A Winter War Read online

  A WINTER

  WAR

  Also by Tim Leach

  The Last King of Lydia

  The King and the Slave

  Smile of the Wolf

  A WINTER

  WAR

  TIM LEACH

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 2021 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Tim Leach, 2021

  The moral right of Tim Leach to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781800242869

  ISBN (XTPB): 9781800242876

  ISBN (E): 9781800242951

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  For Ness

  Contents

  Also by Tim Leach

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  PART 1: THE RIVER OF ICE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  PART 2: THE TWICE DEAD MAN

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  PART 3: AN OATH UPON A SWORD

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Map

  Part 1

  THE RIVER OF ICE

  1

  From a distance, it might have been an army of statues, or of the dead.

  Six thousand riders upon a plain of ice and snow, in a land where it seemed that nothing might live. The wind rattled against tall spears like a gale passing through a winter forest, but the horses did not stir, and under close carved helms and thick furred hoods, the men’s eyes seemed hollows with no glimmer of life. Seen from afar, one might have thought them a great monument carved to a forgotten king, or an army from a long forgotten war struck down by curse or spell, doomed to stand in place for eternity and wait for a command that would never come.

  It was only if one drew close that one could see the little whorls of their breaths frosting before their lips, here and there see a horse toss its head and stamp at the snow. Closer still, and one could hear the impatient whicker and mutter of the horses, more eager for the battle than the men who rode them. They thought only of the rush and joy of the charge, the surge of muscle and hoof, for unlike men they could not imagine their own deaths. Their riders were silent as they looked on the frozen river before them and waited for the Romans to come across the ice.

  One spear tilted down in the line, as a warrior laid the weapon to rest across the neck of his mount. The horse gave a snort of protest, for she bore a heavy weight, she and her rider glistening with scales of horn and bone fitted like a second skin. Yet when the rider laid his palms against the haft of the spear and rolled it against the beast’s neck, the horse’s protest went silent, and she leaned into the touch and gave a shiver of pleasure.

  The rider beside them shook his head. ‘I think you love that horse more than my wife loves me, Kai.’

  The first man answered. ‘And why not? My horse is more worthy of love than you are. She’s braver. More handsome, too.’ He pushed back his hood as he spoke, baring his teeth in a friendly smile.

  Laughter then, to break the silence – soft, and half choked, but it was there, scattering down the line. Even some of those who could not have heard the jest grinned for a moment, patted their horses, lifted their spears to stretch frozen muscles. For a moment, the army lived once more.

  The second rider, Bahadur, cuffed Kai about the head, a slap of leather against bronze, but he answered Kai’s smile in kind. He leaned forward to speak, close enough for Kai to see every mark of the tattoos on his cheeks, the streaks of grey in his beard. ‘Keep the laughter going, if you can. The others are frightened.’

  That last word was like a spell, for when it was spoken the air seemed to grow thin and cold as the air of a Carpathian pass. Amongst his people there was nothing worshipped like warriors, no trade thought noble but that of spear and horse, no death counted as sweet save the one found on the point of a blade. Yet only a madman would not be afraid in that moment, for the Sarmatians all knew what was coming across the ice of the Danu.

  Kai looked out across the frozen river in front of them, shading his eyes from the spindrift with a gauntleted hand. Little to be seen there, even if the mist had cleared. In summer one might see boats on that river, merchants coming to trade wine and perfume, furs and amber. Or fishermen seeking some blessing from the river god that might feed their families. But the merchants came like thieves across the water, and the fishermen did not care to linger long. For the Danu was a border, and it was more than another country that lay across the water. It was another world.

  On the other side of that river, the Roman Empire. A chieftain’s gold dripping from every woman’s neck, a prize of iron in every warrior’s hand. But more important than that, enough wheat and cattle to feed the clans twice over. For the Sarmatians, winter-starved by sickly herds and blighted crops, it was life that was over the water, life that they could almost reach out and touch.

  Almost. For across the ice the enemy waited for them. An enemy whose name was spoken as a warning to children, a bitter curse to a rival clan.

  Kai had seen that enemy broken in battle, their general cut open while he still lived, left pinned out and screaming for the carrion birds to butcher as a warning to his people. Still, they had come back. Another tribe, the Marcomanni, had burned fort and city and carried the fight almost to within sight of Rome itself, and the Legions had returned undaunted. A few years before, the gods had cursed the Romans with a plague that had piled the corpse fires high, had murdered entire armies, murdered so many that it seemed there could be no man left alive west of the Danu. Yet they were there in their forts, scarce two miles away, somewhere across the ice. For those were the men that it seemed not even the gods could kill.

