For the first time, his threats struck a chord. After a long, charged silence, Sellan gave a single, stiff shake of her head. ‘As you wish. She will be gone.’
‘Good. I won’t hear another word about when I can or can’t lie with my wives, or which ones I choose.’ Erlon straightened his belt and jerkin and left the hall with the echo of his heavy steps trailing behind.
Lidan didn’t move. She couldn’t. Her face burned like a flame and her heart beat fast and hard. Behn’s rough metalworking hand reached over and closed tight around hers, offering some small reassurance, but a tear fell down her cheek despite it. She cursed herself. She should have left as soon as she realised her parents were alone in the hall, before the fight, and not continued to sit here eavesdropping like a tine.
Dana Sellan stood alone in the middle of the hall, her eyes on the door Erlon had vanished through. The muscles in the woman’s jaw tensed and relaxed, grinding her teeth as she stood perfectly still. Not one tear marked her face; no sobs shook her lips. After a moment of utter silence, Sellan swept from the hall, leaving Lidan and Behn to stare at the empty space left behind.
‘Come on,’ muttered Behn, standing and pulling her with him. Despite the shivers of cold fear across her skin, Lidan managed to find her feet.
What in the world had possessed her mother to challenge the daari like that? Her status as dana leant her a lot of influence and a significant amount of authority, so much so that she could speak her mind to the daari without fear of the consequences others might face, but not to that extent. As Lidan stared at the abandoned table in the middle of the hall, she sensed her mother’s protective façade rapidly thinning.
‘Come with me.’ Behn dragged her by the hand and they hurried towards the cold stores at the southern end of the kitchen. They burst through the storeroom door and down a timber ramp to sunlight and freedom. Beside them, the Caine rose high in the morning, the sky bright and duck-egg blue for as far as the eye could see. Chests heaving, they paused in the lee of the building, out of sight. ‘I still have to give my message to your father.’
‘Wait!’ Lidan snatched at Behn’s arm as he stepped away. ‘Don’t say anything. Please… to anyone?’
‘Liddy...’ Behn shook his head in disbelief. ‘As if I would.’
She released him and he jogged around the corner of the hall, his thick leather apron flapping loudly against his legs. Lidan groaned and took off in the opposite direction. The stables offered the best hiding place—her mother hated the horses and even if her life depended on it, she wouldn’t set foot there. In the stables, Lidan could shelter from Sellan’s rage and muddle through the mess of thoughts and emotions filling up her head.
Chapter Four
The Disputed Territory, Western Orthia
If a place existed in Coraidin where the Underworld realm of the Dark Rider broke the surface and sucked all the joy and light from the world, Ranoth Olseta stood at the edge of its yawning maw.
The screams of the injured and dying tore at his ears, arrows whistling overhead as he ducked behind a crumbling wall and ran. His breath rasped, acrid smoke stinging his throat and eyes.
A ragged shout echoed over the battle and Ran hit the ground, his hands clasping the back of his head in a feeble shield. A boulder smashed into the tallest wall of the Signal Hill ruins and sent a cascade of stones and ancient mortar crashing down on the soldiers sheltering at its base.
Their screams, garbled and incoherent, cut the air and he gasped, rolling over to stare at where the remains of the old tower had been. Soldiers limped and crawled away, but too many were trapped under the rubble—some silent and still, crushed into bloody puddles—others writhing and twitching as their bodies fought the inevitable pull of death.
Bile surged into Ran’s mouth and he forced it back down.
Now was not the time.
He had to find his lieutenant, if she hadn’t already been punched full of Woaden arrows or crushed by a flying boulder, and get the fuck out of here. The Hill wouldn’t last long under this barrage. It was some sort of gods-given miracle that they’d held it for this long at all, and now those very same gods had decided the Orthian’s luck had run out.
He scrambled to his feet, put the gruesome scene at the base of the tower at his back, and sprinted.
Lieutenant Pallent and what remained of her fifty soldiers had arranged themselves around the ruins of the south tower. It was hardly an ideal defensive position, but it was the best they had.
