by Angus Watson
How strange it felt to say those words, those fleet words that he knew more from his father’s stories of service than from any real experience. They were good words though, strong words with a history, and they felt right in his mouth. If he were to die then they were not bad final words for his father to hear from his place, deep below the sea, standing warm and welcome at the Hag’s eternal bonefire.
He squinted at the figure before him. Thoughts fought in his aching head: which one of them had come for him? Since he’d become shipwife he knew a challenge must come. He commanded angry women and men, bad women and men, cruel women and men–and it had only ever been a matter of time before one of his crew wanted the hat and the colours. Was it Barlay who stood in the door hole of the bothy? She was a hard one, violent. But no, too small for her and the silhouette of this figure wore its hair long, not cut to the skull. Kanvey then? He was a man jealous of everything and everyone, and quick with his knife. But no, the silhouette appeared female, undoubtably so. No straight lines to her under the tight fishskin and feather. Cwell then? She would make a move, and she could swim so would have been able to get off the ship.
He levered himself up, feeling the still unfamiliar tug of the curnow at his hip.
“We fight then,” said the figure and she turned, walking out into the sun. Her hair worn long, grey and streaked in the colours of command: bright reds and blues. The sun scattered off the fishskin of her clothing, tightly wound about her muscled body and held in place with straps. Hanging from the straps were knives, small crossbows and a twisting shining jingling assortment of good-luck trinkets that spoke of a lifetime of service and violence. Around her shoulders hung a precious feathered cloak, and where the fishskin scattered the sunlight the feather cloak hoarded it, twinkling and sparkling, passing motes of light from plume to plume so each and every colour shone and shouted out its hue.
I am going to die, he thought.
She idled away from the slanted bothy he had slept in, away from the small and stinking abandoned dock, and he followed. No one was around. He had chosen this place for its relative solitude, amazed at how easily that could be found; even on an isle as busy as Shipshulme people tended to flock together, to find each other, and of course they shunned such Hag-haunted places as this, where the keyshan’s curse still slept.
Along the shingle beach they walked: her striding, looking for a place, and him following like a lost kuwai, one of the flightless birds they bred for meat, looking for a flock to join. Though of course there was no flock for a man like him, only the surety of the death he walked towards.
She stood with her back to him as though he were not worth her attention. She tested the beach beneath her feet, pushing at the shingle with the toes of her high boots, as if searching for something under the stones that may rear up and bite her. He was reminded of himself as a child, checking the sand for jullwyrms before playing alone with a group of imaginary friends. Ever the outsider. Ach, he should have known it would come to this.
When she turned, he recognised her, knew her. Not socially, not through any action he had fought as he had fought none. But he knew her face–the pointed nose, the sharp cheekbones, the weathered skin, the black patterns drawn around her eyes and the scintillating golds and greens on her cheeks that marked her as someone of note. He recognised her, had seen her walking before prisoners. Seen her walking before children won from raids on the Gaunt Islands, children to be made ready for the Thirteenbern’s priest’s thirsty blades, children to be sent to the Hag or to ride the bones of a ship as corpselights–merry colours that told of the ship’s health. Seen her standing on the prow of her ship, Arakeesian Dread, named for the sea dragons that provided the bones for the ships and had once been cut apart on the warm beach below them. Named for the sea dragons that no longer came. Named for the sea dragons that were sinking into myth the way a body would eventually sink to the sea floor.
But oh that ship!
He’d seen that too.
Last of the great five-ribbers he was, Arakeesian Dread. Eighteen bright corpselights dancing above him, a huge long-beaked arakeesian skull as long as a two-ribber crowned his prow, blank eyeholes staring out, his beak covered in metal to use as a ram. Twenty huge gallowbows on each side of the maindeck and many more standard bows below in the underdeck. A crew of over four hundred that polished and shone every bone that made his frame, so he was blinding white against the sea.
He’d seen her training her crew, and he’d seen her fight. At a dock, over a matter of honour when someone mentioned the circumstances of her birth. It was not a long fight, and when asked for mercy, well, she showed none, and he did not think it was in her for she was Hundred Isles and fleet to the core. Cruel and hard.
What light there was in the sky darkened as if Skearith the godbird closed its eye to his fate, the fierce heat of the air fleeing as did that small amount of hope that had been in his breast–that single fluttering possibility that he could survive. He was about to fight Meas Gilbryn, “Lucky” Meas, the most decorated, the bravest, the fiercest shipwife the Hundred Isles had ever seen.
He was going to die.
But why would Lucky Meas want his hat? Even as he prepared himself for death he could not stop his mind working. She could have any command she wanted. The only reason she would want his would be if . . .
And that was unthinkable.
Impossible.
Meas Gilbryn condemned to the black ships? Condemned to die? Sooner see an island get up and walk than that happen.
Had she been sent to kill him?
Maybe. There were those to whom his continued living was an insult. Maybe they had become bored with waiting?
“What is your name?” She croaked the words, like something hungry for carrion.
He tried to speak, found his mouth dry and not merely from last night’s drink. Fear. Though he had walked with it as a companion for six months it made it no less palatable.
