The Pariah

by Anthony Ryan

  “Steady now!” Sergeant Swain’s voice rang out – loudest of all among the Supplicants – as an uneasy mutter rippled through the company. “Remember what you fight for! Remember who you fight for!”

  I watched the turncoat knights steer their mounts alongside the Pretender whereupon he raised his banner yet higher and they all spurred to full pelt towards the extreme end of our line where I saw Evadine Courlain sitting tall in the saddle. She wore no helm and I was close enough to read her expression as one of steady, unperturbed resolve. In an age when the word “fearless” has been cast at all manner of unworthy recipients, it must be said that she was the only truly fearless soul I ever met.

  I heard Swain utter a muffled curse as it became clear that this charge had been carefully aimed at but one portion of our line rather than the company entire. The churlish mob was sprinting now, keeping in close if untidy order as it followed the Pretender’s course. With the knights at their head, such a number was sure to overrun the line precisely where Evadine waited.

  “Advance order!” Swain called out. The first rank duly raised their pikes, holding them horizontally in front of their chests while the rest of us straightened and shuffled into place. “Supplicants, the company will wheel to the right by troop!”

  This was another tactic we had practised during the evenings on the march, though not with enough regularity to make the subsequent manoeuvre more than a messy parody of what the sergeant intended. The entire company was supposed to anchor itself on the right-most troop and swing around like a great door to take an enemy in the flank. Success depended on relative marching speed, those troops closest to the anchor point taking slow minimal strides while soldiers further out moved at a trot. With our numbers depleted and many soldiers beset by fatigue or the numbing confusion instilled by first exposure to battle, the resultant formation resembled more a bowed feather than a door. However, it did have the effect of forcing the churls and a few of the charging knights to turn and face us rather than continue their assault.

  Off to our right there came the ugly thud and clatter of horseflesh and metal colliding as the Pretender and his knights slammed into the troop closest to the river. Before we closed on the churls, I caught sight of Evadine spurring her black charger forwards, longsword raised high, although what happened next was obscured by the Pretender’s banner. A second later, the sting of a thrown stone rebounding from my head snapped my gaze forwards to be greeted by the image of a wall of screaming, besmirched faces and brandished blades.

  The pikemen lowered their weapons level with their heads as the two sides met, but the raggedness of our formation ensured all order quickly dissolved. Within seconds Brewer’s prediction was fully borne out as I found myself in the midst of the deadliest brawl I had ever known. I watched Brewer skewer an axe-wielding bear of a man with his pike before discarding the weapon and reaching for his falchion. As he did so, a stocky fellow with a crudely fashioned spear darted forwards, his rigid, crimson features that of a man intent on vengeance. I hacked him down as the spearpoint jabbed at Brewer’s face, the billhook’s blade sinking deep into the spearman’s unprotected neck.

  Hearing an enraged shout to my rear, I ducked and whirled, dragging the billhook clear and bringing it round to smash the knees of the churl who came at me with a scythe. He collapsed instantly, landing on his back and clutching at his ruined legs, his screams ending as Toria landed on his chest and sank her dagger into the hollow of his throat.

  The screaming, rage-filled faces of the churls appeared to be all around us then and I saw the world take on a strange, crimson hue. My vision dimmed and narrowed with the focus born of an animalistic urge to survive. I hacked, stabbed, punched and gouged at every face that came within reach, only dimly aware of my body’s aches. I have a memory of hacking a man’s arm off at the elbow and another of holding a woman by the neck long enough for Toria to slash it open. But these are vague, the discordant glimpses of a nightmare best forgotten yet never fully faded from memory.

  “Lay down, you heretic filth!”

  Brewer’s angry grunt brought me back to full sensibility, or as close to it as I could manage in that moment. Blinking as the red tinge faded from my eyes, I watched him slash his falchion across the thighs of a man who should by rights have already consented to die. He stumbled forwards with one hand clutching the snake-like mess spilling from a cut to his belly and the other clutching a blacksmith’s hammer. His face was the gaunt, grey mask of a corpse and yet, even after Brewer’s slash sent him to the mud, he continued to crawl towards us, still dragging his hammer.

