Written in Blood

by Span, Ryan A.

  I could only watch and curse my speechlessness. What power did this she-devil have over me, that she could strike me dumb with just a look and a whispered word?

  Unslinging my kitbag from my horse, I dropped bedroll on sand and threw a cloak over it. It'd serve, and by the Saints it looked tempting.

  Just a nap, I promised myself as I crawled under the cloak. Just a few minutes. Then I'd be back up and at it.

  I woke several hours later, scrambling out from under the cloak in a sudden, hazy panic. No one had called me to stand guard. The full moon glowed faintly through the canopy of blowing sand, and allowed me just enough light to see the state of our camp.

  It was a shambles. Only the woman's tent stood properly. Sir Erroll's had collapsed on the right side, but not loudly enough to wake him, from the prodigious snore that rumbled out into the night. I spotted Faro passed out under his cloak beside the collapsed half. His master might roar at him in the morning, but I didn't have the heart to wake him.

  That, and the fewer people who might see me slip into the woman's tent in the dead of night, the better.

  I pushed in through the heavy tent-flap. The prickly smell of perfume filled my nostrils, too many different scents at once for me to identify. A dying candle guttered on top of a stool at her bedside, and when my eyes adjusted to the light, I realised that she, too, had fallen asleep. That made my presence in her tent something of an impropriety. The kind they hanged you for. I started to turn back, but it seemed I made too much noise. Her gentle breathing stopped and that wonderful, liquid voice rang out, somehow even more attractive when soft from sleep.

  “There you are. I was beginning to wonder. When I send for you, I expect you to‒” She pushed herself up to sit, and saw how far the candle had burned down. Her mouth made an O of surprise. “Ah... Perhaps we've all had quite a night.”

  At her gestured invitation, I approached and sat cross-legged on the rough Harari mat that covered the floor. She lit a fresh candle from the remnants of the old one and pushed it to the edge of the stool. Then she unwrapped a large sheet of parchment, thick and finely-inked, and spread it out across the ground.

  “What does this look like to you, Karl?”

  I stared at it until I'd absorbed the whole thing. “It's a map of the Kingdom. All the borders.” I traced my fingertip along the four boundaries of our country. “Steppe and desert to the west, Aranic Ocean and the Outer Islands to the east, Feldland in the far south, and in the north, nothing. The Catsclaws and the Edge of the World.”

  “The known world,” she replied significantly.

  “What are these markers?” I pointed to six symbols connected together by thin, spidery lines, arranged in a rough spiral shape on top of the Kingdom. The symbols looked vaguely familiar. “More temples and mausoleums?”

  The observation seemed to please her. She rested an elegant fingernail on the central mark. “Adar's village.” She moved southeast through the ocean, to a small island archipelago in the Bay of Candles. “The so-called Drowned Temple, off the coast of Leora.” North, deep into the Catsclaws. “Aemedd's dig site. Do you see?”

  I did. I tapped the westernmost mark, clearly in Harari territory. “Our latest acquisition.”

  “That's right, Karl. Adar's sword, your breastplate, Aemedd's helm, Sir Erroll's shield. I believe there are two more sites. One is here, northeast of Saltring. And the last, what I believe to be the most important one, here. Beyond the Edge of the World.”

  Cold, hollow shock hit me in the pit of my stomach. Going to Saltring was one thing, I could wrap my head around the challenge of infiltrating enemy territory, but this... What in Hell had I contracted for?

  I sputtered, “Milady, you want us to go across the Edge?”

  “I do.”

  “But... Have you not heard the stories?”

  “Every one. Probably more than you.” She reached out to touch my arm again, which snapped me out of my apprehension. “We have to do this, Karl. For our country.”

  “How? I don't understand.”

  “That is why I've chosen to confide in you. You, and no one else.”

  She sucked in a deep breath, then let it all out through her nostrils as if in relief. “Silbane is neither my name nor my title. It's a fiction, conjured up on paper by the Lord Chancellor. My proper name is d'Aranet. Ioanna d'Aranet.”

  I fought to swallow a hard, dry lump in my throat. This was getting more unbelievable by the second. “You're part of the royal family?”

