"Kim Hunter - [The Red Pavillions 01] - Knight's Dawn v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kim Hunter - [The Red Pavillions 01] - Knight's Dawn)

Chapter One

‘Wake up, wake up, someone is near!’

The knight wearily opened his eyelids. There was a dead snake near his foot, with a bloody cudgel next to it. A raven hopped around the snake and stick, yelling at him.

The light hurt his eyes. A pale white sun glared down on the knight from the heavens. He was on a hillside, a slope, on which there had been a great battle. All his muscles ached from the fighting. He felt utterly fatigued. It was all very hazy to him now, blurred and warped. He tried to recall what he had been doing in this battle and who the armies were.

If he allowed his mind to look back he could see the battle in full bloody murder. Around him he beheld a great heaving mess of men, armies rolling one over the other, multitudes of men tumbling like waves of water into hordes of other men. They hacked with battleaxes, thrust with swords and spears, beat each other with maces. Weapon points entered flesh through seams and chinks in armour. Arrows thudded into the chests of knights, penetrating breastplates as if they were paper. Heads and torsos were split asunder. Skulls were battered and crushed by warhammers. There was fire and blood and the bright flashes of a hundred thousand blades, lance heads, pike tips.

‘There he is! Do you see him? Down by the tree line.’ The vision of the past washed away and the knight’s eyes were clear once again. He stared at the area indicated by the raven. There was a horseman down there, wrapped from head to foot, swathed in calico dyed with indigo, only his eyes exposed. The man was a obviously a lone hunter. He rode his piebald steed with his knees only, leaving his hands free. On his left wrist was a hawk wearing trailing scarlet jesses. There were golden bells on its ankles. In the hunter’s right hand was a small black crossbow, with a bolt in the breech. ‘I see him,’ said the knight, not considering why he was talking to a bird. There was too much other strangeness in the air to worry about things perhaps unthreatening. ‘I shall keep him in view.’

In his mind’s ear he now heard the shrieks of wounded and dying men on the hillside around him. Some cried for a physician, some for their mothers, some for their comrades. The cries were pitiful to hear. There was the yell of a decapitated head, as it continued its shout of terror even after leaving the shoulders of its owner. There was the clashing of steel on steel, thousandfold, ringing through the surrounding hills. Screams, groans, death rattles. It was a cacophony which filled the knight’s head. The bullroarers and the trumpets. The animal-skin drums and the log-drums. The whistles and blad-derpipes and ox-horns. To the ears of the animals in the woodlands and valleys, this deafening discord must have sounded like the end of the world. Especially when their own kind were being slaughtered: the noise of screaming horses as they are disembowelled by the lances of knights, or limb-lopped by foot-soldiers, is something no creature ever forgets.

‘See,’ said the raven, ‘the hunter views his quarry.’

A purple heron flew overhead and the hunter released his hawk. The raptor shot skyward, after the heron which had now swerved in flight. There were few signs of panic in the fleeing prey. Only the leisurely flapping of the great wings and the harpoon head stretched a little further forward.

At that moment, while all eyes were on the hawk and the heron, a black boar broke cover. It rushed at the hunter’s steed from the flank. The horse’s eyes rolled and it whinnied in fright, rearing to the right. The hunter steadied his mount with his knees and took careful aim with the crossbow. There was a thwunk and the bolt struck the boar in the brain. The beast’s legs folded under it and it rolled, crashing into a thicket, dead as a rock. The hunter then looked up to see the heron plummeting from the sky, the hawk having stooped and struck.

‘We should go and speak with this man,’ said the raven.

For the first time the knight turned his attention to the talking bird.

‘Who are you? What are you? Did you come to feed upon the dead?’

‘Dead? What dead?’ asked the bird.

The knight looked about him quickly and then remembered. It had all taken place in his mind. Yet he knew there had been a battle. Looking down at himself he saw that he was wounded in a number of places. They were not serious cuts or abrasions, but they were fresh. His uniform was filthy and in tatters and he wore the remnants of bloodstained armour. He was caked in sweat and dust. His throat was parched: choked with the same dust that decorated his clothes. From his belt hung an empty blackand-silver scabbard, twisted and bent. Stitched on the leather of the scabbard in silver-wire thread were the words, Kutrama and Sintra. The knight was suddenly bewildered. Who was he? What was his name? Why was he lying on this hot hillside, talking to a raven who was looking at him as if he were a corpse?

‘Why do you stare at me like that?’ The bird said, ‘A crow can look at a king.’

‘Well, I don’t like it. If you want to end up on a gibbet, just keep on doing it.’

‘Irritable beggar, aren’t we? No need to get annoyed. I was just looking at your eyes. They’re blue. I’ve never seen eyes that colour before. Everyone around here has brown eyes.’

The knight, who had been unaware of the colour of his eyes, touched his eyelids.

They turned away from each other to stare at the hunter, who was now gathering up the carcass of the boar and strapping it to the rump of his mount. His hawk was enjoying the brains of the heron, where the hunter had cracked its skull with a rock. This was the raptor’s reward for a clean kill. The hunter then sat on a rock and began plucking the heron, purple feathers flying over his shoulders. As the knight descended, the raven hopping on behind, the hunter had finished cleaning and gutting the heron and was preparing a wood fire on which to roast it.

There was a beck nearby. The knight went straight to this and began scooping up the water to drink: clear water, but not sparkling. It was midday, the sun horizontally overhead, but the warmth from it was weak.

The knight was then aware that the hunter was speaking to him.

‘Are you in need of assistance?’

The hunter’s voice was confident, firm, but not very deep.

He looked and sounded like a slimly-built youth and his delicate movements offended the knight’s masculinity. Dark-brown eyes stared at him from a band of flesh beneath the swathes of blue calico. There was enquiry there, if not concern.

‘Where am I?’ asked the knight. ‘Has there been a battle here?’

The hunter said, ‘Your eyes - they’re blue.’

‘Does that matter?’

The hunter shrugged and delivered answers which were crisp and to the point. ‘You are just south of the Ancient Forest, near the petrified pools of Yan. To my knowledge there has been no battle hereabouts for over a century.’

‘But, that can’t be true. Look at me!’ He opened his arms and invited inspection. ‘I am wounded. My uniform is in shreds.’

‘I cannot account for your condition. There has been no battle here. What is your name? From what country Eire you? This is not a time to be wandering Guthrum alone. There are brigands and bandits abroad, and the queen’s soldiers are suspicious of lone travellers. They have licence to execute strangers found roaming the countryside. If you do not end up with a broken skull, you might be hanged from gallows such as those you see on that hill.’

The knight looked up. In the distance, beyond the stream, was a triple-gallows, with several corpses hanging from it. As the soldier stared at this place of execution, seemingly miles from any village, town or city, he noticed that few of the hanged figures had hands on the ends of their arms.

‘Guthrum,’ murmured the knight, grasping at the word and inspecting it closely. ‘That name should probably mean something to me, but it doesn’t. And as for my own name, I can’t remember it. Do I even have a name? I feel I am in some kind of dream, or nightmare. I know nothing about myself’

‘Perhaps you are mad?’ suggested the hunter, matter-of-factly.

‘No, no. I do not feel mad.’

‘Madmen never do. To whom were you speaking, as you were coming down the hill? To yourself?’

‘Why, no,’ the knight turned and pointed to the raven, hopping on some stones in the stream. ‘To that bird. It speaks as well as you or me. Raven, say something to the hunter.’ The raven simply sipped at the running water with its beak. It looked like any of the other birds in the area. There was no comprehension in its demeanour or its eyes.

The hunter nodded slowly. ‘I think you are mad.’ He pointed to the roasted heron carcass, part of which he had already eaten. ‘You may have some of that if you’re hungry. Then I must be on my way.’

‘Wait!’ said the knight, quickly. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Why, back to Zamerkand of course. I would rather return home before nightfall. If this countryside is dangerous during the day, it is ten times worse at night. There are bears and wolves to contend with, not to mention—’

‘Take me with you,’ pleaded the knight. ‘I have no weapon with which to defend myself and I don’t know the way. I can assist you if you are attacked. Forgive me, but you do not look strong enough to defend yourself against enemies on the road.’

The eyes hardened. ‘Did you see me kill the boar?’

‘Hunting is a different matter. It takes more than a sharp eye to kill a human. You need the strength of will.’

‘Strength of will? A moment ago it was my physique that was important — now it’s whether I have the stomach for killing. You really should make up your mind what it is about me that you find lacking.’ The hunter stared hard for a few moments, then nodded. ‘You may follow my horse. I can’t take you up behind me because, as you see, I am carrying a wild boar.’

The knight felt inclined to argue that his life was more precious than a boar’s carcass, but the hunter had already swung himself back into his saddle. The hawk had taken to the air again, but the hunter whirled a silver lure around his head, on a long piece of cord, and the hawk came down to his wrist. Then the hunter set off at a leisurely pace, his palfrey high-stepping through the woods, the ground being spongy with thick moss. The knight, weary though he was, trotted on behind chewing on a drumstick. At one point the raven flew down from a branch and landed on his shoulder, to whisper in his ear, ‘You’re mad, you are. Fancy talking to a black bird.’

The bird then flew away, leaving the knight bemused and angry, wondering whether indeed the raven was right.

During the journey the hunter stopped once to treat the knight’s wounds with herbs and healing plants. The cuts were fairly superficial, but there was still a danger of infection. Deep inside him was a bitterness, a hatred for something he could not explain to himself. These feelings were like dark shadows in his soul, but he did not know what was casting them.

In the forest, great spiders’ webs joined high oak branches with the ground. The soldier inadvertently ran through these, getting his face and hands gummed with the sticky threads. When they left the woods and began crossing boggy ground, there were clusters and knots of snakes in every peat hag: far too many to be natural. Every so often they came across another gallows, with hanged people dangling from the bar.

In most cases the hands were missing, though some fresh corpses were intact. The knight wanted to ask the hunter about this, but could not catch his breath enough to be able to hold a conversation.

After three hours of travelling, when the clouds were pink islands in the evening sky, the two men crested a ridge. The knight found himself looking down on an immense walled city with turrets and towers rising as thick as spears from an army of closely-packed warriors. Zamerkand.

There were flags and banners fluttering from every pinnacle. Dark, triangular windows peppered these spires and the wind blew through them and played melodies as if they were holes in a flute. Domes and cupolas crowned every other one of the tall columns, upon which the weak evening sunlight glittered with malevolent sheen.

The knight’s aerial view revealed that within this massive fortification of tall spiky buildings were several palaces, parks, gardens and courtyards. Fountains showered expansive lawns, around which were myrtle hedges, shrubberies and spinneys of conifers and deciduous trees. There were bright lakes and moats that flashed in the evening light. Moreover, a whole town existed within the city walls, with houses, cobbled streets, stalls and cattle pens.

Around the city were at least a hundred large tents — sandstone-red in colour.

An arched stone tunnel ran from one side of the city, across the open wooded countryside, its terminus out of sight beyond the hilly downs and woodland sweeps. The hunter explained that beneath this fortified tunnel lay a canal, straight as a silver arrow, which connected the city with the sea. Along this canal went trading barges, protected from attack by six-foot-thick walls, to meet with ships coming and going from a natural harbour on the Cerulean Sea. Trade with countries like Uan Muhuggiag, across the blue water, was brisk and profitable. It kept the citizens of Zamerkand reasonably wealthy, even during times of siege, when the countryside was ravaged by fighting.

‘What a wonderful place,’ said the knight, pausing to drink in this magnificent scene. He looked around him, at the silhouettes of several gallows on the neighbouring ridges, and down before the city gates at what appeared at a distance to be severed heads stuck on sharpened stakes. ‘Unlike the countryside in which it resides.’

‘Ah, as to that,’ said the hunter, having alighted, ‘you must understand that HoulluoH is dying. His grip on the world has slipped, and people are fearful. But all will be well soon. Things will right themselves once the new King Magus is in command.’

‘King Magus?’ queried the knight.

The hunter placed a slim hand on the knight’s shoulder, which made the tall, dark stranger to this land feel uneasy.

‘You really are a newcomer, aren’t you? Guthrum, my friend, is a region of many wizards, the greatest of which is the King Magus. It is he who ensures that those who have the power of magic do not abuse it. He maintains a balance in the land, between good and evil, nature and supernature, magicians and ordinary folk.’

‘Do the wizards have blue eyes?’ asked the knight, hopefully, wondering if he had special powers.

‘My dear friend, no one in Guthrum has blue eyes.’

The knight shrugged off the over-friendly hand from his shoulder.

‘I am not your dear friend and would prefer it,’ he said, ‘if you did not touch me in that manner.’

There was a twinkling in the eyes of the other, who appeared to be smiling beneath the mask of blue calico. The knight knew he was being mocked, but could not do anything since he was m debt to this person.

‘As you wish, soldier, but you may be in need of a friend in these troubled times, here in Guthrum.’

Soldier? That was as good a name as any. He had no other. Until his memory returned and he knew his identity he would call himself Soldier. It was a manly name, if nothing else.

‘I can take care of myself,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about me.’

Soldier stared down at the castle again. In the ruddy light of the dying sun, blood-scarlet in contrast to the whiteness of its midday face, he could see the red pavilions surrounding the city. He estimated that each pavilion would probably accommodate eighty to a hundred men and there were around a hundred pavilions. Ten thousand men. Each one of the pavilions had a pennon flying from the tip of the centre pole. These pennons bore a symbol but the distance was too great to identify them. When he asked the hunter he was told they were animal symbols — boars, eagles, falcons, cats, dogs — which denoted a company of men. Each pavilion was an entity unto itself and loyal in the first place to its commander. In battle it was the honour of the pavilion which was foremost in the minds of the soldiers. Men lived, fought and died for the pavilion and nothing was permitted to smirch its honour.

‘Who are in the pavilions?’ he asked. ‘Do they guard some visiting royal or noble?’

‘Mercenary soldiers,’ replied the hunter. ‘Troops from the land of Carthaga. Queen Vanda uses them to supplement her own army, when she is forced to wage war. Actually the Carthagans do the brunt of the fighting, while the Guthrumites usually end up supporting them. They have special qualities. They are brilliant warriors - brave, selfless, disciplined, dedicated to their duty — they’ve been in the pay of Guthrum for centuries now and are intensely loyal to us. Each soldier serves twenty years then returns to Carthaga. He can keep his whole extended family on his pay while he is a serving soldier and he receives a huge bonus for completing his time.’

‘Why are they outside the city walls?’

The hunter shrugged. ‘It’s the way it has always been. They never enter the city. Perhaps at one time they were not wholly trustworthy? It has become tradition now. The Guthrumite imperial guards are responsible for policing inside the city and for protecting the royal family. Carthagans protect the city from attack by outside hostile forces. If a larger army is required, then the citizens are armed and put in the field.’

Soldier and the hunter then descended from the ridge, with the raven somewhere around in the gathering gloom. As they approached the city Soldier could see that the Carthagans were a squat, broad-shouldered people. They were swarthy, with flat faces and square frames. He and the hunter were not stopped or accosted while they passed through the red pavilions. Soldier assumed this was because they were only two and hardly a threat to an army of ten thousand tough, battle-hardened warriors.

Soldier decided it would be a different story when they reached the gates of the city, decorated with an avenue of heads on stakes.

They walked through this ghastly gauntlet. Matted hair hung over eye-sockets picked clean by the birds. Tongues, also attacked by birds and insects, hung from between swollen lips. Noses and cheeks were pitted by the weather and other agents of destruction.

‘Help me,’ whispered one particularly gruesome skull as Soldier passed it by. ‘Help me, please!’

Soldier turned and stared at the head, startled by the voice, only to see the stalking raven squatting inside, staring out through one of the empty eyesockets.

‘Fooled you,’ murmured the raven, in a satisfied tone. ‘Fancy a bit of dinner? Plenty here.’

With that the black bird left the back of the skull and began pecking at the rotting flesh.

‘You’re disgusting,’ said Soldier, curling his bottom lip.

The hunter said, ‘Were you speaking to me?’

‘No, no,’ replied Soldier, wearily, just to the raven. You know? My madness? I am a lunatic after all.’

‘Just so,’ said the hunter. ‘Gome, we must enter the city before the gates are locked for the night. Otherwise we might have to share the hospitality of one of these pavilions. Good fighting men the Carthagans might be, but they are also among the legions of the sweaty and unwashed. Their favourite fare is wild-oat porridge dried in the sun, cut into slabs and fried in goat’s lard. If you want to sleep with the stink of axle grease in your nostrils and breakfast on oats fried in animal fat, that’s fine, but I rather look forward to a supper of fish and almonds, followed by a night in clean sheets bearing the fragrance of sandalwood.’

‘You would,’ muttered Soldier, under his breath, ‘but I doubt I’ll see better fare than fried porridge.’

Chapter Two

There was a good deal of traffic going through and milling around the outer gate at this time of the evening. It was the hour of the day when those whose work took them beyond the city’s walls came back inside for protection during the night hours. There were coaches and horsemen, peasants with ox-carts, dog-carts and hand-carts, and lone men and women on foot, some carrying the implements of their trade: scythes, axes, saws, hammers. Many of the vehicles were piled high with faggots and wood. Others with animal fodder or vegetables. The way through the gate was ankle-deep in dung and though Soldier attempted to tread carefully, his leggings were soiled almost to the knee shortly after joining the queue. The whole area stank and the flies were large and bothersome.

Soldier assumed that they would be stopped by the outer guards on the gate and questioned, but they hardly even glanced at the hunter and himself. Once inside the outer ward however, it was an entirely different matter. They were almost pounced upon by four burly men in uniform and led to a gatehouse tower. The hunter was taken inside, while Soldier was made to wait. It was growing dark now and the lamplighters were abroad. There were brands in iron cages on the walls round about and these were being torched. Soldier felt it must be a wealthy place to have street lighting and was duly impressed by all the activity.

The hunter’s mount stood tethered to a post nearby, looking mournfully at the door through which her master had vanished. On its back was the boar the hunter had shot with his crossbow earlier in the day. Soldier was now extremely hungry and the thought of the boar roasting on a spit played havoc with his imagination. He wondered if the hunter would invite him to a meal, now that they were inside the city.

‘All right,’ said a guard, coming out and beckoning to Soldier, ‘in you go.’

Soldier stepped inside the tower to find himself immediately in a room where a scrivener in a grey robe sat at a desk. The man was elderly, with a wall eye and a rather sour look on his face. He was also quite ugly, being bloated and puffy-looking, with a poor complexion and some kind of rash on his neck.

‘Name?’ said the man in a bored voice, his quill pen poised above a great leather-bound book.

Soldier looked about him, bewildered. There did not seem to be another door in the room, yet the hunter was nowhere to be seen.

‘Where did the hunter go?’ he asked.

The scrivener looked up with his one good eye, impatiently.

‘Stranger,’ he said, in a quiet patronising tone, ‘I would like to get this over with as quickly as possible, so that I can get back to my soup, which is cooling on the table by the window. Soup is not my favourite fare, but it is one of the only meals I can digest in comfort these days, since all my teeth are gone and my gums are somewhat diseased. If you do not reply within three seconds, I shall have you thrown outside the city walls where you will spend the night — or not — depending on how soon the wolves get to you, most of whom, I am jealous to be so informed, still retain a full set of fangs.’

‘Soldier,’ said Soldier, quickly.

‘What?’

‘My name - my name is Soldier.’

The scrivener scratched away in his book, his left eyebrow raised and his tongue-tip sticking out of the corner of his mouth.

‘Soldier,’ he repeated. ‘Nothing more? Not “Soldier from Kandun” or “Soldier of Tyern”? Usually when one’s name is one’s trade, a town or a city follows. “Smith of Blandaine,” for example . . .’

‘Just Soldier.’

‘Then my next question is, where are you from, Soldier?’

‘From — from the Ancient Forest.’

The scrivener looked up from beneath his brows, his wall eye disconcerting Soldier.

‘The Ancient Forest? That region is uninhabited. What is more, you do not look like a local, like one of us, so to speak. You seem to be a foreigner and a very strange one at that. Blue eyes? I never heard of such a thing, not even amongst the beast-people beyond the water margin. You’ll have to do better than that, Soldier.’

‘Look,’ he blurted, ‘the truth is I don’t know who I am or where I’m from. I woke today on a. hillside just beyond the Ancient Forest. I feel as if I’ve been in a great battle - I’m sure I have. But the hunter who brought me here said there had been no battle in that region for years. I don’t understand what’s happened to me, but I mean no harm to anyone in Guthrum. I simply need a safe place to sleep until my memory returns and I can put my life in order.’

‘Ah, yes, the hunter. You have money?’

‘Money?’ the soldier felt in his tattered pockets, around his belt for a purse, and came up empty. ‘No, no money.’

The scrivener put down his pen and smiled. It was a horrible expression, even worse than his scowl.

