Bloody Rose

by Nicholas Eames

  “Look!” someone shouted, saving Tam the trouble of ramming her fist down her new friend’s throat in an effort to shut him up. “It’s them! It’s Fable!”

  Rolling up next was an argosy drawn by eight big draft horses in draconic bronze-scale barding. The war wagon was a fortress grinding over sixteen stone wheels, with iron slats on the windows and barbed chain screens hung over the side. The roof was ringed by crenellations of rusted iron, and crossbow turrets were mounted on all four corners.

  In her periphery Tam saw the boy straighten and puff out his chest like a bullfrog about to bellow a mating call.

  “That’s the Rebel’s Redoubt,” Tam said, before this idiot could tell her something else she already knew. “It belongs to Fable, who’ve only been together for four and a half years but are arguably the most famous mercenary band in the world. You see,” she went on, slathering every word in cloying condescension, “most bands only fight in arenas. They tour from town to town, and take on whatever the local wranglers have on hand. Which is great, because everyone, from the wranglers to the bookers to the arena managers—heck, sometimes even the mercs themselves—get paid, and the rest of us get a hell of a show. Mercs is short for mercenaries, by the way.”

  The boy gaped. “I know th—”

  “But Fable,” Tam cut him off, “well, they do things the old way. They still tour, obviously, but they also take on contracts that most other bands wouldn’t dare. They’ve hunted giants and burned pirate fleets to cinders. They’ve killed sand maws in Dumidia, and once slew a firbolg king right here in Kaskar.”

  She pointed to a barrel-chested northerner sitting between two crenellations, his tangle of brown hair obscuring most of his face. “That’s Brune. He’s sort of a local legend. He’s a vargyr.”

  “A vargyr …?”

  “We call them shamans,” Tam explained. “He can change at will into a great big bear. Now, the one in black with half her head shaved and tattoos all over? She’s a sorceress. A summoner, actually. Her name’s Cura, but people call her the Inkwitch. And see the druin, Freecloud? He’s the tall one with green hair and ears like a rabbit? They say he’s the very last of his kind, and that he’s never made a wager he didn’t win, and that his sword, Madrigal, can cut through steel like it was silk.”

  The boy’s face had gone an extremely gratifying shade of scarlet. “Okay, listen,” he said, except Tam was all done listening.

  “And that”—she pointed to the woman standing with one boot on the battlement above them—“is Bloody Rose. She’s the leader of Fable, the saviour of the city of Castia, and very probably the most dangerous woman this side of the Heartwyld.”

  Tam fell silent as the argosy’s shadow enveloped them. She’d never actually seen Bloody Rose before, but she knew every story, had heard every song, and had seen the warrior’s likeness on walls or sketched on posters around town, though chalk and charcoal hardly did the real thing justice.

  Fable’s frontwoman wore a piecemeal suit of dull black plate slashed with red—except her gauntlets, which gleamed like new steel. They were druin-forged (or so the songs alleged) and matched to the scimitars—Thistle and Thorn—she wore in scabbards on either hip. Her hair was dyed a bright, bloody red, and hacked off at the hard line of her chin.

  Half the girls in town had the same cut, the same colour. Tam herself had gone so far as to buy a sack of hucknell beans, which bled their crimson coats when soaked in water, but her father had guessed her intent and demanded she eat them one by one in front of him. They’d tasted like lemons with a cinnamon rind, and had left her lips, tongue, and teeth so red it looked as if she’d torn the throat out of a deer. Her hair, for all the trouble she’d gone to, remained the unremarkable brown it had always been.

  The argosy passed, leaving Tam to blink like a dreamer roused by the slanting afternoon light.

  Beside her, the boy had finally found his voice, though he cleared his throat before trying it out. “Wow, you really know your stuff, huh? Do you want to, uh, grab a drink at the Cornerstone?”

  “The Cornerstone …”

  “Yeah, it’s just—”

  Tam was off, sprinting as fast as her legs would carry her. Not only was she hopelessly late for work, but her father, naturally, had yet another rule when it came to his daughter going for drinks with strange boys.

  Which suited Tam just fine, since she was into girls, anyway.

  Chapter Two

  The Cornerstone

  There were four people you could always find at the Cornerstone.

