Svedora was said to be a town steeped in magic - cattle magic, weather magic, old magic. We were told a shaman lived there still who knew much of the old ways.
I could feel Sire Jochrund's eagerness. Quite how much he had collected from the summer mission thus far I could not say. His chapbooks and scroll cases bulged, and he was forever writing. He had filled sacks with herbs and dried powders, flowers too, and had a little screw-press with which to flatten the blooms into perfect pictures of themselves. Bottles he had of tinctures given him by elders and wise men, and all other sundry totems and materials, all of which the sallow clerk Sigert catalogued and annotated.
Occasionally, most often after nightfall in our latest camp, I would observe the wizard striding out of the way to a field or spot nearby where he would perform - I believe in practise - rituals he had but recently learned. With what measure of success I cannot say. Once we heard a moaning in the dark that put the horses sore afeared; once he caused a blue flame to walk across the surface of a pool, and once he made a great dusty wind to blow up, and came back to us, his eyes reddened, cursing some nameless spirit for at least two days.
Sire Jochrund had his heart set on Svedora, even though on my map it lay a good three days further than I was happy to go. But on we went.
A great number of black starlings began to gather above us for the two days prior to our arrival at the stanitsa. A few at first, circling and twittering, then more, then more. We touched iron against ill-omen, and the wizard seemed bothered by the mob, but in the bracken fields below Svedora, with the walled town overlooking us, they departed most suddenly and flew off cheeping and piping into the western sky.
But our arrival had been noted, and a line of riders galloped out from the gatehouse and threaded a line of dust down the hill track towards us. I saw the flash of sunlight on speartips and armour.
I drew the company to a stand, and stretched them in a line abreast, alert but with weapons sheathed, with the wagon held to the rear. The riders came out of the trees and formed a matching line facing us at a distance of three furlongs.
Sigmar, but they were splendid. Thirty men in golden hauberks, and kettle-helms with nose-guards, decorated with bright jewellery, furs and expensive cloths. Upright from their backs rose the most remarkable wings of bright feathers, part of their decorative harness. Their horses were small, shaggy-maned creatures that had been painted shades of white, yellow, russet and pink. The men sported long, black moustaches and carried horse lances upright at their saddles. One held aloft a bright blue and white banner with a long swallowtail that turned and played in the wind like a water-snake.
They were not the enemy. They were a proud company of Kislevite lancers, of a type long renowned in the Empty Quarter. We however - travel-stained, dusty and displaying no flag or banner - resembled their traditional enemy, the plains bandit, all too well.
I left my spear standing tip-down in the dirt, and rode forward, gesturing to Schroder to do the same. Schroder was my first officer, and sergeant of the men-at-arms, a decent fellow from Ostland who had a useful measure of the Kislevite tongue. We covered the scrubby ground between the two facing lines, and after a moment, two riders broke from their formation and came towards us at a trot. I was encouraged to see they left their lances in the earth likeways.
Closer to, I was yet more transfixed by the ornate beauty of their armour. Gold, inlaid with turquoise and pieces of jet, and also a translucent orange gem called amber. Their horse armour was accoutred in jingling tassels and bead-ropes, and with medals or badges made of smoky silver inset with blue-glass stones. Their wings rose high above their backs, straight and true, formed of gilded wooden frames to which dyed eagle feathers had been expertly fletched. The valley wind rustled them and made the feathertips twitch, like the trim of a circling hawk. The brass nasal-guards of the riders' helms descended sharply almost to the lips, and gave them both a mean and snarling look.
Through Schroder, I greeted them, and made it as clear as I could our intentions were peaceful. They listened attentively, but made no change of expression, nor did they show any signs of comprehension. I produced the Imperial seal, and also my letters of permission, one of which was counter-sealed by the provost of the tzarina. The two men passed the items between themselves and muttered. Then one turned his painted pony smartly and raced off in the direction of their line, taking my letters and seal with him.
'Hie!' I exclaimed in consternation, and the rider who had stayed with us at once growled some caution, and drew his sabre enough that four fingers' width of blue-steel blade was visible outside its jewelled scabbard.
