A Home in the Hills

by Robert J. Crane

  Hamisi had seen his opportunity, though—and like a snake, he had reared. Suddenly upon his feet, he leapt forward, the heavy rattle of two chains giving him away and slowing him down. He thrust out with the needle like it was a sword, brandishing it at the Prenasian’s neck—

  The Prenasian pivoted. His speed was lightning.

  Hamisi bellowed—

  The Prenasian captain dodged his strike. He swung a fist up, cracking it against the inside of Hamisi’s elbow. It was a deft, fluid blur of a strike—but the thwap! that it made cut through the noise upon the deck like the crack of a whip. Hamisi staggered. He released the needle, and the last Jasen saw of it was a glint as it tumbled out of sight, and then the Prenasian captain slammed a fist into Hamisi’s jaw. He buckled, stumbling sideways, landing on his knees—

  “Ancestors,” Longwell said, pushing quickly to his feet.

  The Lady Vizola’s crew were doing the same. Brushes dropped, men pushed to their feet—

  Rakon, watching the sudden action with faint interest, shouted an order to the Lady Vizolans.

  Hamisi was on his knees. The captain stood over him, fists clenched, ready to fly again.

  Burund was saying—something. Kuura too. They’d been yanked along by Hamisi’s movements—the chains connecting them by wrist and ankle were short—and were scrambling to regain their balance.

  Hamisi launched himself at the Prenasian’s midriff.

  “Idiot!” Longwell cursed—and worse, a string of expletives that came hard and fast. “He’s going to get himself killed.”

  Huanatha bared her teeth. “Fool.”

  The troll lumbered over.

  Hamisi and the Prenasian grappled. Hamisi was shouting—the Lady Vizola’s crew were too, and Jasen wished he knew their language, at the same time certain that, with so many voices all crying out at once, he’d never make head or tail of what they were saying anyway—and the Prenasian captain grunted. Hamisi had him tight. Though the Prenasian man outsized Hamisi, both in height and bulk, Hamisi had him too low and too tight for the Prenasian to do much more than flail. He landed blow after blow against Hamisi’s spine—but Hamisi struck, slamming his fists knuckle-first into the captain’s ribcage, using his big central knuckles to drive against bones.

  But the troll was moving still. It had only been a little distance shy, barely any gap separating them at all—and it closed the last meters in two enormous steps. Gargantuan, dirty yellow fists reached down.

  He pulled Hamisi and the Prenasian apart as though he were separating warring toddlers.

  The Prenasian, he discarded, letting him drop onto his feet.

  Hamisi, though … Hamisi, he lifted—and Burund and Kuura and Chaka and the other crewmate yelped, dragged up by the chain too, so they dangled perilously—

  The troll held Hamisi in front of his face. His fist encircled Hamisi’s torso, arms swaddled to him.

  Hamisi struggled.

  The troll growled.

  Hamisi spat—a fat glob of mucus that landed square in the troll’s left eye.

  Its growl deepened.

  Rakon strode into the chaos.

  He ordered—something—

  Again, Jasen cursed himself for not knowing their language. “What’s he said?”

  But even as Huanatha translated, it was obvious enough. The captain who Hamisi had assaulted—Emre, Huanatha said—stepped up. He produced a glinting sliver of metal of his own. Jasen felt a stab of spiky black panic—a small blade, surely, to stab Hamisi between the ribs—but it was only a key, and he released Hamisi from the chains binding him. The dangling men dropped heavily, chains clanking round them, releasing Hamisi into the troll’s grasp.

  The troll stepped over the other crew, as if they were hardly an obstacle at all, and lumbered to the center of the deck, amidst the masts—and before the arrayed Lady Vizolans, who either stood or crouched in some state, their scrubbing forgotten, and their eyes glued to the troll.

  Hamisi struggled violently in the troll’s grip. He was shouting.

  His eyes were wide and he snorted, readying to spit.

  The troll shook him, a violent shudder that came out of nowhere—and then he slammed Hamisi’s head into the mainmast—CRACK!

  He lifted Hamisi in front of his face again.

  Hamisi bled.

  The troll growled, its teeth yellow—not the same as its skin, but a darker yellow-brown.

