by Rob Scott
Garec slid another few paces forward through the sand.
Gilmour had been positive that Nerak couldn’t detect the magic of Steven’s hickory staff, but this close, no one was willing to take that risk. Steven would refrain from using magic until it became absolutely necessary – hopefully, not before they were aboard the Prince Marek. Garec wasn’t sure how far behind him they were now; he tried not to worry. He had told them to wait two full avens before following.
‘Besides, we won’t need magic tonight,’ Garec whispered silently to himself. He slithered to the top of a shallow gully between two dunes and stopped to check the wind’s direction. Approaching from downwind had saved his life that morning in the forbidden forest so long ago, when he and Renna had fled from the grettan pack. He smiled at the thought of Renna; he hoped she had survived the attack on Seer’s Peak.
Around him the misty ocean spray blanketed him in a damp shroud. The length and breadth of his world fell in about him and shrank to the few paces separating him from the Malakasian soldiers guarding the beach behind three large picket fires. The Bringer of Death felt neither hunger, nor thirst, nor fatigue as he crawled forward, unseen. His senses were sharp, his heart rate quick but strong. His hands were steady. From where he lay, he could see six or seven Malakasian guards idling about the fires, drinking wine, while what smelled like steaks were cooking over the coals.
They would all be dead in a few moments. Garec knew he would regret killing them later, but he had to see his friends safely into Orindale, and this was the only way to do that. He must be quick: he had just a breath or two to silence every soldier on the beach. Arrows through the neck would be the only way to keep them from raising the alarm, but six of them? Seven? He had never attempted anything that difficult. As he lay there, feeling the salty spray of the ocean on his face, he considered summoning Steven forward to wipe them all out with one sweep of the staff – but no. He could do it. He could make the shots.
He would wait another half an aven: they were drinking and eating and would grow sleepy soon. A couple might even return to their encampment further east in the dunes; that would even the odds a little. It was a good two hundred paces to their tents: Garec was sure the pounding waves would mask any sound of trouble.
‘Go on,’ he encouraged, ‘go on back to camp. Get some sleep.’ He licked his lips, surprised at how dry they were in the mist, pulled the hood of his cloak up over his head, and settled in to wait.
Private Fallon trundled slowly up the beach, grabbed a chunk of driftwood from the dwindling stack thrown carelessly in a pile and turned back to join the others. He had been with this platoon for a Moon now and had hustled about his duties in hopes of earning the respect of his fellow soldiers. It had not worked. Instead, the sergeants simply had given him more to do, more menial tasks, more late-night duties, while the other soldiers had ridiculed him mercilessly. ‘Fallon, you rutting fool,’ they chided, ‘why such a hurry? Is there a war going on somewhere you’re missing?’ They had all laughed at his expense; when he had tried to join in, hoping his ability to laugh at himself might make them like him, they had bullied him mercilessly. Now here he was, posted two avens’ march from the closest action – not that that had been much, just a skirmish against a band of local ruffians. Prince Malagon’s Special Forces had taken care of that by themselves.
The officers told them little. Dig in. Stand your post. That was it. They had no idea what was happening. There were rumours of a huge Falkan and Ronan resistance force crossing the Black-stones in the east, but Private Fallon believed the Malakasian Army was stretched out around the city for no other reason than to feed Prince Malagon’s ego. He snorted: some prince! Travelling in that huge, cumbersome ship, the Prince Marek – and it was all black, black rigging, black sails, black flags. What message was he trying to send anyway? Was he planning to outlaw colours next? He never gave the troops anything, not even a wave: his own army and he never acknowledged them, never lowered the curtains of that black carriage for one moment to smile or salute. He just climbed in, all robes and secrets, ordered the driver east to that broken-down Falkan family palace and sequestered himself there with his generals and admirals.
Private Fallon spat in the sand and imagined the prince warm beside a fireplace, sipping vintage wine from a fine crystal glass while he was out here, the least popular soldier in the entire battalion, forced to haul firewood all night along a flank that couldn’t be reached by all the combined military forces ever assembled in the Eastlands.
