19
GORARIC
THE SARASINIAN 5th ARMY FOLLOWERS’ CAMP
SARASINIAN OCCUPIED AHRENIA
Goraric had seen the red and gold pavilion before, he was certain of it. With its three poles and dozens of guy ropes, it was probably big enough to sleep twenty. Water still beaded on its sides despite days of rain, too. Few men in the camp had coin enough to afford a beauty like that one. No question it belonged to Leonf.
He made a dozen careful circuits, staying well clear, just watching it out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t guarded, just like the ragged man had said. His gut told him it was a trap, that the man was a liar, and that he should walk away while he still could. Besides, Kolf had only sent him to find leads, not to follow them up as well. He wouldn’t be at all impressed if he got in over his head. Far better to leave now and come back in force.
On the other hand, what if the ragged man had told the truth? What if the girls were actually in there? Rescuing them would go far with their families, and surely atone for his past mistakes. Going in alone was a big risk, but the potential payoff was equally big. Besides, by the time he reported back to Kolf, the girls might be long gone. He’d already failed them once by letting that bastard Giandelone take them, and he would not fail them again.
He smiled nonchalantly at a boy carrying a pair of chickens, then waited for other passers-by to move on. Satisfied there was no one else around, he crept over and put an ear to the tent. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, exactly, but he couldn’t actually hear anything. With a prayer to Owic on his lips, he took out his knife, pushed the door flap aside and ducked through.
It was dark. A candle on a stand sputtered in one corner, its feeble light casting sinister shadows and puffs of acrid smoke. He coughed as he peered around, waving his free hand in a vain attempt to clear the air. What looked like black streams criss-crossed the ground, and the place reeked of shit.
Thick shapes materialised on the ground. He knelt beside the nearest, but it was too dark to see well. Then, just as his intuition finished telling him they were corpses, something man-sized dashed out of the shadows and tried to tackle him.
Goraric yelped, almost dropping his knife as he grappled with his attacker. Exchanging grunts, they stepped on each other’s toes, bashed their knees together, and went to the ground trying to get an arm around the other’s neck. He took some blows to the face, but it only made him angry and more determined to win. He managed to get on top, his elbow in the other guy’s windpipe, and then he remembered his knife. The man went limp after the first flurry of blows, but he kept stabbing until his arm ached and he was out of breath.
Goraric rolled away, exhausted. He lay on his back next to the body, heart racing, desperately sucking air into his lungs. The smoke from the candle made him cough, and suddenly his mouth felt sour. Overcome by a wave of nausea, he vomited.
“Euuch,” he said, smearing bile, fermented milk and bits of sausage bun over his lips and chin. He felt better, but not much. The candle flickered, and he belatedly swivelled around, holding up his knife to ward off any more attackers. Fortunately, no one came at him out of the gloom.
The enormity of what he’d done began to sink in. Everything had happened so quickly that he almost couldn’t believe it had happened at all. He put a hand on his attacker and felt around. No breath, no pulse, and no response when he touched the eyes. Definitely dead.
So, he had killed a man. His first. Purely unintentional, because it wasn’t as if he’d come looking for a fight. Kill or be killed–wasn’t that the way of these things? But he had no more time to reflect on it because the nausea was suddenly back. This time he heaved until his stomach was empty.
The candle flickered again, and he remembered that he still had a job to do. He got up, put a foot on something slippery, and went straight back on his arse.
“Shit,” he muttered. Something unpleasant was seeping through his trousers. Or had he wet himself? He checked. No. And he hadn’t cut himself on his knife, either, since his hands seemed intact and a quick poke around his legs and torso revealed nothing. Or at least no immediately obvious damage, anyway. His face felt banged up, but he didn’t think he was bleeding.
Eventually he realised the source of his discomfort was external–he was sitting in a puddle. He groped around until his hand closed on something soft and spongy. When he put his fingers to his face, they glowed black in the candlelight and smelled strongly of blood.
On all fours, avoiding corpses and their black spillage, Goraric made his way over to the candle. He stood to grab it, wincing as molten wax spilled onto his fingers, and held it up. On the floor of the pavilion lay all kinds of rubbish. He counted three corpses, four if you included the one he’d made. Rubbish and bodies… but no cage. Shit. The ragged man had said there’d be a cage!
