The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  “West?” Rurik muttered, uncomprehending. His ears were faintly ringing. “What is west?” He glanced down at Rowan’s hip, noting the limp there, and eased him back away, all the while shouting for their caretaker. “What happened?”

  “Never you mind that. Your brother, lad. Your brother is coming. West! We need to be west, damn you.” Rowan squeezed him hard about the shoulders and pointed over the ranks. Then he pulled back, shambling from him. He was leaning more heavily on his right side than Rurik had noted before. “West,” he shouted once more.

  Someone was shouting over the din of the crowd, fighting to be heard. “Rally! To me! To me!” And with him, many other men were flooding in the direction of Rowan’s gesture.

  As Rurik tried to shout once more, Alviss finally appeared, with Essa at his side. She was swooning slightly, her legs threatening to cave beneath her. She did not quite seem to know where she was. Alviss checked him over, but Essa’s eyes never left the field, continually sweeping. They locked on her cousin, when she spied him. This seemed to stir her, and she started forward as if to run to him, but held back uncertainly, glancing at their guardian.

  “West, he said…” Rurik mumbled.

  Alviss’s normally bright eyes darkened with that, but Rurik ignored him, and looked to the horizon. The trumpets were growing louder. He followed the lines, streaming out across the field. Alviss’s hand prodded against his skull, like Rurik’s mother did when he was young, feeling for his temperature. It seemed absurd, in the midst of war. So casual. Alviss kept turning him back. Then Rurik batted at him, swiveling away, following the soldiers down to the glitter on the snow. More reserves poured in. Cavalry that glittered as they rode. Armored knights with lances and swords. Pikemen that formed before them and readied for a charge. Rurik peered over them, searching for the banner. It was the Imperial gryphons, crowned in silvery regality.

  At their head rode two of the Imperial Guardsmen, leading a charge with their lances poised and sabers rattling, white capes streaming at their backs. Behind them streamed the palace guard, and all the knights of the Emperor’s entourage, a lone column of untouched resplendence amidst a mottled sea of carnage.

  His brother, somewhere in the mass, would ride on as well—but Rurik could not spy him, no matter how hard he looked.

  They slid through the lines with purpose, between men both living and dead. Beautiful ghosts, rising, riding, shining, gone—and at their center rode the unlikeliest of heroes, in all his aged glory. Like a star, Matthias shone, even surrounded by these other writhing flames, sword flashing before him. Between the steel and the smoke, Rurik beheld a man no longer crowned, but no less regal, for the clothes that swaddled him seemed as white as the snow trailing behind him, sunlight glinting off white gold armor. Rurik could imagine his roar, rippling out before him, but the man and his voice, if he so spoke, were lost to the tumult.

  This, Rurik thought, is a man made to live and to die astride a saddle. Sensing uncertainty on the wind, weaker men might have put their soldiers to the charge and hung back, cheering from the safety of their cannons and their tents. Matthias Durvalle was no such man, and at once Rurik’s heart leapt for him, both in elation, and terror.

  Matthias the Bold.

  Matthias the Fool.

  Matthias the Dead.

  “The Emperor rides,” a dozen voices echoed. “On, on!”

  Rurik tugged away from Alviss’s protection, stumbling into the breach. There he looked for Rowan, but for all his color even that swordsman was a scarce shape amidst the bloodied swell. Gesturing to the others, he made his break, lunging through unfamiliar lines toward the advancing column. When he paused to breathe, he heard behind his breaths the force of a hundred others stirring toward the man that owned their hearts, as well as their bodies.

  Rurik wiped at his eyes, but the grayness would not depart. The dense mix of blackened gunpowder smoke and rolling mist coalesced into a blanket that threatened to smother every man about him. On, he pushed, searching, and here he saw the Emperor, there Rowan, knights and killers and madmen all. He saw, only to lose them once more amidst the smog. Glimpses guided him, mere glimpses, and here he thought he saw his brother, and there he thought he saw him, blade a blur. Another volley and another sounded, as cannons twisted on the lines. He choked on dust, and the sharpness of it stung his eyes, but even still he struggled forward, crying out to any that would hear him. And the volleys thundered on.

