The Long War 01 - The Black Guard (37 page)

‘Brom…’ he began in a quizzical fashion.

‘Yes, Rham Jas.’

‘I think I may know where we can get some help.’ The Kirin knew that it was a poor idea, but marching into Canarn alone was worse.

‘Do you have an army of assassin friends somewhere around here?’ Brom asked with a gormless smile.

‘No, but I know a… well… a man… not that the word
man
really applies,’ he answered. ‘His name is Nanon and he lives in the Deep Wood of Canarn.’

‘He has a strange name.’ Brom suddenly looked suspicious and sat up to look down at Rham Jas. ‘Who is he?’

The Kirin sighed. ‘He’s Dokkalfar… in their language he’s a Tyr, which sort of translates as warrior.’

Brom’s drugged state softened his reaction to this information and he merely directed a doubting expression at his friend. ‘And he lives in the woods of my homeland?’

‘Not just him. He told me there was a big settlement there – maybe a few hundred of them – deep in the woods.’

‘Surely we’d know if there was a village of risen men that close to Ro Canarn.’ Brom’s expression was sceptical, and Rham Jas knew the young lord was cynical and not given to what he thought of as fantasy.

‘They’re quite good at staying hidden. Your god is obsessed with hunting them down.’

Brom suddenly looked offended. ‘Do I look like a cleric to you?’

‘No, but you’re still a Ro. I can sense the wanton arrogance coming off you from here.’ Rham Jas grinned broadly and made his friend laugh in spite of himself.

‘Okay, so how can a risen man help us?’ Brom asked when he’d stopped laughing.

‘Well, if I can persuade him, he may have a few friends.’ Rham Jas closed his eyes to shield them from the sun as it poked out from behind a cloud. It was going to be a hot day. ‘It’s the best plan… if you can call it that… that I can think of.’

‘Why would he want to help me reclaim my home?’

‘Well, they have no love for the church of Ro, so the chance to kill a bunch of Red knights might appeal to them.’ Rham Jas grinned. ‘And it might help if you promised them sanctuary in the woods when you become duke.’

Brom shook his head and rubbed his eyes. ‘I don’t think I’ll become duke any time soon. Canarn will either be independent or Ranen.’

‘So, you’ll be a thain.’ Rham Jas was still grinning, which only made Brom more irritable.

‘I think I know who we need to speak to when we get to Canarn. It’s been rolling around my head since we left Weir and I’m fairly sure he’ll still be alive,’ the young lord said, trying not to look at his friend. ‘The knights wouldn’t kill other churchmen, so Brother Lanry should still be somewhere in the town.’

‘Brown cleric?’ asked Rham Jas, vaguely remembering the man from the last time he had been in Ro Canarn with Al-Hasim and Magnus.

‘He was my father’s chaplain and he probably hates the Red knights more than you.’ Brom at least had a smile on his face and Rham Jas guessed that the rainbow smoke would stop him getting too annoyed now.

‘Okay, so if they haven’t killed, buggered or caged him…’ Rham Jas directed his grin upward as he spoke. ‘He might have… what, a secret way in?’

Brom shot him a dark look and came out of his drugged state for a moment. ‘Rham Jas, Ro Canarn had a population of five thousand men, women and children. If it’s all right with you I’d like to see if any of them are still alive.’ His voice rose in pitch and his eyes conveyed anger.

Rham Jas wasn’t comfortable with grief and he had tried not to broach the subject of Ro Canarn’s citizens. They’d have fought when the Red knights appeared and Rham Jas doubted the survivors would have been treated kindly. The city had formerly been a vibrant place, with taverns, shops and a populace of good, honest people – very different from the paranoid social climbers of the rest of Tor Funweir – and Rham Jas hoped some of their spirit might remain. Brom, as the nascent ruler of the city, had a different perspective – he saw a population in need of rescue from an occupying force. In many ways, Rham Jas thought, he already resembled a Ranen thain more than a Ro duke.

‘Okay, I apologize for my… idiotic rambling, brought on by… you know, drugs and stuff.’ Rham Jas winced at his terrible apology, but decided to soldier on. ‘We’ll go and see the Brown cleric when we get to Canarn. He’ll at least be able to tell us how many Red fuckers we have to kill and if Magnus is still in one piece.’

