Shanakan (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 1) (11 page)

“I am very well,” Stil replied.

Serhan took his hand and shook it, seeing the reaction in his eyes as he felt the stickiness of the grip. He had been correct in thinking that Stil was behind it.

“Look after the place for us while we’re gone, Colonel,” he said. “Our lord relies on you for so much.”

“Yes, of course,” a very pale Stil disengaged his hand hurriedly and headed quickly across the courtyard to the doorway leading to the east wing, where the Shan was concealed.

Darius tapped him on the shoulder. “What was all that about?” he asked in a low voice. “Stil looked scared of you.”

“Private joke,” Serhan said. He laughed. “Shall we go?”

Travelling to war was relaxing for Darius Grand. He never made rigid plans. That would come later. Instead he daydreamed the situations that he might find himself in, even the very worst, and what he would do in each one. He was riding with a body of one hundred trained soldiers towards a town of five thousand, all of whom would probably be glad for him not to be there, so there would be plenty of opportunities for disaster.

He liked to think that he understood people, and his instincts told him that the citizens of Sorocaba would not want to fight. Nobody ever wanted to fight, not even his troops, and not even Grand himself. Sometimes it was necessary, and sometimes people got carried away by fear, and sometimes by anger or grief.

If these people did fight, and it was possible, then it would be because they had been given reason to do so, a cause. That would be the wizard – Serhan’s responsibility. If the wizard was removed from the equation, then he was sure that he could work things out with minimum carnage.

As he rode alongside Serhan he looked at his colleague and friend – yes, he had begun to regard the young man as a friend – from time to time. He was relaxed, too, and that was a good thing. It was especially good for the troops who looked at their two relaxed and confident commanders, and relaxed themselves. They trusted Serhan and their captain to come up with a plan.

Grand himself did not feel that Serhan had a plan. He never did. Grand understood this, because he could never formulate a plan until he had enough information, had seen the lie of the land, gauged his enemy’s strength and resolve. These were all unknowns that he was usually able to determine in short order, and then a plan would emerge naturally from this information, even if that plan was to wait, or retreat.

Serhan planned and acted at the same time, it seemed. He did the same thing as Grand did, but he did it with blinding speed, between words, between strokes of a sword, and he was almost always right. He admired this ability, especially as the man was so young.

On the afternoon of the first day out from White Rock they rode up a long track that climbed the face of a scarp and emerged onto the back slope close to a ruin. It was hundreds of years old, from the time before the Faer Karan, but Serhan seemed interested in it. He was always interested in old things, always asked questions.

“What is that place?” he asked.

“Some sort of defensive position,” Grand replied. “It was destroyed hundreds of years ago. It is a forbidden place, now.”

“Forbidden? By whom?”

“Tradition. Probably by the Faer Karan originally.”

“I’d like to look at it.”

Grand looked up at the sun. They still had a couple of hours good light left, but he was in no hurry to get to Sorocaba, so he nodded. “All right,” he said. He called up his sergeant and told him to make camp on the edge of the woods a couple of hundred yards away. There was a spring there, and it was well sheltered from the wind. He picked five men to come with them.

As they rode up to the ruin Grand surveyed it. The woods came much closer to the line of the scarp here, fifty yards or so from the ruin. He was sure that they had not been so close when the thing was built. It would have been an easy place for an attacking force to hide. The foundations that remained showed that there had been a thick wall surrounding the keep, and as they approached he could see scorch marks on the broken stone from the last attack on the place, still present after four centuries. A portion of the inner tower was still standing, and dark doors and windows gaped at them. It was a little more than a storey high.

They dismounted and Serhan made his way towards the doorway. Grand followed, wondering what it was about the place that interested him.

“Someone died here,” Serhan said as Grand came up beside him.

“A few people I should think,” Grand replied.

“No. Someone important. Such force against what’s little more than a guard post. Any guard contingent would have surrendered to the Faer Karan.”

