The Shadow of the High King

by Frank Dorrian

‘The odds stood against you,’ he continued, ‘reason itself stood against you, but you planted your feet and spat in its face and dared it to move you. I owe you more than I can ever repay, men, and all I can say is that this is the beginning of a new day – a new nation. This is our land now, and I’ll be damned if anyone will ever prise us from it. You are the Blackshield Dogs, brothers, and today you truly earned those shields you bear.’

  Arnulf watched them celebrate with pride, wineskins appearing in many hands as if by magic. He stood straight and stern as he watched over them, though his body ached and cried out to be at rest and free of arms and armour. They needed this, this moment of triumph, this glory – it would seal them, bond them as one to each other, to him. He let the howling die down without silencing them.

  ‘There is much still to do though, my brothers,’ he spoke after a while, ‘tend to the wounded, burn our honoured dead, bury our fallen enemies. Come the morn when the work is done we will feast and make merry your victory here with song and drink. Now off with you, Dogs, you have your orders.’

  Black Dog, Black Dog, Black Dog.

  The chant rang out again as Arnulf motioned for Balarin and Hroga to come to him. ‘See these men out of the gates safely,’ he uttered, gesturing to the men on the landing, huddled together like surcoat-wearing sheep. ‘They have earned that much from us.’

  Arnulf sat down on the top stair of the landing as the last few guardsmen trailed past to the jeering and heckling of the Dogs still thronging in the hall. His eyes fell upon the red ruin he had made of the knight’s face where the steel-plated body lay at the foot of the staircase, and a curiosity came upon him. His hand shot out and grabbed one of the passing guardsmen’s arms.

  ‘This man,’ Arnulf said without looking at him, nodding to the fallen knight. ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Sir Wilmaer of House Rebacht, milord,’ came the downtrodden answer, thick with the southern commonfolk’s nasal accent. ‘Lord Rebacht’s eldest son.’ Arnulf nodded and let the man be led away.

  He stared into the dead man’s eyes. Wilmaer of House Rebacht. He would be well known to the local nobility, this one, as Lord Rebacht’s heir.

  The taking of a land is more than mere butchery of their fighting men and slaughtering of their leaders, more than the simple capture of strongholds great and small. It is a matter of control and subjugation of both noble and commoner alike, one of mind and body. If you wish to control them, then a message must be sent, one that is clear and bold. There is no room for softness in conquest, no place for the gentle and kind-hearted, not in dark days like these, nor in days of radiance – if there ever were such a thing, that is. If a man would call himself a ruler, to lead and be followed by those around him, he must be hard, must be ruthless.

  That was a lesson Arnulf had learnt from Aenwald himself. He felt cold as he remembered it, looking away from where Wilmaer’s dead eyes stared up at him accusingly.

  ‘Ceagga,’ Arnulf called, vision tunnelled, a moving tempest of dark shapes about Wilmaer’s broken form. ‘Fly our banners from the towers,’ he said as the Oathbound approached reverently. ‘And have the knight’s head put on a pike atop the outer gatehouse, I want the highborn to know what kind of men they deal with here.’

  Ceagga bowed and went about his orders, dragging the dead knight out of the hall by his feet. Arnulf felt himself slump, both with fatigue and the release of tension. Part of him could not believe it – the Shield had fallen to them so easily. A smaller part of him worried what the morning would bring when the people realised their ruler had been violently displaced.

  He forced himself up to his feet, leaning on his sword, sighing audibly as he stretched his back. It could all wait for the time being, the fortress was under their control. His men were of more concern to him right now. They had taken their share of casualties during the fighting and he wanted to show his face amongst the wounded, give thanks to those that would expire before the dawn for their courage and valour.

  Arnulf ordered Sweyn to take a group of men with him and scout out the keep’s inner chambers, while he and Garric oversaw the setting up of their makeshift field hospital in the courtyard outside. They’d lost thirty-four men in the fighting, with another forty-three injured and unfit for duty. There were some among the injured new bloods that wouldn’t survive the night. He’d say the words himself when the time came. He thought of a few honourable lines with which to send them off, as well as making a mental list of things there were still to do, but they faded as soon as his head met the soft pillow of Lord Rebacht’s regal bed, sleep taking him in an instant.

