by Adrian Selby
On our first sight of the Forstway we hadn’t expected to see a line of what must’ve been many thousands coming south. Shale juices his eyes for a better look from a hill about a league or so off and tracks a column of about five hundred soldiers and their wagons forcing everyone else on the road into the verges as it pushed through. They were at a fierce step going north. Coming south was a march of refugees, a sight I seen often in my life but not in these numbers, a dazed trudge of folk shedding dead or dying like lepid skin on the verges and the grasses about. Begging, fighting and sorrow was the chorus of this weary column. Post were still about but were more interested in the ’vans they had to run. Blood was getting spilled as the desperate attacked them.
We agreed I should get to the road and see what’s going on.
The starvation was desperate to see and getting close there was all the stink of disease and filth what went with such a mass of folk. I was shortly surrounded by one group of men past caring about my colour. One had to die before I got a handful of coppers to shower them with. I moved away quickly along the line. All these refugees were Vilmorian. The insignia and tats on some of the soldiers showed allegiance to a few of the Houses that made up their royal court. There were many wounded and either hobbling or led on carts. These men had lost a battle and not long since. An old man stepped in front of me then, put out a bird’s-claw of a hand, wide green eyes popping out of a small dried-out face. I understood enough Vilmorian to greet him.
“’Nab or coppers you can spare? My greatson’s sick,” he said. He gestured to a boy of no more than eight winters, pale as fleece, shuffling along on his greatfather’s arm.
I leaned close to the old man and pressed a silver coin to him.
“Should feed you and the boy at Cusston,” I said. He nodded and reached up to clutch my shoulder in thanks.
“Why are you on this road? What’s happened in Vilmor?” I asked.
“Caragula. Vilmor is his, now sure as I stand.” He stopped the trudge we were going at to keep in line and moved out of it with the boy, some urgency on him.
“If each blade of grass in these fields around us was a soldier, that is the army Caragula leads. These Old Kingdoms are at an end. Get over the Sar while you can.”
“Caragula’s a name I in’t heard in a very long time. He were a boy then. Where is he headed?”
“Everywhere. He’s going to be everywhere. He’s got the Wilds hasts united, must have. There’s Post runners and vans from east all on this road and further south I’ll bet, running to tell their masters the trouble coming. More still overtook us before we got to Issan. The Kingdoms is warned now but they don’t stand a chance.”
I bid him farewell and headed back across the plains to the treeline where the boys were at.
“Don’t know what to do, boys. Looks like there’s a war comin’, man called Caragula, if you remembers that purse we had well over twenty winters ago goin’ into the Wild on the Razhani borders. Seems he’s now a warlord an’ he has a horde comin’ across from the Wilds through Vilmor and, by the sounds, Razhani lands too. I still wants to get to Mirisham an’ figure out how we stops Kigan, but we’d be heading into it. More than that I wants to keep goin’ an’ find me sister. Lagrad borders the Wild. I got to go an’ see what can be done.”
“We got no way o’ knowin’ what’s over the water, Gant,” said Shale. “We push on. Has to be a fair head o’ men to cause this. Not seen the like.”
Valdir was nodding, Bense was looking miserable and not saying anything. It was killing Shale to see him like this.
“Bense! Sorry we got you out, brother, yer should’ve said if yer’d prefer bein’ killed by Kigan.”
“Easy, Shale,” said Valdir. “We haven’t been in this all these years, we’re both coming to terms with what’s going on with Kigan.”
“I don’t figure it,” said Bense. “Kigan was tight with me. I saw we had the best plant. His and Ibsey’s mixes were better than a fanny pissing brandy. Figure Kailen never did give him enough respect.”
“Kigan was slippery in my mind, yer forgettin’ much of it,” said Shale. “You might’ve bin stupid enough to agree to take whatever he was puttin’ together on his bench, if you even knew he were doin’ it, but those prisoners in the custody of our purses din’t get a choice once he give a few quarters an’ captains coin enough to try some plant on ’em.”
