As Fire is to Gold (Chronicles of the Ilaroi Book 1)

by Mark McCabe

  The men of Kurandir had taken it all in. Incredibly, of the one hundred and seven able-bodied men available to fight, only two had refused the call. Not one person condemned those two. They left silently and without harassment. Those that stayed knew they’d made a grim choice. In a way, they knew it had taken just as much courage to resist the call as it did to respond to it. If anything, the two were envied. Few of those that remained expected to see their loved ones again.

  And now, here they were, fighting for their very lives. How many now regretted their decision? How many now wished they’d been the ones to flee? How many wondered how much longer they could last?

  The fighting seemed to go on endlessly. Twice Dain had been called on to draw his own sword and fend back sligs from the top of the walls. He was tiring. Then, just as he was wondering how much longer he could keep going, he heard a shout go up, all along the walls. As he drew and fired again, someone grabbed a hold of his shoulder. “Stop firing,” his neighbour was shouting. “They’re pulling back. Don’t waste your arrows.”

  A cheer went up from along the walls. Dain felt the goose bumps rise all over his body as he began to cheer himself. They’d done it. They’d turned them back. He couldn’t believe it. They’d turned back an army of sligs.

  After a few moments, when the shouts began to die down, he felt an insidious weariness start to creep up over his limbs, commencing at his feet and continuing right up till it consumed his whole body. It was if it had been hidden there, covered by a blanket, and someone had pulled back the blanket to reveal his fatigue. As his companion slumped down on the wooden floorboards beside him, he did the same, leaning back against the wall for support.

  “Get your breath,” he heard a ranger call out from nearby. It wasn’t the one that had been assigned to their portion of the wall. Dain didn’t know what had happened to him and was too tired to try and find out. “Waterboys,” the ranger called out. “I want water up here for these men. Now!”

  “We did it,” exclaimed Dain, raising a slight smile as he turned to his companion. He couldn’t recall his name but did remember he was a cooper, from right here in Kurandir.

  “Yep,” gasped the cooper, clearly out of breath. “I didn’t think we were going to make it.”

  After a while, the waterboy appeared, carrying a bucket and offering ladles of water to the tired defenders slumped along the parapet. Once Dain had taken a long drink, he raised himself up enough to look about him. As he peered along the wall, all the elation he’d felt at their success ebbed out of him. It was a pitiful sight.

  Perhaps a quarter of the men who had been with him at the start of the battle were no longer there. Below them, in the street that ran along the inside of the wall, a line of stretcher-bearers was carting bodies away, back into the town. It was clear that some of the bodies were dead men, not just the injured. On the parapet itself, a number of wounded were being tended. Limbs were being bandaged, wounds cleaned, and the more seriously hurt were being helped towards the stairs. It looked like at least half of the defenders had either been wounded or killed in the assault. Here and there the bodies of slig warriors lay. He knew there’d be many more of them that hadn’t made it this far. Their bodies must litter the ground at the foot of the walls. Although they had done well, Dain realised the Algarian success had been bought at an appalling cost.

  A shout from nearby caused everyone to look up from what they were doing. “They’re coming again. Get ready.”

