As Iron Falls (The Wings of War Book 4)

by Bryce O'Connor

  He grit his teeth, and his hand tensed unwillingly, clawed fingers curling inward so that the tendons of his forearm stood out along the scale-less band he still stared at. “I wore myself to the bone fighting to destroy everything I’d inadvertently helped to build. I bled and I killed and I almost died a half-dozen times in a matter of weeks. I thought I’d made a difference. I thought I’d rid the world of a piece of the corruption eating at it, at least for a time.”

  Abruptly, he shifted his hand to point at the open door of the cabin. “Do you see how hollow those men are, out there?” he asked Argoan. “They are free, now, and yet despite this there is so little left to most of them that they fear their own shadows. Can you tell me how, in the end, I made a difference? How I changed the world for the better?”

  The man said nothing, frowning at him, though he did glance out onto the torch-lit deck as though contemplating Raz’s point.

  “Y-you killed half-a-hundred pirates all by yourself,” Lysa cut in, her words slurred as she waved her empty right hand about, like she were swinging a sword. “Bast-bastards won’t be slaving anyone again any-anytime soon!”

  “And I let a ship get away with thirty souls who will likely never know what it’s like to take a piss without being told to,” Raz growled angrily. “Thirty men who will be worked until their hands are bone and their backs are broken. How does that make anything—?”

  Syrah’s hand looped under his arm, and in an instant he calmed. He didn’t look around at her, but he felt his fury with himself, his anger at his own failings, recede at her touch.

  Taking a breath, he continued in a more even tone. “The point,” he said to Lysa, “is that I started my war against the Mahsadën to make a change, and I didn’t manage it. I realized today that there’s a fight I never finished. One I need to see through.”

  “This fight is like to see you killed, Dahgün,” Argoan said darkly, but his eyes were on Syrah. “Have you come to terms with that?”

  In response, Raz felt Syrah shift beside him. Without removing her arm from his, she lifted both hands up. In the faint white light of the candles, the reddish scars about her own wrists showed pink against her pale skin.

  “There are some things worth risking it all for, aren’t there?” she asked the Amreht.

  Argoan sighed in response, bobbing his head as though in defeat. “Very well.” He sounded like a man resigning himself to a terrible fate. “If you’re going to do this, will you at least let us help?”

  Raz felt measured relief lift a weight off his shoulders, and he nodded and spoke before Lysa—who looked ready to pass out from either disbelief or the ale—could interrupt again. “We were hoping you might. We could use provisions, and we need to be taken to shore, obviously.” He hesitated, glancing at Syrah, worried about his next request.

  “Also—” the Priestess took the lead calmly “—we were wondering if you could spare a man. Anyone familiar with Percian lands and customs.”

  The captain looked suddenly pained, and he chewed on his beard a moment before speaking. “Shore and provisions are easy enough,” he said with a nod. “But a guide is trickier. I lost eleven good sailors today, and that’s not counting the injured. I’m not sure I have enough hands to man the ship safely as it is. Even if I did, I couldn’t just order one of my own to follow you. They would have to volunteer.”

  Raz grimaced, seeing the man’s point. He suspected he and Syrah could survive well enough on their own for a while—given how verdant the land seemed to be—but there was little point in wandering the wild plains of Perce without direction. They had little enough of a plan to go on without struggling to find civilization in what he was coming to understand was a realm full of its own dangers.

  He decided to press his luck.

  “A guide would be the greatest boon you could grant us,” he said. “Even a volunteer. Syrah and I know less than we would like of this place. I couldn’t even tell you who this ‘Tash’ is, or why he’s intent on my head. If anyone would be willing to at least help us—”

  He stopped abruptly, though, because all three of the others had reacted differently to his plea. Before him, Argoan scowled suddenly. On the floor, Lysa started hiccupping, eyes wide again, suddenly looking far soberer than she had all night. Even at his side, Syrah tensed.

  “Raz!” she hissed in surprise. “You didn’t tell me that!”

  “What?” Raz asked, not understanding as he glanced around at each of them. “What did I say?”

  “Where did you hear that?” It was Argoan who asked the question, his voice thunderous. “Who told you of the Tash?”

  Raz looked at him, brow creased in confusion. “The captain of the Moalas,” he said uncertainly, disliking the sudden edge of fear he could taste in the room. “He told me someone called ‘the Tash’ was the one spreading the word that Syrah and I were aboard the Sylgid.”

  Argoan cursed in rapid mountain tongue, and Lysa started hiccupping again. Disliking being out of the loop, he turned to Syrah.

  “What is it?” he demanded in frustration.

  Syrah grimaced.

  “I’m not the best person to explain,” she said uncertainly. “I know the Tash are rulers. Powerful ones.” She swore under her breath, muttering to herself. “Lifegiver’s arse, I was never good at cultural studies.” She blinked and look back up at him. “I think the Tash are masters of the city-states of Perce. They are… kings, in their own way.”

