by Matthew Ward
Visitors didn’t come to Tarona. On his rare forays into civilisation, Viktor laboured to discourage them. A chance glimpse, and rumours would spread. Calenne’s secret would be for nothing, and happiness placed beyond her grasp.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll send them away.”
“Play nicely, Viktor.”
She kissed him on the cheek and walked away, her stride quickening to a run as she cleared the crest; a shadow in the sunlight, and then gone. Viktor turned again downhill, and wondered if he should return inside, take his claymore from its hooks above the hearth. Deciding against, he tugged on his shirt, retrieved the lumber axe, and marched down the hill.
Viktor waited for the intruder just beyond the vanished walls, in the dell where tangled trees drew close to an ivy-clad statue. The gangling, robed figure stared not north across the valley, but west, towards the distant sea, though what he sought there, or why, remained as mysterious as the face concealed beneath the pitted stone mask.
Viktor cared nothing for Jack, who drew worship only from rural, uncivilised folk. But he welcomed the chill air that ever hung about the statue, and the smattering of mist that never faded even under brightest sun. Not for the cold, though that was certainly welcome enough after his exertions, but because something about the dell made his shadow cower. A Forbidden Place, touched by old magic.
At last, the uninvited guest lurched into view, a staff tapping the ground ahead of his steps. Viktor let the axe fall loose. This was no thief seeking a score, nor a wolf’s-head in pursuit of mischief. Best of all, he was no Council herald with summons and soldiers. No threat to be had from this man, despite the battle axe slung across his back.
A rich, red beard – plaited in the meticulous Thrakkian style – lent years to a face nearer to Calenne’s age than Viktor’s. A scar set diagonally across eyes and the bridge of his nose added more, barely visible though it was beneath the flame tattoo covering the right side of his face. Thick leathers and a woollen hood must have sweltered beneath the morning sun, though the traveller showed no signs of discomfort. Nor did he visibly react as his empty gaze swept across Viktor, for his eyes were white and glassy.
“Armund af Garna?” said Viktor. “What brings you to Tarona?”
Armund drew to a halt. His head regarded Viktor, though his eyes did not. “So what they’re saying down in Valna is true? The high and mighty Lord Akadra is skulking on this hilltop?”
“A long walk for nothing if he wasn’t.”
“Worth the risk, to visit an old comrade. And I’ve time to spare. Not much call for a blind thrydaxe like myself.”
He spoke jovially enough, but Viktor wondered at the truth beneath the words. He and Armund had been only brief comrades, and a battlefield had separated the strike of their steel. As for his claims of being a thrydaxe – a mercenary? Well, he’d taken no payment in either coin or promise to stand at the Battle of Davenwood – at least, not from Viktor. But “mercenary” didn’t have the same connotations beyond the border as it did in the Republic. Thrakkians were fond of the bargain and the unspoken honour of the trade. Selling one’s skills was a point of pride, and to do so with the balance of trade in another’s favour a most generous gift.
But whatever Armund’s motives, one question remained: what to do with him? Tarona’s modest comforts aside, Calenne wouldn’t be pleased to be away from home while Viktor entertained the unexpected guest. Better to send him away.
And yet…
Brief or not, comrades they had been. Armund had lost both sight and beloved twin in Calenne’s defence at the Battle of Davenwood. More than that, what time Viktor and Armund had shared was unsullied by the Dark that had fallen after. Two warriors fighting for the fortunes of a land not theirs. Sending Armund away would be like sending away a piece of himself.
“If you can stagger a little further, I can manage some refreshment,” said Viktor. “You must be parched.”
Armund grunted. “I’ve had my fill of water.”
“I’d not dare offer you any… but I do have some mead, traded for buckskin in Indrig.”
Easier to trade in Thrakkian villages. Too many Tressians knew the part he’d played in Eskavord’s burning. Not the truth, of course, but near enough for curses and resentment.
He laughed, a deep, warm rumble in a cold place. “See? I knew you’d not let me down.”
