At last, though, their hard ride northwards was over. A group of horsemen sat watching the island right now, the flanks of their steeds were steaming and white with sweat, testament to a hard ride. At their centre was Esric Calvannen, Baron and Chief Prosecutor of the War in the South. Next to him was the red-haired Emeric, leader of the Serpent Knights, and making up the rest of the group were Esric’s chief allies, his fellow southern barons, Garal, Eburg, Josar and Spalforth. There was one other figure, too, a ruggedly handsome dark-haired man with pale-grey eyes, dressed in a black cloak. Esric turned to Emeric, though his question was directed to all present.
‘How many of them are there, do you think?’
‘About fifty I would say,’ said Emeric. ‘They are dug in, won’t move and are refusing to surrender.’
‘I suppose the Gods could not accept all the islands surrendering to us. They had to leave one Arshuman curmudgeon refusing to accept our terms. Well, who are we to deny the Gods their sport, their daily ration of bloodletting? Remember though, take this island and the river Axe is fully under our control for the first time in years. It is quite an incentive. Are the boats ready?’
‘Yes, Baron,’ said Spalforth, a man with a beard so long he could tuck it into his belt. ‘Twenty boats, each of which can carry eight to ten men. They are moored just over a mile away.’
‘Very well, this is no encounter for horse. Josar, this is your land; you can join the landing party with me. In the meantime have the archers soften them up. Tell them to be careful, though; I want no wasted arrows.’
‘Yes, Baron,’ said Emeric. He put a horn that he always carried in his belt to his lips and sounded it.
‘Mikel,’ said Esric, ‘can you do anything to flush out these men?’
The cloaked man pushed his horse forward so that Esric could hear him better.
‘I could set a fire in the trees but that will hamper you and your men just as much as them. I am generally a practitioner of more subtle magics than that. Leave it with me. By the time you arrive their appetite for resistance will hopefully be greatly reduced.’
‘Get to it then. Josar, come with me.’ He spurred his horse onward, followed by the other barons. As he did so, the field behind him was filling with many lightly armoured men all of whom carried bows.
As he was told, barely a mile upriver he came to the boats; they were propelled by oar with three rowlocks either side. Nearly two hundred men armed with mace or sword and mainly armoured in mail or leather were waiting there for them.
‘You know, Esric,’ Josar said to him as they got near to the boats. ‘There is no need for you to risk yourself in this skirmish. Leave it to me; we will soon flush these rats out.’
‘No, my friend. The Grand Duke named me as Chief Prosecutor of the South; it is my duty to lead these men.’
‘You are exposing yourself to unnecessary risk this way. You have proven your worth in battle many times; you can’t seriously believe the men still call you the “Poet Baron” after all this time?’
‘If I sit back and let others endanger themselves in my stead, then the name would be justified.’ He lifted his helmet visor and stopped to inhale the sweet air off the river.
‘Besides, Josar, there is more than a grain of truth in the name. I am a man who far prefers the indolent life of court to the shambles that is the battlefield. Can I help it if I prefer the lute and the muse, the company of educated women and the finest wines of Tarindia and Svytoia? The Gods have been cruel indeed to cast me from such a life.’
Josar laughed out loud. ‘There are times, my dearest Baron, when you sound like a Lilac Palace eunuch, only a little more effeminate. Besides, I have read your poetry and believe me, having you thrown into battle and cast away from your pen, has been a blessing for us all. The Gods may have been cruel to you, but to us they have been merciful.’
Esric smiled. ‘Emeric did once say that to make a prisoner talk all I need do is read to him one of my sonnets.’
‘Keep doing that, Baron, and this war will be won in a week.’
They both laughed as they dismounted from their horses. Josar, a muscular fair-haired man with a week’s growth of stubble, and the smaller, more intense Esric had been friends from childhood and constantly indulged in their favoured pastime of putting the other man down. After leaving the horses with the ostler and stable lads, they gave the order for the soldiers present to get into the boats.
