The Serpent's Bargain

by Jamie Crisalli

  Contents

  Cover

  The Serpent’s Bargain – Jamie Crisalli

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Warcry’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  The Serpent’s Bargain

  Jamie Crisalli

  Laila wriggled into the hole dug deep under the hut she called home. The hole was little wider than her hips and she yanked the stone cover over the opening, sealing her in a womblike darkness. Small holes the size of an old Pelos coin let in air. Thin roots tickled her freckled skin and the smell of Ghyran loam smothered her nose. A cache of water and bread in a sealed clay pot sat between her bare feet. In her shaking hand, she clutched a small leather bottle on a string around her neck.

  Raw screams and exultant roaring filtered down to her in that tiny hollow. And other, more obscene sounds as the fiends went about their horrid joys. Of all the places in Ghyran, the followers of the Needful One had come to her village of Varna. The new palisade had not kept them out, nor had any fighter that they possessed.

  Up above, the hut door banged open and she started, her heart racing.

  A man moaned and licked his lips.

  ‘Not much sport here,’ he said, his voice melodious.

  ‘This is the first settlement in weeks not tainted by those reeking pus-bags,’ said another. ‘So, I’d enjoy yourself while you can. These little people are entertaining enough.’

  Something crashed over, shards of pottery scattering across the floor. And they talked about what they had done and would do if they found someone. Shuddering, Laila clamped a callused hand over her mouth and pressed herself deeper into the dirt. Her mind shrinking away from the memories of her husband’s tortured last moments years ago, Laila worked the stopper out of the bottle and a dusty smell like dead flowers filled the air. She would not die as he had.

  Inside was a poison called Blood of the Wight; it was not painless but it was lightning quick. Her mother had given it to her when she was a child and told her to keep it with her even when she slept. There were numberless things worse than dying.

  With a hiss, the raiders went quiet. A shadow crept over the breathing holes, sniffing. Laila put the bottle to her lips. Then a shrill hollow tone wended over the town, reverberating in her head.

  ‘Is that a retreat?’ one asked in disbelief.

  ‘I would watch your forked tongue unless you want to be the cure for Lord Zertalian’s ennui,’ said the other. ‘Clearly he wishes to save this place for future amusement. So let’s go.’

  Ceramic crunched under foot and the door banged shut. Yet, Laila could not move. She stayed, holding the poison to her lips, staring at the dirt wall, trying to breathe quietly. Only a buzzing tension remained, as if her head were full of bees. What if it was a trick and they had not left, instead waiting to pounce? No, it was better to stay in here with poison than risk that fate. Even as her sturdy legs cramped and her lips went numb, she held still. Then a familiar voice called her name.

  ‘Stefen!’ she called, her voice ragged.

  Laila crammed the stopper back into the bottle and clambered out of her sanctuary. Then she paused.

  Her home was wrecked, her meagre belongings tossed about and broken, her food stores spilled and trampled. Still, she was lucky – only her things had been touched by the seekers. She would burn it all as was tradition with tainted things. Hopefully the elders would spare the hut itself or she would have to move in with a neighbour during winter.

  Stefen rushed in, his dark eyes wide.

  She embraced him, trembling and choking back tears. He was an old childhood friend; they had gone on to their separate lives when he had become a hunter and she had married Jonas.

  ‘It’s all right, they’re gone,’ he said, pulling her close. Stefen was tall and well built, though the Rotskin pox had left him with scarred, pallid skin, ruining his good looks. A clutch of scrawny birds swung over his shoulder, along with his snares and bow.

  A wash of cold fear rolled through her as the gossip of the raiders rattled in her brain.

  ‘Are the elders still with us?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, they were spared,’ he said.

  ‘They need to know,’ she said.

  Without waiting to see if he followed, she rushed out into the bright light of the Lamp. The palisade gate dangled as men worked desperately to wrench the doors back into place. Homes burned, releasing sweet smoke and pale flames as ashen-faced neighbours watched, making no move to put them out. Others wandered aimlessly, their clothing torn and eyes utterly vacant, while some desperately called out for missing loved ones. Horror seeped through the very air as if some malign spirit had made a home in every hut and heart, a final curse bestowed by the fiends. No doubt it would linger for years.

