by Ben Galley
‘A silver.’
Mithrid put the gold coin on the counter.
Edna poked at the Emaneska seal on the coin: the irksome face of Malvus Barkhart. ‘What is this?’
‘More than enough, is what it is.’
‘Mmph. I’ll give you two silvers back. Your coin ain’t worth the same in the Rivenplains.’
‘Four. I might not have seen a lot of the world, but I know gold doesn’t stop being gold based on what’s stamped on it.’
‘Three.’
‘Fine.’
Edna emptied the three silver coins in Mithrid’s hand, crossed her arms, and turned away in a mood.
With a shake of her head, Mithrid headed back to the table. Wrapped up in looking at the dirty smear of ink within the little glass vial, she didn’t realise how close she was to a group of drinkers until one of them snagged her cloak.
Mithrid snatched herself away, looking down at a man with pockmarked skin and a shaved head. He had stars tattooed across his forehead, just like each of the three louts that shared his table. Each was clad in a riding cloak of chestnut fur and chainmail.
‘Don’t see many like you around these parts,’ he said over the rim of his flagon. ‘Not with hair of fire like yours. Nor armour, either. Never seen that kind before. Must be a rich lady to afford such plate. What’s your name, lady?’
‘None of your business is what it is.’
‘By the Dusk God, she is fire herself! I like that,’ he brayed to his friends.
It was then, with a last glance, that Mithrid saw the skull masks balanced face-down on the table between their ales.
She hoisted up her hood and led a meandering route back to her table, fortunately poised just out of their sight around the willow’s fronds.
A flagon of ale for each of them had come, two bowls of bread, melted butter, and a clutch of sausages sizzling on a stone. Mithrid sat alongside the mage, watching the others filling their stomachs.
‘You look concerned, Mith,’ said Aspala, spitting crumbs.
‘I think there are some Cathak here. Didn’t recognise us but they have the same masks. Dressed in brown fur instead of their usual colours,’ Mithrid said.
‘We’ll be swifter here than planned, in that case,’ the mage ordered.
While each of them surreptitiously stared over their shoulders, and while Farden saw to the ink and quill, Mithrid drank the dust from her tongue. The ale was crisp, somehow freezing cold, and only had the lightest of scum floating in it. Mithrid sipped as she examined the walls of windows, and the stairwells and walkways crisscrossing the roof. The tree had a scent that was much more preferable to the tobacco smoke and ash of the fireplaces. It did not smell like wood they were burning, but dung.
Farden bent over the inkwell, staring at his simple message of:
Elessi. We are all alive.
Please tell me you are the same.
F
‘Please,’ he was whispering. Perhaps even praying. ‘Please.’
Mithrid sipped away, eyeing the table of Cathak while they waited, and rested their weary bones.
‘Brace!’
The roar barely preceded the strike of the mountain of a wave. It rammed the Autumn’s Vanguard sideways as it broke against its starboard side. Seawater flooded the top decks, sweeping even more of the wind and water mages from their posts. Lanterns extinguished as they were smashed apart by the fierce waves.
Though the rain tried its hardest to hammer her into submission, Hereni stood obstinate at the railing of the aftcastle. Lerel was roaring orders behind her. Hereni did not care for the wicked rain, nor the wind-driven waves that sought to drown them. She stared, unblinking into the roiling ocean, dreading to see scales and fins at any moment.
‘Hereni!’
The bellowing of her name was a timid, faint wail in the storm, but Hereni at last heard it. Elessi stood beside the wheel, holding onto Eyrum for dear life but insistent on seizing the mage’s attention.
Hereni let go of the railing. The wind was savage, blowing her back across the deck until she caught hold of the Siren. There was no fear in their eyes. None of the crouching terror that Hereni felt, but instead soaked and wide-eyed faces.
‘It’s Farden!’ Elessi cried.
‘What? Where?’
‘In the inkweld! He’s alive!’
‘Thank the bloody gods! And Mithrid?’
‘They all are!’
Hereni practically raced them belowdecks. She stumbled into the cabin and rammed her ribs into the desk.
Elessi had left the inkweld open on her desk. Low and behold, a scrawled message was slowly vanishing. Hereni tilted her head to read it.
