The Last Benediction in Steel
Book II. The Serpent Knight Saga
By Kevin Wright
Quantum Muse Books
Copyright 2020.
The right of Kevin Wright to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act of 1988.
Cover design copyright 2020 by J Caleb Design
All rights reserved.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or commerce, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Also By Kevin Wright:
The Serpent Knight Saga
Book 1. Lords of Asylum
Tales of the Machine City
Book 1. The Clarity of Cold Steel
Others:
Monster City
GrimNoir
Swamp Lords
Dedicated to my big brother Greg.
…set out for the Terra Borza, a wild country shrouded by the daunting heights of the Carpathian Mountains. Under the aegis of King Andrew II, as part of the Drang nach Osten, the Teutonic Brethren’s overarching mission was to stifle the incursion of the eastern horde by seizing control of the high mountain passes.
We were well-suited to do so.
—War-Journal of Prince Ulrich of Haeskenburg
Chapter 1.
THE SCARCE WIND had finally died, and so we drifted on in measured silence.
The watch was mine, and I sat half-awake. Or half-asleep. Perched at the tiller, slumped like a drunk at a tavern past last call, dreaming hard on the slosh and bother of golden brown from heady days of yore. So far gone. Lips cracked. Mouth watering. Stomach groaning. How many? Five days? No, four. Stephan’d caught that fish, that shitty little fucking fish. All day long sitting there with pole and line. And then what’s he go and do? My saintly brother?
The bastard doles it out piecemeal to everyone.
One. Single. Bite.
Not even a mouthful, but it was something, I suppose. Best bite I’d ever had. Better than Yorkshire baked pike.
I felt a tug on my shirt, cracked an eyelid, yawned. “Hmm…?”
I blinked. It was Joshua, Abraham’s boy.
“Yeah … what?”
“Mister Luther,” Joshua leaned in close, eyes serious, “I heard something.”
“Yeah…?” I shook off my fugue.
“A-A boat, I think.” He pointed off west. Or east. Or somewhere. “Over there.”
Port.
A splash.
“Shit.” Reavers. That tore me awake something fierce. Heard maybe a boat bumping against our cog. They’d come in the dead of the moon when only pinpricks of starlight and the vast expanse of milky night glowed above. Nigh on invisible. But I could smell the bastards. The stink of hard-tack and salt pork and cold iron.
I yanked Joshua in close. “Go get Karl,” I hissed. “Double-quick. Then get below. Bolt the hatch.” I shoved him off, scrambling through the dark.
I slid Yolanda from her scabbard as Karl materialized like a wraith.
“He found us,” was all I said.
His assassins came first. The subtle ones. Naturally. Over the gunwale of the Ulysses, they came crawling like things spawned from the briny deep. Cold and silent except for the drip of water, the stretch of taut rope, the scuff of body across plank.
“How many?” Karl hunkered by my side.
“Too dark.” I squinted. “Five?” I pulled my boots off, laid them aside. “Portside. Going for the bow.”
“Yar.” Karl stalked off for infinity.
I laid a hand to his shoulder, hardly able to see him even at arm’s length as we snuck along at a crouch. The grit of sand beneath my feet bit through the numbing cold. But it gave traction. Stealth. Gave some sense to the ship’s pulse that shoes’d deaden.
The assassins padded along the port side, near even with us. Five aboard had bounties on our heads. Me. Karl. My brother Stephan. Abraham ben Ari. Hell, even Lady Mary.
We passed the mast. Karl paused. “Stay low. Cover the stern.” Then he vanished.
Dropping to a knee, I gripped Yolanda, licked my chops, waited.
A rattle sounded from the fore-hatch as one of the reavers tested it, jiggling it, trying to lift it. He’d find it bolted from below if Joshua was worth his salt. And he was. Then he’d call for an axe. I was fair sure he’d find one.
I wasn’t wrong.
One, two heartbeats, the whoosh of Karl’s thane-axe whipping — thunk! — then “FUCK!” And screams tore out followed by frenzy. A hacking slapdash of steel and wood and pounding feet.
