Cry of the Newborn

by James Barclay

  Yuran moved back to the table and picked up his wine. It was cold outside and the fires around the hall struggled to keep the chill from the air. There had been the first solid snowfalls of dusas these past two days and conditions out in the field were only going to get worse.

  'This is a bad country in which to battle in the ice and frost,' said Yuran. 'The plains channel howling winds across the fields, the snow drifts so deep it could cover this castle and the temperature can drop enough to freeze the blood in a man's body. Your men and mine lodge in tents near Neratharn. The enemy has superior structures. They have the supply of the Conquord behind them. We have barely enough to feed ourselves, meal to meal. We have taken too much time to marshal ourselves. If they hold out for ten days, they can beat us.'

  'The battle will not last ten days,' said Rensaark. 'They are outnumbered three to one at least. They will barely last a day against us.'

  Yuran shook his head. 'They have heart and hope still. And they will know by now some of what has been happening to the south. They will soon know that bastard Del Aglios is marching to help them. Marching through my country with nothing to slow him bar the weather.'

  'He will have nothing but the bodies of his citizens to bury,' said Rensaark. 'And he will have no choice but to chase us all the way to Estorr. A city that will be ours already. They have lost and they know it.'

  'And this new weapon. These children who can bring down mountains? You don't deny they are a threat.'

  'Indeed not. But unless they can fly, they cannot help the Conquord at Neratharn either. Relax, Thomal. Take a bath or something. Soon, the threat of the Conquord will be gone forever and we can forge a new peace with independent states. Just as it used to be. And you will be the hub of it all. King Yuran, backed by the might of King Khuran, need never fear invasion again.'

  Yuran took his leave of Rensaark and walked back to his private rooms in the castle. As always, what he said was so plausible. But there was a flaw if only he knew where to uncover it. And the nagging doubt remained that Rensaark was playing him for an imbecile, using him to expand Tsard.

  Yuran ordered water to be brought in for a bath before sinking into his favourite leather chair to soak up the warmth of the grand open fire in his hearth. Presently, he heard his servant arrive and he moved though to the baths to prepare. He frowned on seeing the kitchen lad who had pushed in the heavy, wheeled urn to mix his bath. He was older than most of them for a start, but thin and rather bedraggled. Like someone had starved him and rolled him in mud before letting him attend his king-in-waiting.

  'A bit old for this task, aren't you?' he said. 'And a mess, too. Am I running out of kitchen boys?'

  'No, my Lord,' said the lad. He turned, his head bowed. 'I am sorry if I give you offence. None was intended.'

  Yuran waved his hand. He had more important matters to consider. 'Just mix my bath. The rosemary essence tonight, I think.'

  'I had to speak with you,' blurted the youngster suddenly.

  Yuran sighed. 'If you are petitioning for food, I have none. If you want to join the legions, report to the master-at-arms at the basilica. Now, finish your job and go before I have the guards drag you out.'

  'No,' he said, and Yuran was so surprised he let him speak on. 'Because I need a place to hide and you need a defence against the rise of the Conquord, whether the Tsardon defeat them or not. You are alone and adrift. So am I. And there is a power coming to this world that you cannot deflect with mere swords.'

  'And I suppose you can, is that right?' Yuran's hand had strayed to the hilt of his gladius. 'I have enjoyed our talk but you are out of time, whoever you are.'

  'Who am I?'

  The boy raised his head and Yuran moved backwards, transfixed. Under his dirty blond hair, the boy smiled and a sweep of warm green flowed across his eyes, settling to a neutral grey. Yuran's gaze dropped to the column of water the boy supported on one outstretched palm with no vessel to contain it. He pointed vaguely but no words would come.

  'Don't be afraid,' said the boy. 'Let them fight. Let dusas pass. Bide your time and hide me. And one day it will be you and I who rule this world. Not today. Not this year. Perhaps not in ten years. But one day. All you have to do is trust me.'

