by Steven Poore
There was a strained note in the prince’s voice. Cassia looked at him more closely and saw that he still appeared as pale and exhausted as he had been the previous night. Even more so, in fact.
“But you didn’t sleep,” she guessed aloud. That was the truth of it, she was certain. “You kept watch through the whole night. Why? Keeping an eye on your interests, I suppose?”
Rais’s eyes narrowed, but he did not rise to the bait. Instead he gestured away, behind her. “It’s damned difficult to close one’s eyes with them nearby.”
The shieldmen stood in ranks between the rows of pear trees, so motionless and silent that they might have been grown in place, cultivated just as the trees had been. They had not moved since Cassia had ordered them to halt last night. It was a bizarre juxtaposition – stone soldiers arrayed against the natural, autumnal colours of the Hellean heartlands – but morning had removed any threatening qualities they may have possessed under darkness. For a moment Cassia could not bring to mind how they must have appeared to Rais, but then she remembered the shrine she and Meredith had explored, half a lifetime ago, on the western edges of Hellea. There, the shieldmen waited in oppressive, damp silence, their presence alone enough to drive travellers from seeking shelter there. Someone had scratched a warning onto one of the pillars of the shrine’s portico. This is not a restful place.
Plainly Rais had suffered a similar experience. Perhaps this was the reason Ultess had opted to watch the road back into the city.
“They would not have harmed you,” Cassia told him.
“Are you certain of that?” Rais flicked the tip of his staff across the grass, spraying dew into the air. “Hah. I didn’t think so. This is Malessar’s sorcery, Cassia. They obey your commands now, but for how long?”
She did not have an answer to that question. It was not one she had wanted to consider, but now Rais asked it she felt doubts begin to rise in the corners of her mind. Meredith must have been some form of shieldman, and he had become inanimate once his task was completed. Would her new army suddenly leave her in the same way?
“As long as they are required,” she bluffed. If Rais sensed the lack of truth in her words he did not say so, though his eyes darkened for a moment. Cassia busied herself with packing away her bedroll; it meant she could turn her back on him.
“I counted them,” the prince said, after so long a pause that Cassia thought he had gone. “I could not rest, after all, so I thought to make some use of the night.”
She knelt on the bedroll and tied it tight with two leather straps. These small pieces were most likely even older than she was herself; much of what Ultess had procured for their journey was cast-off campaigning gear, threadbare, discoloured and musty from being poorly kept.
“And?” she prompted when Rais did not continue. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw he had dropped into a crouch, gazing pensively past the assembled ranks.
“I had a nurse who insisted that if I counted the stars I could see through the casement I would soon fall asleep. Of course I did not believe her at first – but I never could remember counting past one hundred.” Rais wore a faint smile now. “A foolish child, hmm?”
Cassia was tempted to ruin his remembrances with a caustic word of two, but she had similar memories herself. The cold open skies of the North, so clear she fancied she could see the stars themselves turn about the world. Evenings spent imagining the outlines of heroes and gods – Meteon there above the horizon, Gelis as a water-carrier high over her head, even Ceresel, holding out the device that was either a forked stick or a set of scales depending how one looked at it – until they blurred into sleep.
Was he calling her a foolish child? Or himself?
“Only if you believed afterwards that there were no more than one hundred stars in the sky,” she said.
The prince’s smile broadened for a moment, then disappeared completely. “There are two hundred and seven of those . . . things,” he said. “Shieldmen. Soldiers of stone. Goulemm. Call them what you will. I counted them twice to be certain.”
Cassia had not expected such a number. Yet at the same time it seemed small and insignificant against the weight of Caenthell.
“What can you hope to achieve with two hundred men?” Rais asked. He appeared to have worked his way along this path of thought ahead of her. “Surely it would be better to wait for the Emperor to raise his troops. He cannot delay now that you have awoken your shieldmen.”
