The Wolf

by Leo Carew

  Eyes followed Roper down the cobbled streets. A few from the crowd called out as Roper passed; just noises of respect. They rode on to the Great Gate, where Roper spotted Hafdis, Uvoren’s wife, waiting dutifully on top of the gatehouse. It was a display to complete his warrior image. The fortress must know that she and Uvoren remained united. But even from here, Roper could see her disdain for her husband. She could barely keep the sneer from her face as he rode forward, managing an apathetic wave of her hand in recognition before turning away from the column. Keturah too was on top of the gate, short hair scraped into the ponytail that denoted a married woman with no children. She stared down at Roper with a half-smile on her face and Roper could not resist staring back. He could see her green eyes from here. She was taller than every figure around her, even the stern legionaries who guarded the gate. She was not even a full subject, but looked like a queen.

  Roper kept his eyes on her until the moment he rode through the gate and the stone of the gatehouse obscured her from his view. Then he looked down. Before him, the gates were open and the clear acres south of the Hindrunn stretched ahead. The melting snows had revealed a broad road that snaked over the grassland, forking east and west. Easy marching. They would take the eastern road. It led through the ruined Eastern Country and into the hills. There, on the Altar of Albion, a horde waited for them.

  Roper had decided (and Tekoa had agreed) that there was a good chance Bellamus was luring them into an ambush. It could of course be that he was so confident in his own abilities as a general that he was sure that he could beat them anywhere and wanted to inflict the greatest possible hammer-blow on the psyche of the country. However, his trick with the caltrops had been noted, as had his canny escape from the Black Kingdom after the Battle of Githru. He appeared to be an imaginative leader and it seemed all too likely that the battle would not be fought at Harstathur, but on the road there. The Skiritai were therefore on high alarum, scanning the land ahead of the army for miles before they marched into it. They were swift, skilled scouts but it still slowed the army’s progress considerably.

  Unlike the previous invasion, on this occasion they knew nothing about the forces they opposed. Not where they were, not how many, not what those numbers were composed of. They only knew who led them, and where he had said they would be.

  Clouds gathered above them on the road. The closer they marched to Harstathur, the more oppressive the atmosphere became. The humidity built irrepressibly and the clouds became an impenetrable smog. It looked as though this wretched, drowned winter might have one last storm left in it. Roper could not decide whether this would favour them or not.

  Twenty leagues short of Harstathur, they managed to rendezvous with the final auxiliary legion. They had been separated by rivers swollen by melt-water but a few Skiritai had managed to cross and pass messages between the two forces. They converged at a ford that crossed the river Ouse. The Fair Island Legion were unarmed and unarmoured, still dressed in their labouring fatigues, but Roper was prepared for that and carried spare weapons and plate with the army. The Fair Islanders had been harried and battered by Bellamus’s forces and there were now no more than three and a half thousand of them, but they still took Roper’s forces beyond seventy thousand soldiers.

  Every day they marched closer to the Altar and every day the Skiritai reported no sign of the Sutherners. They scoured every hill and valley surrounding the road and even made several long-distance forays in case the Sutherners intended to come down on them from afar during the night. Roper would not believe that the invitation to Harstathur was a genuine one until the seventh day after they left the Hindrunn. Finally, the Skiritai outriders were within range of the Altar and returned with the news that there, indeed, was where the Sutherners waited for them.

  The final night, they stopped just two leagues short of Harstathur, already on the climb up to the plateau. The air felt heavier than ever and there was a definite tingle of electricity around them. “This will break soon,” said Gray, squinting into the ash heavens. “Tomorrow will be a horror.”

  “We’ll be right in the thick of the action on top of Harstathur,” said Roper. “We’ll get the thunder and the lightning up close.”

  Tekoa approached the pair of them, riding his grey mare. “I have something to show you two.”

  “How far?”

  “Two hundred yards that way,” said Tekoa, casting his hand towards the north.

