His task at an end in the battle and finally on something approaching the safe side of the lines. Nietan led Ær and the others of his small party on a mad dash out of the swirling combat and back towards the relative safety of their encampment.
***
The surviving Wolven Kindred gathered back at their camp, and Nietan asked Ær and the Beastmaster to take a count of how many had survived.
When they returned, the numbers were, as Nietan had feared, disappointing. The Kindred had lost a fifth of their wolven, and fourth of their soldiers. And on multiple occasions, seen pair-bonds broken apart. Some of those could be seen sitting on the edge of the camp, crying, howling, or just staring into the darkness. A few would be dead by dawn, through their own action or some foolish act that amounted to the same thing.
The Beastmaster had already tried to approach the wolven from amongst the broken pairs, but they had snapped at him, and even his mental entreaties had been met with little more than silence or a howled refusal.
Nietan had no better luck with the humans. Oh, some listened, polite enough, but they answered in monosyllables and stared at the night sky, not seeing a thing. Others did not answer at all, too caught in their own weeping to say or hear anything. Only one amongst all the broken actually listened to what Nietan was saying. Finally, Bahtean, the soldier in question, gestured out across the plains around them.
“I knew it would happen, fairly soon too. We’d been paired for twenty five years. Wolven don’t live much longer than that. So I’d been trying to enjoy what time was left, make it special, y’know? And I thought I’d started to accept it. Accept what was coming. It wasn’t like it was sneaking up on me, or her. Old age never really does, not if you know where to look. And it wasn’t as if she could hide any of the aches and pains from me. Pair-bonded are far too close for that. But…”
After a long pause, Bahtean spoke again. Tears glistened in the light of the stars.
“I thought I’d be able to hold her as she passed, to sit, to have one last pleasant night. Some final treasured memory. Something! And instead she dies behind my back, saving me from an enemy I never saw coming. And I won’t even be able to bury her. She’s somewhere in the Traitor Legion camp, lost when we retreated.”
Nietan rubbed his fellow Kindred’s shoulder. “I’ll talk to the Traitor Legion in the morning. They aren’t heartless. So you might see her one last time.”
“Do I want that though? Or do I want my last memory of her to be her saving my life? I wish I knew. I’ve seen friends die. We all have. It’s a bloody mercenary company after all. But this is different. I’m going to be spinning memories and what ifs around my head for the rest of my life.”
“All you can try and do is live up to the standard she would have liked. And I do mean live. She didn’t give her life only for you to throw away that gift in the next battle.”
A massive shudder ran across Bahtean’s body.
“Fetch her back. Please.”
He then dissolved into tears.
Nietan wrapped his arm around his brother’s shoulder for a long moment, and then left him to the quiet embrace of the night.
***
Dawn broke slowly, poking through clouds of grey and a light drizzle that dampened everyone’s spirits even more. It had been a victory they’d won last night, of a sort, but they’d not been able to follow through on the initial surge. At the cost they had paid, it was a pyrrhic victory at best. And now Nietan had to go speak to the Traitor Legion about the recovery of their corpses. A less pleasant task he could not imagine.
In the early dawn light he and Ær crossed the mile or so between the opposing camps with a white flag held high, not that skilled warriors would ever mistake one man walking openly as an assault. He had had the forethought to clothe himself in dark leathers. Armour would have been most inappropriate, given he had swapped his for the Traitor Legion commander’s in the sound and the fury of last night’s conflict.
After a brief discussion at shouting distance with the sentries, an officer came forward to guide Nietan about the camp, pointing out the bodies of the humans under his command. The wolven corpses, he was informed, had already been stacked near the walls, so much waste in the aftermath.
After a while of wandering through the fort, and having identified most of the fallen from his company, Nietan was invited to break his fast in the officer’s tent. Which turned out to be the same one in which he had spent a very harrowing hour or two the night before. Ær glanced up at him as they passed through the entrance, his expression worried. It felt dangerous to stand in the middle of a place where there had been such slaughter so recently.
As it was, the room had been thoroughly cleaned and cleared, and only the occasional rent in the fabric spoke of the conflict that had taken place. With a gesture, their host bade them sit, and had small beer and wine brought for Nietan, while a large saucer of water graced the floor near Ær. Both of them wondered why the officer was being so magnanimous, but the reason soon became clear enough.
“I’m sure you haven’t heard, given the ruckus you and your allies were involved in last night, but the campaign is over. The Heretics stormed the western gate, and the existing ruler fell. The usurper, I hear, is having the parade and ceremony today. He even invited all of you along to witness his majesty on full display.”
Nietan staggered at the news. All that effort for nothing. Oh, sure, they’d taken a fair amount of pay upfront, which was hardly nothing, but most of that had gone to the Nameless for training, food, gear, and so on. Even with the loot they had captured from the first assault on the Traitor Legion camp, the Wolven Kindred were not much better off than they had been when the campaign started. And they were significantly smaller.
Seeing Nietan’s fallen face, the officer shrugged.
