The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  From the forest itself, a man came slipping and screaming at Rurik and his own band of archers. He meant to impale one of them with a spear, but as Rurik swung on him, Alviss rounded on him as well, stepping between the spearman and his quarry, and meeting him with his monstrous axe. He split the spear in two, and nearly did the same to its bearer. Tearing it from the cavern it had carved through the man's chest, Alviss stomped back toward Rurik and took him by the shoulder.

  “The others—where?” he asked, oblivious to the bolts sailing overhead.

  Rurik pointed toward the trees. Alviss squinted, and nodded, looked to him expectantly, but Rurik shook his head, uncertain as to the others’ fates. Alviss nodded solemnly and motioned for Essa, yanking Rurik and their horse along after him. Some of the archers shouted, but there was no denying him, and they quickly gave way to follow. Rurik crouched low, hoping to draw himself as small as he might against the impending volleys.

  Everything had gone rapidly downhill since they first arrived at the outskirts of Arnesfeld.

  Hours before, they had merged with another party on their way to the village. All about the plain they could see others riding in as well, eager for the hunt. There were Effisian scouts afoot in the hills, either in or around the village, and it was their goal to root them out, as one might flush a hare. They spread and descended, riding into the woods in tattered lines, their horses run ragged in the effort for haste.

  The hunt poured on in earnest, but the hunter quickly became the hunted.

  There had been the smell of smoke on the air, and the horses and Essa both had begun to move alert. One of the men that rode with them had been laughing at one of his own jokes when they heard the first whiz. Then, without warning, a rain of arrows whistled in among them. It was one small, singing bolt that sped past at first, then many, until the air was hissing with them. Rurik, at first, did not know what was happening. It was like the geese themselves had decided to plunge from the sky, embedding in the earth and the trees all around them.

  One of the soldiers’ horses wheeled in confusion. It stamped its forelegs and tossed its head in terror. The man bent, partially hiding behind its head, partially stroking it, trying to calm it. There was a thud, and then he plunged from the saddle, which stirred his horse into an utter panic. The arrow in his neck snapped off as he struck the ground.

  Essa had bent low in her saddle, notching an arrow to her bow, her horse as steady as a mountain. She fired off into the trees as the laughing man tugged at his crossbow, and Chigenda drove his horse around and plunged into the woods, howling as he drew his spear to bear. Rowan struggled for his own blade, though the battle was well beyond him. Alviss made no pretense, shouting at the others and nudging his horse for the thick trunk of a mighty old oak.

  There was another thud as Rurik pulled his pistol from his belt. Something slapped at his calf, just below the knee. His leg spasmed and he jerked down, a frigid twang reverberating clear into his toes. A pale arrow protruded from his calf. In horror, he tried to pull it loose, but it had buried itself into one of the links of his armor, and as it began to bend and quake, he feared it might slide deeper in him for the effort.

  He was still staring in abject horror as Alviss seized control, whirling his horse about and, seeing Rurik’s state, took hold of his reins as well. There was shouting, and Rurik cringed away, but his guardian forced him down in his saddle, bending so low the arrow ran higher than his head, and under the shower, they trotted for the shadows of the dead old oak, and safety.

  The arrows did not persist long after that. The Zuti returned moments later, trotting in on his large brown steed, and leading another saddled young stallion by the hackamore. Its saddle was still specked with blood.

  Like that, their ambushers were gone. Fled into the woods, to attack again and again. Scouting parties come to the assistance of that first band were ambushed in nearly a dozen places, and disorganized and unprepared, were whipped into a panic. When they broke the trees, they found their harriers had driven them into the path of a cavalry charge, which plunged into them from the hillside village.

  Rurik and the others arrived as battle was already pitched. It did not last long. The ferocity and the suddenness of the Effisians’ assault put the Imperial scouts to route, though at admittedly little cost, save to their pride. They fled back into the trees, chased through the woods by the pursuing cavalry. Some were isolated into pockets, and either held firm, or were destroyed. Most broke the tree line at the other side.

