The 19th Bladesman

by S J Hartland

  He dipped the oar into fast-streaming water to keep them in the current. Banks flashed past. A mountain bulked ahead, a silhouette blotting the rose-fluxed horizon.

  They were somewhere in the Waste Mountains. Mountains he knew little about. Not safe, but free. Run, the ghost said. Yes, Kaell whispered.

  A waterfall’s thunder drowned every other sound as dusk’s crimson fugue splintered the horizon. In the churned river, the boat bucked and spun. Jutting rocks menaced. Reluctantly Kaell steered from the dangerous slipstream to the bank.

  Unease gnawed at him, banishing exhaustion. At midday, he glimpsed a boat far behind. Though he did not see it again, he guessed their pursuers were closing in.

  He jumped out to pull the craft through reeds. The forest thinned long ago to a treeless wetland, crowded with scraggly salt bushes, their bare branches rattling in a rising wind.

  Azenor woke with a start. “Where am I?”

  “In the boat. I hear a waterfall ahead. We must walk from here.”

  She stretched cramped limbs. Fascinated, he watched her, tracing Aric in the chiselled cheekbones, the lush mouth, dark lashes and brows. The same clay; a different mould.

  “That’s my first deep sleep since the ghoul ambush.” She accepted his hand to scramble onto the muddy shore.

  Kaell hid the boat in sickly bushes and smoothed mud with a leaf to hide their tracks. Probably useless. Any ghoul could track their scent. His own heightened senses proved that. Touch. Smell. Hearing … Azenor’s blood pulsing. Its scent.

  That terrible, shameful hunger uncoiled. Kaell shoved it down. Do not think of blood. Think only of getting to his lord. To end this.

  “Where are we?” Azenor groped for his tunic.

  “I don’t know exactly. Somewhere in the Waste Mountains.”

  “Ugggh.” She shuddered. “Waste Mountains? What’s in them?”

  “Ghouls.”

  She screwed up her face. “Oh, fooney.”

  “Well, you asked. Slavers. The Varee. I’m told they’re Archanin’s chosen people.”

  “Snakes? We’ve snake valleys in the Isles. Deserted except for venom hunters.”

  “Snakes, no doubt. I’ve heard stories, nonsense probably, about ancient crumbling cities in these mountains. Fields blackened by lightning. Many dangers.”

  “But nothing a bonded one fears.” Azenor laughed. “A bonded warrior is just another swaggerer, isn’t he? Like my brother. Swaggerers fear nothing.”

  “What’s a swaggerer?”

  “An arrogant, strutting dancer. Dances with swords.”

  “Ha. Did you hit your head in the boat?”

  “Very fooney. If I hit yours, I bet it rattles.”

  “Come.” Kaell took her hand, grinning. “I’ll carry you. Your feet are bare.”

  “I’m not helpless, Kaell.”

  He swung her up. Azenor beat his chest. “What are you doing? Put me down.”

  “Stop fretting,” he said. “Archanin’s blood makes me strong.”

  “Fretting? You sound like Aric.” She released a drawn-out sigh. “Oh, very well. Carry me away then, swaggerer. To the Isles, please.”

  “To this mysterious ‘he’? Is he a swaggerer too?”

  “A swaggering dancer of the first order.”

  “Swaggerers have orders?”

  “For sure. And all sorts of rules.”

  “Ha. Only now do I fully understand my dire predicament. I’m lost in dangerous mountains with a girl with a sharp tongue. No plan, no help on the way. But all’s well because I’m a swaggerer.”

  His grin faded. No, a monster.

  Purple dusk lingered as Kaell carried Azenor to a rocky mound. A rug of stunted bushes discoloured a plain sweeping to a darkling knob of distant pine forest.

  An alien landscape. Far different to the valleys and wooded slopes of the Silent Mountains. Even the ugly, ruptured gorge seemed welcoming next to this dismal place, surely long abandoned by men and women.

  “I’m truly lost,” he said.

  “What can you see?” Azenor wriggled to the ground.

  “Salt bushes. From the little I know of these mountains we go south. But where’s south?”

  “Isles seafarers steer by the sun and stars. Aric says to sail south look for The Wolf.”

  “Huh?”

  Azenor flung an arm up. “Exactly who hit their head? Look for a group of stars like a wolf’s head and sail, or walk, towards it.”

  “Does it have a long snout?”

  “How would I know? I haven’t seen it lately, thick head.”

