by C. B. Currie
Bells rang out as they neared the short beach at mid-tide, where a single wooden pier reached out into deeper waters and a small trading boat sat idle. There were fishing vessels too, pulled up onto the beach, nets hung to dry. Townsfolk could be seen running to and fro and some armored guardsmen clustered around the chapel near the shore, their weapons and shields at the ready. Still more folk fled inland toward wooded hills. Some were on horseback and would be long gone by the time the raiders had landed. Thunder clouds brewed behind the longships as Algas turned to his rowers and raised his broadsword to address them.
‘The gods and your ancestors are watching you this day! Tonight we will feast on the Southlanders’ cattle and lie upon their wives and daughters. Be true to your blades and your brothers and we will be victorious!’
The rowers cheered and released their oars, standing to don helmets and buckle swordbelts as the ship glided on its momentum the last few lengths toward the shore. Gormir’s prow was the first to crunch into the rough, shell-strewn sands, followed by Algas then Gerwulf. Men splashed down into the chill waters, knee-deep and waist deep and waded to the shore to form up on the beach. Each crew formed its lines, three small shield walls under a darkening sky, drew their weapons and advanced up the beach.
Algas could see clearly now the town guard, mailed and helmeted, sporting red tunics, some faded others new and all emblazoned with the white symbol of a tree and a stag. Their shields were long and pointed at the tip and painted red with the same motif. It was no doubt the symbol of the local lord, for the traders had spoken of soldiers in red. Yet there were only a handful of them, perhaps three dozen at most. They were formed up around front of the stone chapel where it faced the sea and they were outnumbered by these northern reavers.
It was likely in this building or its cellars that the women and children who had not fled, and the old and the lame were sheltering. Algas had done this many times before in the few years since reaching manhood. It would be a brief battle followed by the rounding up of slaves. They would plunder the southlander temple, stripping it of the silver reliquaries, golden book bindings and bejeweled icons, then search the dockside warehouses and the homes of the village for anything of value. The night would be spent feasting in this town’s hall, to the moaning of ravished maidens and the dour, shamed faces of the menfolk who would be sold across the water never to see their homeland again. It was not a fate he would wish upon himself or his kin, but it was the fate of the weak. Those who put their faith in holy trees, wrote their religion in sacred books and prayed forgiveness for simple pleasures such as drinking, whoring and gorging themselves at feasts were most certainly weak. They even prayed for the souls of their enemies. If any deserved to be thralls it was this pathetic people.
Gormir would do the talking as usual. Algas looked across at his brother as the older man’s crew moved ahead of the other two. He was tall, taller even than Algas, though a little leaner and not so broad of chest and shoulder. His hair was much darker and he wore a thick beard, and despite a scar that ran the length of his cheek, was undeniably handsome. He had a wife, a son, several concubines and a half dozen bastards, whereas Algas was yet to be wed. He carried a large round shield and a hefty single–handed war axe. He was an uncompromising man. The southlanders had sent envoys only a week before and he had beaten them, spat on them, even pissed on one and sent them away as a warning.
‘Who among you commands?’ Gormir called in the tongue of the southlanders. They had spent enough time now on these shores and in the company of their local captives, and in any case the words were not too dissimilar.
‘I do,’ answered an older soldier with a thick white beard.
‘You are outnumbered,’ Gormir informed him his voice raised to carry the fifty paces or so to the chapel, but otherwise calm. ‘If you leave you may take your own wives and one child each, and we will spare your lives.’
It sounded merciful, but they were mindful of how much spare was on the boats. Letting them live would mean the sea-raiders would have to take their plunder and leave as soon as they could, before reinforcements arrived. There would be no swiving on the bellies of captured girls this night. It would also limit the number of captives and possibly cost them some of the plunder any guards might manage to stash and take with them. However it was also the preferred outcome. Even outnumbered three to one, these men might put up a formidable defense to protect their own people. They could kill or maim as many as a dozen of Gormir’s men and those were men he could ill-afford to lose. Easy plunder was not the most profitable, but the war band that shrunk by a dozen on every raid would have a short future.
