131 Days [Book 2]_House of Pain

by Keith C. Blackmore

  “All right, leave the women out of this.”

  “What, and stop embracing all of this?”

  Kra’s face hitched into a scowl as he lowered his mask. “This is nothing. You forget your training.”

  “Ah yes, I forgot about that. Hard to remember it when your balls are soaked through. Much rather remember my oil massage.”

  Kra pointed a warning finger at his brother, a gesture he’d repeated many times. Arrus lowered his head and moved around the tree, having voiced his mind in a fashion typical for him. The first basten would keep an eye out for his younger brother to a point. If this mission went well and Arrus performed as a Jackal should, Kra had every intention of field promoting him to basten. There wasn’t anyone more capable or, more importantly, reliable—no one else he wanted guarding his back. The only trouble with Arrus was his personality. Kra had to admit his brother… was a he-bitch—worse, a he-bitch begging to be slapped at times. A part of him wondered if he would have to do it again as he’d done when they were boys. He would if necessary, but he’d give his brother the courtesy of not doing it in front of the pack.

  Adjusting the mask’s hem at his throat, Kra left the tree and stealthily caught up to the glistening back of the nearest Jackal, a soldier carrying a shortsword and a spiked buckler. The commander moved past and pushed on, mindful of the others around him.

  As Kra walked, the rain lessened and eventually stopped.

  Arrus will be happy.

  The line of leather-clad warriors crept on, water dripping upon them from hidden heights. Wet trees shrouded the land, which tilted into an easy slope. The forest’s spice scented the air. The undergrowth became unsettled, and Kra and his men had to be mindful of where they stepped for fear of slipping or tripping. They knew the area, having come the way before, but the rain had left the ground soft and slick.

  Kra instinctively glanced up before hearing a crack of twigs in the distance. The Jackals ahead froze in their tracks, scanning the brush. Kra held up an arm and peered into the dripping woods. An instant later, his startled breath caught in his throat.

  At the top of the slope, within a cage of tree trunks, stood a single figure with a bare skull. His fearsome shortsword gleamed in the wet light, opposite a round shield poised over the man’s thigh. The forest’s breath clung to his dark frame, coating him in a fine, glistening mist. Kra realized the warrior wore leather armor, and the skull was in fact a helm.

  One man was confronting a pack of almost a hundred Jackals bent on bloodletting.

  Kra could only stare, for the gall of the lone warrior unnerved him more than he dared admit. A nearby Jackal whispered to him, a word that nailed Kra’s attention to the single figure atop the slope, for no other could be so bold…

  Cavalier.

  A wave of dread coursed through Kra, and he hesitated. The Nordish commander couldn’t believe the insolence of the unmoving gatekeeper before them, insulting his entire force by simply standing tall and being. It had to be a trap, a ploy the Jackals used themselves––bait a more powerful enemy with a smaller group, harry them, retreat, and lead whoever was eager enough to follow back to friendly lines, to their deaths.

  The Jackals surrounding him remained motionless, wary of the very air they breathed. Rain hissed and began pattering off leaves. The Nords stared at the lone swordsman, seemingly bedazzled by his singular bravery. Then, somewhere along their ominous line, a branch snapped. That crack of fibers, loud as thunder in the forest stillness, broke the spell.

  The Cavalier half turned then, almost dismissive of the force before him.

  Kra gestured at a handful of Jackals who carried bows and pointed to the Sunjan on the hill. The masked men readied their weapons and took aim, but before they could release, the cavalier casually stepped behind one of the trees surrounding him.

  The Cavalier barked a laugh, harsh and scalding. He spoke to the Jackals, chiding them in his foreign tongue. Though the language was incomprehensible, its meaning was clear.

  Kra’s countrymen tensed, eager to be released.

  “He’s only one,” came a whisper.

  “I can’t hear anything else,” muttered another.

  “We could gut him in a heartbeat.”

  The voices did nothing for Kra’s confidence in the matter. What manner of man dared venture into the wild to confront superior numbers? Trouble was afoot, lying in wait—perhaps not close by, but when the fight began, close enough to rush to the lone Sunjan’s aid. Kra suspected Lancers.

