Kellanved's Reach

Chapter 8

What few horses Orjin Samarr’s rag-tag force possessed they gave over to the scouts and messengers. And so Orjin paced alongside everyone else, close to the arrow-point of the wide, cross-country chevron that was his marching order. His soldiers raided and burned as they went. Their orders were to herd the farmers and peasants towards the twin cities of Quon and Tali, where their clamouring and hungry mouths would eventually force the recall of the expeditionary army that now invested Purage in the north.

Orjin’s force ate whatever they could scavenge from the countryside, and as it was winter pickings were slim; his own lads and lasses were feeling the pinch of hard times just as badly as the farmers they were rousting from cottages and hamlets. Yet he insisted no one was to be slain, save where any resistance emerged.

For the first week of raiding he kept relatively close to the coast, despite advice from Prevost Jeral and Terath that they strike straight for the walls of Tali and break through, if possible. Burning Tali would definitely bring Commander Renquill’s prissy arse running – as Terath had phrased it.

But Orjin had something else in mind, a longer game.

However, it would have to wait, as he faced Terath and Prevost Jeral in an emptied and raided cottage to decide what to do about the first firm opposition to take the field against them.

Jeral pointed to the crude vellum map of north Quon Tali province. ‘They will meet us at this crossing,’ she said. ‘Good roads in all directions – roads put in by the Talians specifically to move troops, by the way.’

‘We could go round,’ Terath put in, a hand at her scarred chin.

‘Do you want them to dog us for ever?’ Jeral answered, a touch sharply.

‘Numbers?’ Orjin asked, breaking up the exchange. These two lieutenants, he noted, seemed to get on each other’s nerves. Too much alike, he figured.

‘Some fifteen hundred,’ Jeral supplied. ‘We’re not absolutely certain. They have a strong skirmishing screen.’

‘Damned few to march out to challenge …’ Terath mused.

Jeral nodded, and rubbed a hand through her matted hair – she’d undone her braids to accommodate the helmet. ‘There’s more. Scouts report a core in the force. An infantry square all in black tabards.’

Orjin and Terath shared a glance. Black tabards – the uniform of the Talian Iron Legion.

‘Size?’ Orjin asked.

Jeral blew out a breath. ‘No more than a hundred.’

Again too few, Orjin reflected. Why come out to face them? Better to husband the force in the defence of Tali. But then, since when were the Talians the type to sit back and wait for the enemy?

Orjin’s own force currently numbered close to four thousand. ‘Over-confidence?’ he pondered aloud.

Terath shrugged. ‘Who knows? We can’t let ourselves get bogged down in an exchange. We should ignore them and strike straight for Tali and gut it while we can.’

Orjin shook his head. ‘No, we can’t leave them behind us.’ He looked to Terath. ‘You’re right. Their goal might very well be to slow us down, buy time for Tali, so we have to do this quickly. We meet them tomorrow head on and sweep our wings around them in an encirclement.’

Jeral picked up her helmet, gave a quick, fierce nod. ‘I’ll inform the flank officers.’

Once the Nom officer had left, Terath turned to Orjin. ‘Their goal may be to break this army, Orjin. Scatter it. Remember, they succeeded not too long ago.’

‘Those Purge nobles could ride away from their mistakes – I can’t.’ And he laughed, heading for the door.

‘Cold comfort,’ Terath grumbled, following.

His Wickan lieutenant, Arkady, waited outside with the hetman of the hill-folk, a squat and lean fellow, Petel, who appeared as tough as a hewn stump. This fellow nodded to him. ‘We are far from our families,’ he began, ‘and it is winter – not the time we choose to be away.’

Orjin nodded. ‘You are free to return, of course. Thank you for your aid. We are grateful you are with us.’

Petel snorted his scorn. ‘The noble Quon lords treat us like dirt.’

‘You have our gratitude, and I wish I had gifts to give …’

The hetman waved that aside. ‘We have the weapons and goods we’ve collected.’ He flashed a grin. ‘It was a good raid.’ He motioned to a number of his people. ‘For you.’ One hill-woman came forward with a great shaggy cloak in her arms which she extended to Orjin. He would have sworn it was a bear-cloak, but for its amazing colour: a dirty white.

