by Damien Black
‘Now don’t take on so,’ replied Vertrix softly, laying his own calloused hand on Braxus’s shoulder. ‘You think too much of what the old man says. You know he really cares for you at heart, just has a funny way of showing it sometimes, that’s all.’
‘Funny indeed,’ muttered Braxus. He didn’t see what was so funny about it.
The surviving crew had done what they could to clean up the mess. They had tended to their wounded as best they could; the bodies of the slain were wrapped in tarpaulin and lined up, ready to be committed to the ocean deeps. Cullen, his arm in a crude sling, was preparing to say a few last words for the dead.
Glancing at the new captain of the Jolly Runner Braxus reflected that his premonition had come true after all – somebody had been in line for a promotion all right. And in a way he’d helped to bring it about. He felt his guilt intensify. Conway had been a boastful old sot, ebrious and opinionated, but he had been a decent enough sort after his own fashion, and undeniably brave.
Another victory, another failure. Why did the two always seem to go hand in hand? He had been raised to believe that battle was the crowning glory of knighthood. If that was true there was little joy in glory, it seemed.
The bodies of the dead reavers had been piled up in an unceremonious pile. Cullen would have had them thrown overboard already but Regan, relentless opportunist that he was, had insisted on keeping them on board for searching before getting rid of them.
With his own squire’s injuries tended to, he emerged from the hatch and breezed across the freshly cleaned deck towards Vertrix and Braxus, looking for all the world as if he had just had a tumble with two wenches, not a tussle with two score reavers.
‘Well, my hearties, as the seafaring folk say!’ he declaimed, grinning broadly. ‘To the victors the spoils – and we, I believe, are the victors! I’m going over to search yon Northlanders – a grisly job, but someone’s got to do it. I’d delegate it to Conric but his arm’s a bit sore right now, poor fellow!’
Braxus managed a wan smile in the setting sun. ‘Of all of us, I feel you’re the best fitted for such a daunting task,’ he replied, trying to sound cheerful. ‘Be careful you don’t cut yourself on their horned helmets.’
Regan gave a short bark of laughter over his shoulder as he turned to his task. ‘Only in the lays, my friend, only in the lays – you of all people should know that!’
Braxus turned back to look at Vertrix. ‘Speaking of which, I’d better get the harp up here and play a dirge or two, to see those poor men off. They fought well and bravely.’
Vertrix nodded. ‘Aye, and when you’re done with that, you take it back below and play us a dozen or two merry ditties. Reus knows, unless Regan finds the barbarian treasure horde he’s hoping for, we’re in need of some cheer, and I for one intend to spend this evening getting wood drunk! Conway’s black grog has never seemed more appealing, Almighty rest his soul!’
Braxus was just about to reply when Regan called over sharply.
‘Braxus! Vertrix! Come here, you’ll be wanting to see this!’
Both knights exchanged a raised eyebrow and strode over to join Regan. Naturally he’d gone for the leader’s body first, wasting no time in pulling the silvered mail shirt off him – damaged or no it was probably worth a fair price. He had used his dirk to tear open his undertunic, perhaps hoping to find a bauble of some kind.
What he had found was altogether less welcome.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ asked Braxus, staring at the dead reaver’s blood-soaked chest.
‘Aye, it is,’ said Vertrix, nodding slowly.
The sight of them clustered around the corpse of the man he had slain must have caught Cullen’s eye, for at that moment he drew up alongside them. Peering over their shoulders he stared at the marking on the reaver’s chest. His deadly thrust had obscured part of it, but even so it could still be seen clearly enough in the light of the sinking sun: two valkyries suspended above a high-prowed ship, their swords raised high.
Cullen blinked. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, none the wiser.
‘It’s a Seacarl’s tattoo,’ said Vertrix quietly. ‘Only the Northland nobility are allowed to have them.’
Cullen blinked again, still none the wiser. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means,’ said Vertrix slowly, ‘that these were no ordinary freesailors. These are made men, beholden to the sea princes of the Frozen Wastes.’
