by Sean Wallace
“I’ve sent a runner south.” Odilo glanced over his shoulder, shaking his head.
Alain understood what he meant – no messages of theirs had been answered for almost a year.
The serjeant returned his glare to Alain. “I need someone to get the subaltern. He’s in command of the Century now. Likely he won’t throw rocks at you.” Odilo’s voice was suddenly low and sly. “You talk to him sometimes. I know it.”
Alain realized Odilo was frightened. Of command? Of being abandoned?
It didn’t matter.
The subaltern would not come, not if the Duke of Bourne himself appeared to deliver the orders in person. The subaltern had fled his life, remaining connected to the Century only by the tenuous thread of habit, and lack of sufficient ambition to move farther inland on his own.
“I’ll go, but he won’t help,” Alain warned, discharging his final duty to the captain in one sentence.
“Someone’s got to do it,” Odilo hissed. Fear leaked from him like steam from a kettle.
Alain said nothing more, but brushed the chilly dew out of his boots with the warm underside of his blanket. Odilo moved off in the morning twilight, adrift, searching for purpose.
There were three eider-fletched arrows in the lintel of the subaltern’s snug little cabin, and the door stood open, badly splintered. Alain jabbed at it with his spear, not afraid of marauders within – had they still been present they would not have let him approach this close – but of what portions of the subaltern might remain behind the door.
The wood creaked wide open, innocent of menace. Alain stepped in, feeling as if he were the barbarian, come to pillage civilization’s last outpost.
Although over time he and the subaltern had exchanged careful, quiet nods in the forests of aspen and birch that lay inland north and east of the Century’s encampment, Alain had in fact never spoken to the officer. As far as he knew, no one had, except possibly the captain. Who had other, more grave concerns to occupy him now.
The cabin was almost spotless inside. The silvery birch floor was polished clean as a deck in the Duke’s fleet – Alain was on a ship once, briefly. Its perfection was marred only by a spray of blood and three fresh cuts.
Blows of an ax, from the look of the thing, Alain told himself.
There was almost no furniture, only a little frame bed slung with knotted ropes, a stool and a tiny table. Leaves, roots and vegetables hung from the ceiling. The embers of a fire still smoked in the little hearth. A flag with the Ducal insignia hung on one wall. Except for the blood and the ax scars, the cabin was unmarred. Unlooted. Intact.
“They took nothing but the subaltern,” Alain whispered to Serjeants Odilo and Severus.
The three of them huddled on a wind-whipped point of rock jutting out over the bay far below. The men called it “The Leap” because every now and then someone did so, launching himself into the next cycle of life with a long, slow dive. It was one of the few places where a conversation could be guaranteed private, as there was no cover anywhere near. A brown gull hung in the wind, eyeing them in hope of fish heads or bread crusts.
“Go to Darknesh,” muttered Severus, long-ago veteran of one of the stranger religions to be found in Bournemouth, with the scars to prove it. His cheeks were flushed, his words already slurred from early drinking.
Odilo glanced from Severus to Alain and back, over and over like a squirrel between two nuts. Odilo would be comical, Alain thought, if not for the desperation in his face.
“We should retreat,” Odilo said, smacking his lips as blue spittle leaked down his chin. “Break the camp, march the Century back to North Coast Keep.”
Ten days’ march south and west, North Coast was where the Fourth Battle had its headquarters. Superior officers, discipline, all the things a good soldier shunned.
But a man wouldn’t have to do his own thinking there. Or bury his own dead.
“North Coasht,” Severus said, then grunted. “Bashtards shor’-measured our oil rash-en lasht year. Never did nothin’ fer ush.”
“Your runner will come back with orders,” Alain said, filled with a sense of urgency, a new-found loyalty to the captain somehow inspired by the dead man’s story about the grubby little wizard on the battlefield. “We should stand with our mission.”
