Shanakan (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 1)

by Tim Stead

  “This doesn’t look too good,” he said. “We need to secure a line of retreat in case we have to get out in a hurry.”

  “I think we’ll be all right,” Delf replied. He leaned down from the leading wagon and spoke to one of the sullen faced young men who were keeping pace with them. “You,” he said. “Does this town have a mayor?”

  The youth hesitated, then nodded.

  “Is he here?” He looked round at the crowd.

  “No.”

  “I’d be obliged to you if you’d fetch him here so we can talk to him. Will you do that?”

  The youth hesitated again. He clearly didn’t want to miss anything.

  “I won’t start anything until you get back,” Delf said, and grinned. The young man smiled and ducked away through the crowd. It was a small town, and he would be back in a couple of minutes. In the meanwhile the crowd grew rapidly.

  “Delf.” It was the sergeant again. The man was looking really worried, and his hand was never off the hilt of his sword. His men were bunched next to the wagons, and there was a bit of pushing going on. Delf had hoped to wait until the mayor arrived, but this could turn bad very quickly. He stood up on top of the wagon where everyone could see him.

  “People of Sorocaba,” he shouted. The noise of the crowd quickly died away and the pushing stopped. They were all looking at him. He’d guessed that their curiosity would be greater than their hostility, and he was right. “We’re waiting for the mayor to get here,” he announced. “It shouldn’t be more than a minute or so.”

  The crowd quickly transformed from a hostile volatile crowd to a hostile waiting crowd. The wrong thing said or done could still turn them into a mob, but he thought he could rely on the mayor to avoid that. He’d grown up in a small town like this one, and even if it had been in the south, close to Samara, he knew the sort of man who would be the mayor.

  His guess was quickly confirmed as a greying, prosperous figure hurried across the square with the young man Delf had sent to fetch him.

  “Who are you?” the man demanded. “What are you doing here?”

  “My name is Delf Killore,” he said. “I’m a builder, come to build you a civic building. These fine soldiers,” he gestured to the guardsmen, “have travelled with us to protect us from any bandits that might be in these parts.”

  “A building? What building?”

  “Your name, sir?”

  “I’m Granis, mayor of this town, duly elected.”

  “Mayor Granis, I could tell you the whole tale sitting up here on my wagon, but it’s a long tale, and my throat is sore with dust from our journey, and I’d be grateful if these good people would allow us to rest a while. We’ll tell all there is to know under the Kalla Tree in an hour or so. Is that acceptable to you?” By invoking the Kalla Tree he was going through a procedure they all understood. It was the way that things were done in the north.

  “It is,” Mayor Granis said. “In one hour, then.”

  The crowd seemed disappointed, but the majority dispersed. A group of younger men hung about in the square, watching out of the corners of their eyes and pretending to do something else, but they stayed well away from the guard and the builders. They looked the most disappointed, and Delf could feel the anger in the stones they kicked, the gestures they made when they spoke quietly among themselves. It probably had some connection with whatever Serhan had done here.

  His men stayed close to the wagons, but Delf took the opportunity to survey the centre of the town. The square was big, laid with gravel and well kept. There was a large house boarded up on one side of it; a prominent place for a derelict. If they could lay claim to the house, then their building could sit right here on the edge of the square, opposite the Kalla Tree itself.

  When the hour was up a few dozen people had gathered at the tree, and Delf took the sergeant and Wulf with him to talk to them. It was always best to take someone. Company made it look like a delegation. The Kalla tree in Sorocaba was a huge spreading oak. It looked a hundred years old. Beneath its cooling shade a mismatched collection of benches, chairs and tables were set haphazardly. The simplest of these were rounds of wood cut from some other tree to make a stool of about the desired height. Granis sat with a group of men the youngest of who was older than Delf. These would be the council.

  “Mayor Granis,” he said as they approached. “I thank you for your patience.”

  “You are welcome, Delf Killore.” Granis gestured to the seats around the table where they had gathered. “Please sit. Now can you tell me what it is that you have come to build?”

  “Of course.” He pulled out the plan that he had drawn up after his discussion with Serhan. It was a professional piece of work, and the look of it impressed the men. He went through it with Granis and the others, explaining the function of each room, the purpose of the building. Others watched from outside the circle.

  “We understand what the building is,” one of the councillors said after a while, “but why is it being built?”

  Delf had hoped that he wouldn’t have to answer this question. He wished that Serhan were here to answer it himself.

  “The lord Serhan,” he ventured, “is trying to restore order to the domains of White Rock.”

  “The lord Serhan?” one of the other men asked.

  “So they say at White Rock. He is recently made Seneschal.”

  Some of the men muttered. There had never been a seneschal at White Rock, and this was news indeed. Gerique was trusting another to rule in his name.

  “We already have order,” Granis said. “We have a council, duly elected; we do not have much crime.”

  “Mayor Granis, I think that Rollo was not the product of the sort of order that White Rock thinks is appropriate. You are lucky indeed to have a town at all”

  The men muttered again, and Delf saw a couple of them exchange looks and nod. Apparently there had not been total support for Rollo’s act of rebellion.

