Heavy Lies The Crown (The Scalussen Chronicles Book 2)

by Ben Galley

  ‘Come and try me then, you swine!’ she threatened him.

  The netting parted just in time for Mithrid to deflect the poor blow of the knife with the flat of the axehead. For a sliver of a moment she considered sparing the sailor, and then she remembered how the goddess had spoken down to her. Never mind that Mithrid had just met a goddess. Dangerous, she had called Mithrid.

  Mithrid sketched her angst in blood.

  She dragged her axe across his chest like a knife, sending him scrabbling. Mithrid whirled for the next foe, but before she could reach him, Warbringer batted him over the side of the Sister like a rotten apple. Mithrid chose another mark instead, beating Farden to the kill by hurling her axe over her head. It pinned the sailor to the bulwark by his shoulder. Farden’s swords finished him off, stabbing two bloody holes in his belly and leaving him to squealing death.

  Up the stairwells, they swarmed, pincering the captain and two of his crew by the wheel. Warbringer snapped one of their necks with a squeeze before Farden halted her.

  ‘You realise your mistake now?’ he demanded of the fool captain. ‘This day could have gone very differently for you. But no, you had to be a fucking fool.’

  Mithrid fully expected the mage to slaughter the remaining two, but Farden slapped the wheel instead to make them squirm.

  ‘Sail us south or join your crew.’ Farden pointed to the corpses splayed about the deck and smouldering netting.

  ‘Right you are, sire,’ the captain whispered as he bent himself to the wheel. The other sailor clasped its handles as if to appear useful.

  ‘Much better,’ said Farden, clapping the fish upon his sweat-damp back, and turning to face the bottleneck of cliffs the Sister faced.

  Despite his threat of speaking more on the knife, Farden said no more to Mithrid. He stalked to the starboard side and balanced Loki’s knife in his hands. For a moment, it looked as though he would let it fall into the ocean. Instead, he twirled it and seized its blade in his armoured fist. As he faced the light of the sun, Mithrid saw the worry plain as wrinkles. She had let him down, she knew that, but she felt innocent of blame. If the mage had any to level at her, she already had some words to fire back. How was she supposed to know about the knife?

  For a time, Mithrid kept guard with Aspala at the wheel, staring into the back of his head and wondering what churned there.

  ‘I can’t believe I met a god today,’ Aspala whispered when the silence had become too heavy.

  ‘Farden seems to treat them like they’re all Loki.’

  It was Durnus that answered. ‘The gods used him, just like many others have. They used all of us, to be honest. Elessi and I. It took Farden years to realise he was more than their machinations, that he was in control of his destiny. They chose him as their hero, but instead, he chose to be ours. Now, if you’ll excuse me…’ He said no more.

  ‘Destiny,’ Mithrid repeated the word under her breath. The prospect of hers was like a rope around her waist, tugging her willingly into a thick mist. She knew not where it led, but she had believed, deep within her, until now that it was somewhere important. Somewhere eddas are sung of. The goddess Evernia’s words had been scissors to such rope, threatening to slice it. Frayed as her belief was, she clung to it all the more. Nowhere in the stories she knew did it say the gods were always right. And if one could lie, so could the others. So it was when the first stars appeared in the west, before the sun had set, Mithrid glared at them.

  ‘Welcome to the Irkmire Yawn,’ informed the ship’s captain, with as much grandeur and ceremony as a semi-conscious toad. ‘Foulest strip of water in all of Easterealm, besides the God’s Rent. Giant whirlpool far out there in the Blue Mountain Sea. Once we’re through the Yawn, it’s plain seas and calm sailin’.’

  Though he was a cheat and a would-be murderer, the man was not a liar. The Yawn was foul indeed.

  As the two coastlines came to a pinch several miles wide, the currents jostled the Seventh Sister with violent purpose. All the angst of two meeting oceans caused whirlpools and towering standing waves. Spray fell like rain as wave after wave crashed against the cog’s fat keel. Its flat bottom thwacked the sea every time it pitched and fell.

  The captain worked tirelessly battling the wheel, mostly for his own survival, Mithrid presumed. She was glad Farden had given him the glimmer of hope.

