by Anna Thayer
When the column made camp during those nights Eamon often sought Anderas. His wound was turning ugly, but the surgeons said that amputation would certainly kill him. Anderas bravely denied that anything was wrong. Eamon wondered if there was any hope for the captain at all.
Every moment they were goaded by wheel tracks frozen in the muddy road – their quarry had passed that way before them. It made the road an agent of their shame.
It was the third morning following the battle. The road had run steadily west and a little south, towards the River. Eamon knew that a couple more days would see them to Dunthruik. Anderas’s worsening plight was a distraction from the awful welcome that awaited him at the Blind Gate.
Eamon was riding a little way back from the front of the marching lines that morning, trying to encourage the remaining wounded, gathered in carts and buried under all the cloaks that could be spared. They had been moving for perhaps two hours when the lines came to a halt. At first Eamon assumed it signified an unsteady part of the road that would need to be negotiated with care, but the delay persisted. He spurred his horse on to the front of the lines.
They had come to a small hamlet. A couple of Hands and a Gauntlet officer were examining the road.
“What is it, gentlemen?”
“It was here,” snarled one of the Hands – Lord Febian. His fingers pointed in a wild, clawing gesture at the ground. There were traces of grain and wagon marks. “The rest of the bloody convoy was here. It off-loaded supplies and went north off the road.”
“If it no longer goes before us then we may reduce our vanguard sentries,” Eamon answered, trying to keep his voice measured. He was deeply surprised to see that the tracks went north – he had thought that the wayfarers’ strength was in the south – but didn’t have time to consider the matter. The Hand’s tone was feral and men were breaking rank to find out what was happening.
“It stopped here,” Febian continued, then shrieked, “and these people helped them!” Angry assent rumbled through the ranks like thunder.
Things threatened to rupture. Eamon glanced anxiously at the village – there were people there. Some had come to look at the soldiers and many now froze in the streets, afraid – rightly so – that any movement on their part might trigger violence. Eamon’s men wanted vengeance for what had been done to them. They wanted to take it there. Eamon could not allow it.
He dismounted and stepped close to the Hand. “Don’t incite a massacre, Lord Febian,” he hissed. “There has been enough blood. There will be no more, do you understand?”
“Yes, Lord Goodman,” Febian growled.
“Whose blood has it been?” roared another Hand, jabbing at Eamon with an accusing finger. “Ours! And they shed it. They helped the bastards who killed our men and destroyed our pride. They will go on to strike at the Master. Shall it be said that we saw the Master’s enemies and did not strike them? It is our duty!”
Eamon could have killed him where he stood.
“I said no more blood!”
But the Hand’s words had grown to a howl; they were joined by the bitter squall of the company’s fury. It was too late.
Some of the villagers ran; it triggered an enormous cry as scores of vengeful men broke ranks and poured into the dirty streets. Aghast, Eamon tried desperately to stop them as swords, knives, and daggers flew to their hands. Fingers became talons that carved flesh with the speed of steel.
The incensed mass streamed into the village. The screaming started.
Eamon hurled himself back into the saddle. The square was a mass of moving flesh, some of it already dead, and the soldiers a crimson wave. Men and women tried to flee and were stopped, some beaten to the ground and others dragged away from the square to be tortured.
Eamon yelled and shouted, cried and commanded, but in their rabid frenzy none would hear him. He shook and balked and raged and stared in horror; the violence that he saw was not perpetrated against the King, but against absent soldiers. He wept. It was a glut of madness that he could not stop.
The camp was quiet that night. Eamon sat once more at Anderas’s bedside, his bed little more than a stiff bundle of cloaks on the hard ground. He had brought the captain something to drink. Anderas struggled to take a sip, growing weaker by the day. It was too much for Eamon to bear.
There had been rape and murder, hangings, men impaled, and children disembowelled before their parents. Houses had been burned, their contents hurled onto the streets and hacked with manic blows. Blood had been poured into the well along with dozens of small bodies. He did not know how many had escaped, or been left, wounded and alive, to suffer.
