Kellanved's Reach

Elath’s mood was now positively darkening. ‘And you are … Orjin Samarr? Yes? Well, come out with it, Captain Samarr. What is it you are suggesting?’

The swordsman pointed to the east. ‘These deep wooded valleys flanking the plain. You could hide a whole army in there. I don’t like it.’

Elath turned a raised brow upon Baron Ghenst Terrall of the Coastal Provinces. The baron bowed. ‘The woods are clear, lord marshal. My own personal scouts searched them.’

Elath returned his attention to the foreign swordsman. ‘There you are. The baron assures us they are clear.’

‘Just the same, I’d feel a lot better if I could send a few of my own lads and lasses to—’

The marshal snapped up a hand for silence. ‘Captain … if a noble of Nom Purge says something is so, then it is so. A gentleman does not question another gentleman’s word.’

Many of the gathered nobility smirked at this particular phrasing, while the foreigner’s thick brows clenched as if he were too dense to parse the hidden insult behind the words. He nodded then, bowing to the general. ‘Too much drink, perhaps.’ He finished his cup and picked up the battered iron gauntlets on the table before him. He saluted the marshal, ‘To a glorious victory, sir,’ and brushed aside the heavy tent flap, exiting.

Outside, in the cold damp wind off the deeps of the Western Sea, he muttered to himself, ‘But whose?’

Four figures rose from a fire nearby. A scarred Wickan with a wild, wind-tossed mane of tangled hair, wearing a long studded leather hauberk; a towering pale fellow, bald, in an iron cuirass; a woman in a full-length coat of mail, twinned Untan duelling swords at her sides; and a squat, very black Dal Hon elder in a cloak of multicoloured rags and patches.

‘He’s not attacking, is he?’ the woman demanded.

Orjin sighed; tucked his gauntlets into his weapon-belt. ‘He’s attacking.’

‘And the woods?’ the bald giant asked.

‘Baron Ghenst Terrall assures us that the woods are clear.’

‘There are horses in the woods,’ the Wickan muttered. ‘I can sense them.’

‘And what would you know about horses?’ the Dal Hon ancient cackled. ‘That is rich! You, Arkady, a Wickan without a horse!’

The Wickan answered slowly, through tightly clenched teeth, ‘I told you … I swore a vow.’

Orjin waved a hand for silence. ‘Spread the word – everyone stick close to me. We may have to carve our way out of Hood’s own grasp tomorrow.’

The four nodded, answering, ‘Aye, captain.’

It was probably Orjin’s impolitic honesty at the staff meeting that saw his command stationed at the rear of the dispositions for the coming battle, in the reserves. He and his would see no glory this day, but that suited him just fine. He wasn’t in it for the glory; leave that to the nobles bred on war and battle. He was here for … well, he really couldn’t say why he was here. It all happened kind of by accident. He’d left Geni, a small backwater fishing isle famous for nothing, and set out to win a living by the only thing he seemed to have an aptitude for – swordplay. And over the next few years he’d found himself with a growing name and a growing set of followers attracted to that name. Now he was a captain, if only unofficially, as his troop was no formal mercenary force, rather more like a large warband such as the chieftains of ancient times used to lead.

So it was that at dawn he and his command stood waiting with hands at belts, or, in the case of the bald giant Orhan of Fenn, leaning his seven-foot frame on a twelve-foot-tall halberd.

As the rising sun burned the fog from the plain and warmed him, the light murmur of contact reached even here, far to the rear.

‘Skirmishers are feeling each other out,’ Terath supplied, her gauntleted hands clasping and reclasping the worn leather grips of her duelling swords.

The Wickan, Arkady, grunted his agreement.

‘You know,’ offered Orhan, ‘in battles the view I’m used to isn’t the rumps of the officers’ horses.’

‘We must be really far back,’ Arkady grumbled.

The swordswoman had set to rubbing her teeth with a willow twig and now she tossed this aside, spitting. ‘You know what we say out east in Unta about this interminable Purge–Tali war?’

‘What, Terath?’ Orjin answered, distracted, focused upon the growing clamour of battle ahead – the lights and mediums must be closing upon one another.

‘Everyone says that the war with Nom Purge is just the Talians keeping in practice.’

The giant Orhan’s chuckle was a deep bass rumble. ‘That is a good one. I like that.’

Orjin rubbed his chin, listening even more keenly now, and muttered, ‘I think you’re right in that, Terath.’

A roar washed over them at the rear, sweeping down from the battlefield – the largest cohorts colliding, mostly medium infantry. Among these two armies the cavalry was mainly the officer corps and their staff, for visibility and mobility rather than actual fighting.

‘Now or never …’ he breathed aloud.