The image in the mirror faded without a further word spoken – Warmont had dismissed me, knowing that I’d follow his instructions. For reasons I didn’t know, I felt a furious anger building inside me. Warmont was losing his grip and I was sure he’d resort to increasingly desperate tactics in order to quell the outlying towns and cities. That was not going to be good news for the First Cohort.
I marched back to where I saw Jon Ploster. He was on his haunches away from the other men, his expression unreadable.
“An easy win, Captain,” he said. I wasn’t fooled.
“Easy or hard, they come and go. We’re off to the coast next, Jon. Another town, another rebellion.”
“How long till Warmont calls in the Emperor’s beasts?” he asked, though I could tell he was not expecting an answer.
“We’re caught between the anvil and the hammer.” I paused for a moment at what I had to say. “We’ve been instructed to kill the prisoners - to a man. There’ll be justiciars here in two weeks to impose the Duke’s law on the town. This place will be a hell on earth.”
“Every footstep we take with Warmont is going to need a dozen to get us back,” he said. “This will be the end of the First Cohort, Tyrus.”
I knew he was right. Soon we’d be off to Treads or Farthest. Each of our victories would be tempered with the knowledge that the aftermaths would be increasingly cruel and barbaric. We’d become little more than murderers, each stride taking us closer and closer towards the abyss. In truth, we’d been teetering on the brink for a long time. I’d looked over the edge and seen what was below. The men had too – I could see it in their faces and hear it in their hushed whispers as they talked around the campfires at night. There was no way back for them and I was leading them forever forwards, damning their souls for eternity. I felt as if we were too far down the slope to scramble our way out.
“Lieutenant Craddock, Lieutenant Sinnar!” I shouted. They came over at once. “Get the men ready to move. We’ve been asked to hold Nightingale until relief arrives in two weeks. I want the men in teams of five on the street on a rotating shift to cover every hour of the day and night. I don’t expect trouble, but we will be prepared for it. We’ll use the town hall as our base. Tell Corporal Langs to find us a place to barrack.”
“Yes, Captain!” they acknowledged.
“For the moment, we use our own supplies. Anything we need or anything the men buy is to be paid for fairly.” I didn’t need to ask if they understood.
“What of the prisoners, Captain?” asked Craddock.
“Fuck it, they come with us for now. Find somewhere to house them and keep them guarded. Take whatever food they need from the townspeople. They can pay for their own.”
Three
Later that evening, I sat alone in a room on the upper floor of Nightingale’s town hall. It was a rough, old building constructed of wood and stone. I’d taken one of the offices for myself, clearing out a spluttering old man who’d thought the First Cohort’s arrival to be thoroughly rude. I chewed on my rations and sipped at a cup of wine from a bottle I’d found hidden in a cupboard. A minor theft, but one I could live with.
The rations hardly even filled my stomach, let alone my soul. The tough, leathery strips of dried beef tasted like ash in my mouth. A soldier’s rations had never tasted good for as long as I could remember eating them, and I’d eaten many of these sorry little parcels of food before. The wine may have been a good one, it may have been a single step above vinegar, I couldn’t tell. In the past, I had prided myself on my palate, paying out great sums for wines and brandies, while the men laughed and mocked me with their two-Royal mugs of rough ale. Now everything tasted the same to me. I ate through habit and drank for the memory of the ritual. I wondered what would happen if I stopped eating and drinking. Would I wither away and die or would I still function forever in the same way? Even sleep’s pleasures were slowly being denied to me. My need for it had reduced over the decades, to the point where I could put my head down for little more than an hour or two and awake with a feeling of readiness. If I dreamt, I didn’t remember them with any vividness. Occasionally, I returned to wakefulness with a fleeting memory of times gone by, but they no longer elicited any nostalgia or yearning.
The men were the same. I heard them grumbling about how they wished they could sleep for hours, and they talked about meals they’d eaten - a mother’s fresh loaf of bread or a meat pie bought in Ironsburg. Always it was the memory of what had gone before and a realisation that those memories were all that remained. I think we all had a craving to feel human again. Except we were no longer human. Or if we were, there were so few shreds of humanity left that we could only pretend.
The First Cohort hadn’t often been used to suppress a town’s population, but we were familiar with the drill. If there were sufficient armed men in sufficient places, there’d be little opportunity for trouble to foment. I’d found groups of five men to be the best – it meant that there were many different squads, making it easier to blanket-cover the streets. If the soldiers went in pairs or threes, they’d be vulnerable to attack. Squads of five were a much more challenging proposition for would-be murderers or groups intending armed resistance.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” I said. Jon Ploster opened the door and entered the room. “Have a seat,” I bade, indicating one of the firm, wooden seats near the desk at which I sat.
“How are things on the streets?” he asked. Ploster had no particular rank and took no part in the command of the men. Nevertheless, everyone was aware his value and knew that he was First Cohort through and through. I sometimes thought I should give him the rank of corporal, yet was sure that he’d decline the offer.
“Everything has gone smoothly so far,” I replied. “The men have reported no trouble. Our name precedes us and no-one wants to see what depravities we might commit if our soldiers are murdered while they patrol.” I laughed bitterly at that. We did not commit depravities. We’d be leaving that to Warmont’s justiciars when they arrived and the justiciars were experts in that field.
