“YOMINA!”
Her scream split the air like a thunderclap. Ink curled off her arm and resolved into a figure hunched beneath the bowl of a broad straw hat. Cords of limp white hair fell past its shoulders, too thin to obscure the creature’s vulture neck and black-toothed grin. It wore a blood-soaked robe that clung to its bony frame, and was impaled by no fewer than seven swords.
As the white-eyed wargs circled it, Yomina closed long-nailed fingers around two jutting hilts. Tam winced at the grating of metal on bone as it pulled the blades from its chest.
Despite its decrepit bearing, Cura’s inkling (as she referred to the menagerie of horrors tattooed on her skin) was alarmingly fast. The wargs’ jaws snapped shut on scraps of black cloth as Yomina dodged with such uncanny speed that Tam thought she’d blinked and missed it moving from one place to the next.
It buried a sword to the hilt in either warg, but still they attacked. One by one the inkling tore blades from its body and drove them into its snarling assailants. At last, as the pair lay crippled, the fire in their eyes fading like stars at dawn, Yomina withdrew the seventh sword from the centre of its chest and cut the heads off them both.
The inkling vanished, and Rose bent to help the summoner find her feet. She cupped Cura’s face in both hands and said something meant for her alone. The Inkwitch nodded, then chuckled weakly at whatever Rose said next. The two of them embraced as the crowd dispersed into the chilly twilight.
Fable decamped to the inn to wait out the blizzard. When it finally passed, the tour rolled on.
Once, while Tam was fishing with her uncle Bran, they had come across a black bear wading through rapids thick with leaping salmon. The fish were headed upstream, drawn by instinct toward the spawning grounds of their youth. Tam was reminded of that now as the Rebel’s Redoubt plodded sluggishly against the flood of westward traffic. The foul weather had frozen the road for days, but now it teemed with men and women bound for Coldfire Pass.
The sun peeked occasionally through the roof of clouds, so Tam and the others spent the day on the argosy’s roof. The bard sat between crenellations, plucking idle music from Hiraeth’s heart-shaped bowl and surveying the throng below for mercs she might recognize—either by sight or by reputation alone.
The Duran twins—big, brutish Agrians clad head to toe in spiked iron plate—were trailed by an escort of rough-looking goons they employed in place of a proper band. She saw the White Snakes as well, and Layla Sweetpenny, and Warfire, who coated their weapons in pitch and set them on fire before every battle. Tam wondered if it was by design or coincidence that all five of them were beardless and bald.
She whooped as the Sisters in Steel rode by on armoured white stallions, and waved at Courtney and the Sparks as the gang of chain-skirted spear-wielding women trotted by. Courtney blew her a kiss, and she wondered if the renowned warrior recognized Tam as the girl who’d served her wine at the Cornerstone when they came to Ardburg last summer.
Probably not, she decided.
Rick the Lion was given a wide berth as he navigated a cumbersome-looking war chariot through the crowd. An argosy bearing the name Wyld Child rolled past on iron-shod wheels, but the band to whom it belonged remained cloistered inside.
“Tam, look up.” Brune drew her attention to a skyship sailing overhead. Its sails crackled with captured electricity, and its tidal engines rained streamers of fine mist that she could feel on her outstretched fingers.
Skyships were exceedingly rare, since the secret of their manufacture had been lost when the Dominion fell. Tam certainly had no idea how they worked, though she’d seen one up close a few times. Vanguard—the band Tiamax and Edwick had both been a part of—had discovered one intact in the Heartwyld years ago. They’d called it Old Glory, and when they retired after the battle at Castia, the skyship was sold for a pittance to Rose’s father, Golden Gabe himself.
By now the road was so congested that Roderick was forced to halt the argosy as the river of westbound warriors flowed around them. As she watched them go by, dashing and dazzling in the bright panoply of war, something like shame stirred in Tam’s gut. All these men and women were racing to save the world, to stand for all of Grandual against Brontide and his ravaging Horde …
And here we are, she thought dejectedly, a great big rock in a river of heroes.
“Hey, Rose!” someone called from below. “You’re heading in the wrong direction!”
