‘At any rate, you’ve had a long journey. I ‘spect you’ve a mind to get your head down. I’ll show you where you can bed down for the night,’ said Smit.
The journey had been fuelled by his excitement at getting back to the front, but now that he had reached his destination the energy had fizzled out quickly and he could think of nothing more attractive than a warm blanket.
He woke with a start. Pulled from a deep sleep it took him some time to remember where he was, and a few moments more to take in his surroundings. His brain still echoed with the dream he had been dragged from. He had dreamt of Alessandra, in a world where everything had gone right for them. It was the type of dream he did not want to wake from and he was left with a profound sense of loss and disappointment as reality replaced imagination. He found it difficult to think of his last conversation with her, but he found there was often little else on his mind, other than perhaps Amero. Those thoughts brought the intense anger he felt over the way Amero had used him and Alessandra both, to suit himself with no consideration for them.
A voice had woken him, distant but still loud. He had to concentrate to make out what was being said, but he quickly realised that the shouting was in the barbarian language. He dressed quickly and left the tent. Smit and a few others were sitting around a recently re-lit fire, drinking from steaming mugs and chatting in muted tones.
‘Good morning, sir!’ said Smit. ‘Care for some coffee?’
‘What’s all that racket?’ asked Soren, ignoring the offer of coffee.
‘That’s the giant. He’s been doing that every morning since we arrived. He walks over, just beyond arrow shot, and shouts abuse at us like that. He keeps it up for an hour or two and then heads home. A few of us thought about going over to shut him up, but he’s bloody massive and the order was given that no one’s to go near him.’
‘Oh. I might go and have a look then,’ Soren said absently. He walked through the camp at a relaxed pace, his mind already set on a course of action. All around him he could see the effect that the barbarian’s taunts had on morale. Men visibly cringed with each new outburst, a mixture of shame at their inaction and fear. There could be no doubt that they believed that when the battle was finally underway, many of them would meet their end on the enormous barbarian’s axe. By the time he reached the camp’s pickets, the guards were engrossed in a completely irrelevant argument, grabbing onto anything to take their minds from the gigantic barbarian. He was several paces past them before they even noticed that he had gone by. One of them called out to him, but Soren dismissed him with a wave. He couldn’t explain why he was doing what he was doing, other than it was something to occupy his mind for a little while, to distract him from his thoughts of Alessandra.
He had covered about half the distance between the camp and the barbarian before the barbarian noticed him. He continued shouting, but now instead of addressing the camp generally, his insults were hurled directly at Soren. Soren continued to walk toward him at a casual stroll, until he was almost within range of the gobs of spit flying from the barbarian’s mouth. All the while he could feel an ever increasing tingling energy dancing across the surface of his skin.
The barbarian was truly huge. Soren was tall, but the barbarian was taller than him by more than a head. His blonde hair was long, dirty and matted, but his armour was clean and well maintained. So was the edge on the massive axe that he rested his hand on.
The content of the barbarian’s ranting must have changed, as a large number of barbarians began to gather at the crest of the hill to watch. The giant turned to face his compatriots and shouted to them, gesturing to Soren. Whatever he said caused them to laugh, which rankled with Soren. He felt a flash of anger.
‘Get on with it you stinking sack of shit. You know what I’m here for!’ he said.
The barbarian turned back to look at him, and screamed something at Soren. His eyes bulged with manic fury and a deluge of spit flew from his mouth. In one quick movement he lifted his axe and swung it in a great arc at Soren. With his massive shoulders he hefted the axe as though it was weightless. Soren ducked and drew his sword. The barbarian swung the axe back with barely a pause, twisting the head so the blade was facing the direction of travel, which drew a great cheer from the barbarian onlookers. His bulk hid Soren’s movement from the crowd. As he ducked and twisted out of the way of the axe, he whipped his sword across the giant’s belly. The razor sharp blade parted the toughened leather armour as easily as it opened the guts underneath. The barbarian groaned in pain as his abdomen twisted with the momentum of the axe and opened the wound even farther. Soren stepped back and watched with grim satisfaction as the barbarian dropped to his knees and let go of his axe to try and hold his guts in his belly.
Soren braced himself for the wave of exhaustion that would follow. He had known from the tingling feeling on his skin that whatever forces affected his gift were strong.
The barbarian crowd had gone deadly silent, unsure of what had happened. Soren took the man’s head from his shoulders with a quick stroke of his sword to clear up their confusion. Before it hit the ground he turned to walk back toward his own lines, hopeful that he would reach them before the Gift faded and the fatigue arrived.
What he saw when he had turned surprised him. The entire army had gathered at the pickets to watch the fight, but had remained silent the whole time as they were certain Soren would be killed. Now they were jubilant. The barbarian champion was dead and their morale spilled over. As a single body they spontaneously began to charge toward him, and toward the barbarians.
