Interregnum

by S. J. A. Turney

  “What the hell are you doing, Athas?” he asked, gesturing angrily with both hands.

  The huge sergeant stopped a few feet away, lending some support to the obviously weary lad. “He’s got a proposition” the man replied.

  “I’ll bet he has,” Kiva growled. “Not interested.” The captain turned his back, reaching toward his paired swords.

  Athas grinned and, stepping in front of Kiva, held out his bunched fist. “I think you might be.” He opened his hand.

  The clink of coins was loud in the quiet night as the gold coronas hit the ground. Kiva looked down at the coins and then back up, surprise and irritation struggling for supremacy on his face.

  “Gold?” he queried. “Where did a lad like you get gold currency?” He waved a hand dismissively. “I don’t deal with thieves; we’re honest men.”

  The young man took a step forward and fell to his knee in front of Kiva, his face downcast. “I’m no thief sir, and I know you’re an honest man.” He looked up into the captain’s face and his voice took on the slight lilt of a youth trained in poetry and rhetoric. “I know who you are, General Caerdin.” The voice had been low, but the intonation carried so much weight.

  Athas blinked. Kiva growled and leaned forward in a menacing manner, his extended finger pressed against the young man’s cheek.

  “Don’t be so damned stupid boy” he replied. “You know as well as I that Caerdin died when the Emperor fell. I’m Kiva Tregaron of the Grey Company, not some poncy ‘hero’ out of the days of old.”

  The boy shook his head and reached out, clutching the hem of Kiva’s tunic.

  “I’m not stupid! I’ve read the histories of Carolus and Phrygias, and all about your past. I’ve even seen your portraits. I know who you are, General, whether you care to admit it or not.”

  Athas leaned forward and whispered into the boy’s ear. “Whether he were that man or no, it’s not something you go around shouting. Be quiet for all our sakes.”

  Kiva nodded and, stretching his shoulders, drew on his gauntlet, fastening it round his wrist. He pointed an armoured finger at the boy, his face coldly neutral.

  “Regardless, whatever you have to offer us, we’re not interested. We’re already commissioned by his lordship.”

  The boy shook his head as words tumbled from his mouth. “What I’m offering must be well over a year’s pay for your company. You don’t even know what I’m proposing, so you cannot tell me you’re not interested.”

  Kiva turned his back on the boy again and reached down to the wall for his other gauntlet. “I said I’m not interested” he said coldly. “Now piss off and find someone else to bother.”

  The lad knelt for a long, quiet moment and then stood, nodding slowly and forlornly as he swept the worst of the dust and dirt from his white tunic and khaki breeches.

  “Very well, Captain” the boy said in an emotionless tone. “If you won’t help, you obviously aren’t the General that I thought you were. I must be mistaken. He was a man of honour.”

  Kiva whipped round at the insult and opened his mouth to put the boy in his place but, as he caught sight of the pathetic figure, his words flitted away unspoken. He pointed angrily down the hill and the lad turned and stumbled painfully down the slope toward the brush once more. Athas wandered across to his commander and sat on the wall beside him, sighing.

  “You do know that you’ve probably just condemned him to death, don’t you?”

  Kiva shrugged. “The whole world’s gone to shit Athas,” he sighed, “and we’ve not got time to help every stray you come across, no matter what he has to offer. We’re contracted to Lord Bergama for at least the next two weeks and you know it.”

  Athas nodded and reached into his tunic, withdrawing a canteen of spirit. He unscrewed the lid with a thoughtful look on his face and took a quick swig.

  “True,” he replied, “but you know as well as I do the odds we’re up against tomorrow. Only sunset saved us today. We’re outnumbered about five to one. Bergama’s gone; he just doesn’t know it yet. Another tower fallen in the game.”

  Kiva stared off into the distance, his eyes slightly defocused. “Maybe soon all the Lords’ll have fallen” he muttered. “Then there’ll be peace.” He snorted. “But of course there’ll also be no one to pay our keep.”

  Athas grasped his Captain’s shoulder. “The lad had gold” he implored. “Real gold, in Imperial currency. More too. He only wanted a bodyguard. Stupid not to even consider it.”

