Shanakan (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 1) (4 page)

“Tell Grand,” it said eventually,” that you have a temporary status equivalent to a lieutenant, and to house you accordingly. You will train with the guard, learning what skills they have, and how they function. It may be a requirement that you work with them. I will find a task for you to prove yourself, and I will send for you. You may go.”

“My lord is gracious,” Serhan said as he backed towards the door. Gerique did not reply, but picked up a book and began to read.

Once outside the door he turned quickly and crossed the antechamber, feeling a pricking of fear. He avoided looking into the shadows, though he felt that the doorkeeper was watching him. The outer door was open, and he passed through, walking quickly down the stairs.

One thing from their meeting had struck him. Gerique had said that Balgoan had told him things, and he was certain that they had not spoken. There was some other way they had of communicating. That was worth knowing.

Now the pain was forgotten, and he felt a growing elation. He was in, and the game had begun in earnest.

Delf and Wulf had stuck it out for a few more weeks. They had even tried their hand at hunting, but neither of them was even a fair shot with a bow, and any snares that they contrived remained resolutely empty. It seemed that the wild country itself was becoming dead and deserted with the approach of winter. If they had not managed to steal most of a deer carcase from an unwary hunter they would probably have starved to death.

Delf’s mind was finally made up when they came across the body of another bandit in a gully just off the main track that led into the hunting grounds. Wulf refused to go near the body, but Delf searched it, an unpleasant job, finding not a scrap of food. The man had even chewed the leather of his own shoes before expiring. He did find a purse with a few coins in it, and took that for himself.

Joining Wulf back on the roadside he sat in silence for a while.

“Find anything?” Wulf asked.

“A few coins.”

“Nothing else?” Wulf was probably as hungry as Delf was. They had finished the venison the previous day, and not before time. It was barely edible. They had breakfasted on some bitter berries this morning – an exercise that did little more than pass the time.

“I found our future.” He gestured at the corpse below them. “Someone will be picking over our bones in a few weeks if we go on like this.”

Wulf nodded. “Farming?”

“Farming.”

It was an easy decision. They had been talking about it for weeks, ever since the strange encounter with the man who’d fed them and first put the idea into their heads. It was the presence of food that attracted them to the profession, a way of life that they had always felt to be beneath them. Delf stood up and looked around. There was fresh snow on the high slopes of the mountains and an early chill to the air. It would get pretty nasty up here in a few weeks. It was time to be gone.

They struck out for the plains almost at once, walking at a steady pace, and not talking much. It would take them more than a day to get down from the foothills, and they would have to find a suitable village – one that hadn’t been stripped by bandits.

Towards evening they crossed a fast flowing stream, and filled their water flasks. Wulf spent an hour looking nearby for something to eat, and came back with some mushrooms and a handful of pitted and shrivelled fruits that were the leavings from some insect feast. They put what seemed edible in a pan and ate it hot. It was the best meal they’d had for a day and a half.

Although it was not yet dark they rolled themselves in their coats against the cold night and Delf fell asleep almost as soon as he closed his eyes.

Dawn found them walking again. The path now led unevenly downwards in a series of long, concave slopes, and from time to time they would top a rise and see the plain spread out before them. Most of it was covered in trees and scrub, and from up here it looked a riot of red and gold. Delf could pick out a number of villages by the field patterns that surrounded them, and in his head he made a map of where they were in relation to each other. Once down on the plains they would be harder to find.

By mid day they were down among the trees and it was noticeably warmer. They stripped off their coats and tied them round their waists. Not long after that they came to the first village that Delf had marked on his mental map.

It was deserted.

They walked down the main street to the square where the village Kalla Tree stood. There were about forty houses, all built in the same manner, a wooden frame filled in with twigs and mud – a sort of primitive plaster and lath, roofed with reed thatch. Some of them had been burned, but most seemed quite intact. The smell of the burning was still faintly detectable, so Delf guessed it had happened recently. They checked the houses, and in one of them Wulf found a sack of deerfruit that had been overlooked. It would be enough to feed them for a couple of days.

