Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar

by Frances Mason

  “I rallied my armoured knights and we forced our way to the front, giving the archers some protection. We smashed into the horde and if they fought like beasts we fought like demons. The swamp was filled with blood that day. But despite our heavy armour the Juta didn’t lose heart. However treacherous they are they’re hardy warriors. Their numbers were showing, especially since so many of my unarmoured knights had fled. My armour had been struck by many spears and clubs and my helmet caved into my face so that I couldn’t see. I swung about me in blind madness until I heard the scream of Sir Valere, one of my knights. I had knocked him down. I knew I couldn’t fight blind anymore. I wrenched off my helmet. We were sore pressed. I fought like that, until an arrow entered where a shoulder plate had been torn away. I had to fight with my left hand. A huge Juta warrior saw my disadvantage. I think he might have been a chief. He broke my armour away from my body with a rain of blows with his massive wooden club. I staggered back. He swung again, pressing hard his attack. I fell. He raised his club. Sir Valere, limping from the wound I had inflicted, staggered forward and sliced the giant’s head off. He tried to help me up. A spear caught him between the joins of his plate and he fell on me, dead. I shoved him off, and saw the rain of arrows. They weren’t our arrows this time. I was going to become a porcupine, only the arrows would come out of my front not my back.”

  Prince Arthur paused, as if seeing still that rain of death falling on him. William impatiently asked, “What happened?”

  “And then a shield was being held up over me. It was Tom. An arrow caught him in the leg, but he didn’t falter. Another in the other leg, and still he stood strong, the shield he had picked up saving me from that deadly rain. My knights had seen me fall and were scattering. I called out that I was alive and they rallied. Some of the unarmoured knights had regained their courage, and under the command of Sir Vek had rounded the castle and flanked the Juta. The starved garrison had opened the gates and poured out to give what aid their tired bodies could. Under the shield of Thomas I regained my feet, and together the knights of my vanguard under me and the contingent under Sir Vek and the garrison under the castellan smashed the Juta lines. Our archers sent their deadly rain on the Juta right flank and it was a general rout.”

  Arthur gripped Thomas’s shoulder. “But without the carters, who’d picked up the shields of fallen knights, and especially your father, the day would have been lost.”

  “We played a minor part.”

  “Whatever you thought of your part in the battle, you saved my life. You can’t deny that. I won’t let you deny that.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do. And if you challenge your prince’s word once more I’ll have you locked up for sedition.”

  Thomas smiled the smile of a man who must, uncomfortable, slightly irritated, but resigned.

  Arthur undid his sword belt, and drew the blade. “This is the very blade I fought with that day.”

  William looked at the sword with awe. He could hardly have been more impressed if a dragon had landed in front of him.

  “It has proven itself in the north, many times. It should find its way there again. But I fear I’ll never take it. You take it.” He sheathed it and handed it to William.

  William, unsure what to do, looked first at Thomas, then Margery.

  “Take it, boy,” Thomas said.

  “It’s too great an honour.”

  “No. It’s too slight an honour. Without your father’s bravery this would be rusting in the swamp among a thousand skeletons of once brave Ropeuans. Listen to your father. Take it.”

  Gingerly, the boy reached out, like a child reaching for hidden sweets when his mother isn’t looking. He grasped the hilt and the sheath, and half drew it out, staring at the swirls in its well-crafted steel. He drew it all the way out then and tested its weight, holding its hilt with both hands. It was a large sword, a two handed sword to most men, though only a long sword to the tall prince.

  “Keep it well, William,” Arthur said, “keep it well and it will keep you alive. It’s as fine a sword as ever I swung.”

  William tried to hold it as he imagined the prince might. The prince corrected his grip, then stepped back to give him room to try a few swings.

  “Feel the balance?”

  William nodded. “It looks large but if you hold it right it’s light enough. I’ll need to build up my strength to wield it easily like you though.”

  “Practice with it daily. You’ll build the strength and the skill you need together. Even with a big sword and in full armour it’s not all about strength and rage.”

  Arthur reached out and tapped the blade with a knuckle.

