The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  Rurik could picture himself blade to blade with one of these men. If luck would have it, he might even emerge the victor. In his enactment of the fight within his own mind, he saw it that way. Not three, though. They would flank him and stab him down without effort. Rowan could hold himself against such odds perhaps, but not him.

  A weight welled in the pit of his stomach, branched out, and hung from the belt about his waist. At first, he thought it was fear. Then he remembered the pistol poking out from the folds of his clothing. Three shots to do the deed, and naught but a one to do it. His throat felt dry, and he shifted uneasily. The blade felt heavy between his fingers. Rurik could not see himself shooting these men, regardless. It was not them he despised. His stomach churned. Dimly, he recognized it was not just the pistol after all.

  “I said, put up your sword, child. You only make things worse this way.”

  “And how’s that?” Rurik snapped. He jabbed his sword at one of the men when he drifted too near. The soldier backed off again, white and still.

  The irritation in Kasimir’s eyes sharpened. “You brand yourself a traitor.”

  “Oh is that so? I brand myself many things. A letch. A fool. A drunk. A child, at my fancy. A bandit—thief. Even a killer, when I’m feeling low. But a traitor? No. I’d say it’s you and yours branded me that.”

  His father drew a measured breath. Then, quietly, he ordered his men to lower their swords. They looked to him in varying degrees of abject horror, but when they met his heavy stare, they complied obediently. Rurik’s own blade wavered when the man turned back to him, gifting him a single nod. Reluctantly, he obliged, though the voice in his head screamed at him all the while.

  At that, his father rose. Pressing his hands into his desk, Kasimir leaned toward him. “Why do you return?”

  Blunt, as ever. His father had never minced words, even with his own children. Things were as they were, and Kasimir preferred to keep them that way. An old warrior’s trait, perhaps. Less endearing to a child.

  “Why do you think?” Rurik started to raise his sword, took one glance around, and lowered it again. “You try to stab a person, they tend to get upset.”

  If he didn’t know better, he might have said the words hurt his father. The man opened his lips to speak, then closed them again without a sound. His eyes closed a little longer than usual, but he did not look away. Leaning away from the table again, the only sound Kasimir made was a soft “ah,” and then he fell to silent contemplation.

  It was an admission of guilt, the forgotten son thought. Didn’t think I’d know, did you? Kasimir had not expected him to find the truth. Do you intend to finish the deed now?

  But his father made no moves toward him, nor did he release his guardsmen from their orders.

  “Twice, today, I have been accused as such.” Kasimir said at last. His tone was calm. “I do not know where it comes from, nor do I care to hear it again. If daggers have strayed into your path, son, they are of your own making, not mine.”

  “Bullshit.” Rurik had never spoken to his father as such before he had left. Astonishment seemed to flash briefly across Kasimir’s face before his eyes narrowed more deeply. “Would that be why he bore your crest? Some bandit just hoping to stir a drop of nostalgia in my blood?”

  His father recoiled at the accusation, like a man struck. “My crest?” Both brows furrowed and his eyes darkened, and Rurik caught, for an instant, a flash of raw anger in the man.

  Yet he could not relent. He remembered the day as clear as fire.

  In the city of Mausche, in the westernmost reaches of the Empire, celebrations had concluded. Das Mondfest, the Festival of the Moon, had come and gone in all its glory. To the slumbering and the hung-over, a man came with promises of work. Alviss, as always, went with him. He conducted the negotiations and handled the administration of their little band, so it was his wont to do, but their would-be “employer” had apparently known that as well.

  Almost as soon as Alviss had left, the man became men, all of them armed, and they raided their room with all manner of ill-content. Rurik quickly staggered beneath the withering assault. He could still see the blade looming over him as the man prepared the final thrust. Essa had saved him, then, and nearly gotten herself killed in the process. More wounds. More scars. Rowan dueled them in a corner, but he had two men to his sword, and no room to play up his footwork.

