The Cold Commands

by Richard K. Morgan

  He gestured helplessly, a man losing his grip on the changing world.

  “Citadel rig, huh?” Egar, voice elaborately casual, sipping his beer. “That’s unusual.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. When I was a kid, they wouldn’t have let an outlander set foot inside a temple, let alone fucking pay them wages to do it.”

  True enough. It was a time Egar caught the tail end of, arriving in Yhelteth a decade and a half ago. A time when a lot of taverns were still calling themselves the Majak’s Head, still sporting iron cages very like the one outside this place to prove the point. He remembered burning one to the ground in the Spice Quarter one riotous summer night. A mixed-bag company of other steppe nomads, out staggering drunk on furlough. Summer heat, booze-tightened tempers, just waiting for the right tinder. Some heavyset Ishlinak, ax in hand, bawling that that was his fucking uncle up there in the cage, rot-eyed and blackened …

  They burst in, boots and brutal-indignant rage. Broke faces and furniture, tore women’s clothing, grabbed torches from brackets on the wall. Roaring encouragement to one another. Whirl and toss—up behind the bar, in amongst the crowded tables. The straw across the floor went up, flames thigh-high in seconds.

  And then it was all discordant screams and chaos, and a stampede for the doors.

  He remembered making it outside, standing there grinning into the blaze as it built. Remembered the fire leaping out of windows, chewing at the low eaves. The head in its cage, flame-wrapped and roasting until the bracket charred too much to take the weight and the cage tumbled to the street, still on fire. The roof timbers took—cheap wood, poorly seasoned—burned rapidly through, and crashed in with a roar. The watching Majak roared with it.

  Whirling, red-orange sparks on a cinnamon wind.

  Akal the Great, always shrewd in his lawmaking, brought in an ordinance the following year. War against the League had brought the Majak south in their mercenary thousands—you could no longer afford to offend them. The tavern names changed.

  No one recalled what happened to the various heads. Most, in truth, had probably never belonged to genuine Majak in the first place.

  “… and he should fucking know better. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Egar blinked back to the present. Scent of stale beer and the sifting, low-angle sunlight. He’d evidently missed a chunk of the publican’s rant.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Look, don’t get me wrong. I got nothing against you people, right. Really. And I still serve Harath in here just the same as anyone else, same as I always did before. I just think you got to know who you are, is all. Can’t make a decision like that just because you’re cunt-struck. He really wants to convert, hey, fine with me. Revelation says it’s for all men to make that choice—even outlanders. But you can’t turn around later and say you want out just cuz your little whore fucks off and dumps you. That’s apostasy, it’s serious shit up at the temples. He can’t blame the ones who still carry steel for the Citadel when they give him the cold shoulder.”

  “So.” Egar made a quick estimate on the shape of what he’d missed. “You’re saying this Harath started the fight?”

  “I’m saying he was here, is all. And I’ve seen the way he gets when the others are around. Starts yelling about the old gods, how the Citadel is full of shit. You can’t expect to talk like that and not get a kicking.”

  “True enough.” Egar turned his tankard back and forth a little on the bar, frowning. “You know where he flops these days?”

  It got him a funny look. “Yeah, and what’s it to you?”

  Shrug it off. “Sounds like this guy I’m looking for, is all. Mother’s cousin’s son, it’s the same name. Bit of a fuckup by all accounts, but I’m supposed to check on him. No big deal. Family. You know how it is.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Does he still come in here? Since the fight, I mean.”

  The publican glowered into the middle distance for a moment or two. Maybe he was remembering the broken fixtures.

  “Try up on the An-Monal road, other side of the Span,” he said. “Someplace above a pawnshop, I heard.”

  CHAPTER 11

  hey reached the river without event, followed the sounds it made and the flash glimpses through sun-metaled foliage that the path afforded them. They tracked along the eastern bank for a while until finally, a hundred yards downstream from the last set of rapids and craggy falls, the trail broke cover and went to the water’s edge. It was the same fording point they’d used coming in, and they already knew the water never went worse than waist-deep. Still, Ringil dismounted there into the long grass and stood for a while, watching. He wanted, he told himself, to check the far bank for any sign of an ambush before they crossed.

