The Free

by Brian Ruckley

  Kerig’s head had sunk low, his chin tucked in to his chest. The wounds still came – a gash spat blood from the back of his neck even as Drann looked, but was gone again in the blink of an eye – but he responded less obviously to each succeeding one. He no longer cried out, but moaned and swayed unsteadily. His body rocked as if struck by unseen blows raining in from every side.

  Sullen leapt down from his horse and walked slowly towards Kerig.

  “And here, indeed, is the very man we seek,” he said, then called back over his shoulder, “You have a remarkable gift, Sestimon. Quite remarkable. It’s no wonder Kasuman sent someone to cut your throat.”

  His voice sounded lifeless to Drann, with none of the rise and fall, the passion, those words might have carried coming from another’s lips. It gave no clue as to Sullen’s mood or intent. His actions did, though. He kept moving towards Kerig, turning to walk a few paces backwards as he did so.

  “This is the man you accuse? Just to be certain, you understand,” he said to the big grey-haired man waiting amongst the Clade warriors.

  And that man nodded.

  “This man is to answer to the School for recent events,” Sullen said to Drann and Lebid, sparing them no more than a dismissive glance. “It is nothing that concerns you.”

  But Drann found it did concern him. His body responded before his head could sort things into order. He hurried to set himself between Kerig and Sullen. The tree creaked and cracked at his back. Leaves drifted down.

  Sullen stopped.

  “Put that spear aside and get out of my way,” the School’s butcher said quietly.

  Drann wanted to, in a way. It sounded a fine suggestion. Yet his feet stayed planted where they were, and his hands stayed clasped about his spear. Not for Kerig’s sake so much as that of the Free. He did not perfectly understand what was happening, but he understood enough. Somewhere, not far from here, the Free were fighting. And bleeding. And what Kerig was doing here, with his body and with this tree, was as best Drann could tell the only thing keeping them alive.

  “You can’t take him,” he heard himself saying. “Not now. The Free are —”

  “Undone,” whispered Sullen and came towards him. The long grass parted about his shins. Grasshoppers scattered from his path like pebbles flicked by invisible fingers. Falling leaves spun about him as if a thousand pale butterflies were tumbling dead from the sky. Drann did not know what to do.

  He gave a jab with the spear, when it seemed that Sullen was going to barge right into him. It was not meant to strike home, merely to warn. To stymie the man’s remorseless advance. Even as he made the thrust, Drann remembered what Yulan had said about there being two ends to a spear, and he snapped the butt around in a low swing. He thought he might catch Sullen in the knee. He did not.

  Sullen swayed without breaking stride and stretched out a gauntleted hand. It caught and closed upon the spear’s shaft. His other hand lashed round and struck Drann a backhanded blow on the face that sent him sprawling, breaking his own grip upon the spear.

  His ears rang to the echo of the impact. He had to blink to clear his vision. His thoughts turned to mud as he tried to rise on legs unmoored from his will. Sullen kicked him in the ribs. Drann rolled on to his hands and knees, spittle – perhaps a little blood – trailing from his mouth. Sullen broke the spear across his back.

  Drann slumped down. Pain burned in his spine, burrowed dully into his kidneys. He tasted dirt. Suddenly Sullen’s hand was on the back of his head, clenched in his hair, grinding his face into the dusty soil so that he could hardly breathe.

  “Stay down,” the School’s butcher murmured, frighteningly dispassionate. “If you’re who I think you are, it’s not your fight, is it? There’s no one here you should be giving your life for. But make no mistake: I’ll take it if you offer it.”

  A resounding, cracking boom burst from the tree. Through narrowed eyes, Drann saw a weaving fissure race up its flank, spitting out shards of wood and flakes of bark that pattered into the grass by his head. It made even Sullen start, and Drann was able to twist and spit dirt from his mouth and get a good breath in.

  Kerig was sagging, swaying. Wounds flickered across his body, opening and closing like eyes. Bruises flowered and vanished in the same instant. His clothing was sodden with blood. The injuries pulsed through him, through his arm, and into the tree. They tore it apart from within. As Drann watched, a branch split from the main trunk and slowly wrenched itself free, leaving a ragged stump. It crashed to the ground. Dust was writhing from the rents in the tree’s bole; the stuff of its innards, pounded into a fine mist.

