The 19th Bladesman

by S J Hartland

  “You wretched, wretched girl. Did you steal in while he slept? Thinking no one would notice one more scratch amid the other gashes left by the king’s interrogators.”

  “I only took a little,” the girl said, sullen. “Every sorceress knows how powerful Caelan blood is. The ichor of the gods.”

  “You had no right.”

  “You rode to the tower, saw the defiled sacrifice. We must restore Roaran’s enchantments, Aingear. The gods showed me their chosen sacrifice. He’s worthy, priestess.”

  That dreadful tower. “I searched my books to find Roaran’s spell,” Aingear said coldly. “Now I am here to ask the gods to choose a new sacrifice.”

  “I know who they desire, Aingear. He came to me in a dream. Told me how to prepare the boy. I offered the boy to our gods when I tended to him in Dal-Kanu, though he does not know it. He has magic in his blood, the perfect sacrifice to The Three.”

  “You think the gods speak to you?” Aingear angrily stomped on broken glass. “You ignorant, conceited child. The gods will show me who they choose. I am high priestess. Leave. I have their work to do. I will settle with you about your reckless spell casting later.”

  Ethne left her.

  That fragrance lingered. Aingear could not be rid of it. Nor her unease.

  An unworldly, compelling presence had been in the cave. It bewitched her with memories of her childhood, of summer breezes dancing on waves. Her sister.

  At last, my lord, my king. Reveal yourself.

  My lord. My king. It was too clear. Ethne had tried to summon the dead Roaran Caelan to restore his broken enchantments.

  Or … A shudder writhed down her backbone. No. No. Not that.

  He came to me in a dream … My king, reveal yourself.

  Aingear dragged her hands down her face. The girl’s foolish words condemned her. That wasn’t a spell to raise the dead. She summoned Roaran to this cave. Not thinking him dead, only hidden. Waiting to return.

  She sagged, impossibly weary, her will frayed. How many must she kill? Cultists spread like sickness, challenging the gods and the rightful king, seeking answers from a dead seer. All a dangerous lie. Whatever, whoever she had glimpsed, it was not him.

  Roaran slumbered in death. No one knew where or if he slept peacefully. Likely not. But he slept.

  Aingear straightened her shoulders. The carnage in the tower stripped age-old defences protecting the Isles. First, seek answers from The Three. Then deal with Ethne.

  The wind plunged to muttering. Waves gurgled around rocks. Aingear blanked her mind. She slowed her breaths until they rose and fell like water droplets into the pool.

  “Saarn, Sartaen, Sauveroken,” she whispered. “Hear your servant. I thank you for the life of my lord’s son, Aric. Now I must ask for more. Name your new sacrifice. Reveal him. Tell me how I can serve you as those of the Isles have since the god-king Caelan first stood upon these shores.”

  Aingear peered into inky water. Her reflection dissolved into a forest. It was green and cool and damp, its scents of leafy earth, of raindrops shimmering on leaves.

  Pink buds withered on branches. Autumn’s pelt pooled in orange clumps at the base of trunks. The last, wilting blossoms spilled fragrance.

  She swayed. Waves lapped a distant shore. But she fell away from the gurgling sea, away from the cave, crying out as she tumbled and tumbled. Until a forest surrounded her.

  Aingear wears a stranger’s face. She rides through sun-speckled trees, flanked by men cloaked in black and grey. Her body aches from wounds an Isles prince inflicted but her spirit rallies at the scent of battle.

  A terrible blade slumbers at her side. Its hunger burns cold through the scabbard to her skin. No one else knows about its grim darkness—this is a secret between them.

  When a man leans to whisper a story, she laughs, feeling that warm embrace of friendship. She belongs here, with this man, with the others.

  In her companion’s glinting helm, her green eyes framed by dark lashes stare back, unafraid.

  She flicks strands of pale hair from her brow with a muscular arm. A sigil scars her skin. A half-moon. A sword. Other marks swirl up her arms towards her shoulders.

  Then the sun slinks below the trees. The men, the horses disappear.

  She runs through darkness, breathless, cold, alone.

  Afraid.

  Not of her pursuers though she hears their taunts.

  She is afraid because the forest no longer smells of damp, tumbled earth or fallen leaves.

