by Leo Carew
They skirted the edge of the clearing. A herd of aurochs grazed in the centre, their breath rising as a mist above them. The hounds whined at the sight of the beasts, but Tekoa snapped his fingers and they went silent. Nothing but giant elk would do.
They followed the treeline for another half-hour, keeping a constant eye on the direction of the wind, which had begun to swirl somewhat. Finally, Tekoa spotted something up ahead. He was more than a hundred and sixty, but his eyes were keen and he held out a hand that stopped both Roper and the hounds. “There,” he whispered. Against the snow up ahead was a powerful silhouette. Roper caught a flash of cream as the mighty beast raised its head and swivelled it towards them, its great antlers swinging round to face them. “We’ve been spotted,” said Tekoa with a grin. He whistled and the hounds streaked out before them, rushing silently for the elk. “After them!”
The hunt was on.
The elk, still three hundred yards distant, turned and lunged away, building up speed until it was in full flight. It was extraordinarily powerful, but not as swift as the hounds who pursued it. Before long, they were upon the mighty beast which swung its head this way and that on the run, trying to catch a hound with its colossal bone branches. The hounds were equal to that and danced out of its range, shepherding it towards the trees. “I’ve got the finest dogs in the country,” called Tekoa over his shoulder. They certainly impressed Roper.
Dogs and elk disappeared into the trees, still sufficiently broadly spaced for the beast to slip its antlers through the gap. Tekoa tore after it, followed closely by the rest of the party, lances at the ready.
And suddenly, the moment was upon them.
There was a mighty crack from up ahead and Roper saw that the elk had misjudged a gap between two trees and stopped dead, antlers quivering. Snow showered from the shaken trees before it. The elk shook its head and swung round, antlers sweeping too fast for one of the hounds which was caught in the chest and hurled backwards with a yelp. It crashed against a tree and dropped to the ground where it stirred weakly. Tekoa roared his fury and spurred faster. The other two hounds had been driven back by the swinging antlers and the elk was trying to break away, dodging past Tekoa’s horse and charging, head lowered, straight for Roper behind. “It’s yours, Roper!”
Roper had a fleeting impression of an antlered head hurtling towards him, of the rippling of the elk’s muscles as it charged. He stood in his stirrups, lance swaying before him, and lunged.
He had no idea what happened. One moment he was on his stirrups, aiming for the base of the neck that thundered with raging blood, the next he was crashing to the floor, his horse collapsing on top of him. Head ringing, face half-buried in the snow, Roper could see the hounds streak past him again and then the hooves of Tekoa’s horse.
He stirred groggily, laying his hands on the horse and trying to push it off him. It was not moving. He looked at it. “My god.” It was dead, neck evidently broken by one of the elk’s antlers. Tekoa was roaring somewhere behind him, the hounds were barking and the elk was bellowing in rage. Roper extracted himself from beneath the horse. Bits of him felt jarred and it took several stunned moments to judge that he was unharmed.
Just then, Tekoa came trotting back. “All right, my lord?” he asked, beaming. “That was brave of you.”
“Was it?”
“Sort of. Very unwise really, but you got it.”
“I did?”
“You did. It’s down, come see.” Tekoa glanced at Roper’s broken courser. “Ah.”
They followed the sounds of celebrating hounds, Roper on foot and Tekoa mounted, back almost to the clearing again. There, just before the end of the treeline, the beast lay fallen on its side, head twisted extravagantly to accommodate the huge antlers. The rest of the party was gathered around it, still mounted and chattering raucously. At the sight of Roper, there came hearty laughter and an ironic cheer. “Impressive commitment, lord!”
“I’ll wager that was a surprise.”
The elk was truly enormous. At the shoulder it had stood taller than Roper and its antlers must have spanned fourteen feet from tip to tip. The hounds were lapping greedily at the puddle of blood accumulating beneath its neck.
“That’s where you hit it,” said Tekoa, swinging himself out of the saddle and pointing at the base of the neck. “Not quite deep enough, but you slowed it. I had to lance the heart from behind. Tricky manoeuvre,” he said modestly.