‘This comes from a great beast of the ice fields of the far north. It is yours – to match your own pelt.’

Orjin self-consciously pushed back his own shaggy, prematurely grey hair and laughed. ‘I understand. My thanks.’ He motioned to the south. ‘Tomorrow we fight. I hope you will stay for that. We could use you.’

Petel grinned savagely. ‘Oh, yes. Every raid needs at least one good fight that the young bloods can boast about.’

Orjin answered the grin. ‘Excellent. My thanks.’

The hetman bowed and walked off. Arkady gave a nod and went with him. Terath leaned closer, murmuring, ‘We need them.’

Orjin nodded. ‘Yes. But they’ve done enough, and this isn’t really their fight.’

‘You’re too quick to let people have their way. You should demand more.’

He was watching the hill-folk settling in around the fires, teasing one another and laughing, and he answered, distracted, ‘The things I want from people are the very things you can’t demand.’

The woman eyed him, her gaze questing. ‘And what if they don’t give those things voluntarily?’

He lifted his shoulders, still watching the hill-folk. ‘That’s just how it is sometimes.’

She pursed her lips, saying nothing, her gaze falling.

He frowned then, noticing the silence, and glanced to her. ‘What is it?’

Her mouth hardened. ‘Nothing.’

‘Well,’ he offered, ‘you and I should try to get some sleep.’

She nodded, letting out a long breath. ‘Yes. I suppose so.’

The morning dawned cold and crisp. Orjin’s breath plumed in the air as he exited the cottage and paused there, setting a booted foot on to a rock to adjust the cloth wrappings he wore up his legs against the cold, and tighten the bronze greave over the top. He lowered the set of his sword-belt round his long mail coat, and, a touch self-consciously, adjusted the new bear-fur cloak at his shoulders, affixed by a large round clasp over his left breast. He then crossed to a fire to warm his hands. The Dal Hon shaman Yune was there in his ratty cloak, which made him look like a shabby crow. The shaman gave him a hard eye, then nodded. ‘Suits you.’

Orjin sent him a questioning look. ‘Anything?’

The fellow shook his head. ‘Nothing important.’ Orjin grunted his satisfaction. Yune extended a steaming glass. ‘Tea?’

‘Thanks.’ Prevost Jeral walked up, fully caparisoned, helmet lowered and strapped. Orjin asked, ‘Our friends still with us?’

She nodded. ‘Waiting for us.’

‘They must think they can break us.’

‘They have reason.’

Orjin scanned the south. ‘Not this time. I will lead the attack.’

The Purge officer actually stiffened. ‘Is that wise?’

‘It’s necessary. No one will retreat so long as I’m fighting.’

‘And if you should fall?’

Orjin raised a brow at that, but laughed and clapped her on the shoulder. ‘Then avenge me!’

Prevost Jeral wasn’t assured, but she did note how all the troops nearby smiled in response to Orjin’s loud and confident laugh. He knows what he is doing, this one.

We just have to keep him alive, then.

‘Set the horns to call order, prevost,’ he told her, and started walking.

The Talians had chosen their ground as well as they could, given the flat domesticated countryside of fields and orchards. They occupied a crossroads – the stout Talian military roads being built up above the surrounding fields. Concentric circles of shieldwalls faced Orjin and his troops as they closed in.

He drew his longsword, its grip manufactured with enough extension for a hand and a half. He eschewed a shield, blocking instead with the sword, when necessary.

The Quon Talian infantry stood their ground. Their bronze shield-edges scraped as they adjusted their footing. Somewhere within that rough circle waited its core – men and women in the black tabard of the Iron Legion. Personally, Orjin was not all that impressed; he didn’t think this new corps would in any way be as formidable or hard-bitten as the old imperial force.

He picked up his pace as he closed, sword rising. He now kicked through the stiff brittle stalks of a harvested field, barley or rye. A war-shout was growing deep within his chest, both to intimidate his opponents, and to stoke his own fighting rage.

To his right, Orhan loosed his own shattering war-bellow; he had set aside his tall poleaxe for a mace in each hand, while on Orjin’s left Arkady had out two long-knives for thrusting in the chest-to-chest brawl that was to come.

