Bloody Rose

by Nicholas Eames

  There was a swell of excited chatter. Tam saw a smile slip on and off Slowhand’s face like sunlight spearing through spring clouds.

  “I used to wonder why you cared so much about those bandmates of yours. You loved them like you never loved me. These washed-up warriors, these haggard old men with limp wands and rusted swords.”

  “Hey,” said Moog, pretending to bristle. “I resemble that remark!”

  “But I know better now,” Rose continued. Her dark eyes roamed the encircling mercenaries, and she pitched her voice to carry over their heads. “We all have our reasons for doing what we do. It might be the money, or the fame, or maybe, like me, you were just trying to piss off your parents.” She paused until another bout of laughter subsided. “So we went and joined a band. We left our homes, abandoned our families, and hit the road. We spent every day and night with our bandmates. We ate with them, drank with them, argued over whether or not a hydrake counts as one kill or seven.”

  “One,” said Brune.

  “Seven,” Cura said.

  “We slept beside them, fought beside them, bled beside them. We trusted them to watch our backs and save our asses—which they did, time and time again. And somewhere out there, between one gig and the next, something changed. We woke up one day and realized that home was no longer behind us. That our families were with us all along. We looked around at these miscreants, these motley crews, and knew in our hearts there was nowhere we’d rather be than by their side.”

  Rose returned her attention to Gabriel’s pyre, reaching to smooth the hair on his head. “Glory fades. Gold slips through our fingers like water, or sand. Love is the only thing worth fighting for. My father knew this. He loved his bandmates. He lived for them. He would have died for them if they asked him to, without question. Instead, he died for me.” A breath. “So I guess he must have loved me, after all.”

  Tam had never known a silence so complete. She could hear the snowflakes whisper as Rose stepped away from the pyre and signalled Moog with a nod.

  The wizard withdrew a small figurine from his sleeve: a bird carved out of dull black stone. A whistle brought it blazing to life—an open flame in the palm of his hand—and an exhalation sent it swooping toward the kindling piled beneath the oak table. The fire spread quickly, devouring the whiskey-soaked wood. Within moments it was blackening the boards beneath Gabriel, curling like talons around the table’s edge.

  Slowhand nudged the wizard with an elbow. “Show-off.”

  Moog opened his mouth to reply, but a shriek chopped his voice into silence. The sound of it—the sheer volume of it—was unmistakable, even before something obscured the sun and threw the world into shade.

  Mercenaries craned their necks, bewildered. Tam, squinting against a flurry of snow, caught sight of feathered wings scything through the clouds above. She heard the word dragon on half a hundred lips, and figured it was probably best they hadn’t yet grasped the danger they were in, lest pandemonium ensue.

  And then Roderick screamed, “Fuck me, it’s the Dragoneater!” as he hoofed it across the yard.

  Pandemonium ensued. The crowd scattered like a nest of mice beneath the raptor’s shadow. A few brave souls bared their swords. A few idiots drew bows and sent arrows arcing skyward. Tam heard a sucking whoosh and watched a wizard’s fireball rise like a second sun. It burst in the clouds like spring fireworks, pointlessly pretty.

  Wait until it lands, you fools! And in the meantime, she thought, pray it doesn’t land.

  Rose was running full tilt toward the stable.

  “Your father’s ashes!” Moog cried.

  “Leave them for the wind,” she yelled over her shoulder.

  Freecloud took off after her, Brune and Cura hot on his heels. Tam followed, and Branigan caught up to her outside the stable. Her uncle’s hair was slicked to his forehead as he peered skyward. “Is it true?” he asked. “Is that really the Simurg up there?”

  It seemed the fear in her eyes was answer enough.

  “Fuck me with a rusty dirk,” he muttered.

  Moog barrelled past them with his robes hiked above knobby knees. “Gregor! Dane!” he hollered to his owlbears. “Daddy’s coming!”

  Ginny hurried into the stable after him, which left her husband standing alone by Gabriel’s pyre. Tam watched Slowhand’s silhouette waver against the flames a moment longer, before finally he turned and stalked away, disappearing through the back door of his inn. He emerged a few moments later carrying an ugly slab of wood she belatedly recognized as a shield.

  “Blackheart,” she whispered.

