by Neil Beynon
‘What do you mean?’
‘We are at war,’ said the thain. ‘Whether you like it or not. We may decide this isn’t the best place to remain.’
‘This is the most defensible area we have. The mountains behind us mean they could only approach from the plains.’
The thain smiled. ‘You did retain something during your brief time in the army, then,’ she said. ‘You’ll also recall that if we wait for that, we will lose our ability to leave. Siege would be dangerous.’
‘Only if he has managed to reinforce his supply lines,’ replied Golan. ‘None of his predecessors managed to do that, and the winter will cut him off.’
‘We’ll make a warrior out of you yet,’ said the thain, airily.
They made their way through the tents and makeshift shelters, passing children playing in the dirt and the odd dog hanging round in the hope of scraps. At the edge of the emerging camp, there were survivors fresh from the road, dirt-encrusted, sweat-stenched and, in some cases, still bleeding. One of the men stood on their approach.
‘Are you her?’
The thain stopped. The man was not dressed like an Shaanti: his clothes were darker and would have shone had they been clean. His skin was as pale as milk, and he was lean like he had been on the road far longer than the rest.
‘Who wants to know?’
Bene drew his sword, but she waved him down.
The man bowed low. ‘I am Gor-Iven of the Del, and I have come as a warning of what is approaching.’
Golan frowned. ‘Delgasia fell. How are you here?’
The man nodded. ‘Some of us escaped, but where my companions made for the ports and looked to our cousins in the cross, on the far side of the world, I have sought you out. This evil will follow us across the skin of the world if we do not stop it here.’
‘I think world domination is a bit much even for the Kurah,’ said Golan, his tone mocking.
The thain gave him a look that made him shut up.
‘My companion is a touch unkind in his tone,’ she said. ‘But I am inclined to agree. The Kurah are not interested in world conquest, not yet.’
‘I am referring not to the Kurah but their ally.’
The thain frowned. ‘To whom are you referring?’
Gor-Iven looked round at the camp. ‘You may wish for me to tell you somewhere other than here. It may spread panic.’
The thain looked around. The camp was staring at them, and anything they said here would travel like wildfire. Perhaps he had a point.
‘Main hall, two hours,’ she said. ‘Dinner with the council – don’t be late.’
‘I apologise in advance for my state of dress,’ said Gor-Iven, with a smile designed to open purse strings.
‘Don’t push it, Gor-Iven,’ said the thain, keeping a smile from her own face. ‘Your clothing is fine. Bring your information.’
They moved away. Golan’s face told his story. She wondered if the merchant ever played cards or how he had managed to negotiate the sort of deals that had enabled him to amass almost as much wealth as herself. Perhaps this was an act. The man was in league with a traitor that was sending messages across the Shaanti lands to the Kurah. Someone who was quietly whittling down their supplies and sabotaging the city walls while the council argued amongst itself about what to do.
‘My sources report that milady has sent Lord Jeb from the city,’ said Golan.
The thain paused. Golan should not have been able to find this out, and yet here he was, asking the question. His network had grown too big while she had been worrying about dying. The pain in her lungs was sharp, but she pushed it away.
‘Lord Jeb is on a private errand for me to an old friend,’ replied the thain. ‘Even rulers have personal lives.’
‘No, milady,’ said the merchant. ‘With all due respect, they do not. That is the price for the seat on which you sit – your life is open to scrutiny. What business does Lord Jeb have in the forest? I am a councillor. I should know.’
The thain smiled. ‘Lord Golan, you are also standing in the middle of a refugee camp. We will not discuss this matter further. Or are you challenging my authority as a war leader?’
‘There has been no formal declaration,’ said Golan.
The thain let her hand drift to her weapon again. ‘Tread carefully.’
Golan flushed and turned. He marched off without taking his leave, and Bene stepped forward to stop him. The bodyguard’s fury was honest but unhelpful. The thain waved him away.
‘Let him go,’ she said. ‘And have my shadow’s deputy look into how in Golgotha that fat merchant knew Lord Jeb had gone.’
