The Hollow March

by Chris Galford

  “He gave me away, didn’t he?” Rowan seemed set to pout.

  Essa laughed, patting the hand on her shoulder. “No, darling. I would say all blame lies with you. Shame-shame. You should know better.”

  “Gods! I see time has not dulled the sharpness of your ears.” Voren applauded her.

  But the words dulled her own humor. In a touch of shame, she tugged at her bangs, rolling the strands between her fingers, making sure they still covered her ears. She smiled despite herself, though her eyes fell away. Silly girl. She knew it was irrational. Rurik always chided her about it. Even so, they were the one thing she allowed herself to be self-conscious about. Or was doomed to be—allowance had very little to do with it.

  It was also, tragically, the one reminder left of her mother. Her father took whatever else might have remained. The irony was not lost on her. Drunken fool.

  Voren rapidly backpedaled. “I-oh, I, I mean the sharpness of your hearing. Stupid. Please. I meant no offense…”

  Rurik caught him with a sharp stare, though only for a moment, the lordling's eyes hastily shifting back to her. Rurik’s hand brushed against her thigh, giving her a heartening squeeze. “Are you alright?” he asked. She liked that about him. Always he greeted her with such concern—her ever-faithful lord. It could be frustrating as well, but most the time she appreciated it. It was not a gesture. It was not a show. Annoying as it could be, it was genuine, and the tenderness behind the words and the touch were…reassuring.

  “Mind me not. There is no matter,” she lied, rather unconvincingly she knew. “It will suffice to tell me what you are about, Rowan.”

  Her cousin shrugged. “Shenanigans. But thems aside, I think it time to have ourselves a look about. Us being me. And you. And Voren, darling, you would not mind being our guide would you?”

  “You’ll find none better.”

  “But for my father’s men,” Rurik cut in sourly. Voren threw him a cross look, as much puzzled as anything. Rurik ignored him, though, turning on Rowan instead. “What of me? I would see it with mine own eyes. I have not come so far to see it second-hand.”

  A tutting sound from their guest drew his attention back. Voren shook his head. “Ah, I would not recommend that, milord. Your father gathers quite the host to him.” He spread his arms to emphasize the point. “The town floods with soldiers.”

  “All the easier to slip in unannounced.”

  “All the easier to be spotted. Too many eyes. It would take but a pair to make you, and none would be quick to forget you.”

  “Assal be damned. You too?” Head in his hand, Rurik rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Must every soul take arms against me?”

  Essa gave him a pat on the head. “Only those who seek your well-being. As you recall, love, we did not wish to come at all. Marvel at your prowess in prodding us this far along and be glad.” If there were anything he could be proud of it was indeed his force of personality. Alas, it might have served him better as a nobleman.

  “Quite so, little lord.” Rowan added. “And Voren tells it true. If your father marshals his men, it would be folly to lead you straight into them. Belly of the beast and all that. Besides, Alviss desires the time alone with you, does he not?”

  “He does,” the boy reluctantly consented. “Likely to lecture once and again. I grow weary of it. Must I stay?”

  The question was to Rowan, but his eyes remained on her, searching her for support. On this topic, however, Essa had none to give. He frowned when he seemed to realize her pity was not forthcoming.

  “You must,” Rowan concluded. “But enjoy it! As the sailors say, ‘If you’re warm, dry, and smoking, that’s happiness, no? So keep warm, stay dry and—well, don’t smoke. Filthy looker that. Have to keep our little lord pretty.”

  Rurik swatted at him and Essa and Voren both lost themselves to laughter. “Oh,” she said, grabbing Rurik’s cheek in her hand, “so pretty.” The hand on her thigh immediately pinched the skin beneath her breeches, which caused her, in turn, to give the boy a little slap across the cheek. Voren roared and Rowan clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle his own laughter. Rurik’s hand beat a hasty retreat, to rub his reddened wound.

  That put a smile on her face. Rurik had gained his fairest share of scars from the months abroad, but some bits of noble seemed glued to his core. Her pretty, fussy noble. She rather liked that thought.

