Strength of Swords (First Cohort Book 2)

by M. R. Anthony

  Thirty yards.

  Leerfar vanished, but Heavy swung his sword in a big, wide arc. Sprinter did the same - he’d been closer to the place where our foe had vanished and his blade sparked as it made contact. Leerfar appeared again, her cloaking magic disrupted. My first thoughts that she’d somehow grown her hand back were wrong, though I couldn’t see exactly how from where I was. She deflected an incoming blow from another of the Saviour’s bodyguards and tumbled further away.

  Ten yards.

  With relief, I saw the top of the Saviour’s head as she pushed herself to her feet. Leerfar performed another acrobatic roll, her speed and weight carrying her under one sword and between two of my men who were attempting to crowd her out. I realised that I hated her.

  My own sword was raised, but I could see that I was going to be too late to intervene. Leerfar recovered from her roll and rose smoothly to her feet, a dagger in one hand and directly in front of the Saviour. Our foe was facing away from me and I could not see the expression on her face, though it would have done me no good to know whether it was a one of triumph or not. Swords descended but I could tell they would be too late to stop the killing blow. The Saviour looked into the face of Leerfar, tiny in comparison to the height of Warmont’s Fourth. She looked serene, without a trace of fear.

  The killing blow did not arrive. Indeed, Leerfar did not move at all and her dagger was frozen in mid-descent.

  “Hold your men, Captain Charing,” said the Saviour. Her voice was as calm as her face.

  I ordered the hold, but we all kept our swords pointed at Leerfar, inches from her body and throat. I could see her face now. Her once-fine features, grey and shrivelled with age, looked worse in the light of day than they had the last time we’d fought her in Gold. Leerfar’s eyes were bright and clear and they looked over at us. Her damaged arm was by her side and I saw that her hand had not grown back, but that she had somehow embedded a sharp steel blade into the stump. There were signs of stitching and the flesh was red sore and swollen where she’d pushed the blade into her wrist bone.

  Waves of magic pulsed out from the Saviour, heavy and vibrating. They held Leerfar unmoving, her killing strike incomplete. I could feel the power of our lady’s sorcery and this close to it my limbs were heavy, as if they were wrapped in a dense metal.

  The Saviour and her murderer held each other’s gaze for a long time, neither unflinching. Eventually, it was Leerfar who spoke, a single word I had not expected.

  “Gagnol,” she said, forcing her face into a sneer. She almost spat the word out.

  “You are mistaken,” said the Saviour. “I am not Gagnol.”

  “I can feel it in you,” Leerfar said, wheezing as she spoke.

  “My lady, we cannot delay,” I said. “Kill her and have done with it, else we might be overcome.”

  “Is there nothing else for it?” she asked. I saw the vulnerability surface for the briefest moment.

  “You will not be rid of her!” I said. The Saviour looked lost. It must have seemed so alien to her that she be confronted by her own killer. I wonder if she feared that she was being tested somehow and was scared in case she failed.

  “I cannot,” she said. “I must forgive her. I am not a murderer like she is.”

  Leerfar tried to keep her face unreadable, though I was sure that the corner of her mouth twitched upwards in suppressed glee. I crunched my sword through her temple in a single, sudden, powerful movement. The force of my thrust pushed the blade all the way through. She was much tougher than any normal person and it took me a great effort to accomplish. I twisted the blade and bore down on it, opening a huge hole right through her brain. Leerfar didn’t make a sound, but her death must have freed her of the Saviour’s binding magic and she fell to the ground. I pulled the weapon clear and faced my lady.

  “You may forgive her, but I could not. I vowed to hunt down your killer and I have fulfilled that promise.”

  I’d had no choice but to do what I’d done. Even so, I hadn’t been sure if the Saviour would accept my explanation. She met my eyes and I saw no threat of punishment in them. If anything, there was relief.

  “I understand, Captain Charing. I am not angry with you for it.”

