Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones

by Vox Day

  Saturnius appeared unruffled. “I have never sought fame or fortune, only victory for Amorr. And it is not noble blood that makes the general, Magnus—it is noble deeds. Amorr knows only one law. There is not one law for the patrician and another for the plebian.”

  “Our House is Amorr,” Magnus shot back. “Surely you have heard that before. Neither you nor any pleb can ever truly understand what it means. Without House Valerius, without the other Houses Insurgus, there is no Amorr.”

  “No, it is you who have never understood what that means, brother.” Corvus shook his head, half in pity, half in contempt. “You have it precisely backward. Other great houses are loyal to the family first, the city second. House Valerius stands apart because we do not distinguish between our interests and the nation’s interests. Honor demands, honor dictates, that we will be the last to exclude ourselves from the standards we demand of others. Even Gaius Valerius Fortex understood it at the end, and he died a true Valerian’s death.”

  “Honor! You were always so damned concerned about your precious honor! That’s all this was, wasn’t it? You murdered my Gaius as a sacrifice to your filthy honor!” Magnus spat upon the ground. “That for your honor. It’s not even worth my piss, let alone my son!”

  Corvus started to reply, but a rhythmic tromp-tromping of iron-studded sandals over the cobble-stoned street caught his attention. He looked back and saw the eight fascitori enter through the open gate in two lines of four. They were helmed and armored, and they bore the ceremonial axes indicative of their authority. They marched without hesitation past the horses, wheeled around, and stopped in front of Corvus’s horse.

  “My lord consul, we are at your service.” The fascitori saluted as one, and Corvus nodded to acknowledge them. “I am Caius Vecellius.”

  Magnus, however, only sneered at their arrival. “I see you feared to face me alone, little brother. Four legionaries, a squad of fascitors, and even a legate to hold your hand while you offer me sanctimonious justifications in defense of your murder.”

  Corvus didn’t bother trying to argue with Magnus. What was the point? After all, it wasn’t entirely untrue, and he certainly felt safer now that the fascitors had arrived. But his brother wasn’t finished.

  “Don’t make the mistake of thinking your imperium renders you immune from consequence, Corvus! I made you consul, and I can unmake you just as easily. And as for you, Marcus Saturnius, you had better leave for Cynothicus now if you know what’s good for you. I’ll find a way to see my son avenged. Just see if I don’t!”

  “To think I once wondered where Gaius learned his lack of discipline!” Corvus spat back.

  His brother struck Corvus across the face with an open hand. Magnus might be over fifty, but he was still a big man, and the force of the blow drove Corvus to one knee.

  He tasted blood in his mouth; the unexpected slap had caused one of his canines to puncture his lip.

  Slightly dazed, he rose to his feet again to see two of the fascitors had dropped their axes and seized Magnus.

  Between them, they forced him to his knees, and Caius Vecellius stepped toward the kneeling man with a lethally impassive expression as he shifted his grip on his axe to hold it in both hands. The two legionaries had drawn their swords, as well.

  The fascetor looked to Corvus.

  “Do you want this man arrested, my lord consul? In striking you, he has struck the city.”

  Corvus, his cheek burning, stared into his kneeling brother’s eyes. They were still red and filled with madness, but the fury had faded enough for him to see grief and despair behind it. Corvus suspected that his brother half-wanted to be executed for treason, if only to escape his pain. Fascitors had been known to behead men for lesser crimes than the one Magnus had just committed. And for the crime of vituper-maiestas, arrest meant summary execution.

  He realized he had to leave right now and get the fascitors out of Magnus’s presence before what was already an ugly situation spiraled completely out of control. It was bad enough that he had had his nephew beheaded. If he didn’t end this farce immediately, he’d find himself saddled with the reputation as a fratricide, as well.

