The Path to Power

by Karen Miller

  Never in Harcia’s history–as kingdom or duchy–had their sovereign soil been plundered by outsiders. The first two raids had made them uneasy, but they’d told themselves the raiders were fly-by-night. No real threat. At the very worst, rogue pirates who’d been blown off-course.

  But Potterstown was their third attack, and with every strike the raiders grew bolder. More than seven hundred Green Isle folk called the market town home.

  “How many raiders, did this boy say?” Terriel demanded of his serjeant.

  “That he wasn’t sure of. A score, at least.”

  Almost twice as many as before. And with Kierron’s horse lamed, they were but ten men. Eleven, counting Revel. If he wanted Jorin a man.

  “My lord,” said the serjeant, “I have eight Tangallon men-at-arms waiting at the edge of the moor.”

  Grefin frowned. “Only eight?”

  “The rest are about the district on other business,” Terriel muttered. “Since you came, Grefin, we’ve grown used to peace.”

  That was true. And until this moment, he’d been proud of himself for it. But now there were raiders, with longswords and axes that could cleave a horse’s head from its neck in a single blow. He didn’t dare look at his son.

  “That brings our strength to nineteen,” Alard said, uncertain. “Is that enough?”

  “Alard, we face them no matter how many they are,” said Grefin. “It might be too late to save Potterstown–but we must try.”

  “And if we can’t save it,” said Terriel, his voice rough with rage, “we’ll chase those murdering bastards till we catch them and cut them down like goats.”

  Goats. Grefin looked at the butchered animals on the ground. “Quickly. We have to salvage as many arrows as we can.”

  “No need, my lord Steward,” said Revel. “My men-at-arms have brought plenty. We near emptied Tangallon’s armory.”

  He gave the man a swift, grim smile. “Then let us fetch them, Revel, men and arrows, and make these murdering raiders weep blood.”

  Potterstown, on the far western side of Lamphill Moor, was the largest market town in the Green Isle’s centre. There, Harcia’s best clay was lovingly crafted into plates and bowls and sturdy ale mugs. But the township was known for more than its pottery. Its folk were artisans and bakers, blacksmiths and herbalists, leatherworkers and poulterers and weavers and meat-smokers and orcharders. Every week, almost year round, its market square was thronged.

  Sick with apprehension, Grefin rode hard along rutted Potterstown road, Terriel at his left hand, Jorin at his right, the rest of their hunting party galloping behind. From early boyhood he’d trained with lance and sword and dagger. But all he’d ever done was joust in play and pretend to draw blood. He’d killed goats and stag and boar out hunting… but he’d never killed a man. Never skirmished in the Marches. Never risked his life. Now he was risking his life, and his son’s life, and the lives of seventeen other men. He was leading them into a slaughter, asking them to fight brutal, axe-wielding raiders being armed only with swords and daggers and arrows. Inside his gloves, his hands were sweating.

  He’d never been so afraid.

  A league distant from the town they encountered a pitiful handful of women and children, fleeing. With a raised fist he ordered his hunting party to halt.

  “Please, my lord, help us,” one of the women sobbed, a baby clutched to her breast. “The raiders are camped in the market square, drinking and raping. And the men and boys they’ve not killed they’ve bound for taking away to be sold as slaves!”

  A ripe curse from Terriel. “Fucking slavery? That’s new.”

  Grefin looked at the women. “We’ll do what we can. You make your way to Tangallon castle. You’ll be safe there.”

  As the women and children moved on, Terriel cleared his throat. “Grefin, I know you want to kill these bastards. So do I. But we should keep one alive. A heated sword to his cock will have him spilling secrets we can use against them.”

  Mordant laughter from the men-at-arms. Ignoring it, Grefin nodded. “Yes, with luck. If we can make sense of raider talk. But you’ll leave that to me.” He nudged his stallion to readiness. “Now, come. The people of Potterstown are waiting for us to save them.”

  The township stank of fire and death. Grefin smelled the spilled blood and entrails before he saw the first body, butchered to pieces on the narrow bridge spanning Snakespine Creek. The man’s severed hand clutched a bill-hook and his eyes stared with blind horror in his bloody, severed head. Stinking smoke from burning cottages wreathed the creek’s banks, the sluggish water, the bloodstained timbers of the bridge.

  Their horses’ hooves boomed hollow as they crossed into the town.

