by Mike Brooks
“So a man who wants them both to die is fighting a man who doesn’t want either of them to die,” Ekham said slowly. “Saana, this isn’t going to end well.”
“I know,” Saana replied through gritted teeth.
Asrel raised his blade in both hands, and charged.
It looked reckless, but, Saana immediately realised, it wasn’t. Asrel now knew Daimon was pulling his cuts, and so he had no reason to hold back. He yelled as he attacked with two-handed swings, frighteningly fast despite the power behind the blows. Daimon was forced to give ground backwards towards Saana and Ekham, grunting with effort as he batted the strikes away, but it was still a controlled retreat. Could he perhaps outlast his father, Saana wondered? Was he counting on his youth and reach to keep himself safe from harm until his father could no longer fight? Asrel surely couldn’t keep this pace up for long, but he’d only have to get lucky once…
The two sars locked blades again and pivoted around each other. Daimon wrenched his father’s blade sideways with his own, then span inside Asrel’s guard and lashed out at his face with his elbow. Asrel just managed to get his own arm up in time to block the blow, then stepped back and to the side, and tried the sweeping upwards stroke that had killed Njivan and wedged Daimon’s blade in Rist’s shield. Daimon brought his sword down and blocked it, but Asrel immediately let go of his sword with his left hand and punched his law-son full in the face. Daimon staggered backwards, blood leaking from his nose, but he brought his sword up again ready to fend off his father’s next attack.
Asrel turned away from Daimon and lunged for Saana, his longblade sweeping down in a diagonal cut.
She’d been so caught up in the fight she’d all but forgotten Asrel’s hatred for her. She was off balance and unprepared, and could do nothing except throw her arms up desperately, knowing it would barely help her against the edge of a sar’s longblade. It would sever a limb, then bite into her face…
Another blade deflected the blow, sending Asrel’s sword skittering off to one side. Her rescuer’s momentum sent him slamming into the thane of Blackcreek shoulder-to-shoulder, knocking Asrel staggering.
It was Darel Blackcreek.
“Traitor!” Asrel roared, launching a slashing cut at his blood-son’s head. Darel got his blade up in time, but the weapon was knocked from his hand and sent spinning away across the stones of the square. He had no defence as Asrel drew back again.
Daimon’s two-handed swing caught his father in the right side of his ribcage, and buried the longblade nearly halfway into Asrel’s body.
Asrel shuddered and staggered, his knees starting to buckle. Daimon ripped the blade out in a welter of blood: a high tide wound for sure. Asrel fell to his knees, but turned his head towards Daimon, nothing but hatred and agony written on his face.
“May Nari curse both of you,” he spat through gritted teeth. “Feeble-minded wretches!”
“Why did it have to come to this, Father?” Daimon asked miserably, his words coming out half-strangled. Saana could see tears welling up at the corners of his eyes, but he still held his blade in both hands, for Asrel had not yet dropped his.
“The fact… you have to ask… shows you are… no son of this lord,” Asrel panted. He finally released his grip on his longblade and it clattered to the ground, but he reached for the hilt of his shortblade.
Daimon raised his own sword, tears running down his cheeks.
“Stand down… whelp,” Asrel grunted. He drew the blade and set it point-first against his own chest. “This lord dies… with more honour… than you live with.”
He threw himself forwards. The hilt of the blade struck the hard stones of the square and Asrel Blackcreek cried out in pain as the point of his shortblade was driven up into his chest and then, as he slid farther onto it, up out of his back. He shuddered twice, then went limp.
First Darel, then Daimon, fell to their knees and began to weep.
DAIMON
HE’D NEVER FELT such grief.
Daimon barely remembered his blood-parents dying. His memories of them were hazy; an impression of long hair and skirts for his mother, a deep voice for his father, and occasionally being picked up to sit on his shoulders. They were mysterious giants, not in his life long enough to know them as people. He could remember screaming with anger when he’d been told he wouldn’t see them again, not understanding why someone would deny him that. He’d been taken to a huge, strange stone house and met another boy, and another giant who’d said he would be Daimon’s father now. Daimon had cried and said he wanted his own father back, but he’d never got him. He could still remember the smile on Asrel’s face the day that Daimon had, after some time spending his days with Darel, finally addressed the thane of Blackcreek as ‘Father’.
