The Free

by Brian Ruckley

  The waiting became uncomfortable. Partly because of the unresolved tension between knowledge and ignorance: Drann knew something was going to happen – something significant – but not what it would be. Not what it would be like to witness it, live through it.

  He settled, eventually, just a few paces away from Kerig and his tree. The Clever had apparently lost all interest in talking, and lapsed into an inward-looking silence. His eyes had closed. His lips still moved, soundlessly. It looked as though he was reciting, over and over again, some memorised passage. Preparing himself, perhaps. Whatever he was doing, it had no room for Drann in it any more.

  Kerig’s last audible words had been to the tree, not Drann: “Sorry about this, old timber.”

  So Drann sat, with arms folded across his raised knees and chin resting on arms, staring out over the dry grasslands.

  As the sun slowly descended towards the western horizon, the light had deepened and become less harsh, raising a softer orange-yellow from the thin grass and dust. It was not a colour Drann had ever seen in his homeland, up in the hills on the north-western fringes of the Hommetic domain. There, it was all green grass, grey rocks. The white of snow on the high ground. It rained too much for anything to ever dry to this pale ochre hue. On balance, he preferred those dank hills; there was something just a little too wizened and barren about this desiccated terrain.

  A little too dust-bearing. That was what he saw then: a thin plume of dust, arising from some indistinct, moving source perhaps two or three miles away. A moving source that was coming closer. Horsemen, Drann realised almost at once. Coming true as an arrow, straight for that hillock, its solitary tree and the four of them. Coming fast.

  He scrambled to his feet, turning towards the two archers, but they had already seen the same thing. All their languid indolence was gone as if it had never been. They were stringing their bows.

  As they drew nearer, Drann guessed there must be thirty riders. At first he thought they might be a happenstance, but they were galloping, and even Drann knew horsemen seldom galloped unless driven by some pressing purpose. And they were following neither track nor ebb and flow of the land. They were coming straight for the very piece of ground upon which Drann stood. They stank of intent.

  “Who is it?” Drann called to the archers.

  They paid him no heed. They stared fixedly out, watching the riders. At best, they seemed to Drann uneasy; at worst, afraid.

  When it started, it started quietly. A gentle preamble to what was to come.

  “Ha,” Drann heard Kerig saying softly behind him.

  He twisted round to look. The Clever was looking at the thumb of the hand in which he held all that shorn hair.

  “Here we go,” Kerig said.

  His tone was conversational, inconsequential, but Drann could clearly see the tightness that entered his expression. The slight pinching of his brow and narrowing of his eyes. Drann got to his feet and walked over.

  When he got close, he could see a pinprick of blood on the ball of Kerig’s thumb. It looked like nothing. An insect bite. Kerig sucked the blood away.

  “What happened?” Drann asked.

  “Stand back,” Kerig said, still calm. “Can be dangerous for onlookers, this.”

  Then he winced sharply. Gave one of his feet a little shake.

  “And that’s Yulan’s foot. Hope he’s happy now, bastard that he is.”

  A low creak sounded from the tree above. Drann backed away. Not far. He watched as Kerig flexed the arm that was tied to the tree, bending a little stiffness out of the joint; rolled his head around his shoulders. Closed his eyes once more.

  Drann glanced at Lebid and the other man guarding the horses. They were both staring at Kerig now. The threat of the approaching horsemen was briefly set aside.

  Lebid waved at Drann, beckoning him away from the tree. The urgency of the gesture was striking, and irresistible. A little puzzled, Drann walked further towards the horses. That was why he had his back to Kerig when the Clever cried out the first time.

  It was part cry, part scream, in truth. It made Drann spin on his heel. He was in time to see a great wound spring open on Kerig’s face, the skin flicking apart as if slashed with a knife from chin to cheekbone. Flecks of blood flew. The Clever straightened sharply; his head rocked back.

  Drann started to run towards Kerig, hearing the archers shouting behind him. He had taken no more than a couple of strides before he saw the long cut closing up, sealing itself as if it had never been. Kerig’s whole body trembled. His hand, as much as the bonds that held it against the tree would allow, clawed.