  Within half an hour of white knuckles and lurching stomachs, the Sister broke onto more predictable waters. According to Durnus’ map, the Blue Mountain Sea spread before them, devoid of any coastline but the one that trailed off west and south. Hartlunder’s slanted cliffs ran east as if fleeing the Yawn. Its dreary walls were all Mithrid ever saw of the country, and she wondered at the kind of folk who endured its dreary skies.

  Farden, at last, left the bulwark. The knife was at his side now, along with his swords. ‘Smooth waters from here, you said?’ he demanded of the captain, pushing him from the wheel.

  ‘Aye, that’s what I said. Lest a squall blows in, Lezembor’s just a day’s stretch from here.’

  Farden pointed over the man’s pudgy shoulder. ‘And what is that land? Friendly, is it?’

  ‘Normont still.’ The captain tried to turn but Farden shoved him ahead. ‘It’s wild but fair enough.’

  ‘How far away would you say it is?’

  ‘Couple miles maybe?’

  ‘Then I hope you both are good swimmers,’ whispered Farden.

  It took an appalling amount of time for the captain to add two and two together. The trout of a man immediately fell to his knees. ‘Please, sire! I ain’t no swimmer!’ he yelled.

  ‘Shame,’ Farden said, no delight on his face. ‘This is what you deserve for trying to cheat and murder honest passengers. You’re lucky I let you live.’

  Warbringer muscled the last sailor to his captain’s side. ‘Over you go,’ she ordered.

  Mithrid looked to the others, who watched without expression. She saw no complaint in them, and there was none in her either.

  ‘We’ll do anything, we swear!’

  All it took was one roar from the minotaur and the two men scrambled over the bulwark like pigeons fleeing a roost. Mithrid heard their splashes before they made it to the railing. The last she saw of them in the Sister’s wake was a flailing captain and a sailor splashing madly for land with no care in the world for his superior.

  ‘Strange,’ Aspala said, ‘I thought so much blubber would float better.’

  Mithrid thought the ship had hit a series of rocks until she realised it was Warbringer laughing, booming deep in her chest. Durnus joined with his papery snicker. Even Mithrid had to chuckle. The mage, however, did not break his sour expression.

  ‘So,’ Mithrid asked once the amusement had died. ‘Does anyone know how to sail this mouldy thing?’

  It turned out that none of them knew how to sail.

  Not even Durnus, with a brain of millennia upon his shoulders, though he could name half the lines and parts of the ship itself, the act of sailing, even in a calm sea, was a comedy of errors. A miracle that the ship stayed afloat.

  ‘Durnus!’

  The shout came again, lifting the vampyre’s head from the dead sailor’s corpse he’d dragged into a cabin below, instead of hurling it over the side with the others. Both blood and soul rushed through his veins, though only one satiated his groaning stomach and shaking bones. Only one dizzied his mind. Soul. The blood was merely a taste of what the corpse gave him. Durnus’ heart throbbed, not with the animalistic pleasure of a feeding vampyre, but of the more ancient blood within him. A power more than two millennia old, born of a great daemon cursed by all. His vampyre’s form was weakening. All the spells and charms he had woven had failed. His former self resurging at last. For the first time, however, fear was gone. Only a feeling of gratification, and a lust for more.

  Durnus drank deep, inhaling soul until his lungs ached. Shuddering as he breathed out, he let the body go limp. The loose threads of the soul drifted from his bloody lips as
cobalt smoke. He wiped his lips and fangs and splashed water across his neck and borrowed shirt.

  ‘Durnus!’

  The mage’s boots were pounding on the steps.

  The vampyre was at the door within a blink. He surprised himself at the ferocity with which he opened it. He found the mage in the passageway, who was soon eyeing the corpse on the floor.

  ‘Time to put yourself to use,’ Farden said.

  ‘Me? I tried to help earlier.’

  ‘I bet you’re stronger than I am by now,’ Farden muttered. Durnus was about to protest and snap uncharacteristically, but he saw the gaunt edge of Farden’s cheekbones, and found calm.

