Yonmar hopped off the boat to meet the agents. A tall man stepped forward from the group. He had a steel cap on his head, stringy blond hair flowing out beneath it, and a patch of beard on his chin that dangled down to his Adam’s apple in a braid.
“Papers,” he said, thrusting out a hand.
“What’s your name?” Yonmar asked, frowning.
“Adelon. Sergeant Adelon.”
“Well, Sergeant, I am Lord Yonmar Grealor. So watch your tongue.”
“Don’t matter to me if you’re Aeternita the fucking goddess of time, everyone needs papers to get into the city.” The man sneered. “Where are yours?”
Yonmar’s face was a mess of anger and embarrassment, but he produced King Hertzog’s documents of safe passage and handed them over. Adelon read them quickly.
“You’ll need to see the baron,” he said, then he pointed at Bershad without looking up from the papers. “You and the exile both.”
“We need to do no such thing,” Yonmar said.
By way of response, Adelon motioned to the men behind him. Four moved to board the ship, and the fifth ran for reinforcements, who soon poured out of a customs house farther down the dock.
“My men will search and document your ship’s contents while the baron decides what to do with you. If everything’s in order, shouldn’t take more than a few hours.”
“King Hertzog’s decree supersedes some saltwater baron’s port regulations,” Yonmar said. “Now let us disembark and be on our way.”
“Don’t know what supersede means, and I honestly don’t give a shit.” Adelon folded Yonmar’s papers behind his breastplate. “You and the exile come with me, or you sail back into the Soul Sea. Your choice.”
* * *
Bershad gave his sword to Rowan—it was too suspicious to be seen with the blade. Then he and Yonmar headed into Argel, escorted by Adelon and twenty soldiers. Everyone else stayed on the Luminata.
They passed over a flood wall and moved down a deserted street.
“Where is everyone?” Yonmar asked as the soldiers led them down the avenue.
Nobody answered him, but after a few more blocks a noise rose in the distance. It was soft at first, but growing. People were chanting.
“Axe! Axe! Axe!” the voices sang.
Then they hushed for a second before erupting again into a howl of cheers and whoops.
“Gods,” Yonmar said. “I know what they’re doing.”
“A wood-chopping contest?” Bershad asked.
Yonmar glared at him. “They’re executing Skojit.”
The chanting grew louder as they turned a corner onto the main square, which was packed to bursting—hundreds of people filled the open area. Small children were propped on the shoulders of parents. Every roof on the square was covered with people. Men sitting on the eaves, trading skins of ale and wine back and forth. Others milling behind them, jostling for a better view. Everybody loved a good execution.
A makeshift raised platform had been built out of pine and erected in the center of the square. There was a pile of headless bodies behind the platform. Across from the corpses, a man was being led up a set of stairs by a soldier. The prisoner’s hands were bound and a burlap sack was wrapped over his head—a long trail of black matted hair protruded from below the sack at all angles and stopped near the middle of his back.
The soldier yanked the man to the center of the platform and kicked him to his knees. To the left, a lord in an expensive ermine cloak sat on a bench. He was leaning forward, with one elbow resting on a knee, the other lazily balancing a naked sword pointed into the platform. He was middle-aged, clean-shaven, with thinning brown hair cropped closely to his face.
“That’s Garwin,” Bershad said to Yonmar. “The baron of Argel.”
Bershad had feasted with Garwin for several nights during his previous stint in Argel. The baron was stern and serious when sober, but he was fun to drink with.
Garwin motioned with one hand and the soldier removed the sack from the prisoner’s head. His face was beast-like, covered in a wild beard that stretched down to his navel. Bushy eyebrows obscured his eyes and a thick scar ran down one side of his face, disrupting the hair in a rough ridge of hewn flesh. The crowd fell silent.
“Name?” the baron asked.
“Logon of the Hidden Lakes,” the prisoner said, his voice full of defiance.
“Charge?”
When the prisoner did not respond, Garwin looked to the soldier, who took half a step forward.
