Winter's King

by Bryce O'Connor

  “When it’s your turn to speak, sir, you will be told,” she spat, before addressing Loben kindly again. “Now… What did you see?”

  The Priest chewed on his lip a moment more, then found his voice as he shrugged. “I… can’t be sure,” he said. “Men. I know that. I was a ways into the Arocklen, heading west, when I saw them. At first I thought they were just wolves, or something likewise, so I conjured flames to scare them off. When the light hit them, though, they were men.”

  “Or hallucinations,” Derro muttered.

  Syrah ignored him. “What did they look like?” she pressed Loben. “Describe them.”

  “Thin,” the Priest said at once, more eager now that he knew Syrah wasn’t going to shun his story right out the gate. “Bearded. With dirty faces and animal skulls atop their heads, or on their shoulders.”

  Syrah cursed internally.

  “Goatmen,” she told the group, though she turned to look at Jofrey in particular. “The Gähs. Of all the tribes, they are the least fond of blood and battles. They prefer hunting and animal sacrifices to please their gods. Loben probably frightened them as much as they did him. They’re superb woodsmen and trackers, though. It makes sense that Baoill would use them as scouts.” She frowned. “It also means that the Kayle will have found the mountain path, if he didn’t know where it was already. They’ll have followed Loben back easily enough, and then it’s only a matter of time before word gets back to the main army, even if they are weeks out.”

  She paused, struck by a sudden concerning thought. The worry must have crossed her face, because Jofrey’s eyes narrowed.

  “What is it?” he asked her.

  Syrah didn’t respond for a few seconds, mentally going over the possibilities and probabilities.

  “… I can’t say for sure,” she said slowly, “but if Baoill’s bothered to send scouts this far ahead, it’s possible he’s sent a vanguard as well…”

  That didn’t settle well with anyone, though Derro managed to speak first. “A vanguard?” His round face blanched. Apparently he no longer doubted that his companion had seen what he’d claimed. “Of what? More of these Goatmen?”

  “Doubtful.” Syrah shook her head, still thinking. “The Gähs clan isn’t one for open war. They’re archers, cutthroats at best. If the Kayle intends to start his siege as early as possible, he’ll have sent others as a first onslaught. If he’s conquered the eastern tribes, he might take advantage of their knowledge of the terrain. Maybe Sefî or Velkrin. In that case, though, he’ll be delayed. My bet would be on the Kregoan, or the Amreht. He might even send the Sigûrth, if he thinks he can spare them.”

  “And that would be… bad?” Derro asked, the hesitation in the question spelling out all too clearly how much he did not, in fact, want to hear the answer.

  “Any and all of them,” Syrah said with a nod. “The Goatmen are an exception in their relative docility. The rest of the clans have a saying: Garros es Feys es Kayle, da brán ed brûn. ‘Glory to Gods and King, by blood and bone.’”

  She let the portent of the words weigh down on the three men.

  Finally, Jofrey spoke. “So…” he started slowly. “The war reaches us at last.”

  Syrah nodded. “I would pull the rest of your scouts back, at least far enough up the path to make for an easy escape if need be. The Goatmen won’t want for open battle, but they’ll come crawling out of the trees in the night if the Kayle wants your men dead. Don’t give them the opportunity.”

  “Agreed.” Jofrey looked between Derro and Loben. “See to it.”

  The two men nodded, both pale in the face. Giving a brief bow to both Syrah and Jofrey—though Derro’s tilt to Syrah was more a convulsive twitch than any sort of respectful gesture—they turned and hurried off.

  After the door had swung shut behind them, Jofrey sighed, leaning back to rest on the edge of the desk behind him and rubbing his eyes with a thumb and the bent knuckle of his forefinger.

  “A siege,” he muttered, chuckling into his hand darkly. “A bloody siege. I tell you, Syrah, of all the things I’ve seen in my life—and I’ve seen a damn few things, believe it or not—this is not something I’d ever have expected to bear witness to.”

  “That makes you and a couple thousand others, in this place,” Syrah said with a dry chuckle, crossing her arms. “Do we have the provisions to make it through the winter?”

