CHAPTER ONE
“By the splendorous balls of the god of beauty,” growled Tuke Brakson.
He stood wide-legged in the middle of the road, a broken shield dangling in splinters from his left hand. The machete in his right dripped with blood, but the steel was notched and bent. His big body was crisscrossed with cuts, old and new, shallow and deep. He panted as he stood there, and he could feel every day of every year of his life. Sweat ran lines down his limbs, over the patterns of tattoos, along the gullies of wounds, mixing with the bright red blood to create paler streamers of pink.
Beside him, the smaller, slimmer figure of Filia alden-Bok leaned on the pommel of her sword, the point dug into the turf, shoulders hunched as she gasped for air. Horse, her brute of a dog, lay on his belly, tongue lolling, sides heaving. His armor was dented and splashed with blood, and too much of it was his own.
Fifty paces in front of them stood Captain Kagen Vale.
He stood alone, his daggers sheathed and no other weapon in his hands. Eighty yards in front of him, riding slowly forward, was the captain of the Hakkian Ravens, his yellow-and-black armor gleaming, golden cloak fluttering behind in the brisk easterly breeze. A bannerman rode beside him, a guidon seated into a leather bucket behind his right stirrup. Two flags flapped near the top of the pole—the Hakkian national flag and below it was a broad strip of unmarked white cloth.
The heavily forested Rinshaw Mountains provided a backdrop and at their foot was an army of two thousand soldiers. Earlier that morning there had been twice that number, but the rest lay dead on the field. A few crawled slowly, crying for their mothers now that prayers to the Shepherd God Hastur had failed them. Vultures circled above the field, and with each turn the hungry birds were closer to the cooling meat.
Tuke and Filia watched Kagen. He stood ramrod straight, his shoulders set, stance wide. They watched the enemy captain approach. He was a dignified-looking man with a precisely trimmed beard and no dents on his armor, no dirt or blood.
“Son of a bitch probably hasn’t even drawn his blade today,” grumped Tuke. “And now he comes prancing out on his horse like it’s harvest fair day and he’s the king of the parade.”
“He’ll ask for a pause in order for everyone to collect their wounded,” suggested Filia. “Standard procedure.”
Tuke grunted. Their own army had lost nearly seven hundred fighters, and what was left looked as tired as he felt.
“Wait,” said Tuke, “let’s see if we can hear what that Hakkian ass has to say.”
“Have you ever seen Kagen negotiate before?” asked Filia.
“Not … as such. Why? He’s noble born and has manners. I’m sure he’ll do fine.”
Filia merely smiled.
CHAPTER TWO
The captain of the Fifth Hakkian Army—the Firedrakes, as they were called—drew his horse to a stop ten feet from where Kagen stood.
“Greetings, Kagen Vale,” he said, raising a hand to show that he held no weapon.
Kagen sucked at a dry inner cheek and spat on the ground between them.
“It’s Captain Vale,” he replied calmly. “Though Lord Vale will do.”
The officer bowed in the saddle. “My apologies, Lord Vale. I am Captain Sheklyn of Hembria, deputy commander of the Firedrakes.”
“Where’s your general?” asked Kagen. “Too busy having his whores pop the pimples on his ass to be here with his troops?”
He said that loud enough so the breeze would blow his words to the waiting Hakkians. There was some laughter among their ranks and then the sharp growls of sergeants.
“My general is in Argon,” said Sheklyn. “He is there at the pleasure of the Witch-king.”
“Meaning he is afraid to be here because he’s a fucking coward.”
“My lord,” said the captain, his tone still formal, “rather than trade insults, I come under a flag of truce to parley.”
“To what end? If it’s to surrender, then all you need to do is throw down your sword.”
Sheklyn looked pained. “No, my lord. Nor am I asking for your sword.”
“Don’t much like swords. I’ve always preferred knives,” said Kagen. “Feels more personal to be that much closer.”
The Hakkian merely sniffed. “I’ve come to suggest that we each take an hour to see to our wounded.”
Kagen smiled thinly. “Now why would we do that?”
“It’s civil,” suggested Sheklyn. “There are rules and honor even in war. Or, I daresay, especially in war.”
“We both know that’s a lie, captain. We both know that if I lose, you’ll crucify any survivors from here to Argon.”
“That’s not true,” insisted the captain, though he was a moment too long in offering that protest. “Besides, the wounded are no longer combatants. Surely you have not fallen so low as to have lost compassion.”
“Say you so?” asked Kagen, smiling faintly. He took two paces forward and looked up at the officer. “It’s my understanding that compassion died when your troops invaded the palace and butchered the empress. It died when your soldiers raped and murdered the Seedlings. It died when the Ravens burned every garden in the empire, sodomized the nuns, and crucified the Gardeners. You come here in your expensive armor on your prissy-ass horse and talk to me about compassion? About mercy? I piss on your compassion.”
