“I feel no anger for you, jotun. You have been a decent opponent. I shall miss you, curiously enough,” she muttered, ripped the spear out of my chain, and stabbed for my throat.
I exerted all my will and thickened my skin, calling forth the great bear.
Men were tossed off me, many losing their hammers.
Not Lisar.
The spear tore to my neck. I shrieked, thrashed, and rolled over men and Lisar, clawing at her armor, at the men, and barreled out of their trap. Trailing blood, taking wounds from javelins and swords, men riding by me, I loped off after the mass of our men, passing many of the slowest who were being butchered. I ran as fast as I could, bit down on a champion of Six Spears, who had been just turning from a kill, and saw how twenty more men were converging on me, excited as any hunter would be when stalking the king of the woods. I saw Quiss amid the mass of people just inside the woods, and she was frowning as she saw me coming.
Men were rushing forward around her. All held brutally long bows.
They were not our people, but fresh arrivals from Alantia.
They lifted their bows and began losing arrows on the great mass of foes behind and around me. Men fell, horses tumbled, and suddenly, I was free. I slunk to the woods and shifted, felt a great wound on my throat, and went to a knee, trying to get up. The bald man I had seen leading the assault on the caravan was there. I saw Hal, and Quiss. They were all pushing and then pulling me up.
“It looks bad,” the bald man said. “But he seems to have seen the like before. He heals faster than a man?”
“He is King Maskan,” Quiss said. “He does. Jotuns heal from terrible wounds. He needs time.”
“We’ll find him some time, and then, we will speak,” he murmured. “Follow the people and don’t look back. We’ll stop them in the woods.”
I got up, bleeding heavily, and turned as we walked off. I watched many of our men dying before Hillhold.
Thousand, perhaps two, had gotten there. Another thousand had fled to the woods. With us, there were two and a half thousand.
On the battlefield, there were nearly six thousand dead.
The enemy cheered itself hoarse, and then, I saw no more.
BOOK 2: THE ROBBER AND THE KING
“And still, it is how you win. You risk all. You need to win your throne, Queen of Red Midgard. It takes more than extorting kings to sit in the Temple of the Tower.”
Maskan to Nima
CHAPTER 7
The retreat was one of miserable chaos. It could have only been worse, had it been night. The enemy doggedly came after us and spread lightly armed men to the woods, while they marched hardy infantry after us. That infantry took horrible losses from the archers. Our guides, locals all, gave us the only good news of the day.
It seemed we would get away.
They led the stream of militia, a thousand and a half, thirty nobles led by Hal, and a thousand men-at-arms of Hal’s and poor Cil’s to the green and white depths of the woods, using trails meant for hunters and their prey.
The militia were shocked.
The men-at-arms were silent.
The nobles, serious.
Many of the militia wept. Some marched with no weapon or shield, and most of the weapons they had were spent and dull. Many were wounded, and the roots and icy trail were hampering their speed.
None could wait for them.
Many of them were left leaning on trees, too exhausted or hurt to go on. A boy, barely fourteen or fifteen, thin and handsome, walked to the woods, holding his bleeding belly.
It made me sick.
I held my throat and bled, not sure I wasn’t dying. Quiss was walking just ahead of us and looking at me with a pale, shamed face. I gave her a look, and she opened her mouth and spoke softly. “It was foolish. We had no time to create the wings you asked for. The militia and the men-at-arms had to be kept separate. And Roger? He took his men out without order. We had just gained Hillhold and held it, and then, he went out like a fool. We had to follow. I sent him an order stay with the militia, but he rode off, and Hal followed him. But of course, the failure is mine.”
The bald man leading the bowmen grunted. “Roger Kinter, eh? Powerful, rich, and stupid. Perhaps the lady should go to the front and see to our well-being with my lieutenant.”
“I—” Quiss began.
“You lost a battle, girl,” he said brutally. “And now, you must not look like you have been beaten, because some of these people will survive, and you must get your act together if you would not lose their trust for good. Don’t admit to failure when they are listening. Go ahead.”
