Black Guild

by J. P. Ashman

  ‘I heard of the fight where Leese fell. Where many of ’em fell,’ he said, his friends’ smirks fading at that.

  ‘And what did ye hear?’

  ‘Longoss, a fire breathing demon and a green haired witch.’

  Coppin smiled and ran a hand through her hair. Her fingers came away stained black.

  The lad swallowed hard, the other two tensed and Coppin’s hand whipped out.

  The knife that thudded into the lad’s throat stemmed the spurt of arterial blood until the fool pulled it out. Hot crimson liquid arced as he collapsed to the ground, a knife in each hand, one bloody and not his own.

  The two who’d stood behind him faltered before they came at Coppin, a failure in their discipline; a failure in their ability to win out against one trained by Longoss.

  Despite her lack of a weapon, Coppin took the lads down. She felt little joy in her bloody work, when both their weapons became her own.

  ‘Did ye know,’ she said to the last, as he choked on his own blood, ‘most knife wounds are caused by the victim’s own knife. Funny thing, isn’t it?’ she said, attempting to wipe arterial spray off her face and neck. ‘Ye thought ye’d stick me with that thing,’ she twanged the lodged knife, ‘after sticking me with that.’ He may have been passing from this world to the next, or wherever, but the lad felt the flick to his cock before he passed, of that Coppin was sure.

  She sat down, right there in the middle of the street, amongst three dead lads and their dark blood. She sighed, the shakes coming on now it was over. She looked down the street to see Longoss, Severun and Egan coming her way and she allowed herself a smile, albeit a weak one.

  How did he do it for so long? Coppin thought, looking about at the mess and trying not to gag at the smell. I can appreciate the thump of my heart when it’s happening, and for a short while afterwards. I can appreciate the appeal of that. Her shoulders bobbed in the shudder of a laugh. I can even feel the want to continue; the aggression making me want to stab and stab and stab until there’s no more hurt, no more pain. A tear mixed in with the blood on her face, then another. But what I can’t stand, what pains me more than anything else, is those last looks in their eyes. Elleth, my love, was that how you left this world, with someone looking in on that last, most vulnerable and personal moment? Is this how Blanck felt as he watched you die?

  The tears flowed as a set of thick, bloodied arms wrapped around her.

  Chapter 27 – A decorative Prow

  The smell of brine and the rushing of water against the galley’s hull was starting to feel normal to Bosun. He wasn’t inexperienced at sea, but nor was he accustomed to life as a sailor, and certainly not on a goblin war galley, despite past months. Looking out at the blackness all around, his eyes settled on the distant light they were following.

  ‘Sessio,’ Bosun whispered to himself, for there were no others near him bar the tireless hobyahs pulling on their oars. He was impressed that they continued to row, what with him offering a grunt now and then, rather than the ‘pull’ he usually called. Must be my tone they associate rowing with, rather than the word itself. He frowned as a sound reached him from the prow of the ship. He wasn’t sure what decoration Spyde had added for Charlzberg, and hadn’t bothered to ask or look, but it was clear there was something going on in front of him, outside the dim light his cowled lamp offered.

  Grunting again for the benefit of the hobyahs, Bosun moved forward. Reaching the fore-deck, which was far, far smaller than the forecastle of the ship he’d previously spent time on, Bosun made out the silhouettes of two goblin sailors, both of which seemed to be, if he wasn’t mistaken – and he wished he was…

  ‘Pulling on their oars.’ Bosun cursed and spat over the side.

  The spoken words turned the jerking goblins to face the man stood behind them. Both hesitated and offered Bosun leering grins before turning back to look down at the prow’s ram. Their shuddering and grunting continued anew, as did another sound. Moving forward, right eye squinted in curiosity, not to mention against the spray lifting from the cutting prow, Bosun looked to Charlzberg’s new decoration. He lifted his cowled lamp high as one of the goblins, evidently racing the other to a climatic victory, gasped three times, jerked violently and sighed heavily. Bosun took an involuntary step back as he saw both the inspiration for the wretched sailors’ activity and the target for the victor’s grotesque explosion.

