03 - God King (23 page)

“Maedbh!” cried the queen as she saw her approach. “A fine gathering is it
not?”

“Yes, my queen, very fine,” said Maedbh, looking around the muster field.
“How many answered the call to arms?”

“All of them it seems,” laughed Freya. “Near five hundred chariots, two
thousand warriors on foot and a half century of horsemen. A host to chase the
dead back to their tombs, eh?”

“A mighty army indeed,” answered Maedbh. “Our lands must be empty of
warriors.”

The queen nodded, her face darkening at Maedbh’s insinuation. “I know you
think me rash to ride off like this, and, yes, this muster will leave us
vulnerable for a while. But brother Siggurd’s lands are aflame and what manner
of queen would I be if I left his murder unavenged? You heard what Sigmar’s
herald said, the dead are rising everywhere and the Menogoths are already gone.
Now Siggurd’s city is taken and our southernmost scouts say there’s an army
moving on Three Hills. No one invades my lands, Maedbh, no one.”

“I understand, my queen,” said Maedbh. “But I have faced this enemy, and it
is not cowed by threats, boasts or reputations. It is a foe that lives to kill
and create more of its kind.”

“You can still come, Maedbh. I need you with me,” said Freya, indicating her
chariot. “I can find another rider when battle is joined, but no one has your
skill with a chariot. No one has your fire and daring.”

Maedbh glanced down at Ulrike, pulled by the desire to ride with her queen
and the need to protect her daughter. She had crewed Freya’s chariot ever since
the queen had taken the throne, and the idea that she would go into battle
without Maedbh rankled. Yet one look at her daughter’s need told her she could
not ride with this army. In that moment she understood the demands on Wolfgart,
but to Maedbh, the choice was clear. She could not leave Ulrike.

“Thank you, my queen,” said Maedbh, “but I cannot. I have Ulrike to think
of.”

The queen shrugged and said, “Your child is blooded now, she should ride with
us too.”

Anger touched Maedbh. “As Sigulf and Fridleifr do?”

The queen’s face darkened and she climbed aboard her chariot.

“You know why they do not march with me,” hissed Freya, mercurial as ever.
“If you will not ride with me, then I charge you to protect them. Keep my boys
safe, Maedbh, promise me this and I might forget your insolence.”

“I will watch over them as though they were my own,” promised Maedbh.

Freya smiled, her earlier anger forgotten.

“I know you will,” said the queen. “I will leave a sword band of my Eagles
too, but it is a great honour I do you, Maedbh.”

“I understand, my queen,” said Maedbh, bowing as Freya took her sons in a
crushing embrace. The queen hugged them to her breast, whispering something to
each of them in turn and pushing them towards Maedbh. They stood with Ulrike,
hurt that they were not riding to war with their mother and resentful that they
were under the protection of another.

Freya took up a spear from her chariot and raised its bronze blade high. At
her signal, the Asoborns let loose a whooping war shout, which was taken up by
every warrior gathered in the muster field. The queen of the Asoborns cracked
the reins and her chariot rumbled away, leading her army towards the route
south.

Maedbh watched her go, her heart heavy at the sight of so many warriors going
into battle without her, yet secretly relieved she wouldn’t have to leave her
daughter. She looked at the three children she was now beholden to protect, and
the maternal urge flowed through her entire body.

She would die before she allowed any harm to come to these youngsters.

“Are you our guardian now?” asked Sigulf.

“Yes,” said Maedbh. “I am.”

The view from the top of the Raven Hall was spectacular, and Princess Marika
never tired of looking out over Endal lands. A relentless grey twilight gripped
the day, as it had done for the last few weeks, but on a clear day it was
possible to see all the way to the Great Road and the marshes beyond. She
suppressed an involuntary shiver at the thought of the marshes, recalling an
unhappier time when Aldred had almost sacrificed her to the mist daemons to save
their ailing kingdom.

Marika and her brother had publicly made their peace, though she could never
quite forget the nearness of her death. As count of Marburg, Aldred had done
what he thought best to lift the curse from his people, his good intentions
twisted by Idris Gwylt, a manipulative priest of an ancient faith now outlawed
in the Empire. That didn’t make it any easier for her to forgive.

