The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  Rurik assured her Voren would be fine, that he was stronger than he looked, but even he felt the pause within his words. The uncertainty. Strength, whether real or imagined, had very little to do with it. The cold beat strong men and it beat weak men in equal measure. It ravaged the skin and the bones and the mind, making all too real the aspirations to sleep, and when one might lay their heads down to rest, one never knew if they would wake again, or slumber eternal.

  In those days, Rurik comforted her as best he could, putting on his bravest face. But the walls did them little good. Trapped, Essa grew increasingly restless. She would pace the room, nibbling on a thumb or tapping her feet. She lingered at the windows and despaired at the haze that greeted her.

  Sometimes, she would crawl beneath the covers with her cousin, and whisper to him as he held her. Rurik pretended not to care, but he would press closer all the same, trying to hear the words that passed between them. Rowan would stroke her hair and shush at her, holding her close, as only a sibling might. On those nights, she would sleep easier, but still not easily.

  Rurik was not immune to such bitter thoughts either. His heart went out to Voren, true, but more often it went to his brother. For all the man’s faults, he was kin, and blood, and despite what he might say, Rurik could not bring himself to hate him. Especially not now. Life was too short for a great many things. He thought on that with irony as he considered his hatred for a certain count. Too short and getting shorter, and still he could not let go.

  Some things were simply unavoidable.

  As the wind began to break outside, six days into their captivity, Rowan seemed to be taken of an idea, and one that promised great inconvenience to Rurik. “The sword,” Rowan said. “As soon as this weather breaks, I’ll be putting you to the sword, lad.” Running through the possibilities of that in his mind, Rurik had to ask a guarantee he wasn’t soon to be executed. The swordsman laughed and shook his head, clapping him on the back as he did. “Training. I saw you out there, in the fray. Tossed about like a turtle lost its shell. Always said you was a little sloppy, but now, oh dear me, now is no time for it. Been far too long since last we had at it. You cannot always rely upon that little belching drakkon, you know.”

  “Should a pacifist be teaching others to kill?” he asked, jokingly.

  Rowan scoffed and stamped his foot. “To kill? Never. A man cannot be held responsible for how his skills are put to use. I merely instruct in the art of the sword—an art put to defense, as well as assault. It kills, but it also protects. Lends strength where else there might be none.”

  “But I already know these things. You aren’t the only one to put the sword to me. Alviss taught me before, you know.”

  Rowan blanched. In a heartbeat he had turned on the Kuric, shouting, “Alviss! Honestly, Alviss, what have you taught our little lordling? You are a graceful boar—but our dear lad moves as a wild pig. Scream. Slash. Flail. Assal above, it is a wonder all that pretty skin lies yet unmarred.” Rounding back on him, the swordsman added, with a silly little grin, “And this—this we set to guard mine coz?”

  A dozen pints of ale could not have made the house erupt with so much laughter, but it might have helped Rurik weather it.

  * *

  The storm passed on the eighth day, to such a glowing shower of sunlight it was perceived as providence to besieged soldiers and battered peasants alike. The men threw themselves all the more heartily into their labors, first merely fighting to free themselves from the cabins, then working to clear some trail between them. In places, the snow had risen as high as, and above, their windows. Some were trapped for hours yet as serfs and soldiers dug them out.

  It was not until the ninth day that they had word from camp. The army stirred and rose, and marched again for the village. They arrived by midday, a haggard mass that seemed now more wight than man.

  With them came also the news of those who had not survived. Hundreds lay dead, lost to the chill. Frostbitten, frozen, the never-ending sleep. Limbs, as well as bodies, littered the snow banks of the plains beyond. It would be a ghastly sight come the springtime thaw—a perfectly preserved monument to the frailties of man, and to the raw, unbending power of nature. For man could learn to kill, but nature had spent thousands of years in the knowing, and could always do them better.

  These sights and sounds set Essa nearly beside herself with fright, and it was only when Rurik and Rowan agreed to help her search for Voren that she began to calm.

  Fortunately, he found them. As they moved through the mass of downtrodden men, there came a shout, and the baker came barreling forth from the supply lines, stumbling over himself in his haste to reach them. They threw arms about one another, and Essa nearly cried, but she buried her head in his shoulders and told him how worried she had been.