‘Six men rowing, one or two upfront holding their shields high, and one or two in the stern to steer and balance out the weight. They will try peppering us with arrows, so keep your heads down and when we get to the island try to beach the boats simultaneously. If we land piecemeal, then they can pick us off one at a time.’
‘Calvannen!’ the men shouted. ‘Calvannen and Tanaren!’
Twenty boats pushed off from the bank trying to maintain spacing so that the enemy archers had more difficulty finding a mark. Slowly they rounded a bend and, once they had negotiated that, the island stood ahead of them in the distance.
Calvannen, in the lead boat, could see the sky was dark with arrows flying in both directions. He saw shadowy figures on the island ducking under the cover of the trees. His men on the bank were more exposed and he could see some casualties had already been suffered. This decided his next course of action.
‘Speed up, lads; let’s get to the island as fast as we can!’
All around him he could hear the grunting of men as they strained at the oars, putting the effort in to close the gap between them and their destination. There were inevitable collisions and much suppressed swearing as the small craft arrowed through the water, churning up wakes that caused the boats behind to lurch drunkenly as they rocked back and forth helplessly. Despite the chaos, though, progress was swift. Esric saw the men in the trees pointing frenziedly and knew they had been spotted. ‘Heads down, prepare for their arrows!’
Even as he spoke, he heard the whistling of one such shaft as it skipped off his boat’s hull and vanished under the water. More followed. Men were holding up shields to block them, but many shafts avoided them and landed inside the multitude of small craft. He could hear shouts and screams as arrows pierced arms, legs or more fatal areas. The man ahead of Esric looked up to see what was happening, and as he did so an arrow shot into the boat hit him square in the face. He dropped his oar and screamed, putting his hand to his wound. As he writhed, the boat listed dangerously. Esric had already seen another capsize as the wounded tried desperately to escape their torment. The man ahead of him continued to thrash around in his agony; the arrow had entered his right cheek and its head had punched through the skin and was jutting out under his jaw. Without the rower, the boat had stalled and was heading towards the bank.
‘You!’ he said to the man next to him ‘Sit on this fellow, try breaking the shaft and pull it out. If he doesn’t stop thrashing around, kill him or we will all be going into the water.’ With that he took the vacant oar space himself. He could hear the man behind trying to calm the stricken man, whose mad frenzy was weakening. The island was close now. The first of the boats had already landed; two now had capsized on the approach.
‘My Lord!’ the man behind him spoke. ‘This fellow has died.’
‘Xhenafa bring him safely to Artorus’s side,’ said Esric, pangs of guilt hitting him as he thought of his last order to the man. ‘But we must complete the task in hand.’
With that, the boat slammed on to the low bank of the island. The men dropped their oars and, with a furious call upon the favours of Mytha, plunged into the trees. Esric followed, his sword drawn.
Once his eyes had adjusted to the twilight under the trees, he could see a savage broil going on barely twenty yards away. About twenty men from each side were desperately hacking away at each other. As he leapt to join them, he heard the crack of bone and an Arshuman fell backwards, his face a mass of blood and pulp – a Tanaren mace had done its worst. More of his own men landed and pushed under the trees. The A
rshumans were surely doomed, though he had decided to show mercy should any of them surrender. He faced up to an Arshuman warrior, in a shirt and coif of mail, shield held low, sword held ready, obviously an experienced man.
They traded blows and both shields did their work. These Arshumans are stubborn fellows, thought Esric. And indeed they were holding their own, despite being outnumbered. The man assayed a vicious swipe to his head, but he ducked under it, countering with a savage thrust that the man barely parried. The noise of battle filled his ears for the thousandth time.
Then something strange happened. Before his eyes he saw what appeared to be wisps of black smoke, wrapping around the trees, wafting over the combatants. It smelt of nothing, though, and was not following the direction of the wind; it was almost as though he was dreaming it.
The effect on the Arshumans, though, was electric. The man facing him dropped his guard. His sword fell from his nerveless fingers, his mouth opened and closed, his eyes became the size of dinner plates. Esric realised his expression was one of pure unalloyed terror.
