by Tim Stead
Narak leaned back in his chair and his eyes found Cain’s and held them for a moment. “The colonel and I are working on a strategy,” he said. “It is not yet ready for scrutiny – there are some details to be overcome – but we will discuss it in two weeks time. I just wanted you all to know that it is in hand.”
Cain managed to hide his surprise. He had been warned, but even so he was taken aback. He was angry, too. Somehow he knew that Narak had nothing. There was no strategy, no inkling of a tactic to defend the White Road.
“Would you like to outline it for them, Deus?” he asked.
Narak didn’t flinch. He smiled instead. “I think we need to discuss it first, colonel,” he said.
Cain nodded. He thought that he detected a stiffness to the smile, and for a moment he regretted his provocative question. It had been disrespectful, even indiscreet. Narak was not a man to annoy if you wanted to live a long life.
“As you wish, Deus.”
“Indeed I have some new information for you that may help,” Narak went on. “If you lords and princes will excuse us for a few moments I will discuss it with the colonel, and then we may return to more pressing matters.”
“We would prefer not to be kept in ignorance,” Aidon said, but his tone knew better. Duke he may be, but Narak was a god, and above them all.
“I understand, Lord Aidon,” Narak said. “But there is not yet enough for us to discuss, so if you will pardon me…” He rose and went to the door. Cain followed him, first executing a respectful bow to the room. Outside Narak walked steadily, not speaking until they were clear of the castle and its quiet servants. He stopped eventually in a courtyard and sat on a stone bench by a small fountain. Cain sat beside him.
“You must understand that I do not mean to put you in a poor situation,” Narak said. Cain did not answer, but sat and waited. “I wanted to discuss this with you before the others came, but there was not time.”
“That much I guessed.”
“You know that there is no plan?”
“That much I also guessed, but what do you have in mind?”
“You. I sent you to the Green Road with no more hope than you would buy time, but you took it and held it. You did things that others might not have done. You changed the rules. Pascha was impressed.”
“Really? I thought she disliked me.”
“Perhaps she does, but she was still impressed.”
“So, what? You want me to change the rules again?”
“Yes. The White Road is our doom. We cannot build a wall there, because it would take too long. We can only stand face to face with two or three times our number against us, and even if we win there will be no purpose to our victory. Too many of us will perish. More of them will flood through and we will not have the swords, the lances, the men to stop them.”
“I see.”
“It is unfair. I admit that. But you are an unconventional man, Cain Arbak. You do not think like Dukes and Princes. I would not say this to another, or even in another man’s hearing, but I am defeated by the problem. I need you.”
Cain shook his head. “You are a god. I am supposed to devise a strategy when a god cannot?”
“I am a man,” Narak said. “And I have seen fifteen hundred summers, so I am perhaps somewhat set in my ways. I know how to fight battles. I can make the best use of what men I have, the weapons they wield, but this needs more than that.”
“You ask a great deal, Deus.”
“I admit it. You are the only one that I can ask it of. The others depend on me. If I should display uncertainty they may lose heart, and then we would be lost indeed. I need men who are confident, who know that we shall prevail no matter how many Seth Yarra march against us.”
Cain sat in silence for a moment. He had not thought of the war beyond Narak. It was true that he had come up with a couple of trifling innovations during their defence of the wall on the Green Road, but it had been Narak who had saved them in the end.
“I do not know that I can do this, Deus,” he said. “I am not a great strategist, and I have never seen the White Road.”
“Well, the latter at least we can do something about.”
“Deus?”
“Give me your hand.”
He did so, carefully, and felt the Wolf’s fingers close about his own. In an instant he was elsewhere, looked down from cliffs onto a field of snow, felt the bitter wind, and the smells – it was as though the whole world stank of a thousand things. He tried to snatch his hand back, but Narak’s grip was unbreakable.
“Do not fear,” Narak said.
“It is magic…”
“It is. But there is no danger in it. You see through the eyes of a wolf, and he stands high above the White Road. He is on the south side.”
The view swung to the left, and he could see that the far wall of the pass was sloping at the base of the cliff, and towards the top of that slope there were patches where the snow had blown away. These were steep screes of frost shattered rock, they lined the pass on both sides and down below he could see that the snow cover was broken in many places by small, scrubby trees. Half a mile, he guessed, from side to side, and several miles long, though even in the clear winter air he could not see the whole length of it because it twisted about the feet of mountains, and the cliffs hid the western end.
The wolf, if such it was through which he saw, began to move. The bouncing motion of its head as it trotted bothered him, but it was heading west, towards the forest, and scanning the pass all the time. It was not an easy path that it took, at times there was scrambling up rocky outcrops, and at times jumping down into snowdrifts. This was not what a wolf would do in nature, Cain realised. This animal was under compulsion.
