The Dark Defiles (2 page)

The same could not be said of the others.

Of the expedition’s other investors who’d actually made the trip north, Klarn Shendanak stuck close to the action because he didn’t trust Empire men any further than you could throw one, and that included Archeth Indamaninarmal, jet-skinned half-human imperial cypher that she was. Menith Tand followed suit and stuck close to Shendanak because he harbored a standard Empire nobleman’s distaste for the Majak’s rough-and-ready immigrant manners and would not be one-upped. And Yilmar Kaptal went along because he mistrusted both Shendanak and Tand in about equal measure. The three of them didn’t quite spit at each other outright, but having them at your back was like leading a procession of alley cats. Shendanak never went anywhere without an eight-strong honor guard of thuggish-looking second cousins fresh down from the steppes, which in turn meant that Tand brought along a handful of his own mercenary crew to balance the equation, and Kaptal flat-out demanded that Rakan muster a squad of Throne Eternal just in case … 

Egar usually tagged along at Gil’s shoulder just to see if there’d be any kind of fight.

O
NE GRAY MORNING, ON THE WAY TO A TALISMAN-WARDED GRAVE THAT
would prove to contain nothing but the skeleton of a badly deformed sheep, Ringil stopped and looked back from the top of a low rise, squinting against the rain. The whole bedraggled entourage spilled up the trail behind him like the survivors of a shipwreck. He reckoned sourly that he hadn’t seen such a mess since he led the expeditionary retreat back to Gallows Gap eleven years ago.

Bit harsh,
was Egar’s considered opinion.
On the expeditionary, I mean. That was an army we had. You imagine trying to lead this lot into a battle and out the other side? We’ll be lucky if they’re not all at each other’s throats before noon.

Don’t,
Ringil told him wearily.
Just—don’t.

They went. They dug. Found nothing and came back, mostly in the rain.

But—to the Dragonbane’s evident disappointment—there never was a fight.

Instead, Gil’s train of gawkers and minders slowly began to whittle away in the face of repeated letdown and the godawful weather. Each found other, more compelling matters to occupy them. Archeth withdrew into brooding isolation aboard
Sea Eagle’s Daughter,
and could occasionally be heard right across the harbor, yelling abuse at Anasharal in the High Kir tongue. Nyanar went back to residence aboard
Dragon’s Demise,
where he instructed and supervised an endless series of small deck repairs and wrote self-importantly about it in the captain’s log. On the shore side of things, Yilmar Kaptal took to his rooms at the inn on Gull’s Flight wynd and asked Rakan for a brace of Throne Eternal to guard his door. Shendanak and Tand stomped about the streets of Ornley, shadowed by their men, glaring at the locals and each other whenever they crossed paths. Desperate to bring the temperature down, Hald and Rakan both habitually stayed in town with the bulk of their respective commands, put their men through punishing work schedules, held exhaustive training sessions, and did anything they could to head off the simmering sense of boredom and frustration.

Egar found himself some local whores.

And Mahmal Shanta sat with a racking cough in his stateroom aboard the flagship
Pride of Yhelteth,
spitting up phlegm, drinking hot herbal infusions, and poring over charts, all the while trying to pretend he was not planning their empty-handed return home.

The search went on, pared back to Ringil and a marine detachment under Hald’s occasional command to do the digging. The unspoken understanding—Gil was the sharp end. He had the spells and the alien iron blade; if the Illwrack Changeling popped up out of the next grave in fighting temper, Ringil was the man to put him down. As they exhausted the more promising fragments of legend and hearsay closer to town, Nyanar and
Dragon’s Demise
were detailed to carry them whenever a site was—or was reputed to be—sailing distance away. Which was all the time these days.

It was starting to feel like clutching at straws. Like going through the motions. Gil’s patience, never his strong suit, was frayed down to shreds. The itch to kill something stalked him day and night. What he wouldn’t give for the Illwrack Changeling to erupt from the damp earth and grass right in front of him right now, sword in hand, undead eyes aflame.

