The Exile

  In the far distance, beneath the walls of the Tusorano fortress-city, a dying man’s screams echoed through the bleak morning. When the gates to the fortress rumbled open, drowning out his cries, an Yllahanan watchman screamed, “To arms! To arms!”

  Signal horns roused the encampment from its sleep and into a flurry of whoops, curses, and barked orders. Goran knew enough of the Yllahanan tongue to make sense of the overlapping shouts, but the fear in the legionnaires’ voices would have been plain to anyone as they scrambled for armor and weapons.

  High above the Yllahanan siege of Tusorano, the morning sun’s rays barely pierced the dense, gray clouds. To the north where the Yllahanans had landed, there echoed the crash of hull against hull as the Republic’s transports were slammed together in the Shipbreaker’s Tide. To the south the fortress loomed, its smooth, white stone walls disfigured by the siege engines the Yllahanans had erected three days ago in a futile attempt to pound them into dust.

  Outside the fortress-city, the Anquiltes assembled - those former slave-warriors who had cast off their chains, driven the Republic from Rondelle, and sworn fealty to the distant White Khan for their freedom. Rows upon rows of purple tower-shields and tarnished golden helmets arranged themselves into a long battle line as they prepared to meet their besiegers.

  On his own side, trumpet calls and drumming rolled across the dusty eastern plains as the Yllahanans formed up their own legions in ragtag fashion, flying the red eagle banner of the Republic against the Anquiltes’ own purple eagle.

  When he was younger, Goran might have found the marshaling of warriors on both sides exhilarating. The green recruits that made up the bulk of the Yllahanan legions might think the same - right up until they would be disemboweled by another man whose only difference was his choice of banner.

  For many of the Yllahanan legionnaires, this would be their first - and for some, their last - battle. It would be Goran’s fortieth.

  Seasoned and bloodied, stamped and sealed. A man of the Company, that’s me. He had killed and wounded, and taken his fair share of wounds himself. He had led heavy cavalry, horse archers, and armored shield-bearers into the thick of battle beneath ten different standards. He had heard men screaming his name in fear as he cut them down and in admiration when they stood alongside him in victory.

  Yet for all he had done and all he had seen, the prospect of another battle still made Goran’s blood run cold. For all he had done, he had always told himself that he did not care whether he lived or died - except he always found himself caring quite a lot.

  What a fool you are, whispered the nasty, sharp-tongued voice in his head. Lying even to yourself.

  You still think you can rebuild.

  You still think you can be a prince again.

  Goran forced down his own treacherous thoughts with a sigh and hurriedly walked down from the hill where his tent stood. An Yllahanan messenger rode into the camp atop a gold-clad horse, announcing himself as an envoy of Senator Numeria Luonerssa. The Company’s commanders, a motley group from across half the known world, met him at the camp’s entrance.

  “Senator Luonerssa was…perplexed by your request,” spoke the Yllahanan envoy. “Who here holds command?”

  “The Captain’s indisposed right now,” responded Heller. The commander of the Company’s footmen was already dressed for battle, wearing a layer of maille and an iron breastplate with a faded Solarian sunburst. “‘Twas us who wanted to speak with the Senator.”

  The messenger scoffed. “You forget your place, Solarian. Did you truly believe a Senator would come at the beck and call of common hired swords?”

  Goran spoke up before Heller could snap back. “My apologies, your honor. We only wished to confirm the terms before our men fight.”

  The messenger rolled his eyes, “Gold and pillage for service, a contract as old as time, boy. What more is there to discuss?”

  “Land.” said Goran. “Land for service, as we agreed.”

  The messenger gave a thin smile. A smiling Yllahanan was never a good sign. “Ah, yes. Ten acres of fertile land for every common man, a thousand for every officer, and ten thousand for the Captain. Given upon the defeat of Rondelle.”

  “Yes, once we’ve taken Tusorano,” said Kassa eagerly. The commander of the Company’s light horse adjusted the leopard pelt he wore over his battered breastplate. “Land for victory.”

