Strength of Swords (First Cohort Book 2)

by M. R. Anthony

  This is what the sorcerers see when they marshal their powers, a part of me thought. I fumbled around, clumsy and uncertain as to what to do. Away from me, the skeins of power were infinitesimally small as the possibilities multiplied into infinity. It made me feel almost giddy just to know that they were there. Here, close by they were still vast in number – even with only four of us present, there were so many things that could happen, so many things we could do. Nonetheless, I found myself able to make sense of my immediate surroundings, though I was sensible enough that I didn’t try to influence any of the strands.

  Then I saw the reason for me to be there. Some of the threads were broad and thick. They looked stronger than many of the others. I realised that some of them were my own, but others were different. These ones twirled around in a spiral, spinning slowly. The threads nearest were drawn closer to this spiral as if they were planets circling a distant star. I studied the spiral, following it down as far as I could, not knowing what I would find. At the end of the spiral, the threads stopped abruptly as if they’d been severed by something of great power. I used my mind to pick up one of these threads and looked at it. If I expected to feel a sense of hurt, there was none to be found - the warps and wefts were not capable of suffering such human emotions.

  My consciousness reached about, gathering all of these severed threads into a single space. I discovered that I could weave them together as if I were making a rope and this I did, working them this way and that until they were bound. The splayed ends were severed and something told me that it had not been intended for them to become detached from the fabric they had once been a part of.

  Something new impinged itself upon my consciousness. A glow that I had not previously been aware of was here with me. The light from it was pure white, but not so bright that I couldn’t see and understand what it was. I reached for the light, pulling it along the threads until it contacted the ends of the rope I carried. There was no bright flash, nor was I granted a sudden epiphany about my place in the world and my own worth. The white glow formed new threads, which snaked out to the surrounding areas of the web and merged with them. In a detached fashion, I noticed a few of these threads behave differently. These ones joined themselves to my own strands, connecting me more widely to the warp and weft, though I felt no different.

  Something inside told me that my purpose here was complete and I began the process I knew would take me back to my body. There was a fragment of me that wished to test my mettle against the distant threads, to see if I could tame them or harness their power, but I was not so foolish as to attempt another foray into the unknown. Not yet.

  My descent had been accompanied by a lurch, my return was not. There was no transition that I was aware of, and all at once I was back in the room with the others.

  “He’s back,” said Ploster with evident relief.

  I felt no weariness or grogginess from my experience and my mind was working immediately. “How long was I away?” I asked.

  “A minute. Perhaps a little longer,” said Ploster. “You went further than I could follow and I worried that you had become lost.”

  I said nothing further, having become aware that the vial in my hand was no longer heavy. Now it felt like nothing more than a normal piece of hollow crystal.

  “It is done,” I whispered.

  We looked at the body of the Saviour. At first, she seemed unchanged, but then I noticed a steady rise and fall in her chest, almost imperceptible. Her hands had been crossed over her chest, I took one and held it between my own two. The fingers were as cold as the grave, but I felt the beginnings of warmth seeping into her palms. I rubbed her wrist and the back of the hand as if the chafing would somehow be an assistance.

  We gathered round, none of us really knowing what to do. In the end, we didn’t need to do anything. The Saviour’s eyes fluttered open and the first emotion I saw was surprise. Her lips moved and I heard faint words come from her mouth.

  “Where am I?” she asked. “I’m so cold.”

  18

  She wept for a long time. When the trembling in her shoulders subsided, we helped her up the steps and out of her resting place. She walked stiffly, as if the wounds she bore tugged and pulled at her with each step. I saw her grimace and she leaned against me, so I put an arm around her and held her upright. Once we reached the top of the steps I lifted her up and carried her in the crook of my arms. She’d have never permitted me to do so before and I knew it meant she was still too hurt for simple things like pride.

  We took her to Lieutenant Craddock’s room. Had we not been men, we’d have probably not been so stupid and would have made advance preparations for her comfort. As it was, we were left to chastise ourselves as I put her down on Craddock’s firm, thin mattress in his cramped room. We’d met other soldiers on our way here, but I’m not sure if any of them realised who it was that we came with. They deserved to know, but the Saviour also deserved some time to gather herself.

  She shivered violently. Craddock’s bed wasn’t dressed with sheets, even in the cold weather, so I asked someone to find something warm. Sinnar leaned out of the door and bellowed commands in his most imperative tones. I could make out the noises of soldiers scrambling to fulfil the orders.

  “It hurts so much,” she said. This time there were no tears, but she continued to shiver as if the cold would never leave her.

  Watching her there, she seemed so small and fragile as she drew closer into the cloth of her robes. Like any man who has not had children, I felt like I should do something, but didn’t know what she needed. I had fought so many times that I had lost count, but what I did then was harder than any battle I could recall. I sat on the bed next to her and gathered her in. She didn’t shy away and I felt that she took comfort from my gesture.

  “I have no warmth to give you,” was all I could say. It was enough and she wept again, while I fought to remain impassive as ancient memories came back to me, of plans made with my long-dead wife to have many children of our own. Jenna was nothing but dust and a distant shining bead locked away deep inside me, but this girl could have been a daughter to me.