  Dain’s heart sank. It hadn’t occurred to him they might come again so quickly. In fact, he’d hoped they might have had their fill. Wearily he dragged himself to his feet. This would be it. They couldn’t hold them off a second time.

  ~~~

  Thom dared not move. He lay as still as he could while the sound of marching, booted feet slowly receded into the distance. It had been a close call. He’d been about to cross the road as he made his way across country, back to Jinny and her dad’s place, when he’d heard the tramp of feet from over the rise ahead of him. He’d barely had enough time to throw himself over the wooden rails of the fence and into the long grass behind it before the sligs had appeared. From his hiding place he had seen there must have been fifty or more of them, marching three abreast, right down the middle of the road, as if they owned the place.

  To all intents and purposes, it seemed to Thom they now did. The folks from all around were clearing out and leaving everything to them. What could they possibly do to stop them anyway? It would take a lot more than a bunch of hayseeds with pitchforks to do that, thought Thom. That wasn’t his concern right now, though. He had to get back and help Jinny to get away, he had promised her he’d be back for her. As scared as he was, he had got himself into a right pickle. There was no turning back now.

  When he’d arrived at Jinny’s place earlier in the day he hadn’t been able to convince her to leave. Her dad wasn’t home. He’d left the previous day to visit his brother over at Brand’s Ford and hadn’t returned, and Jinny wasn’t prepared to leave without him. All Thom could do was get her to pack up some things and wait for him while he fulfilled the promise he’d made to his own father and got a warning to Luc and Prard.

  He’d done that, but now there were sligs all over the place and he was having the devil of a time getting back to her. He’d had to abandon his horse some time back; it was impossible to find quick cover from unexpected bands of sligs with a horse to hide as well. Although that had slowed him down considerably, he knew he would never have made it back any other way. Now he was almost there, his thoughts were turning more to Jinny’s safety than to his own.

  He hoped she had taken his advice about not waiting at the house. He had told her to wait in the orchard where she could keep an eye on the house in case her dad returned. She should be safe there if it was trouble that turned up instead. Thom was glad he had given her that advice. From what he had seen since then, it was clear the sligs were clearing all of the farms and not just concentrating on the villages and settlements.

  Although Thom had almost made his way back to her now, it was getting on towards dark and the storm that had been brewing all day was so close he could smell it. Poor Jinny, he thought. If her dad hadn’t turned up, and Thom didn’t hold out much hope he would, not after what Erl had said about the slig raid on Brand’s Ford, then she’d be distraught by now. That’s if she hadn’t been caught herself.

  As he pulled himself to his feet and started to move forward again, Thom felt the first spatters of rain on his head and back. Before he had gone a score of paces, the rain was driving into him, whipped on by the strong easterly wind the storm had brought with it. At least this will slow down the sligs, thought Thom, trying to find something positive to lift his hopes. He knew it would also reduce the chances of his running into a raiding party as he made his way across the fields to the orchard. Only a fool, or someone desperate to get someplace in a hurry, would be out and about in this kind of weather.

  By the time the orchard came into sight, he was soaked to the skin. The rain had eased slightly after its initial onslaught, or rather, the wind that had been whipping it up into his face had eased, but that hadn’t saved him from a total drenching. From where he stood, he could just make out both the orchard and Jinny’s house through the curtain of rain that shrouded the open fields in front of him. There was no sign of life at the house. It stood in total darkness, as he had expected.

  Slowly and cautiously, moving from cover to cover, Thom crossed the remaining ground between himself and the orchard. Once he got in among the trees, he began looking around for Jinny. It wasn’t a big orchard and he knew that if she was there she should be easy to find.

  “Jinny,” he whispered hoarsely into the darkness, trying to fight down the desperation he was feeling. He’d been hoping she would see him coming and come out from wherever it was she was hiding as soon as he got there. When there was no answer, he called out again, feeling his hopes rapidly sinking. She should be close by, within earshot. He
wouldn’t know where to begin to search if she wasn’t here where she should be.

  His stomach did a somersault as a frightened little voice came out of the gloom.

  “Thom.”

