The Riven Wyrde Saga boxed set

by Graham Austin-King

  Aiden looked at him from under his bushy grey eyebrows. “When did you get so clever about politics?”

  “Probably around the first time I sailed out as shipmaster,” Klöss sighed. “You see my point, though? It’s all about how you look at it. You’re here and the sealord isn’t. You’re in charge, not him. For crying out loud, Aiden, you have your name hung over the door!”

  “Door? I’m not following you.”

  “What’s the city called, Uncle?”

  “Now, you know that wasn’t my idea!” Aiden started, holding up a warning finger.

  “No, I know it wasn’t. And that’s the point!” Klöss took his last sip and set the cup down, a tiny measure of black sludge remaining in the cup. He ran a finger over his teeth to wipe away the grounds that had made it into his mouth.

  “Fine, you’ve made your poi…” He cut off as a knock came at the door. “Your point,” he finished, before turning to the door. “Come!”

  A head poked round it hesitantly. “Beg your pardon, Seamaster, but there’s a man here says he needs to see Shipmaster Klöss. Something about billeting and a message?”

  Klöss groaned. “Tell him to go and find Tristan. I’m busy.” He waved a hand in disgusted dismissal, but the door was already closing. “Honestly, half the time I don’t know if I’m leading men or if I’m a damned nursemaid!”

  Frostbeard laughed. “It doesn’t get any better, you know.” He leaned forward, serious now, and all remnants of the complaining old man fell away. “What’s your feel for it out there?”

  “You’ve read the scout reports.” Klöss pointed at the pile of papers on another desk.

  “Bah! You know my opinion of them!” Frostbeard said.

  “Never trust an opinion on troops from a man who’s been trained how to run away,” Klöss recited.

  Frostbeard scratched at his cheek through his coarse beard. “No, not troops. They can count troops easily enough. I say it as a joke, but I’m serious. The average scout has little feel for a battlefield or a battle.” He turned in the chair so he could look at the map pinned to the wall. “What do you feel about it at the moment?”

  “I expected more,” Klöss admitted. He sat up, leaning his arms on the desk. “Look, we didn’t know what this land was like. In truth, even though we scouted as much as we could, we didn’t know what to expect at all. We’ve pushed inland for...what, about twelve leagues? We’ve driven off their people and we've burned their villages. So where are their armies? Where is the response? I keep waiting for the door to crash open with word that they’re on the march.” He walked around the desk to point at the map.

  “After the battle at that last village, I expected more from them. They were good, very clever. Their commander made good use of the land and improvised to compensate for what he didn’t have. Using logs in the catapults was genius. His forces, though, were nothing compared to ours in terms of numbers.”

  “You think they hold back?” Aiden asked.

  “They have to be. The plan was to engage them, defeat them and then pull back to the lands we’d taken. To discourage them from trying to retake lands. That 's not going to happen unless we meet, and defeat, a significant force.”

  “That was more or less what the sealord was saying in his last letter,” Frostbeard snorted. “Fine. I want you to push inland in force. You’ll have the men from the sealord's fleet but I wouldn’t put any faith in their ability. Take ten companies with you, and go and find me their armies. Bring me back a victory we can drink about.”

  Klöss nodded, concealing a smile at his uncle’s refusal to name the Black Fleet.

  “Oh, and Klöss?” Frostbeard called him back as he headed for the door. “Try to keep the supply lines as short as you can. We don’t have the men to leave whole armies guarding your supply dumps.”

  Klöss grunted. To be fair, that was all the response it deserved.

  ***

  Gavin pulled his cloak closer against the rain. It was more than a misting drizzle, but less than a light shower. If it had been any heavier, he’d have just been wet and been able to ignore it. As it was, it managed to seek out those parts of him that were still dry, sending the occasional fat drip running down inside his leathers in search of them.

  He trudged. It was a particular type of walk that he’d been forced to develop over the last three weeks. The men in front of him never moved fast enough for his liking, but there was no point trying to pass through the line. Gavin muttered and tried to kick his boots into a more comfortable position as he walked.

