The Long War 02 - The Dark Blood

by A. J. Smith

  ‘Haffen!’ roared Horrock with anguish in his voice as he saw his friend die. Other members of Wraith Company cried out in despair at the sight of the warrior sprawled on the ground, in a motionless and bloodied heap.

  Al-Hasim had glanced back to see Red Face fall and had almost lost his head to a spearman. With no time for grief, he continued his attempt to rescue Long Shadow, who was now far in front of the other defenders and staying alive through sheer force of will. Hasim ducked under a spear and sliced a man across the throat. He dived forward, barrelling two Ro to the floor and skewering another as he stood up. The Karesian was faster than the Ranen and was not hampered by uncontrollable rage. He reached Long Shadow and stood back to back with the captain of Scarlet Company.

  ‘We need to get the fuck out of here,’ he shouted over the sounds of combat.

  ‘Death first,’ was the growled response from Johan.

  ‘Forward,’ commanded Jakan from somewhere within the mass of soldiers.

  The defenders of South Warden were isolated now into small pockets of resistance. Even if they did manage to fall back, there would no longer be enough of them to hold the breach. Haffen was dead, Long Shadow was surrounded, and the Darkwald yeomanry were levelling their spears and pushing towards the third gate, flooding round the sides of the Ranen and claiming the ground.

  Several hundred Ranen had died within minutes and now Lanry saw the Purple clerics reach the front of the lines. As ferocious as the Ranen were, they were no match for the skilful nobles of the One. Mathias Flame Tooth and Horrock Green Blade moved to intercept them, but the outcome did not seem in doubt. Neither of the Ranen warriors was enraged as they coldly tried to hold the third gate, with only a handful of men to support them.

  Brother Jakan led the clerics and he didn’t hesitate for a second as he engaged Horrock, starting with a powerful combination of overhead blows that forced the exhausted captain backwards. Flame Tooth tackled a second cleric to the ground, but was quickly swarmed by yeomanry and relieved of his axe. The axe-master of South Warden shouted insults at the men who grabbed him, but Lanry lost sight of the barrel-chested warrior amidst the kicks and punches of the swarming men of Darkwald.

  Horrock was outmatched and, despite the conviction in his eyes, was too weak and tired to put up much of a fight against Jakan. The Purple cleric delivered a feint to the captain’s side that allowed him to follow up with a blow from his shield, dazing Horrock. Then Jakan delivered a powerful cut that sliced open the Ranen’s stomach and sent him flying back to land in a bloody heap against the third gate of South Warden. He was alive, but had no fight left in him and looked skywards, panting heavily.

  Back at the front, Lanry saw Long Shadow and Al-Hasim still fighting a lone battle. Johan had three crossbow bolts protruding from his body, but even the one through the side of his neck seemed not to register on his face.

  ‘Surrender!’ shouted Lanry in a quivering voice. ‘There’ll be another day, another fight... don’t die here.’

  If he heard the words, Al-Hasim showed no sign of recognition as he took a heavy mace blow to the back and a crossbow bolt thudded into his chest. Long Shadow wrapped an arm round the staggering Karesian and tried his best to keep the enemies at bay, but he was a lone figure now among the enemy soldiers.

  Brother Jakan and his clerics killed the few remaining Ranen guarding the third gate. Then he turned to issue a command to his men. ‘Stand to, I want him alive.’

  The men surrounding Long Shadow and Hasim backed off and encircled the two men. The yeomanry lowered their spears and took aim with crossbows, but did not attack. Johan was no longer enraged and his black eyes had turned back to grey. He stood protectively over the unconscious body of Al-Hasim and made no effort to attack. The pain from his wounded neck seemed suddenly to register and he grasped at the protruding shaft.

  With the battle over, all Lanry could hear was the muted groans of dying men. He was breathing heavily. From his position on the third wall, he could hear the gate below being battered down by the thousands of yeomanry, who then flooded into the undefended city. A horn was blown from the rear of the column to signal to the king that South Warden was taken.

  Brother Jakan sheathed his sword and stepped over to where Long Shadow and the dying Karesian stood. They were penned in, with no chance of escape. Lanry had lost sight of Mathias Flame Tooth, but couldn’t imagine that the axe-master had survived.

