The Cold Commands alffh-2

by Richard Morgan

  A hand fell on his shoulder.

  You all right, mate?

  Eril s voice, concerned. He d led his horse up level with Ringil s, was peering at his companion curiously. Ringil blinked back at him, and something shifted in the sun-bladed air. He stared down at the heavy, black-barked tree branch in the water and the death grip he had it in. The crooked twist and reach of one arm off the main body, the way it tried to roll in the swirl of the river s flow.

  It was just a chunk of tree.

  Must have washed down from near the bluffs, Eril said. Seen a lot of fallen trunks choked up in rapids and falls back there. Something that size, the whole tree s probably gone in, got jammed, and now it s rotting off a piece at a time.

  Ringil cleared his throat. Yeah.

  He let go of the branch and stepped back to let the current take it. Watched it drift downstream to the next bend in the river, the lifted arm still wagging slightly from the motion, as if waving good-bye.

  He watched it out of sight. Cleared his throat again.

  There s nothing in those trees, he said brusquely, and led his horse forward again, wading hard for the bank.

  You reckon we can risk the caravan road?

  This high up, they could see it from where they sat a thin, pale line snaking through the wooded uplands east of Hinerion, lost repeatedly to forest and valley shadow on its way north. Ringil narrowed his eyes against the sun, as if at that distance he d somehow be able to pick out the glint of plate armor and lance-points on the carriageway. He shook his head.

  By now they ve got the City Guard out in force. Checkpoints strung every five miles or less, looking slant at anybody with a sword and no good reason for travel. I don t want to have to fight my way through that.

  Eril nodded glumly. For him, it was the road home. But south is going to be the same, right?

  South is going to be worse. When the Yhelteth authorities hear what happened to their legate, we ll be lucky if this doesn t turn into a full-scale diplomatic incident. The border patrol are probably down there right now trying to look like a crowd just in case the garrison commander at Tlanmar loses his temper and decides it s time for a punitive frontier raid or six. Ringil pressed thumb and forefinger to his eyes, which had started to ache in their sockets. Sank his chin on his hugged-up knees and sighed. Truth is, it s a fucking mess. And we re stuck right in the middle of it.

  Right. Eril shrugged and shuddered like a dog shaking off water. Lay back on the flat, angled rock where they were seated. He was a phlegmatic man, not much given to worrying about things he couldn t change. He put his arms behind his head and looked up at the brilliant blue sky. Yawned and closed his eyes.

  So I guess we wait it out.

  Ringil shot him an envious look. Patience had never been one of his strong points he d learned some in the war, because it was either that or die in a hurry, but beyond that basic cornerstone of self-preservation the habit never really took, and age hadn t helped the way it was supposed to. Thirty-one years old and he d still walk into pretty much anything as long as he thought he could walk out again.

  Sometimes when he wasn t even very sure of that much.

  He stared down the pale granite slab to where their boots stood upright, knee flaps folded down inside out, drying in the sun. Socks draped out to the same purpose. Under the soles of his naked feet, the rock where he sat was warm to the touch and smooth. It was a soothing feeling, like the soft breeze out of the west that kept the full heat of the sun at bay, and the knowledge that their vantage point was well chosen clear views back down the valley to the river they d crossed and over pine-covered slopes on all sides. You d see trouble coming before it got within a hard hour s upward slog of the top.

  Their bellies were filled, black bread and cured meat from the saddlebags, cool water from wineskin canteens refilled at the river.

  There was birdsong among the trees, and the soft sounds of the horses as they grazed in the clearing a little farther down.

  A hawk, hanging motionless a hundred yards out in the crystal air.

  Snarl was dead, as planned.

  So what the fuck s eating you, Gil?