Candle smoke stung his eyes and he started coughing again, inadvertently blowing out the flame and plunging the interior of the pavilion into total darkness. Of all the luck! With no way to light it again, he flung it away.
Candle or not, there was no point in hanging around. The pavilion had been a trap. The man who’d taken his drems had obviously set him up. Every word out of his mouth had been designed to get him here to be ambushed. Even the key was just a prop to make the whole thing seem less of a trap. And Goraric had wanted to believe. He’d wanted to be a hero so desperately that he’d almost lost his life in the pursuit.
Stupid, but at least his luck had held. The ambush had failed. The same couldn’t be said for whoever had been lured here ahead of him. But instead of thinking about that, he had to get out of the tent, and quickly. He had to return to Kolf before his good fortune dried up.
He got down on all fours again and crawled until he was sure he was back at the door. He found the flap and was about to open it when he heard voices outside. He froze. If anyone saw him now, he would have a very difficult time explaining himself. Trespassing, covered in blood, bloody knife in hand, in a corpse-tent? A mob would have him dangling on the end of a rope before sunrise, and not even Kolf could save him. Perhaps that was Leonf’s ruse–not to ambush him, but to frame him for murder? Whatever way you looked at it, he was stupid to have come here. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! In what way wasn’t he now completely fucked?
Feelings of dread multiplying until they sat like a stone in his stomach, he went back to where he’d dropped the candle and hunkered down behind some discarded pillows. Not a moment too soon either, because the door flap opened and someone thrust a lamp inside. Goraric’s heart hammered in his ears as he willed himself not to move. Or be seen.
“Raidey?” asked a man. “Raidey?” A few moments went by. “Hey, Raidey’s not ‘ere.”
“Huh?” asked a second man. “What?”
The first man withdrew the lamp. “Oi said, Raidey’s not in the tent.”
“Eh? What d’ya mean?”
“Oi mean ‘e’s not in the fuckin’ tent! What fuckin’ else could Oi mean?”
“How come?”
“Oi don’t fuckin’ know, do Oi?”
“Well where is ‘e then?”
“Is moi fuckin’ face red? Why ya askin’ me?”
There was a pause. “Oh, shit. Ya don’t reckon...?”
“Reckon what?”
Another pause. “Nah. Forget it. Prob’ly just gone for a piss or sumthin’ I expect.”
“Yeah,” said the first man. “Well, come on! Get in, get in! Quick, ‘fore we’re seen.”
Goraric groaned inwardly as the men entered the pavilion and shut the flap behind them. He closed his eyes and gripped the handle of his knife, a thousand thoughts racing through his head. He sent a prayer to Owic in the hope that he wouldn’t die tonight. Or, if that’s what He wanted, to at least make his end as quick and painless as possible.
And then the lamp went out.
“Hey!” spat the first man. “What’d ya do that for? Now we can’t see shit.”
“Can’t keep it on,” said the other. “You fuckin’ know that.”
“Yeah. S’pose.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll just wait for Raidey.”
Another pause. A long one. “What if the next sap gets ‘ere afore Raidey does?”
“We can take ‘im. Two against one. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“All right. Bit o’ shush then, eh? And back away from the flap this time, will ya? The last one what come in saw ya ‘fore ‘e was all the way in in.”
There was a chuckle. “Didn’t make no difference in the end, eh?”
“Yeah. Now, shhh.”
Time passed. For Goraric it seemed like a very, very long time indeed. And in that time, his mouth went dry even as his palms starting leaking. Seriously, it was as if he’d just washed them.
The first man spoke again. “What’s keepin’ Raidey?”
“Shh.”
“Should be back by now, don’t ya reckon?”
“Shh.”
“And what ‘appened to the candle?”
“Shhh! Mm. Reckon it went out.”
“Shouldn’t ‘ave, but.”
“Mm. Oh well, we’ll just loight it up again then, eh?”
“Yeah.”
More time passed. Eventually another man spoke, only his voice came from outside the pavilion. “Oi in there! It’s me. You guys done yet or what?” Goraric thought it sounded a lot like the ragged man.