Brom snorted and Rham Jas was glad that his friend’s drugged haze was rapidly returning. ‘If he’s still alive, Magnus is the second person we should go and see. Spring him from prison and he’s worth four or five knights of the Red.’

‘If he’s still alive… and if we get help… and if we don’t get killed on our way there.’ Rham Jas was pessimistic about all the
if
s, but he was beyond the point where he could just leave Brom and return to Ro Weir. He was committed to seeing this through.

Brom considered the last words spoken by the Kirin for a long moment, gazing off the hillock and down into the loosely spaced trees to the north. ‘You are aware that our horses may well have been eaten by Gorlan while we’ve been lying here?’ he said, trying to focus on something more immediate than their strategy for retaking Canarn.

‘Doubtful. Horses make a hell of a sound when they see the nasty little fuckers… we’d have heard,’ Rham Jas replied, without much certainty.

Brom raised his eyebrows and they shared a doubtful look, before the Kirin said, ‘Okay, we’d better move, just in case. I don’t fancy walking to Ro Tiris.’ He retrieved his longbow and quiver of arrows from the ground.

The two friends pulled themselves heavily to their feet and trudged slowly back to the trees. The hillock was only slightly raised from the forest floor, but the gentle gradient was enough to cause both men to stumble. At the tree line below, Rham Jas peered into the forest before slowly walking towards the horses.

They were picketed to a low tree trunk, next to a dense bramble bush, and Brom stepped past Rham Jas and drew his sword awkwardly as they approached the small clearing.

‘Oh, troll shit,’ said the young lord, as they both saw the dense web that was being wrapped round the twitching body of Brom’s horse.

The other animal was unharmed and was snorting quietly and kicking at the ground as three large Gorlan spiders crawled all over the fallen animal. Each was the size of a large dog and coloured deep black with a bright flash of red on its bloated abdomen. They were sleek, rather than hairy, and weren’t quite large enough to attack men; but their oversized fangs, currently stuck in the flanks of the horse, could nonetheless cause a vicious wound and recovery from their paralysing venom would require several days in bed.

The largest of the three reared up at the sight of Rham Jas and Brom, raising its front two legs off the ground and bearing its fangs in a threat display. It made a loud hissing sound and poised to strike if they came too close.

‘Look, you little eight-legged bastard… fuck off,’ said Rham Jas irritably. ‘We have enough problems without you adding to it.’

‘I don’t think it speaks Ro,’ Brom said, without taking his eyes from the Gorlan.

Rham Jas guessed that his friend was a little scared of spiders and secretly determined to tease him about it later.

Rham Jas waved his arms in the air to attract the attention of all three spiders, and clapped his hands together in an attempt to spook them.

‘I don’t want to kill you, spiders,’ he said, almost regretfully, ‘but I will shoot you up if you don’t leave.’ He slowly pulled an arrow from his quiver and notched it to his bow.

‘Rham Jas, just shoot the spiders,’ Brom said, brandishing his sword.

The Kirin didn’t like killing animals, but Gorlan were aggressive predators and would not leave a feast the size of a fully grown horse without a fight.

He slowly drew back on his bow and pursed his lips before shooting the spider between its fangs. The creature instantly flew backwards and its legs curled up, became rigid. The other two quickly fled into the brambles and the sound of them scuttling away disappeared after a few seconds.

Brom lowered his sword and breathed easier now that the creatures were out of view. ‘I really hate those things.’

‘They’re not too bad. It’s the really big ones you need to worry about. There are Gorlan in Lob’s Wood that take three or four arrows to put down… tasty, though,’ Rham Jas added with a smile.

* * *

Rham Jas enjoyed fried Gorlan legs – they were crunchy and surprisingly meaty. The abdomen could be sliced and deep-fried, but without proper cooking implements they’d had to throw it away. Brom was noticeably less keen on eating the spider. He’d eaten sparingly, concentrating mainly on the dried beef in their saddle packs. Rham Jas had teased him about being scared of Gorlan, but he didn’t seem to mind so long as the others didn’t come back.

Rham Jas was used to them and had seen huge specimens in his time. He’d even heard rumours that some of the largest, far to the south, had a primitive ability to speak. Whether that was true or not, the Kirin of Oslan had long realized that the bigger they were, the less hostile they were, as if intelligence were a privilege of size amongst the Gorlan.

