by Dan Abnett
The main hall rose before them, dark, low-gabled and massive, with smaller outbuildings adjoining it. Behind it sat the narrower shoulders and thin tower of the temple. The party dismounted onto the soft, black marl of the mound’s top and, weapons ready, approached the front portico of the hall. Gaude stayed back, watching over the huddled, cloak-wrapped form of Madoc.
Leading them, Nithrom stepped up under the mighty oak lintel. He hammered on the carved doors. ‘Ho, within!’ he called, in the tongue of the Empire.
Vintze gestured sidelong to the outbuildings with the point of his sword. ‘Livestock in there, lots of it, close-packed and agitated.’
Fithvael had already detected the pungent animal smells, the scrabbling shuffle of hooves. ‘And in there,’ he said, ‘I smell humans.’
Cloden and Vintze both shot him hard glances, but Nithrom grinned. ‘He has it right.’
Nithrom put his shoulder to the doors, pressing his strength against the bas-relief, weathered image of some insubstantial human god. They did not budge, not even when Brom and Dolph added their weight.
‘Barred,’ Dolph said.
‘From within,’ finished Brom.
Nithrom waved up Harg, who hefted his great axe in his hairy paws. Again, Nithrom struck the doors and called out. ‘Ho, within! If you won’t answer, we are coming inside! Know that we are friends, come to aid you - and stand back!’
He moved aside and Harg, a bestial black shape in the thickening gloom, swung back his gigantic axe. Bruda knelt behind him on the steps, just clear of his back swing, her bow raised ready.
With one single blow, the disfigured Norseman stove the doors inwards. A trio spearhead of Nithrom, Cloden and Vintze led the way inside, with the others in tow.
The hall was high, wide and gloomy, ranged with benches and trestles, piles of sacks, barrels, full skins and other commonplace items. There was a stone-edged fire-pit at the far end, under a horn-shaped chimney flue. The crossbeams of the high roof were hung with salting meat, game and bunches of drying herbs. They scented the still, close air heavily.
A megaron, thought Fithvael, in the old style… a mead-hall, a communal one-room palace, as befits an old, traditional community like this. Rushes covered the creaking boards of the floor.
At the fire-pit end, thirty yards from them, ten men cowered in a tight group, facing them. By their clothes and stature they were farmers, two as young as teenagers, one as old as old men get, the other seven in stalwart middle years. But their faces - they were the faces of cornered killers, ready to fight to the very death, eyes glittering with fear and venom. Several held hoes, threshing flails or pitchforks. Two had corn sickles, one a vintner’s pruning knife. The leader had an old, rusty sword.
‘Begone!’ he cried hoarsely.
‘And leave you to the Tilean dogs? I think not.’ Nithrom’s voice was calm. The elf ranger stepped forward, sheathing his blade.
‘In the name of mercy, get you gone!’ the sword-wielder called again as the group huddled back against the fire-pit wall.
‘Don’t you know me? It is I, Nithrom! I swore to bring you defenders, and so I have. Where is Gwyll, your headman?’
‘Dead!’ spat the leader. ‘Dead seven dawns now!’
‘How so?’ Nithrom asked, genuine surprise in his gentle voice.
‘You said you would return, but weeks passed! Then the first of them came, a pack of those dogs, foraging ahead of their army! Gwyll and twenty of the menfolk took arms to drive them off. Four of our kinsfolk were left dead in the outer ditch! We never saw Gwyll or the others again!’
‘Merciful gods… and you have hidden in here since then?’
‘What choice had we? Seven nights and days, waiting for them to return and slaughter the rest of us!’
‘Put up your weapons, men of Maltane. We are here now.’
‘You bring an army, elf-who-promises-so-much?’ the old man asked with a sneer.
‘Those that you see, and three others besides.’
The leader threw his old sword onto the planking with a clatter and sat down on a bench. The cluster of others broke up, lowering their weapons, grumbling.
‘Then we are all surely dead,’ said the leader heavily.
‘What’s your name, friend?’ asked Le Claux.
‘Drunn.’
‘Then, Drunn, you are not dead until we declare it to be so.’
‘Is that a joke?’ asked the wizened old man who had sneered before.
‘Enough, Master Swale. Don’t goad them.’