“Murder. Rape. Cannibalism.” The soldier paused, and Garwin motioned that he should go into further detail. “This bastard invaded a small Ghalamarian mining plot—just a man and his family set up well below the Line of Lornar. The miner’s head was caved in by an axe and his body left for crows. The woman was chained inside the cabin. She had been violated until she died. The children were…” The soldier trailed off.
“Finish the tale, Sergeant,” Garwin urged.
“They were eaten. Not by animals, mind you. Their bones were stacked in piles, their little skulls at the top. Three of them, no older than ten.”
The crowd rumbled in horror. Men called out for his blood. Garwin waited for them to quiet and turned back to the savage. “Do you have anything to say?”
The Skojit raised his head and spoke in a low growl. “Might be the man was murdered. Kids eaten. There are tribes in the Razors who do such things. But I had no part in the flatlander’s story. The men of the Hidden Lakes do not eat people.”
“Where did you capture this Logon of Hidden Lakes?” Garwin asked.
“A league or so north of the ravaged camp, but still below the Line,” the soldier said. “Stone drunk and passed out beneath a tree. Blood on his hands and an axe next to him. No animal carcass nearby to justify the blood.”
Garwin took a moment to absorb these facts and then spoke to the prisoner.
“If you confess, I’ll grant you a clean death.” Garwin gestured toward the pile of headless men. “Either way, you will not see the sun set tonight. Decide.”
Logon of the Hidden Lakes scanned the crowd, his face unreadable.
“Your offer does not move me, flatland lord,” he said at last. “Your people sneak onto our lands and dig into our earth. Like rodents, you are. Taking what is not yours and expecting to have it for free. Trying to heal your poisoned and hungry country.” He glared at Garwin. “Do with me what you will, but I did not eat that man’s children.”
The people roared again, calling for punishment. Garwin stood up from his bench.
“Feed him his manhood,” he said loudly. “See that he chokes on it.”
The crowd went wild. Two men held Logon’s arms while a third cut off his balls and jammed them into his mouth. They wrapped a length of rope around his face several times so he couldn’t spit them back out. One soldier clamped a hand over his nose. The savage’s face turned red and then purple. Then he swallowed with a great deal of effort and the guard let him drop against the wood planks of the platform, legs thrashing. He bled to death a minute or two later, and they dumped his body off the platform and went to retrieve the next man.
“As you can see, the baron is occupied at present,” Adelon said, smiling and revealing a set of yellow, broken teeth. “You’ll wait for him in the keep.”
They led Bershad and Yonmar to Argel’s main keep, which had a dragon’s corpse hanging from the uppermost crenellations. The carcass had been stripped of its fat—only torn scales and rotten bones remained. Probably been hung there for two or three days.
“That a Red Skull?” Bershad asked, squinting at the flash of crimson on the head.
“What do you care?”
“Not a good idea to keep the carcass around for decoration like that,” Bershad said. “Red Skulls mate for life. And they’re known for developing a mind for revenge when some assholes kill their partner.” Bershad squinted at the dragon, judged it to be a male by its size. “And the females are quite a bit larger than the
one you have there.”
“You worry about living dragons, we’ll worry about the dead ones. How’d that be, exile?”
“Suit yourself.”
The baron’s office was tucked away in a room at the back of Argel’s main keep. The chamber was small, but well adorned—tapestries on the walls, soft rich carpets on the floor. Bershad yanked off his boots, rubbed them on the carpet a few times, and then flopped onto a cushioned chair.
“You were a lord once,” Yonmar said. “How can you behave like that?”
“I was a lord,” Bershad said, closing his eyes. “But I wasn’t much good at it.”
Garwin executed Skojit all morning. Every few minutes the cries rose up again as he allowed the crowd to choose the punishment for a particular man. They seemed to favor the axe.
While Bershad and Yonmar waited for the killings to end, servants brought ale, wine, cheese, and cuts of pork and bread. Yonmar ignored the refreshments, but Bershad drank and ate a heavy portion of everything available.
“You don’t feel like this is a good time to be sober?” Yonmar asked Bershad as he downed his third horn of ale.
