Death's Chosen (First Cohort Book 3)

by M. R. Anthony

Three days away from Angax, we came across one of Cranmar’s armies coming from the south-west. We’d been following a well-paved road for some time, which threaded its way along the bottom of a long, shallow gorge between a series of rocky hills. The onset of spring was no longer enough to stave off the chill air of these northern climes and the coldness touched my skin. Haster’s men wrapped their travelling cloaks tightly about them, to trap the warmth of their bodies inside the cloth and the metal of their armour. It wasn’t bitter yet, but even so I didn’t envy them.

  I think we became aware of each other at the same time – they emerged through a gap between two hills and marched along a road that intercepted ours. They had a small cavalry unit, which galloped over to see who we were. I imagine they were left in a state of confusion, since they sped away before we’d even had a chance to speak to us.

  “How many?” I asked.

  “Five hundred cavalry, eighteen thousand men,” said Haster, staring up the slope. They made no effort to divert towards us and would join the road ahead of us, cutting us off from Angax if they were of a mind to do so.

  “That’s about what I make it,” said Craddock. “Plus two hundred archers. More of an afterthought.”

  “Keep it tight and we’ll see if they stop for us,” I said

  A mile in front, they joined the road. We were too much of an unknown for them to let us go unchallenged, and they formed into lines across our path. It was more defensive than threatening, which at least suggested they were willing to talk. When we’d got to within a quarter of a mile, I signalled for us to stop and I took Haster along with me to see what they wanted. We stopped a hundred yards in front of their line. They’d spread across the road. The soldiers all looked well-equipped and their discipline was good.

  “They’re out of Tibulon,” said Haster as we waited for their representative to show himself. “Can’t be a good sign.”

  We weren’t kept for long. Three men came through their lines and walked up the road towards us. They were stern faced and looked hard, with no unnecessary adornments that would interfere with their ability to fight.

  “Good morning,” I greeted them. Sometimes a simple pleasantry was enough to determine the demeanour of a man.

  “Good morning,” their lead man responded – it was a good sign.

  “I’m Tyrus Charing. I lead the men here. The Emperor has requested our presence.”

  “I’m Ferd Heath,” he replied, narrowing his eyes. “I lead these men.”

  It was a lot of men for a captain to have under him. I guessed he’d be relinquishing his command to another once he reached his destination. Unless he was especially competent and trusted.

  “Will you let us pass?” I asked. “The Emperor does not like to wait and our journey from Blades has been a long one.”

  He started at that, though he didn’t lose his composure for long. “You’re far from home. It’s no wonder I’ve never heard your name, nor recognized your livery. You have other men with you, though. They’re Cranmar’s men.”

  “They’re First Cohort,” I said. “Under my command.”

  One of the men with Captain Heath whispered something. Heath raised an eyebrow. “My man here recognizes Lieutenant Haster.”

  “This is Lieutenant Haster,” I agreed. “One of the Saviour’s men.”

  “I’ve heard of this Saviour,” Heath said, surprising me a little. “Still, it is not for one of Cranmar’s men to change allegiance.”

  “The Saviour is not Cranmar’s enemy,” I said. “And any question of allegiance must be resolved between Lieutenant Haster and his former master.”

  Heath was a practical man and not desperate for bloodshed. I liked him from first impressions. “The Saviour isn’t our enemy yet, and indeed she may never become one. I’ve been around for long enough to have my doubts, and I can see I’m talking to men of a similar mind. Still, I have no interest in conflict between us. I’ll let Cranmar decide for himself what he wants to do without me second guessing him. You are aware that there’s trouble coming?”

  I nodded. “Trouble from the north and the south. It’s not a good time to be here,” I said.

  “It’s not. Callian is brewing trouble on our southern border. I was surprised at the order to bring so many out of Tibulon.”

  When I looked at Captain Heath and his men – hard soldiers and brave - I felt a shiver pass down my spine. I do not usually feel premonitions, yet I got the strongest feeling that these eighteen thousand were marching to their doom. I wished it were otherwise and that there was something I could do to stop it.

