At Faith's End

by Chris Galford

  Shoulders sagging with shallow breaths, Berric only slowly resumed his posture. Stepping close to Rurik, he sheathed his blade in accordance with jurti, but he never took his eyes off Falk. Not even as they bundled him toward the door. The curses stalked him out.

  Breath broke in a tense flood from Ivon, and without a spared glance for his brother, the young lord eased back into the crowd. The ambassador, for his part, looked mortified by the display. Grimacing, Rurik couldn’t help but wonder if the fool had damned any hope for talks. Not that reconciliation seemed quite possible in his mind.

  Even as he apologized, however, one interruption begot another, and one of Tessel’s messengers arrived to announce him. Rurik felt the words slip right from his tongue as everyone turned to address the proper commander. Those same words sank down as heavy knots into his gut. Perfect. He no longer had any place, and given how badly the last few moments had gone it was probably for the best.

  Demeaned as a child. Blades to parley. Imagine if I had a whole hour to command.

  Tessel, in spite of the bagged eyes, looked almost regal in his cavalry cuirass and gryphon-embroidered tabard. He watched them all in the remote manner more befitting of an owl, but he marched straight through the crowd for the diplomat without pause. His soldiers loitered at the door, but two other men accompanied him to the meeting. To his left, aged and crooked beneath his linens, Rurik recognized Pasłówska’s chief burgher and mayor. Erim—Baron Pordill of Lucretsia—stood sleek and silvered to Tessel’s right, time having stricken the black strands from his soft features, but none of his fatherly qualities.

  At the diplomat’s feet, Tessel bowed precisely as low as jurti commanded. “It is my honor to receive you, Your Grace,” he said. Only then, under a strict eye, did he take in the rest of the Effisians men, terminating on Messar Bazylski with a straight smile. “My condolences I was not here to meet you myself. I was delayed en route, but I trust between them my emissaries were more than capable.” He spared a glance for Huwcyn, the men trading soldiers’ curt nods.

  “Would that all your noblemen were so…disposed,” Bazylski bobbed uncertainly.

  Tessel, nodding as much to himself as to the diplomat, turned his unyielding gaze to Rurik. “You may go now, Rurik. Knights, lords, you shall all go as well. My lord Huwcyn, if you would be so kind as to join me, we shall retire these discussions upstairs.”

  Curtly, cleanly, he dismissed them all. Some of the men seemed less than obliged to go, but none honestly raised the specter of doubt. For that, Rurik was glad. There were only so many embarrassments a man could take. One man had already made a mockery of them for the day—another would make it seem the whole army stood upon the brink. For that matter, Rurik would not have put it past Othmann to have guaranteed Falk’s presence here. That Tessel had come without him, well…he hoped the slight fit the crime.

  Hardly the image of unity one needed for such discussions.

  Whether they understood that, or feared Tessel’s rage, or even Berric’s skill with a blade, the noblemen filed back into the rain under a veil of darkly worded gossip, and Rurik with them. He looked for Ivon, but through some manner of foresight, his brother was one of the first out the door. He might have sought him, but Berric caught him first, patting his good shoulder as he leaned in close.

  “Watch your back. That one’s not like to be sated,” Berric whispered, before he shut him out into the rain. Him and all the other nobles, with all their whispers between them.

  With the spring came rain, with the rain came mud, and with the mud came war’s greatest killer: disease.

  Throughout the camp there was evidence of it, but nowhere more than the grey-backed canvas with its doctors and its wailing dead-to-be. The fact of it terrified Rurik as little else could. For it was more than mere death. It was the thought of otherwise strong men, terrifying men, who could plunge into a sea of lead and steel and rise still human, suddenly reduced to infants. Crying out in their sleep. Clutching for those toiling over them. Crumbling, inch by human inch.

  Again the dark days came to him. Flashes of substance, taken in too many scattered lumps to mean anything as one. Teeth loomed above his shoulder in the guise of saws, and behind them the dark eyes, hushed tones. Alviss sat before his bedside, holding his hand and snarling wolf-like into their midst, and the phantoms scattered as sheep. The voice, continuous through his mind: Return to the muck. Return. Ghost-like spasms of sympathy curled through his shoulder. A hand idly fingered at the old coin he always kept in his pocket.

