“They’re everywhere.” Horrus replied. “I can’t watch them all. They have full cover and an open field of fire. How could you lead us here fyrdman?”
“Horrus, you need to calm down. We’ve taken the city and it’s perfectly safe.”
“I can’t take it fyrdman!” Horrus cried. “I’m sixteen fucking years old. I need the sleeping fort and I need my tent. I can’t be here now.” Horrus began to weep then, and not quietly. Long and mournful sounds escaped from the deep places within him and an endless stream of tears poured down his face. He dropped the bow, fell to his knees and held his face in his hands.
Then the fyrdman was beside him, and the older man’s arms were around his shoulders. At first Horrus hunched up, but then he grasped desperately at the fyrdman’s biceps, and put his face in the man’s chest, bawling like a newborn calf. “It’s all right, son.” The fyrdman said, his normally gruff voice now full of concern. “You’re safe now. We’re all of us safe.”
The Cthochi had an ironmonger smith, a burly man but short, with bowed legs and a scar-pitted face beneath an unruly halo of shaggy black hair with gray specks. The man wore a leather tunic and called himself Mallet. He was careful to put a thick leather pad between Tuchek’s ankle and the hot iron of the ankle iron that he attached to him, mooring him to a stone ball that likely weighed thirty weight. The ball did not prevent movement altogether, but if Tuchek wanted to go anywhere without ripping his ankle open he had to pick up and carry the ball. It was an effective means of preventing his escape, he thought, although he had already given his captors his word that he would not attempt it.
The other men with him were likewise moored to stones, then they were put to work in the smaller and shabbier camp that he’d seen when he arrived here, the camp that sat hard by the cliff above the Redwater. He could see the walls and towers of the west side of Northcraven City in the distance, rising above the river mists like a fantasy castle. Spoiling the image were the flocks of ravens that swarmed the city.
In the pox camp death moved relentlessly, making rounds with him as he emptied pans of shit or carried the bodies to the cliff, to be thrown with brief ceremony into the river below, and thence out to sea. Well, he supposed they didn’t often make it to the sea, for he saw the writhing tentacles of kraken sometimes, waiting for the bodies.
He knew little of kraken, other than having seen a few. The mariners said they would not eat a living man, but they might kill one who was bleeding. They came in all sizes, from tiny shelled forms with a few tentacles that would sting your fingers but do you no serious hurt to enormous beings that could terrorize a shipping lane by sinking ships. He saw only the hints of their shapes in the river below the cliff, but the ones he saw were as large as men.
The black pox was a horror to see, for it spared no one its ravages. It had been present among the Cthochi for weeks now, according to Silver Thorn, one of the women who deigned to speak to him. She had gotten it, been bedridden, and then recovered. It had left an angry chain of welts across her face, as if she had the skin of a goose with the feathers plucked, and her left eye was milky and blind. Of the survivors he met, she was one of the luckier ones, for a good half of them were completely blind, and some of them deaf as well.
In the middle of the afternoon on the day after his capture the bells of Northcraven City all began pealing at once, but the music did nothing to lift the spirits of the Cthochi. “What is it?” Silver Thorn asked him, but he hesitated a moment. She looked at him again earnestly. “You know, don’t you?”
“Aye woman. I know. It’s the Silver Run Army. They’ve entered the city.” His voice was matter of fact, and he was careful to let no emotions show, but he was inwardly elated. He had come to share Aelfric’s ambition to break the siege, and now the lad had done it. He hoped now that the Cthochi would come to realize that this war was hopeless, as well as being pointless. The skepticism that the people had shown to his father when he was brought in gave him hope on that score, for he knew that Allein-a-Briech was behind the conflict.
For the rest of that day he labored, doing what the healers demanded, and the tasks were many. Those with the pox were helpless to feed themselves, so Tuchek fed them. They could not clean up after themselves, so Tuchek did that, too. His natural fatalism allowed him to work without panicking, but he did fear the pox, even as his work exposed him to it. He knew that it spread from person to person somehow, and he knew that eventually he would have to fight it. That evening he had a chance to see the lamps being lit in the distant city before they returned him to the large tent he shared with the other captives, and he thought there were far too few of them. Northcraven looked more than half empty.