‘Then how do you expect to live?’

‘I thought — that is, I hadn’t really thought. But I’m willing to work.

I’ll eat scraps for the time being. I’ll fight with the dogs for bones under the table. It doesn’t matter. What I need is time — time to recover my wits.’

The scrivener suddenly and surprisingly shrugged. ‘As you will. I understand you clutched the hem of the hunter’s garment and craved hospitality? In which case we can’t refuse you shelter, that person being a citizen of this state. You may have to sleep in the street, but that’s up to you and your fortunes.’ The scrivener pointed the goose-feather quill at Soldier as if it were a weapon. ‘But stay out of trouble. You’re lucky you were not caught and hung in the countryside. Am I understood?’

‘Perfectly. I will be the model citizen.’

‘You will not be a citizen at all, since you are an outlander. But you will be good or you will be dead.’

‘Yes, yes, you have my word.’

With that the scrivener called the guard. Alarmingly, Soldier was marched away towards a half-lit shack standing not far from the tower. He had thought he would be released immediately, but it seemed there were other procedures to go through. The shack turned out to be a blacksmith’s forge, with a great furnace making the place unbearably hot. There a tall, skinny man, whose skin was pitted with black scars from flying red hot iron filings, fitted an iron collar around Soldier’s throat and sealed it with a rivet.

Soldier yelled, as the pain of the hot rivet bit into his neck.

The smith grunted.

Still wincing, Soldier asked, ‘Are you from Blandaine?’

The smith stared. ‘Yes, how do you know?’

‘Because I have heard that people from that town are unfeeling bastards.’

The smith’s eyes hardened. ‘You be careful, stranger. When the time comes, it’ll be me who takes that collar from your neck. My mother was a gentle woman, but I have inherited all my character from my father, who was one of the queen’s torturers. The best at his trade, so I’m told.’

The guard laughed, and said, ‘Come on, stranger. On your way now. If I were you I’d make my way down to the canal district, where you’ll find the rest of the riff-raff.’

‘How long do I have to wear this thing?’

‘A month at the most.’

Once the iron collar was in place Soldier was allowed to go. He realised he had been given the collar so that he could easily be identified. People would know he was a stranger and be wary of him. He would be under observation, by the local residents, during all hours. If he turned out to be a thief, or worse, he would be banished from the city. These precautions seemed very reasonable to Soldier, even if he did feel a little bitter at being subjected to them. In dark times people protected themselves against infiltrators from the wildernesses.

His new iron tore was uncomfortable at first. It chafed his neck. But he knew he would soon get used to it.

Soldier made his way through the dimly-lit cobbled streets, not really knowing where he was going. Eventually he came across a canal, which he followed to a network of moored barges. The canals were fed from the water in the moat, which in turn received an inflow of water from the natural system of rivers and lakes beyond the city walls. He was now in the centre of the city. He went towards a quay. There he saw a sight that shocked him to the core.

The bloated body of a woman was floating in the water, caught up in the mooring rope of a small barge. Just as Soldier spotted her, someone came up from below deck’s and saw her too.

‘Bloody corpses!’ Soldier heard the bargee’s words quite clearly. ‘They stink in this weather . . .’

The bargee took a boat-hook and prised the cadaver away from his mooring line with as much passion as if it were the carcass of some animal. The white limbs and naked torso of the victim of some horrible violence — her head was split down through her nose and upper jaw — then went floating off on the current of the canal. The bargee grunted in satisfaction, before going below again. There had been no compassion in the bargee, only irritation that a lump of flesh had snagged on his boat. Soldier was appalled by the lack of sympathy shown by the bargee and the horrible nature of the woman’s wounds.

‘What is this place I have come to?’ he asked himself. Sitting on the edge of a quay and contemplating his shadow on the water below, Soldier thought about his life. It amounted to only twelve hours. He had been born at noon, so far as his memory told him, and it was now around midnight. He knew nothing about himself. In his mind he clung onto those aspects of his short life which meant something to him. The hunter, for example. That they should have met on the edge of the forest was pure coincidence, yet Soldier felt that the hunter knew more about him than he had revealed. Soldier believed the hunter’s interest in him went deeper than just a casual meeting and acquaintance. And where had he gone? The hunter had simply disappeared into thin air, taking his horse, hawk and boar with him.

‘He’s probably roasting a pork joint over a log fire now,’ said Soldier.

‘Wrong. The meat is already cooked and fit to be devoured. The hunter is just this minute eating the hog’s head apple. You know, the one they put in the pig’s mouth when they roast him? In his other hand is a jug of ale. I bet you’d like both, wouldn’t you? Unfortunately, all you’re likely to get tonight is a pie crust washed down with some of that canal water.’

Soldier turned to see the raven perched on the edge of the wharf, a piece of pie at its feet.

‘Where have you been?’ Soldier asked.

‘Oh, here, there and everywhere. Aren’t you going to thank me for the bit of pie? I’ve eaten my share. This bit’s for you.’

Soldier reached out and gobbled down a piece of crust half the size of a man’s hand.

‘Can you get any more?’ he asked. ‘I’m still very hungry.’

‘Are we friends?’

‘Do we have to be? Can’t you remain a figment of my imagination?’

‘Not if I’m going to steal real food for you.’

Soldier nodded. ‘I see your point. All right, we’re friends. Does that make you happy?’

‘Not deliriously, but we need each other. What would you like me to fetch you now? A piece of pork crackling?’

Soldier closed his eyes. ‘Oh, yes — yes, yes, yes.’

‘Well, if I don’t return, you’ll know I’ve got a crossbow bolt up my arse. Nice necklace, by the way. Pearls would have suited you better.’

The bird flew off, into the night, leaving Soldier fingering his metal collar.

People were beginning to gather now, around the storage houses alongside the canals. Some of these huts were empty and it was to these that the homeless gravitated, presumably to find shelter for the night. Soldier was looked on with mild suspicion as they drifted by him. He sat on the quay, minding his own business, not speaking to anyone. There were ragged women with urchins in tow. There were men who looked spent and wasted. There were the drinkers and the hemp-smokers and the gambling addicts. There were those who had fallen on hard times because of luck, and those who had brought hard times upon themselves. None of them approached Soldier directly and he did not feel confident enough to speak to anyone either.

A short while later the raven came back with meat in its beak. For the next hour the raven fed Soldier as if it were one of its own fledglings. Then he fell asleep on the quay. Fortunately it was a warm night, so he did not suffer any exposure. The following morning he wandered the city, the raven on his shoulder, finding the market-place. There he breakfasted on cabbage and kale stalks which he found in the gutters.

It was in the market that he first saw his reflection in a copper mirror. The face, with its patchy black beard, was a stranger to him. He thought it looked tired but tough, with an unblemished complexion not pocked or scarred in any way. Indeed, he looked a soldier. His hair was dark and cut unfash-ionably short, seemingly by a barber lacking in skill. He guessed his age to be around thirty years. Beyond that, his reflection told him nothing about himself. He remained a mystery to his own eyes.

He began begging for his food. There was a hostility amongst the people which quickly emerged. Soldier was kicked and beaten, sent on his way with bruises and all but broken bones. He was shocked too, by the level of apathy he found in the citizens. They did not seem to care about anything at all. Several times he came across bodies, in alleys or floating down the canals, with signs of violence on them. Clearly murder was rife, and he feared being blamed for one of these deaths. It is easy to point the finger at a stranger and yell, ‘Assassin!’ There was a high level of corruption too, with bribes freely passing between citizens and figures of authority. This Guthrum was a dangerous place for anyone who had no friends and did not know the unwritten rules which kept men alive in such times.

It was on one of his forays around the market-place, begging amongst the stalls, that he met Spagg.

Soldier stared at the stall in front of him in amazement. Displayed there were severed hands, some of them stuffed with herbs and with candles stitched between the index and forefinger. Others were in their naked state. They had all been drained of blood. The dried ones looked brown and grizzled, and in some of these the sinews and tendons had shrunk so that the hand now resembled a claw of some giant raptor.

‘Can I help you friend?’ asked the warty-faced individual behind the stall. ‘Do you wish to purchase my wares?’ He looked into Soldier’s face. ‘Do you wish to sell those blue eyes? They’re rare in Guthrum. Unique, even. I could get quite a bit for those eyes, if we preserved ‘em in good gin.’

Soldier stared at the man who wore a leather apron and skull cap.

‘I need the eyes. They’re the only pair I’ve got. And I can’t buy anything. I can’t afford anything. Can’t you see I’m poor? What are they for, anyway?’

The individual chuckled. ‘You don’t know me? Ah, the iron collar. You’re a stranger. Well, I’m Spagg, and these, my friend, are hands-ofglory. The hands of hanged men and women. Ownership of one of these will unlock doors to a fortune. You don’t need money now. Just promise me some of your future earnings, so to speak, and I’ll let you have one on tick.’

Soldier remembered all the handless corpses hanging from the gallows out in the countryside.

‘You cut them from bodies?’

Spagg said proudly, ‘I have the only licence for hanged men’s hands. Got it from the queen’s own chancellor. I’m the only seller of this kind of merchandise inside the city walls. You won’t find better quality anywhere. Ask anyone.’ He picked up one of the hands, a rather battered looking specimen, and presented it to Soldier. ‘Grisly objects, I can hear you saying, under your breath. But this macabre-looking item can make you invisible, my friend. If you light the candle, made from the hand’s own fat, you can freeze your enemies into immobility. A useful tool for a man whose business takes place late at night or in the small hours of the morning.’

Soldier shook his head. ‘You see this collar? If I’m found to be a thief, I’ll be expelled from Zamerkand.’

‘But with one of these,’ smiled Spagg, ‘you can come back in again without being seen.’

‘If you believe in such things.’

Spagg carefully put the hideous extremity back in its place on the top of the stall.

‘Ah, there’s the rub, friend. You have to believe in it for it to work. Many’s the customer who has come back to me and said, “Spagg, this here hand-of-glory don’t work.” And I say to ‘em, the reason is, friend, you got to make it work. You got to put your faith in it, believe in it, or it’s just another chopped-off bit of body, ain’t it? Now, what about a straight swap? This genuine hanged man’s hand, for that bent old black leather scabbard with its silver tip and band.’ Spagg pointed to the buckled sword sheath on Soldier’s belt.

Soldier clutched his sheath. ‘No - no, this stays with me.’

Spagg shook his head and clucked. ‘You won’t get nowhere in life by bein’ so possessive, friend. Look at you. You’re close to starving ...’ his eyes suddenly narrowed and he looked to be deep in thought. Then he said, ‘Here’s a thing. What about you come to work for me? I can’t pay you much, but you’ll get one good meal a day out of it, at least. What say?’

‘What would I have to do?’

‘Why, you go out and collect the hands for me, while I stay here and sell ‘em. Whenever I do the collectin’ meself, I have to close the stall. This way you could keep me supplied and I could be here all the time to do the selling.’

Soldier said, ‘It wouldn’t be because collecting the hands is dangerous work?’

Spagg, a knotty-looking man with a shapeless ribcage and pointed shoulders, did his best to looked shocked.

‘Me? Scared to go out? Why, you’ll not find a braver knight within these five miles square. It’s not about that, it’s about business. I need to be here, to do the sellin’.’

‘Why don’t you leave the stall to me, and then you’ll be free to do the collecting?’

‘And trust a stranger with my money?’ This time he was genuinely shocked. ‘You must have worms in the brain. Listen, iron collar, I’ve made you an offer. Do you want to take me up on it, or not? No more arguments, mind.’

‘How much then?’

Spagg shook his head in disgust. ‘I’ve never met a man so close to starvin’ to death who had time to haggle and bargain with his patron. I’ll look after you, don’t you worry.’

‘How much?’

‘Two spinza a hand. The left hand’s more valuable than the right, but I’ll pay five spinza for a pair, but they’ve got to match, mind. I don’t pay anythin’ for hands with thumbs missing. If they was thieves before they was murderers, then more than likely they’ll have had their thumbs chopped off. Tattoos is fine, ‘specially if they’re black arts ones — you know, skulls and magic symbols and such. Some of my customers like to collect ones with different tattoos. Scars? Well, if they’re interesting marks. No badly mutilated ones. Any questions?’

‘Do I have the use of a horse?’

‘Horse?’ cried Spagg, the look of disgust almost a permanent expression now. ‘You get a donkey and like it.’

Thus Soldier went to work for Spagg, the hand-of-glory merchant.

Spagg’s donkey proved to be an ugly and obstinate beast, older than the mountains and often harder to move. It was a gruesome trade, but Soldier was prepared to accept almost anything to provide himself with food.

Chapter Three

Spagg gave Soldier a wooden baton with a crudely-carved weasel on one end. This symbol was a market-trader’s credentials. When Soldier was stopped by the imperial guard, or when he wanted to leave or enter Zamerkand, he had to produce the baton to prove his right to move freely as the employee of a citizen. The iron collar remained always a great burden and restriction. City guards continually stopped and searched him. Ordinary citizens kept him at bay with hostile glares and narrowed eyes. He was made to feel aware that he was permitted to stay in the city on sufference.

The first time Soldier went outside he found he was quite looking forward to entering the open countryside again. The city was claustrophobic, the atmosphere inside smoky and smelly. Every street in the city was engrimed with faeces from dogs, cats, livestock and birds. Every wall, door and window bore the sooty traces of smoke. Once through the gates the air seemed cleaner and brighter. He breathed deeply as the donkey beneath him ambled along. The raven came with him, for company. Soldier was getting used to having the bird around.

‘Raven, how is that you have human speech?’ asked the Soldier, as the sky opened up before them. It was a hazy day, the pale sun hanging in the sky like a paper disc. ‘You must have helped a wizard at some time.’

‘No,’ replied the raven. ‘In fact it’s the opposite. I stole from a witch.’

‘And she rewarded you with speech?’

‘No, she changed me from a human into a bird. I was a thief, running the streets of the city. When Clegnose caught me stealing from her house, she transformed me into a raven. Then the old cow died, leaving me trapped in the form of a bird. I don’t mind. It’s easier to find food this way.’

‘You can never become a boy again?’

‘Only the witch who cast the spell can remove it.’

‘I’ve noticed that you don’t often reveal the fact that you have the power of speech.’

The raven ruffled its feathers. ‘Why would I, not being a fool? Only problems lie in wait for the raven which goes around bragging it can speak. There are those who would cage me and use me to earn money for them as a curiosity. There are those who would kill me, thinking me a demon.’

‘Why choose me?’ asked Soldier. ‘I might be one of those two kinds of men.’

‘You? You are as much a curiosity as I am, with your blue eyes and no name. You have just as many problems.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ sighed Soldier.

The donkey was carrying him up a slope now, about two miles beyond the city. It was a grassy hill with smooth granite rocks occasionally rising above the turf, like whales breaking the surface of the sea. Soldier could see a gallows on the crest of the hill, with a hanged figure dangling from a rope. This was his destination, but it seemed he could not get any nearer to it, no matter how hard he tried. After a while Soldier realised that the problem was not one of magic, but one of perspective. The gallows were so tall, the hanged man so large, that Soldier had been further away than he realised. When he reached the corpse he saw that the victim was at least nine feet tall. Not only that, the man had extremities disproportionate even to this large body. The cadaver’s hands and feet were quite huge.

The corpse was in about its third day and therefore relatively fresh.

‘About the same time a hare should be hung before jugging it,’ said the raven. ‘Three-day-old flesh is sometimes as tasty to humans as it is to birds.’

‘You stay away from this corpse,’ warned Soldier. ‘I don’t think I could stomach watching you pick at his eyes.’

‘He hasn’t got any,’ pointed out the raven. ‘Nor a few other parts as well.’

Soldier stared and saw that a particular item of the body had already been cut from its roots.

‘Well, let’s get on with it.’

Soldier opened the bag of tools he had been given by Spagg and took out a pruning saw. He then began the grisly task of sawing off the giant’s right hand. It was a slow business, for the body kept swaying back and forth. To reach the hand Soldier found he had to sit on the giant’s right foot, like a child sits on a playground swing. Even so, try as he might he could not get through the thick bone with the saw, and finished up hacking through it with a hand-axe from the bag. Spagg had asked him only to use an axe in an emergency, because it spoiled the look of the goods on display. However, this was definitely an emergency. Soldier was getting hot and thirsty, and this one set of hands was taking up much of his day. He had hoped to return with a whole sackful by the time the evening came around.

Finally, both hands had been removed, just as some troops came nding by.

‘What d’you think you’re up to?’ asked the sergeant-at-arms.

‘Official business,’ said Soldier, producing his baton. ‘I work for Spagg, the hand-of-glory merchant.’

The sergeant wrinkled his nose. ‘That flea-bitten cur? All right then, but don’t hang about here all day. A rogue Hannack has been been seen in the district.’

‘A Hannack?’

‘You don’t know who the Hannacks are?’ said the sergeant and his men laughed. ‘You will know, if any of them find you, especially with that beard you seem to love so much.’

‘What does that mean?’

The sergeant said, ‘You notice me and my men have smooth shiny chins? There’s a reason for that. Hannacks don’t fight so hard when a man’s clean-shaven. You still look puzzled. Well, you’ll find out. Tell that whoreson Spagg to employ someone with a bit of nonce in future. Idiots like you should not be wandering about out here. Not that it matters. One blue-eyed stranger more or less makes no difference to me.’

With that the sergeant-at-arms called his troops to follow him and they rode back towards the city.

Soldier spent the remainder of the day gathering more hands from various corpses. Not as many as he would have liked, but then the giant had taken up a good deal of his time and energy. Towards evening the sun turned to blood again. As the donkey was plodding along, back down a track towards the castle, a figure appeared on horseback to the west. Soldier saw the horseman ride to the top of a ridge, where he sat and stared at the hand-gatherer on his slow-moving donkey.

‘Hannack,’ said the raven. ‘Now you’re for it!’

Soldier bristled with annoyance. ‘People keep telling me that, but who or what in Guthrum is a Hannack?’

At that moment the bareback rider spurred his horse and came charging down the ridge towards Soldier. Soldier noticed that the Hannack was riding a wild horse, hairier and stockier than those mounts used by Guthrumite troops. The rider himself looked just as savage as his mount. He appeared naked, but strangely his skin was loose on his body. It seemed wrinkled and folded, and it rippled in the wind. In the warrior’s left hand was a warhammer, one side blunt, the other side spiked. His expression was formed into a brutal mask: his battle face. He handled his mount with accomplished ease, as if the beast were joined to him at the thighs and shared the same brain.

His head was startlingly bald.

‘Here he comes,’ cried the raven, ‘wearing the skin of a defeated enemy.’

So that’s what it is, thought Soldier, a cape of human skin.

‘What does he want from me?’ cried Soldier. ‘I’m obviously very poor.’

‘Your chin,’ replied the raven. ‘He wants your lower jaw, Soldier.’

Warriors were warriors, but there were those who tried to look handsome and bold, and those who tried to look as fearsome as possible. Hannacks were obviously into the more gory side of war.

The city below was agonisingly close. The red pavilions of the Carthagans even closer. Soldier attempted to spur the donkey on to greater speeds than the languid step it had been giving him until now. The donkey was not used to such treatment. When riders kicked it in the ribs it was inclined to stop and fume at the mistreatment. It did so now. Soldier yelled at it, kicking harder. It grew mental roots from its hooves and prepared to lock itself to the earth.

Soldier leaped from the animal’s back and with his tools in one fist and sack of severed hands in the other, he began running down towards the gates. There were guards there who stared at him, being run down by a savage horseman, but they made no effort to send out help. They simply watched, with horrified interest, as the thundering hooves of the Hannack’s mount gained on Soldier. Some of the Carthagans had come out of their pavilions and were pointing and gesticulating, yelling for their comrades to come and watch the single combat. One of them cried that it was not so much a combat as a murder. They were convinced the Hannack would kill the dark-haired man with the thick black beard.

Soldier’s breath came out in short bursts. He knew he was not going to make it through the gates. Nowhere near. He dropped the sack of hands and reached into the bag of tools. There he grasped the hand-axe he had used to chop the extremities from the giant’s arms. With this weapon in his grasp he took a firm stance and waited for the horseman. There was the thought in his mind that he was a hardened veteran of war. He should know what to do in these circumstances. And indeed, he did. He could not go for the man with a small weapon. He had to hit the mount, wound it, bring it down and the man with it.

The Hannack bore down on him with ferocious intent. There was no savage glee or joy-of-battle in his face: only concentrated sense of purpose. Soldier could see this fierce lone warrior was set on killing him.

As the speed of the Hannack’s charger increased, the warrior’s second skin flapped in the wind. He looked like some horrible dead man, risen from the grave. Soldier set his feet squarely on the ground and swung his hand-axe back and forth, ready to deliver a blow. His fear was now gone and had been replaced by a coolness. What remained was a keen series of thoughts, assessing the situation as it progressed. Yes, he knew he had always been a soldier, for though his memory had gone the skills of his trade remained.

