Col Buchanan - Stands a Shadow

‘He’s the only man here I haven’t yet spoken to. I’ll have a word with him, at least.’

Darkness pressed upon them from all sides. It seemed to follow their little haven of light as they walked in a collective hush along the passageway, the only sounds the dripping of water and the scrapes of their feet against the stone floor. There were four jailers with them, clad in leather aprons and gloves that came up to their armpits, stout clubs dangling from their grips. They were silent, their eyes fixed ahead. They seemed to be steeling themselves for confrontation.

Bahn followed them, not liking the close confines of this place. He couldn’t imagine being locked up as a prisoner down here. An hour would have him tearing at the walls to get out.

The door to the cell was made from a solid, fire-hardened slab of tiq wood banded by iron. One of the jailers stepped up and opened the small viewing hatch.

Bahn leaned forward to peer inside.

He saw a candle, burning a halo of warmth in the centre of a small vaulted cell. In its light sat a large naked man, chained by the neck to the wall he leaned his back against, one leg stretched before him, the other bent up and its knee supporting a limp hand; his face was smoky shadow, with two eyes that glowered at those in the hatch with open hostility.

Bull, Bahn thought. How did I know you would always end up like this?

He stepped back as the door was unlocked and pulled open by two straining jailers, the hinges protesting loudly.

‘Stay behind the chain,’ the jailer with the lantern advised Bahn. ‘He blinded one of our men a few months back. With his thumbs.’

The man ducked inside, with his club at the ready. Bahn stepped into the cell and stopped by his side, his ankles touching a chain that hung slack across the tiny space. He held his helm beneath his arm, and tried to stand tall in his armour and his red cloak.

The prisoner placed his hands upon the collar around his neck, and lifted himself to his feet in all his naked glory, displaying a patchwork of scars across a tensed, muscular frontage. He looped some of the chain over his arm to support the weight of it, a curious gesture, as though he was adjusting some fine robe of office.

You’ve aged, Bahn thought, as he took in the heavy abuses of the man’s face, and the receding hairline at his temples, where a pair of horns were tattooed.

Bahn had indeed fought alongside this man in those first few desperate years of the war, before Bull had been chosen for the heavy infantry of the chartassa. Bull had been crazy even back then; a dangerous and volatile man who enjoyed a fight more than any other Bahn had ever known. It hadn’t surprised him when Bull had finally lost his temper once too often and with entirely the wrong person – his superior officer, a fellow whom Bull nearly killed with a single clout, and for the careless mistake of calling him by his real name.

Two years in a stockade had come of it, and a full discharge from the army. After that, Bahn had vaguely followed his rising celebrity as a champion pit-fighter. One of the best in Khos, it was said.

And then the day came when Bahn, along with the rest of the city, heard the news of Adrianos’s murder. Adrianos, hero of the Nomarl raid, the last commander to have personally led a successful offensive against the Imperial Fourth Army. The city’s hero had been found in several different pieces in his fine apartment just off the Grand Bazaar. He had been gagged and bound and tortured. Parts of him had been flayed.

Next to his carcass, Bull had sat, wearing nothing but blood.

‘Hello, brother,’ Bahn said to him in a hush.

Bull took a step towards him. ‘Bahn?’ he asked, incredulous.

‘Yes.’

Bull stepped closer, the chain unravelling from his arm as it stretched tight behind him. The jailer at Bahn’s side shifted uneasily, weighing the club in his hand. Bull refused to acknowledge him. He remained focused on Bahn, his massive arm held against his stomach, the knuckles of his hand disfigured by swelling, the skin recently torn and bloody. ‘What brings you here then, eh? Are you lost?’

His voice rasped as though he hadn’t used it for a very long time. ‘Speak up,’ growled Bull. ‘I’m doubting this is a social call. What is it?’

All at once, as Bahn listened to the lilt in the man’s voice, and stared into the dark eyes above his sharp cheekbones, he was taken back to the days of the early war, hunkering down behind a parapet as Bull grinned in his face, slapping his back to stop him coughing and enjoying every moment of it, the crazy barkbeating bastard.

‘The Mannians have landed in force in Pearl Bay.’

Bull narrowed his eyes, pushed his head forward to scrutinize him more closely.

‘I’m here for the veterans. To see if any of you are fit to stand with us.’

‘Another judge, then,’ Bull spat, half turning away.

‘What? You think you’ve been judged unfairly?’

The chain snapped tight as Bull towered over him. Bahn fought the urge to step back a pace.

‘Easy, now,’ soothed the jailer as he poked his club into Bull’s bare chest.

Still Bull ignored him, stared instead at Bahn. ‘No, I suppose I don’t. But then neither was Adrianos. You understand? When I judged him.’

‘They call you the slayer, did you know that? A monster only fit for chaining up in a hole.’

Bull’s expression remained the same; curious, wrathful.

‘Will you stand with us, and fight for your people?’

‘My people?’ he asked, incredulous.

‘Aye. For the people of Bar-Khos, like your father. And for your mother’s people in the Windrush.’

Suddenly, a wide smile creased his face like the gash of a knife. Two of his front teeth were missing, Bahn saw. The rest looked to be rotting. ‘I owe no loyalty to anyone, least of all the people of Bar-Khos.’

‘Will you fight for us?’

‘Is it a pardon. Is that what you’re offering?’

‘Yes. If that’s what it will take.’

‘And all I have to do is kill some Mannians in the name of my people, is that it? You’ll take the slayer into your ranks even if he’s a cold-blooded murdering bastard of a barkbeater, is that how it’s to be, Bahn?’

For a long moment Bahn swayed in his armour, feeling tired and out of place here.

‘Believe me, Bull,’ he told his old comrade plainly. ‘Where we are going, we’ll have great need of men like you.’

Free Enterprise

Mistress Cheer was clearly a woman who knew how to land on her feet. In the space of a single day, amidst the confusion and high emotions of the beachhead, she obtained for herself a wagon and a mule, a cartload of supplies, and enough home comforts to create a small camp for her and her women on the seaward edge of the dunes.

By evening, awnings had been erected over two sides of the wagon and the sand underneath covered in mats of woven grasses. There were stools to sit on, and a fire smoked beneath a hanging kettle and pot, with water and stew warming in them. Mistress Cheer had even procured three tents for them all, which she instructed Ash to pitch not far from the wagon, though far enough for some privacy.

The women relaxed at last, preening themselves in clear view of the men surrounding the camp, squabbling amongst themselves whenever their mistress was beyond earshot. A few casually flirted with Ash, sporting with him over the colour of his skin, the firmness of his old body. He chuckled in pleasure, giving as good as he got.

Ash had overheard that the place itself was called Whittle Bay, a broad cove within the larger sweep of Pearl Bay, which was located on the eastern coastline of Khos. It was a pretty enough location, with its hills to the west and the high peaks of mountains both north and south, and the rocky, gull-covered island out in the greater bay. In many ways the scene reminded Ash of northern Honshu, though it was spoiled somewhat by the stink of the army deployed across the beachhead, and by the closer press of thousands of camp followers, who had accompanied the invasion force all this way to Khos, like Mistress Cheer, in hope of making a profit.