by Tim Stead
“That would be the Wolf and the God Mage,” Bram said. “They persuaded ‘em to go. Seems like they have a reason to come back, but it’s only one ship.”
The militia began to arrive, almost as though Bram’s opinion was enough to bring them. It probably was. Bram was mayor and people generally did what he said.
The ship swung about and dropped anchor a few hundred paces off shore. She was big, and Ivo had never seen sails or masts set that way. She was as foreign as they come, but he had to admit she sailed well.
The crowd by the pier was swelling now. There must have been a hundred just standing and staring at the stranger vessel as it lowered a boat. That meant someone was coming ashore. Ivo watched with the others as a large trunk was carefully lowered into the smaller vessel and was followed by a man dressed in black and four others who promptly took up oars and began to row towards the shore.
The small boat ploughed steadily towards them, and Ivo saw his father step past him and walk down the pier to meet it. Bram was still an impressive figure, despite his years. He had the thick arms and broad shoulders of a man who has worked hard all his life. He stood, legs apart, hand on his hips and waited, a picture of strength.
The boat pulled alongside the pier. Ivo went to stand beside his father. They were a similar build, but Ivo was younger, stronger, quicker. Even so the man in black didn’t seem concerned. He looked up at them.
“This is Berrit Bay, yes?”
“It is,” Bram replied. “And I am Bram Calpot, its mayor.”
“I’m sure you are,” the man said. He didn’t sound at all impressed. He bent down and with a single heave lifted the trunk from the bottom of the boat onto the pier. He jumped out after it and stood in front of Bram. He turned to the boat and flipped a gold coin down to the man at the tiller. He said something in a language Ivo didn’t understand and the man in the boat bowed. The oarsmen pushed off the pier and began to pull back towards the ship.
“Who are you, and what’s your business in Berrit Bay?”
“My name is none of your concern,” the man said. “My business here is to eat, sleep and leave first thing in the morning. You do have an inn?”
“These are troubled times,” Bram said.
“Indeed. Why do you think I landed here? Bas Erinor port is closed and this is the nearest point I could land safely.”
The man was a soldier. Even Ivo could see that. He wore two blades on his back, the hilts protruding from under a pack. A bow was tied next to them and he wore a long dagger at his belt. His clothes were salt-stained, but Ivo could see that he wore mail beneath his shirt, and black leather gloves. He looked like a dangerous man.
“Why go to Bas Erinor?”
“To fight of course.”
“On whose side?” Bram asked.
The man smiled at him. “Why, yours of course.”
“I will have your name, or you’ll have to swim back out to that ship,” Bram said.
The man inspected the militia gathered on the shore. “You think so?” he asked.
For a moment Ivo felt a surge of doubt. There was no fear on the man’s sun-browned face and his voice held nothing but amusement. But Ivo knew this could not be the Wolf. The Wolf was at Golt. Everyone knew that. And his sword master – Caster – was at Bas Erinor. But the moment passed and the stranger shrugged.
“Jerac Fane,” he said.
Bram frowned, but the name meant nothing to Ivo. Even so, it was an Avilian name. He’d thought they were talking to a Seth Yarra.
“What’s in the trunk, Jerac Fane” Bram asked.
“It’s not locked.”
“Ivo, have a look at the trunk,” Bram said.
Ivo slipped past and knelt by it. The catch was simple and he slipped it, lifting the lid. What lay inside was armour, a jumble of it. He could see a helmet, a cuirass, greaves and a sword. But they were like nothing he’d ever seen. They were huge. He tried to lift the cuirass, but it was made of half-inch steel. It must have weighed a hundred pounds.
“This stuff ain’t yours,” he said.
“No,” Fane said. “It belonged to a friend. He died.”
“Must have been a big fellow,” Ivo said.
Fane smiled again. “Big as they come,” he agreed. “Now can someone show me to an inn? It was a long voyage and I’d like a bath and a meal.”
