by Tim Stead
“How long do you think this is going to take?” Cain asked, leaning towards him so that others might not overhear.
Skal shrugged. “I have no idea,” he replied. “But if it’s not over by dusk I’m going back to the Friend.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Cain said, and did so. “Do you think you’ll win the bet?”
“I don’t know,” Skal confessed, reaching for his own glass. “Tilian’s a good man. If he thinks he can win, and he does, then I’m inclined to back him.”
Cain nodded. “I can see what this might mean, if they do win,” he said. “But a win isn’t enough.”
“What do you mean?”
Cain grimaced. “It’s all very well beating fifty men in an exercise, but I’ll not send men to their deaths on the chance of them thinning Seth Yarra ranks by a hundred or so. It has to be better. It’s just not worth it otherwise.”
Skal saw the sense in that. There was truly little point in sending the foresters out if they would be slaughtered cheaply. They had to stay effective for weeks, harassing the enemy and picking off targets, not getting caught. If five of them were taken by Cain’s men, then the whole thing would be pointless.
Somebody shouted, and a hush returned to the crowd once more. There was movement among the trees. Skal strained forwards to see who or what it might be.
A man stepped through the undergrowth into view. It was one of Cain’s men, and he was made considerably more visible by the large patch of red dye on the side of his neck.
“It begins well,” Skal said.
Cain shook his head. “Wait and see,” he said. “Wait and see.”
* * * *
Sergeant Barain crouched low in the bushes, still as he could be, breathing shallow, listening for all he was worth. The ten men of his squad were strung out behind him, and he could barely make out any of them, just a sleeve here, the outline of a leg there. They were pretty well concealed.
He moved his head slowly, turning to look east. Carron’s squad had been over there, but he couldn’t see them now. He’d heard bowstrings, more than one, and a curse or two. He’s seen a man walk away marked with red. Dead, by exercise rules.
There were among them, then, or at least within bowshot. He hadn’t seen a thing. They’d been moving with considerable caution, keeping close to tree trunks, never more than two of them exposed at any time, and he’d been looking for sign. He hadn’t seen a broken branch, a torn leaf, anything at all that told him that Skal’s squad was here. So that meant they were pretty good at this.
Numbers were their principle advantage. He could see that. The key would be to use those numbers, to not be afraid to lose men. After all, this was an exercise. Nobody was actually going to get killed. If this was a real situation he would have to make the same decisions, but it would be much harder. Which man do you sacrifice to save the others? It was his choice.
He looked back along the line again, allowed his eyes to lift into the trees. Most of the branches were bare, so there should be nowhere to hide. A few evergreens offered the possibility of ambush, but he did not think that foresters would be so obvious. He watched them anyway, waiting for movement, for something to shoot at.
An arrow flashed past his eyes and one of his men, the one who had been showing a sleeve, crashed out of the shrub he’d been intimate with a moment before, his shoulder and neck red with dye. The man swore, glanced in Barain’s direction and then started the long walk back out of the forest.
Well, at least he had a direction now. He risked a quick glance around the tree and looked along the path the arrow had flown. He was a good judge of direction, and he could see that the only cover on that line was a group of three trees. He notched an arrow to his own bow and signalled him men to come up behind him. He pointed out the three trees, gestured at them to spread out and advance.
They made about twenty paces before the first arrow came. It came from behind and to the right, and one of his men swore and stopped, and walked away with a new red badge on his tunic. Barain broke into a run, and his men followed suit. They didn’t run in a straight line, but moved from side to side as randomly as they could. Barain himself did not take his eyes from the three trees. If he was going down he was going to take a man with him.
More arrows came out of the trees. To the right, up ahead, he actually saw a man step out from behind a trunk and loose an arrow. He let his own fly, and in the scheme of things it was a pretty good shot for a running man, but the arrow flew a yard wide, and then the figure was gone again. By the time they reached the trees there were only five men left in his squad. Barain went for the middle tree and the other men took the others, two to each.
Nothing. There was nobody there. He put his back to the tree and looked around him. His other men hadn’t had any luck either. One of them looked across and shrugged. What now? All around them the forest rustled and waved thin branches against a pearly winter sky. It seemed hostile, even sinister. He’d watched the trees all the time. There had only been a couple of seconds when he’d looked away, when the man had shown himself, and that certainly wasn’t enough time for the shooter to have moved. He looked up at the branches, but they were clean and bare. A squirrel couldn’t have hidden up there.
It felt like magic, like the man had stepped into the tree itself and disappeared, but that couldn’t be right. Even Durander mages couldn’t do that. The man had to be here. He looked around again, but there was no cover, just a few denuded shrubs and a carpet of leaves, golden yellow, stretching as far as the eye could see.