‘No, I am not to be shushed, Drunn!’ The old man strode forward, facing Le Claux, who smiled with slight bewilderment at the hunched, white-haired old man and his rusty flail. ‘Where were you a week ago? How can you come here now, promising salvation, when there’s but a baker’s count of you and an army approaches? Eh? What can you do that twenty of our best could not?’
‘We are warriors, old fool,’ said Le Claux, his amused smile cooling. ‘We know a sight more about the art of battle than a bunch of farmers.’
‘Is that right, brave sir knight?’ returned old man Swale, his rheumy eyes fierce. The knight took an involuntary step back. ‘Oh yes, no doubt you know the delights of war, the glory, the comradeship, the songs, the gold you earn! But I’d wager we of the soil know more about real war! To see our beloved sons killed or mutilated, our daughters raped, our vines torched, our livestock swept away for camp feasts! We know what it feels like to toil a whole year to see it gone in a week, we know how hard it is to till burned soil, or worse, to dig it to make a grave! Don’t talk to me about war, knight! You play at it, we live with the consequences!’
With an angry bark, Le Claux thrust his mailed hand out and pushed the scolding old man away. Swale staggered and fell, smashing over a trestle.
‘Leave us! Go outside!’ Nithrom told the Bretonnian, his voice as cold and hard as steel.
‘But I-‘
‘Now!’
‘I’ll not be shamed by some-‘
‘So you would shame us all so we can share it? Get out!’
Le Claux turned and thumped heavily out of the megaron, his ornate spurs jingling against his greaves.
Erill crouched and helped the old man to his feet.
‘My apologies,’ Nithrom said to them all, his manner respectful. ‘For that outburst… and for not being here a week back. It took too long to gather this band. But between them, they are more than thirteen swords. Heroes all, one way or another, from the ends of the land, from triumphs too numerous to count. We’re here now, and by my oath, we will stand firm for you. We will protect Maltane.’
‘From Maura and his dogs?’ asked another of the farmers, his voice weary with disbelief. ‘For that, you don’t need to bring us a band of warriors, you need to bring us a damned miracle.’
‘Then you should think of us as just that, my friend,’ Vintze said with a twinkle in his eye. ‘A bloody, dusty, mad-eyed bunch of miracles.’ Behind him, Harg chuckled. Fithvael felt himself smile too.
‘Where are the others?’ asked Cloden.
‘Others?’ Drunn replied, looking away.
‘The rest of the town,’ said Dolph.
‘The folk of Maltane,’ Brom echoed.
‘Gone,’ Drunn shrugged darkly.
‘Run, fled, long departed,’ added Swale, pouring himself a cup of wine from a skin hung on the post-end near him.
The elves in the party exchanged glances. Ever so gently, Gilead thumped his foot down on the wooden floorboards twice. The sound it made was deep and hollow.
With a wide grin, Bruda pulled back her bow and shot an arrow into the boards between her feet.
The last six inches protruded from the floor, vibrating. There was a muffled series of human squeals and shrieks from beneath them.
Harg swept back the rushes on the floor with the flat of his axe blade and found the trap door in a moment. Fithvael stepped in beside him and, with Cloden’s help, pulled it up and open. Below them, in the darkness, dozens
of white, terrified faces looked up. A stench of human misery rose from the cavity.
Nithrom looked over at Drunn. ‘How many?’ he asked sharply.
Drunn sighed. ‘More than two hundred. Mostly women and children.’
‘Get a ladder! Get them out of there!’ Nithrom ordered, face drawn.
It took coaxing to get them up. Eventually, for reasons that perplexed Fithvael, only he and the formidable Kislevite woman had any success in bringing them out, and only then when Drunn, Swale and the other men of Maltane pleaded reassurance. The floor of the megaron hall lay flush with the flattened crown of the mound, but a deep and massive scarcement had been dug underneath. The townsfolk had hidden there, in the stinking dark, for upwards of a week, huddled between the great earthenware vats of drinking water. As the last of them came up, tearful women with deathly pale, grizzling babes in their arms, Fithvael took a flaming torch and descended the ladder. The scarcement was a large as the hall above, deep and damp, with a floor of oozing marl and walls dressed with travertine blocks.
