by Martin Davey
Cover Art and Design: Steve Criado
http://stevecriado.deviantart.com
Copyright 2012 Martin Davey
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
For My Dad,
Peter Davey
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Anyone who has written a novel will know that the road can be a difficult and lonely one. This particular road would have been a lot more difficult and lonely without the support and advice of these wonderful people: Jon Ruyle, axeminster, Geoffrey Stokker, Wren, Rowansnightshade, derrickmcmullin, Tisiphone’s Reign, Mark Taylor, Ana M Raquel, Suzanne Woods, Melody Burris, enigmaticuser, Merlion Emrys, Martin V, LDWriter2, tunnel, Dolly, cmabc123, Victor N and Meredith.
I have to thank Dr Robert B. Finegold,MD for his excellent editing skills and wonderful advice, I hope you get a chance to read his Kabbalist tales one day. Raveneye for letting me talk at her about anything and everything; keep an eye out for her Blood of the Falcon in April 2012.
Anybody reading this was no doubt first brought here by that fantastic cover; that is the work of Steve Criado, a great guy and a great artist. I know he will love it if you stop by and see more of his amazing work at http://stevecriado.deviantart.com/. And those of you who have bought this book will be able to go to the back and have a peak at the wonderful cover for the sequel. Another great artist provided the artwork, Juan Puerta (http://juanpuerta.deviantart.com/) and the title and design was done by my great friend Raveneye who will be very happy if you check out the works of Court Ellyn available on Amazon Kindle.
Thanks to them all.
BLOOD
OF
THE
LAND
FROM THE SEA,
FROM THE EARTH
BOOK 1
CHAPTER 1
The sun was already high in the sky; the shadows cast by the scattered trees clinging to the fringes of the cliff were short and black.
Landros would have to say something soon, for Dorian’s sake if nothing else. Dorian would be the one punished if the five Keepers were to witness him leading the patrol. Landros had heard of the punishments for such offences, though he had never seen them first-hand. Not many were so stupid as to defy the will of the Five.
He kicked his heels to hurry Kerona on. The mare quickened her step and Landros began to gain on his Captain.
Six in the patrol. Some would say one would be too many. How many men does it take to patrol the end of the world? And all along the coast there were guard posts just like this one; all of them watching the Sea.
It was midsummer; the breeze from the Sea was still warm. He cleared his throat as Kerona pulled level with Captain Dorian. The Captain was ageing, his red jacket straining at the hips, his boots worn, his hair thinner, greyer. All things Landros had seen before, but never really noticed. Not until the Dream. He cleared his throat again.
“Oh, for the love of…” Dorian pulled his mount up short, jerking the horse’s head back with a sharp tug of the reins. His greying hair was swept back untidily from his broad forehead by the gusting breeze. “What is it, Landros? Either you’ve got the worst sore throat I’ve ever known, or you’ve something on your mind. Spit it out, lad.”
Landros held the reins loose, allowing Kerona to fall into step with Dorian’s horse. He twisted in his saddle to look at their four companions following close behind. All young men, though even the youngest, Pascal, was still two summers older than Landros. All the men had their red jackets open and fluttering in the wind; all had wild windswept hair. Only Pascal had even bothered to bring his sword. A man could become lax and lazy when all he had to do was watch the end of the world.
“I’d rather we talk away from the men,” Landros said, straightening back in his saddle and watching the well-worn path before them.
Dorian grunted. “It’s like that, is it?” He turned in his saddle, waved a gloved hand forward. “You four,” he shouted. “You know the route well enough by now. First one around and back to me gets to spend the night at Mother Jendra’s house!”
An offer too good to be true. Four pairs of eyes regarded Dorian suspiciously waiting for the first tell tale glimmer of a smile, the first hint the Captain was toying with them. Pascal was the first to kick his heels and urge his horse on. “Tell the Old Mother to warm a bed for me! I’ll be dining well tonight!” he shouted to Landros as he raced past them on his barrel-chested mare. The horse had short legs, but she moved quickly enough and she was already into full stride before the others had finished shouting and swearing and begun the chase.
