The Tattered Banner (Society of the Sword Volume 1) (33 page)

Soren had not even thought of the Competition. A ticket to a future of fame and fortune and he had thrown it away for forty crowns, only twenty of which he had actually got.

‘I would suggest the east,’ said Dornish abruptly. ‘A garrison commander on the frontier is a former apprentice of mine. We shall send you to him. It will be worthwhile experience anyway. Return to your rooms and pack what you will need. I will prepare the necessary letters of introduction and we will have you on your way before nightfall.’

‘Does it mean that I have to drop out of the Academy?’ Soren asked, a hint of fear entering his voice for the first time.

Dornish scratched his chin thoughtfully for a moment before speaking. ‘No. You’ve easily surpassed the standard required to graduate. I shall pass you so you will be eligible to return to the Collegium next year. By then this matter will have hopefully blown over. Criminals are killed with such frequency in this city that I expect other matters will be occupying their attention by then. Now go.’

Both Soren and Amero left Dornish’s office and were walking across the courtyard when a thought jumped into Soren’s mind.

‘There’s a favour I need,’ he said.

‘Name it!’ Amero replied.

‘There’s a girl. She works at the Sail and Sword. Her name is Alessandra. Can you go to her, and explain what has happened. Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t reveal all the details of why I’ve had to go. Just let her know that it couldn’t be helped and that I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ Soren said. He thought about adding to tell her that he loved her, he certainly felt as though he did, but for some reason he found he could not admit it in front of Amero.

‘The Sail and Sword. Alessandra. Consider it done,’ Amero replied. They had reached the centre of the courtyard where they parted, Amero headed out the gate to where his carriage was waiting, while Soren went back to his room to pack his things.

C h a p t e r   3 3

THE WILDS OF THE EAST

T
he lights and smells of the city seemed like nothing more than a dream by the time he arrived at Fort Laed. It had taken a full week to reach, and it was the farthest outpost properly garrisoned by the Duchy. After they had passed out of the river lands, the scenery had become uninteresting and repetitive. Flat plains stretched as far as the eye could see. On a particularly clear day Soren thought at times he could just make out the peaks of the mountains far away to the north, but for the most part, there was rarely even a tree to break the monotony of the seemingly endless miles of grassland.

The fort was beyond what was considered to be the borders, or marches, of the Duchy. In the distant past a busy trade road to the east had passed through the region, but merchants from the far eastern empires were rare at best since the old Saludorian Empire had fallen.

The fort itself was far from being an impressive affair. The last building he had seen made entirely from stone had been Eastmarch Castle, but that was several days to the west and still well within the borders of the Duchy. Although there was a stone hall in one corner of the rectangular area enclosed by the wooden palisade, it was roughly constructed and if anything, less imposing than the other wooden buildings in the compound.

The arrival of the carriage in the compound caused something of a stir. It was clear that contact with the city was not that frequent. After disembarking, Soren asked a soldier who was collecting the mail package from the carriage where the commanding officer was. The man struggled with the bulging canvas parcel as he gestured to what was little more than a shed on the left hand side of the muddy square in the centre of the fort. It was certainly a far cry from the Academy.

He stumbled his way through the churned mud, his legs stiff from the cramped inactivity of sitting in carriages for so long. He knocked at the door and was instructed to enter by a curt and gravelly voice.

‘I am Banneret Soren, recently of the Academy. Master Dornish provided me with these letters of introduction.’ He took a parcel of papers from his doublet and handed them to the commanding officer who stood opposite him on the other side of a desk. His face was weathered and had gone several days unshaven. The combination made him look several years older than Soren suspected he actually was. He wore a dark blue doublet trimmed with the mustard colour of the Duke’s Legion of the Eastern Marches that was so faded the different colours were barely discernable. He took the papers suspiciously and broke the blue wax seal. He read through them for a moment before speaking.

‘I am Banneret Weston dal Vecho, Colonel, the Duke’s Legion of the Eastern March, commander of Fort Laed,’ said the officer formally. ‘Dornish says you aren’t completely green and that you are to remain here under my command until he sends word for you to return to the Academy. He hopes this will be in time for the start of the next academic year.’ He raised an eyebrow as he read and Soren could tell that he was wondering what it was that had precipitated Soren’s unexpected arrival. ‘I hope for your sake that is the case and you are better than the other spoiled brats that occasionally come out here seeking experience. They don’t tend to last long. Speak to the quartermaster in the next building to the right. He will give you your necessaries and see you squared away.’

‘Thank you, Colonel,’ said Soren. As Soren turned to leave, dal Vecho spoke again.

‘We’re very shorthanded here, and the barbarians are acting up more than usual. As an Academy graduate you’re going to be leading men sooner than you might have thought, so prepare yourself for that.’

Soren nodded, saluted and left.

The quartermaster was gruff and unfriendly, but efficient all the same. Soren had not known what to expect. The marches were often somewhere young graduates of the Academy who were from less influential families would go to get some experience in the hope of getting promotion to postings closer to home. Otherwise it was not somewhere an ambitious swordsman would be inclined to spend a great deal of time.

He was given two uniforms, a plain but functional sword and a variety of other items that would serve him during his stay in the east. After signing for the items and being told he would be expected to return them all as soon as his service was finished, the quartermaster’s assistant took him to the officers’ barracks.

Each officer was afforded the luxury of his own room in a long single story bunkhouse, which the quartermaster’s assistant informed him was mainly due to the shortage of officers, and, he added with a smirk, the frequency with which they were killed. The assistant left Soren to stow away his things, but he was not left to his own devices for long.