  “You are mistaken,” said the messenger through his smug smile. “The contract calls for the defeat of Rondelle. The men here are but a garrison. If Tusorano is taken, will the Anquiltes throw down their arms, accept the slave collar, and surrender themselves back to the Republic?”

  Goran’s armor felt suddenly stifling as anger flared in his chest. “No, but we—”

  “Then there is nothing more to say.” A trumpet blast signalled the Yllahanans forming ranks to meet the Anquiltes sally. “Until Rondelle falls and the Republic’s eagle flies over Valle once more, you will not receive an inch of Yllahanan soil.”

  “Valle has never fallen to an army, not in a thousand years,” Yasaman, the crossbow commander, growled. “This is treachery.”

  “It is no treachery,” said the messenger. “Your leader himself read and signed the contract. Do not direct your anger at me, direct it at your fool Captain who bound you all in service.”

  With that, the messenger trampled off atop his golden horse, leaving the commanders standing in the camp’s dust, realization settling over them like a curse.

  “Yllahanan cunt!” roared Heller, his pale face flushed beet red as he raged at the retreating messenger’s back. “Son of a poxy whore!”

  You still think you can be a prince. Goran’s hands curled into fists as old faces swam before him. No land, no future, no hope. Just another mercenary dog. Just another fool with a sword. Just another nobody.

  He wanted to scream, to curse, to draw his sword and pull out the messenger’s bowels from his stomach. To let loose the endless, howling rage he felt burning a hole in his chest. But instead, he unclenched his fists and thumbed his nose in the messenger’s direction before turning to the others.

  “Enough. We still have our contract. I’ll mobilize my riders—the rest of you prepare your men.”

  “Curse their orders and piss on the contract,” hissed Yasaman. “Those Yllahanan bastards fooled us. I say we leave - let’s see how they fare taking the fort without us to save their pale asses.”

  “Idiot,” Kassa snapped. “If we break with the Republic, who else do you think would hire us?”

  “Someone will,” Yasaman shrugged back. “Rich men always need someone else to do their killing for them - all that matters is finding someone desperate enough.”

  “I say aye to that,” murmured Heller. “Bugger these blood-mages with a bloody spear, all of ‘em.

  Goran raised a hand. “Not our call. We command, we fight—but Araldo decides who and when. I’ll take it up with him. The rest of you, do your part. We’ve had bad contracts before - do not throw away the honor of the entire company over this single folly.”

  The commanders exchanged hard looks, then stalked off to their troops, tense and grim. Goran watched them go, then turned toward the Captain’s tent on the hill.

  Araldo cannot stand for this, he thought as he marched across the dusty campgrounds. Even an old fool such as he would see we need to leave, renegotiate, do something.

  Time was running short. Another blast from the trumpets sounded, this time from the ranks of the defenders who prepared to march. As he neared the Captain’s tent, Goran turned and saw the wave of purple shields and golden helms beginning to slowly crawl forward.

  Something…and soon.

  The Captain’s tent was bright blue, its entrance embroidered with a silver lancer. Goran stepped inside and was hit by a wave of sickly-sweet perfume. But even as overwhelming as it was, the smell was too weak to mask the stench of disease, piss, and shit. Goran squinted through the darkness, and shook off a soiled sheet clinging to his boots.

  The Captain of the Kororys Company lay beneath a mountain of blankets and pillows. His arms and armor - sword, mace, plated maille, and an iron greathelm with a feathered plume - waited for him on a wooden Waiting for a master who would not, could not, rise to bear them again.

  Beneath his blankets, Araldo was naked and feverish - his pale, flabby skin was covered in sores that endlessly wept strange pus and fluids. His long beard was rough and unkept, and was sticky with mucus and bile. For a moment it seemed as though the Captain was dead. But when Goran moved closer, Araldo shivered awake.