‘We’re all alive,’ Elessi uttered. ‘That’s what it says.’
Hereni collapsed at the desk with relief. ‘Where are they?’
After wrapping a towel around herself, Elessi sat down at the desk and scrabbled to dip the quill. ‘I was just about to ask them that exact thing.’
‘Yes!’
Farden’s exclamation drew stares, even the frowning attention of the bard by the pool.
They all drew inwards around the inkweld. ‘What? Is it them?’ Mithrid asked.
The inkweld answered for her. Script appeared upon the empty green pages. Slow, steady, and in flowing scribble.
‘That’s Elessi’s hand, if I’m not mistaken,’ whispered Farden.
All alive, for now at least.
Fleeing Krauslung and Loki. He’s claimed the city.
Leviathans summoned. We had to sail south. The Waveblade has been lost.
Where are you? Are you injured?
E
‘Loki has claimed Krauslung?’ Durnus breathed. ‘How?’
Mithrid spluttered. ‘After all we did? Why would the city do that after we won? Freed them from Malvus?’
Farden fixed Mithrid with a sour look. The quill bent in his fist. ‘What did I tell you about that bastard god?’
Mithrid was too busy trying to figure whether Hereni and Bull could be counted in “all”. She hoped with all he heart it did. She was about to ask Farden to clarify when the minotaur spoke.
‘Leviathans? What are these?’ Warbringer looked perturbed.
Durnus explained. ‘Great creatures of the sea. Rare but incredibly dangerous. Sometimes known to menace ships and eat the occasional small boat.’
‘The Waveblade is not a small boat, Durnus.’
Farden dipped the quill in the diminishing ink.
We are on the Sunder Road, far to the East…
‘ “…Not injured but locals aren’t the friendliest”,’ Elessi read aloud, even though Hereni watched the script move from poised over her shoulder.
‘Where in blood-drenched Hel is the Sunder Road?’ asked the mage.
‘I haven’t a clue. Eyrum? Do you?’
Eyrum shook his head, brow a deep trench of frown. ‘Far to the east does not sound helpful.’
Elessi ran the quill against the ink-pot. ‘Durnus must have accidentally taken them there with the Weight,’ she was muttering.
A deep boom shook the ship. Hereni sought the comfort of a bulkhead. She could feel the tremor of the storm-waters running across the hull. At least, Hereni hoped it was merely the storm.
‘Unless he took them there on purpose,’ she voiced.
When are you coming back to us?
E
Mithrid watched Farden’s hand hesitate for a moment before replying.
‘We’re not,’ he whispered as he wrote. ‘Even if we wanted to, we are trapped here without a quickdoor. The Weight is broken and Fleetstar cannot carry us all. We are searching for something to help us. A weapon we will need to destroy Loki.’
Elessi had barely understood the script before a lurch of the ship sent her ink pouring over the inkweld’s green pages, utterly flooding it.
‘Gods curse it!’ Elessi yelled. Despite her attempts to wipe it with the towel, the inkweld was ruined.
‘I need more ink!’
<
br /> In desperation, she scratched the word tomorrow into the mess of black ink with the quill and hoped Farden would see it.
‘Leviathan on the port side!’ came the roar from the hallway. The Vanguard bucked under a heavy blow, as if the bookship had run aground. The screech of something against the iron hull plates was spine-crawling.
‘Ink, damn it!’ Elessi yelled.
But Hereni was too transfixed by the shout. Eyrum was already out of the door.
‘What did they say?’ shouted Hereni.
Elessi slammed the inkweld shut. Trapped. Staring at the quivering bulkheads, she knew the feeling all too well. ‘No help is coming, mage. We are on our own for now.’
‘Haven’t we always been?’ Hereni growled. Her question needed to answer. The air crackled as flames spread from her fists to her shoulders.
‘What the…?’ Farden recoiled as a black blotch of ink spread across both pages of the inkweld.
With the meat of his fist, Farden tried to rub it clear but the ink on the pages was dry as dust. The blotch began to fade away, leaving a faint ghost of the word, “tomorrow” in the ink.