  The Cavalier appeared between the trees, exposing himself. The archers released their arrows, and a pointed mist flashed toward the single warrior, who darted out of sight. Arrows sped through the empty space, and some struck trunks with a rush of whocks. The brief echoes made Kra cringe.

  But the Cavalier’s chuckle, a sound creeping over the slope like rasping chains, angered him.

  Insolent hellpup.

  Kra pointed his sword in the Cavalier’s direction.

  From out of the shadows and the wet underbrush, the Jackals advanced. Swords, axes, and maces bared, their weapons gleamed in the dewy light. At the top, the Cavalier watched them ascend with interest, his own weapon poised and dripping rain. The pack stretched out in places and soon fragmented as men struggled with their footing. Dead vegetation slicked the hillside, rendering it slippery. More than one man dropped to a knee from an unseen dip or rabbit hole. Even Kra discovered how treacherous the hill was, and he grimaced with each uneven step, actually dropping to a knee and catching himself when his foot slipped into an unexpected hollow.

  The foremost Jackals reached the Cavalier. The Sunjan stepped back to allow the first attacker to clamber atop the mound. The Nordish warrior righted himself and lashed out with a blade, the flashing steel a flat arc, seeking to split his foe to his backbone. The Cavalier stopped the slash and hacked through his attacker’s right shoulder, parting meat and bone in plume of fine arterial spray. The Jackal crumpled with a quiet grunt.

  The Cavalier kicked the dead man off his blade and sent him tumbling back…

  Just in time for another warrior to pass through the tall columns of wood atop the hill.

  Clang! Schloop! The Cavalier parried his enemy’s sword to the outside before whipping lightning across the Nord’s face, cutting off a shriek. A second flash of steel drove the dying man to his knees. The Sunjan put a boot to him as well, toppling his dying victim.

  A third Jackal rose and challenged the Cavalier. The Nordish warrior slashed, seeking a head. The Cavalier ducked and countered, and the Jackal crumpled, cradling his stomach before a shield’s edge chopped the back of his neck.

  Kra stopped halfway up the slope. Who is this hellion?

  He hissed twice, two terse expulsions between teeth, and his men lurched up the hill. Kra doubled his own efforts to close the distance, cursing as wet ground crumbled underfoot in places. The Sunjan had chosen his battlefield well, Kra realized darkly, and terrain was everything in a battle.

  At the top, the Cavalier greeted the Jackals one by one.

  One man’s head was half shorn away, his windpipe parting with a frightful hiss. A Jackal swung a mace and splintered the bark off a tree. The same man buckled from having his guts sliced to his backbone. Yet another Jackal crossed steel with the Cavalier, disengaged, and swung again, only to have his weapon hand sliced off at the wrist an instant before a horrific gash opened almost magically from his right shoulder to left hip. Blackness splashed onto the ground as he toppled.

  Two more Jackals attacked as one. Both died in an almost sorcerous display of swordsmanship, their bodies wilting around the Cavalier. The Sunjan stepped back and gestured brazenly for more.

  And the Nordish terrorizers of the night pressed on in unnerving silence, like the blackest insects rising up to feast on fresh carrion, drawn to the inviting clatter of steel on steel. Their masks covered their faces, hiding their expressions, rendering all darkly stoic.

  The Cavalier bashed his shield into one att
acker’s face, stopping the man in his tracks before spinning and catching another Jackal rising from the opposite quarter. That warrior dropped his weapons and staggered, clutching at the redness spouting from his neckline. The Cavalier spun again and slashed the legs of his shield-bashed victim. The Nord collapsed onto his back before being stabbed through the gut with authority, the Cavalier’s sword nailing him to the moist earth with a soggy chuff of flesh and dirt.

  The Sunjan paused then, his gleaming skull-like helm regarding the swarm clambering forward. He yanked his sword free, stood, and beckoned.

  Kra looked on with a sense of awe and hatred. The Cavaliers were damned near legendary for their fighting skills. It was his misfortune that an experienced Cavalier faced them.

  “Forward, from all sides!” Kra seethed, breaking silence and stumbling up the hill behind three of his men while his Jackals converged upon the top.

