The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (27 page)

“I am?” He was surprised. He’d never thought about it like that. Perhaps it was true, but he couldn’t get angry every time he wanted to speak. Anger wasn’t a servant that came and went, subject to his will. But why not? He should be angry, should he not? He was going to fail Narak, fail Lord Skal. These men were going to be the cause of a thousand dead, and maybe even the destruction of Avilian, of Berash, of Sara.

“I will speak to them. Now. Gather them together,” he said. Brodan left him, and he sat for a moment, stared at his hands and thought of the war. Until now he had not permitted himself to see the burden that lay upon him. If he failed, if his men failed, it would cost an ocean of blood. He had been given a sacred trust by no less a being than Wolf Narak, the god of wolves, the victor of Afael, and it was no trivial thing. He looked up and saw that the men were drawn together, looking his way. He stood and walked a few paces until there were no trees or shrubs between them. He stared at them, but thought of Narak

“The Wolf gave me a job,” he said. He spoke quietly, but his voice was loud enough for all to hear. They were listening, which was good. “He saw what these lads from Latter Fetch could do, and he gave me a job because of that, only there weren’t enough of us. That’s why I picked you others. It’s an important job. It’s so important that thinking on it makes me sweat, because if we pull it off every damned man and woman in Avilian will know our names, and not just Avilian. Berash, too, and Afael. Why not?”

He could see the pride in their eyes, and he could see a smile on Brodan’s face.

“If we fail, why then they’ll still know our names, but they’ll look down on us and say those were the men that failed Avilian, failed the Wolf, maybe lost the war. This training that you’re doing, that’s what makes the difference, and you’re bloody playing at it. There’s six of you fit for the task; six out of thirty-seven, and we’ve got ten days before we cross the White Road. Those men that don’t show me that they can do the job will be sent back to the Seventh Friend to stand on the wall. This is a special squad. Every man who comes with us will have rank, and he’ll have it because he deserves it.” He let them wait for a while, watching his words sink in. Rank meant something. It meant more pay, more respect.

“I need two lieutenants, but I only have one. Sergeant Brodan, that’s you. Brevet lieutenant Brodan. Pick your own sergeant. You other men, all those who have sufficient skill will be raised a stripe. The twelve men from Latter Fetch, all of you get a stripe. Lieutenant, say the other names.”

Brodan looked at him. He could see surprise in the man’s face, and pleasure, but it was only right. Brodan was the best of them, the most skilled, and he had more common sense than most. The tragedy was that he hadn’t the right to promote him. His gift could be undone when they got back, but he didn’t think it would be; not if they succeeded. All the others, the sergeants and the stripes would stay. It was an officer’s right.

The new lieutenant turned to face the men and spoke the names. Tilian watched their faces as each was picked out. He saw surprise, satisfaction, delight. Jackan was the last to be named. The former waggoner looked down for a moment when his name was spoken, and when he raised his head he was looking at Tilian. His lips were pressed together, but his eyes were bright, and he nodded once.

When the names had been read Tilian spoke again. “Remember, I still need another lieutenant, and that man will pick a sergeant. See that the right man gets the rank.”

He turned away and went back to his bedroll and cold food. He felt foolish. It was a gamble, bribing the men with rank and pay, but the gods knew they deserved it as much as he. It had worked for now, perhaps, but would they expect more?

“Captain?”

It was Brodan. The forester crouched down beside him.

“That was clever,” he said.

“Do you think?”

“Aye. If not the money, then the rank will make the difference. They’ll fight for it now, or they’re not men we want with us. It’s self respect they’ll want, and that stripe gives it them.”

Tilian nodded. He hoped he was right, and that Brodan was right. He wished he had the general’s gift of certainty, or Lord Skal’s self assurance, but he had neither, and what he had would have to serve as best it could.

*              *              *              *

In the morning he thought he saw a new urgency in the men. The camp was packed up promptly and there was a noticeable lack of grumbling from the usual malcontents. The selected scouts moved off on foot and the rest waited until the signal came back, and then began to walk in their trail. It was colder today, and a thin wind brought them a flavour of the north, cold air and the scent of pines, and occasional flurries of snow.

Tilian got into the spirit of the thing himself, and walked silently beside his horse, ears straining for the calls and whistles that linked the men ahead and managed their progress. If you knew the calls you could tell exactly what was going on, even though the trees hid everything. The right hand man drifted too far out and was called back in. One of the men in the middle fell back, then got too far ahead, judging the speed of the line poorly. Yet to anyone who did not know the calls it would sound just like a forest full of birds.

