The Pariah

by Anthony Ryan

  It’s all about turning flanks, y’see, lad, he’d told me one evening during our sojourn to the coast. Or, more simply put, getting round the side so’s you can have a go at your foe’s arse. And, for reasons known only to the Seraphile, it’s almost always the right flank they go for.

  So it was with sinking spirits that, as I marched dutifully along with all the others, I watched the rest of the company lining out to our left. My guts lurched with even greater energy as we formed our three ranks on their right, bridging a gap between the company and the river. Our troop was obliged to place half its number amid the tall rushes and bushes covering the bank. The ground beneath our feet was soft and soon rendered into mud by so many stamping boots. A snatched glance to my left revealed that not only was our troop at the end of the company’s line; the company itself stood at the terminus of the entire army’s battle order.

  The site of what would become known as the Traitors’ Field consisted of a three-acre stretch of recently grazed pasture, sloping gently from the river to the crest of a low rise. I made out the sight of the king’s banner fluttering atop the rise. The space betwixt was filled with what seemed an inordinately thin line arrayed in varying degrees of tidiness. Knots of pikes bristled here and there but several stretches were occupied by just loosely arrayed churls bearing wood axes and scythes. Behind the line, armour-clad nobles and mounted men-at-arms cantered or walked their mounts, the beasts’ breath steaming in the frigid morning air.

  “Eyes front, Scribe!” Ofihla barked at me. She prowled the ground in front of our line, snapping out orders or delivering judicious blows to straighten it. Apparently satisfied, she then growled at us to remain in place and went to join the other Supplicants gathered around Evadine. The captain rode her black charger today, a more boisterous animal than the grey. It tossed its head continually, forehooves gouging the dew-damp sod. Evadine seemed unperturbed by her mount’s fractiousness, her face betraying only affable approval as she exchanged words with the Supplicant Blades.

  Sergeant Swain and several of the other Supplicants each carried one of the crossbows provided by Aspirant Arnabus, although Ofihla didn’t. I wondered if this indicated some measure of disfavour but felt it more likely that she simply preferred the Lochaber axe she carried. This was a truly fearsome contrivance consisting of a yard-long steel cleaver fixed to a five-foot stave, resembling a billhook that had acquired some form of swelling disease. It seemed an unwieldy weapon to carry into battle but during practice I had seen Ofihla whirl it about as if it weighed no more than a slender length of willow. I decided that whatever transpired today, remaining somewhere in Ofihla’s vicinity would likely serve me well.

  The conference lasted only a short time before the sound of pealing trumpets rose from the crest of the rise. Despite the orders to keep facing front, all eyes soon tracked to the sight of a man riding a magnificent white stallion, closely followed by a large retinue of nobles in royal livery. One of the knights carried the royal banner, while trumpet-bearing outriders continued to proclaim his presence on the field.

  “Silence in the ranks!” Ofihla shouted, quelling the rising murmur provoked by the sight of a man none of us had ever expected to clap eyes on in person. “Pay heed to the king!” Ofihla added taking up position to our front. I noted that, while she and the Supplicants had hurried back to their troops, Evadine remained where she was, regarding the king’s retinue with an expression of only placid curiosity. It wasn’t until the king reined his fine horse to a halt and the trumpeters blared out a final, somewhat discordant, note that our captain consented to dismount.

  Seeing her fall to one knee, the entire company followed suit, as did the rest of the army. Behind the battle line, the nobles and mounted men-at-arms all climbed from their saddles to do the same. I felt the subsequent pause to be overly long as we waited for the king’s word. Having witnessed more than my fair share of sermons, I knew an interval of silence before commencing a speech could be highly effective at commanding attention. However, this silence wore on to the point where the growing accumulation of snorting, impatient warhorses and coughing soldiers threatened to drown out any inspiring oratory.

