Soldiers' Redemption (First Cohort Book 1)

by M. R. Anthony

  And with those words, it began.

  Seven

  By the time night’s gloom had been replaced by a weary morning light, we’d had our belongings packed for almost an hour. An early start like this was still much longer than we usually slept. The sun was not visible through the clouds and as soon as dawn arrived it brought the drizzling rain with it. The thought of a day marching in the penetrating dampness was not enough to quieten the hubbub of the men, who were impatient to be off.

  The village had furnished the girl with a short, sturdy horse of the type suited for riding in the hills and over the moors. It was a vicious beast, except towards the Horsemaster and the girl. Given the scarcity of horses in these wild lands, I knew that it was a precious gift and I was sure that the girl was aware of the sacrifice the villagers had made to lose the animal.

  I was good with directions in towns and cities – I could usually find my way to where I needed to be, without getting lost or confused by alleyways or back lanes. I was also good with directions in the wilderness, but here on the moors, with their seemingly unending and featureless plains, it was easy to become fooled and I found that I was second guessing myself as to which was the correct way to travel.

  It was fortunate for us that Lieutenant Craddock kept a flock of pigeons in his head. Or at least that’s what we accused him of, for he could navigate his way unerringly across a desert, picking out every oasis on the way. He’d got us safely out of dangerous terrain on more than one occasion.

  “Take the lead, Lieutenant Craddock,” I told him, as soon as it became apparent that I was less certain of the route than I wanted.

  “Yes, Captain,” he said with a salute. There were a few chuckles from the men nearby and one joker commented that I couldn’t find my way out of a paper bag.

  “Watch your tongue, Warble,” I told him with mock threat. “Else you’ll have the watch every night until we reach Treads.”

  The men knew where we were headed, because I had told them. The news had perked them all up.

  “We’ll not be fighting for that old bastard, then?” one man had asked.

  I’d shook my head. “We don’t fight for Warmont now. This time we’ll be inside the walls, looking out.”

  “About time too, if you don’t mind me saying it, Captain. We can’t have him laying his filthy old hands on the Saviour, can we?”

  “He’ll see what the First Cohort is made of if he tries,” I’d responded. The men had even broken into a loud, long cheer. I’d underestimated how little they had liked fighting for the Duke and how much faith they had in me to have followed so far down this bad road. I would not let them down again, no matter what it cost me.

  The rain did not let up on that first day and its persistence began to wear the edges away from the good-natured talk amongst the men. It did not suppress it entirely, but it became more muted, and I hoped it would not be much longer until we escaped from its dreariness. In the centre of our line, the girl sat upon her horse, riding it with an effortless grace as if she had been born in the saddle. I asked her about it and she told me that the villagers had tried to stop her from learning to ride, fearful that she might fall and injure herself, but that she had insisted until they relented. She was headstrong and did not like to have terms dictated to her. I fancied myself as a good judge of character and I could see that she would become a formidable opponent to anyone who showed themselves to be her enemy - as long as we in the First Cohort could keep her alive long enough to reach her potential.

  As we marched, I pondered about my certainty and why I had been so willing to risk everything for her. I was not a rash man, yet I had pledged my life and my troops to this young woman with an ease that astounded me. I had no regrets and would never experience them. Sometimes you know when you’ve made the right decision. It may be that we find it easy to fool ourselves, but it seems to me that you’re not fooling yourself so much as doing that which you should do anyway. When we call ourselves fools, it’s just that lurking, scared part of our minds trying to undermine us and weaken our resolve. I didn’t know if I was contradicting myself when I thought these things. I was not perfect, nor did I strive to be so. The greatest fool of all is the man who is the most certain that he is right in everything.

  By the second day, we were close enough to Nightingale that we could see the black smoke rising into the sky, from where Captain Fide had burned the prisoners alive. The rain was evidently not sufficient to douse the smouldering, even after these few days. The girl drew her horse alongside me.

  “Where’s that smoke coming from?” she asked.

  “That’s Nightingale, my lady. It was in rebellion and we defeated their army only a few days past.”

  “Did you burn their homes to the ground also?” she asked tartly.

  “No, my lady, we did not. We were given orders to hand the town over to the Duke’s justiciars and then his sorcerer led us on the hunt for you. As we were leaving, they burned alive all of the prisoners we had taken.”

  “I have heard of his justiciars,” she said.

  “They are not, by and large, pleasant men. They are trained to be cruel and are not punished for their excesses. The nature of their duties ensures that they only attract the people best suited to fulfil them.”

  “Were you like them, before you pledged to me? I did not see any cruelty inside you.”

  “No, my lady. We have never been like them. Our place has always been on the field of battle. We are hated for what we have done, but we have only ever been true to ourselves as soldiers. We have revelled in it more than we might have done, but that was a long time ago. We are weary of what we had become.”

  “But now you are not weary of it?”

  “Look around you at the men. These are soldiers who have fought on the wrong side without knowing or caring about it. That changed a lifetime past, but by the time they started to know and started to care, then it was too late to correct it.”

  “Everyone can change,” she said. “Sometimes you just need the courage to do it, whatever it may cost.”