I squinted, trying to discern friend from foe.
“Die!” some blackguard yelled. “Fucking die!”
Karl failed to listen. He was an uneducated bastard. Couldn’t read. Couldn’t write. Could barely speak his own language let alone mine. A man of small ideals but hell and high water with that thane-axe of his.
I held post by the mast, waiting as Karl murdered the assassins.
Why wasn’t I, Sir Luther Slythe Krait, the valiant knight, fighting along his side? Simple. “Mother-fucker!” someone screamed. One-against-five is poor odds unless it’s pitch black. Unless no one can see. Then the one’s a strength. Cause the one knows all he has to do is hit anything that moves. Anything that makes a sound. Anything and everything. Which was exactly what Karl was doing. A body crashed into the water. Feet pounded below decks.
Someone yelled from the stern hatchway. Stephan? Or Avar? It was muffled tight, and my focus lay elsewhere.
“Stay below!” I roared.
The yelling ceased instantly.
Shod feet clomped my way. I slid out from the mast, keeping low, aiming a blind cut that whisked a leg off an assassin. “Shit—” I turned as grappling hooks latched thunking onto the gunwale. The cog listed to port. More clambering up. Fuck. En masse. And these weren’t the assassins. These were the bruisers. Armor clanked and rattled.
I retook my post at the mast, using it for cover. Beside me, the legless fucker lay dying. Loudly. Ostentatious bastard. His hand slapped on the deck as he reached for something. Warm-sticky oozed round my feet, between my toes, a repellent feel, but I relished the fleeting warmth.
Ahead, Karl was still hacking. Still killing. Still doing what he did.
“Please!” someone yelled. “Mercy—”
Karl gave it to him.
The Ulysses shivered. The port-side bruisers were nearing top. I strode to the gunwale and hacked over blindly, no finesse, not even aiming, just chopping wood free-form, taking some fucker in the face and dropping him into drink.
“Fuckers!” Karl roared from the bow.
Good. He was still alive.
To my left, a gauntleted hand slapped on the gunwale. I slid two steps and aimed another cut, wailing it along, sparking off armored shoulder and skipping into neck. Blood black as night spurted as I ripped and kicked, the blackguard gurgling back in plummet. Left and right, I struck as blots of black deeper than the dark surged over. Three. Four. Five. I skewered one, punching hilt-deep to sternum then kicked the legs out from under him. But he latched onto me, close as a lover, and we both slammed hard to the deck.
“God damn!” I yanked on my blade, but Yolanda was buggered-stuck through guts.
He kept kicking. Bucking. Fighting.
Another body splashed into the ocean.
“Fuck off!” I kicked and elbowed, shrimping
in half, yanking Yolanda free of gut and gore and flailing limb. Rolling back, away, through a forest of pounding boots, someone kicked me in the flank, the head, slammed me back-first into mast. I licked out a cut, missed. Slung out a second, skimmed it off the deck, flicking off someone’s foot.
“Krait!” Karl roared near. “Pray to your worthless God!”
“Already doing!” I spat back as his axe swooshed by overhead.
Two bastards wailed away, kicking the legless bloke, mistaking him for yours truly as some blackguard barreled into me. Through me. Yolanda nearly cut off my head, but I twisted her, catching only her flat. “Shit—”
“Oy! I got him!” A bruiser dropped across me, spasticating in madness, one hand gripping my hair by the fistful.
Twisting, I punched a quillon into the bastard’s side. Ribs broke. He gasped. His dagger plunged, but I read it by feel and drove up into him, snaking a leg round his and shoving him back. Hard. Instead of my neck, his dagger opened my shoulder blade, suddenly all wet and warm and suffused by a sharp centric burn.
I clambered onto him. Smashed him. Bashed him. Pommeled him in the face hard, twice, teeth shearing off, caving in, breaking off at the roots.
He stopped moving.
Something wuffed past above. I dropped back atop top my new best friend as Karl strode past, whipping that axe faster than anyone had a right to. Don’t know if he hit anyone, but the bastards scrambled for the sides as Karl roared, stomping forth like an mad tyrant. Bodies crashed into each other, into the hull of their boat, into the briny abyss.