He’d cut the fucker down like barley.

The sheep track wound its unhurried way across the shoulder of the hill, dropping by hairpin increments into the valley below. A couple of ruined crofts showed hearth ends and tumbled dry stone walls rising out of the heather like longboats drowned in shallow water. Bedraggled-looking sheep dotted the slope, stood at a distance, chewing patiently and watching them pass. One or two of the nearer ones beat an ungainly, lumbering retreat from the path, as if warned in advance of Gil’s state of mind.

I’m going to put that fucking Helmsman over the rail when we get back. I’m going to sink it in Ornley sound without a cable and leave it there to rot.

If Archeth doesn’t beat me to it.

I’m going to—

He jerked to a halt, awareness of the thing that blocked his path coming late through his seething mood. He teetered back a couple of inches.

Behind him, he heard the marines’ banter dry up.

The ram stood its ground on the path. It was big, bulking nearly twice the size of the sheep they’d seen, and it was old, fist-thick horns coiling twice around and then out to wicked downward-jabbing spikes. Its fleece was a filthy yellowish white, matted across a back as broad as a mule’s. It stood well over waist height on Ringil, and it stared him down out of pupils that were slotted black openings into emptiness. Its chin was raised toward him, and it seemed to be smiling at some private joke.

Ringil took a sharp step forward. Jerked arms upward and wide—not unlike, it suddenly dawned on him, one of the charlatan witches you saw pissing about at magic in Strov square.

The ram stayed where it was.

“I’m in no mood for you,” Gil barked. “Go on, fuck off.”

Silence. A couple of nervous guffaws from the marines.

The moment stretched and broke. The ram took a step sideways, tossed its head in a gesture as if to say
look up there,
and ambled off toward one of the ruined crofts.

Ringil looked, a flinching glance, back up the rain-soaked hillside and—

Black flap of cloak, glimmer of faint blue fire in motion.

A dark figure, moving on the ridgeline, head down as if watching him—

He blinked. Stood there, locked still, trying to be sure. The flicker of movement, out of the corner of his eye.

There and gone.

Oh, come off it.

He came back around, spotted the ram standing at the wall of the ruin. It still seemed to be watching him.

“Sir?”

Shahn was at his side, face carefully expressionless. Ringil looked past him at the men, who were mostly squaring away twitchy grins, squinting up at the sky and trying to seem serious. He couldn’t really blame them; he was about to shrug off the whole thing himself, when he noticed the Hironish guides. They stood apart, off the path, and hastily averted their eyes as soon as he looked their way. He stared at them for a couple of moments, and they steadfastly refused to meet his gaze. But he caught the glance one of them could not help casting toward the ruin and the ram.

Ringil followed the man’s gaze. He felt his pulse pick up.

The
ikinri ‘ska,
pricking awake in him like some dozy hound by the fireside at the sound of the latch.

“Sergeant,” he said with distant calm. “Get everybody down to the boats, would you?”

“Sir.”

“Wait for me there. Tell Commander Hald and the captain I won’t be long.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ringil was already moving toward the ruin. He barely heard the man’s response, was barely aware of the marines as they mustered behind Shahn’s snapped order and tramped off at a brisk march. He was off the path now, knee-deep in the rain-soaked heather, and he had to force his legs through it to make headway. Ahead of him, the ram, apparently satisfied, tossed its head again and trotted through a gap in the tumbled wall of the croft that might once have been a doorway.

The sky had darkened overhead with the gathering cloud. The wind seemed to be picking up.

He reached the ruin and looked in over a wall that barely came up to his waist. The ram was nowhere to be seen. Ringil prowled the wall, swept a speculative glance up and down the interior, making sure. Knee-high growth of grass across the floor, shaped stones from the tumbled walls scattered here and there, the splintered, rotted-wood remnants of what might have been furniture a long time ago. At one end wall, the stonework was blackened where hearth and chimney had once stood.

