‘Hah!’ Ota Qwan sighed. ‘I was born south of Albinkirk.’ He shrugged. ‘It boots nothing, friend. Now I am Sossag. And we will burn the farms of the city, or what Thorn has left of it. He wants the Castle of the Women, which interests us not at all.’ Ota Qwan gave a queer smile. ‘The Sossag have never been to war with the Castle of Women. And he has failed.’ Ota Qwan looked into the distance, where the mountains rolled like waves on the sea. ‘For now. And Skadai says, let Albinkirk see the colour of our steel.’
The words thrilled Peter, who thought he should be too mature to fall for such things. But war had a simplicity that could be a relief. Sometimes, it is good merely to hate.
And then Peter thought that Ota Qwan was an injured soul who had fallen into the Sossag to heal himself. But the former slave shook his head and said to himself, ‘Be one of them. And you will never be another man’s slave.’
At nightfall on the second day they were in sight of the town. Peter sat on his haunches, eating a thin rabbit that he’d cooked with herbs, sharing it with his new band. Ota Qwan had complimented his cooking, and had admitted that their new band of war-brothers – Pal Kut, Brant, Skahas Gaho, Mullet and Barbface (the best Peter could do with his name) were gathered as much for Peter’s food as for Ota Qwan’s leadership.
Either way, it was good to belong. Good to be part of a group. Brant smiled when he took food. Skahas Gaho patted the ground on his blanket when Peter hovered by the fire, looking for a place to sit.
Two days, and these were his comrades.
Skadai came to their fire towards true dark, and sat on his haunches. He spoke quickly, smiled often, and then surprised Peter by patting him on the arm. He ate a bowl of rabbit soup with his fingers, grinned, and left them for the next fire.
Ota Qwan sighed. The other men took sharpening stones from their bags, and began to touch up their arrowheads, and then their knives, and Skahas Gaho, who had a sword, a short, heavy-bladed weapon like a Morean xiphos, made the steel sing as he passed his stone over it.
‘Tomorrow, we fight,’ Ota Qwan said.
Peter nodded.
‘Not Albinkirk,’ Ota Qwan said. ‘A richer target. Something to take home with us. Something to make our winter shorter.’ He licked his lips and Brant asked him a question and then guffawed at the answer.
Skahas Gaho kept sharpening his short sword, and men began to laugh. He was stroking it tenderly, with long, lingering strokes of the stone. And then shorter, faster ones.
Brant laughed, and then spat disgustedly and unrolled his furs.
Peter did the same. He had no trouble getting to sleep.
South and East of Lissen Carak – Gerald Random
Random had been ready for ambush for five days, and it didn’t matter when it happened. His men almost won through.
Almost.
They were now riding through deep forest, and the western road was a double cart track with the trees sometimes arched right over the road. However, the old forest was open, the great boles of the trunks sixty feet apart or more with little enough underbrush so his flankers could ride alongside, his advance guard could clear the trail a hundred horse-lengths wide, and his wagons were moving well – it was the fifth straight day without rain, and the road was dry except in the deeper ruts and puddles and some deep holes like muddy ponds.
The woods were so deep that it was difficult to gauge the passage of time, and he had no idea how far they’d travelled on the narrow track until Old Bob rode back to say that he thought he could hear the river.
At that news, Random’s heart rose. Even though what he was doing was suicidally foolish, to aid an old Magus, and his wife would never approve when she found out.
He was on the lead wagon, and he stood up to look – a natural thing to do, even when listening would have been more natural. But all he could hear was the wind in the trees overhead.
‘Ambush!’ shouted one of the vanguard. He pointed at a dozen boglins around a young troll, a monster the size of a plough horse with the antlers like a great elk’s and a smooth stone face like the visor on a black helmet. It was covered in thick armour plates of obsidian.
The troll charged them, racing like a mad dog straight at the wagons. The horses panicked but his men did not, and quarrels flew thick as snow, and the troll screamed and slowed, seemed for a moment to be swimming through steel, and then suddenly fell with a crash.
The boglins vanished.
Random, standing on the wagon seat, took an arrow in the breastplate. It didn’t bite, but it knocked him off the seat and it hurt when he got to his feet – his shoulder hurt and his neck hurt like fire.
Just ahead, the vanguard was abruptly locked up with more boglins.
Old Bob was racing for the melee.
Random watched as his soldiers crushed the smaller creatures with weight of horse and better weapons, better skill, and the boglins, as was inevitable, broke and ran.
Old Bob shouted something, but his words were lost in the triumph of the moment, and the troopers turned as one to harry the fleeing boglins . . . and suddenly the trolls were on them – a pair, smashing in from either flank. Blood came off the melee like smoke as they struck, and horses died faster than they could fall to the ground.
Random had never seen a troll before, but the Wild name for them – dhag – stuck in his mind, as did a picture in a Book of Hours he’d purchased in Harndon for the market – taller than a peasant’s house, as black as night or expensive velvet, with plates of black stone like armour and no face, topped with antlers like clubs. A troll could crush an armoured man’s breastplate in one blow and behead him in another, could move as fast as a horse and as quiet as a bear.
The vanguard was dead before Random could close his mouth. Six men gone in a breath.
Old Bob had a light lance, and he lowered the point – one of the monsters turned, almost falling as it skidded to a stop, feeling the vibration of the charging horse. It braced itself, head low, horn-clad feet still churning at the earth, and Random could see the great plate of stone that protected its skull.
And then Old Bob’s horse was by and his lance, thrown, not couched, went into the beast’s side – struck deep between two stone plates, and the meaty sound of the heavy spearhead going home in the flesh carried across the distance.
A dozen bolts hit the creature.
Gawin had the rearguard up, forming to the right and left, with companies of guildsmen coming up next to the wagons on either side – not the smoothest, and their faces were as white as snow, and their hands shook, but they were coming.
‘Halt!’ Gawin shouted, and Guilbert came from the other side of the wagons with another five of the wagon guards.
Guilbert took command with one glance. ‘Pick a target!’ he called.
The woods were surprisingly silent.
Old Bob had his horse around, but he never saw the dozen boglins coming. One of them put a spear into his horse effortlessly, like a dancer, the squat thing pirouetting as its spear skewered the beast, and the horse stopped its turn and gave a shrill scream as the wounded troll attacked. Its first blow ripped Old Bob’s lower jaw off his face under the brim of his open-faced helmet – then it crushed his breastplate so that a fountain of blood blew out of his open throat.
The wounded troll slumped. The second one stopped and bent down to feed off both of them, its visor opening and a set of fangs showing sharp against the black of its mouth.
The wave of boglins charged the line of bowmen and soldiers, and this time his men broke and ran.
Random watched them with complete understanding, terrified and virtually unable to move his limbs too, and the sight of the old knight being ripped asunder by the troll seemed to have numbed his mind. He tried to speak. He watched as the guildsmen shuffled, cursed, and turned too. The guards had horses, and they put their spurs to their mounts.
‘Stand!’ Guilbert shouted. ‘Stand or you are all dead men!’
They ignored him.
And then Ser Gawin laughed.