  “Hark,” said Terriel, scowling. “The bastards are still at their sport.”

  Drifting with the smoke and stench, faint screams for mercy. The suffering of men and women they’d come too late to save. Grefin kicked his horse ahead along the narrow street, then swung it round and halted. The others halted in front of him, tense and waiting.

  He stared at his eldest son. “Jorin—”

  “My lord,” Jorin whispered, eyes wide in his set face.

  Oh, the anguish of Jorin being here. He could scarcely breathe past the dread. His bones wanted to melt. He’s barely fourteen. I never should have brought him. I should have sent him to Tangallon with those women and let him hate me for it.

  “You’ve trained for this,” he said hoarsely. “You all know what to do. Deliver justice to these raiders, and do your best to live.”

  A small, special smile for Jorin. Then he looked at the others, the rough lords and men of the Green Isle. Showed them with a grim nod how much their courage meant. Met Terriel’s fierce gaze and saw his own terror shining back at him. Not for himself but for Alard, his heir. And for his dead sister’s boy, Robion. It didn’t matter that men were used to breeding their sons for war. In that moment he and Terriel were brothers. Bonded soul to soul.

  “Swords or bows, my friends. Pick your weapon and let’s make these raiders rue the fucking day they were born!”

  The scything, singing music of swords sliding free of their scabbards. Then with shouts of vengeful fury they spurred their horses into a gallop.

  The market square was the town’s heart, found at its centre. Leaping the bodies of Potterstown’s dead and dying sprawled in the streets, following the fallen as a wolf-hunter tracked the spoor of his prey to its lair, Grefin remembered what Balfre had told him of killing in the Marches.

  “They’re not men,” he’d said, shrugging. “Forget their faces. If it’s on the wrong end of your sword, Grefin, it’s a brute beast meant for slaying.”

  They burst into the market square to find a scene wrenched out of nightmare. Children hacked to pieces. Naked women, old and young, their breasts sliced off and their bellies opened, bodies ploughed and then discarded in scarlet pools. Old men butchered like bulls past their seeded prime, rheumy eyes gouged from their sockets and their aged pizzles cut off and stuffed in their toothless mouths. Three young men, bound for slavery, screamed like dying horses as raider cocks rammed up their arses. The rest of the murdering bastards were drinking and laughing and dancing around the square, bone necklaces and seal-hide jerkins and leggings outlandish, their copper-bright hair hacked short and their brawny, tattooed bodies daubed in Harcian blood from head to toe.

  Nearly blinded by horror, Grefin raised his sword and sank his spurs into his horse’s flanks. With a bellow the maddened stallion plunged into the fray.

  Shouting. Screaming. Howls to curdle a man’s soul. Blood and shit and piss, turning the market square’s grass to slop. The ringing clash of sword on sword, sword on battle-axe, the whining hum of loosed arrows, the wet cleaving of steel through flesh and the spintering crack of bone. As he fought for his life in a scarlet haze, Grefin dimly glimpsed his son and Terriel and Terriel’s son and nephew and the men-at-arms and the murderous raiders slashing and flailing and falling around him, even as his own
sword sliced through bellies and faces, spilling guts and scattering teeth, and his lethally trained stallion stove in skulls with its iron-shod hooves. No time to be afraid for Jorin. No time to be afraid.

  And then the single sweep of a battle-axe took his horse’s front legs off at the knees. The stallion went down, squealing. Falling with it, Grefin came near to drowning in the twinned gushing fountains of blood. In its death throes the horse rolled off him. Stunned, he staggered to his feet, shouting at the pain in his left leg and hip. Heard as an echo Balfre’s mocking advice.

  Whatever you do, Grefin, don’t drop your fucking sword.

  And there it was, still in his hand. He heard–felt–someone behind him. Spun round awkwardly, his bruised leg treacherous, and plunged his blade into a wide, screaming mouth. A shock up his forearm as tempered steel punched through the raider’s skull. A second shock as he wrenched the blade free and a third as he cut off the dying man’s head.

  Even as the sundered raider’s body toppled, and he lost his balance, toppling with it, a sword-thrust took him through his right shoulder from behind. He felt the blade scrape bone. Felt a sunburst of pain. Looking down he saw bloodied steel jutting from his flesh, saw his blood spurt as the sword pulled free. Watched his own sword fall from his nerveless fingers and tumble slowly to the ground. He couldn’t remember how to pick it up. A dead man, he lurched round to look his murderer in the eye.