In the morning the men counted the dead, and there were twenty-seven. Ten new patients arrived, and three of them were quite advanced with the pox. Plainly they had remained with their families until the disease could not be denied. Tuchek supposed that was natural, but it meant that the pox was running wild in the camp outside of this quarantined area, and the notion that it could be somehow contained was a fantasy.
Around mid-day they were fed, but it was very little, and Tuchek noted that none of it was the kind of food that came from the southern parts of the Cthochi lands. Most likely the Ghaills there had given up on sending food out of risk of it being intercepted, even though Aelfric had stopped doing so after the battle of Ugly Woman Hill. The other captives were quiet, mostly, but when they were in their tent at evening in the dark the men whispered to each other.
“The Privy Lord’s taken the city.” Tuchek heard a voice in the abyssal darkness. He thought it was Urimen D’Lothe, a scout they had picked up in Redwater.
“Aye.” Tuchek heard a whispered reply. “And one of these days he’ll take this camp, too. Mark my words.”
Tuchek replied in a low whisper. “He won’t cross the Redwater again. There will come a peace. The Ghaill has to call off this war now.”
“He might want to, but the king will want his justice.” That was the voice of Milon O’Kemminton, an irritating and opinionated little man, although as quiet as a shadow when stalking. “Mebbe the Privy Lord or mebbe someone else, but these Cthochi is going to see what it’s like when Mortentians take their vengeance.”
“The Cthochi already know what that’s like.” Tuchek answered. “There’s been war along this frontier for two hundred years. It always comes back to the Redwater, though. They control the west and Mortentia controls the east.”
“They mean to kill us all and you lot want to talk politics.” This voice Tuchek did not know, but he suspected it came from one of the five or so younger scouts they had from the area around Maslit. “We’re all going to get this pox and die.”
“Nothing we can do about it.” Tuchek replied calmly. “I promise you that Aelfric hasn’t forgotten about us, though. We won’t be here forever.” He hoped that he was right on both counts.
On the third morning Tuchek was told to pick up his stone and take it to a certain tent, and when he entered it he found the Ghaill Earthspeaker waiting for him. “Greetings, Rakond.” The man said, and Tuchek saw that he was sitting on a small upended barrel. The barrel was of Mortentian make, and Tuchek wondered if that meant something. The man sitting was nearly as tall as Tuchek was standing.
“Greetings Ghaill.” Tuchek replied, and when the Ghaill offered him a seat on another barrel, he put down the stone and sat.
“Are you well, Rakond?”
“You are asking if I have the pox. I don’t. Only a few of my men have it, and not badly yet.”
“It gets much worse.” The Ghaill replied. “But I am not surprised that you are not sick with it. I suspected it might be so. Walks Under the Moon said that there was a fruit in the land of Valkaz, the place that the Mortentians call Walcox. Did you eat of this fruit?”
“I am not sick.” Tuchek replied. “Some of my men are.”
The Earthspeaker nodded. “The ones who are sick, do they come also from Valkaz?”
&nb
sp; Tuchek thought about it, making connections. “No. They all joined us after.”
“It is as Walks Under the Moon said. There is a magic there. The Cthochi need the magic of Valkaz, Tuchek. Your people suffer.”
“You will never see Walcox again.” Tuchek replied. “There are too many fortifications now between here and there. They learned hard lessons from the Sons of the Bear.”
“Kerrick has returned to us.” The Ghaill said, and Tuchek grunted in surprise. “Your general let him go. Kerrick says the war is over. Your butcher general has broken the siege of the great city. I suppose you know this?”
“Many a man could carry the name butcher after all that has happened, including you and me, Ghaill. But yes, I heard the bells ringing and I knew it could only mean one thing. Auligs don’t ring bells. I knew he would do it also. He’s built the best army this part of the world has ever seen.”