  We had no time for standing and staring, but I found it difficult to wrench my eyes away from Leerfar’s body. Many times, I had wondered if I would feel pleasure or satisfaction when this moment arrived, but I felt neither. Perhaps I just wasn’t that sort of man. The others nearby were also looking and in their faces I saw the same feelings that I had – something akin to disinterest. We’d simply finished a job we should have done weeks ago and now it was time to move on. I crouched down and pulled Leerfar’s second dagger away from her hand. Her grip was limp and the weapon came away easily. I turned it over in my palm and discovered that it was identical to the one I’d already taken from her. I put it in my belt.

  “We need to end the killing,” I said to the Saviour, bringing her attention to the situation at hand.

  She didn’t respond, instead turning her attention to the conflict nearby. Where it had once been a cacophony, now there was only the occasional harshness of metal on metal. There was still shouting, and the screams of the dying had started to rise above the other sounds. In the confusion of our confrontation with Leerfar, I realised that the radiance had never stopped washing outwards from the Saviour. I looked down the slope, over the tops of the men’s heads and saw the dazed looks on many faces. Here and there, soldiers chopped at each other, but it was without intent or enthusiasm.

  “Lieutenant Sinnar. Call Lieutenants Faye and Trovis into a withdrawal,” I said.

  Sinnar opened his mouth and made the order. I saw the Saviour flinch as she took the full force of his voice at such close range. The combat tailed off – not immediately, since such things can never stop at once. Within a few minutes, the two sides looked at each other across a gap of twenty feet, the intervening space piled high with steaming bodies. The cries remained as those still dying begged for their mothers. They would not see their mothers on this day, but if they were lucky, they might see the kind faces of Corporal Grief or Slicer.

  “There they are,” I said to the Saviour as I pointed at the Duke’s men. “It’s time to go amongst them and make them your own.”

  21

  It was evening on the day in which we had defeated the Hangman and the last of the Duke’s armies. We had returned to Gold and our barracks. None of us particularly wanted to see the town again, but for most of the men, it seemed preferable to camping out in the freezing air in a field filled with bodies. I weighed it up and conceded that the barracks was probably a better option than staying outside.

  There was much business to conclude, but it wasn’t as if I needed to get to bed for sleep. There was the important part to get out of the way first. We’d run out of Grask some time ago, but Chartus had recently obtained a small barrel of it, presumably secreted in a cellar somewhere about the town. We raised a toast to our lost as I read out the names of those who had died. All things considered, we’d come out of it much better than I could have expected. Our engagement with the Duke’s foot soldiers had hardly cost us a dozen men, though many carried injuries. We healed fast and even the most badly injured would be back on their feet soon. Our close-quarters attack on the Hangman had cost another three lives and Leerfar had killed two of our lady’s bodyguard.

  I read out the names as was my custom and we all gave our thanks for their service. At the end, I raised another toast for the lost men of Lieutenant Faye’s and Lieutenant Trovis’ regiments, before concluding with a call to remember the fallen amongst our enemy.

  “For they are no longer our enemy, but are now pledged to our lady. They fought as bravely as any for a cause they did not believe in. They did as we once did and we should give thanks for their strength.” No one offered any dissent and we all lifted our cups silently.

  Afterwards, I spent some time talking to the men, passing mock judgement on the state of t
heir injuries and their martial prowess. They gave as good as they got, pointing out the swollen flesh on my throat as well as three other minor injuries that I couldn’t remember receiving. Corporal Grief had sewn them up earlier and as far as I was aware he was still hard at work with the other men. We had surgeons from the town to assist him, but Grief was an exacting man and I doubted he’d be pleased with their work.

  After a time, I left our barracks area and took myself to my room. I saw Jon Ploster and beckoned him to follow, thinking it would be good to pass the time in discussion of the day’s events. We settled down in the uncomfortable wooden chairs I’d commandeered for my use. Ploster looked like shit, with a huge bruise across one eye and his skin had a blue tinge, visible on the parts of his flesh that had no tattoos. I gave him my opinion on his appearance.

