He could already feel his lungs start to burn, but still no tap. Ah, now he saw how this worked: if he were to lift his head up too early, before Bob tapped him on the back, then he was sure to get a crack from the slaver’s fist or spear butt. Then he’d have to go under again and wrestle with his own mind on whether he should go back up and take the hit or wait for the tap that was likely never to come. He’d eventually break or drown, neither prospect more appealing than the other.
Crow wasn’t much of a swimmer and feared drowning more than being run through with a sword. Still, even with his head submerged under water and his hands tied behind his back, he found he could think clearly. It was times like these, when the pressure was greatest and the situation most dire, that he could really, truly think. There was a way out of this, there had to be. He just had to figure it out.Rather than lament his situation and panic, Crow opened his eyes and scanned around his face for anything that might be of use.
It didn’t take long before he located a small piece of jagged metal, semi-submerged under clay and stone. He reached his head down and took it between his teeth. The piece was as small as an acorn cap, and he knew he could choke on it, but the only way to conceal it from Bob was to hide it in his mouth.
With the piece of metal in his mouth and his lungs about to burst, Crow realized that no matter how long he stayed underwater, Bob was not going to tap him. He wanted Crow to come up first so that he could hit him. It was an unavoidable first act of this twisted circus he had been roped into, and he had to play his part.
Crow lifted his head, and just as quickly there was a heavy boot kicking him in the neck, back into the water. He had been kicked further into the river, where the water was deeper, quicker. Panic began to set in, particularly because he had not been able to get a good gasp of air when he went above surface. With his hands tied behind his back, he felt for sure he was going to drown. Then he found a firm footing upon some larger rocks and was able to stand up and gulp in some air. Bob was quickly upon him, this time with his fists.
“Stay down until I say otherwise!” Bob screamed, knocking Crow upside the head. The slaver dragged Crow back to the shore, back to the place where the dunking had begun. “Back down, henpecker!”
Crow did as he was told, his breath barely caught. He felt for sure he was going to drown. Then an idea struck. He began to flounder in the water, as if struggling against his own will to obey Bob’s commands despite his need for oxygen. He could imagine Bob chuckling to himself as he watched Crow drown. The image stoked the anger within his belly to such an intense heat that Crow felt his will grow white hot, his lung capacity limitless. He’d stay underwater for as long as it took the plan to work.
He made a few more mock thrashes against the water, and then went still. He allowed his body to float downriver a bit, despite his fear of drowning. He was confident Bob would grab him and drag him back to shore. Even if the slaver didn’t, he could hold his breath for as long as it took to drift away from the slaver camp and escape.
Sure enough, Bob grabbed Crow by the ropes which bound his wrists behind his back and dragged him back to shore. The Black Wing did his best not to breath, which was a chore, as he wanted so badly to soothe his burning lungs. The pain stoked the embers of his anger, of his thirst for vengeance, until he felt sure he was about to burst into a ball of flame. Once Crow’s head was on the shore, his body still in the water, he dropped the jagged piece of metal from his mouth and onto the sand.
“Wake up, you maggot,” Bob said. “I know you ain’t drowned. Get up!” Bob kicked Crow square in the stomach, which snapped Crow out of his act and made him scrunch in on himself like a poked caterpillar. “Let’s go, before the Boat People come. Get up!”
Crow made a show of rolling around on the sand, trying to get the wind back into his lungs. Though the blow had hurt, it hadn’t as badly as he was letting on. Taking a punch or kick to the stomach was a skill that every Black Wing took great pains to master, a technique called Stone Belly. Running Stag had always been the most masterful, once taking a war-hammer to the stomach, but Crow was no slouch. He had instinctively tightened his stomach when Bob kicked him, so he was in full control of his senses to feel around for the jagged piece of metal.
“Let’s go!”
“I… I just need…” The seconds were clicking in conjunction with his teeth, his drenched clothes and clammy skin like sponges for the cold. Time was not on his side. When his hand alighted on the piece of metal, however, he knew that Elon had finally decided to be kind to him. He wrapped his fingers around it before staggering back to his feet. Though he was sopping wet and his black clothes covered in muck, he felt as if he was being bathed in rays of divine sunshine. His salvation was at hand, and it was in the form of a small piece of bent metal.
