Kingshelm (Renegade Druid Cycle Book 1) (29 page)

“Blessed Mahurin,” said Pruska, an aloof but hard working member of the squad. “Hear my entreaty to you, Warden of Fentress.”
 

Barryn and his squad mates fell silent in deference to the religious man’s prayer. “Bless us this day, which you have made. Grant us a straight road to march and strong arms with which to fight. Let us shine in Your wisdom and glory and return safely from the day’s labors. In Your name are all good things set before us.”
 

The prayer finished, the bustle of the morning’s activities resumed. Barryn and Crossbow helped each other buckle their cuirasses over their black doublets. Delton and Hansid did the same nearby. Jarvik had assigned the new soldiers “battle buddies” to help guide them through the everyday activities and idiosyncrasies of life in the squad.
 

“It’s crooked, Snowflake,” Crossbow said and nudged Barryn’s kettle helm. “How’s mine?”

“Good.”
 

“Let’s go. Out of the tent,” Jarvik said. “Don’t be the last one in here.”
 

The squad rushed out the door and stood in line abreast in front of the tent, awaiting the corporal’s inspection before the day’s work began. Jarvik started at Barryn’s right, making minor adjustments and pointing out at least one off detail or minor problem to correct on each of the mercenaries.
 

Then it was Barryn’s turn under Jarvik’s humorless gaze, and the squad leader’s neutral face magnified the cold darkness of his eyes. Barryn felt Jarvik’s body heat and breath as he tugged at straps and straightened seams on his clothing.
 

Every item on Barryn’s frame was surveyed quickly and thoroughly: his calf-high boots, black breeches (tucked snugly into the strap-laden boots), arming doublet, blackened cuirass, dark brown belt, Blood Singer, wickedly fluked and spiked buckler, cranequin, crossbow, blackened steel kettle helm. Barryn catalogued each item as it fell under Jarvik’s gaze and wondered what deficiency the corporal would find.
 

“That cranequin needs oil,” Jarvik said, and moved on to Delton.
 

After the early morning inspection, the mercenaries lined up at their platoon’s mess tent to break their fast on boiled oats, sausage and a ration of dried fruits meant to prevent scurvy. Each platoon also had a sutler wagon that was allowed to sell the mercenaries whatever treats and condiments they could afford.
 

Barryn saved his coin and scarfed down his ration, then helped his squad dismantle and pack their tent on one of their assigned mules. Each of the mercenaries’ few belongings and money were stored in locked trunks that were loaded into the squad’s wagon, along with their pavises, spare crossbow parts and various projectiles designed for a variety of targets.
 

After the camp was packed away and the men formed by platoon, they marched for three hours and, instead of stopping for a midday meal, lined up in battle formation on a small rise in the grassy plain. The crossbowmen screened the rest of the infantry, and the heavy cavalry guarded the flanks.
 

A half mile away, a motley array of horsemen began to form their ranks and advance toward the Black Swans. They left a cluster of tents surrounded by laagered wagons, but otherwise sparsely defended.
 

Barryn’s first taste of combat was a frantic blur as he followed the orders Jarvik yelled as the enemy horsemen approached. He responded thoughtlessly to the signals transmitted to the soldiers by bugle calls and drums. He cranked and fired at the armored men galloping toward him, cranked furiously, reloaded his crossbow and fired again, just like the rest of the squad mates, just like the rest of the men in the other nineteen crossbow squads. Barryn had no articulate thoughts, no grand realization that he was in war. There was only his gasping breath, racing heart and burning muscles from the wild cranking.

A bugle rang the call for the Swans’ cavalry to advance and, a moment later, decisively called
Charge
. Barryn’s part in the combat was over. His heart continued to gallop like the cavalrymen’s horses even as he and his comrades rested the butts of their crossbows on the ground and stood at battlefield rest. The speed and massed violence with which the cavalry struck the fleeing enemy was a spectacle on a scale Barryn had never seen among human activity—a storm coming in from the mountains surpassed the cavalry charge in its sheer terror and splendor. Barryn could think of no other way to describe the action.
 

