Death's Chosen (First Cohort Book 3)

by M. R. Anthony

  I spent the next fifteen minutes attending to the most important tasks. I had a hundred men stationed in the room behind the door, with Sinnar in command. I told him to be ready for anything. In the room adjacent, someone had managed to set some torches burning in the walls. I didn’t wonder how they’d managed it – some of the men possessed an unusual ingenuity when it came to fire. The light was poor, yet it was enough to see. Corporal Grief and Slicer had already begun their work to repair the damage done to our wounded. Normal injuries didn’t kill us, nor did they fester. All but the worst would heal in days rather than weeks or months. There were over forty in the room who felt they’d been hurt enough to need attention. We were a stoic lot and I imagined there’d be at least the same number again who carried minor hurts that they’d keep quiet about, in order that Grief and Slicer could see to the more seriously injured first.

  “Anyone not going to make it?” I asked. I didn’t need to whisper– we didn’t embrace the possibility of our own deaths, but we didn’t fear it either. Every man who left us would be honoured and remembered for his service to the Cohort.

  Grief looked at me and smiled. I took it as a good sign. “There’re a couple I wasn’t sure about,” he said, pointing to two men nearby. One was Flurry. He was out of his armour and clothes, and had his eyes closed. His body was a criss-cross of black thread. I’d long since ceased to be surprised at the speed with which Grief and Slicer could patch us up.

  “I’m not sure how he made the run. I think he’ll still be with us in the morning,” said Grief. “As will Eagle.” I looked about and couldn’t see where they’d put Eagle. I didn’t want to lose one of our two archers. I trusted Grief’s judgement and didn’t pursue it.

  I left them to their work – they’d be on with it for several hours, I guessed. I ordered someone to do a count of who we had with us. As usual, I feared the worst and hoped for the best. For almost the first time since we’d given our service to the Saviour, it seemed that good fortune had shone brightly upon us. Every man who had left Blades was still alive. I didn’t believe in gods or higher beings, so instead gave thanks to our fellowship and loyalty to one another.

  I’d put men on the upper floors to look out of the windows. The night was all-encompassing and there was no way they would be able to see anything that approached. If anything came, the only notice we’d have would be the sound of their approach. As I looked around the upper two floors, I stopped at each man in turn and offered him some words about how well we’d done to escape the trap that had been set for us. Most of them wanted to know about our casualties and I gave them whatever details they wanted.

  The tower itself had no imagination applied to its interior and was purely functional. The walls were constructed from heavy stone blocks, which had been cut beautifully and fitted together without gaps. There were four rooms to each level, with a set of stone steps being the means to ascend. I climbed once to the top and then came down again to the ground floor. Although our safety might have been only temporary or even illusory, the good humour quickly returned to the men now they’d learned that no one had been killed.

  “You’re going to empty our lady’s treasury with all these tents you keep buying and losing, Captain,” joked Trusty. We’d had to leave almost everything behind us when the enemy had attacked.

  “I’ll bet he’s still got his own tent, stashed away somewhere. While us poor foot soldiers get to sleep in the snow.”

  “It’s not snowing, is it?” asked another man, evidently badly-versed in the repartee. His comment ended the ribbing before it had even begun.

  “What’s the Hungerer doing out here, Captain,” asked Radge. “And was that the Pyromancer?”

  “They were fighting, weren’t they?”

  I shrugged and told them I didn’t have answers for them yet. I had a head filled with thoughts which I was reluctant to share until they were more fully-formed. It wasn’t that I felt myself above the other men, it was just that most of them liked to see things in black or white. All I could picture at that moment was an infinite series of greys. I thanked them for their efforts and went off to find Jon Ploster.

  I found the sorcerer on the top floor, alone in the furthest room from the front door. A tiny sliver of light came through the window from the moon in the sky outside. When I’d seen him during the conflict earlier on, he’d looked worn. He looked little better now and had dark circles ringing his eyes. I leaned against the wall and stared outside to see if there was any clue as to what our enemy intended. All was quiet.

