Mordraud, Book One

by Fabio Scalini

  Saiden pushed Gwern from behind, but entered alone. The boy couldn’t cross the threshold. He kept staring at the corpses, the shit on the ground, the rotting in the corners. He was shivering inside his fur cloak but pulled his neck backwards, as if not wanting to even share the air with that hovel.

  Mordraud finished sweeping the floor with his boots, approached his brother and took his hand. Slowly, he coaxed him inside. Then shut the door straight away and led him to a vaguely clean part, among moth-eaten clothing and the remains of wood chopped with a rusty axe, left in the sawdust.

  “When we comb the area around the Rampart, we often find places like this,” he commented, going back to his tidying. “The winter’s merciless.”

  “It’s all because of the war – the winter’s just a consequence,” replied a shaken Gwern, unable to avert his eyes from the grey mouths of those frozen bodies. The chill was deathly in there, maybe more so than outside, even if they’d shut out the wind. It was worse than a glacier. It seeped into bones and infected thoughts.

  “Eldain should stop resisting against Cambria. These people would have preferred to change lord, rather than die.”

  “It’s not a matter of lord, Gwern,” Mordraud exclaimed, sitting down heavily on the floor, using an old shirt as a mat. “Cambria wants to invade lands that have always belonged to others. It can’t have its way so easily.”

  Saiden, who had said nothing so far, now bore a faint smile. He let Mordraud go on, without taking his eyes off Gwern’s invisible reactions to his brother’s words.

  “Doesn’t seem to me like a great reason for having to put up with such suffering,” insisted Gwern, pointing at the three frozen beggars. A man, a young woman and an elderly mother. The girl’s stomach was a strange shape. She might have been pregnant, when she’d died. Gwern shuddered and moved a hand to his mouth, as if he’d felt the sudden need to vomit.

  “Eldain sees it differently. And so do his allies.”

  “But the ones who pay the price are all the others,” Gwern answered. Mordraud was about to give a curt reply, but the boy beat him to it. “We both know why you wanted to join the war, my brother. Not to fight for the cause. But because of Dunwich.”

  Saiden, who was sitting in a distant corner, nibbling on some cheese rind, squinted. The light of that meagre day was at its last drabs and the sole window was crusted up with ice. The two brothers were talking alone, in the dark.

  “I’m also fighting for other reasons now. I have friends at the Rampart. There’s Adraman.”

  An embarrassing silence descended. As if both had more to add, but didn’t wish to. Deanna. Gwern wasn’t aware of all the facts, but he could figure them out. Mordraud didn’t want to admit aloud what he was really doing to his friend. The betrayal that went on each time he returned home, to his wife.

  Saiden could observe it all, even if the light had faded. He discerned the Flux of the shack’s wooden form, and the rubbish littering the floor. And he could make out Mordraud’s vacant body, like a human-shaped black mass printed on a background of woven Flux. He could also perfectly see the bubble of light in Gwern’s chest. The Flux movements between the pair were constant, now. Saiden shifted seating position, too excited to sit still. What was relentlessly taking place between the two had no precedent. It could not be explained through any knowledge he’d delved into, neither Aelian nor Khartian, in all the centuries he’d wandered the world far and wide. Gwern’s light, in the form of Flux strands, was constantly striving to come into contact with Mordraud. Sometimes it succeeded, others it had to withdraw, recomposing itself inside the boy. Saiden was attempting to work out whether what they were saying had any effect. And he also wondered, smiling from the agitation of having no answer, how it was possible that the brothers were so anomalous, residing totally outside the rules making up the Flux framework to reality.

  “We’re here now. We need to put a stop to this winter. There’s no point brooding on these things.”

  Mordraud’s appeal rang out as final in the musty darkness of the hut. Gwern whimpered something incomprehensible. Saiden watched all the Flux threads scattered around him slacken and retreat inside.

  “Saiden, do you know what to do?”