Viktor hesitated. “Shall I guide you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my ears. Your thumping footsteps will be guidance enough.”
Before long, they sat on a fallen column – the lone remnant of a cloister that had once joined the keep to a now-vanished church. Viktor poured himself a cup of mead, and handed the bottle to Armund, who took a hearty swig and gasped an appreciative sigh.
“A welcome payment for a long journey.” He raised his hand high, inviting the chink of cup on bottle that Viktor gladly granted. “I was sorry to hear about Calenne. Those with fire like hers deserve better than a slit throat.”
The old lie. The first telling had almost broken Viktor. But that had been to a brother lost in grief. Confirming it to Armund raised barely a flicker of conscience.
“Thank you.”
“Still, she stood her ground. We fought the impossible fight and sent the shadowthorns howling to the border. There are worse ways to be remembered.” He raised the bottle again. “Brenæ af brenæ. Væga af væga.”
Fire from fire and death from death. The traditional Thrakkian toast, ushering spirits to the feast halls of Skanandra. Viktor raised his cup but said nothing. Fire had long since ceased to comfort him.
“Didn’t think to find you up on a hilltop, drinking your life away,” said Armund. “What happened to the hero’s welcome?”
“It went to the deserving, I’m sure. I’m not counted among them.”
“Oh, I heard that, true enough. That grief sent you mad. Funny thing, though, but I also heard something else. Eskavord concealed something rotten, and you burned it out.”
Viktor gazed at him, but there were few pursuits more futile than attempting to outstare a sightless man. “You should be careful listening to stories, Armund. They’ll lead you astray.”
He shrugged. “I know truth when I hear it.”
Which stories did he consider false? Calenne’s death? His shadow, sensing dismay, clawed at the bars of its cage. Viktor walled it deeper in and swallowed his doubts. If Armund indeed suspected, or even knew, there was no one less likely to speak of it to others. Thrakkian honour was complicated, but also very simple where comrades were concerned.
“So what brings you here?” he said. “Besides your nose for mead.”
“To settle a debt.”
Viktor smiled without mirth. “If Josiri’s sent you for my head, I must politely decline.”
Again, the rumble of laughter. “Don’t think I couldn’t.”
Politeness held Viktor back from contradiction. “Then what?”
Armund set down the bottle and unslung his axe. Moving with a sighted man’s assurance, he spun the blade about and set the haft across his knees. “The debt I speak of is mine, owed to you. For ushering my sister to Skanandra when I could not.”
Viktor glanced down at the axe, whose wooden haft still bore the black scars of that day. Tressians held no fate worse than the fire, but to Thrakkians it was divine.
“I was glad to do so.”
“Maybe, but Anliss insists I set the ledger right.”
The axe he bore was hers, wasn’t it? Rescued from her pyre. “Anliss?”
Armund patted the axe-head. “Aye. She’s beside Astor’s forge, drinking her fill, but still she speaks to me. Always will, so long as I’ve this to hand. She knows what you did for her, and I’ll have no peace until I’ve done for you in return.”
Viktor held his tongue. Was this all metaphor and mysticism, or did Armund truly believe that his sister, dead a year and more, spoke to him through bond of steel?
“Tell her there is no debt.”
“She won’t listen. She’s had me lumbering back and forth across the Southshires for months now, seeking you out.” He grinned. “You’re a difficult one to find, Akadra.”
Viktor grunted. At first, he’d thought to live on the move, travelling from village to village and town to town, the better to watch for Malatriant’s survival. Tarona had been a retreat, not a home. But then winter had come in, and Calenne had grown sick, and plans had changed. “Assuming I accept this debt exists—”
“Wise boy,” said Armund, to a man ten years his senior.
“How do you intend to settle it? Other than by drinking my mead?”
“By giving you back to yourself.”
Viktor blinked. “I don’t follow.”
“You’re meant for more than this! Living alone on a hilltop, watching your life rush past in the rain. You’re a warrior. You belong in battle. You deserve that folk bellow your name in praise, not whisper it like a courtesan haggling price at High Table.”
