Against the Unweaving

by D. P. Prior

  Rhiannon was panting hard, shaking her head as if she couldn’t understand something. “What the shog are you talking about?” She pointed straight between Gaston’s eyes. “It was this piece of shit!”

  “Lies!” Gaston had his sword half drawn as Yeffrik’s fist crunched into his nose, splitting it like a ripe melon.

  Gaston went down hard, the big man kneeling astride him, clubbing away at his face. Justin shoulder-charged Yeffrik, sent him sprawling to the dirt. He tried to rise, but Gaston was up in a flash and ran his sword through Yeffrik’s chest. Rhiannon screamed, and Elias began to shake. Jessy ran towards her husband, but Justin caught her and flung her to the ground. She got straight back up, but Elgin smashed his pommel into her head. Her eyes rolled and her legs folded under her. With a sickening thud, she hit the ground, blood trickling from her lips.

  A door slammed, but Elias couldn’t see the house as the shield wall came towards him. He tripped over the step of the cart, trying to scramble up. Rhiannon’s screaming shredded his thoughts. He was vaguely aware of the Statue of Eingana cutting into his fingers where he gripped it so tightly.

  Gaston lunged at him, sword aimed at his face. Elias tumbled out of the way, the statue starting to singe his skin. More screaming—not Rhiannon this time, but a muffled wailing from a dark place. Something thrashed and cowered behind his vision: a shaggy ape with the head of a dog. Shapes spilled from its eyes, hideous, contorted, all teeth and talons, boiling flesh, and lashing limbs. The images swelled until his mind burst, spewing them forth.

  Shrill cries tore through him as the knights blocked their ears and clawed at their eyes. Shields clattered to the ground, swords clashing on top of them. White knights, swaying knights, screaming knights; froth bubbling from gaping mouths, eyes like saucers staring at invisible horrors.

  Elias climbed into the driving seat, dropped the statue beside him and cracked the reins. Hector lurched forward swatting a knight aside with his great head. He turned the cart towards the road and leaned forward to slap the horse into a run. As they rolled onto the gravel, Elias cast a look over his shoulder. The knights were all down, writhing on the ground next to the bodies of Yeffrik and Jessy. Rhiannon’s head hung over the side of the cart, wailing and sobbing. Elias caught a glimpse of a small boy running for the woods. Sammy. He should stop; go back. But the cart kept on moving, the house falling behind them. The White Knights were climbing to their feet, Gaston yelling orders and slashing the air with his sword.

  WHERE NOUSIA ENDS

  The stars looked different in Sahul, fell in different patterns. Pinpricks in the pall of night, a thousand openings to a silvery hereafter.

  Shader uncrossed his legs, rubbing and patting them to encourage the blood to flow. He rolled to his knees and sat back on his haunches.

  “Ain’t you finished yet?” Elpidio stomped up the steps to the aftcastle. “Captain says we’re nearly there.”

  Shader closed the Liber and returned it to his coat pocket. “He’s got better eyes than me then.”

  “You can see the moon, can’t you?”

  It hardly needed pointing out, but Elpidio did so all the same: a sickle-blade of silver low down on the horizon.

  “You can navigate by the moon?”

  Elpidio leaned over the prow resting his chin in his hands. “Captain can. Guess anyone could with a chart and a thingy.”

  “A sextant. You forget already, eh?” Podesta climbed up to join them. “What are you doing kneeling? I’m not the Ipsissimus, you know.”

  Shader stood, grimacing as the blood pooled towards his feet. “I thought we were running blind to avoid the mawgs. Didn’t realize you knew where we were heading.”

  Podesta put his hands on Elpidio’s shoulders and stared out into the blackness. “There’s a monster of a reef just north of here. Dreamers call it the Makara. Running blind would likely leave us holed. Don’t want to be swimming for it in these waters, eh, boy? Sharks here are as big as horses. I’ll let you into a secret. The reason the mawgs never catch us is that they can’t navigate by night. That’s why we can take the Anglesh route. It’s good, eh? All you need is a sextant—” He clapped Elpidio on the head. “—some charts, and an almanac. Easy. I should show you, eh?”

  “What’s that?” Elpidio pointed out the black outlines of what appeared to be a forest on the sea.

  “Port Sarum. It seems Hagalle has been busy, eh? That’s a lot of masts and most of ’em galleons or my name’s not Amidio Podesta. Maybe he’s going to invade Ashanta, uh?”

