The Black Hawks

by David Wragg

  At the hall’s far side, Rennic stood with a broken spear in his hand, hot blood running from cuts to his cheek and chest and a comatose hunter at his feet. Two more Nanaki closed on him, their aggression tempered by the havoc in the hall, the shouts and screams of their compatriots. One turned as Loveless arrived with fury, the hunter’s skull almost split in two by the venomous blow. The remaining hunter cursed and whimpered, then turned to run. Rennic ran him through with his broken half-spear.

  Close movement caught Chel’s eye, a burst of motion in the firelight. The matriarch was sprinting toward him, pacing a clear path through the carnage, murder in the dark creases of her eyes. Chel was the only thing between her and the doorway. He stood, weaponless, as she bore down on him, the long spear in her hand level with his gut.

  He ground his heels into the earth. ‘Come on then, you crusty old fucker. Come on!’

  Her eyes widened, and she stumbled on a loose hammer from Lemon’s pack. Chel watched the gleaming spear-tip as it lurched toward him, pushing himself aside as it whistled past. For a moment he locked stares with the matriarch, then he grabbed her jacket with his good hand and smashed his forehead against her nose as hard as he could.

  The pain was excruciating, bright blooms across his broken face, purple explosions before his eyes even as his sight went dark. He blinked hard, fighting back tears of shock and pain, feeling the woman sag in his grip as he swayed on his feet. His vision cleared enough to see another swing of the spear coming at him, half-hearted, and he leaned into the matriarch as the weapon flapped against his back, then drove his knee into her abdomen.

  She collapsed into the dirt, and to his shame he kicked her on the ground, jaw clenched, spittle flecking his lips.

  The hall was quiet, aside from the groans and gurgles of the injured. Spider strode up to him, knelt and without ceremony carved open the matriarch’s throat. Chel wobbled, the reality of the situation, and his actions within it, flooding into him as the adrenaline departed. He considered vomiting again.

  ‘I’m impressed, rat-bear.’ Spider said, wiping his blade on Chel’s shoulder. ‘Now where’s my fucking knife?’

  ‘Sod your knife,’ Rennic said, looming behind him, glassy-eyed and bloody. ‘Where’s that bastard prince?’

  ***

  By the time Chel returned to the hall with the shivering Tarfel in tow, the Black Hawk Company had rolled the Nanaki bodies over to the far end and out of the doorway into the cold. Foss and Lemon were at work turning the bloodied earth where they’d fallen, a well-intentioned if futile endeavour; the floor of the hut would likely be forever marred. Tarfel sat straight down by the fire as Rennic stoked it. He did not look at Chel.

  ‘We should bury them,’ Chel said, his eyes fixed on a trailing foot that jutted beyond the hanging hide. Rennic shot him a fierce glare. ‘They’ll draw the wolves, if nothing else.’

  ‘We should burn them,’ Loveless said from at his elbow. She was no less bloody than Rennic, although little of it seemed to be hers, but her clothing was torn and she smouldered with quiet rage. Her scabbarded sword was back at her side. ‘We should torch these miserable fuckers, and this whole sick fucking graveyard with them.’

  Spider picked at his teeth with the point of the now-returned knife. He met Chel’s questioning look and leered. ‘Passed on your findings, vis-à-vis dinner.’

  Chel looked around the hall. None of the others seemed to have voided their stomachs at the news, or at least if they had they’d cleaned it up with the bodies. The tables that hadn’t been overturned or forcibly cleared during the earlier carnage now stood empty, as did the spit over the fire. At least there had been fish.

  ‘We’ll burn them,’ Rennic said. ‘But not tonight.’

  Whisper ducked through the hide behind them and strode over, her fingers and hands twirling their signal dance. Chel tried to parse the movements, hoping to discern meaning, but these were not the obvious mimes she’d offered earlier. Each shape was distinct, one- or two-handed, hanging for an instant before the next followed. He gave up and flicked back to the reactions of the others. Rennic and Loveless were attentive, but Spider wore a scowl. They made fleeting eye contact, and for that moment they shared a mutual frustration at their incomprehension. Then Spider turned his head and spat by his boot, and their connection was over. Chel hoped it was a positive sign.

