The campaign worked like clockwork. The warhost was pinned down before it could muster its full strength. Mark killed the warchief of this tribal confederation in single combat. The Darlothian army did the rest.
When he returned he found Garret playing cards and drinking with a couple of his buddies outside Hesetti’s room, all huddled around a wooden table and chairs.
“Ah, Mark. You’re back. I’m finally relieved from babysitting the savage bitch.” said Garret.
“Where is she?” asked Mark.
“In her room. Honestly, boy, I don’t know how you put up with the bolshie little cunt.”
Mark would later admit to himself that he had missed her, but at the time all he was aware of was a strange nervousness as he opened her door.
She was sat on the floor, propped up against the bed. She gasped quietly and turned as she heard the door open, but then managed a weak smile when she saw that it was him.
“Mark. You’re back.” she said, wearily. Her face was bruised and scarred.
Mark said nothing. He just looked over her, breathing deep, furious breaths.
Hesetti was embarrassed as she saw him looking at her bruises. She shrugged. “It’s nothing. Really. Garret’s just…”
Mark stormed off into the corridor. He picked up one of the chairs and smashed it over Garret’s back. As he collapsed on the floor the other men staggered back to give the fuming warrior a wide berth. Mark grabbed Garret by the throat and pressed his dagger against the man’s balls.
“Easy, boy, easy…” he pleaded as he looked into Mark’s furious eyes.
“What did you do to her?” he scowled.
“Just hit her, that’s all. Shut her up when she was being gobby. What’s wrong?” insisted Garret. “She’s a barbarian wench. What’s she to you?”
Mark breathed deep, fuming breaths. “Nothing.” he snarled, before smashing Garret in the jaw, knocking him out.
“Get rid of him.” Mark snapped to the others, who scrambled away carrying Garret’s limp body between them.
Mark realised Hesetti had watched the whole thing. He didn’t meet her eyes, but he flushed red. He took his place beside her door, saying nothing.
She looked at him for a little while. He was still breathing deeply and fuming. He didn’t turn to look at her, but just kept his gaze fixed ahead.
“Thank you.” she said, putting a hand on his arm, briefly. Then she closed the door.
Something had changed while they were apart. Over the weeks and months that followed they began to realise this for themselves. They went through the same routine as before, but something was different.
On their meandering walks around the castle, Hesetti would play a game where she would look at Mark and try and get him to look her in the eye. He played along, trying to avoid her gaze, looking for excuses to look away, perhaps observing an eagle fly past a window or a good tapestry on the wall. And when they finally did look at each other, Hesetti would tease him playfully.
They would still have their training sessions, but Hesetti would laugh and smile as they duelled. She even managed to coax a few grins out of her grim bodyguard.
On the parapet, Hesetti would open up to him, talking about her fears for the future and what would become of her. She talked of her time growing up as a noble girl in a minor Lotherian tribe. Of her mother, house-bound and submissive, who she loved dearly but found she could not respect, and who she would do anything to avoid becoming. Her father, who she saw as a weak leader, forced into embarrassing truces and alliances to avoid being wiped out by stronger tribes. She talked about her little brother, who had died of sickness so young, leaving her the only heir of the Calvulani, and how the Pictoi rough-housed them into agreeing to unite their tribes with the Pictoi as the senior partner.
Mark didn’t say anything, but he enjoyed hearing her talk, and he enjoyed watching her standing there at the parapet, her red hair flowing in the wind.
It was a disorienting experience for him. As a rule he hated barbarians. He had always seen them as savages, beasts, who pillage the weak and slaughter the innocent. But she seemed so unlike everything he expected a barbarian to be. She seemed dignified. Noble. Thoughtful.
Eventually he would admit to himself that he was in love with her. But for so many reasons his love was futile. She would be gone soon, wed to another man. And he would not betray his King.
