His gaze narrowed, then lessened to a rounded, gentler note, and the Bastard, seemingly exhausted, sank back into the crook of his chair. A long, steadying breath took him, and he dismissed Rurik, saying: “I give you the day to think on it. By time we move, your sword must be steadied to one side or the other.”
Guards bundled him outside and tossed him into the waiting teeth of sharks. The honor guard had dissipated, and a peering twig of a youth remained in their place, though not for long. At the first glimpse of Rurik he made not even the pretense of disinterest. One look and he fled into the lanes.
One of the sentries followed the boy with his eyes, muttered something under his breath, and turned to Rurik as he neared. None of the honorifics of days before still settled on the edge of the tongue, however, and Rurik went to him as one man to another.
Unfortunately, the man did not ease his concerns. “That one?” the man scoffed in answer to Rurik’s inquiry. “Little shite of a thing. Thief he is, but those sellswords took him on. He’s a quick one, I’ll give him that, eh?”
A shiver of dread crawled up Rurik’s spine. “Sellswords?”
“Aye. Southerners, the lot. With them falcons for sigils.” The man made what seemed a sign against evil and shook his head aside. “Your woods breed queer folk, ser.”
A falcon. The crude sigil of the Gorjes. He nearly felt the point of a knife at his back. That made the runner Orif’s creature, and if the man wanted knowledge of his departure, than his skin was surely to be the cost. Will they find me in a ditch or strung from a tree? Briefly, he considered asking for accompaniment, but even those that hadn’t listened in on Tessel’s parting words would be hard-pressed to leave either post or merriment for him. So he sufficed to thank the man, and bundled himself off toward the Company’s camp.
The way was paved, one way or the other. Despite the looming threat from Orif and his bloody band of idiots, Rurik felt lighter both of foot and spirit to know that soon he could go and make some effort to turn things to what they once had been. Only the air above and the grass below, and all the world before their feet.
Thoughts of home tempered it. This time of year the ranchers would be leading their beasts abroad for the fresh grass, while the hunters set snares for the rousing creatures of the forest, still fat from winter’s hording. The whole forest would come alive, as it had not since the snow began to fall, and all of them, caught in that land of ageless grace, would treat again with life, in place of death.
All save one empty home, with hollow halls and memories. No, he thought, slowing to a crawl near their ring of tents, there were some things that would never be the same.
Nor should he have presumed to think the rest would be so neatly done. Wolves, after all, never came at a man straight on. They circled and tore the flanks to pieces.
The Company’s tents had been pitched at the base of a bent, double-trunked pine at the western edge of camp. Their tents circled one another, a canvas barricade against the outside, their perimeter a mass of other outcasts—individuals and broken parties, men that belonged to neither group nor land, and bore only what one saw before them. No allegiance, and hopefully, no vendettas.
Yet among the lot, sitting pretty-as-you-please beside the Company’s own fire pit, was Orif of Kellsly, along with his man Gunther. There was no sign of the boy, but from the way their eyes crossed Rurik’s expectantly—almost keenly—there was little doubt of his having been.
Rurik paused mid-stride to take in the scene and to make some sense of their play. Circling at the periphery was Rowan, hand loose on the hilt of his blade in a manner Rurik found in him unlikely: anxiousness. The others, resting, dined on scavenged bread, in a scene any other man might have taken for the old hearth greeting. Sitting across from the Gorjes, Essa barked something low enough that Rurik could not hear, and Gunther drummed out his own harsh laugh, turning away from the nearing prey. Neither she nor Voren, legs tucked beneath him and with an arm held defensively—and familiarly—across her backside, shared it. Orif consented to a sardonic smile, but his eyes never left Rurik. He even dipped his head in greeting.
In his hesitation, Alviss followed the Gorjes’ gaze and caught him stiff. The look the old man shot him made him feel every bit the child again, caught prodding a feral dog. With a word of excuse to the others, Alviss rose from the place he held beside Essa and headed straight for him. Every voice in Rurik’s head told him to move, but his legs felt bound by bog’s mud. He looked to his former guardian and carefully lowered his eyes as the giant filled them.
