War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy

by D. S. Halyard

  Kuljin narrowed his eyes, but reached up and pulled down the brim of his wide farmer’s cap. He was wearing the thing just for this purpose after all. Levin asked neither the details nor the reasoning behind this surprising decree of the baron’s. Instead he said a quick and silent prayer of thankfulness to the angel of fate.

  “What about the prisoners, captain?” Asked a man with a scar running from his forehead to his chin. The surviving dozen royal troops had been driven from their feet and forced to kneel in a line, each with an Arkerman behind him, brandishing a sword, hand axe or spear.

  The captain walked over to the men and stood in front of them. “I’m Captain Hormit O’Dunwall of the Hammers of Arker, men. Who is your ranking officer?”

  One of the kneeling men raised his face. A streak of blood lay across his cheek. To Levin he looked young. “I am, captain. I’m the senior squadman, Myrim Pamm.”

  “Tell me, Myrim.” The Hormit said. “Any of you lot of the gentry?”

  “No sir.”

  “That’s a pity.” Then he looked up at the scar-faced man and spoke in a calm voice, made the grimmer for the lack of emotion in it. “Kill the lot of them.” Swords rose and fell swiftly and spears were driven between the shoulder blades of the men before they could so much as protest, and the one or two who attempted to crawl away were quickly dispatched, leaving pools of blood and gore spattered on the uniforms of their killers and across the ground.

  Denied a share in the gold they’d seen, at least for the moment, the Hammers of Arker began rummaging through the dead men’s things for loot. Although the display disturbed Levin because the men were helpless, it was nothing he hadn’t seen or worse among the Thimenians. Limme wept openly and would have begged for their lives, but the action was so swift that she never got the chance. It was plain that Hormit had done this before. It was also obviously a message to Levin not to cross the man.

  Limme’s wrists were tied tightly in front of her and she was bound into the saddle of a large white gelding that had a red stain running down its flank, indicating that its former rider no longer had need of it. Scar-face took the reins. With watchful riders on both sides of them, both hostage and guests were escorted away from the ambush site, out of the farmer’s field and onto the long road south toward the merry town of Arker. The afternoon wind was cold on Limme’s cheeks, still damp with her tears and red from her deep shame.

  Chapter 100: Northcraven City and Points West

  Sanjer O’Hiam peered between the battlements at the top of the east gate of Northcraven and down into the treacherous mire below. Two miles off, perhaps more, horsemen were assembling, but he could not yet tell whose. The last ranger they called him, for the thin and perpetually iron-voiced man was the sole survivor of the duke of Northcraven’s foresters, and he’d done duty on this gate now for two months straight. Even when the blizzard struck he’d been here, bundled up in furs with his hands extended over a fire barrel not for comfort, but to keep his bow fingers nimble.

  His ice blue eyes were marked with deep lines of tension and his face was grimy and drawn. Food had been hard to come by, and he depended on the people of the town to fetch it to him, for he dared not leave his post. He was the best longbow man in the city, of that there could be no doubt by now, and the Auligs called him the white-eyed death. The six men who stood with him at the gate worshiped him and hated him at the same time, for he was hell on them and he knew it. He was tasked with making six men seem sixty, for the gate was the weak point in any wall, and this gate the easiest to approach.

  There was little cover below, and Sanjer cut and fletched his own arrows, meticulously selecting raven’s feathers and hammering out sheets of steel for the broadhead points, each of which he honed to razor sharpness. He could cut an arrow shaft from a block of wood without looking now, for he had made thousands of them. Even when he stood watch he was fletching arrows, for there were never enough of them. Every arrow he loosed put a man out of action, and he expected the archers with him to do no less.

  To make six men into sixty was impossible, but the Auligs had come to fear the approach to Sanjer’s gate. Aldebar, the giant forester who had been his erstwhile partner on the wall, had been taken by the pox over a month ago, one of the last to die of it, and Sanjer had visited him twice near the end, when the giant’s frame was gaunt and ravaged and the man’s eyes were ruined. Of all the people he knew, only Sanjer himself had not got the pox. Not at all, not a trace. He didn’t know why.

