Nothing but Tombs

by Tim Stead

  “I heard there was a war,” Catamel said.

  “I fought in it,” Fane said. “I won it.”

  “You won it?”

  Fane smiled, but it wasn’t the sort of smile you wanted to see on the face of a dangerous man – a bitter twist of the lips.

  “Yes. I had help, of course, but I was Lord Commander of the Army of Light.”

  “And you’ve come back to help us, have you?”

  “I came back to fight alongside Cain Arbak at Bas Erinor, but there is an opportunity here.”

  “An opportunity to get killed,” Catamel said, but she looked less hostile. “What is your plan?”

  “Raise an army. I will take as many of the southern lords as I can, break their castles, loot their homes. The regiments will abandon Alwain. One by one they will come running home and we will crush them.”

  “And how many men do you have?”

  Fane shrugged. “Fifty. It does not matter. How many can you raise?”

  “A hundred. Maybe a hundred and twenty, but that would put us in open rebellion.”

  “Alwain is busy. By the time he realises the magnitude of the threat we will have thousands. The whole of the south will rise. It will be too late.”

  Catamel pulled a face and scratched the back of her head. “It’s a sweet thought,” she said. “Giving them back what they’ve done to us. What makes you think men will follow you?”

  “Mayor Catamel, I have played this game before,” Fane said. “In truth I am not raising an army, I am lighting a fire in dry grass and the kingdom will burn. Col Boran will not thank me for it, nor will the King, but it will change everything – forever.”

  “Big words, Jerac Fane, but I believe you can do it. I will speak to my people and I will support your call to arms, but I can’t give you my word. I’m only mayor here.”

  “Good,” Fane said. “They’ll want it as bad as you, but be quick about it. I mean to take Fetherhill in twenty days.”

  Outside in the street again Bram shook his head. “That was too easy,” he said.

  Fane slapped him on his broad back. “Not at all,” he said. “If hatred had a smell this town would stink of it. Hate will start them, but with a bit of luck we can change it to something else by the end. I hope so.”

  *

  The morning showed Bram the depth of Fane’s truth. They spent the night in a tavern near the hall, and by the time they had roused themselves in the morning and broken their fast in the bar the whole town was buzzing. Even in the tavern’s common room people pointed at them and whispered. It made Bram uncomfortable, but Fane ignored it.

  The Farheim finished his meal and strolled over to the bar. He tossed a coin onto the wood.

  “A lot of noise out there,” he said.

  “There’s a meeting in the square,” the barkeep said. He sounded excited, almost happy. “They say we’re going to kill the lords at Fetherhill.”

  Fane pulled a face. “I wouldn’t count on it,” he said. “There are rules in war. One of them is you don’t kill those who don’t fight.”

  The barkeep looked disappointed, but he nodded. “I suppose,” he said. “But there’s those that won’t see the need for rules.”

  “There always are,” Fane said. He walked back to where Bram was sitting. “Shall we go? I don’t want to miss this.”

  Outside they joined a crowd that was moving towards the centre of town. It was an animated throng, and the two strangers were hardly noticed. The crowd emptied out into a broad square, and Bram could see that a couple of wagons had been put at one end. Mayor Catamel was standing on one of them with a few others.

  “We need to be up there,” Fane said and started pushing his way through the crowd. Bram followed. By now the Mayor of Berrit Bay was beginning to feel uneasy and very much out of his depth. There were more people in the square than in the whole of the Bay, and the mood was excited but brittle. This could go bad at any moment.

  Catamel saw them coming and signalled to a man nearby. He began to ring a hefty hand bell and the loud clangour slowly drove all other sound from the square. Within half a minute it was the only sound and when it stopped the silence was oppressive. Catamel spoke into the vacuum.

  “Citizens of Beckton, today is a great day,” she said, her voice carrying across the silent crowd. Fane had reached the wagons by now, and without hesitation he stepped up and joined the folk there. Bram felt he had to follow, though he didn’t like being the centre of attention in such a gathering. He ran Berrit Bay quite another way. He preferred quiet conversations over a pint, a harsh word spoken in private. Often a shake of the head was enough. He saw himself as more of a rudder than a captain.

