Mordraud, Book One (34 page)

The bastard
’s name was Benno. A large and stupid peasant used to coming to blows in the tavern. People said he’d enlisted because he much preferred fighting to working. Mordraud had come up against the worst of the pack.

“
A really nice sword. Worth a bucket-load of money, hey lads? Your master give it to you? Or mummy? Did you let someone split your arse for it?”

Mordraud stood in front of him with his hands on his hips.
“I said:
Give it back!
”

Benno was sitting on a log. Although Mordraud might be tall, Benno looked like a real giant. A few soldiers fell back, savouring the promise of a beating.

“Hey, Blackie, you shouldn’t overdo it...” one of them said, flexing his calloused hands. Mordraud didn’t budge.

“
You shitty swine, give me my sword!”

Benno went to rise but Mordraud got in before him. He grabbed the other
’s head with both hands and pushed it down, kneeing him in the forehead as he did so. Before Benno could react, Mordraud started thumping him in the face. A hail of well-placed punches. He only stopped when he heard the distinctive sound of a nose breaking.

“
SODDIN’ BASTARD!” burbled Benno, his face covered in blood. “I’M GONNA KILL YOU!”

The soldier still had the sword in his hand. Mordraud seized his wrist as soon as he guessed what he had in mind, and he twisted it until Benno
’s fingers loosened their grip.

“
I told you to give it back, you shitty swine.”

Mordraud took his weapon from the ground and backed away. Benno got up, roaring uncontrollably, but had to freeze in his tracks. Mordraud was wielding the sword menacingly.

“I wouldn’t go too far, if I were you...” mumbled Benno as he spat a tooth into his hand.

The lad
was dumb, but not an idiot. Blackie really was ready to kill him. He looked like he couldn’t wait. Benno sat back down, cursing rabidly, and Mordraud left, in an all-round silence.

“
By the Gods, I was crapping myself...” he muttered as soon as he was outside the tent. “I came off lucky.”

He
’d just made himself an enemy. A big one.

“
Well, at least it’ll stop me getting bored...” he decided, shrugging his shoulders.

‘
I’d better keep out of the way tonight,’ Mordraud thought, darting in between the camp’s tents. ‘I’ll join the boys at the Latrine and stay there a bit while things calm down...’

The Latrine was one of the large communal tents where drinking was
permitted after the training sessions and the patrols. It certainly wasn’t one of the best at the Rampart camp, but it had an undeniable advantage: you could hide away there until the early hours of the morning without anyone noticing. The tent stood almost on the camp’s northern border, far from the access road for the front, and sunken below the surrounding area, making it particularly prone to holding the stench of the nearby lavs. It was known as the worst spot in a place that was already notorious.

Mordraud reached the Latrine and immediately found his drinking pals. Hammer, Red, Mercy and Giant
. They were already half tight, which Mordraud was quite pleased about. He couldn’t hold his drink as well as they did, and often ended up flat on his back halfway through an evening, with them all laughing at him. Maybe he wouldn’t be the first to keel over that night.

‘
What a brilliant bunch...’ he thought, chuckling, while he heard them cursing at each other. He didn’t know their real names, as he’d forgotten them at once when, during his very first days at the Rampart, he’d met hundreds of different people and had had to learn the dozens of captains’ names, which had to be repeated straight off. He’d never noticed before, but he didn’t have a fantastic memory. Gwern definitely had a talent for remembering, Mordraud reflected.

He
’d chosen the nicknames: Hammer was a stocky lad from the Eld countryside. Before being called up to defend the borders, he’d worked as a blacksmith with his father. It was said he could strike out with the same rhythmic brutality as a hammer pounding an anvil. Mordraud had only seen him a couple of times during training, and he’d given him exactly that impression. Hammer raised and lowered his sword to thrust and rupture, rather than to cut. A relentless young bull. He was a lad of extremely simple and concise thoughts – something Mordraud particularly appreciated.

Red and Giant were always together. Red
’s face was disfigured by a skin disease; his cheeks were revoltingly raw and pockmarked. It was not a pretty sight, and contrasted well with his cheerful and unquestionably easy-going nature. Instead, Giant was a dwarf who couldn’t string together three words without throwing in an insult or a curse. He spoke all the time and, more noticeably, drank all the time. He said he was the son of an innkeeper, even though Mordraud sometimes wondered whether Giant wasn’t the direct offspring of a bottle, rather than a man.

Mercy was the odd
est of them all. He didn’t come from Eld, and wasn’t even born in the rebel territories. Some said he was from Cambria, while he’d told others he was from Calhann, the city by the Inland Sea Strait. He spoke very little, but observed with obsessive dedication. Usually, when Mercy opened his mouth, it was to state an absolute and indisputable truth. Slight and deceivingly light, he had an unsuspected strength and an alarming ability to move around without being much noticed. Rumours had it that he’d slit throats for money before becoming a soldier. Like they also said he was a killer hired by noblemen, a chicken thief, or a whore-trader. Nobody really knew who he was. Even his nickname Mercy had been chosen by him, without Mordraud having to come up with one. He’d have liked to call him Beanpole, but everyone knew him as Mercy now. And when it boiled down to it, nobody had the slightest idea who he was.

“
This round’s on me!” Mordraud yelled, kicking at Hammer’s chair. Hammer swivelled and hurled a punch at the lad’s chest, nearly stopping his heart. Mercy nodded slowly, in approval. Red and Giant toasted with their empty tankards, flinging them over their shoulders together. They landed beyond the partition separating the Latrine from the ditches brimming with real shit.

“
Landlord! Bring us the house’s best!” shouted Giant. “And make it snappy, you old retard!”

Mordraud couldn
’t understand how, but when he was with those four, he felt safer than he ever had.

