The Grim Company

Duty Calls

Malbrec was located fifteen miles north of Dorminia. It straddled a trade route that wound up through the Demonfire Hills to continue on through to Ashfall at the very northern edge of Salazar’s territory, where the Trine ended and the bandit-infested Badlands began.

A mining town, Malbrec supplied much of the granite used in the construction of Dorminia’s many buildings. It also provided a lucrative source of income for the Grey City; Dorminia’s incumbent Chancellor had set a high tax on the town’s exports in return for its advantageous location and the protection the local Crimson Watch garrison offered from the roving abominations and bandits that haunted the region.

Barandas had been in Malbrec for only a few hours and already he wished he was back in Dorminia. His presence in the town had nothing to do with trade and everything to do with the rather grimmer business of conscription. Thelassa’s mercenary army would soon cross the narrow stretch of sea dividing the two cities, and Dorminia would need every man it could muster to defend it. As a vassal of the Grey City, Malbrec had a moral and legal obligation to provide soldiers in times of conflict. It was up to Barandas to take the raw material of the town’s young men and beat them into something worthwhile.

That was all very well, except that the young men of Malbrec showed scant enthusiasm for fulfilling their obligations.

Barandas frowned at the tear-streaked face of the woman before him. Her two sons loitered slightly behind her, examining the ground with mixed expressions of fear and shame. The elder sibling looked to be near twenty, the younger perhaps seventeen. Old enough to fight, Barandas judged, and didn’t he himself have the scars to prove it?

‘Their father perished down in the mines. Left me a widow, not a copper to my name,’ the woman was saying. ‘My boys, they’re good lads. They work the quarry to support their mother and their sister, who’s barely more than a babe. Who’s going to put food on the table while they’re off fighting?’

Thurbal tapped a foot impatiently. The stocky grey-haired Augmentor wasn’t much for subtlety. If it were up to him, he would have thrown every likely recruit in chains and packed them off to the training camp in wagons. Barandas was fast reaching the point where he wondered if that might not be the best approach. ‘You will be provided for while your boys are away,’ he said. ‘These are dangerous times. Magical abominations roam the wilderness. We will make men out of your sons; teach them how to use a sword so that when the threat to Dorminia is over, they may return and help protect the town from the horrors that plague this land.’

The woman looked at her boys. ‘What if they don’t return?’

Barandas shook his head. ‘Then you will be compensated appropriately. We are at war. Every man must play his part.’

The youngest crossed his arms and shot Barandas a defiant look. ‘This isn’t Malbrec’s fight. Why don’t you all go back to Dorminia and leave us be? I’m sick of your bloody Magelord telling us what to do.’

His mother gasped. Her other son turned to remonstrate with his brother, but the damage was already done. Thurbal had drawn his scimitar. He dashed across to the youth and grabbed him by the throat with his free hand. ‘Listen to me, you little prick,’ he snarled. ‘You’ll fight, all right. You’ll fight as though your life depends on it — because if you don’t, I’ll cut your balls off and send them back to your dear old mum here to remind her of what a gutless little whelp she raised.’

‘You’re choking him,’ the boy’s brother protested. The lad had turned red. His mother moaned pitifully.

Before Barandas could order his deputy to release the boy, the older brother grabbed Thurbal’s arms from behind. He tried to pull the Augmentor away from his sibling — but quick as a flash Thurbal threw his elbow back to drive deep into the young man’s stomach, causing him to release his grip and double over in agony.

‘Enough,’ Barandas ordered, but the grey warrior ignored his command, stepping forwards to bring the pommel of his scimitar crunching down into the lad’s skull once, twice, and then a third time, each blow connecting with a sickening crunch. The quarryman flopped down onto the ground.

‘Enough,’ Barandas barked again, and this time his own sword was in his hand. ‘Lower your weapon. Disobey me again, Thurbal, and I’ll kill you.’

His deputy sneered back at him and waved his scimitar in the air. The pommel was covered in blood. ‘That’s right, defend these cowards,’ he spat. ‘All your softly-softly bullshit will count for fuck all when the Sumnians arrive. You know what they do to their enemies? Let me tell you-’

He didn’t get the chance. With a flick of his wrist, Barandas disarmed his subordinate and sent his scimitar spinning out of his hands to land a dozen feet away. Thurbal’s mouth dropped open in shock.

‘I told you to lower your weapon,’ said Barandas. Despite his anger he couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief. Thurbal had needed a dressing down, but his disarming of the man could very well have backfired and left him holding one half of a severed sword. That wouldn’t have done much to establish his authority over his rebellious colleague.

‘You can retrieve your scimitar when I say so.’ Barandas looked down at the fallen quarryman. Blood leaked from the top of his head and pooled on the ground next to him.

It was then that his mother started to scream.

