Heir to the Raven (The Pierced Veil, #1)

by J. Wesley Bush

  The idea of battle was frightening, but only in a hazy way, like the howl of distant wolves. What was clear were the rewards. A man who fought in war was respected. At every festival, villagers clamored for Uncle Luka’s tales of the Atamon Rebellion. And a man could earn spoils. Perhaps enough to find a wife.

  Thoughts of future glory evaporated as they rounded a bend in the river and a city came into view. The first he had ever seen. A real bleeding city, with walls and gates. He stared dumbfounded at its size, thick walls extending up and over the hills, stone wharves flanking the river, and the peaked roofs of temples peering at him over the battlements. Countless fires breathed smoke into the sky.

  “Your first time seeing one of these?” asked Vasik One-Hand. The rest had gone ahead. “That’s New Oster, second city of Belgorsk. You wouldn’t believe there were this many damned people in the world, let alone in one settlement.” He leaned on his spear, a war spear, not the fire-hardened sticks the rest used.

  “Will they let us in?” Mirko expected Vasik to know things, for he’d been a free sword before losing a hand.

  “Mayhaps. I hear our camp is just east of New Oster. Could be we’ll have business in the city.”

  Mirko heard a mount approaching from behind a moment before it sent him face down into the muck. The lord riding it shouted at Mirko in Oberyn-speak, Mirko understanding “Belgorshan dog!” and the word for horse. The lord dismounted and gave him a few casual strikes with a horsewhip before riding off.

  “Here, get up before the next one just rides over you,” Vasik said, offering the nub of his left arm.

  Mirko stood with a long-suffering sigh and scraped some of the mud from his face. He glanced up and down the river road to see if any lords were in sight, waiting to accuse him of desertion if they saw him near the river – soldiers patrolled both sides of the Green Lady, and the king’s woodsmen stalked deserters like deer in the forest. “Go,” Vasik said, “I’ll sing out if any soldiers appear. And here, fill my waterskin while you’re there.”

  Grasping hold of a root, Mirko eased down the bank and knelt by the swollen river, made fat by the Long Rains. Tree branches poked out from the water like the hands of drowning men. “You speak Oberyn,” Mirko said, washing at the cloying mud. “Have you overheard anything? Who are we going to fight?”

  “Nothing of that. But I did hear the lords talking about mercenaries. Lots of them. If Priest-King Leax is hiring free companies, then this is serious.”

  Mirko took a deep breath and plunged his head into the water, then scratched fiercely at his scalp, hoping to oust as many lice as possible. After filling the waterskins, he turned and carefully climbed up the bank.

  “We’d best make haste,” Vasik said. “The others will worry.” Though it hurt to run, Mirko didn’t mind. He had people who worried now.

  The road was as swollen as the river. They passed mobs of slaves, a group of Imperial priests with two-headed serpents on their green breastplates, even a gaily-painted carriage that turned out to be a brothel. It had foundered in the mud and soldiers were trying to lever it free with spears while the girls blew kisses to them from the windows. Further on, a dead man lay in the weeds, a ring of blood drying around the wound in his belly. Soldiers had shown him the “mercy” they gave to any peasant too sick or weak to march.

  Mirko and Vasik rejoined their group, and soon they were overshadowed by the city walls. Three rounded towers anchored the north side, each flying the crossed-ax pennant of Priest-King Leax. The road around the city was foul, thick with rotting food and night soil. Even Cousin Stepan complained, and he could find the humor in anything.

  “The moat overflowed,” Vasik explained. “Bloody city folk are too lazy to empty their rubbish in the river like sensible people. They just mount the walls and dump it over the side.”

  It took half an hour to round the city walls. Mirko’s eyes goggled at how many people must live inside them, more than he’d meet in a dozen lifetimes. Two soldiers on horseback watched the column pass, speeding the peasants along with word and whip. Finally, he could see the camp perhaps a thousand well-trampled paces away, a teeming mass of men and animals, tents and pine bough shelters, stretching as far as he could see along the river and surrounded by a deep trench.

  As the column approached the camp, their lords rode out accompanied by men-at-arms. “Lord Rotamir’s over there,” Cousin Stepan said. “See his sickle pennant?”