The infantrymen around Barryn shook their weapons in the air and let loose a rising cacophony of cheers, cat calls and insults when the two wings of cavalry cut their way through the enemy’s disintegrating formation and joined in the middle of the field.
 

Barryn raised his crossbow above his head joined the abusive noise the Black Swan Company was making for the fleeing enemy.
 

“I love watching them do that,” Crossbow yelled in Barryn’s ear above the din. “The cav is a bunch of insufferable pricks most of the time, but when they charge…when they charge, it’s a thing of beauty. I never get tired of watching them.”
 

Barryn learned after the skirmish they and a gaggle of mounted free companies had blundered into each other. Whereas the Black Swan Company was organized and cohesive, their enemies were anything but. Some of the enemy men-at-arms had dashed into the withering volleys of the crossbowmen, while others hesitated. Some of the freebooters turned their attention to securing the bevy of captive women and girls they had rounded up from their previous raids. Others fled the field knowing their lives would soon be forfeit otherwise.
 

After the excitement of combat, Barryn also learned that day, came the two grim tasks of policing the battlefield and shooing civilians away from the war-torn ruins of their lives and homes.
 

Barryn’s squad was chosen for the latter. They marched toward the overturned mess that had been the enemy’s encampment. Among the fallen tents and abandoned wagons was a circle of ramshackle carts, obviously looted from peasants’ homesteads along the trail of ruin they burned through the country.
 

Barryn’s limbs went numb when he, Crossbow and Delton broke the laager open. Two hundred dirty, bedraggled women and girls were tied to the wagons or stakes driven in the ground. The crossbowmen cut them free, and a corporal and several men from the quartermaster’s platoon took down the names and home villages of the captives.
 

“Ladies, your attention,” Corporal Jarvik said in his booming command voice. “I am Corporal Jarvik of the Black Swan Company, a member in good standing of the Mercenaries Guild. On this battlefield, I am an officer under the aegis of Imperial law, and in such capacity I place you under oath. By show of hands, tell me true if you accuse your captors of any violence against your physical body, whether corporal or sexual.”
 

They all silently raised their hands. Barryn was standing next to the quartermaster with the list of names and watched him place checkmarks next to all of the names. “That makes the paperwork easy,” he said quietly to Barryn.
 

“This deposition is a legal document and will be entered in the grievance the Province of Brynn has presented against the Province of Relfast before the Imperial High Tribunal,” Jarvik said to the captives. “You are free to go. Agents of the Black Swan Company will escort you off the battlefield.”

With that, black-clad mercenaries gently herded the women and girls out of their captivity and toward a starving and dangerous freedom.
 

The squad next began systematically looting the tents and abandoned equipment in the camp. Quartermasters stood next to a cluster of wagons in the middle of the camp and cataloged the weapons, armor and valuables and packed them neatly away.
 

“Ready?” Crossbow said as he stationed himself at the door of a still-standing tent. Barryn, Delton, and Jarvik lined up at a 45-degree angle from the entrance, swords drawn.
 

“Now,” the squad leader commanded.

Crossbow flung the tent flap open, and Barryn led the others’ charge inside. “Udric, Kyntha and Taern!” Barryn swore.
 

A scrawny girl, maybe 12 or 13 years old, with haunted eyes and torn clothes stood over a charred, twisted corpse.
 

The mercenaries stared in grim silence at the body, which was still clad in the remnants of armor and battlefield kit.
 

“What do we do with her?” Barryn asked.

“What the fuck do you mean, Snowflake?” Crossbow said. “We cut her adrift like the rest of them and move on.”

“We can’t do that,” Barryn said. “Those animals will find her. She won’t stand a chance out there by herself.”
 

“Somebody will pick her up. She’s too little to fuck, so she won’t get raped,” Delton said.

“No, she’s not to little to fuck. But that’s not our problem,” Jarvik said.
 

“Wait,” Barryn said. “We’re in the enemy camp taking enemy equipment. She’s an unclaimed girl. We can take custody of her and press her into service. I know Lady Jasmine—she’ll find work for her around our camp.”

