by Tim Stead
“How..? No I will not ask.” He turned in his saddle and spoke to the men behind him. “Prisoners, we must have prisoners – as many as you can take. If they do not fight, do not kill them.”
The word was passed quietly back.
Now the first blush of pink was in the sky to the east, and they spurred their horses forwards, slowly at first, and quietly. Even this would be heard by the sentries below, but in a few seconds they reached the bend of the canyon and a trot became a gallop, swords were drawn and battle cries rang out. A few hundred yards away in the camp Serhan could see the guards raise the alarm. Men sprang to their feet and looked about them, reaching for weapons that were no longer there. The sentries, who had rushed forward to meet the charge suddenly realised that they were not being reinforced, and looked behind them to see only panic and confusion. They had no lances, and facing a cavalry charge with only a sword is no way to live out the day. They broke and ran back to the camp.
It seemed only moments until the charge reached the camp. They swung around its perimeter, brushing aside those who resisted, and penning the others within their circuit. The charge slowed, then stopped, and the White Rock archers raised their bows.
Darius rose in his saddle and called out. “Who is in command here?”
There was another pause. The Ocean’s Gate guardsmen looked around at their own. Eventually the young lieutenant who had accompanied Gorman under a flag of truce the previous day stepped forwards.
“It seems that our Captain is dead,” the young officer said. “I am Lieutenant Portina, and I believe I am the only officer remaining here.”
“Will you surrender?”
“Do you offer terms?”
It was bold. The young man had very few cards, but should a melee break out there would certainly be some deaths among the White Rock guard. It seemed he was counting on Darius’s reputation as a humane commander.
Darius turned to Serhan.
“My lord Seneschal,” he asked formally. “Do you wish to offer them terms?”
Serhan looked at the men. Their eyes were anxious, and those still bearing weapons clutched them with white knuckles. Their faces were the faces of guardsmen, not unlike his own friends, and while something deep inside him still called out for blood he remembered his purpose and his principles.
“If you lay down your weapons none of you will die,” he said. There was an immediate easing of tension in both the surrounded men and the White Rock guard. No battle, then, no dying to be done. “I hold nothing against you,” he told them. “You have followed your commander, as you should, and now you will learn the justice and mercy of White Rock.”
He could feel Darius looking at him again, but he ignored it. Even as he spoke the ideas formed themselves.
“I will offer each man three alternatives. You may, if you wish, return to Ocean’s Gate and face whatever reward you can expect for this defeat. You know that your lord has breached the rules of fair conflict, so I cannot say what will become of you, or him.
“If you do not wish that, then I will offer a place in the White Rock guard to any man who wishes to take it up. You will return with us to our home and be trained in our ways, and then you will be posted to garrisons around White Rock’s domains.
“If neither of these paths suits you, you may give up your profession and again return with us to White Rock, where you will be given land and instruction, and take up a life of farming under the protection of White Rock.
“The choice is for each of you, on your own, to make. Surrender your weapons now, and we will give you an hour to make your decision.”
Lieutenant Portina glanced back at his men, who now seemed more bemused than afraid.
“My lord seneschal,” he said. “Your word on this is enough to satisfy me. We will surrender.”
The swords were passed over and the captured guardsmen sat down in what had been their camp and began to debate the options that had been given them. Darius posted guards around them and the remaining men took breakfast together outside the circle of guards.
It was a good day for White Rock. The victory was complete. Gerique would now have the evidence he needed to completely discredit and degrade Borbonil in the eyes of the other Faer Karan. Serhan had no doubt that the guard at White Rock would be strengthened, and even those that returned to Ocean’s Gate would face a changed regime. There was little now to fear from that quarter.
“My lord,” a guardsman interrupted them. “The lieutenant would like a word.”
“Of course.”
Lieutenant Portina was conducted to where Serhan and Darius sat.
“My men have a question,” the young officer said.
“Please, sit,” Serhan gestured. “What is the question?”
“If they take up service with White Rock, will their rank be honoured?”
“If they are competent in their rank, it will be,” Darius said.
“I can ask for no more.” He seemed downcast.
“What will you do, lieutenant?” Serhan asked.
Portina hesitated. “Your offer is most merciful and generous, my lord, but I feel bound by my duty to return to Ocean’s Gate, whatever the consequence.”
“Your loyalty is admirable.”
“I am the senior guardsman to survive. Tomorrow, perhaps you will see the officer who took the archers up to the hills, but I surrendered my command, and I must go back to answer for that decision.”
“If you tell the truth you will not be punished,” Serhan assured him. He was sure of this. Borbonil would be too concerned about the consequences of his own actions to punish a junior officer, but he tried one more time anyway. “You would be welcome in White Rock, lieutenant. Are you sure that you will not reconsider?”
“Yes, my lord. Over a hundred of our men have died in this action, and someone must give an accounting. There are families and friends who need to know who lived and who died.”
“It is your choice.”