  “Doesn’t have the strength,” Shader said. “He’s more likely to use them to ferry his troops round the coast to give the Eastern Lords a bit of a reminder.”

  Podesta smacked his lips. “Maybe. It would be easier than a march across the interior. It’s a lot of new ships to just sit there, eh?”

  The Aura Placida slipped into the harbor, gentle waves sloshing against the prow, sailors nattering in the rigging, smoking on the deck. Podesta did his rounds, patting as many men as he could on the back, spreading good cheer. Shader watched the first hints of red appear on the horizon, the skyline of Sarum starting to emerge, jutting towers and arched bridges, the benign glow of lamplight from the sprawl of awakening houses. Far off to the north, he could see the bell-tower of Pardes, stark and lonely, set amidst the limestone monoliths of the “petrified forest”. He wondered if the Gray Abbot was perched atop the tower awaiting his return, waiting for the doors to close behind him with the finality of the tomb.

  “Now what do you make of that, my friend?” Podesta sprang up the steps and guided him by the shoulder.

  They were passing alongside a smaller vessel with a shallow keel and four masts.

  “Isn’t that the Dolphin?”

  “Must have left Aeterna just after we did.” Podesta shook his head. “Impossible Diaz should have got here first.”

  “She’s a fast ship.”

  “Not that fast.” Podesta clicked his fingers. “He must have taken our route. The spineless bastard finally struck up the nerve to try the Anglesh Isles, eh?”

  Shader couldn’t imagine Captain Diaz taking unnecessary risks. He was a calculating man, hard and unscrupulous, but he’d never take the chance of running into mawgs. Unless…

  “Someone must be paying him big money, eh?” Podesta said. “Maybe the Templum?”

  The Dolphin retreated from view as they found their berth and Podesta gave orders for the lowering of the gangplank. Shader retrieved the Sword of the Archon from his cabin, said a quick prayer of thanks, and headed for dry land with the eagerness of a drunk for a bottle.

  “Good luck, my friend,” Podesta called from the forecastle.

  Shader made a visor of his hand and squinted up at the captain’s silhouette against the rising sun. “Not staying in Sarum?”

  “Maybe a day or two. We’ve got business up in Gladelvi.” He touched a finger to his lips. “Big Templum contract. Don’t tell Hagalle.”

  “Templum? But…”

  “Medicines, supplies. You know the sort of thing, uh?”

  A crewman bumped into Shader and muttered a curse. With a will of its own, Shader’s hand flew to the pommel of the gladius. Blood crisscrossed the back of the man’s shirt, evidence of a recent flogging. Cleto. If ever there was a man to bear a grudge.

  Shader waved goodbye to Podesta and then caught sight of Elpidio staring out at Sarum as if it were a fairy tale castle, just as he had himself the first time he’d seen the impossibly tall towers left over from the fall of the Old World. Sabas emerged from the galley and gave him a meaty grin, and then Shader was off down the gangplank and back on Sahulian soil.

  ***

  Shader stamped red sand from his boots, pulled his broad-brimmed hat off and held it to his chest. Squinting at the pink and purple sky, he ran his fingers through sweat-drenched hair. Dawn broke in a matter of heartbeats in Sahul, the sun always in a hurry to scorch everything in sight without mercy. He had perhaps an hour before it reached its
zenith and no further progress could be made. That was the time for lazing beside the waters of the Delling, praying for the cooling breeze to blow in from the ocean. When you needed to lay down weapons and grab a pint at the Griffin. Pretty much the only opportunities for practice were at the beginning and end of the day.

  Not that he’d be doing much of that now.

  Gaston had taken it hardest. Shader had told him on the eve of his trip to Aeterna. He’d returned to the barracks while the lads were training and Gaston had thought he’d come back to them. Best to end it then, he’d thought, and then to finally end his inner struggles at the tournament. One last victory, prove things to himself, and then give it all up. Gaston had pleaded with Shader to take him to Aeterna, to not make any decision about the White Order until they returned. It was all he had, and Shader wished he could do something about it. The chance to be someone, to be a knight of the White Order, had been the making of him. Or at least it would have been had Shader remained in Oakendale.

