Mordraud, Book One

by Fabio Scalini

  He tentatively touched his chest with a hand. All he could feel was intense pain, and withered suppurating skin.

  “The flashes... The Lance... Adraman!” Mordraud remembered it all, at last. “Adraman?! Where are you?”

  He didn’t shout, so as not to wake all the other dozing soldiers. Someone, on the other side of the large tent, replied in a whisper.

  “Mordraud?! You’re awake! Are you okay?”

  It was Adraman’s voice. Mordraud wondered for a moment if he’d been heard as he cried out Deanna’s name in despair, and desperately hoped not. Or perhaps he hoped he had – he wasn’t very sure.

  “Hold on... I’ll come over to you.”

  “Are you mad?! Stay where you are, you have to rest! They’ve left you in a pretty bad state, my boy. It’s a miracle you’re still alive.”

  Mordraud naturally didn’t heed him. There was no question of staying stretched out flat, waiting for who knew what. Tottering steps took him down the narrow aisle that opened up between the camp-beds, to reach Adraman. He had a broken leg but was alive and in good health. Mordraud was again assailed by doubts. Was he happy, or would he have preferred a different outcome?

  Deanna at his side, in the big soft bed. Mordraud banished the enticing image and sat at Adraman’s side. He’d never go that low. Not with him.

  “You never listen, do you? You have to rest. They struck resonance with your internal organs, and you go strolling around... You really are unbelievable.”

  Adraman told him what had happened after the battle. The young man had fought between life and death for four days, and the healers had reached the conclusion that he wouldn’t make it.

  “Even if he were to wake up, he’d be a zombie,” was the judgement from the most expert among them. But he’d surprised them all. He was barely breathing, could hardly stand, and struggled to keep his eyes open due to the pain in his chest – but he was alive.

  “And you, how are you feeling?” he asked Adraman. The horseman was a little crumpled, but he was infinitely better than the last time Mordraud had seen him. Beneath a horse, buried in the snow, half-dead from the freeze.

  “I’m fine, but this damned leg is really bothering me. It itches below the splinting. And I’ve got a stinking cold.”

  “So you’re not spilling tears over me?!” Mordraud replied scornfully. Adraman’s eyes were moist and puffy.

  “Who do you take me for? I’m not some little tart. Go back to bed if you were expecting some fond caresses, you dolt!”

  “I’d never take the liberty...” Mordraud answered. “But let’s get back to serious business... How’s the fighting going? Any news?”

  A glum expression possessed Adraman, as he sank down into the broad pillow. “Bad. Rumours are rife that some allies want to back out. They’re all terrified of this frigging winter, that the wretched Gods are to blame! Eldain no longer knows what action to take... and he seems rather weary, preoccupied... It’s not like him. I’ve never seen him in such trouble.”

  Mordraud nodded without speaking. That trick of nature was crumbling up years and years of sacrifices, battles and ideals. And if Adraman was worried about Eldain, then the situation had deteriorated so much as to be almost irremediable.

  Almost.

  Mordraud realised he had an idea that had never surfaced. Perhaps he’d unwittingly meditated on it as he lay unconscious on his lurid bed. As if the Lance’s chant had created a resonance with something inside him, a link he still hadn’t fully sealed. He wasn’t sure how to make it feasible.

  But he had an idea.

  “All this is a curse set by Cambria, wouldn’t you say? Their chanters have shaped it.”

  “And so? Even if it were, we lack chanters skilled enough to challenge it in any case.”

  That was precisely the point. He’d never considered it before, because he’d failed to see him as useful. Because he was too young, and had been studying for such a short time. And mainly because he was his brother – and Mordraud didn’t want to get him involved in the war.

  Gwern. The only hope that made sense to his eyes.

  “Where’s Eldain?”

  Adraman shook his head and grumbled. “He was supposed to speak with the army captains this evening. And I bet my spit against a diamond that Ice will make the most of the opportunity to announce the eastern allies’ withdrawal.”

  “Then we need to hurry. Come on!” Mordraud seized Adraman by the shoulders and pulled his weight up off the bed. “I’ll explain on the way.”

