Many Are the Dead Read online

  Many Are the Dead

  - A Raven’s Shadow Novella -

  Anthony Ryan

  Copyright © 2018 by Anthony Ryan

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Dedicated with gratitude and respect to the memory of Marine James Holloway, 42 Commando Royal Marines. 1992-2017. Per Mare, Per Terram.

  Contents

  Poem

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  About the Author

  Many are the dead

  Who stand in witness

  To our crimes.

  - Seordah Poem, Author Unknown

  1

  The boy stood frozen, eyes wide and wet, his sword hanging limp and useless from his hand as the Lonak warrior came for him. The lad’s bleached features lacked any real expression, as if the impending certainty of his own death had somehow slipped beneath his notice. Sollis had seen this many times before, the face of one experiencing their first taste of real battle.

  The charging Lonak and his hapless prey were a good dozen yards away. The warrior was wounded, one of Brother Smentil’s arrows jutting from the tattooed flesh of his right arm. The limb flailed like a rag as he closed on the young Realm Guard, using his good arm to raise his war club high. It was a difficult distance for a knife throw, but Sollis had exhausted his arrows during the first few minutes of the skirmish.

  The small, triangular bladed knife spun as it left his hand, describing a deceptively lazy arc through the air before sinking into the back of the Lonak’s neck. Sollis grunted in frustration as he saw that the knife had missed the man’s spine by a clear inch. Nevertheless, his charge came to an abrupt end as the knife struck home. He staggered, war club still raised as he tottered barely a yard from the frozen boy-soldier.

  “Kill him!” Sollis shouted. The youth, however, seemed deaf to the call, continuing to stare with moist but empty eyes at the shuddering man before him. Sollis started forward then halted at the sound of feet scraping loose rock.

  He sank to a crouch, spinning as he did so, the Order blade flickering across the wolf-pelt covered torso of another Lonak. The man’s war club whistled over Sollis’s head as the star-silver edged steel cut through fur and the flesh beneath. The Lonak reeled back, sliced open from belly to shoulder, a shout of fury and pain erupting from his mouth. The wound was plainly mortal but, as was usual with his kind, the Lonak refused to surrender to death whilst there was still a chance to kill the hated Merim Her. Blood streamed from the Lonak’s mouth as he sang, drawing back his club for another blow. Although the words were garbled, Sollis possessed sufficient understanding of his language to discern the cadence of a death-song.

  Seeing another Lonak beyond the dying warrior’s shoulder, Sollis flicked his sword across the man’s throat and stepped to the side to avoid the spear thrust of his charging comrade. It was a good thrust, straight, swift and true, missing Sollis’s chest by bare inches as he twisted, sword extended to skewer the second Lonak through the eye. This one was a woman, tall and lean, head shaven but for the long scalp-lock that sprouted from the base of her skull. She had no chance to give to voice the song that would carry her into the gods’ embrace. Death came the instant the sword point reached her brain, although she hung on the blade twitching for a time until Sollis withdrew it.

  The two Lonak collapsed against each other, forming a strange pyramidal tableau as they sank to the rocky ground, heads resting on the shoulder of the other, almost like lovers sharing a last intimate moment before slumber.

  Sollis blinked and turned away, intending to resume his charge towards the boy-soldier and his assailant, expecting to find the lad lying on the slope with his head bashed in. Instead, he stood over the body of his erstwhile attacker, grunting as he tried in vain to tug his sword free of the Lonak’s ribcage. His face was more animated now, colour returning to the pale immobile mask and tears streaking his cheeks. Apart from the boy’s grunts a familiar post-battle quiet had descended on the canyon.

  Glancing around Sollis saw his brothers descending the western slope. There were sixty besides himself, less than half the number of the war band they had just despatched, but the shock of their attack had done much to even the odds. Distracted by their slaughter of the Realm Guard, the Lonak had neglected to guard their rear.

