by Damien Lake
They dashed back to the Hollister yet were unable to close the gates before the pursuing Galemarans streamed through after them. In another half-mark, the last Noliers were being chased across the Hollister Bridge. Officers gave orders not to follow. The defenses on the Nolier side were still too solid to risk an attempt. Plans for sacking the Hollister’s opposite end would need to wait for the knight-marshal’s return from Thoenar, assuming the war would continue.
Marik shook his head. He had nearly fallen asleep. The blood loss affected him. His arm burned in a dull fury from the many gashes his sword’s shrapnel had torn in it.
He forced himself up, leaving the blade leaning against the catapult frame when he went in search of any chirurgeons who had survived the surprise raid.
* * * * *
The next day, the survivors found each other. Kerwin and Landon were wounded but intact, as were Dietrik and Edwin. All sported bandages and Marik wore his arm in a sling. They stood together as Acting Lieutenant of the Ninth Squad Fraser informed them of the death of Lieutenant Earnell, as well as Nial, Pierce, Gerrie, Kenley, Hayden and others. The squad was at an all time low, the Fourth Unit sporting a bare twelve men.
“It’s a ruddy low blow about Hayden,” Edwin said softly while they salvaged their mangled belongings from the trampled tents. “He knew he’d die on this kind of contract.”
“He always was superstitious about the border,” Marik agreed. “I guess he was right in the end.”
They remained silent for several moments. The death of friends remained the unfortunate price of their profession. Marik did not know whether everyone else’s silence stemmed from respect for their fallen friend or lingering shock from the massive battle. He wondered if making long-range plans to find his father while he worked as a mercenary constituted a foolish endeavor.
But foolish as it might be, he would never give up. That certainty glowed within him as surely as the sun shone down overhead. He would have his answers as soon as Tollaf started teaching him the scrying workings that would locate Rail.
While he continued shifting wreckage with only one good arm, he relived memories of Hayden in his mind. The first time he and Dietrik had met him in the barracks. Hayden promising to meet them on a training area but always finding a tavern instead. His easy, accepting manner on most of life. Marik’s eyes stung with tears he refused to shed in the presence of these older, hardened mercenaries.
“Too bad he lost it here and all,” Edwin continued at last. “I doubt there’ll be any fighting between us and the bloody gods-cursed Noliers for a long time.”
“So is this the end of it?” Marik asked Landon, who poked through his retrieved pack.
“For now, I believe,” he replied, withdrawing a mass of extra bow strings that had tangled into a knot. “We’ve retaken our end of the Hollister and we don’t have the men to sack the other side.”
“Not today,” Dietrik agreed. “Though the king could call up levies, if there are any left, or start conscripting men.”
Landon shook his head. “You never conscript unless the need is dire. I think the king will shut this end of the Hollister to travel and leave men to patrol the south river banks where crossing is possible. Besides, I think the young Nolier king may have lost more men than he can afford. Bandits will be on the rise over there, and recruiting fresh men for his army will prove difficult for awhile. He lost a lot of fighters and doesn’t have anything to show for it except what gold he plundered from the strike while he controlled it.”
“Was it worth the men he lost?”
“No,” Kerwin horned in, always the expert in matters concerning wealth. “However much gold he gained, he lost more men than it’s worth. I’ll bet he spends every ounce of it to rebuild what he’s lost and he’ll still have to dip into his own pocket to finish the job.”
“You really will bet on anything,” Marik observed.
Kerwin smiled. “It saved my life! I took a sword thrust right in the chest, but my winnings stopped it cold! Course, now half the coins are bent. I’ll have to hammer them flat.”
“You going to retire?”
“After this? I think I will. I’ll find a roadside inn along a prime route with lots of travelers and set up shop. Or maybe not. I hear old Kerny is thinking about selling his tavern on the Row back home.”
“As much as Torrance might like having taverns close at hand to keep the men happy, he might object to a gambling hall opening in the center of town,” Marik told him.
“We’ll see. I’ve got the whole trip back to think it over.”
“What’s the word on that?” asked Edwin.
Landon replied, “Fraser didn’t say, but I think that’s because the officers are still putting things back together. The king needs his forces in other parts of the kingdom to keep the peace. Once a holding force is established, the rest of us should be recalled. Call it two eightdays at the outside.”
“It’s too bad the knight-marshal isn’t around,” Dietrik added. “Things might not have fallen apart so badly if he had been around to boss the forces.”
“He never made it back,” Landon agreed. “Whatever is happening to the west must be grim business.”
“Well I hope they don’t plan on hiring us again,” Marik stated. “It’ll take us years to get back up to strength! If we took in every new applicant this winter, we’d barely be at half strength, and half of them shouldn’t be admitted to the Kings in the first place!”
The conversation centered on the state of the Crimson Kings until two people arrived half a candlemark later.
“I’ve been looking for you,” one told Marik simply and without greeting.
“Colbey! And Commander Torrance?” Marik stiffened in the presence of the man who had double-shuffled him to Tollaf. “What’s the problem?”