  Goran wrinkled his nose at the sight of the Captain. Once, the Kororys Company had seemed unbeatable, and their Captain had been resplendent. He rode day and night at the head of the cavalry, armor polished to a shine, his sapphire cape trailing in the wind. That same cape was now a musty rag atop stained clothes.

  A captured Rondellian healer claimed the disease that was eating their Captain alive from the inside out lurked within for years - yet it had only taken a month for the illness to lay the Captain on death's door once it awakened. First were the headaches, which Araldo had dismissed as the price of strong wine. Then the weakness, forcing him to name his Klyazmite squire Goran the commander of the Company's heavy cavalry. Then the sores, the stench, the shits - and by then no amount of incense and perfumes could hide the sickness from the other commanders. The Captain reeked of disease - he reeked of death. And if they did not act soon, perhaps the rest of the Company would follow him into the grave.

  “Who is it?” croaked Araldo, his eyes barely able to open. “Who is it?”

  The dying Captain of the greatest mercenary company in the world was a small man without his splendor. A small, old, confused man. Another face flashed before Goran's eyes, a memory from another life. His own father stared back up at him from beneath the blankets and pillows as Goran drew closer.

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  Take the girl, his father had said one night in a far-away land, in a far-away time. He had only been a boy then, even if he did not feel like it. Her father may not consent, but he will have no choice if you make her yours by force. Take her, make her your bride, and I will protect you from what may come. Your father commands it.

  Goran leashed his runaway mind as he lowered himself to Araldo's side. “Captain. The Yllahanans have made a mockery of us - they have tricked us, and you.”

  Araldo shifted onto his side with a groan. “How so?”

  “Their promises of land…they told us we would only receive our reward when we take all of Rondelle.”

  “All of it?”

  “Yes!” breathed Goran. “They said we won’t have an inch of Yllahanan soil until Valle falls.”

  Araldo thought slowly. The sickness ravaged his mind - turned a man quick of wit and tongue into a doddering fool. “No one has ever taken Valle.”

  “Exactly!” said Goran. Outside, the distant horns’ call signalled the Yllahanans’ march against the Anquiltes. Battle was almost on them - something had to happen, and soon. “They will never give us our land! They’ll string us along, snatch what little territory they truly seek, then they will toss us to the side and laugh at us!”

  “But they will still give us gold,” murmured Araldo. “Mountains of it. No one pays better than the Republic. Gold is such a fine thing…”

  “I don't want gold.”

  Goran spoke in a whisper, yet his words seemed to fill the whole world. For a moment, he felt like a boy again. An angry, homesick boy who had to leave all he knew and loved to sail to a foreign lands alone. “I don't want gold. I don't want loot. I don’t want riches. I want a home.”

  Araldo's chest jerked up and down as he coughed violently. A small smile crept up to the Captain's face, and Goran realized he was laughing.

  “Listen boy…” Araldo croaked. “War is your home. Your life is here, in the shieldwall, in the saddle, in the battle line. Forget your old home - it does not exist anymore. Your brothers here and now are who matter, they are your home.”

  The Captain's words rang with a certain truth - after five years, some of the memories had begun to fade. He no longer remembered the names of the boyars’ sons he sparred with in the courtyard. He no longer remembered the face of the old cook in his father’s employ who had given him sweets. He no longer remembered the names of the towns and villages that were promised to be his to rule.

  But he did remember some things. Goran never forgot their faces - the boyars who laughed at his back as he left in exile, and the Grand Prince who cast him out. He never forgot the faces of the men in his own father's court who smiled when they learned of his banishment, already planning to put themselves in the succession. And he never forgot the face of the girl - the girl he was supposed to make his bride. Vasilisa.

  The Grand Captain's eyes opened, and they gleamed with an affection that made Goran sick to his stomach. They were his father's eyes, filled with their false, cowardly love. “Put aside these thoughts, boy. Your Captain commands it.”

  Your Captain commands it. Your father commands it.

  “I am not your boy,” said Goran. Then the dagger was in his hand, cold steel glinting in the morning light that streamed through the fluttering tent flap. “Goodbye, Araldo. And…thank you.”