  As we waited, I risked a quick glance at the king. He had halted a good distance from our length of the line, making it hard to glean much from his appearance. However, my impression was not that of a striking figure of regal authority. The king was taller than most and his armour, burnished and shining bright in the burgeoning sunlight, was certainly impressive. Yet, my principal sense was of a man ill at ease with finding himself at the apex of his army’s collective attention. My lack of awe was not helped by the sound of his voice when he finally consented to speak.

  “Soldiers of the Crown!” he proclaimed in tones that were most charitably described as strained. A chronicler of less generous inclinations would later term it “a thin, reedy piping that resembled a child’s flute for all the courage it inspired”, and I find this an accurate account.

  “This day we come not for war, but for justice!” the king went on, his volume dwindling with every word so that the rest of his speech was largely lost to our ears.

  “What’s he saying?” the pikeman next to Brewer whispered, his mottled features bunched in consternation.

  “Not sure,” Brewer whispered back. “He mentioned brothers, I think. Didn’t know he had a brother.”

  “He doesn’t,” I said in low murmur. “That’s the reason we’re here, remember? His elder brother who died tupped a wench thirty years ago and now his bastard nephew wants the crown, if the Pretender even is his bastard nephew and not the most gifted trickster in history.”

  Hearing the king utter a few more unintelligible lines from a no doubt carefully crafted address, I turned a questioning glance on Toria, who had the best ears among us.

  “Can’t make out much,” she reported after cocking her head in the king’s direction. “Something about treason… Now something about the Covenant… Now it’s something about his da.”

  My attention, however, quickly slipped from the distant voice of the king when my eye alighted on something beyond the bulky shoulder of Ofihla’s kneeling form. At first, I thought it might be the swaying of tree branches jutting above the low hill some two hundred yards opposite, then it occurred to me that it was summer and these swaying branches were bare of leaves. Also, they were very narrow and spindly in appearance and seemed to be growing thicker by the second.

  “Supplicant…” I hissed at Ofihla, drawing a furious glare.

  “Silence, Scribe!”

  Her fury swiftly transformed into stiff attentiveness when she followed my jabbing finger to take in the sight of the many pikes now jutting above the hill. From the ripple of unease that swept along the line, it was clear a large part of the host had also witnessed the approaching danger. King Tomas, however, had not.

  While the knights in his retinue stirred and shifted, he continued to blithely chirp out his mostly unheard speech. I saw indecision reign among the knights, along with a good deal of whispered argument, until one figure spurred his mount to the king’s side. A very tall figure with a helm bearing an iron spike, twisted and enamelled in red so that it resembled a flame.

  I couldn’t contain a palpable shudder at my first glimpse of Sir Ehlbert Bauldry, the King’s Champion, finally revealed in full. His presence at the king’s side was hardly surprising, but still I found it jarring to behold him in the flesh. I should have taken heart at the knowledge of being on his side during the coming tumult, for there never was a man so formidable. Instead, he birthed in me a knot of fear that was somehow deeper and more painful even than the nauseous roiling in my gut.

  Sir Ehlbert paused for a moment at the king’s side, leaning close to whisper something that brought the inspiring royal address, such as it was, to an abrupt halt. The knight then kicked his horse forwards, the great beast rearing as Sir Ehlbert drew his longsword and raised it high, calling out, “All hail King Tomas!” in a voice that no chronicler
would ever describe as weak.

  The response was far from immediate as the unease provoked by the unexpected sight of the enemy continued to ripple through the ranks. It wasn’t until Evadine climbed onto her black charger and raised her own longsword, voice loud and strident in echoing the champion’s call, that our company followed suit. Soon the cry went up all along the line, “Hail King Tomas! Hail King Tomas!” as noble and churl alike stabbed the air with their weapons. I cheered along with everyone else, although my attention remained primarily focused on the dark, jagged silhouette now cresting the opposite hill.

  To his credit, the king did not ride off right away. Instead, he stayed for at least a full minute, sitting straight and poised on his fine white horse, gauntleted hand raised in acknowledgement of his host’s praise. If the growing throng of his enemy only a few hundred paces away concerned him, he failed to show it. Watching him placidly absorb the adulation of his soldiers, I was forced to conclude that this man might not possess the voice of a hero, but neither did he have the heart of a coward.

