"After this, what?" asked Shield. His hands were sticky with unseen blood.
Cassius shrugged. "Out of the blasted desert for sure. Hopht is subdued, ate itself up more than anything else. All it took was a little prompting."
"So what then?"
"Back to the capital. Rest awhile, baths, decent meals, wine, get the sand out from underneath our skins."
"I hear rumors of another legion or two heading east to Sasarra."
Cassius ran his hand through his dark curled hair. He was a Dhurman soldier through and through – olive-skinned, hawk-nosed, clean-shaven, meticulous with his plated armor and cotton tunic. But Cassius was also different than the other Dhurman officers and soldiers that Shield had encountered over the past twenty years because he cared about his mercenary Hounds, counting on them over the years to do the dirtiest of work and filling them with praise and coin. The other Dhurmans had spat at the feet of the Northmen, cursed them in front of their face, brawled with them at the slightest provocation. They showed no respect for the bearded men of the North, the savages who painted their faces with blue woad, wore trousers and fought like devils.
"We've been through a lot together," said Cassius. "But, at this point, our days of glory are destined for the wine houses, stories to tell our grandchildren as they bounce on our laps. Not much lies ahead. East, they don't want the Hounds. They want men of the East to be their hunters of warlocks and witches. Know the land better. No use anymore for you or me."
"But across the Black River..."
"The North has been quelled, Shield, things settled well enough. You know that. Nothing the Emperor wants. No gold, no jewels, easier to get timber from the East. The seas are calmer, more cities to trade with. Nothing in the North anymore."
"So what do we do?" asked Shield.
"With Hopht subdued, the civil war is finally over. The Emperor blamed the betrayal on a general godlessness, a wandering from our traditional ways. Now's a time to rebuild. The temples have fallen into ruin."
"The temples of your gods..."
"I can put in a word for you and the Hounds for the campaign to the East and Sasarra but legions have already left Vas Dhurma. Maybe Harad's right. Maybe it is time to return north."
Alone Shield followed the trail back to the Hounds. But before he reached them, he veered onto a path of shattered stones to a small sandy plateau that overlooked the burning city below. The sun was near sunk in the west, and with it came the winds stronger than before.
What was left for the Hounds? Would he bury them all? And for what?
When he finally shook himself from his reverie, the sun had been swallowed beneath low hills of the west. The sand tore about him in a renewed fury, as if the winds had been pent up by the heat of the day.
He had stood there so long that the sand buried his feet. He kicked free and cursed the gods of the North. He had to keep moving. This was not the end of the Hounds. There were still witches and warlocks that would taste the sharp edge of his blade. Then all the deaths of the past twenty years would make sense.
Shield Scyldmund knew this as sure as he breathed.
HEROES
A SINGLE WORD spoken brought blood.
Harad Hammerhand ran his fingers along the letters on the page of the thick book, his lips moving against the tangle of his wiry red beard as he tried to pull the word out of the characters. He squinted as he ran his fingers over the letters again. Thole. A word of the North, an old word, not a word of Dhurma, of Empire, but a word of Harad's people.
Thole. To suffer, to endure hardship.
Harad marveled that such a word, a word of the North, had not only crept into the mind of a poet of Dhurma but had materialized on the pages of the Song of the Southern Sword. A word of the North would exist forever.
He jabbed his finger onto the page again to form the next clump of letters into meaning. Each day it had been getting easier and the letters were flowing into words and words into sentences but then the noise of the Vas Dhurman tavern and the raucousness of his companions dissolved any chance at maintaining his concentration. So he closed the leather bound book and tucked it into his shoulder bag. It felt substantial against his ribs.
Patch, his remaining eye bloodshot and bulging, slammed his tin cup on the long wooden table, tangy wine sloshing over the rim. "Fucking Hophts ran from their city. Hell, we weren't even at the walls yet. Just standing there thumbing our blades, and they begin flooding out of the gates. Gave up their city without a fight."
