The Black Coast

by Mike Brooks

  Sar Blacksword took their sword hand off at the wrist, then set his shoulders and swung his blade at neck height. The legendary edge of a Naridan longblade did its work, and head left shoulders.

  He swung around as the decapitated body behind him slumped to the ground, and those spectators nearby scurried backwards to avoid getting blood on their clothes. The former spear fighter, shuffling warily towards the axe that still lay on the ground in front of its wailing original wielder, froze in their tracks.

  Sar Blacksword gestured to them encouragingly, motioning for them to pick the axe up.

  The Alaban turned and ran, hurdling the wooden barrier and crashing into the crowd not far from the cryer, to a hail of boos and jeers. Tila couldn’t see what happened to them, but they weren’t thrown back into the oval. Sar Blacksword shrugged and pulled out a rag to wipe down his sword, then stopped. Tila saw his face twist into a grimace for a moment, before he stepped forwards and leant down to speak into the ear of the wounded Alaban still trying to hold their guts in.

  He pulled them up into a kneeling position which the Alaban held while quivering with effort, teeth clenched and tears streaming down their face. Sar Blacksword swung his blade once more, and another Alaban’s head left their shoulders. Only then, with an act of relative mercy administered, did he clean his sword and sheath it.

  “Oh, blessed Nari!” Marin exclaimed with relief. “It never gets any easier, watching him fight…”

  “Thank you for your advice,” Tila told him, then began to push her way through the crowd towards the cryer. She could see Barach already providing her token to prove he’d placed a successful bet, so her winnings should be secure.

  Sar Blacksword took a fat purse for winning his fight, Tila saw as she nudged and elbowed her way to the cryer’s side. They turned towards her as they became aware of her presence, and Tila registered wide, deep brown eyes, a delicate mouth, and cheeks that dimpled when they smiled.

  “Your pardon,” she said in Alaban. “I wish to speak to Kurumaya.” By all her ancestors, but it felt strange to throw that untethered sentence out, identifying herself with no indication as to her status. At least she’d remembered to use the formal neutral intonation.

  “No,” the cryer said, their smile widening.

  Tila frowned. “Your pardon?”

  “You are speaking to Kurumaya.”

  EVRAM

  HE’D FOUND A barn not far from the road, and bedded down in the hayloft. Despite the tickling, scratchy tips of the hay stems, their overall softness was as close to a blissful experience as Evram could imagine, compared to the hard ground or knotted tree bark that was all he’d had to rest upon for the last week. He’d woken in the morning chill as daylight began to leak in through the rough pine slats of the roof, and had to force himself to get up and move. On the preceding days he’d started walking as soon as he’d had a piss, even chewing his meagre breakfast as he trudged, trying to warm himself with the action. Cold though it was in the barn, it was still warmer than he’d been any morning since he’d left home.

  He couldn’t stay there, though. There were few vagabonds on Blackcreek land, since no one had reason to go that far south, but any discovered would be treated harshly. He doubted it would be different here. Evram didn’t want to catch a beating, and couldn’t afford to be dragged to the local reeve and his men, so he’d hurried back to the road before anyone found him. If his message was to be heard then he’d need to present himself to the thane, not be thrown into the Darkspur lock-up with the drunks and petty thieves.

  Darkspur.

  He’d seen it from the moment he’d left the forest late the previous afternoon, when to push on towards it would have meant arriving at night when the gates would almost certainly be locked, no matter how urgent he claimed his news to be. Now it rose above him, a mighty outcrop of dark rock many, many times the height of a man, that looked to have been thrust out of the earth like a monstrous, blunt dagger. The steepest side formed a formidable wall, and on the other three it was surrounded by the town of the same name and the lower, man-made walls guarding that. Atop it sat the stronghouse of Lord Darkspur, thane and protector of these lands to the north of Blackcreek, which was flying his banners: a mighty white kingdrake soaring against a green background, and the crowned sunburst of Narida, signifying his family’s fealty to the God-King.

