Empire's Legacy- The Complete Trilogy

by Marian L Thorpe

  Chapter Ten

  The deep peal of the meeting bell reverberated through the village in mid-afternoon. I looked up from the knife I was sharpening, muscles tensing. Dessa stood watch this afternoon. I slipped the knife into its sheath and ran to the meeting hall. Other cohort-leaders did the same as the cohorts gathered in their appointed places.

  The council leaders waited. Longsighted, accustomed to searching the sea for the movement of birds or water that told of fish, Dessa spoke with authority. “I saw something on the horizon,” she reported. “It could be no more than a flight of seabirds, far out, or a breaching whale, but I think not.”

  My heart skipped as my mind raced through our preparations. The leaders ordered the children and new mothers to the caves while I counted weapons in my head. No one panicked. No one argued. Freya would be in Ranni’s byre, and Camy in a loft.

  “Cohort-leaders,” Gille said. “Check your weapons and your gear one last time, then command your cohorts to rest.” Her voice did not waver. “They will wait till night.” Her gaze quartered the room. “Eat lightly, but enough. I doubt there will be another chance for food for some time. Carry water if it will not hinder you.” She paused. “We are ready,” she continued, her voice gentler. “Remember that.”

  My cohort had gathered under the trees at the training ground. No one spoke as I approached. They had gathered their weapons.

  “Cohort-leader,” Tice said formally. “What is the news?”

  “Dessa has seen a sail,” I said. “Or, something she believes to be a sail. I doubt she is wrong.”

  “She won’t be wrong,” Freya confirmed. “They are very far out, then?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It will be very late when they land. We will review our posts and our tactics and check our weapons. Then you all must try to rest and take some food and water. You should be in your places two hours before midnight. Tice will review with half the cohort, and I’ll take the other half.” I hoped I sounded calm and in control. The cohort divided. I looked at the girls and women standing in front of me.

  “Freya, your orders?”

  “Ranni’s byre,” she said. “I do nothing until I hear the dogfox bark twice. Then I pick off any man who comes within throwing distance or closer. If they do not climb the hill, but attack the buildings, I will use our routes to move up to the hills and wait until our skills are needed.” I nodded.

  “How many knives do you have?”

  “Six.”

  “Sharp?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” I had grown to both like and trust her in these last months. I put out a hand to touch her shoulder. “Get some rest. I’ll see you at your post.” She nodded, moving away, making room for Kelle.

  The review took no more than twenty minutes. Each woman knew her orders and posts and answered me calmly. Finally, only Tice remained. She and I would both be high in the village, I at the forge, she at the big barn, places where we thought men might splinter off to, to hide or regroup.

  “Aline and Camy are nervous.”

  “Everyone is nervous. They just can’t hide it as well as the older women. Will they hold their posts?”

  “I believe so,” she said. “But if either thinks the other is in trouble or hurt…I’m not sure.”

  I nodded. “They are closely bonded.” As Maya and I had been at that age. They would be posted in the lofts of adjoining houses on the far side of the village.

  “May they be safe,” Tice said. “May we all be safe.”

  Shortly after midnight, I crouched in the loft of the forge. I had done my rounds, checking on each member of my cohort, over the previous hour. A light seafog shrouded the village, and no breeze moved the air. I sat back on my haunches. Listening. An owl called and mice rustled in the roof. Stars wheeled through the sky. I shifted quietly to keep my muscles from cramping. I smelled the sharp musky scent of a fox about its night’s hunt. I heard the rhythm of the waves on the shore. Then, above the gentle susurration of the waves, I heard the sweep of oars.

  My heart beat faster, and my breathing quickened. I forced myself to relax my grip on my knife. Tired muscles grew clumsy. I waited. I heard them disembark, the noise muffled by the fog. I heard footsteps, and then a thrush called, sleepily, twice. From the barnyard, a cock crowed.

  I crouched, staring into darkness as minutes passed. Then I heard them climbing the hill toward the open space above the council hall. We had guessed right. I listened until no more boots sounded on the path. I barked twice, and twice again.

