Prologue
No greater enemy



The River Viknoy, guarded in this the 293rd year of the 1st Era of the Holorian Western Empire by the VIIIth Alscoria of the Imperial Army.

The Empire discriminated; the plague did not.
Cloak collars turned up against the chilling rain that this night whipped almost horizontally across the slate grey sky; the sentries who guarded the one crossing point of the River Viknoy could hear nothing but the gale. Donning the mask of a rising storm the province of Andeburg steeled itself, suffering the growl of thunder and the lash of the lightning as it tore at the rocks of the surrounding mountains. A sentry glanced up, taking the sting of the rain with a defiant grimace. This was no place for glory, no place for a man to achieve the greatness of the heroes of old. No place to live, and certainly no place to die. A second sentry stepped up beside him and in a token show of vigilance glanced across the expanse of dirt and scrub separating the fort wall from the shingled ford. Lightning flashed, picking out the shape of bushes, the debris and detritus of the river bank and briefly the western shore. There were figures there, moving towards the fords and he cursed the Sarach for their stupidity. What fools these peasants! No wonder the Empire had conquered them so easily as it had. They did not even have the sense to stay indoors when a storm bit hard. He shrugged and turned away, not wanting to venture away from the warmth of the brazier, not tonight.
“Hey Vethan, you heard something?” His companion asked, voice muffled as he spoke into his collar.
“Nothing worth the bother,”
His companion leaned a little closer, waiting for the next revealing flash of lightning then grinned. “I’d say that’s fifteen coins worth about to cross our path, but who’s counting how many pay the toll tonight? If you know what I’m getting at.”
“Aye, and a right hard flogging when we’re found fifteen coins the richer,“ said Vethan. “You do what you want with your own hide, but I like mine with no more scars than its already got. Rain’s got into your brains man. Stinking peasants these Sarach, every man, woman and filthy child. I tell you Ullius, I’m sick of them, sick of this river, sick of this weather and as sick as a vagabond’s dog of this edge of a province of wilderness. So Im staying by the brazier where its warm, even if it cant be dry. I didn’t see anything.”
Ullius shook his cloak and wiped the rain from his eyes. “To think we could be anywhere but here. You can give me the deserts of Karithia any day, or even the rancid quaysides of Duvarium, if you can still remember Duvarium?”
“I remember it,” Vethan laughed, his blood warming with the recollection of the women there and wine fuelled fumbling in dingy alleyways.
In a life before the Alscoria he had seen four years inside the prisons at Illusidum and had leapt at the opportunity to carry a sword rather than a slop bucket. The Empires Alscoria recruited anyone willing to join, from the sons of affluent gentlemen who bought in as officers to provide good grounding to a political career, to the dagger wielding scum who grew up in the shadows of its cities, or scraped a living from its colonies dusty fields, but even the worst of them knew better than to ignore the orders of their seniors.
“Get your lazy backsides down to the river!”
The sentries backs straightened and both exchanged fearful glances as the Senec of the night guard emerged from the watch tower where he had been hiding. He eyed them both harshly and smelt their breath for liquor before taking each one by the arm and leading them forcefully down to the fort gates.
Neither Ullius or Vethan raised a word of protest as he thrust them both through where they just caught themselves from slipping back into a gathering pool of rainwater. The gates slammed and the pair muttered their curses but quickly got themselves to the riverside to intercept the peasant traders who were almost across.
“A toll for the crossing,” Ullius snarled at the dishevelled figures stumbling up from the edge of the fords.
Vethan grumbled. "Half the garrison will be in the great hall on a night like this. Torvanician wine, beef and pork on the bone, we got the sharp end of the stick alright with this duty."
Ullius grinned. "Aye, but for the poor bastards up on the Longridge Way if they’ve been caught out on patrol in this shit, and far from one of the towers. Rather here than there Vethan. Not all's bad eh?"
Vethan nodded, thinking only that when tonight was over he could mark another line in the chalk tally that was being kept at the guardroom, counting down the days and weeks of their tour here at Talath Vidris and towards the reposting as the Alscoria were rotated throughout the Empire. His back straightened. They were the VIIIth Alscoria of Demetanicians, bearers of the Lion Standard and veteran warriors of Emperor Calpitus’ campaigns in the deserts of Agalien. The Emperors Men, who at the sharp end of the sword could civilise a savage nation and give it a purpose and place in the world. He shoulders slumped, if only the Emperor wasn’t such a weakling and not of such a mind to consolidate the Empires borders rather than expand them. He took a glance about, seeing barely a few dozens yards of Sarach soil, awash and filthy with mud and weed. The day of reposting couldn’t come soon enough. What was there in this province for a man? The taverns were straw floored huts, and though the Sarach women, whilst easy enough on the eye, were none too accommodating.
