Soldiers' Redemption (First Cohort Book 1)

by M. R. Anthony

  We stole what supplies we needed and untethered the horses, driving them off into the night. Anything which remained that Bonecruncher’s men might have used, we burned, to deny them an advantage. We returned to our camp, successful and elated.

  Eleven

  We did not delay in breaking camp the next day. As we mustered, I asked our lady if she could sense Bonecruncher’s infantry.

  “They are some miles behind us,” she said. “And they are moving already.”

  “I am not surprised,” I said. “Their leader is not sympathetic to his men.”

  “I sense a void with them, as if the strands leading there have been cut.”

  “That will be Bonecruncher,” I told her. “He’s the least of Warmont’s Five, but magic is of little concern to him. I have once seen him stride through an onslaught from three casters in the streets of Blades, who had destroyed a hundred of the men he had sent to kill them. His flesh charred and blistered, but the sorcerers could not harm him greatly. They tried to escape, but he is fast and caught them. Their deaths were unpleasant.”

  “I will kill him if he finds us,” she said. There was a sudden heaviness in the air and I knew she had gone away, probing at the void which surrounded Bonecruncher, looking for its reason and its weakness, learning about it. I stared up at her and I believed every word she had just said.

  Now that we were no longer escorted by the enemy cavalry, we were able to set a greater pace. We usually made forty miles each day, but had the capacity to travel faster and for longer. With Bonecruncher’s men behind us, I wanted to reach Treads ahead of any siege. If we arrived late, we would be denied access to the town. I spoke to Ploster about it.

  “Bonecruncher has caught us unawares. I did not think that Warmont would have committed so many men to this region,” I said.

  “Warmont himself told you that he had located the Saviour. Just before we defeated the rebels outside of Nightingale. He did not tell you when they had found her and the Duke is a cunning man. He does not tell all of his vassals what he knows. We were a tool for him. A useful tool, but a tool nonetheless. If he told you about the Saviour, it is likely that he knew that the time for secrecy had passed.”

  “He was wrong, then. I still believe Dag’Vosh was looking to double-cross his master.”

  “Who knows?” Ploster responded. “Warmont is a capricious man, and it is not unheard of for him to spread mistruths and rumour, even when there is no benefit for him to do so.”

  “Aye, that’s true enough,” I said. “In the end, all that matters is that we have the Saviour and Warmont does not.”

  “There are many enemy pieces on the map and they move all of the time. We cannot foretell the position of these pieces, nor hope to second-guess everything that might be a peril.”

  I nodded at Ploster’s words. I had observed that as a soldier got older, he tended to develop a fatalist view of the world. Whatever would happen to him, would happen. As the First Cohort’s commander, I was not immune to these feelings either. I always had to answer to someone, was always at their beck and call, at least as far as I permitted it to happen. We were all pieces on that map.

  I was not a caster, but had once heard Ploster describe the warp and the weft of our world as a thing of great beauty and order when viewed close up. Minor magicians and sorcerers could control this order with ease in order to cast their spells. When you stepped back, the warp and the weft became rapidly more complex – exponentially harder to fathom and control. Even the most powerful of sorcerers found their limits when they tried to pull at these threads and many were driven mad by their desire to control the impossible number of permutations and opportunities that the threads present.

  If you pulled back further again, if your mind was capable of viewing the warp and weft in even a tiny fraction of its entirety, you would see that everything looked like chaos as threads wove hither and yon, without rhyme or reason. I think that without knowing it or seeing it, a soldier accepts this chaos and accepts that his life is at the mercy of many things that he cannot control. Those who can live comfortably with this acceptance are the ones who are best placed to move with the ebb and flow of their lives. It seems strange, but I believed that a man who is aware that his death could come at any moment is better placed to avoid it than a man who fears it.

  I drew myself back to the present, to find Ploster patiently walking at my side.

  “The citizens of Treads are not going to welcome us with open arms, you know?” he said.

  “Of course they are not! We will have to earn their trust. It is in our favour that we have no history with this town. Had we crushed their armies and killed their people a dozen seasons gone, I would understand that they would hate us greatly. However, we have done them no great wrong, so it is our reputation upon which they will judge us. It is far easier to change the mind of a person when they can observe your actions to be in line with their own. Actions are provable, a reputation is subjective.”

  “I hope it will be so simple, Captain,” he responded.

  “I don’t think for one moment it will be simple, Ploster! We will be hated and feared by them. Even as we fight for them, they will treat us with disdain.”

  Our lady had caught these words. “And will this disdain have been fairly earned, Captain Charing?”

  “Aye my lady. That it will have been – twice over and more. We will have earned everything we get, but it will not turn us from our cause.”

  She looked at me with sadness. “You are not evil men.”

  “No, my lady, we are not. Most soldiers do not revel in what they do. They may talk as if it’s a game to them, but when the lights are out and we lie alone, most of us pray that if we are judged we will not be found wanting.”

