by S J Hartland
A rider broke free of the others, his captain’s badge a curled salamander and lavender sprig. Dark-brown hair matted his ruddy cheeks beneath dented capped steel.
“Our lord desires the pleasure of your company,” he said.
“Oh, pleasure is it? The pleasure of my company in a foul cell?” Determined to hide his alarm, Kaell swept the man an insolent bow. “Tell Caelmarsh I’d rather ghouls skewer me.”
The captain grinned viciously. “I’m bid only to bring you to him. Skewering you must discuss with Caelmarsh. I’m sure my lord will oblige.”
Warily Kaell circled within a noose of horseflesh and steel.
“You may thank Caelmarsh for his kind invitation, but I am too busy.”
“Too busy to answer to a great lord of Telor?”
“Too busy.” Kaell patted his mouth. “And a little tired. Another day perhaps?”
“My lord did say you’re an arrogant brat who doesn’t know his place.” The captain gestured. His companions dismounted, slid swords free and advanced, unsmiling. Nervous.
“Really?” Kaell sighed. “Another dance? I had my fill for today.”
Despite his bold words, fear stirred. The soldiers numbered eight. The odds against him. Especially as he must only wound and not kill.
“Then put up your sword,” the captain said complacently.
“The first thing a bladesman learns is never, ever lose hold of your weapon. The second—that attack offers better odds than defence.”
With a roar, Kaell leapt at the knot of soldiers. His slash opened a long cut in an arm. The wounded man yelled in pain, his sword spilling to the dirt as Kaell twisted and swung. The stroke put a second man on his knees. He clutched his hip and howled.
Kaell thrust at a third. The soldier reeled. His thigh gushed blood.
Two Downs guards confronted him. Kaell backed up, watchful. They advanced together as though intent on combining their attacks.
In position, he let them come. They struck in unison. Kaell veered from their blows, sunlight blazing off his sword as he parried. He fought with grim resolution, taking no pleasure in any contest against men. But they must not overwhelm him.
Again the pair attacked as one. Kaell knocked their blades aside and jabbed low. One collapsed, moaning. The other circled.
With one fluid movement, Kaell whipped his knife from his belt and hurled. It snagged the man’s shoulder. The soldier yelped and dropped.
The captain kicked his horse forward to ride him down. Sword levelled, Kaell retreated a step, then another.
Beneath his heel the earth crumbled into emptiness. For a heartbeat he clawed air, toppling on the edge of a gaping hole.
Then he tumbled, flailing at nothing until he smacked hard ground, his breath knocked from lungs, limbs sprawled on a bed of stone.
Kaell moaned. The stones tore clothes and flesh alike, his inflamed back a mass of bloody cuts. Blood trickled from his gashed temple.
A tattered cloth ripped by his weight fluttered above like a ragged curtain, its camouflage of dirt and grass layering grime over his face and garments.
Flinty rock and clouding dust settled into a tense silence, broken only by wind stealing through branches. Kaell could not take in what happened. He fell. Into some hole?
The captain peered down, laughing with surprised glee. “I’ll leave a man or two to make sure you stay put while I fetch Caelmarsh. Maybe he’ll just bury you alive.”
“He wouldn’t dare,” Kaell said. He wished he believed it.
“My lord will risk not only the king’s displeasure but the wrath of the gods to make you suffer. He intends—”
A bowstring twanged. An arrow clattered on earth.
A man called, “the next pierces your throat.”
The captain whipped about. “Show yourself, coward.”
More arrows strummed heat-simmering air. “To your horses,” the captain cried. “Ride.”
A ruckus broke out above. Scuffling boots, men’s groans, then grating leather, jangling harnesses and the captain’s angry gibe, “You’ll be sorry. We’ll return with more men.”
The drum of hoofs exploded then faded. Kaell’s breath shuddered out into a bewildering quiet. But from a creep at the nape of his neck, he wasn’t alone.
Footsteps crunched. A man’s low, deep voice rumbled, “And they shall. Caelmarsh fostered me as a boy at Knight’s Spike. He is a vile man, but a determined one.”
A woman answered. “And a patient one.”
