A Blight of Blackwings

by Kevin Hearne

  But I wasn’t authorized to talk about such things. Maybe Rölly had been counting on an official to-do. Maybe he was going to negotiate for something important. Far from doing anything significant, I might have set the country back and given the Raelechs what they wanted for essentially nothing in return.

  “Who does make poisons in Rael, Fintan?” I asked.

  The bard froze with a piece of fish halfway to his mouth. “You know it’s kind of nerve-wracking that you keep bringing up poison while we’re eating, right?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “I don’t know the answer to that. I suppose someone must be doing it, just from a statistical probability standpoint, but it would be pointless. Everyone knows the Fornish are best at it.”

  “The Fornish?”

  “Yep. The Red Pheasant Clan in particular.”

  I remembered he’d mentioned that in passing before in one of his tales. “Wait—the clan of Mai Bet Ken? The tea people?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “If everyone knows they’re making poison, then why aren’t they being blamed for every single suspicious murder?”

  “They don’t administer it. They just sell it.”

  “But it’s an instrument of death.”

  “So is a sword. Do you blame blacksmiths for people getting hacked to pieces?”

  “No, because swords have other uses. Nonlethal ones, like ceremonies and decorating walls above the hearth and so on. Poisons have no other purpose than murder. I think we can blame them for that.”

  “Okay,” Fintan said. “Go ahead. The same place also creates lifesaving medicines. They are in the business of researching plants and making money from them. Some of them have poisonous qualities.”

  “I imagine it would be difficult to find out what kind of poisons they make and who is buying them.”

  “The latter would be impossible. The former would be merely challenging.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, you’d have to go to the Red Pheasant Clan and tell them you want to buy some poison. And then you’d have to convince them that you’re serious and that you really want to hear about their poisons’ effects before you buy.”

  “Clams and tentacles. Okay.”

  “Should I be worried? Start checking my food before I eat it?”

  “No, no. Never mind. Sorry.”

  I was a really terrible spy.

  * * *

  —

  When we reached the wall later, Fintan began with a very old song about the children of Teldwen and Kalaad, which was taught to him but rarely performed. “This will be relevant later today, I promise,” he said cryptically.

  Kalaad and Teldwen gave us all their blessings

  And gave birth to the scions of four kennings:

  Thurik came first, and like his sire

  He blazed with the passion of undying fire;

  His brother Reinei aimed to please,

  His presence calming like a soothing breeze;

  The triple goddess of the earth bloomed forth

  And protected her people in the north:

  And Bryn was last, Lord of the Deep

  With all the secrets of the oceans to keep.

  Together they watched over all our shores

  To nurture life and prevent wars.

  “Yesterday’s tales were of a historic meeting,” he said after the break. “Today includes a tale of revelations that should make us all reconsider—not change our minds necessarily, but just consider again—the stories we’ve been told since we were children. That will be Gondel Vedd’s tale a bit later. But first, as I promised you earlier, more from Gerstad Daryck du Löngren and the Grynek Hunters.”

  The crowd roared as the gerstad’s seeming appeared out of the smoke.

  We’ve been prowling the northern coast for a week, moving fast in an attempt to catch up to the army we’re tracking. We found evidence of another camp and watering mission at the site of a river emptying into the ocean. Brön noted that these streams were not poisoned like the Gravewater and were safe to drink without him using his kenning; settlement up here would therefore be possible without hygienists.

  “Yeah, but in winter your balls would freeze, drop off, and shatter,” I said.

  “That will never be a problem with my balls, Gerstad, but thank you.”

  “So what is the problem, Brön? Are you chafing again?” Luren said, his tone solicitous.

  “I am not chafing.”

  “You should put some ointment on that. Or at least some grease. Gyrsön, you got some grease our hygienist can use?”

  “Sure, I can rustle up some weasel grease,” the cook said.

  “I am not using grease of any kind. If you could see the stuff living in grease, like I can, you would not apply it anywhere on your body. Trust me.”

  “Aha! So you are chafing!” Luren crowed.

  Gyrsön’s extraordinary nose smelled the ambush before we heard or saw the ambushers. “Uh, Gerstad, there’s someone up ahead who needs a bath,” he said.

  “I’m perfectly sanitary!” Brön protested. “I would know.” But one look at Gyrsön and I knew he wasn’t teasing Brön.

  “Incoming! Ready bows!” I called, and so we had arrows nocked when they attacked. If we hadn’t been prepared and they’d caught us unawares, I’m not sure we would have made it.

  The Bone Giants were certainly tall but not quite so tall as Hathrim. White-skinned, with stick-like anatomy and faces painted like skulls, black paint around the eyes and over the nose. The armor that gave them their name was evident. No battle cries, just the clacking of bones as they ran. And they ran right toward us; clearly, they must have heard us coming up behind them, for we’d made no effort to be quiet while dunking on Brön.

  They seemed to have no sense of self-preservation; they just came at us fast with long, ground-eating strides, raised those weird crested swords of theirs, and brought the blades down with tremendous force. There were seven: Arrows brought down four of the Bone Giants, and Sören exploded the brains of the other three, but they still got two of the mariners, one man and one woman.