  The mage was indeed ageing. Faster and faster each day, it seemed. Though seventy winters had passed since he had come screaming onto this earth, the Scalussen armour had stalled the wearing of the years somewhere around thirty winters. He had cheated death, but now it was collecting its debt. It broke Durnus’ heart to see his friend so ravaged. Behind his eyes, Durnus saw the chaos whirling, no matter the quietly simmering exterior Farden wore. No doubt he stared back at Durnus thinking the same thing of him: troubled. Scared. He would be right.

  Each of their daemons hung silently between them, unspoken. Durnus wracked his mind for something else and adequate to say. He realised all words were empty. Only actions could talk. His friend needed his help and nothing more, no matter the cost. Durnus took a step from the door and made his way to the stairs.

  ‘Wipe your face,’ Farden called after him. ‘There’s still blood on your chin.’

  The deck greeted him with brisk wind and angry, flapping sails. The Seventh Sister was being blown sideways to the waves. Aspala was at the helm and doing her best to fight the winds.

  The minotaur sat hunched on the steps of the bow.

  ‘Warbringer is banned from touching anything,’ Mithrid shouted. She was trying to tie a complicated knot around an iron cleat.

  ‘It was accident,’ she barked in defence.

  ‘Hold that rope there,’ Farden told Durnus. The vampyre did as he was told, and as Farden rescued a wild line, they finally managed to get the sail taut and under control. Slowly, they adjusted it until it caught the wind, driving them south and closer to the coast, flat keel slapping the whitecaps. Aspala kept the ship banked to a slight angle, making all of them lean.

  For sailors as useless as they were, there was constant adjustment to be done. They hauled on all kinds of ropes until unarmoured hands were frayed. Durnus worked until he felt as frail as he had in Scalussen, but not a complaint was made in support of Farden.

  Somehow, they kept the ship on course even as darkness claimed the sea. A waning moon and stars painted the slopes of the gentle waves silver. The wind had growing warmer by the mile even in the night hours. The rugged coastline of Normont fell away to sweeping coves of grey sand. Two islands stepped out into the Blue Mountain Sea, one small, its sibling much larger. They were far enough apart that Aspala and Mithrid – now helping to man the wheel – steered right between them. The Hâlorn girl had barely been herself all evening. The vampyre supposed the goddess’ warnings had put them all in sombre moods. After all, Evernia told Mithrid she had no place in this quest, no purpose. Durnus would have despised the goddess just as she seemed to.

  In the shallower waters of the channel, they came across barrels bobbing about, presumably tied to anchors deep below. Wrapped around their chains and staves were weeds that glowed milky green in the moonlight. Each barrel sported a sign and a long arrow that pointed in a general, broad direction thanks to how it wallowed about.

  ‘Ingenious,’ Durnus whispered. He pressed his fingers to the corners of his eyes, employing a swift spell to make out what the buoys said in the dark night. ‘Lezembor, it says, and then a measurement that looks like two hundred. I am assuming miles.’ Durnus kept reading as the cog sailed past each floating signpost. ‘Kedi Ada, one hundred.’

  ‘The place that the captain said he would take us,’ said Farden, leaning against the mast with arms crossed.

  As the Sister rounded the point of the smaller island, they saw the distant yet awe-inspiring glow of a sprawling city. Lezembor, presumably. Smaller settlements glowed all around the Bay of Souls. A larger stretch of glittering lights directly to the west beckoned.

  ‘Where will we go?’ asked Durnus.

  Farden had already decided. ‘I’m not venturing into another city again.’

  Mithrid called down to them. Trying, somewhat, to appease the mage’s distrust, Durnus wagered.

  ‘But your armour’s still broken,’ she said. ‘There might be a smith—’

  ‘Nothing’s worth the risks we faced in Vensk. If the Doomriddle says we find the third task past the roaring waters, then that’s where we go. There’s even less time to waste.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Durnus, drawing unusual stares.

  Warbringer had given up on trying to sail and was currently trailing a fishing line as thick as Durnus’ thumb. He did not want to imagine what she intended to catch.

  ‘What of cursed knife? Loki will follow us,’ she advised.

  ‘Oh!’ Farden called to her, watching Mithrid from the side of his eye. ‘I’m counting on it!’