  “What sort of insult is thick head?” Kaell could not hold back another grin. “Actually, there’s a rhyme in that: Hit his head and now his thoughts are thick and slow and out of sorts.”

  Azenor laughed. “Like I said. It rattles where your brain should be.”

  Kaell laced Azenor’s warm fingers through his own. Her teasing lightened the darkness burdening his thoughts.

  “Then south to the snout.” He lifted her into his arms.

  “Or north to nowhere? I trust you. You’re Khir’s Bonded Warrior.”

  “Khir surely turned from me,” he muttered. “No warrior lets his enemies capture him alive.” A yearning kindled. It wasn’t Khir’s approval he wanted, but his lord’s.

  “It’s easy to die, Kaell,” Azenor said. “Harder to survive.”

  Kaell plodded on in silence, careful not to stumble and drop her. Weariness blurred his footsteps. An eternity since he slept. An eternity since he fed. He dragged his tongue over his lips, too aware of her heart tolling against his chest, her pulsing blood.

  So hungry. Hungry.

  No. He dug his nails into his bloody palm. He must not lose control and hurt her.

  Dawn trailed opal tails through a black satin sky. The Wolf faded above mountains glazed in mist. Thunder clapped. Light streaked between sky-flung walls of stone; a lance smashing into a ribbed ravine. Then darkness curtained again.

  Beneath the trill of birdsong, the ripple of breeze, another sound, taffeta-soft, intruded. A furtive sound. Kaell whipped about, seeking to strip the blackness with his eyes. Mist swirled in hoar light. A bush trembled. The wind? A scuttling. Paws?

  “There! I see them.” Through blindingly turbid, grey cloud, shapes lurched.

  “Kaell.” Azenor stiffened in his arms as he broke into a run. “Is it them? Is it?”

  Steps pounded at his heels. A shape leapt at him. Kaell crashed down. The jolt tore Azenor from his arms. At once a ghoul fell on him, pinned him, a knee to his chest.

  “I’ve got him. Here.”

  Kaell drove his thumbs into the ghoul’s eyes. Howling, his attacker clutched at his face. Kaell hurled him off and rolled to his feet.

  “It’s me,” he said, reaching to pull Azenor up. She sobbed in relief. He took her hand and fled into the ravine. Towering sheets of stark rock closed about them.

  Kaell tripped often on uneven ground. Their pursuers fell also, their curses muffled, their steps eerily echoing in scattering fog.

  “They’re close,” one said. “Work your way back. We’ll find them.”

  Kaell led Azenor away from the voice. Dawn’s fragile light at last broke up the darkness. Pebbles dislodged by his foot scuttled into emptiness. His breath cut. He flung out an arm to hold Azenor back. But for his ghoul senses he would not have seen it.

  “What is it?”

  They tottered on the edge of a cliff. Far below a flat wasteland of scarred black earth bowled between mountains.

  “That’s a lightning plain.” Lastenarron emerged from the mist with a handful of armed ghouls. At Kaell’s startled look he laughed. “What? You don’t know? Watch, fool.”

  With a metallic, scorched odour, thunder crackled. Jagged light punched at earth. Azenor clutched at Kaell’s arm.

  “Nowhere to go, little flower. You can’t cross that plain. Surrender and I won’t hurt you—” Lastenarron grinned as he gestured to two ghouls with loaded bows. “Too badly.”
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  “I’m feeling particularly stubborn.” Kaell tore out his sword. His palm ached.

  “That’s your most attractive quality. Drop the weapon, blossom. Or I’ll put a bolt in you and carry you back, moaning and sobbing, to our lord.”

  How to escape? Even with the comfort of a sword, Kaell was less than he was. His humiliating capture, his captivity broke his spirit, his confidence.

  The archers edged closer. Azenor huddled against him. Her heart sang of fear, its pounding even now stirring that sickening hunger.

  “Put the sword down, Kaell. No doubt you think with our lord’s blood you’re special, strong enough to fight your way out of this. But it ends only one way, with or without violence. I hope it’s with.”

  Kaell frowned. “What do you mean special? You have his blood, too.”

  “Only Raggamirron does. And you. What makes you so deserving?” Lastenarron hitched up a lip in disgust. “Not going to surrender? Good. It’s violence then.”

