Black River (The Hounds of the North Book 2) Read online

  "Is there something there you don't want us to find?" asked Pullo.

  "If we go in with a full legion or two," said Vincius, "we will be too obvious. A force as large as that will be spotted miles away. Even now I wonder whether we have too many men and honestly as we get closer to the warlock my best recommendation is that we leave the better part of our party behind and only go in with a crack troop. The proven strategy in all the histories of the Grand Collegium is to bring in a small force and catch the wielder of dark magic by surprise."

  "I never understood what exactly you do," said Spear. His shaved head glistened with the settling mists. "Is this right? You sneak up on warlocks and witches and try to capture their words of power before they kill you. You're basically making yourselves known to them so they start working their magic, and then after you capture their words, you kill them."

  "That's exactly right," said Vincius.

  "Like baiting a wolf by going into its den and grabbing its young."

  "It's not a calling for the faint of heart."

  "Sounds like a calling for those who are replaceable." Spear laughed.

  "And that is where the skill comes into play."

  "So tell me then, boy, how many of these words have you captured? How many witches and warlocks have you killed?"

  Spear released the reins and the horse wheeled out uncontrollably beneath Vincius. He held on desperately but then lost his seat and was flung into the mud and the muck of the streets.

  "Know this, boy," said Spear. "I will follow your lead across the Black River and I will help you hunt down this warlock for the coin that I am promised. But do not think that you own me and do not think that when the time comes for blades to sing that I will yield to your dream of tongues. The only thing that matters is my own skin."

  THE PRISONER

  URBIDIS FELL AGAIN, hard on his chest. The horse dragged him along through a patch of grass before he stumbled back up to his feet pulled by the rope that bound his hands. His face was bloodied and each time he fell and struggled to his feet, each time he lurched to match the gait of the horse, his captors laughed.

  The wide-chested Dhurman, commander of the fortress at Cullan, could not believe how his world had turned inside out so quickly. Days ago, they had been establishing their camp at the village. Then the warlock's army descended on them. His own soldiers, dead, rose against him. He had thought that he would have been killed too, almost wished he had, but the warlock prevented the knives from dropping. Then he was moving north, a captive tied to an unrelenting horse, driven by the lashes and kicks of three Painted Men.

  Urbidis was not sure what he felt anymore, whether it was residual fear from the undead warriors, especially his own that had risen against him and their fellow soldiers or exhaustion at being led further north, well beyond the Black River across bog and wide meadow.

  He had no idea where they were going except in a northerly direction.

  The rain pelted his bare skin like small icy shards. They had stripped him of his furs and armor and boots, leaving him in his torn and bloodied wool trousers to chase after the horse.

  At night, they would tie his arms behind him, bend his legs backwards and cinch them to his arms. When they undid him in the mornings, he wondered that he had the ability to even stand, much less follow a horse across rugged terrain for hours.

  He had lost track of the number of days since the battle. He thought it was four days but he was no longer sure.

  While Urbidis had lost track of so much – where they went, how many days had passed, and whether any of his men had lived – the only thing that remained clear to him was that he would escape and he would return to Vas Dhurma to his wife and two daughters.

  He held them in his mind even as he stumbled over the foreign landscape. He saw the long gentle fingers of Giulia and the bright eyes and ready smiles of his daughters.

  How long it had been since he had last seen then. Near a year. How much had the girls grown? How much had his wife aged? He saw his own changing face every day in the mirror, the gray in the beard, the wrinkles lengthening on his cheeks, the weariness beneath his eyes. How had she changed?

  Urbidis was no hopeless romantic. He never had been. In fact, Giulia often complained that he was too taciturn and that he never told her or his daughters how he truly felt inside. He had always shrugged that off.

  Did they not see the sacrifices he made for them and for country? Did they not see his swallowing of any emotion before he said his goodbyes?

  Maybe they had not. Maybe everything around which he had built his life had been a fraud.

  Why did he live his life the way that he thought a true soldier was supposed to – strong, quiet, relentless – rather than the way that he should have if he was true to himself? But what was that way? He had lived the cold, taciturn life so long. Did he even know what emotions he felt deep inside? Or had all of that died long ago on some field of battle or some long march or some cold morning while he pored over the orders of the day.

  What worth this life if the things that had the greatest value to him slipped further away from him each day?

  Who was Urbidis any more?

  He did not know, but as he picked himself up again, he swore that he would get back to the city of Vas Dhurma, back to his wife and daughters and there find who he truly was again.

  The rain poured down harder causing the distances to shorten. His captors, three Northmen, their entire bodies painted in blue woad, were wrapped in cloaks of fur. Urbidis shivered. What he would do for one of their cloaks or horses.

  They were arguing now in a Northern tongue that he could not make sense of. Then quick as a serpent one of them hurled his spear through the chest of the other.

  Urbidis waited, expecting the dead man to rise. But there was no song of dark magic. The warlock and witch were long gone, having disappeared with their growing army soon after the battle and not returning. He wondered if they had even known who he was, that he commanded the fortress. But they must have since he was left alive. He knew they would ransom him. What other use could he be to them? But why hadn't the warlock taken him in bonds to where ever he was going? Or maybe these men were taking him there separately?

