by Steven Poore
What was that? It had looked like a bright line of molten fire, just like she had seen in smithies in winter when they were the only places she could go to keep warm. But true fire did not look like that. Nor did it fly through the air in straight lines. Yet the bright after-images burned behind her eyelids told a different tale.
Baum, calm and business-like, as if he had not just killed several of the Factor’s legionaries, stooped to wipe his blade clean on the grass before sheathing it. Meredith still held his sword in one hand, using it to prod the bodies of the fallen scouts. Neither man seemed to have noticed she was still there.
I could steal the horses and leave them stranded. I could ride away and be back in Keskor by tomorrow night. But she didn’t want to return to Keskor, and now Vescar had been defeated she knew she could never return there again. A huge weight lifted from her shoulders as that road was closed to her. I could make for the coast road, and try to buy a passage to . . . to anywhere. I can go anywhere.
She reached for her staff, and came back to her feet again, more warily this time. It was then she saw the three scouts who had fled . . . or, rather, what remained of them. They lay by the trail, limbs twisted and scorched, tendrils of smoke curling from their wrecked corpses. Cassia stood rooted to the spot, unable to force herself any closer to the horribly burned men.
“Oh, mercy,” she prayed with a sob, disbelief warring with the evidence before her.
It was magic. That was the only thing it could be. Magic, straight from the tales of the Age of Talons, or of the High Kings, or of the spiteful, petty wars of the gods themselves and their pet spellcasters. There was no other way to explain how three men could be healthy and whole one moment, and burning husks the next. But this wasn’t the work of the gods, was it? She turned slowly, to stare at Baum.
Was it?
Baum looked up and met her gaze. His eyes were hard, but they held no threat that Cassia could see. Now he was an old soldier, long-retired from campaigning, just as he had been before.
Vescar broke the spell, moaning and rolling onto his side. “Bastard sorcerer – finish me off then.”
Baum strode over to him, and Cassia found herself headed there too, without having made any conscious decision to move.
“No,” the old man said, standing over the fallen half-captain. “You’ll carry a message for me, boy. Whose idea was this farce of an ambush?”
Vescar grimaced and clutched his leg with one hand while tearing at his sleeve with the other. “He said you were dangerous – insane. But you’re an old man . . .”
Baum folded his arms and watched the man struggle to dress his wound. Cassia approached quietly, trying to keep out of Vescar’s sight.
“Older than you know, boy. And I carry Pyraete’s blessing with me. The God of the North is on my side, not the Empire’s. Remember that, and tell your father that too, if this was his idea. And here’s the message. The North will rise again, with or without his help. There is far more at stake here than petty power-brokering with some minor Imperial functionary who was raised soft and moneyed in the south. Far better men than you have tried to stop me in the past, and all have failed. When the High King’s armies return to the mountains, you had better know which side you are on.”
Vescar stared up at him in disbelief. “The High King? You mean Caenthell? You really are insane, old man. It’ll never happen.”
Baum shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I advise you to leave me well alone. If he sends anybody else to silence me, I will not be merciful. Look to your squads here, half-captain, and think yourself lucky.”
Vescar levered himself onto one knee. Cassia moved aside quickly, but the half-captain was not interested in her anymore. His attention was fixed on the bodies spread over the field. “And how do I explain this slaughter? How do I explain magic?”
“That’s not my concern. One more thing, boy. The girl and her father stay with me.”
“Fine,” Vescar growled. “I did not want them anyway.”
Cassia could not stay silent. “Then who did? Hetch?”
His contemptuous expression was enough to make her back off. “It speaks. My brother thinks with his cock. But you’re plain enough that I’ll wager he’d have tired of you inside a week. Good riddance.”
Baum coughed. “My patience is wearing thin. Go and bury your men. On foot, mind, leave the horses.”
Vescar rose unsteadily and took a javelin from one the fallen scouts to use as a staff. With one last glare at Baum and Meredith, as if committing their faces to memory, he limped toward the trail.
