It was the first contract Yulan had taken as leader of the Free, and – he understood later but not then, not in the midst of those days and deeds – he was hot with a giddying mix of self-import, responsibility, anticipation. He was hungry to prove himself worthy of Merkent’s legacy, conscious of the need to show that the Free remained potent. He thought himself fully capable of doing so. Many people had praised his wisdom, his cunning and his fitness for command over the years, after all. He had allowed himself to believe them.
By the standards of the past, it was a small matter: thirty of the Free, serving as scouts and cutting edge for five hundred Armsmen sent to hunt down the stragglers of a failed Sorentine revolt. Crex the King called it a revolt, at least. In truth, like all the trouble made by the tumultuous Sorentines since they lost their throne, it was little more than a bloody adventure born of resentment and rivalries and a surfeit of young men with something to prove. But they had anointed a bull as totem of their war, which gave their raiding a certain standing in their own eyes and by their own rituals. So Crex had sent his cousin Callotec, with five hundred men and a pledge of enough gold to buy the Free’s services.
By the time Yulan and Hamdan and Rudran led the Free, and behind them Callotec and his little army, into the village of Towers’ Shadow, the hard work was five days done. They had killed close to three hundred Sorentines on the slopes of Bruman Hill. Another hundred, taken alive, were beheaded along the stream at the hill’s foot. Callotec knelt them along its bank, one great straggling line of them, and watched as they were executed one after another. Yulan, standing far away up on the higher ground where the killing had been more honest, and less cold, noted that the beheadings began upstream. Many loosened heads tumbled into the water. Many of the corpses slumped forward and did the same, entirely or in part. The current took heads and great slicks of blood down the channel, past those who were yet to die, to gild their anticipation of the coming sword. Yulan had heard of Callotec’s shallow cruelty before – it was whispered that even Crex despised him – but only then, at Bruman Hill, did he learn something of it at first hand. Not quite enough, as it turned out.
There were few Sorentines still on the loose after that, and they were running, not raiding. They ran into the furthest corner of the lands the Hommetics claimed, where the Empire of Orphans was barely a half-day westward and there was nothing at all to the south save the vast territories of the Massatan peoples. Yulan’s people. As were those who dwelled in Towers’ Shadow. They were not of his kin – he had never set foot there before, or met anyone from the village – but they were of his kind. More settled than most of his folk, living beyond the main territories of their tradition and history, they nevertheless had the tongue and the look and the manner that had been his own until he was old enough to go wandering in search of something more. It was a long time since Yulan had thought of himself having any home but the Free; even so, to see the people of Towers’ Shadow and hear them speak was to be invited back into memories that were more good than bad.
Those people themselves, though, were suffering through a present that had little of the good about it. That was clear as soon as Yulan saw the bare fields around the village, with their dried irrigation ditches and delicate swirls of dust dancing on the hot breeze. Far above the great cliffs of the escarpment beyond, dark vultures and buzzards swung in lazy circles. Patient. A handful of children were playing in the arid fields, scratching patterns in the dust. They stopped to watch Yulan and the others riding in. Their eyes, he noted, were sunken, their skin paler than it should have been.
The villagers came out to meet Yulan. Callotec had sent the Free – and Yulan in particular – ahead for just this: to speak to the people in their own tongue, and prepare the way for the Hommetic army close behind.
He dismounted and passed the reins to Hamdan. He bowed his head to an old woman who came forward. She was wrapped in a tan shawl despite the heat and burdened by a heavy, rusted iron key on a chain about her neck. She looked weary, and hungry. They all did. The children who watched from a nervous distance were thin. No men, save the aged. That told Yulan all he needed to know of how things stood.
“You’re Massatan,” the old woman said, in the language of Yulan’s childhood.
“I am, mistress.”
“Him too,” she grunted, pointing with a blunt thumb at Hamdan, who sat silently on his horse behind Yulan.
“Him too,” Yulan agreed. “The men who are coming after us are Hommetics, though. They mean to camp here for a day or two.”