  A half-naked, bound and gagged young woman stared back at him from astride the prow’s barnacle-encrusted ram. It was Bosun’s turn to gasp. It was his turn to move violently, although that violence had a specific aim of its own: two goblin sailors. As the disappointment of losing hindered the second goblin’s… performance, the creature pitched forward, cock in hand, to meet the black waters below. The splash was barely audible over the sound of wood cutting through water; it was enough to turn the victorious goblin back to Bosun though, and to hold the hope-tinged, fearful gaze of Charlzberg’s prow decoration, whose white dress was soaked through with blood and water.

  It was a fist rather than a foot that knocked the second, victorious goblin overboard, and as he hit the water and disappeared with little more than a pitiful squeak, Bosun flexed his fingers and shouted back to the galley in general. ‘Goblins overboard!’

  He was answered by laughter; laughter and a half-hearted cheer of mockery. Grunting a laugh of his own at the ridiculous crew, before remembering the poor woman tied to the front of the ship, Bosun set his lamp down and descended carefully to the shivering decoration.

  ‘It’s alright, lass. I’ll let no more harm come to you.’ He drew a knife and she flinched. He cut at her bonds without explanation. Once free, the woman allowed Bosun to lift her up to the fore-deck proper. As Bosun was pulling himself back onto the fore-deck he heard her cry out in fear.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ The shrieking question that further startled her could only have come from one goblin. Bosun snarled, a hot anger rising, swelling, finding an outlet through the cowering woman above him.

  Climbing up and standing alongside the prisoner, for that’s what she was, he knew, Bosun locked eyes with Charlzberg, who was flanked by two goblin sailors, hatchets in hands. Bosun stamped his foot and both goblins returned to whatever it was they’d been doing before their admiral had summoned them with his shriek.

  ‘Pull!’ Bosun shouted, realising the oars had stopped. ‘I found this poor woman tied to the front of your flagship, Admiral.’

  Charlzberg’s head vibrated with rage. ‘Well of course you did. She’s my prow decoration, you fool of a fuck!’ He pulled his replacement hat - the other likely worn by a child - this way and that, before stomping towards the two humans, pathetic cutlass in hand. ‘And I’ll have her back there, Bosun. Back there and beautiful and bleeding!’

  The woman, cold and wet, clung to Bosun’s arm. Shrugging her off, he stepped between her and Charlzberg, knife away and hands out to the sides.

  ‘Move aside,’ Charlzberg said, trying to look around the bulk before him.

  ‘She needs tending to, Admiral.’ Bosun didn’t move, so Charlzberg had to stop.

  Through broken teeth the goblin replied. ‘Step. Aside.’

  ‘Sessio is close,’ Bosun said through his own teeth, before adding an extra loud, ‘Pull!’

  Goblin eyes met human eyes, although the former left the latter sharpish and again tried to look around linen clad muscle. ‘What of it,’ Charlzberg said, teeth grinding, painfully – the wince confirmed it.

  ‘We can’t afford mutiny, Admiral.’

  Charlzberg stepped back, jaw slack.

  Bosun nodded solemnly and crouched, face to face with the goblin who, to his credit, managed to meet the glare given to him by his human officer. ‘If the hobyahs knew,’ Bosun whispered, leaning in to Charlzberg’s torn ear, ‘of a woman tied to the front of the galley, how long do you think they will row towards Tull, dangling from the stern as he is?’ Charlzberg hesitated, but when he tried to speak, Bosun cut him off
. ‘They’ll row backwards if they find out.’ Charlzberg’s beady, bruise-surrounded eyes widened and again Bosun spoke. ‘I wouldn’t tell them, Admiral. Pull! But there’s those on this galley… well…’

  ‘Go on!’ Charlzberg implored Bosun to do so by sheathing his cutlass and clasping his hands together before him.

  ‘I hate to say, Admiral, but if it weren’t for the likes of me looking out for you—’

  ‘Yes?’ Charlzberg leaned in closer, until his scabby ear brushed Bosun’s wet lips. Bosun snarled, out of eye-shot as he was.

  ‘I dare say there could be mutiny,’ he whispered, after moving his head back a fraction, freeing his lips of Samorl knew what. ‘So—’

  ‘Mutiny!’

  ‘Shush, damn you!’ Bosun hissed, then winced. He waited for a tirade that never came. The woman behind started whimpering. ‘I’m looking out for you, Admiral, as I say. As I always do. Pull! So, let me lead here. Let me take this woman to my hole— quarters, and hide her away from the hobyahs. You can count on me, my lord Admiral.’ Bosun placed a hand on the admiral’s padded shoulder and pulled back enough to make eye contact once more. He nodded to hammer home the seriousness of the fabricated threat, which drew a reluctant nod from the battered and bruised goblin.

