Corner the bastard, Artim thought, see how his footwork serves him then.
He flew at his opponent, a second wind of rage fuelling his onslaught. Forward, a step to the side, forward, back again, he chased him back to the wall of the keep, backing him up into the corner by the door. His sword was a clumsy blur against his opponent’s fluid parries and nimble movement.
Artim swung his sword in a relentless overhand battering as his opponent was trapped, unable to side step or change the angle of their defence, their knees buckling under Artim’s fury as blow after blow rained down over head.
They sunk to the floor, still parrying Artim’s blows, still keeping his sword at bay, until their arm gave out, crumpling after one final savage blow from Artim turned it uselessly aside.
Artim raised his sword above his head for the killing blow, he could feel his opponent’s eyes beneath his dark hood regarding him. It felt almost like interest, or intent. He saw a glimmer of silver from beneath the hood as the fallen figure looked up at him, and he paused, distracted. Confused.
What was it?
A gout of blood flew through the rain, showering the hooded figure.
A spear tip jutted through Artim’s chest. His sword clattering and ringing as it hit the floor beside him. He stared down at the bladed shaft in disbelief, at his torn mail, at his legs now running red, and felt the eyes upon him still.
He was lifted from the floor suddenly, impaled upon his own spear, and was thrown up and over to land awkwardly on his back. A jolt, a crack and the spear shaft snapped under his weight. He lay prone, unable to move, staring into the flame lit sky, blinking against the rain. He felt his lifeblood leaking out of him onto the wall top, like spreading cold.
He heard soft footsteps, two pairs of feet, heading towards him. The sound barely perceptible over the storm above. Failure faintly came to mind as he lay listening. A failure as cold as the rain, icy darts stinging his face.
I’m sorry, he thought distantly.
He thought he could hear screams now, coming from the town. Voices. Hundreds of voices, all clamouring in fear. Shouts, screams, torment. The sound of the dying. What was happening? He couldn’t move to look. His body would not answer, could not answer.
Two shapes appeared, standing over him. Hooded and cloaked. Shrouds of darkness, outlined by the burning keep above, casting fire and smoke into the sky, defiant against the night. He could see them now, the flames lighting the faces beneath the hoods.
Only they were not faces. Not really.
They wore identical sculpted masks of polished steel, shaped like the barren yet strangely beautiful faces of men. Eyeless and cold. Terrifying in their strange beauty. One was flecked with blood, running down its steel cheeks and thin, pursed lips.
Were they men? He could not tell. They stooped more like creatures as they regarded him. The bloodstained one clutched a slender blade, the one he had fought against, though the two were near identical.
He saw that one look to the other, and then with a slow nod, it stepped over him and disappeared from his sight. He stared into the other’s eyeless steel mask, feeling a hidden gaze meet his own. With a flash, a quick searing of pain, it drew its sword and cut his throat. Blood struck against its mask, the stark image of some bloodied god or devil, emotionless in its work.
It stood, sheathing its blade beneath its cloak. It stepped over him silently, remorselessly, and was gone, as flames rose higher above Thegnmere, a pillar of fire caressing the storm clouds above, conquering the sky.
He lay still as the blood from his opened neck spread over and around him, silent in his end. His last few thoughts turned to his grandchildren. How he had failed them. He hoped they would survive whatever happened tonight without him.
He saw himself in better days. Younger, quicker, stronger. His children around him during a bold summer in the fields beyond the Marrwood. Returning home to his wife at the end of a long campaign. Triumphant and loved by them all, glorious in their admiration.
His body lay still and empty atop the wall and the rain fell hard over Thegnmere, as the screams of the dying rose like a black wave over the town.
Chapter 2
The Blackshield Dogs
Harlin stared into the flames before him. The sounds of the war camp thick around him, darkness descending over the rocky plains. Embers and sparks rose into the sky, curling upwards and carried away on the breeze, fading away like fireflies.
The sounds of music could be heard around the camp. The nightly festivities beginning as they had every night since they had rode north to join the forces at Farrifax. He sipped from his wineskin shallowly, bards and whores passing him by without a second glance.