  “I am King Lauric's elder sister. We share our father's blood.” She couldn't help but smile at my reaction, and looked down to hide a blush. “My mother was a noble-born courtesan favoured by old King Anderling. While the Queen proved incapable of producing an heir, my mother secretly conceived a daughter, tucked away in a remote Kingsport villa. Anderling's only child. With the Queen's health declining day by day, he planned to wed my mother as a widower, and to name me the eldest child in the royal line. Then ‒ somehow ‒ the Queen managed to fill her belly. She died birthing a boy, my brother. The undisputable royal heir.”

  She clenched her elegant hands into fists, but the wave of bitterness soon passed. “This was more than thirty years ago, and even then the Kingdom was flirting with civil war. Father did what he had to do.”

  “By God,” I said, reeling. “How have you kept this secret for so long?”

  “It's not so difficult. I do not attend court. My title is little-known, I don't hold any land, and I'm no longer in the line of succession. The few who know me are loyal and wise enough to keep their tongues from wagging.”

  “I don't understand. Why the charade? Why this quest? Why you?”

  “All those questions have the same answer, Byren. My brother is losing this war.” She massaged the bridge of her nose, for the first time looking as weary as she must feel. When she looked at me again, her eyes were big and round as she tried to read my thoughts, uncertain, even vulnerable. “He lost his last hope of victory this year at Farrowhale. On the other hand, even if the Duke manages to take the city, autumn's already on our doorstep. The Six Rivers will flood and cut him off from reinforcement until spring. Maybe he could hold the city for five months, maybe not. We keep on skirmishing while the greater problem festers.

  “Soon there won't be enough men left to plant or harvest. Belts were tight last winter. Next year we can brace ourselves for a famine, and pestilence, and funeral pyres as high as the walls of Winter Court. And once all our fighting men are dead or too weak to stand, the Feldlanders will probably march in and enslave us all, if the Harari don't beat them to it. At this rate we may have to save the country from Lauric, not for him.”

  I cringed at her vision of the future. “I had no idea things were so desperate.”

  “That's why I thought you should know my real name, heading north. The Duke... He would recognise me.” Her lips pursed, and her hand brushed my thigh. “I cannot be captured, Karl. You'll do what you must, won't you?”

  “O-Of course, Milady. Anything.”

  I squirmed like a fish on a hook. Before I knew it her lips were at my ear, nibbling at the flesh, hissing satin-soft words into my soul. My body froze like a statue except for my sudden, painfully intense erection. “You'll find me very grateful for your loyalty, Karl,” she soothed as her tongue explored my earlobe. “Very... grateful.”

  The soft silk covering her breasts pressed against my arm. Her fingertips trailed faintly down the thin shirt covering my belly, dancing across the bulge in my trousers, and I almost came right then. She had me utterly under her spell.

  Just as suddenly, the moment vanished, as if she lost interest in seducing me for now. Instead she waved me towards the exit. “That will be all for tonight, Byren.” The knowing giggle under her breath was the dirtiest sound I'd ever heard. “Sleep well.”

  I staggered out in a daze, and tossed off into the sand somewhere between her tent and mine, before crawling back under my cloak to sleep. I couldn't. She was under my skin
, filling every corner of my mind. Sleep refused to take me until I'd come twice more, raw and covered with grit. Possessed by the need for her.

  Finally, sore and exhausted, I sank back into blessed nothingness.

  The sun blazed high in the sky by the time I got stirred awake, and the storm had lightened to an insistent breeze. I heard something. Raised voices, an argument, Sir Erroll's thunderous bellow and Aemedd lecturing back at him.

  Somehow I'd known the bickering would come, the very moment we managed to catch our breath. To my ears, the whole affair smacked of a kind of tedious inevitability.

  No matter how much I ignored it, though, the situation refused to go away on its own. So I wiped away the sand caked to my eyelids, shook off the cloak, and crawled into the open to see what was wrong.

  “It was an ambush, and we barely escaped with our lives,” the knight roared. The shield strapped to his back shone like the sun itself in the midday glare. “How could they know where to look for us? Byren said there were Harari, this little bitch must be in league with them!”