Tonight he had cleaned the pots, cut stakes and polished the lieutenant’s boots. Now he was on firewood duty. He was sick of being the platoon’s lackey and he deliberately picked up just one log from the stack at his feet then sauntered back towards the pickets.
Sergeant Tereno called out, ‘Fallon, you dog-dumb mud-rutter!’ The others chuckled. ‘Don’t you dare come back down here with only one log, laddie, or I’ll beat your frame to grettan dung. Get back up there and haul an armload. We have to keep this thing burning until dawn.’
Fallon stopped and spat down the beach at his platoon mates, but Sergeant Tereno was unimpressed. ‘I’ll deal with your attitude problem when you get back, laddie. Now, at the double!’
Fallon turned on his heel and stomped quickly back up the beach, taking his frustration and fear out on the forgiving sand. ‘Mud-whoring rutters,’ he muttered, ‘this is it. They’re going to kill me.’ And for the ten thousandth time in the last thirty days he wished he were someplace else, someplace warm and dry.
He pulled a large log from the stack. ‘Fat, slovenly, drunken tyrant,’ he grumbled to himself as he bundled a collection of thinner branches and logs around the first and bent over to heft the entire load. ‘I ought to whip him hard across that puffy gut of his with one of these branches. That’d show him.’ Fallon knew he would keep his head down and his face expressionless in the vain hope of avoiding a terrific thrashing at the hands of Sergeant Tereno and his bullyboys. He sighed heavily.
Private Fallon had taken several steps before he noticed something odd – not a stupid joke, as he first thought, but something else. Something was wrong. Three of his platoon mates lay still, one with an arrow protruding from his chest. Two were kneeling, their foreheads resting on the sand as they groped awkwardly at the cruel shafts impaling their throats. Thick black blood ran down each to soak the dusty brown sand. Sergeant Tereno had an arrow through his abdomen. He looked up and saw Fallon, and reached for him imploringly as he gurgled a plea for help. Blood dripped from his wound. Fallon froze for a moment, then, still gripping the wood firmly against his chest, turned down the beach and waited to see or hear the forward ranks of an approaching Resistance army.
Materialising out of the gloom like a wraith, the killer slowly took shape. He came alone, cowled in black, on softly padding feet that left barely a trace, while the booming crash of the surf drowned out all sound, as if the land itself were muting the man’s advance. Fallon wondered whether the mysterious assassin were truly there: he could have sworn that he had seen the surf breaking white through the midnight folds of the bowman’s robe.
Private Fallon was still holding the driftwood when Garec clubbed him hard across the temple. His vision faded to black.
Garec kicked the driftwood aside and began dragging the fallen soldier’s body north towards Orindale.
When Private Fallon woke, it was still dark and he could feel sand moving beneath his body. Despite a ponderous headache and what felt like a splash of blood across his cheek, he didn’t think he was seriously injured. He had not been unconscious for very long. He struggled to catch a glimpse of his captor, then he remembered the mysterious bowman and he closed his eyes tightly, hoping against hope that it was his fellow soldiers who were dragging him, and they were heading back to camp. Then they stopped and Fallon was dropped onto the beach. His worst fears were realised: he was the archer’s prisoner.
A gloved hand closed over his mouth and a voice whispered harshly in hi
s ear, ‘Where is Malagon?’
The hand relaxed slightly as Fallon choked back an incoherent sob.
The hand closed over his mouth again and the voice repeated, ‘Is he on board the ship? Where is Malagon?’
Answer the questions. Answer and live. Blinking to clear his vision, Fallon nodded clumsily.
The gloved hand pulled slowly away and Fallon swallowed hard before croaking out, ‘He is at the old palace. He made a big show of going there in his carriage and hasn’t come out since.’
‘Good.’ The voice was hollow. ‘What about the ship? Where is it moored?’
Fallon’s mind raced, searching for anything he could recall that would help save his life. His stomach turned and he felt his vision begin to fade again. He had never imagined fear like this.
