Love to Ash

  They should not be taking this long, thought Goran as he leaned heavily over his map of the Shipbreaker's Tide.

  Three thousand men had departed from the shores of Tusorano with all their horses, pack-mules, arms and armor crammed onto the forty war-galleys the Senato Luonerssa had been kind enough to leave ill-guarded. But the Shipbreaker's Tide did not bear its name without warrant - the summer storms and choppy waves had broken up their fleet into pieces, scattering them all across the sea. When the walls of rain and tidal waves had passed, less than half of the galleys remained in formation to be escorted to the shore by a patrol from Albina-Suzdal.

  The trade city's magisters flew into a panic when they heard news of Yllahanan galleys off their shores - instead of docking for rest at the ports, Goran's men found themselves herded to make camp ten miles west of the city. There they had now spent nigh on ten days under the watch of the Suzdalian city guard as men slowly trickled in every day from whatever small islands they had run aground. And yet still, close to five hundred men remained at large. The hope among their brothers was they were simply lost and due back anytime soon, but the Young Griffon did not share their optimism.

  Lost to the sea, that fickle bitch, he thought as he scratched off their names from the Company's roster. Five companies and two hundred destriers, worse than any battle. And half my riders are now footmen.

  His head was beginning to swim from the numbers. But at least within the ink and arithmetic there was security and certainty - while outside, his stolid and newly-sworn druzhinniks were losing heart by the minute. Idleness and boredom was taking hold, and soon there would be desertions if they did not march soon.

  The flap to his tent opened with a flutter as he finished crossing off the last of their lost. Kassa waited patiently, clad in a long blue Sanurian kaftan. The Suzdalians were used to dealing with Klyazmites, ruddy Solarians, tanned Huwaqis, and even Khormchaks. But few were able to stop staring at Kassa and his Sanurian archers, whose skin was black as night and who cladded himself in the brightly-patterned clothes of his home. He smiled to think on how it would be further north, in the remote villages outside Gatchisk.

  "How goes the provisioning?" Goran asked, motioning for him to sit. He poured them both a cup of wine - the last of their original stock picked up in Thyl Thalas.

  Kassa swirled his wine idly. "Poorly. The Suzdalians are charging Arash thrice over for grain, and what they give us is either spoiled or still green. They say it's a poor harvest - I say they're making fools of us."

  "All the same - is there enough?"

  "Barely. Once we cross the border we'll be down to half-rations soon, unless we can live off the land."

  Goran shook his head. "They'll bleed our coffers white at this rate. Tell Arash to come back, and mind his manners. The magisters are looking for any excuse to have one of ours in irons."

  That was the other great headache. Two days after their arrival in Albina-Suzdal, an old ship-insurer of some kind had turned up murdered and mutilated in his shop - and the magisters were quick to blame the eastern and southern foreigners for the crime. They proved too cowardly to outright arrest anyone from the Company, but Arash and his men were forced to tread softly around the markets, and always under guard. Plainly, their time in the city was running short - as was their treasure, their goodwill, and worst of all, the Company's faith in his plan. The cruel sea had robbed all high spirits from the commanders - even Kassa was beginning to have doubts, though he always kept his tongue guarded, unlike Heller and Arash who complained loud and often.

  The commander of the Company's archers nodded, saluted, and then left without drinking.

  Damn it all, just give me a good fight. Just one good fight, and everything will be well.

  Later that day when the last wagon-load of Suzdalian grain entered their camp, he received all his commanders for a war council. The journey across the sea had turned Heller into a sickly green ghost, and even ten days later he still seemed to have half a foot in the grave - but at least that meant he would be content to keep silent for now. The Solarian’s lieutenants in attendance were sure to speak on his behalf, but blonde Ansgar and fat Kinczel he could handle. Arash was a black stormcloud from his dealings with the Suzdalians, and brought no-one - his subordinates Bijan and Farhad were among those missing at sea, and new lieutenants had yet to be chosen by the men. Kassa too sat alone, his dark eyes fixed carefully upon his new lord like a cat watching its prey.

  For the first time in a while, Goran suddenly felt as though he had no friends. The men with whom he had spent the better part of five years now seemed like strangers again. They eyed him warily now - looking for answers they doubted he had. It was time to prove them wrong.

  “I’ve decided we will be leaving this cursed city by dawn tomorrow,” he said at length. Between the commanders he unrolled an old dog-eared map of his father’s realm, Gatchisk. “If we make good time and stick to the roads, we may reach the border in as little as two days.”

