The Spider

by Leo Carew

  Roper made a noise of interest.

  “She convinces me it is a positive. But that is at home. Before an assault, silence is a terrible thing.”

  “So how do we fill it?”

  “For the men? With anything. Build more siege weapons than we need. Get them to stockpile firewood, or look for food or water.”

  “We could have the bards sing in the evenings,” said Roper.

  “Indeed,” said Gray. “But you, lord, can devote this time to your swordsmanship.”

  Roper was intrigued. “I would like to be a better fighter,” he admitted.

  “It is essential if you wish to continue your current leadership style. You place yourself in constant danger and need the skills to survive it. Find someone to tutor you with a blade.”

  “I like that idea,” said Roper. “You? Will you teach me?”

  “Somebody better than me,” said Gray, firmly.

  “Pryce? He defeated Uvoren one-on-one.”

  “Pryce’s fighting style works only for Pryce,” said Gray. “He is a barbarian with a sword. Somebody more technically skilled.”

  “But surely he is now the best fighter in the kingdom. After he beat Uvoren, I can’t imagine who else might challenge him.”

  “Uvoren was one of the best,” Gray agreed. “But even he admitted Leon in anger would frighten him. And any man would fear Vigtyr’s sword.”

  “Could even Vigtyr kill Pryce, though?” said Roper. “Hit him with a cannon and I believe his pieces would reassemble.”

  “Bust his head open with a mace, his body would get up and gouge out your eyes,” Gray agreed.

  “But if Vigtyr is so technically excellent, why don’t I have him teach me?” Roper suggested.

  Gray frowned. “He is impressive,” the captain admitted. “But not necessarily a good teacher.”

  “Unless you can think of someone better…”

  Gray considered this. “If Vigtyr can impart a fraction of his knowledge to you, it will be time well used. I can enquire further, but he could fill the gap.”

  It had not occurred to Roper that he might be able to dedicate time to self-development. When he had become Black Lord, he had been plunged into a struggle for survival. Every moment saved from assassination, from political disgrace, from Suthern invasion or losing someone close to him, had been a moment to sit and draw breath so that the ringing in his ears might fade and his heart slow. Gray’s suggestion had reignited the fierce pleasure and determination that he had known during his education: that of adding to himself. Embracing failure and growth, and stretching himself into something a whit more resilient than he had been before.

  When Gray left, Roper requested he summon Vigtyr. The great lictor joined him on top of the hill. Beneath the clouds, they shared a rationed lunch of dried venison and cheese, Roper informing Vigtyr that he was to tutor him in the sword.

  “That would be an honour, lord,” said Vigtyr, turning grey eyes to Roper. It was what Keturah had called Vigtyr’s “lazy stare”—a gaze that did not bother to stop at the person he was looking at, but instead passed right through. It was as though he were fixated on the rock behind Roper, rather than the Black Lord himself.

  “Then when we have concluded our business with this fine cheese, perhaps we might begin.”

  Vigtyr chewed on a mouthful of venison, nodding slowly. His eyes lingered on the sword at Roper’s side. “May I inspect the blade you’ll be using?”

  Roper unsheathed Cold-Edge and offered Vigtyr its marbled handle. The lictor’s precious food was forgotten at once as he took the handle, getting to his feet and testing the grip. Then he held the straight blade out before him, letting the tip drop, gather momentum, and then swing in a full arc back to horizontal. “She’s unusual, isn’t she, lord?”

  “Unusual?”

  “A blade without taper. You would think there’d be a lot of weight at the tip but… it feels more balanced than I expected.” Vigtyr ran his eyes along it, not a trace of laziness in his gaze. “This is very clever craftsmanship.” He glanced down at Roper and then reversed the blade, holding it back towards the Black Lord. “Come then, lord,” he said. “Let’s see what you can do with it.”

  Roper abandoned his lump of cheese and stood opposite Vigtyr. The lictor drew his own sword: the fine tool gifted him by Roper. “We’ll be gentle today,” said Vigtyr. “Tomorrow, I’ll bring a couple of training swords and we can finish with some sparring. First, show me your stance.”

