Rythe Awakes (The Rythe Trilogy)

by Craig Saunders

  Roth gave a guttural laugh and patted j’ark on his shoulder as he took the fore, making the warrior’s knees sag. “Do not fear them, j’ark.”

  Everyone watched and held their breath as Roth walked to the head of the group. It bowed low in front of the warriors. One, the largest by far, stepped forward in front on the rest and reached up to take its head off. One of the prisoners fainted, thinking it was about to tear its own head from its shoulders. The rest backed away in fear. The head came up. It left not a gaping hole, but fur, and teeth, and shining white and brown mane that fell out and flowed outside of what Tirielle now realised was the most amazing armour she had ever seen. Only a rahken could bear such weight. The armour alone, made from the skin of a crystal golem or modelled after one, must weigh enough to crush a man.

  The crystal warrior dwarfed Roth. It put the helm under one arm and made the same symbol she had seen Typraille make before, that of a circle, with its fingers from under the hard backhand guard of its gauntlet. The Sard each smiled in relief, some returned the gesture, others bowed their heads.

  She spoke in a gruff harsh voice that rattled the very rock on which they stood. It echoed in their minds but soothingly and said, “You have brought them, child. Welcome, everyone, to our home.”

  Roth turned to the humans, waiting with their mouths agape, and said with a flourish and a toothy grin, “Tirielle, Sard, everyone – permit me; my mother.”

  *

  Chapter Sixty

  Klan Mard breathed calmly and let inner light flow, eyes open and staring at the ceiling of his spartan quarters in Arram. He found peace easier to attain now he had something to occupy him, his inner library, his bone archive, but it was not enough. He felt eager to move, to do something, but there was nothing to be done.

  Both the Sacrifice and the Saviour had vanished but his plans for a new division were proceeding apace. There was little to do at night though – most of his new division had already been chosen and he would have to wait a few days for Mermi to return anyway before it would be complete. In the meantime he would go mad from boredom, so instead of chaffing he looked to his friends on the ceiling and let the one thing that calmed the savage urges, whims and destructive rants that had followed his ascension bring peace. His friends, smiling down at him.

  The mosaic above him was a testament to their exquisite suffering. Almost every inch was adorned with souvenirs of his conquests. Draymar, Sturman, Lianthrian…even a hierarch. It was one of his favourites. As yet he did not have a protocrat. It would be a shame if it had to be hidden away when it came. Knowing it was there wouldn’t be the same as seeing it before him. It would be like the difference between correspondence and conversation. He could understand why – the rest of the delegation would be none too happy to share eternity with their tormentor. But then, he thought, none of them were particularly vindictive. After all, they still talked to him. Perhaps he was blessed, after all, to have such accepting friends.

  Klan smiled up at his delegation.

  Each face stretched out in wide youthful grins. He would have no frowns in this, his haven from the silences in his head.

  As Klan looked at the grinning visages on his ceiling he dreamed of Shorn’s death. The Protectorate might not be able to find him, but he would. When he had him, Klan would add Shorn’s face to his collection.

  The mercenary was not easy to kill, though.

  Klan had struggled to get the poison into him. Then Klan had been confident that his beasts would finish the job. It seemed he was not infallible. To kill Shorn would apparently take more than a subtle poison or summoned hounds. To kill Shorn you had to be sure. You had to feel the knife inside.

  Klan carried a wise knife.

  *

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Renir sat up and felt his crotch. The fire was just a soft orange glow in the starry night. He stared at the damp patch still growing on his trousers in the meagre light and let out a relieved sigh. In his dream he had thought the warm wetness there the weeping remnants of his manhood.

  Just a dream, he told himself, panting and damp. It took a while to let go.

  The three travellers were arranged in a triangle around the fire. The remainders of the foraged firewood faded into a network of living orange roads running through a blackened wilderness. Shorn and Drun slept soundly beside Renir. They snored a rasping lullaby; Shorn’s born of the dry and cracked land, Drun’s born of the frigid seas.

  The horses slept standing.

  The image of the black-toothed harridan in his dreams slid slowly from consciousness, leaving a murky trail of fear behind. The old witch’s sullied cackle still echoed in Renir’s head. The image of her freshly blooded teeth took on a new life, bright in the centre of his mind. He shivered in the glow of the fire and looked behind.

  Renir had always had a rich dream life, but rarely suffered such visitations. Outside visitors were not generally welcome – to invade a stranger’s dreams was just plain rude. While some dream travellers, like Drun, were polite, even that was an intrusion.

