To Ride Hell's Chasm

by Janny Wurts

  All at once, his head turned. ‘Who is that?’

  The officer just interviewed followed his glance: saw the broad-shouldered man in plain clothing who had just raised the sheet from the corpse. The jostle as the bearers paused for his review caused the victim’s head to roll off the board. Unsupported, it dangled, wrong way around, like a melon hung from a string.

  ‘Powers!’ The officer minding the prisoners swallowed fast. Through the scald of churned bile, he grated, ‘That man, standing there? He’s the marshal of the high prince’s honour guard. Came here on leave time, until Sergeant Jedrey accepted his help.’

  Before the last word, the captain was moving. Mykkael crossed the wrecked floor, his limp grown pronounced as he hoisted his leg across an overturned trestle. No such hitch marred his reach, as he clamped a fast hand on Jedrey’s immaculate shoulder. The grip must have ground on a nerve, for the large man went boneless. Spun around and bowed backwards against the bar, he lay gasping, the sweat springing down his blanched face.

  Behind, the keep’s quartermaster shot straight, his finger still pinned to the disputed sum in the ledger. He drew breath, stopped, thought the better of speaking, then wisely moved back out of range.

  The captain’s dark eyes kept their merciless focus. Instinct deferred, shown a cold-cast ferocity that would act before mercy or reason.

  ‘Devall’s marshal leaves. Now!’ The order held a warning past compromise. ‘No questions, and damn protocol. I’ll have no stranger’s meddling given the sleeve to stir into garrison business!’

  Released, Jedrey straightened. His face was wrung pale. The stoop to his shoulders seemed flaccid and aged, and the arm he required to brace his slack knees shook in spasms as he clung to the bar top. ‘The high prince is our ally, you slinking, dumb mongrel. Offend his Highness, and you’ll turn our merchants to paupers. No lowland port will ship goods out of Sessalie if your post-pissing ignorance turns Devall’s monarch against us.’

  Mykkael said no word. Just moved, a blur sprung from stillness no wary reflex might track. A snap cracked the air. The sergeant toppled. Jedrey’s frame hit the floor like an axed tree, his left forearm snapped clean through both the long bones between elbow and wrist.

  ‘Carry on,’ Mykkael said to the dumbstruck quartermaster. ‘You heard my orders. Henceforward, you have the watch.’

  At his feet, Sergeant Jedrey’s stunned effort to rise tangled with his horrifically mangled appendage. His shriek of fainting shock sliced through the ignominy, as the garrison captain stepped over him. ‘You’re relieved. Where I trained, we don’t waste the time pissing posts with citations and whippings.’

  The raid on the Bull Trough Tavern took over an hour to wrap up. Mykkael chose not to be present throughout, but came and went, one man-at-arms or two at his heels, to prowl the back streets above Falls Gate. The taverns he sampled seemed chosen at random. He quartered their packed taprooms as though testing their mood, taking note of which patrons did what, with no inclination to make more arrests. The Cockatrice, favoured haunt of Prince Kailen, seemed more than usually raucous and jammed. There, Mykkael lingered, absorbed by something he encountered in a dimmed corner, though the guardsman beside him saw nothing.

  Before the toll of the watch bell at midnight, the garrison captain was at hand to enforce the quartermaster’s order to march, as the Bull Trough’s catch of malcontents were moved under guard to the gaol in the Lowergate keep. The straggling prisoners could not be moved smartly, roped as they were, the tied wrists of each man attached to the left ankle of the one in procession before him. Any wretch who tried bolting would trip half the line, with the fallen as living anchor. By the time the coffle reached the plank drawbridge, the night mists descended like layers of dropped gauze. Mykkael’s stride was visibly dragging, no longer quite noiseless as he traversed the span over the moat.

  For that reason, he led the way into the gate arch, with guardsmen flanking the prisoners on each side, and the quartermaster and a squad of six stalwarts holding position as rearguard. Beneath the dank stone, thick with the rust taint of iron and the gritted smoke of spent torches, the darkness was a jet shroud, punch cut by the ruddy glare from the fire pans in the bailey beyond. What warned Mykkael, whether the brush of stirred cloth, or the note of chance-struck metal, or some whispered change in the air, no man knew.

  His reverse was too sudden. The front pair of captives jammed into each other, shouting, as his evasion crashed backwards into them.