  Roper dredged up what he could remember about how to stand and settled with his feet shoulder-width apart, sword extended ahead of him, legs slightly bent and right foot perpendicular to his left. Vigtyr viewed him critically from the front and then toured Roper’s stance, walking behind him the better to inspect. “Oh dear.”

  “Not good?” asked Roper.

  “No, my lord, not good.” Vigtyr’s blade flickered and scored a flat, cold tap first on Roper’s inner wrist, then his inner knee, then beneath his shoulder. “Your wrist is turned too far out,” he reached forward and corrected Roper’s sword-hand. “Your arm is held too far to the side of your body.” He made another adjustment. “Your right foot is too far forward,” he kicked it back a few inches, “and your left at too much of an angle.” He kicked Roper’s left foot inwards. Then he gave Roper a shove. Roper staggered backwards, stumbling to keep his feet, Vigtyr talking before he had recovered. “But most of all, you’re much too static. Your limbs are like the roots and branches of a tree, and trees are not good swordsmen. You must buzz like a wasp.” Vigtyr raised his own sword and the tip quivered before him. “Not too hard, not too fast. You will tire yourself. But buzz, and you will move faster and with more accuracy. Stand now, as I showed you, and buzz.”

  Roper tried to mimic the posture Vigtyr had shown him, and suffered the lictor’s corrections. And then he trembled the tip of his sword in imitation of his tutor.

  “Too much tension, you’ll be slow and exhaust yourself,” advised Vigtyr. “Your arm should be loose in flesh, ready in nerve. More on the balls of your feet, you must be ready to move.”

  Roper tried to hold all that Vigtyr had said in his mind, but invariably standing on the balls of his feet meant that he forgot the posture Vigtyr had advised. Once he had recovered it, his buzz had become too tense again. So it continued, Vigtyr growing steadily more impatient in his corrections of Roper. After a time, he began to show Roper with his sword why he had made a mistake, grazing his knuckles, his wrist, his forearm. Each cut drew a pale line that filled scarlet and began to weep blood. It seeped between Roper’s fingers and into his palm, making his grip sticky. Vigtyr was precise in every movement, never cutting Roper more than he intended, and began to rattle off a cold inventory of Roper’s abilities. “You are fast in reaction,” he observed, “but slow in execution. Your muscle memory is poorly trained. You think too much. Your endurance is good. But slow. Slow, slow, slow.”

  Roper did not complain. He would not admit how much the cuts on his arm stung, how heavy his legs and arms were, or how turgid his thoughts had become, saturated with new information. He stayed silent, and kept trying until Lincylene itself became a gentle source of light, alerting him to the fading sky. Vigtyr glanced after Roper’s gaze and nodded to himself. “We will resume instruction on your stance tomorrow. Only when it has stuck, will we move on. There is no sense building on weak foundations.”

  Roper dropped to one knee, laying Cold-Edge on the grass and panting vacantly at the bright sweep, mirroring the sky’s last light. Vigtyr offered a bow, but no words of encouragement. “I have duties to attend, if I may, lord. The same time tomorrow?”

  “Yes please, Lictor. Carry on.” Vigtyr left and Roper curled about his stinging hand, breathing heavily. He stared across the hillside, down at the city, sweat cooling his body and the pain oddly sweet. He was there for a long while before a chill breeze persuaded him to move. He stood heavily, scraping together the cold remnants of their lunch left handed, and bundling them into
a cloth. There was a little blood on Cold-Edge’s blade, so he kept it out of the scabbard and descended stiffly back to the camp.

  “Great Almighty, what happened to you?” demanded Keturah, eyes on his red right hand. She was kneeling by their hearth, stacking freshly split wood over the embers.

  “Sword training with Vigtyr,” managed Roper.

  “He’s shredded you!”

  “They’re not deep,” said Roper, dropping the cloth bundle and his sword by the hearth. He dropped after them, turning to look at Keturah. “You’re making the hoosh? Can I fetch water?”

  “You can sit still,” said Keturah. “Your hand needs treating.” Roper sat obediently as Keturah gathered water, clean linen strips and a bundle of herbs she had gathered at the freyi. She poured the water into a pot, set it to warm by the fire and added dried yarrow and betony.

  “What have you been doing?” Roper asked.