Now Daimon’s father was face down in Black Keep’s square with his lifeblood pooling around him, and Daimon had been orphaned a second time, this time by his own hand. He wept bitterly, tears breaking through walls he’d never even realised he’d raised, walls formed from his image of what a sar should be, and his desire to please the stern, undemonstrative man who now lay dead in front of him. Asrel Blackcreek would never have approved of a sar weeping, let alone openly in front of others.
“Darel Blackcreek?”
It was Saana’s voice. Daimon looked up through blurring tears to see her squatting in front of Darel, reaching out to touch his shoulder.
“You saved this man’s life,” she said softly. “Thank you.”
Daimon’s gut twisted, even through his grief. Darel. He was free as well, with his shortblade still in his belt, and Saana within easy reach of it. He’d saved Saana, that was true, but that was before Daimon had cut their father down. If Darel blamed Saana for that… “Brother?”
Darel looked up. Daimon wiped away tears to clear his vision and saw similar ones also streaking his brother’s face. He dropped his longblade and scrambled over to him, heedless of his robes on the ground, and seized his brother in a hug. Darel’s arms enveloped him in turn and they knelt like that, each with their face buried in the other’s shoulder.
“Your brother is sorry,” Daimon said, tears leaking from his eyes into Darel’s robes. “He tried to disarm our father, to defeat him without hurting him, but—”
“Your brother saw,” Darel interrupted him, and the grip of his arms tightened momentarily. “You did everything you could, Daimon. He’d… he’d taken leave of his senses. Your brother should have stopped him as soon as he started threatening to kill people if you wouldn’t face him, but your brother lacked that courage.” He made a snuffling noise that Daimon realised was a laugh of sorts, choked with tears though it was. “You always were the brave one.”
“You would have died fighting the Tjakorshi,” Daimon replied. The shoulder of Darel’s robe was wet under his face now, but he didn’t lift his head. “You were braver than your brother.”
“Foolish is not the same thing as brave, Daimon,” Darel said. “You saw no one had to die. You had the courage to question our father’s words.” He relaxed his grip and leaned back, and Daimon did the same. He looked at his brother, round-faced and earnest, with haunting notes of Asrel’s features mixed with someone else; the woman Daimon had never known, Lady Delil, whose death was the reason Daimon had been adopted in the first place.
“It is good to see your face again, brother,” Daimon said honestly. “Even in such circumstances.”
Darel nodded. “Aye. It is. Now, there is something this man must do.” He turned his face towards Saana, who was still squatting awkwardly next to them. Daimon tensed involuntarily. He wouldn’t fight his brother, and if that meant just throwing himself in front of Darel’s shortblade…
“Lady,” Darel said, bowing his head to Saana. “This lord apologises for his father. Trying to strike you while in a duel… there was no honour in that. It was the action of a coward. This lord could not let it happen.”
“And you have this man’s thanks,” Saana said. “Did you know he would do
that? Was that why you were here?”
Darel’s face twisted. “This lord’s father told him to be ready to strike you down when the duel ended. He… does not know if he would have done so, had his father prevailed. And so he must apologise for that, also.”
Saana shook her head. “This man will not hear an apology for something you did not do, when what you did do saved her life. That is foolishness.”
Darel blinked in surprise.
“This man knows you are both sad,” Saana continued, looking between Daimon and Darel, “but she must ask: who is thane now?”
Daimon looked at Darel, and found Darel looking back at him. Tradition said the older son would inherit, unless a liege-lord stepped in. Of course, the only reason their father hadn’t still been treated as thane was because Daimon had imprisoned both him and Darel in the stronghouse, and the lowborn had gone along with it.
