Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1) (24 page)

The Emperor took measuring strings with lead weights at either end and formed a bewildering array of geometric shapes and lines connecting landmarks, cities and fortresses. He studied the patterns thus formed and wrote more notes.
 

Mithrandrates paced around the table for a time, letting the connections and symbols shift around in his mind’s eye. After a half hour he stopped and closed the diary.
 

“Summon the Black Rod,” the Emperor ordered the guards outside his door.
 

When Garon arrived, Mithrandrates forwent any preamble. “Bring me horoscopes for Governors Drucilla and Torune, as well as Duke Grantham, Lord Marek, and Captain Alcuin Darkwood. And the Grand Masters of the other major guilds, if you can manage it.”
 

“That may take some time,” Garon said. “One must be very circumspect when dealing with these matters. The Church, of course, disapproves mightily of astrology…and other such heresies.”
 

The Emperor noticed just a hint of sarcasm or mischief in the Black Rod’s voice. “Then the Church must remain unburdened with the knowledge that I seek these documents. The Sons of Mahurin are giving the Holy See plenty of heresies to deal with as it is.”
 

“Indeed, my Emperor. It will be done. With all discretion.”
 

“And with as much as haste as you can manage elegantly,” Mithrandrates said.
 

The mercenary commander led his retinue through the Dread Marches on the ill-kept road to Sellsword Ferry. The detour was meant to cut precious time off their return trek to Falgren Keep, for this year’s trip to Mergova had netted him a lucrative five-year contract with Duke Grantham, and Alcuin was anxious to begin the Black Swans’ deployment.
 

Taking the long way north through Hastrus Province to bypass the Shoraz-Athar Rift would have been safer but more lengthy—and more expensive. Alcuin had heard that illicit “toll” collectors on the Imperial road through Hastrus were already popping up.
Word of impending war spreads fast
, he mused.
 

The route he planned would take them through a forlorn, hilly land lousy with bandits and, if the superstitious old women and priests were to be believed, haunted ruins.
 

The threat from bandits subsided greatly the closer one got to Sellsword Ferry as it was protected by Guild mercenaries at all times. Once they crossed on the ferry, Alcuin and his party would pass through the soon-to-be enemy territory of Relfast. They would be safe, however, if they stuck to the well-patrolled Imperial roads on which Guild membership entitled them safe passage, at least until hostilities broke out in earnest. Then the Imperial roads would be off limits to all combatants.
 

Alcuin, however, was not worried. He rode with 25 of his best cavalrymen and a small caravan of seven wagons, each with two armed riders from the quartermaster’s platoon in escort. The captain signaled for a halt and, after a short conference with his six scouts, sent them ahead to investigate an ominous ruin overlooking the valley in which they would spend the night.
 

“What if it’s haunted, Captain?” the lead scout asked. Alcuin didn’t bother to decide wither the man was joking or not.

“Ghosts don’t frighten me, Sergeant,” he said. “I’m more worried about brigands taking cover in those ruins. Move out.”
 

“Yes, sir.”
 

Alcuin didn’t have to tell the scouts not to go farther than a few minutes’ gallop away from their comrades, or to have two of their number act as a quartering party and establish their camp site once it was secure. The harder he trained his men in peacetime, the fewer instructions he had to give them on the battlefield.
 

By the time darkness had fallen on the valley, the wagons were laagered, tents were up and fires blazed merrily against the chill of the spring night. Those not on guard duty had put most of their armor away, but were clothed and armed in case they were attacked. Alcuin walked around the camp, quietly inspecting every aspect of it and making small talk with his men. He circled back to his tent and found his valet oiling his armor.
 

“Garthus, when we get back to Falgren Keep, you’re fired,” Alcuin said.

The young mercenary stood up and stammered, “What have I done wrong, Captain?”
 

“Nothing,” Alcuin said. “That’s my point. You’re too good a soldier to waste your talents being my errand boy any longer. I’m reassigning you to a line platoon so I can get some real work out of you. Have you taken care of your armor yet?”
 

