The Cold Commands

by Richard K. Morgan

  “Riders to the west!”

  Jagged awareness, like waking in terror from a flandrijn pipe dream. The distant drumming fell out of his head and into the morning quiet, resolved into what it was: a sound he knew from half a hundred battlefields past—the tremor through the ground of an armored cavalry detachment at the gallop.

  Eril was bellowing now.

  “ ’Ware riders!”

  Around Ringil, the mercenaries heard, too, and took up the cry—

  “ ’Ware riders!”

  “Riders!”

  “Fucking heavy horse!”

  Bawled warnings, chaining together like lightning before the storm, and then, suddenly, the random crisscross of sprinting men, leaping and kicking their way through the huddled slaves, heading for the tree line, for horses maybe, ultimately for anything the horizon might offer. Ringil tried to grab one of them as he pelted past, was spun around by the man’s momentum and left grabbing after a fistful of empty air. The man ran on, still bawling.

  Heavy horse!

  Ringil had seen it put more seasoned men than these to flight. Armored cavalry—for anyone who’d ever had to face some, it held an ingrained terror worse than any sorcery. Back before the rise of the Yhelteth imperium and the foundation of the League to stand against it, heavy horse was the deciding factor time and again in the endless squabbling wars between the Naom city-states. It smashed through defensive formations; it shattered morale. Even the Majak had been known to break under armored cavalry assault. Expecting this bunch of castoffs to hold together, well … he gave it up as pointless, hurried up the slope to meet Eril instead. Turned about to stare westward as Eril pointed again.

  “There. Left of the bluff, where the tree line breaks.”

  No detail yet, but Ringil saw the pale boiling of the dust cloud. No doubt about it.

  “Hinerion,” he said grimly. “Word got through, then.”

  “Yeah, looks that way.” Eril eyed the dust, and the wooded terrain that separated them from where it was rising. “Heavy horse won’t cut through those trees, they’re too dense. They’ll have to keep to the road.”

  Ringil nodded. “Gives us about time to saddle a horse.”

  “Already saddled. Up behind the tents. Come on, I’ve got the old man watching them.”

  They went up the slope at a run. Found the old man from Hreshim’s Landing stood between the heads of two shaggy-maned mares, face tilted down under a grubby skirmish ranger’s cap. He wasn’t holding the reins, but he had one hand pressed lightly to the side of each animal’s head and he was crooning to them, some garbled gibberish that put Ringil’s teeth on edge. He looked up as his commander approached, and the sunlight gleamed red off one eye.

  “So it’s not to be a stand, sire?”

  “No it’s not,” Ringil told him shortly.

  “A pity. An old man might imagine himself dying well, fighting at the right hand of the hero of Gallows Gap.”

  Ringil stopped, peered suspiciously into the old man’s weather-tanned features. As far as he remembered, neither he nor Eril had mentioned his true identity to any of the mercenaries they’d recruited over the previous weeks. But the old man just looked innocently back at him, face devoid of apparent mockery or deceit.

  Got no time for this shit, Gil.

  “This isn’t Gallows Gap, old man.” Voice tight with memory. “And the war is over. We’ve done what we came here to do. We’re leaving.”

  The old man’s head lowered in deference. “Very good, my lord. And your mounts are ready for you, as you see. The best two I could secure.”

  Past the old man and the two animals, Ringil caught sight of something on the ground. He stepped sideways around the right-hand horse for a better look. Saw three tumbled corpses—by their mismatched weapons and ragged apparel, members of his own mercenary troop. The other horses had moved back against their tether lines to give the dead men as wide a berth as possible, and now they blew and whinnied and shifted nervously about, in marked contrast with the two the old man had selected. Ringil stared at the corpses, then at the old man’s sword, still sheathed across his back in echo of the way Ringil wore the Ravensfriend. He frowned.

  “And your own mount?” he asked.

  The old man offered him a crooked grin. “Oh, I shall not require a horse to evade capture, my lord. I have other and better means.”

  “Yeah? Such as?”

