Ghost of the Wall

by Jeff Mariotte

  At any rate, as he dodged trees and rocks, he knew that despite Alanya’s entreaties, he had to tell Uncle Lupinius what he had seen. Alanya didn’t like, or trust, their uncle, a fact she had made abundantly clear since before they even reached Koronaka. Donial had agreed with her, at first, because he knew no better. But the more he got to know the man, the more he liked him.

  Invictus, their father, and Lupinius, his brother, had been born to people of accomplishment but no significant wealth. They had managed to acquire some land, a small estate, and had served king and country honorably. Invictus, as the oldest son, had inherited that estate. He worked hard on behalf of Aquilonia. But so did Lupinius, who had been left with only a small sum, no fortune at all, which he had quickly spent. Without the inheritance, Donial believed that Lupinius had had the harder time, and he had performed admirably. He was a man of ambition who had overcome the disadvantage of his birth order to create a significant estate of his own, albeit in the border region instead of the city. Alanya claimed that their father sent Lupinius gold from time to time. But Lupinius had never given any indication that her story was true, never intimated that he had established himself in Koronaka through anything other than his own efforts.

  Since Invictus had gone off on his mission to the other border outposts, Donial had been spending more and more time with Lupinius, and the more he did the more he found that he liked and respected their uncle. Therefore, he didn’t share Alanya’s distrust of him, and he thought that Lupinius, having put in a good many years in the Westermarck, would know what to do about the encounter Donial had witnessed.

  Something had to be done. Alanya was his sister. He had to take care of her.

  Maybe he couldn’t kill the savage, but he could use what skills he did have.

  He could run.

  Really fast.

  “SHE IS MY niece, Governor Sharzen,” Lupinius stated later that day. “That . . . that heartless savage assaulted her. Honor demands action against him and all his kind.”

  He was in the governor’s office—the only one in Koronaka, he judged, that was bigger and finer than his own. The interior walls were plastered, the windows shuttered, the wooden floor covered with rich Ophirean rugs. Sharzen sat on a pile of luxurious silken cushions beside a low table of intricately carved pine. On that table rested a cask and two cups, which Sharzen had filled with good Zingaran wine when he had entered. Lupinius had left his untouched.

  “We have a truce,” Sharzen replied, as if Lupinius were a child. He was a big man, a Gunderman, well over two meters tall with sandy brown hair and blunt features. He wore a tunic of forest green, with a short cloak fastened to it by silver pins. On his wrists were coiled bracelets, and a broad leather girdle belted his thick waist. “It was agreed to by representatives of King Conan himself. I cannot simply break it on a whim.”

  Lupinius fairly exploded. “A whim? He laid hands upon my niece. When Invictus hears, do you have any doubt that he’ll counsel Conan to drive every last one of them into the sea?”

  “But . . . she said that he never touched her. She called him a friend, Lupinius. He gave her a gift.”

  “She knows not what she says,” Lupinius shot back. “The poor girl was terrified. It is her brother whose testimony we must believe.”

  “I suppose there is some truth to that,” Sharzen offered.

  “You know that it is absolutely true. And here is something else to chew on, Governor. I have my own force of Rangers. We will go over the river and into the Pict village. The truce will be considered broken then anyway, whether our presence there is officially sanctioned or not. But if we are outmanned, then the savages will have reason to strike back here, at Koronaka. Possibly the other clans will set aside their petty squabbling and join together against you. If we go in with our full forces—my Rangers and your regulars—then we stand a chance of wiping them all out in one swoop.”

  Sharzen looked a little pale, but he drained his cup of wine and his color returned. “You make a good point, Lupinius.”

