Godless World 2 - Bloodheir

by Brian Ruckley

  "He'll have to learn the cost of defiance, then," muttered Aewult.

  "The boy is young, inexperienced. I suspect I can turn him back, wherever he thinks he is going. Unless he is the slow one out of that family, he should be open to persuasion, especially if I can talk to him alone. But failing all else, yes, some blunt warnings - perhaps even a threat or two - should clarify for him the importance of retaining your goodwill, and that of your father. It is time, I think, to find out how this new Thane of Lannis responds to the crack of the whip."

  Later, descending through the Tower of Thrones, Anyara stared at the back of her shieldman. Coinach was not overly tall, nor were his shoulders especially broad. Despite this, his was an impressive presence. He had a muscular bulk, and moved with the kind of restraint that Anyara associated with older, intensely capable men such as Taim Narran. For all his youth - he could not have been much more than twenty years old - he had an air of confidence. His face, though, was surprisingly gentle, for a warrior whom Taim had assured her was as skilled as any under his command.

  Anyara still thought it foolish for Orisian to have forced a shieldman upon her, but the young man's company was not unpleasant. Which was just as well for Coinach, since Anyara might otherwise have vented some of her many frustrations on him. She had been aghast when Orisian had told her he meant to return to Kolglas without her.

  She knew his reasons, of course; better, she believed, than Orisian knew them himself. Only someone who had experienced the utter, dismantling grief of profound loss could understand the fear it engendered: the fear of its repetition, a constant anticipation that the cruel world might at any moment inflict a still more excessive, wanton punishment. Orisian meant to fend off that possibility by keeping her out of harm's way. She understood that; understood the fear that haunted him. Almost every night, she experienced the consequences of loss herself. Her sleep was awash with evil dreams: dreams of darkness and fire and threat, dreams that had the same flavour as those she had suffered when the Heart Fever took possession of her. They had begun only after she had reached the comparative safety of Kolkyre, as if her mind, freed from the constant and immediate pressures of her captivity and then her flight to Koldihrve, had turned in on itself. Most mornings, Anyara woke drained, sometimes alarmed.

  She had hidden it all from Orisian with meticulous care. She had no desire to add to his burdens, and therefore told him nothing of her dreams, or of the grief that was testing her inner defences to their limit. And she had not argued with him when he told her to remain here in the Tower of Thrones. Not for very long, at least. His face, as soon as she raised her voice, had betrayed the maelstrom of feelings that he could not express: regret, fear, guilt, love. But there had been an insistence there, too. She held her tongue. She allowed him to leave her behind, and hoped that doing so might ease his fears.

  It left Anyara with a prodigious store of irritation and frustration, like a vat so full of vinegar that the acrid liquid trembled at the very lip, poised to spill forth at only the slightest nudge. Had Mordyn Jerain not arrived when he did, Aewult nan Haig might have been drenched. After the Chancellor and Bloodheir departed, she tried to return to her discussions with Ilessa oc Kilkry-Haig but found herself distracted by angry thoughts. The Thane's wife was understanding.

  "Go," she said. "Take a walk in the gardens. The mind works poorly when the heart is so unsettled."

  So Anyara followed Coinach down the long spiral staircase, and watched his shoulders, and his short, coarse hair. He fitted her image of what a young warrior should be like. She hoped, and assumed, that she would never have cause to discover whether his abilities matched that image.

  A few steps out into the open air were enough to tell Anyara that the weather was not all it might have been. Desultory sleet had begun to fall, gobbets of slushy ice spitting down. She glanced up at the cloud-filled sky.

  "Not fit for a stroll, really," she muttered.

  "No," Coinach agreed.

  Anyara sighed. She hated the idea of sitting around. Bitter experience had long ago taught her that inactivity only undermined her defences. Movement, occupation: these were the things that kept her beyond the reach of the past and of memories.

  "You've orders to teach me how to fight, haven't you?" she asked Coinach.

  "Yes, lady." The flicker of unease in his expression was tiny and faint, but Anyara noticed it. She let it pass.