“Masterful strike, sir.”
“Be quiet, Harald.”
They left the elk to the attentions of Harald and the other legionary. They would prepare the carcass for transportation and then drag it behind the horses to a cart waiting on the road to the forest. It could then be taken back to the Hindrunn.
The rest of them would ride back ahead, with Roper borrowing a horse and the other two officers riding together. One was the Councillor for Trade, the other was the Treasurer. Both were Vidarr and appeared to be old friends of Tekoa. They were middle-aged. Only after one hundred years’ service in a legion were subjects of the Black Kingdom permitted to apply for an administrative or councillor’s position. There they would specialise in their chosen field and then be able to advise the Black Lord, or oversee the enacting of his will across the country. It was an option seldom exercised by regular legionaries, who preferred the status of the battlefield, but they were desirable posts for members of the auxiliary legions.
Roper fell to talking with them on the road back. The snow fell more and more thickly, though fortunately there was no wind. He hunched into his wolfskin cloak as they followed a line of withies that marked the way back to the Hindrunn. The paving of the road had long since been assimilated into the whiteness around it.
He realised almost at once that these were the men who would be able to tell him what he could do for the eastern refugees. However, broaching the topic with them, they seemed surprised that he was bothering himself with it.
“The eastern subjects are tough, my lord. This is not the first time their homes have been torched by invading Sutherners.”
“It is the first time in centuries that the torching has been so comprehensive,” suggested Roper.
“Even less could we afford to help,” said the Treasurer. “Your father was a strong ruler, lord, but strong rulers are often as much a problem for their own nation as they are for other nations.”
“A great ruler,” agreed the Councillor for Trade. “But he would not be counselled. He rejected a trade agreement with the Hanoverians over a perceived slight, cancelled existing agreements with the Yawlish and the Svear and refused to accept emissaries from Iberia whilst they supplied ships to the Sutherners. He also stopped raiding south, to avoid antagonising the Sutherners, so that source of revenue dried up.”
“As a consequence, lord, our coffers are almost empty. It was only the timely intervention of the Vidarr that enabled us to mount your campaign without forgoing the legionaries’ Out-of-Fortress Pay,” finished the Treasurer.
Roper glanced at Tekoa, for this was the first he had heard of Vidarr fiscal intervention, but Tekoa was fiddling with a pair of gloves and did not appear to be taking any notice of the conversation.
“So what would it cost us to relieve the suffering of the eastern subjects?”
Both officers let out a breath, the plump Treasurer shifting uncomfortably in his saddle.
“In depth, my lord? Surely you don’t need to concern yourself with such numbers …”
“Itemise it,” insisted Roper.
“Well … Out-of-Fortress Pay for the legions. To meaningfully impact the crisis in the east, lord, we’d need all nine auxiliary legions. Then building materials; it would take weeks of work and therefore more Out-of-Fortress Pay for the auxiliaries to source the wood, the stone, the withies … The water-reed will not be ready yet, so we’d need heather from the north, which is more money. Then, of course, the grain. We don’t have anything like the reserves to supply to the eastern subjects; in fact, we’re l
ooking at a shortfall for the Hindrunn itself. So we’d need to buy grain from the continent …”
“Iberia might trade with us, though relations are frosty,” put in the Councillor for Trade. “Bavaria and Alemannia are not out of the question, but neither has a coastline, so getting the grain here will be expensive. In short, lord, we have no hope of affording anything meaningful. The country is broke. If you want to do anything for the eastern subjects, you will need to rely on charity. And if you want your reign to amount to anything meaningful, we will need to find an additional source of income.”
“Such as invading Suthdal,” said Roper.
The Treasurer and Councillor for Trade exchanged a glance. “Exactly, my lord.”
“But it isn’t just the finances,” said Tekoa, who appeared to have been listening after all. “Vengeance, Lord Roper. As you said in your speech, the Sutherners must be taught to fear us once more. They cannot invade us with impunity and expect to return to safe, intact homes. Vengeance.”