  “Grefin!” shouted Terriel, and with a furiously swinging battle-axe hewed the raider almost in two.

  Blinking, from far away Grefin watched the body fall. Watched Terriel turn, swinging again, to bury the axe in the chest of another blood-soaked raider.

  An agonised cry to his left. Terriel’s nephew, Robion, feet tangled in spilling entrails, slipping in spilled Potterstown blood. A raider heard his cry. Hefted his wicked, bloodstained axe, grinning.

  Clumsy, Grefin bent and picked up his fallen sword with his left hand. There was pain in his right shoulder, but it felt oddly muffled. The blade felt awkward. Unpractised. He was a right-handed man. Balfre’s voice sounded in memory, angrily contemptuous as only his brother could be.

  Don’t be a lazy fuck, Grefin. A man who can’t fight with either hand is a fool.

  He took the grinning raider with a sword-thrust through the throat. As the body crumpled he helped Robion to stand. Was he dreaming, or had the sounds of battle almost stopped? Blood and sweat dripped down his face, stung his eyes, blurred his sight. He used his right arm to blot his skin and hissed at the pain.

  Robion took in a slow, shuddering breath. “My lord Grefin. I think–I think it’s done.”

  Staring around the stinking market square, he saw Terriel’s serjeant, Revel, bury a battle-axe in the skull of a weakly flailing raider. Saw a young girl, her face slashed open, pick up her own severed hand. Saw dead men-at-arms. Dead horses. The dead of Potterstown. Dead raiders. Saw Terriel’s son, Alard, his injured left arm clutched close to his chest. Keening through the smokey air, the moans of the wounded and dying. Jorin. Where was Jorin? His knees threatened to buckle. His shoulder was on fire, his leg and hip burned. His son. His son. He couldn’t see his son.

  “Grefin.”

  He turned. Slowly. Painfully. Terriel stood behind him, blood-soaked and weeping. He held a sword in one bloody hand, battle-axe in the other. His huntsman’s leathers were ripped in countless places, slashed flesh showing here and there, his silver braid half-dyed red. His son, Alard, lived and so did Robion, his nephew–but tears were trailing down his bloody face.

  Grefin shook his head. “No.”

  With a groan, Terriel dropped to one knee. Bowed his head amidst the carnage. “My lord Steward, I am sorry. Your son Jorin is dead.”

  Along with serjeant Revel, three other men-at-arms had survived the battle. All their horses were killed, though, so they took Potterstown nags in their stead. Two men-at-arms rode to Tangallon castle, to see the district alarm raised and help sent back to the town. Alard and Robion scoured smouldering Potterstown to be sure no raider had escaped them, and gather any hiding survivors at the bridge over the creek. Revel and the third man-at-arms worked with Terriel in the market square, laying their own dead and the village’s slain in neat rows for later claiming and burial, or a return to Terriel’s castle. The wounded were placed on makeshift stretchers and taken to join their fellow villagers at the bridge. Terriel’s kennel-master would come with a cart by sunset, so the dead horses could be butchered for their meat. The slaughtered raiders they hauled into a pile for burning, setting aside the longswords and axes to be used in other battles. The air was foul with the stink of smoke and blood and lamp oil and shit.

  As the aftermath unfolded around him, Grefin sat on the churned grass in the market square with Jorin’s body, his wounded shoulder roughly bound and viciously throbbing. It was Terriel who’d ministered to him, and afterwards taken charge. He felt vaguely ashamed of himself, as though he’d failed his father, failed the Green Isle, because his legs wouldn’t hold him upright and he’d forgotten how to speak.

  Balfre never said what battle is like, after. He never said it makes you a moonwit, leaves you weak and gasping and trying to recall how to be a man.

  Nor had his brother told him what it was like to lose a son. He thought he’d known, because of Malcolm. And Herewart, who’d lost Black Hughe. He’d seen his father’s grief, and that old rump’s tears, and so he’d thought he understood. But he understood nothing. When it came to grief, he was a child.

  Jorin lay quietly on the ground beside him, his face mercifully unmarked. The dreadful wound that killed him was hidden beneath the partly burned, bloodstained sheet covering his body from neck to feet. Terriel said it was a mighty blow. Jorin would likely not have felt a thing. It was meant as a comfort. Perhaps one day it would be–but not yet.