  “Take care,” I said. “And if you see a dense fog of freezing air in front of you, do not enter it, Captain. Gather your men and run without being weighed down by feelings of cowardice. There is something coming and it is not for the living to fight it.”

  I am sure he didn’t understand what I’d told him. I could tell that he recognized me as a trustworthy man, even if I wasn’t his friend. He nodded at me and turned towards his troops. I didn’t know if he’d remember the words when the time came, or if he’d act on them. I’d done what I could.

  We received no invitation to join with Captain Heath’s men and I had no interest in asking. He did us the courtesy of allowing our smaller group to walk around his own and take the lead on the road. Some of the men exchanged earthy comments as we made our way past, though it was all in relatively good humour. We formed a marching column and pushed onwards along the road. Captain Heath followed in our wake and he soon fell into the distance. I didn’t judge him for not rushing.

  The road wended gradually upwards and cut between the hills at the end of the gorge. There was still plenty of grass, though now it was wiry and scrubby. All the plants had a dry look about them, as if the wind and cold air leeched the goodness away. There were people on the road with us, invariably travelling back the way we’d come from. It didn’t take a wise man to realise that these people knew it was time to get away. I spoke to one or two and received the usual garbled mixture of fact, rumour and guesswork, with no way to distinguish between the three. The only common theme was that trouble was coming in some form and they didn’t want to be around to find out what it was.

  On the last evening before we reached our destination, we made camp in the usual manner. The road had been a good companion and had taken us in a more or less straight line towards Angax. We’d seen a number of houses and cottages in the distance, set high up on hillsides or next to the many streams that we crossed over. There was livestock in abundance – mostly sheep which seemed well-suited to life in these harsh northern lands. I had coin and paid a fair price for a number of sheep owned by a young couple who tended a hilltop farm. We butchered them and carried the dripping carcasses to the camp, while I listened to the men talk with longing about the last good meal they’d eaten.

  Around the campfires we sat, with bleeding hunks of mutton thrust into the flames. The meat spat and hissed while it cooked. Morale had been good before Haster’s men had joined, yet even so our numbers had been reduced by so much that the campfire talk had become almost muted. On this night, the noise of our laughter reached up into the night sky and filled us all with gladness. I was sure that many of the men had worries and doubts, but the smell of charring meat overcame all and the atmosphere was one of fellowship.

  I did my rounds – I make it sound like a duty, when in reality I enjoyed it – and sat at each campfire in turn. I still needed to learn a few of the names of the new men. I was able to address most of them with confidence of getting their name right, but there were still gaps. In the worst of engagements, knowing a man’s name in order to give him a precise command can make a difference.

  “What’s Cranmar like?” I asked one of Haster’s. I’d only heard tales.

  “He didn’t used to show himself much, even twenty years ago. He’s a big bastard with a stoop and an axe that could cut ten others in half with one swing,” said Corporal Plink.

  “Really?” asked Beamer,
immediately identifying a tall tale when he heard one.

  “Maybe ten men if they stood in a line,” said Plink.

  “What does he look like? He’s not a man, is he? None of the Emperor’s nobles are anything like human. I have no idea where any of them have come from. In fact, our lady is the only one I’ve seen that hasn’t rotted half away.”

  “Cranmar’s definitely not human,” said Plink. “I don’t know what he is. I remember him looking like he was eight feet tall, maybe more. He’s not pretty. I only saw him from thirty yards and it looked like you could see his skull through his skin. Like his flesh had fallen off or become so thin that the bones were visible underneath. He can fight. And he’s tough.”

  “Aren’t they all,” I said. The description of Cranmar came as no shock – all of the Emperor’s nobles were rotting and ancient. It was like the enormous power they possessed wasn’t quite enough to sustain their physical forms. They’re slowly dying I thought to myself. I didn’t know how long they’d lived for or where they’d come from. Malleus had begun his campaign long before my birth. If there were any records about his history they were probably lost, or guarded secretly by their owners. There were some things that got you killed in the Empire even if you never learned why.

