by Tim Stead
The lord dismissed him, and Tilian walked back to his quarters – he had one of the better servants’ rooms – his head full of schemes and glory. He was an officer now. It was something he had never dreamed of. All he had wanted to do was serve the hero of the wall, his lord, Skal Hebberd. Now he had a chance to serve him in a greater way, and he was determined not to fail.
* * * *
The day had dawned well enough, but since then nothing had walked in its proper path. Twenty men of all ages had assembled at dawn, gathering in talkative clusters on the gravel in front of the great house. Tilian had addressed them, told them why they were there, what he expected of them, and divided them into three groups.
After that everything had descended into chaos. The group he had set to archery practice had turned it into a competition and started making side bets on the outcome. The only consolation was that they were excellent archers. Arrow after arrow thudded into the gold, and winners were judged on inches and fractions, not feet. He left them to it. The other groups were worse. The sword group played at it. He showed them exercises, demonstrated certain simple moves and asked them to practice, but when he looked back at them most of them were talking, Two had started working on the hilts of the blades, two had borrowed a sawn round of wood from the woodpile round the back and seemed to be throwing knives at it, and the rest were doing a terrible job of the exercises.
The third group he’d put to spear practice, showing them how to use shields and spears to make a wall. They stumbled through the figures, nudging each other, sharing jokes, their minds not on the task.
His training had not been like this. He remembered his sergeant, a thick set man of middle years with a touch of grey and a smile as rare as a dancing pig. Barain. He remembered Barain. They had not exactly been afraid of the man, but just a stern look was enough to shut them up, to bring them to heel like chastened hounds. He tried to remember their officer, but the face and name eluded him.
He crossed the gravel to the bow group. Their chatter dimmed a bit, but did not stop. He found the face he was looking for.
“Welcart, a word with you please.”
The landskeeper stood up and walked with him until he was out of earshot of the group.
“Welcart, I need your help,” he said. The old man raised an eyebrow.
“What I can do, I’ll do,” he said. “If and it be for a good cause.”
“The cause is the war, Welcart. Here it seems distant, and perhaps some of the men do not believe it matters to them, but it does. I stood on the wall and watched them come, tens of thousands, all willing to die for their god, and happier still to kill us, to break through and slaughter the people of Berash and Avilian.”
“It may be so,” Welcart conceded. “But are there not enough soldiers?”
“No. There can never be enough. The Wolf slew twenty-five thousand in the east, ten thousand more of them fell at the wall, but fifty thousand more, so my lord tells me, await the spring to attack us once more.”
“And we’re to fight these men?”
“It has to be done.”
“These’ll be meat for the grinder, Master Henn,” Welcart said, nodding his head back towards the boisterous farm hands and foresters. “They’ll never make a good soldier, none of them. Will so few make a difference?”
“A house is made of bricks, Welcart, and an army is made of squads.”
Welcart squinted and looked at the forest. He clearly didn’t like what he was hearing, but knew that it made sense. Everyone had to fight, or nothing could be won, and war meant death, and death would take most of these men in a line of battle.
“Will you let them fight the way they know?”
Tilian looked at the men. They were still joking and fooling around, looking like children in a schoolyard more than they looked like soldiers.
“The way they know?”
“Aye. Take Brodan over there. He’s an unmatched stalker. He’ll get within ten paces of a deer, and it’ll not know it. Jerris there, he can shoot a squirrel out of a tree at fifty paces. There’s ten here that you couldn’t find in a forest if and they didn’t want you to. They’re hunters and foresters, and they’re willing enough. None forced them here. They came because they want to serve.”
Tilian looked at the men again. It was hard to believe. Yet he had seen Welcart in the forest, or rather had not seen him. He respected the old man.
“Very well,” he said. “I will give them a chance to prove your words, but I must be sure that they are put to the best use, and they must learn to use swords. If they do not have the basic skills they will be cut down at once if they come face to face with a trained man.”
“Is that so?” Welcart asked.
“I shall prove my point,” Tilian assured him. “And when I do, you will become sergeant to these men, keep them in order, and appoint others to lead the squads, men that they will respect. You agree?”
Welcart nodded. “I agree, Master Henn,” he said.
Tilian hoped he had not overstepped his ability. His lord had taught him well, and he was a proficient bladesman, better than most, but he was no Skal Hebberd. He walked back to the sword group with Welcart in tow.
“Stand to and listen,” he said. There were seven men in the group. Five held salvaged, rusty blades and two had rough wooden facsimiles. They stood and listened, but he thought it more for Welcart’s presence than his words. “We’re going to see how bad you are,” he said. He walked over to a man who held a wooden sword, took it off him and gave him his own blade. That would be fairer, and he wouldn’t kill anyone with a weighted stick. The man handled the blade as though it was precious. He had probably never held a good blade before. “There are seven of you and one of me. I want you to attack me.”