‘Well done, friend,’ yelled one of the guards at the gate in admiration. ‘It would have been useless to run.’

The Hannack was almost upon him. Soldier swung sideways with the little axe, aiming for the horse’s outstretched nose. The Hannack was lightning fast and swerved to protect his mount. Soldier’s swing carried through, missing his original target, but striking the Hannack’s thigh. There came a yell of pain from the attacking warrior, who turned on his mount to a position where he could strike down. However, Soldier’s left arm went up to protect his vulnerable temple. This left the lower part of Soldier’s face as the only real target. For reasons of his own the Hannack stayed his hand, did not smash his warhammer into Soldier’s hairy jaw. Instead, the frustrated warrior tried for Soldier’s right shoulder.

He missed, because at that moment the donkey, either terrified by the fracas, or simply enraged by all this unnecessary activity, charged past the steed’s flank and lashed out with his hind hooves. He struck the Hannack’s mount on the rump. The horse shied and bolted forwards, causing the Hannack clutch at the reins. In doing so the warrior dropped his warhammer. Soldier immediately picked up this weapon, longer than the hand-axe and far more deadly, and began wielding it himself. The horseman saw that he had to arm himself again and drew a broadbladed sword slung from the side of his charger. As he did so, he found himself in a storm of arrows, which were now coming from the direction of the nearest red pavilion. Carthagan archers had fetched their weapons and were raining missiles down on the Hannack. One struck him in the shoulder. He pulled it out, gave Soldier a frustrated, if not longing look, and then rode off towards the hill country to the north.

Soldier breathed a sigh of relief as he watched the dust clouds fly from the horse’s hooves in the blood-red light of the dying sun.

He patted the donkey on the rump. ‘You saved my skin there, old fellah. Extra hay for you tonight.’

‘An extra something for your other helper?’ suggested the raven, who had flown back again. ‘I was going to fly at the face of that Hannack, but the donkey got in the way.’

‘Oh, I’m certain you were,’ said Soldier, sarcastically.

‘No, really, I was.’

‘Let’s forget it, shall we?’

Soldier wrapped the Hannack’s warhammer in a piece of sacking. He would keep this prize. It might come in useful to him later, since his empty scabbard attested to the fact that his own sword was lost. Soldier then led the donkey towards the city gates. On the way he expressed his appreciation to the stocky Carthagan archers, who had assisted him.

‘I owe you my life,’ Soldier shouted.

One of the archers shook his head.

‘Courage needs assistance from time to time. You are no Guthrumite,

for otherwise you would have fled the Hannack.’

Soldier went over to this short, square, narrow-eyed man. His chest was bare and the muscles stood so proud of his form they might have been embossed by a sculptor used to working in bronze. Soldier was quite envious of his physique, yet he was only one of hundreds of others with

similar physical qualities.

‘You don’t think much of Guthrumites then?’

The other replied. ‘They make fine cooks and clerks.’

‘But not fighters.’

‘There have been some, but not many.’

‘Tell me,’ said Soldier, ‘what did the Hannack want of me? He seemed

so anxious for the kill.’

The Carthagan stroked his chin and smiled. ‘Your beard.’

Soldier saw that the other man was clean shaven, like most people he

had met within the castle too.

‘What about my beard? You can’t take another man’s chin fuzz. What would you do with it?’

‘He wanted your mandible. Didn’t you notice he avoided smashing in your face? That’s because he didn’t want to damage your lower jaw bone. Hannacks are all as bald as boulders in a stream. They take the bearded mandibles of their enemies and wear them on their heads, to cover their

hairless pates. He might have skinned you too, if you hadn’t been so close to the castle. Just because he was wearing the skin of one enemy, does not mean he wouldn’t take a spare. You’re very lucky, friend.’

Soldier left the Carthagan and went to the gates. There the Guthrumite guards underlined the Carthagan’s words, telling him he was a lucky soand-so. Soldier was more inclined to think that his skill as a fighter had more to do with it than luck.

When he got through the gate he was again pounced on by four guards of the inner ward, who viewed his iron collar with distaste. When he produced Spagg’s baton they sneered.

‘The hand-seller. Is that what’s in the sack?’ asked one of the guards, a tall fellow with a thin nose.

‘Yes, the hands of hanged people.’

Soldier opened the sack so that the guard could peer inside.

‘What’s that?’ cried the tall, thin man, pointing. ‘There’s a big one in there.’ He reached in and pulled out the giant’s hand.

‘By Theg,’ said an older guard, ‘that’s the hand of Jankin the giant. Has he been hung then?’

‘He was hung,’ sniggered another of the guards. ‘Very well hung, so I’m told. That was the reason Queen Vanda ordered his neck to be stretched. He impregnated one of her plain cousins, so I heard the captain say.’

The fourth guard added thoughtfully, ‘The old maids of this castle are going to be bit upset about Jankin being hanged. The story is that Jankin serviced a good many spinsters and very satisfied they was too, he being so well-endowed. There’ll be weeping and wailing in certain lonely quarters once the news of this gets around.’

‘There was another thing missing from his body,’ Soldier said. ‘His penis.’

‘Ho! Some old witch has had that,’ cried the thin guard. ‘She’ll sell it on, once she’s breathed a bit of life into it.’

‘Or, if she’s very ugly, she’ll keep it for herself,’ said one of his friends.

The guards all laughed uproariously and told Soldier he could go on his way.

Spagg was less enthusiastic when presented with the large pair of hands.

‘How am I goin’ to find room on my stall for Jankin’s great mitts?’ he asked, holding up the monstrous appendages. ‘You’ve chopped ‘em. Look at the stumps! Bah! They’re like two slabs of pale meat. And there’s no character to ‘em,’ he quite rightly pointed out. ‘There’s no tattoos, no scars, no hard gristly bits or misshapen warts. The hands of a clerk’s got more interest in ‘em than these. At least a clerk’s usually got a pen callus on the writing hand. These have got no blemishes at all. Why, they’re as soft and smooth as a baby’s bottom. Look at the perfect shape of the moons on the nails! The cuticles. Everything trimmed and neatly filed. Them’s manicured fingernails. Jankin couldn’t have done a hard day’s work in his life.’

‘From what I hear,’ said Soldier, ‘he had no need to.’

‘You mean his bedroom antics? I suppose those widders and old maids paid him, did they? What a way to earn a living, eh? Plying your trade between white cotton sheets.’

‘I heard it was the silk ones that were his downfall.’

Spagg nodded, holding the pair of hands up to the light. ‘Ah well, maybe if I distress ‘em a bit, with a hammer and some chisels. Make ‘em look as if they’ve been through terrible times? Tricks of the trade, Soldier. Can’t just give up on ‘em, just ‘cause they look brand new, can you? We’ll knock a bit of character into ‘em.’

Soldier said, ‘Isn’t that cheating?’

Spagg looked up quickly with a frown on his forehead.

‘When you buys things in a market, you take risks. You don’t find honest men in places like this — only in shops, what charge more money for the same goods. You buy cheap, you takes a risk is what I say.’

Spagg paid Soldier for his work and told him he could have the rest of the evening off.

Gratefully, Soldier took the donkey to its stall and gave it some hay.

‘I owe you my life, fellah,’ he said, patting its nose. ‘You are the prince of donkeys.’

Now that he had some money in his purse, Soldier went looking for accommodation. However, at every boarding house or inn he received the same rejection. It seemed no one wanted a stranger to the city, a man who wore the iron collar, in their house. Some hardly opened the door before slamming it in his face, not even listening to what he had to say. Others threatened him. It seemed a hopeless task. In the end, as night was coming on, he went back to Spagg.

The merchant was just in the process of gathering his hands from the stall: little ones, big ones, red ones, pale ones, black ones, copper ones, hands with twisted thumbs, hands with missing fingers, hands with no nails, hands with tattoos, skinless hands, hands with webbing between the joints, hands of every description, all bearing the obvious signs of preserving fluid. Spagg picked them up and placed them carefully, even lovingly, on top of each other, like stacking books, before wrapping them in sackcloth and placing them in leather saddlebags.

‘Can I stay with you?’ pleaded Soldier. ‘You must have a place for a bed where you live? If I stay on the streets I’ll be robbed. There are footpads, cutthroats and cutpurses everywhere. They’re more numerous than cockroaches once the sun goes down. I’ve got to sleep some time and they’ll be on me as soon as I close my eyes.’

‘Use that new warhammer to beat ‘em off,’ replied the unmoved hand-seller, nodding at the weapon which was now stuck in Soldier’s belt. ‘The story of you sending that Hannack back to the hills is spreading over Zamerkand faster than flies can breed. The night-people’ll be scared stiff of you.’

‘Be reasonable. I can’t fight in my sleep. Some rascal will tap me on the temple and I’ll quit this world, reputation or no.

‘Not my fault, not my business,’ replied Spagg, loading the last of his gear on a cart. All around him the other market traders were in the process of leaving the great square. Soon it would be empty of everyone except Soldier. ‘Why don’t you sleep on the guildhall steps,’ said his employer, ‘then you’ll be bright and early for work tomorrow morning. I need to you help me put some dirt under Jankin’s fingernails, and chip and crack ‘em a bit. The only thing they’ve touched in the last few years is the breasts and fannies of the female gentry.’

‘Why won’t you take me home with you?’

‘Because my lover wouldn’t like it - we value our privacy.’

Soldier stared at the hand-of-glory merchant. He was a small, squat man. His torso had a shrivelled look to it, while his arms and legs were thin and gangly. His greying hair was stiff with dirt and looked as if it had been cut with a blunt instrument. His feet were large, his ears were large, his nose was large. His skin was pockmarked with the ravages of the pox and there was a horrid hairy mole on the point of his chin. In short, he was an ugly brute.

‘You have a lover?’ said Soldier, and before he could help it he had added, ‘She must be very unfussy.’

Spagg raised his eyebrows. ‘We’re not all as fond of peaches-andcream as Jankin was, you know. Anyways, you can chunter on all night, you ain’t comin’ home with me.’ He started to walk towards the stall where the donkey was stabled and then turned and said in a generous tone, ‘You could try a woman called Uthellen. Lives at number 133 West Gate Street. She sometimes takes in lodgers, even suspicious ones like you.’

Soldier saw he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Spagg and left the square to seek this Uthellen woman’s house. Nightwatchmen came out of the recesses in the castle walls to light the faggots in their cages. Street people had already started fires on corners and in alleys, to keep themselves warm during the night. Even these low-life individuals stared suspiciously at the man wearing the iron collar, indicating with their eyes that he would be wise not to stop and try to share the comfort of their fires with them.

As was usual, he came across one or two bodies on his search for the house. One was lying in an alley, its head beaten to a bloody pulp and looking like a watermelon which had been squashed by the wheels of a cart. The other was hacked into several pieces, the bits scattered over the road outside a tavern. The watch had obviously not yet found the remains of either of these ugly signs of violence. It reminded him that this was a city where death was cheap and very often nasty. His hand never left the warhammer. He found the weapon a great comfort when shadows flitted within alleys.

Finally, in the light of the faggot torches, he found a house with the number 133 painted on it in crude figures. There had been no 133 West Gate Street, and Soldier had assumed that Spagg must have got the names mixed up.

It was a green door in an alley so narrow he had to slip up it sideways to prevent grazing his shoulders. The alley snaked up through houses on a hill at the back of the city. There were no windows through which Soldier could peer and get some idea of the occupants, but it did not look a very salubrious set of residences. He simply had to knock on the door of 133 and hope to get a welcoming reception. The knocker on the thick wooden portal was a demon’s claw clutching an iron ball. It invited use. He listened at the door first and thought he could hear faint grunts, or perhaps moans and groans going on behind it. Maybe the lady was sick? Perhaps that’s why she took in unsavoury lodgers, because being ill she could not work and needed the money desperately? At least someone was home.

He knocked hard.

Nothing.

He knocked even harder.

Still nothing.

He knocked harder still.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

He used the warhammer, thumping loudly enough on the wooden portal

to awaken the dead.

The door flew open and an enormous, sturdy woman filled the opening to the house. She was tucking a grimy blouse into the waistband of her even grimier skirt. Huge breasts weighed down the blouse front. Huge muscles bulged the blouse sleeves. Huge legs stood firm as tree trunks in the doorway. Soldier had obviously interrupted something, though his

brain reeled drunkenly at the awful possibilities.

‘WHAT?’ she roared.

Soldier took a step backwards, to be out of reach of the stench of her

foul breath.

‘I — Spagg told me — that is, do you have a room for rent?’

The woman’s jowls were red with anger.

‘Room? There’s only one room in this hovel, and that’s got me in it and

— for a very short time — a little friend. There’s no space left for a cockroach, let alone a grown man.’ She peered more closely at his neck.

‘You’ve got an iron collar. Get out of here, before I call the watch!’

‘But Spagg said . . .’ cried Soldier, desperately.

‘I don’t know any Spagg.’

The door was slammed shut. Soldier could hear bolts slamming into

their sockets. That was that.

Soldier walked back to West Gate Street, despair in his heart. Still he could not find 133. At that moment the raven landed on his shoulder,

making him jump.

‘Don’t do that,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

‘It’s not what I want — it’s you who needs something. I’ve been

watching you. I heard what Spagg said. You’re barking at the wrong door, Soldier.’

Soldier was puzzled. ‘What do you mean?

‘Look down at your feet.’

Soldier did so and saw nothing but the cobbled street.

‘I see stone,’ he said.

‘And?’

Soldier used his powers of observation a little more.

‘And iron grids, every hundred yards.’

‘Bravo! Precisely. The openings to the sewers below the city streets. Each of them are numbered.’

Dawn came up in Soldier’s sluggish brain. ‘Not a house number — the number of a sewer?’

‘Bravo. Now, off you go. The one you want is by the south wall.’

The raven flew off, up towards the turrets and towers, with their flapping banners and flags.

Soldier tramped along the street until he reached the south wall of the city. There he found the grid marked 133. He lifted it and climbed down the iron ladder, trying to ignore the stink of the air below. The first few yards were dark, but once he had reached the tunnel where the muck flowed in a sluggish stream down the centre, he noticed faint lights. There were people down either side of the river of sewage.

Soldier stood on the narrow ledge and said, ‘Uthellen? Is there a woman called Uthellen here?’

A woman with a young boy sitting in the light of a cheap tallow candle looked up quickly. There was fear in her face.

When she saw she was being observed she looked down again, just as swiftly, and pretended to be doing something with the boy’s shoes — taking them off - or putting them on.

‘Are you Uthellen?’ called Soldier again.

This time there was no sign that the woman had recognised the name. She continued fussing with the boy’s feet. Soldier climbed down on to the ledge and made his way towards her.

Soldier decided that the woman would have been very attractive, if it were not for her rags and grime. She had a small, oval-shaped face set with deep, brown eyes. Her hair too was probably a chestnut colour under the dirt. The boy with her looked weak and sickly. His limbs were as thin and knobbly as sticks and his complexion was pale. There were dark rings around his eyes and the hair on his head was thin and patchy. Two eyes, bright as fiery coals, burned with intensity in his face. Was that with fever, or with some inner strength?

Soldier made his way to the pair, over grumbling bodies, until he reached the woman’s side.

She looked up. There was still dread in her eyes.

Soldier said in a low voice, so that others could not hear, ‘I mean no harm to you, woman. My name is Soldier. Spagg, the hand-seller, said you might find me somewhere to sleep. I actually asked him if there was someone who would rent me a room, but I see that like me, you have no dwelling.’

‘Oh, Spagg?’ There was some relief in her voice and the look of terror faded a little, though it did not vanish completely. ‘I’m - I’m sorry. There is someone who would . . . but never mind that. You are a stranger to the city. I see that by your collar. So, they will not give you room to sleep? I have this space,’ she said, indicating the stone bank of the sewer. ‘I rent it from the Lady of the Sewers, who is responsible to the Queen’s Chancellor for the good running of the city’s sewers.’

‘Ah, so it doesn’t come free?’

‘Nothing comes free in Guthrum,’ she said. ‘You have been here a very short time if you haven’t learned that. The Chancellor has his finger in every pie.’

Soldier was surprised. ‘Chancellors are usually rich men — why would this Queen’s Chancellor bother with renting sewer space?’

‘Have you ever asked yourself how chancellors become so wealthy?’

Soldier thought about it and nodded. ‘You have a point. In that case, may I share this spot with you? I have good coin to pay rent.’

At these words several people in the half-darkness around them shuffled as if paying attention.

‘All I need is a place to sleep,’ he added. ‘Nothing more, nothing less. If you and the boy could find it in your hearts to help a man with the iron collar of a stranger, I should be eternally grateful.’

She grimaced, ruefully. ‘Of course you may share my space, but now you have told everyone you have money, one of us will have to remain awake at all times. If we all three fall asleep at once, they’ll rob us blind

— won’t you?’ The last two words were shouted for the benefit of the listeners. Grins and nods came from the beggars, thieves and vagabonds sharing the sewer. There were no protests. They knew what they were and what they knew what they would do given the chance.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Soldier. ‘I have a lot to learn, obviously. You sleep first. I’ll stay awake and count the stars.’

‘Stars?’ said the boy, opening his mouth for the first time and staring up at the curved black ceiling of the sewer. ‘What stars?’

‘In here,’ replied the Soldier, smiling and tapping his head. ‘The bright stars of the open fields and woodlands.’ He sighed. ‘They are with me always, even in places like this.’

Chapter Four

There was a part of the extensive city grounds which did not have the stink of dogs or the filth of the streets. Here there were pleasant bowers and alcoves, beautiful thickets of small-leafed lime trees and green mazes of myrtle and hibiscus hedges. Painted statues and ornamented seats were everywhere, while fountains served expansive camomile lawns and clusters of yew shrubs. Lakes full of exotic fish, bearing glittering jade lizards on their banks, were scattered around. Deer and other wildlife wandered between these drinking places, decorating the landscape with their animated forms.

Everywhere one looked there were swathes of colour: the white sweep of a gathering of lilies, a flush of red roses or tight-bulbed tulips, a shady bank dusted with the hazy blue flax in bloom. These were the gardens on which two palaces stood: the Palace of Birds and the Palace of Wildflowers.

Queen Vanda lived in the Palace of Birds.

At first glance it might seem as if this building’s beautiful architecture had been fashioned from plaster bricks in the shape of birds. However, closer inspection would reveal that these were actual birds, frozen in a variety of actions - perched, flying, eating, alighting, swimming — birds with beaks open, birds with beaks closed, birds with smooth feathers, birds with ruffled feathers. They were once warm, live creatures that had been turned to stone, then used in the making of arches, turrets, towers, pillars, window-frames, ledges, portals, and all the other necessary and decorative features which go into the making of a palace fit for a queen and empress.

It was, however, a house of sadness.

Queen Vanda, like her sister, Princess Layana, who lived in the nearby smaller Palace of Wildflowers, dwelt much of her time in a terrible twilight world on the borderlands of madness. Thus the walls of both palaces were padded with silk brocade stuffed with goosedown. It was said that ten thousand wild geese had died to provide the padding which helped to prevent either sister from braining herself on the stone walls of their respective homes.

The parents of the sisters, the old queen and her consort, had died when the children were young. The royal offspring had been in the care of their nanny since birth, and she, poor soul, had crept unknown into senility at the time of the old queen’s death. No records had been kept. The queen had been uninterested in her daughters. She had consigned the girls to the nursery where they were cherished and kept from all society by their doting and jealous nanny.

Since reason had left the old woman in whose care the royal children had been left, there was no discovering their exact ages. One day she said it was Vanda who was the oldest, the next Layana, then changed her mind the following morning. It was Humbold, then only a clerk in the civic library, who set about discovering which of the two children was the elder. His keen inquiry led him to the conclusion that it was Vanda who was five years of age and Layana who was four years and three months. Once Vanda became queen, at the age of twelve, she rewarded Humbold with several promotions for his research.

There were times when the queen was quite lucid and rational, but there were also times when her reason flew out of her like a startled bird from its nest and the dark shadow of lunacy clouded her thinking and her actions. This morning was one of those days when her thoughts were clear and she called for her chancellor to attend her in her bedchamber.

‘How is your majesty this morning?’ asked the chancellor, warily, on entering the queen’s boudoir. ‘I trust you slept well?’

The queen was sitting up in bed, the satin sheets covering only her legs. She was robed in a pale peach silk gown which emphasised the thinness of her form beneath it. Her ribs showed through like a furrowed field. Her elbows were sharp points halfway down the mandarin sleeves. Her collarbones made silk arches around the neck of the robe.