  “Besides,” Delf went on. “I’m sure you must have a problem with bandits from time to time, even in a town as large and prosperous as this.”

  “It is true that they raid us,” the mayor said. “We lose food and other things, damage is done, and lives are lost. You will fight the bandits?”

  “Not I, mayor Granis, but those men and women in armour over by the wagons are skilled in warfare, and will act in your defence. They will stay behind when the building is made.”

  This was the first time that the idea of a permanent garrison had been raised, and the men gathered under the Kalla Tree looked uncomfortable.

  “Do you have any discretion in this?” the mayor asked.

  “None.”

  “That is unfortunate. The recent… trouble that we had here had left some of our people angry and seeking a way to avenge themselves. Rollo inspired some, and his death was a blow for them. Left alone their anger would probably fade, but with a contingent of guard in the town, well, you see what might happen. We do not want to rouse the wrath of White Rock again.”

  “I see. Well, you have been lucky so far. Gerique would have sent Dragan but for the intervention of the lord Serhan.” A little white lie. “I suggest you make efforts to control these angry people as best you can. Your luck may not hold for ever.”

  Granis blanched at the mention of Dragan. The name alone seemed to pierce him. Delf could see a look in his eye that said he was in some other time or place. One of the others now spoke up.

  “Rollo said that he could protect us from Dragan.”

  Delf laughed. Some of the councillors smiled with him, one looked annoyed, and Granis still looked as though he was elsewhere.

  “My friends,” he said eventually. “Dragan did not come. A group of men came, and ten times their number would not have been noticed by Dragan the punisher. Rollo is dead. His record on defence speaks for itself.”

  “Your point is well made, Delf,” the mayor said, his eyes focussing again. “Many of us did not have faith in Rollo’s abilities, but man
y others were won over by his talk of battle and victory. He seemed very wise, and could do things that no man should, but it is not a man’s place to stand against the will of the Faer Karan.”

  “At least not by force of arms,” Delf said. He was not sure why he said that, but by the looks on the faces of some of the council members it had been a good thing to say.

  “So we will agree to this building, give it our assent?” Granis asked the other men. They all nodded. “There are none who wish to speak against it?” Nobody indicated that they did.

  So that was that. For the most part the situation was defused. The council would tell the people that the Kalla House was there to protect them from bandits, and that it was also there to ensure that the town did not repeat its recent error. White Rock was watching them. And there was the smallest hint that the lord Serhan was not just a tool of the Faer Karan. He had acted to save them from Dragan, he wanted order and prosperity for the domains of White Rock, for the town of Sorocaba itself.

  Delf walked back to the wagons with the mayor, who seemed to want to talk to him.

  “What is White Rock like?” he asked.

  “I do not know. I have seen it from the outside, but never entered.”

  The mayor seemed surprised, even a little disappointed, but he went on anyway. “I have seen more of White Rock than I care to,” he said. “As a young man I was travelling to the village of Blackwood to visit a relative there. It was long ago, and my memory of the who any why has faded, and I do not know what had passed in Blackwood, but as I topped the hills two miles out from the village – it can be seen from there – I saw Dragan attack the place.”

  “You saw Dragan?”

  “Yes. I wish that I had not. His wings were a hundred feet from tip to tip, and his body about the same. His terrible claws ripped whole houses from the ground as if they were nothing more than curled dry leaves in autumn. His breath burned everything. I tried to hide, but I could still hear screams and the roaring of wind and flame. Even from such a distance. Again and again I heard the vast wings pass over me as he turned about the village. When all had been silent for an hour I dared to look again, and there was nothing but a burnt scar on the land. Blackwood had gone. I went down in the end, much later when some portion of my courage had returned, looked to see what I could. There were no bodies, no broken houses. Deerfruit that was three feet under the soil was cooked through.” He paused, his eyes closed. “I would have killed Rollo myself if I could. I was afraid for us all, but I was ready to flee the town alone by the time the soldiers came from White Rock. They did us a great service, Delf.”

  “It may be so, Mayor Granis.”

  Granis left him then, and wandered back towards his house as though still not sure what time and place he was in, besieged by powerful memories reawakened by a name. Dragan the punisher. In a better world Dragan would have been a tale that parents told their children to scare them when they misbehaved, but Dragan was real. Very few had seen him and lived. No man had ever heard him speak. Some even claimed that he wasn’t real, but Dragan’s existence was counted in human dead. It was what he did.

  “Are you all right?” It was Wulf.

  “Yes. Just visiting someone else’s nightmare.” He walked back to the wagons and began talking to his crew about unloading.

  * * * *

  Weeks later everything was quite businesslike on the site. Delf had secured permission to demolish the house on the edge of the square. In the process he had found out that it was Rollo’s house, and that Rollo’s son, Jinari, was the owner. The boy was about fourteen, and so not yet able to make his own decisions. In this case the decision was made for him by his mother, who was not sorry to see the house gone for a fair price.

