And here he was, gravely wounded in the mud.
Brann was already at his side. Ossavian, his face drawn with the pain and one hand holding the spear still where it entered his side, looked up at him. ‘Take that worry from your face, boy. I’ll be fine. Gods, I’ve had worse when I’ve drunk too much to stay on my feet.’
Brann glanced down at the froth in the blood seeping between the general’s fingers, and was just as aware as Ossavian himself that he lied.
Ossavian smiled weakly. ‘Just get me back up where I can see what is happening, young man. Can you do that for me?’
Brann nodded. He glanced back, seeing both armies retreating from the field for the first short respite that the day would bring. He waved a passing soldier to help, and the pair took an arm each across their shoulders and eased the general back to the medics who swarmed to help. Ruslan’s personal healer, his robes already more bloodstains than not, waved away all but Philippe, citing both the personal connection and the young man’s fast-growing skill to explain to the young man why he remained. Brann was waved away also, and he complied without a word. In situations such as these, the healer was a king.
The tending stations, already overwhelmed, accepted more of those too badly injured to continue or, in some cases, to live. The remainder of the army regrouped, hands grasping greedily for liquid of any sort, wounds being roughly bandaged to allow a return to the fight, weapons prepared or replaced.
Brann gratefully accepted a water skin and, gulping, swept his eyes about the scene as, already, the lines began to form once more. No encouragement was needed. This was their home. They would defend it while they still could stand. The two kings, while rocked by Ossavian’s injury, were pragmatists and were already absorbed in directing and adjusting where they saw fit.
Brann looked over at the canopy where Ossavian was attended with calm urgency; he looked at the dead and dying strewn across the empty ground that would soon be filled with ever more victims; he looked at the ranks of faces that had come to this field with earnest determination and now stood upon it with a hardened acceptance that they must, for now, live in hell. Xamira’s bitter words from the night before filled his head once more. Battle is killing for someone else’s reason.
Brann’s voice came out in a growl. ‘Enough.’
Hakon looked up. ‘Say again?’
Brann shook his head as his hands checked his weapons. ‘No more.’
He walked forward, his stride becoming more definite with every pace. All that he had done, all that he had suffered, all that he had endured, all that he had survived, all that he had become: all now seemed to make sense. All of it aligned, and with a certainty that felt unshakeable, he knew. He knew this was his time.
Gerens’s voice came from behind. ‘Oh shit. Grakk!’
He walked on, through the ranks of their soldiers, none now considered novices, all around starting to murmur as he passed.
Grakk caught him as he neared the front of their lines. The tribesman looked at him with worried eyes. ‘Have a care, young Brann. It appears that while there is madness and a disregard for the lives and suffering of swathes of ordinary people in Loku’s thinking, there is a purpose to it and an ingenuity behind it that may exceed that of all of us combined.’
Brann’s voice was low and dark. ‘The cleverest head thinks less when a sword blade takes it off at the neck.’
Grakk laid a hand softly on his arm. ‘Have a care, young warrior, for the blade may miss its mark should the target outsmart the aggressor.’
Brann stared at him. ‘My blade will not miss him.’
He passed through the front rank and continued walking into the emptiness between the armies. An emptiness that felt much larger without the press of struggling men around him. He walked past corpses from many cultures, all just men in death. He walked into clear ground. When he was the length of two spear throws from the enemy host, he stopped.
A gaggle of the Scum, no more than a dozen from along the length of the line, broke from their ranks and ran at him. At shouted commands, most stopped and capered back. Another command, and arrows flickered from the enemy and took down those who continued. One alone survived, charging at Brann, his eyes alight with wild lust. A single contemptuous swing of Brann’s axe took away that light.
He slowly wiped his axe on the tunic the man wore beneath ill-fitting mail, his eyes never leaving Loku. He pointed his weapon straight at Loku. All eyes turned to the enemy leader; he could not ignore the gesture. The stopping of the men who had run at Brann had already proved that he would not ignore the gesture already made.