  Yuran felt as if he were choking. There was a thumping in his head and a tremor in his limbs. He groped for a wall and leaned heavily against it. The Tsardon with the dread in their eyes had all spoken the truth. And here stood one of them now. A boy who could make a mountain fall.

  'Who are you?' he managed.

  The boy smiled again. 'I am the one who sees the truth. I am Gorian Westfallen and I am humbly at your service, Marshal Yuran.'

  Chapter 72

  848th cycle of God, 16th day of Dusasrise 15th year of the true Ascendancy

  Under his eye-patch the itch had begun again. The scar was infuriating, ever more so as the weather got colder. The discharge, he wouldn't think of it as tears, froze and pushed at the sides of the wound. He let his hand trail down the length of it, all the way around his right cheek and to the hinge of his jaws.

  The surgeon had called it luck. The Tsardon blade, filthy with Scintarit mud, had glanced rather than hit him full force. If it had, he would have been dead rather than standing here, one of the few survivors of the rout. Yet, as he looked out over the defences to the sea of enemies assembled in front of him, he wondered whether it wouldn't have been better to have died. To preside over one defeat was hard enough to bear. Two was reason enough for suicide. And defeat it would surely be.

  The bird from Gestern had cheered the senior team and given great heart to the legions massed to defend but the reality was out there for all to see. Roberto was four days away and that was two days too many. They had so nearly done it. The legions adrift in Atreska picking away at the advancing Tsardon and rebel forces. They had bought the defenders time to reinforce and build. To bring up every piece of artillery they could find and repair, arm every citizen strong enough to stand and drill the legions to new heights of discipline. They had even built a highway-class road running north to south along the back of the permanent defensive structures, to hasten movement. Everything was in place except the force of arms he knew he would need.

  From the southernmost shore of Lake lyre to the sheer faces of the Gaws, the Neratharnese border with Atreska was just nineteen miles

  long. The highway crossing point was heavily fortified and much of the land south impassable to an army. Some great geological event of the ancient past had showered fields of rock down from the Gaws to lie as silent traps for wheel, hoof and ankle. Lookout posts and forts punctuated the length of the border and he would staff them all, though the likelihood of major incursion on this ground was unlikely.

  But it still left him an area of friendly ground, almost two miles long, to defend. He had an armoured gate across the highway, with artillery platforms, oil and rock runs, archer positions and secure staging for cavalry or infantry. He had two other forts a mile apart and he had the Atreskan civil strife of the last decade to thank for the fact they still stood and were maintained. None of it, though, had been built to counter what he faced this cold, crisp dawn.

  He gazed south along the line of his defence. He was proud of what had been built in the short time they had been afforded, much of it before he had arrived and assumed control. The open spaces between the two forts and the highway gate had been blocked by a wall of stone and wood. The whole had been sealed with concrete. It had a rampart for archers and was lined with artillery platforms. But it would not stand up to a concerted barrage.

  Immediately behind the wall stood every other onager he had at his disposal, a hundred pieces grouped in tens. And behind them would stand the lines of artillery and cavalry currently housed in the stockade, corrals and tented encampments a few hundred yards away.

  None of it would be enough. He had twenty-five thousand regular legion infantry and cavalry at his disposal. Three thousand levium would maraud around the north of Lake lyre
and undertake flanking actions. And he had two or three thousand farmers and potters from the Neratharn hinterland. Brave but doomed.

  He looked to the east from his position atop the highway gate. It was hard to believe. He had been surprised by the sheer weight of numbers at Scintarit. Here, it was the level of the betrayal. He had clung to the hope, despite all the fragmented reports coming out of Atreska, that the Conquord alae would remain true. This morning was the final evidence that Yuran and his bastard traitors held complete sway among the Atreskan people.

  Throughout the vast army ranged in front of him were dense pockets of men wearing Conquord armour and weapons. Enough of the artillery he'd seen through his magnifier was Conquord-made to give him a sick feeling in his stomach. But it was the faces of men and women he recognised and that had fought for him that lodged like cancer in his gut. His loyals were going to die under the sweep of weapons forged in the Conquord. It fed his brooding rage.