The words provoked insidious stirring. Viktor tamped it down. “I’ve never fought for glory, only out of need.”
“Glory is need.”
“For a Thrakkian, perhaps.”
“Say that’s true. What if I told you there was need?”
“Then I’d send you to petition the reeve of Ardva.”
“Hah!” snorted Armund. “She’s too worried about convoys going north to trouble over the border villages.”
“Which village?”
“So you are interested?”
Yes. Despite himself. Despite his best judgement. “I thought Thrakkians prided themselves on being straightforward.”
“Valna.”
Viktor frowned. He’d been in Valna two days before, and nothing had struck him terribly amiss. The people were quiet and withdrawn, yes, but southwealders always were around him. Twice bitten, and shy to invisibility. “I don’t follow.”
“My brother Ardothan, greedy sack of spoil that he is, has decided taking tithe from everything south of the Grelyt and north of the Goyda isn’t enough for him. He’s turning his eye across the border. Disri and Hadgrove paid up like good little children, but not Valna. They’re to serve as example.”
“Which means war between the Republic and Indrigsval.”
Armund downed the last of the mead. “For a few farmers? Ardothan knows the Council won’t risk that. And if they do, it’ll be blood along the border.”
“And how do you know this?”
“Need I lecture you about my ears again? There are still a few in my brother’s court who care that he stole that throne.” He shrugged. “Farmers’ll still be dead, though. Unless someone steps up.”
“One sword against a thane’s army?”
“There’ll be no more than a dozen. It’s a raid, not an occupation. And it wouldn’t be one sword, but one sword and one axe.”
“And you think that’d be enough?”
“If it’s the right sword.”
Viktor’s treacherous pulse quickened at the thought. He could face down a dozen Thrakkians. They’d be expecting terrified villagers, not a man who’d served as Council Champion and twice laid low a Hadari Emperor. A little blood would bring them to heel.
Then the shadow in Viktor’s soul rattled the bars of its cage – a reminder why Valna’s fate would have to unfold without him. “I can’t do it.”
“Why not? Struck by cowardice, are we?”
Viktor scowled away the insult. “Not of the sort you mean.”
“Now who’s not speaking plain?”
“Perhaps…” He paused. “Perhaps the stories about me hold a measure of truth. Perhaps I’m not the man I once was.”
“Anliss says you are.”
“I’ll give you a letter for the reeve of Ardva. She’s an old comrade. She’ll listen.”
“I don’t travel as well as I used to,” said Armund. “Even if I set out now, I won’t reach Ardva until nightfall. Ardothan’s vanaguard will be in Valna at dawn. The village will be corpses and ash long before the first wayfarer sets bum in saddle. But if we leave now, we’ll be there to give proper greeting.”
Corpses and ash. Viktor shook his head angrily. “You should have gone straight there.”
“Why, when you’re right here?”
“I said before, I can’t help.”
“Clinker rot! Why not?”
“Because…” The urge to confess – to explain – grew overpowering. “Because no aid I can give you will be worth the price. No matter what your ‘sister’ claims.”
“I see.” Armund smoothed a hand across the axe’s blade. “Well, sister, you can’t say I didn’t try. Seems it’ll be one axe and no sword.”
A blind man alone? “They’ll kill you.”
“More likely they’ll drag me to Ardothan and he’ll kill me. But I know what I’m dying for, Akadra.” Armund reslung his axe and groped for his staff where it rested against the wall. “What are you living for? The man I sought is long gone. You’re but an echo.”
He picked his way clear of the column and strode away, staff tapping at the ground. Calenne appeared at the hall door, though she said nothing until he was well out of sight.
“I hope you said nothing of me.”
Viktor shook his head. “Your secret’s safe with Armund. But no, I didn’t tell him.”
“I heard what he wanted. Why did you say no?”
“You know why,” he growled. “Malatriant—”
“Is dead. Gone to dust, and never to return.” She took his arm in hers. “She has no hold over you, Viktor.”