  Keturah shrugged. “Assisting the Chief Historian. But I spoke to Vigtyr’s new woman just now.”

  “Oh, yes? She’s here too, is she?”

  “With the baggage train,” explained Keturah. “Adras, she’s called, and she’s a brazen sort.”

  “Coming from you?”

  “Lewd, even,” said Keturah, with relish. “I confess I did not entirely enjoy her company. I am baffled, Husband. She’s no great beauty, and not the personality Vigtyr is usually seen with. He likes his women sickly sweet.” Keturah shuddered ostentatiously.

  “That didn’t seem to work for his previous wives. How did they meet?”

  “They were childhood friends,” Keturah explained. “They lived close to one another, just above the Abus.”

  “So maybe their relationship was formed when they were both very different people,” said Roper.

  Keturah tutted, unsatisfied with the response. “Perhaps. When I have seen them together though, Vigtyr always looks uncomfortable.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Roper.

  Keturah tested the temperature of the stewing herbs, first with her fingers, then she tutted at her numb extremities and dipped an elbow in. She was evidently satisfied, for she plunged Roper’s hand into the hot water and scrubbed at it with a pinch of yarrow, stripping away the dried blood. Roper closed his eyes at the sting but Keturah took no notice save to tartly instruct him to open his fist. When she was done, she removed his hand, dried and wrapped it in the linen strips, securing it with a tight knot. The fire was roaring now, and Keturah went to fetch Roper’s cloak, draping it around his shoulders. “Thank you, Wife, but the guardsmen will be back soon, and I can’t let them see me like this.”

  “You are absurdly proud,” she said disdainfully.

  “And you’re not?”

  She laughed delightedly, ever unable to resist a barb.

  Roper began to clean and oil Cold-Edge. The sting of his hand was much reduced by the bandages and he had sheathed his sword long before the guardsmen began to return in pairs and fours. Gray arrived with Pryce and the two came to sit by Roper. “What happened to your hand, lord?” asked Pryce.

  “Training, today,” said Roper. “Vigtyr is tutoring me in the sword.”

  “And what did he do to your hand?” asked Gray.

  “Just a couple of nicks.”

  “Why would he do that?” asked Gray flatly.

  Roper shrugged. “To show me where I’m going wrong.”

  “He can do that without incapacitating you. I will find someone else.”

  “I want to keep trying with Vigtyr,” said Roper firmly.

  “There is nothing you will learn from him,” said Pryce scornfully.

  “He is a good enough swordsman that it is worth trying and that’s an end of it,” said Roper. He had no wish to be treated like a child and would choose his own tutor. But more than this, he liked the idea of learning from one so accomplished as Vigtyr. “Where have you two been?”

  Pryce stayed silent, evidently dissatisfied with Roper’s brusque tone.

  “I took them running over the hills,” said Gray. He too sounded a little distant, and Roper placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “A long way?”

  “No. Lung-busting. They’ve earned their supper.” Lung-busting was the term for the legionaries’ close-battle training. They would don packs, find a hill, run to the top and then wrestle each other to the ground. This was repeated again and again until the soldiers were retching, spluttering and kneeling, and still it could not replicate the exhaustion of the battle-line. Being strong and good with a sword was important in the first forty heartbeats of a fight. And after that, fitness surpassed all other virtues. A fit but limited warrior could defend until he had outlasted his opponent, and then finish him.

  “We had a long run back though,” Gray finished.

  “Pryce is upset because he came last,” put in another guardsman.

  “I am a sprinter,” said Pryce, loftily.

  Keturah laughed. “What? You’ve never mentioned, Cousin.” The guardsmen around the fire laughed gleefully. Roper stayed silent. He just admired Keturah in the fire’s glow, smiling to himself.

  His mood was soured by Gray delivering news that he had learned on his way back through camp. “We’ve had to assemble a baggage train to get fresh water, lord,” he said. “Every stream around this campsite is corrupted.”

  Roper stared into the fire. “We will kill that man. The sooner the better. How far away is the nearest clean water source?”

  “Leagues,” said Gray. “Sturla has set up a wagon-relay to keep a supply coming in to camp. But once Bellamus realises that we’re so reliant on that water source, it’ll turn bad as well.”

