The Dread Wyrm

by Miles Cameron

  “Have you a flask, Gant, some more of the Honour?”

  Her hands were full of earth, grabbing at it, having their final fling.

  “I’m out, Dolly,” I said. “I’m done too. I’m sorry for how it all ended.”

  She blinked, grief pinching her up.

  “It can’t be over already. I’m twenty summers, Gant. This was goin’ to be the big purse.”

  A moment then I couldn’t fill with any words.

  “Tell my father, Gant, say…”

  I was raising my bow. I did my best to clean an arrow on my leggings. She was watching me as I did it, knowing.

  “Tell him I love him, Gant, tell him I got the Honour, and give him my purse and my brother a kiss.”

  “I will.”

  As I drew it she looked above me, seeing something I knew I wouldn’t see, leagues away, some answers to her questions in her eyes thrilling her. I let fly, fell to my knees and sicked up.

  Where was Shale?

  My mouth was too dry to speak or shout for him, but I needed him. My eyes, the lids of them, were peeling back so’s they would burn in the sun. I put my hands to my face. It was only visions, but my chest was heavy, like somebody sat on it and others were piling on. Looking through my hands as I held them up, it was like there were just bones there, flesh thin like the fins of a fish. My breathing rattled and I reached to my throat to try to open it up more.

  “Gant!”

  So much blood on him. He kneeled next to me. He’s got grey eyes, no colour. Enemy to him is just so much warm meat to be put still. He don’t much smile unless he’s drunk. He mostly never drinks. He sniffed about me and at my wound, to get a reading of what was in it, then forced the arrow out with a knife and filled the hole with guaia bark while kneeling on my shoulder to keep me still. He was barking at some boys as he stuffed some rugara leaves, sap and all, into my mouth, holding my nose shut, drowning me. Fuck! My brains were buzzing sore like a hive was in them. Some frothing liquid filled up my chest and I was bucking about for breath. He poured from a flask over my hip and the skin frosted over with an agony of burning. Then he took out some jumpcrick’s legbones and held them against the hole, snap snap, a flash of blue flame and everything fell away high.

  There was a choking, but it didn’t feel like me no longer. It felt like the man I was before I died.

  Kailen

  “Let’s see it.”

  Achi flicked it across the table, a pebble across wood, but this stone was worked with precision, as round as a coin, black and thick as a thumb. There were no markings on it, a hairline of quartz the only imperfection of the material itself. The ocean had polished it, my face made a shadow by it. It was the third I’d seen in the last few months.

  “The Prince, from your old crew, his throat was cut,” said Achi.

  Achi drained his cup, leaned back in his chair and yawned, the chair creaking, not built for such a big man still in his leathers, filthy and sour-smelling from the weeks sleeping out.

  “How are the boys?” I asked.

  He opened his eyes with a start, already drifting away to sleep. I smiled at his irritation.

  “Sorry, sir, all good. Danik and Stimmy are sorting out the horses, Wil went looking for a mercer, wants to get his woman something as we been away a while.”

  “Stimmy’s boy is on the mend, I had word from the estate. Let him know if you see him before me.”

  Achi nodded and yawned again.

  I looked again at the black coin in my fingers. Such coins were given to mercenaries who betrayed their purse or their crew. But who had The Prince betrayed?

  We called him The Prince because there was a time when he was in line for a throne, last of three, least loved and cleverest. His homeland chose its emperors in a way as ridiculous as any; which of the incumbents best demonstrated martial prowess. His sister won their single combat on the day their father died and was thus made queen, but his sword wasn’t what made him worthy of the Twenty.

  The Prince did the politics his sister could not. War allows only two dimensions, yours and theirs, a limit his sister was not capable of seeing beyond. Nations require the management of more factions than cut diamonds have facets and I met nobody that could exploit his empire’s politic more adroitly than The Prince.

  I plucked a white grape from the bowl, milky and juicy as a blind eyeball. Achi peeled eggs, head bowed. The bargirl came in and cleared away the plates. She offered a quick smile before retreating to the noise of the inn below us.

