Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion)

by James A. West

  Edrik nodded. “I must prepare myself … and tell Kyreen.”

  “Tell your wife only that I’ve sent you and the others to the far side of Targas on Munam a’Dett business.”

  Edrik bowed his head, seeing his pregnant young wife behind his eyes. Kyreen was his strength. He hated the idea of lying to her, but it was for her sake, and for the sake of their unborn child, that he had agreed to travel into the ugly and blasphemous world of the deycath. “Of course, Essan.”

  Thaeson produced a small golden flask and placed it into Edrik’s palm. Gently, the essan closed the younger man’s fingers around it. “The Blood of Life will grant you, and those who join you, leave to pass through the Shield of the Fathers unharmed. Take a sip, my boy, and feel the power of the Munam a’Dett.”

  The flask’s worn engravings pressed against his hand, but it was the heat of the object, warm as living blood, that drew his attention. The Blood of Life, he thought. The day he had donned his acolyte’s robes, he learned of the hallowed potion, its purposes and powers, but it had never crossed his mind that the Blood of Life might actually be blood.

  Mesmerized, he pulled the stopper, raised the flask, and took a tentative sip. Just as he feared, the flavor of salt and rust swarmed over his tongue. The elixir was far thicker than blood. When he began gagging, Thaeson clutched his arm.

  “Keep it down, boy! It is far too precious to spew on the ground.”

  Edrik gagged again, gulped at the saliva and bile flooding the back of his throat, and somehow managed to swallow the Blood of Life. He kept swallowing until the worst of the taste was gone from his mouth.

  “Good,” Thaeson said. “Very good.”

  Edrik could only nod. The Iron Marches awaited him, along with a man bearing the mark of his namesake. Such a mark could only be a sign of evil and pain … and yet in this man rested the hope of Targas. By Blood and by Water, protect me, Fathers!

  Chapter 3

  Fumbling his coin purse, Rathe stooped to retrieve it from the ground. Yesterday’s slushy quagmire of mud and snow had frozen into an uneven crust overnight, leaving him to brush dirty bits of ice off the leather sack. Before he straightened, eyes darting imperceptibly, he searched up and down the street for any sign of followers. He saw nothing suspicious.

  Two turns back, he had paused to look through a chandler’s window, feigning interest in the displayed candles and soaps, while at the same time taking pains to see if anyone seemed out of place. Perhaps a watchful man leaning against a doorframe, or the flash of someone ducking into an alley. Then as now, Rathe had seen only the folk of Iceford going about their daily tasks.

  He tilted his head back to scratch idly at his dark-whiskered chin, his gaze flickering across the rooftops to a pair of chimneys rising above a baker’s shop. Other than a line of watchful crows perched just beyond the lazy plumes of rising smoke, there was nothing alarming.

  Where are you? he wondered, picturing the thin face of the fellow he had named the Shadowman, who had trailed him across the Gyntors, and who he had fought in the halls of Ravenhold. Despite what Loro, Nesaea, and Fira believed, Rathe was sure the murderous bastard had also been stalking him during their time in Iceford. His belief was so strong that he had shaved off his black locks and grown a short beard, in order to disguise himself against the Shadowman, who moved about the world with ghostlike ease.

  Hiding his disquiet behind a bored expression, Rathe set off again, glancing at the stone-and-timber shops and homes lining the narrow street, their thatched roofs thrusting toward a lowering gray sky. Being from the warm climes of Cerrikoth, the frosty reaches of the Iron Marches were strange to him in many ways, but he knew weather when he saw it. More snow would soon fall. Over the last fortnight, it snowed more days than not.

  Snow and increasingly bitter cold distressed Rathe almost as much as the unseen eyes he sensed, for Captain Ostre had warned of the need to reach the White Sea before the River Sedge froze. Rathe’s companions were confident Ostre would get his ship in order, and the burly captain impressed Rathe as a man of his word, but after walking the decks of the Lamprey, Rathe was not so sure the wallowing tub could meet its master’s demands. More troublesome were the continual setbacks that plagued ship and crew. As it stood now, the Lamprey was not sailing anywhere.