  The lords began shouting for their slaves and peasants and chaos descended as a thousand men scuttled through the mud, trying to reach their lord before earning a beating for sloth. By unspoken agreement, Mirko’s little band kept together as they slipped and slogged through the muck, ensuring that each man made it. Mirko helped Vasik when he fell on his armless side, and others returned the favor when a great ox of a man trod Mirko underfoot.

  At last they all assembled before Lord Rotamir and his two serjeants, perhaps a hundred men from his domain. Mirko wondered what it would be like to have the power of life and death over a hundred souls. What it would do to a man.

  Lord Rotamir shouted in Oberyn, shrill voice echoing strangely in the steel-jawed helm. The serjeant with a peasant face interpreted: “We are now in the war camp of the priest-king! My serjeants will train you to use those spears in coming days. You will never be true soldiers, but you may still be of some service to your master.” Lord Rotamir drew his sword and motioned to the two serjeants. “We will divide you into tithes of ten men. Five tithes make a half-century, commanded by one of my serjeants.” When he spoke again, Mirko heard bitterness in the tone. The serjeant interpreted, “I will command you in battle.”

  “He wanted to ride with the knights,” Vasik explained softly. “It’s a disgrace and he’ll take it out on us.”

  Sure enough, Rotamir spoke again, and the peasant serjeant interpreted: “I know you peasants worship strange gods, far from the eyes of the emperor. Those gods cannot help you here. I am your god now, and I see everything. Serve me faithfully and you may live. Shirk, desert, or disrespect, and you will die.” Rotamir thrust the sword behind him, and for the first time Mirko noticed gibbets near the gate. A row of ten men hung by their necks.

  “Your tithe is your family. You will sleep beside them, eat beside them, and fight beside them. If any try to desert, you will hang beside them. All are punished for the crime of one, so watch each other closely.” Rotamir turned the horse and barked an order to his men.

  The serjeants moved among the peasants, carving them into ever smaller clusters. Mirko and his companions huddled together, refusing to separate until a serjeant made them a tithe. Thanking God, Mirko followed his new family into the camp.

  CHAPTER 18

  H elaena stood atop a burial mound between her mother and last remaining brother, joined by family, friends, and pledged men, but felt alone in her grief. Everyone died alone, they said, but mourning was also solitary. Dozens of mounds blistered the savanna in all directions, heaped on the bones of her male ancestors, each topped with a stone column engraved with deeds. Ardashir’s stone would be almost bare. His life had been too short for many acts of valor. Two brothers already slept beneath the ground, one taken by illness and the other by the Vyr.

  Ashes mixed with tears and stung her eyes. She wiped at them angrily with the gray sleeves of the gown. Hundreds of mourners encircled the mound, their faces rubbed with ash and obscured by gray veils and hoods. Official mourners wailed and beat their breasts and heads, their role permitting them emotion that would shame other Jandari.

  Over all of it shone the pitiless sun. This was no day for sun. Helaena wanted leaden clouds and the misery of rain. The whole world should weep.

  Reyhan, Selwyn, and others had dug graves the night before, and now the bones of her father and brother lay beside the holes, wrapped in sacks of soft, beaded leather. Scavengers and carrion birds had picked the bones clean during four days of sky-burial. Spirits for God, flesh for the savanna, and bones for the children —the w
ay it should be. Yet nothing else in the world was as it should be.

  She glanced at Mother. No trace of emotion showed on Alethea’s smooth face, but her breathing came in small, choked sounds. She smiled wanly and took Helaena’s hand in her own.

  “It’s all right to cry, Mother. This is the time for it.”

  “We will find who did this,” Alethea whispered, rattling the sword belt she carried in one hand. “We will find them and they will die weeping.”

  The crowd parted and two knights led horses up the mound and beside the graves, the roan destrier of Duke Harlowe and Ardashir’s courser. Perhaps they sensed what was coming, or maybe it was only the crowd, but both horses were nervous, their skin rippling with anxiety. Attendants tied ropes to the saddle straps in all directions and held the horses tautly in place.