  There they found the advance guard’s infantry marching for Arnesfeld as well, and regrouped at their backs. By evening, they were several hundred strong, and marching full force into the woods, spears poised, lances aching for another go at hoof and rider.

  Skirmishes were swift, but bloody violent. The shouts and clangs of steel reverberated through the woods as a haunting undercurrent, and one could not say precisely where the fighting lay. Spears and arrows darted from the shadows, and still the lines poured on, trampling over the dead and the dying in equal measure. They slaughtered any Effisians foolish enough to remain in the trees.

  They met again just outside the village, and under the gaze of the terrified locals, flushed Effisians and battle-hungry Idasians formed ranks and marched headlong into war. A volley of arrows was traded from each side, swarming over the hill and peppering the unfortunate. Most of the Effisians’ volley clattered ineffectually into the trees and brush, but the Imperials’ arrows sunk deep into arms and legs, and several horses teetered and dropped beneath the assault.

  Cavalry was the first to march, forming along the trees and trotting at their assailants. They covered the spearmen with their thick mass, so as to shield them from the Effisians’ knowledge. The Effisians followed suit, spears low and to the ready.

  Save Essa, who was detained with the archers, Rurik and the others were loped in with the cavalry and sent headlong into the fray. The lines came within a few dozen feet of one another, listening apprehensively to the whistles of the shafts flailing overheard, before they charged as one. More than a hundred men, suddenly whipped into a frenzy, poured on into the breach. The boy felt his heart catch in his chest at the sight of so many bristling blades. When the lines clashed, Rurik could feel the earth itself quiver beneath the clamor. There was an energy in it, and it surged through him in an almost giddy sort of disarray. It did not last long.

  Battle was a swarm of maddened flies, gnawing at the flesh. Rurik stabbed at them with his sword, but the men poured on around him, until he grew dizzy from the sight of so much steel, so many faces, all rounding him and stabbing at him. Friend or foe, he could not say. He stabbed and was stabbed at in turn. The bodies poured on. He turned a spear and stabbed a man through the hip, watched him lurch in his saddle and fall away into the chaos of hooves.

  Forward, he told himself. Keep pushing forward. They were behind him, and around him. He fought to keep with the others, but the blades hemmed him in, and he found himself increasingly isolated. Blood spattered hot against his cheek, and he felt the first shudder. He saw Rowan, then no more. He called out to him, but his voice was lost in the pandemonium. Eagerness turned to desperate fury, riding parallel to a creeping dread. A soldier from their party pitched near him, hooked from his saddle by a mace. His rearing horse nearly kicked Rurik from his. He twisted back, relying on his steed to bear him free, but other men blocked his way. There was no room to maneuver, and his horse backed up, grinding its hooves into the dirt as they found themselves surrounded. The blood on his face was scorching.

  But Alviss fought to his side, unhorsing one man and burrowing his bardiche in the stomach of another. Direction became senseless. What was forward and back. Rurik turned and turned again, saw a rider coming too late.

  They met blades, but the force of the blow nearly pitched him from his saddle. His assailant came on again, and he could see the whites of the man’s eyes, the complete fury to which he surrendered. A pistol roared to life nearby, spewing noxious fum
es into the air—it stung at the eyes and clogged the throat. Another blow in quick succession scored Rurik’s leg, near where the arrow had struck. He bent down, screaming, tried to stab back, but the man came around it and drove him hard, lunging at him and laying into his chest. Rurik’s chain shirt deflected the blows well enough, but not their force.

  Everything was set to spinning as he toppled out of the saddle. He had an image of the world as a great mawed monstrosity, rearing up to swallow him whole. It was Cathal, the great wolf-hound, come back for its vengeance. He always hated that mutt.

  With a heavy thud he struck the ground, and was promptly struck by a horse’s hoof. His own, perhaps. He could not say. The air sputtered out of him. Everyone was a mass of shapes and shouts swirling around him, and were lost.

