The Stealers' War

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘You want Willow dead?’

  ‘I want her destroyed for her treachery. She’s hiding in exile with her rebel friends. Bring her back to me. Willow must give birth in her husband’s estate. I owe Viscount Wallingbeck the squalling brat of an heir I promised him. After that, the gallows for high treason will be a fitting fate.’

  ‘Willow’s in Northhaven?’

  ‘Not anymore. Rodal. The rebel leadership has taken refuge inside the Rodalian capital,’ said Leyla. ‘The borderland is full of rebels and refugees fleeing the advancing southern armies. Remove a rebel uniform from a corpse and you’ll be able to pass over to the other side in the confusion easily enough.’

  ‘Well, you are Willow’s step-mother,’ laughed Nocks. ‘Dare say you know best.’

  I do try hard to arrange a convenient end to matters. Leyla noticed the deadly look in her odious little manservant’s eyes. Hatred, not lust. ‘I need the scandal of Willow’s betrayal erased. Settling scores with Jacob Carnehan and the pastor’s son can be attempted in your own time. Although I suspect King Marcus and his imperial allies will finish the job long before you get around to it.’

  ‘Those two are an itch that needs scratching,’ growled Nocks.

  ‘If it helps, think of the agony Carter Carnehan will endure after you abduct his lady-love and return her for chastisement. And if Carter pursues his unsuitably high-born woman south, then no doubt Father Carnehan will follow his son as he did before. Wouldn’t you prefer the chance to finish your business with the Carnehans personally, rather than hearing second-hand of how they died on the sharp end of a royalist bayonet?’

  Nocks nodded and Leyla knew she had her little beast back on the leash again. She reached behind his neck and scratched the back of his hairy, thick neck. Yes, I always know best. ‘Isn’t that better?’

  Duncan hadn’t visited the town he had been born in for years. The young Weylander had imagined a variety of greetings upon his return to Northhaven, and every one of them had all been happier than this. He fought desperately to hold on to the reins of his horse as it panicked, rearing wildly into the air with a hail of burning timber coming down around him. A fireball expanded out from where the bridge across the White Wolf River had been up until a few seconds ago, the horsemen crossing it incinerated along with their gun carriages. Duncan barely had time to take in infantry columns staggering away from the inferno, blue uniforms shredded or ablaze, before a volley of fire opened up on the road from the woodland to their left. That would have been me if I had been at the head of the column.

  ‘Take cover!’ yelled Duncan. He didn’t wait to see if the high and mighty officers of the Army of the Boles were heeding his advice. Duncan’s battle-trained mare recovered its nerves, and he spurred her towards the cover of a drainage ditch and low stone wall running along the wheat fields on his right. He pulled her down behind the stones and a granite marker indicating the town of Northhaven waited a mile away. It was topped with the arms of the House of Landor. The irony of its presence was reinforced when ‘Colonel’ Benner Landor came sprinting towards Duncan, just ahead of a hail of bullets, his father’s steed left fallen across the Northern Trading Road. Look, Father . . . we can die on our own land.

  ‘Bandits!’ Benner Landor yelled towards the trees. ‘Filth! You’ll hang for this. I’ll see every one of you swinging from a tree!’

  Duncan pulled his pistol out from its holster and fired blindly into the tree-line. Branches wavered in the volley of counter-fire, but it might just have been the chill wind making the leaves sway. ‘I don’t think they know who you are.’

  ‘On my own acres,’ growled his father, as though the shame of being ambushed here was worse for the powerful Benner Landor than any of the wounded soldiers lurching away from the river’s fast-flowing rapids.

  All the way down the road their regiment took cover where it could, returning fire into the woodland. Behind walls. In ditches. Lying flat in wheat fields. Their ambushers could be inside the trees or the thick bush below or they might have already retreated, vanishing into the wilds like malicious tree sprites. Duncan was glad that Paetro and Helrena had stayed with the Vandian fleet, the Imperium’s great ships landed in river flats to the east. Legionaries were felling trees for miles around, constructing fortified landing fields, camps and barracks for their forces. Nobody from the Imperium to witness my countrymen’s incompetence. This was still an army of hastily-formed amateurs. Bullets cut down fleeing southern soldiers trying to gain the field wall. Nope, our bushwhacking friends haven’t pulled back yet.