“What’s his grudge against the boy?”
“Rumour is something to do with Caelmarsh’s daughter. I don’t know the story.”
Kaell twitched with unease. Whoever stood above knew rather too much about him.
Dizzy, his battered body protesting at movement, he pushed to his elbows. Hoping the drop broke no bones.
“We’d best finish this quickly, Your Grace.” The man hesitated. “If you still intend—”
The woman sighed. “It seems the abhorrent deed falls to me after all. Get him out. If he’s conscious after the fall, I don’t want—I do not want to see his eyes. Cover them.”
A shadow fell on the hole. Kaell glanced up fast at a figure silhouetted against bright sunshine. Wind slapped at a woman’s long gown. A tendril of memory sparked. The tournament. Someone beneath that apple tree. Watching.
Men appeared at the pit’s edge. Their indistinctive clothes and swords revealed nothing about who they were.
Kaell passed a hand over his damp brow. “What happened?”
“You fell into a hole.” A man joined the woman, a hood shading his face.
Dazed, bruised, Kaell squinted into sunlight. “Someone dug a hole and covered it up?”
“Are you hurt?”
“I hit my head.” He staggered up. “My back, too. Someone filled this cursed hole with sharp stones.”
The man reached down. “We’ll get you out. Pass your sword up.”
Kaell looked at his spilled weapon, then at the man. Doubt curdled into a harsh laugh. He scooped up the blade and drove it into his belt. “I’m not in a trusting mood. For all I know you dug this pit. No, I’ll find my own way out.”
The man muttered to someone unseen. An archer took position at the edge, bowstring drawn back.
“Be reasonable,” the man said calmly. “Keep the sword if you must, but we’ll haul you out one way or the other.”
Kaell glared at the bowman. With an angry hiss he swept his palms over dirt and rock for a foothold. It hurt his pride to be so helpless. Trapped.
Seething, he peered up. “What do you want with me?”
The man dropped a dark cloth into the hole. “We want a word. It’s a better option than Caelmarsh will give you. Cover your eyes and get ready to grab the rope.”
Kaell caught the cloth. “Have I any choice?”
“It’s a poor one, I’ll grant you that. We could leave you here for Caelmarsh to take captive. Or our archers cripple you and I climb in to get you. Now, the blindfold.”
“Why a blindfold?”
“A precaution. You’re waste time arguing. Just do it.”
Kaell cursed and swung a fist at crumbling earth. He paced in a tight circle, muttering. Helpless anger jagged through him.
“You choose an arrow in the leg, then? Come, be sensible.” Coiled rope dropped.
Nowhere to go. No footholds. Futile to stomp about in this pit. With a heavy sigh, he tied the cloth about his eyes, groped for the rope and clambered up. Men hurled him over the top, set him on his feet but held his arms.
“You said you wanted a word. Well, I’m listening. So let me go.”
Someone pulled Kaell’s sword from his belt. He glared blindly. “I want that back. I also demand to know why you’re holding me.”
When they did not release him, he broke into a frenzied thrashing, shouting, “let me go.”
“What’s he say? It’s like he speaks Venivan or something.”
“They all sound like that in the Mountain
s. Can’t understand them half the time.”
Kaell kicked towards the voices.
“Here you, keep still.”
At a numbing slap to his face, Kaell fell against his captors. They roped his wrists together and dumped him on his knees. He swayed and moaned, every breath painful. Fresh blood dripped from his temple.
“There’s no need to be so rough.” The woman drew so close he caught a snatch of her perfume. Roses and vanilla.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“Sorry?”
“Who you are is not your fault. I shall make this quick. Painless if I can.”
Kaell had no time to think what that meant when someone pushed his chest. His bruised, torn back hit the ground. Guards pounced, their knees pinning his hips.
He writhed, bucked and twisted, shouting in outrage. They held him until at last, exhausted by pain, Kaell stilled—all but his heart’s ragged rhythm against caging ribs.
“What do you mean quick?” His voice thinned in horror. “Do you mean to kill me? Why?”
“Hush.”
“No.” Kaell rocked his head weakly. “Let me die as a warrior. If not in battle at least in combat. Give me a sword.”