They struck with a bone-jarring crash and all planning or consciousness of the larger engagement fled Orjin’s mind as he gave himself over to the animal ferocity of killing. Enemy faces screamed at him over shields, some eyes slit, others wide. Teeth were bared in grimaces of rage, or of agony.

Through it all he swung and bashed, exultant at the very fact of still being alive, until the troops to either side of him rebounded suddenly as if from a stone barrier; they faced now a solid wall of blackened rectangular shields emblazoned with a simple circle, or crown, of silver. Above the shields cool eyes regarded them, the gaze of those long inured to battle.

This pause allowed Orjin to raise his head and study the battle, and he saw that despite his hopes of allowing an opening to the rear of the enemy for them to retreat or break, his troops had washed round the much smaller force completely. He raised a fist for a halt, and Orhan lent his war-bellow to the order, ringing out, ‘Cease!’

The two forces eyed one another across the short gap of a few paces, one a tiny dot of black surrounded by thousands. Breathing heavily, Orjin cleaned his blade, sheathed it, and approached. A fellow in a black tabard over a long mail coat slipped out of the shieldwall to meet him.

Calm now, Orjin could see that every face belonged to a lined and seamed veteran. Some were clean-shaven, others carried grey beards braided in the decades-old style. All were calm, some even smiling.

The legionnaire who met him was a compact fellow no taller than Orjin’s shoulder; his thin hair was brush-cut to a grey stubble, his face sun- and wind-darkened to a deep umber brown, and his eyes, like those of Orjin, a bright glacial blue. His tabard was threadbare, yet clean and much mended – stored reverently for decades, no doubt.

Orjin inclined his head to the veteran. ‘You’ve made your point, oldster. There’s no need to continue. You may quit the field with pride.’

‘It is you who should quit the field, lad. Go back north, or we will break you.’

‘No. Not this time, I think. Stand down, please.’

The oldster shook his head. ‘No. There is no standing down. You don’t understand.’

Orjin raised his face to the sun and wind, let out a long breath. ‘Yes. I do understand. Once more you’ve answered the call. Once more you’ve set down your shovels and hoes and you feel the weight of armour at your shoulders, the heft of your weapon at your hip. But most important – once more you stand together as in the old days, shoulder to shoulder.’

The veteran had started nodding as Orjin spoke, and now he eyed him narrowly. ‘You do understand. Then you know what must be done?’

Orjin gave one slow nod of assent. ‘Yes – though I wish it were not so.’

The oldster saluted him and slipped back into the ranks of the shieldwall.

Orjin returned to his troops. Orhan sent him a questioning look he would not meet. He peered down the curved line of massed troops, right and left, then raised his sword, held it poised, then dropped it forward.

His force charged bellowing their war-cries, converging to meet the eerily silent black-clad veterans. Orjin, however, did not advance. He watched and waited, sword ready if necessary. The Iron Legionnaires fought efficiently, silently, and they held out for far longer than he could have imagined. Yet outnumbered so vastly they eventually fell, first one by one, then more swiftly as the shieldwall crumbled, until finally the last few fought back to back to fall amid their brothers and sisters. None threw down their weapons or yielded. They perished to a man and a woman.

With victory came great whoops and cheers from Orjin’s force, and they hugged and clapped one another, but Orjin did not join in. He slammed his weapon home and headed off to a nearby cobblestone hut.

Prevost Jeral came jogging up to him, saluted. ‘Congratulations, commander.’

Orjin raised his face to the clean wind once more. ‘Think you so?’

The officer seemed to understand his tone; she lost her smile. ‘The troops needed this. They’ll pull together now.’

He nodded. ‘Yes. That is true at least.’

‘I’ll start the burial detail,’ she said, and headed off.

‘Captain!’ he called after her, and she turned. ‘Leave them be. Do not disturb them.’

‘Really, sir? But don’t you think – that is, it would be disrespectful not to give them the proper rites.’

‘I am giving them their proper rites, captain. Leave them to lie together, shoulder to shoulder. It’s what they marched out here for.’

The Nom officer tilted her head at this, a touch confused, but bowed. ‘As you order, sir.’

That evening the troops celebrated their victory over the storied Iron Legionnaires. Out came long-hidden flasks and wine skins, and campfires roared high through the night.

