The Long War 03 - The Red Prince (2 page)

PROLOGUE

T
HE
L
ADY OF
Haran ducked behind a line of rocks and held her breath. The ground was hard and dotted with sharp stones. Beyond the rocks and across the northern plains of Haran rocky pinnacles rose, harsh and unyielding terrain where a thousand warriors could hide in a hundred places, anywhere from Ro Haran to the Walls of Ro.

‘How many?’ she whispered to Sergeant Ashwyn.

‘Maybe a hundred, my lady. Another group of hunters trying to sniff us out.’

No more than forty paces away, the column of Hounds had not seen them and continued their march northwards, oblivious to the warriors of the fifth cohort.

‘Not us, Ash... not us,’ she replied. ‘They don’t know our names or who we are. They only know that Alexander Tiris, the Red Prince of Haran, is hiding up here somewhere.’

The Hounds clanked past, the noise of their marching masking any other sounds. She wondered about their training, or lack of it. To march into enemy territory in such a blatant fashion was ignorant, stupid, suicidal. The Seven Sisters didn’t care about their troops – so long as they had more than everyone else. They’re just a mob, she thought.

She peered carefully over the rocks to get a better look. Her long black hair, loosely tied in a topknot, brushed her neck as the wind picked up. It chilled her, finding the gaps in her leather armour and making her fingertips tingle. She wore no chain shirt or steel helmet, preferring to avoid blows rather than to bear them. That set her apart from the prince’s Hawks more surely than her gender or origin.

‘Announce our presence, sergeant,’ she said.

Ashwyn drew his short sword and signalled to the men. Two hundred, half the unit, poised to strike. The Hounds were now parallel to them, ambling northwards, a shining mass of black armour and scimitars.

The warriors of Haran moved as one as Ashwyn shouted, ‘We are the Hawks of Ro, stand down or die.’

* * *

Although she had lived in the duchy of Haran for ten years, this campaign was her first prolonged stay away from the city of Ro Haran. It was a long way from Hunter’s Cross, especially for a young woman untutored in the strict traditions of Tor Funweir, but then she’d never expected to be married to a duke of Ro.

Alexander Tiris had come to her land with an army of Red knights to purge a settlement of Dokkalfar. They met strong resistance from the warriors of the Cross. The knights floundered in the forests, but the fighting still lasted many months. The final battle against Xander’s men left only two survivors. They huddled together in the deep woods, far from either camp and badly wounded.

He had told her he was a knight. He had told her he only followed orders. He was of the Red and did his duty for the One God. But his eyes were opened when the Dokkalfar found them.

He struggled at first, but his wounds were severe. He had no option but to accept their help. Over weeks and months they watched each other heal from the hidden branches of a Dokkalfar settlement. Each day she saw his glare softening, his conviction wavering. It wavered until he was no longer the same man. He stopped clutching his sword, stopped fussing over his armour, he even stopped calling them risen men.

At some point – she couldn’t be sure when – they began to love each other. Endless days with each other for company meant they shared everything. War and death were a thousand leagues away, too distant to mean anything any more. So the king’s brother and an unsuitable woman gave themselves to each other in the stillness of the forest. When they left, clutching hands, they were bound for life. He was handsome, tall and muscular, with strong hands and ardent brown eyes.

Alexander Tiris and Gwendolyn of Hunter’s Cross married in a Darkwald village on their way back to civilization, with a vagabond Blue cleric to speak the words that united them.

Their first few months were difficult. Every knight of the Red has a story of a man he once knew who tried to leave. Without exception, those stories end in death: sometimes the noose, more often beheading. Xander was a Red knight who served no longer and neither of them wanted him to hang or lose his head. If he hadn’t been of royal blood she might just have had enough time to watch him die in a military camp, north of the Falls of Arnon, before her own execution.

King Sebastian Tiris didn’t even look at her as he made the proclamation. He wasn’t a wicked man, just a pampered noble who couldn’t conceive why his younger brother would wed a commoner in secret. Instead of death, he gave him a duchy, the most isolated in Tor Funweir, and dismissed them. The first and only man allowed to leave the knights of the Red, and his low-born wife, the Lady of Haran.

Ten years hence and time had only brought them closer. She had adapted to his world, knowing that he would never adapt to hers. He was tough on his men, but with her, in the quiet moments when the world went away, he was vulnerable and insecure, a man with great pain in his heart. He took on the role of general and duke, ruling fairly and beloved by the folk of Haran. A duke who had been a prince. A man who had cast away his god for the woman he loved. But he never forgot his family and he never forgot his name.

* * *

The Hounds startled, flailing scimitars and trying to move into a defensive formation. Gwen and Ashwyn led the Hawks in two waves, flanking the mass of black steel, and it was clear that the Karesians were outmatched. Their weapons were adequately forged but poorly wielded. Her first blow drove her Dokkalfar leaf-blade into a man’s throat, sliding off his clumsy parry and deflecting the scimitar with little effort. The Hounds’ plated black steel armour was not custom-fitted and gaps appeared as each man moved. At the underarm, the knee, the neck, a blade could be crippling or fatal, and the Hawks’ short swords were designed to exploit such weaknesses.

