Tarn turned back to Berren and made a sign to ward off evil. ‘I’ll trust my sword, thanks.’
Sterm. That was the priest’s name. Sterm the Worm. Remembering made Berren smile for a while, and then the smile faded as he remembered how things gone for him when it came to wizards and their ilk, and the whiff of rotten fish he’d smelled as he’d plunged into the sump; and then other memories came too: the woman he’d killed, as always, and standing in the yard of Tethis castle with a whip in his hand and tears on his cheeks. Deephaven seemed so long ago. He’d been such a fool. So naive.
With a heavy sigh, he went and did what he’d come to do. Found Talon and told the Prince of War that his brother was gone. When he was done, Talon shook his head and sent him away without a word, though his face was pale and stony and his eyes were cold and hard. No blame, no pointed finger demanding to know how it was that Berren and Berren alone had returned. Almost as though Talon had expected it.
‘Meridian won’t kill him. Not while Talon’s here,’ said Tarn when the news finally spread around the camp. ‘But he’ll be happy enough to hold a hostage.’
The weeks passed and dragged into months. Berren stared out at the sea, watching ships come and go from Forgenver, telling himself that the next one, always the next one, would take him away. Talon recruited every man he could get. Each day wagons went back and forth, full of supplies. Most of it was food, but sometimes there were arrows or spearheads or boots, and when a hundred brand new crossbows arrived just as Talon had promised, the camp buzzed with the news for days and even Berren slunk across the camp to look at them. Every morning, as he woke up, he wondered if that would be the day he’d finally vanish back to Aria; and every night as he fell asleep in the same place once more, he realised that he had nowhere else to go; until, as the weeks rolled by, the thoughts began to fade and he knew, for better or for worse, that this was his home now, and the men around him were his family.
News came from Tethis now and then. Talon spoke of it with glee. Meridian had prepared an attack. He’d sailed two fat-bellied ships into Tethis harbour and filled them up with soldiers. They’d been ready to sail when the skies had darkened and the worst storm for twenty years had struck. One ship had broken apart and sunk right where it was, and the other needed months of repair. Dozens of soldiers, perhaps a hundred, had drowned. They heard too that Syannis wasn’t dead and was Meridian’s hostage, just as Tarn had said. Rumours shot through the camp like wildfire after this: every week there was a new story about how Syannis had escaped, or which bit of him had been cut off and sent to Talon as a warning this time.
Meridian tried again late in the summer, sending his soldiers northwards on foot. His army marched a day past Galsmouth and then found their food infested with rats, rot and blight. They had no choice but to turn back. From the accounts that reached Forgenver, Meridian had been so furious that he’d had the quartermasters from each company hanged.
The seasons turned and the weather began to change. The days grew cold and wet, the nights dark and long. In Tethis the Black Swords were rumoured to have sailed south for the winter, leaving only two cohorts of archers. Outside Forgenver the Hawks had swelled their numbers close to the five hundred that Tarn had predicted. The autumn rains set in, driven by a biting wind while Talon drilled them ever harder; unrest spread among the older soldiers, used to spending their winters in milder climes. Day after day of rain turned their camp into a sea of mud, and still Talon ordered his grumbling companies out of their tents to march back and forth until they were soaked, to practise their formations until mud covered everything and no one knew who was who any more. Berren began to think there might be a mutiny, but just when he thought that even he might revolt and run away, Tarn barged into their tent, shook the rain off his coat and beamed with glee. He threw a coin at Berren.
‘Two rest days and five silver crowns for each man.’ He hauled Berren up off his pile of blankets, where he’d been savouring the ever-present smell of sodden earth and listening to the thrum of rain on canvas, the pitter-patter of drips where it found its way inside their tent. Tarn was still grinning. ‘And then we march!’ He rubbed his hands. ‘Forgenver’s not going to know what hit it. We’ll drink the whole town dry!’
‘What do you mean we march?’
‘Get your coat on! We’ve got a shipment of blankets and boots and other things to get from the docks to the camp without there being any pilfering, and then. .’ Berren threw on his long leather coat, the coat Master Sy had once worn in Deephaven. Outside they trudged, heads down through the mud. ‘Tethis, Berren.’ Tarn slapped him on the back but his tone was serious. ‘We’re going to Tethis! We’re going to war! Whatever words have never been spoken, speak them soon. A winter war takes far more lives than a summer one.’
The road into Forgenver was churned to a thick gooey mud that sucked at Berren’s boots. The rain was relentless. Even under his cloak and his coat, he was soaked to the skin when they reached the docks. Crates lay piled up by the waterfront; men were swearing and shouting at each other over the hiss of water falling on stone. Puddles lay ankle deep. Everything was sodden and faded to a haze of grey, and in the midst of it all, barking orders and cursing, stood Talon, waving his arm over some crates stacked beside him.
‘Tarn! These! Get these to the camp. I don’t care how, but get them there. Don’t drop them.’
‘What are they?’
Talon glanced at Berren. He shook his head. ‘Fragile, that’s what.’ Berren saw firelight flickering through the cracks in the wooden crate. Were they. .? He bent down to peer closer and then stopped. Talon had drawn his sword, fast as a snake, and the tip of it was hovering in front of Berren’s face. ‘Fragile. Like glass. That’s all you need to know,’ he said to Tarn, then turned his eye on Berren. ‘You I brought here for a different reason.’ His voice softened a notch. ‘You’ll know what they are when you see them.’
Berren stepped back. He knew already. He’d seen that flickering light before. In Kalda, a bright ball of flame in the hands of a Deephaven lancer.
Talon’s stare was strong enough to flay skin. ‘Sergeant Tarn, I suggest you put a covering over those crates when you get them to the armoury. You will take them yourself and you will let no one else come near them. Do you understand? What they hold will change the course of a battle, if used well.’
Tarn nodded.
‘There’s a handcart here for you. Let no one else see them.’ Talon turned back to Berren. ‘Well, you might as well help him now.’
The two of them gingerly loaded the crates. Berren tried to guess how many fire-globes Talon had. A dozen crates and a handful in each one, so perhaps fifty, perhaps a hundred? Enough to change a battle, yes, unless the enemy had them too. They set the crates down on a bed of straw, carefully apart from one another. When they were done, Tarn helped himself to a piece of sailcloth and wedged it down on top. Further along the waterfront, a heavily loaded wagon was being forced through the mud by a team of beasts pulling from the front and a cohort of sodden swearing soldiers pushing behind.
‘We’ll follow them,’ said Tarn. ‘They’ll go nice and slow and find all the bumps for us,’ but Talon was shaking his head and looking at Berren.
‘Take them back on your own, Sergeant Tarn. Berren stays here.’ When Tarn cocked his head as if to ask why, Talon laughed. ‘Because I’m going to ask him to help me kill a warlock, that’s why.’ He turned to Berren. Half a smile played around the corners of his mouth. ‘I know what Syannis offered you in Tethis. She’s here. She wants to talk to you. She wants you to kill Saffran Kuy. Can’t say as I’d object.’ He turned back to Tarn. ‘Does that satisfy you, Sergeant?’