He swallowed, licked his lips. “My name is Joron. Joron Twiner.”
“Don’t know it,” she said, dismissive, uninterested. “Not seen it written in the rolls of honour, not heard it in any reports of action.”
“I never served before I was sent to the black ships,” he said. She drew her straightsword. “I was a fisher once.” Did he see a flash in her eyes, and if he did what could it mean? Annoyance, boredom?
“And?” she said, taking a practice swing with her heavy blade, contemptuous of him, barely even watching him. “How does a fisher get condemned to a ship of the dead? Never mind become a shipwife.” Another practice slash at the innocent air before her.
“I killed a man.”
She stared at him.
“In combat,” he added, and he had to swallow again, forcing a hard ball of cold-stone fear down his neck.
“So you can fight.” Her blade came up to ready. Light flashed down its length. Something was inscribed on it, no cheap slag-iron curnow like his own.
“He was drunk and I was lucky,” he said.
“Well, Joron Twiner, I am neither, despite my name,” she said, eyes grey and cold. “Let’s get this over with, ey?”
He drew his curnow and went straight into a lunge. No warning, no niceties. He was not a fool and he was not soft. You did not live long in the Hundred Isles if you were soft. His only chance of beating Lucky Meas lay in surprising her. His blade leaped out, a single straight thrust for the gut. A simple, concise move he had practised so many times in his life–for every woman and man of the Hundred Isles dreams of being in the fleet and using his sword to protect the islands’ children. It was a perfect move he made, untouched by his exhaustion and unsullied by a body palsied with lack of drink.
She knocked his blade aside with a a small movement of her wrist, and the weighted end of the curving curnow blade dragged his sword outward, past her side. He stumbled forward, suddenly off balance. Her free hand came round, and he caught the shine of a stone ring on her knuckles, knew she wore a rockfist in th
e moment before it made contact with his temple.
He was on the ground. Looking up into the canopy of the wide and bright blue sky wondering where the clouds had gone. Waiting for the thrust that would finish him.
Her sword tip appeared in his line of sight.
Touched the skin of his forehead.
Raked a painful line up to his hair and pushed the hat from his head and she used the tip of her sword to flick his hat into the air and caught it, putting it on. She did not smile, showed no sense of triumph, only stared at him while the blood ran down his face and he waited for the end.
“Never lunge with a curnow, Joron Twiner,” she said quietly. “Did they teach you nothing? You slash with it. It is all it is fit for.”
“What poor final words for me,” he said. “To die with another’s advice in my ear.” Did something cross her face at that, some deeply buried remembrance of what it was to laugh? Or did she simply pity him?
“Why did they make you shipwife?” she said. “You plain did not win rank in a fight.”
“I—” he began.
“There are two types of ship of the dead.” She leaned forward, the tip of her sword dancing before his face. “There is the type the crew run, with a weak shipwife who lets them drink themselves to death at the staystone. And there is the type a strong shipwife runs that raises his wings for trouble and lets his women and men die well.” He could not take his eyes from the tip of the blade, Lucky Meas a blur behind the weapon. “It seems to me the Tide Child has been the first, but now you will lead me to him and he will try what it is to be the second.”
Joron opened his mouth to tell her she was wrong about him and his ship, but he did not, because she was not.
“Get up, Joron Twiner,” she said. “You’ll not die today on this hot and long-blooded shingle. You’ll live to spend your blood in service to the Hundred Isles along with every other on that ship. Now come, we have work to do.” She turned, sheathing her sword, as sure he would do as she asked as she was Skearith’s Eye would rise in the morning and set at night.
The shingle moved beneath him as he rose, and something stirred within him. Anger at this woman who had taken his command from him. Who had called him weak and treated him with such contempt. She was just like every other who was lucky enough to be born whole of body and of the strong. Sure of their place, blessed by the Sea Hag, the Maiden and the Mother and ready to trample any other before them to get what they wanted. The criminal crew of the Tide Child, he understood them at least. They were rough, fierce and had lived with no choice but to watch out for themselves. But her and her kind? They trampled others for joy.
She had taken his hat of command from him, and though he had never wanted it before, it had suddenly come to mean something. Her theft had awoken something in him.
He intended to get it back.
if you enjoyed
WHERE GODS FEAR TO GO
look out for
A TIME OF DREAD
Of Blood & Bone: Book One
by
John Gwynne
Brave the shadows, wield the sword.
A race of warrior angels, the Ben-Elim, once vanquished a mighty demon horde. Now they rule the Banished Lands, but their peace is brutally enforced.
In the south, hotheaded Riv is desperate to join the Ben-Elim’s peacekeeping force, until she unearths a deadly secret.
In the west, the giantess Sig investigates demon sightings and discovers signs of an uprising and black magic.
And in the snowbound north, Drem finds mutilated corpses on a hunting expedition. The work of a predator, or something far worse?
It’s a time of shifting loyalties and world-changing dangers. Difficult choices will need to be made. Because in the shadows, demons are gathering, waiting for their time to rise.
Chapter One
Bleda
The Year 132 of the Age of Lore, Reaper’s Moon
“I should be down there,” Bleda said, knuckles whitening on the grip of his bow. He was crouched upon the steep slope of a hill, looking down upon a scene of wonder.