  The blisters on Evram’s feet had deteriorated from early-morning sharpness into the rubbing pain of background agony by the time he limped to the town gates. The guards watched him approach with a mixture of wariness and curiosity.

  “Ho, traveller,” one of them called as Evram drew closer. “You’ve come on the south road?”

  Evram opened his mouth to say that no, he’d come on the north road, then realised that would mean something different to them. “Aye,” he managed instead, trying not to wince as his right foot made its discomfort known again.

  “What’s your business at Darkspur?” the other called. He bore the scars of the pox, and eyed Evram dubiously. Travel-stained and limping as he was, Evram was hardly surprised.

  “S’man brings news of Raiders at Black Keep,” he said, halting in front of them. “He needs to—”

  “Raiders?” The guard on the left looked at his colleague. “That’s the business of the thane of Blackcreek, surely?”

  “Raiders don’t come this early,” Pox-face said. “And they haven’t been as far south as Black Keep in years.”

  “Must’ve worked out there’s nothing there except fish,” the first one sniggered.

  “Besides,” Pox-face continued, looking at Evram again, “even if there were Raiders there, they’ll have been long gone by the time you were halfway here.” He lowered his spear a little and his eyes narrowed. “So what’s your business?”

  Evram gritted his teeth. “They haven’t gone. They’ve taken the town.”

  Pox-face’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean, ‘taken’? They’ve burned it?”

  Evram really wanted to reach out and throttle the man, but that would just see him stuck with a spear. “They’ve taken it. They’re living there!”

  The unscarred guard snorted. “Raiders don’t do that, they—”

  “They do now!” Evram shouted. “There are hundreds of them! They brought their old, their children, their… their fucking chickens! Lord Asrel tried to fight them, Lord Daimon turned on him and surrendered the town to the Raiders, then killed one of their champions in single combat, but—”

  Suddenly Pox-face’s spearpoint was at his throat. He swallowed and fell silent.

  “Right,” Pox-face said. “S’guard has had about enough of your shit, old man.”

  “It’s all true,” Evram said, as the metal pricked his skin. “Nari preserve s’man, it’s all true. Every word.”

  “You want us to throw you into the lock-up?” Pox-face demanded. “It’s that, or you piss off.”

  “Why would s’man lie about this?” Evram pleaded.

  “No idea.” Pox-face shrugged. “We had some old bastard here a year or so ago who kept telling everyone he was Tolkar the Last Sorcerer. Never worked out why he was so insistent about it; didn’t much care either.” He nudged the spear forward slightly, forcing Evram to take a step back. “Now, off you go.”

  “Wait.” It was the other guard. Evram felt a flicker of hope as he saw the man’s expression.

  “Nari’s teeth, Mer.” Pox-face looked sideways at his companion, frustration clear on his face. “The man’s clearly either touched, or a liar.”

  “You said Lord Daimon betrayed his father, and surrendered the town to the Raiders?” the man called Mer asked.

  Evram nodded, wary of the spearpoint. “Yes. He said it was the only way to avoid them killing all of us. S’man believes Lord Daimon had to lock his father and brother up in the stronghouse.”

  Mer chewed his lip. Pox-face looked from Mer to Evram, then back again. “Don’t tell me you believe him?”

  “S’man thinks we should
make this someone else’s problem,” Mer said. “He’ll go and get the captain. You stay here and watch this one. Try not to prick him too badly.”

  “Fine,” Pox-face muttered. “On your head be it.”

  IT WASN’T LONG before Mer returned with his captain, a hard-faced man called Gavrel with a white scar down his left cheek, who looked at Evram as though he’d like nothing better than to knife him and leave him in a ditch. However, when Evram told his tale Gavrel rubbed his chin thoughtfully, gave a small nod to Mer, and told Evram to follow him. And so, for the first time in his life, Evram entered a town other than Black Keep.

  Truth to tell, it wasn’t that different. It was a little bigger, perhaps, with a few more people in the streets—although that was maybe no longer true, now the Raiders were in Black Keep—and the ground rose a little as they approached the great rock itself. Black Keep was flat, built as it was next to the river, whereas Darkspur was not only farther north but also farther west, closer to the Catseye Mountains.