  Turning in the direction he thought the voice had come from, Thom was startled to see Jinny drop down from one of the trees about a dozen or so paces away from him. She’d been hiding up in the branches. That was why he hadn’t been able to see her.

  As soon as she hit the ground, she darted across the space between them and threw herself against him, almost bowling him over as she did so. Wrapping her arms around him, she hugged him tightly to her. He could feel her slender body shaking against his as she sobbed out her pent-up fear.

  “Oh, Thom! I was so scared. I thought you weren’t coming back. Dad hasn’t come and I saw sligs down at the house a while back. I think they’ve gone now. What are we going to do?”

  Thom had been right to think she’d be distraught. The poor girl was almost frightened to death. He knew she must have waited and waited, wondering if he would ever come back for her, and wondering what she would do if he didn’t.

  “I told you I’d come back,” said Thom, holding Jinny to him and swallowing his own emotions. He thought it ironic that he’d dreamt of doing this so often, of holding her in his arms, and now he was finally able to do so the circumstances were too tragic for him to gain any satisfaction from it. “What we gotta do,” he continued, “is get out of here. Da said we gotta make our way to Kurandir.”

  “But what about my pa?” cried Jinny, almost hysterically.

  “Shhhhhhh,” soothed Thom. “Did you leave a note in the house like I said?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Well if he does come back here he’ll know you got away. Okay? Jinny, we can’t wait any longer. Your da wouldn’t want you to wait here until you got caught. He’d want you to get yourself to somewhere safe. You know that.”

  “I guess. I don’t know what to do, Thom. You’ll have to work it out for both of us. I’m so scared. Those sligs looked horrible. I thought they were going to come up into the orchard.”

  “Don’t worry,” soothed Thom, stroking Jinny’s back as he did so. Her clothes were as soaked as his were. They clung to her like a second skin. “We’ll be okay.”

  Thom wished that he thought that was true. It was dark now and they were both soaked to the skin. He hadn’t given a thought to what he would do once he found Jinny. All he had focused on all day was getting back to her and hoping she would be there waiting for him. Now he had achieved that goal, he realised he would have to focus on getting them both to safety. They were a long way from that at the moment.

  “Are you sure the sligs have gone now?” he asked Jinny. “They didn’t stay in the house?”

  “No. I saw them leave. I don’t think any stayed behind and I haven’t seen any lights.”

  “Well, let’s start off by seeing if we can get some dry clothes, and maybe some blankets.”

  It took them a while. They approached the house very cautiously, both unwilling to take the risk that Jinny was wrong. Once they were sure the sligs had left, the first thing they did was get into some dry clothes. Thom borrowed a jacket and some pants that belonged to Jinny’s dad. Then they got some blankets and some weather jackets to provide them with cover until they found a dry spot well away from the house. Leaving the dwelling, they made their way west, steering away from any other farmhouses or villages in case there were sligs there sheltering from the weather. Their luck held and, after a while, the rain stopped and they were able to move along at a faster pace.

  Although it was dark, Thom urged Jinny on. He knew they would travel much more safely at night than during the day, despite their fatigue. The plan he had formed was for them to travel as much as they could in the dark and to find somewhere secure and dry to rest up during the day. That meant they would need to be far away from Jinny’s place before they stopped again.

  Somehow they found the energy to keep going, but they were both desperately tired. They didn’t talk much, and when they did, it was in whispers. The combination of their exhaustion and the worries each was harbouring about what might have befallen their parents was sufficient to keep them both occupied. Without anything having been said, they also sensed the need to travel quietly. As unlikely as it was, they didn’t dare take the chance of waking some band of sligs that had decided to bunk down out in the middle of an open field.

  When they finally stopped, it was almost morning. They bedded down under a little lean-to some farmer had built to provide cover for his horse. It was close enough to a grove of trees that they figured they should be able to get away fairly quickly if anything came their way. As much as Thom would have felt safer in among the trees, he knew there was more rain on its way. They needed to keep as dry as they could for as long as they could.

  After they had eaten a little, he let Jinny sleep while he kept watch. The poor girl fell asleep within minutes. Thom longed for rest himself and found it a struggle to keep his eyelids from closing. He willed himself to stay awake, knowing they had come through too much to throw caution to the wind now.

