Exile (Bloodforge Book 1) (5 page)

None of them had even
had a chance to react. Only Kiren still stood, mouth agape as the Impostor
turned slowly to regard him. The young soldier's eyes flicked to Barin, still
leaning against the tree. It never ceased to amaze Kiren how one could look
without seeing. Until now Barin had merely been resting. Now it was clear that
he had been dead for some time, an arrow pinning him to the tree by his throat.
The arrow had gone clean through his gorget, evidence of incredible strength
and accuracy. He looked back at the Impostor as the figure spoke.

“I’m sorry, boy. This
was not your fight.” Kiren opened his mouth to reply and then coughed. He
hadn't meant to cough and so made to speak again, yet something warm and salty
bubbled up into his mouth. The ground came up to meet him, catching him like a
pillow. He felt warm and comfortable. He coughed again, staining the snow with
red liquid. It reminded him of the juice that the local tavern owner had made
when he was a child. It had tasted of summer berries and Kiren had loved it. He
couldn’t remember why he had stopped drinking it. It had always made his lips
pink.

The first thing he
noticed was silence. The black abyss in which he swam was utterly still: no
whispering breath of breeze, no gentle hiss of water on rock — a sound he
was all too familiar with, even if he could not remember exactly why. A dull
thudding in his chest and the constant throbbing of his skull were the only
things that let him know he was still alive, unless it was some cruel trick by
the Black God. But wait… did they have ravens in Hel? There it was again: the
harsh caw of one of the Black God’s winged followers, fallen cousins of the
songbird, painted in pitch by the Unnamed to reflect their grim duty.

His eyes seemed sealed
shut, the lids gummed together by something sticky and unyielding, perhaps
blood. Soon it did not matter, for a wash of pain hit him. What had been muted
warmth in his thigh suddenly became a searing white-hot agony that shot upwards
into his side. Now he could feel the cold metal of the gorget around his neck,
now he could feel the bite of the buckles and clasps holding his armour to him.
The weight of the steel seemed such a hindrance, when surely hours before it
had been the difference between life and death. He didn’t even have the
strength to wipe the obstructing fluid from his brow.

Yet the temporary
immobility of the Soldier — for he could be nothing else — soon
became a blessing. For a new sound broke the silence. Amongst the squabbling
birds and the ripping of dead flesh from cold bodies, the shrill mirth of
several young children could be heard, accompanied by the lower warning tones
of adult women. In any other place, the excited cries of the young would have
been a cause for delight. Brief images of a giggling youngster ran through his
mind: a chase through the servants’ quarters; a tiny hand engulfed by his own.

An abrupt crushing pain
chased these thoughts from his mind as a heavy figure knelt on his stomach,
driving the rim of his breastplate into his upper groin. The stench of fish and
piss swept over him.

As any soldier
experienced past his first battle knew, children on a battlefield usually meant
one thing: looters. After any large conflict a field would be littered with the
dead and the dying for days, perhaps weeks. As the ravens and the dogs gorged
themselves on the brave, women and children would slink out from neighbouring
settlements to take what they could. It was the way of the world. If they had
not fallen, these men would only have been pillaging and raping in the
surrounding villages anyway.

The Soldier went limp,
his instinct urging caution over resistance. Any sign of life would likely earn
him a slim knife slipped through his eye and into his brain.

“This ‘un’s sure to be
wealthy,” a rasping voice, rattling with phlegm and disease. “Just look at ‘is
fine plate!”

“Can’t we go ‘ome soon,
Ma? It’ll be sundown ‘fore long an’ I was ‘opin’ I’d getta see some soldiers
‘fore they all leave.”

“Psssht, there be plenty
of soldiers ‘ere for ganderin’.”

“Aye, but they’re all
rebels!” he spat. “I wanna see proper fighters.” The venom in the boy’s voice
was startling. The Soldier fought down panic. Did that make me a rebel? If he
could afford expensive armour then he must be important. Was he a rebel leader?

“Shut yer whinin’ or
I’ll take your hide. There’s plenty to see ‘ere an’ we’s got work to do.”

The Soldier felt cool
air on his right hand as his gauntlet was tugged off and tossed aside with a
clatter
. The left one soon followed.

