Blood of War (16 page)

Thalor painted on a frosty smile. “Yes. Of course. I think this group might have stood out. There were four of them, on horse. A tall brute with blond hair and blue eyes. An old man, also tall, looks almost emaciated. A short bulky man with a sword. A young man, with the bearing of a soldier. Do these descriptions ring any bells?”

Morgen licked his lips and his sweating increased until it was nearly a torrent. His eyes darted as he searched for an answer that would satisfy, that would get this hostile army out of his town, that would avert bloodshed.

“N-no, Yer Grace. I seen no one like that.”

“Really? Are you certain?” Thalor leaned forward, pinned Morgen with dagger eyes. “They must have passed by here. As you say, your village is on the caravan route.”

Shouts erupted from outside; Morgen's eyes flicked to the door.

“What's this-?”

A scream, high and filled with pain, punctured the air, followed by another. Morgen took a step toward the door. “What's goin on?” he shouted.

Before he made his second step, as the scream was joined by more shrieks, turned into a veritable chorus of agony, one of the Soldiers stepped in front of Morgen and placed the point of his sword on Morgen's chest.

For the first time since their arrival, Morgen showed something other than fear in his features. Outrage? Anger? Could the man have larger stones than Thalor had first presumed?

“What's goin on?”

Thalor could not help it. He smiled. It was a real smile, the smile of a man who was enjoying himself. And as Morgen gazed upon the terrible smile, his face drained of all color—even his flaming beard seemed to pale.

“That,” Thalor said quietly, very quietly, like a strop on a blade, “is my men asking your folk the same questions I am asking you. I would surmise that my men are as happy with the answers they are receiving as I am.”

The cloying stench of burning slowly began to filter in around the crack of the door jamb and the badly sealed windows. The grimy windows that looked onto the main street, began flickering with blurry orange light. Thalor held Morgen's eyes as the smell of smoke intensified.

“Private, please stand aside so that the good headman may see what comes of thwarting the church.”

The sword snapped back and Morgen raced to the door. When he opened it, he let out a cry and sank to his knees.

In the center of the village, great pillars of flame were shooting from the homes and shops of the residents licking hungrily at the already hazy sky. The villagers themselves, those that were not lying in spreading pools of blood, were being herded toward the central square. A dozen Soldiers trotted past the door in perfect unison, swords drawn.

“What in the name of God are ye doin?” Morgen shrieked.

“In the name of God, I am cleansing the land of heretics. Any who would aid the men we seek are summarily convicted. As you can see, the punishment is swift and severe.”

Thalor rose and gestured to the private with the sword. “Please escort him to the square where he may join his neighbors.”

Morgen had one more thing to say as he was pushed into the street with the tip of the private's sword: “
You bastard! You sick twisted bastard!
”

Thalor's lips quirked as he glanced at Reowynn. Reowynn's expression was stony but there was a light in his eyes. He, too, was enjoying himself. As the two stepped through the front door into the chaos that had upended Veloth, Thalor heard the distinct crackle of fire taking hold in the inn behind him. It was for the best, he thought. This heap was a danger to anyone who stepped foot in it. Burning it down would be doing a lot of innocent travelers a favor.

Remounting his horse, he took one last look at the scene. A knot of villagers huddled in the square, gazing with dead-eyed fear at each other, at their burning homes, at anything except for the line of Soldiers that faced them. One woman carrying a caterwauling baby broke free from the cluster and bolted. She managed to get seven or eight steps before three arrows sprouted from her back. She fell forward as though tripped by a stone. When she landed, the baby's crying cut off sharply.

“You know what to do, Major,” Thalor said and turned his mount toward the camp that was being erected outside the village, searching the peaks for his own tent.

“Of course, Your Eminence,” Reowynn acknowledged, and trotted off calling orders for more torches.

And why wouldn't he? After all, they had plenty of practice.