  Klöss would be somewhere up ahead of them. His troops had left Rimeheld days before Gavin and the others with him had even been organised.

  The arrows came from nowhere, whistling from the trees in a little chorus of hate.

  “Shields!” someone shouted, though they needn’t have bothered. Any man with any sense was now huddled down behind his shield, trying to make himself as small a target as possible. Then the line was moving towards the trees and Gavin bit his lip to keep from screaming.

  The men of the Black Fleet or, as he thought of them, the Dead Men, were mixed in with experienced oarsmen. What the oarsman acting as their leader had done to deserve this duty, Gavin had no idea.

  He was surrounded by a pocket of Dead Men, a tight phalanx of oarsmen on each side of them. The differences were obvious and immediate. The oarsmen moved their shields as a unit, working together to provide themselves with the best cover possible as they headed for the trees. The Dead Men moved sluggishly, receiving the occasional kick from the oarsmen that were acting as their squad leaders to keep them moving.

  He saw first one man, then two more, go down as arrows found the gaps between the shields and he looked to either side of him. The man on the left was too far away, so he reached out to the right, grabbed the edge of the man’s shield and yanked.

  The Dead Man gave him a look of pure terror, and then moved closer as he saw what Gavin was doing. Overlapping the shields provided them with slightly more cover, although two alone made little difference. He looked to the left again to where his neighbour scuttled along, hiding more behind other men than taking cover from his own shield.

  “You!” Gavin called. “Come over here.”

  The man gave him a startled look and then shook his head violently. “Fuck that!” he hissed back.

  “Get your flea-ridden hide over here or I’ll gut you myself!” Gavin spat back. He flicked his cloak aside to reveal the long, curved dagger at his belt and pulled it an inch from the sheath. The man, now more frightened of him than of the arrows, moved within reach.

  Gavin stepped back slightly, so the second man’s shield overlapped the first. With his own shield held high, they had an improvised wall. The arrows thudded into it with a regularity that was both terrifying and oddly reassuring. He relaxed slightly and looked about for the rest of the squad. They had melted away like mist in the morning sunlight and their leader was nowhere to be seen.

  Gavin swore to himself and thought for a second. The wall enabled them to move faster and he saw some of the other Dead Men grouping into threes and fours to copy what he’d done. It would have worked better if they’d worked as a single unit, but they hadn’t the training for that.

  A cry went up from ahead of them and the oarsmen broke into a sprint, charging into the trees. Gavin watched them go for a second, before lowering his own shield for just long enough to gauge the distance to the trees. “Come on!” he shouted, and raced for the closest trunk. Let the oarsmen have the fight; he had his own agenda and, at the moment, that included having a good two feet of tree trunk between him and the next arrow.

  He threw himself into the undergrowth close to the trees as arrows continued to hiss past. His leather armour was bulky and it felt alien to him. Despite wearing it during the weeks of training they’d been given before the sea voyage and for the week or more that they’d been pressing into enemy territory, it still felt wrong. He forced himself to ignore it and squirmed on
his belly towards a tree.

  Men surged past him, running blindly into the trees with their weapons drawn. Let them, Gavin thought. He was no coward and would fight when he needed to, but to run blindly towards flying arrows crossed the line between bravery and stupidity, as far as he was concerned.

  The arrows first slowed and then stopped, as the distant sounds of fighting carried through the trees. He moved towards the sound, although he was in no hurry. Keeping his sword sheathed at his side, he pulled out his long dagger. They might have forced him to drill with the sword, but really it was just an oversized knife. Once you got the first inch of any blade into someone, they ended up just as dead anyway.

  He could move far faster with the smaller weapon than he would ever have been able to carrying the sword. Even sheathed, it was getting in the way. After a moment’s indecision, he drew and then dumped the heavy weapon. He kept his shield for now. It was large, heavy and made moving with stealth almost impossible, but it was rather good against arrows.

