The Shadow of the High King

by Frank Dorrian

Behold the Ram’s Head.

  A shiver crept through him as he spooned oats into his mouth. If it was mere ramblings, then why did it play upon his mind so viciously? The Ironbrand was not a man to be unsettled by the words of another. Yet something about the letter had resonated with him, something rang true about it.

  A king crowned upon a pale horse like the Emperors of old.

  He finished eating, and drained his cup. The Emperors were finished. Dead. Extinct. Their Empire with them. They were as much a relic or ruin as what was left of the Empire itself. Had Garrmunt crowned himself king whilst in the east? He snorted at that notion. The man was a lickspittle. A groveler and bootlick. He could barely rule over Garr’s Cairn and the Spear Hills. Yet…

  They come forth to conquer, as they have done countless times before.

  ‘They,’ Aenwald muttered to himself. Garrmunt had labelled himself as a vassal in the letter, not a ruler.

  Aenwald rested the book on his lap and opened it almost with urgency, thumbing frantically through its yellowed pages, taking in title chapters and contents at speed. Finding one that dealt specifically with matters of the Old Empire, he spent that morning alone in his chambers, reading on into the afternoon and foregoing his midday meal.

  He had meant for it to put at ease his troubled mind, but as he turned those old pages, crackling and stiff with age, the shadow of fear that hung above him only grew.

  They came from the east, across the Parting Sea, in bright ships of many oars worked by the hands of slaves. They landed on the coast of what is now known as Starkridge and laid their claim to what they saw, naming this land Caern Faldar in their tongue.

  Garrmunt’s letter rang in his mind again as he read that passage.

  They have watched you from across the Parting Sea.

  The Parting Sea was the body of water that divided the lands of east and west, and it was from there the Empire had first come and then finally retreated across when they had been defeated. How long had passed since then? Some five hundred years or more, scholars reckoned, didn’t they? An age ago, at least. They were all but forgotten by most men, outside of folklore and fairy tales. Most, himself included, had even forgotten the name of the Empire they had once been part of.

  Or been enslaved by, rather, he thought. He read on.

  Atop a white horse he sat, the one they called the ‘Kaethar’, he who was their leader and their ruler by divine right. Upon his head he wore a horned helm, and a crown of pale gold was placed atop it, marking him as Emperor over all he beheld. At his side were men clad in dark mail, who proudly carried great banners all of black silk, and woven upon them in silver was the ram’s head, seal of that great Empire of Ipathos.

  Aenwald slammed the book shut.

  Coincidence, he told himself, shaking his head. He felt clammy, palms and neck sweating. Coincidence and nothing more.

  But was it? Something bothered him, told him otherwise and niggled gleefully at his fears. Too much seemed to fit into place, and only his own disbelief, his own unwillingness to accept what seemed so unlikely, so impossible, kept him wondering and trying to reason away the frightful images formed by dark logic.

  The Old Empire cannot have risen from its grave… how could it be? How could Garrmunt have taken up cause with them though, unless it was so?

  There were too many questions, too many maybes, possibilities, shadows and suggestions. He needed clarity. They would all need clarity. He wanted to believe it was mere scaremongering by Garrmunt, an attempt to throw the kingdom into chaos, as he achieved whatever end it was he sought with his knights.

  But Garrmunt doesn’t have the resources to take Thegnmere and Farrifax, Aenwald thought to himself sickly.

  Not alone.

  Further reading did not uncover any mention of a Red Handed Prophet, or anything to do with a bloody hand, and, unwilling to disturb himself further, he set the book aside and turned to his letters instead. His scholars could see to that matter for him, there were matters of state to attend to this day.

  The state waits for no king, just as a king waits for no man, it is unfortunately said.

  He signed letters of remuneration, payment for services, acceptance of tribute from his vassals and land holders, wrote letters threatening swift punishment for those who had not delivered theirs on time and planned what it would be. There is a kind of base solace to be found in dictating the woes and pains of others simply because you can, particularly those others who are a tiresome, recurring pain in the royal arse.