  The horses exploded from their hiding place, hooves hitting sharply upon the rocks, riders screaming defiance. The sheepdogs gave tongue from the barns. I heard the scrape of metal on leather as swords came out of scabbards. Voices spoke in surprise. The horses and their shouting riders grew closer. Steel clashed on steel as men and women screamed. Arrows cut the air, whistling. I strained to see through the small window and the dark.

  Two shapes broke off, heading towards the barns and the fields. I saw them fall, as Casse calmly rose from behind her sheltering rock to throw a knife, once, twice. Beneath me, in the village, the battle raged in full force. I heard the chop of sword on leather, the whir of bowstrings, screams of pain and challenge. My heart pounded in my ears. A man turned from the melee, running toward the forge. I dropped out of the loft, landing silently, and slipped through the door. He wore no helmet. I grabbed his hair, and his cry of surprise turned to a gurgle as I slit his throat. His hot blood spilled over my hands. I felt my gorge rise. No different than the hunt, I told myself. Don’t think about it. I bent, wiped my hands on the grass. I took his knife from his boot.

  More followed. I could see at least three pounding up the path. I ran behind the forge and into the longer grasses, working my way toward the barns. I forced myself to stay quiet, to move slowly. I reached Casse. She had taken the knives from the men she had killed and was hefting them in her hands, judging their usefulness for throwing. She looked at me sharply.

  “I’m not hurt,” I assured her. “I’m going to the barn. Stay here. There are three at the forge, at least.”

  “None got past me,” she said. “Not that I saw.” A shout of rage rose from the battle below us. The water of the harbour reflected the flicker and glow of fire: the catboat, burning.

  I moved through the field until I reached the barns. I whistled softly, the meadow pipit’s call. Tice answered and stepped out from behind a partition.

  “They sent two men to burn the barn,” she said. “They’re both dead, though one killed a sheepdog first.”

  “Good,” I said. “There are three, or more, at the forge. I killed one. Casse remains on guard. Stay here, Tice, and watch this end of the village. I’m going down to assess where we are needed.” She nodded, and I moved through the barn and out the far end, into the heather.

  I reached the stream and its cover of willows easily. I climbed up, to edge through the branches, keeping parallel to the stream and the footpath. Once I thought I saw movement in the field beyond. I paused to watch, but saw nothing more. A fox, perhaps, or a badger. From the village and the harbour, the sound of battle continued, but women’s voices were raised in command more often than men’s. The morning grew lighter.

  I crossed on the branch, sliding to the ground on the other side of the stream, taking the now-familiar route through byre and tunnel toward the harbour. Freya was gone from her hiding spot in Rette’s kitchen, but a dead man lay in the doorway. Fifty feet from Siane’s workshop and the net sheds, where the archers had lain in wait, I stopped.

  The flames of the burning catboat and the rising sun gave enough light to see well. The fog had lifted with the dawn. A group of six men fought with swords and shields at the base of the dock, surrounded on three sides by the sword cohort. As I watched, one man broke, running along the jetty. I heard the twang of the bowstring, and he fell with an arrow in his back. Further up the hill, a horsewoman swung a sword, and another man dropped.

  As the day brighten
ed, I saw the tallest of the fighting men look desperately around. The catboat smouldered, listing on its side in the shallow water at the edge of the jetty. Above, in the village, a few men still fought, but the main path was littered with bodies. He stepped back and dropped his sword. “I surrender,” he said, hoarsely, in the accents of Leste.

  The men with him did likewise. Tali stepped forward to pick up the swords, passing them back to other cohort members. “Shields,” she said. They too, dropped. She bent, taking the knives from the men's boots. “Take off your belts.”

  They tied the men’s hands with their own belts. “Now,” Tali said to the leader, her voice calm and deadly. “Call your men to you. Tell them it is over.” He stood impassively. She put the point of her sword at his neck. “Tell them.” The sun broke over the ridge.

  He raised his head and called out, one word, three times.

  “How many on the boat? How many men, in total?” Tali demanded.

  “Three and forty,” he said.