  As the cheer wore on, Sir Ehlbert spurred his mount alongside the king once more, head lowered to address him in unheard but evidently urgent tones. Whatever he said sufficed for the king to turn his mount and ride off, the retinue making for the centre of the line where an even taller royal banner fluttered.

  “Stand up!” Evadine’s steely voice snapped all eyes to her as she reined in her mount before Covenant Company. We rose as one and her hard, implacable gaze roved over each and every face, looking into every pair of eyes. I remember her as embodying purpose in that moment, as if resolve and unshakeable will had become fused into flesh and armour. We all knew with no shred of doubt that whatever the outcome on this field, our captain would never run from it. She had resolved to prevail today or die and, I knew, many if not most of those around me were content to share her fate.

  Toria, naturally, proved an exception for she chose this moment to lean forward and vomit on my boots. “Serves you fucking right,” she gasped, stepping back and wiping her mouth, the last word drowned by Evadine’s strident proclamation.

  “The time for doubt is over!”

  My fellow soldiers stood taller as her words assailed us. Through the stink of Toria’s spew I could smell a good deal of sweat and the acid tang of piss, but strangely I had no sense that any soul present was about to flee. Evadine’s gaze and words held us in place as firmly as any shackle.

  “You know what they call you in this army?” Evadine asked us, paying no heed to the long line of pikemen busily arranging themselves on the hill at her back. “Scum, villains,” she went on. “The wretched dregs of the realm. That is what your comrades think of you. I will not ask if you agree, for I know they are wrong. I know that I would rather stand here with you than alongside the finest knight in all the Covenanted kingdoms of the earth. For I look upon true hearts and true souls. I look upon the true blades of the Covenant, blades the Pretender and his vile horde will learn to fear this day.”

  A harsh discordant blaring rose from the enemy host then, an accumulation of trumpets, bugles and the distinctly non-melodious bagpipes found in the mountainous regions of the Althiene duchy. It appeared the Pretender had a fair number of hill-clan savages among his ranks. This tuneless screeching was soon joined by a clamour of shouts and waving of weapons, the Pretender’s horde resembling a storm-tossed thicket as they roared out their challenge. The shouting and gesticulating continued as the entire enemy line started forward, the thicket becoming a dark grey wave sweeping down the slope towards us. To my increasingly alarmed gaze it seemed both inexorable and irresistible, an impression made worse by the armoured knights I saw cantering behind their left flank.

  “They seek to make you fear them!” Evadine told us, still not deigning to turn her gaze to the foe. “Do you?!” she demanded, longsword raised high. “DO YOU!?”

  The reply erupted as a savage scream of “NO!” The shout continued as the company convulsed in a mingling of rage and eagerness, a sentiment to which only I and Toria remained immune. I could feel her face pressed against my back, repeating the same word in a soft whisper. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

  “For the Covenant!” Evadine’s strident call cut through the rageful tumult, the cry immediately echoed from every throat in the company. I also heard it taken up by the soldiers from the contingent to our left. They were a mixed bag of pressed churls and veterans from upper Cordwain under the command of a spindle-thin noble who couldn’t have seen more than sixteen summers. Glancing over, I saw this child cheering along with his soldiers, visor raised to reveal pale, fragile features while he waved a mace I wouldn’t have thought him capable of wielding.

  “For the Covenant!”

  The shout went up again and again, Evadine continuing to lead it as she guided her black charger to the very end of our line, standing tall amid the grassy bank.

  “For the Covenant!”

  I turned my gaze forwards, gloved hands taking a firmer grip on the stave of my billhook. The oncoming tide had swept to the nadir of the far slope, marching with a steady, measured cadence, the cacophony of their voices, pipes and trumpets failing to drown our own fervent chorus. Behind me, Toria’s unending curses formed a faint counterpoint to it all.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

  “For the Covenant! For the Covenant!”