Rose came to stand beside Tam, who identified the speaker as Sam “the Slayer” Roth. On his back was the greatsword Fang. His embossed plate armour was strapped so tight over his bulky frame that he looked like a Narmeeri pineapple splitting at the seams. His horse, Tam noted, appeared to be struggling under its rider’s considerable weight.
Roth was pointing west. “The Horde is that way.”
“So I keep hearing,” Rose drawled, “but I’m afraid we’ve got prior commitments. Besides, who’s gonna keep the courts safe while all you selfless heroes run off to save us from the Horde? There’s a necromancer on the loose, or haven’t you heard?”
The Slayer tugged at the collar of his breastplate, clearly uncomfortable in the afternoon heat. “Aye, I did hear that. I also heard you’ve got a gig in Diremarch.”
Mercenaries were an avaricious bunch, Tam knew. If there was a juicy contract up for grabs, Sam Roth would doubtless wonder why he hadn’t got wind of it.
“That’s true,” Rose said.
“So what’s more important than a giant with a host of monsters at his back? Don’t tell me you’d rather earn a few lousy courtmarks than do battle with the Brumal Horde! Where’s the glory in that?”
“This isn’t about money, Sam.”
“Ha! I knew it! So what’s the gig? It must be something big. Something bloody vicious, right?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” said Rose.
Roth’s eyes narrowed. “Gods of Grandual,” he breathed, “it’s a dragon.”
Rose said nothing, but her smile deepened just a little.
“It is, isn’t it? You’ve got a fucking dragon on the hook!” The man actually sounded jealous—as if doing battle with a winged, fire-breathing lizard the size of a house was in any way enviable.
Please let it not be a dragon, Tam thought. She’d wanted adventure, sure, but adventures tended to end rather abruptly when a dragon got involved.
“Which one is it?” Roth asked. “Konsear? Akatung? Wait, didn’t your father kill Akatung?”
“It’s the Simurg.”
The Slayer’s face dropped. “Say what?”
“The Simurg,” Rose repeated. “The Dragoneater.”
Was it Tam’s imagination, or had the others—Freecloud, Cura, Brune, even Roderick on his driver’s bench—gone very quiet all of a sudden? A coincidence, she decided, since the satyr began whistling to himself, and Cura flipped another page of her book. Even so, a chill went down Tam’s spine, despite her thick leather longcoat.
Rose is kidding, Tam told herself. Of course she’s kidding.
Sam Roth laughed for a good long while. When he’d finished he pulled off a mailed glove and wiped at his eye. “Fine,” he said. “Don’t tell me. Winds of bloody winter, Rose, you had me going for a second there.”
“Something funny?” asked a woman who reined her charger in beside Roth’s beleaguered mount. She was pretty, Tam thought. Her skin was deep brown, her hair dyed the colour of untarnished silver. There was a spear on her back, and a shield bearing a silver star on a black field was strapped to her left arm.
The Slayer was having trouble wedging his mail glove back onto his pudgy hand. “Rose here was just telling me why Fable is bound for Diremarch instead of Coldfire Pass. They’re off to fight the Dragoneater!”
The woman didn’t even blink at the name. The Dragoneater was a made-up monster, and it was clear Rose had no intention of telling Roth (or anyone, for that matter) what awaited them in Diremarch. “It’s true, then?” The newcomer raised her shield to cut
the glare as she looked up. “Bloody Rose is running from a fight? Never thought I’d see the day.”
Rose put on a frosty smile. “I’m not running from anything, Star. I’ve already fought one Horde, remember?” She glanced over briefly as Freecloud moved to stand at her shoulder. “This isn’t our fight.”
“Not your fight?” The woman—who Tam now knew was Lucky Star—sneered up at them. “I don’t recall Castia being my fight, but that didn’t stop me from coming to save your ass, did it?”
Rose’s smile was melting like an ice chip in a clenched fist.
“But what if the Horde breaks through Coldfire Pass?” Star pressed. “What if it threatens Coverdale? Will it be your fight then, I wonder?”
All trace of mirth fled Rose’s face. She glowered like a gargoyle with an incontinent pigeon perched on its head. “Good to see you, Slayer,” she said, then stepped away from the battlement and called out to Roderick. “Get us moving,” she ordered. “Run them down if you need to, I don’t care.”
