Brennan shook his head without knowing if she was even watching him. She could not be more wrong, he was sure, but he did not quite have his own words for why. He had heard many others among the Free speak of it now and again though. They had words.
‘It’s not that I like the fighting,’ he said. Which was not entirely true. It did excite him; he was not afraid of it. ‘In all the Kingdom there’s one who doesn’t bend the knee to anyone: Crex the King. There’s him, and there’s the Free, and there’s no one else. We’re the only ones save him who could be called by that name and have it be true. There’s no lord above us; there’s none below us.’
‘That what you do the fighting and the killing for then, is it? Nothing to do with all the gold, I don’t suppose.’
When she asked the question like that, Brennan did know the answer. He did not give it to her because he did not think she would really understand it, or entirely believe it.
The gold had never been that important. Not to him anyway. The Free did indeed make those who survived it rich, and there were those who fought and sometimes died for that very reason. They were not him. He fought and might die for those who did the same thing alongside him. For the shared, bright life they lived, that none who did not share it could ever fully comprehend. For the suffering they had shared, and the pleasures they had tasted and the fears they had conquered together. Yes, for the family they had become, some of them, just as Marweh said. Not that he was going to admit as much to her.
‘I don’t know how you can do it, all the killing,’ Marweh was saying. ‘Even men who deserve nothing better.’
‘We do what we must. You farm. I fight.’
He heard her rising out of the water, and instinctively started to turn his head a little.
‘You keep your eyes to yourself until I’m dried and dressed,’ she warned him, and he half-raised an apologetic hand. Kept his back to her and his gaze fixed on the dry grass before him. It was so close to the pool, that grass, yet still yellow and brittle-looking. Step just a few paces from the water and everything here was thirsty.
‘We all do what our nature calls us to,’ he said.
He had heard that from Lorin a while back. Lorin and Manadar, both of them, had movement in their nature. Unsettled. If Brennan was honest, he was not certain what his nature really called him to. Perhaps it would come to him one day. For now, it was enough to be a part of something much greater than he could ever be alone. To be among friends and family.
‘We all do what our nature calls us to,’ Marweh repeated, closer behind now. ‘I like that. We do what we must.’
Something in her voice, almost sad and resigned, made him start to turn once more.
He never did set eyes on her. There was only the blur of movement and the ferocious impact across his temple. Then points of light tumbling across his vision. A spike of pain punching deep into his head. Darkness. Falling.
As he fell, he heard the flock of doves rising from the far side of the pool. Erupting in a clattering of wings.
Then nothing.
VI
Someone threw water in his face and Brennan blinked. Sharp light hurt his eyes. He winced. All he could see was Manadar grinning down at him.
‘She hit you with a stick,’ Manadar told him merrily. ‘You want to see it? It’s still got some of your blood on it.’
‘Go sit on your sword, you bastard,’ Brennan groaned. He could barely believe what was happening. What had happened.
‘Take a look. I think this might be some of your hair just here.’
‘I’d piss on you if I could stand up.’
‘He’s fine,’ Manadar called over his shoulder.
Brennan sat up stiffly. His head throbbed. He felt, gingerly, with his fingertips and there was dried blood caked there at his temple. Manadar hauled him to his feet and Brennan could not help groaning. It was not just his head that ached. His whole body was unready for this.
‘Where is she?’ he asked, squeezing his eyes shut against the pounding pain.
‘Not here,’ Lorin said from a short distance away.
Brennan let a little bit of the piercing light in again. Lorin was crouched over the bare earth, a dozen or so paces around the edge of the pool.
‘She leaves a plain enough trail,’ he said. ‘Looks to me like she’s in a hurry to get back to her family.’
‘She can’t be far,’ Brennan muttered, realising even as he said it that he had no clear idea how long he had been gone from the world for. Though there was a faint, hot tingle in the skin of his face that suggested he might have lain unmoving beneath the hard sun long enough for a burn to begin.
