The Heron Kings

by Eric Lewis

  “I know what you mean, I heard you. If this is some attempt at coercion….”

  “It’s not. I know you won’t change your mind. If the screams of those people couldn’t do it…. But I can’t – I won’t endure another day like yesterday. Innocents suffer every hour and no one does anything about it. ‘It’s war,’ they say, as though that makes enough excuse, and move on. The one refuge they have is the temple, and now you say we only welcome folk lucky enough to fall on the right side of some damned line on a map? How can I accept that?”

  “You can’t.” Tanusia nodded. “Not being who you are. I admit I feared something like this. I was hoping it’d pass by…but no. You must do as you feel the gods demand. You have that luxury. I’ve more complicated responsibilities.” She gave a wan smile. “To think, only the other day it was I chiding you for being too ungentle, now here we are. Your knife cuts deep, child. Are you absolutely sure of this? Where would you go? It’s not safe out there for anyone, never mind a woman alone.”

  “I…I hadn’t thought much of that, I was so dreading this moment.”

  “Ah, then I suppose I should be flattered.”

  “Carsolan, or Murento, somewhere I can practice physic without restriction—”

  “There’s no such place! Oh, you haven’t thought this through at all, have you? This damnable war’s left its mark on every corner of Argovan and Bergovny both. It’s not just battles anymore. If temples are no longer sacrosanct, then nowhere is. You may come to regret this decision, sister.”

  Alessia set her jaw, determined. “I’m full of regrets, Tanusia. I can bear a few more, but not like yesterday’s. Call me sister no longer.”

  “Very well. Take a day to gather your belongings and make your goodbyes, but no more. I can’t have your choice infecting the others. They’ll miss you terribly, especially the acolytes. And Livielle. And…I will miss you.” She drew Alessia into a tight embrace, tears welling up. “I do hope you know what you’re doing.”

  That night the temple sisters sang their evening prayers. It was a dour melody, made haunting of late and no less so for being one voice the weaker.

  * * *

  Alessia was two and a half years into her novitiate. Another season and she’d have taken final vows as a full-fledged sister pledged to the Polytheon for life. People joined the temples for many reasons: some fled the law or serfdom or an unhappy home. Some sought peaceful retirement after a lifetime of chaos, or after growing weary of the world and finding for themselves no place in it. Only a few had the true calling, and the novitiate period allowed those on a wayward path to realize their mistake, with no harm done.

  Which am I? Education, position, opportunity beyond the marshlands of her home county – they all seemed like naïve notions now. Alessia pulled off her habit and wondered what she should do with it. Fold it and set it on the cot that was no longer hers? Hang it on the hook above or deliver it to the laundry? Maybe they’d ritually burn it after she left. She stood shivering in her shift. The canvas rucksack in front of her held pitifully few items, for everything she’d needed was provided and owned by the temple. A spare physic kit, a change of clothes, some travel items, some hardtack, copper coins. And all of those newly bestowed gifts of charity. Oh, the irony of that!

  “So it’s true then. You’re running away.”

  Alessia jumped, spun around. The dormitory was quiet and otherwise empty, but Livielle’s soft slippers let her move undetected. “I’m not running. You know why I have to do this.”

  “Another argument with Mother? Another temper tantrum? What does it matter, Lessi? Is it so important that you get your way—”

  “Stop it! You know that’s not what this is about.”

  “But how can you leave…us?” Me, Livielle almost said before catching herself. No matter, Alessia heard it anyway.

  She moved in close, her voice dropping to just above a whisper. “Liv, you’ll be fine. Stay behind these walls, listen to Mother. One day this will all be over, and then…well.”

  Livielle swallowed, fought hard not to cry. “All right. It’s just…it would’ve been nice…wouldn’t it?”

  They were alone, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they were not, not now. Alessia took the girl in her arms and kissed her lightly. “It was just a dream, love,” she whispered, “just a pleasant dream. There’ll be others.”

  “Not like this.”

  Alessia pulled back, forced herself to let go. “May the gods light your path.” But she couldn’t see any light, any path before her, and that made her afraid.

