by Anthony Ryan
“North Guard up!” Vaelin called out, rising and reaching over his shoulder to draw his sword. He ran for the gate with the North Guard close on his heels, hearing Tallspear’s hunting horn pealing out a summons to the others waiting in the forest.
A few outlaws came stumbling from the shadows in various states of undress, attempting to form a barrier across the portal. Their aim was quickly frustrated by Little Teeth, who began to whirl, lashing out with his claws and sending the outlaws into confusion. One man staggered back from the beast, clutching a bleeding arm, placing himself directly into Vaelin’s path as he reached the gate. He made the mistake of drawing the knife on his belt and died for it, Vaelin jabbing the tip of his Order blade neatly through the ribs to pierce his heart, leaving him kneeling as blood swelled his mouth.
The remaining would-be defenders were quickly cut down by the North Guard, though the obscenity-laden defiance they screamed out in the course of the brief but frenzied fight ensured any last vestige of surprise had now vanished. Looking around, Vaelin saw the interior of the stockade featured only a few huts and no structure large enough to accommodate the kind of numbers that must dwell here. However, his gaze soon alighted on an opening in the canyon wall. It was a typical mineshaft common to the Reaches, buttressed with timber and wide enough to allow entry by five or more men at once.
They didn’t come here to raid for riches, Vaelin surmised. They came to dig for them.
He could hear a rising tumult from within the shaft, accompanied by a flicker of torchlight that grew in brightness with every passing second. Working a mine, he knew, required many hands, probably a good deal more than he had reckoned to find in this place.
“Line out!” he barked to the North Guard, then turned to Ellese and Tallspear, jerking his head at a nearby ladder. “Get on the wall. Loose as soon as they emerge, see if we can choke them at the entrance.”
He nocked another arrow to his own bow and took up position in the centre of the guardsmen’s line. A glance behind showed the remaining North Guard and Bear People moving rapidly across the canyon floor. Judging by the sounds emerging from the mineshaft, Vaelin doubted they would arrive before this battle began in earnest.
“Lay it on thick, lads,” he told the guardsmen. “Don’t want me to tell your families you fell to a scum-blade, do you?”
He received a chorus of grim affirmation in response, even a few chuckles. Those with bows nocked arrows, and the others took a firmer grip on their swords. They were mostly veterans of the Liberation War. Having fought all the way from the Realm to the gates of Volar, witnessing countless horrors in the process, they weren’t about to succumb to fear in the face of outlaws, however many they might face this night.
Vaelin half drew his bow, eyes locked on the tunnel, now glowing brightly with burgeoning torchlight. He frowned at the sounds emerging from within. At first he had thought it the clamour of desperate men girding themselves for a fight, but now realised it to be a discordant chorus not unlike the din of battle. It continued on for some time as no new foe emerged from the shaft, rich in screams and rage and, as it wore on, terror.
Abruptly, the cacophony ended, heralding a short interval of eerie silence before two figures appeared in the shaft entrance. They were silhouetted by the glow, one standing tall, the other kneeling. Vaelin noted that the standing figure appeared to be holding the kneeler by the neck. As the kneeling man struggled, the other jerked him to stillness, Vaelin detecting the distinct clink of a chain as he did so. Hearing the creak of a drawn bow from the wall, Vaelin stepped forward, raising his hand. “Hold!” he called out, glancing up to see Ellese lowering her bow and frowning at him in bemusement.
“Wait here,” Vaelin told the North Guard, tossing his bow to the nearest one. He approached the shaft with his sword held low and to the side, his free hand raised and open. He came to a halt when he could make out the two figures clearly, finding he recognised one but not the other.
“Termin Resk,” he said, squinting at the kneeling man. He was a stocky fellow of middling years, a former Realm Guard sergeant, now leader of the Damned Rats, with a dire reputation to match. Resk gasped out something in response; his words, either a plea or an expression of defiance, were quickly choked off by a tightening of the chain around his neck. The outlaw’s stubby fingers clawed at the iron links to little effect, his head increasingly resembling a quivering, reddened blob.