The second man replied. “Raidey?”
“What? No, it’s Haris.”
“Haris?”
“Yeah. So, are you lot done or what?”
One of the two inside men opened the flap. “What?”
“I said,” said Haris, “are you lot done?”
“Done with what?”
Haris seemed annoyed by the question. “Done with the one I just bloody well sent you?”
“Which one?”
“Goraric. I directed him here a good while back.”
Goraric’s heart practically skipped a beat at the mention of his name. He swallowed.
“Huh? No, we ‘aven’t seen ‘im.”
“What do you mean?” asked Haris, clearly not wanting to believe what he was hearing. “That can’t be right. I saw him go in with my own eyes!”
“You sure about that? We been in ‘ere awhile and we ‘aven’t seen no one.”
“Of course I’m sure,” said Haris, indignant. “I sent him, and he went in.”
“Well there’s no one in ‘ere save us two.”
“What?” Haris was more confused than ever. “There are only two of you? Where’s Raidey?”
“Dunno. Guess ‘e’s not back yet?”
“What?”
“Well we uh, took a bit of a piss break an’ when we got back ‘e wasn’t ‘ere.”
Haris paused. “What?”
“Oi said, we took a piss break an’ when we got back Raidey wasn’t ‘ere!”
“You… took a piss break?”
“Yeah.”
“Both of you?”
“Yeah.”
“And you left Raidey on his own? Here, in the tent?”
“Well, uh, yeah. But you know, it’s Raidey. Oi mean, it’s not like ‘e couldn’t ‘andle ‘imself!”
“So,” said Haris, now sounding very drained, “you two left to take a piss break, together? And you left Raidey here by himself? And then when you returned, he was gone?”
“Well, yeah. Yeah, pretty much.”
There was another pause. “Out! Quick!”
“Huh?”
“Out!” cried Haris. “Get out! Goraric’s in there with you!”
The men fled. Goraric heard them tying off the entry flap from outside, followed by calls for help. He got to his feet, almost overwhelmed by panic. Shit! Shit! Shit!
And then he remembered his knife.
The pavilion’s canvas would have been easier to get through if Goraric, like an idiot, hadn’t neglected to keep his blade sharp. Even so, he eventually managed to poke a hole in one side. Fibres popped as he tried to widen it with his hands, but that was the extent of his success. “Fuck!”
Desperate, he hacked and strained until he had the hole big enough to fit his head through. The followers’ camp air was notoriously fetid, but at that moment it smelled like summer rain. Tucking his knife in his belt, he grabbed the edges of the hole and pulled for all he was worth. To his relief and delight, more of the canvas began to give way.
He’d worked a gap in the side of the pavilion almost big enough to crawl through when he saw men coming. “There!” cried one, pointing at him. “There! Get ‘im!”
“Fuck!” said Goraric. There were three of them, and two had spears. He didn’t like his chances, so he edged back inside where they couldn’t easily strike him.
“In, in!” yelled someone, and a moment later a man tried to wriggle through his hard-won exit strategy.
“Muuh!” yelled Goraric and he pounced, sinking his knife into flesh. It stuck fast, so he abandoned it and went for the man’s spear. The fellow practically handed it over in his shock and haste to get away, and Goraric wasted no time in using it on the insides of his thighs.
“Fuck!” yelled the man, crawling back through the opening. “He got me! He got me!”
Goraric heard a terrified voice. “Oh, mother of fuck! He’s bleeding! What do we do now?”
“Shit!” said another. “Fuck it, I don’t know.”
“Cut the ropes!” shouted someone else. “Cut the guy ropes! Bring the fuckin’ tent down on top o’ the cunt’s head!”
Goraric knew he wouldn’t last much longer without help. “Kolf!” he roared. “Kolf! Come and get me, you bastard!”
The men outside laughed. “Oh we’ll get ya, ya little son of a bitch! We’ll get ya!”
They must have misheard him. “Fuck you!” he screamed. “I killed Raidey!”
His side of the pavilion collapsed in reply. He backed away, thinking about trying to poke another gap somewhere else with his new spear. But almost before he could even complete the thought, another section of the pavilion came down.
