Soldiers' Redemption (First Cohort Book 1)

by M. R. Anthony

  Then, our lady spoke. Her voice had a peculiar quality to it, which made it carry upwards and outwards, so that we all heard it at the same volume, as if she were speaking to each of us in a quiet room. “I am the Saviour, and these are my men. We have travelled far to reach you. My captain’s words are not false – I know that the First Cohort is not loved, but they have come to me for absolution and I have accepted them as my own.”

  “Go away, girl, you are not the Saviour,” came the response from Magister Frost. “These men have convinced you that you are something which you are not. Captain Charing, did you think to fool us into opening our gates by bringing a hedge wizard with you?”

  I spared a glance over at our lady. Her face was set and her eyes fixed on a point somewhere before her. I recognized her expression as one of absolute determination and certainty. She was not angry – the people of Treads had every reason to view us with suspicion – but I could tell that she had come to terms with the fact that there was to be no hiding herself from now. These were to be her people and if they were to accept her, they must know her for what she was.

  I have said before that I am not skilled with the power, but I felt that I was somehow attuned to it, though I had never chosen to pursue the matter to see where it led. At that moment, in front of the gates of Treads, I felt our lady remove her disguise as if she were shedding a thick, winter cloak. We of the First Cohort had all felt something similar before, back at her village after we had killed the sorcerer Dag’Vosh. She had kept it hidden as we’d marched here, but now her radiance shone anew, as if a great, golden light surrounded her, not quite seen but somehow visible to every man and woman watching from the wall.

  There was a low, rumbling resonance beneath the ground and in the air about us. The air closed in around us, ruffling our hair as it soughed through the streets towards our lady. I had felt Dag’Vosh’s immense power as he had done the same, until Stabber had knocked him unconscious. Our lady was stronger yet and even still, I felt as if she were holding something back. The rushing of the air suddenly stopped, and we all held our breath as the vibration ground into our bones and sent slates cascading down from nearby roofs. The world seemed to pause, as if everything focused on this one young girl, tiny before the great gates of Treads. Just when I expected not only the gates themselves to shatter into a million pieces, but the walls around them too, a voice reached us, cutting clearly through the rumble as if the two sounds did not share the same space.

  “Enough!” said Magister Frost.

  Abruptly, the rumbling ceased to be and we all felt a relief that we had not seen the gathered potential released in an act of violence. Even as I thought that, I told myself that the Saviour would not have done anything so damaging to her people. She had given them a demonstration of what she was, nothing more.

  “Saviour, forgive us. We have waited so long for your arrival,” said the magister.

  Twelve

  For some reason, I had expected the great gates to be drawn creakingly open, in order that we could gain entry to the town. As it became clear that we were to use the postern gate, I chided myself for my fanciful notion that the arrival of the Saviour would require the city’s defences to be swung wide for her. Most soldiers are prone to flights of fancy – we all tell ourselves that our actions can directly influence events and bring them into being. It keeps your mind occupied during the march and makes you think that you have some worth, beyond being a disposable number sent to die against an enemy force consisting of similarly disposable numbers.

  Three abreast, we filed into the town, with me at the lead and our lady by my side. I was worried still about our safety. Even if the people accepted our lady as the Saviour, there was no surety that they would accept us amongst them. In fact, I thought that they would hate us still, even under the Saviour’s aegis. We had a long road ahead of us to win any sort of trust, though I wasn’t so sensitive that I desired it. The First Cohort had lasted this long on its own – we did not require the approval of others in order to become comfortable with who we were.

  The rest of the day saw action, but not the sort of action that I enjoyed. The details and minutiae of planning are necessary, but I preferred action to sitting around a table talking about action. My men were provided with the lower floor of an old warehouse for our lodgings, presumably to keep us out of the way of everyone else. The floor was hard, but the roof did not leak, nor were there rats in any great numbers. We’d slept in many worse places, so we set our guards and made ourselves at home. They tried to take our lady to a grand room elsewhere in the city until she had protested that she wished to remain close to us. As a consequence, she was given a room in a modest house across the street from us. The woman who owned this property could do little more than stammer and gasp at her guest, and was too timid to offer any objections to the ten burly men I posted outside her front door at all times. Burly men with heavy swords and daggers close at hand, with tattoos upon their hands and faces, and eyes that had seen too much of death.

  We met with the Treads Council, comprising two women and one man. They had the commander of the Treads army with them, a woman called Lucy Wolf. We exchanged the customary stares as we sized each other up. She was of medium height, with short-cropped hair and an athletic physique. She wore a metal breastplate and kept twin swords at her sides. I had seen people fight in the twin-blade style – all stance and posture. I preferred our own single-sword method of fighting, with a spare hand for a shield or a sharp dagger to dig into an opponent’s belly when things got close and dirty. In spite of this, I thought I saw something I liked in Commander Wolf.

  For a time, I was ignored while the Treads Council spoke to our lady, as they desperately searched for something about her that would provide reassurance that everything was going to be fine. Our lady had no time for this and dismissed the questions easily. She was learning fast.

