by Stephen Deas
But not all of them. Along Talon’s line tiny sparks of flaming light arced through the air towards the advancing soldiers. Even through the rain, light flashed bright enough to make Berren cringe. Fire blossomed along Meridian’s line; men screamed and burned. Their charge faltered. The wall of shields wavered, and now the Hawks launched their own charge. They crashed into Meridian’s line, its soldiers still reeling and screaming, the smell of singed flesh and hair mingling with the smell of rain and earth. The shield wall cracked and broke in a dozen places. Around the edge, soldiers broke away. Berren raced after them. He cut down one man who didn’t even try to fight, just ran and wasn’t quick enough, and then a second who tried to dart past him and slipped in the mud. The next one he let go. By then, everyone was so covered in filth it was almost impossible to tell who was who any more. And they were running – why kill a man who was already running?
He sighed, shook himself down and sheathed his sword. Somewhere out there was King Meridian. Perhaps Kuy too, both of them men Talon wanted him to kill. Quietly he applauded the Prince of War. Meridian had a cohort of men in heavy armour, two cohorts of longbow archers and around fifty cavalrymen. In this mud, in this rain, in this roiling mass of confusion, they were useless. It all came down to men in thick leather and old mail hacking and stabbing at each other with swords and short spears.
There were more of Meridian’s men around him now, lurching through the mud, back towards the general direction of Tethis. Berren slipped in among them, but he’d barely gone a dozen paces when someone was running at him out of the rain, and Berren had no idea whether this was a friend or an enemy or just some irate peasant, letting him know what he thought of what was happening to his turnip field. All he could see was a madman covered with black mud, with wild white eyes and a great big axe.
‘Cowards! Get back and fight or take what’s coming to you!’ The axe swung. Berren ducked and tried to jump away, but the wet earth took his feet out from under him. He landed flat on his back, spattering mud in all directions as the axe split the air where he’d been standing. The axeman almost lost his balance as well. ‘Vermin, all of you! Get back and fight! Afore I cut you all down like this one!’ Berren tried to scrabble to his feet but he kept slipping. The axeman steadied himself. Somewhere underneath the layers of black goo was a skirt of hardened leather strips. He had braided hair and a spindly beard, both caked in mud.
He’s from somewhere in the far south, then. The thought bubbled up from the storm of panic in his head. Berren pushed with his feet, trying in vain to find some sort of purchase. The mud was like a thick soup.
The man with the axe took a long hard look at him and braced himself. ‘Deserter,’ he hissed. ‘You know what that means.’
Desperate, Berren threw a handful of mud. It caught the axeman squarely in the face. He shuddered, pitched over backwards and didn’t move.
When at last Berren found his feet, the axeman was still lying there. Berren stood, waiting for his heart to stop racing, for his hands to stop shaking, for the urge to run away to fade. He dropped to his knees and threw up. Then he looked down at the axeman again, sprawled flat on his back in the slime. Already mud had started to ooze between the dead man’s fingers. His face was covered in dirt and the tail of a crossbow bolt stuck out of his chest, punched straight through his mail shirt. Berren looked back the way he’d come, but all he could see was a handful of ghostly shapes stumbling through the mud, covered in it and almost lost in the rain.
His sword lay on the ground. He picked it up and wiped it clean. He’d never know who’d saved his life. His crossbow was soaking wet and covered in filth – though at least the rain washed the worst of the mud away. Whether it would still work, he had no idea. Try not to get them wet, Talon had said, and they’d still been laughing about that as they’d locked their shields together in the pouring rain with Meridian’s soldiers rushing towards them.
He trudged on for a few minutes and then dropped to his haunches. He couldn’t see any more deserters now. The ground here was firmer, the soaked earth not yet trudged into slime by a thousand marching feet. The turnips hadn’t been crushed. Absently, he pulled a couple out of the ground and peeled them. They were sweet and ready for harvest. He peered through the grey sheeting rain for any sign of a building, a barn perhaps. That’s where Meridian would be. Somewhere with a roof over his head. Somewhere dry where he could see what was happening, if only the rain would let him.
