by Tim Stead
The man nodded and set off down the corridor at a trot.
Standing still, Serhan felt fatigue pressing down on him and in spite of the pain in his arm was close to unconsciousness. He was still upright but swaying when the guard returned.
“Follow me,” he said.
Serhan did his best to keep up, but the guard still had to wait for him a couple of times. After a few turns and a couple of flights of stairs they came to a room and the guard knocked before entering. Inside were about twenty of Grand’s guards with Grand and Gerique himself. The men all looked anxious, but Gerique was only impatient.
“Well?”
Serhan quickly explained the trick with the black doors and the intention of the plan. The Faer Karani sat in silence for a while and considered the situation. He stood.
“Come,” he said to Serhan. “You will all wait here,” he said to Grand, and stepped out into the corridor.
As soon as the door was closed Gerique shape-shifted. Serhan had never seen this before. The huge frame melted into something less than solid and reassembled itself into a figure of human form in a guard’s uniform. The eyes were a give away, though, still yellow.
“Now we will see,” he said.
They went back to the chamber with the black doors and Gerique spoke a spell as he approached, and by the time they entered all the men in the chamber were frozen.
A useful spell, Serhan thought. He filed it away.
Gerique examined the black door carefully, touching it front and back with his hand.
“It is so,” he said eventually. He spoke another spell, and then turned back to Serhan. “Now go through. You will find that you are back at White Rock. Find Captain Bantassin and tell her that I wish a substantial force to be arrayed before the gate. Nobody who passes through before Captain Grand is to be permitted to return.”
“My lord.”
He stepped through and as it had been promised he was back at White Rock. A couple of guards who had been stationed at the door recognised him and saluted.
“Fetch Captain Bantassin,” he said. One of the men ran off and the other put a hand out to support him.
“You look in a bad way, sir.”
“I’ll be all right.” He was sure of it. He knew that the Faer Karan could fix him again.
Bantassin and a group of five guards appeared from a doorway and ran to where he was standing. He explained the situation.
“Fifty archers and fifty swordsmen,” she said to her lieutenant “As quick as you can.”
It turned into a scene of pure action. Dozens of people ran to and fro across the courtyard. Serhan sat down on a convenient barrel and closed his eyes for a moment. A hand touched his shoulder.
“You need to rest.” It was Bantassin.
He nodded and she instructed two of her archers to take him to his chamber, which they did with considerable gentleness, which he appreciated. His whole side now felt like a single ache, and it was stopping him from thinking straight. Best to sleep for a while. The job was done, after all.
He slept.
Some time later he was woken again and lifted out of the bed by three guardsmen. They carried him down to the courtyard. By the time they got there he was awake and alert again in spite of the pain. He insisted on walking on his own feet.
The courtyard looked like the aftermath of a battle, which he supposed it was. Quite a few bodies were scattered close to the gate. Arrows protruded from some, others were gashed terribly. The floor was red and black with blood. A group of shocked and disarmed guards in a uniform that he recognised from Ocean’s Gate were huddled together surrounded by Grand’s men. The sight of so much death made him nauseous. He’d never seen violent death before this.
Gerique was there, standing vastly amidst the ruins of so many people, looking pleased, Serhan thought, if it was possible for a Faer Karani to look pleased.
“You have done well,” it said to Serhan, and placed a hand on him, speaking a spell that took away all the pain. Serhan flexed his arm, and it functioned perfectly again. He knelt, now that he felt capable.
“My lord,” he said. “I am happy to have been of some small service.”
“Stand.”
He stood, and Gerique gave him a sword. It was a nice piece of work with a good blade and considerable fine decoration on the pommel.
“Take this sword and learn how to use it. As a reward for this day’s service I am raising you to a rank equivalent to captain. You will be appropriately quartered.”
It turned and walked away, vanishing into the stairway that led up to its great room.
“Never seen that before,” Grand said from somewhere behind him. There was a hint of admiration in his tone.
“I’m glad your lot made it back ok.”
“Yes. You might want to know that he asked a lot of questions before he sent for you just now. None of us could tell him anything, but I think he suspects that you did something not quite acceptable.”
“Such as?”
“I have no idea and I don’t want to know. Just be careful.”
“Always.” But he wasn’t, he realised. He had a reckless, impulsive streak that he struggled to control. Using magic wasn’t explicitly forbidden for humans, but anyone who had done so was dead. Was it possible that Gerique could tell, or had it guessed? As he walked back to his room he was slapped on the back by a few of the men whose lives he had saved, and he felt better about it.
Now that he had proven his value he would be asked to do other tasks, but the captain’s rank gained him little. He needed another opportunity.
7 Woodside
During the winter Delf and Wulf built a house for themselves. After the harvest they had enough food to see themselves through to the next year, and Tarbo had suggested building a permanent home. It was easy, the farmer had said, to make progress if you were prepared to work hard. Neither of them was familiar with the pleasures of idleness, so they had selected a spot on the edge of the village with Tarbo’s help, and begun to gather materials to build with.
