The Pariah

by Anthony Ryan

  “Don’t kill him yet,” I said.

  “What is this?” Sergeant Swain demanded, clambering onto the ship. His wrath had been obviated somewhat by the unfolding mystery, but still he regarded me with a baleful intensity that told of imminent retribution.

  “Nary a warrior to be had,” I said, moving to tap the toe of my boot to the pinioned axeman’s head. I saw for the first time how grey his hair was, and the depth of the wrinkles surrounding the eye he strained to glare up at me. “Apart from him, and he’s at least a grandfather by my reckoning.”

  I saw the sergeant’s anger vie with his duty as he scanned the ship’s deck and the surrounding fleet. Ayin and Toria had also made their way on board, the former compelled by basic curiosity and the latter, I assumed, in search of loot. Wilhum followed shortly after, taking in the scene with a frown of understanding rather than bafflement. Crouching, he peered at a gap between the deck boards, letting out a grunt of confirmation.

  “The hull’s filled with recently cut timber,” he said, face grim. “That’s why they sat so low in the water. If their warriors aren’t here, it’s plain they’ll have purpose elsewhere.”

  I found myself momentarily distracted by the sight of Ayin skipping towards the two Ascarlian boys. They huddled together at the base of the main mast, eyes bright with terror.

  “Hello,” Ayin greeted them with her customary fondness for pups. “What’s your name?” Her face formed an aggrieved pout when they responded only with puzzled suspicion. “Don’t be mean,” she said, extending a hand to pet the head of the youngest. “My name’s Ayin—”

  Her voice ended when Toria lunged towards her, catching her about the waist and bearing her to the deck just as a volley of arrows whipped through the air. There were only a few dozen shafts, not especially well aimed but still sufficing to force us all to seek cover. I ducked down behind a barrel, flinching as an arrow careened off the iron rim in a flower of sparks. Raising my head a little, I saw another grey-haired fellow on the neighbouring ship raising a longbow. Beyond him several more grandfatherly types were doing the same. Few in number and too old for battle they may have been, but they were apparently determined to put up some sort of fight.

  Just then a loud but completely unfamiliar sound came echoing across the fjord from the port. My gaze snapped towards the town, seeing a large blossoming of dust at the base of Mount Halthir, precisely where the statues of the Ascarlian pantheon stood. The sound resembled the rushing of a waterfall, but harsher, accompanied by numerous overlapping thuds that told of heavy objects impacting on the cobbled streets. The dust was thick and only partly illuminated by the lights of the town, but through its billowing clouds I discerned the sight of a very large shape toppling.

  “Ulthnir’s statue,” I breathed.

  “What in the name of all the Martyrs is happening?” Sergeant Swain half rose from the coil of rope he had been crouching behind. His features were suddenly rendered near unrecognisable by a mingling of bewilderment and fear. I, however, felt a growing realisation as the statue completed its fall, birthing a thunderous boom of such volume it shook the ship.

  Reaching into my pocket, I hurried to where Brewer still had the captive Ascarlian pinned. Luckily, it appeared the aged archers on the other ships were just as stunned by the statue’s collapse, for they failed to cast any arrows at me as I traversed the deck. “What does this say?” I demanded, unfolding the scrap of parchment before the Ascarlian’s eyes. They narrowed in obvious understanding upon surveying the runic characters, but his face remained stony and lips firmly closed.

  “Wilhum!” I shouted, keeping my gaze locked on the captive’s while I pointed at the two boys still cowering at the main mast. “Explain to this old fuck that if he doesn’t tell me what this says he can watch us cut these brats’ throats.”

  The fellow apparently knew enough Albermainish to understand my words, letting out a rageful growl as he tried vainly to rise. “Craven southern scum!” he grated, spittle flying from between clenched teeth. “Making war on children!”

  I grabbed a fistful of his hair and held the parchment closer to his face. “Tell me what it says and I won’t have to.”

  The old warrior’s nostrils flared as he drew in some ragged, furious breaths, although I did detect some smugness in the reply he grunted out: “‘Ulthnir falls so that the Ascar may rise.’ That’s what it says, you pox-ridden son of a whore.”