Their bloody work was done quickly, with no survivors.

‘That’s the fourth patrol this week, my lady,’ said Ash. ‘Do you think they’re getting bored of our city? Bored enough to come up here to die?’

‘If the enchantress is foolish enough to stay in Haran and send all her Hounds to us... well, then we’ll raise a glass to her stupidity. But we’re not that lucky.’

‘So if we can’t go back to the city until she is gone,’ asked the Hawk sergeant, ‘when will that be?’

‘Do you know a man who can kill them?’ she countered. ‘Xander won’t return if there’s any possibility he’ll become thrall to Shilpa the Shadow of Lies... I’ll kill him before I let that happen.’

‘We’ve got five thousand Hawks of Ro, my lady, and every one of us would die rather than see the general a slave...’

‘But...’

He smiled. ‘But I’m sick of sleeping under canvas. It’s been seven months.’

‘Let’s hope that assassin turns up soon, then,’ she replied.

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

RANDALL OF DARKWALD IN THE TOWN OF KABRIN

T
HE HARBOUR WAS
called the White Landing, though in the darkness it looked black. He’d never been this far south. It was hot, much hotter than he was used to. He wore a simple tunic, leaving his arms bare, and his belongings were stored in a heavy rucksack back at the inn. He was still sweating, even at night.

He had begun to trim his beard, and his master had remarked that the squire was turning into a strapping young man. Months of continual activity had turned him from wiry boy into well-muscled man of Ro. The sword at his side, the battered travelling boots, the visible scars – he felt older than his nineteen years. And it felt as if his conscience had added a year for each man he’d killed. It was a strange thing to admit. The bloodstains on his hands never seemed to disappear completely, nor did the nausea he felt whenever he pictured the men’s faces.

A gust of warm air travelled across the black water and he closed his eyes, breathing in the refreshing wind. Somewhere across the Kirin Ridge was the city of Kessia. Beyond that, he didn’t know. Their ship would be here soon and Randall was too impatient to join the others in sleep. He preferred to wait at the White Landing on the off-chance that the boat might arrive early. So far, it hadn’t done.

He was also uncomfortable being around Ruth for any extended period of time. The Gorlan Mother had maintained her human form since they left the Fell, but he was sufficiently scared of spiders to struggle to alter his perception of the woman. She had slept when they’d slept, and eaten when they’d eaten, but Randall was certain that was merely a courtesy intended to make the two men feel more comfortable.

He had stopped trying to talk to Ruth and accepted that she simply didn’t understand his desire for conversation. That was appropriate, because Randall understood nothing about her. She was an ancient spider and she was a woman. He shook his head and tried to accept that his life was likely to get stranger before it got any easier.

His mind was forced to stop wandering as a sail appeared out of the foggy sea. The ship was of Karesian design and emerged slowly, bobbing gently in the water and gliding towards the White Landing. The harbour was tiny compared to that of Ro Weir and catered mostly for private merchant ships and the occasional pleasure cruise. The king’s harbour in Weir was flooded with Hounds, and so Utha had directed them to the small coastal town of Kabrin in order to take passage to Karesia.

Kabrin was one of the nicer places that Randall had visited since he had left the Darkwald, and they had found it easy to pass unobserved through the quiet town to a tavern overlooking the White Landing. If the captain of the ship proved trustworthy, they’d be in the city of Kessia in a week or so, and that thought terrified him. He knew that Utha had never been there and he doubted whether Ruth would have much local knowledge. None of them had a clue about Karesia or how to act around Karesians.

A bell was rung from the harbour to signal that the ship was approaching at the right angle. Men on board began to trim the sails and prepare to dock. Within a few minutes the ship had turned and the sailors were coiling ropes to throw across to men stationed on the landing.

Randall puffed out his cheeks and began to stroll down the wooden steps to the dock. He tried to adopt a tough demeanour for dealing with the ship’s captain, imagining the man would react badly to a humble squire. They’d been told that the Karesian’s name was Captain Makad and that he was amenable to chartering his boat to strangers. For a price. Randall had twenty gold crowns. Utha had told him to pay no more than fifteen for passage to Kessia.

The Karesian crew quickly roped the ship to the dock and rolled out a wide landing plank over which a dozen men quickly disembarked. They all had the rolling gait of men who had spent most of their lives at sea, and the hard faces of men who don’t like other men. Randall thought briefly about going to wake Utha before he attempted to deal with the sailors, but decided at least to try and negotiate a favourable deal on his own. The worst they can do is kill me, he thought.

The sailors were joking and complaining among themselves as Randall approached. The main topic of conversation was the likelihood, or otherwise, of there being a brothel in Kabrin. Randall was fairly sure they’d be disappointed, but hopefully the preponderance of taverns would soften the blow during their time ashore.