  The conversation tailed off for a while as hungry soldiers pulled half-cooked pieces of flesh out of the fires and ate them. I had my own lump of meat as well, which I left in the flames until it was pink instead of red. In the past, I’d have happily eaten anything no matter what state it arrived in. Now that food was no longer a necessity I felt that I could afford to be fussier. The meat tasted good and I’d purchased animals that weren’t old enough to become chewy. I closed my eyes and ate, letting the smells and chatter soothe my mind. There was plenty spare and by the time I’d finished mine, many of the others were already on their second helpings. Eating, sleeping, living and dying. The four things that governed everyone’s existence. You just had to keep the fourth at bay until you got sick enough of the other three.

  We broke camp early the next day. When they’d been stationed at the bridge, Haster’s men had developed a habit of sleeping till full light. It wasn’t a bad habit when there was nothing more pressing to fill your day. They’d soon readapted to a life on the road and there was hardly any grumbling at the early mornings. Most of the men believed that griping was an unassailable right they had and I generally didn’t mind as long as it didn’t get out of hand.

  It was noon, give or take an hour, when we first saw Angax. There it sat, a low-lying city in the distance. It occupied a position on a plain and smoke billowed from its many chimneys, filling the sky with a veil of soot that turned the azure into a smudged grey.

  “How many live there?” I asked.

  “A few hundred thousand, perhaps,” replied Haster with a shrug, as if to say that once the numbers became so large they lost meaning. “Cranmar’s not got many big cities. This and Tibulon. A few others here and there. Nothing else like those two.”

  “There’re no trees,” I said. We’d hardly seen one for days.

  “There’re no trees, but there’s plenty of coal,” said Haster. “We’ve mined these lands for as long as I can remember. I won’t hear a word against the pitmen – I took to the army as a safer and easier alternative.”

  I didn’t need to hear any more details – there were mines in the Duke’s lands. The men who lived in the pitch black of those tunnels for year after year were worthy of admiration and respect. It was hard and unforgiving. Most of all, it was relentless. If you swung a sword for a living, you might die one day, but you knew that if you lived, you’d at least have earned a rest for a few days – weeks or months if you got lucky. For the pitmen, there was never a chance to rest.

  When we got closer to the city, we saw a great deal of activity. It was the normal sort that you’d expect to see – farmers and labourers about their daily business, tilling the fields in preparation for planting. There were windmills dotted around the landscape, along with dozens of outlying buildings with horses and carts tethered to the front. It looked almost normal. I spoke to a few people that passed and from their words I gathered that nothing was usual at all. The talk was of war to the north and the south.

  “What are we to do?” asked one traveller, a middle-aged lady with her husband. “We can’t run. Everything we have is here. Normal folk like us need to keep our heads down and hope that when it all blows over, we’ve still got our lives and our homes.”

  “Angax is too big to fall,” added the man. “Rumour has it that the Emperor is here! What could possibly stand against Malleus himself?”

  “What indeed?” I said, taking my leave. The question was as much for me as it was for them.

  After another hour, Angax was near enough to make out the details which had been previously lost in the haze. The city was made almost entirely of stone. The outlying districts were low buildings, mostly single storey. Towards the centre, there were two and three storey buildings, uniformly constructed from grey blocks. It seemed oddly flat for a city so large – I’d have expected many more taller buildings. There was a keep somewhere in the middle and a few other larger buildings here and there. Other than that, no spires or towers in celebration of the victory of civilisation over barbarity.

  “Why build upwards when you can build outwards?” said Ploster. “There’s enough room all around.”

  “A fine theory,” said Haster. “Angax has stagnated for decades. As far as I remember it, many of the buildings were built hundreds of years ago – longer perhaps for some. When we get there, you’ll see that there’s plenty of space. Homes are easy to afford, yet even so there are not enough people to fill them.”