  An officer came crawling towards them, using the cover of the wall, pieces of flint flying from the stone above his wide-brimmed hat. Hugh Colbert was Northhaven’s prefect. He’d worn the additional title of General of the Army of the Bole easily when it seemed like advancement under the king’s patronage. Less easy now, though, with the politician crawling behind a field wall crumbling under heavy fire. Mud from the soggy ditch concealed the three gold-embroidered stars and wreath on the high collar of his blue double-breasted coat, but it couldn’t hide his temper.

  ‘I was told our path into Northhaven had been scouted and declared clear of marauders,’ barked Colbert.

  ‘It was,’ said Benner Landor. ‘The skyguard flew over this road only two hours ago.’

  ‘And the pretender’s supporters move at night,’ said Duncan, fighting to keep the exasperation from his voice. ‘Rarely in numbers large enough to count from the air.’

  ‘Move our cannons behind the wall!’ yelled Benner Landor down the road. ‘Load for grapeshot.’

  Duncan’s father appeared content to benefit from shelter denied his artillery-men. Out on the road soldiers struggled to hold the horses steady as nearly invisible snipers aimed shots at gunners and the trains of horses bearing each artillery piece. The royalist army’s heavy pieces had been crossing the bridge, leaving the survivors with relatively light gallopers and six pounders. Small mercies. We stand a chance of getting them behind cover. Bullets whizzed like angry hornets through the air. They were starting to be lost in gun smoke coming from the southerners, rifles loaded with shot after shot and emptied into the woods. Ammunition carriages were dragged off the road and unceremoniously dumped around the artillery, left halted in the mud as wagoneers forced their horses to lie down. Some soldiers loaded their cannons even as the artillery pieces were manhandled back behind the flint wall, charges and ammunition canisters rammed into place, and then the cannons bucked, discharging deadly clouds of grapeshot into the woods. Birds erupted for the sky as tree trunks splintered, their calls lost beneath the explosions. Duncan’s ears rang from the detonations. The nearest cannon was less than twenty feet away, rocking in the mud ditch, thick waves of dark, acrid powder smoke pouring out of its dark iron barrel and enveloping Duncan’s position. Its crew didn’t bother cooling the barrel with water; they rammed another load into place, trimmed the fuse and set the sixpounder off again.

  With the noise of the artillery fire, Duncan only noticed the cavalry company cantering behind the artillery when it was nearly on top of him, its riders and mounts seemingly unconcerned by the cannons’ thunder. He groaned as he noted the officer at the fore was Viscount Wallingbeck.

  ‘Hold your fire!’ called Colbert, his command shouted on and passed down the wall.

  ‘Chased down many a fox through woods far thicker than this,’ Duncan’s brother-in-law hooted. ‘And rebel vermin don’t dig warrens to escape into.’ Viscount Wallingbeck spurred his horse forward, hurdling the wall and galloping towards the dark pines, yelling as his carbine tore bark off the trees. The nobleman was followed eagerly by his company, shredding their way through the undergrowth with heavy steel cavalry sabres and from the sound of it, riding down anything they encountered below their mounts’ hooves.

  ‘Forward the cavalry!’ came the infantry’s cries from behind the wall. General Colbert’s infantrymen rediscover their spirit quick enough when someone else shows up to do the dying for them.


  ‘Noble blood,’ said Benner, approvingly. ‘Quality of birth shows through every time.’

  Pity it didn’t rub off on the viscount’s wife. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that Willow Landor was one of the rebels just aiming pot-shots at them from the woods.

  ‘A solid fellow,’ said Colbert. ‘A yard of sharp steel is a fitting last meal for those traitors.’

