Drann led Yulan in through the crude palisade that he and his fellow labourers had bent their backs and bloodied their hands to make. He saw Yulan casting his eyes up and down its length, but could read nothing of his impression. Unfavourable, Drann would have guessed. The fence looked all too obviously what it was: a lot of trees and saplings felled, sharpened and stuck into the ground at various irregular angles by people who barely knew what they were doing. Even to Drann’s innocent eye, it hardly appeared impregnable.
The remains of campfires were strewn amongst the tents. A few still smouldering, most long dead. The lines of horses tethered side by side were silent and listless. Those few fighting men wandering around were sluggish. Even the handful of flags on some of the larger tents hung limp.
Drann marched steadily on, making for the wide white tent near the heart of the camp, where Creel’s orange banner and a green truce flag flew – or rather, hung limply like the rest. He put some effort into keeping a straight back and a long stride, pretending he was full of vigour. It took a certain amount of concentration, so he did not notice for a moment or two that his companion had veered aside. When he did, he turned about sharply and had to run to catch up with him.
Yulan approached a weary-eyed lad who was strapping nosebags to one horse after another along one of the tether lines. The boy looked up, giving every sign of being far, far too early awake.
“I need fodder for my horses,” Yulan said bluntly. “The grass up on the ridge there’s not even fit for cattle.”
The horse boy blinked. Shrugged, as if to express impotence. Drann felt a little twinge of trepidation.
“Enough for a dozen horses,” Yulan said levelly. “Two days’ worth would be good.”
Drann saw the nose wrinkling, the lips forming into refusal. He darted forward, because it seemed like a good idea, and hissed into the boy’s ear: “It’s the Free.”
Which resolved the matter at once. The horse boy rubbed his eyes, opened them wider.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “We’ll send some up there. The ridge?”
Yulan nodded mutely, and pointed the way.
As they drew near to Creel’s tent, there was brief commotion. Laughter. The first Drann had heard that day. Half a dozen men were leading a mule with a great dead stag draped over its back. Drann and Yulan stopped to let them pass. The hunters were dirty, and clearly tired, but flushed with their success. Not just in the hunt, perhaps, but in the war.
The stag was bigger than any Drann had ever seen around his northern village. Magnificent, with many-pointed antlers like huge splayed claws. A head as big as a horse’s. Even in death, it had presence. A dead king, brought down from his wild pasture.
The guards outside Creel’s tent did not look nearly as tired as Drann felt. They looked like alert hawks, in fact, staring out with bright eyes from beneath silvery helms. Unfriendly hawks. Drann was not sure how these things were supposed to go, but he guessed it might be his duty to announce Creel’s visitor.
“He wants to see Creel,” he said, and it did not sound as confident, or apt, as he would have liked.
“Does he?” sneered one of the guards. “Back to your beds. Too early for that kind of —”
Drann flinched and ducked his head down in alarm as Yulan cried out behind him: “Creel! We’ve got ears for you!”
The guards were not amused, and Drann could see the snarls gathering around their mouths, but those were snuffed out by a gruff cry from within.
“Let them in, you slow-wits.”
And thus Drann to his considerable surprise found himself, for the second time in as many days, in close company with two of the most famed warriors of the age.
Creel put him in mind of nothing so much as rock: short, stout, grey of hair and beard. Weathered. A bit eroded perhaps, but if so, merely reduced to a hard kernel against which all other rocks would break. Entirely recovered, as best Drann could tell, from his misadventures of the day before.
Yulan and the lord of Mondoon faced one another, mismatched in size yet precariously balanced in potent presence. Each had that aura to which so many aspired, and so few ascended: authority, confidence, power. Great men. The tent seemed too small to contain them. Had they been dogs – or desert lions, more likely – Drann imagined they would surely have started to pace up and down, to measure one another.
“Where’s my contract-holder?” Creel asked. “I thought you’d be bringing him to me.”
“He’s dead,” Yulan replied.
“You might have mentioned that yesterday.” Creel frowned.