  Kiva turned to look his sergeant in the eye and Athas recognised the steel in it.

  “The lad thinks I’m Caerdin and that’s not something any officer wants to hear, least of all me. He’s either crazy, stupid or reckless or all three at once. Any way you take it, we’re better off without him. I don’t care, I just want to get through tomorrow and then we’ll think about the next step.”

  Athas smiled sympathetically. “That’s crap sir” the big sergeant said. “You want your men to get through tomorrow, not you. You’ve never wanted to get through the next day. You’ve just been looking for a way to get yourself killed for twenty years now. Problem is: you got so damn good at surviving, it became second nature. I doubt if the Gods themselves could kill you now.”

  Kiva pulled away from his sergeant’s hand and pointed down the hill. “He’s coming back, damn him.” The Captain picked up a small pebble and hoisted his arm back to throw.

  “I don’t think you should do that sir,” Athas said quietly.

  Kiva sighed as the lad ran up toward the wall.

  “Come on lad, piss off. I told you the answer’s no.” He rolled the pebble in his palm for a minute and then dropped it to the floor.

  The young man stopped and rested his hands on his knees, gulping down air. As soon as he stopped heaving, he spoke in a breathless rush. “There’s … there’s an awful lot of soldiers … in dark … green down there, creeping along the … gully. Thought you should know.”

  “Green?” Kiva asked sharply. “Dark green?”

  Athas glanced for only a second at his captain and then turned and leaned over the wall, cupping his hands round his mouth.

  “Stand to!” He called, his voice echoing round the ruined building. “Enemy sighted.”

  In a testament to the training and the fighting spirit of the Grey Company, every man was upright and arming in a matter of seconds. Kiva nodded at his sergeant and then vaulted over the wall, grasping his swords from where they still leaned against the crumbling stonework and sweeping them from their scabbards one after the other.

  Athas turned to the young man. “Thanks lad” he uttered. “Now get inside behind the walls and keep yourself out of sight.”

  As the young man walked across the threshold into the ruined building, Athas stopped him and handed over the hatchet that had been left on the wall. “Just in case.”

  Moments later all twelve members of the Grey Company were at the wall. Like mercenary units everywhere, no two of them wore the same armour or bore the same weapons. The one thing that was uniform was the charcoal grey of their gear, from tunics to breeches to shield faces. Grey was the colour. Indeed, when fully ready, they were barely visible in the darkness, an army of ghosts in the flickering firelight.

  Athas took his position at the far left as Kiva took a place on the right. The sergeant drew a long, curved southern blade from his back scabbard and stuck it point first into the ground near the wall before removing half a dozen arrows from his quiver and planting them into the loose mortar on top of the wall in a similar fashion. With a creak of his recurve bow, he prepared himself and then nocked an arrow. Kiva nodded at Thalo next to him and the dark haired archer put down his bow and struck a flint and tinder, sparking until the dry substance on the ruined wall caught light and blossomed. He put a few small sticks and knots of dry grass on it and then, nodding at the captain, took up his bow once more. Kiva hefted his two gently curved swords and gave them a practice swing. He’d never taken to using a shield and had nev
er been a great marksman. Along the wall, between the sergeant and himself, a number of men drew their own weapons of choice, three more of them bows.

  An eerie silence fell across the ruin as the Grey Company waited for battle. Ten of the company waited at this wall, while two others kept positions at the opposite corners where they could watch for any kind of flanking action.

  The only sound that announced the arrival of the enemy was the scrape of a boot on rock as a man tried not to fall foul of the treacherous slope. Kiva nodded a second time to Thalo next to him, and the small archer dipped the tip of his arrow into the burning tinder before lifting and firing it deep into the thick undergrowth. There had been no rain now for almost three weeks and the brush was so dry that they’d already started three small fires accidentally and consequently could be fairly assured of a burning oil-covered arrow triggering a blaze. Indeed, the moment the arrow hit, orange flame leapt up from the flora, throwing back the curtain of the night and crawling along the intertwined branches at breathtaking speed.

