by Leo Carew
Fear.
It seeped through the fortress, infinitely more contagious than the potent miasma that had caused the plague. It crept between door and doorstep, through open windows, and hung heavy over the cobbled streets. You could perceive it in the way the legionaries now walked in clusters, talking urgently and quietly with one another as they hurried between barracks and keep. Or in the way that the Metal District now clanged and hissed through the night, as the arms and armour were prepared. Or in the frenzied bartering of the markets, as subjects brought up as much food as their modest household assets would allow in preparation for an impending siege. Or in the muted officers’ mess, which was almost silent whenever Roper sat down to eat.
The refugees had begun to reappear at the Hindrunn. Roper admitted the first of them at once and then, once the legions were back, sealed the gates. This was met with guilty approval from the subjects within, glad that Roper was the one taking such difficult decisions. Tekoa, as ever the best-informed man in the Chamber of State through the thousands of Skiritai eyes that roamed the country, said the relatively small number of refugees was not due to excessive slaughter; it was simply that the Sutherners had raided this land so recently. They had torched some of the refugee camps that Roper had assembled, but most they had left un-harried as they marched north. As the Sutherners saw it, the canvas and hazel tents were not even worth destroying.
It took more than a week for all the warriors (barring one legion, which had sent word that it was stranded further north) to assemble within the Hindrunn. They mustered at sixty-seven thousand warriors, including the new year’s crop of nemandi apprentices. It was a drastically reduced number compared to the ninety thousand who had marched out under Kynortas just last year.
The forges and smiths had worked through the night, churning out Unthank-silver swords, steel arrowheads, iron horseshoes, chain mail, greaves, gauntlets and the steel plating that would be sent to the armourers to be assembled into full cuirasses. The houses were expected to equip their own legionaries, and the poorer ones whose resources were more limited (House Alba, perhaps, or House Nadoddur) would arm only their most esteemed warriors with arms and armour bearing their house crest. Those whom they could not afford to arm would borrow armour decorated with the crest of the Jormunrekur, the Lothbroks or the Vidarr. The more legionaries who went into battle bearing your house crest, the higher the esteem of your house. However, the treasury still had to pay and feed these legions and tumbled further into debt with the Vidarr under the strain of yet another campaign.
There was no debate over staying in the fortress this time. Uvoren no longer had the influence to block Roper and besides, knew that his most likely source of redemption was the battlefield. The legions were almost ready to march when a message arrived.
It was from Bellamus.
A cannon fired on the Outer Wall. It boomed, flat and desolate, around the citadel and disturbed the councillors assembled in the Chamber of State.
“Enemy sighted?” queried Gray.
“It must be,” said Tekoa, glancing towards the window behind the Stone Throne. “From the south. The Great Gate.”
“Thank you for today, peers, I suspect the cannon has terminated our council,” said Roper. “Legates, please make certain your legionaries are ready to depart at two hours’ notice.” Roper turned to Gray and Tekoa. “Shall we?”
They were already out of their seats and an agitated humming had filled the room as the rest of the council packed up. Surely an enemy sighting could only mean they were about to be besieged. Pryce was also in the room, begging Roper with a look for permission to come to the Outer Wall. Roper assented with his eyebrows and issued an invitation in kind to Helmec.
The five of them hurried down the stairs that connected the Chamber of State directly with the stables of the Central Keep. They mounted coursers, usually kept for messengers to speed between the Outer Wall and the Central Keep, and flew up the ramp and onto the packed streets. The girth-straps of their saddles were fitted with great clanking iron rattles that jangled as they rode, warning the subjects to make way. Everyone had heard the cannon-shot and had cleared a path long before Roper and his companions were within earshot, gazing anxiously after the party charging for the Great Gate.
Roper leapt off his saddle, handed the reins to a legionary to tether and then noticed that the Great Gate was already open and a cluster of Suthern horsemen was waiting beneath the arch of the gatehouse. One of them held a huge, long-bladed spear, attached to which was a limp square of white linen. If the gates had opened, that would mean that the sentries above the gate could see no more than these soldiers on the plains that had been cleared around the Hindrunn.