  —no fucking time for this, Gil—

  But the old man only grinned again, and touched the brim of his skirmish ranger’s cap in silence, as if that were answer enough. Ringil shrugged and took the reins of the horse on the left, ushered her about for space, and swung up into the saddle. He doubted the old man would easily evade capture, ranger training or no—not if Hinerion’s border watch had been roused as it seemed. But he was in no mood to argue the point. He had his own escape to think about.

  “Well, I’m obliged to you then.” Ringil raised a hand to his brow in salute. “Good luck.”

  “And to you, my lord.”

  The old man put a sweeping bow behind his words, and once again Ringil could not be sure if he was being mocked or not. He looked across at Eril, now also in the saddle, but the Marsh Brotherhood man gave no sign he saw anything amiss. Ringil shook it off—whatever it was—and urged his horse forward.

  “Look to your own safety, old man,” he said gruffly. “While you still can.”

  He passed the corpses, glanced down at one of them and then wished he hadn’t. He jerked his gaze back to the tree line, scanning for the broken pine tree and the hidden defile it marked out, the path that had brought them to the encampment from the river. It was a goatherd’s track, not made for riding, but with a little care and good horsemanship they should pass.

  Yeah, we’d better. Ringil’s mouth twisted sourly. Don’t like the alternatives much.

  The distant drum of the approaching cavalry was distant no longer, and as he looked north to where the road emerged from the thinning woodland, Ringil thought he spotted the flash of desert sunlight on armor through the foliage. He kicked his horse into a canter.

  The old man stood and watched them go. Smiling faintly.

  Down on the flat ground, the slaves who had not run earlier were milling about in a listless simulacrum of the panic among those who had freed them. Ringil and Eril cantered through the mess, heading for the marker pine. Mostly, those on the ground got out of their way, but one young mercenary—Ringil recognized him from the queue for Snarl—stood his ground, brandishing a battle-ax without much sense that he really knew how to use it. There was a cheap helm askew on his head, and his face was white with fear. He stepped in, yelling.

  “Don’t you fucking leave us, you fatherless piece of—”

  Ringil nudged his horse left, booted the mercenary full in the chest as he passed him, and rode on.

  At the tree line, Eril reined about and stared back. He shook his head.

  “Armored cavalry’s going to make mincemeat out of those guys.”

  “Yeah, well they’ve been paid,” Ringil growled, and ducked his head as his horse picked up the start of the path.

  But as the trees closed around them, he thought back to the corpses around the old man, and he shivered. One of the mercenaries had fallen faceup, neck lolling to the side, throat tugged stickily open on the long, neat slash that had bled him out. No different from a hundred other sneak killings Ringil had seen over the years. But the man’s eyes were frozen wide open in the grime of his face, and his expression …

  In over a decade of soldiering, Ringil had never seen horror so clearly printed onto a set of human features.

  A low-hanging tree bough brushed his shoulder. Sunlight speared between the branches, dappled the ground. Somewhere in the quiet of the forest, a bird called to its mate.

  Ringil shivered again.

  Shook it off. Sneezed.

  Coming down with something. Definitely.

  CHAPTER 10

  ne of the Nine Eternal Gi
fts from the Kiriath to the Khimran dynasty, the Black Folk Span did exactly what its name implied—it bridged Yhelteth estuary with a leaping arrogance of architecture that dropped Egar’s jaw like a gangplank the first time he saw it. Gleaming black iron, hung up in the air from shore to shore like some dark lord’s rainbow, like a bow chopped out of pure night and then planed and polished and bent to purpose by forces beyond dreaming. Glassy cables, each as thick around as an archer’s arm, fell from the structure in twinned rows a thousand strong, flashing translucent in the sun, holding aloft a carriageway broad enough for two dozen armored men to ride abreast and not jostle one another.