  Only the timely and unlikely intervention of Chigenda had spared them all a rather gruesome end. The Zuti had caught them at unawares from the next room. Between the four of them and the sudden shift of surprise, they managed to overwhelm the men and put them in their graves.

  It was in the aftermath of that horror that Rurik had found the truth. Assassins had come before. Come and gone the way of these—unto the plains of death, and whatever lay beyond. Some were better armed than others, but none bore any trace of their purpose. Some gave it freely, of course, but he knew that all had come for the same goal.

  His end.

  These assassins were different, though. Sloppier. What they had in sword work, they lacked in common sense. They left a trail. Others had come from Count Cullick, he knew. It went without a doubt. Publicly, the man had taken to the duke’s ruling. Privately, he turned to other means of quenching his thirst for vengeance. Death being the answer, a whispered bounty the means.

  These ones, however, carried with them the crest of an owl. His father’s owl.

  The others called it a trap or a trick. They pleaded with him not to go, but there was a fire in him he could not subdue with words alone. His father had sent him into exile, with nary a word of goodbye. To kill him could not be so far a stretch from that, could it? Kill a son. Save the family name. Restore that honor he was always getting on about.

  For a man that had already subverted himself to Cullick’s whims, Kasimir had a great deal to gain in addition. Some honor. No man that made himself another’s dog could ever get on about honor. Some soldier. The tales told stories of the man the littlefolk wanted him to be, and of the man the nobles wanted him to be. They didn’t see the real person.

  Something was off, though. For the first time, Kasimir was not meeting his gaze.

  That’s not right. It wasn’t right at all. Hairs bristled all along the back of his neck. There was a presence, not a sound—a motion at his back, as delicate as any mouse.

  His father was not staring at him, because he was staring past him.

  Rurik twisted just as the hand laid upon the hilt of his sword. With a shout, he meant to grapple with this new assailant, but all that met him was a sharp blow across the temple. There was a sudden burst of pain that ricocheted through his skull, then the darkness.

  From somewhere far away, he could hear the dimness of his father’s voice asking, “Where is my son?”

  When he roused again, Rurik found the tables had turned. His father stood over him, and Rurik was sitting, unbound, but unarmed. He made a show of rolling his head, wincing as the pain flared through him. It was a dull thing, like an echo in his skull, but it lingered no matter how he twisted or rubbed at it. A lump had formed there as well, where whatever the offending thing was had struck.

  As he rolled his jaw, the exile pondered whether it had been a fist. Particularly a mailed fist. The bone popped. Much too much pain for that. He rubbed at his eyes and blinked away the ache. As much as he could, anyhow. A club, perhaps. Though that was unusually crude for his father’s men. When he looked up again, he found his father staring back. Goody.

  They were no longer in the study, Rurik realized. Nor were they in the dungeons, which was as much a surprise. He had been brought, inexplicably, to the manor’s chapel. Curious thing. It had never had a priest. Verdan’s church had priests. Rurik’s father had never had any use for them here, and so it had remained largely empty, but for a single statue to give it some semblance of life. It was of a robed man kneeling, head bowed, hands folded in prayer. Atop his head was a banded crown.

  Another of his
mother’s fancies, Rurik imagined. He could recall her teaching him to kneel before that very statue. It was an old memory. Hazed. But he could remember her smile, and the touch of her hand on his back. She had religion. His father never had time for it, at least since she died. He tried to blink his focus back.

  Pressing his wrists together, Rurik offered them up to the aging soldier. “Why father, do you treat all the prisoners so well?”

  Kasimir snorted in disdain. “The idiots.”

  A hand reached out to touch his head, but Rurik flinched back and struck it aside. His father stared at him, caught somewhere between shock and dismay, and did not make the effort again. Kasimir retracted his hand, and then a step, silently regarding him. There was something there. In Kasimir’s eyes. It stirred in the depths and was lost to whatever currents drifted there.

  Then Rurik’s father turned away from him before he could come up with a suitable rebuke. That was as good as another slap in the face. Showed that he was less than a person. He wanted to reach out and strike the man for it. Even to shout at him, to make him know he had not gone away simply because he willed it. Instead, as so often in his life, all Rurik found was his own silence, waiting for his father to make the first move.