  He opened his eyepatch to let the cold air wash over the wound for a moment. The cold was stunning on the raw flesh that was smeared with balms against infection and irritation. He blew out his cheeks, enjoying the sensation as it worked through his face down the crack of his cheek and into the stiffness of his jaw.

  'General Gesteris?'

  He turned, letting the eyepatch fall. In front of him stood a messenger dressed in furs and, by the sweat on his face and the smell that surrounded him, fresh off a horse.

  'Yes,' said Gesteris.

  He adjusted the strap on his new green-plumed helmet and smoothed his fur-trimmed cloak down with his gloved hands. His armour was his own, beaten back into shape and polished to a sparkle. He needed everyone to see the remaining scars in the shine and know that it represented the rebirth of a hope that he didn't share.

  'Appros Harin reports enemy staging complete, sir. He advises they will attack imminently.'

  Gesteris managed a smile. 'He is a diligent soldier but he is not asking you to deliver me surprising news, is he?'

  The messenger looked at the ground. Gesteris found that a lot these days. He had never been a man to draw envious glances. Now he drew none at all but for morbid fascination and sympathy. He had no time for either.

  'Did he give you a renewed estimate of numbers?'

  'His estimate now stands at fifty thousand, General.'

  Gesteris nodded. 'In line with my assumptions. You can get back to him safely?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'He is to act independently but not to attack until the enemy are committed against our walls. Go quickly.'

  The messenger slapped his right fist into his chest and ran back through the gate guards and away. Gesteris watched him go. He turned back to the enemy. They were drawn up much as he was. Archers and artillery to the fore, infantry in attendance to build on any breach. And cavalry nowhere to be seen. No doubt what they had was patrolling their flanks and supply lines.

  There were men and catapults as far as he could see to the south and all the way to the lake's edge north. Through his magnifier he had counted five distinct ranks of infantry. No doubt there was a mobile reserve too. Once again, Gesteris thought about sending out riders to try and take down some of the artillery and again he dismissed it. The weight of archers would overwhelm any force he could muster. It was the worst of all worlds. Their doom was standing less than half a mile away and all they could do was watch it come.

  Gesteris frowned, becoming aware of a sound floating to him on the still, cold air. They were singing. It was something he hadn't heard before. Not harsh anthems of imminent victory, the ones that stirred the blood and energised the body, but something altogether more melodious. The bass rumble of tens of thousands of voices rolled across the open space. It raised the hairs on the back of Gesteris's neck and swam through him like the ambling power of an ocean.

  It was a song of melancholy and of loss. He could understand none of the words but the emotion was as plain as a written script before his eyes. It came to him then why they sang, and why every man and woman in his defence listened without thought of raising a song of their own in response.

  'They think they're going to lose,' said one of the gate guards, against the haunting, beautiful dirge.

  'No,' said Gesteris. 'They know they are going to win but they know the cost too. Like so many of us, so many of them won't be going home.'

  Roberto was in no mood for a pause to dispense succour though he felt the pressure of his Atreskan friends to do so. Their country had been destroyed. The level of devastation had taken them all by surprise. On their march south to Gestern, they had travelled routes ignored by the Tsardon. On the way to Neratharn along the highway all they saw was ruin.

  Burned-out towns and villages; evidence of crops and livestock

  taken by force; the bodies of men, women and children littering the roadside and anywhere his scouts and foragers travelled. Some had died under the blades of one or other opposing force. Others had frozen. Some of the youngest had plainly starved, left nothing by an army desperate to fill its stomach.

  The highway was intermittently clogged with refugees travelling to Byscar. Everyone of them was as desperate an innocent as the next. And Roberto knew that he could not take in a single one of them. The army had replenished supplies at Gestern but there would be no more until the battle was done. It had reopened the tensions between Atreskans and Estoreans.

