by P. J. Fox
Provided no one anticipated their coming.
Family bonds were all among the clans, as they were throughout the North. Far more so than in the South, where fair weather allowed men to become more independent. Or at least think of themselves as such. In the South, men were bonded to another not by loyalty, or even blood but by law: serf to lord, apprentice to master. Each man owed allegiance, even to the point of sacrificing his life, to the man above him.
Among the clans, no man had a master. Even the chief was only a first among equals, elected by his peers and on occasion deposed by those same peers. Men were, rather, brothers. Marriage, rather than oaths of fealty, was the means by which families formed alliances. Because becoming family was understood as the greatest commitment of all.
Unsurprisingly, then, there were other means of forming this bond. When, the night before, Callas had referred to Hart as his blood brother, he’d been using the Northern term for a created bond that was as sacred as marriage. Each man cut himself on the palm of his sword hand before clasping it with his fellow, commingling their blood as he swore an oath of vengeance on the other’s life. The ceremony that Hart had undergone had been somewhat…different, but the effect had been the same. He and Callas were bonded for life. He and the North were bonded—in this life and the next.
The Northmen lacked the obsessive concern with a man’s parentage that shaped life in the South. Didn’t understand it. They accepted that family—by birth or no—was a choice. And one that each man must make, as an individual, anew each morn.
The men who crept along beside Hart did so, not from bondage but for love. A man, Hart had learned over the last few seasons, would do things for love that he would never do, simply because a man who called himself lord demanded that it be done. He might be compelled to fight, because theirs was a world of competing obligations, but he could not be made to sacrifice. To yearn for victory as a drowning man yearned for air.
He halted, alongside Callas, as dim forms joined them from the left. Black on black, shades of men. He and Callas had traveled here with the bare minimum number of men, a number that to Hart’s mind had nevertheless been a risk. The larger the group, the greater the chance of being spotted.
And so he’d decided, after encountering Bjorn on their second night and discussing the proposed plan with him and Callas, to split them all up.
Each group, each composed of about two score men, had split up and taken a different route through the passes. Now, they were coming together by prearrangement, each from a different direction. Hart had hoped that, by going about things in this manner, even if they were spotted their true purpose would be obfuscated. Multiple groups of seemingly unconnected men, each of them too small on its own to do more than hunt game. A group of search parties, perhaps. Or duke’s men, gathering information.
The village had a population of about three hundred souls. Owen Silverbeard’s intelligence suggested that perhaps another hundred men had joined them. Even adding ten percent to that number, Hart felt confident that the traitors were outmatched. Counting the tribesmen among his own, he’d brought almost that number. Two hundred and fifty loyal duke’s men, almost all of whom had now joined him in the darkness.
Molag had no wall, an oversight that Hart found curious. Then again, many of the mountain villages were similarly unprotected. Unlike their Southron counterparts, they relied on the treacherous slopes of the mountains to protect them. And, in Molag’s case, a series of watch-fires. Each fire provided warmth, and some measure of protection from wild animals to the sentries gathered around each.
But Molag, it seemed, wasn’t a village kept in good heart. The watch-fires facing them had burned down. Embers would do little to deter dire wolves, and those other predators—on four legs and two—that plagued men in their houses while the moon was out.
One of the sentries stumbled away, grabbing his crotch and mumbling something about needing to take a piss. A Southron, by his accent. Hart felt his blood run cold.
Owen Silverbeard had been right.
The good news, at least, was that less light meant less potential of being spotted.
“Praise Bragi,” Bjorn whispered, “they’re downwind of us!”
Hart smiled briefly. A smile that didn’t reach his eyes. They were coming upon it now: the moment of reckoning.
He’d prepared for this moment his entire life, although he hadn’t known that that was what he’d been doing. Only that he’d been waiting—for something. Marking time. But standing there, frozen as still as the creatures in the undergrowth, the chill air filling his lungs, he knew his purpose. To fight for the North. For Tristan. To give his entire being to the cause of preserving this land.
To wiping out this rebel scum, scourging their very bones into the earth.
He slid a gloved hand over the pommel of his sword. A beautiful piece, designed for him at Caer Addanc. Perfectly balanced, it demonstrated the clear understanding of function and fine sense of both form and proportion that were the hallmarks of a true bladesmith. Caer Addanc’s was hailed, even in Chad, as one of the finest in the world.
It was completely plain. In this, it was modeled after Tristan’s sword. Tristan, a man of means and power, could have chosen to express his status through gold and silver and even jewels. But he didn’t. He let his martial prowess speak for itself. His sword demonstrated a dedication, not to show but to the severest of knightly ideals.
Hart’s sword was almost a full five spans, as befitted a man of his height. The blade was fine and thin, grooved with a deep fuller. An inscription read look to him and live. A line from a prayer that most men knew, but that within the shadow world he now traversed had its own special significance.
Did it strike Hart as ironic that he, a man who’d sold his soul for power, would feel this urge to fight? To protect what was pure? There was no purity in Hart. And yet he knew, in his bones, that he’d die to defend not merely his ideals but his comrades. His brothers.