  That voice was known to him.

  Accursed nostalgia. Yet was it not nostalgia that called him to the Eagles’ camp? He slunk past the sprawling tent like a dog with its tail between its legs. When he glanced inside, he envisioned his mother reaching out to him, pale-faced, blood still slick between her thighs. There were some ghosts he could not face. Say what men would.

  It was midday, so most were well and truly about the work of the camp. For its size, the camp was surprisingly simple in layout, its lanes easily navigable. Martial priorities, he supposed. Sections were divvied up by province of origin, with companies of sellswords attached to whichever lords had made the acquaintance of their services. Naturally, these twenty some odd sections were then split into the myriad regions that made up each province, but one truth always held: the attending lords always lay pretty-as-you-please packed into the center of their people’s mass. Some of these places were fortified encampments in their own right, but most were open, so long as one held no blood feud with any therein.

  The Company of the Eagles—though one could hardly call so few a company—remained settled in the boundaries of the Jaritz contingent, near the eastern boundaries of the larger encampment. They were not close to Ivon and his fellow bannermen. They remained instead where they always had been: smack in the center of another camp of sellswords, the Gorjes. Originally, it had been a ploy by Rurik’s father to keep them out of sight. Now it was merely that no one knew where else to put them.

  Few troubled about his path home and he kept his eyes from those who did. Rurik found he preferred it that way.

  He wove between the walls of canvas, quickening his pace as he stepped amidst the lands of the bloody falcon. Men gambled brazenly with whatever they had at hand. One roared at a loss, others laughed with the man that robbed him. A few pikemen trailed him with their eyes as he stopped to consider the loss. Rurik hurried on, tipping his head and doing his best to be as one with the shadows. Clouds churned overhead and the mud slopped at his deteriorating boots.

  “Why the rush, boy-o?”

  A hundred feet. Maybe less. He could see the drooping visage of his eagle perched atop the tent, like an island in shark-infested waters. Yet the voice seemed to slither from the alleys themselves and it seized him as sure as any hand. When he turned, he found himself eye to eye with Orif of Kellsly, the vile captain of the Gorjes. He stepped casually from the flap of the tent Rurik had just passed, smiling his battered smile. Many of the teeth had long been plucked—an image that should have rendered the fierce comical, but only served to fuel the ghoul’s malevolence.

  Behind him, yellow eyes and sickly grayish skin marked one of his enigmatic bodyguards. A hunched but menacing wraith, the orjuk bore no weapons that Rurik could see, but the trunks that formed his arms left doubt as to whether he needed them. One hand idly fingered the long, single black braid that was the hallmark of his people. It was the first Rurik had ever encountered. From the first, he had hoped it would be the last.

  “Orif,” Rurik said tightly.

  A hundred feet. He tried to spy out Alviss from afar, but with the rain, he was undoubtedly inside. All the while he tried to suppress that squawking voice reminding him that Ivon may have been their nominal commander, but only that. Sellswords kept their own company, and what happened in the heart of their own domain was generally left to their own business. Ivon and Alviss both might as well have been miles away.

  “Hear the crag-hoppers have come t
o ground. As a representative of our good commander, mind telling me what that might mean for our wages?”

  Rurik swallowed. It was not a conversation he wished to have at the best of times. While most soldiers had been paid by the crown for outfitting and the right of levy, most had yet to be paid for services rendered. For Tessel, the majority waited. Some, like Orif and his greedy band, were not so patient.

  “I’m sure I couldn’t begin, at the moment.”

  Orif gave a dry chuckle. “Oh, I’m sure.”

  Rurik flushed at his tone. “It’s a parley. When he’s—I’m sure I’ll know more in the days to come. If you’ll excuse—”

  But Orif took a step closer in his need to relieve Rurik. “Woah, woah. Easy, lad. Wasn’t so long ago we was goodly neighbors, you know. Did I know a speckled mare from a rabid gryph? Certainly. Did I spare a word? Of course not. So a man’s inclined to ask: where’s the trust? And me and your pa—well. Really.” Orif’s grin took on a decided edge. No few of those gaping gums had been caused by men at Kasimir’s beck and call. Rurik’s father had not abided thieves. “But we really gots to talk soon, you and me. Your girl’s seriously edging my boys. War’s no place for a woman with her britches up, and camp’s no place for a lamara.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not forgetting my dead boy, devil-eyes. At the least, Tessel owes me for the loss of hands. You hear me?”