  "Let's begin that, then. So long as we can find somewhere sheltered."

  "The barracks, lady. They have the training blades we would need there, too."

  "Wooden?" she said with a trace of scorn. Coinach looked uncomfortable, perhaps even fearful of her displeasure, but he said nothing. There was an appealing boyishness about his expression, Anyara thought. He was, she reminded herself, not much older than her.

  "Very well. Come, we can get rain capes from the guardroom. They keep them there for such moments."

  The little room had been hollowed out of the thick wall of the Tower. Its walls were bare stone, and their smooth, hard surfaces were inflating the noise of the argument Anyara found in progress. A single guard, who obviously wished with all his heart that he was elsewhere, stood in the corner making a determined effort to go unnoticed. A maid, her cheek glowing from the aftermath of some recent blow, tears on her face, rushed out even as Anyara entered. The girl - who could not be more than fifteen or sixteen - brushed past, barely even noticing Anyara, and ran for the main stairway.

  Ishbel, Aewult nan Haig's notorious companion, stood in the centre of the guardroom. She was shouting after the fleeing maidservant.

  "The red one! With the black hood! The one you should have brought in the first place!"

  She glanced at Anyara. Their eyes met for a moment, but Ishbel seemed not to recognise Anyara - or not to care. Her gaze snapped aside, still pursuing the maid.

  "You'll not make me wear these rags!" Ishbel cried out.

  "You struck the girl?" Anyara enquired softly.

  That was enough to hold Ishbel's attention. She was truly beautiful, Anyara thought: flawless skin, sleek dark hair. Perfect, full cheeks that were suffused with a rosy blush of anger.

  "She forgot my cape," Ishbel snapped. "Then thinks I should wear one of those." She gestured at the plain rain capes that hung on one wall of the guardroom. "Look at them!"

  Anyara did as she was bid. "They seem fit for their purpose to me. I was seeking one myself." She smiled at the other woman, and not out of affection or politeness.

  Ishbel glared at her. Anyara thought there was a moment of doubt, perhaps recognition, in there. Perhaps she knows who I am now, she thought.

  "Not good enough for you?" she asked Ishbel sweetly. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the guard hang his head and shrink still further back into the corner.

  "I didn't come all this way to wander around this miserable city in the rain dressed like a fisherwoman."

  "Oh. Why did you come all this way? To strike your servants? Or just to keep the Bloodheir's bed warm?" She heard Coinach groan behind her, and saw Ishbel open her mouth to respond. "I was always taught that the only people who struck their servants were those who deserved worse themselves," she said before either of them could interrupt her.

  Such a twist of anger then disfigured Ishbel's fair face that Anyara imagined for a moment that she was about to be struck herself. She knew it was foolish - a thought that did not become the sister of a Thane - but she almost relished the prospect: it would, at least, offer a release for her caged frustrations. Surely no one could object if she struck back? Instead, Ishbel's face settled back into an expression of studied contempt.

  "And I was taught that it's best to keep your nose out other people's affairs," she snapped.

  Coinach pushed in front of Anyara, nodding almost respectfully to Ishbel. He took one of the capes down from its hook.

  "We have what we came for," he said to Anyara as he settled the cape on her shoulders and gently - so gently that it was little
more than a suggestion in his hands - sought to turn her away. "It might be best to be on our way before the weather worsens."

  Anyara allowed herself to be ushered out into the sleet. She paused outside the Tower, adjusting the cape and pulling up its hood.

  "I didn't know it was a shieldman's task to guard me from the likes of her," she muttered.

  "From whatever harm may threaten, I think, lady," the warrior said. "Whether self-inflicted or otherwise."

  She tugged aside the edge of her hood in order to frown at him, but he was looking up at the sky.

  "May even turn to snow soon," he mused. "Best to get down to the barracks."

  He said it with an air of such casual observation that her irritation faded. It would not, after all, have been wise to stand there trading ever more barbed insults with Aewult's lover. The Haig Blood hardly needed more reasons to dislike her own.

  "Come, then," she said as she set off down the path that curled away through the bleak gardens. "What will you be teaching me today?"