  ‘Well, that figures,’ Loveless said as Whisper’s hands stilled. She slumped back onto a table, her righteous fury draining.

  Rennic nodded. ‘Should have fucking seen it. Too late in the year. I said it was too late in the year.’ He turned to Spider. ‘This is your mess, Spider. You let us sit here, drinking and eating, in the company of fucking monsters.’

  Spider sprang forward, the pointy blade tight in his grip. ‘And that’s where you’d have fucking died, Beaky, if the Spider hadn’t swooped in and cut you fuckers to safety. Where’s the fucking thanks there?’

  ‘A situation entirely of your making! We trusted your judgement and that fucking pile of human waste over there is the result.’

  ‘And who tipped these fuckers off to the princeling’s tribe? Strikes me you should be showing a little more gratitude, Beaky, for even having a job in the first place. Not like anyone else will work with you, is it? You should be giving thanks for scraps from the Spider.’

  Rennic waved a contemptuous hand and strode away, and Whisper followed. Spider stalked off in the other direction, knife clenched beneath white knuckles. Chel stood beside the table, looking from one to the other. He felt completely lost.

  From the table, Loveless tilted her head his way. Her scar shone livid in the firelight. ‘Those body parts you found, cub, in the lake. They’re Nanaki too.’

  Chel grimaced. ‘So they did eat their own. Was that why there were no very old or young?’

  ‘Not exactly. Whisper reckons different sept. Probably the original owners of this place.’

  Chel sat down on the table beside her. He felt nothing at their proximity. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Fuck indeed, cub. This bunch were probably outcasts already, waited until the first of the snows then came raiding as the other septs moved downslope. Looks like they were planning to wait out the winter here, piled high with family meat. Until we came dancing into their laps.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Chel repeated. ‘Think they would have attacked us anyway? Even if they hadn’t seen the prince?’ Tarfel sat cross-legged before the fire, cloak wrapped twice around him. He was pouting and avoiding Chel’s eye.

  Loveless tilted her hand: maybe, maybe not. ‘Risky for them either way. Bunch of armed strangers, not much coin, and Lemon is wretched stringy. May have been planning to wait until we were good and shit-faced, or fully comatose, then take care of us in the quiet of the night. Cannibal cocks.’ She spat in the direction of the corpses. ‘So perhaps golden boy did us a favour after all. Once they saw his complexion, they showed their true colours.’

  Chel was quiet for a moment, face scrunched in reflection. ‘Why does Rennic hate that song so much?’

  She turned to look at him, a surprised frown creasing her brow. ‘You would have to ask him that,’ she said, holding his gaze for a moment. Then she looked away, staring into the fire, and Chel realized that was all he’d get.

  ‘Fucken cannibals, man!’ Lemon strode over, one of the jugs of spirit, somehow unscathed, dangling from her hand. ‘Fucken honest-to-ancestors cannibals, like I said. Not that any of you wankers believed me, eh?’

  Chel spread his hands. ‘I believed you.’

  ‘Aye, right, but only ’cos you’re almost as gap-skulled credulous as Prince Gormless over there!’ She thumped down on the table between them, shunting them further apart, then proffered the jug to each in turn. ‘No? Bollocks to you. It’s the perfect time for more drinking. Ugh, wee bear, you smell of sick.’

  Returning, Rennic kicked out some turned earth and shunted a table aside from the fire. ‘Listen up, pustules. This has been a catastrophe, and I expect you to be of
fering up some prayers of thanks to your creator of choice that you live and are, in most senses, whole. We cannot afford another fuck-up like this, as at the very least I will run out of words to describe the depths of incompetence.’

  ‘Aye, fair play, boss, this was just bad luck, eh?’

  Rennic pointed his glare at Chel, who shrank against the table. ‘Oh, there’s no such thing, Lemon. Now get to sleep. Tomorrow we burn this fucking place to the ground, and the ghouls with it, and we go on our way and never speak of this again. First watch is Spider, first watch of Spider is Foss.’

  From somewhere beyond came Spider’s snarling retort, but Rennic ignored it. He swept his gaze around the shattered hall, blood-streaked and quivering with suppressed fury.

  ‘Tomorrow is another day. And if it’s anything like today I’ll kill the fucking lot of you myself.’