  He buried the honed steel blade up to the hilt through Araldo's flabby neck before the old man had a chance to scream. When his lips did part, all that spilled out was dark, diseased blood that dribbled down his chin and stained his beard.

  I am not your boy.

  And this is not my home.

  Goran ripped the dagger free from Araldo's throat and watched the Captain sink onto his back. A queer whistling noise escaped from the Captain's punctured throat as he struggled for breath, and then fell still. An awful stench quickly filled the room.

  He left the Captain's tent in a hurry. The air outside was cool and salty, and he breathed it in greedily until he felt his lungs would burst.

  The commanders were beneath a great tent near the center of the war camp - tensely awaiting what was to come from the Grand Captain. Their eyes fell upon him, and then the knife that was still in his hands - soaked to the hilt in the Grand Captain’s blood.

  “Araldo is dead,” he announced loudly. He took a step forward, then slammed the tip of the bloody dagger into the table that sat between the three commanders, causing their cups of wine to jump. “And our contract is void. As of now, we are free men once more.”

  For a moment, there was only silence - and nothing. If there was any loyalty or love left for the Grand Captain, the commanders would have seized him and cut his head off the moment they saw the knife in his hands, still dripping with their Captain’s life essence. But no-one moved. No-one spoke. The commanders only stood in tense silence, their eyes flitting from one to another as Goran’s words hung in the air.

  Good riddance, he knew was the thought among them all. If he had not killed the Grand Captain, he was certain one of the commanders would have eventually risen to the task. But Araldo’s death was not important, not anymore. Now there was a far more important question that was on everyone’s minds.

  “So…what now?” spoke Kassa. “What do we do now?”

  “Do we side with the Rondellians?” asked Heller.

  “Curse that,” spat Yasaman. “We need to leave and wash our hands of this whole mess. Find another contract.”

  “The Yllahanans will try to stop us.” piped up Kassa.

  “The Yllahanans are welcome to try,” laughed Heller. “They’ve got five thousand slave-veterans bearing down on them. They can’t stop us.”

  “But where do we go?”

  “I don’t know…anywhere but here.”

  “What about Albina-Suzdal?”

  “I hear my fellow princes in Sanu are looking for hired blades…”

  The commanders’ voices all swirled together in the Goran’s mind - becoming just so much noise alongside the blaring horns and thundering marching of the legions. He closed his eyes, and dreamed of an old land, far away from the blood and sweat and dust of the south. The memories seemed so clear now…as though the land were calling to him, calling him back home.

  But more than the memories, there was opportunity.

  “I have a new contract.” He spoke, and the commanders’ eyes all fell upon him. He felt his mouth go dry as paper, and swallowed his fear before he spoke again.

  “Why must we always swear our swords and lances to some other man’s cause?” he said. “The Yllahanans, the Suzdalians, the Sanurians - none of them care for us. None of them have bled alongside us - none of them are Company men. To them, we’ll always be nothing more than dogs to do their bidding. They will keep us fed and watered and dressed in gold, but they will never let us rise above what we are.

  “I curse all of that!” he shouted, feeling his chest lighten just a little. “I ask all of you - who here wants to be more than a dog? Who wants more than this - this endless wandering, this endless jumping from contract to contract?”

  “What are you saying?” spoke Kassa sharply.

  “I say you sign on with me,” Goran replied. “If you follow me…I would lead you north, to the lands that should have been mine. I would lead you to Gatchisk.“

  Heller scoffed, as did Yasaman. “Gatchisk? The north is cold - and there is little gold or silver there.”

  “It might be so. Mercenaries fight for gold, and nowhere is there more gold than here, on the Shipbreaker Coast. But I would not have you fighting as mercenaries.”

  Goran’s hand went to the hilt of his sword, and the steel awakened from its sheath with a hiss. He raised the sword high into the air, then laid it down on the table between the commanders. “If you come with me, it would be as my druzhina - my sworn brothers of sword and lance. And I would not pay you with just gold…”

  The boyars’ forked tongues, their toadying words, their sniveling, grovelling. Weak men of a weak land.

