by Duncan Lay
“If all the nobles are telling him the same thing, he has to listen to them,” Fallon insisted.
Now it was Dina’s turn to sigh. “I shall try. What of your relationship with Prince Kemal? Can you use it to get him to negotiate? Perhaps we can do a deal for me to take the throne.”
“Perhaps,” Fallon said guardedly. “But I don’t think he will be looking too fondly on anything I say.”
“Well, I shall try with King Aidan and you try with Prince Kemal and perhaps we can save Gaelland between us,” she said with a smile.
“Meanwhile, can I borrow Gannon and a squad of your men? If I am to train these poor lads then I need all the help I can get,” Fallon asked.
Dina smiled widely. “Of course. He is getting bored here, anyway! You know, Prince Cavan would have been so proud of you. What you are doing will make a real difference to the people.”
Fallon bowed his head.
“If we can remove that bastard Aidan from the throne and his weasel son Swane as well, then Cavan will look down and smile upon us,” she said.
“I would like to think of that,” Fallon admitted.
*
Fallon was thinking about seeing Aidan replaced by Dina as he slipped back into his rooms. Maybe he could not make that suggestion to Prince Kemal, but he could make it to the man’s wife. After what he had done, he knew full well that Kemal was not going to listen to anything he said. But planting the idea in his wife’s head might work even better.
“What are you thinking, Dad?” Kerrin asked.
He patted his son on the shoulder and felt the solid muscle there appreciatively. All the hard work Kerrin was doing with the throwing knives and crossbows had changed him. He was not coughing now, not even when he ran. There was another change in him as well, something in the eyes, a hardness and determination that had not been there before. Again, after wanting to see it for so long, now it was another painful sign that things were changing.
“How would you like to help me?”
“Sure, Dad. What are we doing?”
“I need you to play with a couple of Kottermani boys,” Fallon said with a smile.
Kerrin looked up at him, puzzled. “But what about my training?” he objected.
Fallon squeezed his shoulder. “Your training is going very well. But if there is one thing I have learned, life is more than training. I want to see you laugh again.”
“I will laugh when Mam is back,” Kerrin said fiercely.
“And this will help bring her back,” Fallon promised. Kerrin needs this even more than I thought.
*
Devlin was delighted to see them as they slipped into the Moneylenders’ Guildhouse.
“I know you said she must speak our language but all three of them have just been chattering to each other in Kottermani. Won’t say a word to us,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, up the stained and burned stairs to where Kemal’s family was hidden.
“Has anyone been around?” Fallon asked. “Anyone suspicious?”
“There was a couple of strange-looking men who came sniffing around earlier but I sent a pair of the bigger boys out there and they disappeared right quick,” Devlin said.
“Watch out for them,” Fallon said bleakly. “Not only have the Kottermanis got agents out all through the city but the King let slip that he has men following the Kottermanis. If either were to get wind of who we have here, we could end up in the shite right quick.”
“A comforting thought,” Devlin grunted. “So are you just here to cheer me up?”
“Not really,” Fallon admitted. “Me and Kerrin are here to try and cheer them up.”
“Well, good luck with that!” Devlin said with a snort.
Fallon led Kerrin up the stairs to the large office where Kemal’s family was being kept, the door guarded by a pair of villagers, whose grim faces broke out into smiles at the sight of Kerrin.
“Have they been making much noise?” Fallon asked.
“A bit of singing. Nothing more,” Craddock replied.
Fallon nodded his thanks and pushed open the door, Kerrin at his shoulder.
“What do you want? Get out!” Kemal’s wife said, the moment he was inside the room.
She was seated on the large mattress they had provided, one arm around each of her sons.
“I wanted you to meet my son, Kerrin,” Fallon said, stepping aside slightly to reveal Kerrin.
“Why?” she sneered.
“Because he misses his mother, just as your boys must be missing their father,” Fallon said, leaning against the wall. “So you have something in common.”
“We have nothing in common!” she snapped.
Fallon ignored that, watching instead the way the two boys kept their eyes on Kerrin.
“When your husband’s men came to our village to steal away all the women and children, my wife hid our son, our only child, then went to fight them armed with only my training sword, which was blunt. She sacrificed herself so that he would have a chance at getting away,” he said conversationally. “Would have you done any differently?”
This time she did not answer and he took that to be a good sign.
“Kerrin, what was it like without your mam?” he asked his son.
Kerrin looked up at him in surprise and he nodded slightly.
“I cried myself to sleep every night. If I hadn’t had my dog to help me, I don’t know how I would have got through it,” Kerrin said.
Fallon nodded towards the two boys. “They will probably feel the same. But perhaps the chance to run around in the sun might help them.”
“They do not need your help! You are the one who put them in this place, who was about to hurt them!”
“Yet I did not harm them. For better or worse, we shall be seeing much of each other over the next moon,” he said. “Trust me, I want to see you returned to your husband, your boys to their father, because that means my wife will be back with me, given the chance to hold our son again and hear how she saved him. The next moon here will seem long and boring for your boys but perhaps with a playmate, it might go faster?”
