“I’m stuck,” Drem said, his voice muffled. He was trying to put on a coat of mail, had seemed to be doing fine when he threaded his arms into it, but now he was having trouble getting it over his shoulders and finding the slit to squeeze his head through. His head and arms were in, but there seemed to be no way forward, just a great claustrophobic weight of steel constricting him.
Cullen chuckled behind him.
“There is an art to getting into a shirt of mail, Drem, my lad,” Cullen said.
Why does he insist on calling me his lad when I am older than him? Not for the first time, Drem resisted his usual urge to correct.
“I’ll help you, lad,” Keld said, a reassuring hand on Drem’s back. “Now, lift your arms straight up, and jump up and down. Let gravity do the work for you.”
Drem did, and after a few moments of worry, and a helping hand from Keld, the mail shirt slithered down over his head and torso.
It was heavy, rubbing on his shoulders, a weight on his arms when he tried to lift them, like he was wading through water.
“I don’t like it,” Drem said. “How can I fight in this?”
“A chainmail shirt is a pain, and no denying,” Keld said. “Takes some getting used to. But this will turn a blow that would slice through your leather jerkin like butter. Better to put up with the sore shoulders and be a bit slower than be dead.”
“But will being slower make me just as dead?” Drem worried.
Keld shrugged. “Move faster.”
That’s helpful.
“This’ll help,” Keld said, slipping a thin leather belt around Drem’s waist and buckling it tight.
Keld was right, though, as soon as the belt was on, it took some of the mail shirt’s weight off Drem’s shoulders.
Over half a moon had passed since the night he had entered the tunnels with Byrne. He could feel the scrape of the mail coat on the healing cut on his arm, little more than a dry scab now. He felt a sense of elation when he remembered that night, when he had sworn himself to Byrne. He did not regret it. Since then, each day, more warriors of the Order had arrived, answering Byrne’s summons to muster. And on each of those days Drem had trained almost from dawn until dusk. His left arm felt like it was going to fall off, muscles seized and stiff from shield work, something that Drem had been entirely unaccustomed to. Muscles throughout his whole body ached. Not because he was unfit. Living a trapper’s life in the Desolation had toned and honed Drem’s physicality far beyond what was normal, but these last fourteen nights Drem had used muscles in ways that they had never been used before.
He rolled his shoulders and ignored the aches and pains.
Keld and Cullen were already in shirts of mail, Cullen with a dark leather surcoat buckled over the top, Dun Seren’s four-pointed star emblazoned upon it. Keld wore his star in his cloak-brooch.
“Here you go, lad,” Cullen said, passing Drem his weapons- belt. Drem rolled his eyes at Cullen and took the belt. His sword and seax were already scabbarded on it, as well as two empty rings for hand-axes. There was also a pouch with Drem’s flint and striking iron, some tinder, and beside it one of the Order’s weighted nets, folded and ready for use. Drem had trained with it, managed to wrap himself in the net a dozen times before finally mastering the art of looping it over his head and releasing.
It had felt like a glorious moment. He liked to learn.
“Well, looks like you’re all dressed as fine as can be,” Keld said, looking Drem up and down.
A horn sounded from outside.
Drem felt a stone settle in his gut. They all knew what the horn was for, a weight hanging over them all, though none of them had spoken of it since Drem had opened his chamber door to the two warriors. It had all been light-hearted quips, purposely avoiding what they knew was coming.
They were leaving Dun Seren and marching back into the Desolation. Crow scouts had returned from the Desolation, telling of Gulla’s warband marching south from Kergard and destroying all in its path. Drem knew that Byrne had hoped to continue gathering her forces until Kol’s White-Wings had arrived, but this news from the north had forced her hand.
“We exist to protect the innocent from evil like the Kadoshim,” Byrne had said to Drem. “We will not sit idly by while innocents are being slaughtered. Not when I can do something to save them.”
So, they were marching to war.
The three of them shared a look.
“It’s time, then,” Cullen said.
