Death's Chosen (First Cohort Book 3)

by M. R. Anthony

  “What can I do for you, Captain Charing? This isn’t a social visit, I assume?” Her eyes glittered with gentle mirth.

  “I have come to see how things fare in your lands,” I replied. “Have you heard news from the north or the south?”

  “You know I tell you as soon as I hear something worth telling,” she said. Then, as if her words reminded her of something, she looked at the sealed envelope in her hand, which the messenger had not long ago delivered. “Let us see if this is anything,” she muttered, flicking away the red wax seal with her thumb nail. She read the contents, her lips moving slightly as she scanned the words. At last, she looked up. “Baron Vaks gathers on my southern borders, close to the city of Ranks,” she said. “At least thirty thousand strong.”

  “Does the note provide any more details?” I asked, knowing already that it was unlikely.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I assume the Baron’s intentions are hostile.”

  “I wouldn’t make that assumption just yet,” I cautioned. “Vaks surely knows what lies to the north of Warmont’s old lands. It would be a fool who didn’t prepare himself against the possibility of an invasion. Remember that he is the Emperor’s man and likely shares the same intelligence that Malleus receives.”

  “Or it could be that he will wait for a trigger,” she mused, striking me anew with her ability to see things from a different viewpoint.

  “What sort of trigger?” I asked.

  “A word from the Emperor, perhaps. It could be that Malleus has not yet decided what to do with us.”

  “The time will not be long, my lady. Malleus is not an indecisive man – no good soldier is. Whatever he plans will be revealed as soon as he is ready. I have felt the pressure of the inevitability weighing upon me in the last few weeks.”

  She rose from her chair, her red robes brushing the carpet as she stood. I saw a momentary flicker of vulnerability flash across her face as she thought things through. I am not sure if she reached a conclusion. In the end, the need to speak was taken from her, though I am not sure if she would have been relieved by the message. There was a knock at the door, loud and insistent.

  “What is it?” she demanded, impatiently.

  The sturdy wooden door opened and Corporal Heavy poked his head inside. He looked surprisingly meek and deferential for a man who was neither of these things.

  “Sorry to disturb you, my lady,” he said. “There’s a gentleman here – a man from the keep gates. He says there’s someone who demands an audience and he won’t go away.”

  “Has this gentleman said why his need to see me is so important that he must disturb my time with the captain of my army?”

  “He says he’s come from the Emperor, my lady. With an important message.”

  The Saviour looked at me. “Would you like to attend, Captain?”

  I nodded grimly and we left her room. Whatever it was I’d been waiting to come – it seemed likely that it had arrived.

  2

  We waited in one of the large rooms on the ground floor of the keep. I remember that the Duke had kept this room for audiences, though those had grown fewer in number as his rule progressed. There were chairs, a table and little else. There’d been a few tabards and coats of arms, which the Saviour had ordered to be torn down. This was no longer Warmont’s keep.

  There was a knock at the door. It opened and Jon Ploster entered, releasing some of the pent-up tension. He winked at Corporal Heavy, while the latter mimed pulling the sorcerer’s beard. They thought they were doing it unseen, little knowing that I was watching from the corner of my eye. I didn’t mind their behaviour, as long as they stopped it when the Emperor’s messenger arrived. Some of us never grow up.

  Before Ploster could settle, there was another knock and Lieutenant Craddock opened the door. I didn’t like the expression on his face. “Sir?” he said. “He’s sent Jarod Terrax.”

  I swore quietly to myself.

  “Who is Jarod Terrax?” asked the Saviour.

  “You might have heard him called the Flesh Shaper, my lady.”

  “Another death sorcerer? In my keep?”

  “We need to hear what he has to say,” I told her, not clear what she meant. Then I looked in her face and I saw what she meant. If we didn’t like what he had to say, we would kill him. “Easier said than done,” I told her out loud. Her mouth formed a thin, tight line and she said nothing else.

  Eventually, Terrax arrived. He took so long that I assumed Craddock had done something to delay his arrival, so that we could prepare ourselves. The Flesh Shaper was average height and cadaverously thin. He was dressed in the same style of clothes that he’d been wearing the last time I’d seen him – an impenetrably thick, black robe that trailed along the floor as he walked, and with a hood that he kept pulled up and over his face. Like all of the death sorcerers, his visage was not something that you would want to look at. I doubted he kept himself covered out of fear of what people might say. There again, nobody knew how or why creatures like this did what they did.

  He shuffled into the room. From afar he might have looked like a harmless old man. He was certainly old, but other than that he was neither harmless and I am not even sure he was a man. There was a stench about him, which he’d not tried to mask. It was the odour of something rotten – not quite flesh and I found it hard to put my finger on what it was. I didn’t like it, though I found the cloying smell easy enough to ignore. You get used to the smell of putrefaction when you’ve experienced it often enough.

  “Greetings from the Emperor,” he said. His voice was faint and wheezing, as though his lungs were full of holes.

  “Greetings, Jarod Terrax,” said the Saviour. “What brings you to my capital city of Blades?”