‘No, I had nightmares as usual. I dreamt I was being torn apart by witches and eaten alive. It was horrible. Each part of me was a conscious living creature with a mind of its own, so that when the witches ate my liver, my heart watched in great sorrow and agony, seeing its body-mate torn apart and devoured by these wretched hags ...’

As the queen spoke her expression changed. She began to look more and more haggard and distressed. Chancellor Humbold stopped the flow with a sharp, ‘How terrible for you, your majesty ...’

Humbold was not much concerned by the queen’s grisly dreams, but for him to retain his position it was necessary that she be lucid for at least part of the time. If it ever emerged that she had lapsed into complete, irretrievable, howling madness, the queendom would collapse completely and he would be robbed of the power he now wielded. While she was seen as partially able, there would be no revolution. Rulers were entitled to run slightly mad in any case: they were products of inbreeding, even incest. Queendoms however, like chickens, required heads. Without a functioning queen — even a cruel one — chaos and disorder would prevail. Murder would be the order of the day and the streets would run with blood. Hated chancellors would be dragged from their beds and hung from tower flagpoles.

Humbold was the true ruler of the queendom. There had once been an empire, but that had been lost by Queen Vanda’s mother, though the trappings were still in place — the Imperial Guard and other such institutions. There was still great wealth in the queendom, from the imperial era, but once-conquered neighbouring countries no longer paid tribute to Guthrum. It was a static wealth. The empire had withered, but the city state of Zamerkand still flourished.

There were old scores to settle however. Many of the tribes around and about saw themselves as victims of the old empire, and now that the mighty had fallen were eager to crush it completely. The cry of ‘Barbarians at the gates’ was expected to be heard at any time, now and in the future. Only the mercenaries, the Carthagans, stood in the way of Guthrum’s utter destruction. A sacked and burning city, its population slaughtered to man, woman and child, was in the mind’s eye of every citizen. Guthrum was living on the edge of a precipice. Queen Vanda’s fortune paid for the foreign troops to guard Zamerkand’s walls, but the queen’s wealth was not bottomless and one day would run out. Then the Hannacks would come, and the clans of beast-people from the North — the Horse-people and the Wild-dog-people — and coast raiders would sweep in from the Cerulean Sea. Guthrum would be devoured by fire and sword and its people consigned to death or slavery.

‘What are the duties of the day?’ asked the queen, getting out of her bed. There was a fountain in the middle of her room. She allowed her attendant maid-servants to strip her and wash her in its waters, oblivious of the presence of the chancellor, who it has to be said was slightly revolted by the sight of her gaunt, careworn body. ‘Do we hold court?’

‘There are petitions for your majesty to hear. To save your majesty time I have weeded out the unnecessary ones ...’

She looked up as a maid-servant wrapped her wet body round with orange-coloured cotton towels.

‘Surely I should hear them all? Surely I should be the one to decide whether or not they are necessary?’

Humbold smiled. ‘Forgive me, your majesty. I have taken the liberty of whittling them down to fifty. There were originally seven-hundred-andten. I’m sure your majesty would be too exhausted to hear such a number of suits.’

The queen raised her eyebrows as she was being dressed.

‘That many? You’re quite right. Even fifty sounds a tiring number. You are forgiven for usurping my power, Humbold, this time. Next time, however, you must tell me beforehand how many there are and I shall decide whether you whittle them down to a manageable number.’

‘Your majesty is quite right.’

Most of the fifty supplicants were bearing false suits, all invented by Humbold himself. In this way he kept a buffer between the citizens and the queen. Four hundred of the original seven hundred and ten involved complaints against the chancellor himself. He could not have such things coming to the ear of the queen. Those not of his own making which he had allowed through the filter were minor quarrels between neighbours — someone’s pig had eaten someone’s vegetable patch — and nothing at all to do with the way Humbold ruled the castle city state.

‘Has anything unusual happened recently?’ asked the queen. ‘While I was — asleep.’

While you were in the thrall of your ugly lunacy, thought Humbold, screaming fit to bring down the walls of the castle.

‘No, not really . . . oh, yes, there was a stranger - he came to the city with one of our hunters. Apparently the hunter found him on a hill. The man was convinced he had been involved in a battle just prior to meeting the hunter. Indeed, he looked like a soldier, though his uniform was in rags and his sword sheath was empty of a weapon.’

‘Why do you mention this trivial account to me?’

‘Why?’ frowned the chancellor. ‘I don’t know. There’s something about the way this man was found — or found himself - that is troublesome to me. Just a feeling, nothing more. The manner of his coming worries me. I sense more importance in it than just happenchance. I fear this stranger, who calls himself Soldier, may be bad for us. But I’m not entirely sure. I feel it best to keep him under observation before executing him.’

The queen, now dressed in regal fashion, in great swathes of light cotton with silk trimmings, started.

‘Is he out to destroy us, do you think?’

Humbold raised the palms of his hands. ‘It’s just a feeling, your majesty, and I am having the man closely watched. If he remains within these walls I intend to invoke an old law of Zamerkand. I found it the other day, in one of the books in your library. It states that a stranger requesting hospitality must be given such, but for one lunar month only, after which if he has not left the city the Lord of Thieftakers, our highest judge, may have him arrested and put to death.’

The queen said, ‘Are you sure you didn’t just write that law yourself?’

Humbold smiled. ‘Your majesty jests.’

‘And you think this is necessary, to have the stranger put to death? Perhaps your feelings are mistaken? What if he is some kind of messiah, come to save us from destruction?’

‘That’s why I have allowed him to live for a while. If he is such then he will reveal himself before the month is out. However, if he has nothing to offer us, or is simply a lost stranger, then we can dispose of him. No, no, your majesty, if this man is any sort of threat to us I will have him executed after the full moon has passed.’

‘As you will, Chancellor Humbold; now what of the rest of the day?’

‘I am afraid, your majesty, that we have rebellious elements in our midst.’

‘Traitors?’ She breathed the word.

‘A traitor. Fear not, your majesty. I have had the man concerned arrested. He was preaching sedition in the taverns of the city. This is one Frinstin, Keeper of the Towers ...’

‘Frinstin? He speaks against me?’

‘There are several witnesses. They shall be called at the trial.’

Vanda stared as if into a room of darkness. ‘Trial? There will be no trial. Execute him.’

Humbold altered his facial muscles a little into something that might, in some quarters, be recognised as a smile. ‘But, you may require proof, your majesty.’

‘I need no proof, Chancellor Humbold. Your word is good enough, is it not? You have heard the case against him?’

‘Indeed I have.’

‘Then cut off his head, today.’

‘A nod from the chancellor. And his successor?’

‘I leave that to you, Humbold.’

‘As you wish, your majesty.’

Later, the queen was in her throne room, ready to hear supplicants and make judgements. Humbold, as ever, was by her side, gently guiding her. He was subtle, had to be, for she was not an unintelligent person. Long hours of studying his queen had enabled Humbold to make just the right noises at the right times. He knew just when and where to intervene and when to stay silent. Sometimes he remained aloof even when he wished the judgement to go the other way, knowing that in this particular instance, on this particular subject, it was better to take a small defeat than risk losing the confidence of the queen.

Two people entered the throne room and bowed very low before the monarch. She acknowledged their presence and waved them away as if she were wafting cool air on her hot brow. The two went off into one corner to speak quietly with each other.

They were rich and powerful personages, these two. One was short and muscular, with a broad face and high forehead. Her name was Qintara and she was the Lady of the Ladders.

The other was tall and thin, with a narrow nose, a small mouth and a generally pinched look about him. His eyes were piercing and glinted like flints. He surveyed the room as the other talked in a low voice.

This was Maldrake, Lord of the Locks.

Both Qintara and Maldrake belonged to Chancellor Humbold, of course. They were his creatures. There were many taxes on the citizens of Zamerkand, which kept its residents safe from raiders and other warring states, and gave them their secure trading canal to the sea. They paid dearly for their protection. There was a tax on steps and stairs, collected by the Lady of the Ladders. It was she who assessed how many steps went to a citizen’s room, or trading place, or house. If you lived above the stench of the dung-covered streets, in a high tower, then you had to be able to afford it. There was a tax on locks, collected by the Lord of the Locks. The larger and more complex the lock, the more a person had to protect, and therefore the more tax he could afford to pay.

There were in turn, a Keeper of the Chimneys; the Lady of the Sewers; the Lady of the Doors; Keeper of all Gates; and so on. The same principles of tax applied to all: those who could afford conveniences could afford to pay tax. Controlling much of this wealth was the devious Humbold, who had over the years managed to fill most of the posts in the city with sycophants, and so took a percentage of all taxes paid to the queen.

There were not many who resisted Humbold now. Frinstin had been one of them, but he was the least powerful, the least important of them all.

Marshal Crushkite, Warlord of the Guthrum Army, was one who hated and opposed Chancellor Humbold whenever he got the chance. The standing army of Guthrum — the Carthagan mercenaries aside - was not large, but it was well-armed and very loyal to its officers. Humbold had to fawn in front of its senior officers, especially Crushkite, and he loathed them all. The marshal strode into the throne room now, tall and aristocratic, a thoroughly military bearing, his head a shock of lion-mane hair, his expression disdainful, his manner arrogant. He crossed to the queen and gave her a sharp bow. The queen smiled. Crushkite, broadshouldered, narrow-waisted and handsome in his fiftieth year, was one of her favourites. The fact that he had the brain of an ass had always escaped the queen’s notice.

Not so that of Humbold. It was his one source of comfort.

‘Marshal Crushkite,’ murmured Humbold, as the warlord passed him by, ‘you have heard of this stranger we have in our midst. He calls himself “Soldier”. Don’t you think that’s rather impertinent, since he belongs to no army?’

Crushkite turned his baleful eyes on the man he considered to be lower than worms.

‘A man who’s been a soldier is always a soldier, Humbug, dontcha know that? Training, discipline, loyalty to a regiment — they never leave a man. I’ve seen ‘im. Might have to execute him, but that’s neither here nor there, he’s got a fine, straight figure. Spine like a spear. Not like you limp daffodils who’ve never marched anywhere except to your wardrobes. Got a battle-look in his eye, too. Officer material if ever I saw it.’

‘Captain Kaff doesn’t seem to think so,’ Humbold offered, craftily, attempting to drive in wedges.

‘Captain Kaff doesn’t have to agree with my opinion in private matters: he simply has to obey orders in military matters. Good day to you, Humbug.’

Humbug! The chancellor bristled as he smiled. Humbug!

Crushkite was not Humbold’s only problem. There was the Lord of the Royal Purse, Quidquod, keeper of the queen’s personal fortune, a man who was incorruptible, could not be bribed, could not be swayed by rhetoric. He was old, incredibly intelligent, and could destroy Humbold with a few words in the queen’s ear, if any proof of embezzlement ever fell into his hands.

There were one or two minor personages feared by Humbold, but gradually he was whittling these down.

‘Humbold,’ called the queen, after having had a short conversation with Quidquod, ‘the Lord of the Royal Purse seems to differ with you over the matter of Frinstin. He feels that perhaps you are being a little hasty.’

Humbold simmered internally, but smiled on the outside.

‘Has he more information? How tragic. It may be too late, your majesty . . .’

‘Not so,’ replied the crusty, grim-faced counter of the royal coin, ‘I received a message from Frinstin this morning and acted on it straight away.’ Quidquod bowed solemnly to the queen. ‘I took the liberty of postponing the execution.’

‘Quite right, Quidquod. If you have evidence which speaks of Frinstin’s innocence, then we must discuss it before he has his head lopped from his shoulders. Both of you be in my inner chambers before noon. We’ll take the matter further.’

Quidquod bowed.

Humbold bowed.

Humbold felt a rage go sweeping through him, reaching to the very depths of his soul.

Chapter Five

Soldier was awakened by the sound of beautiful singing. He did not understand the words - they could have been bird-songs for all the intelligence they imparted - but there was no denying the quality of the tone. He was aware, as he opened his eyes, of shadows scuttling away along the banks of the sewer. Sitting up quickly he realised the straps on his belt purse had been half-severed. He had been in the process of being robbed when the singing woke him.

Turning to Uthellen, Soldier said, ‘A simple shake and a warning would have been enough.’

‘Enough for what?’ She too was stretching and rubbing her eyes.

‘Enough to alert me. There’s was no need to sing, even though you have a wonderful voice.’

She blinked at him. The boy was awake too, staring.

‘Sing?’ she repeated. ‘What are you talking about?’

The boy pointed with a bony finger. ‘It was that. The sword sheath.’

Soldier looked down at the scabbard strapped to his side.

‘This? What do you mean?’

The boy said, ‘I heard it, before you woke. It sang in the language of the wizards. It sang in the voice of a castrate,

‘Awake, awake, oh warrior mine. Before you’re slain by thieving swine.’

The Soldier grasped and inspected the scabbard with Kutrama and Sintra stitched into its leather.

‘Are you mad, child? Scabbards don’t sing. Perhaps someone was throwing his voice.’

‘No, it was the scabbard.’

Soldier frowned and stared hard at the boy.

‘What do you know of the language of wizards?’

Uthellen suddenly came to life and clutched her child to her breast. ‘Nothing — he knows nothing. We all fell asleep and someone woke us.’ Desperately she called out into the darkness, ‘I thank you, whoever it was, for giving us a warning.’

With that she began to gather what belongings she had and seemed to be preparing to leave.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Soldier. ‘It’s still night.’

‘It’s almost dawn. The boy and I should leave now.’

Soldier shrugged and reached into his purse. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Here’s the money I promised.’

She took it with a gracious thank you, and before very long Soldier was alone on the ledge. He was a little puzzled as to why Uthellen and the nameless boy had left so soon. She seemed to go into a panic when her son started to speak of wizards. Of course, it was not good policy to take the name of wizards in vain, but there had been nothing of that sort. It was the mere mention of them that put her into disquiet. Soldier didn’t understand it at all. And the boy had been so convinced it was the scabbard which had warned them of the robbers!

Soldier could not get to the bottom of it. He resolved to speak again with Uthellen, that night. But when he returned after a day of sawing off the hands of murderers and bandits, she was not there. One of the other sewer residents told him she would not be back. She came to offer her apologies, said the man, and left her promise that you could have her ledge. Soldier was surprised, but there was little he could do about it. He simply took her place and paid the rent when the collector came to demand it.

‘Do you charge the rats as well?’ asked Soldier of the rent collector. ‘They spend their days down here, as well as their nights.’

The rent collector, a little man with narrow shoulders, shook his head.

‘You’ll be in a deal of trouble, friend, if you mock Her Majesty’s officers. I’ll ‘ave you danglin’ from the battlements by your thumbs, any more lip. I may look weak and puny to you, but there’s a cartload o’ soldiers outside would love to kick you from here to there and back again. Get my meanin’?’

‘There’s not a lot of meaning to get, but as a stranger here I should probably watch my tongue.’

‘Absolutely, friend.’

The time passed swiftly. Before he knew it, Soldier had been in the castle a month. By day he worked for Spagg and at night he slept in the sewer. It was not much of a life, but it was all he had at the present time. There was some idea that he might progress by degrees, but to where or what he still had no clue. Then the hour came when he was arrested.

He was standing by Spagg’s stall at the time, helping to persuade passers-by into purchasing hands-of-glory.

‘Want to make yourself invisible?’ he called. ‘Do all those naughty things you’ve always wanted to do, without fear of being seen or caught? Men, get into the ladies’ public baths without being noticed! Women, follow that two-timing husband of yours and catch him with his pants down! Come on, buy a hand-of-glory, dirt cheap on Wednesdays, Fridays and the queen’s unofficial birthday. Waxed-and-wicked fingers guaranteed to light first time. Makes a fine glow to read or sew by, without the added extra cloak of invisibility. A must for professional burglars and grave-robbers . . .’

Six castle guards led by a captain came from a corner of the market square and made straight for Spagg’s stall.

‘Uh, oh, what have you done this time?’ Soldier asked Spagg.

The stallholder was already creeping away, distancing himself from his assistant.

‘Not me,’ he muttered. ‘You.’

It was execution day. Murderers, rapists and child moles-ters were hung outside the walls of the city, but traitors were decapitated within. In a courtyard near the Lord of Thieftaker’s office they were cutting off heads. One could hear the sound of the axe chinking past the block as each head rolled. Occasionally there was a scream cut short by a thumping sound as a head fell onto the boards of the executioner’s platform. It was not difficult to imagine the bnght-bladed sword raised high above the quivering neck, then flashing down.

The soldiers had come to add to the number of victims in the Lord of Thieftaker’s yard.

At first Soldier thought they’d come to take his collar off, thinking he had earned the right to citizenship after a month of wearing the uncomfortable iron ring. However when the captain shouted on the march, he knew he was mistaken.

‘The stranger known as “Soldier” is hereby under arrest, having been sentenced to death by the queen for remaining within these city walls for one lunar month without authority or invitation. Take him!’ This last order was directed at his guards.

Soldier felt something flare within him. It came from that corner of his mind where guilt and hatred dwelt side by side. He leapt back with great alacrity, reaching down for his sword.

Of course, there was no sword to draw. However, the Hannack’s warhammer was still in his belt. He drew this and crouched like a cornered rat, ready to deal death to those who would take him and execute him. Soldier was not about to spend the remainder of his days on a gibbet, without first putting up a fight. The square suddenly came to life. Citizens began erupting from nearby buildings — the inns, bawdy-houses and the guildhall - and those already in the square began to crowd round, sensing a battle to the death.

The officer had drawn his sword and his men began to hem Soldier in with their spears.

‘No need for that. You can’t get away,’ said the captain. ‘Innocent people will get hurt.’

‘Never mind us innocents, let’s see a good fight!’ roared a voice from the crowd. ‘Let’s see some gore and guts!’

A great cheer went up. Some ragged children who had previously been playing kick-ball with an unfortunate live rat were beginning to force their way to the front, squeezing through the legs of the adults. Donkeys and other livestock were raising a din from the pens in the east corner of the square. A dog had stopped in its tracks and stood there, wondering what on earth was happening in the usually quiet market-place.

Soldier struck out and hit the head of a guard, who went sprawling back into the crowd with a dent in his helmet. The man tried to struggle to his feet, helped by cheering onlookers, but only succeeded in staggering a few paces before his knees buckled and he passed out. His spear rattled on the cobblestones.

The remaining five guards stabbed with their weapons, infuriated that first blood had gone to their adversary. Soldier’s warhammer clattered along the line of spears, like a child’s stick along iron railings, jarring the guards. He ducked and weaved under their efforts to pin him. His acrobatics delighted the spectators, who shouted encouragement. Once the warhammer came down on the foot of a guard who went in too close and put him out of the action. Another time the deadly spike on the back of the hammer went through the empty hand of this wounded man’s nearest comrade. Soldier yelled in triumph, screaming that victory was his. He flailed his warhammer around his head, yelling into the face of his opponents, his features a mask of hatred. The guards backed away under this furious onslaught, looking to their leader for support.

The captain remained calm and unimpressed.

‘If I call for another troop, they will surely finish you where you stand,’ he told Soldier. ‘If you give in now you will at least get the chance to be heard.’

Voices shrieked from the heart of the crowd, ‘Don’t do it!’

‘Fight to the death, stranger.’

‘Don’t let them take you alive!’

But Soldier realised these were just vultures, these people who wanted to see him take on the Guthrum guard. They lived humdrum lives here in the city and they wanted a bit of a thrill. He was nothing more than a circus act to them. Bear-baiting, cock-fighting, iron-glove-boxing. These were the sports that excited these people. Once he was lying bleeding, with a crushed skull, on the cobbles they would laugh and go back to eat their sandwiches of bloody cow meat covered in spicy sauce and talk about matching fighting dogs against each other.

The captain was right. Even if he won and put all the guards out of action, the blood-lust of the crowd would be up. He was still a stranger here. The mob would tear him to pieces and think nothing of it. They would be doing their duty by the queen. The market-place was now packed with people. There was no escape. He was doomed whether he fought or not.

Something landed on his shoulder and a voice in his ear whispered, ‘Give it up. I’ll get you out later.’

Then there was a flutter of black wings and the raven was gone again.

‘Ahhhh, dark magic,’ yelled a spectator. ‘See, the black bird of death landed on his shoulder!’

‘It spoke to him,’ shrieked another. ‘I heard it!’

Soldier let the warhammer fall to his feet and held his hands high in the air.

‘I surrender,’ he murmured.

One of the guards, a man with an angry red face, was about to run him through, but his officer sharply admonished him.

‘Do that and it’ll be your last act, corporal. This man is to go before the Lord of Thieftakers for proper sentencing.’

‘I can understand,’ said Soldier, nodding to the frustrated corporal. ‘I wounded his friends.’

The captain lashed Soldier viciously about the face with his chain mail glove, leaving a red smear from temple to chin.

‘And that’s enough out of you, too, scum. You are not required to understand anything. Speak only when you’re spoken to.’