  “Worry not, my lord Matair,” Voren said. “I will return them as safe as I found them.”

  “Let us hope for a deal better than that,” Rowan wryly added.

  Rurik looked particularly morose, but so it went. It would not do to come so far, only to lose him to simple and blatant idiocy. Care was needed and the lot of them were far less conspicuous entities than the former lord. Rurik’s eyes alone made him known the world over. Here, he was a legend.

  The boy that rutted the barren wastes of Cullick. That thought always made her bitter. It was not his fault of course—or it was, rather, but not entirely. Better men than he had succumbed to the beckoning of the penis—and Rurik had always been weak when it came to his nethers. It was not as though the maiden Cullick had been the only one he had lured into his bed. The difference was that she had a father with the power to care who she fucked, and the wrath to see injustices avenged. All the pretty talk in the world could not have swayed the mind of Count Cullick, especially when the villain was, to one such as him, little better than the peasant masses.

  One had to see the brightside, though. Had Rurik not gone whoring, she probably never would have seen him again. Essa would probably still be swaying her hips to some tavern’s raucous beat, naught but her cousin to keep her company.

  Essa leaned into Rurik’s cheek and kissed him there, cherishing the warmth of him. Then she whispered, “Next time. You’ve all the time here.”

  As she pulled back, she watched some of the tension ease out of him, only to note the tightening of their guest, as though the apprehension flowed freely from one to the other. For Voren, though, she had no remedy. If the baker was still so skittish around women, all she had to offer were her jokes.

  As she rose, taking Rowan’s hand in hers like a good and “proper” lady, Rurik asked, “Another time,” his voice dark, nearly conspiratorial.

  She patted him on the shoulder. “So wilt it be. If I lie, may my face grow gray and bulbous, my breasts sag to my knees, and all the color be gone from this wretched-mangy hair of mine.” She grinned as devilishly as she might, watching with delight as the slow but steady pace of a smile drew in across his face. He always looked better with a smile.

  “Well then. Best not lie. I would take that as twice the loss.”

  “Oh yes, you poor and wretched soul.”

  * *

  From the moment they ventured onto the dirt of the town proper, it became readily apparent that Voren had not minced words.

  Soldiers roamed the streets of Verdan in throngs, frequently armed, if lacking armor. The standards of a dozen different companies and bannermen fluttered in the mid-day breeze, most unknown to her. Numbers jumbled in her mind and many of the standards looked much the same, but for subtle variations of color and direction. One yellow lion faced right. A blue lion left. A third green lion faced left as well. She cursed the lack of originality many nobles often had.

  What few standards she did recognize were ones she had grown up with. Most prominent was the silver owl, wings stretched as if in flight within the green sea of its backing. The unusual creature was the mark of the house Matair—the mark of Rurik’s family. Supposedly it was an old house, but the lordship was new. Older than her, but still new. Without it, Verdan would have never been founded.

  Even so, she had never understood why their crest had been kept so long. Nobility tended to turn toward the ferocious or the powerful for their marks, at least in her experience. Hence the predominance of lions and drakkons, and the twin gryphons of the Empire itself—though the modern beasts held little resemblance to those noble creature
s that had earned such honor.

  Lord Kasimir Matair had never struck her as an owl. She took him as more of an eagle. Watching from afar, diving down to spear you when you least expected it. Owls represented knowledge. From what she understood from Rurik, it had suited his ancestors, but Lord Kasimir was a soldier through and through. He said little. Reacted harshly. Took his orders and saw them done. And always he was watching with those unyielding eyes.

  He had never done her any wrong, per se, but his gaze always gave her shudders. Those eyes had a way of making one feel remarkably insignificant.

  As for the others, she recognized the one-talon hawk of House Jordell—old friends of Lord Kasimir, and fellow bannermen to Count Witold, the lord of Jaritz. The Jordells were an old family of knights with a touch of land just west of Verdan, where Rurik had found her and Rowan following his flight into exile.