At midday they stopped briefly. The scouts were called back in and they sat and ate among the trees, cloaks wrapped tightly against the wind and a slight drizzle, which was all that remained of the snow.

“It worked,” Brodan said as he thumped down next to Tilian. “It’s certain they’re trying. I think I have three more names, and all of them have got better.”

“Well, let them sweat a little, if they can manage it in this damned cold,” Tilian said. “Don’t name anyone for a couple of days.”

“Aye, keep ‘em trying. I see it well enough,” Brodan agreed.

“Keep it tight, too,” Tilian said. “No nods, no winks.”

Brodan nodded. They ate quickly, not speaking again and soon they were back on their feet. Tilian had done his duty as scout in the morning, but they still had two hours’ march before they set camp and went to training for the day, so he walked with the others, listening to the calls filtering back through the forest, and seeing all that happened in his minds eye.

An hour after midday he heard a call he hadn’t heard before. He knew it well enough. They all did. Enemy sighted.

The call came again and again. It was the man on the left; the westernmost scout. He glanced across at Brodan and raised an eyebrow.

“Orders?” Brodan asked.

“Damned if it can be Seth Yarra in the middle of Avilian, but we treat it like the real thing. Advance to the signal with five men, and take Latter Fetch lads.”

“Aye, Captain, I will.”

Brodan was gone in a moment, running silently into the forest with five men. Tilian didn’t even see him pick them, or tell them to follow, and in moments they were gone. Today there was a little wind, and the stirring of dead leaves hid the slight noise of their passage completely. For the hundredth time Tilian wondered how they did that, so fast, so little noise.

He whistled a pair of notes, bringing the men on the eastern side back. He moved forwards himself, bringing the rest of their force up two hundred paces.

A man appeared in the trees, running towards them. It was one of Brodan’s five.

“Captain,” he said, voice hushed but urgent. “Seth Yarra. Must be. Brodan says about fifteen, and they have prisoners, it seems. Some sort of fight going on, but single combat. There’s a road. Brodan’s taken his lads across to the other side. He’ll take centre, you take left and right this side.”

Orders from a lower rank, but Tilian understood well enough. Brodan had seen the situation, and action was needed. It was what any good officer would do.

“Any man with a stripe, follow me,” he said. He pointed at the remaining Latter Fetch men. “You take the right, this side of the road, I’ll take left. Go. The rest of you, hold here until you hear yelling, then come running.”

He set out at a steady run, wincing every time he scuffed the leaves, every time one of his men did. To his own ears they sounded like a cavalry charge, though he knew every metal fragment that could jangle was muffled with cloth, every bright surface dulled with ash or hidden. It seemed a long way.

He heard the ring of steel on steel, again, again. It was a fight, just as Brodan had said. He slowed their advance, moving to a fast walk that was quieter, straining his eyes to see what lay ahead through the trees. There was movement there. He heard a voice speaking. He stepped past a thicket of saplings and suddenly it was all laid out before him.

“Gods and demons damned!” he hissed. He recognised the general at once, and in the same glance he saw the blood and knew that he was wounded. He looked around him. He could see his men. They were stopped like him, bows in hand, arrows on the string. Which of them was good enough, he wondered.

“Jackan, can you hit that man?”

“The one in black with a drawn sword, sir? I think so.” He could see that Jackan had recognised the general, too. He was a veteran of the wall.

“Don’t think so, man. That’s the general he’s trying to kill.”

“Yes, sir, I can hit him.”

“Right. Shoot on the signal. The rest of you, take the men on the left. Pick your targets. Be steady lads.”

Tilian took a deep breath. The scene before him was coming to a head. There was no time.

He gave the signal.

Pascha found herself longing for Narak’s return. Without him Wolfguard was barely tolerable, and it was only Caster that made it so. The rest of the household were at best deferential, and at worst bordering on the obsequious.
To her embarrassment she found that she could not stand the company of Sithmaree and Jidian, the one selfish and vain and the other with an honest, cowish stupidity that drove her to distraction.

She
liked
Jidian. She just could not bear to converse with him.

So Pascha became a hermit. She would have preferred to go to one of her houses; the one in Berash, perhaps. It was a nice enough place. There would be servants who treated her like a person, and people who would come to dinner, young men to flirt with and young women to admire her poise and erudition.

On the other hand, it would probably be nearly as bad as here. Most of the young men would be away, called to arms by the damned war, and everyone else would talk about it incessantly, braying their spectacular ignorance to the world in general.

