The Dark Defiles (11 page)

It drew a smile from her, and for a moment she bowed her head in homage to something he couldn’t quite work out. Then she looked up, and her face was set.

“Look, Eg,” she said quietly. “Maybe this business about the sword is so much superstitious horseshit, just like the Illwrack Changeling, just like the Vanishing Isle. But if it isn’t—if the sword really is some talisman for bringing back the dwenda, then the Empire needs to know what’s coming. And that means you have to get home, with or without me.”

Egar shook his head. “The Empire’s on a war footing already. And if Jhiral’s not expecting dwenda to the feast, then he’s even more of a useless wanker than I thought. Not like he hasn’t had enough warning the last couple of years.”

“That isn’t—”

He chopped across it. “We all need to go home, Archidi. That includes you. The Empire I could give a stiff shit about; it’s a decade since I took their coin. But I took an oath to keep you in one piece, and that’s still in force. You don’t really get a say in it.”

“I saved your life last year,” she reminded him.

“Yeah—which is really going to encourage me to leave you up here on the wrong side of a war while the rest of us run south. Forget it, I’m not—”

The tavern door unlatched, slammed back on a gust of wind. Cold air scooped the room. Klithren of Hinerion loomed in the doorway, bodyguards at his back. No helm or mail, but he bore a long sword over one shoulder and another sheathed in leather at his belt.

“Here we go,” murmured Archeth.

The League commander pretty clearly spotted them, but there was no sense of acknowledgment in the way his gaze swept the room. He headed over to speak to his skirmish rangers instead. For a while, the men prodded at the piled Majak weaponry and swapped comments that were apparently funny.

“Easy, Eg.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He made an effort, wiped his face of all expression. Took a measured sip from his wine and settled lower in his chair. “All under control.”

Presently, Klithren found time for them.

He came to their table alone, bodyguards dismissed to their own devices over by the bar. Arms spread wide with avuncular good humor, a cheerful grin on his face. Ease of victory had evidently put him in an expansive mood.

“So you’d be the Dragonbane,” he said loudly. “Sitting right there in the fucking flesh! Couldn’t believe it when they told me. Can’t be too many like you left aboveground, eh?”

Egar grunted into his goblet.

Klithren seemed to take it for an invitation. He hooked out a stool from under the unoccupied portion of the table. Sat down with the satisfied sigh of a craftsman at the end of a long day’s work. He looked amiably from Egar to Archeth and back again.

“Fought the reptiles myself, of course, back in the day. Hinerion, Baldaran, like that. We had some Majak lads billeted in Hinerion back in fifty-one.”

“Not me.”

“Right, no, I guess not.” Klithren helped himself to the wine bottle, swigged deep, set it down. Wiped his mouth with evident relish. “Anyway—an honor to meet you, Dragonbane. Only sorry about the circumstances. And I want to thank you for talking down your brethren earlier. That was a smart move, saved a lot of bloodshed all around.”

Egar stared into the middle distance. “Think nothing of it.”

“Yeah, ’cause otherwise we would have rolled over you like a twenty-stone whore. No one wants that, eh?”

“Don’t know, “the Dragonbane said, teeth still not quite clenched. “Never had a twenty-stone whore. I guess it’d be an interesting challenge.”

“We’re all keen to avoid bloodshed,” said Archeth hurriedly. “We are not, as I’ve already said, a military expedition. Can I ask what provision you’ve made for the internment of our men?”

Klithren switched his attention to the woman across the table from him. There was a small smile playing about his mouth that Egar didn’t like at all.

“Those who have surrendered will be treated well, my lady. But it seems a handful of your Throne Eternal have taken weapons and a small boat with their captain, and escaped along the shoreline. They will, of course, be executed if captured alive. I can allow no mercy there.”

“Of course.” She made it come out it pretty smoothly, Egar thought.

Count young Noyal out of any schemes we have for now, then. Crafty fucker, wish I’d had the same idea first.

“Of Menith Tand’s mercenaries,” Klithren went on, “quite a few have offered to change sides if the purse is right. But that’s a matter for my masters back in Trelayne to decide. For now, imprisonment will be according to rank and station.”

Archeth nodded. “Yes, that’s fair. Thank you.”

“For yourselves, I would like you both to report to the harbor at dawn tomorrow.
Lord of the Salt Wind
is now at dock and reprovisioning, so she’ll be ready to sail at first light.”

“Both of us?” Caution edging her tone now.

“Yes, it’s my intention to have you conveyed back to Trelayne with all due speed along with the other prisoners. Matters of ransom and interrogation can be decided by the proper authorities once you arrive. I’m afraid I shall not be accompanying you myself.”