  “And I, and I,” the baker assured, stroking a hand against her head. “We had no knowing of how you fared. I could but fear the worst, in those dark nights.”

  Voren had not fared as well as first he seemed, though. When they pulled apart, the baker took the others’ hands in his own, but Rowan turned his hand, and revealed a finger missing from its place. Voren paled, but told it well enough.

  The nights had been cold, so bitter cold. He had watched his fingers go from a corpse-like pale to blotchy blue, even buried beneath the sheets. He tried to warm them by a fire, tried to rub the life back into their veins, but while most persevered, even through the blisters, he could but note in horror as the pinky of his right hand blackened and hardened.

  At first it burned. The slightest movement or the faintest touch could set him to howling. Then the feeling died away entirely, and it began to reek. One of his tentmates did the deed. Said there was no hope—it was too far gone. They took a kitchen knife, and used that. Voren had fainted straight away, but when he awoke, the finger was gone, and he felt all-together colder than before. The empty space still throbbed, he claimed, but it would heal in time.

  “By providence, though, the rest of me stands untouched,” he said with some manner of resolution. “Many more than I fared much the worse, and of those black nights I fear many widows were born in the west.”

  They took him inside and saw him properly fed and comforted, for a time. After that, Essa scarcely left his side during her waking hours, meandering herself into assisting with his duties, just to make sure he was alright. For all her disconnections, the threat of loss of one of the few people she had was a horror inconceivable. Rurik, she knew, would view this with some shred of jealousy, but it was all the more reason for him to grow and to learn and to get over it. He never said anything, though, and she imagined his sudden duties with Rowan helped in that respect.

  Death loomed too sharply near to waste time on petty rivalries. Voren was a friend, and had been put perilously close to death, and he only was in the situation in the first place because of their own actions. Sometimes at night, she still saw him dead, but his blue hands and his blue eyes stretched out for her, in necromantic furor, as if to pull her with him into the grave. Sometimes Rowan, too, was with him, and Rurik, each dead in their own horrific way. They pawed at her and dragged her down, screaming.

  More than once, as well, she saw men with arrows through their hearts, eyeless, lipless caricatures of humanity, crying out for mercy. She had done it—killed them all—and somewhere, lurking at the edge of her vision, she had the feeling of being watched, but everywhere she looked was death, and there was nothing save its cruel call.

  Rivalries be damned. A little time spared for Voren was the very least that she could do.

  * *

  The press clattered harmlessly off Rowan’s guard. Then the tiny blade swept his own sword around and came up over it, to prod Rurik in the shoulder. He dropped sharply back, rubbing at the spot his friend’s blade had slapped.

  “Broadcasting your movements. Too loud, too wide. If I had wanted, I might have slit your throat and tottled off to tea by now.”

  Rurik grumbled to himself. The young
exile kicked at the dirt as he pulled himself back up, sword down and off at his side. A few men applauded. When exactly the crowd had gathered, he could not say, but others had begun to join the Company as they smelled a show, and Rowan seemed all too willing to give it to them, though in truth he paid them little heed. It was Rurik, self-conscious of his own failures, that noticed, and disapproved. He would have rather they did these things inside, where there might be found some semblance of warmth, and they might be spared the prying eyes. Rowan insisted to the contrary, and so too did the officers.

  “Let us again, little lord. On your move.”

  Rowan slid back, one foot turning slightly to the side and behind him, the other forward, at a perfect angle, poised and ready. The fencer’s legs bent, sprightly. Rowan’s rapier pointed up and toward him, daring him as it always did. It, like its master, looked perfectly frail, but he wielded it like a snake, glancing off Rurik’s own strikes and rolling through them, stabbing in and darting back, quick as could be. It didn’t help that Rowan fought with his left. Rurik fought with his right, and found compensating for it to be a frustrating endeavor.

  Poise. His teacher’s motions were all about poise and grace. It was more some pansy dance than a real brawl, but Rurik could not deny the results. It was a form that relied on speed—in the hands, in the feet, and in the mind. Outthink the other man, and make his steps your own. In war, men oft made strength their reliance. Beat them bloody, beat them raw, swing and swing again until they do not rise. But Rowan took his opponents’ strengths and turned them against themselves.

