Bloody Rose

by Nicholas Eames

  “But the Brumal Horde is different,” said Freecloud. “They’re angry, yes, but they’re desperate, too. Some will be survivors of Castia. Others will have fled from Grandual, forced to live on the margins of a world they once called their own. Brontide isn’t offering vengeance—he’s leading them in a fight against annihilation. If this Horde is destroyed, there may never be another one. Humans will hunt them to extinction—or take them captive, sell them off, and breed them for sport in the arenas.” The druin looked pointedly at Gabriel. “The Horde, I believe, is fighting for its very existence. It’s winning because it can’t afford not to.”

  Tam spared a glance for Moog, who was sitting cross-legged on his couch. The wizard’s expression was conflicted—hopeful but hurt, like a merchant who’d learned a bitter rival had come to ruin and was saddened to hear it.

  Rose struck a match that guttered in the night breeze. “And you think Astra has something to do with this?” she asked Freecloud.

  Moog’s bushy brow’s furrowed. “Astra? Why is that name familiar? Ah!” He tapped the shiny crown of his head. “Right! I had a cat named Astra. Spiteful creature! And vicious.” He whistled. “I swear, it once killed a bird and left it on my doorstep in the morning.”

  Brune shrugged. “So what? Lots of cats—”

  “It was an eagle,” Moog finished.

  The shaman nodded appreciatively and poured himself a drink.

  Gabriel, meanwhile, had gone pale as birch skin. “You mean Vespian’s wife? The Winter Queen?”

  “The Winter Queen is a myth,” said Rose. “You told me so yourself.”

  Her father shook his head. “Not a myth. A moniker. A made-up name for a very real and very dangerous woman, who …” He trailed off. Something unspoken passed between him and the wizard. “You’ve seen her, then? She’s alive?”

  “Alive is a relative term,” Cura said.

  Moog’s knees cracked as he craned forward. “Where? When? What did she look like? Did she still have her, you know—” He wiggled two fingers above his head in mimicry of rabbit ears.

  “We’ve seen her,” Rose confirmed. “She … Well, it’s a long story.”

  Gabe settled into his seat. “It’s a long way home.”

  For a while no one spoke. The only sounds were the engine’s sloshing whir, the creak of old boards, and the hum of hidden currents coursing through the sail’s metal struts. It wasn’t until Freecloud gently cleared his throat that Tam realized who it was they expected to tell the story.

  “Oh,” said Fable’s bard. “Right.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Cold Clouds

  By the time Tam finished recounting their journey with Hawkshaw, their brief stay at Ruangoth, their flight to Mirrormere, and, finally, their battle against the Simurg on the frozen lake, Gabe looked as though he might be sick.

  “I just …” He rubbed despairingly at his face. “Why do I even bother rescuing you? Seriously? You fought the bloody Dragoneater? On purpose?” He glared at her from between splayed fingers. “You know I refused that gig, right?”

  Rose shrugged, her pauldrons clanking.

  “Not just because I thought the Warden was lying, or that his mistress was orc-shit crazy, but because if he wasn’t lying, and she wasn’t orc-shit crazy, then I’d be up against the fucking Simurg! It was a suicide mission!”

  “Apparently not,” said his daughter dryly.

  Gabe’s jaw clenched the way Rose’s did when she was angry. “I heard about that stunt you pulled in Highpool, by the way. Taking on a whole tribe of orcs … fighting a marilith by yourself. Your uncle Moog and I crossed the Heartwyld to save you, remember? The least you could do to thank us is to not try to get yourself killed.”

  “How could I forget?” Rose’s own anger flared like windblown embers. “Half the songs in the world paint me as a useless twit, waiting in Castia for her gallant father to come rescue her!”

  “Is that what this was about?” Gabe asked, on the edge of his seat now. “Is that why you dragged your friends into the Brumal Wastes? Why you put their lives at risk? So you could get your name in a song?”

  “She didn’t drag us anywhere,” Cura snarled.

  “That’s right.” Brune’s voice was gruff.

  “We knew the stakes,” said Freecloud. “We didn’t follow her because she told us to.”