  He awoke to shouts and screams after what felt like a minute. Outside, the sky was empty save for stars, midnight long behind. He thought for a moment, as things went quiet, that he had been dreaming, and closed his eyes again.

  A crash and a roar came from somewhere below.

  Arnulf sprang from his bed, still clothed, and grabbed his sword from where it lay, throwing open the chamber doors and charging out into the corridor. He pelted towards the source of the sound through shadow and flickering torchlight, his pace casting sleep from him and his thundering heart driving back exhaustion.

  The sounds of fighting came from the main hall, clashes, bangs and shouts. There had to be at least ten men fighting, maybe more, it was hard to tell from this distance.

  ‘Stop them!’ Arnulf heard a voice cry as he neared the main staircase. ‘Seal the doors!’

  Arnulf burst into the main hall, taking the stairs two at a time, sword free of its scabbard. Shield Brothers were spread out across the hall’s recently-cleaned floor. Swords were drawn and shields were raised. Some wore their armour, but others, seemingly awoken from sleep themselves, wore only their simple cloth garbs. Near the stairs, an unarmoured Shield Brother sat cradling a gash in his arm. Sweyn was amongst those who stood, Arnulf saw, his face drawn in anger beneath his helm. Most concerning, though, was what they surrounded.

  Six men, clad in finely-crafted plate armour, longswords drawn, half of them bloodied. They drew closer together as Arnulf descended, panting, into the hall, like armoured sheep clustering against prowling wolves. They wore knightly tabards of varying colours and depictions, but their helms… no knight in Caermark would wear one of such make. They wore closed great helms, topped with distinctive crests. Tall, upward-rising horns, mostly, some ending with the heads or mouths of serpents, though the one at their centre bore a majestic crest of curving wings, like those of a bat, their segments alternately gilded and enamelled black. His white tabard was stained red in places with fresh blood, a splatter of it streaking across the sigil of the crowned, two-headed lion, embroidered in black next to a wyvern in mid-flight, swords clutched in its claws. Arnulf felt the pit of his stomach drop at the sight of it.

  It was the two-headed lion of the Konungs of Gausselandt.

  Chapter 14

  To Snap the Puppet’s Strings

  Harlin sat at the end of the pier looking out to sea as the sun set, blood red, fat and lazy as it sank. He breathed deep of the salt air and stretched, legs dangling freely over the water, savouring the feeling of being free of his armour for the first time in two months. The events of the summer had been so intense and close together he had lost track of time. There had been so much fighting and confusion that weeks had seemed to roll past in days. He had never imagined his path would lead him to a place like this. It felt almost as though he was dreaming at times. It was surreal to be suddenly surrounded by his kinsmen after so many years of living amongst foreigners.

  But here he was. Tásúil. The last bastion of the clans, and one founded upon enemy soil.

  It had been almost too much for him to take in at first – the road from the woods had been long, and his prideful stubbornness in refusing Ceatha’s offerings of food and drink had left him weak and weary. Indeed, he had nearly fallen down the stairs leading down from Radha’s hall, his legs buckling beneath his weight as he made to descend them.

  He had forgotten
how hearty and warming the food of his homeland had been. A thick stew of lamb, roots and barley had broken down his walls, brought strength back to his limbs and almost put a smile on his face before he remembered the situation he and Anselm were in.

  They were imprisoned here, by his own people. The thought still made him laugh at times. He could not tell if he had misplaced his trust in Ceatha or if she had proven herself true in some roundabout way.

  She had brought him here, as she had said she would, though not in the manner she had led him to believe. Harlin had thought Tásúil would be the perfect place to find passage to Luah Fáil, but Ceatha refused to help him find a way to make Radha lift her restrictions upon him and Anselm. He could not work out what it was she wanted of him, or why she had even brought him here, other than to keep him in sight for some reason. Truth be told, he could not make head nor tail of the girl in general.

