The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (16 page)

The wolf had stopped. She had been so engrossed in the pageantry of the buildings and the people that she had not seen it. It had stopped before a tall double wooden gate, one of many in a clean, quiet street. She knew nothing of cities, but she was sure that this was a prosperous area, and the gate the entrance to an important place. It was scrubbed clean and studded with heavy iron bolts.

“Here?” she asked the wolf, somewhat pointlessly, she realised as she said it. The wolf just looked at her and waited. It could not knock on the door.

Narala looked up and down the street, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to her. She reached up and knocked three times high up on the bleached wood. She waited. In a short time she heard sounds behind the gate; steps on a stone yard, a bolt being drawn.

A small gate set into the big one opened. She had not noticed it, but a head looked out and peered at her, saw the wolf.

“You are Narala?” it asked.

“I am.”

“Then come.”

The head vanished again and she went to the small gate and ducked under it. The head belonged to a man. He was very old and wrinkled, strands of white hair still clung to the sides of his head like the snow that lingers on the high peaks of the Dragon’s Back in spring. He was dressed in what looked like a brown sack, and he did not meet her gaze, but looked at the floor instead.

He bolted the door once more and set off across the yard. “Follow me,” he said over his shoulder. She followed, and the wolf came with her. What she saw of the yard was plain enough. Windows looked down from a pale stone wall ahead, and there was a door. On one side the yard was bounded by a low building with many wide doors. It smelled of horses, and she supposed it a stable. The other side was a high stone wall.

They passed through the door, along a short, unlit corridor and came into a large room. She had seen rooms before that pretended to be what this one was. She had been a slave in Telas, in small towns where small men wore big titles. They had rooms with fires, tapestries on the walls, rugs before fireplaces. None of them came close to this. Everything was larger, brighter, more finely wrought than anything she had ever seen. The tapestries shone with light, danced with detail. She could have studied them for hours. The fire was prodigiously large and blazed from end to end, making the room hot even on this winter’s day, the rugs were soft, the chairs that stood about looked as though they had been carved from gold, and the table that crouched before the fire looked as though it had been painted by a man using a single hair, so fine was the abstract detail that covered it.

“Wait here,” the old man said, and promptly left through a side door.

She waited. She did not dare sit in such grand chairs, for surely the master of this house must be a great and powerful man. Instead she stood close to the fire, shed her cloak and tucked it over one arm. She studied the tapestry that dominated one wall.

“This is beautiful,” she said to the wolf.

There was a faint pop, more of a disturbance in the air than a sound. She looked at the fire, thinking a coal had split.

“I’ve seen better.”

She turned, startled, to see that the wolf was gone, and in its place stood Narak, smiling. She dropped to her knees at once, but he stepped forwards and took her arm, raising her gently to her feet.

“You are not a slave, Narala,” he said. “Only slaves kneel.”

“I am sorry,” she said. “But I owe you my freedom, and the wolf has protected me.”

“You chose to walk with the wolf, Narala. That means that the wolf walks with you. You will always be protected. You will always be helped.”

She risked a glance, and his eyes met hers. He was not offended that she dared to meet his gaze, but smiled again. She had thought to be his servant, but the reality was daunting. He was a god. She did not even know what that meant. She had been his for a week, owned by him, and yet he had not used her, not commanded her to do a single thing. He had asked a few questions, but no more. She knew nothing about him at all but for the wild tales she had heard on the road, told by drunken men by firelight in country taverns.

“I am grateful, lord wolf,” she said.

He chuckled. “That’s original,” he said. “The correct form of address is ‘Deus’, but I quite like ‘lord wolf’. You may use it if you wish.”

She nodded. It felt wrong to stand in his presence, but she dare not kneel again having been lifted to her feet.

A man came into the room. He looked young, and quite dashing in the way that some young men have. His face was open and handsome for a white skinned man. He was tanned, well dressed in a cotton tunic and white silk doublet stitched all over with green leaves. He wore no jewellery, but still his dark hair was tied back with white silk in a fashionable tail.