  Laila walked, eyes seeing but unable to understand it, same as it had been then. The horrid memories edged into her mind and she forced them away. Jonas was long dead, praise Alarielle.

  By some miracle, the stone elders’ hall had not been touched. Some speculated that it was once a temple devoted to a forgotten storm god. Perhaps that was why the fiends avoided it.

  Inside, the place was stifling hot, the fires burning high to warm old bones. Yet, the crowd was more meagre than Laila had expected. The hall guards were gone to help with the gate. At the far end, sat in a loose half-circle, were the elders, some hunched and withered, some grey and still robust. The old altar loomed behind them.

  ‘We will rebuild and mourn as we have always done,’ Uma said, her voice like a creaking door. ‘The dark ones never stay. The seekers will move on and leave us be.’

  The other elders nodded. As always, they acquiesced to the ancient crone. Laila suddenly hated the old woman and the sycophants that surrounded her. Of course they felt that way; they sat in the heart of the village surrounded by stone and armed guards. Did they even know what happened out there? No more than they had after the last raid by the seekers.

  ‘No, they won’t,’ Laila said, her tone cold. ‘They’re coming back.’

  The silence sharpened and Laila blushed as all eyes focused on her. Uma’s face crumpled, her eyes narrowing.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Uma said.

  ‘They’re coming back?’ another man said.

  The crowd bubbled with alarm, looking around as if the dark ones were going to lunge out of the walls.

  ‘Two of them came into my house while I was hiding,’ Laila said, wrapping her arms around herself. ‘They were summoned by their leader early. They said that they would return.’

  Another rumble of discontent. If Uma could have killed Laila with her gaze, she likely would have.

  ‘I agree with Laila, we can’t wait and do nothing,’ Stefen said behind her.

  ‘What would the youngsters suggest?’ Uma said. ‘That we fight them?’

  Laila stammered, her thoughts churning. She had no solution to the problem that she had presented. Then an idea popped into her mind. A dangerous endeavour but better than the alternative.

  ‘The Fair Ones in the Valley of the Oracle’s Eye,’ Laila said. ‘They help people if the foe is right. Is that not correct?’

  The crowd murmured. The Fair Ones. Some said they had earned this name because they were beautiful. Others claimed they were hideous, with snakes for hair, and cursed those who did not flatter them. What the legends did agree on was that the Fair Ones hated Chaos more than anything else, especially the followers of the Needful One.

  Uma snorted. ‘You are not serious,’ she said. ‘The valley where they dwell is a place of madness and they
are themselves not remotely human. The Fair Ones fight on their own terms and no one else’s. You are a fool.’

  ‘Says the old woman who counsels that we wait for those beasts to return and finish what they started,’ Laila snapped.

  Uma blanched, her thin skin turning whiter than the wisps on her head.

  ‘Out! I will not tolerate your stupidity a moment longer,’ Uma said, snapping a finger at the door.

  Laila spun on her heel and pushed through the crowd, out into the smoky air. Inside the hall, the arguing escalated. Although there was a harvest to bring in, no one wanted to go outside the walls if there was the slightest chance that the fiends were waiting for them. Cries echoed, questioning why they did nothing. Others called for the villagers to resettle elsewhere. Uma shouted back with all the ferocity in her old bones.

  ‘And she calls me stupid,’ Laila muttered to herself.

  ‘She’s afraid, nothing more malicious than that,’ Stefen said. ‘This isn’t like the pox walkers. It’s worse. I should have been here.’

  ‘You would have just got yourself killed, or worse,’ Laila said. ‘We need to get help from people that can fight. Uma is right, we can’t defend ourselves against that.’

  ‘I can lead us to the valley,’ Stefen said. ‘I’ve been to the borders anyway.’

