by Rob J. Hayes
It seemed to take forever to reach the rocky base of the first mountain on her ankle. Jez told herself it was only twisted, hoped it was only twisted. A broken ankle in her current situation would present a whole new set of problems.
Looking up Jez thought she could see the first ledge of the pass about twenty feet above her. That was part of the problem with the trail; it required almost as much climbing as walking in places. Jez took one last look back towards the fort, the fires were still glowing, and she fancied she could even see a few flames. Then she placed one hand on the rock in front of her and reached up with the other hand, searching for a hold of some kind. She found one and started, pulling with her arms, pushing with her legs, scrambling up the rocky cliff face with a screaming ankle and shrieking fingertips.
One hand over the other, pulling, pushing, feet scrabbling for purchase. Pebbles, loose rocks and dust cascaded to the ground around her. Grunting, growling and, at times, squealing Jezzet climbed, inch by painful inch.
After something close to eternity Jez pulled herself onto the ledge, rolled onto her back and spent a good minute gasping for air. She was pretty sure she was both laughing and crying though she couldn't say why.
Her master had made her do many demanding things during her training but never had he made her climb a mountain. She was starting to wish he had.
No time to waste Jez pushed herself to her feet and started following the trail upwards. There was no way anyone would see her from the fort now but it wouldn't be long before Constance realised Jez had escaped and the bitch would send riders in every direction to hunt her down. She wanted to be out of sight by the time those riders reached the base of the mountains. They wouldn't be able to follow her up the trail with their horses but they would be able to ride back and tell Constance where she was.
You've been in worse situations, Jez. There was that time in Korral with the Red Hands. And that time out on the southern plains being hunted by those wild dogs that laugh at you. Truth was Jezzet Vel'urn could name a hundred bad situations she'd been in and truth was this one was climbing its way to the top.
This part of the trail was slim to say the least. One misplaced foot, one patch of loosened rock and Jez would go tumbling down the mountainside. She looked down. A bad idea. The world seemed to lurch around her as she spied the lethal drop onto vicious, jagged rocks that were waiting below. Jez flung herself backwards and pressed herself flat against the rock face trying to calm her foolish breathing. Another bad idea.
From her vantage point up on the mountain she could see Eirik's little fort burning away. It seemed Constance wasn't even bothering with putting the fires out. Her bastard of an employer didn't want the fort, he just wanted the fort gone and his warlord was more than happy to oblige. What was worse though was that, from the light shining down from the moon and that of the burning fort, Jezzet could see the riders. They were spreading out in all directions looking for signs of a person fleeing the fort. Looking for signs of Jezzet.
Fuck!
Jez turned back to the trail and doubled her speed. If she placed a foot wrong and tumbled downwards to her death so be it. Better that than get caught by Constance.
It wasn't often in her life that Jezzet could say luck was on her side. Truth was more often than not luck, fate and the Gods, whatever their damned names were, seemed to be allied against her. Tonight was not one of those times.
A flash lit the sky somewhere far away and a crash of thunder that seemed to shake the earth followed just a few seconds later. A minute later and the world seemed to grow darker as clouds moved across the moon. Jez felt the first few drops of rain speckle her skin and would have whooped with joy would it not have given away her position. She was a dark shadow against a dark mountain with almost no light to reveal her. Only an unlucky flash of lightning could give her away now and she intended to be out of sight before that happened. The pass was already starting to bend, following the mountain edge around. Soon the fort wouldn't even be visible and neither would she.
Of course, Jez had to admit to herself, there was a problem with luck and not just that it tended to run out. It was always a double edged blade. The darker it was the more hidden from viewing eyes she was but the more dangerous the trail became. While the rain would be welcome in washing off some of the stink of shit it also made the rock slippery and while the thunder may help to hide any sounds of a person scrabbling up a rocky trail it could also shake loose a small mountain of rocks which would crush Jez on the way down. Luck was ever the type of friend who showed up without warning, handed you a bag of gold bits and then proceeded to sell you out to your closest enemy.
