The Forgotten War

by Howard Sargent

  ‘I am afraid so. Sir Varen, you stay here tonight and guard Cedric and Willem. The rest of you, let’s take a quick walk outside; we need to chat. After that I will speak to the innkeeper, I may need to part with some coin to keep him sweet, looking at the trade he is getting I am sure he will be grateful for it and more than willing to turn a blind eye to what we have to do.’

  There were still a couple of hours before the sun went down. Morgan took the opportunity to visit the stalls where the others had bought their supplies earlier; he took just Cedric with him. While he was there he bought some turnips and some apples on the turn – ‘For my horses. I will be sleeping in the stables with them tonight; you have to be wary of rustlers after all.’

  They strolled back to the inn, taking plenty of time, and Morgan slowly explained to Cedric that all horses loved apples and that he would slowly feed them all to them through the course of the night. He spoke loudly and repeated himself many times over, just as the rest of his men were doing at the same time in the tavern. They seemed carefree and oblivious to the shadowy figures lurking in doorways or slowly following ten to twenty paces behind them...

  The night was crisp and cold. The weak waning moon cast little light on to the courtyard at the rear of the inn, on one side of which stood the stables; only a solitary lantern, hanging from a bracket over the inn’s rear door, cast its pallid yellow glow over the straw-covered cobbles. There were ten stable doors in all, facing on to the courtyard, then on to a slippery greensward that separated the courtyard from the river, a river swollen by the recent rains. The river could be heard but not seen and only the occasional lantern illuminated the far bank. The bridge could just be noticed poking out in the distance from behind the inn’s east wall. In contrast to everywhere else, it was well lit with lanterns and flaming torches that turned the dark waters under its arches a churning crimson. Apart from the constant rush of water, no other sound could be heard.

  Suddenly, a figure emerged into the courtyard from behind the last stable. He was cloaked in black and hooded. Almost noiselessly he scampered past the stable doors until he reached the fourth one from the inn. Halting there, he put his fingers to his lips and gave a low whistle like a calling bird, and within seconds he was joined by five other men, all cloaked but not as quiet as the first man – the distinctive sound of metal against metal could be heard; it appeared some were wearing chain mail. They all congregated around the same stable door.

  Then another man joined them, also cloaked, and wearing soft leather gloves. He appeared to be the man in charge as he immediately started hissing instructions to his companions. A wooden bar secured the lower stable door and a bolt secured the upper. Slowly, silently, one man slid the bolt free, keeping a hold on the upper door to stop it opening; another, crouching down next to him, started to slide the wooden bar free from its housing. It came loose; there was the sound of metal against leather and the glint of steel in the moonlight as weapons were drawn. The two men by the doors readied themselves to swing them open as the others readied themselves to charge in. The tension was so thick it could be tasted on the air.

  Suddenly a noise broke their collective concentration. As one, they turned to face the inn. Its rear door had swung open and standing there, looking almost like pale ghosts in the pallid light of the lantern, were four men, their leader being an absolute giant of a man, one-eyed, clad in a wolf pelt and fingering an axe.

  ‘Now, fellas,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t be waking our horses now, would you?’

  Chaos broke loose. Rozgon closed the ground between himself and the enemy in two bounds, slamming his axe foursquare into the face of his nearest foe. The man went down instantly. Leaving the axe where it was, he swept out a brutal-looking hammer concealed under his cloak, shoulder-charged the next man to him, before bringing the hammer to bear on the side of the man’s head with a sickening thud. While he was doing this, Haelward next to him was thrusting his sword clinically through an enemy’s throat. With a half-twist of his blade, the sword was free to engage another foe, leaving his first victim thrashing desperately on the floor as he tried vainly to staunch the flow of blood on to the cobbles. Samson and Leon both loosed arrows, sending another man tumbling.