  SEVENTEEN

  They were three days below the snow-line, tracking the path of a white-frothing river, when they saw the riders coming the other way. Four figures on horseback, another on foot, leading a train of well-laden ponies, picking their way up the hard-packed slope. Whisper signalled and the crew spread across the gritty landscape, ducking behind bleached crags and boulders. Foss and Lemon took their customary positions around Chel and the sullen prince, pushed below an outcrop toward the back of the group.

  There they lay in tense and uncomfortable silence, listening for the echoing crunch of hooves on loosened stone, hearing only the whine of the wind through the narrow valley, the rolling whisper of the scrubby trees. From his vantage, pressed against the dusty ground, Chel could see Rennic in one direction, crouched and ready at the trail’s edge, his thick black hair tied back from his eyes; in the other direction lay Loveless, her sword still sheathed but her fingers flexing on its fine hilt.

  The sounds of horse were ever louder. The riders were nearly on them.

  ‘River of shit, you call this an ambush?’

  The voice came from behind them. Chel spun over, feeling the dull protest of his still-weak shoulder, to see a tall, muscular figure standing upslope, silhouetted by the dim midday sun. He struck a casual pose, a long, bladed spear resting across his shoulders, his arms dangling over its shaft.

  ‘How the fucken—’ Lemon was scrabbling to her feet, grabbing for handfuls of ironmongery, as Foss rose beside her like a wave. The new man took two lithe steps down the slope, swivelling and bumping the butt of his spear into Lemon’s chest as she tried to stand. She thumped back down against the rock, almost crushing Tarfel.

  ‘Arsehole!’

  ‘Simmer down, orange midget.’

  Foss took a step toward him, his arms spread wide, and the man ducked and reversed his spear, sweeping the blade around in a wide arc that stopped an inch from Foss’s bearded chin. ‘Same for you, man-mountain, unless you’d rather end the day a foot shorter.’

  Foss remained immobile, neither advancing nor flinching, but the wide whites of his eyes told their own story. Chel pushed himself up on his elbows, squinting against the sun’s hazy glare.

  ‘That’s enough, Dalim.’

  The woman’s voice carried up from the trail, and Chel poked his head over the outcrop to see that the horses had reached them. One of the four was riderless, presumably that of the man above them. The lead rider, the speaker, was a grave-faced woman close to Rennic’s age, great streaks of white braided into her thick, dark hair. Mail glinted beneath her riding leathers, and a curved sword was strapped at her saddle. ‘You’ve made your point.’

  Dalim waited a moment longer, then swung the spear around. He twirled it around his arm then across his back, before grounding it at his feet with a flourish.

  ‘Prick,’ Lemon said, rising to her feet with a short axe in her hand.

  ‘Stand down, Lemon.’ It was Rennic, who had emerged from his position and was approaching the riders with no great concern. Spider was two steps ahead of him.

  Dalim smirked as he made his unhurried way back toward the horses. ‘Lemon? What a perfect name for something sour and pissy.’

  ‘I will eat your fucken guts, pal!’

  ‘Lemon!’

  Dalim was already past them, striding easily toward where Rennic and Spider were converging on the lead rider. He was lean and handsome, his dark hair short and braided tight. He spread his arms wide as he approached, spear gleaming in the dull light. ‘The Spider of Karvik, and … is that … Gar Rennic, as I live and breathe! Spear of the South! The Eastern Eagle! I thought you’d be off waging some doomed rebellion down in the plague-lands.’

  ‘And I thought you’d be face-down in a ditch somewhere, Dalim, fucked inside-out by passing boar. Life is full of disappointments.’

  Dalim’s smirk faltered a little at that, then recovered when he saw Loveless emerging from the rocks on the far side. ‘And what is this gorgeous creature that dazzles my humble eyes? My darling, you must crave the company of a real man, after your travels with this bunch of festering shit-balls.’

  She didn’t even look at him as she walked past. ‘Piss off, Dalim. You stink like a hen-house rapist.’

  His mouth pressed tight, muscles pulsing at the corners of his square jaw. He looked about to respond when the lead rider spoke.

  ‘This is not what was agreed. Your messages have been nonsensical, but we expected you in Kurtemir.’ Her voice was calm, serious, her face grave. ‘I am pleased we have located you, but you must understand our confusion. You may deliver your full report once we are off this slope, but I expect some manner of explanation.’