Orjin sat staring into his fire before the hut he’d taken as the field command. With him sat Yune and Terath. He held his tea-glass in his fingertips, idly swirling the dregs and watching the firelight glint from the glass.

Prevost Jeral approached from the darkness in the long and loose sweat-stained shirtings and leg-wraps she wore beneath her armour. A bloodied field dressing was bound about one arm. She nodded to Orjin. ‘We march for Tali, then?’ Still eyeing the dregs of his tea, he shook his head. She frowned, glanced to Yune and Terath, perhaps for guidance, but neither spoke. ‘Then what? Care to inform your staff?’

Orjin crooked a grin at her impatience with his reticence, which was well deserved. He finished his tea and sucked his teeth. ‘What do you think will happen when we show up outside Tali’s walls?’

Jeral shrugged. ‘They’ll tell us to go bugger ourselves.’

‘And if we invest the city – don’t you think there’s a chance they may not even send messengers requesting Renquill’s return?’

The Nom officer nodded at that. ‘Yes. Those old generals are proud and stubborn.’

‘And that Renquill might even refuse to abandon the siege?’

She snorted a laugh. ‘If he thinks he can win it – especially so.’

Orjin was nodding. ‘But what if we threatened Quon instead?’

Jeral crouched before the fire. She adjusted the bindings at her upper arm, wincing. Terath poured her a glass of tea, which she accepted with a nod. ‘But there’s nothing there. No armoury, no garrison. It’s not a military target.’

‘But the Quon merchants will demand Renquill’s return, won’t they?’

‘They will squeal like cornered pigs.’

‘Yes. And while Renquill can refuse his own generals without any political consequences … what of Quon?’

The prevost sipped her tea, nodding. ‘He dare not – cannot – refuse them. The alliance.’

‘The old saying,’ Terath put in: ‘Quon pays so that Tali can fight.’

Jeral looked to the old Dal Hon mage. ‘What do you think?’

Yune smoothed his wispy grey moustaches. ‘I think fate is like water – you cannot push it uphill. Therefore it behoves one to find the easiest – that is, the most likely – path downhill and hope to ride it.’

Jeral frowned at the old shaman, clearly trying to find her way through his comment. Terath threw a pebble across the fire at him. ‘And how long did you spend on that one?’

He opened his hands. ‘What? You didn’t like it?’

‘That’s one of your stupidest ever!’

Yune appealed to Orjin. ‘I thought it had a good balance.’ Orjin laughed.

Terath motioned to Jeral’s arm. ‘Let me take a look at that.’ She took Jeral into the hut.

Later, when Jeral had reappeared and bowed her departure, Orjin pushed open the door and entered. He found Terath washing blood from her hands in a ceramic basin.

He worked to keep his face straight as he asked, ‘How did it go?’

The tall Untan dried her hands and threw down the cloth. ‘All she did was ask me about you.’

They marched double-time for Quon, which occupied the shore-side slopes of the gentle hills the twin city states were founded upon: Quon, expansive and rambling, consisting of extensive family estates, large warehouse district, and several market squares; Tali, inland, confined and walled, consisting of towers and enclosed baileys and yards for layered defence.

Orjin requested that all those among his force who had worked as labourers for the Quon trading families report to him on its walls and streets. After that meeting, he decided to head to the waterfront district, where the walls were described as ‘more gesture than barrier’.

Two days later, without encountering significant opposition – the Quon Talians clearly not thinking such an expedition even possible, let alone feasible – they came within sight of the north walls of the broad waterfront harbour and warehouse district.

The ‘gesture’ part of the description immediately became clear to Orjin. Walls there had been, formidable and thick, from the old days when the Talians besieged Quon every few years. Now, however, entire sections had been taken apart, stone by stone, no doubt ending up in the buildings of some impressive new family estate.

At Orjin’s side, Prevost Jeral, reviewing the jagged remnants of the north wall, snorted her disgust. ‘That’s a damned disgrace,’ she announced.

‘With the alliance, it came to seem irrelevant,’ Terath, on Orjin’s other side, supplied.

‘Hiring mercenaries only gets you so far,’ Jeral muttered. Orjin looked at her and cocked a brow. She cleared her throat. ‘Present company excepted.’