  “It is not going to be easy, Magister Scafe. Nothing about the coming times, is going to be easy. We will fight and we will either win or we will lose. What did you expect would happen when you declared yourself free?”

  Magister Scafe spluttered a little at these words, “My lady, we declared ourselves free because our forefathers were free. We no longer wish to bend the knee to Warmont’s men and kiss the arses of his justiciars when they come to collect his taxes. Always when they visit, they take with them a number of our children to sate the Duke’s vile appetites. Enough is enough! We would rather die fighting than have our children stolen from us and our best men conscripted into an army to kill others like us!”

  “Magister Scafe, the town of Treads is doing a great thing,” said our lady. “I am young, but I know many things. I will be a rallying point for your army and the armies of others who would join with us. The rebellion of Treads and Farthest is the first real challenge to Duke Warmont’s sway over his lands. Let us ensure that his wounds are great.”

  “His armies approach already,” said Commander Wolf. “Ten thousand of them coming from the direction of Blades, hardly more than a day away.”

  “Ten thousand?” I asked. “Bonecruncher was not far behind us with another eight thousand, coming from the east.”

  “Shit,” said Commander Wolf. “Our army is trained and prepared, but we had hoped for a delay before we saw the enemy at our walls. Eighteen thousand? It is a lot.”

  “Warmont can field over forty thousand men. Far more if he calls in his reserves. I am not surprised that he has committed so many and so soon. He dare not delay,” I said. “Do you know who leads the ten thousand?”

  “Our horsemen reported seeing a great hulk in blood red armour, striding around the enemy as they made camp.”

  No one wanted to say his name, but I was not afraid. “Gagnol the Blackhearted,” I announced, giving voice to that which they already knew.

  “Who is Gagnol the Blackhearted?” asked our lady.

  “Warmont’s Second,” I replied, almost spitting out the words. “He is no longer a man,
though I remember him when he was. The old sorcerers of Blades shattered his body when Warmont took the city. The Duke crafted some armour for Gagnol – it keeps him whole, but it sucks the life from the people it touches, sustaining the sorcerer within. Some of the men who have served under him for a long time have seen themselves age much more quickly than other men. It is said that Gagnol draws the life from his followers.”

  “Is it only his armour we must fear?” our lady asked.

  “Gagnol is the most powerful sorcerer who serves Warmont. He is almost as dangerous as Warmont himself.”

  At one time in the past, Gagnol had challenged Warmont. In the duel, the Duke had ripped out his subject’s life force and now retained it in a crystal vial, which he kept to ensure Gagnol’s continued obedience. Even if Warmont’s Second ever came into possession of this vial, I thought that the life energies it contained would never be able to merge with the man from whom they had come. Gagnol had sustained himself on death for far too long.

  “So, we face a sorcerer of enormous power and a creature which may as well be immune to magic. And eighteen thousand troops,” she said, without a flicker of concern. “And what do we have to fight them?”

  “Two thousand five hundred infantry, three hundred archers and one hundred cavalry,” said Commander Wolf. “And some walls.”

  “The First Cohort numbers nearly six hundred, and will add their weight to the defences,” our lady told them.

  There was a momentary pause and I saw the members of the Treads Council exchange looks. Magister Frost spoke hesitantly.

  “We have risen against the Duke’s rules at great danger to ourselves. The town is alight with thoughts of freedom, though many have not tasted it. I worry that they may back down from their cause when the realities of our situation strike home. As brave as our people are, they need someone to lead them. Saviour – will you lead us?”

  She drew herself upright, the youngest person in the room by far. “I will lead you.”

  The meeting was soon concluded, but by then the day was at an end. I escorted our lady back to her room, helping her through the narrow, cobbled streets of Treads. Down every street we followed, people stopped and stared, crowding in but not threatening us or blocking the path. I could feel the glowing warmth of our lady’s radiance, drawing them from their homes to see who it was that had come to them. Every pair of eyes was fixed on her, and she walked sedately and regally as though nothing was a care in the world for her.

  “Is this what you were expecting?” I asked, with a small dose of humour.

  “I don’t really know,” she said. “I have thought about it, but didn’t know what people would see in me.”

  “They see their Saviour,” I said, and then, quietly, “And you need to behave like one, rather than as a lost waif.”

  “Yes, you are right,” she replied, taking my words as advice rather than insult. “I am expecting them to flock to me and follow my direction. They need to see what I am, as well as know what I am.”

  “You are wiser than your years,” I said with a smile. “You will need a banner and you will need clothes that separate you from others.”

  “There is no time for these things now.”

  “No, not today, and tomorrow I think we will fight. I will get your men to see what they can do about a banner.”

  “They are still your men, Captain Charing and always will be,” she said.

  “My lady, my men are yours and I am also. My job is to lead them to help in your cause.”

  “And here it all starts, in Treads,” she replied.

  “Treads might seem big to you and indeed it is compared to what you’ve seen before. In reality, it’s no more than a backwater to the Dukedom. A backwater that is just about to become greatly important, but still a backwater. The people here have taken a monumental step, but they have taken it without thinking it through.”

  “Sometimes that is the best way to act,” she said.