It was in the shadow of the man’s feet that he began to wonder: where was Chigenda?
“We move to be away from these. Now you bring them to us?” There was a terrible fury in the man’s voice which only age and discipline contained. Rurik all but shivered under it regardless, and would not meet the man’s eyes.
He stammered, “No. I—”
“What do I tell? Caution. Always caution. Never…” The voice trailed, and Alviss’s tone with it, drifting into a sort of whimsy one might expect from a dreamer or a poet. Hesitantly, Rurik looked up, but Alviss was not watching him either. The man was fixated, further than he cared to question, until he caught Rurik’s eyes upon him. Alviss grunted. “He waits you, boy. See him swiftly gone.”
The northman turned and loudly proclaimed departure on excuse of water. Yet all the while Rurik noticed how his head twisted just so, and none of the muscles of his neck settled. He looked beyond the camp, to something—and there it was. Rurik cursed himself for not noticing sooner. The orjuk stuck out even in the colored multitude of the nearby tents, but there were others—Gorjes, all—that walked with club and knife both tapping anxious beats, watching the proceedings with all the subtlety of bulls on the plains.
They had been circled. This was not a man’s threat, but a pack’s.
Alviss shouldered past him. Several men, trying to appear a part of some ailing soldier’s company, broke from their place and hastened after him. Rurik whispered a silent prayer for the Kuric, and turned his attention back to Orif. The Gorjes’ captain hadn’t as much as moved a muscle, aloof if not ignorant of the barbs being traded about him.
It had been some time since Rurik last had cause to give the man a second glance. Hard months had only drawn the slight man slighter still, but his teeth gleamed like a shark’s, which was well, for he had lost none of the sharpness to his features. Lounged against several of the Company’s packs, forsaking the grass the others contented themselves with, the man sprang like a jackrabbit at Rurik’s approach. “Rurik,” he cried as though old friends, crossing the feet between them in easy, luxurious strides. A hand snapped up Rurik’s own, though he had not offered it, and pulled him close.
“To what—” was all he got out before he was all but yanked off his feet. Then, more cautiously: “To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit, Orif?”
The man pulled back, smile wide enough to swallow the lot of them whole. Beyond him, Rowan had drawn still as an addled man might, and their eyes caught. There was something there. A longing. Rurik drew aside from it.
“My boy,” the Gorjes’ swine of a leader boomed, “is it not manners to see a lad off? Surely war hasn’t taken all our traditions?” Bells rang sharp through Rurik’s head, and he angled for a surer look beyond the smarmy man. In the cast of his net, he spied Essa also stock still, her eyes fire on the both of them.
“And any protection this place has brought you,” Tessel’s voice echoed hauntingly. Surely even he would not go so far…
Trust. It was a fleeting thing. And men like Tessel—soldiers through and through—they knew that a pragmatic man used anything they might to see need met. Rurik’s own weakness was only too apparent.
He cringed as he tore his hand back. “The day you learned manners—”
“Ah, ah, easy now. Wouldn’t want to offend, aye?” Orif leaned close enough that Rurik could smell the wine on his breath. “Not your escort, I’d say.”
“E
scort?”
Orif threw his arms wide in a dramatic gesture. “Why, you’re the general’s chosen. He’s not so heartless as to send his own off unaccompanied, nor I, for all those services you rendered. There’s bandits in the woods, you know. And unseemly folk too, I’m told.” He was enjoying himself.
“You need to leave.”
Orif shifted his gaze sideways, as though addressing another beside Rurik. Someone who took his words no more seriously than he. “Ah-ah,” he clucked absent-mindedly. “Now that’s a might unseemly.” He gestured out at the orjuk and the threat it implied.
If he could have throttled the man, Rurik would have. They were so close and he, boy that he was, still had a head on Orif. The first swing. That was all he would need. Instead, he tried not to choke on his tongue.
“That shouldn’t be necessary, I’m sure. He must needs every man about him, and we are capable.”
