Nail turned away, partly in defiance, partly in shame, dipping his chin, trying to hide the scar that circled his neck—the scar left by the Bloodwood’s thin rope.
Culpa approached. “Could be it’s infected.”
Nail backed away. Bleary-eyed and hungry, he couldn’t rightly concentrate. “Have you anything to eat?”
“You know who I am, don’t you?” Culpa asked. “You remember me?”
Nail nodded, eyes hazing over. The confrontation with the four outlaws had dulled his senses. The light-headedness was increasing and he stumbled back into Dusty, clutching at the old saddle atop her, almost crumpling to his knees.
“Whoa.” Culpa grabbed him by the arm. “Easy.”
Nail shrugged him off crisply. Stood straight. “Do you have food?”
Culpa retreated to his saddlebags, hauled out a wineskin, a heel of bread, and a strip of jerky, and handed the food to Nail. “This is farm country, but folks are restless with the advance of Aeros’ army. Thieves are becoming more brazen, preying on folks fleeing the south. Folks like you, with ponies and horses to steal. You just crossed paths with the Untamed, four of the most notorious outlaws in all the Five Isles. Don’t be fooled by their lackadaisical manner. The Untamed use their names as much as possible whilst talking. They want to be known and remembered by all they rob. Praed left me alone only in deference to my father. They go way back. We were lucky today.”
Nail tore into the bread, drank of the wineskin. Beer Mug sniffed at his hand holding the jerky. Dusty nickered behind him. Culpa ran a gloved hand along the neck of Hawkwood’s horse as if checking it for injury. “You can trust me, Nail. We are the truest of friends. The Turn Key Saloon? That is where you are headed, correct?”
Nail remained silent under Culpa’s cold scrutiny, chewing the jerky. “It’s a stout steed you have there,” Culpa said of Hawkwood’s roan. He hauled himself up atop his own palfrey. “I’m sure Roguemoore is worried about you. Mount up. We shall journey to Lord’s Point together.”
With the food settling into his empty stomach, Nail was feeling instantly more alert. But with every word the knight spoke, he was purposefully shrinking back into himself, becoming closed off. He knows the rendezvous point. The Turn Key Saloon.
Culpa said, “I just traveled with Hawkwood for many days, Nail. He was sorely injured, though he did not say how. He did claim Shawcroft was dead. Is this true?”
Nail’s eyes did not waver from the knight. “Shawcroft was killed when Gallows Haven was sacked.” He took another long drink of the wineskin.
“That is distressing news.” Culpa’s face was briefly drawn in grief. He straightened in his saddle. “But the question is, are you okay, Nail?”
“Did you follow me?” he asked.
“Hawkwood wanted me to find you,” Culpa answered, casting his gaze about nervously. “It’s best we make it to Lord’s Point before dark.”
Again Hawkwood watches after me. He owed the man. Though these last many days had been imbued with much loneliness and hardship and hunger, Nail had been free—free to wander wherever he wished at whatever pace he desired. But the loneliness could be crushing. He missed his friends Stefan and Dokie, the only links to his previous life. But with that thought came the crushing realization that he was to blame for the destruction of Gallows Haven and the death of so many. Yup. Everyone in Gallows Haven gone because of me. Just the no-good son of Cassietta Raybourne and Aevrett Raijael.
He was so confused. “I will make my own way,” he said, eyes of stone fixed on the knight in black-lacquered armor astride the gray palfrey.
“And where will you go?” Culpa moved his horse forward. “We are at war. You will be hung as a deserter by some baron or lord if you cannot prove who you are or where you are from. You will become naught but a thief or a beggar or an outlaw like Praed. That is the way of things. You are fortunate to have made it this far on your own. At least with me you will have someone to speak in your behalf. The word of a Dayknight is law in Gul Kana. Some titles and lineage hold power.”
Culpa was right. Damnably right. Titles and lineage did hold power, more power than he could ever possess. But can I trust this man? He recalled long ago in Deadwood Gate how Culpa had taught him of the stars, taught him of the Warrior Angels ascended into heaven with Laijon. He had recounted the details to Ava Shay on the beach the night of the Mourning Moon Feast. But her reaction had been one of disgust. And later that night she had confessed her love for Jenko Bruk. A hollow pang of regret followed that thought. Ava had hurt him. Abandoning her was his only way of striking back at that hurt. But he knew that one petty revenge of his would weigh on his soul the rest of his life. And Jenko Bruk in the enemy armor of Sør Sevier? In Ravenker, Jenko had wanted to kill him. Like everything else, it just didn’t seem real.
