Imperial Fire

by Lyndon, Robert

  ‘Use your sipers,’ Vallon said.

  Lucas had only seen these devices used at the practice butts. Strapped over the archer’s wrist and bowhand, a siper was a pad with a channel of bone on top that allowed the arrow to be drawn back behind the stave, increasing range. Lucas was still struggling to master the Turkish draw and hadn’t graduated to such advanced techniques. Get it wrong and you could put an arrow through your hand.

  Gan fitted his siper. Not for him a leather pad and bone groove. His overdraw device was crafted from shagreen and ivory. The other archers took their timing from him and six arrows flew high to splinter on the road fifty yards ahead of the enemy.

  ‘Again,’ Vallon ordered.

  Four times the archers bent their bows, each volley falling shorter than the one before. The enemy jeered and Duke Skleros, emboldened, rode forward to add his taunts and threats.

  ‘A month’s pay if you puncture that bladder,’ someone called, and another ragged flight of arrows hissed through the overcast. One of them shattered only a few feet in front of the duke, sending him hurrying back to the safety of the ranks.

  ‘That will do,’ Vallon said. He lifted an arm to signal the advance. Lucas’s chest tightened in excitement.

  ‘Let me try a shot.’

  Lucas swung round to see Wayland dismount and hold out a hand to Atam. Wayland rode equipped with three bows – a light one, much knocked about, that he used for game; a short, powerful war bow designed to be shot from horseback; and a target bow crafted to his own design. It was the target bow that he drew from its protective sheath. Lucas had seen it once before and Wayland had even allowed him to handle it and marvel at its workmanship. It was a cross between a war bow and a flight bow, forming a crescent when unstrung rather than the boat shape of the weapons used by horse archers. Its composite construction – sinew on the back, wood for the core, horn on the belly facing the archer – was nothing unusual, but Wayland had selected the best and rarest materials. Instead of cow sinew, the tension face was sheathed with the sinews of an elk he had shot himself. Instead of maple for the core, Wayland had cut a yew branch in the Taurus Mountains. For the compression face he’d used water buffalo horn rather than cow horn. And to bond these materials, he’d chosen fish glue. Not any old fish glue, but glue imported from the Danube, rendered from the roof of a sturgeon’s mouth. The bow’s maker had decorated its belly with a repeat design known as ‘flower bud’, painted with pigment ground from the finest Persian lapis lazuli and lacquered with damar resin. On the back of the bowgrip he’d signed his name and inscribed a flowing motto in gold calligraphy under a flake of sea turtle. In God not arms.

  ‘How far can it shoot?’ Vallon asked.

  ‘Six hundred yards on a good day. This isn’t one of them.’

  ‘Make it quick and God guide your aim.’

  Wayland’s movements were almost too fast to follow. He strung the bow with a dry silk string – the draw weight equivalent to that of a strapping youth – nocked an arrow, bobbed his head at the target like a hunting hawk sighting on prey, then tensed into a fluent draw that made bow and archer as one. Open-mouthed in admiration, Lucas knew he could never emulate such skill no matter how long he practised.

  As Wayland released, a skein of fog floated across the road, hiding the target. Lucas strained, waiting for a cry to announce that the dart had bitten. No sound carried from the Georgian line and when the fog cleared, everything looked exactly as it had been before.

  Everything the same until the duke toppled sideways off his horse to the mute astonishment of the officers around him.

  ‘I don’t fucking believe it,’ Gorka said.

  The Outlanders close to Wayland pummelled his back or just touched him as if a bit of his magic might rub off on them.

  ‘Bravo!’ Vallon called. ‘A shot made in heaven.’

  Wayland gave a sheepish smile. ‘I missed. I was aiming for the Georgian commander.’

  In that moment Lucas’s respect for Wayland surged into worship.

  ‘Squadron advance,’ Vallon said. ‘When you reach broader ground, form ranks one squad wide. Hit the centre.’

  Lucas was in motion before he was ready, trying to curb his excitement and hold back his horse. Vallon set the pace, his right hand raised.

  ‘Steady. Charge on my word. If we break through, turn and attack again. On no account lose contact with the supply train.’

