The Shadow of the High King

by Frank Dorrian

  Arnulf nodded, shaking himself, suddenly ashamed. It did not do leaders to mope and show weakness, not now when his men needed his strength.

  ‘It is a difficult road ahead for us, Balarin. Difficult but not hopeless, I will need you by my side in this, I cannot do it alone.’ He shoved the rest of the fernroot in his mouth, shuddering at the taste of it.

  ‘You and I both know we have weathered worse storms than this together, Arnulf. This is but a setback.’

  ‘A foolish one,’ Arnulf said, wincing at the taste that lingered on his tongue, ‘I should not have been so greedy and led us in unprepared. We’ve lost our best men because of my haste. We will have to begin rebuilding ourselves sooner than I thought because of this. We need to reach Berro.’

  Balarin nodded quietly. ‘Maybe it is overdue. How long has it been now, Arnulf?’

  ‘Twenty years,’ Arnulf said after a moment’s pause, head shaking. Had it really been that long? He supposed it must have. Balarin huffed quietly beside him.

  ‘Hard to believe,’ he said. ‘It’s a wonder where the time goes when you’re on the road. Twenty years since Greylake. No wonder we’re not young men anymore.’ He laughed and clapped Arnulf on the shoulder.

  They talked at length then, neither able to sleep that night. They talked of their youth, of days long gone, of their home, Greylake, and its fall.

  It had not always been this way, this life of travelling, killing and watching the men beneath him die in the disputes of Caermark’s nobles. Once, things had been so very different to this. Arnulf and Balarin cast back over well-worn memories as they rode on, their edges tattered and dog-eared like the pages of a much read book, though the feelings within were still solid and unyielding even after all the years between then and now.

  Berlunt.

  Once, that name had commanded respect. Once, it was a name men knew across Caermark. Now it was all but forgotten. Arnulf’s family traced their bloodlines back to the ancient Thegns of the north. Their scholars even spoke of how their founder helped the first King of Caermark, the Chainbreaker himself, take his throne from the Empire. Their family’s sigil, the white dog’s head on the black field, came from that time. Arnulf carried it with pride to this day. So did his men, the Blackshield Dogs – they even took their name from it, hells, men even called Arnulf himself after it – the Black Dog.

  Arnulf still remembered Greylake, nestled in its wide craggy cleft of the Silverpeaks, those tall mountains that held back the frozen wastes of the land that lay beyond them. He remembered how the sun reflected every morning from its namesake, the wide lake to the east of town, how it shone and sparked like shattered crystal. He remembered the great stone walls around it, how their ends were carved from the very stone of the mountains themselves. It had been the bastion of the north for the longest time, majestic, rich, brimming with trade brought in from the east by the nearby Parting Sea. His father had been Lord of Greylake and its lands, Lothan Berlunt. Some even went as far as to name him Lord of the North, in his day.

  It is strange to think that success can be its own downfall.

  Lothan Berlunt and his family had always managed, for the most part, to avoid the constant power plays that plagued Caermark. The constant infighting between noble houses had left the land a fractured one, made weak by shifting alliances and backstabbing as a wooden plank is made weak by worm. Lothan had thought such behaviour beneath their line. Perhaps Arnulf’s father should have reconsidered that point of view, in hindsight. It might have changed what happened. Though, if he was truthful with himself, he doubted anything could have changed his family’s fate. They had all felt the eyes upon them when dealing with other noble houses, heard the whispers, felt the hatred. Sooner or later they would have fallen just as far, one way or another.

  It had happened while Arnulf was away leading his father’s men on a campaign against the raiders of the Rhosi who lived on the barren plateaus of the Silverpeaks, that a lord from further south had arrived in Greylake, one, who at the time, had been of no great renown.

  Deorwin Marreburg of Thegnmere.

  Arnulf was told after that day that Deorwin claimed he had come to assist with Lothan’s campaign against the Rhosi, arriving with a complement of men at Greylake. Survivors of that day told him that Deorwin had even begun negotiations with Lothan to marry his eldest son to Luse, Arnulf’s younger sister.

