by Duncan Lay
Ezok smiled gently. ‘I have sworn to always give you the advice you need to hear, not the advice you want to hear. You do want to be victorious, carve your name in history, do you not?’
‘Of course!’
‘Your cousin and her Ralloran dog are trying to use Aroaril against you. They think it is the only thing that can stop you. And perhaps it might…’
‘No! I shall not be stopped again!’ Gello breathed.
‘Then you will need to call on Zorva. The enemy of your enemy must be your friend,’ Ezok offered.
Gello shuddered. He hated religion at the best of times. And was not Zorva reputedly the source of all evil? He had just won the people back again—and he was under no illusions as to how most of conservative, God-fearing Norstalos would regard a deal with Zorva.
‘Concepts of good and evil are pointless for men such as yourself. There is only power, and nothing has more power than Zorva,’ Ezok said softly.
Gello could only agree with that sentiment but he did not want to consider such a radical step now. He had faced a few setbacks but he was still in control.
‘I do not wish to talk about this now! I don’t need Zorva, I don’t need Mother, I don’t need anyone!’
‘Of course, sire. We can wait. But I would caution—you cannot leave it too long. If Aroaril is indeed against you…’
‘Enough! I have made my decision!’ Gello said violently.
‘I shall say no more, sire, for now. Just consider my words, for the time may come when you need to act.’
‘I shall think on it. No more than that!’ Gello stalked back to where everyone else waited.
‘Is it even worth ordering a search of the surrounding countryside?’ he snarled.
‘I would suggest, sire, that instead we redouble our efforts to send our men north, to stamp out the Queen’s rebellion before they try anything else,’ Ezok said delicately.
Gello looked at the ambassador. He could see the angry looks many of his captains were sending Ezok and Prent.
‘But you can confirm both Archbishop Declan and Bishop Gamelon are dead?’ he said darkly.
‘Naturally, sire. We can show you the bodies,’ Prent added.
Gello nodded. ‘Then not too much damage done. A bunch of country priests have escaped. So what? A proclamation from the old Archbishop, or a prominent bishop might have concerned us but the peasants are not going to take notice of a pack of aged priests and women! Increase our efforts to get the men north, though. I have had enough surprises from my bitch of a cousin and her Ralloran dog.’
The streets of Bellic were choked with corpses.
Martil tried to hide but only had a moment before the horde of howling dead spotted him again.
‘Kill him!’ The cry was taken up by a score of ripped-out throats.
Martil did not waste his breath pleading with them. He knew by now that they would not listen. He saved his apologies for the bodies he clambered over in his desperate attempt to escape. He recognised many of their faces—and was horrified to see new ones among the familiar. Men—and women—he thought he had forgotten but had dragged here, seemingly, to haunt him.
Ahead was the town square, with its tortured display of his fellow war captains; beyond that was the gate. He had a growing conviction that if he could just reach the gate, Karia would be able to open it, and he could get away.
But perhaps the twisted inhabitants of Bellic had also come to that conclusion, because their pursuit was fierce and deadly that night. Normally they seemed content to hunt him through the streets, were happy for the woman and her son to move in for the kill. Not tonight.
A screaming woman, her intestines bulging out of a wicked wound, raced out of a doorway and sliced a butcher’s knife at his face. Instinctively he leaned back, and his sword lashed out, taking off her head in an instant.
‘Over here! He’s over here!’ the head screeched from where it had come to rest on the cobbles, while the body still stumbled after Martil, the knife cutting through the air.
Martil backed away in horror. He had to get away. Karia was waiting for him.
But more dead were appearing all the time, reaching out to grab him, slow him down or drag him into darkened homes, where flames roared and strange voices gibbered hate.
Desperate now, he slashed and hacked to either side as he ran; a trail of severed limbs and heads still tried to follow him, while their owners staggered to catch up. Broken corpses pawed at him, and jabbed spears and swords at his legs. His swords rose and fell, trying to cut himself loose from their clutches.