  “Martyrs preserve us.” Brewer stamped a boot to the crawling man’s head, continuing to pound it into the mud until blood erupted from the sundered skull. “There’s some evil at work here,” he said gravely. “The Anointed Captain spoke true. The Malecite have surely lent strength to this lot.”

  Looking around, I saw that the three of us stood in a clearing among the general mayhem. The company fought on in clusters, each assailed on all sides by the churls, the ground between littered by the dead or the crippled. Looking down, I found that I now held my axe rather than the billhook. The axe’s crescent-shaped blade was dark and matted with gore but I couldn’t recall losing one weapon and reaching for another.

  Surveying the ongoing struggle, I found reason to doubt Brewer’s claim of malign influence. It was true many churls continued to assail the company with frenzied energy and scant regard for danger, but, by my reckoning, the same number were now opting to keep clear of the fight. They knelt or staggered about, beset either by exhaustion or fear of risking further danger. Many wore the wide-eyed, pale faces of those who find the experience of true battle a jarring disappointment of glory-filled expectation. I felt no such sentiment; this day had been every morsel as dreadful as I’d imagined, except for the singular surprise of finding myself still alive.

  I shuddered as the thrill of survival coursed through me, bringing a laugh to my lips.

  “What’s so fucking funny?” Toria demanded. Her eyes stared out from a face so covered in red and brown grime that it seemed she had donned a garish mask.

  “Oh, nothing in particular,” I replied, my mirth and renewed spirits dissipating as quickly as they had arrived. Fatigue clamped its heavy hand on me then, bringing a sag to my shoulders and threatening to buckle my legs. Every muscle I possessed ached and my head throbbed with a melange of recently witnessed horrors. The haft of my axe slipped through my fingers and I felt no inclination to prevent its fall until a fresh tumult erupted close by, banishing my exhaustion with a resurgence of panic mingled with now habitual aggression.

  Some twenty paces distant, a cluster of knights were assailing each other, the swirling melee of clanging swords, maces and flailing hooves scattering the surrounding churls. As I watched, one knight fell from the saddle, brought down by an overhead swipe of a longsword that caved in the crest of his helm. As he tumbled to the mud, I glimpsed Evadine at the centre of the melee and realised that she was fighting the three remaining knights single-handed.

  Such odds should have doomed her, but watching her parry a blow from a mace then immediately sway to avoid the jab of a longsword point, I wondered if her claims to divine guidance might have merit. She moved with such easy fluency it appeared to be more a rehearsed dance than a fight.

  The captain cut down another knight with a perfectly placed thrust of her sword through his visor then hauled on the reins of her charger, making the animal rear and lash its hooves to the head of another knight’s mount. The horse collapsed instantly, as if all tendons in its legs had been severed at once, the knight it bore also falling victim to the black charger. The iron-shod hooves descended like hammers, crumpling the fellow’s breastplate as if it were fashioned from the thinnest copper.

  The sole remaining knight, however, proved a resourceful soul and swung the spiked head of his mace into the rear leg of Evadine’s charger. The warhorse screamed and reared, flailing about with such violenc
e that Evadine was forced to relinquish the saddle. She landed hard on the muddy ground, the impact jarring the longsword from her grip. Fortunately, the struggles of the still-panicking black impeded the mace-wielding knight before he could close in to finish the captain. However, it was clear to me she had but seconds before his mount trampled the life from her.

  I don’t recall making a conscious decision to act, my response being immediate and void of thought. Sprinting forwards, I ducked to scoop up the blacksmith’s hammer from the flaccid hand of its slain owner. The distance to the captain and her would-be killer had shrunk to about a dozen feet when I let fly with the implement, the implement impacting square in the centre of the knight’s visor just as he had successfully pushed past the flailing black.

