by Ahimsa Kerp
They remained silent as they wove their way into the deeper recesses at the base of the hills. The moonlight peeked through a splattering of clouds, reflecting off a rivulet that trickled down the center of the depression.
Gleda and Bren waited for them in a cave near the base of a narrow waterfall. The cave was shallow, yet large enough for the four of them to sleep within, lying down and out of sight. Bren ran over, his brown locks and clothes as unkempt as his older brother’s. Eager to know everything, he wouldn’t let Nat pass until he’d heard all that had happened since the elder and Trask had left earlier in the afternoon. Nat started spinning the tale beginning with the rabbit he’d almost shot from across a bluff, and then to the strangers they’d hidden from.
Trask crossed over to Gleda. He winced as he lowered himself to the ground, then slumped against the hard stone at the cave’s entrance. “Southern foragers,” he said.
Gleda’s eyes widened and darted to the boys, and then to the darkness beyond.
Trask shook his head. “Not close,” he said, “not yet anyway. They’ve found the ford at Spring Vale, but by the sounds of it their van may have reached the ruins of Baldairn Motte already.” Trask paused and ran a thumb along his bowstring. “The battle may have already joined, if the muster wasn’t routed at the start.”
“It weighs on you, whether you’ve done right or not in leaving the others,” said Gleda.
“I know I’ve done right, wife,” Trask snapped, though the lie sounded as hollow as it felt.
Gleda pulled the knife at her belt and began working free a hunk of salted lamb from within the sack at her feet. “Caulder, Tillon, those with families will understand. Even Hem, the Passions bless him. They’d have done the same if it’d been their kin gone missing.”
“And if I’d found the boys at Burn Gate?” asked Trask. “Where would I be now?”
Gleda’s knife stopped. “Where the Passions meant you to be and nowhere else.” She set the blade aside and tore the last bit with her hands.
When she offered it, Trask thought about refusing. He was too tired, and his throat had gone dry. But he remembered the sweet scent of the roasted deer and his rumbling stomach won out. At least those at Baldairn have fires to keep them warm, he thought as he chewed. Trask didn’t dare risk the light or smoke with the southerners about. As if to taunt him, an icy wind whipped down the rock face and carried mist from the waterfall to coat them in a blanket.
“Ack,” cried Gleda. She wiped the moisture off her cloak and called for Nat and Bren. They would need to spend the night huddled close for warmth or risk freezing to death.
“Do you think the Fairie will come out tonight?” asked Bren when he reached them. The boy stared at the moon as he rubbed his arms and stamped his feet.
“I hope so,” said Trask. He and all the North could use their luck.
HEM
Tillon had a nose for the bartering craft, so Hem wasn’t surprised when they’d returned to their campfire with a bundle of bows and sheaves of arrows. Of spears, there were none to be found. Hem huffed as he sat inspecting the bow stave he’d taken from the bundle. The ash had a fine grain to it, though its throat was a little too thin, and the draw was for a weaker man. He’d also taken two sheaves of cloth-yard arrows, which were wrapped in a linen sack, and a pair of strings. He’d been forced to wrap his hood around the arrow bag to keep the fletching dry, and now the cold bit at his exposed ears and cheeks.
Tillon had found a jack in one of the wagons they passed and had offered it to Hem, but the miller’s shoulders were too broad for it, so he’d passed it back. It was the only armor any of them had, though Caulder mused a good bow in the right hands was better than any shield.
Hem didn’t dispute that, but he knew as soon as the first wave passed, he’d drop the bow and snatch up one of the fallen spears. A man his size wasn’t meant to be flinging sticks from the rear, and he wanted to see the blackspurs’ faces as he ripped through their lines.
He threw the stave back onto the pile with the others. Forning Passions. For all the Ordained’s strutting, where was Ordryn in all this chaos? And what lords and captains would lead an army where men thought more of fighting over food than how best to defend their homes? Perhaps Trask had had it right all along. Maybe the North would be stronger if each man thought only of defending his own kin. But Hem had no kin. And save Trask, the only kith he had sat beside him sucking on boiled pine needles for supper.