Now he was in the town square, where the other four war captains writhed and twisted on their endless gallows.
‘This is all your fault! Your fault!’ they hissed at him as he ran past, but he dared not stop. If he slowed down for a moment they would have him.
‘You cannot escape us!’ the leader of the dead, the woman he had killed, capered on a battlement over the gate. ‘You don’t deserve to!’
But Martil ignored her. The gate was ahead—he knew he could escape now. At full pace he hurled himself at the massive wooden gate, then beat on it with his sword hilt.
‘Too late!’ a voice taunted and he turned to see the host of the dead arrayed in a semi-circle around him. Many of them were missing limbs or heads, although, as he watched, some of these crawled or wiggled to join their owners. At their head were the woman and her son. The spear and the long knife were ready and seemed to have grown wicked barbs.
Martil crouched, swords ready, and was prepared to throw himself forwards in a last attack when a creaking noise made him glance over his shoulder.
The gates were opening!
He looked again, a wild, outrageous hope rising in his chest. Through the gates, in the distance, was a small hill that overlooked Bellic. On that hill stood a small figure, which beckoned to him.
It was Karia!
‘No! You must not escape!’ the dead howled.
It was too late. The host of the dead were not going to stop him. He turned and stepped forwards, wanting to run through the gates.
But something grabbed him around the legs and he looked down in horror to see the woman from the Ralloran village, still cradling her dead baby.
‘Your fault! All your fault!’ she hissed.
He tried to break free but her grip was unyielding. He looked up to the hill where the small figure waited for him—and saw the gates beginning to close now, heard the insane laughter of the dead…
‘Captain!’
Martil sat up, a scream dying in his throat.
‘Captain, you were thrashing around—I thought you were going to call out!’ Kesbury whispered.
Martil ran a shaking hand over his face.
‘I’m fine now, Sergeant. Just a bad dream,’ he managed to say.
‘Bellic, sir?’
A quick glance told him that everyone else was asleep. With a pang, he saw that Karia was cuddled up with Father Nott—or Archbishop Nott, as he should be thought of now. ‘Aye. But I’m fine now.’
Kesbury thought he did not look fine but he was not about to say that.
‘I’ll stand watch now, Sergeant. You get some sleep.’
Again, Kesbury thought it would be better if his captain rested but he would not contradict an order. He lay down on the ground and closed his eyes.
Martil watched him for a moment, then stood and began to pace around carefully. He would not sleep again that night. He could not face that dream again.
He looked down at Nott, sleeping peacefully next to Karia, and sighed. Maybe she would be better off with him after all. Thanks to Aroaril, it looked as though the old man still had quite a few years left in him. And, although Martil was younger, he had no guarantee of a long life with the Dragon Sword refusing to work for him—and that was even before you thought about Gello’s massive army coming for him.
‘What are we going to do now?’ Sendric asked.
He, Merren, Rocus, Romon and Barrett were sitting a
round, eating the last of the bread and cheese.
They had been unable to go back to the village to get more supplies, even though both Merren and Sendric had more coin. The dust of marching men had been seen on the road, and Merren had ordered them to stay hidden. She had personally led a patrol out to look at the advance, keeping hidden as the regiment of rangers had hurried past on the main road. By now the men trusted her implicitly—although Sendric had chided her privately for taking too much of a risk—and accepted her orders without question, although it meant discomfort for them. The only one spared from rationing was Barrett, who had rested frequently and eaten prodigiously over the last day and a half and had announced he was ready to take everyone back north the next morning.
‘I mean,’ Sendric continued, ‘not only did we fail to win over the rangers but we also lost many valuable men, including both Wime and Tarik, two of the three leaders of this little rebellion who have been with us from the start. We also lost Forde, who gallantly saved you, my Queen, but without him, it is going to make it more difficult to bring on the men from Gerrin and Berry.’
