Fic: Henry's Journey. Henry V/French Herald 5/8
Title: Henry's Journey
Author: Hyarrowen
Fandom: Henry V, 1989 movieverse. Slight crossover with two of Christopher Marlowe's plays.
Pairing: HenryV/French Herald
Rating: T
Genre: Romance, adventure
Word count: 21,000. This part 3,700.
Summary: Henry is sent into exile, accompanied by a rather reluctant Herald. They go on a long journey together, but it's Henry who travels furthest.
Disclaimer: Not mine, Shakespeare's, Marlowe's and Renaissance Films'. Not making any money out of this.
Three weeks travelling across drying lands from oasis to oasis, and then a long stretch without a source of water, and it was with huge relief that they reached the first spur of the northern mountains. Climbing a little way into the foothills they came to a small lake surrounded by fir trees, and drank, and swam, and watered the beasts. On the way back to the road, Henry noticed scars burnt into many of the tree-trunks, but only on the older trees. It was always the same device.
“This sign,” he asked Liang, who’d travelled this road many times. “What does it mean?”
The trader, who had been with them since Shanghai, spat, and spoke a name that Henry hadn’t heard for a long time. “Tamburlaine,” as if that explained everything.
“What? Here?” Henry’s mind went back to the devastated plains of India, and traced the distances they’d journeyed in the year since then. “He got this far?”
“Almost to the wall. He wasn’t here himself; his men did this. If he’d been leading his armies, not even the desert would have stopped them. The wall certainly wouldn’t.”
Henry tried to imagine the destruction Tamburlaine would have wreaked on the orderly and ancient lands of Cathay. “You were incredibly fortunate.”
“We know. And yet, while he was alive, he protected the merchants. All the world was afraid of him, but he knew the value of trade, especially if it passed through his capital at Samarkand. He was at the crossroads, there. But to have him this close to your borders?” He shuddered.
The caravan descended through the woods, quiet on the carpet of needles, the resinous air a benison after the desert. Henry looked at the scarred trees. There must be forests like this all over Asia, marked with Tamburlaine’s sign. He had a vision of a continent astir with armies, years on the road, bringing destruction or prosperity in their wake, and hardly spoke for the rest of the day.
That night, they reached the next oasis town, and in their attic room in the caravanserai he burrowed into Jehan’s arms. “Henry, what’s the matter?” asked Jehan, with sleepy concern, but he couldn’t answer, because he didn’t know himself.
Three days later, men and pack animals rested, they set out again through the narrow gateway between sentinel crags and the river, and on into true desert, heading for another chain of oases a week away; and it was of course while they were at the mid-point of this stretch that the sky turned dirty copper and lightning began to flicker far above them. They turned back to the ruined city they’d left that morning and reached its shelter as the sandstorm howled down on them. Two days of misery, the wind shrieking for hours, sand clogging their lungs despite the shelter; and then abruptly the wind dropped and there was a light pattering of rain. They emerged from the ruins, and went on. Then, under the southernmost slopes of the Tien Shan, the Heavenly Mountains, they encountered the survivors of another caravan, and then a company of soldiers from the next oasis, coming down out of the foothills, and their news was bad.
“We need the water,” said Henry.
Qurgan, the next oasis, was under attack.
“Nomads, from beyond the hills. They’ve been getting bolder all along this stretch of the road. It was only a matter of time.” Ghazan, the troop leader, a veteran who had taken over when his officer was killed, sketched out the situation to Henry; Jehan on hand to facilitate the translation. They had got into cover and Henry, who commanded the largest number of men in the three forces, listened to Ghazan’s story in silence. The tale unfolded. Movements of the nomads in the hills, a scouting party sent out, their own signallers found dead, and then, when they returned to the oasis, the town surrounded and the road cut off.
“They’ll have sent riders to Aschur to the west, but who knows if they’ll get through? Or if the garrison at Aschur can spare the men? There have been raids all along this section of the road, a year or more.”
“And we need the water,” repeated Henry, and they did. Those days lost to the sandstorm had ensured that they wouldn’t reach Aschur, even if they managed to get past Qurgan. “Tell me…” He got the details out of the survivors, the lie of the land, asking opinions and advice from all of the locals and from his own men. Jehan listened and translated as necessary, and felt the dread which had settled over him begin to lift. Henry knew what he was about, of course. They were far from helpless. He watched the men steady down as they realised the same, that this was no ordinary guard captain leading them. Ghazan began to draw maps in the sand.