  Bran stirred beside her. “What?”

  Before she could point it out, the wagon they’d brought from the battlefield came slewing into the yard. Roderick slid across the baseboard as it rounded the inn. He brought it skidding to a stop in the slush before them. “Get in!”

  “Where are we going?” Tam asked, helping Bran into the wagon’s bed.

  Freecloud’s mare bolted from the stable. Wren, looking remarkably calm, was seated in front of the druin, her fingers curled tightly in Greensea’s white mane. Rose came after them, Heartbreaker thrashing like a branded mule between her legs. She yanked hard on the stallion’s reins and nosed him south. “Conthas,” she shouted, and went galloping off.

  Chapter Forty-five

  The Free City

  The Free City of Conthas was many things to many people. It was a hub of trade for claw-brokers and scale-merchants, a base of operations to the huntsmen who supplied Grandual’s arenas with fodder. Its proximity to the Heartwyld made it a natural staging point for bands brave enough to venture into the forest, and a haven for those who returned alive from that awful place.

  As its name implied, the Free City lay beyond the borders of any court—but a city without rule is a city without rules. Anarchy reigned instead of kings. Chaos governed in place of ministers. Lawlessness and mayhem prowled the streets like wolves, preying on the innocent, devouring the weak. Criminals from all five courts made pilgrimage to Conthas as though it were some holy terminus, a refuge for villainous scum the world over.

  Despite its sordid state, the city boasted a glorious past. It was here, some five hundred years prior, that the Company of Kings swept away the remnants of the Hordes that had overrun the Dominion. In the centuries since, Conthas (formally known as Contha’s, and before that, Contha’s Camp) had endured numerous attempts by eastern kings and southern hans to take the city by force. Even the notoriously aggressive centaur tribes gave the city a wide berth, preferring instead to raid towns and villages that weren’t, as the horsemen put it, Ict ish offendal putze—which, roughly translated, meant “full of shitty assholes.”

  It was surrounded by two walls (both in disrepair), an encircling moat (which served double duty as a communal latrine and a convenient place to dispose of corpses), and was overlooked by a fortress so totally impregnable that no one had the slightest clue how to get inside.

  Rose and Freecloud led the way toward the city. Roderick and Bran had taken turns driving the claw-broker’s wagon, while Brune, Cura, and Tam sat hunched and wet in the creaking bed. Clay Cooper and his family rode just behind them, trailed by a crowd of weary refugees and a few hundred mercs who’d fled with them in the aftermath of Gabriel’s funeral.

  Lady Jain and the Silk Arrows were among those Tam could see, and the bard spotted Sam “the Slayer” Roth using Fang as a crutch as he hobbled along in his heavy plate armour. The warrior had been mounted on one of Ginny’s horses when they set out from Slowhand’s two nights earlier, but either his poor mount had died of exhaustion, or it had wised up and run off while the fat bastard got off to piss.

  Either way, Tam thought, it’s in a better place now.

  “There.” Freecloud pointed the citadel out to his daughter as they approached the city. “That’s where your grandfather lives.”

  The sylf looked confused. “But Mommy said he was with the Summer Lord now. She said he could drink wine all day without getti
ng in trouble, and that his hair was yellow again instead of grey.”

  “Your other grandfather,” Freecloud said. “I told you about him yesterday, remember? He’s a druin, like me.”

  “Does he have ears like a bunny, too?”

  “He does, yes.” For once the druin didn’t bridle at the association. “But his are droopy, because he is very old.”

  Cura found a smirk and slapped it on. “You know what else droops when it gets old?”

  “What?” Wren chirped.

  “Yes, please,” said Freecloud dryly. “Tell my five-year-old daughter what else droops when it gets old.”

  “Oh … um …” Cura wilted under the druin’s glare. “Flowers?”

  “I thought Contha was a recluse?” Tam wondered aloud. “Why does he live in the middle of the city?”

  “He lives below it,” Freecloud told her. “Lamneth is sealed. I am the only one to have entered or left it in almost a millennium.”

  Tam eyed the ancient druin citadel, its shadow stark against the morning sky. “Your father sent you to treat with Lastleaf, right? He must think you’re dead.”

