by Anthony Ryan
“The bastard who left me with this,” Al Hestian raised his right arm, the barbed spike protruding from the leather cap covering the stump glinted in the bright mid-day sun. His gaze was fixed on Vaelin, seemingly oblivious to the advancing Alpiran host. “Al Sendahl, I know you didn’t find him taken by some imaginary beast.”
Vaelin had been surprised the Battle Lord had chosen to place himself on the rise, although he supposed it gave him a good view of the field. But he was more surprised at the man’s choice of time to pursue a grievance. “My lord, perhaps this discussion can wait…”
“I know my son’s death was no mercy killing,” the Battle Lord continued. “I know who wished him ill and I know you were their instrument. I will find Al Sendahl, be assured of that. I will settle accounts with him. I’ll win this war for the king, then I’ll settle with you.”
“My lord, if you hadn’t been so intent on slaughtering helpless captives you would still have your hand and I would still have my brother. Your son was my friend and I took his life to spare him pain. The king is satisfied with my account in both cases and as a servant of the crown and the Faith I have nothing else to say on either subject.”
They regarded each other in cold silence, the Battle Lord’s rage making his features tremble. “Hide behind the Order and the king if you wish,” he said through clenched teeth. “It will not save you when this war is won. You or any of your brothers. The Orders are a blight on the Realm, setting up gutter born scum to lord it over their betters...”
“Father!” A tall, fine featured young man stood nearby, his expression strained with embarrassment. He wore the uniform of a captain in the Twenty-seventh cavalry, a crow’s feather fluttering from the top of his breastplate, a longsword with a bluestone pommel strapped across his back. At his belt he wore a Volarian short sword. “The enemy,” Alucius Al Hestian said, inclining his head at the host advancing across the plain, “doesn’t seem inclined to dally.”
Vaelin expected the Battle Lord to explode at his son but instead he almost seemed chagrined, biting his anger back, nostrils flaring in frustration. With a final baleful glance at Vaelin he strode off to stand beneath his own standard, an elegant scarlet rose at odds with the character of its owner, his personal guard of Blackhawks closing protectively on either side, casting suspicious glances at the Wolfrunners surrounding them. The two regiments shared a mutual detestation and were like to turn taverns and streets into battlefields when encountering one another in the capital. Vaelin was keen to ensure they were kept well apart in the line of march.
“Hot day’s work ahead, my lord,” Alucius said, Vaelin noting the forced humour in his voice. He had been disappointed to find Alucius had taken a commission in his father’s regiment, hoping the young poet had seen enough slaughter at the High Keep. They had met infrequently in the years since, exchanging pleasantries at the palace when the king called him there for some meaningless ceremony or other. He knew Alucius had recovered his gift, that his work was now widely read and young women were eager for his company. But the sadness still lingered in his eyes, the stain of what he had seen in the High Keep.
“Your breastplate should be tighter,” Vaelin told him. “And can you even draw that thing on your back?”
Alucius forced a smile. “Ever the teacher, eh?”
“Why are you here, Alucius? Has your father forced you to this?”
The poet’s false smile faded. “Actually my father said I should stay with my scribblings and my high-born strumpets. Sometimes I think I owe my way with words to him. However, he was persuaded that a chronicle of his glorious campaign, penned by the Realm’s most celebrated young poet no less, would add greatly to our family’s fortunes. Don’t concern yourself with me, brother, I’m forbidden from venturing more than an arm’s length from his side.”
Vaelin looked at the oncoming Alpiran army, the myriad flags of their cohorts rising from the throng like a forest of silk, their trumpets and battle chants a rising cacophony. “There will be no safe place on this field,” he said, nodding at the short sword on Alucius’s belt. “Still know how to use that?”
“I practice every day.”
“Good, stay close to your father.”
“I will.” Alucius offered his hand. “An honour to serve with you once again, brother.”
Vaelin took the hand, more firmly than he intended, meeting the poet’s eyes. “Stay close to your father.”
Alucius nodded, gave a final sheepish smile and walked back to the Battle Lord’s party.
