With the Lion gone, Zahariel looked at the stars high overhead.
For a while, he thought of what the Lion had said. He thought about the stars, about Terra, about the necessity to build a better world on Caliban. He thought about the golden age that Jonson had promised.
Zahariel thought about these things, and knew that with men like Luther and Lion El’Jonson to guide them, the Order could not fail to achieve this Utopian vision of the future.
Zahariel had faith in the Lion.
He had faith in Luther.
Together, these two men – these giants – could only change Caliban for the better. He was sure of it.
It occurred to Zahariel that he had been blessed with good fortune of the kind few men were granted in their lives. No one could choose the era in which they would be born, and where the majority of men struggled through times not unlike the times their fathers had known, Zahariel had been lucky.
As he saw it, he had been born in an age of great and momentous change, a time in which a man could be part of something bigger than himself, a time when he could devote his efforts in line with his ideals and hope to make an achievement of real significance.
Zahariel could not see precisely what the future might hold, he could not see his destiny written in the stars, but he had no fear of what it might be.
The universe, it seemed to him, was a place of wonder.
He looked to the future and was unafraid.
SIX
T
HE CRUSADE AGAINST
the great beasts was to continue for another year before the last bastion of monsters was ready to be assailed. The dense, tangled and lethal forests of the dark Northwilds remained to be purged of the monsters, yet this was the one place the warriors of the Order and its allies had not yet entered.
In part, this was due to the due to the difficulty of mounting any organised, systematic hunt within its depths. Much of the forest was so dense as to be virtually impenetrable to riders, and even the hardy warriors of the Ravenwing would not ride within such places unless called to do so by their masters.
Settlements existed within the Northwilds, heavily defended villages with high walls built upon great rock plains or within the depths of wide hills, but these were few and far between, and populated by resentful people who bemoaned their lot in life without ever daring to improve it.
In truth, the real reason the crusade had not yet ventured into the Northwilds was the antipathy of the Knights of Lupus.
A knightly brotherhood known for its scholars and great libraries, the Knights of Lupus had vehemently opposed the idea of any campaign against the beasts, and had spoken out against Luther and Lion El’Jonson many years earlier.
Alone of the other orders who had voted against Jonson’s proposal to rid the forests of the great beasts, the Knights of Lupus had refused to go with the will of the majority once the matter had been decided. Instead, they had made warlike noises, threatening to launch their own counter-campaign of war against the Order and its allies.
In the end, Luther broached a compromise. The details of the agreement he made had never been revealed, but whatever terms had been offered, the Knights of Lupus had retreated to their mountain fastness in the Northwilds, and took no action against the Order.
For ten years, the Knights of Lupus had watched from their fortress as Jonson’s campaign achieved victory after victory. Region by region, the great beasts were cleared from the forests of Caliban.
As the years went by and the campaign came closer to realising Jonson’s ambitions, the minds of most people on Caliban turned to the beckoning of a golden age.
The Lion’s campaign had progressed to the very border of the Northwilds, long a Knights of Lupus stronghold, and the only region of Caliban left where the great beasts still existed.
Almost inevitably, when the Order entered the Northwilds there would be conflict.
A
GROUP OF
armed supplicants gathered in the centre of the training halls in the pattern of an outward facing circle, their swords extended before them in a defensive posture. Zahariel stood in the centre of the circle, back to back with Nemiel, while another class of supplicants surrounded them and watched their sword drills.
Brother Amadis walked a slow circuit of the circle, his hands laced behind his back as he oversaw this latest training session of the Order’s supplicants.
The supplicants gathered around the circle were a year or so younger than the students forming the circle and were all armed with wooden training swords. Though blunt, each had a lead bar at its core, which would make any impact painful in the extreme.
‘You have trained in this manner for years,’ said Amadis, addressing the younger supplicants, ‘and you appreciate the defensive strength of the circle, but you do not appreciate its symbolic strength. Who within the circle can tell these students why we fight in this manner?’
As so often happened, Nemiel answered first.
