by Jon Kiln
The fisherman shook his head, unable to agree to murdering the boy that he had once hoped to hand over his fleet of one fishing boat to.
Gant’s eyes flicked open, but they were not Gant’s eyes at all. They were veined with black. “You shouldn’t have done that, priest,” the Gant that was not Gant started to hiss.
“No!” The fisherman, terrified, seized the body of Vekal and threw him towards the rising Gant, almost on top of him. The old man had no idea what he was doing, or why, only that fear had stolen his senses and the priest seemed to have a plan.
“Death shall come for me and I will welcome it, because I know it’s halls,” Vekal snarled as his hands clapped onto Gant’s features in a stranglehold.
“What have I done? What have I done!” the old fisherman was wailing, collapsing into the boat in floods of tears. “I’ve killed him, the boy! I’ve let that monster kill Gant.” The fisherman was about to hurl himself over the edge of the boat itself in a fit of despair, when he realized that there were no gasps or gurgles, or a suffocating, choking man; not the screams of a crippled priest behind him.
The fisherman turned to see that Vekal was lying next to Gant, both of them holding each other as lovers might do, only Gant’s eyes were fluttering as he groaned, and Vekal’s mouth was a rictus grin of savage joy.
Gant opened his eyes and shook his head when he saw that he was holding a supposed drowned man, quickly disengaging himself and scurrying to one side of the boat. The boy gasped, in thick, slurry tones that were definitely his own. “What’s going on here? Have you gone mad, old man? What happened?”
“B-boy? Gant, is that you?” the fisherman was saying.
“I bloody hope it’s me, otherwise who else would I be?” Gant said in a spectacular piece of Gant-logic. The older fishermen declined to offer suggestions, but instead his eyes flickered to the drowned priest, who was no longer crippled it seemed.
“Thank you for saving me, and I must apologize for…” Vekal sat up by the edge of the boat and coughed, before stretching his arms as if for all the world he had just been asleep. His voice did not sound like a thousand buzzing plague flies, nor the creak of funeral carts, but there was something, the fisherman thought, to the way his eyes glittered a little.
“Apologize for everything and whatever you think happened,” Vekal finished lamely, shuddering as if from a chill. He looked over at the fisherman and said, solemnly, “It won’t happen again, I promise.”
“But—but you was dead!” Gant declared. “We hauled you outta the soup! Looked as though you’d been drowned for two days at least, I reckon.” Gant made the sign against the evil eye.
“He’s a priest, son.” The older fisherman looked owlishly at Vekal, still clearly terrified of him. “From that city in the desert. They teach them strange tricks, or so I heard.”
“Really?” Gant looked at once impressed and terrified at the same time. If there was the smallest part of his mind that knew that something had happened, that a shadow had briefly passed not only over him but through him, the rest of Gant wasn’t going to admit it, not even to himself.
Vekal only smiled grimly, his hands twitching as if someone or something else were trying to move it. “If you could get us to the Isle of Gaunt, we’d—I’d—be grateful, I mean,” he said through clenched teeth, before putting one hand over the disobedient one and stilling it manually.
“Isle of Gaunt?” the fisherman intoned heavily. “No. No one sails to that foul place, but I’m not surprised one of your kind wants to. It’s too far from here in this boat anyhows. We’re heading straight to shore, gods help us. And, if you please, I’ll have you off my boat.”
“Thank you.” Vekal’s face creased into an angry snarl, but was quickly replaced by a calming, if a little tense, smile. “Of course. You’ll never hear from us—me—again. I promise.”
The older fisherman carefully stepped around the strange half-drowned priest and to the tiller. “Take the oars, boy, and mind you leave our passenger alone. Don’t’ even touch or talk to him. You never know what illness he might have brought with him.”
Gant looked from the drowned, recently dead Vekal to the white-as-a-sheet fisherman, and clearly decided whatever it was that had happened was too much for his meager intellect or his even poorer pay. He did silently as he was ordered, and they started heading for the nearest shore they could.