“They want nothing to do with you!” she said sharply.
“Perhaps not now. But they will want to get out of this room and run around a little,” Fallon suggested.
Again, she said nothing to this.
“You know our names. I am Fallon and this is Kerrin. Will you at least let us know your names?” he continued.
For a long moment he thought she would spit anger at him but she glanced at Kerrin and then seemed to relent a little. “I am Feray and this is Asil and Orhan,” she said.
“And do they speak any Gaelish?” Kerrin asked.
Again she hesitated but Fallon could see while she might have refused his question, she obviously did not see as much danger in replying to Kerrin. “They both speak it, a little. They expected to live here, after all.”
“How did you learn to speak our language?” Kerrin continued curiously.
“We had a teacher. A young woman who spoke it,” the older boy, Asil, said.
Fallon tucked that away in the back of his mind for later. If a young woman spoke Gaelish then she was either a slave who had been taken earlier or the child of a Gaelish slave. That said the Kottermanis had been taking Gaelish slaves for a lot longer than just the bargain with King Aidan.
“Would you like to kick a ball around tomorrow?” Fallon offered.
“They have never done anything like that,” Feray admitted.
“That’s all right. Kerrin hasn’t done it much either,” Fallon said, reaching down to pat his son’s shoulder.
“We can teach each other,” Kerrin said.
“Perhaps,” Feray said.
“Then we shall see you tomorrow,” Fallon said. “Good night.”
He was pleased to see Kerrin waited until they were not just out of the room but halfway down the stairs before asking questions.
“Do I have to play with them?” he asked.
/> “Yes,” Fallon said firmly.
“Why?”
“Because we need to get them liking us before her husband comes back with Mam,” he said, not adding the other reason: that Kerrin needed to laugh again.
CHAPTER 22
Prince Kemal looked across the sea and wished Feray were there. He could not bear to think of her, nor of his boys, suffering under the hands of that bastard Fallon. All he could cling to was the thought he could get them back. Any other ending was impossible to consider. A tiny part of him raged silently, promising to turn the whole of Gaelland into a land of stinking corpses if his wife and children were harmed, but he had to keep that locked away tight. Partly because it would mean giving in to despair and those black thoughts but mostly because it made him understand Fallon and what he had done to get his wife back. And he only wanted to feel hatred for Fallon.
Freeing the slaves was not going to be easy. There would be many awkward questions asked, and news of it would reach his father. Anything to do with Gaelland interested the Emperor. But he would explain it away as part of the bargain that had to be made to bring the country into the empire without much bloodshed.
He did not care about what his father would do or say, nor about how his brothers would try to use it to undermine his position. At least two of them lusted after the Elephant Throne, that kind of sick longing that would never end. He had already been told by several of his father’s more trusted advisers that he would need to have them killed the day his father died, or face civil war and rebellion.
Kemal’s over-riding thought was to get Feray and the boys back. But it was not his only thought. He had to prepare not just for things going wrong with the families being handed back but with the handover of the country. King Aidan could not be trusted and he had to return to Gaelland with a huge force.
He drove the crew unmercifully, stripping extra sailors from his accompanying two vessels and leaving them to follow at a slower pace while he pushed his ship to the edge.
“As soon as we are within the limits of our messenger birds, I want to be told,” he instructed the frightened ship’s captain. “The men can rest once we reach Adana. I want to be there tomorrow. Or sooner. How soon we get there will determine your payment. Either more gold than you can carry or a slave’s collar.”
As soon as word came that he could use the message birds all Kottermani ships carried, he would release them for Adana. The words they carried were the same: Assemble me an army.
He had never used his power so brutally before, terrifying men around him. If Feray had been here, she would have chided him, gently suggested a better way to do it.
But she was back in Gaelland, so he merely sat in his cabin and brooded.
He replayed that day and night over and over in his mind. First he obsessed over a way he could have got out of the trap, but that was just a taster. The main dish was the battle of wills between himself and Fallon. He remembered every look on the man’s face, every word he said. He longed for the chance to go back and do it again. This time he would stay strong and it would be Fallon who cracked and begged for the return of his family. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Fallon’s face and he relived that scene in his mind, always finding new ways to stay strong and save his family. He had left Feray, Asil and Orhan back in Gaelland but it felt like he had left more than that. And until he took back his pride from Fallon, he would always feel lost.
*
Fallon stared at the mass of young men in disbelief. The square out the front of the castle had been slowly filling during the night and dawn had revealed at least two thousand men. They stood in little groups, instinctively seeking others they knew, from their own village or street but, when Fallon had emerged from the castle, followed by a mixture of guardsmen and villagers, the recruits had begun to cheer and chant his name.
“Can you help me talk to them?” Fallon asked.
Padraig nodded slowly. “Aye, but we need to be careful,” he said. “Aidan might have let us off the leash but he is going to be listening to what you say over the next few days. You are about to become one of the most powerful men in Gaelland. The King only has about three hundred guards, of whom about a third would rather follow you anyway. Make these lads loyal to you and Aidan will be helpless against you.”
