She held her ground. “You will not fight alone, Lorimer. Black Herran and I will fight with you, as will the others.”
His hands twitched, eager to wrap around her throat and squeeze. “Black Herran is a betrayer and you fight for no one except yourself. You trust nothing except what you can kill and enslave.”
She lifted a hand in warning, black mist writhing around her fingers. “Watch your tongue, vampire. You are undead, and I, a necromancer – this will not end well for you.”
He smiled and flexed clawed fingers. “You think yourself the master of life and death, but I have trodden that knife’s edge for centuries. If you think you can strip my soul from this house of flesh and bone, then you are very much mistaken.”
Her eyes narrowed, and for a moment it seemed she might relish the challenge, but then she took a deep breath and lowered her hand. “We all stand to gain from crushing the Lucent Empire and we have much to lose if they sweep across all Essoran. Their faith holds no mercy for the likes of us, nor for any race other than human. Who now is left to oppose them? The southern city states and towns from shore to shore all squabble amongst themselves, and the barbarous tribes care more about warring with one another when not fighting the orcs.”
He hissed in annoyance. “Cease cloaking your words in layers of deception. What do you stand to gain?”
She was silent for a long moment. “I made a deal with Black Herran. She knows where my brother and sister can be found. In exchange I am to help crush the army the Lucent Empire will send in the summer.”
“Truth finally falls from your lips,” he said. “Your obsession means nothing to me. What can you possibly offer to stop me tearing out your heart, never mind wage war on your behalf?”
She swallowed and looked into his eyes. “If you agree to protect Tarnbrooke for Black Herran then I will swear a blood oath that once we are victorious, I shall assist you and your remaining people to regain Fade’s Reach.”
That gave him pause. Her sorcery was undeniably formidable. “Assist? Pah! Once we are victorious you will swear to serve my people and I until Fade’s Reach is free of the Lucent Empire.”
There was no hesitation. “I agree to your terms.”
He stared. This was… unlike her. Where was the bargaining and twisting of words, the wrestling for position and advantage?
Lorimer noticed Estevan’s eyes twitch open. He had been awake and listening for some time. “My lord,” he croaked, “I advise against it. This vile creature cannot be trusted.”
Lorimer snorted. “I have not forgotten her nature. And yet I require her help to restore our people’s home and freedom.” He held up his hand and ran a claw down the palm to open up a long glistening wound, then extended it to her. “You will swear the blood oath here and now.”
Maeven stared at it, then took a knife from her belt and nicked the back of her hand instead. “Wounds and healing are nothing to you – only idiots slit their palms open.”
He grasped the back of her hand, their blood mingling. A frisson of binding magic ran through them both. The oath had been sealed. Estevan’s eyes closed with a disappointed sigh.
“Well,” she said, bending down to wipe her gory hand on the tattered gambeson of a Lucent soldier, “now that is resolved you had best take Estevan somewhere that he might recover. We need to make haste in recruiting all the others who still survive.” She handed him the list of names Black Herran had given her.
Lorimer loosened a low and malevolent laugh. “Well now, this will prove interesting.”
CHAPTER 4
From a shadowed doorway across the street, Lorimer and Maeven watched through the window as a fight broke out inside the decrepit shack the locals called a tavern. Years ago, some misguided devotee had carved the sunburst emblem of the Lucent’s Bright One into the front door, and it was now overlaid with graphic sexual graffiti. The symbol split in two as a grizzled drunkard crashed through the tavern door.
The red-haired older man tumbled into the dark and muddy street in a shower of splinters, cursing and dragging two heavy-set farm boys down with him. He was tall with wide shoulders and battle-scarred arms, but his grey-shot tangled hair and bulging belly showed his best fighting days were long behind him. All three men’s tunics and hose were ripped and stained with blood and beer.
Faces peered from the tavern’s shattered doorway as the men exchanged a flurry of punches and kicks and then rolled through cart-churned mud and dung, cursing and grunting, limbs flailing. Drinkers exchanged coin as bets were placed.