‘And that means,’ said Braxus, finishing for him, ‘that after more than eighty years of relative peace on the Wyvern, the Northlanders have broken the Treaty of Ryøskil. They’re going to war with the mainland.’
CHAPTER XIV
In The City Of Kings
Adelko and Vaskrian exchanged excited glances as they caught their first glimpse of two things they had never seen before in their young lives: Strongholm, and the sea.
A few leagues before reaching the coastline the plains dipped at a slight gradient, and following the king’s highway they could see a thin blue roiling strand on the horizon. As they drew nearer they began to discern the grey walls of the capital, looming high and proud from their perch overlooking the Strang Estuary. Here the waters of the Vyborg reached their final destination, plunging into the salty vastness of the Wyvern Sea.
There legend had it the Tritons and Seakindred had made one of their many underwater realms, long ago in the Dawn of Time. Back then the Wyrms that gave the sea its age-old name had made sport across its tumbling waves, before their once-mighty race was withered to extinction by the slow passing of millennia. Or so the sages told.
Adelko had little time to ponder the unfathomable fastnesses of the ocean deeps, for soon they were drawing near to the city, and gazing on the double unicorn banners that fluttered from every turret of its crenelated walls he found plenty more recent history to occupy his mind.
Though it seemed mighty indeed to his raw eyes, the novice had read enough to know Strongholm was small compared to the sprawling cities of the Sultanates of Sassania or the venerable metropolises of the Urovian New Empire. It probably sheltered something like twenty thousand souls, a fraction of the populations of Ilyrium or Ushalayim. Or Rima for that matter, the Pangonian capital that was their destination.
But still, it was impressive enough. And besides that, it was his capital. Remote as his upbringing had been, Adelko felt some sense of civic pride as he looked upon his kingdom’s first city for the first time.
Much of Strongholm’s compact walled area was given over to the citadel, where the King’s palace overlooked the great harbour built by the First Reavers who had founded the Three Old Kingdoms that would later become one. The citadel perched on a high hill overlooking the harbour and the rest of the city, a warren of narrow crooked streets flanked by overhanging buildings mostly wrought of stone. A far cry indeed from the wattle village huts of his childhood.
The approach to the West Gate was clogged with traffic, and noon was long gone by the time a harried looking sentry waved them through. Riding under the great stone archway and into King’s Approach, the city’s main thoroughfare, the two youths marvelled together at the cobbles paving the streets, unknown to the dirt trails of the villages and towns they had visited.
As they rode deeper into the city to be swallowed up by its tumult, Adelko found his senses under assault from all directions. The streets were thronged with every kind of humanity he could have imagined: hawkers, harlots, tradesmen, mercenaries, beggars, drunkards, watchmen, town criers, preachers, refugees and other wayfarers like themselves all clamoured for a meagre stretch of space.
Accustomed as he was to the silence of the country, he found the noise overwhelming. The reek was no less intense, though by a fortune of Strongholm’s location this was offset to some degree by a constant sea breeze.
As he narrowly avoided being spattered by a washerwoman emptying a tub of nightsoil out of a window above him, the young monk found himself thanking the Redeemer for small mercies.
The city was intoxicating, although Adelko thought its blandishments somewhat uncouth; Vaskrian almost trampled on a lolling drunkard on the corner of Tavern Street as they drew near the citadel, and the novice did his best to ignore the brightly painted wenches who leered and cooed at him out of gaudily painted shutters that were half open. He was ashamed to admit that their warm smiles and enticing bodices, half undone, were not completely lost on him. Although to tell the truth they scared him more than anything else. Girls. Even now he still wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about.
‘Pay scant attention to this filth, young Adelko,’ his mentor counselled prudishly. ‘As we often teach, cities are a repository of moral degradation and iniquity! A necessary evil, unfortunately, to the governance of realms – you would do well to consider this brief sojourn another test of your faith and spiritual fortitude.’
‘Indeed, Master Horskram,’ replied the novice breathlessly – although he couldn’t honestly say he found busty whores or belligerent tradesmen nearly as much of a drain on his fortitude as half the horrors they had encountered on their journey.