  “That is strange,” replied Ploster. “For two hundred years during our time in Warmont’s lands, we’ve assumed that the Empire has remained as vibrant and burgeoning as it was when we left the Emperor’s capital of Hardened for the final time. The more I see of it, the more I sense that neither is true.”

  “I couldn’t say,” Haster told him. “My memories of Cranmar’s lands have always been the same – tired people and war. There were days when hundreds would cross our bridge, seeking a better life in the south. From what you’ve said, it doesn’t look like they’d find anything better than they had.”

  “We didn’t see anyone attempting to cross when we arrived,” I said.

  “No, you wouldn’t have. Cranmar didn’t like the idea of his people leaving their fields untended and their forges unlit. His soldiers have been actively discouraging anyone from leaving.”

  It was strange to listen to my assumptions of the Empire be so easily unmade. There was many an evening or long march I’d spent side-by-side with Ploster as we talked about the imposed peace and prosperity we’d always imagined to exist in the other lands. With Haster’s words, I began to reconsider everything that I’d thought to be true. The Empire was dying and I wondered how much bloodshed it would take to wrest it from the Emperor’s unyielding grasp.

  “How much I long to be gone from here,” I said. Haster looked at me with curiosity.

  “What are your thoughts, Tyrus?” asked Ploster.

  “At the beginning, we wondered at the Saviour’s appearance. Why this time out of all times, we asked? We questioned her significance and her strength – how weak she seemed against our memories of not just Malleus, but his death sorcerers too. Now I am beginning to see what she represents, Jon. She is all that stands between life and extinction. Those creatures we saw in the village of Solking – could you not feel it? They were waiting for their time to come again. They knew their chance was coming and they were desperate for it. We are so weak that they are already spilling into the places of men. We spoke about the picture I have seen that makes up my past. How I wish I could see more pieces of the picture which makes up my future, so I can smash it into the form I want it to take. What’s coming is going to be worse than terrible – it’s going to turn the world upside down and leave men, women
and children screaming to return to the past.”

  “Aye,” said Ploster. “We need to have done with the Empire and return to the Saviour as soon as we’re able.”

  “What if we simply turned and left this place at once?” asked Haster. “Could the Emperor stop us?”

  “Malleus never forgets and he’s not defeated yet,” I told him. “He’s surprised me dozens of times before, each time emerging stronger than he was. It won’t do to double-cross him.”

  “Besides, Captain Charing hopes to find answers,” said Ploster. “He’s the one man whom I trust to pry them from the Emperor’s tongue.”

  “And most importantly, the Saviour has committed us to the Emperor’s service for a time. We cannot allow her word to be broken – we would be diminished in her eyes if we did so.”

  Haster understood and offered no disagreement. The conversation had been a sobering one. No matter how much you turn a thought around in your mind, there are occasions when you need to speak the words aloud in order for it to coalesce into something of meaning. The Empire was failing, I was certain. Now, the only thing that mattered was getting back to Blades as soon as we could and hope to draw together enough soldiers from the lands which Duke Warmont had spent the last two centuries plundering for his own armies. I didn’t know if men alone would be enough to stand fast in front of the storm and I was as thankful as ever that the Saviour was not only a woman, but a woman who hated death.

  23

  We marched into the streets of Angax late that afternoon. It was a grim city, filled with dour-faced men and women, who showed no signs of joy. Even under the worst of hardships there is always time for laughter, so life in the place must have truly been unfulfilling. The streets were wide and paved, the buildings solid and free from decay. There was a patina of dust everywhere - black and greasy it fell from the smoke-laden sky. We saw sturdy carts heavy with coal on almost every corner, pulled by oxen and with queues of people carrying buckets, which they filled with the black rocks and took away with them. Upon the carts sat men and young boys, their faces and clothes filthy with coal dust and their gleaming eyes the only brightness in their faces. We saw signs of the city guard, who roved in packs looking out for signs of trouble. Here and there were soldiers, marching in formation to destinations unknown. No one stopped us or hailed us and we were able to march deep into the city.