I raised my hands for peace and waited. The rider came clattering back, and brought with him another. This lancer was as finely amour-clad as the others, though he seemed at once to have some bearing the others did not quite possess.
'I have read your letters,' he said, using the language of the Reik perfectly.
'I would have ridden to you at once had I known. You carry no banner, and seemed to us to have the look of raiders.'
'Your pardon, sir,' I replied. 'We have sought to conduct our errand as anonymous travellers rather than as a mission of the Imperial crown.'
He nodded, and handed me back my belongings. 'These are unruly times. Welcome to Svedora, Sire von Kallen. I am named Subarin, of the rota of Svedora krug.'
A rota, as I had discovered earlier in the summer, was the Kislevite word for banner, and every town and stanitsa had its own. Around that banner, the town's band of lancers would form, their gathering known by the symbolic word ''krug'', of which is meant ''circle''. A stanitsa's rota of lancers was sworn to protect both its own town and the community in the region round it. In return, the community of town and country funded the splendid armour and weapons of the riders. Settlements took special pride in this: a rota might be small or large, but it was always splendid. At times of great war, the rotas of all the towns in a region would form together into an army or ''pulk'', supplemented by infantry and bowmen drawn from levies.
The Svedoran rota gallantly escorted my company up the trail and into the town itself. Subarin was not the ''rotamaster'' - the honour of commanding the lancers fell to a slender, older man named Buryan. But Subarin - who, when he removed his helm, was revealed to be a commanding fellow with close-set green eyes that seemed quick and clever - was a man of education who had spent time in the Empire, and his fluency with my language accorded him the duty of dealing with Imperial matters.
Svedora had a commanding position above the valley, its size well disguised by the stands of myrtle and oak that lined the slopes. To its west, above the aspen-shingled roofs of the town, and the golden onion dome of its zal, the ragged foothills of the Czegniks rose away, half-hidden in garlands of cloud. The town, and its walls, were made of clay, baked into pink blocks that reminded my eye of the sugar and gelatine fancies they sometimes serve at court. The place was old indeed. On some walls were carvings, weathered by the fingers of time. They showed winged lancers with couched spears, men riding wolves, and nymphs of the myrtle woods.
The townsfolk came out, and made loud welcome, ringing handbells, chimes and tambors. We were greeted well, and fed, and our horses were cared for. One thing above all else that may be admired of the Kislevite: he values the horse, and knows its keeping.
We were presented to the ataman, and to sundry other estimable men, but the town's shaman we did not see. At length, Sire Jochrund and his clerk were taken to meet with the wise man in some secret place. They did not return until the next morning.
That night, I spoke with Subarin. 'Do you always ride out in full gear at the first sign of riders in the valley?' I asked of him.
'There had been auguries,' he said. 'Symbols in nature that the shaman warned us of. We thought evil rode with you.'
'Just magic,' I said.
He nodded, and swallowed a glass of samogon as a vouchsafe against ill-omen.
We spoke then of other matters, mostly of horses, in whi
ch Subarin took a particular interest. He made comment favourably on the warhorses my company rode, especially my own great destrier, all markedly larger beasts than the lancers' mounts. 'That was the first clue I had that you were not bandits... the size of your steeds. Only knights of the Empire and Bretonnia put the spur to warhorses of such measure.'
Subarin, it was revealed, owed his reputation and wealth to horse trading. He was esteemed across the region for his expertise in that wise, and the business had taken him as far as Middenheim in his younger days. He told me that night of the Kurgan, the ravagers who dwelt in the North. They too rode great warsteeds, he said, but there is no trade in them for they cannot be caught, let alone broken by civilised men.
At dawn, Sire Jochrund's clerk returned to us, his narrow eyes filled with sleep from a night spent in wakefulness. He told me (quite uncivilly, for he believed the eminence of his master bestowed some rank upon him also) that Sire Jochrund would be staying at this place for another two days, for he was engaged in great discourse with the wise man, and refused to be taken from it. To his sullen face, I told him that this was not to my liking. I had already urged the wizard that we should be commencing our return journey. Sigert shrugged, as if to dismiss me, and I urged him a second time to impress upon Sire Jochrund the gathering urgency of our departure. That morning, there had been frost upon the clay walls of Svedora, and a glassy cool in the air.