  “But where is it you want to go?! Put me down! You can barely stand up, and I’m in a similar state! We’re pitiful!”

  “Yeah, yeah... We’ll talk about it later. But let’s get a move on just now, come on!”

  Mordraud began staggering ahead, trailing with him Adraman, who had to hop on his one fairly good leg to keep up.

  “You’re crazy, my boy,” Adraman commented indignantly. “You’re a wretched, foolish lunatic.”

  “I know, don’t worry,” returned Mordraud, pulling back the edge of the curtain door leading outside. The chill was horrific. His body shuddered, on the verge of deserting him. But Mordraud desperately drew on all his will and managed to hold out. There was no time to lose.

  He had a winter to sweep away.

  ***

  Deanna took the parchment closed up with the Eld seal, broke it, and approached the window of her private sitting room. They’d run out of candles a good while ago, and just a glance at the courtyard smothered by snow was enough to remind her they’d have to go without for quite some time more. And the same was true for everything else, now.

  The food was down to the last scraps, and only thanks to the reserves Adrina had wisely stocked the cellars with could Deanna afford the luxury of dining decently.

  “Why did you put all this stuff aside?” Deanna had inquired when she observed every sort of pickle, preserve and cured meat on the table. “I do believe my husband never gave you instructions to do so.”

  “The master was aware I had my stores, and he always left me free to decide how to run and organise the supplies,” the elderly housekeeper had replied. “You young ladies don’t have the grit of the women of my times. Did you know when I was a girl Eld’s lands were hit by food shortages lasting for years? We even ate rats, cats and dogs... the few that were left. You can never be sure of anything, young madam... One should always be provident.”

  Things were proceeding much worse in the rest of town. Whole neighbourhoods were cut off by the snow, and however much the old men and the women used their shovels to free the streets, the vegetable patches and the doorways, they were helpless against the arrival of yet another ice storm. Rumours, very nasty rumours, were going around about what was happening at the Rampart. And other even worse ones on what state the villages out towards the east were in. The elderly and the children left to starve to death in an attempt to save at least the strongest and most able-bodied. Citizens who boiled and chewed tree bark as a way to fill their stomachs. Revolts for bread, or for a handful of mouldy wheat. The villas of rich merchants pillaged, and their occupants wiped out. People who vanished and hadn’t returned home by sunrise.

  A sun that also barely ever rose.

  It was mid—morning, but it seemed like sunset. The sky was veiled, as ever, in grey and black clouds laden with cold. A thick sharp fog lingered over the ground like decomposition fumes on hillocks. The fire was lit, but it heated and illuminated too little. The waxy table legs didn’t burn at all well. Deanna strained her eyes and made an effort to decipher the neat and tiny handwriting that unfurled on the yellowed parchment. The wool shawl around her shoulders wasn’t enough to keep the draughts out, so she took a blanket off the armchair. It smelt of damp and mustiness, but it was nevertheless comforting. It felt like a human embrace – something Deanna was craving and missing dreadfully.

  Mordraud and Adraman had only stopped by home once in recent months, a few weeks earlier, and they’d had dinner togethe
r. She certainly hadn’t passed up her chance, and had found a quiet spot to be alone with Mordraud for just a few minutes, before gloomily going back to her husband in his room. It had unquestionably been a very demanding evening. The men had set off the next morning, together, to return to the front, despite the relentless snow and a wind as chill as death. The truce had never come that year.

  Nobody would ever have expected the winter not to make rightful way for the spring. It was unthinkable, impossible even to imagine. An age-old process that anyone would have taken for granted. The festivities to celebrate the arrival of the warm season were arranged in the fiefdom, the peasants were awaiting the moment they could return to their fields, the children tingled at the idea of being able to play outside in the open air once again until late. But the snow simply didn’t stop falling. Adraman set off for the front with the new recruits, among general puzzlement. And from that day on, everything grew bizarre.