  The two men by the stable door were standing at the ready, gripping wicked-looking knives, when suddenly the upper door swung violently open. It caught one of the men on the back of the head, sending him tumbling. The other had just enough time to get out of the way but dropped his guard to do so. It was enough time for Morgan. He leapt out of the stables, sword raised, before swinging a deadly blow at the man’s neck. It did not quite sever the head but he was killed instantly, jets of arterial blood shooting in all directions. The man sent flying by the stable door lasted only a brief moment longer, as Leon’s arrow pierced his throat, its barbed head pushing through the back of the neck. This left one man, the man with the gloves. Seeing the ruin around him he turned tail and ran. Samson let loose an arrow, which stuck in his leg; he went down for a second but continued to desperately try and escape, now limping badly. He was slowed so much, though, that Haelward and Morgan caught up with him on the grass by the riverbank. Haelward brought the pommel of his sword down on the man’s head, knocking him to the ground. He held the sword to the man’s throat, forcing him to lay still. Rozgon, walking armoury that he was, was dispatching the wounded with a knife. His task completed, he, Samson and Leon came and joined the other two men by the river.

  The whole battle lasted much less than a minute.

  Such was the ferocity of the ambush that most of the men had gone down with barely a sound, and no alarm was raised, no hue and cry. Six men had died unnoticed, accompanied only by the sound of the swollen river.

  The surviving man was forced to stand and Rozgon was given another chance to use his headlock. He was a well-groomed man, dark-haired with a trimmed pointed beard. Morgan sheathed his sword and drew his knife, which he placed close to the captive’s face. ‘Your name, and who you are working for,’ he said succinctly.

  The man smiled and spat at him. ‘I am telling you nothing, Felmere man.’

  Morgan looked at the man impassively. He had avoided the man’s spittle and instead appeared to be looking at a small tattoo the man had on the collar line.

  ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘You have nothing to lose.’

  You won’t hurt me,’ he sneered. ‘The hero of Axmian would be above such things.’

  ‘Your ambush was incompetent,’ said Morgan. ‘Only seven men? All of you attacking together in a mob? Your employer will be greatly displeased. I imagine he paid you quite well.’

  ‘You know nothing!’ hissed the man. ‘I may have failed but there will be others. Oh yes, he who pays me can afford many others.’

  ‘But I am afraid that that,’ said Morgan, ‘will no longer be your concern.’

  With that, he thrust his knife deep into the side of the man’s neck before pulling it outwards, opening the windpipe and causing a stream of gore to spurt forth, hitting Morgan in the face with greater accuracy than the man’s spit had done earlier. He nodded to Rozgon who dragged the almost-dead fellow to the water’s edge before pitching him in with a gentle splosh. Morgan’s last image of the man was of his frozen, startled expression before he disappeared into the dark waters.

  ‘Was that necessary?’ Haelward said in a low voice. ‘We could have just sent him back to Fenchard.’

  ‘Who would have had him killed anyway.’ said Morgan. ‘Only more slowly and painfully, if what we have heard about Fenchard stands up. A failed assassin is a dead assassin. Besides, what did you notice about him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Haelward. ‘It was rather dark.’

  ‘Firstly, and this is a minor point, did you see his beard?’ Morgan was cleaning his knife on the grass. ‘He was well dressed, some expensive gear, yet his beard was hardly Tanarese high fashion. Few people here wear their beards in such a way, and secondly and more importantly I noticed a small tattoo of Mytha
just under his throat.’

  ‘We all have them,’ said Samson. ‘How is that unusual?’

  ‘Yes, of Mytha the bear, but our religion is different to other places. Women here venerate Elissa above Camille and for us Mytha is a bear. This man’s tattoo was of Mytha the bull. That and his beard led me to believe that he was...’

  ‘Arshuman,’ whispered Haelward.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Morgan, sheathing his knife. ‘An Arshuman that has lived here for a long time, judging by his accent, but an Arshuman nonetheless. Now let’s get this mess cleared up.’

  ‘Why hire an Arshuman killer?’ Rozgon enquired. ‘It makes no sense.’

  ‘To be honest, I can’t be doing with thinking about it now. One thing is for certain, though: Master Fenchard keeps some very strange company.’

