A sneak peek of the sequel to THE SPEAR OF HEAVEN
as it says above
Friends and readers,
As promised here is a first look at the as-yet untitled sequel to THE SPEAR OF HEAVEN. Fair warning, what follows is still pretty rough. Apologies for the typos.
A cold spring wind came down from the hills this morning. Tevrek coughed as it blew against his cheek. His head feet as though it was packed with wool...though his nose had at last stopped running like a stream. No doubt due to the intercession of some friendly feran. Early in the morning, maybe an hour past dawn. The day was going to be a bright one, and he had to admit, walking through the mountain valley, that the surroundings were pretty to the eye. Meadows covered with bright flowers, awakening from their winter sleep. Tall trees sprouting new green leaves on winter bare branches. The air was alive with the sound of bird song. Occasionally there would be the crack of breaking twigs and rustling leaves, and a stag would bound out from the thick woods climbing up the slopes, bounding across the valley floor.
An idyllic scene, he had no doubt someone of a more poetic sensibility could make something of it. But for Tevrek, all that was secondary to the pillars of smoke rising in the sky. To the left and right, to the north and south, smoke from burning rota, the villages of the clansmen of who called he hills of Verrelin home. Burning houses, burning barns and storehouses, the torch put to everything that would take fire and keep it.
Fires lit by his army.
“We’re being watched.” Burden was beside him, the burly man clutching his round shield close, tipping his helmet back, partly to get a better look at the surrounding trees, mostly to let the wind waft across his sweaty face. His voron coat, made of overlapping plates of iron covered with leather and sealed with lacquer, was marked by a bronze chest plate. Tevrek had something similar on his armor coat, as did the hundred sanvenai marching behind him. Men of the Sun Guard, the elite of Kavril. The bronze was polished bright when they came into this hills a month back. Now it was smoke stained and scarred. The same might be said of the men.
Burved watched the trees. “I can see them,” he said.
Tevrek couldn’t see anything. “Don’t jump at shadows,.”
“You know the hill rats are there.”
“I know,” Tevrek said. “I want them there. I want them to watch.”
Burved had nothing to say about that. He merely shrugged and lowered down his helmet, his sspear looking like a twig in his massive hand. The man was a blacksmiths apprentice in a former life and loomed over most other men. Tevrek was not a tall man, or that well built. If it wasn't for the scar marring the left side of his face, starting behind his eye and running down his cheek to his jaw, most could consider him shockingly ordinary.
But there was no doubt who was in command here. The hundred men marching with him were only part of a larger army, shaking through these valleys in marching columns, burning everything in their path and forcing the men and women of the Vanin clan to flee. A grim business, and Tevrek didn’t spare himself the task. Though he did not relish it.
At the head of the valley there was a small ride in the ground, like a blister arising from the fields. Another fortified village stood on its summit, ringed by a wooden palisade, with a broad ditch half-full of rain water at the base. A rota,...that’s what they were called. Each sura - clan – was comprised of any number of such villages, under the rule of a headman and swearing allegiance to a clan and its sirkar. Spreading out around it across the valley was a patchwork of fields and pastures. The ground was freshly turned for sowing, but no farmer worked the fields, and the flocks of sheep and goats were notable by their absence.
“No defenders,” Tevrek saiud, shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand. “They’ve abandoned the place.”
“And taken all the livestock with them.” Burved said the last mournfully. “Shame, that. Some roast goat would be welcome.”
Tevrek didn't answer. Instead he looked to the mountain slopes to the west, where trees began just above the stone walls marking the edges of fields. Something was off...there. Bird flying suddenly out of the trees.
“To the west!” he called out. “Form up!”
With a shout, the men of the Sun Giard closed in, forming two ranks, their shields overlapping, their spears raised up. Even as the last of them got into position, men emerged from the trees, climbing over the stone wall and running towards them, shouting war cries and insults. They were lightly armed, with small shields on their left arms, clutching handfuls of javelins in their left hands. They quickly closed the distance, and with a shout hurled a volley with their right arms.
“Shields up!” Tevrek raised his shield, and felt it vibrate as a javelin scraped off the side, the iron point hitting at an angle and not biting into the face. No shouts of pain, no wounded. He looked over the top and saw the men readying for another volley.
“At them!” he he shouted.
With a shut the Sun Guard advanced quickly, moving at a trot to keep their formation. The foe- men of the Vanin clan, likely men who lived in the valley – hooted and hollered, and flung more javelins. But the sanvenai closed the distance quickly, and the enemy turned tail and fled, headed back into the woods. A few waited too long, for a chance to throw their last javelins at the men invaders in their valley, the men burning villages throughout the hills. Tevrek heard one of his curse. Any joy the enemy might have felt ended when the spears of the Sun Guard jabbed out, cutting them down even as they tuned to flee.
The rest of their comrades were into the trees, fleeing up the mountainside. Tevrek called a halt – he'd learned the hard way that chasing the wretches into the trees was an exercise in frustration and ambush. They’d made their point in resisting and wouldn't be back. If there were more then a handful of skirmishers out there, if the Vaninai wanted a real fight, they’d be on the valley floor, dawn up for battle.
Which would suit Tevrek just fine. “Anyone hurt?” he called out, turning to his men. One fellow was limping slightly...he’d stumbled during the run and sprained his ankle. Bumps and bruises for the rest.