“Deus, you are come,” he said. “I am honoured to have you in my house.” Pleased, too, if Narala was any judge, and not at all fearful. He wore a broad smile and did not bow that she could see.

“I am glad to be here, Caster,” Narak said. “You have done as I asked? All is prepared?”

“It is, Deus.” He turned his sunshine smile on Narala. “You must be Narala of the Green Isles.”

“I am, my lord,” she said.

“I’m no lord,” the young man called Caster said. He held out a hand as though he expected her to shake it. “I am just a man who is fortunate to walk with the Wolf, as you do.” She looked at his hand for a moment, then took it firmly, as she understood the custom.

“Will you show us the way?” Narak asked.

“Of course,” Caster said. “An honour and a pleasure.” He went out through the same door that the servant had taken to fetch him. Narak followed, and she followed Narak. They stepped out into a brightly lit hallway. A great window dominated one end, and through the diamond panes of glass she could see a garden, a little piece of nature caged for a man’s pleasure. Still, it was a soothing sight in all this stone, and she was glad to see it.

They walked down the hallway on a long, blue carpet. Narala could smell food cooking, and realised that she was hungry. She heard voices coming from the kitchen, or so she supposed. It sounded like a lively snippet of gossip was being imparted, and she recognised the tone as one that her mother had used, and the recognition stabbed at her composure. She blinked to hold back inappropriate tears, but her mind was still elsewhere when she followed Narak through a door into a modest chamber, and stopped dead with surprise.

Passala sat on the bed before her. She was no longer a child, but it was Passala, dressed in fine clothes and sitting with an open mouth and wide eyes as she stared back at Narala, and the sum of their astonishment was enough to remake her world.

They flew into each other’s arms, and now the tears came. They embraced fiercely, and in that embrace Narala felt something inside her heal, in an instant. There was, after all, some good in the world. There were people who did such things as this; men who saved sisters and freed slaves.

That was before she knew them. At that time Caster, the young faced owner of the house in Telas Alt, was already three hundred years old, and already, like his master Narak, addicted to the random acts of spectacular kindness and generosity that seemed to give their lives meaning.

Caster, even then, had already fathered seven sons by three wives and buried them all, and it was from him that she was to learn that bitter lesson. She had no children. She did not marry. Narak’s gift of immortality was a singular one. Husbands and children were excluded.

There was one exception, later. Much later. Narak had told Caster that if he ever found a woman that he wished to die with then he would release him to live a normal human life, to grow old, to die as other men died. Caster found her. She was a white haired Afaeli woman called Aisling, a rare beauty with a kind nature and a lively mind, and Caster asked for his release. Narak waited a year. He watched them together. He, too, came to believe that she was an exceptional woman, and he did what he had never done before, he took Caster’s wife into his favour.

It had lasted three hundred and a dozen years. They were years of great happiness for the sword master. Even when Narak declined to grant immortality to their daughter and Aisling mourned for a child that was only twelve and still with a full life ahead of her; even that did not tear them apart. They were both loyal to the Wolf. They understood. They were bound to him by love.

It was the most remarkable thing about Narak that his household, isolated from the flow of time, had bound themselves together with bonds that would have shamed any family. They were all brothers and sister to each other, sometimes lovers, and always there was Narak, the kind uncle, the father, the companion, the one who protected them.

Aisling had died. It had been a stupid thing; a riding accident while hunting on Caster’s estates in Berash. A horse had stumbled, and she had fallen badly. It was the sort of thing that happened every year to other people, to mortal men and women, but it had torn at them all. Caster had mourned for a decade. For all his power Narak could not heal wounds, nor could he banish grief.

“Narala!”

