“Perhaps it should be renamed the Bleeding Heart Sea,” remarked Bail, and the Generals all turned to look at him.
“We gave you no permission to bark, dog,” said Saqr, a trifle testily, “and in truth you ought to be whipped for your performance today. Could you not have waited until Harsu was safely asleep or alone with you in some private place, before sticking the knife in? You have placed us in a most awkward situation.”
Bail shrugged. “I have waited to kill him these past ten months,” he replied, calmly wiping his bloody knife on the edge of the sodden map, “now seemed as good a time as any.”
“Except it wasn’t!” hissed Bashar. “There are scores of his lancers outside, waiting for him to emerge as Emperor. They will have our guts when they see he is dead!”
“Yes, your timing left much to be desired,” said Saqr. A smile crawled up one side of his face. “However, there may be a remedy.”
Bail tensed as General Anma placed a meaty hand on the hilt of her sword. “You mean, let’s kill this foreign shit and claim he murdered Harsu of his own volition,” she rumbled, “Nice idea, Saqr, but I do wish you would just speak your mind. Guards, have him!”
Bail had been expecting it, and moved quickly. He was over the table and almost at the exit before the four bodyguards had drawn their swords.
Only Anma stepping into his path stopped him from making a clean getaway. The other Generals hung back, aesthetes to a man, deploring bloodshed that didn’t occur at a safe distance.
“Help! Murder! Treachery!” Bail howled at the top of his voice as Anma lugged out her sword and unleashed a cut at his head. Lithe as a snake, he rolled aside, flowed to his feet and sprinted through the tent flaps. At the same time he slashed his own cheek with his knife and threw the weapon away before emerging into daylight.
“Treachery, treachery!” he screamed at the nearest soldiers, who were shocked to see this bleeding apparition staggering out of what was supposed to be a peaceful parley. They were not Harsu’s men, so he dodged through their line, clutching at his self-inflicted wound, and ran towards the Harriers.
Their commander, a tough one-eyed veteran named Sargon, spied Bail and spurred towards him. “What happened?” he demanded, “where is the General?”
Bail held up his hand, now dripping with blood. “Our master is slain, most treacherously slain, by those jackals in the tent!” he moaned, “they tried to kill me too…fly, Sargon, before they kill us all!”
The old soldier turned pale. “The fuck we will,” he rasped, and turned to his soldiers. “Brothers, our noble commander is dead!” he roared, “after me, at the double!”
His troop roared and shook their lances, and the fragile tension erupted. The soldiers immediately outside the tent, General Assur’s men, scrambled to form a hasty shield wall and bellowed for their comrades. More cries went up, mingling with droning war-horns and the whinnying of frightened horses.
Bail weaved and ducked through the throng. He thought he heard the voice of General Saqr, bleating for calm, along with the bass rumble of General Anma, but paid them no heed. Harsu’s chariot had appeared just in front of him.
The pretty young driver, whose name was Asu, appeared dumbstruck by the sudden melee, and raised no objection as Bail vaulted over the guard and thrust the slack reins into his hand.
“Drive! Now!” he bawled, and Asu sprang into life. Grabbing the reins, he cracked his whip at his already nervous horses. The beasts surged into a gallop.
* * * *
The warrior knelt on his raw knees and scrubbed the deck of the infamous pirate ship, the Jagged Blade. His ears ached as well as his knees, for he was being bawled at by the first mate, a rat-like tyrant named Silt.
Six months previously, the Jagged Blade, a sleek black vessel that knifed through the sea like a hunting shark, had boarded a fishing boat and slaughtered all the crew but one. The exception was Colken, who had become a fisherman out of necessity but was a warrior by birth and training. He had killed four of the pirates and crippled two others, before being finally subdued and thrown into the stinking bilge.
Silt would happily have left him there to die, since the first mate was unwilling to forgive or forget the humiliation of receiving a sound beating before his subordinates and the weeks of pain in his broken jaw. He had vowed to kill Colken, but he couldn't do so just yet for fear of Captain Wade.
The captain of the Jagged Blade had been sufficiently impressed by Colken's performance to order Silt to release him and make him one of the crew, which only served to intensify his hatred.