  The plants didn’t sprout their new shoots. The animals failed to produce litters or young. The fields rotted under the weight of marble-like ice. The trees shrivelled and died. People’s mouths were watering at the prospects of fruit, vegetables, the scented air and sunshine till evening. They had to swallow it all down reluctantly. That big freeze was increasingly taking on the guise of a divine curse, a punishment for what Eldain and his supporters had been pursuing for years. Cambria had the Gods’ backing, so it seemed. The Alliance was lucky religion held little sway in those areas. Otherwise, things would already have floundered a long time ago.

  Deanna managed to read a few lines in the dim light provided by the window, but didn’t grasp the meaning straight away. It was already rather challenging to live in those conditions – she would have found it hard to bear more bad news.

  “I’ve been injured in battle. One leg’s broken, but it’s not life-threatening. I’m writing so you won’t be overly worried, since I haven’t been home for some time and won’t be returning for months to come. Mordraud’s been wounded too. He’s not in very good shape, but he’s young and I trust that he will recover.

  I miss you.

  All my love”

  Deanna finished reading it and remained motionless for a moment. Perhaps she hadn’t understood properly. She read again. And again, until her head hurt. The light grew ever weaker and greyer.

  Mordraud’s been wounded too.

  He’s not in very good shape.

  I trust that...

  Deanna scrunched the letter up in her hands, squashed it, then tore it up into a thousand pieces. She was neither furious nor worried. She wasn’t sure how she should be feeling.

  Relieved about her husband? Anxious about her lover?

  It was too much, to be able to decide. So she chose to feel nothing, while the tiny ink-smeared pieces fell to the floor like sleet. While she tossed them around the room and she watched as she made them dance like tiny ballerinas.

  Only once her destruction was complete did Deanna recognise that her heart had made the decision for her.

  And she sobbed until she felt her eyes would burst.

  ***

  ‘Why do you do it?’

  Mordraud opened the frost-stiffened leather pouch and broke up a hunk of bread as dry as a stone. He chewed slowly, evading the pain that pushed to reveal itself every time he performed the simplest of actions. His chest now showed few traces of the harmony flashes that had shot so close to killing him, but he was perfectly aware his struggle had merely shifted inside his body. That wasn’t a wound that could be healed by rest. Death was usually the outcome of a similar attack. Without fighting, without resisting. But he hadn’t died and, oddly, found this curious, rather than surprising.

  He had been unable to look at himself the first few days, but Adraman had told him what the healers found on stripping him inside the casualty tent. A face like ash. Chest skin as black as charcoal, split and throbbing. Neck veins repulsively swollen. Blood never ceasing to trickle from his mouth. They hadn’t believed for a second he’d make it through the night. Even less so the following night. When it grew clear to all that he hadn’t the slightest intention of giving up, a few began uttering the word miracle paired with his name. But Mordraud didn’t feel like the result of a miracle. The pain had anything but subsided. It had burrowed down into his flesh, and no herbal remedy could soothe it. He could only clench his teeth and carry on, as he had always done.

  ‘Why do you do it?’

  He hadn’t wanted an escort with him. Not out of arrogance, but purely through good sense. The world had become totally white. Snow on the fields, on the meadows, on the dry trees and below them. Snow in the sky. Snow on the houses. He himself was a beacon in the night, a black dot on an entirely white canvas. Had they been many in number, it would have been impossible not to draw attention. And so, alone and in shoddy dress, he could at least hope to be mistaken for a beggar, and could hide anywhere, even in a hole in the ground. He had just his sword with him, well-concealed in the folds of his blankets. Nothing more. The idea of horses hadn’t even been discussed. Those few still holding out were needed by the army. And Mordraud also feared some particularly famished stranger could have the unpleasant idea of murdering him just to get his mount. So he travelled alone and on foot, bearing up through the pain step after step, the only person in a landscape that had lost all colour, as well as its essence.

  “Why do you do it?”

  “What?”

  “Go on fighting. Go on hurling your life beyond the Rampart. Why do you do it? What is it that yokes you to Eldain’s cause? Why have you made it your own?”

  The question of all questions. Mordraud slowly chomped on the piece of tasteless grey bread, staring at the paltry flames of his small fire. He’d camped at the edge of the wood, beneath a tree that had died under the weight of the ice. Adraman had said goodbye with that question, and he’d been unable to answer.

