by Leo Carew
“That was one of the first things I noticed about the Anakim. You have an exceptionally confident and single-minded culture.”
Roper observed the spymaster for a moment. “Was that an insult?”
“No, no,” Bellamus assured him. “Merely an observation. I am not claiming any way is superior. Suthern society, I think, is more prone to doubts and hand-wringing. Have we got that right? How can I show I belong to the rest, but am also different? Perhaps we should adopt this for our culture? How can we change?”
“Sounds exhausting,” said Roper. “And divisive.”
“It is both those things,” said Bellamus. “But it also keeps Suthern culture dynamic. We have a word you lack in Anakim: fashion. It is a name for something that is very briefly popular, and then slowly declines until it becomes embarrassing.”
“Sounds applicable to my rule,” Roper observed.
Bellamus raised a finger, amused. “Not quite. I haven’t given the best definition. It is usually used in relation to clothes, or hair, or pastimes. Things that your race is too austere to bother with, I think. Music,” he added, suddenly. “You love music. Do you have songs that go in and out of general favour?”
Roper considered this. “I… don’t think so. Different ones are sung for different activities or at different times of year. Some songs are only for a particular annual feast, or gathering the acorn harvest. But they don’t go in and out of favour at random.”
“So you do not have fashion. And perhaps it is because your society has such self-confidence. Nobody seeks to differentiate themselves from the others, because all are happy with your culture as it is. It is confident.”
Roper drummed his fingers on the board. “What you are describing sounds to me frivolous and fickle, rather than dynamic.”
“It is all those things,” said Bellamus. “Frivolous, fickle and dynamic. And therefore, adaptable.”
Roper raised his eyebrows at that. Confidence versus adaptability, he thought. This campaign might decide which was superior. They played on, a vicious battle shuffling across the centre of the board, the exchange ending slightly in Roper’s favour.
“I never finished telling you about my first encounter with the Anakim,” said Bellamus.
“No, you didn’t.”
“You remember I’d gone into the mountains looking for them,” said Bellamus. “But I heard them before I saw them. Singing, like I’d never encountered before.” There was a strange radiance to his eye: wistful and painful, and it gathered the rest of his face close in a frown. “Unearthly noises, ringing through those snow-laden trees. It was like a cicada, and an owl, and a wolf, in eerie concert. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising, and crawled into view of a fireside by which eight of them sat. Two were singing, one playing a pipe of some sort. So tall and lean and graceful, and one of them held a baby, which was almost the strangest of all because it was so quiet. I stayed until it got dark, through the night and to morning, and the baby never made a sound. But they caught me,” he said, grimacing.
“And you escaped?” asked Roper, temporarily divorced from the game. “They wouldn’t have let you live.”
“As a matter of fact, they did,” said Bellamus. He made his move before continuing. “I had feared them capturing me, and when they did, the atmosphere was quite different from the one I had imagined. It was much, much worse. They were relaxed and light-hearted. It was not as though they were about to kill a person, but an animal of some sort that they’d snared. I thought to survive, I had to humanise myself in their eyes.”
Roper looked over the board at Bellamus, amused. “Is that what you’re doing now, spymaster?”
The tide of Bellamus’s pieces was on the way out. He clawed back some pride by waging a petty war against Roper’s pawns, but it was another victory to Roper. Bellamus declared his great regret, and asked if Roper might be persuaded to play again. Alas, he could not, and instead bound the Sutherner’s hands and returned him to his lonely post in the rain.
When Roper squelched back to his hearth, he found it roaring, and all legates, historians and officers standing close, huddled about its warmth. All eyes were on Keturah, who was recounting an anecdote that Roper had heard before about getting lost in the Academy and having to sit through several hours chanting because she was too embarrassed to leave. Roper doubted the experience had been as boring as she described: he had once heard the Chief Historian refer to her as a “chant-cormorant,” her appetite for history insatiable. She finished to laughter, and when it died down, Tekoa took up storytelling duties. There was something a little distant about this audience, Roper thought.