  At his signal, ghouls advanced, but warily. “Don’t hurt the girl.” Lastenarron yawned. “Our lord is fond of her. But hurt Kaell all you like. Just leave him alive and in one piece. Makes it easier to drag him back rather than carry all the bits.”

  Azenor needled Kaell’s arm with her fingers. “What do we do?”

  “It took three arrows to bring you down when we hunted you near Thom,” Lastenarron said. “I’ll put three in you now and we’ll see how stubborn you feel, little flower.”

  Thom. His men slaughtered. Fury salted Kaell’s mouth. A red mist fogged his eyes. Make them pay. That single thought flashed. Make Lastenarron pay and pay.

  Rage, pain, burst out in a roar. With no plan, just the sword, Kaell ran at them.

  For a heartbeat stunned ghouls gaped. Then Lastenarron shouted. An arrow’s wind parted Kaell’s hair. Another whistling shaft skimmed his wrist. His sword spun away.

  He yelped but the pain, the spurt of blood didn’t stop him. He crashed into the archer. They hit the ground in a puff of dust. Kaell rolled to his feet. Kicked. The ghoul skidded across earth.

  Such strength in his every blow now. Elated at his power, he flung a startled ghoul through air like a spear.

  Arrows twanged. Kaell dived. More sank around him. Lastenarron drew back his bowstring. Kaell launched at him. The ghoul fell back. Kaell groped for a stone and smashed it into his face.

  Scrambling up, he rushed to Azenor. She huddled in a chaos of arrows and shouts, of surging bodies. He swung her over his shoulder and ran. Arrows zipped over his head. The ground rattled and throbbed as lightning flashed, the charged air hot and strange.

  Another arrow seared into a gnarled bush beside them. Kaell glanced over his shoulder.

  Lastenarron staggered up. Blood streamed from his gashed head. “You can’t hide, Kaell,” he shouted. “There’s nowhere to hide. Not for you.”

  They put the saltbushes, the river, the ghouls behind them. After a few days, Kaell dared hope they had lost their pursuers in the shadowed valleys.

  By the time they reached the Silent Mountain’s darkling forests, terpenic with pine, he realised spring was upon this land, that he’d been a prisoner for three months. It was hard to make sense of that.

  “I must have been in that dreadful place longer still,” Azenor said. That was all she’d tell him about her time as a captive. But as they walked, they spoke of many things. Tide’s End. Aric. Winters in the mountains, the fortress of Vraymorg. Its lord.

  “My lord will do the right thing,” Kaell confided one night around a fire.

  Azenor took a moment to work that out. Then she made an exasperated sound. “You expect him to kill you? You do, don’t you?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  She groped for his hand. “You don’t have to die, Kaell. Take me to Tide’s End. You’ll be safe there, too.”

  “It’s my duty to return to Vraymorg. You’ll be safe there.”

  A week into their journey, he told her about the tournament in the Downs where Caelmarsh sent soldiers to abduct him, and a woman tried to smother him.

  “You fell in a hole?” Azenor burst out laughing. “I’m sorry. It’s not funny, I know.”

  “Maybe it’s a bit funny,” Kaell said. “In hindsight.”

  “Why would Caelmarsh risk the displeasure of the king and the gods—not to mention your lord—for the sake of throwing you in some dark cell?”

  “He says I killed his daughter.” Kaell didn’t look at her. Easier to speak about this that way. “Or as good as.”

  “But Annatise Caelmarsh fell in the river or something.”

  “On her wedding night,” Kaell said. “The king discovered she was with child and threw her out of not only his bed but of the castle.”

  “Oh.”

  “It wasn’t my child. Caelmarsh thinks it was. But it wasn’t.”

  “Oh,” Azenor said again.

  Another week passed. Kaell hoped they might be safe. But in the dense forest beyond the ravine, drums pursued, their toneless beat creaking up his backbone.

  “Is it about us?” Azenor whispered. “A message to someone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He remembered standing as a child upon the walls of Vraymorg, listening to the rolling drums as sentries clutched at amulets and muttered to Khir.

  “The Varee,” Vraymorg once told him.

  “We must hunt them, my lord,” Kaell declared with all the fierce clarity of a child of ten.

  Vraymorg laughed and clapped his shoulder. “That’s my business, Kaell. Yours is to kill ghouls—when you’re older, of course.”

  Kaell was older now but more afraid. When he was a child, his lord seemed so powerful, so big nothing could harm a boy under his protection.

  “Can we rest?” Azenor said. “I’m exhausted.”