  “I feel like shit as well,” he said. “I’ve not felt like this in as long as I can remember.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “My reach exceeded my grasp. I discovered what happens when I challenge the might of an opponent as strong as a Death Sorcerer. You would not have seen it, but the Saviour attacked him constantly and he in return did the same to her. She’s grown, Tyrus. The old Saviour would have been killed through a lack of power, but today it was only her inexperience that held her back. Meanwhile, there was I, trying to unbalance the Hangman with my own magics. He noticed me and this is what happens when your innards are ruptured.”

  “You held him off, though,” I observed.

  “Aye, that I did. I’m quite proud of myself, too. I’ll admit it.”

  “We had a good day today,” I said. “It could have gone worse.”

  “It was shaping up to be a disaster when the Hangman appeared,” he replied.

  “There are only three hundred and twelve of us left, now. Soon there will be fewer than three hundred. We can’t lose many more before we start to become an irrelevance in battle.”

  “Let us not think about that now, Tyrus. I can see from your expression that the significance of the day has been lost on you.”

  I looked at him without speaking, trying to think what he was getting at. My brain was still whirling and I couldn’t put my finger on what he meant. He told me.

  “After today, not only is the Duke gone, but also the last of his armies. We’ve won, Tyrus. That man has choked his lands for more than two hundred years and now it’s over.”

  “I’m neither an optimist, nor a pessimist, Jon, and I know you to be the same. Your evaluation of our victory falls definitely into the side of optimism. We do not know what the Emperor is doing and you can be sure that he will not be scratching his arse while Blades remains ungoverned. And there is something coming from the north. I am struggling to see how we have won.”

  Ploster laughed. “Tyrus, you’re definitely becoming a miserable old bastard. You’re thinking too far ahead. Like a politician.”

  I could tell he was jesting, at least in part. He knew my disdain of politics.

  “Just think about the now for a moment,” he continued.

  I stared back. “You can only kill the man who’s in front of you,” I said.

  “And if you keep killing the man in front of you, eventually they’ll stop coming,” he replied.

  “I appreciate the perspective,” I said, feeling a small amount of relief at being reminded of this soldier’s refrain.

  “Anyway, I hear you have become something of a sorcerer’s nightmare,” he said.

  I nodded – a few of the men had already asked me about it, having seen my speed with the blade and the relentlessness of my assault on the Hangman.

  “I’ve always been able to feel the patterns of warp and weft,” I told him. We’d discussed it many times in the past. “Recently it has changed and I feel more in control of my battle trance, as if I can trigger it whenever I choose. And there is more – the attacks of magic seem to glance off me. I hardly even notice them if the caster is weak.”

  “The Hangman is not weak, nor was the Gloom Bringer.”

  “The Gloom Bringer nearly killed me. Just before Eyeball got her with my dagger. She was too strong for me, no matter how hard I fought.”

  “The Hangman was her equal in power, if not greater,” said Ploster. “I saw what he did to you and I could feel how you severed the links of his magic. I could not do that, Tyrus. I could not even come close.”

  “There is something else. When I used Gagnol’s life energies, it was as if I shared a part of them. I don’t know if that’s the right way to explain it, but I have no other way to say what happened.”

  Ploster looked more excited than worried. “I am very interested in this, Tyrus,” he told me. “If you get the opportunity to face any more sorcerers, please take note of what happens.”

  “I will be sure to do so,” I told him drily. In truth, I was also intrigued, as anyone would be.

  There was the sound of tramping boots and the office door opened. Lieutenant Sinnar poked his head inside. “Got someone here to speak to you, Captain,” he said. “I was on my way here myself, so thought I’d accompany her and the fine men who are acting as her guards.”