  Hamisi’s head rolled. The fight had gone out of him. If not for the fact his mouth hung open, and Jasen saw him dragging in great, gasping breaths, he’d think the sailor dead.

  Rakon strode forward, joining the troll at its side.

  He surveyed his newly assembled slaves with a grim look.

  “Discipline,” he said in Luukessian. “It is a value above no other, in our glorious land of Prenasia—and one which, it would appear, some of our new hands aboard this galley are severely lacking.”

  “Why’s he speaking Luukessian?” Jasen asked. “The crew don’t speak it.”

  “He doesn’t speak their language,” Longwell answered. He kept his voice at a low mutter. Poised beside Jasen and Huanatha, he looked ready to spring at a moment’s notice. Yet there was no lance to complete him.

  “But he questioned Burund yesterday.”

  “In our tongue, I believe.”

  Rakon had not broken his monologue. “… would appear that, in your old lives, acting out of course was endured. I know these sorts well; I have encountered enough of you on these seas—ghostly hierarchies, done aside with until the moments where it matters most, in favor of a false equality among you.

  “Do yourself away with every illusion such as this,” Rakon said. “Your last captain may have blurred the lines among your crew. Here, though, you are not family. You are your role, your place upon the ladder—and at this moment, it is at the very bottom of it. Perhaps, when you show yourself to respect our system, and when I have forgiven you for trading with our enemies, you may attain higher ranks. For now, however, you are deckhands, all of you. And failure to follow orders will not be tolerated.”

  Hamisi was regaining some of his wits. Lolling less in the troll’s grip, his eyelids were flickering now. Blood ran down his face in great rivulets.

  The troll lifted him high again, right into the air, like he weighed nothing at all—

  He lifted his free hand, then wrapped it around Hamisi’s neck—and squeezed.

  That roused Hamisi. He gasped—or rather, he tried to gasp. Eyes suddenly wide—no, not just wide, bulging—he clawed at the troll’s massive fist, raking at its huge fingers—

  “No!” Jasen cried, stepping forward.

  Huanatha caught him. “Don’t.”

  “But—”

  “The Prenasian’s speech was for all of us,” said Longwell bitterly. “It’s a threat.”

  “But Hamisi—”

  “Is now an example,” said Longwell. “Do not join him.”

  So Jasen could only watch, like the crew of the Lady Vizola, as the troll continued to squeeze Hamisi’s throat, and the man tried to breathe, tried to flail and kick free, grappling with his hands in a desperate attempt to release enough pressure that he could breathe …

  Yet he could not. His dark-skinned face turned purple. His movements slowed … until, finally, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he hung there, utterly limp.

  The troll did not release him immediately. For some twenty seconds, twenty awful seconds of tense quiet, Rakon and Emre and the other Prenasians stood, alternately surveying the terrified faces of the Lady Vizola’s crew—and, in Rakon’s case, making pointed glances at Jasen, Longwell and Huanatha—and looking at Hamisi’s body as it dangled in the troll’s fists.

  At last, when the effect had been achieved, Rakon said something to the troll.

  The troll tossed Hamisi overboard as though he were nothing. Overripe fruit, perhaps, to be got rid of with ease.

  Rakon nodded to his captains. “Continue,” he said to the Lady Vizol
a’s crew—and then off he went, to oversee the whole business from the front of the deck.

  Jasen felt sick—sick at seeing a man so brutally, easily killed in front of him, right down to Hamisi’s last twitch. Sicker still, he felt, at seeing just how swiftly the Lady Vizola’s crew returned to their tasks. Except for Burund and Kuura, Jasen was not aware that a single one of them could speak Luukessian, and would know what Rakon had said. But the effect was clear, no words were needed. They picked up their scrubbing brushes and returned to scrubbing the deck in a silence that was worse, somehow, than the one before.

  What made him feel sickest, though, was that he knew that this was his fault. He had not liked Hamisi, that much was true … but his was yet another death upon his conscience.

  9

  Longwell led Huanatha and Jasen to his own quarters—the only place, he said, where they might speak in private.

  “We have much to discuss,” he said quietly, guiding them back into the war galley.