Cassia watched him, her heart empty and cold. That was what they thought of her? Then they could rot in the ground for all she cared. Hetch could take his false friendship and stick it up his backside. The damned mule was a better friend to her than Hetch ever would be.
She paused, mid-thought, and looked around again. Where was the mule? Come to that, where had her father gone?
She turned a full circle, unable to see either of them, and she felt her breath race again, panic surging into her muscles. Had they been caught by the scouts? By the first flight of javelins?
“Father?” she called out. “Father?”
Baum heard her and looked up, then motioned to Meredith. The lordling jogged up the nearest rise, gaining higher ground for a better view. After a long moment he shook his head.
“Nothing. He has gone,” he called down.
Baum kicked at one of the corpses and cursed vehemently. “Behia take me for a damned fool! That must be the fastest he has moved in the last three days! If I didn’t know better I’d say he planned this all along.”
Cassia dropped to the ground once more, her legs unable to take the weight of the world that had crashed onto her shoulders. Gone. Abandoned. Her thoughts buzzed around those words like moths to a flame, never settling long enough in one place for reality to take hold. She raised one hand to the straps that cut into her shoulders: the pack was all she had now. All that was left of her world.
Abruptly she shrugged it from her back and tore at the knots that sealed it, pulling ragged cloths and dented pans onto the grass, scrabbling through the meagre collection in a desperate search for the one thing that should have been there . . .
. . . and was not.
Norrow had swapped the purse into another bag. He had never intended to do more than save his own skin.
She rolled onto her side with a sob, tears flooding into her eyes. Gone. Abandoned. Set free.
She didn’t know whether she was laughing or crying.
q
Baum led them away from the Emperor’s March, into the rolling hills of the lower Antiachas. The trail passed several empty sheepfolds before petering out altogether, but the old man did not appear to notice; he was so wrapped up in a foul, darkened mood.
Cassia was absorbed in her own thoughts. At least now she did not have to walk. Meredith had lifted her, unresisting, onto one of the horses that had not fled the field of battle, enlisting another to carry their baggage. Left to her own devices for a few moments while the two men saw to their own mounts, she could easily have followed her father’s example and made a bid for freedom. After all, a small voice in her head said to her, if he could make it clean away on that damned mule, why couldn’t she, with a warhorse to her credit?
But the effort was beyond her. Why? she asked. Where would I go? What would I do? The voice did not seem able to tell her, so she sat on the horse, skirt rucked up above her knees, her staff held across her lap, and waited.
She looked back once, and saw that Vescar’s scouts still lay where they had fallen. Vescar had abandoned them, just as her father had abandoned her. And Baum had not spared time to see to their burials, or any of the proprieties that all the tales of great battles stressed were so important. These men weren’t part of any story of the golden campaigns of the past. And they were dead, after all, so why would they care how they lay?
An uncomfortable thought kept circling her mind, like
the birds and four-legged scavengers that would soon find the dead scouts. Where was Baum taking her? Why were they travelling so deep into the hills? Did he mean to murder her too, and leave her body in the wastes of the Antiachas, never to be seen again?
She was painfully aware of Meredith’s looming presence, only a yard or so to her left. He had not been so much as lightly winded by the fight, let alone taken a single scratch. The exercises he rigorously performed every morning were as nothing compared to the speed and vicious skill with which he had despatched Vescar’s men.
If he cut her down without warning at least it would be a quick end. Nobody would miss her.
The tears came upon her so suddenly she could not hold them back. Her vision blurred, and her shoulders shook with wracking sobs as the staff fell from her unresisting hands.
She felt, rather than saw, someone take the reins to keep her horse walking uphill, but it hardly registered. It seemed all she could do was cry to prevent her heart from bursting, and she surrendered herself to the misery.
At last, when she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and let her breathing slow to normal, her horse had halted. In fact, the whole party had stopped on the crest of a hill, and Baum and Meredith both watched her, waiting for her to recover. She met Baum’s intent frown with a guilty flush.