She shook her head. “He might react, but he will still not believe, Rais. And we do not have the time to stay and attempt to convince him otherwise. Unless you wish to return to the city and talk with him.”
Rais’s mocking stare was the only reply to that suggestion. Cassia stood again and hefted her packs. They felt even heavier than the day before.
“At this time of year the high grounds outside of Keskor are treacherous,” she continued. “If the winds turn from the west or the north, it will be a harsh winter, and I have no idea at all how hardy these shieldmen truly are. But Ultess reckons that if we move fast and keep to the Emperor’s March, we should be outside Keskor within three weeks. With luck we will beat the first snows. If we stayed to wait for Hellea, I doubt the Emperor would march before spring.”
Rais frowned, bit back his words, then nodded. “The campaigning season,” he said. “Of course. Every time I believe I have the measure of you, Cassia, you surprise me again. You talk as though you were born to the sword.”
She paused in the process of securing her weapons; Pelicos’s sword at her hip, Meredith’s strapped firmly across her back. The blades still weighed her down, but she was slowly becoming used to the awkwardness they engendered. Another change, another step away from the girl she had once been.
“Perhaps I was,” she said quietly. “Because I am already thinking there will be more than a bare two hundred of us when we reach Keskor. There are other shrines on the Emperor’s March, you see. And we will have to pass through towns and villages as we travel north . . .”
“And young men, eager for adventure and seeking fortunes of their own, will abandon their homes to follow the Heir to the North into battle,” Rais said. For once he did not sound as though he was mocking her. “It has happened before, you know. Popular revolts that draw the peasants in their thousands from the fields to fight in far-off lands; uprisings ten times more successful than any Factor’s levy could ever be.”
Cassia felt her heart sink at the thought of so many men blindly following her into the fight against Caenthell. Her own nightmares aside, she still did not know anything about the forces that had been pent up behind Malessar’s curse wards, or whether her shieldmen would fare better against the foul mists of Caenthell than the wraiths of long-dead soldiers she had somehow summoned up at Karakhel. Any army that gathered behind her now would consist of ordinary Helleans: farmers, craftsmen and bondsmen. Not one of them a sorcerer or even a scholar. Would any of them ever see their homes again?
Do I have the right to ask it of them? Is that what it means to be born to the sword?
Cassia looked across at Rais again, and found the prince staring back at her thoughtfully.
“You can go home, you know,” she said. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t need to come with me. If I’m wrong, if I cannot fight Jedrell and Pyraete . . .”
“If you are wrong, then you are wrong,” Rais said. “And perhaps you will find Caenthell as ripe and beautiful as Peleanna’s garden, with clear springs pouring joyfully down to the rivers that feed the land, and the air filled with the pollen and fragrance of a million different flowers, and Jedrell himself will welcome you to the gleaming spires of his resurrected castle.” He shrugged. “Who can tell?”
She laughed despite her mood. The image he had conjured was so absurd that she could hardly do otherwise. The sound carried across the fields, echoing between the ranks of stone soldiers. Arca stirred beneath his thin bedding, coughing himself awake.
“Should that not be th
e case, however,” Rais continued, one finger lifted in a more solemn gesture, “you will have an army to direct and lead. You will need officers. Scouts. You cannot do all of these things yourself.”
“I have Ultess,” Cassia pointed out. “And Arca. There will be others, too.”
“Cassia, they were soldiers. Now they are old men. Look at Arca, girl. He can barely stand up straight. Who would take orders from such as him?”
Her good humour had quickly evaporated. “You think that Helleans will take orders from you?”
“I think they will take your orders from me,” Rais said.
Cassia was silent for a long moment, pondering his words. Further North, if she even made it that far, if the Emperor did not send his own legion to bring her back, she would run into the Factor’s patrols. She did not want to force her way past them; they were not her enemies, after all. But she was sure the Factor himself would not see matters in that light. To him, she would be as nothing: a storyteller’s daughter, masquerading as something she was not. Jianir had not listened to her, after all, and the Lady Lianna had only laughed at her. The Factor would see only a threat to his authority. That would be more real to him than the threat a resurrected Caenthell posed.