He heard a voice and then another, and then several at once, coming towards him. He dropped flat into the green shoots and the sodden earth. Since he was already covered from head to toe in mud, no one would notice one more body.
‘. . . get out of this mud,’ one voice was saying. ‘This is a disaster!’
‘. . . sound the retreat and get us out of here?’
‘I thought he did!’
Berren wriggled, trying to turn his face toward the voices. The last one sounded strangely familiar. There was a pause. ‘You told me he did!’ said the familiar voice again. It had a shrill tone of outrage this time, one that Berren would have known anywhere, remembered from Silvestre’s sword school in Kalda.
Lucama!
25
THE KING’S ASSASSIN
‘I said he should have,’ said the second voice.
‘That bloody king probably won’t let him,’ said another. Berren wriggled again. There were at least four men now. Last he’d heard, Lucama had been fighting for the Mountain Panther. Made sense that he was here, but why here and not in the battle line being butchered with the rest?
‘Even if they didn’t call the retreat, so what? We’ve got what? Fifty men here? Let the Black Swords get themselves slaughtered. One less company to keep an eye on next year, that’s what I say.’
Finally he caught sight of them, walking slowly out of the haze of rain.
‘It’s a shambles,’ said the first voice. ‘They had some sort of fire-throwers. Our cohorts managed to rally. Buggered if I know what happened to the Panthers. I think they broke. Then those traitor lancers came at us from the other flank. By the time we get back to the king, chances are we’ll find the whole place overrun. Only thing that makes sense is we get back to the castle as fast as we can. What’s left of us. Don’t know why we left it.’
‘Huh.’ Lucama snorted. ‘With archers and armoured swords, we don’t need the rest. We could hold the walls on our own. And don’t ask me why we came out here!’ Which made Lucama a Black Sword now? Berren clenched his fists. Almost the first friend he’d made since escaping off that bloody ship, and now they were to be enemies across a battlefield?
‘And what if the Prince of War has another trick up his sleeve?’ asked the second voice. ‘What if he’s got some way to shake down the walls and make them topple back onto us?’
The feet trudged past where Berren lay. He watched them go.
‘Don’t be an oaf,’ snapped Lucama.
‘That fire seemed a pretty good trick to me!’ snapped the other voice. ‘And don’t forget that the Prince of War grew up in that castle. If it has secrets then he knows them. They already did that to us once, don’t forget.’
‘And we were ready for them . . .’
‘And then there’s the people in the town. What if they decide they want their old kings back?’ The voices began to fade as the men walked away, but the last words caught Berren’s ear: ‘. . . go tell that mouse-dick Meridian about that . . . probably doesn’t know.’
Right then. He picked himself up and sat on his haunches, watching the soldiers fade into the rain. When they were nothing more than hazy shapes, he wiped the mud from his hands and face and followed. More men passed him in dribs and drabs, coming the other way. Some of them were limping, some running. They slowly appeared out of the grey haze of rain, and slowly faded again, heads bowed between fearful looks over their shoulders. They were all headed the same way. Away. Anywhere but the battlefield.
Lucama and his friends led him to a hollow wh
ere half a dozen houses nestled together with maybe twice as many barns. Soldiers milled aimlessly to and fro, scores of them, or else propped themselves up under whatever shelter they could find. They looked bored and dejected and afraid. Covered in mud just like the rest of them, Berren walked into their midst without a single challenge. Lucama stopped at the largest house and exchanged words with two soldiers in long leather skirts who slouched by the door, then he vanished inside. Berren scratched his head. From here, in this weather, you wouldn’t have the first idea what was happening on the battlefield. What sort of general was this, sat with his feet up, drying his cloak by someone’s fire while his men were put to the sword in a sea of mud and rain? In his mind’s eye he’d seen Meridian sitting on a horse atop a hill somewhere, watching the battle in horror. He’d seen himself creep through the mud, shoot him in the head, and that was the end of that.