He slid in beside Keturah and she glanced at him. “Good lord, you two were holed up in there for hours. What took you?”
“Just talking,” he said.
“Charming, is he? He’s very handsome, in an odd sort of way.”
“I have been seeing if he might turn to our side. But I do enjoy his company,” Roper admitted.
That confession drew Keturah’s head towards him, face half-illuminated by the fire’s shy touch. “Oh? Our greatest enemy, orchestrator of a thousand disruptive plans that have slowed our progress to a crawl?”
“I know what he’s done,” said Roper. “But he is refreshing. He’s so different from everyone else. I only know the kind of man that is produced by the haskoli. They are all direct, hard, confident, energetic,” Roper flapped the words away like smoke. “And I only realise that now that I’ve met Bellamus. He is subtle, mild, fascinated by big questions. I can talk with him like I can with Gray, but his perspective is so different.”
Keturah was thrilled. “Husband, this is sweet! Have you made a friend?”
“No friend, it’s just illuminating. How was the run?” he put in quickly, hoping to avoid further questions. In trying to turn Bellamus to their side, all he had succeeded in doing so far was developing a fondness for the spymaster. Once or twice already, he had spotted that Bellamus was trying to manipulate him. But rather than putting him on his guard, Roper admired the intelligence behind his words. He had always rather liked Bellamus, despite everything between them. Perhaps he had known this would happen when he chose to keep him alive. When he took that chessboard.
“Oh, the run was fine but high drama here,” Keturah said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Oh, yes?”
“There is a great sickness among the Skiritai,” she confided.
“Oh, I knew that. Let’s hope the quarantine works.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Keturah. “The quarantine has failed. That’s what Father says. Three score are sick, and more are being brought in every hour.”
“No.” The word uttered itself. He remembered the plague of the previous year. Trying to breathe through the smoke of the corpse fires. The barricades, the fear: streets choked with mounded bodies. His chest rattled, and he felt the tingle of disturbing energy. He looked over at Tekoa, who was staring wearily into the fire. “No, please,” he murmured. “Please.”
28
Hunger
Roper slid around the silhouetted audience and joined Tekoa.
“I hear the quarantine has failed,” he murmured.
Tekoa turned away from the firelight, he and Roper walking a few steps out of the circle. “I wouldn’t go quite that far,” he said in an undertone, “but yes, it seems ineffective. What are we going to do?”
There was a slight jolt as this man, for all his irascible, forceful experience, laid responsibility on Roper’s shoulders.
“Well how serious is it? Is this just an illness that people recover from, or is it worse? Does it kill?”
“It kills,” Tekoa confirmed.
“How often?”
“Both the prisoners we liberated from the spymaster’s barn are now dead. It is hard to guess how far advanced the other cases are; for most the disease is still in its infancy. But there are a dozen I do not expect to survive the night. Of those infected, it seems
likely that more than half will die.”
Roper gritted his teeth, turning inwards the snarl that came to his lips. If he were the sort of man who did such things, now seemed the moment to lose control. He felt an urge to snap something in half and continue tearing at it until only splinters remained; to advance to the fire and obliterate every glowing crumb. But he could not. The customs of his land marbled his flesh and encased him. All he could do was carry on.
“Tekoa,” he said. “My brother. This can go no further.”
“Agreed,” said the legate, softly.
“Everyone,” said Roper, in a vehement hiss. “Everyone exposed in any proximity at all to those two prisoners, or any of the infected, must be separated from this army. Otherwise sickness will overtake every legionary here.”
“My entire legion,” said Tekoa.
Roper stared bleakly at the two glowing spots of light that were Tekoa’s eyes. He did not want to speak, but forced out four bitter words.
“And you, my friend.”
They sounded worse than he could possibly have imagined. He and Tekoa looked long at each other. Those around the fire still talked, forcing cheer and trying to raise their own spirits, while the legate and the Black Lord shared this quiet moment.
