Tracato: A Trial of Blood and Steel Book Three

by Shepherd, Joel

  “Pity to waste her,” said the blond man above her. “Can I have a turn?”

  “We’ll invite the whole fucking movement,” said Perone, placing his swordbelt aside, and unfastening his pants. “If they won’t let me fight, they must at least let me fuck.” He pulled a knife, inserted it into her underwear leg, and slashed.

  Quite strangely, it occurred to Sasha that her hands, pulled back over her head, were close to the blond man’s belt. Did he keep a knife there? Her hands reached and found a hilt. It seemed he did.

  She pulled it hard and stuck it in his belly before he could notice what she’d done. The pressure on her arms ceased, and she flipped her legs up, wrapped her ankle chain about Perone’s neck, and pulled as tight with her legs as humanly possible. Perone’s hands grasped the chain, trying to pull it off. Sasha slammed her feet down on the tabletop, and took Perone’s head down with them. His flailing arm struck her, reaching for her throat. Sasha stuck the other man’s knife in it. Perone flung himself sideways, pulling her off the table. They hit the ground together, Sasha careful to brace her legs and not lose the tightness of that loop around his neck. Perone tried to roll away, and Sasha took the opportunity to make a second loop, hooking her ankle again around his head. Then she braced both feet on the floor, and tried to stretch out from the knees as hard as she could, pulling the chain tighter and tighter.

  It was a big-link chain. A small-link chain would have been more supple, and cut more tightly. The big link chain took longer, and required more effort. Sasha thought that perfectly fine. Perone’s horrid choking, his desperate agony, his flailing hands and spluttered attempts to beg, scream, cry for help, were all blissful music to her soul.

  “I told you I would,” she told him. She had never hated like this. It felt indescribably wonderful.

  Perone died sooner than she’d hoped. She didn’t trust it, and stuck the knife in his neck just to be sure. She got up, and found the other man slumped against the far wall, clutching a bloody wound just below his heart. She hadn’t expected to have stuck him so well, but it seemed she was so good with blades these days that her hands knew what to do, even if the mind was elsewhere. He was sobbing and frightened, apparently in too much pain to risk inhaling, and cry out for help. Coward, Sasha thought, searching Perone’s body for a key. She found a ring of them on his belt, dropped with his pants now about his feet. A few moments’ searching found the right key, and she unlocked manacles from wrists and ankles.

  No sooner had she done so than the door clanked open once more. Sasha was on her feet in a flash, taking Perone’s sword from its sheath, and was onto the new arrival in quick strides just as he realised what had happened. The man’s reach for his sword ended with Sasha’s blade tearing his throat, the head nearly severed, blood jetting in violent sprays as he fell. It trickled down her face, warm and sticky, as she walked to where the wounded man sat, staring at her in helpless terror.

  Sasha knew of no graceful stroke that would kill a seated man, or she would have done it then and there. There was a lot of blood on his hands. She’d driven the knife in almost to the hilt, and none of these Civid Sein wore armour. So close to the heart, there was no surviving such a wound. Better that he died slowly, anyhow.

  She took his blade, a short sword like the Steel used, sheath and all. She also took Perone’s coat, as it fitted her better than the big cloak, and would not impede her movement. The knife, she put in the coat’s pocket. Then she padded lightly into the corridor, a naked midlength blade in her right hand, a sheathed short one in her left. Pain blazed with every motion, but it was a welcome price to pay. As against the joy of revenge, pain was nothing. She had tasted the blood of enemies, and like a drunkard sniffing the scent of a brew, she wanted more.

  She moved quickly, bare feet soundless on stone, pausing to peer into open doorways before passing. Footsteps gave her warning to duck into one room, as several Civid Sein came into the corridor, then opened the door through which she’d last seen Reynold Hein disappear. She caught a glimpse within before it closed—it was a command room of some sort, perhaps it had a good view of the fighting. There could be quite a few men inside such a room. The thought brought her no pause, only cheer.