  “I’ll see if Alixa is back,” said Jasen. “She could join us.”

  She wasn’t. Only Scourgey inhabited the room, lying on the cot in total darkness now that the candle had gone out. She raised her head when the door opened then, seeing Jasen—or more likely, Longwell—she rose and tottered weakly to her heels.

  Jasen stroked the top of her head. He could smell her again now, faintly. Seeing Hamisi’s death like that, so plain, so stark, seemed to have elevated all of his senses. The woody interior of the war galley was particularly pungent, but there was a sour undertone to the whole thing that Jasen couldn’t get away from. What exactly it came from—the Prenasians, the trolls, perhaps from the wooden ship itself—he didn’t know. But it wrinkled his nose, catching high in the back of his throat, and he was unable to rid himself of it.

  How the world had changed, that Jasen found himself pleased to have Scourgey’s deathly, rotted smell in his nostrils again. At least it was familiar.

  Longwell, lingering at the door, cast the scourge a disgusted look. He sidestepped, putting a little extra space between them.

  Scourgey watched him with her coal-lump eyes—at least, Jasen thought she was watching him. Her lack of pupils made it difficult to be certain. In turn, Huanatha watched her, a peculiar look on her face.

  “Your … beast … thing is coming with us, then,” said Longwell. He clearly wished she wasn’t.

  “Can she?” Jasen asked.

  Longwell hesitated. “I do not think …”

  Scourgey whined, and

  Huanatha’s eyes widened at the sound.

  She lowered to her knees, the clink of her armored greaves like a gentle chime over the creaking of the war galley. Looking very intently at Scourgey, she reached out, slowly, until her fingers were just touching Scourgey’s head.

  Jasen said, “Uhm …”

  Longwell paled. “Huanatha, I will give you the same warning I gave the children. Those things are dangerous. They have destroyed—”

  “This one is not like the others,” said Huanatha.

  Alixa had told Longwell as much before. He’d come to believe her, Jasen thought, at least begrudgingly. Enough that he was willing to tolerate the scourge, at any rate. But now, deprived of his spear, he seemed much less comfortable in her presence.

  “You wish to be rid of her,” said Huanatha slowly, still peering into Scourgey’s eye. “But this one … this one is much like you.”

  “A scourge?” Longwell‘s voice was disdainful. “How do you mean?”

  “She dislikes the feel of these Prenasians too,” said Huanatha. “It is why she quivers and cowers, meek even now that she is in safe company.”

  Longwell breathed a little snort at that last part, but did not comment.

  “I thought she was just seasick,” Jasen said.

  “She does hate the seas, yes,” said Huanatha.

  “All her kind do,” Longwell said. “They die in water, a fact I once used to …” his voice trailed off, and Jasen barely caught what he said next. But he did catch it. “… Save a city.” His voice was hollow, and Jasen wondered if perhaps he’d lost as much as he’d saved.

  Huanatha ignored him. “She feels in these … these warmongers a link to the peoples like this from her own life. Despots. Conquerors. Those who would see free people put into chains.” She shook her head. “She does not like it. Also, the yellow ones? The … trells, you called them?”

  “Trolls,” Longwell said. “That’s what they’re called. Or at least, the green-skinned ones on Arkaria were.”

  Huanatha shook her head. “These, the Prenasian version … they remind her of an old friend, long unseen.” She ran a hand over Scourgey’s face, scratching her behind the ears and producing a whine. “She misses him. His … sense of the absurd, I think.”

  Longwell stared at Scourgey, frowning. Disgust was still etched upon his face—but it had faded now, softening into a look that was almost—almost—the very first hints of respect. “You can tell all that about her?” he asked Huanatha. “About her life before she … became this?”

  “I can.” Huanatha looked up at him. “And more. For example, this one … she knew you in her life before.”

  Longwell’s eyes flashed. “Impossible.”