‘He presents a very grave threat,’ said Bene, sheathing his blade. ‘Do you propose to let this charade continue much longer?’
The cough came on her before the thain could reply. She was unable to speak: the cough just kept rolling and rolling, and her chest felt as if someone had lit a firework within it. The handkerchief she pressed to her mouth came away bloody, but she thought she got it inside her cloak before he saw it.
‘Do you need a drink?’ asked Bene, concerned.
She shook her head.
‘We should return within the walls ourselves,’ said Bene, looking around the camp. ‘These poor people will be carrying their own share of sickness. You know how coughs travel through camps.’
‘You are right,’ she acknowledged. ‘But let us not hurry like frightened rats.’
‘You did not answer my question.’
The thain did not reply. She knew she had not answered his question, and truth be told, she was not sure how long she could let her deceit continue. She wasn’t sure she understood the game that was being played. And she didn’t like that. Not at all.
The dinner was a morose affair.
The banquet hall was largely empty save for one long table at the end of the room nearest to the throne. Seated around it were the top five generals, the commanders of the thain’s army, and the council. Seated to the thain’s right hand was her invited guest, Gor-Iven of the Del. He wore a simple robe in black, as was the custom for an official in Delgasia, and had been cleaned up by someone – the robes were fresh, and he was tidy and shaven, his hair oiled back in a top knot. The thain wondered who had helped him. Her suspicion was that Golan had, and she was walking into a trap.
‘You must forgive our fare,’ she said, leaning conspiratorially towards him. ‘We are all on rations, as the exodus from the borders will put us under strain. We may have to defend ourselves against a siege.’
Gor-Iven smiled. The grin did not reach his eyes. ‘I understand, and please appreciate this is a feast to someone who has been on the run for over ninety days. I would have been shamed to see myself here if your bodyguard had not lent me these clothes and his quarters.’
The thain hid her surprise well. Bene was a private man, and kind, but she had never seen him take a stranger in like this. She glanced over at him, but he was lost in conversation with the speaker and only keeping her, the thain, in his periphery. She wasn’t bothered by this – it was positively liberating to be trusted with one’s own safety for longer than five minutes.
‘We know each other,’ continued the Delgasian. ‘He is not one who is free with his resources, as you know, but we were at Pep together when he was just a swordsman and I was a bowman.’
‘Remind me never to play cards with you, Gor-Iven,’ she said, turning back to him with a smile. ‘What was Bene like back then?’
Gor-Iven smiled. ‘Pretty. Full of energy but not contained like it is now – he was like a flame that burned if you got too close. You no doubt remember, you sent him to Pep.’
The thain laughed. A long time had passed since a stranger had managed to elicit that from her, and she was thankful because the act of laughing felt like she had emerged into sunlight after a long storm. She hadn’t been aware how dark her thoughts had become. Looking round, she took in the sight of people she had known all their lives, sitting around chatting and discus
sing, with such sombre faces. Despite the mood, this was peaceful. Soon all this would turn to hastily gobbled food in war tents and a constant fatigue punctuated only by relentless, freezing drops in temperature as night came.
The room fell silent when she stood.
‘You have been good enough to share my company for dinner,’ she said. ‘And I would have you enjoy the meal, despite the circumstances, but we must hear what our guest has to say.’
‘Does our guest have an explanation for how he escaped?’
The room was quiet enough that you could have heard a heartbeat if you concentrated. The guests were staring at Golan as if the merchant had lost his mind. The thain knew he had not. Golan had had time to think and now felt that whatever Gor-Iven had to say, he was a threat to Golan or whoever he was working with, and so he wanted to discredit him. The thain did not let her feelings show. Fortunately, she was not young any more, and she had more cards up her sleeve than he.
‘I do not think …’
The Delgasian rose. ‘Milady, if I may,’ he said. She nodded. He continued. ‘My lord asks a fair question. I was not an escapee.’
Some of the warriors seemed uneasy now. Bene was looking like he was going to come over. She shook her head.