“Runnin’ ’em down!” Roderick cracked the reins, and the Redoubt lurched into motion.
“What’s in Coverdale?” Tam asked Freecloud.
“Our daughter,” he replied.
Chapter Thirteen
Highpool
After one final stop in a village bearing the unfortunate (and unfortunately accurate) name of Boring, Fable’s tour rolled to its conclusion in Highpool, which rivalled the capital of Ardburg for size and dwarfed it for splendour. Constructed almost entirely of brilliant white limestone, it perched like an ivory crown at the top of a broad hummock.
The city was surrounded by the southernmost peaks of the Rimeshield Mountains, and rearing above it was a colossal figure carved into the sheer cliffs to the north. One of its hands clasped the hilt of a granite sword, while the other was extended over the city below. Channels carved into the rock allowed a steady stream of meltwater to pool in the palm of its hand before spilling between its fingers into a reservoir several hundred feet below.
The residents of Highpool called it the Defender, but as they approached the city, Freecloud apprised Tam of its true identity.
“The Tyrant?” She squinted up at the statue’s face. It was worn almost featureless by centuries of harsh weather, but the long ears sweeping back from its head marked it as druin.
“His name was Gowikan,” said the druin. “He was an Exarch who tasked his slaves—hundreds of men, women, and monsters—with rendering his likeness into the mountainside. They toiled for a dozen years and managed only so much as that hand, so he put thousands more to work. A decade later they’d chiselled out his chest, an arm, his head—all you can see now. But they never finished.”
Freecloud was toying with that strange moonstone coin as he spoke. Tam wondered if the thing was some sort of lucky charm.
“By then the Dominion had begun to collapse. Civil war erupted, and the Exarchs turned on one another. Gowikan’s army was untrained, ill fed, exhausted from years of gruelling labour. They were overrun, and the Exarch was killed.” The druin’s ears shivered when he sighed. “It makes me wonder, sometimes, if what we’re doing really matters. The fighting, the killing, the glory we’re all so desperate to claim. None of us decide how we are remembered,” he said, and Tam recalled her uncle voicing a similar sentiment on the hill above Fighter’s Camp.
“Gowikan was cruel,” Freecloud continued. “And vain. He was a petty despot whose quest for immortality doomed both him and his people. And yet here he stands, long after his enemies are gone, revered by those he’d have treated as slaves. Immortal, after all.”
Tam pulled a strand of windblown hair from her eyes. “Aren’t all druins immortal?” Tam asked.
“Essentially, yes,” said Freecloud. The coin in his hand vanished with a flick of his wrist. “It’s too bad so many of us are pricks.”
The road into the city ran a full circuit of the hill upon which it was built, and was flanked on the left by an earthen bulwark packed with exultant crowds. They cheered wildly as the Outlaw Nation wound its way toward the gate, and Fable’s welcome inside the city was even more grand. People lined the streets as the Rebel’s Redoubt ambled by, and Tam, who tried counting the number of women sporting the same bloodred hair as Rose, gave up after the first hundred. She doubted there was a single hucknell bean left in the whole damn city.
I should bring some with me wherever we go, she thought. I could sell them and make a fortune …
One woman (who ran beside the argosy for several blocks) begged the honour of having Brune’s babies, while another, brandishing a wailing infant dressed in a makeshift bunny costume, claimed to have given birth to Freecloud’s already.
“Should I be worried?” Rose asked the druin.
Freecloud favoured the woman with a wave and a wary smile. “I certainly am.”
The balconies and rooftops were teeming as well. Dyed cloth streamers rained down from above, along with clumps of birdseed, and rose petals so frozen they fell like hailstones.
Tam leaned over the driver’s bench. “What’s with the birdseed?” she asked Roderick.
“No idea.” The satyr scooped some up and tossed it into his mouth. When he saw her horrified expression he held out his hand. “I’m sorry, did you want some?”
She waved him off. “I’m fine, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” Rod siphoned the seed in his hand, examining its contents. “Hey, I think there’s corn in here!”