“So we thought. Looking for the bull-folk, are they? There are none here. None near.”
“Then we and the Hommetics will pass on soon, mistress, and cause you no trouble.”
“Do you have food?” she asked, looking him in the eye. Not a trace of pleading, or desperation. Just a quiet question.
“My people and I can find a little to share with you,” Yulan said with a regretful half-smile, “but the man behind us, the one with the army… it might be best not to ask that question of him.”
She nodded and looked away.
“Wolf, is he?” she murmured.
“Jackal perhaps, mistress. But he does bite.”
“World’s awash with jackals. You look more the lion, fit to keep them at bay.”
She turned from him, and started to walk away.
“Your men are out hunting, trading, looking for food?” Yulan asked her.
“Where else would they be? Nothing for them to do here but take food out of the mouths of their children.”
Yulan nodded. “It would be best if you told your people to keep to their homes these next few days. Callotec thinks himself your lord, you his people. He might be impatient of any disagreement on the matter.”
As far as the Hommetic throne was concerned, the shadow of its authority fell far across the southern lands, but there were no hereditary lords here to enforce the King’s law or claim his tithes as they did in other parts of the domain. Tax-takers came only now and again, and some of those who did never went home again. Dead by flood or lion, the Massatans – a people of independent instinct – would gravely and sorrowfully say, or simply lost in the wide reaches of trackless scrub and desert.
The old woman smiled at Yulan, without parting her dry, lined lips.
“Is he your lord, this Callotec?”
“No. But he is the man who pays me, today.”
“Spoken like a true Massatan. You talk your own language like an outsider, but there’s still some of the south in you after all. Let this man who pays you think what he will.” She jabbed her thumb towards the abandoned fortification on a hilltop outside the village. “The Kingshouse has been empty for years, but if they still want to call this Hommetic land, they can. It makes no odds to us.”
The Free camped on the hillock, beside the hollow Kingshouse. Yulan always chose high ground when he could. Callotec arrayed his men on the fields below. Yulan did not know whether he would have done so even if the crops were abundant, but as it was, it hardly mattered. There was nothing to trample save the fine, dusty soil waiting for the wind to carry it off.
The trouble came with the dawn. Rudran, leader of the Free’s little band of lancers, shook Yulan ungently awake.
“Up and about,” the horseman hissed in his ear. “You’ll want to see this, I think.”
“See what?” Yulan asked, his throat sore, his lips arid. Even the air was dry enough to rob a man of moisture while he slept.
“See how Callotec’s lads are amusing themselves, down in the village.”
Rudran was not an eloquent or expressive man. But there was some colour to his voice and face that morning; some anger. That was enough to make Yulan hurry. He buckled his sword on as he bounded down the hill. Even in the day’s barely part-formed light, he could see the crowd gathered at the edge of the village. From its sound and its indistinct, roiling motion he caught its flavour, and that made him lengthen his stride. Hamdan was the only one of the Free to k
eep pace with him, though he could hear others coming after them, more cautiously.
One of Callotec’s warriors was flogging the headwoman of Towers’ Shadow. That was what Yulan found when he barged his way his through the jeering ranks of Hommetic men. The old woman’s shawl had been torn away, her tunic ripped open across her back. She was half crawling, half writhing on the ground as her assailant lashed at her with a knotted rope. Her frail, thin skin was lacerated and welted. There was blood, but not a lot; her age and weakness left little of it to spare for marking her wounds. She was shaking and twitching. Not crying out, but, Yulan suspected, dying a little more with each blow.
He reached out as he drew near to the man with the whip. Took an iron grip upon the man’s wrist, and hooked his other arm around his neck. He bent almost double and threw the man over his hips, rolling him on to the ground, face down. He kept hold of the wrist, twisted it and set a foot on the shoulder joint at the root of that arm. The whip fell from spasming fingers. Another twist, just another few fragments of weight, and Yulan would break bone, or rupture that shoulder.
Villagers were running to the headwoman. In the crowd, others were wailing, or raging. Yulan knew what the people of Towers’ Shadow wanted him to do. He could not give it to them.