  He looked again at Eril, felt the same stab of envy, and saw abruptly what lay at its root. The Brotherhood occupied an odd niche in Trelayne, trading on their much-vaunted historical lineage to avoid being classed as the bunch of organized criminals they basically were. That meant giving ground from time to time if some overly brutal piece of extortion or murder upset the Chancellery and the Glades classes enough to stir up a law enforcement response. As a Brotherhood soldier, Eril would be well used to sitting out the heat from his work, out on the marsh with trusted retainers or in some backwater harbor town down the coast until his lodge master could smooth things over back in the city. Strictly a matter of patience in the end, you always went home.

  All well and good, for those who have homes to go to.

  Trelayne.

  He glanced instinctively northward at the thought, though from here it was probably more like northwest. Trel-a-lahayn, Blessed Refuge on the Trell, fabled merchant metropolis, rising in walled and towered splendor from the mists and mazed safety of the great river s estuary marshes. Trelayne League Queen of the northern city-states, and the closest thing to an imperial capital anybody outside Yhelteth could lay claim to. Trelayne, the unquestioned cultural and political heart of the civilized north.

  Write it off, Gil. Let it go.

  Gingren had disowned him in front of the Chancellery. My son, war hero or not, has in his recent activities gone far beyond the pale. Debt-slavery is an established pillar of our society, without which the good economic function of the city cannot be guaranteed. It has been voted on and signed into law with all due solemnity, and it is not for any citizen, however privileged their position, to gainsay that decision. It is not for any man, Glades-born or not, to terrorize merchants in good standing in a legal trade.

  Break their legs, burn their homes down, murder their agents. Stuff like that.

  I thus declare my son Ringil now and forever exile from the Glades House Eskiath, and proscribed outlaw within the territory of Trelayne .

  They d posted copies of the declaration alongside his wanted poster in market squares and at crossroads all about the city, the seal of clan Eskiath stamped into the parchment beside that of the Chancellery, assurance if any was needed that Gingren would not seek blood vengeance in private against the bounty hunter who managed to bring Ringil down. Though truth be told even now, it brought a small, bleak smile to Ringil s lips you d be hard put to find a Trelayne bounty hunter who could read much more than the large lettered price at the top of the poster.

  There d been a sketched likeness to complement the written description, unflattering but to the point. Long black hair, worn pulled back; long white scar scrawled across otherwise finely drawn features. Mouth thinned, drawn down at the corners, and more lines in the face than Ringil liked to think he owned. The eyes were dead. Known to carry Kiriath steel and a Majak dragon-tooth dagger.

  Knight graduate of the Trelayne Military Academy, they did not mention. No point in putting off the punters. The accent was on the five-thousand-florin reward, and a noisy rumor that certain parties within the slave trade cabal of Etterkal would triple that money for a rapid result. Word-of-mouth and greed, leavened through with the poverty and desperation the war had left in its wake, would take care of the rest.

  There was no going home.

  Ringil stared at his stranded boots some more. Behind him, Eril had started to snore slightly. He sighed and rolled his head back to loosen the tension in his neck. Screwed up his eyes against the glare of the sun.

  Shadow fell chilling across his face.

  So, the illustrious Ringil of House Eskiath.

  He flinched, violently. Eyes jammed abruptly open, lunge headlong, half blind in the sudden blast of sunlight, sideways across the smooth rock to where the Ravensfriend lay discarded in its sheath.

  Knowing at some
instinctive level that he was wasting his time.

  Up in the ready crouch anyway, one hand on the hilt of the sword, the other wrapped low on the scabbard as Grashgal had taught, so the blade would clear through the engineered split down the side without taking off his fingers on its way.

  He blinked about in the bright air, looking for the voice.

  Or would Ringil of Gallows Gap be fairer nomenclature?

  Something seemed to happen to the light. It was like coming in out of the sun on a summer afternoon in the Glades, the sudden gloom before your eyes got used to the change. As if the day were pale blue fabric of some kind, and something could come and abruptly drench it through.

  A cloaked figure stood watching him, less than half a dozen yards away.