  It smells of blood. Of defeat.

  Aingear burst through iron-studded wooden doors. Respectful guards fell back.

  “Where?” Her gaze flickered about the tower room. “Where?”

  Aric lay on a pallet, a blanket screening his nakedness as the physician stitched his wounds. His father stood taut with anxiety at his younger son’s bedside. A scowling Gendrick poked a stick in cold embers, detached. Ethne fidgeted at Aric’s shoulder.

  Aingear brushed past her king to Aric. The horse-faced physician rocked aside, his long jaw dropping. The odour of his lotions stung her throat.

  Bandaged, bruised, broken, Aric’s skin mottled purple, his sword arm in a sling. Candlelight contorted his gaunt face.

  They had pulled him from his horse that morning, more dead than alive, his saddle slick with blood. “I didn’t dare stop,” his uncle had told the king. “Cathmor’s men hunted us. But his wounds keep bleeding, may The Three help him.”

  Gods help him, indeed. If Tide’s End fell, he’d hang—if Cathmor was generous. Burn in a traitor’s fire if not.

  Aingear looked away for a heartbeat to banish compassion. “Describe Khir’s warrior.”

  “Well hello to you, too, priestess.” Aric grinned wearily. “You clearly missed me.”

  She bunted air with her palm. “I have no time for polite words. The gods showed me something strange. Too strange. Tell me of this man.”

  “Kaell? Why?”

  “Just answer. What does he look like?”

  “Kaell is my equal in height and easily as broad.”

  That described half the warriors in Telor. Pairas. Aric’s lover, Aiden Saltman.

  Aingear hissed impatiently. “Obtuse prince. Describe him so I would know him.”

  Aric’s gaze cut through her, questioning. “His hair is pale. A golden brown. Not washed-out straw like those brutes from Veniva. His eyes, green. Ask Ethne. She tended to him.”

  Tended. Oh, she knew too well how Ethne tended to Kaell.

  Aingear cast the girl a hard look. Deluded child. History was clear: a Cahirean king murdered Roaran at Dal-Kanu. These rumours he lived did not start until many years after the seer’s death. How could an intelligent woman like Ethne believe them?

  Such treacherous lies. Cultists stirred discontent, even revolt.

  A story recently reached Tide’s End of merchants who ejected the king’s tax collector from their town because they would only pay into the coffers of Roaran Caelan upon his return. In the eastern Isles, peasants armed with pitchforks burned their liege lord’s house, declaring they knew no masters but the seer king.

  His name had become a rallying cry for malcontents. What if his followers sought to overthrow Hatton, to prepare the way for their dead master to return to power?

  Yet for a moment, unlikely pity softened her outrage. Must she condemn Ethne to a cultist’s death? The sorceress was young, like that boy Aingear had sacrificed. Foolish. Seduced by legends and lies.

  An ancient voice stirred like a cold caress down her spine. Aingear stiffened her resolve.

  Ethne meddled in magic she did not understand. Her meddling could cost Kaell his life; cost the Isles gods their prize.

  “You struck him down. But what other bond ties you to this Kaell? What bond could tie him to the Isles? It is to do with you, I know it. Tell me.”

  Glances shifted. Feet scuffled. Hands fluttered. Gendrick tossed his stick into the ash.

  The king tapped fingers against his
belt. “The gods are good.” He beat out the words. Gods are good, gods are good. A scream echoed silently in Aingear’s head.

  “Thanks to our gods, this boy returned Aric to us with little harm.”

  What did he call harm? His daughter—dead. The peace with Dal-Kanu—broken. Come spring, Cathmor’s soldiers would pound Tide’s End’s proud walls.

  “Do you mean he rescued Aric?” Aingear spread her hands. “That makes no sense.”

  Nor did it make sense for the Isles gods to show Kaell in her vision. A bonded warrior served Khir. He knew nothing of The Three. She misunderstood. It must be another.

  She said, “Kaell has scars?”

  Aric laughed. “What warrior hasn’t?”

  “A bad warrior,” Gendrick said without turning. “A dead warrior.”

