I wasn’t expecting a response and I got none. We hadn’t tarried long, but it was enough for us to be discovered. Before we had made any more progress, the sound of many booted feet heralded the arrival of numerous men. I was close to ordering our withdrawal in the opposite direction, before I saw something that made me hold the order. Shortly we faced off against a group of about seventy other soldiers, who looked at us with the wild eyes of men who have lived far longer than their expectations and had started to believe that they were somehow charmed against death. I knew the look.
“How goes it, Lieutenant Trovis?” I asked.
He stepped forward to greet me. “It goes well, Captain. My men have discovered depths to their skills that they didn’t know existed. We have killed and been killed, but by the gods the enemy do not wish to fight with us again.”
“It will serve the men well in future. We are all discovering how it feels to fight for something we truly believe in.”
“We cannot stay long, Captain. My men have fought beyond even their own hopes, but we are still vastly outnumbered by the enemy. They have their informers too,” he spat to indicate that some of the townsfolk were traitors, “and it won’t be long until they come here.”
I stepped in close and whispered so that my words would not carry. “Leerfar Backstabber leads them. Keep your men close at all time. She is a tricky and sly opponent.”
Lieutenant Trovis nodded his understanding. I considered joining with him, but I did not want us to become part of such a large group. The men with Trovis knew Gold far better than we did and I was sure they knew of many places to hide or escape to. I didn’t want our tactics to interfere with how they chose to deal with the invaders. They were alive, which told me that whatever they were doing it had worked up till now.
We parted ways, and as we did I could hear the sound of conflict a few streets across from us, informing me that Leerfar’s troops would not be getting much sleep tonight. The constant whittling away at their numbers and the uncertainty that besets a man in a hostile town would wear away at their resolve. I hoped that it would be enough to keep them at bay until help arrived, if it ever did.
We reached the river without further incident. As we ran, we kept a careful watch around us, in case Leerfar still followed. She knew who I was, so I didn’t doubt that she’d be close. Once or twice I thought I saw a flickering shape or shadow off to one side, tall and lean. It may have been her, or it may have been my imagination. I had to assume that she was there and that even if my eyes had deceived me, she would still be watching us.
Moonlight cast its wavering light over the surface of the water as we waded through it. There were torchlights along some of the streets, but none along the bank where we emerged from the river. An army of fourteen thousand was a lot of men, but they couldn’t all be on patrol at once and the town was too spread out for them to blanket the streets.
I shoulder charged the wooden door of a two-storey building near to us. I hit it harder than I had meant to and the door burst open, crashing against the inner wall.
“Take it easy, Captain,” whispered Frods. I raised my hand in apology.
Before we could enter the dark room beyond, I heard a grunt and a thump from behind me. My periphery saw a trace of white light cut through the darkness.
“That’s her!” said Beamer, his voice hissing. He had his sword out.
“Did you get her?” asked Waxer.
“I hit something. Right at the tip,” said Beamer.
I didn’t need to ask him if he was certain. If his blade had caught only air I would have questioned him to see if there had definitely been an attacker, but any swordsman can tell the difference between an empty swing and contact with something.
“You three, facing outwards,” I said. “The rest of you, get inside.”
My squad bundled into the room, while three others watched their backs. It was too dark to easily see anything on the river side of the building, but we clattered our way through, catching our legs and feet on the odd bits and pieces which had been left behind. Where the building faced onto a street, there was light enough for us to see, coming from the houses opposite. We gathered in two such rooms, the dark tattoos on our faces and limbs making us hardly visible at all.
“Reckon she’s gone?” someone asked.
I shrugged, realising that the gesture couldn’t be seen. “I don’t know. She’s not a coward, but she’d be stupid to confront all of us at once. This is just a game to her I think. Probably nothing more than something to keep her interested until daylight.”
“She knows us, Captain. Knows you,” said Twist.
“Aye, she knows us.”
Twist was telling me that he thought we were too great a prize for her to ignore, that she might risk more in order to drive her blades into our backs. Into my back, if she got the chance.
I held us in that room for fifteen minutes.
“Get up. We’re leaving.” I told them. There were no complaints or questions and we left our refuge with the utmost of care. I led us fifty yards down the street and we broke into the residences of a family on the opposite side to the building we’d just left. I kicked in the door and ushered everyone inside. There was a lamp in the room here, to provide us with enough light to see, and worn furnishings. I closed the splintered door behind us and propped it shut with a chair.
Another door opened and a man entered. I hadn’t seen him before, but he was holding a sword. He lunged at Gurney, who batted the weapon away with his shield.
“Hold!” I commanded.
The man who had attacked suddenly realised how many of us were in his house. His face went pale and his sword arm drooped.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, stammering in his haste to speak.
“Go back upstairs,” I told him. “We’ll do you no harm. We fight for the Saviour.”
His reaction to this told me that he was loyal to his town. It was little matter, even had I thought him a turncoat. He retreated deeper into his house, scared but grateful that we hadn’t killed him.
“What’re we doing here, Captain?” asked Weevil. “Are we expecting some of Warmont’s to come this way?”