  And the tree boomed. The sound came from somewhere deep inside the bole. A crack zigzagged across its bark, just above Kerig’s hand. It ran perhaps a quarter-way around the trunk. Drann stopped, and blinked.

  Kerig suddenly hunched over, folding down around a point on his left side. He blew out a great gasping gust of spent air. A dark flower of blood bloomed on his shirt, the fruit of some grave injury to his flank. And in the instant it appeared, he jerked upright again.

  A hole burst open in the tree trunk, as if some invisible fist had punched through from within. The eruption sent fragments of bark and splinters spinning out. Drann ducked instinctively as one, the size of a finger, flashed past his head.

  He recovered himself, and turned back to Hamdan’s men.

  “What’s happening?” he shouted to them.

  “What’s supposed to happen,” Lebid said.

  “Except they’re not supposed to happen,” the other muttered, glaring at the tight knot of riders drawing rapidly closer.

  20

  The School’s Butcher

  Yulan’s great horse bucked and reared amidst a knot of his enemies like a ship in the grip of turbulent seas. He hacked down, first to one side then the other, at heads and arms and shoulders. They still reached for him, some of those hands and spears, not yet understanding what they faced. He cut them away.

  The wound in his left side, where one of the first spears had punched in, was already gone. The searing, startling pain of its arrival carried away, just as the rending of his flesh had been, just as the older wounds to his foot had been; all that harm flying, a formless bird, across the distance from him to Kerig, sitting and suffering beneath his doomed tree. Yulan could spare no sympathy for Kerig, though. Not now. When it was done, when the Clever’s sacrifice had bought them their victory, then perhaps there would be time to acknowledge it. Now, that sacrifice must be used, not mourned.

  Callotec’s column was a snake, struck in its flank by Yulan and Rudran and their few riders. It writhed and tightened and twisted in unthinking response to the blow. Uncaring what injuries might be inflicted upon him, Yulan could watch its throes.

  The mules were scattering, some of them already splashing into the stream, dragging their handlers with them. The wagons tried to push forwards, even as men from the head of the column turned to rush back and confront the assault. Hamdan and his bowmen up above the road were dropping riders from their mounts, putting swordsmen on their knees. As Yulan watched, an arrow darted into the shoulder of one of the wagoners and set him sagging sideways. He dragged on the reins as he slumped, and the wagon skewed across the road.

  Rudran’s lancers were wheeling in unison amongst the great fraying crowd of their foes. An arrowhead of hawks, plunging through a disordered flock of songbirds. Their first charge, down the steep slope and across the flat ground into the unready ranks, had been brutally successful. Men had gone down beneath their horses, died on their lances, been thrown violently aside. Already they had cut clean through the spine of Callotec’s column, and now turned in neat array to fall on it once more. Some were casting aside broken lances, raising their long, cruel maces. No words or signs were needed, for these men were as well trained as any horsemen anywhere.

  Yulan was not a part of Rudran’s arrowhead. He fought, and rode, alone in their wake. He felt his horse stagger. A knife or sword had opened a long cut on
its shoulder, scoring a ragged line through its hide. He saw the edges of that rough wound already knitting back together, as its burden was visited instead upon Kerig. He slashed down at the Clade warrior who had inflicted it. His sword did not cut all the way through the padding on the man’s shoulder, but the blow was hard enough to break the collarbone beneath. Yulan heard its clicking snap, even through the tumult of battle.

  Hoofbeats told him that Callotec’s rearguard was coming up. He glanced that way, as another fleeting stab of pain in his thigh recorded a knife’s stab. A mass of lancers – Armsmen from Armadell-on-Lake itself, the red blaze on their breasts told him – were charging, lances levelled, horses already at full gallop. They made for a fearsome sight, but Yulan felt no fear. He trusted Wren and Akrana, watching from somewhere up on the high ground, to do what was needed.