One of the quartermaster corporals walked in and blanched at the grisly scene.

“That’s not Lady Jasmine’s decision to make,” Jarvik said.
 

“Let’s take her, Corporal Jarvik,” the quartermaster said. “I’ve already sealed the Release of Civilians report, and it would be a pain in my ass to amend it just for her.”
 

Jarvik shook his head in resignation. He jabbed a finger at Barryn. “She’s your responsibility until we get back to camp.”
 

“So what the fuck happened to this guy?” Crossbow asked, prodding the blackened corpse with his toe.
 

“The tent burned down,” Jarvik said and turned to leave. “Find a torch and make that happen, Delton. Move out!”

The five spires of the Empty Tower loomed above Emperor Mithrandrates in the warm darkness of the summer night. The red moon Taer was waxing gibbous, and the white moon Kyn was a sickle-like crescent in the starry, deep blue sky.
 

The Empty Tower was actually five slender towers, four of them surrounding an even taller fifth. The four outer towers were connected by a circular wall forming a stone ring around the central tower. The whole complex sat in the heart of the Five Sided Temple, a place where even the Emperor’s predecessors had been forbidden.

Two robed figures armed with ceremonial staffs flanked the door at the base of one of the outer towers, and another robed man accompanied the Emperor as he approached.
 

“No drugs this time?” Mithrandrates asked.
 

“There will be no drugs to aid you during this level of initiation,” the robed man beside him said. “Only
vir
, and the knowledge you bring with you through this gate.”

One of the robed figures stepped forward to intercept Mithrandrates. “Who approaches the Empty Tower?”

“One who would apprehend the Great Mysteries as a Brother of the College of the Illuminated in the Minerval Grade,” the man escorting the Emperor said.

“Under whose authority does he approach this sacred edifice?”
 

“I approach under the authority granted by the light of wisdom the power of my own will,” the Emperor replied.
 

And that was the ritual. It was nowhere as florid and long-winded as the others Mithrandrates had endured. The robed guardian stepped aside, and the great door opened. “Enter as a candidate, and leave as a true initiate of the Mysteries,” he said.

Mithrandrates entered the circular outer tower, and the door shut behind him with a grind of stone on stone. The Emperor was shrouded in perfect darkness, but he felt the enormity of the hollow structure rising above him. He took a cleansing breath, relaxed his shoulders and drew the cabalistic symbols of the Order’s Lesser Banishing Ritual.
 

Ye gods. It worked. This is real.
Mithrandrates allowed his reaction of surprise to run its course, then stilled his mind once again as the feeling passed. The darkness around him felt truly empty and sterile, like a spiritual vacuum devoid of all energy and emanation.
 

Within this vacuum, Mithrandrates believed truly for the first time that he could tap the mystical
vir
that Lady Madeline kept insisting suffused all existence. He performed the motions, vibrations and visualizations of the Invocation of Light that had become ingrained into his muscle memory from daily practice. He did not need to open his eyes to know that resting in his cupped hands was a radiant blue sphere of light; he felt the
vir
coursing through his body and coalescing between his palms.
 

Mithrandrates’ concentration was total, but now it was effortless. He had tapped into the
vir
, and its currents swept him toward the source of all power. He opened his eyes, stared into the blue light in his hands, and was suddenly face-to-face with himself.
 

The Emperor was outside on a cold, gray day. The ground below was just as dull and gray as the sky above. Dead grass crunched beneath Mithrandrates’ fine, supple boots as he approached the double of himself seated on a high marble throne set upon a stepped dais. Across the iron plain behind the throne, a strange city full of spires and towers unfolded across the horizon.

“Is this your empire?” Mithrandrates asked the seated figure. “I would advance in peace.”

The stately man looked down to meet Mithrandrates’ gaze and answered in a strange tongue. The double gave Mithrandrates a slight, contemptuous scowl.
 

“In what language do you address me?” Mithrandrates demanded.

The double replied in the alien language, then pointed to the ground and said a single word.