  Though it was Rurik who took a step back, he tried to hold firm as he mastered himself, demanding: “What did you call her?”

  Orif rolled his eyes, smile fading. “I knew her father, you twit. Think I’m blind, too? Aren’t nothing so tight what’s human.”

  Rurik could feel the twitch in his hand. He also became acutely aware of just how close his blade was. One sweep, he told himself, thinking of Rowan’s quick-draws. Orif was watching him from the recesses of his dark eyes, waiting for something. Both hands rested surely before him, and Rurik became steadily aware of other eyes lurking. The orjuk at his back was prepared for sudden death. He needed to go. Before they goaded him into doing something stupid.

  And with them, it was a matter of when. Not if.

  “Think of this as a courtesy I been meaning to have with you some time now, boy,” Orif whispered.

  “I’ll speak with Alviss, and with Lord Tessel. It’s all I can do.”

  Orif scoffed, but some of the tension seemed to go out of his shoulders. Disappointment, perhaps, hedged through his eyes. “See that you do.”

  Rurik was off before the words had even left his mouth. As he went, he could feel the eyes following him, but he resolved not to look back. Not for the first time, he resolved to broach the topic of the company’s reassignment with Ivon. Only fear of drawing other unwanted eyes had stopped him in the past. That, and the fear that he would insult his friends’ capabilities.

  Slow breaths sought to steady his heart. Nothing stirred the blood, however, like an assault upon one’s kin.

  Lamara, they called her—the old Asanti term for “half-bloods.” Literally, the union of man and Aswari. It was derogatory, but it was all they had for blood such as Essa’s. Sighing, he tried to imagine Essa’s mother, but it only came out as the cobbled patchwork of stories and legends. What of the Aswari remained, he knew, were mostly confined to designated villages, tightly governed by often less-than-sympathetic lords. The Vorges spoke of the Aswari like phantoms, a nimble people past their time and far beyond man’s salvation. People reborn as men, to reign anew.

  Essa’s all-too-human father had belittled her simply for asking. He drank away his life remembering. And Essa—she learned only through his sobering insults. Her mother had left them both before Essa was even a year old.

  Given the nature of Essa’s father, it wasn’t hard for him to imagine why.

  Nor was it hard, then, to reckon why the thought of alcohol’s hand in her corruption made it all the more difficult for her to bear. That night. That horrible night. It came to the fore whenever Rurik neared the threshold of their memory, and as his steps slowed, he knew it would haunt him until the end of days. He still wasn’t certain what had happened. Arasyl rang in his mind and haunted his thoughts. It was the only thing, shouted in Essa’s rage, that he had to go on. Where it had come from, though, was another matter entirely.

  It was somewhat unsettling that, as he stepped amidst the triangle of tents marking the grounds of the Company of the Eagles, the only ones there to greet him were the pair of Gorjes Orif had leant at Ivon’s command. One of the pair hooked him with a smile as he glanced around, but the other was bent to a wood carving. He couldn’t say he remembered either of their names.

  “Lost?” asked the shorter of the pair. He tipped the rim of his hat with the question, letting accumulated water run.

  “Alviss about? I was supposed to speak with him.” Frowning, Rurik bent toward Essa’s tent, peering through the open flap, but neither she nor Rowan were there. “Where is she?”

  At the sound of chains rattling, Rurik turned toward the northern point of the triangle—Alviss’s fur-laden tent. Pulling himself up to his full height, the sight of the rising northman was like watching a bear rise from its den. Alviss’s blue eyes immediately locked on his former ward and all but ignored the others. It set a pang through Rurik’s own heart. They saw too little of one another these days and that, as much as anything, he knew for his own fault.

  “Well the mountain’s hard to miss,” the Gorjes man jibed. “As to the peach, it’s sad to say the other’n took her. Prolly to teach her the fine art of castration.”