“
Trelayne?
But …”

Egar saw how she clamped down hard on her dismay. How she came back smooth-voiced and court-mannered once more. “My lord Klithren, I understood you required my help in negotiating a surrender from the marine force accompanying Ringil Eskiath up the coast.”

“Did you now?” Klithren grinned.
He knows, he fucking knows.
“My apologies, my lady, for that little misunderstanding. I have no intention of sailing out in search of the outlaw Eskiath—that would, after all, entail splitting my forces with an enemy still at large. Tactically unwise, given that I am now weighed down with captives, most of whom are canny professional soldiers. Wouldn’t you say, Dragonbane?”

Egar took the bottle and concentrated minutely on pouring his goblet full. “I’d say you worry overly about men whose weapons you have already taken away.”

“Well, we differ, then.” The League commander sniffed, but showed no sign of losing his good humor. “In any case, I have it on pretty good authority from some of the locals that Ringil Eskiath will be back very shortly. The grave he went to rob, it seems, is not all that far from here. A little something you neglected to mention there, my lady.”

“Specifics, my lord.” Archeth, working at elaborate unconcern. “As I told you—”

“Yes, yes, I recall. You are not a military expedition, you do not concern yourself with details, Ringil Eskiath went, uhm, let’s see … north.” Klithren’s grin sharpened a little. “But it seems he didn’t go very
far
north, so I think an ambush here in Ornley will serve me better than hunting him along the coast. And clearly it’s better that such honored prisoners as yourselves should not be caught up in the action.”

“My lord, without my presence …” Archeth cleared her throat. “Well, I’m not sure the marines can be relied upon to surrender, even under ambush.”

“Well, then they’ll die.” Sudden, graveled drop in Klithren’s tone, and the grin was gone. “My men will hold the high ground and the cover, and I’ll close up the harbor from the outside once Eskiath’s ship is in. Surrender will be offered—once. If a detachment of imperial marines can’t see the writing on that particular wall, then I’ve no sympathy for them. We are, after all, at war.”

They all sat there while that sank in.

And across the silence, Klithren’s long arm reaching, as he helped himself to the wine bottle once again.

hey waited a full day and night for Ringil Eskiath to show.

Everyone was briefed, everyone knew their place. The League warship
Mayne’s Moor Blooded
sat quietly at quay as decoy, while
Star of Gergis
and
Hoiran’s Grin
took picket station at points north and south along the nearby coast. The privateers held ambush positions down at the harbor and all along the edges of the bay. Lookouts took the high ground at either end, and the watchtower at Dako’s Point. Certain among the imperial marine prisoners were held in cellars not far from the docks, ready to be hauled out and used for bargaining or simply as shields. Klithren sat at a table in the Inn on League street, played dice against himself, and waited for word.

The locals hid in their homes. Ornley held its breath.

The privateers were sanguine—they knew how to sit tight. It was part of their trade to wait, sifting the haze at the horizon for signs of enemy shipping or a change in the weather. You waited sometimes for days on end, and nothing to break the monotony but the soft rocking of your vessel on the swell. You learned patience out there, you had to. No percentage in getting all riled up ahead of time. The fight, the storm—these things would be upon you soon enough. Take the quiet empty hours and breathe them in like pipe-house smoke—they’d be yours for a meager enough span in the end.

The townspeople were less sanguine. Maybe if you were a soldier boy you could sit scratching your arse like this all day long, but gouging a living out of the Hironish took work. You were up with the dawn or before, out to sea and casting your nets, or into the surrounding hills to tend your livestock. There were dry-stone walls to be maintained, crops to be checked for blight, crows and gulls to be kept at bay, eventually the harvest; thatches to be renewed or repaired after storms, peat to be dug and cut and stacked for drying. Nets to be mended, hulls to be ripped of barnacles, scrubbed, and pitched; there was gutting and cleaning, salting, packing, the smokehouse to tend. Did these bloody blade artists ever stop to think how food ends up on their plates and fire in the grate to keep out the chill? Thank the dark queen we never got that garrison they promised us after the war, if this is all they’re good for … 

The hours limped by like aging mules, overladen with expectation, one slow step at a time. Late into the afternoon, some representation was made to Klithren, that they could not sit like this indefinitely and when did he expect to be done? Because the goats out on Whaler’s Rise wouldn’t milk themselves, you know, and there were—

At which point, Klithren looked up at the little knot of spokesmen, and gave them a thin smile that dried the words in their throats. He waited a couple of beats and then, when no more complaints looked to be forthcoming, he nodded. Two privateers stepped in from the corners of the room, and the spokesmen were ushered away, to recriminate bitterly with each other out in the street.