The man was too horrified to scream. Instead, he dropped his shield and fled directly away from the strange smoke, his countrymen following. Some slumped at the base of a tree trunk, covering their face with their hands and screaming as if in the grip of a primeval fear. Most, however, jumped straight into the river, trying desperately to get away from the smoke. Weighed down as they were with their heavy armour, none made it to the far bank. His own men stood dumbstruck at the bizarre turn of events. Josar, his face spattered with other men’s blood, saw him and came over.
‘See the benefits of having a mage? I have heard of such spells. He has conjured phantoms of pure terror for these men while we see only smoke. Congratulations, Esric, another fine victory.’
Esric appeared to overcome his surprise and decided to shout out a few orders.
‘See these survivors are gathered together and bound. Strip them of equipment while I go and proffer thanks to the learned Mikel.’
‘We all have our own specialist fields of expertise, Many of them overlap with other mages; sometimes, though, they are unique. I personally like to dabble with illusions, to confuse and obfuscate my victims. I shrouded those poor fellows with visions of their own worst nightmares. I have to confess I hoped they would collapse to their knees, not plunge into the water and so to their own deaths.’
‘Indeed, many of them reacted as if they had seen Josar’s wife for the first time.’ Josar said nothing; he did not appear to disagree.
The brief and bloody skirmish had concluded about an hour ago and the barons and the mage were back on the riverbank evaluating the results – six dead and a dozen wounded to incapacity compared with at least thirty dead of the enemy with fifteen prisoners taken. All in all, a highly successful outcome.
‘Oh, I have a message for you mage.’ Esric had taken off his helmet and was letting the cool breeze dry his sticky hair. ‘The lady Cheris in the north wishes you well and asks after who is feeding her cats? I hope this makes sense to you.’
Mikel smiled warmly. ‘Ah, so you have met the divine Cheris herself, have you? She is a different sort of mage to me. In battle, whereas I tease and confuse my enemy, I would imagine she is far happier making them explode; and if she were here I would tell her that Elsa is feeding her cats and that they have very much taken to her. With any luck, though, I will see her myself before too long, so I can explain this to her personally.’
‘It is strange how we are awash with mages at the moment. We have four with us now, I believe.’
‘Yes, four it is,’ Mikel replied. ‘The college does not let us go cheaply. I imagine Leontius is spending a pretty hefty amount of coin on four at once.’
‘He wants this war won and over with,’ said Esric. A servant had brought him a goblet of thin ale which he drank greedily. He does not want it hanging over his tenure at the Ducal Palace. He is an ambitious young man who obviously has his own plans for his reign.’
As he spoke, a tall cadaverous man came to speak with him. He was thin as a lath and his ill-fitting mail shirt swung loosely at his sides. He wore a deep-blue surcoat bearing the emblem of a golden heron.
‘Many salutations on a fine victory, Baron,’ said the man. ‘The river Axe is now under your sole control; things have not looked so promising in the south for many years.’
‘Thank you, Eburg.’ Esric acknowledged him with the tiniest of bows. ‘But you know I am a naturally cautious man and will not rest easy until the entire south is free from the enemy; and that...’ – he paused for effect – ‘depends on occurrences in the north over the next few weeks.’
‘As you say, Baron, and now, with your permission, I would like to take twenty of my men back home with me. I have many matters to attend to there and with winter coming I do not expect too many military developments to press into my, I mean, our time.’
‘Of course, Eburg, but be ready if I call upon you.’
‘That I will, Baron.’ The man bowed and left them.
Josar watched him go, then spoke to Esric.
‘You have told him nothing of your meeting with Felmere?’
‘No, it is still too early, and I cannot yet trust him properly.’
Mikel broke in. ‘Apologies if I appear impertinent, but am I missing something here?’
‘That, my friend,’ said Josar, ‘is Baron Eburg of the town of the same name. Nary a few weeks ago his wife’s son by her first marriage, his adopted heir, was discovered passing information to the Arshumans.’