  Rurik took his sword in both hands and steadied himself along the ice. Some of the men began to whistle. He did his best to ignore them. Spread. A little further. Just a little. He tried to match Rowan’s footing. Get your footing, get your strike. He slid a little further, and further, bent slightly, poised himself. Ready, ready. He drew his sword up into a high guard, and rushed onto the attack.

  Rowan was perfectly content to wait. The killing blow was not something to be rushed. If it availed itself, he struck. If not, he wore them down. Bit by bit. A cut to the elbow, a slash to the thigh. The smallest points of unarmored access, however scarcely shown, would be struck, drawing the man out. Blood had a way of making men wild. Their own, all the moreso. As composure eroded, Rowan would shred them, all on the tip of a blade no wider than Rurik’s pinky. Elegant eradication.

  So it was with Rurik.

  As he sprang forward, he ducked a jab from the rapier. He slashed low at Rowan’s legs with the flat of his blade, but Rowan hopped it, and slapped him once on the back. Rurik swung up, and was parried by the base of Rowan’s blade. It was thin, so inconceivably delicate he could see no reason his blade could not slice it clean through, but the blade held, and turned him off. He struck again, and was parried again. He dropped back, and came on again, determined to give the fencer no rest. Rowan smiled at him as he came, swatting through his strikes like he was swatting at flies.

  The rapier scored Rurik’s hand, and his knee. It slapped his stomach and slapped his shin. When Rurik backpedaled to regain his footing, he found himself suddenly pressed, forced to ward blows he was far too slow to deny. He dodged well enough, but Rowan was relentless, and his movements flowed like water, as though there was no force to them at all. Rurik sidestepped one blow, and swung in to force him off, but his teacher dipped beneath it and came up at a lunge, with his blade tapping against the side of Rurik’s throat. Rurik stopped dead.

  “No form,” Rowan sighed. “No form at all.”

  He slid his sword down and wheeled away, brushing snow from his breeches.

  “I was teaching you these same things but months ago. I know you’ve not forgotten them. Come now, must we start again?”

  The question, Rurik knew, was rhetorical. Rowan mimicked his swordplay in many areas of life—particularly his playfulness. There was no real malice in anything he said, however biting the words could be. He had the honest feeling of one merely trying to help. Rurik was quite content without, though. Nor did he want his failures particularly spread about the camp.

  Or viewed, at the least, by Rowan’s cousin, who sat among the rest, chin in her hands, watching with rapt fascination. She herself had embarrassed him in many areas of life, but there were some things he would have preferred to keep to himself.

  A ridiculous notion, really. They had seen one another fight for months. Each had saved the other, at one point or another. And this wasn’t the first time she had watched him train. Even so…

  “Well then, we shall just have to do it. Lesson one, little lord!” Rowan held up his rapier, wiggling it for Rurik and the crowd. “Observe your sword. See the pointed bit? We so do like to see it lodged in the other man.”

  The fencer’s snappy jeer earned a litany of laughter from the crowd. Rurik felt the blood rushing to his cheeks, but maintained his composure, putting up his sword and extending it toward Rowan.

  The fencer smirked at him, but did not follow suit. “Rushing, rushing. That’s always the problem with you. This need to rush will only get you dead.”

  “Shall I be condescended to the whole way through this?” The fencer’s composure was beginning to irritate.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Rurik tried to suppress the snarl in his tone. “I think I recall why we stopped these little sessions in the first place.”

  “Failure to commit. I should think a trait mine coz would find a little grating.”

  Rurik’s ears burned. With the howl of the crowd in his ears, he scarcely heard Essa as she called out to her cousin. Rowan glanced away, making a silly face at her, sword laid flat against his shoulder. Seeing an opportunity, and more than a little aggravated, the boy threw himself forward with vigor, such that the crowd could scarcely call out to Rowan in time.