“What mission?” Odilo’s voice peaked in panic before settling into his accustomed jeer. He spat out over the harbor, the brown gull diving after the wadded leaves. “Captain never told us nothing ’cept sit tight. Well, we sat tight. Now you want us to swivel around here on our asses, out of supply, waiting for the snows to come. A couple of weeks, the road back to North Coast will be waist-deep in mud, a couple of weeks after that, snow up to our earlobes. If’n we want to leave, we got to leave now.”
Alain shrugged. “You’re the serjeant. I’m just a corporal.” Afraid to meet Odilo’s eye, he looked out at the gull, returned to hanging in the wind. “But I’m staying.”
The subaltern might need someone to come home to, even if he came in small pieces.
The First Century decided to bury their captain that coming evening, on the south side of their camp. The warm side. There was a squabble when no one could find the banners. Alain knew the Ducal standard was at the subaltern’s cabin, but he kept his mouth shut, praying for the little wizard to come before cold dirt and pine needles filled the captain’s face forever.
Each man in the Century dug at least a shovelful from the grave, which resulted in a scooped-out bowl in the soil. It was a kind thought, but Alain hated the shallow pit that was created, so he stripped to his trousers and dug the grave properly from the bottom of the pit, working with a fury born of frustration. It made for a huge trench. Exhausted, he finally climbed out.
“Planning to lay us all in the ground together?” Odilo asked as Alain cleaned the shovel and gathered his clothing.
Alain tried to smile. “A great man deserves a great grave.”
Odilo spat. “He wasn’t a great man. He was a jumped-up clerk turned out to fight in some war what couldn’t get his old job back after. They kept him around and made him an officer ’cause he could read and write.”
Alain could read and write, some – his childhood village had had a progressive priest who served a gentle god – but this didn’t seem the time to mention that. “He was great to me,” said Alain, thinking again of the grubby little wizard and the small magic of restoring a man’s life.
* * *
When First Century marched out of their camp to lay the body to rest, wrapped in a sheet from the captain’s cot, they found another eider-fletched arrow. This one was point down in the bottom of the grave, still quivering, though no one saw it fly and the woods were hundreds of yards away.
Without a word, Alain scrambled down into the grave, plucked the arrow from the turned earth, snapped it in two and climbed back out to lay the halves atop the captain’s winding sheet. The men of the Century cheered, even Serjeant Severus. Then they rushed through the funeral, each eager to get to serious drinking and plotting their escape from this northern perdition.
The little wizard never came.
In the morning, eight men were gone, with their gear and somehow – against all common sense where the noisy beasts were concerned – one of the camp mules. Serjeant Severus was also among the missing, though his gear was still present.
Odilo would send no one after the deserters, but was willing to turn out a desultory search effort for Severus. Alain went to The Leap, where he spotted Severus floating in the bay far below.
At least he assumed it was Severus. A man was there, wrapped in an old tunic the color of bayberries, just as Severus wore lounging around the camp. His head seemed to be missing, although perhaps Severus was simply riding low in the water.
After some thought, Alain told Serjeant Odilo.
“Quiet, fool,” Odilo said, smacking his lips. He had been chewing his weed like a mule ate hay, this last day or so. “Let the men search. I’ll prepare our withdrawal.�
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Alain was overcome with a wave of stubborn pride. “So when Benno and Faubus and the others left, it was desertion, but now we’re going to withdraw?”
“This is orders,” Odilo said, pressing his puffy, blue-stained nose right into Alain’s face.
“We already have orders, serjeant.”
“You want to stay here and die at the hands of the Ice Tribes, fine with me. You’ve got Severus’s squads now, corporal. Orders is half yours.” Odilo spat between Alain’s feet, then stalked away.
The Century’s encampment surrounded the foundation courses of the unfinished tower. They were protected on three sides by wooden hoardings backed with clay, erected years before in best army fashion, though these were now mostly overgrown with beans and melon vines. Fields of hardy crops stretched around the hoardings. The fourth side was open to the cliff over the water, with gaps between the ends of the hoardings and the cliff large enough to drive a wagon through at each end.
