by David Wragg
‘Hush and listen, this could save your life some day.’
‘Oh?’
‘Aye, “oh”. See, thing is, most people, they don’t get hit by arrows much.’
‘That so?’
‘Indeedy. So, if and when they do, they don’t know what to do. They think that’s it, and they should just keel over, curl up their toes, back to the ancestors.’
‘Whereas …?’
‘Ah, you can fight on with an arrow in you! You can fight on with a dozen, like a fucken pin-cushion. I knew a fella, a Clydish man, mark you, not like one of you northern piss-sheets, fought on with sixteen arrows, two spears and a sword in him. Carried on for hours, cracking heads and ripping limbs.’
‘And he lived?’
‘Well, no, but he didn’t lie down and die at the first blow, did he?’
‘So what’s the big secret? If you’re hit by an arrow, don’t die?’
‘Aye. That’s the secret: don’t die. Now budge your skinny arse, before I help you along.’ She gave a meaningful wave with a fat-headed hammer, and Chel began to drag himself back into the store. The door closed behind them, and Lemon bolted it.
‘Hey, Lemon?’
‘What do you want, bugger-bear?’
‘What about the big guy? He got any names?’
‘Oh, Rennic? Hundreds. More than the rest of us combined.’
‘And what do you call him?’
‘We call him boss.’
SEVEN
Chel and the prince sat in the stuffy gloom of the barge store, surrounded by vegetables.
‘Why did you antagonize them?’
‘Sorry, highness?’
‘You were riling them up, Chel. I’ll be ransomed in Kurtemir – ghastly place, but accessible at least – and until then all you have to do is be quiet and meek. I’m assuming you’ll be included in any arrangement, of course, but I can’t see why you wouldn’t.’
‘Thank you, highness.’
‘Didn’t they teach you manners, etiquette, politesse? Where was it you grew up?’
‘Barva.’
‘And they taught you nothing of diplomacy, of catching more flies with honey than vinegar? It’s simple, Chel: it’s important for people to like you, or they won’t do what you want.’
‘Nobody does what I want anyway, highness.’
A moment of relative silence passed. Chel lay back against bumpy sacks, feeling the soft advance of sleep, lulled by the barge’s gentle rock and the river’s wash. Even the dull agonies that racked his body couldn’t stave it off. ‘Highness, when the Norts attacked, you were down in the stables … Why were you hiding in the mule cart? Why not just take one of the horses if you wanted to flee?’
‘Oh, that’s simple enough. I can’t ride.’
Chel blinked in the darkness, long and slow. ‘You can’t ride?’ How could a prince not ride?
‘No, never learned. Mendel promised to teach me, but well, the brigands, his injury, Corvel’s death, et cetera. You know. Anyway, why do all your insults revolve around intercourse with animals?’
‘Highness?’
‘It’s always “pig-sucking this”, “horse-stroking that” with you. Is there something I should know?’
Chel coughed, shifting against the scratchy bulk behind him, feeling throbbing aches all over. ‘I suppose I picked it up from Lord Sokol’s regulars. Most were from the fields, I imagine that sort of thing came up a lot.’
‘I’d like you to cut it out, Chel. You’re sworn to a prince now, and such vocabulary is …’
‘Unseemly?’
‘I can see we understand each other, Chel. Chel?’
He was already asleep.
***
Somewhere in the small hours, hazy dream images slipped away: Heali falling over and over, the knife glinting in his hand, while soft yellow flames licked at a slumped form on the stones below. Chel rubbed his eyes and winced. The prince was snoring beside him on the floor of the store, their legs pressed in the gaps between crates and barrels. The darkness was near-absolute, only a sliver of indigo starlight lighting the boards where they lay. The starlight moved, and Chel turned his head to look up at the deck grille above them. A shape blocked most of it. A man-shape.
‘Your highness?’ The voice was low, whisper-soft. The barge creaked and flexed around them, the sound of the river’s wash now dominant, and Chel had to strain to hear. ‘Are you there?’
Chel nudged the prince, who woke after a couple of shunts. Chel motioned to keep quiet, then upward at the grille.