  Getting a bit jumpy in our advancing years, aren’t we, Gil? What’s the matter, you planning to die old and in bed all of a sudden?

  Not planning to die at all just yet.

  It was a beautiful day, drowsy with heat and insect hum. Late-morning sunlight lay on the water in splashes too bright to look at directly. Ringil shaded his face and screwed up his eyes, peered across to the trees on the other side. It was about thirty yards, an easy crossing for the horses, no swimming required.

  If there was anyone in the trees, they were keeping very still.

  There’s no one in the fucking trees, Gil, and you know it. This is local militia and the border patrol we’re dealing with here, not a skirmish ranger advance party. They’re all back at Snarl’s encampment, butchering your men and probably the slaves as well for good measure. Just face it—you got away from this one without a scratch.

  Nonetheless, he took the reins and led his horse into the water on foot, moving slowly, ready to scoot back and use its bulk for cover if the far bank suddenly sprouted militiamen with crossbows. He tested each boot-hold on the river bottom, and he never took his eyes from the greenery.

  Behind him, Eril dismounted and followed suit.

  They crossed without a word, wading through the soft swirl of water at their waists and a curious sun-touched silence that seemed to exist separated from the muted roar of the rapids upstream. A pair of birds bickered brightly and chased each other in dipping flight a scant couple of feet above the surface of the river. Pine needles and bright yellow specks of forest detritus slid by on the flow. It was—

  The corpse was on him before he knew it. Bumping at his side in the water, carried on the current. One trailing arm wrapped around his hip like the final effort of an exhausted swimmer.

  “Fuck!”

  The curse jolted loose, as if punched out of him. Nerves still raw from the morning’s slaughter, cranked newly taut again from watching the bank ahead; he flinched like some upriver maiden touching her first erect cock. Floundered back, hands up and warding, almost off his feet with the shock.

  Just about had the presence of mind to let go the reins and not drown his fucking horse.

  Hoiran’s sake, Gil. Get a grip.

  He found his footing, reached back to the horse, and clucked at it. The dead man caught at his waist, seemed inclined to cling there. A little embarrassed at being so girlish, Ringil cleared his throat and looked the body over. He saw drenched clothing bubbled full of air at the back, facedown under a floating mop of lank, dark hair. Crossbow fletches standing stiffly clear of the water where the quarrel protruded from the man’s back.

  Some dark and weary war-stained impulse made him reach down and touch the corpse at the shoulder. He rolled the man in the water, pulled the clinging arm gently loose, and turned the body faceup. It told him nothing. Nondescript Naom face, about forty, worn with hard-scrabble living, and a couple of small scars that didn’t look like the result of combat. The sharp end of the quarrel jutted a handbreadth out from the chest. The floating hand that had until a moment ago been wrapped around Ringil’s waist was blunt-fingered and scarred from a lifetime of labor, but it had raw manacle sores around the wrist, leached pale and whitish pink by the water.


  The corpse opened dead black eyes and stared up at him.

  “Better run,” it hissed.

  This time the shock held him rigid, came shuddering in along his veins like icy water and put cold clamps at his temples. His grip on the corpse clenched as if to drown it, he heard his throat make a locked-up sound.

  A hand fell on his shoulder.

  “You all right, mate?”

  Eril’s voice, concerned. He’d led his horse up level with Ringil’s, was peering at his companion curiously. Ringil blinked back at him, and something shifted in the sun-bladed air. He stared down at the heavy, black-barked tree branch in the water and the death grip he had it in. The crooked twist and reach of one arm off the main body, the way it tried to roll in the swirl of the river’s flow.

  It was just a chunk of tree.

  “Must have washed down from near the bluffs,” Eril said. “Seen a lot of fallen trunks choked up in rapids and falls back there. Something that size, the whole tree’s probably gone in, got jammed, and now it’s rotting off a piece at a time.”