  Slouch hat shading a face that was oddly hard to draw detail from later, all Ringil recalled was the smile that clamped the thin lips shut, and a cold, speculative light in the eyes. The cloak, now he looked closer, was a stained and worn patchwork of leather mendings, one upon the other until it was hard to tell where, if anywhere, the original material remained. Blunt, sailor s hand stitching, and here and there amid it all the embroidered runework of a charm against mutiny or storms. He remembered Egar s muttered, half-disbelieving words in the stolen ferryboat as they fled downriver just like they say in the fucking legends, man; sea captain s cloak and hat, the whole thing. Just standing there .

  Just standing there.

  No weapon.

  No way no fucking way anything human could have crept up on him like that.

  Ringil eased up out of his crouch. He did not relinquish the Ravensfriend. There was a deep pulsing in his chest and something in his hands that should have been trembling but was not, was tighter and sweeter and scared him more because he didn t know where it might go. The world was changed about him, even the birdsong muffled away by the Presence. His eyes flickered briefly to Eril s prone form, saw the man s sleep-softened features and he knew that whatever happened now, his companion would not wake until the stranger was gone.

  So.

  Like bending an iron poker, he forced his stare back to the newcomer. Met the cold and curious eyes, the waiting in them.

  You re late, he said harshly.

  The clamped smile loosened a little, showed teeth. You were expecting me?

  Ringil shook his head, and the tiny motion seemed to give him back a small measure of control. From limestone depths and the memories of Seethlaw, he summoned an awful, precipice calm.

  Not me. Talking about someone I met last night, some marsh dweller kid name of Gerin he was asking for your help, back by the river. Right before he died, he told me he prayed to the Salt Lord for intercession. Begged for it, I d guess, the state he was in. So what s the story, Salt Lord you don t hear so good these days? Got to scream our prayers a little louder, do we?

  The eyes held him, attentive and mildly amused, as if he were a Strov street performer with a less than averagely tiresome act.

  Is it really this boy s unanswered prayers that so upset you, Ringil Eskiath? Or another boy s, long ago?

  Ringil s knuckles whitened on the hilt of the Ravensfriend. You think I m upset? When I m upset, Salt Lord, you ll know all about it.

  Should I take that as a threat?

  Take it any fucking way you want.

  Because while one component to that thrumming in his hands and chest and blood was certainly fear, a swooping shadowy terror of what stood before him, the fear was really nothing he had not felt before, and thrumming along with it his blood sang with other things, just as dark, that he had long since learned to welcome in. And while he had never been face-to-face with a denizen of the Dark Court before had in fact not believed until very recently that they even existed he had been eye-to-eye with other things that most would count just as soul withering, and the truth was, his soul had not withered very much.

  He took a pine-perfumed breath from the forest around him, held it, plumed it out again like fumes from a well-rolled krinzanz smoke. He widened his eyes at Dakovash, and he held the Salt Lord s gaze.

  A quiet like the world waiting to be born.

  But Ringil thought that, for just a moment, the mouth below the slouch hat might have bent at one corner. There and gone, the sour trace of amusement, and something else he could not quite name. The sigh that followed sounded, to his Glades-bred ears, a little manufactured.

  Do you really consider that a fit way to talk to your clan deities?

  Ringil shrugged. If you wanted veneration, you should have shown up while your supplicant was still alive.

  Has it occurred to you that maybe I heard Gerin Trickfinger s prayers, heard the forward echoes of them long before they were even said, before he was even born, and that help was sent?

  I was there. If you sent help, it didn t show up in time.

  Well, as you say: You were there.

  Ringil s eyes narrowed. And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?

  The figure matched his earlier shrug. Take it any way you want.

  Which sat in the washed granite-and-gloom space between them for what seemed like a long time. Finally, Ringil bent and lowered the Ravensfriend carefully to the rock under his feet. He straightened up, felt a long shiver run through him as he did. He folded his arms tight across his chest.

  What do you want, Salt Lord?

  Ah. So your insolence is calculated after all. No risk in disrespecting the Dark Court if it needs something from you, eh?

  Ringil stared back through the creeping chill in his bones.

  No gain in respecting a demon lord who cannot be summoned when he s needed.

