Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4)

by McPhail, Melissa

  Loukas fell back on his hands and turned to Trell a disbelieving look. “What…” he waved at boat, rock, river and him, “what just happened here?”

  Follow the water, Trell of the Tides… Naiadithine’s farewell felt a chaste kiss, as a parting grace.

  Trell flung the hair from his eyes—oh, to be free of this accursed rain!—and winced slightly. “I think She wants us to follow the river.” He got to his feet.

  “Who?” Loukas pinned him beneath a hammering stare. For all he had the build of a minstrel, his gaze could sure give a man a pounding. “Who wants us to follow the river?”

  “Naiadithine.” Trell put one foot carefully in the boat to steady it.

  “The River Goddess?” Loukas’s voice sounded a bit shrill, but he might’ve just been trying to be heard over the raging water.

  Trell looked to him. “Get in, Loukas.” He held the skiff while Loukas climbed in, glaring profoundly at him the while and muttering oaths in at least six languages. Trell bent down and tried to work free some of the debris clinging to the rudder, whereupon Loukas remarked darkly, “Are you familiar with the Akkadian parable about the prince and the tiger?”

  Trell looked up under his brows. “The one where the prince gets eaten or where the tiger loses her ruby?”

  Loukas speared him with a stare. “The one where the prince learns it is a dangerous—never mind insanely stupid!—idea to seek the favor of a god.”

  “Oh, that one.” Trell grinned at him. “Hold on now.” He grabbed the rim of the boat and launched them off the rock.

  The current instantly caught and slung the skiff around, slung Trell into the bottom, and before he could get his bearings or claim his seat, they were tossing and pitching down the rapids, smashing through waves when they weren’t being deluged by them, both of them holding hard to each side of the little boat, the rudder forgotten and useless in any case against such a torrent.

  At one point where breath was possible, Loukas spun Trell such a look—And you thought we could swim this and survive?

  Trell grinned through the hair plastered to his face. Loukas had a point.

  How long they rode the river, Trell couldn’t say, for each moment passed with that heightened sense of timelessness that comes when a man is fighting for his life. Hours passed as minutes; minutes stretched into hours. Never is time more malleable than when a man has the sense that each ticking second could become his last.

  Finally the canyon broadened again and the river flattened out. Trell saw a stretch of flooded trees downstream where the water became smooth. He pointed through the rain. “We can make that eddy!” Well…they could if they swam harder than they’d ever swum before, and if nothing lay hidden beneath the churning waves, and if the river graced them with extraordinary luck. “But we have to swim!”

  Loukas considered the trees briefly and then nodded. He appeared determined, but Trell worried for him. His body was shaking, his face was very pale and his lips were blue.

  Trell pulled off his belt and rethreaded it through its buckle. Then he shoved one arm through the loop and waved to Loukas to do the same, shouting to be heard over the rain, “So we don’t get separated!”

  It was a tenuous link, but if there was a better way to keep them together with the materials and time they had available, Trell couldn’t think of one.

  Loukas hooked his arm through the belt and nodded to him.

  They jumped out of the boat.

  The current carried the little skiff fast away. Loukas could barely keep his head above the waves, so Trell kept the belt firmly within the hook of his left arm and used his right to maneuver them both towards shore, kicking as hard as he could manage.

  It was a harrowing few minutes.

  He finally reached the eddy where the current eased, and soon thereafter—and to his immense relief—he had them into shallower waters. With his own teeth chattering, Trell wrapped his arms around Loukas and half swam, half-dragged him onto land.

  There they collapsed, side by side, in the mud. Cold, slimy earth had never felt more welcome.

  The last few minutes of swimming had cast a fog over Trell’s thoughts. His body was shaking forcefully, yet he could barely find the energy to move. He hugged closer to Loukas and tried to inch both their bodies further up the hillside. A grey twilight had claimed the river, darkness the trees…

  Trell must’ve lost consciousness, because when he became aware again with a sudden start, he was staring at a pair of muddied boots. His gaze traced their line up to a belt sporting a pair of daggers and a wickedly fat scimitar, farther up over an embroidered kameez and vest beneath an expensive cloak, to the three chin braids that marked the man a member of M’Nador’s nobility. A tattoo of thorns collared his neck, marking him an heir within the Council of Princes, but the shiny, trident brand of a thief stood out starkly against one of the inked thorns, ruining its line.