  Whatever sprang without sound from the shadow lunged after him, thrusting with murderous steel.

  Moving with the assault, his shoulder already twisting to narrow the available vital target, Mykkael took the stabbing strike for his heart as a graze across chest and shoulder. The tip of the blade jabbed a prisoner’s arm, raising an ear-splitting yell.

  Mykkael dropped, palms flat on wet stone, then rebounded upwards, away from the trampling scuffle of roped legs. He drew, sword screaming from sheath, met and parried attack, to a pealing shriek of clashed steel. The blows exchanged came one after the other like licked fire, scribed out in chance-caught reflection. The clamour belled in a crescendo, then ceased. Something dropped, rolling, to a gurgle of drowned breath, jetting stone walls and panic-stricken men with a spray of let blood.

  By the time the roused watch sprinted into the sallyport with lit torches, the dropped body drummed its heels through the spasms of death. Mykkael bent above with his sword slicked bright scarlet. With no pause to survey the carnage before him, he hoisted his fallen assailant by the ankle, and began hauling him shoulder down towards the bailey. The lead captives, milling behind in stunned shock, saw a stranger’s face, still spasmed by its final rictus. The dragged fingers, limp and weaponless, trailed over the stone, splashed with the blood and urine that flooded, still steaming, from the opened viscera.

  ‘Dark powers of hell!’ gasped a man, while two of the tied captives dropped retching. The inbound guard with the torch recoiled clear as his captain shoved past with his burden.

  ‘Assassin!’ snapped Mykkael, his temper shaved thin. ‘A boring damned nuisance, now that he’s dead. First, there’s a captive with a stabbed arm that wants binding. Next, I want to know what the moat watch was doing, that this crafty visitor slipped by them. Last, I want a plank set up in the wardroom under good light. I will know what sort of creature dared an ambush on my turf with the thought he could strike without penalty.’

  The gate watch scurried, somewhat green at the gills, as Mykkael proceeded with his fresh kill across the width of the bailey. Soon engrossed in his promised review of the corpse, he snapped off more orders. Stablehands were dispatched with buckets and brooms to sluice away the spilled effluent. A boy caught staring was sent to recover the dropped sword, and a knife, if he could find it. The moat watch was called in for reprimand; then the rattled quartermaster was reminded to assert his authority. Men who had never seen battle-raw violence mustered their shocked nerves, and resumed their dropped purpose under their captain’s brisk bidding. Chaos receded. The jangled knot of prisoners began to be sorted, the wounded one doctored by Vensic’s firm hand, while Mykkael retired upstairs. Settled industry ruled for scarcely a minute before upset erupted all over again.

  The keep sergeant was left on his own as the next sheet-wrapped body borne on a plank trailed in on the tail of the crisis.

  ‘He killed twice tonight?’ Vensic sucked in a vexed breath, and swore as he knotted the linen over the captive’s unlucky puncture. ‘Holy powers of mercy’ He tried not to look at the hacked mess that lay, dribbling gore on the wardroom trestle. Then, ‘Don’t go up there,’ he snapped to the quartermaster, who ventured an unwise step towards the stair. ‘You need watch orders? I’ll handle the dispatch. Captain’ll be a rank bundle of nerves. Let him unwind first. Trust me, he’ll come back down when he’s ready’

  ‘You hear yet, he broke Jedrey’s arm?’ said a man, somewhat shrill, as the neck-broken corpse was manoeuvred inside and laid out alongsid
e the first. More guards milled about, shaken and exclaiming.

  ‘Poke a dog with a stick, it’ll snap. Sergeant Jed was a fool to provoke him.’

  ‘Blighted bad call, for those wretches on moat watch!’ a bystander griped in commiseration. ‘You hear what Captain Mykkael said when he dressed down their sad hides for negligence?’

  In no mood for gossip, Vensic cracked orders. ‘Canvas and needles, boys, keep it smart! We’ve got two stiffs to sew up for the gravediggers. And this place to scrub down in the meantime. No man sits on his arse till, floor to ceiling, we’re mopped clean as the late queen’s pantry!’

  As the room cleared, and the fascinated pack broke away from Mykkael’s morbid handiwork, the keep sergeant collared the quartermaster to hear the official report.

