by Leo Carew
Roper led the column again the next day, pretending he could not feel the stiffness in his legs or the pain in his wounded thigh as the road began to climb. They were drawing near the ancient crossroads of Harstathur, where they planned to camp the night before advancing to battle at Githru. Roper dispatched Helmec and one of the Rangers on horseback to act as heralds and invite the Sutherners to battle, arranging to rendezvous with the pair of them on top of Harstathur.
As they climbed, the trees began to fall away from the road, growing thinner, slighter and finally disappearing. Two hours before sunset, the road at last levelled and they found themselves at the top of a mighty stone outcrop. Harstathur was shaped like an enormous rectangle, though significantly broader at the end opposite the legions than the one they had entered. The crossroads radiated from each corner of the rectangle and, at its longer edges, the plateau sloped steeply away to provide ample defence for the flanks of any army that might occupy the stage. Its nickname, the Altar of Albion, was well bestowed. It indeed resembled a vast sacrificial table. There was no way of knowing how high they stood but they had been climbing for hours and the air was significantly colder than in the shelter of the valleys. It was easy to imagine that whatever unfolded atop it might be particularly conspicuous to the heavens. It felt weighty. Significant. Gazing across it, Roper took a moment to envisage the ancient battle that had stained this place.
The legionaries were grateful to have arrived and began to set up camp. The sun had fallen beneath the edge of the plateau before Helmec and his companion found them. They had evidently been riding hard and Roper brought them straight to his hearth, presenting them with a bowl of hoosh before asking the results of the errand. “The Sutherners are coming,” were the first words out of Helmec’s mouth.
“Did you speak to Lord Northwic?”
“Yes, lord. He and Bellamus both.” Helmec described how he and his companion had ridden into the Suthern encampment bearing a white flag. “They’re petrified of us, lord!” said Helmec with glee. “Petrified! Their warriors were trying to look tough but a glance was all it took to make them back down.”
Roper was not surprised they were scared of Helmec. The guardsman stood more than seven feet in height and his face was as scarred as a battlefield. It was one of the reasons Roper had sent him. Nobody negotiates in negotiations. It’s an exercise in intimidation.
“So they led us into a massive dark tent, tricked out with skins and tables and chairs and servants, and Bellamus was there. He sent for Lord Northwic and offered us wine while we waited.”
“Wine and servants!” said Roper, amused. “Perhaps I would lead more campaigns if that was how I lived out in the field.” Helmec grinned, and Roper almost shrank away from that smile. “How was the wine?”
Triumphantly, Helmec took his water-skin off his belt and held it out to Roper, who laughed incredulously and took a sip. He had rarely tried grape-wine and it was intoxicating. “You don’t reject hospitality like that, lord,” said Helmec earnestly. Roper, Helmec and his Skiritai companion shared the wine together in the evening’s gentle dark, the cool light of the stars smouldering above. “So then Lord Northwic arrived and I said we would wait for them tomorrow at Githru to finish this war. And Bellamus started joking and asked whether we would actually fight them this time.”
“You promised we would?”
“I promised, lord. And Lord Northwic said that that was where we were going to die. Then Bellamus said he had something to show us before we left and led us up a little hill. He was chatting away, very friendly.”
Was Helmec friendly back?
“No.”
What had been on top of the hill?
“It was just a vantage point. He wanted us to see the army, spread out over their campsite. There are a lot of them. He pointed us towards a huge patch of tents, which took up more space than our entire encampment, and said it was just their knights. He said he had thirty-seven thousand of them and that they had so many horses they were stripping away the hillsides. He said they’d been resupplied by sea.”
Which was nonsense. Roper would have been prepared to wager the Hindrunn that they could not have got a message to the south and received a response in the time since they had destroyed the wagon park. Thirty-seven thousand also seemed a drastically unlikely number of knights. “He wants you to spread that rubbish among the legions,” said Roper. “So what are you not going to do?”
“Spread that rubbish among the legions?” suggested Helmec, sweetly.