  His hatred of the Cthochi was a thing of the past. Whatever debt they owed him for the death of his father so long ago he’d paid them back with interest, and the kraken crawled up out of the mire on their ghastly giant crab’s feet and hauled away the bodies of his victims. He felt the most pity for those he merely wounded, for their blood entered the water and drew the kraken. They died screaming, but he couldn’t afford to waste arrows putting them out of their misery.

  Yestereve the word had come to Northcraven that the siege was going to be broken soon, and the rumor had been backed by live scouts coming to the river gate by night, but even though they’d been Mortentian, they’d been in Aulig canoes, so they were made to pass by, and even now they slept on the other side of the harbor chain, anchored in the sound until their word could be verified. Master Jordith was taking no chances, and Sanjer didn’t blame him. For months they’d lived on the knife’s edge, and those who died were those who took a single wrong step.

  Rumors of the ending of the siege had been a common enough staple from its inception, and Sanjer had learned to disregard such fanciful notions. His reality was the wall, the high grim wall with its white patina of birdshit and its horde of ravens for decoration. The ravens reminded everyone that death was one wrong step away, and that death waited just outside even as it had rampaged unchecked within the walls for a long time.

  In Sanjer’s mind the plague had been bad, but the famine that preceded it worse, for the hunger had brought out the worst in men within the walls. Sanjer had killed the hunting packs of savage and hungry cannibals whenever he caught them at their evil game, and his reward had been the occasional bite of fish brought to him by the furtive children that prowled the wharves and piers incessantly. He lived and the cannibals died, but they took many children with them, and that had enraged him.

  The duke had been ineffective in stopping the madness that ravaged the city, just as he’d been ineffective in controlling the harbormaster’s foolish depredations on the supply ships. He had too few men, he said, although Sanjer imagined he could have found volunteers to help in maintaining order. Of course he would have had to share his food hoard with the volunteers had he done so. The death of the idiotic and helpless duke had been one of the few benefits of the pox, Sanjer reckoned.

  Lio’s icy breath but it was cold. The hunger had stolen the fat from him, and the cold sapped his strength and put pain in all of his joints.

  After the pox there had been food enough, if barely, for fewer than one of five people who contracted it lived. It was the urchins who found the food, and one enterprising boy of about thirteen had discovered a way to lure and kill small kraken. It was a dangerous job, that, but each one killed netted a good hundred weight of fatty meat. Never mind the fact that the kraken lived on the hundreds of corpses they’d put in the river when the space in the graveyard ran out, along with the strength of men to dig holes.

  Thus the need to make six men into sixty. Had the Cthochi known how few people manned this or any other gate in the city or how many of the men on the walls and in the towers were mere constructs of castoff clothing and padding occasionally moved about by children, they would have taken the city a month ago. The decoys had been Sanjer’s idea, but Master Jordith, a man who had been naught but a blacksmith before the siege, had taken the idea and made the people act on it.

  Necessity had made Jordith lord of Northcraven, as all other claimants with any ability were dead. There had been some who didn’t like that, but the gate guards we
re behind him, which meant that so was the last ranger. Jordith restored a semblance of order to what was left of the city, and the men who stood behind him made sure that no one starved completely. No one grew fat, either, and the hunting of children had stopped. At the peak of its population there had been nearly one hundred thousand people in Northcraven, for at the beginning of the war many people had fled to the city from the surrounding towns and villages. About seven thousand still lived, if you could call it living.

  The horsemen were coming closer, moving through the siege camp of the Cthochi with purpose, and Sanjer saw several fires spring up, even as the sounds and screams of battle reached him across the flat and swampy ground. Could it be possible? Were those Mortentians out there?

  Swiftly he stepped away from his post, a place behind a narrow and yet sufficient arrow slit where the flagstones of the gatehouse had been worn smooth by his feet. He turned and called out to the gate boy. “Bisson, run and fetch some of Master Jordith’s men. Quick now.”