Goraric knelt, waiting for the end. The canopy would fall on his head, and Leonf’s men–he had no doubt it was them outside–would finish him off with their spears. He didn’t imagine they’d be in a hurry, either. “Kolf! Kolf! Where are youuuu?! Kolf!”
He was still composing a final prayer to Owic when he heard the unmistakable sound of fighting outside. He wiped a sweaty hand down his trouser leg, then jabbed at one of the pavilion’s remaining sides with the spear. At first it went much like it had with the knife, but he kept at it until he again had a gap large enough to accommodate his head.
He looked out, and sure enough, a battle was raging around the pavilion. Men screamed, axes thumped into shields, and there were already bodies on the ground. Goraric couldn’t immediately recognise the participants, but then he saw his cousin and his heart leapt with joy. “Tarec!” he shouted.
Tarec made straight for him, a couple of companions in tow. “Goraric! Goraric! Holy shit, you’re alive! Are you all right?”
Goraric grinned. “Tarec! I can’t believe you’re here!”
“Kolf sent us to find you! Come on, out! We need to get out of here.” And with that, Tarec and others began cutting him free.
“Praise Owic, because I don’t think–” said Goraric, but he was interrupted by the arrival of new enemies. Tarec’s men turned to engage them, fending off spear points with their shields, but they were outnumbered. His cousin finished carving his exit, and Goraric leapt from the pavilion with his spear at the ready.
“Fall back!” shouted Tarec. On hearing him, Leonf’s men came on with renewed purpose. Tarec turned and ran. Goraric thought it cowardly, but then everyone was running and he had no choice but to do the same.
Goraric fled with Tarec’s men as they made a fighting retreat through the followers’ camp. Ordinary folk shrank away, wanting no part of the violence. Although they pursued them hotly for a while, eventually Leonf’s men pulled back. Even so, Tarec ran a while longer before calling a halt.
“Why stop now?” asked Goraric. “Why not go all the way back to headquarters?”
“Orders,” said Tarec. “We’re to regroup here.”
Kolf found them soon after, accompanied by around thirty followers. He took off his helm and clapped Tarec and others about the shoulders, and then he hugged Goraric with such gusto it was almost embarrassing. “Thank fuck!” he cried. “Thank fuck! I thought we’d lost you for sure!”
“Praise Owic,” said Goraric. “I’m all right.”
Kolf peered at him. “From head to foot you’re red, nephew!”
“Eh? Oh, it’s not mine.”
His uncle’s eyebrows went up. “You killed, eh?” He turned to Tarec. “How many did you lose?”
Tarec looked down at his toes. “Two.”
Kolf gave a grim nod. “Ah. More’s the pity. Their families will receive compensation from us, though, mark my words.”
Tarec made a face. “They were good men, uncle.”
“No doubt,” said Kolf. “And that’s true of every Upright Man, Tarec. But tonight’s enterprise cost Leonf a lot more than it did us. He paid dearly for their lives, I assure you.”
Tarec merely folded his arms, his vambraces scraping against his mail shirt.
“Don’t believe me? We just came from his headquarters. He wasn’t expecting an attack there, I don’t think. We killed at least a dozen of the bastards, Tarec. A dozen!”
Tarec nodded but seemed neither heartened nor impressed by the news. “Mm.”
Kolf put an arm around Goraric. “And best of all, you rescued this one!”
“How did you know where I was?” asked Goraric.
Kolf pursed his lips. “We’ll talk about that later.”
“That pavilion. It was a trap.”
“Yeah. And luckily for you we figured it out right quick as well, eh?”
Goraric gave Kolf a pained look. “I thought the girls were in there, but they weren’t. I failed you.”
“No,” said Kolf, shaking his head. “You didn’t. Mistakes were made, but everything that happened tonight was pure Leonf. Cunning bastard. And at least he didn’t get you, eh?”
“Well, yes,” said Goraric. He forced a smile. “There is that, I suppose.”
“Don’t worry. He’ll never catch us the same way again.”
“Yeah,” said Goraric, shaking and feeling suddenly more fatigued than he’d ever felt in his life. He sat, not caring that the ground was muddy. “Once was more than enough for me as well.”