Vaelin’s gaze tracked along the chain to the manacle on the wrist of the man holding Resk. Taking the full measure of the fellow, Vaelin found him to be taller than himself by an inch or more. The man’s bare chest was broad and impressively muscled if marred by numerous scars, some recent, and Vaelin recognised the telltale mark of a whip. The sweat of recent exertion shone on the man’s dark skin and he met Vaelin’s gaze with a cool, appraising stare beneath brows marked by a series of pale, precisely placed scars.
“You are far from the empire,” Vaelin observed, speaking in Alpiran.
The man’s eyes narrowed at the words. From his colouring, Vaelin knew him to be of the southern provinces where the Emperor’s tongue wasn’t always known, but he saw comprehension in his face.
“It is not my empire,” the man replied, his Alpiran accented but clearly spoken. He jerked the chain, causing Resk to grunt in pain, eyes bulging now. “You are this one’s enemy?” he asked.
“He is a . . . bandit,” Vaelin replied, using the term most commonly ascribed to outlaws in the Alpiran Empire. “I enforce the law in these lands.”
“Then you serve her.” The tall man’s eyes betrayed a small glimmer Vaelin recognised: hope. “You serve the Queen of Fire.”
“She doesn’t like that name.” Vaelin gave a formal bow. “Vaelin Al Sorna, Tower Lord of the Northern Reaches by the grace of Queen Lyrna Al Nieren. And you are?”
He saw the tall man’s hope joined by another emotion then, his brows bunching with a particular sense of recognition Vaelin hadn’t seen for many years. “Alum Vi Moreska,” he said, the muscles of his forearms bunching as his fists tightened the chain. In response Resk let out a final, choking gurgle and fell limp, all light fading from his bulging eyes. “I request safe harbour,” Alum Vi Moreska said, unfurling the chain from Resk’s corpse with a skillful flick of his wrists. “For myself and my people.”
Vaelin nodded at the mineshaft. “There are more of you in there?”
“Many.” The man met Vaelin’s gaze once more, letting out a hard, shame-filled sigh as he sank to one knee. “On behalf of the Moreska Clan, I pledge our allegiance to the Great Queen in the hope she will bestow upon us the gift of her renowned mercy and compassion.”
CHAPTER TWO
In all, they had taken six outlaws alive; the rest, over a hundred in number, had perished in either the stockade or the mine. Captain Nohlen, commander of the North Guard contingent, reported a total of four hundred and twenty-three people in chains in the mine, plus another thirty-two corpses besides the outlaws’.
“Bad business, my lord,” the man advised Vaelin in his typically clipped tones. “They didn’t die easy. Those that didn’t perish in the fight had been worked to death, I’d say.”
The slaves were all of the same clan as Alum, the Moreska, and Vaelin could find none with an unscarred back. There were no children or old people amongst their ranks.
“The pirates took them away,” Alum said after describing how their ships had come under attack by a flotilla of pirate vessels in the Arathean Ocean. “We know not where. If the gods are kind, they were given a swift death. If not . . .” A shadow passed across the man’s face, and his nostrils flared as he fought to master himself.
“When did this happen?” Vaelin asked him.
They sat together at a fire pit where the outlaws had cooked their meals, the embers still warm and littered with bones. Alum had taken a spear from one of the dead and used it to describe a series of intricate symbols
in the ashes as he spoke. “Six months, maybe more. A man loses sense of time when he labours beyond sight of the sun.”
“The pirates? Do you know which port they called home?”
“They spoke a language not known to us, but had the eyes and faces of those from the lands of the Merchant Kings. Many bore fresh scars, and their ships had plainly seen recent battle. They had the look of desperate men, so desperate they didn’t hesitate to kill any who cast a defiant glance their way. After weeks at sea they brought those of us still alive to this land of damp and cold, where they sold us to these dogs so that we might dig into this mountain for the metal they craved.”
“Why were your people sailing the Arathean?”