Fury flared within Soldier. He almost struck the captain and thereby ended his life there and then.

Those guards who had received minor wounds to foot and hand let their comrades dress them. The others fitted a milk churn yoke across Soldier’s shoulders and tied his hands to it. Then they hobbled his legs with a short rope. It amused them to have him trotting in little spurts to keep up with them, as they began to cross the square. The people parted to form an avenue. A moment ago they were with him, while he was fighting the guards. Now that he had been humiliated by his enemies the fickle mob turned against him. They jeered, yelling insults and obscenities, calling his mother a harlot, his sister a strumpet and labelling his brother and father as bastards. Since he had none of these relations, or at any rate did not know them, their taunts did not bother him in the least.

The crowd could see that Soldier was not biting on their bait. This annoyed them and they began then to pelt him with rotten vegetables and offal. The captain let this target practice go on until a flying pig’s intestine missed its mark and wrapped itself around the throat of one of his guards, then he ordered the crowd back.

‘I’ll flay every damn one of you,’ roared the captain. ‘I’ll come back here with a troop of horse-soldiers and clear this square, or have the cobbles running with blood! I’ll show you cattle-slaughterers what carnage really is.’

The gentle citizens of Zamerkand wisely ceased their sport. They knew how far to go and when to stop. They let the captain leave the square with his captive and soon the place was humming with business once again.

Soldier was taken to a keep in the north part of the castle. There he was dragged before a white-haired, dignified-looking man whose portrait half-filled the wall behind his huge desk. He was too important to look up when Soldier was finally standing before him. In fact he continued to write in a large ledger for another thirty minutes, sipping occasionally on a steaming beverage contained by an onyx beaker. Even if he was curious his eyes did not drift upwards to look at the prisoner. Only once he had used a salt shaker as a blotter did he place his goose-feather quill on its stand and look up into Soldier’s eyes.

‘This is the stranger, the one they call the Soldier?’

‘Just “Soldier”,’ said Soldier.

He felt an agonizing, stinging pain on the back of his neck as he was again struck by the chain mail glove.

‘Quiet, prisoner,’ said the captain. ‘Speak again and I’ll cut off your thumbs.’

‘I will decide whether there is any cutting to be done, Captain Kaff,’ said the dignitary. ‘You may have recently been made the Captain of the Imperial Guard, but I am in charge in here.’

There was an offensive pause before the answer came.

‘Yes, my lord.’ The tone was sneering.

‘You are getting above yourself, Kaff. Do not rely too much on your friendship with Chancellor Humbold. Chancellors have been known to fall, and once they do, it is into my hands that they fall. There’s a thin line between a man who holds a powerful position in the court and a traitor. It’s the queen who decides where the line is drawn and on which side a man is standing.’

There was only a brief hesitation this time, before the answer came back in a more civil tongue, ‘Yes, my lord.’

‘That’s better, Kaff. Much better. One day I’ll take you on a tour of the rooms below this one. It’s hot down there, very hot. Stifling, in fact. Even now you should be able to feel the warmth rising through the floor from the coke furnaces below, where we heat the branding-irons and red-hot anus-pokers. If you listen very hard you may be able to hear the squeaking of the racks. You won’t hear the screams, of course, for the first thing we do is tear out a prisoner’s tongue. Silent screams — the mouth wide open, the eyes starting from the head, but with no sound coming out — that is what we aspire to in the room below this one.’

This speech, Soldier knew, was as much for his benefit as the captain’s. He was meant to be intimidated. He was meant to be terrified of what was going to happen to him. Soldier knew now that he was in the presence of the Lord of Thieftakers, head of magistrates, judges, lawyers and the watchmen who policed the streets of the city.

The Lord of Thieftakers now rubbed the sides of his nose with both hands before proceeding.

‘You have been here a lunar month?’ he asked Soldier.

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘And you have made no attempt to leave, now that your statutory month is up?’

‘I didn’t know I had to leave. No one told me.’

The Lord shook his head. ‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse.’

‘Surely someone should have told me, my lord?’

‘Someone should have, but they didn’t, and so here you are before me, awaiting my sentence. Well, I have no choice but to sentence you to death.’ He looked at a sundial on the windowsill of his room where the sun came through. ‘Normally I would have you beheaded, but the executioner has almost finished for the day. Instead, you will be taken from here and disembowelled and your innards fried in a copper bowl while you still live. Once you are dead the rest of your remains will be placed in a gibbet cage. Said gibbet to hang outside the city gates where the rooks and crows may cleanse your bones. That is all. Do you have anything to say?’

‘I would prefer to wait for the next set of beheadings.’

‘Anything else?’ asked the lord, in deadpan voice.

‘Wait,’ said Soldier, desperately. ‘Surely there’s something I can do?

An appeal to the queen, asking for mercy. There must be some way ...’

The Lord of Thieftakers raised an eyebrow.

‘Hasn’t the captain explained it to you?’

‘No — no, my lord. The captain has said nothing.’

The lord sighed. ‘In that case, I shall have to, won’t I? One. Your death sentence may be revoked if a Guthrum citizen with either wealth, business or land comes to plead your cause and stand surety. Two. If a lone wolf appears before the city gates under the next night’s moon. Three. If a maid of Guthrum agrees to take you to husband. That’s it.’ To the captain the lord said, ‘Take him back to the market-place. See if anyone wishes to stand surety, or if some fool girl wants to marry him. If neither happens, then take him to the tower and slice open his belly!’

‘But a wolf might come,’ argued Soldier.

The captain smiled. ‘All wolves are slaughtered on sight by the Carthagans who ring the city walls.’

Soldier remained silent at this news. He had to rely on Spagg to get him off. Or if he could see Uthellen, on the way, he would plead with her to marry him. She was poor and in need of a man’s protection. All was not yet lost.

The captain, who let it be known afterwards that he felt this was all a waste of time, led Soldier back towards the market-place, to where Spagg was back at his stall. The hand-seller was in none too good a mood. Having left his stall unattended, Soldier had allowed some of the hands to be stolen before Spagg could get back to his wares.

Spagg was very sorry, he said, but he couldn’t stand surety for Soldier.

‘What?’ cried the condemned man. ‘What are you saying? I’ve worked for you for these past few weeks. Haven’t we been fnends?’

Spagg shrugged. ‘Firstly, if you ran away they would take my business from me. It’s the business that’s the surety, not me.’

‘I won’t run away,’ promised Soldier, desperately.

‘Secondly,’ replied Spagg, ignoring this interruption, ‘someone wants you dead. Someone with a bit of power, otherwise you wouldn’t be in this fix. I’m not going to cross a powerful man for someone I’ve only just met. I hope the beheading is quick, for your sake.’

‘It’s not a beheading. It’s a disembowelling,’ said Soldier.

Spagg winced and then shrugged, turning away, leaving Soldier feeling wretched. Soldier then appealed to anyone in the crowd who had any sense of kindness to stand surety for him.

‘You’ll probably steal the teeth out of my head,’ one man shouted back, ‘the minute I fall asleep.’

‘What did I say?’ said Captain Kaff, after a few minutes of further barracking. ‘A waste of time.’

At that moment Soldier spotted Uthellen in the crowd. He waved to her.

‘Marry me, or I die,’ he cried to her. ‘Please, Uthellen . . .’ Her face looked stricken, but she did not come forward.

One of the crowd explained why. ‘She has a child - she’s no maid — you need to marry a virgin to save yourself.’

‘Oh,’ said Soldier. He raised his voice again. ‘Is there no one . . .?’

Peals of laughter went up. ‘In this crowd? You must be joking. Any woman here is waiting for a customer.’

‘No, no, please.’ Soldier was getting desperate. ‘There must be a maidservant, out shopping for her mistress? Does anyone want me? I have this magical scabbard to offer.’ He held up the empty sword sheath for all to see.

The leather-caps and dirty-aprons around him hooted, their stinking breath hitting him in the face.

‘I’ll work hard for you. I’ll protect you ...’ more peals of laughter. ‘I’ll even love you.’

‘Oooowww, that’s temptin’,’ said a bulky woman with greasy matted hair and a warty face. ‘I ain’t bin loved since I don’t know when. An’ I’ve bin a maid since I was forty-two.’

The crowd hooted again.

Captain Kaff said, ‘You’ve had more men up your skirts than a rat’s got fleas. No serious takers? Right, that’s it, I’m not hanging around here all day, smelling cattle dung. Let’s go, Soldier.’

Soldier, now in the depths of despair, was led from the market-place, to his last destination. Spagg shouted after the captain, ‘When you cut ‘im up, for the gibbet, let me have his eyes. I’ll split the profit with you.’

The captain shook his head in disbelief. ‘You see what kind of people they are?’ he said to Soldier. ‘They’re filth. They’d sell their own children for a stew if the price was right. That man was your former employer and now all he cares about is making a small profit out of your remains.’

‘If that’s the way they are,’ replied Soldier, ‘that’s the way they’ve been made by the world they live in. Who’s responsible for that?’

‘They are what they are,’ replied the captain. ‘You can’t make ambergris from pond scum.’

As the guards were hurrying him through the cobbled streets they had to pause for a sedan chair to cross their path. The chair was carried by four naked men: slaves by the look of them, since they did not appear to be Guthrumites. Behind the gauze curtain was the silhouette of a slim woman. Suddenly there came a call from within and the carriers halted. The captain of the guard looked on, as puzzled as Soldier himself, as the gauze curtain was slowly opened by a delicate hand. Then they could see the occupant of the sedan chair. Her profile was quite beautiful. What could be seen of her radiant features, half-hidden by a white silken hood, were lovely to behold, with high cheekbones and eyes as dark as blackthorn sloes. She had black hair, which was pinned up, revealing a pale slender neck. The skin on that throat, and on her cheeks and brow, was fair and unblemished. Wafting from her direction came the fragrance of attar of roses mingled with sandalwood.

He knew that it was impossible, but Soldier could not shake the idea that he had met this woman before somewhere.

The lady, never once moving her head to turn her eyes fully on the guards and their prisoner, called softly for the captain to attend to her words. He stepped forward, went to the side of her chair, and listened to what she had to say. Soldier could hear nothing of what passed between them. Then the captain was dismissed and the curtain was dropped. The sedan chair carriers raised the lady aloft and were about to depart with her when Soldier cried out on impulse.

‘Lady! Marry me! Or I die a horrible death!’ Immediately he was punched and kicked by the guards around him, including the captain.

Amazingly, however, the chair was lowered again, the curtain was opened.

This time the lady turned her head to stare. She looked directly into his eyes and no doubt observed their unique colour. Now Soldier saw that the other side of her face, hidden from him until now, was hideously disfigured. She gave him a fleeting, distorted smile, from which no warmth could come through that rippled flesh. Again she called the captain, who went to her side, and a whispered command left Kaff looking white and shaken. Then the sedan chair was again raised and was whisked away down a side-alley. The captain stood transfixed for a moment, staring in its wake, then he returned to shake his head at Soldier.

‘I don’t know whether you’re the luckiest man alive — or the most unfortunate.’

‘She agreed?’ cried Soldier, elated. ‘She will marry me?’

‘So she says.’

‘Who is she?’

‘That, my poor friend, is Princess Layana, sister of Queen Vanda, of Guthrum. Your wedding will take place at the Palace of Wildflowers in three days’ time.’

‘A princess!’ cried Soldier.

‘An ugly princess,’ muttered the captain, wanting no one but Soldier to hear this perfidy. ‘A mad princess.’

‘What do you mean? Is this why you called me unfortunate?’

‘Indeed it is,’ said Kaff. ‘You have escaped one painful death for another. Princess Layana is violently insane. She has already brutally murdered two husbands, one with nail scissors, the other with a long darning needle. Watch out for your eyes and always keep your pants buttoned tight.’

‘But — husbands? Is she not a maid?’

‘She is still a virgin, despite the two husbands. One got dead drunk at his wedding. That same night he was attacked by his deranged bride bearing nail scissors and woke up without his manhood. He bled to death in sheets which had turned from crisp white to sodden red overnight. The second husband was warned not to enter the princess’s boudoir during her bouts of madness. Unable to contain his lust he secretly arranged a rendezvous in a rooftop garden and had his eyes winkled from his head. In his blindness he stumbled over the battlements of the palace and fell to his death.’

‘At least I live for a while longer,’ Soldier told the captain.

‘Make no mistake about it. She will destroy you, as she has others.’ Kaff paused before he said in a faraway voice, ‘It is such a great pity for her that she doesn’t see what is before her eyes.’

There was something in the captain’s tone which caught Soldier’s attention. He stared into Kaff’s stricken eyes. In there, he saw another kind of madness.

Soldier sighed. ‘You’re in love with her yourself.’

The metal glove lashed out yet one more time, splitting Soldier’s lip. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth.

Kaff said, ‘You’re not married to her yet - don’t become too insolent, stranger. You might have an accident on the way to the wedding. Wouldn’t that be tragic?’

Soldier stared into Kaff’s face and realised that now he had made a real enemy.

Chapter Six

Soldier was taken to a house near the Palace of Wildflowers and handed over to a man-servant of the princess.

‘What lovely eyes,’ said the eunuch. ‘You’ve got a summer sky in your head, haven’t you?’

Soldier’s iron collar was removed by a blacksmith brought in for the purpose then dismissed. Fortunately it was not the man who had put the collar on.

In the centre of the hollow-squared house was a beautiful courtyard, trimmed with bushes of entwined rosemary and lavender, and studded with medlar trees. Lyre-birds fluttered on the mosaic paths and strutted between sprays of pure-white lilies, pecking at the brown fruit from the medlars. Doves decorated the statues of gods and wild beasts. Soft music came from ivory horns projecting from the fresco which lined the walls. Clouds of colourful butterflies drifted from corner to corner, purely decorative, while hardworking imperial blue dragonf lies kept the surface of the water free from invading mosquitoes. Forming the centre of the courtyard was an oblong pool with fluorspar steps leading down into its pink water and a fountain which seemed to spray rose petals that somehow dissolved into pink-crystal liquid drops before falling gently onto the waters of the bath.

Guards stood and watched, smirking and nudging each other, while Soldier was stripped and bathed in the pink water by the man-servant with soft hands and pallid skin.

‘I can do that,’ said Soldier, as the man lovingly soaped his body. ‘I’d rather do it myself.’

The man-servant, who said his name was Ofao, smiled a secret smile.

‘You don’t have a choice, sir. This is my work. I have been told to bathe you, smear you with perfumed oils, powder your bottom, and make you generally presentable.’

‘You keep your damn hands off my bottom,’ growled Soldier, ‘or so help me I swear I’ll cut off your manhood.’

Another secret smile from Ofao. ‘I’m afraid that’s already been done, sir.’

Once Soldier had been bathed, given a shave and haircut, and wrapped in a light cotton gown, he was left to reflect on the change in his fortunes.

That evening the stars were out in great bunches, like sparkling grapes on vines. He sat in a soft chair on the roof of the house, staring at the Palace of Wildflowers nearby. Why had she done it? He was nothing to her. Yet he knew he had met the princess somewhere before, though he could not say where. It was another of those terrible puzzles which haunted him.

‘You’ll go blind.’

‘Wha ...’ Soldier looked wildly about him.

‘Too much thinking. It sends you blind. It’s all right, it’s only me,’ said a deep black shadow from the darkness of the rooftop. ‘I told you I’d come and get you out. I can pick locks you know, with my beak. It’s a talent.’

‘Oh.’ Soldier relaxed. ‘It’s you, raven. Well you’re a bit late. I’m no longer a prisoner.’

‘No?’ said the raven, hopping out onto the white marble parapet before Soldier’s eyes. ‘Then what are all those guards doing, in and around the

house? Are they there to read you bedtime stories?’ Soldier shifted his weight, uncomfortably. ‘Well, in three days time I’ll

be free, once I’m married.’

‘You have faith in that, do you?’

‘So, what do you suggest?’

The bird wiped its beak once or twice on the stonework of the parapet,

as if he were sharpening it.

‘Sorry, just been eating goat’s guts. Can’t get the stuff off your beak afterwards. Now, where were we? Oh, yes, suggestions. Well, I’m not here for that, am I? I’m here to be told what to do. You decide if you want to escape and I’ll help you do it. If you want to stay here and be wed to a lunatic with a face like a well-used cart track, then I’ll go along with that

too.’

‘You watch your tongue.’

‘How do you know ravens have got tongues?’

‘I might just find out in a minute.’

The bird made no reply to this.

Soldier then asked it, ‘This singing scabbard I have. Why didn’t it warn

me about the imperial guards in the market square? It warned me of the thieves down in the sewers.’

The raven was silent for a moment, then it replied, ‘You didn’t need warning. You saw the guards coming.’

‘Oh, so you think it only warns me when I have no knowledge I’m being approached.’

‘Maybe — probably — yes.’

Soldier clasped his hands together and nodded. That makes sense.’ ‘You smell nice,’ remarked the raven. Soldier looked down at himself. ‘I’ve had a bath — I’ve been bathed.’ ‘You look nice too, without that beard. You have boyish features.

Perhaps that’s what attracted Princess Layana. Your handsome face?’

‘Perhaps.’ He rose from his seat. ‘Now, I’m going to get some sleep. Are you hanging around? Or have you got somewhere to go?’

‘No, no - I’ve already eaten - I think I’ll stay here the night. Don’t you worry about me.’

‘I shan’t,’ muttered Soldier, then an idea came to him. ‘Look, I want to get in touch with that woman again — Uthellen — the one with the peculiar child. Can you go and find her for me? Scour the streets from the

sky. Make yourself useful.’

‘What do you want a woman for - you’re betrothed.’

‘This has nothing to do with anything like that. I want to help the

woman. She helped me when no one else would. My intended would understand that.’

The raven had to have the last word however.

‘It is strange though, that she agreed to marry you, isn’t it? She must have some motive.’

‘You’ve already said — my handsome features.’

‘That was to goad you into some sort of sensible thought on the subject. You don’t really believe she’s fallen in love with you at first sight, do you?’

Soldier did not answer. He agreed with the raven. It was an odd situation. Why did she wish to marry him?

The wedding itself revealed nothing more than Soldier already knew. A priest was in attendance, but that was not to marry the pair. He was there to help with the signing of documents. In fact it was quite a drab affair, which the princess did not even attend in person. Layana sent one of her maid-servants to stand for her. The raven had told Soldier he must take three objects with him: fish, fowl and flower. The first represented the oceans of the earth, the second the skies above the planet and the third the lands of the world. He offered these symbols to the bride. If she, or her representative, accepted them, the pair were married in the eyes of the gods and confirmed that by Deed of Matrimony.

On the third day Soldier was escorted to the Palace of Wildflowers. There were no trumpets, no flutes, no sweet marrying music. There were no guests. There was no bunting, no decorations, no visible sign it was a wedding.

Soldier had taken gifts along with him. The first was the home of a pretty mollusc with long thin spines running down two sides: a comb shell from some exotic sea, a decoration prised out of the brickwork of the house he was living in. To represent the sky he had a black feather plucked (with permission) from the raven’s tail. A dark-green oleander wand, with pink bloom still attached, completed the three objects, appropriate because it grew wild almost everywhere.

‘What happened to all the guests?’ he asked a guard, afterwards, when the hall was empty but for the two of them and the priest. ‘I thought the queen would be here, at her sister’s wedding.’

‘Since the bride hasn’t even bothered to come, you can’t expect her relations and friends to be there, can you?’

At that moment a messenger arrived and announced he was from Princess Layana.

‘About time,’ said Soldier, hands on hips. ‘Well, out with it, man.

When am I to see my wife?’

‘The princess states she does not want to see you,’ answered the messenger. ‘Not now, not ever. You are free to go about your business in the castle, but you must stay away from Princess Layana. It’s for your own good. Her previous husbands met with, er, fatal accidents. She would prefer you did not meet with the same kind of misfortune.’

Soldier was surprised to find a bolt of disappointment go through him. He had only seen his wife once, when she had stared at him from the confines of her sedan chair, but he now found within him an enormous attraction to her. Yes, she was unsightly, even perhaps grotesque when viewed from one side, but he had never been a man to trust appearances. It came as a shock to learn he was not even to meet his wife again, let alone make love to her as a husband should. Any fanciful thoughts he had of winning her love flew out of the window.

‘Is this true? Do I not get to see my bride?’ cried Soldier. ‘What kind of marriage is this?’

The messenger, a courtier of sorts, was stern with Soldier.

‘The queen’s sister has saved your life, stranger. What more could you ask for? Are you not grateful to the princess? Her finer feelings could not allow you to die, once you had made supplication to her. Yet here you are, whining about the number of guests and the lack of cake and ale at your feast.’

The number of guests? There were not any. Cake and ale? There had been nothing to eat or drink.

