by R. S. Ford
‘Everyone?’ Harlaw said. ‘Does that go for you too, Maud?’ His hand was already brushing the pommel of his blade. Maud was here mob handed but he’d be damned if he went down without a fight.
‘Relax, Harlaw, you’re in no danger from me. There’s no bounty on you… yet. What would be the point in killing you now? Besides, we’ve known each other years. Not all mercenaries are as treacherous as you think.’
Her words didn’t ease the tension. ‘So what would you do, if you were me?’
‘If I were you, I’d get on that big white stallion and ride north. And I wouldn’t stop until the Suderfeld border was ten leagues behind me.’
Harlaw knew it was an opportunity that wouldn’t come twice. ‘Thanks for the advice,’ he said, rising to his feet. He picked up his saddlebags and turned towards the door.
Half a dozen of Maud’s men stood in the shadowy recesses of the room. No wonder she had been so relaxed. With his hand still teasing the pommel of his sword, Harlaw made for the door. No one tried to stop him as he left the inn, and outside he was relieved to see the rain had stopped.
The stable boy was quick saddling Mestilus, and Harlaw was quicker securing his bags and climbing atop the horse’s back. With a silent thanks to Maud Levar for her mercy, he put heels to flanks and took the long road north.
* * *
The walk was hard. He had never known land like this – dry arid scrub, fit for neither man nor beast. No wonder the Cordral Extent was such a lawless place of disparate territories lacking any cohesion. How could one city hold sway in a wasteland like this, let alone a city that had lost its king? Whoever ended up ruling the vast city of Kantor now its king was dead had an unenviable task on their hands.
He had passed a town some miles back. More outpost than vibrant community, with vendors selling their scant wares under the oppressive heat of day. It was there he had been forced to bid goodbye to Mestilus; sold to a trader for a few supplies. It had hurt Harlaw more than he thought, more than losing Selene if truth be told. At least that horse had been faithful to him. And in return he had sold the stallion to some desert nomad who would probably slaughter the beast for meat.
For all his growing disdain of this country, it did not slow Harlaw. He had nowhere else to go now, no allies to turn to. Across the Ebon Sea were savage lands that would consume a man whole. Further north the Ramadi was little better and the Shengen Empire to the east would accept no foreigners into its lands. This was his last chance. One chance.
The road he walked led to Kantor – a city ruled by a regent queen, her son too young to take the crown. Harlaw saw his opportunity. She would need warriors around her. Loyal men she could trust. If Harlaw could persuade her he was such a man, then perhaps he could find some type of redemption here. Perhaps he could be the nobleman he used to be.
The more Harlaw trod the road north the flatter and more arid the landscape became. In this endless barren country he missed the rolling hills of the Suderfeld. Even riven by war the homeland he remembered was a more welcoming place than this. It was with relief that he spied another outpost on the road ahead, and he drank the rest of his dwindling water as he quickened his pace to reach it.
At the edge of the outpost he could hear orders being barked. His heart began to beat that much faster. Perhaps this was a military outpost – a way for him to begin his journey to Kantor could lie amongst the ranks of the Cordral militia.
He made his way past the domed buildings and came out onto a central square. The stench of sewage and rotting meat hit his nostrils, but he put that out of his mind as he saw a group of men at the centre of the main square. They were being watched with some amusement by a gathered crowd, and for a moment Harlaw stood among them and viewed the spectacle. It didn’t take him long to realise what had caused their mirth.
‘Straight fucking rows,’ bellowed a beleaguered militia officer, his accent thick, reminding Harlaw he was a stranger in this foreign land. The men were arrayed before the officer in two rough ranks but they seemed little used to the ministration of a military man. Each wore civilian dress and carried a makeshift weapon like a pitchfork or a farmer’s hoe, but there was not a real blade among them.
‘Can not one of you stand in a straight line?’ shouted the officer. ‘If you want to join the Great Eastern Militia, you’ll have to use your fucking heads. What kind of bloody recruits are you?’
