Afternoons were usually spent in the healing house helping Brother Harin or visiting with Arken, still recovering from his arrow wound. Despite the brother’s best efforts the wound had contrived to fester, necessitating some deft work with the scalpel and a liberal application of corr-tree oil. “You stink,” Reva told him the following day, wrinkling her nose at the acrid aroma.
“The smell I can get used to,” he said. “The sting’s the worst of it.”
“From Veliss.” She placed a bag of sugared nuts next to his bed. “Make them last, there won’t be any more.”
“Promise me,” he said, reaching for her hand, eyes dark with serious intent. “You’ll call for me when they come. Don’t let me die in this bed.”
You’ve a lot of years ahead, she wanted to say, but stopped herself. He may be young but he’s no fool. “I promise,” she said.
For all their apparent devotion, and despite the increase in rations, the mood of the people darkened as the breach widened. There were fewer shouts of adulation as she walked the streets, and she often saw people weeping openly, one old man surrendering to despair and collapsing to the cobbles, hands clamped over his ears against the slow drumbeat of the engines’ labour. And the Reader kept preaching.
Veliss’s reports told of the old man’s increasingly deranged sermons. He would often speak for hours with no reference to the Ten Books, the words “heretic” and “judgement” most prominent in his rantings. “A mad old man screaming in a hall,” Reva had said in answer to Veliss’s worried frown.
“True,” she replied. “But the hall isn’t empty. In fact it’s more full than ever.”
A stone crashed into the breach, raising another cloud of dust and shattered masonry. Reva turned her gaze to the ships and found them busier than usual, the engineers rushing to and fro as they hauled ropes and worked levers, the engines swivelling on their mounts with slow deliberation.
She walked to the lip of the breach, staring down at the dust-shrouded wreckage below. Stones that had stood for centuries reduced to rubble in a few weeks. A familiar thrum sounded from the engines as they launched in unison, the stones describing their lazy arcs against a clear sky, smashing into the wall some two hundred paces north of where she stood.
She raised her gaze to the Volarian warship. The awning cast a dark shadow but she could just see him, a tall figure staring back. It may have been her imagination, or a trick of the light, but she fancied she saw him offer a bow.
“My lady . . .” A faint call behind her. She turned to find a woman hurrying up the steps to the battlements, a wailing bundle in her arms. The young Asraelin mother from the other day, face pale and drawn in fear. Reva rushed to her, reaching out a steadying hand as she swayed a little, her breath laboured, the words barely audible above the child’s cries.
“They took her,” she gasped. “Lady Veliss hid us but they took her, and all the other Faithful.”
“Who did? Where?”
“A great many people, shouting about the Father’s judgement.” She paused, hugging the child to her. “They said they were taking them to the Reader.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Vaelin
“Another two hundred today,” Nortah said, putting his bow aside and collapsing onto a chair. “Mostly men this time. All raring for revenge, which is nice. Their women and daughters all got taken by another caravan. Poltar’s off looking for them now.”
“How many does that make?” Vaelin asked Brother Hollun.
“We have freed fifteen hundred and seventy-two people since crossing into Nilsael, my lord,” the brother replied without pause. “Just over half are of fighting age. Almost all have opted to join our ranks. Though I should point out our continued lack of weapons.”
“We’ve got the slavers’ swords,” Nortah pointed out. “Plus any axes and bill-hooks we can scavenge from all the corpse-strewn villages we keep finding.”
Vaelin looked out over the camp, the tents clustered around a bend in the river which changed its name from the Brinewash to the Vellen when it crossed the Nilsaelin border. The camp grew larger every day, home to over forty-five thousand men now they had Marven’s Nilsaelins to swell the ranks. Soon after Brother Harlick penned their agreement, their Fief Lord had taken himself off to his capital, pressing his seal into the wax with a customary cackle and waving at his litter bearers to get moving.
“You can have the idiot twins,” he said to Vaelin, bobbing in his chair as they bore him away. “Been lusting for a war all their lives. Don’t be too surprised if they piss their breaches at the first whiff of blood though. I’ll conscript all the men I can and send them on after. Try not to lose too many. Fields don’t plough themselves, y’know.”
Alornis had been busy sketching during the sealing ceremony, beginning a new canvas depicting the event shortly after. Unlike Master Benril she felt no need for additional drama or embellishment. Although still roughly worked, her painting conveyed her gift for uncanny realism in its rendering of a grinning old man leaning over a scroll whilst the captains of the army looked on, varying depths of unease or suspicion on every face.
“Did I really look that angry?” Vaelin asked.
“I do not flatter, lord brother,” she replied, flicking pigment at him with her brush. “I see and I paint. That is all.”
Vaelin scanned the line of scowling or frowning faces, finding one exception. Nortah stood near the back of the assembly, a faint wry smile on his lips.
“They’ll need training,” he said to his brother now, moving to the table and reaching for parchment. He dipped his quill and began to write, the letters formed with slow precision. “Nortah Al Sendahl is hereby appointed Captain of the Free Company of the Army of the North.” He signed the parchment and held it out to Nortah. “You can have Sergeant Davern as second.”
“That blowhard?” Nortah scoffed. “Can’t I have one of the North Guard?”
“He’s good with the sword and he knows how to teach it. And I can’t denude the North Guard any further. We can linger here only two more days, so train them hard.”
“As you wish, mighty Tower Lord.” Nortah went to the tent flap then paused. “We’re really marching all the way to Alltor?”
The song’s insistence had deepened the further south they marched, the tone ever more urgent. She fights, he knew. They come to tear the walls down and she fights. “Yes, brother,” he said. “We really are.”
Two days later they were on the march once again, Vaelin setting a punishing pace of thirty miles a day and letting it be known that he would be less than forgiving to stragglers. As in any army however, there were shirkers and deserters. The former he left to the sergeants, the latter were pursued by the North Guard and brought back to be stripped of weapons, coin and shoes before they were flogged and set loose. It was no more than a handful of men, and he hated the need for it, but this was far from a professional army and the leeway he had allowed the Wolfrunners would be a dangerous indulgence now.
They forded the Vellen on the fifth day, keeping a southward course until the jagged outline of the Greypeaks came into view and he ordered a halt for a day’s rest and reconnaissance. As expected, Sanesh Poltar brought grim tidings come the evening.
“Many horsemen,” he said to the council of captains. “South-east of here. Riding hard after Marelim Sil soldiers, on foot and only a third as many. They hurry to the mountains, seeking shelter.” His expression was grave as he shook his head. “Won’t reach them.”
“Is there enough time for our horse to get there?” Vaelin asked.
The Eorhil war chief shrugged. “We will, can’t speak for others.”
Vaelin reached for his cloak. “Captain Adal, Captain Orven, muster your men. We ride immediately. Count Marven, send the Nilsaelin horse to screen the south and west. The Army of the North is in your hands until I return.”