“How?” demanded Roper. “The snows are barely melted, it isn’t even properly spring yet. How was he ready to march?”
“I don’t care,” snarled Tekoa. “Let’s just put an end to this.”
“Recall the legions,” said Roper. “At once.”
“The Skiritai are already riding; we are to muster here. And I’ve recalled Uvoren as well.”
Roper froze and Tekoa, seeing his resistance, waved a hand impatiently. “We shall need him.”
Part IIISPRING
21Garrett Eoten-Draefend
As though the Hindrunn were the drain of Albion, the legions streamed towards it. Every day for two weeks, men flooded through the Great Gate, swelling the barracks and withering the granaries. Some of the legions were in good order and had not even encountered this fresh Suthern menace marshalled by Bellamus. Other legions came in already battle-weary; injured, exhausted and demoralised. One, the Hetton Legion, had been broken so completely that it merely dripped through the Great Gate over the course of a week. Individual centuries of men, or sometimes even fewer—a score, a dozen—found their way to the fortress never having received the order to withdraw; just knowing that if there was one safe place to which they could retreat, it would be here.
In private, Roper and Tekoa had argued extensively over Uvoren’s recall. Roper did not want him anywhere near the Hindrunn. They could break the Sutherners without his help, Roper insisted, and bringing him back sent out the terrible message that they relied on him. Tekoa had said that was childish; that men fought better when they knew Uvoren was with them or watching over them and Roper had to consider the wellbeing of the country above his own leadership. On this point at last, Roper conceded and grudgingly had allowed the Captain of the Guard to be recalled.
Roper nevertheless afforded himself a passive-aggressive glare at Tekoa when they saw the welcome Uvoren received as he marched through the Great Gate. The fortress had chattered about his impending arrival for days and when finally he appeared, there was a crowd waiting for him on the other side of the gate. He came in on horseback, accompanied by half a dozen stern Lothbrok warriors and dressed in the full finery of a master of war. He was cheered lustily by the crowds. They mobbed him so intently that Uvoren could scarcely advance up the street. He held out his hands to them, assured them everything would be well now that he was here, and told them that they had driven back the Sutherners many times and would do it again.
“This is the worst of it,” said Tekoa in answer to Roper’s deepening scowl. “We’ll need him in the battle, but there you might get lucky. Sacred Guardsmen die like newborns.”
“We can dream,” said Roper, turning away from the sight in disgust.
Where this invasion was different from all those that had preceded it was that Bellamus had caught them unawares. They had had no idea that the Sutherners, who had seemed whipped, could be ready to march as soon as the roads had reopened. The legions Bellamus faced did not even have their swords and plate armour with them. They fought with axes, hunting bows and billhooks as they retreated from the hordes. Bellamus had broken one legion entirely and scattered several others, killing thousands. There were already almost as many Anakim dead from this invasion as there had been in all the battles of the previous campaign put together. Roper had to strike the Hetton Legion from the rolls: there were simply not enough men to fill it.
Fear.
It seeped through the fortress, infinitely more contagious than the potent miasma that had caused the plague. It crept between door and doorstep, through open windows, and hung heavy over the cobbled streets. You could perceive it in the way the legionaries now walked in clusters, talking urgently and quietly with one another as they hurried between barracks and keep. Or in the way that the Metal District now clanged and hissed through the night, as the arms and armour were prepared. Or in the frenzied bartering of the markets, as subjects brought up as much food as their modest household assets would allow in preparation for an impending siege. Or in the muted officers’ mess, which was almost silent whenever Roper sat down to eat.
The refugees had begun to reappear at the Hindrunn. Roper admitted the first of them at once and then, once the legions were back, sealed the gates. This was met with guilty approval from the subjects within, glad that Roper was the one taking such difficult decisions. Tekoa, as ever the best-informed man in the Chamber of State through the thousands of Skiritai eyes that roamed the country, said the relatively small number of refugees was not due to excessive slaughter; it was simply that the Sutherners had raided this land so recently. They had torched some of the refugee camps that Roper had assembled, but most they had left un-harried as they marched north. As the Sutherners saw it, the canvas and hazel tents were not even worth destroying.
It took more than a week for all the warriors (barring one legion, which had sent word that it was stranded further north) to assemble within the Hindrunn. They mustered at sixty-seven thousand warriors, including the new year’s crop of nemandi apprentices. It was a drastically reduced number compared to the ninety thousand who had marched out under Kynortas just last year.
The forges and smiths had worked through the night, churning out Unthank-silver swords, steel arrowheads, iron horseshoes, chain mail, greaves, gauntlets and the steel plating that would be sent to the armourers to be assembled into full cuirasses. The houses were expected to equip their own legionaries, and the poorer ones whose resources were more limited (House Alba, perhaps, or House Nadoddur) would arm only their most esteemed warriors with arms and armour bearing their house crest. Those whom they could not afford