Alum’s spear paused in the ash as an even deeper sadness crept over his face. “This,” he said, jabbing the spear at the symbol he had drawn, “is the sign of Malua, Lord of Sand and Sky. These”—the spear shifted to the smaller symbols on either side—“are his children, Jula, Lady of the Rains, and Kula, Lord of the Winds.”
“Your gods,” Vaelin said.
“A word we do not use. In our tongue they are ‘Protectors.’ Since the time of the first feet upon the sand, we have held true to Malua and his children. The Emperors always respected this. As long as we pledged loyalty with the dawn of each new season and sent our warriors to join their host when they called, we were left in peace. The Empress”—Alum’s jaws bunched and his lips twitched in restrained anger—“feels differently.”
“Empress Emeren wanted you to worship the Alpiran gods?”
Alum nodded. “She tried to sunder us from the loving arms of the Protectors. She sent envoys that spoke of unity, of how all subjects of the empire must now come together because the Queen of Fire, having seized all the lands of the Volarians, now looked upon ours with envious eyes. More than that the Empress sent people to settle lands that had always been ours, lands the Emperors had long shielded from outsiders. They scraped furrows in the sacred earth to grow crops, hunted all the animals they could find, leaving none for the next season, claimed the wells as their own. When we drove them off she sent soldiers. We are fierce but they were many. Long we fought but the blood of our clan seeped away with every battle.”
Alum paused to look around, pointing as his gaze alighted on Captain Nohlen. “That man has skin like mine,” he said. “The old ones told stories of another tribe that had once fought against the Emperor and fled across the sea to find refuge in the north lands. We sought to follow their example.”
“The exiles came here four generations ago, it is true,” Vaelin said. “They were made welcome, as are you.” He gestured at the symbols in the ashes. “And your Protectors. As for your children, the Merchants’ Guild in North Tower keeps a ledger of all pirate sightings. Perhaps some clue to their home port can be found there. You’re welcome to accompany me on my return.”
“I will. As for my people?”
“They are now free subjects of the Greater Unified Realm and may do as they wish within the confines of the law. However”—Vaelin raised his hands, gesturing at their surroundings—“Captain Nohlen tells me the seams are rich here. If you wish, it’s within my power to grant licence for you to remain. All gold mined within the Reaches belongs to the queen, but you will receive one-quarter of the price gained for every shipment sold.”
“We are hunters, not miners.”
Vaelin glanced at a huddle of Moreska nearby. Unlike Alum, most were stick thin and hollow cheeked from lack of food, many with glistening wounds from recent whippings. “Your people need a home,” Vaelin said. “At least for now. As for hunting, the surrounding forest is yours as far as the broad river to the north. Beyond that the land belongs to the Bear People. They’re a generous folk, but jealous in guarding their hunting grounds.”
Alum looked away, his furrowed brow bespeaking both puzzlement and contemplation. “I am not Clan Chief of the Moreska. He died fighting the pirates. But we were brothers in war if not blood. Together we answered Emperor Aluran’s call when your people came to steal the ports on the Erinean coast. Together we marched with the host and together we witnessed the night when the man they called the Hopekiller came out of the desert to wreak fire and fury upon us.” He blinked and met Vaelin’s gaze. “The name they gave you, it doesn’t seem to fit.”
A small laugh escaped Vaelin’s lips, surprising in the bitterness he heard in it. It all seemed so long ago now, and yet the name Hopekiller still lingered like a ragged, stinking cloak he could never cast off. “It fit well enough then,” he said. “But I’ve earned a few more since.”
“I consider any blood debt settled by your actions this night,” Alum said, his voice possessed of a grave note that implied a sense of formal agreement. “But still, I feel the scales are weighed in your favour. Even so.” Alum’s gaze tracked to the small cluster of captive outlaws. “I find I must ask for one more thing.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“You can’t hang this one, Uncle. He’s far too pretty.” Ellese favoured the captive outlaw with a smile, running a finger along the youth’s jaw to the tip of his chin. “Can’t I keep him? As a pet, I mean.”