Another flash, another crash and the rain turned into a steady downpour. Jez took a moment, raised her head to the sky and opened her mouth. Her water skin was in her backpack which was in Eirik's quarters which were naught but ash by now. Wasn't easy drinking rain straight from the sky but it was a damned sight better than dying of thirst.
The night wore on for Jezzet. At some point she passed long out of sight of any pursuers, the trail opened out, became wider, safer. Here the path started to wind between peaks and troughs but all was black and grey to Jez in the dark and rain. Her pace slowed and Jezzet had to admit she was as miserable as she was cold, as cold as she was wet and as wet as she was tired. So when she spotted the opening mouth of a small cave she trudged towards it, not even bothering to limp any more. At least the shooting pain in her ankle served to keep her awake and aware.
Inside the cave was dark but dry, spacious and with a strange smell Jez couldn't quite be bothered to place. She had no dry clothes, no sleeping mat, and no wood for a fire so she found a corner, curled up in a ball and closed her eyes.
The thing about having a master who liked to sneak up on you in the middle of the night and hit you with things was that you soon learned to be a light sleeper, to wake up at the slightest creak, scuff or wheeze. Jezzet, being the good student that she was, liked to try to turn the tables on her old master. She'd crack an eye, just enough to get a position of her assailant and then she would wait until the very last moment before launching a counter-attack. It had never worked against her old master but then he had never been a big mountain cat. Jezzet fancied her chances against the cat a lot more.
Her eye opened just enough to let in some light and she waited for it to focus. There, padding towards her on light feet, cautious as a child stealing from its parents, was a big cat. Two foot tall at the shoulder, Jez guessed, and with a lot of damned big teeth. It had spots, not stripes. Jez tried to remember the old rhyme.
'Cat with spots... something something, cat with stripes...' No good. She remembered the point of it at least. Stripes meant a lot of cats, spots meant just the one. Luck was still playing jokes on her it seemed.
Here, Jez, have a vicious killer on four legs. Don't worry though, there's only the one of them.
Her hand tightened around the hilt of her sword. Jezzet couldn't remember the last time she'd slept without her sword in her hand. The first thing her master had ever taught her, 'A Blademaster without a blade is a master of nothing.' Well actually that was the second thing he'd taught her, the first had been how to fuck a man while...
The cat crouched to pounce and Jez was on her feet, sword sliding from its sheath with a reassuring metallic ringing. That made the beast pause. It had no doubt thought Jez was already dead; chances were she smelled like death.
Jezzet stared at the cat and the cat stared back, great golden eyes never leaving her own deep browns. Sunlight streamed in through the mouth of the cave and Jez realised it must be morning, the storm must have broken. She needed to get moving, not stand here playing with an overgrown kitten. Just as pressing a need though was she needed to eat.
Jez took a cautious step towards the cat. Her ankle held, it hurt a bit but felt more stiff than painful. That was good at least, meant it wasn't broken. The cat growled at her, a low rumbling echoing from deep within its throat. Jez hadn't known cats could gro
wl, she thought it was something only dogs did. She was half tempted to growl back.
The beast aimed a lightning fast swipe at her but one thing Jezzet Vel'urn was known for was her speed. Her hand darted out, her sword an extension of herself. The cat had claws, Jezzet had a sword and hers was sharper. The blade skewered the cat's paw mid swipe and then Jez danced backwards. The cat hissed in pain and tried to back away. Jezzet decided not to let it; she pressed the attack with a jab followed by a slash. The first punctured the cat's shoulder and the second laid open a long, deep gash down its back.
The creature collapsed to the floor, a sound escaping from its mouth somewhere between a mewl and a sad gurgle. For some reason Jezzet felt sorry for the beast. The damned thing had just tried to kill her and here she was feeling bad about killing it right back.
She stabbed it in the chest, hoping to put it out of its misery. Problem was the creature wasn't human so Jez had no idea where its vital parts were. Instead of dying it just cried out even more. Again Jez stepped in and stabbed it, then again, and again. By the time the beast died it had more holes in it than a sinking ship and its last breath was a great shuddering thing that made Jez feel guilty beyond belief. She went about cutting off a leg, skinning it and carving off a sizeable chunk of raw meat.
