The Black Hawks

by David Wragg

  Spider tilted his head back, dark eyes glittering in the moonlight. ‘Where’s the little prince?’

  ‘They’ve got him. I think they mean to hurt him …’

  Spider breathed long and hard through his narrow nose. ‘Stay here.’

  He disappeared back into the hut.

  Chel stood alone in the cold, wondering if his shivers came from temperature or adrenaline, expecting to hear the crunch of footsteps on snow at any moment as the Nanaki butchers came up the slope to finish the job.

  He heard a sound from the hut, something like a sigh, then a moment later Spider ducked through the doorway, dressed and bristling with knives. He grunted and gestured toward the central building.

  ‘Move it, shit-rat.’ He stepped in close, a hooked knife in his hand without seeming to travel from his belt. ‘If that fucking prince dies, then all this arse-grief will be for nothing, and the Spider has come too far to get nothing. The Spider might be tempted to push your eyeballs out the back of your head by way of compensation.’

  ‘Um. Understood.’ Chel nodded. He could cross that bridge when he came to it. Spider was already loping toward the main entrance; Chel hurried after.

  ‘What about your, uh, friend?’

  ‘What friend?’ Spider didn’t even look round. ‘Who fucked up? Was it Beaky? Never could keep his piss straight after two jugs.’

  ‘They’re cannibals. Truly. They’ve got a load of butchered bodies freezing on ropes in the lake.’ He was amazed by how easily he could say it.

  Spider didn’t blink.

  ‘And?’

  ***

  Spider moved over the snow like a sure-footed beast, low on all fours, leaving shallow impressions compared with the deep, rutted tracks that had led from the entrance. Chel laboured after, trying to keep up while limping against the thick drifts, his breath great silver plumes in the milky light. He did his best to outline the situation in the hall as he went.

  ‘What’s your steel?’ Spider said as they closed on the central hut.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘What are you carrying?’ Spider stopped, turning to Chel with incredulity mixing with his existing disgust. ‘What are you armed with, rat-bear?’

  Chel spread his hands, as much as his strapped shoulder would allow. ‘I don’t have anything.’

  ‘God’s fucking cock-pus.’

  ‘It’s not my fault – I’ve been disarmed since Denirnas, and even before then, uh …’

  ‘What? What kind of fucking bodyguard are you?’

  ‘I only took the oath just before your lot snatched me and the prince.’

  Spider’s eyes were glittering coals. His hand moved in a blur, faster than Chel could register, and Chel found a knife at his chest. With a flick Spider reversed it, and Chel found himself taking the hilt with his good hand, while a sudden surge of adrenaline fizzed cold in his gut. The blade was long and narrow, a stabber, not a slasher. It was very cold, and heavier than it had looked.

  ‘Keep that close, rat-shit. The Spider will be taking it back later, one way or another.’

  Spider reached the outer doorway and crouched beside it. Chel waded up beside him and did likewise. ‘How many of them are there? A dozen?’

  ‘Fourteen,’ Spider said, then considered. ‘Thirteen.’

  Chel opened his mouth, then said nothing.

  ‘They’ll know we’re loose,’ Spider said. He had a hooked blade in each hand, and slow steam floated in wisps from his bald head. ‘They’ll be looking. Are you ready?’

  Chel nodded. His options were limited.

  ‘There are two entries to the hall, one at each end. The Spider will take the one closer to Prince Fuck-face, you the other. They’ll be off their guard at our arrival, maybe we can talk them down, maybe not. Whatever goes down, you’re following up with that dagger – stick it in as many of them as your shit little rat arms can manage, aim for the soft places. Eyes, ears, neck, tits, cock, you name it. Jam up some fucker’s arsehole and he’s out of the fight, yes? None of your lordly pissing around here, understand?’

  Chel nodded again, hoping his distaste wasn’t too obvious.

  ‘The Spider takes the prince, you get those other useless fuckers out of there. Their weapons are by the table, yes? Head that way, sling them over. They won’t be expecting a rat-faced cripple to spray steel, so that’s in your favour. Yes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The fuck you say, rat-boy?’

  ‘I’m taking the prince.’

  ‘Did you hit your head?’

