Strength of Swords (First Cohort Book 2)

by M. R. Anthony

  “You don’t realise how much you miss bread till you’re eating it again,” he said, with his cheeks stuffed full.

  “I didn’t understand a word of that. Try emptying your mouth before you speak again,” said Beamer, before following it up with. “You filthy bastard.”

  I laughed along with the rest of the men. No one else tried to speak, so focused were they on their food. I couldn’t deny the pleasure I felt as I ate, and to my great shock there was even a rumble from the direction of my stomach - something I’d not heard in a long while. I had never been a man with airs and graces. I had tried to cultivate an appreciation of finer things – not in order to fit in, but rather so that I could broaden my horizons and gain new experiences. I had eaten the rarest of delicacies and consumed some of the most coveted vintage wines and spirits, but when it came down to it, I couldn’t deny that I would choose a loaf of bread and a cooked chicken over any number of other foods. Wines and spirits were another matter, but it wasn’t often that I got to partake in those anymore, apart from the Grask, and that harsh spirit was never drunk for pleasure.

  “Did you pick up any news from those shopkeepers, Captain?” Bolt asked after a while. The village was over a mile behind us now and most of the men were finishing their meal.

  “Not much to tell,” I replied. “The man who sold us these packs recognized us, but the baker didn’t. They dragged the justiciars off to the east somewhere, dumped them in a cave and abandoned the carriages with them. That man who ran the tavern – he took the horses with him to the market at Scar. He hasn’t returned yet, but it’s a long way. The shop keeper tells me that any money they raise from the horses will be used to support the people who need it.”

  “Like that woman and her daughter?” asked Chant hopefully. He was referring to the woman whose rape we had interrupted.

  “Yes,” I said. “Like them.” I didn’t really know how the money would be spent, but I liked the idea that these villagers had chosen to look after their own.

  “A brave man, that tavern owner. Going to Scar by himself,” said Ploster.

  “Let’s hope no one recognizes them as justiciar horses,” said Beamer.

  “I’ve never heard them to be branded,” I said. “And it’s not as if they’re all racing thoroughbreds, is it? Their riders are only hired thugs after all, not lords or noblemen.”

  The thought that some tiny positive could be taken from the justiciars’ visit was pleasing to us and I spent a few idle minutes calculating the worth of the horses and then assigning the money to imaginary projects and causes around the village. There was definitely a dreamer in me somewhere.

  The next few days were free of incident. Here and there I saw a feature on the land that I thought I recognised from our trip south – a strangely-shaped rock here, or a stunted tree there. I’d long since learned that the return trip can look entirely different to the outward journey, as if the brain is easily tricked by the reversal of an image. Even so, I was happy enough to convince myself that my sense of direction had taken us on almost an exact mirror of the route we’d followed to reach Blades.

  There was no indication that the chill was going to let up and indeed I thought that it had become even more bitter as the journey progressed. I heard the men talk about it – an idle soldier always likes to grumble – but they mentioned it with such frequency that I could tell they thought it unusual. It made me all the more grateful that we’d stopped to buy the tents and ground sheets. We were still wary about the potential for Leerfar to attack, so we pitched the cloth shelters close to each other as we sheltered within. Whoever had crafted these tents was also better at it than the man who’d made the ones we’d left behind in Blades. Once the others from the First Cohort got their eyes on them, I’d be reaching into our money chest again to equip everyone with better tents. Had I been a miser, I’d have been plotting a way to make these new tents vanish before we got back to Gold.

  On the evening of the twenty-fifth day, we reached the village again. I suppose there was an inevitability about it, as if we’d left matters incomplete when we’d passed through it over two months before.

  “It’s that place again,” said Beamer. “With all them dead people in the well.”

  It was directly ahead of us, daring us to walk through the middle. It wasn’t yet dark, but it was getting there. There was another hour of marching time left to us and I had no intention of stopping in this village, with its cluster of wooden shacks and memories of death.