Somewhere nearby someone was cooking slabs of red meat for their evening meal, his stomach rumbled at the smell. Voices all around sounded drunk already. It wouldn’t be long before the camp was a den of carnality again.
It sounded like the buzzing of flies to Harlin, as he stood and watched the flames dance to their own music. A peaceful oblivion as he drank, transfixed by the patterns they traced in his vision. It gave a brief sense of privacy and isolation that was so devoid when marching with an army, a prison made of other men’s eyes and ears.
Beyond the fire, past the shadowed peaks of silken pavilions, the town of Farrifax loomed, perched atop its rocky crag like a squat beast, silhouetted before the setting sun. Banners rippled gently atop short, broad towers, their heraldry indistinguishable in the fading light. The occasional spear tip or helmet rim glinted as guards made their rounds atop the wooden walls.
Harlin hadn’t bothered to ask for whom they would be fighting when they had been hired for the coming battle. Who paid his coin and who he had to kill to earn it mattered little to him. Lord Suchabody of Castle Shithouse could have been their contractor’s esteemed title for all he cared, and his Shield Brothers for that matter.
They were mercenaries. Their loyalty lay with the gold and silver that bought their ale, meat and women rather than the pretty silk banners knights and their kin worked themselves into a froth over. A pretty silk banner cannot fill your belly after all, nor can it suck your cock, Harlin would think to himself when considering the zealotry such simple artefacts seemed to inspire, both in allies and enemies he had shared the battlefield with.
They were the Blackshield Dogs. One hundred and eighty men who lived and prospered by the only craft any of them really knew: killing. Something they were renowned for, or their proficiency at it, to be precise. Wherever they went their reputation for both victory and violence preceded them, and their talent in the shield wall.
The Blackshield Dogs knew their business, and business was good wherever they went. Their Lord-Captain, one Arnulf Berlunt, the Black Dog his very self, seemed to have a knack for picking the most talented butchers of men one could ever hope to find. Disgraced lordless knights, outlaws and bandits from the southern reaches, pit-fighters that were more scar than man, landless soldiers with a taste for coin and a talent for swordplay. They were a motley gang of warrior vagrants. But they all possessed one thing in common: their talent at arms, and in this they were steadfast together, this small, ragged band of dogs. They were Shield Brothers - and their home was the road that led them to their next fight.
‘Harlin,’ a voice spoke behind him as he lingered still by the fire, lost to his own thoughts. Anselm, he knew without turning to look. ‘There’s wine, food and women over at our spot - move your arse and come join us you miserable bastard.’ Harlin did not answer him at first, his eyes still on the fire before him.
‘There are always wine, food and women, brother,’ he spoke softly after some moments had passed, mind elsewhere, ‘forgive me, I wish to enjoy the night by myself.’
‘Perhaps your prick dropped off somewhere on the way here?’ he heard Anselm spit back at him, ‘we march tomorrow, and there’s some fine women in the camp, especially the ones having a drink with the lads from our crew. So move your moping arse and join in… unless yo
u want me to fuck the one we left untouched for you as well as my own? It’s no trouble if you do, I’m sure she’ll thank me for saving her from a cockless wonder such as you.’ Harlin smiled at that as he watched the flames dance, taking a sip from his skin.
‘Well in that case, Anselm,’ he said, turning to face his companion slowly , eyes adjusting to the gloom, ‘I had better make sure I fuck her myself, I couldn’t let you riddle more than one girl tonight with that limp, poxy lump you’re so proud of.’ Anselm narrowed his eyes at him and Harlin met his gaze steadily until they both shook suddenly with laughter.
‘Come on,’ Anselm said as he tried to stifle a deep belly laugh, ‘the lads are asking where you are, so is the Lord-Captain.’ He gestured for Harlin to follow him and strode off. Harlin tore himself from the warmth of the blaze and set off after him.
‘What does the Lord-Captain want?’ he said, offering Anselm his wineskin.
‘Probably to bollock you for missing the briefing this evening,’ said Anselm after a long slug of wine. ‘We’ve got quite the prize waiting for us if what I’ve heard is true.’ They wound their way through tents erected at random upon the plains. Wherever soldiers had dropped their gear seemed to be the rule. The camp had a distinct feel of a shanty town made of canvas, mud and shit.
