The Pariah by Anthony Ryan

Author:Anthony Ryan [Ryan, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2021-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

It was another week before Crown Company marched away from Callintor. By then our sackcloth garb had been replaced by more hardy attire of woollen trews and shirts with jerkins of leather, all products of the Callintor artisans. Some of us had even been provided the accoutrements of war, after a fashion. The day before we marched, Sergeant Swain had handed me a sack full of pig-hide gloves with orders to share them out among my troop.

“Not a good notion to go into battle with bare hands,” he sniffed. Since I hadn’t detected more than a slight thaw in his regard for me, I deduced this to be a reward for my exemplary record keeping.

His description of the previous clerk’s hand had, if anything, been overly generous. The ledgers recording the company’s strength, equipment and, most interestingly, payroll had all been filled with an untidy, barely legible scrawl that offended my scribe’s pride no end. So, without orders, I had copied all the existing books before embarking on recording fresh entries. This had the added benefit of revealing my predecessor’s fraudulent accounting of the food stores, a decent portion of which had been surreptitiously sold off to the increasing stream of folk passing along the road. People fleeing war are often hungry and willing to pay excessive prices for basic fare.

Swain’s treatment of the thieving clerk had, for the time being, blunted my interest in the payroll. Having stripped him fully naked, the sergeant bound him to a tree before delivering thirty strokes to his back and arse with a horsewhip. After that, the bleeding half-dead wretch was driven from camp still naked and the custodians at the Callintor gates instructed not to allow him entry. I assumed he had probably perished from exposure or blood loss by now.

“Better than nothing, I s’pose,” Brewer said, flexing his hand after pulling on one of the thick gloves. “Still rather have a breastplate and helm, though. Or at least some mail.”

“It’s supposed to be waiting for us at the muster,” I told him. “The captain received a letter from the council assuring her of such only yesterday.”

My tone was only slightly sardonic, partly due to fatigue after a twelve-mile eastward march, also because it was the truth. The Lady Evadine kept up a constant, hectoring correspondence with the Luminants’ Council. Her letters were filled with polite, but firm demands for more weapons, armour and, above all, recruits. So far, the only response had been a terse note confirming the consignment of armour had been dispatched and would be provided when the company rendezvoused with the king’s host.

“You almost sound eager,” Toria muttered. “Keen to get at the Pretender’s vile horde, are we?”

“Why wouldn’t he be?” Ayin enquired in the disapproving tone she adopted in rare moments of annoyance. It had become her habit to share the evening fire with us once her chores for the captain were complete. Since sinking to her knees before our anointed leader, Ayin’s demeanour had become more consistent in its cheerfulness with only rare slips into vacant-eyed rambling.

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