“Not really, no.” The city was making Bershad’s skin itch.
Yonmar shrugged and returned his attention to the window. They knew when the executions were over because a sad murmur rumbled through the crowd, followed by the sounds of men and women leaving the square. A few minutes later, Garwin burst through the door to his office, followed by Adelon, who stayed by the door.
“Wretched business,” Garwin said, more to himself than his two guests. He kicked off his own boots, crossed the room barefoot, and collapsed into his chair behind the main table. He squeezed his nose between two thick fingers and then looked up at Bershad.
“So it’s true,” Garwin said. “You’re still alive.”
Up close, the baron of Argel’s face was a battered thing. He had been hit in the face with a mace or a maul or some kind of blunt object. There were deep pits of scar tissue on his cheek and chin and forehead. His nose had been broken and not repaired, and the top half of his ear had been pinched off. The life of a Ghalamarian baron wasn’t defined by border skirmishes and battles like an Almiran’s was, but it wasn’t peaceful, either.
“Do you know why I do that?” Garwin continued leaning back in his chair.
“You got tired of boar hunting?”
“I do it for the people,” Garwin said. “You have to show them the blackness that waits beyond these city walls. Helps them appreciate their lives of comfort and safety.”
“Nothing like a pile of headless savages to boost morale,” Bershad said. “I’m surprised, Garwin. I’d have thought a soldier like you would find a more honest method of ruling. Intimidation and spectacle is a rich man’s game.”
“Everyone’s a critic of the nobles until they become one and have to actually make decisions,” Garwin said.
“You forget, I used to be a noble,” Bershad said.
“How’d that work out for you?”
“Not well,” Bershad admitted. “Doesn’t make me wrong.”
“You know what my subjects are doing right now?” He looked out his window. “Every lowborn man, woman, and child is walking down to a river outside of town to wash themselves clean of that business this afternoon. The whole ritual makes them feel like they’ve accomplished something meaningful. For today at least, they forgot about the grain famine Ghalamar has endured for years. They forgot that their lives, and their children’s lives, will be marked by labor and toil and little else, with most of the profit going to the heart of an empire they’ll never see. How else do you rule a people whose lives are made of such mundane drudgery besides through distraction? Your country does the same thing with their mud gods and human sacrifices.”
“Almirans haven’t sacrificed humans for five hundred—”
“Quiet, boy,” Garwin said, cutting Yonmar off. “The adults are talking.”
Garwin looked at Bershad, waiting for an answer.
“If your people are plagued by famine, maybe you should provide better seeds instead of bloody distractions,” Bershad said. Ashlyn had mentioned there were famines in Ghalamar because they’d killed too many dragons. Bershad didn’t know how a lack of dragons led to a blight on wheat, but he was sure that Ashlyn could tell him.
“I seem to be fresh out of high-quality seeds. Did you bring me some?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.” Garwin crossed his arms. “So, what are you doing here?”
“The same thing I’m always doing.”
“There are no dragons near Argel right now. We had a male Red Skull a while ago, but a lucky dragonslayer managed to kill it. Poor bastard got so drunk that night that he tumbled off the ramparts while taking a piss and killed himself, but that doesn’t detract from the achievement. I’m sure you noticed the carcass on your way in.”
“I did. You really shouldn’t keep it hanging like that, though. If he was m—”
“Spare me the fucking lecture, Silas, and tell me why you’re here.”
“Come now,” Bershad said. “Is that any way to treat an old friend? I’m sorry for criticizing your leadership style, okay? I’m an asshole, you know that. But I seem to remember your parting words on my last visit being far more hospitable. Something about women and wine? I don’t remember exactly.”
“May you live long enough to return, so I can put wine in your hand and a woman at your side.”
“That’s the one,” Bershad said, leaning forward and smiling. “A Ghalamarian saying? I just love these little foreign adages. Well, I have returned very much alive. I see the wine, but not the woman.”