Those that weren’t screaming and drowning rowed off like maniacs.
In the aftermath, gasping, bleeding, cursing, I scanned the horizon. Still could make out nary a God-damned thing.
Behind, one of the bastards rolled over, groaning, whimpering, and spat teeth skittering across the deck.
Waves lapped against the hull.
“Y’understand, when yer on watch,” Karl leaned his thane-axe against his shoulder and wiped his blood-spattered hands on his pants, “that ain’t all you’re supposed to do.”
“But you’re just so handsome.” I batted my eyelashes then marched over to the poor son of a bitch dying in droves all across our deck.
“P-Please, mister.” The poor son of a bitch raised his hands. Small hands. Trembling. Wasn’t much more than a kid, truth be bare. “Th-They press-ganged me. Made me come. I—I didn’t want to hurt nobody. Truly, I didn’t.”
“I believe you, kid,” I said then did him the biggest favor of his short life.
…our battalion’s duty lay bare: spread Christianity and civilization south into ‘the Lands Beyond the Trees,’ as it is called, a place of wayward faith and inbred paganism.
We sought to educate the savages, to convert them, to save their souls from the bowels of Purgatory. But we went with axe and hammer, sword and spear, fury and flame, and even at journey’s outset, we kenned clearly the truth of the matter.
—War-Journal of Prince Ulrich of Haeskenburg
Chapter 2.
I AWOKE SCREAMING in the fetid dark. Swaying. Moving. Breathing. Fearing the worst. For a moment, I was lost. Sweat soaked my hair, my clothes, my hammock. I blinked… The hold of the Ulysses. The poor son of a bitch kid’s pleading, sobbing, begging for his life, echoed through my mind, Please, mister, I didn’t want to hurt nobody…
Every night now. Seven nights running. Soon as I laid back, closed my eyes, that damned kid, that damned night, those damned words.
I needed a new nightmare.
“You alright, Mister Luther?” Sarah peeked up wide-eyed from the far side of Abraham’s makeshift cot.
Please, mister…
“Yeah, kid. Sure,” I lied, rolling out of the hammock.
“Krait…” Abraham ben Ari coughed. His cot was little more than some empty boxes and barrels bound together with cord. Some flea-bitten blankets for a lumpy mattress. For all it wasn’t, I still eyed it with leprous jealousy.
“Yeah…?” I picked the sleep from my eyes. “What is it, Abe?”
“By Jove,” Abe coughed, “where are we?”
“No idea.” I staggered up from the hold, shielding my eyes, and stared out back over the Ulysses’ stern, at the rush of dusk clawing on strong.
The Ulysses rocked gently from side to side, slogging along, sluggish through the water, small waves lapping at its sides, nearly drinking over, as the town of Haeskenburg materialized out of the azure mist. Claustrophobic tiers of single-story cottages grew into two and three-story houses cramming the town’s saddle-back lay. As a whole, the town had the aspect of a sad thing collapsed across its death-bed, crippled by consumption, dying by degree.
Good old Haeskenburg.
Said no one.
Ever.
“Any sign?” I hollered up through both hands.
“Nay, Sir Luther!” Chadwicke’s voice echoed down from the crow’s nest. “Nary a ship from here to horizon.”
It’d been a week since the attack. A week of alternately backbreaking rowing upriver or fighting off tempests trying to dash us to pieces against rocky shoals. Sploosh… All to the intermittent piss-trickle of the bilge pump vomiting water. Sploosh… Karl was down there, waist-deep in frigid swill, freezing his arse off, working the lever back and forth, tireless as an automaton. Sploosh… The only thing keeping us this side of the surface.
“It’s possible we lost him.” Stephan angled the tiller underarm, steering the Ulysses upriver. Always upriver.
“Yeah … possible.” I rubbed my back against the mast, digging in like a bear against a tree. It was healing, but the stitches Stephan had sewn were tight. Itchy. Out of reach.
“You’re going to tear them open,” Stephan warned.
“What I’m trying to do.”