  Standing at the foot of Ardashir’s grave, Clark Istvan turned to Selwyn. “Send your brother his mount,” the clark said, taking a long step back. Selwyn breathed deeply and gave Helaena a nervous glance. She nodded encouragingly – he looked so young and lost.

  Helaena and Mother stepped down from the mound as Selwyn approached the horse. “There, there,” he crooned softly. “There, there.” Reaching behind him, he drew out a curved dagger and then grabbed the horse by its mane.

  Faster than Helaena’s eye could follow, the blade stabbed into its throat and sliced a red channel. The horse reared and tried to kick, wet sounds of panic bubbling through its severed throat. Strong hands held it in place until shock and loss of blood sent it thudding to the ground. Selwyn and others rolled it into the grave.

  Duke Harlowe’s destrier was no fool and began lunging and kicking in all directions. Its teeth snapped at the restraining ropes. Selwyn’s mourning cloak was shiny with fresh blood and his face and hands drenched in it. The smell drove the roan into a frenzy. Men stumbled, still clutching the ropes, and long moments passed before Selwyn could approach.

  “Can’t he use a spear?” Helaena asked Mother, though she knew the answer: Jandari never took the easy way.

  Approaching from the front, Selwyn tried calming the horse, but to no end. Finally, her brother grabbed the halter, clutching it firmly as the horse reared once more. Feet leaving the ground, Selwyn stabbed the beautiful roan in the neck, once, then twice, then again. The horse twisted in his grasp and bit down on his shoulder. Selwyn cried out in pain and jabbed the blade once more into its throat, crudely ripping it. The horse buckled, tumbling into the pit. Scrambling for purchase, Selwyn grabbed at the grass around him, blindly taking hold of Father’s remains. He and the bones followed the horse, falling ten feet to the gravel-lined floor.

  Thumping sounds issued from the pit. The attendants dropped a rope to her brother, but she heard him order them away. Several minutes later, he climbed free of the grave, covered in dirt, blood and ashes. He still looked like a thin boy to Helaena, until she saw his eyes – their father was truly gone now, and a different Selwyn had come out of the grave than had gone into it.

  Selwyn and Reyhan next lowered Ardashir’s bones into his tomb and then dropped weapons to each body. Clark Istvan preached a homily, but Helaena heard little of it, lost in her thoughts. Selwyn and Father would never reconcile, she thought sadly; and she and Father would never again hunt the savanna together, nor fish the Green Lady.

  “Duke Harlowe and his beloved son now ride in the retinue of the great High King,” Clark Istvan said, his voice reedy with emotion. “This kingdom has lost its strongest protector, but God has gained a true and valorous knight.” He stooped down, old knees shaking with the effort, and took up a handful of dirt. “And now we commend our liege to the ground and his spirit to God.”

  There was only one thing left to do. Mother went to Selwyn and belted Father’s falchion on his waist, as countless mothers had done with it in the past. She pressed a hand to his cheek and rejoined Helaena. It was time for Selwyn to announce his gesture, the way he would honor the hallowed dead.

  The official mourners ceased their wails and moans. All was quiet, save for wind in the grass.

  A raucous cawing broke the silence. Helaena looked to the source and found a white-necked raven perched atop the nearest burial column. Sunlight glared from its iridescent feathers, obscuring it, but Helaena could tell the thing was massive. Her heart raced with a thrill of fear and excitement. It was her father!

  The rest of the crowd must have realized it at the same time. Mourners fell to their knees, shrieking and stretching hands toward the revenant bird. In the savanna, everyone knew that murdered souls came back as ravens, haunting the living until justice was done.

  Motion brought her eyes back to Selwyn. He had drawn their father’s ancient blade and raised it aloft.

  The Crystal Falchion. It was translucent, like cloudy glass, the result of countless pacts over centuries. When pactmakers could make the steel no stronger, they had shifted to beautifying it. So odd to see it in Selwyn’s hand, Helaena thought dazedly. It belongs to Father.