‘Highness?’ came the voice again.
‘Who’s there?’ Tarfel said in as soft a voice as he could manage.
‘A loyal servant, highness. Here to rescue you.’
‘How many are you? We’re well-kept.’
‘There’s a boat coming, but we must be ready for it. I’ve opened the hatch on this side – unbolt it on yours and I’ll raise it.’
Tarfel and Chel exchanged glances. The prince was beaming in the gloom. One-handed, Chel clambered onto a barrel, then reached up and ground open the lower latch on the grille. Slowly, the man above them levered it out, and a wider swathe of starlight flooded the hold.
The man’s arm thrust down into the gap. ‘Highness, your hand. Quickly, please.’
Tarfel went to climb for it, but Chel shook his head in the gloom. Let me check. The prince nodded, twitching with impatience. Chel steadied himself, then reached up to take the man’s outstretched hand. It was cold to touch, and rough, but it gripped him with an iron strength and dragged upward. Chel braced his feet against the wall of the store, hoping its creaks would be covered by the noise of the barge’s passage.
As soon as his head and good shoulder crested the hatch in the deck, he found himself looking up at the face of their rescuer. He was rangy, shaven-headed, a single gold earring glinting in the starlight. His eyes widened as the light caught Chel’s face.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
Still Chel dangled in his grip, one-armed, his toes braced against the wall below the hatch. ‘I’m s—’
His gaze caught the knife in the man’s other hand, wheeled back to strike.
The man’s eyes followed his, then they locked stares. Without a word the man thrust forward with the blade, and Chel did the only thing he could think of. He drove back with his legs, pushing away from the wall, and yanked the man into the hatch after him.
His attacker slammed his head on the lip of the opening as he fell, and for a split-second Chel congratulated himself before his own thumping impact, spread across a splintering crate and a sack of something solid. The man fell straight onto him like a dead weight, crushing the air from his lungs, the knife vanishing into the darkness.
‘Chel? Chel? What’s happening?’ Tarfel’s voice was urgent and timorous in his ear.
He tried to answer, but his abdomen was in spasm and he could barely breathe, let alone speak. Instead he honked in what air he could and wrestled his good arm free. The man was moaning and stirring, and Chel swung feeble, one-armed punches past his head.
‘Hoy, what’s going on in there?’ It sounded like Lemon on the other side of the door. ‘Don’t make me come in and sort you out, you pestilent pissants.’
Tarfel looked at Chel with fearful eyes. He did his best to look reassuring while gasping like a harpooned seal and jabbed a finger toward the door with what he hoped was encouragement.
‘Get Lemon?’ the prince said.
‘Get … Lemon …’ Chel croaked.
The man crushing his lungs shook his head and pushed himself up, and for a moment Chel managed a real inward breath. Then he couldn’t tell which bangs were Tarfel thumping on the door and which were the assassin landing punches into his sides as he flailed his good arm and struggled beneath the man’s weight.
Light burst brilliantly across the store as the door to the hold flew open. Lemon stood framed in the doorway, a small, wiry silhouette, an orange halo around her head.
‘Rig
ht, yon fucker!’
The weight lifted from Chel’s chest as the man struggled to his feet. Something whistled through the air and connected with the assassin’s head with a dull clunk. Lemon strode through the door and over Chel’s prone form and punched the reeling man in the throat as he staggered. He collapsed to the floor, gasping, and Lemon crunched her knee into his face. The assassin slumped, passed out on the floor.
‘Where’d this shite-box come from?’
Chel’s own breathing was barely under control, and he felt like the room was spinning even as he lay beside the broken would-be assassin. He managed to wave his good arm toward the empty hatch above.
‘He said he was here to rescue me,’ Tarfel said from his hiding place in the opposite corner.
‘Aye, right. Course he was.’ She stooped to reclaim her hammer.
‘He said there’s a boat coming.’
‘Ah, ancestors’ piss-wine! Now I have to wake everybody up.’
Lemon turned and marched back to the doorway, then paused. ‘Stay here, dullards. For all that is sweet in this shitty world, do not fucken wander off again. Yes?’