  When the sun finally rose, he saw the spot they had chosen was a good one. They were on the side of a gentle slope and could see anyone approaching from a long distance away, unless they came from out of the grove of trees that covered the top of the hill behind them. Thom knew the area well enough to know that the latter was unlikely.

  He saw no sign of the sligs as the day progressed. The rain returned about mid-morning and kept up a constant drizzle throughout the rest of the day; not that he saw much of the second half of it. When Jinny finally woke around midday, he let her take over the lookout duties. As reluctant as he was to hand over that role, he knew that he had to get some rest as well. They would need to cover a lot of ground when night came and they both needed to be rested enough to do so. Although they still had a bit of food left, it wouldn’t last them long. They needed to be in Kurandir before it ran out and that meant pressing on with as little delay as possible.

  As Thom drifted off to sleep, his thoughts went out to his parents again. He knew they’d be worrying about him. His father would be fine, but his mother would worry herself sick until she saw him again. By his reckoning, if he and Jinny could keep making good time under the cover of darkness they should be in Kurandir the following night. That would be fine for him, but he knew poor Jinny was hoping her father would be there waiting for her. Thom didn’t think that was likely to be the case.

  His parents were the lucky ones. They’d had warning and been able to get out before the sligs had come. Thom knew that Jinny’s dad wouldn’t have had a chance. Brand’s Ford had been caught totally unprepared. Jinny’s dad was dead now, of that he was certain.

  Chapter 15

  “And what course do you recommend, Count Regulus?”

  The moment the count had been dreading had arrived. The Queen of Algaria had listened attentively as the Guardian’s assistant had recounted his message in the presence of the royal court. She had then sat impassively while her council of advisers had questioned the quickling, going over and over his message to ensure that nothing had been missed. Then, when he had finished and been dismissed, she had waited patiently while those same advisers had debated the matter before her. It was a procedure Regulus was very familiar with and one that had served the Algarian Queen well over the years.

  As usual, the advisers were divided as to how the Algarians should respond to this alarming development. Regulus knew that the Queen had composed her circle of advisers with that very purpose in mind. He was aware that Elissa liked to ensure she was able to consider each of the many perspectives that might be brought to bear on an issue. The advisers she had chosen to surround herself with provided a well-balanced mixture from bold adventurers right through to conservative and cautious diplomats. It was rare that they formed a unanimous view on how to proceed.

  Regulus also knew that the Queen would turn to him la
st of all. Once she had considered the views of all of the others, it was her custom to then turn to him for his opinion. It wasn’t the weight of that responsibility that filled Regulus with dread on this occasion, he had already decided on the course of action he would recommend. What filled him with dread was that he knew his Queen so well. He knew that she would already have formed a similar view on this matter and that she sought his opinion only to confirm what she already knew they must do.

  Turning his back to the others, Regulus lifted his eyes, locking on to those of his sovereign and seeing his own apprehension mirrored in her gaze. Taking a deep breath, he uttered the words he knew would come back to haunt him over the days that would follow. “We must retreat, my Queen.”

  “No.” The cry went up from all around the room, all parties taking it up with a mixture of shock and indignation.

  “Quiet.” The Queen’s strident voice silenced the clamour abruptly. “Let Regulus speak.”

  “We must retreat,” Regulus repeated, turning to face his colleagues and pausing for a moment to ensure he had the attention of all in the room.

  He was a tall man, as tall as anyone there, and his mien was an imposing one. His wavy black hair and closely trimmed beard framed a ruggedly handsome face that had turned the head of more than one of the ladies of the court over the years. Though his bearing ensured he stood out from his fellows, his attire was similar to that of his fellow advisers. His long maroon frock coat was bordered with gold twine in keeping with the fashion of the Algarian court. Only the star-shaped emerald that adorned its black velvet lapel marked him out from others as one of the Queen’s inner circle of advisers. The high sheen of polish on the red leather boots that protruded from beneath his high waisted, tapered, black pants reflected the flickering torchlight that lit the royal audience chamber. All eyes turned to him now as he pronounced his view on the best course of action for Algaria in this fatal hour.