‘The ship? Where is it?’ The bowman was unaffected by the Malakasian’s terror.
Fallon forced himself to focus. ‘Orindale. The wharf.’
‘The town wharf? Which one?’
‘Ah- ah… north. The north wharf, that’s it. About a thousand paces out. You can’t miss it, all black, big as a city.’ Fallon thought he detected the presence of other people coming up the beach behind them.
‘Very good.’ The gloved hand once again closed over his mouth and he felt the stranger’s knee lean heavily on his chest. ‘And now, my friend… I have to kill you.’
Fallon thrashed wildly beneath the bowman’s grasp, but it was no use. His chest. He could not raise his chest. His breath came faster and faster, but it was not enough. His eyes filled with tears and a sharp pain lanced across his torso. He gripped handfuls of sand, dropping them and picking them up again, and all the while a voice in his mind was asking, ‘What good is that doing? Think of something! Think of something!’ Panic overtook him completely and Fallon lost control of his bowels. He tried to scream, but couldn’t draw breath. His vision narrowed to a point and Fallon stopped struggling.
Garec stumbled to his feet and staggered for a moment like a drunk, no longer the cool assassin. Brynne gripped him in a bear hug and whispered, ‘He’ll live, Garec. He’ll live.’
Steven, kneeling beside the young soldier, reported, ‘He has a couple of cracked ribs, but he’ll be fine in a few days.’
‘Sore, but fine,’ Mark added.
‘The others won’t,’ Garec choked and collapsed to the sand beside his victim.
Brynne started to cry softly as she watched her lifelong friend struggle with what he had done. She wished it could have been her responsibility; she would not have wrestled with her conscience as Garec always did. Garec had the most skill, but he also fell furthest after each battle. He could never stand himself after using his skills to their full grim potential. Brynne’s heart wrenched as she watched him curled up in the sand, so unlike the entirely professional soldier who had started stalking the enemy such a short time ago.
‘Just give him a moment,’ Brynne said as Steven moved to help him up. ‘He’ll be all right.’
THE SOUTHERN WHARF
Morning found the four of them hiding in an abandoned shanty on the edge of the city, part of a small community of fisherman’s shacks, smokehouses and boathouses assembled randomly beneath the overhanging branches of the coastal forest just south of an enormous wooden pier. The pier was flanked by a number of huge warehouses: Mark guessed that they had found Orindale’s southern wharf. A few stevedores hauled crates from a nearby warehouse to a waiting single-masted sloop; it looked like the tide was turning and judging by the string of orders and obscenities, the captain was eager to set sail.
Finally a small group of Malakasian soldiers emerged from one of the warehouses and boarded the ship. From where Mark was hidden he could see them searching the vessel and interrogating the officers. There was endless paper-shuffling before they granted the captain permission to shove off.
‘Just when we thought it was going to get easier,’ he grumbled, checking the pot of tecan brewing over a tiny fire out behind the shanty. ‘That rules out the warehouse, I suppose.’ He blew gently across the top of his cup, the steam dissipating quickly in the swirling Twinmoon winds.
Garec, Steven and Brynne were sleeping while Mark stood the dawn watch. The sea was wider here than he had imagined after hearing all the tales of trade ships and merchant vessels crossing so frequently between Falkan or Rona and Praga in the Westlands. Squinting in the pale orange glow, Mark could not make out the Pragan coastline in the distance. A collection of ramshackle boats, skiffs and sailing vessels were tied to mooring pylons and rocks in the shallows. Mark made a mental note of one craft hauled up above the high-tide mark; it looked as if it was stowed for winter: a lucky break for them if that were the case. The sailboat was about twenty-two feet in length and had a single mast. He couldn’t see the tiller, rigging, or even sails, but hoped they might be stored beneath the gunwales, packed away until spring. If not, he’d done enough sailing to know what was needed – steal or buy, he didn’t care, he was happy just to know they would be able to get the vessel rigged and ready to flee should the need arise for a seaward retreat. ‘It might even take us to Praga,’ he considered aloud, and mentally checked off one of three hundred things that needed to go according to their plan in the coming days.
