S. Turney: Interregnum

Kiva hadn’t always looked like this; dusty, grey, scarred and hollow. Once, long ago, he’d been a fresh faced blond youth with piercing green eyes and a lithe build. In the days when he’d come out of the Northlands he’d had a budding, wispy beard and long, braided hair. He’d worn furs and leather and travelled out of the cold, swampy lands of his people into the heart of the Empire, golden and prosperous. It hadn’t been unusual in those days, when the Empire was at its greatest extent; when the borders were being forced north and east by generals whose names even now carried the weight of history and valour. The tribes at the fringes of the Imperial world had sued for peace with the Emperors and were beginning to see the benefits. For the first time in the history of the north the tribes had running, clean water, with aqueducts and drainage systems constructed under the expert eyes of Imperial architects and engineers. The young men had begun to learn the Imperial language, and many of them had begun to travel south to find service in the Empire’s bureaucracy or its military. All those years ago, the idea of a heated floor was unheard of in the north.

He sighed when he thought of that first day in the army. His braids had been cut away, his beard shaved and his favourite furs burned for fear of infestation. He’d stood with other young men of all colours both skin and hair, naked in a parade ground, while they were shorn and prepared for their training. Very little made Kiva smile these days; not properly, as though he actually meant it, but he’d laughed loud and often in those early days with his comrades. He shuffled under his blanket, trying to find a slightly more comfortable position against the rough wall. Pieces of plaster broke off and dust showered down his back causing him to shrug uncomfortably. He reached out and picked up one of the larger pieces. Painted plaster; an image of some sort of ornamental lake with a colonnade. This place must have been a rich house once.

He could remember just such decorative plaster work at the commanding officer’s house in the Northern Army’s headquarters fortress of Vengen, when he’d received his first military decoration. Over a mere three years, he’d made it through the lowest ranks and had become a non-commissioned officer. Then, little over a year later, as he received a golden torc for his defence of the Galtic Narrows against the barbarians, he’d also been made Captain, with his own unit. Barbarians? Now that really did threaten to make him laugh. The force of northmen he’d held back with less than a hundred troops had been his own people, or people very much like them. It had been in that action he’d met a young soldier called Athas from the far south, his skin dark as night, who had grown throughout the following years to be Kiva’s best friend and most trusted lieutenant. Others came to be trusted; his men had been a good crew even then, in the early days.

He glanced across the ruined building to Athas. The man slept little, but loud. Currently the big man crouched on a low and broken wall, watching the countryside in the night, alert and guarded. The charcoal-grey tunic, along with the colour of his skin, made him barely visible except for the eerie dancing light of the fire. The rest of the unit were asleep around the floor as Athas would be soon, once he’d woken the next watch. Then there would be snoring like the collapse of a marble quarry.

As he watched the fire flickering in the light breeze, his memory strayed once more to the age of glory in the Imperial army. In those days, the tunics had been emerald green and the arms and armour had been a standard issue. He remembered when he’d finally reached a position where he was not bound by the uniform code. He’d been made Prefect and given command over a thousand men, all new and eager for glory under the acclaimed commander. By that time he’d stopped wearing his military honours. They’d become numerous and bulky and had been taken to safety at the new estate that he was building at Serfium by the sea. Meteoric, people had called his ascent to command. No one in living memory had risen from the lowest ranks, without even Imperial citizenship, to become such a high officer. He’d made sure too that his trusted friends moved with him. Athas had been made Captain shortly before, and continued to hold a position as Kiva’s right hand man. By then there had been others; men who had proved time and again that they could be trusted in and out of battle. In those days of fire and steel and the glory of Kiva’s campaigns, with the ever-present Athas and a dozen men of skill and virtue, the Wolves had been born.

That was what they’d been called. Despite his command of a thousand, Kiva continued to travel chiefly with a party of a dozen men as his close companion unit. He’d made sure that they all achieved at least the rank of Captain; his influence in the Imperial bureaucracy was becoming powerful indeed. They’d taken to wearing wolf-pelts as a shoulder cloak. He’d also put in requisitions and had them agreed such that the regimental insignia was now a profile of a howling wolf, on both flag and standard. Their shields came to be painted with a wolf’s head. And the analogy was good, too, for they became predatory. The army no longer held the borders against the Empire’s enemies, guarding passes and constructing fortifications. Now, the Wolves forced campaigns into the wilderness, bringing the light of civilisation on the tip of a sword. They’d become hunters of barbarians and heroes of the Empire.

Once more Kiva’s attention was drawn back to the camp. The firelight was beginning to burn low. He would have to get some wood before long or the light and heat would be gone altogether and the unit would have nothing to cook breakfast on in a few hours. Across the fire he could see the wiry Thalo, hunched asleep by the wall, his grey, oval shield propped next to him. No lupine symbols in evidence these days. The days of heroes were gone, and the Wolves had been consigned to legend.

Even when he’d been made Marshal, one of the four commanding Generals of the Imperial Army invested by the Emperor himself, he’d been wearing his distinctive shoulder cloak as he received his baton of office. Behind him, the Captains of the Wolves had stood straight and true, pride and discipline emanating from them. Those had been such great days. The glory and the vigour of constant battle, secure in the knowledge of a righteous cause and a goal: to bring culture and civilisation to the whole globe. He’d been proud; but then he’d been ignorant… they all had. To serve in the Imperial army was to serve blindly, and no yet man can stay voluntarily blind his entire life.

With a yawn and a stretch, Kiva straightened his legs, the blanket falling to the floor. For a brief second Athas’s head snapped round at the noise. As he saw Kiva stirring, he nodded barely perceptibly and then turned his attention once more to the undergrowth. Stepping lithely between the slumbering forms of the unit, Kiva wandered out into the brush. His boots, old though they may be, were hardy and comfortable and he felt virtually none of the fractured pieces of crumbling masonry under his feet. At the fallen wall surrounding the once opulent room he picked up the hatchet Thalo had left there earlier and unfastened his belt, leaning the sheathed swords against the stonework.