The Wolf

by Leo Carew

  Keturah vomited through the night. Both Roper and Tekoa remained at her side, taking it in turns to empty the pails and feed her water to sustain her. By the time dawn pierced the windows, the retching had stopped, though whether the foxglove distillation had worn off or she simply no longer had the strength to persist, Roper could not tell. They responded by giving her more water and the wood sorrel solution, a diuretic that would help expel the poison she had already absorbed. She was desperately weak and Roper could not help but wonder whether the treatment was killing her.

  A few hours after dawn, Harald, the legionary who had spent so much time in Tekoa’s service, appeared hesitantly at Roper’s door with a pot of honey. Tekoa turned to bark at whoever had disturbed them, but seeing Harald so timid, holding the honey, he froze. It was a large earthenware vessel: a week’s pay for a humble legionary. “A gift for Miss Keturah,” Harald said, half dropping the pot clumsily onto Roper’s table. “Sorry for disturbing you, my lord.” He turned to leave, hurrying from the room.

  “Harald,” said Tekoa abruptly at the legionary’s back. “I’ll tell her when she wakes up. That’s kind of you. Uncommonly kind.” Harald turned on his way out of the door, offered a smile and then shuffled awkwardly out. “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Tekoa, glancing at Roper with something like his old humour. “The man has a heart.”

  Roper had other thoughts. “Can we be sure it hasn’t been poisoned too?”

  Tekoa jerked his head dismissively. “He watched her grow up. If we can’t trust him, there’s nobody we can.”

  When Keturah awoke, they fed her spoonfuls of honey along with the water and sorrel solution. It seemed to strengthen her somewhat and her moments of consciousness grew longer and more lucid. By the evening, Roper thought she might be strong enough to be moved to Tekoa’s household. He had matters to attend to here and no sooner had she been carried down the spiral staircase by Helmec and into a waiting litter, than Roper summoned Vigtyr the Quick.

  Roper knew Vigtyr was tall, but had not realised just how immense the figure who arrived at his quarters would be. When Helmec showed him in, Vigtyr had to stoop beneath the lintel of the door, straightening up just enough to make perceptible the bow he offered Roper. “Lictor,” Roper acknowledged. “Will you drink birch wine with me?”

  That would be Vigtyr’s honour.

  He was gigantic: perhaps the tallest man Roper had ever seen. He was a full foot taller than Roper himself; taller too than the berserker, Tarben, who had won the wrestling at Roper’s feast (though leaner as well). His hands were massive; each finger as thick as a baby’s arm, with chestnut-knuckles and forearms corded with muscle. Roper watched the way Vigtyr moved as he handed him a full goblet; noting his balance, how he took the goblet with his left hand, the way his eyes seemed to look through Roper to the wall behind, rather than at him. His hair was long and black, his high boots a dark-brown leather and, instead of the usual woollen tunic, he wore a split-leather jerkin with a carved ivory brooch bearing the crest of House Baltasar over the heart. He had several thick gold rings stretched around his fingers and his belt-buckle was intricate silver. That was a demonstration of personal wealth that would have raised even Uvoren’s eyebrows. It was almost disturbing. Anakim status is built on memories and deeds, not embellishments.

  At Roper’s invitation, Vigtyr settled himself in a yew chair that squeaked beneath his weight and stretched out his legs before him, looking lazy and content. Roper began to partition his mind. He forgot Keturah. He forgot the plague stalking the streets. He forgot Uvoren, he forgot Tekoa’s displeasure. Almost most painful of all, he forgot Gray, and the look of disappointment in his eyes when he had suggested meeting with Vigtyr. This encounter would require a clear head.

  Dutifully, he began the work of charming Vigtyr. He saw that Vigtyr’s grey eyes lingered on the elk skull. There was quite a story behind that. Did Vigtyr hunt? Had he had the pleasure of visiting the Trawden forests? A shame. Oh, but he had been to Pendle? Magnificent, by all accounts. Roper hoped to go there himself when the winter was over.

  Word had it that Vigtyr had faced the knights at Githru? Easier than expected, eh?

  Where were his farmsteads?

  Did he have hounds?

  Vigtyr was exceedingly good company. He laughed in all the right places, told eloquent stories of his own in his deep voice and Roper found himself unexpectedly warming to this character, in spite of his Suthern ostentation. It was surprisingly easy to devote himself to this encounter, and Roper began to wonder whether the dark rumours that surrounded Vigtyr were just that: rumours. They had refilled their goblets before the topic turned to Uvoren.