Harlaw could see they were the shit kind. Old men and naïve boys. Where all the fighting men were, he had no idea. As he continued to watch, his own dismay grew to match that of the recruitment officer, and before he could stop himself he stepped forward.
‘You’re looking for recruits?’ he said, conscious that all eyes were suddenly on him. ‘I have experience.’
The officer regarded him with an imperious expression. ‘Step back, southlander. I have enough old men already.’
‘And yet you have no fighters.’
The officer looked Harlaw up and down, perhaps sensing he was not quite the old man he first thought.
‘So you can fight, southlander?’
‘Better than anyone here,’ Harlaw replied.
‘Really?’ The officer looked unconvinced. ‘Itzhak!’ he bellowed.
From the crowd came another militiaman, this one wearing a uniform that was stretched over bulging muscle. His black hair was shorn close to his scalp and Harlaw couldn’t quite tell where his neck stopped and his shoulders began.
‘Let’s see just how good you are,’ said the officer.
Itzhak was already drawing a blade that looked more like a short sword in his meaty fist. In response, Harlaw undid his own sword belt, but kept his blade sheathed as he waited for the brute to advance.
As Itzhak swung his first lumbering blow, Harlaw just had time to think how unfair it was he had to fight when the rest of the recruits stood around failing at drill. He stepped to the side, allowing Itzhak’s sword to swoop by before slapping his sheathed blade across the back of the man’s head. It made a hollow crack, and Itzhak staggered forward. He rubbed the back of his head, confusion turning to annoyance before he lumbered in again. This time Harlaw dodged the blow then slapped the scabbard across Itzhak’s rump. It only served to enrage the giant further as the crowd laughed at his misfortune.
The militiaman growled, waving his sword around like it was on fire. Harlaw planted his feet, grasping the scabbard and sliding his sword free. With a downward swipe he disarmed his opponent, bringing the tip of the blade back up to hover in front of the brute’s throat. It stopped Itzhak in his tracks and he held up both his meaty hands in surrender.
Harlaw looked over at the officer. ‘Good enough?’ he asked.
‘Good enough for me,’ the officer said. ‘Welcome to the Great Eastern Militia.’
Harlaw sheathed his blade, forgetting the defeated Itzhak and moving closer to the officer so they might conduct their conversation out of earshot of the crowd.
‘That’s a fine offer,’ he said. ‘But I was hoping to reach Kantor and offer my services to its queen.’
The officer barked a laugh. ‘Kantor? They will entertain no foreign mercenaries there. The city is in lockdown after the death of the king. Egil Sun holds sway now. Go there and you’re as likely to be hung as a foreign spy as given a place in the Desert Blades.’
Harlaw considered the man’s words. He could very well believe the city was closed to foreigners. These were trying times in the Cordral as well as the Suderfeld. Add to that the fact that the bag on his shoulder felt light on supplies and he was thirsty as a man lost in the desert.
‘The Great Eastern Militia it is then,’ he said.
The officer gave him a beaming grin. ‘Good man. What’s the name?’
Harlaw thought on it for a moment. ‘Ermund,’ he said finally. He’d never liked his given name, but it seemed apt he use it now.
‘All right, Ermund. Feel free to join the rest of the recruits.’
Harlaw looked at the motley group before him. It
was hardly the royal guard he had hoped for, but what choice did he have? He had indeed fallen low, but perhaps there might still be some way for him to rise through the ranks and regain some of what he had lost.
Fastening the sword belt around his waist once more, Harlaw stepped forward to stand beside his new countrymen.
17
SUDERFELD dungeon cells were pretty much like any other, apart from a strange stink Ctenka couldn’t identify. It was in between damp, rot and fresh straw, and he was hard pressed to work out if he liked it or not. Weird, he knew, but hardly the weirdest thing about this whole situation.
Ermund sat across from him in silence. At some points Ctenka had been tempted to call horseshit on the whole sorry tale, but there had always been something noble and aloof about the man. The fact he was a duke explained everything. His story had to be true. Why else would they have been imprisoned down here in the dark with their hands chained behind them?