  We gathered at the meeting hall. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I looked around for my cohort members. I heard quiet sobs from across the room where my mother stood with her hand on Dessa’s shoulder. Dessa kneeled beside a covered body. Siane. I approached them, hoping I was wrong. My mother looked up. I saw the flash of relief on her face. Dessa did not move. With a motion of her head, my mother indicated we should move away.

  “What happened?” I whispered.

  “Her knee gave out,” my mother said. I could see the tears in her eyes. Mine remained dry. “She stumbled and fell into a swordstroke meant for someone else. It was quick, at least.” She shook her head. “She should have gone to the caves.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Not yet. But not everyone is back. Is all your cohort here?”

  I looked around. Aline and Camy were slumped against a wall with mugs of tea. Freya sat beside them. Kelle spoke to her sister on one of the benches. Casse had gone to Dessa. Everyone but Tice. I had just opened my mouth to tell my mother this when I saw her at the door, her eyes searching the room. She saw my mother, and then me, and beckoned us over.

  “Gwen,” she said. “You are needed, although I fear it is too late. Lise is near the common with a sword cut to the thigh. She is bleeding badly.”

  “Is the blood deep red?” my mother asked. “Is it pumping out?”

  “No,” Tice said. “But she’s lost a lot of blood, and she’s unconscious.”

  My mother nodded. “I’ll come.” She found her basket, following Tice out the door. I was hesitating, wondering if I should go too, when Tali called me.

  “Lena! Please join me.”

  I went to where she stood with Gille and Sara at the side of the hall.

  “We can account for thirty-two men—dead, wounded, or surrendered.” Tali said. “You said there are three at the forge?”

  “That I saw,” I said. “Others could have joined them.”

  “True, but I doubt all eleven are there. We need your cohort, Lena to check everywhere a man could hide. I think we should leave the forge alone for now.”

  I considered. “Yes,” I agreed. “We’ll have to plan an attack there. They will have made peepholes in the walls, so we won’t be able to take them by surprise. But we should guard it, with horsewomen, perhaps?”

  “A good plan,” Gille said. “Is your cohort ready?”

  “They will do what is needed. But Tice isn’t here. She went with my mother to tend Lise, who is badly hurt.”

  “Send someone down for her,” Gille said.

  I nodded. “Give us ten minutes.” I walked over to Kelle. “We’ll need to go out again soon. Can you fetch Tice? She’s at the common with my mother.”

  Kelle nodded and slipped off the bench. I did a circuit of the room, speaking to each of my cohort, ensuring they had eaten and drunk. I had done neither myself, I realized, so I filled a mug with sweet tea and took a hunk of yesterday’s bread. I had a mouth full of stale bread when Tice and Kelle came back. I could see the news in their faces.

  “We were too late,” Tice said.

  “I’m sorry. But we have work to do. Mourning must wait.” Shock flickered over Kelle’s face. Then she nodded, and I saw her body straighten.

  “We hunt?”

  “We do.”

  “Good,” she said.

  I found my first man in Kyan’s timber loft. He chose to surrender, eagerly offering up his weapons. I tied his hands and took his boots, and once out in the street, found a member of the sword cohort to take him to the council hall, where the prisoners were being held. As I turned away, I saw Freya slip out of a byre. I whistled. She held up one finger, then drew it across her throat. Thirty-four.

  My second man did not surrender. The deep wail of a cat caught my attention; I moved towards the stable behind Ranni’s cottage. I heard the tabby growl, then scream in pain. I opened the door. The man sprang up, leaving the bleeding cat on the stable floor, to come at me with his knife out. I sidestepped, but the knife grazed my upper arm. It stung. He turned against his momentum, stumbling. I ducked, letting the knife swing harmlessly above me. I stood, grabbed his arm, and drove my knife up under his ribs.