“No, Captain.”
 

“Then give me that,” Alcuin said, reaching for the breastplate Garthus had been oiling. “Go tend to your own kit.”
 

“Yes, Captain,” Garthus said, and did as he was told. The two sat in silence beside a fire in front of Alcuin’s tent, cleaning the day’s grime off their armor.
 

The mercenary commander offered Garthus a rag and took a horsehair scrubbing brush from him in exchange. “As much as you probably hate these petty chores and useless responsibilities I’ve inflicted on you these past two years, this is actually good experience.”
 

“I don’t mind the work, Captain, or even the shit that everyone gives me,” Garthus said. “It’s all just part of the job. Besides, I’ve learned a lot about reconnaissance and small-unit tactics on these trips with you to the capital.”
 

“That’s why I rotate men through this job,” Alcuin said. “I only trust decent troopers with my kit and my horses, but I have to send them back to the line as soon as they’ve learned how to do it. I pulled you out of Second Infantry Platoon, didn’t I? Just before you were to be kicked out of the company.”
 

“You did, sir.”
 

“You’ll go back there as soon as we return, if you can keep your smart mouth shut around your sergeants,” Alcuin said. “But after this campaign, you can train for the cavalry, if you want. I would prefer to send you now and get it over with, but I can’t spare anyone. I think we are in for some hairy fighting soon.”
 

“I’ve always wanted to be in the cavalry, sir. It would be an honor.”
 

Another mercenary walked up to the fire and took a seat. “You’d waste a good infantryman by making him cavalry. That’s your typical cav attitude at work, Cap’n.”

“I’m going to need all of you sons of bitches doing your jobs right for this one, Helfgott,” the commander said. “Ground pounders, pony riders, ballista monkeys—the whole circus. Are the roving guards in place?”

“Yes sir,” Helfgott said.
 

“Good. I’m turing in,” Alcuin said, rising to go to his tent. Garthus and Helfgott rose as well.

The captain waved them off. “Carry on, carry on for Saint Taern’s sake. Good night.”
 

Three days’ ride from the ferry, Alcuin stood in his stirrups and scrutinized the rugged terrain ahead. He frowned and put his helm back on. The road, such as it was in this stretch of lawless hill country, cut through a narrow cleft between two rocky hills that formed a natural choke point.
 

“You’re sure it’s clear, Sergeant?” the captain asked the lead scout. “That’s a perfect spot for an ambush.”
 

“I know, Captain. We checked it thoroughly.”

One of the other scouts cleared his throat and muttered something that almost sounded like, “My ass!” to Alcuin.

The sergeant turned on the mercenary. “I’m tired of your fucking mouth, trooper. You keep it shut until I tell you to open it, understood? I will lash you myself.”
   

Alcuin examined his lead scout as carefully as he had the terrain moments before. “The scouts will go in first, of course,” the sergeant said after an uncomfortable silence.
 

“I’ll ride with you,” Alcuin said casually. “Let’s go.”
 

Two hundred yards from the choke point, Alcuin turned the column left and skirted the hill.
 

The lead scout rode up beside Alcuin. “Captain, we’re…”
 

“We’re bypassing that damned choke point,” Alcuin said.
 

“Sir, we’ll add hours to the trip that we hadn’t planned for…”
 

Alcuin leaned in as close to the sergeant as he could without bumping their horses together. “You are a red cunt hair away from insubordination, Sergeant,” he said quietly. “A red fucking cunt hair. If you ever contradict me outside of the planning tent again, I will demote you and send you to the wagons. Do I make myself clear, Sergeant?”
 

“Yes, Captain.”
 

They rounded the foot of the hill, and Alcuin ordered the wagons circled on a grassy rise in the land. The drivers set wickerwork mantlets between each wagon and armed themselves with crossbows. The mounted escort roved in groups of three or four around the little rise.
 

Alcuin led the rest of the men down into the woods below and found a well-worn path that led, he guessed, to the far side of the little pass—and to the ambush point that he would have set up if he were a bandit in the Dread Marches.
 