  He came across the first body moments later. It lay in the ferns, face up, as if the man were just taking a nap. The feathered shaft jutting from his chest told another story, however, and the fact that his armour hadn’t stopped the arrow was not lost on Gavin.

  “Waste of bloody time,” he muttered, picking at the heavy leathers he wore. He found himself wishing, not for the first time, that he had other clothes with him so he could be rid of the hateful stuff.

  The sound of the fighting grew louder and he ghosted from tree to tree as he approached. He stopped as he caught sight of them and pressed himself close to a broad tree trunk to take stock.

  The men in green cloaks were easily distinguishable from the leather-clad Bjornmen. They were clearly better trained as well, he noted, as the one closest to him held off two Bjornmen with ease. They were probably Dead Men, he realised, as he saw them waste several opportunities to strike.

  He knelt to ditch his shield and move in closer but, as he did so, the green-cloaked man’s sword dipped, almost delicately, into one of the stomach of one of the Bjornmen. The man fell like a stuck pig, screaming as he rolled in the leaves. Gavin swore to himself and moved quickly before the fight could turn the two men round to face him.

  The leaves were dry but the noise of the fight covered his approach as the Bjornman puffed and wheezed. Green Cloak, for his part, didn’t even appear to be winded. He turned at the last second, sensing something, and twisted as he spotted Gavin. By then, however, it was too late and Gavin thrust his long knife deep, sinking it into the man's kidneys. He was moving again before the man hit the ground, drifting forward, seeking the cover of the trees, while the surviving Bjornman sank to his knees in the leaves, shaking and sobbing.

  Gavin knew how to kill. You didn’t live long amongst the Wretched unless you did. His training hadn’t come from instructors in ridiculous schools, though. It had come in the shadows of back alleys at the hands of boys trying to kill him for a warmer shirt, for the bread he carried or even just because he was there, in that place.

  He moved on through the trees, killing where he had to. Some of the time, he could just step past the skirmishes. Getting killed in a senseless fight after he’d travelled all this way would be beyond stupid.

  Any sense of order amongst the Dead Men seemed to have gone out the window as soon as they had entered the trees. They were scattered, fighting a thousand small fights alone or in twos and threes. If it weren’t for their obviously greater numbers, Gavin knew they would probably have been slaughtered to a man by now. As it was, the death toll was horrific and every empty space seemed to be littered with bodies.

  The sound of a twig cracking was the only warning he had, and he ducked purely on instinct as the sword hacked at the air where his head had been. Gavin followed his movement through and turned it into a tight roll, before coming to his feet and turning.

  His attacker was already pressing in, his longsword held low and his large wooden shield ready. He was dressed for speed and wore none of the ridiculous metal armour that Gavin had been warned to expect.

  Gavin pulled his knife and stood ready, weaving it through the air. The movements were purely for show; it was a trick he’d picked up from long years on the streets. . Show the enemy your weapon. Let the light catch it, shine off the edge, so they focus on it and see the sharpness of the blade, the cruelty of its point. A man imagining the feel of a knife slicing into his vitals is not a man concentrating on the fight.

  The swordsman struck, with a feint and then a thrust, and Gavin spun to the right, pushing the sword blade to the side with his knife and moving in close to the shield. His intent was to spin again and then be behind the man, so he was utterly unprepared for the blow when the shield slammed into his face.

  The impact sent him reeling and he fought to keep hold of his knife as the world spun around him for a second. The man gave him no time to recover though and moved in, his sword held high to strike.

  Gavin backed away, giving ground to keep the steel outside of his skull. The swordsman grinned at him, the contempt he felt for the weapon in Gavin’s hand clear in his eyes. A knife has one advantage over a sword though, and Gavin gave a snide grin back as he flipped the weapon over in his hand and hurled it into the man’s throat.