2
“Heads! ‘Ware the skies!” The cry went up and Talon flinched instinctively, looking for a place to hide. By his side however, the taller Suriyen merely swept her hand across the youth’s shoulders and hauled him bodily under the nearest eaves of the city.
The street spat with splintering arrows, the long black-fletched darts of the Menaali tribesmen outside Fuldoon’s high gates.
“They’re getting closer,” Suriyen grunted, pushing Talon ahead of her as she continued to walk briskly away from the city walls and deeper into the market district—or what was left of it. The trader’s city of Fuldoon had been at war for a whole three days so far against the Menaali horde of Dal Grehb—the most vicious conqueror that the world has ever seen.
Dal Grehb had once been confined to the northern highlands, before he crossed the near endless Sand Seas to get to his destination of the ancient, crumbling city of Tir. After butchering its mad populous of priests and fanatics, he had led his army on what had never before been attempted—a clean sweep across the south lands, and were he to do that then the very first obstacle that he had to face was Fuldoon.
Which, Talon thought, didn’t really seem like much of an obstacle at all, really. He looked at the demolished grounds of the Near Market—originally a long cobbled area with two fountains which housed stalls and cattle pens but was now a series of compacted rubble, and drifts of wood and stone like the fallen leaves of some titanic storm. Two of the objects that had caused this devastation still sat, clearly visible in the market. One was buried half in a house, and the other sat nestled in the center of its destruction. Masonry boulders half the size of a house, one still with the faint carvings of whatever building that the Menaali had ripped it from.
What an insult it must be, Talon thought as they passed the first one, which had carved on one side half the beak of the eagle-headed god of accounting, history, and death, Lord Annwn. Talon wasn’t much of a believer in the gods, but he still averted his eyes suspiciously in case Lord Annwn just might be able to see through the angry stone eyes of this ruined statue. What an insult to have your own gods used as weapons against you. Talon shuddered. These blocks must have come from the smaller traveler’s settlement outside the gates of Fuldoon and beyond the great river.
“At least they might run out of town to throw,” Talon said to the woman by his side.
“What?” Suriyen shook her head as she woke herself from whatever dark reverie that she had been in. The pair paused by the head of the god, the taller warrior woman regarding it narrowly. “Hmm. But how much of Fuldoon will be standing when that happens, huh?” She snorted defiantly at the face of the god ahead of her.
“Suriyen!” Talon said alarmingly, certain that they didn’t need anymore bad luck than they already had.
“Not my god, Talon. Not ours,” she said pointedly. “That’s these desert gods for you. As harsh and cruel as the sands from which they came, and they won’t even raise a finger to help those that worship them,” she muttered, before turning to Talon suddenly. “Here.” She slipped from over her head the bronze medallion that she wore under her mail shirt and linen tunic. It was the sign of her and her mentor Aldameda’s religion: a bull whose horns held a spoked wheel. Suriyen looked at the medallion for a moment before placing it around the boy’s neck.
“You’ll get more luck from this, Talon. Much more than any bird-headed lord.” She even smiled at him. “Do you know what it means?”
Talon frowned. He had heard a little of her talk with Aldameda at the ‘friend’s house’ as they referred to the sort of lodge-come-training hostel wher
e the older woman lived. “Umm. Something about being a scout.”
“A guide,” Suriyen corrected, pushing some of her lighter frizzy hair back into its ponytail. “Go on.”
“Oh, right. And the guides are like, you and Aldameda,” Talon said, trying to make sense of the scraps and fragments that Aldameda had told him. “And they protect the herd?” he finished lamely.
Suriyen’s face broke into a wider grin, before ruffling the boy’s hair affectionately. “Something like that, Talon, something like that. I guess you don’t need to be frightened with all of it just yet.”
Frightened? Talon thought. I was the forward wall scout, strapped to the front of the gates of Fuldoon and calling out enemy positions, he thought angrily, but before he could say anything there was a low whistle from the other side of the ruined market.
“That’s us,” Suriyen said, picking the way through the wreckage to where the side of a house still held, and created a natural clearing amidst the destruction.