Klithren, for his part, stared after them until the tavern door slammed, then he went back to his dice. Cup and roll, out onto the scarred wooden tabletop with a bony rattle. Scrutinize the faces the worn cubes offered.

Scoop and cup, and roll again.

“He’ll come, Venj,” some later claimed they heard him murmur. “You’ve not long to wait now, mate.”

But whomever he was talking to seemed destined to disappointment. Afternoon turned into evening, and what miserable gray light there’d been all day went down into dark without any sign of the outlaw or his ship. The customary lamps were lit along the harbor wall and the wharf-front, the waiting privateers stretched cramped limbs, and cursed, and settled in to wait some more.

“Going to be a long fucking night,” someone grumbled out on the harbor wall, and the men down the line all laughed.

“Figure it’ll be worth your while,” someone else called back. “I was at Rajal beach in the war, I saw Ringil Eskiath fight. Never seen anything like that, before or since. He was a fucking maniac. We take him down tonight, you’re going to have a tale to get you laid the rest of your natural life.”

More laughter, punctuated this time with lewd commentary.

“Yeah, or you’ll be dog meat,” sneered a grizzled and corpulent privateer sprawled spread-legged with his back to the wall a couple of yards down from the original speaker. “And your soul sent screaming to hell.”

And he prodded morosely with the tip of his killing knife at the crack between two of the harbor wall flagstones he sat on. Around him, the laughter damped down a bit. Stares fell on him. A few of the men shifted out from the wall so they could see him more clearly.

“Say what?”

The grizzled privateer glanced up, saw he had an audience.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “I don’t know nothing about Rajal beach, but before I got this gig, I worked muscle for Slab Findrich back in Trelayne—”

“That slaver piece of shit?” A younger privateer hawked and spat.

“Too fucking right, that slaver piece of shit. Findrich pays double the going rate for good men in Etterkal.”

“What’d he pay you, then?”

Jeers. Farther down the line, a sergeant bellowed for quiet.

“Yeah, laugh it up.” The corpulent privateer glowered and dug harder with his dagger. The blade tip made a tiny scraping that put your teeth on edge. “I was in Etterkal when Ringil Eskiath came calling last year, when Findrich put the bounty out on him. I saw what was left of the Sileta brothers when they finally found them.”

The jeers dried up with the mention of the name. Everyone knew that story, some version or other. Tavern tale spinners in Trelayne had been drinking off it ever since the news broke. Mothers down in harbor end used it these days to quieten their unruly infant sons—
behave, or Ringil Eskiath’ll come for you in the night, do you up like the Sileta brothers.

The privateer looked around with a bleak smile, nodding.

“Slab Findrich threw up when he saw what was left,” he said. “I was there at his side. And I’ll tell you this much for free. Nothing human could have done that.”

“Ah, come off it,” somebody scoffed. “What is this Eskiath, a fucking demon now? You think there aren’t half a hundred whores and losers in harbor end who’d have cut the Siletas up the exact same way if they got the chance?”

“But they weren’t cut up.”
Scrape, scrape
went the knife point, along the crack and the listeners’ nerves. “It wasn’t a blade that did it, it wasn’t that kind of damage.”

Silence. Lamplight dappled out in thin lines across the black harbor waters. Out to sea, a barely heard sound that might have been gathering thunder.

Someone cleared their throat. “Look—”

“He’s just a man,” snapped the privateer who claimed to have been at Rajal beach. “Fast with a blade and not afraid to die is all. Seen it before plenty of times.”

The corpulent storyteller scowled. “That’s what you think. Maybe he was still a man back at Rajal, but no man could have—”

“You!” The sergeant, grown tired of the raised voices, had stirred himself and come stalking down the line. “Yeah, you—fatty. Shut the fuck up, before I kick your larded arse down in the cellar with the prisoners.”

The rest of the privateers broke up—ripples of snorting laughter along the harbor wall. The sergeant rounded on them.

“That goes for anyone else around here who thinks this is all one big fucking joke. You stow that shit, right now. Call yourselves men of war? You’re on watch, all of you—not down the tavern with your pox-ridden sisters on your arm.”

The laughter died abruptly. The sergeant glared up and down the line, spaced his words for impact.

“When this outlaw faggot piece of shit comes creeping into harbor tonight, I want men on this wall, not a gaggle of fucking fishwives. Do I make myself clear?”