  She had played the fearful maiden well enough while they were on the road. It seemed at times when he caught her gaze he did see the shadow of fear that dwelt there in those deep green eyes. But within her was another shadow, one not so small and meek. It showed itself at times, like when she had first touched him, something powerful, dangerous and controlling, though she had not tried anything so overt since that day. It was in the spoken word, in casual gestures, in looks, like a darker outline over things so innocuous, unreadable to most.

  But it was there. Half-hidden and watching.

  Harlin felt her sometimes in his repose, that middle ground, in the space that lies between sleep and waking most often. Like the slipping of a needle into fabric, he would feel her presence as sleep began to bring him images of the past, as half-dreams sought to cut him with their sharp edges and rip at soft, unhealed flesh. He knew it was her, from the lingering of her soft voice that traced words through the shades of memory. It was as though she studied him.

  Radha had meant it when she had said Anselm and he would be under Ceatha’s care. She was everywhere. Literally everywhere. It had to be either her Weaving, or other clanfolk watching him for her, perhaps both even. Harlin had transpired a few times to slip away from Tásúil now, and always she would be there ahead of him, usually with Bradan and his men not far behind. The clansmen still held their weapons and armour, and the town smiths had been forbidden to forge or sell them any. Faced with half a dozen armed clansmen and with the Weaving trembling through the very ground he stood upon, Harlin had found little choice but to stand down each time. Reaching Luah Fáil was all that mattered, dying here would not achieve that.

  For the first time in years, he felt utterly trapped.

  The sky bruised purple as the sunset faded behind the sea, cresting waves dusted with its colour. His stomach growled at him for food but he stayed put. Ceatha had him and Anselm lodged in a small dwelling near the town centre granted to them by Radha. She was kind enough for a gaoler, he had to admit, though his trust in her was non-existent. She was almost motherly at times, and seemed to take pleasure in keeping the two of them looked after.

  She truly made no sense at all to Harlin and he found that he despised her for it, that and her kindness.

  He stretched and rose, the sea breeze catching his hair and blowing it about his shoulders as he stepped onto the pier. The theft of his rings still galled him almost every moment of the day. He ran his hands through loose hair, the memory of Bradan pulling them from his braids jabbing him like a knife to the ribs. He could see the looks the other clanfolk gave him as he passed them by in the street – a braidless, ringless boy of twenty summers, a disgrace to his kind.

  That was something he would set right before he left this place.

  For he was most certainly leaving, of that he was sure. He just needed find a way around Ceatha and Radha first. He found he cared nothing for these people. He had been gone too long, suffered too much, changed too greatly, for them to ever accept him as one of their own. They as well, perhaps, had suffered too much of the same at the hands of the Marchers. They were broken. Their glory gone, their ways watered down – they hid like worms in the forgotten corner of a land, like lice that hid in a host’s crevices. Clans forced together were once land or blood feud and war would have kept them separate, the need for secrecy strangling them. Harlin wanted no part of it.

  Anselm, on the other hand, seemed to have taken to the place favourably, joyously almost, all things considered. Harlin often found him wandering the town in the day time, taking in the sights and smells of its small marketplace, sampling dishes from the island, admiring smiths’ steelwork, laughing as he watched the children in the streets brawl and spar one another with bare fist. The man even seemed to have forgotten his fear of witchcraft and sorcery, for Harlin would often find him drinking with Ceatha of a night time as happy as could be – his usual crude humour and coarse, yet oddly charming, manner in full swing.

  ‘No whores here though!’ Anselm would laugh, over cups of honey wine the clans called meodhglin. ‘How’s a Marcher supposed to have his fill of all these fine young redheads if they won’t take his coin?’

  ‘Most of us island girls are a wee bit more respectable than that, Anselm,’ Ceatha would chide him, looking more than a bit uncomfortable at her own words.

  There were too many memories here, Harlin realised, reaching for the door’s iron ring, his hand hesitating. Bráodhaír reborn, the vision, the scent, the sound, each sense assailed by daggers of the mind.