  As the fire spread among the bushes at a phenomenal rate, Kiva was beginning to ponder on the wisdom of his plan when a scream announced that the fire had taken its first target. The horrible crisping, gurgling sound of a man suffering an agonising death by fire was something that Kiva had never truly come to terms with. He’d hardened himself such that he could usually ignore it, but in the depths of night when dream came in his black robe, with unbidden images of fire and death, to take the remaining fractured shards of his soul, then the flames still ate away at his conscience.

  Moments later a number of agonised voices added to the tumultuous roar as the flames took man after man, dragging Kiva’s attention back to the fight.

  Almost a minute went tensely by before the first intact figure appeared from the brush, looking startled, having exited the smoke and the undergrowth and come face to face with the waiting Grey Company. They barely had time to register the surprise on his face and hear his brief monosyllable before Athas’ first arrow took him in the throat. The man toppled backwards, his blade clattering to the floor, and disappeared once more from view into the roiling thick black smoke. Glancing round, the big sergeant spotted another smoke-wreathed figure ghosting out of the brush.

  “Here they come!”

  Shapes began to appear, those who’d managed to find their way around the edges of the ever-growing conflagration and stumble through the smoke. The company let fly with arrows as fast as they could, each marking a single target as it appeared and announcing their shot to preserve their companions’ ammunition. Few of the attackers managed to move more than a couple of feet from their cover before being struck, invariably with instantly fatal results.

  Gradually, fewer and fewer of them appeared until at last there was just the crackle of flames and the groans of the few who lay bleeding their last. Athas waited for a moment to be sure of the lull and then called down the line “count off!”

  “I took three,” shouted Scauvus.

  “Five,” Thalo called, nocking another arrow ready.

  “Four for Marco,” called a light voice, “but only three for Alessus!”

  There was the sound of a punch landing on an upper arm somewhere along the wall and a carefree laugh.

  Athas nodded as he carried out his mental arithmetic. “And I took five.” He added. “That’s twenty down to arrow shots, plus however many dead in the flames. Not enough to turn a full brigade away, sir.”

  Kiva strained to see into the distance. “They won’t come that way again until the fire’s gone out” he confirmed. Turning to face his unit, he added “three groups! One remaining wall each.”

  As the dozen men split off to watch the walls, Kiva walked over to where the young man in white cowered, hatchet clutched in equally alabaster knuckles.

  “Make yourself useful,” the captain barked, “long as you’re here. Stand and watch the fires. If a single living thing comes towards you up that hill, shout me or Athas, right?”

  The young man nodded, the look of a startled rabbit about his eyes. Kiva returned to the rear wall, shaking his head, and looked up the hill toward yesterday’s field of battle. He glanced across at Athas and beckoned to him.

  “We’d see them if they came at us from there, but we still don’t know how many of ‘em there are. I can’t run an effective defence without knowing what’s happening or what we’re up against. Get Scauvus to make a run to the top and see what’s going on.”

  Nodding, Athas ran across to a side wall and spoke to a small, wiry looking man with dark, close-cropped hair and at least four days’ growth of facial hair. Scauvus dropped his bow next to his shield and walked across to the other side of the ruin. Dropping to a crouch and taking a couple of deep breaths, he tore off at high speed for the crest of the hill. The company watched as he ran, fast and nimble as a mountain wolf, up the steep incline and to the top, where he slowed considerably. A bad sign thought Kiva and, as the scout reached the crest and dropped to his stomach, his worst fears appeared to be realised.

  “Ahh, shit” the captain groaned.

  Athas appeared to have had similar thoughts. He began to nock and store arrows, gesturing to the men to be ready. Kiva strained his eyes once more to see Scauvus hurtling back down the hill as if the hordes of hell were at his heels his form disappearing momentarily from view as a brief change in the wind drove the column of choking smoke across in front of him. A couple of seconds later, the scout appeared out of the grey and jogged back up to the wall, out of breath and wild-eyed.

  “The other camps are…” he gasped “all on fire and the enemy … are everywhere. I think … we’re the last.”