  She strode calmly to the door, testing the balance of her blade. It had not the length of a svaalverd weapon, its hilt barely long enough for her accustomed two-handed grip, and the balance felt all wrong…but she knew enough one-handed svaalverd extensions to think she would manage. As for the rest, well, she had always liked to improvise. She changed the sword to her left hand, holding it and the sheathed short sword together, and opened the door. There were three high, arched windows on the right wall, before which four men were gathered, behind a large desk. Another three stood about a small table, poring over some parchments. None looked up immediately as she entered, gaining her several strides with which to close the range and take the knife from her pocket.

  The first looked up—a Nasi-Keth, a man she recognised from the Tol’rhen. Jardine, she recalled the name. She hurled the knife, and he fell with it sticking from his throat. The second and third reached for their weapons in panic. Sasha killed the one nearest with a single slash, leaped onto the low tabletop to clear the third man’s defence, and drove the point down through his shoulder, into the heart. She landed on light feet, rounded a chair and came at those by the windows. One, Reynold Hein, was yelling at the top of his lungs for assistance.

  Sasha grabbed her short blade by the hilt and swung so that the sheath flew off, straight at the first man, who ducked. The big, bald man who had beaten her and Errollyn in the dungeon came around the big table at her, while Reynold drew a throwing knife. Sasha threw the short blade at Reynold, no great throw, but it made him duck. The big man swung hard from above…a stupid attack; Sasha just swayed aside and impaled him with his own momentum.

  She pushed him back several steps, using his bulk as a shield from Reynold’s knife. The man she’d thrown the sheath at was trying to come about on her left. As he raised his blade for a strike, Sasha pulled her sword free of the big man’s gut, spun low and took the other’s leg. He fell screaming, and Sasha grabbed up his fallen blade and hurled that at Reynold too. Reynold ducked aside again as the blade scythed by his head, and lost his knife as he rolled. The big man collapsed, face first, clutching his stomach.

  Reynold’s last standing companion was Timoth Salo. The young nobleman held his blade two-handed, Nasi-Keth style, staring incredulously at Sasha, then about at the carnage she’d wrought. The man she’d legged was still screaming, clutching the terrible wound. Sasha stuck her blade in his back to shut him up.

  “What did you do?” Salo said with horror. And again, on the verge of hysterical tears, “What did you do?” As though it had not occurred to him that his friends could die so easily. As though it had not occurred to him that his own actions could lead to this end.

  Sasha rose from her crouch and advanced slowly. “You thought this was a game?” The calm of her voice amazed her. Dripping fury, and cold as ice, yet steady. Revenge made her calm, when all about her was crazy. No sheth an sary. She had never felt more Lenay than she did at that moment. “Did you think I was joking when I said I’d kill you all?”

  Salo looked ill with fear and horror, the sword trembling in his hands. Reynold was backing away, circling about, his own blade far steadier. No assistance had yet come through the doors. Sasha reckoned most would be busy with the defence of the Justiciary.

  She paused to pick up the big man’s blade. He had been Nasi-Keth too, it seemed, though she had not recognised the face…but most Tracato Nasi-Keth were ex-pupils of the Tol’rhen, not present ones. His blade presented her with a much better balance than the shorter one in her hand, so she exchanged them with several expert twirls.

  Behind Salo, the room held something extraordinary—a great sphere on a stand. It was covered with the dark squiggles of map lines, and on one high corner, Sasha recognised the coastline of Rhodia. A map of the world.
The serrin world, perfectly round, that the Verenthane priesthood considered sacrilege of the highest order. Only a little of the coastline seemed complete, the rest was mostly guesswork. There were banners in the room too, and parchment inscriptions in scrawling Rhodaani letters. A Verenthane star, prominent upon a shield in the Tracatan colours. Sasha realised whose chambers these had been.

  “This is Chief Justiciar Sinidane’s room,” she said to Reynold. “Where is Sinidane?”

  “I don’t know,” Reynold said, breathing hard. “Somewhere about.”

  “You arrested him, didn’t you?”

  “He was a traitor!” Salo screamed. “They were all traitors! All who cannot see that deserve to die!”

  “You breed a calm and thoughtful disposition in your movement, I see,” Sasha observed to Reynold. “In your search for justice, you’ve destroyed justice itself.”

  Salo panicked, attacking because he knew nothing else to do. Sasha had seen that before in youngsters and was not surprised, deflecting his first strike on pure reflex, and killed him with the counter before his follow-through had finished. Reynold ran.