  Our lady came into the room. Her robes were clean and her dark hair was well-kept. It was only the haunted look on her pale face and the sunken eyes that spoke of the efforts she’d made against the Hangman. We both scrambled gallantly to our feet. There was no padded chair in the room to offer her, so I made a feeble gesture towards the final wooden one.

  “I’m not unfamiliar with discomfort, Captain Charing,” she said with a smile. She sat in the third chair, while Lieutenant Sinnar looked at me with an eyebrow raised questioningly.

  “Come in, Lieutenant,” I told him, waving him forward. “You know we have no secrets here.” I looked at our lady for confirmation and she smiled wanly. Sinnar came inside and pretended to give Ploster’s beard a playful tug. I’ve heard it said that you never truly grow up.

  “A successful day, my lady,” I told her. “It could have gone differently.”

  “I am pleased and saddened in equal measures,” she said. “So many are dead, but we have managed something important today. The people will be emboldened by our actions and by the death of the Duke.”

  “As long as we can get the message to them,” I told her.

  “I knew what my life would entail as soon as I met the First Cohort,” she said without rancour. “I am here for your counsel about how I should proceed. Things are no simpler now than they were before our victory. In fact, they are more complex as there are choices spread before me, whereas yesterday morning there was no choice but to fight.”

  I’d been giving the matter some thought, as I’m sure we all had. I summed the choices up in their simplest terms. “We can either stay in the north and rally the coastal towns to the west, or we can strike south for the main prize and hope to capture Blades. We now have somewhere between eight and nine thousand men.” The casualties had been huge and many of the men who had been routed by the First Cohort had not returned.

  “What about the cities to the east?” she asked. “Those which border upon Duchess Callian’s lands are large and wealthy.”

  “Church, Fallow and Sinew are a long journey, my lady. And they are close to the lands of one of the Emperor’s loyal servants. Even if they flocked to your banner, you might find hostile troops massing across the border. You cannot afford to engage in a war of attrition – at least not until you have made more friends here. Septic, Bunsen and Demox are as far from the Emperor’s grasp as you can get.”

  “But they are too far north,” she said.

  “Have you learned more about what we face?” asked Ploster, sitting upright.

  “I have not had the time nor the energies to search,” she said. I could tell there was something more.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She looked pensive, not quite meeting my gaze. “I just have a feeling,” she said. “We lack the strength to fight what comes.”

  I rem
embered how she had once told me of a vision where the town of Treads had been in flames. We’d defeated Gagnol and Bonecruncher both within the town’s walls, and I had thought that her vision may have been only a glimpse of a possible future, rather than the future itself. We later found that Xoj-Fal the Wyrm had burned the town into ashes and I’d learned from that single occurrence that our lady’s visions may portend the unavoidable.

  “If we lack the strength to fight, we are left with a single option – we must leave for Blades as soon as we are able and hope to establish our position before the Emperor can do so,” I said.

  “Perhaps Malleus believed that he was already secure,” she said. I asked her to clarify and she continued. “He has only eight of his Death Sorcerers. To send three of them here would suggest that he hoped one of them could take over from the Duke.”

  “Once we’d murdered him,” I said grimly.

  “If you’d failed, could the Gloom Bringer have completed the task?”

  “She was wary of the Duke,” I replied. “And she did not desire a confrontation. If she had been accompanied by the Hangman or the Pyromancer, then Warmont would have been overcome. By the time my men were brought into the equation, the Hangman was already a week into his northward march. We have no idea where the Pyromancer has gone.”

  “Are you sure that the Hangman left Blades with the Duke’s army?” she asked.

  “That is an excellent question,” I conceded. “It is entirely possible that the Hangman was still in Blades, or that he was diverted from elsewhere and joined the Duke’s army at a later time. But it doesn’t make sense for the Emperor to send him north.”

  “Unless there was another of the Emperor’s chosen already there,” she said. I had to admire her incisive mind.