Strength of Swords (First Cohort Book 2)

by M. R. Anthony

  Soldiers always need to believe in what they’re fighting for, and we all did. It made it easier for us to look forward, rather than dwelling on what had happened in the past. I was a firm believer that our pasts do more to hold us back than we admit to ourselves. I believed it, but that didn’t mean I had no chains shackling me to what we’d once been part of. They held onto me with the tightest of grips sometimes, and it was all I could do to pretend that I did not feel their weight. Even so, my chains felt lighter than they had for decades and I hoped that one day I would turn around and discover that they had slipped away, vanishing into my history and never to be seen again.

  Lieutenant Craddock told me that we’d see Nightingale by the late afternoon of tomorrow, all being well. I couldn’t recall the time he’d been wrong about such things, so took him at his word. We hadn’t come across any of the three missing scouts, which was a slight concern. Still, the countryside was vast and we might have easily passed in opposite directions without knowing it.

  I spoke to Ploster that evening as we camped on the moors. He’d recovered from the battle against the Hangman and looked as hale and hearty as ever, though his mood was fairly sombre.

  “What do you think we’ll find in Nightingale?” I asked him.

  “Whatever we find, I do not think we are going to like it. I am certain the reports that reached Lieutenant Craddock in Gold are correct. I could see it in our lady’s eyes – she is not happy about what is to come.”

  I stared into the campfire. “That is worrying. Since we first pledged ourselves, she has grown in confidence and stature. Before her death, she had already become a strong and intelligent leader. I could sense her zeal and her yearning to confront her foes. Against this unknown adversary, I felt something else in her. Not fear, but certainly there was reluctance. I must admit that I feel differently – if anything I feel…”

  “Excitement?” asked Ploster, finishing my sentence.

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Yes. That’s what it is. I can tell when there’s a challenge coming, Jon. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “You always did like to test yourself,” he replied. “Though I suspect there is more to it than just that. The thought of an implacable and unknown foe is something to focus on to the exclusion of all else.”

  “You are right, old friend. A part of me wishes to throw myself into the fray, without distraction from anything else.”

  “The oblivion of eternal battle is an appeal you would do well to resist,” he cautioned.

  “I know it. But something has changed within me, Jon. I have felt almost unstoppable at times – as if I could stand in the centre of a thousand of my enemies and cut them down as they advance.”

  “You long for the simplicity of the foot soldier’s life,” he offered. “To live or die by the strength of your arm.”

  “Or that of my fellows,” I finished, aware that in my vision I had been standing alone.

  “It’s not for you Tyrus. You left that life behind long ago, yet you still partake of it whenever you can.”

  “I like the fighting more than anything, I think. I would not wish to give it up, though I am different now. In the past I wished to fight wherever we were directed and cared little for who my foes were. Under our lady, I wish only to fight those I know are my enemy.”

  “And here we are, seeking out a new enemy.”

  “Aye, that we are. I wonder if tomorrow will bring us any answers.”

  He left me, heading over to his own tent. I heard him fending off the usual comments about his beard, responding with his own observations on the men who had delivered them. I felt content at what I felt around me and let the low chatter wash over me for a time as I sat on the grass, with my knees pulled up to my chest. Eventually, the camp fire conversations tailed off and the fires burned down to their embers, popping and snapping as if in anger at their slow, inevitable deaths.

  I crawled into my tent and lay there, letting the comfort of familiarity soothe my mind. I closed my eyes for a time, though was denied the randomness of my brain’s wandering, since no dreams came. Tomorrow would bring answers, I thought, without knowing exactly how I was so certain.

  23

  We’d been marching for almost eight hours when Nightingale came into view. I remembered it well, which was no surprise since we’d seen action there only a few months before and had barracked in the town hall. An insidious, whispering voice even reminded me that I’d stolen a bottle of wine I’d found in one of the offices. It’s strange what our minds can tell us at the most inappropriate of moments.

  “Looks deserted,” I said. We were in a field near to the town. The land about the place was flat, so we were not afforded the benefits of a clear vantage down into the streets. There was a mist also, thick and damp, which clung to our clothing and left a sheen across our breastplates and shields. This mist hung low, obscuring our vision as it swirled and drifted without any apparent wind to assist it.

  “It’s hard to be sure, Captain,” said Lieutenant Craddock. “I can see no movement.”

  “The refugees mentioned fog,” I said.

  “They told me that it was so thick that they could scarcely see. This is just a mist and nothing like the descriptions I was given.”

  I called Eyeball forward. “Fancy a look?” I asked him. It wasn’t really a question.

  “I’ll give it a go, Captain,” he told me. “But the mist will make it harder for me to remain hidden.”

  I raised a quizzical eyebrow at that, but he just shrugged in response. “It does, Captain,” was all he would say and I had no reason to disbelieve him.

  “Here, take this,” I said, flipping him Leerfar’s second dagger. “It’s yours.”

  He caught it by the hilt without even looking. He’d put the first dagger to good use killing the Gloom Bringer and I couldn’t think of anyone better to have it. I wasn’t looking for thanks and he offered none, simply tucking the weapon away out of sight.