"That stolen book going to make your fingers bleed," said Hawk. The hollow-cheeked man refilled the cups of the Hounds of the North and then the smallest of the clansmen waved the empty jug over the clumps of the causeless soldiers, the quarreling toughs and the few cackling whores and in the direction of the kitchen. A serving girl waved back.
"It's a story of heroes. Their most famous song and I have it here at my side," said Harad fanning at the sweet pipe smoke that filled the subterranean room. "All written down. These words have captured the song for all time."
"Their song," said Patch. "The lies of Empire."
"Thole," said Harad. "I just found thole in the song."
"What else they steal from us?" asked Patch. He ran his fingers over the leather patch that covered his missing eye and down the white scar that ridged along his cheek, rising about his thick pale beard.
Like the other Hounds of the North, Patch wore a thin functional leather vest beneath a heavy wool cloak, and his hair hung long, a few braids beaded and twisted with threads. They had left their heavy armor, their chain mail, dented helms, painted shields and spears back in their cramped apartment further down the river. Here in the city of Vas Dhurma, the capital of Empire, they kept long knives, choke cords, and small clubs at their belts. All but Harad who relented and went everywhere with his cumbersome hammer at his hip.
"Stolen or given?" Shield Scyldmund, the man they had followed for two decades, raised his blurry eyes from weathered hands that rested on the table. "We were the ones meant to be the heroes. The Hounds of the North. The destroyers of magic. Where's our song?"
It had been this way since the Hounds returned from the campaign in Hopht. In that desert kingdom for nine months, these giant mercenaries from the North had served Empire, but instead of doing what they had previously done – slipping into caves and huts just before dawn to drag blades against the throats of warlocks and witches – they had been reduced to the role of common soldiers, crashing shield walls, soaking the earth with the blood of those that stood against Dhurma, and slogging across the sands in the dust of the legions. The Hophtic campaign had dragged on – the battles at sea, the canyons and sandstorms of the desert, and the final anti-climactic siege on the capital, the seat of their God King.
At least at the end, they had been given the job to hunt down that witch. Shield's obsession to kill yet another speaker of the ancient words had been sated. Patch and the others had filled their palms with coin.
But now, returned to Vas Dhurma, their handler Cassius had nothing for them and their problems rose again. While the last of the legions of empire moved east to Sasarra, the Hounds idled in the squalid quarters of the splendid city, spent their days along the river and their nights in the taverns, and with each passing day Harad witnessed a deepening shadow descend on Shield, their leader.
Something would break soon.
A scurrying little boy exchanged a full jug of wine for a few coppers and Hawk was quick to refill the tin cups. The Hounds drank in silence, hunched on the benches that were too small for their bulk, their knees pinned against the bottom of the long table.
Harad saw this as the end of their days in Vas Dhurma. They were no longer needed by Empire. They had played their role – fearsome giants from the North, fur and armor clad, painted in blue woad and blood – showing the other edges of Empire that, if its fiercest enemies could be broken and held at the end of a leash, any resistance was temporary: the Dhurman Empire would swallow them as well.<
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The Hounds had played their role, and now with the internal conflicts in the east, where only sheer numbers and disciplined columns mattered, the Hounds, wild fighting berserkers and hunters of witches and warlocks, had been cast out by their masters. Aging mercenaries no longer needed.
For six months the Hounds festered in the Whore's Quarter of Vas Dhurma.
Even having spent so much time over the years in Vas Dhurma, Harad still hated it. He hated the cramped streets, cobbled and shit soaked, the red-roofed buildings built so close together that they kept the streets in constant shadow, forever blocking the opportunity to look upon the wide stretches of the sky. He hated the people – immigrants and merchants from all over empire, mixed with the Dhurmans in their white tunics. It was chaos – foul sour smelling food from the refugees from Hopht, the grating tongue of the Hyber merchants, clacking, whining, nasal, and even the dazed stumble of his own people from the North, forever confused in the city.