Yes, his mind was flooded with conflicting thoughts. Confusion. He took a long swig from the wineskin and handed it back to the Dayknight. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his rough-spun shirt, then hauled himself up onto Hawkwood’s horse. With a click of his heels, he turned the mount toward Lord’s Point and proceeded that way at a leisurely pace, Beer Mug at his heels, the piebald pony, Dusty, following too.
Culpa Barra galloped up next to him. “I wasn’t going to force you, Nail. But you made the right decision.”
† † † † †
As afternoon had worn into evening, the sunset above Lord’s Point was reddish and murky. Wood smoke hung in streams stretching skyward from countless crooked chimneys. After Amadon, Lord’s Point was the next largest city in Gul Kana, and the biggest place Nail had ever been. The road to Lord’s Point had consisted of a vast expanse of outlying farms and small hamlets stretching between Devlin, Lokkenfell, and the Autumn Range.
They entered Lord’s Point under the towering gate of the city’s outer ring. Once beyond the outer wall, they traveled among broad avenues and porticoes, past a dizzying maze of winding side streets and alleys. Fountains and statues seemed to line every square and corner. Ragged children skittered along dirt paths and cobbled streets teeming with beggars, peasants, and shopkeepers. There were so many people. Everywhere. Closer to the city’s center, the flying buttresses of a cathedral ten times the size of the chapel in Gallows Haven climbed skyward. Beyond the cathedral, the towering inner wall along with Lord’s Point Castle rose up alongside the sea, towers and spires and battlements looming and dark against the sunset.
Nail wondered how Aeros Raijael’s army could attack a place so grand and large and full of people. But somehow he knew the White Prince would. With utmost savagery he would. Lord’s Point would be destroyed. But the people here showed none of the panic that had seized all those fleeing the southlands. It seemed these city dwellers were helpless in their ignorance. They had no idea of the horrendous violence and slaughter that was coming for them.
As Nail and Culpa wended their way toward the dock district, things grew crammed and stifling. Taller buildings crowded the pathways, and the shadowy streets between were interspersed with the occasional green-leafed garden of ivy and flowers. As they neared the docks, the space between the buildings opened up some and Nail could see the flat blue ocean beyond. The Fortress of Saint Only rose up on the far horizon. And through the heavy ocean air, Nail could just make out the cloudy vision of Wyn Darrè and the thin, soaring slivers of the five Laijon Towers, barely visible in the haze. Rumor was, the view from Lord’s Point of both Adin Wyte and Wyn Darrè was one of the most magnificent in all the Five Isles. And now that he was seeing it, he believed it.
“The Turn Key Saloon,” Culpa Barra said, dismounting, hitching his palfrey to a rail.
The Dayknight stood before the most grim-looking storefront facade Nail had ever seen. The door was rotted gray wood. It was closed. And what should have been shuttered windows on either side seemed to be just boarded-up holes. A rusted tin sign clanked in the breeze above, hanging crooked from an equally rusted pole that leaned precariously out over the
roadway. The sign read THE TURN KEY INN & SALOON. In smaller lettering underneath was stamped A DRINKING ESTABLISHMENT FOSTERING AN ENVIRONMENT OF LAW-ABIDING CITIZENRY AND NONCRIMINALITY.
“Stay with the horses,” the Dayknight said, and marched up the tattered wood porch. He pushed the rotted door open and disappeared into the gloom of the place.
Hawkwood’s horse nickered and shuffled sideways as a dirty crabman pulling a wobbly handcart topped with red crabs rattled by. Nail soothed the horse with a calm hand and thought back on the day’s journey with the Dayknight. Their conversations had been brief, mostly consisting of Culpa’s questions about Shawcroft’s death and what Nail and Hawkwood had been doing in Ravenker that had led to Hawkwood’s capture. Nail had told him everything—everything but for the fact that he had lost Forgetting Moon to Jenko Bruk, letting Culpa just assume the battle-ax and angel stone were in the possession of Godwyn and Roguemoore.
When Culpa stepped back out onto the Turn Key’s porch, Nail was surprised to see Liz Hen Neville there with him. Wearing a heavy, rough-spun cloak, she was still fat and round as a church bell. Beer Mug barked and practically leaped straight up into her arms. “Oh, my big sweetie!” she blubbered, kissing the dog on the face and snout. Beer Mug’s tail was wagging.