  “Now it is a great surprise to me, Vigtyr, that the rank of Guardsman eludes a warrior of your renown.” Vigtyr seemed to stop looking through Roper for the first time and looked at him instead, straightening perceptibly in his seat. “And as I’m sure you know, there are currently thirty-five vacancies in the Sacred Guard. We have a whole scroll of potential warriors, of course, and naturally you’re on there but competition has never been fiercer. I am afraid that I am finding Uvoren difficult as well.” Roper allowed himself a little shake of the head. “He thinks it is his unit, you see, and does his best to turn the other guardsmen against appointments that he does not agree with. It is getting increasingly difficult to overrule him, and, as you know, he has many influential supporters.”

  “I’m not sure they’ll be influential for long, my lord,” said Vigtyr, reading Roper perfectly.

  “How interesting. Do you really think so?” asked Roper, smiling now.

  “I’m certain, lord. I like to stay well informed and hear that the Ephors are developing a keen interest in many of Uvoren’s friends.” The Ephors were the five supreme arbiters of justice in the Black Kingdom.

  In response, Roper slid a sheet of parchment across the table, scrawled with coats of arms. “Well,” he said, “I wonder if they have an interest in any of these peers.”

  Vigtyr took the parchment delicately and cast his eye over it, muttering the odd name to himself and frowning as he wracked his memory. “Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, yes, yes, yes.” He rolled the parchment carefully, stowed it in a leather pouch at his belt and drained his birch wine. His light grey eyes flashed over Roper. “They’re taken care of, lord. Will that be all?”

  “One more thing,” said Roper. He allowed his smile to slip. “My wife has been poisoned.”

  “I’m shocked to hear it, lord.”

  “If you can find out who is responsible then I will be especially grateful. Who gave the orders and who carried them out. That is all, Vigtyr,” said Roper, standing and watching Vigtyr climb to his full height opposite him. “Please let me know if you need any assistance.”

  “Very good, my lord.” He bowed, more deeply this time, and strode from the room.

  He left Roper standing, staring after him, his brow gathered into a frown. It was the first time he had tried using the subtlety which Kynortas had so often employed, and so subtle had he been, that he had no idea whether Vigtyr had understood what he had been asked to do.

  But Vigtyr had understood every last word.

  When on campaign, discipline was handled by the Black Lord himself. By strict Anakim law, an army could only have one head and that must include the ability to discipline his soldiers. When at home, however, matters of disgrace, justice and vengeance were handled by the Ephors. It was the most prestigious non-military position that the Black Kingdom offered and immensely powerful. To even be considered for appointment, which was by unanimous verdict from the existing Ephors, you had to have served a century as a legionary. You were then the ultimate judge in all cases of indiscipline, with the mandate to hand out death, disgrace, or any manner of imaginative punishment to anyone else in the Black Kingdom. Even the Black Lord was not immune from the Ephors, who were wholly independent.

  In a vindictive twist, Uvoren’s sons were the first to fall.

  At the first hint of dawn
in the east, just three days after Roper had spoken with Vigtyr, six Pendeen legionaries arrived at Unndor’s house with an Ephorian mandate for his arrest. “What charge?” Unndor, the younger son, had growled.

  “Cowardice,” said a captain with barely disguised contempt in his face. He was dragged to the prisons beneath the Central Keep.

  Urthr, the elder son, followed the next day. Rape, this time.

  The two were Ramnea’s Own legionaries: men second in martial reputation only to Sacred Guardsmen and individuals from whom the very highest levels of discipline and honour were expected. Their arrest set the fortress abuzz and they were tried less than a week later in a windowless granite chamber beneath the Central Keep. People could come and watch, of course, to ensure that due process was followed, and Uvoren’s own supporters bullied their way into the room, roaring with rage each time an allegation was made and greeting Unndor and Urthr’s defences with cheers and applause.

  They lost that battle.

  The presiding Ephor, draped in an immense cloak of eagle feathers that flashed and rippled every time he shifted in his seat, was not swayed by the noise of the hall. There were witnesses who spoke out against the two brothers. Three quivering women, teary-eyed but unwavering, insisted that Urthr had forced himself upon them. “Lies!” Urthr screamed at each in turn. “Where did they find these wretches? Every word, a lie!” He was found guilty, though, and trussed up to be sent to one of the prison-ships in the North Sea.