  He thought he saw something spark in Dakovash s eyes.

  Oh very droll, the voice whispered, suddenly uncomfortably close and intimate, though the figure did not appear to have moved. But what if you re wrong, little Gil Eskiath? What if you re wrong and we don t need you as much as you think? What then? What if I just cut my losses and take offense and melt your fucking bones down, right now, in your still-living flesh?

  And like a nightmare made real on waking, Ringil felt it start, a crawling, searing sensation along the edges of his shins and forearms, down his spine and into his guts like a bucket hitting well water, the beginnings of true pain buried deep under his skin, the fleeting premonition of how it would be, how he would dance and flail, and scream without surcease as the fire ate him from the inside out

  Feel better now, do we?

  He goes to his knees with the sudden force of it. Catches a breath already turning scorched and acrid in his throat

  Is catapulted away, elsewhere.

  Smooth, cooling breeze, and a low, silvery gloom that instinct and fumbling recognition tell him are not the Salt Lord s to command. Breath sobbing in his throat the pain is gone. He kneels at the heart of a place he knows: an Aldrain stone circle, mist shrouded, the looming impassive half-hewn monoliths scabbed with dark moss patches and lines, and overgrown around the base.

  For a moment, something leaps alive in him at the sight.

  Seethlaw.

  But the circle is empty. Anything that happened here is long over, and if the stones witnessed it, the way he thinks he remembers, then they have nothing to say on the matter now. Ringil gets to his feet out of silence and long grass soaked with dew. The knees of his breeches are damp and cold with moisture. He stands there, aching in the throat once more, and this time it s nothing anyone has done to him but himself.

  He tips back his head to see if that ll relieve the pain, but it doesn t.

  Overhead, Seethlaw s dying, pockmarked little sun the thing he called muhn instead sits high in a murky sky and scatters its second-rate light. Tatters of ragged cloud whip in from a direction that might be the west, sweep briefly across its feebly glowing face, almost blotting it out as they pass. It s the wind, he supposes, pushing the cloud that way, that fast, but he feels abruptly as if it s the muhn scudding past overhead at dizzying speed while the rest of the sky stands rock-solid still
.

  For one disorienting moment, he tilts with it, and almost falls.

  Seethlaw

  He s been back to the Gray Places more times since Ennishmin than he likes to count, back to the Aldrain realm he first walked in at Seethlaw s side. He knows you can find the dead there, along with other, less reliable ghosts, the ghosts of what could or should or might have once been, if only. So like grinding a loose tooth down into the soft bleeding gum of his fear he goes looking. Sometimes cooked on krinzanz fumes and mad with a generalized grief he no longer knows how to contain, sometimes wakeful straight and possessed of a mind so cold and clear it scares him more than the madness. He goes looking for the dead, and they come to him in droves, just as they did before. They make their cases, present their alternatives to him, the way that, no, look, they certainly have not died, that s rubbish, he misremembers, they re as alive as he is, can t he see that

  You don t argue with the dead. He learned that early on. Argue and they grow angry, build vortices of rage and denial in the webbing of whatever holds the Gray Places together; if you aren t careful, they drag you in there with them, and damage whatever delicate mechanisms of sanity keep you centered in your own version and understanding of what s real. Better by far to let them have their way, and you go yours. There s a state of mind you need for it, something like the slightly fogged and thoughtless competence you find underlying your hangover the morning after a night lit up with krinzanz and cheap tavern wine. You cope, you move on.

  You keep looking.

  He never found Seethlaw. He doesn t know why, doesn t for that matter know what he would do or say if he ever did find him. It s not as if they parted on good terms at the end.

  But the search is a compulsion, a deep insistent tug with no more governed sense to it than the deep salt pull of the currents that flow past the point at Lanatray where his mother keeps her summer residence. More than once, as a boy, he swam out too far and got caught up in the implacable grip of that flow. More than once, he saw the shore swept away to a flat charcoal line on the horizon, and wondered if he d ever make it back to land alive.