  “What a mess,” he said at last. “What a tangled web we are caught up in.”

  I laughed at that. “You have a talent for the understatement,” I replied. “Is this the Emperor’s death sorcerers playing with each other while Malleus is to the north, or are we seeing them wage open war against him and his rule?”

  “At least we know where the Pyromancer got to,” he said. “I’ve never seen such power before.”

  “It’s all he does and he does it well,” I replied.

  “Has the Emperor betrayed his word, Tyrus?” he asked quietly. For once I could see that he needed reassurance.

  “I don’t know, Jon. I’ve seen him speared by his promises before, when he’s suffered from his unwillingness to break them. I cannot imagine that he would change. The man is intransigent.”

  “I am not sure why, but it will make me feel better if I know that Malleus at least hasn’t changed. I owe him no love or loyalty, yet he’s still a part of us.”

  “I agree with you. I think we’re only seeing a tiny section of a much larger picture. This contest will spin itself out into tragedy for everyone who becomes involved. I would not like to be caught in the middle of it.”

  “We’re too late for that,” he replied. “We have seen two death sorcerers and the Emperor’s beast here tonight. Two of them were looking to destroy us. Are we so important?”

  “It is worrying that our enemies should find us so significant that they will put such effort into killing us.” I remembered something else. “Those troops we saw – they were Callian’s men. They wore no livery, but they could have been none other since they could not disguise their accents.”

  “This means rebellion, Tyrus. Or at least that is the only conclusion I can reach. We have the Emperor away from his capital. His death sorcerer colludes with his nobles to kill us. All the while, our lady remains in Blades, helpless to influence events which will doubtless affect her.”

  “Might it work in her favour?” I wondered. “Her armies are small in number, yet not so small that they couldn’t give a bloody nose to a badly-led enemy. And though a lot of Warmont’s men were young, there are still many veterans in the ranks. They’ve been fighting for years.”

  “They’ve been fighting for years, but we defeated them,” Ploster said with an air of resignation.

  “Think about it! A man who hates his master will not fight for him. Fear might drive him on, yet he will never fight willingly. Without determination, that soldier will always lose the hardest battles. When he wavers, he will crumble and run, rather than take strength from his fellows and stand.”

  “The Saviour will change them,” he said with the sudden fervour of a man who believes.

  “She will change them!” I said with passion. “With or without Lieutenant Sinnar to shout at them and beat them into shape. She will bring out the best in them, because what she offers is a share of the spoils. The men on her side will have their freedom and their children will have theirs. They might not realise it, but if they follow the road far enough, they will eventually have peace and prosperity.”

  “That road is a long one indeed,” he said. “It takes many generations until the people of a land forget about better times. I’ll bet the Duke cursed their long memories every time he heard that a new rebellion had sprung up somewhere a thousand miles from his seat.”

  “And let us not forget that the Saviour is imbued with some of Gagnol the Blackhearted’s es
sence. If she can resist his darkness, her magic will be enough to turn the tide of many a battle.”

  “I hope so,” he said. “Callian’s duchy is far wealthier than the lands of the Saviour. She has mostly had peace for two hundred years. Her armies are large, yet there is a chance that they are soft beneath the surface.”

  “There is too much we don’t know,” I said, banging my fist on the stone in a sudden frustration. “Why is this happening now? The Emperor has brought power and wealth to his nobles. Why might they decide to turn against him? Is this the start of something which has been decades in the planning? Or do the players feel as if they’ve been provided with an opportunity which they can’t ignore?”

  “What are you going to do, Tyrus? Are you going to return to the Saviour?”