Even with two hundred shieldmen at her command she knew her arguments would have no weight. But Rais . . . he was a prince. He had commanded troops. He could speak to a Factor in one voice, and to troops that mustered beneath her banners in another, and in each case people would listen.
She could use him.
When did I come to think like this? Like a general? Like Jedrell?
The drums echoed mockingly at the base of her skull. Every beat drained a little more of her energy. It was a constant battle to keep from being overwhelmed by the strength of the sorcery. It was sorcery, she was certain. Caenthell pulled at her, demanded her obedience and loyalty. Blood called upon blood.
She would fight that call as much as she possibly could, but if there was a way to channel Caenthell’s sorcery, to use it against itself . . .
Rais still watched her, waiting for an answer. She realised she had not heard the question.
“You would be my captain,” she said.
He grimaced, the flippant, cosseted side of his personality ascendant again. “Captain? That’s no rank for a prince. I’d stake a claim on a generalship at the least.”
Cassia conceded the point with a blunt nod. “Very well, general. Gather your men.”
She took the flasks Ultess had distributed and went in search of the stream that followed the low contours of the valley, leaving Rais to poke life into Arca’s restlessly dozing form.
The shieldmen resumed their march without complaint. Without a single word, for that matter. Their silence was as unnerving as it had been the previous day. And while stone was ever unchanging, the same could not be said for the rest of Cassia’s so-called army. Both Ultess and Arca appeared as troubled as Rais himself, unable to rest in the presence of such magic.
The former quartermaster had fallen easily back into his role. Even before Cassia found him he had bought fresh produce from traders headed into the city. Tonight they would dine on fresh-cropped vegetables, and there was even a jug of ale to be shared out. That jug was kept tied at Ultess’s side, to Arca’s evident dismay.
Arca the Brave, Cassia thought, as they passed before another walled estate. There was a small town further ahead, to judge by the trails of chimney smoke that rose above the treeline. He was not so brave now, of course. Instead he looked thoroughly miserable and uncomfortable, his strength so deteriorated that Cassia feared he might fall from his saddle at any moment. Did the lack of alcohol weaken him as much as the journey itself?
“The old man will be lucky to last out the day,” Rais said in a low tone, mirroring her thoughts. “Perhaps we should leave him at the next village.”
She shook her head. “He chose this way. And besides, I will need him now.”
“Need him? For what? He can barely lift his head, let alone a blade.”
Cassia shook her head again. She couldn’t explain it to him, when she could hardly explain it to herself. There was a symmetry of sorts in the make-up of their small party; a reflection of the tales of heroes and quests that, for better or worse, had been such a large part of her life until now. That symmetry was important.
“As you wish,” Rais said when it became clear she would not answer. “But he will only slow us further.”
“Are you really in such a hurry to meet the spirits of the North?” Cassia asked.
“As much as you are, I’ll wager,” the prince replied. He shrugged away the question as though she had merely asked after his health. “So, tell me. This is the heart of your Empire, yes? The Winter Road?”
“Not my Empire,” she reminded him. But yes, these were the oldest and most settled lands of Hellea. The woods were tamed, the fields cultivated; walls, hedges and ditches scored the hillsides to prove the boundaries of each estate. The stories told of third and fourth sons sent out to make a fresh inheritance for themselves, and of beautiful orphan girls who claimed the hearts of landed folk. There were tales of woodland folk too, capricious and bitter, ever aiming to destroy the order that man had brought. They tumbled the walls, filled the ditches, and caused the hedgerows to grow out of control. The Thorn Lord mazed travellers so that they became lost on the winding lanes that threaded between the small walled towns of the heartland. Some set off on journeys to near neighbours only to be lost forever. Small wonder that the rose and the thorn were such potent symbols here.