  Jofrey nodded, though he still frowned. “Well enough, though we’ll be surviving off nothing more than gruel if the valley towns don’t come to our aid in time. If they don’t come at all, we won’t make it beyond the first month of summer.”

  “Cheerful,” Syrah grumbled.

  Jofrey shrugged. “Realistic. If it comes to it, we’ll need to know where our weaknesses are.”

  “I supposed,” Syrah said with a huff, reaching up to push a lock of white hair behind her ear. “Still, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. You’ve sent birds out to the towns?”

  “The very night you made out the Kayle’s plan.” Jofrey nodded. “And a few more the morning after for good measure. We’ve done all we can, at this point.”

  Syrah frowned, suddenly thinking hard. “Not quite.”

  Jofrey cocked a brow at that. “Explain.” He leaned towards her, his curiosity piqued.

  “The vanguard,” she told him. “If they come, and they’re western tribes, then there’s a good chance I’ve worked with their people. If they were part of the main host I doubt I would have much of a chance to talk any sort of sense into them while they were under Baoill’s thumb, but separate from the army they might not be so unified…”

  “Go on,” Jofrey said with a slow nod, indicated he followed so far.

  “So…” Syrah started, forming the idea as she spoke. “If we could disrupt the front line of the Kayle’s attack, it would mean a lot of trouble for him when he’d arrive. No siege, no camps, and less soldiers.”

  Jofrey fell into contemplation, his eyes on the floor as he thought, one hand absent-mindedly stroking his beard.

  “A punishing strike,” he agreed after a moment.

  “Very. It would make it harder for the Kayle to establish a foothold in the Woods, much less along the path or at the gates of the Citadel. If we can disband whatever spearhead he sends—or even disrupt it—we could delay him weeks, and at the very least a few days. It might make all the difference, in the end.”

  “So you want me to… what? Give you permission to meet their vanguard head on?”

  Syrah smiled. “Just give me permission to craft a white flag from some old bed sheets.”

  Jofrey sighed, and returned to rubbing his eyes tiredly.

  “I get the distinct feeling,” he said eventually, “that it wouldn’t matter in the least whether or not I give you my blessing to do anything.”

  Syrah laughed, shrugging. “If it makes you feel better,” she said with a sly smile, “it wouldn’t have mattered if Talo had been here either.”

  VII

  “We talked of many things, into the dark hours of just as many nights. We talked of the past, of the future, of the present. We talked of politics and wars, of people and places and things. We talked about dreams, aspirations, and the direction in which life had taken us. When we talked about what we wished for, though, what our greatest desires really were, at the core of all things, Raz would always go quiet. Then he would tell me of what he missed most about an old life, of the warm comforts of home, love, and family.”

  —SYRAH BRAHNT

  AS RAZ came to, the first thing he was aware of was that he was floating. A softness enveloped him, a silken gentleness, like the clouds themselves had been stitched tightly together to wrap around him in a soft cocoon.

  The second thing he was aware of was the horrible, bone-deep ache of his back, chest, and head.

  Raz groaned, fidgeting in discomfort. From somewhere nearby he heard a gasp, then the scrape of what sounded like wood on wood as a chair was pushed back when someone hurriedly stood u
p. He was aware of their presence above him, of a body leaning over him, and the cloud shifting around him.

  No, he realized. Not a cloud. A bed.

  Raz cracked his eyes open slowly, marveling at how even this small motion made his head throb, the painful pressure behind his eyes that accented several days of dehydration, sickness, and what he suspected was very callous treatment.

  “Ooowwwwwe,” was all he could manage through gritted teeth.

  At this some of the tension faded from the blurry outline of the worrying figure hovering over him, and there was a light, feminine snigger.

  “Raz i’Syul Arro, groaning like a child. Now I really have seen it all.”

  Raz’s eyes flew open at the sound of the familiar voice, and he rapidly tried to blink away the sleep. Slowly the faded silhouette solidified, forming itself into a pretty Southern woman bedecked in light Northern fashion, a grey blanket pulled over her white wool shirt in an attempt to ward off what chill the roaring fire in the hearth on the far wall hadn’t been able to chase away.