‘I hope you’re happy now,’ said Ctenka. He knew it wasn’t a helpful thing to say but he was too angry to hold it in.
Ermund regarded him with a look of genuine regret. ‘You know I’m not. If I’d thought this was going to happen I would never have brought you into it.’
‘Oh, well I suppose that’s all right then. That will come as great solace when my head’s stuck on a spike on some southern fucking castle.’
‘Don’t lose hope,’ said Ermund. ‘We’re not dead yet.’
He looked completely relaxed, which only made Ctenka even angrier. It was as though getting locked in foreign dungeons happened to him all the time. Perhaps it was a Suderfeld tradition. Perhaps they spent most of their time locked up in each other’s fucking castles.
‘Not dead yet?’ Ctenka spat. ‘You brought us to meet a man who stole your wife and took your lands. What did you think he was going to do? Welcome you back with open arms?’
‘We needed his help. Now the war is over I thought—’
‘You thought? You fucking thought? We’re going to die, Ermund. We should never have come here.’
That much was obvious, made even more plain when the door to their dungeon cell was thrown open. A crowd of men in red, golden lions emblazoned on their chests, burst in. They were shouting obscenities as they grabbed Ctenka by the throat, lifting him to his feet, telling him what a horrible little cunt he was and what horrible things they were going to do to him.
Amid the cacophony of violence, Ctenka forgot where he was and who he was with. All he could hear was shouting. All he could feel were mailed hands pulling at his clothes and hair as he was dragged out of the cell and along a dank corridor. His feet barely touched the ground as he was pulled up a narrow flight of stairs and through an outbuilding. He just had time to look up and see they were being brought out into a courtyard, scaffold in its midst, two nooses up on a gibbet, before he was consumed in a melee once again.
The pair of them were dragged out before the scaffold and driven to their knees. Ctenka stared up at the gallows, all the fight in him fled. There was sudden silence, no noise but the birds chirruping from the rooftops, an audience for the execution.
From beneath a nearby archway came the woman Ermund had talked about, the one that had seen them arrested back at the inn. Selene, his wife, though Ctenka supposed she was the queen now. Every last inch of her spoke power and authority. It wasn’t just the way she looked either. She walked with an air of grace Ctenka had never seen before. For all Ermund’s stout nobility, Ctenka couldn’t imagine how he, or any other man, would think this woman could be theirs. Not even a king could hope to own this woman as their wife. She was an empress.
‘Selene,’ Ermund said as she drew nearer. ‘This is nothing to do with the boy. Let him go.’
She stopped, gazing down at Ermund like a cat about to pounce.
‘So typical of you,’ she replied. ‘Noble to the end.’
‘Does Stellan know I’m here? I must speak with him. There is danger coming, I must speak to the king.’
‘He knows you’re here, Ermund. He just doesn’t care. You were given every chance to escape this place, but still you returned. Surely you knew what would await you?’
‘The Suderfeld is in danger, Selene. You must let me speak to the king. Don’t let your bitterness lead to the ruin of this land.’
There was a flash of anger in Selene’s deep green eyes for a moment, before she wrested back control.
‘Bitterness, Ermund?’ A smile crept up one side of her perfect lips. ‘You think I still care enough about you to be bitter? You’re nothing to me. You never were.’
‘Then let me speak to him. For the sake of the Suderfeld I must entreat his aid. An army is coming—’
‘From beyond the Crooked Jaw,’ she said. ‘Yes, we know.’
That was enough to silence Ermund for a moment. ‘You know? Then you know we must raise an army and ride east before it’s too late.’
That made her laugh, the sound tinkling through the open courtyard. It almost made Ctenka forget he was about to be hung by the neck until fucked.
‘We need no army, Ermund. There is nothing for us to fear from the Iron Tusk.’
Ermund shook his head. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘Much has changed in the Suderfeld since you left. The War of Three Crowns is over. We are a country united once more. There is a power here that you cannot begin to comprehend.’
‘But what—’
‘Would that we had the time, Ermund. But I wasted enough years on you. I don’t owe you anything. You should never have come back here.’