An hour or so presently, Sire Jochrund himself reappeared, and took me to one side for quiet words. There was an almost unseemly excitement about him, and his golden eyes darted all about. In his soft voice, he assured me we had to stay a while, for which news he was sorry.
'If we ride away now, Jozef, we risk losing the very worth of our mission. There is lore here, young man, that the Colleges of Magic must possess.'
He had begun to call me Jozef most frequently, as if I were his son, and perhaps it should have flattered me that he thought so. But it rankled me. I was ever courteous to him, calling him most formally ''Sire'', yet he showed my office of knighthood no comparable respect.
Still, I consented to his wishes. I imagine it is hard for an ordinary mortal man, even a trained warrior of the Reik, to say no to a wizard, and to this soft-voiced, golden-eyed magician, it was impossible.
Sometimes, I fancied he had put some conjuration on me.
So, we waited for two days. The horses were glad of the rest, the men too. Some took the time to wash clothing or repair their wargear and trappings and resharpen their blades. Others shaved their cheeks and chins of beards that had grown on the journey. I did not. My hair, which usually I wore shaved up about the nape and ears, as is the custom beneath bascinet helms, had grown out, and my face was decorated with a bristle of beard. I had vowed not to cut nor trim the hair of my head until my return, as a mark of dedication to my mission, in Sigmar's name.
Subarin noticed that I was ill at ease and, in company of some of his fellow lancers, diverted my mind with hunting trips into the forest. We caught nothing but a few dapple-deer, for it was an excuse to ride free and fast, and forget troubles. The men of the rota had put off their fine armours, and dressed themselves in leathers and furs, but I noticed that Subarin still carried a fine saddle-sword, broad and straight, of the most exquisite damascened working, with all finery of lions and horsemen upon the golden scabbard. He saw me admire it, and showed it me, claiming it was many generations old, though the blade seemed new struck. A Scythian sword, he said, forged and owned by the great horse people that had once roamed these regions before the Gospodar khans led the Kislevite tribes to mastery of the land. Beside it, my Imperial blade seemed crude and dull.
In the landscape about Svedora, there were many curious places, shown to me by the worthy Subarin. A heathland upon which great stones stood in a ring, into which area no bird or animal made noise or motion. Other stones, graven with weather and lichen, had all but worn smooth, stood in glades of the woodland, and amongst the dense steppe thistles that choked the ravines of fast, falling streams.
In another place, very deep in the darkest belt of the woodland, my companions drew me to a ruinous tower that lingered amidst many tall maple trees. It was made of a black stone, finely dressed so as to be smooth, and was fully twenty horse lengths around about the base. At the height of a goodly oak, the tower was split asunder and broken, suggesting that once the tower had soared unto the sky. No fallen blocks or splinters of black stone remained around its base to attest to the disaster that had befallen it, nor did any of the fine maples grow within ten lengths of it, and further, no ivy or mosses lived upon its smooth, cyclopean walls. We rode about it thrice, widdershins as Subarin insisted, and I remarked that no door or window slit could be found in its sides. It was a mystery, he agreed, and it seemed that was why he had chosen to show it to me. None could say who had raised it, or when, or by what mischance it had come to be destroyed. When I asked him if any man had ever assayed to climb the walls and enter the tower through the broken top part, he laughed, as if such a thought was madness. I thanked him for showing me such a strange wonder, but were happy in my heart to ride away from that eerie glade.
In the early part of the morning of the third day, without reference to Sire Jochrund or his mealy-mouthed clerk, I roused the men and set the company for departure. All drawn up, we waited the length of an hour, and then, as I was about to send for the wizard, he appeared with Sigert in tow. His work in Svedora was done, he proclaimed, and for a moment, my heart was happy.