  He wrote letters to his sons, the three princes of Caermark, all of whom were stationed far to the south along the Shattered Marches, ordering their swift return. They were overseeing Border Holds that protected where their land met with the Gaussemen’s and the Southscar River. He would be glad, truth be told, to see them again, somewhere close at hand, where he knew they were safe, instead of them cutting their teeth and testing their mettle against the Gaussemen. Delivering a steel boot up Garrmunt’s arse would be a better education in battle for them than border skirmishes.

  Well, it would be when it came to Aenwulf and Aenfeld, at least. Paega, however…

  It really was not the time to think of that. There were other matters to attend to of greater import. He had to meet with his Minister of Coin later today to discuss new ways of garnering income for the crown treasury. Running a nation was not cheap, and much coin was to be spent in order to see the state’s coffers stay full and healthy.

  They needed to find new trade, primarily. As one source that both the crown and nobility had seen a fine profit on had essentially dried up some time ago and was no longer viable.

  Who would have thought Luah Fáil would ever run out of savages for them all to sell?

  The slave trade from that shit-stained island had dwindled down to almost nothing in the last ten years. He had heard reports of some troubles there quite some time ago, but had never followed them up in any detail. He recalled hearing one saying something about the coastal towns having been abandoned for some reason. There was something else in it too, he was sure… what had it been?

  He couldn’t remember, wincing as he felt a slight nip of incompetence in reflection. He should have paid more attention, a fair portion of the kingdom’s coin came from the slaves they took from Luah Fáil, after all. It didn’t matter anyway, not really. That dreary little island full of goat-herding, sister-fucking, long-haired imbeciles was the least of his concerns. Even less so, now that the gold had stopped flowing from it. It was worthless.

  Perhaps a few years away from the place would encourage those savages to breed again, he pondered for a moment, tapping his quill against pursed lips in thought.

  They had begun raiding Gausselandt more recently, taking slaves from their coastal towns and villages, but the Gaussemen were a more sophisticated people than the brutish pond life of Luah Fáil. In fact, some scholars even said that the people of Caermark took their more modern approaches to warfare and combat from the innovations of the Gaussemen – though none would dare admit to saying that, of course. It wouldn’t end well for them. The Gaussemen were filthy, pig-worrying louts to a man, for sure, on that they were all doubtlessly agreed. But as such they proved a much more difficult quarry than the island barbarians – Luah Fáil did not have knights in full plate armour bolstering border and coastal garrisons, for a start.

  As Aenwald set aside his parchment and quill with a weary sigh, his hands ink-spotted and stiff from so much writing, the History of Caermark caught his eye again, and set his mind to troubled wandering once more.

  For they come forth to conquer, just as they have done countless times before.

  Conquer. Aenwald snorted at the idea, tapping fingernails anxiously against his teeth. They could try. Many had since the days of the Old Empire came to a close. The Konungs of Gausselandt swore to break Caermark each time the Silver Crown was placed on a new head. The last time Aenwald had checked, the Gaussemen were still south of the Shattered Marches, eyeing Caermark bit
terly, nursing their innumerable failures, and Caermark was north of them, laughing heartily.

  How long had it been since they last tried? Ten years, maybe? He knew the Gaussemen watched Caermark intently, with their spies and their whisperers, that watched and they waited for a day that would never come. A day when Caermark finally buckled under the weight of its own deceit, the thousand tiny knives in its back at last draining it of life. Aenwald would allow no such thing. This was his land. His alone. Garrmunt would achieve nothing but a miserable end for himself.

  Mind made up, he strode out of his chambers, fat stack of letters tucked under his arm, and into the long corridor beyond, the late afternoon sun beaming through open windows. Garan and Baine of the Red Cloaks were on duty outside his door. He grabbed Baine’s silvered pauldron so urgently the young knight jumped and span with hand on sword, apologising profusely on bended knee and begging forgiveness at the sight of his king before him.