  Not for the first time, Rathe weighed the option of riding west along the River Sedge to the White Sea, and there boarding a merchant ship bound for the south. He drew up his hood as the first flakes of snow began to fall, knowing in his heart the time for riding downriver was long past. If Ostre failed to get the Lamprey fit to sail, Rathe and his friends would be stuck in Iceford until the spring thaw.

  There are worse things than spending a long winter in the arms of a beautiful woman, he thought, envisioning Nesaea’s raven curls falling over her smooth shoulders, her violet eyes, her—

  He cleaved the visions of his lover before they became too distracting. All his fruitless cautions had put him behind schedule. He needed to reach the far side of the village by noontime, for those awaiting him were the most impatient lot he had ever met.

  Wending his way across the village took him through Iceford’s market square, where hordes of men in drab woolen cloaks and women in heavy, unflattering dresses slowed him further. He mingled with the crowds, and the watched feeling faded a bit.

  The market was little different from any others he had been to. Noisy children ran about underfoot. Chickens clucked in their wicker cages, and geese honked in theirs, each unknowing that cook pots waited in their future. Wood smoke mingled with the scent of pigs and sheep, sweat and cooking meat.

  When Rathe passed by a pen holding a handful of yaks, he wondered about his fidgety friend Horge who, it had turned out, was a shapeshifter. When Loro had queried about eating yak, Horge had explained that folk prized the wooly beasts’ milk and cheese over their meat. Horge, Rathe expected, was doing fine in his new home of Ravenhold.

  Soon after he escaped the market square, the weight of unseen eyes fell on him again, heavier than before. The sensation was so strong that he ducked into an alley beside a cooper’s workshop. A glance over his shoulder showed him nothing, and he fell into a crouch between two wagons loaded with barrels and casks. Looking through the wheels, he watched folk leaving the market square, and others going toward it. Am I imagining watchers?

  Rathe stood up and hurried down the alley. He came out on a side street, searched both ways, then headed toward a rutted track that led to the eastern edge of Iceford. Here the forest tumbled down off the snowy feet of the Gyntors, and grew thickly amongst a scatter of hovels. Neither Iceford nor Wyvernmoor, farther east, had defensive walls. With the fall of the once powerful Iron Kings some five hundred years before, the last hostile armies of the north had long since dwindled to nothing. Roving brigands kept to the River Sedge in hopes of finding a grounded barge or river trader. They knew better than to attack villages inhabited by able-bodied woodcutters, miners, and trappers, folk who would dispatch a troublesome sort without hesitation, and then happily dump what was left of the marauder in the forest to feed bears, wolves, or frost leopards.

  Rathe kept on along the frozen track until coming to a long, low, weathered-gray building. Iceford’s tannery. Despite the increasing snowfall and the deepening cold, the reek of rotten hides filled the air. The lower, riper stench of urine and dung fermenting in large vats, both used to soften rawhide into leather, made Rathe wish he had chosen a different sort to do his bidding. But Nesaea had told him urchins tended to see more than adults, as their lives very often depended on keen observation. The children he had employed were not the usual urchins found in a city, but dung-gathers serving the tanners.

  He angled away from the track toward a stand of firs cut through by a frothy creek, its banks rimed in ice gone a poisoned brown from tanning wastes. The waters burbled by, taking their befouled load around Iceford, and emptying it into the River Sedge well downstream from the village. There was no sign of those he soug
ht, so he waited.

  Stiny came alone, a young boy of twelve years or less carrying a wooden bucket loaded with dung. Had it been high summer, doubtless flies would have plagued him. Now only the stench of his burden perfumed the frosty air. Short and skinny as he was, the ratty collection of moth-eaten wool he wore as a coat made him look as if he were wearing an older brother’s clothes.

  Rathe glanced around. “Where are the others?”

  Stiny dropped his bucket and gave a languid, one-shouldered shrug. “Berry had to go fishing with her da,” he said, speaking of the young girl with the large red wen growing on her chin. “An’ last night, Amers tried to steal a stew bone back from a bastard of a cur-dog and got bit—lost a finger, he did.” Stiny wiggled his little finger to indicate which one. “Helmund … well, he says you’re naught but a lack-witted arsehole, if you think shadows are after you. He wants no part.”