Narak’s voice dragged her back across eight hundred years and she opened her eyes and looked at him. For a moment she saw them both together, that Narak in Caster’s house, and the one that stood before her. Physically there was no difference, but he was somehow more bowed, and there was a shadow about the eyes that had not been there before. Yet he was smiling, and for certain there was good news because it was a smile that went deeper than his mouth and eyes.

“Deus, you have returned.”

“There is good news,” he said. “The man Cain Arbak has devised a way that we might build a wall across the White Road, so our purpose here is somewhat blunted. Their help would still be a great benefit, but our need is no longer desperate.”

She recognised the value of the news, but her smile was forced. She still failed to understand why Cain Arbak was alive. Was he not the man who had ended Perlaine’s life? Had he not been in the service of a traitor? It was unlike Narak to let a man so damned remain alive. Yet it was also very much like Narak. Sometimes he was as unpredictable as a coin toss, and she had to admit that the spared man was proving to be a good investment, but she did not now how she would react should she ever come face to face with him.

“You have heard? Will they see me tomorrow?” He seemed not to notice her discomfort, but she could never tell with Narak. He was always more perceptive than she credited, but rarely showed it.

“Yes, Deus. The herald will be here at the hour of sunrise. He will guide you there.”

“Good. Is there food? I have not eaten.”

“There is some fish and rice,” she said. “The wolf ate all the meat.”

“That is your food, Narala,” he said.

“Then we will share it,” she told him. “I can buy more in the morning after dawn, but you cannot. You must go with the herald.”

Narak smiled again. “As you wish,” he said. She prepared the food, cooking the fish with hot spices in a way that she knew he liked, and they ate together in companionable silence.

Tilian Henn hurried through the passageways of Latter Fetch house. He had been summoned. It was not that he was concerned, but it had never happened before. It had always been Tilian who had been at his lord’s side, and he who had been sent to summon others.
He felt somehow derelict in his duty to be elsewhere when his lord needed him.

His morning had been passed in the armoury. At least it was a room that was supposed to be an armoury. It had taken the staff a fair slice of the morning to find the key for him, and then he discovered that the lock was rusted well past use, so they had forced the door.

The lock should have been warning enough, but as a soldier he expected order, he looked for well kept swords and polished armour. What he found was rust. It had once been an armoury, of that he had no doubt. There were thirty sets of armour – breast plates, helmets, mail coats – and thirty swords, thirty daggers, thirty shields, two dozen bows and four hundred arrows, but almost none of it could be saved.

He had prised them all apart, sorted them into piles of rubbish and what might be salvaged. It was a thankless task. The bows were simple wooden staves, and they along with all the arrows and bow strings were rotted to damnation. The plate was worse for the most part. He found three breastplates that might be sanded and restored, and seven helmets, but none of the swords would do in a real fight. They could be sanded back to a surface, re-hilted, and sharpened, but he wouldn’t want to trust one himself. The same went for the armour.

He stopped outside the parlour and knocked.

“Come!”

He went in. His lord the colonel was sitting by the fire, legs stuck out towards it and his shoes off. He was reading a stack of papers by the light of the window. He looked up and smiled. Tilian bowed.

“Good to be warm again, eh?” he said. He put the papers to one side and rearranged himself into a more dignified figure. “Sit down, Tilian.”

“My lord.” Tilian sat on the edge of the chair opposite. He could feel the heat of the fire, and it was true that Latter Fetch was a lot better heated than the draughty tents they spent their days in back at Bas Erinor.

“You’re annoyed to be staying here, Tilian,” he said. “I know you are. You think that your place is at my side, and I agree. I don’t know how I’ll manage without you, but it must be this way.”

Tilian was surprised at the compliment; glad that he had pleased his lord.

“I will join you as soon as duty permits, my lord,” he said.

“Ah, but that’s the thing. I am going to give you another duty, one that will keep you here even longer. I am doing this because I must.”

“What am I to do, my lord?”