‘I am on a mission from the last king of Delgasia.’
‘Pah!’ said Golan. ‘How do we know this?’
Gor-Iven smiled. ‘I’m glad you asked.’ He produced a ring from within his robes and held it to the light. The piece was made of a metal brighter than silver, and the jewel in the centre had been formed into a cat’s head that was so realistic and finely detailed it was hard to tell if an artisan had done the work or a mage. The last time the thain had seen the ring, it was on the hand of the king of the Delgasians.
‘You could have taken that from his corpse,’ said Golan.
‘No,’ said the thain. ‘He could not. Once the ring is passed to each ruler, it cannot be removed unless the bearer decides to remove it, or someone related to them removes the ring in death. This man is no relative of the king, unless his skin has been bleached.’
Gor-Iven laughed.
‘Then this was given by Jorn as a sign of good faith.’
Golan sat down, but his eyes never moved from the Delgasian.
‘Please,’ said the thain. ‘Tell us everything.’
The Kurah came with the dawn.
Gor-Iven heard the war bells before he saw them. He had been stretched out in his bed with his lover, the warrior-poet Ilya, next to him. Ilya moved faster than Gor-Iven, springing naked to the window. For a moment, Gor-Iven was too busy looking at the younger man’s naked back – he had a notion to pull him back under the sheets – to notice his lover’s expression. Ilya turned.
‘Kurah,’ he said.
Gor-Iven’s ardour evaporated. The Kurah had not attacked in his lifetime, but his father had died when he was two, never having really recovered from the last war. He had been a one-legged cripple, unable to see past his experience to notice his family. Gor-Iven was a live-and-let-live kind of man – but not when it came to Kurah. Already screams were reaching them from below. There was a loud thump, like thunder, and the room shook.
‘Trebuchet,’ said Ilya, pulling on his leggings.
‘Get away from the window,’ said Gor-Iven, doing the same.
Ilya threw his tunic on as he replied. ‘They aren’t in here ye—’
The crossbow bolt caught him through the back, between his shoulder blades, and cast blood over the wall above the bed. Gor-Iven couldn’t move as he watched the man crumple to his knees and slump over. Another bolt slammed into the wall. The strike broke Gor-Iven’s hypnotic grief, and he dropped down out of sight, pulling his own tunic on and grabbing his dead lover’s chain shirt almost as an afterthought. The warrior who had fired the bolt must be close, from the force of the projectiles. His own weapons were back in his quarters. He grabbed the dead man’s sword and lousy excuse for a bow and crawled out of the room.
Once he was safely in the windowless corridor, he ran for the stairs. Gor-Iven took them two at a time until he reached the archers. The attack had come from nowhere. The floor was almost empty. Three archers lay slain. His eyes took a moment to adjust before he spotted the Kurah warrior bending over one of the corpses, his grey robes concealing him in shadow. Gor-Iven let loose an arrow without drawing properly. The strike took the man in the eye, and he went down screaming. Silently the Delgasian moved forward and ended the scream by thrusting a dagger up under the man’s chin.
Gor-Iven looked out from the arrow slit next to a dead Delgasian bowman. He should have known his name, but he forgot them so quickly now. They all looked like children. Had he ever been so young? The image of Ilya, sinking to his knees and bleeding all over the floor, came back to him. He drew his bow and looked for the man that had fired the crossbow.
All across the city, Kurah poured through the streets, and there was little effective resistance. The king had abandoned the outer wall right away, from the look of it. There was a ragtag defence forming at the palace wall. The Kurah sniper was on the roof of the temple, firing occasional bolts down on the passing Delgasian warriors but, more often than not, looking to the high-rise windows of the palace and high-status buildings. The archer clearly had a strategy to decapitate the Delgasians by assassinating their leaders. He was not alone. Other snipers were in similar positions on half a dozen roofs across the capital.
