by RJ Baker
“Do you regret it?”
“Your tongue is as brutal as your choice of weapon, boy.” He nodded at the warhammer and I covered the hilt with the palm of my hand as if the weapon were a guilty secret I had to hide. “But I shall answer you, in a fashion. Yes, I do. Often. I lost my honour though I still think I was right.”
“It is lost for ever?”
“Unless I carry out some great and charitable task.” My master coughed and he glanced at where she lay, keeping his eyes on her for long enough to make me worry. Then he turned back to me. “But now I am older I understand—”
“Riders!”
Mastal climbed back onto the cart to check on my master as I took up my bow. The troops around me formed a loose circle with their pikes.
“It’s those hedge-cursed mount archers,” hissed a woman by me.
“Shields up,” shouted Thian. Then he slipped from his mount as did the three other mounted men and they all joined the circle. “Make no move to attack.”
The men and women around me crouched behind their teardrop-shaped shields, and I grabbed my own as the Riders thundered in. They were like no troops I had seen before, neither heavy cavalry nor simple mounted troops like Thian. They wore light armour of boiled leather rather than the usual colourfully enamelled heavy armour of Tired Lands cavalry. They all had swords sheathed by their saddles but made no move to draw them, instead they carried curiously small bows, bent like the gentle curve of a courtesan’s painted lip. They circled us, twice, and then darted away – they were extraordinarily skilled in the handling of their mounts. If this was how the Nonmen rode I knew we were dead; even small bows, like theirs could wound and wear us down over time. The Riders drew up out of bow range and their leader, a tall man whose wide helm was topped with a silvery flying lizard, trotted towards us.
“Thian ap Myrrvin,” he shouted, “you are a long way from your king’s lands, if he still has any.” I felt I knew the voice but five years is a long time and the name escaped me.
“Are these Nonmen, Thian?” I asked.
“No, these men are far more dangerous, they are Rufra’s mount archers.”
I glanced back at the Rider, and it was only then that I noticed his mount. No, not his, it was mine, I was sure of it, and something soared within me at the sight of him, while at the same time an anger rumbled within that another should ride him. I had not seen Xus for five years. I had missed him.
“Xus!” I shouted and expected the animal to rear and throw off the interloper on his back, but the mount ignored me. It felt like a spear in my guts.
“Girton?” shouted the Rider. “Girton, called ap Gwynr, is that you?”
“Aye,” I shouted back.
The Rider pulled off his helmet. Once I would have been shocked by what I saw but I had seen many injuries and the scars they left. This Rider had taken a blow from an axe, or maybe a warhammer like the one I carried, and it had caved in one side of his face, taking most of the flesh with it. He had blond hair, shorn short on one side, and when his skull-face smiled it looked like he was in agony – though from the laugh he gave he was clearly not.
“You are lucky we found you, Girton. I don’t know what Captain Thian has told you but he bares his throat to the pretender, Aydor. I am sure he is someone you would rather avoid.”
“We come from Aydor with a message,” shouted Thian.
“Really?” He sounded amused. “I doubt that. Give us Girton or—”
“It’s true,” I shouted. “Aydor seeks terms and has freed me to carry a message to Rufra.”
“Then tell them to give up their arms, Girton.”
“I cannot. I do not—”
“Disarm!” shouted Thian to his men, and he lay his shield and spear on the ground. “I hope you are as trustworthy as the man you call king, Boros ap Loflaar.”
“Boros?” I said, remembering the beautiful youth who had sided with a young Rufra, and his identical twin who had not.
“You did not recognise me …” The man on the mount laughed and pointed at his face. “Of course you didn’t. This was a gift from my brother – people find us much easier to tell apart now.”
“I hope you paid him back in kind.”