“There are many who agree with Kerrick, but your father disagrees. He claims that his visions tell him that we must take the land east of the Redwater.”
“I cannot speak to visions I don’t have, Ghaill.”
“Nor can I. I find myself a pawn of those who do. Jecha came to us months ago and said that the visions of Allein-a-Briech are false, and that this is a false war. But also she said that we Cthochi would be in Northcraven City by spring time. Allein says now that we must win this war or the Cthochi perish. Both of them say that they are sure, and both of them are known to be true seers.” The Ghaill looked down at his two hands, as if deciding which one to use.
“What do you think, Ghaill Earthspeaker?”
“My heart is with Allein-a-Briech, but my mind tells me that Jecha the Entreddi tells the truth. Jecha is wise, and she is not of our people and has no need to flatter our vanity. I think Kerrick the Sword is right. This war is over.”
“I saw outlander gear and ponies in the camp when we were brought in.” Tuchek said, changing the subject. “Tell me, are these the Sparli?”
“Yes.”
“When I was with the Thimenians I heard stories of the Sparli. I also looked at the maps they have of the Sparli lands. Tell me Earthspeaker, how did they come to be here?”
“They came at my call. When we killed the bull I sent out a summons to all of the Aulig peoples.”
“When you killed the bull. When was that, Ghaill?”
“It was in the second moon of the planting time.”
“And how long was it before they came to your call?”
“They arrived within the month. They came on ships.”
“So they came down from their villages in their thousands with their ponies and found ships to carry them and sailed from east of Thimenia, yes? And arrived here all within four sevendays? Did you find that strange?”
The Ghaill was silent for a long time, mulling Tuchek’s words. “They were already raiding and heard of my call.” He offered, but it was as if he was explaining it to himself, offering the only reasonable conclusion.
“How many thousands of them? Twenty-thousand? Thirty-thousand? Do the Sparli raid with so many and on ships?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that they were already on their way here when you killed the bull, Ghaill. Just like the Sons of the Bear were already here, else how could they have come up to Walcox so swiftly? Someone else summoned them before you did. Someone who wanted this war all along. I should think you would want to speak to their headman.”
“They are in the east, on the other side of the great city, ravaging the country. This is the task they set for themselves.”
“And now they have no ships. We had reports from all over Northcraven Duchy about the storm. What will they do now?”
“They will do as I tell them.” The Ghaill’s voice was confident. “It is I who must decide what to do.”
“Stop the fighting, Ghaill. Send word to their leaders and have them come here. You can’t win.”
“You have a lot of faith in your young general, Eskeriel. I almost had him two days ago.”
“No you didn’t.” Tuchek’s tone was dismissive, and he almost chuckled. “You had smoke. He dangled a bit of bait in front of you and you snapped it up. He knew what you would do.”
“How do you like being the man’s bait?” The Earthspeaker retorted. “What do you think of your butcher general now that you have been given over by him?”
“I think he wins.” Tuchek replied. “I believe he is a friend of mine, but always he places winning above all else, even friendship. All the time he is thinking about how to win. You need to stop the war, Earthspeaker. It is winter and the warriors need to go home and to hunt. We are not winter warriors.”
“You said ‘we’, Rakond. Do you think of yourself as Cthochi now?”
“I am a man, Ghaill, that is all. No more and no less.”
“I will go to Kerrick and Allein and the others and we will decide.”
Curiously, rather than dismissing Tuchek it was the Ghaill who rose then, and he stood and began walking toward the tent’s entrance.
“It’s peaches, by the way.” Tuchek said.
“Peaches?”
“Aye. When we were in Walcox there were peaches all over the place. We had them with every meal, and it was too early in the year for them. My commander made me eat them.
“Go and offer peace to the Mortentians, Ghaill. Tell them you want peaches in return. All they can give you.” Through the walls of the tent they could plainly hear the sound of men working in the pox camp, and they were dragging something heavy. A wet and agonized cough sounded nearby.