Darel cleared his throat. “Well… you seem to have been doing a good job, Daimon.”
Daimon stared at him, unable to find words.
“Two weeks have passed, the fields are being ploughed and planted, and your brother sees two peoples standing together, now united by marriage,” Darel said gesturing to Saana and Daimon. “His father was wrong. He was wrong. You are not savages. You have lived here without killing…”
He tailed off, his eyes widening.
“Darel?” Daimon asked, alarmed. “Darel, what is it?”
“Nadar, Yoon, Kelarahel, and Shefal,” Darel said grimly, getting to his feet. “They freed this man and his father, and killed Malakel to get the keys!”
“Malakel?” Daimon felt a new stab of grief alongside the aching pit of his father’s death. He’d liked the guard captain. However, the grief was rapidly overtaken by anger, and burning shame at his own short-sightedness. “Kelarahel? He was part of this? No wonder he never found the traitors; he was one of them!” He stood as well, scanning the crowd. The townsfolk had hung back a way, out of respect or nervousness, but curiosity had won out enough for many to have approached. Daimon couldn’t see any of the men Darel had named, despite craning his neck to see over people’s heads.
“Nadar! Yoon! Kelarahel! Shefal!” Darel shouted. “Where are they? Does anyone see them?”
There was a generalised turning of heads and muttering amongst the crowd, but no one shouted an affirmative. Darel grimaced and muttered a curse under his breath.
“Cowards! Cowards and fools!” Daimon spat. His anger at the betrayal of his own men might have been tempered by the possibility they’d merely been true to his father. However, the fact they’d fled spoke of their own lack of honour, and burned any remaining compassion out of him.
“We have another problem, too,” Darel said distractedly, still searching the crowd.
“We do?”
“Aye, Shefal sent someone along the North Road to Darkspur to seek aid, the night the Raiders arrived,” Darel said, turning to him. Daimon felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.
“The night they arrived?” He glanced north, despite the fact the road was hidden by buildings from where they stood. “If they reached Darkspur, and Odem believed them, he could be here any day!”
“Which is why the lack of the conspirators is so troubling,” Darel said grimly, taking his shoulder and speaking in a low voice. “If they fled when… when father fell, they may have headed for the north road too, fearing reprisals. If the first messenger never reached Darkspur, or Odem didn’t believe them, but then more arrive…”
Daimon nodded, feeling his hands clench into fists. Without their interference, Malakel and his father would still be alive! “Your brother will saddle Bastion, and ride them down, if he has to.”
“Take others,” Darel countered. “Bring them back. Do not let grief cloud your judgement, brother. The people should be allowed to see and understand—” He broke off, tilting his head. “Do you hear that?”
Daimon turned. There was a noise on the edge of hearing, a little like the mews of the seabirds that were forever in the air over Black Keep, but as he listened he realised that they were voices, the voices of people, albeit distant and muddled. There were many of them, and they seemed to be shouting.
“What are they saying?” he asked. “Where is it coming from?” The crowd around them had heard it too, and the murmur of conversation quietened as everyone strained their ears.
“Daimon,” Darel said, his voice halting. “Daimon, look to the roofs.”
Daimon looked up. There, perched on the roofline of the nearest houses, were a line of dark-feathered shapes. Even as he watched, three more flew overhead, cawing raucously. Fear gripped him, a fear that harked back to his childhood, for every child in Black Keep knew what these birds in these numbers signified.
“Crows…” he whispered. Beside him, he saw Saana’s head turn as she followed his gaze.
The shouted words abruptly became clear enough to hear, like vision clearing as tears are blinked away.
“Raiders! Raiders!”
Daimon looked at Darel, then both of them looked at Saana. How could this be? The Tjakorshi were already here…
Saana’s face drained of colour as she, too, heard the words and understood what they meant.
“It’s found us,” she whispered. Her eyes met Daimon’s, and for the first time he saw true fear in their grey depths.
“It’s found us. The Golden.”