“Didn’t seem of the most urgent import,” Yulan said easily. “He’s as dead now as he was then.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear it. He was a good man.”
“I’ll take your word for it. We told him to stay out of the way. He didn’t. They had Clevered arrows.”
“Really?” Creel’s reserve gave way to a lively spark of interest at that. “Did you bring any back?”
“No. They only had two. One went through your man, the other through my horse. My best horse.”
“A shame.”
The words were uninflected. Drann could not tell whether Creel regretted the loss of horse, man or the chance to acquire some remarkable arrows.
“It was a good horse,” Yulan said.
Creel regarded the mercenary, eyes pinched into a calculating glare. Then, abruptly, his whole face relaxed. A smile – fierce, but a smile – parted his lips, as if he consented to be a part of some joke.
“I’ll take your word for it,” he said. “Do you want to eat? I can’t drink wine this early – this old bone-house of mine wants nothing but sleep if I do – but I’ve some you can have, if you want it.”
“No wine,” Yulan said. “I’ll take bread if you have it, though.”
Creel nodded to one of his attendant warriors, who stepped smartly out of the tent, then gestured for Yulan to settle himself at a small table. No one was paying any heed to Drann, so he stayed quite still and quiet. Hoping to escape notice.
“Your people are safely nested outside the camp?” the warlord asked as he took his own seat.
“The Clamour, you mean,” Yulan grunted. “Yes, we’ll keep our distance.”
“Good, good. Too many tired folks with blades around here to test their nerves, eh?”
Yulan upended the sack he carried, spilling ears like little pickled dainties across the table. Creel regarded them dispassionately. One tumbled to the floor. No one made a move to retrieve it. Drann had to suppress an instinct to step forward, pick it up and set it carefully down amongst its fellows on the table. Somehow, he doubted his intervention would be welcome. In any case, he saw no need to remind anyone of his presence.
Yulan produced a battered, bent manuscript case from inside his jerkin. It was stained, and had part-folded itself about a notch punched through one side of it. He ripped it open down its length, and unrolled as best he could the similarly discoloured and deformed parchment within.
“Sorry about the blood. Your man carried it strapped across his chest. The arrow went through contract and him alike. But you can see’ – he held the document out to Creel, who took hold of it – “you can see that he marked down twenty kills before he died. For the other forty you’ll have to take my word. There’s not a man bearing blade in the King’s name left between here and Trumock. We’ve done as you asked of us.”
Creel examined the fouled contract intently. He showed no distaste, that Drann could detect, at the blood soaked into it.
“Can you do that?” Yulan asked. “Take my word?”
Creel folded the parchment and tucked it inside his jerkin.
“I’ve heard men attach all manner of calumny and offence to your name, but never the betrayal of a contract, or lying about its completion. And I’d say you won more than a little of my faith with your work yesterday, wouldn’t you?”
It was only now, noting a faint softening in Yulan’s shoulders and hands, that Drann realised the e
xtent to which the Captain of the Free had been prepared for a different response. He had not been certain of Creel’s answer. And Drann had no idea what would have happened if it had been less accommodating.
“Payment’s in the pouch,” Creel said, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder towards a dark corner of the tent, where not one but several leather bags lay in a pile. “You want it now?”
“After I’ve eaten.”
“Good. Let’s break bread.”
Creel abruptly swept his arm across the table, sending the severed ears scattering over the rug. One tumbled to touch the toe of Drann’s boot before falling flat. He kicked it discreetly away. They reminded him of the pig’s ears the butcher in his village sometimes sold by the handful.
The guard who had been waiting patiently by the tent’s entrance with a platter of bread came forward and set it down on the table. The lord of Mondoon tore a loaf in half with all the enthusiasm of a ravenous farmhand, and offered a hunk to Yulan.
Whatever was between these two great men, it was beyond Drann’s ability to put into simple words. A thing particular to great men, perhaps; incomprehensible to those of meaner standing. Wariness. A grudging regard. Even – though Drann was not at all sure he was not imagining this one – a hint of abrasive affection.