Something was gathered there, crouched by the hearth-space, waiting for him.

He couldn’t quite see what it was.

At the ruined doorway, gusts from the rising wind agitated the long grass, bowed it back as if offering him passage inside.

Ringil nodded to himself. “All right, then.”

He stepped in over the threshold.

e’d paid the whores for the whole afternoon, but in the end couldn’t summon much enthusiasm for a third go-around. Usually, two women at once solved that kind of problem for him, but not today. Maybe it was the smell of damp wool that still clung to their bodies even after they’d peeled naked for him, maybe the fact he caught the mask of fake arousal falling off the face of the younger one a couple too many times in the act. That kind of thing stabbed at him, took him out of the moment. He knew he was paying, but he didn’t like to be reminded of the fact, and back in Yhelteth he wouldn’t have been.

What’s the matter, Dragonbane? You never fucking happy? Up on the steppe, you craved all that southern sophistication you’d left behind. Put you back in the imperial city and you wish you could have the simple life again. Now here you are with simple whores in a simple little town, and that’s not right for you, either.

Ye Gods, he missed Imrana.

Wasn’t talking to the bitch currently, but missed her still.

So when the young one knelt before him on the floor and slipped his flaccid cock into her mouth, while her older companion sat on a stool in the corner, legs apart, lifting one pendulous tit at a time and tonguing the nipple with leering glances in his direction, he just grunted and shook his head. Hoisted the girl bodily from her knees—his cock slipped back out of her mouth, still pretty much flaccid—and set her aside. The older whore eyed him warily as he got up off the disheveled bed. He read her thoughts as if they were tattooed across her face. No telling what any paying customer might do when they couldn’t get it up, and this one here was big and battle-scarred, and a foreigner to boot. Harsh alien accent and hair all tangled up with talismans in iron. Lurid tales of the Majak had percolated right across the continent in the last couple of centuries—they’d doubtless got as far as the Hironish isles long ago.
Bloody steppe savages, disembowel a girl and cook her on a spit soon as look at her most likely if they got out of bed the wrong side one morning
… 

He forced a reassuring grimace and went to stare out of the window. Heard them move behind him with alacrity, start gathering up their clothes and the coin he’d left on the table. Light-footed, they left in what seemed like seconds and the door of his room clunked shut. He felt the relief it brought go through his whole frame. He slumped against the window, rested his head on cool glass. Outside, a light rain was falling into the street, clogging up daylight that was already past its best. A couple of children went past, splashing deliberately in the puddles and yattering some rhyme he could barely make out. He’d learned the League tongue, more or less, while on campaign in the north during the war, but the Hironish accent was hard work.

Yeah, like their fucking awful food and their fucking awful weather and their fucking awful whores. Five weeks in this shit-hole already, and still no—

Commotion downstairs. A woman shrieked. Furniture went over.

He frowned. Cocked his head at the sound.

Another shriek. Coarse laughter, and men calling to each other. The words were indistinct, but the rhythms were Majak.

Uh-oh.

He grabbed his breeches off the bed, trod hurriedly into them on his way to the door. Shirt off the table as he passed, out into the corridor still bare chested. Shouldered into the garment as he went down the stairs. No time for boots or other refinement, because—

He arrived on the ground floor of the inn, barefoot and undone. Surveyed the scene before him.

There were three of them. Shendanak’s men, just in from the street by the look of it, felt coats still buttoned up and damp across the shoulders from the rain. One had the younger of Egar’s whores grasped firmly by the crotch and one tit, was nuzzling and licking at her neck. The other two seemed engaged in facing down the innkeeper.

“Oi!” Egar barked, in Majak. “Fuck do you think you’re doing?”

The one holding the whore looked up. “Dragonbane!” he bawled. “Brother! We were just looking for you! Get your drinking boots on! ’S time to light this shit-hole town
right
the fuck up—Majak style!”

Egar nodded slowly. “I see. Whose idea was that, then?”