  In the morning the temple doors opened again and Alessia emerged from a misty-eyed crowd of sisters and acolytes, Tanusia and Eudo. She was dressed in a simple travel gown with her sack slung over a shoulder. Livielle wasn’t there; she couldn’t bear another parting. That was fine, they’d made their farewells.

  “I must ask you once more,” said Tanusia before Alessia crossed the threshold, “is this really what you want?”

  Alessia lowered her eyes. “No, it isn’t. But it’s what I have to do.”

  “Then indulge me in one little way at least.” Tanusia turned to a young acolyte almost lost in the folds of her habit and took up what the child held. “Taurix was right in one thing. It is an absurd world we live in, and dangerous. Take this.”

  It was a bow. A light, recurved hunting bow of simple but quality manufacture and a dozen arrows sheathed in a hide quiver. “Mother,” said Alessia, “I can’t take this—”

  “Take it,” Tanusia insisted. “Better to have it and not need it than the other way round.”

  “I’m leaving so I can save lives, not take them.”

  “And there may come a time when you’ll have to save your own. Besides, you might need to hunt to eat. Take it! Consider it my final order.”

  Alessia took it to satisfy the woman, certain she’d never use it nor even learn how. She pulled the copper Polytheon star from her neck and dropped it on the ground torn up by the supplicants they’d turned away. “Well, that’s it. I guess.”

  “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” said the child acolyte.

  “So do I, dear.” Alessia fought not to look back as she walked toward the road that led she knew not where, to do she knew not what.

  * * *

  Taurix drew the fur cloak tighter around his neck against a gust of wind, his bones not yet used to the chill of the south. Still, he thought as he surveyed the devastation, I wouldn’t be anywhere else. Even after so many years he never failed to feel awe at the sheer destruction of a town given over to sack. A few more such examples and things might finally start going in the proper direction. Every corpse, every smashed building was a stone laid on the path to victory. In the distance a scream was cut short. But not too quickly, perhaps.

  A body lay in Taurix’s path, face down and naked in the mud with blood trickling from between its legs. As he stepped over it his boot crunched on something hard – a piece of pottery, and a trail of broken bits leading from a burned-out home. More looting’ll slow us down. Have to speak to the captains about that. Across the way a crow alighted on an overturned barrel, brandishing a pink piece of something in its beak before flying off again. “Feast well, my friend,” Taurix muttered.

  “M’lord!”

  Taurix spun on a heel at the call. The cloak twisted around his muscular frame, the few wisps of hair remaining on his head fluttering in the breeze. A stab of pain shot up his left leg and into his hip at the movement. This war came twenty years too late, he thought. Or I twenty too early. “Well Tobius,” he said impatiently, “is he here?”

  The secretary dropped to one knee, making a squelching sound in the street trampled to sludge by hundreds of boots. “Waiting in your command tent.”

  “I assume that means he’s managed to capture Ludolphus?”

  “I…er, His Lordship did not say—”


  “No then.” Taurix sighed. “Disappointing.” He took a last look at his day’s work before stomping off to his tent and wrenching the flap aside.

  The young man looked up from the letter he was reading. He sat behind Taurix’s campaign desk, muddy lambskin boots perched on the edge and a silver goblet in hand.

  “Lord Felgred, I presume?”

  The fellow raised the goblet in greeting then took a long gulp. “I’d just about have to be, wouldn’t I? Anyone else that barged into your tent and drank your wine from your silver should look to be disemboweled for his troubles.”

  “Don’t exclude yourself so quickly,” Taurix replied. “Welcome to the war, my lord.” My spy, more like. Pharamund sends his lackey to keep me on a short leash. Shitheels, both.

  “You’re welcoming me? That’s a bit backward. Since storming down out of the northern Marches just last season you’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest of troubles. Your little stunt in Murento, for instance….”

  “That was no stunt. Two years of attack, retreat, advance, fall back and regroup…lunacy! It’s past time for decisive action. And to lose a city….”

  “I see your strategy – kill everyone in the city and there’s no one left to surrender it. Brilliant.”