  He toppled backwards and slipped over his horse’s rump, one of his greaves catching in the stirrup as he fell. The animal, now apparently content to surrender to its fears with no master to hold its reins, immediately spurred to a full gallop, dragging its senseless rider away. Curiously, I have never discovered the fellow’s identity or his fate. Perhaps he survived the day and lived on for many years to bore his grandchildren with a tale of unlikely deliverance. However, I find this doubtful, for the worst slaughter of that day was not yet upon us and it would be done with a conscientious dedication that spared few.

  “Captain,” I said, crouching to help Evadine to her feet while Brewer retrieved her sword.

  “An impressive arm you have, Scribe,” she told me, her face betraying a faint smile as she accepted my proffered hand and levered herself upright.

  “Always better to throw than stab, if you can.” This was another of Deckin’s favourite lessons, the thought of him bringing an unexpected pang to my chest. What would he have thought of seeing me here? I wondered, although the answer was clear: he would have named me a fool and been right to do so.

  I shook my head to clear the intrusive notion and the persistent throb. I ascribed the latter to either the stone that had struck me earlier, or a blow I didn’t recall suffering. The fatigue had returned too, this time refusing to fade at the sight of the churls who were now turning their attention to the four lonely figures beside a dying horse. These were the stragglers and cravens unwilling to join their comrades in assailing what remained of Crown Company, but in us they had been presented with easier prey.

  Evadine paid them scant heed, her attention captured by the plaintive whinnies of her stricken mount. The black’s eyes were wide with terror as he tried vainly to rise from the mud, growing ever more viscous from the thick stream of blood pouring from the gash to his rear leg. Evadine’s face tensed in sorrow as she laid a hand on his snout, the beast’s struggles calming at her touch.

  “Would you mind, good soldier?” she said, turning to Toria. “I don’t think I can.”

  Toria gave a worried glare at the churls, now forming a tighter circle around us, then nodded and stepped closer to the charger, cutting knife raised. The slash was swift and carefully placed, opening the vein in his neck to birth a dark red gush. He huffed out a few more breaths, but somehow kept his head in place, unwilling to surrender Evadine’s touch until at last his eyes rolled back and he settled onto his side.

  “Captain,” Brewer said, his voice rich in warning. Evadine raised her eyes from the fallen horse to regard the churls, edging closer now, faces set with renewed purpose.

  “So many misguided souls,” she said, hefting her longsword.

  “Might I enquire, Captain,” I ventured as the four of us drew closer together, “what became of the Pretender?”

  “Oh, I fought him for a short time,” she replied, her tone one of light regret. “But the melee drew us apart. Last I saw he was through our line, alone.”

  “And remains conspicuous by his absence,” I noted, gesturing to the churls, not a noble among them and certainly no sign of a tall knight with a winged-serpent banner.

  “He fled,” Brewer stated. He let out a harsh, taunting laugh as he brandished his falchion at our foes. “You hear that, heretics? Your traitorous bastard has left you here to die!”

  This had the unfortunate effect of stirring rather than negating the churls’ anger. Obscenities and wordless growls rose as they edged nearer, axes, scythes and knives raised and twitching in anticipation, although they paused when Evadine’s voice rang out.

  “My friend speaks true!” she proclaimed. “The Pretender is gone from this field!”

  I assumed it was her lack of fear that gave them pause, also the expression of pained, beseeching sorrow she wore as she stepped forwards, sword lowered and hand raised. Despite the madness of that day, I think they still managed to comprehend that this woman was not begging for her life but theirs.

  “Please,” she implored. “Give up this liar’s cause, this false crusade. I see your hearts and know there is no evil there, only misplaced devotion.”

  Although I had seen the power of her rhetoric before, I still found myself astonished at the hesitancy these few words birthed in this murderous mob. Their advance halted, uncertain glances were exchanged, their raised weapons wavered. I heard Evadine take another breath, yet more transformative words about to spill from her mouth, but whatever they were, and what effect they might have had on our faltering enemy, would forever be lost to history.