The barbarians, who were silenced by the death of their champion, began to murmur. Soren looked at them as their shock turned to confusion. Some of them were armed, while others were not. Some had not even bothered to don their armour to watch their champion kill a Duchy man. Now they were faced with the entire Duchy army charging across the field at them. Soren stood still as the body of men reached him and passed by, all eager for their own share of the glory that morning. Realising that they were in full attack, the barbarians began to turn and run back to their camp. Some were too stunned to move, and they were cut down where they stood. Soren watched as the Duchy troops disappeared over the hill and down into the barbarian camp.
A slaughter sounds very differently to a battle, and it was most definitely a slaughter that Soren could hear. Spirals of dark smoke started to rise up into the air. A group of finely uniformed horsemen galloped up to Soren. A portly man with grey hair in a doublet liberally embroidered with gold thread pushed to the front.
‘What is going on here, Captain?’ he said.
‘I believe the barbarian army is being routed, my Lord Colonel,’ said Soren.
The colonel of cavalry looked at the large headless corpse on the ground behind Soren.
‘Fine work,’ he said, before spurring his horse to a gallop toward the barbarian camp with his aides and adjutants following hotly after him.
C h a p t e r 4 1
AN UNWANTED HERO
It was late in the evening before the Duchy army was brought back to any semblance of order. Soren had spent the afternoon half-heartedly looking around the remains of the barbarian camp for any booty that was worth having. A few coins and rings were all he had found, but they would fetch a few florins that just about made the effort worthwhile. There were too many greedy hands to make a fortune on the battlefield though. He had returned to his tent as the afternoon dimmed into evening to see how many of the old frontier regiment had survived the carnage. They straggled in over the course of the early evening. Most made it back. It seemed that Duchy casualties had been remarkably light. An adjutant arrived shortly after with a summons to see the General.
He knew the way to the General’s tent, but the adjutant led him there nonetheless, keen, it seemed, to ensure that he arrived. He was bustled into the tent, through the antechamber he had been in before, into a separate room at the back.
‘Banneret Captain Soren, sir!’ said the adjut
ant.
‘Thank you, Lieutenant. You may go,’ said the General. He looked up from his papers and turned one of the lamps to cast more light on Soren. He studied Soren for a moment before speaking.
‘It was a nice piece of work today, killing that barbarian. I expect you are here anticipating some sort of reward or decoration, but I’m afraid that isn’t the case. I gave express orders that no one was to fight that man. His morning rants may have been bad for morale, but not half so bad as my entire army watching one of their officers being butchered. You were lucky and the result was good for us, but if you were killed it could quite easily have been this camp that was a looted and burnt wreck,’ he said.
Soren felt his confident bluster fade to apprehension.
‘Now I have to decide what to do with you, my lad.’ He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers in front of his face.
Soren opened his mouth, but was cut short.
‘I didn’t tell you to speak!’ said the General, raising his voice and showing an undertone of anger for the first time. ‘On one hand you have disobeyed an order and placed my entire army in jeopardy. On the other, you are the man that killed the barbarian champion and that rallied my demoralized army to victory. My reports will inevitably have to make more of the latter than the former, and you will no doubt win some recognition for your “heroism”. I understand that you have already had a taste of fame at Fort Faraway. It occurs to me that perhaps you are a whore for fame, but no matter.’ His words had become more of a stream of consciousness than a lecture. ‘Needless to say I am displeased with you, but your actions have made it impossible for me to censure you in the way that I would wish. So instead I have to come up with something else, which is exactly what I’ve done.
‘We’ve learned a surprising number of things in the past few hours. Members of the Intelligenciers have been interviewing prisoners all afternoon and continue to do so as we speak. They have come upon an answer for the barbarian invasions. It seems that a new cabal of shamans have taken power in the barbarian lands, and their magic has allowed them to unite the tribes. Not all of the tribes are happy with this, or happy with contributing troops and supplies to this shaman’s army. They’re just too afraid of him to do anything about it. We have corroborated intelligence that suggests if the head shaman were to be killed, the tribes would fragment and once again be reduced to seasonal raiding and be little more than an irritation.’ He paused again and studied Soren, waiting for him to take the hint before continuing. ‘I understand you have some experience dealing with the barbarians,’ said General Kastor.
‘Yes, sir, I spent the past season with the Legion,’ replied Soren.
‘And in this time did you manage to learn any of the barbarian tongue?’
‘A little, sir,’ said Soren. ‘But no more than to ask a few basic questions.’
‘It’s a shame that you don’t have more, but I’m sure what you have will come in useful. When you are in the barbarian city that is. I have had my adjutant prepare some maps that should allow you to find it without any difficulty. I want you to infiltrate the city, find this shaman, and kill him. If you succeed you will have performed a valuable service for the Duchy. If you fail you will be dead and will have learned an important lesson in hubris.’
‘The latter seems more likely than the former,’ said Soren, knowing that he really didn’t have any choice in the matter.
‘It does, but such is the price for patriotic service sometimes. See my adjutant on the way out to get your instructions and official orders.’
