The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  What of Alviss? The giant acted as their father, of a sorts, but the man merely sat there and let them paw at one another. It was the Kuric in him. Oh, yes, Voren was certain of that. Bloody Kurees had no problems with whore daughters. The more spawn the better.

  And the Zuti—he did not even know where to begin there. Vile dogs. He heard the stories. They and their Kuhman lords. What they did to the Narans. Thousands of refugees, thousands of people seeking the charity of other lords, and why? Because they risked rape in their homeland. Defilement. That was the Zuti way. They had no respect for war. All they saw were spoils. A woman’s virtue meant nothing to them. Chivalry meant nothing to them. Of course Chigenda said nothing. It was a wonder he hadn’t joined in himself. That one was especially bad, even among his own kind. There was a bounty on him. Essa had said as much. He stole through Asantil like a fox in the night, bloodying his hands with their innocence until it had lost all its gleam. Then he descended upon the Empire. Rapist. Murderer.

  No, he was too kind to the Zuti. It was more a wonder he hadn’t slit their throats for fun, and rutted the corpses when he was done. He had heard that once. The Zuti and their practices with the dead. Necrophiliacs, the whole damned lot.

  He howled in disgust, running his hands through his mangy hair as he paced the mess. The drinks he was to deliver like some bloody tavern wench set still upon the table, taunting him.

  Many were the hour that Voren had spent raging over the events of that night. But the worst part of it was that it was his own doing. In the bliss of the camp’s celebration, he had sought to follow suit, to see where that joy might bring him and them, and to see what respect it might yet bring from the others. The whole thing had backfired, terribly. If anything, he had only helped that insipid little lordling and Essa had…she had…

  For not the first time, he struck the wall and laid his head heavily against it. The alcohol had done a great deal on him, both of the night and that next, most bitter morning, but it had never dulled his knowing. Not once. He could still see himself, fool that he was, leaning over her, each laughing as the exile took his tumble. Such naughty things, he whispered. The things he wished to do, the things he hoped that she might yet accede. He wished to nibble at her neck, to gather her into his arms and set his tongue upon those lips—the taste, how he still remembered that taste! All night she flirted—no, he could not hold that against her, for again, such boldness was the ale. She had kissed him and hugged him and danced with him, even squeezed him by the rear once upon the floor. He had been chaste, by comparison, but in those words, he had put them out.

  All he had said was what he wanted. Nothing more. He did not say he wished to rut her on the rutting tables, those slack-jawed jackals leering at their every buck and moan. Yet after all her playing, she had laughed in his face. Struck him on the shoulder and laughed it off as if it were some child’s passing fancy. Such a pain, no god might have ever contrived to build. A holier man might have blamed a devil for such deeds. He turned his attentions to a baser flesh.

  Rurik. It was Rurik’s fault. It was him she had always sought to match, and drink for drink, they had sought it still. He and the drink—they were one in their wickedness. Wicked, shameful creatures. That she turned from him and fell on that…shameful. Filthy, rotten…

  To think how kind he had been! He had made the effort. He had laughed with the boy. Shared water with Rowan. Watched their pathetic sparring matches and cheered—cheered for the runt’s futile shows. Then there were the rations. He brought them extras, even though it might have meant his head or his back. Assal be damned. Voren had given them everything a friend could give, and every day he was with Essa, making her laugh, and making her smile, walking with her at the sunset hour, and talking of home, and the trees, and all of nature’s wondrous bounty to take her mind off this sodding war.

  Every thrice-damned thing was that boy’s fault. He never would have been here if it hadn’t been for Rurik, and neither would Essa. First it was his freedom, then his finger. Rurik cost a baker a finger—did he have any idea what the hands were to his profession? That one could find other work. Always. Not Voren. If it had been another finger, he would have been damned. He had no other skills, no other hopes. He would have been a beggar on the street.

  And what had he done in those long, cold nights of purpled limbs?

