Brian Ruckley - Tyrant

Yulan and Hamdan and Rudran advanced a short way to meet this uninvited guest. And the lone Orphanidon ignored them. He did not so much as glance in their direction as he rode, very slowly, past them and on into the very camp of the Free, where their bedrolls were still on the ground and spears and sacks lay all about. Yulan and the other two had to turn their horses about and follow him.

He was like no man Brennan had ever seen, this one. His horse was magnificent, a hand taller at the shoulder than anything the Free rode. He wore a chest-plate and helm of polished, silvery metal. He had greaves at his shins of the same metal, engraved with swirling patterns. His gauntlets were overlaid with plates of gleaming bronze. Ribbons of many colours were tied about his upper arm.

He had a tall spear in one hand, held perfectly erect with its butt resting beside his foot in a stirrup. A round shield was strapped across his back, and a long sword was at his waist. He was bright and fearsome and proud.

Orphanidons. Terrible and impregnable. The master troops of the Emperor. But they had meaning far beyond that simple fact. The Empire was named for the countless thousands of orphans it harvested-quite deliberately and methodically-in its wars of conquest, and then shaped to serve its own ends. The best of them, the strongest and most iron-willed, became the Orphanidons. Each one of them was the result of years of training and sculpting. He was not merely a man of war; he was the crowning achievement of the Empire that had made him. As a baker made bread from humble grain, so the Empire made warriors from orphaned children. Perhaps-if the stories were to be believed-the greatest warriors the world had ever seen. So many thought. Not the Free, of course. Brennan would not allow himself to believe it. He preferred to remember that the Free had carved just as many stories into the world’s memory as the Orphanidons ever had.

This dazzling warrior drew his horse to a halt in the centre of the ring made by the Free’s bedrolls, and turned it about in a tight circle. The animal trampled the ashes of the firepit.

The Orphanidon said something in his own fluting language.

Yulan, sitting quite relaxed astride his horse, smiled apologetically.

‘Forgive me, but we have no one here who knows your tongue. It shames me to ask it of you, but can you speak in ours?’ It was a lie, Brennan knew. There were at least a couple of men here-including Hamdan, right there at Yulan’s side as ever-who could speak the language of the Orphans. For all Brennan knew, Yulan could as well. When it came to his Captain, no accomplishment would surprise him.

The Orphanidon regarded Yulan flatly for a moment or two, almost as if he smelled the untruth. Then he spoke.

‘You do not belong here. You are not of the Empire.’

‘No,’ Yulan acknowledged.

‘You will go back to your bed of lice and whores in your little lands.’

‘Ha.’ Yulan looked as though he wanted to laugh at that. ‘A fine turn of phrase you’ve got there. But no, sadly we cannot do that. Not yet.’

‘You can. Now.’

The Orphanidon matched Yulan’s calm. He was more stern, his face all but dead in its absence of expression. It did nothing to dampen the tension in the air.

‘Your ribbons say that you have seen much of the world,’ Yulan observed, twitching a finger at the many-coloured bands adorning the Orphanidon’s arm. ‘You must have served long and risen high.’

‘I hold the rank of Carnotec.’ The man of the Empire appeared entirely unmoved by flattery, if that had been Yulan’s intent.

‘I see the ribbon for crossing the northern bounds into the cold places,’ Yulan went on. ‘I see the ribbon for guarding the Emperor himself in Arnothex. I see the ribbon for tracking the Unhomed, and riding its flanks.’

‘You see those and more.’

‘Then you know much of the world. And you know well who we are, Carnotec.’

‘You are the Free.’

‘A few of them, yes. Just a few.’

‘Too many.’

‘You know we are bound to fulfil any contract we have taken. You know that is our code, and the earth from which our honour grows.’

‘I know that none who kneel before Crex the Corrupt, Crex the Base, may set foot where you have done. These are the lands of the Emperor, and the lives of his enemies are forfeit.’

‘As it should be,’ Yulan nodded. ‘Yet if you know of us, you know we do not kneel before Crex, or any other. We are the last of the free companies, unbound and unfettered. And it is not Crex’s contract that we are here to fulfil. He would not dare to test the patience of the great Emperor in such a way.’

Yulan twisted in his saddle. Only his body really; he kept his eyes firmly fixed upon the Orphanidon.

‘We have our contract-holder here. You can see the document he bears, if you wish. The name it carries is that of a village headman who asks us to return to him the many of his people who have been stolen away by evil men, and carried off into subjection and servitude.’

Surmun was in fact nowhere to be seen. Brennan glanced around and saw no sign of him. The high responsibility of accompanying the Free to bear witness to the legality of their contract had made Surmun a deeply unhappy man. To be fair, he had only sunk into despondency once it became apparent that the pursuit of the slavers was going to take them into the Empire. Until then he had given every sign of quite enjoying himself in a preening sort of way. Brennan was not surprised to find that he had disappeared from sight now that Orphanidons were on the scene. Poor Surmun’s little adventure was showing every sign of going terribly wrong. Not that he was alone in that.

Fortunately, the Orphanidon was not interested in the details of the contract. It would have said precisely what Yulan claimed it did. They all knew, as no doubt did the Orphanidon, that what it said and what it really meant were not the same thing. The headman of Wyven Dam might have put his mark on the contract, but it was the King’s coin that would pay the Free, and it had been the King’s scribes who wrote it.

The Orphanidon stared into Yulan’s eyes. There was a true courage here, Brennan thought. It might be born of arrogance and privilege and brutality; that did not make it any less brave to ride alone into the camp of twenty fighting men, knowing they were no friends.

‘The Empire takes no slaves from Hommetic lands,’ the Orphanidon stated.

‘Excellent,’ said Yulan. ‘We understand one another. The Orphans do not take slaves from Hommetic lands. And Crex does not trespass upon the rightful territories of the Orphans. Those we pursue are but bandits and rogues, who act without the Emperor’s knowledge. Just as we act without the King’s.’

There was the crux of it. Even Brennan, little of the world as he had seen and little of its workings as he understood, knew that. For years-decades-there had been nothing but loathing between Hommetics and Orphans, yet neither would venture open war against the other. The Empire feared the Kingdom’s School of Clevers and the terrible Permanence, the Bereaved, that they controlled. The Kingdom feared the Empire’s limitless expanse and limitless armies. Their fears balanced one another, and there would be no war. But there would be slave raids and skirmishes and killings, all of which each ruler could feign ignorance of. There would be contracts that sent the Free hunting slavers. And everyone, if they chose, could pretend that it was not war.

The Orphanidon looked around. For the first time, he shifted his attention from Yulan to the rest of them and let his gaze flow around the circle of the Free. It brushed over Brennan, and for that moment he felt all the cold confidence and certitude of this potent warrior.