Now what?
Another soldier hurried out of the house. Berren followed him with his eyes into a barn and then out again, a wine bottle in each hand, then back to the house. When he was inside again, Berren peeked into the barn. It was packed full of soldiers sheltering from the rain, but in among them were horses and mules. One of the horses wore an elegant harness in fine rich colours. The king’s colours. He slipped out again and found himself a place to stand without being seen, between the barn and the house, out in the rain and away from the sheltering soldiers. He took the crossbow off his back, cleaned it up as best he could and settled to waiting along the path the king must take to his horse. Water ran in steady rivers over his face, trickles of it creeping down his spine, into his breeches, filling up his boots. He was soaked through to his skin and the cold had settled into his bones. Yet he waited, still and silent.
He almost missed them. Out of nowhere, three soldiers in gaudy cloaks and crested helmets walked swiftly towards the barn. They weren’t muddy at all. An older man was with them, dressed in fine metal plates. He was carrying his helm under his arm, and he’d already walked past when Berren saw the golden crown set into it.
Meridian. It had to be. He didn’t know what the king even looked like, but the crown was enough. As they passed, barely a dozen paces from where he stood, Berren lifted the crossbow. He took a moment to aim. Blood pounded inside him, urging him to hurry, but he it fought back, picking his spot with deliberate care. The string was wet, the crossbow would be weak, the man wore metal plate, but from this range none of that would matter.
The bolt hit the king square in the back of the head. Berren didn’t see Meridian fall; by then, he was already gone, out of sight between the houses. He hurled the crossbow away, drew his sword and then gave in to the tautness inside him and ran, as far and as fast has he could. He had no idea where he was going. Away, as though there were a dozen men hard on his heel, maybe more. At first, he didn’t even dare to look back over his shoulder.
And then he realised that no one was following him, no one at all. If anyone had even seen him go, they hadn’t given chase. Behind him in the rain the hamlet was already nothing more than hazy shapes. He kept running anyway, until he couldn’t see it any more, and then he ran further, in a different direction this time, until he was sure that no one who was looking for him could find him. Finally he stopped and caught his breath. Every part of him was shaking, trembling uncontrollably. He could hardly feel his fingers. They’d already been numb when he’d pulled the trigger.
I killed a man. He never saw me coming.
He saw Tasahre again, Master Sy cutting her down, face twisted with rage. And Radek, paralysed by Saffran Kuy’s shadow around his neck as Berren smashed in his skull. The sailor, Klaas, the woman who’d earned him his name and the nameless soldier Syannis had killed beneath Meridian’s castle.
After a bit he found a tree that gave him a vestige of shelter. He huddled under it, cold and wet and shivering. The rain finally began to ease away as the early winter darkness fell. He could see the farmhouses again by then, or rather he could see the fires being kindled beside them. He could soon hear the men around them too, their rowdy singing and shouting. For a time he thought these must still be Meridian’s men, camping for the night. But the fires grew more numerous, spreading out into the fields all around until Berren understood. This was Talon’s army, not Meridian’s. Talon had won.
He tried to run again then, to get back among them and back where there was warmth and friendship, but the best he could do was a stumbling lurch. He collapsed in their midst, sitting himself down beside one of the fires, rocking slowly back and forth, shivering. Someone passed him a bottle of something strong. He took a swig and stared into the spiralling flames. He could see his sodden clothes steaming, but he still felt cold and the shivering got steadily worse. Hunched under his cloak he watched the sparks from the fire rising up into the sky, mingling with the stars. A strange music started to fill his head. He looked around to see where it was coming from and everything began to blur together. He thought he saw Tarn grinning at him, and then the grin fading and a strange look in Tarn’s eye. Someone passed him another drink, one that burned his throat. A soldier wrapped a blanket over his shoulders, and then another and another, layers and layers like sheets on an emperor’s bed, but he was still achingly cold. The words and the conversations around him twisted into a blur of noise. He closed his eyes.