“Hush.” Cloth rustled in grass as if someone knelt. Dread banded his throat.
“Don’t struggle.” She touched fingertips to his cheek. “It will be over fast.”
Beneath the blindfold, Kaell’s blinkered eyes snagged on her ring of silver and emerald. Alarm narrowed his thoughts to that ring. Only that ring.
Cloth clamped hard over his nose and mouth. He jerked in shock, then fought pressing hands, desperate for air. His lungs choked. A scream buried within him, unheard. Panic flamed. Thoughts splintered. Too weak to fight. Blackness rushing. Dying. He was dying.
“Mother, no.” A boy’s high-pitched voice.
“I told you to wait in the trees.”
“You’re hurting him. Please don’t hurt him.”
The cloth and hands lifted. Kaell rasped a breath.
“There. I stopped hurting him. Though it is cruel to pause, to give false hope.”
“You can’t kill him. Mother, you can’t. My tutors say the gods punish those who spill a bonded warrior’s blood.”
“I’ll not spill his blood. Not a drop. That’s why we dug the pit. To capture him, execute him bloodlessly.”
Kaell shuddered. They even knew of the curse.
“Don’t hurt him. I don’t want you to.”
“Nor is it my wish. But my fire visions show me a terrible truth. I warned his lord, but he did nothing. Nothing. Clearly Vraymorg values this young man’s life above the lives of thousands. This foul act falls to me.”
Kaell uneasily shifted his hips. Did she expect his lord to kill him?
He struggled to his knees. No one stopped him. Panted breath beat in his skull. Hot air wisped his arms, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. A breeze carrying a silage of pine and mud stirred branches Pungent sweat trickled uncomfortably down his neck.
“We make our own choices,” the boy said. “You taught me that.”
“None of us cheats fate. Whatever path you choose, fate twists to find you.”
Duty chased like fate. He could not flee from it either, no matter the nonsense he told Arn.
Kaell chanced getting to his feet. This time his captors pushed him back to his knees and held his shoulders. The rancid stink of their unwashed bodies, the damp touch of hands soaked into him.
“You know who my father is,” the boy said. “You chose him so I may become king. But I will not be a king with a bonded warrior’s death on my conscience, Mother.”
“It shall be on mine.”
“Please. I’m not asking because I’m weak, Mother. But isn’t there another way?”
A breathless, empty stillness battered. Into its void, she whispered, the words indistinct like a storm-scattered murmur. Did she softly say, “Is my son right? Show me. Speak.”
Wind tunnelled furiously through trees. Branches creaked, snapped and fell in whirl-pooled leaves. Inhuman cries boiled beneath the gusts. Nervous men muttered.
Kaell trembled. He lived close enough to the otherworld to recognise magic.
“Is there another way?” Her plea rose to a shout. “Tell me!”
The wind swirled, a fury of hewed sound like spirits shrieking all at once. Kaell dug his knees into the ground, cold fear dampening his skin.
The woman moaned. “I understand. It’s too soon. It is your will he dies somewhere else. Very well. I’ll spare him. But the next time you put him in my power, I will do what I must.”
The wind died. Sunlight once more beat on Kaell’s scalp. He groaned, his strength leached by pain and blood loss, unsure he could fight them even if they freed his hands.
“We have wine?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Do not call me that. Get wine into him—until he passes out.” A pause. “I want him very, very drunk, so he recalls less.”
It could work. Poison him with alcohol and he might doubt what he saw and heard. Kaell stored memories. Her scent. A jewelled ring. Betraying words—Your Grace.
“You are young to show your mettle, my son,” the woman said to the unseen boy. “You are not fire, like me. You are steel like your father—cold, bright, sharp.”
Her laugh bubbled. Sweet, almost innocent. “I am satisfied with that.”
His captors forced wine down Kaell’s throat. Spluttering, he tried to turn his head, clamp his lips shut, but again and again they pummelled his belly until he gasped and swallowed. When they dumped him on grass, he curled, wretched.
He was a bonded warrior. Blessed by the gods. Strong.
But he didn’t feel like that now.