  “Swirls, symbols on his chest, shoulders and arms.” Ethne avoided Aingear’s eyes. “A half-crescent moon on his arm. Other marks carved by dagger or sword. Khir’s wounds. I am told there is a ceremony—”

  Aingear’s knees buckled. Fragments of her vision snapped. A half-crescent moon. A forest. The scent of blood. Aric’s words confirmed who she had glimpsed in her vision.

  But it was too late. All too late. Kaell was lost to them.

  Aric struggled to lift himself on the pillows. “Priestess, are you ill?”

  “Old mother, what is it?” Ethne grasped her arm.

  Aingear braced the bed. “You wretched girl. What have you done?”

  At the vitriol in her tone, Ethne took a step back.

  “Priestess?” Aric frowned. “What’s going on?”

  “This warrior from Vraymorg rides into an ambush. His gods have abandoned him—because of what this foolish girl did.”

  “Me?” Ethne spluttered in disbelief. “I saved him.”

  “You saved him with blood magic. Magic that broke his bond to Khir. There is only one reason why the gods showed me Kaell’s fate. And that is impossible. Unthinkable.”

  Aric shook his head. “Priestess, I still don’t understand. Why did the gods show you Kaell?”

  “I asked them to show me who they chose as a sacrifice—to restore Roaran’s protective spells. They showed me him. Him. A warrior bonded to other gods. That’s why I say it’s impossible. But even if it were not, this meddling sorceress has decided his fate.”

  Aingear drew herself tall. She stabbed a finger at Ethne. “Guards, arrest her. She is a cultist, a traitor to her true king. She must die.”

  Aric

  Pairas slouched at the foot of Aric’s bed, long legs crossed at the ankles, his gaze brooding and distant.

  If another man demanded punishment for falling prey to a woman’s wiles, Aric might tease him about her eyes like deep, shadowed pools, her hair of silken midnight.

  But Pairas? No.

  His captain too quickly drew blame upon his shoulders. Aric knew the cause; a raving, drunken father who berated his young son daily as stupid and useless.

  Pairas fled to Tide’s End as a thin child wearing rags, eyes hollowed by misery, unable to take the beatings any longer. He found some sense of self as a soldier, but Aric recognised the fragile spirit beneath that rigid, patterned shield of duty.

  “The Quisnaf trained Judith Damadar as a seductress. She’s a weapon, not a woman,” he said. “Of course you liked her.”

  Pairas shifted irritably. “I didn’t say I liked her. Just when we talked, something stirred—”

  Aric wriggled his brows. “Stirred.”

  His captain forced a half-hearted grin and lumbered to his feet. “What do the Damadars want with you, Aric? Your cursed blood? I heard a few drops brew up nicely in a potion.”

  Aric shrugged. He had other concerns. Cathmor, for one, intent on spilling every drop of his blood. All that morning, the king’s messenger had argued with his father and uncle behind closed doors. Threatening, cajoling, bargaining.

  “Why should it be my blood for brewing? Maybe Judith Damadar heard I’m charming. She hopes to, ah, stir me, the way she stirred you.”

  “Ha, ha. Throw on a funny hat and you can entertain us all as a jester.”

  Grief lumped in Aric’s belly. Azenor had teased him about his jests before the ambush.

  Ambush. He’d led his sister to her death. He, the commander of Tide’s End, tournament champion of Telor could not save her or his men.

  Now he couldn’t save Kaell.

  When ghouls seized him and Azenor, he was helpless, his skill as a bladesman worthless. Imprisoned by the king, helpless again. He was free only because of a stranger’s kind heart and courage. A stranger about to ride into an ambush.

  “Stirring or not,” Pairas muttered. “Judith comes with an appendage—her brother. He’s the one asking questions about you.”

  “The appendage is a fire dancer. Not beaten in the arena since he was sixteen.”

  One summer he and Heath had become unlikely friends while their elders hammered out a marriage contract between Gendrick and Heath’s eldest sister, Deborah. It came to nothing.

  Deborah died—suspiciously.

  But what Aric remembered most about that summer was Heath’s sarcastic wit. He liked him. He hoped fate didn’t demand he kill Heath Damadar ... one day.

  “A what?”

  “Fire dancer. A fire dance is a ritualistic fight in an abyss of flames. The defeated warrior’s death is an offering to those cruel Icelands gods.”

  Pairas looked astonished. “How do you know this?”