‘By standing in a circle, each warrior is able to protect the man to his left. It’s a classic defensive formation to be used when heavily outnumbered.’
‘Indeed so, Nemiel,’ said Amadis, ‘but why the inner circle?’
This time, Zahariel answered, saying, ‘A circle is stronger with another circle inside it. It’s an old battle doctrine of Caliban.’
‘Correct,’ said Amadis. ‘The idea of concentric circles, each inside the other, has been the basis for the defences of all the great and abiding fortress monasteries of Caliban. By creating an inner circle to guard and watch over the wider grouping of warriors on the outer circle, the defence cannot be breached. Now attack!’
The younger supplicants threw themselves at the circle, their wooden blades stabbing and chopping towards the older boys. The boys in the outer circle fought well, deflecting the blows of their attackers with a skill borne of an extra year’s training, but they were outnumbered three to one and inevitably some strikes hit home.
Zahariel watched the battle unfold with clinical precision, turning on the spot with Nemiel always at his back as they struck out at any potential breaches of the circle. Swords clashed and clattered for ten minutes, but not a single breach had been made in the outer circle.
Amadis shouted names as he declared boys ‘dead’, and those boys limped from the circle holding bruised and broken arms, and nursing their shame, as the outer circle drew closer to keep their line intact.
Zahariel stabbed and cut as the younger supplicants threatened to overwhelm them and Nemiel did likewise on his blind side. The bout continued for another fifteen minutes, with no sign of the circle formation breaking, and then Amadis called an end to the session.
Both Zahariel and Nemiel were drenched in sweat, the battle having taken its toll on their reserves of strength. Fighting at such intensity for any length of time was difficult, but fighting at the inner circle was particularly draining.
Brother Amadis walked amongst the exhausted supplicants as he said, ‘Now you see the benefit of the inner circle and the strength we gain from its presence. Remember this when you go into battle and you cannot fail. It is a truism, but alone we are weak, together we are strong. Each of you will one day face battle and if you cannot look to your brother and know without thinking that you can trust him, then you are lost. Only when such bonds are ironclad do they mean anything, for the moment that trust is not instantly reciprocated the circle breaks and you are dead. Dismissed!’
The supplicants picked themselves up from the stone floor of the training hall, in ones and twos, wearing linen towels draped around their necks, and nursing tired and battered limbs.
Nemiel wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve and said, ‘That was a tough one and no mistake.’
Zahariel nodded, too tired to answer.
‘He’s working us hard, eh?’ continued Nemiel. ‘You’d think we were actually about to go into battle or something.’
‘You never know,’ said Zahariel at last, ‘we might be. The representatives of the Knights of Lupus are due to arrive later today, and if what I hear is true, we might indeed be making war soon.’
‘On the Knights of Lupus?’ asked Attias, coming over with one of his notebooks tucked under his arm.
‘It’s what I hear,’ said Zahariel.
‘You got all that Brother Amadis said?’ remarked Nemiel as Eliath joined them.
‘I did,’ said Attias, ‘give or take a word or two.’
‘Maybe if you practised more swordplay instead of scribbling in your books you wouldn’t have left us open to attack,’ said Eliath, though there was no malice in the words, only good-humoured banter.
‘And maybe if you weren’t so fat, you’d have been able to avoid their attacks.’
The boys smiled at the familiar jibes, though they were spoken in jest rather than with malice. In the year since the attack of the winged beast in the forest, the four of them had passed beyond the rancour that had divided them and had become fast friends, the shared near-death experience bringing them closer than anything else could.
Attias had filled out into a fine figure of a boy, with handsome features, broad shoulders and taut muscles corded around his limbs. Eliath was still the biggest of them, his muscles bulging and powerful, any hint of fat long since burned from his slab-like frame, though he was still the least agile of them.
‘Seriously though, you think we might make war on the Knights of Lupus?’ asked Attias.
‘I don’t know, maybe,’ said Zahariel, wishing he had not brought the subject up. Brother Amadis had told him that Lord Sartana of the Knights of Lupus was travelling to Aldurukh to protest at the Order’s knights venturing into the Northwilds, and though he had not been told to keep the information to himself, he still felt like he was betraying a confidence in sharing it with his brothers.