“You have served me well. You are clever and resourceful. I confess that I no longer think of you as a corporal, and certainly not as a common soldier. It is time that I made the distinction. I am naming you captain of the household guard at Latter Fetch. It is not a military rank, but it gives you certain authorities, and greater duties, one of which is my personal safety. Another is the raising of a body of men who could serve in the army. The number should be above ten, and no more than twenty. I don’t think there’s more than twenty of a suitable age in the estate villages, so that’s your limit, but don’t strip the place of brawn – they need men to run the farms.”

Tilian was stunned. Captain of the guard? There was no guard, of course, but the title was grand enough to puff him up. And there would be a guard.

“The number of men would warrant no more than a sergeant’s rank in the regiment, but I can invoke ancient privilege. A lord’s guard should always be an officer, and so I will name you a lieutenant, and that will have to do.”

Tilian could no longer sit. The honour was so great that it stood him up and he saluted his lord. “I will not fail you, my lord,” he said. He knew he would not. The certainty burned within him like the eternal flame on Ashmaren’s temple.

“I know that, Tilian,” the lord said. “Actually I should address you as Captain Henn when we are here and Lieutenant Henn when we are in harness, but forgive me if I lapse. Tell me, how was the armoury?”

Tilian felt himself colour. His first task as Captain here would be to bring bad news, but he knew that it was at least the truth.

“The armoury was much neglected, my lord,” he said. “Most of what lies within is no longer fit for battle, but some of it will do to train. We need more weapons, more armour, more of everything if a detachment is to be raised.”

“I thought as much.” The lord plucked a purse from the table at his side and tossed it to Tilian, who caught it deftly and could not resist a look. He saw the glint of gold. “Ten Guineas,” the lord said. “It will be enough to get started. Pay the men, buy what needs to be bought, have the plate made. There is a smith in the north village who is up to the job if I remember well.”

“I will do as you say, my lord.”

“Do as you see fit, Tilian, and I am sure that it will be well enough. When the men are trained enough so that they are not an embarrassment, bring them south, but do not be more than six weeks about it.”

“I shall be there in four,” Tilian said.

“Take your time. It may be a difficult task. Best to call for volunteers first, and then press men if you don’t have enough.”

“Yes, my lord.” He would work them hard. He had no doubt that he would turn out a body of worthy men, fit to take their place among the veterans of the Seventh Friend. First he would post a notice in the south village. He could ride south with the lord at least that far, and then to the north village, calling them to assemble at the house on the following day, and he would talk to the smith at the same time.

The lord dismissed him, and Tilian walked back to his quarters – he had one of the better servants’ rooms – his head full of schemes and glory. He was an officer now. It was something he had never dreamed of. All he had wanted to do was serve the hero of the wall, his lord, Skal Hebberd. Now he had a chance to serve him in a greater way, and he was determined not to fail.

*              *              *              *

The day had dawned well enough, but since then nothing had walked in its proper path. Twenty men of all ages had assembled at dawn, gathering in talkative clusters on the gravel in front of the great house.  Tilian had addressed them, told them why they were there, what he expected of them, and divided them into three groups.

After that everything had descended into chaos. The group he had set to archery practice had turned it into a competition and started making side bets on the outcome. The only consolation was that they were excellent archers. Arrow after arrow thudded into the gold, and winners were judged on inches and fractions, not feet. He left them to it. The other groups were worse. The sword group played at it. He showed them exercises, demonstrated certain simple moves and asked them to practice, but when he looked back at them most of them were talking, Two had started working on the hilts of the blades, two had borrowed a sawn round of wood from the woodpile round the back and seemed to be throwing knives at it, and the rest were doing a terrible job of the exercises.

The third group he’d put to spear practice, showing them how to use shields and spears to make a wall. They stumbled through the figures, nudging each other, sharing jokes, their minds not on the task.

His training had not been like this. He remembered his sergeant, a thick set man of middle years with a touch of grey and a smile as rare as a dancing pig. Barain. He remembered Barain. They had not exactly been afraid of the man, but just a stern look was enough to shut them up, to bring them to heel like chastened hounds. He tried to remember their officer, but the face and name eluded him.