For Hesetti the experience was no less bizarre. She hated the Darlothians, who looked down on her people as rapists and murderers when their own soldiers commit the very same atrocities. They were arrogant, rude and base. But Mark seemed different. He was brooding and sullen, but beneath all of this he could not hide his kindness. At first she thought it was only fear which made her feel for him – fear of the future which awaited her, and of the crueller men who inhabited the castle. But then she decided that it did not matter. Her freedom – what little of it she enjoyed as Tiberix’s hostage – was soon going to be taken away from her. She was determined to follow her heart while she still had the chance.
One day, she turned to Mark when standing at the parapet, and gave him a mischievous smile. Then she bolted off. Mark was stunned at first, but gave chase. He chased her all over the castle, and she laughed as he stalked her through the many halls and corridors and the crumbling, abandoned towers of Tirigast.
Then Mark bolted round a corner, and Hesetti was there waiting for him. She jumped out, throwing her arms around his neck and pushing him back against a wall.
“I’ve got you! If I was a Morrowfow bushwhacker, you’d be dead by now, a poisoned barb in your throat!” she beamed, scoring her finger across his neck.
As their eyes met, Mark found that he couldn’t move a muscle. He was frozen in place by her stare. His heart pounded, and his limbs went numb.
She closed her eyes and leaned closer. Her lips touched his.
Mark pushed her off and turned away, his breaths heavy, his heart pounding.
They stood there for a while in awkward silence, avoiding each other’s eyes. Then she walked over to him and kissed him gently on the cheek and set off back to her room. Once he had regained himself Mark followed after.
Her final day in Tirigast had come. Ravens had been sent to the castle, and she was to be taken to the Pictoi delegation to meet her new husband. Their rendezvous point would be somewhere on the Lotheria-Darloth border, near to the Grimwold Forest.
As Mark stood outside her door that night his heart twisted and turned in his chest. Suddenly everything that he though was important – killing your enemies, doing your duty and your king’s bidding, making him proud – seemed irrelevant. All he could think about was her.
Hesetti opened her door. Mark didn’t turn to look at her. He couldn’t bear to.
She took him by the hand and his heart thundered. She led him into her room and over to her bed. She took off his belt and dropped it to the floor, his axes clattering on the ground. They lay down next to each other, and she wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on his chest.
They lay there for what seemed like an age, not saying a word, just being together. The only noise was the whooshing of the chill wind which came in through the window. It took all of that time for Mark to muster his courage. When he was ready, he spoke.
“I love you.” he said, in the barbarian tongue.
Hesetti gasped, and looked deep into his eyes.
“You speak the language of the Lotherians?”
“A little.” said Mark. “I’m still potato.”
Hesetti laughed. “Learning. You’re still learning. I’ve been learning too.”
She kissed him gently on the lips and whispered in his ear, in Darlothian. “I love you.”
It would be the first time, and not the last, that Mark would disobey his king. They made love that night, but it was bittersweet. They both knew that tomorrow they would ride out to deliver her to her new husband. The story of Mark and Hesetti would end there.
The lovers sat apa
rt from the rest of the men. While the others sat around a big campfire, laughing and drinking, Mark and his ‘prisoner’ sat opposite each other around their own little fire.
These were the men who had been picked to deliver Hesetti to the Pictoi. Their camp was small, made up of a few shabby tents. They had made camp just outside the Grimwold Forest, which was silhouetted by the shining moon above. Towards the horizon, nestling among a cluster of hills, there were distant campfires. It was the camp of the Pictoi delegation, come to take their prize. It was a grim reminder that these would be their last moments together.
“I wanted to thank you for our time together.” she said, though she didn’t know quite how much of it he would understand. “Thank you for letting me feel what it’s like to be in love. For letting me feel what it’s like to make love to someone who you’re in love with. I’ll never feel that again.”
Mark stared into the fire, saying nothing.
Hesetti shuffled up next to him, and went as if to hug him. He shook his head, grunting – they couldn’t show affection in front of the men. But she hadn’t gone to hug him at all. She had her hand on the dagger at his belt.
