Forge of Darkness

He watched his wife gesture and then she was riding down the road with her troop.



Glancing back, he saw smoke coming from the keep’s slit windows, and drifting out from the open front doorway. It was not as easy to burn such edifices as one might think, he knew, since they were mostly stone. He turned to the soldier at his side. ‘I trust you are confident that it will burn down.’



The man nodded, and then shrugged. ‘Nobody will want to live in it, sir.’



‘Let’s head down to the village, then, and be on with it.’



‘Yes sir.’



‘I want to look upon the lieutenant’s body.’



‘Sir?’



‘To pay my respects.’



Captain Hallyd Bahann, Tutor Sagander decided, was an unpleasant man. Handsome, with grey in his short-cropped hair, he had about him an arrogance that, for some odd reason, women liked. No doubt he could charm, but even then his commentary was sly and verged on cutting. It baffled Sagander that Captain Tathe Lorat shared the man’s tent. She possessed a beauty that left the tutor breathless, and looking upon her — the laughter in her eyes and the ever ready smile on her full, painted lips — it seemed impossible that she would delight in killing and, even more appalling, that she would keep in her company a daughter sired by her first, now dead, husband, and that then she would do… this.



They sat in the command tent, the two captains and Sagander, and Hallyd Bahann’s dark eyes glittered with something like barely contained mirth. At his side, Tathe Lorat was refilling her goblet with yet more wine, and the flush of her cheeks held its own glow in the faint lanternlight.



‘I see,’ she said in a slurred drawl, ‘that you are struck speechless, tutor, which must, I am sure, be a rare occurrence. Do you wonder at my generosity? Good sir, even now, behind you on the tent wall, we can make out the flames from the monastery. True, the monks fought with uncommon vigour and we took disturbing losses despite your betrayal, but this nest of Deniers is now destroyed, and for that we are pleased to reward you.’



‘It may be,’ Hallyd said, half smiling, ‘that the tutor prefers boys.’



Tathe’s perfect brows lifted. ‘Is this so, tutor? Then I am sure we can find-’



‘No, captain, it is not,’ Sagander replied, looking down. He sat on a camp stool, and with but one leg to anchor himself he felt poorly perched upon the leather saddle of the seat. The imbalance he felt in his body was like an infection, spreading out to skew the entire world. ‘Did none of them surrender?’



Hallyd snorted. ‘Why should the fate of the Deniers concern you now? You showed us the old tunnel to the second well. By your invitation, we visited slaughter upon the occupants of that monastery. However, I will assure you none the less. Not one knelt except to more closely observe the ground awaiting their final fall.’



‘And the Mother?’



‘Dead. Eventually.’ And his smile broadened.



‘Is it,’ Tathe asked, ‘that you do not find my daughter attractive?’



‘C-captain,’ Sagander stammered, ‘she rivals even you.’



Tathe slowly blinked. ‘I am well aware of that.’



There was something ominous in her tone and Sagander felt his gaze drop yet again.



‘We tire of your indecision,’ said Hallyd Bahann. ‘Do not think she will be unfamiliar with her purpose. She is no virgin and is indeed now well into her womanhood. We do not approve of consort with children and among our soldiers we count it a heinous crime punishable by castration or, in the case of women, the branding of their breasts. Now then, will you accept our offer or not?’



‘A most generous reward,’ Sagander said in a mumble. ‘I–I am pleased to accept.’



‘Go then,’ said Tathe Lorat. ‘She awaits you in her tent.’



As always, it was a struggle to climb upright, using his crutch like a ladder, and then tottering as he found his balance. Breathing hard with the effort, he made his way out of the command tent.



The stench of smoke filled the air, drifting down into the streets and alleys of Abara Delack. Here and there walked squads of Legion soldiers, still loud and boisterous in the aftermath of the battle, although more than a few could be seen who were silent, for whom the end of the killing saw a second battle, this time with grief. Sagander looked upon them all as savages, filled with brutal appetites and the stupidity that marked bullies. Every civilization bred such creatures and he longed for a time when they could, one and all, be done away with. A civilization for ever within easy reach of a blade had little to boast about.