“But we have real swords, Captain,” one of the men said. “We could hurt you.”
Tilian laughed at them, though he had to force it a bit. What the man said was true, and he was gambling. He took a gold guinea out of his pocket and threw it onto the ground. “The first man to cut me gets that,” he said.
Tilian could see from their eyes that a couple of them fancied their chances at the gold, and that was what he wanted. He took a guard and waited for them to come at him. The first man stepped forwards with a raised blade, ready to swing down at him, and Tilian stepped forwards, blocking the man’s arm with his own and thumping him hard in the gut with the wooden blade. He heard the man’s breath leave him with a whoosh and he sat down hard.
“You’re dead,” Tilian said. “And the rest of you, if you come one at a time this is going to be too easy.” He saw them look at one another, saw a small nod. Friends then, and agreeing to share the gold. He stepped back again and took guard.
Three of them came at once, but they were too cautious at first, stood too far apart and too far from him. He moved quickly to his left and drew a hurried stroke from the man on that side; he deflected it and turned his body, hitting the man a resounding smack on the side of the head.
“Dead,” he said.
The other two came in behind him as he’d expected. He moved from side to side as they swung at him, forcing them to time their strokes wrong, never being there for both to swing at once. He worked them round until one was too far to attack altogether, and then stepped inside the closer man’s blade and struck him above the heart with the point of his wooden sword. He tripped the man he’d just struck and jumped over the top of him, beating the next man’s sword down and pushing him over with a blow to the chest.
“Dead and dead,” he said.
He didn’t wait for the others to come, but went after them. They gave way, backing away in different directions, making it easy. He tripped the first, tapped his chest as he struck the ground, got the second with a classic feint, and knocked the sword out of the last man’s hand with a blow to the wrist, and then tapped him on the top of his head.
He was breathing hard, but it had been easier than he’d expected. None of these men had natural abilit
y. Lucky for him, but bad for them.
“All dead,” he told them. “Seven of you, and all beaten by a wooden blade.”
“You made your point, Captain,” one of the men said, still rubbing his ear.
“Did I? You know I’m not an expert with this?” He held up the wooden blade. “If just one Seth Yarra sword got in among you lot you’d not be coming home. Gods, the Lady Sara would do better than any of you. At least she got a counter in.”
They looked at each other, sheepish. The other two groups had stopped what they were doing to watch the fight, and he moved to where he could see them all, and turned again.
“I’m not trying to make you look like fools,” he said.
“Not doing very well then,” one of the men called out. Some of the others laughed, and Tilian himself grinned. He couldn’t help it.
“You have to learn this,” he said. “It’s serious. You have to be able to defend yourselves, at least enough for you and your mates to gang up on one of them.”
They’d stopped laughing. The first man he’d beaten was sitting to one side, but he’d got his wind back now. “We’re all going to die, ain’t we?” he said.
Tilian glanced at Welcart, and he saw the old man was looking at him, staring almost, waiting for his answer.
“Some of you might,” he said. “It’s a war, and people die in war. My job is to see that as few of you as possible die. I’ll try to keep you out of the line, but at some point you’re going to have to face another man and kill him, or he’ll kill you.”
“We’re not cowards,” the man with the sore ear said. “If there’s fighting that must be done, then we’ll do our part. That’s why we come here today.” There was a murmur of agreement from the other men.
“Oh, you’ll fight,” Tilian assured him. “I’ve seen what some of you can do with a bow, and that’ll be your job, but lines break, those bastards come at you too quick for an arrow, and you can’t run.”
“Can’t kill ‘em if and he can’t see ‘em,” Welcart suggested.
“Can they become invisible, then, like ghosts?” Tilian kept the scorn out of his voice with difficulty.
“Aye, they can,” Welcart said. “In a wood they can.”
“Battles aren’t fought in woods,” Tilian told them.
“Why not? High time they were, if you’re asking me, which I know you’re not,” the old man said.
Tilian was about to reply, to argue again, but he suddenly had a vision of fifty thousand Seth Yarra marching through the great forest, as he knew they must to reach the White Road. Fifty thousand men and twenty foresters with arrows, foresters who could shoot a squirrel at fifty paces, who couldn’t be found; a tiny army of invisible death. He wondered how many arrows a man could carry. Fifty? Twenty men and fifty arrows could be a thousand dead Seth Yarra.
“Can you use a quarter staff?” he asked.
“It’s a country skill,” Welcart said. “Any man here can use one.”
Quarter staffs, bows and knives; could they be enough? A good man with a staff could stand alone against a sword, but in a line? He had no idea. He would have thought a man needed space to fight with a staff, and there was none of that in a line.
“That’s good,” he said. “That’ll help, but a staff is defensive. You need to kill a man quick, before another arrives to help him. You need the swords.”
“Then we’d best learn how, best as we can” Welcart said, and Tilian was gratified to see a chorus of nodding among the men. It would be easier now. They would try harder.
