Joel Shepherd: Haven

Kessligh galloped his horse up the field beside the tree-lined avenue, and saw that he was too late to save Hershery. He swung down from the saddle and scrambled along the embankment between the trees, staring at the flames that rose from the old town's little cluster of rooftops. Men rode about the town on horseback, pointing and talking. Several put their heels hard to their mounts and tore off in pursuit of something unseen.

“That one's the leader,” said Errollyn from Kessligh's side, stringing his huge bow with a heave and twist of powerful arms. He nodded to the apparent captain on his horse. “I could have him.”

The captain was at least sixty strides away, in heavy chain armour, but Kessligh did not doubt Errollyn's certainty. Kessligh shook his head. “Wait.” He looked back across the field, and waved his arm toward the tree line, pointing for an encirclement.

“I count twenty,” said Errollyn. From within the little town came wails and screams, and the barest sound of fighting. In the villages of Rhodaan, safe and happy behind their defensive wall of Steel for two centuries, there was rarely any more than that. Several nearby houses were now going up in flames. “If we're fast we could save more.”

“I know,” said Kessligh. He wasn't here to save Hershery. These villagers had been told to evacuate and hadn't listened. From that refusal on, their fate had been beyond his power to alter. He could, however, do something about the Regent's advance raiding parties…for whatever good it would do.

The captain and his one man departed at a gallop.

“Let's go,” Kessligh told Errollyn. As they accelerated down the slope to the village, a dismounted soldier appeared from a little lane between brick walls. Errollyn's bow thumped, and the man took a shaft through the eye. Errollyn did not so much as blink as they dismounted for a second time, and tied their horses' reins loosely to a post.

Errollyn's arms beneath his loose sleeves were crisscrossed with scars, and the gleam in his inhumanly luminescent eyes was different from what Kessligh remembered from their first meeting. The mischief was gone, replaced by something implacable and deadly. That Errollyn had always seemed surprised by his own proficiency at killing, and faintly apologetic about it. This Errollyn apologised to no one, and regarded his victims with cold disinterest.

Kessligh led the way, controlling his ever-present limp enough to make a decent pace up the narrow, weaving lane. Smoke billowed from a doorway. At a gate, an old man lay dead in his own blood. Within a second gateway, Kessligh glimpsed more bodies. Footsteps gave him warning of an approach, and when the soldier appeared, Kessligh shoved his serrin blade through the man's chest-mail and bone parted like butter and the man sank with a burbling, spluttering protest.

A man of Meraine, Kessligh noted, not of Larosa. The Larosans were now the kingly province of the Bacosh, and led the invasion of Rhodaan beneath the command of Regent Balthaar Arrosh, soon to be High King Arrosh. As soon as he reached Shemorane, and the Enoran High Temple. Kessligh had known warfare since his late teens, and he knew that it could not be stopped now. He only hoped to slow the Army of the Bacosh down, in order to organise further defences.

The path opened onto a little stone courtyard, picturesque with flower boxes, a small well, and the end face of a chapel with a little iron bell. Limp figures were now being hung from the branches of an oak that spread beside the chapel. Three men were heaving on a rope, while another supervised. Hung by the neck, the bodies were already dead, but disembowelled and gruesome, they hung as sentinels or warnings.

Errollyn shot the supervisor through the back of the thigh, reloaded fast, and, as the three holding the rope began to react, shot one through the neck. The two remaining dropped the dangling body, which hit the stones with a horrid thump. Those two tried to retreat, in shock and fear, then attacked when they realised they were trapped against a courtyard wall. Kessligh took one attacker through the hand when he presented a poor guard, sending fingers spinning. The other presented a more commendable attack, which Kessligh sent sliding past with a high elbow and downward angle that whipped into a cut whilst the attacker was still in his follow-through. The man split and hit the stone in a gush of blood.

Errollyn took guard while Kessligh stood over the arrow-shot man, struggling on the ground, trying to half-limp, half-slither away. “How many in this party?” Kessligh asked him.

The man grimaced, unreasonably attempting to escape. Kessligh put the blade to his neck. “Mercy,” the man muttered, tears leaking from tightly shut eyes.

“Oh, I don't think so,” said Kessligh, looking at the carnage around him. “How many, and I'll make it fast.”

The man said nothing. And was knocked sprawling by Errollyn's arrow through his chest. Errollyn strode over to him, put a boot to the dead man's chest, and retrieved his arrow with a yank. The armour-piercing head was intact, barely scratched, to the satisfaction of Errollyn's critical gaze.

“Twenty,” said Errollyn, placing the arrow back in his quiver. “I told you.” And he set off down the narrow lane, looking for men to kill. Kessligh thought about cutting down the hanging bodies, but decided against it. Better that his men all saw. A few had not yet been persuaded of the necessity of the action he proposed.

From the fields came the sound of galloping hooves and the cries of battle. Errollyn climbed a short stairway to a wall beside a rooftop, and Kessligh joined him with a little difficulty. From there they could see the trap this party of Meraini had stumbled into. The land here was a depression, a small basin amidst fields and trees, with limited escapes and one obvious approach for a sweeping counterattack from Rhodaani cavalry.

Now those cavalry came, on Kessligh's command, while other light cavalry approached Hershery on Kessligh's flanks to cut off any escape. Meraine cavalry scattered before barely thirty oncoming horsemen-there were twenty more ahorse, in addition to the twenty Errollyn had counted in the village. Their positioning poor, they tried to flee and the Rhodaani cavalry cut them from their horses. Several came rushing toward the town, to find some safety within its walls. Errollyn stood, drew firmly, and shot a man from his horse. He pulled another arrow immediately, fitted it…and was surprised when Kessligh yanked on his bow, throwing off his aim.

“They're dead anyway,” Kessligh explained to Errollyn's nonplussed gaze.

“But not by me,” said Errollyn, as though offended.

“Exactly,” Kessligh said grimly.

They were finishing with the bodies when a captain of the Rhodaani Steel came galloping across a field, five soldiers at his flanks. He rode to where Kessligh was examining bodies and horses, looking for clues. Errollyn had little interest in corpses and captured horses. Kessligh had a war to win, and was a general once more. Errollyn was glad Kessligh had found a purpose. He wished he had one like it.

Errollyn swished his hand at some tall grass. Wild wheat, escaped from nearby farmers' fields. Thirty terms for it in Saalsi occurred to him. This wheat was a crossbreed of human lands; it had not existed here before the serrin had brought it from Saalshen. Like so many things.