“Very good. So they’re coming.”
“They’re coming, lord.”
The word spread through the camp: tomorrow, they would fight as Pryce had promised; in the narrow pass beside the sea, until their lungs were raw.
11
The Fight by the Fire
The night over Harstathur threatened to disappear altogether. No sooner had the sun set than it looked ready to rise again: an ominous, flickering glow staining the sky from the east, as though dawn quivered just beyond the horizon. The sight was met with dismay by the legionaries, who desired nothing so much as a few hours of soothing dark to sustain them for the crush by the sea. A memory of quiet to set against the smash of weapons and armour.
But the glow was no unnatural dawn. It was the distant blaze of the Suthern campfires; thousands upon thousands of them. A galaxy, spread on the distant plains.
It gave Roper an idea. He commanded each group to build a bonfire, rather than the more practical-sized cooking hearth that they would usually have used, and imagined with satisfaction the immense blaze that the Sutherners would be able to see emanating from the plateau.
That night, they slept in the open; truly close to the heavens and encased in a dome of stars, sliced open every now and then as one of them tumbled from the cosmos. The camp went quiet. The legions brought their equipment to the fireside and began to check it thoroughly, burnishing and oiling the plates of their armour. They patched the holes in their leather and honed swords and axes obsessively. Some talked, usually too loudly. Roper noticed that his own bonfire was quiet: Gray had gone to address the Sacred Guard, reminding them of their duty the following day. They were still outnumbered at least two-to-one, and the expected intensity of the battlefield weighed heavily on the camp.
“Skallagrim,” said Roper, breaking the silence. “You never told us of the Battle of Harstathur.” Such a tale was delivered in the form of a chant, learned by heart. There were thousands of them; tens of thousands, documenting the history of the Black Kingdom and all safeguarded by the sisterhood of historians who lived in the Academy, the pyramid nearby the Central Keep. It formed a living record of the Black Kingdom’s history, of utmost importance to a society which had no writing. The Chief Historian and her deputy attended each council, giving historical precedents when called upon, and forming a narrative of this latest stage of the Black Kingdom’s history. They had committed a broad outline of the recent past to memory. For in-depth assessment, or for anything beyond twelve thousand years ago, they would need to visit a cell: a trio of historians who specialised in a particular period of history. There were hundreds of these. Anyone who wished to add the bard’s skill to their repertoire could make an appointment with the Chief Historian, who would arrange for a cell to tutor them in as many poems as they wished. The bard could then deliver the poem as entertainment at a great feast. For now it would make a fine distraction before battle.
Skallagrim was an old warrior, and there was not much of him that ran as easily as it had done in his youth. His right shoulder was ruined to the extent that it would dislocate if he moved it suddenly upwards. He would groan as he stood up or sat down, stretching scar-tissue that had formed in both his thighs and calves. Sometimes he would find breathing difficult and have to massage his chest, a legacy of the time it had been splintered by a war hammer. And at that moment, he was winding leather strapping around his weak right knee in preparation for the next day.
“Should you like to he
ar it, my lord?” he asked, securing the strapping and testing his leg gingerly.
Roper said that he should, and Skallagrim stared into the fire for a moment, took a deep breath and began. The chant was often performed with drums and throat-singers accompanying it, but the only adornment that evening was the location; the sense of significance and anticipation that loaded the air. The men paused in the treatment of their equipment, leaned close, and tried to lose themselves in the tale.
It began fifteen thousand years before, with the arrival of the Sutherners. A small band of them emerged from the deserts to the east. Where from, exactly, and why they had arrived, nobody was sure. Some said that they were the forerunners of Catastrophe, the vast serpent that threatened to overturn the world. Others thought that the thousands of years of cold that had come before had isolated and ruined a band of Anakim, and that they had become these stunted Suthern men. Still others suggested that these creatures had burst from the ground and were the subterranean race of dwarves, forced to the surface by civil strife. Whatever the cause, the small band was followed by another larger one, and then a steady stream of men, women and children, pouring from some distant source. They came with their own language, their own tools, their own ways and their own history. A fully formed people, as shocked to encounter the Anakim as the Anakim were by them.