“Slade’s not going to stop.”
“But like you said,” I paused from self-mortification, fixing him through one eye, “maybe we lost him.”
“You truly believe that?”
“Since when do I believe in anything?”
“A fair point.”
I nodded at the tiller, and Stephan slid aside.
The fact of the matter was I didn’t believe it. Not even a little. That grinning bastard was still back there. Slade Raachwald. Him and his pack of shit-heels and blackguards, still stalking us, just shy of sight and sound and aiming to creep up and knife us in the dark. He’d hound us til we put him in the grave. Or him us.
Stephan gazed toward Haeskenburg. “We need to put in.”
I tightened my grip on the tiller. “We need to keep moving.”
“We can’t.”
“We have to.”
“We’re out of food.” Stephan wiped his lone hand on his pant leg. His other hand was gone. Lost. Another gift from Lord Raachwald, the Lord of Asylum and Slade Raachwald’s own father.
“We’re nigh on out of coin, so we ain’t buying anything,” I said.
“We can trade.”
“Trade what?” I glared out over the black water. “Sickness? Misery? Cause that’s all we have in abundance.”
“The arms and armor the blackguards bore.” Stephan untied a rope, drew it tight, fixed it with a belaying pin. He was getting adept using only the one hand. But that was Stephan. Grin and bear it and move onward. Me on the other hand…? “Good steel’s always worth something.”
“Good’s a little strong.” Three of the reavers had died on deck. Others had left behind weapons. Limbs. Dignity.
“Steel’s steel.”
“Hrmm…” He did have a point, not that I’d concede it easily.
“We’ll simply have to scratch up some luck.”
“Out of that, too.” The Ulysses was riding so low I could practically touch the water. “The good kind, anyways.”
“Then we make some.”
“Sounds like work.” I swallowed. Took a look behind. Shivered. “No. You’re right. Slade’s still back there. Somewhere. Best we keep moving. Put in at the next tow
n.”
“We put her through her paces.” Stephan laid a hand upon the transom, running his hand along, feeling the grain of the wood. “And she endured. But she won’t weather another storm.”
She might not weather another calm, I thought, but didn’t say cause I’m a stubborn prick. At best. So I just shrugged and lied, “She might.”
“Abraham’s dying of pneumonia.” Stephan’s eyes narrowed as he played his trump card.
Abraham ben Ari was an old business partner, employer, and for a short time, friend. Now he and his family were cargo. Back in Asylum, Lord Raachwald, had a long list of folk to have their lungs hacked from their back. Might be Abraham topped the list. Unless it were me.
“Tough way to die,” I said.
“How would you know?”
I fixed him a proper glare, seeing for a moment the visage of a skeleton dying of consumption. “Had to watch you doing it once upon a time, yeah?”
“Aye, brother, that you did.” Stephan brought the full bore of his righteous-might down upon me. “Just as his family’s down there watching him die as you and I fence jibes? His wife. His daughter. The one son he has left to this world?”
“Jesus. Fucking. Christ.” I hocked a lunger into the water, watched it bend to shreds in an eddy, twisting and swirling, then swore again beneath my breath and tore on the tiller, changing course toward good old Haeskenburg.
* * * *
WE GIMPED into Crimson Bay, bulging off the Abraxas River like a goiter off a dead beggar’s neck. “Docks are empty.” I craned my neck, squinted. Strange for a town that made its living off scavenging trade up and down the river. Middle-men, they called themselves, but it was scavenging all the same. “Not much to look at, is she?”
“It’s so quiet.” Lady Mary brushed her short brown hair from her eyes, offering a wide-eyed glare as she took in all of Haeskenburg. It didn’t take long.
Lady Mary’d filled out despite our limited rations and was no longer the withered wraith I’d found haunting Coldspire Keep. Her hair had grown back somewhat, too. It was still short, but it was now evenly short. The Lord of Asylum had shorn it along with her hand. He’d had his reasons, not that they reeked of sanity. “No ships. No people.” She crossed herself and muttered a prayer, which about summed up my opinion of the place. “Is it plague, do you think?”
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