  Sullen straightened, his beaded braids swaying heavily. Drann rolled on to his side.

  “Might be a whole flock of birds to be knocked down with a single slingstone here,” Sullen said thoughtfully, perhaps to himself. Then, quite clearly to Kerig, who equally clearly could not hear him: “I do know what this is, don’t I, Kerig?”

  He turned to the Clade warriors, many of whom were staring in uneasy fascination at the violent death of Kerig’s tree.

  “Cut that Clever loose,” Sullen said. “Bind him and get him on to a horse.”

  “No,” Drann grunted.

  He would have cried it out loud, but the pain in his flank and back was like a tight band, squeezing the air from his chest. Sullen gave him another, desultory kick in the side and walked away.

  “Gather up these horses, too,” Drann heard him shouting. “A few fresh mounts’ll speed us on our way, and slow Yulan and his boys nicely. If any of them are left alive after this.”

  Yulan whistled. Over and over again, turning his horse about, ducking an arrow that skimmed low over his head. He held a spread hand straight up in the air, and answering whistles and a horn came, sharp over the cacophony, from up there atop the slope.

  As one, like the most ruthlessly trained hunting dogs, Rudran’s men broke away and rode at full gallop. Those couple who still carried lances cast them aside. The signal was for instant retreat, and they all knew it. Yulan went with them, riding down those in his way.

  The trap was now against the hunters, for that short but steep slope that had carried them down into Callotec’s flank was cruel to those who wished to climb it. The ground crumbled beneath the clawing hoofs of the horses, and stole from them all their strength and speed. An arrow went into the back of the man next to Yulan, right in the centre of it, through some flaw or chink in his chain vest. He arched, and gasped, and fell sideways. The spearmen who came boiling in their wake swept over him, and closed about him. Stabbing and pounding. Fethin Fiveson. His name had been Fethin Fiveson, the distant, still part of Yulan’s mind thought.

  He pumped with his arms, driving his horse on and up. He could see Hamdan and the archers standing now, starkly exposed, at the crest of the rise, sending arrow after arrow darting down. His horse was faltering, betrayed by the sliding ground beneath it. He shouted into its ear.

  Out on to the high ground he came, his horse trembling and ready to drop. He looked back. The whole column of warriors – what remained of it – was a seething mass, streaming to the foot of the slope, up it. Hungry for the Free.

  “Wren!’ he shouted.

  She was running towards him, and he could see in her face that she understood what had happened, and what it meant. There was no time for that now. Only for what he and Wren had agreed might be needed, if all went wrong. She would be ready for it, he hoped.

  “Wren! We need you.”

  He pointed down the slope, at the furious host coming for his blood. Wren stopped, and scowled at him, then nodded. She dropped to her knees, pressed her hands to her face for a calming, centring moment, then set them one atop the other on her thighs. Yulan spun and called out to Hamdan.

  “Kill the carthorses. Wren has the rest.”

  Hamdan did not even acknowledge the command, but he adjusted his aim. All the archers did, and a hissing flight of shafts went skimming down in search of horseflesh.

 
Yulan dropped down from his horse and knelt, that he might be a less tempting target for any arrows climbing up. He watched as the first of the Hommetic spearmen came slithering and scrambling to almost within touching distance.

  “Quickly would be good, Wren,” he said calmly.

  Even as he spoke, the whole face of the incline gave a great convulsive heave. It flung men into the air as a bull might shiver to flick flies from its back. Wide slabs of thin turf came loose and slid down the slope, carrying a tumbling mass of warriors with it. The movement spread rapidly wider and wider until all the land was sliding away, the ground shaking beneath. A great slip, that piled all of Callotec’s men back to the foot of the slope in drifts and exposed scars of pale rock.

  “To your horses,” Yulan shouted, backing away. “We ride!”

  And then he had to dart forward again, to catch Wren in his arms as she fainted away.

  21

  The Eye Of The Bereaved

  One of the carthorses was dying on the track. Enormous, lying there on its side, its strength ebbing away with every bubbling, bloody, wheezing breath. Its dark flank heaved, the arrow that had gone deep in there and pierced its lung quivering. A second shaft was sunk into its neck and had released a wide pool of blood across the road.