  Corvus wiped the blood away from his mouth. “The ex-consul has insulted neither me nor Amorr, Caius Vecellius. He has only just now learned of the manner of his son’s death, and he is understandably aggrieved. It would be unjust to hold him responsible for his actions. Release him, and we will leave him and his family to their mourning. Now, I must speak with my consular colleagues, so if you will lead us to the Forum?”

  “At once, my lord consul!” Caius Vecellius bowed smartly and returned his axe to his shoulder.

  Two of his fellows helped Magnus to his feet, then rejoined the others and began to follow Vecellius toward the gates.

  Corvus didn’t say anything to Magnus, he remounted in silence and turned his horse around.

  Saturnius did likewise, and the two knights also clambered into their saddles and followed them out to the safety of the street.

  When he reached the gates, Corvus looked back and saw that Magnus was still standing motionless, watching him, and his eyes burned with an unfraternal hatred that chilled Corvus’s soul.

  “Well, that went well,” Marcus Saturnius said.

  “In what way?” Corvus spat, and a red gobbet splattered against the white wall outside the gate, leaving a faint crimson stain behind as it slowly trickled its way down the wall.

  “I was listening to the lads earlier,” the legate indicated the knights riding behind them. “It was four to one that either you or your brother wouldn’t survive that meeting.”

  “And yet you decided to ride along—out of morbid curiosity?”

  Saturnius grinned up at him. “I always bet the chalk, General. But sometimes it helps to keep an eye on your investment.”

  FJOTRA

  Fjotra found it strange to be standing on the broad deck of a Savoner warship rather than behind the narrow prow of a Dalarn snekkja, like the one on which she’d previously crossed the White Sea.

  The Savoner ship, which the sailors called a caraque, was a little shorter, but much wider and taller than even the biggest drekar. It had three sails to the longship’s one, and it carried five hundred soldiers in addition to the crew of forty.

  It had been slow and awkward in the harbor, wallowing like a whale about to beach, and she’d heard the laughter carried across the water from the hardy crew of the snekkja that had accompanied them in the return to Raknarborg.

  But the laughter had quickly stopped once the sails were fully unfurled.

  Then it had become obvious that Le Christophe, as the ship was called, and her three sister ships were capable of keeping pace with the longship. More than capable, even, especially when the wind wasn’t coming from the south. Their multiple sails allowed the caraques to beat against the wind more efficiently than the single fixed sail of the Dalarn ship.

  Their pride affronted, her kinsmen had labored manfully at the oars for hours the one day that a westerly wind had prevented their progress, angrily refusing when the Lord Admiral Hurualt asked if they wished one of the Savoner ships to tow them.

  That one day aside, the crossing had been a quick and uneventful one, although by the second day, the smell of what was essentially an entire Dalarn village crammed into a single large ship had become something that Fjotra feared she would never be able to wash off or forget.

  However, the Red Prince had been kind to her and had even asked her to dine with him and the Lord Admiral on the first evening. The Savoners ate remarkably well even when at sea, as she was astounded at the quality and variety of the foods that were served. She dined on stuffed duck and pigeon eggs washed down with a sweet white wine that bubbled and burned as it went down, all the while knowing that on the longship, the men were eating pickled herring and three-day old bread washed down with water.

  It was early morning when land was first sighted, and they reached the bay over which Raknarborg’s three towe
rs cast their shadow before midday. She didn’t realize how frightened she had been that the fortress would have fallen in her absence until she saw the towers, intact and unburned, and felt her knees weaken with abject relief.

  She wished she could send Brynjolf a message and put his mind at ease, but he had been left behind. Brynjolf had survived both the stabbing wound in his chest as well as the arm that had been broken in his fall from the wall. He had not recovered sufficiently to accompany the Red Prince to Raknarborg, however, which was why it had fallen to Fjotra to serve as the royal Dalarn aide-de-camp to the heir to the Savoner throne. There was the possibility of sending him a message via fire-talking, but the younger of the expedition’s two battlemages had told her that, although a fire could be built on a ship, the fire-talking the mages used to speak with each other over long distances did not work across oceans, rivers, or large bodies of water.

