“To ale,” replied Stepan, knocking his cup against Bellamus’s.
They drank together, and before long the lucky few who had made it inside the inn had been supplied with drink as well. All manner of receptacles, from livestock bowls to boots, were filled with foaming ale and passed to those outside, where they were received with muffled cheers that came through the walls and made Bellamus smile. The warmth of a grubby hearth that crackled at one end of the room began to reach through his damp clothes and even Bellamus found himself on the verge of a glowing euphoria. For now, survival would do. His score with the Black Kingdom could wait.
Next to him, Stepan was on the defensive from good-natured jeers. It transpired that in their first victorious battle on the flood plain, he had swung his sword so wildly against the Black Cavalry that he had cut into the neck of his own horse, fatally wounding it. “Hilarious, hilarious,” said Stepan, as the men around him rested their heads on their arms, tears of mirth leaking down their cheeks. “I promise, it’s easier than you’re imagining,” he said. “And it saved me! I hit the horse and it toppled, ducking me beneath a blade being swung at my head.”
The innkeeper returned, still clutching his skin of drink, and declared the food was on its way from a larger village nearby. Bellamus thanked him, which seemed to be taken as an invitation to join their company. The innkeeper, whose braids were slowly ceding ground to his forehead, and whose cheeks would have drooped below his jaw had the folds of skin there not been equally pendulous, squeezed in between Stepan and the man next to him. “It’s been a long while since we had travellers here,” he said. “And I wasn’t expecting anyone this winter, let alone four hundred of you. Where are you from, lord?” Several Anakim words had once again squeezed their way into his speech, and Bellamus could see Stepan frowning thunderously as he tried to decipher what the innkeeper was saying.
Bellamus smiled wryly. “I’m not a lord, friend. We’ve come from beyond the Abus.”
The innkeeper nodded as though he was not surprised. “I thought you must have.” He leaned close to Bellamus. “There was an army, headed up there recently, under that Earl William. You haven’t heard tell what happened to it?”
Stepan sat up straight, clearly delighted to have understood this last sentence, and spread his arms as wide as the crowded table would permit. “You’re looking at it!” he boomed.
The innkeeper nodded again, as though he had suspected this too. “I’m only surprised there’s as many of you as this,” he said. “Not many who go beyond the river end up coming back.”
“Well, not many are led by our captain, here,” said Stepan, gesturing at Bellamus. The knight’s ears seemed to have attuned themselves to the innkeeper’s dialect.
“You must have a tale or two from past the river,” said the innkeeper, looking shrewdly at Bellamus. “How is it that you survived out of the thousands who crossed into the Black Kingdom? Last I heard, your victory was assured. Earl William had banished them in battle and had the devils on the run.”
“That’s almost true,” said Bellamus. He glanced at Stepan. “It is a fine tale, but my noble friend is a better storyteller than I.”
Stepan needed no second invitation. “A mighty tale it is, my friend,” he said, wrapping an arm around the innkeeper’s shoulders. “As you say, things did not seem to be going so badly until the battle beside the sea. After that, we discovered the Anakim to be the warriors of legend that we’d been promised.”
“I could’ve told you that,” said the innkeeper.
“I don’t doubt you could have,” said Stepan, winking at Bellamus. “A ferocious clash it was,” continued the knight, now placing his palms flat against the table. “A tight pass beside the thrashing ocean, the warriors obliterating each other as wave upon rock. Our side fought bravely and we were holding them. I even dared believe we might exhaust and break them with our superior numbers. But there was no room for manoeuvre and their flanks were secured by the sea on one side, and the mountains on the other. Our captain, here,” Stepan gestured at Bellamus once more, “came up with a plan. We’d built a couple of hundred crude boats to help us forage from the sea, and Bellamus bade us fill them. ‘We’ll row around behind their lines,’ says he, ‘and crush them on two sides!’ We got a good few thousand into the boats, the best we could find. Bellamus took his own soldiers: a frightening bunch, a fair few of whom sit listening to me now.” Stepan raised a hand to indicate the assembled company. “Not nobly born, but experienced Anakim-slayers from across Erebos, loyal only to the captain. We supplemented these with as many knights as we could find, and loaded up the boats.
“It was a good plan and we put to sea, hopeful of seizing a second victory against our old enemy. We began to row and were nearly behind the Anakim lines when we saw a change occur in the battle on the shore. Our line was collapsing, right in the centre. We understood later, when we heard that our brave leader, Lord Northwic, had been cut down by some Anakim hero.” Stepan paused here and raised his cup. “I will not simply let his name pass by. To Lord Northwic. May God take him!”
This was met with a murmur and a toast. Bellamus held his own cup aloft a moment longer than everyone else, bowing his head as he took