  ‘Really, you’ve seen it?’ she said. ‘That’s forbidden.’

  Stefen blushed sheepishly and nodded. ‘Once.’

  ‘You will not get there alone, especially if the fiends are still out there,’ a stranger said in a hard, growling accent.

  They both spun about. A man stood before them in leather and bronze plate. His skin was tanned and aged and he was built heavily with a round gut that spoke of a steady diet of beer and meat. That he was creeping into middle age indicated either luck or skill, likely both.

  ‘Who are you?’ Laila asked.

  ‘Ano,’ he replied, as if that explained everything. When they continued to look at him in silence, he added, ‘I worked for the merchant, Antton. I hope that if I help you, your village will let me stay over the winter.’

  ‘What we’re talking about doing is dangerous,’ Laila said, suspicious.

  ‘I heard, but what that old woman is suggesting is worse,’ he said. ‘What you described sounds like something that the fiends do. They wait for your guard to fall. And they can wait a long time. Then they strike.’

  While Laila did not trust the stranger, when standing against the Chaos hordes all pure humans had to stick together. What few untainted humans remained.

  ‘The real question is will Hadlen let us out?’ Stefen said.

  Laila winced; the reeve was stubborn at the best of times. ‘We have to try,’ Laila said. ‘He might be persuaded.’

  Stefen smiled tightly. ‘Yes, and lightning men will fall from the sky and kill our enemies.’

  They snickered at the old child’s tale and made their plans. They delayed as much as they dared, speaking to the few close friends that they knew would keep their peace. With the watch so tense, sneaking out would be a challenge. Carefully, they gathered their supplies – a few loaves of hard bread, dried beans and smoked meat. Then at the light of dawn the next day, they walked to the back edge of the village where the midden heap lay next to the wall. It smelled of rotten grain and human waste; however, there was a gap in the palisade where the beams had rotted and they slipped out into the greater world with no one the wiser.

  ‘So this is how you kept escaping,’ Laila said.

  Stefen grinned as he brushed off his hands. ‘No one ever looked.’

  As they walked around the village and onto the road, they saw not a single corpse. Just dried bloodstains and spatters of clear fluid like the trails of slugs. Strange perfumes lingered in the air, faded but potent enough to tickle the nose. Crows fluttered out in the fields, squawking at each other.

  Stefen took them off the road towards the east, into the thinning forest. A deep layer of leaves rustled underfoot. Overhead, the skeletal trees rattled in the wind. The glow of the Lamp dimmed with the evening, while the Cinder Disc glimmered, already small and red with the autumn.

  It felt almost unnatural to be moving away from Varna. The trees seemed to hide sinister threats, and Laila waited for some pale horror to come pelting out at them. Out here, the urge to leave struck her as impulsive while in the town it had felt brave. Had she misheard the raiders? Was Uma right? With a start, Laila realised that she had never been this far from the walls.

  ‘Second thoughts?’ Stefen said.

  ‘How do you do it?’ she said. ‘Leave Varna I mean.’

  ‘One step at a time,’ Stefen said, smiling.

  They walked on, the shadows growing long. Stars flickered into being and the night birds started to warble to each other.

  ‘What about you?’ Laila said to Ano. ‘How did you come to travel?’

  ‘It’s tough to do,’ Ano said. ‘But there are advantages.’

  ‘Like what?’ she said.

  ‘Being paid in coin is good,’ Ano said.

  It was practical, yet there was a mercenary attitude to his response that she did not like.

  ‘We can’t pay you in coin,’ she said, hoping to gain a clearer sense of his motivation.

  ‘No, but a bed for the winter is priceless,’ he said. ‘Besides, I could not help my employer.’

  She let the subject drop when he looked away from her with a cough.

  They travelled for several days, the forest twittering and breathing around them. It had not always been so. Once upon a time, this entire woodland had been a mire of maggots, rot and corpses. Then something had changed. Some said it was just the way of nature to reassert itself after a time. Others said it was a blessing from Alarielle, waking from her long slumber. Still others whispered that it was the Fair Ones that had freed the region of its decay.

