The Great Bear: The Adarna chronicles - Book 3

by Jason K. Lewis

  “Why did you continue if he was telling the truth?” You are an inquisitor. You should know the difference.

  Ashferon took a long time to reply. The silence filled with accusation.

  You are no better than the Emperor. You have become what you despise. The power has finally driven you mad. But Martius knew the truth and clung to it. I have been consumed with anger. I wanted revenge. No one had threatened his family before. No one had hurt Ellasand.

  Ashferon spoke, finally. “As I said, that and I allowed myself to believe that you might possess a greater insight than I…”

  It sounded like respect. “But you are an inquisitor,” Martius weakly protested. He took a deep breath and let the rage he had pent up for days dissipate as if it were a physical thing. It felt like he had exorcised a powerful spirit.

  “I was an inquisitor.” Ashferon shrugged. “And you are Felix Martius.” It was as if that simple statement was enough. A small smile – it may have been rueful – played across his lips. “Besides, I’m a private citizen now.”

  Ashferon had never revealed why he left his post, but Martius did not need to ask to know the answer. Mucinas Ravenas. Ashferon would not do the work of a despotic emperor. A strange moral boundary for an inquisitor, but a moral boundary nonetheless.

  “You never cease to amaze me.” Martius smiled and the last of his anger abated. Strangely, despite the fact that Jhan Guttel still sat bound to a chair, colour slowly returning to his face, a smile did not feel inappropriate.

  “Sir?” Villius asked, his tone formal once more. “I knew you would do the right thing, sir.”

  How quickly your faith is restored. “Thank you, Villius.” Thank you for dragging me from the abyss.

  “Forgive me, sir. But what should we do with him now?”

  It was a good question. Jhan Guttel was a thief and rogue. There was no doubt that the world would be a better place without him. He was a citizen of the Empire though, a citizen who had been attacked, seemingly without provocation.

  “Please don’t kill me.” Guttel pleaded. Tears coursed down his cheeks. “Please. I won’t tell anyone. Just let me live.” His rheumy eyes bored into Martius. “Please, General. I swear.” He looked towards Tituss and flinched, though the great giant did not move. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Martius’s legs carried him to stand before Guttel. “Tituss,” he addressed the behemoth looming over them all. “Would you kindly release this man’s bonds?”

  In answer, Tituss removed a small knife from his belt and cut the rope binding Guttel in one smooth and practiced motion.

  Guttel winced as the bonds released. He brought his hands up, clenched and unclenched them slowly, wincing as he did so.

  “The blood flow will return shortly,” Ashferon stated quietly. “There should be no permanent damage.”

  “Thank you.” Guttel sobbed the words as much as said them. He looked into Martius’s eyes, the light of life and hope returning by small increments to his face.

  I almost kill him and he thanks me. It struck Martius as bizarre but he had seen similar things happen before – the bully could often become the strongest ally if he was beaten. We are no better than animals in that respect.

  “You should not thank me.” But if I am to be merciful, I have to be sure that you will not see it as weakness. He had enough enemies already. “Nor should you ever meddle in my affairs again. I will not be so lenient if we cross paths in the future.”

  Jhan Guttel nodded but remained mute.

  The night was a dead end. Guttel knew nothing of the attack. He was just a hired hand. “You swear to me that you know nothing of the attack on my house?”

  “I swear it. I do.”

  “But surely you must know the whereabouts of the preacher Marek Tyll?” Martius could not leave empty handed. Tyll was an obvious suspect after the attack at the Inn on the Green.

  “I don’t know where he is.” Some form of resolve seemed to creep into Guttel’s eyes. “I doubt it was him though. I heard he left the city and most of his followers went with him.” He took a long breath, then sighed. “Do you promise I’m free?” He sounded like nothing more than a lost child.

  Martius nodded. “You have my word as a Felix.” An unbreakable vow.

  “I heard a rumour.” Guttel rubbed his hands over his wrists, seeking to restore the circulation. “Don’t know if there’s any truth to it.”