  “Aye. We are not lacking in courage, my lady. As I said to you, we have been lost for a long time.”

  “Sometimes you are so lost that you don’t even know it,” she whispered, looking down at my haunted face. Then she raised her voice. “We will take back Nightingale and drive out the justiciars. Kill them all, if you can.”

  There were times when she spoke that the tone of her voice made it clear that she would brook no dissent. I quickly learned to recognize those times, as would any good soldier. On almost all of those occasions, I would accept that the decision had been made and apply myself to offering a solution to accomplish her requirements. I remembered the certainty of youth.

  “What of the townsfolk in the aftermath?” I asked her, already fearful of what her reply might be.

  “At the moment, they have little in the way of choice and I am sure their lives are miserable in the extreme. What will happen to them when their overlords are killed?”

  “I don’t know. The Duke is unlikely to send a significant number of men this way any time soon. Treads and Farthest will keep him occupied for weeks. Months if we can get there in time.” I said this latter without fear of immodesty.

  “Can they come with us?” she asked. My heart fell at the question, worried that she’d already made up her mind.

  “I would rather they did not, my lady. There are other options for them beyond attempting to walk forty miles a day with our men. Lieutenant Craddock estimates it to be six hundred miles to Treads. There are many smaller towns and villages within a hundred miles of Nightingale which would make more suitable destinations. Or they could stay in Nightingale and rearm themselves. We didn’t kill all of the men.”

  “Very well,” she said. “We’ll take the town first and see what happens afterwards.”

  “And we are not to allow Warmont’s men to escape?” I asked, to hear her repeat it.

  “No. If they escape to any
town with a big garrison, they’ll just return as soon as we’ve gone.”

  We did just as she’d asked. I insisted to our lady that we would not risk her within the streets of the town, so left her near the outskirts with a guard of a hundred men. I sent groups of fifty to blockade the main streets out of the town, confident that we’d be able to manoeuvre into place before the justiciars realised we’d switched sides.

  Bold as brass, I entered the town in a long column, ahead of one hundred and fifty fully armed men of the First Cohort. Captain Fide had either been too lazy to find somewhere else to barrack or he’d agreed with my choice, so I found him at the town hall. A number of his men lounged around lazily, ignoring the screaming sounds that came from upstairs. They’d obviously decided to try out a few of the ladies of the town for themselves before sending them on to Warmont.

  “Captain Charing?” asked Captain Fide in surprise at my arrival with a squad of thirty soldiers. He sat at a table with three others of his men. “I wasn’t expecting you to come back to Nightingale.” His expressed shock was compounded by the sounds of metal striking metal, which drifted clearly in from the yard outside.

  “What’s that?” he shouted, surging to his feet. I punched him with a thundering blow. I felt his jaw shatter as I struck him and his pristine white teeth flew into the air. I was not the biggest man in the First Cohort, but I was not far off and I had an imposing presence. I also had a strength that belied even my large size.

  I drew my rune-etched sword and beheaded the closest of his men with a backhand blow. He didn’t even try to defend himself. My men drew their own swords and set about them, slaughtering the fifteen or twenty men in the room. There was little honour in it, but we were only here to kill them in order that we could resume our journey. A good soldier does not give up his advantage in battle. If you let down your guard, or try and fight on the enemy’s terms, you are committing the worst of crimes against your own men, for you are effectively saying that their life is no more valuable to you than the life of an enemy. Whether this was right or wrong I did not care to worry - it is what you must do as soldier. The time to reflect is when the war is over, but in the First Cohort we never had that luxury. I thought it was for the best.

  As the butchery continued both inside and out, I called across five of the men and indicated that we should go upstairs. I paused only long enough to push my sword all the way through the skull of the unconscious Captain Fide and then clambered up the stairs. I knew the building well and it was cramped upstairs. I drew forth a short dagger with my left hand and kept my sword in the other.

  The screaming upstairs had stopped when I arrived, replaced by the sounds of a girl sobbing behind the nearest door. I kicked it open with the sole of my boot and strode in. There were two men there, struggling to get back into their trousers. I saw their scabbards on a table nearby and did not hesitate in stabbing the first justiciar in his guts. The dagger went up to the hilt in his belly, lifting him from his feet as he gasped out in surprise, the agony of it yet to reach his brain. I pushed him away with the clenched knuckles of my sword hand and marched at the second man, who backed away in fear. I thundered a headbutt into his face and he collapsed to the floor with a scream. I crouched and stuck my dagger into him in one smooth movement, killing him quickly. The first man had curled up into a ball, with his hands over his stomach, whimpering as blood oozed out through his fingers, his face as white as a sheet and his jaw set.

  On the bed was a girl, naked and probably no more than sixteen. She had blood between her legs from where they’d brutalised her. She closed her eyes at the pain and in fear that I was about to do the same. I killed the justiciar who had been party to the cruelty and spoke to her.

  “Get dressed and go home. The men who did this will all be dead by the time we are done.”

  From the look in her face I could see that she was too scared to take the chance she’d been offered. Given the time, she would eventually find the courage to take herself home.