16. The Third Dream
It was like a drum, pounding in his head. The firm stamp of ten thousand synchronised feet on the rock floor, over and over and over again. He stood and watched as a division, a regiment, he knew not what to call it, of Bren warriors returned from feeding to stand in their allotted positions in a cave. It was a picture of order and discipline. They marched three abreast down the passageway and turned neatly into their barracks cave, left two files to the left and right file to the right, then right two and left one until the cave was filled.
The noise stopped. The movement stopped. A taste of dust in the air was the only clue that these glittering ranks had ever moved at all. To Narak they seemed hardly alive. He was dreaming again. He thought of it as dreaming, but he knew by now that it must be something else; a vision perhaps, some magic that permitted him to see through the eyes of the Bren Ashet in all its multitude of presences.
Their numbers had grown since the last time he had seen them. More of the barracks caves were full. The army must now exceed a hundred thousand. If they struck now they could wipe out the Seth Yarra armies and purge the land. He suspected that they were waiting until that last moment permitted by Pelion’s law, hoping that Seth Yarra would win, but that did not explain the growing numbers of Bren Morain. They could sweep the six kingdoms if they continued to grow at this rate. There would be… he calculated swiftly in his mind… two million.
Two million.
It was an unthinkable number. Forty Bren for every Seth Yarra soldier on the other side of the Dragon’s Back. It was far too great a number, but if these dreams that were not dreams were to be trusted, then that the numbers pointed that way. Two million. Narak tried to imagine what such an army would look like. He balked at the image. Imagine a square mile of land covered by Bren. How could they be fed?
The vision changed. Abruptly the cavern barracks and its shining darkness vanished and was replaced by a starlit night. He felt a warm and humid breeze. Trees rustled and unleashed an unfamiliar scent of flowers. It was a sweet perfume. There was a noise of insects, chirping and buzzing here and there in the dark.
He stood among trees on a hillside. They were big, spreading trees, branches sweeping low to the ground, and even by starlight he could see the flowers, white and huge, a profligate display of blooms that told him he was not in the six kingdoms; not even in the isles.
He moved through the trees. Stopped because there was a noise, and waited in complete stillness as a dark shadow, big and smelling like a cow, passed within twenty feet. He saw the beast’s horns, the way they curved two ways, and knew that it was familiar to him. His progress continued. As usual he was a passenger, a presence behind the eyes of one body of the Bren Ashet.
The Ashet came out of the trees and stopped on an outcrop of rock that allowed a spectacular view. The land dropped away before it, a long, concave slope that revealed a great river valley. He could see the river, a black, sinuous snake roaming to and fro across the valley on its way to the sea. He could smell a thousand things, smoke and food and men, almost as though he was a wolf, but it was his eyes that amazed him.
The river embraced a city, the like of which Narak had never seen. A vast loop curved away from him, almost touched the other side of the valley, at least three miles away, and then curved back again, capturing ten square miles, and the whole thing was an imitation of the stars, lamps in streets, glowing curtains in windows, the slow procession of wagon lamps. It went on and on. It was three times the size of Bas Erinor. Mostly it was uniform, a sea of small houses and flat roofs, but in the distance he could see three clusters of great buildings, stone towers and windowed walls, all alight with habitation.
What place was this? What was he being shown?
For once he was not aware of anything else. The vision of the unnamed city held him as nothing else had the power to. He stared. He breathed the catalogue of foreign scents. He was filled by the river, the stars and ten thousand tiny flames that flickered in the homes of men and women. Surely this was the greatest city in the world, but where was it?
He remembered the cow, the ox that had passed the Ashet in the wood. He had seen such an ox before, many of them. They pulled Seth Yarra wagons.
This was a Seth Yarra city.
He woke with a start, and sat on his bed in the dark staring at the faint light filtering through the curtain door of the guest hut.
Dawn found him still awake.
17. Incident at the Tavern Door
Cain sat on his accustomed stool at the end of the bar in the Seventh Friend and struggled to stay awake. He was tired. This was his duty, or one of them: to greet his customers for the first hour that the inn was open. To speak to the men and women that he knew, to nod at the ones he didn’t, to be there in case he was needed to resolve some issue. He had not changed this practice since his blood had been raised up, and so the lord of Waterhill sat and greeted the carpenters, the masons, the potters and smiths, the market sellers and clerks who poured over his threshold with the first ink of night.
He was more than a month back from his new estates, but still they lived vividly in his mind, the house, the people, and the land. His place. His and Sheyani’s. That was something that he could still not believe. They were to be married. In spite of the war, and the prospect of death in the spring which leant a certain melancholy to everything, in spite of the desperate work upon which he was engaged he was happier than he had ever been. He went about his tasks each day in the certainty that he would see her in the evening, that she would play for him, and that they would spend the night together. His mood was unbreakable.