“I can hardly say I’m happy with the manner in which it ended either. We got battered, twice, while the Heretics picked on the soft targets and the rabble did nothing more than sit there with their thumbs up their asses. And as for whoever planned that assault last night, I’m not sure if I’d give him a medal for a brilliant plan, or kill him because of the ruin it made of our command structure.”
Nietan glanced down at Ær, who whuffed quietly.
Best not tell him unless he asks very directly.
Which, of course, the officer then proceeded to do.
The Packmaster shrugged, playing for time.
Tell him, it can’t get worse for us.
A mutter escaped Nietan’s lips. “You’re sitting down with the person responsible. Well, sort of. He’s lying on the floor.”
“Your wolven planned this?”
“Hardly mine. If anything, he’s the one in charge of me.”
Oh come off it. You’re the one with the big shiny title.
“And you’re the one who actually runs the Wolven Kindred.”
The Traitor Legion commander glanced back and forth between Nietan and Ær, hearing only half of what was apparently a two-sided conversation.
“They talk to you?”
“Rather too much I’m afraid. They get a bit big for their britches.”
I do not wear britches. Nor do I talk too much.
“Oh, be quiet Ær.” Nietan shook his head. “And yes, Ær was the one who planned the assault, and the raid on your command structure. Although it cost our unit rather heavily.”
“The point of the spear often breaks.”
“Broke rather too much for my liking. We’re a small unit as is, so casualties are always magnified.”
“I can hardly say the campaign went well for us either. We won, but the Traitor Legion was used as a shield against four separate companies. As you can imagine, our losses have been significant.”
“How badly has it gone?”
“Perhaps three thousand dead, a third of our fighting force. We’ll need to recruit heavily after this. Probably in the southlands, as they seem to be more willing to join the companies.”
“I t
ake it there is some resentment against the Heretics after this.”
A grim look passed across the commander’s face. “Why would we ever dislike our allies? They’ve been fighting the hard fight all along.” He struggled to control himself for a moment. “You have quite a motley collection of allies yourself. Some of whom are more unpleasant than others.”
“I hardly would have chosen them myself. But they were the companies who would take this campaign.”
“Even your own presence is a bit unusual, is it not?”
Nietan shrugged. “We did as best we could for ourselves. After all our recent history, even being allied with other companies was an achievement. But with time, we might rebuild what we’ve spent so long destroying.”
“That’ll take decades. Memory is long on only one side of the ledger.”
“With good reason, unfortunately.” The Packmaster took a last long swig of wine. “I think I should get back to my men. I’ll send some along to retrieve the dead. There weren’t any wounded who managed to surrender, by any chance?”
The commander’s face clouded. “There were very few wounded on either side. Your allies saw to that.”
“A fact I will be sure to bring up with them. Thank you for your hospitality.”
The commander bowed as Nietan left the tent.
***
After the work of collecting the dead was organized, Nietan and Ær squatted down on the edge of camp, staring off into the distance.
“Where do we go to recruit? And can we even afford to spend the time doing so?”
Probably south as well, but in a different direction.
“And the wolven? We can hardly be the Wolven Kindred if humans outnumber your kind ten or twenty to one.”
There are still massive packs that roam the forests, the tundra, and the mountains. I’ll have to convince them to join us.
“You mean try and survive a brutal gauntlet of fights, losing any one of which will kill you.”
You always look at the dark side of the matter.
“The last thing I want is for you to be killed. We don’t need more wolven that badly.”
Yes, we do. And you know it as well as I do. We’re almost at the limit of being a fighting force now. Too many wounded, too many dead. And that was only one battle.
“And we pay for the new recruits how? They need supplies, arms and armour, even food.”
We scrape, we scratch, we scramble. Anything to keep our heads above water. But nothing that breaks our honour. That is all we have to offer.
“I’ll talk to the Beastmaster and some of the veterans. Hopefully they have ideas. I’m out.”
A giant, rough tongue ran up the side of Nietan’s face. Stop despairing, you old worrier.
The Packmaster shook his head and embraced his companion, before they turned and walked back to camp. There were funerals to oversee, and a final debriefing argument to face, but for once Nietan felt as if he had a spring in his step.
Perhaps matters could look up, after all.
The End
We hope you’ve enjoyed this Deepwood Publishing story. As part of our mission to give readers the best of up and coming fantasy and science fiction, the following pages contain a glimpse into Tarranau, the first full length novel from James Tallett and Deepwood Publishing.
Tale of the Apprentice
Tarranau sat upon the cliffs, looking into the clear blue sky, matched at the edge of the horizon by a darker sea. Ocean and heavens blurred into one grey-blue mass as the ocean mist softened the view and removed all hard lines until it became one seamless whole, air and water together. Below him, the sound of waves crashing into and over the rocks of the seashore provided background music to his relaxations and contemplations. It was the end of the day and one of his favourite moments: waving goodbye to the departing sun as it slipped below the horizon, the glowing rays reaching out through the low lying mist. Molten gold running across the water to greet him, a last warm caress before the darkness of night fell over the island.