“I don’t see any bodies,” he remarked.

“No, but it looks like it was raided recently. Weeks, perhaps”

Wulf set to lighting a fire and Delf walked to the outskirts of the village, thinking to circle round and see if there was any sign of what had happened. It looked like some of the crop lay unharvested in the ground – most of it, in fact. He walked through an orchard and picked a couple of apples. The presence of so much food made his stomach ache with anticipation, and his mouth water.

There were tracks here, very obvious ones. At least fifty horses with riders had come this way. Branches were broken, and even his untutored eyes could see the round shape of horseshoes in the dried mud. He was almost back to where they had entered the village when he came across a mound. It was a couple of feet high and about thirty feet across. He didn’t like the look of it.

On closer examination he found a place where animals had dug into a section of the mound, and pushing the dirt around with his boot he exposed what remained of a human hand – mostly bone – protruding from a sleeve. He pushed earth back on top of it again. This was a grave pit; big enough for fifty people or more.

Back in the deserted square Wulf had cut up a couple of the deerfruit and with a handful of herbs was cooking what smelt like a banquet.

“We need salt.” He said as Delf approached.

“I found the villagers. Some of them anyway. Dead. There’s a grave on the west side. Probably not big enough for everyone who lived here, but they must have killed a lot.”

“Why would they do that? The farmers make the food. No more farmers, no more food.”

“And they raided before the harvest. What kind of idiot does that? There would have been hardly anything in the village to steal.” He shrugged.  “When’s that food going to be ready?”

“Five minutes.” Wulf grinned. “I found a bottle of spirit under a mat in one of the houses. It’s pretty rough.” He offered the bottle to Delf, who accepted it and took a massive pull. The stuff burned down his throat, making him cough, but quite quickly the world looked a better place.

As it grew dark they sat by their fire under the village Kalla Tree and ate, sipping at the bottle. The world seemed much more benign than it had last night. They were warm, full, and well on the way to being drunk.

“There’s a lot of food here – out in the fields. We could stay a while,” Delf said.

“Not with the dead,” Wulf replied. “Staying in a dead village is asking for trouble. We should move on tomorrow.”

Delf sighed. Wulf’s family came from the north and he was superstitious, like all northerners. It would be pointless trying to talk him round. Delf was a southerner, from a small town close to Samara. He didn’t believe in anything except what he saw with his own eyes. When people were dead they were dead, they didn’t bother the living unless they weren’t properly buried, and even then it was only the smell.

“Happy to stay here tonight, then?” he asked.

“Of course. We’ve done them no wrong. One night of food and sleep is just common hospitality.”

Delf grunted to himself. Hospitality or not, he would be taking all the food he could carry with him tomorrow.

When the meal was finished it was dark. The Kalla Tree rustled its leaves over their heads, the fire danced and the empty houses gaped at them in the firelight. Delf didn’t care. He rolled over and in a few minutes was asleep.

*              *              *              *

Breakfast was fruit from the orchard. Wulf had been searching again, and had turned up a pot of honey and some jaro root, so they put honey on the fruit and drank hot jaro with a little honey dissolved in it.

Delf felt it was the best breakfast he’d ever had.

The sun was well up by the time they left, and though their packs were now quite heavy with food they didn’t feel the weight.

“We’ll follow the road east from here. There looked to be another village about ten miles distant.”

They walked at a comfortable pace. Ten miles was not much, and by mid day they began to detect the first signs of settlement. Trees had been cut down, and the track began to look more travelled. It took another twenty minutes to break out of the scrub into the fields around the village. They were in good order, but nobody was working them.

The village itself had been fortified. A palisade of tree trunks had been raised around the houses. It didn’t look very impressive until Delf realised it was ten feet high. Quite a climb if someone is throwing rocks at you. They must have heard or seen them coming and retreated to their home-made fort.

They approached the main gate through the fields, and were within fifty paces of it when something flew through the air and thudded into the ground just short of them.