“Name a drudha did it different, Shale,” said Bense.
“Fuck, Bense, Ibsey din’t.”
“And who was better for it? We all knew he was carrying Ibsey. Kailen sold Kigan’s plant, not Ibsey’s.”
“All right, lads. Square it off,” I said, trying to close off the bickering. “We might be on the Honour in a day or so, need to get the lay on the land about the stable and what routine it has. We best rest up.”
“The Honour? How’d you get the Honour when none of us did?” said Bense. He looked confused then, proper troubled by something.
“Gant said that Kailen give the recipe to Shale,” explained Valdir.
“You must’ve sucked him good then Shale, for none of us learned it.”
Shale looked to the ground then, close, I could tell, to giving him a beating. “Gant, tell me why, if he’s about as much use as a cotton sword, we’re draggin’ this cunt with us?”
“It’s just a bit of lip,” said Valdir. “He’ll get his Forms sorted.”
So the stables we were hoping to raid, that the Post had off the Forstway, had a few more men in than we hoped. To be clear, it was more of a compound. A high wall round it for seeing off casual thieves hid a better guess at their number. Still, we reckoned we could go in dry if they themselves looked to be, which is to say without brews and masks. We decided that with an ambush it was unlikely even the guards would be on full brews so we prepped for the spores and dust and a three-one caffin, and our need of their horses was more than worth the risk if it helped us get to the lake.
We followed some runners coming off the road at about the place we were told the stables would be and found a big old track leading to a clearing where the compound was. Could have been ten or twelve in there for all we knew.
With numbers of the Post likely to get worse before better with what was going on north we agreed to go in that night. Bense was useless. We put him through the Forms and even Valdir, himself struggling for more than a few minutes at a duel, was whipping him. We would’ve been sending him to his death if we put him in that compound on a Red, or worse, an Agent.
Rain was rolling in heavy as we got strapped up and took the caffin mix. Bense was past us, tucked somewhere over the hill east where the road rose out of these trees and onto a clear stretch what bridged a long valley.
Shale and Valdir spotted the guards in the treeline doing the perimeter, I had to get the two gate guards with Juletta, two quick shots, both tight on the chest so’s they wouldn’t get a yell out.
Guards were huddled about a brazier in the doorway of one of the gate posts of this old sentry fort.
I couldn’t stop my breathing for minutes at a time like on the Honour, making shots easier. I did my best to control the bit of rise we had from the mix.
They were turned away from me at the fire they had and first shot had to be through the back. I drew Juletta and she bent like an aristo’s mistress, the arrow true. The moment the other saw his mate struck he looked out at the trees and there’s that moment of seeing me and deciding what to do, but the next arrow was in flight and he was too slow as it caught him in the ribs as he made to turn away. I rushed over and I took a red cloak, putting the hood up and then dragging them across the mud to the side of the gate where they wouldn’t be seen by the men within. I stood at the gate facing out, in case a guard inside was patrolling. It was lucky the wind was picking up, for Shale and Valdir got at the guards what were sheltering in the trees and took them on. I heard the sound of boots and then, over the wind, some blows, a grunting from one or two, then a shout. Shortly a door in the bunkhouse wha
t sat in the centre of the compound was opened but I didn’t look about upon hearing it.
“Yilsen, what’s the yap now?” said the Red.
I raised my hand as though to acknowledge him but didn’t turn about. I needed Shale because this was about to go wrong.
“Yilsen, if Messe’s gone for a dump, get him. About time you switched out. And a Yes Sir would be the right thing to say.”