  He shook himself and entered, the smell of simmering stew and fresh bread hitting him immediately. Ceatha was stood near the central fire pit, and greeted him with her usual pleasant smile and flash of her green eyes despite his dour glare. He took the bowl she offered thanklessly and seated himself distantly from her on the floor. Anselm was already seated at a wooden bench set against the far wall, shovelling stew and bread into his mouth rapidly, pausing only to acknowledge Harlin’s return.

  Harlin ate in silence and gave up listening to Anselm’s tales of his repeated spurnings from lithe young girls with fiery hair, his fumbling, slurred attempts at learning the Clans’ tongue from Ceatha. A part of Harlin was slightly envious, he found, that his own people seemed to be more accepting of Anselm than of him. Perhaps it was that Anselm was a novelty to them, a Marcher who found their culture fascinating, almost seeming at times to want to be part of their ways, whereas Harlin was but a braidless failure of a man.

  Sleep would not come that night, try as he might to find it beside the embers of the fire. He lay away in half-darkness, listening to the wind fret and tease at the thatch, to the sounds of crickets at play in the tall grass outside the shuttered windows.

  He rose silently and dressed. Stepping outside, he let the night air kiss his face gently and strode back through the streets of the town to the pier. He passed by the town centre, where folk would often gather around a fire to sing, drink and dance with one another as the night came, though at this hour it stood empty.

  Harlin took up his seat at the end of the pier again, watching black waves rise into flowing, silver mountains beneath the moon’s pale face. Luah Fáil was somewhere to the north and west of here, beyond those cold waves. For a moment, as he sat watching black waters swell and moonlight dance and break upon the ripples, he considered letting himself fall, letting the tide take him where it would, to whatever end. Even the white shores of Luah Fáil, maybe – or Hathad Camoraigh, whatever it was called now.

  Footsteps sound on the boards of the pier behind him, punctuating the sighing of the waves as they broke upon sand and rock. Slow and delicate sounding they came. Ready to pounce, he eased as a gentle voice spoke in the clan tongue.

  ‘Can I join you?’

  A glance over his shoulder showed him the cloaked and shadowed form of Ceatha, her hair tousled and voluminous as the breeze blew it about her shoulders. He hesitated to answer her at first, the words ‘fuck off, whore’ dancing upon the tip of his tongue.

  ‘If you wish,’ he said, turning away to look out at the night sourly. She took
a seat on the pillar opposite him, bare feet tracing patterns above the water as she hummed quietly to herself.

  ‘Restless?’ she asked after a few minutes of him ignoring her.

  ‘So it would seem,’ he replied, uninterested. He felt her eyes on him, twin emeralds gracing his form.

  ‘Your hair looks nice,’ she giggled. He felt his lip curl.

  ‘Thank Bradan,’ he spat, ‘for making less than a man of me.’ Her laughter caught in her throat and she fell silent again.

  ‘I’m sorry for how you’ve been treated.’

  Harlin did look at her then. She sounded almost sincere. The fine silhouette of her face was downcast, eyes upon her hands folded in her lap. ‘This was not how I meant for things to be,’ she sighed, turning her face towards the moon above them. ‘Perhaps I’ve been away from them for too long myself, or maybe they just got more broken while I was away. They weren’t always like this.’

  He chewed his tongue, uncertain of what to say. Broken was the word. Tásúil felt like a dumping ground, a middenheap almost, a gathering of remnants bereft of their once formidable glory and stripped down to those who once were warriors, now picking out a living from the land in secrecy and isolation.

  ‘Their fear guides them more so than anything else,’ he said, shrugging, wishing she would go away. He hated her moments like this – when she would approach him and act as though they were friends, or could speak freely with one another of matters held close to the heart. He saw her nodding at his words and wished he’d stayed silent – she might have given up and let him be if he had.

  ‘My father always told me that fear is only a dangerous thing when it controls you,’ she said. Harlin stayed quiet again. ‘I think he was right. Fear has poisoned us, made us weak, made cowards of the brave. We huddle together in this bay like frightened sheep, when we should be stood tall and proud like we once were. Like the warriors our people used to be.’

  ‘Who was your father?’ Harlin asked of her, ignoring her passionate sentiment.