“Oh, here we are,” Hamdan murmured, still a little short of breath after the hurried descent from their camp. Yulan looked round.
“Let that man go.”
The warriors had silently parted, and opened a path for Callotec to come walking slowly through and on to the clear ground between them and the village folk. He wore a heavy red robe of the sort his rich kind might don when first rising from their bed. His hair was still tousled from his slumber. His narrow chin and sharp nose did not give him a commanding presence, but Yulan caught the scent of danger, and of menace, clearly enough.
“Let my man go,” Callotec insisted.
Yulan released his grip. His captive groaned and staggered to his feet, stumbling away with a hand clasped to his damaged shoulder.
“They have taken three of my dogs,” Callotec said, staring fixedly into Yulan’s eyes. “Some boys were seen carrying them off from the stables, in the night.”
“The stables?” Yulan said incredulously. “You put your hunting dogs in their stables?”
Callotec might be cruel, but self-indulgence was his more striking trait. From the first, he had treated this campaign as an inconvenience to be tolerated, its rigours offset by an absurd train of attendants, wagons loaded with wine and fine food. And the hunting dogs. Thirty of them, and each standing more highly in Callotec’s affections than any man under his command, as best Yulan could tell.
“Why should I not accommodate my hounds as I see fit?” Callotec rasped. “They need respite. Each is worth more than any horse that might ever have rested its legs in this midden of a place. And if even the property of the King’s family is not safe from the avarice of these savages, then they are forgetful of their place and duties. I know how to remind them. I will have the thieves, or I will scourge the life from those who think the throne’s command carries no more weight than a leaf on the wind.”
“No,” said Yulan.
“What?” Callotec said flatly.
“Take care,” Hamdan whispered in Yulan’s ear. “Might not be the moment to pick a fight. Not with the entire Hommetic Kingdom. We could manage a few dozen, but five hundred’s a bit beyond even us, don’t you think?”
The anger tightening Yulan’s throat was a rare thing. Unfamiliar in its urgency. Born, he later recognised with the boundless wisdom of hindsight, of many fathers; not the least of them his bitter regret and shame at his failure to save Merkent, and his longing to make the Free, inherited from that good man, something he would have been proud of. It all rendered him short of temper and patience. His thoughts, that day in Towers’ Shadow, were not as considered, or as quick, as they might have been. But he did, at least, find the presence of mind to swallow before he spoke to Callotec, and to exile all indignation from his face and voice.
“The boys – the thieves – will be long gone by now, fleeing your wrath out into the wilds,” he told the King’s cousin. “Might be we come across them, in a day or two, out there somewhere. They’ll not be found by whipping these know-naughts.”
“You think not? I think these brown-skins deliver those boys to me, or they pay the price themselves. I think they need tutoring in the matter of respect for their betters.”
“It might be so, sire, but this’ – Yulan waved an arm in the direction of the prone, bloodied woman, without taking his eyes from Callotec’s – “will only make it harder to get what you want. It’ll close mouths, not open them. I know these people.”
“Of course you do,” Callotec sneered. “You’re one of them. And you think they are not subject to the same laws as the rest of my cousin’s subjects. You think their insolence should go unpunished, like your own, because in their abject ignorance they know no better than to behave like pigs.”
Yulan had met with mockery before, on account of his Massatan heritage. More than once, when he was young and freshly come to the Hommetic heartlands, he had broken noses in answer to it. It was not something he had needed to do since he joined with the Free. That affiliation, and his own reputation, silenced any barbed tongues. But the depth and completeness of the contempt he saw in Callotec’s face woke old instincts. He imagined – saw, in pleasing detail – himself surging forwards, putting a single hard blow in to the side of Callotec’s face, just below the cheekbone. It would break or dislocate the man’s jaw, perhaps knock loose some teeth. Certainly, it would put him down. Callotec was not the sort to withstand even a single strike. But then, he did not need to be. He was of Crex’s blood. Untouchable, and he knew it.
