Riding the Red Horse

by Christopher Nuttall

  “The Ironmasters haunt us,” Nateel said reverently as she gazed at the crumpled pile of bent spars and girders.

  “How could anyone capable of metalwork on such a scale, disappear from the face of the Earth?” Joonta wondered out loud.

  “You know the legend,” Nateel said. “The Ironmasters grew restless, and went into the sky. Eventually leaving the world entirely.”

  “Superstition,” Joonta said, frowning. “Boats that fly? I know the legend, but it sounds like nonsense. Something killed them. Or nearly all of them. A plague. Or an enemy. One of the two.”

  Joonta guided her pony up close to the ruin, examining the way the metal had twisted and sheared—in what had to have been a deafening fall, some untold number of years in the past. No people dwelled here now. The superstitions surrounding the Ironmasters were manifold. The wild men dared not tarry so close to a place clearly dominated by bad luck and evil spirits. The ruin was like a gravemarker in this way, but on a grand scale.

  Joonta felt her mood turn sour.

  “We’d better keep moving,” she said. “The general won’t like it if he catches up with us and finds us sight-seeing like this.”

  Nateel’s eyes lingered on the ruin as both women rode away.

  #

  Night.

  They made camp by the shores of a small mountain lake, where the animals could rest and all of them could replenish their water from the icy streams that fed the tarn. Erel’s surgeon tended to the injured and put them to bed early, before checking in with Erel himself. The general’s single wound was a large bruise on one thigh, which he occasionally massaged with his hands. Otherwise, he’d been unharmed.

  Presently, Erel called the disparate members of his personal guard to the edge of his campfire. Joonta included.

  They sat in a circle—young eyes all staring at the single pair of old eyes among them—their mouths quietly chewing on dried bread and salt-cured meat. Joonta could sense the rebuke coming. There was a hard knot where her stomach should have been.

  “You were sloppy today,” Erel said to no one in particular, poking absently at the fire with a long stick.

  “Sir,” Joonta said, “we haven’t trained together before. It’s difficult to fight alongside strangers.”

  “Yes, no doubt,” Erel said. “But it was more than that. You, Joonta, practically left your Coamian comrade behind as soon as I gave the call to arms. Moreover, you suffered your comrade’s presence under protest—when I dispatched you both forward of the main caravan element, following the fight. I expected better of the archers of Coam.”

  Joonta felt her cheeks grow hot. A dozen different protests burned on her lips. But she did not speak them. The general’s voice had a teaching tone. She had heard it in the remonstrations of her captains many times.

  “But it wasn’t just you,” Erel said. “Your behavior was mirrored by the others: the confident sprinting ahead of the hesitant, and the skilled cursing their unskilled companions. Sloppy. And disappointing. We’ll stay here at the lakeshore for several days. Enough time for our walking wounded to recover. And for you all to drill. There are experienced men on the watch tonight. All of you will sleep, and begin exercises at sunrise tomorrow. Is that clear?”

  A chorus of yessirs ran around the circle.

  “Good,” the general said.

  When there was nothing further—Erel merely prodding his fire with his stick—the group of young warriors stood up and hurriedly departed the general’s presence. Each of them quietly muttering under his or her breath.

  #

  For Joonta, sleep came fitfully. If she’d initially been elated to join the general’s guard, that elation had evaporated. There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to the general’s decisions. If he’d wanted a crack squad capable of performing right from the start, he should have taken the best from a single city-state, not thrown together a loose collection of recruits—half of whom seemed as if they had no business carrying weapons or marching in the first place.

  In the morning, Joonta prodded her companion awake.

  “Nateel,” Joonta commanded, “drill commences. Get up.”

  The short, stout woman reluctantly rolled out of her bedding and threw on her leggings and tunic, neither of which fit very well. She walked several steps behind Joonta as they went to morning mess—which was decidedly quiet, what with all the young, unhappy faces staring into their wooden bowls. Then Nateel walked several steps behind Joonta as Joonta gathered a small bale of hay off of one of the feed wagons and went to prop it against a tree. Far from where the others were setting up their sparring circles.