  It was the question I knew had to be answered and one which had been wheeling around in my head, waiting for me to pull the pieces from where they spun in order to coalesce my thoughts into an answer. Malleus was a long way ahead and the journey would surely be fraught with conflict and pursuit. I couldn’t even be certain that the Flesh Shaper had been taking us to the Emperor in the first place – everything might have been a betrayal from the outset and Malleus might yet be in Hardened, unaware that his death sorcerer had led us a thousand miles from Blades. This might even be a part of a larger plan of the Emperor’s own, to take us from the Saviour. I wondered about this for a moment, before I rejected the idea. Malleus took his word seriously and I couldn’t imagine that he’d ever permit it to be used for trickery. Then there was the appearance of the Northmen. The Gloom Bringer had told us that the Emperor had problems and these creatures from the north were the only thing I knew about that could have caused him to take once more to the field. A voice inside my head suggested that the Gloom Bringer herself could have been part of a plot. The ideas spun again and threatened to overwhelm me with indecision. When I felt the worries surge within me, I did what I always did and swept them aside.

  “We’re going onwards,” I said. “To the Emperor. Come what may, I am going to see the man again and I am going to get answers. I am sure that Malleus holds information about these Northmen that will serve our lady in good stead for the coming years.”

  Ploster smiled wanly. “Do you hope to find that he’s mellowed?” The unspoken question was there. Could we somehow forge a peace on behalf of the Saviour, that might allow her to coexist with the Emperor? Would she even permit that to happen if it were an option?

  “We all change over time, Jon. Even the Emperor will be a different man to the one we remember. On the surface he will seem unchanged, but the years will have altered him, no matter how much he’s tried to fight against it.”

  “That sound like Malleus,” he said with a chuckle. “He never liked to concede anything.”

  The conversation tailed off. There were things I could have attended to, but for the moment I continued to look through the window into the blackness of the night. The moon’s light was teasing – promising details, yet not revealing them sufficiently for me to make sense of what I saw outside. There could have been movement, or it might have been nothing more than the trees stirring in the breeze.

  “This tower is old, Tyrus. I can feel the ages seeping from the stones of the walls.”

  “I would be interested to know who built it and for what purpose,” I said. I had an occasional interest in architecture and history; sometimes I felt enough curiosity to ponder over the things I saw or discovered.

  “It’s thousands of years old. There was magic here once. The source is gone, leaving only lingering echoes. There must have been a tremendous force for me to detect it after all these years.”

  “The Pyromancer knew of it,” I said. “He directed us towards it.”

  “This isn’t the magic of a death sorcerer,” he said. “They are exceptionally strong, but their magic is different. Whoever or whatever was here possessed great power and their sorcery is reluctant to leave the place.”

  “They left behind no clues. In fact, they left behind almost nothing.” I looked outside the window again. This time there was movement, though it was the gentle fall of snowflakes which caught my eye. They were thick and heavy, the sort that would settle quickly. “Winter has finally caught up with us.”

  “I’ve hardly even noticed the cold,” he said. “As if our encounter with the Northmen has made me even less susceptible to it.”

  “One thing’s for sure – the snow will make it easier for our pursuers to find us if we escape from here.”

  “Why’d you bring us to the tower?” he said. I knew why he asked – if we holed up in here we would be easy to contain.

  “Another hunch,” I said. “Not just a hunch. A feeling that if we stayed outside, the Hungerer and the Flesh Shaper might have an advantage over us. We don’t know the land, but we know how to defend a tower like this one. The armies of Callian are not our biggest concern.”

  He nodded. Sometimes there are no right answers and you have to go with the one you feel will bring you out of the fight with the fewest casualties.

  I left him in peace and went down to the ground floor. The men had done their best to get comfortable, a task made almost impossible with our packs lying abandoned in the clearing some distance away. Doubtless they’d be stolen and used to keep someone else warm. I didn’t mind – I could hardly begrudge our enemy for doing it. They’d be soldiers like us, the only difference being the person they fought for.