  And almost impossibly, as the Nordish terrorizers reached the crest in ones and twos, the Cavalier put them down with a speed unimaginable. One Jackal floundered backward, clutching at his slashed and bleeding face. Another’s arm was hacked off at the elbow before his skull was slammed by a shield. The Cavalier’s sword stitched another Jackal through the torso and left the man dead on his feet. His shield crashed across a Jackal’s jaw, and while the Nordish fell, the Sunjan killed two more in a heartbeat, his sword ripping their lives from their chests in splashing ruby arcs.

  Those last two soldiers were ahead of Kra, and the commander shoved the third man out of the way in order to reach this Sunjan executioner. The Cavalier didn’t pause, his sword snaking through the air in a grand flourish, marking his boundary. Kra lunged, crossed blades, locking their weapons in a tense struggle for supremacy. The Nordish officer tried to push, then twist, and discovered with horror the Cavalier was stronger. Connected as the two warriors were, Kra couldn’t help looking into the Sunjan’s flinty eyes.

  The corners crinkled in a smile.

  The Cavalier stomped on Kra’s toes, crushing them into the soil and sending a jolt of agony shooting up the basten’s entire frame. In that mind-freezing instant, the Sunjan grabbed the back of Kra’s head and pulled him down onto his blade, impaling him through the heart.

  There was a brisk twist of steel before the swordsman shoved him off, pulling the mask off as a dead Kra fell and crashed into the underbrush.

  The Cavalier took a quick look at the Jackals converging upon him, more than even he could handle, and decided he’d held his ground long enough. Without warning, he turned and fled through the brush, leaving the Jackals clambering over a low wall of dead and dying.

  Arrus reached the top of the slope and stopped in his tracks as the other Jackals bounded after the retreating Cavalier. He turned around, surveying the corpses at his feet, feeling dread the likes of which he’d never experienced before. The decision to hide their faces with black masks served several purposes, and only now did Arrus realize one of them with swelling alarm.

  Kra lay amongst the dead, his white face unmasked.

  Arrus gasped, seeing his brother’s blood ooze into the dark earth.

  “Kra,” he whispered hoarsely as a Jackal ran past, leaving him behind. “Kra.”

  Arrus stepped over a corpse to reach his brother. Kra’s eyes were closed, his mouth open as if drawing air, but Arrus spied the frothing slit in his brother’s chest. Any other man might have raged and charged into the brush after his brother’s killer, but the battle lust left Arrus in a gush. His knees buckled, and he fell to the corpse’s side. Dropping his sword and shield, Arrus found and folded Kra’s mask into a black pillow, which he tucked underneath his brother’s face, keeping it from the dampness of the ground. A great shuddering breath took Arrus, and he was only faintly aware of screaming and the sounds of battle in the distance. Not that any of that mattered to him anymore. His brother was dead while he still drew breath, while he just sat and stared.

  He had no more strength but to sit and mourn.

  Cold with misery, his throat painfully constricted to the size of a reed, Arrus patted Kra’s ashen features, hoping that maybe he’d crack open an eye and smile at him in that fond yet scathing way he had. Death wasn’t unknown to Arrus, and he certainly had had friends perish in battle, but…

  This is different. This is Kra. This is family.

  Frame trembling, eyes and sinuses flooding with grief, he was oblivious to the echoes of a dying battle beyond. Arrus stayed by his brother’s side longer than he should have. He knew every passing moment endangered him, but he couldn’t bear to leave.

  And then, it didn’t matter. Brush crackled. Arrus lifted his eyes to see warriors in dark chainmail rising above his line of sight; rectangular shields splashed with red; short swords poised to stab; the guarded whispers of an alien tongue he knew but couldn’t speak.

  Sunjans. Worse yet, they were Sujins, harsh slayers devoid of any emotion, the equivalent of Nordun’s own Grinders. Arrus glanced around the forest, seeing the gaps between trunks fill in with bulky warriors cutting off any escape. Not that Arrus would have fought. The fight had long left him.

  A handful of wary Sujins, their shields and breastplates dented and scratched, closed in and formed a ring around the slouched Jackal. One of the men spoke, a low, menacing gargle of words Arrus didn’t understand in the least and didn’t bother answering.

  When he didn’t respond, the Sujin’s tone became even harder.

  Sujins. Arrus shook his head. He’d been better off fighting. At least then there was the chance of being killed.