  He urged his horse into an extended canter, the squadron flowing behind him like a river gathering strength before plunging over a fall.

  He dropped his arm. ‘Charge!’

  Swept along in the current, Lucas saw the enemy lines surge closer. This was how he’d imagined battle. This was the real thing. In a few heartbeats he’d be one step closer to wearing the gorgeous suit of armour. It never occurred to him that within those few pulsations he might be dead.

  He reached full gallop and couched his lance. He’d singled out his target and nothing else existed. The Georgians held their line. He was less than fifty yards from it when the enemy broke and scattered, the infantry bolting for the trees, the cavalry skeltering up the road to the castle. Where moments earlier death or glory had been waiting, only one figure remained – the tubby corpse of Duke Skleros Phocas, late imperial ambassador to the Chinese court.

  ‘Don’t pursue them,’ Vallon yelled. ‘Otia, send two squads to bolster the rearguard. The rest of you hold yourselves ready for a counter-attack.’

  Lucas howled in frustration. ‘Cowards,’ he shouted after the Georgians.

  He wasn’t the only one disgusted by the enemy’s flight. Gorka drew his sword and hacked at the duke’s corpse. Every trooper who followed did the same, bending over and slashing with offhand formality, almost in the same manner that they’d acknowledge a roadside shrine. Turkmen mashed the body under their horses’ hooves. Cartwheels rolled over what was left, and by the time Josselin ushered the rearguard past, the traitor was just pulp. Turning for a last look, Lucas saw a pair of crows hopping towards the carrion, bright-eyed in a sudden shaft of sunlight.

  XVII

  The Outlanders pressed on until dark and established a defensive position in a wooded gorge. Wayland grew weary of the praise and handshakes and took himself and Atam off up to the ridgeline. The sky had cleared and stars massed in gassy swirls. To the north, snow peaks jutted like fangs. Wayland lay back and looked up through the cross-hatched branches, watching the constellations’ almost imperceptible drift.

  ‘You did aim for the duke,’ Atam said.

  Wayland smiled. ‘It was pure luck.’

  ‘Will you teach me how to bend a bow?’

  ‘You don’t want to be a soldier.’

  ‘What else can I be?’

  ‘When we return home, you’ll go to school.’

  ‘Home,’ Atam said, as if it were a destination as remote as heaven.

  ‘That’s right. My wife is minding it as I speak. You’ll like her.’

  ‘Tell me about her.’

  Wayland closed his eyes to picture Syth better. ‘In form, tall, fair and slender – taller than you and with a carriage that would put most queens to shame. In manner, kind and cheerful, but she knows her own mind and isn’t slow to voice it. Talking around the fireside – I don’t mind admitting it – my Syth often has the better of me. She has a way of uttering things that seem nonsensical until you screw your head around and look at the world from her direction.’

  Atam laughed. ‘Your children wouldn’t welcome a strangeling into their nest.’

  ‘Why not? My dog has adopted you as my own. My children will do the same.’

  Atam rubbed his cheek against the dog’s head. It wagged its tail and flicked its tongue across his face.

  A lookout cried a warning. A smudge of flame glowered in the south, growing brighter.

  ‘A signal fire,’ Wayland said. ‘We’re not out of danger yet.’

  Sure enough, a smear of flame appeared to the north, and then another one, deeper into
the mountains.

  Wayland helped Atam to his feet and led him down to the camp.

  ‘You did mean it,’ the boy said. ‘About taking me home.’

  Wayland squeezed his hand. ‘As God is my judge.’

  They continued up the road under a blue sky stippled with lambs’-fleece clouds. Watching the landscape unfold, Wayland was struck by the thought that every day would be like this – a new patch of world revealed and then left behind, forgotten or fixed in memory forever.

  Like this stretch of road. To the right a verge of wildflowers sagging under the weight of bees. Above it a rocky slope matted with rhododendrons running up to a vertical scarp capped with trees. To the left, a great green swoop of valley threaded by a river like a milky vein. The rhododendron blossoms filled the air with a rich honeysuckle scent. A cuckoo cried its drowsy note from the undercliff.