  Rolan Lamodaar. Trell heaved a sigh of relief and let his head fall back in the mud. He’d been on several campaigns with Rolan before being assigned to the Cry. He’d never encountered a man who hated Radov abin Hadorin more.

  Rolan grunted amusedly. “You two have got to be the luckiest bastards Thalma ever saw fit to grace.”

  Trell wanted to agree with him, but he couldn’t make his lips form words just then.

  “N-not Thalma,” Loukas stammered, his voice barely audible. “N-naiad-dithine.”

  At this, one of Rolan’s shaggy black eyebrows hitched an inch higher than the other. He bent to help Trell up, and together they dragged Loukas to his feet. It took a few attempts to get him to stay upright, and then he just stood there with his shoulders hunched, teeth chattering, hugging his chest and shivering.

  Rolan planted a hand on his scimitar and looked Loukas up and down. “I thought you didn’t believe in our gods, Loukas n’Abraxis.”

  Chin to his chest, Loukas managed faintly, “I’ll believe anything T-Trell tells me to b-believe.”

  Rolan looked to Trell with his rearing bear of an eyebrow seeking explanation for this statement.

  Trell wrapped an arm around Loukas’s icy shoulders. “Don’t listen to him. He’s delirious.”

  “No doubt.” Rolan goaded Loukas with his gaze. “I would’ve thought Valeri would’ve been the one went into the Taran after you, n’Abraxis. Or maybe I’ve been reading him wrong and he was relieved to let the river claim you.”

  Trell shook his head. “Tannour didn’t see him fall.”

  Rolan—or at least his eyebrow—appeared unconvinced. “In any case, n’Abraxis is lucky you went in for him, Trell of the Tides, and we’re all damned fortunate you made it out still breathing.”

  “Rolan!” A male voice called to them from further up the hill.

  “Balé!” he answered in the desert tongue. Yes. “I found them!” Rolan clapped Loukas hard on the arm and added with a grin, “Hang in there, Yashar,” which was the name of a cat with nine lives from a famous Akkadian parable.

  Soon, men were flooding down the hill, Loukas was being wrapped in blankets, someone placed a heavy blanket around Trell’s shoulders as well…but as they were encouraging him away, he looked back to the river, which lay darkly now beneath night’s blanket. Riversong still sang loudly in his thoughts.

  ‘It is an ephemeral, perilous state to be beloved of a god,’ thus the saying went.

  Every story Trell had ever heard warned that a mortal need seek no better way to an alacritous death than to court or be courted by a god. If the god of his desire didn’t do him in, another god, stricken by jealousy or greed or simply the whimsical caprice that often infects immortality, most assuredly would.

  The Goddess Naiadithine had saved Trell’s life so many times…thus far she’d asked nothing of him in return, though he’d given her multiple offerings from his own gratitude. But now that Trell had somewhat met her—at least gotten more of a sense of Her, a perception of Her…corporeality, if such could be said, and in the least the experience of an actual
interchange of communication between them—he was beginning to suspect that Her benevolence would in fact come at a price.

  What troubled him most in this thought was wondering if it would be a price he’d be willing to pay, and if not…well, he didn’t like to contemplate the consequences of denying a god, especially one to whom he so many times owed his life.

  Forty-two

  “Just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be done, and what should be done cannot always be accomplished, but where the two coincide—this must be done.”

  –The Akkadian Emir Zafir bin Safwan al Abdul-Basir

  Later that night, after Trell had ensured Loukas was being well cared for and was attending to himself—which mainly involved sitting beside Rolan’s campfire wrapped in blankets and being fussed over needlessly by everyone from the company’s Healer to the cooks—Raegus’s valet showed up and hovered at the edge of the firelight, beyond the reach of Rolan Lamodaar’s long arm, if not beyond the spear of his gaze.

