The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (2 page)

“Tell me, Deus.”

There were footsteps outside, and voices. Narak looked mildly annoyed. The others were coming.

“It is the White Road, Colonel,” Narak said quickly. “Forgive me if I tell you all together, and try not to look too put out by what I say.”

The door opened and Duke Aidon of Bas Erinor walked into the room. Aidon was a young man, recently raised to his position after the death of his father in the east at the battle of Finchbeak Road, yet he had acquired the gravity necessary to his role more quickly that Cain had expected. He had not known Aidon before. He had only seen him once, but anyone with such expectations was spoken about, and Aidon had been described as easy going, kind, skilled, young – more than anything, young. He no longer looked young. Cain suspected that Aidon was still grieving for his father. He seemed stern, and robbed of laughter. As Duke of Bas Erinor Aidon was commander of the Kingdom’s armies, the true power in the land, and the weight of that duty was yet another burden that showed on his face.

Aidon was followed into the room by his brother, Lord Quinnial, whose crippled arm gave him some sort of kinship with Cain, and after him Prince Havil of Berash and Duke Petelan of Hibrae in Afael, representatives of the allied kings.

Havil saw Cain and stepped over to him at once, a broad smile on his face. “The Wolf of Fal Verdan!” he exclaimed. “I was not at the wall, though I wished to be, and have not had the chance to thank you for your service to my people.” He took Cain’s hand, left hand in left hand as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Prince Havil, I was only…”

“No modesty, Cain,” Havil said, and Cain could feel the man’s enthusiasm and friendship washing over him like a warm tide. Havil was a big man; strong and tall, broad shoulders, massive hands, and Cain knew his reputation as a formidable warrior. For all that he seemed to wear the crisis lightly. He seemed pleased to be in Bas Erinor, delighted at the company he was in, and completely at ease. Cain liked him at once. He seemed one of those rare men who saw only the world about them, taking themselves for granted. Other men might see life as a stage on which they must act, a story in which they must stand in the light, but Havil took his part, his duty, as though it was the rising of the sun, the falling of the rain – something as inevitable and unremarkable as that.

“I was fortunate in many ways, Prince Havil,” he said.

“As are we all,” Havil said. “But fortune seeks out the clever man before the fool.”

“Can we get to the purpose?” Aidon asked, cutting across their conversation. “And will you tell us why the colonel is here, Deus?”

A good question. Cain was not blind to the fact that he was among the most powerful men in three kingdoms, and somewhat out of place. But he thought he could detect a trace of unease in the Wolf God, as though Narak did not want to hear the question. He hesitated only a moment, though.

“As you wish,” he said. He turned to the map and placed his hand on it, spread out as though to cover it. “Here lies the White Road,” he said. “In the spring Seth Yarra will march north and seek to pass through it. They will come in great numbers. We will not wait for them. I intend to take the army through the Green Road before the snows melt and attack Seth Yarra in the rear as they move north. Even if we do not wipe them out we will inflict a great blow, reduce their force. While we are doing this the snows will melt and the White Road will become passable. Eventually Seth Yarra will reach it, and at that time we must have a force waiting for them. The colonel will take the First regiment of the seventh friend and defend the pass.”

“Three thousand men?” It was Havil who spoke, but Cain could see that the numbers did not add up. If only a tenth of Seth Yarra reached the White Road he could not hold them with three thousand.

“I believe it will be enough,” Narak said.

“Forgive me, Deus,” Aidon said. “I do not see how. How will three thousand hold against Seth Yarra?”

Cain waited for the answer as eagerly as the others. If there was no trick to it, then his new command could well be his last. His men were mostly green, half trained at best. By spring they would be better, but not veterans, and even veterans would have little chance at the odds Narak was proposing.

Narak leaned back in his chair and his eyes found Cain’s and held them for a moment. “The colonel and I are working on a strategy,” he said. “It is not yet ready for scrutiny – there are some details to be overcome – but we will discuss it in two weeks time. I just wanted you all to know that it is in hand.”

Cain managed to hide his surprise. He had been warned, but even so he was taken aback. He was angry, too. Somehow he knew that Narak had nothing. There was no strategy, no inkling of a tactic to defend the White Road.

“Would you like to outline it for them, Deus?” he asked.

Narak didn’t flinch. He smiled instead. “I think we need to discuss it first, colonel,” he said.

Cain nodded. He thought that he detected a stiffness to the smile, and for a moment he regretted his provocative question. It had been disrespectful, even indiscreet. Narak was not a man to annoy if you wanted to live a long life.

“As you wish, Deus.”

“Indeed I have some new information for you that may help,” Narak went on. “If you lords and princes will excuse us for a few moments I will discuss it with the colonel, and then we may return to more pressing matters.”

“We would prefer not to be kept in ignorance,” Aidon said, but his tone knew better. Duke he may be, but Narak was a god, and above them all.

“I understand, Lord Aidon,” Narak said. “But there is not yet enough for us to discuss, so if you will pardon me…” He rose and went to the door. Cain followed him, first executing a respectful bow to the room. Outside Narak walked steadily, not speaking until they were clear of the castle and its quiet servants. He stopped eventually in a courtyard and sat on a stone bench by a small fountain. Cain sat beside him.