Design within design, Vaelin concluded, pondering the Battle Lord’s words. Janus promises him my death in return for victory. I get to save my sister, the Battle Lord gets vengeance for his son. He calculated the many bargains and deceits the king must have spun to bring them to these shores. The entreaties made to Fief Lord Theros to bring so many of his finest knights. The un-named price agreed with the Meldeneans to carry the army across the sea. He wondered if Janus ever lost track of the web he wove, if the spider ever mislaid one of his threads, but the notion was absurd. Janus couldn’t forget his designs any more than Princess Lyrna could forget the words she read. He thought about the Aspect again, about the orders he had been given and how, for all its complexity, the old man’s web amounted to nothing.
“ERUHIN MAKHTAR!”
The shout went up from every man in the regiment, loud enough to carry to the oncoming Alpirans, loud enough to be heard above their own chants and exhortations.
“ERUHIN MAKHTAR!” The men brandished their pole-axes, steel catching the sun, shouting as one the words they had been taught. “ERUHIN MAKHTAR!” On the summit of the rise Janril was waving the standard on a pole twenty feet high, the running wolf rippling in the wind for the whole plain to see. “ERUHIN MAKHTAR!”
Already the Alpiran cohorts nearest the hill were beginning to react, the ranks wavering as soldiers increased their pace, their drummers’ steady beat unheeded as the Wolfrunners’ taunt drew them on. “ERUHIN MAKHTAR!”
The Battle Lord was right, Vaelin decided seeing the discipline of the leading Alpiran cohort gave way completely, ranks dissolving as the men broke into a run, charging the hill, their own shouts a burgeoning growl of rage. The guardsman gave us a weapon. The words and the banner. Eruhin Makhtar. The Hope Killer is here, come and get him.
And they came. The cohorts on either side of the charging men broke ranks and followed suit, the madness spreading rearwards as more and more formations forgot their discipline and charged headlong for the hill.
“Little point waiting,” Vaelin told Dentos. He had stationed himself with the archers, his own bow ready, arrow notched. “Loose as soon as they’re in range. Might make them run faster.”
Dentos lifted his bow, sighted carefully, his men following his lead, then drew and let fly, the shaft arching down on the charging Alpirans, a cloud of two hundred arrows close behind. Men fell, some rose and charged on, others lay still. Vaelin fancied he saw a few still trying to crawl forward despite shafts buried deep in chest or neck. He loosed off four arrows in quick succession as the archers’ arrow storm began in earnest, all the time the regiment maintaining its taunt. “ERUHIN MAKHTAR!”
At least a hundred Alpirans must have fallen by the time they were half-way up the hill but they showed no sign of faltering, if anything their charge had gathered pace, the base of the hill now thick with men struggling to climb the rise and slay the Hope Killer. Vaelin saw how the whole Alpiran line had been disrupted by the charge, how the flanking cohorts were wavering, undecided as to whether to assault the Realm Guard before them or turn and try for the hill. This battle is already won, he realised. The Alpiran army was like an ox tempted into the killing pen with a bale of fresh hay. All that remains is the slaughter. Whatever his faults it was plain the Battle Lord had a gift for tactics.
When the tide of onrushing Alpirans had come to within two hundred paces the Battle Lord had his own flag-men give the signal for the Cumbraelin archers to move to the summ
it. They came at a run, longbows ready, reaching into the thicket of arrows already thrust into the sandy soil on the summit, notching and loosing without preamble as they had been ordered.
Vaelin had fought Cumbraelins on many occasions, acquiring an intimate knowledge of their deadly skills with the longbow, but he had never seen their massed arrow storm before. Air hissed like the breath of a great serpent as five thousand shafts arched into the charging mass, producing a huge groan of shock and pain as they struck home. It seemed as if all the Alpirans in the lead companies fell at once, five hundred men or more, driven to the sand by the mass of arrows. The air above Vaelin’s head became thick with arrows as the Cumbraelins continued to loose, glancing back he marvelled at the speed with which they plucked shafts from the soil, notched and loosed, seeing one man put five arrows in the air before the first fell to earth.
