Interregnum (2 page)

“Come on out where we can see you” he said, his voice still clear, though less forceful.

With more rustling and the tearing sounds of cloth on bramble, the figure struggled out into the light. He was young, though not as young as Kiva had initially thought. Perhaps eighteen or nineteen years of age, he’d have been fighting battles for years had he been born among the northern tribes. This lad, on the other hand, had quite obviously never used a weapon in anger in his life. He was clean shaven with short, blond clipped and curly hair, the pale studious look of a scholar and a white tunic that had seen much better days. The material was torn in numerous places by thorns and here and there spattered with mud or blood. Indeed there was a spray of blood on the lad’s neck and arm, though none of it appeared at closer inspection to be his own. Kiva pointed at the boy and gestured angrily out over the landscape.

“What the hell are you doing in the middle of a battlefield?”

The lad opened his mouth to speak, but Kiva cut him off sharply. “Nah, forget it. Don’t really care. Just turn and head that way, downhill. Don’t stop ‘til you’re well clear of this place. There’s a town about five miles away where you’ll be safe.”

The young man looked frightened and raised his hands in supplication. His cracked voice warbled “I can’t go on my own. Everyone else is dead.”

Kiva became aware that Athas had his hand round the hatchet haft and was gently encouraging him to lower the weapon. He relaxed his stance and dropped the hatchet to ground level. He’d never even heard the second creak as his second in command had released the pressure on the bow.

The captain sighed. “Look, we’re in the middle of a campaign here. I’ve a dozen men hungry for food and pay and I haven’t got time to deal with your problems too. Fuck off and find someone else to bother, just stay out of the way of my camp.”

He growled in irritation as he felt Athas’ reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll handle it sir,” the hulking sergeant said in a reassuring voice.

With a shrug, Kiva stood and swung the hatchet in small circles around his wrist, glaring at his sergeant as he spoke.

“Don’t be long. You’re still on watch until three. And don’t do anything stupid.”

He walked back up the slight incline toward the ruined walls that sheltered the men of the Grey Company. With a sigh he took a seat on the wall and, while he began to strap his armour of interlocking plates back on he watched Athas and the boy in deep conversation among the scrub at the edge of the light. An irritating suspicion crept over him that the sergeant was busy consoling the lad rather than getting rid of him.

It never ceased to amaze him, with all the years gone by and the hard, rough, bloody life they’d lived that Athas could never let a problem go past without getting himself involved. Still, they’d all had pride and cared about these small things once, he supposed, in the days when they had been the Wolves and the Empire had celebrated their actions. So much time had passed since then. They’d been the Grey Company for around fifteen years, and Kiva’d been a mercenary Captain; money was the name of the game these days. There
was
no centralised army. Oh, some of the old guard were signed up more or less permanently with one Lord or another, but when the day came that that Lord fell, so would their military force and any renowned veteran among them became just another victim. Safer by far to be a mercenary, serving no longer than a season with a single Lord. Last season they’d been serving with Lord Jothus at Avarilum, and they’d wintered in the city before moving on to join another faction. During their season of rest they’ been unlucky enough to see Lord Jothus’ fall, from the storming of his palace right down to his breaking on the iron bed and disembowelling in the public square.

Kiva suddenly became aware of movement on the hill and returned his attention to his Sergeant. Athas and the boy were coming up the hill together. Damn it. Why’d he left the sergeant to deal with it? He fastened the last thong on his body armour of overlapping steel plates and stood.

“What the hell are you doing, Athas?” he asked, gesturing angrily with both hands.

The huge sergeant stopped a few feet away, lending some support to the obviously weary lad. “He’s got a proposition” the man replied.

“I’ll bet he has,” Kiva growled. “Not interested.” The captain turned his back, reaching toward his paired swords.

Athas grinned and, stepping in front of Kiva, held out his bunched fist. “I think you might be.” He opened his hand.

The clink of coins was loud in the quiet night as the gold coronas hit the ground. Kiva looked down at the coins and then back up, surprise and irritation struggling for supremacy on his face.

“Gold?” he queried. “Where did a lad like you get gold currency?” He waved a hand dismissively. “I don’t deal with thieves; we’re honest men.”

The young man took a step forward and fell to his knee in front of Kiva, his face downcast. “I’m no thief sir, and I know you’re an honest man.” He looked up into the captain’s face and his voice took on the slight lilt of a youth trained in poetry and rhetoric. “I know who you are, General Caerdin.” The voice had been low, but the intonation carried so much weight.

Athas blinked. Kiva growled and leaned forward in a menacing manner, his extended finger pressed against the young man’s cheek.

“Don’t be so damned stupid boy” he replied. “You know as well as I that Caerdin died when the Emperor fell. I’m Kiva Tregaron of the Grey Company, not some poncy ‘hero’ out of the days of old.”

The boy shook his head and reached out, clutching the hem of Kiva’s tunic.

“I’m not stupid! I’ve read the histories of Carolus and Phrygias, and all about your past. I’ve even seen your portraits. I know who you are, General, whether you care to admit it or not.”

Athas leaned forward and whispered into the boy’s ear. “Whether he
were
that man or no, it’s not something you go around shouting. Be quiet for all our sakes.”

Kiva nodded and, stretching his shoulders, drew on his gauntlet, fastening it round his wrist. He pointed an armoured finger at the boy, his face coldly neutral.

