Grim Company 02 - Sword Of The North (60 page)

Kayne’s eyes snapped open. ‘This far south?’ he muttered, shocked and dismayed. He’d been intending to see the orphans to Southhaven, then find a horse and ride west and north, circling around to the West Reaching and joining up with Carn Bloodfist’s army. If even the peaceful Green Reaching had become caught up in the war, nowhere in the Heartlands was likely to be safe.

Brick was readying his bow. Kayne placed a firm hand around his narrow shoulders and shook his head. ‘Not here, lad. There’s too many.’

‘We’re not going to fight?’

‘We’re outnumbered twenty to one.’

‘But… you’re the Sword of the North.’

‘I’m just a man, lad. One man goes up against twenty, he gets a spear in the back and a half a dozen swords in the ribs while he’s wondering which way to turn first. Twenty on one, it don’t matter how good the one is. Fact is, he dies.’ He remembered Red Valley, men dropping like leaves all around him. He looked at Jana, noticed the set of her jaw and the glint in her eyes. She wanted a fight, wanted the chance to regain whatever honour she thought she’d lost back in the ruins. ‘Let me do the talking,’ he said firmly.

The band of warriors approached slowly. They were dressed for battle, fully armoured and bristling with weapons. Many wore cloaks with fur-lined hoods covering their faces, but those that didn’t looked young. Very young.

One warrior, a big fellow with a deep cleft in his chin who couldn’t have seen his twentieth winter, took a step forward. He hardly seemed able to control his anger. ‘Got some gall passing back this way after the evil shit you done.’ He cleared his throat noisily and spat.

Kayne glanced at the yellow spittle dribbling down the front of his leather vest. He took a deep breath to calm himself, then, keeping his voice level and his hands by his sides: ‘Come again?’

‘Men and children slain. Women raped with cold steel and left to bleed out. The Butcher thinks we’re sheep-fuckers and cowards? That he can send his Kingsmen to terrorize us and we’ll bend over and take it?’

‘Hang on a minute, I ain’t no Kingsman—’

‘Bullshit!’ the warrior roared. A vein on his thick neck stood out angrily. ‘You chased these kids all the way down from Heartstone on the King’s orders. What, sacrificing children to demons wasn’t enough for you, old man? Couldn’t get you hard enough?’

‘Watch your mouth,’ Kayne snarled. He had his greatsword in his hands, his own anger getting the better of him now.

The cleft-jawed warrior advanced, two spearmen falling in behind him, their hoods hiding their faces. ‘I’m gonna send your head back to that butcher,’ the leader hissed. He sprang at Kayne, sword flashing down.

Kayne casually disarmed the young firebrand, then planted a boot in his mid-section and sent him flailing back to land flat on his arse.

The spearman on the left leaped at him, thrusting towards his chest. Kayne knocked aside the stabbing steel tip, kicked away the man’s legs and sent his weapon skittering across the snow with a flick of his foot.

That left one spearman remaining, at least as an immediate threat. This bastard was good, much better than Kayne might’ve expected. He seemed to waver a little as if drunk, and in fact Kayne could smell the mead on the man’s breath – but his spear batted aside Kayne’s every attack, thwarted his every effort at subduing the fellow.

The apparent leader of the band, the big one with the cleft in his chin, clambered to his feet and turned to his men. ‘Kill him!’ he roared.

Out of the corner of his eye Kayne saw Brick fumbling for an arrow and Jana Shah Shan taking up a fighting stance. ‘Call your men off!’ he tried to yell. ‘I ain’t no Kingsman!’ But the damned spearman kept coming at him, and any second now the other warriors would reach him. He and Jana and maybe even Brick were going to die here, all because of one hot-headed young fool with fire in his blood who’d mistaken him for someone else. He snarled and redoubled his efforts until he drove the spearman to his knees. He lined up his greatsword for a killing blow. There was no point pulling his punches; it seemed they were beyond that.

‘Kayne?
’

The disbelieving gasp reached his ears at the last possible moment. He turned his blade aside just before it cleaved through the man’s neck, staring down in disbelief as the warrior reached up and pulled back his hood.

‘Taran?’ he said dumbly, once his brain finally caught up.

It’d been many years since he’d last seen that face, and it had changed for the worse. Taran had been handsome once, but now his skin had the ruddy, vein-threaded complexion of a man who’d drunk far too much. His eyes were yellowed and dull and his teeth, where he still had them, more brown than white.