“I should go now,” said Tekoa, in the softest voice Roper had ever heard from him. “We all should.”
He had known. He had just needed it voiced. Bravery in isolation is near impossible, and even Tekoa Urielson needed this fragmentary confirmation before condemning himself.
“I…” Roper began. What was there to say? That he was not sure that he could campaign without the legate’s guidance and experience. That he would miss his company terribly. That Keturah would likely not forgive him for letting her father go. That without the Skiritai, the army was lost already. Even an embrace, which might have said some of that, was impossible under the circumstances. Tekoa had stayed two nights with those sick men. The part of the army for which he was responsible was rotten. They were about to cut out a great deal of good flesh to ensure they contained the disease.
“Goodbye, Lord Roper. Good luck.” The light in Tekoa’s eyes flickered, and Roper knew he had flashed a glance over his shoulder at Keturah.
“I’ll tell her. We will meet again, my brother.”
“In one world or the other,” said Tekoa, with the pale gleam of a smile.
And then he had turned away, into the rain. Roper watched his cloak dissolve into the dark, and took a steadying breath. Then he returned to the fire as if nothing had happened. No one had noticed Tekoa leave, and that was how it needed to remain. If she knew, Keturah would insist she went with her father. He looked down at the bulge beneath her cloak on which she had laid her hand. He looked up at her eyes, narrowed gleefully as she delivered another anecdote. He stood there in silence, smiling whenever there was laughter, and betrayed Keturah. As he knew what to listen for, Roper could even hear the sounds of the Skiritai packing up and departing. Tekoa would likely take them to the coast, where food was more plentiful, and wait there for whatever fate delivered.
The conversation was an exertion, and an hour later was beginning to wind down, when Roper saw a phantom brush the firelight.
Jokul. Without thinking, Roper hailed him. The small man stopped, half turning his attention towards him. Roper made his excuses and jogged out of the circle, joining the stationary master. He had to know whether there was any chance that Tekoa was correct, and Bellamus had deliberately released this disease on them. “Master. Would you tell me how you located Bellamus?”
From the slightly paler patch of dark before him, he heard an irritable tut. “Really, Lord Roper, you do not need to concern yourself with the specifics of our work.”
“Master, please. I beg you, this is not mere curiosity, it is important. Would you tell me, in whatever way satisfies you that it does not compromise your agents?”
Jokul was silent. But Roper sensed he could not resist telling the tale. “Very well. Prior to passing you that information, we had been trailing two suspected spies for some days. One of them realised he was being followed, and was killed to preserve our agent’s identity. The other had been seen making nocturnal forays beyond the camp and leaving behind small cairns. We set a watch on these, naturally, and the night after construction, a Suthern woman was observed approaching one and digging at its base. When she retreated, she was followed, leading us right to Brimstream.”
“Brimstream? The spy-hub?”
“Quite. We investigated for some time to be certain of our discovery, before sharing the news with you. Does that satisfy you?”
“It does. I thank you, Master.” Roper returned to the fire, thinking about the account. To him, it suggested that releasing the illness had not been a deliberate act on Bellamus’s part. It sounded as though it had been so difficult to find him that it had truly happened against his wishes.
Keturah did not notice Tekoa’s absence until they were settling down to sleep together. “Where’s my father gone? Does anyone know?” Nobody did, of course, except Roper, who persuaded himself it was kindness, not cowardice, that she should not find out until the morning. They piled the fire high and shared a waxed linen cloak to shield the rain. Some agitation woke Roper first in the morning, two words spinning around his head, which he tried to dismiss. He revived the fire and set water to boil, dreading what was to come.
When Keturah awoke, her first glance was at the empty patch of ground where Tekoa slept. She looked at Roper. “Did you see Father? Has he risen already?”
“No, my love,” said Roper, his voice horribly flat. “He’s gone.”
“Gone?” said Keturah, raising an eyebrow. “Gone where?”