Workers had been scrambling over the scavenged missing sections, hastily mounting wooden barricades and piling rubble. They abandoned their efforts when Orjin’s broad-fronted chevron approached. A thin line of what must have been conscripted city watch and private estate guards remained at the wall – these put up very little resistance to Orjin and his heavies.

Once he’d stepped down on to a cobbled street, Orjin ordered three columns to spread out and occupy the warehouse district. Here he stood on the main way, amid abandoned wagons and carts of cloth and fine leather hides, salt slabs and boxes of spices – a sampling of all the goods of this, the richest western port of the continent. Orjin planted his sandalled feet, crossed his arms, and waited.

Later that day a delegation approached down the broad avenue. It consisted of three canopied palanquins, each carried by bearers and preceded by what must be elite personal bodyguards. Impressive guardsmen, Orjin thought: Dal Hon giants and armoured northern Bloorian knights – but not soldiers, these. He knew the least of the hill-folk scouts had been far tougher than any of these pampered house guards.

He raised a hand for a halt. ‘Close enough! Leave the bearers and guards behind and approach on foot!’

‘What?’ an old woman squawked from within one palanquin. ‘Leave our attendants behind? Approach on foot?’

Orjin sighed. ‘That’s what I said.’

The palanquin rocked in evident agitation. ‘This is unprecedented! Uncivilized!’

‘Yes it is.’ At his side, Terath, he noted, was openly smirking.

‘Inevitable,’ a deep voice rumbled from the middle palanquin, and it sagged alarmingly as a thick leg in bright silk pantaloons emerged, a dainty silk-slippered foot feeling about for the cobbles.

‘Very well!’ the ancient crone-voice answered, sniffily. The palanquin’s gauzy pastel-hued cloth parted, emitting a gout of smoke, and to Orjin’s surprise out stepped a petite, even dwarf-like young woman, a long-stemmed pipe clamped firmly in her mouth.

The thick leg belonged to a correspondingly large barrel-shaped fellow in rich silks; out of the third palanquin stepped a tall and bearded oldster in unadorned dark robes. The odd trio approached together, the fat one wincing each time a slippered foot touched the stone cobbles.

The tiny young woman drew herself up as tall as she could, raising her chin. ‘We are the elected representatives of the great trading houses of Quon,’ she announced in her smoke-roughened voice. She motioned to the huge fellow, ‘Imogan,’ the thin old one in simple dark robes, ‘Carlat,’ and finally herself, ‘Pearl. So,’ she continued, not even waiting for Orjin to introduce himself, ‘now we must discuss your price.’

Even though Orjin had been fully expecting this, he couldn’t help stiffening at what, to him, was a terrible insult. Terath actually growled her seething rage. He shook his head, looking to the sky. ‘You people … just because you can be bought doesn’t mean others can.’

‘Everyone has a price,’ Pearl sneered, and she blew out a great plume of smoke.

Orjin was glad his arms were crossed as it stopped him from immediately going for his sword. ‘You people need a lesson that there are more important things than coin – and I think I’ll demonstrate it.’ He looked to Terath. ‘Burn the warehouse district.’

The Untan duellist smiled hugely. ‘Immediately.’ And she turned on a heel and jogged off.

The fat merchant, Imogan, raised a hand. ‘A moment, please. Perhaps we may negotiate …’

‘We were negotiating,’ Orjin answered. ‘Your approach was to insult me. Negotiation failed.’

Pearl snatched the pipe from her mouth and jabbed it at him. ‘You cannot do this.’

‘I am. I suggest you gather your labourers and guards to contain the fire so that your estates aren’t consumed.’

‘But artwork,’ the tiny girl spluttered. ‘Fine leathers from Seven Cities. Spices. Silks! You barbarian!’

‘Fisherman, actually.’

Now her tiny eyes slit almost shut. ‘We, the representatives of the trading houses of Quon, will see you crucified for this. Your motley gang will line the road from Quon to Purage!’ She raised her chin as if in a coup. ‘Long ago we demanded the return of Talian forces. Even as we speak they are probably on the way!’ She jammed the pipe back into her mouth, sneering her triumph. ‘You will all be dead within the month.’