Taran scrambled up and twisted to face the advancing warriors. ‘Stop,’ he shouted. ‘He’s not lying. This ain’t no Kingsman!’

‘Then who the fuck
is
he? He sure as hell fights like one.’ The leader scowled and held up a hand, halting his men.

‘This… this man here is the Sword of the North.’

That brought gasps and incredulous laughter from the band of warriors. ‘You taking the piss, Taran?’ said Cleft-chin angrily. ‘The Sword of the North’s ancient history. Borun hunted him down.’

‘Aye,’ Kayne said, reaching up and sheathing his greatsword. ‘He hunted me down. But I’m still here, and Borun’s dead.’

It turned out the leader’s name was Carver. He was the eldest son of Brandwyn the Younger, chieftain of the Green Reaching, and he and his band had set out from Southhaven as soon as his father’s council had voted in favour of war against Krazka. The atrocities committed in the King’s name could not go unanswered.

Kayne listened as Carver described the events that had led to the Butcher King seizing the throne whilst the Shaman and the Brethren were elsewhere, summoned down to the Trine by the Tyrant of Dorminia. Kayne himself had witnessed the moment the Shaman had received news of Krazka’s audacious coup, though at the time all he knew was that Heartstone was in grave peril. The revelation that Mhaira yet lived had stunned him. It was only after he considered what Heartstone’s peril actually meant that he had begun to fear for Magnar.

‘Demons,’ he said again. ‘What kind of man bargains with demons?’

‘A madman,’ Carver replied. ‘You never saw the things Krazka did at Beregund.’

No
, Kayne thought bitterly.
I was trapped in a cage while my friends were murdered and the capital was burned to the ground.

‘What you gonna do, Kayne?’ Taran asked. The one-time Warden was a broken man. Red Valley had done to him all those years ago what the horrors of the Borderland couldn’t. Soon after returning from the war, Taran had been exiled from Heartstone for beating his wife to death in a drunken rage. Kayne had wanted nothing to do with his old friend after that. As Taran sat there now, breath stinking of mead, Kayne just felt pity for him.

‘Krazka’s placed my boy in a wicker cage,’ he said quietly. ‘I got no love for the Shaman, but if I’m gonna get Magnar out of there, he and the Bloodfist are my only hope.’

‘Rumour is the Shaman’s not long for this world,’ Carver said. ‘He’s dying, if such a thing’s possible. Hasn’t been seen in months. Most of the Brethren were slaughtered outside Heartstone’s walls.’ The young warrior shook his head and spat. ‘We can’t count on the Shaman’s help. Still, my father will be pleased to know the Sword of the North stands with us. We’re rounding up the last of the fighting men down south before we move north to join my father’s army.’

Kayne nodded slowly, still taken aback by the news about the Shaman. It scarcely seemed possible. ‘Someone ought to send word to Eastmeet. Watcher’s Keep’s likely fallen, but Orgrim Foehammer might yet live. If it’s demons we’re fighting, there ain’t no man more experienced.’

Taran stared at him. There was something like shame in his bleary eyes. ‘Kayne… Orgrim threw in his lot with Krazka.’

‘What?’ Kayne felt as though someone had stuck a knife in his ribs and twisted it.

‘Shortly after the Herald showed up the demons started getting more numerous. They flooded the Borderland, until the Wardens couldn’t hold the Keep any longer. Krazka offered the Foehammer a choice. Stand down and be spared the demons, or… Well, you can guess the rest.’

Kayne thought back to that fateful moment on the bank of the Icemelt when Orgrim had saved his life. He thought back to the morning of his Initiation, when the Foehammer had volunteered to lead him into the Borderland together with the broken warrior sitting opposite him. ‘But the Foehammer was a man of honour,’ he whispered to Taran. ‘He was true.’

Taran shrugged helplessly. ‘There’s none that are true any more. We’re old men, Kayne. We bend with the world or we break.’ He hiccupped, still half-drunk, and tried to hide his trembling hands.

Silence followed. Kayne watched the foundlings playing in the snow. Brick had his arm around Corinn’s shoulders, the two of them staring out at the white hills. Jana was fiddling with the medallion she wore around her neck beneath her black clothing. Apparently the amulet, a gift from the Wizard-Emperor himself, would hasten her return home. According to Jana, its magic would function only for graduates of the Academy.

Brodar Kayne cleared his throat. This was it. No point putting it off any longer. ‘There’s something I need to know,’ he said.

Taran and Carver looked at him. Behind the three men the rest of the band waited. Occasionally someone would cast a curious glance in Kayne’s direction. ‘Go on,’ said Taran.