At last they halted before a three-storey inn called the Gnarled Staff, whose proprietor, a retired wizard named Elfmin, welcomed Fable in the yard outside and presented each of them with a bright red scarf.
“It’s … warm,” Tam remarked as the old man draped one across her shoulders. The thick wool actually radiated a mild heat as she drew it around her neck.
“It’s enchanted!” said Elfmin. He adjusted the pair of gold-tinted spectacles he wore on the bridge of his nose. “A minor cantrip, but they’ll serve you well in Diremarch, believe me!”
It took all afternoon for the Outlaw Nation to take up residence in the Gnarled Staff. Once they had, everyone—Tam included—spent the early hours of the evening fast asleep since, as Rose bluntly put it, “We sure as hell won’t be sleeping tonight.”
Since the Gnarled Staff would host the final party of Fable’s tour after the following day’s fight, the band spent their penultimate night in Highpool exploring the city’s seedier establishments. An entourage of Outlaws tagged along, but pretty much anyone with the mental and moral fortitude to keep up was welcome aboard.
Their first stop was the Basilisk, a brothel furnished with statues of men and women in various states of fornication. After that was the Gorgon’s Den, which had a similar theme but considerably more snakes lying about.
Next up was Mackie’s, followed by the Bald Bard, and then another brothel called the Longest Sword in Town, where Freecloud, after a great deal of heckling and altogether too much wine, was persuaded to dance in a cage while Tam played a sultry rendition of Magic Boy, a song usually reserved for children’s birthday parties.
The walls of the Shattered Shield were decorated with broken swords and cloven shields. The place was full of grizzled warriors who told meandering stories of days and nights spent touring the Heartwyld. All of them, it turned out, had lost bandmates to the rot, the disease that had once preyed indiscriminately upon those who entered the poisoned forest. One old man brandished a hand he claimed had been infected, before Arcandius Moog (a bandmate of Rose’s father) began producing his miracle cure.
Before moving on, Tam asked the room of weary vets what song they’d most like to hear, and was touched when they unanimously agreed on Lily Hashford’s most famous ballad—which suited Tam just fine. Not only did it remind Tam of her mother, but it had earned her a place in Fable. If she’d played any other song but Together during her audition, she might still be back in Ardburg right now.
By the time she reached the song’s final verse t
he old mercs were singing along with her. When she finished, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.
Their last stop was a tavern called the Monster Market. The staff were scantily dressed as various fey creatures, and instead of wax candles or oil lamps, there were actual pixies imprisoned in coloured glass jars suspended from the rafters. Following Rose’s example, each of her bandmates and every Outlaw stole one on their way out the door. In the street outside they tore off the lids and set their captives free, laughing in wonder as the sky filled with the buzz of bright wings.
It was almost dawn by the time they started back toward the Gnarled Staff. Somewhere along the way Penny lobbed a snowball at Brune, who lobbed one back. He missed, but hit Rose instead. The street-wide snowball fight that followed raged until a platoon of white-cloaked watchmen arrived to break it up.
They arrested Brune, who couldn’t hope to outrun them with Penny straddling his shoulders. Rose and Freecloud were discovered together in a snowbank and charged with lewdness, public nudity, and possession of an unsheathed sword.
Cura took Tam by the hand when the bard almost slipped on a patch of ice. The two of them fled together, ducking through alleys and skirting the edge of snowy squares. They managed to shake their pursuers, but Cura didn’t let go of her hand. They were almost to the inn when the Inkwitch squeezed Tam’s fingers and pointed skyward. “Look.”
The moon’s glow bathed the falls above Highpool in silver light, transforming the tumbling water into strands of whispering silk. Between each were swatches of starry sky that glimmered like a lake in the moment before it turned to ice.
“Beautiful,” Tam said, but by then she’d turned away from the spectacle of falling water and was looking at Cura instead.
The summoner glanced over, a sly smile spreading across her face. “Hey, you know what we should do?”
“It needs to be wet first,” said Cura.
“Will it hurt?” Tam asked.
“It’ll tingle a bit, but no—it shouldn’t hurt. Not if we’re doing it right.”
Bloody Rose Page 11
