Blood and Iron 4

by Eli Steele

  “There is no place more inviting than the east Calisal,” Byard offered after a time of quiet horizon searching.

  “It seems that way. The Cormorant has shown me beauty I didn’t know existed a moon ago,” replied Rowan.

  “From where do you hail?”

  “Ashmor.”

  “Indeed? I too am from Prydia, though much farther north.”

  “Prydia… you seldom hear the Four Kingdoms referred to as such in the south. You’re not Meronian, are you?

  “Farther north still. Fenryn”

  Rowan nodded, not surprised. “I took you for a northman.”

  “That I am, though it’s been a long time since I’ve been home.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  Byard snorted, looking off into the distance. Warm winds tousled his hair. “Men on ships far from home seldom speak of the whys of their leaving.”

  Eyeing him, Rowan asked, “Should that worry me?”

  “It should not, my lord. I am your sword sworn still.”

  “I’ll accept that,” the thief conceded, “for now.”

  The northman grinned. “That is fair.” After a time, he added, “But you, you have secrets of your own. Secrets stranger than mine, that I know.”

  Rowan exhaled and wrapped his fingers around the rail. Looking back, he saw the islands with names unknown, fading specks on the western horizon. Ahead was nothing but time and blue water. “I wondered when this would come up.”

  “I saw my lord bat two men aside without the laying of hands. And now, looking back, I reason he did not pick those locks either, am I right?”

  “Most people are more taken aback by magery at first. At least, I know I was.”

  He shrugged. “You are a mage. It is not new to me, for I have met a few, but you are different than they.”

  “Different how?”

  Byard mused the question, searching for the right words. “They were... consumed by it. But you, you are just a man that does things others cannot.”

  “I’m still just trying to understand it all myself...”

  After a time, the northman said, “There is another thing I would know.”

  “Ask, then.”

  “Where are we bound?”

  “Thim Dorul.”

  “What draws us there?”

  Patting Unforged’s sheath, Rowan replied, “The Sins of Thim would have this at great cost. I mean to end them.”

  “It is indeed a sword unrivaled, and many would have it, I’m certain. What is its story, why is it so important to them?”

  Rowan started to speak, but thought better of it. “But that I knew,” was all that he offered.

  Byard laughed at the sea, as if they two had a secret shared by no one else.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “The gods, my lord, when they favor me, they do so five-fold.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A mage unusual, with a sword unknown and skills unearned, sails to the city of secrets unending, to challenge the sins Undying. It is poetry, sung by a skald, is it not?” He chuckled. “In my cell, I prayed for one last adventure before I died, and it seems, someone heard me.” Slapping Rowan’s shoulder, he started away while saying, “I am to the hold to fetch another skin. Shall I return with two?”

  “No, thank you, Byard. I should head to the helm.”

  “As you wish. On the morrow, we spar again, yes?”

  “On the morrow, I will best you,” the thief replied with a smirk.

  “Perchance with spell, but not with steel, my lord, not yet,” the northman said, winking, “but I will hone you, like the blade on your belt, until you can.”

  Crossing the deck, Rowan saw the sun setting low in the sky. Smaller than a thimble, it seemed as if he’d never been farther from it than in that moment. But if that was true, how could it be warmer still? There were so many things, even among the mundane, that he did not understand. Every day his world seemed to grow wider half again, and he was lost in its sea, struggling to stay afloat.

  Lost in his musings, Ortun startled him just past the mast. “You did well against the warrior, m’lord, I did not take you for such a swordsman.”

  “Perhaps the sun was in his eyes,” the thief said with a wrinkle of his nose, still half in his thoughts.

  Tapping the deck with the toe of his boot, the boy stammered, “Would you, I mean... could I-“

  Rowan smiled and said, “The mentor’s blood flows thick in Byard’s veins. He would welcome another student.”

  “Thank you, m’lord. I’m not much with a blade, but I would like to be.”

  “Then you will be.”