‘Might be a bit further than you imagine,’ said Manadar. ‘She’s business for later though. There’s bigger trouble brewing. That’s why we came to find the two of you.’
‘Bigger trouble?’ Brennan echoed. He felt dull and befuddled. Dim-witted as a fool.
‘Orphanidons,’ Lorin said, rising to his feet. He strode past Brennan without looking at him.
‘Careless, idiot boy,’ he muttered as he went.
And that wounded Brennan more deeply than Marweh’s makeshift club had done. The more so because it was richly deserved. Not that the blow to the head had been exactly unearned if the currency of the moment was carelessness.
But there were more immediate problems than the disappointment of those whose opinions Brennan valued. Orphanidons. Even in his soft-headed state he knew that was–just as Manadar said–a much bigger kind of trouble.
Manadar had to support him now and again as they walked back to the camp. Brennan’s legs were slow to respond to his mental commands. It was not the first time he had been knocked unconscious, so he was not too concerned about that. Not yet. His body should remember itself in an hour or two. Hopefully the dull throb in his head and the faint nausea in his gut would subside by then too.
The rest of the Free were waiting for them. Or waiting for something at least. As Brennan and the other two came slowly back towards the little camp, they received little attention. Hamdan–he and Yulan and Rudran were sitting on their horses side by side–glanced at them and gave a faint, wry smile when he saw Brennan’s stumbling condition. The archer nudged Rudran. When the big man looked round and saw them coming, he scowled. Rudran was not much given to smiles of any sort.
The rest–Yulan himself, and Wren and Kerig and all the others–were looking elsewhere. Up on the low, rocky ridge above the campsite was a distant mounted figure. One that glinted and gleamed in the sunlight. Another, just the same, was riding very slowly down across the slope towards them. That second horseman was close enough for all to see that it was metal that caught the light and shone with its reflection. Armour.
Brennan and Lorin and Manadar stood beside Wren and Kerig. The two Clevers were close but not quite touching. Brennan was always just a touch wary of talking to any of the Free’s Clevers. By rights, they were no different from him. Just more companions on the hard road the company followed. But of course they were a little different. They did things Brennan could not understand, and never would. They lived in a slightly different world.
Wren was the most approachable of them all to his way of thinking. Much of the time, it was possible to forget who and what she was. Kerig was another matter. Him Brennan found decidedly intimidating. There was always a faint tension in the man. A sense that saying the wrong thing might have unfortunate consequences. As a result, Brennan tended to say as little as possible in the Clever’s presence.
Manadar had no such inhibitions.
‘Just one of them coming down?’ he whispered to Kerig. ‘That’s a man short on fear and sense.’
Kerig glanced at the warrior and was clearly unimpressed.
‘You short on them yourself? Might be we just lost this whole contract, now the Orphanidons have found us. And if that’s all we lose, we’ll be doing well.’
‘Let him be,’ Wren whispered, touching her lover’s arm. ‘We’ll all know which way th
is is heading soon enough.’
Rudran was muttering quietly to Yulan. His voice was too low for Brennan to hear the words, but the general sense was not hard to gather. The lancer–clad in his own armour, which had never in its existence shone the way the Orphanidons’ did–was hefting a hammer, giving it a little shake now and again to emphasise some point.
It was a nasty weapon, with a heavy blunt head backed by a long, sharp spike. Made, Brennan knew well enough, more or less specifically to kill Orphanidons. To break armoured bones by sheer weight of impact; or, if turned in the hand, to punch through metal into flesh. Brennan had seen Rudran and his horsemen training with them often enough. As far as he was aware, the Free had not had to fight Orphanidons for many, many years. But the possibility was always there, and it was in the nature of both the Free as a whole and Yulan as their Captain to prepare for that possibility. The Orphanidons were the kind of threat that, without a planned answer to the question they posed, was liable to ride right over you and trample you into the dirt.
Yulan was shaking his head. Rudran would not get the chance to test his answer today. The lancer lowered his hammer. He looked disappointed.