  As my eyes adjusted to the brightness I could absorb the whole unwelcome scene. Yazizi lay on her hands and knees before the knight, fresh blood trickling down the corner of her mouth. The others had gathered in a semicircle opposite him.

  Faro stood rigid, fists clenched, caught between loyalty to his master and a fierce desire to protect. Aemedd was directly opposite Sir Erroll, arms crossed casually, relishing the opportunity to do intellectual battle. Adar looked bored and played with the pommel of his sword. The woman looked on with a cast-iron expression, though she wasn't ready to intervene yet.

  Ioanna, my heart screamed, and I had to bite my lip to silence myself.

  Penn's eyes darted to all the other faces in turn, but his own body language gave nothing away.

  The scholar replied in his usual lazy cadence, though his words dripped with acid. “You have no evidence of that, Sir. How would she have betrayed us? When would she have had the opportunity?”

  “Were you watching her, Professor? Who knows what pagan trickery she might have used.”

  “Are you accusing her of witchcraft now? Does she summon little green goblins to fetch messages? Perhaps she speaks to the wind itself?”

  The withering scorn in Aemedd's words hit home. The knight's face turned red in towering fury, but all of a sudden, he went calm again. Near-perfect teeth bared into a grin as he thought of the perfect retort. “If she's not a witch, then I'd like an educated man to explain how she found our enemies in trackless desert during a sandstorm.”

  Aemedd did not like the sound of that one bit. His eyes narrowed to tiny slits. “A fluke. The plant heightens senses and intuition‒”

  “What pitiful stuff! If not for Byren and the young lads, her people would have butchered us in our sleep.” He noticed Yazizi trying to crawl away from him, and drove a vicious kick into her side. She gasped and crumpled back to the sand. “I said to stay down, you sand-skinned whore!”

  I couldn't stand by any longer. “Stop it,” I said, and elbowed my way through the line of bodies to protect her. The squire was frozen in indecision to my left, visibly shaking, every knuckle in his hands white as bone. “She saved my life, Sir. All our lives.”

  The look Sir Erroll gave me contained more disappointment than anger. “She's taking advantage of your naivety, Byren. Wouldn't any spy try to protect her chief defender?”

  A hot retort died on my lips as Yazizi struggled to her feet, eyes downcast, panting as she held her injured side. Her voice rang out harsh but strong. “They are not my people. Were I dying of thirst, alone and on foot, I would still spit on every one of them before death took me.”

  That put a kibosh on the argument. For the first time, the woman spoke up. “Explain.”

  “You think of Harari as one people. We are not. We are tribes, as different and independent as your nations. What you saw were Jun Dargha, one of the northern peoples. I am Jul Haderha, from the south. I know the Dargha for what they are. Poachers, well-dippers and horse thieves.” Her mouth twisted grimly. “And slavers, when it suits them.”

  “How in God's name can you tell what tribe they are?” asked Sir Erroll, unconvinced.

  Yazizi held out her hand to me. “That necklace you took. Please.”

  I'd almost forgotten about it. My hand went to my pocket and found it there, much less impressive in daylight, just a bunch of sun-bleached teeth on a string. I handed it over, and she lifted it up for everyone to see.

  “Dog's teeth. The northern tribes like to make fetishes from animal parts, and the Dargha animal is the wild dog.”

  The woman listened without giving a thing away. “What can we expect from these 'Dargha'?”

  It had been a long time since I saw so much anger on Yazizi's face. Haunted memories played out before her eyes, and she described them in strained, terse sentences. “I was with a trading caravan from the far west. Many Dargha joined us along the journey under a banner of peace, claiming to be on their way home. One night, without warning, they fell on us while we slept. Killed the men and took the women. Sold us at your slave markets, one by one.” She paused, fighting to swallow. “That is the Dargha way. Ambush and betrayal. Dealing with infidels goes against centuries of custom, but they do it anyway. Slaves for weapons and silver.”

  “That doesn't help our tactical situation,” Sir Erroll pointed out, still annoyed and impatient. “How many of them are there, and how dangerous are they?”