  The first was Tera, who owned the place. She’d been a mercenary herself before losing her arm. “I didn’t bloody lose it!” she’d say, whenever someone asked how it happened. “A bugbear tore it off and cooked it on a spit while I watched! I know exactly where it is—it’s inside his damned dead body!” She was a big, broad woman, who used her remaining hand to rule her tavern with an iron fist. When she wasn’t cussing out the kitchen or dressing down the serving staff, she spent her nights discouraging fights (often by threatening to start one) and swapping stories with some of the older mercs.

  Her husband, Edwick, was always there as well. He’d been the bard for a band called Vanguard, but was now retired. He took the stage each night to recount the exploits of his former crew, and seemed to know every song and story ever told. Ed was the opposite of his wife: slight of frame, cheerful as a child on a pony’s back. He’d been close friends with Tam’s mother, and despite Tuck Hashford’s rule concerning his daughter playing an instrument or consorting with musicians, the old bard often gave Tam lute lessons after work.

  Next was Tiamax, who’d been a member of Vanguard as well. He was an arachnian, which meant he had eight eyes (two of which were missing, covered by crisscrossing patches) and six hands with which to shake, stir, and serve drinks. Consequently, he made for an excellent bartender. According to Edwick, he’d been one hell of a fighter, too.

  The last permanent fixture in the Cornerstone was her uncle Bran. In his youth, Branigan had been an illustrious mercenary, a prodigious drinker, and a notorious scoundrel. But now, almost ten years after his sister’s untimely death had brought about the dissolution of his old band, he was … Well, he was still a thief, still a drunk, and an even more notorious scoundrel, though he’d since added compulsive gambling to his list of vices.

  He and Tam’s father had spoken rarely over the past decade. One had lost a sister in Lily Hashford, the other a wife, and grief had led them each down very different paths.

  “Tam!” her uncle shouted at her from the second-floor balcony directly above the bar. “Be a darling and fetch me a dram, will you?”

  Tam set the stack of empty bowls she’d collected on the stained wooden bar. The tavern was busier than usual tonight. Mercenaries, and those come to rub shoulders with them, crowded the commons behind her. Three hearths were roaring, two fights were in progress, and a shirtless bard was beating a drum like it owed him money.

  “Uncle Bran wants another whiskey,” she said to Tiamax.

  “Does he?” The arachnian snatched up the bowls and began rinsing them with four hands, while his remaining two cracked open a wooden shaker and poured something fragrant and rose-coloured into a long-stemmed glass.

  “What is this?” asked the woman he’d made it for.

  “Pink.”

  “Pink?” She sniffed it. “It smells like cat pee.”

  “Then order a fucking beer next time,” said Tiamax. The mandibles sprouting from his white-bristled chin twitched in irritation. One of them had snapped in half, so the sound they made was a blunted click instead of the melodious scratching others of his kind produced. The woman sniffed and sauntered off, while the arachnian used a rag to dry three bowls at once. “And how will your uncle Bran be paying for that whiskey, I wonder?”

  “Tell him to put it on my tab!” came Bran’s voice from the balcony above.

  She offered Tiamax a tight smile. “He says to put it on his tab.”

&nb
sp; “Ah, yes! The inexhaustible tab of Branigan Fay!” Tiamax threw up all six of his arms in exasperation. “Alas, I’m afraid that line of credit is completely and utterly exhausted.”

  “Says who?” demanded the disembodied voice of her uncle.

  “Says who?” Tam repeated.

  “Says Tera.”

  “Tell that bastard hatcher I’ll handle Tera!” yelled Bran. “Besides, I’m about to sweep the board up here!”

  Tam sighed. “Uncle Bran says—”

  “Bastard hatcher?” The bartender’s mandibles clacked again, and Tam caught a malicious glint in the manifold facets of his eyes. “One whiskey!” he exclaimed. “Coming right up!” He chose a cup off the counter behind him and reached up with one segmented arm to retrieve a bottle from the very top shelf. It was coated in mouldering grime and thick with cobwebs. When Tiamax pulled the stopper free it fairly disintegrated in his hand.

  “What is that?” Tam asked.