Loku slowly walked his horse forward. He passed through his men, staring at none but Brann. He dismounted at the front rank and walked onto the field. He stopped twenty paces from Brann. Behind him stood a small group of what appeared to be senior officers or priests, and one archer, too far away to accurately strike Brann where he stood, but close enough to be sure of a kill should Brann move close to where Loku now stood. Brann heard noise behind him also and glanced back to see Gerens, Xamira, Grakk and Hakon poised to rush forward. He raised a hand slightly to hold them there, although they had already stopped, wary of provoking a situation that was already tensely balanced.
‘So, boy,’ came Loku’s mocking tone. ‘It has come to this. How you must wish that you had realised in those woods that poor Daric was not the real prize.’
‘I have you now,’ Brann said, his voice flat.
‘You do indeed,’ Loku said amiably, ‘or, at least, you have my curiosity and my attention for as long as my curiosity lasts. Pray speak.’
‘This,’ Brann swept his hand to encompass both armies and the area of slaughter between, ‘serves neither of us.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Loku’s tone was flippant. ‘Half of my men see it as a religious experience, and the rest positively revel in it. And you know that you will lose. Your people could each kill two of mine before they fall and I would still have a force enough to serve my gods’ purposes when all on your side of the field are meeting with their gods.’
‘I hope your gods are patient,’ Brann said. ‘I doubt it serves your purposes to wait overlong at this place, and it suits ours to keep you here.’
Loku’s eyes grew serious, though the mocking smile remained. ‘Every hour I am here, I grow closer to the information I need for the prize I seek, and then nothing can stop me. And every hour I am here, your new friends from this city grow fewer, so I presume you have a suggestion. A truce? We go on our way, and leave this city?’ He barked a harsh laugh. ‘I have told my soldiers that the gods will see this city fall to the righteous, and I cannot have them doubt their gods, can I? How could their gods be wrong? And in any case, I still have questions to ask of the locals, and one answer to find. If I ask enough people, one will know.’
Brann felt his face harden. His voice rose, ringing harshly in the still air, reaching at least the closest ranks of the enemy host. ‘Let your gods show their power, if they have it! Let there be a fight of champions! Let all watch and all witness the fight that will decide the fate of this city. Let us see if your gods have the strength to prevail. Let us see if your gods are true!’
Loku’s lip curled in contempt. ‘A clumsy effort boy, but a decent attempt, I suppose, from one at your level of guile. Run along now.’
His words faded, however, as a rumble spread across the enemy lines, developing into a chant.
‘Our gods are true! Our gods are true!’
Even the Scum, who had no concept of any gods but for the invented and crudely drawn deities of pain and suffering they had been introduced to in their camps, joined the chant. Loku turned to stare at them, then looked back at Brann, his voice just audible above the noise. ‘It seems that my people have a less finely tuned appreciation of guile. You shall have your fight of champions.’
‘Prepare yourself,’ Brann growled in eagerness. ‘You have fifteen minutes before I meet you here.’
He turned to go, but Lo
ku’s honeyed tone stopped him. ‘Oh, my dear foolish boy, you do not think I would dirty my holy hands on you? Your kings have sent a champion, why would I do different?’ He whirled to face his army, his hands held high. The noise quietened, and his voice called clear and strong. ‘This hero of the foe has come with a challenge, and we will meet this challenge with the strength of our gods in our hearts and our sword arms!’ A roar burst forth, and he waited for it to fall. ‘We will accept this challenge in our time-honoured tradition. Five gods, five champions.’ The chant took up those four words, and he let it continue for a short while before turning back to Brann. ‘Five of ours will meet five of yours.’
Brann was already considering it: the two kings would doubtless insist on their two first warriors, both hardened and skilled warriors as Brann had witnessed in recent times, and the five would be completed by Grakk, himself and Gerens – he knew there would be no chance of keeping away the boy who had made it his purpose to watch over Brann since the moment they had met. He was confident in the talents of each.