  There was another sound – the same wheezing, this time with a rasping undertone to it. I realised that he was laughing. “The Emperor does not give up his holdings so easily, my dear. I am sure the good Captain Charing here has told you as much.”

  “My time is short, Jarod Terrax,” the Saviour told him. “If you have come to demand my surrender, you are about to be disappointed.” I felt a swelling in the air around me, a build-up of magic used as a threat to any who were sensitive enough to feel it.

  Terrax raised his hand, the sleeve falling back to reveal his unnaturally thin fingers and wrist. “You misunderstand me. I am not here to demand surrender. I am here to talk. Now – may I sit?”

  The tension subsided and the Saviour waved Terrax to a seat. He dropped into it with a sigh. I wasn’t fooled by the act of infirmity.

  “If you’re not here for our surrender, what does Malleus want of us?” asked the Saviour. She also sat, though I could tell that it was only out of politeness. She preferred to stand when she was speaking to strangers or enemies.

  “In normal circumstances, the Emperor would crush you,” said the Flesh Shaper, with another one of his wheezing laughs. He wasn’t trying to be our friend, much to my relief. I couldn’t stand subterfuge. “In other circumstances, he might demand you bend the knee and pay taxes to him. I believe he is impressed by what you have achieved. Not that such feelings have ever stopped him acting in the interests of his Empire before. Not for one moment have they ever stopped him.” He paused to let that sink in, not that it was any surprise to me or my men, nor should it have come as a shock to the Saviour.

  The Saviour leaned across. She was scarcely six feet from the death sorcerer. “If he does not want to crush us and he does not want our subservience, what exactly does he want?” she asked. There was a menace in her voice that I hadn’t heard before.

  “You are aware of what is coming,” said Terrax, his voice suddenly intent. “I am sure that a woman of your power has an idea of what it wants.”

  I looked carefully at the Saviour when these words were spoken. Sorcerers knew sorcerers. I was just a soldier who got a sense of things. Her expression didn’t change.

  “The Emperor wishes for a truce, then?” she asked. “A pause in the fi
ghting.”

  There was that laugh again. “No, my dear lady, don’t be so foolish!” The Saviour’s eyes narrowed and the Flesh Shaper continued. “There has been no fighting yet in order for there to be a pause. You have deposed a man whom the Emperor has wished dead for fifty years. If he’d wanted Warmont alive, he’d have sent armies here long before you had the opportunity to defeat his noble. The Emperor is not dealing with an equal. What he offers is a period of observance – a time for reflection, if you will.”

  “To what end does he require this?” the Saviour asked. “If he is concerned that he must fight on two fronts, surely it is to our advantage that we decline any cessation of violence.”

  “That is where you are wrong,” he replied. “You will be aware that Baron Vaks gathers to the south. You may also be aware that Duchess Callian has men making their way through the Forestwoods towards your east.”

  As far as I was aware, the Saviour hadn’t known about that. It was no great shock and it changed nothing. The knowledge that Vaks was waiting had more or less guaranteed that Callian would be getting ready for war as well.

  “What does Malleus want?” I asked. “You have skirted around the issue for these last few minutes.”

  “Captain Charing,” he acknowledged. “With a soldier’s need to speak his mind. But you’re no normal soldier, are you? You know things and you see things that others do not. Truly a man of potential.”

  “Speak!” I commanded him.

  “The Emperor’s loyal nobles could recapture half of your holdings before winter is even two months gone. Yet he does not wish them to do so. At the moment. If there is conflict, he will lose access to something that he wishes to have returned to him. Something important to him. Malleus hopes that a period of observance will give you time to consider matters. If you decide to join his Empire, I believe he will welcome you with open arms. These are lands of great, untapped potential. Under the right ruler they could become wealthy with commerce and the wombs of its women heavy with children.”

  “The potential of these lands is untapped because the Emperor allowed it!” the Saviour snapped. “He could have killed Warmont a hundred years ago and let his people flourish. Instead, he chose to do let the Duke murder as he pleased!”

  The Flesh Shaper hesitated – just a fraction of a second, yet enough to make me listen carefully for deception. “The Emperor cannot kill his own. He does not wish to appear…fallible.”

  I’d already known as much – there were few things that Jon Ploster and I couldn’t get close to the truth of in our wandering conversations. The Gloom Bringer had also said the same. Nevertheless, I felt as if there was something more than a reluctance to appear fallible. I put the matter to one side for the time being.

  “We are still waiting to hear what the Emperor requires,” said the Saviour, her voice carrying a dangerous edge to it.

  The wheezing breath became louder for a few seconds, as if the Flesh Shaper suddenly found it difficult to draw air. “If there is conflict, the Emperor knows that the weakened remnants of the First Cohort will be destroyed. He does not wish this to happen.”

  “What does he wish for? In return for his temporary forbearance?”

  “The Emperor asks only one small favour – the same that he has asked from each of his nobles.” He raised his hand again to forestall any protestations about who bent the knee. “Let us not focus on the small details for the moment and see if we can reach an agreement. The Emperor has asked each of his nobles to commit a portion of their forces, to assist him with his troubles. You can tell yourself that it’s for the good of the people, if it makes you feel better,” he added. I could picture the malicious smile on his face, hidden beneath the hood.

