Soldiers' Redemption (First Cohort Book 1)

by M. R. Anthony

  Lotus saluted his acknowledgement and I watched him for a moment as he ran down the hill towards the village square.

  Over by Ploster, the girl crouched still, her hands upon his face. His body was unmarked, but not all wounds appear on the surface. There was a faint thrumming, which I felt when I stood close by.

  “Will he live?” I asked her softly. She didn’t answer at once, looking up at me with her brow furrowed and her face intent. Then, Ploster gasped and jerked awake, before he sat upright, blinking in surprise. Ploster was an intelligent man and didn’t waste his words on pointless questions. He saw the girl and the gathered men of the First Cohort.

  “Dag’Vosh?” he asked.

  I pointed nearby, where Chunky still hewed with undiminished vigour. “Stabber knocked him out cold. The sorcerer’s wards killed him, but he’d done enough.”

  Ploster attempted to push himself to his feet. He lacked the strength, so I reached out a hand and hauled him up.

  “Warmont has another four of those,” he said, rubbing a hand over his bald head. “I’d hoped not to see one of them again.”

  “Or Warmont himself,” I commented wryly.

  The men of the First Cohort continued to hurry to the mill. They’d all heard the sorcerer’s expulsion of his power, but had awaited orders before coming to see what had happened. Without being commanded to do so, they formed a semi-circle around where we stood, as if we who had been directly involved were a tableau of something with vast significance. To a man, they stared at the young woman. She had a radiance which surrounded her like an invisible halo and I wondered how she had remained hidden for so long. It may have been that her radiance was more clearly visible to us, as if we were intended to be her guardians. We all felt it, and no one had to speak - each of us knew that we’d found something so precious that we’d do everything we could to keep it safe. The eyes of everyone there had a light behind them which I hadn’t known was missing until I saw it lit anew. It was the light of hope.

  I turned to the young woman, as she stood, looking neither uncomfortable at the attention, or certain as to what she should do. I walked until I stood in front of her, towering over her as she looked upwards with her unwavering gaze. I sunk to one knee, the top of my head still above the level of hers.

  “My Lady? I am Tyrus Charing and these are my men. Will you have us?” I asked. I felt no sense of desperation, just the same calmness that always pervaded my body before the hardest of battles.

  “Rise Tyrus Charing, I will have you.”

  With those few words, the Saviour began healing us all. A hollowness I had always known lay inside me, ever since we’d first been changed two hundred and fifty-three years before, became diminished, though the space was too great to be filled so quickly.

  “My lady, Duke Warmont must know where you are now. Will you come with us? He has more resources he can call upon than just this sorcerer.”

  “And we must hope that he has not told the Emperor that you have been found, or all the legions of Hardened will descend upon this land and they will burn and murder without mercy if they think it will hasten your capture,” said Ploster.

  I saw her face twist in worry at the enormity of what she’d been told and I was reminded that for all the power within her, she was still young and if she had lived here all her life, would have been sheltered from so much of the world.

  “These people,” she said. “They have raised me, protected me. Even been my friends. Must I leave them so quickly?”

  “My lady, you are doing it for their sakes as well as your own. If Warmont’s eyes fall upon this village, he will not be so gentle as we were. His men will murder those who are not taken to appease the Duke’s lusts and this place will be burned to the ground and forgotten as if it were never built.”

  From her face, I could see that she knew this to be true and I thought for a moment that she might cry. “Oh, why did I have to be born like this?” she asked herself. It was the first and last time I heard her express a hatred of how she was. Her face steeled and she spoke to me. “Captain Charing, we will leave tomorrow at first light. Your men will make camp outside of the village and I will spend the day saying my goodbyes.”

  I didn’t give her an argument; I could tell at once that I’d have been wasting my time doing so and I was old enough to tell when a task is futile and wise enough to not try and alter the inevitable.

  “Of course, my lady,” I said. “I would like to post guards on the roads close by. I do not expect the Duke to get here soon, indeed he may never hear about this place, but I should not like to take the chance when there is no need for the risk.”

  “That will be fine, Captain Charing. I am sure your men will prove to be excellent sentries.”

  We left her to it and made our way out through the few streets that comprised the village. The hill from which we’d first overlooked the houses below was as good a site as any for us to camp and we pitched our tents there, where we had a vantage over the valley below. Craddock arranged for patrols and guards to be set, as I was wary of the unexpected.

  The First Cohort usually travelled in silence. We’d seen so much that even a soldier’s bravado seemed like a waste of effort. All the tall tales had been told long ago, though a few of the better ones were occasionally reincarnated for a repeat telling. This silence had remained as we made our way back to the site of our intended camp, but once the ration packs were out and we’d offered our toast to Stabber, the talking began. When something changes, and does it gradually, it’s easy for this change to happen without being noticed. It’s the sudden changes that seem jarring. This was how it happened on the first night that we found the Saviour. Our camps were usually muffled, quiet affairs, even when we were in safe lands. On this evening, the men talked more than I’d heard from them in many years. I wondered if it was my own failing that I’d let things go so far. I often walked amongst the men in the evenings, talking about old times and what our futures held. I think we were all affected by what we’d become, and I had not escaped those feelings either.