  Another of the animals needed to haul the wagons was already dead. Callotec’s men were cutting it free from the harness. It had fallen there, dropping in an instant, when an arrow went in through its eye. That had been either a lucky shot or the work of an absurdly gifted archer. Callotec was minded to think it the latter, given the identity of their assailants.

  “The Free do not abandon a fight just because their first attempt is rebuffed,” he murmured to Kasuman, who stood beside him regarding the great dying horse.

  “Agreed,” the Clever said, equally quiet. “We are short two carthorses. Three of the mules have run off, with everything they carried. A good thirty of our men are dead, close to twenty too sorely hurt to move from here. Two of my Clevers are arrow-shot to death. You truly think we have the strength to fight the Free all the way to Threetower?”

  “Everything you say is true,” Callotec conceded, hiding his contempt with difficulty. “But we still outnumber them by… what? Ten to one? Only three of us need to reach the border to claim victory, Kasuman. You, me, and…”

  He nodded discreetly towards the wagon upon which sat the Bereaved, anonymously cloaked.

  “That’s true, I suppose.”

  “Of course it is,” snapped Callotec.

  He curled his lip in distaste. Distaste at everything. The indifferent cruelty of a world that had stripped him of all he had once possessed, and left him standing here in the wilds of a lost kingdom with only dead horses, a fell Permanence and timorous allies for company.

  Callotec had fought, as he was bound to do, for Crex and the throne as long as any sane man might. With that cause lost, and nothing on the horizon but death – hard, unkind death in all likelihood – at the hands of the rebels, he had fled. As any sane man might. There was nowhere the traitorous Council could not reach him save the Empire, so it was towards the Empire he went. And hoped, in his secret heart, to finish on the way that which he had once left unfinished at Towers’ Shadow. Callotec had no great desire to be a subservient king swept to the throne by a raging army of the Orphans, strewing his future kingdom with the corpses of his future subjects. But it would serve.

  As would Kasuman and the Bereaved. The Clever had pledged fealty, called him the rightful, if uncrowned, king. Brought him two hundred men to fight his way to the border and safety. Now that the Free – Yulan – hunted him, whatever faint chance remained of reaching the Empire alive relied upon keeping close to hand every single sword Kasuman had brought with him.

  “We might be able to do it,” Kasuman said softly, as if catching the scent of Callotec’s thoughts on the evening air. “Unless they loose the Clamour.”

  A flicker of dark movement amongst the rocks on the far side of the stream caught Callotec’s eye. A lizard. A mottled corpse-eater. Nosing about there. Already sensing the feast awaiting it upon this field. The vile thing should be readying for its winter sleep by now, but the abundant table laid for it and its kind these last few weeks had kept them awake, hungry, deeper into the year than was usual this far north.

  Callotec bent and scooped up a loose cobblestone from the road. He pitched it towards the huge lizard, putting all his bitter frustration into the throw. The stone clattered harmlessly off the rocks, part of it erupting into a cloud of splinters and grit. The lizard writhed sinuously around and disappeared into some crevice or hole.

  “You there!’ Callotec shouted at the nearest of his Armsmen. “For the love of mercy, silence this horse. Its moaning repels me.”

  The swordsman drew a long knife and did as he was commanded, quickly and quietly. He and Callotec shuffled backwards to keep their feet out of the blood that pulsed thickly from the horse’s opened throat.

  There was some disturbance amongst the men labouring to pull one of the heavily laden wagons out from the rut into which its panicking horse had dragged it. Callotec and Kasuman both turned and looked that way.

  The effort to free the wagon had been overtaken by pushing and shoving. An argument had taken root, and prospered amidst the shock and fear of the battle’s aftermath. Grown towards brawl. Levymen were exchanging abuse with a pair of Callotec’s Armsmen who had gone to lend their shoulders to the task. One of those Armsmen was sent sprawling backwards, spat out from the fractious knot. The warrior fell, and cursed, and came to his feet again. He made to draw his sword.

  “Stop that,” Callotec called out.

