Juliet McKenna - The Gambler's Fortune

A hand shook him by the elbow. “What do you want?” he snapped, a vicious glare searing the man hesitating beside him.

Reflexive anger straightened the man and his face hardened in the failing light. “What’s the delay? We’ve been marching since noon without a break.”

“Of course.” Eresken managed a conciliatory tone. He held the man’s eyes for a moment, searching blunt features beneath a grubby bandage obscuring one brow. There was weariness in the man’s mind, and an ominous shadow of doubt, both in the wisdom of taking on the lowlands and in the men and women supposedly leading this campaign, all because of a few reverses when the sheepherders turned defiant and some tree dwellers bolder than the rest had loosed their pinpricks on unwary stragglers. So much for the bold and mighty Anyatimm who had driven his forefathers away. Were these fair-weather warriors to be the guardians of the ancestral lands? The sooner true heirs of Misaen claimed these peaks, the better. Let worthy men see the real secrets revealed by Solstice suns.

Eresken curbed his contempt lest it seep into the man’s unwitting perception. He reached through clouding tiredness and looming misgiving and dragged a memory of recent looting to the forefront of the man’s mind. He struck an echo from the guilty delight in such easy spoils and the relish of violence let loose. The man’s face lightened, all in no more time than it had taken Eresken to draw a long breath. The Elietimm considered thrusting deeper, but his own exhaustion and exasperation balked at further effort.

“Take the goods we recovered to the stores-master at the fess.” Eresken laid a friendly hand on the man’s shoulder. “When it’s all been noted, tell him you’ve my authority to take back the ale. We’ve won some mighty victories and I think we’re due a little celebration!”

“Misaen made you true gold!” The man shouted his extravagant approval to the bedraggled troops and Eresken muttered a complex chant beneath his breath. With that charm following him, the man’s renewed enthusiasm would be carried along by his words into the minds of any he spoke with. That should keep the fools from brooding on recent minor setbacks.

The long column of laden men trudged across the bridge. Most were silent, many glum, faces set and shoulders bowed. They were just tired, Eresken decided; a good night’s sleep, a few days’ rest, Jeirran’s undoubted eloquence with the whisper of Elietimm enchantment running beneath it and he would have them marching down again to grind the Forest Folk beneath an iron heel. His stomach growled low but insistent at a tempting savor of frying onion. When had he last eaten?

Men burdened with litters and supporting the ungainly struggles of walking wounded had reached the bridge now. “Go straight to the fess,” Eresken told them, face concerned. “Sheltya will tend your hurts.” And soothe away memories of pain along with disloyalty stirred by the shock of injury, Aritane’s scruples be cursed.

Grazed and bruised faces lightened with gratitude. “Come on, I’ll walk with you.” Best to get these miserable failures out of sight. Bloodied stumps and gashed limbs would only spoil the goodwill mixed from a few looted barrels and some judicious manipulation of memory.

Crossing the bridge with the first of the litters, Eresken considered the simpletons gawking by their campfires. Could he enlist Aritane’s help in turning the thoughts of the more fatigued back to the rage that had first spurred them on? Eresken warned himself against demanding too much of her too soon. Aritane’s usefulness still depended on her cherishing the illusion that, though breaking her vows and defying her elders, she was still working for the greater good of her people.

Raucous cheering distracted him. A group of men were clustered around a figure whose beard and hair glowed golden in the light of the flames. So Jeirran and his men were back earlier than expected from the lowlands. Eresken’s annoyance was tainted with jealousy. Had Jeirran won some great victory that had enabled him to return in triumph?

“You all go on up to the rekin.” Eresken turned to the wounded men who had obediently halted to wait for him. “I must just speak with Jeirran.” He forced a smile to answer the grins of admiration the men were turning to their leader. Jeirran’s voice was loud, his gestures animated. “It sounds as if he has successes to report, doesn’t it?” There would also be food he could commandeer to stifle his gnawing hunger.

Eresken began to force his way through the crowd gathering around Jeirran. Tiredness weighed him down like a physical burden but he managed a warm enough greeting. “Jeirran! Good to see you back so soon. How did you fare?”

“Eresken!” Jeirran pushed a man with a flagon of ale aside and dragged Eresken into a crushing embrace. Jeirran’s breath was piercing with an unfamiliar, woody sweetness, eyes bright with the exuberance of alcohol.

Eresken detached himself with some difficulty and held Jeirran at arm’s length for a moment in a passable imitation of affection. “So how did you fare?”

“We drove those mewling cowards of villagers clean out of the foothills, all the way down to the chase above the lakes.” Jeirran laughed uproariously. “We thought about ducking them in the water but let them alone once they’d cleared our lands.”

“For the present, anyway,” quipped a bystander to ominous laughs.

“I thought you were to drive the Folk of the Forest south of the road?” Eresken managed a tight smile to cover his annoyance.

“Oh, we sent the squirrel fanciers scurrying up their trees, right enough. Took ’em on, man for man, fair fight and no quarter asked or given!” Jeirran took a swig from a crude glass bottle and sucked in air to cool the mellow burn of the spirits in his mouth. “We hit ’em first, burned ’em out, told ’em not to set foot on our lands again!”

Eresken steeled himself to look beyond the surface confusion of recollection and wishful thinking in Jeirran’s mind. Teasing out the truth was no easy task; memory was curdled by drunkenness and complicated by deliberate refusal to acknowledge darker truths lurking in the depths.

Jeirran had heeded the agreed plan to begin with, Eresken saw, attacking a small group of Forest Folk already fallen foul of an earlier sortie from the uplands. Eresken listened to Jeirran’s vainglorious boasting while seeing the truth of the events in his mind’s eye. The Forest Folk’s few possessions were dragged from their feeble grasp, the men hacked mercilessly down as they fought despairingly. Any woman who took up a weapon was cut to the ground by the fury of the Mountain Men. Those that sued for mercy were cruelly disappointed, used and discarded, bleeding and weeping.

Eresken nodded his approval; that much at least had been done properly. It had taken long enough to convince these fools to wage war as it should be done, unpicking their nicety and scruples, convincing them to use every terror as a tool.

He stumbled over a fearful recollection Jeirran had thrust deep into a recess of memory, cloaked in shame and confusion. So the heroic leader had joined his men in the wholesale rape? After all his high-flown words and claims to a lofty cause, he’d gone nosing in the dirt as eagerly as any beast, but this wasn’t just something done in the heat of the moment, Eresken realized with interest. Jeirran had a taste for it, unmasked by the deceits of drunkenness. That would be worth letting slip to Aritane, if her loyalty to this fool ever threatened to draw her away.

Eresken’s concentration wavered as anger shook him. The arrogant shit could take the western sweep next time, deal with the shoot-and-run tactics of the cowards with their bows and spears. Let Jeirran lose his best men to deadfalls and pit traps, find his nights poisoned as sentries were stabbed from the darkness by darts bringing death and madness.