  Rathe took no offense. “Then I take it you haven’t seen any shadows?”

  “Oh, I see ‘em all the time.” Stiny rubbed a hand through his tangled nest of wheat-colored hair, making it stand up in greasy knots. “Course, they ain’t really shadows, so much as folk who think if they stay in the dark, no one will know what they’re up to.”

  Rathe’s interest sharpened. “Who?”

  Stiny bobbed his head. “Nina the cobbler’s wife, for one. She creeps out after most decent folk are abed, and then sneaks like a cat all the way across the village to Aeril’s shack—he’s a woodcutter. By all Nina’s moaning and crying when she’s there, Aeril must be a mean whoreson.”

  Rathe hid a smile. Nina, the cobbler’s cuckolding wife, was of no interest to him. By Stiny’s smirk, Rathe suspected the boy also knew what Nina was up to at the woodcutter’s shack. “Nothing else?”

  Stiny’s face screwed up in concentration. “Morning before last, I saw a few strangers. I’d judge they’re too stupid to be dangerous.”

  Rathe was not so sure. King Nabar had put quite the reward on his head, and that much gold would tempt all manner of bounty hunters. “What did they look like?”

  “Outlanders from the south, like most outlanders hereabouts. I’d guess they’re merchants.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re too well-fed, and their clothes are too fine, to be otherwise,” Stiny said, casting a pointed glance at Rathe’s garb.

  Rathe had seen many mercenaries and men who earned their way collecting bounties. These strangers didn’t sound the sort. Likely, Stiny had the way of it.

  “So, you haven’t seen anything else I should know about?”

  “You mean to say shadows?” Stiny asked, a hint of a smile turning his lips.

  “Strange shadows, boy, those shaped like men, but when you look at them, they vanish.” Fear hones a man to his sharpest. That was something the mysterious swordsman had said once, and Rathe believed it. But at Ravenhold, it was he who had put fear into the Shadowman’s heart. From what little he had gathered of the man’s ways, Rathe suspected the fellow hadn’t enjoyed the reversal. In time, he would come again.

  “Shadows shaped like men?” Stiny offered another lopsided shrug. “Ain’t seen nothin’ like that. An’ the only strangers in Iceford besides merchants are you, your friends, an’ a few sailors off that accursed ship.”

  The Lamprey had gotten a reputation for bad luck around Iceford, but Rathe was sure Captain Ostre’s troubles had nothing to do with luck, good or ill.

  Rathe rummaged through his purse until he found a silver coin. It was ten times the amount he usually paid Stiny and his friends, but theirs was necessary work that he greatly valued. He held it out, and Stiny wrapped his grimy fingers around the coin with a comical look of awe.

  “You’ve done well,” Rathe said.

  “For this much, I s’pose I could find a man or three who’d poke a knife into any shadow that troubles you.”

  Rathe went still, mind working. It took less than three heartbeats to decide how best to keep Stiny from doing something that might get his throat slit.

  “Keep the coin for yourself, boy, for there’s no more coming. Forget about shadows, forget about me. You’ve done all I asked, and our arrangement is finished.”

  With a final shrug, Stiny collected his dung bucket and headed toward the tannery. Looking after him, Rathe shouted, “If you see a shadow, especially one that looks like a man, you run.”

  Stiny turned a little, waved a dismissive hand. “Shadows are everywhere,” he said, grinning wryly. “I’ve one, an’ so do you. Every man casts a shadow. To run from them all would make for a pair of awful tired legs.”

  Rathe found himself hoping Nesaea was right about the craftiness of such children. After the boy disappeared into the tannery, Rathe made his way back through Iceford, hurrying to another appointment.

  Chapter 4

  Master Abyk, renowned as the finest tailor in Iceford, and a better than average armorer in a former life, used his hand to slash a few errant white hairs back from his wrinkled brow and gave his handiwork a critical glare.

  Rathe had never been knowledgeable of fashion, but in his estimation, the garb Loro wore had looked better before he stretched it over his girth.