  “Rumour?” Some part of Martius suspected the answer. He knew what Guttel would say but he dreaded the truth of it.

  “Word on the street is,” Guttel grimaced and clenched his fists again, “the Emperor wants you dead.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Conlan

  CONLAN PACED THE COURTYARD of the Felix family townhouse. Brown stains marked the stone slabs at his feet. Some were small, not much larger than a coin, but in other places whole squares were discoloured. It was blood. Blood from some of the twenty-one men and women that had died three weeks before in the failed attack on General Martius and his family.

  The courtyard itself had changed beyond all recognition since the attack. Where once a flower garden had vied for prominence with a small orchard and a vegetable patch, there now stood a small military encampment. The whole area was crammed with fighting men from the Phoenix Third; it had been since the evening of the attack.

  Conlan’s thoughts drifted back to the night of the assassination attempt.

  Andiss, battered and exhausted, had stumbled into the command house of the Third legion and shouted “The general is in danger!”

  Conlan had rushed to gather a cohort, instinct leading him to seek Jonas – newly promoted to command the ninth cohort of the Phoenix. They had run – with all the men they could gather – through deserted streets, occasional civilians and stray animals scurrying fearfully out of their way. Andiss had insisted on returning with them; breathless with exhaustion from his journey, he nevertheless found the energy to tell the tale of the attack as they hastened to their destination.

  When they arrived at the townhouse, Conlan, expecting the worst, had immediately ordered the front door smashed open.

  As they peered into the courtyard, the scene that greeted them confirmed the truth of it. Bodies lay in disarray all around, like dolls thrown down from the veranda above, clouds of flies circled busily around their open wounds.

  An eerie and unnatural silence pervaded the place.

  “General!” Conlan had shouted as he followed Andiss up a staircase.

  Andiss staggered as he climbed the steps, his body perhaps registering the toll his exertion had taken.

  Martius had appeared in a doorway on the upper level, tunic and arms caked in blood, a familiar white handled sword in his hand. The general had said nothing, relief was clear on his face, there was no sign of the smile he usually wore to battle though. He looked grim as death itself.

  “We are safe,” Martius intoned, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “Bring the medics up if you have them. We have wounded.

  “Andiss.” He turned to his weary houseman. “Go find Doctore Nessius, I sent for him some time ago. The lady Ellasand will not wake.”

  Andiss – steadfast and true – had not even paused to catch his breath. “Sir,” was all he said before he turned and ran down the stairs, then out of the house and into the night.

  A good man, Andiss, thought Conlan as the sight of the houseman – standing talking to a young maid by the kitchen – pulled him from his memories. But then Martius seemed to have surrounded himself with good men. Most, like Andiss, were ex-legion, whilst others were freedmen. All were loyal to their master, who, Conlan now knew, kept no slaves. Or rather, Conlan corrected himself, freed every slave that he employed within two years of purchase. If the slaves proved themselves, they stayed in Martius’s household as freedmen, and some even rose to high station. The others – those that did not meet Martius’s standards – were not sold on, but freed and released to go their own way.

  Conlan had l
earnt a lot about General Felix Martius in the last few weeks. What he saw had surprised him and forced him to reassess his views of the upper classes that for so long had – for the most part – ruled the Empire.

  The general, born to a high-ranking family with so much wealth that he would never have needed to work, never mind enter military service, lived a life that appeared to be simple and unadorned by opulence. It was true that he had much that others did not. Conlan, having been raised in a pair of rooms in a six-story block near the docks, had experienced a very different upbringing. But, somehow, Martius did not seem to care about possessions. They were secondary, Conlan had begun to suspect, to the driving passions of his life, which appeared to be his family, the Empire and his military career.

  It seemed odd to Conlan that in stark contrast to Martius, the great old General Turbis – who by his own admission came from a measly background – clothed himself in enough gold to fund a military expedition, whilst surrounding himself with expensive slaves and pleasures. It was as if the very fact of having something made it unimportant to Martius. But then he has never known hardship, perhaps he would care more if he had.