  I spoke to Lieutenants Sinnar and Craddock for a time, to gather their opinions and observations on our situation. They were as surprised as we all were at the way things had turned. Craddock was studious and methodical and spoke with calmness and reflection. Sinnar had his own thoughts and I could tell that he was itching to get some manner of violent revenge on our betrayers. The two men were almost completely different in their approach, yet each was as effective as the other. I was lucky to have them.

  “I wonder why they haven’t attacked yet,” grumbled Sinnar. “Even if it’s too dark for the men, I’m sure the death sorcerers don’t need daylight to bring their magic to bear.”

  “Don’t be too eager, Lieutenant. We’ve got plenty of casualties who need time to recover,” I told him.

  “They’ve got plenty of casualties too, I reckon,” he said with his customary grin. “I wonder how they reacted when they saw their dead fellows jump to their feet.”

  “I doubt their morale is good,” said Craddock.

  He was right – Callian’s men had seen their ambush fail, they’d had a good many of their numbers killed and then seen those dead men come back to fight again. Most men can accept the defilement of their corpse during the chaos of a battle, but no man wants to think that his body will be used again after his death. I could imagine the fear amongst them – the terror that a tiny fragment of their living, conscience essence might still be trapped within the animated husk, hideously aware of the depravations being done, yet completely unable to prevent it happening.

  I left Craddock and Sinnar and crossed to the room where Corporal Grief and Slicer were still at work. There was a low hubbub in here as the men talked amongst themselves and compared injuries. We’d all been hurt countless times, yet the fascination with the wounds our bodies sustained never went away. Most of the soldiers were in good spirits – even exchanging darkly humorous jokes with the men who sewed them up. Eagle and Flurry, who had been the most badly hurt, looked dead. I stopped by each of them and was relieved that they appeared to be asleep. We didn’t usually need to sleep, though it was a state that was far easier to find when we were badly injured.

  As last, I stopped my rounds of the building. I am sure most of the men would have recognized my fidgeting inability to settle as a sign that I was worried about something, and they’d have been correct. I found an unoccupied section of the wall, sat back against it and closed my eyes. The stone was smooth and the deep chill within the blocks provided a welcome distraction. I spent the night awake, with my
mind somewhere far away.

  7

  The morning light came and outside the snow had settled thickly. It turned the clearing around the tower into a featureless circle of whiteness and fooled the eye into seeing the ground as perfectly flat. The trees were a mixture of browns, drab greens and brilliant white where the snow had managed to settle upon the leaves. The sky was clear and the air had a pureness that you can only find in nature and even then, only rarely.

  “A day to savour, Captain,” said Sinnar, rubbing his hands together. I knew he wasn’t cold – he was excited to see what the day would bring.

  “There are few like it,” I agreed. We were on the second floor, looking through different windows. I knew that something awaited us outside – something that wanted us dead. I wasn’t scared – we must take such moments when they come to us, without allowing our worries to sully them.

  “Movement,” he said.

  From the trees, they came. Silently and with an unnatural gait, they trooped into the clearing. Even across the seventy intervening yards I could see the damage to their armour and the wounds on their bodies.

  “The Flesh Shaper lives, then,” grunted Sinnar.

  Without warning, the risen dead were stopped in their tracks, as if they’d walked into an invisible wall fifty yards from the tower. They clawed at the air and thrashed, but something prevented them from coming closer. I called Ploster to come and look.

  “There must be old wards, buried in the ground,” he said. “I didn’t feel them when we passed over them last night. Whatever they are there to guard against, it isn’t us.”

  “They must be strong,” said Sinnar.

  “Yes, Lieutenant. To have retained their potency over thousands of years, they must have been created by a sorcerer of immense power.”

  Then, I saw him. The Flesh Shaper came into view, riding his sway-backed horse like a master surveying his domain. He sauntered along, his hooded face looking directly at the tower. A few soldiers came into our room to let us know what we’d already guessed – the tower was surrounded.