  “Yes milord ranger.” The boy said, turning and running on his raggedy boots to the head of the downward spiraling stairwell. The boy was there to learn archery, he said, and he was one of those who had fetched Sanjer and his men kraken meat or fish from time to time, so they had all been taking turns teaching him.

  The Cthochi camp was all flames and smoke by the time the boy came back, and behind him Elfim Hawes, a one-time hunter and now full time policeman. “What is it, lord ranger?”

  But Sanjer found that he could not speak. Something had come up in his throat, something that had lain dormant in his guts for months, and that now put tears in his cold and ruthless eyes and set his hands to shaking. Try as he could to speak, the words would not come up behind that terrible and yet wondrous lump in his throat, and all he could do was to point down the road.

  Elfim Hawes, himself no less dirty nor wretched than Sanjer, looked where Sanjer was pointing and saw riders coming slowly up the eastern road in an armored column of fours, and at their head was a man in knight’s armor. The riders bore lances, and a bannerman in the second rank was carrying a large rectangular flag with a black griffin on red, the ancient symbol of the Black Duke’s get, if he recalled correctly. Sanjer saw the banner and saw the men coming behind it and he collapsed, his legs giving out with the sudden strength of his weeping.

  “Lio be praised.” Elfim whispered, tenting his hands before his mouth with sudden wonder as tears of relief poured down his face. His words had to do for the both of them, for Sanjer had been struck dumb by the moment. “We’re saved.”

  By the time Haim’s wagon and the fifth spears reached the gates of Northcraven the bells had been ringing for what seemed like an hour or two without ceasing. Not only the bells of Northcraven’s great cathedral, but also the bells in the Duke’s castle, the harbor bells and every other bell that could be found, he supposed. The cacophony was amazing, and long before his fyrde marched up to the gate they could no longer hear each other without shouting.

  Ravens, driven to distraction by the sound, flocked above the city in a great dark cloud, and Haim had never seen so many. It was not until he actually crossed beneath the great arch of the open gate and under the mighty iron portcullis that he saw the cause. He was marching, for entering the great city they had fought so long and so hard to liberate in a wagon while the rest of the fyrde marched would have been unbearable. The sight of the city within the walls was almost unbearable, too.

  At first Haim thought that there was trash in the street, heaps of castoff clothes and bits of garbage until he saw the unmistakeable shape of a ribcage showing through one such heap of clothing. This was not on the main street, but in a side alley, and there were other skeletons near it, picked clean by the ravens in their millions. The city looked like a battle had been fought in some areas, and homes had been torn down by fire or hands eager to get to the beams and planks to make fires. Everywhere Haim looked he saw ravens, and in some of the empty streets he also caught the furtive movements of rats.

  The city’s people had come out to wave at the soldiers marching in, but by the time the Hedgehogs entered the city they had lavished all of the praise they had energy for on the lancers. Haim’s fyrde had wagons behind it, however, and the food intended to relieve the siege was on the wagons. Desperate voices from haggard faces did not dare to ask the question, but the men of the fifth fyrde cajoled the teamsters into drawing one wagon aside and breaking open a box of food stuffs. The fifth fyrde stepped out of place and began passing out dried apples, cheese and biscuits, and a crowd soon formed around the wagon.

  “What are you doing, Haim?” Captain Tolric demanded, riding back to the middle of the line from its head. “The food isn’t supposed to be distributed until we can assemble some kind of regular procedure.”

  “Captain, they’re starving. Look at ‘em.” A circle of faces surrounded Haim, who had clambered painfully back into the wagon to help pass out the food. Haim noticed that none of the women were beautiful, nor were any of the men handsome. They were all alike, with a kind of desperate gauntness to their features, with cheekbones thrown in stark relief and their clothes hanging ragged on their skeletal frames. Their hair seemed of a color, and their skin of a uniform pallid gray. They did not argue or beg, but rather stood, and when each one had a biscuit, or an apple or a bit of cheese, he would step out of the ring of people and find a quiet place in which to eat it in furtive, watchful silence.