On the next day the party split up. Ten new guards were assigned to the Kalla House in Barisal, and forty guardsmen went with Lieutenant Portina to an arranged rendezvous that would allow them to go back to Ocean’s Gate through a black door. Serhan rode back to White Rock with one hundred and ninety new faces. Sixty had opted for the gentler life of land and farming, while the rest were to join Darius’s command and serve White Rock.
With each mile that passed Serhan’s heart became heavier. Grief could be borne, more so when a sword was in your hand, but now he was going back to a White Rock without Mai, where every place would remind him, where his bed would be empty, and his eyes robbed of their resting place.
There was nothing that he could do about it.
32 Final Ascent
Calaine wept. Hidden in her room in the Saine house with the door locked she hid her face and wept. Life had been hard, always. She understood sacrifice, and was prepared to play her part. She had prepared for it all her life, but now her part was changed for ever, her world was ripped and bleeding; her brother was dead.
Word had come from her father. There had been a fight in a tavern. Some guardsmen from Ocean’s Gate had walked in on her brother and a handful of his men. Just a chance encounter. Swords were drawn, arrows loosed, and three men had died.
She had loved her brother, but they had not been close. Petron Tarnell, the Do Regani, heir to the throne of Samara had been a wild and intemperate young man. He had been an affectionate but infrequent friend for Calaine as she grew, and the frequency had declined still further when he became a man. He had always seemed angry, keen to be elsewhere, and she had come to understand that he was not happy with his destiny. She could not fault his anger. Who would want to be heir to running and hiding, heir to an implacable enemy who could not be defeated?
Petron drank a lot, got into fights and acquired a sort of reckless arrogance. It made him seem glamorous to some, and unpopular with most of the city.
Their father had looked the other way. He had been the same, she gathered from
some of the older men. He could not bring himself to impose discipline on his son. Let him run, he had said, his life will be bound soon enough.
But it never had been bound, and now she was the only child, the heir, the destined one. It might not have been so bad if she had never been sent to live in this house. Here she saw a different way of living, a world of compromise and subtlety that she was just beginning to appreciate. She was learning things that she had never imagined, taking pleasure in knowledge, conversation, food, even things as simple as the view from the balcony at sunrise. Half a year ago she would have dismissed such things, but that Calaine had grown, stepped out of her old mind and learned a different way to measure importance.
It would all end now. Her father would never allow the Do Regana to live with a trader family in Morningside.
And there was Corban. She would miss him, had grown fond of him.
She was not given to self pity, and after a while she returned to the living. Her life was about to change, but before it did perhaps she could squeeze just a little more pleasure from this pleasant place. She left her room and went in search of Corban.
She found him in the store rooms with several clerks shifting quantities of food out into the courtyard.
“Corban, do you have time to climb today?”
He put down his lists and walked with her out into the courtyard.
“I was distressed to hear about your brother, Calaine,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. That he knew things like this was no longer a surprise to her. The house of Saine had its own ways of finding out. “I expect that my father will terminate our arrangement, so I hoped that we could climb one last time.”
“Really?” He looked surprised. She wasn’t sure if it was her leaving or her desire to climb that surprised him.
“Do you have time?” she asked again.
“Not for an hour or two. I’m sorry. The Ocean’s Gate guard will be back soon to collect food, and we have to set it out for them. They’ve gone out riding.” He shrugged.
She looked at the floor. Ocean’s Gate. They had killed her brother and Corban was giving them food. She understood, but it made her angry.
“Fine,” she said. “I will climb on my own.” She left quickly, almost rudely, but she didn’t want to be angry with Corban. He called after her, but she walked on, making her way to the guard room. She collected an escort and sent two others to drop a rope over her chosen rock face. She was getting quite good now, but still remembered that Ella’s life depended on hers, and she liked Ella. Calaine always climbed roped to the top, just in case.
She chose a difficult face that she had never before scaled without falling. It was a hundred and sixty feet to the top, and the holds were small, rare and difficult. If she was ever going to do this it would be now, her last climb. She waited nearly half an hour at the base of the cliff while the militiamen rode round to the top via the road. She talked with her escort about trivial things. They were good men, but they were not dedicated to their cause. It was a job to them.
Eventually the rope came snaking down the rock and she saw faces at the top.
“It’s tied off,” one of them shouted down.
She took the rope in hand and tested her weight on it, bouncing on it to be sure it was firm. She looped the end around her as Corban had shown her, making sure that it was tight, but not too tight. She wished that Corban was here climbing with her.
Her hands found the familiar first handholds, and she stepped off the ground into the air. She felt, in a way, that this was as close to flying as she would ever get, rising slowly above the earth like a leaf caught on a lazy breeze. It felt good today. Her hands were strong, and her feet slipped easily into cracks and onto minute ledges. She enjoyed the smooth power in her muscles, too. She was stronger than she had been when she came here, and she climbed steadily, glancing down from time to time to enjoy the height. She was not at all afraid.
After a couple of minutes she rested.
It was a mental pause as much as a physical one. The climb was started and Corban had taught her to take time to evaluate the route ahead of her, to think. The same climb was never quite the same twice. Some ledges might have weathered, and some handholds might not be as firm as the last time.