Blood gushed from a fresh cut on the old warrior’s forehead, staining his ginger beard. One of the farm boy’s flailing elbows cracked into his face, causing blood and snot to dribble from an oft-broken nose.
The warrior grabbed the first farm boy by the throat and spat blood in his eyes. The boy yelped and rolled free, calloused hands scrubbing at his eyes. It freed the warrior’s hand to grab the other boy by the balls and squeeze. The second farm boy howled and then curled up cradling his crotch, sobbing.
The old warrior staggered upright, wobbling on unsteady feet. He closed one eye to focus on the prone form in front of him and then rammed a boot into the boy’s belly. He swayed, peering at the two cloaked and hooded figures watching him from across the street. The man dismissed them from his clouded mind and began weaving back towards the tavern, slurring some kind of savage battle chant.
The first farm boy finished wiping the blood from his eyes and lurched after the old warrior. “Oi! We ain’t done with you yet!” He swung a wide right hook.
The man swayed and the boy’s clumsy punch sailed past his head. Maeven and Lorimer could not be certain if that was intentional or due to extreme inebriation. He spun, his own fist jabbing out to snap the farm boy’s head back. It was a fine blow but then the drunken warrior continued spinning, arms flailing as he tried to regain his balance. The farm boy slowly fell to his knees and then pitched face-down in the mud. The older man finally managed to find his balance, then promptly doubled over and vomited a foamy stream of ale and bile over the back of the boy’s head.
Disgruntled murmurs came from the tavern doorway as coin changed hands again. With the excitement over, the patrons slipped back into the warmth and their own ale cups.
Lorimer glared at Maeven. “Is this old and decrepit creature really Tiarnach, who was once a god of war? Are you certain?”
Maeven closed her eyes and sighed. “More of a demigod really, but he didn’t take kindly to that. I am quite sure that is him. And you thought your position in life had fallen far, Lorimer.”
Tiarnach yawned, then slowly toppled forward onto the farm boy’s back and slid down to join him in the muddy pool of his own vomit, emitting rasping snores loud enough to wake the dead.
Maeven pinched between her eyes. “I can already feel the headache brewing. Damn him, he is going to be more of a nightmare than ever.”
Lorimer chuckled nastily and approached their target. Tiarnach stank, not just of fresh vomit and alcohol, but the old sweat and sour piss scent of neglect. He grabbed a handful of greasy hair and lifted Tiarnach’s face from the mud to examine him carefully.
“A face of barely healed scars with the stink of infection on them,” Lorimer said. “He is no god or demigod. He is merely a mortal man long past his prime – nothing more than a drunken wretch.”
“Tiarnach was the war god of the Cahal’gilroy,” Maeven said. “A small god, granted, but still old and fearsome. Even as he is now, his knowledge of waging war is unsurpassed.”
Lorimer’s eyes held great doubt. “Never did any human display more ferocity than the Cahal. Those madmen fought against all odds, even against me.” His voice held a touch of admiration, something Maeven had heard but rarely from his lips. “What happened to bring him to this sorry state?”
“Black Herran’s documents say that after they failed to take the walls of Rakatoll the weakened remnants of the Cahal were hunted down and exterminated, oh, twenty years or so ago, b
y what eventually became the Lucent Empire,” she said. “Not a man, woman or child of that bloodline survived. Tiarnach is a god without a people, and all their stories of his might are now whispers upon the wind.”
“A shame to see how he honours the memory of his tribe,” Lorimer replied.
Maeven scowled. “He lost everything. His family, his friends, his worshippers – his whole people.”
“So touchy, Maeven. Did I hit a raw wound? How are your own family?”
“When was the last time you loved anything, you crusty old monster?”
Lorimer let Tiarnach’s head drop back. He turned to face her, expressionless. “I love many things. Love was never my problem. You had best drag him on your own. I refuse to carry this stinking pig.”
The farm boy with bruised balls struggled up to his feet and limped towards Lorimer. “You ain’t taken this scum anywhere. He owes–”
Lorimer’s clawed hand crunched through the man’s ribcage. He ripped the heart free in a welter of blood. Maeven started – she hadn’t even seen the vampire move. The farm boy gawped down at the hole in his chest for a split second, then collapsed to the mud.
