Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1

by Ian C. Esslemont

  He struggled to rise once more. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Yield! We yield!’ But he was so very weak, his voice a hoarse croak.

  A Kanese lancer broke through, rushing for Silk. Buell stood motionless, arrow tracking, as the man’s leap brought him within arm’s length. Buell’s shot took him in the chest even as the man’s sabre sliced down through shoulder and neck. Buell fell, his hot blood splashing across Silk’s front as he collapsed across his legs. The lancer fell as well, tumbling backwards; at such close range the arrow had penetrated his mail shirt.

  The last of the defending Hengan soldiers fell in a gurgle of pain, clutching at his stomach; five Kanese now remained. These mercilessly slashed through the lightly armoured scouts – even those who now threw down their weapons and called for quarter. Two lancers closed on Silk. ‘Yield!’ Silk called, uselessly. The last scout, the girl, caught the first sabre cut on one short knife, and going to her knees slashed upwards through a high leather boot and leather trousers, and up under the hanging mail shirt, perhaps even to the groin, gutting the man, who sank in a waterfall of dark blood.

  The second lancer took the girl’s scalp off in one swing, then raised the bloodied blade over Silk who peered up unblinking, thinking What a useless way to die . . .

  Something struck the lancer and he peered down, surprised; the wet triangular head of a crossbow bolt jutted from his chest. He fell to his knees before Silk, then toppled. Astonished, Silk grasped hold of the wagon’s planking to pull himself erect. He peered about the field and saw it was strewn with fallen corpses, horses and men, all smoking. Beyond, a line of wildfire topped a distant hill sending a white band of smoke high into the clear blue sky.

  More mounted troops now surrounded him. But these did not display the flowing verdant green of Itko Kan; they wore the deep red tabards of the Crimson Guard. One approached, a woman, her long flowing coat of scaled armour enamelled the same blood red. She held a crossbow negligently in one hand as she came. ‘City mage Silk, I presume?’ she offered, amusement on her wide, olive-hued features.

  Silk ignored her; he peered about, watching stunned as those Hengan scouts and soldiers who could stand – a mere pitiful handful – began to labour to their feet, clutching their wounds.

  ‘My command . . .’ he breathed, horrified.

  ‘Congratulations,’ the woman said. ‘You won.’ And she hiked up the heavy weapon to rest it over her shoulder.

  His appalled gaze swung to the callous mercenary. ‘You stood by . . .’ he breathed, almost choking, ‘while my men and women . . .’

  ‘We thought you had them after your display, mage.’ She prodded a fallen lancer with a boot. ‘But these Kan Elites fight like devils. And they wanted your wagons bad.’ She squatted next to a scout, pulled off a glove, and pressed a hand to his neck. ‘This one lives.’ She raised her chin, shouting: ‘Luthan!’

  ‘Kinda busy!’ a man yelled.

  Cursing, the woman tucked her gloves up her sleeve and set to yanking the belt from the man’s waist. Silk staggered to stand over her. ‘You step in now? So late? After all this slaughter? You watched . . .’ He couldn’t continue. Horror and outrage choked him. Acid bile strove to push up past his dry throat and his heart hammered as if he were in the grip of some sort of terror. His gaze shied away from the slashed corpses, the exposed viscera – it was all so different up close.

  ‘We are not in the employ of the Protectress of Heng,’ the woman calmly informed him as she tied the belt in a tourniquet high on the man’s wounded leg.

  ‘Yet you act now? So late?’

  ‘Aye,’ the woman answered with her first hint of temper. She moved on to another wounded Hengan. ‘And be thankful we did. Else you’d be dead.’

  Silk studied the field and his slaughtered command. ‘I wish I was,’ he murmured aloud, realizing that this was in fact true. These men and women had held little regard or respect for him, yet they died to protect him. That sacrifice was a burden he couldn’t even begin to face.

  The woman was studying him with a new expression – if not quite compassion, then perhaps understanding. ‘We thought you’d hold,’ she offered by way of explanation.

  Silk sensed that this was all he could expect from her, or any other of these hard-hearted mercenaries. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Auralas.’

  He eyed her more closely, her olive skin, dark brown eyes and mane of long black hair, at present plaited and tucked down under her mail coat. ‘You look Kanese yourself.’

  She straightened. ‘I am.’