  “The Tash,” a new voice said from the entrance of the cabin, “are the blessed chosen of the Sun and Moon. They are considered the Twins' emissaries in the mortal world. Their Hands are thought of as the secondary voices of the gods.”

  Everyone turned to the open door. There, as the echoes of cheering and laughter mixed with the sounds of fighting and breaking clay flagons from behind him, Akelo Aseni stood framed against the light of the deck. Whereas the sailors of the Sylgid had doffed their gear and weapons after the battle had ended, Akelo—like most of the other former slaves—had refused to part with the items he’d managed to scavenge from the bodies of their former masters for fear he wouldn’t get them back. The man had attired himself in looted clothes and armor, a rough set of hardened leather plating fastened over a torn red shirt that almost hid the dark weep of blood staining its left side. The bow he’d found was still slung over his back, and an empty quiver hung from his right hip. On his left, a battered scimitar was sheathed in a wooden loop off a worn belt. In the crook of one elbow rested one of the Percian spiked half-helms, complete with a neck guard made of woven leather straps, and his free hand was at his side, fist clenched nervously. He had the look of a man unsure of whether or not he was about to be welcomed with open arms, or hurled from the room.

  “Akelo,” Raz greeted him in surprise, waving him in. “Come in. And close the door behind you.”

  The Percian hesitated for almost five whole seconds, clearly uncertain if doing as Raz said was in his best interest. At last, though, he stepped into the cabin and shut the door after him, muting the cacophony of the festivities.

  “I apologize for eavesdropping,” he said in that rough voice, like he was only now realizing he could speak after a lifetime of silence. “I…” He paused, uncertain of himself. “I wondered what it was you were planning to do, now that you’re free to sail again.”

  The way he said it made it sound like he was asking the group as a whole, but he never looked away from Raz.

  Raz, in turn, took him in. Though the aging man looked a good deal better off now he was clean and his dirty rags had been thrown to the sea with the dead, he was still half-a-mess. His right eye was completely swollen shut now, the hard crust of a scab forming over a large section of the bruise where some pommel or club must have caught him. He clung to his new helm and kept his other fist clenched tight, but still didn’t manage to hide the shake of his hands completely. He might have stood tall and strong, but his face was gaunt and the hollows of his bearded cheeks and good eye were dark, like a
man who’d only ever been fed just enough to keep his body strong for the task at hand.

  Despite all this, though, there was still that will in his gaze that Raz had noted the first time the man had spoken up, seizing on the chance to see him and his comrades freed from a life in chains.

  “We were wondering the same,” Raz answered him, appraising the former slave. “We were just addressing some concerns regarding what our next move might be.”

  Akelo nodded in a jerking fashion, but said nothing more.

  “Concerns you seem to have some of the answers to, Akelo,” Syrah pressed the man gently. “You sound like you might know more of the Tash than any of us…” She looked to Argoan and Lysa, who nodded and shrugged respectively.

  Again, Akelo hesitated, clearly out of his element. Raz felt Syrah lift a finger from where her hand rested against his forearm, and in almost imperceptible increments the white flames of the candles grew, steadily chasing away the shadows of the cabin.

  There are no cruelties lurking in the dark, here, she seemed to be trying to say. There are no evils lying in wait.

  As the light brightened, so too did the freed man’s confidence. He took a quick breath, chewing on his lip for a moment more, but his hands stopped shaking.

  “The Tash are the blessed chosen of the Twins,” he repeated again, his voice much calmer now, and it was Syrah he addressed this time. “The Sun and Moon. They are men held in the same level of reverence as Her Stars, considered something like adopted children of the gods. Their Hands—the First and Second—are their proxies, individually chosen to aid them in ruling the lands around the city-states of Karesh Syl and Karesh Nan.” His eye flicked to Raz. “If one of the Tash has put out the word of your arrival in Perce, then the entire realm is like to be on the lookout for you.”

  Raz ground his teeth at the words, and he felt Syrah stiffen beside him.

  “Is there something we could do?” the Priestess asked him. “Some way we could appease them?”

  At her question, the Percian’s face twisted in what might have been disgust. “You would not want to make the attempt,” he said flatly. “And you would have little sympathy from me if you tried. The Tash are not worth the reverence they are given. They bask in their privilege, seeking only to hold onto their power and appease the masses of their cities.” He swallowed, like the words came hard, and looked at Raz again. “I may have been mistaken, but you seemed surprised to find so many of my kind aboard the Moalas…?”

  “I was,” Raz answered at once. “I hadn't realized the Percian preyed on their own, let alone in such numbers.”

  Akelo nodded. “Nearly half of all the enslaved in Perce come from within the borders of its lands. No other race comes close, not even—” he inclined his head in Raz’s direction meaningfully “—the atherian.”

  Raz felt himself bristle.

  “It’s just like the South, then,” he muttered furiously, feeling his neck-crest twitch in outrage. “Cities devouring their own. Sun burn them all!”