“Ahhh! Look at that.”
She tugged his left arm across her lap, the coarse fabric of her apron tickling
the fine hairs on the back of his hand. “Gimme the blade, boy.” The Soldier
clenched his teeth and fought the urge to scream as he realised what was coming.
He barely stifled a gasp as cold steel bit into his ring finger.

"What a luverly
gold band,” grunted the fisherwoman as she bent to her task. “That’ll fetch two
gold pieces at least.” The blunt edge swiftly parted the meagre flesh above his
knuckle and cleaved awkwardly into the bone with an audible squeak. The Soldier
swallowed rising bile and nausea with an immense effort of will as his torture
continued. The knife was making hardly any impression at all on the thin but
tough bone of his finger. Each jerk of the blade seemed as ineffective as the
last, sending withering vibrations and bright pain down his arm, now sticky
with hot blood.

Eventually the stinking
hag must have grown bored with her work as she simply snapped the finger off at
the joint. The dry cracking pop of breaking bone sent the Soldier back into
welcoming oblivion. As he slipped into nothingness, he almost felt relief that
the howling agony clawing at the back of his teeth could not betray him to such
an ignoble end.

A more discerning
observer would have noticed that dead men do not bleed so enthusiastically when
cut. The Soldier’s arm was covered in bright red blood and the birds were
already circling at the scent of warm gore. However the fisherwoman was far too
pleased with her catch to notice such trifling matters. Beginning the long trek
back to her cramped hovel, she paused briefly to hold the ring up to the fading
light, admiring its deep, claret-glazed sheen before hiking up her filthy
skirts and heading towards the dying sun.

The crows left him
alone.

He woke much later once
they were gone, their bellies full of meaty morsels. This time there was no
gentle easing into consciousness for him. His world filled with blinding agony
as if some demonic blacksmith was pouring molten steel into his eyes. This
time, too weak to fight it, his voice betrayed him. He let out a gasp followed
by a low moan. Panic dulled the pain as he remembered where he was. After a
moment of terror he took a shallow breath. The danger was past. If somebody had
heard him they would be here by now.

He began to breathe more
deeply, sucking in oxygen like a man near-drowned. The smell of death clung to
his nostrils and coated the back of his throat. Oily, thick, putrescent. The
pain in his thigh was beginning to abate. The ghost of his finger throbbed, yet
he could tell that the blood flow had weakened to a trickle.

The Soldier reached to
his side with a shaking hand. It took every ounce of effort he possessed but he
made it to the clasp on the side of his battered breastplate. With fumbling
fingers he loosened it and then pulled the armour free, rolling on to his side
and easing the heavy lump of scarred steel off of him with a
clang
. He paused again, filtering out
the scratchy sound of his own breathing to listen for danger. Satisfied, he
reached up with his good hand and dug strong fingers into the recesses of his
eyes, clawing the thick, tacky fluid away and pulling his eyelids apart with
thumb and forefinger. The world before him was dark and he panicked, afraid
that he had lost his sight after all. However he soon realised that it was
simply night time. He suppressed manic laughter. His eyes were as useless to
him as if they had stayed shut.

The Soldier fumbled
around on his knees, wincing with pain as the ragged wound on his left hand
touched cold metal, then damp soil, then grave-cold flesh. He had fallen amidst
a mound of bodies, his helmet lost somewhere among the pile of broken rag dolls
that had once been men. His good hand closed around the warm leather hilt of a
sword. He lifted it with a grunt and inspected the metal. From what little he
could make out it was a simple straight short sword with a wooden cross guard
and a thick blade in good condition. There was no gore on the blade — its
owner had died unblooded, then.

The Soldier planted the
point in the ground and used it as a crutch to haul himself unsteadily to his
feet. His eyes were still adjusting to the gloom but he could make out the
shapes and shades around him. It was a world stained with a grim palette of
grey, black, and red, though a red rendered so dark in the light as to be
nearly black. The extent of the butchery around him made him shudder. It
stretched as far as he could make out, shattered forms of men lying in intimate
groups or scattered loosely like individual leaves on an autumn day. Every now
and again a spear or planted standard jutted upwards forlornly from the misery
below.

A groan that was not his
own caught his attention

He froze, aware that
there had been a noise but unsure of where it had come from. The silence of the
night stretched out until it was almost maddening. He stood and waited,
straining his ears.