Three Vanin suriai lay on the ground, already dead form the spear thrusts into their bellies and backs. Tevrek looked at one...an older fellow, gray bearded and balding. Around his neck was a soapstone amulet depicting a man wearing a tall peaked cap, with an owl perched his left hand. The image was familiar...the patron feran of the Vanin clan. He didn’t recall the name.
“Leave the bodies,” he said. “We have work to do in the village.”
There was a wooden bridge laid arcross the moat. Tevrek and his men entered cautiously, shields raised in case there was another ambush waiting inside. It wouldn't be the first time...but only silence greeted them. The dusty streets were empty, the rough stone and timber houses devoid of inhabitants. Doors swung open in the wind, and household goods were scattered about on the floors.
“They left in a hurry,” Tevrek said. “Likely earlier this morning, when they saw us march into the valley.”
“Barely had time to pack,” Burved observed. He looked through a window and winced at the bare conditions inside. “These Vaninai had little enough worth taking.”
Tevrek could only agree. The rota was a stronghold for the valley, but there was little anyone from Kavril would see as worthwhile. The Vanin clan was rich in sheep and goats and fighting men...and that was about it.
Still, there might be something worth having. “Tear this place apart,” he ordered. “Everything but the shrine! You know what to do.”
His men cheer and dispersed into the village. Tevrek continued on towards the summit of the mound, ignoring the sounds of break doors and shattering crockery, mingled with curses at the meager pickings and the occasional cry of triumph as someone found something worth having. At the top of the mound was a small shrine to the gods. Too small to merit its own resident priests, little more than a small house with crude images of the gods painted behind the altar. Tomon, wielding his Spear of Heaven, and Naerta, the Lady of Life, sanding beneath the crescent moon. Places in niches in the walls were small idols, images of the feranmiai, some still glistening from the remembrance offered to them, libations of water or milk poured over before the supplicant fled into the hills. Some of the feranmiai he recognized...a surprisingly lifelike image of the prophetess Naveka, holding her two children. Pavdann, hero of the Odevala, his right arm raised in greeting. Most striking was a small wooden image of a sparrow in flight...Agelvan the Guide, who escorte Naveka in her journey from the Abyss to Heaven, through time and space in search of her stolen children, revealing to her many secrets of past, present and future.
Agelvan walso also the patron and divine ancestor of the Arvelkiai, Tevrek’s own family. He picked up the wooden tablet and slipped it into his sword belt, then walked back outside.
Two piles were taking shape in the center of the village. The first, quite small, comprised those goods his men considered worth keeping...clothes of fine weave, a handful of pewter cups, a surprisingly large silver tray marked with the image of a winged lion rearing in triumph. The last caught Tevrek’s eye – that was something of Orzarai make. Gained through trade, perhaps, though how it ended up in a backcountry rota in the hills of Verrelin must have been a tale.
Or, and this twisted Tevrek’s belly, it was plunder from the war against the Red King. Which meant the former owner was a man who’d fought at Porevad, perhaps even under Tevrek’s command, shoulder to shoulder with the Kavrilai now ransacking his village. One could only weep at fortunes path...regardless, it was now the plunder of the Sun Guard. By common custom all loot was held in common and would be handed out afterward in shares across the army when they returned to the main camp. Tevrek was entitled to his own portion, rough ten times that of the ordinary soldier due to his rank as Servari. As usual he would dedicate his portion to the gods, for the succor of the less fortunate in Kavril.
The other, much larger pile, consisted of chairs, tables, beds and broken doors. One of his men was busy working a flint and steel next to a torch. Tevrek waited until a spark finally caught on the rags wrapped around the top, then gave the order. “Pack up the loot,” he said. “Burn the rest.”
The torch was thrust into the large pile, even as the small one was broken up among the rest of the men. Soon enough the pile was burning merrily, dark acrid smoke rising into the sky. The Kavrilai picked up burning brands from the pile and went through the village, hurling them through doors, windows and into the thatched roofs. Before long flames were spreading through the village, and the Sun Guard marching out the gate and across the moat were soot stained, their shining bronze armor even more dulled than before.
No ambush awaited them as they marched back through the valley. But Tevrek could feel the eyes watching him from the hill, could almost taste the hate of the Vaninai. Facing them in battle was one thing….there was clarity that sort of fight. But this...burning their homes, driving their women and children into the hills, scattering their livestock and trampling their fields. When the winter came many would go hungry, and all wold know who to blame.
He thought back on that strange platter. He might claim that as part of his share, actually keep it as a reminder of what had been. Men of this clan stood with the Kavrilai, with all their Anvarai brethren against the Red King and his hordes. There was clarity in that, a good understanding of what was at stake and what needed to be done. Us and them. Anvara versus the foreigner, the easterner, the barbarian stranger and their Red King. There was the battle, there was sacrifice...and there was renown. Mallaret and his fellow Mountain Sleepers dying at the Modeva Pass, and later the heroes at Porevad, Tevrek among them, breaking the army of rhe Red King and send it back east in defeat. So much renown.
There was no renown here. Tevrek knew it, as did his men...plunder was a poor substitute. He could see it in their faces. It was a dirty, ugly business. He wondered what Mallaret would say. Probably that it was sad but necessary.
“Hear me, you gods! Hear me, you feranmiai!” He said this softly as he marched with his men, leaving the burning village behind them, now sending up its own funerary pillar of smoke to join the others dotting the hills. “I do only what is necessary.”
Enough of that. Tevrek pulled his mind back to the present. They had a long way to go before they reached their camp, and this was still enemy country.