He had barely finished organising his things, much in the same fashion as he had in the Academy, when a trooper knocked at his door with orders for Soren to attend on the Colonel at once. He left what he was doing and followed the trooper, hoping to make a good impression with promptness if nothing else. The trooper led him back across the muddy yard and back to Colonel dal Vecho’s office. When they arrived, he opened the door and gestured for Soren to enter. It seemed that they did not stand on ceremony in the marches. Nonetheless, Soren saluted when he entered.

‘Ah, Banneret Soren, I know you haven’t had much time to settle in, but a report has just come in of a raid on a farmstead a few hours away. I’m sending out a patrol that will be commanded by Lieutenant Dalvi. I want you get a feel for the job and the lie of the land. The next time you go out, it will likely be you in command, so learn as much as you can. I have given you a field commission of Cornet. The legion is a light cavalry regiment, so I hope you are comfortable in the saddle! If you’ve got questions, ask Lieutenant Dalvi, he knows what he’s about,’ said dal Vecho.

Despite his trepidation, Soren found himself to be enjoying the patrol. While he loved the Academy and the life that he had there, the patrol had a quality to it that was missing from there. This was real. The sense of exhilaration that it gave him went some way to easing the concern he had at the very real possibility that he would never be able to go back to the city, or the Academy, at all.

The patrol consisted of twenty men and two officers, Lieutenant Dalvi and himself. Dalvi was considerably older than Soren but had a face that made it difficult to determine exactly how old he was. It was tanned and lined, but he could have been beyond middle age or just weather beaten. He didn’t say much, nothing more than the occasional command to the sergeants who rode directly behind them. His head scanned constantly from left to right, his steely grey eyes squinting into the bright, early summer’s day as he searched for anything out of place. It was unusual for an officer not to have been to the Academy, but it was clear that when dal Vecho had not referred to the Lieutenant as Banneret, it had not been an oversight. Unusual, but, as Soren was quickly learning, the rules on the marches were very different to those in Ostenheim.

Soren still knew virtually nothing about the patrol beyond what the Colonel had already told him. A little after midday they stopped at a small farmstead. It was two small wooden buildings and a corral, a tiny dot on what seemed like an endless plain. The officers and sergeants dismounted and approached one of the buildings and were greeted by the man who exited it.

‘Lieutenant Dalvi!’ he said happily. He gestured to a table and chairs by the door that had been laid out with rough wooden cups. ‘Am I happy to see you,’ he added, as they sat. ‘Caroline! They’re here!’ he yelled as an after thought.

A moment later a stout woman that perhaps had once been pretty, but now showed the wear of a frontier lifestyle, came out of the building. She carried a heavy pitcher and after heaving it up to the table began filling the cups with lemon water. Soren stared idly at the corral that contained half a dozen horses.

‘Magnificent, aren’t they!’ the man said, following Soren’s gaze.

‘Thomas, this is Banneret Cornet Soren, just joined us from the west, as punishment for a variety of misdeeds, no doubt!’ Lieutenant Dalvi said.

Soren cast him a half glance. ‘They are magnificent indeed,’ he said, returning his attention to the horses. ‘They remind me of Ruripathian destriers.’

‘You’ve a good eye. There’s a fair amount of Ruripathian in them, but these are my own breed. Just as strong, just as brave, but these fellows are faster and will run all day. When I have a good stock I’ll start selling them to the Duke. He’ll have a cavalry to beat anything the Ruripathians can send against him!’

‘Well, hopefully the days of war with Ruripathia are far behind us,’ Soren replied

‘Ha!’ said Thomas. ‘That day will never come.’

‘Thomas is a veteran of the last war,’ Dalvi said, between mouthfuls of lemon water.

‘Aye. I saw how the Ruripathian cavalry operate first hand. Well, I used my veteran’s pension to buy some captured horses, and came out here to put them to stud. It’s the perfect place. You can run them for hours on end in every direction. Perfect but for the barbarians that is.’ He cast a glance over his shoulder. ‘I suppose that’s why you’re here.’

‘A prospector said he saw smoke on the horizon and reported it to us at the fort,’ Dalvi replied.

‘The smoke had faded out by noon yesterday. It’s the Androv stead I reckon. There’s nothing else out there,’ Thomas added glumly. ‘I was going to ride out and check, but the lads are still young and Caroline won’t let me go more than an hour or two from the stead on my own.’ He said it with shame in his voice, but everyone knew that it would have made no difference to what they would no doubt find.

‘Thank you for the drinks, Thomas,’ said Lieutenant Dalvi. ‘It’s my plan to overnight there and stop by here on our way back tomorrow, but my advice to you now would be to pack up your family as quickly as you can and head to Fort Laed until we are sure the area is safe again. There are too few of us on this patrol to chase them down and offer you protection also.’

‘Aye, you’re right. I need to go to the fort for some supplies anyway. Good luck to you!’ said Thomas.

The patrol mounted quickly and before long the farmstead was fading into the distance.

C h a p t e r   3 4

THE DISTANT OUTPOST

‘I
 grew up on the marches,’ Dalvi said abruptly, an hour or so after they had left the farmstead. ‘It was nicer back then, before the barbarian tribes moved down from the hills in the north. First they started raiding in the summer, now they seem to be attacking whenever they want. As the frontier stretches ever farther to the east, we just can’t keep them from raiding settlements. The Duke won’t send us more men, beyond volunteers. And who would volunteer for danger and hardship out here when there is a nice comfortable life in the city, with parades and balls and fancy uniforms? Who indeed?’ He cast a glance at Soren with a smile on his face. ‘What did you do anyway?’ Dalvi asked. ‘Sleep with the wrong noble’s daughter?’