  Conlan viewed the tents of his men in the courtyard, weapons and kit arranged in perfect order outside each one, and breathed a sigh of satisfaction. For the first time since the battle at Sothlind, he had found some semblance of peace.

  Conlan had hated Martius, mistakenly as it turned out, and now that hatred had morphed into respect. The man treated him as an equal; respected his opinion.

  Hell, he treats everyone as an equal, even new recruits...

  In return, Conlan had determined to join his fate to the man – for now at least – and resolved to protect and defend his unlikely sponsor.

  He glanced up at the balcony. Martius’s twin boys, Ursus and Accipiter, sat with satisfied grins fixed on their faces, no doubt sharing a joke between themselves as usual. They were almost identical but for the bandaging around Ursus’s arm. The boy had received a grievous wound when seeking to defend his mother and sister and, according to Doctore Nessius, it was still possible that he would not regain full use of his hand. Ursus seemed unaffected by the thought though, often showing off his wounds to the legionaries, proud, perhaps, to have proven his mettle in battle. If anything it was the other twin, Accipiter, that appeared more troubled by the ordeal, sometimes rubbing his left forearm as if he had received the wound in place of his brother.

  The boys and their sister, the young beauty Elissa – who seemed to thrive on the attentiveness of all the new men around her – appeared to have all but recovered.

  Conlan had found himself, not much their elder, becoming quite protective of Martius’s children. He had even disciplined one man and sent him back to barracks for making lewd comments about the maiden Elissa, even though the comment was out of her earshot and nothing more than barrack banter.

  Satisfied, as he knew he would be, that everything in was in order –the house and family protected – Conlan strode purposefully to his command tent. He heaved the heavy door cloth aside. Jonas sat inside, his arms nonchalantly leaning on Conlan’s – the legion father’s – desk.

  Conlan tutted. “Why am I not surprised to find you here?”

  Jonas looked up with a small smirk. “Hello, boss.” He lifted a large piece of parchment from the desk and waved it. “Been doing some research, thought you might be interested.”

  Conlan huffed in mock indignation. “I don’t believe I asked to see you, Cohort Commander. You are not on shift as I recall.” He knew he had begun to pick up mannerisms and terms of speech from both Martius and Turbis as he sought to emulate their command style. Imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery. It’s just a shame it doesn’t work with someone you knew before you were promoted.

  Jonas shrugged. “Oh, I know that, boss. But it’s not the same in the command house without you.” Cohort commanders, by tradition, always shared the command house with the legion father and his staff.

  “What is it I can help you with then?”

  Jonas waved the parchment again. “It’s a map… Got it off that strange fellow, Metrotis. He’s always hanging around talking about catapults and machines, nice enough chap though once you get to know him.”

  “He’s the general’s nephew.”

  “That’s right. Looks a lot like him too, I reckon. Well, he’s been hanging around me and the boys. Turns out he wants to learn to fight. Think that wound he got in the attack scared the crap out of him.”

  “So it should,” Conlan replied. The wound in Metrotis’s leg was, thankfully, not severe, but an inch either way and it would have severed a main artery, killing him in seconds. “Nasty cut.” General Martius had told the tale of Metrotis saving his life, attacking the assassins in the courtyard from behind armed only with a dagger. Metrotis had managed to stab one man in the back before they even knew he was there, thus distracting them and allowing Martius to hold them off until his housemen arrived to rescue them both.

  “Yeah, he’s still limping.” Jonas shrugged. “Poor bugger. Well anyway, it turns out he’s been trying to figure out where the barbarian horde –”

  “The ‘Wicklanders’.” Conlan nodded encouragement, his interest suddenly piqued. An image of the Wicklander, Wulf, flashed unbidden through his mind.

  “Yeah, these ‘Wicklanders’ came from. Far as we know they must have come out of the deep south, way beyond Selesia.” Jonas held the map up, his finger tracing down the page as he spoke. “So it turns out that there was an explorer called Josephis ’bout a hundred years ago who travelled all the way south, past the basking islands, to where the earth ends, and he mapped it all as he went.”