  “And why did you start a band, Dad?” Rose’s smile was cool as a cadaver’s feet. “Did you have some noble purpose in mind? Or were you just trying to fuck every farmer’s daughter in Grandual?”

  Moog snorted at that, but quickly masked his mirth behind a thoughtful frown.

  Gabe didn’t even blink. “I started a band because the centaur clans were stealing children who strayed too close to the forest. Because ghoul-spiders sucked the blood from our horses and left them hanging dead from the trees. Because, when I was sixteen years old, a wyvern swooped out of the night and flew off with a farmer’s daughter I was madly in love with, while I cowered in the grass like a mouse.” Gabriel straightened in his seat. “It took Clay and me two weeks to track that fucker down—but we did, and we killed it, and I can’t say for sure if the bones I buried belonged to the girl I was looking for, but I wept over them just the same.”

  The skyship groaned as it climbed, passing through wisps of cold cloud. Lightning arced across the roofing sail, scoring Gabe’s ire with a sizzling crack.

  “Things were different back then,” he went on. “The world was a dangerous place. The roads weren’t safe. Monsters were everywhere, and if you heard something go bump in the night it probably meant that something was coming to kill you. But when was the last time a giant stormed through a city? Or a slag drake turned a whole forest to ash? Or the trees themselves came marching from the Heartwyld? Even the rot is nothing more than a nuisance nowadays, thanks to Moog.”

  The wizard wore a sheepish smile. “I only—” he started, but Gabriel went on raving.

  “Yeah, we got famous along the way. And yeah, we enjoyed the hell out of it. But we didn’t crave it. We got rich, too—but not by selling seats or splitting the overhead with some miserly wrangler. And you know what? You’re right: I did fuck a lot of farmers’ daughters.”

  “And blacksmiths’ daughters,” Moog added obligingly. “And innkeepers’ daughters, jewellers’ daughters, millers’ daughters, stonemasons’ daughters, stonemasons’ wives, innkeepers’ wives, grocer’s wives—”

  “Moog …”

  “—that cobbler’s mother, once—

  “She gets it,” Gabe told him.

  “I got it,” Rose agreed.

  “But at some point,” said her father, “things changed. We’re not afraid to walk in the woods, or swim in a lake, or take shelter in a cave only to find out it’s a dragon’s lair. We toppled the giants, brought the ogres to their knees, burned the trolls and scattered their ashes to the wind. And now?” A laugh, bitter as black chocolate. “Now we’re hunting down fairy tales, apparently.”

  “We are the ones going bump in the night,” Freecloud murmured.

  The cloud through which they passed seeped into Tam’s skin and chilled her blood. She’d spent most of her life tormented by what monsters had done to her family. How many nights had she woken up screaming, sweating, sobbing for fear of some dread creature knocking down her door? It hadn’t occurred to her that the “dread creatures” of the world might be doing the same.

  She thought of the sinu murdered by Hawkshaw at the temple in Diremarch, and the orcs Fable had slaughtered back in Highpool. She remembered them scrambling to escape the wrath of Rose and her bandmates, clawing at the stone walls, desperately trying to protect the weakest among them. She recalled the anguished wail of the cyclops set loose in the Ravine. Its flesh had been scarred by years of abuse, its spirit tortured by captivity into something hopelessly wicked.

  Tam peered around the skyship’s deck, seeing the same dawning awareness in the eyes of her companions. They’d have considered all this be
fore, she was certain, but to hear it from the mouth of Golden Gabe—the most revered mercenary in all five courts—would lodge the truth of it like a dagger in their hearts. Roderick, hatless and horned, stared morosely into his lap.

  “I wish you hadn’t gone west,” Gabriel told his daughter. “I wish, sometimes, that we hadn’t saved Castia from the Heartwyld Horde. We might have avoided this war altogether.”

  Rose said nothing. Her expression was a mask of cool restraint, but her eyes betrayed a hurt that Tam suspected her father alone was capable of inflicting. In a roundabout way, Gabriel was blaming her for the return of the Winter Queen and the emergence of the Brumal Horde, burdening Rose with the death of everyone who had lost their lives at Castia, and Cragmoor, and Coldfire Pass.