  The two remaining Northmen looted their fallen companion, taking knives, bronze rings and armlets, his leather helm. Urbidis caught their attention and motioned for the fur cloak. They frowned at him and shook their heads.

  "I'll go no further then." He sat down in the spongy grass. "You and the horse can drag me the rest of the way, a piles of blood and bones."

  The men turned from him, arguing in low voices, before one of them threw the cloak at the Dhurman. The cloak was still warm with the lingering heat of the dead man, and wet with his blood. It was a small thing really to get the cloak, but it was something and it fed the commander's hope. Escape was possible now that Urbidis knew he was of more value to them alive than dead.

  PROMISE

  SHIELD WATCHED THEM from the rise of a hill. The thirty odd men on horseback picked their way along the banks of the Black River following a trail of mud and stone. It would be another half hour for them to reach Oron's Belt. They were ghosts in the rain.

  "Once again Northern dogs following at the heels of our masters," muttered Patch, not so softly that he was not distinctly heard.

  Shield blinked at the rain. Drops down his cheek burrowed their way deep into his beard. The grasses around their horses' hooves collapsed beneath the rain.

  "We are North again," said Harad. "Where we belong."

  "But still beneath their yoke" said Patch. "A change of scenery but nothing has changed."

  "Everything has changed," said Harad. "After this, we are free. You heard the Chronicler. Free men in the North. We can return to our clans."

  Patch shook his head. "With welcoming arms I am sure. I'd rather just return to the mead hall."

  Shield cinched the top of his cloak more tightly around his neck. "You boys can do what you want. You kn
ow that, don't you? You're not beholden to me."

  The rain hissed through the sky.

  "Our days as the Hounds of the North are over," said Shield. "They ended back in Hopht. Hell, maybe they ended long before that."

  "We're still the Hounds," said Harad. Shield could see tears lost to the drops of rain on the big man's face. "We always will be."

  Patch scoffed. "We were always something. More like the Dogs of Dhurma. Serving this Chronicler makes me sick. Hunting down old hags and crippled men. And for what? A few coppers. We are worth more than this. Much more."

  Patch's words brought back a memory of one of their journeys outside of Cullan. They had come uninvited into a village. The Apprentice Chronicler feigned a consumption of the lungs and then when an old man sung words to heal, Vincius ordered the Hounds to seize him. What followed still burned in Shield's memory. It was murder. And there was nothing that the old man had but words to heal, simple words of old that now were lost forever, the Chronicler's scribblings incomplete.

  "We will always be the Hounds," Harad echoed again.

  "There is no us, fool," said Patch. "Can't you see that? Can't you hear what the almighty Shield Scyldmund is telling us? He's done with us. He's led us to hell and back and maybe back into hell again and now it's time to say good bye. Good luck, good-bye. We're back home where all this shit started. And with empty purses. But we aren't home any more, are we? We are as foreign and as unwelcome as the Dhurmans themselves. We've lost our homes because of what we did."

  Harad shook his head. "We did what we did because the Warlock King killed Shield's father. He had already brought war to the North."

  "Not just that," said Patch. "That was just the beginning of what we did. We left. We created chaos and opened the door to Empire and then we made our beds with them. Gods, if I had a chance to do it over again, I would have stayed here. I should have. Not like Spear, not to be a simpering dog to our conquerors, a bully to his own. I would have fought."

  "You would have died," said Harad. "Who could have stood up to Empire? What a waste it would have been of our lives."

  Shield spoke. "Patch is right. I led you wrong. We made a tremendous mistake. These years have been wasted."

  "The legions would have destroyed us," said Harad.

  "We should be dead now. Maybe we are dead and just don't know it. What have we left? Fading memories of our childhoods, our families lost to us forever, our land that is no longer our land. We have nothing but each other and at every turn one of us vanishes by blade or by choice. We are a pale reflection of what we once were."

  Shield stared at the ground beneath their horses, the endless rain and mud had swallowed the impressions of their hooves.

  "So where do we go now?" asked Harad.

  "We go with them," their leader said pointing to the horsemen heading towards Oron's Belt.

  "To serve them?" asked Patch.

  "No. To serve ourselves. To serve the North."

  Shield looked hard to the north, into the sheets of rain, the rising mists, and the shadows of the distant peaks. What was once clear was now hazy and undefined. But in that chaos, he could see her face as clearly as the day that he had broken his promise to her. He could see the clear dark eyes and smooth skin of Birgid Wordswallow, the one to whom he promised to return, and he knew that his promise was not broken yet.

  CROSSING THE RIVER

  THE FORCE LED by Pullo and Vincius rode to the edge of Cullan town along the path of mud, the horse's hooves sinking deep, leaving small pools of murk, a trail of their passage. Spear had drifted towards the rear position so he could see who Pullo had recruited.

  "These men?" Spear asked Pullo as his horse came even.