* * *

Gixen surveyed his growing army with pleasure. He had been traveling for weeks, gathering men the way a farmer gathers carrots—grub around in the muck and yank them out. Brush off the excess mud and there it is: one army, ready to go. The mass of sweaty men in the camp was, at last count, up near twenty thousand. Not enough. Not yet. But soon.

He walked between the ragged tents, mostly made of untanned or at best badly tanned animal skins, off-white or brown, and he breathed deeply of the sickly-sweet odor, relishing it. It was the scent of his people, the scent of warriors and of violence. He thought perhaps it was the sweetest thing in the world. A great thing to wake up to and to fall asleep with. He inspected the men that surrounded him, glancing at armor and at swords, checking for rust or mold. The stains did not matter. The men could still fight if they were covered in old chicken fat or dirt. It was the mold and the rust that could get them killed. He did not really care if they died. As long as they did it in battle, after he had completed his mission.

Every once in a while, he would point and bark a sharp order; the men surrounding the unfortunate he pointed at would jump up and grab the hapless victim and drag him forward until he stood in front of Gixen. Depending on the severity of the man's laxness—how far the mold and rust had spread—he would either be whipped, or in the worst cases, flayed. Of those who survived, not many made the same mistake twice. Every once in a while, he had a man whipped, or flayed, simply because he could, for no other reason than because he did not like how the man looked, or sat, or perhaps just because it amused him.

As he walked, and turned his eyes from one campfire to the next, and the next, men looked away from him, were frightened of him, as they should be. They were wolves. He was the pack leader.

It took him some time to get from one end of the sprawling camp to the other, carefully picking his steps over the broken, uneven ground, and when he did, he took another route back, picking out more men who needed discipline. Screams melded into the landscape, punctuated by the sharp crack of whips, and they became as ordinary as the crackle of fire.

The next day, more would join his force. And more, the day after. Until finally, there would be enough of them to sweep south in a ravening horde, killing everything in their path starting with that great hump of man-city, that great infected lump of wood and stone and plaster, the one that the southers called Killhern.

Well, killing
almost
everything in their path. There would be time for a little leisure, after all. A little sport with the local wildlife, a little hunting. He liked that: wildlife. Wildlife on two legs with brown eyes and skin the color of bare wood instead of the pale creatures that dwelt here in the north. Wildlife that would try to fight him off, to retaliate by scratching his back or maybe by trying to knee him in the groin as he impaled them on the end of his spear. He chuckled, well
pleased with himself. Wildlife.

He would hunt. He looked around as he walked, surveying the hundreds upon hundreds of campfires, eying the thousands of men as he passed. He was the wolf leader and they were his pack. He smiled. Everything was as it should be.

Part 2:

War Cries

“
We know until we don't.”

-Mikal

Chapter 14

In the end, it took them nearly two months to prepare. As winter's tenuous hold snapped like icicles hanging from an eave, the Abbey was in a furor. Supplies were gathered into great heaps in the main courtyard, counted and sorted by three harried sergeants—and dozens of underlings—who had been assigned the task of logistics, counting mountains of arms, armor, pots, pans, food, tents, medical supplies, uniforms, and the hundred other sundry bits and pieces that must accompany large groups of men on their way to battle. The air resounded with the heavy clash of metal on metal as smiths busied themselves at their forges, hammering out new shoes for the herds of horses that arrived almost daily, or striking out new blades, or arrow-heads.

The children of the brothers and sisters and various servants in the employ of the Abbey were chased from the fields to make way for soldiers—from single squads to entire platoons—who engaged in drills and field exercises, mock battles and maneuvers, though many of the children watched fascinated from a discreet distance as men and women pummeled each other with their practice swords or pikes, or practiced their archery on hastily erected, vaguely man shaped targets constructed of straw bundles wrapped in burlap.