Tarfel nodded. Chel managed a groan. Lemon disappeared into the flickering light of the hold, then a moment later a coil of rope came whistling through the door and thumped down onto the boards. ‘And tie that fucker up!’
***
By the time Chel had recovered his feet and spat a bloody mouthful into a corner, Tarfel had made a decent fist of tying up their attacker. Not being a natural knotsman, he’d gone for quantity over quality, and thick balls of contorted rope jutted from the man’s constricted limbs. He’d also found the man’s knife, which he presented to Chel with great solemnity. Uncertain of what to do with it, Chel took it in his good hand and tucked it in his belt as he’d seen others do. He hoped he could keep his balance and avoid falling on it, which seemed the most likely prospect at that point.
Sounds filtered down through the open hatch. Cries and clangs and thumps.
‘Someone’s fighting,’ Tarfel said.
Chel nodded. ‘More than likely. Let’s go, highness.’
‘What do you mean, let’s go? The Clydish oaf said to stay here!’
Chel chewed something salty around his mouth. He could feel his face swelling up again. ‘She did. But all we know at the moment is that people are trying to kill us, or maybe just me to get to you, and that we’re in the hands of mercenaries employed by interfering foreigners. That doesn’t strike me as people we should be bending over backward to keep alongside, highness.’
‘But what good is going up there?’
‘Up there,’ Chel said, ‘is a boat. And if we time it right, we can be away before anyone knows we’re missing, leave these bastards to sort things out between themselves. All we need to do is get to shore. We’re still well north of the lake – this part of the world must be teeming with folk loyal to the crown. So, I say again: let’s go, your highness.’
This time, Tarfel followed.
They crept through the empty hold and up onto the lower deck. The moon was lost behind drifting clouds but the stars were bright, and the scattered forms of bodies lay clear across the planking. Three on the lower deck, another over the rail on the fore tower. The sound of combat came from over their heads, the aft upper deck. Chel ignored it. He had seen what he was looking for.
‘There, grapples!’
He limped forward, feeling every wound and trauma as he crossed the deck with the prince in his wake. A rope ladder dangled from rusty hooks from the barge’s high rail, and Chel peered over the side. There on the slick water below bobbed a long, narrow rowboat, tied against the side.
There was someone in it.
The figure below gave a cry and raised the crossbow in its grip, its projecting bolt-head gleaming in a sudden burst of moonlight. Chel floundered, too shocked to react.
Something whistled past his face, close enough to flutter his hair, and he assumed the bolt had fired and missed. Yet still he could see it in the crossbow below him, even as its owner wobbled. He refocused. Something long and dark was projecting from the top of the figure’s head. Something fletched. Another black arrow swished down toward the boat, thudding into the crossbow wielder. The crossbow clattered against the boat’s hull.
Strong hands gripped him and pulled him back from the rail. He looked around to see Foss, the braided hulk, steering him back toward the hold. Spatters of blood shone on his face in the starlight. Tarfel was already walking ahead of them, unprompted.
Lemon stood in the hold’s low doorway. ‘Aye, right, fancied a spot of night air, did you? Wankers.’ She shot an uneasy look up at the upper deck as they reached her. ‘I won’t mention this if you don’t, but get the fuck back below and maybe we’ll all still be breathing come sun-up, eh? Good lads!’
***
Chel was dozing, exhausted, his head against the door, when he heard the clump of boots on the boards beyond. Shivering awake, he strained an ear to catch Rennic in low conversation with a gruff-voiced woman he took to be the barge’s captain.
‘—him aboard in Sebemir, with three more flimsies,’ he heard the captain saying. ‘Nowt peculiar with any, some of the crew knew ’em. Or of ’em, least.’ He heard her stamp a foot in frustration. ‘Peasy fucker shanked my helm.’ A pause. ‘If any’s left when you spit him out, I’ll take a bite myself.’
Chel didn’t hear Rennic’s reply, but a moment later one set of heavy boots stomped out of earshot. He slid over from the door, mindful of his earlier eavesdropping tumble, and was gratified when it was yanked open a moment later.