‘Someone fetch a physician,’ he said loudly to the slack-faced onlookers. He turned to the woman and her younger son, who looked as if he was about to piss himself. ‘I am sorry for what occurred here. Come and find me when you know if he is… likely to pull through. I would see you recompensed in some way.’

He left the sobbing woman and the small crowd that had gathered behind. Reprehensible though Thurbal’s actions were, the incident had been coming ever since Barandas and his two deputies arrived in Malbrec. The town had seemingly forgotten that it was a vassal of Dorminia; forgotten that it was Salazar who kept them safe and allowed them to sleep soundly in their beds. Now that war with Thelassa loomed, the town needed reminding where its loyalties lay.

Salazar had recently returned to the city after a two-week absence. The Magelord had not yet deigned to speak of where he had been. Halendorf’s condition had worsened, and the pressures of organizing Dorminia’s army had taken their toll on Barandas. Grand Magistrate Timerus was sufficiently recovered from his own ordeal and was already in the process of recommending new magistrates to replace those murdered in the assassination attempt. The upper echelons of Dorminia’s government would soon be crawling with men loyal to the hawk-nosed Grand Magistrate — or at least, even more loyal than the previous ones had been. Timerus was a schemer without peer, a man whose cunning had secured him a position second only to Salazar himself.

Barandas sighed. Timerus could play his games. He had more important matters to focus on. The drafting of soldiers from Dorminia’s poorer districts was under way and had gone surprisingly well, but three of Dorminia’s larger vassal towns had provided such a meagre yield of men that the Supreme Augmentor had decided to oversee the recruitment at Malbrec personally.

He sweated in his golden armour as he strode towards the east of town, where the gigantic quarry that was the basis of Malbrec’s industry yawned like a festering wound in the land. Red-cloaked soldiers saluted as he passed them, shielding their eyes from the afternoon sun.

Eventually he found the man he was looking for. Garmond was difficult to miss, even while he was sitting down. He was clad in his enchanted plate armour from head to toe, making no concessions to the early summer afternoon heat. The only part of his raiment he had removed were the gauntlets, which lay on the table next to him.

The huge Augmentor had a sheet of parchment before him and was in the process of scribbling something down. The quill looked faintly ridiculous in his ham-sized fist. At first Barandas had been vaguely surprised that the man even knew how to write. Garmond’s brutish countenance and infamous temper made it easy to overlook the fact he was a son of one of Dorminia’s most renowned families.

Garmond stopped writing as Barandas approached. ‘Commandant,’ he said. The monstrous helm he wore caused his voice to echo ominously so that not only did he look demonic, he also sounded the part.

Barandas nodded in greeting. ‘How many?’ he asked. He wasn’t particularly keen to hear the answer.

‘Eighty-five. They came forward quickly enough once I started knocking heads together.’

Barandas raised an eyebrow. That was more than he had expected from the small part of town Garmond had been assigned. Malbrec was home to just short of four thousand, the largest of the settlements that fell within Dorminia’s territory, but so far only a few hundred men had been drafted.

‘Is anyone still giving us trouble?’

Garmond turned his helmed head and nodded at the hill a few hundred yards to the south. A cluster of walled estates perched on top of the hill, fronted by pretty orchards and gardens.

Barandas sighed. Always the privileged. Too rich, too important to send their sons to war.

‘I’ll speak with them,’ he said. Dorminia’s nobles were still resisting his efforts at securing their participation in the city’s defence. He had no option but to raise that particular annoyance with Timerus, who would probably wave him away with some weak excuse. Still, there was no reason the wealthy merchants and landowners of Malbrec should dodge the draft.

He strode up the gently sloping path that meandered up the hill. The walk was a pleasant one. From this vantage point Barandas could see Crimson Watchmen going from door to door and enlisting suitable candidates. Those drafted would have a day to gather a few essential belongings and bid their farewells before they departed to the training camp just outside Dorminia’s eastern wall.

Wiping sweat from his brow, he approached the first of the estates, a small manor house set behind a row of cherry trees preparing to bloom. He stopped suddenly.

He remembered trees very similar to these, on a day that had, at first, been equally glorious.

The afternoon was thick with the smells of summer. The odours that always accompanied hot days in Dorminia were there, so ubiquitous that one hardly noticed them. But nothing could overpower the rich scents of blossom, the crisp aroma of fresh grass and the sweet tang of the rose-coloured cider that was so popular during the Festival of the Red Sun — the one day of the year when Lord Salazar presented himself before his people.

Barandas recalled the pride he had felt marching alongside his comrades at the front of the procession. He had been a member of the Crimson Watch then, barely a year into his service with the army. The parade had taken them down from the Obelisk to the lush, leafy boughs of Verdisa Park, which occupied a wide space near the south-east corner of the Noble Quarter. They had proceeded to the centre of the park. There Salazar would stand silent vigil before the great oak.