  Eyeball went on ahead as we all stamped and shifted uneasily in our field. I watched his outline as it faded from view, shimmering in the same way that I had seen objects do on very hot days. I squinted into the mist, trying to see any sign of him, but if he was more visible than normal, I couldn’t tell the difference and he was soon entirely gone from sight.

  Eyeball came back within thirty minutes. “They’re all dead, Captain. I didn’t spend long looking for survivors though.”

  “What killed them?” I asked.

  “Looked like swords to me. Some of them weren’t showing any wounds at all. They were just lying there, dead in the road.” He lowered his voice so that it wouldn’t carry to the other men. “It spooked me a bit, Captain. It didn’t look right at all.”

  I dismissed him back to his position. “Come on,” I said to Sinnar and Craddock. “Let’s move in and see what there is to find.”

  I raised my arm and we advanced in a wide column, with our shields ready and hands close to the hilts of our swords. Whatever had frightened Eyeball, the other men could feel it too. The mist continued to drift, though the air was deadly still and quiet. When you have marched for as long as I had, you learn to tune out the associated sounds of tramping feet and other sounds will reach your ears. Here, there was nothing at all, bar the total stillness that came with the absence of life.

  We entered the closest street into the town. It wasn’t a large place and our column was too wide to walk along any of the main streets. Our line narrowed and lengthened and the men looked into the windows and through the open doorways as we proceeded. I was at the front and came across the bodies first. There were three of them and they lay in a pile atop each other. We were not in a defensible position, so I stepped over them and continued walking. The paleness of their skin and the looks of terror frozen upon their faces had been unmistakable.

  “Fuck it, let’s get to the town hall,” I muttered to myself. This close to winter, the days were becoming increasingly short and it was already gloomy. We needed
to camp somewhere for the night and I was quite content to hole up in the same building we’d used before, assuming there were no other signs of whatever had killed these people that might make us beat a hasty retreat.

  The town hall was only a few minutes’ walk away and I expected us to reach it quickly. The closer we came to the centre of town, the more bodies we found. Many were twisted, as if their deaths had been in great pain. Others had great slashes across their bodies, huge long cuts that revealed bone and organs beneath. I paused very briefly to look at one, and saw that no blood appeared to have flowed from the wound and the flesh was blackened and shrivelled at the edges. I had Corporal Grief come forward as we continued towards the town hall and he stooped to look at the next of the bodies we came across. He hardly broke stride as he ran fingers over the open neck of a young girl.

  “Cauterised by the cold,” he said after this shortest of assessments.

  We reached the town hall. It had a wide, walled compound outside, accessed through a set of double wooden gates, which were open. There’d been plenty of room for us when we were a full complement and I was sure things would be much roomier with only three hundred to fit inside. I waved the men into the compound, but stood outside for a while as they filed past me. The area around the town hall was fairly open, with a square of sorts – it was one of the places where the people had once gathered to meet and talk. There were benches and the area was well-maintained. At the moment, it was littered with bodies – hundreds of them.

  “It’s like whatever came attacked from all sides at once,” I said to Lieutenant Craddock. “And the people fled towards the centre, hoping to escape from the other side of town, only to find the other townsfolk coming to meet them.”

  “Then, whatever it was, it caught up with them here and slaughtered them,” he said. “You can see that many of them are in their night clothes, as if they were attacked in the evening or the middle of the night.”

  “Is that what your witnesses said?” I asked him.

  “I do not recall them saying as such. Perhaps they did not see it relevant to mention the time of the day and I must confess that I did not think it important to ask.”

  “I doubt it matters little to someone what time of the day it is when they are murdered,” I said. Behind us, the last of the men entered the compound.

  “Coming in, Captain?” asked Lieutenant Sinnar. “We should close these gates.”

  I didn’t answer immediately, since something had caught my eye not twenty paces away. I raised a hand to deflect Sinnar’s question for a second and made my way over to what I’d seen. It was almost dark now, but as I raised my head to the sky to remind myself of the hour, I noticed that the mist had thickened. Almost subtly it had changed, until it was difficult to see more than eighty yards.

  Lieutenant Craddock had accompanied my short walk across the square. “That’s come up suddenly, Captain,” he said. I knew he was worried, since it had turned from mist to dense fog in only a few minutes. It billowed towards us, silent but somehow full of menace. “Shouldn’t have happened like that,” he continued. “It’s like it’s come from nowhere.”

  I’d reached what it was that had caught my eye. There was a wooden bench and on it were two women, one old and the other little more than a girl. They were unmarked by injury and sitting upright, as if they’d been perfectly balanced in their positions. They had their arms wrapped tightly around each other and their eyes were squeezed tightly shut. The older woman rested her head on the shoulder of the other as though she needed to share in the hope of youth. They shared a similar appearance and I knew they must have been related in life. I felt sorrow when I saw them - even in death a hardened man like me could sense the bond of love that had existed between them.

  “Someone you know, Captain?” asked Craddock.

  “The younger one,” I said, pointing uselessly at her. “The justiciars had raped her. I found her in one of the town hall rooms. She escaped them and found only this.”