“There are other ways to punish whatever insolence has been shown,” Yulan said tightly. “Ways that need not turn the whole village against you. Against us. Our business is putting down a revolt, after all; not fomenting a fresh one.”
Callotec glared at him. He did not look away. Heartbeats of silence passed. Villagers, warriors all waited, and watched.
And Callotec fluttered a dismissive hand.
“So be it. If the whip’s not the answer, so be it. Only dogs, eh? Of no great consequence. That’s what I’m to think?”
“That’s not —’ Yulan began, but Callotec had swung away, his robe swirling about his ankles.
“Enough,” he snapped over his shoulder. “Enough. I’m tired. I slept badly. I’m going to rest.”
The warriors drifted away in their lord’s wake, back out into the fields they had claimed for their camp. The villagers closed around their damaged, wounded headwoman. Yulan knelt at her side. Her eyes were closed, the lids trembling. She breathed thinly. She had bitten through her lip, and there was blood all over her mouth and teeth.
“Jackals,” she whispered, faint as a mouse in the grass.
That evening, Callotec came to the Free’s camp. Yulan and the rest were seated in one great circle around a fire they had set, all of them save the few standing guard out in the dusk. They had cooked flatbreads on stones at the fireside, and ate them with a paste of ground nuts. No one had been speaking much, and Callotec’s sudden arrival at the edge of the circle of firelight ensured no one would be doing so now. At his appearance, Yulan and many of the others made to rise; a great shuffling of feet.
“Stay where you are,” Callotec muttered, holding his hand up. “Eat.”
Yulan nodded in curt gratitude, but set aside his bread in any case. Whether by his own invitation or not, Callotec did not seem like a man to be casually disrespected.
“I have decided to forgive you your earlier impertinence,” Callotec said, and Yulan could hear clearly enough the lie of that, buried just beneath the words.
“I am grateful, sire,” he said, getting to his feet. Sitting in this man’s presence was probably no wiser than eating, he guessed.
“Good,” grunted Callotec. “Now, I requir
e your service, and that of your men. There’s word that the Sorentines, what remains of them, are in a valley half a day north. Turned back towards their own lands, if it’s true. I want you to go and put eyes on them, bring me word of their strength and direction.”
“All of us?” Yulan asked doubtfully.
“All of you. My men are wearied. They’ve done their part in finding the shepherd who told us this. Now it is for the Free to test the truth of it, and discover its meaning. That’s what you’re here for, is it not? It’s what I’m paying you for, is it not?”
It’s Crex who’s promised to pay us, Yulan could have pointed out. But the contract was between the Free and Callotec, even if the gold was Crex’s.
He had thirty men: Rudran and his lancers, Hamdan and his archers. Not one Clever, for the task and the enemy had not demanded it. The Sorentines, if they these days even had any Clevers amongst them save a few walking-witches, had never been inclined to use them in war. They preferred their fighting done with iron and sinew, and thirty of the Free should not need any Clevers to meet whatever such materials these Sorentines had left after Bruman Hill. Unless Callotec was knowingly sending them into a furnace. Which, Yulan grimly reflected, was not out of the question.
That was not what really concerned him. He had boundless faith in the abilities of the men he commanded, and no small amount in his own ability to lead them. On any ground, so long as they had the freedom to move and fight as they chose, he knew they should overmatch ten times their number of ill-disciplined, half-beaten Sorentines; and could escape a greater number, if it came to it. No, what worried him, and set his every instinct for trouble on edge, was the question of what might happen between Callotec’s warriors and the people of Towers’ Shadow while the Free were half a day away.
There was the contract, though. There was the duty to fulfil it, and to win for the Free their first gold-prize since he had become leader. An open breach with the royal family would be a disastrous, perhaps fatal, beginning to make. Crex’s own cousin was issuing an instruction, and was not the sort to acquiesce in its refusal. So many times, Merkent and others had praised the sharpness and nimbleness of Yulan’s wits, and yet no insight came to him there beside the Kingshouse at Towers’ Shadow. He felt impotent. Bereft of choice.
The Free Page 5