‘We’re going further north then,’ Harlin asked without a trace of interest.
‘Aye, seems the rumours were true,’ Anselm replied, as they squeezed between two lopsided tents and stepped over a young soldier passed out in a drunken stupor on the other side. Anselm gave the lad a quick, spiteful kick up the arse for the inconvenience, a slurred stream of mumbled profanity following in their wake.
‘Who’d have thought,’ Harlin repeated dryly.
‘Aye, who would,’ said Anselm, the cynicism not lost upon him. ‘They talk of refugees fleeing from the northern villages and farms of late. Clogging the streets and alleys of the fair and merciful Farrifax without fuck all but the clothes upon their backs, and the babes suckling at their teats.’
‘How terrible,’ mused Harlin.
‘That it is,’ said Anselm, ‘and we’re here to kick the arses of whatever shit has descended upon the north and made the place its privy.’
They paused alongside the nearest thing the war camp had to a road, a long, muddy stretch of narrow ground in the tents. A procession of knights from Farrifax passed them by at a trot. They carried torches that dimly illuminated a red banner showing a broken spear. Lord Garrmunt, Harlin thought. They watched them stream past in their rustling mail and heavy steel plate, nonchalantly splashing his and Anselm’s boots with mud, which Anselm responded to by spitting a wad of phlegm upon the flank of a horse. The act went completely unnoticed by both mount and rider as they cantered by shouting ‘Make way for the knights of the Spear Hills! Make way, scum!’
‘Make way for the tin cunts! Make way!’ Anselm was shouting through cupped hands at the disappearing knights, winding their way off to a silken tent towering over the canvas rabble the other side of the camp. ‘Pigfuckers,’ he muttered to himself, shaking mud from his boots as he and Harlin carried on their way.
‘So the lord of the Spear Hills and the Blackshield Dogs ride together again,’ chimed Harlin, clapping Anselm on the back jovially as they entered back into the press of tents. ‘I bet our Lord-Captain is beside himself with joy.’ Anselm grunted in response, a sign that Harlin knew meant only one thing: that he was very, very fucking angry. ‘I wonder if he brough that daughter of his on the march,’ he continued, ignoring his seething friend, ‘what is it they say about her again? Tits big enough to feed an army?’
‘Two armies,’ Anselm grunted. Harlin smiled to himself. Tits always took Anselm’s mind off things. They were often the cure for his own troubles too, now he thought on it.
The lord of the Spear Hills and the Blackshield Dogs had something of a history together. They had shared the battlefield together once, a few years ago. Harlin recalled the man had publicly insulted Arnulf at a war council before the King. The Dogs were quite defensive of their grim-faced Lord-Captain, and more than a few scuffles had broken out between their men as a result. He couldn’t recall why Garrmunt had insulted Arnulf. Maybe, Harlin believed, the man didn’t like that they were simply a bunch of lowly mercenaries – shit upon his lordship’s shoe so to speak. But that was a venom reserved for an all-encompassing tarring of sell-swords and their like by most men of power, where as Garrmunt’s hatred of the Dogs seemed to be something more personal. He couldn’t figure it out.
It was odd that Garrmunt was here at all, now he thought of it. The Spear Hills were far south from here, close enough for him to lick the boots of King Aenwald the Ironbrand at his seat in Great Armingstone. The last Harlin had heard of Garrmunt anyway had placed the man somewhere in the ruins of the Old Empire to the east, stripping it of what few treasures it had left. What had brought him back to Caermark so quickly?
Anselm was talking again, Harlin realised, of women and drink and needing a good fight soon, or that he’d be paying a visit to Garrmunt’s knights for a spot of the old fisticuffs with Sir Small Bollocks the Poorly Shafted. Harlin had no idea who he meant but laughed encouragingly all the same and slapped his comrade on the back. His mind wandered, these days.