Who better than he, to fight what was not pure? To fight the greed, the desperation that drove the men making camp in Morven? He understood them, as few men could. He’d let those same urges drive him; the will was ever a beast of burden. Only where they’d sworn to uphold their own best interests, merely seeing convenience in the figurehead of Maeve, Hart had sworn not simply his fealty but his soul something far greater.
He’d given over his everything, not to a single man but to a cause.
Perhaps that was why he saw a purity in Lissa. The whore. Even in a place as permissive as Barghast, whores weren’t seen as true citizens. However popular they were as sometime companions, however celebrated their beauty or achievements, they lived their true lives in shadow. Like Hart.
He understood the world differently than most, and so he didn’t judge others as they did. From birth, he’d been an outcast: for his bastardy and yet, at the same time, for the fact that his father was such a fool. The scourge of the earth because he wasn’t truly his father’s son, and yet held accountable for the old man’s actions as if he were. Hart had grown up, too, understanding that the world was unfair.
He flexed his fingers on the leather wrapped grip and slowly eased his blade from its sheath. Slowly, so as not to disturb the silence of the clearing. Around him, the other men did the same.
Swords at the ready, they advanced.
FOURTEEN
One step, and then another.
And then another.
By prearrangement, the men feathered out into first a line, and then a ring. A ring of wraiths, descending on the village. Squeezing it from the outside, like putting pressure on a festering wound. Until the pus erupted, thick with infection. Scything through that infection, cleansing the North of its blight.
Hart was almost at the watch-fire. A man slumped with his back to him, warming his hands. Fool, Hart thought.
There was still no sign of the man who’d staggered off to piss.
Hart paid his absence no mind, figuring that the absenc
e of one man could be of no great import. Perhaps his bowels had fluxed on him, or he’d passed out face down in the snow.
An assumption born of an over-confidence that Hart would bitterly regret.
He should have investigated. Should have waited. Should have put more thought into the fact that Molag looked exactly as unprepared as he’d been led to expect such a village of slatterns would be. Should have gone ahead the morning before, to suss out the situation for himself. Should have done so many things, instead of rush blindly forward on the world of a man he’d never met.
But he’d done none of those things.
Instead, his boots crunching in the snow, all pretense of quiet forgotten, he raised his sword to strike. He’d hew the man’s head from his shoulders and then advance into the village proper, where he and his brothers would do short work of these still-sleeping fools.
The man whirled, his sword coming up to block Hart’s as he rose to his full height. Jumping up onto the log where he’d been sitting, he tried to take Hart’s head from his shoulders. Only the faintest glimmer of reflected light on the blade gave clue to its location. Hart brought his sword up again just in time, falling to one knee as he threw his head back, exposing his stomach and wrenching something in the small of his back.
Quickly, he ducked under the blade and rolled, sword extended, regaining a position where he could protect his vitals. He spat out a mouthful of vile-tasting snow, thick with wood ash and the Gods knew what else. He heard instead of saw the blade arc down and rolled again, the steel scoring the earth a mere finger’s breadth from his shoulder.
He jumped to his feet. This time, Hart had the advantage: his opponent, turning to chase him, was now silhouetted against the dying flames while Hart had retreated into shadow. If only he could make the man leave the fire. He waited, tense, for the strike to come again.
The man charged, shouting something incoherent. Hart blocked, parried, blocked, parried, a roaring noise in his ears. Beads of sweat stood out on his brow. The depth of the snow made true swordsmanship impossible; his feet felt anchored in blocks of cement, and moving each one even an inch took what felt like eons. In that respect—as in others—Hart felt like he’d somehow stumbled into a nightmare.
The roaring wasn’t just in his own ears, he realized. It was all around him. Men howled in rage, screamed in pain. And drowning them all out was the atonal yet somehow rhythmic clash of steel on steel.
He lunged forward, almost losing his balance, and engaged with the man again. Skill wasn’t at issue here, he’d realized: he could be the best swordsman in the world and he’d still end up with his head on a pike if the snow gave way beneath him. Using all his weight to propel himself forward, he wrapped the man in a bear hug. It was a calculated risk—if the man pulled a dagger, he’d be done for—but at least he was inside the man’s sword range.
With a shocked grunt, he fell backward with Hart on top of him.
His eyes widened fractionally; Hart had knocked the wind from his chest. His sword still clutched in one hand, he balled the other into a fist and drove it into the man’s nose. It gave under his knuckles with a satisfying crunch. Hart punched him again.
And again.
And again.
And then he stood, staggering, and sheathed his sword before taking hold of the man by the shoulders and dragging him through the snow. He was still alive, if barely. All around them, battle raged. Hart could just see the outlines now, of the figures, in the grayscale light of dawn. But he paid them no heed. Some part of him screamed that he was being foolish, that someone could at any moment come and attack him from behind and he’d be defenseless, but he paid no heed to that voice either.
He threw the man onto the watch-fire.
The sour-sweet stench of charred flesh assaulted his nostrils, as the man protested feebly. Still awake, then. Hart hardened his heart against the sight. The flesh was nothing. Death was nothing. The man would meet his own gods on his own terms.
He turned.
And came face to face with Bjorn.