Aware of the rest of his retinue dismounting around him, Roper beckoned the Suthern party come closer. He thought the man in the centre looked as if he might possess unusual height for a Sutherner but did not realise quite how tall he was until the man had swung himself out of his saddle, removed his helmet and looked Roper in the eye. This Sutherner was enormous. He was taller than Tekoa, Pryce and Helmec and was able to match Roper and Gray inch for inch. He and the rest of his party were clad in strange raiment: plates of some rough, ceramic-looking material that overlapped in a flexible suit of armour. It covered their shoulders, their torsos and their thighs, with metal greaves, gauntlets and helmets with horsehair tails completing their defence. They moved easily in it, suggesting that the plates, whatever they were made of, were lightweight.
“Well?” said Roper in Anakim, for the benefit of his companions. “Who are you?”
“We are the men who have come to take your country from you,” said the tall Sutherner in a faltering, heavily accented version of the same tongue. He was dreadfully scarred, this man. Amid other marks on his face, the front half of his nose was missing, with a skull-like cross-section of his nostrils dominating his features. He had a shock of bright-blond hair and his eyes were a fevered, wolf-like yellow.
“Do you have a name?” pressed Roper, ignoring the tedious reply.
“Garrett Eoten-Draefend, of Eskanceaster.” His demeanour suggested that Roper should have heard of him, though he had not. Roper knew the Saxon word “draefend.” “Hunter,” that meant, though he could not translate “eoten.” “I lead Bellamus’s household warriors.”
“And what is this pottery that you armour yourselves in?” Roper posed a dutiful insult.
Out of the corner of his eye, Roper saw Gray look at him abruptly and Garrett gave an unexpected laugh. It was a maniacal, out-of-control kind of laugh that made Roper’s hair stand on end. “You should know,” he said in his heavy Anakim. Roper scrutinised the overlapping plates that were coloured like cream mixed with rust. They were reminiscent of something and his mind was on the verge of grasping it when Garrett spoke again. “I have a message from Bellamus.”
“Go on.”
“He travels to Harstathur, your sacred mountain crossroads. He says you should join him there and fight for the Black Kingdom.”
“Harstathur?” said Roper, disbelieving. “Why would he fight there?”
“He will fight you anywhere,” said Garrett. “Even where you think you are strongest.” Garrett smiled to reveal bleached white teeth before turning away. He and his companions hauled themselves back into the saddle, leaving Roper mystified behind them. Garrett reached out to one of his companions and took the long-bladed spear, which had been held for him. “I think you know this blade,” said Garrett, lowering it carefully towards Roper, trying to make it clear that he was not threatening the Black Lord.
Roper glanced down at it and felt a jolt run up his back.
It was Bright-Shock.
His father’s sword. Roper could tell by the outline and the way its Unthank-silver blade glittered. It had been embedded in a powerful ash-shaft with some sort of steel and lacquer socket. Bastardised into a huge long-bladed spear and here it was, wielded by this immense Sutherner. Roper looked up into Garrett’s face to see that white grin b
ared at him again. With his wide, febrile eyes and severed nose, the smile made his face irresistibly skull-like.
“You called it Bright-Shock,” said Garrett. “Now it is Heofonfyr.”
“It is your weapon?” asked Roper, switching to Saxon.
“Yes.”
“I hope we meet at Harstathur,” he said.
Garrett laughed. “Me too.” He rammed his helmet back on his head, gave a mocking bow with a flourish of his hand and turned away, spurring his horse out through the Great Gate. His retinue followed.
“That was bait, my lord,” said Gray at once. “That man, his weapon, his armour. They were all to entice you to Harstathur.”
“Why wouldn’t we go?” Roper asked distractedly. His mind was grasping after that armour. It was so familiar.
“Because that’s what Bellamus has asked us to do?” suggested Gray.