  The skirmisher clutched at the knife and made a tortured, gurgling noise as he fell. Gavin stepped forward to retrieve his blade, then froze as another man emerged from behind the fallen body and charged, his sword ready to thrust. Gavin dived for the knife, knowing he’d never reach it in time, and tensed for the blow he knew must come.

  Instead, he heard a grinding, slicing crunch, followed by a crash as the man fell to the dirt. Gavin lifted his head to see a large Bjornman oarsman wiping a double-headed axe on the dead man’s cloak.

  “A good trick with the knife,” he observed, “That, he was not expecting, I think.” He held a hand out to help Gavin up.

  “Thanks,” Gavin said, as he pulled himself up. “Good timing.”

  “I was watching,” the big man confessed with a shrug.

  “Watching?” Gavin didn’t attempt to keep his feelings from his face.

  “I had never seen a man attack a swordsman with just a knife before.” He shrugged. “Stupid but interesting. Perhaps next time use your sword?”

  “Swords are slow,” Gavin muttered and stooped to retrieve the knife.

  “We are falling behind. Come.” The big man slung his shield over his back and strode off through the trees, hefting the axe in one hand.

  “Wait! I never got your name,” Gavin called after him.

  “Tristan.” The voice carried back to Gavin as he ran to catch up.

  The Bjornmen seemed to have managed to push the skirmishers back through the woods, thinning their numbers, by the looks of things, but never quite managing to fully close with them. Gavin followed Tristan through the trees and they made their way out of the woods. As they stepped out into the field, Gavin looked around in confusion. He had been expecting to emerge into a battle. The signs of fighting were all around them, from the torn and muddied grass to the bodies lying on the ground like discarded toys, but the scene was nothing compared to what it should have been.

  Tristan examined the grass. “Horses,” he grunted. “Clever.”

  “I don’t follow,” Gavin admitted.

  Tristan glanced over to him. “These men. They attack us from the trees, yes?”

  Gavin nodded.

  “They goad us, allow us to push them back through these woods, picking us off with arrows as they go, staying out of any real fight.” He turned, waving at the torn ground. “Then here, they escape on the horses they left.” He pointed off to the south.

  Gavin nodded again, struggling slightly with the man's thick Far Islander accent. It was a clever plan. The Dead Men, in particular, would have been easy pickings for the archers as they moved back through the woods.

  Men were forming back into their units and Gavin watched them for a moment, m
aking no move to join them himself. He looked to the south, where the grassy hillside dipped down into a shallow valley. He could just make out the horses in the distance, as the skirmishers made their retreat.

  “What would you have done?” The question caught him off guard and he was silent for a time, while Tristan looked at him appraisingly.

  “I would never have put the Dead Men all together,” he said, finally. “They should have been dispersed throughout the other units.”

  “Dead Men?” Tristan asked, with a snort.

  “This lot.” Gavin waved his arm in their direction. “The men from the Black Fleet.”

  “Why Dead Men?”

  “The training is a joke,” Gavin explained. “These men are more used to threatening people with their weapons than actually fighting with them. As fighters, they’re dead already; they just haven’t found a sword to stick themselves with yet.”

  Tristan stared at him long enough to make him wonder just who this man was, and whether or not he’d just shoved his foot all the way down his own throat.

  “Come,” he said, finally. “There is someone I want you to talk to.”

  “What about my squad?” Gavin ventured.

  Tristan gave the Dead Men a scathing glance. “You do not belong with them. Come.”

  They travelled west, pushing faster than most of the other men. The fact that nobody stopped them or even raised an eyebrow as they went past was not lost on Gavin and his concerns grew by the minute.

  They had passed the foremost elements of the column by evening and made a rough camp in a stand of beech. Tristan was quiet and offered little in the way of conversation beyond asking Gavin his name and what training he'd had. They rose early and pushed on. During late afternoon, the shallow valley through which they were travelling opened up into a vast grassy plain and Gavin suddenly saw a sea of white tents and men in leather armour. The Bjornman army was like nothing he could have imagined and the camp stretched as far as he could see.