  "We should start with the knife, I imagine. Always easy to carry a knife somewhere about you."

  "A knife? That'll not help me much if some White Owl's trying to stick me with a spear, or some Inkallim's chopping me up with a sword."

  She thought she heard Coinach sigh then. It was a faint, resigned sound. It made her smile, and she almost reached out to pat him encouragingly on the back.

  "We'll make it a big knife, lady," he said. "The biggest we can find."

  III

  Urik the Wardcaptain was drunk when Ammen Sharp killed him. Falling-down, stupid drunk. Ammen would have made the attempt anyway, for he had no reserves of patience to draw upon, no caution left to soften his urgent hunger for revenge. That luck should so smile on him as to lead Urik into a tavern and keep him there long enough to render him defenceless only made Ammen more certain of the rightness of his course.

  He had followed the Wardcaptain from the Guard House of Kolkyre's Harbour ward. The foulness of Urik's mood had been obvious from the first moment he stamped out into the evening. His path to the nearby tavern had been direct and determined. It was easy for Ammen to follow undetected. Sprawled flat on the roof, staring down at the door from which he expected his quarry to emerge, he had allowed himself to wonder briefly just how much trouble the Wardcaptain of the Guard was already in. His distress, his pressing need to drown it with ale, suggested that the bribes Urik had taken from Ammen's father had come to light, or were about to do so. Perhaps the Guard itself was close to turning on him; to sending him to the headtaker. In the end it mattered not at all, since Ammen Sharp meant to save them the trouble.

  When the Wardcaptain came stumbling out onto the street below Ammen's rooftop perch he managed only a few strides before he fell on his face, into a puddle. As soon as he saw that, Ammen slithered back from the edge of the roof and lowered himself into the alley at the side of the tavern. Inside, he was urging Urik to rise, to gather himself enough to move on. Late as the hour was, and dark the night, there was still too many people abroad here. Even now, he could hear laughter out in the street, some little band mocking Urik's state. Ammen silently cursed whoever it was, hating them for interfering, for coming between him and the man who had killed his father. Soon enough the merry voices drifted away, and the only sounds he could hear were Urik coughing and spitting and the slopping of mud as he tried to rise. Ammen went out into the street. Urik was a stumbling shape reeling off down the long slope towards the sea. There was no sign of anyone else, but Ammen kept to the darkest places as he followed the Wardcaptain. It mattered greatly to him that he should not be caught, if only because he had other business to attend to once Urik was done with.

  After Ammen had acquired his little knife a year ago, his father had told him often how to kill a man, demonstrating with sharp movements, clenched fists. Not the heart: too well-guarded by ribs. The throat, perhaps, or the groin, where the blood would pour like a fountain. With a bigger blade, you could try to open a man's guts or spear his liver, but Ammen's knife was too small for him to be sure of such a result. The throat might be the best, the surest, now that Urik was too drunk to resist.

  Ammen had not had cause to use the knife in anger since that night a year ago in the darkened alley. For all his pride in bearing it, and in the manner of his winning it, he had never been one to seek out confrontation. His father had taught him that the best victory was the one gained before violence became necessary. In the long run, it was almost always better to use intimidation, bribery, deceit than your fists to bend a man to your will: their effects were, Ochan had always maintained, more reliable and long-lasting.

  Urik had come to a halt. He was leaning against a stall, his feet sliding out from under him in small increments so that he sank slowly towards the ground. Ammen Sharp crouched down in the doorway of a basket-maker's shop. The darkness pooled there was deep enough to hide him from any casual eye. Glancing up and down the street, he saw no one. He could hear only distant voices; nothing of immediate concern. He watched Urik, wondering if the Wardcaptain had gone as far as he could go.

  Ochan's insistence that violence was to be avoided had its exceptions, of course. Sometimes, Ammen had come to understand, there was no choice other than to unsheathe a blade or tighten a garrotte. If a man would not step aside, would not listen to reason or threat or the tempting song of coin, then his challenge must be answered in other ways. That was the nature of the world.

