by Leo Carew
What kind of people belonged to such a world? In the south, Bellamus had been determined to deconstruct them; certain he nearly understood them. Here, he felt as wide-eyed as any of his men and had felt the breath catch in his throat when the horn had called Enemy Attacking through the mist-smothered camp. He had been foolish. He had not thought any harder than the animal desire to defend, and that had been used to pluck something precious from them. It was a lesson for which he was not sure he could afford the exorbitant fee.
“There is not a single Anakim body down there,” said Lord Northwic. “I was looking. Monsters.”
“So now we know that the Anakim are clever, not indestructible.”
Lord Northwic looked flatly at the younger man.
“Warfare of the mind,” elaborated Bellamus, unwillingly. “They lost men. Of course they did. But they’ve removed the bodies to discourage us for the next time we fight them. They want us to believe they are invulnerable.” Both were quiet again. “What a waste,” said Bellamus quietly. And then, to himself: “You bloody, bloody idiot.”
Lord Northwic jerked his head as though to dispel the mood. “We shall move the army to the coast,” he said. Food was more plentiful there than inland; they could take fish, crabs, kelp and shellfish. There was also the option of being resupplied by ships from Suthdal. “We shall replenish our resources and send a message to the king saying we have seen off a minor raid.”
“It would appear,” replied Bellamus slowly, “that Roper knows what he is doing. My God, we will have our revenge.”
The day was beginning to fade by the time the Anakim had come to a halt. Most of the legionaries were silent as they assembled the camp; in equal measure exhausted, elated and shocked. Physically and mentally, the effort it had taken to march through the night to come down on the Sutherners at dawn, sweep through their camp, ascend the col fast enough to avoid being caught and then retreat so swiftly as to discourage anything other than token pursuit, was at the limits of what even the legions were capable of. Roper had wrung every last drop from his soldiers and been rewarded with an overwhelming victory; though of course they had lost peers as well. Men had watched friends of a dozen campaigns fall raiding the encampment, dampening the light-headed wonder at what they had achieved that day. Crushed by his exertions, Roper was attempting to help the Sacred Guard assemble some rough fortifications, but working so slowly that Helmec took him gently by the shoulders and steered him towards the fire, pressing a bowl of hot hoosh into his hands. Roper stared blankly down at the thick stew for some time before taking up a spoon and beginning to shovel it absent-mindedly into his mouth.
The Black Lord in particular had been at the heart of that effort. He had not ridden alongside the legionaries. He had walked with them, sharing each league, blister and flooded road. He had stumbled with them in the dark of a moonless night as they approached the Suthern encampment. On the advance he had led from the front, and on the retreat from the back; at each stage more exposed to danger than any other man. He wore the risk lightly, joking with those around him and seemingly oblivious to the threat of the Suthern army. When they had at last reached the Suthern encampment and swept down upon it, the Black Lord, oblivious of what might be waiting for them in the mists, had finally mounted Zephyr and rampaged far ahead of his soldiers, Gray and Helmec tearing to keep up and preserve their lord.
If one of his men slipped, the Black Lord would not help them up, marrow-drained though they were. He stopped with them, making jokes, until the fall seemed a small thing and righting it even smaller. There had been no special arrangements for him: he did not use the great, many-chambered constructions of canvas that Lord Northwic and Bellamus brought on campaign with them. He slept beneath the charcoal clouds, wrapped in his great black cloak, a saddle for his pillow.
He did not address his soldiers by rank but by name. So many names, it was a miracle that he knew them all. His secret was that every spontaneous interaction was planned; before he joined a group of men for the march, he would consult their officers. He cooked his own meals, tended his own weapons, minded his own mood and that of every man around him.
These efforts diminished Roper. Sometimes, marching in obscurity with the legionaries, he could not be found to make decisions and the legates would have to take temporary command of the column. Placing himself at risk also placed the army at risk: if he was caught by the Sutherners, or blundered into a sentry, the army would be thrown into chaos. Sometimes Roper was so weary he could barely see, let alone lead the legions effectively. But he always kept that to himself. He had made his choice. This was how he led: by example and without compromise.
