Stranger of Tempest: Book One of The God Fragments (23 page)

The Exalted was almost at the top when the light-bolt struck. She threw herself away from the searing light, barging the troops who followed her and almost knocking one from the steps. But a tidal wave of heat and pain never broke over her, just an intense brightness that she could see through her eyelids. That single moment of fear and anticipation stretched out, two heartbeats, three, four. Then the light began to recede and primal panic fled before the steel edge of her will.

Not a burner.

Uvrel hauled herself upright, treading on her dragoons as she staggered to the top of the wall. She blinked and cursed as trails of light swam across her vision. The sharpshooters she’d sent up first howled with pain, all three on their knees with their hands clamped over their eyes. Their mage-guns were abandoned at their feet so the Exalted snatched one up and tried to level it.

It was no use. She could barely keep her balance, the sway of her body was enough to ruin any shot and she couldn’t even see anything to shoot at. Beyond the wall was just a darkened blur, her night vision ruined and her best soldiers half-blinded by the light-bolt. In disgust she dropped the gun again and grabbed the stone crenellations for support while she fumbled at the nearest man. Her fingers closed around long greasy hair.

‘Hagan? Is that you?’

The man whimpered until she shook him. ‘Exalted? Veraimin’s rage, I can’t see!’

‘It’ll pass,’ she shouted to the three of them, praying she was right. ‘Stay still, I’ll send for help.’

She lurched drunkenly back the way she’d come, grabbing a soldier coming the other way who gratefully took hold of whatever he could for support. She ignored where his hands had fallen and tried to focus on his face.

‘Tovil?’

‘Sir! What was that?’

She pushed him back against a wooden post and stood straighter, though she could still only half see. ‘Where’s Harril?’ Uvrel demanded, realising Tovil was as useless as her.

‘Here, sir!’ called a voice from somewhere further down.

‘You can see?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good – rouse the rest of my dragoons, all of them! And any scouts you can find, we need guns and trackers. The rest of their company might be waiting. If we walk into an ambush I mean to outnumber our Steel Crows.’

She turned to Tovil. ‘Get the men on the wall looked at. If they can’t see anything when we’re ready to move, leave them with the doctors – otherwise tie them to horses if need be. Lieutenant Sauren?’

‘Sir.’

‘Run to the Lord-Commander, ask to commandeer as many troops as I may, get whatever you can and lead them out after us.’

‘Yes, sir!’

As Tovil slipped past her to the men on the wall, Uvrel sank down to sit on the top step. She closed her eyes and forced herself to take a long breath. She’d only glimpsed the fleeing riders, but one thing had jumped out at her, other than the pale giant and the portly Hanese soldier, Lynx. A woman with long red hair streaming in the wind – strikingly beautiful, a face to remember. A face she’d seen before, out on the street last night when she’d laid in wait for the mercenaries and they’d failed to come.

The courtesan. She must be a foreign spy in need of an exit.

Despite her aching eyes Uvrel stood and turned to face her troops. ‘The rest of you, get to your horses and be ready to move out. Insar has granted me a lesson in my blindness – I underestimated these mercenaries and let them slip through our fingers. We will not fail our god a second time!’

Lynx opened his eyes and immediately regretted it. Daylight streamed in through the high window, scraping like tiny claws at the back of his eyes. Motes of dust glittered amid the fug of unwashed bodies, a miasma of alcohol-saturated sweat filling the air. He moaned and rolled over, tugging his blanket up to try and escape the light. His limbs were sluggish and heavy, his crotch warm and damp.

Damp?

Lynx did his best to ease his eyes open again. Trying to focus made them hurt even more, with little result. A blur that seemed to be his hand untangled from the blanket and worked its way down. The throb in his skull continued to build, a colony of mine-spirits hammering away inside.

Eventually he managed to fumble at his crotch. Everything was wet – not just damp but completely sodden. His trousers from waist to knee were soaked through, and the mattress beneath too.

Coldest dark, I pissed myself in the night? Was I that drunk?

Brief flashes of his stagger back to his bunk appeared in his mind. Of ending up on his arse as he tried to yank his boots off, of a few verses of the Wisp and the Whore while he pissed into a pot.

Mebbe. Was that bit a dream, or not really a pot? And why in buggery do I still need a piss so bad?

A creeping sense of shame crept down his neck. Nose wrinkled in anticipation, Lynx couldn’t resist bringing his fingers back up to his nose to sniff them.