  ‘Think about it. You can talk to the Nanaki, they know you. If there’s a bloodless solution to this, it’s you convincing them that all’s well, that Tarfel’s not worth any trouble.’ He tried not to think of the lake meat, or Spider’s absent friend in the hut. Bloodless seemed a remote outcome. ‘Either way, they won’t be expecting me, like you said. You make the big entrance, see if they’re open to negotiation, hold their attention. I can grab the prince and get him to safety before anything, uh, untoward happens. That’s what matters, right? The prince being safe. Like you said, he dies, this was all for nothing.’ And I spend eternity in an unmarked grave in these mountains, assuming I’m not digested first.

  Spider considered. To Chel’s eye he was weighing probabilities, and it felt like an awful lot rode on which way Spider’s scales would tip. After a moment, he grimaced. ‘Fine. The Spider should make the big entrance. You’d only fuck it up.’ He twirled the knives, one after the other. ‘But you come back, rat-boy. Get that bleached weasel out in the woods and come back, give a signal, wave your little rat arms. You think about running, you will not be getting far.’ Spider’s gaze was a darkness from which there was no escape.

  Chel swallowed. ‘Of course—’

  Spider’s hand went over his mouth, rough and cold and salty. He shuddered and tried to move away, but Spider’s eyes were on the doorway. He whipped his hand away, the curved blade reappearing as it moved, then stood silently, pressed against the doorway’s edge. Chel pulled back from him, his own dagger cold and strange in his off-handed grip. He fixed his eyes on the heavy hide, watching its every curl and ripple in the breeze.

  All was still, no sound but the rolling bustle of wind in the forest around them, and the pounding of blood in Chel’s ears.

  The hanging moved aside.

  The Nanaki was half out of the door, his spear leading proud, when Spider rolled over him like a boulder. One hand clamped over his mouth, Spider’s legs wrapped around his arms and body, and they tumbled into the snow before the Nanaki could cry out. One hooked blade rose and fell, rose and fell, and blood sprayed into the churned drift. Spider locked the man tight, crushing his struggles and convulsions, his protests only gurgles as the life flooded from him into the mush beneath. His movements slowed, then stopped altogether. Spider stood, wiping his blade and brushing himself down.

  ‘Twelve.’ He hawked and spat a fat gobbet onto the cooling body at his feet. ‘Fancy sticking him with your blade, get the feel of it?’

  Chel took three attempts to shake his head.

  So much for bloodless.

  ***

  The scene in the hall was little changed, as Spider peeled back a wisp of hide covering from the inner doorway and they peered in. Lemon and Foss had been moved away from their weapons, and joined by Whisper, who sported a fresh cut across the top of her chest. One of the Nanaki was bandaging his hand in the corner. Loveless remained pinned between the two young studs, steaming with booze and fury. Rennic stood at the hall’s centre, his hands raised in supplication, still trying to surmount the language barrier. The Nanaki matriarch looked unmoved, although Chel found her expression as hard to read as ever.

  Tarfel had remained where he was, curled in a ball and whimpering beside the instruments, his back to the wall. Despite the fuss over his heritage, he seemed at the bottom of everyone’s priorities. Chel nodded toward him.

  ‘I can reach him from here, if you draw their attention to the fa
r end.’

  ‘The Spider will draw plenty, don’t you worry, rat-bear.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ What had his mother said about people who refer to themselves in the third person? He’d forgotten her exact words, but the essence had been: wankers.

  Spider was away, scuttling back through the darkness like his namesake. Chel waited at the doorway, counting his ragged breaths, feeling the weight of the dagger in his hand. It was still grave-cold, his fingers offering little warmth in the circumstances. He peeked into the hall again. The fire crackled away at the hall’s centre, yet somehow its amiable heat now repelled him, its association with the butchered human-meat too close.

  The far hanging flapped aside, and Spider strode into the room. The Nanaki fell into uproar, weapons brandished, threats made clear despite the foreign tongue. Two Nanaki nocked arrows to their short bone bows, swivelling to face the new threat. Spider’s hands were up and empty, his tone conciliatory, his eyes glittering in the firelight. Tarfel sat alone and forgotten. Chel moved.