Arrows sailed out from behind the shattered wall, some finding their marks among the Woaden advance, most falling short or missing entirely. Ran slid to a breathless halt beside the lieutenant and caught her arm.
‘We have to go,’ he croaked over the melee. ‘Send runners to the others. We need to retreat.’
The words caught in his throat like a fish bone. His father would have his skin for calling a retreat, but he had no choice. The Hill was lost. He’d lost it, and there was nothing to be done for it.
‘What others?’ Lieutenant Pallent frowned at Ranoth, her face contorting in confusion.
‘Norris and his—’
‘Norris is dead, your Grace.’
The news hit Ran like a kick to the guts and he all but staggered under the force of it. ‘What? When?’
Pallent pointed a shaking finger at the slight incline leading away from the ruins to the west. ‘Wiped out by artillery about an hour ago.’
Ran followed the lieutenant’s gesture and the bile rose again.
Arrayed across the face of the Hill was the remains of Bray Norris’s half of the company. There hadn’t been more than twenty of them left to defend the trenches when dawn broke, but now the position was completely overrun, Woaden soldiers and archers were teeming across it like ants on a picnic. Beyond that, a line of creaking mobile catapults rolled forwards under the power of enormous draught horses, pausing at intervals to launch boulders at the Hill, shattering what remained of an ancient castle that had, many years ago, been abandoned to the war.
The Hill had a commanding, if foul, view of the carnage spread through the valley below. Trenches and artillery lines snaked off to the north and south, across blackened, barren fields that had not seen sprouting grain or a grazing beast in generations.
‘Fuck…’ Ran breathed.
‘Fuck indeed, your Grace.’ Pallent turned back to her soldiers and Ran glanced around, counting the heads of the infantry and archers.
Eighteen…
Was this it? Was this all that remained of the hundred souls he’d led out to reinforce the Hill?
His hand began to shake beside the hilt of his sword.
He’d begged for this command. Begged his father, Duke Ronart, to make his fifteen-year-old over-eager son a captain so he might whet his blade in battle. And Ran had been convinced they could hold the position, too—convinced that all they needed to do was repel the Woaden from the Orthian line until the first snow of winter arrived and the annual ceasefire was called across the Disputed Territory.
But the snow hadn’t come, and the Woaden had advanced.
Months of trench warfare in the icy northern winds had been broken when a mage arrived in the Woaden lines and used their cursed magic to boil two dozen of Ran’s infantry in their boots. Despite a squad of cutters taking the mage out of action, the Woaden had surged forwards in the aftermath, pushing this portion of the Orthian line back, day by day, until they clung to the ruins of Signal Hill with desperate fingers.
Today their grip slipped, and there was nothing left to do but run or die.
Ran didn’t really fancy dying today, so he opted to run, dismissing the venomous rage his father would fly into as a necessary evil.
They could come back.
They could take the Hill again.
Maybe…
‘Your Grace!’ Pallent’s shout in his ear snapped him from his thoughts. ‘Orders? Do you still want to go?’
He nodded once and the lieutenant started screaming o
rders.
Bile rose again in his throat, burning away his resolve as the soldiers around him abandoned their positions and scurried away.
It would be a fighting retreat, but a retreat nonetheless, and he doubted very much that his father would care to know the difference.
*
The Disputed Territory was a desolate swathe of scarred land to the east of the Morgen Ranges, defended by Orthians against the Woaden Empire for generations before Ran had been born. But despite the blood and the danger, the place had called to Ran like a siren’s song, luring out a boy who was desperate to prove himself a man. He’d waited with bated breath for his fifteenth birthday and the chance to finally stand with his father and learn the business of war, yet as he beat a retreat to the command centre a day’s ride from Signal Hill, he wondered silently if he’d been utterly insane to desire such a thing.
He and Pallent left the surviving soldiers under the command of another captain resting his troops behind the lines, warning them of the Woaden advance, then rode as hard as they dared for Duke Ronart’s command post to the south.