  ‘We are the last ones left,’ said Kai.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The last people still fighting Rome. The Marcomanni are kingless. The Quadi pledged to Rome after the miracle of the rain. The Dacians…’ Bahadur muttered a foul curse at that name, and Kai had no need to speak further of them. ‘There are none but us left to fight. What do you think that means?’

  Beneath his cloak and helm, Bahadur’s face was unreadable. The touch of light on his eyes – was it anger or grief at the words that Kai spoke, words that danced at
the edge of doubt?

  ‘That we shall have to win here today,’ the older man said, ‘if we are to eat this winter. If we are to be free. What do you think that it means?’

  ‘That our grandfathers should never have left Scythia. That our people should have stayed upon the Sea of Grass to the east.’

  ‘They would have come for us there, too. A little later, that is all.’

  ‘Better that we fight them now,’ said Kai. ‘Or our children would have to fight them instead.’

  A little cry at that – not from Bahadur, but from the rider behind him, a boy who huddled on his horse and shivered and wept. Too young for the warband and drowning in his armour, it should have been another summer at least before he was asked to set his spear in the charge. But the ranks were filled with those like him – greyhaired men who could scarce hold their spears, boys who should have been herding sheep out on the steppe. It was Bahadur’s son, Chodona, who shamed himself with those tears, and Bahadur put his arm about the boy and drew him close, whispering the wordless charms against fear that father might speak to his child.

  Watching them, Kai felt the coward’s hope that the Romans would not come. Let them stay in their forts across the water, so that the boy might live to become a man.

  But already, it was too late. For a sound was echoing across the river, coming through the mist. At first Kai thought it the bark and chatter of the ice, the echo of a distant storm that boomed and blew across the open land. But soon there was no mistaking what it was.

  Mothers whispered stories of that sound to children around the campfire at night. Warriors spoke of hearing it for the very first time, as though a great monster had crawled up from the pits of another world to scuttle across the ground on ten thousand feet. And everywhere that it moved, it left the dead piled high, too many to honour and send to the next world with iron and gold. And for those that lived, a different kind of death. A death of submission, and slavery.

  The stamping tread of an army moving as one. The sound of the Legion on the march.

  It struck the horsemen like a curse. The quiet words of encouragement, the boasts and the black-humoured jokes – all went silent. The riders hunched their cloaks about them, and even the proud horses fell quiet. They had heard that sound many times before. Hard-fought victories, bitter defeats, retreats that had scattered them across steppe and plain. And in victory or defeat, nothing changed. Still the Legion walked on.

  Beside him, Kai heard Bahadur shift, the scales of his armour clinking against each other like chimes in the wind. The hood slipped from the older man’s head, and the helm was in his hands, his thinning hair exposed to the wind, the white of his skin shockingly bright in the midday light. Bahadur turned his head to the side, listened as closely to that terrible sound as he might have listened to the whisperings of a lover in the night.

  And then, he laughed.

  ‘You can laugh at that?’ said Kai.

  ‘Listen. You are young. Your ears should hear it better than mine.’

  Kai slipped the hood from his head, pushed his helm up onto his forehead. The wind drew still for a moment, and he could hear the fell tread of the Legion. Yet he heard other things, too – a rattle and clatter, an echoing curse spoken in a foreign tongue, sharp scrapings from the ice. He felt the smile stealing over his face, too. For he knew what those sounds meant.

  Other sounds too, then – the rattle of hooves, moving fast, coming close. Shadows in this mist, as spears tilted forward and the captains barked to ready a charge. A moment later, the spears lifted once more, and calls of greeting filled the air. For it was no enemy that emerged from the mist, but a scattering of Sarmatian horsemen. A few dozen and no more, some of them holding the reins of a second horse with an empty saddle. Here and there, a bright spear dulled with the touch of blood.

  They broke to different places, returning to their clans. And some of those riders came towards Kai and Bahadur, beneath their own banner – a twisting creature, armoured with scale and brandishing tooth and claw, for it was the mark of their clan that they rode under, the River Dragon.

  ‘They have stuck the boar of Rome,’ Bahadur said. ‘But it shall be for us to kill it.’ He turned in the saddle to the rest of the company. ‘They shall be here soon. If there is anything you have left to say to each other, say it now.’ And once more, he leaned in close to Kai. ‘That goes for you, too.’

  ‘Bahadur, I—’

  ‘Not to me, fool,’ the older warrior said as he tipped his lance and pointed down the line.