  ‘Throw down your axe,’ said Jakan in an imperious voice. ‘You are beaten.’

  Johan Long Shadow, captain of Scarlet Company, made sure that Al-Hasim was placed carefully on the bloody ground before he stood to face the Purple cleric. He winced in pain, but otherwise remained stoic, as he reached up and grasped the shaft of the bolt in his neck. With a defiant growl, and maintaining eye-contact with Jakan, the Ranen warrior pulled the bolt free, causing a sudden rush of blood to flow down his battered leather armour. To Lanry’s eyes, the wound was obviously fatal and the captain’s rage had been the only thing keeping him alive.

  ‘Death first,’ he muttered, charging at the Purple cleric with his axe held high.

  The captain of Scarlet Company did not reach his target. He was peppered with a dozen more crossbow bolts almost before he had moved and lay dead a moment later, his tattooed head a symbol of bloody defiance at the feet of Brother Jakan.

  Al-Hasim and Horrock were not moving either, as the few survivors were relieved of their weaponry and placed under close guard. The third gate had been battered down and Ro filled the centre of South Warden. The rest of the army was advancing now and the Brown cleric suddenly felt faint. He saw yeomanry quickly ascend the nearby stairs and run towards where he stood with crossbows held high.

  Holding up his hands to indicate that he was not armed, he said through chattering teeth, ‘I am Brother Lanry of Canarn... and I surrender.’

  * * *

  As the sun rose high over the plains of Scarlet, Brother Lanry found himself shackled in a Ranen house converted into a Ro prison. He did not know what had happened to Horrock or Al-Hasim, though the whispered opinion was that the captain of Wraith Company would die from his wounds before nightfall. Several thousand citizens of South Warden had been dragged from their homes and corralled on the central mount of the city to await whatever justice the king had in mind, while the rest of his army made themselves at home.

  Lanry had been placed with a disgraced former knight of the Red and an unconscious nobleman who had apparently drunk himself insensible while the battle was raging. The knight’s name was Fallon of Leith. The cleric of poverty had heard tales of his martial prowess and vaguely recalled that he was part of the force that had taken Ro Canarn. What he had done to have his tabard removed and his arms bound with steel was a mystery.

  When the awkward silence between the two men had reached its height, and the lord of Darkwald had started snoring, Lanry decided to speak. ‘Er... what was your crime, sir knight?’ he asked, unable to think of anything better to say.

  Sir Fallon smiled thinly, but the strange intensity did not leave his eyes. ‘I prevented a man from dying,’ he replied cryptically. ‘And don’t call me sir.’

  ‘Well, as a fellow man of the One, I wish you luck with your trial,’ said Lanry, and suddenly his mind felt as exhausted as his body.

  ‘You should sleep, brother,’ said the disgraced knight. ‘A voice in my head tells me that you’re my ally... and we have a lot to do.’

  The Brown cleric smiled politely, but he had no idea what Fallon meant.

  * * *

  Al-Hasim was hurt. Again. He had a crossbow bolt in the right side of his chest, a few ribs broken by a mace, and a deep gash down his neck. Luckily, his piecemeal leather armour had taken enough of the sting out of the bolt that the head stuck only a little way into his flesh. It still hurt, but he was fairly sure the wound wasn’t too serious. The cut down his neck looked and felt worse, but the blood had stopped flowing quickly and he had not passed out or felt the need to o
ffer his final words to Jaa.

  He had played dead when the Darkwald yeomanry had begun to assemble the bodies of the fallen defenders of South Warden. Now, with the killing ground mostly cleared and the day drawing on, he lay under a pile of bodies. It was not the first time he’d pretended to be dead in order to get out of a tricky situation.

  Haffen Red Face was dead, Johan Long Shadow was dead, and Mathias Flame Tooth was dead. The only slight ray of sunshine was that Captain Horrock Green Blade, the redoubtable leader of Wraith Company, was still alive. The green-eyed axe-man of Ro Hail had been hauled away by knights and his wounds tended to. Al-Hasim reckoned that, as the most senior Ranen still alive, the king would want to use him as an example. The rest of the citizens of South Warden had not been so lucky. There had been large-scale executions. Any man who had raised an axe was swiftly strung up. Most died quickly with their necks broken, but some had hung for several minutes as the air was slowly strangled out of their chests.