  “Oh, it’s whiskey. Or near enough, anyway. We found six cases of this in the cellar of Turnstone Keep while the Ferals had us trapped inside.”

  Like every ex-mercenary Tam knew (except, of course, her dad), Tiamax rarely missed an opportunity to recount a story from his adventuring days.

  “We tried drinking it,” the arachnian was saying, “but not even Matty could keep it down, so we turned them into bombs instead.” The stuff trickled from the bottle’s mouth like honey, except it looked and smelled like raw sewage. “Here. Tell your uncle it’s on the house, courtesy of that bastard hatcher.”

  Tam eyed the cup skeptically. “You promise he won’t die?”

  “He almost certainly will not die.” The bartender placed a spindly hand over his chest. “I swear on my cephalothorax.”

  “Your seffawha—”

  Tera came bursting through the kitchen door wielding a sauce-stained wooden spoon as though it were a bloody cudgel.

  “You!” She levelled her makeshift weapon at a pair of burly mercs wrestling on the rushes in front of a fireplace. “Can’t you read the bloody sign?” Lacking another arm with which to point, Tera used the spoon to draw their attention to an etched wooded board above the bar, and even deigned to read it to them. “No fighting before midnight! This is a civilized establishment, not a godsdamned brawling pit.”

  She started toward them, patrons scrambling from her path like she was a boulder rolling downhill.

  “Thanks, Max.” Tam seized the cup and fell in behind the proprietress, using the swathe she cleared to cross half the commons before plunging back into the mob. Tera, meanwhile, had kicked one fighter into a curling ball and was thrashing the other’s ass with the wooden spoon.

  Tam slipped, slithered, and sidestepped her way toward the balcony stair, pilfering gossip like an urchin picking pockets in a market square. A trio of merchants were discussing the early frost that had wiped out most of Kaskar’s harvest. They’d got rich importing provisions from Fivecourt. One of them made a jest about paying tribute to the Winter Queen, which drew a hearty laugh from the northerner on his right, while the Narmeeri on his left gasped and traced the Summer Lord’s circle over his breast.

  Many were discussing who would fight in the Ravine tomorrow, and, perhaps more importantly, what they’d be squaring off against. Fable, she heard, had opted to let the local wranglers decide, and rumour was they had something special in store.

  Most of the conversations swirled around the host of monsters assembling north of Cragmoor. The Brumal Horde, they dubbed it, and everyone—from fighters to farmers—had an opinion as to what its intentions were.

  “Revenge!” said a merc with a mouthful of something black and gummy. “Obviously! They’re still sore about getting their asses kicked at Castia six years ago! They’ll try again next summer, mark my words!”

  “They won’t attack Castia,” insisted a woman with a white spider tattoo covering most of her face. “It’s too far away, and too well defended. If you ask me it’s Ardburg needs to worry. The marchlords better keep their men sharp and their axes sharper!”

  “This Brontide fellow …” mused Lufane, a skyship captain who made a living taking nobles on sightseeing tours above the Rimeshield Mountains. “Word is he’s got a mighty grudge against us.”

  “Us?” asked spider-face.

  “Everyone. Humans in general.” The captain drained the last of his wine and handed his bowl off to Tam as she went by. “According to Brontide, we’re the monsters. He led a raid over the mountains a few years back and smashed to rubble every arena he could find.”

  The first merc flashed a black-toothed sneer at that. “A giant calling us monsters? Well, it don’t much matter what he thinks, does it? The day after tomorrow every band in the north’ll be bound for Cragmoor, lusting for glory and looking to make a name for themselves. The Brumal Horde’ll be nothing but bones in the muck come spring,” he was saying as Tam moved on, “but the bards’ll be crowing about it for the rest of their lives.”

  She skirted the stage. The drummer had finished up, and now Edwick sat perched on a stool with his lute in his lap. He spared her a wink before starting into The Siege of Hollow Hill, which drew a chorus of cheers from the commons crowd. They liked songs about battles, especially ones where the heroes were hopelessly outnumbered by their enemies.