“He will think me mad.”
“Let him think what he will. You haven’t much time. He will be glad to pay, Ghaill. I know him.”
Anbarius, Faithborn and O’Hiam insisted that Aelfric dress for the occasion, and searching among the stores of the dead duke in the nearly empty palace they found clean clothing, rich and elaborate, and a tailor was enlisted from among the camp followers to fit it Aelfric’s thicker frame. The Swan of Northcraven was removed from a midnight blue tabard and replaced with a golden griffin while another woman from the baggage train cut his hair, trimmed his beard and cursed while she worked over his ragged and dirty fingernails.
The sixty or so wagons that had followed the Silver Run Army from Walcox arrived in Northcraven City two days after the army did, for neither the teamsters nor the whores could keep up with the army when it was on the march, try as they might.
The road from Redwater to the city was still in Aulig hands and the baggage train would have made a fine prize, so Aelfric sent orders for them to swing wide east of it, and thus come to the city by way of Wehnsford, and a heavy cohort of lancers accompanied them.
Also to Wehnsford had come a group of seven Cthochi warriors under a banner of parley. The eighth member of the delegation had been Tuchek, and Aelfric had been delighted to learn that the Aulig was alive and seemed well. They met in Wehnsford after sufficient guarantees of their safety were given. Kerrick the Sword was there and spoke for the Ghaill.
“The Ghaill wants to speak to you about ending this war, general.” The man spoke through a Cthochi interpreter, despite the fact that Aelfric was aware that he spoke perfectly good Tolrissan. “He asks that you meet him on the Redwater River, boat to boat in the quiet space downstream from the west gate of the city.”
“He wants to meet me in a boat?” Aelfric had asked, confused.
“Yes. He knows you won’t feel safe on our side of the river and he cannot cross to speak to you.”
“Why can’t he come here? I can assure you he will be perfectly safe.”
“He pledged at the end of the last war to never cross the Redwater again, Aelfric. That was his promise to your father.”
“Oh, that’s splitting hairs pretty damn fine.” Busker O’Hiam had blurted out. “He sends his warriors and doesn’t come himself? That’s how he honors his treaty?”
Kerrick had shrugged. “Those are the terms. I return you t
his prisoner as a pledge of good faith.” Tuchek was returned to them, and he relayed what had happened in the Cthochi camp.
The last exchange of arrows between the Silver Run Army and the Cthochi had taken place two days ago, and the Auligs had allowed the wagons of the baggage train to pass unmolested, so there was a very good chance that this war was over. Aelfric hoped so.
When he’d breached the possibility with Anbarius, O’Hiam and Faithborn, they had urged him to make peace. “We’re short on everything, Aelfric. Food, supplies, medicines. We can survive here, within these walls, but to launch a campaign now would be difficult.” Anbarius told him, but he hadn’t been sure he even had the authority to negotiate a peace.
“King Falante made you his hand in the north, Aelfric. He may be dead, and Maldiver may disagree, but the fact is that there is no one else. The Duke of Northcraven is dead and you command the only Mortentian force within a hundred leagues.”
Aelfric had met master Jordith on the day after the city was secured. On the first day he had remained in camp at Wehnsford, strangely reluctant to enter the city he had fought so hard to liberate. Truthfully he was thankful that he had waited.
Anbarius had taken one look at the devastation that was Northcraven City and he had put every idle hand in the army to work cleaning the streets and disposing of bodies. Since the army had no more orders than to secure the walls and set up a supply chain to the central market square, there were, in his estimation, a lot of idle hands.-
Several companies of archers were given the sole task of killing ravens, for the surfeit of bodies in the city had brought them like a black cloud. So it was that when Aelfric entered the city for the first time the army had had a full day to try to improve it, and the Silver Run army was nothing if not efficient.
War of the Misread Augury: Book One of the Black Griffin Rising Trilogy Page 135