She hesitated and handed me the Grinlark. I refused it.
“Where is the Book of the Past? And the rings and other things?” I asked her. “I gave them to you.”
“With Thrum. He never left the keep,” she said, and then walked her horse forward, dodging branches.
The man watched her go and looked behind. “Poor lass. Out of her depth, but who isn’t?” He gave me a look that suggested he meant me. Before I could answer, he went on. “They’ll hunt us like dogs, but they always do. That Harrian’s cavalry force is a nasty one, and that Queen Vittar is giving Alantia a history we shall never forget. She has butchered up and down the land, before they all looked towards Dagnar, and she went to Hillhold.” He smirked. “Now, she is back. Not good. Not good at all. It has been a hard fall here in Alantia, and winter seems to go to shit as well. You are Morag’s boy?”
“I am,” I said.
A boy?
I leaned closer to him, and spoke harshly. “I am the King of Red Midgard.”
He chuckled. “King, eh?” He rolled his eyes. “King of a bloody mess, you mean. Dagnar is gone. They burned it. Morag is dead, usurper that he was, and no human king at all. And now, what you built in Dagnar and the pass with your sword, is shattered.”
I bristled at his tone. “Yes. I am a king of ruin, and I’ll not stop before I have pushed the enemy off. I am—”
“Bleeding to death, if that is not taken care of,” he said as he eyed my wounds. “Those cavalry boys were expecting you. They were looking for you. I saw them waiting in the woods, like a pack of well-trained hounds. They watched the battle unfold and could have gone in sooner. They could have captured your pretty lass and shattered the entire line. Instead, they waited for as long as they could, and only went in after it seemed the battle had been decided.”
I nodded. “They would like to see me dead, wouldn’t they?”
“You called for magic,” he said with a first hint of approval in his voice. “Dangerous magic. Deadly skill, worthy of a consideration. That is much more important in these days than a title of a king, eh? We would have done so much better here in Alantia, had we but not faced their magic. They are not alive, are they?”
“They are not,” I answered. “It is a long story.”
“Oh, we know much of the story,” he said. “People travel in your kingdom, Morag.”
“I am Maskan,” I said. “King.”
He chuckled and went serious, as he heard commotion, not far. A man screamed, a horse whinnied with pain, and after a while, he relaxed, as if he had seen the danger go away.
He spoke on. “One of their scouts found one of ours, and the usual thing happened. Those southern boys are no good in the northern woods. Like asking a noble to milk a cow.” He eyed me with some interest. “Maskan, eh? Morag is what the king has always been called. All the Danegell kings were called Morag. They say the first Danegell after Hel’s War took the name of a jotun king he had slain, and it had been the custom ever since. But, indeed, it was that first, stupid Danegell who had been raped with a jotun’s ax, and it was really Morag all along. It has been the same damned Morag all the time? Aye. You can call yourself a brute, for all I care,” he muttered. “There was a King Crec in the middle, wasn’t there? A bastard of some Helstrom family? Greedy and stupid. Do not worry. You can call him a pig, and none shall so much
as a flinch. We dislike him here in Alantia. He stripped us of our defenses. The Gray Brothers would have been much needed here.”
I shrugged. “You call him King Crec, this Draugr, but you dislike the idea of calling me King Maskan. One must wonder why you bothered to intervene on our behalf, if you hold me in such a contempt.”
He spat and thought about it for a moment. He looked like a man pondering if he should throw his dice, or if he should just walk away. Apparently, he tossed them. He spoke harshly. “All the nobility left us to our own devices. Granted, Crec took the armies, but Fiirant recalled the nobles. The left us to deal with twenty thousand hammer legionnaires. There were a hundred thousand people in Alantia. It is a spacious, mysterious, rich country with fine cities, peaceful towns, and harmonious villages, with gold and iron mines, and we have the very best hunting grounds in Midgard. Now, only the hunting ground remains, and we basically don’t hunt for stags or deer these days. The rest, and the people along with it, has been burnt, looted, raped, and destroyed. And you wonder why we care little for kings? Where was King Maskan when our land was put to torch?”