  “No,” Akelo said firmly. “The walls of Karesh Syl and Karesh Nan protect residents. Any born to a free father within their borders are guaranteed their liberty. Outsiders, on the other hand…”

  Beside Raz, Syrah was watching the man in concern. “Is that what happened to you?” she asked. “Were you born outside the cities?”

  In response, Akelo smiled. It was a light, happy expression, and Raz knew well the face of a man lost to old memories. For a second the Percian looked at peace, drawn back into his own mind by the Priestess’ query.

  When he spoke, his voice was as distant as his gaze.

  “I had never even been within a hundred miles of Karesh Nan when its soldiers fell upon my tribe.” Akelo reached up, tugging at the neck of his shirt to reveal a swirling pattern of white curled under the dark skin below his collarbone. A tattoo, much like the ones Raz had noticed on most of the other Percian slaves as well. “I was—No, I am—kuja.”

  Argoan made a sound then, like a slow exhale of understanding. Raz and Syrah glanced at him.

  “‘Man of the plains,’” the captain translated for them, studying the tattoo with distinct interest. “Families who live in the savannah, separate from the laws of the cities. We trade with them often.” His eyes met Raz’s. “They’re how I manage to get my hands on the herbs and medications for Evalyn.”

  Akelo nodded, releasing his shirt so the white ink was hidden once more. “I was the shaman of my tribe—the chieftain, you would say. Another family wished to control a number of watering holes in our territory. After we rebuffed them for several seasons, they sought help from Karesh Nan in routing us.” The man’s lip twitched at the memory, combining with his bruised eye for a moment to make him look demented. “They sold my tribe to the slavers. Whereas we could very well have continued repelling them each year on their own, they fell on us with a hundred extra men, all bearing leather armor and steel. We were no match. Ours homes were burned to the ground, our livestock slaughtered. Even after we yielded, they murdered those too old to be of value and drowned the infants and babes.” Abruptly, his left eye became wet, his bad right already weeping tears. “My own family… I-it’s been… It’s been…” He inhaled sharply, rasping in a breath and shaking free of the spell of his own story.

  When he had regained control of himself, Akelo’s eye fell on Raz and Syrah again. “I tried to count the years, but eventually you stop caring. You have no purpose.” He injected the word with meaning. “I would have you give me a purpose, Arro. If you would be willing. Many of the others, too, I think, should you grant them the opportunity…”

  The proposition took a moment for Raz to comprehend. He blinked at the Percian, then around at Syrah, who looked about as surprised as he felt.

  “You want to join us?” she asked, sounding taken aback.

  This time, Akelo nodded at once. “I do,” he said. “You told the captain you require a guide. Many years may have passed, but the lands of the savannah do not change so easily. You will find none better than I. In addition—” he inclined his head respectfully to Argoan “—we are most grateful for his hospitality, and his food. This way, none of his company need leave him.”

  “A-and the others?” Syrah followed up, tripping over her words like she had trouble believing them. “They would want to join us as well?”

  At that, Argoan interrupted with a splutter. “I had intended to offer them a place aboard the ship,” he admitted, looking sheepishly around at Raz and Syrah. “As I said, we are short-handed…”

  There was a hiccup, and off to the side Lysa mimed lifting a drink to the heavens.

  “To the dead,” she muttered, then lapsed back into silence.

  After a pause, Akelo turned back to the captain. “You should make the offer,” he agreed. “I believe a few, at least, are hoping you might. Most of us have spent many years at sea, and not just pulling the oars. You will find any who agree to sail with you valuable additions to your crew.” He eyed the man then, as though unsure. “So long as you treat them well, that is…”

  “He will,” Raz cut in before Argoan could struggle to form a response. “I will vouch for the captain, Akelo. You can tell your men that.”

  That seemed to satisfy the former slave, because he relaxed, then faced Raz and Syrah once more.

  “We know your story, Arro,” he began slowly, speaking cautiously. “You are laughed at by the freemen of Perce, I will not deny it, but among those bound in iron your tale is very much alive, and often repeated. We have heard of what you did to the rulers of your fringe city, and what happened to the governor of that valley town in the North. You are a myth to the enslaved, a dream many of them cling to. You are often the hero our children pretend to be, imagining themselves descending on their homes to free their mothers and fathers from their chains.” His eyes were fiery, bright in the candlelight. “If you seek to make a difference, know that you would not be alone in doing so. There are thousands—tens of thousands, even—in
this land who would rise and join you if you would give them the chance. There is an army waiting for you, bound and shackled, that you need only free.”

  Raz felt a shiver go down his spine, and he wasn’t sure if it was a jolt of excitement or fear.

  “You’re talking about starting a war,” he said cautiously.

  To his surprise, Akelo shook his head.

  “No,” the man said, his voice growing stronger. Then he raised his own hand, as Raz and Syrah had before. There, ringing his wrist in an even darker shade of black than his skin, was the scar that marked where the irons had bound him for more years than the man had been able to count.

  “I am talking about finishing the one you started.”