The stink of human excrement was intolerable. Fithvael found two miserable bodies: an old woman and a girl, crumpled in the furthest corner. He could not tell if it had been fear, hunger or suffocation had done for them. He did not want to know.
He heard a movement behind him and turned to find Gilead standing behind him in the torchlight. Gilead was rapping his knuckles against the bulky water jars.
‘Two-thirds gone,’ he said quietly.
‘There is time to refill them from the streams or the well.’
‘No well up here in the inner place.’
‘I noticed.’
‘Not a good sign if it comes to a siege.’
‘I noticed that too.’
Gilead sighed and scratched behind his ear. ‘Why did you come here, Fithvael?’
Fithvael cleared his throat. ‘Because of Nithrom. Because someone had to. I see that more clearly now I am here. Someone had to.’
He paused. ‘And why did you come?’
‘Because you did. Because you are usually correct. Because… I did not know what else to do.’
Fithvael smiled, his white teeth glinting in the torchlight. ‘Gilead te tuin… you will be the death of me.’
‘I’ve always fancied it would be the other way round… Fithvael of the lost causes.’
‘Lost causes?’
‘Starting with me.’
‘Oh.’
‘But if it makes you any happier, I promise I will be the death of you,’ Gilead said and clambered back up the ladder.
IN THE HALL, as lamps and fires were lit and food and wine shared out, there was hubbub. The place was suddenly crowded, much smaller and hotter as bodies mingled. The folk of Maltane, mostly women and children as Drunn had pointed out, huddled and grouped, some weeping, some singing, some asleep on their feet. The stench of their inhuman confinement rose from their bodies and blocked out the sweetness of the hanging herbs.
Gilead and Fithvael joined Nithrom, Harg and Bruda at a table where a flask of wine and pottery beakers had been set out. A passing girl slid a platter of husked corn, oil and dried goat-meat onto the tabletop.
‘There is water below,’ said Fithvael as he sat. ‘But it needs refreshing and refilling.’
‘So noted,’ said Nithrom, taking a swig of wine.
‘So… when was you going to tell us about Maura?’ Harg asked.
‘Aye, old friend, when?’ added Bruda. ‘When battle commenced? Or before that?’
‘Does it matter who we face, my lady of Kislev?’ Nithrom smiled, eyes guarded. ‘The wars we’ve seen together, I’m surprised you concern yourself with the enemy’s name.’
‘When it is Bloody Maura, perhaps.’
Overhearing their talk, Cloden sat down with them, a beaker in his hand. ‘Maura’s Murderers? Great gods, Nithrom, I’m with the she-bear on this! You should have told us! I thought those were his damnable colours on those men we danced with in the woods. White for bone, blue for blood.’
‘Blue?’ asked Fithvael.
Harg grinned across at him, the smile ruffling the line of his beard and zagging the dreadful scar. ‘Maura fancies hisself a noble prince of Tilea. He’s naught of the sort, of course! I’m more a bastard king of the north than he is nobility!’
Nithrom looked over at them both. ‘There’s more truth in that remark than you’d first know, Fithvael te tuin. Isn’t that so, King Hargen son of Hardrad?’
‘Bah!’ scoffed the hulking Norseman, filling his cup. ‘No more of such talk!’ He sipped down a big gulp of wine and stared across the table at Fithvael earnestly. ‘Maura thinks hisself a prince, and delights in killing to achieve that rank. Hence blue for blood. Noble blood. Understand?’
‘Transparently,’ Fithvael said.
‘And so Maura is the one we face here. Maura and his vermin band. You should have told us, Nithrom.’ Cloden’s voice was grim.
‘Cloden’s not been so right since that day at Altdorf field. Then he was wery right.’
‘Don’t remind me, Bruda. That was another day… and we won, did we not?’
‘Just, da.’ Bruda smiled.
‘He is just a mercenary, a human mercenary, with a band of dogs,’ said Gilead abruptly. ‘Sell-swords are all dangerous. Why should we be troubled? An armed company returning south after the war season is still an armed company.’
‘You’ve been hiding in the woods for too long, friend,’ Cloden said, without malice. ‘Maura and his murders are sell-swords, yes, but more than that. Maura takes things… personally.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Imagine: you’re a company of war-dogs. You take coin and assault a town. You fail. You say ”I did my best, goodbye, I’ll not waste more trying”… yes?’