“You couldn’t have stopped it,” Anderas murmured. Eamon shuddered. “Forgive me for saying so, Lord Goodman, but you were a fool to try. They could have turned on you, too.”
Eamon could not answer him.
“Perhaps on your tour of duty in the north you never saw similar,” Anderas added weakly, “but it is not uncommon – especially when our enemy is as hidden as this Serpent is. Defeat – shame, and the death of brothers in arms – puts a kind of madness into men’s blood. But right senses return. Many of these men will not sleep soundly for a long time.”
What good was broken sleep? “It will not atone for what they did,” Eamon snapped.
“It won’t,” Anderas agreed. “You should rest, Lord Goodman.” His breathing sounded sickly and shallow.
“Yes,” Eamon murmured, but he did not move.
They remained silent for a long time. Anderas fell asleep. Eamon saw him shuddering beneath the cloaks as the chill moon rose. The camp was quiet.
Anderas was going to die. The surgeons had informed him that the wound was past their skill. It was rumoured that the Easters used arrows with poisoned tips but the surgeons believed that the wound had turned with infection. Anderas fought it bravely, but was doomed to meet with as much success as the battle in which he had garnered the hurt.
Eamon watched the captain’s pale, sweating face, sorrow and anger grinding hard in his heart. He would not have lost the battle if he had been a wayfarer. He could have saved the village if he had been a King’s man. If he had ever been the First Knight he could save Anderas, even now. But the throned’s mark was on him. He had never been – and could never become – the man whom Hughan had believed him to be. He saw that now. The battle was lost, the village was slaughtered, and Anderas would die.
He laid his hand on the captain’s brow. It was clammy beneath his touch. Would Anderas last the night? Choking back a sob, he brushed his hair aside. Why should Anderas die for what he had not had the courage to be?
He closed his eyes. He pleaded with the blue light, the King’s grace, begging it to overlook his oaths and transgressions, imploring it to come and save a man whose life surely deserved saving. Was it not but little to ask?
You are not a Serpent’s man. Cease your unseemly pleading. No grace will come to you, son of Eben. You serve me.
The voice worked cruelly in his mind and his hope fell, crushed. No grace would come. Anderas would die.
He tore his hand away and rose. He could not stay there.
They had camped by the roadside again that night, among a small cluster of hills that offered shelter from the wind. The hillside was dotted with campfires; he heard their distinctive crackling. He did not know – and barely cared – where his feet took him. None noted him, a shadow among shadows at the edge of the firelight. He swept on into the hills until the noise of the camp was far behind him. He walked until his feet began to climb and he was scaling the hillside, his lungs burning with effort. He gasped in the cold air.
Suddenly he stopped. The rocky hillside lay all before him. But there was something different about the half-lit shadows. Part of him remembered the feeling of so long ago, when Ma Mendel had first led him to the Hidden Hall. As he gazed hard at the windswept grass he felt a similar sensation.
Scarcely daring to breathe, he walked forward until he stood between two of the stones. H
e was staring directly into the hillside. He smelled the cool earth. He reached out with one hand, and stepped forward.
He opened his eyes to the inside of a hall. It was rounded and worked with grey stone. Dull paintings, faded with age, marked the walls. Dust lay thick on the floor and burnt-out torches were bracketed to cracked wall-stones. Behind him he saw out onto the moonlit hillside and down to the field of campfires.
The hall was deserted. It gazed out over the stony hillside, an unseeing guardian that watched the road to Dunthruik.
Why had he come in? Perhaps he had hoped that the place would be filled with wayfarers who, seeing his black cloak, would have fallen upon him and killed him before they realized who he was – or wasn’t. He remembered the face of the Easter who had spared him and the eyes of those from the desecrated village who, with their screams, had begged him to spare them. He thought of Anderas, pale and shivering under borrowed cloaks while death choked him…
The moon cast a long arc of light over the hall wall. He looked up. His eyes stung – was he weeping?
