by Tom Lloyd
Blood spurted from his nose over the wooden deck. Safir stepped forward to grab Toil’s arm, but she’d already released Haphori. The injured man slumped back with a groggy moan – nose broken, lip torn. Safir and Toil exchanged a look then both stepped back.
‘Easy there,’ Safir said. ‘No one here asked for these tattoos and all the shit that comes with them, remember?’
‘Nor did I,’ Toil said. ‘Doesn’t mean we can pretend we don’t have them though.’
Safir nodded in agreement. ‘Just remember who we were following when we got the damn things, yes?’
‘Ah, Princess?’ interrupted Anatin. The commander of the Mercenary Deck stepped forward from the crowd. ‘Did we not have an agreement regarding discipline within my company?’
‘Yeah, I recall something o’ the sort,’ she said, inspecting her knuckles. ‘Honestly though, I didn’t think your book of regulations would cover the eventuality.’
Anatin smirked. ‘That’s because you’ve not spent enough time around these dumbshits. Forel?’
The company quartermaster bobbed his head. ‘Ah, yes. Page six I believe, sir. Use of heavy ordnance on the ship, building or anything similar that members of the company are occupying at the time.’
‘And the punishment?’ Anatin asked with an eyebrow raised at Toil.
‘Ah, well.’ Forel gestured to the bloody groaning mess on the deck of the barge. ‘Pretty much exactly what she did. But with all due procedure first.’
‘Really? Bugger. So much for my moral high thingy.’
‘With the usual caveats of course,’ Forel added.
‘Which are?’ Toil said.
‘Company commander reserves the right to shoot the offender in the head should any of his stuff be damaged or there’s an unsatisfactory level of alcohol within easy reach.’
Anatin coughed. ‘We prefer to think of that as more of an unwritten rule, don’t we, boys and girls?’
The rest of the Cards said nothing, no one willing to become the focus of this conversation. When Toil gave Anatin her sweetest smile those nearest Anatin edged slightly away.
‘But Forel’s actually written it in, hasn’t he?’
‘’Course he hasn’t!’
‘I … well. It’s pretty much the first rule o’ the company, sir,’ Forel said. ‘Seemed only right to write it in.’
‘Oh for pity’s sake.’ Anatin shook his head. ‘Fine, lucky guess from you, Toil. Point is, they’re my troops whether or not you’re currently paying the bill.’
She nodded. ‘High time, then, that they learned my first rule. I don’t give a damn what they get up to, except when it gets in the way of what I’m paying for. Paying damn well too – maybe too well given all the new clothes and jewellery I see all around me. But what you all need to learn is that I’m buying something for my money – the tough-as-nails unit I need to complete my mission exactly as I need it done. That includes not drawing attention except when it’s called for, certainly not waving pissing flags to any of our recent acquaintances who might be looking for us. Am I understood?’
No one replied, but Toil didn’t wait for a response. She stalked her way back to the rear cabins and the Cards cleared her path with unusual haste. Lastani scuttled along in her wake, not meeting anyone’s eye. Once they were gone, Safir cleared his throat.
‘Anyone got a piece of paper?’
‘Why?’ Anatin demanded.
Safir clutched his hands to his heart. ‘She called us tough as nails. I need to write to Mother and tell her! She’ll be so proud!’
Anatin snarled and punched him. A great cheer rose up from the rest of the company and the deck descended into a brawl.
Chapter 2
As the afternoon turned a lazy eye towards dusk, Lynx felt his eyelids sinking. Long streaks of cloud stretched across the sky, now tinged pink and orange against the bright blue. The skyriver, faintly thinner as they headed south, was a wisp of gold and grey overhead. Below it the wilds stretched into the dusty distance unbroken by forest or hill.
Dun savannah ran for miles, marred only by clumps of wild rose and wedge-shaped anthills angled to avoid the afternoon sun. Closer at hand, fronds of creeper hung in broad sheets over the edge of the canal. Fat bell-shaped flowers looked up to the sky as bees hummed all around and the lowest leaves trailed in the water.
Lynx groaned and shifted his feet off the gunwale to sit more upright. ‘Is it time to start drinking yet?’ he called over his shoulder.
The comment drew idle laughter.