  “We must start over,” Abyk said after a long consideration, and reached for a measuring string tucked into a pocket of his woolen vest.

  Looking put out, Loro fingered one of six straining buckles on his new jerkin, the front and back of which were covered in burnished steel scales. Rathe decided it was best not to tell his companion that he resembled a gleaming, overfed trout.

  “What did you do wrong?” Loro asked.

  At Abyk’s pained look, Rathe spread his hands in sympathy. He was more than satisfied with his own clothing. It was not nearly as extravagant as Nesaea preferred, but he had been a soldier too long to change. His heavy woolen coat was red, and the shirt beneath it brown linen and plenty warm. His leather trousers and stout boots, both lined with wool, were black. Simple garb, if better than what most of the folk of Iceford wore.

  “I made no mistakes,” Abyk said, scowling more fiercely than ever. “The problem isn’t with my workmanship, but with you. You’re built all wrong, and—” his forefinger circled around Loro’s prodigious belly “—and exceedingly bloated besides.”

  Loro frowned as he scratched his bald head. Generally, he did the insulting. Being on the other end seemed to have fouled his mood. “Listen here, you twiggy little fool, if you want payment, then you’d better make this right.”

  “How can I?” Abyk blurted, and promptly jabbed a finger into the bulge of Loro’s gut, making him retreat, eyes wide, mouth opened in shock. The tailor gave chase, every step of the way using his finger like a dagger to prod the portly warrior.

  “Your arse is smaller than your belly, which forces your trousers to fall.”

  Loro slapped at the man, trying to ward him off. “That’s why I have a belt, idiot!”

  Another jab. “Your teats sag worse than my grandmother’s!”

  “Teats!” Loro yowled, cupping his hands to his chest. “I’ve the strength of a bull!”

  Another poke. “Your legs are stumpy and broad as barrels.”

  “You ought to see what’s nested between them, you wilted bastard!”

  Another stab, driving Loro into a corner hung with samples of cloth. “Your neck is a flabby pillar of suet.”

  “It only looks bunchy because you made the collar too tight, you ham-fisted buffoon!”

  This time Abyk delivered a ringing slap to the side of Loro’s skull. “Your head is like a fat, brown egg.”

  “What difference does that make? I didn’t ask for a hat,” Loro growled, hauling out his sword and slashing it under the Abyk’s nose. “Now back away, or I’ll chop off that finger of yours, and stuff it up your bony arse!”

  Rathe suppressed a chuckle, but chose not to intervene. Presently, Loro didn’t have that particular crazed light in his eye that signaled he was ready to cut a man’s life short.

  Abyk dan
ced back. Once he gained a safe distance, he pressed his fists to his hips, looked Loro up and down. With a sniff, he pointed a finger at Rathe. “Your companion is the picture of what you should seek to attain in yourself. He’s lean where he should be, tall and straight, and proportioned after a sculptor’s vision of an ideal hero.”

  “My thanks,” Rathe said, bowing to hide a grin from Loro.

  “He’s barely off his mother’s teat,” Loro countered. “Why, when I was that young, I looked the same—better, even.”

  Abyk eyed him doubtfully.

  “Be that as it may, heroes come in different shapes and sizes,” Loro said defensively. “Why, if it weren’t for me, Rathe wouldn’t be standing here soaking up all your sunny praise.”

  “That is true,” Rathe admitted. The short of it was, Loro had a knack for showing up when the fighting was at its worst, and he never hesitated to throw himself into the thick of things.

  Abyk snorted. “Even so, he’s still more of an ox than a man.”

  Loro gave Rathe a bemused look, but in this Rathe could not help him. Truth told, all the fat Loro had lost trekking through the Gyntor Mountains had returned during their time in Iceford. It was not all Loro’s fault, as Fira, the fire-haired Maiden of the Lyre he had reunited with at Ravenhold, took great pains to keep him well fed.

  Abyk looked to the ceiling, as if beseeching a helpful spirit stashed in the cobwebby rafters. “How does someone, even with my exceptional skill, change the unchangeable?” He dropped his gaze. “There’s nothing I can do for a … a man-ox, I say. Nothing at all.”