  “I will not find you or your men wanting, Captain. I have seen.”

  “The Saviour has an open heart and the ability to heal, my lady. We all pray that it is enough.”

  Again, there was that look. Pure, unbridled and unquenchable determination. “Captain Charing, if you believe in one thing, believe that it will be enough.”

  I smiled at her. “My lady, I am starting to believe. Will that suffice?”

  She smiled back. “It will Captain Charing, for the moment.”

  After that, we marched, reaching Treads at mid-morning of the fifth day. Even when we were more than a half-day from the town’s walls, it was apparent that this was no small backwater like Nightingale or Turpid. There were well-paved roads for us to travel along, allowing us to march more quickly. There were fields to either side of the roads, with stone walls and hedges demarking their boundaries. It may have been my imagination, but the air felt warmer and drier. I must have been mistaken, since we were far to the north and the climate here was not renowned for its clemency. The wind which had been with us for so long had gone and our already high spirits were lifted once more.

  Merchants and itinerant tradesmen passed us often, or we passed them. They gave no indication of poverty, with carts and wagons loaded with goods bound to and from Treads.

  “What news from the town of Treads?” I asked one man who travelled on a horse-drawn cart with a lady I assumed to be his wife.

  “Fear and worry. So business is booming!” he exclaimed, giving no indication that he recognized us from our livery.

  “What about the rebellion?” I asked him in puzzlement. “Has the Duke not sent his men here yet?”

  The man snorted. “The whole of the north-west is in rebellion! Warmont won’t send his men up here yet.” At that, his wife elbowed him firmly in the side.

  “Assuming you are not the Duke’s men,” she smiled, apologetically. “We are simple merchants, you understand, with no interest in politics.”

  “We are not the Duke’s men,” I told her. “Is there is no word or rumour about the Duke’s activities in the region?”

  “Not a thing,” said the man. After a pause, “And I hope it stays that way too.”

  We left them to their journ
ey and continued on our way to the town ahead.

  “The Duke will not give up his lands,” said our lady.

  “You are correct - he will absolutely not give up his lands. It is a long way from Blades to reach here and some of Warmont’s men will be even further afield. It takes time to summon them all and prepare for an extended campaign so far away. Be certain though: his men will come and they will not leave until the Duke’s goals have been accomplished.”

  “I can feel that he will seek to make an example of Treads and Farthest,” she told me. “I am not sure how, but I catch glimpses of a walled town in flames. If this is a vision of the future or merely a vision of a possible future, I do not know.”

  “Have you had such visions before?” I asked her, troubled at the notion that the future of Treads might already have been determined.

  “Only once. I dreamed of dead men seeking redemption.”

  “The future is not yet decided,” I said with firmness. “Nothing happens until it happens, and if you have the will and the resolve, I am sure that the future can be moulded.”

  “Let us hope so, Captain Charing. My vision was a simple, powerful image. Sometimes a picture needs to be accompanied by words, to put the image into context. We must not second guess ourselves in order to try and alter something we fear might come about.”

  “I am not afraid of the future, my lady. Not anymore. My only fear is that no matter how hard we fight, that it will not be enough.”

  She didn’t respond to that and I wondered if I’d been given too much time to think recently. The march had not been especially long, nor especially arduous, but I was prone to sinking into deep thought when given the opportunity. I always looked for answers and even when there were none to be had, I would often find my mind plagued by its own ceaseless wondering. I had not been so afflicted as a younger man, but the years had altered me greatly.

  Soon, we came to Treads. The town had been built upon a low headland, jutting out into the sea. The walls were not as high as Lieutenant Craddock had remembered them, but they were a formidable defence of thirty feet high, with crenellations running their full length. From what I could see from afar, the walls did not completely enclose the town, merely stretching across the width of the headland. What spoke of prosperity was the number of dwellings which had over spilled the confines of the wall, and these had been constructed without the comfort of its protection.

  The sky happened to be a clear blue on this day and seagulls soared high overhead, their plaintive cries reaching us where we marched far below.

  “It’s quite pretty, isn’t it?” our lady said.

  “It looks a lot nicer than most of the shit holes we’ve visited,” I admitted grudgingly.

  As we came closer, advancing along a wide road which led over a gentle downward slope covered in cultivated fields, it became steadily more apparent to the trained eye that all was not normal. The town’s gates were shut, something which I would not have expected to see in peacetime. There was also dark smoke hanging low over the buildings, suggestive of industry. I had never visited Treads before, so perhaps this was usual, but it looked as though the town’s forges worked flat out. There was also a steady flow of foot traffic heading towards the city from the surrounding lands, but little sign of people leaving.

  “It doesn’t look right,” I told our lady. “More importantly, it doesn’t feel right.”

  “They are preparing for war,” she replied, staring into the distance.