“Bugger that,” said Tekoa. “If he wants to meet us at Harstathur, let him. We’ll carve him and his hermit crabs apart.”
Roper looked sharply at Tekoa. “The armour!” he blurted.
“Anakim bone-plates,” said Gray grimly. “Extracted from our dead.”
That shocked Roper. It made a grim sort of sense: the bone-plates were lighter and harder than steel and would have a ghoulish impact on the Anakim they faced. But somehow it seemed beyond the pale. To wear the bones of dead, honourable legionaries as armour! That was bitter.
“I agree with Tekoa,” said Roper, vengefully. “Bugger that. We’re going to Harstathur.”
The legions would leave the next day. They had a destination, they had an enemy and Bellamus seemed interested in little other than their destruction, so Roper gave the warriors a final night to prepare themselves and say goodbye to their homes and families.
The fortress went deathly still the day before a march-out. Weighing heavily on the minds of all was the knowledge that, win or lose, not everyone would come back through the Great Gate. Some of the wives now preparing their husbands’ equipment would hear a knock at the door in the coming weeks. A messenger, telling them that their husband, the father of their children, had given his life in service of the country. Just as the men were expected to accept their fate with an unwavering heart, so their wives must take the news like a subject of the Black Kingdom. “Were we victorious?” was the accepted response. And if the answer was “yes,” as it so often was, then the woman might respond: “Then I am glad,” or perhaps, if her resolve was close to failing, “Good.”
Then the door would slam shut.
Keturah assembled Roper’s equipment, just as thousands of other wives were putting together their husbands’ arms and armour. She laid it out on one of the deerskins on the floor: first, Cold-Edge. It seemed that she had known where it was all along. Next to that, a long dagger that Roper could use if he lost his battle-sword. Then a task-knife, single-edged for cutting food, cloth, wood. His axe; a saw blade; an entrenching-tool; the oxhide medical roll; two water-skins. His steel cuirass, the patch he had sustained in the battle on the flood plains visible as a faint outline, was laid out next to these. It gleamed. Roper took care of his own equipment, but Keturah had dismissed his efforts and polished the steel herself with fine sand until it shone, then sealed it with oil. Next to the cuirass: a padded leather sark with a chain-mail skirt attached, that he would wear beneath the steel. Then his gauntlets and the leather gloves he wore beneath them. His oxhide boots with steel strips inlaid in the shin and calf; a felt cap to be worn beneath his helmet, with a slit at the back so that it fitted around his high ponytail. Finally, the Unthank-silver helmet that had belonged to Kynortas, the axe-shaped blade at its front so sharp that the eye shrank from it.
Most wives added several small tokens that were not required for the march or the battle line and Keturah would not be outdone. She had included a bundle, wrapped in comfrey leaves, of dried fruits threaded onto a string and dried fungi too, which could be added to stews for flavour. In a separate package she had pressed strips of dried elk and boar, seasoned to make the mouth water. On top of the packages of food was a small silver mail snake on a chain. Catastrophe: the serpent that would end the world.
When Roper entered his quarters and saw his equipment laid out so tenderly for him, with the keepsake and the packages of food, he stopped suddenly. Keturah was sitting on their bed, trying to weave with her numbed fingers. “Your equipment is ready, Husband,” she said, glancing up at him.
“Thank you,” said Roper, quietly. This did not feel like the last time he had gone to war. Then, his situation had been so desperate that it had seemed an escape from the torment of the Hindrunn. To die trying to undo the retreat that had been his first command would not have been a bad outcome.
This was different. Now, he had something to lose. He was partaking in the customs that warriors of his land had observed for thousands of years. He was connected to that history: through his ancient sword, his father’s helmet, the honour of the legionaries under his command and now this farewell from his wife. Pride threatened to overwhelm Roper, that he could be so much a part of the mighty warrior tradition of the Black Kingdom. He was also beginning to feel fear. He might never come back here, to this room and to this woman.
“What?” said Keturah. Roper shook his head; she knew exactly what. She smirked. “I hear Bellamus sent a big message.”