Orjin inclined his head to her. ‘We shall see. But for now, I suggest you throw every man and woman you have into a bucket brigade.’ He motioned to the guards. ‘Even that lot, though their pretty livery will get all sooty.’

Pearl opened her mouth to reply but the third of the trio, who had been studying Orjin all this time, hand at chin, forestalled her. ‘You planned all along to relieve Purage, and in case word has not yet reached you I can tell you that you have succeeded. But at a price. So far you have been the cat, but from today onward you are the mouse.’

The woman turned a glare upon the tall and rail-thin oldster. ‘Now the great prognosticator of Quon speaks? Now? When it’s too damned late? What use is that? Faugh!’ She turned on her foot and waved the other two to follow.

Orjin watched them go. Nothing of what transpired had come as a surprise to him, save that last comment. The old fellow had the right of it. From now onward he would be the prey. He just hoped to prove a fox rather than a mouse.

Later, he met with a large portion of his troops in a broad square surrounded by the Quon merchant warehouses. Atop a loading dock, in his thick grey bearskin cloak, he raised his hands for their attention. ‘Take all the food you can carry!’ he shouted. ‘Load any mules and carts! Prepare for a damned long march! Then,’ and he waved to the warehouses, ‘burn everything behind you!’

A great roaring cheer answered that, and a chant of a word from some quarters. He climbed down to Terath and Prevost Jeral. ‘What’s that they’re saying?’ he asked Jeral.

She smiled in answer. ‘They like you, so you’ve earned a name. Sort of a title.’

‘What is it?’

‘Greymane.’

He laughed, and pulled a hand through his long greying hair. ‘Well … better than Greybeard, I suppose.’

* * *

Heboric walked the main trader road of Itko Kan that ran as a spine along the thin north–south conglomeration of united city states. It lay far from the coast, as a precaution against the ever-present threat of pirate raids from Malaz and Nap. Also, as an inland route, it served as an unofficial border with Kan’s warlike neighbour, Dal Hon.

It was winter, and thus cold and wet. At places the road was nothing more than a mud track of pools and glutinous ruts. Protected only by sandals as he slogged through the muck, his feet were sodden, caked in mud, and frozen all day. He was in no particular hurry, and so he chose a leisurely progress from one wayside inn or horse-post to the next. Each evening, by the fire of one such establishment, he would warm his feet and wait to be served whatever fare his obvious calling as priest might garner from the innkeeper. Sometimes it was a full hot meal; other times he was offered leavings no better than those meant for dogs.

So did he make his way north, aiming, roughly, for the great city state of Li Heng.

Fellow travellers came and went: mounted messengers, merchant caravans, local farmers and craftsmen and women. He passed the time with a few, but most took in his boar tattoos and moved on, as the Great Boar was, among many things, one of the gods of war.

Outside Traly he came upon a richly caparisoned wagon – the conveyance of some noblewoman – with an armed escort of ten men-at-arms. The rear wheels were stuck in the mud up to the axle and half the guards were down in the muck pushing while the noblewoman within berated them.

Shaking his head, Heboric clambered down into the ruts to help. With his aid, and the driver whipping the four horses, the wagon lurched free.

The guards nodded their wary thanks and took up their arms. Heboric tried to shake the mud from his legs.

‘You will attend me, priest!’ came a command from the covered wagon.

Heboric raised a questioning brow to the guard captain, who nodded him closer. ‘Yes, O noble-born?’ he asked.

‘Walk with me. I would have your prayers – gods know I have need of them!’ The wagon rocked onward and Heboric kept pace. ‘Where do you travel?’ she demanded.

‘To the Valley of Hermits, east of Li Heng.’

‘Excellent! Our path is similar. I myself am for the new sanctuary of Burn to pray for the welfare of my family. Are you intent upon becoming an ascetic yourself?’

He shook his head. ‘No. I would ask questions of them.’

‘Ah, you are on a quest for knowledge.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, join your earnest entreaties to mine. I am so very worried by the fecklessness of this new generation. They know only to spend money like water and have no concern for the future.’

Heboric crooked a smile – having heard that very complaint from his own elders.

‘Tell me,’ the ancient demanded, ‘have you seen the Holy Enclosure of Fener at Vor?’