  “It’s too long for a tall young man like you to swing it freely in here, but once Sir Marl has taken you north you’ll have plenty of time to train with it.”

  William sheathed the sword.

  Chapter 17: Jasper: Lurvale

  The king’s master of pavilions set up tents above the battlefield and men cut down trees to build a palisaded enclosure around it. Others dug a trench beyond the palisade. A similar encampment was being established on the opposite side of the river. Before the sun set much of the work was done. Campfires started to light up across the valley, on both sides of the river.

  As Jasper approached the king’s palatial pavilion he heard screaming from a small tent beside it. The king lifted a tent flap of his pavilion and stepped out.

  King Louis of Vrongwe was a short man with huge shoulders and barrel chest built training with heavy weapons in youth, but neck and torso now running to grotesque middle aged fat, only partly concealed beneath layers of food stained, extravagant purple silk, which did not, however, hide the absurdly thin legs that refused to match his corpulence, and seemed hardly sufficient to support his weight. From the midst of a bulging forehead, flat, snuffling nose, and jutting chin, dark beads of eyes glared pig like. His complexion was pasty from too little sun, but was marked by splotches of a yellowish tint, hints of the sickness that years of gluttony had invited. While his blonde hair hung down to his shoulders, his baldness was almost perfect within the circumference of his golden crown. In his fist, which sparkled with more jewelled rings than bare flesh, he gripped a massive leg of roasted waterfowl like a mace to threaten moderation. Grease dripped down his wrist and chin as he tore a piece of flesh from the bone with rotting, but perfectly straight teeth. A stench of layered, stale perfumes, and sour, unwashed sweat radiated like an invisible aura that only the bravest or most foolish courtier would dare recoil from.

  He signalled Jasper to follow him as he walked toward the small tent. “A good battle,” he said, then frowned, “until the treachery.”

  Jasper tilted his head in a way that might be interpreted as assent, or merely respectful attention.

  “We have another problem though,” the king continued. He indicated the small tent, from which the screams came.

  Jasper followed him into the tent. On a trestle table inside a man lay, bound naked to the boards, with the scars of torture across his body. He was a large muscular man. He turned his eyes to Jasper as the knight commander entered. Jasper was struck by recognition. Did he know this man? And yet he could not place his face.

  “This spy was caught by the abandoned baggage train of the traitors,” the king said.

  “Are you sure he’s a spy?” Jasper asked. He did not mention the familiarity he felt. Though he could not place the man, his presence affected him, as did the indignity he suffered at the hands of the torturer. He was reminded of his childhood, and his father, a man on whose strength he had depended. But he also was reminded of his father’s demise, old before his time, coughing up blood, consumed from within, his strength ebbing away, until he could hardly care for himself. This man seemed strong but also vulnerable, as though Jasper’s father were there at both stages of his life, strong as the god of war, frail as an autumn leaf. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  The man looked at him through eyes clouded by pain, or
perhaps by something else. He seemed puzzled. “Do you understand me?” Jasper asked.

  The man started speaking, looking directly at Jasper, but Jasper could not understand a single word. Jasper only knew it was language because the man’s lips moved, though it sounded more like wordless song. Stranger even than this was that multiple tones seemed to be expressed in each utterance. But could any man sing thus? And why would any man sing on the rack of his torture? Jasper asked the torturer, “Do you know what he’s saying?”

  “No. He’s been babbling that nonsense since we caught him. But don’t worry,” He looked ingratiatingly at the king, “he won’t keep up the pretence for long. We’ll have the truth from him before the moon is above the peaks.”

  The king tore another chunk off the roasted leg, and between chewing said to Jasper with an accompaniment of spat fragments of fowl flesh, “I had my master of revels, Gisbert, listen to him. There isn’t a language Gisbert hasn’t some knowledge of, from the Seltic Isle to the Eastern Wild, from the Northern Steppes to the Jungles of Kemet. But he says it’s no ordinary language.”

  “What is it then?”

  “Fragments, spells. Perhaps he tries to free himself with magic.”

  “Not very successfully, it would seem.”

  “No. Perhaps he’s a wizard’s apprentice.”