“One for the road,” Lorimer said, teeth elongating into fangs. He bit into the steaming organ with relish and ambled off into the darkness, leaving Maeven to try and figure out what to do with an unconscious man who was once a god.
Tiarnach was deep in the throes of the old nightmare. He was stuck reliving a moment of glory while knowing that the worst moment of his life was just around the corner, and yet unable to change a single thing.
The war god grinned and rammed his sword through the miller’s chest, exulting as hot blood gushed over his hands. He roared in victory and lifted a bloody fist skyward, the cry taken up by his warriors. The old miller had been the last villager of Fenoch Mill to stand and fight the Cahal’gilroy. Tiarnach admired his bravery, and it was this man’s honour to die by the hand of a god. Out of respect, he would take the man’s skull home and keep it in his temple. The rest of the villagers were cowering curs who would die like vermin, drowned in the river instead of slain in honourable battle.
The Cahal’gilroy had never been dirt-grubbing farmers – they were a warrior people, reivers who came down from the hills to raid the towns and villages of soft southerners and slake their desires for women, men, meat and ale. Fenoch Ford had wisely paid them off in goods and livestock, but their neighbours at the water mill upstream had been defiant. An example had to be made before others dared to have the same idea.
His men whooped in delight at the discovery of barrels in the cellar of the mill, and on broaching them found them full of strong imported brandy rather than ale. The village’s painted whores kept them entertained and the sounds of feasting, fucking and the screams of torment filled the air all night long. In the small hours somebody challenged their god to drain an entire barrel of brandy on his own. He accepted and he succeeded, naturally, being an immortal youth, but at the cost of all memory and consciousness.
It was the fire that woke him from his drunken stupor, boots smouldering as flames licked up the muddy leather. He groaned and staggered upright. His head hammered and rang. Smoke rose through the floorboards and the wooden stairs to the ground floor fell away into an inferno.
The entire mill was burning. Outside, men were screaming. He booted a window shutter open to witness the entire village enveloped in flames, every door blocked from the outside as his people within shouted for help, choking on the smoke. More warriors of the Cahal’gilroy lay dead in their blankets, throats slit while they slept off the strong alcohol. Mailed soldiers stalked the streets, felling more of his people before they were able to organise a proper defence.
A man armoured in silver appeared at the head of a force of archers, bearing the emblem of the Lucent Queendom on his white tabard. The visor of his helm was worked into the likeness of a falcon, and he was laughing. The village’s painted whores laughed with him, cleaning the blood of Tiarnach’s kin off their knives.
The war god snarled and climbed out onto the creaking water wheel, deftly making his way down towards the battle. “I’ll gut you all like pigs!” he shouted.
“Your people die at the hands of the Falcon Prince,” their leader shouted. “And so will you, heathen.”
An arrow thudded into Tiarnach’s chest, then another flew deep into his thigh. He ignored them and leapt from the wheel onto one of the soldiers, slamming the man’s helmet into the ground so hard that steel and skull flattened. He picked up a fallen sword then staggered, nausea rising as a horrific emptiness filled him. All his power was draining away like a burst wineskin.
Somewhere, far to the north, the families of his warriors, his devout believers, were dying.
“Ignorant savages,” the knight said. “It was pitifully simple to kill them while you slept. I hope you enjoyed my barrels of brandy, for it was your last. My second, Sir Malleus, is even now burning your hidden village and putting all within it to the sword. The murdering days of the Cahal’gilroy are finished.”
Tiarnach roared and lifted his sword. An arrow took him in the throat. Such pain! Mortality was returning as his believers died. He stumbled backwards and fell into the river. Blood and water gushed into his mouth, choking him as the current sucked him under.