In the face of the storm the Alpiran rush slowed as men fought to climb over the bodies of dead and wounded comrades, arms and shields raised to ward off the rain of deadly shafts, although these seemed to offer scant protection. But still they came on, fuelled by rage, some still stumbling forward over the thickening carpet of dead with multiple arrows protruding from their mail. When they had struggled to within fifty paces of the summit the Battle Lord signalled the command for the Realm Guard regiments flanking the hill to advance. They moved forward at the double, spears levelled, pushing the disrupted Alpiran line back. The Alpiran cohorts wavered but soon rallied, their line holding as horse borne archers to their rear responded, galloping along the line of battle to loose their shafts at the Realm Guard over the heads of their embattled comrades.
On the right a cloud of dust rose as Alpiran horse massed for a counter charge at the Realm Guard’s flank. The Battle Lord saw the danger, his flag-men signalling frantically to set their own cavalry in motion. The neatly arranged ranks of the Realm Guard horsemen stirred, more dust rising as they manoeuvred to face the mass of Alpiran cavalry. The discordant peel of a hundred trumpets signalled the charge, ten thousand horse hurtling towards the oncoming Alpiran lancers, meeting head-on in a thunderous collision. Through the dust it was just possible to glimpse the whirling spectacle of the melee, men and horses falling and rearing amidst the din of clashing weapons, before the cloud became so thick it was impossible to gauge the course of the struggle, although it was clear the Alpiran charge had been checked. The Realm Guard infantry continued their assault without interference, the Alpiran line on the right beginning to buckle under the pressure.
Whoever commanded the Alpiran host belatedly started to exert control over his forces, sending what infantry reserves remained to bolster the disintegrating line, five cohorts running forward to contend the momentum of the Realm Guard advance. But it was too late, the Alpiran line bowed, wavered and broke, Realm Guard streaming through the gap to assault the neighbouring Alpirans from the rear, the whole line breaking apart under the strain in the space of a few minutes. Not a man to miss an opportunity, the Battle Lord unleashed Fief Lord Theros’s knights, the mass of armour and horse-flesh thundering through the remnants of the Alpiran right then wheeling around, wreaking slaughter on the Alpirans still thronging at the base of the hill despite the Cumbraelin arrow storm.
On the left the Alpiran line started to collapse as the soldiers saw the havoc being wrought on their comrades at the hill. Panic took hold of one cohort, the whole complement fleeing despite the exhortations of their leaders. The Realm Guard surged into the gap, more cohorts taking to flight as the whole line crumbled. Soon thousands of Alpirans were streaming away across the plain, raising a cloud of dust tall enough to obscure the sun and cast the battle in shadow.
On the slope before Vaelin the surviving Alpirans were at last attempting to escape the combined fury of the arrow storm and the onslaught of the Renfaelin knights. Seemingly too exhausted to run many simply stumbled away, clutching wounds or embedded shafts, too spent even to defend themselves when knights spurred amongst them to hack down with mace or longsword. Here and there knots of men fought on, islands of dogged resistance amidst the tide of steel and horse, but they were soon overwhelmed. Not one man had made it to within sword-reach of the summit and the Wolfrunners hadn’t lost a single soldier.
Over on the right the ever burgeoning dust-cloud spoke of an undiminished fury from the Alpiran cavalry and the Battle Lord ordered the Order companies into the fray. The blue cloaked brothers were soon swallowed by the dust and it was only a matter of minutes before Alpiran riders began to emerge, galloping westwards, foam streaming from the flanks and mouths of their horses. There were only a few hundred survivors from the thousands of horsemen that had sought to turn the flank of the Realm Guard.
Vaelin glanced up at the pale disc of the sun, tinged red by the dust. You will witness the harvest of death under a blood-red sun... Words from a dream, spoken by the spectre of Nersus Sil Nin. The thought that the dream’s portent might have a claim on his future left an unwelcome chill in his breast. The body cooling in the snow, the body of someone he had loved, someone he had killed…
“Faith!” Dentos exclaimed at Vaelin’s side, gazing at the spectacle before them with a mixture of awe and repulsion. “Never seen the like.”
“Don’t expect to see it again,” he replied, shaking his head to clear away the vestiges of the dream. “What we faced today was but a gathering of the garrisons of the northern coast. When the emperor’s real army comes north I doubt they’ll offer us so easy a triumph.”