  “But look at him.”

  “What about him?”

  “He has the body of a warrior.”

  “There’s that. True. But he didn’t even try to fight. Not that he could have done much. He was found like this. Naked. No clothes, no arms, no armour.”

  “Strange.”

  “He was just wandering, as if lost.”

  “A madman? Holy man?”

  “No, no,” said Louis, and his face darkened, “he must be a spy.”

  “Why?”

  “Why else would he be wandering the camp. And there are so many enemies about me. Look at the treachery of the archers. So many men who want me to fail, who want that scion of a silk worm to succeed. He is Augustyn’s man. I can’t doubt it.”

  “Well, if he is a spy he’s the worst I’ve ever come across. Do you think a man like that would be employed by the duke? Augustyn values his spy networks more than his armies or his merchant fleets. His spies are the most cunning and subtle of their breed. This man’s behavior would be lunacy for a spy. He must be mad. And if the language is only babble that would make sense. A madman would babble.” But as the prisoner looked into his eyes Jasper knew there was more to this man than madness. He was confused. He was in pain. But despite that there was a something powerful about his manner. It was not like magic, Jasper felt no compulsion to do anything he did not want to do, but rather the manner seemed that of a man who was accustomed to command and found himself suddenly demoted. He could not discard the imperious habits of a lifetime, though no one would obey him. Once, perhaps, men had feared him and submitted. He was proud. He was angry. He was certainly no commoner. And he was a warrior. Though he had not fought his captors, Jasper did not doubt that, if he chose, this man could match any knight, perhaps even a knight commander of the order of Urysthra like himself. He felt an affinity with this unarmed, unarmoured warrior, despite his probable madness. “Perhaps he was once a brother of the temple. Some brothers leave the order to live the life of a hermit. Isolation can drive a man mad.”

  Louis stared at the prisoner, ignoring Jasper. Sucking grease off his rings and smacking his lips he said, “No, no. He must be a spy. Augustyn’s forces are across the river. The archers I paid for murder my knights and aid the enemy. And this traitor was found among their baggage train. The Gwendurian dogs will soon cross and crush us.”

  “Even with the Kumese crossbowmen they don’t have the numbers for that.” Though this was not strictly true, he would not nurture the king’s paranoia, nor his defeatism. “And you can use your catapults against the Kumese palisade. They’ll flee across the river to escape the bombardment, if you’re quick to act.”

  “Numbers? What need have you of numbers when you have the cunning of Augustyn?”

  “Augustyn’s commanders are not fools. If you quickly drive the Kumese away, the Gwendurians will only harry and skirmish until your knight levies finish their month of service and return home. Then they’ll cross and take back what you’ve won. If you’d attacked sooner…if you attack now…” If your knights weren’t such arrogant fools, he thought, if you had more sense, if you had as much courage against armies as you have against a naked, bound prisoner, if, if, if.

  “Yes, yes. You can’t be too careful. He’s a spy, and we’ll have the truth from him.”

  “Not a word of which we’ll understand.”

  “He’s hiding behind this language,” the torturer said confidently, and twisted the man’s testicles with a pincer. The man screamed, gasped, then started babbling in tones that were as haunting as they were alien. “He knows what we want, and I’ll break him soon enough. Every man breaks.”

  “How long have you been torturing him,” Jasper asked.

  “Every man breaks,” the torturer insisted.

  Louis walked out, followed by Jasper. There was a cry from within the tent, but it was not the cry of a tortured man. The torturer ran out. “My lord, he’s gone.”

  “Gone?” The king did not comprehend what was being said. Jasper pulled back the tent flap and looked inside. The table where the man had been tied was empty. The ropes lay over it. When Louis saw this he rushed back in, with his torturer and Jasper following, and several lords rushing to the sound of the king’s shouts. “What have you done? Why did you let him escape?”

  “My lord, I didn’t. I swear. He just disappeared. One moment he was there, the next he was gone.”