  The lad had never got over the conversion of his father. Bovis had become more Nousian than the Ipsissimus, more intolerant than Exemptus Silvanus. More intolerant than Shader himself. Bovis said it like it was. Couldn’t be a Nousian and a killer. He’d seen the Elect as an aberration, denounced Shader as a heretic. Funny thing was, Shader agreed with him. He just couldn’t quite let go. The White Order had only served to fuel his own personal war between Nous and the sword. Between his mother and father, Ignatius had always said.

  Much as he didn’t want to admit it, though, Shader knew it was all just excuses. The real reason he couldn’t go on with life in Oakendale was much simpler, much more human. The real reason was Rhiannon.

  Tugging off his coat, he began to fold it, but then caught sight of something moving in the hazy distance. A dark smudge shimmering in the heat, heedless of the sun, just as he’d been when he’d first arrived in Sahul.

  The figure came into focus the way that a sharp slap can shake the grog of drunkenness from you. A tall hat, sunlight glinting from a buckle at the front. Long black coat—not dissimilar to Shader’s, and totally unsuited to the Sahulian summer. The man stopped twenty yards from him, one hand on the hilt of a rapier, the other clutching a heavy book. He tilted the hat to show his face—a lean face with sunken eyes, a triangle of a beard flecked with gray.

  “Deacon Shader?”

  Shader dropped his coat, letting the man see the swords scabbarded at his hips, the hint of mail beneath his surcoat. He flipped his hat back into place, pulling down the brim to keep the sun from his eyes.

  “Yes, I see that you are.” The words were quietly spoken, precise and clipped, covering the distance between them like an actor’s up into the gods. “I have had more trouble finding you than I would have liked, but I am not one to complain. Do what must be done, Ain willing.”

  “You’re from Aeterna?” Shader was surprised they’d found him so soon. After all, Sahul was a long way from Latia.

  “Bardol Shin. Investigator Shin of the Templum Judiciary. You know, of course, why I have come.” Shin’s expression remained neutral. He didn’t even show the slightest discomfort at the rivulets of sweat running down his face from beneath his hat.

  “The Ipsissimus noticed his new Keeper was missing? Sent you to bring me home?”

  No trace of a smile. He may have sighed, but if he did it must have been a small one. There was the slightest shrug of his shoulders, a movement of his coat. “His Divinity has absolute trust in the Judiciary. I doubt he is even aware of my mission. Anything he needs to know will be conveyed to him by Exemptus Silvanus, and in your case, I’m sure His Divinity would have much sympathy.”

  Unlike Silvanus. The Prefect of the Judiciary was a notorious conservative, utterly puritanical and widely favored to be the next Ipsissimus. With the backing of his henchmen in the Judiciary, Shader couldn’t see it being any other way.

  “I have been at sea for six weeks. Six weeks with the scum of the earth. Privateers, I’ll warrant, under a certain Captain Diaz.” Shin enunciated the name with great precision, as if he were dredging it from a carefully organized mental archive. “You are familiar with the name?”

  “I think you know the answer to that.” How could he forget the outward bound trip to Aeterna on board the Dolphin? “That how you found me?”

  “Diaz said he had never heard of you. He was lying of course. I can always smell a rat. He seemed to have a plan to get me drunk, but the trouble with such scheming is that—”

  “You don’t drink.”

  “Precisely.”

  “You’re not likely to go down well in Sahul, then.”

  Shin took a step closer. “Going down well in Sahul is hardly top of my list of desires. I am a simple man, Shader. Simple and down to earth. All I desire is to do Ain’s will, but as he speaks only through his most reverent servants, I am bound to do the exemptus’s. You will not, I take it, return without a fight?”

  “And land myself in the Judiciary’s dungeons? Hardly proportionate to the crime of wanting to be left alone.”

  Shin bent over from the waist to lay his book on the ground. “If you wanted to be left alone, you should not have taken solemn vows. There is no place in the Elect for deserters and no room in Nousia for lapsed consecrated knights.”

  “Then perhaps you’ve not noticed. Sahul isn’t part of Nousia.”

  Shin may have wrinkled his nose at that, but it was such a small reaction as to be almost indiscernible. “It is the people who make the kingdom.”

  There was the faintest of rasps as he drew his rapier. Shader’s blades leapt clear of their scabbards, his father’s longsword and the Sword of the Archon.