Colbey carried the massive sword from the mounted lord they had fought together. Torrance remained quiet while the scout spoke. “This is yours. Battlefield conquest or some such nonsense. That’s what the officers said when they asked me to find you.”
“Battle loot? But I’m not the one who killed that knight. That was you. And why is the Galemaran army concerned with a mercenary’s war prizes?”
Colbey shook his head. “I ended his misery. He was dead the moment your blade connected. And the officers insist.”
Marik looked at the massive blade with its ornate hilt and the fallen lord’s engraved crest. “I don’t think I want it. It’s too big for me.”
“Oh, honestly!” Dietrik exclaimed. “It will make a nice trophy to brag about. At the least, you can sell it off for a nice bit of coin. Take the dumb thing!”
“Besides,” Kerwin added with a nasty smile. “Think how much it would irritate Balfourth to see you strutting around with it strapped to your back. He sure didn’t cover himself with glory. All he did was run west to get away from the Noliers so he wouldn’t get skinned.”
“Pity about that,” Edwin nodded. “A perfect opportunity to put an arrow into his back if we’d seen him, and say it was a bloody Nolier what did it.”
Marik took the blade from Colbey. Someone had retrieved its sheath from the fallen mount. A matching crest was etched into the leather on the scabbard as well.
“Does anybody know whose crest this is?”
Colbey answered. “The officers say he was Duke Ronley of the Third House of Nolier.”
“Who’s that?”
“About the fifth highest ranking noble in Nolier after the king,” Colbey replied, utterly unimpressed. “I will see you later.”
He departed, his task accomplished. Torrance addressed Marik. “Do you realize you’ve just irritated the spit out of my chief mage?”
“Sir?”
“Not that that’s anything new, from what he tells me.” Torrance paused. “I’ve received reports from men who were scattered over the battlefield. So have the army officers. By all accounts, you and Colbey played a pivotal role. You could say the outcome of the entire battle suddenly
hung on the outcome of your own fight against the duke and his knights. Duke Ronley headed the combined Nolier forces for this campaign. Our reports say that his cousin, the king, personally placed the army under his command.”
“Sir,” Marik repeated. Should he acknowledge his role in the battle, or its importance? Not in front of his friends at least, who were hanging on Torrance’s every word. They would never let him live it down.
“Troop morale is every bit as important as troop numbers or troop position. When the duke’s banner fell, the Noliers’ confidence faltered. Did you realize that?”
Marik shrugged. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
“That was a good tactical move. And I understand the fight was impressive as well.” Torrance smiled grimly. “So you two turned the tide of the battle all by yourselves, and you did it with your sword rather than your magic. I’m going to be hearing about it from Tollaf all the way back to Kingshome. Only the thought of the massive fee I can charge the seneschal for your accomplishment is soothing my ire.”
Marik saw no need to admit he had been using his talent for magecraft. He felt his new working existed as a fighting technique rather than magic. Instead, he chose to repeat a comment he had once made to Tollaf. “I agreed to study as a mage for the band, commander, but I never agreed to give up my sword.”
Torrance snorted. “Well, in any event, consider yourself raised one fighting class in the band. Since you won’t stay away from combat, we’ll have to maintain your records as a frontline fighter.” He made to leave, then added as an afterthought, “About your new sword, by the way. Galemaran tradition since the Unification states that any man who defeats an enemy of the kingdom, an enemy who happens to be of noble parentage, may claim the crest of that noble for his own.”
Marik, confused, asked, “You mean I’m part of a Nolier family now?” He sounded alarmed.
This made Torrance chuckled. “Not in the least. It simply means that if you ever design your own device to mark your shield and blade, you have the right to include Ronley’s crest within it. That’s why so many of the old Galemaran family devices are such a hodge-podge of symbols.” He shrugged. “More in the nature of listing your defeated foes than anything else. But the army is nothing if not rigidly attentive to tradition.”
When the commander left, everyone talked about Marik’s elevation and his prize. In the end it was agreed that Marik would keep the sword as a trophy even though it meant having to carry the giant hunk of metal all the way back to Kingshome.
“Still,” Marik said while he finished re-packing his belongings, “it’ll be nice to get back home. I need the rest.”
“Even with Tollaf shouting at you every day?” Dietrik asked with a grin.
“I suppose so. Come help me put this tent back up. I can’t do it myself with only one good arm.”
Epilogue
Summer came to an end. The Crimson Kings slowly followed the road home. Marik had overestimated their damage. Only one third of the men in the band had perished, while the rest nursed injuries of varying severity.
They passed southwest through the port town of Rawlings where Marik had anticipated that spring’s original contract would take them. If the merchants still suffered raids on their riverside warehouses, he could see no evidence of it from the streets. Business boomed from the stalls and shops throughout the town. Dietrik, Marik and Colbey led their mounts around the town during their one-day layover to shop for impulse items and spend a bit of the pay they had accumulated over the fighting season.