  “Haven’t heard of him.” Conlan frowned. “At the academy they say that the southeast is an endless steppe. South of Selesia are the Indomius Mountains, mostly hill tribes and mountain men. Tough lands, tough men, not worth conquering. It’s a long way through the valleys, but the nomads came before.”

  Jonas nodded. “The nomads got through back then because there were so many of them. The hill tribes were scared to attack. Same must have happened with the Wicklanders. Who really knows what lies south, boss?” He rattled the map again.

  Conlan shrugged. “Alright, so we have a map. How do we know it isn’t made up?”

  “We don’t. Metrotis said that’s why this map isn’t common knowledge. This Josephis was laughed at when he got back. He even wrote a book about his travels. Said he found some weird island or something too, but people thought he was mad. Metrotis thinks there must be some truth to it because Josephis mentions people that sound a lot like the Wicklanders in his journal. He even says they share an ancient kinship with the Basking Islanders.”

  Conlan reached out and took the map from Jonas’s hand. The area Jonas had pointed to was in the south west, a land of many inlets and fjords that spread out like fingers. “How far is it from there to Selesia?”

  “Difficult to tell. But if you believe the map it would be about seven hundred miles.”

  Conlan peered over the map at Jonas. “What makes a nation travel seven hundred miles?” What do the Wicklanders have to be afraid of?

  Jonas shrugged. “Don’t know, boss, but I reckon that Wulf knows.”

  Conlan felt the hair on the back of his arms stand up. Wulf had the freedom of the house now, ever since he purportedly saved Martius’s family. Wulf usually stayed close to Martius or Metrotis, often speaking to them in broken Adarnan, gesticulating as he did so.

  Conlan was not sure if Wulf recognised him from the battlefield, but he could not wipe the image of the barbarian from his mind, stepping forward out of the throng and coolly braining Father Yovas’s horse with his war hammer as if chopping wood for the fire. If not for Dylon throwing a rock, knocking the man senseless, he suspected he would be dead now at Wulf’s hand. Conlan's face flushed as he recalled the look the huge warrior had given him as he charged to attack – a rictus grin of joy – seeming to relish the thrill of battl
e.

  “I think you’re right,” Conlan said. “But if he does know, then he’s keeping it to himself. Either that or he’s only told the general.” He handed the map back to Jonas and sat down on the cot bed. “To be honest, I’m more concerned about the other one.”

  Jonas leaned towards Conlan, his piercing blue eyes searching, bright with enquiry. “Are you sure it’s him? Are you sure it’s the bear? The one from the battlefield?”

  Conlan sighed. “I’m certain.” He raised his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I told you.”

  “Explains what the general did with him then doesn’t it?”

  “Yes it does, but I don’t understand why he would keep the man a secret. He must know that someone will talk about the battle, about what we saw… There’s something strange about the man, this ‘bear’. It’s like he isn’t really here, you know? Like how some people get when they’re old? Vacant; gone. He obeys Metrotis like a dog would, barely takes his eyes off the man.” Conlan looked down at his hand, slowly clenched his fist. “The man that we saw, the ‘bear’, was deadly and utterly remorseless. He could take half a cohort out without breaking a sweat – you saw it…”

  Jonas nodded, “Half a cohort, and the rest. Never saw a warrior fight like that, except for the other ones… you know…” He paused, a mischievous twinkle lighting his eyes. “The other gods.”

  Conlan smiled wryly and shook his head. “We’ve been over this. They’re not the gods, Jonas.” He glanced at the copper bracelet around Jonas’s right wrist, adorned with text from the scriptures, a sign that Jonas was strong in his faith. A sign to the gods – and the Sender when his time came – that he had been pious, a good, devout man and a member of the Sacreun faith, the oldest and purportedly original denomination of the faith.

  “The great bear, Conlan,” Jonas said earnestly, shaking his head. “You know it’s the ancient sigil of Lord Terran.”

  Conlan snorted. “Jonas, just because someone has a bear on his breastplate it doesn’t make him the king of the gods.”