But then he gave me new instruction. From the wise man of Svedora, he had learned of a place called Kzarla, which lay up in the hills, and this place he now intended to visit also. His eagerness to reach Kzarla was even greater than it had been to come to Svedora. 'Seven days, Jozef, seven days there and back,' he told me, 'and then our work will be truly done!'
I made protest, but it was to no avail. We were to Kzarla bound, whatever I liked of it.
As we made to depart the gates of Svedora, the men of a mood quite downcast at the further travail, Subarin rode to us with two of his comrades. They were dressed in furs and cloaks for travel, but beneath wore the bright armour of their kind. Their lances and wings were wrapped in bundles across the backs of their steeds, and their golden spike-helms bounced at their waists. Subarin hailed me. At the advice of the town elders, he would ride in our company, so as to guide us directly to lonely Kzarla. This much he did to make as short as possible our journey, for he said the tracks of the hills were treacherous and befuddling to the newcomer. With his aid, we could make the ride as short as possible, and so speed the hour of our return. I thanked him for it, as did my sire the wizard.
They led us away from Svedora in the morning light, turning north and west into the ranges of the Czegniks, ascending steep tracks that wound between the stands of larches and mountain ash. The air was chill and damp, and there was no colour in the sky. Svedora's pink walls vanished below us in the mist, and above, the hills rose grey and severe, with the purple threat of greater summits beyond them.
The three Kislevites rode sure-footedly. Subarin's comrades were named Baibek and Markovo. Baibek was a small man with intense grey eyes, like a snow-owl, and his face was set always in a frown. Markovo was of larger build, with a wide jaw and half-shut eyes. He had a bright smile that he flashed like a sword blade.
Despite our guides, the going was slow, for the track was scarcely fit for our small wagon. We laboured in dim, tree-lined vales, and crawled up the black soil paths between rock crests, passing more than once marvellous cascades of water that fell in crashing, smoking streams into dark plunges below, bright as the girl's hair in the storybook.
Two days we laboured, up into the hills, passing so high above the table of the earth that we left all sign of trees behind. The hill country was heath and coarse grass, bramble and thistle, all swayed by the winds that blew down across these sloping pastures. Low cloud veiled the land, and brought rain and some little hail to us. Winter, I knew full well, was all bu
t upon us.
Half a day from Kzarla, Subarin advised caution. Baibek had been riding ahead to scout the bleak country, and had returned with word that we were not the only riders abroad in the hills. From a distance, he had sighted a band of warriors on horseback, and counted forty shields. We paused, and made secure our armour, cinching it tight and placing helms upon our heads. We eased our swords in their sheaths, and made other preparation as necessary, then moved on again, following the track into a vale swirling with mist and vapour. Strange ringing and moaning came upon our ears, but Subarin told me this was but the echo of our traces and the song of the wind amongst the peaks.
Barely was I reassured than we were attacked.
They were, as I learned after, warriors of a brute-clan called the Kul, one of the many fraternities of Kurgan who claimed sovereignty of the North, and who knew only the worship of the feral gods and daemons in their savage minds. They thundered out upon us on their braying nags, full tilt, raising up a din of raw voices and furious howls. Each one of them was of mighty frame, dark-haired with unruly, matted locks, and they wore great pitch-black helms fixed most fearfully with horns and tusks. Beads and shells and also scalps and talismans rattled against their painted chests.
I gave sharp order and turned the company into their face, rising our pace to a counter-charge, for there was no wise of retreat or flight. I drew my sword and in we went, hooves clattering on the flinty soil, harnesses ringing. We shouted aloud the war cry of Sigmar to drown out their grim holler, and mingled with it I heard the battle call of the rota fly out from Subarin's lips. His glorious golden sword was flashing in his hand.
Such impact is made when charge meets charge. There are many distinct sounds of war - the clash of sword blades, the whistle of the axe, the thump of the arrow, the crack of gunpowder - but to my mind, there is no sound more true to the spirit of battle than the bone-shaking clash of riders crossing riders. It is the sound of knightly combat, where strength and skill are contended in equal measure. And it is not merely a sound. It is an uncommon jolt, a quake, like rocks smiting against one another, like a tree's trunk splitting, like a mountain falling down upon the flat earth.
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