  As they descended into the canyon the brothers paused to finish off those Lonak who had not yet succumbed to their wounds. It was a long-ingrained tradition of the Sixth Order not to show mercy to these people, as the only reward was a knife in the back as soon as they recovered sufficiently to attempt an escape. A few Realm Guard survivors stood around clutching wounds or staring in shock at the remnants of their regiment. Over three hundred cavalry had trooped into this narrow canyon just a quarter-hour before. Sollis reckoned less than a third still lived. Most of their horses had survived the ambush, however; the Lonak were always keen to get their hands on Realm-bred stock.

  “You,” he said, advancing towards the boy who was still engaged in a struggle to free his sword from the fallen warrior. “Who’s in charge of this farce?”

  The young Realm Guard gaped at him in blank incomprehension, causing Sollis to wonder if his mind might have been unhinged by the recent carnage. Then the boy blinked and raised a hand from his sword hilt, pointing a finger at the base of the canyon. Sollis felt a small pulse of admiration for the way the youth managed keep the tremble from his hand.

  “There, sir,” he said, his voice coloured by the burr of those raised on the south Asraelin shore. He was a long way from home. “Lord Marshal Al Septa.”

  “I’m a brother not a sir,” Sollis corrected, following the boy’s finger to a pile of bodies in the centre of the canyon. At least a dozen Realm Guard had fallen there, covered by a small forest of the hawk-fletched arrows favoured by the Lonak. The pile of corpses twitched slightly but Sollis’s experienced eye told him none of these men still held on to life.

  “Spared himself the disgrace of a trial before the king, at least,” he muttered. “This mad jaunt north of the pass was his idea, I suppose?”

  “The Wolf Men destroyed three villages before fleeing back to the mountains,” the boy said, a defensive note colouring his tone. “Killing all the folk they could find, and they weren’t quick about it. Lord Al Septa was driven by a desire for justice. He was a good man.”

  “Well.” Sollis pushed the boy aside and took hold of his sword. “All he managed to do was drive most of you to an early communion with the Departed. Good men can be fools too.” He gripped the sword with both hands, putting his boot on the dead man’s chest as he dragged the blade clear. A wet sucking sound rose as it came free, followed by a brief fountain of blood and a nostril stinging stench as the man’s lungs let go of his last breath.

  “Always better to go for the belly or the throat, if you can,” Sollis said, returning the sword to the boy. “Less chance of it getting stuck.”

  “Faith! How old are you, lad?”

  Sollis turned to find Brother Oskin approaching, his weathered features drawn into a squint as he surveyed the boy-soldier. Red Ears, his ever present Cumbraelin hunting hound, trotted from his side to snuffle at the Lonak corpse, her long tongue flicking out to lap at the blood leaking from its wound. Oskin allowed the
beast a few more licks before nudging her away with a jab of his boot. It had been thanks to Red Ears’ nose that they tracked the Lonak war band, so it would have been churlish to deny her a small reward, although Sollis wished the beast had managed to find them soon enough to prevent this massacre.

  “Fourteen,” the boy replied, casting a nervous glance at the massive hound as Red Ears sauntered towards him, licking the blood from her chops. “I’ll be fifteen in a month.”

  “The king sends children to fight the Lonak,” Oskin said with a despairing shake of his head. “Your mother know where you are?”

  A certain hardness crept into the lad’s gaze as he replied in a low mutter, “No. She’s dead.”

  Oskin gave a soft sigh before turning back to Sollis. “Smentil took a shaman alive, thought you might want to talk to him. Best be quick if you do, I doubt he’ll last long.”

  Sollis nodded and moved off, issuing orders over his shoulder as he climbed the far slope of the canyon. “Get these horses rounded up. See if there’s anything to be done for the Realm Guard wounded, and see if you can find one with any kind of rank. This lot will need a captain for the journey south.”

  “That I will, brother.” Oskin clapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder and guided him to the canyon floor where most of the Realm Guard had begun to gather. “Come on, whelp. You can point me to a sergeant, if there’s any left.”

