Warlords and Wastrels

by Julia Knight

  She’d been taking it easy, resting where she could while she regained her strength–she’d lost a fair bit of blood. Now she sat for a while, watching, revelling in a dawn as she hadn’t in months, maybe even longer, before she got the horse going again. She hadn’t even had to try hard to find the bastard animal; he’d found her and had taken a small chunk from her arm in a friendly sort of way as a greeting. At least she had someone familiar to be with as she tried to work out what she had left, who was under the cracks in her life.

  The day rose warm and willing, and she was, if not content, at least hopeful. She’d made a decision, and now she had to live with it. She rounded a bend in the track and pulled up short, the horse snorting its displeasure at the sight of another rider sitting as though waiting for her next to a thundering river which would be gone when the snows finally gave up the ghost.

  He took off his hat and turned his face up to her, and she wondered where in hell Dom had managed to find a razor to shave off the raggedy beard, not to mention a half-decent suit of clothes. Not quite up to inducing a fit of jealousy in Vocho, but smart enough. They sat and looked at each other for a while, and then she nudged her horse on.

  “Turned out nice again,” he said, getting his horse to fall into step with hers.

  “I wondered where you’d got to. One minute you were fighting that bald giant, the next you’d gone.”

  “I like being mysterious. It amuses me. And good of you to notice.”

  “I wanted to say goodbye,” she said and narrowed her eyes his way. “I intend to leave, no matter what you say.”

  An amiable smile. “I know. I thought I’d ride with you for a bit, that’s all.”

  “I also intend to leave on my own.” Then again… “How long a bit?”

  He shrugged. “Until I get bored? Where are you going?”

  “Don’t know yet. This way.”

  “Ah, yes. I’ve been to Don’t Know Yet. Periods of intense boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror usually. Much like everywhere. Weather’s nice though. No snow as a rule. I think I’ve had my fill of snow for a bit.”

  They rode in companionable silence until they reached a fork in the track. Right would take her back to Reyes, to Voch, to home and the guild and all the memories that went with it. Going back would be to sink back into them and maybe never escape who–what–she’d been there. Last chance.

  “I’ve found,” Dom said softly, “that the memories are always there. You can’t escape them, but you can soften them, make the edges of them cut you less. And there’s only one way to do that. Make new memories. Better ones, hopefully.”

  “Maitea?” She let the question hang in the air.

  Dom stared off ahead before he shrugged. “A fine young woman. Just like her mother, and like her father too in many ways. Good with shadows and mystery. She helped us back there. But she doesn’t need me, or want me. If I were to stay… No. No, it wouldn’t work. And if she left, she might end up just like her mother too. She’s decided to stay, and that’s for the best. But I can’t stay. Better memories await.” His hands opened and closed on his reins, opened and closed like he was trying to hold on to something that would not stay held.

  Kass looked down the road that led to Reyes. “Do you think he’ll be all right? Voch, I mean?”

  Dom looked at her from under the brim of his hat, his eyes shadowed and old and tired to the bone. “I think he’ll be fine. He’s got more sense than you ever give him credit for–he always had you to fall back on if anything went wrong. Down there, in that camp, he didn’t have you or even know if you were alive, and he made a bloody good fist of it. Kept his head, mostly, if not his mouth shut. There’s probably nothing in the world that can be done about that mouth.”

  “Probably not.”

  She turned left, away from Reyes, and Dom followed.

  “OK,” she said as they reached the crest of a rise, and the rolling and dipping plains of Ikaras opened up below them like an unfurling map full of unknown names and strange places, whole countries to get lost in. “Let’s get a few things straight.”

  “Yes?” He sat up and looked more like the old Dom again, riding easily like he was on oiled springs, his whole body perfectly poised.

  “If you’re really coming too, then it’s friends. That’s it. Nothing else. I’ve decided I have terrible taste in men. Just in case you had any funny ideas.”

  His answering smile was rueful. “Your taste in men is better than my taste in women. Yours didn’t orchestrate a war just to kill you. Did he?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe. I don’t know.” She sighed. “Fine, you win.”

  “Excellent. Friends it is. No funny business; all will be deadly serious. Anything else?”

  “Yes. For the sake of your ears, never let me have a gun.”

  He laughed, and the sound gave her the first hint of a lightening in her chest, the thought that maybe, perhaps, she’d be all right, that maybe they both would be all right.

  “I’ve heard that,” he said. “No funny business, no guns. Now that we have the rules out of the way, have you any idea where you want to go? People of our talents can find work wherever we find ourselves.”

  She looked down over a green plain that led towards the distant shimmer of the sea. For the first time in an age she felt at ease with herself, with the world. “I’ve heard Five Islands is nice this time of year.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Vocho was once again cursing paperwork. At least he was in the warm now, beside a toasty fire in Kastroa with a bottle of jollop freshly made by Cospel in his tunic. He was still alternately swearing at Kass and missing her like hell. He kept finding his mind wandering, wondering where she was, where she was going, what she’d do when she got there. Whether he’d see her again. There was a big Kass-shaped hole in his side. Who was going to watch his back now?