  A falcon’s harsh cry drowned the cuckoo’s song. Wayland spotted the strung-bow profile of a peregrine defending its eyrie, patrolling back and forth above the cliff. It checked and half-stooped towards a wooded outcrop. Wayland’s eyes narrowed. The falcon wasn’t alarmed by the commotion on the road. The threat came from above.

  He was still swivelling to cry a warning when the first arrows whistled past. A trooper thirty yards behind him clutched his ribs and folded over his horse’s neck.

  A dozen more arrows flighted down, one of them nicking Wayland’s sleeve. He snatched the reins of Atam’s horse and dragged it over the downhill slope, pulled the boy to the ground and pushed him flat.

  ‘Stay down,’ he ordered. He seized his dog’s head in both hands. ‘Guard Atam and the horses.’

  Crouched below the road’s rim, he scrambled down the highway. A horse squealed somewhere above him. A trooper threw himself off the road and looked back, wiping dirt from his mouth.

  Wayland ducked his head above the verge. Half the force had sought cover on the uphill slope. The rest had flung themselves on this side and were wriggling back up to assess the threat. The baggage train stood abandoned, one mule dead, another kicking in its traces. A single driver remaining at his station with his hands clasped over his head. Wayland sprinted forward, grabbed him and dragged him to cover. He propped himself on one elbow and cupped a hand to his mouth.

  ‘Vallon!’

  ‘Down here!’

  Wayland slip-slided towards the general, negotiating a muleteer drumming his feet in a death spasm. He threw himself down beside Vallon. ‘They chose the site well,’ he panted. ‘It would take a day to find a way up those cliffs and our archers won’t trouble the ambushers from below.’

  ‘I know. And the Georgians are threatening our rear.’

  ‘If we ride into the valley, we’ll get round the ambush.’

  ‘Carts can’t negotiate the slope. Lose the baggage and we lose everything.’

  Wayland squirmed up for another look. The scarp contoured north for another mile, its cliffs broken by fissures and wooded ledges that could have harboured an army of marksmen.

  ‘We’re just going to have to take our chances,’ Vallon said. He raised his voice. ‘Centurions, pick forty men to get the carts and mules out of danger. The rest of you, work your way up the road, keeping out of sight.’ He sank down while his captains made their choice.

  ‘Ready!’ Josselin cried.

  ‘Go!’ said Vallon, leading the way. The troopers sprinted after him and Wayland felt he had no choice but to follow. Vallon organised the men, delegating some to cut the dead animals from their traces and replace them, ordering the others to form a defensive screen with their shields. Wayland lent his strength to one heaving group. Arrows sprayed down.

  Safe from counter-attack, the ambushers began to show themselves. Some of them were armed with heavy bows which they drew by sitting down and bracing their left foot against the stave. Wayland saw one seated archer hauling back a three-foot-long arrow two-handed, with both feet straining against a bow as thick as a wrist. The man seemed to be aiming straight at him. He ducked and a trooper toiling beside him collapsed, the arrow punching through both shield and armour.

  The troopers got the train moving. Wayland jogged beside the wagons, trying to ignore the lethal hail. A trooper ahead of him buckled with a barb in his calf. Wayland bore his weight and helped him peg-leg along. ‘Not far now.’

  He wasn’t lying. The cliffs curved away from the highway and the assault tailed off. Wayland handed the wounded trooper over to Hero and found Atam and the dog unscathed. Men called out, searching for missing comrades. Four of them would never answer an earthly summons again, and the same number of baggage men had perished.

  Vallon, reunited with his horse, pounded over, his face running with sweat. ‘See that,’ he cried.

  Up the valley light winked from the top of a watchtower pitched on a high ridge. ‘The brigands haven’t done with us. Unless we find another path, they’ll kill us by a hundred cuts.’ Vallon dragged his hand across his brow. ‘Our attackers have won an easy victory and will follow up. Wayland, hide with half a dozen men and grab some of them.’

  Vallon was so incensed that he’d forgotten Wayland wasn’t subject to his command.

  Wayland pushed out his cheek with his tongue and nodded. He turned and singled out a Bulgarian freebooter who’d impressed him with his calm during the assault. He pointed at another man. ‘And you.’

  ‘And me,’ said Lucas.