“Seems like they arrived earlier today, just before us.” Culpa unhitched his palfrey. “Godwyn sent the girl to help us with the horses. There’s a stable in back.”
“Where’s Stefan?” Nail asked Liz Hen. “Where’s Dokie?”
“The dwarf sent them and Otto to ready the stable.” The red-haired girl looked Nail up and down with scorn. Her eyes traveled over Dusty and Hawkwood’s horse next. Her brows crumpled questioningly. “Where’s the ax?”
Fatigue suddenly lay like a smoldering blanket of distress over Nail’s body and mind. He couldn’t muster up the will to even answer the question.
“Don’t tell me you lost it already,” Liz Hen said.
It was stolen from me! Nail couldn’t admit to his failure out loud. Culpa Barra was eyeing him, brow creased.
“Such a useless bastard.” Liz Hen glared at him smugly. “Losing the very battle-ax that was so important to our friends. You and that ax have been all the bishop and the dwarf could talk about; waiting for Nail, worrying about Nail, hoping Nail will soon show up with that ax in tow. And now look at you, Nail. You’ve done lost it.”
“And why would you care?” Nail shot back. “You never thought it was real, Liz Hen. You never believed in it anyway.”
Liz Hen shook her head in disgust. “Well, I wouldn’ta lost the thing.” Her eyes roamed the street. “Where’s Hawkwood? Don’t tell me you lost him, too?” She punched him in the shoulder hard.
Hugh Godwyn and Roguemoore stepped from the saloon. The bishop was still wearing his knee-high boots, dark leather breeches, and green woolen shirt, elk hide sewn at the elbows. His scraggly mane of gray hair fluttered in the breeze. The dwarf looked as gruff and serious as always.
“Nail lost the ax,” Liz Hen announced. “And Hawkwood, too. Also the blue stone, I’d reckon.”
“What of the satchel?” Godwyn’s eyes flew to the saddlebags tied to Dusty. “Have you lost Shawcroft’s satchel, too?”
“It was stolen from me,” Nail answered. “Stolen by Jenko Bruk!”
“Jenko Bruk?” Liz Hen scoffed. “Now you’re talking nonsense.”
Roguemoore’s face fell. Godwyn grabbed Nail by the shoulders, eyes flaring with distress. “In that satchel was a parchment. Hidden. Is it gone too?”
“I suppose so,” Nail answered brusquely. “Jenko took the entire satchel.”
The bishop’s face fell at the news. As did the dwarf’s. Despair and loneliness fell over Nail like twin blankets, smothering and dreary. They aren’t even glad to see me alive, just worried about some stupid slip of paper Shawcroft wrote some stupid words on. Words that were seared into his mind.
The boy now bears the mark of the cross, the mark of the slave, and the mark of the beast. He has bathed in scarlet, bathed in blood.
* * *
The Way and Truth of Laijon is eleven books as scribed: the Early Books of Prophecy, Book of the Great Hunts, Book of the Slave, Book of the Cross, Book of the Beasts, Book of the Atonement Tree, Ember Lighting Song of the Third Warrior Angel, Acts of the Second Warrior Angel, Revelations of the Fourth Warrior Angel, Song of the Stones, and the Soulless Lament. Other than these, there shall be no other gospels forever and ever, amen.
—THE WAY AND TRUTH OF LAIJON
* * *
CHAPTER FIVE
AVA SHAY
7TH DAY OF THE ETHIC MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON
BEDFORD, GUL KANA
Asun-warmed breeze bled over the Sør Sevier encampment just north of Bedford Bay, rippling Ava Shay’s simple woolen shift around her legs. Blinking through milky, inebriated eyes, she gazed out at the blue horizon heaped with soft white clouds. She’d been spending her days drunk on Aeros’ stash of strong wines, always imbibing just enough to drown the howling emptiness within her soul.
She stood on weak knees under the shade of the towering Sør Sevier Knight Archaic Hammerfiss. He loomed over her like a bearded oak, a straw of willow reed jutting from his mouth, gleaming battle armor adding to his bulk. His features were hard-lined and pale beneath the blue tattoos spanning his face. The small bones and fetishes tied in the tangled mass of his hair and red beard twinkled in the sun and wind.