“I’ve another contract to offer you,” Creel said through a half-chewed mouthful. A few crumbs of soft dough escaped his lips and congregated in his beard.
“I told you the Trumock road was likely the Free’s last labour,” Yulan said. “That hasn’t changed. We’re done.”
Creel laughed. Yulan did not.
“Didn’t believe you then, don’t now,” Creel said.
“We’ve tested our luck a long time and it’s held firm, but it gets to be burdensome. There’s more than a few of us’d not weep to leave all this behind, me amongst them; and there’s none could easily take my place at the head once I’m gone. I think our time – the free companies’ time – is finally passed.”
“It passed for all the rest of them a good while back. Not you, though. Not the Free.”
“Even us. Our charter’s a grant of the Hommetic kings. There won’t be any more of them, will there? No more kings?”
“No,” Creel acknowledged. “They found Crex a few days ago in the Holden Shaw, hiding in a woodcutter’s cottage. Wearing a woodcutter’s clothes, the silly goat. His head’s spiked and sent to Armadell-on-Lake, arms and legs to four other cities.”
“Equitable of you, to share him out. Makes our charter a good deal less certain than it was, though. Will your Council honour it? Enforce it? You and your friends rose up to put an end to the arbitrary exercise of power, didn’t you?”
“Depends who you ask. Me, Crex had already taken my brother-in-law’s head, and he was better than halfway convinced I was plotting against him. Making the rumour real seemed my best course. But arbitrary exercise of power? I suppose that’s the taproot, for some of us.”
“Well, that’s what’s sitting across this table from you. I am the arbitrary exercise of power. Anyone who can afford the Free can buy enough power to exercise it just about any way they choose. Is your Council going to rest easy with that?”
“You’ve more friends than foes amongst the cities,” Creel said, with an expansively dismissive shrug. “I doubt you’ve anything to fear from the Council, or whatever might succeed us.”
Yulan smiled, though Drann felt there was more sadness than mirth in the expression.
“And what about the School? They spent decades harrying all the other companies into nothingness. We’re unfinished business for them, and believe me, they’ve tried to finish it more than once.”
“Yet it remains unfinished, because you’re too fierce and friend-rich for even them to wrestle to the ground,” Creel said. “But they’re a thing of the Kingdom, anyway. Their word’ll not carry the weight it once did. Sided with us in the end, but by all accounts they near tore themselves apart trying to decide between us and Crex.”
“They didn’t side with you; they decided not to side with the King. You’d do well to mark the difference. The School was there – a sapling, but there – before the Kingdom, before even the first of the free companies. Outlasted both, outgrew both, and had more than a small hand in the ending of both. I’ll give you a wager, if you like: every penny, every copper bit, of the prize in that pouch over there, that you learn just how much weight the word of the School still carries inside… oh, six months’d be more than time enough.”
“Well, I’ll not test my fortune against your judgement. You’ve the quickest wits of any man on the continent, it’s said.”
“Not true,” Yulan said sharply, and Drann thought he detected just the faintest wince of displeasure at the suggestion. “Not by a long way.”
Creel grunted. Leaned back in his chair, chewing a contemplative mouthful. After a moment or two’s silence, he shrugged. Yulan’s olive hand, resting on the surface of the table, stirred. The first finger began to tap at the wood. Soft, but regular. It put Drann in mind of the twitching of a cat’s tail. Creel did not seem to notice, or care.
“I can’t force you to take what I offer, of course. I’ve a mind this might be a contract you want, though.”
“Do you?” Yulan asked with an air of indifference, still drumming that finger, staring into Creel’s eyes. “Why’s that?”
“Well, the thing is this: it looks like the last stagnant pool of the Hommetic swamp might be ripe for the draining, if I can find some fleet-footed folk with good big spades for the task.”
“Who?”
“Callotec.”
And at the uttering of the name, everything changed. As if a sudden frost had crisped out of the air to chill and still everything, every breath. Yulan’s finger stopped in mid tap, held crooked and motionless. His eyes narrowed as he regarded the lord of Mondoon.