Harad too felt adrift in the city, easily losing his way trying to get back from the docks to the small apartment the Hounds shared in a ramshackle building in the Whore's Quarter. The thick grainy Dhurman soups and stewed meats, as simple and as plain as they were, never sat well with his stomach. Sleep never came easy with the constant roll of wagons, the braying of mules, the fighting dogs and cats, the vendors calling out their wares at all hours, and the drunken debauchery that filled the night air.
He wanted to leave, to return north.
The only thing of value that he had found after all these years was their writing, their books, their ability to capture words.
He would return home with the Song of the Southern Sword, a tale of hope and redemption, of a people rising to follow a hero. He would return with the magic of words on a page, a gift unknown to the clans. This book would bring a power back to his people. Words would allow the clans to exist even if they vanished forever. They would become immortal. As poor as his abilities were, he would teach the clans to write and read and make that which was ephemeral eternal.
But since their arrival in Vas Dhurma, he worried they would never return North. Not together. Not since the Hounds began falling apart.
How things had changed just before the Hophtian campaign had ended. Everything seemed to have gone awry in the awful battle in the ravine. The old Chronicler drooling as he spoke of taking the witch's tongue, the magic-possessed Hophtian guards, the burying of the Brother Bulls and the change that came over Shield.
Harad recalled that fateful day. He had been standing over the Brothers Bulls, his hammer dripping with the life of his clan brothers, waiting for them to pull themselves to their feet again. Then the witch's song vanished. Without the dark magic to move their limbs, the desert warriors that had been rushing the cave entrance suddenly collapsed to the earth. The Hounds had held for a moment, afraid that the dead would rise again. But they did not and a glance backwards by Harad revealed Shield, standing in the billowing silks at the entrance to the inner chamber of the cavern, the head of the young witch in his hand, her dark hair entwined in his bloody hand, his sword dragging a line in the sand alongside him with each step.
What had been the change that had come over Shield? He was no stranger to killing but since his disappearance into the den of the witch something had changed in him. He brooded; silence lorded over him; he snapped angrily at the Hounds more often than not. Since they had returned to Vas Dhurma and dismal opportunity, he only got worse.
The Hounds tolerated it, expecting their leader to return to them. Then Night left the first week without warning, without saying goodbye, without letting them know where he was going. A month ago Cook had gone east with the caravans.
Only four of them left now.
Were they even the Hounds anymore?
Four from what was the original two dozen bearded barbarians that began their adventures some twenty years ago beyond the Black River, reckless marauding youth following the swords of Shield and Spear, back when Empire was only a rumor and the young raiders ruled the bogs and hills of heather, back when Shield and Spear were as close as brothers.
Back when the world was theirs.
Harad wondered if things would have been different if Spear and Shield had not crossed swords.
The red-bearded giant's reverie was broken by sudden shouting in the tavern.
The toughs, strong arms for the gambling dens and loan sharks, had descended on one of their own. A stool splintered against the wall. Then the mass of men surged outside, the limbs of their victim flailing.
Silence held as the door slammed behind them. Then the murmuring and laughter and slop of wine filled the tavern again.
"This place will be the death of us," said Harad.
"I know, I know, we should return north, beyond the Black River, find a wife, die in the earth," said Hawk. "But what if we return and there is nothing for us?"
"Nothing but the bitter cold," said Patch. "All this that we have traversed to return home strangers in our own land. No fortune to bring back. Nothing but scars. I can't return poorer than when I left. Better to stay here and finally secure our fortune."
"Our clans are north. It is always home."
"Home is not always home, Harad. Things change." He nodded to the brooding Shield. "People change. Do you expect a hero's welcome after what we did? After what he did? Can we be heroes anymore?"