With a wave of her hand two men grabbed Ctenka and dragged him towards the stairs. This was it; he’d been saved from death at the hands of lowly bandits and murderous priestesses just to be strung up by royalty. It was little comfort as he struggled in vain against the two knights.
‘Wait!’ Ctenka shouted. ‘Your Majesty, I am just an envoy from the Cordral.’ He tried nodding towards Ermund in a last desperate attempt to save himself. ‘I don’t even know that man.’
As his foot hit the first step of the scaffold he realised how stupid he must have sounded, since his and Ermund’s uniforms were identical. It didn’t matter anyway, they ignored his pleas and he was unceremoniously bundled up to the gallows, where a rope was affixed around his neck. One of the knights pulled it tight and Ctenka was forced up, as a stool was placed beneath his feet. A firm kick and he’d be left dangling like a marionette.
This was it. This was how he’d die. The story of Ctenka Sunatra, left hanging at the end of a rope in a Suderfeld palace. This was definitely not how he’d wanted to go out.
From the corner of his eye, Ctenka saw someone new enter the courtyard. He tried to shift his head to get a better view but he was so afraid of slipping from the stool he could barely get a sense of who it was. The knights noticed the newcomer too, and paused as though awaiting permission.
‘Wait.’ The voice was calm, and Ctenka watched as a slim man with a crooked nose came into view. By his side was a little boy, head shaved, watching proceedings with a blank stare.
‘What do you mean, wait?’ said Selene. ‘Do you know who this is?’ She gestured to Ermund, still kneeling on the ground.
‘Of course I do,’ said the man. ‘I’ve been waiting for him to arrive.’ He glanced up at Ctenka. ‘Don’t know you, though.’
Ctenka tried to put on his best smile but it was impossible with the noose so tight around his throat. ‘Ctenka Sunatra,’ he tried to say, but it came out as more of a strangled croak.
‘Someone take him down,’ said the man. ‘There’ll be no need for executions today.’
Selene took a step forward, all her composure gone now. She looked furious. ‘These men are—’
‘And remove those chains, they won’t be necessary.’
The knights ignored Selene, and did as they were ordered. Two of them loosened the rope at Ctenka’s neck and gently lowered him from the gallows.
When they were both unchain
ed, the man waved off the knights. ‘You can leave now.’
They obeyed him, but Selene remained, her ire only growing. ‘This is not—’
‘Anything to concern yourself with,’ the man interrupted. ‘I’m sure there must be other business for you to attend to?’
Selene glared at him, then glanced down at the child that accompanied him. All the fight seemed to leave her, and she stormed from the courtyard. Ermund watched her every step before she was out of sight.
‘Gentlemen, my apologies. I wasn’t notified of your arrival.’
There was a moment of silence before Ctenka realised it was their turn to speak.
‘No apology necessary,’ he said, despite having almost been hung like fresh game. ‘I am Ctenka Sunatra.’ He gestured to Ermund. ‘And this is—’
‘This is the former Duke Harlaw of Ravensbrooke. But it looks like you’ve now found gainful employment in the Cordral.’ He glanced down at Ermund’s weathered uniform.
‘I have,’ said Ermund. ‘I’m glad you recognised me before we were hung for common criminals.’
‘Who wouldn’t recognise a man of such esteem? Well—’ he looked Ermund’s dishevelled form up and down, ‘— former esteem.’
‘I don’t mean to sound rude,’ said Ctenka, fast running out of patience, ‘but who are you?’
The man smiled, placing a hand gently on the child’s head. ‘I am Randal Weirwulf. And I run things around here.’
‘You?’ said Ermund, the disbelief plain in his voice. ‘This is Northold. King Stellan rules here. What do you mean, you run things?’
‘Well,’ said Randal, turning to take a stroll. ‘That’s a long story…’
Ermund stepped after him. ‘Any chance of you telling it?’
‘Every chance,’ Randal replied.
Ctenka followed right behind. He would be damned if he’d miss this tale.