He looked at the leaves again. Just how thick were they? He’d hardly been wading through them, and there shouldn’t be a layer thick enough to hide in. He studied the ground before him. What if there was a hollow there, just behind the tree, a hollow full of leaves that could hide a man? He shouldered his bow and drew the training sword from its sheath.
He looked to left and right. One more of his men had gone down. He gestured to the remaining three, prodding the leaves around his feet, pointing at the area that was immediately concealed behind each tree. The men caught the idea, and each drew his sword. Another arrow struck home, this time coming from the left and slightly ahead. Were there really just twelve men in here?
He lunged forwards and prodded the ground, but it was just leaves. He took another step, lunged again, and something hammered into the small of his back, knocking him forwards onto his knees.
He reached round and touched the place he had been struck, and his hand came back stained with red dye. Dead then. Time to go back. He took one last look, scanning the leaves before him, and there, just showing in the smallest gap, he could see the end of a finger, perfectly still, the fingernail was chipped, dirt beneath it.
“Nearly got you,” he muttered.
* * * *
The steady trickle of Cain’s men leaving Myras Woods continued all afternoon, and Skal counted them with growing satisfaction. When the number passed twenty he began to feel confident. Not one of Tilian’s foresters had emerged. It was happening exactly the way that Tilian had said it would. He could see that Cain had grown very still, apart from the occasional drumming of his fingers on his knee or the arm of his chair. The expression on the general’s face had become thoughtful, and he had stopped talking. Others may have taken these signs as an indication that he was annoyed to be losing, but Skal knew better. He’d seen Cain like this at the wall. It meant that he was thinking, calculating, planning.
This was a new weapon. He had no idea what was in Cain’s head, but he was getting into the habit of imitating his former commander, trying to think the way that Cain thought, and the possibilities were enough to set his mind to racing down new paths. There were woods everywhere. Most of the kingdom’s roads ran through woodland at some point, and the same was true of Berash, Afael, and Telas.
What puzzled him was that nobody had thought of this before. It was obvious once you’d seen it. It was a sort of long sightedness, he supposed. The great lords who ruled all
the lands had foresters by the score and soldiers by the hundred. The separation was complete, and he would not have paired the two in the same thought, nor would any of them, not his father, not the old duke, not Aidon or Quinnial. Soldiers fought. Foresters looked after the forest, hunted deer for the table, and deer, well, they were not men. Everywhere there were talents that could be used in war. He remembered Cain’s carpenters, building stairs out of wagons. It was like that.
But Cain saw it, Tilian saw it. They were low born, untrained, used to living on their wits. There was something here that Skal had always suspected. Some people had natural ability, and given a chance it emerged, given just a little light and air it burst forth like a rose among daisies. All the training in the world could not compensate for a dearth of talent. He knew that he had talent. He was good with a sword, had learned his lessons well, and easily. It all came naturally to him. He wondered of Cain would have been a good student. The older man lacked his ability with a blade, but his mind was sharp, in a ponderous, no stone unturned sort of way.
Barain was one of the last to emerge. The sun was sliding down towards the sea, imparting a cold glitter to the water when the sergeant came out. Skal knew him. He’d been Tilian’s sergeant; a competent man, a good soldier, albeit a smith before he’d volunteered, and he’d been one of the first to do so. As he walked past Cain he muttered under his breath.
”Another ten seconds and I’d have had the bastard.”
Cain looked up sharply.
“That’s forty-three,” Skal said.
“Yes,” Cain seemed to wake up, unwind and reached out for his cup of wine. Finding it empty he filled it and tasted it before setting it down. “I was counting, too. I think that barring some miracle we can take the result as conclusive.”
“Tilian has proved his point, then?”
“You just promoted him, did you not?”
“Yes. Lieutenant – and captain of the guard at Latter Fetch.”
“Good choice. He seems a smart boy. Is he country born?”
“Bas Erinor. He worked in a warehouse before the war.”
Cain raised an eyebrow. “City bred? Will you bring him to the Friend tonight? I’ll set up a private room, just a few officers. I want to see where we can go with this.”
Skal nodded. “He’ll like that,” he said.
They waited until the bitter end. The last of Cain’s men was escorted out by Tilian’s victorious squad. Out of the forest they were just young men again, slapping each other on the back and joking among themselves. They were pleasant young men, Skal thought, and he wondered how good they would be at sowing carnage amongst the enemy. Had any of them ever killed a man? Well, there was time to learn that, he supposed, plenty of time before spring.
24. Mourning
Pascha was worried about Narak’s state of mind.
He had returned from the Green Isles in deep mourning, and that was understandable enough. She, too, felt the loss of Narala. Everyone in Wolfguard shared in that grief, but Narak seemed to want to hoard it all for himself. He had retreated almost immediately to the lair, deep beneath the ground, and forbidden anyone from coming to him.