Drem grabbed two short-axes from his desk where he’d been sharpening them and slipped them into the rings on his belt.
They turned and walked from Drem’s chambers, through corridors that grew busier with every footstep, and then they were striding through Dun Seren’s keep and out onto the steps that led down into the courtyard.
All was noise and chaos. Horses, bears and wolven-hounds, giants, men and women, a swirling, milling mass. Keld led them across the courtyard to a huge stable block, stablehands standing and waiting with three bridled horses. Drem took the reins of his mount, a big roan mare. She whickered as he rested his head against hers, gave her half an apple from his belt pouch, which she crunched contentedly, and then he was swinging himself up into the saddle, a moment as he wavered, adjusting to the weight of his chainmail shirt, and then he was settled in the saddle.
A few moments of waiting, cold breath misting in dawn’s chill, Drem patting his horse’s neck, and then horns were blowing again and Byrne was riding into the courtyard, Ethlinn and Balur behind her, mounted upon great bears. Byrne reined in before the statue of Corban, a silence settled; her horse dancing a few paces, sensing the excitement and adrenalin that was crackling through the fortress.
“We are marching to kill Gulla,” Byrne cried out, “to put an end to those that have brought war to our world.” She paused, looked around. “TRUTH AND COURAGE,” she yelled, and Drem added his voice to the roar that answered her.
“TRUTH AND COURAGE,” echoing from the fortress walls, lingering in the air.
And then Byrne was riding out from the courtyard, crows circling in the air above, squawking a cacophony of “Truth and Courage.”
Ethlinn and Balur One-Eye rode behind Byrne, a clattering of hooves and bear claws and iron-shod boots. Two thousand warriors, men, women and giants, a swarm of wolven-hounds loping on their flanks, banners of a white star on a black field rippling in the wind, and the Order of the Bright Star rode forth from Dun Seren.
“Where is everyone?” Drem asked.
They had been riding half a day and had just reached Dalgarth, the bustling traders’ village that Drem had passed through on the way to Dun Seren. It was a very different place, now.
Cure had travelled back to Dun Seren from Dalgarth once since Drem had returned from the Desolation, to tell them that Dalgarth was to be quarantined. He had ridden back the same day, and not been heard from since.
The walls were unmanned, gates hanging open, creaking on a northerly wind, and the streets were empty.
A sense of unease seeped into Drem, and he could see it was affecting them all, warriors ahead and behind looking about, searching for any signs of life. Drem was close to the head of the column and he saw Stepor appear from a side alley, his black and red wolven-hounds with him as he reported to Byrne.
“No one, not a soul,” Drem heard the huntsman say.
“Where have they all gone?” Cullen said, a frown creasing his usual high spirits.
Keld said nothing, but the three of them shared a look. Hildith and the scouts had told tales of the holds and villages in the Desolation laid low by plague and something worse.
Revenants, Drem thought.
He shrugged his shoulders and loosened his sword and seax in their scabbards.
They rode on, through the silent village, even the crows above them ceasing their constant chatter. Slowly the warband emerged from the far side of the village and continued. As they crested a ridge Drem reined in a moment and twisted in his saddle, looking back.
Dalgarth sat like a stain upon the land, unnaturally still and empty, and behind it in the distance Drem could see the dark line of the river Vold, and the walls and tower of Dun Seren beyond.
I have only been there a short while, but Cullen was right, it does feel like home.
He turned, looking forwards, the undulating, cracked landscape of the Desolation before him.
And now we are riding back towards danger, towards Kadoshim and Feral beasts and death. He sighed, feeling the weight of it settling in his soul.
But I am glad to do that, because my father’s killers are out there. Fritha, Gunil and you, Gulla, the puppet-master of these dread days. I will kill you all, if I can. I shall take my father’s sword back, and then I shall fulfil his oath, and slay your king. I will take Asroth’s head.
If I can.
Or die in the trying.
He clicked his horse into a trot, catching up with Cullen and Keld, and they rode on.
Into the Desolation.