“Come on now, you henpecker! Let’s go! Dragging you up that beach made me hungry again, and you better hope for your sake that all of Salty’s stew was not ate ‘fore I_ uck!” The metal had cut through the rope quickly, and quick as a raven’s caw, Crow had his hands around Bob’s thin neck, choking him with all his strength. Bob tried to wrestle out of Crow’s grip, but the Black Wing wasn’t about to let go.
They went down to the ground, rolling over each other like a tumbleweed of sopping wet clothes. Bob clawed at Crow’s face with his nails, while a creaking moan escaped from his constricted throat. The slaver’s face was turning blue, purple, was taking on the same coloration as the puddles of black blood that leaked from the old cart carriages when they mixed with a fresh rain. The creaking stopped when the delicate bone and cartilage in the slaver’s neck broke to pieces.
Bob’s eyes were like bulging leather skins at a water pump; Crow saw something in them akin to a plea for clemency, for a second chance. Had this wretched man finally come to regret his ways, with death looming so close? Hesitation seized Crow then and his grip slightly eased, as he thought of what the wandering Apostle said long ago, when Old Wren had him to supper on the longest night of the year, about how the Bleeding Christ said to love one’s enemies, to show them mercy.
Then he thought of his mother, of how the slavers stole her, broke her, killed her when he was but a boy. He thought of his father’s knives in the bloated hands of that sloven slaver, of Matchless roughly handling the girl with the gray eyes, of his being stolen away from his sister. The anger he had kept white hot while underwater, the seething hate he had used to survive, returned.
Crow pushed down on Bob’s windpipe with all his weight. His body was a piston, shoulders heaving up and down. Bob’s tongue was distended from his lips like meat from a hopper, snaking out further from his mouth with each jounce of Crow’s body. Droplets of water fell on Bob’s face and Crow wasn’t sure whether it was spittle, rain or his tears. There was no going back from this. Finally, Bob’s eyes rolled back into his skull and his struggling ceased.
Crow rolled off of the slaver’s corpse and lay on his back, his chest heaving, dark crow eyes closed. He was tired and ached in places he didn’t think possible, but knew that things were going to get a lot more heated before he could relax. He was at least a full day’s march from the Black Wing camp and surrounded on all sides by wild country. There were cannibals in the Seven Streams, or so it was said, and that was just to the north, while the Boat People who traversed the Hud were no friends to a Black Wing. Alone, he would have to travel a fairly dangerous road back to the camp and the more civilized country to the west. First, though, there was unfinished business he had to take care of back at the slaver camp. He needed his knives back, and there were at least three dozen Wandering Bastards that needed killing.
Crow left Bob’s body in the mud and ran up the embankment on a pair of silent feet. The ruins of the buildings gave him good cover, but once he was beyond their walls and at the top of the slope, the slavers would have a clear view of his approach. He had to find a way to stay hidden, to get as close to the camp as possible without them knowing he had freed himself. While Elon had been g
ood to him, time was not as benevolent a friend, and would not be on his side for long. He had to be quick, before they realized Bob had been gone for too long.
Close to the top of the hill was an archway that led into one of the buildings, which Crow ducked under. He saw that if he went along the length of the building to its other side, there was a thick cover of high grass and small trees through which he could safely approach the slaver camp.
The going was slow: the floors were piled high with rubble and the broken bits of old machines, and his clothes were waterlogged and heavy. More than once his cloak snagged on a nail or twisted piece of steel, each time eliciting a silent thread of curses. Despite this, Crow eventually reached the room on the far side of the building, the wall of which was partially crumbled away. Through it he could see over the high grass, to where the remaining slavers milled about, noticeably anxious. He could just hear them over the sparey birds cooing in the tree branches outside.