Strangely, Colbey had taken to riding with the pair, though he never offered an explanation why and usually refrained from contributing to their conversations. Marik knew it for odd behavior through both his own assessments on Colbey’s nature and the rumors that reached his ears all the way from the Second Squad. It mystified them as well. In the end they chalked it up to the bonds that form on the battlefield, especially between men who had faced foes side by side. He would have thought the same, except he remembered the promise Colbey had wrangled from him in exchange for the secrets behind the stamina technique.
Marik wondered.
Dietrik stopped at a stall to examine flat crates filled with fresh fruit and to exchange gossip with the lady running it. She burst with questions about the war against Nolier.
“Oh my!” she kept exclaiming while Dietrik filled her in on the details. When he finished, she paid him with her own news. “Well, I should say! I suppose you boys will be ready now to put down Tullainia after going through such a battle!”
“How’s that?” asked Dietrik. “Is the situation worsening over there? I thought they were in the midst of a civil war between highlords or some such buggery.”
“Well, that’s what everyone thought at first, but the refugees running across the border are all full of the wildest stories you’ve ever heard! I wouldn’t give them any credence, except I’ve seen their faces myself!”
“I thought they were being turned back at the border.”
The woman was delighted to share her gossip. “Well, you know they tried to at first, but there were just too many after awhile! The highwayguards try to regulate them at the border crossings but they’ve been spilling over along the entire border, and there weren’t enough soldiers to man the whole length!”
Colbey picked through a pile of small grape clusters as Marik commented, “Yeah, they were fighting off the Noliers! So the refugees came all the way to Rawlings?”
“Yes! The ones I’ve talked to were all scared right out of their wits, let me tell you! The poor dears! Like I said, I never would have given tales like theirs a second thought, except I’ve seen them while they were talking. Shaking like they were frozen right through and weeping on for candlemarks. A few plan to keep right on running until they hit the east coast of Nolier!”
Marik could tell the woman desperately wished them to ask, so he obliged her. “What’s so terrible? War’s a horrible experience, no question, but it sounds like something else is going on.”
“Yes! Yes! They all tell different stories, but they come to same in the end. Monsters and demons are running loose over there, killing everyone they can. Strange warriors and awful magics destroying everything in their path, and the Tullainians can do nothing about it!”
Dietrik and Marik looked skeptical, forcing the woman to defend her story. “It’s the honest truth! I heard the tales from so many different families. They saw them up close, and only lived because the demons were too busy killing their neighbor to stop them from running. Monsters bigger than you and covered in fur with giant horns on top of their heads! Most of them destroying everything they see!”
“What?”
Colbey’s whip-crack shout startled the other two. They turned to him, seeing his eyes burn with fever, his fists clenched so hard he paid no heed to the grape pulp dripping from his hand.
“It’s the honest truth,” the woman repeated, though softer. She took a step backward from the scout.
“What else have you heard?” he demanded, advancing like a rampaging bull, but her pool of information had run dry.
They paid for their purchases, including Colbey’s destroyed grapes, and rode back to the camp outside Rawlings. Marik watched Colbey from the corner of his eye while the silent man burned with an inner fire. A miasma of dark, murderous emotion rolled off the scout in waves so thick Marik half-expected them to form into a second aura. Perhaps as black mists engulfing his body, visible to these non-magical people in town as clearly as the etheric ovoid shone to his magesight. He forced himself to ignore the impulse to lean away from Colbey. Superstitious thoughts raced through his mind, suggesting he would be scorched anew should he stray too close to the wrathful pyre riding beside him.
He wondered what had set the scout to fire. In the midst of those thoughts he suddenly wondered exactly why Colbey had joined the Crimson Kings. Colbey never had revealed his reasons after hinting at deeper motivations and Marik had never asked,
though he felt curious as he studied the terrible expression twisting the scout’s face. Was it a madness, or an affliction sprouting from far delving roots? Only time would reveal that answer.
Marik decided to closely watch this man once they returned to Kingshome. That unspecified churning in his stomach, that sense of ominous premonition that had fallen over him prior to the worst changes in his life now chilled his spine again.
But after a summer like the one past, how could matters possibly worsen while he continued the search for his father? The thought redoubled the turmoil of his intuition.
So ends the first volume of Marik’s and Colbey’s adventures!
BUT……
Even as Colbey plunges into the viper’s lair to investigate the weirdling invaders responsible for the deaths of his fellow villagers, Marik’s new reputation draws him into the machinations of the nobility as an unforeseen development sends the search for his father in an unexpected direction! War, intrigue, strange magics and monstrous beasts abound in Volume Two of the Chronicles of the Crimson Kings, “Arm of Galemar”!
Other books by Damien Lake:
World of Folcrist:
Chronicles of the Crimson Kings:
Steel and Flame
Arm of Galemar
Forest for the Trees
Masters of the Wind:
Silver in the Darkness
**Silver in the Daylight
** = In Production
Abbreviated Excerpts from “Arm of Galemar”, Volume Two of The Chronicles of the Crimson Kings:
Torrance flipped through the papers on his desk, searching for the relevant documents, when a knock on the door drew his attention.