“It’ll take years to clear this up, I’m sure,” muttered Aldameda, hair frizzy and grey, skin as dark as burnt sugar. She still wore her loose fitting robes and her heavy belt with its many hooks and pouches and ties, but had augmented it with a stiffened leather jerkin and heavy boots. She was also not alone in the ‘clearing’ but had with her two of the thin desert ponies, stamping nervously on the packed earth below. “And I’m glad that I won’t be around to help out!” the older woman laughed sarcastically, handing to Talon the reins of the slightly smaller pony, the color of light chestnut with large, dark eyes.
“Mother,” Suriyen greeted the woman in the traditional way for their odd religion.
“Friend,” Aldameda returned, before her face fell. “So you have decided to stay then? When the entire fate of the world could rest on our mission—and you would stay here and lop the heads off a few Menaali tribesmen, is that it?” Aldameda took in what Suriyen was wearing and found it all entirely disagreeable.
The taller and younger woman was dressed for battle, and not for traveling. Her ring mail shirt was cinched tight at her waist, and she wore part metal at her shoulders, elbows, and shins. Only her long sword and her daggers hung at her waist, not her spear or her traveling pack.
“Yes, Mother, I am staying,” Suriyen said, her tone making it clear that she dared the older to challenge her decision.
There was a moment of silence which Talon found intensely uncomfortable, instead looking to the horses. His mount was a chestnut mare, with a seemingly even temper, whilst the other was a slightly stockier darker brown, almost black gelding with a bit more fight and spirit to his stamping hooves. Talon clicked his teeth at them both, getting their attention. Talon had always been good with animals. That was why the gypsies had kept him on as long as they did, before Vekal and Suriyen rescued him from them.
“Is your quest for revenge so important to you, that you would throw away your faith for it?” Aldameda whispered to Suriyen on the other side of the horses, although still clearly audible to Talon’s ears.
“I don’t see this as throwing away my faith, Mother,” Suriyen said. “There are many types of terrors and predators in the world, and not just devils and demons. What sort of world will we hand over to the next generation if you succeed, but Dal Grehb has them all enslaved?”
“You know that Dal Grehb is just one man!” Aldameda snapped. “This… thing, this Ikrit has been terrorizing the world for hundreds of years. Maybe thousands.”
“Is he?” Talon looked up to see that Suriyen wasn’t looking at the leader of her faith anymore. She was looking afar over the rubble, back to the gates where the distant cries and screams rose up like the wails of sea birds. When next Suriyen spoke, her voice was quieter and uncertain. “Who would think that one man could have such an impact? Could destroy my life so completely?”
“Oh child,” Aldameda said, and Talon averted his eyes again.
“Here girl, here girl…” he whispered to the chestnut pony, who nuzzled his shirt affectionately. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to hear what Aldameda was going to say to Suriyen, but he did anyway.
“Dal Grehb is a warlord. Killing parents and raising villages to the ground, and yes, even enslaving little girls is what evil warlords do. It was never your fault. You couldn’t have stopped him—”
“Enough!” Suriyen snapped, and Talon heard a scuffle as one of them jerked, or was pushed, back suddenly. “No. Dal Grehb is a monster. And the precepts of the faith are clear. Monsters must be hunted, and slain.” The tone in her voice was the same cold, emotionless steel that she used when she was barking orders on the Forward Gate, and Talon shuddered. The Council of Fuldoon had made his protector and friend the wall-sergeant, and now the wall-captain, to help defend the city. Suriyen was the only one with an intimate knowledge of the Menaali horde and their tactics, having herself been kidnapped by them in the distant north when Dal Grehb swept through the region.
“Talon?” the metal-edged Suriyen called. There was no hiding from the command in that voice.
“Yes?” Talon stepped out from the chestnut ponies’ side, to see the woman who had been his traveling companion for so long standing a little way up the rubble, and Aldameda near him, looking aggrieved and shocked.