At least a hundred Sør Sevier knights were gathered behind Ava and Hammerfiss. In front of them, silhouetted against the bright sky on the grassy slope above the beachhead, was Enna Spades. The red-haired warrior woman sparred with Jenko Bruk and the Wyn Darrè, Mancellor Allen. Both Mancellor and Jenko were shirtless, their heavily muscled torsos glistening with sweat as they struggled to keep Spades at bay. But the Sør Sevier woman, with her whirling broadsword and impeccable footwork, was making the two young men look like bumbling fools. She wore leather riding pants and a white undershirt and broke no sweat, despite sparring with unbridled fury. A gauntlet of tall wooden posts had been pounded into the dirt, creating random obstacles for the combatants. The pine posts didn’t bother Spades. Ava had never imagined a woman could look so deadly. She was a nightmare. Everything is a nightmare! If Jenko and I could just go back to Gallows Haven and pretend none of this ever happened . . .
But Ava knew those dreams had crumbled to ashes many days past. And without the numbing spirits that coursed through her veins, the constant pool of bitterness that boiled in her heart just might destroy her. She wished she could retreat into her little wood carvings again. Like she used to do with Nail, him sitting beside her with his charcoal and parchment, her whittling turtles and fish. Some of the only true and peaceful moments of her life. Ava recalled the first wood carving she’d ever done, how proud she’d been of it—a small fish with little scales. She remembered how she’d shown it to her younger sister, five-year-old Ashi. She could still recall Ashi’s curious eyes staring at the carving in wonder as she’d remarked, “It’s so fine, I could just look at it all day.” But Ashi was now dead, along with Agnes, Aja, and little Aikin. Best not to think of them Or the joy I took in my art. They were long-lost moments, memories locked away into that small corner of her soul where she scarcely ever ventured. The slave brand burned on the underside of her wrist was grim confirmation of her current dream-deficient existence.
“Why even bother sparring?” Hammerfiss asked of no one in particular. He plucked the willow reed from his mouth. “I doubt there will even be another battle. This piss-bucket town was already emptied out when we got here. Just like Ravenker and all the other little shit-hole hamlets and farms in between. No fight in ’em at all.” The burly man looked down at Ava as if it were all her fault. “Gul Kana, what a joke.”
But Ava, submersed in her own thoughts, scarcely cared. Other than the spirits she drank, she knew of no other way to suture her soul against the wraiths and heal the burning scars they left. If I could jus
t go back to Gallows Haven . . .
“Have ya not even been listening to me, lassie?” Hammerfiss grumbled, tossing the reed to the ground. “They’ve all fled. Like scared rabbits. I need a real fight to get my blood pumping again. A great bloody battle.” He nodded toward Spades, Jenko, and Mancellor. “None of this pointless sparring.”
What he said was true, about there being no real battles. The southern coast of Gul Kana had emptied in the advance of the growing armies of the White Prince. They were smart to flee. Ava’s own vivid memories of the destruction of Gallows Haven were as fierce and inexorable in their aggressiveness as the actual siege had been. And Aeros’ army had moved fast up the coastline toward Lord’s Point, nobody to stop them. It was an army encampment that had grown as big as ten villages crammed together. At night these brutish fighters could assemble their camp—Aeros’ tent and all its accoutrements included—with a clean efficiency that was a sight to behold, and come morning, disassemble it just as smoothly. Ever since leaving Ravenker a smoking ruin, Aeros had kept Ava under even tighter scrutiny, letting her out of the tent only when the army was on the move, forcing her to ride in a covered wagon with the injured Bloodwood as her travel mate. And that was a whole other bit of weirdness in itself.
Spiderwood lived. Barely.
In Ravenker, after Mancellor and Jenko had gifted Aeros with the battle-ax and blue angel stone, they awaited return of the Spider with Nail. But Spiderwood never returned. Aeros had sent them back out to locate the Bloodwood. Mancellor and Jenko had found the Spider near death in a pool of his own blood in the exact spot they’d last seen him, his Bloodeye horse standing guard, and Nail long gone. Ava wondered if it had been the bald knight, Gault, who’d fought the Bloodwood and left him for dead. She hoped so. After all, it was she who had informed him of Aeros’ and the Spider’s betrayal. The bald knight had seemed so lonely. It was why she had befriended him. She knew what loneliness felt like. She hoped Gault had escaped. And I wish I could have gone with him. . . .
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