Merren swallowed a mouthful of bread. ‘We shall return to Sendric. I am confident that Captain Martil will have rescued the Archbishop, and the rest of the priests. Once we have them safely back, we can use them to rally the ordinary people. With the towns rebelling behind him, Gello will not be able to lead his army north, and we shall have the time we need,’ she said calmly, injecting a confidence she did not feel into her words.
‘Merren, you have shown you are willing to make the hard decisions. Therefore, I beg you to consider making one now,’ Barrett said flatly. ‘The people are afraid of Gello, but, thanks to the bards and his tame priests, also afraid of the Rallorans. We need to make the choice easier for them.’
Merren considered him carefully. Since their little talk, he had seemed normal—too normal. She had expected more from him: more anger, more hurt, more tears even. Not that she had wanted that but seeing him apparently take rejection so well—it was a little disconcerting.
‘How do we achieve that?’
‘We need to remove the Rallorans from the decision. Send them south, to attack Gello. His army will take months to recover from the damage they can inflict.’
Merren stared at him. ‘And the Rallorans?’
‘Well, obviously they will be wiped out. But I can save Martil, as the Dragon Sword wielder. With the Rallorans gone, the people will have nothing to fear, and will be happy to join us. Meanwhile, their sacrifice will have given us the time we need to recruit a Norstaline army.’
Barrett decided he needed to clarify those comments, in the light of the stunned look on Merren’s face. ‘We are all agreed that there is no way we can defeat Gello’s army? Then we have to make a tough choice. Do we all die, or do we make a necessary sacrifice so Gello can be defeated? The Rallorans knew what they were letting themselves in for when they joined us. They, more than any of us here, know that wars cannot be won easily. Besides, they are men with no end of problems. In some ways, we shall be doing them a favour. And, in the same action, we save ourselves.’
Merren just stared at him. ‘So we just tell them to march south and keep killing Gello’s soldiers until they are all dead?’
‘Of course not!’ Barrett laughed briefly. ‘We shall tell them that we are planning a surprise night attack on Gello’s camp and that the Norstaline companies will cause a diversion, allowing them to break free and retreat. Only we shall not provide that diversion. Already deep in the enemy camp, the Rallorans will have to keep fighting, for Gello won’t offer them surrender. Warriors like that, fighting to the death—they could easily take out three or four times their number—perhaps even a little more. Gello will be unable to assault the passes with more than a third of his army dead or wounded. He will be forced to retreat and we can gather a new army, a Norstaline army. It is dishonourable, it is even contemptible. But when the alternative is our death and Gello triumphant, what choice do we have?’
Merren just sat there, unable to speak. Part of her could see the logic of his argument but there was no way she could possibly agree to this. Even if it regained her the throne, it was something she could never come to terms with. And then there was Martil. If he survived, he would never accept the death of his men.
‘Your majesty, he does have a point. The Rallorans have been as much a hindrance as a help. With them, we have earned ourselves a breathing space. Without them, we could attract a much larger army of volunteers,’ Sendric offered.
Merren turned to look at Romon, who sat silent.
‘Do you have anything to add, bard?’ she asked.
Romon smiled. ‘I am a bard, I am a recorder of history, not a maker of history. Do what you will; I seek to merely tell the people about it.’
‘Well, you can tell them I would rather die than betray men who have sworn an oath to me. There will be no sacrifice of the Rallorans. If there is no hope, I would rather walk away from the country. With me gone, there will be no need for Gello to destroy the towns—he can afford to be generous. And I refuse to let people suffer in this struggle between Gello and myself…’
‘Your majesty! You can’t walk away!’ Barrett gasped.
‘Leaving the country would only cause more problems—do not forget that Gello is allying himself with the Berellians and now Fearpriests! Without you, Gello would be able to do what he liked!’ Sendric protested.