He realized he’d been clenching his jaw hard enough to make his teeth hurt. He rubbed a hand at his beard and tried to loosen the grip the day’s frustration had cast upon him.
“The captains know their business,” said Caulder, guessing at Hem’s thoughts.
“Ordryn’s cunny.” Hem glowered. “That one from Thurmwood has barely given up his mother’s teat. We’d be better off following the Fairie into battle!”
“We’re here to fight with or without the captains,” said Tillon. “We’re all just a bunch of rat-spears to the lords, anyway.”
Under heavy clouds, the night had grown darker than the star-filled skies of days before, but Hem could still make out a few nods of agreement in the light of their fire.
The drizzle that had come and gone throughout the day started anew. With it came a cold breeze that forced its way under Hem’s cloak. He shifted closer to the fire and stared into the flames. A few days prior and he would’ve flown into a rage at the thought of wielding a bow. More, he would’ve challenged any who questioned the captains and lords. Theirs was Ordryn’s Will, the stone that held against the wind. But his resolve had weakened. It’d been worn away by a gnawing in his gut he could only claim as despair. Craven, he scolded himself, but the word had become meaningless.
His eyes grew heavy, and he tucked his head into his chest. He hoped the southerners would come on the morrow so he could die or kill. It no longer mattered which; he just wanted an end to the Passions’ game.
He’d almost found sleep when a great cheer sounded from the orchards loud enough to silence the patter of the rain and startle him to his feet. A rumble of thunder echoed through the encampment, growing louder, and then a flood of light blazoned through the trees at the base of the hills, from thousands of torches carried by a sea of mounted men-at-arms.
Hem and his companions glanced at each other in bewilderment. Tillon snatched up one of the bows, but those from the campfires around theirs were whooping and clapping, not arming themselves.
It seemed half the encampment rushed toward the newcomers, and Hem lurched to join them. His legs felt light. The cold and wet no longer bothered him. The troubling thoughts from earlier were forgotten. In their place was a strength Hem hadn’t felt since the camp at Thrall’s Dale, when the campfires held good cheer and boasting, before Trask had abandoned them, before Alric’s body had been found.
A horseman pushed through the gathering mass. Hem forced his way forward and grabbed the man’s leg. “What lord’s come to join us?”
“Make way!” the horseman shouted. “Make way for the Duke of Hairng, Lord of the North! Protector of the rightful king!”
A boot caught Hem in the chest and bowled him backward into a clump of men who cursed and pushed him away. Hem struggled to find his feet as the crowd parted. Shouts rang out all around him, “Lord Hairng! Lord Hairng is come! We are saved!”
And then the ground trembled as thousands of hooves thundered past. But Hem’s gaze was fixed upon the head of a stag mounted on a standard at the front of the column. It seemed stalwart amidst the chaos. Proud, even in death. The opposite of the rotting carcass he and Trask had spied on the banks of the Sprite. Lord Hairng had come to command the North and bring order to their ranks. Hem shook and gritted his teeth and roared; elated, his blood boiled, his heart thumped, and he lost himself in thoughtless jubilation.
HEM
Hem rubbed fingers caked with a week’s grit over his cheeks and down his beard as he sat by the morning cook fire. His stomach gnawed at him, h
alf in hunger and half in fretfulness. Bile ran up the back of his throat, and he reached for a skin of water. But when he put the oiled mouth to his lips, he squeezed too tight and a rush of water spilled over his shirt.
“Rains not wet enough for you?” asked Caulder with a smirk. The chandler hunched down next to Cynric a short distance away. He chewed on a sprig of pine and poked at the crackling flames with a blackened stick. The skald sat shivering with his knees tucked up to his chin.
Hem spat. “The forning sun will never rise. It just sits there on the crest of the hills like a stubborn mule.”
“They’ll be calling us to form rank soon enough. And then the real waiting will begin.” Caulder clapped Cynric on the shoulder. “Enjoy the warmth while we have it.”
Hem pursed his lips and tried to rid himself of the awful taste in his mouth. His eyes hung heavy. None had slept much the night before. No sooner had the cheers of Lord Hairng’s arrival died down, than had a second, more somber, chorus rippled through the encampment.