Delf picked it up and examined it. A crude spear. The point was sharpened and fire hardened, and the tail had been roughly fletched to make it fly straight. He hefted it. Whoever had thrown this must have a good arm, he decided.

A few heads were visible above the top of the palisade.

“Go away!” a voice shouted.

“We’re looking for work,” Delf shouted back. “You must need help with the harvest.”

“Don’t want it, don’t need it,” the voice shouted back.

“We need the work. We don’t mean you any harm.” He took a couple of steps towards the gate and three more makeshift spears were launched at him, all clattering harmlessly short.

“I’m glad they haven’t got bows in there,” he said to Wulf.

“Oh I think they have,” Wulf said. “Probably saving the arrows for when they’re sure they can’t miss. Those spears are pretty useless. A thick leather jacket would stop them.”

“How are we going to make them listen to us?”

“We won’t. I’ll bet some of the survivors from the first village came here. They’re scared and that palisade isn’t going to keep out anyone determined enough. It’s rubbish.”

“But we’re only looking for work!”

“Look at me,” Wulf said.

Wulf was dressed in an assortment of military looking materials. A dagger was stuck in his belt and a sword stuck out both sides of his pack. He wore a light mail shirt and a thick leather helmet.

“We look like bandits.”

“We are bandits.”

Delf swore under his breath. “It’s fifteen miles to the next village. We won’t get there tonight, and I guess we have to do something about the way we look.”

Wulf nodded. “Which way?”

“North.”

They headed north. Because they wouldn’t make the village before nightfall Delf kept an eye open for a good campsite.

He was still troubled by what they’d seen at the first village. It made no sense to him. The only thing in that village would have been people, and the ease with which they’d found supplies meant it hadn’t even been searched thoroughly.

It was as if someone had gone there to deliberately kill everyone, and what was the point of that? Whatever the reason, something wrong was happening. More than that, he was shocked by his own reaction, or lack of it. He could not believe that he felt nothing for so many dead. Yet that was the truth. Perhaps he had seen too much death, accepted it. Even so, the dead village was a mystery.

He puzzled over it while they walked, but had no greater insight by the time they came to a clearing with a bright, clean stream running through it. Afternoon was well advanced, and they’d covered ten miles, so they stopped and enjoyed the last of the afternoon sun. Wulf vanished into the woods around them, and came back with handfuls of herbs. He lit a fire, cut up a couple of deerfruit and started making another stew.

If they ever separated he’d miss Wulf’s cooking.

They ate, finished the bottle of spirits and slept easily under the stars.

*              *              *              *

Morning was sharp and bright with a clear blue sky. It was going to be a hot one. Delf dug a pit about a foot deep and three feet long, and they wrapped their swords and most of their other militaria in a blanket and buried it, keeping just a dagger each. He replaced the turf carefully and marked the pit with a rotten tree stump.

They looked each other up and down.

“You look like a peasant to me,” Wulf grinned.

“You’ve even got the accent, farm boy. No one will be scared of you looking like that.”

They gathered what was left of the food into their packs and set off to the north again, trying to get most of the distance behind them before the heat of the day built up. They were lighter and more comfortable without the trappings of banditry and it was less than two hours before they came out from the trees into open fields.

Here it was different. The fields were busy with people, and from the look of it the harvest was just beginning. People stopped working to look at them suspiciously, but nobody challenged them, and nobody threw anything. The villagers seemed healthy but poor. Their clothing looked worn and old, but none of them was thin or weak.

“This looks a likely place. They have a lot of crop planted,” Delf observed.

An old man sat by the gate in the sun.

“Good morning, father,” Wulf greeted him, but the old man scowled and shook his head, looking past them to the harvesters.

They carried on to the centre of the village and sat down under the Kalla Tree. The tree was the traditional centre of any northern village. Village meetings were held under it, marriages, funerals and celebrations of all sorts took place here. Outsiders seeking work were also expected to wait beneath it for anyone who wanted to employ them, so they waited.