“I’ve—”
“I know,” he said reluctantly, and sighed. “You have raised the people in Fiirant to your cause.”
“Our cause.”
He smirked. “To a cause. You showed them the draugr deceptions, and you have pushed the people of Fiirant, those whom Crec and this goddess of yours betrayed. They stand together, and I agree your actions have been for … Fiirant. Alantia, however, still hasn’t seen the good you have done. You are the first jotun king of the west Red Midgard, and you fight hard for your people. Everyone can see that, o king of scars. What I saw out there, that miracle of a shapeshifting, scares me as much as anything I’ve ever seen. I do not know if you are suited to be a king of the east. We might not want a king anymore. No, nothing scares us more than kings in Red Midgard.”
He sighed.
“Save for the undead,” I said. “Because with them, you cannot win.”
“Save for them,” he said softly. “I am called Saag, Saag of the Highwoods. But you err when you say the undead scare us more than kings of Dagnar. As part of your role, as a king, you have hanged many of my kind in the past.” He flashed me a grin. “I am, sir, formerly a bandit.”
I gave him a cold stare.
“One thousand gold for my head, before all this began,” he chuckled. “Your father would have had me strung up on the Gate Gallows, and I’d pissed my thighs for all the crimes I’ve done.”
I nodded. “I remember your name. I was a thief for years, see?”
He blinked and then spoke on, uncertain. “Now, I am the king of Highwood, this wood, and one of the dozens of bands of people who seek to survive this winter. Not all fight the enemy. There are people in Alantia who think by surviving, the High King Balic will one day give us peace back and will give us our freedom under a new king, and things shall be mended.” He chuckled. “The people are turning to me, King Maskan. Even nobles live under my wing, and many local militia and men-at-arms, who used to hunt me. Alantia is divided and no longer a county, unless one for the robbers. The people brought us food, and I gave them shelter, and it is the same all over the country. There are five thousand people in the Saag’s Hold, and that is where we shall hide your people as well.”
I shook my head. “And how will you feed them?”
“They can go back to Hillhold, unless that bitch draugr takes it later, but for now, I am going to give you shelter and protection, and aye, it will cost us supplies we do not wish to spend on others,” he said, and gave me a quick, worried look. “I’d not try to raise my people to your cause, king of Dagnar,” he added. “They hate the nobles and kings as much as they do the southerners. You shall have shelter for now, until you heal. I am no beast, see?”
“You propose we sit on our hands,” I asked him scathingly, “while they slowly kill us all off?”
“I suggest,” he answered with equal fire, “that we let winter do its evil on their armies, and I shall summon other people during the winter, and together, we shall try to negotiate a peace. They want it as much as we do. They must. The draugr cannot possibly want more than the land. What good are the dead to them?”
I laughed, bled, coughed, and still couldn’t stop laughing. “What good … they are Hel’s things. All they want is to kill the living. That is their goal. They are seeking a powerful being of Hel up north,” I answered. “Their victory won’t stop with the death of a king.”
He flinched.
“That’s what you have been contemplating on, eh?” I said. “Kill me and offer the head as a gift? Lisar would go giddy over it, and she’d make a count of you. Draugr Saag the Count. This war will be the end of all of us. They don’t want the living. They have no use for any of us. All of this is just a distraction.”
He grinned, though he looked worried. “Truly?” he asked. “They want us all dead? It is hard to … fine. Possibly. But you are saying there is a powerful being, and we are just a distraction?” He looked at me with pity. “No. They want power, and they will take Falgrin and Ygrin, and the Golden City, and then, they will rule what living people remains. It is no more than what they have done in the south, in the Verdant Lands. Those lands are not filled with the dead. They merely rule over the land, and the living do well enough, don’t they? Saag’s people will not budge from the holds unless to keep our people alive, to fight when it makes sense. That is all we do. We help retain what we have and shall have in the future.” He smiled. “I must look after my people.”