  “I’ll leave Zephyr,” said Roper. He and Gray walked together behind Tekoa’s mare, crossing to the edge of the track and heading into the close-cropped grass next to it. Roper studied the grass as they walked, frowning to himself while Gray and Tekoa talked about the march. The first observed that he had blisters for the first time in years; the second that Gray should have ridden, rather than walked.

  “Here,” said Tekoa, a moment later. “Look at this.” He had led them to a field where the grass was regularly intersected by long bare strips of naked earth. They looked like pathways, where the movement of thousands of men had worn through the grass to the mud below. There were boot prints visible in the rain-softened paths, which had obviously been formed by infantry of some sort. “The Rangers have been finding these marks all over the surrounding land. They are strange.”

  “Very strange,” agreed Roper. He bent to examine one of the paths and the grass that lined it. There was a gap of around six feet between each strip in which the grass had survived. “Cavalry,” he said quietly.

  “Boot prints,” said Tekoa, who had not bothered to dismount. “Not hoof prints.”

  “Cavalry,” said Roper again. “This grass has been cropped by horses.”

  “Where’s the dung?” said Tekoa impatiently. “Where are the hoof prints?”

  “Removed,” said Roper. “This pattern is Bellamus trying to hide how much cavalry he has. The horses graze along these paths so that they do not leave hoof prints elsewhere, then the infantry march the path afterwards to cover up the tracks. Any dung is cleared away. Look at the grass; the shredded tips are not yet white. They’re fresh. This field has been grazed by a large number of horses but they have gone to considerable trouble to hide that from us. So he has a lot of cavalry, but doesn’t want us to know.”

  Gray inspected the grass. “You’re right; it has been grazed.”

  “Your mind is working quickly, Lord Roper,” said Tekoa suspiciously.

  “No,” said Roper. “I just understand my enemy. Remember how we removed our dead after raiding their supplies? We’ve inspired him to try something similar; Bellamus would have understood what we did. I’ve been waiting for something like this. He’s got cavalry and doesn’t want us to know about it, which means he has plans for it.”

  “What plans?” mused Gray.

  “On Harstathur? Hard to say. He surely can’t be intending to flank us; that detour around the plateau would be twenty leagues. All the same, Tekoa, have your men scout far this evening. I don’t want to be fighting tomorrow and find that a horde of cavalry has suddenly appeared behind us.”

  Tekoa rode to give the orders, and Roper and Gray headed off to find a place to set up camp. As ever, they were joined by Helmec and together they located an area surrounded by a cluster of Ramnea’s Own. Roper set the fire and Helmec began adding ingredients to a blackened copper cooking pot. Gray prepared a tripod of greenwood, held together with a withy which also doubled as a pot-suspender. From this, Helmec hung the pot which contained the last of the day’s water (saved for exactly this purpose), butter and crumbled marching biscuits. Roper contributed the dried mushrooms given to him by Keturah, and Gray, a chunk of salt-mutton and some lingon berries. They allowed the stew to simmer, Roper able to smell the contents from the pack on which he sat. It was a little better than the evening meal they would usually have prepared. It seemed appropriate on the eve of battle; there was no need to save food you might never get to eat.

  After the meal, when the dark amber sunset in the west had faded completely, they would
head off into the darkness to circle among the campfires. As Kynortas had said to Roper just six months before, they had no battle plan. They could merely reassure the legionaries, exhorting them to their most honourable duty and their bravest conduct the following day.

  The nature of the huge altar that lay between the Anakim and the Sutherners was such that neither side could tell much about the enemy they faced. If they sent scouts forward over Harstathur, they would find the front of their enemy’s encampment but be unable to estimate numbers or composition. Two prizefighters had agreed to a fight to the death without ever having seen each other.

  “So what can we tell the men, Gray?” began Roper, over his stew. “Are there any comparable battles you know of, where the armies were so unfamiliar?”