Rennic stood in the doorway, head ducked, more than filling the frame. He reached in, past Chel and the blinking prince, and grabbed the bound legs of their would-be assassin. He dragged the man’s slumped and mumbling form over the grimy floor and into the hold. He did not shut the door after him.
Chel and Tarfel peered into the lamp-lit hold. A single chair stood at its centre, and without apparent effort Rennic hoisted the man up onto it, leaving him lolling with the barge’s rise and fall on the water. In the gloom beyond the lamp, Chel made out the huge, implacable form of Foss, arms folded, standing against the wall. Beside him leaned Loveless, and in the corner Lemon squatted, apparently cleaning her ironmongery with a rag. Spider was beside the door, picking his teeth with the point of his curved knife. All looked unharmed, if a little bloody.
Rennic looked around. ‘Any water to hand?’
Loveless stepped forward. ‘Allow me.’ She slapped the man hard across the face. ‘Wake up, shit-head!’
Rennic gave her a long look, eyes narrowed.
‘What? Look, he’s awake. Now keep out of the way.’
The man was blinking, his eyes darting around the hold. A moment later he struggled against his bonds, but only briefly. Tarfel’s knots were good enough, and the man had taken in enough of his situation to realize that even freed of his ropes he’d remain in a tight spot.
Loveless leaned back against a barrel a few feet away from the bound man, her manner relaxed.
‘So,’ she said.
The man looked up. A carpet of dried blood had crusted down one side of his face, and his features looked misshapen from swelling and hammer-induced realignment. His breathing was harsh, each breath in a nasty, rattling wheeze.
‘You might as well kill me now,’ the man said. ‘I’ve got nothing for you.’
Loveless smiled at that, a wolfish smile on her winsome face. A pale, narrow scar, forked like lightning, marked one side of her face from temple to cheek. ‘We both know that isn’t true, chum.’
‘Beat me all you want. You get nothing.’
‘Why would I beat you?’
The man blinked flecks of dried blood from his eyes. He looked confused. ‘To get me to talk?’
Loveless leaned forward. ‘Come on, we’re all professionals here, chum. No need to pretend that torture is worthwhile.’ She stood and began to walk around the bound man in a slow circle. ‘Sure,
it can make the person doing the torturing feel better, and assure clients that, well, Something is being Done, but the trouble is …’ She stopped behind the man, who looked increasingly uneasy, and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. ‘… You just can’t trust the information, can you?’
‘So you’re not going to kill me?’
Loveless’s face was impassive. ‘Oh, we’re definitely going to kill you.’ The man sagged. ‘If we didn’t, the captain of this vessel most certainly would. And she’d be far less civilized about it. But. The good news, chum, is that we’re not going to torture or beat you first.’
The assassin was still blinking. A rusty tear trickled down his swollen cheek. ‘Then get the fuck on with it! Why are you talking to me?’
‘Because I think you want to help us.’
‘Do I fuck. You’re going to kill me.’
‘It was the people who placed you on this barge who did that. This is just inevitability working its way through.’
‘What?’
Loveless swung around the man, a hand on each of his shoulders. She moved with grace and menace. ‘What brought you to us, chum?’
‘Stop calling me that.’
‘Was it coin? It’s no good to you now, either way.’ Loveless tilted her head. ‘Or was it threat? They have something of yours, or someone? Forced you?’ She leaned forward, so close that the man jerked his head back. ‘No, you’re not the sort, are you, chum? And we can discount loyalty – those unfortunates whose organs are soaking the decks outside weren’t any company I’ve ever seen, nor was there a sworn among them. And you’re no man of the Shepherd, are you, so I think we can discount the holy calling.’
She stood. ‘Coin it was, then. And where is that coin now? Did it even reach you?’
The man in the chair seemed about to sob.
‘Nothing up front and sent to your death. No family, no friends to collect on your behalf. Not that they’d pay, would they? We both know that. What do you think your reward was going to be, had things gone your way tonight? Silver or steel? The type to pay a man to kill a prince aren’t the type to leave a killer alive to spend his fee.’
‘He’s not a fucking prince!’ the man spat. His cheek ran with rusty wash.