It was true. He had his life. But human nature is such that now he had it, it seemed a trivial thing. He wanted more. He wanted the wealth and position he had thought came with being the husband of a princess. He wanted the princess herself, in his bed, loving him. He wanted a home, this simple little palace, a place to put his feet under the table. Perhaps a few hunting dogs? A trained falcon? One or two servants?

Was that too much to ask?

The messenger thought it might be.

‘I would settle for your life — even that might not be yours for very much longer. The new Captain of the Imperial Guard, Kaff, does not think kindly of you, stranger. He is rising in power every day. If I were you I would sunk into obscurity and stay there until they carry you away in a box.’

Subsequent to this good advice, Soldier was given a purse containing a sum of money and was then thrown out into the street.

Soldier roamed the streets, looking for Uthellen. He was married now and intended to stay faithful to his new wife, but he could not forget Uthellen. It had seemed to him that she was afraid of someone, or something. Had she managed to get herself onto the wrong side of the law? Or perhaps she had upset one of the chancellor’s minor officials in some way? Whatever it was, it caused her to scuttle away from him if she saw him first, because he came across her again in one of the three long narrow streets that ran parallel to each other the length of the city, some five miles of ground. She immediately clutched her deformed child to her side and ducked into a sidestreet. When he ran to this point, she was gone.

‘If she doesn’t want to see me, then I have to respect that,’ Soldier told the raven. ‘Unless it’s because she thinks I mean her harm, which I don’t, of course.’

‘Who knows the mind of a woman?’ replied the raven, preening his feathers. ‘They’re such vain creatures.’

When evening came Soldier decided to go to an inn for the night. There was no reason why he should not spend some of his wife’s wedding present. He found a large inn with a room and a comfortable bed, then spent the evening eating roast chicken and getting drunk on ale. Since he had money he was willing to spend he gathered about him several tradesmen. There was a cobbler at his elbow, and a wheelwright, and a butcher, and one or two other aspiring gentlefolk from the market fringe. Halfway through the evening he was far gone enough to share his personal and domestic problems with the whole tavern.

‘Who does she think she is?’ he cried, drunkenly. ‘Just because she’s a princess doesn’t make her someone special.’

‘Er, excuse me, but I think it does,’ said the cobbler.

‘Who asked you?’ snarled Soldier. ‘You’ll get no more ale from me. Not you, or your friends. What’s more, I could knock your block off with one punch.’

The cobbler thought differently, but to make sure he enlisted the services of his friends the wheelwright and the butcher, and between them they threw Soldier out of the inn. He landed, sprawling, on the hard cobbles of the alley. The cool night air sobered him somewhat. Picking himself up, he staggered down the alley towards one of the three main streets. He was too befuddled to notice that someone else had slipped out of the inn behind him and was stalking him silently along the alley.

‘My father placed a wager, upon a young grey mare . . . ‘ sang Soldier, weaving back and forth across the alley and using the walls as resting points on his journey.

The sound of his voice cloaked the stealthy steps of the man who rapidly came up behind him. Something held in the hand of the stalker flashed in the moonlight: a short blade of sorts. At that moment a voice sang out, clear and sweet, into the night airs of the city street.

Soldier stopped his own song in mid-line.

‘Wha . . .’

Soldier’s brain was not sodden enough to forget the tone of that voice, even if he did not understand the words. The scabbard! A warning! He swung round just as the would-be assassin lunged at his back with the curved dagger. Soldier swung an arm across, parrying the blow. His clouded brain cleared instantly. Next he lashed out with his foot, catching the attacker on the shin. The man howled in pain and this time used the dagger to slash with, slicing through the fabric of Soldier’s jerkin, the one put on his back by Ofao.

‘You bastard,’ cried Soldier. ‘I’ll get you for that!’

Before the other man could settle himself for a murderous blow, Soldier struck him hard on the chin with his fist. The assassin fell backwards onto the stone alleyway, his dagger flying out of his fist and skittering over the flints. Soldier then brought a boot down on the offending wrist and heard a satisfying crack. His attacker yelled and rolled out of the way of any further kicks. Soon he was on his feet and running, down the alley back towards the inn, with Soldier swaying on his feet, watching him through narrowed eyes.

‘I have enemies,’ muttered Soldier, picking up the curved-blade dagger and thrusting it into his belt. ‘Someone wants me dead.’

‘Kaff, no doubt,’ said a voice at his shoulder.

The raven.

‘Why aren’t you around when I need you?’ grumbled Soldier. ‘You could have warned me a lot earlier than this bent and battered piece of leather-and-metal hanging from my belt.’

‘I’ve only just got here.’

The drunkenness returning, Soldier staggered to a wall and leaned against it.

‘Why does this scabbard sing in a language I don’t understand? What’s the use of that? If I hadn’t swung round by instinct, I’d be dead by now.’

‘It sings in the tongues of wizards,’ replied the bird.

‘The boy said that. But why?’

The raven shook its head. ‘Ever thought that it might be because it belonged to a wizard? I don’t know where you got it, but if the owner ever catches up with you, you’ll be joining me in the animal kingdom. I hope he turns you into a nice fat worm, so that we can be together always — me on the outside, you on the inside.’

Soldier shook his head to try to clear it. ‘Why are you with me?’ he asked. ‘I wonder about it.’

‘You saved me from a snake,’ replied the raven. A serpent was about to swallow me whole when you beat it to death with a stick. You saved my life. I owe it to you.’

‘I don’t remember that.’

‘On the hillside, where you thought the battle was.’

Soldier said, ‘I must have been asleep.’

‘It was while you were waking up.’

‘I still don’t remember.’

The raven snorted. ‘You don’t remember much at all, do you?’

Soldier let this pass. ‘Did you find the woman and the boy?’ he asked.

‘That’s why I came to get you. They’re on their way out of the city.

The woman is afraid of something.’

Soldier blinked and looked around him at the shadows cast by the moonlight. ‘So am I. Someone tried to kill me here.

You say Kaff was probably behind it? I think you’re right, raven. In which case I had better get out of Zamerkand too, before I’m murdered in my sleep.’

‘Your drunken sleep.’

‘Never mind the wise talk, let’s find Uthellen.’

The raven flew ahead, stopping every so often for Soldier to catch up to him. They wound their way through the city streets, avoiding watchmen. Finally they came to the north gate. Ahead of him, Soldier could see the woman and the child, hurrying along as if they were being pursued.

Soldier caught up with them. ‘Wait - I’m coming with you,’ he said.

Uthellen turned in alarm. She looked up into his face.

‘Why do you want to do that? Leave us alone. You’re causing us trouble.’

‘I don’t mean to. I have to get out of the city. People are trying to kill me. I want to find somewhere to rest for a while, in peace and quiet.’

She clutched the witchboy to her breast. ‘You’re spying on me. You’re a wizard, or a wizard’s agent. Go away. Leave us alone. We won’t harm you.’

He took one of her hands in his own. ‘I swear to you,’ he said, ‘I’m no wizard, nor wizard’s spy. I’m a simple soldier, who woke on the hillside and found himself with no memory. It’s true I have this scabbard, which appears to be magical, but I don’t know where I got it or from whom.’

‘You talk with that jackdaw, I’ve seen you.’

‘Please,’ replied the bird, ‘raven. My mother wouldn’t have a jackdaw in the house. They steal things.’

‘Mother,’ said the awkward child, detaching himself from her clutches, ‘I think we should take Soldier with us. I trust him. Let him come with us.’

She looked worried. But clearly her son’s words had a profound affect on her. Staring into Soldier’s eyes, she said, ‘They worry me.’

‘They’re just eyes,’ said Soldier. ‘Nothing more. I come from a different race to Guthrumites, that’s all.’

‘Different as well from the Carthagans and every other people I know.’

Soldier shrugged. ‘Perhaps I’m from across the sea? I seem to know there are people with dark skins over there. There are images in my mind which are just there, like pictures hanging on a wall. I know there are a tall stately people with long black hair and dusky bodies.’

‘But not blue eyes.’

‘No, but perhaps they are from another place?’

Again the boy interrupted. ‘Mother, we must leave, but we should take Soldier with us.’

She sighed. ‘All right, we travel together.’

‘And trust each other?’ said Soldier.

‘I have no choice,’ she replied.

‘Now that’s settled,’ said the raven, laconically. ‘Let’s get on.’

They were stopped at the gate, but it was pure boredom on the part of the guards. They were in the middle of their night duty and the world was peaceful. They questioned the three, assuming they were a family, and asked them why they were leaving the city at three in the morning. Soldier said they were going out to gather mushrooms, to sell in the market.

‘We have to be out early, to gather them before the sun comes up and blemishes their caps.’

‘On you go then,’ muttered one of the guards, ‘bring us back a couple for our breakfast. I like fried mushrooms. No funny ones mind. Just your plain wood or field mushroom, with a nice velvety-brown underside. Nothing with red spots or white gills. A friend of mine was dead in half an hour, just from licking his fingers after pickin’ the wrong kind.’

The other guard said, ‘They say a death cap can kill you just by seeping into your pores. You don’t even have to put it into your mouth.’

The first guard shuddered. ‘On second thoughts, I’ll stick to eggs and bacon. You don’t find destroying chickens or death pigs, do you?’

Uthellen, Soldier and the boy slipped out into the night. They made their way towards the distant forest. It was dangerous anywhere outside the city, but at least in the forest there was plenty of cover, lots of places to hide from potential enemies. There were wild boars and wolves in the forest, but though any boar might charge them if cornered, wolves tended to avoid contact with humans. Soldier knew there were lots of myths about wolves attacking humans, but there was very little truth in them. In his experience, locked somewhere in the recesses of his mirid, wolves were only really dangerous if they sensed their human prey was sick or feeble in some way, and they — the wolves — were starving to the point of madness. Wolves were not stupid. Better to run down a wild boar than tackle a human being.

They reached the forest without incident. It was getting light as they entered the pale of the trees. They had to battle their way through huge webs built by giant spiders, which blocked every path. There were stagnant pools and rotten trees everywhere, and carcasses of dead animals and birds. Carrion creatures infested the area, feeding from the corrupt flesh of their own kind.

‘Better stick to the edge,’ said Soldier. ‘We don’t want to get lost straight away.’

‘It’s all right.’ said the witchboy, leading them into the thick undergrowth. ‘I know every part of the forest.’

‘You’ve been here before?’

‘We’ve not been out of the city before, have we Mother?’

Uthellen didn’t answer, but Soldier took her silence to mean yes.

‘Then how do you know your way?’ he asked the boy, beginning to get worried as they went deeper into the gloom of the trees.

‘It’s all in here,’ replied the boy, enigmatically, tapping his head. ‘Trust me, just as I trust you.’

They found a mossy bank by a little brook with a waterfall that gushed from a rocky outcrop. There were plants and wildflowers growing in amongst the lichen of the outcrop’s cracks. Great trees shouldered each other around the small glade, letting in narrow sheets of light. Here there was a pretty pink campion flower, there some mauve herb robert. Frogs and newts swam in the small pool at the bottom of the tumbling waterfall. A grass snake slithered away, under a stone, one of the shy creatures of the forest. Butterflies and dragon-flies decorated the air above the sparkling waters.

‘This is a beautiful place,’ marvelled Soldier. ‘How is it that the rest of the forest is in a state of decay, while here it’s clean and fresh?’

‘There are small pockets which escape corruption,’ said Uthellen. ‘We’re lucky my son knows of them.’

Soldier then set about making a shelter for them. He still had the assassin’s dagger in his belt and he used this to cut some staves to form the frame for a bivouac. He covered the frame with moss and leaves, making a small apartment for himself and a bigger one for the other two.

When the watery-pale sun arrived, they were ready for it.

There just remained the problem of food. Soldier went out, following the brook away from the scent of their camp, to set snares for wild creatures. He made a fishing line from some twine unravelled from Uthellen’s belt and a hook from one of her metal hairgrips. With this makeshift angling tool he left the boy happily fishing in the brook ahead of the falls, while he set his springy willow traps at the watering places of wild animals. By the time evening came he had caught a hare, while Uthellen’s boy had managed to hook a rainbow trout.

‘We can eat like royalty,’ he said to Uthellen.

The boy looked up from his task of cleaning the trout. ‘You are royalty,’ he said.

Soldier thought about this. ‘I suppose I am,’ he said at length. ‘I’m the husband of the queen’s sister. But she doesn’t acknowledge me. She’s not interested in me as a man. She merely took pity on me as a human being. Princess Layana married me to stop me from being tortured by the Lord of Thieftakers.’

‘You don’t know that,’ said the boy. ‘Maybe she’s protecting you against her madness, by not letting you into her house. Perhaps she secretly cares for you.’

Soldier studied the boy carefully in the light of the camp-fire. His stick-thin limbs appeared quite dark in the dancing shadows thrown by the flames. They protruded from a scrawny body which would have any observer thinking the child was consumptive. His face was gaunt and elf-like, with narrow inquisitive eyes and a long thin nose. The hair on his head stood as erect as the bristles on a brush. He was clearly a peculiar looking individual. But with his last remark he had revealed that his insight was very incisive for someone of his age.

‘Just how old are you, boy?’ asked Soldier.

‘Eight,’ replied the child proudly, as children do when they think they have reached a superior level and expect to be praised for their wisdom, ‘and a half.’

‘Well, that’s quite a speech for an eight-year-old, but of course you’re quite wrong. The princess has only seen me once. People don’t fall in love at a single glance.’

The boy stared at Soldier. ‘You did.’

This observation really made Soldier sit up. He said to Uthellen, ‘This boy is remarkable.’ To Soldier’s surprise she looked frightened at these words. She moved closer to her child as if to protect him from Soldier. Perhaps it was Soldier’s imagination, but even the dark trees circling their camp seemed to shuffle forward as if to come to her assistance, should she cry out for it.

‘No - no — most children of his age say things like that. They don’t know what they’re talking about really.’

The boy whom Soldier had, in his own mind, labelled the ‘witchboy’ looked up into his mother’s face.

‘You can trust him, Mother. Don’t worry. Soldier has come from another place. He won’t hurt us.’

‘Of course I won’t hurt you,’ said Soldier. ‘Do you think I would cause you harm, Uthellen?’

Uthellen continued to look scared and hugged her child to her breast.

‘Tell him our secret, mother. He needs to know. If we are to share our exile with him, then he must be told.’

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘He could be a spy. Who knows what form ...’ here she stopped abruptly and shuddered.

‘What form?’ Soldier was bewildered by all this cryptic talk. ‘You’ve lost me, I’m afraid — both of you.’

The boy then began whispering with urgent tones in his mother’s ear. For a while Uthellen continued to shake her head, but finally she broke down and sobbed. Soldier let her cry for a while, then assured her again he meant no harm to her.

‘If you think I’m some kind of demon in disguise, well, there’s no way of proving that I’m not.’

‘Tell him, Mother.’

This was by way of a command from the boy, rather than a request.

‘All right,’ said Uthellen, quietly. ‘But Soldier, you must swear an oath never to reveal what I’m about to reveal to you. It would put my child and myself in great danger.’

Soldier was a little ruffled by these words.

‘I’m not sure I even want to know, if that’s the case. I’ve got enough burdens to carry with my own troubles. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know where I come from. I don’t know why I’m here. I’m a stranger in a hostile land. It may be the result of some accident, but I feel I have some purpose here, but what it is or how I find out seems to be an insurmountable task. If you’re going to add to the load I have to carry, I’d as soon as not know your secret.’

‘Perhaps,’ said the boy, mysteriously, ‘you have come to Guthrum — to our world — to seek some kind of redemption? If this is so, you must seek it with all your might and soul, for it won’t come looking for you. You must grasp all that is offered, in the hope of finding some kernel of understanding within.’

‘This boy is exceptional,’ cried Soldier. ‘What is he, some kind of priest?’

Uthellen drew a deep breath and the shadows moved in even closer.

‘He is the son of a very powerful wizard,’ she replied.

‘A wizard?’ Soldier stared at the boy. ‘Then why does he look so sickly?’

The child gave him a cold and emotionless smile which chilled Soldier to the bone. In that smile he saw the strangeness of the creature before him. This was no mortal, with a mortal’s feelings and thoughts. This was a being of another make-up, a creature incomprehensible to human view. The boy might as well have been an intelligent wolf, or a knowing serpent, for all that Soldier knew about what was in his heart and mind. This boy was of a different race to that of men and women.

‘Wizards are not strong in their youth,’ replied the boy. ‘They’re weak and puny, the prey of men. That’s why there’s so few of us. We die of disease, we are killed out of fear. In the beginning we have to develop our minds at the expense of our bodies. We do not have a natural ability to employ magic, that comes with patient learning — just as the knowledge of such subjects as science, philosophy and mathematics comes to men and women. You would not expect your own son to be born with vast learning. You would send him to a teacher who would tutor him.’ The child paused for a moment, then added, ‘Later the flesh will cover my bones, but for now I must starve my body of the energy my mind needs to develop its powers. I must use all the potency I can produce in sharpening my thoughts and intellect. When I am worthy of a name I shall be given one — a wizard’s name — until then I shall live — or die — in anonymity.’

‘Whose child is he?’ asked Soldier, anxious to keep the boy in the third person. ‘Are you really his mother?’

Uthellen explained to him the nature of the world at that time.

‘You have come to us from the outside,’ she said, ‘and you’re not familiar with what is happening to Guthrum and the world at large. You have seen the weak, pale sun. You have seen the hanged men, the stagnant lakes, the lethargy and corruption which festers within the walls of the city. For some time now we have been on the brink of war with our neighbours. There are horrible murders committed without compunction.’

‘Why is this?’

Uthellen sighed. ‘To explain that, I must tell you how things are here. Guthrum is a country surrounded by mountain ranges, beyond which are forces of great evil. The greatest of these ranges is the one to the east, where on seven of the tallest peaks sit our gods, one on each.’

‘These gods,’ said Soldier, ‘they keep the evil at bay?’

‘Not so much the gods, who are simply there because they are part of the unnatural world around us. This wickedness is held back by the vigilance of a fraternity of magi. The King Magus provides spiritual and moral guidance to this fraternity. He is responsible for a balance of good and evil in the world.’

Soldier was sceptical. ‘The King Magus, I take it, has supernatural powers?’

‘Of course,’ said Uthellen. ‘He resides in the western mountains. The King Magus at present is a wizard called HoulluoH, who has been ill for the last fifty years. He’s dying of old age — it’s rumoured he has seen seven hundred years of our history - but wizards live long and in consequence take a long time to die. HoulluoH’s strength has all but gone, and the nameless evil from beyond the mountains is seeping through and poisoning the minds of the people of Guthrum.’

‘This sounds like a good excuse for lawlessness and chaos to me,’ said Soldier. ‘I don’t believe in the presence of “nameless evil” - only in the evil that mankind fosters.’

The boy interrupted their conversation now, with his own views. ‘Perhaps, Soldier, you come from a place where pure evil does not exist, where it is only generated in the hearts and minds of mortals greedy for wealth and power. Here there are forces which are difficult to control. Yes, there are men, and wizards, and all manner of creatures who perpetrate their own kind of evil, but there is also the distilled essence of evil which comes from living in a world where nature and supernature live so close to one another that they often merge. Magic and the ordinary meld into an indivisible one. There are blurred lines here, boundaries which are crossed by beings from both sides. Here, Soldier, you will find the unexpected.’

‘So,’ said Soldier, still unconvinced by this explanation, ‘the depravity I saw within the walls of Zamerkand and the decay of the natural world at large, all this is due to one sick and dying wizard?’

‘Not just to that,’ replied the boy. ‘Some of it is due in part to my wicked progenitor, who was banished by Queen Vanda’s father, the old king of Guthrum, at the request of the King Magus, my uncle HoulluoH. The old king’s family has, for his pains, been rewarded with spasmodic purple madness, which visits at odd times. No one knows where OmrnullummO is now, but wherever it is his mind reaches out and corrupts all it touches. OmmullummO, my father, never got over the fact that his older brother HoulluoH was instated as King Magus. Jealousy gnawed at the mind of OmmullummO until he finally turned rogue wizard, opposed to a world in balance. My father no longer believes in symmetry, only in pure evil. He wished the world to be flooded with corruption, and must still wish it, since once a wizard has turned rogue he is lost to iniquity forever.’

‘Where is your father now?’

‘No one knows — perhaps a long way away.’

‘Yet his magic still reaches us?’

‘Those who take the wrong path find power at the end in great abundance, for there are few who have used it.’

Chapter Seven

Soldier woke in the middle of the night covered in small creatures which had their teeth buried in his arteries. He leapt up, yelling, and tried to fend off the invaders. They were not so easily dislodged from their task. Soldier shouted for assistance. Uthellen and the boy woke at his second cry. In the glow from the embers of the camp-fire they saw his plight. The boy took a stick and began beating the parasites, small beings about two and a half inches in length, of human appearance. They clung on with their teeth and when one was severed by Soldier’s blade, its head remained with its jaws gripping Soldier’s flesh, while its wriggling torso fell to the forest floor. Soldier had to squeeze the head to open its jaws, so that he could remove it.