Merren gazed at them. ‘I do not want to walk away. I truly believe I am better for this country than my cousin. But if it ever got to the point where I had to do things I hated, things I could never live with, then I would walk away rather than destroy the fabric of this country.’
Nobody answered her, although Romon’s quill was busy.
‘So,’ she continued, ‘I must believe Martil has succeeded in his mission. We must trust in him to give us more time.’
The barracks was still in a mess, and the companies were in disarray because Kay had had to promote a number of sergeants to replace all the officers who had died trying to apprehend the Queen. But the orders were unequivocal: March north with all speed. Food and supplies will be waiting at the camp, so travel light, with only the basics. Kay was still seething about the Berellians but he was also eager to get back his captaincy by destroying the vicious Rallorans. He had decided that, despite his feelings about Berellians, he could fight against Rallorans with a clear conscience.
The criminals were grumbling, and Kettering was hearing it all. They were hungry, they were footsore and they were tired.
‘We should cut and run—take out the sergeants and officers and scatter,’ was one suggestion that gained a fair bit of support.
‘We stay together. We run too early, then they’ll hunt us down. When we take control, we do it when the time is right.’ Kettering sent the order out and was not in the least bit surprised when it was obeyed. The political prisoners, the ones who had found themselves in jail on trumped-up charges, they were happy to obey him. And even the real criminals respected him. Now he just had to repay that trust, by not allowing them to be led to their deaths.
Nerrin laughed and clapped his men on the back as they passed him, sweaty, soot-stained and grinning in the darkness. Behind them, a huge pile of supplies in Gello’s camp was going up in smoke and flames.
‘It was too easy, sir.’ Dunner chuckled. ‘They had one squad of sentries on! The lazy bastards! We had the place alight before they even worked out what was going on!’
Nerrin smiled. ‘They’ll have a full company on each night from now. But it’s too late.’ He glanced back to where several hundred newly woken soldiers were frantically trying to save casks and barrels from the flames. They were trying in vain. The Rallorans had soaked many of the wooden casks in lamp oil, to help the flames along.
‘An army goes through supplies faster than a two-copper whore goes through customers. They can’t sustain a long siege now. Once those rangers get here, there’s no way Gello will be c
oming north this year,’ Nerrin said loudly, wanting that message spread among the men as widely as possible.
13
Martil was in a foul mood. Not only had he been haunted by exactly the same dream for two nights in a row—where Karia opened the gates of Bellic yet he could not escape the clutches of the murdered Ralloran mother—but he had been forced to watch Nott laugh and play with Karia. The new Archbishop was with her the whole time, not even giving Martil the chance to play with her. As the others had found ways to occupy themselves while they waited for rescue—Milly walked the countryside with Kesbury for protection and Tiera stayed well away when they were out—Martil was left to sit and brood.
Nott had taken time out from reading a saga to Karia to tell him that the Queen was safe and would be returning to the town that day, as they had planned too. But Martil also worried that his men back in the capital would not be able to escape. And that the priests and priestesses might not bring in volunteers. There were so many uncertainties. Above them all, though, was the fear that Nott was preparing to take Karia back. As much as he tried to tell himself that would be great, that he could get on with his life, could relax and finally get the chance to never read another saga again, he felt sick inside.
There were only two things that let him clear his mind: battle, and being with Karia. But while fighting and killing only gave him more bad memories, Karia gave him a feeling of peace. She could drive him crazy but she also made him feel more alive than ever before, gave him an appreciation for life he had not thought possible.
The thought of losing her filled him so full of rage and hurt that he needed an outlet or he would surely explode. The return of Kesbury and Milly, who had been off walking, provided the perfect opportunity.
‘Next time, Sergeant, I want to know your proposed route, and a series of warning calls, so we know how to rescue you, if necessary,’ he growled, knowing he was being ridiculous. But he also knew Kesbury would never argue back. ‘And what are you doing spending so much time with a bishop, anyway? People might talk!’
