“I convinced her to go back down and prepare a meal for Burkhed and his men. If they sober up and get up and there are no services available, I have no doubt they’ll burn the town down.” He hooked his thumb in the air over his shoulder. “I’m going to go help her – she’s frightened enough, poor girl, more than usual – though I don’t know why. Anyway, after they’ve eaten, I’ll show Burkhed the coin and see what I can arrange. Be back in a couple of hours.”
It was actually closer to midday when the trader returned. His broad face sported a black eye and he held his left arm draped across his chest with his right. There was a crust of blood on the ample whiskers below his nose. At the sight of the man’s injuries, Aram came to his feet, anger rising in him.
“What happened, Mullen?”
The man shrugged, slid his left hand into the clasp of his belt and rubbed his left shoulder tenderly with his right hand. “Well, as you can see, they didn’t kill me – nor do I think anything’s broken. But they sure as hell made certain that I was carrying just the one coin.”
“Will they meet with us?”
Mullen laughed harshly, coughing as he did so. “Oh, yes, sir – Burkhed insisted upon it. I told him that you were waiting in the long valley north of town with a lot of men – practically an army – so that he and his men wouldn’t follow me back here. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if he didn’t have one of his people follow along and watch me anyway.” He met Aram’s gaze. “They’ll be waiting for you on the docks about mid-afternoon. He told me to tell you to come alone and that he was eager to do business with such a fine gentleman as yourself, and that he hoped your partnership would last for a long time.”
He grimaced as he lifted his left arm back into its position across his chest. “It’s a trap, you know. I’m certain that he means to kill anyone you take down there with you and then hold you for ransom – provided he thinks there is more gold to be had than what you carry on you; otherwise he’ll just kill you, too.”
Aram smiled grimly as he felt the old familiar fury rise inside him. “Mullen – you’ve done well. Hear me now. If Burkhed wants to survive the day in one piece, he will not only do business with me, he will also come to your house and apologize for his actions.” He turned away as the man frowned at him in doubt and looked around at the others. “Burkhed is right about one thing,” he said, “it is probably best if I go alone.”
Findaen leapt to his feet. “Nay, my lord – you will not go alone. Not again. Not ever again. I’m going with you.”
The others agreed with Findaen’s sentiment in a chorus.
Aram tried to mask his surprise at the steely insistence in the voices of his friends. “Alright, then, let’s go.”
“Wait!” Mullen said sharply. “Burkhed said to come at midafternoon.”
“I heard.” Aram answered. “But he is not lord of these lands – he just imagines that he is. I intend to educate him on that point.”
He went out the door, followed by Findaen and the others, crossed the bridge and started down through the town, stopping at the public house just long enough to learn from Lora – who seemed to have escaped the brunt of the morning’s cruelty – that Burkhed and his men had gone back down toward the docks. As they continued through the town, dropping toward the water street by street, the disparate, ragged citizens gathered and trailed behind them at a safe distance. The people of Durck thought they knew what was about to happen to these strangers and couldn’t help themselves – they needed to watch.
The sun was high overhead; the air was warm and heavy with the sour smells of fish, sea, and salt. To Aram, unused as he was to the thick atmosphere of sea level, it felt almost like he was trying to breathe underwater. White birds with thin, sharp beaks, sleek feathers and high-pitched, haunting cries wheeled above their heads, as if they, too, expected something from these men.
As they turned the last corner and came out full by the sea where only the wide wooden dock stretched away before them, Aram saw a man scurry from between two buildings further on and hurry toward a large group of men standing about and sitting on kegs and boxes near where a large craft – not as large as those anchored out in the bay, but sizeable nonetheless – lay at anchor, tied to the end of the dock.
There were twenty-five or thirty men; one of these was such a big man that, though he was seated, he still towered over many that stood nearby.
Burkhed.
Aram studied him as he walked the length of the dock toward the cluster of seamen. Burkhed was an enormous man, nearly the size of a smaller lasher. The hair covering his immense head was a light, bright red, almost orange. It seemed to glow in the vertical light of the sun. His nose was long and broad, with curling nostrils that allowed someone facing him to see into the shadowed depths. His eyes were slits; the only color that showed in each of them was a black slash at the center, like a serpent’s eyes.
A full, red beard covered the lower half of his face; his cheeks above the thick beard were broad, fleshy, and ruddy. He stood up, towering above his companions like a massive tree, and grinned hungrily as Aram came up, showing double rows of sharp, yellow teeth. In his right hand he held an enormous sword, and it was unsheathed. His left hand rested on the top of a tall thin metallic shield, stained and dirty, but decorated with many beautiful carvings of strange creatures, none of which Aram recognized.
Aram stopped about twenty feet away and examined the seamen. Except for the slaves at Burning Mountain, he was certain that he had never seen such a collection of scruffy, dirty men in his life. And he suspected that much of the sour odor permeating the air about him came from them.
Burkhed looked Aram and his friends over in turn and then settled his gaze on Aram.
“Are you the rich man?” The voice that emanated from the giant privateer was thick and low, hollow, and raspy, like chain dragged across rock.