  As he walked towards the wagon, the ten or more levymen concerned arrayed themselves to meet him. One of their number, unarmed, came forward. He did not look, to Callotec’s eye, as submissive as was appropriate to the moment. The approach of several of Kasuman’s Clade warriors – formerly of the Clade, Callotec supposed was more correct – did draw a slightly more nervous glance from the levyman, but his courage withstood the test.

  “We’re thinking we’ll be going home,” he said – almost shouted – without preamble.

  Callotec nodded. “Indeed?” he said.

  “I’ll not fight the Free for any man. None of us will.”

  “You’ve already beaten them!’ cried Callotec, spreading his arms as if to summon the evidence of their bleak surroundings. “Did you not see them fly from the field?”

  He knew that the tale told by the scene around him did little to strengthen his words. Men dragging bodies off the road, piling them to await the carrion-lovers since there was not time, and too few hands, to dig graves and no wood for the making of pyres. Others tending to the wounded. More gathering the supplies that had spilled from wagon or mule in the confusion.

  “You don’t think they’ll be back?” the levyman shouted. Callotec had a poor ear for accents, especially those of peasants, but he thought the man to be from Armadell, or somewhere near it. “You don’t think they’ll make bone and meat and shit of us all? And in any case, I’d as soon die now as become a slave of the Orphans. You think my family’ll thank me for taking that to the Empire?” He nodded as he said it towards the Bereaved, sitting on one of the wagons, unmoving and silent as ever.

  “You are a subject of the Hommetic king!’ Callotec shouted, his meagre stores of patience long exhausted. “Here stands that king, and he commands you to see him safe to the border.”

  “Aye?” the Armadell man muttered. “I see no crown on his head.”

  “Then you are treasonously deaf and blind.”

  Callotec could feel the black fury rising in him. The flood that he had never been able to resist when it came. Never wanted to resist, in truth. The levyman could not see it. He spat in the dirt at Callotec’s feet.

  “World’s got nothing but treason to it, these times.”

  “Maybe so, but it still carries a price,” Callotec said, suddenly cold and calm.

&nb
sp; He turned away, spoke sidelong to the nearest of the Clade men standing behind him.

  “Take hold of the traitor.”

  They rushed in before the levyman could do more than cry out in surprise and anger. Some took hold of his arms. Others faced his fellows, hands upon the hilts of their swords. For a moment it seemed that threat might not be enough. That a general slaughter was about to begin. But the levies had not quite so far outrun their senses as to think they could best what faced them. They did nothing as their spokesman was dragged away by his captors.

  Callotec walked back to Kasuman.

  “An example is necessary,” he told the Clever.

  “Sire?”

  “The Bereaved. Nothing less will do.” Callotec felt calmer now that he was set upon the course. “Close to a third of what strength remains to us is of his sort. If we allow these notions to foul their heads, we’ll never get them out.”

  “Perhaps…” murmured Kasuman.

  “They doubt my rightful crown. I will prove it to them, and there will be no more treason after that.”

  “Prove it?”

  Callotec smiled. “The Bereaved, as I said. Its possession and its use has ever been the most potent symbol of Hommetic power. That is something they cannot contest, or dispute.”

  Kasuman hesitated, and Callotec marked that and would not forget it. But in the next moment the Clever turned away and beckoned the warriors to bring their captive after him. Callotec was satisfied. Events had their flow, and once it began it was seldom turned aside. Those who thought otherwise, as often as not, would be cast ashore, battered and bruised. Or dead.

  Kasuman reached up and delicately, as a mother might lift a sick child, brought the Bereaved down from the wagon. He set it on its feet beside him.

  “No!’ the levyman screamed as they hauled him closer. He bucked and writhed, but the hands that held him were strong.

  Kasuman took the cloak from the Bereaved’s shoulders, and it stood there, before them all. A Permanence that few had ever seen, all had known and feared. Even Callotec had never set eyes upon it before, not when it was so exposed. As far as he knew, it had not, in his lifetime, set foot outside the School’s Keep in Armadell-on-Lake until Kasuman somehow stole it away. In all the time it had sat there on the Clever’s wagon, these last days, Callotec had not dared to draw near to it, let alone lift its hood. Now everyone looked into its face.