  He kept low against the wall, retracing the steps he’d followed on his way out such a short time before. He skirted an upturned table, closing on the prince, sweat prickling along his back from more than the fire’s heat. His ankle throbbed and yowled with every hunched step, but he pushed on with gritted teeth. A gentle tap on the prince’s cloaked shoulder was all he could risk, his darting eyes on the figures beyond, Spider’s low, placatory words against the aggressive barks of the Nanaki present. How long before they realized that at least one of their number would not be returning?

  Tarfel turned. His head was sticky with dribbled spirit and dried blood, his hair matted and lumpen against his scalp. His eyes widened as he registered Chel, and his lips parted to speak. Chel shook his head with fury, jamming his good hand forward to still the prince’s mouth. The pommel of the dagger mashed into the prince’s lips and he recoiled with a gasp, Chel’s mortified grimace scant mollification. Chel watched a single tear roll down the prince’s filthy cheek, gnawing his fist in mute apology.

  A swift glance suggested no one had heard the gasp over the central dispute. Chel beckoned with his weak hand, head inclined toward the doorway, and the prince nodded, eyes wet and wide. They crawled at a gallop, Chel not risking a look back, his pulsing heart pressing against his gorge so hard he feared his eyes would burst from his skull. He ushered Tarfel past him at the doorway, through the dark passageway beyond, and out into the stinging cold of the night.

  ‘Vedren!’ the prince said as the starlit night welcomed them. Chel gestured on, aiming for the line of dark forest at the head of the slope. ‘Why did you hit me?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, highness. It was an accident,’ he managed, breath coming hard. ‘We need to keep moving.’

  ‘Why is the snow so dirty? What’s this by the door?’

  ‘Come on!’ Chel grabbed the prince by the arm and dragged him into the woods.

  ***

  They climbed into a snow-draped thicket that offered a narrow, fractured view of the huts below. Chel tried to calm his breathing as he peered back down the slope, scanning for any movement. The lake beyond was a pewter slab, the odd sliver of moonlight that slipped the gloomy cloud glinting from its sullen surface. His fingers and toes were long since numb to the cold, his limbs beginning to stiffen and seize.

  ‘Vedren?’ The prince’s voice was meek in the darkness, almost buried in the whispering creak of the surrounding forest.

  ‘Highness?’

  ‘They were really going to kill me, weren’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know, highness. They certainly didn’t seem best pleased to see you.’

  ‘Why do they hate me? Why would they want to kill me just for how I look?’

  Chel bit his lip. It hardly felt the time for a diversion into ethno-politics, and the Horvaun reaver purges that had driven the Nanaki into the remotest parts of these mountains.

  ‘I need to get back, highness. We can talk later.’ He rose to his feet, cursing every battered bone in his body.

  ‘What? What are you talking about! You can’t go back! You can’t leave me here! I command you!’

  ‘I’m sorry, highness. I must.’

  ‘But, but, it’s cold! There are wolves! What if the Nanaki murder you like the others? Why don’t we just run, right now? The two of us?’ Tarfel spread his pale palms in the darkness. ‘After all, what do we know about those people, these kidnappers, assuming they’re not dead already? You know, I don’t think they’re planning to ransom me at all.’ His voice rose in pitch. ‘They’ve not been very nice to me and I don’t see why you should risk your life helping them when for all we know they’re planning to cut our throats as soon as they get us to wherever it is they’re dragging us!’

  Chel nodded. ‘And that’s why I have to go back. Without them, we’ll not last a day out here. Certainly not with the Nanaki hunting us.’ And certainly not if Spider survives and comes after us, either. I prefer my eyeballs on the inside of my skull.

  ‘They’re not your friends, Vedren. They’re mercenaries, hired by my enemies – by our enemies.’

  ‘I know, highness. I still have to go back.’

  ‘You are refusing a royal command. I am … displeased!’

  ‘Take this, highness.’ Chel held out the dagger, hilt first.

  ‘What? I can’t fight off a horde of Nanaki if they come for me.’

  Chel nodded.

  ‘It’s not for them.’

  Tarfel’s indignation vanished, and he suddenly seemed very small in the moonlight.

  ‘Oh.’