  “What is it, Rami?” the Nadorii prince waved the boy into his lighted domain.

  The lad stepped forward tentatively, a youth of ten and three at best, with large, dark eyes and a hairless upper lip. Those large eyes darted between Trell and Rolan as if unsure which of the two he should address. In the end, he sort of spoke to the air between them. “The A’dal is asking for Pr—Trell of the Tides.”

  “Pr-Trell?” Rolan’s dark eyes scrutinized the lad while his tone taunted. “Is that a new prefix? Will you be calling me Pr-Rolan?”

  The boy went red in the cheeks. He shifted a desperate gaze to Trell.

  Trell set down his bowl of stew and pushed to his feet. “I guess that’s my cue.”

  “Try not to let Raegus beat you to a pulp, Pr-Trell.” Rolan’s dark eyes glinted with amusement. “You’re about to get an earful, as Sherq blows west.”

  Trell followed Rami to a large tent. He nodded to the two men standing guard, neither of whom he knew—though both seemed to recognize him, if told from the way they straightened at his approach—and ducked inside behind the boy.

  An antechamber opened to the left into a bedroom partially concealed by drapes and to the right into a living area. Raegus n’Harnalt was seated behind a camp desk situated between two wrought-iron braziers. Two more burned at the opposite corners of the room. The air was blessedly warm.

  The Avataren had a knife scar on one cheek that looked new. It disappeared beneath his dark, close-shorn beard. Raegus looked up as Trell entered. Then he came around and clasped shoulders with him, whereupon they each pressed a fist to their hearts in the traditional desert greeting between commanders.

  “Trell of the Tides.” Raegus smiled and motioned him towards a chair across the desk from his own. “I read the Emir’s missive.” There were at least a thousand things implied in his tone, and as he sat down again, his blue-eyed gaze held a flinty spark.

  Trell lowered himself slowly into his chair.

  “You’re all right?” the commander asked. He sounded angry enough to have possibly wished the opposite.

  Trell watched him warily. He wasn’t about to tell him that his hands were still shaking at odd times, or that the inside of his head felt like an over-used punching bag. “It was nothing a bowl of stew couldn’t cure.”

  “Well and good,” Raegus leaned towards him with thunder in his gaze, “because take me for a Sorceresy slave but that was the stupidest bloody fool thing anyone could’ve done, and I certainly didn’t expect it from you!”

  Trell drew back slightly in his chair.

  Raegus slammed his palm on the desk. “What in Jai’Gar’s holy name were you thinking, throwing yourself into the Taran like that? Do you have any idea how much trouble I’d be in if anything happened to you?” He picked up the Emir’s letter and shook it at him. “Never mind what this says—I don’t even want to think about what this says—the Emir looks upon you as one of his sons, Trell, and everyone here bloody knows it. If something were to happen to you while attached to my company, the Emir would have my balls in a sling, and that would just be the appetizer.”

  “Raegus,” Trell felt numbed by his words, “he couldn’t possibly hold you accountable for my—”

  “No-no-no-no-no.” Raegus fell back in his chair and glowered darkly at him. “You know how our Su’a’dal thinks. He would’ve asked me, why did I place the son-of-his-heart in a position where he felt he had to make such a choice? Why weren’t my men faster in responding? Why wasn’t I there, putting my life before yours? He would painfully remind me that such is what Jai’Gar requires of His Converted. There’s no escaping that responsibility.”

  Trell held the other commander’s gaze, recognizing the truth in his words, disturbed that he’d disappointed and aggrieved him. “Raegus, I deeply apologize for putting you in such a position.”

  The Avataren grunted. “Well…I accept your apology.” He scrubbed at his jaw and considered Trell like a magister assessing a horse thief when he knows the man is just going to go right back out and steal another horse. “Who’d you pull out of the water anyway?”

  “Loukas n’Abraxis.”

  Raegus’s hand froze on his jaw. “Loukas n’Abraxis.” It fell to his lap. “My only combat engineer—well, fethe.” It was Avatar’s most versatile curse word. “I guess I ought to be thanking you instead of busting your balls, eh? Or I suppose you can be thanking yourself soon enough.”