  Blankets arrived, along with Corporal Grief, who carried with him his ever-present case and a hot drink, which he handed to our lady at once. His face was locked in his battlefield expression, that place he went into in order that he would not be affected by the things he saw.

  “What is it?” she stammered through her chattering teeth.

  “It’s nothing but tea, my lady,” he said.

  We wrapped her in the blankets and gradually the shivering subsided, though it took more than an hour. In the past, her pale skin would have developed a slight pinkness as the warmth returned, yet on that day and for every day after, it remained so pale that she could still have passed for the dead.

  Soldiers gathered in the corridor outside, standing silently and patiently. I looked out of the door once, and saw the expectation in their faces. More of them arrived and soon the passage was filled to overflowing with them. It was at that point that I realised that her radiance had been renewed. It must have grown so gradually that we who were close to her in that room hadn’t felt its return. Now that I opened myself to it, I could feel it as clearly as I always had. Except there was something new to it, something different and more powerful, as if she had increased in stature.

  Her composure started to come back – I could see it in her eyes and in her face. I did not offer her the comfort of my embrace again and stood with the others. Corporal Grief examined her, carefully and gently, his thick fingers pressing and prodding here and there as he inspected the jagged rends that he had sewn up.

  “The skin is joined again.” He hesitated. “There is scarring where the cuts have sealed. I am sorry, my lady, but I don’t think they will ever fade.”

  Corporal Grief was the finest battlefield surgeon I’d ever come across and I was eternally glad that he was with us. However, he only ever dealt with the wounds of men and his manner wa
s factual and descriptive. He delivered his news in sympathetic tones, but the words he’d chosen were not those that a young woman would have wanted to hear. I watched as our lady reached tentatively up to her neck. She ran her delicate fingers over the stitches and I could imagine what it was that her fingers felt. I had countless scars of my own – they weren’t a badge of my pride, rather they were records from my history. I wished more than anything that I could take the scars from her body and wear them alongside those I already had.

  “Corporal Grief, take out my stitches,” she said. Her face hardened in a look I knew well. “I should be thankful for the scars. Now there will be no one who can look upon me and think that I am scared of death, nor will they think that it is a stranger to me when I command them to fight.”

  She pulled her robes away from her neck, revealing the criss-crossed patterns where she’d been slashed by Leerfar’s daggers. With infinite patience and care, Corporal Grief snipped away the black threads from her neck, pulling the ends free with a pair of tiny pliers. With the stitches removed, we could see the skin beneath – it was a light pink around the scarring, the colour looking strangely healthier than the pallor on the rest of her body.

  After that, Grief took out the stitches from her back. I knew he’d needed to do much more work to sew up the wounds there and it took him two careful hours to undo his needlework. Throughout it all, the Saviour made no sound – our surgeon was skilled and I was sure he caused no unnecessary pain. In the end, it was done. He put away his tools, rolled up his pack and looked at me for guidance.

  “Thank you, Corporal Grief. That will be all,” I said. He nodded his head a single time and turned in the direction of the door. Another voice made him pause briefly.

  “I am grateful for your gentleness, Corporal Grief,” she said.

  When Grief was gone, she propped herself up on the bed. Now, she was surrounded by more drinks, plates of food and blankets than she knew what to do with. There was even a modest bunch of flowers that someone had found – probably stolen from a garden nearby – which sat forlornly in a jug.

  We’d already given her an outline of what had happened to her and how she had been brought back to us. I wasn’t able to judge if she was shocked or if she’d taken it all in her stride. She’d come a long way in the short time since we’d taken her from her village. She had to be strong and I was hopeful that she would continue to be the leader that we needed.

  “What is our current situation?” she asked.

  Lieutenant Craddock deferred to me, so I answered. “The Duke is dead, but he has sent his soldiers to kill us. We don’t know how many men he has and may not know for several days.” Lieutenant Craddock already had his scouts posted to the south, since he’d known the arrival of another army to be inevitable. As yet, they’d brought him no news.

  “Can you speculate on how many there will be? Ten thousand? Twenty?”

  “If I had to guess, I would say no more than ten thousand and those not well trained. Lord Trent is with them, but he only had fifty riders last time I had dealings with him.”

  “What is it that we should fear from this man?” she asked. “I assume there is more to him than his mere numbers, which are small?”

  “He used to lead the justiciars and is rumoured to have had some part in their founding. After a time, it became hard for the Duke to allow the man to roam unchecked, so Lord Trent was sent to the south a long time ago. He is a sorcerer of a reasonable power. All of his men are sorcerers, though none of them individually strong.”

  “But fifty-one sorcerers acting in concert is something we need to take into consideration,” she said.

  “Exactly that,” I replied.

  “What else is there, Captain Charing?” she asked. “I can see by your face that we have more things to worry about than the last of the Duke’s men.”

  I was surprised by her question. I’d always thought I had a face that gave away nothing, but apparently my abilities were not as good as I’d thought. “There is something to the north of us as well, my lady,” I said. “We’ve had reports that Nightingale and Turpid have been destroyed and all the people living there killed.” I allowed Lieutenant Craddock to fill her in on the scant details we’d managed to gather. She looked upset and I knew why.