The thing about raw meat is that a person can live off of it, for a while at least, if the person can keep it down. It tasted foul, felt disgusting, sat heavy in the gut and the blood was sticky and provoked a gag reflex that Jezzet had to fight with every mouthful. Still, she ate her fill and then left the rest of the carrion for any scavengers could find it. Then she walked outside the cave into the glorious morning sunshine.
It was good. She still felt damp from the rains of the night and now she was coated in the mountain cat's blood. The sun would soon dry her off but it would also evaporate any pools of water. Jez spotted one such pool and rushed over. A small indentation in the rock where water had collected and stood, a little cloudy but wet all the same. She put her face into the pool and sucked in as much water as she could. It tasted of blood and minerals but she'd tasted far worse things in her life.
Jez emptied the first little pool of water then found another and gave it the same treatment. Then she relieved herself over by a modest looking boulder before trying to find her bearings.
It looked to be mid-morning which would put the sun between the south and the east. Jezzet found the trail that seemed to lead the right way and set off. The good thing about owning nothing, Jez decided, was that you had nothing you had to carry. The bad thing, of course, was that she owned nothing.
Jezzet reckoned the trail would take her two days over the mountain. They'd be two hungry, thirsty, hard days but she could manage and at least the view was nice. From the bottom of the trail it was only about seven days to get to Chade and there she could find work and get herself back on track.
I may look like a bloody savage and smell like a sewer but I'll be damned if I'm going to die and let that bitch, Constance, win.
The Black Thorn
“Back ta the matter at hand. This is gonna slow us down,” the Boss said, staring out across the plains.
Bones was busy taking fingers from the men he'd just killed and storing the bloody digits in a little pouch until he was ready to clean the flesh from the bones to add to his collection. Swift was looting the corpses. Green was measuring boot sizes from the men they'd killed trying to find a good match for his own feet and Henry was staring at one of the two horses that hadn't run off. It was a dull-eyed creature that stared right back at her, trusting despite her having just slit its owner from navel to neck.
Betrim stood next to the Boss and joined him in his staring. A good staring was sometimes as enjoyable as a good leaning. “Knew it were comin'.”
“Aye,” the Boss said in a resigned voice. “Wish it'd waited another week or so though. Bloody bad luck I reckon.”
Two days out of Bischin and they'd run straight into the great herd. Beasts as far as the eyes could see in front and to the side of them. Thousands upon thousands of them, some people gave that amount a name, a word. Weren't no words to describe the number of creatures in front of them as far as Betrim was concerned.
Some of the animals were huge hulking things with short fur and big horns that honked to each other as they stripped the land bare of grass. Loud cracks echoed around as two of the big males butted heads, maybe for food, maybe for mates. Smaller deer-like creatures bounced around as well. Always alert, ever watchful for any sign of danger, their heads moved with sudden jerking motions that reminded Betrim of a bird. There were the tall beasts as well, the spotted ones with long necks, long tongues and funny little horns on top of their heads. Then there were the elephants; huge, grey monstrosities with big ears and long snout-like noses that coiled around the grass and lifted it to their mouths. The males had dangerous tusks that could skewer a man armour or no. Only the Boss wasn't afraid of the elephants and Betrim thought he knew why. He'd heard it said the black skins of the far south tamed and rode the monsters. Betrim was pretty sure he didn't have the stones to get close enough to touch one let alone ride one but then the Boss had the biggest stones of anyone Betrim knew.
“At least we won't be going hungry tonight,” the Boss said with a sigh.
“We gonna have a fire? Wouldn't mind cookin' my meat.”
“Aye. Might as well. Don't reckon anyone else is gonna be comin' at us from Bischin an' nobody comin' at us from the herd side o' things.”
“I wanna ride.” Betrim and the Boss both turned to find Henry standing next to the horse. She poked its nose with a thin, bony finger and the horse nuzzled her hand. She turned to look at them with a smile. “Reckon it likes me.”