“You’re a soldier,” Bram said. “Ever hold a rank in the Avilian army?”
Fane didn’t answer at once. He looked back at the Seth Yarra ship. The boat had reached it again and the oarsmen were climbing back on board. “Lieutenant,” he said.
“What regiment?”
“Seventh Friend.”
“And what were you doing with them?” Bram asked, pointing at the ship.
“Getting a ride home. I’ve been in the homeland for a while.”
“Fighting?”
“Some.”
“What rank?”
Fane sighed. “Mayor Calpot, you really don’t want to go there. Just let me eat and sleep and then I’ll be gone. Nobody has to die.”
There was a moment when Ivo thought his father would force the issue, but there was something about this man Fane that frightened him. It was almost as though he didn’t care if he lived or died, or perhaps an absolute certainty that he could fight his way past the hundreds gathered on the shore. Either way Fane obviously wasn’t bothered.
“You leave in the morning,” Bram said, and stepped aside.
“Thank you,” Fane said. He stopped and seized his heavy trunk by a handle and set off, dragging it behind him as though it weighed no more than a sack of wool. Ivo watched him go with the sense that they had somehow escaped.
“He’s strong, that one,” he said to his father. “That trunk is full of steel.”
“Aye,” Bram said. “And that name of his, that means something. I’ve heard it before.”
“How could you?”
Bram didn’t answer. “Send Camren to me. I’m sure the boy’s here somewhere.”
Ivo had already seen his son among the gawkers on the shore, and he went to find him at once. He had a feeling that this wasn’t over, not by a long way.
*
“Read it again, boy.”
Camren turned back the page and dutifully read the section again. Secretly, Bram thought the boy enjoyed these reading sessions. Ever since Bram’s own eyes had begun to fail him, he’d used his grandson this way. It was an underhand way of giving the boy an education. Bram himself was self-taught. He’d always liked reading, of hearing in his head the words of other men. It was a kind of magic.
Ivo had never been interested. He was a dutiful son, a fine fisherman and a good husband, but he lacked the spark that was so obvious in Camren. The boy wanted more. More than fishing, more than Berrit Bay.
“My thanks, Camren,” he said when the boy finished. “You can go.”
Camren closed the heavy book, but didn’t leave.
“Is that him, then?” the boy asked. “The man in the book, the man at the inn – Are they the same?”
“They have the same name,” Bram said. “That doesn’t mean they’re the same man.”
“But you think so.”
“Perhaps I do.”
“Can I come with you?”
Bram raised a grey eyebrow. “And where am I going?” he asked.
“To see him, of course.”
“And why would I go to see Jerac Fane?”
“You need his help,” the boy said.
Bram decided to stop asking the boy questions before the answers worried him even more. Camren was half right.
“Men change, boy,” he said. “If that Jerac Fane staying at the Ghost was once this man in the book, maybe he ain’t that any more. There’s a lot of years between the two.”
The boy grinned at him. “He didn’t want to hurt anyone, did he?”
“Maybe, but that don’t mean he won’t. You stay here, or be about your own business. I’ll speak to him alone.”
“Busy day, Ben,” he said.
Ben rolled his eyes. “Ale?”
“Aye, that’ll do.”
Ben drew the mug of ale and Bram flipped him a coin. He turned and leaned his elbows on the bar, eyeing his neighbours.
“Tomas, you fixed those nets of yours yet?” he asked. “Best get it done. Don’t what to miss the tide in the morning.”
Tomas looked at him and Bram gave him a hard look. The message was clear enough. Tomas emptied his mug and left.
“Never seen so many idlers on a fine day,” Bram said to nobody in particular. “Enjo, you seen that boy of yours? Running wild I hear.”
Enjo glanced at his friends. There were four of them at a table. They all stood up and left. It took about five minutes for the inn to clear completely. Now Bram was alone with Ben and Fane.
“Give us a moment, Ben?”
“As you like.” Ben stepped through the door into the kitchen and closed it.