  “I don’t have the pox,” I muttered in response. Releasing him, I returned my gaze to the town. The dust had covered most of the buildings in a grey pall from which arose a multitude of shouts and screams. In the streets closest to the mountain an orange glow flared, probably the result of fire catching in the ruins of shattered houses. But my thoughts were filled with the many drawings and scribblings fixed to the wall of Berrine’s bedchamber. Also, the way her gaze had lingered on these words inscribed into the base of Ulthnir’s statue. Ulthnir falls so that the Ascar may rise.

  “Sergeant Swain!”

  Eyes drawn by the familiar sound of Supplicant Ofihla’s voice raised in a shout, I saw a score of longboats swiftly approaching the fleet from the direction of the harbour. Ofihla stood at the prow of the leading vessel, hands cupped about her mouth.

  “The captain sends orders!” she called. “We are to seize what ships we can and sail for home!”

  “Where is she?” Swain called back.

  “Still ashore! She said she’ll follow when ready and we’re not to tarry!”

  “You left her?”

  I saw Ofihla’s bulky shoulders move in a helpless shrug. “It was her command!”

  “She told me she had a vision,” I said, causing Swain’s eyes to meet mine. I could tell from the twitch in his otherwise rigid features that this was a man engaged in asserting all the self-control he could muster.

  “Vision of what?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “She was… vague on the details.” I broke the stare to survey the port once again. The screams rising from the billowing dust were louder now. There is a unique pitch to the clamour that arises from those facing slaughter and, once heard, is unmistakable. I knew with sudden certainty that fire was not the only danger within those clouds.

  Know that this is not a punishment, Evadine had said.

  “I think she expects to die here,” I told Swain. “She’s trying to spare us her fate.”

  I saw Swain master himself then, lowering his head momentarily while his back straightened and all impression of uncertainty vanished. When he raised his face, the twitch was gone and he gave voice to the only profanity I ever heard him speak: “Well, that’s not fucking going to happen, is it?”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  We found the harbour in chaos. A panicked crowd of townsfolk thronged the quayside, all struggling to get aboard one of the ships or fishing boats anchored along the wharf. The foreign merchantmen were equally keen on pushing off and sailing away, their crews beating back the crowd with clubs and boathooks, sending a constant trickle of yelling people tumbling into the water. The fisher-folk were more welcoming. Several boats passed us as we rowed through the harbour mouth, their decks heaving with townsfolk clutching bundles containing what valuables they could gather before fleeing what was now a doomed port.

  “Ascarlians came out of the mountain!” one fisherman called in reply to Swain’s shouted question. “Thousands of the bastards! They’re killing all they can find!”

  His words caused the pace of our oars to quicken without the need for any command from Swain. He had ordered Ofihla to take two-thirds of the company and set about the task of seizing ships, once the annoyance of the aged archers had been dealt with. There were a few former sailors among the ranks who would be set to work readying the vessels for departure.

  “If we don’t return by dawn—” Swain began only for Ofihla to stiffen and snap out a rare interruption.

  “Then we shall come ashore and find you, Supplicant Sergeant. We are not leaving without the captain
.”

  We had about a hundred company soldiers crammed into five boats, a meagre force to contend with thousands of blood-crazed northern savages, but we all heaved our way towards the wharf with undaunted energy. I had surely settled my debt to Evadine Courlain on the Traitors’ Field, and I still harboured a kernel of resentment for ordering me on that near-fatal reconnaissance. Even so, I worked my own oar with the same zeal as the others, for I found the prospect of staying behind simply unthinkable.

  Toria, by contrast, had been quick to make herself scarce as soon as Swain’s intent became apparent. She shot me a despairing, disgusted look before dragging Ayin off towards the stack of barrels at the ship’s stern, ignoring her plaintive wails.

  “But I want to help get the captain—”

  “Shut up, you mad bitch!”