  She was addressing Spider and Rennic both, but Spider stepped to one side. ‘Old Beaky can fill you in, Palo.’

  Rennic was leaning on his splintered staff. ‘We have something for you, Palo. The messages didn’t lie.’

  ‘Enough to warrant the dereliction of your contract?’

  ‘You can judge that for yourself. Princeling, get over here!’

  Tarfel appeared, half dragged into view by Foss. He looked sullen, petulant, and was still not speaking to Chel after the horrors of the Nanaki outcasts.

  ‘Shepherd’s shit-stack,’ Dalim said, eyes wide. ‘Is that one of Lubel’s spawn?’

  Palo, the lead rider, stared hard at Tarfel. ‘Young man, what is your name?’

  Tarfel stared at the ground, pouting. After weeks on the road, he’d changed from the doughy, pale thing that Chel had first seen at Denirnas. His paunch had gone, devoured by hard rations and daily exertion, and exposure to the sun had darkened his pasty skin and lightened his hair. He was still a slumped, stunted thing, but it was no longer so impossible to believe that he could be related to the dashing, handsome, damaged Prince Mendel. Still, since Chel had refused his command to escape, he had retreated to a permanent sulk for the duration of their descent.

  ‘Tell her your name, princeling.’

  ‘Tarfel.’

  ‘Your full fucking name, or so help me I will slap a chin onto you.’

  ‘Tarfel Merimonsun! Tarfel Merimonsun, called Tarfel the Young, Prince of Vistirlar, third heir to Great King Lubel the First, himself called Lubel the Joiner, son of Akko the F—’

  ‘Thank you, your highness, that is enough.’ Palo gazed down at Tarfel from her mount with eyes that were neither warm nor unkind. ‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is Ayla Palo.’

  ‘Never heard of you,’ Tarfel muttered toward the rocky ground.

  Rennic’s hand went back, but Palo stilled him with a gesture. ‘I look forward to conversing with you further on our return. For now, we should be away and off this mountainside before we encounter anything untoward.’

  Dalim whistled, appraising Tarfel. ‘Expected the runt to be fatter.’

  ‘Shepherd’s crotch, Dalim,’ Loveless called, ‘he’s not one of your cock-piglets.’

  ‘Palo, wait,’ Rennic said. He was staring at the horseless member of the new arrivals, a slender type in travelling furs, half-obscured by Palo’s horse. ‘Is that our runner?’

  Palo no
dded. The figure took a step forward, revealing a clean-cheeked Nanaki, barely more than a youth: the runner that Spider had dispatched before affairs at the lake had escalated. Chel blinked. Until that point, he’d given no thought to how the riders had found them.

  ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Surprised he went ahead at all. Given, you know …’

  Beside him, Lemon shrugged. ‘Mayhap friend Spider is more persuasive than we credit.’

  Rennic looked to Palo for assent, then approached the boy. ‘Do you understand me?’

  The Nanaki returned a slow nod, his face pinched in effort. Rennic puffed air from his nose. ‘You beat my best guess by half a day.’ Rennic reached out and spilled a jangle of small coins into the delighted Nanaki’s cupped hands. ‘Now here’s where we part ways. You’ll want to get back to your people.’

  Chel frowned. It seemed hardly fair to send the boy back into the mountains when Rennic knew full well the rest of his sept were burned to ash. He looked to Lemon, but she’d turned her head away. Foss had found a patch of loose grey dirt that warranted close inspection. A cold feeling began to grow in Chel’s gut.

  Rennic clapped the youth across the shoulders, steering him up the trail and away from the horses. ‘Your god go with you,’ he said.

  The arm around the Nanaki’s shoulders swivelled and clamped over his mouth, and as the boy’s eyes went wide two quick cuts at his neck opened his arteries. Rennic held him tight as he thrashed and kicked, his movements spasmodic and desperate. His eyes flicked and darted, unable to see what had happened even as hot life drained from him. At last, his frantic gaze fixed on Chel, locking him with a silent plea. Chel could not break away, feeling every thudding heartbeat against his ears with conspirator’s guilt. It took him a good few breaths to realize that the boy’s eyes were glassy, his movements stilled.