First Century even had an old cannon, a lion-mouthed thing originally captured from the Onyx Navy far to the near-mythical south. It was spoil of some battle, handed from unit to unit and officer to officer until like the men it had finally washed up here on this northmost shore. There was a small pile of shot, rusted together, and four kegs of what was alleged to be powder, though no one in the Century seemed to know what to do with the stuff.
Alain organized some of the younger men to wrestle the cannon into the inland-facing gap between the hoarding and the cliff. He readied one of the unit’s two wagons to block the other gap, while Serjeant Odilo supervised a loading up of the second wagon for the march south.
Neither of them had actually issued orders. Rather, each quietly made his intentions known, and some silent democracy of soldiers voted in successive pairs of booted feet, until the Century had divided itself around two heads, like a worm cut in half and left to regrow.
It was no surprise to Alain that most of Odilo’s men chose to go with the serjeant, while most of Severus’s men stayed with him. Alain was polite enough to leave Odilo’s way clear. Odilo was smart enough not to comment on the folly of Alain’s cannon.
Late that afternoon, as the Southron cannon was mounted in place and the departing wagon had been fully loaded, a rider appeared out of the trees a quarter mile inland, to the east. He was a small man on a small horse, the animal grubby white with shaggy hair, the man grubby brown wrapped in shaggy furs.
Alain and Odilo found themselves side-by-side at the east-facing hoarding. The weather had turned suddenly colder and damper, and their breath curled and mingled together, nature seeking to reunite the Century by some sympathetic magic.
“What do you think?” Odilo finally asked as the rider approached at an insolently slow canter.
“I don’t know yet,” Alain said, looking carefully to see if any heads were dangling from the rider’s saddle.
The newcomer carried a tall pole with a small wooden circle or wheel mounted across the top, from which dangled a forest of dark horsetails. He was clad entirely in furs, only his face visible, which glistened with smeared-on fat.
“Hai,” said the rider.
“What’s your business here?” Odilo demanded.
“I’ve come to ease your sorry lives,” the rider said in astonishingly good Wentish, the language of the duchy.
A herald of sorts, then, Alain thought.
“The chief of our chiefs requires this place for his use,” the rider went on. “You are invited to depart before his armies come scouring.”
“I—” Odilo began to say, but Alain elbowed him in the ribs and spoke over him. “The Duke’s army moves at no one’s beck save His Grace’s own.”
“You do not need this place,” said the rider. “Your men do nothing here but grow fat and tired. Go south, to your warmlands and your women, and leave our cold places to us.”
“Fat and tired we may be, but here we’ll stay,” Alain shouted. “Now begone and tell your little chief we will not surrender to him.”
“Nobody said nothing about surrendering,” Odilo muttered in a pained voice, but the rider was already cantering away.
That night around the fires, the silent democracy of soldiers finally found its voice. “We’ll all die here – for what?” “They killed the captain, too, some ice wizard’s work.” “Magicked the subaltern years ago.” “Eating Serjeant Severus’s liver even now, I warrant you.” “That Alain’s crazy, and too big for his boots.” “Odilo’s a coward – we got a job to do.”
At dawn the loaded wagon creaked away west and south, accompanied by the irritated complaints of mules, the shuffling of dozens of feet and one spitting serjeant. Alain stood atop his lion-mouthed cannon, facing northeast where the enemy doubtless waited, wondering what had ever possessed him to stay.
After the sun had broken above the shoulder of Mount Abaia into an icy clear day, Alain turned to find that over half the Century had stayed with him.
“Well,” he said, “pull that last wagon around to block the other exit, and let’s have men on the hoardings. A show of strength is what’s called for here, and a show of strength is what we’ll have.”
As they bustled to their work, Alain again felt pride in being a soldier, for the first time in years. He recalled the Ducal standard in the subaltern’s cabin. “I’m off to scout a bit. Hold fast, and see if some one of you can’t manage to load this cannon up.”
The men of the Century cheered as Alain walked into the woods, toward their enemy.
He found the cabin without challenge – there were no Ice Tribesmen in evidence. The arrows were gone and the door was shut, but Alain simply pushed in.