‘Zahariel, Nemiel, get cleaned up and report to my chambers in fifteen minutes. Full dress surplice, weapons and ceremonial attire.’
Both boys looked up in puzzlement, surprised at the arrival of Brother Amadis.
‘Sir?’ said Nemiel. ‘What’s going on?’
‘The Lion wants the best of our supplicants on display when Lord Sartana walks into the Circle Chamber, and you’re it. Now hurry, he’s already here and apparently in no mood to dally. Move!’
Z
AHARIEL SHIFTED NERVOUSLY
from foot to foot as he and Nemiel stood at the edge of the plinth at the centre of the Circle Chamber. They had marched in with Brother Amadis at their head a few minutes ago, thrilled and not a little honoured to have been allowed to follow him in through the western Cloister Gate.
The higher entrances to the chamber were for the lower ranked members of the Order, and only the senior knights were permitted to enter the chamber through the Cloister Gates.
Normally, supplicants and those lower in rank than a full knight were forced to enter and sit in the benches high above, but the senior members of the Order had granted special dispensation for this occasion.
The corridors and chambers of Aldurukh were fairly buzzing with activity, their little group passing knights, squires and supplicants rushing from place to place on no doubt vital errands in preparation for the arrival of Lord Sartana.
Ceremonial banners were being dusted off and hung from the roof of the chamber, the warlike banners of red and crimson replaced with those that recalled a legendary past, and conjured images of brotherhood and confraternity.
Robed and hooded members of the Order were filling the stone benches around the centre of the chamber, though no supplicants other than those accompanying senior brothers of the Order were present.
‘Is this Sartana really that important?’ whispered Nemiel, careful to keep his voice soft, for the Circle Chamber’s acoustics were incredible.
Zahariel nodded. ‘I think so. He’s the most senior member of the Knights of Lupus.’
‘I thought they had pretty much died out?’
‘No,’ said Zahariel, ‘though they are much reduced from their former glory, it’s true.’
‘What happened to them?’
Zahariel thought back to what he’d heard the seneschals talking about below the halls and chambers of the noble knights in the years after he had first joined the Order.
‘They were opposed to the Lion’s campaign against the great beasts, and retreated to their mountain stronghold while the Order and its allies began cleansing the forests. I heard that a significant number of their knights and supplicants defected to join the Order when they saw how successful the campaign was.’
‘They left their own brothers?’ asked Nemiel in surprise.
‘So they say,’ agreed Zahariel. ‘I imagine they must have been hard and joyless years for them, since the recruitment of new supplicants dwindled to barely more than a handful each season. Within a few years, perhaps another decade at most, the Knights of Lupus faced the real prospect that they would cease to be viable as a knightly order.’
‘How sad,’ said Nemiel, ‘to be on the brink of oblivion, not through glorious heroic death or epic battle, but by obsolescence.’
‘Don’t write them off yet,’ said Brother Amadis, appearing at their shoulders. ‘There’s never more life in a beast than when it thinks it’s cornered.’
‘Brother Amadis, I have a question,’ said Nemiel.
‘Yes? Go on, but hurry, Sartana will be here soon.’
‘Zahariel tells me that the Knights of Lupus have almost no supplicants, that their numbers dwindle.’
‘That’s not a question,’ pointed out Zahariel.
‘I know, I’m getting there,’ said Nemiel. ‘What I mean to say is that is it not a little… well, brash to flaunt the Order’s supplicants before Lord Sartana like this?’
Amadis smiled and said, ‘Very perceptive of you, young Nemiel.’
‘So why do it?’
‘It is a good question, so I will indulge you,’ said Amadis. ‘In all likelihood, Lord Sartana does not come with conciliation in mind. I believe the Lion and Luther wish to make a tacit display that will speak of our strength in the years ahead.’
‘And if Lord Sartana can be made to think that he cannot oppose us, he will more readily agree to our warriors campaigning in the Northwilds,’ completed Zahariel.