After twenty minutes he could see a gap opening up, the cliffs parting from one another, and the ground sloping away to the endless sea of the great forest, the trees holding their burden of snow but still undeniably trees. The wolf stopped and scanned up and down the pass again. There was a neck here, a narrow place where spurs of rock jutted from the north side and closed the passage down to five or six hundred yards. There had been something similar where they had begun, he recalled, but he had not thought of its significance at the time. He had been too distracted by amazement at what he was seeing and how he was seeing it.
The pass vanished and he was back in the courtyard at Bas Erinor. It felt as though his senses had been stripped from him. He could smell nothing. His sight seemed clouded and foggy, his ears bunged with wax. Narak was looking at him.
“That was the White Road?”
“Yes. Impassable now, and months yet before the thaw begins.”
“But you have seen it in the summer?”
“Many times. There is not much more to see. The ground is quite flat beneath the snow. Everything else is how you saw it.”
“And what am I to do, Deus?” Cain felt despair again. He had noted the two necks, and marked them as defensible positions, but they would not serve, not against the numbers of Seth Yarra.
“I do not know,” the Wolf replied. “If I knew I would not need to ask you. Pascha thinks you are a man of ideas. You showed that at the Green Road. It may be that this task is beyond you, that no solution comes, but there will be no blame if you fail. I will tell the council of princes that our idea proved to be unworkable. Do not think that you are alone in this. I and all of the Benetheon, and all the dukes and commanders, princes and generals of all the kingdoms have the same thing on their minds, but I have chosen you because of all the regiments yours is the one best equipped to do the impossible. The others have soldiers. You have masons and smiths, carpenters and clerks, all the talents of the city at your beck.”
“And the rest,” Cain said. “I will do as you ask, Deus, I will try to find a solution because now I can do nothing else, now that you have told me.”
Narak put a hand on his shoulder. “I made the right decision at Bel Erinor,” he said. “Even now I know that to be true. You have done as much as a
ny man to defend the kingdoms, and I am grateful for your deeds. You do not need to prove yourself again, Cain, but it would delight me if you did.” He stood. “I must get back to them. They may have begun to bicker without a referee to guide them. Go well, colonel. Think deep.”
He turned and was gone, striding away down the corridor that led back to the council chamber, and in a moment he was out of sight. Cain sat still, listening to the delicate sound of the fountain and the muttering thunder of the city below. The city made a sound like the sea, but he had never really heard it before. He summoned the image of the White Road to his memory, but he could not bring back the smell. The essence of the wolf had already escaped him.
2. Latter Fetch
Skal Hebberd rode ahead of the wagon, keeping clear of the dust. Tilian Henn road at his side on a small but robust bay mare that he had bought the boy. Mostly they did not talk. Henn knew his place, though the mare did not and often strained to ride ahead of Skal’s grey. Each time the bay surged forwards Henn was quick to rein it back, and each time he glanced across at Skal to see if he was annoyed. Skal, however, had ceased to notice. It had been faintly amusing on the first day, but now he had filtered it out and his thoughts tended towards memories of the estates at Latter Fetch, of the house and the people.
He did not have many memories. It had been one of his father’s minor estates, and they had visited only twice that he could recall, and he had been a child. He remembered a brooding house in a forest glade. He remembered a tall, dour man, an unsmiling presence who had seen to his father’s every need.
But Skal’s father was dead – a dead traitor. All his estates had been taken and this place, this one small place won back by Skal’s own efforts. No. Not quite his efforts. He could not put aside the trust that Quinnial had shown in giving him rank and a command. It was a gesture that had saved him from total disgrace and given him a chance to pull himself up again. The General had helped, too. Cain Arbak had given him credit for holding the wall during the desperate night battle against the Telans, and so he had regained Latter Fetch.
But it was his, and not Quinnial’s or Cain’s.
He could see that they were not far from the house – an hour perhaps, but no more than that. He knew that the road from the south swung close to the river, and that was the sign. He allowed his horse to drop back, pulling gently on the reins until the he walked next to the wagon.
She was sitting with her eyes closed, though he did not think she was asleep. The infant was, though; fast asleep with his head resting in her lap. He studied her for a moment. Her name was Sara Bruff, and she was the widow of Saul Bruff, a tanner who had volunteered for the regiment and died at Henfray. He had, however, saved Skal’s life before perishing, and Skal had felt an obligation to his family.
There was more to it than that, however. Sara Bruff was a beauty. She had fine, pale skin and a face of straight lines and soft curves. Her hair was black as ravens’ eyes and had a spirit all of its own, breaking free of constraint at the least opportunity. She was the same, he thought. She was strong willed, and certainly no fool.
She opened her eyes and looked at him. Skal smiled.
“We are nearly there,” he said.