  “Today,” Catamel went on. “Today we have a choice.” She paused. They waited. “For years we’ve been robbed. You all know what I’m talking about. This year is the year you’re going to get ahead, finally you’re going to be able to buy a house, a cart, a carpet, pay off that debt. Then we get taxed, again. It happens every year. If we complain they send men with swords and fire. People get hurt. In the end we pay because we have to.”

  She paused again. Bram looked at the crowd. The crowd looked eager.

  “In the last five years our taxes have doubled,” she said. “In the ten years before that they doubled. And what do we get for our money? Protection?” There was a ripple of laughter in the crowd because her tone had invited it, but these people weren’t amused.

  “We need protection from those that tax us!”

  This was greeted by a louder murmur of assent.

  “But today we have a choice,” she said. “You have a choice. This man,” she pointed to Fane who stood by her side looking every inch what he was. “This man is the Farheim Lord Jerac Fane, and he has come to lead us, us and all the other towns of Fetherhill. This man,” and here she put a friendly hand on Bram’s shoulder,” is the Mayor of Berrit Bay. We do not stand alone, and from this day none of us will pay Fetherhill’s taxes.”

  The crowd cheered. Catamel let them go for a while, a count of ten, and then she signalled the man with the bell again. When the mob had hushed once more, she spoke again.

  “There is a price,” she said. “We have to fight.” She turned to Fane and dropped her voice. “Will you speak?”

  “Of course.” It was clear that Fane had been expecting this. He stepped forwards and put a foot on the rim of the wagon. Bram had to admit that he looked impressive. The expectant silence waited for his words.

  “I am a soldier,” he said. “So I will be blunt and honest because that is a soldier’s way. I have fought in wars. I have killed hundreds of men. I have never enjoyed killing them. I knew Cain Arbak before the Second Great War, and he was fond of saying that a soldier’s duty is to win the war, not to kill the enemy. I have found that the two often coincide, but General Arbak was right. War is bigger than your grudges, bigger than your hatred. Remember that.

  “If I am to lead you, I will lead an army. An army has rules. If you join this army you will abide by the rules. I have no doubt that some of you will die by the enemy’s hand, but also that some – fewer – of you will die by mine. That is the price of breaking the rules, and I will tell you what they are.

  “You will obey my orders and the orders of those who are chosen to be officers.”

  Fane stopped and looked out at the mob. They were still silent, but now some of them looked grim. Bram could see a few angry faces among the crowd, angry, perhaps, at Fane’s arrogance, at his easy assumption of authority.

  “That’s it,” Fane said. “Obey my orders. Obey your officers. If you can’t do that then I suggest you do not join my army. If you do, I will train you. I will make you the best soldiers that you can be, but remember this also: Alwain’s troops are professionals. Many have trained for years. You will have weeks, maybe days before you are called on to fight, perhaps to die. You will only survive if you train hard and keep discipline. If you can’t accept that, don’t join.

  “I don’t want taver
n bullies. I don’t want drunkards. I don’t want men who think they know better. Trust me. War is my business. I know how to win, and we will win, but it will be hard and not all of you will see victory.

  “And one more thing,” he smiled and glanced back at the Mayor. “You will always pay taxes, though you will not always pay them to Fetherhill.”

  Fane drew both his blades and with a flourish he drove them both into the wood of the wagon.

  “Now,” he said. “Anyone who still wants to fight, come up here and swear allegiance on my blades.” He turned to Catamel. “You have someone who can take names?”

  She was clearly taken aback, but she nodded. “Of course.”

  They lined up, each man putting one hand on each blade and repeating the words of the oath that Fane told them, swearing loyalty to the army, to Fane, to the people of Fetherhill. There was no mention of Beckton or Berrit Bay, and Bram wondered about that. He had a strong feeling that he had stepped off a cliff and as yet he couldn’t see the bottom.