  Rurik stared. Alviss glared. Putting up his hands in innocence, the man traded a sheepish smile between them.

  “Ey, she’s a bear for a reason. Little wolf just don’t quite do it. If either of you still had your stones, it’d be more terrifying, I swear you.” His partner grinned as he bent into another stroke of the wood, but added nothing from between tobacco-stained teeth. Rurik, shaking his head, did his best to ignore it as he moved to greet Alviss.

  Both burrowed into Alviss’s crowded tent—made so not for any abundance of goods, but simply by the presence of the Kuric himself. Nosing in somewhere between a deer’s hide and the flap, Rurik tried his best to make himself comfortable. It was not easy. Nor was it easy to look the old man in the eye, as once he had.

  Expressionless, Alviss nevertheless met him with the bearing of a father regarding his child. Rurik swallowed through a smile, trying to recapture the myriad thoughts he had held before he stepped foot into the tent. Scattered, they had, and all with a look. It had been as such for months. The old man loved him, to be sure, but there was a hurt there that went deeper than words. Essa’s hurt. Such pains never touched just one.

  “So,” Rurik said quietly. “Ivon said you were looking for me the other day. I should have come sooner but…” But I was too afraid to risk it. He squirmed. “I’ve a little time, between Effisians and nobles. Will they…?” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the men outside. He did not like the thought of them listening in.

  Alviss dismissed the worry with a wave of his calloused hand. It hooked the open flap and yanked it shut. “Aye. I thought it time we had a piece.”

  “A—a piece?”

  The Kuric eased back against one of the poles of the tent, crossing his arms over his chest. “About Essa, Rurik.”

  Rurik felt hope swell past his reservations. “Has she—has she asked of me?”

  If he thought the fates had finally shown him a kindness, however, the dampening look the Kuric shot him struck any thought of it from mind.

  “She asks often, but means little. I’ve enough of pain. You will tell me of that night.”

  He could feel the color draining from his cheeks. “I don’t think—”

  “All of it, child.”

  So he did. Skirting the details of their coupling, he recanted the night in detail, or as much of it as he could remember. He tried his best to keep theory from the mix and tell it only as he s
aw it. It wasn’t until he came to the morning after, though, that he choked.

  Boyish pride is a frail thing. It wounds easily and scars deeply. His heart was much the same, for all his shows to the contrary. Even that brief telling was as salt in the wounds, and by the end, Rurik’s eyes were cast firmly to the earth, like a beaten dog, his thoughts circling around the woman that had scorned him.

  “Why, Alviss? Why won’t she speak to me? You-you see, I did nothing wrong.”

  The Kuric sighed deeply at that, but there was no sympathy in it. He dragged a hand through the gnarls of his beard and looked pointedly away. When he looked up, Rurik could see another night not so long ago, Essa curled against Alviss in the dark, weeping. The old man held her and let her fade into the furs, far from any hurt. He took it all in so that its burden might pass from her. There was never any falter in the solemn watch of those owlish eyes.

  “I do not doubt you,” Alviss said finally. “Still. Drug. No drug. There is more. Hurt as such—no heart could stir it, did not love. She loved you.”

  Loved. Past. No word could have hurt him more. Rurik felt himself falling as he blurted, “And I her! Then why does she torture me so? I—I was kind. I didn’t, that is to say—”

  “Why.” The word snapped from Alviss like the crack of a whip. Rurik blinked up at him, startled by the harshness in his tone. “There is a whole side you do not see. I can live with boy that makes mistake. Such is youth. But this hurts not you only, Rurik. Think. What if she took to child? Would she ever look to it with mother’s eyes—even if she survived the birthing?”

  “But Aswari don’t—” He bit down on his tongue to keep himself from finishing. Nevertheless, the Kuric took his meaning.

  “Take human child?” their guardian remarked mirthlessly. “Clearly. So she stands before us.” Rurik hung his head, trying not to look at him, but Alviss bulled on. “Every time she looked at that child, she would see only mistake. Or deception. Little matters. Youth is her curse, as yours. Youth cannot raise youth. Don’t tell yourself otherwise. You cannot even take care of yourself.