  ‘Good man,’ Bosun said aloud, standing. Or goblin, I suppose. He turned and grabbed the woman before pulling her past Charlzberg and off down the galley, not stopping until he reached his hole where he shoved her into the blackness below. Turning back to a stunned Charlzberg, who openly stared at him, Bosun shouted, ‘Pull!’ and followed the woman down. Once away from prying eyes and ears, he found the woman’s shoulders in the dark and held them firm.

  ‘I’m no Samorlian Saint, lass,’ he said, ‘and blind me but I don’t know why I put my neck on the line for you, especially when I’ve a job to do, but I did, so you owe me big.’ He heard her sniff with what could be the beginning of a flu, or tears, or both, and continued regardless. ‘As I say, I’m no Saint, but I’m a damned sight better than those shites up top, so you do well by me and I’ll do the same by you. And who knows,’ he added, releasing her bobbing shoulders and leaning back onto his rolls of hessian, ‘once we reach my own ship and master, you may even find your way back to a decent port with some coin in your purse. Eh?’ Nothing. ‘Well say something, lass?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, although her voice broke as soon as she spoke, the last word barely audible.

  Bosun offered a breathy laugh. ‘I wouldn’t thank me yet. Anyhow, my name’s Bosun, for now, and yours shall be Prow. I’ve no need for your real one. Now rummage around in the dark there, will you, I’ve stashed some bread and I’m pretty sure we could both do with a bite after all that nonsense.’

  The sound of scrabbling hands preceded the sounds of chewing, swallowing and dry coughing.

  Bosun laughed again. ‘I guess you’ll be wanting some of my small-beer too, eh Prow?’

  Chapter 28 – Never trust a goblin

  ‘How’s tricks, lass?’ Bosun lowered himself into his hole-come-quarters, eyes searching for Prow in the darkness. ‘Lass?’ he said again, receiving nothing in return. He settled onto his hessian rolls and fumbled in his belt pouch.

  ‘As well as can be expected,’ came a soft voice from the corner.

  Bosun heard the girl shift and gasp. The quietness of it was broken by a sniff and a series of coughs.

  ‘You don’t sound well.’ Bosun strained to see. He looked down and the cold steel he held struck equally cold flint, several times. A candlewick flared to life, giving light to the hole in its entirety. The immediate rotten smell of tallow struck him.

  ‘You hurting, Prow?’ A pause. ‘You know, down there?’ Bosun motioned low, between her legs. She drew her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them and squinted at the pain it brought, shivering all the while. The candlelight was enough to see Prow nod. Her eyes remained on the wooden floor. Bosun could see her cheeks glistening in the orange light, as did her top lip. She sniffed again, twice, before rubbing her nose with the edge of the blanket that covered her back and hung over her sagging shoulders.

  Bosun swallowed hard. He dripped wax onto the floor and stood the candle in it, holding it steady until it set. He looked to Prow once more, but the girl continued to stare down, at nothing, fair hair falling lank across her blue eyes.

  ‘Was it the top of the ram, where you sat, that hurt you? Can’t imagine straddling rough, wet wood in wet clothes does much for soft skin.’

  She looked up, stared at Bosun, eyes hard, defiant. ‘The bit I was tied to?’

  Bosun nodded and offered a sad smile. ‘Aye lass, where you were tied.’ Another pause and Prow’s eyes moved away.

  ‘Wasn’t me who tied you there though, remember that.’

  Her eyes glazed over again. ‘Oh, I’ll remember it alright. All of it, and everything leading up to it…’ her voice broke into a series of coughs. She brought the course blanket to her lips as her shoulders bobbed.

  ‘I know you will, lass,’ Bosun said, once the coughing had passed. How old is she? He thought, taking in her pock-marked but pretty face. Fifteen, sixteen years? No more. And she’s certainly no older than my sister was when she passed. The thought dried Bosun’s throat, causing a lump. He took a swig of the small-beer he’d poured into a clay pot earlier.

  ‘Now…’ He rummaged in a sack by his side. Prow watched as he brought forth a smaller clay pot than the one they drank from. ‘A balm, of sorts,’ he said, lifting the pot and turning it this way and that. ‘Eatrian squill bulb and spirits, amongst other things.’