  The forelegs of the lead horse plunged deep into the road surface. Hard-packed earth suddenly turned to sinking sand as loose as liquid, sucking down cobblestones and hoofs alike. That was Wren. The first horse, and then another, pitched forward. Their legs broke as they went down. Their riders rolled and were trampled, bringing down more. Lances were falling from hands, their wielders crying out and clasping at their own eyes. Blinded, Yulan knew; and that was Akrana, and the Hibernal entelech she used, marking them. The charge at once began to slip into churning disorder. A wave breaking and collapsing before it reached the shore.

  Yulan’s horse burst free of the assailants surrounding it, and in doing so set many of them to flight. Dozens more were already scrambling to get away from Rudran’s men, across the stream, over the wagons, even up the slope towards Hamdan’s bows. The warriors of the School’s Clade stood firm, but the rest were not minded to die today.

  A Clever had climbed on to the seat of one of the wagons, and was holding both hands towards Yulan, fingers splayed. Every Clever had different habits in their use of the entelechs; this one was evidently of a showy, ostentatious sort. Ill suited, like most of the School’s people, to the immediate demands of battle. An arrow transfixed his neck and he toppled leadenly from his perch.

  Clade spearmen were gathering between Yulan and the wagons. Panic did not yet have hold of them. They were trying to make a hedge of shields and spears, curved across the line of the road. Yulan knew he needed disorder if the Free were to carry the day, if he was to reach Callotec. He drove his horse at those half-formed ranks. Several of Rudran’s men came in tight array after him, knowing the same thing.

  The horses broke in amongst the spearmen, and for long moments the chaos of battle spread its wings over them all, gathered them into its embrace. Fragments of shield flew. Spears broke, horses stumbled. Men fell, howled, spat spittle and blood. A spear went up into the neck of Yulan’s horse. The animal slumped to its knees, and Yulan rocked forward in the saddle. He loosed the reins and reached to pull the shaft free. That was one thing that could sometimes undo all of Kerig’s protective work: a weapon that remained in the wound it made.

  He tore the spear loose, more concerned with speed than care, and the horse shook. Yulan felt its strength coming back to it at once, though. It began to rise. Someone threw themselves across his back, clawing at his neck. The horse lurched down again. Then Rudran himself was there, clubbing Yulan’s assailant away. The lancer was grinning fiercely, eyes a little glazed, a little distant. An arrow was lodged in his shoulder. He pulled it out and threw it aside.

  Yulan’s horse surged up, and bounded forward of its own accord. It brought him hard up against one of the wagons. A Clade spearman ran at him and tried to impale him against the wooden sideboard. Yulan bent flat against his horse’s neck and the spear rasped across the small of his back, cutting through his jerkin and his skin. There was no space for the swing he would have liked, but he managed to put enough strength into his sword arm to sever fingers from the spearman’s hand and to break the shaft beneath them.

  Yulan straightened. Someone was leaping at him from atop the wagon. He caught the glint of a knife. An arrow sprang down and smacked home, but too late to stop the leap becoming a fall, carrying the man into Yulan. His foot came loose from his stirrup under the impact; he was borne down beneath its weight, and knew that if he did not let it take him, he would be left trailing from the other stirrup, caught in it. And so he kicked himself free and fell with the arrow-shot man to the ground.

  He rolled away at once, came up in a crouch, sword still in hand. They ran at him as dogs might to a lamed deer, but found him a harder prey than they thought. Kerig’s sacrifice bought him an abandon; freed from that need to guard himself, he could attack, and fling himself at his enemies, and look only for the openings that would allow him to kill them. They cut him and pierced him. The pain came and went, the wounds came and went. But he killed them. All that he could reach.

  His horse had waited for him. He turned to it and set foot to stirrup, ready to throw himself up on to its back and ride for Callotec, and for any who stood with him beyond these wagons. But behind him he heard the clatter of metal on metal, the beating of hoofs. He looked.

  Some few of the rearguard had come unscathed through the nightmarish obstacles Wren and Akrana had set in their path. Very few, but enough to draw half of Rudran’s men into a swirling melee of horse against horse. And as Yulan watched, one of those marvellously armoured and becostumed horses that his lancers rode took a scything sword blow to the side of its neck and staggered, reeled. It twisted its head, its legs went from under it and it crashed down on its side. And did not rise. Its blood continued to flow.