‘You will find no treasure here,’ the old soldier answered. ‘Let us depart and you may look for yourselves.’
Algas thought it unlikely the townsfolk had managed to remove all the valuables in the chapel on such short warning, but it was entirely possible that most of the town had run away by now. With captured horses, they could likely be rounded up from the countryside and farmsteads about, but it was likely that the horses were mostly gone as well. He was thankful it was his brother who was leading for he would have been unsure of the response. Attack and hope they were lying, that the chapel was filled with slaves and silver, or let them go without shedding any blood and hope at least to gain some profit from whatever the town had left behind?
But Gormir was a leader because he was a shrewd survivor and ensured that his men lived to fight another day as well. It was obvious the raiders had surprised the town, unless earlier raids up the coast had led them to hide their wealth or remove it to safer places inland. That would almost certainly be the course for a prepared chapel for no raid in a hundred years had ventured more than a few miles from the coast, not since the great warbands of old.
‘Go then,’ answered Gormir, a note of disgust in his voice. ‘Run like old women and tell your lord you’re still men.’
The old soldier turned, nodded at his men, and they fell back around the chapel, filing through the town between houses and barns until they passed out the far side and could be seen marching hurriedly through the fields toward the distant and darkening woods. A light rain began to spatter. Gormir turned and bowed theatrically at his men and they cheered and raised their weapons again. Algas was smiling at the easy victory, though he was less optimistic now about their chances of plunder.
The ranks broke and almost a hundred northern reavers poured into the town., Gormir, Algas and red-bearded cousin Gerwulf led some of the senior warriors into the chapel. The doors were closed but not barred, and opened easily. The large stone building, bigger even than the wooden hearth-halls of some kings back in the north, was a testament to the wealth of the soft southern lands. There were two rows of varnished wooden pews flanking a wide aisle down the middle. The floor was polished stone tiles and a gilt-edge wooden dais stood on a platform at the front beneath a man-high wooden carving of their sacred tree. What little light was left streamed in through high windows intricately worked in colored glass to display scenes of miracles or magic from the southlanders’ tales of their holy man’s life. It was empty and eerily silent; a redcheek sparrow flitted from the high rafters and flew out the open door. The rain fell heavier now on the tiled roof and they had to raise their voices a little to be heard in the echo.
‘Pull up the benches,’ Gormir ordered, ‘and go and look in the back rooms.’
Algas and Gerwulf were first into the rear of the chapel, where two small chambers sat that looked like the living quarters for one of the Southlander priests. There was a wooden bed in the smaller room and in the larger, shelves of bound books and scrolls. There was a trapdoor leading to a basement and Algas raised an eyebrow at his cousin who smiled.
Just then panicked voices could be heard outside, the familiar gruff tones of their own men. A warrior burst in to the back rooms and shouted, ‘Horses!’
Algas and Gerwulf ran back through the chapel, empty now of their men, and out into the gathering dark and driving
rain. Along the beach a column of mounted warriors came riding from the north, with glistening spears and helms and trailing flowing cloaks. Gormir was already forming up another wall of shields and more men streamed back to the shore from inside the town, some laden with sacks of goods already looted from the houses.
‘There!’ Gerwulf pointed through the houses toward the fields. The red-clad clad watchmen were returning, now with more men, hundreds it looked like, some in blue, most on foot, all with weapons and some mounted on large chargers. They were surely outnumbered now and worse, the horsemen had cut off their retreat to the beached ships.
The men were nervous, looking for leadership, but not panicked for they were hardened warriors, and fortunately his brother was confident enough to inspire. Yet the formation was haphazard, thrown together and not the three neat crews of men that had advanced up the beach a few minutes earlier. They would have to fight as a single troop, for splitting up would surely doom them. Although they had been outnumbered before and had prevailed, Algas knew that some of their number must die this day, perhaps many, perhaps even himself, for the crows that fed on the dead cared not whether they were leaders or followers. He drew his sword again and fell in with the forming ranks.
