The Bird & The Lion: (The Feather: Book 1)

by CJ Arroway

  ‘Assembly?’ Orlend sneered. ‘What in the name…’

  ‘Lord King, I beg your forgiveness.’ Another of the messengers spoke, Caril – a Borderer mercenary who Orlend had employed as a guide to the mountains. ‘If I may, Your Majesty. The Cyl will make such a decision with their Assembly. They have no one leader and this is their way. It has always been so.’

  ‘No leader?’ Orlend’s expression suggested the man may as well have said no legs. ‘No wonder they live in this cesspit of a valley and farm rocks and lichen for a living. And this…assembly? It will deliver her to us?’

  ‘That is the impression I got, lord.’ Harmul said.

  Orlend looked casually at the table where his war sword rested. ‘Well, we’ve waited this long. If they will hand her over and save me men then I can wait a little longer. If it is meant to be some sort of delaying tactic, so be it.’

  He walked slowly over to the table and picked up his sword, testing its edge with a thick finger. ‘Tell them that we will wait, but that if they have tried to trick me I won’t just take the fort and the girl, I will hunt through every valley, hill and stinking bog in these mountains until I have found and slaughtered every last Cyl alive. Then I will return to The Home and find any of their kin still living there, and slaughter those too. Let them know this.’

  ‘Lord King,’ Harmul bowed so deeply his bald crown reflected the light of the brazier that warmed the open front of Orlend’s tent. ‘They said that when their assembly had reached its decision they would signal its decision with fire. The beacon in the fort would be lit if the girl was to be handed over. If not, they would signal with fire arrows into our camp.’

  Orlend let out a roar of laughter. ‘They have courage, I’ll grant them that. But it will do them little good in the end.’

  * * *

  Luda was struggling with the straps of his leather chestplate, which seemed too loose for him but could be tightened no further.

  ‘Damn it,’ he spat, ‘there’s something wrong with this one.’ Aldrwyn smiled sympathetically as he helped him with the straps.

  ‘Are you scared, Aldrwyn?’ Luda asked, having finally decided this would have to do.

  ‘Terrified. You?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied. In truth he felt a mixture of fear and resignation. He had never fought before, and now he would be facing the greatest army to ever set foot in these mountains. He had no experience of battle to give proper shape to his fears, but instead imagined the release of his anger and the pain of an axe or spearhead as abstract concepts he could not quite conjure to life. He wondered if he was simply numb to it.

  Evie had offered to fight, but Rachlaw and Nan had expressly forbidden it. ‘If they see you on the battlefield it will only give them more determination,’ Nan had told her. ‘And besides, you aren’t a fighter. You would last no more than a minute.’

  ‘Neither is Luda,’ she had insisted loudly, but they would not be moved.

  Instead, they had kept Evie in the library at Brya since the Sea People army was first seen. She had complained bitterly about being a prisoner, but they insisted it was for her own safety. If the Sea People attacked without warning and breached the walls they would not find her in the fort, and in Brya below she would be hidden from view beneath a trap door covered with sheepskin and broken barrels. That way they may convince them she had fled.

  Around the hut where Aldrwyn and Luda dressed for war, preparations were being made. Weapons were gathered, warriors armed and families brought together to be sheltered in the inner stone circles of the fort. They awaited their orders from the war council.

  In one of the larger huts, that council was meeting – though Dyfran was absent, attending to the men who would lead the defence of the gate.

  ‘So it is decided then? The flames will be lit and there is no going back on it.’ Rachlaw said.

  Nan raised her hand to signal agreement, followed by the others of the council. A night and a day had passed since they had sent their message to Orlend, and now the sun was falling and the second night was here.

  ‘We must inform the people now, you all have your orders,’ Nan said. ‘I will stay on the ramparts…’

  ‘You will do no such thing, Nan.’ The door of the hut had swung open and Dyfran’s broad frame now filled the doorway. Behind him were a dozen of the Cyl elite guards, spears in hand.

  ‘Rachlaw, you come with me now. Men, put the chains on him.’

  * * *

  Orlend paced the ground outside his tent. There was an hour at most until daybreak, and his men were already assembled, awaiting his order to attack.