A war.
Horses and their riders swirled upon the plain in constant motion, from this height seeming like two great flocks of birds looping ever closer, the distant rumble of hooves setting the ground trembling beneath Bleda’s feet. As he stared in envy and fascination, the faint echo of hurled challenges and insults, the harbingers of violence, drifted up to him.
“No, you should not be down there,” a voice said behind him, Old Ellac absently rubbing the stump where his right hand used to be. The skin around his eyes creased and cracked like old leather as he squinted at the battle about to begin on the plain below.
“Of course I should,” Bleda muttered. “My mother is down there, leading our Clan. My brother rides one side of her, my sister the other.”
But not my father.
“Aye, but they are all more than ten summers old,” Ellac pointed out.
“So?” Bleda snapped. “I can fight, am more skilled with a bow than most. Than you.”
“That’s not hard these days.” Ellac snorted and cuffed Bleda across the head with his one hand.
Bleda immediately felt shame at his remark, more painful than the slap. He knew that neither of them wanted to be sitting on this hill while their kin fought and bled on the field below.
Your tongue is sharper than your sword, his father used to say to him.
“Look,” Ellac said, pointing with his stump. “Altan.”
On the plain below a lone rider separated from their Clan, instantly recognizable to Bleda as his older brother, Altan.
Seventeen summers is not so much older than me. Yet he is old enough to fight, and I am not. Bleda scowled at the injustice of it, though none of his ire was directed at Altan. He loved his brother fiercely.
Altan was galloping hard, curling close to the enemy warband. As he did so a rider emerged to meet him, galloping just as fast. Both warriors dipped in their saddles, arms extended as they drew their bows.
Bleda felt a jolt of fierce pride, as well as a cold fist of fear clench around his heart.
Aim true, Altan. I cannot lose you as well.
The world seemed to slow, sound dimming as Bleda stared at the two champions.
And then Altan was wheeling away, the other rider swaying in his saddle, toppling sideways, falling to the ground, dragged along as one foot snagged in a stirrup. Ellac let out a grunt of admiration and Bleda punched the air with his fist, whooping and yelling his pride. He felt Ellac’s disapproval at his burst of emotion, the warriors of his Clan were supposed to wear the cold-face like a shield, but that was Altan down there, and he had just felled a champion of their ancient rivals.
A swell of cheering rose up to them, changing into battle-cries as the two warbands came together with a concussive crash. Bleda gulped, a squirm of anxiety uncoiling in his belly. He had seen death before, held his da’s cold, wax-smooth hand, heard the tales of warriors back from their raids, even helped stitch their wounds—but this…
The death screams of men and horses echoed up to them, within moments the plain becoming a choking, seething mass of bodies, the splash of blood, the harsh clang of steel.
“What’s that?” Ellac said behind him, pointing to the skies. “Your eyes are better than mine.”
“Vultures and crows,” Bleda said as he squinted into the searing blue and glimpsed the silhouettes of wings.
“Too big,” Ellac muttered.
Bleda tore his eyes away from the battle and stared. More and more winged shapes were appearing in the sky, speeding towards the battlefield, growing in size with their approach. Great white wings beating through the air, then Bleda saw the glint of sunlight on steel.
“The Ben-Elim,” he whispered.
Winged warriors wrapped in gleaming mail swooped down to the battle-plain, skimming above men’s heads, stabbing indiscriminately with spear and sword, lifting men into the air, rising up steeply and dropping them, scream
ing, limbs flailing.
“No!” Bleda hissed, hand reaching for arrows in his belted quiver as he stood, about to launch into a scrambling run down the hillside. Ellac grabbed his wrist.
“We must help,” Bleda shouted. “This is not the Ben-Elim’s fight; they should stay out of it.”
“They said they would come, would not allow the Clans to go to war,” Ellac said. “And whether it’s their fight or not, they are here now. Look.”
To the west of the battle the realm of Arcona stretched into the horizon, a never-ending sea of grass, the vast plains punctuated here and there by clusters of low-lying hills. From around the closest range Bleda saw a wall of dust rising up, knew such a cloud could only be stirred by the tramp of many feet. A great host was coming.
The Ben-Elim’s Holy Army. Giants upon their great bears, and their wall of shields.
Then Ellac was dragging him back up the hill, towards their tethered horses.
“What are you doing? We must help my mother,” Bleda yelled, but Ellac ignored him, hoisted him into his saddle, and then, mounting agilely for a man with one hand, grabbed Bleda’s reins. With a click of his tongue and touch of his heels against his horse’s side they were cantering up the hill.
“Please,” Bleda cried. As a prince of the Sirak it was a word that rarely touched his lips.
Ellac looked between Bleda and the battle.
“I cannot let you go down there,” the old warrior said. “Your mother would have my other hand, and my eyes as well.” He spurred his horse on, up the hill and away from the battle. Bleda looked back as they reached the crest and his heart lurched in his chest. On the field below all was chaos and blood, winged warriors diving and swooping, slaying any who came within reach. Then the battlefield was gone and they were riding hard for their camp.