  Sasha tore after him, into a deserted hall. She was a good runner, but Reynold was taller, uninjured, and a man. As he flew away from her, Sasha felt her burns and wounds screaming in pain for the first time, and fancied she felt some skin on her leg tear. Still she ran, slowing a little, listening above the slap of her bare feet as Reynold disappeared about a corner, lest his footsteps abruptly stop, indicating ambush. But his boots pounded on and Sasha charged about the corner, onto a balcony above the wide floor of the Justiciary below, now awash with people and confusion.

  Reynold flew down some stairs, faster again than Sasha, who plunged after, unconcerned of who he might rally against her—half of the crowds were women, hauling bloodied bodies of dead and wounded, crying for water, for bandages, for anything to cope with the flood of human catastrophe that now lay sprawled across the flagstones. She darted after Reynold, sighting a flash of movement ahead, a ducking figure there…she wove past hobbling wounded and skirted around a makeshift bed where a desperate surgeon cut crossbow bolts free from shrieking victims. The figure she’d thought was Reynold turned out to be a stranger, and she spun about, thinking perhaps he had tricked her, and was doubling back to surprise her from the crowd…but she saw only frightened men and women, and the same, panicked disbelief she’d seen on the face of Timoth Salo.

  Sasha snarled, spinning back. Reynold could not run far—the Steel had the Justiciary surrounded, soon enough he would be forced back here, as the noose tightened. A young man she recognised from the Tol’rhen passed, supporting a bleeding, ashen-faced comrade. It was poor discipline, however much one cared for friends, for all to be abandoning the defence to carry their comrades back to shelter. The priorities were…

  Priorities. Errollyn.

  She turned away from the direction Reynold had run, and pushed her way back through the throng toward the dungeon entrance. To abandon her revenge on Reynold made her want to sob. But to abandon Errollyn would be worse.

  The dungeons were unguarded, and she moved silently down the darkening stairs. Her wounds burned like murder now, and her legs felt unsteady, her balance suddenly dubious as the light slowly faded. She did not know how she had done what she’d just done, save that warriorhood was the truest nature of what she was, and came to her as naturally as a horse did to running. That, and pure, blood-lusting fury.

  It was almost as though…almost as though…but she pushed the thought aside, for later contemplation.

  Light from the Justiciary hall had nearly vanished, when a yellow lamp lit the way from below. The descending corridor bent, and suddenly, she saw the guard room and a man who looked to be Civid Sein holding a lamp, gazing up the stairs toward her. Sasha merely kept walking, as though she had every right to be there, as the man looked at her curiously, perhaps not making the connection between the girl who had been taken from these dungeons not long before in chains, and this one with a Nasi-Keth blade in her hand.

  Suddenly his eyes widened, and he yelled a warning, a hand reaching to his sword. Sasha pressed on, unsurprised by the attack from her right by the second guard as she followed the retreating man into the room. One parry and a diagonal slash dropped his corpse to the flagstones. The first man dropped his lantern, a flash of flame as serrin oil erupted. Sasha ducked past it, and took the man’s sword hand off at the wrist. He screamed and fell to his knees. Sasha stood over him, sword at his neck as he tried to stop the terrible bleeding, stuffing the stump under his armpit and squeezing.

  “In which cell is the serrin? Or your head will be next.”

  She found her way down more stairs with another lantern from the guardroom, leaving the guard sprawled unconscious from a blow to the head. He might die from blood loss while asleep. Sasha didn’t care—she hadn’t cut his head off, so her honour was intact.

  One door before the corner the guard had indicated, she stopped, and inserted the selected key from the great key ring. The door unlocked, and she pulled it squealing open and crept inside.

  Errollyn lay on his back on dirty straw, his torso a criss-cross of cuts and dried blood. His wrists were free, his arms loose, only his ankles chained. His eyes slitted open to look at her, as she placed the lantern down, and knelt at his side.

  “Errollyn.” There was sanity in those eyes, blazing green in the lamplight. And pain. “Errollyn, can you move?”

  “Did you take your revenge?” he asked her hoarsely.

  Sasha nodded. “The big bald one from the dungeons,” she said. “Perone. Timoth Salo. Some others too.”