Delf insisted on a proper chimney, which was unheard of in the village. He quickly found, however, that there was no source of good stone closer than the mountains, so they made a dozen moulds and baked hundreds of clay bricks. Many of the villagers gathered to watch them, and it was this more than anything else that made them friends. People marvelled at Wulf’s mortised joints, burnt their fingers on the hot bricks, rubbed mortar between their fingers, and at every stage poked, prodded and asked questions.
“The trouble is,” Wulf confided to Tarbo over the evening meal one day, “they have never seen a properly built house.”
The farmer was diplomatic enough not to point out the walls and ceiling that they were eating under, and exchanged looks with Delf.
“You see,” Wulf went on, “you just can’t get the smoke out without a chimney, and the walls here must need re-finishing every two or three years.”
Tarbo agreed that they did.
“We’ve always built the same way. We have plenty of time to repair the houses in the winter.”
“Are you supposed to be doing something with the food or not?” Delf asked. It was the one thing that could distract Wulf.
Wulf had insisted on helping in what passed for a kitchen, which most of the villagers found amusing. It was hardly man’s work. Tarbo’s wife thought it pretty fine, though. Wulf knew more about herbs and spices than anyone she had ever met, and they became friends and collaborators in the cooking space of Tarbo’s house.
Over the months they had stayed with Tarbo they had become familiar with the tragedy of rural life. Every year the village was raided by bandits. Sometimes people were killed, sometimes carried off. Tarbo’s own family had had lost a daughter, Falla, and a son, Sinron. Every year they came up with new places to hide food so that they always had enough to last them through to next harvest. But whatever they did the population slowly declined. There had once been twenty villages within fifty miles, but over the
years they had been abandoned one by one, the remains of the population moving to another village. Land was left to be reclaimed by the forest, health was poorer than it should be, people died younger.
In spite of it all, most of the time it was a good life, punctuated by sorrow though it was. They had all the building blocks of happiness, some fine luxuries, and good companionship.
Spring came, and the seeds they had saved from last year were planted in the soil. Wulf and Delf had cleared a patch of ground for themselves, and planted some of their seed stock there. It would be entirely theirs next autumn. They also planned to get additional supplies by working for others, and Wulf had started a herb garden in a small plot on the sunny side of their house.
They were preparing to head out to their small plot on a fine spring morning when the sound of shouting came to them from the far side of the village. There was another sound that they hadn’t heard for a long time; hoof beats.
They ran through the village and arrived in time to see a group of five horsemen ride up. They were rough looking, streaked with dust and sweat, but all of them carried swords and wore mail of some description. They looked hard and arrogant. One of them pushed his horse aggressively forward towards the swelling crowd of villagers, and they drew back. He looked little different from the others, but that his face was scarred on the left side, and he had the clear blue eyes and long dirty blond hair common among northerners.
“Your village,” the bandit announced, “is now part of the domain of General Bragga. We will return in autumn and collect half of your harvest. If you attempt to resist, every third man will be killed.”
“Who is general Bragga?” a man asked.
The bandit spurred his horse forward again and kicked the man to the ground.
“Your lord, you dirt-eating scum,” he said, and drew his sword, waving it at the crowd. “Your lives will be forfeit if you rebel.”
Delf thought he was overstating it a bit. One horseman in a crowd of nearly two hundred people could not be so sure of himself, even if he had four friends behind him. The man was not confident. Delf could see the way that his eyes darted about the growing crowd, the way that he gripped his reins a little too firmly.
“Does Gerique know?” It was Tarbo. Delf moved up beside his friend to be ready to help.
“Who said that?” the bandit demanded. At least a couple of the horsemen looked uneasy at the mention of the name. One of them even looked over his shoulder as if he expected the Faer Karani to rise from the ground at the sound of his name.
“I did. The earth itself knows that I have no love for the Faer Karan, but Gerique may take exception to your lordships’ claim. He, too, claims these lands.”
“You are a foolish old man,” the bandit said. “The Faer Karan are not interested in you. They hide in their castles and play games with their toy soldiers. It is we that rule out here in the real world.”
Tarbo shook his head. Delf recognised the gesture. More stupidity, the old farmer was thinking, more thorns to prick us in our hard life. Nothing we can do about it. The bandit saw the gesture, and it seemed to enrage him.
He spurred his horse forwards and raised his sword to strike as the crowd scattered. Delf had not been expecting this, but ducked low as the horseman closed on Tarbo. He had noticed that the bandits did not wear stirrups, but rode in the northern fashion. As it passed he grabbed the bandit’s foot, nearly wrenching his own arms off at the elbows. It worked. The bandit was ripped from the saddle and crashed awkwardly to the ground behind his startled horse.
There was a prolonged moment of silence. The man did not rise. Tarbo knelt next to him.
“His neck is broken,” he said. “He is dead.”