  “It’s Jehrid,” the boy said in a sullen mutter as Oskin led him away.

  Sollis found Brother Smentil standing over the slumped and bleeding form of a wiry Lonak of middling years. His status as shaman was proclaimed by the swirling tattoo covering his shaven skull. The exact meanings of the various symbols with which the Lonak covered themselves were still beyond Sollis’s understanding, but he knew enough to distinguish the signs of a warrior or a hunter from that of a shaman.

  Gut wound, Smentil told Sollis, his hands making the signs with a flowing precision that came from years of necessary practice. The tall brother held the unenviable distinction of being the only member of the Sixth Order to be captured by the Lonak and survive the experience, albeit losing his tongue in the process. Consequently, the Order’s sign-language was his primary means of communication apart from the occasional written note in a near illegible script.

  Sollis angled his head as he surveyed the dying shaman, finding himself confronted by a typically hate-filled glare. He spoke as he locked eyes with Sollis, bloody spittle spilling from his lips and staining his teeth as he formed the words. “Merim Her, fogasht ehl mentah. Shiv illahk tro dohimish.” Merim her, always there are more. Like maggots on a corpse.

  “Ver dohimishin,” Sollis replied: You’re dying. He sank to his haunches, speaking on in Lonak, “Do you wish a quick death?”

  The shaman snarled, face quivering with the effort of meeting Sollis’s gaze. “I want nothing from you.”

  “No raids for nearly a year,” Sollis went on. “Now you lead a war band of many spears to our lands. You steal nothing, take no treasure or captives. All you do is burn and kill. Why?”

  A suspicious glint crept into the shaman’s eye as he narrowed his gaze. “You know why… blue-cloak,” he said in a hard, pain-filled rasp.

  “No,” Sollis assured him with a humourless smile. “I don’t. Tell me.” He held the shaman’s gaze, seeing no sign he might yield. Sollis was tempted to draw his dagger and start probing the man’s wound, though past experience told him the Lonak were too inured to pain for such encouragement to bear fruit.

  “I can take you with us,” he said instead. “Back to the Pass. We have healers there. Once you are made whole I will put you in a cage and parade you through the lands you raided. Merim Her will spit upon you, cast their filth at you, and no Lonak will ever hear your story again.”

  The shaman’s nostrils flared as he drew in a series of rapid breaths. Blood began to seep through the fingers the man had clamped over his wound and Sollis saw his eyes take on a familiar, unfocused cast. “No, blue-cloak,” the shaman said, a crimson torrent now flowing from his mouth as he grinned at Sollis, speaking in harsh grunts. “I… am being called… to the Gods’ embrace… where my story will live forever… in their ears.”

  “Tell me!” Sollis reached out to clamp a hand on the shaman’s neck, gripping hard. “Why did you raid?”

  “You… Because of you…” The shaman’s grin broadened, allowing a slick of blood to cover Sollis’s hand. “You came into the mountains… and brought that which is known only to the Mahlessa… She decreed… vengeance…”

  The shaman’s eyes dimmed and closed, his head lolling forward as Sollis felt his final pulse, no more than the faintest flutter against his palm.

  What did he mean? Smentil’s hands asked as Sollis rose, hefting his canteen to wash away the blood. Like most of the brothers Smentil had only a partial understanding of Lonak. Sollis, by contrast, had used his years at the Pass to learn as much as he could. It had been a tortuous business, reliant on rarely taken captives and the few relevant books he had gleaned from the Third Order library. Whilst Lonak prisoners almost never divulged information of any value, they were always enthusiastic in assailing their captors with all the insults they could muster, which added greatly to his vocabulary and understanding of syntax. It also meant he spoke a version of Lonak even harsher than the original.