“Perhaps, but times were different then.”

Serhan turned and looked towards the forest, the way the door faced, as though he was trying to see the view as it had been seen then. Grand studied the walls. It had been a well built place.

There was a shout of alarm from one of their men, and Grand reached for his sword, only to be roughly pushed by Serhan. He stumbled to his knees. There was the distinctive sound of an arrow striking home, and running feet. He picked himself up and looked around. Two of his men were running towards them; three others were running at the tree line with swords drawn.

“Are you all right?” one of the men asked anxiously.

“I’ll be fine,” Serhan said. “The mail must have taken the force out of the arrow.”

The arrow in question was lying on the ground. It was iron tipped.

“What happened?” Grand asked.

“Some bastard popped up in the woods over there and loosed an arrow at you. Captain Serhan stepped in front of it. The others have gone to fetch him.”

“Signal the troops in the camp to move out and cut them off, I want to interrogate them,” Grand said. He turned to Serhan as the men moved away to obey his order. “That was a foolish thing to do. The arrow could easily have killed you.”

Serhan would not meet his eyes for a moment. “My armour is better than yours, I think.”

That was nonsense. They both had standard guard issue mail.

Another shout and they looked up. Three men were running towards them from the tree line, pursued by the three guards. The two that had been with them moments before were now too far away to help. Grand and Serhan drew their swords at the same time, and the oncoming men slowed a little. Grand could tell at a glance that they were not bandits. There was no armour, and their weapons were bows and daggers. Hunters, probably.

“Alive, Darius, we want them alive,” Serhan said.

Grand nodded. No point in killing hunters.

One of the three picked an arrow from his quiver and fitted it to his bow as he ran. They both saw him do it.

“Get behind me,” Serhan said.

“What?”

“Just do it. Trust me.”

Reluctantly he stepped back behind Serhan, leaving him as the bowman’s only target. The man stopped and raised the bow, only to be struck at that moment by several arrows from a mounted group of archers that had ridden up from the valley camp in answer to the summons. The man dropped dead, and his two companions, now only ten yards away stopped running.

“Put them down.” Serhan called. “Drop your weapons and you won’t be hurt.”

The men looked scared, but they did as they were told, and a moment later they were surrounded by armed men coming from all directions. They were seized and brought forward. They were both young, and in spite of their fear they were defiant.

“Why did you attack us,” Grand demanded.

“You’re thieves,” one of the hunters said. He was the bigger of the two.

“They should be executed, sir,” Grand’s sergeant said. “They tried to kill you.”

“You heard Captain Serhan give his word, sergeant,” Grand said. “They are to be spared, but I’d like to know why.” He turned to Serhan.

“I’ll explain later. I want to hear what they have to say.”

“Serhan?” the hunter said. “You are Cal Serhan?”

“Yes. Do you know me?”

“My cousin,” the hunter said. “He was with Bragga. Not of his own will. He came back to the village last week. You killed general Bragga?”

“Yes. He would not yield.”

“Then we are sorry for shooting at you. Bragga was a curse on all our lives. You lifted that curse.”

“You shot at us because you think we are thieves,” Serhan said impatiently.

“Yes, but you may take what you wish, Captain. The village is grateful.”

“Do you understand why Bragga’s band was broken up, why he died?”

“It does not matter.”

“Yes it does.” He turned to the troops. About sixty of them were gathered around now. “I want you all to understand why we killed Bragga, why we are making war on bandits. Just to know that it is done is not enough. These people,” he indicated the hunters, “and their families, are the people who feed us. We are not going to do things the old way any more. We will protect these people from bandits, and we will stop any new Bragga from arising. We will maintain peace. In return we expect the farmers to provide us with food, but we will not steal it. We will tell them in advance how much we need from each village, and we will expect it to be delivered to White Rock. With peace the land under cultivation will grow, and the population will grow, but we will not. Our needs will remain the same, so that as time passes the burden on each family will be less. This is how it will be.”