The van of the enemy had arrived.
How the Lord of the North had managed to out fox the southern lords was a tale already spinning wildly from fire to fire. Some spoke of steeds that raced until their hearts gave out, and others of the Passions blowing winds to clear the high passes of ice in the wake of the northern lord’s march. Hem didn’t give a piss either way. All he cared to know was that his lord had somehow seen the Baardol affair as a feint and read Sturm Galkmeer’s true intentions. Lord Hairng had arrived just in time, with his enemy on his heels.
The Passions gave the lord luck, thought Hem, and the common folk through their lord.
From where he sat, he spied a cluster of southern horse milling in the lower fields across from the three hills on which their encampment perched. He hadn’t realized how much the fields sloped away until the mounted figures had appeared to give perspective. He shook his head. If the southern van had arrived a day earlier, they could’ve run the forces of Lord Thurmwood off the higher ground.
Hem had time to muse over the will of the Passions for only a few moments before a captain strode toward them bellowing. “To arms! Raise those spears, lads! Form battles on the slopes!” The captain slapped men on the back as they scurried toward the line, and nudged a few who only stood about with slackened jaws.
“A battle?” asked Cynric.
Caulder strung his bow and hefted his arrow bag. “A wedge of spear, he means. We’re to fill in beside them.”
Tillon appeared out of the press next to his brother, with a bundle of spears in his arms. “Not beside,” he said. “Within.” A wicked grin splashed across his face. “Found these in a tree.”
“Ha!” bellowed Hem. His lips pulled into a broad grin he couldn’t contain. “You make a convincing liar, Tillon,” he said, coming to take one of the proffered spears. The shaft stood half again as tall as his own height, with an iron spike running the last foot. Its weight felt sturdy in his hands and brought gooseflesh to his arms.
The younger chandler’s excitement echoed that of the miller’s. The leather jack he’d claimed had rents in the flank, but he wore it as if he were a lord, and he doled out the remaining spears as if they were gemstones.
Caulder merely shook his head. “I’ve held spears before, thanks. I’ll play the archer this time.”
To Hem’s surprise, Cynric set down his bow and hefted one of the spears. A meek smirk crossed the skald’s face. Hem laughed and clapped him on the back. Then he and the others moved off toward the massing battles.
Hooves beat the ground, mailed shirts clinked as they jostled in the saddle, leather straps groaned, and arrows clacked together as they shifted in their linen bags. The nervous murmur of the northerners fell to a heavy silence as men found their positions within the ranks.
Cynric pointed out a band of northern horsemen whose round shields were painted in spiraled patterns of red, green, and black. Their swords were short and thick, not blades for show but for butchery. Their leader held a lance with brown and crimson pennants flying from its tip. “Lord Hairng’s personal houseguard,” said Caulder. The chandler pointed off to their left, “and over there are the Quarrelers, and there the Titan Guard.” Emblems of the North, Hem knew, master archers who could launch volleys upon the enemy with devastating precision, and the elite guard who formed the shock force of the northmen’s line. His nerves quelled a bit at seeing these hardened allies.
The companions from Burn Gate jostled into a spot on a small slope in the battle closest to the orchard. The line stretched farther than Hem could see under the haze of the morning clouds, into the orchards on one side and beyond the fields of wild flowers on the other. Spears bristled like a hedge of decaying brambles, their shafts a forest that swayed and danced. The captains rode among them, pushing them tighter until the air grew stale with spent breath.
At the far edge of the fields, down the long slope, gathered the enemy. No longer a cluster of horsemen, men-at-arms marshaled the spear of their van into the clearing from a long train that wound through the hills toward North Port. The southerners’ tunics and trousers were bright in color, reds and oranges, the shades of a sun-baked climate, though the men who wore them looked as sodden as Hem’s companions. The rains had not spared them either.
“When will they come?” asked Hem, though it sounded more like a curse than a question.
“Soon, I think,” said Tillon. “Look there, some of their horse already want to charge.” Hem’s heart thumped as he saw where the chandler pointed, and it seemed to him that his hearing dimmed, as if all the realm had gone quiet to watch.