Perishable goods. She remembered Beloff’s phrase to describe those who were not of the Benetheon and its unaging households. In a way she saw his point. Narak would not have agreed. The Wolf liked people, mortal people. He stayed away from them because of this. When they aged and died it hurt him. She had seen it in his eyes. Pascha realised now that she had only ever seen them as entertainment, a show put on to amuse her – or at least that was how it had been since Alaran died.

So she sat in her room and read. She had her meals brought to her room. She waited for Narak to return.

Yet she would still have gone, if only to walk in lively city streets, to watch ships in harbours, to smell the vivid scents of the markets in Bas Erinor. Any of these trivial things would have been better, if not for the metal headed killer that stalked them.

Caster saved her.

The day after Narak had left to do whatever he thought he must in Bas Erinor and elsewhere Caster knocked on her door. When she opened it she felt a sense of relief that startled her.

“Deus,” he greeted her formally. “I wondered if you would like to resume our lessons while Narak is away?”

She stood staring for a moment, wondering why she had not thought of it herself. Caster was a friend. She had no great desire to improve her fencing skills, but it would be a pleasure just to talk.

“A fine idea,” she said. “When shall we begin?”

“I am entirely at your disposal, Deus,” he replied with a smile. “Now?”

“Now? Why not?”

They walked together, side by side, up through the corridors of Wolfguard. Caster talked all the way. He told her a story about the time he had lived in Telas Alt. His stories were always amusing, and those had been wild days, so she listened and laughed and gradually felt herself relax.

His tale was one she was certain she had heard before. It was the story of a wealthy merchant who had gambled on his wife’s fidelity, though she was twenty years his junior and pretty as a summer morning. He’d believed that if he could get a wife, he could keep her, and so great was his wealth that families had queued up to offer their daughters, and he being wealthy beyond all need had chosen the prettiest, despite the lack of dowry, despite her family’s poverty.

Indeed, the wealthy merchant had been kind to the young woman’s family. He had bought them a house, found the father a better job with status and good money working in one of his own establishments, and showered the mother with gifts of clothing and jewels. Yet all that was nothing compared to what he had done for the daughter. He was not a cruel man, but neither was he passionate, nor particularly pleasing to the eye, and so he endeavoured to make up for his lacks by giving her the best of everything, and acceded to her every request.

She had dancing masters, music teachers, poets to serenade her, servants to attend to her smallest need, day and night.

Yet a friend had said to him that he would never keep her to himself. “She will have a lover,” the friend said. “You may rely on it.”

“Of course she will not,” he replied. “Think what she has to lose, and so little to gain by such infidelity. She would be foolish indeed to betray me.”

“Mark my words,” the friend replied. “If you look for it you will find it, but my advice to you is not to look. You have a beautiful young wife to take to your bed and nothing can be so fine.”

“I will look,” the merchant said. “And I will wager you a hundred guineas that I will not find any such thing.”

“I am loath to take your money, old friend, but I will. I know that you are an honest man, and will tell me the truth when you find it.”

So the merchant spied on his pretty young wife, and within seven days he caught her in bed with her dancing master.

“It was shocking,” he told his friend as he handed over the hundred guineas. “Of course I sent her packing, sacked her father, evicted her parents from their home. They are ruined. But you know what she said to me when I berated her for her betrayal?”

“Tell me,” the friend said.

“She said that I could not give her what she really needed.”

“And what was that?”

“You know, I have no idea.”

Pascha laughed again at the ending. “Tell me you were not the dancing master,” she said. Caster grinned, but he shook his head.

“Oh, no,” he replied. “She was my mother. The dancing master was my father. And they were hardly ruined. The jewels he’d given her and grandmother were enough to keep all of us in some comfort for decades.”

They laughed again. “You’re making it up, Caster,” she accused. “I’m sure you’ve told me this tale before, and it wasn’t about your mother.”

“Ah, but was I making it up then, or am I now?”

“Both,” she said. “Both times for certain.”

They had arrived at the training room, Caster’s special domain. She had not been here since the lesson before Narala’s death. He picked a training sword off the rack and tossed it to her. She caught it easily and swished it to and fro’ a couple of times. Caster picked a weapon for himself and took a guard position.

“Attack me, Deus,” he said.

She remembered their last encounter, her desperate slashing and hacking, his poise and skill. Well, if she was going to be humiliated she would at least do it with dignity this time. She took her own guard position and tried to forget that it was Caster before her. She tried to remember all that he had taught her, each step and move. This time she would control herself.