  He didn’t know what to say even after day upon day of trudging alone.

  ‘Because I’ve got an unsettled score,’ he could have said. ‘Because Cambria has to pay for what it did to my family,’ was another excellent reply. ‘Because I hate my brother, and I know he’s an Imperial Lance. Hence all Imperial Lances have to die,’ was a little extreme, but it made some sense.

  ‘Because I’m screwing your wife, even if you’re my friend, and I deserve to atone for my guilt, on the battlefield,’ was almost true.

  But none of those answers was enough to convey the full sentiment of what he felt.

  ‘Because Eld is my home, and the people who fight for it are my family. Because I care about the lads awaiting their outcome behind the Rampart.’

  That was perhaps the closest answer. And it only came to him as he looked into the fire, and ate his chunk of mouldy bread. He was missing Mercy, Giant, Hammer. He felt he could hear Berg’s voice ferociously barking a command. That funny old bastard, he mused with emotion. He was torn up at the thought that Red had died and he hadn’t been there with him when it happened.

  Sleeping at night was impossible in that cold, so Mordraud carried on with his trek when the light faded from the horizon. Moving was the only decent way to keep warm, even if each pace was an ordeal. Eldain had welcomed the idea with open arms, but grew angry when Mordraud insisted on setting off in person, and alone.

  “You’re in a pitiful state, my boy,” he admonished furiously. “It’s out of the question.”

  “Gwern’s my brother. He’ll help us if I’m there to ask him,” he’d replied, with a partial lie. Gwern would help anyone – he was so good and willing. But Mordraud wanted to personally take on the responsibility for getting his brother mixed up in that business. It was his duty, not Eldain’s, not Adraman’s, nor that of any other captain. It was his alone.

  “Well let’s ask Saiden himself then! He’ll know what to do. Your brother is still very young! And perhaps he’s not capable of...”

  “Gwern will certainly know what to do, I’m sure of it,” Mordraud had cut short.
All that confidence was, in fact, based on a mere supposition, but he by far preferred to try through Gwern, rather than a renowned chanting expert who’d nevertheless always shown no interest in the rebels, the Alliance and all the rest. Mordraud bore absolutely no trust in the power of harmonies. But in his brother he did.

  Perhaps he’d been rash, boasting of Saiden’s help without even knowing whose side he took in the war. And Gwern might not even be competent enough to help him.

  To do what, he wondered with a bitter smile. He was a wreck. He was likely the weak link in his flimsy plan. ‘Well, at least I’ve secured a few days of respite, to lend Eldain a hand...’ he considered, desolate.

  The night slipped away one step after another, in moonless and starless darkness. Sounds were suffocated by the snow, and were as heavy as millstones in water. Mordraud hadn’t seen an animal for days, and the last one he’d come across he’d eaten raw, so great was his desire to taste a bite of fresh meat. A lynx, dopey and dazed by the cold. A knife had sufficed to lay it out flat, plus a good fast aim from a short distance away. Mordraud was still absorbed in the memory of that tasty improvised dinner when he saw a sickly dawn emerge through the mist, along with the outline of a solid tower, a solitary column amidst an endless white pasture.

  ‘Here we are!’

  He quickened his pace, but his legs sank down into the snow, making it all more arduous. He found, in some places, that he had to almost slither so as not to end up submerged to his neck in the freezing snow. It fell to such an insistent rhythm that the snowflakes didn’t have the time to harden, and changed into a sort of fine fleecy sand. Mordraud came to the foot of the tower. Somebody had cleft a channel so the door could be reached. He missed his step and tumbled over, bashing his back on the iron slab. The rumble attracted hurried paces. Mordraud rolled into the building between his brother’s legs.

  “Mo... Mo... Mo...”

  “I’m glad to see you too, Gwern,” burst out a stunned Mordraud.

  “But what are you doing here?!” cried Gwern, helping him to stand up. He dusted the snow from his shoulders and hair, and flitted around him on tiptoe in excitement. Gwern took his cape and handed him a thicker heavy blanket. Together they walked towards the centre of the tower, the spiral staircase. Mordraud gazed around and attempted a whistle, but his lips were frozen.