“I can’t.” she said, tears in her eyes. “I don’t want to live this life. It wasn’t meant for me.”
Mark shook his head, also crying now.
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to put you in this position, but there’s nobody else I can go to, and I’m scared to do it myself. Please. You can say I took your knife and killed myself with it.”
Mark looked her in the eyes, wet with tears. He couldn’t do it. Of course he couldn’t. But could he leave her to her fate, one which she considered worse than death? And his fate would be to live a lifetime of regret, always wondering what had become of her.
“Let’s go.” he said, in her language.
“Go?”
“Yes. Into the forest.”
“So the others won’t see you do it?”
“No. So we can escape.”
Hesetti gasped as hope suddenly flooded her heart. She nodded, hurriedly, as she wiped away her tears.
They stood up and started heading out towards the forest. Hesetti’s heart pounded as she contemplated what they were doing, and the ruin she would be inflicting upon her family and her tribe. It hurt her greatly, but she knew that dying there and then in the camp would have the same effect, and she was simply not prepared to live as a chattel of her husband.
As they neared the forest, Mark thought about the king he was abandoning and the thegns he was betraying. At that precise moment in time, filled with excitement and holding Hesetti’s cold hand, he really didn’t care.
They lived in the forest for three years. Three years of hard work – building shelters, hunting, gathering. They were on edge and paranoid, always on the lookout for Darlothians and barbarians alike. They built traps around their hut to catch beasts and men who wandered too close. The Grimwold, though beautiful in places, was harsh and dangerous.
But hard though it was, it was also blissful. They were together every day. They hunted together. They trained together. They laughed and joked with each other. And every night they would make love, starting with a little ritual. Mark would tell her “I love you” in Lotherian. Hesetti would tell him “I love you” in Darlothian.
They had abandoned the outside world entirely, forgetting their people, their duty, their kings, warlords and families, war and politics. It was just the two of them.
If Mark had to pick the moment when he was most happy of all, it would be when they made a little pilgrimage to one of those beautiful spots in the Grimwold I mentioned earlier. It was spring and their stores were plentiful, so they could spare a day to just go somewhere and relax for its own sake.
They lay together by a stream which winded down a rocky slope, shards of golden light descending from a lush green canopy. Mark was combing Hesetti’s hair as he sat behind her. She was fletching some arrows. Their weapons lay in a pile nearby.
“It’s just like that river by the camp, soon after we met. Do you remember?” she said, softly. She laughed as she recalled. “You were too shy to look at me naked.”
“I wasn’t being shy. It was a matter of urgency.” said Mark. “I was getting a semi.”
Hesetti laughed, slapping his leg playfully. “That’s not very romantic.”
“No, but it’s the truth.”
As they sat there, Mark listened as Hesetti hummed a song which her mother used to sing to her as a child. He listened to the trickling of the water, and the birdsong in the trees. He felt Hesetti’s hair on his fingertips and the warmth of her skin. Yes, if he had to pick a moment where he was the happiest he’d ever been, that would be the one. And what followed wasn’t too bad either.
Hesetti stopped humming and turned around. “I love you.” she said in Darlothian.
“Here? How?” laughed Mark.
“Why not? There’s nobody here to see us.”
“The birds are watching.”
“Let them.” she said, leaning in to kiss him.
Mark shuddered as he woke up, and winced. He had pulled at the wound under his armpit and pain shot through it.
He sighed as he sat upright. The forest was a forest no more, but a pigsty where he was hiding out. He wasn’t sat on a moss-strewn boulder by a river, but the cold hard ground. He wasn’t running his fingers through Hesetti’s hair, but straw and pig shite. He wasn’t listening to birdsong and his lover’s humming, but the snorting of a pig which slept beside him.
“Morning.” he grumbled to her. He winced again as he changed the bandages around his armpit. Once done he sat there for few moments and rubbed his face. He sighed, taking in the whiff of the sty.