“Where the hell is Bob?” The voice belonged to the large oaf who had cut himself on Crow’s knives. “Those Black Wings are a tricky lot. Never underestimate them. Probably hypnotized Bob with some magic and made the poor sap drown himself.”
“Shut up, Gregory,” Matchless hissed. The fat man, Gregory, did as he was told, finding interest in his feet, which he rubbed in the dirt as if he were a child. “Alain, Tyson, go down to the river and see what mess Bob has gotten himself into.”
His men nodded and started down towards the Hud, both stopping suddenly at the foghorn that cut through the air. It bellowed once, twice. On its third call, a young slaver, no more than a boy, emerged from the thick underbrush to the north of camp out of breath, a smile plastered on his freckled face.
“They’re here!” The youth cried. “The Boat People are here!”
Crow didn’t know whether his fortune had turned for the better or fizzled out completely. The Boat People were an aloof lot, suspicious of all those who lived on land. Once, on a hunting trip, Old Wren had told him how the Boat People believed crows and ravens to be harbingers of shipwrecks, storms and death. Thus they did not care for the Black Wings, nor the Black Wings for them, as Crow’s people saw the detached nature of the Boat People as cowardice, as a shunning of responsibility. It was no secret that the men and women who traversed the Hud in their great barges remained neutral during the War for the Green Lands, that they stayed on their boats while Godwin ravaged the Green Lands with his army of undead.
The Boat People only came ashore to exchange the goods they’d purveyed from their many trade routes around the world. They knew where there were other pockets of fertile land besides the Green Lands, had maps and charts to guide them. Their men wore ponchos draped over their strong chests, and wide brim hats that often concealed their eyes. The women wore flowing dresses that covered their entire bodies save for their faces, the fabric in the varying hues of water, from the green of a marsh to the opaque gray of a stormy sea.
The children walked about as naked as if they had just been birthed, in keeping with tradition. It was a seen as rite of passage for a Boat Person to take on the garb of adulthood, for them to trade in the caress of the sun and sea for the woven fabrics and discipline of trade and government. Innocence was exchanged for worldliness; it was said that if a person were to look deep into a Boat Person’s gaze, he’d come to know secrets of the world, ancient knowledge that had been lost for ages, esotericism that could drive a land-dwelling person insane.
Crow watched as half the Bastards followed the freckled boy, Matchless leading the way, the woman with the tree tattoo in tow. This left a gang that included Alain, Tyson and the fat man named Gregory, his hand now wrapped in a bloody linen, to watch over the captives and the precious munitions. Crow decided then that he was indeed lucky, that the men he most wanted dead were standing before him in as vulnerable a position he could hope for.
He wasn’t about to waste any more time. Hugging the wall furthest away from the collapsed side of the building, Crow sidled his way to the door at the far side of the room. It hung slightly ajar, rusted in place. Crow lightly pushed on it; when it wouldn’t budge, he put his shoulder against its red, scabby surface. The door gave way suddenly, the cry of the hinges echoing off the stones and trees. He fell into a heap but immediately got up and ran as silently as he could into the brush. He was sure that the slavers had heard the door.
“Bob?” It was Gregory, from around the building. “Bob, that you?”
Alain hushed him. “Quiet, you moron. That might be the Black Wing.”
Crow could imagine Gregory’s pupils trembling in his too-close eyes, the sweat pooling on the fat man’s brow. The mere thought of the Black Wing who wielded such terrible knives was sure to be sending Gregory into a fearful panic. Crow knew that he wouldn’t hear them speak anymore, that they’d be trying to sneak up on him, but he’d be ready.
As quick and silent as a squirrel, he climbed up the tallest tree in the vicinity, taking with him a fist-sized rock and an arm-length stick. When he was at eye-level with the building’s roof, he threw the rock into the air, aiming it over the trees and towards the river. He hoped that the commotion it caused as it fell would make the slavers think he was actually nearer the water than he was.
“Hey man, you hear that?” It was Tyson, whispering almost right below him. “It was down there, by the water.”