“We spoke about the sickness last night,” said Roper. “It is spreading too fast, it is deadly and it seems you do not need to have touched a victim to catch it. He and the rest of the Skiritai were too closely exposed to the infected. They have left.”
Keturah leaned forward. incredulous, her mouth open. “Left for where?”
“I do not know,” said Roper. He nearly shuttered his eyes against the expression on Keturah’s face. “Somewhere far away, to wait out the effects of the sickness, and preserve the rest of the army.”
When Keturah spoke, her voice was poison. “You sent my father, without so much as a word of farewell, off to die with a band of infected men?”
“I hope not,” Roper said. “He will not be careless. He’ll prioritise the men according to those at greatest risk and try and preserve as much of his legion as possible. But we agreed on this,” he added desperately as Keturah stirred suddenly, getting to her feet. “He knew that if he said farewell, you would try and stop him, or go with him, and he wanted you safe. What he did was for you, and it may have saved us all.”
Roper caught a glimpse of her derisive expression before Keturah turned away, walking from the hearth without a backward glance and stalking out into the encampment. Roper dropped his head into his hands and held it there.
“You’ve done the right thing, Lord Roper,” said a cool voice. Roper dragged his head upright and saw the Chief Historian sitting up, watching him levelly. “Of terrible options, you have chosen the best.”
For some reason, that was what tipped Roper past endurance. His vision blurred, and he stood abruptly. He spared a hand in recognition of her words, and turned away to hide his tears, walking off into the camp, carefully distant from Keturah’s retreating shoulders.
When Roper returned to the hearth an hour later, Keturah’s things were gone. He supposed she had gone to join Sigrid and Hafdis, and did not pursue her. This army needed him and he had to carry on. So he told the full story of why Tekoa was gone to the legates, who knew most of it already from the watchmen who had reported the Skiritai’s departure the previous night. “This is just a precaution,” he told them. “Tekoa and I are very much of the hope that he can contain it within the Skiritai and that they will soon be able to rejoin us. But there is absolutely
no sense in risking the remainder of this army to sickness. From now on, we must be exceedingly vigilant. Any sign whatsoever that this sickness advanced beyond the Skiritai, please take steps to isolate the infected and inform me immediately. Tell your men this morning, as soon as we are done here.
“Otherwise, this changes nothing. Onwards. Our armourers need one more day to finish the Unhieru arms and then we send them to Gogmagoc, escorted by the Fair Islanders. We move on to Deorceaster and besiege it; assault it straight away if we get the chance. Then onwards again, to the next settlement and the next. Does anyone have any questions?”
Randolph raised a hand. “What are we to do without the Skiritai?”
“Each remaining full legion will provide two centuries every day for scouting. The Skiritai horse have been left behind, so we still have them. We should not be badly affected.”
There was a silence after that which suggested the legates thought that as unlikely as he did. The Skiritai were the army’s most specialist legion, and truly skilled at their work. They would be hard to replace.
Sturla spoke next. “And what of food? We’re starving. Half-rations for too much longer and we will barely be able to march, let alone fight.” The Skiritai were among the army’s most skilled hunters, and their departure had made the food situation worse, rather than better.
Roper turned to the Chief Historian. “My lady, are there any forests further south in which we might hunt?”
“There are,” she said. “There is one near Deorceaster.”
“Good. Then we will devote a large portion of this army to hunting once we have besieged Deorceaster, and I hope that shall give us enough to carry on. Anything else?”
Randolph cleared his throat, glancing about the circle for support. “Do you think the time has come to turn back, my lord?” Roper cocked his head as though surprised at this suggestion, but Randolph, heartened by the murmur of agreement round the fire, went on. “We have done our best, but the army is starving. We’ve lost our scouts. The Unhieru remain in their homeland. We’ve taken just one city, and to finish this we’ll need to get as far south as Lundenceaster, and take that too. That city alone would be a match for this army.” He shook his head. “We cannot subdue Suthdal. We are too few, this place too alien.” Heads were nodding fervently about the circle. “It is time to go home.”