  “Did you see the look on that dark-hearted bastard’s face when Chunky cut his head off?” said Scram. “Looked like he was shocked that we’d dare!”

  “He flopped and turned even as I stuck his bits into a sack!” said Chunky. “But his head stopped its complaining when the fire got hot!”

  “No one kills one of us and gets away lightly. Not even Warmont’s specials.”

  I walked to a campfire close by that they’d somehow managed to coax out of the wet, wiry scrub that they used for fuel. There were more soldiers huddled around, speaking like men who looked towards their future, rather than pretending that it didn’t exist. I didn’t tell them that we’d had it easy for the last few years and that what we’d done today was going to turn out to be the hardest thing we’d ever done. I doubted they’d care – a man who fights and dies for something he believes in has lived a better life than he who dies of old age having accomplished nothing. I thought again of the rebels we’d defeated recently outside Nightingale and their leader Ragar. It could have been that they weren’t so different from us after all – they’d only had the bad luck to start a fight they couldn’t win. Just like we in the First Cohort had done on this day.

  “Is she really the Saviour, Captain?” asked Heavy, squatted down with a group of other soldiers. He knew she was, he was just looking to hear it affirmed by me.

  “That she is, Heavy. I felt her power – she’s like nothing else I’ve come across. Not for a long time at least.”

  “What’re we going to do now? Can we hide her from Warmont?”

  “I need to think about it. Give me an hour or two. We’ll be leaving at first light though, so don’t get too comfortable in your arse print.” I smiled at his impatience. I didn’t see it as a sign of weakness that I admitted uncertainty. They knew I wasn’t hasty and besides, when I thought about something for a while it was always because it was something that demanded its due considerat
ion.

  “Captain?” asked Newt. “There’s something special about her, isn’t there? Even if she wasn’t the Saviour, she’d be wasted out here.”

  “I reckon,” I replied.

  “I had a daughter like her. Brown hair, sharp eyes. She wasn’t afraid to tell her old da’ off, even when she was only knee high,” said Dueller.

  Had he told us this even one night before, the conversation would have tailed off into silence, as morose faces stared into the empty space before them, lost in fleeting memories of earlier times. Tonight was different.

  “Aye, you’ve always been easy bullied, Dueller,” said Knacker. “I reckon your wife had you right under her thumb and that’s why you was two feet tall when you joined the First Cohort.”

  “He’s hardly even two feet tall now, is he? They say you shrink when you get older. I’m sure he’s getting smaller.”

  Dueller was short in stature, hardly up to my chin, and outside of the First Cohort didn’t tolerate it being mentioned. He’d fought many an outsider over the matter and he was good at it, hence his name.

  “Is that so? Well it’s a wonder you’re bigger than a foot, isn’t it, you old sod,” replied Dueller to the mocker. “At least I’ve got a cock and two balls to sow my seeds.”

  “Your balls have dropped then, have they, Dueller?”

  I smiled at the campfire raillery and pushed myself to my feet, clapping Dueller on the shoulder as I did so, to give him moral support for the ongoing battle of wits.

  After another hour, during which I spoke to most of the men, I headed back to my tent for some contemplation. I wasn’t surprised to find Ploster waiting for me. He looked tired and haggard.

  “You look like you’ve been kicked by a horse,” I told him honestly.

  “I feel like it, I assure you.”

  “At least you’ll sleep well tonight.”

  “Maybe. That would make a nice change. What do you think of the Saviour?”

  I hadn’t imagined that he’d come to my tent to talk about his sleep, nor anything else that we might occasionally talk about to pass the time into the late hours.

  “She’s got power. A vast well of it. I doubt she has the faintest idea what she’s capable of,” I said.

  “I felt that power too,” said Ploster. “She’s inexperienced though. If Warmont’s Third had been given the opportunity, I think he might have overcome her. He was a vile old creature, but clever with it. I don’t think he’d have come out here if he didn’t think he could chain her.”

  I couldn’t deny what Ploster said. I also knew what the Emperor commanded and he could call upon powers far in excess of what Warmont had available to him. “She’ll grow into it,” I ventured. “We’ll take her far away until she’s old enough to know what she needs to do.”

  “There’ll be a lot of death in these lands while we wait.”

  “There’s been death in these lands ever since Malleus smashed the gates of Hardened and sent in his murderers.”

  “We were amongst them, don’t forget it.”

  “I’ll never forget! And now we’ve got the chance to forge a new path for the First Cohort. I feel it, Ploster. I never knew it until I met her, but now it burns within me!”

  “You’re already changed, Tyrus,” he said with a slight smile. “I can see it in how you look and how you carry yourself.”

  “I’ve led us to do some bad things. Always in the name of the First Cohort. I know now that I have not always chosen the best path for us.”

  “We have all made mistakes, and we all follow you willingly, with our eyes open.”

  “I have often thought that the Cohort is like a cage on wheels. Within the cage, we are free to move and act, but always there is the hand of another directing the cage itself. No matter what I’ve tried, that cage has taken us forever, inexorably, along a path that is not of my choosing. The Saviour is the key to our cage, Jon. I will risk everything for her.”