“You must understand that I do not mean to put you in a poor situation,” Narak said. Cain did not answer, but sat and waited. “I wanted to discuss this with you before the others came, but there was not time.”

“That much I guessed.”

“You know that there is no plan?”

“That much I also guessed, but what do you have in mind?”

“You. I sent you to the Green Road with no more hope than you would buy time, but you took it and held it. You did things that others might not have done. You changed the rules. Pascha was impressed.”

“Really? I thought she disliked me.”

“Perhaps she does, but she was still impressed.”

“So, what? You want me to change the rules again?”

“Yes. The White Road is our doom. We cannot build a wall there, because it would take too long. We can only stand face to face with two or three times our number against us, and even if we win there will be no purpose to our victory. Too many of us will perish. More of them will flood through and we will not have the swords, the lances, the men to stop them.”

“I see.”

“It is unfair. I admit that. But you are an unconventional man, Cain Arbak. You do not think like Dukes and Princes. I would not say this to another, or even in another man’s hearing, but I am defeated by the problem. I need you.”

Cain shook his head. “You are a god. I am supposed to devise a strategy when a god cannot?”

“I am a man,” Narak said. “And I have seen fifteen hundred summers, so I am perhaps somewhat set in my ways. I know how to fight battles. I can make the best use of what men I have, the weapons they wield, but this needs more than that.”

“You ask a great deal, Deus.”

“I admit it. You are the only one that I can ask it of. The others depend on me. If I should display uncertainty they may lose heart, and then we would be lost indeed. I need men who are confident, who know that we shall prevail no matter how many Seth Yarra march against us.”

Cain sat in silence for a moment. He had not thought of the war beyond Narak. It was true that he had come up with a couple of trifling innovations during their defence of the wall on the Green Road, but it had been Narak who had saved them in the end.

“I do not know that I can do this, Deus,” he said. “I am not a great strategist, and I have never seen the White Road.”

“Well, the latter at least we can do something about.”

“Deus?”

“Give me your hand.”

He did so, carefully, and felt the Wolf’s fingers close about his own. In an instant he was elsewhere, looked down from cliffs onto a field of snow, felt the bitter wind, and the smells – it was as though the whole world stank of a thousand things. He tried to snatch his hand back, but Narak’s grip was unbreakable.

“Do not fear,” Narak said.

“It is magic…”

“It is. But there is no danger in it. You see through the eyes of a wolf, and he stands high above the White Road. He is on the south side.”

The view swung to the left, and he could see that the far wall of the pass was sloping at the base of the cliff, and towards the top of that slope there were patches where the snow had blown away. These were steep screes of frost shattered rock, they lined the pass on both sides and down below he could see that the snow cover was broken in many places by small, scrubby trees. Half a mile, he guessed, from side to side, and several miles long, though even in the clear winter air he could not see the whole length of it because it twisted about the feet of mountains, and the cliffs hid the western end.

The wolf, if such it was through which he saw, began to move. The bouncing motion of its head as it trotted bothered him, but it was heading west, towards the forest, and scanning the pass all the time. It was not an easy path that it took, at times there was scrambling up rocky outcrops, and at times jumping down into snowdrifts. This was not what a wolf would do in nature, Cain realised. This animal was under compulsion.

After twenty minutes he could see a gap opening up, the cliffs parting from one another, and the ground sloping away to the endless sea of the great forest, the trees holding their burden of snow but still undeniably trees. The wolf stopped and scanned up and down the pass again. There was a neck here, a narrow place where spurs of rock jutted from the north side and closed the passage down to five or six hundred yards. There had been something similar where they had begun, he recalled, but he had not thought of its significance at the time. He had been too distracted by amazement at what he was seeing and how he was seeing it.

The pass vanished and he was back in the courtyard at Bas Erinor. It felt as though his senses had been stripped from him. He could smell nothing. His sight seemed clouded and foggy, his ears bunged with wax. Narak was looking at him.

“That was the White Road?”

“Yes. Impassable now, and months yet before the thaw begins.”

“But you have seen it in the summer?”

“Many times. There is not much more to see. The ground is quite flat beneath the snow. Everything else is how you saw it.”

“And what am I to do, Deus?” Cain felt despair again. He had noted the two necks, and marked them as defensible positions, but they would not serve, not against the numbers of Seth Yarra.

“I do not know,” the Wolf replied. “If I knew I would not need to ask you. Pascha thinks you are a man of ideas. You showed that at the Green Road. It may be that this task is beyond you, that no solution comes, but there will be no blame if you fail. I will tell the council of princes that our idea proved to be unworkable. Do not think that you are alone in this. I and all of the Benetheon, and all the dukes and commanders, princes and generals of all the kingdoms have the same thing on their minds, but I have chosen you because of all the regiments yours is the one best equipped to do the impossible. The others have soldiers. You have masons and smiths, carpenters and clerks, all the talents of the city at your beck.”