  Duncan suspected the majority of their ambushers possessed the good sense to pull back when they noticed cannons being loaded with grapeshot. Those left firing were only holding fast to slow the pursuit; but the rebels hadn’t counted on the reckless abandon of a brute like Viscount Wallingbeck riding with them. Colbert didn’t order the infantry in after them. Once the cavalrymen had the bit between their teeth, anyone around them was likely to be ridden into the mud and sliced at, friend and foe alike. A strange silence fell down the length of the road. Their column left as spectators. The creaking of cooling cannon barrels, shots and yells muffled by the undergrowth. Sentries were picketed just inside the trees to ensure their ambushers didn’t try to circle back. Wisely, in Duncan’s opinion, the artillery was left behind the wall in case they were needed to clear for action again. The road was emptied of corpses and dropped supplies, wounded soldiers attended to, horses calmed and wagons put back into some sense of order. Wallingbeck and his men emerged from the dark shade of the trees ten minutes later, a disarmed sergeant in a rebel uniform stumbling before them. A boot against his back from one of the riders sent the prisoner into the arms of the infantry.

  ‘This is all we have to show for the fight?’ demanded General Colbert. ‘A single damnable outlaw?’

  ‘There’re more bodies dead back there,’ said William Wallingbeck. ‘Not enough to account for the fire the column took, I’d say. With your permission, we’ll ride around to the eastern edge of the woods and see if we can flush out any of the pretender’s grouse that attempt to fly that way.’

  Colbert nodded and the horsemen rode off whooping, waving their sabres in the air.

  ‘I know you, man,’ said Benner. ‘You work for the Avisons as an estate manager.’

  ‘Not anymore,’ spat the captured soldier. ‘Now I work as a pig slaughterer. Southern pigs and the traitors who support them.’

  Duncan’s father might be an amateur officer, but he had a memory like a steel trap when it came to the business of the house. Particularly as it related to people who worked for commercial rivals inside the prefecture.

  ‘Not one of mine,’ said Benner, taking whatever consolation he could from the fact.

  ‘Long live the assembly of the people and the people’s king. May maggots feast on the usurper’s bony arse.’

  ‘You stand condemned as a rebel by your own detestable words,’ said Colbert. ‘Hang him.’

  ‘I wear a uniform. I’m a soldier. I demand the common conventions and protection of the Lanca.’

  ‘You are nothing but a bandit in grey rags, sir. The outlaw pretender you serve has fled the nation and you shall suffer the same sentence as Owen when we capture him.’

  ‘Hang him in front of the town,’ said Benner. ‘Raise him like a standard on the flagpole for everyone in Northhaven to see the cost of rebellion against the king.’

  ‘A capital suggestion,’ said Colbert. ‘And he won’t be the last example that needs setting. By the saints, Benner, if you had not rebuilt this city after the slavers’ raid, I would burn a street for every soldier lying dead on the road here today.’

  Duncan’s father looked pale enough to faint. ‘I am grateful for your forbearance, Hugh. I still have loans on the majority of the properties. The cost of building a new cathedral was enough to bankrupt a lesser house than mine.’

  ‘Well then, we shall have to make sure it’s the rebels who pay for the cost of meeting their treachery,’ said General Colbert. ‘We’ll root them out; confiscate land and title deeds from every traitor who put the king’s treasury to such cost.’ He looked meaningfully at Benner. ‘Such reparations are King Marcus’ due. And the king’s allies in the north.’

  ‘Our due,’ agreed Benner.

  ‘And how will the rebels pay?’ asked Duncan. ‘When you throw the defeated off their land and cast them out of their stores and premises?’

  ‘With their labour, of course,’ said Colbert. ‘The new mills in the south are hungry for indentured labour. And the estates up here will be far more profitable without greedy field-hands constantly grasping and griping in the cause of unreasonable wages, threatening to down tools at every opportunity.’

  Benner nodded. ‘It is good to see our Prefect still remembers the problems of the region.’

  ‘When an ungrateful hound bites the hand that feeds it, you kick it quite thoroughly and place the dog on a shorter leash,’ said the general. ‘We have been over-kind for too many years, and our forbearance has been interpreted as weakness by the rebels.’

  Duncan watched the struggling Avison man held by two soldiers as a noose was fitted around his neck by a third trooper. He suspected the nobles’ so-called kindness wasn’t a mistake that would ever be repeated. Not as far as Northhaven and its people were concerned. This isn’t your business. Northhaven is no longer your home. Forget that and you’ll end up back here shuffling trade papers for old man Landor like a glorified clerk until you’re old enough to need a walking stick. Vandia is where everything that matters to you belongs now.