The corners of Orif’s lips twitched at the last. “Oh, so he does, and that’s why your loss does hurt us so.” The man leaned back on the balls of his feet, hand tapping a gentle beat against his heart. “Perhaps I’ll send a letter to Witold, yeah? Tell him the boy-lord’s headed home, with Tessel’s own blessing. Send someone to meet you, I’m sure.”
He started to object anew, but as seemed the running case for this conversation, found himself once more cut off.
“Oh, but it will.” All at once, all semblance of the smile dropped and the leer that became the sellsword emerged. “You just be sure and keep that girl real close now, you hear? Escort or no, I hears to tell we’re headed south ourselves. And as you seen—accidents do happen.” With a parting pat on the shoulder, Orif slid past him at a whistle. It took but seconds for the other Gorjes to snap to and come nipping at his heels. Before they were quite out of earshot, he could not resist one final gibe, calling out, “The very best, dear lordling!”
Rowan, standing as a reed amongst this sudden river, watched the flow of mercenaries with sunken eyes. He followed them long past the lengths of their threats, hand never once leaving his rapier. He never offered a glance to Rurik. Not like Voren. That one’s eyes, still firebrands, remained fixed on him, as if by sheer force of will he might commit Rurik to the flames.
The promise of his blade was tempting, yet it was a temptation best resisted. Orif was swine, but one didn’t get where he was without a few tricks. That, and the utter ruthlessness to see them done right. Between him and the orjuk, Rurik would have found himself little more than a thin paste smeared across the dust.
And Orif was one of those that rarely stopped at an eye for an eye—not that Essa needed help in riling this lot.
As it was, people were staring. Prying the nails from his own palms, Rurik twisted back for his would-be companions. Idle threats, he knew, were not the Gorjes’ way. Nor Tessel’s—and no man, even those cutthroats, would dare move so brazen without the Bastard’s consent. It was to be blackmail, than.
The only noble blood, indeed. Tessel played the game with the best of them, it seemed. If only the core were a different man, Rurik might have followed him gladly to his end. But the man was a force consumed—he would burn or be burned in turn by the people, but never a blooded man or circled one to strike him a knee.
Essa scowled at him over the lip of the fire, sparing some sharp word for her faithful baker. Would they hate him for his weakness? Or for what he dragged them into? More important: could they ever forgive him, and see that he did this for them?
For her, at least, he thought he knew the answer. This, too, was his fault.
Hesitation held him at the edge of the tents. It no longer seemed, for all the warmth contained within, a place that he could cross.
Once, moons ago, a bastard-general had said that all men had a choice. So too did Rurik, and he saw it plain. Thus did he turn away now and leave the Company to their questions. Even Alviss, on his way back with bucket in tow, eyebrows raised in question, received nothing but a tip of the head. The stride came heavy, but it was not difficult to retrace his steps.
Conform or die. This was the decision laid at his feet. Tessel had never been kind to traitors. Perhaps the others would have chosen death, but Rurik could not choose it for them. It would only be a slower death for him.
Life was the only gift he could give, and they would never love him for it.
It was this they whispered in the dark hours of the night: he was the puppet on Tessel’s strings. And how he danced.
The tent waited, and the blight within, growing longer in the twilight.
They would remain. Assal help us all.
Only two things held fortunate: the weather and their master. Both made a swift southern march of the days that followed Oberroth.
Agruil, the month the farmers quietly—for fear of the old goddess herself—referred to as the “fickle time” for its penchant toward indecision, dithering as it did between sudden, violent frosts and refreshing, windy blossoming, proved remarkably steady for their march. Nights were brisk, but morning quickly flooded the world with sunlit warmth. Even the sharp rains seemed to abate themselves, save for a few, scattered afternoon drizzles that served little more purpose than to wet the trees’ thirst and cool the sweating men.
It also served to keep the Jurree within its banks—ever a problem in such early months. Already swelled with the thawing snow, any torrent might have flooded the banks and left the army trudging through mud and debris—something the raging river was always full with. When they reached it, however, the river was as placid as it could get, and cautious merchants were already taking advantage to peddle wares. Most fled before them, no doubt adding knowledge of the invaders’ movements to their list of goods.