  In time, he got used to it, the way he did to the Kiriath themselves. All part of life in the big city. But the Span went on casting its shadow over him in a more practical sense for quite a while after. The carriageway it lifted across the water came ashore on the north side a full thirty feet overhead and didn’t hit the ground proper for seven city blocks beyond. And down at the water’s edge, in the shadow it cast, stood the Pony Stringer’s Good Fortune, a raddled old tavern dedicated to the memory of some young horse trader from the city’s earliest history who’d apparently been lucky enough to rescue some of his livestock from drowning on a beach at this very spot. Or something. Horse-related tales and legends were ten a penny in Yhelteth; after a time they all blurred into one another. Anyway, the so-named tavern was a known haunt of mercenaries and freelance street muscle from way back, and a clearinghouse for all manner of professional opportunity. Recruiting officers drank there regularly, ganglords and minor merchants dropped in from time to time to assess the available talent, and for a couple of coins hard-up men of violence seeking employment could always leave a name and current doss address behind the bar.

  Much of his young mercenary life in Yhelteth, Egar had thought of the Pony Stringer’s as more of a home away from home than any of the billets or lover’s lodgings he’d happened to be crashing in between deployments. Even later, with rank and officer’s lodgings to call his own, he’d habitually find his way down there to drink away the slack summer afternoons in the shade of the Span. Or he’d close out the place at dawn and stumble groggily outside between a brace of supporting barmaids, head tipped back to stare up and up and up at the soaring alien architecture, and often as not go teetering backward onto his arse with the dizzy, wine-soaked wonder the sight could still inspire.

  And when he went home for real after the war, and a fellow Skaranak came riding through years later with news that, among other things, the old Pony Stringer’s had burned to the ground, Egar surprised himself with the pang of nostalgia it pricked in his belly.

  If he’d known the place was standing again, it would have been his first port of call. For far more reasons than simple information.

  Come on, Dragonbane. The past is dead and cairned. Let’s stick to the present, shall we.

  The present turned out to be a basic but not unappealing two-story in stone and white stucco. Supporting beams for the upper story protruded an unfinished couple of feet out of each wall, and the woodwork hadn’t yet taken much weather. Egar spotted a couple of beam ends still showing the red drip stain of a carpenters’ guild stamp. On the dusty ground between the tavern and the water’s edge, equally rough-sawn trestle tables stood about, and the place’s new name was lettered across the shore-facing wall in cheap gilt characters a foot high. The rising sun glanced off the gilt and gave it an illusory early-morning shine.

  And just as Darhan had promised, there was a small iron cage hung by a short length of chain from one of the beam ends at the tavern’s corner. The severed head sat inside for all to see, mummified black and listing sadly to one side, like some overlarge turnip left way too long at the back of the larder. At some point, someone had sheared off the creature’s lips to better reveal the fangs beneath, but even so it was a pretty pitiful sight. Egar felt a grimace take his face as he stared up at the trophy.

  “That’s a Scaled Folk,” a small voice at his side said solemnly.

  He glanced down and saw a boy of about five with a grimy face and stuck-up, filthy hair. One chapped and reddened hand held a wet cloth streaked with soap curds. Egar nodded.

  “It certainly is.”

  “It’s dead now, though.”

  “Yeah, looks that way. Did you kill it, then?”

  The boy looked at him as if he were mad. “I’m seven.”

  “Right. Stupid question.” Egar stifled a yawn and looked around. “Is your father about?”

  Flicker of confusion across the young face. “My father’s dead. Laid to rest with honors, his sins cleansed.”

  It was recitation—learned cant. The boy must have thought he was asking if his father was abroad, condemned to wander the Earth in spirit for want of a properly officiated burial.

  Abroad, about—his Tethanne had never been great in the finer points.

  “Ah. With honors, eh? He was a soldier, then?”

  The confusion smoothed out, gave way to a waxing pride that had clearly been taught as carefully as the clerical cant. “My father died fighting dragons in the war. He died defending the Emperor and his people.”

  “That’s good. Something to be proud of, then. So look, who around here is—”

  “Gadral? Gadral?” It wasn’t quite a full bellow, but the boy jumped as if the head in the cage had suddenly opened its eyes at him. “If you’re out there jawing with your little cunt mates again, I’m going to give you such a fucking hi—”

  The voice dried up as its owner loomed in the doorway and saw Egar standing there. The man narrowed his eyes against the early-morning sun.

  “Help you, pal?” It wasn’t a helpful tone.