  When all the names were taken there were two hundred and thirty-seven men on the list.

  45 Revenge

  The town was exactly as she remembered it. That was hardly a surprise, really. She had been gone less than a year, but in another way it seemed an age ago. She saw people that she knew, vaguely. They had been faces in shops, barrow men, smiths, farmers come to town. They still were. It was Callista that had changed. She had never known them, not really.

  She walked the length of the main street. It wasn’t much to look at after a month in Afael City. There was the shop where her mother had bought the cloth for her first ball dress. She shook her head. She had only worn the thing twice before she outgrew it. That was how exciting life was in Whitefields. But it was about to get much more exciting.

  She stopped in front of a barrow man. He was selling coloured candies. They were little more than dyed sugar, but they had once seemed the finest sweets on earth to her when her father gave her a paper cone of them.

  “Sweet tooth, My Lady?” the vendor asked. She knew his face, but he obviously didn’t recognise her. To be fair it had been more than a year since she had been free to roam the town. Her uncle had seen to that.

  The thought of him brought a frown to her face.

  “I have salt candies too, if that’s your fancy,” the vendor said.

  “No, I like the sweet ones. The red and yellow. Three of each.”

  The man swirled a small sheet of paper into a cone and picked out the colours she’d asked for.

  “Two coppers,” he said.

  Callista picked a silver coin and dropped it in his hand.

  “Nothing smaller?” the man pleaded.

  “You can keep it,” Callista said. “But tell me about the people in the big house.”

  “Oh, fine folk,” the vendor said.

  “If you’re going to lie, I’ll have that coin back,” Callista said.

  He grinned and nodded.

  “Know them, do you?”

  “Maybe I do,” she said.

  “Aye, a mean lot. The old baron, he was a good man, pretty free with his coin, saw the town right when it needed it. New man hardly ever comes here. The boy does, though. Drinks in the tavern and refuses to pay, but what can you do?” He looked at Callista and turned a shade of red, realising, perhaps that he was complaining to another aristocrat. “Begging your pardon,” he added.

  “There’s no crime in honesty,” she said.

  “It’s the wife I feel sorry for,” he said, encouraged. “Shut up in that house with that tightwad.”

  Callista tried to summon an image of her erstwhile guardian’s wife and found that she couldn’t. She’d been a shadowy figure at best, and almost more a servant than a family member. Neither could she remember feeling sorry for the woman. A feeling of guilty shame rose up in her, but she’d had her own problems back then. She’d never thought that anyone could be suffering as much as she.

  “Have you seen her in town?”

  The candy seller shook his head. “He won’t let her out,” he said. “They say she takes all her meals alone, hardly ever speaks to any but her maid and the master, of course, but he ain’t got a kind word to say.”

  Gossip from the servants, Callista supposed. It couldn’t be helped, and in this case she was grateful for it. But now she was curious.

  “What about the old baron’s daughter?” she asked.

  He pulled a face. “They say she got away, ran off somewhere, but I don’t know. He could have done her in. She wasn’t much. Weak sort of thing. Can’t see her having the pluck to make a run for it.”

  And that was her in a nutshell, or at least it was the girl she had been. It’s a difficult thing to despise what you were, but Callista did. The man was right. She’d been spoiled and weak. How had she ever found the courage to run off into the beast realms with no more than a small pack full of food and the clothes on her back? She popped one of the sugary treats into her mouth. It was exactly as she remembered it. She thanked the sweet seller and walked on. She had somewhere to be before noon, and a few dozen steps and a turn down a side road took her there.

  Whitefields didn’t have a mayor and it didn’t have a militia. It was too small and too close to the baron’s house for either. What it did have was a constable. She walked into his small office and looked about. There was a space behind the desk with a couple of cells, and the man seated at the desk stood up when he saw her.

  “My Lady, how can I help?”