“I – I’m sorry,” she began. “I don’t mean to hold you up—”
Baum shook his head in an impatient gesture, but his words were more conciliatory. “Not to worry, girl. It is only to be expected. We can move faster now we have you on horseback, but I think it best if we do not travel much further today. We can always make up the time elsewhere.”
Meredith looked unhappy at the prospect – as much as he ever seemed to look unhappy. “The half-captain will raise the alarm, and we will find ourselves surrounded by daybreak.”
Baum made a gesture of denial. “Unlikely. Vescar has far too much to lose. He will have to spend some time coming up with a plausible reason why he has lost a dozen of the Factor’s scouts for no gain. Without mentioning us or Caenthell, of course.”
Cassia shivered at the name. It slipped through the air like a curse, and even the wind stuttered in its passage for a moment.
“And the storyteller?” Meredith asked.
Now Baum swore softly. “A far greater loss. Who could know the North could breed such a damned coward? It seems plain he would be of little use in Hellea, so perhaps we are better off without him.” He glanced at Cassia. “Yes, in fact. Far better off. Pyraete strengthens our hand . . .”
“Sir, I don’t understand,” Cassia said. There were so many questions. Which would he answer? Which would make him angry? How could she know which to ask? “I – I just don’t understand . . .”
That brought an unexpected, wry smile. “I’m not surprised, girl. This must be quite a shock to you. It usually is.”
The comment made no sense to her. She rubbed her eyes again and then stared down at her hands. Where had the staff gone? She remembered holding it across her lap earlier as she rode . . .
Meredith passed it to her. He must have picked it up when she dropped it. “Never lose control of your weapons,” he told her, in the manner of a teacher passing on wisdom to a slow-learning pupil.
“Can you ride a little longer?” Baum asked. He looked satisfied with Cassia’s hurried nod. She had no wish to spoil his sudden good temper, even though she wanted to do nothing more than curl up on the ground under her blanket. “Good. There is – was, at least – a small copse on the far side of that hill. It will give us shelter for the night, and our fire will not be visible from the road. Once we are settled, I will see if I can lift the clouds of your confusion somewhat. Quite a long story – you may even know a little of it,” he added, his lips quirking into that familiar wry smile.
If his last words were a bait, then Cassia was hooked, despite her fear of these men and the strange powers they appeared to possess. It wasn’t as if there was anywhere else she could go anyway, and so she urged her horse after Meredith and Baum as they started down the hillside.
q
“Now . . . where to begin? When?” Baum’s expression was quizzical, as if Cassia was the one with the answers. She wrapped her arms around her knees and inched closer to the fire, waiting for him to continue.
The copse had turned out to be larger than Baum had described it, and he had joked that he had spent too much time out of the North, before leading them under the branches of the weather-twisted trees. Their camp was completely obscured from view, and Cassia glanced up at the overhanging branches nervously, half-expecting them to start moving of their own accord, reaching down menacingly . . .
She shivered. This was not a night for dark tales, but she had an inkling Baum’s story would not be a happy one.
“The High Kings of the North,” Baum said. “That’s where we’ll begin. Do you know the High Kings?”
“Gallemas,” she said hesitantly. Her father hadn’t favoured many tales that old, so her knowledge was sketchy. Once the old myths of the North entered the Age of Talons, she was on much firmer ground. “You said he was the first. And Jedrell was the last. I know that much.”
Baum nodded. “Go on.”
She paused. What did he want? “Jedrell?”
The quizzical look had been replaced by a more solemn expression. He was remembering something, Cassia thought, as she tried to put the stories back together in her own mind. Everybody enjoyed tales from the Age of Talons, although many of them were set in the plains and on the high seas to the south and east, and yet more took place in far-off Galliarca or Stromondor. When they touched on the North they were dark and tragic, lined heavily with feuds carried from father to son. The High Kings walked through them with all the arrogance and impunity of the true nobility, handing out justice and vengeance in equal measures. They were rarely the heroic focus of the tales – more often they were obstacles to be overcome or avoided. In some of the more bloodthirsty stories, they could be found as invincible warriors on the battlefield, or commanding great armies that pillaged and burned their way across the land.