Shale and Valdir crept up along the wall across the gateway from me. I nodded as Shale drew his bow, and we both turned into the gateway and shot the Yes Sir. We dropped bows and ran for the main bunkhouse. There was a commotion inside as we got to the door, a shout for masks, but Shale threw in a dustbag and I waited. Valdir headed about to see who else was there and killed some stabler out with the horses. Shale moved to the side of the building and there were two jumping out to escape the dust, fair with blades for the time it took him to kill them. Then I heard Valdir engaged on the other side of the bunkhouse from the doorway so I got around to help him with the man on him. Valdir remembered enough though; a thrust from the Red, he squatted and drove through under, and with a crack and a shudder the boy went down. There were a few Reds then got out the door of course but we returned for them and they weren’t a match for us dry, dying fairly easy.
Inside the bunkhouse there’s the room with their beds on frames could fit twenty, warm with the fire they had going. We took off our gloves and wambas and had a few apples and the fried potatoes they were eating, which was a blessing with winter starting up in these parts.
I went into the office itself, small room off the side of the bunk room next to the stores and where Shale was rooting about on a big battered old desk.
“Road’s bad an’ when we burn this place down the Post’ll be hoppin’. We should get the Reds on, give ourselves some orders. Some o’ these letters are showin’ this army’s rollin’ over Ahmstad quicker than anyone can respond to. Hard to believe the Wildmen were capable o’ this sort of action.” He nodded then to the wax pot and parch on the desk.
“Valdir, what’s your words like, your writing?” I asked.
“Fair,” he called, from the main bunk room, “did a good bit these last few years for me boy and the association of the fishers.”
“I’ll get the best of the horses and get us packed up,” I said. “Go and get Bense.” Shale nodded. Valdir got to work on the papers and was soon putting together a mission for us from what the letters contained of the Post’s business hereabouts.
Unless you were top coin you didn’t wear a red robe for that was what the Post wore and you either didn’t want the trouble of being mistaken for it or didn’t want the odd lusty Red thinking he could beat on you for some sort of deception you might be trying, for it wasn’t unheard of that men would thrive under the pretence of being a Post ’van and then just vanish with the goods entrusted to them. Needless to say it wasn’t the first time we wore the Red, for or against their cause.
Shale got Bense to help with putting oil over the outbuildings. I’d seen off the horses we didn’t need and Valdir and I stood with the mares would take us up the Forstway to the port.
The fire soon drew its greedy arms around the bunkhouse and the shelters they had for feed. We rode out in the dark to cover some leagues, keeping away in the fields from the lines of people nursing each other along the road, past camps where music and singing were, as everywhere in hardships, fortifying spirits.
Issanaian soldiers under watch sang a song of work as we rode to the outlying huts of Meddyman’s Harbour. Hundreds of them were digging out the foundations for stakes while the camps of ’vans that had brought carts of lumber spread around a hundred fires and a few thousand men, most soldiers, that were undergoing some furious drilling as we neared. Issana was beginning to respond to the threat of this Caragula.
The wooden stakes were used too for funnelling people in and out of the harbour, and pens had gone up where, from the looks of that which I experienced previous, those who passed through what had a problem with conscripting were being held until they joined up or starved, men separated from family and all the crying and shouting that it caused.
With the camps come also the merchants and slavers and wanderers looking for a turn in fortune, and the ships and boats from over that vast inland lake what skirted the mountains were like darts jammed tight in the mouth of the harbour. Further across the shore either side of the harbour were the pennants of Issanaian watches, catching the icy winds of this bright day while the soldiers around them were trying to keep back boats landing on the banks about. Issana weren’t famous for its welcome.
I kept having to stop and shit though little come of it. Had to mash my food ’less the bits I ate were like glass going through me. Bense did fuck all but smoke his pipe while Valdir or Shale were dressing me or mashing up the bilt and biscuits we took from the Post in some water. It was hard to not show I was feeling a bit sorry for myself.
We come to the lines of soldiers and there’s a Red there looking at us sharp, only twenty or so summers but wearing one of the more fancy pins what kept his cloak about his neck. Rank in the Post was measured out in how fancy those pins were, and when you got some shiny in them like a ruby or such then you were a big deal in the land about.