  “There you will labour,” decreed the Ephor, voice well trained to carry over the baying crowd, “for twenty years for each woman you have wronged. Once free, you will start afresh as a nemandi and re-earn your status as a subject.” Urthr had been demoted to an apprentice rank, a rung below the full peers and subjects of the Black Kingdom. Stricken, Urthr appealed to his father, but Uvoren had turned away and strode from the room as soon as the sentence was read out.

  Unndor was next to be dragged down, falling victim to a dozen tales of cowardice. On three separate occasions, it was said, he had shuffled back from the front rank when it was his turn, and sheltered behind the flesh of worthier subjects. Four times, it was alleged, he had attacked warriors already engaged in a fight and slain them from behind. One legionary testified that he had seen Unndor turn away from the battlefield earlier in the autumn before the Black Lord had signalled the retreat.

  “How convenient that every witness so far has been either Vidarr or Jormunrekur!” howled Uvoren.

  “Yes,” said the Ephor cuttingly. “What a surprise that none of the Lothbroks have testified against these men.” Cowardice, in its most extreme form, was punishable by sticky-fire. But this was not one of those: Unndor had twice been close to receiving a Prize of Valour and had something of a reputation of his own. Nevertheless, the evidence could not be ignored and, though he avoided the prison-ships and even retained his status as subject, he was reduced to an auxiliary legionary.

  Roper had been at both trials. At first Uvoren had ignored him, but after Unndor was reduced to an auxiliary, the captain had looked across the chamber to Roper and raised a trembling finger to point in his direction, his jaw set, his nostrils flared and his eyes shining with spite. Roper had responded with a cold nod, holding Uvoren’s eye for a time before turning away from the scene.

  Two gone from the table. Six remain.

  18

  The Hybrid

  It was a still morning when Bellamus and his ragged band at last snaked through Lundenceaster’s main gate. As they travelled south, the influence the Anakim exerted on the locals had lessened. A hundred miles after the barn in which Bellamus had left two of his soldiers hanging, the locals started to lose their hair-braids and bright bracelets. Many of the Anakim words remained in use but the land was less sparsely populated and less wary. They knew of the Anakim there, of course, but nobody had seen one in a decade, there were no hybrid slaves, and they had no fear of mentioning the name of that race out loud. Even so, the folk there still stopped their work to stare uneasily at the whipped Suthern force, turning to look back to the north as though they might see pursuing and vengeful Anakim darkening the hills.

  Further south, the Anakim had drifted into the supernatural. The people there knew of the race of fallen angels that inhabited the north, but were unclear how they might tell them apart from any other man. Bellamus heard that sometimes individuals were accused of being Anakim and put on trial to determine their innocence. Unusual height was enough to place you under suspicion; but so was having a good harvest when everyone else’s had failed, or being a recluse, or having particularly bright eyes, or giving birth to twins.

  At last they had come to Lundenceaster: a city where the nobles were taught Anakim along with Frankish, Samnian, Iberian and Frisian as they grew up; a legacy of the days when the Anakim had swarmed over the walls and invaded the streets. To the folk here, the Anakim were almost totally mystical, and were kept at bay with crosses, ceremonial braziers that burned herbs and feathers, and, by royal decree, symbols inscribed in chalk onto the streets at night.

  There were no symbols now. Just snow. Everywhere he looked, Bellamus could see signs of the damage wrought by this turbulent year. Skeletal houses stripped bare by the wind crowded those haggard few that had resisted the elements. He could feel from the way his horse walked that beneath its hooves were not snow-covered cobbles but a smooth sheet of ice. A bell was tolling in a nearby church and the sound was enough to make Bellamus smile. He had not heard one since before he had crossed the Abus and it made him realise for the first time that the Anakim had no bells. How could he have missed that?

  People stepped aside as they saw the little column enter the streets, watching suspiciously from doorways or upstairs windows as they progressed. They stared particularly at Bellamus, eyes lingering on the enormous war-blade that he carried, strapped over his shoulder.

  Bellamus’s household was one of the sturdy stone buildings left behind by the empire that had stretched over these lands long ago. Its tiled roof had resisted the autumnal storms much better than the thatch around it, though dozens of the tiles had evidently slipped and, towards the left-hand side, there was a hole through which a wild boar could have escaped. “My poor home,” said Bellamus.