“He probably heard us coming and is trying to get away,” Gregory said, trailing behind Alain as they too passed the tree. “Come, brothers, let’s just let him go. Matchless will skin us alive if we leave all the guns and swords unguarded.”
“He’ll gut us alive, we let that Black Wing get away,” Alain said. “Dusty Yen will pay a pretty penny for that boy, and Matchless will want to collect on it. He may even have his eye on a high rank in Yen’s army. I know I would, had I something worth a trade.”
“Matchless won’t join, man,” Tyson said, his bloom of hair catching on every branch and bramble. “He don’t like taking orders from no one, ‘specially not some wannabe warlord from the east.”
“Wannabe warlord?” Gregory scoffed, his voice almost out of earshot. “They say he has close to ten thousand men under his command, with more joining every day.”
Crow arched his arm back and threw the stick in the direction the slavers were walking. He had originally thought it would come in handy were he to go hand-to-hand with them, but the plan had changed: he had to get them as far from camp as possible if he were to get his knives, and the rock and stick crashing amongst the tree boughs closer to the river would help with that.
Feeling that his slaver pursuers had been sufficiently put off of his scent, Crow climbed out of his tree and ran back in the direction of camp. He kept low in the waist high grass, but his feeling that the slavers could return from their reconnaissance at any second made him anxious, reckless. While he had a perfect vantage point of the tent and the two slavers who were guarding it, he had failed to look on the outskirts of camp and see the guard patrolling it.
He caught just enough movement out of the corner of his eye to avoid getting the full brunt of the blow, his shoulder crumpling under the impact rather than the back of his head as intended. Crow went down, his shoulder screaming in pain. He somersaulted upon meeting the ground, then quickly got back to his feet, turning around to meet his attacker. Standing before him was Salty the cook, his nose as fat as if it had been bludgeoned by the aluminum bat in his hand.
“Well, well, look what Salty found here. A little black hen, flown the coop. Come to Salty, now, there’s a good laddie. Let him take you back to camp. There’s a good chickadee.”
Crow crouched low, doing his best to clear his mind of the pain in his shoulder. The man had snuck up on him with footfalls befitting a Black Wing. He realized then that he had underestimated the slavers, that at least some of them were not just plodding idiots whose only strength came from their guns and numbers. Salty, who moved with the fluidity of an eel in water, was proof of this.
“I found him!” The cook screamed, the phlegm thick in his throat. “Come on maggots! I got the Black Wing right here!”
Even if he could take the cook one-on-one, time was too precious a resource to waste with fighting. Crow turned foot and ran for the tent. Salty called after him, but his voice was receding: the cook wasn’t giving chase.
The slavers who had been guarding the captives and the guns below, however, were coming up to meet him, weapons in hand. The first had a long spear, aimed straight for Crow’s gut as the two rushed towards one another. The hem of his cape in his hand, Crow spun around, catching the spear’s tip with the heavy fabric and deflecting it away from his body. Rolling down the spear’s length, his fist met the slaver’s nose, his knee the man’s groin; it was eddying leaf technique, a sleight of the cape. The man crumpled in an unconscious heap and Crow kept running, the slaver’s spear torn from his cape and in his hands.
The only other slaver between him and his knives was standing his ground by the tent, his feet shoulder-width apart. An automatic rifle was in his dirty hands. Crow rolled away from the oncoming bullets, the ground around him erupting in little geysers of dirt from their barrage. Coming up from his somersault, Crow launched the spear at the slaver. It found its home in the man’s chest with a dull thunk. The man fired a few more aimless shots into the sky before he too went down to the ground.
He was almost there. Some of the captives were screaming for him to free them, praising Elon or the five gods of the Fist. Crow thought of hushing them, but knew it would be to no use: Matchless and the rest of his slavers had undoubtedly heard the shots from the fallen slaver’s gun, and were very likely running back to camp. He looked over his shoulder, sure that he’d be staring into Salty’s dark eyes, but he didn’t see any sign of the wiry cook. He didn’t see anyone, actually, just the slaver he had knocked out and the other he had killed.
The Undead King: The Saga of Jai Lin: Book One Page 10