  Roberto was walking his horse at the head of the column to show solidarity with his infantry, who were being marched at a murderous pace. On the highway, he wanted thirty-five miles in a day. Only just possible with the snow and ice beginning to build. He would have made promises about demobilisation and sending his people home but for too many in his army, there would be no home to go to. Morale among the Atreskans was understandably low.

  'Just a gesture,' said Davarov. 'Make my people understand you care.'

  'If they don't know it by now, they never will,' said Roberto. 'And I hardly think that scooping a hungry child into my arms is a cure for our ills. I can't afford the deflection in our focus and I certainly can't afford the loss to our stores. And, Davarov, I have already had to issue warnings about giving food and blankets to people begging at the stockade at night. I need you to enforce those warnings among your people. I am tired of having to post so many guards at the walls. There is a bigger world in trouble out there.'

  'Don't lecture me about the greater good, Roberto,' said Davarov. The big Atreskan master's face was turned away. Roberto knew how hard he fought to contain his frustration. 'These are the people we are supposed to be saving.'

  'Do you think that the look on every orphan's face doesn't cut me to the bone? Do you not think that I crave to help these people? Grant me some respect. But stop to help one and we are morally bound to help them all. It is not in our gift to choose. What is in our control is whether to continue the pace of our march and carry out the Advocate's orders.

  'We are going to be hungry, cold and tired enough when we get there, without giving up the things that keep us alive. And when we do get there, I pray that there is a battle still left to fight. More than that, I pray that we are in a condition to fight it. I cannot let anything get in the way of that chance.'

  'You are condemning people to death.'

  Roberto nodded. 'That's right, I am. And when you're general you can live with the shit decisions instead of me.'

  Davarov turned away but Roberto called him back. 'General,' he said.

  'Yes,' said Roberto, i am. And since we are being formal, let me remind you that I didn't dismiss you. Neither did I ask for your opinion. I understand your concerns but like it or not, there is a greater good to serve. I need you, Davarov. More than ever. Don't turn from me now. Tell your people what must be done and remind them that should anyone choose to break my rules, they will find themselves joining the refugees and their ration shared among those able to follow my orders. I trust I make myself clear.'

  The two men stared at each other, Davarov unwillin
g to back down, Roberto refusing to let the man reach his heart.

  'Dismissed,' said the General.

  In the open sea the mist was a barely remembered dream. Above them, the sky was an angry grey. Snow was coming and the wind whipping up under the clouds was going to make it an uncomfortable day's passage. Already the swell was six feet and was set to worsen.

  Iliev checked the condition of his injured squadmen before heading up on deck to join the others who, with no room below, had all been forced to sleep topside. Patonius had rigged up a makeshift shelter from sail canvas but the nights were very cold and the barrel fires had been put out when the ship began to pitch and yaw. But the Ocenii squadron was bred tough and he heard not a whimper of complaint from any of his men.

  'At least it'll slow the enemy down too,' said Patonius, coming to his side on the starboard rail where he was looking out at the assembled Ocetanas fleet.

  'Let's hope it hit them two days ago or we'll not catch them.'

  'Don't be so sure, Karl,' said Patonius.

  'We've been clearing barely seven knots without sail.'

  Iliev put his back to the rail and looked at the red-faced skipper.

  Like him, she was bare-armed, defying the cold in a plain woollen tunic and sandals. Her hair had been freshly cropped and her face still alive with the memories of the run from the Isle.

  'We're chasing, what, a hundred sails at least,' he said. 'Fresh crews, fit from the journey out of the Bay of Harryn and undamaged by battle. I'm surprised you want to catch them.'

  'Well, I suppose we could come about and try and dodge the two hundred or so that are chasing us. Any preferences?'

  Iliev chuckled. 'They'd be surprised to see us looming up on the horizon. But I don't think the Advocate would thank us for it.'

  'Probably not.' Patonius stared past Iliev at the fleet. 'Any more news on stragglers?'