  Aric grinned. “How do we learn anything in Tide’s End? The rumour cesspool of the world. Isn’t that what they call this city in Dal-Kanu? You hear everything here: the Venivans plot about their princes, the Wardorians boast of war and plunder. And Icemen whisper in awe about Heath Damadar, beloved of the gods.”

  “The gods do not love him near as much as he loves himself.” Pairas rocked to his feet. “I know what you’re thinking, Aric. But it’s too late. That boy from Vraymorg is already dead. You’d never reach Thom to warn him. You can’t hold the reins, let alone a sword.”

  Aric squeezed his eyes shut. He imagined the scene the high priestess described; the knot of men, their desperate shouts, the clanging steel, the iron taste of blood and pungent fear as wave after wave of ghouls fell upon them like beasts.

  He pictured the ravens circling, foxes slinking from the trees to sniff at the stench of death. Sweat wet his armpits. It was all a terrible echo of Dal-Gorma.

  “Kaell is alone,” Aingear had told him when he begged to know the reason for her questions. “Badly wounded, tracked by his enemies. They will have him.”

  Aric shifted his sling. Before he lifted a sword again, Kaell would be dead. Helplessness, as heavy as armour after a battle, bowed his shoulders.

  “I owe Kaell my life.”

  “He’s a warrior bonded to Khir,” Pairas said. “He’ll die young. You know this. You’re the one who reads old stories in your creepy tower.”

  “It’s called a library, Pairas.”

  “Whatever. It still creeps. So you tell me, Aric. How long do bonded warriors live?”

  As long as the gods willed. And who was he to defy gods that weren’t his? Gods—according to the high priestess—who had now abandoned Kaell.

  The saddle crashed to the ground. Aric fell after it. He struggled to his hands and knees to crawl. Blood from ripped wounds dripped on dirty straw stinking of horseflesh and manure.

  He slapped a palm into the ground, furious at his weakness.

  The Three help him. He must at least save Kaell, must. His fault, all of it.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” he shouted at Ethne in his dreams. “He rides into an ambush; he dies because his gods turned from him. Your magic did that. Magic you used to save me. I would rather die than carry this guilt.”

  He glimpsed Kaell, arms bound. But when Aric stretched a hand to help, the dream always slipped away.

  Dust motes danced in sunlight through the stable door. The early morning light dazed. He
clambered to his knees, his fingers clamped to his sticky belly. The world tilted, blurred into nonsensical images, snatches of memory. Aric slumped into emptiness.

  When his wits returned, his cheek lay in straw. A face faded in and out. “I’ve found him.” Hands lifted and carried him. Darkness rushed him, tossed and tumbled him like a stormy sea and he fell into it with a sigh.

  “My son is mad. His wounds, the torture, made him so.”

  Through a fog of sleep, Aric recognised his father’s voice. Reluctantly, he stirred. Sunlight warmed his face. Damp cloth cooled his brow. The scent of sea and old parchment swirled, tantalisingly familiar.

  Where was he? Not the stables. Nor his bedchamber, though he lay on a feather mattress. Stone walls circled. Leather-bound books cluttered shelves and a tangy breeze through a low window rippled papers scattered on a table.

  The Sea Tower. Why was he here?

  His father leaned from a bedside stool. “How do you feel?”

  Aric thought about that. “I don’t know. A little strange.”

  “You lost more blood. The physician tended to you day and night. I thank The Three you live.” His father’s lined face clouded with pain. “I could not lose another child—could not.”

  Aric looked away, unable to bear this man’s grief. Do you blame me? Do you hate me? I didn’t save her. Couldn’t.

  Sorrow and guilt warred in his gut. No, do not think of Azenor.

  He coughed. “How long—”

  “You slept two days.”

  “Why am I in the Sea Tower? Not my chamber?”

  “I ordered a bed moved here. This room has a heavy door and lock.”

  “You’ve locked me in? How dare you.”

  His father shot to his feet. “I dare because you’re a reckless fool. You were in the stables. Muttering in your delirium about riding to warn that boy.”

  Aric rose to his elbows. “Is there any word? Of Kaell?”

  “I’ve done what I can to get word to Dal-Kanu, but this warrior has probably already left the city. Beyond that, it is not our concern. Leave it be, Aric.”