The Two Shades

The battle of Ambershale is over, and now the chaos begins. The men in my spear-line break rank as the enemy's horns signal retreat. I don’t bother ordering them back. Our victory is a crushing one, and the soldiers are ravenous. They hunt the fleeing enemy to feed the thrills of war a little longer, before the pain of our losses sets in. With sword and spear held high, the men rush forth to the village, and I run against them, back to the hill where fighting was the fiercest. I don’t seek thrills or spoils. I'm looking for my brother. Today I watched him, with an arrow sunk in his neck, fall away from this world. It’s not an easy search for him. The waist high einkorn hides the fallen, though the red splattered on the flaxen stalks paints the way. I must get to Rolly before the looters do.

“Captain.” A groan comes from my feet. Joron of Otham is trembling there. His helm is twisted and caved in on one side. Blood spurts from a gash on his neck. Joron is one of the Baron’s men, a minor royal, a cousin of the Baroness, I think.

“The horns were for them?” he says.

I kneel and give him a drink from my wineskin. “The only targets are their asses now.”

He sputters and wine bubbles out the corners of his mouth. “Good…good.” He pats my hand and his eyes go still. I start a prayer: the rites of the last passage. Joron doesn’t kneel to Vol, none of the soldiers do, save Rolly and I, but a man needs his rites.

“May Vol guide you to the shining fields–”

Joron clenches my wrist, giving me a jump. “Tell Shrevan to bring honeywine to the feast,” he says “Ablia is quite fond of it. I’m going to ask for her hand tonight.”

“Sure,” I say. I give him another sip but it runs out his mouth. I wait a moment. A tiny gasp spills from his throat and flatulence rumbles from below. He’s dead for good this time.

I stand and see a Corgan across the hill face, rummaging through a corpse. How vile. He hasn’t the decency to cast off his surcoat, wearing his lord’s sigil - the tusked brown bear of Corg - while looting the dead. There’s no honor among these barbarians, and they deserve all the terrors we give them. I run and shout at him “Get away you devil!”

He looks up. There’s a leaking gash across his face. He pockets something and runs. I rush to the corpse and my disgust turns to fury. It’s Rolly. The Corgan has taken his bloodstone - his sard amulet. The same make that was given to me and every Volsher child on our first passage day. The priests say that without it, Vol will not allow us entry into the shining fields, and we’ll be forced to toil in the rooted realm for a thousand years. I never listened much to the priests, nor did Rolly, but that stone means something. It’s a piece of our home that’s now ash. And I’d rather slit my throat and join my brother in his toil then see a filthy Corgan’s hand on it.

I grab the shoulder of a bowman as he darts past me. He turns and scowls. I don’t know him. He’s a southerner, with copper skin and black hair tied back with blue silk.

“Watch his body,” I say.

“Says who?”

I pull my sword halfway out its scabbard, showing the three red bands of the vanguard captaincy. The bowman looks down and nods. “Yes sir.”

“If so much as a button is missing from his boot, I’ll be looking for your face.”

“Yes captain.”

“Good.” I toss him my wineskin, and run after the thief.

***

The Corgan disappears into the treeline as I close in on him. There’s no greater folly in war than to rush into an enemy's lands unprepared, but I’m not chasing after victory. This is for the honor of Rolly, for every fallen Volsher, and I run into the trees for them. The forest is unlike the Bevy woods of my home, where Rolly and I cut our paths through branch and brush. The spruces here are smooth and spaced, reaching up through red soil and a thick carpet of brown needles. The ground is furrowed with mounds reaching three men high. I climb and scan for signs: scattered needles, drops of blood - he’s turned east. I skid down and chase my unknown enemy into an unknown place.

I lose and find his trail a dozen times. Rolly would’ve found him by now, he was always a better tracker. Once we stalked a whitetail through thickets of maples and oakleaf from dawn to dog star, and me, being younger by four years, cried on my first foot ache. I didn’t stop whining until we found our prey, and yet even after my bitter complaints, Rolly let me take the first shot. He never stopped then, and if the roles were reversed he wouldn’t stop now. My cuts, bruises, twisted muscles, they all scream at me on the climbs and skids. My mind throws up its complaints. I’m a vanguard captain, with the learned sense and poise to think clearly of risk. The captain should turn back, but the younger brother will not stop until that thief is dead.

After an hour of running with heavy battle boots and chain, I'm regretting giving away my wineskin. My waterskin is dry and my undercoat is soaked with sweat. From a high spot I see a creek, the opposite way from the thief's footfalls. The captain in me calls for prudency: a refill, a drink, a short rest. But I catch movement in the trees about fifty paces south. Something black falls below my sightline. Is it him? I rush down the hill and sprint across level earth for fifty, one-hundered, two-hundered paces. My heart pounds and I run until I heave. The thief is nowhere, like a ghost. Our priests talk of the kashay forest spirits that cause hunters to go insane and wander away from their parties. Have they got me now? This is verging on madness and yet still I wander; I spot fresh tracks that lead to a thicket with clumps of red berries hanging from green and purple leaves. I push through the bushes and come to the other side, seeing nothing but the tall thin spruces. The trees give little shade and the sun is high. Sweat pours, stinging the cuts in my face. The ground slopes downward and the red soil becomes green with moss and grass. And after a long painful jog, I come to a river’s edge! Is it a kashay playing tricks? I rush in and shove handfuls of cool water into my mouth and over my face. I plunge my waterskin in, and catch a reflection in the pond. A rock, the size of my head, sails past me and splashes in the river. The Corgan charges.