When the duke had announced that he’d finally given in to Ran’s badgering and would allow his son to take a command, his commanders had frowned, but stopped short of voicing their concern in Ran’s presence. Even Ran’s tutor, Perce, thought fifteen was too young for a prince of Orthia to lead troops in battle, and had made his thoughts very clear to the duke. Yet, for all his grand plans and bravado, his lessons on strategy and military leadership, Ranoth had lost his company, lost his position, and very likely lost his father’s respect.
The reality of it galled him as they approached the duke’s camp, their horses shivering with fatigue and blowing jets of clouding breath from their nostrils. Night fell hard and fast this time of year, and he and the lieutenant were lucky to arrive only a few hours after dark.
The echo of battle had long since faded to the dull rumble of a camp at rest. Archers had stowed their bows, and catapults had ceased their barrage of the Woaden lines. Infantry were beginning to settle into their night watches and healers set about doing what they could for those who made it back from the trenches alive.
Lieutenant Pallent regarded Ran as a pair of grooms led their weary horses away and they stood at a distance from the duke’s pavilion. She was a short woman, somewhere in her thirties, with a sharp wit and keen eyes that never missed a trick. Even at fifteen Ran towered over her, a head taller and much broader in the shoulders, but her presence on the field and the regard her troops held her in outstripped him ten-fold. Ran liked her, and the pained expression on her face cut him to his core.
She and Norris had been good to him, keeping any reservations they had about his leadership to themselves, following his orders and offering solid advice when they thought he needed it. He already missed Norris’ acerbic humour and penchant for using curse words as punctuation marks. And he knew he would miss Pallent’s cool head and honesty when she inevitably returned to the front.
‘I can do the talking, if you like?’ she offered in a hoarse whisper.
Ran shook his head and rubbed road dust from his eye with the ball of his gloved palm. Despite the soft kid-skin leather, his fingers were frozen solid. ‘I think it’s best he hears it from me. It was my command, after all.’
Pallent shrugged. ‘As you wish, your Grace.’
She gestured towards the pavilion, the perimeter of the tent lit with a circle of staked torches that threw dancing orange light on the canvas walls. ‘Lead on.’
Ran stepped past her and clenched his jaw, preparing for the onslaught of his father’s anger even before they crossed the threshold.
‘Ran?’ Duke Ronart’s voice erupted in front of him and Ranoth started.
The older man stood tall and broad in the shadows beside the tent door, hands on his hips, the whipping north wind tousling his greying brown hair. He had his armour on, and as dulled and dented as it was, it still held a little lustre in the light of the torches. The duke eyed his son as Ran gave him a quick bow and Lieutenant Pallent snapped a salute.
‘At ease, Lieutenant.’ The instruction came out as a low growl. ‘What are you two doing here?’
‘W-we have news, sir,’ Ran began, his voice squeaking as though he were a six-year-old. It was always worse when he was nervous. He cleared his throat to try again. ‘We have news, sir. From Signal Hill.’
Ronart cocked his eyebrow and folded his arms. ‘Do you now? And why is it you bring this news, and not a messenger? I recall giving you command of a company, not appointing you as an errand boy.’
The duke’s hard eyes wandered over Lieutenant Pallent, who stood with her feet apart and her hands clasped behind her back. She made no move to speak. The duke’s questions were not for her.
‘You did, sir,’ Ran acknowledged. ‘And the news concerns the company and the Hill.’
The duke’s eyes narrowed slightly. It was a gaze Ran never felt entirely comfortable under. It burned away every layer of his confidence until he stood naked and raw, diminished and reduced to a state of infancy. Perhaps that was how his father saw him— still a vulnerable child, hardly strong enough to lift a sword let alone lead troops in action. He’d hoped to prove the man wrong in that regard, but it appeared he had only lived up to his low expectations. The weight of the realisation pressed down on Ran’s chest and he fought for breath, lifting his chin, determined to keep his emotions in check.