“Any time now,” Caster said, a hint of friendly mockery in his voice at her lack of motion.

She lunged. Her blade twisted, her wrist working it so that it turned around Caster’s, avoiding his first attempt at a parry. She was so fast that it was his only attempt, but when her blade arrived his body was not there. She had been close, though. There was no counter stroke.

“Very good,” he said. His eyes sparkled with delight. He attacked at once, and she parried, but found that his blade was as elusive as his body, and he touched her on the shoulder. She pulled back, raised her sword.

“How is it that I never touch you and you can hit me at will, Caster?”

“I have been practicing for a thousand years and more, Deus. Allow me a little vanity if I think skill matters more that speed and strength. You are better today, but you are still a child with the blade. Here, let me show you.”

He attacked again, and this time her parry rang against his steel, and again, almost as quick as she might have done, and more accurate by far. Again she managed the parry. A third time, and exactly the same, he lunged, she parried. She was beginning to feel pleased with herself when she saw him pause and wink. He lunged, and the tip of his blade thumped into her breastbone, her own sword cutting empty air. She cursed. He stepped back.

“Did you see?” he asked.

“No, I did not see. If I had seen I would have parried.”

Caster shook his head. “I trained you,” he said. “The first thrust was slow, and you parried to the right. The second was a little faster, but also to the right, and you parried again. The third, the same. The final thrust switched to the left, and you had been conditioned to move your blade right.”

“You tricked me!”

“Yes. But that is what fencing is. When you have great skill and speed you may be able to fence with the eye, as Narak can. That is what makes him unbeatable. He can see and respond to every change his opponents make. No mortal man is quick enough to do this. Believe me when I say that there are few men who could have avoided that first thrust of yours. It was well made, and fast.”

“So if fencing is in the mind, how can you be certain always to win, even skilled as you are?”

“I cannot. But losing one time in a thousand is not so bad, and if your reputation is great enough your opponent will expect to lose, and so he will. Narak benefits greatly from this, even if he does not need it.”

“Is that what makes a great warrior?”

Caster shook his head. “Fencing is not war. It is a sport. We play to best of three or best of five hits. A good fencer may get one touch on me, but never two before I win. War is a more cautious game, for one hit alone will end it, often as not.”

“And Narak?”

“He is a supreme fencer, but on the battlefield he is death itself, for he eschews all elegance in a quest for efficiency. He always finds the killing blow, and never wastes a stroke. His style uses Ohas, but it is not what I taught him. It has a terrible beauty all of its own.”

“You will make me melancholy with all this talk of killing, Caster.”

“Then I am melancholy at the thought, Deus,” Caster bowed, raised his sword. “Attack me again,” he said.

*              *              *              *

As entertaining and informative as Caster was, she could not make their lesson last the day, and soon she was back in her room, but with something to look forward to tomorrow. She had worked up quite a hunger, and sent down to the kitchens for food and wine.

When it came she sat on the bed a read some of the papers that Narak had left for her. She saw little merit in them; not in the writing and not in the matter written of. But she read them anyway for want of anything better to do. She finished eating and sipped at a glass of wine, but the ancient writings began to bore her. They were less vivid than her private memories of Afael, and only served to remind her of the terrible events of those days.

Her eye fell upon her sword, sheathed and propped in a corner. She thought about blood silver and all the strange things that she had experienced when using her powers with the blade close to hand. She was afraid to try again because she had done something that was forbidden, and yet it called to her. It was like the first days when she was newly a god. Then it had delighted her to pick up heavy things, simply to run and feel her breath stolen by the speed of her passage, to exercise her powers. Now she had new powers, though she did not know them, and like a child in a new house she was eager to explore, even the shadowy places.

She picked up the sword and sat back down on the bed, pushing the papers aside. She drew the blade and looked at it. Mostly it was plain steel, but the edge and tip glittered with an unnatural brightness, as though stars had somehow been captured and painted upon them. Blood silver: the metal of death.

She laid the blade across her arms so that the glittering edge touched her skin, then she closed her eyes and dropped without effort into the Sirash. She flew, glided, moved without effort. A city would be good. She thought of Telas Alt, the great city of the kingdom of Telas, their traitorous enemy. She was there as soon as the thought was formed. She could feel the press of people, like a fire below her, a sort of deep warmth. Sparrows, too, were plentiful here. She could feel their bright candle minds flitting and flickering all about her.