  “And with what army?” Arash grumbled. “If your boyars are anything like the Yllahanans or Anquiltes, they’ll run behind their walls at the first sight of us. If it comes to a lengthy siege, we’ll starve.”

  “And we have little in the way of cavalry,” Kassa piped up. “All our heavy horse is either drowned or-”

  “Marooned somewhere off in the Thousand Teeth, I know.” Goran sighed. “I will not stand here and tell you all that we are in good shape - our supplies and treasure are strung out, half our men are seasick, and the other half are listless. If we had tried to invade my father’s realm in this sorry state even a year ago, we’d have been cut to pieces easily. But-”

  He rummaged through his pack and placed onto the table a stack of parchments - perhaps the most expensive in the world. “If we are in a sorry state, then my father’s realm is utterly broken. We could not have come at a better time.”

  “What the hell are these?” Ansgar muttered as he read through one of the papers.

  “Letters. The magisters of Albina-Suzdal spend plenty of gold to keep well-informed of their cousins’ activities - yet pay their pigeon-keepers and servants a pittance.”

  He smoothed out one parchment on the table, glancing over the map of his realm - the dozens of battles and skirmishes already playing out invisibly across the whole country. “My father’s realm is tearing itself apart. The old Grand Prince is dead, and his authority lies in ruin. Half the boyars of the south have declared for Svetopolk of Pemil - a pretender seeking a crown - while the other half have turned to raiding and brigandry.”

  “A civil war.” said Arash as he read one of the dispatches. “So what of the royal army? The crown?”

  “There is no royal army - not even a single crown any longer,” Goran smiled. “Not all of Klyazma will come down on us. Not even all of Gatchisk. All we shall find are a dozen squabbling lords with spent druzhinas and famished levies.”

  “That’s still a lot of men to kill,” grumbled Arash. “Even ants can bring down a lion, if they are many. The lords can always recruit more men from the villages, while we will grow fewer with every battle. Company men are not forged easily.”

  Kassa stood from his seat, carefully tracing a finger across one of the many roads inked through the countryside. “Your country is vast. Even if we do break every army before us, they’ll have endless space to retreat. We take one town - and the one behind us revolts once we’re over the horizon.”

  “Who’s to say we’ll be fighting alone?” Goran said with a thin smile. “Remember, I was once a prince of this land.”

  He traced their marching path from Albina-Suzdal - up Sverkinskaya Road, then through the border woodlands into the Gatchisk Plains west of the Cherech, where settlements sat along the rivers and floodplains. “Not all of the boyars have forgotten their liege’s heir.”

  He jabbed at each of the settlements in turn, those he had known well in his youth, spent days studying in his old life until he could recite them and their heraldries by heart. “The woodsmen of Mykoshad - their boyar’s son had called for war against Belnopyl when I was exiled. Hlotopol - I’ve a friend in Stribor, who now rules as boyar. In Rzhychach they spoke of the Old Griffon’s weakness, and wept for my return when I rode through on my way to the border. Perhaps even the Kangar horsemen may be bound to our cause, if Bori-khan’s ears prove open. We will have potential allies and friends at every hand - and if we gather them into a single fist, the pretenders and turncoats will fall.”

  Kassa’s gaze remained fixed on the map, but his tone sharpened. “That’s a fine dream - if Gatchisk stood alone. But what of Svetopolk? What of Belnopyl? Whoever rules there, surely they will not be idle. To them, we’re the usurpers. What then?”

  What then? What then? What then? The walls of the tent pressed in. He had sensed the others, even Arash, slowly coming along to his plan. Yet the Sanurian had severed his web of words with a knife of doubt that cut deep.

  “Then…” He paused, unsure how to answer. Of Svetopolk and his ilk, he knew much. But Belnopyl remained a mystery - even its ruler. Was it Igor’s wife, Cirina? Or perhaps…no, surely not.

  He looked down at the map again, the plains of his youth staring back in question. “Then we play the games of kings. We rule.”

  He pointed to the plains. “Gatchisk is the breadbasket of Klyazma. Once their wars are done, Pemil and Belnopyl will have sore need of its harvest to feed their armies and new lands. What use is a crown, if the people they aim to rule will starve?”

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  His voice grew colder, more resolute as the idea crystallized in his mind. “Let Pemil and Belnopyl bleed white. While they waste strength on one another, we’ll gather ours. Once Gatchisk is taken and the traitors are hanged, the rest of the realm will follow us. Better a prince they know in me, rather than one such as Svetopolk.”