  I recalled the two other black coins I’d seen recently, as perfect as this one, which The Prince showed me in his cabin aboard one of the Quartet’s grand galleys only a few months ago. The Quartet were an influential merchant guild across most of the Old Kingdoms.

  I had travelled to see him after he’d sent an escort to get me.

  “These coins were found with Harlain and Milu,” he said. “I will try and find out more.”

  “How did they die?” I asked.

  “Harlain returned to his homeland, Tetswana, became their leader, the Kaan of Tetswana no less. It was the gathering before the rains. Leaders and retinues of nine tribes. Seventy or so dead, the coin in his hand only.”

  Harlain would not join us at Snakewood, the last time any of the Twenty were together. He had wanted to leave us some time before the end. Paying the colour had taken from all of us, but it took his heart. It was only as we embraced for a final time and I helped him with his saddle that I realized I hadn’t heard him singing for some months. I was glad he made it home.

  “Milu?” I asked.

  “He became a horse singer out in Alagar. They found him lying at the side of a singer’s pit. Someone had been with him, footprints in the sand around his body, the coin in his hand.”

  “Poison?” I asked.

  “Almost certainly. No way of placing it.”

  Milu had also been at Snakewood, but stayed only for a drink and to buy supplies before leaving with Kheld. They had lost heart as much as Harlain had; no talk of purses or where in the world was at war; they did not discuss, as did Sho or Shale, how my name could be put to work to bolster the gold of a purse.

  I never tired of watching Milu work, bringing the wild horses to his side, training them to hold firm in the charge. It seemed that he, like Harlain, had been able to let go of the mercenary life before the colour took everything.

  “Their deaths are connected, Kailen. It must be the Twenty.”

  “You’ve heard from nobody else?”

  “Only that Dithnir had died. He went back home to Tarantrea, one of their envoys that negotiates with the Quartet I represent knows me well and shared the news with me. I asked about a coin but there was none. Apart from that I keep in touch with Kheld when I’m in Handar, but the rest, no idea.”

  I breathed deeply of the morning breeze that blew across the deck and slapped at the fringes of the awning we were beneath. Dithnir was a bowman, almost a match for Stixie, shy and inadvisedly romantic with whores, cold and implacable in the field.

  “I remember Snakewood,” said The Prince.

  Our eyes met briefly. “No. That was dealt with.” I’d said it more sharply than I’d intended. Why did I feel a thread of doubt?

  He reached across the table, took the carafe and refilled our glasses.

  “Your estate is improving,” he said, holding up his glass for a toast.

  “Yes, these vines were planted two winters ago, they’ll improve. I only wish for Jua’s cooler summers, perhaps an estate nearer the hills. How is the Quartet? I hear you have brokered a treaty with the Shalec to cross their waters. Not even the Post could manage it.”

  “Why would I toil through its ranks to High Reeve or Fieldsman when I can be a Partner with the Quartet. The Red himself could learn something from The Quartet regarding our softening of the Shalec, but I’m glad he hasn’t, I’m lining my pockets beautifully. Remarkable as the Post runs so much trade elsewhere. They can bid lower than us at almost every turn; w
e can’t match the subs, but we can work with lower margins, give Shalec a fee on the nutmeg, a pittance of course. Every investor north of the Gulf believes the Post controls the winds.”

  “While the Post can sub dividends over fewer summers than anyone else, the flatbacks will flock,” I said, “but enough of trade. Congratulations, Prince, I’m glad to see things are going well, being a Partner suits you. Will you get a message to me if you find Kheld? It would be good to know he’s still alive.”

  He nodded. He had been the difference at Ahmstad, turning three prominent families under the noses of Vilmor’s king, extending the borders and fortifying them in a stroke. The mad king is still being strangled in the noose The Prince tied. His death proved that whoever of us was alive was in danger. I signed our purses. This could only be about getting at me.

  Achi had fallen asleep.

  I poured him some of the dreadful brandy that was the best the Riddle had to offer.