He crossed the gravel to the bow group. Their chatter dimmed a bit, but did not stop. He found the face he was looking for.

“Welcart, a word with you please.”

The landskeeper stood up and walked with him until he was out of earshot of the group.

“Welcart, I need your help,” he said. The old man raised an eyebrow.

“What I can do, I’ll do,” he said. “If and it be for a good cause.”

“The cause is the war, Welcart. Here it seems distant, and perhaps some of the men do not believe it matters to them, but it does. I stood on the wall and watched them come, tens of thousands, all willing to die for their god, and happier still to kill us, to break through and slaughter the people of Berash and Avilian.”

“It may be so,” Welcart conceded. “But are there not enough soldiers?”

“No. There can never be enough. The Wolf slew twenty-five thousand in the east, ten thousand more of them fell at the wall, but fifty thousand more, so my lord tells me, await the spring to attack us once more.”

“And we’re to fight these men?”

“It has to be done.”

“These’ll be meat for the grinder, Master Henn,” Welcart said, nodding his head back towards the boisterous farm hands and foresters. “They’ll never make a good soldier, none of them. Will so few make a difference?”

“A house is made of bricks, Welcart, and an army is made of squads.”

Welcart squinted and looked at the forest. He clearly didn’t like what he was hearing, but knew that it made sense. Everyone had to fight, or nothing could be won, and war meant death, and death would take most of these men in a line of battle.

“Will you let them fight the way they know?”

Tilian looked at the men. They were still joking and fooling around, looking like children in a schoolyard more than they looked like soldiers.

“The way they know?”

“Aye. Take Brodan over there. He’s an unmatched stalker. He’ll get within ten paces of a deer, and it’ll not know it. Jerris there, he can shoot a squirrel out of a tree at fifty paces. There’s ten here that you couldn’t find in a forest if and they didn’t want you to. They’re hunters and foresters, and they’re willing enough. None forced them here. They came because they want to serve.”

Tilian looked at the men again. It was hard to believe. Yet he had seen Welcart in the forest, or rather had not seen him. He respected the old man.

“Very well,” he said. “I will give them a chance to prove your words, but I must be sure that they are put to the best use, and they must learn to use swords. If they do not have the basic skills they will be cut down at once if they come face to face with a trained man.”

“Is that so?” Welcart asked.

“I shall prove my point,” Tilian assured him. “And when I do, you will become sergeant to these men, keep them in order, and appoint others to lead the squads, men that they will respect. You agree?”

Welcart nodded. “I agree, Master Henn,” he said.

Tilian hoped he had not overstepped his ability. His lord had taught him well, and he was a proficient bladesman, better than most, but he was no Skal Hebberd. He walked back to the sword group with Welcart in tow.

“Stand to and listen,” he said. There were seven men in the group. Five held salvaged, rusty blades and two had rough wooden facsimiles. They stood and listened, but he thought it more for Welcart’s presence than his words. “We’re going to see how bad you are,” he said. He walked over to a man who held a wooden sword, took it off him and gave him his own blade. That would be fairer, and he wouldn’t kill anyone with a weighted stick. The man handled the blade as though it was precious. He had probably never held a good blade before. “There are seven of you and one of me. I want you to attack me.”

“But we have real swords, Captain,” one of the men said. “We could hurt you.”

Tilian laughed at them, though he had to force it a bit. What the man said was true, and he was gambling. He took a gold guinea out of his pocket and threw it onto the ground. “The first man to cut me gets that,” he said.

Tilian could see from their eyes that a couple of them fancied their chances at the gold, and that was what he wanted. He took a guard and waited for them to come at him. The first man stepped forwards with a raised blade, ready to swing down at him, and Tilian stepped forwards, blocking the man’s arm with his own and thumping him hard in the gut with the wooden blade. He heard the man’s breath leave him with a whoosh and he sat down hard.