  Kinczel shook his head. “The risk-”

  “-will only grow greater, the longer we wait. Klyazma has never been more broken than it is now - and the Khormchaks are busy with their own squabbles.” He fixed the lieutenant with a hard stare. “When we departed Tusorano, we aimed to make ourselves lords. Is a little storm all it takes to unman a druzhinnik of my company?”

  Ansgar was smiling in approval. The others traded thoughtful looks as Kinczel’s face reddened. Then Arash shrugged, “We made a black mark against ourselves when we broke from the Yllahanans - there’ll be little work awaiting us in the Shipbreaker’s Tide now. I say we strike north.”

  Kassa shrugged and said, “I’m for it as well. My ass yearns to die upon a lordly seat, not a saddle.”

  The commanders began to speak among themselves, and Goran allowed himself a sigh of relief. For now at least, his head remained above water. One by one, his nascent boyars nodded their tentative approval, and then they set into a familiar business: planning for war.

  The westering sun flooded the skies deep red by the time the commanders took their leave of Goran’s tent. Each man left with their marching orders in hand, and the camp roused back into action as preparations began for the march north. Only one man remained - Heller. The commander of the footmen regarded Goran with a flinty eye once the others were gone. “Got it all figured out then, do you? Our bright prince.”

  The Young Griffon frowned. “You have your reservations?”

  “Aye, and then some. Figured I’d spare you my tongue in front of the others.” The Solarian shifted in his seat uneasily. “We’ll be marching into a damn quagmire, this Klyazma. If there’s anything I know about your kinsmen, it’s that they’re the type to cut off their nose to spite their face. What will you do if the realm doesn’t follow their long lost prince the moment he takes Gatchisk? Kassa has the right of it - we don’t have the men to hold all of the north.”

  “We’ll make examples out of traitors,” Goran replied. “Hang those who reject the rule of the throne.”

  “Can you hang three million northerners?”

  Heat rushed to Goran’s face as Heller smirked. “If you want to play games, find someone else to humor you,” he said as he motioned for the commander to take his leave. “Peasants are peasants. They will bow and scrape before whomever, so long as they have enough to eat and gather a good harvest.”

  “The Yllahanans thought much the same of my people,” Heller replied. “We were a land of farmers and fishermen - simple folk! And the Yllahanans brought with them ‘civilization’ and higher arts, how could we not wish to be elevated by their rule? It took the blood-mages three hundred years of revolts and uprisings before they realized Solarians could not be cowed so.”

  Heller tapped the map with a calloused finger. “These are times when men go mad. Desperate. And desperate men will look to something- anything- that simply isn’t what they had before. That’s when they leap into the jaws of monsters and call it salvation.”

  Goran said nothing, watching the curling edge of the parchment where Klyazma spread like a wound.

  “The whole damn country went up in arms the moment the Grand Prince died - that speaks to a rage we can’t just put down with a few hangings. That speaks to a hungering for something different, something new. And what are we bringing? Nothing but an old banner, and an old name.”

  The sickly commander straightened his back, his eyes narrowing with something that might have been pity. Goran did not let his own fear show upon his face.

  “And remember, Goran. Even a man who returns home might see only strangers in the faces of those he left behind.”

  And then Heller took his leave, staggering out from the tent with little more than a cough. Goran remained where he stood for a long while, watching the inked land spread out before him as the men outside gathered for war. And land that was once his, like a bride once promised. Except I have neither - neither the land, nor her. All that remains is what you can take.

  Yet the Solarian’s words still rang in his ears. And what if they do not love you? What if they hate you? What then?

  He spread one hand out across Gatchisk, tracing the rivers and roads that ran from the beating heart of the city that was once home. I will make them love me. Those that remain. I will die with a crown upon my head. I will die as Goran of Gatchisk, the promised prince. Their promised prince.

  ***

  Across the camp, the sound of hammers and crackling fires went on into the small hours as armorers and farriers worked to repair armor and re-shoe what remained of the horses. Elsewhere, sentry torches flickered like restless spirits down the paths between tents. When he emerged, Goran took it all in at a distance from his captain’s tent. Araldo’s old cape billowed at his back as a breeze sighed across the Suzdalian plains - the only remnant of the captain’s belongings, while the rest was set ablaze. Seeing him, a half-dozen outriders saluted him as they made their way north to seek tomorrow’s trail.

  “Grand Captain,” one called with pride.

  “Lord Goran!” came another voice, young and sharp.