  “Surrender must be seen as the worst possible outcome. From now on it will be. This war’s been run like a farce—”

  “I certainly hope,” Felgred said sharply, perhaps made bold by Taurix’s excellent wine, “you aren’t speaking ill of His Grace.”

  Taurix glared, taking a rare moment to measure his words. “Never dream of it. But perhaps the judgment of those who advise King Pharamund isn’t all it should be.”

  A tension settled thick in the tent. Two soldiers oiling leather in the back tried hard to look invisible but quivered in anticipation at the very real risk of violence. “Taurix,” Felgred said. “That’s a Marchman name, no?”

  The older lord winced. “It is,” he replied, ice clinging to each syllable. “What fucking of it?”

  “It just seems strange to me that a noble lord, especially one of the soft sunny north, would carry the name of a barbarian.”

  Taurix pushed Felgred’s boots from his desk. “My grandfather was an upland chieftain. I carry the name in his honor, and to remind me of how far a man can climb. Or fall. And since the Marchman tribes precede the kingdoms of Argovan and Bergovny both, my right and title is doubly sound. And, as you doubtless learned the lineages of the Bergovan peers before knowing which end of your prick to use, I must wonder at your point.”

  Felgred set down the goblet, held up his hands in surrender. “Just an observation. Whatever else folk say, the Marchmen are fierce warriors, heedless of their own safety in battle. I wonder if some of that recklessness doesn’t run in your blood as well.”

  “Battle,” said Taurix, “has been the exception rather than the rule in this war.”

  “You see my point all too clearly then.” He held up the letter he’d been reading, waved it in Taurix’s face and never knew how close he came to being gutted for it. “You got Engwara’s attention – she’s sent reavers to devastate my lands, and as we speak crops from Lenocca halfway up the Carsa burn. Armies march on their stomachs, and if I can’t feed them they certainly can’t fight.”

  Taurix nodded with approval. “Good basic warcraft. If it’s grain you want I’ll make you a gift, courtesy of the soft sunny north and the Marcher lord with a barbarian’s name.”

  “That’s most kind. Meanwhile, I’ve a line on your elusive General Ludolphus.”

  “You captured him?”

  “Me? Heavens no, I haven’t the men for that. I have an idea where he’s fled though – south, straight for Carsolan.”

  “Then let’s get after him!”

  “We will, we will.” Felgred rose, a touch clumsily thanks to the wine. “Something I want to show you first. Come.”

  * * *

  “Hold still, here it comes!”

  “Aye, m’lo—”

  The soldier was knocked clean off his feet by the blow, the bolt lodged halfway through his shield. He tried to fall so as not to impale himself on the tip. The man crawled to his feet, his heart pounding.

  Felgred sat mounted twenty yards away, impatient. “Well?” The soldier held the shield up sideways to show the damage. “Amazing,” he said with a wide smile. “Simply amazing device.” He handed the weapon to Taurix, who sat on a charger next to him observing the demonstration. “Care to give it a try?”

  “What’s it called again?”

  “A cross-bow. It’s powerful. Like a ballista you can carry.”

  “Hmm.” Taurix examined the awkward weapon. “Takes long to reload, though.” He handed it back to Felgred untested.

  “The price of progress. Still, one volley of these and you mayn’t need to reload.”

  “This war won’t be won by curious gadgets.” Taurix kicked his horse back toward his camp, anxious to get moving. Felgred’s palfrey struggled to keep up.

  “Yes, you favor simpler methods. You made short work of Brathilde’s lands. Didn’t she declare for Pharamund?”

  “She switched sides last season. That makes her an enemy.”

  “Ah. And I hear you gave those temple women a singular fright. It’d be unwise to anger the Polytheon. The Holy City might be far away and neutral, but there are plenty of powerful true believers here, and Engwara’s enemy enough.”

  “Point taken,” the Marcher lord replied impatiently. “I’ll defer to you on political matters, if you’ll defer to me on military ones. An enemy’s an enemy whether the so-called queen in Carsolan or a slogger in sickbed. After the bloody nose Pharamund suffered at Everwest, I’d think you would tend to agree.”