  How quickly children returned to the dominion of their fathers—he cursed it.

  There were no guards that he could see, but he could not imagine they were far. He sized up his options, but there were few. There were no windows in the chapel. The only route out was the door at his back, and then, any number of guardsmen lingering in wait for just such an occurrence. He fidgeted.

  Perhaps a sap?

  His father reached out a hand toward the statue. However, he hesitated as he neared it, and drew back uncertainly. Kasimir rubbed at his hand, reached instead for something else, and again decided against it, folding both hands behind his back.

  He turned back to Rurik, those brown eyes narrowing uncertainly. “How could you be so foolish, child?”

  “Emotions do tend to make one—”

  “Not tonight.” His father waved him off. “This whole business. What are you calling yourselves now…eagles, was it?”

  “The Company of the Eagles,” Rurik mumbled despondently.

  Kasimir gave him a derisive scoff. “My son. A sellsword.”

  Your son? How quickly we forget.

  “As I recall, your son, as you so eloquently put it, had his worldly possessions seized, his home revoked, and his name stripped. Seems to me you surrendered any right to call him yours when that happened.”

  His father reared up like a roused bear. “The point was to keep you away from trouble.”

  “Forgive me. I must have been mistaken. To me starvation seemed like trouble. And thirst. And the blades hounding my trail made settling down a touch difficult as well. At least this way I was paid, and had a chance to meet the daggers that came for me.” A small, pointed smirk came onto Rurik’s face. “Do you like the name? Came up with it all on my own. Shocking. I’m a man grown and everything.”

  Kasimir ignored the bait. “There were others you might have stayed with.”

  “No. There wasn’t. My name. My face. Both make me a pariah. To touch me is to rub your hands in disease.” The boy laughed then, for the sheer ludicrous nature of his father’s comment. “And who do you suppose might risk such a thing. Dachs?”

  His father started to say something, but stopped short. The name caught him, as Rurik suspected it would. Dachs was an old friend of his father’s, he knew, but not one Rurik had any right to know. He had never met him when he was still a Matair.

  Kasimir’s look demanded an explanation, so Rurik gave it readily.

  The late lord Dachs—or viscount, rather—had been until a year past one of the merchant lords of Nirsburg, greatest of the Empire’s port cities along the northern coast. In the courses of his trade, however, the lord had run afoul of one of the most powerful elements of their time: the guilds. Even lords bowed to the collective powers of the merchants.

  Dachs had not. He saw no reason to frivol away his own coin and his own earnings on guild dues, when they were rightly his. For a time, the merchants had taken his rebukes in stride. Then he stole business from them. They turned to assassins, and they did not waste a pence.

  During their travels, Rurik and his merry band of eagles had happened on him in hiding in the small town of Greenhaven. Dachs knew him, though he could not return the favor. The man was adamantly defensive of Rurik’s father, even years removed from their last encounter. For that admiration, he offered a roof and coin. Kasimir was like that, though. Always inspiring loyalty, even in those that disliked him.

  Love. The word left a trail of ashes down Rurik’s throat. That had been the topic of their final discussion. He loves me dearly, you said. Love. Love. Love. Dachs had looked so hopeful, then. One day he would see it, or so Dachs said. And where has it gone, now that I’m so close? And where did all those hopes get you?

  “He’s dead, you know.”

  And so it was. Words unraveled and hopes were dashed against the rocks of fate. On that night, so far away, Lord Dachs’s pursuer had come upon them and plucked Dachs’s life from him as though a vengeful wind. There was no strain, nor regret to any action. He danced around them all and struck the rest down at a whim. Rurik wished he could say it was the only time he had come so close to death, but that would be a misperception.

  Essa’s cousin, though, had never been so close, and never since. None of them had so much as grazed the assassin. Yet other guards had been less fortunate than they. Rurik had looked the man dead in the eye, listening with bated breath as the assassin stooped over him, reminding him casually that many shadows knew exactly who he was.