  When the clink and clash of bronze blades began to fill the cool air, Joonta strung her bow and prepared her arrows.

  Nateel handled her own bow like a clumsy child.

  While Joonta began putting shafts into the hay bale’s center, Nateel struggled to fit the loop of her bowstring over the bow’s far end—grunting and leaning on the curved wood, almost to the point that Joonta feared it might snap.

  “Ridiculous,” Joonta barked, putting her own bow down long enough to snatch Nateel’s from her hands, and expertly fit the loop over the notched and pointed end of the springy, recurved weapon.

  “My thanks,” Nateel said quietly.

  Joonta ignored her and went back to placing shots into the bale. When she had exhausted her quiver, she went to retrieve her arrows while Nateel took up an inexpert stance and hesitantly pulled at her string, flexing the bow.

  Nateel’s first three shots were wide, and sailed into the treeline.

  Cursing, Nateel dropped her bow and chased after her errant shots—a good arrow being worth a lot, this far from the weaponsmith shops where the men of Coam manufactured some of the finest arrows in the Longstar Combine.

  When Nateel returned—having found only two of three arrows—Joonta could take no more. She fixed Nateel with a hard gaze.

  “It would have been better if you’d not come,” Joonta scolded.

  Nateel merely gazed up at her taller companion with a tired expression.

  “I know my skills are poor,” Nateel said coldly.

  “Do you?” Joonta said. “Then why did you not resign, and spare yourself the indignity of your incompetence?”

  “No archer in the history of Coam has ever resigned!” Nateel said sharply. “It would be a grave dishonor.”

  “You dishonor us already,” Joonta said. “How by the sun and moon did your clan choose you, of all women, to represent them in the ranks?”

  “It was my father’s idea,” Nateel said. “Even my mother didn’t want to see me dispatched, but my father had other plans. He thought joining the archers would be good for me. He’s a businessman, not a farmer. He used his influence with the clan council to get me this slot. Much as I did not want it.”

  Joonta continued to glare, the insults piling up on the back of her tongue. But she couldn’t bring herself to utter them. What good would it do? There was only the mission as ordered by the general: practice. And the archers of Coam always practiced together, so there was no help for it. Joonta and Nateel were joined at the hip for as long as they were in the general’s service.

  And practice they did. With bows. On foot. And from the backs of their ponies. And even with swords—although the short blades the archers carried weren’t much larger than very-long knives.

  The noon meal was even more quiet than breakfast.

  Joonta kept her back turned to Nateel, saying nothing.

  After noon, the work continued. More sword play, mostly for the sake of exertion. More marksmanship. For every arrow Nateel sent into the middle of the hay bale, two others were high, or low, or wide. Her thrusts and parries with her sword were similarly comical. And her reflexes so slow, Joonta felt a ball of frustrated disgust build up in her chest. Several times she put an elbow into Nateel’s ribs, knocking the smaller woman to the ground. It helped Joonta get out some of her anger at her predicament.

  The end of the da
y could not come soon enough.

  And once again, the general’s guard were called to his campfire.

  “You were worse today than you were during a true fight,” Erel remonstrated, his stick rearranging a few of the logs resting on the fire’s orange coals. “I walked from place to place, keeping my nose out of your training, but watching carefully. What I saw . . . did not encourage me.”

  “General, sir, it is difficult to prove one’s worth when saddled with poor baggage,” remarked a young swordsman from the city-state of Mux.

  “Indeed?” Erel said with a raised, silver-tinged eyebrow. He carefully laid his stick at his side and gazed across the flames at his young cohort.

  “Look around you,” Erel suddenly commanded, motioning with a pointed finger that swept the circle. “From each city-state I take one of the strongest young troops, and one of the weakest young troops.”

  “But why, sir?” asked a particularly tall warrior, whose shield was slung on his back while he carried a long, fiercely-tipped spear. “When you passed through Urrek we were all sure that you’d want the best, most experienced spearmen. I have seen war before. Against your very men, in Syqar, no less. But him—?”