  We weren’t wearing helmets, and the swords just obliterated their heads. I’m not sure a helmet would have saved them anyway; the force would have cracked their skulls or concussed them to the point where they wouldn’t be fighting back.

  “I get it now,” I said, looking down at the pale bodies sprawled in the pine needles where the forest gave way to the beach.

  “Get what?” Gyrsön asked.

  “How they beat us. They don’t announce themselves with battle cries. They don’t care if you take them out, because they know someone else will get you. And they’re fast and ruthless. We got off one volley before they were in close quarters. Think if we didn’t have Sören with us. Think if Gyrsön didn’t warn us they were coming. Think if they had more than seven, which they certainly did when they came after the cities. We had advantage of numbers, ranged weapons, early warning, and a kenning, and they still got two of us. We’re lucky to be standing here.”

  “I was thinking much the same,” Luren said, all traces of bonhomie gone. He was every inch a mynstad now, a professional soldier reviewing the battle. “Something for me to think on tactically.” He picked up one of the giants’ swords to examine it, judging the heft in his hand and giving it a few experimental swings.

  The invaders all had satchels of cloth strung across their torsos, and I ordered them searched. I went over to one giant in particular, who looked different from the others. He had grown out a beard and tied it into thin braids that radiated from his jaw like the bottom half of a sunburst. The braids were stiffened somehow—with egg whites, perhaps. His satchel contained some strips of dried salted meat, a bulb of fresh water, and some wafers of t
errible flatbread. But it also contained some documents in a language I couldn’t read. I kept those, since the quartermaster had said the pelenaut knew a Kaurian who could translate them. There was also a bound book in there—in the satchels of all of them, in fact—that said Zanata Sedam on the cover.

  “Why are they all reading the same thing?” Gyrsön wondered aloud. “Are they in a book club or something? Go around murdering people by day, discuss themes of angst and alienation among tall white guys at night?”

  “It’s probably a religious text,” Sören said.

  Brön spat upon one of the corpses. He considered this the ultimate insult a hygienist could deliver, and I’d seen him do it only once, to a fish head in Grynek who’d tried to pick his pocket. “Whatever book gives them permission to commit genocide can be thrown in a fire, as far as I’m concerned.”

  We kept one copy but left the others in the satchels. We dragged all the bodies to the shore, including our fallen mariners, and Sören pulled them out one at a time to deep water and gave them to the sea.

  We stood watch during that process—or, rather, most of us did. While the majority of the band was turned away, I watched Gyrsön as he stared at the bodies. His great mustache wiggled and twitched underneath his nose, his eyes began streaming, his lips curled back from his teeth, and then, with an inarticulate cry, he charged forward and kicked one of the bodies, giving it a good cursing. Then he apologized for his outburst, because everyone had turned around.

  Mynstad Luren blinked and said, “Nonsense. That is the perfect response right now. These are the people who killed our families for no reason. I’d appreciate it if you’d give them a few extra kicks for me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” Luren turned back to scan the horizon but said over his shoulder, “You’d be doing me a favor.”

  “Me too, Gyrsön,” Brön said. “Thanks.”

  The mariners and I all chimed in, and then we politely turned away as Gyrsön got it out of his system. We’d all taken our shots at the Bone Giants and drunk the tiniest sip of vengeance from a river we wished to drink dry, but Gyrsön hadn’t yet. We protected him and the chow as a rule when we were afield, and anything that got through to him was either wounded already or off-balance enough that he could finish it with a cleaver. But he’d not had his chance at these skeletal monsters, and he had his own grief to work out, as we all did. Judging by the cursing and the repeated dull thuds of his boot against ribs, he was working it out hard.

  I wondered when I’d figure out how to let my own grief go. Our teasing of Brön aside, I realized that I hadn’t told a single joke since we found Grynek sacked, unless making fun of the quartermaster’s lack of cake one time counted. What were jokes, anyway, and why did I used to think they were funny? Maybe I should try writing a cock sonnet, just to prove to myself that I could still do it. What if I’d been changed forever? And then I thought it would be more troubling if I hadn’t changed after losing most everyone I knew in the world.

  The really strange thing was that while of course I missed my family and friends, I was missing my bartender the most. Thinking of him made my throat close tight and tears well up. And it’s not because I knew him all that well or just missed the way he poured a drink—I didn’t even know his real name. Everyone used to call him Nudge. And thinking of Nudge hit me hard because he’d always been behind that bar, a steady presence in good fortune and bad, and now he wasn’t. Our tiny minds latch on to one thing sometimes because we can’t handle the enormity of everything, and somehow Nudge had come to represent everything I’d lost.

  One night at his place, I’d been nursing a beer as someone two seats down was sobbing into their whiskey and mourning a family member they’d recently lost to illness. And Nudge leaned over the bar, put a hand on the man’s arm, and said this so I barely caught it: “Remember that the dead are at peace, and never resent that they have it; you’ll have it soon enough yourself. What you’re feeling now is despair at all the damage you’ll have to repair or endure. Their damage, yours, everyone they knew—I know it can be overwhelming. But your comfort is this: You can repair and endure. And you can build too. So when it’s your time to rest, those who remain will gather and celebrate a life well lived.”