An hour or two later, Henry had his tactics clear, and spoke to the men, drawing them round him as he had with his own army at Agincourt. Hampered by his workaday knowledge of the language, he couldn’t inspire his troops as he had done that day, (Jehan had caught the tail end of that speech, and had all but switched sides there and then) but his confidence was very clear.
“We march in absolute silence; I’ll enforce that. Ghazan here will take us in through the hills. We’ll leave the camels outside the oasis with all those who can’t fight. The rest of us will go on with the horses and then Ghazan’s men will take us up to the town. We’ll attack while it’s still dark to offset their greater numbers and their horse archers. Strike where they’re strongest. They’ll find it harder to regroup that way. Remember, they just want plunder; we’ll be fighting for our lives or our families’ lives. Right, lads - let’s go!”
The last words were called out in English, but it seemed the “lads” understood, for they raised a muffled cheer before silencing themselves and leading off, Jehan and Ghazan riding in the second rank just behind Henry. The column of men, horses and camels moved almost inaudibly over the sparse feathergrass of the foothills.
They approached Qurgan as the night wore on, through orchards and fields, creeping along walls and irrigation ditches. Stopping at a well, they paused to drink while some of the local men went ahead as scouts.
“By the fires over there,” said Ghazan when he returned. “That’s where the main force is. They’re over-confident, careless.”
“That’s our objective, then. Leave the horses here; we can take theirs if necessary. Small rearguard stays behind. Ghazan, Jehan, with me.”
They struck hard and fast, through the horse-lines, artillery overwhelmed and disabled, on to the next knot of attackers and through them too, confusion spreading in their wake as the nomads’ lines of command were broken. As the noise of the counter-attack rose into the dawn, sally-ports opened in the town walls, and parties of the defenders raced out to join the fight. The attackers, their own tactics of mobile warfare turned unexpectedly on them, staggered under this new shock as the light grew. Then news came from the town walls that a small group of the nomads was making an escape. Separated from Henry in the charge, Jehan heard from Liang, injured and left behind, that Henry had cursed, gathered together what horsemen he could, and vanished in pursuit.
Jehan, in his first full-scale battle, had fought like everyone else. A year and more of concentrated tuition from Henry had ensured that. Now his body shook and shook through the reaction. He cleaned his sword awkwardly, sheathed it, and looked around him for the distraction of something useful to do.
Fires were smoking here and there on the battlefield. Small parties of townsfolk were quartering it, searching for the wounded of both sides, their shouts sharp through the chill air of dawn. He found the garrison commander, located those of their own men who hadn’t gone with Henry, sent back for the caravans, and settled down to liaison work, a new twist on the once-familiar role of herald.
Qurgan had not suffered much in the attack. Henry’s forces had arrived before much damage could be done, and the attacking nomads had not been numerous. But even so, the town could not have held out long, and they’d had no reply to the plea for help they’d sent to Aschur.
Arun, the garrison commander, had sent as many men as he could spare after Henry soon after the first charge from the town walls. “We need to find their lair and clear it out if we can. We can’t let them get word back to their own people.” It was as Ghazan had said; all this section of the road was problematical now. Even the clearing-out of any lair would not ease the situation much. As Zhen had said, there were always more nomads coming in from the north, and with the trade route from Cathay closing there seemed little point in defending the oasis towns.
Jehan, suddenly turning back into Montjoy, wondered if negotiation might be the answer to the problem, considered what he knew of the history of the region, and knew with absolute certainty that this was not a mission he wanted to undertake himself. He and Arun continued to make arrangements for accommodation at the caravanserai; all the water and food the men needed, the same for the animals; medical care; and baths.
From time to time he continued to look out to the northern horizon, but news came in from the west first: All this part of the road is being abandoned. Break out and retreat to Aschur. We will send help if we can.
“We would have been lost without you and your Henry,” observed Arun, as they sat in his office, snatching a meal in the middle of another planning session.
“How soon might the help from Aschur reach us?” Jehan’s food sat heavy in his stomach.
“Four days for troops. But we can’t risk waiting for them, and it’ll take longer than that to get there with the townsfolk.”
“We have the horses and wagons we captured.”
“Those will help. Water, food, transport for the old and sick…” Arun was not a native of Qurgan, but still took his responsibilities very seriously. “Your friend. Once we’re ready to go, we can’t wait for him. I’m sorry.”
Jehan had known it. “He’s beaten overwhelming odds before. Get the evacuation ready. When the time comes, I’ll know whether to go or stay.” He would stay of course, maybe with some of their friends from Shanghai, but there was no point asking for help from Arun, whose duty lay with the people of Qurgan. “How long before you’re ready to leave?”