‘Had enough of it, have you? Got the Lieutenant to escort you back to safety?’ Ronart gave a dismissive sigh and shook his head. ‘I did try to tell you war isn’t all victory and glory. There’s glory to be found, certainly, but it’s in a muddy trench, under the rotting corpses of a hundred soldiers who’ve spilled their blood before—.’
‘We lost Signal Hill, Father.’
The duke glared at his son and Ran’s throat contracted. Ronart turned to Pallent. ‘Tell me he’s joking.’
She shook her head. ‘No, sir, Prince Ranoth speaks the truth. We were over run, and the Hill was lost.’
‘When?’ The low growl deepened.
‘This morning, a few hours past dawn.’ The Lieutenant continued while the duke’s gaze bored through Ran’s skin. He clenched his hands into fists and held them tight, pushing all his fear into the skin of his gloves lest he betray a sliver of it in his face.
‘And the company?’
Pallent cleared her throat. ‘In the end only twenty or so were able to retreat back to the Ford. We left them with Denover who sent messengers up the line. They should be able to hold the Empire at the river.’
‘They fucking better,’ Ronart snapped. He stepped back and jerked his head towards the doorway to the pavilion, his gaze never leaving Ran’s face. ‘Get in there. You can account for this debacle like a real soldier, seeing as you’re so intent on playing at one.’
Chapter Five
Orthian Central Command Camp, The Disputed Territory, Western Orthia
The duke’s pavilion was packed with marshals in various states of cleanliness—some covered head to toe in drying mud while others had little more than a clump of horse shit on their boots. As Ran ducked into the tent, servants were setting a long table with bowls of bread and trays of meat, but none of the men sat to eat as they might in their homes. They remained standing and picked at their food as it arrived, frowning over maps and scratching on them with quills and charcoal.
Ran shuffled into a corner at one end, hungry beyond reckoning but too anxious to touch a morsel. He’d find something to eat later, away from the glare of watchful eyes. Pallent saluted the marshals and accepted two cups of ale, shoving one at Ran as he stared blankly at the maps and papers strewn across the table. He wasn’t sure anyone had even noticed his entry. He drained his cup before he realised what he was doing, and a servant appeared beside him, refilling it without preamble.
The duke did not immediately follow his son and the lieutenant into the pavilion, and by the time he did appear, Ran had lost count o
f his refills. A boozy warmth flushed his cheeks, the alcohol hitting his empty stomach and going straight to his head. Lieutenant Pallent slipped his cup from his grasp as the duke entered and the murmur of conversation eased to silence.
‘Right, have any of you got some good news, or did they hammer us again?’ Ronart asked the assembled marshals.
He collected a roll of bread from a nearby basket and slumped into a chair at the far end of the table. Evening was the only time Ran saw his father’s weariness and impatience manifest. Usually, the man kept a tight check on his appearance, despite the toll of the unending defence of Orthia’s border against the Empire’s advances. For a moment, the marshals glanced at each other.
‘Well,’ Ronart addressed the marshals, ‘get on with it.’
‘We regained our trenches in the south, sir, but we think the northern companies have been held up near Sadef’s Crossing. The reports are still coming in from the camps,’ said Tenner, a tall marshal with bushy brown brows. ‘If we push them back from the Crossing, we can recover most of the ground we lost last month.’
When no one else offered a report, the duke’s eyes fell on Ranoth and his mouth ran dry. ‘Have you something to report, Captain Olseta?’
Ronart used Ran’s military title, souring the words with a sarcastic twist that left Ran under no illusions. He had fucked himself good and proper by retreating from the Hill, and his father was going to make him own every moment of it.
‘Signal Hill is lost, sir,’ Ran replied in the most even tone he could manage.
A murmur rolled through the assembled marshals as Ronart funnelled his anger into ripping apart the bread in his hand.
‘Signal Hill had the ruins on it, yes?’ Marshal Tenner regarded Ran with an expression gentler than he thought he deserved.
‘Yes, Marshal. It was the site of Eddafore Castle,’ Ran replied.
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