  Saiden chuckled. Pinpointing where the chanters were concealed was easy for him. Potentially, exterminating them was too. If he drew on all his Flux, on all his destructive power, then the Khartian chanters caught unawares would leave themselves open to being slain with little resistance.

  “Yes. I’ve already located them. We just have to get there... and, if need be, fight. Instead, you... do you feel up to tackling them?”

  Mordraud grunted and stretched his legs out in the sawdust.

  “I can’t wait.”

  Saiden clapped a single time.

  “Then we can manage it.”

  “Even if you’re not interested in the cause, right?” went on Mordraud.

  Saiden was caught off-guard. “I too have to endure this horrific winter, wouldn’t you say?” he attempted.

  “So why didn’t you take any action before?”

  “I’m a master of harmonies, not a warrior,” Saiden responded. “I would never have embarked on attacking Cambria’s chanters alone.”

  “You could have offered your services to Eldain’s army. Someone would definitely have listened to you.”

  “That’s enough, Mordraud,” Gwern interjected. “He’s given his word that he’ll help us. We shouldn’t be demanding more, don’t you think?”

  “I just wish to know why your teacher decided to intervene only when I asked for your help.”

  Saiden realised he had to be careful. The black mass marking out Mordraud’s presence suddenly seemed menacing to him.

  “I did it to help Gwern grow. So he could learn something new in the field.”

  “And what exactly?! I haven’t heard the two of you chant even once.”

  Gwern, that time, didn’t interrupt. He didn’t stop his brother. He also shared some of those doubts. He also found it hard to grasp his tutor’s behaviour and his decisions.

  So far, they’d done nothing but walk in the direction dictated by Saiden.

  “By tomorrow we should have the source of all the resonances within sight. He’s still not expert enough to pick up on them at such as distance...” he uttered in a calm and understanding tone. “That’s when we should be able to begin practising again.”

  Gwern ushered out a sigh of relief. He could finally see a direct purpose in that journey. Not just the enigma of not having the faintest idea of what to do. Mordraud resigned himself, slipping down onto his back to get a few hours’ rest on the floor. His empty shell still appeared vaguely threatening, but it seemed to have loosened its hold.

  Saiden left them to chat in private, losing himself in his conjectures.

  He had absolutely no idea what to do to placate their demands. He did not want to actually teach Gwern about harmonies. Their lessons were in truth endless experiments he conducted on Gwern’s core of Flux. The fact that he was learning something about the realm of resonances was a side-effect and, in a certain sense, an unwanted one. He didn’t wish to risk placing more power in the hands of a being whose essence he hadn’t fully comprehended yet. Gwern was still too great a mystery. He kept him close with the excuse of teaching him harmony – not to actually do it.

  He had to come up with a way to drive Gwern’s Flux to react even more vehemently. He had to dig up what was beneath that curious bond between the two brothers.

  And to do so, he had to take drastic action.

  He already had half an idea of how to go about it.

  XXVI

  “Berg’s in a bad way.”

  Adraman felt the earth gape beneath his feet. He’d travelled day and night to shorten as far as possible the weeks of distance from Hannrinn, just to report news of his success to Eldain. A diplomatic masterpiece, and an unexpected one – particularly on his part. He’d never been very adept at following the complicat
ed mechanisms of diplomacy, yet the emergency had made him shrewder than even he had expected of himself. However desperate the situation might seem, at least he’d earned a few precious months.

  But he never would have expected to find Eldain in that sorry state.

  Berg was stretched out on the bed, drenched in sweat and contorted by unbearable pains. The cold outside the tent was shocking, but it certainly wasn’t much better inside. He seemed gripped by a fire consuming his flesh from inside. The wound on his shoulder was blackened and swollen, and Adraman’s experience was great enough to understand that the man’s future hung by a thread. But he was more worried about Eldain.

  He looked like a corpse that insisted on standing up.