  He worried for them. Both of them, Assal’s honest truth. He prayed for them. He lay near what he thought for sure was death and still he prayed for them. May they live, he said, even if I might die. Was that the sign of an ungrateful man? And when he saw them again, did he complain of it? Did he put his hand in Rurik’s face and shout for all to hear, “Look at me. Do you see what you have wrought?” No, he hadn’t. He laughed it off. He clasped their hands and hugged them tight and kept his words sealed deep within himself. Like a good little peasant.

  He had to calm. Had to. This was no way to do it. Deep breaths, he tried to tell himself. This will get you nowhere. You aren’t one to act like this. But it all came back to her. If only she hadn’t said no. If only she hadn’t laughed. Nothing had ever cut so deep. Nothing.

  It took some minutes to calm, as these rages seemed to, but Voren persevered. He forced the ease to settle on himself, and pressed the anger somewhere just beneath the surface, carefully out of sight. He gathered the mugs, and headed for the tables beyond. No one could know the fires writhing just beneath the thin veneer.

  “You moving, boy?” Irdlin barked as the old man swung back through the door. He might have been taller once, but his wrinkled body had shrunk with age.

  “Yes ser, moving ser.”

  “I ain’t no ser. And we’ve got tables waitin’. Morge’s bustin’ his arse. What are you doin’?”

  Voren bowed his head and started to move past.

  “Get to it, then,” the old man snapped, and turned away.

  Voren hated him, and the old man hated him right back, he reckoned. It was the hate borne of one that knew he was better than another, yet was forced to serve him regardless. The man was an incompetent, but he kept the house in order, and for the mess, that was all that seemed to matter. At least, now, they had an actual set of buildings with which to work.

  He made it three paces through the door. “Here’s the—” The words caught, choked, died. The drinks slipped and the mugs clattered against the floor. All the heads spun on him. He felt parched, suddenly, faint. He wavered once, stepped back, spread a smile with his hands. “Sorry. So sorry…” And they were looking at him, chastisingly. Only one was concerned. Those green eyes, staring back, and he was certain they were pitying him.

  Not her. Let them all pity me. But not her. Never her.

  He spun away, rasping as he sprang back through the door. Irdlin was already rounding on him. “What’s that racket,” he shouted, but Voren brushed past him, ignoring him even as his words turned to threats. You think too much. You think too much. Stop thinking, you rat. He closed his eyes against himself and clawed at the back of his neck. There were more drinks in the kitchen. Dozens and dozens.

  They had no excuse now. Not booze. Not terror. Yet there they had sat, the traitor exile and that dearest girl, together at the table, and their lips were on one another and his hand was…his hand was…He saw her legs, uncrossed and immodestly spread beneath the table. Unladylike. She wore man’s pantaloons, but it was the image, still. It was beautiful, but for the hand, reaching, deeper, and deeper, and he was up her thigh, and at her waist, and she was giggling as their lips touched—could no one else see? Under the table, in the shadows. They waited for their drinks, and made their own merry.

  His head was spinning. He needed a drink, desperately. But not now—it wouldn’t help anyways. There was only one thing. He had tried kindness, and he was a patient man, he would say, but even patient men had limits. There was a game afoot, whether Essa realized it or not, and the prize was life and the cost of failure was death—death in shadow, death in longing. Star-crossed lovers, mayhaps,
but damn them all. If it wasn’t right, then might Assal himself stretch down his hand to strike him.

  Voren could not take the life that had been laid out for him. Peasants toiled. No hope. They worked without reward. Family was the one reprieve. Yet his father was taken by sickness. His mother was lost first to the grief of it, then to the bitterness that rose in grief’s wake. She was dependant on him, yet she was made cruel to him—he wept for her, yet he knew not if she would do the same for him. Would she break again? Would she die while he was away? This was the torture. A small piece of it.