  Jussoud padded into the lull of the aftermath, still wearing his fine robe and silk sash with the dragons. He quartered the room once, reviewing the two corpses with unmoved professional quiet. Even under the fluttering candles, the loose tunic and drawstring trousers on the gutted one could not be mistaken for northern dress. As though foreign assassins were commonplace visitors, the tall nomad met Vensic’s leashed-back distress with a calm like unruffled water. ‘Since these two lie past need of my services, where’s your captain?’

  ‘Taskin sent you?’ Vensic shut his eyes, released a pent breath, then set down the duty slate in his hand. ‘I thank glory for that.’ Exhausted and troubled, he placed the chalk alongside as though it was explosively fragile. ‘Mykkael’s upstairs. Mind how you handle him. He isn’t inclined to want company’

  ‘By nature, is he a man who craves a woman to let down from the tension of violence?’ Jussoud shrugged, the chink of glass in his satchel too strident amid the strained quiet. ‘Then bide easy. I’ll manage well enough on my own.’

  Vensic rubbed his stubbled face with taut hands, nodded, then moved with intent to roust stableboys. ‘You’ll be wanting the wash tub?’

  Half turned away to proceed up the stair, Jussoud glanced back in surprise.

  And steady, sensible Vensic gave way, his voice cracked rough by an onslaught of shaking. ‘Last I saw, Mykkael looked as if he’d walked through an abattoir. What’s happening? Who sent the foreigner that just tried to kill him?’ Then, as the braced set to those eastern-bred features reached through, his distress snapped to shattering fear. ‘Bright powers, what’s troubled you? Jussoud?’

  But the nomad had no assurance to salve his deep worry, that fresh bleeding could be masked by the gore of a kill. ‘Send up filled buckets. Hot water. Leave them outside the door. If I need aught else, I’ll send down to you.’ All business, he spun and mounted the stair, leaving Vensic, struck desolate, behind him.

  The door at the top of the landing was ajar. The feeble glow of the clay oil lamp beyond spilled carmine light over the stairhead, where Jussoud took pause to consider the difficult prospect of entry. He shifted his satchel, to a faint clink of glass.

  That distinctive sound, or perhaps the earlier tread of his grass sandals, reached Mykkael’s overstrung senses and woke recognition. His flint voice came muffled, from behind that gapped panel, the phrasing in high-caste Serphaidian. ‘Jussoud? Come ahead. Only you.’

  The nomad contained his stark apprehension, pushed open the door, and stepped through. The sweet-burning fragrance of incense filled his nostrils, underlaid at next breath by the coppery tang of let blood. Jussoud all but flinched as his tentative first footfall mired in Mykkael’s dropped shirt. The fabric was sodden, more scarlet than white. Rinsed in hellish tones by the lamp on the trestle, Mykkael knelt before what looked like a clothes chest. His posture was upright, buttocks propped on the heel of his good leg, with the bad knee extended at a sideways angle that suggested the scream of pinched nerves. His naked, marked back showed Taskin’s three stripes, the scabs rubbed raw where his harness had chafed. His head stayed bowed, and his hands, tucked before him, were not visible.

  He might have been settled in meditative contemplation, except for the tremors that chased in sharp waves through the musculature alongside his spine. ‘There is always reaction,’ he said, almost steady. ‘It will pass. Take care to move slowly until then.’

  Jussoud took a deep breath, sampling the incense for narcotic drugs. He smelled none, only the mild blend of herbals used in southern physics for calming. Left to wait, allowed no direct outlet to allay his concern, he softly set down his bundle of remedies. The stained shirt, untangled, showed him two rents: one across the left-hand side of the chest, and beside that, another razor-clean slice through the upper sleeve. Anxious about bleeding, but granted no invitation, the healer crushed down his urgent impatience.

  The incense unreeled serpentine smoke, tinted rouge in the flutter of the oil lamp. Mykkael drew in the scent with shuddering long breaths, as though all five senses could be condensed down to one, with the meadow-flower fragrance the ephemeral nail upon which he hung his strained consciousness. Cued by the intuitive awareness that tonight, the ritual was not going to ease him, Jussoud dared a cautious step forward. ‘I’m coming across.’

  The captain did not forbid him; only the tremors grew worse as the healer’s slowed step approached. Jussoud reached, ever so carefully gentle. He touched the unmarked right shoulder, felt the animal flinch of recoil, then the lightning-fast surge of roused sinew as the man underneath his poised fingers strangled down the reflexive barqui’ino response.

  ‘All right,’ Jussoud said. ‘Settle back. You can trust me.’