  “Eva?” Raz croaked through a dry throat, not believing his eyes. In response, the woman smiled broadly.

  “In the flesh.” She gave him a little nod. “And very glad to see you back among the living.”

  “But…how? What…?” Raz couldn’t keep his questions in order, taking his eyes off the former slave to look around the room, wincing as the motion shot pain up his spine and into his neck. It was a sparse chamber, with plain plank floors and walls of plaster and stone. Above his head, heavy crossbeams lined the ceiling, supporting what he assumed to be at least one other floor to the building.

  “Go easy,” Eva said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and resting a hand atop his where it lay beneath the covers. “You’re safe. We have all the time to talk.”

  Raz calmed at the pressure of her hand on his, forcing himself to relax, feeling the ache in his back ebb as he let himself sink fully into the pillow behind his head.

  “I can’t remember the last time I slept in a bed,” he said, feeling the plushness of the feather filled mattress beneath his shoulders and fingers.

  “You’ve been busy, I hear,” Eva said with a laugh. “Challenging the Mahsadën can’t have left you with much opportunity to frequent the better inns and taverns on your way up here.”

  “It didn’t leave much opportunity for sleep at all, much less anything else,” Raz said with a smirk. Then his face sobered, and he contemplated Eva carefully, studying her face.

  “I want you to tell me everything that’s happened since you left the South,” he said finally, calmer this time. “First, though… I don’t remember much, after the road. I remember the men, and every now and then what I think was the bumping of a cart…”

  “Mercenaries had you,” Eva said with a frown. “Possibly split off from one of the valley towns’ militaries. It happens, and only moreso since word spread about your open invitation in the Arena. I don’t know how they got you, but it seems they wanted you alive. Badly enough even to break for Ystréd and ferret out someone who would patch you up without too many questions.”

  “And that person happened to be you?” Raz demanded doubtfully.

  Eva shook her head. “No. They took you to an acquaintance of mine, a hack named Sven. Terrible physician, but a decent man overall, and he owed me a few favors given the number of times I’ve come to the rescue for him when he’s botched up. When he saw you he found a way to let me know you were in the city.”

  “Why?” Raz asked, still confused. “How did he know that—?”

  “That I’d want to find you?” Eva finished for him. “Like I said, he’s a good enough man, when it comes down to it. After you got the others and me out of Miropa, we made north as fast as possible, just as you’d said. Made it as far as Azbar without trouble, but…” She trailed off.

  “You found trouble there,” Raz finished darkly, nodding. “Not surprising. What happened?”

  Eva looked as though it was a painful memory, grimacing as she spoke. “The city guard let us in without issue, but within a few nights Tym and his idiot friend Dayle got into a brawl at one of the local pubs. Before any of us could do anything, the guard had swooped in and thrown everyone in irons, the two of them included.”

  She sighed sadly. There might not have been any love lost between herself and the men, but Raz could imagine what happened next wasn’t anything they deserved.

  “They were thrown in the pit,” he said stoically, pulling his hand gently out from beneath the covers to place it atop of Eva’s. “I’m sorry, Eva.”

  The woman shrugged. “Nothing any of us could do about it. Didn’t even have time to get to the town hall and make a plea to the Chairman and his council before Tym and Dayle were dead.”

  Raz nodded from the pillow. “If it makes you feel better, the Chairman got his due, in the end.”

  Eva’s eyes widened at that. Then she allowed herself a hard smirk. “Gone the same way as the Mahsadën, has he?”

  “The Mahsadën had it easy in comparison,” Raz replied, though he didn’t smile. “There are some lines that even slavers hesitate to cross. Tern didn’t, and he paid for it.”

  Eva’s brow furrowed at the words, but she didn’t voice her curiosity. Raz suspected the edge with which he’d spoken had been enough to imply it was nothing he wanted to discuss.