After a time, footsteps closed on him. Warm breath misted his cheek. “None of us eludes fate, Kaell,” the woman said. At least he thought she did. Maybe he dreamt it. The wine and sleep weighing his eyelids fragmented reason.
She stroked his face, her touch tender. “Every path twists back to what must happen. There can be no escape for you, I think. Still, I offer what warning I can.”
Cloth wisped his arm as she leaned against him. “He’ll call you to him.” Her voice was soft but iron-edged. “Archanin. You must never go into the Waste Mountains. If you do, he’ll take you.”
Kaell fell away into a wine-sodden dream of blood and misery and death.
Someone shook him. He surfaced with a groan, his skull aflame, throat rough as unhewn stone. Dusk deepened about him, its soft web shrouding the first moon. Beneath a spreading tree, bilberry bushes cushioned his back, his dew-wet clothes stinking of wine.
Arn’s face screwed tight with disgust. “Wine breath. Wine hair, too.” The man threw Kaell a long look. “And you’re bleeding. So now you’re drinking and fighting. With what? Bilberry bushes? Shadows?”
Yes, shadows. The woman’s voice drifted like a dream’s fading fragment. He’ll call you to him. Never go into those mountains.
“I fell in a hole—” Kaell broke off with a sigh. Too hard to explain when his head thumped and words grated his throat.
Arn pulled him up. “Talk quietly. Caelmarsh’s men are searching for you. I heard your name and followed them. Little did I know I need only follow the odour of stale wine.”
“You came after me.”
“I always do, Kaell. But I clearly missed the fun. A hole, you say?” Arn clapped a palm to his brow, groaning.
“Cyrah protect us, I just had a terrible thought. You’ll torment us with a song, or worse one of your awful poems, about your adventure in the hole.” He grinned. “With luck, you won’t think of anything rhyming with the word witless.”
Kaell started to laugh, then moaned. “Oh, my head.”
“Don’t expect sympathy. You stink like an Isles tavern. Caelmarsh’s men can hunt you with their noses.”
“The woman forced wine on me.”
“Found a woman in the hole? Was that before or after the fighting?”
&n
bsp; “You’re as funny as a log, Arn.”
His dulled wits scrambled memories. Vanilla and rose. Her sigh of regret. Words about duty that struck deep, like a forgotten truth.
He whirled, hearing his name. Darkness welled beneath the trees. The wind rattled dead leaves and gnarled boughs. The forest surely sat empty. Yet a shiver ran through him. Khir.
Kaell stared, lost in a trance. It held him a long while, until he grew aware of Arn gripping his arm, an owl’s distant hoot, cicadas humming, the scent of wet grass and leaves.
“I hate it when you do that,” Arn said.
“When do we ride for the Waste Mountains?”
Arn brightened. “I thought you wanted to wear fur undergarments and fight for a Damadar Ice lord.”
Kaell shrugged that off grimly. He belonged to Khir. If he peered deeply into his dreams, his god waited in the murk, demanding his surrendered will, his blood. He could not serve an Ice lord any more than he could the ghoul god, Archanin.
What did the woman say? You cannot flee fate. Something like that.
And Khir moulded his fate. He must go where the gods willed. Even beyond the great gorge into the Waste Mountains. Towards the door of his nightmares.
Heath
The inn stank of stale wine and cold sweat. Of intrigue. Heath raked its gloom, spying his sister Judith alone at a corner table.
He ducked his head beneath a low-hung beamed roof, his cloak swishing leather boots as he dodged crowded benches to reach her. Discordant voices, laughter, the odours of tallow and roasted meat roiled in a chaotic blend so very typical of this dreadful city.
A girl in a low-cut, tight gown brushed past. Heath stared with undisguised interest at her sand-pale hair. She favoured him with a bold, nearly toothless smile.
A seaman at a nearby table glared. “Go find a goat, stranger. She’s taken.”
He pulled the unprotesting girl onto his lap. Dice spilled as the table rocked. Another sailor sprang up, pointed an accusing finger at Heath and jabbered.
Heath at once groped for his sword. Though—think it through. Killing drunken fools attracted attention.