  I could make out the faces of our enemy now, seeing a long row of mostly bearded men and a few women. It may have been a product of my fear, but I saw no callow youths among them; to my eyes these were all the fabled veteran killers who had followed the Pretender’s trail of slaughter for years. Like us, they had their pike-bearers in front with sword- and axe-wielders behind. Also like us, they wore scant armour. I counted only a few helmeted heads and most bodies were clad in hardy woollen garb with hardly a breastplate or mail shirt to be seen.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck…” Toria cursed.

  “For the Covenant! For the Covenant!” the company cried, their voices rising to a scream as the first rank of oncoming enemies came within twenty yards of our line, lowered their pikes and spurred to a run.

  “For the Covenant!”

  Our first rank took one forward step, jamming the butts of their pikes into the earth and lowering the long spears to the angle the Supplicants had drilled into them for so many days.

  “FOR THE COVENANT!”

  I have often reflected since that, at the moment the two lines of pikes first clattered together, I would have shit myself if I had remembered to do so. Instead, I stepped up close to Brewer’s back as I had been taught, waited until the pike sliding past his own came within arm’s reach whereupon I used my billhook to force it down, stamping my boot hard enough to snap the stave behind the iron spearpoint.

  Apparently enraged by finding himself so disarmed, the pike’s owner launched himself forwards, falchion in hand, a guttural cry of challenge emerging from his shaggy face. His charge was halted when he found himself jammed between Brewer and the mottle-faced fellow to the right.

  This is murder, I knew as I raised my billhook above my head, bringing it down to split the trapped, snarling fellow’s skull open.

  And thus, dear reader, was battle joined.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The bearded man didn’t fall right away. Although plainly dead with a good deal of blood and other more greyish matter streaming down his shaggy face, the press of bodies contrived to keep him upright. Also, his eyes remained open. So, as the opposing lines shoved and jabbed at each other in an increasingly disorderly scrum, I was required to suffer the continual stare of the man I had just dispatched from this world. Feeling his gaze to possess an irksome, unblinking intensity, I experienced a sudden swelling of rage, so much so that I struck him again. Drawing the billhook back like a javelin, I stabbed the blade into his staring visage, sundering his face as the crudely hammered steel sank in and promptly became stuck.

  “Oh, shit on it!” I hissed through clenched teeth, stepping fo
rwards to push the impaled fellow clear. One of his companions, a wiry man with a beardless, weasel-like face, took the opportunity to stab at my outstretched arm with a long dirk. The narrow point jabbed painfully into my wrist but failed to penetrate my glove. It did, however, stoke my rage higher.

  Keeping one hand on the billhook, still stuck fast in the corpse’s head, I balled my free hand into a fist and drove it hard into the dirk wielder’s face. With no room to dodge, he took the full force of the blow and slipped senseless to the churned mud. I assume he must have been trampled to death shortly after.

  Grunting, I gripped the billhook with both hands and twisted it, glad that the cumulative shouts, grunts and screams drowned out the squelch and grind of metal working free of bone and flesh. This time, as the billhook came loose, the bearded man finally consented to fall thanks to a narrow gap having appeared between the opposing ranks. There came then the briefest of lulls, just long enough for all to drag breath into their lungs and allow for a survey of the dozen or so corpses or injured lying in the mud that separated us. Then, without benefit of command from the Supplicants, Covenant Company surged forwards.

  Brewer and the more astute pikemen in the first rank had used the fleeting interval to raise the butts of their weapons above their heads, so that as they advanced the spearpoints stabbed down into the enemy. Many pikes bowed and snapped under the pressure, Brewer’s among them. I saw him jab his splintered haft into the neck of an enemy, leaving the fellow on his knees with an arc of blood jetting from the wound. Kicking the stricken man aside, Brewer drew his falchion and began to hack at the press of bodies before him. He fought with a practised focus, his blows aimed at legs and overextended arms, leaving a short trail of maimed and screaming folk in his wake.