‘Fancy-pants Hanese bastards,’ croaked Varain from the piled crates behind Lynx. He gave Lynx’s chair a kick. ‘Too good to drink all day with the rest of us, eh?’
‘Better’n most of you lot, aye,’ Lynx said. ‘Shame that doesn’t mean shit by normal human standards.’
He felt something bump his shoulder and turned, squinting into the setting sun until he saw a battered pewter cup and Sitain’s face behind.
‘Aha, knew we’d make a proper merc out of you yet, Sitain!’
He settled back in his chair, adjusting the long mage-gun in his lap so he wasn’t about to shoot off his toes before taking a mouthful. The beer was sour, lukewarm and gritty, but Lynx wasn’t feeling overly fussy. Not about drink anyway, and there was sod-all food worth getting excited about on the barge.
Sitain settled in beside him, shunting the chair forward until she could put her feet up. The young woman had her new jacket on, fitted to her frame and unbuttoned in a way that certainly wasn’t for Lynx’s benefit. On her head was a large maroon hat against the sun, but now evening was come she had tilted it at a ridiculous angle to shade her eyes.
Lynx looked around at the other mercenaries on deck, noting with amusement the sudden rash of respectability among them, or at least something above the usual air of vagrancy anyway. Deern lounged next to Varain; scrawny and half-naked, but with a half-dozen charms and pieces of jewellery hung round his neck in addition to the ghosts of willow leaves tattooed on his skin.
Layir sprawled on top of the flat cabin roof behind them, looking for all the world like the exiled nobleman of Olostir that he absolutely wasn’t. He wore a glittering smile, golden necklace and rings, and a crisp white shirt; carelessly and effortlessly handsome in a rakish sort of way. The image was enhanced by the merc beside him, Brellis, who seemed as delighted with Layir’s smooth muscled skin as he was himself.
Layir lived and looked the man he intended to be, Lynx reflected with no small amount of envy. Lynx had never managed that trick. His past was clear to read in the tattoo on his cheek and the scars on his back, even if he had a fine new coat and boots back in his cabin.
Most of the others on deck also showed similar signs of wealth and contentment. Even Varain wasn’t looking too dishevelled, the gruff veteran wearing a red silk scarf around his neck and a neatly repaired tunic.
‘Getting paid suits us,’ Sitain commented, following Lynx’s gaze.
‘Aye, say what you like about Toil—’ Lynx scowled and raised a hand. ‘Shut up, figure of speech that was. We don’t have time for your list of grievances. Anyway … yeah, say what you like about her, she pays well.’
‘Not much choice there,’ Sitain reflected. ‘A third of us are marked and she can’t afford to lose us, Anatin will know that.’
‘I don’t care,’ Lynx said. ‘I’ve had enough jobs where I never got paid at all. Everyone got a bonus after Jarrazir and she saw to the death-pay for our lost. Whatever her reasons, she chose the better path when I’m sure there were less friendly options in her head.’
Sitain hmmed. ‘Doesn’t sound much like her, come to think of it. Was it your idea? Something you got her to promise while she was purring in bed?’
‘Um, yeah, let’s go with that,’ Lynx said with a laugh. ‘Happy to take the credit.’
‘Oh gods, I just pictured it,’ Sitain said with a shudder. ‘Go get me another drink!’
Lynx smirked and finished his own. He passed the gun to Sita
in, gave her a suggestive look that actually did seem to make her queasy, and stood.
The view had hardly changed this past week, but had yet to become dull after too much excitement in Jarrazir. Their journey had been a long one; ten days on the Ongir Canal out of Jarrazir and crossing the inland sea known as Lake Udrel, now over a week on one of the longest Duegar canals on the continent, the Shrelan Canal, which worked a zig-zag path south-west.
There wasn’t much in the way of civilisation out here until you reached the coast, just backwater fiefdoms and lost villages. Far to the north was the Greensea and, beyond that, Lynx’s homeland of So Han, but the wilds here saw few humans. Canal water wasn’t great to drink or use for crops so there were few waystations or settlements. Where there were waterways on the great continent of Urden, there were tolls, but most days had been a peaceful glide through the empty land between pockets of civilisation.