Gor-Iven noted the Kurah crossbowman was no longer looking this way at all. He clearly thought the clearance had been done, and this was such a natural thing for a bowman to think. It was also fatal. Gor-Iven locked his bow on the man, adjusted for the wind and the narrow space of undefended torso, and let the arrow fly. It arced out wider and swooped back in on the wind, embedding itself in the assassin’s neck and sending the man writhing for the wound, his crossbow forgotten, as he slid down the roof, coming to rest on the ledge. He did not move again.
The Delgasian got two more before the others realised they were being picked off. The bolts started flying, but it was only when the boulders from the trebuchet started landing that he moved and made his way, running, to the palace walls. There was no fear now. He knew that he was going to die, and his sole purpose was to take as many Kurah with him as he could.
Gor-Iven arrived at the palace walls just in time to see them fall. In a thousand years of the Del, the palace had never, ever been breached, and it was thought by most in the land to be impenetrable. Magic struck like lightning. Tendrils of light and the bright orange of fire warped and wrapped themselves round the ancient stone before blowing it asunder. The explosion took Gor-Iven and smashed him into the side of the palace, and scattered Del warriors like they were leaves blown by the wind. The Delgasian passed out.
Gor-Iven woke up, aching all over but relieved to find he was alive.
The majority of the men he had seen thrown from the wall as it was breached were dead. Those who’d survived were fighting Kurah. Gor-Iven wasn’t sure if he had been hurt too badly to move. He lay as still as he could lest he be seen, checking himself as subtly as he could before risking a move. Around him, his comrades fought and bled. Gor-Iven hated himself for his caution. Satisfied that he was able to fight, he lashed out with a sword. He hacked the legs out from under the Kurah fighting a few feet away. Gor-Iven caught sight of another Delgasian, a tall man with a purple breastplate stained with mud and blood, becoming overrun by Kurah. He ran to help, ducking swipes from Kurah and killing all he could. Gor-Iven killed one of the men attacking the purple-armoured Delgasian. He killed the next Kurah by ducking under the warrior’s wild swing and shoving a dagger through the man’s eye. Before long Gor-Iven was fighting back to back with the Delgasian in purple armour, and he realised the tall man was actually his king, Jorn.
‘What’s your name?’ shouted the king over his shoulder.
‘Gor-Iven,’ he shouted back.
‘The city is lost,’ yelled the king. ‘You need to get out.’
‘Not likely,’ shouted Gor-Iven. ‘They need to pay for this.’
‘Courage is not dying for no reason,’ yelled back the king. ‘The Kurah have won today, but they will not stop here. The Shaanti must be warned.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re Brent’s boy, aren’t you?’ yelled the king, ducking a blow and taking another Kurah’s head.
‘Aye,’ said Gor-Iven. The man remembered his father. In that moment, he would have gone into hell for him.
‘Then you know why,’ said the king. ‘They saved us once. We must hope that she still has it in her.’
‘Who?’
‘The thain,’ said the king, turning and pressing the ring into Gor-Iven’s hand.
What happened next still gave Gor-Iven nightmares. The fire-lightning snaked into the broken corridor and wrapped its tendrils around the king and lifted him into the air. Gor-Iven drew back in fear. This saved his life. The creature that came through the breached wall, lightning emanating from his right hand, was over seven feet tall and had hair that fell in crazy locks that could have been antlers. His skin was covered in tattoos that moved and merged and blended and shifted in the light. He was dressed in Shaanti leggings; his chest was bare; and in his left hand, he carried a spear that gleamed like the moon. Delgasians did not believe in the same gods as Shaanti, but they had spent enough time on this continent to know one of their gods when he appeared, however old he may be.
‘You claim that an Shaanti god is with the Kurah?’ asked Bene, rising.
‘I wish that it were not so,’ said Gor-Iven, his face a picture of grief. ‘I truly do, but I cannot tell my story other than I saw it.’
The thain felt cold. Her mouth was dry despite the wine she had been sipping, and the silence of the room was feeling more like a collective scream.
‘Please continue,’ she said. ‘You saw more. You have not told us of your escape.’