by Tim Stead
“He’s a coaster,” he said.
“Maybe there’s coasters work for the lord,” the other said. “Means nothing.”
The first man turned and looked up again. “We’s from Black Hill,” he said. “Heard there was trouble.”
“Was,” Bram said. “Not any more.” He’d heard of Black Hill. It was a small town about fifty miles west on Fetherhill land.
“You work for that prick of a lord?” one of the men asked. The other shoved him.
“Don’t go sayin’ things like that, Tally, you get us kilt.”
“Lucky for you I don’t,” Bram said. “I work for General Fane, or he works for us. Either way we ain’t friends of Fetherhill.”
“Told you,” the first man said. He looked up at Bram again. “We come to join up,” he said.
This presented Bram with a problem. He was pretty sure that they were telling the truth, that this ragged bunch of farmers wasn’t some clandestine attempt to take back Fetherhill, but there was just that slim chance that they weren’t what they said. He turned to the man beside him.
“Fetch the general,” he said. “Fane’ll want to see them.”
The farmers waited patiently enough until Fane appeared. Bram told him what the Black Hill men had told Bram.
“Open the postern,” Fane said. Bram watched as Jerac Fane, Farheim Lord, walked out and inspected the farmers. He did it subtly. He talked to them, stretched a bow or two, and examined one of their poles. By the time he ordered the gate opened they were all smiling, laughing, eager to serve him. Bram could even see how he’d done it. He’d talked to them like men, understood their concerns, praised their reasons for wanting to fight, but somehow he’d maintained a distance. He was the general. They were fighting men. They shared a cause. It seemed that was enough.
It wasn’t the only time he saw it. Another group arrived that afternoon. The following day there were three and after that it turned into a more or less constant stream. There were single men and groups of all sizes. The biggest was over a hundred and twenty men from Dale Town. By the end of the second week Fane had about fifteen hundred men. There were two problems with this as far as Bram could see. These men weren’t soldiers. They were farmers, hunters, potters, carpenters and scribes. It would take a lot of training to make them otherwise and Fane had only a handful of professional fighters to train them. The second problem was arms and armour. A man dressed in farmer’s cottons wielding a long stick was hardly going to strike fear into professional soldiers no matter how fierce and determined he was.
To give Fane his due he was addressing both issues. The men were training in squads of fifty in the fields beyond Fetherhill’s walls and he had sent others back to their towns with orders to acquire as many weapons as possible. Smiths were to be recruited to make swords, bowyers to make bows and arrows, and all of it was being paid for out of Fetherhill’s treasury. Even so progress was slow, and Bram had the impression that Fane was in a hurry.
It was at the end of the second week that Fane called a meeting. Bram was summoned, as were Mayor Catamel and Captain Wenban. There were others there, too, but the one that surprised Bram the most was the Captain of Fetherhill’s guards. He wore a yellow bruise on the side of his head and was unarmed, though not restrained.
Fane waited until they had all taken their seats, then he waited a little more, standing with his back to the room, looking out of a window.
“We’ve been idle long enough,” he said.
Wenban made a disbelieving sound and Fane turned to face the room. “I know you’ve been flat out training men, Captain, but now it’s time to put that training to use. I want you to pick the best two hundred men we have.”
“They’re not ready, General,” Wenban said. “Another month…”
“Will be too late. Besides, I do not expect the fighting to be especially onerous.”
“May I ask…?”
Fane cut him off again. “Not yet. It is time that we became an army, and that means that I must choose those to lead and those to follow. We have enough for a regiment, but there will be more.” He took a seat at the table and drummed his fingers on the wood. It was all show, of course. Bram realised that he had chosen long before this moment, but he gave every impression of considering his decision. “Mayor Catamel, I appoint you the army’s Quartermaster General. It will be your task to gather supplies, to discover what it is we need and to fetch it to Fetherhill. You will have half our wagons and a hundred men.” He smiled. “We will, of course, need more wagons.”
Catamel looked worried. “I don’t know how to be a quartermaster.”
“You will learn,” Fane said. “We must all be new things. There will be traders and waggoners in camp. Find them. Use them. We will need food, weapons, tents, blankets – many things. Come and speak to me later.”
Catamel nodded. He had given her a thread to follow and she looked happier.
“Bram.” Bram sat up straighter. He had not thought he would escape this meeting unscathed. “You’ll be Campmaster General. It will be your job to make sure everything goes smoothly, set up camps, organise cooks, bowyers, smiths. You’ll stay here, or where ever we base ourselves. Everyone who isn’t a soldier or working for Catamel will work for you.”
Bram leaned back in his chair. “No.”
The room quietened significantly. Fane raised an eyebrow.
“No?”
“I’m a fisherman,” Bram said. “No, I was a fisherman.” He tugged at his thinning hair. “See this? It’s white. That’s because I’m old. My fishing days are over. Now I like to spend time with my grandson, tell him tall tales, sink a few ales with the other old men in the tavern. If I walk above a mile on hard ground my knee hurts. I used to read fine, but now my arms are too short and the sun’s not as bright as it once was.”
Fane shook his head. “You said you wanted to fight.”