  “Well,” she continued as though there had been no pause in the conversation, “after what happened to Tym and Dayle, the rest of us decided it was time to go our separate ways. The Azbar guard were looking for any excuse to add to the fodder of the Arena, and we knew some of them had seen us all arrive together. A few stayed, promising to keep as far from the eyes of the law as possible, but most made west for the larger valley towns of Drangstek and Stullens, or south again for some of the smaller border towns.”

  “But you came further north?”

  Eva nodded. “I wanted to be as far from the South as I could get. I would have made for the High Citadel itself, if I could, but the Twins might frown on me pretending to pray to another god.” She laughed at the joke, though Raz didn’t follow.

  “Anyways,” she said after a moment, “Ystréd is as far as I got. I was on my own, and didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to do next. I couldn’t bring myself to beg, even though I was sleeping on the streets with all the other tramps. I was this close”—she held up the thumb and forefinger of her free hand, peering through the tiny space between them at Raz—“to selling myself to one of the slum brothels when I met Sven. During the summer he trades tonics and salves to the beggars and vagrants for what coppers or food they can scrounge together during the day. It’s not pretty work, but it keeps him fed and many of the slum dwellers from dying of infection and diseases, even if he is as shitty a doctor as they come.”

  Raz snorted at that, gritting his teeth as the action jolted a sharp burning pain in his back.

  “Seems he did a fair enough job on me,” he managed to wheeze out eventually. “Last I remember I was close enough to dying to start seeing ghosts.”

  Eva smirked. “If Sven had gotten his hands on you, you’d probably have been worse off, and he knows it. No, you’re alive because it turns out I’m a damn sight better with a scalpel than I ever thought I could be, and your Priest friends”—she waved at the door of the room—“have powers unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “Priest?” Raz asked, confused. “Did Brahnt find—?”

  “Getting to that!” Eva cut across him, obviously enjoying the recounting of her adventures over the last months. “As I was saying, Sven took me in and got me back on my feet in exchange for my help when necessary. I made him a better healer, and he made sure I didn’t starve to death, or die beaten and raped in some snowy back alley of the city. After a while I started making waves of my own, treating the more gruesome injuries the idiot gangs and criminal rings of this place manage to make each other suffer, the stuff Sven would never have gone near.” She laughed. “They call m
e ‘the Carver’ if you can believe it.”

  “I can,” Raz chuckled in a pained way. “Feels like you carved half my back right out of me.”

  Eva punched him in the chest, making him wince.

  “So,” she kept on, failing to hide a smile, “when you landed on his table, Sven knew enough about you and I both to put two and two together, and he convinced the men who’d brought you to him to loop me in. Apparently their leader thought you were worth a lot more alive than dead. As soon as I could, I made a run for this place.” She waved a hand about her to indicate the room. “And—as it turns out—I wasn’t the only one looking for you.”

  “Lucky me.” Raz coughed. “I imagine I’d be in chains and halfway back to Miropa by now if that hadn’t been the case.”

  “Probably not, actually,” Eva said with a mockingly casual shrug. “Apparently your friend—the High Priest, I think—put down the mercenaries as they were bringing the sword down on your head. So… you’d just be dead.”

  “Oh, well that’s pleasant,” Raz said with a grunt. “Is that the bedside manner you keep for all your patients, ‘Carver’?”

  Eva winked. “Only the ones I like. Now—” she removed her hand from under his and stood up, patting out the wrinkles of her shirt and pants—“unless I’m much mistaken, there are a couple individuals who would appreciate it if I didn’t keep the fact that you’ve woken up from them any longer. One has been so on edge to leave the city you’d think the place was about to burn to the ground or something.”

  Raz chuckled again. “al’Dor,” he said with a nod. “Don’t judge him too harshly. He never seemed a man capable of anything more than the best intentions.”

  “Well his anxiety is making me anxious,” Eva said with a little pout before making for the door. “I’ll fetch them, and you can tell him so.”

  “Tell him yourself!” Raz did his best to yell after her as the woman left the room. When she was gone, he rolled his head back to the opposite wall, in which was inlaid a narrow window of cheap glass panes, the kind that distorted the light and made it hard to see through.