Fane was still eating, but Bram could see he was smiling.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked.
“There seem to be a lot of empty tables,” Fane said.
“I wanted to talk. It’s not every day we get a Farheim Lord in the Ghost.”
Fane stopped with his fork half way to his mouth.
“I didn’t think anyone would remember,” he said.
“I read about you.”
Fane laughed. “I’m in a book?”
“Deeds of the Farheim. Someone wrote it after the Second Great War. You saved the duchess’s life. You held the River Gate at Bas Erinor against a Seth Yarra attack. You were at Fal Verdan when the war ended and nobody’s heard of you since. Until now.”
“So what now?” Fane asked.
“Now?”
“This land is beholden to Fetherhill. I’m told his regiment rides with Alwain. Technically you’re my enemy, Mayor Calpot.”
“Loyalty’s a plant that needs watering,” Bram said. “And we’ve had kind of a drought the past fifty years.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Our own lord, so called, steals food from our mouths so we have to hide it. He gives us nothing in return.”
“But he is your lord.”
“Berrit Bay has no lord.”
“You support Cain Arbak and the King?”
Bram shrugged. “If it means we’ll be rid of Fetherhill.”
Fane put a forkful of food into his mouth and chewed on it. He pointed his knife at Bram. “You want to fight,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“I do,” Bram said. “But I’m an old man, and even if I could persuade the folk here to fight, we’ve got twenty militiamen and perhaps another thirty that can swing an axe or shoot a bow. What can fifty men do?”
Fane ate another mouthful. “You know this is pretty good,” he said. He sipped his ale. “Why do you want to fight?”
“A hundred reasons, but mostly because we wiped out one of Alwain’s foraging parties. There’s no proof, but I think they know we did it. If they win, if they come back, they’ll come back here.”
Fane laughed. “You wiped them out? Their officer must have been some kind of fool.”
“I suppose he was.”
“So you can put together fifty men?” Fane asked.
“Maybe.”
“And the other folk round here, the other towns, you think they feel the same?”
“I reckon. We’ve all been bled dry.”
Fane forked down a few more mouthfuls. He stared at the blank wall opposite. Bram supposed he was thinking. Eventually he finished his food and washed it down with a swallow of ale.
“I think we can do it,” Fane said. “You know that if you fight some will die? That’s the way it goes.”
“I understand.”
“Then talk to your people. Come back in the morning and tell me what you have agreed.”
Bram turned to go, but stopped half way to the door. “Over in the Seth Yarra place. What was your rank?”
Fane looked him in the eye.
“General and Lord Commander of the Army of Light,” he said.
41 The Trap
Even Gayne could see that the attack was an ill-conceived thing. Men were pouring across the open ground towards the breach in the wall and General Delarsi was rubbing his hands in anticipation. Still stranger, it only seemed to be about a quarter of Kenton’s forces – some two thousand men.
Delarsi was ready for them. There were about a hundred archers on the new walls and another three hundred set one step back where they were lower and out of the attackers’ line of sight. A further thousand men waited at the foot of the wall. It was a simple enough trap. Gayne was surprised that it had fooled anyone, let alone a man of Kenton’s cautious stamp. The real success, though, would be keeping the men in the trap while they were slaughtered. Delarsi had rigged up some kind of net that he planned to drop across the breach, but Gayne had watched them set it up, and he didn’t think it would work.
He crouched down as they came through the gap in the city wall. Arrows rattled against the wall and arced overhead, breaking windows and pitting walls on the buildings unlucky enough to be in range. Delarsi’s first line of archers replied in kind, but they hadn’t shot off two volleys before the attackers reached the foot on the new wall. They had ladders and they began to climb.
Courage had always been a theoretical thing for Gayne. He’d run from soldiers and laughed about it. He’d been terrified that they’d catch him. He’d hidden. These men were insane. They came up the wall like cockroaches and were hacked and shot to death by the dozen. It seemed that it was raining bodies. But it wasn’t one-sided. Men were falling from Delarsi’s ranks as well, tipping back over their hidden comrades, arrows sprouting bloodily from chests and throats. It was time to leave.