Presently, their work finished, a dozen guardsmen joined him at the fire. Pryce sat on his left and Gray on his right. Others filled in the gaps at the hearth, each bowing to Roper as they walked before him. It was a formality that should have been observed all along, but Roper was too weary to notice how his reputation was changing. Word of how he and Zephyr had marauded single-handed through the valley was spreading quickly. The guardsmen took their hoosh from a blackened communal pot hung above the fire on a tripod of greenwood and sat in companionable silence, beginning to eat.
“That was a triumph, my lord,” said Gray, breaking the silence after a few minutes. The guardsmen thumped their feet on the grass in affirmation.
Roper looked up from his bowl with a faint smile, a little hoosh dribbling down his chin. “Wasn’t it?” was all he managed.
“And how was your first victory, lord?” asked Pryce. Of every man Roper had seen, the athlete seemed the least affected by the day’s exertions. His handsome face was marred by a split over his left cheekbone, surrounded by bruising and scales of dried blood, but he was ignoring it. The irrepressible guardsman did not even seem tired.
“I loved it, Pryce,” confessed Roper. “I know there were thousands of dead; I know we have lost many brave peers and that this didn’t even qualify for the full glory of the battle line … but I have never been so enthralled.” He shook his head, not able to articulate what he had felt.
“It is what we live for,” said Pryce, approvingly.
“You were born for this role, my lord,” said Gray. “You cannot tell before you throw a man into battle for the first time how he will respond. I have seen martial prodigies of the haskoli and the berjasti who could not stand the slaughter. They shy away from it, despising the brutality and incapable of seeing past the death, to the wider necessity and vitality of combat. Not everyone can curb their empathy in the way that is required. True warriors discover a side to themselves they did not know existed before their first taste of combat. When a man strikes at you with a sword for the first time, you find the keys to a room which must never be opened except in battle. Some men have it, some men don’t.”
“Peace is boring,” explained Pryce, more glibly. “Nothing compares to the thrill of one-on-one combat once you have tried it. Everything afterwards seems …”
“Flat,” suggested another guardsman and Pryce shrugged, accepting the word.
“But there are those who will judge and despise you for loving the fight, lord,” continued Pryce, impatiently. “They will think you a barbarian, incapable of controlling your base instincts. They do not feel what you feel and cannot appreciate that neither you, nor they, have the power to change their own nature. But they rationalise their own nature, and like to deem it superior to other men and imagine they have tamed something that you cannot.”
“Everyone tries to rationalise their own nature,” said Gray, neither in support nor disagreement of Pryce’s words. “Were you scared, my lord?” Dimly, Roper recognised that Gray was mentoring him. These were the questions that his father would have asked him, had he been alive. They would have unpacked the fight together; discovered what sort of man Roper was and what sort of warrior he would become.
“No,” said Roper, confused. “I thought I would be but truly, no.” He had spent his whole life training against the fear he had b
een told would obscure his thoughts and make his limbs weak, but it had not come. There had merely been assurance, euphoria and pride. Roper wanted to say more but was not sure these men, many of whom seemed merely bereft, would understand.
“You are one of a rare breed,” said Gray. He gestured around the fire. “Some of these men are like you. True warriors. Pryce is one. Leon is one,” he gestured at a hard-faced guardsman sitting opposite them. “I am not.” He smiled. “I have to control my terror before each enemy I face and even after a victory like today, all I can think of are the casualties we have taken. Do not worry that you enjoyed it.” Gray read Roper’s silence exactly. “It is as Pryce says: you cannot change your nature. It does not make you a worse man, but it might allow you to be a better leader. I find battle harder and harder to endure and one day I shall not be able to advance through my own dread.” He grinned again. “I hope to be a bureaucrat by then.”