  She spied also the speckled and bloody-beaked falcon of the Gorjes. They were the creatures the count set to hold the river. Supposedly, there was knighthood mingled in there somewhere. Sellswords, the lot of them. Large company, but little skill as far as she had ever seen. Her father used to gamble with a number of them. That alone set the warning bells ringing.

  The rest were a smattering of other birds and beasts of little or no meaning to her. Rurik was the one to ask about banners. They meant as little to her as grains in the sand. However, she still fretted about being seen by them.

  Rowan did not particularly fuss about being recognized, but she did. His side of the family had never lived in Verdan. They traveled there, did business there, but they never lived there. Essa and her father, on the other hand, had lived there more than half her life, until but seven years past. Time took its toll on recognition, to be sure—but seven years was not so long a thing, in a town as small and familiar as Verdan.

  Fortunately, Voren took great care to make sure they remained unnoticed. He knew what paths to take, which people to avoid and which to hail. Furthermore, he knew how to keep himself discrete, which was a marvel with Rowan accompanying. Her cousin was many things, but subtle had never been one of them.

  Verdan was not a large town, by any means. It was a frontier town in an age where the only real remaining frontier lay across the great blue ocean, or east beyond the mountains, where the Talimphates ruled.

  Much of its population were a mix of hunters and old soldier families—retired men that had once served Lord Kasimir in battle and the families that followed them. A small dock and ferry operated along the river bank at the village’s eastern end, but it saw little traffic, save occasional traders from Surin, or from further south along Witold’s territories. The only other visitors hailed from the road they themselves had taken through the thick canopy known as Ulneberg, and in the winter, it was frequented only by messengers trekking back and forth across the Empire.

  Verdan was a place of blood and dirt. Of wind and grass and rain. The paths were not yet cobbled, nor the buildings wrought of stone. It was a place of sound and breath and life—but not the same maddening crash of civilization. Essa had seen what the cities of the Empire had to offer. She did not care for it. There was music there, and culture, but also desolation—the growth of man at the expense of all else. Instead of sound, she found a world consumed by noise.

  Now that noise had been brought to her home.

  But for the bodies buried beneath its soil, Verdan had never seen so many people at one time. It did not feel right.

  Time could be gauged by the unified clatter of many marching boots. Restless fools wandered, hooting and howling at whatever fair piece of tail ventured too close. More than a few whistles went her way, but Voren would take her by the waist and lead her off, whispering assurances or denouncing their idiocy. Occasionally one whistle would be met with another, if Rowan was so inclined. Once, her dear cousin even blew a particularly attractive young man a kiss. Then the fear was blood and fists. Young soldiers were not so restrained a lot, and Rowan’s perceived mockery was an…aggravating sight.

  “Just be glad Matair governs them,” Voren assured her. “Here they are permitted no wine, no ale—no alcohol of any sort. Fat Boge and old Jez are livid about it o’course, but how can the rest of us argue? This way at least we can keep them under control.” Wringing his hands together he added, “And either way, they are making me a mint.”

  Another sign: the leak of greed.

  Looking at the twiggy men to either side of her, Essa could not help the wrinkling of her nose. Greed was unbecoming on Voren. When she looked at him, she remembered the boy she had left—the stuttering, mildly neurotic youth, content to dirty his hands and powder his nose with flour. His father had never made more than their family needed to survive. Now he had a sampling of something more and the thought of the glitter set his mouth salivating.

  Then there was Rowan. He had been a lost cause from birth. Fate birthed him into unknown mediocrity, but that had only made him slaver like a dog at every opportunity for something more. He was a nobleman trapped in a commoner’s body. Gentle as a newborn babe, but coin was his mistress, the one and only he would ever take. She may have grown with him in the woods, but she had no doubt the city held his heart.

  “Hold.” Voren stayed them with his hand. He quick-stepped back along the side of a house, peered sheepishly around the corner. “Assal be damned.”

  Rowan peeked his head out as well. “What is it?”

  “Goody Elsine. Hells almighty. Could it be the third of the month already?”