  “My village was not far to the north of Nightingale,” she told us. “They must be dead too. I hope that some of them managed to escape. We knew the hills well.”

  I had my doubts – we of the First Cohort had encountered little difficulty in rounding up all the people there when we’d been looking for the Saviour. Back when we were under the sorcerer Dag’Vosh’s command. Unless the villagers had started posting sentries, they’d still have been easy prey. I kept my thoughts to myself.

  She continued speaking, with a faraway expression on her face as she called up memories of her past. “I have visited the lands to the north,” she said. “I used my power to fly over them from the safety of my bed. There are mountains a long way distant that I could not see beyond.”

  “I recall you mentioning it, my lady,” I told her. “The matter seemed of little importance when we had only six hundred men and all our attention was focused on reaching the town of Treads. Now I would dearly like to know what is beyond those mountains.”

  “What actions do you recommend, Captain?” she asked.

  “I don’t think there’s a single best answer,” I replied. “I do not relish the thought of more conflict in the streets of Gold and I would not wish to encounter the unknown here. The people of the town have seen enough violence and death. If indeed there is an army coming from the north, I would prefer to meet it out in the open, somewhere away from the town.”

  The coming decision wasn’t mine to make. From a practical point of view, I’d have most likely waited to see what reports came in from the scouts. But there again, I knew that waiting might not be the best course of action for the people in Gold.

  “So then, Captain,” the Saviour said with a grim smile. “You’ve roused me from the peace of death, to tell me that half of my men have deserted and that we are caught between two potentially superior armies. Perhaps it would be for the best if I slit my throat open again and returned to the void.”

  I stood there in dismay for a second, before I caught Lieutenant Sinnar trying to stifle a grin. “You might want to borrow the Captain’s dagger for that,” he said, making a joke with an appalling lack of sensitivity.

  The Saviour looked closely at the dagger I had tucked away. The blade was hidden, but the hilt was not. “At least my killer lost something,” she said, not at all perturbed by Sinnar’s jest. With the smallest grunt of pain, she pushed herself upright from the bed.

  “I must think about our choices for a short while,” she told us. “Before that, there is something more pressing that I must do. Captain Charing, would you accompany me for a time, while I show the men who remain that I will not be held back by the inconvenience of death?” There was another smile from her. I’d been stupid to overlook her resilience.

  “Of course, my lady. I must insist that Lieutenant Sinnar and Corporal Ploster accompany us.” I turned to Craddock. “Lieutenant, I need you to pick twelve men from the First Cohort to act as permanent guards for our lady. They will be with her at all times. Let me know their names as soon as you can and I’ll promote the lead man to corporal.”

  “Yes Captain,” he said with a salute.

  “And arrange for a room to be furnished. I am sure you’d be happy to give up your own, but I suspect that our lady would prefer to sleep on a mattress that is greater than two inches in thickness. One with a sheet as well, I would imagine.”

  He smiled and repeated the salute.

  We left the room. I offered my arm for support, but she declined and straightened to her full height which was only close to my shoulders. I was sure the scars pulled cruelly at her when she changed her posture, but not a sign of it showed on her face now.

  When they saw her, the soldi
ers who had gathered pressed themselves against the wall so that we could pass. Most of them chose not to speak, but I heard a number of them say what they hoped were words of encouragement and support.

  “Welcome back, my lady.”

  “Good to see you with us again.”

  “We’ll not let anything happen to you.”

  We made our way through them and I could tell that her return from death did not seem at all strange to any of the men. It was as though they had been tested and had come through it stronger than they had before. With a shock, I realised that the same had happened to the Saviour. I had worried that she would hate me for what I’d done. Instead, she already seemed to have grown in presence and stature, as if what she’d gone through had only hardened her resolve and taken away her fears. After all, if you have died and returned, what other fears are there to impinge upon how you act? I knew that she had so much more than her own personal wellbeing to be concerned about, but I felt sure that she wouldn’t ever divert from a course where the spectre of death loomed. We of the First Cohort had long since learned to put aside fear and I hoped that the Saviour would do the same, whilst continuing to temper her it with compassion for the people who followed her.

  Our journey took us through the barracks and onto the streets of the town, though not before I’d gathered fifteen extra men to walk with us. The coldness of the air washed over us – it seemed to have become more bitter over the last few hours. We headed along a few of the main streets, with the people stopping open-mouthed to stare. Her radiance flooded over them, soothing and powerful, letting them know that the death of hope was an impossibility.

  “Captain Charing, let us return to my room. I am worried about what comes from the north and I would like some time to search.”

  We returned, to find that Lieutenant Craddock had already located and appointed a suitable room. It didn’t seem appropriate to use the same ones that she’d been murdered in, but the warehouse was a rabbit warren of rooms and offices, so there was plenty of choice. There were twelve of my men in the corridor outside, lined up against the wall. I went to them and spoke briefly about their new duties, though I was sure that Craddock had already given them everything they needed.