Tom Lloyd: The Dusk Watchman

He squinted at the weak sun as he gingerly wove a path through the makeshift camp in the grounds of Moorview Castle. He stopped outside the walls on the slope that led down to the moor, brought up short by the chaos of the previous day.

There were three great pits, one still being dug. The first was already filled with bodies and wood from the forest and a column of dirty smoke was rising high in the windless sky. Images from the battle flashed before his eyes: friends falling as the Menin threw themselves forward with frenzied abandon. The Brotherhood had lost half their number, a shocking proportion that was matched or exceeded by at least a dozen legions.

‘Brother Doranei.’ Suzerain Derenin sat on the sloping grass to Doranei’s left, his back against the wall of his castle. His right arm was in a sling and he winced as he gestured to the ground beside him with the spherical bottle he held in his left. ‘Join me.’

‘Got any food?’ Doranei asked as he eased himself down beside the Lord of Moorview. Whatever was in the bottle smelled more potent than wine

Suzerain Derenin shook his head. ‘Couldn’t stomach it.’ He was muscular, both bigger and younger than Doranei, his long limbs and broad shoulders well-suited to battle, but he’d still been so exhausted he’d almost crawled out of the fort once the last Menin had fallen.

‘Your first real battle, right? You sure can pick ’em.’

Doranei received only a grunt in reply, and when he took the bottle from Derenin he saw tears glisten in the man’s eyes. ‘Don’t matter who tells you what to expect, nothing prepares a man for what he sees on a battlefield, and that…’ He tailed off. None of the Narkang men had seen anything like it, experienced or not. Scree had been a place of horror and slaughter, sure enough, but it was the Farlan and Devoted troops who’d seen the worst of it. And they’d got off lightly, he now realised.

There were tens of thousands of men lying dead out there on the moor. Someone had guessed at fifty thousand, but others thought the figure higher. And a great many of those who survived the battle would have died in the night of their wounds. Bodies were lying everywhere, despite the efforts of the gangs working to drag the dead into those great pits. The earth was stained rusty-red, and the stink of death was rising with the clouds of flies.

‘Can’t get the taste out the back of my mouth,’ Suzerain Derenin muttered. ‘No matter what I try to wash it away with.’

‘Try this.’ Doranei proffered his cigar. ‘Covers up most stinks that can be covered.’

He watched Derenin puff away at it, grimacing at the unfamiliar taste but drawing all the harder on it for that. ‘You fought well,’ Doranei said. ‘There’s not much to feel proud about when you’re treading on the faces of the dead and sticky with their blood, but you were a hero yesterday. Never forget that.’

‘I won’t,’ he murmured. ‘It’s right there with the screams of men I’ve known my whole life — men who were only in that hell-pit because of me.’

‘I’ve got no answers for you,’ Doranei replied wearily. ‘There’s no justice in war, no consolation. My best friend died before the battle of the Byoran Fens — you know why? Because we tossed a coin and he got unlucky. Much as I hate myself for it, that’s all there is, and no amount of blame’ll change that.’

‘And life goes on,’ the nobleman said bitterly, wincing as he shifted slightly. ‘I’ve heard men say that half-a-dozen times already this morning.’

‘It’s the only truth we know. You got the luck o’ the draw, others didn’t. I ain’t claiming to have worked this out myself, but all you can do is mourn and keep on living.’ Doranei paused and looked at the battlefield. When he spoke again it was with a firm nod of the head, as though he was still having to remind himself that what he said was true. ‘If I meet Sebe on the slopes of Ghain and he asks me how I lived the life won on that toss of a coin, I better have a good answer for him. Hard as it might be, we got to try.’

He hauled himself up again and started on down the stepped gardens into the small forest of tents pitched on the moor’s edge. To the right was a second, smaller camp where the worst-injured of the prisoners were; anyone able to walk was out on the moor dragging bodies into the pits. The prisoners were a mixed lot, mainly Menin as most of their allies had fled when they felt the Menin lord’s name ripped from their minds. Some, unable to escape, had surrendered; only the Menin elite had fought to the death, but it did mean there was no chance of pursuit.

He walked forward, drawn without thinking towards the fort where he’d made his stand at the king’s side. He was still not sure how they’d survived that crazed assault. He felt his hands start to shake as he neared it. When he reached the mound where Cetarn had sacrificed himself, his legs gave way and he sank to his knees, feeling the anguish build up inside him, but the tears would not come; no matter how much he craved the release, the outpouring of grief, it wouldn’t come.

At a sound behind him Doranei gave a cry of alarm and tried to turn and draw his sword, but his body betrayed him and he staggered sideways, waving the weapon drunkenly until he used it to steady himself on the uneven ground. The group of soldiers behind him were enlisted men, wearing the Narkang legion’s uniform.

‘My apologies, sir,’ said the nearest, tugging frantically at his greasy curls of hair, ‘din’t mean to disturb you, sir.’

Doranei wavered and his vision blurred for a moment before he was able to pull himself together. ‘I- Ah, no, it doesn’t matter. What do you want?’

The man glanced back at his comrades. The lot of them were caked in mud and blood, and several were very obviously injured. ‘Well, sir, we was hopin’ you’d tell us what happened.’

Doranei tried to grin. ‘We won, didn’t you hear? Can’t you smell the glory?’

The soldier winced and bobbed his head again. ‘Aye, sir, we all felt his name taken, but no one knows what happened — some said the Gods themselves must’ve-’

Doranei stopped him. ‘Cetarn,’ he said, ‘Shile Cetarn, Narkang’s greatest mage: you want someone to thank in your prayers, he’s the one. Him and Coran, they both sacrificed themselves.’

‘The king’s bodyguard?’

‘Aye, him, the one and only, stubborn, stupid, vicious white-eye motherless shit that he was.’ Doranei felt his lips tremble, but suddenly he couldn’t stop talking. ‘A man with no friends and lots of enemies, who liked his whores bloodied and bruised and never had a good word for any living man. The sort o’ fearless bastard you wanted at your side when it got down to the bone, one who never backed down from a fight in his life and enjoyed pain more than any fucker I ever met.’

He took a long, shuddering breath and glanced back at the mound of earth where Cetarn had died. The earth was scorched and ripped open by the terrible magic unleashed there, the fury of an earthquake visited upon that small scrap of moorland.

‘And Cetarn was the best of men; ’cept for his size he had nothing in common with Coran before this. But neither one hesitated, or took a step back when the time came — they marched into Death’s bony arms, glad they were doing their duty and never a backwards glance from either of them.’

Doranei turned his back on the soldiers’ stunned silence and looked at the killing ground between the fort and the mound. There too the grass was scorched black, the earth furrowed and seamed with white as though burnt to ashes. Crows and ravens hopped across the brutalised ground, their calls cruel and callous to Doranei’s ears. The faint smell of smoke carried on the wind and for a moment he felt his soul tug free to drift on the breeze with the voices of the dead and carrion birds.