  The main street was wide, if not straight, and Gavrel led the way at a pace Evram’s blisters complained about bitterly. The man led him to a squat guardhouse with narrow window slits sitting at the base of the winding track that was the only way of ascending the rock, save for climbing its sides. The arched gateway within was high enough to admit a man mounted on dragonback, and wide enough for a wagon, but the gates were stout and firm. At present they were open, however, and as Evram approached them he saw a couple of the guards peering out curiously.

  “Is that him, then?” one man asked, pushing his helm back to scratch his forehead. “Is that—?”

  “The man Mer spoke of, yes,” Gavrel replied shortly. “Where’s the steward?”

  “Up on the Rock,” the same man answered.

  “Good. Come with this captain,” Gavrel instructed Evram, walking on through the guardhouse. Evram hurried after him, despite the complaints from his feet, and didn’t look around at the guards or the guardhouse as he did so. He didn’t want to be accused of spying for Black Creek. Evram was no noble, but he knew not all the thanes of Narida saw eye to eye. Some of the greatest songs, in fact, were tales of warriors fighting not the Raiders, the Morlithians, or the Alabans, but a treacherous neighbouring thane intent on stealing land.

  His feet and legs protested as the road started to climb, but Gavrel was striding ahead with the vim and determination of a younger man, so Evram gritted his teeth and forced himself to follow at the same pace. The road was at least a decent surface; a light sandy soil very different to the rich, dark earth Evram was used to tilling. It didn’t stop his breath from starting to wheeze in his chest, however. He wasn’t as young as he had been.

  No sooner had the road finished the main part of its climb then the way was obstructed by yet another guardhouse, this one set into a wall running the width of the rock’s upper surface. Here Gavrel tersely instructed Evram to wait, so he sat gingerly and looked around him. It was quite a view: he didn’t think he’d ever been so high, not even in his youth when he’d climbed trees in search of birds’ nests. He could see the Darkspur lands laid out below him, a patchwork of fields and pasture. Beyond was the Downwoods, dark green conifers and the sullen, bare brown limbs of the trees that shed their leaves, with just the faintest flash of light green here and there as the earliest of them began to push forward new ones.

  “You. Black Keep man.”

  Gavrel had returned. Evram heaved himself to his feet, then noticed the man following the guard captain. He was perhaps of an age with Evram himself, although somewhat plumper. He wore a simple brown robe edged with gold, reaching to mid-forearm and mid-shin, had a longblade and a shortblade sheathed at his side, and his hair tied into warrior’s braids.

  Evram bowed. The man waited for him to straighten again before he spoke.

  “This sar is Omet, Steward of Darkspur and cousin of the Thane. Tell him of these Raiders.”

  ZHANNA

  LIFE AS A hostage was hard to adapt to, mainly because there was nothing to do. Or more accurately, nothing which needed Zhanna to do it. Her food was provided without her needing to catch it, hunt for it, pull it out of the ground, or even cook it. Since she wasn’t doing anything strenuous, her clothes didn’t need repairing. As a result, she’d ended up spending a lot of time interacting with the strange beast Daimon Blackcreek had so casually handed to her: the dragon runt.

  It was a truly odd thing, this little rattletail, and all the stranger for being familiar in some ways. Its purply skin lacked the feathers of the adults at first, but these were now pushing through. She could almost have believed it were a bird, but it had jaws with tiny teeth, not a beak, and its forelegs were certainly not bent into the useless wings of a chick; they were definitely legs, with claws. And yet they weren’t legs like the forelegs of a goat, mere props to support the weight of a body above them (although Zhanna knew well enough a goat’s legs could get it all manner of precarious places). The little creature could grasp, and once it had got a bit more coordination and strength in its limbs, was able to climb all over her. When it reached her exposed flesh, or burrowed beneath her clothes to find it, the tiny claws scratched at her skin. And so, in partial defiance of her mother’s insistence that she never give names to the crow chicks she’d rescued as a child, she’d privately called the baby dragon Thorn.