Lynx had observed life out there though, as he let the jangle of bloody, brutal memories from Jarrazir start to fade. Much of it seemed unbothered by the gentle passage of a barge train – hauled by teams of flathorns that had once grazed free on these plains. Great clouds of butterflies could often be seen crossing the landscape, pursued by birds and flying lizards. Huge black bees attended the flowers at the canal side and many-legged things scuttled through the undergrowth. The further they went south-west the more flying lizards were common and now the sun was setting, canal martins darted all around the barges, feeding on the insects.
Lynx looked up as he poured more beer from the deck’s keg. There were four roosting boxes under the eaves of the barge-master’s station – years of plying these waters teaching the bargemen that the voracious birds were a blessing.
As he returned to his seat, more mercenaries emerged from the low cabins. The barges were built with a central cabin running the length of it and wide cargo platforms on either side. They were hauling wool and cotton for the main, but also precious blocks of paper and more wine and beer than was safe around Anatin’s Mercenary Deck.
It was enough to justify the journey, but most of the barge-master’s profit would come on the return where they hauled oil, precious metals, spices, medicines, and tobacco. The hub of the Mage Islands was called Caldaire and it straddled the entrance to the Shrelan Canal. That position allowed it to dominate trade from all parts of the Callais Sea, being the only route to the silk lands west of the Hanese Mountains. For that return journey, the Cards wouldn’t have to pay for passage, the value of almost fifty guns coming into its own.
‘It starting yet, Sitain?’ Anatin called as he emerged into the sunlight.
‘Not long,’ she replied.
More Cards appeared, Toil among them, but Lynx was already settled back beside Sitain, waiting for the show to begin. It had unsettled them all at first, but now they mostly looked forward to evening. The barge-master still thought it an ill omen, but the mages of the Cards claimed otherwise and at least two of them were expert enough for their word to carry weight.
The shadows lengthened with every passing minute and for once the Cards were content to sit together in silence. To Lynx that seemed like a minor miracle in itself, but after some of the things they’d seen together, it hardly registered.
Beside him, Sitain had a small glass ball in her fingers. She held it up to the fading light to inspect it. From where Lynx was sitting, it looked dully grey, but no doubt to the eye of a night mage it was rather more interesting. He knew they were mage beads – not as powerful as the cartridges in his gun, but easy for most mages to make.
A supply of glass beads and a modicum of control was all a mage needed for a basic weapon. Cartridges were made with God Fragments, the crystal-like shards that were all that remained of the five gods, used to focus and concentrate the mage’s magic. It was strange to think of the Militant Religious Orders using holy relics on a daily basis, but profit and power had somehow worked an exception to the usual reverence.
‘Fancy making me some of those?’
She gave him a sideways look. ‘Why?’
‘Why do you think? Not having to kill people can be useful.’ He shifted in his seat and looked at his comrades. ‘I realise not everyone ’round here understands that, but I thought you would.’
‘Is that what all the noise is in Toil’s cabin? You explaining about ethics and stuff?’
Lynx coughed and glanced back at Toil. The sometime assassin caught his eye and gave him a quizzical frown. He grinned awkwardly and looked away.
‘Aye, absolutely. The woman’s a fool for lectures on morality.’
‘Good to hear. The answer’s no, I’m afraid, not yet. Atieno says I shouldn’t trust any I make at first. Once I’ve done fifty or so, mebbe they’re worth keeping, but not before.’
‘How many you done?’
‘Including those I broke?’
‘No.’
Sitain looked away. ‘Not fifty, put it that way. These ones felt better though.’
‘Tested ’em?’
‘I was waiting for Deern to say something really stupid.’
‘Let’s toss ’em now, see if we can’t start the show?’
Sitain gave Atieno a guilty look, but the tall mage’s attention was elsewhere. Atieno now wore the Prince of Tempest badge on his chest – about as cheerfully as Lynx had adopted the Stranger – but it was more of an honorary position. Along with about a dozen others, Atieno had been marked by the stone tree hidden beneath the Labyrinth of Jarrazir. They still didn’t know what had been done to them, but their futures were bound together now.