“We’ve got a quiet two weeks and then we’re off to another one of Warmont’s fights, then?” Ploster already knew this was the case, he was just prodding to open up the subject again.
“Nightingale’s beaten and the people know it. They just don’t know what’s going to happen to them yet. They’ll keep their heads down in the hope that obedience will bring leniency.”
“It won’t, though, will it?”
I laughed again, another humourless response. “No of course it won’t. That old bastard’s going to take this place apart. The ones that aren’t dead will soon be wishing they’d spent themselves against our shield wall.”
“You could tell them all to leave,” he whispered, his voice hoarse as it spoke his sedition. His eyes looked hollow and sunken.
“You know I can’t do that. Warmont will guess what we’ve done. He’ll not speak of it directly, but you can be sure that we’ll be first into every breach and first up every siege ladder, until we’re so weakened by attrition that we will no longer exist. As the First Cohort’s captain, I will not see that happen!”
“Something needs to happen, Tyrus,” he told me. “Another year of this and we’ll have to march ten thousand miles to find a place we’re not despised. Otherwise the only person we can fight for is Warmont.”
“Or the Emperor,” I added.
“You got us away from his command before. Would you truly take us back there?”
“Never,” I said. “I have enough to atone for already. I do not wish to heap that upon my mountain of sins.”
“You are already heaping upon that mountain, Tyrus. Every day it gets higher and the First Cohort follows you willingly, because it is you.”
I gritted my teeth at his words. Not because I was angry with him – what point was there in trusting a man as an adviser if you shouted down his every opinion – but because I knew he was right. I’d allowed us
to be forced into a corner, where all options led to damnation. The choice of fools. And all the while, Warmont could sit in his keep, laughing at how easily he played me.
“Jon, I am as grateful as ever for your willingness to deliver the bluntest of messages.” He knew me well enough to realise that the words were spoken in jest, albeit a poor joke.
“I am sure that whatever happens, you will lead us,” he said.
“Aye, that I will,” I said. “Now, please take for yourself a cup and I would value your opinion on this fine quality wine that I have unearthed in the local cellars.”
I poured him a good quantity into his cup and he took a sip of it. “Tastes like shit,” he volunteered. After another sip, he corrected himself. “Absolute shit.”
“I’d hoped you’d tell me it was the finest of vintages,” I told him ruefully. “So that my imagination could fill in the blanks from my mouth.”
The next morning, I woke while there was still darkness outside. I descended to the floor below and spent some time with the men who were stationed there, exchanging empty banter and the occasional story from the past, where a man was willing to volunteer one.
“When I was a young lad I used to eat so much, that I could hardly pull my pants up after I’d had a shit, because I was so fat,” said Sprinter, starting a familiar tale.
“And even now your breath stinks of it,” interrupted Roots.
“One day, I overheard a group of girls laughing at me as I struggled to get up the ten steps into the tanner’s shop.”
“You said it was the pie shop you couldn’t get into, last time you told us this tale,” said Loopy.
“It was a long time ago, wasn’t it? Maybe it was the pie shop and maybe it was the tanner. Either way, the sounds of their laughter haunted me, it did.”
“I’ll bet you wanted to pork one of them, didn’t you?” chortled Scram.
“And ironically, if you’d eaten less pork, you’d have had more chance of porking one of them lasses,” said Roots, once more breaking into the narration.
“Anyways,” continued Sprinter, “from that day on, I decided that I’d lose the weight and become the slim man that I knew was inside me. I almost starved myself for months, and look at me now.” Sprinter was lean and fast. He could outrun almost anyone in the First Cohort with ease and we’d all won countless coins betting on him at tournaments in the past.
“Let me guess? You still didn’t get to tumble with one of those wenches that you were so hot for?” someone asked.
Sprinter went quiet, a sure sign that he didn’t want to speak further. The men left him to his thoughts.
“Are we staying here long, Captain?” asked Furtive. I knew what he was after.
“A couple of weeks, maybe. Don’t go getting yourself too comfortable though, and don’t go setting up any gambling rings out there. These people are poor enough as it is – they’ve already lost everything.”
Furtive looked disappointed that I’d identified his plans so easily. “It’s not everything they’ve lost, Captain. I reckon they’re about to lose a whole lot more when Warmont’s men get here. At least let me give them a chance to have some fun before…”
He tailed off at that point, not wanting to speak the words about what would soon happen to the people of Nightingale. I’d not made it widely known that the justiciars were coming, but soldiers aren’t stupid and I had often wondered how they managed to find out so much, even when I kept my lips tightly sealed. There had been times in the past when I could have sworn that my men knew something even before I’d known it myself. Perhaps they just speculated so much that eventually someone was certain to have guessed the future accurately.
“Let’s not try to second guess the Duke’s intentions, eh lads?” I said. They weren’t fooled.
“No need to guess, Captain. I think we know what’s coming,” Scram said.