  The crush of people on the quay was so thick Swain had to order us to fight our way ashore. Brewer was at the apex of the brief struggle as he led a group of soldiers who reversed their halberds and thrashed the crowd until it thinned. Even in their panic, the fleeing townsfolk possessed enough sense to stay clear of us after that.

  Swain ordered a score of soldiers to stand guard on the boats before pausing to peer at the smoke-shrouded streets beyond the docks. “Form spearhead!” he barked.

  This was a more novel formation than we were accustomed to, one the company had learned on the march north. It consisted of a narrow triangle of halberdiers preceding a base formed of two ranks of sword- and dagger-men. It was designed to puncture an enemy’s line of battle with a swift, concentrated charge, the swords and daggers completing the assault by doing their deadly work amid the subsequent chaotic scrum. Brewer placed himself at the head of the spear while Wilhum and I fell in alongside Swain in the base, longswords drawn.

  “How do we find her in all this?” Wilhum asked, nodding to the flickering smoke ahead. We could see little beyond running shadows but the constant chorus of screams told the story well enough. It was also punctuated by the occasional tumult of combat. Someone was still fighting.

  “We go where the fight is thickest,” Swain told him before raising his voice to a sergeant’s bark once again. “At the quick march, advance!”

  The smoke enveloped us instantly, making it impossible to discern more than a few feet in front of our noses. Still the formation kept together through a mix of determination and harshly instilled discipline. Townsfolk flitted past all the while, some blundering into our ranks in their terror only to be shoved aside. Others assailed us with desperate pleas for help or protection. I saw one fellow, a merchant of good standing judging by his ermine cloak and fine clothes, follow along with us for a time, an open purse clutched in his outstretched hand. Tears streamed down his fleshy face as he gabbled out promises of wealth in return for safe passage from the town. We paid him no more heed than we did the shoeless woman a few streets on who held up her wailing babe and cursed us as cowards when we ignored her pleas.

  The sense of having stepped into a realm of nightmare increased at the sight of the bodies. I stopped counting the corpses when I reached a dozen. They lay on blood-slicked cobbles, cut down without regard for age or gender. Some bore the gaping wounds that told of axe work; others lacked obvious injury but still bled in fulsome torrents. I had often thought tales of blood running in the streets when a town suffers a sacking to be a product of lurid exaggeration, but I saw it that night.

  We came upon our first Ascarlians when Swain ordered us down one of the broader streets fringing the merchants’ quarter. He had been following the din of battle, a course that I saw, with scant surprise, drew us ever closer to the base of Mount Halthir. Rounding a corner, we found about a dozen Ascarlian warriors busily hacking away at a pile of bodies that appeared to be composed of mostly townsfolk with a few of the local soldiery. Seeing us, the northmen left off their slaughter and stared in apparent stupefaction as we approached at a steady march. Seeing how they failed to either attack or flee, I wondered if they were drunk on blood, or simply drunk. It was clear that our appearance was unexpected – remarkably so, for it wasn’t until we closed to within the last few paces that the Ascarlians let out a collective war cry and charged our formation.

  Their ferocity was impressive, as was their lack of care for their own lives, but they were facing true soldiers now, not Fohlvast’s hirelings or defenceless civilians. Also, they were considerably outnumbered. The halberdiers cut them all down without undue difficulty, suffering a few minor wounds before the spearhead swept on. Naturally, successive encounters were not so quickly overcome as more and more Ascarlians became aware of our intrusion into their happy butchery.

  A trio of axe wielders came roaring out of an alley and succeeded in hacking down two halberdiers before falling to the stabbing blades of their comrades’ weapons. Wiser enemies were content to loose arrows at us from the rooftops, claiming several more lives before we cleared the merchants’ quarter and beheld a scene of utter devastation. The streets closest to the parade of statues lay in ruin, their stones and timbers transformed into piles of rubble, the ugly mounds seeded by corpses and speckled in flame. The granite monolith that had been Ulthnir lay among the destruction, shattered into five huge pieces.