  Gray considered this. “I suppose this makes our position more like that of an invader, rather than a defensive force,” he said. “As a defending army, it isn’t hard to gather information on your enemies. You know the land, the locals are on your side and there are good opportunities to know your foe before you fight them. It is much easier to be a defender than an invader and that is why I believe Bellamus has erred by bringing his forces here. Remind our warriors that this is our ground they fight on. Remind them that we have defended it again and again over thousands of years, and on this battlefield especially, we have broken one of the gravest Suthern threats we have ever faced. Connect them to this land and make sure the Sutherners pay for each foot they take in more blood than they can afford.

  “If we are to fight the unknown tomorrow, we cannot feel our way into the battle. If we stand off and allow Suthern aggression to shade the opening exchanges, we may find quickly that it is too late to recover.”

  “If we lose tomorrow,” said Roper, then trailed off. He shook his head. “This is the weakest full call-up that I can remember.”

  “Perhaps in numbers,” said Gray. “In the years that my memory covers, this is the first time we have had less than eighty thousand soldiers at the Black Kingdom’s disposal. But we are more battle-hardened than ever. Not only are there true heroes in this army, but most of the legionaries here have fought more battles than a Sutherner could squeeze into a lifetime. We may be a mere seventy thousand, but these are the seventy thousand hardest, most cussed legionaries ever to walk these lands. They are the descendants of the greatest heroes of our culture. Take our friend here,” and Gray gestured at Helmec, who was licking his bone spoon carefully, “how many battles have you been through, Helmec?”

  “I don’t know,” said Helmec, a smile splitting his ruined face. “Many.”

  “Too many to count?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how many times have you lost?”

  Helmec thought about that. “We’ve lost small skirmishes. We lost that day in the flood waters.” He glanced apologetically at Roper. “That’s all I can remember. There’ve been victories which felt like losses, though, because so many died. Lundenceaster was one.”

  “Yes, it was,” said Gray. “Lundenceaster was ten times worse than the defeat on the flood plain.”

  “That’s where I said goodbye to my face,” said Helmec. “But it’s probably better this way. I was never very pretty, and now Gullbra can imagine that I was once.” The reference to his tiny wife caused Helmec to grin again. “Better it happens to me than someone like Pryce. He did make a fuss when he lost his ear.”

  “It suits you,” said Roper, who then broached the question he had long wanted to ask. “How did it happen?”

  “A morning star,” said Helmec. “Just caught me lengthways,” he covered the right half of his face with a hand, “as I was climbing a ladder. The infection nearly killed me, which is why I think it never healed properly.”

  Both Roper and Gray had put down their stew. “You are a man of remarkably little self-pity,” commented Gray, admiring Helmec across the glow of the fire.

  Helmec blushed. “That is praise from you, sir,” he said, looking down at his stew again.

  Above them, a chasm had opened in the mountainous clouds that hung overhead; the sky behind painted with starlight. Just as the last time he had been at Harstathur, Roper could see the Winter Road: the band of stars that marked the route they would all one day take to the underworld. It was a place of cold wonder: illuminated only by moonlight, surrounded by endless forests composed of giant ice crystals and many of the paths blocked by hard, frozen fog. Wolves with spines of frost instead of fur watched your progress and would act as guides for the brave and the well prepared; for the rest, they were a more insidious presence. Some wandered the Winter Road for ever, never finding the underworld on the other side, and watched all the while by the only mortal animals that could travel to this realm: raptors. They sat atop the ice crystals and watched the souls who drifted beneath them. It was the great test. Deeds performed in life were nothing more than practice for that long traverse.

  Roper looked down and saw that Helmec and Gray had both paused their eating to gaze upwards. They stared fixedly until the clouds shifted and the stars disappeared again behind their dark bulk. “I hope you’re confident about tomorrow, lord,” said Helmec, still looking up at the sky.

  “Confident?”

  “In yourself, lord. You didn’t get this far by accident. Trust yourself.”

  “Thank you, Helmec,” said Roper, quietly.

  As they spoke, Roper spotted Uvoren moving from fireside to fireside, clapping peers on the shoulder and patting their heads. He wore a snarl as he discussed the Sutherners and Roper observed how he energised the fires. He had a wake, which lifted the introspective silence a little as he passed. Then, to the Black Lord’s great surprise, he approached the hearth at which he, Helmec and Gray sat. He stopped where the light of the fire and the darkness merged and stared vacantly into the flames for a moment.