The flag was still there, but so was a large man in furs. Enormous, in fact, for an Ice Tribesman. His resemblance to the herald was passing at best, bald head tattooed with runes, a necklace of fingerbones around his neck. He sat on the subaltern’s lone stool, staring at Alain with an expression of mild amusement that broadened to a yellow-toothed grin.
“You’re their shaman,” Alain said without preamble, ignoring the chill stab of fear in his heart. He was careful not to make any quick motions with his spear.
“How tell?” asked the tribesman in thickly accented Wentish. His voice was a braying rasp, with a strange echo underneath as if he spoke from two places at once. What the captain had called “a slippery wizard echo”.
“Who else would be in here? And someone killed the captain.” Alain leaned his spear against the doorpost. “Besides, you’ve got charms and fetishes.”
“All Ice Tribe got charm fetish,” said the shaman. “Big power, big pain. You go home now.”
“This is my home. His Grace told me to come live here, and here I live.” Well, actually, some clerk had told him, but it was the Duke’s will, however indirect.
“Big magic in north. Big working, go home, danger you.” The shaman mimed fangs and snarled. “Call snow demon, steal you heart. Many rider cross you grave. You go now, you safe.”
Demons. The Ice Tribes were going to summon demons and bring their armies rampaging southward. The chill stab in his heart twinged again, the ordinary private magic of fear. His own death was close at hand, and the death of thousands more if the tribes swept southward behind their demons.
All the more reason to stand fast, to show the Ice Tribes that the Duke’s men were brave and true.
Alain recalled the captain’s story of the grubby little wizard and his small magic. “Big magic, sure. Call lightning. Send us storms. I’ve no doubt your snow demons could eat us like sausages.” He stepped past the shaman, pulled the Ducal standard down from the wall. “We have some small magic of our own, oaths and loyalty. And I know a secret about small magic and big magic.”
With that, Alain nodded at the shaman, wrapped the flag over one arm, took up his spear again and left. He saw no one on the walk back to the encampment, but he hadn’t really expected to.
At the walls, the men were pointing to a wispy thread of smoke in the distance
, far to the southwest along the coast. Alain knew it had to be Odilo’s wagon burning, the serjeant and his men as dead as Severus and the captain, but he just shrugged when the younger men asked him what the fire might mean.
The older men looked grim and said nothing.
“Me, I was a sailor betimes,” Michel said to Alain out of the corner of his mouth later that day.
Alain was fascinated. Was this fantasy, or secret history? Michel was a little man with a Southgate accent who’d never had much to say. “We’ve both lived in this place for four years,” Alain said. “This is the first time you’ve brought that up.”
“Jumped ship,” Michel said. “Land is safer, always.”
Even now? Alain wondered, but he did not say it. Instead, he waved at the lion-mouthed cannon, glowering in ancient, corroded brass. “You ever fired one of those things?”
Michel shook his head. “I seen ’em do it.”
Alain smiled. “Then you’re our master gunner. Get to work loading it.” He named off three men to help Michel.
All evening whooping riders galloped back and forth in front of the hoardings, glinting shadows in the stormy darkness. A cold wind brought both snow and lightning – a rare mix – the thunder rolling over the encampment so loud and long that some men bled from the ears. Alain went from man to man, touching shoulders, telling them this was not an attack, only a stoking of the fire of their fear.
Six more men deserted that night, but at dawn their bodies lay below the hoardings amid the Century’s trampled fields of turnips and rye, riddled with eider-fletched arrows. There was an odd beauty to the scene, men and arrows and ruined plants all dusted with snow to highlight their frailties and lend grace to their wounds.
If Alain’s men had been archers, he would have salvaged the arrows, but the bodies were perhaps a better lesson. He realized that he was starting to think like an officer.
He hated that.
That afternoon, ranks of horsemen poured out of the woods. They all rode shaggy ponies, like the herald had, though Alain could see scraps of battle kit and armor from all over the Western Principate, not to mention further south and east. There must be many deserters here, Alain thought. Who would join the Ice Tribes?