  Swain brought the troop to a halt a dozen paces short of Ulthnir’s great stone head, the huge eyes regarding us with what I felt to be mocking satisfaction. Beyond him I could see a huge crack in the fabric of the mountain where he had stood less than an hour before, a black jagged triangle through which Ascarlians streamed by the dozen. The opening was narrow and the tunnel within presumably extended all the way through to the mountain’s northern flank. I had wrongly assumed the full strength had already invested the city, but now I understood it to be a mere vanguard. The bulk of their force was only now joining the fray.

  To the front of the tunnel mouth, a fierce struggle raged atop the largest mound of rubble where a hundred or so ducal men-at-arms battled the invaders. The northmen seemingly had little use for the niceties of well-ordered ranks, throwing themselves with frenzied abandon against the cordon the duchy men had formed up on the slopes of the mound, in the centre of which stood a tall, armoured figure with a longsword.

  “To the captain, double quick!” Swain barked, sending the troop into the fastest pace it could adopt while still maintaining order. The distance to the mound, where the struggle grew more ferocious by the second, was at least a hundred paces. The piled rubble and frequent gusts of smoke also made for delayed progress, as did the burgeoning number of Ascarlians seeking to bar our path.

  The first few attackers were smashed aside without much difficulty but resistance soon thickened into something that resembled an actual formation. Two ragged ranks of highly vocal warriors strung out before us, many with shields, forcing Swain to shout out the order for a charge.

  As one, the spearhead accelerated into a run, the point striking the centre of the Ascarlian line. The momentum and weight of numbers sufficed to break their ranks but, as we had been trained to expect, ensured the struggle immediately dissolved into a free-for-all.

  “To the captain!” Swain yelled, sidestepping the thrust of an Ascarlian’s sword before felling the warrior with a swift blow from his mace. He rushed on, crushing the skull of another northman who stumbled into his path. “To the captain!”

  Swain’s words were soon taken up by the rest of the troop, echoing loud in my ears as I followed Wilhum in the sergeant’s wake. Knowing the folly of allowing myself to become snared in any prolonged fracas, I kept running and slashed my longsword at any warrior who came close. Through the drifting smoke and struggling figures I could see Evadine’s tall form, her longsword moving with unceasing energy, a succession of Ascarlians seeming to wither around her like wheat before the scythe. Then my gaze discerned the rise of a far larger figure cresting the mound at her back, a shaggy-haired giant bearing an axe that caught only a speckled sheen from the fire’s glow, as might a stone.

  “Captain!” I called out, the warni
ng lost amid the tumult of combat. Rushing forwards, I ducked the sweep of a sword and dodged a descending axe before a shield-bearing Ascarlian stepped into my path. In no mood to be halted, I leapt, planting a foot on the fellow’s upraised shield and vaulting over him. I felt a rush of air as he chased me with his sword, feeling a small sting on the back of my neck. I ignored it and pressed on towards Evadine, calling out another warning. Both Swain and Wilhum had been compelled to halt and fend off attackers, while I had a clear path through to her.

  Whether she heard my warning or not, I couldn’t tell, but she did turn in time to avoid the first blow of Margnus Gruinskard’s axe. Rubble shattered into powder as the massive stone blade descended, the Tielwald drawing it back for another try as if it weighed no more than a fly switch. It seemed incredible to the point of impossibility that a man of such age and stature could move so quickly, but Evadine was equally quick.

  Instead of delivering another blow, Margnus was forced to raise the haft of his axe to ward off the thrust Evadine jabbed at his throat, then again as she whirled, slashing at his face. The Tielwald succeeded in blocking the strike, but Evadine displayed even greater swiftness, ducking low and darting forwards so that she closed the gap between them, rising at the last instant to drive the point of her longsword into the flesh below the Ascarlian’s chin. Had she succeeded in pushing home, it would surely have spitted his head and deprived the northmen of their general. Whether this might have saved Olversahl for the king is another question, although many a historian will tell you so. Personally, I’ve always had my doubts. Even with their Tielwald slain, the Ascarlians now had sufficient numbers to sack the port several times over and their blood was fully stoked for carnage. Olversahl, and most of its people, was always destined to perish that night.