  Somewhere behind them, a man shouted for Ortun, followed by a string of curses. Even still, the boy’s eyes beamed. Rolling his eyes, he said, “I should be off, duty calls me back.”

  “Duty sounds like a harsh mistress, better hurry.”

  On the helm, Kassina bickered with Stitch while he slathered a gray-green salve on her face. Though the swelling was gone, the bruises remained. Leaning against the rail with arms wide, Sutton ignored them and gazed past bow and horizon.

  “If you’d come in from the sun and the wind, m’lady,” said the ship-bound physician, “you would surely heal sooner.”

  “Stitch,” she pleaded, pushing him away, “please, be gone! You are more plague than doctor!”

  “And you are as insolent a patient as there is on all of the Calisal!” he retorted, pushing past Rowan in a huff.

  Pulling the brim of her hat down low, she fumed and focused on the tiller.

  “He’s just trying to help,” Rowan offered.

  “He’s driving me mad with his grease that smells of seaweed and piss!” she replied.

  Without a word, Howland pushed off the rail and left them. As he did, the thief whispered, “He’s still upset?”

  She shrugged. “In another day or two, it’ll be forgotten. I think he was worried more than anything, but like you, he can be hard to read.”

  “Men,” he remarked.

  Kassina rolled her eyes exaggeratively.

  “So,” he said after a time, taking up the captain’s position on the rail, “Is Thim Dorul our next port?”

  “Not quite. Sutton wants to re-provision in Tabor, so he can put us off on the docks in Thim and be done with us.”

  He snorted, “For someone that cares, he doesn’t seem to give much of a damn what happens to us once we’re in that city.”

  “He’s just scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “That I don’t know,” she conceded.

  “At least we’ll have Byard,” added Rowan, after a silence.

  She nodded. “He’s impressive, I saw him kick your ass earlier.”

  He snorted. “He’s lucky I didn’t heave him overboard.”

  “So much for flicking flames in the hold,” she said with a smirk.

  Slow then swift, I should seek out Iseult soon…

  “So much for setting the till under Howland’s watchful eyes,” he retorted.

  “Before long, I’ll want a ship of my own.”

  The thin thimble sun sizzled the sky pink-orange as it quenched its flames in the western reaches of the Calisal, while pulling its sable mantle across from east to west. In time, it set ten thousand scintillating sequins across the expanse, before pinning a blood moon brooch off their starboard side. As dusk departed, nightfall wore the sky like a highborn lady in black silk and silver at a king’s ball.

  “I’ve thought through it a thousand times,” she said, “I’ve dreamed it and mused it here where I stand, and I’ve still no idea what we’ll do once we reach our destination. In truth, I wish our journey was for another moon still, so I had more time to-”

  “There are no answers to be found on the Cormorant,” he replied. “We cannot know what we must do until we are there. But still, I agree, another moon would be nice.”

  The air cooled with the sun’s absence, goosing their skin and sending a shiver ove
r Kassina. Rowan watched her in silence for a time as she guided the ship while Sutton brooded somewhere below. “I feel like I failed you,” he said, finally, “in Falisport. It haunts me still. What if-”

  “You cannot carry that burden,” she interrupted. “If there’s anyone that’s to blame, it’s me.”

  He started to speak, but his words trailed off before they started. Instead, he let out a sigh.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she replied, “but I’m not that little girl anymore, splitting time between Gruff’s and the church and the streets, scared and alone. I don’t need protecting all the time. I mean, sometimes I will, like in Falas, but sometimes so will you. I guess, what I’m saying is, we’re partners equal. So let me carry the burden of Falas; I’ve earned it, and am paying for it with Stitch’s seaweed salve. It’s not fair for you take that from me.”

  Behind her, he smiled but said nothing.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she gave him a look that demanded words.