  It worked every time, and she supposed that deference was a kind of poison. It made you feel more worthy than you were. In her case, of course, it was entirely appropriate. She was a god-mage, but this man didn’t know that. To him she was just someone with money and position.

  “I have a job for you,” she said.

  “You do?”

  “Yes. There is to be a dragon court held in this town tomorrow morning. You must prepare for it.”

  He stared at her. “What?”

  “A dragon court. The Lord Kelcotel will arrive shortly after dawn.” She could see panic in the constable’s eyes.

  “But we ain’t had nothing like that here. Ever. There’s no call for it.”

  “Nevertheless, it will happen tomorrow.” She took pity on him. “Don’t worry. I will tell you what needs to be done. You need to find a field close to town, a couple of acres will do. You must make sure that there are seats for some folk. The Baron and his family are required to attend, of course, and you will have to feed Lord Kelcotel.”

  “Feed a dragon?” The constable was already scribbling frantically on a scrap of paper. “A cow?”

  Callista couldn’t help smiling at the thought of Kelcotel presented with a live cow.

  “Who’s the best cook in town?” she asked.

  “Mankin at the White Bull, or that’s what folk say.”

  “Then get Mankin to cook his best food – enough for about thirty people. That should do. There should be a lot of meat in it. Dragons are fussy about what they eat.”

  “Aye, My Lady, but Mankin won’t work for nothing. He has folk to feed at the Bull…”

  She tossed a heavy purse onto the desk. “This should cover everything,” she said.

  The constable picked up the purse and peered inside. “Yes,” he said. “Very generous.”

  “Remember, the baron must be there with his family or the dragon will be offended. It is a great honour. And spread the word through the town. I will be at the White Bull if you have any questions, and I will be back here before dawn to see that all is ready.”

  The constable nodded. She could see that he was keen to get started. She’d given him enough gold that he could arrange everything and still have a small fortune left over which she did not doubt he would keep for himself.

  She left him to do the work and walked a little further up the main street. There were only two taverns in the town, and the White Bull was the better of the pair. It was a low building that spread itself fifty p
aces up the main street and a similar distance down one of the town’s better alleys. There was a stable behind it.

  She pushed open the door and walked in.

  The White Bull was no different from a thousand other taverns all across Afael, Avilian and Berash. There were tables, chairs, a fireplace, a bar, and a man standing behind the bar. There were a handful of old men, those past working age, nursing their drinks near the fire, but otherwise the place was deserted. She approached the bar.

  The barkeep saw money coming and straightened his back.

  “My Lady?”

  “I need a room for the night. The best you have.” There was a risk in staying here. If her cousin drank in town it would probably be in this tavern, but she didn’t think that her uncle would let him go drinking this night, not when he heard what the morning would bring.

  “Of course, My Lady.” The barkeep cast a glance over the room and, finding no need there, ducked under one end of the bar and opened a door next to it. “I’ll show you,” he said.

  The room was modest, but clean. There was even a copper bath placed in front of the fireplace.

  “Do you want the fire lit, My Lady?”

  “Not now. I need to rest. Call me at dusk. You can have it lit then. I’ll eat in the bar and you can fill the bath while I’m eating.”

  Having dismissed the barkeep, she carefully bolted the door and lay down on the bed. She wasn’t really tired, but she wanted to think.

  It was strange coming back here. Whitefields had been her life, but now she could see it for what it really was – an unimportant, small country town. But that made her uncle’s crimes no less vile. In spite of that the thought of her revenge no longer excited her. Those crimes now seemed old and distant. She still felt sorrow when she thought of her father, a little less for her mother because that had been years ago, but nothing she could do would bring them back, not even as a god-mage.

  She thought of Jidian. His revenge had been something else, an act of living, bleeding grief. But Sithmaree was still gone.

  She reached for the link that Pascha had shown her, the thin thread that tied her to the Snake God, and it was still there, still alive, but when she tried to follow it, it led into darkness. Pascha had said it meant that Sithmaree was still alive, but somewhere she could not reach. That was hard to understand. She could be anywhere in an instant.