  Had Lothan more experience or knowledge of Caermark and the snakes that slithered in its crevices, perhaps he would have been more careful, perhaps had knowledge of Deorwin’s reputation.

  It is always easy to think perhaps, maybe, if only, when you lie broken in the aftermath and ashes of your sorrow, though. It is easy to wish, and hope, and pray, for something, anything, to turn back time itself, to undo the fetters of pain life has shackled you with. It rarely achieves much other than to set your soul to grievous aching and mind to bitter, darkened rumination.

  Arnulf had known nothing of the man’s arrival, being encamped with his father’s men on one of the mountains of the Silverpeaks called the Giant’s Fist. They had been seeking out a Rhosi encampment when they were taken by surprise. A horde of wild men had attacked Arnulf and his men as they had trudged up the mountain pass, charging at them down the slope all covered in hides and fur, howling like madmen with axe and club raised above their heads as they burst from morning mists.

  The brigands of the Rhosi had been an expected sight, despite the ambush. But there had been something else that day.

  The fight had been bloody and Arnulf had lost many men to the heavy-bladed axes and crude cudgels of feral men. But as the Rhosi had spent themselves against his men and their shrieks had faded, more shapes emerged from the mists.

  Men bearing swords, bearing shields, their mail rustling as they charged. Arnulf’s barely had time to call for his own men to lock shields.

  They had come streaming into Arnulf’s shield wall with a roar that echoed from the mountain sides like a clamouring thunderstorm. He could remember how their swords met and sang and men cried out in pain and bloodlust alike as they threw themselves against each other.

  They had been northmen, like themselves, and they fought fiercely, downhill, fresh and unhurt. Arnulf had thought he and his men were done for, as they lost ground steadily against unexpected foes.

  It had been blind, foolish luck alone, he recalled, that had won them the day.

  Arnulf’s wall had been pushed back downhill, the strength of his men waning against the fresh assault, and a gap had appeared between the lines. Their attackers’ momentum had carried them forwards towards Arnulf’s line at a rushed pace, uneven, their formation breaking. A few men had stumbled, perhaps on loose rocks or uneven ground, perhaps even on the blood or corpses left in the wake of the Rhosi. They fell and were trampled, the men behind them unable to stop, tripping over them, the ones behind tripping over them in turn, until the front of their line had completely collapsed and men lay in piles atop one another or fell straight down the slope of the mountain, carried away by their reckless pace.

  Arnulf and his men simply seized their chance and sprang upon them in their disarray. They had slaughtered those that were trying to get to their feet, those who were trying to flee back to the safety of the numbers behind them, those trapped beneath their accomplices’ corpses and shields, storming over them and into the confusion beyond, sending them fleeing back up the mountain pass.

  Simple luck, nothing more, had won them the day.

  It was as the men praised the gods for their victory that Arnulf had been unsettled deeply. Picking through the fallen to find some clue as to who they were, he had picked up a fallen shield, battle-scarred from sword blows. It had borne the black eagle clutching shield and sword upon a blood red field.

  Marreburg.

  The first taste of the games Caermark’s nobles play is often the last. Though including the Rhosi in them was one Arnulf, even to this day, doubted anyone, even the greatest of Caermark’s game players, could
have anticipated. It was a bold move, a grand move, its course plotted and steered by skilled, experienced hands.

  They had turned back to make for Greylake at once, he and what was left of his men, abandoning the campaign, fearing for his family, knowing he was supposed to be dead instead of racing to their aid. His heart had whispered to him, a dark fear had chilled him to the bone, driving him and his men onward at a relentless pace.

  They had reached Greylake some days later and found it a smoking ruin. The town had been razed, its great towers broken and fallen, its homes burned, the fields beyond its walls scorched black and filled with the dead. Above its splintered, once resplendent gates, the banner of House Marreburg had fluttered a breeze from the northern mountains, rippling like a strip of raw flesh beneath a harrowing skyline.