  “Traitor!” the king screamed, throwing what was left of the roasted leg at the torturer’s face. He paused long enough to reflectively lick the grease off the palm of his hand, smearing most of it across his lower face, and wipe his palm on his silk clothes, adding to their already rich pattern of food stains then, fury renewed as if forgotten and just remembered, unsheathed his sword. “You’re in league with that demon spawn, Augustyn. Admit it.”

  “My lord. Your majesty.” The torturer fell to his knees, his hands clasped together in sign of supplication. “I would never betray my king.”

  “You think that duke your king? You miscreant, treacherous, spawn of a succubus from the flaming planes of Akeron.” The king’s face was red with anger, and foam flecked his lips, and Jasper thought, he’s as mad as the senile old king Richard. Since the aunt of the Ropeuan king was the great grandmother of Louis of Vrongwe, perhaps it was a family disease. As several barons crowded into the tent the king struck off the torturer’s head. The head rolled into a corner and its eyes looked up at the canvas tent top with surprise. At least, Jasper thought, he had the good fortune not to suffer his own inflictions.

  Jasper examined the table and the ropes while the barons placated their king. It occurred to him that there had not been time in the few moments after he had left the tent with Louis for the torturer to have freed the prisoner and the prisoner to have escaped. And the ropes had neither been unknotted nor cut. He walked a circuit of the tent, examining where the canvas met the grass. It was tightly drawn by the pegs outside. It would have been impossible to crawl under without loosening it. Not for the first time, he thought Louis was slow to action when it was needed, and quick when it was foolish.

  But what was the sensible way to interpret the disappearance? There was something more than natural here. He shivered, though the evening was warm.

  Chapter 18: Rose: Thedra

  Though The Temple dominates the entrance to Thedra, and all gods find their place beneath its vaulted ceilings, within its flying-buttressed walls; there is an older part of the city, where the many gods are not overruled by Thulathra, where The Elder Three have no place, where each of the gods has his own temple, and each cult rules its own adherents. This is the Avenue of the Gods. Along the ave
nue, fronting the temples, are great statues, sculpted by artisans with greater craft than any now have. Thus it must be as the world grows old, for all that once was great in men is as surely lost as the moments of time, all that flourished must decay, only fragments remain of what once was whole, and that which was clear and bright at the dawn of things can now only be sought futilely among indistinct shadows in the twilight of the world. At the far end of the avenue stands the statue of Saruthra, god of sky, thunder, lightning, and tides, with a ram’s head and six eagle eyes, one missing, brandishing a lightning bolt. Then his brother, Sedthra, god of sea and storm, with his bull’s head and spear and net. Almost all the gods are here: Nethra, god of death, with his hyena’s head and the great scythe with which he harvests the souls of men; Naathi, goddess of marriage and constancy, with her wreath of flowers and thorns, long suffering wife of ever lustful Saruthra; Pulmthra, most great and divine patron of learning and science and healing, the monkish god, whose steps lead the willing to truth, with cowl thrown back and a mechanical bird, proof of his science, on the tip of his staff, turning its head this way and that all hours of day or night, for the learned must always seek knowledge; Kemthi, goddess of wisdom and prophecy, with scroll in one hand and distaff in the other; Iridethi, who brings the world renewal and hope, her statue’s hair painted in the colours of the rainbow, flowing all the way down to her feet and swirling around them; Septhi, whose grief is never ending, whose lamentations echo down eternity, bent by her troubles, dressed in mourning black; Trestathrathi, goddess of seasons and change, a shapely young woman, whose long dark hair entwines with her grey beard, with her male genitalia held aside to display the female. There is no temple to Ilsa, god of thieves, beggars, revelry, madness and transgression, though the Lord of Law and the King of Misrule both claim to be arkon of the cult, and practice their supposed mysteries in their guild halls, if you could call Ilsa’s Inn and the theatre guild halls. Fulkthra is not here either, though there is a shrine deep beneath the city for the god of fire, earthquakes and smiths, where the city’s blacksmiths practice the mysteries of their cult. Neither is Dithi represented. The goddess of the hunt and nature’s healing is too wild to be worshipped in the city. Her sanctuaries are in the untamed places, where the axes of men can never fall, and the trees rise higher than the spires of man’s greatest temples.