  The captain looked around at the people, then at Haim’s expectant face. He nodded at last. “Very well, Haim. But just the one wagonload. We’ll call it an inventory error. Edwell will have a fit.”

  When Horrus O’Rockwall first saw Northcraven City he was marching with the small complement of archers who were to take places on the walls and in the gatehouses to relieve the city’s defenders. He looked up at the crenellated battlement and his hands began to sweat, itching for the feel of arrow and bow, for there were countless arrow slits from which an archer could shoot down from there, and he walked undefended down the road before it. When his fyrde of archers drew within bowshot of the walls he began to sweat profusely, and his breath became shallow.

  “You look pale, Horrus.” They fyrdman commented, but Horrus did not reply, nor even seem to hear him. His youthful face was pinched and tight, and his eyes danced nervously from point to point on the walls, watching for hidden bowmen. “Horrus, I’m talking to you.” The fyrdman said gently, for Horrus was far and away his best bowman, and he was patient with him.

  “Sorry, fyrdman.” Horrus gulped, but not for one moment did he take his eyes from the gatehouse and the many arrow slits. “What did you say?” The other archers were looking at him with curiosity in their eyes.

  “I said you look pale. Did you break fast this morning?”

  “Aye, fyrdman, thank you.” Horrus said lamely, but the mention of breakfast made his stomach lurch, and suddenly he felt like he might puke. Thick and slimy mucus was filling his mouth, and he licked his lips nervously. Not until he was under the wall in the narrow east gate and out of range of the arrow slits did he breathe easier, but only for the briefest time.

  When they emerged into the city itself, Horrus was confronted with a façade of three storey stone buildings, most of which had been abandoned. Shutters were missing from the empty buildings, for these had gone to feed the fires of the besieged, and the open windows showed black with the abandoned rooms behind them. There were thousands of these empty and abandoned windows, and each one gave a view to the open street below. Every window was within easy bowshot, and Horrus could not watch more than three or four of them at a time. The fyrde walked beneath them with no cover at all, and Horrus shrank in on himself, his head whipping from side to side, seeking any movement at all.

  Without command he unlimbered his bow and nocked an arrow to the string.

  “What are you doing, Horrus?” Demanded the fyrdman. “Put that thing away.”

  But Horrus could no more have put down his bo
w than he could have quit breathing. He looked at the fyrdman in bewilderment. The open windows stared down at him, each one potentially hiding a bowman. “Lio’s Eyes, fyrdman. Can’t you see them?” He said, but his voice sounded desperate and afraid, even to his own ears. He swallowed repeatedly, but couldn’t seem to keep the bile from rising in his throat. Then they passed an alleyway, and trash was piled in the alley in heaps, each of which was large enough to conceal an Aulig with a bow. Horrus flinched.

  “Horrus, what in the fornicating hells is wrong with you?” The fyrdman demanded, stopping the column in the middle of the street with no cover whatsoever, making all of them easy targets. The rest of the archers stared at Horrus with half-smiles on their faces, maybe thinking that he was making some kind of a joke.

  “Can’t you see?” He demanded again. “The buildings, fyrdman. They can see us!”

  “Pull yourself together, archer!” The fyrdman yelled, but by now Horrus was out of formation, his eyes desperately seeking the hidden bowmen. Once he started walking away from the column his feet seemed to free themselves, and he found himself running, with the fyrdman yelling after him, but he did not listen to the words. He ran from street to street in a bewildering maze of a neighborhood that had been abandoned to the dead and to the pox. Ravens and the skeletal remains of people were occasionally in his path.

  Finally he found an open door and ran into an abandoned and windowless room from which the furniture had been stripped and all of the possessions taken. He backed into a corner from which he could watch both doors, lifted his bow and watched, breathing fast and hard. In a few minutes the fyrdman was on the other side of the door, standing with his back to one side of it. “Horrus, it’s Melbak. I need you to put down the bow and calm down.”