  Those words haunt me now. Can I repair, endure, and build? Can any of us? When I go home to rest forever, will anyone celebrate what I did with my life? I don’t know that hunting is a thing to be celebrated. It’s simply a necessity sometimes.

  When Sören and Gyrsön were finished, we spent some time covering up the battle scene, kicking sand over the blood on the beach and sweeping pine needles around under the trees. It probably wouldn’t be enough to fool an experienced tracker, but we hoped the disappearance of this group would be chalked up to animals in the Gravewood rather than a band of Brynt mercenaries.

  We moved more cautiously after that, realizing that we must be getting close to the main army and also half-expecting some scavengers to come sniffing around at the scent of slaughter. I wondered how long it would be until this scouting party was missed and what they were doing behind the main army. Did they know they were being followed? Were they a rear guard? Or did they have some other mission—maybe somebody left something behind at their last camp and they were coming back for it?

  Regardless, we had a very clear mission. The pelenaut wanted the location of the enemy and their numbers, and I considered that a first step toward vengeance.

  I doubt that Nudge would consider the seeking of revenge a life well lived. It would certainly not build anything or repair a lick of the damage done. But maybe this would be how we endured.

  * * *

  —

  My breath hitched in my throat at Daryck’s last words, and tears practically leapt out of my eyes, for I felt his coping mechanisms—or those of his late bartender—were so close to my own. I had chosen very consciously not to seek revenge for Sarena’s murder, but I understood that impulse keenly and felt how it might be an effective way to endure, if nothing else.

  Looking around, I saw that several others on the wall were having feelings of their own, remembering whom they’d lost and why, and a quick glance over the edge of the wall at the wooden bleachers revealed that many in the audience at Survivor Field were dealing with the same issues. The tales of the Nentians and Hathrim and so on were affecting, to be sure, but they were different, somehow, from hearing one of our own go through what we had. Those other tales were like mere flesh wounds compared to Daryck’s story, which was a knife to the heart.

  “How we deal with loss varies greatly from culture to culture and from person to person, but dealing with it is something we must all do at some point,” the bard said after a respectful silence. “Let’s catch up with Olet Kanek, who abruptly discovered she had losses of her own to process.”

  People like to complain sometimes about the strain and exhaustion of labor, but rarely do they praise its meditative and restorative qualities. Since physical work requires little mental activity, it can be restful for the mind, and one can arrive at solutions to problems almost by magic instead of strain. Like a pot roast left to cook slowly throughout the day over glowing coals, solutions to problems can be reached sometimes while the brain is nominally occupied with something else.

  While most in the budding city were occupied erecting shelters of one kind or another, La Mastik and I were in the crude shed, building a glass furnace that would eventually become a respectable smithing operation. We needed the furnace before building an actual forge, because we had a more urgent need for glass than for iron and steel for our new buildings. We’d brought plenty of finished products like nails with us, but we’d had no illusions about finished glass surviving a cart ride over leagues of untamed wilderness. So we’d packed lots of soda and lime instead, and the beach provided all the silica we required.

  Since we’d elected two new
council members to replace Halsten Durik and Lanner Burgan, I thought we were operating pretty well. The bard had come up with the idea of pairing off the Joabeian crew with various citizens to help them learn Nentian and make everyone feel more comfortable—though the Thayilists, as the Raelech called them, were still suspicious and might not ever get over their baseless prejudice.

  Leisuen and Baejan were coupled with us; they helped to mix the mortar and spread it around while Mirana and I did the heavy lifting of the boulders for the furnace. I thought they were picking up Nentian pretty well from us, but I hoped we weren’t giving them noticeable Hathrim accents.

  Of all the problems my mind could be stewing over in the background as we worked, the one that wouldn’t go away was Abhi’s report that there was a man living on the island to the northeast of us. Just one man, apparently. An extremely puzzling man.

  I’d asked Abhi to send his stalk hawk, Eep, on additional flyovers to get some answers.

  The man she’d seen was the same one each time, as far as she could tell. There were many buildings on the western side of the island, but he stayed near one in particular, which was bigger than most of the others. Eep didn’t know—most likely couldn’t know—what kind of buildings they were.

  There were some additional buildings on the eastern side plus some watercraft of varying sizes next to a dock, but she never saw any humans near there. She also saw nothing she could eat, which is a question Abhi asked that I thought was clever. It meant the man wasn’t hunting or trapping his food. Most likely he was fishing. Or he’d brought in a huge boatload of supplies at some point.

  But questions abounded. Who was he and why was he there? Why was he there alone? What had happened to all the people who’d presumably occupied the other buildings at some point? And unless he was also blessed by the Sixth Kenning like Abhi was, how did he get around in his boat without the krakens smashing it to flotsam? And where did he sail here from?