When they reached the walls of the citadel, Sir Tarlquist produced a parchment scroll bearing the High Commander’s seal. The serjeant glanced at it before ordering his men to open the gates and let them in without question.
Inside the citadel the streets were somewhat straighter and better kept – and far less busy. Here only the wealthiest nobles, merchants, master craftsmen and perfects could afford to live. As they made their way towards the palace Adelko caught sight of a round colonnaded temple on the other side of the citadel precinct. Each of its pillars featured a bas-relief carving of the Redeemer’s Seven Acolytes and the Seven Seraphim. Atop the temple’s central dome loomed a great stylised wheel. To this a life-sized statue of the Redeemer was affixed, his hewn limbs twisted about the granite spokes, his carved face a stone mask of agony.
Seeing this, Adelko made the sign – though somewhat primitive, the graven image was curiously potent in its portrayal of Palom’s suffering and sacrifice.
The palace itself looked more like a fortress. It had been built by Olav Iron-Hand not long after he arrived from across the sea to take the throne of the Old Kingdom of Nylund, and its crude but bluntly efficient masonry served as testimony to the simple hardy craft of their Northland ancestors. Since then the Northlendings, as the descendent peoples of Northalde had come to call themselves, had gentled somewhat, absorbing foreign influences from the more southerly Free Kingdoms. Through long centuries, as the mainlanders exchanged longship and war-axe for warhorse and lance, sporadic rapine and pillage for more codified if scarcely less brutal forms of war, they had become sundered from their Northland ancestors, in some cases mingling with the Westerling tribes they had conquered.
The sturdy oak gates of the King’s residence were approached by ascending a great flight of broad stone steps that led into an outer courtyard surrounded by ramparts that overlooked a wharf teeming with war galleys. Everything spoke of a strong martial character, from the ships in the harbour below swarming with sailors to the heavily armed guards lining the thick crenelated walls of the palace and courtyard. Though he could be wise and just in peacetime, King Freidheim was not an unwarlike ruler.
A distinct blot on the landscape they had seen on their approach to Strongholm further bore this out: the unmistakeable signs of an army camp, where the loyalist forces were mustering for the coming war.
Vaskrian felt his heart thumping with excited expectation as they mounted the steps and crossed the flagstoned courtyard to the palace gates. The sea breeze whipped at his hair and cloak; its salt tang stirred his breast as no beckoning harlot in the streets down below could. He felt his ancestors’ yearning for the ocean tugging at him. But more alluring still was the spectacle of the royal seat they now approached.
The gates were guarded by soldiers in chequered cloaks. The White Valravyn was personally responsible for the King’s safety, and all knights and soldiers on duty at the palace were hand picked from the Order’s ranks.
Their serjeant scanned the sealed parchment proffered by Tarlquist before motioning for the gates to be opened and favouring the knight with a curt nod.
It was not a deferential one, Vaskrian noted: here at the heart of the realm a common soldier’s duty to King and country superseded all other hierarchies. It was this complicit understanding that had ensured the security of Northalde’s rulers since the Order’s founding: before then rebellious nobles had been known to murder a rightful liege after using nothing more than their rank to get past his guards.
But that was long ago, and no king now need fear such an attack while the White Valravyn protected him – custom also dictated that a dozen of its best knights personally guard him, night and day. If Thule wanted to kill the King, it would take a successful war to do it. And his loyal subjects would soon see about that!
If Vaskrian could have read his friend’s thoughts, he would have known that Adelko felt less sure of the impending war’s outcome. The novice had read enough of the world’s histories to know rebellions could and did succeed, often in the face of all expectations – and with bloody consequences for those on the losing side.
They were ushered into the palace’s inner courtyard, a surprisingly small cobblestoned affair that seemed a ruder version of the elegant plazas he’d read about in musty old tomes at Ulfang that treated of Rima and the great cities of the far-flung Southlands.
Stable boys came to take their horses. They were dressed in royal livery, purple cloaks and tunics embroidered with the clashing unicorns of the House of Ingwin picked out in silver thread.