  The Sujin talking stepped in close, imposing his presence. The warrior spoke again, curtly, stressing his point by hitting the Jackal’s shoulder with his shield.

  Arrus didn’t care for that. Couldn’t they see he was mourning? He knew Sunjans were an ignorant lot, but by the Nordish Ivus’s grace, he hadn’t realized they were stupid.

  “Vudosto,” Arrus swore, implying the soldier should ardently violate himself with the genitalia he’d been born with––the worst Nordish insult he knew.

  The Sujin paused, seemingly pondering the meaning of the word, and for a short satisfying moment, Arrus believed the lout had actually understood him. His hand rested on Kra’s unmoving brow, cool to the touch. A lock of his brother’s hair brushed against the back of his fingers, and for a dreamlike moment, Arrus believed Kra really was only sleeping.

  Then the Sujin’s shield crashed into his head, and the world went black.

  13

  Borchus felt lighter after delivering Clavellus the sack of coin the old taskmaster had won on Pig Knot’s fight. The original wager had been meant to be placed on Pig Knot, but Goll––Seddon bless him––informed the agent of his grand scheme for the Sunjan, thus averting the costly loss. Borchus had certainly appreciated it, but he suspected Clavellus wouldn’t approve of Goll’s ploys. Pride or something or other—Borchus wasn’t completely sure which—blinded the taskmaster to the realities of the world and maintaining a full purse. Borchus had no such qualms, not when it came to the fighting season. Or so he told himself.

  With Garl recovering from his bath and resting in relative safety, Borchus concentrated on recruiting the next set of eyes and ears for his network. He knew just the person. Unlike Garl, that particular spy was perhaps the best placed of any Borchus knew of, as well as being utterly unassuming and completely trusted by the locals.

  The challenge––he never thought of it as a “problem”––would be convincing her to join his efforts.

  The sun baked the stone slats covering the streets, rendering them as hot as coals and warning Borchus to replace his aging leather boots. He swung his muscular arms as he slunk through the back alleys, threading a path through a brick, mortar, and wood maze as surely as a sewer rat. At times, he scratched his long sideburns and his shorn mat of dark but graying hair, hoping his appearance was respectable. He headed north, toward King Juhn’s palaces.

  His destination, an alehouse, was located a bowshot fr
om the inner walls of King Juhn’s palace, and it serviced Sunja’s more polished citizens, the flowers of the evenings, the upper-class revelers…

  And the house gladiators of repute, good and bad.

  As he bypassed the main streets and the throngs of people going about their afternoon business, Borchus remembered how Garl had recognized him by voice. By voice! He’d always firmly believed if anything were to give him away, it would be his height. His current disguise shielded him from second glances, and he knew the areas of the city to avoid—not even the underchambers of the Pit bothered him. Still, Garl had managed to guess him by his voice, of all things—even after all those years. Borchus cautioned himself. Others might very well do the same.

  The thought disturbed the agent. Borchus knew he could be overconfident at times. Had he fooled himself? He hoped not. He couldn’t possibly disguise himself any better unless he started wearing a sack over his head or moved to another country to ply his trade.

  Those alternatives didn’t sit well with the agent.

  A few fellow alley lurkers passed him, their features forgotten as soon as they were gone from sight. The armored backs of what appeared to be a full Street Watch stood at the mouth of a side lane, and Borchus walked on without worry. The city authorities didn’t concern him. The law could be more than willing to provide useful information when offered coin.

  The shadows between the buildings deepened when he arrived at the back entrance of a particularly sturdy-looking alehouse. Great slabs of timber, cracked and stained in places, rose up two stories and tapered into a high, tar-lathered roof. A crow watched him from its perch, a bare pole used for hanging wet clothing. Borchus thought the bird quite handsome, though he hated the voice of the creatures. He approached the rear door, mindful of the creature for fear it might defecate upon him. The smell of fresh baking bread wafting from a kitchen window perked his head up, and the thought of supper entered his mind.

  The door swung open with a creak. A woman backed out, wearing a gray work dress with matching white shirt. She labored with a wooden tub of wash water, and her grunts punched the air as she turned the edge of the container around and tipped its lip. Gray suds spilled onto the alley floor with a hiss, flowing toward a grated drain.