  The soldier did not come for him again. He might have seen another, more pressing victim. Rurik struggled to his feet, trying to find his horse, but the beast had vanished in the madness. Another rider bounded in, and he raised his sword to guard against him, but the force of the blow took his feet out from under him and dragged the sword from his grip. He sprang for it again as soon as he hit the dirt, shuffling between furious hooves to seize it by the hilt.

  He rolled aside, though his chest ached, and stabbed up at a lancer that loped past. He scored his horse’s flank, but the man went on, and he saw no more of him. The crack of gunfire twisted him about. A man screamed and tottered. Several musketeers had formed a firing line near the village. Striking a knee, loading, firing again. Rurik saw the haze of black smoke, smelled the death they wrought. An arrow struck one, and he sank to his knees, clutching at it in shock. Another feathered the man, and he went down.

  Then Rurik was lifted through the air and borne away. Alviss seized him and drew him up into the saddle behind him. They rode hard, regardless of anyone in their way. By then others had broken away as well and were falling back behind lines of advancing footmen.

  As he rode through the lines, Rurik felt nauseas. The battle demanded more of him, but part of him wanted to break down and hide away. Another demanded blood. He hoped it was merely the instinct of preservation.

  They unhorsed at the trees, with the archers. Down below, the battle was turning. He could see it then, survey it as he couldn’t in the throes of it. Little groups of men, coming on in twos and threes, were riding or running into the fight as reinforcement to either side. Soldiers late to the fray.

  But the tide was against the Effisians. The Imperial scouts outnumbered them at least three men to one, and their infantry bit hard into the trapped Effisian horsemen. They had caught them between two walls of blades, the infantry having split and swung around behind the Effisians to cut off any hope of retreat.

  Another shot whizzed past, but it was the last. In the distance, Rurik spied the final musketeer ridden down and speared by an Imperial horseman. What remained of the Effisians wavered, broke and struggled to force their way through the Imperial lines. Trapped and demoralized, they did not get far. A few managed to squeeze through, only to be ridden down or feathered with arrows.

  By day’s end, the Effisians lay dead in the field and Imperial soldiers were marching through the dirt paths of Arnesfeld. It was victory, and several hundred lay dead for it. Dead for a hamlet that had no purpose or profit, whose people could but look on and wonder how the victors might take out their pride on them.

  * *

  “Kasimir Matair, Lord of Verdan and banner to His Highness the Count Witold, mine own servant, you sit today as a man accused of sins most foul. You have been questioned and withheld by the glory of His Imperial Majesty and by the virtue of our lord Assal—praise be—to be put before us here this day. As lord and master so appointed by my blood, so too am I judge and jury, joined only by members of mine own assembly. My word is law, as the heavenly lord hath wrought it, and his earthly servants attended it.”

  Kasimir sat alone among the court, a seemingly simple man in a tragically adorned chair. Behind him sat both crowd and jury, though the judge that sat before them all would never turn to them for their opinions. They, in all their finery, looked on as one of their own was put before the whims of Duke Rusthöffen, in all likelihood to face denouncement and execution. Even lords and ladies that might have called him friend but days before now whispered behind his back, and laughed, and told their little stories.

  “I once heard he said…”

  “The apple never falls far from the tree.”

  “Wretched creature.”

  And to look at them, one might never have guessed they had ever shared a thing with him. He might as well have been a commoner off the street, in dusty threads of simple cloth, colors as plain as the man’s looks. The rest were all bedecked in pomp and finery, each a spectacle in their own right, for the simple reality that even an execution was another moment in the eyes of their fellows, and so, another moment to flaunt and gush, rise or fall.

  Sometimes Charlotte wondered if the littlefolk didn’t have it right. Respect—for the dead and the dying. They made the day of mourning a day for the dead. The nobility made it for themselves. Such was the game.