  All around him the children teased, grew, and acted as though it never happened. Even those that coddled him while Essa was around fled as soon as she had gone. Her vaunted Rurik ignored him, turned his back as his kind always did. All the while, Voren and his peasant stock ground away beneath the invisible shackles, the nobles taxed them, the Church stole from them, and neighbors leeched off them. In such a world Essa was the only recourse left to him, and yet, the world seemed determined to conspire against a place with her as well. He did not want what he had to do. The world forced him to it.

  There was but one course. Voren had felt her touch, and she could love him. But not beside the boy. Never beside the boy. She might have loved, as others might have, if there were no one to compare him with. It was cruel logic, but time had taught him no other. What can I give the other boys can’t? So little it made him want to cry at night. He had coin, but not the looks that went with it. He had a home, but no prospect of growth, no land to truly speak of. Common born, and common to death. Now, even less of that, for he was less a digit. Only Essa had ever given him the time of day…and what had come of it?

  Voren liked to think he was a rational man, but his rational mind had been battered too long. He saw but one course, and he meant to take it. Another man might have killed for what he wanted. Voren aspired only to make her see. He could not do that with Rurik on her mind. Yet Assal forbade murder, and he was ever the weaker man. Besides, it would prove nothing to Essa. Only that he meant to take her, and that was not the sort of man she sought.

  What he did have was the power to make her see only him. If only for a little while. That was all he needed. To make her see what love was like without that boy to muddle it. Arasyl had been made for pimps and slavers. But sensible men could use it, too. He would join them to make her see…and that was all.

  One night was all he needed, and he had all the drinks at hand.

  Chapter 15

  As the caravan crossed the borders of Usteroy, back into the realms of Corvaden, the crown’s lands, a tension that had been building throughout Joseph’s stay with the count palatine slowly began to fade. There were, as the writers said, simple pleasures to be taken in life. The simple ease of his heartland was all the pleasure he could need. That, and perhaps a run at some of Madame Koschne’s girls.

  Fine things. Young, tight and discrete. One could not ask for better in an Idasian woman.

  The count’s daughter—Charlotte—certainly looked the part. In truth, Joseph wouldn’t have minded sticking it to her before they departed, as much for the joy of seeing the anger set in her father’s jaw as for any sort of physical relief.

  He would have liked to mount her on the bastard’s own bed, and ride her screams out the window of his chamber, to let all the guests know how low that family truly was. But that would hardly be discrete, and the girl’s father watched her like a hawk regardless. Just as well. She already had another cock in that henhouse. He had little desire to be in a woman whose lover’s father he had just seen beheaded. That would be unseemly.

  Besides, that woman unnerved him in ways that neither politics nor war could manage. A perfect songbird one moment, groping at his hair the next, like some boorish Zuti tramp. He didn’t mind a bit of madness to a cunny—it usually gave them a bit of wildness to the coupling—but he did like them to, no, he demanded they know their place. This woman mastered Jurti one moment, discarded it the next, and in public, no less. She had no respect. Her father at least kept his hostility veiled, however thinly.

  Would that he had never had the need to cross into Usteroy, but in his years, he had found the importance of putting in appearances. With his brother dead and his father absent, Joseph had to look his part. The heir had to be redoubtable, like the walls of a great keep. People would think Gerome’s death could soften him. Cullick, he judged, was one of those people. Joseph still drew some smug pleasure from that terrified look on the dear count’s face when he handed him his letter.

  Fear suited Joseph. His father had the people, and what had it gained him? Damnation, that’s what. For he and all his bloody Farrens, the Empress foremost among them.

  Joseph glanced from his window to his brother, who sat as a perfect gentleman—high-backed, shoulders slightly raised, one leg tucked delicately over the next, staring politely out the window to avoid Joseph’s gaze. Molin wore the uniform of the Imperial cavalry, rather than the fashions their sister Kanasa so often tested on him. He was something of a dandy, but Joseph had personally watched him lead and studied his works at the academy in Anscharde. He had his faults, sure as any man, but young Molin was a good man, an intelligent cadet, and now—now he was a fine captain as well. Barring Ser Marcin or Ser Aras, who stood guard at the palace with the rest of their siblings, Joseph could ask for no better company on the long ride home.