Tessel, in his turn, seemed to settle into the contentedness only a purposeful march could bring a soldier, partnered with the boon of a full belly. He left Rurik largely to his own devices, and rarely called on him for counsel, but in the same vein, he had no doubt kept his word regarding the Gorjes. Those mercenary hounds seemed almost stark in their absence in the aftermath of Rurik’s decision. What few times he encountered them, they gave him room, and though they did not meet his eyes, he could feel their scowls burning into his back. Only Gunther put in any real appearance, and this amounted to little more than his usual calls on the Company.
For the moment, the swine were kept to pen. Yet it only confirmed how deeply linked they were to Tessel’s own decisions. A moment’s change of thought and Rurik might have found himself dining on a dagger’s tip by breakfast. Fortunately, Tessel had never been an impulsive man.
In that same vein, the villages and hamlets, stray merchants and isolated ranches they encountered remained somehow, remarkably, unharmed. Though many men would have eagerly worked their dark deeds—by light of day or dead of night, Rurik reckoned—Tessel seemed to have regained some of his former soldiers’ pride. What contact they had was civil, and aside from the setting of flags and a few posting of bands for watchmen and outriders, Tessel kept the interactions with “the new territory” to ambassadors—his captains—that often went to these places for pledges of allegiance, offerings of the Bastard’s own word, and appeals for anything to aid “the pilgrim’s march.” This last disgusted Rurik, for it was merely extortion by another name, but he held his tongue.
All around the camp had spread new banners, following the influx of some small train of tailors to the camp. Gone were the gryphons, save of course the Emperor’s own banner. In their place were seas of brown marked by the white, twisting mark of the “double infinity,” some making of Tessel’s curious mind, held aloft by staves.
“A symbol,” the man intoned one night over a mandatory dinner with his captains and noble prisoners, “is as powerful as the thing itself. We make ours so the people mark us. This is, after all, a journey they shall share with us.”
Rurik had kept to his cups that night and never shared a word, knowing that one day soon that flag would likely soar over his own hideaway in the trees. Yet another aske
d the very question he had pondered: “And what does our symbol mean?”
The Bastard’s eyes seemed to glimmer at the telling. “Hope, of course. The hope of eternity, tempered by the simple earthiness of the shepherd’s staff. We are born of the people, the ones left behind while the nobles play. Let them keep their beasts and their crowns. We, as faith itself, are born of the people, as Farre himself once said. Let us show them what it means to us.”
What it meant to Tessel were bodies to fight his war. Anywhere they went, the Orthodox men shied away from the light and kept their families to their homes. The landed men among them often paid the lion’s shares of a place’s dues, and no few souls found themselves playing host to Tessel’s hungry soldiers. But the Farrens moved with a vigor Rurik had never seen before. Some offered gifts at the gates of the morning camps. Some offered their arms to Tessel’s cause. One adamant farmer even gave them three cows and a rather skinny chicken. The officers had feasted well that night.
Through it all, Rurik pondered: How do they not know of Oberroth? Clearly some word had gone before them, but it was Tessel’s word, or some other fancy. Truth died in the wake of greater things, and all the while, divided the ones that listened. In Emperor Matthias’s day there had been tension, true, but the people were first and foremost Idasian—the heart of religion came after. Now, in Tessel, Rurik saw the beginnings of other loyalties. It broke his heart.
They never met another army. Twice, in small encounters, Witold’s people probed their lines. The battles were short and indecisive—neither side lost many, and both withdrew as quickly as they were able. For the count’s own part, locals said that he wandered further and further south, deeper into his territories at nearly the same pace as Tessel.
Running, most of the soldiers declared with pride. Biding his time, Rurik thought more likely. The old man was no fool, and he knew his land, proud hunter that he was. When battle came, Rurik had no doubt, it would be on his terms, and in a way that used the terrain to its full advantage.
At Faith's End Page 42