Once Soren had gone, General Kastor took one last look at the letter that he had received only the day before. The letter had been sealed with wax that bore no marking, which meant only one thing to the General. It had warned him of the coming of a young officer and requested that he did everything in his power to ensure that the officer did not return to the city. Satisfied that he had sent Soren to his death, he held the letter over the flame of his candle until it caught light and did not drop it onto the drip tray of the candle holder until it had burned all the way to his fingers. It would be a nice bonus if he actually managed to kill the shaman, he thought.
Navigating across the featureless plain was second nature to Soren after the time he had already spent in the east. The summer he had spent there had largely been about not getting lost and he had been reasonably successful at it. He did not hurry, although he was very eager for the whole experience to be done with one way or the other.
On horseback he quickly began to catch up with the small groups of barbarians who were struggling to make their way back north. He gave them a wide berth. He was not concerned about being discovered, but he suspected that his horse would make him an attractive target for a robbery, which was a complication that he did not need.
It took four days to reach the barbarian city, which was not at all what he had expected. Instead of a mud smeared wattle fence surrounding a shanty of thatched roofs, there was a proper stone wall, and tiled roofs. The wall was not nearly as tall as those surrounding any of the cities in the Duchy, but it was solidly built and well maintained and more than enough to provide an obstacle to an attacker without heavy siege equipment. It was nestled at the foot of a hill with a river running along its western wall. From his distant vantage point Soren could see that there was a steady passage of traffic in and out of the main gate, and there was little in the way of security. It was likely that nearly all of the men of fighting age had been with the army that had been defeated.
As he surveyed the city, his eyes stung from lack of sleep. He had trouble sleeping on the way north and the result was that his fatigue had built to a point where he was beginning to be concerned that it might become a problem. Nonetheless he wanted to get the job over with as quickly as possible. The longer he stayed in or near the city, the more likely he was to be engaged in conversation. Despite having a very basic grasp of their language, he had no desire to be caught out over that. He got rid of his horse a short distance away and then made his way toward the city gates on foot.
Soren watched and waited for a larger group to accumulate at the gate before attempting to enter the city. The barbarian clothes he wore and the days of travel lent him enough of a disguise to appear no different to any of the other survivors who were arriving in dribs and drabs. The inside of the city proved as much a surprise as the outside. He didn’t really know what he had truly expected, but he imagined something along the lines of a poor Duchy farming village but on a much larger scale. Here things were very different. Instead of the mud streets covered with potholes and filth, there was a wooden boardwalk raised above the level of the ground. Most of the buildings were of stone, and many had slate roofs, although there were some that were thatched. The stereotypical barbarians that Soren had expected were present in large numbers, roughly dressed, with long hair and beards. There was another class though, in finer clothes, wearing valuable gold jewellery and who looked well washed. They even gave Soren a wide berth, treating him with the contempt a citizen of the Duchy might show a barbarian. He allowed himself a private smile as he walked deeper into the city.
It was not as large as Ostenheim, but no city was in his experience. Even Brixen had been smaller. Despite this, its population must have numbered into the tens of thousands, far more than he had expected. After a little while he entered a large open area that was paved with irregularly shaped stones. It contained a large number of bedraggled looking men, either beggars, or more likely survivors from the army with nowhere else to go, as well as others who were passing briskly through. The bedraggled men huddled in groups around the square, some sleeping and some sitting sombrely with no purpose. Soren fitted in well with them. He sat down a short distance from one such group and put his head down on the ground. He was exhausted and despite the circumstances, no sooner than it touched the cold, wet stone, he was asleep.
It was dark when he awoke. There were many small fires scattered across the square. Although it was hard to te
ll in the darkness, it seemed that there were more men on the square than there had been when he had arrived. They sat around their fires in small groups, huddled around its meagre warmth. Soren took a few moments to take in his surroundings. No one took any notice of him. He was just one of many new faces there, not particularly welcome, and completely ignored.
His first task was to discover where the shaman was. A rough description of the temple he based himself in had been elicited from the prisoners. The most straightforward thing to do seemed to be to walk around until he found a building that fit the description. He also wondered if he would be able to feel an increasing energy when he got closer, as he had the previous times he had been near a shaman. The Intelligenciers told him that the shaman never left this building other than to preside over religious ceremonies.
The biggest danger to him was that someone would try to engage him in conversation. The more he thought about the whole situation, the more convinced he became that the General did not expect him to return. He certainly didn’t seem to care one way or the other. Soren was determined to kill the shaman and then to disappear. He had no intention of dying here.
It was cold and he didn’t feel like sleeping any longer, so he began his search through the streets of the barbarian city. He felt a growing excitement inside, the danger and thrill of his mission were almost intoxicating and he felt himself eagerly anticipating the kill.
The building was not hard to find, but he hadn’t expected that it would be. It had been remarkably well described, and the energy that ran through him as he drew near was unmistakable, just as he had hoped would be the case.
He walked past it as innocuously as possible, taking in as much detail as he could and then circled around behind it. He had determined to carry out his task immediately. He had no desire to remain in the city any longer than he had to as the chances of being discovered grew with each minute he spent there. Neither had he any desire to spend another night on the street. It brought back too many unpleasant memories, and he could not rent a room in an inn because he could not speak the language well enough.
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