Dorian waited until their shouts and cries had been swallowed by the wind before he looked once more to Landros. “Well, lad, what’s on your mind?”
Landros’s stomach felt cold; his betrayal all the more bitter because he had to deliver the fatal blow, because he was taking the one thing he knew was precious to his oldest friend. Dorian had his collar high, his sharpened sword buckled smartly at his waist, his coat fastened, his buttons polished. Dorian was the Captain and always should be. Landros cleared his throat again.
Seeing the gasp of exasperation already forming on his Captain’s lips, Landros raised a hand. “How old were you when you had the Dream, Captain?”
As soon as he asked the question, he saw the understanding dawn in Dorian’s grey eyes. Still the Captain played along, running a hand along a smoothly-shaven cheek. “The Dream? Twenty-two days after my sixteenth birthday, it was.” He smiled at the memory, ever-watchful eyes alert as something shuffled through a bush at the side of the path. “Keeper Liotuk. My mother had been convinced I would be the first in our village to Dream Keeper Jerohim.” Dorian shrugged, swaying easily in the saddle with each step along the path. “But still she was proud.” Another shrug and Dorian fell silent, lost in his memories.
Landros nodded to himself and chewed his lip. Berragulls soared over the cliffs, wings rigid as they let the wind take them. If only life were so simple, Landros thought. Now he had Dorian alone, he realized he couldn’t find the words.
Dorian didn’t look at Landros as he spoke. Instead, his eyes were fixed straight ahead. “I take it, from the question, that you have had another Dream?”
Landros nodded glumly. “Last night. Keeper Jerohim.” Every time he closed his eyes, the memory came to him. The confused cacophony of his regular dreams, each one fading into the next, each one more meaningless and muddled than the last. And then the fragments began to move and shift to a different design; familiar faces and voices twisted and turned until they were no longer recognizable, until they were no longer faces and voices at all. Until they were nothing but colour and noise, and Landros had known that his dreams were no longer his own. More colour and more noise and it was as though he travelled at unimaginable speed, his stomach, his mind, his being left far, far behind. Until he found himself standing before Keeper Jerohim; most glorious of the Five gods.
A long silence between the two men. One old, one still to see his twentieth summer. Of course it was never silent on the edge of the world. There was always the wind sweeping through the grass, the waves crashing into the rocks below, the plaintive cries of the berragulls circling overhead.
Dorian finally spoke: “Keeper Jerohim. You are honoured, Landros.” The Captain turned to Landros for the first time in a long while. His grey eyes looked tired. “Is it true what they say about him?”
What did they say about Keeper Jerohim? That he was the most glorious of all the five gods who had descended on the world of man millennia before and brought harmony and justice to the world? That being in his presence could bring enough peace and joy to a man that would last a lifetime? Landros didn’t feel very peac
eful or joyous at the moment. He could hear the cries and whoops of the racers fast approaching. It was now or never. “He said I am to be the new Captain of the Watch.”
The slightest murmur of reproach from Dorian’s mount as his fist tightened about the rein. He nodded, his face not betraying any emotion. “He said that, did he? And did he mention what is to become of me?”
Landros remembered the mask of flame; the only sight visible once his vertiginous journey had come to a halt. How does an expressionless mask bring joy and fulfilment? Especially when the mask is telling him that his friend’s career, his life was over. “The Keeper told me to…” let, he was going to say. Choose your words carefully when telling somebody their usefulness was at an end. “To have you with the company as long as you want to be with us.” Landros wanted to put a hand on his friend’s arm. Instead he gazed out across the waves glinting in the sun like diamonds. The Sea. Other seas had names, he had heard. The Kalun sea, the sea of Jorah; even the Great sea. But when people spoke of the Sea, there was no question of which they spoke.