  Through the smoke, a line of spearman emerged to bar their path. Both sides seemed as shocked by the appearance of the other, but they still fell on one another with a fury. With the others streaming about him, Rurik bellowed and launched himself upon them. Like a child, he thought bitterly, and plunged beneath their thrusts. A man to his left rasped and fell, but Rurik stabbed up, plunging his sword into his killer’s gut, below the protection of his cuirass. The soldier sank down, gasping blood, and Rurik left him like that, twisting to pounce another.

  Somewhere, beyond the din of being, his name still rang.

  This next one blocked his swing with the pole of a pike and swatted him off. Rurik lunged again, and caught him by the arm. They traded blows, in quick succession, but as the soldier reared back, two others stabbed him down. Rurik’s eyes darted aside, looking for another—panting, he realized—and he twisted to swing as a shadow loomed, but the towering shape drove his axe again and again through the nearest man, and the rest were similarly falling, swarmed by the frenzy of the assault. Blade trembling, he saw only lately that it was Alviss.

  Behind them, though, still more were stirring. All about Rurik, the lines rushed, and though there were shouts for order, they did not oblige. The cacophony of shots arose again, and he was shambling through the ash.

  Alviss reached for him, but he slipped away.

  Dizzied by the fumes, he wandered from the rest. A swordsman came at him—they traded blows, each on wobbling feet, but he stabbed him down in short order. The man might have been his brother’s age. He did not dwell on it—he moved on, breathless.

  All at once it seemed he stumbled from the choking mass and breathed deep, rasping breaths of bleak, bitter air. There was vision, and all around him were dead and dying men who looked at him and past him, their twisted, broken bodies winding a trail east. He followed them, at a loss for words, or thought, and there, in that moment, he spied that which he had sought.

  He did not see his brother. But he saw Matthias, wedged between two distant, warring lines. The cavalry had charged, and in the charge, the Emperor had been cut off. A single man still rode at his side, stabbing and slashing indiscriminately among his assailants. His helm had gone, and blood coated his armor. They were hopelessly surrounded by a dozen men or more, but still he fought, wildly, to protect his lord. His white cape no longer gleamed, its tattered remnants unwinding with every arc. One of the horns of his helm had been snapped clean off.

  Effisians circled like a pack of rabid dogs. Some were ahorse, others afoot, stabbing out with their spears. Dead men surrounded them, mostly Effisian, but many Imperials as well. They pecked at the Emperor and his man, scoring little victories with every blow, wearing them down. One man lunged foolishly, sensing an opening. The Emperor’s man scored him about the neck and set his head lolling. Yet in the effort, he overextended himself, and another man stabbed his horse through the neck. The beast reared, kicking wildly, and in its death throes brooked a cavalryman’s worst fear: it bucked him from the saddle, in all his armor. The Effisians swarmed.

  This Rurik watched as though frozen, unable to move. He heard Alviss calling to him, but the breath caught in his lungs and he could barely hear it.

  He saw the pistol rise. He watched the Emperor whirl, warding off another blade, turning it aside with the skill of a man half his age. He saw the spark, and the cloud, and shook with the thunder that it rolled. He knew it, even before the smoke wisped away into the faintest vapors.

  It rang to the sound of Rurik’s name.

  The Emper
or swooned, clutching at his gut. He reeled in the saddle, seemed to right himself, and then, as the hounds sniffed the blood upon the wind, he plummeted from his saddle, down into the dust and the snow.

  The Lord that Rides, unhorsed. The Defender of the Faiths, debased.

  “My god,” he heard Rowan gasp at his back.

  Through the smoke, the Emperor’s horse broke past its master’s foes, their attentions focused wholly on the body at their feet. It rode on, between the lines, and vanished into the fog.

  Alviss began to speak. “We need—” But Rurik was already rushing forward, firing a shot into the air, as one might to drive off vultures. Amidst the tumult, it was a futile gesture, but several twisted still at the sight of the crazed boy. One spurred his horse to a gallop, coming around and at him, poising his saber above his head.