  ‘Well you can’t trust a savage. I have always said,’ he complained to Faral One-Eye, who now stood by his side in full battle dress. ‘They can’t even keep their word enough to attack us. Oh well, this will have to be decided with the sword, as it was always to be.’

  ‘Lord King, the men are hungry for battle. They long to taste blood again.’ Faral snarled.

  ‘Well,’ Orlend said, looking at the faint line of light that ringed the mountain horizon, ‘they’ll be getting a good breakfast today.’

  ‘Lord King!’ One of Faral’s personal guard shouted suddenly, pointing up the steep slope at whose foot they now stood. In the half-light the white of the fortress wall stood out, and above it the flame of the sacred beacon had flared up.

  ‘Ah!’ Orlend belly-laughed. ‘Perhaps your men will go hungry after all, Faral.’ He slapped his vassal lord on the back, sending him stumbling two steps forward before he could regain his balance.

  ‘They have seen sense and our journey is over. Faral, bring your guard, we are going to collect her.’

  * * *

  The first full rays of the sun were breaking over the far valley end as Orlend stood at the gate. He was dressed for victory – his shoulders draped in the skin of a huge bear, at the top of which hung it’s fanged head, the symbol of his strength. He would place it, in triumph, over his helmet, as he rode through the gate. At his side were the most trusted of his followers, and around them stood 100 or more of the Sea People’s finest warriors. The great war leader smiled.

  Then the palisade was opened once more and above him stood Dyfran; to his side – his face battered and his body hung in chains – was Rachlaw.

  ‘Lord Rachlaw!’ Orlend boomed. ‘Skavan told me you were here. I’d thought I’d already killed you on the road to Riverhead – now I guess I’ll have to kill you again.’

  Rachlaw, gagged so he could not speak, threw a look that did not need words.

  ‘And who am I speaking to? I was expecting a woman.’ Orlend now addressed Dyfran, who was holding tight to the back of Rachlaw’s neck. He had dressed to meet a king – his mail coat gleamed and his helmet was crested along its length from crown to neck with the feathers of his family’s symbol, the Golden Eagle.

  ‘I am Dyfran. The woman you speak of is dead. I now make the decisions.’

  ‘Well, Diffin, you’ve made the right one, now hand over the girl and we will leave you to sort out whatever issues you all have with each other. Oh, and you can throw in Rachlaw too, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘My name is Dyfran’, he snarled. ‘You can have the girl, but you’ll have to come in and get her.’

  Orlend looked blankly at Dyfran. ‘Come in?’

  ‘Nan Tabyn and Rachlaw would not give her up. They hid her and we had to beat her location out of Rachlaw and drag her out of her hiding hole. There was a scuffle and she was hurt. Badly, I am afraid. She is with the healers and if we move her now we fear she may die.’

  ‘What?’ Orlend spat the word out and gripped his sword handle tightly.’ ‘If she dies, you all die!’

  ‘You may take her, but you will have to come in and get her – we can’t bring her to you. She is your responsibility.’

  Now Orlend began to laugh, some of his guards looked around at each other, as if to see if any others knew the joke. ‘What kind of a fool do you think I am? Oh wait, don’t tell me,
the healing grounds are sacred and I must come unarmed?’ Orlend now looked around his men who followed his laugh as much as they dared.

  ‘Do you really think I’m just going to march in there now to be ambushed by hundreds of savages with spears? I’ll leave you to your stupid games – and I’ll be back very shortly with the rest of my army.’ Orlend turned his horse and signalled his men to leave.

  ‘Wait, king!’ Dyfran shouted from the palisade. ‘This is no trick. Bring as many men as you want – we will open the gates to you. I swear.’ Dyfran put his hand on the stone of the ramparts. ‘I swear on the blood of my ancestors that binds these rocks, we will let you in unchallenged. The army has been stood down and there are only the 12 of us you see here still armed, to keep the peace.’

  Orlend looked to Caril, his Borderer guide, who rode by his side. He gestured towards Dyfran, above. ‘My Lord King, if he swears it on the stones then it will be true – this is sacred to the Cyl.’

  ‘Alright, alright – bring up the whole guard. Bring up the White River bowmen and the spear guard. If they are planning a trap, they will have caught themselves a pack of hungry wolves.’