“Old Klarn, mate! The man himself.” The whore bucked and twisted in the speaker’s grip. She sank teeth into his forearm. He winced and grinned, let go of her crotch, used the free hand to squeeze her jaws open and force her head back, clear of his flesh. Looked like she’d left a pretty distinct bite there in the thick muscle behind the wrist, welling blood and everything, but the Majak’s voice barely wavered from its previous slurring good cheer. Egar estimated he’d been drinking awhile. “Fucking bitch. Yeah, Klarn says how we’ve been soft-soaping around these fish-fuckers for long enough. Time to get steppe-handed on their arses. In’t that right, boys?”

Growls of approval from the other two. By now they had the innkeeper bent back over his own bar with the flat of a knife blade tapping under his chin and his legs dangling a couple of inches off the sawdusted floor. They flashed cheery, inclusive grins at the Dragonbane.

Egar jerked his chin at the girl. “That’s my whore you’ve got there. Let her go.”

“
Your
whore?” The other Majak’s face was suddenly a lot less friendly. “Who says she’s yours? She’s down here waggling her tits and arse in grown men’s faces, she—”

“She’s paid until sunset.” Egar shifted his stance a little, squaring up. He nodded at the older whore. “They both are. They’re down here getting me a drink and a platter. So let her go. And you two—let him up as well. How’s the poor cunt supposed to pull me a pint if you have him pinned?”

The two Majak at the bar were happy enough to obey. Maybe they’d been drinking less, maybe they were just more intelligent men. They nodded amiably, backed off the innkeeper, and let him scramble loose. The one with the knife put his weapon away with a sheepish grin. But the guy with his arm round the whore was going to be a harder push. As Egar watched, he tightened his grip.

“My coin’s as good as anybody’s,” he growled.

Egar took a casual step forward. Measured the room without seeming to. “Then get in the queue with it. Or find yourself another whore. You’re not having mine.”

The other Majak’s hand strayed down toward his belt and the big-hilted killing knife sheathed there. He barely seemed aware of the motion.

“You’ve got till sunset,” he said gruffly, almost reasonably, as if trying to put the case to some court in his own head. “I’ll not need long.”

“I’m not going to tell you again.
Let her go.
”

Egar saw the other man make his decision, saw it in his eyes even before he went for the knife. His hand clamped down on the hilt, but the Dragonbane was already in motion. Across the scant space between them, bottle snatched up off the table to his right, sweeping in, and a braining stroke across the Majak’s head. He gave it all he had, was actually a bit surprised when the bottle didn’t break first time. As the other man reeled from the blow, Egar stepped in after him, swung again, backhanded, and this time—
yes!—
the glass came apart in a bright burst of shards and cheap wine. The Majak went down, bleeding from multiple gouges in his forehead. The whore got loose and scurried behind her colleague; the injured man crawled dizzily about on the floor, blood running into his eyes. Egar curled one foot back, mindful of his naked toes, and kicked the Majak hard in the face before he could get up. He brandished the business end of the shattered bottle admonishingly at the other two.

“You boys plan to paint the town, you aren’t going to start in here. Got it?”

Quiet. Wine dripped wetly off the jagged angles of the bottle stump.

The two remaining Majak looked at their companion, curled up on the floor and twitching, then back to the wet gleam of Egar’s makeshift weapon. Rage and confusion struggled on their faces, but that was as far as it went. He saw they were both pretty young, reckoned he might be able to brazen this one out. He waited. Watched one of them rake a hand perplexedly back through his hair and make an angry gesture.

“Look, Dragonbane, we thought—”

“Then you thought wrong.” He had his reputation and his age—things that would have counted for something among Majak back on the steppe, and might play here, if these two hadn’t been away from home too long.

If not, well … 

If not, he had bare feet and a broken bottle. And glass shards on the floor.

Nice going, Dragonbane.

Better make this good.