  “We might have reasoned with Lastleaf,” Gabriel said, helping himself to a share of the blame. “But instead we routed his army, shattered his dream of a new Dominion. We left him no choice but vengeance, and now …”

  He left the rest unspoken, but the implication was clear to all.

  Now, thought Tam, his vengeance is upon us.

  Gabriel stirred, blinked, and wet his lips. “Which brings us back to Astra.” He looked to Freecloud. “You think she’s allied herself with the Brumal Horde?”

  “I suspect so, yes,” said Freecloud.

  “Why?” Gabe wondered. “Lastleaf wanted to destroy the Republic and restore the Old Dominion. So what’s his mother after?”

  “You,” said Tam. Her cheeks flushed under the sudden scrutiny of everyone on board. “At the lake … She said you killed her son.”

  The old hero shook his head. “I didn’t, though—not really. I had my hand in it, sure, but so did everyone who resisted him at Castia, and every merc who fought alongside us.”

  “Lastleaf’s own army deserted him in the end,” Moog pointed out. “He took his own life in despair and was trampled in death by those he’d sworn to set free.”

  “So basically she has a reason to hate pretty much everybody,” drawled Cura. “And now, thanks to us, she has a pet Dragoneater at her disposal.”

  “And probably an entire Horde,” said Brune.

  Tam shifted uncomfortably, wary of speaking again, but Gabriel turned to regard her. “Yes?” he asked.

  “What if we didn’t fight the Horde?” she proposed. “What if we made a deal with Brontide? We could find someplace for his army to settle, and maybe he would help us fight the Winter Queen?”

  The idea sounded foolish the moment she’d said it, yet everyone—including Golden Gabe—looked as though they were giving it due consideration.

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” Moog said glumly. “It’s a good plan, Tam. It really is. But there’s too much blood between us and the, uh, them,” he concluded, likely having stumbled over the word monster. “And besides, assuming Brontide and Astra are allies, it’s likely they have a similar arrangement in place already.”

  “So we’re back where we started,” mused Brune. The shaman went to pour himself another brandy, but then nudged his glass aside and drank straight from the bottle. When he’d finished guzzling he wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. “How do we go about fighting a rampaging Horde, a vengeful giant, a ruthless druin sorceress, and her undead Simurg?”

  Rose looked from Brune to Cura, from Cura to Roderick, and from Roderick to Freecloud, nestled behind her. The druin nodded, tight-lipped, and took her hand in his own.

  “We don’t,” she said, matching gazes with Gabriel, daring him to challenge her. “We’re done.”

  By morning they were clear of the mountains, swooping over a dense pine forest that stretched out of sight in every direction. Brune and Tam stood together at the portside rail, gazing out over the sea of snowcapped trees. The sun was shining, the air winter-crisp, and the wind was … Well, the wind was bloody freezing, but the shaman’s bulk was cutting most of it, so that helped a bit.

  “The Hagswood,” Brune announced, then pointed east. “Ardburg is just a few hundred miles that way. It’s too bad we’re in such a hurry, or we could ask them to drop us off.”

  Tam pulled a strand of wind-whipped hair from her eyes. “Will you go home after this?”

  “I don’t really know,” he admitted. “My village has changed so much since I left. I have, too, I suppose. I’m not sure I belong there anymore. I wouldn’t call it home.”

  “So where’s home?” Tam asked.

  The shaman spared a glance for his bandmates: Rose and Freecloud were asleep on one couch; Cura was out cold on another with a book splayed on her chest. “Here,” he said. “With them.”

  Tam smiled. “They’re your pack.”

  “Exactly.” Brune grinned as well, gap-toothed and ruddy-cheeked behind the tangled curtain of his hair. “Pack, family, band—it’s all the same to me. I don’t know where I’d be without Fable,” he mused. “Or what I’ll be without them. I keep thinking about something Roderick said.”

  “That he could eat fifty socks without throwing up?”

  “Oh, he’d throw up all right. He tried it once before, you know. Barely made it to forty—puked all over the place. But no. Back in Woodford, remember? You asked him if all ragas were monsters.”

  She did remember. “Only if they choose to be,” she supplied.