Yulan and Hamdan and Rudran advanced a short way to meet this uninvited guest. And the lone Orphanidon ignored them. He did not so much as glance in their direction as he rode, very slowly, past them and on into the very camp of the Free, where their bedrolls were still on the ground and spears and sacks lay all about. Yulan and the other two had to turn their horses about and follow him.
He was like no man Brennan had ever seen, this one. His horse was magnificent, a hand taller at the shoulder than anything the Free rode. He wore a chest-plate and helm of polished, silvery metal. He had greaves at his shins of the same metal, engraved with swirling patterns. His gauntlets were overlaid with plates of gleaming bronze. Ribbons of many colours were tied about his upper arm.
He had a tall spear in one hand, held perfectly erect with its butt resting beside his foot in a stirrup. A round shield was strapped across his back, and a long sword was at his waist. He was bright and fearsome and proud.
Orphanidons. Terrible and impregnable. The master troops of the Emperor. But they had meaning far beyond that simple fact. The Empire was named for the countless thousands of orphans it harvested–quite deliberately and methodically–in its wars of conquest, and then shaped to serve its own ends. The best of them, the strongest and most iron-willed, became the Orphanidons. Each one of them was the result of years of training and sculpting. He was not merely a man of war; he was the crowning achievement of the Empire that had made him. As a baker made bread from humble grain, so the Empire made warriors from orphaned children. Perhaps–if the stories were to be believed–the greatest warriors the world had ever seen. So many thought. Not the Free, of course. Brennan would not allow himself to believe it. He preferred to remember that the Free had carved just as many stories into the world’s memory as the Orphanidons ever had.
This dazzling warrior drew his horse to a halt in the centre of the ring made by the Free’s bedrolls, and turned it about in a tight circle. The animal trampled the ashes of the firepit.
The Orphanidon said something in his own fluting language.
Yulan, sitting quite relaxed astride his horse, smiled apologetically.
‘Forgive me, but we have no one here who knows your tongue. It shames me to ask it of you, but can you speak in ours?’ It was a lie, Brennan knew. There were at least a couple of men here–including Hamdan, right there at Yulan’s side as ever–who could speak the language of the Orphans. For all Brennan knew, Yulan could as well. When it came to his Captain, no accomplishment would surprise him.
The Orphanidon regarded Yulan flatly for a moment or two, almost as if he smelled the untruth. Then he spoke.
‘You do not belong here. You are not of the Empire.’
‘No,’ Yulan acknowledged.
‘You will go back to your bed of lice and whores in your little lands.’
‘Ha.’ Yulan looked as though he wanted to laugh at that. ‘A fine turn of phrase you’ve got there. But no, sadly we cannot do that. Not yet.’
‘You can. Now.’
The Orphanidon matched Yulan’s calm. He was more stern, his face all but dead in its absence of expression. It did nothing to dampen the tension in the air.
‘Your ribbons say that you have seen much of the world,’ Yulan observed, twitching a finger at the many-coloured bands adorning the Orphanidon’s arm. ‘You must have served long and risen high.’
‘I hold the rank of Carnotec.’ The man of the Empire appeared entirely unmoved by flattery, if that had been Yulan’s intent.
‘I see the ribbon for crossing the northern bounds into the cold places,’ Yulan went on. ‘I see the ribbon for guarding the Emperor himself in Arnothex. I see the ribbon for tracking the Unhomed, and riding its flanks.’
‘You see those and more.’
‘Then you know much of the world. And you know well who we are, Carnotec.’
‘You are the Free.’
‘A few of them, yes. Just a few.’
‘Too many.’
‘You know we are bound to fulfil any contract we have taken. You know that is our code, and the earth from which our honour grows.’
‘I know that none who kneel before Crex the Corrupt, Crex the Base, may set foot where you have done. These are the lands of the Emperor, and the lives of his enemies are forfeit.’
‘As it should be,’ Yulan nodded. ‘Yet if you know of us, you know we do not kneel before Crex, or any other. We are the last of the free companies, unbound and unfettered. And it is not Crex’s contract that we are here to fulfil. He would not dare to test the patience of the great Emperor in such a way.’