  The druin’s smile was sickle-sharp. “I’d be surprised if he knows I’m gone, or even remembers he sent me away in the first place. My father was never especially considerate of others, and nine centuries of isolation has made him even less so.” Freecloud returned his gaze to the hilltop fortress. He didn’t look especially happy to be going home. “Solitude can do troubling things to a mind.”

  There were two armies camped outside Conthas. To the east lay the green-and-gold tents of Agrian regulars, arranged in ordered rows that reminded Tam of the vineyards she’d seen in the hills west of Highpool. To the west, scattered like the ashes of a kicked fire, were the yurts of Cartean clansman. Brune pointed out the wind-whipped pennant of the High Han himself.

  “The Han fights alongside his army?” Tam asked.

  “The Carteans are more like a mounted mob than an army,” replied the shaman, “but yeah. The plainsmen value strength and prowess above all else. If a han doesn’t fight his enemies, he’ll end up fighting his friends.”

  Tam shifted on her seat. Her rump ached after a night of rutted road and Roderick’s careless driving. She would have sworn the satyr aimed for the potholes. “Can a han be a her?” she inquired.

  Brune blew into his hands to warm them. “Of course. Ever heard of Augera?” Tam shook her head. “They called her the Howling Han. She was among the most feared warlords of all time. She conquered the bottom half of Agria and the northern half of Narmeer before she died.”

  “How did she die?”

  The shaman frowned. “Recklessness. Greed. The usual suspects. She set her sights on the Narmeeri capital and had the bright idea to march directly across the Crystal Flats. Took thirty thousand riders with her, and just … disappeared. To this day, the Carteans call the east wind Augera, and say it carries the cries of the Howling Han’s thirst-crazed warriors.”

  “How do you know all this?” Tam asked.

  Brune shrugged. “Drunk Carteans tell stories,” he said.

  By now they had come to the city’s outer-east gate, called the Courtside Gate, which was thronged with refugees seeking safety behind the walls and mercs eager to slake their thirst at the local dives. Rose wielded Heartbreaker like a bludgeon, using the stallion’s head to force a path through the press of parked argosies and overburdened wagons. Rough-looking men wearing soiled red tabards over rusted chain hauberks stood on either side of the entrance, collecting a toll on behalf of someone called Tabano.

  “Most likely some jumped-up Gutter-Boss,” growled Cura. “Fucking shit-eating rats,” she added, in case it was unclear what she thought of those who extorted desperate people with nowhere else to turn.

  One of Tabano’s thugs sneered at Freecloud as they approached. “Rabbits are extra, chap. That’s a full crown for you, and two coppers for—” He paused as he caught sight of Wren’s face beneath her hooded cloak. “What have we here?”

  “A half-breed runt!” said one of his cohorts, sauntering up. “And a girl, no less?” He withdrew a courtmark coin from the purse at his waist and offered it to the druin. “Tell you what—take this and leave the little one with us. We’ll make sure she gets a roof over her head.”

  Rose slipped from her stallion’s back and held her hand out to him. “Your helmet.”

  The thug regarded her warily. “Huh?”

  “Give me your helmet,” she demanded. “Now.”

  Either too scared or too stupid to refuse, he unhurriedly removed the dented iron pan from his head and handed it over. As he did, recognition bloomed on his pockmarked face. “Hey, aren’t you Bloody R—”

  The helm cracked across the side of his jaw. His eyes took a look at the back of his skull and he swayed like a tree deciding which way to fall. Rose pushed him over as she advanced on his friend, grabbing a fistful of the thug’s tabard and pinning him against the stone wall.

  “Take his purse.” She pointed at the one she’d laid out. “And yours. Give a crown to every man, woman, and child without a weapon who comes through this gate until you’re broke, then run back to your shithead boss—Tabo, was it?”

  “T-Tabano,” he stuttered. “The Baron of Saltkettle.”

  “Tell him Bloody Rose is in town, and the Winter Queen is on her way. Tell him the Brumal Horde is coming, and that every knife on his payroll—every thief, thug, and halfpenny assassin—had better be waving from this wall when they get here, or else he won’t have anyone to steal from, rough up, or assassinate, because we’ll all be fucking dead. Got it?” The man’s jowls quivered as he nodded. “Go.”