‘Of-”
‘Not Maura. Not ”Bitter-End” Maura. Damn that he can’t pay his men, damn that it takes three months when it should have taken a week. Victory is all he wants. Victory is all he will accept.’ Cloden looked down into his drink. ‘A skirmish won’t drive him off. He plays to win, and he’ll keep sending his men on until he has that victory.’
‘But that would break morale…’ Fithvael began.
Harg smiled, sadly. ‘Not the Murderers. Maura has that, that charm - what do you call it again, Nithrom?’
‘Charisma.’
‘They’re with him all the way. To hell and beyond. He draws to himself the best and the meanest and the most insane. That ogre sergeant of his-‘
‘Klork,’ growled Bruda.
‘Aye! The tales I’ve heard of him. And the leaders of his dog pack: Hroncic and Fuentes! Animals! Bastards! Death-dealers!’
The group was silent for a moment as the sounds of the busy hall washed about them.
‘They were good, I will say that,’ said Fithvael eventually. ‘Those we met in the woods. Just scouts, but they fought like… daemons. Good swordsmen, good horsemen. And their archers, if they were but a taste, I have a dread of what is to come.’
The huddle looked around to see Gaude leading Madoc in. Fithvael stood up, urging the Maltaners to find a cot and heat up some clean water. He still wasn’t sure what he could do, but that arrow had to come out. Attended by Gaude and a gaggle of townsfolk, the elf set to work.
Le Claux returned, but paused in the doorway. He glared across at Nithrom.
‘Le Claux?’ the elf said patiently.
‘Caerdrath summons you. There are lights on the northern trail.’
It was truly night now and a loose wind from the south-west scudded rafts of grey cloud against the moons. Leaving Fithvael and Gaude inside to tend Madoc, Nithrom’s ragged band emerged from the main hall and crossed to the open gate of the inner mound. Caerdrath, still attentive astride his patient mount, was like a gleaming statue in the half-light beyond the bridge. He heard them approach without looking round and pointed off into the gloom.
On the northern path, the road that the carts had followed that very afternoon to enter Maltane,
a string of torches jiggled slowly down. Twenty or more.
‘More scouts?’ suggested Erill.
Cloden frowned. ‘Too many. This could be the front end of the main company.’
‘Or an expeditionary force coming to learn the fate of the scouts,’ Gilead suggested.
‘Aye… and we don’t know what numbers lurk just beyond that rise,’ added Harg.
Nithrom swung into his saddle. ‘We will go to meet them. Make your peace with whatever gods you observe and come on. This may be done sooner than we expect. Master Erill: stay here, watch the gate. Make ready to close it fast if we return in a hurry, and get the townsfolk to prepare torches. Lots of them. Light the tops of the inner fence with as much light as you can.’
Erill nodded and hurried back in through the gate.
Nithrom looked from side to side and regarded the warriors drawn up on horses beside him. ‘Vintze, Harg, Gilead… with me to meet them. The rest of you keep out of sight and behind the outer ditch. Come when I call. If it all goes bad, withdraw to the inner mound and close the gate. If my vanguard falls, Cloden has the lead.’
Le Claux started to say something but thought better of it.
Along the line of riders, final preparations were made. Vintze put on his helm and slid his left arm into the loops of his small shield. Harg rested his war-axe across the chin of his saddle as he donned his snarling, full-face helmet. Dolph and Brom buckled on their helms and loaded their long, bulky handguns with synchronised movements, resting the primed pieces across the specially raised rests of their saddle mounts. As one, they closed their brass visors. Bruda placed a fur-trimmed, spiked bowl-helmet on her head, gathering her red hair beneath it, and tested her bow. Cloden adjusted his basket helm and slid on kidskin gloves before drawing his greatsword. Le Claux made a blessing to the Lady and settled a lance across his looped shield. Caerdrath, already prepared, raised up a slender javelin, one of six nested in his steed’s saddle-sling, and propped the butt against his right hip.
Gilead, like Nithrom, was bareheaded and carried a long, leaf-pattern elven shield. The rangers of Tor Anrok drew their longswords, Nithrom’s silver, Gilead’s blue-steel.