  The Urrekian pointed at the shorter soldier to his left.

  “Bega was a farmer before he was pressed into service. He’d be a farmer again if his family would take him back. Which they won’t. Even in the fields, he is next to useless.”

  Joonta examined Bega, who stared down at his toes in pink-faced shame.

  Then her eyes wandered to the other faces of the other young soldiers who’d been selected. In each case, from each city-state, it was the same: an example of someone in his prime, teamed with someone of so obviously inferior quality that Joonta had to wonder if Erel was playing a colossal prank.

  The general merely looked from troop to troop; some of whom wouldn’t look back. Including Nateel.

  When the general’s eyes came to Joonta, they lingered.

  She suppressed the urge to hide her face, and opted instead to match his gaze with her own—her heart beating quickly behind her ribs.

  “General, sir, if I may speak at length?” Joonta asked.

  Erel nodded.

  “I did not fight against Syqar, sir. But we all know of your land’s mighty reputation. The Syqarian code is strict. Only the strongest, fiercest, most bold and able men are permitted to bear arms. Why in the names of the gods are you, of all people, deliberately leavening your bread with bad seeds? It doesn’t make any sense to us, and it certainly can’t make sense to a Syqarian warlord such as you.”

  “Do I look like a Syqarian warlord?” Erel said, a slight smile on his lips.

  Joonta couldn’t answer, because she’d never seen a Syqarian before.

  “No,” said the Muxian who’d first voiced his umbrage. He then added a quick, “Sir.”

  Erel took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Then he stood up, with arms crossed over his chest.

  “What you children may not realize,” Erel said, his hand drifting to the hilt of his sword at his waist, “is that towards the end of the Combine’s war with Syqar, half or more of the Syqarian phalanxes were populated with Haynian conscripts. My father was from Hayn, while my mother was a barbarian outlander he married before Hayn was conquered and consumed by Syqar.”

  A whispered ripple of astonishment went around the circle.

  “And so,” Erel continued, “the wheel turns again. Bloated Syqar is in turn conquered by the Combine—a not altogether unfortunate turn of events. The king reaped what he sowed, even to the ending of his life. May his soul rot in the hells under the Earth.”

  “Sir, how can it be that a Haynian led the forces of the tyrant-king who oppressed Hayn?” asked one young man, his bow over his back. A Mighian—rivals to Coam, for their skill with arrows.

  “Because I was the best one for the job,” Erel said matter-of-fact. “And because by the time the king got done executing his other generals for repeated failure, I was all that was left. Syqar was losing. For all their bluster and martial arrogance, Syqar had not the numbers to repel the Combine. The king needed me. I had the respect of all the Haynian troops in the ranks, and after winning a couple of duels with rival Syqarian challengers, I had the fear of the Syqarians too. I fought the Combine because duty and honor demanded it. Haynians are proud, and we have our traditions too. War is in our blood. But now that Syqar and Hayn alike have come under new management, well . . . there is still duty to be carried out, and plenty of honor to be had by all. Even those who seem least deserving.”

  Erel’s eyes blazed with firelight as he said his last words.

  He was staring directly at Nateel, who now seemed rapt.

  “Maybe things could have sorted themselves out in time, given true peace. But the mystic Northern Empire will devour the Combine whole. Unless something is done to secure the border, and repel the Empress’s forces. The Longstar Conclave knows this. Some of you probably know it too. And so the Conclave sought me.”

  “Sir,” Joonta said as respectfully as she could, “this still doesn’t explain why—”

  “Why I took the most and the least of you?” Erel finished.

  All young heads nodded in unison.

  Erel permitted himself a short, sardonic grunt.

  “If I learned one thing while commanding the Syqarians, it was this: their stubborn insistence that every soldier be a perfect exemplar of the Syqarian ideal, was the very thing that undid them.”

  “I don’t understand, sir,” Joonta said.