“Right.” he mumbled in his gruff, world-weary way. “Tiroginus, you wily old bastard. You’re next.”
Chapter Five: Warlord Tiroginus’ Plan
Beaumont looked a little bit out of place in the Heroes’ Hall, feasting hall of the Calvii. It was a mighty, high-roofed hall with many long tables. Weapons, shields and animal skulls adorned the walls. A bonfire blazed right in the middle of it, bathing the hall in warmth and light, black plumes of smoke sweeping up through a hole in the roof. Calvii warriors lined the hall, with their swirling blue tattoos and blonde hair, green-painted shields and spears in hand.
Beaumont was a scrawny, rat-faced fellow with dark, lank hair wearing peasant’s clothing. By the look of him you could tell he was Darlothian. But he wasn’t ill at ease in this mightiest of halls, a show of strength from his Lotherian host, as he sat before the throne of Tiroginus.
The Warlord of the Calvii was a thin and ageing man. His once-blonde hair and short beard were now grey. He wore a mail shirt but he was no warrior. He was too smart to put himself in harm’s way, and wily enough to outlast those who mocked him for cowardice. One of his arms was bare aside from bracelets and torcs. The other was bound in a padded gauntlet to hide the fact that it was withered from an injury he sustained as a young lad. His crown, golden and set with amber stones, was genuinely regal. His eyes matched the stones in colour.
He, like the Kings of Darloth, had a champion to do his fighting for him. His name was Bronmere. He was everything you’d imagine a mighty barbarian hero to be. He was muscle-bound, his bare chest and mighty biceps oiled up to make him look even more impressive. His features were brutish yet handsome, with a thick, close-shaven jaw and thin lips. His eyes were blue and his long hair was blonde. He wore hide trousers and boots, heavy iron bracelets, and a helmet which had a bear’s skull nailed onto it. His weapon of choice was near at hand – a ball and chain that looked like it could rip the head off a boar.
“I’m looking for a man. A Darlothian. His name is Mark.” said Tiroginus. His voice was deeper than you would expect from a man of his stature, and it carried great authority. “He’s quite famous. Cold blue eyes, long scar on his face. He used to be the King’s Champion, but then he disappeared for three years. Do you know of whom I speak?”
; Beaumont smirked. “I know of him. So does everyone in Darloth.” he replied in passable Lotherian, though his Darlothian accent was thick.
“I want him dead. He’s already killed two of my allies.” said Tiroginus. “He killed Warlord Brogan of the Visgoti, and now his idiot son is their warlord and I have to waste time and men fending off Visgoti raiders and laying waste to their villages.”
“Then he killed Warlord Aelarix of the Albrantes. They have convened a ten-day tournament to decide who will be their next warlord. So not only are my allies out of action for ten days, but they’re going to spend those days killing off all of their strongest and bravest warriors, and electing the biggest, dumbest lunk of the lot of them as warlord, who in all likelihood will be, though good at killing, an imbecile.”
“What is more, he has mutilated the bodies of said warlords in a sacrificial ritual popular with less enlightened tribes – the blood eagle. I’m sure this is a warning, to me and to others who would oppose Darloth. I don’t intent to be carved open like a boar at a feast. I want him dead.”
Beaumont looked around the massed troops in the hall, and Tiroginus’ giant bodyguard. “You seem safe enough.”
Tiroginus laughed. “I’m sure Aelarix and Brogan felt safe before they were butchered by this man. But you’re right. I have plenty of men. My hold is surrounded by tall walls. And I have the strongest man in all of Lotheria at my side. But the question is, are you the strongest man in Lotheria and Darloth? If it came to it, could you defeat him?” he asked of Bronmere.
Bronmere grinned. “Maybe. I’ve never seen the man fight, but his reputation precedes him. I’d call it fifty fifty.”
Warlord Slayer Page 9