The outlaw stared up at Vaelin, pleading eyes bright in a pale, delicate face that contrasted with the brutish aspect of his fellow captives. “This is the one?” he asked Alum.
The Moreska nodded. “It was him.”
Vaelin moved closer to the captive, watching him tense in fearful anticipation. “Name?” Vaelin demanded.
The outlaw swallowed and coughed before forming a thin, barely audible reply, Vaelin detecting the broad vowels of southern Renfael in his voice. “Sehmon Vek, my lord.”
“Kin to Jumin Vek?”
“My cousin.”
“Your cousin’s dead. My niece killed him in the forest.”
Sehmon Vek glanced at Ellese, who replied with a broad smile. “Then she saved me a job, my lord,” the youth said, narrow shoulders moving in a shrug.
Vaelin grunted and inclined his head at Alum. “This man tells me you aided his people. Gave them extra rations, brought water when it was forbidden. He also says you unshackled their chains upon hearing our attack. Is that true?”
At this the other outlaws stirred, an angry murmur rising and one attempting to get to his feet, raising his bound hands in an effort to club the young outlaw. “You treacherous little fucker!”
One of the North Guard stepped forward and slammed the pommel of his sword into the man’s face, sending him sprawling and bloody to the ground. The others soon quieted as Vaelin’s gaze tracked over them.
“Never wanted any part of this, my lord,” Sehmon Vek said. “My family’s been outside the law for as long as any can remember, that’s true enough. But the Veks have always been smugglers, not slavers. After my pa died, Jumin came back from the north with promises of more gold than we’d ever seen.” He paused, casting a glance at Alum, rich in shame. “Didn’t tell us we’d be knee deep in filth whipping folk raw every day. It weren’t what I was raised for. But I did my part in it and I’ll take my due. It’s said the Departed take a dim view of those who die with lies on their lips.”
Vaelin searched Sehmon’s face for some sign of deception, some artifice hidden beneath the mask of his contrition. He found nothing, only the misery of guilt and the knowledge of impending death.
“The Queen’s Word decrees that slavery has no place in her Realm,” he said, addressing the outlaws as one. “Any found engaged in this vile practice are subject to execution without trial. Captain Nohlen.”
The captain stepped forward, saluting smartly. “My lord.”
Vaelin pointed at Sehmon Vek. “Release this one. Hang the others.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The youth’s bonds were cut whilst the remaining captives were dragged towards the gate. A couple shouted pleas for clemency; the rest either struggled vainly
and hurled obscenities or slouched dumbly towards their end.
“Alum Vi Moreska has asked for your life,” Vaelin told the young outlaw. “I am minded to give it to him. This is my sentence for you, Sehmon Vek. You now belong to him. You will serve him as he sees fit until the day he decides to release you. This is not slavery, merely indentured servitude, which is within my province to impose. Under law you do, however, have the right to refuse.” Vaelin gave a pointed glance at the gate where the noose was being thrown over the lintel.
“I . . .” The lad faltered, swallowed hard and tried again. “I most happily agree, my lord.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“Could’ve just given him to me,” Ellese admonished Vaelin as he stood in the centre of the compound to watch the executions. “I saw him first.” She fidgeted for a moment, her agitation increasing as a noose was slipped over the first outlaw’s head. “Do we really have to watch this?”
“You don’t,” Vaelin said. “I do. And if your mother had ordered it, she would watch too. When you order a killing, you need to see it, lest it becomes too easy.”
Tallspear appeared at Vaelin’s side with his typical absence of noise, his gaze dark as he watched a trio of North Guard haul on the rope. The outlaw’s desperate sobs for mercy died as he was dragged aloft, legs kicking in a frantic dance.
“I recall a time when your heart was more merciful, my lord,” the hunter said. “Even at the dawn of war.”
“That war ended,” Vaelin replied. “Whereas this one never seems to.”
“Was I any less wretched than these men? Any less deserving of death?”
“Perhaps not. But then I . . . knew there to be a chance for you. If the Bear People found you, there was a path to peace. Such insights are beyond me now, and the queen’s justice is all I have to offer.”