Silt was a wiry little shrew, born to a barmaid in a harbour tavern somewhere in the Western Isles. The Isles, a famous nest of pirates, attracted some of the most disreputable characters in the World Apparent, plying their trades as thieves and cutthroats without the inconvenience of laws. Any one of a thousand of them could have been Silt's father.
Consequently, he was a bad tempered bully with a little-man complex and a sadistic streak. He was a good head and a half shorter than Colken, who dwarfed him, and most of the crew, in every physical aspect. His tiny, black eyes blinked over a filthy beard that failed to hide the permanent expression of disdain on his rodent face. That expression had deepened since Colken's arrival.
Colken kept his eyes fixed on his work. He had made some progress endearing himself to the rest of the crew, but he still got the same daily abuse from Silt. And, for the time being at least, there was nothing he could do about it. Silt was second on the Jagged Blade and to kill him would mean Colken's life. But his patience was wearing thin.
“Scrub harder you useless louse!” Silt's repertoire of insults was not extensive, but that just made them all the more grating. Frustrated at Colken’s refusal to react, he aimed a vicious kick at his ribs.
Colken's hand shot out and caught Silt's foot before it could make contact. He gazed up at his tormentor, wondering whether he should kill him or wait for a better opportunity to escape.
Colken's decision was made for him, for there was a shout from the crow's nest. The ape-like lookout known as Gristle had spotted a sail on the horizon to the north. Colken released Silt’s foot, and the first mate turned immediately, producing his eye-glass and pointing it toward the distant ship.
“Stations!” he yelled.
If there was one thing Silt liked more than goading Colken, it was the prospect of plunder, preferably easily taken, and that was exactly what his little black eyes peered at now.
Colken fetched his grappling hook and took up his position, which was at the starboard rail. His job was to wait until the Jagged Blade drew up alongside its quarry, throw his hook aboard the other ship and help to pull the vessels together. After that was the easy part, or easy for Colken at least; leap aboard the snared vessel and kill until he was told to stop. He had been trained from infancy to be good at such wanton killing, in his distant home in the deep jungles south of the Girdle Sea.
He had fallen easily into the lifestyle of a pirate, despite the questionable morality of piracy playing on his conscience. He had justified his actions by the fact he had no choice. Six months ago, as he lay starving in the bilge, he had been given an ultimatum by Silt: become a pirate and serve Captain Wade aboard the Jagged Blade, or become food for the sharks.
He knew he would escape, he had to, but if Colken had one surviving virtue after months of indiscriminate murder, it was patience. Opportunities to escape a ship in the middle of the high seas don't come very often, but he was determined that when one did, he'd be ready. For now he had to do his job and try not to get killed.
So while men raced back and forth following the orders barked by Silt, Colken lined up at the rail with the rest of the boarding party. Fifty of the most vicious, bloodthirsty thugs on the ship, armed to the teeth with an array of weapons ranging from the functional to the exotic—depending on each ragged individual's particular taste in butchery.
It was a warm day in mid-Harvest. The Jagged Blade had been sailing east on a
choppy sea, the sails flapping in a brisk, balmy southerly wind. Upon sighting the distant sail, Silt ordered the galleon brought around to larboard. The sails were fully unfurled to take advantage of the breeze and they quickly gained speed in pursuit of their prey.
The tiny, white sails on the horizon gradually became clearer. The shouts from the crew grew ever more excited as they closed on the other vessel. It was a two-masted flute; a fat-bottomed merchant ship built more for capacity than speed.
The hapless ship was no match for the Jagged Blade. She was a sleek, three-masted vessel, stolen from a fleet of brave but sea-sick knights from the Winter Realm some fifty years previously. Manned by over two hundred ruthless killers, her black-painted hull sliced through the swell like a freshly whetted cutlass gutting a fat man's belly.
The Jagged Blade slid in a great arc as she turned north, then continued to bear round to larboard in a giant half-circle that eventually brought her up the stern of the slower flute.