  Shale and Gant were taking a purse only weeks south. If they were still anything like the soldiers of old I would have need of them. Achi’s crew would be glad to be going back to Harudan. I needed good men with my wife, Araliah. Still, there was one more thing I needed to ask of Achi himself, one person I needed to confirm was dead.

  The Prince and the Ahmstad

  An account, by a Fieldsman in the guise of a bodyguard to the Ahmstad Ladus (chief), of the negotiation by which Kailen and The Prince secured a bloodless victory for Ahmstad over Vilmor.

  —Goran

  Report: Candar Prime, Q4 649 OE

  Eastern Sar Westmain routed

  Confidential for The Red only

  Fieldsman 71

  You are aware of Vilmorian expansionism under their King Turis. They have been amassing an army for assaults on two fronts, the Luzhan Province and Ahmstad.

  A clan leader for Ahmstad brought a mercenary known as Kailen to their war council. To say the Ladus was displeased was to put it mildly. The clan leader, Hasike, asked that the Ladus hear him out.

  What follows is a transcription of the meeting as best as I can relay it. It is evident that Kailen, and his fellow that he called The Prince, displayed a formidable understanding of both sides of the potential conflict. He is a most unusual mercenary and a compelling speaker, though of course this does not come across half so well in my approximation of the meeting.

  “May I ask the Ladus the size of the army he is amassing?” said Kailen.

  “The clans represented here have committed to me near eighteen thousand men and women. Do I speak right?” Raised voice, eliciting approval and some banging of cups.

  “And what would the Ladus say losses of such men might be, were Vilmor to bring to bear an army estimated at twenty-five thousand?”

  “Where do you get such numbers, soldier?”

  The Prince speaks then. “We served with Vilmor, as you no doubt already know. They have seventy-six fiefs, variously providing twenty to two hundred men and women.”

  “With these numbers, in open battle, the losses would be?” This was Kailen.

  “Significantly higher on their side.” More cups were banged at this point.

  “Ladus,” said Hasike, somewhat frustrated, “who bears the brunt of their aggression? My clan. We are your border with Vilmor.”

  “As we border the Wilds,” said another, “but we do not cry to the Ladus over it.”

  “The Wilds do not bring in twenty thousand men in front of a fortified supply line,” said Kailen.

  “Bang your cups and brag if it pleases you, but you stand over a map that shows clearly where Vilmor will push, through Hasike’s land and to the heart of Ahmstad.”

  The Ladus raised his arms to quieten the shouts.

  “My council waits with bated breath for the wisdom of a Harudanian mercenary on its own affairs. I question your fitness to be part of this council, Hasike, that you have brought to our gathering men paid to chop up soldiers when what we need is to outwit Turis’s generals.”

  “You ought consider Hasike wise, Ladus. I will gladly demonstrate why.” Remarkably, the mercenary sounded angry. I had expected him to be run through at that point, for the Ladus enjoyed nothing more than disemboweling everyone from servants to his own family for slights of honour or even dark looks.

  “You have not begun to muster from your war communes, the sheriffs and quarters are still securing your supplies: wood, cattle, grain. The men at this table await their levies, and the last time I fought Ahmstad I would not hold such hope for the weak and ill equipped majority that are enrolled. Hasike’s lands will be pillaged and burned, some fifth of your tithe in buffalo, a seventh of all your kannab crops.” He had the room now, though the Ladus’s fist was white as it gripped the handle of his axe.

  Kailen swept the arranged blocks from the map and reset them. He laid out the routes the Vilmorian army would take, the challenge for the Ahmstad forces, and every way that he laid out their options they were to expect heavy losses, even in victory.

  The room was silent, for each anticipated deployment and stratagem had been devised and its consequences presented soundly.

  “I have a question,” said the Ladus. “If we are likely to lose, why have you sold Hasike your services? Do you and your friend of some dubious royal lineage plan to defeat Turis with your own hands?”

  “No. For one hundred and fifty gold pieces my friend of dubious royal lineage will explain why you need not raise a sword to defeat the forces of Vilmor, gain yourselves land and new allies and weaken Turis significantly.”