“He escaped before I could, but I will, don’t doubt that.” A feral anger burned in his eye. “And when I do I’ll make his death last.” His mount had picked up his anger and was straining at the bit. It looked so much like Xus and yet it had not recognised me. Boros wheeled it round, having to fight to get control of the animal back. “You have my word, Captain Thian. Neither you nor your troops will be hurt, but I cannot let you loose in Rufra’s lands with weapons. You must give them up to me and then you may go back to your master.”
“No,” I said.
“No?” Boros’s scarred face twisted and all levity fled. “You are giving me orders, Girton?”
“I do not mean to, Boros. On our way we were followed by one of the Nonmen.“
“Which one?”
“The Boarlord, Chirol,” said Thian. “If you send us away without weapons we are dead.”
Boros stared down, looking for all the world like one of the shatter-spirits, the fierce and angry ghosts of those who have given in to the worst of the hedgings and are cursed to share their gnawing hunger for evermore.
“Many of my men have died at your hand, Thian.”
“And many of mine on the arrows of your archers, ap Loflaar.” The two men locked gazes for a count of twenty and then Thian stepped forward. “Take me prisoner, or send me out alone at the mercy of Chirol, but don’t let the Nonmen take my troops simply because they obeyed their king’s orders.”
Boros snorted.
“Pick up your weapons,” he said. “Tell me, while you were wandering the roads did you find a girl by name of Fara? Or a corpse that could be her. Darvin, one of our priests, has lost her.”
“You think I would have left a girl alone with the Nonmen out there?” said Thian. “No, no corpses either, except one killed at the hands of the Boarlord, and I swear it was a man he tortured. He made him suffer too – he screamed us awake all throughout the night. Dead gods know I’d like to get Chirol on the end of my lance.”
“Thian,” said Boros with mock seriousness, “please don’t say any more. I’m discovering common ground with you and if I have to respect you it will make it harder to kill you in the field.”
I saw Thian smile as he bent to pick up his shield and spear. He saluted Boros in the old way, raising his head and offering his throat. Boros nodded to him.
“Come, Girton,” said Boros. “We’ll chaperone you the rest of the way to Rufra’s camp, and you can see what it’s like to ride with real troops.” He turned to a Rider at his shoulder. “Hran, take fifteen and see if you can catch Chirol – maybe he’s strayed too near chasing Thian. I want him alive though, you understand?” There was a real fierceness in his voice.
The Rider nodded and spurred his mount, and fifteen Riders followed. I marvelled at their discipline and wondered how they had known who was to follow and who was to stay with Boros.
“The cart comes with me,” I said, “and the two on it.”
Boros shrugged. “Fine.” I stepped through Thian’s line and put out a hand towards the muzzle of Xus, still barely able to believe the great mount didn’t recognise me. “No!” shouted Boros and reined the mount back. “Galadan is war trained, he’ll take your arm unless he knows you.” I stood still as a statue with my hand poised in the air midway between me and the animal.
“Galadan?” I said. “But I thought …”
“Oh,” laughed Boros, “you thought it was Xus? Dead gods, I like my life too much to try and ride that one. No one can ride that animal. Rufra decided that at least he could be of some use and put him to stud. Galadan is Xus’s son, one of many fine children by him.”
“Life always goes on,” I said, my voice dropping to a whisper. “I must see to the cart and my master.” I turned, thinking about how much the land had ch
anged in the five years I had been away and wondering if, when I met Rufra, he would still be the person I remembered. As I said my farewell to Thian and his men the captain clasped my arm.
“Don’t be a slave to old hatreds, Girton. People change, remember that. Forgiveness is its own reward.”
I stared into his eyes and the warhammer on my belt felt like it took on an extra weight. I nodded, even though I did not believe him. We are cursed to be the sum of our deeds, black as they may be. They are like an arrow: once the shot is made, there is no escaping the consequences.
Chapter 6
I thought I saw blood, but then it turned into flowers. There was a spattering of red, like the pattern sprayed on a wall when a limb is severed, which resolved into a colourful garden around a small house. In a land that had been at war for five years it was incongruous, and the closer we came to the house the more out of place it looked.