He stepped out as we dismounted and led the horses in.
“The Reeve’s commanded all Post refrain from taking routes northward, particularly across the lake. The lands there are at war with a horde of the Wildmen.”
Valdir spoke, having devised our story with what he found in the office of the stablehouse.
“I am Rilbin,” he said. “Our purse and seal take us to the northern shore only, cured leather from the Abelmar brothers, as well as a summons for the brothers themselves, to flee this very disturbance before it descends over Issan. You are aware of their importance?”
The lad stuttered briefly. Valdir had played a deft hand for we saw from the books kept at the stablehouse that the Red what normally ran the southern shore had been taken ill a lot of late, a man much older than this colourless boy that put on his fierceness with inks and hair three copper hoops long. “Just the northern shore? How much leather awaits?” he asked.
“We can walk it back on horses, fifty or so hides, but we’ll need a cart too if we’re to move the goods and brothers back to Jua. You are instructed to arrange this if it be within your power.”
Valdir produced a scroll with the stablehouse seal, a letter mostly completed of the same purpose that bred our deceit’s shape and manner.
The boy nodded to us. “Leave these horses, we’ll get them to the stables, I’ll send a bird over to arrange things for your arrival.”
We were waved through to the harbour itself.
The streets were almost too blocked up with refugees to move against. Mothers and children what lost each other were making the most noise, so many desperate that they’d even push for Reds with colour like us for a few coins. I was more generous with the Post’s bag of coins than my own I’ll admit, so threw a few coins at those I saw that seemed like they had lost the strength for the fighting of those begging. Shale had to leave me with Bense while he and Valdir went about the taverns looking for a captain mad enough to head back out across the water.
Course, it wasn’t a captain that was mad enough, it was a da that was desperate enough. Hearing of the coin we had as Shale was shouting out our purse at the bar, he soon come to see us, asking for some of the coin up front to get some of the food what was now commanding a lord’s ransom. The hunger was getting people killed around us.
His name was Pavey, his wife and a bab, two brothers and their duts all on his riverboat what had come down from Ahmstad. We got a bit of food and some ale to ease their worry, the purse taking care of the remaining doubts they had to look on us.
We kept the story up about the hides as Pavey put his sail up and we helped oar out of the harbour. Pavey and his brothers were Ahmstad men. He said what clan but I’ve forgotten it now. This was a c
ountry where men were born with a sword or mace in hand, bordered on my own homeland of Upper Lagrad. Soon as their borders were hit the call to arms went up and he answered, missing his bab’s birth, him and his brothers riding out with the men of their settlement to join the legions what were so recently exercised by the madman running Vilmor.
They had marched maybe four days he said when he saw the soldiers coming the other way. Ahmstad’s legendary Third and Fifth Cohorts had joined with the Eighth and Tenth and a few thousand more men besides to meet the threat. Now men of those Cohorts stumbled past them, exhorting them to return to their families, that Ahmstad was lost.
Lost! Pavey and his brothers could hardly believe these glass-eyed veterans but for the burgundy leathers. They were routed, the horde supposedly countless, many more than a hundred thousand men they were told.
Bense thought this was a lot of shit, seemed Pavey was inclined to agree insofar as he kept on with the hundred or so men what were answering a summons at Fort Iras. But Iras was burned, the smoke they could see from a few leagues away. It was hard to believe it of course, and it was troubling for so few of the Old Kingdoms had a standing army like what Ahmstad was forced to have on account of its position against the Wilds and with its war with Vilmor. If men like this were being routed then things were bleak for a lot of innocent folk in the lands closer to the Sar.
They found one soldier still breathing, who was led in a ditch near the fort. He’d cut through his own infected leg with an axe but it was a bad job and the killing of him. He told Pavey of the horde that come through, a few thousand seeing to Fort Iras, and as they fought for Ahmstad they were watching tens of thousands just marching by, drilled like no horde of the Wild he’d seen.