Chapter 4
The Governor’s mansion at Untesh stood on a picturesque hill-top overlooking the harbour where the masts of the city’s scuttled merchant fleet jutted from the water like a submerged forest. The mansion’s gardens were rich in olive groves, statuary and avenues of acacia trees, tended by a small army of gardeners who had continued their daily labours without interruption following the Battle Lord’s assumption of residence. The rest of the mansion staff had acted similarly, going about their duties with mute servility which had done little to alleviate the Battle Lord’s insecurity. His guards watched the servants with a glowering vigilance and his meals were tasted twice before proceeding to his table. The dumb obedience of the mansion staff was, for the most part, mirrored in the city’s wider population. There had been some trouble with a few dozen wounded soldiers, survivors of the what had become known as the Bloody Hill, mounting a shambolic attack on the main gate when the first Realm Guard regiments had trooped through, and meeting a predictable end. But for the most part the Alpirans were quiescent, apparently at the order of their governor who, before drinking poison along with his family, had issued a proclamation ordering no resistance. Apparently the man had been in command of Alpiran forces the day of the Bloody Hill and, feeling he had enough slaughter on his conscience, had no wish to face the gods with yet more weighing the scales against him.
Despite the lack of resistance Vaelin could see the resentment of the people in every snatched glance they cast in his direction, marking the shame that made them shuffle wordlessly about their business and avoid the gaze of their neighbours. Many had no doubt lost sons and husbands to the Bloody Hill and would nurse their grudges in silence, waiting for the emperor’s inevitable response. The atmosphere in the city was oppressive, made worse by the mood of the Realm Guard which had soured by the time they marched through the gate, the jubilation of victory fading in the face of the Battle Lord’s decision to leave the most badly wounded behind and the lack of plunder to be had in the Realm’s newest city. The day after their arrival a gallows had appeared in the central forum, three corpses dangling from the scaffold, all Realm Guard with signs hung about their neck proclaiming one a thief, one a deserter and the other a rapist. The king’s orders had been clear, they were to take the cities, not ruin them, and the Battle Lord felt no compunction in ensuring his orders were followed without demur. The men had taken to calling him Blood Rose in grim mockery of his family emblem. It seemed Al Hestian’s facility for victory was matched by his t
alent for making his men hate him.
Vaelin guided Spit along the acacia-lined avenue leading from the mansion gate to the courtyard, dismounting and offering the reins to a nearby groom. The man stood still, head bowed, eyes downcast, sweat shining on his skin in the hot afternoon sun. Vaelin noted the way his hands trembled. Glancing around he saw the other grooms had adopted the same stance, all standing immobile, refusing to look at him or see to his horse, accepting the consequences. Eruhin Makhtar, he thought with a sigh, tying Spit to a post with enough slack to reach the trough.
The council was already underway in the mansion’s main hall, a large marble chamber impressively decorated with mosaics on the walls and floor illustrating scenes from the legends of the principal Alpiran gods. As usual the council discussion had quickly degenerated into a heated argument. Baron Banders, who Vaelin had once seen beaten unconscious by Lord Darnel at the Summertide fair and had since regained his position of chief retainer to Fief Lord Theros, was exchanging insults with Count Marven, captain of the Nilsaelin contingent. The words “jumped up peasant” and “horse-shagging dullard” could be heard amidst the tumult as the two men jabbed fingers at each other and shrugged off the restraining hands of their companions. There had been some bad blood between the Nilsaelins and the rest of the army since the Bloody Hill, their contingent hadn’t been ordered forward until the enemy were already in flight and most had seemed more interested in looting Alpiran corpses than pursuing their broken army.
“You are late, Lord Vaelin,” the Battle Lord’s voice cut through the commotion, silencing the argument.
“I had far to ride, my lord,” Vaelin replied. Al Hestian had ordered his regiment to camp at an oasis a good five miles outside the city walls, ostensibly to guard a supply of fresh water for their next march but also a sensible precaution against the potentially violent reaction of the city-folk to Vaelin’s continued presence within the walls. It also afforded the Battle Lord an opportunity to rebuke him for lateness every time he convened a council.