Loku continued, his words coming through a delicious smile, turning to his host once more. ‘This man before me is the first of their challengers! Salute the bravery of the man who seeks to defeat death five times!’
Brann frowned at this and Loku noted his reaction with undisguised glee. ‘Oh, Northerner, do not tell me you are unaware of the custom across these southern lands of combat under the sight of the gods? Allow me to enlighten you. Five champions are chosen from each army. The first two fight, the winner facing the next man, and then the next, until one side has no champions left. In being prepared to fight five men, each of the first pair prove their faith that the gods favour them. And in being prepared to take the place of those who fall, those who follow show their devotion to the one who stepped into the light of the gods first. I commend you on being the first of your people – your faith delights me.’
Brann stared at him, feeling the hatred burn in his eyes. He was trapped into Loku’s terms. Brann had sought the confrontation and, in his haste, had neglected to think that customs in the South may vary from those in the Northern sagas he had listened to with a child’s shining eyes. To seek to change it in his favour would be catastrophic for the morale of the army behind him, but to die here would be worse for the city and its population. He had no option – Grakk’s warning about Loku’s ingenuity came back to him too late.
But if this was how it would be, then his fate was set, one way or the other. He spat. ‘I will kill your five, and then I will put your head on top of one of your poles.’
Loku’s smile broadened. ‘Oh, I am sure you will not. But I very much look forward to watching you make the attempt. And my thanks for hastening what had become a tedious affair. Victory here will release my full attention to finding the knowledge to save my people. I need that hastened time, and I thank you for it.’
He turned in a whirl of his robes and returned to the acclaim of his followers.
Brann walked back to his comrades, his mind already committing itself to thoughts of the impending combat. Loku may have forced him into a series of fights of horrendous odds, but Brann had approached him with the basic aim of stopping the wholesale slaughter of the battle by addressing the one reason for it taking place and that, at least, he had achieved. For now.
Gerens grabbed him as soon as he reached them, his voice intense. ‘You do not need to do this, chief. You are already the hero you needed to be. What you have done, it has achieved more than all the rest of us combined could have accomplished. If this army can but hold them here to sap their strength, then regroup in the city where a demoralised enemy will enter only with fear, we can turn the tide. He will have failed. Khardorul will be safe.’
Brann stared at the enemy host, at the man standing among them, and shook his head. ‘I know why you say it, Gerens, but you cannot blame yourself for not being able to protect me this time. You have discharged that duty more times in the past than was ever necessary. What will be, now, must be.’
Gerens made to speak again, but Grakk’s voice came low from behind. ‘He is right, young Gerens, though it pains me as much as it does you to watch this unfold.’ He looked at Brann. ‘You have to stay alive – for all these people. I truly do not know how you can achieve this, but I also do not know all that you have gone through in Sagia. I can only hope that there is something in the terrible things you endured that will have helped you to prepare for this now. For Loku does not even ultimately need his men to win, although it would be best for him were they to do so. He needs to kill you. In doing so, in losing our talisman, the inspiration of all those people behind you, our hope will fade like smoke from a pyre.’
Brann looked at him. ‘I only fought to help them in whatever way seemed right at the time. I did not choose to be their hero.’
Grakk smiled sadly. ‘No hero ever does.’
Xamira spun him to face her, her look as strong as her tone. ‘You have to stay alive for these people.’ But her eyes said: ‘For me.’
The four supporting warriors were chosen as Brann had predicted; even Shahkam Davar showed grudging respect for him in his greeting. The five walked forward, the eyes of two armies upon them. Brann was reminded of entering the great Arena of Sagia: there, thousands also had watched him fight. This time, however, he was driven by personal desire: he did this for those who stood behind him, and he did this for Loku.
He reached the appointed spot, noting that no designated area had been marked. The fight would go where it went. He guessed there would be no rules also, but that did not trouble him, either. He had fought, and survived, in the illicit matches below the streets of Sagia, where the only rule was live or die.