  Few dreamers recognised the outsiders as immigrants, but thought them conjurations of their own imagination. It was difficult to know who was one of your own and who was an outsider in this most hallowed, most private, of places. His grandmother had told him once – the dreams take on power, become a new plane of existence. Renir knew that sometimes the dreams themselves invited unwanted guests. The dream life Renir experienced was his own and one he guarded jealously. His grandmother has warned, ‘Be mindful of waking from such dreams – in dreams you are not safe’. He knew in dreams there was no safe haven.

  He pulled his blanket up to his neck and lay back, staring at the stars. There, the Gapusk, the Wendril, the towering constellation of urj’an-dril. The star patterns wavered in the thin smoke clouds that drifted across the night sky. He thought he saw a meteorite shooting through the Field of Castles, where Sturma’s forefathers had thought the sky met the night in eternal battle. The stars blinked at him. A soft breeze brought the smell of the dying fire.

  Reassuring earthly odours eventually lulled him and he returned to sleep. This time he dreamt he was eating from a plate and sitting in the wash as the waves came up to his lap.

  In the morning they broke camp and set out once again. Their destination, the distant oasis of Port Naeth. Naeth sat upon a river, and serviced all manner of trade. There was even a castle there – it had only been built some scant five hundred years previously. The stone for the castle itself had been taken all those years ago from Pulhuth, one of the oldest cities of Sturma.

  Of all the regions, called Thanedoms since ancient times, only the Thane there retained enough power to raise a force capable of opposing the Draymar invaders. Even though Drun insisted that the north and the red wizard must be their ultimate goal, he refused to sit idly while Sturma was destroyed.

  Shorn still rode. His leg and arm were clear of bandages now, the scars livid but free from infection, which was gratifying for Renir, after all the nights spent caring for the mercenary.

  The mercenary was ornery, though. Each night he would carry out his Shartrias; when he was with his sword Renir saw that his left hand came free sometimes, tiring fast, the grip unsure. Renir watched and tried to understand the movements, but he could not see himself moving as well. Shorn was more graceful than he would ever be, even now, without strength enough to bear his own weight.

  Renir, too, was changing. The walking had helped him take his mind off the things he didn’t want to think about. He walked for days, after the first few his feet grew bumps in the places that they were needed and then even his blisters just went away; they never burst.

  Drun refused to wear shoes, saying he wanted to feel the earth under his feet for as long as he could. ‘Winter will be long this time around’, he said.

  All three had improved greatly in health and hair and Renir was fitter than he had ever been. They had yet to trim their beards and their hair had grown enough to give each man
a different appearance. Renir had taken to carrying the axe with him and wore his armour everyday. He was getting stronger and complained not at all.

  He walked until the axe felt comfortable in his hand. He walked and let his feet think for him. All day he walked, reins in one hand, axe in the other, talking distantly with Shorn and Drun.

  The old man’s yellow eyes missed little though. He did not mention it, but something was amiss. Renir roamed like he was born to it and ran in tortured sleep.

  People often run to leave the past behind.

  By the time they had reached Naeth they looked refreshed. Built in between two diverging estuaries, the town had struggled to breach the riverbanks, little escaping the clutch of the castle in the centre. Instead, the town had spread along the river, the poor already headed to the sea and the rich to the mountains.

  Renir walked without speaking the rest of the way, until a guard said, “Welcome.”

  Renir favoured him with a wide grin and entered through front gates adorned with red iron spikes atop and armoured guards at the front.

  “He said welcome! It’s like a banquet!”

  Shorn laughed. “First time in the big city then, Renir?”

  “Yes, it’s glorious – like Turnmarket but bigger! And look at all the taverns!”

  Drun could see the guard smirk under his helm as they passed into town. When they were out of earshot Drun heard one say, “No shortage of peasants today, eh?”

  Shorn continued grumbling to Drun (Renir wouldn’t listen, he was starring contentedly at everything they passed) as they passed through the gates and into the town. The horses’ clops bounced back at them from real stone walls.

  Naeth had once been a ward against incursion from mountains. Smooth and ancient walkways stretched into the river but did not reach the other side. The constant flow of water and weather had crumbled the stone walkways and abutments. Five hundred men could still be held here, but the old barracks were now a market, and the only remaining sign of Sturma’s turbulent past were the crumbling relics that now formed part of new homes. Even the newer walls were in disrepair.