‘Ever seen that before?’ he demanded of Durnus.
‘Never. Though I would wager some kind of ink-based accident on Elessi’s part.’
Mithrid heard more hope in the vampyre’s voice than certainty. She met Farden’s wide, blood-rimmed eyes.
Farden wrote Elessi’s name across the page three times. The ink did not fade this time. It lingered on the page, despised as a confession.
‘Leviathans,’ snarled the mage. ‘How did Loki summon Leviathans?’
Mithrid had heard stories of the sea monsters. Colossal serpents of scale and fang. She could feel her heart beating faster. ‘Will they be all right?’
Durnus’ hands spread across the table. ‘Calm, both of you. Fear only grows without facts. Trust in your allies, as you struggle to do so often. Elessi has the Rogue’s Armada. She has Eyrum, Hereni, and not forgetting Towerdawn and the Sirens. You might argue they are safer than us.’
Again, the vampyre’s voice wavered. It could have been whatever malady of weakness still affected him, yet he seemed stronger since leaving the mountain ridge.
Farden looked anything but. Mithrid could see the white of the knuckles in the mage’s hand as it wrapped around his borrowed knife. To her surprise, whatever inner monologue raged within his skull, stayed there. Instead, Farden closed his eyes, took a breath through his nostrils, and held it.
‘I trust them,’ he said at last. ‘I do not trust Loki.’
‘Tomorrow, mage. We will try them again.’
Farden slid the inkweld across the table and shoved himself back in his chair. ‘The sooner we leave, the sooner tomorrow will come.’
Mithrid’s heavy eyelids, the cold sensation of ale in her stomach, and the ache of her muscles made her want to do nothing but to stay sitting. Perhaps even to graduate to lying down. Yet Mithrid felt the same frustration and restlessness that Farden felt. She knew all too well how desperately one will scrabble for control in situations bereft of any. So it was that Mithrid half rose, but the others stayed still.
Durnus shook his head. ‘We fear for them as much as you do, mage. But how much use will we be to Elessi and the armada if we walk ourselves to death before we find the Spear of Gunnir? We are, all of us, exhausted.’
Aspala nodded.
‘Speak for yourselves, weak ones,’ chuckled Warbringer. She had already drained her flagon and was looking menacingly at a haunch of meat roasting across the hall.
Durnus rolled his eyes. ‘Except for our good Warbringer here. You are half-dead, Farden. I see it in you. Hear it in your heartbeat, smell it in your blood. Do not forget what I am.’
‘Is nothing in my control any more?’ he muttered. With Loki’s knife, he began to carve an idle pattern in the table.
Mithrid’s tired bones were secretly glad for the vampyre’s complaints. She settled back in her chair and seized her tankard. She suffered guilt for it, especially knowing that at that moment the armada was fighting to survive, but Durnus was right. And, somehow, the more she sipped her ale, the more leaden she felt.
‘Steward!’ called Durnus.
He appeared momentarily. If he was expecting more gold, he was disappointed.
‘Another round, sires and madams?’ The steward’s eyes lingered on Warbringer as if to wonder if either of those salutations were correct.
‘Have you heard of Sigrimur, my good man?’ Durnus asked.
The steward laughed so immediately, Mithrid thought he had suffered a surprise sneeze.
‘You might as well be asking if I have heard of the sky, sire. I mean no offence, but everybody in the Rivenplains and beyond has heard of Sigrimur. At very least, they’ve heard of his head.’
‘His head?’
‘You really are far from home, aren’t you?’ The steward now looked more shocked than full of mockery. ‘You don’t know the Head of Sigrimur? By the plains, what else would they give as a prize for winning the Scarlet Tourney? Champions travel for leagues for a chance to hold that head. All other tourneys – even the pits of Lezembor – pale in comparison. There’s nothing like it. The fights, the blood, the cheering. And the Golikan ale!’ The steward scratched his neck, remembering himself. ‘I assumed that’s why you were passing through. Armour and weapons like yours…’
‘This Scarlet Tourney, where is it?’
‘Why, in Vensk, of course. The capital of Golikar? By the plains. The procession begins in Dathazh in a few days. Just follow that. Now, more ales or not? I don’t get paid as a guide.’