  He was taken aback. ‘Yet you shoot down your own king’s Elites?’

  Standing so close, he realized that he was looking up at the woman, and that the breadth of her shoulders far exceeded his own. ‘He’s not my king,’ she answered with something like disgust. Turning away, she called loudly: ‘Load the wounded! Let’s get these wagons moving.’

  Silk stumbled after the officer as she moved about the battlefield, calling orders to the troop of Crimson Guard, checking dressings, and, oddly, casting quick worried glances to the horizon. He held his aching head with one hand, biting back groans; he was still mentally bludgeoned after reaching out beyond the limits of his Warren. He feared that he’d never again be able to muster the determination to risk raising Thyr – had he permanently damaged his mind?

  Speaking very slowly, blinking back tears from the hammering in his skull, he managed, ‘These wagons are the property of the Protectress of Li Heng. They are not prizes of battle. You’ll not interfere in our journey to the city.’

  ‘You haven’t the personnel to make it,’ she answered, rather brutally.

  He still held his head, grimacing in pain, his other arm numb and useless. ‘Then . . . we’ll come back for the rest.’

  ‘We’ll escort you,’ she said, moving on. ‘Fingers!’ she called, pointing to a youth lounging atop one wagon. ‘Watch the perimeter!’

  The youth, skinny, pale, and freckled, his hair a wild shock of sandy brown, rolled his eyes and offered a mocking salute. Silk watched the lad, puzzled – this was a mercenary? He was suddenly aware of an active Warren. A mage?

  Auralas had moved on; he tottered after her. She was now overseeing the stripping of all the corpses, Hengan and Kan alike, and he was suddenly outraged. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Your gear will be piled on the wagons,’ she answered, without even turning to acknowledge him. ‘Plus half the Kanese armour and weapons.’ She cast him a quick humourless smile. ‘You will have need of it, yes?’ She straightened and shouted to the youth: ‘Anything?’

  ‘Nothing yet,’ Fingers drawled.

  Silk was still blinking. He felt as if he were moving through a dense fog. ‘More lancers?’ he asked.

  Her answer was a grim ‘No’. She whistled then, piercingly, and raised an arm, signing something. ‘Let’s get moving!’ Silk stood motionless, at a loss. What was going on? It was all happening too quickly.

  Auralas pointed him to a wagon – the one holding the lad, Fingers. As it passed he stumbled to it and climbed aboard. Over the barrels and sacks of provisions lay several of his surviving Hengans, their wounds staunched with rough field dressings. Four Crimson Guard sat in the bed also, crossbows cocked and readied, scanning the surrounding plains. The bench bounced and rocked beneath him, bringing dark spots to his vision and blasts of agony that threatened to crack open his skull.

  ‘Who is out there?’ he asked the lad. ‘Seti raiders?’

  This youth cast him a contemptuous glance. ‘No. And you a Hengan. Hood’s mercy, man. All this spilt blood? Him. The beastie.’

  Silk’s gaze snapped to the horizon and he immediately winced in the stabbing slanting sunlight. ‘I thought you lot were hunting him anyway.’

  ‘We are. But it takes all of us to hold him off.’

  Silk straightened, peering about, then stood in the rocking vehicle. ‘This is not the way to Heng. We’re going west. Why?’

  ‘Someone wants to talk to you first,’
Fingers said, sounding exhausted by the effort of explaining.

  ‘Who?’

  The lad cast him another look, studying him through half-closed eyes, as if he’d just said something incalculably stupid. ‘Orders from our glorious leader. He would like a word.’

  Silk sat heavily. Oh. Courian D’Avore, whom some named the Red Duke, commander of the Crimson Guard – he was here? What could he want with . . . although, given what had just happened, Silk could guess why the man might want a word.

  He sat back, broken arm across his lap, and despite his best efforts to remain awake the exhaustion and mental strain pulled upon him and he faded, his eyelids falling, his wrung-out and overwhelmed mind seeking the oblivion of rest.

  *

  Silk blinked to awareness and stared into the darkness of night. At first he panicked, believing that he was now blind, for he remembered only a dazzling shaft of brilliant light. A light like liquid fire; a fire that seared as it pierced him and he smelled the terrible stomach-turning stink of burned flesh, heard the hiss . . . Then a soft amber glow bloomed in the dark and he saw that he lay in a tent, a clay lamp stuttering on a nearby side table. He raised a hand and rubbed his eyes, groaning.