“My men have seen a woman,” Garwin said. “A Papyrian widow, sworn to protect the royal family of that great island nation. And I see this Almiran lord.” Garwin looked at Yonmar for the first time. “Who has the snide look of a fourth or fifth son that nobody gives a shit about.”
Yonmar’s jaw tensed and the flesh around his collar reddened, but he said nothing.
“I’ll tell you what I do not see,” Garwin continued. “I do not see any good reason why I should be finding you in my city today, drinking my wine and getting my carpet dirty.”
Bershad drummed his fingers on the table a few times. Then he gave Yonmar a look. This was supposed to be his job, might as well let the bastard do it.
“If you had let me finish a sentence,” Yonmar said, “I would have told you that we travel with documents of safe passage from King Hertzog Malgrave. The exile is traveling to Cornish to execute a writ there, and I am escorting him.”
“Cornish?”
“The baron requested Bershad personally,” Yonmar said. “King Hertzog obliged—he is in a relationship-building mood these days.”
“Why are you with him?”
Yonmar leaned back, relaxing into his story. “Almira is happy to share our famous lizard killer, but King Hertzog wants to make sure he doesn’t go wandering off.”
“We keep dragonslayers in line on this side of the Soul Sea, too, lordling.”
“All the same.”
Garwin rubbed his scarred face. “I suppose you have these documents?”
“Your sergeant took them from us.”
“Adelon,” Garwin said. The soldier crossed the room and produced the papers. Garwin read them carefully, his lips moving as his eyes scanned the words.
“I was planning to strike east,” Bershad continued while the baron read. “Heard there’s good foraging along the pine forest foothills all the way to Cornish.”
“What’s your excuse for the widow?” Garwin asked, raising the paper with King Hertzog’s seal and examining it in the light.
Judging from the way that Yonmar’s shoulders tightened, he hadn’t bothered to create a good answer to that question, so Bershad did it for him.
“I’ve been trying to fuck the widow for a fortnight now—you know I have a thing for Papyrians,” Bershad said. “But it’s proved a slow process. Pap
yrians are like wild jaguars in bed, but they take the most convincing.”
Bershad pulled a fake smile across his face.
“Pretty thin, exile,” Garwin said, tossing the papers onto the desk.
“Thin? We travel under the king’s name,” Yonmar protested.
“Look, lordling. The king of Almira might get his ass licked by every mud lord on the other side of the Soul Sea, but things are done differently here. The emperor of Balaria holds sway, not your king.”
Adelon stirred behind them, shifting his spear from his right hand to his left. “We should put them in a dungeon.”
“Did I ask for your opinion, Adelon?” Garwin asked. “No? So keep your fucking mouth shut.” Garwin sighed and squeezed his nose between his fingers again. “Do you take me for a fool, Bershad? Some thick-headed baron you can trick into letting you into the mountains, as I did the other three groups of adventuring Almirans?”
“Who said anything about mountains?”
“Your presence in this office says much and more about a great many different things.” Garwin looked up. “I’m told there was an incident with an Almiran princess and a Balarian envoy several moons ago. Any chance your trip across my country is related to that?”
“What do you care about an Almiran princess, Garwin?”
“I swear allegiance to a count, who in turn swears allegiance to a duke, and it runs all the way up the chain until it reaches the king of Ghalamar, who himself is buried so deep in the pocket of Emperor Mercer Domitian of Balaria that he shits lint.” Garwin smiled. “The emperor cares about the Almiran princess, which means that—by a long chain of command—I care.”
Bershad took one final sip of wine. “So, the nobles finally dug their claws into your back and turned you into another fucking puppet with a title. I’m disappointed.”
Garwin bristled. “Let me explain something to both of you. There are no Lysterian barons or counts left in this world. There is no Lysterian king. They are ruled by Balarian viceroys, who have sucked their decaying countryside dry. The only reason Ghalamar gets to keep a scrap of autonomy—and a fraction of our own meager harvests—is because we follow Balarian directives when we receive them. It’s the only way to survive. And I have been directed to close my port against any suspicious foreigners, particularly Almirans.”
Blood of an Exile Page 14