They rode, Brom sitting behind Rham Jas, on the only horse they had left. The low wooded gully became a dense forest a day or so beyond Cozz. Rham Jas was not overly concerned about entering the woods of Voy as there was unlikely to be anything there that would cause a genuine threat to the two of them. Any bandits would provide a quick fight and maybe even a second horse, but the kind of scum who preyed on the Kirin run were usually broken men, with few options but to risk death. Not men who would cause Rham Jas to sweat.

‘Stop moving so much,’ Brom said grumpily.

‘I didn’t eat your horse, don’t blame me.’ Rham Jas gently elbowed his friend in the ribs.

‘Just ride and try to keep still.’ Brom had still not fully regained his composure and had been silent for several hours as they rode away from the dead horse.

Rham Jas had to admit that he wanted to fill the air with pointless conversation in order to not have to think about contacting the Dokkalfar. It would be an awkward encounter, bringing a lord of the Ro into the Deep Wood, but Rham Jas knew a little about how they thought and had high hopes that they would help. Nanon, in particular, favoured the idea of fighting back over just sitting in the woods to be picked off by clerics. So far, his more violent impulses had been curtailed by their Vithar shamans – the eldest of their people, whose counsel was always that the Dokkalfar must simply
endure until the time is right
. They had a strange view of vengeance and were more patient that any people Rham Jas had met. As long as Brom was quiet and let Rham Jas do the talking, they should be okay, he thought. They might even stand a chance of assaulting Canarn and killing enough of the knights moderately to inconvenience the church before they were hacked to pieces by longswords.

* * *

The days passed slowly as Brom and Rham Jas made their way through the foothills of the Walls of Ro and on to the forested northern plains of Tor Funweir. The Kirin run was decidedly empty and Rham Jas was glad not to encounter any random bandits or larger Gorlan. It suited those travellers who used the route to foster the image of the Kirin run as a dangerous and hostile environment. In reality, if you were well enough connected to know about it, and tough enough to use it, you were probably safe. Rham Jas had travelled Tor Funweir widely and the wilds held no fear for him. He was a crack shot with his longbow and a nightmare with his katana, and he had well-placed confidence when it came to killing things.

Brom was still quiet and, aside from the odd comment about his father or sister, he’d remained morose and sullen since Cozz. They had meagre daily rations and the young lord of Canarn had steadfastly refused to supplement his diet with Gorlan. He’d even turned his nose up at Rham Jas’s nutritious spider and nettle broth, a rich concoction that was quite a delicacy in Oslan. The smaller Gorlan they encountered in the woods were perfect for eating, but Brom was clearly bothered by the creatures and became twitchy whenever they approached a nest.

‘Rham Jas, what’s that?’ Brom pointed through the trees off to their left.

It was just approaching twilight and they had been talking about finding a place to camp. The woodland they travelled through had thinly spaced trees and was dotted with rocky crevices and dry river beds.

Brom was pointing to a slight glow emanating from a low fire in the distance. ‘Is that a campfire?’

‘I should think so, unless the moss has started to glow,’ Rham Jas replied flippantly.

The fire was flickering close to the ground and far enough away that they couldn’t see any movement around the area. Rham Jas reined in the horse and leant forward to stroke the animal’s muzzle to keep it quiet.

‘Hold the reins,’ he said over his shoulder to Brom, and began to dismount.

Once on the ground, Rham Jas crouched and tried to focus through the grey evening air to see the campfire. The sky was rapidly becoming dark and Rham Jas couldn’t make out any definite shapes through the trees, though he could hear distant rustling and footsteps consistent with a small group of people.

‘I need to get closer to see, but it’s probably just a bandit gang or a group of travellers,’ Rham Jas whispered to Brom. ‘If we’re going to be sleeping around here as well, I’d like to know who our neighbours are.’

Brom dismounted and pulled the horse over to a nearby rock, tying the reins securely, before drawing his sword and crouching down next to Rham Jas.

‘I know stealth isn’t a speciality of yours, Brom, but try not to make too much noise… let me go first,’ Rham Jas said with his customary grin.

‘Oh, just shut up and get on with it,’ he replied, clearly not in a jovial mood.

Rham Jas quickly retrieved his longbow from the horse and notched an arrow loosely against the string before making his way into the trees. He walked slowly, one foot over the other, moving in the practised fashion of a man used to sneaking up on people in the dark. Brom stayed a little way back and Rham Jas was glad that his blundering through the undergrowth produced only a little sound.