  The common folk of the realm of Scarlet were not the kind of people to submit readily to occupation. Most had tried to defend their homes and families from the men of Ro. Old men had clubbed at knights with rusted family heirlooms and women, clutching their children to their breasts and refusing to be dragged from their homes, had spat in the faces of bound men. It had not been a pleasant sight.

  After a few hours, most had surrendered rather than continue their futile resistance. Thousands of common men, women and children of South Warden were corralled into fenced-off areas of the inner city, under the guard of knights and bound men. The yeomanry were less keen to pillage the city and brutalize the population. Hasim had heard whisper that their commander, a noble of Darkwald called the Lord of Mud, had been arrested by the Purple clerics on some trumped-up charge of disloyalty. It was clearly only fear of Brother Jakan that was keeping the yeomanry in line.

  He shifted position and shoved a limp man’s arm out of the way the better to see what was going on. A cart next to him contained a dozen dead Ranen, hacked to pieces or riddled with crossbow bolts, and the stench of death was vile. Many had already been burned, but it now seemed that the majority of bodies would be incinerated the following morning, when the men of Darkwald had had a chance to rest.

  The Karesian rogue had seen combat in Canarn, Hail and now South Warden. He had broken any number of his personal rules about not getting involved in battles and deep down, in the pit of his stomach, he was amazed he was still alive. Quite how he had ended up on the receiving end of the king’s advance into the Freelands was a question he couldn’t really answer. One moment he’d been enjoying the hospitality of Fredericksand as a guest of Algenon Teardrop, the next he’d been skulking around Ro Canarn trying to avoid capture. He’d stood on the battlements of Ro Hail as Wraith Company repulsed the advance of the Red knights, and he’d stood next to Johan Long Shadow as South Warden was battered into submission.

  ‘What the... am I doing here?’ he asked himself, as a drop of blood fell on to his face from a dead body lying across him.

  He’d not seen Brother Lanry since the last attack and he hoped the Brown cleric was being treated as the non-combatant he was. If the Purple clerics who commanded the army had any semblance of honour, they’d allow Lanry to return to Ro Canarn and tell Bromvy what had happened – but he very much doubted that they would.

  Hasim began to shuffle his way to the edge of the pile of dead. No one was on guard around the low funeral pyres. Now the yeomanry had fallen back to their tents to rest, the centre of South Warden was like a ghost town. He had not removed the crossbow bolt from his chest, for fear of causing the wound to worsen, and his movements were jerky and uncomfortable as a result. He did not even try to stand as he made his escape, preferring instead simply to crawl away and pull himself into a deep toilet trench that ran alongside the central ground of the city, and then make his way towards the outer walls.

  ‘What does a man have to do to get killed,’ he muttered through gritted teeth.

  CHAPTER 8

  DALIAN THIEF TAKER IN THE CITY OF RO LEITH

  There was little greenery in Karesia aside from palm trees, cacti and the occasional garden, and Dalian found the city of Leith strange in comparison. The wilds of Tor Funweir were full of forests, but their cities were built of stone with little greenery. He liked the duchy of Leith, with its wide, tree-lined roads and pleasant, smiling people.

  The journey south had been straightforward and those he followed had made no effort to cover their tracks. Rham Jas Rami was no more than a few hours ahead of him and, as he entered Ro Leith, he was optimistic that Jaa would guide his search for the Kirin assassin. Leith was home to all manner of native and exotic birds. Around the second hill fluttered a variety of brightly coloured wings and the birdsong was a pleasant accompaniment to Dalian’s arrival in the city. He had made his way past the third hill and found a seat outside a tavern from where he could watch the comings and goings, and he had picked up the talk on the street that a Kirin criminal had been apprehended in a tavern nearby, though the locals were confused as to why half a dozen watchmen had been killed during the arrest. Whoever he was, it had taken more than twenty men to subdue him. This had made Dalian sure that Rham Jas Rami had been captured less than four hours before.

  Leith had little need for a well-guarded gaol. The building was large and ugly and more reminiscent of a Red church than a town gaol. The wind claws that patrolled the perimeter were a new addition. As a black hawk flew down and perched on a nearby tree, Dalian saw a man emerge from the darkness between the feeding troughs. He was a little drunk and, by the look of his pale, clammy face, the old Karesian guessed that he’d been sick in the recent past.