In response, Aram reached inside his jacket, removed the bag of gold coins and dropped it on the planking of the dock between them, casting it far enough that it spilled some of its contents but remained close enough to him that anyone attempting to retrieve it would have to come within the reach of his sword.
As the gleaming discs were exposed to the sunlight, a concerted gasp arose from the throats of the rancid seamen. Everyone froze, all of them staring at the gold. Aram could tell by the expression in Burkhed’s eyes, after he finally looked up from ogling the treasure, that he understood Aram’s action to be something of a challenge.
The two men faced each other for a long moment. In that moment everyone else on the dock was reduced to the rank of spectator. Burkhed spoke.
“I sent instructions for you to come alone.” He growled.
“I don’t take instructions from you.” Aram answered quietly. His anger from earlier had subsided, and he meant to be reasonable, if possible, but the knowledge of what the man before him was like, based on the observations of his own eyes and others, prevented courtesy.
Burkhed was not used to being challenged, had, in fact, never been successfully challenged by anyone in the entire course of his fierce life, and though Aram’s quiet demeanor did not make him uneasy at all, it did serve to confuse him. Surely this stranger had been informed of who it was that he would face on the dock. Why then did he not behave timidly, or at least respectfully?
He glanced at Aram’s companions, found them to be unenlightening and non-threatening – even the formidable Mallet – and moved his slitted eyes back to Aram. “I said to come this afternoon.”
“I am here now.”
This genuinely surprised the monstrous man.
“Do you know who I am?”
“I’ve been told.”
“Then surely someone must have told you how I treat insolent pups such as yourself ?”
Aram ignored that. “I’m here to do business with you, if I can. Otherwise, I’ll take my gold and go elsewhere.”
Burkhed looked down at the coins spilling from the sack, gleaming in the sun and slowly
shook his huge head; his grin came back and broadened. “Oh, you will go elsewhere, my friend, I promise you that – I’ll send you myself – but you won’t be taking the gold.”
Laughter broke out among his companions at this remark, though most of them still had their attentions riveted on the massive wealth represented by the small pile of gleaming metal in the middle of the dock.
Aram spread his hands. “I came to do business, friend – to make a straightforward business deal. You have ships and I have gold. I need steel. Why not just do business with me?”
Burkhed took a step forward, toward the gold. As he did, Aram followed suit, closing the distance. Burkhed gazed at him again for a time, confused by the stranger’s lack of fear.
“Are you threatening me, insect?” He growled.
“Not at all.” Aram answered. “But this is my gold.”
Burkhed gazed at him a moment longer, and then he threw his great head back and laughed. His men joined him. The huge man laughed full and long. When he had finished, his confusion was gone, replaced fully by intent. He stepped forward, coming to within a pace of the sack of gold. Aram closed to within a pace as well.
Burkhed shifted his shield upward, holding it close to his chest and lifted the tip of his sword off the wooden planking about a foot. A broad grin spread across his wide face. “I’ll tell you what, friend – I’ll explain the state of things to you, and I’ll keep it simple. Whether you want to accept it or not, I do make the rules around here, because I am in charge. And I don’t do business, as you call it, with insolent, hag-faced insects such as yourself. So here’s what we’ll do. We’ll fight for it – just you and me – whoever wins, gets the gold. We fight to the death. Everyone else goes free.”
Aram slid his gauntleted right hand up to his shoulder, to within a few inches of the hilt of the sword of heaven. He motioned with his left. “Why not just do business with me instead? I can make you very rich. In my experience, being rich is unquestionably better than being dead.”
“Yes, well, I’m about to be rich, and you’re about to be dead.” With that quiet and humorless statement, Burkhed’s demeanor lost all traces of mirth and became deadly. The huge man had enough of toying with this stranger. It was time to end it. But he couldn’t help raising his voice and giving one last jibe, perhaps for the benefit of his crew and the denizens of the town, watching the proceedings from a safe distance. “I didn’t say that you had to agree to the conditions, pup. I’m in charge here today, and what I say goes.”
Fury rose again within Aram and he controlled it only with an effort.
“And who is in charge,” he asked quietly, but loud enough that all could hear, “when you die?”
There was a moment’s hesitation in the big man’s eyes as some inner voice once more gave pause at the lack of fear in the smaller man before him, warning him that there must be a reason for it – and that that reason might represent danger. But then all doubt and hesitation was washed aside in a wave of rage and contempt. Burkhed had squashed insects beneath his boots all of his life; this insolent man was just another.
He stepped toward Aram, swinging hard into the stroke that he began to deliver with his enormous right hand and arm. As he came, the massive blade arcing through the heavy air, he lifted the shield with his other arm.
Aram reached back, drew the sword of heaven from its sheath and stepped quickly to his right, swinging the gleaming blade. With the bright sun directly overhead, the sword was as light as a feather in his hand and under the undiluted influence of that great orb, flames erupted immediately along its length and its strange song arose. It slipped through Burkhed’s shield as if the carved metal was nothing more than a phantom, then it passed through his massive body without the slightest lessening of its momentum. At the last it swept through the blade of Burkhed’s descending sword, cutting it in an instant into two pieces of useless steel.