The guardsmen chuckled appreciatively.
“That is why this is the best man in the Black Kingdom,” said Pryce, pointing past Roper to Gray, who waved his hand dismissively. “His courage is far superior to mine as he is always acting in spite of fear which I do not feel. It is one thing to be born for this role. It is another to make yourself fit for it through total mastery of your emotions.”
“I am far from alone in fighting through my fear,” said Gray, sternly.
“You are different, though,” said the guardsman named Leon in a bear’s growl of a voice. “Do not deny it, Konrathson. You have more awareness than any other man and yet I’ve never seen fear slow your hand or falter your step. Your consciousness of danger is extreme and yet you hold as many Prizes of Valour as any man alive.”
Gray gave a grunt and a little lift of his eyebrows. “Well, then, if we’re speaking on this subject, I will share with you all my dream, to which I dedicate my life. It is neither deep, nor particularly advanced. I try to be a student of fear. I want to understand it, why it is I feel it, and how it can be truly mastered. If it is possible, I want to transcend it. I want to lose all selfish desire for life and live only to be a servant to others. One day, I dream of advancing into battle with every bit of awareness of my own mortality that I possess now, knowing that I will likely die, and not caring. I wish to feel gladness alone, that I am able to lay down my life for those I love. That is my quest.”
“And does this goal grow closer, or more distant?” asked Roper. “Is it indeed possible?”
“I believe that it is both possible, and grows a little closer,” said Gray, cautiously. “I do not want to achieve it through weariness of life or battle, but I am inspired daily by those around me. My young protégé here,” he indicated Pryce, “inspires me. He is heroic indeed and there is something very special about his courage, though it is not what I seek for myself. Not quite, but it is close.
“But I will tell you all a story and then I’m going to shut up. It concerns the death of Reynar the Tall, who, I believe, was closer than any man I have met to achieving the dream of which I speak.”
As one, the guardsmen looked up from their bowls, weariness and bereavement banished from their faces. Reynar the Tall was widely regarded as one of the greatest warriors of any age. He had held more Prizes of Valour than any man in history, having died in the act of achieving his fourth. Only Gray and two others had seen him die, and of those, Gray was the only witness yet alive. To the certain knowledge of all there besides Roper (for the tale was eagerly sought), Gray had never confided it to anyone besides Pryce.
“Most of you know that when I joined the Guard, I was given Reynar as my mentor. What more could I have asked for? Three times winner of the Prize of Valour, guardsman for three quarters of a century already and reckoned one of the bravest ever to have lived, even in his own time. I confess to you that it did not make me glad. I already believed myself to be hopelessly out of my depth. I had never sought the Sacred Guard; guardsmen die too readily and I was not prepared for that. I was unworthy of this band, and to be paired with Reynar … well, it was hardly the obscurity I was looking for. I was filling space in the Guard which should have been for another warrior and now the talents of this hero were going to be wasted on me as well. So it was in spite of my own wishes that I began training and fighting next to one of the greatest warriors who has ever lived.
“Does anyone here remember Reynar on the battlefield?” Gray looked around and chuckled. “Of course not. Oh dear, does that make me the oldest here? I suppose it does. He was not as wild as Pryce here, nor as ferocious as our friends Leon or Uvoren. When he fought, it was as though each action was undertaken not to slay the enemy, but to preserve his peers. To be sure, he cut down as many foemen as any other man in battle, but his blows and parries were as frequently in service of the men either side of him, as against those before him. On many occasions, fighting on his left, I knew I was about to die and Reynar’s sword preserved me, sometimes at the expense of his own wounds. He appeared to trust me; I did not feel protected or watched by him and yet, on several occasions when I was too tired or my skill was not enough, I was delivered just in time by Reynar. He must always have been aware of me; me, and the man on his right, whoever that happened to be. In him, I thought I had seen the ultimate incarnation of a warrior. One who fights for love of his peers rather than love of glory. You had to watch him closely to know it; he did not speak of such things and most only saw the celebrated warrior. But I believe that by the end I knew him well, and that I was correct in my assessment.