The captain’s face went pale and then slowly turned red. He made a great and visible effort to rein in his anger and when he spoke, there was more of a pleading note in his voice.
“Surely, Lord Captain, you do realize that if you refuse this request now,” said Sheklyn, “when you sue us for peace as this day unfolds—as you inevitably must—you will get none.”
“Have I asked for peace?” asked Kagen, amused. “Or mercy? Have I asked for any rules of civilized combat? No, because I do not bargain with scum and bootlickers of a usurper who is devoid of honor.”
He drew one of his daggers with his left hand and pointed the blade at Captain Sheklyn, smiling coldly as he did so. “It’s time you crept back to the safety of your troops.”
“Do you threaten me?” demanded the Hakkian officer.
Kagen grinned and pretended to notice that he held a knife. “So it would appear.”
“This is a flag of truce,” cried Sheklyn. “By the staff of Hastur the Shepherd God, have you no honor?”
“Honor? Well,” laughed Kagen, “my own gods turned their back on me. I am damned, haven’t you heard? The damned are soulless and therefore have no honor.”
The captain licked his lips and tried a different tack. “Lord Vale, can’t you hear the cries of the wounded? Surely even one who is damned has some trace of mercy left.”
“Mercy? Aye, I’ll show you mercy.”
With a movement far too quick for the Hakkian to follow, Kagen’s right hand whipped a throwing knife from its sheath and snapped his arm forward. The six-inch blade thunked into the socket of Captain Sheklyn’s throat. The Hakkian’s mouth went wide and for two seconds his trembling fingers clawed hysterically at the weapon. Then his eyes rolled high and he pitched sideways out of the saddle, falling to the bloody dirt with a heavy clang of armor.
The bannerman cried out in horror. Across the field, the enemy soldiers stared in shock for three full seconds, and then they leapt to their feet, shouting curses and oaths, their voices rising on the crest of their outrage and fury.
Kagen walked over to the dead officer, tore his knife free, wiped it clean on the man’s cheek, slid it back into its sheath, and glanced at the bannerman with the white flag.
“Toss your weapons down,” he said. “And then ride off. That is the only mercy I have left to offer.”
The man hesitated, glancing from Kagen to the army in front of him—all of whom had also gotten to their feet. He saw hundreds of bowmen fitting arrows to their strings.
“All hail the Witch-king,” he cried, dropped his guidon, drew a curved sword, and charged in for the kill.
Kagen made a noise of disgust, sidestepped the charge, and whipped the tip of his dagger lightly across the man’s calf. The blade was soaked with eitr, the deadly poison known in legends as the God Killer. The eitr rippled like lightning through the aide’s veins and he was dead before he knew he was cut, toppling sideways from his saddle. However, one foot snagged in the stirrup, and the bolting horse dragged him bumping and thumping across the corpse-littered field.
Kagen then walked over to the fallen captain. He sheathed his dagger, moved his leather codpiece, pulled out his cock, and pissed on the officer’s dead face. He shook off, turned, and walked back to where Filia and Tuke stood with their entire army at their backs.
Filia shook her head, but she was grinning.
“By the cast-iron balls of the god of blacksmiths,” growled Tuke. “That was a flag of truce. He came over to parley.”
“I know,” said Kagen, his voice as cold as winter ice. “But I came here to start a war.”
He nodded to the captain of archers. Immediately there was a huge thrum and four hundred arrows darkened the skies as they flew toward the advancing Hakkians.
CHAPTER THREE
Kagen swung into Jinx’s saddle, drew both daggers, roared a challenge to the Hakkians, and galloped forward. Tuke and Filia rode beside him, with Horse ranging ahead, filling the air with deep-chested barking.
The Bloody Bastards chased them, tearing the air with threatening howls in a dozen languages. And on their heels was the balance of Kagen’s small army. Less than half of them had horses, and barely half that many had full sets of armor. But they moved with precision. The archers ran forward in squads, and then split off to the sides to act as skirmishers. The sergeants of each squad were Samudian Unbladed, and—as the old saying went—a Samudian archer was worth ten of any enemy. They proved it that day, firing even as they ran, their powerful yew longbows sending arrows that punched through plate and chain mail. As the distance dwindled, they used their superb accuracy to target the legs and hips of the riders, being careful to cripple the Hakkians without injuring the horses. It was an old Samudian tactic that had worked for seven hundred years. And it worked now.