  He scampered off. Rose remained on foot, leading Heartbreaker by the bridle through the outer city. They followed a muddy road littered with so many stone bricks Tam suspected someone had once tried to pave it and gave up partway through. The way was hedged by stables, smithies, stinking tanneries, and snoring mills. Conthas reminded her of a bruise: a ring of soured earth that grew darker the closer they got to the centre.

  They passed through the city’s Monster Market, a menagerie so vast and varied it made the one in Ardburg look like a pet shop by comparison. Tiers of stacked cages made a maze of the cluttered square, their occupants raging, pacing, or sitting sullenly in the shadowed corners of their prisons.

  Tam caught sight of talons and beaks, wings and horns, glistening scales and blood-matted fur. Slick green tentacles curled around the bars of one cage, and those passing near gave it a cautious berth. A circle of massive wains surrounded the forum, their iron-barred windows offering glimpses of Heartwyld horrors bound for the arenas of Grandual. Many of them, Tam figured, had been taken as captives after the battle up north. They likely thought captivity was a fate worse than death.

  But there were fates, she knew, even worse than both.

  They passed a pen of rangy centaurs packed so tight they could barely move, their hands and hooves bound by heavy manacles. Tam peered into a roped-off pit filled with goblins, yowling like a thousand feral cats fighting over the crust of a sardine sandwich. A bowlegged fomorian—its face so hideously deformed even its mother would recoil at the sight of it—was being ushered into a stockade by a cordon of barking dogs and huntsmen armed with barbed polearms. Elsewhere, a pair of vibrantly striped gorilliaths were forced to pummel one another for the amusement of a jeering crowd. The whole square stank of soiled hay, stale urine, and callous neglect. The noise—a buzzing cacophony of squawks, roars, hisses, and growls—made Tam squirm uncomfortably on her seat.

  She’d been fascinated by the market back in Ardburg. The monsters had seemed exotic at the time, inherently dangerous—as if cramped cages and filthy pens were exactly where such wild things belonged. Now, however, they felt to Tam like victims, casualties of being born with scales instead of skin, claws instead of fingers, or (in the case of a giant spider trussed by corded rope) eight bulbous eyes and poison-laced mandibles instead of a proper face.

/>   The bard saw a red-maned gnoll chained by her throat to a stake. The hyena-headed creature was nursing a litter of spotted pups and staring dazedly at the middle distance. Her children, Tam supposed, would be taken from her once they’d been weaned, and she would be bred again with another of her kind—a specimen chosen for his size and ferocity. Her offspring would be raised in captivity beneath some distant arena, beaten and lashed by pitiless wranglers until they became the savage monsters mankind required them to be.

  Tam found herself scowling at the thought of so many desperate thousands rallying to Brontide’s cause. Their aim hadn’t been to destroy humanity—merely to survive it.

  Clustered like crows around the next gate were goons of a different sort: pale-skinned priests with shorn heads and soiled white robes. When their leader turned her way, Tam nearly leapt out of her seat. His mouth was sewn not quite closed by a grille of polished bone piercings that stretched his lips into a gruesome, lunatic smile.

  “The Frost Mother has returned!” he slurred. “Let the fires die, the candles burn to stubs. Let nothing remain but ash and smoke to mark their passing!”

  “Ash and smoke,” groaned a woman at his side.

  “Fuck your ash and smoke!” Cura swore, and the man’s hollowed eyes snapped in her direction.

  “Rejoice!” he howled, his lips taut behind the bone cage. “Our queen is coming.”

  “She will be here soon,” crowed the woman. She lifted her face and reached out to catch snowflakes in skeletal hands. “I can feel her touch. I can taste her on my lips.”

  Tam was thankful when the priests were out of earshot.

  “Behold,” Roderick announced from his perch on the baseboard, “the glory of Conthas. The one and only free city this side of the Wyld.”

  “What about Freeport?” she asked.

  The booker scowled. “Just shut the fuck up and behold, all right? This here’s the strip, though most folks call it the Gutter.” He indicated the broad avenue ahead of them. “Little bit road, little bit river—it depends on the weather, really. Don’t step in the puddles,” he warned. “In fact, stay away from the water in general while we’re here. Beer is fine. Wine is good. Rum is best.”