  “You’re right,” he said finally. “You don’t need protecting. You’re a woman stronger than I ever could’ve imagined you would be. I don’t know what Thim Dorul holds for us, but I know that together we’ll face it as partners equal.” Glancing to the side, he watched a low star near the water, before realizing it was no star at all. “What is that?” he asked, motioning towards the light.

  Studying it for a time, she replied, “Could be a distant city, or passing merchants, or,” she paused for a moment, before adding, “Howland said these waters, from here until Thim, would be rife with corsairs. You should tell the crew to douse the torches, just in case.”

  Pushing off the rails, he said, “Aye, captain, I will,” before kissing her cheek and disappearing to the deck below.

  Chapter 42

  Byron Dhane

  Village of Perk

  Kingdom of Beyorn

  Though the sun was high overhead, black smoke hung thick in the air, crowding out the light and beguiling Byron’s mind into believing the time later than it was. The winds had died with the blizzard’s passing, allowing the sickly smell of charred wood and burning bodies to build, until it bore deep into his nostrils.

  He smashed his pommel against the ice, before plunging a wool rag into the trough. Upon wringing it dry, he tied it around his nose and mouth. It was damnably cold, but held back the worst of the battle’s stench. His face prickled as the rag hardened, but he welcomed the distracting burn.

  Ash fell in flurries, defiling the blanket of snow that covered the worst of their atrocities. Turning slowly, he saw a stone bench beside a still-smoldering smithy, and sat. He thought of Gorv, the forger of the daystar that hung from his hip, and wondered if the death of the blacksmith in Perk was a just accounting for the one in Bearbrook. He reasoned not.

  Wars were fought against men on broad fields and high hills, not the unarmed and infirm in villages. And yes, sometimes examples were made of traitors, such as the farms just north of the Braewood. Though he regretted that decision more than any other in his life, for he had paid for it with his sword hand, and much more.

  Perhaps, if choices different had been made on that day, then I would not be standing here now, a stranger adrift in a strange army. But I was a different man then, and much has changed. Byron sighed. Maybe, if not for that day, then I would be the Raven Knight instead of he…

  A pair of soldiers burst through the smoke, stained with blood and drunk on the spoils of victory. They ignored him, as if he was no more than a lowborn spear on the front line. He stood to confront them, but no words came. Instead, he sat again and pulled a skin from his belt and wet his parched throat as they disappeared behind the smoldering ruins of a collapsing sundry shop.

  After a time, Havar appeared, soot-faced and sullen, sword sheathed, with shield and clay jug in hand. Sweat dripped from him despite the bitter cold. “May we depart from this place, my lord, if only for a time?”

  “There is a knoll not far, with a birch copse unstained by blood.”

  “Take me there, I have a gallon of winterwine unopened, pried from a dead man’s hands. It is from three years prior, one that I would like to remember.”

  * * * * *

  On the low hill overlooking the despair that was once the village of Perk, they turned their backs to the smoke-filled valley and halved a loaf of stale wheat and barley. Byron tore off a hunk of bread, before chasing it with a long swill from the red clay jug. Thick and bitter, and full of yeast dregs, the wine watered his eyes and burned his throat. Handing it back, he offered a loose whistle.

  Havar turned up the jug and gulped until he was defeated. Blinking, he set it between them on the grass. “I stopped two defilements. Nearly had to kill one of our own.”

  Dhane gulped the wine again, before laying back and staring past the winter-thin canopy. “You failed to stop two hundred more, and you’re wrong – they’re not our own, not anymore.”

  A pair of rust squirrels chased each other through the branches overhead, oblivious to the grim realities in the valley below. It was just as well that they didn’t know, the commander mused, for knowledge alone solved nothing. Hell, he knew, and what had it changed?

  “The blue tower didn’t even attempt a defense,” Havar said aloud, though more to himself as a half-formed thought. “I expected more.”

  “Perk was indefensible, a battle lost before the start,” Byron replied. “And the man is a strategist. He warned the village and took those that he could to Ashmor – the ones that wouldn’t slow him down. I’m surprised he didn’t stop to slaughter the livestock. We were closer to him than even I thought, it seems.”