‘Mhaira. My wife. I thought she was dead, but the truth… the truth is she was exiled by the Shaman.’ He paused for a moment. Afraid to ask. Afraid to know the answer. ‘I wonder if you got any idea where she might be.’

Carver looked puzzled. Like the rest of his band, he knew Kayne only by reputation.

Taran, though, was a different matter. ‘I’ve spent the last eight years in exile,’ he said slowly. ‘Been all over the Fangs. Everywhere save the Heartlands, which were forbidden me by the terms of banishment. I never saw nor heard anything that might’ve led me to think Mhaira was close by.’

Kayne sagged.

‘Except… there was this one evening…’ Taran closed his eyes, as if searching for something buried deep in his drink-scoured mind. ‘I was travelling back south two months ago. Returning home after I heard the Shaman got ousted. I passed near Beregund on the way. Nothing but a burned-out ruin now, but I wanted to see it for myself. Anyways, a few miles on I spotted a field with a couple of houses. I remember being surprised. I couldn’t understand why the army that marched on the capital had left them untouched. I saw light coming from one of the houses, and I thought to myself, this reminds me of the place my old friend told me about at Red Valley. When we was surrounded by Targus Bloodfist’s army and men were dying all around us, and we was sure we’d be joining them any moment. I asked you what it was that made you keep going. That made you fight on. And you answered that it was a vision. A vision of following the long road home after this was all over and stepping from the shadows into the light.’

As Kayne listened to Taran, he began to shake. ‘Two months? he said, his voice husky. ‘You said it was two months back?’

‘Aye, two months. Give or take a week.’

Kayne hesitated, frozen by uncertainty. He wanted nothing more than to find a horse and ride home and find Mhaira and take her in his arms. But that would take precious days of travel – and lead him away from Heartstone.

Magnar needed him. His son was in dire trouble. The promise he’d made to Mhaira burned in his chest.

‘I need a horse,’ he said, climbing to his feet.

Carver looked from Taran to Kayne. ‘You’re leaving?’

‘I’m going to join your pa and his army. Ain’t no more time to waste.’

‘There’s a farm a mile north of here. Place ought to have a horse of some kind.’

Kayne went to Brick and Corinn. They turned as he approached. Kayne hesitated, then reached out and placed a hand on Brick’s shoulder. ‘I’m going to join the army. My son needs me. Afterwards I’m going home to Mhaira. She’s here, Brick. She’s alive.’

Brick stared at him for a moment – and then his freckled face folded into an enormous smile. ‘I knew you’d find her!’ he exclaimed, his green eyes bright.

A snowball hit Brick on the back of the head and he turned. Milo was grinning at them, hands dripping wet. The other foundlings were teaming up to build a big snowman. ‘His name’s Grunt!’ Tiny Tom piped up happily.

‘Corinn and me are going to Southhaven with the children,’ Brick said, wiping snow from his red hair. ‘They need someone to watch over them.’

Kayne nodded. He’d figured as much. ‘Carver says you should be safe in the capital. As safe anyone can be in these dark times. The Green Reaching’s declared against Krazka. The Kingsmen that came through here looking for the younglings will be killed on sight, and so will anyone else proclaiming to serve that butcher. We’re at war now.’ He turned to Corinn. ‘Make sure you look after young Brick,’ he said, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘He ain’t as tough as he thinks he is.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Corinn said, smiling shyly.

‘All right then, Brick,’ Kayne said. He cleared his throat.

‘All right,’ answered Brick, not meeting his eyes.

They stood there awkwardly for a moment. Then Kayne leaned forward and embraced the young flame-haired archer. ‘You keep safe, you hear?’ he whispered. ‘I’ll come check on you once this is all over.’

He felt Brick nod, and something suspiciously moist trickled down the boy’s cheek and landed on his hand. It might have been melted snow, except that it was warm.

Having bid farewell to the youngsters, Kayne went to say goodbye to Jana. She nodded at him and adjusted her veil. ‘I’m sorry to say that I must shortly depart. There is no sign of the thief, and my betrothed is waiting for me.’ The snow fell more thickly now, flecking her black hair and clothes.

‘You never did tell me who your betrothed is.’

Jana looked faintly embarrassed. ‘You recall I told you that he taught me much? I meant that literally. He is… was… my master at the Academy. Our relationship is forbidden by law. I thought that if I volunteered for this mission and succeeded, our indiscretions might be overlooked. But I have failed.’