  He still remembered how his family had swayed gently from the ends of their ropes when he cut them down from the rafters of his father’s hall. How long he had sat there staring silently at their bodies after he could not remember, though he did remember it had been Balarin who had stayed with him that whole time.

  The town was near enough empty in the aftermath of its ruination. Some of his father’s retainers and servants had survived, though grievously injured. None had lived more than a few days after they had been found. Arnulf had managed to piece together from them what had transpired in his absence. Calculated betrayal, cold in its unloosing, murder disguised as friendship like velvet gloves covering iron hands.

  Greylake had been lightly garrisoned with Arnulf taking his father’s warriors into the mountains against the Rhosi. Marreburg’s men had executed his entire family and had ransacked the town for days. Taking the few guards left by surprise they had control before anyone knew what was happening. Lothan had kept enough men behind to defend the town from an external attack, not from one within.

  They said it was Deorwin Marreburg himself that had thrown his family from the rafters and let them swing before he had cleared out their coffers, not leaving behind one single coin. His final insult had been to cut the heads from his father’s beloved, noble wolfhounds, leaving them outside the vault doors like bloody laurels of his victory.

  Arnulf had given his family to the lake as was their tradition. He and what remained of his men, they had shared the task as one, equal in their grief for they had lost everything together. They were all that was left of Greylake, some three hundred warriors, injured, bloodied and grieving, those few men lucky enough to have survived the mountain ambush. All they had left was each other now, and the swords at their sides.

  They had travelled south together to Great Armingstone, to seek the help of the newly crowned King Aenwald, too weak, too few in number to challenge Deorwin at Thegnmere. But Arnulf’s pleas for help, for his right to justice had fell upon deaf ears.

  Rumours had abounded in the southern courts that Greylake had planned to break away from Caermark, declare independence and recognise no sovereign but its own. The southern nobles had hailed Deorwin Marreburg a hero for his dauntless ravaging of the town, while Arnulf found himself stripped of his rightful title, his father’s lands and holdings as he stood there in royal court, and had listened to the new King declare his father’s eastern ports legally the property of Deorwin Marreburg in return for his loyalty in deposing of a powerful traitor to the crown. He had been turned away from the crown court, with naught to his name but the men at his back, whose oaths kept them as his own, and the sour taste of unfathomable betrayal fresh again on his tongue.

  There would be no justice for his kin, not from the crown. Not from anyone but themselves.

  There are two choices in Caermark, it is said, for lords who are left landless and without a title. One is to become a servant, spend your days as a scribe and use your skill at letters and quillcraft to scrape a pittance from men of greater fortunes. The other is to walk the path of the freelancer, the hireling – the mercenary.

  To Arnulf and his men, as they stood dejected in the wide streets of Great Armingstone, in the shadow of the enormous Keep of Faldarun, there was only ever one choice. They would forge a new way – a warrior’s way.

  They were broken now, but it would not always be so. There was coin to be made in a land as bloody as Caermark, piles of it for the ones who could fight and survive the games that its lordlings played upon one another. They would rebuild their legacy – in fire and blood, and when their day had come, Deorwin Marreburg would learn what it was like to taste vengeance colder than the northern winds.

  Three hundred strong men, mailed, with sword and shield in hand, had renewed their oaths, sworn their lives to him and each other, and they had emerged from Great Armingstone as new men, as mercenaries, warriors of coin.

  Looking back, it saddened Arnulf greatly to see that most of those original faces were now gone. The Oathbound, he called them, the ones who had sworn those original oaths, the inner circle of the Blackshield Dogs. They were his closest and most trusted men, his greatest warriors, his personal bodyguard. Time had whittled them away, as time is wont to do to many things. Now there were a maybe a dozen of them left to him. It made his heart heavy, his mind sorrowful to think upon it. Many had been lost in at the Marrwood.

  Arnulf rose from his brief slumber to learn they had lost another two men in the night. He spoke the words for them himself, it felt right somehow.

  ‘How many men do we have left,’ he said quietly to Balarin as they rode on towards Farrifax through empty countryside.