“Certainly a big messenger.”
“Garrett Eoten-Draefend,” she probed him. “Garrett the Giant-Hunter.”
Roper did not care about his name. “He has Bright- Shock.”
“May it bring the same kind of luck to him that it brought to your father.”
“Bad luck didn’t kill Kynortas. Men die on the battlefield.” Roper shrugged. “And I shall make sure that Garrett is among them.”
“Garrett has killed Anakim warriors with many years’ more experience than you,” she said. “He made his name fighting the Unhieru. He killed Gogmagoc’s eldest son, Fathochta. That’s how he lost his nose. Garrett is famous across Erebos!”
Roper looked at her sceptically. “How could you possibly know that?”
“You have one great source of Suthern information, it is beyond me why you do not use it. The Academy,” she added as Roper continued to look baffled. “Everything we know passes through there.”
“You researched Garrett?”
“We are a partnership. I do the things that you do not, and the most recent cell has plenty of information on Garrett.”
Roper sat down next to her. “But that can’t be true. How could a Sutherner possibly kill a creature like Fathochta?” He stared out of the leaded window a while and Keturah shrugged. “All the same, I want Bright-Shock.”
“Maybe Pryce or Leon or one of those other heroes will kill Garrett. You could let it be known that you want his spear.”
“Yes, perhaps.” There was a pause and Roper’s eyes turned themselves moth-like to the gently stirring hearth. “How was it last time that I left?”
“Conflicting,” she said. “We were married then but I didn’t know you. If you had not come back … I would have been more sorry about the loss of a half-call-up. So many brave men, marching out under this untested lord and against such a large number of enemies. I think most of the fortress said goodbye for ever to your forces the day you left. Nobody expected so many of you to come back. Even if you did, nobody expected Uvoren to allow you through the gates.”
“But you trusted your father.”
“Yes, I trusted him. I thought he would know when to use you and when not to. But he says he never intended to contain you and that you commanded the whole campaign.”
“I did. What do people think this time?”
“This time they expect victory again. Nobody believes that a full call-up will be defeated. And they have all their heroes in this army. Leon is the talk of the fortress after his Prize of Valour; and Pryce, as usual. They love and trust Gray. Uvoren as well: people say his influence is worth an extra legion on the battlefield. Ther
e are questions over Vigtyr but people say they are glad he is on our side. And you: people say this new Black Lord is a good one. He has a talent for the business of war, he is brave and he inspires his men.”
Roper grunted. He struggled with that idea. There was a part of him that did not believe that those victories had been earned. Two successful battles were few enough that he could have been riding his luck. And he had never fought against Bellamus, who seemed to be a rare talent and who was already dictating the terms of this campaign. “Failure is so much easier to accept when people don’t expect anything of you,” he said.
She placed her familiar hand on his arm. “You’re not allowed to fail this time.”
Roper looked at her and saw that her other hand lay lightly on her stomach. “A child,” he said, detached. Absurdly, he wanted to laugh but he controlled himself. He was fairly certain this should be a solemn moment.
She nodded carefully. “Yes.” Then she smiled.
Roper capitulated to the laughter. “You’re going to be a subject!”
“A thrilling thought,” she said dryly. “But not as thrilling as the thought of meeting the babe I carry.”
“I should like to meet it too.”
“Then come back to me. And if you can leave Uvoren at Harstathur, so much the better. Go and kill our country’s enemies, Husband.”
They marched out.
The streets were thronged with people. They watched solemnly as the legions marched past. There were no herbs and no cheers; those would be saved for a successful return. Roper rode at the front on Zephyr, with Uvoren on horseback behind him. The Guard followed them. Gray’s house was on the route out of the fortress and, leaning out of the upstairs window, Roper saw Sigrid, Gray’s wife. She was startlingly beautiful even from this distance and supplied Roper with her distinctive smile, as if to say she was thinking kind thoughts about him. Then her gaze had moved on to her husband, marching in the ranks behind Roper.