“I look forward to that day,” Fallon said softly.
“But who takes the throne afterwards? The Duchess?”
“Well, she would be better than Aidan.”
“Aye, but so would what I left floating in my chamber pot this morning! Now do you want to talk to these lads or not?”
Fallon smiled. “Better than talking to you, old man!”
Padraig slapped him on the shoulder and nodded once, to let him know his next words were going to be loud enough to be heard across the square.
“Men of Gaelland!” Fallon called, his voice echoing off the houses at the edge of the square. “You have come here today to protect your families, your friends and your country! Children will look up to you, women will swoon over you and men will want to shake your hand! Listen to me, listen to the warriors who will teach you and you will become Gaelish heroes, blessed by Aroaril!”
They cheered again, roaring their enthusiasm.
“Now divide yourselves into groups of ten! Stay with men you know, for you will be living and fighting alongside them. They will be your brothers, as I will be your father!”
Again they cheered, but this time they began to shuffle around, dividing themselves up.
Fallon pointed at Padraig and the old wizard gave him a wink.
“Right, how many weapons have we got for them?” he asked, turning to the men he had appointed as his lieutenants. It did not feel right, not having Devlin there, but he had a more important task.
Brendan loomed over Gallagher, Gannon and Bran, the bearded guardsmen looking somewhat uncomfortable. Gannon at least had been commanding Duchess Dina’s guards but Bran had merely been an ordinary soldier, pushed around by officers like Quinn, the man who had been too scared to lead them into Killarney. Now he had the same rank as Quinn and Fallon had to hide his smile when he saw Bran sneaking a look at the new crown sewn onto his tunic’s shoulder.
“As soon as we make a count, another line of carts arrives from a county and it all changes,” Brendan said. “But we have maybe three hundred swords and getting on for a thousand shields, which should be enough for today.”
“Good; you all know what to do?” Fallon asked. “Your men are all ready?”
“I think so, sir,” Bran said stiffly.
Brendan slapped a big hand onto the guardsman’s shoulder. “He’s only Fallon, man. You don’t need to call him sir!”
Bran’s eyes widened and then grew some more when Kerrin strode up, crossbow over his shoulder and Caley at his hip. The boy stamped to a halt and saluted while Caley sat down by Fallon’s side.
“I’m ready to help, Dad,” Kerrin announced.
“Now you do need to call him sir,” Brendan rumbled, slapping his other hand on Kerrin’s shoulder.
Fallon winked at his son, then grinned at his new officers. “Remember, what we teach these boys today might keep them alive tomorrow. Go to it!”
The recruits were divided up by the simple expedient of the trainers gathering the first groups they found together until they had enough men for the equipment they had. Bran and Brendan had about half of them, splitting those up equally, giving them both shields and teaching them to form a wall of shields while Brendan tried to use his size to break through. Fallon had the ones with the swords, taking them through the basic cuts and blocks he had learned as a recruit more than twenty summers earlier. Gallagher, with most of the villagers and Kerrin, worked with about fifty of them on crossbows.
Gannon and his men, on the other hand, took the rest of them on a run through the city, followed by a string of other exercises that had them sweating and puffing. Fallon strode through the recruits, nodding as they saluted excitedly or cheered him,
even when they barely had any breath left. Caley did not leave his side and they cheered her too.
He smiled as he saw Kerrin demonstrating the crossbow. “This is my son. I taught him everything I know and he is going to teach you, so listen to him,” he announced.
“If I can do this, then you can,” Kerrin told the recruits and Fallon saw them redouble their efforts. He looked up at the castle and wondered whether King Aidan was watching. A moon of this and he would be ready to lead them into the castle.
*
“How goes the training?” King Aidan asked.
“It went well for the first day, sire,” Fallon said carefully.
They were standing atop the wall over the castle gate, watching the exhausted recruits slowly setting up awnings for shelter. Servants from the castle were bringing out huge pots of stew for the hungry young men, followed by endless cauldrons of potatoes. Fallon could not imagine what all this was costing the crown. Even the selkie tax might not be enough.
“How will you fight them?” Aidan asked, looking out over the makeshift camp.
“Well, we can use the shields to block up our tight streets, sire. Then from above we can use our crossbowmen. We shall lure them into an endless series of ambushes. Victory will not come cheap but it will be certain.”
Aidan slapped him on the shoulder. “There!” he said triumphantly. “That is the sort of thinking I cannot get from my nobles. You understand that sometimes you have to sacrifice to win, and no victory comes without cost.”
Fallon forced a smile onto his face. Strangely, having the King so friendly towards him was worse than seeing him shouting and screaming. Aidan made his skin crawl and it was all he could do not to shudder when the King patted him on the shoulder again. “I want to hear how the training is going every second day,” he said. “I must see how my new army takes shape.”
Once he was sure the King was gone, Fallon hastily spoke with his new lieutenants, getting them ready for tomorrow. The recruits had to be run until exhausted, and the ones who had not worked with swords that day given the chance to use them.