“And my head?” I asked.
He scratched his neck. “I played with the idea,” he said. “I am not a man like that. You shall be aided, your wounds bound and stitched. Then, you get to leave, and you will take your nobles with you. The rest will stay. They will give me more strength for the spring’s negotiations.”
“As you bid on Balic making you a count?” I sneered. “You do know that the royals in the south, many generals, dukes, and counts, are all undead.”
He shook his head. “I’ll try to be something less than a count and a duke, and still important. I have my ways,” he told me. “Do not make trouble. Like those riders, you will be kept an eye on.”
In the shadows, archers looked on.
“The Princess of Aten shall stay,” he said, and marched off. “I need an insurance, after all.”
I walked on and found a clenched hand stuffed in my belt.
It was the grand admiral’s, and there were papers in the fist. I pried them off, dropped the hand to the snow, and read the papers.
***
Later that evening, the pursuit had fallen off. We were being guided to a rocky path that led down a mighty river’s bank and then up a steep, rocky hillside. We took trails through ravines that defended the land quite naturally and found another exhausting route up a steep side of hill, and there was a man-made barrier, for a gate barred the way, and a drawbridge over a steep ravine made it a near unassailable place.
We marched through and found a valley hanging over the river, nestled in an armpit of a near-mountain of a hill, and that hill was filled with robber-caves, and the valley was rich with several villages.
People poured out to see Saag’s men leading a beaten army in their midst, and I found myself standing with forlorn noblemen and some of their men-at-arms. The remainder tottered to rest, to the caves, and all were kindly but sternly disarmed before they would be allowed to change sides.
Many would, I was sure.
We were closely watched. There were two thousand archers around the valley, many staring at us while casually working on their duties. All had bows nearby, and bundles of arrows.
We waited until out people had been settled in.
Hal was shaking his head. “What a mess this is.”
“What happened in the battle?” I asked, looking for Quiss. I couldn’t see her.
Hal took a tentative step forward. “Hillhold was abandoned. We couldn�
�t believe it. We thought they might have rebelled against Balic and gone to raid their supplies, and the dverger managed to climb on top. It took some time and skill. Then, the gates were opened, and we simply marched in.” He shook his head. “The next thing I knew, Aten’s legion was outside the gates and then on the run, after they took a few volleys of arrows. Then, suddenly, Roger is leading half of the nobles and men-at-arms outside and after them.”
“Roger.”
He nodded. “It was odd. He was totally composed. Then, we had to follow, to make sure they wouldn’t get into trouble. Regent Quiss ordered it, though she kept sending riders to Roger.”
“And you went right.”
“Yes,” Hal said, “I, too, led my men to the right of the legions, as ordered. You know the rest.” He shook his head.
“You were ordered to the right,” I said. “I see.”
Hal took a ragged breath. “We lost most of the nobles in the land. I guess you actually must remake the order after the war.”
“Aye,” I said darkly.
Roger. The dog.
Finally, we saw Saag in one of the villages, riding out and looking at us. He pointed a finger at a large, dirty white hall, and grudgingly, I walked that way with the nobles and many of their men-at-arms. Every man kept a hand on their dulled, busted swords and weapons. There was a throng of nine hundred, and little more. I still couldn’t see Quiss.
It was as Saag expected.
Most of the nobles of Alantia had gone to Dagnar to seek help. Those who had stayed had been killed in battle. It was easy to blame them for the misery and the losses, for the hunger and hopelessness, and it was easy to listen to a robber lord, who only hoped to profit from the whole debacle.
He was using us to make his point. The hall was a center of attention and rude comments. People were mocking us outside, and the people who had aided us, refused to look us into the eyes.
We didn’t belong.
I feared the people I had so recently been made a king by would forget as well.
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