“Captain,” the hunter said. “Forever?”

“For as long as White Rock rules.”

“But what right have you to rule us?”

“You are brave to ask,” Serhan said. “I cannot answer you, other than to refer you to our lord Gerique of the Faer Karan.”

The hunter looked downcast, but then brightened. “You are trying to make things better for us,” he said. “I understand.”

“You will explain this to your village?”

“Yes, my lord.”

That caused a murmur throughout the assembled troops.

“I am not your lord,” Serhan said, very deliberately. “That privilege belongs to Gerique, who is the master of White Rock.”

“I understand,” the hunter said, but he smiled.

“What is your name,” Serhan asked.

“I am Carn san Rufus Barak,” the hunter said.

“You must make others understand, Carn. I would consider this a service.”

Grand considered the whole thing well done. The surviving hunters would be messengers for the new order that Serhan was trying to establish. He had used all his assets to sway the men, even those he was unaware of at the start of the interrogation. He had drawn in the guard, shown each side its advantage, and revealed the ultimate threat behind his words.

“I am sorry that your friend died here today,” Serhan went on. “The guard sought to protect their commanders, which is their purpose. It was an ill judged attack. Captain Grand,” he turned to Grand, almost formally. “Can you spare ten men to escort these men and their dead friend back to their village?”

“Of course.” It was a gesture. Get them used to seeing the guard doing something that wasn’t threatening. It was a good idea. He was beginning to understand the direction of Serhan’s strategy. The villagers were friends, and should be respected. The bandits were misguided, and should be warned or redirected, but tolerance would go only so far. Darius would not have been so gentle with either party.

Men were allocated to escort duty and left with the hunters. The rest returned to the camp, leaving the two captains and their original five bodyguards by the broken tower.

“You still want to look inside?” Grand asked.

“Of course. Do we have time?”

Grand looked up at the sun. There was still over an hour of good light. “Yes,” he said, “but you might want a torch.”

Serhan made his way to the door and entered. Grand followed. The interior was quite well lit because of the gaps in the walls. It was a single room, about fifty feet across. There was a place where stairs had once gone up to higher levels, but they were broken, and nothing significant remained of the roof. People had died here. There was a scattering of relics on the floor, swords, spear points, arrow heads, mail shirts. All of them rotten with age.  Serhan inspected them all carefully, working his way slowly towards a back corner. When he got there he knelt down and gently brushed away what remained of a couple of sets of mail.

“Here. Darius come and look at this.”

Grand walked across the room and looked at the floor. There was a large iron ring set into one of the stones. Serhan tried to move the ring, but it was rusted solid, and didn’t look like it could hold the weight of the stone any more.

“You think there’s something under that?”

“Who knows, but I want to have a look.”

Using their daggers and what purchase they could get on the ring and the stone they managed to lever an edge up high enough to slip one of the rusted swords under it, and then it was just a matter of brute strength to lift one edge of the slab and flip it over. They stood looking down into a black hole.

“How deep do you think it is?” Serhan asked. He was smiling and excited. Grand picked up a stone and dropped it into the darkness. It struck stone almost at once.

“No more than ten feet,” he said.

“I think we need that torch now.”

Grand went outside and talked to the guardsmen who waited there. They were still alert, and he could sense that they were embarrassed at being caught out by mere hunters.

“Fetch me a torch,” he said to one of them.

The man mounted and set off at a gallop down to the camp. Darius looked around him again, at the view down the scarp, where he could see for twenty miles, at the forest, and the ruins. There was something about this spot that he found uncomfortable. This place had been built as well as White Rock itself, perhaps by the same builders. There was no doubt that it had been brought low by the Faer Karan, and easily at that. He wondered at the men who had stood at the walls and in the keep, waiting for death. They must have known that it was hopeless by the time they faced the enemy, so why had they died? Perhaps Serhan was right. Someone important had died here.