“And so you are to be the Captain of the Watch, young Landros?” Dorian nodded. Landros had long ago come to realize that this was a sign the Captain was deep in thought. “Captain of a company that doesn’t know what it is they watch for. Captain of a company that will never see combat, or action, or excitement. A company that follows senseless orders because there is no other way.” Landros had never seen the old Captain so angry. His eyes didn’t look so tired anymore; the only other sign of his fury were the flexing muscles in his jaw. “I had hoped for more for you, Landros.”
More? Landros had thought there was little in the world to surpass being the Captain of the Watch. All his life he had seen the respect that Dorian had garnered in the town; the way people spoke to him as though he was a man whose opinion mattered. As long as he could remember, Landros had wanted to be just like him. And that, he only realized now, was the reason it had hurt so much when Keeper Jerohim had told him that he was to be the new Captain of the Watch: that initial flush of pride he had felt.
The pounding of hooves made both men, new Captain and old, turn in their saddles to watch the final moments of the race. Pascal, the initial leader, was now bringing up the rear; his horse’s short legs no match for the taller mounts of his three opponents. Lykos was perhaps two lengths ahead, his jacket flying behind him; he even had a grease stain on his vest and thick dark stubble on his cheeks. Something to be addressed at the earliest opportunity. Only after the thought was whole did Landros berate himself. Who was he to dictate the way Lykos or any of the others dressed? And with Dorian not even home and changed out of his uniform yet.
He shook his head and wheeled Kerona around to watch the rest of the race. Clouds of thin soil billowed around the heels of the racers. Feren was rapidly gaining on Lykos, the flanks of his black horse thick with frothing sweat. It wasn’t only the men of the Watch who were becoming fat and unfit. Despite her struggles, Feren’s giant mare stretched her legs, her eyes wide and her teeth bared. Feren didn’t look too dissimilar, the laughter of earlier long vanquished by the stimulation of the challenge. Two abreast Feren and Lykos raced, Feren gaining all the time, his great horse stretching her neck with the exertion. Both horses looked at each other, eyes wide. Both men watched each other. Feren reached out to grab his opponent’s arm, missed, and grabbed both reins to try and steer his horse closer for another attempt.
Nobody noticed the danger. Nobody saw Torra gaining even faster than Feren. Torra’s horse was a wise old creature that suited him perfectly; watchful and cautious, neither of them liked to make a move until they knew how the cards were stacked.
Whether man or beast had decided now was the moment, Landros would never know. But decide they did, and it was as though the horse was running on the winds sweeping from the end of the world.
Torra’s horse was a stallion, the other two were mares. Both mares looked to the stallion bearing down on them, both riders of the mares more preoccupied with each other and trying to gain the advantage than the dangerous angle on which their horses were taking them away from the path.
Landros only saw the danger at the last moment. He reached out, his cry of warning caught in his throat. Dorian was already two steps ahead of him, bellowing aloud and sending a flock of shalon flapping into the air from the branches of the atlas trees. Even Dorian was too slow.
The cracking of Feren’s mare’s legs against the tree stump was enough to send Landros’s stomach roiling in revulsion. He flinched against the scream of the horse ripping through the air. Feren seemed to be the last person to realize what had happened; when finally he knew the danger, he flailed out with an arm, the horse below him still screaming at the pain.
It was only because Torra was still cutting across them that Lykos was pushed so close to Feren. Only this that allowed Feren to grab Lykos’s rippling red jacket as he fell into the sweating, crushing gap between the heaving bulk of the horses.
The mare reared her neck, emitted the most terrible blare of agony before she twisted and fell on top of Feren. Somehow, the young Guardsman held his grip on the jacket even though his arm was bent at a sickening angle under the weight of his horse. Just as Feren kept his grip on Lykos’s jacket; so Lykos held his grip on the reins, pulling his own horse ever nearer to the mass of flailing limbs.
The whole incident was over before Landros had even managed to urge Kerona into motion.
Man and horse screamed enough to drown the cries of the berragulls, to silence the winds. Landros struggled with the reins; his fingers felt thick and awkward. He looked to the wreckage, saw red blood thick on the ground under the confusion of the struggle. He wasn’t sure he wanted to get any closer to the carnage. Torra was still in his saddle, his horse circling and prancing and rearing about the scene of the accident.