  ‘Forty-seven as of this morning,’ Balarin muttered, casting a grave eye back at the men who followed behind them. ‘Maybe a quarter of them are unable to fight, and the rest not able to fight as well as they should be.’

  Arnulf sighed. Troubling numbers, they’d never had so few men before.

  No matter, they had once rebuilt from nothing and they could do it again – they just needed men. The coin Arnulf had been stockpiling for what was meant to have come lay in wait at an inn in Farrifax, under the protection of Berro and his two huge wolfhounds. There was enough to hire more men, more than they had ever fielded before.

  Enough so that he could finally carve out a new legacy, a new land, a new seat of power for his line, the name Berlunt refounded, reawakened and restrengthened by the men at his side.

  It should have been Thegnmere. It was meant to be Thegnmere. Arnulf should have the one to crush and steal all of House Marreburg’s accomplishments as Deorwin had once crushed and stolen those of House Berlunt. He should have thrown Deorwin Marreburg from the town’s great stone walls with a noose around his neck, as that man had once thrown his family from the rafters of their hall. It grated on him like crushed glassto know someone else had killed Deorwin, he could only hope it had been a slow death for the man, whatever way he had met his end.

  Ainric Callen had provided him with the perfect opportunity, an unexpected one he had rushed blindly into without weighing up the risks to his men. He had even intended for the Dogs to be the first atop the walls, it couldn’t have been a more perfect chance, even if he couldn’t avenge his family in Deorwin’s blood, he could take his town and claim what was rightly his.

  It would have been interesting to have seen the look on Ainric Callen’s face as he witnessed the rebirth of House Berlunt and have his victory fall to pieces before his very eyes. Twenty years of injustice could have been set right by the sword, had it not been for Garrmunt.

  ‘Is it irony,’ he said to Balarin, ‘to have my own plan of betrayal scuppered by someone else’s?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, my lord,’ his friend said with a shrug.

  It felt like it.

  They drove a hard pace to Farrifax, Arnulf pushing them all more harshly than he would have liked, they had lost enough on the ride already. They first saw the lights of Farrifax as night was falling over them all, and he had them ride for the town full pelt. They found the gatehouse manned heavily by spearmen atop the walls, who regarded them suspiciously in the gloomy torchlight.

  ‘Open
the gates!’ Arnulf called up at them, ‘I am Arnulf Berlunt of the Blackshield Dogs, and I come bearing urgent news for the town steward!’ He heard the guardsmen atop the walls muttering distrustfully amongst themselves.

  ‘Blackshield Dogs, you say?’ one cried back down at him, ‘the mercenary company?’

  ‘The very same,’ shouted Arnulf, inclining his head. ‘My men and I have right of passage through the town gates, granted by Lord Ainric Callen for as long as we are in his service.’

  There was more muttering from above, these men had some problem with them, clearly.

  ‘My men are injured,’ Arnulf spoke, hoping to draw some empathy or compassion from them. ‘They need food, water and the skills of your healers.’ A grim faced man in an iron cap leaned over the battlements.

  ‘One of your boys smashed our serjeant up pretty well the other night,’ he spat down at him. ‘What’s to say your lads here won’t do worse?’

  One of my boys, Arnulf thought, shocked, have some of the men made it back here?

  ‘Who was it that harmed your serjeant? Tell me their name and I will see them punished for what they have done – my men know not to break the laws of the land.’

  ‘Some big feller,’ the answer came, ‘all in black, long-haired, scar on his face.’

  The bottom fell out of Arnulf’s stomach.

  Harlin?

  ‘Tell me where this man is,’ Arnulf said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘I will see him punished for his actions. You have my word as Lord-Captain.’

  ‘No one knows,’ the guard called down. ‘We’ve been too busy to be looking for him.’

  Busy with what?

  ‘Let us through then,’ Arnulf said, ‘and I will find him myself.’

  His heart raced. Could Harlin still be alive, had he made it back here somehow? If he was still alive Arnulf would have to punish him if what the guard said was true, he couldn’t let an assault upon of Lord Callen’s soldiers go without recompense, it wouldn’t do for their reputation at all. He would have to be flogged.