Gwylt was dead now, executed in the manner of the Thrice Death, but Marika
still woke with the stink of the daemon queen in her nostrils more nights than
not.

The reek of the swamp took her back to that dark time, but she was a princess
of the Endals and destined for great things. As a child, a soothsayer had told
her that she would one day bear the first king of a great city of union, a place
of wealth and prosperity that would one day stand taller than all others. It was
a child’s fantasy, yet one that made her smile on a day like this, when even a
child’s dream was a welcome relief from grim reality.

“So many of them,” said Eloise, her lady in waiting, her hands clasped before
her heart in an unconscious supplication to Shallya. “Those poor people.”

Marika shook her head, thinking there were no more than two thousand people
trudging along the coast road towards Marburg.

“So many? No, it should be a lot more,” she said. “Jutonsryk was a mighty
city. This is less than a third of its population.”

“Where are the rest of them?” asked Eloise, and Marika rolled her eyes.
Servants could be wilfully dense sometimes.

“They’re dead,” said Marika, turning and making her way towards her brother’s
chambers.

She found Aldred with Laredus in the throne room of the Raven Hall, donning
his armour in preparation for meeting his fellow count. Laredus helped buckle
Aldred’s bronze breastplate, its front moulded to replicate abdominal muscles
Marika knew were nowhere near as sculpted as the armour would suggest. Aldred
pulled his sword belt around his waist, shifting Ulfshard’s hilt to be within
easy reach.

Twin shafts of weak sunlight shone through the eyes of the carved raven’s
head that surmounted the top of the tower, and a warm fire burned in the hearth,
filling the glossy-walled chamber with glistening reflections. It was a cold
room, one that had seen its share of bad decisions in its time. She had long
since vowed to see that no more were made here.

Her brother wore a long dark cloak of feathers, and as she watched Laredus
buckle on the last portions of Aldred’s armour, Marika saw an all too familiar
melancholy settle upon Aldred. Laredus lifted a tall, black-winged helm from the
armour stand behind the count’s ebony throne, where the majestic Raven Banner
was seated in a socket cut into the backrest.

Marika took her brother’s hands and looked into his sad features. The years
had been difficult for him. The death of their father at Black Fire cast a long
shadow, and when their brother Egil died of the mist daemons’ plague, a black
outlook had settled upon Aldred like an indelible stain on his soul.

“You should hurry,” said Marika, adjusting his cloak. “He’ll be at the gates
soon.”

“They’re here?” asked Aldred without looking up at her. “They’ve moved fast.”

“So would you with the dead nipping at your heels,” she said.

“I suppose,” he answered as Laredus handed him his helmet. Aldred tucked it
in the crook of his arm and said, “How do I look?”

“Grand,” replied Laredus. The captain of the Raven Helms was a warrior born,
a man who had fought all manner of enemies in his service to the royal bloodline
of the Endals. “You do your fellow count honour to meet him warrior to warrior.”

“He’s damned lucky I’m meeting him at all,” said Aldred. “The man’s
insufferable. First he refuses to stand with us at Black Fire, and then we have
to lay siege to his city to earn his Sword Oath. Now he’s a hero of the Empire?
I’ve a damn good mind to shut the gates on him and his bloody people.”

“Don’t be foolish,” said Marika, moving in close and adjusting his sword
belt. “What kind of message does that send? You will be gracious and welcoming.”

“His people drove us from our homes,” said Aldred.

“Thirty years ago, after the Teutogens drove them from theirs,” pointed out
Marika.

“Semantics.”

“History.”

“History,” he grunted, “Is written by those who now live in lands they took
by force.”

“No, it’s written by scribes cleverer than you and I,” she said. “Now come
on, you don’t want to keep Marius waiting.”

Aldred eyed her suspiciously. “If I didn’t know better I’d swear you were in
a hurry to meet this mercenary.”

Marika smiled. “Marius may be a mercenary, but he is a count of the Empire.
You should remember that.”

“Like you’ll let me forget,” he muttered.