Beer?

There was a long moment of relief, one interrupted by a renewed burst of insistence from his bladder. He scrabbled the blanket off and tried again to focus on the mattress below him. A dark stain covered the middle portion, a warm, pungent hoppy smell overlaying the bunkroom’s stink of sweat, feet and flatulence.

‘Which prick brought a beer to bed?’ whined someone from a nearby bunk. It took Lynx a while to identify Himbel’s voice. The company doctor sounded in as much pain as Lynx and as bad-tempered as ever.

‘Ah, ’parently me,’ Lynx said, having to put all his strength into sitting upright. Too late he remembered there was a bunk above his and he cracked his aching head against the wooden frame. He fell back into the damp patch, fighting the urge to whimper.

‘Got any left?’ Himbel replied with a pathetic note of hope.

‘Fuckin’ shitsticks,’ Lynx moaned, cradling his stinging forehead.

‘Eh?’

He blinked and again pushed himself upright. ‘I, er. Nah. Spilled it, I reckon.’

‘Oh gods!’ broke in a third voice.

By the time Lynx had worked out who it was, Sitain was leaning over the edge of her bunk and vomiting onto the floor below.

‘Get the fuck out!’ growled a few voices as others retched at the sour stink filling the room. ‘Bastard recruits,’ added someone else.

Sitain didn’t reply. Lynx watched her roll off the edge of her bunk, her face green, and struggle to avoid the puddle of puke.

‘That way,’ he called, pointing towards the door.

She wavered and barely managed to keep on her feet, but by will alone Sitain stumbled towards the door, heading for the outhouse beyond it. On the way she had the sense to grab an empty chamber pot, some sense of self-preservation deciding the courtyard would be a better place to be sick than a stinking outhouse.

Quiet returned to the bunkroom, but there was a restless shifting of limbs as the mercenaries reluctantly surfaced from sleep – the voices and sharp smell of puke enough to drag all but the most comatose to wakefulness.

Lynx stared at his boots for a while, trying to fathom how he’d get his feet into them, before noticing a pair of shoes nearby. Too small and caked in dirt, they still looked like an easier prospect so he wedged his feet in and hauled himself upright. A few shuffling steps across the room gave him confidence he could make it, but just as his bladder started making insistent noises he saw a dark hand point towards him.

‘Filthy shitbag Hanese,’ Braqe said, squinting forward in the unwelcome light. ‘One pukes, other pisses hisself.’

‘It’s beer,’ Lynx replied, feeling a hot flush of embarrassment all the same.

‘Sure.’

‘You wanna get your face down here and smell it?’

Someone laughed from a bunk behind. ‘Kas went to sleep alone, eh?’

‘Eh?’ Lynx turned and searched for a face, but couldn’t tell which of the occupied bunks it was.

‘Comp’ny tradition,’ said the mystery comrade. ‘You piss beer on our plans fer a screw, you get beer pissed on you.’

Lynx stared at the bunks for a while. Eventually he shrugged. He wasn’t happy about it, that was for sure, but with a pressing need and a certain trouble thinking, he found he didn’t much care. Instead he followed Sitain out and found her at a table outside, illuminated by crisp morning sunshine as she retched and heaved over her chamber pot. He left her to it and went to relieve himself at the adjoining outhouse, the filthiest verses of last night’s serenade running through his head.

Back out in the fresh air, he finally had the chance to appreciate the morning sun peeking over the rooftops and eased himself down on a warm bench to let his body recover a while longer. At some point he knew he’d need to go back inside and try to peel off his wet trousers, but the thought of such effort confounded him at present.

‘Better?’ he called after a few deep breaths.

Sitain looked up through a bedraggled curtain of hair. ‘Uh.’

‘Glad I ain’t the only one then.’

‘I blame you.’

Lynx smiled at that and rubbed a greasy palm over his face. ‘Aye, me too. There’s blood sausage for breakfast if you want.’

He chuckled to himself as Sitain went through another round of puking, idly looking up at the thin darts of cloud that drifted slowly through the sky. The black dots of birds danced and wheeled across the dull grey arc of the Skyriver, their faint cries just detectable over the muted sounds of the city beyond. Lynx closed his eyes and felt the warmth on his eyelids, revelled in the sensation he’d once thought he would never feel again.