He put on his best Clanmaster voice. “I am
guesting here,
you herd-end fuckwits. My bond with these people
compels
me, under the eyes of the Dwellers, to defend them. Or don’t the shamans teach you that shit anymore when you’re coming up?”

The two young men looked at each other. It was a dodgy interpretation of Majak practice at best—outside of some small ritual gifts, you didn’t
pay
for guesting out on the steppe. And lodging at a tavern or a rooming house, say, in Ishlin-ichan, wasn’t considered the same thing at all. But Egar was Skaranak and these two were border Ishlinak, and they might not know enough about their northerly cousins to be sure, and in the end, hey, this old guy killed a fucking
dragon
back in the day, so … 

The one on the floor groaned and tried groggily to prop himself up.

Time running out.

Egar pointed downward with the bottle. Played out his high cards. “And what do your clan elders have to say about
this
shit? Stealing another man’s whore out from under his nose? That okay, is it?”

“He didn’t kn—”

“Pulling a
knife
on a brother? That okay with you, is it?”

“But you—”

“I’m done fucking talking about this!”
Egar let the bottle hang at his side, like he had no need of it at all. He stabbed a finger at them instead, played the irascible clan elder to the hilt. “Now you get him up, and you get him the fuck out of my sight. Get him out of here while I’m still in a good mood.”

They dithered. He barked. “Go on! Take your fucking party somewhere else!”

Something gave in their faces. Their companion stirred on the floor again and they hurried to him. Egar gave them the space, relieved. Bottle still ready at his side. They propped the injured man up between them, got his arms over their shoulders, and turned for the door. One of them found some small piece of face-saving bravado on the way out. He twisted awkwardly about with his half of the burden. The anger still hadn’t won out on his face, but it was hardening that way.

“You know, Klarn isn’t going to wear this.”

Egar jutted his chin again. “Try him. Klarn Shendanak is steppe to the bone. He’s going to see this exactly the way it is—a lack of fucking respect where it’s due. Now
get out.
”

They went, out into the rain, left the door swinging wide in their wake. The Dragonbane found himself alone in a room full of staring locals.

Presently, someone got up from a table and shut the door. Still, no one spoke, still they went on staring at him. He realized the whole exchange had been in Majak, would have been incomprehensible to everybody there.

He was still holding the jag-ended bottle stump.

He laid it down on the table he’d swiped the bottle from in the first place. Its owner flinched back in his chair. Egar sighed. Looked over at the innkeeper.

“You’d better keep that door barred for the time being,” he said in Naomic. Too the room more generally, he added: “Anyone has family home alone right now, you might want to drink up and get on back to them.”

There was some shuffling among the men, some muttering back and forth, but no one actually got up or moved for the door. They were all still intent on him, the barefoot old thug with iron in his hair and his shirt hanging open on a pelt going gray.

They were all still trying to understand what had just happened.

He sympathized. He’d sort of hoped—

Fucking Shendanak.

He picked his way carefully through the shards of broken glass on the floor, past the stares, and went upstairs to get properly dressed.

He wanted his boots on for the next round.

H
E FOUND
S
HENDANAK HOLDING COURT OUTSIDE THE BIG INN ON
L
EAGUE
street where he’d taken rooms. The Majak-turned-imperial-merchant had ordered a rough wooden table brought out into the middle of the street, and he was sat there in the filtering rain, a flagon of something at his elbow, watching three of his men beat up a Hironish islander. He saw Egar approaching and raised the flagon in his direction.

“Dragonbane.”

“Klarn.” Egar stepped around the roughing up, fended his way past an overthrown punch that skidded inexpertly off the islander’s skull. He shoved the tangle of men impatiently aside. “You want to tell me what the fuck’s going on?”

Shendanak surfaced from the flagon and wiped his whiskers. “Not my idea, brother. Tand’s getting his tackle in a knot, shouting about how these fish-fuckers know something they’re not telling us. Starts in on how I’m too soft to do what it takes to find out what we need to know. Come on, what am I supposed to do? Can’t take that lying down, can I? Not from Tand.”