  From beyond the encircling churls there came a brief thunder of many hooves followed by the shouts and excited snorts of warhorses at the gallop. Next came the hard, overlapping thuds and screams of many living bodies being smashed aside at once. The knights surged into view a heartbeat later, a long line perhaps five hundred strong, maces and swords hacking as they tore through the commoners’ disorderly ranks. My gaze was inevitably drawn to the tallest knight, his longsword describing a tireless series of crimson arcs as it scythed down a succession of fleeing churls. Sir Ehlbert Bauldry had evidently already done a good deal of bloody work this day, judging by the state of his armour, but he continued to slaughter with expert industriousness. I stopped counting his victims at ten and forced my morbidly fascinated, and increasingly fearful, gaze elsewhere.

  The churls had scattered now, leaving the surrounding ground bare save for the dead or crawling wounded. I blinked in surprise at finding a good portion of Crown Company still standing in their tight clusters, many faces blank with incomprehension at their survival. Beside me, Evadine stiffened as a knight reined his horse to a halt a few paces away. He was a broad-shouldered fellow astride a charger with much the same colouring as Evadine’s steel-grey mount. His helm was unusual in lacking a figurine crest, but his nobility was evident in the enamel motif on his shield: a black rose on a white background.

  Behind him a young knight stumbled to his knees. He wore no helm and his face was caked in almost as much mud and gore as Toria’s. Despite the dirt, I could still discern the visage of a handsome man, albeit a handsomeness currently drawn in abject misery. He wore a finely made suit of armour enamelled in sky blue but his gauntlets were gone, replaced by a thick, knotted rope that bound his wrists and trailed to the saddle of the mounted knight with the black-rose shield.

  This noble’s features were hidden by his visor but I could tell his gaze was focused entirely on Evadine. She returned it with an expression that, just for a moment, held a small glimmer of shame. It vanished quickly, however, and her features were expressionless as she went to one knee, head bowed.

  “My lord,” she said.

  The knight spared her a short glance then reached to unfasten the rope from his saddle. A hard tug dragged the kneeling captive forwards to land face down in the mud before Evadine’s kneeling form. She frowned then blinked as she took in his besmirched, downcast face.

  “Wilhum?”

  The mounted noble spoke then, the words emerging as a grating echo from the confines of his helm. “The king has decreed this a Traitors’ Field. If you wish to preserve this wretch’s neck, you don’t have long.”

  Evadine bowed again and I noticed a quaver colouring the gratitude
in her voice as she said, “Thank you, Father.”

  Sir Altheric Courlain, better known to scholars as the Black Rose of Couravel, straightened in the saddle, hidden eyes regarding his daughter for one more moment before he snapped his reins and rode off towards the riverbank. The knights’ charge had driven the churls to the water’s edge, the river roiling white as many desperately tried to swim to the far bank. The knights, unwilling to tolerate any escape from this field, spurred their mounts into the current and soon the waters were frothing red as well as white.

  “An ill meeting on an ill day, Evie,” the sprawled noble groaned. “Though the sight of you always brightens my heart, even now.”

  He raised himself up, white teeth showing among the grime as he regarded Evadine with a winning smile. Seeing it birthed a sudden spike of envy in my breast, for it was the kind of smile I had always tried to perfect but never quite managed, a smile that combined innate confidence with knowing rectitude. It appeared on this captive’s lips with effortless ease but failed to win more than a sorrowful scowl from Evadine.

  “You utter fool,” she told him, voice hard but also tinged with grief.

  “A pronouncement I find it hard to deny, at present.” His smile faded and the misery from before returned in full, his eyes darkening into the inward gaze common to those contemplating imminent death.

  Evadine stiffened and rose to her feet, turning to survey the scene from the continuing slaughter at the riverbank to the corpse-strewn ground to our rear. Now that combat had ended, the haze was fading. What had been a few acres of unremarkable pasture was now a great churned-up smear of black, brown and red. Riderless horses cantered among the dead and the dying while men-at-arms roved in small groups, pausing here and there to stab their halberds into the twitching or flailing bodies of the not-quite-dead. This was the fate of those who find themselves on the losing side when the king proclaims a Traitors’ Field. No nobles would be ransomed this day and no commoner granted mercy.