  ‘You have a plan, then?’

  ‘You know me and plans, Durnus. They never turn out as expected. Why try? Win and not die. That is all I will hold myself to.’

  ‘That does not fill me with the greatest comfort—’

  Mithrid interrupted before he could get further. ‘What are we going to do with this ship? I don’t know about you but sailing through roaring waters doesn’t sound fun!’

  Far from comforting, Farden had no reply. Durnus watched him grip the wheel and set a stare almost directly south, where a dark and rocky coastline beckoned. Only a few campfires or villages gleamed along the whole stretch of land.

  For hours they stood in relative silence, watching the strange new land come closer, and closer, and closer still without the mage changing course. A beach ringed with toothy rocks could be seen under the moonlight. Pearlescent sand and skinny grey trees stretched for miles. A lone fire burned on the beach. Three lithe figures watched the ship’s approach with some alarm. One even started sprinting down the sand.

  Durnus held on tight as Farden let the ship grind on the sand and pebbles. The noise was horrendous to his vampyre’s ears, shattering the empty night. Thankfully, it was brief. The cog wallowed to one side, its fat bottom coming in use for once. Farden vaulted over the side and splashed heavily in the shallows. Durnus saw him struggle to get up, but before he could assist, the mage limped up the beach without him. The others followed. The splash of Warbringer soaked him. He hunched, dripping from his brow, and glared at her.

  ‘It’s warm,’ Mithrid said in whispering wonder. ‘The water’s bloody warm.’

  The strangers around the campfire were poised, short spears held low and cautious. Their skin beyond their cotton trews was dark like the rocks around them, and their eyes yellow in the night. Their arms and legs were painted with intricate spirals of glistening alabaster clay.

  ‘We mean no harm,’ greeted Durnus.

  ‘Who ares you pale faces?’ rasped one in a voice and accent quite unlike anything he had ever heard. The man had scars running from his lips down to his throat. ‘Speaks!’

  Farden decided to handle this negotiation and moved the vampyre aside. ‘Would you like a boat? A ship, you could say?’ he asked.

  ‘Pale face speaks stranges,’ the scarred man replied.

  Farden jabbed a thumb at the Seventh Sister. ‘We don’t need her any more. If you want her, she’s yours. It may need a clean, but…’

  Suspicious looks were traded between the speaker and the silent. ‘What bargains? What tricks?’ he demanded at last.

  Farden shook his head. ‘No trick. No price. Just tell us where to find the roaring waters.’

  The quiet man pinched his lips and whistled. Another sound to make Durnus wince. The third fellow, st
ill full tilt across the beach, skidded to a halt. He began a loping return.

  ‘This Bay of Souls,’ continued the scarred. ‘We’s Chanarks. We’s lives here. Always haves and always wills.’

  ‘We would like to travel to the roaring waters,’ said Farden.

  The Chanark nodded sagely. ‘Many faces, both pale and tan comes to sees. Most takes caravans road from Lezembors. War of norths and souths brews, but none comes yet. Chanarks wants none part.’

  With caution, he approached. The other two skirted around their strange group to inspect the ship. Their hands wandered over the barnacles and dripping seaweed of the hull. They whistled low, reminding Durnus of the gryphon.

  ‘We accepts,’ said the Chanark. He came closer to Farden, taking a closed seashell from a pocket within his baggy white trews. Farden did not move, but Durnus could see the tension in his limbs. The Chanark opened the shell’s halves to show an intricately carved little compartment filled with silver paint. With a long and spindly finger like that of a spider’s leg, he daubed Farden across his forehead.

  ‘You mays now pass upon the roads. Until Khandri’s borders. Diamond Mountains,’ he said.

  The man waved his guttering finger from west to south, where a dark void in the sky spoke of huge and distant peaks. Always peculiar given his vampyre nature, but Durnus longed for daylight to see this new land by. The only upside to the trials of this quest was that he could finally look upon places only glimpsed in tomes and books. Places he had spent centuries wishing to visit. Too long, he had spent being a hermitous scholar, or as a servant of the Arka.

  ‘The roarings waters ares south. Thundershores, we names them.’