A tall man with silvery grey hair dressed in purple robes of ermine also bearing the royal coat of arms walked across the courtyard from the keep to meet them. He was accompanied by four more knights of the Order.
Drawing level with them he bowed stiffly.
‘Sir Tarlquist and Sir Wolmar, welcome both,’ he said in a dry, distinguished voice. ‘Strongholm is gifted by your presence – and yours, Sir Torgun. His Majesty’s men are always glad to have their greatest knight among them.’
‘All knights who serve the Order and their King are great,’ replied Sir Torgun humbly.
From the corner of his eye Adelko caught Wolmar scowling. He wouldn’t put jealousy past the vindictive knight.
‘And all are just as pleased to be received by their royal liege’s right hand,’ said Tarlquist, continuing the formalities. Proffering the letter of introduction, he added: ‘Lord Ulnor, if it please you, we seek urgent audience with His Majesty, for we have tidings of the war and other pressing business to discuss with the King.’
Lord Ulnor, Seneschal of the King’s Dominions and one of the most powerful men in the realm, raised bushy brows and fixed Sir Tarlquist with keen eyes that were the colour of summer skies. They reminded Adelko of his mentor’s, yet where there was wisdom and knowledge in those of the old monk he thought he detected a more cunning intelligence in the steward’s. That made sense. Horskram had spent most of his life grappling with spirits; Adelko fancied Lord Ulnor had most likely spent his grappling with the wiles of mortal men.
Not a man to cross, in other words.
‘And what other business could be so pressing in times such as these?’ the haughty steward demanded, drawing himself up to make himself look even taller. He carried a cane of polished walnut fashioned to look like a hippogriff rearing in full flight, although it seemed to Adelko as though he merely carried it for show and didn’t really need it – though he must have seen well over seventy winters.
‘I fear these are matters for the King’s ears only at present,’ answered Tarlquist nervously. ‘Though no doubt he will make a full disclosure to his most trusted advisers once he has been informed of our news.’
The seneschal held the knight in his cobalt eyes for a second or two longer, his wan smile and taut face giving nothing away. ‘Very well,’ he replied. ‘And would you do me the honour of introducing your c
ompanions? The chequered twins are known to me – you needn’t trouble with them.’
Pointed as it was the question had to be answered. When Tarlquist had done so Ulnor nodded. ‘Ah Master Horskram, I must be getting old, failing to recognise you straight away. I did think your face looked familiar – a healer of the blood royal is ever welcome at the King’s seat. The Lady Walsa shall be delighted to learn of your presence I am sure.’
‘And I will be delighted to speak with her – and all of His Majesty’s kin,’ responded Horskram with a courteous bow. Over the past few weeks Adelko had realised that his tetchy master could certainly curb his crabby nature and turn on the manners and charm when it suited him.
‘Very good,’ said Lord Ulnor, before motioning for the travellers to follow him. ‘Let us go now. The King’s Court is in session, so you may have to wait a little while – though when I tell him your news is urgent and comes from his brother I am sure he will admit you directly. And in the meantime I will see to it that you are brought refreshments – the road to war makes hungry men, as the old battle proverb has it.’
Adelko liked the sound of that – he had yet to be feasted by a king, and it was an experience he was keen to relish. They were taken through a single brass-bound door fashioned of pine and down a long, wide corridor lined with guards, before emerging into a large antechamber. At the far end loomed a pair of double doors fashioned from the same materials.
At its centre was a great bronze relief portraying a bust of Thorsvald, the Hero King, divided straight down the middle by the double doors. Its peculiar design had led one of his vanquished foes, the Wolding robber baron Lord Jale, to famously remark that the only way of cleaving the Hero King’s skull in twain was to seek an audience with him.
But that had been well over a century ago, and the Wolding barons were long since cowed as a political force, if still fiercely independent and scarcely obedient to royal law. The latter meant there was never a shortage of skirmishes with Wolding knights – Adelko had heard Torgun and several others including Vaskrian speak of fighting them during the evening meal at Lady Selma’s. But full-blown war was another thing. That was a Southron problem nowadays.