  “It’s in the mathematics, really,” Erel said. “The proudest lion may be brought down by two dozen dogs. That’s what ended Syqar. Now, against the Northern Empire? Our foe has nearly as many people as the Combine does. Maybe more? I therefore require the effective service of every troop the Combine can give me. Best, as well as worst. But here’s the thing, and I want you all to remember this—”

  Again, the general’s pointed finger swept the circle.

  “In my army, there will be no best, and no worst. No longer will the city-states deploy their forces as separate, self-contained divisions. My formations will be amalgamations of Urrekian spearmen, Coamian archers, Dreshian warrior-mages, Muxian sword-wielders, and so on and so forth.”

  A scoffing sound rounded through the circle.

  “Madness,” one young warrior spat vehemently.

  Erel suddenly stood up, the firelight illuminating his features as he drew his sword and brandished it at the group. The blade was notched and chipped from use.

  “If I thought I had the luxury of letting the city-states march to battle beneath separate banners, I would happily let you do it. But this new war isn’t about what I want, nor what you want. The Conclave’s orders were very specific. I am to take the separate militias and build them into a cohesive, single force that can defy the Empire. It may be madness, yes, but sometimes madness has its place. I see potential in you, as I do in all your different peoples. As I see it in my own. Hayn is independent again, beneath the Longstar flag. I’ve pledged my life to keep it that way, just as I’ve pledged—on my honor—to build you into an army capable of greatness. But it starts here. If you’re not willing to stand with me, I challenge every heart in the light of my fire to walk away. Do it now. I won’t say a word. Just get up and leave. Take your tents and your weapons. Go.”

  No one moved. No one breathed.

  Perhaps sensing that he had their undivided attention, Erel continued.

  “In my Army,” Erel said, “weaknesses will become strengths. And it begins here, with you. My guard. The troops I keep closest to me, and on whom I depend most of all. But first, you must each come to trust each other. To include trusting yourselves. I pledge my blood, as your commander, that if you yoke yourselves to this purpose, I will not fail you.”

  Erel deftly flicked the tip of his sword up, and slashed at his opposite wrist. Not deeply. But enough to raise a line of blood that was visible in the firelight. A be
ad of that blood ran down and dripped off of his arm. Erel looked to the young troop next to him, and said, “Dreshian, do you pledge?”

  The young warrior-mage jerked to his feet, and thrust out his arm.

  Erel’s blade slashed again. The warrior-mage’s blood welled at the small cut. Erel reached out and gripped the warrior-mage’s forearm—the general’s wound over the top of the warrior-mage’s wound, hands clasped almost at each others’ elbows.

  “Be seated, defender of the Combine.”

  The Muxian sat back down, his eyes transfixed.

  Erel turned his attention to the warrior-mage’s shorter compatriot.

  “You, Dreshian, do you also pledge?”

  And again, the impromptu blood ritual was repeated.

  And so it went, each of the guard taking his or her turn in the procession. Joonta wasn’t sure, but she thought Erel kept his grip on her arm for just a moment longer than he had with the others—his eyes burning at her, like the coals of his fire. She met his gaze, and returned the grip, before moving aside for Nateel to take her turn.

  When it was over, Erel produced a small Longstar Combine flag, and used the cooking knife from his late meal to cut strips of the flag, which he then dispersed throughout the group, ordering them to bind their bleeding arms with it.

  “Let blood join us and keep us,” he said, expertly wrapping his own small wound. “Go to your tents now, brothers and sister. My men will rouse you in turn to do your parts on the night watch. Tomorrow, your new learning commences.”

  #

  Joonta returned from her stint on the watch to find Nateel already up, sitting outside their small two-person tent. The moon was full and its light glimmered on the surface of the lake. At any other time, Joonta would have thought the scene quite beautiful. But tonight she felt only weariness, and a toothache-nagging irritation at the predicament she’d been placed in. Learning to work with the young soldiers from the other city-states would have been difficult enough. But trying to do it with a runt in tow? Almost impossible.