  Delf had walked round the house before it was demolished, and found nothing there of interest. The house had been thoroughly stripped by whoever had the right, and there was only dust and empty rooms.

  Now there was a new building rising where the old one had stood, and covering an additional corner of the town square. In fact it was three times the size of the building it replaced, and where there had once been wood his men were raising a structure of layered brick, with outer walls two feet thick.

  There was still a degree of hostility from the town, despite the efforts of Mayor Granis and the council. They had made Rollo’s support seem small, but it was becoming clear that a good number of the townspeople still resented the presence of anything to do with White Rock. There had been no open confrontations, but after nightfall stones had been thrown at their tents and at the guards they posted. During the day there were always a few young men loafing in the square watching them.

  Delf had begun to suspect that the resentment was organised, that there was some person or group of people behind it all.

  In spite of it, the building progressed, and after forty days of work was beginning to look as he had imagined it. From the outside it was solid and strong, squatting broadly at the edge of the square, completely different from any other structure in Sorocaba. The many long, thin windows were set high in the walls, and their shape made it all but impossible for a man to get through them. The door was relatively small, and therefore defensible. There was a solid roof, surrounded by battlements behind which a few dozen archers could hide. Inside it was less forbidding. The light and the high ceilings made it airy in the main chamber where the council were intended to sit. The guard quarters were pleasant, too, while the store rooms and cells were darker.

  Delf had moved his men inside the building as soon as the walls were complete, and the attacks had all but ceased. Guards up on the roof were a lot less vulnerable, and had a better view of what was going on.

  There had only been one incident, and he blamed himself for that. It was traditional in Samara to celebrate the completion of the roof of a new building, and he had allowed his men to do so. Sorocaba had three taverns, and the closest of these to the new building was a place called the Good Harvest. It stood on the square opposite the Kalla House, and was popular with locals as well as the builders. The guard sergeant had decided long ago that his men would do their drinking apart, and in moderation, so they had stayed behind within the completed walls.

  White Rock, or Serhan, had provided Delf with silver coin to spend if he needed it, as this was the common currency throughout all domains, so he bought drinks and food for his men beyond what their small salaries would have allowed.

  Many of the men became quite drunk, but the mood was good. The locals in the tavern didn’t seem to object, especially when Delf bought them drinks, and the evening went on in a good spirit.

  He was reluctantly beginning to think that it was time to return to the new building when a commotion broke out near the door, and he could see the builders streaming out into the night. He found out later that one of his men had stepped out to clear his head and been attacked. The man’s friend, who had been a few steps behind him, had raised the alarm and a brawl ensued.

  The men who had been lying in wait outside were sober, but numbered only five. They were, however, equipped with clubs and knives. The fight was brief and bloody. It ended when the guard contingent, roused by the noise, hurried across the square, swords drawn. At this point the attackers had fled. One of the archers in the guard had shot at them, hitting a man in the leg. The wounded man was captured and protected by the guard from the outraged, drunken builders.

  Delf was not entirely sober himself, but managed to calm things down. His men stood in a group by the tavern door. They were angry, and it was now plain to see why. One of them had been stabbed to death, and another was wounded. Delf himself was angry, but he was less so at the attackers than with himself. He should have seen this coming.

  There was a chorus of demands from his men to hang the culprit, to behead him, to kill him any way.

  “What do you want me to do?” the guard sergeant asked.

  Delf was in two minds. Like his building crew he wanted swift revenge, but he was aware of the l
ocals from the tavern, who were now outside and watching everything that he did. By moonlight and lamplight he could see the new Kalla House opposite. It frowned across the darkness at him.

  “Bind him,” he said eventually. “Take him to the Kalla House and hold him there. Treat his wound and make sure that he remains alive and untouched. We will deal with this in the morning.”

  “As you wish.”

  The builders protested, but he hushed them again.

  “My friends, have patience,” he said. “What we are building here is a symbol of justice. If we stain its walls with hastily spilt blood our work will have been for nothing. In the morning we will be sober, and in the morning we will see that justice is done.”

  It satisfied the men for now, but Delf had no idea what form justice would take. Should they publicly kill the man? Should there be a trial? Maybe he would be able to think more clearly in the morning’s light.

  * * * *

  The morning came, and the problem remained. He went to see the prisoner, who was being held in an unfinished cell. He was bound and two guardsmen stood over him. Delf was pleased to see that he had not been hurt beyond the arrow wound that he had received the previous night.

  He was a young man, one of those who watched the builders during the day, and Delf had no doubt that he was one of those that threw stones at night.

  “What is your name?” Delf asked him.

  “I am of The Free,” the man replied. “I will not tell my name to a slave of the Faer Karan.”

  “I am no slave. I am a master builder employed to do a job, and paid for it. Who or what are The Free?”

  “We are the ones who do not bow to the beasts who rule the world. We are free men who will only be ruled by free men.”

  “And which particular free man rules you?”