Harad shrugged. He did expect a hero's welcome. He imagined descending Eagle's Aerie into Lake's End, seeing the familiar twist of smoke rising from the roundhouses, children and women running to them, his childhood friends older but wide with smiles and warm embraces. He imagined the scent of heather and goats, the lowing of cows and the moan of the wind through the high passes, the familiar tumble of the clouds through the stone cliffs of the highlands.
He would return with his book of a hero and give them back hope.
***
The air should have been bracing, awakening Harad from the torpidity of the foul wine. Instead, the air was simply bitingly cold. He had softened after so many years away from the North.
He and the Hounds stumbled through the moon lit alleys of Vas Dhurma. In a pack, the toughs from the tavern weaved next to them.
After earlier having dealt with their own, the toughs had returned to the tavern and the two gangs of men – the Hounds and the toughs – who shared separate histories of blood had emptied jugs of wine, drawn together by the need to numb themselves to the world that they had created for themselves.
Now after too many jugs of thick wine, the two packs meandered beside each other in the night air.
The toughs were squat, hair shorn to stubble, blue ink painting eagles on their bared arms. They wore leather-studded vests that should have gone with the armies to the east, the insignia of an unnamed legion marked by torn stitching. Their thick dark legs moved in a swirl under their white tunics and along the short blades that hung from the leather belts at their hips.
Shield and his Hounds were giants, towering at least a head above these men and in the case of Harad closer to two heads. Despite the more temperate climate of Vas Dhurma, the Northmen dressed as if they were still in the cold highlands – woolen trousers, heavy animal skin and wool cloaks. When the Hounds entered battle, they painted their skin blue and copper with woad and vitrum. While the Dhurmans kept their hair short and their faces cleanly shaved, the red and yellow hair of the Northman streamed over their shoulders and their long beards were braided and adorned with beads of bone and stone.
A bubbling of voices rose between Patch and the mob of toughs.
"No," said Patch. "There is one word for us, and that is heroes."
One from the mass of thugs laughed. "No, the one word is cowards. Those of us old enough heard story of you Hounds. Killing your own at the command of the Emperor. Not standing with your own. Cowards."
Patch and Hawk went silently into the heavies. The crack of knuckle against chin. The thud of knee into gut. Groans and shadows pinwheeling to t
he ground.
Shield and Harad charged into the melee.
Harad came in heavy with fists arcing from above, the same dropping motion as if he held hammer in hand. He cleared space with a boot and then crashed over the top of one of the thug's guard. Then the giant red-bearded Northman spun, elbow clipping a head.
The Hounds were outnumbered, facing twice as many but they fought with the fury forged from decades of battle, where strength of mind decides encounters. They came in hard, eating space, relentless, giving their opponents no time to gather themselves, only time to react.
Hawk was the nimble one among them, whipping his worn cloak before him, lashing out with low sweeping kicks, stepping onto another's bent knee to drive a knee to the face. He was a graceful fighter with fist and foot and a deadly one with his long sword.
Patch was the opposite, awkward, lumbering, playing a game of deflection and luring. Patch lay a web of fist and elbow, baiting and then setting the mouse trap, letting his opponents come in deep, too deep where hands touched his chest but where they lost their mobility. While they fought to untangle from hooked and trapped arms, he cracked shins with his heavy boots.
Shield played no games. He squared up, cut the angles, closed the distances and picked his shots. A hooking kick behind the knee, a fist in the kidneys, palms at sacrum and forehead. He was brutally efficient, a natural fighter, one who cut quick through the fog of confusion, always advancing, never retreating.
So the Hounds fought in that dark alley, quick and fierce, and the toughs crumbled to the cold stones before massing once again, crashing into Hawk and then running down the alley, breaths whining, sandals slapping.
Patch yelped at the night sky. "By the gods, I needed that. So fucking long cooped up in this shit hole. Maybe we are heroes despite it all."
"The Hounds," yelled Shield, his voice sending a shiver up Harad's spine.
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