  “There’s no need for that,” said Roper. He nodded to a small patch of woodland to the south. “Alder and willow over there. And there were more north and west too. Must be lots of water below the surface. Dig some wells there and we can be assured of uncontaminated water.” The Sutherners might rely on open water sources, but they had long been uprooted from the land.

  “What do you suppose they’re thinking in that city?” asked one guardsman, staring at the dark walls of Lincylene. “Do you think they’re scared?”

  “Of course they’re scared,” said Pryce.

  “Then why haven’t they surrendered?”

  “We haven’t asked them, I suppose,” said Roper, thoughtfully. “Maybe we should. Our case is compelling.”

  “We could certainly make it so,” said Gray.

  Roper nodded slowly. “Tomorrow, then. We’ll ask.”

  As he lay down to sleep that night, Roper anticipated his next lesson with Vigtyr. He was half compelled by the effort; half in dread at the inevitable pain. His limbs were still weary, his hand still throbbed and rest was an uncommonly sweet prospect. He entwined himself with Keturah, she softer in gesture than word, and was asleep almost at once.

  When he awoke, Roper went to ask Lincylene for its surrender.

  He rode straight for the main gate. Gray was on his right, holding a fluttering banner of ragged white silk, and Tekoa, wings affixed to his shoulders and the Wolf’s Head banner of the Black Lord held over his head, on his left. Roper rode Zephyr, his immense grey destrier. The beast had been a wedding present from Tekoa and was now dressed in yards of malicious barding: steel plates dripping from the horse like ice. Astride the beast, Roper rode head and shoulders above his companions, dressed in his own bright armour and draped in a black cloak streaked with lightning. Keturah had arranged that after the Battle of Harstathur, when their forces had been delivered by a shocking ethereal bolt. Strangely it had improved Roper’s reputation above any talent he had displayed. The legionaries were pious, and to them Roper was not just skilled: he was blessed.

  The three horsemen stopped in front of the city gates, just beyond bowshot. Behind them Roper had ordered six legions—fully thirty thousand men—to assemble in armour, their horrid and varied banners hanging overhead. They stood in silence some two hundred yards distant, just waiting.

 
Roper remembered his first parlay with the enemy less than a year before. How he had sheltered behind his father’s shoulder, distracted by the charismatic Captain of the Guard and in shock at the Suthern faces before him. Now he drummed his fingers on his saddle, staring impatiently at the gates before him, which had started to open. As they had for Kynortas, a huge number of Suthern knights were emerging to greet Roper, perhaps fifty riding beneath their own swirling white banner.

  Nobody negotiates in negotiations. It is an exercise in intimidation.

  Roper and his companions did not move, waiting for the knights and whoever it was they guarded to approach. At their centre rode a figure in fur and chain mail, a thick golden chain draped over his shoulders. As the Suthern delegation drew near, a rhythmic thumping began at Roper’s back. He did not turn. It was the sound of his legionaries stamping their feet at the speed of a slow heartbeat. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

  The central figure, the furred lord, reached Roper and raised a hand in a greeting which was not returned. “You must be the Black Lord,” he said in Saxon.

  “I don’t know who you are,” replied Roper in the same language.

  “Almund,” replied the man. “Mayor of Lincylene.” Almund had a freckled face surrounded by hair and beard the colour of rotting iron. His nostrils were flared and his chest rose and fell rapidly, though with fear or anger Roper could not yet tell.

  “That will do,” said Roper. “We have come to offer your city the chance to surrender, Almund. You will open your gates, pile your arms and armour outside and disgorge your fighting men to our custody. We will take what we need from the city, and your weapons of course, dismantle the walls and move on. None of your inhabitants need suffer unduly.”

  Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

  “If you resist, every single soul inside Lincylene will die.”

  Almund listened to this offer with a growing smile and at the end emitted an incredulous noise, halfway between laugh and gasp. He was furious, Roper realised, but also immensely frightened. “Ah! We were warned you would come, Lord Roper,” he replied. “We have been stockpiling food for weeks. Our walls are fresh and strong, and infested with fighting men. And it will not be long before the Suthern army has been gathered and comes to our aid. It would be better for you by far if you turned away, crossed that vile river of yours, and returned to the nightmare forests which spawned you.”