  Accepting the unspoken challenge, I led us amongst the huts. There was something oppressive about the place, which melded strangely with the air of abandonment. We were grown men, but we kept our hands on our sword hilts and remained watchful. We arrived at the well and I was unable to resist the temptation to look inside. I didn’t know what I expected to see that might have been different to the last time, but the bodies were still where we’d left them. The stench remained and flies still buzzed around, eager to take advantage of this bounty of rotting flesh.

  “Something’s here,” said Ploster. His voice was calm and steady, but I could tell from the tone that he wasn’t happy.

  I drew my sword at once and the others followed suit. We formed a circle close to the well as we looked for anything that could be a threat. I reached behind me and unhooked my shield from where I’d hung it on my new pack. One by one the others did the same, with each keeping his eyes watchful.

  “What is it, Corporal Ploster?” I asked. “I need more information than it’s something.”

  Before he could answer, it revealed itself. Hardly more than twenty feet away, a small shape emerged from a doorway leading into one of the huts. It was clothed, but the rags hardly covered it and we could see the pale flesh of its skin.

  “What are you doing here?” it asked. It had the voice of a child. The face looked like it belonged to a young boy, but only an approximation, as if it were a copy made by an imperfect artist. If there was any doubt that this creature wasn’t human, the black orbs of its eyes gave it away, as did the two rows of serrated teeth that were far too large to be fully hidden by the lips.

  “Another blood drinker?” I asked Ploster, ignoring the creature’s question.

  “It’s not a blood drinker,” he replied. “I don’t know what the fuck it is, but it’s not a blood drinker. That’s not its real appearance either,” he finished.

  There are times when a wise man turns to negotiation and there are times when a wise man knows that whatever words he chooses and however skilfully he speaks them, they will not be enough. I counted myself as the sort of man who could instantly identify a situation when there was no point in wasting my breath. There was still room for threats, however.

  “Whatever you are, you won’t find us easy meat like these people in the well,” I said. “Should we kill you?”

  “You are very tired, old man,” replied the creature. “I think I shall put you into the well so that you can play with my other friends.”

  I shook my head at the games. “How about you fuck off?” I asked. I walked slowly towards the creature, with my sword held in front of me and my shield raised. The other men spread out to my sides, while Ploster followed a pace or two behind, which was his usual position when he intended to use his magics. I could feel him gathering it while we closed in. Without warning, the creature turned and vanished back into its hut, the darkness engulfing it immediately.

  “Let’s get away,” I said at once. Whatever it was I didn’t want to risk our lives fighting it. I’d already seen what it had done to the people who once lived there and I’d gathered from Ploster’s demeanour that it was definitely not something we wanted to test ourselves against if we could avoid it. If I’d had fifty men with me, I’d have hunted it down to avenge the villagers it had slain, but now was not the time.

  Before we’d gone a dozen paces, heading along a route that would take us in a wide arc past the creature’s hut, Ploster spoke. “It won’t let us go,” he said. “It’s
sensed what you’re carrying, Captain, and it wants it.”

  “The vial,” I said. “It belongs to us and we’re never giving it up.”

  If the die was cast and we were to be forced into a confrontation with this creature, I didn’t want to allow it to control the situation. The tactical part of my brain told me that by vanishing into the hut, it was trying to manipulate us somehow. Perhaps it hoped to ambush us, or simply to instil fear by inviting us to fight it in the darkness.

  “Knock that hut over, Corporal Ploster,” I said.

  There was a whoosh of air as Ploster expelled his energies. His sorcery struck the hut and smashed it into hundreds of pieces, sending planks of wood in a cone many yards long. One of the adjacent huts was caught by some of the debris and it also fell over, its walls sagging inwards with a sigh. All that remained of the first hut was the wooden floor, made of poorly-fitted planks which rested upon stones embedded into the earth. If the hut had ever contained furniture, that was now destroyed and scattered across the ground.