How he wished that were true, that the shadow on his soul had never existed. That its pressure – its temptation – could be forgotten. That he could simply be himself and all he’d once stood for. Not for the Republic, for the Republic was cold and unfeeling, but for its people. But his shadow remained, longing to be free.
“You weren’t there at the end,” he said. “You didn’t see how close I came. Malatriant offered me everything, and I accepted, body and soul. If it wasn’t for Josiri…”
She scowled. “I don’t believe that.”
Viktor closed his eyes, the final moments of Eskavord swelling unbidden. “All that remains of Malatriant’s Dark is within me, bound to my shadow. If I let it loose, there might be no putting it back. I might become everything she sought to make of me.”
“But you’ve already let it loose, haven’t you? When the snows fell and the wolves came running.”
He blinked, for he’d not known she knew. “For you. Only for you.”
“And I suppose the people of Valna deserve less? If your shadow worries you so much, keep it caged. Armund didn’t come here seeking magic, but mettle.”
“Would that it were so simple.”
“Do you remember what you once told me? That too many men and women live and die longing for a moment in which to make a difference. You’ve just been handed such a moment, Viktor.” Calenne glared, her bunched fists thrust down at her sides. “And if you’ll not act, perhaps I will!”
He reached for her. “Calenne…”
She pulled away and retreated inside. The defiance he loved so well – that urged Viktor to be better – had blossomed, and in the challenge had found him wanting.
He stared across Tarona’s overgrown courtyard. From its sentry post in the crop-garden, the surcoated scarecrow gazed back, and Viktor’s shadow laughed.
Maladas, 5th Day of Wealdrust
History is an avalanche. It gathers in the distance, the signs missed even by the vigilant. By the time the ground shakes, all you can do is run.
from Eldor Shalamoh’s “Historica”
Twenty-Six
“A good morning for it,” said Armund, his axe’s pommel planted on the road’s flagstones, his spread hands set atop the eye.
Viktor snorted. A fiery sky might have been a good omen in Thrakkia – a reflection of Astor’s forge at Skanandra – but red skies at dawn seldom portended anything good.
; “Could be you change your mind before the hour’s out.”
Armund shrugged. “How many?”
“Looks to be a dozen.”
A dozen vanaguard in heavy chain and drakon-wing helms. Cloaks of thick yellow and sea green claith – loom-woven wool whose pattern was as unique to a thane as his heraldry – guaranteed a sweltering ascent up Valna’s wooded hillside. Their axes made Armund’s hand-and-a-half weapon seem a toy. Splitters of shields and skulls, and impossible to stop once momentum was up. An intimidating display, and one Valna’s aged militiamen had no chance of contesting.
Despite Calenne’s reassurances during their bittersweet parting at Tarona, Viktor resembled every inch the scarecrow from which he’d reclaimed his surcoat. A scarecrow with a battered claymore and without armour. Valna’s headman hadn’t believed he stood in the presence of Lord Viktor Akadra, but the old soak had been desperate. Desperate enough to put his faith in a scarecrow and a blind man.
“There’s still time to walk away,” said Viktor.
Armund spat. “Bugger that. My family. My responsibility.”
Viktor glanced back past Valna’s ivy-covered palisade to thatched rooftops silhouetted against the dawn. A cluster of homesteads gathered around a broken-down temple and scraping a living from soil. Once, the border fortresses – or Revekah Halvor’s wolf’s-heads – had sheltered them from Thrakkian aggression. But the soldiers had been withdrawn, their fortresses overgrown; Halvor and her phoenixes were dead. Whatever the maps claimed, in practical terms the Republic ran no further south than the inland port of Ardva.
Valna needed a champion. If only for a day.
“I can’t fight them and keep you safe,” said Viktor.
“Tend to yourself, lad. Anliss watches for me from Skanandra’s forge.”
Again, the dead sister. Did Armund seek Valna’s salvation at all, or simply a good death? Thrakkian honour was a tangle of contradictions. What if Armund had brought him there not to fight, but to stand witness?
He gripped Armund’s shoulder. “Death and honour.”