“You will be going with Mother Aldameda for a long journey, if you wish it. I cannot promise your safety here, and if things go awry I would rather that you did not have to suffer the things that I did at the hands of that horde.” Suriyen spoke casually, but it was clear that her tone held hidden horrors. “You can stay or go with Mother Aldameda, but you should know that if you go that you will also be in grave danger.”
Talon’s first impulse was to stay, and he opened his mouth to say so, before he looked at Mother Aldameda. The old woman was as tough as old boots, clearly, and from one shoulder hung the crossbow which she had first threatened all visitors to her house with. But still Talon knew that he couldn’t leave her to travel alone, out there in the wilds.
What can I do to protect her? Talon thought. I barely have any blades’ training. When his gaze went back to the hardened statue of Suriyen, the sun rising behind her in the dawn as if she were a hero or some godling from legend, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to protect her either. I would only get in the way here. Another pointless death in the war for Suriyen to mourn, the youth thought bitterly, as he nodded.
“I’ll go with Aldameda,” he said quietly. At least I might be able to stop her from killing Vekal. One good thing.
“Good,” Suriyen sighed, looking suddenly much more relieved than before. “Then heed her well. She is wise, and will teach you much more than I ever could.”
Before he could protest that wasn’t true, and that Suriyen had taught him so much, she was already crunching her boots back over the rubble, and back to the war beyond.
“May the god’s look out for her,” Aldameda breathed haggardly, before patting her many pockets and pouches as if searching for something that she had long misplaced. “Well. Done is done, and bad luck has wings, as they say. So let us be away before any more can find us,” she muttered, taking the reins of her dark gelding and leading the way through the ruins. “This is Jax, and your one hasn’t even got a name yet. Brought this morning from someone keen to get rid of them before the Menaali get them. You and I are traveling up around the Great Inner Sea to the Shattering Coasts, boy, and there we’ll be trying to get to the Isle of Gaunt, before a devil does.”
“Oh.” Talon nodded, suddenly wondering if he might have been safer after all staying on the ramparts of a besieged city, as the largest army the world has ever known tried to break its way in.
3
Suriyen strode back through the shattered streets of Fuldoon, and she didn’t cry. The early morning sun had just crested the high walls and it shone fiercely down, but she regarded it without flinching. A part of her welcomed the pain of the glare for a moment, just as she welcomed the heat of it on her upturned face.
A small bla
ck speck broke the sun’s flare as, far above, one of the desert crows sailed over the wall, as gracefully and as peacefully as if no war were raging beneath it. Suriyen’s gaze was broken, and she blinked hurriedly as her eyes watered and the after-image of the sun hovered for a moment in front of her.
“Captain!” shouted Ruyiman, her chief and next in command should she fall. Ruyiman was a number of years older than her, with dark hair in a thin ponytail that stretched almost to the center of his shoulder blades. He had a rangy, sharp face and speckled grey beard. He was the only leader amongst the entire city of Fuldoon worth his salt, Suriyen thought.
Fuldoon was a trader’s city, ruled by a council of the richest, and whose ports and gates had a reputation of being forever open. Others in the north might unkindly regard it as a smuggler’s city, or a pirate’s getaway, but the truth as Suriyen was beginning to find out was much more complex. A complex web of alliances, payments, and debts held the city together, and made a choke hold on trade coming up from the hot south and passing across the Great Inner Sea to the cooler climes of the north.
As such an industrious and influential port, Fuldoon had many enemies but had few wars to its name, preferring to buy them off or even recruit them. Second in charge, Ruyiman, was one of the latter—an ambitious pirate born to a pirate family who had turned for the cities coin more years ago than Suriyen had been standing upright for. He was now as devoted and true to his adopted city as any who had been born here, and, more importantly to Suriyen, he could be as mean as a desert viper.
“Is it ready?” Suriyen asked the man, who appeared tired and haggard even this early in the morning. He had forsworn his usual chain and ring mail armor of the wall for the task that Suriyen had set him, and instead wore only padded and quilted linens, smeared and stinking of foul vapors.
“It is, god help us, it is.” He pulled a disgusted face. “Had to threaten half the tallow and candle merchants in the city with conscription.”