  For everywhere about them, one could see feuds being settled. Kai saw two men of different clans, the Wolves of the Steppe and the Shining Company, men who had quarrelled and feuded for the better part of ten winters, standing with companionable arms draped about each other. In another place, a father and a son, not a word spoken between them since a knife fight over a woman, were in a firm embrace, the son’s head cradled against his father’s shoulder. Everywhere there were warriors breaking from the ranks, trotting up the line to exchange some quick word and exchanging gifts, handing over carved belt buckles, leather knife sheaths, and sometimes, where a particularly vicious feud must be settled, some precious little piece of iron. For it was the Romans that had brought the five warring clans of the Sarmatians together, a common enemy to undo all other feuds for one winter at least.

  Bahadur was pointing to a figure on horseback, standing a little apart from the rest. The champion of their clan, wrapped in a cloak of wolf fur, the spear trailing tassels of red felt from it, reminders of all the blood that it had spilled. He saw many warriors – young boys mostly, the occasional older man in particular need of luck – coming up and asking a blessing from the champion. A touch of a spear, a clasp of a hand, a single word, an occasional small token for them to take away to bless those particularly marked with favour.

  ‘I shall not beg,’ said Kai.

  ‘You do not have to,’ the older man replied. ‘Just keep that tongue of yours in check.’

  Kai touched his heels to his horse – perhaps she felt his reluctance, or a grudge of her own that she did not wish to answer, for she moved sluggishly, dragging her hooves, turning her head and casting a look back at Kai. There was an almost human light in her black eyes – Are you sure? she seemed to say.

  ‘No, my friend,’ Kai said, ‘but we shall have to try.’ And he stirred the horse forward once more, moving alone upon the ice.

  Voices called to him as he passed. A few wished him good fortune, others muttered curses under their breath, those whom he had ridden against in one feud or another, or where words had been said, once the wine had run thick, that could not be unspoken. But most spoke even softer words that could barely be heard above the crack of the ice and the rattle of armour. Prayers they spoke as he passed them. Wards against ill luck.

  He did not slow his horse to answer those who greeted and cursed him. He kept his eyes upon the rider they called the Cruel Spear.

  Even in the dim light of the winter morning, he could see the glitter of gold on the belt and broach of the champion. Once, all their warriors had gone to war clad in gold. The tombs of even the most humble warriors had been marked with grave gifts that shone under the funeral fires. Now only the champions and chieftains rode with that touch of gold about them, and even their tombs were dulled with gifts of clay and bone.

  The fear returned at that thought – not a fear for his own life, for the battle to come, but a fear for a whole people, a nation, a world. He stirred his horse a little faster. It would not be long before the Romans came.

  The champion gave no greeting as Kai came forward, and it was the horse that first marked his arrival – its left eye had been taken by a Roman spear many winters before, and it was forever tossing its head back and forth, seeking an enemy on the blind side. As Kai drew close he saw the beast tilt its head to fix him with its one forbidding eye. Lips curling back, ears flattening, the scrape of hooves against the ice like that of a blade against a whetstone.
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  Kai brought his own horse still before the champion, gave a bow from the saddle and made the ritual greeting. ‘Good fortune to the Cruel Spear. May I swallow your evil days.’

  Beneath the helm, the grey eyes glittered at him. A wordless silence.

  Kai pulled the gauntlet from his hand, felt at once the chill wind cutting at his skin. He took a bronze ring from his finger, and it slid away easily – poorly fitted, for it had not been made for him. He offered it up, trying to keep his hand still as he did so.

  At last, the champion stirred. First a twitch of a gauntlet, then an arm raised slightly, moving forward, before the hand dropped back and reclasped the spear once more. And then, the warrior spoke.

  It always surprised Kai, how soft her voice was. When one had seen how she rode on the battlefield, or had her wild gaze lock against his like sword against shield, the softness of the voice would always come as a surprise.

  ‘You seek a blessing?’ she asked. ‘Some guidance for your unlucky spear?’

  ‘No.’ He hesitated. ‘I would settle our feud.’

  She cocked her head to the side. ‘You fear to ride to the Otherlands with such a shame hanging over you?’

  ‘I do not feel shame,’ Kai said, even as he felt the blood pulse beneath his cheeks. ‘I wish that it had not come between us.’

  ‘And yet it has.’

  ‘Bad blood brings ill fortune to the warband.’

  ‘No. Just ill fortune to you.’

  Laughter then, from the pack of riders behind her, and a madness stirring in his heart and on his tongue.

  ‘I have always heard it takes a brave spear to start a feud, but a braver one to end it,’ he said. ‘I did not take you for a coward.’

  ‘Oh, you would speak of bravery? A braver man with your tongue than with your sword.’ She favoured him with a hideous grin. ‘Hoping to be my third man, Kai? You’d earn some fame with that honour. But I shall not darken my spear on you.’