“I said we wanted to fight. That’s Berrit Bay, that we. And they do. And I do, too, after a fashion. You’ve got our best men. Why do you need an old man?”
“You want to go back to the Bay and drink ale and tell tall stories?”
“It has a certain appeal. You see here’s the thing. I ain’t signing up for the gods know what. You want me, you tell me what your plan is and I’ll say if I want to be part of it. That’s fair, ain’t it? Nobody here who shouldn’t hear what you got in mind, ‘cept maybe him.” Bram pointed to the Captain of Fetherhill’s guards.
Fane smiled. “It’s fair,” he said. “And I don’t care who knows what I’m about. If Alwain were here I’d tell him. You listen to the rumours from the east?”
“I do,” Bram said.
“Then you know that Alwain has laid siege to Bas Erinor and all the northern regiments have put themselves in the city to defend it. All of us are on one throw of the dice, one battle, one siege.”
“That was where you were going,” Bram said.
“It was. But I listened to you and another possibility came to mind. What do you think Fetherhill’s regiment will do when they find that Lord Fetherhill is a prisoner?”
“I don’t know,” Bram said. “But, if I were there, I would want to come home.”
“And so they will. But Fetherhill is irrelevant. His regiment went against the Wolf at Golt and was torn apart.” Fane shook his head. “You people have such short lives, such short memories. I still cannot believe that anyone was so stupid as to raise a blade against Narak.”
“And?”
“Well, the simple story is that there are eight southern regiments – seven that matter now – and we will march against their Lords one by one. They have kept back the barest handful of men to defend themselves and it will not be enough. Alwain will eventually choose between facing revolt in his army or abandon the siege and march on us.”
Catamel and Wenban both looked worried. “We can’t face Alwain,” the captain said.
“No? Think about it. We have fifteen hundred men. They are not yet soldiers, but they will be.
The more this army grows the faster it will grow. If Alwain waits two weeks before coming at us we will have ten thousand. If he waits a month it will be twenty, and we will have a string of strongholds across the south. If he keeps the siege beyond that we will march on him. Either way he will eventually be caught between us and Cain Arbak. If he marched now, this very minute, he might be able to crush us and turn back in time to meet Cain on open ground, but he will not. Alwain is an arrogant man. He will not believe that Avilian peasants can be a danger to him.”
“Can they?” Catamel asked.
“The Seventh Friend was a volunteer regiment. They held Fal Verdan against ten thousand Seth Yarra. Why should we be less?”
“They had Cain Arbak,” Catamel said.
“Yes, they did,” Fane smiled again, but this smile was not as warm. “Cain was, and probably still is, a brilliant man. But when he was given command of the Seventh Friend, he had no experience of command. I, on the other hand, have won a war. I assure you that I will not fail you. Here we sit, masters of Fetherhill and still you doubt me?”
“Catching one fish doesn’t make you a fisherman,” Bram said. “But you seem to know your business, and I can’t fault your plan.”
“So, will you come with us, Bram Calpot, or go back to ale and stories?”
Bram slapped a meaty hand on the table. “The men that saved Cain Arbak’s bacon, eh? Could be the best story I know, this,” he said. “I will come with you. As long as there’s not too much walking.”
Fane nodded and moved on. He appointed Wenban colonel of the regiment, the new regiment.
“We should name it,” Wenban said. “Like the Seventh Friend.”
“More apt than you know,” Fane said. “The idea first came to me in a tavern. Bram, what was the name of that place?”
“The Ghost,” Bram said. “After Henn’s Ghosts.”
“An inauspicious name for living men,” Catamel said.
“It served Tilian Henn well enough,” Bram said.
“The Berrit Ghost,” said Wenban. “The First Regiment of the Berrit Ghost.”
“Must we name it after a tavern?” Catamel asked. “What about Berrit and Beckton Volunteers?”
“That has a ring to it,” Wenban admitted. “But the men are not all from Berrit Bay and Beckton. They’re all Fetherhill folk, though.”
“Can’t call it that,” Bram said.
“True.” Wenban scratched his head. “The Ghost it is, then.”
54 A Difference of Opinion
Pascha was annoyed, Callista could tell. Her annoyance stopped a little short of anger, which was good, but a couple of months ago she would have been terrified of even this. Pascha’s mood showed in a slight narrowing of her green eyes, in a tightness of her upper body, in the way she dipped her head slightly forwards.
“You killed two men,” she said.
“I executed them,” Callista replied.
“It was vengeance.”
“They were criminals, murderers, found guilty in a dragon court and sentenced by the injured party. It was justice according to the law – nothing more.”
Pascha turned her back, looked out from her terrace across the featureless plain that stretched away to the east.
“And what if it was vengeance?” Callista said. “If it’s also justice does that matter?”
Pascha said nothing. Callista didn’t see how she could object after Jidian’s vengeful rampage. That had been pure and unadulterated revenge, something that Narak himself had done a hundred times over the centuries. Callista had followed the letter and spirit of Afaeli law.
“We have to be careful,” Pascha said, still facing the darkening plain. “Everything we do is bigger because of what we are.”
“But if we do nothing, then what is the point of us? Didn’t you end the Seth Yarra War? The Bren Invasion?”