  The shaman nodded, scratching absently at a scar below his eye. “Only if they choose to be,” he repeated. “But some of us—most of us, I think—don’t have a choice. Not really. Rose didn’t decide what the rest of the world named her. She didn’t get to pick who her father was. None of us do. Rose was born to the sword, destined to be a mercenary the way a farmer’s kid is destined to push a plough.”

  Tam thought of the farmer’s daughter they’d met east of Highpool—the one who’d gone up against Rose with a rusty sword—and wondered if the girl would manage to change her fate.

  And me? she wondered. Did I escape Ardburg, or was I destined to be a bard, as my mother before me?

  “There’s a reason my kind put so much stock in finding our fain,” Brune went on. “When a shaman shams, they risk losing themself to the instincts of whatever it is they become, unless what they become is something so close to their nature it’s like being in their own skin. And even then … Well, you saw what happened in my village.” He sighed, and blinked as though trying to shake the memory of a nightmare. “I spent most of my life trying to be something I’m not, thinking I was on the right path without knowing how lost I was—if that makes any sense. If it wasn’t for Rose, and Cloud, and Cura, I’d probably be dead. Or worse: I’d be a monster, through and through.”

  The shaman put his back to the rail. He gazed at his sleeping bandmates with the open adoration of a father admiring his children. “I love them,” he said, and then chuckled quietly. “Even Cura. I’d follow them anywhere. I’d fight until my last breath to keep them safe. And you, too. Tam. You’re family now, like it or not.”

  Tam opened her mouth, decided she didn’t trust herself to speak, and shut it. She gazed out over the endless expanse of forest instead, and so did Brune.

  “Will you fight against the Horde?” she asked eventually. “Even if the rest of them don’t?”

  Brune shrugged. “I’m not sure it matters. I doubt one man will make a difference.”

  But one band could, Tam thought.

  When Rose and Freecloud woke, Tam crashed on the couch they’d been occupying. She dreamt of Astra and the Brumal Horde, except in her dream the Winter Queen bore Rose’s face and the Horde was nothing but yethiks. After that she was lost in a winter forest where the trees were blowing away like ash. In her dream she was running east, always east, as Hawkshaw dogged her heels. All at once he stepped out ahead of her, his crossbow levelled at her chest …

  They veered west the next morning, skirting a range of mountains less daunting than the sort Tam had looked up to her entire life. Moog, who’d been glued to the rail since dawn, cried out suddenly. “There it is! Oddsford! Home to Grandual’s
greatest minds, and arguably the most beautiful city in all five courts!”

  Tam was inclined to believe him, since her breath caught at the sight of it. From above, the city famed for its grand university resembled a maze of red-brick buildings and lush green parks, the trees of which were strung with lamps that twinkled blue and gold in the mist rolling off the slopes above. A tower so tall it rivalled the mountains reared over the city. Sparrows flocked at its crown. Crooked turrets branched from it like stunted arms, and Tam could have sworn the entire structure was leaning dangerously off-kilter.

  “The Dreaming Spire,” Moog said. “It’s filled top to bottom with dusty old people and dusty old books.” He cupped his hands and shouted at a woman watering plants on one of the tower’s many balconies. “Oi, Helen! You old chewed boot!”

  Helen—assuming the woman was who Moog thought she was—had barely looked up before the Old Glory blew past, trailed by its vapour stream and a cloud of bewildered sparrows.

  By afternoon they were approaching Grey Vale, a hardwood forest nestled between encircling ranges. According to Gabriel, the Brumal Horde had been camped here for several weeks. The sky ahead was shadowed, piled with clouds so dark it seemed that night itself lingered over the valley.

  A speck appeared before them, and soon materialised into a bird that was much larger than any bird ought to be, with slick black feathers and talons that could have torn a bull in half. A plague hawk, Tam guessed, noting the grey-green miasma steaming off it. It banked from the Old Glory’s path, beating north on poison wings.

  “Is that a storm?” wondered Rose, peering westward.

  If Daon Doshi had slept since being asked to pilot them home, Tam hadn’t seen it happen. The captain stood and pulled his goggles down over his eyes. “Not a storm,” he said. “It’s smoke. The forest is burning.”

  Chapter Forty

  Mercs in the Murk

  Brontide was dead.