“Regardless, whatever you have to offer us, we’re not interested. We’re already commissioned by his lordship.”

The boy shook his head as words tumbled from his mouth. “What I’m offering must be well over a year’s pay for your company. You don’t even know what I’m proposing, so you cannot tell me you’re not interested.”

Kiva turned his back on the boy again and reached down to the wall for his other gauntlet. “I said I’m not interested” he said coldly. “Now piss off and find someone else to bother.”

The lad knelt for a long, quiet moment and then stood, nodding slowly and forlornly as he swept the worst of the dust and dirt from his white tunic and khaki breeches.

“Very well, Captain” the boy said in an emotionless tone. “If you won’t help, you obviously
aren’t
the General that I thought you were. I must be mistaken.
He
was a man of honour.”

Kiva whipped round at the insult and opened his mouth to put the boy in his place but, as he caught sight of the pathetic figure, his words flitted away unspoken. He pointed angrily down the hill and the lad turned and stumbled painfully down the slope toward the brush once more. Athas wandered across to his commander and sat on the wall beside him, sighing.

“You do know that you’ve probably just condemned him to death, don’t you?”

Kiva shrugged. “The whole world’s gone to shit Athas,” he sighed, “and we’ve not got time to help every stray you come across, no matter what he has to offer. We’re contracted to Lord Bergama for at least the next two weeks and you know it.”

Athas nodded and reached into his tunic, withdrawing a canteen of spirit. He unscrewed the lid with a thoughtful look on his face and took a quick swig.

“True,” he replied, “but you know as well as I do the odds we’re up against tomorrow. Only sunset saved us today. We’re outnumbered about five to one. Bergama’s gone; he just doesn’t know it yet. Another tower fallen in the game.”

Kiva stared off into the distance, his eyes slightly defocused. “Maybe soon all the Lords’ll have fallen” he muttered. “Then there’ll be peace.” He snorted. “But of course there’ll also be no one to pay our keep.”

Athas grasped his Captain’s shoulder. “The lad had gold” he implored. “Real gold, in Imperial currency. More too. He only wanted a bodyguard. Stupid not to even consider it.”

Kiva turned to look his sergeant in the eye and Athas recognised the steel in it.

“The lad thinks I’m Caerdin and that’s not something any officer wants to hear, least of all me. He’s either crazy, stupid or reckless or all three at once. Any way you take it, we’re better off without him. I don’t care, I just want to get through tomorrow and then we’ll think about the next step.”

Athas smiled sympathetically. “That’s crap sir” the big sergeant said. “You want your men to get through tomorrow, not you.
You’ve
never wanted to get through the next day. You’ve just been looking for a way to get yourself killed for twenty years now. Problem is: you got so damn good at surviving, it became second nature. I doubt if the Gods themselves could kill you now.”

Kiva pulled away from his sergeant’s hand and pointed down the hill. “He’s coming back, damn him.” The Captain picked up a small pebble and hoisted his arm back to throw.

“I don’t think you should do that sir,” Athas said quietly.

Kiva sighed as the lad ran up toward the wall.

“Come on lad, piss off. I told you the answer’s no.” He rolled the pebble in his palm for a minute and then dropped it to the floor.

The young man stopped and rested his hands on his knees, gulping down air. As soon as he stopped heaving, he spoke in a breathless rush. “There’s … there’s an awful lot of soldiers … in dark … green down there, creeping along the … gully. Thought you should know.”

“Green?” Kiva asked sharply. “Dark green?”

Athas glanced for only a second at his captain and then turned and leaned over the wall, cupping his hands round his mouth.

“Stand to!” He called, his voice echoing round the ruined building. “Enemy sighted.”

In a testament to the training and the fighting spirit of the Grey Company, every man was upright and arming in a matter of seconds. Kiva nodded at his sergeant and then vaulted over the wall, grasping his swords from where they still leaned against the crumbling stonework and sweeping them from their scabbards one after the other.

 
Athas turned to the young man. “Thanks lad” he uttered. “Now get inside behind the walls and keep yourself out of sight.”

As the young man walked across the threshold into the ruined building, Athas stopped him and handed over the hatchet that had been left on the wall. “Just in case.”

Moments later all twelve members of the Grey Company were at the wall. Like mercenary units everywhere, no two of them wore the same armour or bore the same weapons. The one thing that
was
uniform was the charcoal grey of their gear, from tunics to breeches to shield faces. Grey was the colour. Indeed, when fully ready, they were barely visible in the darkness, an army of ghosts in the flickering firelight.

Athas took his position at the far left as Kiva took a place on the right. The sergeant drew a long, curved southern blade from his back scabbard and stuck it point first into the ground near the wall before removing half a dozen arrows from his quiver and planting them into the loose mortar on top of the wall in a similar fashion. With a creak of his recurve bow, he prepared himself and then nocked an arrow. Kiva nodded at Thalo next to him and the dark haired archer put down his bow and struck a flint and tinder, sparking until the dry substance on the ruined wall caught light and blossomed. He put a few small sticks and knots of dry grass on it and then, nodding at the captain, took up his bow once more. Kiva hefted his two gently curved swords and gave them a practice swing. He’d never taken to using a shield and had never been a great marksman. Along the wall, between the sergeant and himself, a number of men drew their own weapons of choice, three more of them bows.