“Two days.”
“What help do you need?” So the conversation was turned away from the unthinkable.
But that night, signal rockets went up in the north, “victory, returning”, which told Jehan nothing that he needed to know. Rather than trying to sleep, isolated in his room, he got up and continued the work on the evacuation; the caravanserai and its warehouses had become the centre of this operation.
Early in the morning Jehan was multiplying number of wagons by sacks of flour and making a tally of the result to send to the town’s mill when word came in from Arun. A messenger had arrived from the north. Few casualties, commanders safe. Jehan sat down very suddenly on a pile of blankets, and couldn’t think at all for a few minutes. One of the women, Sarai he thought it was, patted him kindly on the shoulder and handed him a cup of tea. He blinked back tears and tried to hold it still long enough to drink it.
He was at the infirmary, talking to the town’s physicians and working out how to transport the sick and wounded, when the pursuit party returned, each man leading a couple of extra horses or ponies with him. Shouts and cheers followed their progress into the town, but by the time he’d settled the question of transport, Henry and Ghazan had disappeared into conference with Arun, and there was always more to be organised, so he simply carried on. It was evening by the time he got away.
Henry had reported on the foray to Arun. The retreating nomads had been hunted down, no signals sent that they knew of, most of the attackers killed and their mounts taken, but they couldn’t be sure that none of them had escaped to get the word out. Qurgan was too vulnerable to try to hold. They had agreed that evacuation was the only way. He had seen his men settled, snatched a meal and cleaned himself up, found his way to Jehan’s room in the upper levels of the caravanserai, and slept for a while. It was here that Jehan finally found him, rising rumpled from the bed, the evening light slanting in through the casement turning his sun-bleached hair back to the ruddy fair it had been when they had first met. Jehan, seeing him standing there blinking, surrounded by lazy floating dust motes lit by the same light, simply had no words.
Henry was smiling, saying something about the pursuit, but Jehan cut this off with a desperate hug, feeling the real and solid warmth of him; then, still speechless, stripped him with single-minded purpose, inspected him minutely for hurts and finally, with fears relieved, took him with some urgency to bed.
As the cooling night air flowed in through the open window Henry extricated himself from the tangled mass of bedclothes and went across to close the shutters, pausing to scan the northern horizon. Pointlessly; he would see nothing. He swung the shutters closed and returned to bed.
“I’m not complaining at all, you understand,” he said as Jehan received him back into the curve of his arm. “But why now, in particular?”
Many reasons. “I, er. Had to be sure you were real, and whole.”
“I was whole. Not any more,” mock complaint grumbled into the hollow of Jehan’s shoulder; but after his initial surprise Henry had been very willing. “What took you so long? I simply thought you didn’t fancy me that way.”
“You’re a king.”
“Still bothered by that? It was far away and long ago.”
“Easy for you to say. If it hadn’t mattered, you’d have let Scroop inside you.”
Henry put out a hand, and turned Jehan’s face towards him. “If it mattered that much, I wouldn’t have let you inside me. I couldn’t quite trust Scroop enough. You I trust to the ends of the earth and inside my own body. Don’t leave it as long till next time, hmm?”
“Then I won’t. And you might have to get used to being thoroughly rogered every time you come back from a battle.”
A huff of laughter against his neck. Soft breaths sighing down towards sleep; then, on the brink of unconsciousness, a last murmur: “I thought heralds were supposed to be good with words?"
“We were lucky,” said Henry the next morning, continuing the story of the pursuit which Jehan had interrupted so summarily the night before. “They were over-confident, and there weren’t many of them. We caught up with them before they had time to signal for reinforcements. But the news will have got out by now. We had to kill all we could,” and he cast a careful eye at Jehan, who simply nodded, glad that the decision had not been his to take “- but some will have got away. We’ve got days, no more, if they decide it’s worth a counter-attack.”
“The township’s ready to evacuate. Arun will probably want to leave today.”
In the end it was evening when they set out. Troops and horses had to be rested, the injured tended and equipment overhauled. Henry had looked in on Arun and been sent back to his room to rest, which he did with a slightly startled air, still not being quite used to such treatment, for all his “far away and long ago” of last night. So he slept, while preparations for the departure surged in the courtyard beneath. Arun, whom Jehan respected more every day, oversaw the final arrangements with calm competence, leaving Jehan with remarkably little to do in the last hours before departure. He went back to their room, nudged Henry over in the bed, and settled in beside in him.
“I’ve got to be able to ride tonight,” mumbled Henry, only half-awake and not sounding altogether unwilling.