A pocket of southern horsemen broke free from their line and thundered across the field. Clumps of mud churned beneath them like the foam of a breaking wave. Hem could make out the cloth-of-gold tabard the lead horseman wore but not the sigil stitched upon the breast. Some small lord, it was obvious to tell, with his retinue behind him.
The lord raised his spear and roared. The cry was echoed by his men, but only two score of the southerners had broken their ranks, and after clearing half the field, the lord pulled his horse to a plodding halt and swung his head around.
The northmen bellowed taunts and waved their spears, beckoning the lord closer. The horses milled about in confused circles for a time before the enemy turned to retreat.
A great cheer went up from the North, and Hem found himself shouting until spots danced in his vision. He gripped his spear and felt grounded by its sturdy weight.
The morning passed with similar feats, southern lords and captains urging their men to steal the honor of leading the charge, only to retreat in disorder, abandoned by their fellow countrymen. Hem felt a rush each time a wave broke, but the ebb and flow grew exhausting. Soon his voice had given from the shouting and his legs tired from the strain of tensing and relaxing. Several of the men around him had taken to sitting on their cloaks, and a few munched on bread or traded bawdy jests and talked of the fool blackspurs as if they weren’t just across the field.
The blaring of horns began, and the northmen’s battles fell silent. “So many,” Cynric breathed beside him. Hem had to agree. The southern ranks had swelled five times in size since the van first appeared. They advanced now at a steady gait, their horsemen pushed to the flanks as a thick wall of spear blotted out the open field.
“Archers!” a captain shouted.
Hem searched for Caulder as those with bows moved forward in the ranks, but could not spy him. A few arrows sputtered out from their line but fell short. An eager murmur rippled through the line, gathering strength.
The men in front lowered their spears and braced themselves. Arrows from the enemy clattered in the mud before them, then began to find purchase in flesh. Their own ranks answered, and the whistle of missiles turned into a pounding hailstorm across both lines. Cries of pain were drowned out by savage roars.
The hailstorm was replaced by the thwack of spears as the two armies joined.
The wedge pressed tighter a
round Hem, pinning his arms to his sides. He tried to force his way free, but a hand shoved him between the shoulders, and he pitched toward the spears of the southerners.
His boots skidded in the muck, and he fell to a knee. Sharp eyes blazoned hatred from the enemy ranks. A spear tip thrust at his chest but clanged against the shaft of another and deflected harmlessly to the side. Hem drove the butt of his spear into the ground, straining to pull himself to his feet, but the surge of bodies crashed into him again and again, like the thunderous waves of a maelstrom.
He tottered and lost his grip on his spear. A foot stepped on his ankle, twisting the joint and causing an eruption of pain. The shaft of the spear of the man above him cracked against his skull, and his vision blurred. His lungs tore as he sucked in ragged breaths, lost in a panic that slashed holes in the world around him.
He floated, smelling the bitter soil of the field and tasting the sweat upon his lips. Those around him grunted from deep within their bowels, their muscles and tendons bulging.
The line of northmen surged forward as a cluster of the enemy buckled. Short thrusts rent the chests and arms of the southerners who dropped their spears and turned, clawing to get away from the onslaught.
A hand clasped Hem’s shoulder, and he was yanked to his feet. He tried to slip through the press of bodies behind him hoping for a short reprieve, but there were no gaps between elbow and hip and knee and shoulder. He spun and growled at the enemy, a vicious rumble from his gut. The fire of hatred returned to him, warming his limbs so they felt fresh and limber.
Somehow, he reclaimed his spear. He brought it to bear and thrust it into the mass of the enemy with all of his bulk, feeling it jerk and slow as it met flesh. He snarled and yanked the spear free. Then he crouched his legs and waited for the wave to crash into him again.
Heavy black clouds hid the afternoon sun. A cold wind gusted up the slope toward Baldairn Motte, when Hem finally lowered his spear. The enemy, without herald or defeat, had fled the field. Some of those around Hem made to pursue, but the dead and wounded that lay between the two lines formed a barrier that stole their will. There had been enough killing on the day.