“Do ya even know how ta ride one of those things?” the Boss asked.
“How hard can it be? You jus' sit on the thing, kick it a bit, an' it goes.”
“That sounds more like you,” Betrim said. The Boss laughed and Henry narrowed her eyes at him.
“No horses, Henry. Get rid of it.” It was an order from the Boss and not even Henry would refuse an order.
“Fine, fine.” One of Henry's daggers whipped out and bit deep into the horse's neck. She danced backwards with a laugh as the beast collapsed, thrashing and spraying blood everywhere.
“What the fuck?” Bones shouted, springing to his feet as a spray of blood hit him full in the face.
“I told ya ta get rid of it, not kill the fuckin' thing, Henry,” the Boss shouted.
“It's got rid of. What's the difference,” she replied with a shrug.
The Boss shook his head. “Swift, get ta cutting some meat off that thing. We'll move off a ways an' start a fire an' you can all thank Henry fer the horseflesh tonight.”
Green and Swift groaned. Betrim shrugged. Meat was meat after all.
They all sat around the small camp fire, all except Henry who had pulled the first watch. She prowled around the camp quiet as a ghost, watching and listening for any danger. It wasn't just people they had to look out for; wild animals were a threat too. Along with the grass eaters of the great herd came the meat eaters. Predators and scavengers followed in great numbers.
Just before sun down Betrim had seen some of the big cats that stalked the plains. A whole group of them, looked to be near fifteen, had been lounging underneath the shade of a corpse tree. The trees were said to grow wherever a corpse had been buried and provided much needed shelter from the midday sun for many.
He could also hear the haunting sounds of the laughing dogs. An unnerving noise for anyone and a death sentence for everyone alone on the plains. Those dogs could smell you from miles away and would chase and hound a man till death. Snapping at his heels as he ran, trying to hamstring him and then darting away, always just out of reach of retribution.
Carrok birds were always a danger even when the great herd wasn't passing. Huge winged creatures as big as a man with three time as great a wingspan and razor sharp talons and beaks that coul
d puncture steel. They tended to prefer smaller prey but it wasn't unknown for a pair of them to attack travellers. Diving from high up in the sky, attacking from the air and then speeding away to wait and let their prey die from the wounds. Betrim was always wary when fast shadows passed over him.
There were the giant lizards too. Some called them dragons, or dragonspawn but Betrim knew better. They weren't dragons just big lizards with dangerous turns of speed and a poisonous bite that could kill a man in hours. They didn't need to fear the lizards here though, the beasts didn't venture onto the plains, preferred the rocky areas not the grass.
For now though there was the warmth of the fire and all the horse meat he could eat and cheap spirits to burn his throat. Some of the others watched every time Betrim took a swig from the bottle but he'd be damned if they were getting any.
“How'd ya do it?” His near constant shadow, Green, asked.
The boy had chosen to sit next to Betrim and kept glancing his way. It was all Betrim could do not to shove a knife in the lad's neck. Still, the moon and stars tended to put the Black Thorn in a mellow mood. Something about the way the specks of light twinkled, he reckoned. It was pretty.
“Do what?” Betrim growled out the corner of his mouth as he tore off a strip of meat with his teeth.
“How'd ya kill 'em? The Arbiters.”
Swift groaned from the other side of the fire. “He's been wantin' ta ask ya that ever since he found out who ya are, Thorn. I reckon the boy's a bit taken wit' ya.”
“Which one?” Betrim asked.
“The first one,” the Boss said. He knew all the stories, had asked about them himself back when Betrim agreed to join this little group of sell-swords.
Green was nodding. Swift was getting comfortable on the ground, trying to find a non-lumpy spot. Bones had finished eating and was busy cleaning the flesh off of his new bones but he was watching Betrim all the same. The big man had never heard the details either, had never asked. Neither had Swift truth be told; only the Boss and Henry knew the details and even then they only knew the truth so far as Betrim had told it.