  “Men cannot fight the battle which the Emperor fights,” said the Saviour.

  “No, they cannot. Regardless of this, Malleus needs men and there are some men who can fight against the Northmen.”

  “He cannot have the First Cohort,” said the Saviour at once. “We have the Northmen on our doorstep.”

  “Will the Northmen come, or will they stay where they are?” he asked cryptically. “Do you have what they want?”

  I could tell he was playing word games and determined that I would treat everything he said on the matter with scepticism. I cast a glance over at Jon Ploster. The sorcerer caught my gaze and returned it. I knew him well enough to read his suspicion. Not that we’d have trusted the Flesh Shaper if he’d told us the sun shone in the day.

  I could see the Saviour adding things up in her head. The threat was there – send the First Cohort or have Vaks and Callian’s forces invade and destroy everything she’d fought for. I knew how many men she had and it was likely she could hold Blades for a long time. There again, Vaks and Callian wouldn’t even need to try and capture it. There were other prizes the Saviour couldn’t afford to defend, which they could take without risk. She’d have Blades and the lands to the north, but little else. She needed time to build and it didn’t look as if she had that time available to her.

  “If I send my men to Hardened, I have the Emperor’s word that he will hold off his nobles?” she asked.

  “They won’t be going to Hardened,” said the death sorcerer, feigning surprise. “The Emperor is with Cranmar Sunderer.”

  “Malleus has taken to the field?” I asked. “Things must truly be dire.”

  “Maybe the Emperor wishes to dust off the cobwebs and see how his magic fares against an unfamiliar foe.”

  “Whatever his reasons, do I have his word?” insisted the Saviour.

  “You will have his word,” the Flesh Shaper confirmed. If there was one thing you could trust about the Emperor, it was that he’d hold his word.

  “The Saviour’s bodyguard remains,” I said, indicating Corporal Heavy and the rest of the men.

  The Flesh Shaper made a play of looking over at them. “I’m sure that will be acceptable.”

  And that was that. The news I’d felt was coming had arrived and washed away any preconceptions I might have had about what it would be. In all my wildest conjecturing, I had not once thought that our lady might instruct the First Cohort to fight for the Emperor. I was almost shocked. Not numb, and not upset, but I’d have been lying if I’d said I hadn’t been caught unawares. I realised that agreeing to the Emperor’s request was the only chance the Saviour had – she was playing the long game and she was playing it ruthlessly. I approved.

  “When can your men be ready to leave, Captain Charing?” she asked.

  I smiled at her, though not with much humour. “This afternoon,” I said. “Two o’clock. Three at the latest if any of my soldiers are patrolling the far districts.”

  “Very good, Captain. Please see that you leave as soon as possible.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “The Sunderer’s lands are almost twice the size of these.”

  “Our destination is not yet finalised. The journey will be long, and by the time we are close, we may be required elsewhere.”

  His use of the word our was not lost on me. “You will be accompanying us?” I asked.

  “I will. The Emperor communicates his desires to me. I will lead us to where we are needed.”

  “You will not slow us down,” I said it as a statement.

  He laughed again and this time it sounded genuine. “Captain, you must have forgotten much if you think I will slow you down.”

  With those words, the negotiations were over. I had someone escort Terrax to another area of the keep, where he could wait until the First Cohort were ready to leave. Before I could leave to begin my own preparations to mobilise the men, I heard the Saviour speak.

  “I’m sorry, Captain Charing,” was all she said.

  I looked at her – she seemed drawn into herself as if the decision she’d made had cost her dearly. I smiled without rancour. “You have done the only thing you could, my lady. I am thankful that you have been offered this chance.”

  She smiled back, relieved that she s
aw no anger in my face. The Saviour wasn’t as hard as she might have wished. “Bring back my men,” she said. “All of them.”

  “I will do everything I can,” I promised her, leaving it at that.

  I nodded to Corporal Heavy and the other eleven who would be remaining and left the room. It would be easy to say that my head was in a whirl over the suddenness of it, but all I felt was excitement. Just when I thought I’d seen it all, I’d been taught a lesson that there’s no such thing as a man who is unaffected by surprise.

  3

  We mustered a few minutes after two, in the courtyard of the keep. One short of three hundred, we formed a square, so silent and dispassionate that to look upon our faces you might have thought we cared not at all for what had happened. In truth, I felt that events had dictated our future more than at any point since we’d rescued the Saviour from the sorcerer Dag’Vosh.

  We were one man short. He arrived, several minutes after we had gathered. The sound of hooves on cobbles gave warning of his arrival and I looked towards the stables. Jarod Terrax was there, astride a tall, black horse. The courtyard was busy and I saw people look at the horse and its rider, before moving away with stifled exclamations of disgust and fear. Ignoring it all, the Flesh Shaper calmly guided his steed to a position near to me. The horse was rotten – covered in glistening sores and maggot-filled blisters. Its eyes were milky and sunken. He must have raised this one weeks ago.