He should have gone out, she thought, become the wolf again and roamed the forest for a few days, even a week. Wolves did not feel grief, they were not sentimental. His wolf nature would have been a bandage beneath which his trauma could have healed.
Instead he had turned it inwards. She had never known him to be so negligent of his duty to others, and she could not see things improving quickly if he persisted in cutting himself off. His people needed him, just as he needed them. His isolation was another blow for all concerned to bear.
In spite of the edict he had issued she thought that she would have to speak to him. No member of the Benetheon had the authority to forbid another, and even within Wolfguard Pascha did not feel bound by his preference. It would be impolite to disregard his wishes, but she thought it necessary.
She had to get past Poor first. The steward took his duty very seriously, and regarded Narak’s edicts as law. She made her way down through the curving corridors into the poorly lit tunnels of the lowest level. Poor was waiting, as she knew he would be, just within earshot of the lair, standing patiently in the half light between two lamps. When he saw her approaching he stepped away from the wall, nor exactly barring her passage, but indicating by the movement that he wished to speak with her first.
“Has he eaten today?” she asked.
Poor shook his head. “No. Nor yesterday.”
“If you have something brought I will take it to him.”
“He will not eat, Deus. And he has forbidden any to disturb him.” She knew this of course, but Poor clearly felt the need to remind her.
“Poor, I am not his to command, and you know there is a bond between us, even now. If I take him food he may yet eat it.”
Poor seemed to consider this for a moment. There was no way in which he could prevent her from entering the lair, and that alone was a persuasive argument. “I will have something brought, Deus,” he said. “Wait here until I return.” The last was more of a plea than a command.
“I will wait,” she said.
Poor stepped quickly along the tunnel, the lamps fluttering as he passed them, and very soon he was out of sight. Pascha stood alone in the silent passage. It was unnaturally quiet down here. The many feet of rock above her, the carpet of soil and leaves, trees and shrubs above that sealed the lair from the upper world, and yet the stone also caught whispers, a boot scuffing the stone, the sound of her swallowing, a sigh, and passed them along the stone walls, an eclectic susurrus of tiny sounds. It was like a breeze, shivering through dead leaves.
She thought she heard a voice. Just at the limit of what she could hear, and her ears were very keen. She heard the hints of baritone, like meat under the skin of the whisper, almost like music played in a distant room. She listened.
Again she heard the deeper tones. Was Narak talking? If so, he was speaking to himself, for Poor would not have allowed another mortal to pass, and Jidian was with Sithmaree several layers above her head. She had checked.
There was another tone, too, an answering tone, higher, even fainter, like the wind-blown song of a flute. It was a conversation. Yet it was all so faint, so ephemeral, that she doubted her own hearing.
Poor’s footsteps, returning down the tunnel drowned out all traces. He was carrying a tray, draped with a cloth. She lifted the corner and saw bread, cheese, fruit; simple food. It was what he liked.
“I’ll take it,” she said, and lifted the tray out of the steward’s hands. He let it go with a good grace, and she walked on, down the forbidden passage that led to the lair. She trod firmly on the stone, making sure that he would hear her approach. She did not want to surprise him, not in this mood.
She stepped into the doorway and stopped. The lair was almost dark. One candle burned, its flame dancing as if caught in a sudden breeze, but there were no breezes down here. Narak was seated in his accustomed chair, the light from the candle making him half silhouette, his right side shining like a sliver of new moon.
“Pascha.” She could not see his mouth move. That part of his face was dark, and she could not see his eyes, but his tone was neutral.
“You must be hungry,” she said. “Poor tells me you haven’t eaten for two days.”
There was a pause before Narak answered. He picked up the candle from where it stood, half behind him – why was it behind him? – and placed it on the table so that she could see his face.
“Yes,” he said. “Bring it over here. Sit.”
She crossed the lair and put the tray on the table. Narak pulled the cloth away. He seemed calm, but closed. He did not meet her eyes. He looked at the food instead.
“Poor is a genius at this,” he said. “This is exactly right – just what I want.”
“He knows you well,” she replied.
Narak began to eat. He ate rapidly, like an animal, almost; his hand mov
ing quickly between the plate and his mouth. He hardly seemed to chew the food at all.
“What did you want?” he asked, barely pausing between mouthfuls. Pascha didn’t answer. She waited until he stopped eating and looked at her. “To make sure I was all right,” he said. “I am.”
“Do you want me to go?”
Narak wasn’t how she had expected him to be. He seemed businesslike, quite normal. It was as though she had interrupted him in the middle of some important task. He did not answer her at once, but put another piece of fruit in his mouth, chewed it slowly as though to buy time. Pascha wondered about the voices, the ones she thought she might have heard out in the passageway. She looked around the lair, but by the light of the single candle she could see nothing. It was all bare rock and shadows, thick rugs on the floor.