  Egar let the moment stretch, took the time it gave him to read the other man. Big by Yhelteth standards, a heavy, once-muscular frame now beginning to blur at the edges with age and easier living. Sun-darkened face seamed and pouched, but still some trace of military bearing, something a little deeper etched than levy standard. A butcher’s chopper held casually in one meaty, blood-sprinkled hand.

  Egar nodded at the clumsy blade. “Making soup?”

  Brief clash of gazes while the other man took the trouble to read him, too. The chopper lowered, hung slack at arm’s length.

  “Yeah. Week’s End stew. You want some?”

  “I’ll start with a beer. Work up to it.”

  “Sure.” The other man nodded him inside. As Egar stepped past and found a stool at the bar, he heard the publican cursing the boy out again. But he thought there was a little less heat in it this time, and the man came inside pretty quick.

  “Your boy?” Egar asked, as his pint was drawn.

  “Is he, fuck. My boy died under arms at Shenshenath, when the lizards came. That’s just my whore’s son. Came with the territory, y’know. Someone’s got to feed the little shit.”

  “Right.”

  The other man set the filled pint glass down on the bar between them. “Stew is going to take a while. I got bread and oil, you want it while you wait.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The publican disappeared behind a grubby curtain hung across the kitchen entrance, leaving Egar to his pint. Low voices, clatter of plates, and then the dull, repeated thud of the chopper into a wooden board. The Dragonbane sat in the stale, beer-scented gloom and the dusty, filtering light from shutters still not opened. He sipped his beer. It wasn’t bad.

  Presently, a tall, haggard-looking woman came out carrying a platter with his bread and oil. She stopped in her tracks when she saw Egar but then gathered herself quickly enough and set the food down on the bar. She charged him one elemental for the platter and the beer, looked relieved when he paid up without a fuss, and then went outside. Egar heard her murmuring to the boy.

  When she came back in, he said, breezily: “Guess you don’t see that many like me in here?”

  “What?” Voice faint.

  “Steppe dwellers. Don’t get a lot of them? I was wondering because—”


  “Not so early,” she said and fled back into the kitchen.

  Egar raised his eyebrows and went back to his pint. More lowered voices in the kitchen. The chopper chunked once, definitively, into wood. The publican came out through the curtain, glowering.

  “What’s your fucking problem, then? I said she was my whore, I didn’t say she was up for grabs.”

  Egar set his drink aside with care, and looked at the man.

  “Just making conversation,” he said softly. “Where I’m from, reasonable men can talk to a woman without it meaning anything. You seemed like a reasonable man when I came in, but maybe I was wrong about that.”

  The publican hesitated. Sunlight filtered into the low-beamed space and the quiet. Somewhere, a beer tap dripped into its tray. The moment stretched.

  Went away.

  “Yeah, all right then.” An ungracious shrug. “Let it go. Got a brother served up at the Dhashara pass, he always did say you lot let your women run riot. Mouthing off like they were men, riding horses, carrying weapons, shit like that.”

  “Been known to happen,” Egar agreed.

  “Yeah, well, that shit won’t wash down here. This is Yhelteth, this is the Empire. We’re civilized. Women know their place. And truth is, I’m about fucking sick of the trouble we get from your kind coming in here.” Grudging, bitten off. “No offense.”

  “Oh—none taken. What kind of trouble would that be, then?”

  “Only a big fucking fight a couple of weeks back. They put out two windows, and one of my serving girls lost a finger. Had to call the City Guard. Like I said, I’m sick of it. You going to live in a civilized city, you’ve got to act civilized, too. You know?”

  Egar pulled a face. Brawling at the Pony Stringer’s Good Fortune hadn’t ever been out of fashion as far as he could recall.

  In fact, some of his best brawls …

  “What was this fight about, then?”

  “Fuck would I know?” The publican swabbed irritably at his bar with a fetid-looking cloth. “Some tribal shit? Not like I speak northern, is it? All I know is, one minute everybody’s drinking and yelling back and forth like normal, next thing it’s fists and blades. Half of them in Citadel threads, too—I mean, that’s just …”