As they gained on their quarry, Colken could make out figures rushing back and forth on the upper deck, casting barrels over the side in a vain attempt to make their ship pick up the pace. Silt cursed at every barrel lost to the depths.
He could also see a coat of arms embroidered on the white sails. It showed two horses, one red and one blue, rearing up either side of a red and blue shield. In the centre of the shield was a horse-shoe which appeared to have been embroidered in gold thread and shone bright in the sun. He had heard that the horse-shoe was a symbol of good luck in the Winter Realm, although whichever family this coat of arms represented, it had apparently not worked.
By the time the Jagged Blade came alongside the hapless flute, Silt was in a vile rage, having watched the crew of the smaller vessel empty most of its cargo overboard. His red face seethed with fury as he spat and swore at the boarding party.
“On my command, you swaggering half-wits! Hook her and pull! As soon as she's pinned, kill everyone! Bring me anything of value!”
For the first time Colken caught sight of the name painted on the hull. The Queen Heloise.
“Another family fleeing the strife in the Winter Realm,” cried Silt, “out of the frying pan and into the fire!”
A great chunk of sun-burned muscle to Colken’s right, known as Scutum, nudged Colken in the ribs. Criss-crossed with the white arcs and nicks of scar tissue from innumerable fights, Scutum was a wall of battered flesh. His anvil jaw creaked open to show a vast cavern sporting five or six brown teeth as he wheezed his amusement at the Winter Realm's recent tendency to provide prey for the pirates of the Western Isles.
The truth was, there was civil war raging in the island kingdom following the death (or murder, as the rumour went) of its infant queen, and those without the stomach for the ensuing fight for power, or simply too much to lose, were fleeing west and south, to start again.
Unfortunately for them, these waters were patrolled by ruthless pirates, and without a heavily armed escort or some prior arrangement with the Raven Queen, the mysterious female monarch who ruled over the pirates, the refugees were doomed.
Scutum laughed again. “Another ship named after their dead queen! How many have we taken? Five? Six?”
Colken shook his head silently and gazed down at the deck of the Queen Heloise and the thirty or so grim-faced men in red and blue livery preparing for a fight to the death. He had to admit, they didn't look like a pushover, but they were outnumbered two to one just by the boarding party.
This fight should be over quickly.
2.
Bail clung on to the guard for dear life, urging Asu to flay the skin off the backs of the horses. The boy responded, eager to put as much distance between them and the carnage as possible. For the next few minutes he plied his whip with all his strength, while the chariot bounced and shuddered as it sped along the uneven ground.
They were heading south, towards the snowbound peaks of the Jabal Kish, some eighty miles away. He grabbed Asu’s arm as it rose for another crack at the horses, and yelled in the boy’s ear.
“Not that way! Turn west! Much more civilised over there, no bloody mountains or deserts!”
“But my home lies to the south, lord!” piped Asu. His soft green eyes, the eyes Harsu had loved to gaze into so much, were brimming with tears.
“What happened back there?” he demanded, “is my master dead? Did those jackals slay him?”
Bail glanced over his shoulder to see if there was any pursuit. Thankfully there was none, but when he turned back Asu was staring at Bail’s hands.
His gory hands, stained with his own blood and that of Harsu.
“Look where you’re going, man!” Bail squawked, almost thrown off his feet as the chariot bounced violently over some loose stones and veered off drunkenly to the south-east. Still Asu stared at him, and now his eyes were full of rage.
“You, outlander!” he hissed. “My master used to dream of you and cry out in his sleep. He told me that in his dreams you were the death of him, and he planned to have you strangled. But you got to him first!”
Bail had no time to digest this, for in that moment Asu thrashed at him with his whip. It was a vicious instrument, half a dozen knotted leather thongs attached to a stiff handle, and there was no room for Bail to dodge. The thongs slashed across his face, and Bail howled as they scored cuts down his cheek and the side of his neck.
Asu followed up with a kick to Bail’s midriff, but he was off balance as the chariot lurched again and his sandalled foot cracked painfully against his target’s knee instead.
Half-blinded by blood and with bolts of agony coursing through his leg, Bail fell back against the shuddering side of the chariot. Asu went for him, lashing him again and again with the whip while screaming curses and imprecations down on his head.