Four
Rain beat down on the tiles of the roof and wind lashed the walls and rattled the shutters. Father Haendric was awoken by something made of iron crashing to the ground outside - a shovel or a rake left propped against a wall - and wondered if he would be able to get back to sleep in this weather. Thunder clapped again overhead and he decided against it. There were still embers glowing in the small iron stove in his room and he roused himself, creaky knees supporting him as he staggered out of bed, and fetched some more kindling from the basket in the corner.
As the flames danced to life again, the old priest sat down at his desk, picked up a thick tallow candle and leaned over to light it in the fire, placed it back on the desk, poured himself a small cup of wine and settled back in the chair with a leather-bound tome. These were the translated works of Al-Ghalil, another of the heathen explorers and scholars officially shunned by the Faith. He had collected such works for many years, for most of his life in fact, and with the Prior’s blessing had been allowed to keep them in a corner of the library here at Havenside, if only for the outward purposes of studying the enemy.
Though he was one of the few men he knew who could read the cursive, flowing script of the Qureshi, he did not claim to be fluent, or even to be able to speak much. Pronunciation remained something of a mystery to him, but for the few words and phrases men like Beland had brought back from the wars in the east or pilgrimage to the Holy City of Sulimh. Yet he was capable of deciphering much of it, with a lexicon to help and with years of experience in translating from Ventish, the Old Tongue, and the original text of the Strictures, to guide his instincts. Thunder clapped again and the candle flame flickered in a small draught. Perhaps rainy nights were best for quietly pondering ancient texts.
He heard that such rain storms never visited the shores of Al-Ghalil’s land, far to the south and east. Men said it was a place of hot cloudless summer skies, blazing sands and azure coasts. The cities were said to be vast, with winding alleys, great marketplaces covered from the sun’s glare and temples with spires that pierced hundreds of feet into the air. A man could buy anything in such cities: spices, silks fine jewels and exotic wines; slaves of every color from the blackest men of the southern deserts to the fairest maidens of the frigid north; great beasts the size of a house and snakes thicker than a man’s arm; sweet meats and exotic fruits that would never grow in the chilly climes of his own country. Haendric visited Bastion’s summer market outside the north gate almost every year and could scarcely imagine more variety than that: except for the tumblers, fortune tellers, harlots and thieves. These great eastern realms were said to have all this and more.
But more than this they possessed knowledge. So much had been lost since the great empires of the south had crumbled and the western realms had clawed their way up out of invasions, internecine wars, revolts and regicide. But the people of the east seem to have thrived, building desert kingdoms amid lush oases and busy sea routes and becoming centers of learning and theology. Haendric believed this knowledge, indeed the civilizations themselves, decried by the Fathers of the Faith as heathendom, would be the path to greatness for his religion too. At the very least, he could better himself through lifelong learning.
Al-Ghalil’s book was something of a mystery however. Haendric was one of few men who had learned the language of the desert people, but its idiosyncrasies still posed challenges. Ghalil was a long-dead scholar and sage of Quresh who had written his works some three hundred years before. Ghalil spoke in an older, classical dialect, and he spoke often in riddles and metaphor. The book was an allegory of some sort, its purpose not to enlighten but to nudge the reader, or the listener if it were meant to be a sermon, onto a righteous path.
It concerned a man, a mystic and wandering healer, never named, who struggled to lead a pious life. He had temptations, even succumbed to them at times, but was always brought back to The Path, as the book referred to it and, Haendric hoped his translation was accurate, by his own guiding principles and the help and advice of loved ones. Haendric reflected on how much like his own people the Qureshi were. The more he read, the more he struggled to name the differences between the Faith and the beliefs of the heathens, though it would be heresy to speak such thoughts aloud. He wondered if Ghalil had ever thought the same. He did not doubt as a man, the author had shared some of the trials and doubts of his subject.