  Laila found herself dreading the night. Her sleep was long in coming and when she finally drifted off, nightmares haunted her with horrifying blends of past and present. The fiends, all wearing the manic sweaty face of Jonas, chased her through the fields. They always caught her and then cut her apart, ecstatic breathing echoing in her mind. The shadowy pain remained after she bolted awake, lingering in cramping muscles and unmarked skin.

  Just as Laila began to think they were going the wrong way, Stefen spotted a coiling vine growing under the dense boughs of a great tree. It was black, like the night void when no other heavenly bodies lit the sky. Laila had never seen such a colour in nature before and marvelled at the glossy black leaves.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ Stefen said. ‘Most things in the Valley of the Oracle’s Eye are venomous.’

  ‘Are you sure you can get us there?’ Ano said, shifting his weight.

  ‘Normally this is where I turn around,’ Stefen said. ‘If we just keep walking, the landscape will guide us. Though it will be dangerous in ways that are unfamiliar to us.’

  ‘We should be more cautious now,’ Ano said, gripping his spear. ‘Pay attention. Watch your backs. I will take the rear.’

  ‘Why?’ Laila asked.

  ‘Because I have the feeling that the beasts out here do not attack from the front,’ Ano said with a sardonic smile.

  Laila shivered. The shadows seemed even deeper and more threatening than before. As they moved eastwards, the land grew bleak. The trees shrank, their limbs struggling upwards. Blood-red leaves coated the earth, filled with worms that slithered alarmingly under Laila’s bare feet. Above them, the Lamp grew fat and orange as if seen through a veil of ashes. Animals became quiet and unnatural, with deep black coats, bloated white eyes and long spidery limbs. The world of Ghyran changed, tainted by whatever miasma leaked from the Oracle’s Eye.

  They trudged onwards until the Lamp suddenly winked out and darkness fell, a blackness so complete that it hurt the eyes. Laila stifled a
scream. The night had never come on so fast back at Varna, not even in the depths of winter. A clammy chill rushed in, cutting through their clothes. The sort of cold that would slowly kill if allowed to.

  ‘Light,’ Ano hissed. ‘Now.’

  Leaves rustled under foot as Ano shifted around.

  The shadows watched them. This she knew. She felt their gaze lingering on the skin. Something whispered past her and she flinched. Shadows touched her hands, coiled around her legs and brushed her cheeks, light as cobwebs. She stayed still, even as a scream threatened to escape her throat.

  Instead, she focused, her ears straining. The whisper of cloth, a soft grunt, a light rattle of stone. Something fell into the leaves. Stone clacked against stone. Sparks flared, stinging her eyes. Then the crackle of fire. The hiss of retreating things.

  ‘Hold this,’ Stefen said, handing her the torch before putting an arrow to the string of his bow.

  ‘Where is Ano?’ she said, looking around.

  Their hearts hammering, standing in the little circle of light surrounded by blackness, they realised that their best fighter was gone without a struggle. How could he have not made a sound? Neither dared to call for the man. Laila crept to the edge of the light, as if she were looking over the side of a boat into a dark sea.

  ‘Ano, say something,’ she hissed, then her toes brushed something heavy and wooden.

  Ano’s spear lay where he had dropped it. There was nothing else. Not a drop of blood, nor a shred of cloth. Not even the leaves were disturbed. With a start, she looked up, expecting some beast but there was nothing but blackness.

  ‘Don’t make a sound,’ Stefen said, then turned his back to the light and walked out a few paces. Unblinking alien eyes peered from the gloom, disappearing and then reappearing somewhere else. He raised his bow, drew and waited. Then he loosed and something hissed in pain out in the darkness. That he could see anything amazed her.

  ‘We should move, that’s not the only thing out here,’ Stefen whispered. ‘We may be in some creature’s territory and it will leave us alone once we’re gone. At least that’s what I hope.’