“I’m hit!” one of the riders shouted, and two more arrows whizzed among the column. A horn blared frantically several yards away in the trees.

“Bandit camp to our right!” another shouted.

“Off the horses! Form a line—echelon right, march at my command!” Alcuin shouted.

Most of the mercenaries dismounted and advanced into the woods, while those designated to tend the horses pulled the others’ mounts back and away from the coming melee.
 

The mercenaries advanced into the woods against sporadic but intensifying arrow fire. Alcuin had stopped three arrows with his shield before he reached the archer who had fired them. The lightly armored bandit dropped his bow and drew a curved sword, but Alcuin was on him too quickly. The captain “defanged the snake,” as it was called in the fighting manuals—he landed a fast, upward cut from below his shield to the bandit’s sword hand, severing three of his fingers at the knuckle and knocking the curved blade flying into the underbrush. Alcuin followed up with a downward stroke that split the bandit’s skull.
 

Alcuin and his men cut down the surprised bandits as they swept through the woods and pushed eight survivors back into their own camp. These died in a pile surrounded by the encircling, black-armored mercenaries.
 

“Back to the horses,” Alcuin ordered. “We’ll take the bastards who were set up in the ambush.”
 

The ambushers galloped headlong into Alcuin’s cavalrymen a few minutes later. Alcuin rode past the lead rider and chopped him off his horse on the pass. He parried another bandit’s cut and steered his horse into the enemy’s, pinning the man’s leg, then drove the pommel of his sword into his temple.
 

Twelve of the attackers fell to the battle-hardened mercenaries’ blades before the rest could break off and flee. The brigands, equipped with light armor and recurved bows, were ill-prepared for the close combat their heavily armored opponents pressed upon them.
 

Once the nearby woods were cleared of their enemy, the mercenaries circled back to collect their dead and wounded.

All told, the Black Swans had killed almost two score of the bandits in the woods, losing only eight of their own men killed and another five wounded. Among Alcuin’s dead were the lead scout and Garthus—both felled by arrows when the mercenaries surprised the bandits in their camp.
 

There was no time to mourn their losses, at least not yet. Alcuin and his cavalrymen returned to the wagons and found the defenders dragging the bodies of five more bandits into a neat line for inspection and looting.

“About ten of them come galloping at us from your little pass yonder, Cap’n,” said the master of the wagons when Alcuin rode up. “We ‘uns shot the fuckers off their horses, and our horsemen chased ta others off, yeah.”
 

“Well done, Sergeant Raeder,” Alcuin said.
 

“We could’a fucked them up good if we had a ballista or two wiv us,” Raeder said. “They come at us all in a scrum before they split up and shot at us from they horses. Could have knocked two or three down at a shot before they knew what was what.”
 

Alcuin looked down at the dead raiders. The mercenaries had done a job on them, even without artillery. He ordered his men to set up camp for the evening, bury the dead, and plunder what they could from the enemy corpses and their camp. The commander had a long night ahead of him certifying his own dead and writing letters of condolence for those who had families recorded in the unit’s annals.
 

The sergeants were right: Barryn learned how to dig. And dig. And march. And dig some more.

“Dig a hole!” Sergeant Otaraz had shouted sometime in the days following Barryn’s arrival. The young heathen and his squad of recruits were outside the curtain wall of Falgren Keep—they had seen the inside of the fortress for the last time the day Barryn arrived, but the ever-present bell followed them along on their marches and bivouacs like a stray dog.
 

“Deeper! Keep digging, you! Make it square,” Otaraz shouted. The bell was nearby, but the young heathen was too stubborn to climb out of the hole and ring it.
 

Once the recruits had made a square hole three yards to a side and two deep, the sergeant threw a pebble in. “Now fill it in!”

For the first few sleep deprived, hellish weeks Barryn thought the incessant digging was punishment from the gods for being stupid enough to join the mercenaries in the first place and too hard-headed to ring the bell and walk away. Five of his fellow recruits were not so stubborn, and they were dismissed before Barryn had time to learn their names.