“No, Weevil, we’re expecting some of Warmont’s to come to the building we just left,” I told him, cracking open a shutter and peering along the street. “If they do, it means that Leerfar left us in order to call her men and we might have got away from her.”
“And if they don’t, she’s still watching us,” said Chant.
We had our answer soon enough. We all heard the crunching sound from above us, like something wooden had been broken into pieces. There were other sounds – not gentle.
I waved us through the back room from which the man had emerged. There was a flight of stairs to the upper floor. Beamer went in the lead, with his sword stretched out before him. Binks followed and then I came after. The noises abruptly stopped and I felt the cold night air blowing across my face when I reached the first-floor landing. It was dark again, but not so much that we couldn’t see the reflections the moonlight made across the slick redness that covered the walls and floor in the bedroom closest.
We searched the upper floor quickly, waving our swords in front of us, as if we might catch a creature as cunning as Leerfar unawares with such a simple ruse. A few of us clustered in the only bedroom which had been occupied. The remains of the man and his wife were spread in pieces across the floor, hardly even recognizable for what they’d been. We all knew that we’d brought this upon them.
“At least there was no nippers,” said Waxer. “I don’t think I could have stood it if there’d been nippers.”
We were saved from our silent contemplation. We heard a choking, gasping sound from below, as if a man whose throat had been cut fought to tell us something important.
“Captain, quick!” said Binks from below.
“Downstairs, now!” I said. “You four stay up here and watch out.”
I was first down the stair
s, smashing through whatever furniture got in my way. The room into which we’d first entered the house was the scene of a fray. The five men who’d remained in here were hard-pressed by a lithe, dark shadow. Leerfar was over six feet tall, with long, spindly limbs. She may have been beautiful in life, but there was nothing exquisite about her features now. She looked old beyond measure, like a witch clad in black leather.
Her outline was hard to focus on, but I could see the shining short blades she held in each hand. The weapons were a blur, carving through the air with impossible speed and precision. My men huddled behind their shields, as they sought to cut at our opponent with their swords. Where Leerfar’s short swords hit the metal barricades, they made a screech and pieces of the metal fell to the floor. There was plenty of room to fight and I pointed my sword tip at her and circled around. She saw me and laughed, a rasping hiss that held no humour that anyone would comprehend.
Without warning, she vanished from sight – totally and utterly. For me, the world shuddered and slowed and I raised my sword, anticipating where the attack would come from. I saw nothing, but felt the impact and then the sparks flew from where our blades had met. I swung my sword down and again felt that I had blocked something.
In my heightened state, I could almost see my attacker and sense where she tried to reach round my guard. I was dimly aware that the other men had slowed almost to a halt now, as if they waded through thick treacle. I was an expert swordsman, but I was just a soldier, not one of Warmont’s specials. My power was in my men, not in me alone.
I blocked three more times, each time closer and closer to my head as Leerfar pressed me. Had my sword not been from the Emperor’s own armoury, I was sure it would have sheared away quickly, but it did no such thing.
War is not all about honour and fair play. I kicked out and my booted foot connected with something hard and unyielding. I heard a grunt and the blow I had anticipated next did not arrive, giving me time to recover. I kicked again, but Leerfar was already wise to me and my foot didn’t hit her again.
There was a shimmering to my left and too late I sensed the next attack. My sword was too far away to raise in a block and I leaned to one side, knowing that I was too late. The blow didn’t land. A second shape appeared from out of nowhere, its hand already halfway along a descending arc before I saw who it belonged to.
There was a scream of rage as Twist’s dagger plunged into Leerfar’s back, the shock of it depriving her of her shadow cloak. She had a strength far beyond what I’d expected and her arm swatted Twist aside. Quick as a flash, she tumbled away, parrying a blow from Sense without any apparent effort. Her speed was such that she pulled a draught behind her as she fled the house. Sense was first to the doorway, but I already knew she would be gone.
“She didn’t like that much,” said Twist in satisfaction. “I only wish I had my old hand back and she’d have had two blades in her spine.”
“We have to leave,” I said. “Now.”
That night already felt as though we’d spent it on the run. We needed to find a place we could hole up and gather ourselves, else we’d always be on the back foot.
“You seem to be getting faster as you get older, Captain,” said Tigs. “Shame Dueller’s gone. Would have been interesting to see you two spar.”
“Dueller was the best,” I said. “He’ll always be the best.”
We left the home of the two murdered townsfolk and entered the town’s streets again.
Twenty-Six
I knew there was a chance that Leerfar would continue to stalk us, so I was cautious and took care that the next place we hid in wasn’t occupied. It didn’t take long to find somewhere – an old tavern on the south side of town, much to the delight of the men. Whoever owned this building wasn’t in evidence and he’d spiked his barrels, so that nothing was left for the invaders or us. I didn’t blame this unknown bar keep. I’d have done the same, rather than leaving my wares behind for enemy soldiers to steal. Fortunately, he hadn’t been thorough and one of the men unearthed a dusty green bottle of something unknown. One sniff told us it was suitable and we toasted the men we had lost, drinking from the bottle.