  Although the issue of fealty had been agreed, and sufficient treasure had been loaded on the four Savoner ships to satisfy the Red Prince that the negotiated payment to the crown would be made, there was still tension between the heir to the throne and Fjotra’s father. As one of the few who could speak to both men, and the only one personally acquainted with both, Fjotra was required to serve as their primary translator, with the assiduous assistance of the young battlemage, Patrice. But the two men butted heads from the start.

  The main issue of contention was when the evacuation would begin taking place. The three of them were standing on the South Tower, which overlooked the harbor. Her father wanted to load up all of the available ships with women and children and send them south at once, whereas the Red Prince had insisted that the four Savoner ships must remain at Raknarborg in case an urgent retreat across the sea was required.

  “I do not wish to accuse this royal princeling of cowardice,” Skuli told her in their own tongue as the prince glared incomprehendingly at him. “But what sort of warrior’s first concern is being able to run from the fight?”

  “He is no coward, Father,” she assured him. “No coward would have come here. He did not have to make our people’s battle his own.”

  “Then remind him of the treasure. Little good it will do him or our new liege lord if it never crosses the sea.”

  “What does he say?” the prince demanded to know.

  “He say he know you are brave, maybe too brave, for you come here.” The prince nodded, satisfied. “He say you take treasure to your father with the women and the childrens. Six days, all ships come here.”

  “I have sixty longships,” her father pointed out. “We must keep ten here to guard against the wolfships entering the bay. But fifty can carry fifteen hundred women and children besides their crews. That needs five trips…a month for all of them. With the Savoner ships, we can take forty-five hundreds, which means only two trips and less than a fortnight on the sea.”

  “That is nine thousand. But you said we have about seven thousand women and children?”

  “Seven thousand, three hundred eighty four. Yes, we only need three of the Savoner ships. Tell him that. If he’s more concerned about his own skin than his troops, then he’ll be satisfied with the one.”

  Fjotra smiled at the Red Prince, who was no longer glaring at her father, but still looked less than pleased with him. The comtesse had told her that the prince was a man who well appreciated women, and she noticed that despite her youth and uncertain grasp of his tongue, he seemed to be rather easier for her to manage than for any of the men, Savoner or Dalarn. “Your royal highness, my father say he want send 50 longships and three of your big ships tomorrow. Then we stay here twelve, thirteen days.”

  “Only three caraques? I thought he wanted to send all four. But even three presents a problem. I’m not concerned about myself. I can always keep a longboat crewed and kept ready for the battlemages and me. On the other hand, one could argue that there is considerably less risk to my men if we are only here for two weeks rather than a month while the noncombatants are ferried over. Can you ask him when the last attack was?”

  “Eight days ago,” Fjotra’s father told her.

  “So, eight days ago. And you reavers turned them back without any help from us. I don’t see why together we shouldn’t be able to fend off another attack or two, no matter how many of them there are. Very well, I agree. Three of my ships will assist the transporting. But until their return, one longship and its crew are to be set aside for my personal use.”

  She translated his suggestion for her father, who agreed to it at once. That issue was much more easily resolved than their difference of opinion over the best way to defend Raknarborg while four thousand children and five hundred of their mothers were sailing to safety on the other side of the sea. Skuli wanted to remain safely ensconced behind the high walls of Raknarborg, whereas the Red Prince was intent on actively sending out patrols night and day in an attempt to gauge the strength of the enemy as well as its current locations.

  As a tactic, it wasn’t a bad one, except for the fact that the Savoners were completely ignorant regading the wild lands surrounding the fortress on three sides and required guides familiar with the local environs if their patrols were going to serve any purpose. But the only available guides didn’t speak their language.

  The two men argued vociferously, and mostly through her, for nearly two hours before Skuli finally, reluctantly, agreed to provide each day-patrol with two Dalarn guides and each night-patrol with four. With no translators, they would have to communicate as best they could.