It was one of two volumes in the library that Haendric had only just gotten around to working on some months earlier. He hadn’t finished the other yet either, but had been curious enough to delve into the second volume at the same time. Haendric finished his cup and closed the book, his tired mind best rested so that he might resume deciphering the easterner’s work in the morning. He was about to blow out the candle on his desk, when he heard shouting from down the hall.
Vanis came to his door first, as the old priest drew a heavy cloak about himself to ward off the cold.
‘Thieves!’ the novice shouted, ‘They were in the chapel!’
Haendric hurried after the youth, who was much faster, as he ran down the corridor past more cell doors opening with startled monks stepping out. Some carried candles, others flaming torches, others still garden tools, walking staffs or short logs of firewood and other makeshift weapons.
They crossed the rain-swept courtyard as lightning flashed in the night sky and arrived at the chapel door to find a gathering crowd of brown and grey robes inside. In the nave, clergymen huddled around Prior Algwyn, a tall, lean, dour old man, hunched over the crumpled grey-robed form of one of the priests.
‘Let me closer,’ Haendric said irritably, for his age and authority meant that the monks and novices should give way. It still took help from Vanis and the lad was at least tall enough and had enough reach to part the muttering crowd and let the old priest through.
‘It’s Father Caddock,’ the prior said, as Haendric crouched down beside them. The music teacher was moaning, his face and grey robes bloodied. He had a large swollen lump on the side of his balding head.
‘I tried to stop them,’ he sobbed. ‘Two men. They took the candle stands, just those, and some books!’
Haendric shook his head as he took the priest’s head in his hands and examined the welt. He sounded delirious. Men had died of such injuries after a day or two, but if Caddock was talking he was probably alright. He was holding up one wrist that hung limp and misshapen, and Haendric thought that the priest must have broken it in the fall. It would heal.
It was no surprise that books and candelabras were stolen. The ornaments were made of good silver and the books bound in bronze, silver or gold. Some had very ornate bindings and locks wrought by Ventish goldsmiths across the sea and imported at great cost, for the priory was well-endowed by the loc
al nobility, who saw their salvation in the afterlife tied to how they spent their wealth in this.
Caddock was taken away and the brothers who searched the chapel and the library later found a good many missing treasures: a silver reliquary that had once housed the bones of a saint but was thankfully empty these days; a strongbox with donated jewels, sculpted bookends covered with gold leaf and a knee-high stand of the Lifetree. Apart from the bookends, which were taken from shelves in the library, these had all been locked the dais cupboard, which had been pried open with a iron bar that was found lying on the floor. The thieves had been disturbed by Caddock and had made off quickly, but not before wrestling briefly with the ageing priest who had tried to snatch back one of the bags they had filled.
Caddock now lay recovering in the infirmary and Haendric sat with the prior and several other older priest and friars.
‘They may have found buyers for the books,’ one monk suggested. ‘There are merchants, even lords who will buy stolen volumes.’
‘Unlikely,’ offered another. ‘They only managed to clear one corner of a shelf. They didn’t pick and choose.’
‘I’ve never met thief who can read,’ Haendric snorted, ‘but perhaps their buyers can, and they’ll pick and choose the ones they want.’
‘Take an inventory of the missing volumes in the morning.’ Prior Algwyn ordered. ‘Perhaps we can get more copies made in Castlereach. How much silver and gold was taken?’
‘A sack full at least,’ said Brother Penn, the treasurer of the priory. ‘I will have a full count by tomorrow evening.’
‘And father Caddock?’
‘He will be fine.’ Said Haendric whose knowledge of medicines, potions and salves made him the priory and the village’s unofficial master of healing. ‘He has a broken wrist and won’t be able to play the harp in a while. I have set it and placed a splint.’