  Stepan, sitting on a pony next to Bellamus, stopped to inspect the dwelling. “This is yours?” he asked. “I was always told these old ones are haunted.”

  “Not to my knowledge,” said Bellamus. He dismounted, handed his reins to one of the warriors who followed, and lifted the latch on the front door, opening it a few inches to call inside. “Hilda?” He kicked aside some of the snow in the doorway and dragged the door wide enough to slip through. “Hilda?” he called again, as Stepan squeezed in after him. The room was bright. Light poured in from a central aperture, below which was a pool of water now covered in snow and probably, Bellamus thought, frozen solid. It was the snow which was providing the illumination, reflecting the daylight into the corners of the atrium.

  In answer to Bellamus’s call, a stout old woman came shuffling into view. First her head appeared from a door to the side of the atrium, her face framed in grey curls, broad and perplexed. Then she moved further into the atrium to reveal fine leather slippers below a loose-fitting brown robe. “Master?” she said suspiciously. “Good God, that isn’t Master Bellamus?”

  “It is,” said Bellamus, embracing the woman who was suddenly beaming. They broke apart and Bellamus gestured at his companion. “This is Stepan, a knightly friend of mine.” The stout woman gave a flustered curtsey and Stepan bowed in return. “Are you well, Hilda?”

  “We all thought you were dead!” said she. “Word came that your forces had been defeated and there were precious few survivors!”

  “Well, as luck would have it, I was among them,” said Bellamus. “I and four hundred others who are now waiting outside. They’ll need feeding, Hilda. I appreciate it will take some time, but I would be most grateful if you could see to it.”

  “Of co
urse, Master,” she said, a little confused. “The stores are low but we’ll do our best. Nobody expected you back at all. The cook is seeing to his house, the servants are gone. It’s just me here. It will take time.”

  “We have time,” said Stepan, breezily. He gestured at the snow and gave her a wink.

  “We do indeed,” agreed Bellamus. “Fetch the cook and, if there aren’t any servants, hire some. There must be thousands in need of employment in this city. See to it for me, Hilda.”

  “Yes, certainly, Master.” Hilda knotted her fingers. “A message arrived from His Majesty in your absence. Delivered by his royal guards.” Bellamus smiled, inviting her to continue. “It was a summons to court. They said if you ever came back, you had one day to present yourself. I tried to tell them that you would come in your own time but they were extremely rude.”

  Bellamus laughed out loud at that, placing a fond hand on her shoulder. “Nobody could have done more, Hilda. I’ll go first thing tomorrow, then. His Majesty would not be pleased if I reappeared alone of the forces he sent north, looking like a beggar and smelling like a stable.” Bellamus gestured down at his clothes, dark with moisture and spattered with mud from the trail. The gold that had been hung at his neck and wrists was gone: bartered away for food or billets for his men on the long journey back. His hair was loose and ragged, and he had a month’s beard-growth on his face. But there was something about him all the same. For all their tattered appearance, his clothes had evidently once been fine and he did not carry himself like a commoner. This was the sort of man whose rough appearance did not make him less respected: it merely made him more noble.

  Hilda departed to organise sustenance for the soldiers and Stepan settled himself to sleep on the floor of the hall, wrapped in a musky cloak he had acquired on the march south. Bellamus, meanwhile, began seeing to a bath. First he struck a fire with the very last of the tinder which he had carried with him on the march, striking iron and flint onto a piece of charred cloth. Adding this to some hay that he had kept close to his chest, he was able to blow it into a small flame that he fed with twigs until it was large enough to add some of the seasoned logs stored at the rear of the house. He left the fire to establish and next wiped the snow off the icy surface of the pool in the atrium. With the help of a cobble uprooted from the road outside, he discovered that the ice was only a few inches thick, with liquid water below. The snow must have insulated it from the worst of the cold. He smashed a hole large enough to allow him to fill a kettle with freezing water and hung it on a hook above the fire. It would take a long time to heat enough to fill the wooden half-barrel that he used to bathe and so he began searching for his razor. He was not surprised to find it undisturbed upstairs, along with his other possessions. Hilda was known throughout the community and would have kept the house safe. And besides, most people feared to step foot in the ancient stone houses.