  We approached, looking carefully to see if the creature had been swept away in the blast of magics. Naturally enough it had not - there was a wide, square hole in the middle of the hut’s floor, five or so feet to each side. We gathered around and peered into the pit, though it was too dark to make out anything more than the rough-cut sides as it fell vertically into the ground. A faint draught blew up from the hole, ruffling our hair and carrying with it the stench of something rotten.

  “What is that creature, Corporal Ploster?” I asked.

  “I don’t know if we have a name for it, Captain,” he replied. He summoned his magical light, which hovered over the hole, allowing us to see deeper within. The bottom was almost fifteen feet below and through the shadows it was just about possible to discern that there was a low tunnel heading off to the north.

  We had few choices and they were all unpalatable. We could drop into the hole and hunt out the creature in a place of its choosing, or we could withdraw and test its speed by making a run for Gold. If it had been early morning, the choice would have been easier to make, since we would have had an entire day available in which to put some distance between ourselves and this place.

  “I don’t like to have the terms of our engagement dictated to me,” I said out loud. “And I’d have to be a fucking idiot to go into that hole.” There were a few humourless chuckles at my language.

  I led us from that place. At first, we backed slowly away from the hole, and then we turned and ran. There wasn’t much time left that evening and I was determined to make the best use of it. As we splashed through the wide stream that lay adjacent to the village, the unpleasant thought came to me that we might now find ourselves pursued by two dangerous foes.

  16

  “Are you any closer to knowing what it was?” I asked Ploster as we laboured our way up a steep, grassy hillside.

  “There were horrors in this land before the Emperor arrived,” he said. “Perhaps that creature once stalked these hills, murdering people who have long since moved on.”

  “And the people of that village caught its attention?” I asked.

  “Maybe. If I had to guess, I would say that they disturbed it or awoke it somehow.”

  “All of the bodies were in the well. Could they have dug into its lair when they were digging down for water?” I didn’t know why they’d even needed a well when they lived so close to the stream. It might have been that the water dried up during certain times of the year.

  “Who knows?” he asked. “It definitely looked as if there were passages beneath the ground. The whole area around here might be riddled with them.”

  “Let us hope there is only one of them, whatever it is,” I replied. “How sure are you that it’s a threat?”

  “It’s definitely got power. Old power and different. I doubt it would test the mettle of a Death Sorcerer, but I wouldn’t like to face it myself.”

  “Fortunately, you won’t have to face it alone,” I told him grimly.

  Night became as black as pitch far sooner than I’d have wished it, and the folly of my plan started to play on my mind. If we’d stayed at the village, at least we’d have had some degree of control over when we fought the creature. Here, in the wilds of the countryside, there was no guarantee that we’d find shelter of any sort.

  I always thought that a long-lived man was a lucky man, especially when he was a soldier. Luck smiled on us in the form of a dark silhouette, scarcely visible against the night sky. It was a stone hut and we made for it at once. I didn’t care if it was deserted or not and I kicked the door open. Inside, there was just a single room, with a wooden floor. If there had been furniture here in the past it had either been taken elsewhere or stolen. Parts of the roof were missing and we were able to see the stars through the large holes above. Whoever had built the hut had clearly abandoned it a long time ago.

  We settled around the room to wait out the night, with our swords drawn and our shields within easy reach. We didn’t have long to wait – out in the distance we heard a rumbling, guttural roar. Whatever had made the sound, it certainly hadn’t come from the body of the child we’d first seen in the village.

  Ploster had conjured up his light again and we looked at each other. I saw no signs of fear – it was an emotion we had long forgotten, but there was agitation and uncertainty.

  “Can’t we keep running with Corporal Ploster’s light to guide us?” asked Beamer. “It would beat sitting here waiting for that thing to come to us.”

  “The stronger I make the light, the quicker it drains me,” said Ploster. “If I make it strong enough for us all to see, I am not certain that I can make it last the night.”