He came to, screaming, washed up many leagues downriver. He was alive and whole with wounds healed by the dregs of his godly power. But he was alone. Truly alone. The Cahal’gilroy were all gone: men, women, even the blessed little children…
It took him a week on foot to return to the ruin of his hidden village. The Lucent bastards had left the corpses where they fell to be gnawed on by wolves and scavengers. He built a pyre and watched them burn, wailing and sobbing until he ran dry. Finally, no longer a god but just a man, he set out for revenge.
He failed.
Time and time again he failed until it broke him. He gave up trying as the Lucent Queendom became a rising Empire with the Falcon Prince as its head.
Twenty years of failure – it couldn’t help but change a man…
Tiarnach jerked awake from that old nightmare, sodden, freezing and face down on rough wood, splinters jabbing his cheek. The acidic burn of vomit lingered at the back of his parched throat and it felt like an army of blacksmiths were beating the shit out of his skull. He rolled onto his back and blinked away the sleep, staring up at a blanket of grey cloud. He opened his mouth to catch the drizzling rain but it didn’t help.
He was lurching up and down, and the sounds of hooves and wheels sloshing through mud gave him some inkling that he’d been tossed into the back of a cart. He smelled blood, and it probably wasn’t his. Slavers again most likely. They’d regret taking him.
He raised an aching, heavy head and peered at the two cloaked drivers with hoods up against the rain. His tongue felt like sandpaper as he tried to moisten cracked lips, wincing as he encountered a split.
A sodden family of five trudged through the mud at the side of the road, barefoot. Their few belongings were stuffed into sacks slung over their shoulders. More refugees from the Lucent purges in the north. Easy prey for bandits, or an old warrior in need of coin.
“Our passenger is awake,” a deep male voice said, the one holding the reins to the shaggy and sorry-looking horse pulling them along.
The other hooded figure turned slightly towards him. Tiarnach started to grin when he noticed the shapely bulge of breasts under the cloak. Then he saw the black tendrils of tattoo swarming across her scarred face, reaching towards him hungrily.
“Fuck’s up with your face?” he blurted out.
“This one is a natural born charmer,” the man said. “Perhaps he likes his women soft and pretty.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed.
“Ach, no,” Tiarnach said. “Scars tell a story. Why hide it behind that weird tattoo?”
“My personal business is not your concern,” she hissed. “And you would do well to remember that, Tiarnach.”
> He grinned. “Fierce little thing, eh? Wait… how do you know my name?”
The man up front glanced back, revealing dark skin and a strip of black cloth tied across his eyes. Tiarnach blinked and sat up, regretting it instantly. He leaned over the side of the lurching cart and retched.
“You, big black lad up there,” he gasped. “You’re either blind or a blood drinker from Fade’s Reach. Which is it, eh?”
The man grunted. “Seems the alcohol hasn’t rotted all your instincts.”
The woman up front chuckled.
He groaned and massaged his temples. “Don’t know what you are, lass, other than bloody stupid – some sorceress most like – but him, well now… I’m older than you might think. Old enough to remember a tribe of folks with dark skin that make their home in the northern fells. Not many of them sort this side of the sea, save the ports o’ course, and none of those smelled like blood.”
“And just what do you remember of my people?” the man said.
Tiarnach grimaced as he sifted through dusty old memories. “Grand fighters they were. Good scholars, too, what with charting the stars and suchlike. The old magics ran strong and fierce in their veins: shapeshifters, shaman and blood magicians and the like. Wait, no, that voice… can it be? Lorimer Felle?”
“How interesting,” the woman said, turning to the driver. “I spent two years with you and that one just told me more of your history than you ever did.”
The man remained silent, staring straight at the road ahead.
Tiarnach groaned. “And that stink of death means that’s a necromancer next to you. Is that your chattel then? Or… ah shit.” He squinted through the rain. “It’s fucking Maeven, isn’t it? Fucking hells. I thought I’d seen the back of you bastards years ago.”
Maeven turned and smiled coldly. “So good to see you again, Tiarnach.”
His day was worsening by the second. He scowled and struggled up onto his knees, fumbling at his hip for the sword that he’d swapped for a barrel of ale in some dingy tavern years ago. “The fuck am I doing in the back of your cart?”
The Maleficent Seven Page 4