  Felgred swallowed hard. The Everwest disaster and the cost of retaking the city had led to the rather intemperate removal of the previous lord high marshal and the elevation of Taurix. “No argument there. It’s just, your devotion to the king’s cause seems to have come, well, a bit recently in my memory. Perhaps—”

  “When that woman’s fleet attacked Ólo it was she who declared the enemy, not I. My house has ruled the northern Marches before man piled stone on stone or set fire to forge and will do so until the sun burns out in the sky. There’s nothing I won’t do to remove her threat, and there’s my devotion. Is that clear?”

  “All right, you’ve convinced me! Maybe I should feel sorry for Ludolphus.”

  Taurix snorted. “Don’t bother. I’ll put him beyond all feeling soon enough.”

  “Though I’m surprised you’re so keen to end the war quickly. I would’ve thought this is what you Marcher lords live for. What’ll you do when it’s over?”

  “There are always wars to fight, lordling. The Bhasan emperor’s satraps raiding over the mountains, snatching at my lands like ill-behaved puppies while I’m away. Pirates from Pelona, slave uprisings. Even Lady Nostrado needs to be slapped back into line on occasion. This? This is a distraction.”

  Chapter Three

  A Just Reward

  ‘Civil war’ they called it, but Ulnoth couldn’t see a damn civil thing about the whole mess as he crashed through a wall of brush and down the ravine, making far too much noise for someone trying to slip away. Though outnumbered three to one, he knew the woods better than the recruiters set on drafting him, so his odds probably worked out about fair. Fairness was currently the last thing on Ulnoth’s mind.

  Rolling to a halt, he peeked back up the slope where the afternoon sun lanced through the trees. Had they given up? No, a healthy man in his twenties was too precious a prize to surrender so easily. He grabbed a good, thick branch from the ground and crept along the bottom of the gully, making it almost ten paces before a blur of red whipped across his vision and slammed him into the mud. It resolved into a decidedly unhygienic fellow with a toothy grin and five-day growth, cl
ad in the worn scarlet livery of Pharamund. King Pharamund if you asked certain folk – Usurping Bastard Pharamund according to others. “Now let’s have no more o’ that,” said the recruiter. “You just come along with us and we’ll get you sorted out real n— Huargh!”

  Having no interest in getting sorted out any way at all, Ulnoth swung the branch up across the man’s jaw, launching two yellowed teeth across the forest floor followed by tiny comet-tails of blood. He scrambled to his feet and tore off in the general direction of the village. “Teach me to take a shortcut,” he muttered to himself.

  “Muhverfugger,” the recruiter moaned, bent over and spitting more blood. Two more burst forth after Ulnoth, leaving their companion forgotten behind.

  “Come on, son,” called out one of them, somewhat past his prime and huffing heavily. “King’s army…needs men! No use…running, they’ll get ya…sooner or later. They get everyone!”

  “Aye,” said the second man, “we’s just doin’ our jobs! Come back, make it easy on yourself!”

  Ulnoth’s mind raced with options, most of them dumb, until he heard a soft trickle not far off. Cadwall’s Run! He looked for the familiar landmarks – the upturned tree stump, there. The boulder with that patch of moss that looked like Saint Nelwyn…right there. Not much farther, then.

  He came at last to a rickety bridge. It certainly looked solid enough to bear him across, surely good for another season yet? He didn’t step onto it but cut north upstream, careful not to get stuck in the marshy wet. Now where’s that stone? He leaped lightly onto the rock jutting from the middle of the stream, then again toward the other side. He didn’t quite make it, landing shin-deep in a clod of muck a yard from the bank. Good enough. He waded ashore, came back to the bridge and continued on to the village just as his pursuers came upon the Run. Without a moment’s hesitation they trampled onto the bridge. A creak, a groan and the rotted-out planks collapsed, tossing the men into the water. The rubble and sucking mud held them long enough for Ulnoth to pause a moment and admire his handiwork.