  ‘You,’ Wayland said, selecting Gan the archery instructor. Three times more he pointed. ‘Seven should be enough,’ he told Vallon.

  ‘Make it eight,’ said Lucas.

  Vallon swiped the air. ‘Take the fool. If he dies, it’s no great loss.’ The general quirted his mount and rode off.

  Wayland watched him go with an ambivalent smile before organising his squad. For the ambush site, he chose a birch spinney along an innocuous stretch of road just past a tight bend. He divided his force on each side of the road and nestled into a dell with his dog. Lucas found his way beside him. The expedition laboured out of sight, dust settling in its wake.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ Lucas said.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘How many men have you killed?’

  ‘I’ve never counted.’

  ‘You must have some idea.’

  ‘That’s between me and my confessor.’

  Lucas rolled a halm of grass between thumb and forefinger. ‘I’ve made a resolution. If I kill five men in battle, I’ll consider I’ve earned the right to wear the armour I took on the causeway.’

  ‘It didn’t do its original owner any good.’

  Lucas was straining out an answer when Wayland cut him off. The dog had cocked its ears.

  ‘They’re coming.’

  ‘What if they arrive in a horde?’

  ‘Let fly an arrow and then run as if Old Horny were trying to pin your tail. Take your lead from me.’

  Lucas tensioned his bow. Wayland made him relax it. They waited. A striped hyena trotted into the road, looked down it and galloped into the undergrowth as the first highlanders came loping around the bend.

  They advanced in a loose pack, running in cleated sandals that made hardly a sound.

  ‘Don’t shoot until I do,’ Wayland said.

  He waited until the nearest highlander was forty yards away before rising and dropping him in his tracks.

  Lucas’s bow discharged with a wonky twang. ‘I missed!’

  Two more highlanders went down. One of the front runners, bearded to the waist and waving a strange-looking fluted sword, urged his men on. Wayland released his fourth arrow at the same moment Lucas shot his second and the shaman sat down in the road with a most tragic expression.

  ‘Whose shot?’ Lucas cried. ‘Yours or mine?’

  ‘Neither. It came from the other side.’

  The highlanders hadn’t expected opposition on this scale and turned tail with woeful cries.

  ‘After them!’ Wayland shouted.

  Two troopers caught one of the h
ighlanders before he’d gone fifty yards, hurling him down in a swirl of dust. Wayland’s target jinked off the road, scrambling up rocks and shoving through shrubs.

  Wayland followed, branches whipping his face. The slope was steep and tangled. His breath came in painful gasps. Lucas overtook him and closed on the quarry. Ahead of him the dog brought the runaway to bay. It wasn’t a man-killer, but the fugitive didn’t know that. He backed against a tree and swiped a knife from side to side.

  Lucas kicked it out of his hand, seized a hank of his hair and dragged his head down.

  ‘Alive,’ Wayland shouted with the last of his breath. He staggered up, grasped the prisoner and hoisted his head up to reveal the face of a boy, reared in a harsh school to be sure, but not much older than Atam.

  Wayland lashed out at Lucas. ‘Do you think killing a kid entitles you to wear fancy armour?’

  Lucas made an idle swipe at a shrub. ‘I got carried away.’

  Wayland grabbed Lucas by his tunic. ‘Learn to bridle your temper, or I’ll never have truck with you again.’ He released him. ‘Now take him down.’

  Wayland watched the young Frank escort his captive back to the road as if he were a geriatric relative. Wayland smarted. Never before had someone outpaced him in the chase. He stroked the dog. ‘I’m getting too old for this,’ he said.

  With their prisoners at heel, the snatch squad caught up with the main force at a bridge over a rushing burn. The Georgians had given up their pursuit, but that suggested they were more intimidated by the mountain tribesmen than by the Outlanders.

  Vallon sat his horse. ‘You know what to do,’ he said to Otia.

  Soldiers dragged one of the prisoners before the centurion. The man was middle-aged, a shepherd or hunter with faded blue eyes in a sun-darkened face. Under Otia’s interrogation, he grew increasingly agitated, pointing at the peaks and throwing up his hands.

  Otia turned to Vallon. ‘He says the Daryal Gorge is the only road through the mountains.’