16
One by One
Tekoa sent the giant elk’s head, boiled and scraped to spotless white bone, to Roper complete with its immense antlers. Roper had it mounted on a beech board as a memento of the day and displayed it above the hearth in his quarters. In the following days, Keturah twice awoke screaming at the alien form of the giant moonlit skull now hovering opposite their bed.
Roper had taken his father’s skull, stripped equally bare of flesh, into the Trawden forests during the hunt and, riding off quietly for a moment, buried it between the roots of a vast oak, carefully pointing the empty eye-sockets east before filling in the hole. Above it, he whittled a rough outline of his own hand. That would be good enough for Kynortas, he thought.
The snow had proved as relentless as the rain that preceded it. Some of the subjects, those who cared less about the light and feeling the moving air, attempted to raise the temperature inside their houses by putting up in their window-frames translucent shutters of greased paper with a wooden lattice behind. Most preferred open exposure to the elements, and left their houses with the feel of a hand-made cave. The ground around the Hindrunn grew smooth and white, the branches of the forests began to bow and crack under their fresh burden and the legions sweated to keep the streets clear. That was where most of the refugees were now to be found. Roper had decided to open the gates and admit them to the Hindrunn’s granite embrace. In hours, the cobbled streets were thronged with the homeless, who gratefully sheltered from the winds that swirled beyond the Outer Wall. But their life was still far from comfortable, with most sheltering beneath crude tents made from old cloaks and begging food from passers-by.
Roper thought about the Treasurer’s words and the only solution he could think of to help the refugees further was to appeal to the generosity of the people. To that end, he appeared on the steps of the Central Keep to make a plea to the subjects of the fortress to receive the refugees into their homes. They responded in magnificent fashion. Just three days after his speech, Roper had made the ride from Central Keep to Great Gate and seen not a single tent. The homeless had been taken into the citadel’s sturdy stone houses, hosted by a generous populace.
To attempt to refill their coffers, Roper sent the Councillor for Trade, whose name was Thorri, to Hanover to attempt to barter a fresh agreement. He was not expected back for another three weeks, during which time Uvoren was a constant thorn in Roper’s side. He was seeking to rebuild his influence and began with constant displays of altruism towards the subjects.
When the snows had fallen, the great warrior had received a cheer for stopping his horse by a mother and her freezing child and, dragging the two into the saddle behind him, had taken them into the Honour Hall with him for a fine meal at his own expense. He took no one into his home, but received the adulation of the crowds nonetheless for the freshly baked rye bread that his household produced each evening and handed out to those on the street. He even donated a small herd of the pigs bred on his northern estate to the people of the Hindrunn, having them slaughtered before the Central Keep where cups of their hot blood were passed out to those who came to watch. Lothbrok legionaries roasted the carcasses all day in the open air, so that by the time night fell and more snow was descending on the citadel, a great crowd had gathered to be rewarded with bread pockets of glistening pork.
But that did not seem to be the limit of Uvoren’s machinations. Roper had also come to wonder whether the captain was having him followed. Twice now, when he and Keturah had been at the mess, he had caught the eye of a couple of legionaries whom he had spotted regularly during the day, always nearby, always seemingly otherwise engaged. They had looked away swiftly, and Roper wondered what their intentions could be. Were they just reporting his movements? Or were they waiting for a moment when he was unguarded? Roper did not know, but his was a devious enemy and, as he and Keturah had discussed, the captain must be destroyed soon.
Roper and Keturah had taken to walking the streets of the Hindrunn together in the mornings. Keturah had lived in the citadel for longer than Roper, having returned to her father’s household at the age of sixteen when she had completed her time in the freyi (the female equivalent of the haskoli). She seemed to know everybody, while Roper had only recently returned from an extended apprenticeship with the Pendeen Legion and thus had an extremely small pool of acquaintances. He thought it might do his support base good if he could build on Keturah’s already impressive networks, and so they toured the streets together. When Keturah was not introducing him to someone or other, Roper liked to bounce ideas off her, with the level of her derision a good yardstick for whether he might be able to propose it at one of the afternoon councils. The standard for rejection was if she laughed raucously at the suggestion. If she only tutted impatiently, then Roper considered it a good idea.