  Ringil cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

  He let go of the branch and stepped back to let the current take it. Watched it drift downstream to the next bend in the river, the lifted arm still wagging slightly from the motion, as if waving good-bye.

  He watched it out of sight. Cleared his throat again.

  “There’s nothing in those trees,” he said brusquely, and led his horse forward again, wading hard for the bank.

  “YOU RECKON WE CAN RISK THE CARAVAN ROAD?”

  This high up, they could see it from where they sat—a thin, pale line snaking through the wooded uplands east of Hinerion, lost repeatedly to forest and valley shadow on its way north. Ringil narrowed his eyes against the sun, as if at that distance he’d somehow be able to pick out the glint of plate armor and lance-points on the carriageway. He shook his head.

  “By now they’ve got the City Guard out in force. Checkpoints strung every five miles or less, looking slant at anybody with a sword and no good reason for travel. I don’t want to have to fight my way through that.”

  Eril nodded glumly. For him, it was the road home. “But south is going to be the same, right?”

  “South is going to be worse. When the Yhelteth authorities hear what happened to their legate, we’ll be lucky if this doesn’t turn into a full-scale diplomatic incident. The border patrol are probably down there right now trying to look like a crowd—just in case the garrison commander at Tlanmar loses his temper and decides it’s time for a punitive frontier raid or six.” Ringil pressed thumb and forefinger to his eyes, which had started to ache in their sockets. Sank his chin on his hugged-up knees and sighed. “Truth is, it’s a fucking mess. And we’re stuck right in the middle of it.”

  “Right.” Eril shrugged and shuddered like a dog shaking off water. Lay back on the flat, angled rock where they were seated. He was a phlegmatic man, not much given to worrying about things he couldn’t change. He put his arms behind his head and looked up at the brilliant blue sky. Yawned and closed his eyes. “So I guess we wait it out.”

  Ringil shot him an envious look. Patience had never been one of his strong points—he’d learned some in the war, because it was either that or die in a hurry, but beyond that basic cornerstone of self-preservation the habit never really took, and age hadn’t helped the way it was supposed to. Thirty-one years old and he’d still walk into pretty much anything as long as he thought he could walk out again.

  Sometimes when he wasn’t even very sure of that much.

  He stared down the pale granite slab to where their boots stood upright, knee flaps folded down inside out, drying in the sun. Socks draped out to the same purpose. Under the soles of his naked feet, the rock where he sat was warm to the touch and smooth. It was a soothing feeling, like the soft breeze out of the west that kept the full heat of the sun at bay, and the knowledge that their vantage point was well chosen—clear views back down the valley to the river they’d crossed and over pine-covered slopes on all sides. You’d see trouble coming before it got within a hard hour’s upward slog of the top.

  Their bellies were filled, black bread and cured meat from the saddlebags, cool water from wineskin canteens refilled at the river.

  There was birdsong among the trees, and the soft sounds of the horses as they grazed in the clearing a little farther down.

  A hawk, hanging motionless a hundred yards out in the crystal air.

  Snarl was dead, as planned.

  So what the fuck’s eating you, Gil?

  He looked again at Eril, felt the same stab of envy, and saw abruptly what lay at its root. The Brotherhood occupied an odd niche in Trelayne, trading on their much-vaunted historical lineage to avoid being classed as the bunch of organized criminals they basically were. That meant giving ground from time to time if some overly brutal piece of extortion or murder upset the Chancellery and the Glades classes enough to stir up a law enforcement response. As a Brotherhood soldier, Eril would be well used to sitting out the heat from his work, out on the marsh with trusted retainers or in some backwater harbor town down the coast until his lodge master could smooth things over back in the city. Strictly a matter of patience—in the end, you always went home.

  All well and good, for those who have homes to go to.

  Trelayne.