  Rurik shot him down. There was no thought to it. The man reared back and wobbled against his steed. Two more rushed him, afoot, and he shot one of them as well, and took his sword to the other. The man sprang at him, and the distance between them collapsed. They cracked into one another with a sound like trees splintering. They jarred apart, came on again, each aggressively pressing at the other’s guard. A feint nearly cost him. Rurik screamed as steel bared his leg, but instinct carried his own sword and bared the soldier’s unguarded throat in penance. The man gurgled as he sank.

  On he went. Pain flared up his leg, reality howling. He ignored it, eyes only for the dead man and the vultures that hounded him. Then he heard a scream, beckoning him back.

  “RURIK!”

  It was Essa. She alone could make him still so quickly. He twisted, fearing for her, but it was for him she screamed. He should have dropped. Too late he saw it—a rider bearing down on him. The mace swept the air. It cracked against his shoulder and the world exploded. The fabric of his shirt gave to the metal, ripped, and the chains of his armor crumbled into him. He was certain he cried out for the pain—and he wrenched back, spilling across the earth, the arm catching beneath his body. Pain blinded as flesh and bone crushed against the ice. It was an agony so stark he felt the bile in his stomach rile. The world swooned.

  Rurik gritted his teeth against it, trying to blot out the pain, trying to will his body to move, but it would not listen. He tried to grip his pistol, but at the flex of his fingers the fire shot clean up his arm again, and he nearly blacked out. The pistol was fallen beneath him. He rolled, and his left arm hung limp beside him. Blood seeped out through bent chains and rolled down the length of his arm. All was pain, and his body seemed keen to surrender to it. It can’t be so simple. It can’t. He struggled just to sit.

  An arrow caught the rider as he swung back for another pass, but it didn’t stop him. Another arrow struck him, and still he rode. Rurik stared into him, and beheld nothing but contempt. Drifting, he watched and waited, weakly gripping at his sword, knowing that death had come for him. This soldier would kill or he would die. The pain only focused him more, as it broke Rurik to a pauper. With a sour laugh, he choked the realization that this man, nameless to him, was more a man than he would ever be. He would have done his father proud. Rurik’s own father, wherever he waited, would only know a fool’s disgust. He should have looked before he ran. His blood rang with his approaching end.

  Ten paces. Five paces. The mace drooped with its rider. Dust scored the wind.

  Alviss ended his ride then, leaping between the cavalryman and his victim, bardiche in hand. He drove it into the horse’s neck, muscles straining at the effort. Its throat nearly split in twain, sparking a defeated, terrified gargle as it reared and bucked forward. Swinging around again, he took the rider from his saddle and slammed him to the earth. Standing over him, he hefted the axehead a final time and caved the rider’s skull with it.

  Flicking the blood from his axe, Alviss knelt before Rurik, lightly touching his shoulder. Even the touch made him flinch, and he had to bite back a scream. The Kuric’s grim look confirmed his fears—chainmail or no, his shoulder was wrecked. He could hardly move.

  A haggard Rowan lingered long enough to see that he would live, then threw himself across the field. A handful of soldiers remained cloistered about the Emperor’s body, but neither line was far from him. They were in a lull amidst the chaos, but it would not be long in reaching them. If the Effisians reached the body first, they would never have it again. Perhaps knowing this, the fencer put himself to the task with vigor. Then with a roar, Chigenda plunged from the smoke as well, barreling after Rowan into the fight, a handful of soldiers trailing in his wake.

  Though injury hobbled Rowan, he and Chigenda moved together as Rurik had never seen them move before. One struck with grace, the other with raw fury. Together, they cleaved the defenders down, a winnowing of blades. One nearly escaped, but he made it just a few steps before Chigenda’s spear hurdled through the air and drove through the back of his throat.

  In the distance, more horses stirred. Flags descended. Voices shouted, corpses pointed.

  Rurik tried to rise, but his body rose in revolt against him. He shuddered back to his knees, and felt the blade go out from under him. He looked to Alviss, and in his agony, a certain understanding passed between them. Other men might have waited for him to ask for help, but Alviss was too proud to let him. The Kuric slid under his good arm and hefted him up, leaning him onto his powerful shoulders.