  “Did you see the way the Raven Knight shamed him in single combat? Loathed as he is, you must concede, no man can best the knight.”

  “What if he isn’t a man?” Dhane said, his words raising his own hackles.

  Havar stared at him for a long while. “If not a man, then what?”

  Shrugging, the commander turned up the jug again, before replying, “Perhaps it is fear unfounded, but we know there is an air about him – we can feel it – and he is skilled with a sword like none I’ve ever seen. Maybe he is merely like Lothe, but recall not a year ago that a man speaking of magery would’ve been laughed out of the taverns. Now, it is strange but familiar, at least among our ranks. But what if there is more?”

  “More than mages? I had not considered the thought.”

  “I have, since the night I watched him at the Brae, with that face… it was as if he was tormented, yet reveled still.”

  “How does it feel?” Weston said, approaching from behind.

  “What’s that?” asked Byron, turning.

  Squatting beside him, Volf grabbed the jug and replied, “To be a commander usurped.”

  “Usually a man usurped discovers as much by the knife in his back.”

  “Fret not, my lord. Your knife will come, soon enough.” The Bear blinked after swigging the harsh wine, before adding, “Damn these spirits…”

  “A vintage of eighty two,” replied Havar.

  Weston nodded, taking another pull, albeit a smaller one. “A good year.”

  “I’m not sure what is worse,” the commander lamented, forlorned by the wine, “to be replaced or forgotten.”

  Volf snorted. “Lothe has certainly not forgotten you, but with his Raven Knight near, you’re no threat. Besides, he is drawn to Ashmor like a crow to the killing fields. In truth, I am surprised we have tarried here so long.”

  “The black brood he breeds desires blood,” Havar remarked.

  A gust of wind chilled them. Looking back, Byron saw the smoke swirl, revealing the village’s charred bones, like a sash parting before a sepulcher. He exhaled, dismayed by the depravity still on display down below.

  “Do you wonder why it’s only we that are not affected by the mage and his knight?” The Bear asked.

  “I expect that only the darkest hearts have been turned in full,” Dhane replied, “Indeed I believe many among
us are being pushed along by the corrupted few, too afraid to stand against Lothe.”

  “If what you say is true, then they are cur bastards... and so are we.”

  Weston’s words laid him bare, though not as deep as they once would’ve. Instead, they tightened his chest and reminded him that coward was a title that would haunt him until his grave, and if the gods willed it, perhaps beyond.

  The Bear stood and stared at the pair, before saying, “Your words have stirred these men before, and would do it again. Rally those that would hear you, Dhane, and let us stop this!”

  Byron shook his head. “It would do naught but cause their slaughter. The Raven Knight and his Bluchnoire are too strong.”

  “So we remain, craven witnesses to it all? Silent, like stone-faced gargoyles atop a keep?” The Bear spat.

  “No,” said the commander, rising. “We ride to King Bathild, and we tell him all, and raise an army stronger than Lothe’s, and end this.”

  Havar snorted. “Kings care not of the how, only that it is done, and Meronia’s border grows by the day.”

  “He speaks truth,” added Weston. “Do you think Alfred gave one single damn of the women and children in Bearbrook that his blue tower slaughtered? Of course not. And neither will our liege balk at a lord hung and a village razed.”

  “If we fight the mage here, we will surely die,” Dhane said, “but if we fight him from Hadrian, we may yet live.”

  “If we fight the mage here, we will die with honor,” retorted The Bear, “but if we fight him from Hadrian, we will surely hang with signs round our necks.” He shook his head. “I can see them now, ‘Here swing the craven three of Perk, horse thieves and traitors to the crown. The hells doth welcome them.’”

  “I leave tonight,” Byron declared, “with or without you. And by doing such, I am the commander of none, so your choice is your own.” With that, he left.