John Gwynne - Valour

Tahir looked at him. ‘A man with revenge in his heart should dig two graves, my old mam used to say to me.’

‘As long as Jael’s in one of them, I’ll be content,’ Maquin said. But still, he could not stop Orgull’s words rattling around his head — all will fight, all will choose a side.

Whose side am I on?

‘The man who told you of these things,’ he said to Orgull. ‘What was his name?’

‘Meical.’

The next day they set out early, dawn a mere hint beyond the trees. The Rhenus was liquid black. Maquin dipped his oar; Orgull sat across from him and they rowed away from the small quay that jutted from Brikan’s walls.

On the second day they saw a large barge moored on the eastern bank of the river. No one answered their calls so they approached cautiously. Orgull was the first to recognize it.

‘It is the one we were guarding that was attacked by the Hunen and their white wyrms,’ he said.

Maquin peered closely, seeing corpses strewn across the deck and other bodies littering the wide track of the east bank; a booted foot, a hand, the shaft of a giant war-hammer, a horse’s skull, all lying where they had fallen in battle, clothes rotted, flesh picked clean by Forn’s inhabitants.

In silence they pushed away from the barge and moved on up the river.

By highsun on the fifth day the trees began to thin, great shafts of the sun beaming down upon the travellers. Soon the river swept them from the forest into rolling meadows, the riverbank thick with wildflowers; it was as if they had rowed into spring.

‘How far to Dun Kellen?’ Tahir asked, scratching his leg. He had been complaining of a sore arse, stiff arms and blisters on his palms for two days solid.

‘Ten to twelve days, if nothing slows us,’ Orgull said. Tahir groaned, looking at his palms.

‘We could always put you ashore, let you walk,’ Orgull suggested. Tahir did not reply, except to grip his oar and continue rowing.

Early on the seventh day since leaving Forn they were breaking camp where they had pulled ashore for the night. A mist hung heavy over the river, clinging to thick beds of reed. Orgull was shaving his head with a sharp knife.

‘Why do you do that? Tahir asked. ‘Why not just let it grow?’

‘I used to have fine long hair,’ Orgull said, ‘or so the ladies told me. When I first joined the Gadrai, on one of my first patrols we came upon a party of Hunen. One of them grabbed a fist full of my hair and threw me about like a rag doll. He bashed me into a tree. I didn’t wake up till I was back in Brikan — my sword-brothers had carried me there.’ He smiled, half a grimace. ‘I’ve shaved my head clean ever since.’

‘Do you hear that?’ Maquin said, head cocked to one side.

They all listened. The river was silent, muted by the mist. A moorhen cried out, long and mournful. Then Maquin heard it again: horses’ hooves, lots of them, the jingle of harness and chainmail.

‘Quickly,’ Orgull hissed, and as quietly as they could, they climbed back into their boat and pushed away from the shore. As time passed the mist evaporated, giving a good view of the land about them. It was flatter now they were further north, broken up with ragged stands of trees. There was no sign of the riders they had heard.

Late in the day they saw shapes ahead: a stone bridge spanning the river, a tower on the western bank, a sprawling village of timber and thatch behind it. Figures moved on the bridge and amongst the buildings.

Orgull hissed a warning and they rowed to the bank, pulling the boat ashore, then crept slowly through the rushes.

A banner hung from the tower, snapping in the wind. Upon it was a jagged lightning bolt in a black sky. It was Romar’s mark, the crest of Isiltir, taken from the name the giants had used — the storm-lands. But as Maquin looked at it he saw something else on the banner, something intertwined with the jagged lightning, coiling about it. A white serpent.

‘I don’t like the look of that,’ Maquin said quietly.

‘Me neither,’ Orgull said. ‘Whose banner is it?’

‘If you don’t ask you won’t know, my mam used to say,’ murmured Tahir.

‘Your mam was a wise woman,’ Orgull said. ‘Let’s go and ask someone.’

Maquin crept through the reeds, wincing at every rustle. He and Tahir were close to the bridge now, though it had taken them a long time to get this close.

A handful of houses were clustered about a squat tower. Maquin could smell horse dung, and hear the gentle neigh of a horse off in the darkness. Torches burned around the tower, small patches of light in the night, and further away larger fires burned. Men stood at the doors to the tower, grim-looking and dressed for war. This was a warband, no doubt, though it was hard to tell their numbers in the darkness — two, three hundred, maybe more. The banner hung limp on the tower, but Maquin remembered Isiltir’s lightning bolt and the serpent wrapped around it.

‘We’ll sit tight a while, see what we see,’ he whispered to Tahir.

They lay there waiting a long time before the tower door swung open and a handful of men strode out. At their head was Jael.

Without thinking, Maquin reached for his sword, then felt Tahir’s grip on his arm.

‘Don’t,’ the lad hissed.

‘It’s Jael,’ he whispered back.

‘I know, but there’s too many — you’ll get yourself killed, and worse, get me killed.’

Maquin wrestled with the compulsion, then released his sword hilt.

They crept back along the riverbank to Orgull and told him all they had seen, then waited until deep of night, when most would be sleeping, and pushed the boat back into the river, letting the current take them downstream. When they were convinced they were far enough away that sound would not carry, they rowed like their lives depended on it.

By the time the sun rose behind them Maquin was slick with sweat, his back throbbing, muscles burning. They had come leagues since the bridge, giving them a good head start on Jael. Their guess was that he was moving on Gerda and Haelan, Romar’s son. Striking quickly, before news could spread and any resistance could rally. So their task was to reach Dun Kellen ahead of Jael.

‘Keep pulling,’ Orgull said behind them. Maquin wanted to say something but could not find the breath to do it.

Dun Kellen rose out of a river mist, the sun sinking behind it. Built upon a hill, the town around it was a disorderly mass that flowed down the hill’s slopes. A mass of quays edged the river; the three men steered towards one of them and made fast the boat.

‘What now?’ said Tahir. He sniffed and pulled a face as fishermen and traders began to take notice of them. ‘And what’s that smell?’ he muttered.

Orgull strode away, eyes fixed on the fortress on the hill.

‘Civilization,’ Maquin said, following Orgull.

At the gates to the fortress a handful of guards stood with spears in their hands. Maquin noticed the shoddy state of the fortress’ defences. A whole section of the wall had collapsed, timber frame and cladding filling the gap. As he looked along the walls he saw there were a number of similar sections.

Not the best place to endure a siege.

‘You — big man,’ a guard called, pointing at Orgull with his spear. ‘What’s your business in Dun Kellen?’ He looked at Maquin and Tahir, at their leather war gear and their swords. ‘Sellswords?’ He sneered. ‘We don’t need your sort round here.’

‘We are the last survivors of the Gadrai,’ Orgull said, frowning down at the man. He reached inside his cloak and the guards around him drew back, levelling spears and reaching for swords. Maquin and Tahir spread to either side of Orgull, hands on their own weapons. Bloodshed was only an instant away.