  So Orlend rode alongside 800 Fraxian soldiers, and the gates of Cran Dar opened to him. And for the first time in its long and noble history, and without a spear being raised in its defence, the Cyl’s proudest fortress fell.

  Rachlaw stared straight into the eyes of Dyfran. The Cyl warrior did not blink.

  ‘So Rachlaw,’ he said after a moment, ‘I’ve got to say, I enjoyed getting to punch you in your smug face, but the real fun starts now. You ready?’

  Dyfran relaxed his grip on the chains at Rachlaw’s neck and they fell, unbound, to the floor.

  ‘Give me my sword and let’s go,’ Rachlaw said, holding out his hand. Dyfran shook his head.

  ‘No Rachlaw. You have another fight to come. I’ve got one here. Go to Evie and Nan, they need you.’ Rachlaw stared and held his hand out again.

  ‘Rachlaw – this is my fort, you are not in charge here. I am not asking you, I am giving you an order. Get out of here.’

  Orlend was nearly at the gate now, and already he was sensing something wasn’t quite right.

  ‘Go now or I’ll give you your sword back in your chest,’ Dyfran hissed at him.

  ‘You need to come too, Dyfran,’ Rachlaw pleaded, and now Dyfran shook his head and threw Rachlaw’s sword to him.

  ‘Don’t be stupid Dyfran, that was the plan – there’s 12 of you what are you going to do?’ Rachlaw was beckoning him on to run with him.

  Dyfran looked at the 12 Cyl warriors who stood behind the gate palisade, then looked out across the empty expanse of Cran Dar, the grass littered with scattered household belongings, the debris of barrels and empty sacks. This was the sacred fort of the Cyl and it would not fall without a fight.

  ‘Ah yes,’ Dyfran grinned, ‘but its 12 Cyl warriors. A dozen of us against 5000 of them? I’d say the odds were about even.’

  Rachlaw laughed, and shook his head. ‘You’re an idiot Dyfran. A stubborn idiot. But you’re the bravest idiot I know.’

  Dyfran tilted his head and looked at Rachlaw a second before speaking again. ‘Go now. And I meant what I said, don’t think I didn’t – you are not Cyl, you are not my brother, and you never will be. But I will shake your hand this time.’

  And Rachlaw ran – back down towards Brya, back towards the path through the mountain, and to Evie.

  ‘Right,’ Dyfran said as he lightly punched the chest of one of the guardsmen with him on the palisade, ‘time for my big speech.’

  Orlend’s horse had been pulled to a halt in the entranceway, with his personal guard around him. He surveyed the empty fort with a look of disbelief that rose to anger, and then rage.

  ‘What sort of… what have… I will kill you all. I will kill every one of you with my bare hands. I swear it.’ He started with a forced tone of calmness but it quickly rose to a crescendo that might almost shake the thick stone walls of the fort he had just taken, seemingly for nothing.

  He looked up at the 12 Cyl warriors above him now and spat on the ground. ‘What have you achieved? You’ve let us through your best defence and now, wherever you are hiding, I’ll just find you and slaughter you. What was the point of this, except to anger me?’

  ‘Well,’ Dyfran said, shielding his eyes as he looked up at the sun that was now well over the mountain tops, and flooding the whole valley with light, ‘here is the point.

  ‘Right about now, I should think, at the end of the valley, at the back of your camp, there should be about – I would say 500, maybe more – big, hairy Borderer horsemen; all with the glint of gold in their eye. And about two hours ago, this beacon here let them know that right around the corner was the prize we told them about a couple of days ago. A baggage train filled to bursting with the entire treasury of Wyrra.’

  Orlend looked quickly down the slope and then to his men, whose heads had all turned the same way.

  ‘And the best bit,’ Dyfyrn said, his face spreading to a broad grin, ‘is that while they are attacking it, we promised them they’d just about be able to see all your best soldiers and your guards, right up here on top of our hill, in the far distance.’

  Orlend now exploded. He hurled his great spear at Dyfran, who easily dodged it. But now his men had started to turn. The first sounds of skirmishes could be heard from the other side of their camp and, to his men, it was the sound of their gold disappearing. Some of the archers broke ranks and charged down the hill, Orlend’s guard looked around but did not move. Other men began to run back towards the camp. There was confusion and chaos all around them.