  Never had he felt so low. So helpless. Even now, the threat of what might come was as nothing before that unstoppable shadow.

  Silver. There had been silver in that stare.

  His father quietly took in all that Rurik had to say, making no efforts to interject himself. Kasimir had always been a good listener, at least, even if he did not like what he was hearing. The man betrayed no hint of emotion, or interest, however. Once Rurik had finished, his father only nodded solemnly.

  “So I have heard. A good man. Wrong to indulge your childish fancies, though.”

  “Fancies?” Rurik seethed. “It’s called survival. Do you so despise me you cannot even grant me that?” When met with naught but quiet, he felt his anger growing. His mind, however, wheeled around through the pain-induced fog to grasp at another image.

  Seized by the suddenness of the thought, he sprang to his feet, blurting out, “Where are my friends?”

  But his father did not bite. He did not flinch; merely met him as so many walls of stone. Kasimir’s look tightened, ordering him down, but Rurik did not budge either, his anger overwhelming any normal sense of discretion. As Rurik rose against the man, he thought he caught a flash of something in Kasimir’s level gaze, but it was gone as quickly as it had come.

  “The path you took was as a bonfire in the blackest night. You fear blades, yet few things could have drawn them so readily to you.”

  “I want to know where they are.”

  “And now you take a fool’s bait, honestly thinking I would ever guide a blade to you. I had hoped, at the least, your time away would grant you wit.”

  “Goddamn it, tell me!” Rurik was shouting now. He stepped forward threateningly, but Kasimir was unmoved.

  “I tried to keep you from the wolves, yet you throw yourself, and them, all too willingly into their den.”

  Rurik wanted to grab his father, to shake the answers out of him and to beat the smug detachment from his voice, but all he did was gnash his teeth and stamp his foot, like a child scorned. It was all his father saw him as anyway. No respect. Rurik’s fingers balled into fists and he practically snarled in frustration, but Kasimir was a patient man—a quality he had never passed on to this particular son.

  When Rurik snapped, it came in an outpou
ring of words.

  “Oh, it was for my protection?” He sneered. “Which part? Was it the banishment? Or perhaps the sympathetic words before that? No. My mistake. The silence, then, was that a gift? Surely you don’t mean the blades. After all, they were Cullick’s men, all of them, clearly. You would never have a hand in that. Not the lord. Not the great general—never.”

  “So where is this love, father? This protection? Dachs claimed the same good things of you, for all the good it did him. So where is it? I don’t think it was in the men that came to beat us at the tavern. It certainly wasn’t in the hilt you drove into my skull to get me here. A father is supposed to protect his son. Yet all I have ever seen you do, is sit back and watch the world pick us all to shit. You sit there and you pass judgment, but what do you ever do to help? Nothing.

  “Do you know who has helped me? My friends. Alviss. Essa. Even that bloody Zuti. But please, tell me how wrong I am, how stupid and childish and bitter I am, and while you’re at it, if you would so kindly, tell me where in the hell my friends are.”

  His father studied Rurik’s nigh-on panting self for a time. Then Kasimir stepped away from his son, under a scornful blast of demands not to turn away from him. Kasimir opened the door and leaned out the crack, exchanging words with someone in the hall. All Rurik caught was the word “bring.”

  Kasimir closed the door again and passed his son by without a word. Rurik had more, but his assault fizzled as his anticipation got the better of him. Bring, but bring who? Essa. Please let it be Essa. It was only after that he reflected on the oddity of wishing someone captured, merely for his own self-comfort. Selfishness, more like.

  Rurik spared a glance for his father, who stood waiting by the statue, content in his silence. The door swung open and drew Rurik back. One held another by the arm, and flung her into the room. Essa stumbled forward, catching herself on a bench. The guard pulled the door shut again behind her.

  So I was right about that, at least. The guards were indeed not far. Even his father could not have so much faith in himself as to allow all that.