  ‘Orannia’s brother,’ Mykkael whispered, the next wracking shudder all too close to the wrench of a sob stifled silent.

  Jussoud knelt, gathered the tortured knot of bronze flesh into his steady embrace. ‘In a kinder world, we should have been family’ There he held for long minutes, while Mykkael trembled against him, head turned aside in choked grief. Over his shoulder, on the lid of the clothes chest next to the incense, Jussoud saw the object that had held the captain absorbed: an intricate wooden seal inlaid with gold patterns, until what looked like an axe blow had hewn its symmetry into quarters. ‘Brace up, now, Captain. I’m going to raise you.’

  Mykkael cursed his knee, which had forced his collapse, then swore with more venom as he saw the silk sleeves of the robe Jussoud had just spoiled with bloodstains. The inventive, rich phrasing startled the nomad to laughter. ‘I can see we won’t waste any candles testing your eye reflexes for a concussion.’

  ‘My head wasn’t dunted,’ Mykkael agreed. Leg under him, his wrecked balance back under command, he managed to perch on the stool with his bloodied hands braced on the trestle. ‘Did you know Anja?’ he asked, pointblank.

  ‘Yes. Forget memory. She is not like Orannia. Let her quandary bide for the moment.’ Jussoud withdrew his steadying touch, caught blindsided as an explosion of tuned instinct whipped Mykkael back to his feet. The move erupted too fast to resist. The nomad stopped cold, awareness shocked through him that, had he owned the speed of reaction to try, the attempt might well have destroyed him. Since the aggression seemed caused by someone’s step on the stair, he chose words in rapid Serphaidian. ‘It’s a boy bearing buckets. Hold fast, do you hear?’

  Mykkael disarmed reflex, spun, and propped his stressed frame on the trestle. His hurt tucked into a protective posture, chin averted, he said, ‘I should send you out.’

  ‘You’re not going to. Stay still.’ The nomad moved, intercepted the boy on the landing. He returned with the steaming buckets, shut the door, then recovered his satchel of remedies. He rummaged inside, trimmed the wicks of four candles, and set them alight one by one. Now able to see clearly, he approached Mykkael and started his treatment in earnest. ‘Do the do’aa ever poison their blades?’

  Mykkael turned his head, jerked stiff with surprise. ‘You knew that assassin was oath-sworn?’

  ‘To mark you? He had to be.’ Jussoud completed his cursory assessment, then selected a soft rag, several herbals and two oils. He tested the first bucket, and made an infusion with
the hot water. ‘Answer.’

  ‘They don’t.’ Mykkael subsided, eyes shut, while those quick, knowing fingers probed at the gash on his chest, then the shallower graze on his bicep. ‘The swords they carry are quite sharp enough.’

  ‘So I see. Nothing you have here should cause undue worry.’ The nomad dipped his clean rag and pronounced, ‘This will sting. I am sorry. But stitching would badly impair your mobility, and naught else will reliably stanch such a razor-clean cut.’ Fast and sure, he wrung the hot linen and began the unpleasant chore of cleaning the open flesh wounds. No need to waste words to note how a hairsbreadth change in angle would have let the sword’s point pierce the chest wall. Mykkael surely knew how close he had come to the death that had danced with him in the dark.

  As often happened, Jussoud’s steady silence invited the overstrung mind to unburden.

  ‘Had they sent a southerner, I would have died,’ the captain admitted straight out. ‘The fact he had northern skin let me place him.’ He sucked a sharp breath, as Jussoud’s ministrations moved on to the angry slice on his arm. ‘A man sent from that do’aa may have known of the knee. Even odds, and surprise, he should have been able to take me.’

  ‘Yet he did not.’ Jussoud rinsed his rag, packed the wounds with clean lint, then added a salve that eased the virulent sting like a tonic. ‘Life’s too short to waste looking back.’

  ‘The two masters I flouted don’t think so,’ Mykkael said, his sadness turned savagely wrenching.

  Jussoud rummaged for dry linen, then uncapped a tin with turpentine gum, and softened the contents over the candle. ‘Well, they must get tired of losing trained men.’

  ‘You saw the seal?’ Mykkael retorted. ‘Smashed crosswise, that means they will quarter the known world. It is sent as an oath-breaker’s promise of vengeance. I had hoped, of the two, Kaien’s do’aa might release me.’