Farden set the man free from Durnus by thanking him with another silver. ‘We will take those beds after all.’
‘Fine. With company or without?’
‘Without.’
The steward tutted as he left. ‘Foreigners,’ he huffed.
His interest in his customers and their coin squashed, he took his sweet time with the second round of flagons. Mithrid spent the wait watching others over her vessel. Drinking was a pastime she could easily get used to.
The bard was now entertaining a table for a coin, singing something dire about a shepherd crying about wolves. Mithrid found herself thinking of old Grey Barbo’s wheedling tone, something he had only broken out on Highfrost’s Eve. Home, she realised, was not about a hearth or a roof, but about safety and comfort. And she had been missing plenty of both since Troughwake. Since Scalussen, even.
‘We should find that healer for you, Durnus. You still look awful,’ Farden was saying, filling the silence.
‘Speak for yourself, mage.’
Farden shook his head. ‘I told you, I’m fine. All I care about is my armour and finding somebody who can fix it. Hopefully this city of Dathazh will be more than a scratch of wood and sheep shit. Civilisation, instead of these endless plains.’
‘ “Three tasks every god and mortal fears to face await. Three duties yet fulfilled of blood, breath, mind, and soul. Three cursed keys to three doors to be left locked evermore,” ’ Aspala recited the Doomriddle. The words had rattled around Mithrid’s head, too, but in a misremembered order.
‘Why’s it always three?’ she asked.
Durnus nodded sagely. ‘One for each of the cultists that hid the Spear of Gunnir on the Allfather’s command. They went to every length to hide it.’
‘Why not destroy it, as the Knights of the Nine destroyed their armour?’ asked Farden.
Mithrid looked at the mage’s armour beside her. Hereni had told her of it in Scalussen: thousand-year-old armour made of the blood of gods. It sounded as ridiculous as the spear, but here it was, right in front of her. It made the world even larger, and made her knowledge of it more pitiful.
‘Perhaps it cannot be destroyed.’
Warbringer scoffed. She was already halfway to her hooves, her big brown eyes still fixed on the meats roasting across the hall. ‘All things are broken and built again,’ she asserted as she left.
>
Mithrid watched as gazes followed the minotaur as she stamped her way across the mix of boards and bare earth towards food. As Mithrid turned back, she caught glances of another figure. This one came bustling from an entrance and pushed his way through the tables, no matter the complaints he received from other patrons. His colours caught Mithrid’s attention: yellow furs trimmed with blue. A dishevelled owl clung to the man’s right shoulder, wings splayed for balance.
As she watched, the fellow made a beeline for the Cathak men that had bothered Mithrid before. A cold prickle ran up her nape.
‘Farden,’ she said quietly.
But the mage was distracted. ‘…then we will destroy it when we’re done, Durnus. Finish what these cultists failed to do.’
At first, the Cathak dismissed the newcomer with sneers and waves of their sausage-greased hands. The more the man pressed them, the more they began to listen. The leader’s stare turned, swivelling across the hall to find Mithrid, staring right back.
‘Farden!’ she snapped.
‘What?’
‘Trouble,’ was all she said. The others traced her gaze until they too met eyes with the Cathak men.
The squeak of chairs against boards confirmed her fears. The table of Cathak got to their feet. Three of them donned their skull masks before approaching. The flaxen-haired leader had a sword beneath his furs. He rested his palm on its pommel as he strode towards them.
In the corner of Mithrid’s eye, Farden lowered his knife to his side, kept it close. Her hand strayed to the head of the axe balanced against her leg.
‘Strangers!’ called the leader when he was close enough. Far too close for his chosen volume.
He was met by a table of flat stares and silence. The four of Emaneska waited, poised and wary.
‘If you have not been welcomed to the grandness of the Rivenplains, then I wish you welcome.’
Farden stayed silent. Jaw bunched. Durnus spoke for them.
‘We are grateful.’
‘What are your names, strangers? What brings you here?’ Before anyone could object, the leader grabbed a chair and added it to their circle. His cronies stood close behind, all of them still, watching with unblinking stares.