  “It is true,” said Huanatha. “She speaks; and I can hear her. She talks of a place where the hearth fires burned warm on every night. Where the company was loyal and true …” The queen of Muratam stared into the middle distance, hand on Scourgey’s back as the grey-skinned creature let another low whine. “Where any of good heart could find a home …”

  And suddenly, Jasen was aware of an almost electric energy in the air. Longwell, who moments ago had been keen to put as much of the war galley between himself and Scourgey as possible, was now looking at the beast with wide, expectant eyes, set in a rapidly paling face. He stared, unblinking, as though the scourge herself were speaking, and he was hanging on her every word, waiting for …

  “Sanctuary,” Huanatha breathed.

  Longwell reeled back as though he had been slapped. All the color had gone from his face now. “Lies,” he croaked.

  Huanatha spoke, eyes closed, as if she were channelling the thoughts from Scourgey’s mind.

  “Sir Samwen Longwell, who came to the gates of Sanctuary from a far distant land, with a very different spear than the one you now carry.” She opened her eyes, looked at Longwell. “She met you. She knew you. And you were there when her blood ran across the stones of Sanctuary.”

  Longwell seemed to sag, as if it were only his suit of armor holding him up. Deathly white, he stared at Scourgey. He put out a hand to clutch at the nearest wall.

  “Who?” he whispered, his voice strangled. “Who was it?”

  “A beautiful girl,” said Huanatha. “Ageless—with pointed ears—”

  “An elf.” More strangled than before, as though Longwell were now in a troll’s grip.

  Huanatha nodded. “And long, flaming red hair …”

  Longwell closed his eyes. He breathed out, a long exhalation, as if he’d held in that breath all his life—and now, only now, could he finally unburden himself from keeping it in. It left him like the entire weight of the world.

  Jasen stared at Scourgey. He pictured her: an elfin woman, hair of fire streaming after her.

  This was who Scourgey had been?

  He’d thought her a beast. The way she loped on behind them, keeping close to heel, the way her mouth opened and her tongue lolled, the way she pressed her nose to Jasen’s forehead—her dog-like behavior. But now that he looked, really looked, he could see there was something almost human about her—horrible and transmogrified though it was. Scourgey’s body, her curved spine, those awkwardly placed legs, as though she would never be any good for running … it was as though a person had been put in a rack and stretched, then reshaped, forced onto all fours—and then grafted with the parts of beasts, turned into an animal with pitted eyes and sharp teeth and over-large claws, wiry hairs all over her
body, humanity done away with.

  Yes, he could see it now—could see how Scourgey could have been human, once. And hadn’t Shilara said that the scourge were people? Cursed men and women?

  An elf with flaming red hair—who’d known Longwell.

  And now she was this.

  Huanatha looked deeply into Scourgey’s eyes still, probing, perhaps reading Scourgey’s mind directly.

  “And she died,” she whispered. The words were heavy in the air, so terribly heavy. “—with no magic to save … to save her …” Her eyebrows knitted. Lines crinkled about her eyes. “Her …”

  “Her arse,” Longwell said finally. “To save her arse.” He looked at Scourgey, his eyes filled to the brimming with a deep-seated sadness. “Niamh.” The word was whisper-quiet, and came out in a low breath that Jasen had to struggle to hear. “Her name … was Niamh.”

  10

  He was with his parents.

  He was young, so young that this distant memory—dream?—was blurry. He didn’t seem to be in Terreas, so it could not be a memory, exactly … but it was so familiar.

  They were walking through long grass together—a field of it. Not the hill down to the wall … no, this was someplace else in the village, or on the edge of it, or a thousand miles away.

  No, he must be in Terreas. His mother was saying … what was she saying?

  “One day we’ll climb the mountain.”

  He didn’t look up at her: just focused on walking. The grass was tall, so tall against his body, coming well past his little waist. It was like walking through a jungle. He’d heard of jungles, like a distant legend, only whispered about, never seen. More overgrown than this, his mother said—and Jasen knew it, knew it from a distant time that was yet to come, because he’d seen woodlands that were not close to jungles, and dimly remembered stories of somewhere called Coricuanthi, where lush vegetation abounded, and the whole place was terrifically hot and overgrown, so incredibly humid that the water beaded out of the air on the underside of leaves.

  How do I know that?

  Stories, from someone else. Somewhen else. Kuura—Huanatha—Burund. All and none of them, all and none.