  ‘Silence your yapping,’ Aenwald barked at him, dragging him to his feet. ‘Send word to the War Councillors to call in the banners and make ready. We march to war against Haakon Garrmunt.’

  With a bow, and a stuttered ‘At once, Your Majesty,’ Baine was off, pelting down the corridor and out of sight.

  Aenwald would take no risks. Not after two decades of blood, sweat and sacrifice to make this nation work as one. No one, particularly some babbling madman from the Spear Hills, would threaten the peace of Aenwald’s land.

  Not even the Old Empire itself.

  Chapter 8

  The Weaver

  It is strange to think how low those who are lofty can fall, and how weak can become the powerful, when their foundations are undone by the sweeping hand of fate. There are those who say that the proud shall stumble and fall someday, and that none shall raise them again. Pride is a weight around the necks of those who bear it, one that slowly, but ever so certainly, crumbles the stones upon which they stand and buckles their legs beneath them. The drop waiting below for one suffering its burden is into sheer nothingness, a shapeless maw, fathomless and ever hungry.

  Or so it felt, anyway. Ceatha could think of nothing else that would have led to her deserving a fate such as this.

  She had been proud once. She had stood tall amongst her peers, and from an early age. Talented. Wise. Beautiful. The praise heaped upon her by her mentors and admirers had been almost unending.

  She missed it, the feeling of being important, being someone, of having people kneel to her and utter her name with adulation, reverence and even a touch of fear. The feeling of power it brought with it was… intoxicating, to put it blandly, there was no other way to describe it. To stand and look out across a land and know that someday, and soon, all you saw would be yours – it made the blood rush through you pleasantly. Men speak of their drink and their heady, mind-clouding smokes and sight-bending leaves, but all of them pale before the taste and feel of true power – it was sweeter than any wine she knew of.

  We are all of us guilty of our hidden vanities deep within, awaiting the caress of another’s flattery, that rhetoric and word-spinning which strokes the ego of the soul, and can make monsters of the most noble of men. Some master their control of them, to a degree, at least. They often let their gifts go to waste in the name of humility. Others are consumed by them and burn in the flames of their own brazen folly all too quickly. Most dangerous, though, are those who can harness and manipulate their own egoism and arrogance, turn it to something practical, stride with purpose as it guides their every footstep. Such people are those you should fear.

  Ceatha had always strived to be the latter in her life, though it was obvious to her now how terribly she had failed. Perhaps that was why she had fallen so far. Her swollen head had pulled her down from her high perch, beneath humbling waves.

  Humbling was the word, she was most definitely sure.

  Her mentors had said she was destined for greatness someday. She had believed them, too. But if she was really meant for such things, then how had she ended up here? Stuck in a run-down town far from home, with no money and only the room her employer gave her to sleep and… work in.

  She sat there now, kicking her bare legs over the side of her double bed, the only furnishing in that box of a room, other than a cheap mirror and dressing table for her to make herself beautiful at. Or attempt too, rather. She didn’t feel beautiful anymore, she felt small and ugly. Oh, plenty of men were ready and willing to tell her of her great, fiery beauty, of how her hair shone like spun copper and how her hips seemed to sing gentle songs of passion as they moved.

  But men are ever ready to tell women of their beauty, their grace and their charm when there is something in it for them.

  No, Ceatha felt beautiful no longer as she looked into her mirror. Her skin too pale, nose too small, lips too thin, hair too red. Her flaws stood out to her brighter than the midday sun that beat down on the dirt road outside her window.

  As she flowered as a woman she had been able to turn down suitors from all across her homeland. Many had come to try and woo her, telling her of how her beauty was a legend across the island. Warriors, chieftains, wealthy craftsmen and shipwrights – all and more had taken their turn in travelling to seek her favour, and all she had spurned and turned away, purely in her arrogance at times, looking back on those happier days.

  She tried not to think about it. She had been happy then, been loved, wanted and adored by all – her future certain and within her grasp. Now her life was misery and shame.

  How had it come to this?