The Eternal Tree, it had been called. No one knew what significance it held to their Magelord, but the tree itself was a thing of beauty, its golden leaves untouched by the turning of the seasons. The Eternal Tree had occupied the centre of the park for as long as any in the city could recall.

It was a sight to behold. A reminder of the wonders the world once held before the fall of the gods.

He remembered how he would sit beneath its gilded canopy and pray for his mother after she got sick. The malignance in her chest had killed her eventually, but he had found peace in the comforting embrace of the great tree’s shadow.

Barandas closed his eyes. He remembered sensing something was amiss, glancing up to see the branches overhead rustle in a way that had struck him as strange. On an instinct that to this day he had never fully understood, he had rushed past the Magelord’s Augmentors and knocked the invisible assassin to the ground before he had buried his dagger in Salazar’s back. Their cover blown, the other assassins had dropped down from where they had been hiding in the boughs of the great tree. For those few seconds when everything was pure chaos Barandas had fought off the unseen assailants, taking wound after wound before the knife had plunged into his heart.

I was on my knees, coughing up blood. Salazar uttered a word and suddenly the assassins were there for all to see, their cloak of invisibility stripped from them. The Augmentors waded in, and everything from that point on was a blur.

The Festival of the Red Sun attempt on Salazar’s life had ultimately proved the catalyst for the Culling. A cabal of Dorminia’s most powerful wizards were found guilty of hiring assassins from foreign lands and plotting to murder the Magelord. Something seemed to break in Salazar that day, for later that year he ordered the Eternal Tree burned to the ground and every mage in the Grey City and its dependent territories killed without mercy.

As for Barandas, he had awakened with a new heart of enchanted iron — and the most rapid promotion from Watchman to Augmentor in the city’s history. He sometimes wondered if Salazar had intended the irony. A heart of iron, to bear the burden of duty and not burst with the weight of what must be done.

He reached the front of the manor house. A dog barked at him and then ran off around the back of the estate. He placed a hand on the pommel of his sword and cleared his throat. ‘By order of Lord Salazar, Magelord of Dorminia and rightful sovereign of Malbrec, open this door.’

He waited for a minute or two. Eventually the door opened to reveal a sour-faced old man in a deerskin jacket clutching a pipe in one hand. ‘I already told that armoured juggernaut of yours,’ he said irritably. ‘There’s no one here but me. I’m far too old to be fighting in your damned war.’

There was a cough from somewhere inside, which was quickly cut off as whoever made the noise desperately tried to stifle it. ‘I think I’ll see for myself,’ said Barandas. He pushed past into the entrance hall and through into a plush sitting room.

‘This… this is scandalous,’ the man protested, giving his pipe a furious tug. ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘That’s of no consequence,’ Barandas replied. He looked around at the leather armchairs and the fine rosewood cabinets. ‘You’ve done well for yourself.’

The old man frowned. ‘The mining business has been good to me. I ship a lot of stone to the city. I always pay my taxes. Every copper,’ he added.

‘Who’s that?’ Barandas pointed at a canvas hanging over the fireplace. It depicted a slightly younger version of the scowling merchant. Next to him was a woman of similar age with an equine face. Between them, a teenage boy wore the expression of the terminally bored.

‘That’s my wife, Mildra. She’s been dead these past six winters.’

‘I meant the boy.’

There was sudden fear on the face of the old merchant. ‘Harald? He’s not here. I sent him to Westrock-’

There was another cough. It came from upstairs.

‘If I find you are lying to me,’ Barandas said carefully, ‘I will have you thrown in chains, your estate seized, and your son placed in the very front ranks when hostilities with Thelassa commence.’

The merchant’s face sank and he inclined his head slightly. ‘Harald is unwell. He contracted an illness while we were in Dorminia on business. I haven’t found a physician who has been able to help. He’s coughing up his lungs.’

Barandas frowned. This wasn’t the first he had heard of this sickness. If things got much worse Dorminia would soon have an epidemic on its hands. Still, citing exemption from the draft because of some mystery illness was a claim he heard all too often recently.

‘Send your son down to my man Garmond. He will have a physician examine him. If it is indeed as you say, Harald will be excused.’

The old merchant started to protest. Barandas was in no mood to hear it. He spun on his heels and marched out of the manor, pulling the door shut behind him.

‘How many?’

Lieutenant Toram squinted down at the parchment in his hands. ‘Four hundred and sixteen.’

Barandas sighed in frustration. The sun was sinking into the horizon and he still had an hour’s ride back to Dorminia. His sweep of the hilltop residences had proved fruitless. As it turned out, many of the town’s lords and wealthier merchants had anticipated there would be a draft shortly after the declaration of war and sent their sons away. It was a common story throughout Dorminia’s territory.