Yulan twisted in his saddle. Only his body really; he kept his eyes firmly fixed upon the Orphanidon.
‘We have our contract-holder here. You can see the document he bears, if you wish. The name it carries is that of a village headman who asks us to return to him the many of his people who have been stolen away by evil men, and carried off into subjection and servitude.’
Surmun was in fact nowhere to be seen. Brennan glanced around and saw no sign of him. The high responsibility of accompanying the Free to bear witness to the legality of their contract had made Surmun a deeply unhappy man. To be fair, he had only sunk into despondency once it became apparent that the pursuit of the slavers was going to take them into the Empire. Until then he had given every sign of quite enjoying himself in a preening sort of way. Brennan was not surprised to find that he had disappeared from sight now that Orphanidons were on the scene. Poor Surmun’s little adventure was showing every sign of going terribly wrong. Not that he was alone in that.
Fortunately, the Orphanidon was not interested in the details of the contract. It would have said precisely what Yulan claimed it did. They all knew, as no doubt did the Orphanidon, that what it said and what it really meant were not the same thing. The headman of Wyven Dam might have put his mark on the contract, but it was the King’s coin that would pay the Free, and it had been the King’s scribes who wrote it.
The Orphanidon stared into Yulan’s eyes. There was a true courage here, Brennan thought. It might be born of arrogance and privilege and brutality; that did not make it any less brave to ride alone into the camp of twenty fighting men, knowing they were no friends.
‘The Empire takes no slaves from Hommetic lands,’ the Orphanidon stated.
‘Excellent,’ said Yulan. ‘We understand one another. The Orphans do not take slaves from Hommetic lands. And Crex does not trespass upon the rightful territories of the Orphans. Those we pursue are but bandits and rogues, who act without the Emperor’s knowledge. Just as we act without the King’s.’
There was the crux of it. Even Brennan, little of the world as he had seen and little of its workings as he understood, knew that. For years–decades–there had been nothing but loathing between Hommetics and Orphans, yet neither would venture ope
n war against the other. The Empire feared the Kingdom’s School of Clevers and the terrible Permanence, the Bereaved, that they controlled. The Kingdom feared the Empire’s limitless expanse and limitless armies. Their fears balanced one another, and there would be no war. But there would be slave raids and skirmishes and killings, all of which each ruler could feign ignorance of. There would be contracts that sent the Free hunting slavers. And everyone, if they chose, could pretend that it was not war.
The Orphanidon looked around. For the first time, he shifted his attention from Yulan to the rest of them and let his gaze flow around the circle of the Free. It brushed over Brennan, and for that moment he felt all the cold confidence and certitude of this potent warrior.
It did not linger on him though. He was of no interest. Wren and Kerig, they were of interest. Just for a heartbeat or two. Then the Orphanidon looked back to Yulan.
‘You have Clevers,’ he said levelly.
Yulan said nothing.
‘Clevers are forbidden. Practice of their magics is forbidden. The shielding of them from the Empire’s law is forbidden.’
‘I understand,’ Yulan nodded.
‘You will be watched. You will be measured. If your Clevers wake the entelechs, they will be mine.’
Brennan heard Kerig shifting at his side. The Clever had a reputation for a certain hotness of temper, though by all accounts Wren had worked wonders in cooling it over the last year or two. Even so, he was known as a man it was unwise to provoke. Brennan fervently hoped that they were not all about to see why.
‘No one puts a claim on any one of the Free without claiming all,’ Yulan said, for the first time letting a little steel into his voice, ‘and that is the kind of claim there are few in this world able to press. We stand together, always. That too is the earth in which our honour roots.’
The Orphanidon was unmoved. He simply stared back at Yulan.
‘It is of no matter now though,’ Yulan continued with a small smile. ‘Our Clevers will give you no cause for concern. They will let the entelechs sleep for now.’
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