Dorian had already leapt from the saddle, sliding to his knees to try and reach his men amid the flailing hooves and legs. My men, Landros thought, those are my men. He began to dismount, his eyes never leaving Dorian. The Captain slid to the thrashing mass of horse and man, one hoof battering him a painful looking blow in the ribs. Dorian barely flinched. It was Lykos’s horse causing the problem, the beast rolling about and trying to gain purchase in its desperate attempts to regain its feet. Dorian ducked lower, one hand on the ground, the other reaching into the tangle.
Still Lykos’s horse flailed and kicked out, its flanks shining black in the glaring sun.
Landros’s movements felt unnaturally slow as he approached the melee. All he could see were the thrashing hooves. One strike from one of those to the head and he would be dead. He winced at the thought.
No such fears from Dorian. He reached out a hand and grabbed Lykos by the arm, pulling the younger man free even as his horse finally rolled away and struggled to its feet.
Lykos’s red jacket was smeared in dirt, he had a ragged hole in the knee of his black pants, his normally carefully styled hair was jutting to the sky at odd angles. He cradled one arm in the other, bent at an angle that made Landros feel cold. Cold, that was, until he saw the blood spreading from Feren’s temple and pooling thickly in the footprints on the path. There was a roaring sound in his ears and he shook his head in denial as he looked at the open eyes and stunned expression of his friend. Feren was only three years older than himself. Only a few weeks ago he had celebrated his twenty-second birthday. “No…” Landros shook his head. How would they tell Feren’s mother? “No…” he said again. He could see the white of the skull beneath the red blood.
“Landros!” Judging by Dorian’s tone, it wasn’t the first time he had called him.
Landros blinked, tried to tear his eyes away from his dead friend and the jagged split in his skull.
Dorian had his back to Landros; he lifted Feren’s head gently in his arms, cradled it like a father holding a son. In some ways, Landros thought, Feren would be like a son to the Captain. Dorian would have known him since he was a child. “The horse.” D
orian’s voice sounded ragged, choked. “See to the horse, Landros.” Dorian had turned Feren’s body, putting his own between the dead Watchman and Feren’s horse. The mare was badly wounded, perhaps two broken legs, her eyes glazed with pain. She tried to struggle to her feet, fell back again, pawing limply at the ground. Her mouth hung open, her tongue purple and drooping on the ground. It had bits of soil stuck to it.
“I’ll do it.” Landros had forgotten about Pascal. The young Watchman who had started the race in the lead. Pascal had his sword drawn, his face was white. Pascal, who was two years older than Landros and yet always seemed the youngest man of the Watch; the others always mocking him for his bright ginger hair and freckles. The ginger hair waved in the breeze, unruly curls fluttering freely.
“No.” Landros called out. “No, it should be me.”
Pascal was no more than four steps away from the mare. Blood oozed from her flaring nostrils. “What? Why?” Pascal looked from horse to Landros.
It was the last thing he wanted to do, but Landros strode over to Pascal and reached out for the sword. “We don’t have time to argue about it. Just give me the sword.” He blinked away tears he hadn’t realized were there, held out his hand.
Pascal’s green eyes wavered; he’d always hated anybody telling him what to do.
Landros sighed in exasperation, grabbed the sword from Pascal’s limp grasp and strode the remaining few paces to the horse. He stooped to stroke her ear once. “I’m sorry, love.” He whispered. And then he struck. As hard and quickly as he could. A two-handed blow with his eyes closed.
The mare screamed loud enough to wake the Nameless One himself. Landros snapped his eyes open. His sword was embedded in the creature’s head from just below her ear and reaching under her eye to the corner of her mouth. The blood hadn’t begun to flow yet. The horse’s huge black eyes were now wild with agony and she thrashed and kicked at the already battered ground. Landros heard screaming. Only distantly did he realize it was his own voice.