  A chair creaked in the dark and someone said, ‘You are with us again, I see.’ The speaker moved the lamp closer and Silk blinked upwards at a Dal Hon male, his kinked hair going to grey at the temples, his eyes a mesmerizing black and his gaze sharp, though a welcoming smile softened his expression at the moment. ‘I am Cal-Brinn. And you, I understand, are the city mage Silk. We are honoured to host you.’

  Silk cleared his throat and attempted to assemble his jumbled thoughts. Cal-Brinn, a mage of the Crimson Guard. And not just any mage, one of the premier adepts of Rashan, the Warren of Night. There could be no misunderstanding why he was here at his bedside. Not after the display earlier. Barely trusting himself to speak, Silk nodded and swung his feet over the side of the cot. He carefully raised himself to a sitting position, hands at his head as if to keep it from falling off. A memory came and he examined his right arm: healed. He flexed the arm and nodded once more to Cal-Brinn. ‘Thank you for the healing – and for seeing to my wounded,’ and his voice took on an edge, ‘even if you arrived belatedly.’

  The mage lowered his gaze. ‘I am sorry. But we were . . . constrained.’

  ‘Constrained,’ Silk echoed, and left it at that – he had no wish to hang about debating: he had to get the wagons back to Heng. He rubbed his forehead, fully expecting to find great cracks in it, and drew a steadying breath. ‘Auralas promised that you would escort us back to the city.’

  Cal-Brinn nodded. ‘Yes. We will honour that. But first the duke would like a word. If you would.’

  Silk did not want to face the notoriously fierce and blunt Courian D’Avore, but knew that it would be both boorish and stupid of him to decline, given that he and his command were not only in the Guard’s debt but also at their mercy. So he gestured to the tent’s front. ‘Very well – let’s get this over with.’

  Cal-Brinn’s tight smile told Silk that the man was fully aware of the calculation that went into his assent. He held out a beige stoneware mug. ‘Tea?’ he offered. ‘I find it very restorative, especially after particularly trying magery . . .?’

  Rising, Silk accepted the mug, but declined to pursue the other invitation. Cal-Brinn rose also and led the way, pushing aside the heavy canvas tent flap. Silk saw that the man was fully armed and armoured, wearing an ankle-length mail coat, complete with hood, now thrown back, and a longsword sheathed on either hip. Over the mail coat he wore the requisite blood-red tabard of the Crimson Guard. Silk followed, feeling even more dishevelled and worn in the presence of the mage mercenary’s martial habit.

  Without, it was the depth of night. The sky was clear, the moon a few finger-breadths above the horizon. Torches on poles lit the encampment of circled tents, with the horses staked in the centre of the ring. For an instant the idea of placing the horses in the protected middle puzzled Silk. Then he realized, of course: him. The man-beast, Ryllandaras. As he walked, Silk sipped the hot herbal tea and was surprised by just how immediately restorative it was. The after-taste was a pleasant hint of caramel. ‘Where do you get this?’ he asked.

  ‘My personal recipe, I’m afraid,’ the mage answered with a smile. He led the way to the largest of the field tents. Here two sentries guarded the half-open tent flap. Cal-Brinn nodded to them and held aside the flap for Silk, who stood blinking in the relatively bright glare of candles and lamps set about the wide open tent. It was also quite noisy, as the tables that stood all about the circumference were crowded with mercenaries.

  ‘It is our guest!’ a great voice boomed out, thunderous and welcoming, and Silk knew who the speaker must be. He started forward, Cal-Brinn at his side. The gathered soldiers, male and female, many of whom Silk knew by reputation, turned in their seats to watch.

  The two mages passed a crackling fire-pit and stopped before a table of thick planks behind which sat the Crimson Guard commander, flanked by two youths.

  The contrast between the older man and the two youngsters could not have been more complete. Courian D’Avore was a burly giant in a laced leather jerkin, his hair and beard a mass of tangled black curls going to grey, his hands and face burnished by wind and sun to the consistency of worn leather, one eye a dead white orb from a sword cut that left a scar from brow to cheek. He was digging at the dinner before him, a rack of fire-charred ribs, and waving Silk forward with one greasy paw. ‘Come, come.’