“A toll for the crossing swine, or two days at The Wall,” Vethan called, his mood soured even further as a cold trickle of rain wormed under his armour and down his back. The Wall was a tradition in every Alscoria; an unnecessary brickwork built up dry by one gaggle of prisoners and dismantled by the next that came along. And once it was a pile of square rocks again there were new prisoners to build it up again. A monotonous and back breaking task indeed but the Empire was certainly inventive in its use of stone. Temples, halls, walls, docks, magnificent arenas, even hospitals and if there was the need for it, the hastening to death of cowards, murderers, enemies and other less than dedicated citizens.
The foremost peasant stumbled soundlessly onto his knees, crawled onto his feet and swayed unsteadily before both men.
Vethans eyes rolled and he drew back a foot to threaten a kick. “Clumsy savage, dig into your pig skin purse and pay the Emperor his coin; and look sharp or you’ll spend the next hours cleaning every inch of my armour,” Ullius snapped. The warm coals and a bottle of wine hidden in his pack were calling.
The figure stood, wavered briefly as if drunk then fell forward and clawed his way up the legs of the now enraged soldier who tried to thrust him away with his foot.
“Help me.”
The gasp fell cold on Ullius’ skin as he stared down into a pair of blood red, pale rimmed eyes in a face as grey as a corpse and down which the rain slid like oozing sweat.
The stink of sickness bled from the man, like the sweet fetor of a river fish rotting in the sun.
“Midius!” Ullius cried, leaping back and slipping on the shingle.
His God did not hear him but his companion did and dragging him back to his feet they fled to the fort yelling the alarm as the diseased half-corpses of men and women clawed their way from the water as if the river was giving up its dead.
The gates slammed shut and bars thudded as bells clanged calling the forts to muster. Half awake and disoriented the soldiers stared from the parapets in disbelief and revulsion at the pitiful, shambling figures that pawed at the gates in desperation and despair. There was no enemy to raise a spear or sword against and yet the soldiers billeted there were more terrified than they had ever been.
“Keep those gates closed,” a soldier shouted when one of the gate wardens in a fit of compassion ran forward and started to lift the bar. Four soldiers dashed from the parapets and thrusting the gate wardens out of the way held the gates firm as hands beat on them from outside.
Senec Marius Fettelis rubbed his eyes and slapped at his face to wake himself up. He had managed to drop off to sleep after setting the two idlers down to the river to get the Emperors coin and now he cursed himself for being so lapse. He always felt groggy if he snatched a few minutes, more so than if he had stayed awake through an entire night, though a proper nights sleep at this posting was a rarity. He walked first onto the riverside parapet then hearing the commotion from the gates doubled back through the watchtower and went to the flying parapet that stretched over them. He could hear the men below debating angrily and shook his head. The Sarach didn’t have it in them to attack a patrol, never mind a fortified position so why the chatter. If someone wanted into the fort on a night like this then let them in and blather about it afterwards. His soldiers had become soft as women, if they could be frightened by a few civilians. He opened his mouth to yell at them to find their backbone but when he saw what was gathering outside the gates his mouth closed again. A sentry came up beside him, asking for orders, but his entire attention was fixed upon the poor souls below. There were about twenty of them, and more coming in from the riverside. He couldn’t smell the disease but a look at them said all he needed to know. A child was being pulled along by what he assumed to be her parents. She looked sorrowful enough in her rags but the sickness, whatever it was, had turned her into a walking ghost. His lips narrowed, teeth grinding as he muttered to himself behind them. He wasn’t supposed to pity the population, he was supposed to guard them, or if they were hostile to brutally put them down. A second child appeared, this time being carried by his father. The boy couldn’t have been older than five and it was too far away for Marius to hear the lads pitiful moans but the sight of his mouth gaping and moving slowly made the sound appear real enough inside Marius head. He looked away, back at the fort garrison. A hundred and sixty men between the forts, one Mellin in each, a lot to expose to plague or disease, and yet he could sense that the province of Andeburg was moving, that there were not only those who had thus far crossed the river who were suffering. Thirty or so now, a thousand by dawn and several thousand over the next few days. He could see it as if his mind had suddenly been freed from his skull and let to fly eagle-like over the hills and fields. Not a vision of the future, but an inevitability he thought. And hideous it was. Maybe it was not a disease one could contract from other human contact? What if the wells or a river inside Andeburg had become poisoned. If he kept the gates closed he would be denying the populace food, shelter and clean, healthy water. And if the disease were spread by breath or by touch…
“May my God Middius have pity and watch over these his servants and keep them safe in this hour,” he said quietly, then he looked at the sentry. “Open the gates.”
The order was passed from parapet to courtyard and yet comparing the threat of the whip to the horror clustering at the walls many of the soldiers rebelled and shook their heads in refusal. Senec Marius Fettelis breathed deeply, then holding his head high walked down to the gates. He looked at his men, the pleading in their eyes almost as heart rending as that he had seen outside. He almost relented but a babies cry decided him. He had lost his own family to illness and had listened helplessly as his daughter cried until her strength gave out and death took her. The Army had become his life, but he was too old, too long a father, to have it make him into a bastard. With a single heave the gate bar was tossed from its mountings and the gates swung in.
“I don’t know about you scum but I came here to guard a province and that doesn’t mean standing idly by whilst it dies,” he declared.