  “I don't know. They should not be here at all, we are many days from Dargha territory.” Chewing her split lip, she raised her head and looked the knight full in the eye. “If you hear nothing else, hear this. Even among Harari the Dargha are famed as trackers. They are like wild dogs, savage, cunning, and without honour. If they work for your Duke now, expect them to hound us to the gates of Hell.”

  Sir Erroll seemed to find some twisted humour in that, and shook his head. “Savages among savages. What a world we live in.”

  “That will do,” said the woman. She dismissed Yazizi with a wave. The girl dragged herself away without any further punishment. “We all know what will happen if they catch us in the Duke's lands. We have to ride hard, harder than before. Are we ready?”

  I cleared my throat politely. “Just one more thing, Milady. The real culprit.”

  I let my eyes swivel past the row of people until I found the one I wanted. I kicked him hard in the stomach, driving him to the ground, and kept him pinned with my full weight on his chest.

  “What... What the Hell are you doing?” Penn retched. He threw his arms up in some vain defence, and the look in his wide, bloodshot eyes was barely human. “He's crazy! G-Get him away from me!”

  “Not so fast,” I cooed gently. I gestured Faro towards the bag hanging from Penn's saddle. The squire brought it and shook until the severed head dropped out. Hollow sockets stared at the sand below it, still wearing its helmet by way of the nails hammered through the bone. “The girl isn't the one who owes us an explanation. This Arravis fellow seems to have a lot of heads, at least one of which is still attached to his shoulders.”

  “I didn't know! I swear!”

  “You were sure enough at the time.” I deliberately wrapped my fingers around the grip of my sword. “You might want to change your story while you still have the chance.”

  For a fleeting moment, I saw something new in his eyes. The animal fear gave way to something hard, cold, cruelly intelligent. It only lasted a heartbeat before he resumed his helpless act. Not fast enough to hide it from me.

  He pushed my foot away long enough to cry out, “It's his helmet! Really! Please, I didn't know!”

  Aemedd made a curious noise. I could almost hear his body creak as he picked up the severed head, wrinkling his nose at the maggots tumbling out onto the sand. A squinting Sir Erroll joined in and stopped the scholar to rub some caked sand from one of the emblems.

  “It does belong to a Sergeant of the Duke's cavalry,” said Sir Err
oll.

  The scholar, too, contributed his thoughts. “This skull is too small. A layman wouldn't be able to tell, but on a living man, the helm would come down over his eyes. It seems the Harari neglected to match helm to owner.”

  Now the woman came to Penn's rescue, her lips curled in a generous smile. “Man is a fallible creature. I believe your point has been made, Byren, and Master Saldette is adequately chastised, no?”

  She inclined her head to me, signalling me to withdraw. The job was done. As satisfying as it felt to crush the spy beneath my heel, I obeyed.

  “Perhaps I was... hasty,” I said, putting on the falsest smile my face could bear, and helped him to his feet.

  He held my hand and my gaze just a moment too long. Triumph glinted in those eyes. “Th-Thank you, Milady. Thank you, I won't forget this, I swear.”

  “See that you don't,” she said. “Let's put this unpleasantness behind us, shall we? We've got a hard week's ride ahead and I am sick to death of desert.”

  That sounded good enough to everyone. The business of striking tents and packing the horses went by in double quick time, and then we were mounting up again to head north, already settled back into the endless routine of travel.

  Except for the rare moments at camp, the ride became our lives. We set off early every morning and stopped late. Most days the only way to tell we were going anywhere across the featureless steppe, constantly battered by the Tzan and cut off from sun and stars, was by Sir Erroll's compass. The needle pointed north and we followed it.

  I'd already lost track of the days when, early one afternoon, the sandstorm broke around us. It tapered off to a little dust cloud flitting around our feet, and left us bewildered under the deep blue sky. I straightened up from my hunch and blinked against the intense sunlight, eyes full of tears.

  “Is this it?” I asked uncertainly, pulling off my veil. I took the first deep, unrestrained breath I'd had in days. “Are we in the North?”

  Sir Erroll did more than remove his veil. He tore the whole robe over his head and threw it on the ground, sucking in several lungfuls of sand-free air. “Thank God, the Saints, and anyone else who needs thanking! We're out of that blighted place!”