  I’d known of the limitations to the spell, which was why we’d never travelled by its light in the past. The need might be about to change, but for the moment I thought it best if we wait. If the creature chose to engage us here, it was infinitely preferable to fighting in a narrow tunnel underground.

  The roar came again, sounding more akin to a choking noise than the cry of a wild animal. It was closer this time and we all stood on our guard. The silence was broken by a third roar, this time sounding like it was less than a hundred yards away, though it was hard to tell exactly where it came from, since the walls impeded the sound. Without warning, Bolt began to laugh. It was a rich sound, full of genuine humour. We all looked at him in puzzlement.

  “We’re huddled like a bunch of children!” he said. There was nothing accusing about it, nor was he suggesting we were cowards, but there was something in the situation he couldn’t prevent himself laughing about. “And that creature is growling to try and make us scared! Imagine it!”

  “Yeah,” said Grids. “I bet it’s loving the thought that we’re shitting ourselves.”

  “And what’s it going to do to us? Nothing that a thousand men haven’t tried to do to us before,” said Weevil.

  “When I kill it, I’m going to piss on its corpse,” said Bolt. “For the people it shoved in that well.”

  Soldiers - you had to love their perspective on things. I suppose that facing death on a regular basis makes you prone to unusual behaviour. I probably exhibited it myself, whilst at the same time thinking that I was acting in a perfectly normal and rational manner.

  As we spoke, I felt the vibrations of power as something plucked at the warps and weft. It happened in a way I’d never felt before and I’d fought for and against many practitioners of magic. I looked up and watched Ploster’s face. He didn’t return my gaze and I could tell that he was focusing his own strengths, in preparation for what approached. The air within the hut stirred and whispered around us. Whatever Ploster was doing, he wasn’t holding back. Even the other men felt it and they exchanged glances, knowing what it meant.

  There was no further build-up in the tension. I’d guessed that the creature had been trying to play on the fears that we didn’t have. Once it had heard the laughter from within the hut, it surely knew that it wasn’t facing
farmers or labourers, who might cower at the sound of their impending death.

  Without warning, one of the shorter walls was smashed inwards. Stones and the rough limestone mortar showered over us, thrown at speed by an impact from outside. I felt two large pieces of rock strike me in the arm and shin, whilst more were deflected by the shield that I’d raised only moments before. Shards of stone crashed and rattled around inside the hut, leaving none of us completely unscathed. I’d instinctively turned to avoid the worst of the splinters, but from the corner of my eye I saw that the whole of the end wall had been destroyed, leaving a ten feet hole, ragged at the edges. On the far side of the hole, something loomed – seven feet tall and stooped. It had wide shoulders, massive with muscle and a broad head. I caught sight of claws at the end of long, thick arms.

  Before any of us could react, I felt Ploster release his pent-up magic. There was a deep vibration through the structure of the building and the creature was knocked from its feet, as if by an invisible hand. A moment later, it was gone, thrown at enormous speed into the night by the force of Ploster’s sorcery. The walls of the hut were caught in the concussion and the far end of the building sagged as more of the wall was ripped apart and hurled away.

  “Outside!” I barked at the men.

  We sprinted through the gap in the wall, with our shields raised. We formed a line, using the hut to protect our backs. Out in the darkness, away from the glimmering of Ploster’s light, something sped by – the sensation of something being seen, rather than anything clearly visible.

  “Who’s hurt?” I asked.

  “I’ve got a couple of smashed fingers, Captain,” said Beamer.

  “I reckon some of my skull got a bit broken,” said Chant. “I can still think straight, so I don’t think my brain’s been hurt.”

  I checked myself where I’d been hit. The two stones that had hit me had left deep scrapes across my flesh, almost down to the muscle. It wasn’t anything worse than I’d taken on a hundred occasions in the past and I paid the abrasions no more heed.