  ‘Another drink, sir?’ asked a Ro serving-boy.

  The presence of a Karesian did not concern the people of Leith, though Dalian had made a particular effort to appear old and unthreatening. He’d discarded his hound armour and wore a simple brown robe. Tor Funweir was more cosmopolitan in the south and, after bypassing Arnon, he had experienced little problem regarding his race.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘another glass of this excellent wine would be delightful.’

  The servant smiled and moved back inside the tavern. A moment later he returned with a bottle of Sixth Hill Reserve and poured Dalian a large measure.

  ‘Your first time in Leith, my lord?’ he asked, clearly accustomed to dealing with visitors.

  ‘Indeed,’ replied the Thief Taker. ‘I must say that I find your city most relaxing.’

  ‘We get a fair few Karesians, my lord. I think they like the trees and woods.’

  ‘Tell me, young man, what is all this I hear about a Kirin criminal?’ he asked.

  The servant turned excitedly. Evidently, the altercation earlier in the evening had been one of the more interesting things to happen recently. ‘It was the bloodiest thing ever,’ he replied, with the wide eyes of an eager child. ‘The Kirin killed twenty men with his curved sword. There were body parts and blood everywhere. My dad said he was an assassin or something.’

  ‘Did you hear his name by any chance?’ asked the old Karesian conversationally.

  ‘It was a strange Kirin name. Rami, or something.’

  ‘Thank you, lad,’ said Dalian, throwing a silver piece towards the boy, who caught it and ran back into the tavern.

  ‘Well, lord,’ he said addressing Jaa, ‘it seems we have a prison-break to plan. Any advice you can give me would be gratefully received.’

  Turning back towards the dungeon, the drunken man stood partially concealed in shadow, waiting for a gap in the guards’ patrol pattern before he emerged on to the street. There was an old longsword at the man’s side. A caw from the hawk that had landed nearby alerted the drunkard to the wind claws’ presence and prevented him from being seen. Once the way was clear, the hawk cawed again and the figure moved swiftly across the street.

  Dalian surmised that the enchantress in Ro Leith would want to keep the assassin alive for as long as p
ossible, prolonging the man’s suffering for weeks on end if she were able. This meant that time would be on the Thief Taker’s side. If the drunken man was the criminal from Tiris he’d been told about, and if he knew where the assassin was being held, Dalian thought they might have a chance of rescuing Rham Jas Rami before the enchantress had finishing amusing herself.

  ‘I could do with some guidance, lord,’ said Dalian to the air. ‘Or maybe a company of hardened warriors.’

  The drunkard was now lounging back on the grass and shaking his head. Dalian was not impressed. In Kessia, the title of mobster was one of respect. They were community figures who came from old families and dedicated themselves to keeping crime within certain honourable bounds. This man, apart from being a Ro, was slovenly and too far gone with drink to be of much use to anyone.

  ‘I’d rather rely on help that can stand upright without vomiting, lord.’ He spoke with an ironic smile.

  The black hawk circled once more, and the forger waved it dismissively away and revealed a second bottle of wine. ‘Yes, that’s sensible,’ muttered Dalian ironically. ‘Drink more, drown your sorrows, leave Rham Jas to die.’

  The hawk landed on the grass next to the forger. It fluttered its large wings a few times, hopping up and down. When he rolled over on the grass and turned his back to the agitated bird, it stopped making a noise and took to the air again. The Thief Taker followed the bird’s flight as it circled the drunken forger. After a few moments, its circle widened to encompass the tavern and the hawk gradually came closer to the ground until it disappeared into a small copse of trees.

  ‘I like birds, lord, really I do,’ said Dalian, ‘but they have certain disadvantages when it comes to wielding weapons effectively.’ He took a long drink of wine and reclined back in his chair. It was a pleasant evening and he enjoyed sitting outside under the darkening sky, at peace for a few moments after the rigours of recent weeks. The razing of Cozz had not been an enjoyable thing to witness and as the Thief Taker had travelled south his thoughts had been dark and morbid. He did not flinch at death, or even wholesale destruction, but the things he’d seen in the merchant enclave had stayed with him.