‘I feel it’s necessary to point out that once again we’re headed for trouble because Falcio couldn’t keep his heroism under control,’ Brasti said as the cage bounced unnervingly on the back of the cart. The horses here had longer hair than our Tristian beasts, doubtless bred to deal with the colder weather. They were bigger, too, and made me think of Monster. I wasn’t yet sure how Kest, Brasti and I were going to make our escape, but I would have dearly loved Monster’s brutish strength and vicious temper on our side right about now.
As we approached the fort, Reyek pointed unnecessarily towards the open gates set in the great wall surrounding it. ‘We go inside now, Trattari?’ From his mouth the word sounded more like Traii-taraii. I didn’t bother to correct him.
‘We’re not Traii-taraii,’ Brasti said. ‘We stole those coats from men on the road. Killed them.’ He patted his own chest. ‘We good men – kill bad Traii-taraii. I personally have slain nearly fifty nasty Traii-taraii.’ He gestured to Kest then added, ‘He only kill twelve.’
‘You’re wasting your time,’ Kest said, the fingers of his left hand twitching as he limbered them up for when the time came to fight.
Brasti gave Kest a dirty look. ‘Hey, Saint Kest-who-fucked-the-plan, why did you give it away? You think these barbarians are too clever to be fooled? Or is it that you can’t follow any idea unless it’s Falcio’s?’
‘Neither,’ Kest replied. He looked at Reyek. ‘He has no clue what you’re saying.’
‘I speak you language,’ Reyek said, his face belying the statement.
‘Four words of it, anyway,’ I muttered to myself.
The cart pulled inside the walls, we got our first look at the fort and for the longest time, none of us spoke. Kest stopped moving his fingers, Brasti stopped complaining. I stopped thinking about escape.
The fort itself was plain enough – a hastily constructed affair made from felled timber lashed with ropes and seamed with some kind of thick glue maybe made from sap. It was typical of what we knew of Avares construction: sturdy, simple, and by and large looking like it had been designed by a child. Outside the fort proper was a vast courtyard of hard-packed snow marked by hundreds of wheel tracks. Perhaps two hundred men milled about – big men like Reyek, all with long hair and thick beards, sporting a motley collection of furs. Some were moving small carts laden with supplies in and out of the fort; others were practising with canfreks, the Avareans’ favoured blade: straight wide swords that came to an abrupt, almost flat end where the point of a normal sword would be. These were cutting weapons, meant for chopping off a man’s head or limbs. I watched as one of the men swung his canfrek and took a foot-long piece off a log. The sun glinted against the steel of the weapon.
That was my first sense that something was badly wrong.
‘Where are they getting proper steel from?’ I asked out loud. Avarean weapons are usually made of bronze, or a weak iron they mine that’s too full of impurities to smelt into proper steel.
‘That’s not just steel,’ Kest pointed out, ‘it’s Shan steel.’
‘How in hells would barbarians get hold of Shan steel?’ Brasti asked, staring through the bars. ‘Don’t those little bastards kill anyone who turns up on their shores?’
The Tristians might consider the Avareans uncivilised, but the Shan believe everyone who isn’t Shan to be barbarians. Though their small island lacked some resources, still they rarely traded with other nations.
‘You’re looking at the wrong thing,’ Kest said, taking my attention away from the blade.
‘What do you mean?’
He pointed to the other side of the courtyard where a group of about three dozen men were drilling with spears inside a hundred-foot training square. ‘So what?’ I asked. ‘They have Shan steel spearheads, too. I hardly think . . .’
My words trailed off as I realised that the problem wasn’t the weapons. The men were practising in formation, their every movement matched to the rhythm of a jaunty tune they were all singing as they stepped forward, thrust their spears then returned to guard, moving in perfect time. I remembered then that Nehra had wanted us to memorise any of their warsongs that we heard – despite my knowing barely enough about music to sing a verdict.
But watching the Avarean warriors on the training ground, I realised I now had much bigger problems to deal with.
‘What’s the problem?’ Brasti asked. ‘They’re big men, but they’re not doing anything different; that’s just how any fool group of Ducal foot soldiers would do it.’
‘That’s the point,’ I said. ‘Since when do Avarean warriors fight in formation?’
Brasti looked like he was about to make a joke, then he stopped. ‘Shit.’
King Paelis’ best estimate had been that the population of Avares was only about a third of Tristia’s, but they had two warriors for every one of our trained soldiers. The only thing that kept them from overrunning our borders was a mix of tradition, religion and their unsophisticated military practices, which meant they had no inclination or idea how to fight in formation. There’s some saying in Avarean which I’d never learned, because – well, why would anyone want to learn their language? But the gist of the saying is, ‘No glory comes from more than one arm.’ They’d always fought individually, believing their singular God favoured only the boldest warriors.
Our cart stopped not far from the entrance as a small group of women came out lugging baskets that proved to have food for the training warriors. Then three more women came out, these wearing furs banded by leather and carrying their own canfreks.
‘Well, there’s something else I never expected to see,’ Brasti said. Avarean women are almost as big as their menfolk, but I’d never heard of any being allowed to take up arms.
‘It appears there have been a number of changes here in recent years,’ Kest remarked. I could see him thinking the same questions I was: how many of their women were now warriors? Ten per cent? Twenty per cent? How many battles would be won by that difference? How well could Tristia, with its broken Knights and ill-prepared soldiers, now fight off an invasion from Avares? How well would our idiot generals – mostly wealthy men with no real skill in strategy or experience in battle – fare against a real army for the first time in two hundred years?
As the women passed our cage I studied the little carts sitting inside the walls of the fort, until a clang startled me and the cage door opened. Reyek gestured at the four men with spears at his side, then motioned for us to come. ‘I speak you language,’ he said.
He surely did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Magdan
I expected them to put us in a cell in the fort, but instead we were prodded to the edge of the training square as the warriors ended their formation exercises and began to assemble along the heavy wooden fencing.
‘If this is summary execution, then I’m going to be very disappointed,’ Brasti warned Reyek.
The red-bearded man just pushed him forward. The warriors had left their formations and were now taking up positions around the square. A low humming sound, almost a rumbling, began to arise from the onlookers and soon took on the shape of another song, or perhaps just the beginning of a song. The slow, thick notes evoked in my mind the tense moments just before a battle.
‘Odd buggers,’ Brasti commented.