The first encounters between the two had not been hostile, but cautious. As they learned more, the caution turned to confusion. The Sutherners were restless, voracious and rootless; incomprehensible to an Anakim mind. The confusion was mutual, the Sutherners not understanding the crude Anakim art and their limited symbolism; despising the wilderness in which they delighted; scornful of the tools that they used and scarcely able to communicate with these giants. In those days too, the Anakim were vast; standing nearly nine feet in height and intimidating their smaller Suthern neighbours. Though differences can be overcome, the Sutherners were beginning to understand: theirs was not the only way to be human. The distinct place they occupied on the earth had been disturbed; the narrative of their civilisation had to adapt, and the Sutherner is nothing if not adaptable.
As the Sutherners bred, so did hostility, and through a hundred small clashes that spread and sowed distrust, the fleeting period where the two coexisted peaceably was truncated. So began the Uprooting. With a singular and voracious will, the Sutherners proceeded to strip the Anakim from Erebos. Their lands were taken, their wilderness destroyed and replaced by the order beloved of the Sutherner. The new arrivals were more numerous, they could infest the land more intensely, and their conflict with the Anakim had given an edge to their innovation. They copied the bow from an Anakim weapon, improving the arrows to make them more accurate, and matching their bone-plates with armour made from slate and boiled leather. This new form of man crept north; a tide that never ceases to rise, and the Anakim, who would not retreat, were overwhelmed.
From all sides, the Sutherners attacked as the disparate Anakim families were fragmented and pushed into refuges. Some fled to the very southernmost tip of Iberia. Others were pushed along the coast and into the north-east; to a land of darkness and ice. It was not just the Anakim who suffered. The Mountain Men, known as the Unhieru, were surrounded and destroyed, and now survived only in the hills and valleys in the west of Albion. The Haefingar and the Riktolk, the other two races who had shared Erebos, met the same treatment and were extinguished altogether. They would never again walk this earth.
The last Anakim in the west of Erebos found themselves pinned against the coast, and though their kind had never before taken to the water, they floated across that raging sea, and retreated into Albion. The Sutherners followed them, overrunning their defences, seeking not space but eradication.
For the Anakim, it seemed hopeless. Their options were to unify, or face oblivion. There was a single figure who frightened the Anakim enough to command their respect: Chlodowich, the mighty king of the Jormunrekur. A huge figure, known as “Roper” to his enemies for his habit of cutting the hair from those he had killed and weaving it into his own, forming a ghastly ponytail that wrapped around him twelve times in all to form a broad plaited belt. This was a leader to terrify the Sutherners, and beneath him the tribes united to name him the first Black Lord.
However, even together, even led by Chlodowich, a warrior so fearsome that the Sutherners began to shave their heads before battle so as not to join his ghastly belt, the Anakim were losing. They were driven further north through the land that would become known as Suthdal, fear hanging low over the hills thick as fog. His forces scattered, Chlodowich and his few remaining warriors stumbled across the Abus, a Suthern horde scenting after them.
It was the end for the Anakim. Chlodowich had just his three hundred household warriors remaining to him; his Sacred Guard. He retreated to Harstathur, climbing onto the Altar of Albion and, sacrificing his own horse, he prayed for the strength to defeat the Sutherners. He offered his own life in a pact with the Almighty, if he would preserve the Anakim.
And the Almighty answered his prayer.
Four hundred horsemen of the Oris tribe appeared on the plateau. Chlodowich sent them out in all directions, seeking reinforcements from his scattered army. They arrived in small groups; all the tribes. The Vidarr, the Baltasar, the Nadoddur, the Lothbroks. Some of the Oris rode north and found the hill people called Alba, who agreed to join them. Last of all, the Algauti were found and joined together with Chlodowich’s warriors; the scraps of his alliance.