  I left her to her misery. It is not that I was dismissive of the sufferings of others, but I could not let myself be consumed by it. If I let myself think of that girl as a woman with hopes and dreams, or if I did the same each time I saw the horrors that men commit, I would add their burdens to my own. I didn’t know if this made me weak, and if I was pushed, I would probably confess that I was fearful to go along that road. We each have our own way of dealing with the things we see and this was mine.

  In the corridor outside, I was just in time to trip a third justiciar as he tried to flee the sword of Loopy. The man stumbled and Furtive was there before me, to plunge a blade into his neck. Others of my men emerged onto the corridor from the side rooms they’d searched. Two of them had bloodied daggers in their hands.

  “All done?” I asked.

  “Yes Captain,” volunteered Leaves. “We’ve got them all. Up here at least.”

  Our business was almost done. In terms of resistance it was definitely over, and all that remained was for us to kill whatever justiciars were left. Runners came in with their reports from the groups I’d posted on the city’s outskirts. There were two reported injuries – one of my men had been cut in the leg, but we’d sling him over a horse and he’d survive. Another man, Spangle, had slipped over on a horse shit and split open the skin on his head because he’d stupidly left his helmet on its cord hanging from his pack, rather than putting it on. He’d live, though he’d never live it down.

  A count of the bodies revealed that we’d killed ninety-two of the justiciars. Mindful that the girl had ordered that they all be killed, I split the men into teams of five and we spent the afternoon knocking on doors and searching the houses. We were remembered by the people, but we had become the lesser of two evils. News travelled fast, even when everyone had their front doors locked and tightly bolted. Mouths were very happy to give the details of where these men were to be found and find them we did, killing them without mercy.

  It was late afternoon when we trudged out of Nightingale, leading a number of the horses that the justiciars would no longer require. The magical bird was silent this time, though many of us had been hopeful we’d hear it sing again.

  “Captain Charing?” she asked when we arrived.

  “One hundred justiciars arrived, one hundred justiciars are slain,” I reported.

  “Thank you, Captain. We have done the right thing.”

  “Yes. We have spoken to many of the citizens as we searched their houses, and I spoke to an old man who claimed to be mayor.”

  “And?”

  “They will not leave Nightingale. It is my feeling that their defeat weighs too heavily for them to come with us.”

  She nodded. “Travelling with the men who killed their husbands or friends would be hard. I was foolish to think it might be otherwise.”

  “Naïve, not foolish, my lady. You will learn to succumb to neither.”

  She didn’t reply, so I spoke of other things. “We’ve still got an hour of light before the darkness will make it too perilous to travel. We should get on our way.”

  “You are correct, Captain Charing. Let us go without further delay.”

  Eight

  While many would deny it, most soldiers like to march. The journey is a time of mental comfort, and if you allow your mind to ignore the future and enjoy the present, it is free from worry. It is true that many soldiers also like the destination, for here lies warm beds, fresh bread and, most often, battle. The younger and more inexperienced soldiers will look forward to the destination simply because they know that it means there’ll be a scrap. After they have seen their friends writhe in screaming agony, or lost a few fingers of their own, that young man will become a veteran and will begin to appreciate that much of a soldier’s time is spent travelling. Here is where much of the bonding takes place. I’ve heard it said that men bond in battle, but I disagree. In the heat of a dirty, bloody skirmish there is no bonding, only the drive to kill the men before you, to overcome them t
hrough guts, will, or simply force of numbers. It is the aftermath where the men bond, when there is time to brag, for everyone knows that another soldier’s boasting is simply his own way of expressing his fears without leaving himself open to accusations of being too sensitive. All soldiers have to boast amongst themselves – it is how they cope.

  The First Cohort had seen almost constant combat over the years. We’d moved from one miserable field to another, at each one overturning the forces arrayed against us, often where we faced vastly superior numbers or were disadvantaged by terrain or poor commanders. Even with this period of fighting and moving, the banter had become almost a forgotten element of the march, as if it were somehow frowned upon. I recognized too late that this was a symptom of the shame we felt about what we were doing and who we were fighting for. You can only brag about something that makes you feel proud. In the days after we set off from Nightingale for the second time, the men talked of themselves as liberators, as if they’d saved fair maidens from a dragon’s breath. We all knew it wasn’t true, but didn’t let that get in the way of spinning a good yarn.

  We remained on the Northdown Moors, but the skies had taken pity on us and the clouds had cleared, sparing us from the incessant rainfall that had plagued us further east. The wind knew no such pity and scoured our faces remorselessly, though it only really bothered our lady as far as I was aware.

  “Do you not grow to hate the wind?” she asked on the morning of the fourth day.

  “How can you hate the wind?” I asked. “It is just there and we can’t change it.”

  “But it’s bloody freezing!” she exclaimed with the dismay of a young woman. “Back at the village we could hide indoors. I used to live with Margie – she was the miller – and her house was always warm, even in winter.”

  I regretted that we had not used our opportunity in Nightingale to procure some warmer clothes for her. The clothes she had were suitable for a time outdoors, but I imagined the wind would cut through their protection as the hours wore on. As I have mentioned before, none of the First Cohort were bothered by inclemency.