Bjorn’s face was soot-streaked, and a shallow gash ran the length of his hairline. But he grinned. “Summer child.”
“Where are the leaders?”
“I’ve seen none marked as such.” Bjorn glanced quickly to either side. Their conversation was an island of calm in a sea of carnage. “Nor heard them hailed as such. Which means they’re either disguising themselves”—he spat—“or hiding out like women.”
If Bjorn thought women were less terrifying than men, he’d never met Isla.
But of course, he hadn’t.
Which was a pity; Hart could have used her wisdom, in that moment.
Turning, they jogged together toward the central longhouse. All around, them men spun and swung and hacked. But, save to avoid harm, Hart paid them no mind. He couldn’t afford to; he and Bjorn had to understand what was happening.
And where was Callas?
They’d been separated in those first moments, and Hart hadn’t seen his brother since.
Molag had been waiting for them. At first, Hart had been so busy defending himself that he hadn’t had a chance to process what that meant. And he still wasn’t entirely certain, although a terrible suspicion had begun to form. But…he couldn’t dwell on that now.
He’d have time enough to sort this out, later. But first he had to survive.
His sword at the ready, he pushed open the door of the longhouse. It wasn’t barred, and no sounds of weeping came from within. No whispering of women; no wailing of infants. Were there women in Molag? Or was Molag no true village at all, anymore, but a hollowed out husk that was being used by the rebels for show?
If there had been women, where had they gone?
Another, equally terrible suspicion seized him.
He stepped inside.
The longhouse was cold and damp, like the inside of a tomb, and smelled of peat. Of peat, and of mold. An unappetizing combination, but one of which Hart was only vaguely aware as he scanned the shadows. Like all traditional longhouses, the interior was divided into three by matching rows of columns. The central corridor had a packed dirt floor, which cushioned the sound of their footsteps. Ash had been scattered about, in place of rushes, as an absorbent. To the right was a sort of fireplace, almost more of an extended fire pit, running the length of the wall. Holes had been cut in the sod roof for ventilation, and now let in a weak glimmer of morning light.
To the left, a row of benches provided a surface for sleeping, eating, working and simply sitting.
There were no windows.
Hart and Bjorn exchanged a glance.
There was no raised sleeping loft, from which to pounce. The entire longhouse, the largest structure in the village, appeared to be deserted. Why was no one using it for protection, or to mount a defense?
He’d turned to leave, and rejoin the battle outside, when he heard a noise.
Just the softest scrape of a boot heel.
“Welcome.”
Once again, he recognized the accent.
His eyes met those of a man who’d once been his fellow. In another lifetime, long ago, when Hart too was a Southron. But those afternoons in the practice yard, evenings spent with Rose and nights spent lying in the hay of an abandoned horse stall with his pig, thinking, seemed more like a series of dreams than true things remembered. Hot, fevered dreams from which he was glad he’d awoken.
Still, his tone was cool as he addressed the scum. “The leader of this band, I presume?”
“And you must be the Viper.” He paused. “Or are you the Warlock?”
Hart held the man’s gaze evenly. “You address the first.”
Where was Callas?
“Or should I call you oath breaker.”
Hart said nothing. He refused to allow himself to be baited.
“You are a child of Morven.” The man took a step forward, but made no move to draw his weapon. Whatever scant warmth the sun outside might have brought with its rising, none o
f it touched this place. Which, more and more, felt like a tomb. Hart steadied his breathing.
“The kingdom bleeds. And yet you forsake us in our time of need, turning against the light.”
You have no idea, thought Hart.
“Against all that is good, and right.” The man paused. “All men know that the king—or queen—is divinely appointed. He is subject to no earthly authority, answerable only to the Gods. When you go against him, when you go against your rightful ruler, you go against the Gods.”
“Then the king must acknowledge himself ordained for his people,” Hart countered, “having received from the Gods a burden of government. Your Maeve would destroy her so-called people, ruling over a graveyard so long as it means ruling. And she picks henchmen like you, who cowers inside, declaiming on philosophy rather than joining his men.”
Hart turned to go.
“Two more—nary three, if you count the dog—will make no difference.”
Hart turned. “What?”
“You’re surrounded. There are a thousand loyal soldiers outside, making short work of the Necromancer and your Northern scum.”
Bjorn spat an oath.
“You lie,” Hart hissed.
“Join us.”
“What?”
“Your reputation precedes you. The most skilled among the duke’s war leaders, and the most trusted. Both revered and feared among the local populace, soon they’ll be frightening their children at bedtime with stories of your exploits. If they aren’t already. In Ewesdale, before, you near singlehandedly controlled the bandit population.” The man’s eyes were dark in the low light. “You weren’t, ah…appreciated at home. This is true. But that can change,” he urged.
“You’re insane.”
“Outside, battle rages. By noon this day, all your men will be dead. And then we will sweep down into Barghast and depose the traitor.”
“Never.”
“The traitor…and his bride. Granted, she’ll find things a bit…rougher among my men. But I’m sure she’ll survive. In some fashion.”
Hart forced himself to breathe deeply, and exhale. He wouldn’t take the bait.