  "There's none to look after us, boy," Ochan the Cook had muttered to his son once, while they stood together before the body of a man who had just been strangled on his orders. "Some folk say that when there were Gods in the world, everything was all light and warmth and loving. Everyone was kind and noble, and everything was all orderly and peaceable. Doubt it myself, but even if it's true that's not the world as it is now. That's not the world we live in."

  He pointed at the sagging corpse in front of them. The man's hands and feet had been tied to the chair, his head hooded with a burlap sack. The knotted rope was still taut around his livid neck.

  "We're not much more than dogs on two feet, boy, and don't you forget it. Sooner or later, you might have to fight for what you want. The ones who know how to fight come out on top, the ones who don't . . . well, there. You can see. They end up tied to chairs with bags over their heads."

  Now, edging out from his hiding place into the street, Ammen Sharp knew that the world did not even adhere to the simple rules that his father had set out. Sometimes the ones who knew how to fight ended up dead anyway, their heads smashed in on the floor of someone else's warehouse. It was not only the Gods that had abandoned the world, but all sense, all justice. If even men such as Ochan, strong and powerful men who understood the pattern of things, could come to such an end, what was there left to believe in, to hope for? Not much. But there was revenge. Punishment.

  Ammen edged up behind Urik. The Wardcaptain was retching. In a moment or two he would probably be on his knees, emptying his stomach. His entire attention, drunken and dislocated as it might be, was focused on the rebelliousness of his own body. Ammen took one last look up and down the length of the street: empty. Silent. He grasped Urik's greasy hair with his left hand, pulled the Wardcaptain's head up and back and stabbed him in the side of the neck.

  Urik made a stupid, incoherent noise and tried to turn around. He was pawing the air. Ammen Sharp stabbed him again, and a made a couple of quick sawing motions with the blade. Blood was pulsing out in thick black splashes. That was enough to tell Ammen the wound would be fatal. He stamped hard on the back of Urik's knee, knocking him down. The Guardsman twisted as he fell and landed on his back, staring vacantly up into Ammen's face.

  "For Ochan the Cook," Ammen hissed, and spat on the bridge of Urik's nose. He jammed the knife in again, into the front of Urik's throat. Part of him would have liked to stay, to watch the Wardcaptain's last breaths rattling bloodily out, but the pleasure of savouring those moments did not outweigh the r
isk of being caught. It would be ill-disciplined, silly, to ruin everything now by being captured.

  Ammen Sharp ran this time. He went as fast as he could in the dark of the city's narrow ways, following one of the possible routes he had plotted in his mind during those long hours of waiting on the tavern's roof. He did not need the light of day, here amongst the alleys that had once been his father's domain. Down, down towards the harbour he ran, cutting this way and that, back and forth amongst the crowded ramshackle houses of poor fishermen and shore-scavengers. The bolt-hole he had found for himself, an abandoned kiln in a workshop long ago ruined by fire, awaited him: safe and secret. And as he ran, his mind raced too. He was done with Urik, but a further task remained to him. One more death was required in answer to what had happened in Polochain's warehouse, and he already knew it would be far more difficult to contrive than Urik's had been. It might even be beyond him; attempting it might achieve nothing but his own death. Nevertheless, he would try. It was the least his father deserved.

  So, somehow, Ammen Sharp would find a way to kill the Shadowhand.

  IV

  "I heard you had a disagreement with Aewult's whore." Roaric nan Kilkry-Haig had an unpleasant, bitter smile on his face as he spoke.

  Anyara avoided his gaze. "I thought she was a singer or something," she said.

  "A dancer, once upon a time I think. Still, she loves his wealth, his glory, not him," Roaric said with a shrug. "Makes her something of a whore, doesn't it?"

  Lheanor's son made Anyara uncomfortable. He meant well, she knew. He thought himself a friend and ally of her Blood, and no doubt she could trust him in that. His anger was so raw, though, his character so veined with hostility, that it coloured his every conversation. Anyara suspected that what she saw in him was a distorted reflection of herself as she might have been, had she not learned to hold back bitterness and sorrow by strength of will. She found it ugly.