  The youth on the man’s right Silk knew to be his son, K’azz D’Avore, whom some called the Red Prince, more because of his regal manner and bearing than a claim to any title. K’azz nodded him a greeting: thin, ascetic, he had the look of a scholar rather than a warrior. But Silk found the pale eyes, greyish in this light, calculating, their gaze piercing.

  The other youth was pale, slim, all in black, his features long and somehow conveying a moroseness of character. He wore a thin gold band, like a circlet, over his straight sandy-brown hair, and with a start Silk realized that he was looking at Malkir Herengar, heir designate to the Grisian throne. He gave Malkir a bow that the youth answered with the faintest of nods.

  ‘You are Silk, city mage of Li Heng, and one of its rulers, yes?’ Courian said as he gnawed on a rib.

  Silk grasped the mug behind his back in both hands and smiled modestly. ‘Shalmanat is the ruler of Li Heng.’

  Courian’s gaze – the living eye and the dead – narrowed. He held the bone in his teeth and growled, ‘Do not dissemble with me, mage. You five are her voice, her hands. You rule the city as nothing more than a damned cabal of mages.’

  Silk hadn’t thought of it in such a way before but couldn’t, on the spur of the moment, dispute the characterization. The youth K’azz spoke up, ‘Perhaps we should offer our guest a seat, Father. He has had a trying experience.’

  Courian snorted harshly. ‘Listen to my son, mage. No doubt after a hot meal we’ll all be best of friends, hey? Perhaps we could all sing songs together.’

  The youth’s features were strained as he lowered his voice. ‘I merely—’

  ‘That is your problem, son. You merely.’ Courian pointed the stripped rib at Silk as if it were a spear. ‘It is strange, the beast Ryllandaras malingering about Heng, yes?’

  Silk brought the stoneware cup out from behind his back and blew upon it, sipping. ‘The beast does as it will.’

  ‘Indeed it does – to the Kanese mainly, these days. But they are gone now from these northern plains, yet it lingers.’ The one good eye examined Silk, gauging him up and down. ‘It is almost as if it were waiting for something.’

  Silk sipped again, loudly. ‘The walls to fall, no doubt. You ought to try hunting it.’

  The mercenary commander scowled, his jaws bunching in anger. He tapped the rib to the plank table. ‘It is fast, deadly, and cunning. A difficult quarry.’ He cocked his head, the dead eye now on Silk. ‘Some say the Pro
tectress possesses some sort of hold over the beast. What say you to that, mage?’

  Silk sipped the reviving tea, remembered Ryllandaras’s pledge of love and devotion to Shalmanat given in his own inhuman growling voice. He was sorely tempted, but could not bring himself to leap into that abyss. He said, ‘Is it so surprising that her beauty should conquer all?’

  Courian snorted once more. Now he held the rib in both hands before his chin, his elbows on the table, and, almost smiling, asked, ‘What is going on in your fair city, mage?’

  Uncertain of the man’s tack, Silk found that all he could do was banter, stalling: ‘We’re readying a victory banquet.’

  The grizzled mercenary affected mock surprise. ‘Really? I find that difficult to believe.’ He pointed the rib to Cal-Brinn at Silk’s side. ‘My mages have been yowling like cats in a bag on fire. They say something very unusual is going on in Heng right now. We hear rumours of some sort of daemon stalking its streets.’

  Silk glanced to Cal-Brinn, who raised his brows in a silent question. Now he understood. ‘Citizens hear a barking dog and this becomes the roar of Ryllandaras next door. Stories always grow in the telling. That is all.’

  Courian’s answering smile was thin. ‘Of course.’ He flicked the rib aside. ‘Since you are done talking, have a seat. Eat. Tomorrow we will escort you back to Heng.’

  Silk bowed. ‘You are most generous, m’lord Courian.’ Cal-Brinn guided him to a seat where he could eat without having to answer any further questions, and sat down next to him. He peered about, naturally curious about the Guard, but wary as well. He spotted the hulking Petra who fought with a two-handed mace, and scanning the crowd of mercenaries found the man he wanted: the tall, lean figure of Oberl, black-haired, his long legs stretched out before him. Champions all were these men and women, drawn from across the face of the continent and beyond, yet reigning over all was Oberl of Purge, champion of champions.