The apprentice lay there for an hour after the sun disappeared, enjoying the fading warmth of the day and idle contemplation of the clouds, sea, and sky. Finally, the light had sunk low enough that the young student knew he needed to go back to the dormitory and head to the dining hall, for idle contemplations and golden rays had stirred and filled his mind, but done little for his growling belly. Grinning at the idea of eating sunbeams for dinner, Tarranau moved on down the path, loose gravel and worn away earth marking a trail that had been used for a long time, so long that it overrode any right to close it.
Lazy strides took Tarranau down from the cliffs, towards Tregonethra where it sat in a depression between natural walls of stone, walls that sheltered a wide inlet in the western shore of Bohortha Eilan. The city wrapped around the inlet, a mass of tall wooden buildings and shore front warehouses, with wood and stone docks reaching out across the beach and into the water, fingers stretching towards the open ocean. It was the home of the largest fleet that sailed anywhere in the world, a fleet comprised of deep sea fishing boats and heavily laden traders, carrying goods up and down the coastline, to and from the outer islands, of which Bohortha Eilan was the largest and most populated. It was on one of these boats that Tarranau hoped to make his career as a marine mage, as one of the guild.
It was back to their school that he went now, a school of which he had been a part since his tenth birthday. The guild of mages that ran the school sent out small parties to the communities that were within their scope, including Tarranau’s. The marine mages examined all boys at the age of ten, testing them to see if they had magical talent. Those who did fell into two categories in the eyes of the mages: those with a simple affinity, and those with real potential. Having an affinity meant being tied closely to the water, often able to manipulate the element slightly. They were given a few years of training, until the age of fourteen, and then sent off, to become whatever caught their fancy. Usually, these boys worked as sailors or fishermen; knowing the waters as they did, they felt more at home there than upon dry land.
For the others, those with potential, they were trained for nine years, from ten to nineteen, and it was into this track that Tarranau had fallen. As with all boys of ten, he had regretted leaving home, and cried a good deal in those first few months, for many of the boys were sad, and the teachers appeared stern and unyielding after a childhood that had been infused with familial closeness. Still, it was one thing to be turned down by the mages, but another entirely to turn them down, and thus Tarranau had gone to the school, even if it had nearly bankrupted his parents in the first few years, for mussel farming was not the most profitable of occupations, even if it always put food on the table.
Now, Tarranau was eighteen and nearing the end of his time in the school, with less than a year remaining under the tutelage of the teachers. By this time, he paid for his own learning, through jobs that the mages gave to him, and by working on the docks. Students were encouraged in that regard, for it was felt by the guild mages that it helped young mages acquire an understanding of the life they would be living. So it was a common sight to see apprentice mages down on the docks in the early morning before the boats set out, or during the evenings as the boats returned and the bustle of unloading and repairing for the morrow began again.
This evening, it was that hustle and bustle that drifted up to Tarranau as he made his way back into the city, along with salty comments and bantered insults. The path ran down a sloping hillside into the outskirts of Tregonethra, where a few spread-out houses slowly gave way to more and more packed-in buildings, the wooden structures growing taller as they crept towards the city centre, where many stretched into the sky, four stories tall. Tarranau’s destination was the one walled area of the city, placed close to the sea shore, but far enough round from the main area of the harbour that it did not take up land that would be valued for commercial purposes. Here was the school of the watermage guild, marked off as its own little community insi
de of the larger populace of Tregonethra, and it was into the largest of the halls within the compound, the dormitory, that Tarranau ventured.
Tarranau went up the stairs to the second floor, heading towards his room. Walking along the long corridor, he passed a multitude of doors, each hiding a single small chamber, complete with bedding and a desk, the cause of crooked backs as students poured over texts by the light of a candle. Tarranau’s space was further along, down where the corridor went off at an angle, allowing the rooms in this small area of the dormitory to have a view out over the sea. His status as one with under a year to graduation had earned him this pleasant view out across the waters of the harbour, from which he could see those cliffs upon which he had been perched so recently, away off to the left. The vantage point was designed by the teachers to prompt thought of what comes after school, showing the harbour in which the graduates would spend many years working, and the sea that was the lifeblood of Tregonethra. Tarranau, however, was a young man, and not often given to the kind of introspection that the view was supposed to inspire, although from a sunny spot on the cliffs he would often spend hours trying to answer some of the great philosophical questions, including “What does come next for me?”.
Chuckling at the futility of trying to answer that question, the young apprentice changed from his dirt and dust covered clothes into his formal student’s robes, required for all school related activities during the day, including meals and time spent in class or with a professor, although that latter requirement was oft waived by the more lenient teachers. Dressed in clothes that were appropriate, if showing signs of being put on hastily and with little regard for decorum, Tarranau jogged down the stairs at his end of the building and through the compound towards the dining hall, his dirty blonde hair bouncing as he ran. He’d left it late again, and the bell that marked the end of dinner would soon ring out, and Tarranau had to get in the door before that happened.
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