  Colbert mounted his horse, drawing his sabre to point it down the river. ‘March east to Little Bridge and ford the river there. Check for powder charges first. When you’ve crossed, secure the airfield so we can start landing our skyguard.’

  Crossing Northhaven’s town limits was a surreal experience for Duncan. The last time he had seen his home was through the grubby glass porthole of a slave carrier, circling the burning town from a few thousand feet, jostling with his fellow prisoners in a crowded slave hold for what they all thought would be their last ever glimpse of home. I suppose for many of them, it was. But not for Duncan. He had risen to become an imperial citizen. Past all the fools and doubters who had only seen a spoilt, pampered, useless and largely ornamental heir to the House of Landor. Past all the jealous townspeople who had considered Duncan’s capture as a slave his just deserts for lording it over the rest of them for so long. From what he had seen of his devastated town, left burning by the slavers’ incendiary bombs, Benner Landor had done a grand job of rebuilding Northhaven when Duncan was far-called inside Vandia. The old, narrow, wooden streets that once sprawled up the hill towards the ancient fortified citadel of the old town, had been rebuilt as wide open boulevards flanked by four-storey stores, apartments and businesses, backed up by suburbs which sprawled across twice the area they had replaced. There was even a full-sized stone cathedral risen on the outskirts of the town. No wonder my father was so worried about all of this being damaged in a siege. Part of Duncan couldn’t help but resent Northhaven. Benner Landor’s duty to house and staff, the best excuse his father had to avoid joining the rescue expedition which had ventured after the slavers. Leaving me and Willow to rot wherever we ended up. Replacing our mother with Leyla and his son with a fresh new heir. It would serve him right if he saw the fruit of his crippling loans go up in flames and smoke again. Jacob Carnehan had risked his life to save his son Carter, Willow and every other Weylander left alive in the sky mines. And he was just a common pastor who turned out to be a murdering bandit hiding out from the law. Would Benner Landor have survived the hard, long, dangerous journey from Weyland to Vandia? Unlikely. Even Jacob Carnehan had arrived at the far end driven half-mad from the voyage, stripped down to the true, ragged core of the killer he had once been. But then, by rights, everyone in the expedition should have died. Because that was what family did for family. They put their necks on the line for those they love. Duncan snorted to himself. But not me. I’ve got a treacherous sister who wants to stick a knife in my back and a father who’d sooner shuffle trade papers in the warmth of h
is mansion than try to save his own children.

  Duncan glanced back towards the landau. The open carriage rattled up the hillside avenue drawn by a pair of white mares. His father putting Leyla Landor on display was an all-too-obvious way of flaunting the fact Northhaven’s richest family had returned to take charge; the hard-faced blue-uniformed soldiers lining the streets the guarantee of the king’s imposed peace. Sitting in the facing seat of the open carriage, Adella Cheyenne appeared happier about returning to Northhaven than his father’s new wife. There’s an irony for you. When Adella had been a common town clerk’s daughter with an eye on snaring Duncan as her future husband, Benner Landor couldn’t do enough to keep the young woman out of the way of his son. Now that Adella was one of the favoured courtesans of a powerful Vandian nobleman, she was permitted to ride alongside Leyla Landor. The sight of captured rebel bodies swinging from lampposts didn’t seem to be enough to rub the sheen off Adella’s return, at least, not in her eyes – affecting all the pomp and majesty of a queen returning to her kingdom. William Wallingbeck had done a thorough job of sweeping the town with his cavalry. Duncan’s brother-in-law had handily discovered enough traitors to decorate the streets all the way up the hill to the gatehouse of the walled old town. I wonder how many of them were actually rebel supporters, and how many the result of old grudges and family feuds being settled? It seemed unlikely to Duncan that those actually involved in the rebellion would have hung around to see how forgiving King Marcus’ forces would prove to be. There was a lack of males of fighting age along the town’s streets, along with an awkward predominance of surly pensioners and frightened mothers with trains of young children clinging to them. That suggested that anyone with trouble in mind and treason in their heart was hiding out in the wilds somewhere. The pinched faces and hungry expressions of the townspeople indicated a serious lack of backs labouring in the Landor fields, too.