Yet for all that, the old gods held little sway here. Only the Thorn Lord himself was given any measure of respect. Hellea’s own pantheon had insinuated itself into the stories, taking over the positions owned previously by the likes of Pyraete and Ceresel. Even Movalli, the patron of storytellers everywhere, had been deposed by the Dancing Boy – a character cut from whole cloth to render the old god powerless, or so Malessar had once said, in his guise as the scholar Karak.
And this was also the road where Arca the Brave had faced his last test, Cassia thought, while Rais digested what she told him. Paid to betray Lianna to a rival family, he had stood against the attackers instead. Already decayed by age and drink, it was a miracle he had survived at all. Cassia prayed there was still some small measure of that strength of will inside the old man. There had to be. Rais was wrong.
“I think they’ve seen us coming, my lady,” Ultess called back over his shoulder. There was a wry tone to his words.
“Or else someone ran ahead to send warning,” Rais pointed out. “This road veers from side to side like one of Torcilides’s arguments. It would be easy for a local man to sniff out a shorter way.”
From here the trees thinned out into fields, divided into strips and staked to show who had the right to farm the land. Beyond those fields the ground fell a little way to follow the course of one of the many rivers that flowed into the Castaria. A small town sat on the near bank, hemmed in behind plastered and whitewashed walls. The wind that scudded autumnal clouds across the sky also blew chimney smoke, and Cassia caught the edge of fresh-baked bread and forge-hot coals.
The road led into the town through a squared-off gateway, sturdy enough to allow a guard to climb up and keep watch from the top. There were two men up there now, short bows in their hands, while more could be seen climbing the side of the gateway. The gates themselves were either disused or missing, but the townsfolk were hurriedly erecting a makeshift barricade instead, rolling carts and barrels into place.
“It would appear we are not welcome,” Rais said. “Perhaps it is the manner of my dress.”
Cassia glared at him, uncertain how much of what he said was flippant humour.
“That barricade isn’t much,” Ultess said. “I dare say your shieldmen could dismantle it with barely a scratch, my lady.”
She did not doubt it. She called the column to a halt and stared back at the shieldmen for a moment. Here on the Winter Road, agai
nst the dying colours of autumn, they looked even older than they had back in Hellea, or in the roadside shrine where she had first encountered them. Their stillness was unnatural, and spooked her even now. She was not surprised the townsfolk had panicked themselves into barring the road.
“They could, but I am not here to fight Helleans,” she said. “And the shieldmen might be made of stone, Ultess, but you are not. Hold the column here. When I give the signal, you may bring them forward – but not before that. Arca, come with me, please.”
She nudged her horse into a walk and was unsurprised to find that Rais followed her.
“Hardly the most sensible option,” the prince said. “They will not heed a girl and an old man, regardless of that walking quarry back there. Perhaps I should talk with them.”
“Because you believe they will listen to a prince of Galliarca?” Cassia shook her head. It was unrealistic, she thought, to have expected Rais to lose his self-importance overnight.
Rais shrugged. “Why would they not?”
On Cassia’s other flank, Arca spat loudly into the grass at the side of the road. “You don’t know much about this land, do you?”
“I am a son of Jianir,” Rais said, his voice sharper than before as his temper rose. “I was educated by such scholars as Torcilides, Herron of Kalakhadze, and Karak himself. You know that man, I think, soldier. My education is beyond reproach.”
“Aye, boy, but you’re still a Galliarcan brat.”
Arca’s waspish retort clearly had the desired effect. The prince’s features darkened and he pulled hard at the reins, hauling his mount around so the old soldier was within his reach.
“Enough!” Even when she closed her eyes the pulsing of the war drums sent flashes of colour across Cassia’s vision. The High King called her and mocked her at the same time. There was enough conflict inside her head, without her companions adding to it. “I will need you all, in time. But you may not thank me for it.”
Rais lowered his hand and stared at her for a moment before resuming his position on her right. “Now you sound like my father,” he muttered.