He sipped his drink and gazed down at his friends sleeping soundly on the hard wooden floor of the fisherman’s shanty. They would remain here all day, maybe longer, if Garec needed it. He’d not yet recovered from his ordeal.
By now, their attack must have been reported, maybe by the one soldier Garec didn’t kill. With so many footprints scattered about the Malakasian picket line, he hoped they would assume it was a partisan strike, that they had killed the sentries, then fled south. Allowing that young man to live caused a problem: he knew they were looking for Malagon, or at least for the Prince Marek. Garec had released his grip at the last minute, and that made their current predicament far more dangerous.
Although he was angry with himself for thinking maybe Garec should have dispatched that soldier too, Mark couldn’t banish the thought. He kept a wary eye out for the patrols that must be coming for them.
They had done what they could to disguise their trail, moving all the way to the warehouse, then doubling back through the forest. The Twinmoon tide had roared all the way in and wiped clean most of the footprints along the beach. Mark hoped a few out-of-season fishermen might show up and begin working in the nearby smokehouses as soon as the sun rose. Hide in plain view: Gita’s words echoed back at him. This was about as plain view as Mark could stand.
With any luck, the Malakasian force would come through the shanty village, detect nothing out of the ordinary and continue along the waterfront towards the north wharf and the Prince Marek. He finished his first cup and poured a second. That might be hoping for too much, he thought. He stared down at the bowman asleep at his feet. Garec needed time to recover from the horrors of the previous night, but if they were overrun by a Malakasian patrol, he might be called upon once again to use his gruesome skill and help them escape.
As if thinking about them had made his fears concrete, Mark heard the telltale sound of horses’ hooves, pounding along the sand. Five riders approached at a gallop and Mark quickly doused the small fire with the remains of his tecan, scolding himself as he did so. ‘Stupid bastard,’ he muttered, ‘what the hell do you think you’re doing making a fire?’ Mark tossed his blanket over the coals as a great cloud of smoke and steam rose from the soggy embers: not a perfect solution, but the cloud dissipated somewhat. He heard terse commands as the riders reined in out near the water’s edge, but huddled beneath the front wall of the shanty, he couldn’t make out what was being said. He longed to peer through the window to see if anyone was coming through the trees.
He looked around at a slight sound. Garec was awake and on his feet, an arrow nocked and ready to fire. Mark shook his head and held his breath. Please, God, don’t let it happen again, he prayed, over and over, please God, let them ride on.
A great weight fell over the shanty, as if a waterlogged cloud had blown in off the ocean and settled above their hiding place. Despite the morning chill, Mark felt sweat bead on his forehead. The stitches in his abdomen began to sting; it was hard to breathe. Beside him Garec was a rock, stern-faced and impassive: he would do whatever was necessary to protect himself and his friends.
Mark suddenly realised that it wasn’t just the deaths of the soldiers that were weighing so heavily on Garec’s heart; it was Gilmour – he blamed himself for Gilmour’s death. He needed to make peace with himself and forgive himself for allowing Gilmour’s killer to escape.
Now Garec stood stock-still by the crooked door of the shanty, poised and ready for the mounted patrol to find them. It would be a costly discovery.
But they never did. After a few minutes’ tense wait, they heard the clopping of the horses fading as they trotted off along the wharf.
Garec lowered his bow and folded like a discarded rag. Mark finally exhaled and returned to his watch at the shanty window as Garec wrapped himself back in his blanket and curled up on the floor.
For the moment at least, they were safe again.
Hannah was up early, before dawn, brewing tecan and warming two loaves of day-old bread in one of Alen’s fireplaces. She was kneeling on the hearth and didn’t hear him enter the room. When Alen spoke, she jumped, inadvertently spilling several burning logs onto the floor.
‘Jesus, you scared me,’ she exclaimed in surprised English, then smiled disarmingly and switched back to Pragan. ‘Good morning to you too; sorry, you startled me.’ Hannah used the poker to shovel the smouldering logs back onto the flames.