  “For my crown, I would give you the lands of the pathetic men of my realm who call themselves boyars - and their lands are vast. Ten acres for every foot soldier? I could give a hundred. A thousand acres for every officer? I could give ten thousand, and a stone castle to each one of you.”

  Something stirred in the commanders’ eyes as they studied one another, weighing his words. He recognized what lay in their eyes even as they stood trying to appear aloof and thoughtful. Hope. They want it as badly as me. A home. A place to call their own.

  The Solarian, Heller, had once been an abbot of a temple-city - before he was cast out for murdering a fellow priest. Yasaman once counted among the Huwaqiyya - the royal guards of the Huwaqi-shah whose empire the Khormchaks trampled. And Kassa was another lost prince - only it was his own half-brothers who cast him out, rather than any boyars. He was not the only one who had lost so much. And he was not the only one who dreamt of more.

  Kassa opened his mouth to speak when a crossbowman poked his head inside the tent. “Sorry to disturb. Another Yllahanan’s come - a girl-commander. Says she has our orders.”

  The commanders looked to Goran.

  They waited for him to speak.

  They waited for his command.

  He felt his heart race - in that moment the sound of its pounding was more beautiful than any song or hymn he could dream of.

  The Young Griffon turned to the crossbowman. “Send her inside.”

  The soldier withdrew. When he returned, he propped open the tent flap for an Yllahanan officer in a cloak of red and gold and a plumed iron helm. On her breastplate was an engraving of twisting vines and flowers, their petals gleaming with gemstones.

  “The slaves seek to push our center,” the officer announced. “Five centuria stand stand against them. While the wretches draw near, you will take your mounted archers and make them pay dearly for every inch they advance. Once our spears pin their battle line, you will take your heavy horse and strike them from the rear and flanks. This is the command of Senator Luonerssa.”

  “A fine plan,” said Goran. Indeed it was…now if only you were so smart about keeping your hired blades happy. “But things have changed. Our commander’s up and died, you see.”

  “My condolences,” replied the officer in an icy tone. “But that does not change your orders - or your masters. Destroy the Anquiltes, and you may elect your new commander after the battle is over.”

  “We won’t be destroying anyone,” muttered Heller. “Not for you, anyhow.”

  The officer glowered at the Solarian. “You dare to-”

  Her reply withered in her throat as the situation finally dawned upon her. “You are breaking your contract?”

  “There’s no contract to be broken,” said Yasaman. “Our commander signed your papers, not us - and the Company dies with him. For now, we’re free men, free to fight for whomever we please.”

  The officer’s hand went to her sword. Stupid woman.

  Before she could even lay a finger on her blade, Goran’s sword was already back in his hand. The longsword sang beautifully as it clashed with the officer’s shortsword - sending its wielder staggering off-balance.

  The officer caught her footing, brought her blade up to ward off another strike. It was a defense he had seen a dozen times before - and Yllahanan officers were no master duelists. Goran leapt forward before she could get her bearings, thrusting his sword past her guard and through the officer’s eye.

  The point of the sword ripped out the back of the officer’s helmet, and the officer’s blade clattered to the ground as she gasped. The officer managed two wobbly steps before she tripped over the commanders’ table, spilling red wine and contract papers as she fell. The officer twitched a few more times, feebly reached for the edge of the table, and then she died - her iron and emerald flowers watered with blood and wine.

  Heller gave the dead woman a shove with his boot, then turned to look at Goran.

  “So…what’s next?”

  The Shipbreaker’s Tide roared, its waves rising high to smash down onto the anchored Yllahanan ships. Only a skeleton crew of soldiers were there - just enough to ensure the slave oarsmen would not try to bolt for freedom.

  The Young Griffon smiled as he wiped his blade clean on the dead officer’s cloak. “We take the ships. Then we strike north.”

  Father…I’m coming home.