I watched their faces intently. These men were all veterans – had each killed hundreds or more of our opponents – but they had a moral code. I’d never met a profession before which had such an overtly black and white view of right and wrong. There was little room for greys when indecision or uncertainty could see you with a spear in your gut. The men looked back at me and I saw something in their eyes which I’d not seen in a long time – it was hope. Hope that they’d be given some respite from having to shift their boundaries constantly, in order that they might see their actions as good, rather than evil. A man can only fool himself for so long and I could tell that they needed to see a future where black and white no longer moved, to stop the inner conflict that each one felt.
I had nothing to give them, yet. “We’ll wait and see what happens to Nightingale. We’re all used to the unexpected, aren’t we?” I didn’t even try to defend Warmont. It would have belittled me if I’d done so and I had no faith in the man or his motives. A few of the men nodded. They still had belief that I’d pull a rabbit out of my hat.
I left them behind and searched out Lieutenant Sinnar. I located him just inside our compound, which comprised the large yard surrounding the town hall.
“Any trouble?” I asked.
“Not a peep, Captain,” he said, almost with surprise.
“Without Ragar they must lack motive and leadership.”
“I wonder if they blame him for what’s happened,” said Sinnar.
“Send some men and bring him to me,” I told him. “Find Ploster and send him along as well.” At that, I left him and returned to my office to wait.
I wasn’t left for long. Within fifteen minutes I heard several pairs of feet approach along the corridor outside. I asked them to enter and three soldiers hauled in Ragar, with his hands tightly bound and his legs hobbled with more rope.
“Sit him there,” I said, just as Ploster entered the room.
The soldiers pushed Ragar to the seat and I told them to leave the room, which they did without hesitation or question. They knew I could defend myself, but I was sure it was Ploster’s presence that gave them the most reassurance.
Ragar met my gaze, evenly, like an equal. He still had some fight left in him, then. We sat silently for a time, taking the measure of each other, until I chose to speak.
“Why did you do it?” I asked. I think he was surprised.
“Do what?” he said.
“Rise up in a futile rebellion. You had hardly more than eight hundred men. Do you know how many Warmont’s got?”
“Many more than eight hundred,” he said. “But we beat them twice.”
“That you did, but Warmont can’t afford to send his main armies out so far – at least until he’s sure he needs to. He commands over forty thousand troops and not all of them are men. You only saw a fraction.”
“I gambled and lost,” said Ragar. “I thought if we could beat what he sent here, that he’d let us go. That we’d be more trouble than we’re worth.”
“You weren’t even taking a gamble,” I said. “There was no chance whatsoever that Warmont would allow one of his towns to declare so openly against him. If he hadn’t sent us, he’d have sent five thousand of his own. He’ll do whatever it takes, whatever the cost.”
“I have heard that other towns have risen in rebellion,” Ragar said, unwilling to name them in case I didn’t know which they were.
“Treads and Farthest have also declared themselves free. You can be certain that even now, Warmont is preparing to send his heaviest and best-trained armies to crush them.”
“And after that? There will always be another to take their place.”
“At what cost? The Emperor will not allow Warmont to squander his lands and Malleus is far, far more deadly than Warmont ever could be. You do not want to see what the Emperor can and will bring to bear against his own people. This is not a game of who will blink first, for neither Warmont nor the Emperor will ever concede an inch of the lands they rule. The time they do so will mark the beginning of the end for them both and they know this.”
“Why are you telling me th
ese things?” asked Ragar.
“The First Cohort does not like to fight against untrained men and women,” said Ploster. “We are tired of battles that we cannot lose. We are weary of seeing the hopes of our enemies crushed beneath our heels as we defeat them!”
“Then do not fight!” snapped Ragar. “And leave these lands forever!”
“There is nowhere for us to go,” I said. “At least nowhere that would have us.” I changed the subject abruptly. “He’s found her, you know?”
Ragar couldn’t help himself and snapped up in his chair. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“The Saviour. Warmont has found her.”
“Impossible!” Ragar exclaimed. “She doesn’t even exist!”
The lie was an easy one to ignore. “I don’t believe he’s captured her yet,” I said to him. Ragar’s relief was palpable. “But it will only be a matter of time. You know how important she is to Warmont. And the Emperor.”
“He won’t find her. She’s too well hidden.”
“She is young,” said Ploster. “Warmont’s sorcerers are very, very old and they have ways of penetrating even the darkest of veils.”
“The girl will destroy whatever he sends.”
Ploster looked at me, before he responded. “Let us hope that she’s as powerful as you say.”
Four
I did not speak to Ragar again for the next twelve days. There was no unrest amongst the townsfolk and none amongst the prisoners. Although we did not let down our guard, I noticed that the people had begun to slowly and tentatively return to their normal routines, even if many of the shops and businesses remained closed. After all, we did them no harm and paid fairly for whatever it was we needed. They did not like us, of course; I’m sure they still hated us for what we had done to their husbands. Nevertheless, the people were stoic and with nothing better to do, attempted to return to as normal a life as they could manage. They must have realised that it couldn’t last, but in the absence of knowing what awaited them, decided to make the best of what they had.
Soldiers' Redemption (First Cohort Book 1) Page 3