A smell of smoke and incense and fish and some giant was looming over him with hands that were neither kind nor gentle. He felt them touch his face . . .
Dragons for one of you. Queens for both! An empress!
Daylight. He staggered along in line. They were going somewhere. He saw Tethis. He remembered the place where he and Hain had buried their swords.
Gasping, watching a reflection of himself. The golden knife clasped in both hands. It rose and fell but there was no pain, no blood. In its swirling patterns he could see his other self, clutching and clawing, his face contorted with agony . . .
He remembered shouts. He wasn’t sure what they meant, but afterwards there was a warm place to lie down, and far off he heard men cry, The king is dead! Long live the king!
You have to keep it closed. Otherwise something will come through. He’s making us ready. To let it in when the Ice Witch makes the Black Moon fall.
Someone whispering in his ear in the dead of night. A terrible smell of dead fish. A true master makes a few tiny cracks in the stone just so, and then leaves time and wind and rain to finish his work. And he saw them again, the faces of the dead – of Tasahre and of all the men he’d killed – and in his fever he was gazing through a tiny window out over the sea from the stern of a ship, watching Tethis as it receded into the distance, savouring a dull pang of regret. Not for anything he’d done, but simply to be leaving, and for what he knew would await him. He held a handful of sand and slowly let it trickle through his fingers to the floor.
See, whispered the voice of the warlock. This is what happens to us all in the end.
26
CRACKS IN THE STONE
Berren woke with a start. The last thing he remembered, the last thing that didn’t feel like a dream, was sitting on sodden earth, staring into the flames of a campfire with half an army around him. Now he was alone in a big room, maybe a barn, but the roof was too low, lying on a hard pile of old straw. It was uncomfortable and scratched his skin. The room stank of sweat. When he tried to stand, his legs had no strength. He threw off his blankets and looked to see if he had some injury he didn’t remember, but no. No blood, no bandages.
For a few seconds he couldn’t think where he was. He’d killed a king, or what passed for one anyway. He’d run away and hidden shivering in the rain, getting colder and colder until he could barely feel his skin. Then he’d found the Hawks and their camp, the delicious warmth of their fires, and that was where his memories began to fray.
What came after that were fragments. Marching and marching and feeling tired enough to die. ‘You’ve gone grey,’ someone had said to him. There might have been another battle, bu
t if there was then he didn’t remember any of it. If there was, he was surprised he was still alive, because his arm barely had the strength to lift a sword, never mind wield it. But they must have won because the next things he remembered were more songs and drinking and more delicious fire. At some point he’d crawled away from the rest of them, stolen as many blankets as he could find and found a place to sleep, struggling to be warm.
Everything ached. When he walked to the door and opened it, he cringed at the brightness of the sunlight. He was standing in the yard outside Tethis castle, tents everywhere, surrounded by the sights and sounds of the Fighting Hawks. He sneezed. The winter sun shone through the clouds, warming his skin a little; still, he shivered.
‘Berren!’ Someone was waving at him. ‘Light of the Sun! You were sleeping for the dead!’ Berren squinted. Talon. The Prince of War came over and clapped him on the back. ‘You missed all the fun!’
‘What happened?’ Berren sat down on a log. The ground was cold and soft under his feet from all the rain.
‘You had the shivers.’ Talon smiled and shook his head. ‘Most of the lancers are down with it too. You Deephaveners can’t take a bit of cold and rain, eh? So was it really you who killed Meridian?’
Berren nodded.
‘You ranted something about it but you were all over the place. Stuff about Syannis and Saffran Kuy and a knife. Didn’t make much sense. But we did find Meridian with a bolt through his head.’