  Dyfran looked down then took his spear in his hand. ‘My name is Dyfran, son of Bryndl, and this is my fort!’ The warrior leapt from the wall straight into the group of guards that surrounded Orlend, knocking three of them to the floor. His spear caught the first man in the throat, and his short sword split the belly of another as he pushed towards Orlend.

  The other Cyl warriors now leapt to join him, as they pushed and stabbed against the shields and spears that stood between them and Orlend.

  The great leader looked around, confused for a second, then pulled his heavy sword from the scabbard. He kicked at his horse and turned away from the fighting as Dyfran called after him – reminding him where he was, who it was who had made him run like a coward for his life – until he fell silent under the spears and swords of Orlend’s guards.

  * * *

  All magic kin have different gifts. The Nix are attuned to music and water, the Daw to nature. But some common gifts are found among just a few in every tribe. One of those is the ability to scent out your enemy, or your prey.

  As soon as night had fallen, the Cyl hunter-warriors had left the fort for the crags and marshes that surrounded it to the north, east and west – and they had sniffed out every lone scout of the Sea People and silently slit their throats. Then, under the cover of night, the Cyl slipped away.

  Cran Dar had never fallen, not just because of its walls or its enemies’ disinterest. It had never fallen because all its traditional foes knew it was just a facade. The real fortress was the mountains – the bogs and the cliffs, the gorse and the blackthorn, the wind and the fog and the rain. In the heart of the mountains there are no paths – none at least that are visible to those who do not belong there. And in that heart are the real forts of the Cyl. Simple, small, with low walls and no great earthworks. But hidden, deep in a maze that would confuse and scatter even a small band, let alone a vast army. No horse could come here. No waggons. Just soldiers who would be picked off one by one in the night as they fumbled their way through the twisting valleys, down blind alleys, into the grip of black bog and over false summits, until their morale and resolve was broken and they died or fled.

  This was how the Cyl fought. This was how they had always fought.

  And so now, as the sun rose further in the sky and the mountains opened up before them, Evie, Luda and Aldrwyn
trudged wearily up another slope – away from the Sea People and the fields of Brya, and towards their new fort: Cran Dy.

  The rain was coming in now and they had exhausted all talk of what might have happened, what might come. They kept their heads down as their tired legs burned against the gradient of the slope and tried to keep them up with the main column.

  Luda’s hood was pulled tightly around his face, vainly trying to keep out the thin mist of drizzle that blew down the hillside and seemed to find its way through every line of defence he put up.

  From the narrow tunnel of his vision he caught the sight of movement. A young Cyl boy, maybe nine or 10 years old, was running towards them.

  ‘Can you help me please. Is it Aldrwyn?’ he pleaded.

  Aldrwyn turned. ‘That’s me – what’s happened?’

  ‘It’s my brother,’ he said. ‘We lost the path and he’s fallen in the swamp, in the pool – he can’t swim.’

  ‘Hold this’ Aldrwyn said to Luda, and handed him his backpack as he turned to follow the boy. ‘I’m coming.’

  ‘It’s just around here, mister,’ the boy said, leading Aldrwyn behind a thick hedge of gorse.

  Aldrwyn stopped still, then looked around in confusion. There was no marsh. Just a young Cyl man with a battered face and swollen lips. He smiled to show a jagged row of broken teeth.

  ‘This is for Bryndl,’ he said, thrusting a short sword deep into Aldrwyn’s side. Aldrwyn fell with a groan. ‘And this is for my teeth you dirty little fish freak,’ he yelled – kicking Aldrwyn’s head as he lay still on the ground, his startled eyes looking up to the dark clouds that now emptied their rain onto his colourless face.

  The Betrayer

  Orlend hanged 20 of the White River archers from the stunted trees that lined the valley road and personally beheaded their captain. Then he set to assessing the damage.

  The Borderers had been fought off without too much difficulty, but on horseback, against foot soldiers, they had been able to take spoils that would have made their raid more than worth the trouble.

  A number of men had pursued the gold – no doubt, Orlend thought, only to be butchered somewhere out there in the forests and scrub of the Borders. Others – perhaps now starting to question whether Orlend was indeed the Reborn King – had simply left.