  “Of course I do,” Lupinius said, knowing he had the man convinced. Now it was just a matter of establishing the details of the raid and making sure that he was in charge. That wouldn’t be too difficult. Sharzen was an appointee of the king, a soldier who had served Aquilonia well in these territories many years ago. He had helped found Koronaka, more than a dozen years earlier. But since trading in the sword for the quill and the trappings of power, Sharzen had become weak. His massive muscles became flabby, and his once-strong will turned toward the bureaucrat’s goal of self-preservation at all costs. Any courage he might once have possessed had been buried over the years by a desire to serve his distant masters in order to retain his position.

  At Koronaka, Sharzen governed two hundred settlers and as many soldiers. And yet he had ceded his own authority to Lupinius without a fight. Lupinius couldn’t help but feel contempt for the man Sharzen had become.

  The good thing was that his fears made the governor that much easier to manipulate. Since learning that, Lupinius had been able to use the man’s position to build his own fortunes, until he was himself the most influential person at Koronaka.

  She didn’t know it, but Alanya had given him the means to increase both wealth and power—to make of him someone who could go back to Aquilonia a very rich man, to build a comfortable estate and get away from the stinking border territory forever.

  As an important man, rumors and whispers usually found their way to his ears. He had, for months, been tantalized by a story of an incredibly rich Pictish hoard, kept in hiding by the Bear Clan. Traders who went back and forth across the river heard stories from friendly Picts, or ones trying to tempt them into better deals. Gems from caverns deep beneath the hills they ruled, the whispers claimed, nuggets of pure gold that they didn’t even know how to work. Items stolen from travelers or settlers who ventured too close to Pictish territory. They kept these things because they were shiny and pretty, Lupinius guessed. People who still dressed in raw skins and painted themselves for battle had no need of wealth.

  But he did. He could put it to much better use than they ever would.

  As long as King Conan’s truce held, however, he’d had no opportunity to go in search of it. If the Picts wouldn’t break the truce, then he would, and Donial’s tale of the Pict he’d seen with Alanya gave him the excuse he needed. Attacking the village with the full force of the Aquilonian border soldiers and his own Rangers, taking them by surprise, they would be able to slaughter the Bear Clan to a man. Then he could take his time locating the hoard. Once he had that, combined with the wealth he had already amassed in his time on the Westermarck, he would return to his homeland.

  Their father had favored Invictus, and as a result his older brother had inherited the bulk of the family’s land and prestige. Lupinius had been obliged to make his own way in the world. He had bitterly resented Invictus for that. From time to time Invictus had offered Lupinius what amounted to charity. Each time, Lupinius had accepted the proffered gold, and each time found himself despising his brother more than ever. Now, on the cusp of great riches, he thought that perhaps he could find it in himself to forgive his brother after all.

  Either that, or put his newfound wealth to work to ruin him.

  He just had to decide which it would be.

  ALANYA WENT TO the cabin that she and Donial shared with their father when he was at Koronaka. It was not nearly so grand as Lupinius’s home, or as the home she was accustomed to back in Tarantia. But its small rooms and low ceilings were still somehow comforting, compared to the more expansive space with which Lupinius had surrounded himself. The walls were built of rough-hewn logs chinked together with Black River mud, the floors and ceilings of the same wood, split and planed. Lupinius’s place had water from the river and a timber-lined sewage system, but at the more modest cabin her father had acquired, they had to use the nearby public latrine.

  She needed time alone, though, and this was the best place to get
it. Donial had become comfortable at Lupinius’s place, and no one else in town ever came to her father’s cabin. She could have the solitude she wanted here, time and space to think about what had gone wrong.

  Maybe she should have told Donial about Kral from the beginning. Had she enlisted his help in keeping the secret, he might not have been so inclined to run screaming to their uncle when he did find out. But she didn’t expect that he’d actually follow her. That seemed like too much effort, even for him.

  Instead, finding out the way he had was so shocking, he’d just had to tell someone. And since he had been gradually becoming closer to Lupinius, maybe even seeking their uncle’s approval, going to him with the stunning news had seemed like the right thing to do. Perhaps it was. If their places had been reversed, wouldn’t she have wanted to reveal what she had seen?