  Would that his brother had come with better news.

  They had not expected him. They had already been making to leave, however, when word came of the approaching riders. Molin and his score of horsemen rode through the gates of the count’s castle, announcing they had arrived to escort Joseph back. At once, he had known something was wrong. He had the good graces not to bring it up as long as they were within the palatine’s estate, though. No need to spread the gossip any further than necessary, and Joseph derived some pleasure in knowing things the count did not. The man was an arrogant fop. He needed to have his place taught to him from time to time.

  Unfortunately, it had taken another hour for the party to be ready. Or rather, for the Empress to make ready. Her handmaidens took as long to pack all her things, while the Empress herself had one last meal with Walthere and his mangy brood.

  Joseph could expect little better of these Farrens, though. They might play it down for the Church and for the other nobles, but he knew it well enough. All of them were Farrens, down to the youngest runt. It was the dear count, after all, who had introduced his dear and grieving fool of a father to that idiot-wife of his.

  Surelia. How he loathed her. She was nothing like his mother. How many times did I swear oaths to her beside father? No matter. Death was the great dissolver of oaths. He would give her and her spawn the honor of the day to mourn their father’s demise. Then he would do his duty, to Assal, to Church, and to country. No man would deny him that.

  On that day, he swore the Cullicks would be next. He spoke of corruption in the court, and when he did, he meant them. Curderoy bloods. Joseph’s great grandfather might have been a remarkable man, but he was a right bloody git, with that one. Simply because a people said they gave up their rights to crown and kingdom did not mean their children would do the same. Their grandchildren. Words spoke loudly, but blood always spoke louder.

  Therein was the difference between himself and the others of his line, as far as Joseph saw it. They had practicality. His great grandfather undoubtedly saw a moment where he could use these traitorous creatures, and so he took it without second thought. Practicality bade him use them, and Joseph could not blame him for that. However, Joseph also possessed the trait of sensibility. His ancestors thought in the moment. He thought in generations. Had it been his time to live and rule, he would have used the Cullicks for the extent of their worth, then quietly snuffed them out as soon as their brethren lay dead on the field. Dead on the battlefield would have been even better. He could venerate them, while admitting no connection to his own misdeeds. This was his time though, and he ha
d to deal with it as it came.

  These creatures desired his throne. He could see it. Sense it. He knew their moves. Walthere thought he was so smart, but Joseph knew his measure. Whispers in the right places. This business with the bumpkin lord. Sneaking friends and families of “his” honor into position and title. The Empress was the worst of it. Through her, Walthere’s hold on the throne tightened. The woman and his wife were cousins, dear and true. Blood-sown, right down to the same vacant stare. Then there was that son of hers. He should’ve dashed him away the very night that he was born. But Joseph tried to be civil. Gerome’s kind words, no doubt.

  You cannot be emperor if…

  If, she says. If! That little rat would never sit the throne, so long as he breathed. The insolence of our harlot-queen heretic. The throne was his and his alone. His father had not changed the lines of succession just for some new cunny like her, no matter what she bore him. If she had thoughts to the contrary, he would prove her sorely mistaken.

  The boy was a threat though. He suffered no delusions to the contrary. Fragile, sweet, innocent little Lothen was a face for the Farrens to rally around. Nobles and peasants both.

  It all came back to Cullick again. The dear impartial count palatine was also the lad’s godfather. Were the father to go, Cullick would be duty bound to protect him—to shield the little prince against his brothers. Oh, the lark. The scandal that would draw. People choosing sides. Joseph would put a stop to that. The world had to see there was only one side, and that side was his. Cullick was an ant. An ant with dreams, but an ant nonetheless, and the only way to deal with an ant was to crush it underfoot.