Even Calaine now recognised that Corban saw climbing as a metaphor for life. It was. Climbs changed, and life changed, though what had happened to her in the last day was about matched by a landslide taking out half the rock face. Never the less, the lesson was to look upwards, evaluate the route, take the time to understand, and move one step at a time.
She moved upwards.
It was a beautiful day, and looking over her shoulder she glimpsed the view that she anticipated from the top of the climb. She had wanted more from this fostering. She had seen the trader life, listened when they talked of distant towns, rough roads. She had wanted to see it, would have relished the personal and private test that it represented. Now she was committed to the very public test of monarchy.
Glancing down she saw that it was now a fatal drop. Why did that occur to her? No drop was fatal with the rope well tied about her. Do I hate it that much? Fear it that much? Not the climb, of course.
She shook her head and carried on. This face had never seemed easier to her, and her hands unerringly found each handhold. Her feet were strong and did not tire. Life should be like this.
How fine to climb upon a horse’s back and ride out of Samara, not knowing what awaited you. Every day would be a new thing, a new place. Any destiny that awaited you on the roads would be a hidden and secret destiny, a daily diet of surprise and wonder, and the past would be only a memory.
She came to one of the hardest pitches on the climb. It drove destiny and past and future from her mind. There were a couple of difficult moves here, and one by one she executed them. She had fallen here before, at least as far as the rope had allowed, but this time she did not. A last reach, pushed up by a firm thrust of the left leg and her hand slotted into a crevice, held firm. She smiled. Corban would have praised her, and she imagined his voice. Good move, cleanly done.
She looked up. The rope seemed a little loose. She was closer to the top now.
“Tighten up!” she called.
The rope tightened, but there was no answering call from above. She frowned. The rest of the ascent was quite routine. She rested again. Corban had also taught her to enjoy her moments of triumph. This was the first time that she had made this face without an error, the first time that the rope was only a rope. A few more minutes of moderate effort and she would have beaten the climb for the first and last time. She rested her forehead against the bare rock and felt it cool and hard and simply rock against her skin.
Petron was dead.
Had he been surprised when the arrow had struck home? Had he been relieved? She pushed the thought away and looked up. No more than twenty feet left, but it involved a move to the right. It was simple enough, a narrow horizontal ledge where softer stone had weathered away. The footholds were trickier.
She reached the end of the ledge and went up. Now it was easy. Less than a minute and she could see a hand reaching down from above to lift her over the top. She reached up and grasped it.
She was lifted too quickly, too strongly and lost her footing, She found herself flung to the ground, and she righted herself, angry, a rebuke already in her mouth when she saw the bodies of the two militiamen, and for the first time saw the man attached to the hand that had pulled her over the top.
It was Fram. She hadn’t had much to do with him, but she knew him and knew what he’d done.
“I’m so pleased to find you here, Do-Regana,” Fram said.
Calaine was looking for a weapon. There were six of them, all armed. The dead militiamen and their swords were too far away. The best she could do was a rock. As she reached to pick one up she was kicked in the small of the back and thrown forwards on the ground again. She kicked out and felt some satisfaction to hear a crunch and a
yell of pain from one of the men. More boots slammed into her body, and one struck her head. She blacked out for a moment, and when her vision cleared she found herself pinned to the ground. It felt like a man on each limb. Fram was sitting on her, looking down at her eyes.
He slapped her across the face. It hurt. He did it again.
“Are you awake, princess?” he asked. She spat at him. “Good. I wouldn’t want you to miss anything.” A couple of his men laughed. Fram showed her his dagger, pressed its point against her cheek just below the eye. She lay quite still.
“That’s better,” he said. “Now, you do know who I am, don’t you?” She nodded carefully. “You see, lads,” he said to his men. “I’m famous. Even the princess knows me.”
Calaine was trying not to think about Fram. She could feel a dark panic picking at a corner of her rational mind. If that got started she would be finished. She needed time. The longer they messed about with her, the more likely something would happen to give her a chance.
Fram turned to speak to one of his men. A joke. She twisted and pulled with all her strength and her right leg came free. She lashed out with it, kicked someone, but had no way of knowing how effectively. If she could free the other leg it would be better. She reared up, forcing her upper body at Fram’s face, but he was quick and pulled back out of the way, giving her even more freedom of movement.
Fram hit her again, this time with a fist, she felt three blows, and then blackness again.
When the light came back she could feel blood on her face. She was pinned down again and everything hurt.
“Ah, awake again,” Fram said. His tone wasn’t light any more. It was nasty. “You’re a grim little bitch, aren’t you? Well, just so you know, this isn’t about you. It’s about your father, but know he’s going to suffer when he finds out how you suffered, so we’re going to make it obvious.” He reached down and ripped open her shirt. “I’m going to cut you up,” he said. “I think we’ve probably got about twenty minutes after those boys at the bottom of the cliff hear you start screaming, so we’ve time for quite a bit of fun. You’re not going to be very pretty when they pick you up from the bottom of the cliff, princess.”