“I did. But I still don’t know if it was the right thing to do. I did it because Narak would have tried to do it alone. I saved the kingdoms. You ask me what purpose do we serve, and it is simply this: to protect the world from our own kind.”
Callista felt like stamping her foot, a childish gesture but she was still barely more than a child.
“And we do that best by staying in Col Boran?”
Pascha turned and looked at her, but the god mage’s face had lost its pinched look. She shrugged.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Callista saw her chance and seized it. “We can do more,” she said. “If dragons can judge truth then we can enforce agreements between the powers.”
“If we take sides…”
“No. We wouldn’t have to.”
Pascha walked across the terrace and poured two cups of wine. She offered one to Callista and pointed to a seat. “Sit,” she said. “Explain.”
They sat side by side looking out at the world.
“We can come between armies,” Callista said. “Like you did at Fal Verdan when the Bren attacked. Make them talk. Give them a chance to come to some understanding before the bloodshed begins.”
“The strong will always think we are protecting the weak,” Pascha said.
“But we won’t force anything on anyone, just find out if there is a point where each is satisfied with the outcome. The weaker party may be willing to concede what the stronger desires, or the stronger may be happier with less that total victory. Is it not worth trying?”
“I still think the strong will see any delay to their detriment,” Pascha said. “But you have something specific in mind?”
“I do, but first I would like to make another point, if I may.”
“Of course.”
Callista sipped her wine. Her mouth was dry. Pascha had been at this game for decades. It was presumptuous to even speak like this, but the god mage seemed willing to listen. Callista could not tell if it was out of respect or desperation.
“They’re not coming any more, are they?” she said. Pascha knew what she meant. The trickle of people coming to Col Boran to be tested had dried up. Callista herself had been the last to face that trial.
Pascha said nothing, but it was true.
“There’s no way the flowering of talent has dried up. It’s happening all across the kingdoms. I heard so many stories in Afael. It’s like flowers in spring. Magic is popping up everywhere.”
“So my strategy has failed. That’s what you’re saying.”
Callista wasn’t sure how to answer that. Should she choose blunt honesty or something more subtle. Pascha must know that her plan to screen and eliminate possible god mages had failed, but could Callista say so?
“They are afraid to come,” Callista said. “We must go to them.”
Pascha looked away. She picked up her wine and put it down again without drinking.
“You’re suggesting we hunt them.”
“Not… not like that, no. But we should be there, moving among the people. We need spies, agents, to tell us what’s going on, to identify possible candidates. We need to be involved.”
“And this specific task that you have in mind?”
“The Afaeli civil war.”
Pascha raised an eyebrow, but Callista could see that she wasn’t surprised.
“You think there is a possibility of a negotiation between Kenton and the populists?”
“After Duke Anjasari’s death, yes. The general feeling is that Kenton no longer has the strength to force the walls, but he still has the stronger hand. He can make life difficult for the populists, but not without hurting his own interests. His dukedom is rural and most of his army needs to get back to the land to gather the year’s harvest or many of his people will starve.”
Pascha smiled, and that as a good sign. “You’ve thought about this a lot,” she said. “You trust the populists?”
“I don’t need to. They have already used Torgaris in their council to determine truth. They can hardly object to his presence at a negotiation to guarantee good faith.”
Pascha sipped her wine aga
in. “So you bring the parties together, Torgaris ensures the pledges made are in good faith, and you… what? Enforce them?”
“I hope the threat will be enough but, if necessary, I will act to prevent any treachery.”
“To do that you will have to stand on the city walls day and night,” Pascha said. “You cannot undo what has been done. You can only punish the guilty.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Sometimes it is. Despite Narak’s naked threats many of his ring bearers have been murdered over the years. They were always avenged, but somehow that never saved the next one. The kingdoms are vast and time makes men forget.”
“But if we are there among them, perhaps they will not forget.”
Pascha pulled a face. “Living amongst mortal men is difficult, Callista,” she said. “I did it for centuries and found it empty and frustrating. You no sooner get to liking someone than they grow old and die. In the end you stop making friends. There’s no point. Narak couldn’t stand it and retreated to Wolfguard. You are young. Time’s knife has yet to cut you off from the common flow of life, but it will, sooner or later.”
Callista resorted to her cup of wine. This was not what she wanted to hear, but she supposed that Pascha knew what she was talking about. It was hard to accept, though, with her immortality younger than a year. She felt no different, except that she was free, free of expectations, free from the tyranny of age, free to do more or less as she pleased – or so it had seemed.
The door at the back of the room behind the terrace opened and the guard stepped through.
“Eran, Lord Skal is here. He says he has urgent news.”
Pascha glanced at Callista. “Send him in,” she said.
Skal was not his usual smiling self. His customary cocky, cheerful manner had surrendered to a frown. He hurried across and took a seat.
“Bad news?” Pascha asked.
“Worse, perhaps,” Skal said. He poured himself a drink like he needed one, and confirmed that by draining the cup in three swallows. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I have received a message from Lord Henn,” he said. “It has taken many weeks to reach me, but he claims that there is another god-mage in Avilian.”