  She had thought that Lupinius would be furious. Instead, he acted concerned, even solicitous. The expression on his face when he took her into his office was warm and concerned. “Did he hurt you?” he asked. “Touch you in any way?”

  “No, Uncle,” she had said. “He was a gentleman.”

  “That is hard to believe, of a barbarous savage.”

  “It is true just the same.”

  “Very well, then. I am glad to hear it. Still, you understand that it was a very foolish and dangerous thing for you to do, correct?”

  He had sat down in a straight-backed chair made of branches with leather strapping, leaving her standing before him. He rested his muscular forearms on the chair and stared at her with a dark-eyed gaze that seemed to bore right through her. “I understand that under ordinary circumstances, it would have been,” she hedged. “But in this case, Kral would not have allowed any harm to come to me.”

  A sharp intake of breath, and Lupinius brought his right hand to his chin in exasperated fashion. “I am not sure you fully comprehend the situation,” he told her. “There will have to be a response.”

  She didn’t know what he meant. “A response?”

  “We cannot allow those Picts to think they can just come across the river at will and consort with our women,” he explained. “There are strict rules about contact between our peoples. There will be bloodshed. Brave soldiers might lose their lives, because you were so foolish as to wander away from the fort unescorted and because you didn’t immediately report this person’s approach.”

  Alanya was confused and furious. If the bloodshed was a direct result of contact between Pict and Aquilonian, then what would it have mattered if she had told her uncle about it right away? And why did anyone have to suffer, since she had been unhurt and unmolested? Didn’t traders deal with the Picts on a regular basis, albeit on their side of the river? And what of her own father, who had been to the Bear Clan village on several occasions?

  Lupinius had been unwilling to provide any further detail, claiming a pressing engagement with the governor. He had left the house. Shortly after, so had she. That was when she had come to the cabin, where she sat in the dark, fighting back tears, clenching her fists so tightly that they hurt, wishing there was some way that she could magically undo the whole day and start over again with the dawn.

  5

  INVICTUS RODE THE borrowed steed hard, trying to cover ground as quickly as possible. The road was a narrow path cut between overhanging trees, which blurred into a wall of solid green. Dirt flew beneath the animal’s hooves at every stride.

  He had been at Thandara, trying to negotiate a peace between the Pictish Eagle Clan and the settlers there. But a rider who had just spent a few days in Koronaka had mentioned preparations for an assault on the village of the Bear Clan. King Conan had specifically sent Invictus to Koronaka to learn how they had kept the peace and to share that information with other settlements throughout the Westermarck. For that truce to be broken was bad enough. Worse yet was the rumor that Invictus’s own brother, Lupinius, was a chief instigator of the impending attack.

  So the mad rush back toward Koronaka. Governor Diocletian of Thandara had offered an escort, but Invictus had been afraid that additional companions would only slow him down. Besides, until Lupinius broke the peace Invictus had little to fear from Picts, and he could deal with any bandits who might try to make trouble. He spent one night camped near the road, on a bed of soft needles dropped by towering pine, and breakfasted on dried beef and crusty bread given him by Diocletian. With the first light of dawn he was back in the saddle.

  The second afternoon, Koronaka loomed ahead of him, its dark brown walls and towers solid and forbidding. Were he a naked savage living in a mud hut, he thought, he would not want to do battle with people who could build such a structure from the materials surrounding them. He shouted a greeting to the guards at the gate, who threw it open to admit him, and in a flash he had ridden past them into the fort’s parade area.

  He was dismayed by the sight that met him there. The previously peaceful settlement of Koronaka had turned into a war camp. Smiths worked furiously over fires that spat sparks into the afternoon sky, mending armor, shoeing horses, shaping swords and spears. Fletchers busily produced arrows by the hundreds. Bare-chested men drilled with sword and axe, sweat running in rivers down their torsos in the hot autumn sun. Others, who Invictus judged to be either more dedicated or insane, trained in full armor.