The whorehouses and taverns of the Unclaimed Lands will doubtless enjoy a roaring trade for a while, he thought sourly. This entire exercise had been a disappointment. Between Westrock, Ashfall and now Malbrec, they had raised barely half the numbers he had anticipated.

He turned to Symon, his squire. ‘Ready my horse,’ he said. ‘I will return to the city shortly.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the lad replied, and scurried off to carry out his orders.

Toram scratched at his bristly grey moustache. ‘We did the best we could, my lord. If you like, we could do one more round. I’m certain there are malingerers and cowards dodging our recruiters.’

‘It’s late,’ he said. ‘Wait until the morning. If you see anyone trying to sneak out of town-’

‘Sir?’

He turned to see who had interrupted him. It was the lad whose mother had argued against his drafting earlier that day. ‘Do you bring news of your brother?’

The boy looked glum. ‘The physician says he will survive… but he will need months of recovery before he is fit to return to work. Or go to war.’

Barandas nodded. ‘Tell your mother she will be paid the sum of three gold spires as compensation for the unfortunate incident. That should help keep food on the table while he convalesces.’

‘What about me, my lord?’

‘You? You’re perfectly fit and healthy, are you not? Lieutenant Toram will take a few details and then he will see you at noon tomorrow outside the gates. Do not be late.’

‘I’m not fighting your stupid war!’ the boy cried. He backed away a few steps and then turned and ran.

‘You want me to send someone after him?’ Toram asked.

Barandas noticed Thurbal watching him. He had a smug look on his face. ‘No,’ he replied. His grip tightened on his sword. ‘I’ll fetch him. He needs to learn some respect.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You can begin another round of inquiries immediately. Use whatever methods you deem necessary.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ The lieutenant saluted and left to organize his men.

Barandas set off in the direction the boy had fled, intending to give him a good dressing down, when he almost collided with a horse travelling in the opposite direction. The merchant astride the beast immediately hopped down and offered up his profuse apologies.

‘I am terribly sorry, my lord,’ he gushed, wiping nervously at his forehead. ‘I was in a rush. I have been riding for the best part of a day and night.’

‘Indeed.’ Barandas felt his head beginning to ache. This interruption had probably cost him the opportunity to chase down the boy. Perhaps that was for the best, all things considered. ‘Would you care to elaborate on why you are in such a hurry?’

The merchant nodded, eager to make amends for his error. ‘It’s Farrowgate, my lord. The village has been saved! Some brave Highlanders and their companions slew the dreadful abomination that had been preying on its residents. Of course,’ he added, with a conspiratorial grin, ‘where there is disaster there is opportunity. The village is in desperate need of supplies. The early bird gets the worm, hmm?’

Farrowgate. Barandas had forgotten about the tiny settlement on the outskirts of the territory. He had intended to send a small detachment of Watchmen to investigate the reports of monstrous activity, but he had been so busy with war preparations the last couple of weeks that it had slipped his mind completely. ‘You mentioned Highlanders?’

‘Indeed. Two of them. Grim fellows. They looked in pretty rough shape, what with their injuries and all, but I tell you: I wouldn’t like to be the man who got on the wrong side of them.’

Barandas stared. Highlanders… the Wailing Rift!

The loss of the Rift meant the creation of new Augmentors was now entirely dependent upon the successful return of the ships sent to the Swell. If he could do a single thing right this day, it would be to enact justice on the bastards who collapsed the mine.

‘Thurbal,’ he said, moving to stand before his scowling deputy. He could hear that strange ticking sound again, the same noise he had heard during the temple massacre. ‘The scoundrels who sabotaged the Rift have been spotted in Farrowgate. Retrieve your scimitar and gather Garmond and a score of Watchmen.’

The grey-haired Augmentor rose to his feet immediately. His scowl was gone, replaced by the happy grin of a child who has just been handed an unexpected gift. ‘Garmond’s already here.’

Barandas turned away from the deputy to see the giant Augmentor approaching. He was dragging something along the ground.

It was a body of a young man. The corpse was coated in dirt and the head was a bloody mess, but the boy’s identity was unmistakable.

‘Caught him trying to flee town,’ Garmond said. ‘He won’t be going anywhere now.’

Barandas stared at the broken skull of the quarryman and then up at Garmond. He’s a monster. But what can I do? Discipline him? The boy was a deserter. He turned to Lieutenant Toram.

‘The gold you were to present to this lad’s mother? Double it. Tell her… tell her there’s been a terrible accident. He slipped and fell into the quarry.’

‘Aye, my lord.’

Barandas closed his eyes. It had been a long and difficult day. He longed to return to his comfortable estate in the Noble Quarter and take Lena in his arms. Before he could do that, however, he needed to check in on Marshal Halendorf and review how recruitment elsewhere was faring.

When duty beckoned, a man had no choice but to answer its call. Duty was what defined him; it gave him purpose in a world of chaos and uncertainty.

A man who neglected his duty was no man at all.