“Well, on my third campaign with Reynar, the Sutherners succeeded in capturing one of our fire-throwers, tank fully charged with sticky-fire. They retreated to the town of Eskanceaster and we followed, determined to recapture it before they had an opportunity to discern the recipe for sticky-fire and make their own. It was a task given specially to four of us: myself, Reynar and another pair of guardsmen. We were to enter the night before the main assault in great secrecy, find the fire-thrower and make sure it could not be used against our forces.
“We made it over the walls and advanced to the keep, where we believed it was being held. The keep is surrounded by a moat and can only be entered by a single bridge; there was one way in, and that was where they had positioned the fire-thrower. We could see it was manned by a pair of soldiers, ready to immolate anyone who tried to cross the bridge and gain entrance.
“We watched them for a time, knowing we would not have time to rush their defences before they turned on the sticky-fire. Then one of our number, who had been an engineer before he was a guardsman, spotted that they had overcharged the tank. They had pumped too much air into it,” he explained in answer to Roper’s questioning look. “He could tell from the way they couldn’t push the pump down any more. The pressure was too high, meaning they would not be able to shut off the sticky-fire once they had turned it on. They had one shot, then the tank would be empty.
“We decided to try to panic them into firing early and then wait until they had emptied the tank. We showed ourselves and though they raised an alarm, they did not fire. They were cautious and, try as we might, we could not make them fire before we were within full range of the weapon. We could hear the garrison coming and we were running out of time. Then Reynar,” Gray stopped suddenly, brow furrowed, and drew a deep breath. He shook his head and continued. “Reynar handed me his sword, bade me take care of it and ran onto the bridge. He was sprinting for the fire-thrower, though he must have known he would never have made it. They turned it on.” Gray stopped again and took a spoonful of hoosh. He looked up at Roper and gave a depleted smile. “On that bridge, Reynar was finished. There was so much fire that afterwards we saw no trace of his body. Just empty armour and an upturned helmet. All I remember is him running head on into that jet of flame, raising a hand as though to shield himself from its heat.
“Reynar did that for us. He did what he had to, because we were running out of time. We waited for the thrower to empty, for the flames to die away and then crossed the
bridge and tipped it into the moat. We managed that and escaped thanks only to Reynar, who was awarded his fourth Prize for that. When he handed me his sword, I did not realise what he was about to do because I could detect in him no fear. When he laid down his life, I believe Reynar was close then to achieving my dream. Though, of course, I do not know what he was feeling as he ran into the flames. He did raise his hand, so perhaps he felt fear. One day, I will see him again and I will ask him about it. Until that time, I carry his sword as a reminder of his sacrifice.”
Gray drew his blade and balanced it on its tip before them, showing the etched alloy to the engrossed guardsmen. Ramnea, she was called, and she was a beauty. Long, thin and paler than any Unthank blade that Roper had ever beheld. Her handle was engraved whale-bone and she seemed almost to glow in the dying light. She shared her name with the dog-headed angel of divine vengeance, and it had been an act of unusual generosity to bequeath the sword to Gray. The argument could be made that it had not even been Reynar’s to give. It was one of the most famous blades in the land, handed down through the Vidarr for centuries and highly coveted by Reynar’s own sons. A weapon of such quality was considered the property of the family throughout generations, rather than just one man. The nature of Reynar’s death and his surpassing stature had meant that the Vidarr had been generous, however, and had not contested Gray’s claim on the weapon. Reynar had started a new path for it; not father to son, but from one exceptional warrior to another.
“There ends my tale; you shall not hear it again,” said Gray. “Since my lord asks, that is why I believe the state of mind I seek to be possible. Ramnea reminds me of it, every day. She reminds me that by shielding myself from what I knew must be done, I allowed a great man to die for me. To that example, I dedicate my life.”