  Essa remembered Goody Elsine well. She was a kindly lady, fierce with a sewing needle, though somewhat dulled in other areas of existence. The wife, daughter, and mother of farmers, she was every bit the perfect common wife, even if she was not much to gaze upon. Essa used to play with her sons—and fondly remembered several instances where she had roundly thumped all three.

  The baker paused as he pulled back, seeming to count the days at great length. To help speed him along, Essa assured him that it was indeed the third—though in truth she had little idea herself. The days had entered into that long stretch between festivals, and all time seemed the same in such monotony. A life spent constantly jostled by the road did not help matters much either.

  Voren sighed, then took to fluffing up his clothes. When Essa asked what he was doing, he assured her he would not be long. “The two of you wait here. She’ll be wanting her monthly piece, by and by. I needs but get it from the shop and send her on her way. A moment is all.” He started off, but she began to follow. Voren promptly turned on his heel, staying her with a shake of his head. “No, Essa. Here. Wait here. She’s sure to recognize you. You left much too much an impression on her whelps.”

  They watched him head around the corner and listened to the warm exchange of words. Spying interested them until shopkeep and customer alike vanished into the old bakery. Then Rowan turned and asked, “So what do you think?”

  “Think of what?”

  “Well I might say the town, dear, but let us make it a who and see how our guide strikes you.”

  She chuckled faintly, leaning back into the beams of the building. They felt a little off—shoddy construction. “Same old Voren. Lots of talk. Little else. Stutter’s gone—so that’s something. Kind enough, too.”

  Down the street, a small band of soldiers had taken interest in some washing wench. Her name sat on the tip of Essa’s tongue, but she could not quite recall—some young mother, though, if she remembered right. One of the men slapped her on the rump as she passed by. The rest were howling and whistling, while the woman, red-faced, was busy gathering up her dropped buckets and simultaneously attempting to fend off any further questing hands. Laughing, one proved her efforts for naught, coiling his arm around her waist and sweeping her around.

  Essa contemplated shouting on her behalf. For that matter, she ventured at the thought of stringing one with an arrow—but she had little interest in drawing attention where it was not needed, and generally when soldiers started taking arrows
to the throat, people tended to notice. Still, were it just her…

  “I see. And what of the crush?”

  She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Crush?”

  “Come now. You do not see it?” Rowan slid his hands to his hips. She knew he was about to get sassy. “The young master’s eyes have that same doey glaze Rurik’s do whenever you’re around.”

  Unbelievable. “Voren?” She nearly choked on the laugh. “Right.”

  “You doubt me? Oh sweet child, would that I had your charms, but kept my wits.”

  She slugged him in the arm. “You might start in holding your tongue.”

  Feigning hurt, her cousin slumped against the wall, letting loose a low moan. She shook her head, turning away from the pathetic sight.

  Down the street, she beheld an even more pathetic sight. The washing woman scrambled across the path, one hand clutching her torn blouse, the other holding desperately to one of her pails. Wetness gave her eyes a haunting sheen, though tears did not yet fall. At her back, her assailants jeered, little better than drunken fools. The one that had taken her by the waist even tried to woo her back.

  A damn lot of good no alcohol did. A taste like bile welled in her throat. These were precisely the reasons she could not stand an abundance of humanity. The closer we are, the more we lose. Would that any of her circumstances differed, she would have confronted them, or reported them, or something. As it were, all she could do was to stand idly by and watch the woman run.

  “Beasts,” Rowan spat. “As much dignity as dogs in the street.”

  Essa craned her head back against the wall, though she kept a wary eye on the loitering soldiers. “They should lay so low.”

  “Our little lord would try to string them up himself, no?”

  There were many things one could say of Rurik, for good or ill, but his impulsiveness did tend toward the latter. Those who did not know him might be inclined to say it was an offshoot of his precarious condition—a need to prove oneself that only naturally extended from exile. She had a different word for that: Bullshit. It was not difficult to see him as a boy, flailing his wooden sword about at anyone who dared offend. It took a bit to goad him about himself, but to pick at his friends, or especially, women—these set him off like a hellfire.