  Standing on a shaded porch of the governor’s house, watching the bustle of activity, were Lupinius and Governor Sharzen himself. Invictus threaded his horse through the preparations for war and dismounted before the house, tying the animal to a nearby post. Lupinius watched him approach with a welcoming smile on his face; Sharzen’s expression was more tentative.

  “Welcome, brother,” Lupinius said. He was resplendent today in red silks, and his face looked flushed, as if his skin were trying to match his attire. “You’re just in time.”

  Invictus waved an angry hand toward the busy parade ground. “It looks as if I’m a little late,” he growled.

  “Not at all,” Lupinius said. He moved forward and embraced Invictus awkwardly. “Your daughter is fine, by the way. Unhurt and completely safe.”

  “Alanya? What does she have to do with anything?” Invictus demanded.

  “Surely you got my message,” Lupinius said anxiously. “About the Pict boy?”

  “I received no message,” Invictus replied simply. “If I had not heard that you intend to break the truce, I would be in Thandara yet. What Pict?”

  Lupinius drew Invictus to one side, as if to exclude Sharzen from the conversation—though the man had not so much as opened his mouth since Invictus had arrived. “I am sorry, brother,” Lupinius said. “I assumed that my runner had reached you there. Alanya was away from the camp, and met a boy in the woods—a young man of the Bear Clan. He did not touch her or threaten her in any way, she insists. Nonetheless, I thought the only appropriate response was to attack the clan’s village, to let them know in no uncertain terms that any kind of fraternization between their men and our women will be met with a harsh and definitive response.”

  A rush of horrific images presented themselves to Invictus’s mind’s eye. Alanya with a Pict boy? He had made great efforts toward making peace with the Picts, working to convince the leaders of other settlements that while they were different than Aquilonians, they were no less human beings. But that didn’t mean that he would trust one alone with his daughter. He had been to a few villages where Aquilonian women had been taken as wives, and while he hadn’t seen them mistreated, it was still not a fate he wished for Alanya.

  “I need to see her,” he said. “Right away.”

  “She has been keeping to herself the last few days,” Lupinius said. “But I know she will be thrilled to see that you’ve returned.”

  “And we need to discuss this assault on the Bear Clan,” Invictus said. “I am not convinced it is necessary or wise.”

  Now Sharzen decided to add his input. “The decision has been made,” he stated. “We cross the Black River at first light.”

&n
bsp; “But . . . she is my daughter,” Invictus said, surprised at the governor’s adamant response. “I should have some say as to how we respond.”

  “You were gone,” Sharzen said. He looked pale, as if arguing with Invictus was a frightening proposition for him. He was a big man, but Invictus knew that his physical strength was much greater than his personal courage. He blinked rapidly as he spoke, and his gaze rested somewhere over Invictus’s shoulder instead of directly on him. “Lupinius spoke for you. And I made the final decision, as governor of this territory.”

  “I am here now,” Invictus pointed out. “And able to speak for myself. And for the king, who desires peace along the border.”

  “The king is not here, and does not know what has transpired. At any rate, we are too far along to stop. The appetite for battle has been whetted. If we tried to halt the action now, our soldiers would fall upon one another. There is considerable emotion stirred against the Bear Clan as a result of this, and some of the soldiers would doubtless make for their village anyway.”

  “As would my Rangers,” Lupinius added confidently.

  “A smaller force might well be rebuffed,” Sharzen continued. “Certainly you would agree that a defeat for us would be worse for the peace than a resounding victory.”

  “And no battle at all would be even better for the peace.”

  “No battle is no longer an option,” Lupinius put in. “There is only a win or a loss, now. I prefer to win.”

  Invictus remembered his brother as a young boy, fiercely competitive at every game they played. “As you always have,” he said.

  “So you are with us?”

  “I have not said that,” Invictus countered. “I need to see Alanya and Donial.”

  “You will find them at my house,” Lupinius assured him. “Safe and well.”