  His face had lost any hint of colour, was as ashen as the grey of his hair and his once-blue eyes. His cheeks seemed hollowed out with a spoon. Stooping over Berg’s bed, with his hands clasped over his captain’s, Eldain could easily be mistaken for a seriously ill man – like all the others. His breathing was laboured, and he struggled to keep his back straight. The winter was killing him, like a tree whose roots were slowly freezing.

  “You must return to Eld,” Adraman pronounced, grasping his friend by the shoulders. “You need a bit of rest.”

  “Ah, really?!” he replied, assenting sorrowfully. “And what about you?”

  “I’m fine, now.”

  Adraman moved his still-bandaged leg and lifted the stick he used for walking. The bone was almost back to normal, and even if he still couldn’t run or jump, the worst seemed behind him.

  “Perhaps because you haven’t had a good look at your face.”

  Eldain took a small mirror hanging on a support in the tent and thrust it in front of him. “You’re not such a pretty sight yourself.”

  Adraman peered in alarm at the crinkled whitish skin on his face, scored with creases and red marks caused by the cold. He hadn’t looked at himself in ages. Hardly surprising really, as he’d had more pressing business to attend to.

  “It must be the lack of sun. It’s been a lifetime since I last saw the sun peep out from behind the clouds.”

  “It’s not only that... You’re tired too, like me... like everyone.”

  Eldain was right, but only partially. Adraman wasn’t in great shape, but his leader was in a far worse state. His breathing was a rough rasp, his ashen eyes were injected with a nasty dull yellow. But Adraman already knew how pointless it was trying to convince him.

  “How did it happen?” he inquired, pointing to poor Berg.

  “During an assault. They managed to get over the Rampart.”

  “But... how...” he stammered disbelievingly. By now he was used to Cambria’s strategies. Taunt them, exhaust them – those were the Empire’s usual tactics. The Rampart had remained inviolate for years, apparently impregnable.

  “A Lance helmed a raid, using a chant. Terrible resonances. Inflicting dreadful damage, awful damage...”

  Eldain took Berg’s hands again, as the captain twitched on a bed of sweat. “If it hadn’t been for him, it would have been much worse.”

  “The Lances have never dared do such a thing! Cambria’s too afraid of losing its best men!”

  “It was a surprise for all, believe me. We’re still busy patching up everything they set fire to with their bloody chanting...”

  “When did it happen?! Did they try it again?”

  “No, luckily not. The first and last attack targeting the Rampart was two weeks ago.”

  Adraman pondered for a moment on that staggering news. He couldn’t recall Cambria embarking on such a hazardous enterprise in years – so many he failed to count them. The Empire had invariably implemented a sluggish wearing strategy, one that was inconsequential at times, but always detached and patient. Brutal assaults at the front in the last ten years could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and these nevertheless involved masses and lacked strategic aim. The Night of Fire battle was an exception, but even then the Empire used its own men as a battering ram made of human flesh, compact and confident only through its crushing superior number.

  It wasn’t the only murky spot in that situation. They’d never discovered who had decided to warn them, and why, about the imminent attack that night. Adraman had found out thanks to a tip-off by a simple foot-soldier who’d fled from the mass of troops and had reached them in the camp to the south. Without him, the Rampart would never have held out.

  It was a secret only he and Eldain knew. And the reason was simple. They’d never worked out the real purpose of that unforeseen help. Whether it came from someone inside Cambria, or perhaps from an army fringe planning on a change of ruler. They didn’t know, and so preferred not to share the information.

  The Empire was behaving wholly unpredictably. That sudden spurt seemed caused by something else. “A rash act by a Lance captain. Somebody tired of wasting time,” Eldain decided.

  “The message is clear,” he went on. “They can break through our lines when they want. They just need a little commitment and to do the right thing. They’ve got chanting on their side, they’re better rested than we are, and they have three or four times our number of men. Maybe more.”

  “So why don’t they do it?”

  “If I knew the answer, I wouldn’t be so concerned.”

  “Let’s hope it was merely their mistake... and that they go on seeing it as such,” Adraman muttered. “If they were to realise just how much damage they inflicted with a mere handful of men, it would be the end of us.”