Wulf picked up the fallen sword. The horse trotted back the way it had come through the scattered villagers and past the other four bandits, who looked very uneasy. Every man, woman and child in the village looked at them. It was a moment that could go either way. Delf picked up a wooden rake that had been dropped in the melee and stepped forward until he was beside Wulf and the two of them stepped slowly towards the horsemen. The villagers were not brave, but moved to fill the space behind them, creating a sense of forward motion. It worked.
One of the four broke ranks, wheeled his horse around and galloped for the woods. The other three were only a moment behind, and in a very few seconds they were all gone from sight.
“I expect they’ll be back,” Tarbo said. “With friends.”
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” Delf objected.
“No. Not your fault, but we’re going to have to fight them. It won’t be food they’re after when they come again.”
“We have no weapons. Just one sword,” Wulf said.
Panic was beginning to set in among the villagers. Some cried out that they should hide in the forest, others that they should try to appease the bandits when they came, and a few even wanted to fight. Tarbo held his hands up in the air, and after a minute they quietened down to hear what he had to say.
“You know me, friends,” he said. “I’m not a man to fight when I can talk, and not prone to hasty council, so hear me out. It will be a day at least until they can return, I think. Those men had ridden long to get here, probably camped along the way. If they have friends it will take them many hours to reach them, and many hours for them to return. We have some time.
“If we left now we could be twenty miles hence when they come to our village, but what could we take with us? All the food that we have gathered would be stolen or destroyed. In a few weeks we would begin to starve. Harvest is not for a hundred and fifty days. Nobody will help us because nobody can – we are too many.
“If we stay and try to appease them they will take most of our food, and perhaps they will leave us enough to get through until harvest, perhaps not, but blood has been spilled, and these are brutal men. They will take your daughters and kill your sons. I for one will not willingly be party to that harvest.
“We are here. All our food is here, our houses and gardens are here. We have many strong arms and something worth defending. We have time to prepare. I say that we fight.”
The villagers all started talking at once. It was clear that many had been swayed, but it was still not all. Delf stepped close to Tarbo.
“It will be difficult to hold this place,” he said quietly in his ear. “You will need to build barriers, cut off a section of the village, use houses as part of your wall, and make the rest as strong as you can.”
“Yes, I understand. You will advise us?”
Both Delf and Wulf had a good understanding of fortifications – what would inconvenience cavalry and infantry, what would break and what would hold. “For a while. I know where there are some weapons hidden and Wallace and I will go to fetch them quite soon. It will take us several hours, so we will have to leave well before dark.”
“Can two swords really make such a difference?”
“We need everything we can get,” Delf replied, realising that the old man had quickly guessed more about their past than he had ever said. Even three swords, if visible to the enemy, would signal to the bandits that there were fighting men here. It might well make a difference, even if it was only a deception. They would fear steel more than headcount.
They walked back into the village, and the rest of the villagers followed, although they still argued among themselves. Like most people who weren’t used to trouble they wanted to avoid it, or at least have someone else make the decision for them. Delf picked a spot that looked defensible – a circle of houses where most of the outward facing walls were windowless or had only small openings. These he had blocked up as best they could. He set twenty men to building hurdles, and was only mildly surprised when they obeyed – starting with three pieces of wood tied together to form a triangle with plenty of points, then triangles raised to the vertical and themselves tied at intervals to three long poles so that they formed heavy spiked fences about five feet high. Supplies were carried into the area, alo
ng with all the hunting bows and every arrow in the village. Delf also had them bring in stones and long sharpened poles.
By mid-afternoon things were well in hand and Delf took Wulf to one side.
“We should fetch the swords now,” he said. “We might get back before nightfall.”
Wulf agreed, and after a brief word to Tarbo they left the village and headed south. They half ran, half walked to increase their pace, and it was just over an hour before Delf stopped and looked around, sure that this was the place. There had been a lot of growth with the coming of spring, and it took a frustrating twenty minutes to find the log. Beneath it the swords and mail were quickly unearthed, and proved to be serviceable, if a little spotted with rust. They put the mail on, tucked the swords into their belts and began to make their way back through the forest. They were in good time.
About half way back they heard voices nearby and stopped, standing as still and quietly as they could. Through the trees they could make out a group of horsemen, about twenty of them, picking out a trail that crossed their own.
“Will we get there by dark?” one of the men asked. Another of them squinted up at the sun.
“Easily,” he said. “Bragga wants us all there before he does anything. You know how he likes to stack the odds.”
The first man laughed. “Quite. Why fight five to one when you can outnumber by ten to one and not fight at all.”
The group passed out of sight and Delf relaxed. He looked across at Wulf. “Looks like there are a lot of them,” he said.
“You there!”
They turned quickly and saw that two more horsemen had ridden into the clearing behind them. Delf thought about his sword. Two more horsemen appeared, then another three. The idea of fighting, never a favourite, got steadily less attractive.
“Freelancers,” one of the others said. “I thought we’d cleared them all up round here.”
“I’m sure that you did, captain,” Delf said quickly. They had mistaken him and Wulf for bandits, which wasn’t surprising. “We’re new here. Heard what General Bragga was doing and made our way here to join you.”