They wound further onward into the mess of canvas and drunken men until a clearing with a welcoming campfire appeared before them, flanked either side by two company banners planted into the ground. Their banners were black, their emblem a snarling dog’s head embroidered starkly in white. Around them men lounged lazily, drinking, talking, dicing and playing cards, singing and cooking meat over the flames, while others were preoccupied with the young women scattered around.
A bawdy song greeted Harlin and Anselm’s return, the unofficial company anthem, which let them know that they truly were back amongst the Blackshield Dogs.
‘Hide your women and hide your coin,
The Dogs are coming for you.
We’re on the march to kick your arse,
And there’s nothing you can do.
The Blackshield Pack is at your back,
So don’t think you can run.
Just drop your gold and your daughters too
So the Dogs can have some fun!’
A cheer rose up from their campsite, Harlin and Anselm included, and men swigged from mugs, cups and wine skins alike, while young women laughed sat upon their laps or hanging on their arms. Greetings and comradely insults were hurled at Harlin and Anselm and returned in kind as they strode across the camp to swipe spitted, roasted pork from the fire before taking a seat on the ground amongst a circle of their closest friends.
A man could be forgiven, Harlin thought as he looked about at his companions, for mistaking the Blackshield Dogs as a simple pack of coarse louts from the way they behaved, instead of professional warriors. The men were sat or sprawled atop half-barrels, empty crates, saddlebags and the odd comfy patch of ground if there was no place to park their arse.
There was Dag across from him, swigging ale from a wooden mug with the one hand, while the other adventured up the skirts of a young girl sat upon his lap who laughed drunkenly at his fumbling. Elric and Ulrig, two of the youngest in the company, were dicing, the loser being forced to slug a full pint in one go before the next round, or throw five coppers in the growing pile before them. Harruvard, or Red Harry as he was affectionately known, was engaged similarly to Dag, a young fresh-faced girl sat astride him holding a wineskin, pouring its contents over her bare breasts for him to lap up.
Only two of the men they were with were conducting themselves with at least a passing attempt at class, Jorric and Torc, two former knights. They sat upon empty storage crates, each with an eye catching young lady sat in turn upon their knees. Torc was holding a wineskin to the lips of the blonde girl he was entertaining, who laughed as he spilled some down her chest in a way that was almost an accident to the untrained eye, but left those with a knowing one an interesting view of her th
in blue dress turned pink and clinging to her chest.
‘Forgive me, my sweet,’ Torc was crooning, placing her gingerly on her feet as she giggled and covered herself, unoccupied eyes turning to take in the view. She tried to supress her inebriated giggling, as she was led to his tent to ‘clean herself up’, Torc giving the other men a devious smile as he followed her inside –a lewd cheer rising at his disappearing, victorious form.
Beside Harlin, Anselm finished slugging ale from a tall mug and slammed it into the ground before him. ‘Thank fuck for that!’ he cried, looking about hungrily, ‘now! Where’s my whore?’
‘And mine, for that matter,’ Harlin said through a mouthful of pork. ‘You told me there was one waiting for me, Anselm, you oafish prick.’ All the women about them were taken.
‘Well tan my arse then, I’ll go find us some more!’ He stood and stormed off deeper into the Dogs’ camp, leaving Harlin alone amidst the indulgences of his Shield Brothers.
Harlin watched the display before him with a certain aloof, detached interest only one who spends their free time either watching their friends drink and fuck girls, or having their friends watch them drink and fuck girls comes to possess. The Lord-Captain Arnulf came striding into the firelight to his side unannounced, the flames shining from his long silver hair and close-cropped beard.
‘Good of you to join us, Harlin,’ he said plainly, his northern accent gravelly. Harlin rose and offered him a respectful bow.
‘My lord,’ he said, meeting Arnulf’s iron gaze, ‘Anselm says you’ve been looking for me?’
‘Aye, that I have,’ Arnulf said curtly, his gaze unwavering. He was known for his iron glare. It could break men down with its ferocity and command obedience. Some even said the Black Dog had killed men with the daggers he cast at them with his eyes. Harlin had no doubt that was far from the truth, but he did know that Arnulf was a fierce man in every aspect, one not to be taken lightly, one to be respected.
The Shadow of the High King Page 3