  “Talking about ends...” Eldain gazed at him with an unusually resigned and defeated expression. “What did the Rinns say? Did they sell us out?”

  “No!” Adraman smiled, purely in an attempt to raise his morale. “I’ve earned us a few months... more or less till next spring.”

  “What spring?! Does spring still exist?” Eldain hissed sarcastically.

  “Mordraud will pull it off, you’ll see!”

  Adraman would have liked to feel convinced of his own words, but the truth was he didn’t at all. All their plans and hopes were resting on a slim clay slab. Mordraud and his brother. He’d accepted that farce simply to gain time, to bring hope to those who were so desperate as to believe it feasible. Two, against the Imperial plan of the Long Winter.

  “Do you remember what the sun looks like?” Eldain asked, going back to sit near Berg, who was struggling against a pain that made him thrash futilely. Adraman was unable to answer.

  “I no longer remember.”

  ***

  Deanna was waiting for Adrina to return from her scouring. She watched out of her reading-room window, in the hope of seeing her emerge beyond the half-open gate. The servants had dug out a path through the snow, to reach the street, but they’d given in when finding themselves faced with a daunting white barrier between the courtyard and the villa walls. Nobody had shovelled out that stretch for weeks. Adrina had had to clamber up over the snow, until she reached the roof pitches.

  Deanna wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders and took the cup between her hands. It was already cold. She’d stopped having a fire in her room, to economise on wood, which was now only used in the cast-iron stove in the kitchen. She no longer slept alone: she’d accepted to spend her nights with the serving staff, on the floor, next to the table where Adrina would prepare the dinner. The rest of the house was an appalling ice cave. Outside, the wind chapped the skin. The skies were the colour of bottomless sorrow. She felt like weeping every time she poked her nose out the window.

  Trees were nowhere to be seen. The fields were a white sea. Their walls appeared as ridiculous stone stripes scoring the tops of the mounds, heaped up when Eld’s people still endeavoured to keep the roads clear. That desire to react had passed long ago. Just like cordiality and hope.

  Two servants hadn’t returned to the house, the day before.

  They’d gone out hunting for some wood. But the only way to find it was to sneak into the homes of the dead, hoping it hadn’t all
already been used up. Table legs, chairs, mantelpieces, wall-panelling. Many families perished from cold before they had the time to fully bleed their homes of their few possessions. Her serving staff had already been out looting a couple of times. Without taking risks, and only coming across corpses mummified by the freeze, huddled together in pitiful embraces on the owners’ beds. But the third trip must have been fatal.

  Deanna shifted her eyes from the yard, to avoid picturing the scene.

  The other two lads were ill. A fever that left little optimism. The rest of the staff were two old men whose work was once tending a patch of land outside the walls of her property. Although Adrina was the same age as them, she was the only one in the house still with enough strength to leave it. They had a few supplies in the cellar yet, but she hoped to find some meat. Especially for the two fever-racked boys. Deanna was eating very little, and didn’t even expect to be able to at all. She’d burnt out and gone cold, like the empty belly to a disused stove. She’d heard nothing more of Adraman. Even less of Mordraud. She was alone. And she had discovered how deeply she hated that state, to the extent of sincerely missing her husband. That automatic sense of safety he conveyed to her.

  Instead Mordraud belonged to the rare moments when she still dreamt.

  Sleeping in the kitchen wasn’t so bad. She’d initially felt robbed of her authority in the house. But listening to the others’ breathing and the rustle of their blankets helped slacken panic’s grip on her. She could no longer sleep alone. It was too chill, inside her. She managed to push the winter out with her covers. But the solitude was irrepressible – a gruesome pain that was killing her. She’d lost weight, no longer put make-up on. Adraman, with his stoic and silly attempts to win her over, had always made her feel desirable. The way Mordraud looked at her provided her with her own sense. It allowed her to consider herself still alive.