  “I have been to the abbey, you know.” Shin made a couple of practice lunges and held the blade vertically in front of his face. “The Gray Abbot was as tight-lipped as I would have expected, but a certain Frater Elphus was most instructive. He said you had not been cut out for monastic life. Said you had caused a spot of bother in the city. He also mentioned your exploits in the village of Oakendale.” Again the careful pronunciation, as if he’d committed the name to memory along with Ain knows how many others, all filed away for some undisclosed day of retribution. “Establishing an order of religious knights, even if only a poor parody of the Elect, is about as serious a crime as you can commit. Besides reneging on your vows, that is. I am afraid they will have to be dealt with once I have finished with you.”

  “You may want to examine your conscience, Investigator. Thought I detected a note of pride there.”

  Shin frowned—just for a moment. “Confidence in one’s divinely bestowed abilities is not the same thing as pride. If Ain has blessed me with the finest fencing skills in Nousia, who am I to deny it?”

  “Such a pity we’re in Sahul.”

  Shader sprang to the attack with the suddenness of thought, longsword thrusting, gladius arcing in a vicious swing. Shin spun away from the onslaught with the grace of a dancer, the tip of his rapier darting for Shader’s unprotected heart. With a turn of the wrist, the longsword parried it and slid down its length to the basket-guard. Shin snatched the blade away and skipped back in a tight semicircle.

  “Good eyes, I will grant you. Sharp reflexes too. I see the rumors amongst your confreres were not exaggerated.”

  Shin was good himself. More than good. Shader could tell from his poise, his balance, that he was a master swordsman, and he was swift as a striking serpent with it.

  “I am a little surprised you showed no recognition of my name.” Shin circled him, sword point lowered. “I have quite the reputation back home.”

  “With the ladies? Or for being the life and soul of the party?”

  One of Shin’s cheeks began to twitch, and his eyes narrowed. Shader tracked them, scarcely daring to blink. There! The tiniest glance to the left gave the game away. Shin lunged with bewildering speed. Shader swayed out of the way and felt the hot spray of blood on his forearm as the gladius found its mark in the investigator�
�s throat. Shin’s eyes bulged, his lips moving, nothing but pink froth coming out. The rapier dropped to the ground, his knees buckled, and he fell on top of it.

  Shader picked up Shin’s Liber and opened it upon his corpse. He wiped the gladius on Shin’s coat, and sheathed both swords. Shin should have caught up with him in Aeterna, spared himself six weeks aboard the Dolphin. Ain knows what that would have done for his soul. Shader knelt beside his body and thumbed through the pages until he came to the Rite for the Dead. A single drop of rain spat upon the page before he’d mouthed the first word of prayer. The sun vanished behind a smudge of cloud that had crept in from the ocean unnoticed. That was Sahulian weather for you. Shader picked up his coat as the rain pattered on the Liber and splashed ripples in the blood pooling upon the thirsty ground.

  THE CAT’S OUT OF THE BAG

  Cadman frowned at the blood smeared across his cellar wall, whilst still keeping count of the blows at the back of his mind. Thirteen lashes of the cat-o’-nine-tails, and already Jarmin was blathering for all he was worth.

  Shadrak drew back his arm for another crack of the whip and then paused to peel a strip of skin from one of the barbs. His white face was speckled with Jarmin’s blood, pink eyes glinting with rather too much enjoyment for Cadman’s liking. Do a thing with gusto, by all means, but please let’s not debase ourselves. The irony wasn’t lost on him. He’d been debasing himself for centuries, but there was a world of difference between need and gratuitousness.

  “Please,” Jarmin sobbed, the martyr well and truly beaten out of him. “Please. I’ve told you all I know.”

  Cadman raised a hand to tell Shadrak to take a rest. The midget threw the whip aside and helped himself to a bottle of Shiraz, pushing the cork in with a slender knife. Only five bottles left on the rack. Cadman winced. Not that he minded Shadrak taking the wine—he’d long since lost the ability to taste anything, and alcohol hadn’t affected him for donkey’s years. It was the nuisance of having to get away from the number five that was so unsettling. Either they’d have to drink another bottle or go out and buy some more. Grinding his teeth with the annoyance of it all, Cadman turned back to Jarmin, who was suspended by his wrists, toes just about reaching the floor. He was naked, not because Cadman took any pleasure from seeing him that way, but because he’d learned long ago—in the castle in Verusia—that nakedness deprives a man of any number of defenses, not the least his dignity.