The wounded soldiers fell screaming from their saddles as their horses panicked and broke the orderliness of the charge. The ranks behind them crashed into the frightened animals or tripped over the bodies of the thrashing wounded. Within seconds the bold Hakkian charge had become a bedlam of disorder, pain, confusion, and death.
Boys holding shields above their heads ran out onto the field between the armies and collected spent arrows, taking every shaft—theirs and Hakkian—plucking them from the dirt or pulling them from the bodies of the dead. Behind them came a wave of camp followers to drag the wounded away, with ambulatory injured holding shields to protect them. A few old women—widows and mothers of dead sons—slit the throats of every Hakkian they could reach.
It was not a civilized battle. This was mutual murder on a grand scale.
Other squads of Kagen’s archers rode horses or ponies, racing along the flanks of the field of combat and shooting into the advancing horde. These squads targeted the Hakkian archers, outmatching their short bows with longer and more accurate ones. Each of Kagen’s archers had oversized quivers of arrows slung from their saddles, and they proved why everyone in the west feared Samud’s bowmen. While the Hakkians could fire ten arrows per minute with reasonable accuracy, the Samudians could fire thirty. Their hands were blurs, their eyes rarely even blinking. The yew bows bent and released so fast the arrows seemed to vanish only to appear in breast or throat or belly; and they had the next arrow nocked before the last had found flesh. An entire wall of Hakkians crumpled beneath the onslaught.
And then the Bloody Bastards hit the center of their main advance.
Jinx, Kagen’s horse, was wrapped in lightweight chain mail, and he slammed through a narrow gap between two racing soldiers. Kagen was a big man, but not huge; and all through his combat training, his mother—the dreaded Poison Rose—taught him to prize speed and accuracy above brute force. He twisted and ducked in the saddle, slap-parrying spears and swords, using deft flicks of his wrist to deliver tap-cuts with the poisoned blades, moving on without waiting to see the effect. Anyone he failed to kill with the eitr had to deal with Tuke, Filia, and the Bloody Bastards.
The substantial difference between the Hakkians and Kagen’s army was that the enemy were ordinary soldiers with a few seasoned sergeants and knights to anchor them. The Unbladed were all professional fighters who had lived by their blades every day, and in situations more dire than a straight field of battle. The Unbladed were masters of every kind of weapon, from mace to morning-star, from spear to double-bladed axe. Some, in open defiance to their creed, carried swords and proved that they were masters of these as well.
Horse—Filia’s war hound—had his own small army, a pack of hounds, many of which were half wolf or half coyote. They harried horses and riders both, leaping up to tear open legs and throats. The dogs were all clad in spiked armor, and then if they had no chance to bite, they slammed their bodies into legs and groins. Those spikes did awful damage. Those hounds that died did so with screaming meat between their teeth.
Kagen punched through the line and began hunting the officers, even as teams of archers did the same. The enemy’s sergeants were also prime game. One of the first lessons of so-called civilized warfare was to target the officers and sergeants. Without a workable structure of command, whole sections of the Hakkian force began to fall apart. Even the toughest soldiers became terrified when there was no one left alive to tell them where to go and what to do.
“Kagen—ware!” yelled Tuke, and Kagen twisted in his saddle to see a big soldier driving at him from his blind side. The man had clearly passed by him as the armies collided, then wheeled to try and take Kagen out. Probably hoping to do to Kagen’s army what he had done to theirs—kill their leader.
The Hakkian had a small shield and a heavy cavalry saber. The blade was already falling as Kagen turned. There was no time to think, only to act. Kagen jerked Jinx’s reins hard, sending his mount crashing into the side of the other mount with such force that the descending attack resulted in the Hakkian’s forearm crunching down on Kagen’s shoulder. It was painful, but it spoiled the intended blow.
Kagen leaned sharply forward, chopping downward and backward with a knife, drawing a red line across the horse’s neck while, with the other hand, Kagen reached over and drove the point of the other dagger into the Hakkian’s ear. It was a clumsy counterattack that might otherwise have resulted in a panicked horse and a rider with nothing but a minor wound. The eitr made the attack lethal, and Kagen grinned like a wolf as horse and rider collapsed and died.
An arrow slashed Kagen across the cheek as he turned to reenter the fray. He spun to see a group of five archers clustered in a knot with their backs to a large boulder. Before he could snap out an order, Horse and his pack of hounds swarmed over them, savage teeth and bristling spikes doing terrible work.
“I love that gods-damned dog of yours,” he yelled to Filia. Her response was a wild laugh.
Tuke was on his feet beside his mount, who had taken two arrows in the belly. The animal screamed in pain. Kagen knew that Tuke loved his horse, but the wounds were mortal, so the big Therian raised a machete and chopped down, ending its torment. Tuke whirled and vented his loss on every Hakkian within reach. And he had a very long reach.