I duck a blow from a rock in his hand. He has no weapon. I reach for my sword and he grabs my arm with both hands and twists. He’s strong, and I can’t get free of him. He screams and forces his weight on my arm, spinning me round as though we are dancing. I bash his back with my bracer, again and again, slipping on the wet muck and trying to stay on my feet. I kick at his legs and hear a snap. He cries out and falls. A felt bag spills out his pocket. Rolly’s bloodstone. We both lunge for it but I’m quicker. From the ground he clasps my legs. I get my sword out and club his head with the pommel. I step back and slash. He rolls away. His back is to me and I hold my sword up like a dagger, ready to strike. As I do I stumble forwards. Something is at my feet. An animal, the size of a hunters dog but fatter, yelps as I land on it.

“Borath,” the Corgan says. He leaps up and runs to the river.

I see the little tusks on the baby bear’s face. It scrambles away, up the bank, into the berry bushes. And bursting through where it went, comes mother. A giant beast, three times the size of the black bears of the Bevy, with long tangled brown fur and white tusks like bull horns jutting out the sides of her snout. She barrels toward me and I leap up. Her massive rump clips my side and I’m again sent off my feet. She’s not after me. In a blink, she’s at the river, chasing down the Corgan.

Oh no you don’t. He’s mine.

The bear knocks the fleeing Corgan into the water and stomps him. I run up behind and send my sword into her side. She roars and stands on her hinds. I’ve never witnessed such speed. She turns and claws my face in a flurry. Her tusks and teeth find chain and greave. Her attack is a blur, and only the hot stench of rotten fish and feces is clear. She’s pinned me down, batting me like I’m a child’s doll, and biting into my armour. I try for my sword still stuck in her side, and her teeth find my hand. She crunches through flesh and bone. Wet drops hit my face. It’s the Corgan! He’s mounted her, bashing her head with a jagged rock. She turns and bucks and whips him ten feet up.

I pull my sword free from her side and aim for her neck. The sword goes into her shoulder. She spins and roars, and runs back into the berry bushes.

The Corgan is slumped over an exposed root near the water’s edge. He’s black with mud and blood. I clench where the flesh of my thumb hangs loose off my hand. “We got the bitch.” I say. He wheezes.

I tie up my hand with strips off my surcoat and hobble to the felt bag. Out comes a bracelet with two shades of hair: flaxen and charcoal, woven like thread around a copper band. “Where’s the amulet?” I say.

The Corgan shifts off his side and lays flat on back. “My son.” he says, in thickly accented common. He points to the bracelet. “To my son’s son.”

“Where’s the bloodstone?” I trace my hand around my neck and hold an imaginary pendant.

“No stone. My son.”

“This is your son’s?”

The Corgan takes a waterskin off his belt and wipes dirt from his lips before taking a long drink. He looks of middle years, only a few beyond me. “Dead man take,“ he says. ”I give to son’s son.”

“Your son is dead?”

“Dead man kill son.”

My knees buckle. Us Volsher warriors have a practice of taking tokens from the fiercest combatants on the field, and Rolly kept the practice, long after I stopped. The Corgan didn’t loot the bloodstone from Rolly. My brother killed this man’s son and took his bracelet. Pain shoots up my shoulder. I grow dizzy and heave out everything in my stomach.

A waterskin lands near my feet. “Drink,” the Corgan says. I take a sip. It’s not water or wine, but a milky spirit that tastes like mint and lamp oil. It’s harsh and I choke. The Corgan wheezes out a laugh. “More,” he says. The spirit is warm in my stomach and a tingling numbness reaches out to my limbs. The second sip goes down easier. The pain, everywhere, subsides.

I hand him back his skin and the bracelet. “This is for your grandson?”

He smiles and nods. “Son’s son.”

“Where?”

“Son’s son,” he says.

“Where is his home?”

“Home. Kapon.”

I rip my surcoat into strips, dipping them into the water, to clean and wrap his wounds. As I do, he downs the rest of his spirits and falls away from this world. I say the prayer to Vol and give him his rites.

The captain in me wants to turn back and rejoin my men. The Corgan’s only another enemy soldier after all, lucky to have survived as long as he has. If not today, another battle would’ve claimed him, and he would deserve it. His kin burned my home and slaughtered my family. The distant screams from Ambershale sound the vengeance that Rolly and I swore to claim. When we joined the Baron’s army and raised that first village, it was intoxicating, a swelled lusty rage that burst upon my enemies. But that rapture receded with every battle after, while the pain of loss grew, until the only reason to fight was that Rolly kept fighting. Did he feel the same?

I am lost now. A man without a home and living kin, a warrior who loathes war. But maybe this dead Corgan has given me purpose. He did not deserve the death I handed to him. He suffered from a rage that shielded me. The easy way would be to join him, to join Rolly, but that is not what Vol wants. Kapon is as far into enemy lands as one could go. Only a madman touched by the kashay would wander there. And that’s where I’ll go, to give this warrior's grandson what’s rightfully his.