Jurel, as the nominal commander in chief of the army, spent most of his time with Mikal and Gaven, the former being the commander of the forces at the Abbey, the latter being given the rank of captain at Jurel's behest, and placed in command of a platoon that would make the journey. Most of their time was spent in a dingy office set aside for Jurel's use (Jurel was certain that it was, in fact, a linen closet hastily cleared out; lit only by a single taper, without even the smallest window to alleviate the gloom, it smelled distinctly of a laundry room), poring over reams of paperwork, or engaging in impromptu lessons as Jurel's egregious lack of knowledge in the area of warfare became apparent. Learning how to fight effectively was one thing; learning how to get large groups to fight effectively was entirely another.

By the end of the first week of the preparations, Jurel was ready to tear out his hair in frustration. By the beginning of the third, he was ready to commit foul murder. By about the fifth week, having managed to avoid killing anyone—sometimes by the skin of his teeth—he spent most of his time stunned, wearing a permanently startled expression.

“How the hells do you remember all of this?” he demanded for the umpteenth time, throwing down his quill, his chair creaking alarmingly as he leaned back.

With an annoyed grunt, Mikal glared at him and sat back down on the rickety stool across from Jurel's rickety desk. “Because it has to be done. Don't interrupt. Just pay attention. Now. When you manage to locate the exact position of your enemy, the first thing you need to do is...”

Oh
gods.

Reports came in of troop movement to the north; more villages burned to the ground, though thankfully, they came sporadically. Whether that meant that less villages were being burned or that the information was not getting through, no one could say. Jurel chose to go with the former. Reports of troop movements from the south were a prime concern to the command council; the primary danger seeming to be a pincer movement by the enemy as the two armies move toward each other with Jurel's force in the middle.

His meal times were most often spent swallowing his food without bothering to chew, knowing full well that he likely would not have time for even that much before someone interrupted him with urgent, can't-wait-for-five-minutes business, such as how many shirts he wanted packed with his things. Even after he dragged himself to his bed each night, well past moonrise, his head feeling like it was turning slowly to boiling mush and his eyes trying to push their way out of their sockets, he knew he would not be given more than the barest minimum time to sleep. To him, it was as though someone must have taken up position just outside his door every night whose sole duty it was to inform everyone the moment he drifted off so they could form a line to present their ever so urgent demands. Like whether he preferred his collars starched or not.

During these weeks of preparations, he found himself asking one question more and more often: What had bloody well possessed him to, in perfect mulish fashion, assert his authority and personally take command of this nightmare? By the end of the month, that question had distilled itself to the very essence of what he felt, and a different, more distilled question came clear in his mind: Why me?

On the morning of their departure, before the sun was more than a hint on the eastern horizon, but long after the moon had gone to its daily bed, with stars still sparkling sharply high above like an omen, Jurel strode from the wide double doors that were the main entrance into the Abbey and down the few steps to the courtyard. His army was arrayed in platoons, each one fronted by an ensign who carried their standard, though with only torches lighting the yard, the limp flags were as yet no more than dark smudges like tar oozing down the sides of the pikes.

Along the top of the compound walls, and in doors, and windows, other soldiers stood—those selected to remain behind to continue fortifying the Abbey.

Mikal and Gaven waited nearby with Kurin and Metana. Goromand, Garvus, Fagan, and Selena rounded out the small group. Their heads were bent close in quiet conversation; upon sighting Jurel, they fell silent and watched his approach.

With one eyebrow raised, Jurel halted in front of them. “What?”

“Nothing, my boy. Nothing,” Kurin said grandly, a grin creasing the corners of his eyes. “We're just waiting for you.”

“Well, I'm here.” Jurel shrugged.

Mikal, his second-in-command, his back to the men, glared at him. “Have you not heard anything I've told you?” His voice rumbled deep in his chest, a sure sign of his displeasure.

Jurel stared blankly back. Obviously, he had forgotten something, but Mikal had shoveled a lot of information at him these past months, and try as he might, he could not seem to part the veil of sleep that still wrapped tightly around his mind.

“It's traditional for the general to address his men before marching, Jurel,” Gaven said quietly. “Not too much, you know. Just a few words of inspiration so the troops will have something when they're slogging along the road wondering what they're doing there.”