‘He was caught totally red-handed, in a secret meeting with their spies.’ Esric continued. ‘It cost him his head, which we sent to his mother. Eburg himself, it seems, has not been blessed by the Gods when it comes to fertility and has no natural progeny. Since that particular episode he has been at pains to ingratiate himself with me. He is terrified of losing his baronial seat.’
‘It is a justifiable terror,’ said Josar. ‘We have many candidates, which Esric here, as Southern Prosecutor, has the legal right to raise to the status of Baron. Eburg is on shiftier ground than the marsh his town is built on.’
‘I will be watching him keenly. Let it remain at that.’ Esric turned and started off to the army’s camp. When he arrived there he was saluted with much cheering and clashing of weapons on shields. As Josar had told him correctly, he was the Poet Baron no more.
44
Echoes. What was it about fog that caused every footstep, every breath, to resonate so starkly, so clearly, that it felt to Ceriana that she was on a stage with nowhere to hide. The harder she tried to hush her footfalls and control her breathing, the noisier she seemed to become and, in this town of absolute silence, the last thing she wanted to do was draw attention to herself.
The six of them had left the little boat at the pier, climbed the steep steps of the harbour wall, crept past the statue of Hytha, and were now standing on the street facing out to the sea. Even the sea made no noise here – there was just fog above them, below them and about them, enfolding them with its icy fingers, shortening their breath and making Ceriana’s heart thump so violently she half expected it to see it explode out of her chest.
Wulfthram was in the lead, with Ceriana following closely behind him, as they walked slowly past dark lifeless cottage after dark lifeless cottage. Then he stopped.
‘A tavern,’ he said. ‘If we are going to find anyone in this place, surely it’ll be here.’ Even he was trying to speak quietly.
They all looked at the gloomy two-storey building in front of them. The sign, displaying some sort of jolly fisherman, hung limply without moving over the dark oak door. There were two bowed thick glass windows that reflected no light in front of them. Ceriana tried peering through but could see nothing. ‘Who’s going in?’ she asked.
‘It’s black as pitch in there,’ said Haelward. ‘It looks as deserted as every other place we’ve seen.’
‘Hand me the lantern,’ said Wulfthram, ‘Strogar, Haelward, come w
ith me; you three wait here; I reckon we will only be a minute.’
The door was not locked. As Wulfthram pushed it, it creaked slowly inwards, a noise that seemed a violation to the all-pervading stillness around them. Wulfthram looked at Strogar, who was a bull of a man, who in turn looked at Haelward, who in turn looked at the three people behind him. He raised his eyes, making Ceriana smile back at him. Then the three of them disappeared into the tavern.
Ceriana looked around her. The moon was casting a ghoulish light on to the cobbled street and making both her and her companions faces look as white as a death mask. Derkss, a thin-faced man with a full growth of beard, held the remaining lantern. He looked as discomfited by their surroundings as any of them.
‘Are you all right?’ Ceriana asked him.
‘Of course, my Lady; it is just that I am a simple enough man who would much prefer a stand-up fight to all this creeping around. And this place ... can’t you feel it? It is as though it has been forsaken by the Gods.’
‘Forsaken by the Gods!’ Ceriana whispered to herself. ‘Perhaps I am in the right place, after all.’
Ulian padded softly to the water’s edge. The outline of their ship could barely be seen. After a little while, though, he asked out loud, ‘Do you think this is a natural fog?’
‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Derkss replied nervously. ‘These parts have many heavy sea fogs.’
Ceriana did not reply; the same thought had already occurred to her. What if the fog was the cause of everyone’s disappearance? And here they were trapped in the middle of it. It was cold, too. Her cloak seemed to be doing nothing to protect her; the fog seemed to be passing right through it, her dress, her very skin. Her very soul seemed frozen by it.
The three men came out of the tavern. ‘Nothing,’ said Wulfthram. ‘It looks like the place was full of people who for no reason at all decided to get up and leave. Mugs of ale not fully consumed, plates of half-eaten food, crumpled bed sheets. It is so strange.’
The Forgotten War Page 62