“I know. I just want to get some sleep, that’s all.” He kissed Henry’s shoulder, settled him more comfortably into his arms, and dropped into a doze. The chance of a few hours in a bed with his beloved was not to be missed.
A thump on the door woke them as the sun neared the horizon, and they dressed and went downstairs to eat their last meal in Qurgan. Families, marshalled by commanding grandmothers, were filing into the caravanserai, soldiers arming, traders loading up, children herding animals or smaller siblings. Many of the women carried bows, and some wore lamellar armour, which made Henry raise his eyebrows; in the Khmer lands he’d got used to seeing women in positions of authority but women soldiers were something new to him. But the more fighters they had, the better.
They stopped at the infirmary to gather up the sick, and a thin moon lit their way out of the oasis. They travelled in silence. Henry, glad for once not to be in the lead, stayed with those who had gone a-hunt in the hills in the centre of the long caravan. The troops who had stayed in Qurgan formed the van and rearguards.
Sunrise saw them encamped in a patched of tumbled ground, defensible in an emergency and with a tiny hidden spring. There was little to do but watch and wait. So the pattern of the next few days was set, march by night, rest by day, cold food, silence enforced as far as possible. The desert stretched before them. Sometimes Henry was able to sleep at Jehan’s side, sometimes not as the troops rotated through their duties, day-watch, scouting, main escort; often Jehan was busy with his own tasks of liaison and translation. A few times, to his own surprise because he knew how his looks set him apart, Henry came in for interested glances from some of the young women, and once or twice these were positively inviting. Jehan came in for similar treatment from time to time, coming into contact with the townsfolk much more often than Henry. He coped with such small incidents with his usual diplomat’s courtesy, and was apparently much less bothered by them than Henry, who didn’t know how to deal with them at all.
“Pretend you can’t understand a word they’re saying,” advised Jehan, in English and an amused undertone, as Henry nodded and smiled awkwardly at a group of girls, passing unnecessarily close, who promptly burst into smothered giggles.
“They’re speaking a language anyone could understand!” An exasperated rejoinder.
“You’ll have to get used to being a hero. They know what would have happened to them if you hadn’t raised the siege.”
“Not just me. Everyone fought.”
“You led us. You took the responsibility.”
Henry smiled for a moment, glad that he’d made a difference, and then suddenly he sobered and looked away.
“Now what?”
Henry sighed. “At Harfleur. I made threats. Against the women, and the old folk, and the children.”
“As I recall, you treated them very well in the end.”
“They didn’t know I had no intention of harming them. I played on their fears.”
“Would you do that again?”
“No!”
“So, you’ve learned. I’d say you paid off the last of your debts a few days ago. And if I know you, you’ll be defending us with your life, all the way to Aschur. Henry, we’d all be dead by now if it wasn’t for you. Except for the girls, and some of the boys.” He nodded at the group of youngsters, now on their way back from this campsite’s spring. “And they’d be wishing they were dead.”
Henry looked at them, and at the families camped round them, the wagons with the sick and the animals in their makeshift pens, and got to his feet. “I’ll go and see what help Arun needs.”
“Don’t wear yourself out. We’ve got a long way to go yet.”
Jehan watched him make his way through the camp, and stretched out in the morning sun. Henry was the love of his life (and he must tell him that sometime) but there was no denying that he could be quite hard work.
The next day, they sighted a company of horsemen coming up out of the west. Careful observation identified them as troops from Aschur, sent belatedly to the relief of Qurgan, and after meeting up with them, they were able to travel further and faster. Henry’s pursuit of the nomads, and destruction of their main camp, had done more to lift the threat from the north than they’d realised.
“It seems you killed one of their khans, and they’ll need to choose a new one,” Arun explained, with Jehan’s help, when he’d conferred with the leader of the relief column. “This branch of the road is still being abandoned, but now we can do it in a much more orderly fashion. They’ll be pleased in Samarkand.”
“Well, that’s good, if we can bring the people in safely.” Henry’s eyes swept over the camp, and his face relaxed for the first time in a long while.
Two days later they reached Aschur, and the process repeated itself along the journey to the city of Kashgar, guarding the passes to Samarkand. There were a few deaths along the way; it was a hard trek for all its lack of incident, but there were some births as well, and things could have been so much worse.
And every so often, they had overheard a muttered comment, around camp fires or in the corner of a caravanserai or at a well while they waited to water the beasts: “This wouldn’t have happened in Tamburlaine’s day."
On to Part 6: http://community.livejournal.com/historic_slash/146731.html#cutid1
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