Aram ducked under the flying piece of steel that had been separated from the big man’s blade, stepped back to his left, out of the way of the twin masses of Burkhed’s severed body, and then turned to watch as the enormous seaman angled his head to look at him as he collapsed. In the big man’s eyes, Aram saw the astonished realization of his own inexplicable and indecipherable death a moment before the flood of blood rushing from his severed midsection rendered the shocking, unacceptable surprise as a truth.
Aram looked down at the mass of steaming ruin into which Burkhed had been made, and then he carefully sheathed the sword. Stepping aside, out of the spreading pool of blood, he faced the rest of the seamen.
“Now,” he asked quietly, “who is in charge?”
Thirty pairs of amazed and frightened eyes faced him. No one moved. Burkhed, the mighty monster that had ruled their lives and their world, and had ruthlessly ordered their existence for years, had vanished in one sweep of this strange and suddenly terrifying man’s right arm.
“Isn’t there a second in command?” Aram asked.
At that, several hands extended and pointed toward a rather young sailor with light brown hair and intelligent blue eyes. Except for a thin scar that ran the length of his long thin face from his right eyebrow all the way down to the line of his chin, he was almost as handsome as Findaen.
Aram looked at him, seeing stark fear in his expression. “What is your name?”
“It’s – Keegan, sir.”
“And you are in charge now?”
“No, sir, not really.”
“Then why do these others say that you are?”
He glanced sideways, swallowed, and then looked back at Aram. “Because none of them want to be, I guess.”
“Would you like to be in charge?”
“No, sir, I don’t think so.”
Aram stepped forward and the men seemed to shrink away from him. He focused on an older, wizened man that had sat on a pylon near Burkhed. He had been one of those that pointed at Keegan. “Why did you say that that man was in charge?”
“Because, sir – he’s the n-navigator. He always knows where the ship is, e-even in the worst of storms. The captain depends – uh, depended – on him. Guess I always thought that he was first m-mate – though Burkhed never made it clear. I just thought it was that way.”
Aram nodded. “That’s good enough for me. You’re in charge then, young man.” He said, looking at Keegan. “Can we make a straightforward business deal?”
Keegan glanced around but found no help or advice coming from his shipmates. “Yes, sir,” he said, “I think we can do that.”
Aram went back and retrieved the bag of money, removing a handful of coins, and then he secured the top of the bag, which he then handed to Findaen. Returning to face Keegan and his compatriots, he held one of the gleaming coins up so that it caught the sunlight.
“How much steel will this buy?”
Keegan swallowed and glanced around again, but again no one came to his aid. Most were still struggling to comprehend the ease with which this man had struck down the dreaded Burkhed and wondering if, at any moment, he might decide that they were next in line for death. Keegan looked at the coin.
“Give an honest answer, young man.” Aram warned him.
Keegan nodded nervously. “Truthfully, sir, one such coin will fill a ship, maybe all three.”
Aram inclined his head. “And you will captain one of these ships?”
“I suppose so. The Nighthawk.”
“Who will captain the others?”
Keegan pointed out two men standing side by side at the edge of the dock. “Lubchek captains the Windever.” He said, indicating a stocky man whose head and face were so covered with tangled masses of red-blond hair that all that showed was a patch of forehead, his nose, and two piercingly blue eyes. Keegan’s finger moved on to the man next to him. This man was tall and very thin with beady eyes, bushy black brows, and a hooked nose above a small, pinched mouth. He was very nearly bald and was missing most of his left arm below the elbow. “And Niven sails the Deepwater.”<
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Aram took four coins from his hand and set them on the flattened top of a nearby pylon. “Four coins.” He said. “One for each ship full of steel that you bring to me, and one extra to share among all of you.” He fixed Keegan with cold eyes. “Now – tell me how you will earn this.”
Keegan met his gaze for just a moment and then looked around at his fellow seamen. Aram looked at them, too. In their eyes he saw amazement, outright disbelief at their impending good fortune, and here and there, stark greed. It occurred to Aram that to let loose such wealth among such men was to invite the incidence of abandoned ships, deep at sea, drenched in blood. That was a possibility that he could not afford.
When Keegan started to answer, Aram held up his hand, silencing him. “Let me tell all of you exactly how you will earn it.” His eyes narrowed and hardened and he fixed them for a moment on each man. “You men, and those that remain on the ships out there, will go across the sea to your suppliers and fill your ships with steel for me. I will send three coins with you to expedite the purchase of that which I need. When you return, there will be two coins more –not just one – to split among you.”
He paused to let this sink in and then lowered his voice to a sinister level. “Fail me – and the sea and all the lands that surround it cannot hide you – I will find you and exact payment. If I have to – I will boil the seas dry, and cut you down among the dark canyons of its depths. Nothing will hide you from my sight or my justice.”
He drew the sword again and held it out so that the flames appeared and writhed like controlled lightning along its length. He waited until its high-pitched song made the men cover their ears and cower in fear; then he slipped it back into its sheath. He swept the privateers with a steely gaze and pointed at the ruin of Burkhed’s body lying behind him on the pier.
Kelven's Riddle Book Two Page 36