“Boros, what is that?”
He grinned down at me from his mount. “That is the house of Magar the Thankful.”
“How does it stand in the midst of war?”
“It stands, Girton,” said Boros, “because King Rufra commands it.”
“Why? It is just a house.”
“I thought so,” said Boros, “but this was the main road taken by those fleeing Tomas, Aydor and the Nonmen, and that house hides a well. The first thing those fleeing to Rufra see when they enter his territory is a garden, and then they are offered water and food by one of the thankful.”
The perfume of the garden wrapped itself around me and I felt my spirits lift.
“Is Magar there, Boros?”
“No, there is no such person as Magar; Rufra invented her.”
“Why?”
“Sergeant Beyish, Rider ap Garl,” he shouted, and two of his Riders trotted their mounts over. “Ap Garl, tell my friend where you are from.”
“I am the son of the ap Garls and our house is in the far north. We claim marriage kinship with the ap Glyndier and the ap Mennix.”
“Sergeant Beyish,” said Boros, “tell my friend where you are from.”
The sergeant shrugged. “Little village called Haarn. My father was a cobbler.”
“He’s scum,” said ap Garl, but he smiled when he said it.
“That’s Sergeant Scum to you, ap Garl,” replied Beyish, and the two rode off laughing.
“You see?” said Boros.
I gaped, unable to hide my shock. Rufra had always been an idealist, but to have one of the living class in charge of one of the blessed was to turn the way the Tired Lands had existed ever since the gods died on its head.
“It is a symbol of Rufra’s new ways?”
“Exactly.”
“I cannot believe Tomas approves of this place. I cannot believe he lets it stand.”
“Oh he hates it,” said Boros with a laugh. “He used to destroy it regularly, and each time we would rebuild it. Tomas got bored before we did, or, to be more truthful, he realised the cost of men was not worth the insult to his blessed ego.”
We passed through Magar’s garden, a riot of flowers, and I saw a woman, young and beautiful, sitting by a well with a golden cup in her hand. She smiled at me and I turned away.
“Where are the refugees, Boros?”
“It has been five years, Girton. Magar’s garden has been undisturbed for three because the refugees are gone. Those who think Rufra denies the gods and undoes the way the world should be went to Aydor or Tomas. The rest came to us, and those who made no decision, well …” his voice tailed off “… many died.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know,” said Boros, but his words were so quiet I heard them the way one feels an old scar hidden deep beneath the skin. “Too many.”
We journeyed for half a day in silence and I saw the country around me change. It was not healthy, the Tired Lands had never been healthy, but at least what I saw here was a familiar sickness, not the ravaging plague of war. At twilight I saw the unmistakable shape of Castle Maniyadoc rising on its hill above the plain, but to my surprise we did not head towards it. I was glad of that; it held nothing but memories of pain.
“Where do we go, Boros?”
“I go to Rufra’s war camp, but you stay here with Beyish.” He leaned in close. “No one here knows who you are for now, Girton ap Gwynr, or what you are, and it may be Rufra wishes it to stay that way. Mind what you say around the campfire.”
I avoided the troops he had left and bedded down with the healer and my master. She did not wake, and the man did not speak. He seemed to be in some sort of trance as he put his hand on her forehead and felt her temperature or tasted her spit and blood. He worried me, and I wondered what he would report to Aydor.
I slept in a blanket, wrapped tightly against the night. I did not sleep well. Since my master had started scoring the Landsman’s Leash into my flesh to control the magic within me I had stopped dreaming in anything but odd, disturbing snippets and it felt like my mind wormed around subjects the way the leash wormed its way over my skin.
I was pulled struggling from sleep’s dark mud by the sound of claws drumming on the ground. Two Riders entered the camp: Boros and another I did not know, he rode a brown mount with four-point antlers, an unassuming-looking beast, and was dressed in battered and dull armour. He must have been from Rufra’s heavy cavalry as he was armed with a lance, unmarked shield and twin swords scabbarded by his saddle. His visor, blank apart from eyeslits and holes to breathe through, was down to hide his face.