  Kaell set her down and peered about.

  The forest tangled with black trunks sunk deep in shed leaves, vines and spindly bushes. Spikelets of pea-shaped citrina on shrubs spilled the last of their winter perfume. But elsewhere leaves budded on boughs. Wildflowers pushed up in grass. A stream murmured.

  Twilight rimmed the black sky with a cacophony of red streaks. Two moons blinked through branches. A third clung to the horizon. Pale, full. Ready to ascend.

  Kaell’s blood iced. A three-moon night.

  He jumped up. “We’re in danger.”

  “No,” Azenor wailed. “They can’t have found us.”

  Panic spun Kaell’s thoughts. Fire. That held off the Lost. Yes, start a fire.

  The red dusk drained as though a whirlpool sucked its colours into a black pit. The last moon assaulted the night. Awakened shadows twitched. Trees soughed with murmurs.

  “What was that?” Azenor’s voice shrilled. “Kaell, something’s there.”

  Kaell pulled her to him, his arms a shield. Three moons towered in shards of silver brilliance. Branches creaked. A shape wisped, lifelessly pale. Figures staggered from the trees, wraith-like, arms outstretched.

  He knew what they were. But he only ever glimpsed them from the safety of Vraymorg’s high walls. Now terror stripped his breath. Even if he had a sword, steel did not kill the Lost.

  “Don’t move or speak.”

  Azenor trembled. “I don’t understand. What’s there?”

  A wraith turned. Arms outstretched, fingers curled as claws, it lumbered towards them. It was the shape of a man, but ragged cloth hung from a body little more than ghastly flesh covering bone. A sickly sweet odour cloyed. A crackling scraped from its throat.

  Kaell put his lips to Azenor’s ear. “Do not move.”

  The wraith’s breath chilled his face. Moonlight fell on pallid skin, on gleaming teeth. Its flailing arm swatted Azenor. She slumped in his arms.

  Quietly, shaking, Kaell lowered her to the ground. He stood over her, his body the only protection he could offer.

  More misshapen figures lurched their way. Flat gazes frosted. The first wraith groped at Kaell’s face. He gagged
at the waxy stench.

  “Let me in.” Its voice rustled, its touch icy.

  He dared not move. Dared not breathe. The wraith pawed his lips. “I want to be free,” it hissed, forcing his mouth open. “Let me in. Let me go home.”

  Swooping coldness burnt his throat. Kaell gasped, spluttered. He could not run. His scream caught against his ribs.

  “Get away unclean thing.” A man poked a flaming torch at the wraith. Howling, it fell back.

  As though released from a spell, Kaell dropped to the ground beside Azenor, coughing. His breath frosted. The air smelt of ash, burning pitch. Bobbing torches carved flames through silver-flecked darkness. Wraiths screeched.

  “Quickly, come with us.” A man beckoned.

  Shaken, Kaell staggered up. He slung Azenor over his shoulder and followed the stranger. The man’s companions fell in behind, jabbing at the Lost with flaming pitch.

  More wraiths emerged from the trees, their cries an awful pleading. “Let us in. Free us.”

  “This way,” the stranger said. “It’s not far.”

  He led Kaell through forest etched with opaque light, along overgrown trails where sharp branches cut and bruised skin. The crisp air beneath the trees hardly breathed, spidery, stark bushes still, but a breeze trilled through the top canopy of leaves.

  Pines drowned the sickly stink as the Lost pursued, their shuffling feet crackling leaves, their hissing a sibilant curse. Paws pattered from their path. The chirr of insects faded only to pick up once they passed.

  The strangers shouted and thrust flames at wraiths. One caught alight. It thrashed soundlessly as the fire took hold, collapsing to a blackened, smoking hulk.

  A mountain’s bulk loomed. A light glimmered. Kaell followed his guide onto a sloping path strewn with sharp stones. He stumbled. Azenor groaned but did not stir.

  Across a gaping cave mouth a fire pit glowed. Two men stoking embers looked up sharply at their approach.

  “It’s us,” the man said. He beckoned to Kaell. “Inside. You’ll be safe.”

  Kaell carried Azenor into an enormous cavern. Men crouched around cook fires turned to stare. Flames in another pit threw shapes on a far wall. It was a sheer pane of stone, intricately carved. The façade of an ancient, crumbling ruin. An arch in its centre framed a passage burrowing into the mountain.