  He was also having a great deal of trouble with the wording of this particular bit of paperwork. Raised voices echoed through the door, rising to a crescendo that ended with a sharp rejoinder to someone to “Piss off” before Carrola came in, looking flushed and pleased with herself.

  “You’re doing an excellent job of keeping people away,” he said.

  “That’s easy. Use a bit of logic, add some uncomfortable truth, wrap it up in sarcasm, hit them with it right between the eyes, and they don’t know where to look. That Imanol is a sod, isn’t he? Trying to charge us rent for this place, and he wants us to pay for the furs Kass didn’t bring back. I told him to go to every hell there is and take it up with the prelate.”

  “Good. Don’t think I could have managed him as well as all this. A report for the prelate. Apparently it’s a must, so Cospel tells me, though I’m inclined to think he’s saying that because he thinks it’s funny. The Clockwork God may know what to put in it, but I don’t. The worst part is going to be where I admit Petri’s not only still alive and is the Skull, but never mind, I let him off. And just to top it off, I’ve promised the prelate will help them.”

  And admit he’d lost Kass along the way. He really wasn’t looking forward to that part.

  Carrola sat down next to him, so close that he went all flip-flop inside again. They’d barely had a minute alone since Kass had left, and he found he missed that almost as much as he missed Kass. Perhaps even more, because he’d have been quite happy just sitting and looking at Carrola, which is more than he had ever been able to say about his sister.

  “I was wondering…” he said, then hesitated for perhaps the third time in his life, all caught up in looking at her. Gird your loins, my lad. “Um, I was wondering, seeing as you probably haven’t a position in the guards any more—”

  “No, the chief of the prelate’s men here relieved me of my duties this morning. He gave me an honourable discharge though, so it could have been worse. Very apologetic about it too. ‘Understand your dilemma’, ‘possibly only course of action in the trying circumstances’ and all that, but in the end ‘not a precedent
we want to set’.”

  “No, I can see it might pave the way for a few murders. Anyway, I was wondering. Um. See, I quite like bits of the whole guild-mastering thing: everyone listens to what you say, mostly, plus they all stand to attention when I walk past, people think I’m important and of course the sheer dash of the title quite suits me. I like bawling out lessers when they cock up basic footwork as well, though I can live without the snotty noses. Only there are other bits I’m not so good at. Eneko used to have a sergeant-at-arms as his assistant. She used to terrify all the lessers and not a few of the masters as well. I was, um, wondering if you want the job? You terrify me quite often, so it seems it could be a good fit.”

  “You need terrifying quite often. Anyway, aren’t I a bit old to join the guild? Shouldn’t you appoint one of your masters?”

  Vocho raised what he liked to think was an imperious eyebrow, though its only effect was to make Carrola giggle. “I hereby appoint you a master of the duelling guild of Reyes. I can do that, you know.”

  “Can you now? I’d just like to point out I left my last position when I decided my captain needed a shot in the face. You’d have to cut back on shitwittery, because I can do it again.”

  “Good point, good point. Consider it a thing of the past.” A slight pang at that because that was half the fun. But along with the guild master’s position and the adulation, came a lot of responsibility. It did, however, also mean he wasn’t required to duel as often, and considering his hip… and he’d found over the last few days that he could do the responsible, even the heroic, just as well without Kass. Maybe even more so, because he didn’t have her to rely on to get him out of whatever he got himself into. “I promise. On the Clockwork God’s cogs and gears.”

  “Believe that when I see it. So what would my duties be?”

  “Paperwork. And stopping all the masters bitching about each other to me.”

  “Anything else?” Her own eyebrow rose in a decidedly non-imperious but much more inviting way than his own. “Because I can think of more interesting things we could do as well.”

  He was blushing again; he could feel the heat of it working its way up his neck. “I’m, um… sure we’ll come up with something.”

  “You better had, because you are irritatingly bad at picking up hints. I accept. As my first action as your sergeant-at-arms, I would like to give you this. It might help with that report.”

  She handed him a sheet of paper, roughly printed and a bit smudged.

  “Local newspaper. Brought out a special edition after I talked the man with the press into it. Well, I say talked. More threatened. Best to get the story right first time, right? I told him everything and had him send a load of copies towards Reyes, just to get those bards a good head start, with none of your little extras. This story doesn’t need any. I gave him the title too. What do you think?”

  He looked down at the sheet and grinned from ear to ear. Right at the top, in bold type, it said vocho upgraded from great to fabulous. Under that, in slightly smaller type, “Heroically risks self to save prelate’s guards.”

  It was the best newspaper he’d ever seen. He might have to frame it. He looked back up at Carrola, who was grinning as broadly as he was. “Is that one of those hints?”

  “Yes, Vocho. Yes, it is.”

  And just in case he missed any more, she grabbed him by the front of the tunic and kissed him soundly. His insides went flip-flop for quite a long while.

  extras

  meet the author

  Photo Credit: Kevin Fitzpatrick

  JULIA KNIGHT is married with two children, and lives with the world’s daftest dog that is shamelessly ruled by the writer’s obligatory three cats. She lives in Sussex, UK, and when not writing she likes motorbikes, watching wrestling or rugby, killing pixels in MMOs and is incapable of being serious for more than five minutes in a row.