  “Reynold?” Sasha shook her head, bitterly. “Then I have reason still to live. Let me out.”

  Sasha used the keys, and released his ankles. “The Steel are attacking,” she told him as she worked. “It should be over very soon.”

  “It could be no other way,” said Errollyn though gritted teeth. “This portion of humanity has become diseased. It must be cut out.”

  “Your wounds will turn bad,” Sasha worried. “I have to get you to the Mahl’rhen, they can heal such things best.”

  “We have to fetch Alythia first,” said Errollyn. “Do you know where she…”

  “Alythia’s dead,” Sasha said shortly, as the last manacle released. She made to haul Errollyn to his feet. Errollyn clasped her hand, but did not move.

  “You’re certain?” he asked, shocked. Sasha nodded, unwilling to speak more. She tried to haul Errollyn upright once more, but again he resisted. “How do you know?”

  “Errollyn, not now. She’s gone, I must get you to the Mahl’rhen. If you get some disease of the blood it may already be too—”

  “Sasha!” Errollyn insisted, with pain on his face that was not all from his wounds. “I cannot claim to know your loss, but she was my friend too, and I cannot leave without knowing for certain!”

  Sasha could not meet his gaze. “I saw her head,” she barely managed to force out. She was trembling. “They threw it into my cell.” Errollyn looked stricken. “I spent…I spent half the night with it….”

  She curled over, straining as though with a new, physical agony, trying to contain the sobs. Errollyn grabbed her shoulders with chafed, bloody hands and pressed his face to hers. Sasha tried to breathe deep, tried to calm. Errollyn was here, and alive. The nightmare was passing. Somehow, she managed to straighten.

  “Let’s go.”

  By the time they’d limped to the guardroom, Sasha could hear that the sounds from the Justiciary hall had changed. She could hear armour rattling, and the yelling of orders, disciplined and purposeful. The Steel were here already, and the Civid Sein lines had collapsed.

  As she stood listening, Errollyn’s arm about her shoulders for support, a pair of lithe shapes came soundlessly down the stairs. Eyes blazed in the lamplight, one pair gold, another hazel. They paused, and shouted something back up the stairs in a Saalshen tongue Sasha did not recognise, then came to Errollyn
and helped him up the stairs. Another serrin offered Sasha an arm, but she waved him away, and climbed up to the main floor while keeping to one side of the stairs, as more serrin came rushing down, swords in hand.

  Soldiers of the Steel now guarded every doorway, stairway and archway of the Justiciary, Sasha saw, blinking in the light. There were some fresh corpses on the ground, blood pooling, and other soldiers dragged prisoners, arms twisted behind their backs. The chaos of wounded continued across the floor nearest the grand entrance, left undisturbed by the soldiers. Officers and some serrin now walked among the wounded, looking at faces, searching for certain individuals. They would find Reynold, if he were still hidden here.

  Sasha shielded her eyes as she stepped out into the day. It was warm, the sky a cloudless blue, and the peaked rooftops of Tracato’s elegant buildings seemed to mock her with their beauty. Upon the wide stairs lay more bodies, blood flowing as though down a series of waterfalls. There were soldiers everywhere, and horses, and already some horse-drawn wagons, with men to load the corpses into the back. The efficiency of the Steel amazed her.

  A serrin came to them, leading another, smaller serrin in a wide hat, a bloodstained blade in her hand. Aisha. She met them at the base of the steps, and would have hugged Errollyn ferociously had his wounds not given her pause. She hugged Sasha instead, gently, with shock in her eyes. Fury quickly followed.

  “Who was it?” she asked quietly. “I’ll have them killed.”

  “Already done,” said Sasha. “All save Reynold Hein. He got away, but he’s mine if you find him.”

  “Mine,” Errollyn said hoarsely.

  “Oh merciful light,” Aisha muttered, observing his cuts more closely. “I’ll have you at the Mahl’rhen shortly, just let me commandeer one of these carts.”

  Errollyn eased himself down onto the lowest step, and Sasha sat alongside. Sitting hurt terribly. Every new position did. And every old one. She was certain Errollyn felt much worse. He looked up, to regard the blue sky. A serrin placed her hat upon his head, yet still he squinted fiercely beneath its broad brim.