On inspection, Soldier found his skin covered in bite marks.

‘What are they?’ he cried.

‘Drots,’ replied Uthellen, still striking the furious little figures. ‘Bloodsucking fairies.’

The fairies began to suffer severe loss of numbers under the onslaught of Uthellen’s and the boy’s blows. Eventually the small creatures began to fall away, flying into the darkness with their wings humming loudly. Soldier could tell the vicious little beings were angry by the sound they made. One of them, having been stunned by the boy’s stick, was disorientated and whacked into a tree at great speed. It gave out a terrible shriek, before dropping at Soldier’s feet and buzzing there, thrashing with its arms and legs, until it finally died and lay still. Soldier, now free of the creatures, picked it up and studied it in the light from the glowing charcoal.

‘It’s like a tiny human,’ he marvelled. He pressed the jaws again, revealing the serrated teeth inside the fairy’s mouth, two of them longer than the others. ‘Except for these.’ Then he saw a bloated one, wriggling on the edge of the fire. It was mortally wounded and in great pain. He trod on it swiftly to put it out of its suffering. The drot burst, showering the embers with Soldier’s blood, making the flames sizzle.

Soldier’s head suddenly began to swim and he felt a little weak and woozy.

‘I don’t feel so good,’ he said, his manhood suffering from the confession. ‘I’ve come over a bit faint.’

‘Loss of blood,’ said Uthellen. ‘You’d better lie down while I warm up some hare soup for you. You’ll be all right with some rest. In the meantime, my son will gather up some blackthorn branches and make a protective barrier to keep out such creatures as these.’

Soldier sank gratefully to the ground.

‘Why haven’t I met these drots before?’ he asked, his voice a little shaky.

‘You only find them in forests,’ Uthellen replied. ‘They infest these particular woods in great numbers. Mostly they feed on the blood of cattle, but they like the blood of mortals a lot. They say it’s rich in goodness, because of the variety of foodstuffs eaten by human beings.’

‘Why didn’t they bite you too?’ asked Soldier, a little resentful of being picked out as a sole victim.

‘They wouldn’t suck the blood of a wizard’s son - it would kill them. And I think I was sleeping too close to the fire for their comfort. I kept waking up very hot and intending to move, but was too sleepy to do it.’

Soldier said, ‘You could have warned me.’

‘We forgot. It’s been a long day. It just never crossed my mind that we would be attacked by drots.’

‘Is there anything else you’d like to warn me about?’

The boy, now dragging thorn branches and placing them in a circle around the camp, said, ‘There’s a giant boar somewhere in these woods, but we can’t worry about him.’

‘Why can’t we?’

‘Because we don’t know where he is. If he attacks, we’ll just have to do what we can to protect ourselves. He preys on travellers in this forest. The boar kills them, leaves them to rot for a few days like jugged hare, then returns when the flesh is soft and putrid to eat his fill, as a scavenger feeds on a decomposing carcass. He has a name too.’

Even though Soldier had been amongst the Guthrumites and Carthagans for only a short while he knew instinctively that if the boar had a name it was more than just an ordinary beast. Just as a sword with a name is a unique weapon, so a wild animal with a name is also exceptional. This boar had to be the bastard son of a god, or a creation of the gods. Such a creature might terrorise a whole town or city for many years, until someone came along and killed themselves into the annals of history by slaughtering the beast and becoming a hero.

‘What’s the name of this boar?’

‘He is called Garnash. They say he weighs a black ton and his tusks are like sabres.’

‘So, we have a giant boar for company.’

At that moment there was a howl from the distant forested hills above their camp.

‘And wolves, of course,’ added Uthellen. ‘There’s the wolves.’

‘Of course there are,’ grumbled Soldier, sarcastically. ‘And the odd rogue Hannack roaming the countryside, looking for a bearded mandible to hack off and use as a wig.’

‘Oh no,’ Uthellen assured him, ‘a Hannack would never come in here

— his horse wouldn’t like the thorn bushes.’

‘Well that’s something, I suppose. Now, can we get some sleep? I’m feeling fatigued by all this.’

Soldier lay there, trying to get back to sleep again, but there seemed to be all manner of things out in the darkness, pressing to reach his vulnerable form. In the distant hills the wolves raised their heads to the moon and let their throats sing. He listened to their night noise. After a while Soldier began to recognise a repeated sound. It was as if they were calling out a single word, though the meaning was lost in the hollow of the howl. Howls are smooth, flowing sounds, mellow in the utterance, and from a great distance they are difficult to interpret. Soldier had the feeling the wolves were calling a name — his real name — but maddeningly he could not quite hear the syllables.

‘They know who I am,’ he said, mournfully to himself, ‘but I can’t make out what they’re saying.’

‘I can’t understand what word it is they’re howling either, or I would tell you.’

‘Uthellen?’ said Soldier. ‘Are you still awake?’

She came to him then and snuggled down beside him. He could smell her hair, which had been washed with some kind of forest herb, letting out a fragrance which tested sorely his resolve to remain celibate for his wife. Still, he turned his back on her.

An owl hooted derisively.

‘Do you find me repulsive?’ said Uthellen. Am I simply a woman from the sewers?’

He sat up now, the same owl hooting its scorn. ‘I find you extremely attractive. That’s why I have to turn away. Uthellen, you know I am married . . .’

She said in a disappointed tone, ‘But your wife does not love you. She has sent you away. And your marriage is not yet consummated.’

‘Still, I cannot. I know it’s stupid. Most men would give their right hands to sleep with a woman such as you. A week ago I would have been one of them. But there’s been a union of two people and I am one of them. It’s part of who I am. I can’t put that aside and forget it ever happened. Also I have to be in love with a woman in order to make love with her, otherwise the act means nothing to me. I’m sorry.’

She pulled him down beside her and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tightly.

‘And you are not in love with me?’ asked Uthellen, refusing to let him go. ‘You hate me?’

‘I don’t hate you, I’m very fond of you — I shall be like a brother to you — but not a lover.’

The owl hooted so much Soldier thought it must fall off its branch. Soldier gritted his teeth. He really was very fond of Uthellen and could have loved her easily, if another had not come along. But that other person had come along and now there was an iron door between Soldier and other women.

He got up, thoroughly miserable, and went and sat on a great root beneath a tree. In the moonlight, forest fairies, smaller than the drots, came to him. They covered him in swarms: transparent wings humming, tiny eyes glowing, hot little fingers pinching him with sharp nails. When he did not respond to their pinches they bit him lightly all over his skin, inflaming his lust. The faster Soldier brushed them off, the more they swarmed over him. He gave up. With his passion swimming Soldier went back to bed and tried to get some sleep. All that came to him were images of himself and Uthellen, rolling on the mossy ground amongst the roots of an old grandfather hornbeam, making love in high and furious fashion.

When morning came Soldier had found little sleep, but he had not broken his vow of renunciation. He had remained true to his lady and tired though he was this was a source of comfort to him.

Uthellen rose before the boy was awake. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I should not have tempted you in the night hours. Please forgive me. Something — something got into me. I think it might have been a residue of the boy’s father. From time to time I am driven to wickedness by those traces of him which remain in me.’

‘There is nothing essentially wicked in wanting to make love to someone,’ replied Soldier. ‘But I am greatly interested in the father of the boy. OmmullummO is still abroad somewhere in Guthrum?’

Uthellen nodded. ‘Or one of its bordering countries.’

‘Then how did — how did you become pregnant by him?’ asked Soldier. ‘Did you meet him before he was banished?’

‘No. He was able to project his lust into a youth, who then seduced me. Wizards can obtain vicarious gratification from making love to women through a surrogate male. After we had finished our passionate meeting the poor youth collapsed and withered away. He became like a puffball sucked dry of any moisture: a husk with simply nothing but dust inside.’

‘And through this one mating, you became pregnant with the boy?’

‘Wizards are potent creatures. You must remember to keep my secret, however. His father wishes him dead. Most children of such unhallowed unions are killed by their wizard fathers before they reach the age of seven. They’re a threat to their elders, being young and pure of spirit. Their minds are not yet corrupted by ambition and the craving for power, or by any other worldly desire.’

‘But one or two reach adulthood?’ Soldier said.

‘Of course, that’s how supernature plans these things, otherwise there would be no new wizards. Just as in the natural world two or three newly-hatched turtles out of fifty manage to reach the sea, after running the gauntlet of gulls and other birds, so one or two wizards’ offspring make it past the year of seven. Again, like the turtles, of that generation of three perhaps a single one will survive being eaten by the monsters of the ocean

— the sharks and other predators - to reach adulthood.’

Soldier marvelled at these things. ‘So, you have managed to keep your son alive, despite being hunted by - by what exactly?’

‘By the agents of his father: rats, spiders, beetles and other small creatures that infest dark places.’

At this moment the boy himself woke up. He rose and began collecting wood and leaves. These he put on the fire. Soon there was a blaze going from the embers. It warmed the sheltered and shaded glade. The boy then cut a gourd from a nearby climbing plant and hollowed it out with the Soldier’s knife. This he filled with water from the pool, then, nestling it in some hot stones which kept the gourd from the actual flames of the fire, he managed to heat some water to a tepid temperature.

‘He’s a good lad,’ said Soldier. ‘Look at the way he did those chores, without being asked.’

‘He’s my son,’ said Uthellen, proudly.

Soldier noticed marks on the boy’s ankles. They were like inflamed handprints. He asked Uthellen what they were.

‘They’re the handprints of the witch who acted as midwife during his birth. I have burn marks from her hands too, around my thighs and on my stomach. And before you ask, I went to a witch rather than an ordinary midwife because I knew I was giving birth to a wizard’s son. The birth of such a child is very difficult. They are always in an awkward position in the womb, a kind of defensive crouch, ready to ward off any attack. The witch had to break his bones to get him out of the womb, that’s why his

arms and legs look a bit peculiar. Once he is fully grown, he can straighten them with magic.’

‘Broke his bones?’ cried Soldier, appalled at the thought.

‘It happens in ordinary births, too, where the baby is trying to come out sideways.’

‘I never knew. How did you know you were giving birth to a boy? It could have been a girl.’

‘Wizards don’t have daughters, only sons.’

Later, while Soldier was making himself a bow and arrows, he asked the boy, ‘Have you ever been attacked by rats or spiders?’

‘Rats, yes. Once by a snake — a blind cave racer.’

‘What did they do?’

‘They tried to tear open my throat, so that I would choke or bleed to death.’

Soldier raised his eyebrows. ‘Yet you escaped injury.’

‘I killed them all,’ said the boy, his dark eyes flashing with menace. ‘When I was a baby, still in my cradle, I strangled one rat and bit the head off another.’

‘I can believe it,’ replied Soldier, a chill going through him as he studied the youngster. ‘Look, I’m going hunting. I’ll be gone an hour, then I want you to call me. Can you do that? I don’t think I’ll get lost, but just in case I would like to be guided to the camp by the sound of your voice.’

‘All right,’ said the boy, once again a compliant child, ready to the bidding of an adult. ‘I’ll shriek like a magpie.’

Soldier was dubious about this. ‘What if there are real magpies shrieking their heads off? I might be confused and try to go in all directions.’

‘Magpies don’t come into this wood. Not this deep. No birds, except perhaps owls, come in here.’

‘If you say so.’

Soldier left, carrying his bow and a spear he had made with a sharp flintstone and a staff. By noting which side of the tree moss grew on, he managed to keep in one direction, moving stealthily through the undergrowth. Once or twice he attempted to kill some small creatures — a polecat, a tree marten — but missed each time. The animals of the forest might fall for his clever snares made of supple saplings, but they were too quick for his hunting skills. He was not very adept with the bow, especially since his arrows had no flights. In the end he decided to return to camp empty-handed. Soldier waited for the boy’s cries to guide him into the camp.

A call came from the boy, somewhat earlier than expected. A shriek from a distant place. Soldier realised he must have wandered further than he thought from the camp, for the sound was very faint. He tried calling back, but the boy had chosen his tone well. Soldier’s deep, low voice was lost in the ferny brakes after a few yards. It needed a high penetrating shriek to carry through the woods. Soldier gave up trying to tell the boy he had heard him and travelled as quickly as he could in the direction of the sounds.

As he was passing through one glade where the sunlight shafted through and picked out small red flowers like drops of blood amongst the star moss, Soldier got the distinct feeling he was being stalked. He turned quickly, looking in all directions, but was faced only with the wooden pillars of the forest, the canopy above and the undergrowth beneath. Soldier listened intently, trying to pick up any sounds of breaking twigs or the drumming of hooves on hardened earth.

Nothing.

No sound, no scent, no sight of any follower.

Yet he knew he was being hunted. He had set out from camp to hunt, but now he was the prey. What would go after a man in the daylight? Not the wolves. They might attack a lone disabled or sick traveller at night, but not a healthy man in the light hours. A bear? Unlikely. Bears tended to avoid humans. The only thing Soldier could think of was that he was being tracked by Garnash, the wild boar. There was nothing else, man excluded, which might set out after a human hunter.

He looked down at his weapons. If the boar was after him he was in deep trouble. All he had was the bow and a makeshift spear.

‘But if I killed this Garnash,’ he told himself, ‘I would not need to worry about Kaff or people like him. I would be a slayer of magical beasts. Behold, they would say, the marvellous hunter, slayer of Garnash!’

He cut a vine and spliced the ends, then made a noose from it. The other end he tied to a thick bough some thirty feet off the ground. When Garnash felt something round his leg, or his neck, he would instinctively run headlong to free himself from it: that was the nature of beasts. In doing so he would simply tighten the noose of the thick vine and entrap himself. Soldier intended to remain up the tree until Garnash had exhausted himself by running around, perhaps getting entangled in other trees. Then he would simply climb down and stab the great creature in the heart with his spear, finishing the job with the dagger he had in his waistband. There was no danger involved, should things go wrong, for Soldier would be high up in the branches of a great tree.

All the while these plans and preparations were taking place there were the calls from camp, but he had to kill Garnash before he returned to the boy and Uthellen. Wouldn’t they be surprised? Soldier wondered whether the knife he had would be big enough to cut off the head of the boar, so that he would have proof of his kill? It was something he could worry about later.

Soldier climbed the tree and sat in the fork, his hand on the vine. Down below he could see the patch of leaves which hid the noose under them.

He waited.

And waited.

Dusk began to fall.

Eventually he heard a sniffing and snorting sound, not too loud, coming from the undergrowth. Certainly there was some kind of wild pig, a hog of some sort down there, but whether it was Garnash or not there was no way of telling. Then some leaves of bushes parted and a great creature entered the gloaming of the clearing, slipping along like a huge dark shadow.

It was a monstrous black boar. Soldier’s heart missed a beat on first seeing this beast. Indeed it was a giant, with a great bristled belly which hung in the dust. Its head was as large as a curled-up man and the back of its neck, and its shoulders, were ridged with rolls of skin. Soldier could see thick wedges of dead flies which had been trapped in these creases in the animal’s flesh and pulped there. Its snout was flat against its face with two caverns which were its nostrils. A black ruff of coarse hair fringed its lower jaw like a man’s beard, and two massive yellow tusks curled out and away on either side of the creature. Set above the crumpled snout were two glaring, intelligent but utterly merciless eyes. This was a vicious creature which would have no compunction in charging down anything on the earth and goring it with those tusks.

It lumbered forward, sniffing the air, and then to Soldier’s absolute horror, it stood up on two legs.

Soldier gagged with fear at that point, seeing this monster with its pizzle erect, its pinky-dark underside revealed, staring around the glade as it stood some twelve feet tall. It scoured the undergrowth around it with those cold, callous eyes, looking for signs of its prey. Soldier was frozen to the fork of the tree wondering what on earth had possessed him to take on this formidable enemy.

One step, two steps, three steps. Awkwardly the beast went forward, still turning that great dome of a head this way and that, sniffing and staring. Drool dripped, splattering, from its jaws as it opened its mouth to reveal a thick row of blackened teeth strung between its long tusks.

It sniffed hard again.

Then it looked upwards, at the tree fork where Soldier crouched, and after a few seconds the jaws went lopsided into a position which might have been described as a grin had it not been on the face of a beast. Garnash had spotted his quarry, hiding from him in the tree above, and did not seem too disconcerted.

Down went the huge brute on all fours now. It raced to the other side of the clearing. Then it charged, head down, to butt the trunk of the tree. There was the terrific thump of an inch-thick skull with a ton of weight behind it smacking the bole of a tree. The earth shuddered and a quiver went through the world. Soldier clung on for dear life. The tree was a great oak, very solid, very mature, yet it shook like a sapling on its roots as if it had been struck by a mobile mountain.

Rotten branches fell, acorns showered the glade, the roots squealed and creaked. How Soldier managed to hang on to the trunk and remain aloft was a miracle. He was as vulnerable as a bird’s nest balanced in the fork of a twig.

At that moment Soldier saw that the creature had one hind leg in the patch of leaves which hid the noose. He jerked quickly on the vine. The loop tightened around the haunch of the great brute. It let out a terrible scream of anger, and charged away into the brush.

For a moment or two Soldier thought his plan had worked. This feeling fled the instant the vine reach its end and was taut around the boar’s leg. Garnash kept going. The tree did not hold him. It began to lean. Roots started to tear from the soil on the far side. Gradually the grunting boar tore the huge tree loose from its anchor. Soldier clung on desperately. When the oak was at forty-five degrees, he fell. He dropped stone-like onto the hard backbone of Gamash. Reaching to steady his fall he clutched at a bunch of bristles like long needles on the boar’s back. They were wrenched from their roots. Garnash let out a terrible scream which seemed to explode in Soldier’s head.

Soldier then began running, terrified out of his wits.

Garnash saw him and started out after him. The tree acted as a hold on the leash. The giant boar, still screaming its anger, continued to heave. Finally, just as the oak came crashing down all the way now to the forest floor, the vine snapped. Garnash lumbered after his prey. But Soldier had a head start on the boar. His feet flew, spurred by terror. He went through brake, leaping over streams, around between tree trunks. He ran until he saw the glow of a camp-fire in the darkening green and finally, gasping for breath he stumbled into the camp.

‘Quickly,’ he gasped, ‘get up a tree — Garnash is after me.’

The boy and Uthellen did not move. They stared in amazement at Soldier. He looked down at himself, expecting to see a leg missing, or at least an arm. There was nothing wrong with him except that he was covered in red mud from head to foot.

‘Did you hear what I said,’ he cried, frustrated by their inactivity. The boar’s just behind me! Look,’ he held up the long coarse bristles he had torn from the boar’s back, ‘here’s my proof. Now, quickly, quickly.’

Still they did not move and eventually the boy said, ‘Garnash won’t come in here.’

‘Why? How can you be so sure?’

‘Because of the fire,’ answered Uthellen. ‘Garnash, like most wild beasts, is terrified of fire.’

Solder felt drained. He allowed himself to relax. What they were saying made sense. It was doubtful the giant boar would risk coming so near to man’s greatest weapon. The smell of woodsmoke alone was enough to send any normal animal into a panic. But Garnash was no ordinary beast.

Perhaps fire meant no more to him than it did to a human?

‘Are you sure?’ he blurted at Uthellen.

‘Do you think I would be standing here if I weren’t?’ Still shaking, Soldier went and sat down beside the fire. His flight had taken all the last of his energy. He lay back, his head on the turf, and fell asleep. Later he was vaguely aware of being woken and fed with some rabbit stew. Then he was allowed to sleep until morning came.

He awoke to the distant sound of trumpets and the rattle of drums.

‘Something’s happening in Zamerkand,’ said Uthellen. ‘There’s a lot of activity.’

‘We can hear them from here?’ Soldier said. ‘The wind is from the south, carrying the sound over the plain.’

‘What could be occurring?’

The boy, who seemed more interested than his mother in what was going on, said, ‘War. Those are war trumpets.’

Soldier sat up and shook his head. He went down to the stream with the far-off blare of trumpets still in his ears. There he bathed, before returning to the camp-fire where there was wild fare to be had. He drank cool water and ate. Then he took up the matter of the distant trumpets with the boy again.

‘You say it’s war?’

‘Probably with the beast-people, or the Hannacks of Da-tichett,’ replied the boy. ‘I’d guess they were going after the Horse-people and the Wilddog-people. Animal-headed people from the northern country of Falyum. They’ve been causing trouble up in the passes lately, threatening to muster and descend upon the castle. If they manage to stop quarrelling amongst themselves and join forces they’re a considerable foe. Fortunately for the Guthrumites the Falyum clans squabble all the time amongst themselves, up in the passes of the mountains. Unwittingly they perform a function for the Guthrumites, just by acting as a buffer between themselves and outlanders — outsiders.’