“And we didn’t march all this way to die here,” one of his men replied.
Marius looked him up and down and smiled. “You’re one of the Emperors soldiers’ lad. If you die here or on the battlefield, either way, it’s not yours to choose anymore.”
In stumbled the fugitives and the plague came with them. Soon the message had been passed to the second fort and eventually its gates also swung inwards so that within an hour the halls of both strong places steamed under the heat of fires and boiling water and rang with the incessant screams and moans of the dying.
“Inform our commander at the garrison at Talath Vidris,” Marius told one of his errand riders. “Report to the Senevate all that is happening here and may Midius go with you.”
“I leave Midius’ watchful eye upon you,” the rider answered. “I think that you will have more need of it.” Then he galloped into the rain.
Expecting aid from the mother garrison Marius and his men did their best to make the plague victims comfortable in their last few hours of life. But the tears of relief at the sight of wagons arriving along the paved road from Talath Vidris turned to shouts of anger when a ring of archers was placed around each fort with a swift arrow waiting for anyone who attempted to leave. Even the healers, high born men of Holorian blood refused to go near now that they had seen the nature of the catastrophe and the Forts were abandoned to their fate whilst across the fords the exodus of hundreds continued and was diverted at spear point through their gates.
Daylight brought no relief from the horror and the soldiers of the forts were sick to the pit of their stomach of the stench of death and of the brown river that belched up hundreds of bodies and swept them onto the shoals where they lay bloating in the sun. All along the River Viknoy and Lake Arias desperate people driven by terror of the enemy that followed them silent, deadly and unseen threw themselves into the water either to drown in their weakness or to be cut down with arrows by waiting archers who faced their own death should they slack in their abhorrent and utterly hated task. Those that had managed to cross under the shield of darkness were so weak that they could only drag themselves onto the mud of its banks where they lay gasping and dying like fish, spat ashore by the flood and raving
Nothing in the history of the Sarach people had prepared them for this; not even the Holorian conquest with its first bitter years of oppression; the examples made at the tip of the spear and the edge of the sword. At Midgeholme, a village thirty miles north of Lake Arias and where folk worked the river for a living, little boats plunged through the swirling water and men fended off the floating dead as they thudded against the timber, legs and arms catching in the oars. They would go on dragging the barely living and the dead out of the filthy brown water for the rest of the day and most of the following night until soldiers of the VIIIth Alscoria arrived from Talath Vidris and ordered them to cease and leave their kin from Andeburg to die. Then the fires had been lit and the stink of rot eclipsed by the sickening stench of blood and flesh burning. And so the North Riding of the province of Sarachia waited and it waited, expecting the first signs of infection to show in those who had come into contact with the fugitives or corpses.
By midnight of the following day the exodus to the fords had slowed to a trickle as shambling figures, their eyes unseeing, their gaping mouths as slack as a death gasp, tramped into the water as if in their last hours of life they could do nothing more than follow instinct. Some spoke of demons rising from the earth, of an army of fiends marching at their heels with swords and eyes of fire, but the hills and fields of Andeburg remained still, as placid as the grave. With the pyres building around the forts and no space or fuel for more burning the Senevate in command of the Viknoy garrison ordered his archers to deploy along the banks and throughout the long hours they cut down every living thing that approached, man, woman and child. The soldiers within the forts worked on through horror, sorrow and exhaustion, wiping the grime from their faces and tending to the dying between carrying out the corpses and piling them high on the pyres that would burn for five days and leave the soil black and stinking of burned flesh for years. The dreadful screams of death began to fade as the last of the fugitives passed painfully to the unconsciousness that heralded a more permanent silence yet within the walls of one of the Ford Forts a sound continued: A child of two who stood over the unmoving forms of a man and a woman, tiny hands clenched at his sides and crying even though his tears were all spent and his throat dry and sore. The soldiers around him were too busy to do anything for him but all of them sobbed as they glanced at the boy, screaming wordlessly for his parents that would never hear him or hold him again and wondering when his voice would sink mournfully into silence. Marius Fettelis whose compassion had in the opinion of his men consigned them all to death found himself once more compelled by his conscience and throwing a blanket around the boys trembling shoulders he comforted him as best he knew how. But the boys’ sobs continued and as Marius reached to soothe the boys’ brow he stopped, his rough hand hovering over pink healthy skin, skin that bore no mark of illness, no blemish of disease, no hint of the plague that had slaughtered every living thing in the province he had been carried from. Marius knelt looking at the child, no longer hearing the depleting moans of the dying. He had already begun to notice that not a single soldier or orderly in his command had so far succumbed to the plague, even though the reports were that it revealed itself within a few hours. Lifting a shaking hand he rested it on the boys cheek as if his very touch might break the spell that had so far kept the plague from taking hold. Soothed a little by the touch the boy ceased to sob and Marius felt compelled to draw him closer, to protect him, no matter what the cost to himself and to wonder why of the entire population of Andeburg this one small child had been spared and what kind of plague this was that could massacre an entire province but was unable to touch anyone beyond the river.