  To fall from a future that burned so brightly, to becoming a common whore in a town hundreds of miles from home?

  But then, of course, she knew how. They all did.

  It filled her with a grey sorrow to think of her home now, of the hut on the south of the island she had grown up in with her family, and the forested nemeton she had spent her teenage years in, learning, developing, growing. She wiped away a stray tear as she thought of everyone and everything she had lost. Her shattered pride left a bitter wound that time refused to heal.

  She hated it here in Haverlon. She hated the inn they forced her to work at, the Singing Lyre – an establishment that crossed the boundaries of brothel, tavern and traveller’s respite. She hated her employer, Genson – a fat, disgusting lump of a man.

  She hated herself most of all, for stooping so low as to live like this.

  There was a knock at the door. She jumped, lost in her reveries. ‘A moment, please!’ she called. She fussed about, fixing her hair, quickly powdering her face and reddening her lips. A quick check of her outfit to make sure the right bits of flesh were on show. She forced a smile. ‘Come in!’

  The door opened. It was a local farmhand. Sten, he was called. One of her regulars. She saw that many men in a day that she struggled to remember names sometimes, but some like Sten were so regular she was sure she knew them better than they knew themselves.

  She knew that she did, truth be told. She knew most people more than they could imagine.

  They had called her talented back home, had trained her intensely in a great many things. The pleasuring of men had been among those lessons. She was to be an advisor and companion to one of the great clan chieftains, one of the Sí Druí. Part of their duty was to be the chieftain’s consort, and such a role demanded that she be skilled in the arts of the flesh.

  It seemed that skill had worked against her now, in her fall. It put her in a sick kind of demand. To think once that she would have sat at the side of one of the clan chiefs, guiding his hand and warming his bed of a night, now she was reduced to being mounted by Marcher peasants that fucked her, spent themselves inside her and left a few copper coins on her dressing table as they laced their pants up.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw it was Sten, though, tension leaving her. She never knew who was going to walk through that door. It was not like Genson gave her a choice in customers, after all – they were the ones paying. Some were violent, and
had beaten her quite badly, and the two men that were responsible for keeping her and the other girls safe had saved her more than once when she thought she was going to die. She didn’t worry with Sten though, he was gentle to the point of being timid. Still, she was glad that Hurn and Denner lurked in the hallway outside, listening for any trouble in the girls’ rooms.

  ‘Afternoon, Ceatha,’ Sten said with a nervous smile, taking off his cloth coif. She smiled broadly at him.

  ‘Come in and close the door, lovely,’ she said, gesturing for him to enter. She saw his wide eyes dance over her body, huge and brown like a deer’s, and she giggled. He was quite an innocent one, Sten. He was one of the younger lads that worked on the farms on the edge of town, still in his teens, five or six summers younger than herself she thought, perhaps. Maybe more. He was tall and well-muscled from labouring on the farm, with a scruffy mop of sandy brown hair that stuck up in random patches, and a gentle, simple way about him. He was quite fond and protective of her, and truthfully she found him quite endearing, looking to him as something of a younger brother in some ways.

  Well, if a younger brother regularly paid to fuck you, that is.

  It felt a bit odd to think of it that way, in retrospect.

  ‘How have you been, a muirnín?’ she asked, calling him her people’s word for ‘darling’, or ‘dear’. The local men liked it when she mixed the odd bit of her own tongue in with theirs, they said it made her seem exotic. She thought it a daft thing to find exotic, but it did the trick on Sten every time without fail. He beamed at her.

  ‘Mighty tired, my sweet,’ he said sheepishly, his eyes following the shape of her body from head to toe. ‘Farmer Rus has been working us to the bone the last few weeks to get ready for the harvest, can barely feel my arms!’

  She clucked her tongue affectionately and cocked her head to the side, letting her long red hair spill over her shoulders. She knew how he liked her hair. They all did, these Marchers – red hair was quite rare here, it seemed, and the sight of it often spurred men into throes of pedantic lust.