‘What’s wrong with outsiders? I’m a stranger myself.’

The boy shrugged. ‘It’s the way they are.’

Soldier asked the question, The Horse-people and the Dog-people? Are they barbarians?’

‘You could say that. One of them is responsible for destroying the beauty of the queen’s sister, your wife. Princess Layana. She was savaged by the Wild-dog-man, Vau. Those twisted scars you see on her face are from the teeth of Vau.’

A sudden and fierce rage swept through Soldier.

‘She was bitten by someone? I thought it had occurred in a fire of sorts. How did it happen?’

‘Princess Layana was out hunting with her hawk, riding her favourite palfrey, when she and her small escort happened upon a raiding party. One of the Dog-men leapt at her and buried his teeth in the right side of her face. They had to prise apart Vau’s jaws with the blade of a sword in order to release the princess. In their concern for the princess, Vau, though badly wounded, was allowed to escape. Your wife has never fully recovered from the attack. That is aside from her madness, which has another cause.’

Inflamed by the story, Soldier got to his feet.

He said with venom in his tone, ‘I must join this war. I have to find the Dog-man, Vau, and kill him. This has become my business at last.’

Chapter Eight

At the time Soldier was making his dramatic pronouncement to a startled audience of two, Princess Layana was rising from her bed. Her boudoir was a room in the tulip-bud cupola of the Green Tower. On the palace walls below her four windows, covered with white-iron grills to prevent her from jumping to her death in moments of suicidal madness, the trumpeters and drummers were making sounds of war. In between their blaring and rattling, doves and pigeons cooed on the rooftops. The two sets of sounds were incongruous: symbols of war and peace, side by side, competing for attention.

Layana’s bedroom, like that of her sister’s in the Palace of Birds, was padded with soft materials. The door to her bedroom was always locked from the outside by her servants. This too was to do with her insanity. It prevented her from wandering in the night hours, when the guards and maidservants were less alert than during the day. Today she was sane, and would be for two or three weeks, since she had just had a bout of the terrible sickness that afflicted her mind. There was always a respite between attacks of madness. These were not kind to her, because they lulled her into false hopes.

The longer they went on, the more she hoped that such a calm period of sanity would be permanent. But eventually, or sooner, the madness returned, ravaged her mind and soul, and left her feeling weak, drained and sickened by what she had done, or might have done, while under the influence of involuntary violence.

Still wearing her chiffon nightdress she went to the window of the green tower. On reaching it there was a flurry of white, fan-tailed doves, which roosted on the sill outside. The birds took to the air noisily. She was not sorry to see them leave. Their cooing was so monotonous early in the day.

‘Such a beautiful morning,’ murmured Layana, staring out at a clear blue sky. ‘May it last forever.’

Then the trumpets blared again, and the kettle drums rattled, and now some whirling bullroarers moaned.

Layana suddenly recalled that she was now married to a man she did not know.

Had it been out of pity? Or were there some feelings in her breast for this Soldier? Layana was confused. It would have been trite to say she did not know her own mind. Her mind was not her own much of the time. Yet she had never before allowed her emotions to dictate to her. Her first two husbands — may they rest in some kind of peace — were not chosen out of love, but for their stable characters. She had hoped at the time they would be strong enough to contain her wild excesses of mindless violence with the strength of their personalities.

How wrong she had been about that!

But Soldier was different.

Contrary to the belief of Kaff, the queen, and others, her first encounter with Soldier had not been in the street, she in her sedan chair, and he in chains. Her first meeting with him had been while she had been roaming the forested hills in the south, secretly hunting.

Between her bouts of madness, and during daylight hours only, Layana was given the relative freedom of Zamerkand. The queen accepted that if her sister’s madness came upon her at that time there were slaves, guards, or chair carriers, who could restrain her and take her back to the Palace of Wildflowers. However, unknown to her sister, and to the grief and fear of her servants who kept such things secret from the queen, Layana sometimes gave her chaperons the slip.

On these occasions she would make her way to a blacksmith named Butro-batan, whom she had befriended in her childhood, when taking her palfrey to be shod.

Butro-batan was a big, ugly man with enormous arms and a head which sat right on his shoulders without a neck to turn it. When he did have to look at something either side of him, he turned his whole upper body. The skin on his face and shoulders was pitted with small burn marks where the sparks from hammered white-hot iron had sprayed him. He was a man of fierce temper whose strength frightened those who knew him, although no one could recall if he had ever actually used his fists on another man. On the other hand, he was as gentle with great plough horses as if he were shoeing kittens. The young princess, on first taking her mount to be shod by Butro-batan, had been the same age as his daughter when the child had been killed by a crowd of terrified people near a horse trough.

The blacksmith’s daughter had died foaming at the mouth. A frightened mob had stoned her to death thinking she was possessed by a demon. Somehow, the heat of the forge, around which the child used to play, had caused her to be subject to fits. One of these came upon her while she was unaccompanied in the market-place and those around her had panicked. The blacksmith missed his daughter, sorely, and of course felt guilty. He always wondered if in some way he had been responsible for her death and there were burn marks from red-hot irons on his forearm where he had punished himself for his negligence.

Butro-batan was always ready for the princess. He kept a horse and hunting hawk for her in a stable at the back of his forge, along with weapons and clothes. The blacksmith was in the process of making the princess a beautiful suit of light armour, since she had expressed a desire to wander even further abroad, and he wished to give her the best protection he could offer. Butro-batan knew he would be put to death if the queen ever knew that he was assisting her younger sister in throwing off the restraints that royalty and madness imposed, but he did not care. Butro-batan was past worrying about such inevitable things as death.

Thus it happened that while the princess was on one of these illicit hunting trips, swathed in cottons to disguise her female form, she had come across the soldier. She had seen him wake on the hillside and look about him in a bemused way. For a while he seemed to be talking to himself and staring over the landscape. Eventually the soldier had come down to her, ragged, bloody, dazed, and with an empty scabbard dangling from his belt.

‘Youth,’ he had said, ‘where is the battle?’

‘What battle?’ she had replied.

He certainly looked as if he had been fighting. Not only was this indicated by his outward appearance, but by the obvious weariness in his spirit. His blue eyes had enchanted her. She still wondered if there was witchcraft in them. Was she under a spell, or was she at last in the throes of a romance? She did not really believe the latter was possible. Princess Layana had been told by others that she had a cold heart, that she could never love anyone but herself. Over time she had come to believe this statement.

‘You are just like your father,’ her old nanny, now dead, used to say to her. ‘A heart of ice. Keep it frozen, my little one, and you’ll never be hurt.’

She believed her old nanny. She believed her father had been a cold man. There were stories that Layana’s mother had spent her life going from one wild affaire to another, looking for the warmth and affection she was never given in her marriage. Captain of the guard, corporal of the watch, musician, poet, cleric, clerk — it had made no difference to the old queen - she had bedded all. The embittered husband and consort, seeing himself as victim, had forsworn women in general.

As if that were not enough, Layana was now hideously scarred, from her encounter with the Dog-man, Vau.

Now she was not only inadequate, she was ugly, and she had no doubt Soldier would find comfort from her madness in the arms of other women.

‘He will not stay in the bed of a witch,’ she had told her maid-servant and confidante, Drissila, immediately after the wedding, ‘even if she is a princess and he a pauper. So I shall not allow him here in the first place. I shall reject him from the outset, preserve my pride and his life, for it’s entirely possible I shall attempt to kill him in my madness.’

The dark-haired Drissila was at that time combing the hair of her princess with the spiny seashell Soldier had brought as one of his wedding gifts. She was standing behind her mistress, who was sitting in an ornate wooden chair. The maid-servant’s image in the silver hand-mirror waved nature’s comb at Layana.

‘I think that’s a good idea. He’s a handsome man, but those eyes of his make me shudder. Such a strange blue. You would think him capable of murder! Perhaps it would be you who wouldn’t rise in the morning, after your wedding night?’

‘You think he looks like a murderer? I think he looks like an angel.’

‘That’s because you’re besotted with his devil-may-care attitude, my lady. Oh, he’s a suave, swashbuckling soldier all right, but there’s something else about him. Something very, very dangerous, if you ask me. You’re blind to his real personality.’ Drissila had sniffed at this point. ‘If you want my opinion, my lady, I’d say throw him on the rubbish pile with the other two, before we’re all murdered in our beds.’

‘I think he looks vulnerable. You really think he’s dangerous?’

Drissila had been quite adamant about this point, which she spoke about with absolute confidence. She had stopped combing the princess’s tresses and had stared her mistress in the eyes.

‘There’s something deadly in him. He seems defenceless and guileless, but I can sense something deeply dangerous about him. He’s a rogue soldier, my lady, who’s been through some dreadful experience which has caused him to seek his fortune in a world where he’s a stranger. Hazardous adventurers are pushed from behind, as well as pulled from the front. He’s done something dreadful in his past. He’s capable of doing something dreadful in the future. We’d be best to keep him away from us.’

The fact that he was a dangerous man did not detract from him in Layana’s eyes. In fact it made him more desirable.

Some women were attracted by such character. Yet, she felt she was chasing after rainbows. Soldier had married her to save his life, nothing more.

‘Who could love an ugly harpy like me?’ she had sighed, turning her face a little to study the twisted eye, the raked cheek with its crimped furrows of flesh, the torn corner of the mouth. ‘Such repulsive looks would be enough to turn the stomach of a mortuary physician.’

‘Never mind your face, you have a beautiful heart,’ her devoted maidservant had told her. ‘That’s more important.’

‘Not when the madness is on me,’ Layana had replied. This conversation had taken place several days previously. Now the princess waited for Drissila and her other maidservants to come to her boudoir. In the meantime, she watched the activities of the world outside her palace.

The window of her room in the tall tower was high enough for her to witness the Carthagan troops mustering beyond the castle gates. War was in the air. The banners, the standards, the martial music proclaimed it. The red pavilions were being struck, poles and ochre coverings were being stacked and folded. Not all the Carthagans would be marching north. Half would stay to guard the city gates from any counterattack by the beast-people of Falyum. Suddenly Layana stiffened as she saw a figure coming down from the forested regions. Soldier! He was making his way towards the Carthagan mustering ground.

‘Oh, what is he doing?’ asked Layana of herself. ‘I thought he was safely in the city somewhere.’

The sound of the door to the room being opened captured Layana’s attention.

It was Ofao. He looked around the door, staring into her face, seeking, she knew, the signs of ill-humour.

‘I’m all right, Ofao,’ she said. ‘I’m fine today.’

He stepped warily into the room.

‘I’m so pleased, my lady.’ Then he was suddenly concerned and solicitous. ‘But you look so pale? Axe you ill? Why are you standing by that open window in just a flimsy nightdress? You’ll catch your death, my lady.’

‘I have just seen my husband.’

Ofao whirled, looking around the room.

‘No,’ she said, ‘not in here. He’s outside the city walls. Look,’ she pointed through the window. ‘See how he strides towards that Carthagan captain. What is it he’s carrying? A wooden spear? A bow? Can he be thinking of joining the Carthagans in their campaign?’

‘It certainly looks like it, my lady. There is determination in his step and in his face,’ murmured Ofao. Then he added in a wistful tone, ‘Isn’t he a fine figure of a man?’

Layana narrowed her eyes at her man-servant.

‘You forget yourself, Ofao. He’s my husband.’

‘Yes, my lady, of course he is. And — anyway — he’s not interested in

other men — not in that way.’ ‘Well, I’m grateful for the information,’ she said. ‘Does that mean

you’ve attempted to seduce him?’

‘No, no, my lady. One can tell, without doing that.’

Layana was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘Sing to me, Ofao, to calm me. My feelings are in turmoil.’

Ofao opened his mouth and began to sing a song in the high notes of a talented castrate. He sang sweeter than any bird. Layana closed her eyes and let the notes carry her to some place beyond the oppressive world, a place where new husbands joined the army to fight and uselessly die in battles which had no real meaning and served no purpose beyond themselves.

Chapter Nine

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

The question was asked by the raven who had just flown down to Soldier’s shoulder.

‘I’m going to join the army.’

‘Slow down, slow down. Why’d you want to do that? You’re not a Carthagan.’

‘Because I’m not getting anywhere like this. I need to advance my position, obtain more status in this country. No one takes me seriously. I need respect. The only way to obtain what I want is to progress upwards, through the hierarchy. I’m a soldier. The best way to get on is join the army. That’s what I’m doing.’

The raven clicked its tongue. ‘They’ll treat you as spear fodder. They always send the raw recruits into the teeth of the enemy front line. You’ll go down in the first wave of casualties. How will that advance your position?’

‘I’ll survive. I intend asking to join the Forlorn Hope anyway. That’s the only way to get on quickly in the army.’

The Forlorn Hope was a group of volunteers who went first into the battle. They took the brunt of the first shock wave of any charge. They were suicide troops, always in the vanguard of an attack. Those who survived the battle were given an automatic promotion to the next rank, or sometimes they skipped a rank and went higher still. It was all or nothing, since a huge percentage of the Forlorn Hope always lay dead on the battlefield after any confrontation.

Soldier brushed away the raven and went up to an officer who was supervising the striking of pavilions.

He said, ‘I wish to join the Carthagan army.’

The officer, a lieutenant who just happened to be a woman, looked him up and down. Carthagan men were short of stature, but very stocky. The women of that race however were on average a head taller than the males and of slimmer build. This lieutenant seemed wiry-strong and had sword-scars on her brow, just below the rim of her leather-and-metal helmet. Like the warriors she led, she wore an armoured breastplate and metal epaulettes to protect her shoulders, but nothing else. There were no shin guards or arm guards. On her feet were leather sandals.

‘You’re not even a Carthagan,’ she sneered. ‘And you intend to fight with those weapons?’

Soldier was conscious that he was carrying his wooden spear and his bow. He had left the dagger with Uthellen and the boy, in the forest, for he knew they would need some kind of tool and weapon. He wished now that he had killed the giant wild boar, Garnash, and had come to them as a hero, so that he would have some credibility as a warrior. He tried to think of what to say next.

He said, dubiously, ‘I think I could get hold of a warham-mer, if it’s still there. The Lord of Thieftakers has it.’ A spark of hope went through Soldier. ‘Some of your warriors saw me take it from a mounted Hannack, just a few weeks ago, right here on the plain where your pavilions are pitched.’

‘What’s the Lord of Thieftakers doing with it then?’

‘It was taken from me when I was arrested. But I have been freed without charge now. I — I’m Princess Layana’s husband.’

Some light came into the lieutenant’s eyes. ‘Oh, you’re that fellow, are you? Of course, the blue eyes. I should have remembered. Well, even so, being the husband of royalty doesn’t make you a good fighter. The Hannack thing — that could have been sheer luck — probably was. A foot-soldier against a mounted Hannack? I would bet on the Hannack every time.’

‘Nevertheless,’ began Soldier, desperately, ‘I’m a battle-hardened veteran.’

‘From which battles?’

Miserably Soldier replied, ‘I can’t remember.’

The lieutenant shook her head. ‘Look at that spear! It looks like some cave dweller made it. It doesn’t even have a metal point. What’s that stuff you’ve tied around the haft?’

Once again Soldier was reminded that he had not come here as a hero, the defeater of the great Garnash.

‘It’s hair — bristles from the back of a boar.’

‘What boar?’

Some of the troops who were busy folding the pavilion covering looked up at this point. They seemed interested in the answer.

‘Garnash, the giant boar,’ said Soldier. ‘I tried to kill him, but failed.’

The lieutenant’s eyes opened wide. ‘You hunted Garnash and lived?’

‘Well, yes, I lived, but I failed in my attempt to kill him.’

A sergeant said, ‘How did you get the hair?’

‘Wrenched it from his back, while I was riding him,’ replied Soldier. ‘I was clinging on to it when it came away in my hand.’

‘You rode Garnash?’ cried the lieutenant. Then her expression changed. ‘You’re lying. You must be.’

Soldier’s eyes turned to blue steel for a moment. ‘I do not lie about such things as exploits,’ he said, his tone even and dangerous. ‘A man who has only his honour left to call his own needs to retain the truth, or he is totally impoverished. A judge can lie. He has his status to protect him. A prince can lie, he has his wealth and position. A serving soldier can lie, for he has a large family, his regiment, to support him. A traveller, a stranger with an empty purse, cannot lie, or he has nothing in the world at all. He strips himself clean, throws away the only thing he has left.’

‘He looks like a soldier,’ said the sergeant, ‘but he speaks like a philosopher. I believe him.’

The lieutenant suddenly nodded. ‘So do I. Listen, stranger, we do not have “regiments” in the Carthagan army. We have pavilions. As many soldiers as can fit into a pavilion — that is the number which fights together under the same banner. This is Captain Montecute’s pavilion, the Eagle Pavilion. That’s our eagle on the pennon there. When we’re on the move or go into battle it flies from our standard.’

‘Eagles fly, others die!’ chanted a grinning warrior close to his shoulder.

‘Can I join the Eagle Pavilion?’ asked Soldier. ‘I would deem it a great honour.’

‘I’ll speak with the captain,’ said the lieutenant, ‘but anyone who has ridden on the back of Garnash I’m sure will not be turned away without good reason.’

‘Idiot!’ snapped the raven, before flying off.

The Carthagan sergeant’s eyes went round. ‘Did that bird speak?’

‘Naw,’ said Soldier. ‘I think it just squawked.’

The captain was duly consulted and agreed that someone - even a blue-eyed stranger — who had ridden Garnash like a bull or a wild horse would be an asset to his pavilion. Soldier went into the city and managed, after a great deal of trouble, to retrieve his warhammer. Then he joined his pavilion as a common foot-warrior. He helped the other warriors finish striking camp. Before the day had advanced beyond noon they were on the march, towards some mountain passes in the north-west. It was here that the Kermer Pass lay between Guthrum and Falyum, the land of the beast-people. It was through this pass that the raiders came to prey on helpless farmers in the outlying regions of Guthrum.

‘We seem to be moving up in great numbers,’ said Soldier to one of his comrades, looking back at the long winding column of warriors in their cloaks of burnt-sienna-red and their pack mules carrying their red-ochre tents. ‘Just f°r raiding parties?’

‘Their raiding parties are huge,’ came the reply. ‘Upwards of a thousand riders along with two or three thousand foot-soldiers. And they can fight.’

‘As well as the Hannacks?’

‘They’re more savage than the Hannacks - much fiercer.’

Which told Soldier a lot about the enemy he was going to fight, even though he had met just a single Hannack in his life.

The column of warriors, with foreriders and outriders to prevent any surprise attack, was like a lazy, drifting rusty snake moving over the landscape. There were few trees on the central plain of Guthrum. It was an area covered in wild-flowers and herbs. Soldier was surprised to realise he recognised some of them. There was yellow loosestrife and mugwort in profusion. Here and there grew patches of orris iris which the local farmers used to patch their wickerwork chairs and thatched roofs. Soldier also noticed lavender stick-adove and mullein, and some sweet woodruff. Where trees were seen they tended to be quinces and mulberry trees, probably planted by farmers. There were no great live oaks out here, or beeches, or green elms.

On the evening of the third day they came to a volcanic mountain which rose out of the plain like a giant. It was high enough to have snow on its peak, though the pale sun was warm on the backs of the marchers. The army camped at the foot of this mountain, which was called Mount Kkamaramm, after a dragon which had once had its eyrie in the crags some way up. Eagles were seen circling the sky. When the camp-fires had been lit and the warriors were eating their evening stew, Soldier settled down to talk with a warrior named Velion, whom he had partially befriended on the march. Unlike most of the warriors in the Eagle Pavilion, she was sympathetic to his newness. Soldier always seemed to get on better with women than he did men.

Soldier did not know the ways, the nuances, of the army he was in. He made mistakes, such as referring to the lieutenant’s sword as a sword.

‘She’s from the Jundra region of Carthaga, that one, and Jundran officers call their swords “scissors”,’ explained Velion. ‘You will notice that unlike other Carthagan warriors they wear two blades, one on either side? When we go into battle they draw both blades and employ a scissoring action with them, slicing at the enemy from both sides at once. The victim finds it hard to parry strokes coming from two directions.’

‘I imagine so,’ replied Soldier, unfolding the worn secondhand blanket someone had given him out of pity. ‘It sounds a good tactic.’

‘Oh, we have many good tactics,’ said Velion, puffing out her chest. ‘The Carthagans are great warriors. We put the fear of the gods into our enemy. A Carthagan can’t leave the field of battle until the enemy has been defeated. You will hear others talk of Carthagan massacres and these are true. We have been massacred in the past because we fight until the last warrior falls. There are tactical retreats, of course - we fall back like any army when we are overwhelmed by superior numbers — but we never run away. Any fall-back is always followed by a counter-attack. Our courage is second to none.’