  The other bodies were collected and faced the same fate as the Arshuman victim – that of being dumped into the river. Haelward busied himself with a bucket and did his best to sluice the cobbles clean of blood. Rozgon was about to throw the last body into the river when he noticed something and indicated for Morgan to come over.

  ‘Look at this one,’ he said, indicating the man’s hands.

  On the third finger and little finger of each hand the nail was missing, and instead the skin had grown thickly to form a fleshy pad. With a little difficulty – the muscles were already beginning to lock – Morgan forced his mouth open. The same two incisor teeth on each side of the mouth were missing, too. ‘They have been pulled.’ said Rozgon. ‘As have his fingernails.’

  ‘The man has been tortured,’ Morgan mused. ‘And a while ago, judging by the way the skin has regrown on his fingers. Has Fenchard been emptying his dungeons? Kill us and get your freedom maybe?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Rozgon replied. ‘But your explanation is as good as any.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter now; we had better pack up and leave before dawn. I am sure Fenchard won’t be up before noon, but we might as well be on the safe side.’

  ‘One question,’ said Haelward, setting down the pail, ‘why did you leave Sir Varen behind? His mace would have been useful; you could have moved the professor and Willem to another room and locked the door. They would never have been found.’

  Morgan stopped and looked at him. ‘Because Sir Varen is a knight and an honourable man. Honour would not have best served us tonight; I wanted no one reporting back to Fenchard before we were able to leave. I know you’re not happy with what I did it – and it might surprise you that neither am I – but the fact is our mission takes priority and the Baron’s grudge against me is not important when compared against it. I reckoned you had a better chance of understanding that than Varen.’

  ‘You didn’t kill him just because he was Arshuman then.’

  Morgan smiled at him and walked back into the inn.

  They left as soon as they could, while it was still dark. Sir Varen gently propelled the horses forward, his face showing yellow by the light of the wagon’s lantern. As soon as they passed the baronial hall, they took the road northwards and very shortly they were clear of the town and into the copses and fields of the surrounding countryside. The road narrowed to a smaller dirt track at this point and veered slightly eastwards until it was closely hugging the river. The birds slowly started to find their voice as dawn slowly broke and a pale light started to show through the pink-tinted clouds above. They met nobody and spoke little themselves being content with their own thoughts and the smell of fast-flowing water coming from the river as it bubbled and sang alongside them.

  Looking ahead it dawned on Morgan how familiar he was with the approaching mountains. They had been there with him pretty much all of his life and generally he took as much, or as little, account of them as he did of his weather-worn boots or the dagger he had had since he was eleven years old and which he still polished and whetted every day. Looking at them now, though, it was as if he were seeing them for the first time.

  He had heard stories of the great Dragon Spine Mountains in Chira whose tallest peaks soared upwards, past even the highest clouds; of Mount Kzugun in northern Koze, part of the Gnekun range, which was supposedly the tallest mountain in the world; and even of the Red Mountains, Chira’s northern boundary and the longest range known to man, running for thousands of miles west to east, joining the Western Ocean to the barely explored Sea of Squalls, reputedly home to many fantastical creatures – but the Derannen Mountains ahead seemed formidable enough on their own – a broad, blue-grey array of spikes, at some points over a mile high and fringed with snow. The pass they sought cut between Mount Deraska in the west and Mount Baenarran in the east, both just under a mile in height. The pass was slightly less than half the height of these two peaks, so it was under the snowline but of course not immune to heavy falls of snow itself, which blocked it permanently for two or three months a year. They were beginning to travel gently uphill already and within a day or so they would be in the pine-clad foothills, inhaling the smell of resin and walking on the spongy carpet of discarded brown needles as they made their way to Shayer Ridge, the mountain town the enemy had never conquered. Then they would veer westwards to the Tower of Hayader, which guarded the narrow mouth of the pass. After that ... well, after that, they would be on their own.

