Battleaxe: Book One of the Axis Trilogy. Sara Douglass
to feed a thousand eagles and hawks.
The eagle had already feasted earlier that morning and was not interested in gorging again so soon. It let itself drift further east across Grail Lake until the white-walled seven-sided Tower of the Seneschal rose one hundred paces into the air to greet the sun. There the eagle tipped its wing and its balance, veering slowly to the north, looking for a shady afternoon roost. It was an old and wise eagle and knew that it would probably have to settle for the shady eaves of some farmer’s barn in this most treeless of lands.
As it flew it pondered the minds and ways of these men who feared trees so much that they’d cut down most of the ancient forests once covering this land. It was the way of the Axe and of the Plough.
Far below the eagle, Jayme, Brother-Leader of the Religious Brotherhood of the Seneschal, most senior mediator between the one god Artor the Ploughman and the hearts and souls of the Acharites, paced across his comfortable chamber in the upper reaches of the Tower of the Seneschal.
“The news grows more disturbing,” he muttered, his kindly face crinkling into deep seams of worry. For years he’d refused to accept the office his fellow brothers had pressed on him, and now, five years after he’d finally bowed to their wishes and accepted that Artor himself must want him to hold supreme office within the Seneschal, Jayme feared that it would be he who might well have to see the Seneschal – nay, Achar itself – through its greatest crisis in a thousand years.
He sighed and turned to stare out the window. Even though it was only early DeadLeaf-month, the first week of the first month of autumn, the wind had turned icy several days before, and the windows were tightly shut against the cold. A fire blazed in the mottled green marble fireplace behind his desk, the light of the flames picking out the inlaid gold tracery in the stone and the silver, crystal and gold on the mantel.
The younger of his two assistants stepped forward. “Do you believe the reports to be true, Brother-Leader?”
Jayme turned to reassure Gilbert, whom he thought might yet prove to have a tendency towards alarm and panic. Who knew? Perhaps such tendencies would serve him well over the coming months. “My son, it has been so many generations since anyone has reliably spotted any of the Forbidden Ones that, for all we know, these reports might be occasioned only by superstitious peasants frightened by rabbits gambolling at dusk.”
Gilbert rubbed his tonsured head anxiously and glanced across at Moryson, Jayme’s senior assistant and first adviser, before speaking again. “But so many of these reports come from our own brothers, Brother-Leader.”
Jayme resisted the impulse to retort that most of the brothers in the northern Retreat of Gorkentown, where many of these reports originated, were little more than superstitious peasants themselves. But Gilbert was young, and had never travelled far from the glamour and cultivation of Carlon, or the pious and intellectual atmosphere of the Tower of the Seneschal where he had been educated and admitted into holy orders to serve Artor.
And Jayme himself feared that it was more than rabbits that had frightened his Gorkentown brethren. There were reports coming out of the small village of Smyrton, far to the north-east, that needed to be considered as well.
Jayme sighed again and sat down in the comfortable chair at his desk. One of the benefits of the highest religious office in the land were the physical comforts of the Brother-Leader’s quarters high in the Tower. Jayme was not hypocritical enough to pretend that, at his age, his aching joints did not appreciate the well-made and cushioned furniture, pleasing both to eye and to body, that decorated his quarters. Nor did he pretend not to appreciate the fine foods and the invitations to the best houses in Carlon. When he did not have to attend to the administration of the Seneschal or to the social or religious duties of his position, there for the stimulation of his mind were thousands of leather-bound books lining the shelves of his quarters, with religious icons and portraits collected over past generations decorating every other spare space of wall and bringing some measure of peace and comfort to his soul. His bright blue eyes, still sharp after so many years spent seeking out the sins of the Acharites, travelled indulgently over one particularly fine representation of the Divine Artor on the occasion that he had presented mankind with the gift of The Plough, a gift that had enabled mankind to rise above the limits of barbarity and cultivate both land and mind.
Brother Moryson, a tall, lean man with a deeply furrowed brow, regarded his Brother-Leader with fondness and respect. They had known each other for many decades, having both been appointed as the Seneschals representatives to the royal court in their youth. Later they had moved to the royal household itself. Too many years ago, thought Moryson, looking at Jayme’s hair and beard which were now completely white. His own thin brown hair, he knew, had more than a few speckles of grey.
When Jayme had finally accepted the position of Brother-Leader, a post he would hold until his death, his first request had been that his old friend and companion Moryson join him as first assistant and adviser. His second request, one that upset many at court and in the royal household itself, was that his protégé, Axis, be appointed BattleAxe of the Axe-Wielders, the elite military and crusading wing of the Seneschal. Fume as King Priam might, the Axe-Wielders were under the control of the Seneschal, and within the Seneschal a Brother-Leader’s requests were as law. Royal displeasure notwithstanding, Axis had become the youngest ever commander of the Axe-Wielders.
Moryson, who had kept out of the conversation to this point, stepped forward, knowing Jayme was waiting for his advice. “Brother-Leader,” he said, bowing low from the waist with unfeigned respect and tucking his hands inside the voluminous sleeves of his habit, “perhaps it would help if we reviewed the evidence for a moment. If we consider all the reports that have come in over the past few months perhaps we might see a pattern.”
Jayme nodded and waved both his assistants into the intricately carved chairs that sat across from his desk. Crafted generations ago from one of the ancient trees that had dominated the landscape of Achar, the well-oiled wood glowed comfortingly in the firelight. Better that wood served man in this way than free-standing on land that could be put to the Plough. Thick stands of trees were always better cut down than left standing to offer shade and shelter to the demons of the Forbidden.
“As always your logic comforts me, Brother Moryson. Gilbert, perhaps you could indulge us with a summation of events as you understand them thus far. You are the one, after all, to have read all the reports coming in from the north.”
Neither Jayme nor Moryson particularly liked Gilbert; an unbrotherly sentiment, they knew, but Gilbert was a rather pretentious youth from a high-born Carlonite family, whose generally abrasive personality was not helped by a sickly complexion, thin shanks and sweaty palms. Nevertheless, he had a razor-sharp mind that could absorb seemingly unrelated items of information from a thousand different sources and correlate them into patterns well before anyone else could. He was also unbelievably ambitious, and both Jayme and Moryson felt he could be better observed and controlled if he were under the eye of the Brother-Leader himself.
Gilbert shuffled back into his seat until his spine was ramrod straight against the back of the chair and prepared to speak his mind. Both Moryson and Jayme repressed small smiles, but they waited attentively.
“Brothers under Artor,” Gilbert began, “since the unusually late thaw of this spring,” both his listeners grimaced uncomfortably, “the Seneschal has been receiving numerous reports of … unusual … activities from the frontier regions of Achar. Firstly from our brethren in the religious Retreat in Gorkentown, who have reported that the commander of Gorkenfort has lost many men on patrol during this last winter.” The small municipality of Gorkentown, two hundred leagues north, huddled for protection about the military garrison of Gorkenfort. Centuries previously, the monarchy of Achar had established the fort in Gorken Pass in northern Ichtar; it was then and remained the most vital link in Achar’s northern defences.
“One shouldn’t expect every one of your men to come back from patrol when you send them out to wander the northern wastes during the depths of winter,” Jayme muttered testily, but Gilbert only frowned slightly at this interruption and continued.
“An unusual number of men, Brother-Leader. The soldiers who are stationed