  My sadness was profound. It seemed to me that this young girl’s escape from misery into death shortly after was somehow an illustration of the pointlessness of everything. Or maybe it was just because I feared being reduced to helplessness myself, where all roads led to unavoidable failure.

  “Come on, let’s get inside,” I told him.

  We walked the intervening few yards towards the gate, the night becoming perceptibly darker by the moment. Darkness always came quickly this far north, but nothing like this. I don’t know what made me turn – I’d heard people talk about intuition and I didn’t dismiss the notion, but never thought myself to be blessed with anything other than my own good luck and my own skills. Behind me, the two figures were almost invisible now, but I swore that the head of the older woman had turned and was now looking at me and Craddock.

  I was not a man to stand still and gawp, so I didn’t slow down, though I continued to look over my shoulder. The gate was close now and as we walked through it, I saw the older woman stand upright, her movement quick and unhesitant. Far from toppling, the young girl remained in her position and I was sure I saw her arm move to steady herself.

  Once inside the safety of the gate, I held up a hand to stop the four men that Lieutenant Sinnar had posted from closing the gate. Craddock turned to see what had got my attention.

  “Shit,” he said. Our vision was obscured by the billowing fog and the night’s early darkness, but we both saw the pale white shapes as they pushed themselves to their feet, their outlines faint and obscured. There had been so many of them in this square that I was sure we’d notice a sound, but there was none to be heard. In their dozens, they rose smoothly to their feet. Not with the laboured struggle of the bodies I’d seen the Flesh Shaper animate to fight for the Emperor. The dead people of Nightingale almost flew to their feet, as if they had a strength far greater than anything they’d possessed in life.

  “Close the gate,” I ordered calmly. “And get inside.”

  The sentries did as they were asked. Only one of them had been looking beyond the gates and I’d seen his eyes widen, but he betrayed no sign of fear. I saw with relief that the men had already started to light the same oil lamps that had festooned the town hall last time we’d stayed here. The ground floor was as well-lit as it could be, and behind one of two of the upper windows there were lights, telling me that some of the men had begun to make the upstairs hospitable as well.

  After the men had barred the gates, we six jogged across the yard. I heard the first thump of something heavy strike the wood on the other side, only seconds after the bar had dropped. I looked behind and saw white shapes appear atop the ten-feet-high compound wall, scrambling over it with hideous ease.

  The door to the main building was open and we went through it, not quite at a run, but at more than a sedate walk. I pushed it closed, noting with relief that it had been made thick enough to deter forced entry.

  “Pass the word!” I yelled. “To your squads. Prepare to fight!”

  The surprise I saw in many faces did not delay their actions. Many of the men had laid their shields to one side as they were permitted to do at the end of the day. There was a period of tumult as the soldiers drew their swords, tried to locate their shields and also to join up with their squads of six.

  The front door shivered in its frame as something collided with it. There were many large windows around the walls, with sturdy wooden frames that held small panes of glass. I saw pale shapes flitting past and I wondered why they had not yet attempted to get within.

  This was a large room. Nightingale wasn’t a big place, but its town hall had always seemed to be larger than it needed to be, as if the builders had expected the population to boom. It hadn’t done so and the citizens were left with a building that had likely been a burden to maintain. There were plenty of chairs and tables upon the wooden floor and I remembered that it had once served as an unofficial tavern of sorts, where men and women could bring their own home-brewed ale to while away a few
hours and forget about their woes. The ceiling and upper floors were supported by a mixture of stone columns and heavy wooden beams. Oil lamps hung everywhere. You can never truly stave off the darkness, and the light seemed feeble in the expanse of the room.

  The stone columns interfered with line of sight and I heard a crashing sound from the opposite side of the room. I realised that we were still poorly organised and shouted to Lieutenant Sinnar to arrange the squads evenly around the room. Sinnar opened his mouth to issue orders and the men moved at once, swords already drawn and almost everyone with a shield.

  Craddock was close by, itching to get moving. “I need a hundred men upstairs,” I told him. “You’re in charge of the upper two floors. Let’s see how it plays out.” He nodded and left, calling out squad numbers and leading them towards the wide staircase that led upwards. The building wasn’t made to repel assault and a blind man could have climbed the rough stone of the outer walls. I wanted to be certain that nothing would get to us from the upper levels and hoped that I wouldn’t need to send up more than a hundred men.

  I was standing near to the front door with my squad, when I heard the first signs of engagement. I looked towards the back of the room, but couldn’t see around the stone pillars. There was something visible - the glint of swords rising and falling, near to where I’d heard the sounds of entry.

  “What’s out there, Captain?” asked Tinker. I realised they didn’t know what was coming.

  “The dead,” I replied. “Men and women from the town, risen from the ground and sent to kill us.”

  “Poor souls,” he said with genuine feeling.

  Something banged on the front door again, a solid hammering that spoke of intent. The staccato thumps built in intensity as if there were a crowd of the dead on the other side taking it in turns to strike at it with progressively greater force. The wood held, but I could see that it would not resist for long.