  Charlotte tried to focus as best she could on that game, that she might put the unnatural events of the previous night behind her. Even now she could see the twisted look in the broken witch’s eyes. She still had not figured out how to tell her father of the incident. Part of her feared what might happen if she did. For that matter, she still needed to figure it out for herself.

  The moment. She had to focus on the moment.

  It had taken hours for the servants to clear and repurpose the old hall, but the end result was a marvelous show. Tapestries hung from each of the walls, as high as the ceiling, displaying the Imperial gryphons and the Cullick lion, and even above the entrance, a most audacious piece—the old Curderoy gryphon, with the body of a lion and the head of the actual bird, its borders resplendent with fleur-de-lis, but lacking the crown and scepter that once marked its power in days long gone. It, in and of itself, was a symbol for all of House Cullick’s enemies.

  It was a whisper on the wall, saying “Look at what we can do.” Look at who we are and who we once were. There is no fear here, because emperor and empress see us and know us and praise us, and even they would not second guess our choice.

  At a word: Untouchable.

  The duke’s own banner had also been hung behind him, beside the Imperial banner. A blue fess ran through it, with an antlered antelope in the fore, a crosier tipped across its shoulder and held firm by its hoof. The antelope’s avatar made for an equally striking form, of the moment. The duke wore a coat of claret velvet, and simple breeches with simple boots, but he had the body of a northman underneath those plain garments, and they clung to him like wet hair. His short cape was black and white, lined and collared with fur—suitably unflashy for the situation over which he would deliberate, yet more fashionable than the rest of his attire. A hand stroked idly at his bushy beard, which had been groomed and pleated to a more fashionable style. A cap suppressed the equally wild brown locks atop his head.

  Unlike her father, this old man still had the look of an animal to him—some distant heritage of youth and war. Walthere, she often suspected, had been born into an old age, and never looked to have done a day of labor in his life. Yet in this one, she saw a man that might have been a wizened grandfather. Walthere had never had anything quite so tender about him.

  “Mine own—”

  The duke’s powerful voice cut itself as the doors creaked open behind the crowd. He rose as the rest turned, and quickly followed suit.

  “Oh, those children…” the Empress whispered, from her father’s side.

  Joseph Durvalle, crown prince of the Empire, entered the room accompanied by his sister, Sara. Unlike their mother, the pair had not deigned to grace the rest of the assembly with their presence at dinner several nights prior, and had remained curiously aloof of any company while they were about. Charlotte had tried—unsuccessfully as of yet
, and at her father’s behest—to make cause for a conversation with the pair. Their guards were relentless.

  The heir apparent was a tall man. He was also thin, but not quite wiry, and his form belied a certain power sleeping within those long limbs. He was a handsome sort, with a pointed brown-beard, well-combed, and fine, curly hair that had nevertheless begun to silver in a most dignified fashion. A fine set of clothes marked him as well—an embroidered black doublet with worked buttons and a matching gown, the gown trimmed with bands of gold. The high collar, covering his long, elegant neck, was worn open at the top, revealing a touch of white ruff.

  Sara was the equal of her brother in beauty, and had the benefit of being twenty years his junior. Her smile seemed to contrast his disinterest, and its presence lit the perfection of her face. She had the Durvalle eyes—an entrancing green. Her hair was like chocolate running in curling wisps down her back and shoulders, topped by a delightfully male hat, road-brimmed and black, and cocked up on one side, a gold hatband and plumes decorating it. Her skin was frail, her small breasts plump within her corset, and even beneath the lace and satin, one could tell she had a body to envy.

  Children they most certainly were not.

  The pair crossed the room, nodding to those that required it, and came, as though in a perfect dream, to Charlotte’s side. She curtsied low for them.

  “My lady Cullick, might I ask the honor of your presence this day?”

  Joseph swept a hand across the chairs to her left, indicating his interest. Charlotte nodded and immediately obliged, chirping agreeable welcomes. Their step-mother, however, leaned over her father and told them to sit already. All the formality was delaying the trial.