  Trell gave him a curious look.

  Raegus arched brows, challenging his ignorance, and held up the Emir’s missive again. “Do you know what this letter says?”

  Trell frowned at his tone. “I can guess at some of it.”

  “I’m to turn command over to you.”

  “Once the Saldarians have been taken in hand,” Trell stressed.

  Raegus snorted. “Do you really think our Su’a’dal would place you beneath my command? Hero of the Cry? Son-of-his-heart? A prince of Dannym?”

  This news hit Trell powerfully. “Raegus, I never imagined—”

  “Bloody hells, Trell, you’re one of the val Lorian heirs?” Surprise threaded strongly through his tone. “And the fethen Dannish soldiers are our allies now to boot? I had to read that damned letter three times just to be sure I was reading it right.”

  Silence bound Trell’s tongue like astonishment bound his thoughts. He should’ve seen this coming, knowing the Emir as he did, and it bothered him greatly that he hadn’t. Had he been gone from the war for so long that his greatest weapons of instinct and prediction, both of which he’d honed to a fine point, had become rusted from lack of use?

  “I see you really didn’t know.” Raegus gave a droll grunt. “So we’re both on the punishing end of Ha’viv’s rod. He is having His way with us something fierce today.”

  Trell misliked the imagery of the Trickster God’s ‘rod’, for it invoked memories of Taliah that he would much rather have forgotten. He exhaled a slow breath. “I suppose another apology serves neither of us.”

  Raegus pushed out of his chair. “No need,” he waved at the room while walking towards a cabinet boasting several bottles of wine, “though I’ll miss the accommodations, but I couldn’t have done what you did at the Cry, Trell. Fiera’s ashes, it was all I could do to hold the lines after you left.”

  He poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Trell. Then he stood there, considering him with his dark brows inching towards one another. “You’ll fit right in with this motley crew. The company is chockablock with disenfranchised princes. I can name five off the top of my head—most of ’em with chips the size of boulders on each shoulder, one going by the name of Indignation and the other Affront. Had to make them into my officers, because the gods know they won’t follow orders, even to save their own necks.” He drank his wine, still pinning Trell with a speculative gaze. “Is that what’s next for you? A kingdom of your own?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  Raegus grunted. “The Emir says he’ll award me a sheikdo
m if I can return you in one piece.” He looked Trell over dubiously. “I guess our Su’a’dal doesn’t trust in your sense of self-preservation any more than I do.”

  Trell cracked a smile. “I suppose I deserve that.”

  “More than a little.” Raegus retook his chair. “What did you find in the town?”

  “Loukas uncovered a Saldarian quarrel.”

  The Avataren perked up at this. “You’re sure it’s Saldarian?”

  “Quite.”

  He nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Outside of a wandering hen, there wasn’t much else to see—leastwise nothing you haven’t seen before, according to Tannour.”

  “It’s damned eerie, is what it is—five towns with folk and all just outright disappeared?” He took a long drink of his wine and then studied Trell with a pensive scowl. “Did Tannour tell you about our first skirmish?”

  Trell shook his head.

  “The Lord Rhakar found the bastards to begin with and Prince Farid led us right to them using the nodes. There might’ve been fifty Saldarians camped in this clearing long about thirty leagues behind us now, but fethe if the place didn’t reek of four times that many men, just rank with the smell of liquor and piss. Half of ’em were drunk on their arses, but the others fought like angry badgers and us the raccoons taking over their den.

  “There wasn’t any question that these were the bastards that’d been causing all the trouble. If it wasn’t the plunder they had just sitting there as a perch for flies, you’d have told it from the reek of the dead they’d piled up on the east side of camp, so the wind would blow away their stench. I rode in thinking this would be the shortest campaign of my career, started shooting off my mouth about how we were cleaning up this region and that meant the end of all of them…”

  He shot back the last of his wine and pushed out of his chair again. “You want something stronger? Fethe if I don’t need it.”

  Trell followed him with his gaze, watching as Raegus pulled out a decanter of amber liquid from inside the cabinet and poured it to the very brim of the glass.