He backed down the wall through the waiting archers. He would go across the main flow of the battle, he decided. He’d get up onto the city wall and look down from there. The attackers seemed intent on the new, lower wall.
He hurried along the lower steps of the wire-built fortification and climbed again when he came to the old wall. There was a rickety wooded stair that climbed the rest of the way, but here, away from the press of other people, Gayne could use his power to shield his back.
He reached the top and looked down. The view was magnificent. There were only a couple of archers up here shooting down into the mass below, and they ignored him. From here he could see everything.
Delarsi’s plan was working, it seemed. Even so, it looked like the battle would be close. The extra archers had already been committed and pretty much all of Kenton’s committed troops were in the trap. They had made it to the top of the wall, and now some of the fighting was hand to hand.
There was a big man standing on the city wall the other side of the breach, bow in hand, shooting downwards. He was picking his targets, and as Gayne watched him it seemed that he never missed.
At the height of the fighting the General triggered his trap, but the net failed to close the breach fully and a dozen or so of the attackers saw the danger and cut it down.
Some of the men began to pull back towards the breach.
Now the strangest thing happened. The big man who’d been shooting from the city wall on the other side jumped. The breach was a sort of ragged ‘V’ with rubble piled at the bottom and he skidded down the very steep slope, never losing his footing, and set himself at the heart of the breach.
Suicide.
But perhaps not. The big man lifted a shield from his shoulder and drew a blade. Alwain’s men seemed taken aback at first, but soon rallied and swarmed at him. Gayne expected him to go down under the assault, but somehow he kept standing and it slowly became clear that
he was winning. Men were hurled back, limbs were hewn from bodies. It was mayhem down there.
He was shouting something. Gayne couldn’t make it out over the din of battle, but it seemed that he was shouting the same thing over and over.
“Anjasari.”
Gayne was startled. The voice had come from just behind him, but he knew who it was before he saw her.
“Eran Callista” he said. “Anjasari?”
“The duke. He’s down there. This is Jidian’s revenge, Councillor Gayne. Remember it.”
Gayne looked down at the slaughter below. “And Col Boran permits this?”
“Col Boran encourages it. When the god mage’s servants are attacked there must be a balancing of the scales. It has always been this way, even with the Benetheon.”
Gayne was genuinely surprised. “Anjasari attacked Jidian?”
“This morning.”
Gayne watched, and the scene below grew even more astonishing. Jidian had apparently seen his target among the mass of his soldiers and launched towards him feet first. It took a moment for Gayne to understand, and in that moment Jidian seized Anjasari in huge talons and his wings beat downwards. The man had become a vast eagle. The transition was so fast, so violent, that Gayne was hardly aware of it. One moment he was a man and the next the world had vanished and been replaced by one in which the leaping figure was a stooping eagle.
Anjasari shrieked. Gayne could hear it above the noise of the battle. The Eagle beat again and the duke was airborne, Jidian’s claws embedded in his flesh as he carried him up and away from the battle. A few of his men shot upwards, but to no effect. The duke tried to strike at Jidian with his sword, but the Eagle seized the blade in its beak and ripped it from the man’s hands, dropping it into the mêlée where it lodged upright in a fresh corpse. Up and up they went, Anjasari’s legs flailing helplessly against the blue sky. Gayne watched open mouthed as they climbed until the Eagle looked no more than a sparrow and the duke a hapless grub.
The Eagle let go.
It seemed that the duke took an age to fall to his death. His screams were a crescendo of terrified despair that pulled the eyes of every man up into the sky. The archers on the walls stopped shooting. The men in the trap forgot their peril for a moment and looked in horror as their commander plummeted down towards them. The cries ended in a loud and very prosaic thud as Anjasari struck one of the large blocks fallen from the city wall.