There was a shape cut into the stone. Blinking hard, he made out the blade of a sword. It was matched by a star whose light, made real by the moon, hallowed both the carved blade and the house whose emblem it was.
With sudden fury Eamon slammed clenched fists against the wall. Clods of dirt fell from it. He let go of his voice. An anguished, enraged howl, which he had held inside himself since the battle, erupted from his lungs, reverberating in his throat. He roared. Sobbing hard, he sank down to his knees in front of the stone. Watched only by the moonlight he called on the name of the King in despair – and no answer came to him.
CHAPTER XXIII
It was still dark when he came to his senses. Tangled dream fragments faded around him: voices, and a light so faint that it had died before he had really seen it.
He struggled to open his swollen eyes, wondering what hour it was. The stars had moved. The trees were shifting in the breeze, their distant branches strangely silent.
He shivered and stretched, glad for the first time of his robe of shadow. His memory returned. There could be no peace for him. There was nothing left to him. He feared both the King and the flame-haired thief of the crown.
He stood slowly. He had to go back; he had to lead his men to the city. He tried telling himself that until he had dispensed of that duty nothing would befall him.
Why was his choice so impossible?
He did not want to leave the hall, but he did not want to stay. How could he face revealing his loss and shame to the whole city? Already he saw the heaving mass of Dunthruik rushing at him in scorn.
But it was nothing compared with how Hughan would receive him.
Grief-stricken, he left.
He retraced his steps to the camp. Spirals of smoke showed faintly against the grey sky. The sounds of men and horses grew louder and he soon found himself passing the grazing beasts. They were curiously calm, oblivious to wars and oaths. One of them – a tall, muddy-coated creature – paced towards him. Eamon rested his hands on the horse’s muzzle. It was warm, and some small comfort.
He continued to the part of the camp where the surgeons guarded and treated the wounded. Soldiers were stirring, pale faced and grim. Eamon could hardly bring himself to greet them.
The surgeons were already awake; he wondered if they ever slept. By the surgeons’ fires he saw a figure laid out beneath a pall. The sight filled him with leaden dread.
“Lord Goodman,” greeted the leading surgeon.
“Lieutenant,” Eamon answered. The half a dozen Gauntlet surgeons were the only men who had not partaken in the massacre the day before. “What news?”
“We lost another during the night.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” he managed.
“We could cure the majority of these wounds in the city,” the man told him. His frustration was evident. “Even Captain Anderas’s hurt would have been relatively straightforward.”
Eamon’s heart plummeted. So he was dead.
“We could have saved so many more, my lord,” the lieutenant continued, “had we anticipated the kind, and number, of injuries to be sustained in the attack.” The officer blanched. “I’m sorry, my lord. I spoke out of turn. I didn’t mean –”
“Peace, lieutenant.” Eamon swallowed, struggling to contain his grief. “Your task these past days has been hard, and your work honourable. It does you no ill to speak the truth.”
The man looked astonished. “Thank you, my lord,” he stammered.
They stood in silence. Eamon summoned his courage. “May I see Captain Anderas?” He owed the captain at least a farewell.
“Over there, my lord.” The surgeon gestured to the dwindling fires.
Heavy-hearted, Eamon walked to where he had left the captain the previous night. If he had only had the strength to choose and keep an oath! Then none of this would have happened – none of them would be dead.
“You look terribly lugubrious this morning, Lord Goodman.”
Eamon started. Anderas sat propped against a tree trunk, making the most of a dying fire while he waited for his turn to be helped to the wagon.
Eamon stared. Anderas was alive! He looked frail and his cheeks bore a ghastly pallor but he was alive. Eamon felt the impulse to rush and embrace the man, but the weight of black made him awkwardly hold his ground.
“Something the matter, Lord Goodman?” Anderas croaked.
“They told me you were dead,” Eamon stammered.
“They told me I was fortunate. What a terribly embarrassing conflict of information!” His laughter was broken by coughing.