  Tam loved the old man’s voice. It was weathered and warbly, comfortable as a pair of soft leather boots. Besides teaching her to play the lute, Edwick had been giving Tam singing lessons as well, and his assessment of her vocal prowess had ranged from “Careful, you’ll break the glassware,” to “At least they won’t drag you offstage,” before finally she’d garnered an approving smile and the murmured words, “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

  That had been a good night. Tam had returned home wishing she could share her joy with her dad, but Tuck Hashford would not have approved. He didn’t want his daughter singing, or playing the lute, or listening to the lionised tales of retired bards. If not for the wage she brought home, and the fact that he’d had trouble holding down a job since his wife’s death, Tam doubted she’d be allowed anywhere near the Cornerstone at all.

  Bran glanced over as she approached. “Tam!” He thumped the table with an open palm, scattering coins and toppling the carved wooden figurines on the Tetrea board before him. His opponent—a hooded man with his back to Tam—sighed, and her uncle made a poor attempt at feigning innocence. “Oh, dear, I’ve accidentally upset the pieces. Let’s call it a draw, Cloud, shall we?”

  “Is a draw where one person is about to win and the other cheats to avoid losing?”

  Bran shrugged. “Either one of us might have prevailed.”

  “I was definitely about to prevail,” said his opponent. “Brune? Back me up here?”

  Brune?

  Tam stopped where she stood, gaping like a baby bird beneath a dangling worm. Sure enough, the man sitting to her uncle’s left was Brune. As in the Brune. As in Fable’s fucking shaman, Brune. Legend or no, the vargyr looked like most other northmen: He was big and broad-shouldered, with shaggy brown hair that did its damndest to hide the fact that Brune wasn’t much to look at. His brows were wildly unkempt, his nose was crooked, and there was a finger-wide gap between his two front teeth.

  “I wasn’t paying attention,” the shaman admitted. “Sorry.”

  Tam’s mind was still reeling, struggling to make sense of what her eyes were telling it. If that’s Brune, she reasoned, then the man in the cloak … the one Bran called Cloud …

  The figure turned, drawing back his hood to reveal long ears pressed flat against green-gold hair. Tam’s mind barely registered the ears, however, or the druin’s pointed, predator smile. She was pinned by his gaze: half-moons hooked against a colour like candlelight glancing through the facets of an emerald.

  “Hello, Tam.”

  He knows my name! How does he know my name? Had her uncle said it earlier? Probably. Definitely. Yes. Tam was shaking; ripples shuddered across the surface of the Turnston
e whiskey in her trembling hand.

  “Branigan here has been telling us all about you,” said the druin. “He says you can sing, and that you’re something of a prodigy with the lute.”

  “He drinks,” said Tam.

  The shaman laughed, splurting a mouthful of beer over the table and the Tetrea board. “He drinks.” Brune chuckled. “Classic.”

  Freecloud produced a white moonstone coin and examined one side of it. “Brune and I are mercenaries. We’re members of a band called Fable. You’ve heard of us, I assume?”

  “I … uh …”

  “She has,” Bran came to her rescue. “Of course she has. Isn’t that right, Tam?”

  “Right,” Tam managed. She felt as though she’d wandered out onto a frozen lake and suddenly the ice was groaning beneath her.

  “Well,” said Freecloud, “it so happens we’re in the market for a bard. And according to Branigan you’re just what we’re looking for. Assuming, of course, you’re willing to get a little mud on your boots.”

  “Mud on my boots?” Tam asked, watching cracks spiderweb across the ice in her mind’s eye. Uncle Bran, what have you done?

  “He means travel,” Bran told her. There was something thick in his voice, a sheen to his eyes that had nothing to do with being shitfaced drunk. At least she didn’t think it did. “A real adventure, Tam.”

  “Ah.” Freecloud’s chair scraped as he stood. The coin in his hand disappeared as he gestured behind her. “Here’s the boss herself. Tam,” he said, as she turned to find a legend in the flesh just an arm’s reach away, “this is Rose.”

  So that was it for Tam’s knees.

  As they buckled beneath her, Bran leapt from his chair. He reached her in time to pluck the cup from her hands before she collapsed. “That was close,” she heard him say, as the floorboards rushed up to meet her.

  “She’s too young,” someone said. A woman’s voice. Harsh. “What is she, sixteen?”