  The sword shook in Selwyn’s grip. “Father, I… I regret my final words to you.” His voice broke, and Helaena wanted to go to him, but that would be shaming. He took a moment and then looked out over the crowd, his eyes febrile and haunted. “Father, I swear by your restless spirit – I will avenge you. Your raven shall pick their bones!” The crowd roared approval, and Helaena shouted along with them, pouring her sadness and rage into the collective sound. Nothing would ever be right again, but at least they could gain vengeance.

  The ride back to the castle was a haze and the evening best forgotten. The Harlowes gathered in the solar after dinner, joined by Reyhan, Brother Addison, and family who had come for the funeral. In place of conversation, they drank wine and stared into the fire, Alethea presiding over the room with mournful courtesy, while Selwyn sat by the hearth, reading a book on castle stewardship. Later, Reyhan got drunk and argued with Selwyn over something pointless, some disputed memory of Aardashir, before storming off to drink somewhere else.

  Saafi, who had matched Reyhan mug for mug, gave Helaena an apologetic wave and followed him out.

  Helaena sat in the corner, working oil into her jack of plates. Leather dried quickly in the savanna and it felt good to be doing something useful. A shadow fell over her work, and a hesitant voice said, “My lady?”

  Looking up, Helaena caught sight of Brother Addison, who made a striking sight with the glow of hearth and torches behind him, she realized before banishing the thought. She was in mourning and holy brothers weren’t for ogling. Nevertheless, he was handsome in the blue and gold cassock of the Order.

  “Yes, Brother?”

  “I only wished to say how sorry I am for your losses. They were good men and fine knights.”

  “You knew them?”

  “Mostly by reputation and on the tourney grounds. Your father and I did speak more than once at court. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, but he was just and honest.”

  Helaena found herself smiling, despite everything. “Then you did know him. He had no tolerance for anyone or anything he thought was foolish.” A sob rose in her chest. “But he was a good father.”

  Without a word, Addison cupped her hand and knelt beside the chair. Helaena buried her face in the leather jack, the smell of sweat and oil comforting as grief overwhelmed her. When she finally looked up, she knew her face was a mess. “Sorry for that… It’s just been a trying day.”

  “I certainly don’t mind,” he said, giving the hand a squeeze. “And no one else noticed a thing – they’re all too far into their cups. Except your brother, of course, who seems intoxicated by that book of his.”

  “You’re very kind,” Helaena said, taking back the hand and feeling suddenly shy. She gathered up the armor and supplies. “Saafi and I leave for the border in the morning. I should be in bed.”

  “Of course,” he said easily, standing and then giving the lightest of bows. “I also depart in the morning. If I don’t see you again, have a safe journey.”

  “Y
ou as well,” she said, brushing a hand over his arm in passing. She took leave of her mother and brother, Alethea giving her an uncharacteristically tight hug. “Be safe” was all she said. Selwyn bussed her cheeks and wished good hunting with the Vyr, but she could see his thoughts were far away. As the forgotten fourth son, he’d missed a lifetime of lessons in rulership and was trying to learn them overnight.

  Sleep eluded her for a long while and she lay in bed staring out the window, remembering her last trip to the Swan kingdom. Father had come, as had Ardashir and Selwyn. Waldrich Swan had taken them in pursuit of the great boars for which Swan lands were famous. It was the last time they had all been together and happy. Soon after, she had taken vows with the Sorority and Selwyn had left to become Lord Wicke’s squire.

  Saafi woke her sometime later, sliding into bed and reeking of wine. “Harlot,” Helaena mumbled, tucking blankets beneath her to keep Saafi from stealing them in the night, as she always did.

  “All we did was drink,” Saafi said without conviction. “Now go back to sleep.” Outside, Helaena could hear roosters calling for the sun.

  “If you’re too hungover to ride tomorrow, I’m going to stuff you in my bloody saddlebag.”

  Morning came quickly and Saafi had no reason to fear a hangover, as she was still drunk. Fortunately, the castle was asleep and Helaena got her friend washed, dressed, fed, and off to the stables without seeing anyone except a handful of servants and guards. The night groom was still on duty in the stables, and helped saddle Saafi’s horse and stow her gear for riding. Just as they began leading their horses out of the stable, Brother Addison entered through the side door, carrying a canvas sack that clanked as he walked, no doubt his famed red plate armor.