ZHANNA
THE SWELL WAS strong, and the south wind bitter. Zhanna’s hands were nearly numb, even inside her thick gloves of sea bear skin, and her nose felt like it was going to drop off. Even so, she knew she’d rather be out on the waves with Jelema and the rest of her crew on the Leviathan’s Wake than at Black Keep on her mother’s wedding day.
It was sickening. Her mother should be ashamed of herself, and the fact she wasn’t was even worse. Instead she’d blithely gone ahead with the whole thing, despite how wrong it was, despite how much older she was than Daimon, despite the fact she’d seen how upset it had made her daughter. Zhanna hadn’t been back to her mother’s house since that argument; she’d stayed with Tsennan’s family instead. Jelema had a long talk with Zhanna’s mother outside the house when she’d come looking for her that first night, then had come back in to say Zhanna was welcome to stay with them for now, although her mother wanted her to go back home.
Home. Zhanna snorted as she hauled on the nets. Home was back across the ocean, and nothing her mother said was going to change that. Home was the rocky shores and pine forests of Kainkoruuk, the chatter of the clear streams and the distant calls of the great sea eagles her clan took their name from. It wasn’t the women’s quarters of the Blackcreek castle, and it certainly wasn’t a wooden house-on-stilts in which Zhanna had never spent a night.
Not all the Naridans were bad, mind. Some were arseholes, but others—like Tavi, or Ita, even the priest Aftak—were friendly enough. They were too quiet, most of the time, with their strange, singsong language that put words in a strange order, not to mention how clumsy it was to talk about yourself in it. And there were a few of them—like Daimon—where the weird Naridan features came together into a face that was truly arresting, something that could take your breath away. Daimon was quiet too, usually, but Zhanna didn’t think that was who he was underneath. Something about him hinted at a banked fire, the bright embers barely visible but just waiting for the right opportunity to burst forth into heat and light…
“Zhanna! Come on girl, pull!”
Zhanna jerked at Jelema’s shout and heaved on the nets again, and another cubit or so of the mesh was dragged aboard. It was hard work, but that was good; that meant they’d snagged a decent catch. Despite anything else she might dislike about the place, Zhanna couldn’t argue with the fishing. Even the experienced sailors spoke of the richness of the waters here, as bountiful as the best fishing grounds of Tjakorsha. It was one of the things that had encouraged them that Zhanna’s mother had done the right thing by bringing them here; Father Krayk had clearly
blessed the waters around this land, too.
They’d come farther south today than ever before, beyond a finger of tumbledown rock stretching out into the waves that marked the limit of their previous ventures. When Zhanna saw dark specks in the water, far to the south and close to shore, she assumed for a moment that she was seeing another rock structure like that, the crumbled remnants of a headland not quite claimed by the waves. Then she saw they were rising and falling with the waves, not disappearing and reappearing, as stone would.
“Zhanna!” Jelema shouted. “Girl, I won’t tell you again!”
“What are they?” Zhanna called back, pointing south. She squinted into the wind and spray, trying to see clearly.
“I don’t care if you’re Saana’s daughter, Zhanna, when you’re on my ship—”
“No, wait,” Zhonda said from behind Zhanna. She was next to her on the net line, and a fisher of ten summers experience. “There’s something there, Jelema!”
“Is it more important than getting the damned catch in?” Jelema demanded.
“Could be a pod of leviathans,” Kurvodan said, and Zhanna could hear the apprehension in his voice. The huge beasts weren’t usually aggressive, but their massive flukes could smash or capsize a taugh if it got in the way of a mating run, and it was the time of year for it. “Do you see any breath-smoke, girl?”
Zhanna wiped her eyes. “No, not that…” She broke off as the Leviathan’s Wake rode up again on another swell, and she finally got a good view of what she was looking at. Perhaps they’d come that fraction closer, or perhaps it was simply that their respective positions in crest and trough had aligned, but she could make out just enough detail now.
“Jelema,” she said, as a chill that had nothing to do with the southern wind ran through her blood, “we’re the ship farthest south today, aren’t we?”