“They’re following us again,” said Roper one morning. Keturah did not react for a moment, then she glanced behind her and gave an apathetic wave at the two legionaries who were once again stalking them. They did a devoted impression of being in deep conversation with one another, as though Roper’s affairs were none of their business, but they had been spotted nearby once too often for that to be convincing. Roper wondered again what they had planned, though he did not greatly care any more. “They’re not very subtle, are they?”
“Uvoren needs better spies,” said Keturah scornfully. “Perhaps we should just spend the entire day walking in circles around the outer track and amuse ourselves by seeing when they give up.” Roper deliberately did not laugh: he had an idea that it might be bad for Keturah to have too much positive feedback. She smiled and threaded her arm through one of his. “You don’t have to laugh, Husband. I know you find me funny.”
“You’re quite funny,” said Roper. “I don’t want you collapsing under the weight of your own head.”
That was exactly Keturah’s kind of joke and she shrieked uncontrollably, startling two women picking crab apples from a nearby garden. Keturah waved her free hand apologetically at them.
“Perhaps I should hold a march through the streets?” pondered Roper. “In celebration of the victory over the Sutherners. We missed it on our return because everyone thought we were going to sack the fortress.”
Keturah had recovered herself. She frowned at him with total bafflement. “Why?”
Roper did not bother to develop the half-formed idea. She would just laugh at him. He changed the subject. “Do you smell that?” There was something bitter on the air.
Keturah sniffed. “It’s like the homecoming smell.” She meant the scent of herbs being crushed underfoot which accompanied the legions on their return to the Hindrunn.
“Harsher than that,” said Roper. There was something threatening about it. It grew thicker as they walked until it was completely overpowering. After a time they could even see it: a gentle grey blurring that hung over the streets. “Smoke,” said Roper. “They’re burning herbs.” The street was deserted. Each of the glassless windows had
its shutters sealed and, unusually, all doors were shut.
“Look there,” said Keturah. She was pointing at one of the doorways. Beneath the lintel, something dark was turning in a gentle breeze. It was a tuft of hay. As Roper looked, the streets seemed to him like a gallows. Dozens of doorways had hay hanging above them. Roper and Keturah both fell still, looking across the deserted road.
“A tuft of hay,” said Roper. “Isn’t that the sign of plague?”
“There hasn’t been a serious plague here for fifty years,” said Keturah, dubiously.
“Away from here,” said Roper. They turned back from the deserted street, filled with the smoke of herbs burnt against the poisonous smells that led to infection, and hurried for the Central Keep. The direct route was blocked: more tufts of hay, more of that bitter smoke. They skirted around it, following the smell of fresh air and the more familiar trace of charcoal smoke. The two legionaries who had been following them had gone: perhaps they had recognised the scent earlier.
“Why now?” said Roper, once they were back within the reassuring form of the Central Keep. “If it’s been fifty years since a plague, why has it reappeared now?” They took the stairs up to Roper’s quarters to find Helmec, as usual, standing guard over the door, and Tekoa standing with him. The legate turned to look at Roper, scowling as he caught sight of him.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever been allied to such a bloody fool.” He jerked his head inside Roper’s quarters, indicating they should speak within.
Roper did not immediately respond to the accusation, instead producing a key which he fitted to the lock. “You’re well, Helmec?”
“So well, lord,” said Helmec, with indecent cheer.
Roper, Tekoa and Keturah entered, leaving Helmec on guard outside. Within, Tekoa unfastened his cloak and threw it over Roper’s bed, before proceeding to the hearth and opening the vent to reignite the charcoal in the grate. “Make yourself at home,” said Roper.