Eamon struggled to grasp the enormity of the truth. It was beyond the comprehension of his hope. “But… they said you would die.”
“Should it salve your mind, my lord, I am still in grave danger,” Anderas answered. “But I might make it back to the city. If I do, they say that they can probably clear the infection.”
“Let it be so!” Eamon rejoiced.
“I shall second that. Truthfully, I did not expect to see the light of day again,” Anderas confided. “But there seems to be new strength in me since the night began.”
Eamon laughed with relief. Neither knowing nor caring where the captain’s strength had come from, he beamed from ear to ear. “Would you like some breakfast?”
“Yes,” Anderas answered, surprised. He had not willingly eaten for several days. “Yes, I think I would.”
They ate a meagre breakfast together as the camp prepared for the final leg of the journey to Dunthruik. They were likely to reach the city before nightfall. Part of him hoped it would be dark when they arrived, so that they could disguise their shame in the shadows. But that morning, sitting with Anderas and marvelling at his second wind of life, Eamon felt a small measure of peace. Their dried bread and mostly stale cheese seemed to be a feast tailored for great lords. Anderas ate ravenously. Eamon offered him the remains of his own dwindling portion.
“You look pale this morning, Lord Goodman,” Anderas commented between mouthfuls.
“I didn’t sleep well.” His mind suddenly conjured Cathair’s grim face. “Pale?” he repeated.
“There’s more colour to you than to the Lord Ashway, Lord Goodman,” Anderas continued. “You’d have to not sleep for hundreds of years to match him, I fear.”
Eamon managed a laugh. “I am just tired,” he assured him.
A startled look passed suddenly over the captain’s face. Eamon noticed it at once.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes… yes, Lord Goodman,” Anderas stammered, shaking.
“No,” Eamon rose sharply to his feet. “I shall call a surgeon.”
“No, no, my lord – Lord Goodman,” Anderas managed. He caught Eamon’s arm. “Really, there is no need.” His cheeks coloured with embarrassment.
“If you need a surgeon –”
“I don’t. Thank you, Lord Goodman.”
Unconvinced, Eamon sat again.
“What’s the matter?” The man looked as though he had seen a ghost. Perhaps he had.
“I…”
Eamon watched as Anderas wrestled with some unknown thought. Their eyes met. Was Anderas afraid?
“It’s nothing, Lord Goodman. I just… remembered a dream. That was all.”
Eamon could not pursue the matter further; the lieutenant surgeon approached to advise that the wagon was ready to receive the captain.
It was mid-February when they began the last miles to Dunthruik. The River glistened to the south. Ahead of them, Eamon saw hills sloping to the mouth where Dunthruik nestled, feeding on the River’s torrents.
Though heavy hearted, Eamon was proud of those who marched with him that day – they had escaped death, refused to desert, and were determined to reap the crushing reward for their defeat. How could a tarnished man – how could any of them – reclaim their honour? Wherever they went, to whichever colleges, units, or companies they were assigned, they would be known as the men who had failed at Pinewood. They would all pay the price for Eamon’s folly.
What would he say to the throned? How could he possibly hope to become Right Hand with Pinewood over him? And Hughan… he could never justify what he had done to the King. He had abandoned his choice. Had the King’s grace deserted him, leaving him only the torment of the throned’s voice?
He had never felt such uncertainty. He knew only that he was a man without honour. It was that which drove deepest. Whatever he had done, and against whomever he had done it, he had betrayed himself.
He longed for Alessia, for her hand in his, for her understanding gaze and her words of comfort. What if she renounced him, too? How could she associate with him after what he had failed to do? His shame would touch her, too, in every circle of the court. He could not ask that of her – and he was terrified that she would not freely offer to bear it for him.
The shadow of Dunthruik touched the landscape before them. All at once he saw the city towers and their snapping pennons. He had not even passed the gates, and yet already he felt the piercing gaze of the throned upon him.