  Prow frowned at the unfamiliar name, but accepted the pot all the same.

  Bosun continued as she held the pot in her shaking hands.

  ‘It’ll help with, well…’ he hesitated and nodded to her drawn up legs, ‘…you know.’

  ‘It’ll take the pain?’ Prow opened the lid and screwed up her face, quickly closing it again.

  Bosun rocked his head from side to side. ‘Sort of.’ She looked at him, eyes narrow. ‘It’ll stop infection and help the healing, along with a wash with salt-water each day—’

  ‘It’s soaking in that stuff that half did me in,’ Prow said, putting the pot down and wrapping her arms around her knees once more.

  ‘Listen lass, I know that, trust me I do, but that small pot cost me a pretty penny, I can tell you. For that money, it’ll work, I know it. It’s no magic or owt, but it’s good stuff. I use it myself on cuts and such. You can’t be too careful on a galley full of filthy goblin shites.’ He grinned. She didn’t. ‘Now do as I say and you’ll be right in no time. Ignore me and you’ll be food for the hobyahs and no mistake.’

  There was a slight nod, but Prow said nothing. She looked scared again, more than anything.

  Bosun sighed. ‘I’m not expecting you to apply it now or anything. You can wait until I’m back up top, which will be soon. I can already feel the bastards slowing without my presence.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Prow said, although Bosun hardly heard it. He knew what it must have taken for her to say it though, after all she’d been through, and was going through.

  ‘Well, don’t thank me yet, as I said when I first brought you down here. The balm will hurt like a slave master’s whip as much as it helps, especially to start with. But it will help.’ He smiled. ‘You use as much as you can and need. A rough bastard like me can go without, despite the cost.’ He grunted a laugh at that and was taken aback when the girl replied with a weak smile, transforming her plane face to reveal more of the pretty Bosun had spied. She picked up the pot again and turned it over in her trembling hands.

  Bosun leaned forward. ‘You still cold?’

  A nod, without looking up.

  ‘Here.’ He threw her another blanket from under his hessian rolls and she caught it and wrapped it around her legs. ‘Take what you need from down here, lass. I’m no monster. Well.’ He laughed. She stared, eyes wide. ‘A joke,’ he added. ‘And a poor one at that,
I guess.’ Bosun offered another smile and returned the subject to Prow’s cold. ‘I’ll bring you some hot stew when Cooker’s finished it. Mind you, it’ll taste like crap, so don’t thank me for that neither. It’ll warm you though.’

  Another nod from Prow, eyes on the contents of the pot, after removing the lid again. Her nose wrinkled, as did Bosun’s.

  ‘How’d the sick shites get you, lass?’

  Prow’s unusual-for-the-region blue eyes raised to Bosun’s. More tears welled before spilling over and down her cheeks.

  ‘If it’s too hard—’

  ‘A goblin informant called Lugg Puffitt. My man used him often. I thought I could trust him.’ She wiped her eyes and nose both. It was easy to see how hard it was for her to talk about it.

  Giving her a moment, Bosun busied himself by sorting some of his belongings into piles by his side. Flint and steel, whetstones of varying grains and sizes, unused candles, a reed-whistle and a pair of immaculate, sheathed daggers.

  ‘My man died…’

  Bosun looked up, left hand shifting his bits and pieces back and forth, turning and re-straightening them.

  ‘…not long before I was taken. Not long at all.’ She coughed again, violently.

  ‘How so?’ Bosun kept his voice low, sympathetic, or so he hoped.

  ‘Murdered.’ She bit back a sob, shook herself from it; tensed her jaw. A moment past and she went on, stoic, tough. ‘Murdered along with his officers and soldiers, loyal men all.’

  Bosun frowned. ‘Soldiers?’

  Prow nodded.

  ‘This man of yours a knight or some such?’

  ‘Not quite, although he was a king in my eyes.’ She didn’t elaborate so Bosun didn’t ask.

  ‘This Puffitt character…’

  Prow rubbed hard at her red eyes and sniffed some more before coughing again, so Bosun stopped, left the question unanswered. She started rocking back and forth, eyes back on Bosun.

  ‘Puffitt turned up after the Adjunct’s Guard had passed, chasing…’ Prow drifted off for several heartbeats, before taking a breath to continue. ‘Puffitt told me he’d take me to safety. Said he’d take me to the tavern I lived and worked in.’