“Not a great threat to your new settlement, I’d have thought,” he said, very calmly and quietly. “Friendless, that one.”
“Friendless as they come,” Creel agreed. “I’ll pay well for him, nonetheless. Twice what you’ll carry off today. That’s enough to give even coin-heavy folks like the Free pause for thought, isn’t it? One last pay day to grease your retirement.”
“Why do you care so much about Callotec?”
“Well I’m not one for leaving a task only nine tenths done. But more especially, it seems that last loose tenth is on his way to the Empire. There’s nobody wants the last man with a claim on the throne sitting in Arnothex making friends with the Orphans. Particularly not if that man’s a viper like Callotec. It’d be all but a promise of blood to come. Rivers of the stuff.”
Yulan folded his hands in his lap, clasping them together.
“The Orphans acquiring a claimant needn’t change much, not even a cousin to Crex; you – the School, at least – still have the Bereaved. They’re mad folk in the Empire, but not so mad they’ll unlearn their fear of that any time soon, no matter how Callotec tries to goad them.”
Creel took another bite of bread, and waved the small hunk remaining in his hand with a flourish.
“A plan that rests upon the sanity of the Orphans is a turd of a plan, Yulan. I don’t need to worry about it if I’ve got Callotec’s head on my table, do I?” he said through spittle and dough.
“Who’s with him?” Yulan asked.
“Three or four dozen Armsmen, from what we hear. No Clevers.”
“Seems like excess to set me and mine on the man, then. Cleaving a mouse with a broadsword.”
Creel rocked back in his chair and sighed.
“You use a broadsword if that’s what’s to hand. My lads are war-spent. I left better than half of them at Caradon, and you saw yesterday what the ones I’ve got left’re worth. Anyway, I can afford you, since I scooped up a nice little treasury at Caradon, so why not?”
“Why not? Because the Free’s done, Creel. Most of those who aren’t with me here are already on their way to White Steading for th
e settling of shares.”
“But it’s the Dog-Lord,” insisted Creel with sudden vigour. “You’re telling me that counts for nothing? I don’t believe it. I know you better than that.”
Drann did not understand the import of all this. He had never heard of any Callotec, cousin to the King, Dog-Lord. But that frost was still on the air. In the leaden, quiet pause, he could clearly feel it. The name meant something, to one or both of these men. Yulan was staring down at his interlaced fingers, lost in thought.
“You haven’t asked me where he’s running to,” Creel said, looking away for a moment.
“You said,” Yulan muttered. “The Empire.”
“Yes, but what drain does the rat mean to sneak away through? He’s making for the Old Threetower Road, Yulan. That’s what I hear. He’s making for Towers’ Shadow.”
The Captain of the Free sighed at that. Whatever or wherever Towers’ Shadow was – Drann had no more heard of such a place than he had heard of Callotec – it carried great weight for some reason.
“I’ll take your contract,” Yulan said quietly. “Me. I can only promise you my own sword.”
Creel frowned. He rubbed his chin, brushing crumbs from his beard.
“And I’d back your one against Callotec’s dozens,” he said, “but the contract’ll be with the Free. Not just you. Yes? You’ll ask them, give them the chance?”
“I’ll ask them,” Yulan conceded. “But I won’t compel a single one of them. The Free’s finished, as far as they’re concerned.”
He extended his hand across the table. Creel stared at it, pondering, then said, “Agreed,” and clasped it in his own. The two lions shared a curt handshake.
“Done, then,” Creel smiled.
“How did you get into Caradon?” Yulan asked, and the change in his tone was dramatic. His voice, and the very air within the tent, was entirely drained now of any hint of tension, any consequence to the matters under discussion. It was to be, it seemed, merely two men passing the time in idle conversation.
Drann found his own shoulders easing, and his stance softening; his body responded of its own volition to that change in the timbre of proceedings. He had not realised how tight he had been before.
The Free Page 3