He checked his weapons: the knife sheaths were all filled and his sword and axe were remarkably undamaged by the intensive fighting, the black metal bearing not even a scratch, never mind a nick. His mail shirt had fared not so well in the intensity of the fighting throughout the previous day, rent in places and battered in others, but it would do and he settled it more comfortably on his shoulders. He noticed as he did so that the kings’ three warriors checked their weapons, also: they expected him to fall. Gerens’s hands moved to his sword and his two knives, but it signified nothing – that happened every time he thought Brann was in any danger. Grakk alone stood still and impassively. The sun flashed from his bald head as he nodded to Brann.
The tribesman moved closer. ‘Remember what you learnt in your fights in the City Below, not in those of the Arena: there is no fighting clean or fighting dirty, only fighting and winning or fighting and losing. Fighting is simply doing what you have to do to stay alive. And in this sort of a fight, you are at least the equal of any warrior I have known. Remember. Your greatest danger today will be fatigue, your greatest enemies the sun and the time you fight. Do not tarry with any man. And do not relax until the life leaves each one, nor even after the last – we do not know what Loku will do then.’
Brann’s laugh emerged harsh and brittle. ‘On the bright side, the worst that can happen is that I discover the truth of whether there is an afterlife. That is a fairly momentous consolation.’
‘No one living can know the truth of that for sure,’ Grakk conceded. ‘But as creatures, we are conditioned to strive to our last breath to survive, and the urge to live is greater in you than any I have known.’
Brann’s mouth moved awkwardly into a smile. ‘You speak as if I will live through this.’
‘You had better,’ Grakk said, his expression never wavering from solemn. ‘I am due to fight second, and I am a little tired today.’
Brann’s smile came more easily than he would have expected for the brief moment before he looked across the space to those awaiting him. It faded as the question of afterlife or oblivion, expressed as black humour but spawned by the reality of his situation, filled his thoughts. He forced his head clear – he had no further time to prepare. A member of the Scum was walking forward, sword and round shield ready, and Brann
wanted no hesitation on his part to give the man confidence. He examined the man: better built than the majority of his comrades, though no doubt he did possess their outlook on life, and with the balance and easy movement of a fighting man – most probably a mercenary before being attracted to Loku’s brand of religion. His eyes fixed eagerly on Brann with a confidence that grew as their eyes met. Brann revised his decision on the hesitation, and turned to Grakk, as if urgently conversing.
‘Make as if you push me to him,’ he said quietly.
Grakk frowned, but did so with automatic trust, his hands spinning Brann and propelling him a couple of steps towards his opponent. Brann fumbled to draw his sword and almost dropped it as he did.
It almost worked.
The man leapt forward with a roar of triumph and a face alight with glee. In the same moment, Brann’s sword came alive in his hand, spearing forwards as he took two steps at an angle on the balls of his feet. A loose rock turned the man’s footing and his body, and Brann’s blade cut through the space where he would have been, and Brann stepped back out of range as the man swung wildly as he tried to regain his balance. His mind was settling into the coldness of combat; his buried self remembering these types of fight with fondness.
The man regained his poise, a sneer spreading across his lips. ‘Now you know the gods are with me today.’
Brann shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps they wish a proper contest for their entertainment.’
He left his axe for the moment, aiming to sap as little strength from his arms as he could, and moved at his opponent, trading blows and gauging his skill. The shouts that had come from both armies as the two had initially closed now became a roaring of voices, the sound taking Brann back more deeply to his gladiator days.
The man was good – he was a champion, after all – and his basic technique seemed greater than Brann’s. He used this, attacking little in favour of a solid defence, moving and parrying, clearly hoping to wear down Brann’s energy. With his greater reach and his studded leather tunic, as opposed to Brann’s mail, he had a chance of doing so, and Brann switched his sword to his left hand as much to rest his right arm as to try to unsettle the man. His opponent merely changed his position, his smile now gone as he lost himself in concentration – the fight continuing longer than Brann would have wished.
Hero Risen (Seeds of Destiny, Book 3) Page 48