“I’m not surprised he left this behind,” said Weevil. “It tastes like shit.”
“Maybe it’s window cleaner,” said Bastard. He dribbled a bit onto his grimy breast plate and rubbed with a finger, leaving a clear trail across the metal. “There! I knew it wasn’t fit for consumption!” He took another swig nonetheless.
We remained alert, but Leerfar didn’t show up. I guessed that the game had ended for her when Twist had stuck his knife between her shoulder blades. From what I knew of her, she only enjoyed the game when she was winning and we were not the easy prey she was used to. There were positives to be drawn from her escape. It was already becoming apparent that she was not the most accomplished military commander and her attempts to subdue the city betrayed her to be prone to vacillation, and the coordination of her men was poor. I was sure that she had some captains who were better equipped to run this campaign than she was, but I doubted any of them would have the desire to volunteer.
We carried ourselves to the upper floor of the tavern, where the owner had lived at one time. He’d left a few scraps of food around and those of us who felt the need ate these bits and pieces. There were windows and we all watched the street below with interest. Most of what we saw were enemy soldiers. They patrolled in what they thought were large enough groups to dissuade the town’s defenders from attacking. I saw them knock on a few doors and search the properties. This at least was a change in tactic from simply breaking in, and suggested to me that they’d quickly learned that it was better to treat the locals with some respect. I crossed my fingers that they would be unsuccessful and that the townsfolk would be a thorn in their sides.
I didn’t lead us out again on that night and gave the remaining men a chance to recuperate. I watched a few of them hunker down to a fitful sleep, but I felt no weariness at all. I’d lost three of my men. The First Cohort was becoming ever smaller and I dreaded to think how many of us would be left if we got out of Gold.
The following five days and nights blurred into one. It was only because I made a specific effort to remember that I was able to keep an accurate count of how much time had passed. We’d stayed in the shelter of the tavern for the whole of the day following our escape from Leerfar, in order for me to be certain that her eyes were no longer upon us. During the day, there were many more enemy soldiers to be seen than there were at night. They still patrolled in large numbers, which was a sure sign that things hadn’t settled down. We listened carefully through open windows and the sporadic sounds of fighting continued unabated. The townsfolk remained indoors.
At night, we emerged to wreak havoc upon the Duke’s men, carefully hunting out those of the enemy who were foolish enough to be travelling in smaller groups. We occasionally ran into men from our lady’s other two regiments and exchanged our tales and our information. The picture was as garbled as I’d expected, but even through the confusion it was clear that Warmont’s men had not managed to subdue the town, nor had they neutralised the ability of my soldiers to hit them with surprise attacks. I doubted that morale was good in Leerfar’s army.
We moved from place to place over those five days. I was concerned that we might become complacent if we did not, and also worried that one of the town’s citizens might report our location, or have it beaten from them.
I found out that Lieutenant Sinnar still lived, though I did not see him myself. A man from the Treads Regiment reported that Sinnar had been seen somewhere to the north, leading an attack against forty of the Duke’s soldiers. I had smiled at that, heartened by the news that I might see my lieutenant again.
On the sixth night, the fires appeared. I didn’t know where they’d been started, but it was somewhere to the south of the town. There had been little wind before, but now it blew along the streets and alleys, as if it were somehow aware that the fires appreciated
its appearance. We were deep into the south part of town, almost in the outskirts. The fires came all at once, as if their setting were deliberate.
“Think they’re trying to burn us out, Captain?” asked Bastard.
“Maybe. I’m surprised it’s taken so long for the fire to come. Every other time we’ve been in this sort of scrap, someone’s turned to fire in the hope of getting a quick fix,” I said.
We got our answer soon.
“Look, Captain!” called Frods. “They’re all moving out somewhere.”
I came over and saw what he meant. Men and wagons in their hundreds were visible as they crossed intersections of the streets near to us – Warmont’s soldiers were heading north.
“Think they’re moving them all over to the other side of town?” someone asked.
I ground my teeth together as I thought about it. “I hope that’s all they’re doing,” I said. Another part of my mind whispered to me that this might be the beginning of the end for Gold. “Leerfar likes the chaos. She could have done this without any sort of plan. Set the town ablaze and see what comes from it.”
“Think Warmont will care?” asked Lamper.
“She’s his fourth. I’m sure she’ll have her instructions. Probably to take the town intact if she can. It looks like she had another plan just in case they got stuck here. I can’t imagine the Duke wants to have such a large section of his men locked down fighting so far away from his capital.”
“You’d think they’d have learned how to take a city cleanly now,” said Beamer.
“You’d think,” I repeated. “We haven’t had to do too much fighting on streets ourselves though, have we? It’s always on hills or fields. No rebel wants to see his wife and family burned alive in their houses. I think I’d prefer that to the alternative, though. For all his hundreds of years, the Duke’s been a lucky man in that he’s never really been pushed to his limits. If we get out of Gold, we’ll see what he’s made of.”
Soldiers' Redemption (First Cohort Book 1) Page 30