‘Indeed I have, mother.’

‘Tell me of it.’

For the remainder of the day Heboric described the situation of the enclosure, its location and layout. The old Kanian aristocrat then questioned him thoroughly as to its rites and rituals; it seemed she was a dedicated student of all the gods’ practices and obeisances. Her guards, he noted, appeared quite relieved to have a new target for her ceaseless interrogation.

Three days’ travel passed in this manner, the Kanian elder, Lady Warin – who, it turned out, was a distant relation of the Kan and Chulalorn line – demanding an account of every scrap of eldritch worship or rite that Heboric had ever come across – which was extensive, as he considered himself something of a historian of the field.

On the fourth day the slow slogging progress of the heavy wagon was interrupted by three mounted figures blocking the road. Lady Warin’s guards immediately drew their weapons, their captain calling, ‘What is the meaning of this?’

The central figure kneed her mount forward. ‘It is what it looks like,’ she answered, rather lazily. ‘The lady will hand over all her coin and jewellery.’

Heboric eyed the bandit woman. She wore a ragged cloak, yes, but beneath he believed he saw the glint of blackened mail. And three horses? Rich bandits indeed. ‘Captain,’ he called, ‘have her shrug off that rag she’s wearing.’

The captain waved the three away with a shake of his sword. ‘Choose your targets with more care, fools. This is Lady Warin, an elder of the Kan line!’

‘I know she is,’ the bandit leader answered, as lazily as before, and Heboric gripped the wagon’s side. No! ‘Fire!’

A fusillade of crossbow bolts came flying from the woods and Lady Warin’s guards all grunted, taken by multiple shots. Heboric himself crumpled, a leg kicked out from under him by the impact of a bolt.

He lay in the mud, panting, while the jangling of harnesses announced the approach of the three mounts. Through the roaring in his ears he heard the old woman say, with great disparagement, ‘So … are we to return to the old dynastic wars?’

The bandit woman dismounted. Heboric noted from under the wagon that her boots were tall and of fine leather. ‘They never ended,’ the woman answered, and the wagon rocked as she climbed inside. Reaching up, snarling with the effort, Heboric pulled himself upright.

‘Curse all of you to Hood’s darkest pits!’ Lady Warin hissed, then gasped.

Heboric stood, panting, and examined his leg – the bolt had passed straight through the meat of his thigh.

‘This one’s still alive,’ a new voice observed from nearby. Heboric looked up, blinking. More of the so-called bandits now surrounded the wagon, crossbows resting in their arms. Boots squelched in the mud as the bandit woman leapt down from the wagon. She’d thrown off her old cloak and was using a piece of torn rich cloth to clean her blade. Her armour was plain and functional; ex-military, Heboric thought.

She looked him up and down. ‘Sorry, priest. But there are to be no witnesses to this bandit attack.’

He did not bother pointing out the obvious truth that this was no bandit attack. Instead, he drew a snarling breath and grated through his pain, ‘Do not make me call the Boar.’

The woman raised a brow, nodding. ‘I’ve heard the stories, of course. The Boar-wildness. Never seen it myself. I think of it as apocryphal.’

Through clenched teeth, Heboric ground out, ‘Do not force me. It is very painful.’

Brow still raised, the officer asked, ‘For you?’

‘For everyone involved.’

Sighing, she turned to her troop. ‘Well? What are you waiting for? Reload.’

Damning the woman for forcing this on him, Heboric called inwardly upon the Great Boar, the roaring god of war’s wildness, petitioning: Ride my flesh! And charged.

When Heboric awoke, it was night, and he lay half in a small creek. Groaning, he turned over to wash the thick sticky layer of drying blood and gore from himself in the icy cold water. He spat out something that might have been a piece of human flesh and washed his mouth, gagging. Then he passed out once more.

With the warmth of the sun, he rose and staggered about until he saw the raised bed of the road and returned to it once more, heading north. Of the Lady Warin’s wagon or party, he found nothing. He must have run or wandered far from that location. At the first farmer’s thatched hut he limped over and banged on the door until it opened and hands took him to heave him on to a straw pallet. Here he sank into a deep sleep of near death, as the Boar cares not for the demands he places upon the flesh he rides.