The pale willow-leaf pattern was more obvious on his darker skin, but whenever any of the mages drew much magic they would all glow faintly white. Distance didn’t seem much hindrance either, from what modest tests they’d done, so striking off on his own wasn’t sensible even if that was his natural inclination. The Vagrim brotherhood was a solitary one, made up of men and women who’d seen enough of this life to prefer their own company.
Lynx and Atieno both wore the Vagrim ring, a simple silver band with three diamond shapes, black, grey and white. They both followed the Vagrim code and as a result felt an obligation towards another who’d been dragged into all this. Lynx could see it in the way Atieno acted around Lastani, although the young academic seemed less resentful of that than Sitain did.
‘Sure, why not?’ Sitain said at last. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’
‘Hey, it’s mages doing mage stuff – nothing much for the barge hands to gossip about there.’
‘Not compared to Haphori setting fire to the barge anyway.’ She chewed on her knuckle for a while then came to a decision. ‘Screw it. I need better control over my magic as much as I need to understand what these leaf-marks mean. Hold my beer.’
‘Words that always herald success,’ Lynx muttered as he took the tankard.
Sitain leaned forward and rested one hand on the gunwale. The far bank of the canal was only twenty yards away since they were travelling under the barge’s small sails. On the other side the team of flathorns trudged all in a line, unhitched from the barge but too big and heavy to be loaded on board. The beasts were the height of a horse but twice as wide, each huge leg the size of a man. The grey skin reminded Lynx of the maspids they’d seen in Shadows Deep, but the flathorns were powerful and placid rather than swift and savage. There was little stopping an enraged flathorn, but they turned only rarely and always with reason.
Just as well, looking at that damn shield, Lynx reflected. Even an earther would need to hit it dead on.
Running the length of each flathorn’s head was a raised protrusion, like a horn that had been somehow hammered into the shape of a shield. Its wide-set eyes couldn’t see directly in front of it, but three tonnes of muscle and bone meant that wasn’t a good place to be. They weren’t as fast as horses, but they could haul a barge all day for months on end.
‘Ready?’ Sitain asked. She didn’t wait long, hurling the glass bead high in the air. The mercenaries watche
d it sail over the calm canal waters and crack against the stone side. There was a twitch of something in the air, a momentary wrench of shadows that made Sitain gasp, and Lynx saw a tiny shape drop down into the water.
‘Did you just knock out a bee?’ he said, pointing.
Sitain gasped. ‘Oh gods, did I?’
‘Looks like it.’ He couldn’t help but chuckle. ‘Reckon it works then. Don’t worry, bees are renowned for their ability to swim while unconscious.’
Sitain cursed under her breath and thumped his shoulder, but didn’t hesitate to pull another glass bead. This one she threw long and nothing happened. A third cracked against the side but did nothing more that Lynx could see. The fourth worked, but that was the last of what she had. Sitain sat back as the last of the sun’s rays receded from the plain before them.
‘Here we go,’ whispered someone reverently.
A small smile on Sitain’s face told Lynx the speaker was correct, but it was a while before he caught the flickering movement they were waiting for. In the gloom of twilight it was hard to make out, so fast did it move. Lynx had seen this up close before, but still his breath caught in his chest.
Two shapes, or rather collections of shapes, flickered uncertainly through the low undergrowth. Angular and ever-shifting, some just a grey suggestion and others obsidian black. Sharp angles, twisting shards of shadow that bore no relation to anything alive, yet somehow moved with a will and purpose – night elementals.
It still wasn’t clear what they were doing, but there was a complex movement that to Lynx resembled a dance, as though the elementals were greeting the twilight. Certainly they matched the sedate pace of the barges for a long stretch, sometimes vanishing entirely only to reappear a few yards away. Entirely silent and otherworldly, the shadowshards achieved the near-impossible by rendering the Mercenary Deck dumb, and they were only one aspect to the remarkable show out here in the wilds beyond civilisation.
High in the air behind them a faint white light suddenly streaked across the sky, cutting a path that was quickly joined by two others. There was a collective intake of breath from the watching Cards as flashes inscribed the evening. With the first pinpricks of stars only now dotting the eastern horizon, there was no mistaking them for shooting stars. Two streaks of light wheeled and danced with long swooping motions – as high as mountains perhaps, cutting a path beneath the skyriver before spiralling north then vanishing from view while the third looped lazily towards the sun.