Survivors began to appear first. They fell into the army with enough gratitude to make Roper ashamed. They wept at the sight of the legions marching to their salvation after being helpless for so long. At the van marched the Sacred Guard: men so highly esteemed that many survivors ran to embrace them or fell sobbing at their feet, assuming that their presence meant victory.
And Roper? They stared in awe at this great warlord. It had been whispered that the Jormunrekur were spent and the Lothbroks poised to succeed them. But here was a shining warrior: tall, stern and covered in steel, atop the biggest horse they had ever seen, riding at the front of a great army. They blessed him, thanked him and swore loyalty to this new lord.
The legions had less faith in him, but Roper was working on that. Each night, he insisted on pitching his own camp, setting his own fire and even did his bit to fortify the encampment with the legionaries, driving sharpened stakes into the earth around the tents. He would then move between the fires where the warriors cooked, exchanging the odd word and passing them the latest information on how far off the enemy were thought to be. “Twenty leagues of rough country,” he told a hearth of Pendeen legionaries one evening. “We’re heading into the hills.” They chattered at that.
“There we have the advantage,” observed one.
“How are we to fight them, lord?” asked another.
“We’re not short of choices on that front,” said Roper breezily. “Guerrilla tactics are an option; make this land a frightening place for them. I favour pitched battle, though. Let’s make sure they know they only got this far through luck.” There was a murmur of agreement at this and Roper bade them goodnight, moving off into the darkness. Everywhere he was followed by a combination of Gray, Pryce and Helmec. With Gray and Pryce in particular, it enhanced his esteem to be seen with such men, and it did not hurt that they had taken quickly to Helmec. The three had become something of a triumvirate and were often to be found laughing together.
Many of Uvoren’s supporters were also with the army, Asger among them. As its second-in-command, he led the Guard in Uvoren’s absence. Roper itched to replace him, but his influence was so insignificant that he was not worth the trouble. However, Roper was ever wary of Gosta, another of Uvoren’s supporters. He was another of the Algauti, a minor vassal house of the Lothbroks. Even for an Algauti, Gosta possessed surpassing loyalty to his master. Roper thought of him more as a dog than a man. It did not matter what the situation was; Gosta could be relied upon to enact Uvoren’s will to the last detail. It was not clear how Uvoren commanded his loyalty so utterly when Gosta appeared to despise all other men, but he was a powerful ally. In him, Uvoren had a fighter quite as uncompromising as Pryce, if not quite as swift.
Both Gray and Tekoa had cautioned Roper that Uvoren might well try to have Roper killed again in the hope that the legions he commanded could be brought to heel, rather than slaughtered. Roper was guarded at all times.
They marched into the wild. As the terrain grew steeper, Roper was forced to lead Zephyr on foot. The rain restarted and the steed lost its steel-grey colouring to mud. The worse the conditions, the happier the legionaries became. This was what they were born for. If not on campaign, the full legions, Ramnea’s Own, the Pendeen and the Skiritai, would be engaged in exhaustive battle training inside the Hindrunn. As for the others, the five auxiliary legions: they would be working in the forges, the quarries, the forests; performing the million small tasks that kept the country functioning during peace and war. Campaign was a release for them all.
The survivors they encountered were able to point out to Roper’s forces the places they had buried their food supplies, supplementing the legions’ rations as they advanced. And, seven days after marching from the Hindrunn, they found their first Sutherners. Outriding Skiritai discovered a band of stragglers, slowed down by half a dozen enslaved Anakim women that they dragged with them. The Skiritai made short work of the Sutherners, releasing the women. From that point on, they encountered pockets of stragglers every few miles. Knowing this must mean they were drawing near the main Suthern horde, Roper sent the Skiritai ranging further than ever before, scouring the hills for leagues around the army.
On the eleventh day, they discovered the enemy.
A pair of mounted rangers reported to Roper. They had found soldiers by their thousand, perhaps six leagues, they said, to the north-west. “Show me,” was all Roper said. He mounted a courser (a horse of Zephyr’s size would not have the stamina for such a mission) and followed the two guides into the hills, Gray and Helmec with him.
The horses made heavy work of the mud and it was nearly four hours of picking their way between tree trunks, over beaches of ash and threading between mountains, before they arrived at the edge of a great valley. The Skiritai knew their business and had been careful to avoid detection, tethering the horses out of sight behind a ridge before approaching the rim of the valley on foot. They crawled the final few yards and peered down into the valley.
There lay the Suthern army. Or, at least, some of it. Tens of thousands filled the valley in which a semi-permanent camp had been established. Tents studded the floor with cooking fires generously interspersed among the men, most of