  The fencer looked to him almost lazily. And he was close. Just a few feet, and less, his blade darted out, attempting to score Rowan about the waist. Then Rowan’s own blade snapped out, and he was lunging past Rurik as he swiveled his hips and his body around Rurik’s attack. Their legs entwined as Rurik missed, twisting to stab back at the fencer’s retreating form, only to have his leg taken out from under him and the inside of Rowan’s blade pushed tight against his throat. The fencer clucked his tongue at him.

  “My looks for good old steel. My years for patience. My manhood for the wits to use them.”

  The fencer kissed the top of his forehead, and slithered away with a snicker. Flushed with embarrassment, Rurik lay in the snow a moment after, listening to the mockery of the crowd.

  “Ain’t that just the dandy!”

  “Damn near hurt his feelings, lad. Go easy on the child!”

  It didn’t help when Essa scurried over to join him in the snow. First came the shadow, then the figure, a silhouette, blotting out the sun. He stared at her, blinking away the glare as she offered him her hand. “Are you alright,” she asked. He nodded numbly, taking her offering and pulling himself up. The hisses went on, even as Essa raked them all with a scowl. If anything, they only intensified.

  “Why don’tcha let the girly fight for you, boy? Bet she’s got more hair than ya!”

  She reached out to wipe at a crust of blood along Rurik’s cheek, but he shooed her off. He wiped the blood across the fore of his arm and turned on Rowan. The fencer was watching them, the sure smile faded.

  “That is all for today, little lordling. On the morrow, and again at the next, I think. We shall make this a daily fare until you might resist the urge to die.”

  Feeling his temper flare, it was all Rurik could do not to shout at the man. “How is this teaching me anything? I can’t follow you. And you’re not telling me anything. You just knock me to my ass and move on.”

  “Would you rather me have you catching cats?”

  “I…what?”

  The fencer winked, and turned to the crowd before departing, leaving them all with a respectful bow. The crowd cheered, but quickly began to split apa
rt, a few lingering long enough to spout one more jeer Rurik’s way. Rurik hurled his sword in the snow and threw up his hands, intending to stomp off. Essa caught him by the arm and whirled him about.

  “Easy, boy. For such a relaxed creature, you stress far too easily.”

  “Tantrums,” Alviss added as he lumbered toward them. The Zuti followed close behind, shaking his head in thinly veiled disgust. “He’s always had them. Losing evokes it.”

  “Tantrums?” Rurik blurted. “These are no tantrums. I am no child. This is exasperation at sheer pointlessness. I’m not going to learn anything. I know what I am good at and this is not it—my talents and time would surely be better spent elsewhere.”

  “Is dis you fight?” Chigenda guffawed. “Sad day. Witin great men, there be you, and like dat. Get you nowhere. You die real soon likin dat.”

  “Assassins. Wars. None of these seem quite the incentive?” Essa snapped.

  Rurik threw up his hands and made his peace. “There is no time for any of this. Those things are already here.”

  “All the more reason,” Alviss affirmed. “What time we have—few. You should cling to this. Here, you fight, never die. Out there, one false step will take your head. You have been on your back enough to know that.”

  When he was younger, Rurik had two masters. Merten, his father’s steward, taught all of Kasimir’s children, devoting his mornings to Kasimir’s stiffening requirements of education. He brooked no tardiness, but his lessons were worth it. He taught the children to speak and to write in formal Idasian, the language of the Imperial court, as well as Asanti, Rovennin, and enough Zuti to manage a proper greeting, even to those savages. He also taught them the art of tactics, logic, and touches of philosophy. Failure was met with caning, and the old man was relentless, hovering over them as they hunched over their desks and scribbled away at their lessons.

  Alviss had him in the afternoon, and instructed him in both the theory and practice of weapons. His lessons relied on demonstration and repetition. They fought with knives, as well as swords, and Rurik took to each of them with the same lack of interest. His eyes and his mind strayed often, and Alviss did little to keep him entertained. The Kuric quickly dissolved whatever childish notions of knighthood and chivalry he once had, focused him instead on the cold realities of bloodshed. Still, in those days he tried other practical pursuits as well. They shared lessons in boxing, wrestling and riding—the latter of which he took to in earnest, marveling even as a child at the way the wind and he became as one.