  Find out more about Julia Knight and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  WARLORDS AND WASTRELS,

  look out for

  BATTLEMAGE

  Age of Darkness: Book 1

  by Stephen Aryan

  “I can command storms, summon fire and unmake stone,” Balfruss growled. “It’s dangerous to meddle with things you don’t understand.”

  Balfruss is a Battlemage, sworn to fight and die for a country that fears and despises his kind.

  Vargus is a common soldier—while mages shoot lightning from the walls of the city, he’s down in the front lines getting blood on his blade.

  Talandra is a princess and spymaster, but the war may force her to risk everything and make the greatest sacrifice of all.

  CHAPTER 1

  Another light snow shower fell from the bleak grey sky. Winter should have been over, yet ice crunched underfoot and the mud was hard as stone. Frost clung to almost everything, and a thick, choking fog lay low on the ground. Only those desperate or greedy travelled in such conditions.

  Two nights of sleeping outdoors had leached all the warmth from Vargus’s bones. The tips of his fingers were numb and he couldn’t feel his toes any more. He hoped they were still attached when he took off his boots; he’d seen it happen to others in the cold. Whole toes had come off and turned black without them noticing, rolling around like marbles in the bottom of their boots.

  Vargus led his horse by the reins. It would be suicide for them both to ride in this fog.

  Up ahead something orange flickered amid the grey and white. The promise of a fire gave Vargus a boost of energy and he stamped his feet harder than necessary. Although the fog muffled the sound, it would carry to the sentry up ahead on his left.

  The bowman must have been sitting in the same position for hours as the grey blanket over his head was almost completely white.

  As Vargus drew closer his horse snorted, picking up the scent of other animals, men and cooking meat. Vargus pretended he hadn’t seen the man and tried very hard not to stare at his longbow. After stringing the bow with one quick flex the sentry readied an arrow, but in order to loose it he would have to stand up.

  “That’s far enough.”

  That came from another sentry on Vargus’s right who stepped out from between the skeletons of two shattered trees. He was a burly man dressed in dirty furs and mismatched leathers. Although chipped and worn the long sword he carried looked sharp.

  “You a King’s man?”

  Vargus snorted. “No, not me.”

  “What do you want?”

  He shrugged. “A spot by your fire is all I’m after.”

  Despite the fog the sound of their voices must have carried as two others came towards them from the camp. The newcomers were much like the others, desperate men with scarred faces and mean eyes.

  “You got any coin?” asked one of the newcomers, a bald and bearded man in old-fashioned leather armour.

  Vargus shook his head. “Not much, but I got this.” Moving slowly he pulled two wine skins down from his saddle. “Shael rice wine.”

  The first sentry approached. Vargus could still feel the other pointing an arrow at his back. With almost military precision the man went through his saddlebags, but his eyes nervously flicked towards Vargus from time to time. A deserter then, afraid someone had been sent after him.

  “What we got, Lin?” called Baldy.

  “A bit of food. Some silver. Not much else,” the sentry answered.

  “Let him pass.”

  Lin didn’t step back. “Are you sure, boss?”

  The others were still on edge. They were right to be nervous if they were who Vargus suspected. The boss came forward and keenly looked Vargus up and down. He knew what the boss was seeing. A man past fifty summers, battle scarred and grizzled with liver spots on the back of his big hands. A man with plenty of grey mixed in with the black stubble on his face and head.

  “You going to give us any trouble with that?” asked Ba
ldy, pointing at the bastard sword jutting up from Vargus’s right shoulder.

  “I don’t want no trouble. Just a spot by the fire and I’ll share the wine.”

  “Good enough for me. I’m Korr. These are my boys.”

  “Vargus.”

  He gestured for Vargus to follow him and the others eased hands away from weapons. “Cold enough for you?”

  “Reminds me of a winter, must be twenty years ago, up north. Can’t remember where.”

  “Travelled much?”

  Vargus grunted. “All over. Too much.”

  “So, where’s home?” asked Korr. The questions were asked casually, but Vargus had no doubt about it being an interrogation.

  “Right now, here.”

  They passed through a line of trees where seven horses were tethered. Vargus tied his horse up with the others and walked into camp. It was a good sheltered spot, surrounded by trees on three sides and a hill with a wide cave mouth on the other. A large roaring fire crackled in the middle of camp and two men were busy cooking beside it. One was cutting up a hare and dropping pieces into a bubbling pot, while the other prodded some blackened potatoes next to the blaze. All of the men were armed and they carried an assortment of weapons that looked well used.

  As Vargus approached the fire a massive figure stood up and came around from the other side. It was over six and a half feet tall, dressed in a bear skin and wide as two normal men. The man’s face was severely deformed with a protruding forehead, small brown eyes that were almost black, and a jutting bottom jaw with jagged teeth.

  “Easy Rak,” said Korr. The giant relaxed the grip on his sword and Vargus let out a sigh of relief. “He brought us something to drink.”