  Alarm clenched tight in Yulan’s chest. He swung up into the saddle, kicked his horse towards that struggle. The lancer was trapped, one leg pinned by the huge body. His helm had fallen from his head. Yulan made for him, distantly aware that his name was Hurdan, that he came from a shore village near Harvekka, that he had joined the Free just two years ago.

  Hurdan worked his leg out from under his dead horse, and scrambled to his feet. He bent to pick up his mace from where it had fallen. He and Yulan spotted in the same moment the Hommetic rider coming pounding towards him. Yulan raked his heels across his horse’s flank, but the distance was too great.

  He saw the sword come down, almost lazy, in a great smooth arc. He saw Hurdan’s head rock backwards at the blow. He saw him sway for a moment. Turn his head slightly, so that Yulan could see the huge bony crevice that had been punched into its side. Then fold down, knees buckling, arms limp. Fall straight down, to the ground.

  Yulan cut halfway through the rider’s neck as their horses swept past one another. He heard the body fall behind him, but did not look. He stared down at Hurdan. Who was dead. Whose wound had not healed in the moment of its receipt.

  And Yulan knew they were in the direst trouble, and that they might not get out of this narrow valley alive.

  Piece by piece, moment by moment, the oak tree was dying. Being rent apart. Every wound that made Kerig cry out and tremble was fleeting, its lasting effect sent into the timber, and the branches. The whole canopy shook and shivered. Leaves fell as if beneath the most tempestuous of winds, but there was no wind.

  Once, to Drann’s queasy horror, Kerig’s arm, the one bound to the tree, suddenly cracked and bent where there was no joint. That loosed a true scream from the Clever’s mouth, but the arm righted itself in an instant, remembering and returning to its whole form. The tree, though, took that wound and made thunder of it. Spat gouts of pulverised wood from a huge split in its trunk. Shed a rain of leaves.

  Drann had retreated to stand beside Lebid and the horses. There were too many branches falling, too many eruptions of splinter and bark. He could not tear his gaze away from Kerig, but was content to keep his watch from a distance.

  Lebid was not watching Kerig at all. He was staring at the thirty-odd riders now cantering up the slope of the hill.

  “I’m thinking this is going to be bad,” he murmured.

  Drann looked then. It took him a moment or two to understand what he saw. Blue
tunics, most of those men wore. School Clade. At their head came three differently attired. One was slight and clad in a dull cloak. Slumping in the saddle, Drann thought. Looking a little unsafe. The second a huge man, with neck and shoulders and arms like stone blocks and long grey hair tied back. The last of them all leather and hide, gloved in black, with a huge sword at his side. There was something odd about his hair that set Drann to squinting. It looked as though some strange, weighted braids were dancing about the back of his head as he rode.

  “Go,” Lebid hissed to his fellow archer. “Ride for Yulan. Fast as you like.”

  The other man did not dispute or hesitate. He hurriedly untied one of the horses – the nearest, for he did not trouble to find his own – and leapt into the saddle. He pounded away, low over the animal’s neck, without so much as a backward glance.

  Two of the Clade horsemen peeled away from the rest, angling their approach to pursue the archer. The man with the odd hair called them back. Drann heard him quite clearly, even at this distance.

  “Let him go,” he shouted. “We’ll not be long delayed here.”

  “Who is it?” Drann asked Lebid.

  “Sullen. The School’s butcher.”

  “What are they doing here?”

  “Nothing good,” Lebid said dolefully.

  “Do we fight, then?” Drann asked.

  The men were close now. He could hear their horses struggling for breath. See the foaming sweat on their necks and flanks. They had come far and fast, these Clade men.

  “No, we don’t fight,” Lebid rasped. “If they try to kill you, you can fight if you like. They try to kill me or Kerig, you leave well alone. Nothing to be gained.”

  He unslung his bow from his back. Held it up high above his head, so that Sullen and the others could see it held no shaft. Not that they showed any interest in either Drann or Lebid. They drew their horses up just outside the shadow of the tree’s canopy, and stared at Kerig’s suffering, the tree’s convulsions.