She nodded, but did not move to wake the child. She did not return his smile. He could see uncertainty in her face, as though she was having second thoughts about coming here with him.
“What will my duties be, my lord?” she asked. “I am keen to know.”
Duties, he thought. He hadn’t been sure when he’d made the offer. It had been an impulsive decision, and part of him regretted it.
“The library here is badly neglected. I’m not sure that anyone has any idea what might be sitting on the shelves. I want you to catalogue it. You will be my librarian.”
“I know nothing of books,” she said.
“But you can read? You said that you could read.”
“I can, my lord.”
“Then you will learn.”
She looked at him for a moment until her gaze was almost a rude stare, and then turned away. It was mildly odd, he confessed to himself, to hire a tanner’s widow to look after one’s books, but he freely admitted, if only to himself, that she was here because of her looks, and not his books. He should have sent her to her sister in Bel Arac. That would have satisfied his debt to her husband. But she clearly hated her sister, and it would have been a punishment as much as a mercy.
The road passed through a hamlet. It was a small place, perhaps ten houses built of modest materials, well kept, an orchard, a barn, a small temple of the kind that suited prayer to any god – in truth barely more than a roof and an altar stone. It was a place he knew. Many of the people who worked on Latter Fetch land lived here, the rest either in the house itself or in a similar hamlet on the northern side. Men and women came out of their houses to look at him. Some knew his face, while others guessed, and they bowed and knelt as seemed appropriate to each. Skal nodded and smiled, raised his hand in a lord’s gesture of blessing.
He saw that Sara Bruff was looking at the houses and the people. She turned to him again.
“Will we live here?” she asked.
“It is too far from the house,” he replied.
She looked away, and Skal rode forwards again, caught up with Tilian.
“Ride ahead,” he told the boy. “If you follow the road you’ll get to the house in a few minutes. Let them know I’ll be there shortly.”
“My Lord.” And he was gone, the bay picking up speed quickly, running with a slightly lopsided gait. It made Skal smile to see it. In less than a minute he was out of sight. He liked Tilian. The boy – he still thought of him as a boy even though he was seventeen years – was quick to pick things up. He had his own opinions, but he obeyed promptly. He was becoming a useful sword, a useful sounding board, an indispensable part of his life. If he wanted something done he asked Tilian, and somehow it just happened. The boy had a gift for persuasion that was somewhere between diplomacy, blackmail and the skills of a market trader. He was resourceful. He was clever. And Skal was lucky to have him.
They passed through the gates. They were set into a high black granite wall which he remembered from childhood. It went all the way round the house and grounds, shutting it off from the farms, walling in the tall trees, keeping out the light. Now the road pitched downwards between stands of pine. He hated pines. Perhaps now he could have them cut, now that he was master here. The whole place had an air of secrets, and it made him think of his father, the man who had sent him away, the man who had betrayed his country to Seth Yarra.
“You do not like this place, my lord.”
He was startled by her voice. He had almost forgotten that he was not alone. It was not her place to speak first, but he ignored that.
“It is not a happy house. My mother died here. I was born here. Both on the same day.”
That seemed to silence her, at least, and he rode alongside the wagon the rest of the way to the house.
It was a big building of dark stone. There was no doubt, when you looked at it, that Latter Fetch had begun its life as a fortress. The central tower was squat and thick walled. Slits in the walls had somehow never been replaced by windows, and it was crowned by battlements. Beyond that it had spread its skirts like so many noble houses. The tower was flanked by two storey additions which boasted large leaded windows, a dark slate roof and two brace of tall chimneys. The ground before it had been covered in immaculate white gravel, a stark contrast to the dark stone and the looming forests that seemed to threaten the building from every side.
The staff had assembled on the gravel apron, and it seemed that there were a lot of them. Skal guessed at least twenty. He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and surged ahead of the wagon, swinging down from his saddle next to Tilian. A man rushed forwards and took the animal’s reins. A groom, Skal supposed.
“Who is steward here?” he demanded. In truth he already knew, or thought that he did. He had spotted a tal
l figure standing to the front at one side. The man was grey now, and his height somewhat reduced by a bent back, but he was almost certainly the same man who had been steward on those rare occasions his father had visited this place with Skal in tow.
He was not surprised when the tall figure shuffled forwards, executing a rather shallow bow.
“I am Parso Elejine, steward, my lord,” the man said. His voice was as frail as his back, but his eyes were not dimmed, nor were they humble. Trouble, perhaps. A man left too long without a master will sometimes assume the mantle himself, and he doubted that this dour stick of a steward had seen his lord more than five times in his tenure. He studied the other servants for a moment. They looked cowed, eyes downcast and heads tilted down. None wanted to meet his gaze, even the young ones, and that was unusual. He was their new lord, and he would have expected some curiosity.