  The Ladus erupted with laughter. “If I’d wanted a fool I would have left my first consort alive. I suppose you wish to be paid before you share your grand plan with us as well?”

  “Listen to him, for my people’s sake,” said Hasike.

  The Ladus was always a big and intimidating man, easily a foot taller than anyone else in a room, and I’d seen him press and win, time and again, from Hasike for more cattle for the northern Ahmstad clans he favoured. Hasike was desperate. The Ladus took a deep breath.

  “Fifty gold pieces. If I like what I hear you’ll get your hundred more, if not you’ll swallow them and I’ll cut them out of your belly.” He turned his head slightly towards where I stood with his treasurer, and a nod commanded the treasurer to count out the coins. Kailen took the proffered pouch as calmly as a man receiving payment for food, suggesting that, uniquely in my experience, his purses were of a not dissimilar amount.

  Kailen’s man, The Prince, was, I learned shortly afterwards, called so because he was an heir to the throne of Old Ceirad. He had the Old Kingdoms aristocracy in every bone, an educated, persuasive speaker. He also used Ladus’s map and his blocks to explain his argument.

  “Vilmor, as I have said, is comprised of seventy-six fiefs. Your lands border eleven of those fiefs. Of those eleven there are three that matter. These three share a common ancestry with Hasike’s clan. You will have noted how peaceful the border is there, compared to the Wilds and Razhani borders. Only Lagrad is more peaceful, and precisely because of your longstanding treaty.

  “These three fiefs, comprising two clans, do not, shall we say, dine at the top table with Turis and the bigger fiefs. Indeed, he has seen fit to put to a vote the redrawing of the fiefdoms in favour of a cousin whose land lies behind theirs. His mistake, as I see it, has been to give his cousin the oversight and control of levies, in the name of Turis, to see to the construction of the forts that now press against your borders, in those three lands.

  “As many of you in the room will testify, if the Ladus here designated Hasike or anyone else to command your own men to build forts in the Ladus’s name, irrespective of the cost to your lands and your harvests, you would be displeased.” This earned a few grunts of approval.

  “Two castles have been built, at great cost to those fiefs, seven other wooden forts and the construction of bridges through some of the marshlands that edge your borders give Vilmore the advantage of which we speak.

  “I
would suggest that the hundred gold pieces not be paid now, as I summarize our plan, but upon its execution. Will you bind to that, Ladus?”

  You now understand how interesting these two mercenaries are. The Ladus is a great warrior, but a vain and ridiculous man. They understood this, as they must have understood Hasike’s position as well as the intelligence they had gathered on the border before they approached Hasike and the Ladus. I was struck at that moment by the thought that one hundred and fifty gold pieces was not as preposterous as it initially seemed. Nor did Kailen’s demeanour shift for a moment at this change in the agreement, as though it too had been rehearsed.

  The Ladus looked about the room, and I noted Kailen’s satisfaction. He had concluded much as I did, that this gesture indicated Ladus did not have the initiative or command here. He sought the faces of his clan leaders for their view on this offer, though it would have been madness to refuse.

  “Explain your plan,” he said.

  The Prince continued. “Enfeoff the three clans, at the cost of one quarter of Hasike’s own lands and four of his herds. Make also a gift to each clan of five hundred gold pieces, along with two hundred jars each of cocklebur seeds and the recipes for them. Commit also to fund a war commune there and give them a place on the council. In return…”

  There were cries of “Disgrace!” and others much more colourful, but The Prince continued over them.

  “In return you have extended your borders, united four clans that Hansike will soon get control of, gained two castles and a number of forts and weakened Turis considerably on this front.”

  Though the hubbub continued a moment, the Ladus raised his hand for silence.

  “Hasike?” he said.

  “I believe with some suitable marriages, the war commune in what remains of my territory and my family’s lineage in respect of these clans, I and my sons after me will take overall control of these lands, though I expect, as The Prince has said, that they will accede to our offer willingly. I can commit from my own men enough, with Kailen’s help, to secure the castles while we secure the lands.”