  Zhanna was giving Thorn a meal, a few scraps of dried meat from the previous night that she’d chewed to moisten for it, when she heard her mother’s voice calling her.

  Her immediate, irrational reaction was that she’d done something wrong, because her mother sounded angry, and that this was somehow related to Thorn. Her second reaction was to wonder what in the deeps her mother was doing inside the castle, and she hurried to the window with Thorn still held in her cupped hands.

  Her first worry—that everything had gone wrong, and her clan’s warriors had stormed the castle in a way somehow silent until now—was dispelled the moment she saw the small retinue approaching. Her mother was in the lead, with a face on her like Father Krayk’s own gale, but she carried no weapons and was followed by Osred the steward, as well as Ita and Sourface Ganalel. Of the three Naridans only Ita matched Zhanna’s mother in height, and Saana probably weighed half as much again as he did, so the impression was almost one of an adult being tailed by three children, albeit two with grey in their hair.

  A very unhappy adult, Zhanna noted with some apprehension. It was rare that Saana Sattistutar properly lost her temper with people that weren’t her own daughter, but when she did so she made sure to share it out equally amongst all those around.

  Still, Zhanna was as sure as she could be that whatever had set her mother off, it surely couldn’t be her fault this time. She tucked Thorn into her jacket’s deep hood and hurried to the front door of the women’s quarters, just in case her mother got it into her head to try to kick it down, and opened it as Saana was striding over the last few ells of gravel path leading to the steps.

  “Mama?”

  Saana’s face relaxed a little, which Zhanna took as a good sign, but her eyes were still tense and her jaw was tight enough to chew through a yolgu’s deck. She didn’t slow down, either, but came straight up the wooden steps. Zhanna saw the hug coming just before she was about to get alarmed, and relaxed a little: angry concern still required careful manoeuvring, but was a lot easier to deal with than anger in its purest form. She had a moment of anxiety as her mother wrapped her arms around her, but both ended up underneath Zhanna’s hood and the baby dragon within.

  “Are you well?” her mother demanded into her ear. She was speaking Tjakorshi: a change from the halting, shouted exchanges in Naridan that were all they’d been able to do so far.

  “Of course I’m well,” Zhanna replied, honestly enough. “They feed me, they largely leave me to myself. I can walk inside the walls, so long as I don’t try to leave, and I’m not to go into the keep.”

  “And this building?” Saana asked, not letting go. “Thi
s is where you sleep?”

  “Yes,” Zhanna replied. “The women’s house.” She put some derision into her tone, to show what she thought of the strange Naridan arrangement, and was totally unprepared for her mother to draw back with a look of horror and anger on her face.

  “Are there other women here? Naridan women?”

  “No, just me,” Zhanna assured her. What was going on? “This is for the noblewomen, and there are none. Mama, are you well? You seem—”

  “These people are unnatural,” Saana said in a low voice, as though any of the three uncomfortable Naridans standing at the base of the steps could have understood what she was saying. “They pair man with man and woman with woman!”

  Zhanna blinked in surprise. “As in… they marry?”

  “And the rest,” her mother said darkly. “Zhanna, tell me true. Has any Naridan woman propositioned you?”

  Zhanna shook her head. “No, Mama. I’ve barely spoken to one, to be honest. There’s Tirtza, but she’s a child, and she’d run should I so much as scowl at her. The cooks are women, I think, but the guards, the stablemaster, the huntmaster, they’re all men.” She threw the Naridan words casually off her tongue, half-hoping to impress, but her mother didn’t seem to notice.

  “Good,” Saana muttered, and Zhanna couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Mama, you hear I’m surrounded by men and you’re glad? You threatened to beat Longjaw bloody when you thought he’d tried to kiss me!” She realised too late that this was unlikely to ease her mother’s temper, and raised her hands in an attempt to calm. “Mama, please. Most of them seem scared of me, and they all know the clan would come for them should I be harmed.”

  Although I’m sure Duranen intended his rattletails to do worse than scare me. But Mama doesn’t need to know about that.