***

“Are they all in there?”

Adraman helped the messenger off with his heavy sodden cape. Poking out from under the hood was a white ponytail, tied by a simple hemp cord. His garments were shabby and dirty, just like the sword scabbard hanging at his side. However, the hilt glinted, revealing a wealth clashing with the whole. The night rest period had just been announced in the camp. The soldiers patrolling the Rampart stood out against the horizon – black
shapes silhouetted by the pale moonlight.

“
Yes, they’re waiting for us. How was the trip?”

“
The usual. Tiring, long and lonely,” replied the elderly messenger.

“
You know it’s for your own protection... If it were to get around...”

“
Yes, I know... nothing to fret about. Beside, sometimes a good long ride isn’t such a bad thing!”

“
You never change, Eldain!” commented Adraman, smiling in relief. “Would you like something to drink? You should get out of those rags – they’re soaking and smell of rain.”

“
Ah, it was just a storm... I’ve been riding in this state for a day now – I can put up with it for a few hours more. Come on, let’s go in! We mustn’t keep the other captains waiting.”

The A
llied Commander-in-Chief seldom left the fief, but this was an unusual situation. They’d heard new and worrisome talk, of a heavy attack on Hann Creek, yet nobody expected it during that period of high waters. The summer was fading, ushering in the first autumn downpours.

Eldain was well past his prime. His face was wrinkled and weary, and his back wasn
’t what it used to be. But his grey eyes were still very bright and shrewd. He could no longer risk visiting the front with as much pomp as would have been appropriate, with attendants and a retinue fitting for his rank. And so he had to travel incognito each time he left Eld. Cambria had made attempts on his life on many occasions, planting dozens of hired assassins within his army. They had come uncomfortably close to success a couple of times, but Eldain had always managed to survive.

“
Nobody knows I’m here, do they?”

“
No, the same as usual, you can rest assured of that,” replied Adraman, holding the tent entrance open so he could pass through. “I’ve informed only the other captains. Even the sentries at the camp’s gate didn’t know.”

“
Capable and efficient as always... Remind me we need to have a chat later. In private.”

The command tent was full of the smoke from the lit pipes. Sitting around a makeshift table where a map of the area was spread out, fourteen men in civilian clothes were waiting for him, absorbed in talk, wine
goblets in hand. They all sprang up and bowed their heads in silence upon Eldain’s arrival.

“
Good, we’re all here,” Eldain commented in a jovial voice. “No new faces – a good sign!”

The captains laughed in unison and took their seats again.

“We can begin.”

The table was soon covered in little white wooden cubes representing the
Allied forces and black ones standing for Cambria’s troops. In turn, each captain used a long wooden stick to move the forces on the field. Eldain waited to listen to a whole explanation, then let another speak, without passing judgement. Adraman would talk last, as always.

The first to report were the spokesmen for the battalions affiliated with Eld, represented by the sons and cousins of the nobility ruling the fiefs from the Rampart to the
Ocean of the East. They usually explored ideas that had already been discussed previously, so as to have greater impact and more power – and the same strategy was held to this time too. Their plan was somewhat simple and sketchy. If Cambria intended to shift the front southwards, they’d have to convince Calhann once and for all to back their cause. The Strait – the only bridge of land connecting up the continent’s north and south – had upheld a neutral position for centuries, and could boast of the best diplomats in the known world. If Cambria tried to expand toward Calhann’s lands, then it would find itself facing a problem far worse than the rebels. Calhann had declared itself neutral and was a flourishing city – practically impregnable and accustomed to minding its own business for centuries. Eldain had sought its support many years earlier, without success, but according to the captains in the east, things had changed so much that even Calhann could no longer turn a blind eye to the Empire’s expanding dominance.

“
You well know that Calhir will never agree to spend money and men on a war he didn’t start himself!” Berg blurted out. He was one of Eldain’s direct commanders and a descendant in an established family the elderly nobleman was friendly with. “That bloody miser cares too much about the silver pieces he earns from the constant demand for mercenaries...”

“
Don’t interrupt, Berg. Let’s wait and hear all the opinions,” Adraman rebuked.

“
Not necessarily. We can’t be sure of that!” the speaker for the eastern allies went on in annoyance – a young blondish and smooth-faced officer with effeminate features. They all knew him as Ice, after he’d lost three fingers of a hand to frostbite during a battle to defend the northern boundaries. Many still said he’d amputated them himself, with a butcher’s knife, to show everyone he was no lily-livered fighter.

“
If Cambria keeps moving along the Hann River, it’s obvious they’re planning to surround us by overshooting towards the Hann Plains, to then head for the sea... But to do that, they’d have no choice other than to capture a region that’s always been allied with Calhann...”

“
Hmm, I reckon Calhir would prefer to befriend Loralon rather than help us... You can’t trust the blood in the veins of those from the Strait, I can tell you!” Berg interjected again. The atmosphere started to grow heated, and the speaking order was ignored.

“
We should ask for help, instead of attempting to plan everything alone! Diplomacy’s an option, and we’re not even taking it into consideration!” ranted Ice.

“
And who would you like to negotiate with?! We all know Calhir’s as slippery as an eel, and the governors in his protectorates won’t even break wind without his permission!”

“
Your usual finesse, hey, Berg?!”

“
What’s wrong icicle, your stumps itching? The discomfort making it hard for you to think?!”

“
THAT’S ENOUGH!”

Eldain thumped a fist down on the table, so hard all the little cubes jumped into the air and pattered like rain onto the tent
’s wooden floor. The captains fell silent in a flash, and order was immediately restored. They were capable of spending weeks taunting each other, or even squabbling furiously, but when Eldain spoke, nobody dared raise his voice without a vitally important reason.