  That was when he realized Essa had lingered with them. Her bow was out, and clutched tightly, but she, white as a ghost, was watching him, and shuddering. There was something of what they once had in that look—some fear of loss, for something that might never rise again. He longed to touch her. Now was not the time, and perhaps, never again. Blood trickled. He started to speak, but she swept up his sword before he could ask. Alviss nodded toward the others, ordered her on. She nodded back, darting across the plains.

  But his brother, where was his brother? He looked to the north, peered through the clouds, but beheld nothing there. Men stirred and fought and died in an endless blotchy mass. He longed to run to them, but there was nothing he could do now. Even if he had his arm, there was nothing for him there but death. Walls shifted between them, and he had not the strength to break them.

  Silently, he said a prayer for Ivon as they shuffled toward the bodies. Many fine men had been stabbed down, but by all that was good and holy, Ivon was not among them. Some had their skulls crushed. They died protecting their emperor, and in that, they had failed. Would that he could tell them to rest easy. The last to fall, the man known as Ser Ettore, was nearly cut to bits. He knew him only by his white cape and crooked nose.

  They had fought well, but it was not enough. Would their spirits see that? The Church still held that spirits walked the earth if something powerful enough held them back. This broke their cycle, stunted the evolution of the spirit. He shuddered to think it.

  Several gold-trimmed cloaks emerged from the dust, ringing them in. They were but bloodied husks of men. And the rest? A whole column had come on, yet this was all he saw.

  At the body, Rowan and Chigenda stood, and where the one looked grim, the other’s face was chiseled stone. Essa circled behind her cousin, unconcerned of the body, her eyes floating instead over the lines twisting through the smoke. She shifted anxiously, tipping another arrow to the string of her bow, and waiting.

  Rurik hobbled closer, hovering over the pale, shriveled speck at the heart of it all.

  The Emperor did not stir. It was as though he had simply disappeared. One minute he was riding hard through the lines, the next he was gone, the spirit faded, body beaten, broken, bloody. The jackals had partially stripped him, tearing at the mail he bore and clawing at the shirt beneath. His skin was sallow, bruised. His eyes were empty. A wordless cry locked the mouth open, tongue hung partway from the wrinkled corner of his lips. No longer did he appear the glorious man that he had been. Without his white-gold helm, he looked but a frazzled old man, fallen in his haste to rise. Yet appearance could not change the truth of it. Thei
r emperor of sixty years lay dead at their feet.

  But he already knew this. Matthias Durvalle, emperor of all that walked the plains, had been dead before he ever hit the ground.

  It was hours before the army heard of their emperor’s demise.

  Shredded by cannon fire and the devastating charges of the Effisian cavalry, the center broke into a chaotic retreat. Much of the front line was bloodily put to rout, their ranks streaming back over the field. What might have been disaster, however, regrouped and rallied around a second line, which the Bastard, in his foresight, had held far out of range of the Effisian guns.

  It was to him the Company carried the body, jostled between howling newcomers and limping refugees. They wrapped him in a shroud made from Rowan’s cape and bore him through the lines, doing their best to keep him from wary and wandering eyes. When they finally pressed through the anarchy, they found the Bastard in camp, watching his lines press across the field. His guards fell on them before they ever drew near, and barred them until they bared the old man’s withered head.

  The Bastard looked to them with a sharp rebuke that bespoke of the mayhem roiling all about them. He hadn’t the time for them, and he made it plain.

  “Who are you,” he snapped. “What do you want?” Then, pointing a finger accusingly at Alviss, he added, “Why aren’t you in formation?” Desertion was treason. Treason was death.

  It was Rurik who stepped forward then, gritting through his pain long enough to address the man. He bowed, and the bastard Kyler Tessel snorted, demanded that he strike with the formality.

  “Your father,” Rurik said. “I bring word of your father, His Majesty.” Numbness crept through his swimming mind, but he struggled forward. Tessel demanded he be out with it. Rurik felt his legs folding beneath him. Alviss gripped him, held him up.

  Tessel took his grimace for the poor message it was. The tall man showered him with questions, swinging down from his saddle to meet him. Peering eyes crowded his uncertainty. Rurik stepped back, recoiling from his touch.