  He did not die easily. In the half-light of the stable, I watched as he moaned and coughed, a froth of blood around his lips. He seemed younger than I, and thin. Blood trickled down his chin, and his eyes held only terror. He tried to speak, but coughed. Blood bubbled up between his lips. He began to choke. I stepped forward, pulled his head back, and cut his throat as if he were a deer at the autumn cull. Then I fell to my knees beside him, vomiting bile until nothing came up. I heaved a few more times, then pushed myself up to a squat, not looking at the body. I found straw, wiped my hands and my mouth, the motions automatic, without thought. I kept my eyes averted, and stepped, shivering, out into the day.

  At mid-morning, we gathered at the training ground. Inside the meeting hall, the shackled and bound prisoners sat against the wall. My mother and sister tended the wounded and shocked. Aline had stumbled over the body of Binne, the knife that had killed her still in her chest. We had all heard Aline’s screams. Kira gave her wine and poppy, and she slept now

  I shook my head to dislodge thoughts of Binne and our other dead. The cohorts reported five men killed or captured. That left six, still, somewhere in the village.

  Grainne rode up, on Siannon. “We can find no one in the hills,” she reported. “The children and the women with them are fine and have seen nothing. I left Dian and Caryn on patrol.”

  Similar reports came in from other cohort-leaders. We turned our attention to the forge.

  “They have swords and knives, perhaps spears,” Gille said.

  Kyan knelt to sketch in the sand. “Look,” she said. “The forge building has three solid walls. At the front, the large doors are split horizontally to allow the top half to be opened separately from the bottom. At the back, there is a small door meant only for escape from fire.”

  “What’s underneath?” someone asked.

  “The metal store, where the ore and charcoal are stored.”

  “They will have found that, by now.” Gille said. “But they have no food, nor a water source.”

  “There’s a little water in the forge, for cooling iron,” Kyan said. “But it won’t last long.”

  “Why don’t we negotiate surrender?” Sara asked. “Have their captain—Kolmas, his name is—order it, even.”

  “Do you think he’ll do it?” Tali asked.

  “We can ask,” Sara said.

  Gille unlocked the Lestian captain’s chains, leaving his hands shackled, bringing him over to where we met.

  “We want to negotiate surrender with the men hiding at the forge,” she explained. “We need to you to speak to them. Will you do this?”

  He grunted. “Do you know names?” he asked, his use of our language passable.

  “No,” Gille admitted. “Does it matter?”

  “Maybe. If Dann is there, he will not liste
n. But I will try.”

  We escorted Kolmas to within hailing distance of the forge, under close guard. Tice and I flanked him with knives at the ready. Horsewomen and archers made a semi-circle around us.

  Kolmas took a step forward. A tall man, barrel chested and strong, he did not test his shackles. He called to the men inside, in Lestian. I thought I heard his name in the string of sounds.

  The doors remained closed, but a voice answered from inside, the derision intelligible, even if the words were not.

  Kolmas shrugged. “Dann. He will do as he choose, and others will follow him. I can do no more.”

  “Does he speak our language?” Gille asked.

  “He understands.” Kolmas said. “But speak? A few words only.”

  Gille raised her voice. “I am Gille, headwoman of Tirvan. I give you one more chance: surrender, or die.”

  Dann laughed. “No, woman,” he said, heavily accented, followed by a stream of words, guttural and angry.

  “He says that not easy,” Kolmas translated. “He is not weak trader, he says, but soldier. If he led battle, you would be dead or in chains. He says he is man, not traitor or coward, like men you breed.”

  “He has chosen,” Gille said calmly.

  Later, at the training ground, Gille told us what she had learned from Kolmas. “Leste has a small army. They sent half-a-dozen soldiers with each raiding boat to teach arms and tactics. Dann is the most senior among them, but Kolmas’s captaincy, and his knowledge of the village, made him the leader.”

  “Kolmas is being uncommonly helpful,” Tali observed.

  “He is hoping for clemency, I suppose,” Gille said. “And in the end, he is, as Dann said, only a trader, and half his crew lies dead. He was led to believe this would be a quick and bloodless raid, with glory to those who led the capture. Glory matters to the men of Leste. Their reputations are everything to them.”

  “Which means,” I said, “that Dann would think a glorious death preferable to an ignominious surrender.”

  “Yes,” Gille said.