Jedrell had done all that, and more besides. The stories of his life portrayed him as a man driven by greed and ambition, a child of one of the lesser branches of the royal line who bitterly resented the lowly position he had inherited.
“Jedrell was the son of Cathos,” Cassia began slowly. “The youngest son. And Cathos was a . . . a captain of the High King’s armies. He was satisfied with his lot, and he never raised his gaze to the skies, but Jedrell was not content to live out his life taking orders from other, lesser men. And when he looked into the night skies he saw his name written there in the stars.”
She looked up, saw Baum smiling, and felt the colour rise in her cheeks. “Am I wrong?”
He tilted one hand in a non-committal gesture. “Who can truly say, so many hundreds of years after the fact?”
“It is wrong, isn’t it?” Suddenly she was certain of that, and she felt the need to defend herself. “But this is how I learned the story. I can’t tell it any other way.”
“Then carry on,” Baum told her. “I will not interrupt.”
Cassia gathered her thoughts for a moment. Behind the old man Meredith constructed their shelters with methodical economy, paying no attention to the conversation at the fire.
“Cathos was an experienced campaigner when he fathered Jedrell,” she said. “And when the boy came to his majority and joined the army himself, Cathos was an old man who had lost much of his prowess and strength, but kept all of his mighty reputation. He won a position for his son, and the High King gave him a full legion to command, but Jedrell was angered by this. He said that he wanted to be known and feared for who he was, not for who his father was.
“His father was dismayed by his words, and the High King took them as a grave insult. He vowed to make an example of Jedrell and make him swing from the walls of Caenthell. When he heard this, Jedrell sent a reply saying the next time he saw the
great halls of Caenthell, he would call himself the true High King of the North, and all would kneel before him.”
She paused again. Was this too much detail? How much of the story did he want her to tell?
Baum poked at the fire, his mind clearly elsewhere. Despite his earlier promise, he did speak to fill the uneasy silence. “And so they did. Jedrell left the North as a brash, hot-headed young man, his temper as wild as the dogs of Galliarca, his legion untested, his reputation in tatters, and his heart broken. But when he returned, years later, he stood above the Hamiardin Pass and raised his standard in challenge, and his vast army lined every peak that could be seen from the great castle. The High King – Rosmer the Black, an ineffectual man,” he added in a scholarly aside, “sat safe behind his walls, secure in the knowledge that Caenthell had never fallen. He knew that while the castle held, Jedrell’s campaign against him would fail. Winter was coming, and Jedrell’s army could not maintain a siege through the inhospitable weather that Pyraete would throw at the mountains. Jedrell was no fool, though. He had been raised in the shadow of Caenthell, after all, and he knew the turning of the seasons. He did not intend to let Rosmer wait him out. Do you know how he took the castle?”
Cassia nodded, tongue-tied for the moment. Baum talked as though these events had occurred only yesterday. And where was the Hamiardin Pass? In all of the tellings of this history, she had never once heard of such a place.
“Sorcery,” she managed at last. It was an answer that reminded her of the slaughter on the hillsides only a few hours ago, and she shivered.
Baum gave her a thin smile. “Exactly. Sorcery. So great was his ambition that Jedrell enlisted the help of one of the most notorious warlocks of that age – Malessar.”
Even though she knew this part of the history she still felt her stomach roll queasily at the mention of the name. “The Man of Stone,” she said quietly. The warlock passed through many ages and tales, up to and beyond the Fall of Stromondor. How ironic it was that her father had narrated that very tale the other evening in Keskor. Malessar was as harsh and frightening a presence as any of the greatest High Kings.