  “Sometimes it is. I used to be a rash man, now not so much. The biggest risks always have the biggest prizes, so it may be that the people here have done the right thing, but never lose sight of the fact that they will be scared to their boots about what is coming. Their doubts must not overcome them.”

  “They need a victory, to quell their fears.”

  “No, my lady. I think Treads will be lost and those who do not flee will be slain. The nature of the loss needs to instil battle lust in the hearts of young men and women elsewhere in the Duke’s lands. They need to hear tales of a heroic fight, where the oppressed rebel gives the Duke a bloody nose. The bloodier the better.”

  “All is lost here?” she asked softly. “Before it has even started?”

  “No, not lost. The war will be a long one, I think and this battle only short. Even were we to win here, there would be no peace while the Duke sits in his keep in Blades. Emperor Malleus will be watching this closely and we do not want him to get involved so soon.”

  “Can we beat the Emperor? If all of our stars align and the warps and wefts favour us?”

  I didn’t want to lie; indeed, I would have been incapable of doing so. “I do not think so, my lady. Warmont governs just a small part of the Emperor’s lands and they are not even particularly important, except for what they represent.”

  “If we light the fire here, will the flames not spread to the other lands? Will Baron Vaks be in fear? The Queen of Swords? Duchess Callian? Do these other subjects of the Emperor sit in their lofty castles and worry that one day the problems that best Duke Warmont will become their own?”

  “I do not know the answers to those questions. I have lived a long time and I have learned more than most soldiers, but I can only guess at what might happen.”

  “Guessing is a game I will not play, where I can avoid it. We must act and speak with confidence in everything we do, else our cause is already lost without a fight! The thought of defeat sits badly with me, Captain and I demand that you do not countenance it! From this day, our cause is the defeat of not just Warmont, but the Emperor himself! If I bring Malleus to us sooner by saying these words, then so be it.”

  I admired her even more for that which she had just said. For too long I had remained unchallenged by someone with such forceful views. Even when serving under Warmont, the Duke had not tried to control us, content to direct our actions from afar. I felt a strange relief as I replied – a burden I had not known existed was suddenly lessened. “As you will, my lady,” I told her with a smile.

  With the prospect of fighting ahead, I returned to where the First Cohort had barracked. I felt a strange combination of calm mixed with a vibrant energy, as I always did before a tough fight. Damn but it made me feel good, though I should have been too old to suffer from such excitement. The men felt it too and there was a febrile intensity about us once word had circulated that battle was imminent. To add to the feeling of elation, I also felt something deep down in the pit of my stomach, long forgotten. That feeling was fire. It burned within me as my mind raced over the possibilities of what we might do to sting the Emperor. One part of my mind, detached and rational, warned me from these childish fantasies, but I ignored it for the moment, allowing myself this one time of youthful exuberance.

  “Lucky for us, eh, Captain?” said Lotus as I walked close by.

  “Why’s that, soldier?” I asked.

  “We’re going to get the chance to cut Bonecruncher’s other arm off and we’re going to rip Gagnol’s helmet off and see what his withered, ugly face looks like after two hundred years.”

  “I’ve often wondered how he has a shit,” said Lurch, interjecting before I could respond to Lotus.

  “Lurch, you stupid tit,” said Dueller. “Didn’t you know the Duke sewed his arse hole up for him? He don’t need to shit anymore.”

  “Yeah,” said another. “I reckon his cock has shrivelled up and fell off into his boots an’ all.”

  “It’ll be like walking around with a stone in your shoe. That’ll be w
hy he’s so pissed off all the time – because his dried cock is giving him blisters.”

  Soldiers have a good imagination when they put their minds to it, and their sense of humour is an earthy one. I won’t deny that I enjoyed the occasional exchanges that I took part in. My enjoyment was interrupted by Corporal Gloom and three of the men who had been posted as sentries. They dragged with them two sullen-faced youths – more boys than men.

  “We just caught these little bastards trying to torch the building, Captain,” said Gloom. “They weren’t much good at it though and this one here almost set himself alight.”

  I loomed over both of the boys and locked gazes with each. I saw that the enormity of what they had attempted had sunk in and they both trembled, their faces stark and pale.

  “Why?” I asked them simply. I left no room for denials.

  “I hate you!” shouted the first boy, dark haired and slender. “You killed my father and I wanted you to burn!”

  So many battles, so many deaths. I didn’t even ask the boy about his father, nor look to give an explanation or seek forgiveness. He had none to give. His father had likely been just another face opposite us in a field. He could have fought like a madman until he was chopped into pieces, or he could have died with a single thrust of a sword and dropped silently to the ground as we slew his comrades. There was nothing that could heal the boy’s hurt, and as we of the First Cohort sought to heal our own wounds it struck home that there would be nothing easy about our journey.

  “I am sorry for your father,” I said to him. This time he did not drop his gaze when I looked at him.

  I sent them away without harm. They might return; if they were wise they would not. I had no concerns that they would be more successful if they tried to burn down our building again. Regardless, the good spirits evaporated in those of the men who’d been close enough to hear the exchange.

  Thirteen