Aramilla stopped walking abruptly, though she retained her grip on the king’s arm, dragging him to a halt too. She looked at him, her eyes wide. “Please don’t send my father north to fight the Anakim, my love.”
King Osbert blinked. “No. Of course.” He planted a kiss on her forehead. “How thoughtless of me, sweet woman. He shall stay safe in the south with us. Yes. Yes, we shall leave it to Northwic and Bellamus.”
Helmec knocked at the door to Roper’s quarters. It was an honour, being summoned to the Black Lord’s private quarters. Or it had been under Kynortas. Roper was simply relieved the guardsman had turned up, and he called him in at once. Helmec entered, his house crest emblazoned on the right side of his tunic: an upright spear capped with a split battle helm. House Baltasar.
Roper, sitting behind another table of rich bog-oak, stood to meet him, trying out the charm that Kynortas had been able to unleash. “Helmec,” he said with a smile, leaning forward and offering the guardsman his hand. Helmec took Roper’s hand in a huge scarred paw and bowed, an evidently irrepressible grin spreading across his ruined face.
“My lord,” he said. Lord. Indoors, away from the horrors of battle where he had seemed somehow more appropriate, Helmec was a hideous spectacle. His mangled cheek, through which a constantly working jaw complete with yellowed molars could be seen, was more withered space than flesh. He was missing an eyebrow and whatever had taken it had almost split his left eyelid. The very light grey eyes beneath looked almost ghoulish and his body was a compact box of muscle rather than the broad shoulders and triangular torso so stylised in Anakim carvings.
Roper invited the guardsman to a chair on the other side of the table and the two sat opposite one another. “Helmec, I wanted to thank you again for the services you rendered me in battle, which amounted to no less than saving my life.”
“My honour, lord,” said Helmec loyally. “I did what any man there would have done.”
“Were you scared?”
“Scared for you, lord,” said Helmec, the smile reappearing on his face. “I thought you’d be dead before I could get there. But you’ve got some speed with that sword of yours.”
Roper nodded, so intent on winning over Helmec that the compliment did not register. “We need more of your sort, Helmec; even in the Guard.” Too much, he thought to himself. More subtle. “I trust you have been welcomed into your new unit?”
“Of course, lord.” Roper did a double-take at the guardsman, as though Helmec had just let something slip that he had not meant to. Helmec’s answer had been convincing, but Roper could guess how Uvoren had treated a man appointed to the Guard by Roper.
“Uvoren has been good to you?”
“Yes, lord,” said Helmec, a touch more feeble this time.
“Go on.” Roper leaned forward in concern, as though Helmec had begun to condemn Uvoren but restrained himself.
“He has been good to me,” said Helmec stubbornly.
Roper sighed and looked down at the ancient oak. “Uvoren is a great servant to the country and one of our mightiest warriors. But he guards his unit jealously. He will often exclude those who have more right than most to be in the Guard.” Helmec hesitated. “I am firmly against the practice. To be the unit they can be, the Sacred Guard must fight as one, undivided by petty rivalries. He tried to turn the rest of the unit against you?” A wild guess.
Helmec looked a little dismayed. “Yes, lord,” he said, at last.
“I’ll do what I can to help you. You have earned that much. Rest assured, Uvoren will not know that you confided in me.” Helmec nodded curtly, already looking ashamed of his admission. Roper kept his face detached, but he was pleased. His man, indeed. “Now, Helmec. I have some special duties I would like from you.”
“Certainly, my lord.”
“I want you with me for the next few days. You will be assisting me as we attempt to drive the Suthern horde from our lands.”
“That would be my honour, lord,” said Helmec dutifully. He could hardly refuse; not now he had confided his discontent with Uvoren’s leadership.
“Very good,” said Roper. “Then I will settle it with Uvoren. To your station, Helmec.” Helmec, looking bemused, stepped outside Roper’s quarters and stood guard over the door.
And Roper had his first ally.
Beyond the Hindrunn’s southernmost extremity, from outside the Great Gate, Uvoren dispatched a messenger. A handful of subterranean tunnels aside, the gate was the only way in or out. It pierced the Outer Wall; a one-hundred-and-fifty-foot-high wave of dark granite that marked the edge of the fortress. Studded with bronze cannons and crowned with all manner of siege-breaking equipment, it was reckoned near-enough impenetrable. But that was no concern of the messenger, for the gates, forty feet of iron-sheathed oak, were opening before him. Behind: a deep stone well that tunnelled through the Outer Wall, ending in a far window of light. As the messenger continued and the passage was sealed behind him, the darkness pressed against his eyes. Just discernible above as deeper pools in the blackness were the charred “murder-holes,” through which sticky-fire would pour onto any soldier who made it through the Great Gate.
But the messenger had passed this way many times before, and the defences were not his concern. His journey to the Central Keep would take him through many structures as intimidating as this. At the end of the tunnel, he emerged into the residential area of the Hindrunn. Beyond him stretched a road of dense cobbles, brushed clean by unwilling legionaries. The roads fed a tight neighbourhood of sturdy stone dwellings, all remarkably alike; built from granite, roofed in slate and guttered