  Lord. The word stuck in his chest like a swallowed ember. He did not correct them.

  He took his first walk through the camp as Grand Captain, and marvelled at how well the men kept their discipline even after the debacle of the Shipbreaker’s Tide. Few sat idly by - most were busy checking their gear, gathering supplies, or training at swordplay and archery at a makeshift drill ground. It was a camp that Araldo would have approved of - for all his faults, the old Grand Captain had left the Company a disciplined, well-honed band.

  Somehow, walking among the men he was to lead, it seemed unthinkable that they would ever know defeat in Klyazma. Most of the boyars’ armies were of ill-trained freeholder peasants, not unlike the Suzdalians who camped nearby in squalor and chaos. And even those who were trained, the druzhinas, could not count more than a few skirmishes under their belt for experience. Yet they were still many, and numbers would come to tell in due time - unless they found allies. He reminded himself of that as he caught a glimpse of Kassa speaking with his lieutenants.

  Surely still my name holds power. And if not, then let them see what power we hold when we break the usurpers.

  When at last he retired for the night, the red sky had given way to a deep blue, coloring the heavens like a bruise. He set aside his own gear, and tucked into a small cot beneath an old banner he scourged from his luggage - the blue griffon on a white flag. Even within the camp Goran kept his sword nearby, lying in its sheath within arm’s reach. Habit. Prudence. Paranoia. All the same, it would serve well once they crossed the border, and into the realm of viper boyars.

  Sleep took him quickly. But it did not hold him long.

  A terrible chill woke him up in the dead of night. The cold was far deeper than a nightly chill in the plains - it felt unnatural. Older, somehow.

  He looked out to his tentflap, but saw it was closed. Then they are inside. How nice of them to come to die.

  Just as his hand crept for the longsword by his bed, two golden lights came to life before his eyes. He shouted in terror and leapt for the sword, only for a grip like cold iron to fasten itself around his wrist. Icy fingers dug deep into his flesh, and in an instant he felt himself weakening - his desperate strength draining away.

  Against the darkness, he could trace out the silhouette of the golden-eyed figure. Thin as a stalk, cloaked in rags that seemed to bleed into the gloom. It moved with no sound, but the air around it seemed to groan and whisper with a thousand voices at once.

  As she leaned down, the stench of decay reached his nostrils - the woman smelled thickly of rot, and he noticed her mouth and chin were a sickly gray, the color of death. “Heed my words, forgotten prince,” she rasped with a voice like creaking branches, ancient stone. “You dream of crowns and thrones, banners raised and rights claimed. But your path, Goran of Gatchisk…”

  Her grip tightened, and Goran thought his bones might shatter. “...your path brings only ruin.”

  He tried to speak, but his tongue felt like a limp slug in his own mouth. He tried to move, but his body might well have turned to lead for all the good it did.

  The woman’s head tilted, like a curious bird. “Do you not see it yet?” she asked, amused. The voice behind the terrible cacophony sounded familiar, dancing on the edge of a blurry memory. “Your true place is in the White City. Do you remember it?”

  All too well. Its name rang with foul familiarity. Belnopyl.

  “Yes,” the woman breathed. Does she hear my thoughts? “You do not belong to the past. Not to Gatchisk. Not to Klyazma. Your place lies along what is to come - and there is much work to be done.”

  The woman leaned in until she was a mere inch away from his face. Goran saw her burning pupils were slits, like those of a cat, and they burned through him, carving like a knife down to his soul.

  “Come now, forgotten prince…” she grinned, exposing pale teeth. “Goran of Nowhere…forget your old home. It is home no longer.”

  And then - nothing.

  Goran gasped awake, shooting upright in his bed. The chill was gone, and he was alone.

  He reached for his sword, and cast his eyes wildly about the tent. The flap was still shut. The only light within was the burnt stub of a candle, barely clinging on to a single ember. It was a cool night, and yet his shirt was soaked through with sweat. His hand and shoulder still ached where the dead thing had touched him, even if it seemed a terrible dream. Phantom pains? From a phantom dream, perhaps.

  He leapt from his cot and threw open the flap - but the night beyond was still silent and calm. Only a few distant torches lit the darkened plains, and by the moonlight he saw no footprints in the dirt. No intruder. Not even a trace of anything amiss.

  Just the deep, black night. As it always had been.

  And yet when he returned to his tent and sat down at his cot, he did not sleep again.

  His sword remained across his lap until dawn, and then the Young Griffon unfurled his wings.