Each national group within Kagen’s army had its own scores to settle. The Hakkians, protected by the magic of the Witch-king, had conquered the entire Silver Empire in a single night. Since then, Hakkian soldiers and their mercenary hirelings had done unspeakable acts of cruelty. Two aspects of that horror were rallying calls.
One was the comprehensive slaughter of nearly every monk and nun and cleric of the Garden Faith, a clear attempt to exterminate the religion that was a central uniting element in the empire.
The other was the Red Plague, a terrible disease that both killed thousands and then raised them as mindless cannibals. Hakkia had used that weapon against some of their own remote villages and cast the blame on Samud—the nation where, centuries before, the plague first struck. But doubt had spread like wildfire that it was not King al-Huk who was behind the plague but a subtle bit of trickery by the Witch-king. The outrage was massive, and although the stain of doubt still lingered for many on Samud, the tide of belief had begun to turn. Even amongst the Hakkian people there was some open protest against the ruse.
The Samudian archers seemed to each feel that it was their personal responsibility to repay Hakkia for the outrage.
The battle raged, with advantage moving back and forth like a tide. Soon the horses and foot soldiers were tripping and trampling the fallen. The Samudian archers were relentless, and now many of them knelt behind rows of shields held by those too wounded to fight. They framed the battlefield on three sides, turning the interior space into a killing field.
Kagen saw Filia, still mounted on her horse—named Dog—and she was doing some combat tricks Kagen had seen only in jousting matches. Dog had sharpened steel hoof covers and as knights charged, Filia would jag her horse left or right and then the animal would rear up and kick either attacking mount or rider. The razor-sharp covers cut as easily through horseflesh as they did the knees and thighs of mounted soldiers. As the wounded fell, Dog would trample them. Filia laughed aloud like a demon in red glory all through the fierce battle.
A figure rushed past Kagen—Biter, a Weskan who was a member of the fierce Crocodile Clan—and he had what looked like the ornate sword Captain Sheklyn had worn. The Bloody Bastard yelled curses in a dialect Kagen barely understood as he bashed aside spears and gutted the spearmen. With him was the dour Ghulian, Borz, who fought in silence, his face set, eyes calm even as he filled the air with the screams and blood of the Hakkians.
Giffer, once an ordained Gardener from Zaare, moved like a festival fire-dancer, a pair of long-bladed butcher’s cleavers in his hands. The moody Ghenreyan poet, Hoth, was at his back, fighting with a short close combat weapon that had a spearpoint at one end and a knobby iron ball at the other.
These—and a handful of men and women who fought with them—had been the first of the Unbladed Kagen had engaged when he began his formal opposition to the Witch-king. They’d gone with Kagen, Tuke, and Filia all the way into the nightmare forests of cannibal-infested Vespia and come out again. They were the core, the heart, of Kagen’s army, and they fought with skill and fury, leaving silent or screaming enemies in their red wake.
“They’re running!” someone roared, and Kagen stood up in his stirrups.
“By the Gods of the Pit,” he bellowed.
“Kagen,” called Biter, “shall we give chase?”
Many of the Hakkians had thrown down their shields and swords to make flight easier. Kagen called for the captain of his archers, the Samudian Gi-Elless. She came running over.
“Hunt them,” he ordered. “Kill anyone who is still armed. Let the others go.”
Gi-Elless grinned and ran off, calling to her sergeants.
And that fast, the tide of conflict ebbed and turned. The archers had great sport with the fleeing Hakkians. As soon as the enemy realized that the unarmed were being spared, swords and spears fell by the score to the turf. Then the remainder of Kagen’s army stood and watched as the five or six hundred surviving Hakkians—unarmed and unprovisioned—fled for safety.
“They’ll tell the tale,” said Filia, riding up to stand next to Kagen.
“Aye,” said Tuke, “and likely embellish it. Hm … I wonder how I’ll be represented in tavern songs.”
“You would think about that now, wouldn’t you?”
“Why not?” laughed the Therian. “Today was definitely one for songs.”
Kagen merely grunted. Then he turned and called his officers to see to their wounded.
“What about the wounded Hakkians?” asked Tuke, cleaning his blades with a dead Hakkian’s yellow cloak.
Kagen’s pale eyes were as cold as arctic ice. “What about them?”
The Therian glanced at Filia, but if he had hoped to see mercy there, he was looking in the wrong direction. He glanced up at the nightbirds. Their black beaks were stained red and there was no mercy in their eyes, either.
Copyright © 2024 by Jonathan Maberry
Map copyright © 2022 by Cat Scully
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