Bail had always been at a loss to know how the late General Harsu, an almost laughably awful man, managed to inspire such love and devotion in his followers. Clearly this boy Asu had been in love with him, and was intent on slaughtering his murderer.
Enough was enough. Bail reached for the curved knife hanging at his waist and had half-drawn it when the axle underneath the wildly swerving chariot splintered against a boulder. One wheel jerked free and span away, causing the body of the chariot to capsize and scrape along the ground. The occupants were hurled off their feet, Asu falling heavily on top of Bail, and almost thrown out as the horses screamed and staggered at the unexpected shift in weight.
Asu’s face was pressed against Bail’s, his hands around the assassin’s neck, mere inches from the rocky ground passing beneath. The boy’s hands may have been perfectly kept and manicured, but they had a grip like steel. Trapped under Asu’s weight, with his own hands pressed against his side, Bail could do little.
Old instincts came to the fore, forged by his years on the streets, and he managed to spit in Asu’s eyes. Asu squealed in disgust and his grip slackened a little, allowing Bail enough leverage to butt him on the bridge of the nose. It was a feeble enough hit, but angered Asu enough to raise himself, knees straddling Bail’s chest, and rain punches down on his face.
One of the geldings stumbled as his left foreleg vanished into a pothole and snapped like a twig. He screamed and collapsed, dragging down his traces and causing the animal behind to lurch and tumble onto his flank. The remaining pair, doomed by the weight of their fallen team-mates, also went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs and writhing bodies.
Asu and Bail were thrown clear as the chariot bounced on its side and slewed into the wriggling mass of horseflesh. Bail rolled expertly when he hit the ground and escaped with cuts and bruises, but Asu was not so skilled or lucky.
General Harsu’s former concubine had come to rest on his front, and gave no sign of life when Bail struggled to his feet and limped over to inspect the body. Breathing hard, Bail drew his knife and kicked Asu in the ribs. No reaction.
Bail didn’t care to check if the boy was still breathing or not. He reached down, grasped a handful of
Asu’s dust-sodden hair, yanked his head up, and drew the knife across his throat. There was a brief exhalation of air, a torrent of hot blood, and Bail let the head fall forward. One more for the worms to eat, and the second he had killed that day.
“Busy morning,” he muttered, wiping his knife on Asu’s hair before slotting it back in its sheath.
Bail took stock of his injuries. His face was swelling up with bruises from the beating Asu had given him. One cheek and the side of his neck were dripping with blood from the whip, and there was a sharp growing pain under his right knee where Asu had kicked him. He was not in a good way, and to make things worse, he hadn’t been paid for his betrayal of Harsu.
He looked around. The chariot must have carried them at least a couple of miles, because there was no sign of the treaty tent or the battle they had left behind. There was no sign of anything much at all.
Bail swore, and cursed his luck. The chariot had deposited him in the Burned Earth. The dreadful wasteland stretched in all directions, grey and rocky and featureless, with only the distant mountains of the Jabal Kish to break up the monotony.
The horses were goners, their backs and limbs broken and crushed beneath the shattered bulk of the chariot. Meat for vultures, and Bail would be also unless he found some shelter, food, and water. All things the Burned Earth was famous for not possessing.
Sighing, he knelt next to Asu’s body and began to search it for anything useful.
* * * *
In the extreme west of the Winter Realm, in the middle of an otherwise flat and featureless landscape, was a lonely mountain of black rock. Named Silverback by the local plains herdsmen, thanks to the permanent layer of glistening snow on its upper slopes, it was the home of the Temple of the War God.
The Temple’s outward appearance was that of a wind-battered series of towers and ramparts erected by apparently insane builders, but this was the mere outer shell. Inside the heart of the mountain, carved out of the rock by ancient and unknown hands, was a labyrinth. Lit by shafts bored into the side of the mountain, the Templars and their servants dwelled in a vast complex of halls and chapels, kitchens and storerooms, smithies and stables, practice yards and even a vast underground space used as a tourney ground.
The Path of Sorrow Page 2