“You!” Boros pointed at me using his bow. “Follow this Rider. He will take you where you need to go.”
“But the cart—” I began.
“We will deal with the cart,” said Boros. There was none of the levity in his voice that had been there the day before and I wondered what had changed while he had been at Rufra’s camp. I wondered what Rufra had heard of me, if he knew of the things I had done as a mercenary.
The Rider turned his mount and started walking it away. I followed, trying to make conversation with him but he ignored me so I studied his mount instead. It was a dull animal, the sort of mount a down-on-his-luck blessed may own, and I wondered at that. Perhaps I was a little insulted because I had expected my friend to come in person, but I tried to put my disappointment aside. We passed through a stand of trees, small, silvery moonwood saplings with plenty of sparsely grassed ground between them, and the Rider spurred his mount on and then turned it towards me about fifty paces away. He lifted his visor to expose the face underneath, a face I knew.
“Rufra!” I shouted, a grin on my face, but it soon fell away. Rufra’s face was hard; there was still the boy I had known there but the man had emerged now. A shadow of stubble covered his jaw and upper lip, his thick brows covered bright, alert, green eyes, and I saw no signs of friendship in him, only the cold hauteur of a ruler.
“I should have known you would come,” he growled. “It was only a matter of time.” He lowered his lance.
“Time?” A shiver ran through me.
“Girton Club-Foot, the only assassin they thought could get close to me.”
“No, Rufra. I am not—”
“Defend yourself, assassin,” he sneered and put spurs to his mount.
I was so shocked I made no attempt to reach for the warhammer at my side, or even to dodge the rapidly closing point of the lance. At the last moment the mount jinked to one side, thundering past and the weapon fell to the ground.
I heard a strange sound from behind me, as if someone were choking. I turned. Rufra was no longer holding the reins of his animal and a moment later he fell from the saddle and crashed to the ground, his arms wrapped around his stomach. He made a sound I could only describe as howling. I scanned the treeline for archers before glancing back at Rufra, who had rolled onto his back. There was no sign of an arrow or bolt in him and as he propped himself up I saw tears streaming down his face. He was laughing as he pointed a gauntleted hand at me.
“Your face!�
�� he choked out. “Oh Girton, you should have seen your face!”
“My face?” I stared at him. “That was a trick?”
He nodded. “Yes.” More tears of laughter. “Oh I am sorry. My life is so serious now and I could not resist, could not.” I stumped over to him as he pulled himself to his feet.
“That was your idea of a joke? I thought you were going to kill me!” He started laughing again and I punched the fishscale of his upper arm.
Immediately, all levity fled and his face hardened. When he spoke his words came out in a hard monotone.
“You dare to raise your hand against your king, Girton Club-Foot?” His gloved hand fell to his sword hilt. “Such an act is punishable by death.”
I stared at him, at that serious, ugly face, and something happened, something so alien and long forgotten to me that I did not recognise the strange sound that burst from my gut. First it was small, small like clouds on a sunny day, and then, like rainclouds swelling the Birthstorm, it grew until it was unstoppable.
And I laughed.
I laughed, and Rufra, seeing he could not trick me twice, laughed as well, and soon we were leaning on each other for support. I had found my friend once again, and the world did not seem so bleak – its colours felt a little brighter and the air a little warmer.
“I have missed you, Girton,” said Rufra. “It is lonely being a king.”
“I cannot believe a king is ever alone.”
“One need not be alone to feel lonely.”
“I know that well.”
“You travel with your master – you are never lonely.”
My flesh itched and writhed.
“A master is not a friend.”
“True.” He picked a blade of grass and idly chewed on it. “I heard you have travelled. I know you passed over the Taut Sea but heard nothing after. I knew you would not be dead though.”
“Came near a few times.”