A door banged open past the hunched, spitting form of Sitain and a gust of welcome smells escaped to greet him; frying meat and brewing coffee. He squinted up at the tall man who’d exited, pock-cheeked Llaith carrying a fat ceramic pot of coffee and a handful of brown squat cups.

Sparing a brief, sympathetic look at Sitain, Llaith deposited the coffee and cups in front of Lynx and sat on one of the other benches. ‘Needs a few minutes,’ he said, nodding at the coffee.

‘I could kiss you,’ Lynx said as he stared at the coffee, almost fantasising about the hot bitter taste of it.

‘It’s a fine morning,’ Llaith said with a shrug. ‘Deserves coffee and a smoke.’ With a deft flourish he filled a wisp of paper with tobacco, rolled and twisted up in a matter of seconds. He paused in the process of depositing it in one of the empty cups, seeing Lynx’s attention fixed on it. ‘You want?’

‘Like you said, it’s a fine morning.’

Llaith smiled, the pattern of his scarred cheeks folding away. He held up the clay coal pot he carried at his waist. ‘Make yerself useful then. I forgot this.’

Lynx took the pot and headed inside to where the fire had already been revived. He ushered a few ash-coated lumps of coal into the pot before closing it up again, but before he could head out he found himself face to face with Kas. Even in the gloom of inside, Lynx could tell the dark-skinned woman was less than her usual sunny self.

‘Morning,’ he said feebly.

‘It is,’ Kas acknowledged, glancing down at his damp trousers. ‘Looks like you had an accident.’

Lynx nodded. ‘Folk say that happens sometimes, when you get too far in your cups.’

‘Probably your age.’

‘Aye, I reckon so.’ He scratched the ghost of a beard on his cheek. ‘Might be brandy don’t agree with me.’

‘You need a head for it, true enough.’

‘I’m guessing you have one, then.’

‘What makes you say that?’

He attempted an endearing grin. ‘You’re smaller’n me and hit it just as hard, but here I am feeling like shit warmed up an’ there you is, beautiful as ever.’

The frown didn’t leave her face, but her eyes seemed to sparkle just for a moment. ‘Right answer. Maybe you’ve got more’ve a head for it than I thought.’

Lynx snorted. ‘Just don’t ask me hard stuff like what my name is, not ’til I’ve got over-familiar with some coffee.’

‘You eaten?’

He shook his head.

‘I’ll get ’em to bring something out. Some of Tempest take a while to round up.’

Lynx nodded, feeling unconcerned. ‘Won’t take long. I already seen Braqe and Llaith.’

‘Go on then.’

‘Yes, Mistress Kasorennel.’

That seemed to earn him another slight softening of expression as Kas turned away, telling him he’d pronounced it well enough. Lynx headed back out to discover a small bundle of smokes in the cup before Llaith and the ageing mercenary in the process of pouring himself a coffee. Before too long, wisps of smoke were being dragged away by the breeze as the pair slurped at their steaming cups. Sitain watched them balefully from the neighbouring table, one arm still wrapped around her chamber pot as the colour gradually returned to her cheeks.

‘Morning, old man,’ Kas called as she arrived to join them, settling in beside Llaith.

‘Kas, ain’t you a lovely sight for a lazy morning?’

‘Lovely sight for any morning,’ she corrected.

‘Ah, but most days a man can’t stop an’ appreciate it.’

She smiled and inclined her head, not intending to contradict the man when it was spoken in friendship. ‘Looks like I owe Teshen some money. I was sure you’d still be face deep in some courtesan at dawn.’

Lynx almost choked on his coffee at the image while Llaith laughed filthily.

‘Weren’t for the lack o’ trying,’ the older man said, ‘but a good fisherman knows when he ain’t getting a bite.’

‘Courtesans?’ Lynx hadn’t been to these parts for a while, but courtesans were to whores what Reft was to the average army private. They had the education and manners of the highest echelons of society – and cost enough no one else would be able to afford them. In a merchant city full of jockeying factions and businessmen looking to broker deals, they would be an influential force and know their own worth exactly.

‘Something of a speciality of our friend here,’ Kas said. ‘Talks his way into those gatherings they host and charms ’em somehow. We never worked out how, but Safir went with him once. Swears Llaith didn’t slip anything in their drinks or pay a scrap o’ coin. Reckon Safir was left troubled by what he saw, truth be told.’

Llaith gave some fashion of bow to Lynx’s incredulous face. ‘What can I say? I scrub up well and overflow with charm.’