  They proceeded northwards for a good while, wanting to put as much space between them and Tetha Vinoyen as possible, and did not stop for a meal until the middle of the afternoon. Morgan wondered about the wagon again; it definitely slowed their progress and, although the pass could accommodate a wagon, it would still be painful-going as the snow clouds gathered above them. It had to be taken, of course, as it bore the gold for the elves, among other things, so there was little point worrying about it. Also Cedric could never walk the pass unaided. And what of Cedric? He had barely emerged from the wagon since they had started their journey. It was odd for such a garrulous man. And did he know of the unspoken dangers of the pass? Attacks by animals or worse. He had stated that he had made a study of such things. Morgan decided to climb into the wagon and chat to him.

  The wagon itself was full of clutter but a central space had been cleared where Cedric sat on a trunk with a book opened in front of him. Willem was not there; he was eating with the other men. Morgan was about to greet him when he noticed something odd. Cedric’s left side was facing him with his hand resting on his knee. Except that it wasn’t resting. It was shaking, quite violently, and uncontrollably. Morgan identified it immediately.

  ‘The shaking palsy?’ Cedric looked at him grimly, nodding as he did so.

  ‘At least you have heard of it,’ he said. ‘I knew I would have to tell you all eventually but I just couldn’t work out the best way of doing so.’

  Morgan smiled sympathetically. ‘Not all of us soldiers are brain-addled killing machines. My grandfather had it. When did you first start to notice it?’

  ‘Oh, about three or four years ago now. I was reading a tome – I am not sure I can recall which one, possibly something relating to the sightings of fell horrors in the Morrathnay Forest – when I noticed the little finger on my left hand had the tiniest of tremors. I tried to stop it but I just couldn’t. After that, it began to happen quite frequently and always slightly worse than before. Ultimately, I checked with the university’s healer, who confirmed what you have just told me yourself. It is not too bad ... yet. I get stiff and have difficulty walking some days, but other than that I get by. Willem is as much my carer as my student, I am afraid.’

  ‘Why didn’t you mention this earlier?’

  Cedric looked at him quizzically. ‘Would you have undertaken this task if you had known?’

  Morgan smiled again. ‘Surprisingly enough, yes. As I have said, my grandfather had it and it will change nothing when we go over the mountains. I would have kept you in the wagon regardless. We just need to make sure you have an extra blanket. That is all.’

  Cedric snorted. ‘Please, no special treatment. It will be some years before I am confined to
a chair or bed and I have no desire for that to happen to me until my ague absolutely forces me into one. I suppose now I will have to tell the others... Do you think any of them will want to turn back?’

  ‘Not a chance. None of these boys strike me as the lily-livered type. And don’t worry about telling them. I will do it.’

  Cedric seemed grateful. ‘Thank you. By the way, how poorly is your grandfather now?’

  ‘Poorly in the dead sort of way, I’m afraid. And it wasn’t the illness that did it – just the Arshumans, in the first year of the war, when they forced us back to the river Kada.’

  ‘I am so sorry to hear that. Was he the only family member you lost?’

  Morgan looked grim. ‘Let’s put it this way, if you look for the village of Glaivedon on any map drawn up in the last ten years, you will not find it.’

  Cedric bowed his head. ‘You have lost much, I see.’

  ‘I am not the only one. Many villages have been destroyed in this war. Rozgon is another to lose those close to him. We were all farmers or craftsmen once; none of us here became warriors for any reason other than necessity. It just so happened that some of us are rather good at it.’ He decided to change the subject. ‘Now, the creatures that live in the mountains, you know of them?’

  Cedric perked up at this. ‘Oh yes, now they are very rare, because food up there is so scarce. This makes them especially savage of course, especially to those caught on the mountains in winter. You may find frost giants, though personally I believe that they are extinct in these parts. Ettins, trolls, snow wolves and others I can’t recall do exist here, however. The best defence against them is fire. None of them is familiar with it and, as all these creatures have fur or thick hair, it may be an effective deterrent to anything that sees us as a meal.’

  Morgan nodded. ‘Good point. I shall see what we can pick up in Shayer Ridge. Now get yourself comfortable and I will fetch you some food. Willem is not doing his job, I see.’