Atop the plateau, they prepared themselves by placing fresh stone tips on their spears and creating the first shields by splitting wood found nearby and bracing it with rawhide, as defence against the Suthern arrows. It was clear that even together, there were not enough Anakim to defeat the Sutherners. So they also prepared for death, Chlodowich leading his men in prayers atop the Altar.
It was not long until the great tribe of warriors from the south had found them. The two armies formed up, the Anakim resolved not for victory, but to face oblivion on their own terms. Volleys of Suthern arrows made the air hiss and sting, but it became clear they were ineffective against the shielded Anakim. They would fight spear-on-spear: stone tips clashing and cracking. The fanged lines advanced and met one another atop the Altar. With each attack and parry it became clear: the Almighty had not forgotten them. Chlodowich and his Sacred Guard had been invested with holy power. The Sutherners’ stone spearheads shattered as they touched them, and Chlodowich and the Guard were insatiable in the middle of the plateau. The battle lasted for hours; the lines drew back and attacked many times, but at last, Chlodowich and the Sacred Guard broke through the centre of the Suthern line and turned on them, tearing their formation apart. The Sutherners broke and retreated, pursued by the horsemen of the Oris, who were able to cut down thousands.
Through faith, victory had been won. In their very darkest hour, the stubborn resolution of the Anakim had been rewarded by the Almighty. But a pact had been made. As the lines split apart for the last time, Chlodowich, his purpose completed, was at last struck down by an axe. The Almighty is just, and cannot be cheated. The great man’s bones were buried here, atop Harstathur, an offering to god.
Skallagrim finished his chant. The fire crackled and the silence in the circle was deeper than before. There, at the very site of this holy and primeval triumph, and beneath a clear and beautiful sky, every man had envisaged the ancient heroes. Skallagrim was a fine bard and he had charged the air. At the soft edges of the firelight, Roper thought he could see shadows moving. Gently shifting coagulations of darkness; watching him in return. There was the faintest gleam, as though a dark flint spear tip was moving in the night. What was this? The ghost of one of those giant heroes? Chlodowich himself? Those around the fire saw where he was looking and followed his gaze out into the blackness. The pattern of the night responded. There was something moving away, Roper was certain. He was not sure if he could see it or hear it. Or maybe he was feeling it, the vibration of weighty footsteps e
xiting via a dark corridor.
Looking around, Roper discovered everyone else had sensed it too. “Peers, you have heard how holy the place in which we rest is,” he said. “There could be no more fateful omen. Go now, and address your legions. Let them know that atop this anvil, our country was made.” The legates dispersed into the night, leaving just Roper and Pryce by the fire.
Roper, who had ceased running a whetstone along Cold-Edge to listen to Skallagrim, began sharpening the blade again. Pryce was casting around him, looking into the night and seeming restless. It was quiet but for the fire and Roper became very aware of the fact that this was the first time he and Pryce had been alone together. He found the guardsman’s presence uncomfortable.
“Skallagrim is quite the bard, is he not?” ventured Roper.
“In a place like this, such a story tells itself,” said Pryce dismissively. There was a pause. “Chlodowich is said to have been your ancestor, Roper.” Roper. “His great achievement was to end the most shameful chapter in Anakim history: the Uprooting. And now here we are, at the same battlefield, with a leader in whose veins the same blood flows, soon to face the same enemy.” He was giving Roper an odd look across the fire. “I can only conclude that Chlodowich bought us time; no more. His blood is much diluted.”
Roper had stopped sharpening Cold-Edge. “Make yourself clear, Guardsman.”
Pryce looked at him coldly. “They all seem to have forgotten your retreat. I haven’t.”
Roper’s mouth was open. “I stand by that retreat,” he said, face growing warm.
“As I said: Chlodowich’s blood is much diluted.”
“Is this treachery, Guardsman? Have you forgotten your oath?”
“I want to know what you have done to deserve my loyalty. I can’t think why I should die for you.”
“Though you kneel each day before the Almighty, you are arrogant, Pryce.”
Pryce did not care. “I am what I am.”