  “Rova kha ertah Mahlessa,” he said, flicking the pinkish water away and turning his gaze north. The sun was well past its zenith and the shadows grew long on the mountains. High on the granite slopes the stiffening wind swept snow into a clear blue sky. As always when he gazed upon these peaks there was the sense of his scrutiny being returned. Bare as they seemed, the chances of journeying through the Lonak dominion unobserved were always slender at best. Veteran brothers had a saying, ‘The mountains have eyes.’ She’ll learn of what happened here within days, he thought. What will she do then?

  “‘That which is known only to the Mahlessa,’” he elaborated, turning back to Smentil. “The Dark, brother. He was talking about the Dark.”

  He made for the crest of the slope and began to descend to where they had tethered their horses. “Best get these guardsmen into some semblance of order,” he said. “We’re returning to the Pass with all speed. The Brother Commander must know of this.”

  2

  It took a night and a day to reach the Skellan Pass. Sollis pushed his mingled company hard, maintaining a punishing pace and refusing to rest come nightfall despite the condition of the wounded Realm Guard, three of whom expired before the journey was done. He had expected some level of condemnation from their fellow guardsmen but they remained a mostly silent lot. Throughout the journey their eyes continually roved the peaks and valleys in wary trepidation, faces pale with a fear that wouldn’t fade until they were far from these lands.

  “They were like ghosts,” Jehrid, the boy-soldier, said in response to Brother Oskin’s request for an account of his regiment’s demise. “Just seemed to spring out of the air. The lads think it was some Dark spell cast by their shaman.”

  “Dark spell, eh?” Oskin enquired with an amused snort.

  “How else to explain it?” Jehrid replied, face reddening a little. “Two hundred men just appearing out of nowhere. And the way they fought…” He grimaced and shook his head. “Not natural.”

  “One hundred and eighteen,” Sollis said. He didn’t bother to turn as he steered his mount along the ridgeline which descended in a gradual slope to the sparsely grassed plain north of the Pass. “And they weren’t all men. The Lonak don’t need the Dark to ambush fools, boy. This is their land and they know every stone of it.”

  The narrow gate in the Pass’s northernmost wall trundled open after the customary delay as the sentries on the parapet ensured the approaching party were not Lonak in disguise. It was a ruse their enemy hadn’t attempted in decades, but the Order never forgot a hard lesson. Sollis led the company inside to wind their way through the twists and turns of the inner fortifications
until they emerged into the courtyard.

  “Get the wounded to the healing house,” Sollis told Oskin, climbing down from the saddle. “And find room for the rest to bed down. I’ll report to the Brother Commander.”

  After stabling his horse he made his way to the tallest of the towers which crowded the southern stretch of the Pass. “He’s got company,” Brother Artin advised as Sollis strode through the door. He and Sollis were the most senior brothers stationed at the Pass. Artin had responsibility for the day-to-day running of the garrison whilst Sollis oversaw forays beyond the fortifications. He felt no resentment at the disparity in their roles. Artin was a sound leader and no slouch in combat, but his stolid attachment to routine made him a better fit for commanding a fortress. Sollis, by contrast, would sometimes contrive excuses to patrol north of the Pass if he spent more than a few days within these walls.

  “Urgent business, brother,” he told Artin, not pausing in his stride. “Something you should hear too,” he added before knocking on the door to the Brother Commander’s chamber with a forcefulness he hoped fell short of causing offence. There was a brief interval before he heard a muffled, “Come in,” in a tone he was relieved to find free of irritation.

  “Brother Sollis.” Brother Commander Arlyn sat behind his desk, greeting him with his customary faint smile, one eyebrow raised in curiosity. “Back early, I see.”

  “With intelligence, brother,” Sollis said, his gaze immediately drawn to the room’s other occupant. She sat in a chair before Brother Arlyn’s desk, blonde hair shifting as she turned to regard Sollis with an open smile and inquisitive blue eyes. Apart from the occasional Lonak captive, women were a decided rarity at the Pass, though he had a sense that a woman like this would be a rarity anywhere.