  He glanced instinctively northward at the thought, though from here it was probably more like northwest. Trel-a-lahayn, Blessed Refuge on the Trell, fabled merchant metropolis, rising in walled and towered splendor from the mists and mazed safety of the great river’s estuary marshes. Trelayne—League Queen of the northern city-states, and the closest thing to an imperial capital anybody outside Yhelteth could lay claim to. Trelayne, the unquestioned cultural and political heart of the civilized north.

  Write it off, Gil. Let it go.

  Gingren had disowned him in front of the Chancellery. My son, war hero or not, has in his recent activities gone far beyond the pale. Debt-slavery is an established pillar of our society, without which the good economic function of the city cannot be guaranteed. It has been voted on and signed into law with all due solemnity, and it is not for any citizen, however privileged their position, to gainsay that decision. It is not for any man, Glades-born or not, to terrorize merchants in good standing in a legal trade.

  Break their legs, burn their homes down, murder their agents. Stuff like that.

  I thus declare my son Ringil now and forever exile from the Glades House Eskiath, and proscribed outlaw within the territory of Trelayne.

  They’d posted copies of the declaration alongside his wanted poster in market squares and at crossroads all about the city, the seal of clan Eskiath stamped into the parchment beside that of the Chancellery, assurance if any was needed that Gingren would not seek blood vengeance in private against the bounty hunter who managed to bring Ringil down. Though truth be told—even now, it brought a small, bleak smile to Ringil’s lips—you’d be hard put to find a Trelayne bounty hunter who could read much more than the large lettered price at the top of the poster.

  There’d been a sketched likeness to complement the written description, unflattering but to the point. Long black hair, worn pulled back; long white scar scrawled across otherwise finely drawn features. Mouth thinned, drawn down at the corners, and more lines in the face than Ringil liked to think he owned. The eyes were dead. Known to carry Kiriath steel and a Majak dragon-tooth dagger.

  Knight graduate of the Trelayne Military Academy, they did not mention. No point in putting off the punters. The accent was on the five-thousand-florin reward, and a noisy rumor that certain parties within the slave trade cabal of Etterkal would triple that money for a rapid result. Word-of-mouth and greed, leavened through with the poverty and desperation the war had left in its wake, would take care of the rest.

  There was no going home.

  Ringil stared at his stranded boots some more. Behind him, Eril had started to snore slightly. He sighed and rolled
his head back to loosen the tension in his neck. Screwed up his eyes against the glare of the sun.

  Shadow fell chilling across his face.

  “So, the illustrious Ringil of House Eskiath.”

  He flinched, violently. Eyes jammed abruptly open, lunge headlong, half blind in the sudden blast of sunlight, sideways across the smooth rock to where the Ravensfriend lay discarded in its sheath.

  Knowing at some instinctive level that he was wasting his time.

  Up in the ready crouch anyway, one hand on the hilt of the sword, the other wrapped low on the scabbard as Grashgal had taught, so the blade would clear through the engineered split down the side without taking off his fingers on its way.

  He blinked about in the bright air, looking for the voice.

  “Or would Ringil of Gallows Gap be fairer nomenclature?”

  Something seemed to happen to the light. It was like coming in out of the sun on a summer afternoon in the Glades, the sudden gloom before your eyes got used to the change. As if the day were pale blue fabric of some kind, and something could come and abruptly drench it through.

  A cloaked figure stood watching him, less than half a dozen yards away.

  Slouch hat shading a face that was oddly hard to draw detail from—later, all Ringil recalled was the smile that clamped the thin lips shut, and a cold, speculative light in the eyes. The cloak, now he looked closer, was a stained and worn patchwork of leather mendings, one upon the other until it was hard to tell where, if anywhere, the original material remained. Blunt, sailor’s hand stitching, and here and there amid it all the embroidered runework of a charm against mutiny or storms. He remembered Egar’s muttered, half-disbelieving words in the stolen ferryboat as they fled downriver—just like they say in the fucking legends, man; sea captain’s cloak and hat, the whole thing. Just standing there.