  “My lord Steward.” Crouching, Terriel laid a gentle hand on his unhurt shoulder. “Alard and Robion have found carthorses and carts. We can take our dead and the living back to Tangallon. From there I’ll see you and Jorin safely home to Steward’s Keep.”

  Home. Mazelina. He covered his face with his hand. Moistened his dry lips. “Good.”

  “Grefin.” The hand on his shoulder tightened. “When first you came to the Green Isle, I was ready to hate your guts. I called you Aimery’s second fucking failure, because I’d heard much ill of Balfre and I thought you’d be the same. I was wrong. You’re a good man. A son to make Aimery proud. A man I’m proud to serve, and call my friend. Your son died. Mine lived. My house is yours, my blood yours, until the day I die.”

  Terriel’s harsh sympathy broke him. As he pressed his face to the rough lord’s chest, he heard a roaring sound, smelled burning oil and flesh and seal-skin. Someone had set fire to the heaped pile of dead raiders.

  “Hold fast, my lord,” Terriel said softly. “This is terrible, but you’ll survive. You must, so you can help the Green Isle survive. So you can make these fucking raiders pay for this slaughter. Come now. On your feet. ’Tis time to go home.”

  Restless, Mazelina prowled the narrow, wind-swept battlements of Steward’s Keep, a warm shawl clutched around her and dread churning in her belly.

  Something was wrong. Something had happened. She was no witch with the far sight. No soothsayer who could read omens. If there was special meaning in a streaking comet or the birth of a headless chicken, she could no more tell what it was than leap from these stone battlements and fly.

  And yet she knew, she knew, she was right to be afraid.

  Since before dawn, she’d been here. She’d watched the morning star set. Watched the sky turn pearly and the sun fright the moon away. Listened to the sweet piping of larks and thrushes, the scolding cry of plovers and the mournful complaint of the castle’s peacocks as they sauntered about its lawns. Now, with the sun risen, the castle’s horses whickered in the bailey stables, eager for hay and grain. Men-at-arms were at play in the tilt yard, sunlight catching the edge of each sword.

  Watchin
g them, she shivered. Felt so sad and oppressed. As though the lightening sky had turned thunderous, and threatened to kill the bright sun. One of the castle boys joined the mock fighting. And then she realised, no, that was Kerric. Even so high up, so distant, she knew him. Her younger son danced across dirt and grass and flagstones like a jongler, light-footed, light-hearted, always laughing, never a tear. Though he’d come close to weeping when told he couldn’t ride with Grefin and Jorin to hunt goat on Lamphill Moor.

  And there was her fright again, stabbing like a knife.

  “Mama? Mama, why are you up here?”

  “Ullia,” she said, turning. “Where’s your shawl? It’s cold.”

  Ullia wrinkled her nose. “I’m not cold. Mama, can we go hornberry picking? Siddly Copse is full of berries and if we don’t pick them soon the rooks will get them.”

  Instead of answering, she looked again over the battlements, down to the long, straight stretch of greensward that led from Steward’s Keep to the countryside beyond its guarded stone gates. It was foolish to think she’d see Grefin and Jorin riding towards her. Tangallon castle was a day’s brisk travel distant. The earliest she’d see them home was sunset.

  “Please, Mama,” said Ullia, coaxing. “Kerric says he’ll be in the tilt yard till nightfall. If he can have the tilt yard, why can’t I have Siddly Copse?”

  Mazelina managed a smile. There were a dozen reasons, but she didn’t have the heart to utter even one. Poor Ullia. Always wishing to be like her brothers. A sword was out of the question, but there seemed little harm in Siddly Copse. Besides. A few hours’ berry-picking might prove a welcome distraction.

  So they collected their rush-baskets and went to Siddly Copse, to pick hornberries and plan the Winterheight Feast the Green Isle’s Steward held every year for his great barons. Ullia had heard from a travelling acrobat about a troupe of jongler dwarves in the Exarch’s palace. The acrobat told her that sometimes the jongler dwarves travelled to other courts and palaces and great lords’ castles, where they jongled on tables and danced with their clever dogs and wouldn’t that be wonderful at the Winterheight Feast? Wouldn’t that make Papa the best Steward the Green Isle ever had?