  The grizzled sergeant nodded. "It's what we have." He ran a palm over his chin, squeezing the rainwater out.

  "The ones Urbidis left behind."

  "You could have offered to bring your men, Northman. You know that."

  Spear did not want to think of Cruhund, alone among his men, whispering discontent. "Urbidis should have split the force more evenly."

  "Too late for that now, Northerner. We're stuck with what we're stuck with – the gimps, the grandfathers, the thick headed."

  "And which are you?"

  "The unlucky apparently."

  In the short time that it had taken for them to walk their horses from the gates of the fort to the edge of the village, the rain had turned from a heavy claustrophobic mist to sharpening drops that forced Spear deeper into the folds of his fur cloak.

  Pullo nodded towards the Apprentice Chronicler in his heavy cotton cloak. "You shouldn't have been so hard on the boy. He's soaked through and through. He'll be miserable until he can get a chance to dry out by a fire."

  "He thinks he owns me," said Spear.

  "You accepted his bond of coin."

  "I needed to send him a message."

  "Sometimes it is better to make friends of your enemies."

  "That why you're chatting me up?" asked Spear.

  The fat sergeant laughed. "He doesn't know what he's doing. He's lost up here. Hell bent on I don't know what."

  "That why I sent him from his saddle. I'll take his coin but not in exchange for my life. I'm here because I survive."

  "Is it enough just to survive?"

  They had just reached the edge of the Northern settlement – the shacks, the penned sheep, the muddy cabbage patches – surrounding the fort, when Spear wheeled his horse about.

  Was it enough simply to survive?

  He wanted one last moment with Yriel, a final kiss to bring with him back across the Black River.

  He had no fear or thoughts that he would not return. He was a Northerner, and a clansman who had earned his scars, one whose sword carried decades of blood. What was there beyond the river that could keep him?

  "I'll be back before you know it. One last thing," Spear said.

  Pullo looked as if to say something but Spear's smile and wink quieted the sergeant.

  Spear pressed his horse back through the market to the small hut that he and Yriel had made their own. He slid from the wet horse and pushed through the fur curtain into their room.

  The fire smoldered in the center of the house, smoke twisting up beyond the iron cauldron. The furs were as they had left them this morning.

  But Yriel was no longer there.

  He had not left her more than a half hour prior and the morning was still young. Why would she go out into the rain, she who always slept in, who bundled herself deeply against the slightest chill, her Dhurman side apparent in her dislike of the Northern weather and way of life?

  Spear wanted to linger to see if he could not steal that last kiss from her, but he knew that he could not. He would need to turn his horse back soon to be able to catch the men before they crossed Oron's Belt. He waited a moment more and then, eyes tightened in anger, stomped back to his horse.

  He was just about to remount his horse when he saw the dark shape in amongst the hovels of stick and mud that had sprung up near their home in the last few months, hovels housing Northern clans people driven towards the hope that Cullan town offered a better life, towards the false promises that Dhurma dangled in front of them.

  She stood among the shadows: a hag.

  She clung to the wood frame, her eyes milky white, her hands bones covered in saggy leather. Her hair was braided and clumped in knots. The skins of animals worn to a sheen hung like moss from a tree.

  Her finger craned at him, curling down, inviting. He came closer, unable to resist.

  "All that you know will die," she said.

  Blackness fell over him and then he was staring where she had stood but she was no longer there and when he popped his head inside the hovel, it was long abandoned, left to the dogs and rats.

  He fled on his horse through the market, out along the muddy trail and then finally caught up with the body of the riders. He pulled himself even with Pullo.

  The hag's words burned in his ears.

/>   "Weren't sure you were coming back," said Pullo. "But then I remembered that Vincius had not given you your bag of coin yet so I figured you are along for as long as I am."

  They followed the muddy path along the river until they came to Oron's Belt. The Belt was an area where the river widened and large flat stones helped form a bridge between the banks. In normal times, the crossing was mild. One followed the white stones cautiously, turning the horse along the meandering passage, careful not to step too far left or right or into a gap between the stones. Or else one would plunge into the deeper part of the river.

  Spear had seen men not pay attention and horses sink to their chests in the water. This always led to men and horse being swept away down the river, usually to the death of both. For this reason, men more often than not chose to wade in the water ahead of their horses, ready to let go of the reins if the horse misstepped.

  The rains that swelled the river made it impossible to wade ahead of the horses. The men would have to ride across.

  Spear explained the crossing to his companions and Pullo outlined a strategy for his men, men who sat uncomfortably on their horses, men whose eyes already turned back to the warmth and comfort of Cullan, men who Spear thought would have been better left back at the fortress. It was decided by Pullo that Spear would come last with Vincius to help him guide his horse across the river.

  Spear wondered how men like this could have defeated his people. They were weak. They had no sense of strength in the wild. A bit of rain sunk them into depression. The dark skinned men never should have taken the North. But he knew the truth. Their weapons and tactics were better, the best of their best were that good, and they had overwhelmed the North with sheer numbers. Of course, the infighting and betrayal among clans played a deciding role.