It seemed, from the ensuing quiet, that he did.

Still, he stood awhile longer, daring anyone to catch his eye. When no one looked like taking up the challenge, he evidently judged his point made and headed back to his post. Muttering snaked in his wake, but it was muted, and there was no more conversation along the harbor wall for quite a while.

The privateers settled once more to waiting.

But the only thing that came creeping into harbor as the night wore on was a thick, low-lying sea fog that blanketed vision, muffled sound, and chilled them all to the bone.

“
I
KNOW YOU CAN’T SEE TO STEER IN IT,” SAID
R
INGIL PATIENTLY. “
Y
OU
don’t need to steer in it. The ship will steer itself.”

Not really accurate, but about as close to the truth as he wanted to get. If he’d told captain and crew what was really going to steer
Dragon’s Demise
through the fog, Gil suspected he’d have an all-out mutiny on his hands.

This swordsman-sorcerer gig was turning out harder to balance than you’d expect.

Lal Nyanar, for instance. There he stood on the helm deck now, fine aristo features pinched up in a frown, shaking his head. Torches bracketed at the rail gave a flickering yellow light, enough to make out the salients. Below them on the main deck, the mist roiled and crept like something alive. Above and ahead of them it wrapped tendril fingers through the rigging and around the masts.

“But this …” Nyanar gestured weakly. “This is no natural fog.”

Ringil held on to his temper. “Of course it’s not natural—you saw me summon it, didn’t you? Now can we please get under way while it lasts?”

“You put all our souls in danger with this northern witchery, Eskiath.”

“Oh,
please.
”

“I think,” said Senger Hald dryly, “that my lord Ringil is most concerned at the moment with our temporal well-being. To which I must concur. There will be time enough to worry about the salvation of our immortal souls once we’ve saved our mortal skins.”

Ringil masked his surprise. “Thank you, Commander. I do believe you’ve stated the case admirably there. Captain?”

Nyanar looked betrayed. Hald was probably the closest thing to a soul mate he had on the expedition. Both men had washed up in the company through sheer chance. Both had been witness to the arrival of the Helmsman Anasharal while they were about entirely routine duties, and so in the interests of keeping the secrets of the quest between as few as possible, both had been promptly seconded to the command.

But more than that, they were both of a
kind.
Both were Yhelteth born and bred, both came of noble stock—Hald might lack the staggering wealth of the Nyanar clan in his own family backdrop, but like most homegrown military commanders in the Empire, his lineage would be impeccable—and both had contented themselves with moderate careers in soldiering that kept them close to home. Neither man had seen more than superficial deployment during the war. Neither man had previously been outside the Empire’s borders.

Now here they were, up on the mist-ridden outer rim of the world, the sun-baked certainties of Yhelteth three thousand miles astern, and suddenly Hald was breaking ranks. Buying into this infidel sorcery and the dark northern powers it called on. Casting off the sober tenets of the Revelation and trusting to an unholy alien faith. Worse still, they had no Citadel-assigned invigilator along to weigh in—Jhiral moved swiftly enough to crush
that
custom as soon as events at Afa’marag gave him the upper hand. The palace, he declared,
could not possibly
trouble the Mastery for valued officers of the faith when they must
surely
be needed here at home to help with the purges; the northern expedition must perforce rely on the individual piety and moral strength of its members without recourse to clerical support; as, in fact, must all naval and military commands, for the time being at least, until this deeply shocking crisis has passed. No, really, such an outpouring of pastoral concern is touching, but his Imperial Radiance
insists.

No invigilators, no clear moral compass, no working chain of command. And the only viable father figure around wears a scar on his face, fucks men from preference, and has unnamed demons at his back.

You had to feel sorry for Nyanar, caught up in it all through no fault of his own and no easy way home.

No, you have to kick his arse and get him moving.

“Captain? Are we agreed?”

Nyanar looked from Ringil to Hald and back, mouth pursed tight as if he’d just been served a platter of peasant gruel. He turned his back and stared out into the fog.

“Very well,” he snapped. “Sanat, raise anchor, make sail. Inshore rig.”

“Aye, sir.” Sanat sent a practiced first mate’s call rolling down the length of the ship. “Raise anchor! Make sail!”

The call picked up, was echoed across the decks. Men moved in the rigging, vaguely seen, and canvas came tumbling down. Inshore rig, taken as read. Grunted cadences from the prow and the repeated graunch of wet rope on wood as the anchor came up.

Dragon’s Demise
shifted and slid on the swell. Began to move with purpose.