  “I am glad that they are under no illusions about what is coming for them. Times may be good for that merchant we met, but the people here are soon going to find out what they have undertaken.”

  She could have responded with a rousing platitude about how our arrival would save the town or turn the tables on the Duke’s plans, but she did not. She was not prone to uttering empty words or promises.

  When we were within a mile of the town’s outskirts, I had our standard bearer hoist up a flag of peace. I could see men between the battlements of the walls, standing out as tiny grey dots, watching us. I was sure that they would have already realised who we were by our colours and there would be a great deal of activity happening within Treads as a result of our approach.

  The people we had passed on the roads earlier that day had seemed undisturbed by our presence, as if near six hundred heavily armed men with scars and tattoos was no cause for alarm. These other men and women who were heading towards the safety of the walls were not so sanguine, and I saw many hang back until we’d gone by, whilst others picked up their speed until they disappeared into the streets on the outskirts of the town.

  Treads was well laid-out, even beyond its walls. A smooth, stone road led directly towards the main gates, several hundred yards away. The houses here were not the slums that you might expect. Treads was wealthy and the only thing it lacked was space. I guessed that some of the dwellings out here were well over a hundred years old, and built for permanency. As we got closer to the walls, these buildings loomed higher above us, crowding on either side. We checked the windows as we passed, not wishing to be struck by missiles hurled by eager citizens, or indeed have the contents of their chamber pots poured down onto our heads.

  “It looks almost deserted,” our lady said.

  There was little sign of life on the streets. I’d expected there to be a throng in a place like this one, accompanied by shouts of hawkers peddling their wares, or children playing. There were a few people here and there, but they showed no sign of industry. Many stared open-mouthed as we trooped by, others scurried inside, slamming their doors behind them – as if that would somehow prevent our entry were we of a mind to try and force it.

  “Most of these houses look empty, too,” I commented. There is something about an empty house that makes it feel forlorn, even when the windows have no boards. I had no way to be sure that the occupants had gone, but this area had an air of the abandoned. “They know that war is coming – and soon.”

  “It seems such a shame,” she replied, her eyes taking in the sights around her. “I imagine it was so full of life before this.” She may have been the Saviour, but her experience of the world had so far been limited, much of it to what she could see as she’d travelled the strands of power from her hiding place in the village.

  “The price of freedom has always been high, my lady. The men who would take it from you will never return it graciously, and these men are always strong.”

  “Warmont has strength, but he will not have our motivation. How can he?”

  “People like Warmont do not think or act like anyone else. He is driven by his own needs and desires, which are so detached from the desires of other people, that you cannot possibly guess what drives him - at least not until you have done his bidding for years. I know the Duke and he is not lacking in motivation, though it is driven partially by fear of what the Emperor might do to him if he fails.”

  The great gates of Treads were now close ahead. I studied them briefly – they were made from heavy slabs of black wood, almost twenty feet high and fifteen feet wide. I’d seen this wood before – it would be thick, ancient and as hard as steel. Holding the gates together were broad iron bands, painted in black to protect them from the sea air. Huge studs clamped wood and iron together, forming a barrier that was only slightly more vulnerable than the surrounding grey walls. To the side was a much smaller, but equally sturdy postern gate, just wide enough for a cart to enter. This gate was open, with people coming in and out. There would be a chamber behind it which could have a vast block of stone dropped within, effectively sealing the postern in times of extreme need.

  It pays a soldier to take precautions when in uncertain situations. High above us, the men we’d observed were now clearly identifiable as archers. There were a hundred bows at half draw pointing down at us. We kept our shields at the ready, though we did not wish to appear hostile.

  I called the First Cohort to a halt and made my way to the fore. Our lady followed unbidden, he
r horse gently nudging aside the men in her path. Lieutenant Sinnar and Corporal Langs made haste to follow her, their shields at the ready. She brushed them away, with a whispered comment that I did not hear.

  I did not beat about the bush. “I am Captain Tyrus Charing of the First Cohort. We have come to join you!” I shouted. “Who might I speak to in order to gain access to your town?”

  On the battlements above the gate, I saw a tall woman lean forward, as if she desired to look at us more closely. “I am Syla Frost, of the Treads Council. You are not liked here, Captain Tyrus Charing of the First Cohort. Please leave at once.”

  “War is coming to you, Magister Frost. Duke Warmont does not tolerate rebellion in his lands.”

  “Do you think we are not aware of this, Captain Charing? We are prepared and we will outlast any siege. Now begone, before I have my archers let loose upon you!”

  “We no longer work for the Duke. We have found the Saviour and we have sworn to protect her. Your cause is our cause for as long as our lady desires it.”

  “I don’t see any Saviour amongst you, nor can I detect a being of great power here. I sense your company sorcerer, but he is of only middling ability.”

  I heard Ploster mutter to himself at this dismissal of his powers. He wasn’t a first-tier caster, but he had much experience and had learned many tricks.