The gates of Marburg swung open and a group of blue-cloaked horsemen rode
through on tired mounts. Most were warriors, their armour torn and mud-stained,
though one was a young man who was clearly no horseman. A scribe perhaps? Their
mounts were lathered and winded, and Marika saw they were near the end of their
endurance. Only a fool would ride their mount to such extremes, but what other
choice was there when death was the only other fate?

The cobbled courtyard was lined with spearmen in the blacks and browns of the
Endals, and a lone piper filled the air with a skirling lament. The lancers
looked uneasy, as well they might, for the Endals and Jutones had long been
enemies. The coming of the Empire had made them allies, but no amount of Sword
Oaths could erase the memory of centuries of bitter fighting.

Count Marius rode at the head of his lancers, incongruous amongst their
raggedness by looking as though he had just stepped from his dressing room in
search of a grand feast. His long blond hair was kept from his classically
handsome features by a silver band, and his blue eyes regarded the warriors
lining the courtyard with amused disdain. Where his warriors were dirty and
weary, his clothes were immaculate and tailored to make the most of his lean
physique. Marika had met Marius briefly atop the Fauschlag Rock the previous
year, and had been dazzled by his quick wit, easy smile and roguish charm.
Though she bore as much ancestral antipathy towards the Jutones as any Endal,
she had found herself warming to him and the cosmopolitan description of his
coastal city.

That city was now gone, scoured of all life by an invading fleet of the dead,
and all that remained was a decaying charnel house. Or so the fastest refugees
had told it. Looking at the bedraggled column of frightened people travelling in
the wake of Marius, she was inclined to believe that description.

Marius rode toward Aldred and dismounted. The Raven Helms tensed, though
there was surely no threat here. In a gesture of uncharacteristic humility, the
dispossessed count of the Jutones dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

“Count Aldred of Marburg,” said Marius. “I am here to ask for your help,
though Ulric knows, you’ve reason enough to turn me away.”

“Aye, that I do, Jutone,” said Aldred, his tone icy as he drew Ulfshard. The
fey-forged blade shone with a sapphire light in the wan afternoon sun, and
Marika gasped as her brother stepped towards Marius. “It’s thanks to your tribe
that we live on the edge of a marsh, afflicted by disease and cut off from our
ancient lands. The spirits of my ancestors cry out for vengeance, so give me one
good reason I shouldn’t kill you right now.”

Marika was horrified at her brother’s reaction, but to his credit, Marius
took Aldred’s anger in his stride. He nodded, as though he’d been expecting such
an outburst.

“Our tribes have never been friends, it’s true,” said Marius, “but I ask you
to look past our shared enmity and give my people shelter. They have lost
everything and have walked many miles to escape death. There is nothing left of
Jutonsryk, the corpse army destroyed it all. Thousands of the living dead came
in from the sea and killed most of my subjects. Fires burned out of control
through the city and I had no choice but to lead the survivors from its burning
gates. My castle is ruined and my walls toppled. Only the Namathir remains, and
the dead now haunt its tunnels and catacombs. Deny
me
a place within your
walls if you must, but do not punish those who have not earned your ire.”

The count of the Jutones rose to his feet and Marika saw the anguish in his
eyes, a genuine sorrow that she had never expected to see in him. Aldred still
held the softly glowing blade of Ulfshard out before him, unwavering in his
hatred. His anger had blinded him to what he was doing, and Marika decided to
take matters into her own hands.

“Marika! What are you doing?” hissed Aldred as she walked towards Marius.

“What
you
should be doing, brother,” she said, keeping her gaze fixed
on the Jutone count.

She extended her hands, and Marius took them, bending to kiss her palms. His
lips were soft and he smiled at her as he stood straight.

“You are a magnificent woman, my lady,” he said. “As radiant as the sun.”

“I know,” she replied.

Aldred stormed over to her side, but before he could speak she rounded upon
him.

“Do not say a word, Aldred,” she warned him. “I am the daughter of Marbad,
and this is my city as much as yours. And you owe me, remember?”

“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”

“Is there any reason I should?” she hissed.

“But he’s Jutone!” protested Aldred.

“No, he is a man of the Empire,” said Marika. “As are you. Would you be known
as a murderer or a man of mercy? A man of compassion and forgiveness or one who
left thousands of innocents to die?”