  SIXTEEN

  Chel collected the sticky bone spear from the doorway and crept inside, feeling every hunched step pulsing along his body. He needed a long rest. And a bath. And something to eat that wasn’t cannibal cuisine.

  He peered around the hide and into the hall. Spider remained closest to the matriarch, his empty palms still front and centre, his words loud and insistent. He’d had little luck convincing the Nanaki to stand down, but he’d stalled violence for a time at least; surly grunts from the matriarch punctuated his broken appeals. All were congregated on the far side of the fire, and Chel crept behind the closest low table, hefting the spear in his good hand. He had a low opinion of his hand’s coordination, but his experience with the wolves had taught him that sometimes it’s enough just to have a sharp thing on the end of a stick to hold out in front of you.

  Foss, Lemon and Whisper were herded together and surrounded by at least three Nanaki hunters. Rennic had another three around him, and Spider had two, plus the matriarch and what looked like her bodyguard, paying him close attention. Loveless was almost his side of the fire, still held fast by her erstwhile dance partners, her face dark as a thunderstorm. The crew’s packs and equipment lay piled and propped at the edge of their original table, now only a few paces from where Chel hid. He squinted. Their odds were not good. He needed a plan.

  Spider tried negotiation again, rattling out another burst of syllables in the unfamiliar Nanaki tongue. The matriarch snarled, spat and jabbed a gnarled finger at Tarfel’s former resting place by the instruments. She was midway through her point, whatever it was, when her dark eyes flicked to where she pointed, and she tailed off. The creases around her eyes stretched then scrunched, and Chel tensed. He still had no plan.

  ‘Rat-bear!’ Spider roared, his eyes darting around the room. ‘This is the time!’

  Chel still had no plan.

  The room erupted into multi-lingual shouting and the clatter of shifting weapons.

  ‘Rat-bear!’

  Chel still had no plan.

  Spider’s hands dropped to his waist, and the Nanaki surged toward him.

  Chel drove himself upward and hurled the spear with his good arm, realising he was screaming as he did so. The weapon flew from his hand, arcing through the air and passing well wide of any of the Nanaki. It whistled through the group, touching nothing, before glancing against the wooden wall and clattering to the floo
r.

  Chel paid it no heed. He’d kept moving, his eyes alone on the equipment by the table. Spider, too, had been unfazed by the spear’s sudden arrival, and from the corner of his eye Chel saw crimson sprays erupt as Spider slipped the spears of the approaching hunters and tore at them with his hooked blades. The eyes of the rest of the hall were still on the bouncing spear, the gurgled shrieks of the stricken hunters melding into the background chaos.

  Chel’s hand closed on the scabbard propped against the table, and he spun and flung it across the hall, offering a small prayer to the Shepherd that Loveless had been watching.

  She had been watching.

  What followed was a tumbling cascade of violence. As the Nanaki reacted too slowly to the carnage in their midst, Loveless caught the hilt of her blade with an extended hand. She flicked the scabbard away as she turned against the man holding her, twisting in a scything motion that ended with her elegant sword hacked into his neck. He fell away, screeching and clawing at his rupture, and she kicked off his collapsing form to drive her blade through the lung of his companion as he lurched to intercede.

  Spider leapt from his first victims toward the Nanaki surrounding Foss, Lemon and Whisper, while Loveless advanced on those around Rennic with a dark fire burning in her eyes. The hunters beyond had realized the danger, but they turned too late to confront the new threats at their perimeter. Foss erupted, his thick arms wrapped around the heads of two of his former captors before they could bring their spears around. Lemon darted between them, grabbing the bone tips of their weapons as they struggled, crushed and blinded, and guiding their wild thrusts into each other’s gut.

  Whisper had sprung from the reach of the hunter who swiped at her with a cleaver, hopping up onto a table then away as he slashed after her with clumsy strokes. Chel, inured to further horror, lofted an axe toward her, possibly one of Lemon’s. It crunched into the table between her and the hunter. For a moment, both stared at it, then as the Nanaki charged forward to cut off Whisper’s reach, he jerked sideways then downward as a bone-tipped spear burst from his sternum. He collapsed, gasping and gurgling, revealing Lemon behind him. She gave a thumbs up, then swung on.