There
. Another
groan. He turned his head towards the noise. The sound had been so faint that a
stronger breeze would have smothered it entirely. The Soldier began to shuffle
towards the groans, favouring his left leg. As he moved he felt heat build in
his right thigh, and then wetness as blood began to flow freely again. He
cursed but hobbled on, desperate for contact with the living — or as
close as he could find.

The pain in his leg was
a steadily burning fire now, licking upwards towards his groin with every
laboured step. He gritted his teeth and pulled himself onwards. Blood had begun
to pool in the neck of his leather boots, making every step a stomach-turning
squelch
. He stepped over torn armour and
broken helms, outstretched hands and severed limbs, past scorched grass still
smoking with the memory of fire, and puddles of water inked with vital fluids.
The Soldier clambered painfully over the ruin of a bowman whose unarmoured
belly had been split into a wide grin, spilling entrails into the mud. As the
Soldier placed his weight upon what he thought was solid footing, he slipped
and fell across the archer with a crash, coming face to face with the source of
the groans.

A boy in rough homespun,
no older than fourteen summers, lay stricken on the field. An axe was sunk deep
into his shoulder, pinning him to the ground. Its owner — a heavily
armoured warrior more than twice the boy’s age — still held grimly on to
the wooden haft. He had died with a weapon in his hand and a spear in his back.
The boy’s face was ghostly pale except for his lips where blood had stained him
in a parody of noble beauty. He moaned again in pain, bubbling pink foam from
the corner of his mouth.

The Soldier crawled
forwards on his elbows until he was inches from the dying boy’s face. He made
to speak and then coughed, spitting blood and dust from his mouth. He had not
realised how thirsty he was. He cleared his throat, and when he spoke, his
voice sounded strong, reassuring. “Brave lad, you fought well.”

The boy turned his
glassy stare towards him. The Soldier reached down and found the boy’s wrist.
He gripped his hand as a man would greet an equal and held it before the boy’s
eyes.

This was no warrior.
This was a terrified farmhand with a borrowed sword and knitted armour. He had
no place here amongst the edges and barbs and men of metal. Another rebel,
then, like him. The Soldier had no memory of what they had fought for but they
had fought together and that was enough.

He squeezed the boy’s
hand and felt no response. He sighed raggedly and reached for his stolen sword,
placing the tip at the boy’s throat. If the farmhand felt the blade, he made no
attempt to move away. He simply stared with mournful, glazed eyes that the
Soldier knew would haunt him for many nights to come.

A quick jerk of the
blade and it was over. The Soldier hauled himself to his feet again and wiped
off the gore with a handful of grass.

In death the boy looked
peaceful — something the axeman atop him had not accomplished. The
Soldier weaved slightly on his feet as the blood rushed to his head. He felt
nauseous. And hungry.

There was nothing for
him here. He needed food and shelter and to find what remained of his comrades.

The crow’s feast had
started as the battle ended. Soon it would be the turn of the wolves and the
wild dogs of the forest, once they were sure that the field held only the
shadows of men. Yet when the scavengers came, there would be those among them
that preferred their meals warm. He could not be here when they arrived.

He walked towards the
forest.

The Soldier was bleeding
again. The wound in his thigh had begun to weep as he stumbled through the
undergrowth but now, after tripping and falling heavily against the jutting
limb of a tree, it was pulsing dark fluid. He could feel the heat spreading
down his leg so that it seemed his flesh would scald him if he touched it. His
stomach was contracting around a lump of ice, sending a deep ache throughout
his abdomen in ripples.

He stopped and stood
with his head back, staring up at the heavens, sucking in great lungfuls of air
to fight down nausea. Thankfully it was a full moon. The forest was thick and
unyielding but in places the silvery moonlight formed pillars that held the
leafy canopy aloft. Dust filtered downwards, floating in and out of the columns
of light with an ethereal quality. It all seemed so… wrong — another
world from the brutality of that muddy field nearby, where men lay like the
discarded toys of violent children.

The Soldier caught his
breath and gritted his teeth, steeling himself for another few steps. He aimed
at the silhouette of a man — no, a tree — near a pool of light some
thirty paces away and forced himself onwards.