  “Captain,” said Roper quietly.

  “My lord,” responded he. Lord.

  “Are you ready for tomorrow, sir?” enquired Gray. “We will need Marrow-Hunter at her best.”

  “She will be, Lieutenant,” said Uvoren sternly. He and Gray had been extremely distant since the latter had replaced Uvoren’s childhood friend Asger as the Guard’s second-in-command. He ignored Helmec completely. “And you? Will you be ready?”

  “I will, sir.”

  Uvoren studied Gray. “I know you like to be prepared for death. You will need to be prepared for more than that. Tomorrow, you are not allowed to die before your blade is blunt and clotted with blood. Do you hear me, Lieutenant? Only when you are utterly spent do you have my permission to fall.”

  At those words, Gray smiled into the fire. “Thank you, sir, but my death still waits for my wife’s permission. Until she grants it, I will do my best to survive.”

  “And what about my permission?” asked Roper. “You do not have that.”

  Gray inclined his head to Roper but said no more.

  There was a pause, during which Uvoren regarded the Black Lord, that familiar curl on his lips. “You know what the difference is between you and me, Lord Roper? The difference is that I wasn’t foolish enough to let Vigtyr off his leash. Whatever you think you can give that man, you will never satisfy him. Sooner or later, he will be the end of you.”

  “There are many differences between you and me, Captain,” said Roper. “Be gone. Other firesides need your company more than this one.”

  Uvoren gave an ironic bow and turned away, Roper and Helmec watching him leave. Gray paid no attention, simply staring into the fire.

  “When I was young,” said Gray, a moment later, “I always thought about death.” He brooded. “I was obsessed with it. When my peers were practising their battle-craft or hunting, I think I was preoccupied with the inevitability that this would all come to an end. Does it hurt? What happens afterwards? Is it better than life, or worse? How will I feel when I face it?” He was perfectly still as he spoke and Helmec and Roper listened closely. “It is the ultimate unknown. There was only one thing that I re
ally feared about death: how I would respond to it. I used to dream about the moment of my dying, and in my dreams, before the final blow fell, I was always a coward. I would beg my enemy for quarter. Or run away like an animal.

  “I wasn’t a bad swordsman. I appeared to grasp tactics easily, but when I was named a full legionary, I thought there had been a mistake. I was terrified of what would happen when I knew I was about to die. I must surely disgrace myself. My peers looked so comfortable and so at ease, and I knew I was a coward … That began to change in my first battle. My greatest friend from the haskoli, a lad my own age, was pierced by a spear in his chest and fell next to me. You know how that feels, my lord. You watched your father slain by an arrow and were compelled to ride after him into a great mass of the enemy. I can only assume you felt then what I felt as my friend Kolbeinn was felled beside me.

  “I just remember rage … pure rage. I have never been so overwhelmed. I was utterly, utterly possessed. I cut the head off the Sutherner responsible, and then dragged my dying friend back through the ranks.” Gray fell quiet for a moment. Roper knew he did not need prompting and waited patiently for the story to resume. Helmec had finished his stew and put the bowl aside, listening as he stared into the flames. “He knew he was dying, and I didn’t tell him otherwise. Frothing blood was coming from the wound and from his mouth. There was nothing we could do. So I just knelt next to him and told him I was there and that he was dying with honour.” Gray made a face. “And my friend; Kolbeinn … he was calm. He knew he was dying and he didn’t care. He just looked at me and he managed a smile. He said that now he knew: when you reach death, you can accept it. He said it felt easy.” Gray took a deep breath and let it out, still staring at the fire but sitting up a little straighter now. “That memory has been my comfort and my strength for more than a hundred years. Kolbeinn was a hero, so perhaps he was terrified and just told me what I needed to know. In which case, his example inspires me. Or maybe, as I believe, he was telling the truth. And there is nothing to fear about death, because when you reach it—when you have no choice—you can accept it.”