  Her father didn’t approve of the Red Prince’s idea of harrying and probing away at the enemy until a direct confrontation could be risked. While he agreed that the Savonders’ two thousand mounted and heavily armored men might be able to defeat up to five times their number in battle, his concern was that they didn’t know if the wolves had five hundred or twenty thousand warriors in the hills and valleys surrounding Raknarborg. Thus far, no overwhelming assault on the fortress had come, but every day they spied watchers keeping an eye on the main road as well as the lesser paths, and every night the great stone walls echoed with their bestial howls.

  The first two days, only day patrols were sent out. The riders went out in groups of twenty, usually accompanied by one of the two mages. No signs of any massing aalvarg armies were found, although the second patrol did manage to ride down and kill three of the wolves caught unaware traversing the road near the bridge that spanned the Goldwater. Along with the return of one of the escorting longships, which had developed a potentially dangerous leak and come back to report that the combined Savoner-Dalarn fleet was safely crossing the sea without incident or catching sight of any wolfships, the three pelts greatly cheered the fortress’s mixed garrison. One was presented to the Red Prince, and one to each of the two battlemages.

  Fjotra thought Patrice looked rather absurd in his new wolfskin cloak, but the breeze from the sea was cold and damp and he was rarely seen without it. The Red Prince too made a habit of wearing his, as he had sensibly decided to adopt the warmer Dalarn fashions, and if it were not for his olive skin and dark, sensual eyes, he could almost have passed for a reaver himself.

  Despite herself, Fjotra found her heart fluttering a little bit each time the prince looked at her with his piercing, hawk-like eyes and called her “princess” or “your royal highness.” He was teasing her, she knew, but she didn’t mind. And she found, somewhat to her surprise, that she didn’t mind having to accompany him everywhere, translating for him. In fact, she began to feel a little bereft when he left her to meet with his captains, exercise his horse, or any other activity that didn’t require the Dalarn tongue.

  Sometimes, when she found him looming over her, she wished he would simply grab her and…do something. Kiss her, perhaps? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she was beginning to grow jealous of the comtesse despite her absence, because she had become increasingly certain that the Lady Roheis was the prince’s mistress.

  On the sixth day, a patrol
spotted a sizable force of around five hundred wolves moving toward the fortress. Unsurprisingly, this sparked yet another argument between her father and Prince Karl. Skuli only wanted to keep watch over the enemy force, whereas the Red Prince urged an immediate attack on them before they could be reinforced.

  “He says they don’t know our numbers and they are accustomed to fighting Dalarn, not armored knights. And he wishes to remind you that your men are taught to fight in raids and to skirmish, but his men are trained in fighting together, as a single piece. No, that’s not the word. As a single unit.”

  “Every man we lose out there is one more man we don’t have to defend the walls when the attack comes,” Skuli growled.

  Fjotra didn’t even need to translate that before knowing what the prince’s response would be. “Every wolf we kill out there is one more we don’t have to defend the walls against,” she said before the Savoner had even finished speaking. “And his horse warriors can’t use their horses fighting inside the walls.”

  In the end, it was decided that three hundred Dalarn warriors would engage the aalvarg as they crossed a river that stood between them and Raknarborg, then fall back as if they were routed. There were two large hills that were just visible from the fortress, on the other side of which was a large and open field. Five hundred of the Prince’s cavalry would be hidden behind those hills, and they would ambush the wolves, who would be spread out and vulnerable as they pursued the retreating Dalarn.

  It was also decided, after both the Prince and his battlemages insisted, that Fjotra would accompany the Savoner riders in order to reduce the chances of any messages being misunderstood. After a brief demonstration of Patrice’s ability to cloak her with a concealment spell, her father reluctantly agreed that she would be nearly as safe with the battlemages as she was behind the great black walls of Raknarborg, especially since the Savoners’ horses could easily outpace the wolves and there was no way to cut off their line of retreat without it being seen from the fortress.