  “Shit! Fuck!” The captain spat. “They’ve done this deliberately to catch us!”

  Kiva stood for a moment, fighting the obvious decision. He hated abandoning a contract, but if the rest of the army had gone, what chance did twelve men stand against thousands? He sighed unhappily and gestured once more at Athas.

  “Get the kit together as fast as you can” he ordered. “We’re leaving, and we’re leaving now!”

  Without questioning, Athas relayed the orders to the men. As the company gathered their gear, two men still on watch for the enemy to reappear, Kiva jogged back to the young man in white, crouched by the wall and keeping a close eye on the burning mass.

  “We gotta move, so you’re on your own, lad” he said. “Surrender fast and they’ll probably just rob you; they can’t mistake you for a soldier.”

  He turned to retrieve his kit bag just in time to see Athas glaring at him.

  “What?” he growled.

  The sergeant merely shook his head and then returned to his work. The company’s bags were already shouldered when one of the lookouts called out the warning.

  “Here they come again!”

  Athas waved Kiva away. “Take the rest and get to the farmhouse, sir. I’ll keep Thalo. We’ll cover you for five minutes, then follow on ourselves.”

  Kiva nodded. The two were quite capable of taking care of themselves. Better to risk two than to condemn twelve. He followed as his men started moving out, and then stopped. Some strange need drove him to turn at the last minute and look at the lad in white, standing by the wall with a look of defiant despair. There was something hauntingly familiar about that look and Kiva tried very hard to push it to the back of his mind. Deliberately turning his back on the boy he joined his men as they rushed down the hill, around the perimeter of the forest fire and into the concealing darkness.

  Chapter II.

  The marble columns wreathed in fire. The purple and gold drapes blazing and falling away into burning heaps on the floor. A chalice of wine on a small table by a couch, boiling in the intense heat. The panicked twittering of the ornamental birds in their golden cages as the room around them was consumed by the inferno. And in the centre of the room, standing in robes of white and purple, a man. He doesn’t look frightened, though the flames lick at his whole world and his face is already grimy
with the smoke. What he looks is disappointed, his arm extended toward the sealed and barred door separating him from a future and a life. Extended toward the figure standing behind that door, turning the final key in the final lock.

  Kiva woke, the grimy soot and dirt on his forehead running down and into his eyes with the sweat. Despite the sweat, he felt so cold and so agonisingly sad. Of all the thoughts jostling for a return to his mind after the horror of the nightmare, strangely, his first and most insistent thought was ‘did the birds die?’

  He glanced around the room. The farm had been unoccupied for three or four days at most. When they’d made their way to the field to meet up with the rest Lord Bergama’s army, they’d found this building the night before the battle, already empty. There had still been half-eaten meals on the table and the fireplace had been warm. Yet another case of the constant feuding between Lords disrupting the lives of the ordinary folk. This family had probably heard tell of the armies descending upon their district and fled, hoping to return after the trouble and find their home intact. He clicked his tongue irritably. He was starting to think like Athas. Screw it. They made their way and he made his. Every man has a path and some are easier than others. He’d move on to the next contract; the next battle. Kicking out in irritation at a table leg, he scraped the chair back and stood. The night was old, with dawn not far off. They’d reached the house around an hour ago and set up shifts for watch. Kiva had immediately surrendered to exhaustion and would still be in the arms of dream had not the old problem driven him to wakefulness. It was no wonder really that his once proud blond hair was now almost entirely grey and that his face had taken on a dark-eyed, haggard look. Sleep was neither a friend nor a comfort to Kiva Tregaron.

  He had been the only one in the kitchen, seated by the thick wall on a heavy bench padded with a blanket. He approached the door to the main living space and peered round into the darkness. The slumbering forms of the Grey Company filled the floor. Trying not to disturb their rest, he rounded the corner and climbed the creaking stairs to the upper floor. On one side of the upper room Scauvus sat on a stool, peering out of the upstairs window and watching for any stray scout that might stumble on their location. At the other side, Brendan and Marco sat on the balcony, keeping the rest of the valley under surveillance.