  “Even the First Cohort itself?”

  “We have cast our lot with the Saviour. I have told her that we will defend her for an eternity, if she will save us. The bargain is made.”

  “And what of our bargain with Warmont?” he asked softly. I knew he was not against me, and asked his questions that I might be able to work it through in my own head.

  “Fuck Warmont! I have made my decision. If he tries to stop us, I will drive my blade into his throat if I am given the opportunity!”

  I knew it sounded as though I had the zeal of the converted, but in my heart I felt as if a door had opened – the door to the metaphorical cage I had described to Ploster. Sometimes a man can be trapped for so long, that even when he is offered his freedom he is scared to take it. When a man who has been imprisoned for all of his life sees that his cell door has been left open, he can be too scared of the unknown to dare look and find out what is beyond the door. I was not that man.

  Ploster’s next words surprised and frightened me. “Welcome back, Tyrus. Welcome back.”

  I had not yet recovered from this shock when I was delivered of another. The chatter of the camp died away outside, it’s manner so sudden that both Ploster and I noticed it at the same time.

  “Captain Charing,” someone said from outside my tent. I recognized the voice as that of Corporal Gloom.

  “Yes, Corporal?”

  “Our lady is here to see you,” he said.

  I went immediately to the tent’s entrance and pulled it back. “Don’t stand there gawping, Corporal,” I advised him. Then, “Come in, my lady.”

  She hardly needed to duck to enter. She was dressed in practical clothing for travel and had a pack over her shoulders. It seemed pitifully small and seeing it, I doubted that she’d had much experience of travel. We had plenty of that to go around and enough supplies to cope with most eventualities.

  “Am I stuck with ‘my lady’?” she asked, looking confused at the formality.

  “I’m afraid you are,” I said, smiling so that she knew the title was not meant to be anything for her to concern herself with. I offered her a seat and she took it.

  “I have spoken to my friends, such that I had. I had hoped they would be upset at my leaving, but I felt only their relief. Am I selfish to have hoped that I would be missed?”

  “Not selfish, my lady,” said Ploster. “They have been brave to have sheltered you. I’m sure they knew what the consequences of it might be.”

  “I am lifting a burden from them by going away.” She sighed, running fingers through her shoulder-length chestnut hair. “I suppose I can’t blame them.”

  “You have been given the greatest burden of all,” said Ploster in reply.

  Her face told a picture, albeit only briefly. Then her expression hardened in a way that I would become used to as either the young woman or Saviour came to the fore within her, though of course they were one and the same.

  “What are we to do?” she asked.

  “I had planned for us to march to the north. As far from Warmont’s lands as possible.”

  “Have you been to the north, Captain Charing?” she asked.

  “No, I have not. I hoped to find a city where we can work.”

  “Until I have grown old enough to fight?” she asked, with a glint in her eye.

  “Until you have grown into yourself, my lady,” I answered.

  “North of us there is nothing. Five hundred windswept miles of bleak, treacherous moors and marshlands, with hardly a town or village to see. Then there are foothills of stone and scree, where snow falls for half of the year, barely thawing before the new year’s blizzards begin again. After that, there are mountains. These are colder and higher than any in the Emperor’s lands and here the snow never melts. There are no people, but there is life, cruel and ancient. You do not want to fight it.”

  “How do you know this?” asked Ploster.

  “I have flown there. I have ridden the warp and the weft until I saw them.”

  “What is there beyond the mountains?
” I said.

  “I don’t know. I was not able to go past them. Either there is no warp and weft so far to the north, or there is something which blocks it.”

  Ploster looked worried at that thought, for the girl’s words had more significance than she realised. He was given no chance to pursue it.

  “Tell me what fares in Duke Warmont’s lands,” she told me.

  I assumed that she had learned enough about Warmont himself that she did not need to hear me repeat it. “There is rebellion,” I said. “Not enough to unseat him – the Emperor won’t permit that – but enough for him to be discomfited by it. As soon as he crushes one minor uprising, another begins.”

  “Why does the Emperor allow it to continue?” she asked.

  “The Emperor’s motives are his own. Maybe he is happy with an excuse for his nobles to exercise cruelty. It could be that he likes to see hope rise in order that he might crush it utterly. He is not a man I ever understood.”

  “Though of course he is not a man, is he?” she asked.

  “No, not anymore. Not for a long, long time. There may have been some dregs of humanity left within him when we served, but I know he embraced the darkness willingly. It took him and he welcomed it.”

  I could see she had many questions and I would have answered them honestly, even though it would have shamed me, but there were more pressing matters for us to resolve. There would be time to speak of history later and I was relieved that I would not have to deal with it now.

  “We won’t go north,” she said with finality. “Where else can we go?”

  I knew the answer. “The Duke’s town of Treads is in rebellion. It is a long march, but it has high walls and backs onto the sea. Farthest is also in rebellion, but as its name implies it is further along the coast. Warmont will need to come through Treads before he can take Farthest. If you agree, we will make the journey to Treads and hope that we can reach it before the Duke’s armies lay it under siege. And pray that we can convince the people to let us within.”

  “Captain Charing, we will go to Treads.”