  A muddy swathe sneaking behind it was the Prume, fed by the River Frana. Many more miles to the south and east the river curled into the great ocean dividing two continents. The river was slowly darkening as the port grew. It pounded the stone of the town out of spite, but the town was growing faster than the river could hold it back.

  Fishing boats now patrolled the river instead of soldiers. Barges prowled the water like fat alligators.

  Nothing in the town was new. The Thane of Naeth ruled from a castle in the centre of the port town, but it too failed to escape the encroachment of decay. The ‘castle’ itself was a dirty, cancerous brown. In time it would die, but for now pulverulent stone waited vainly and uselessly, piled high for repairs in no danger of completion. The town was fuel for the growing population. They lived off it and it took its life from them.

  Naeth reeked of life and death.

  Elsewhere, people were rebounding slowly from the old wars…more carefully. Perhaps people in the country remembered more readily what happened when they were too populous. War cut them back like wheat.

  Renir loved the sounds. The noises of the city gave it character all of its own. He had never heard horse’s hooves on paved street, nor an echo from stone buildings.

  The hawkers, the milling, the rustling of a thousand dresses, the crashes and splashes from the hazier parts of the town, the parts that hid themselves in shame at the denizens they bred. From side streets came muffled slitherings of the town’s own taxationers, taking private taxes the Thane would never see.

  The poor lived closer to the edge.

  His ears and nose fought with his eyes, the images more than he had ever seen before. Garish canopies covered trading barges and people wandered around the edges of the river market. Suspicious meats wafted their aromas from the poor stalls, competing with the smell of waifs and scoundrels, the smells themselves competing with the fumes rising from cautious slurpers. Even the stew at the poor stalls looked dangerous.

  Today, the pennant of Sturma state hung still and heavy over the crest of the town.

  When Renir looked around the town he saw behind the flag’s colours for just a moment.

  Its people seemed the same in look and action, but their clothes cried out, bright as the canopies. They tried to bring their own colour to the town but it bleached out theirs instead.

  Closer inspection revealed small bobbing logs moored along the riverbank. The smell of human waste hung around the river and the town on still days like a wall. The whole wharf smelled of green stagnation.

  Guards wandered the embankment, bashing the occasional scamp across the face with iron mitts. They had tried to steal – probably to eat – and received a fist to the nose for their efforts. The waifs ran crying to show off their blood and bravery. The blood just created more romantic stories to urge larcenous companions into greater feats. One day the scamps would look back and think, ‘ah, but those were the days…’.

  Distracted by yet another new sensation, he blinked and the backlight was gone. All he could see now was the colours. The darkness underneath pulled back into an alley, comfortable in any place people were desperate enough to reach out to it.

  He gazed in wonder at all the sights and no one thought him odd. Strangers often passed through here. Their money was always welcome.

  Drun thought he could smell corruption. He called the other two to him and pointed to the tavern on his right.

  Morry’s Gransald.

  They pulled up. Drun motioned them closer with a backward nod of the head.

  “Renir, would you see how much you can sell this gear for? When you come back, we can use the money to petition to see the Thane. Try not to make an impression, won’t you? The Protectorate will hunt us everywhere. I can shield us from their magic but I cannot make them blind and they have eyes everywhere. I cannot afford to leave Shorn’s side.”

  “You have to pay to see the Thane? Renir asked.

  “Yes, that’s the impression I got.”

  “How do you know all this, Drun?”

  Drun tapped the side of his nose. Renir missed the point and said. “Well?”

  “Because Shorn’s been there! I’ve been watching him. Honestly, Renir. Sometimes you can be dense.”

  “Well how was I supposed to know that?”

  Shorn sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “You know far too much about me,” he said to Drun.

  “I know far too little,” replied the old man.

  Shorn and Drun paused at the dark wood door. It was coated in creosote but they could tell it was dark wood from the splinters. A sign made of Gransald skin wavered on its tether above the door. A pipe from the kitchens filled it with hot fumes, holding it up. The pipe also carried the smells of hot food outside the door, the smells themselves more effective than a hawker.

  Most locals avoided the place – most of the visitors, too. When you took the smells away it was still a pit. The batten shutter was broken already, but gave a splintered yawn as a man flew through (the second today) and landed with a crash in the muddy forecourt. He did not get up. A moment later a small mousy man came out and removed a well-kept dudgeon from where it hid under the dead man’s armpit. The three looked on.

  Only Renir looked remotely shocked, but thought to himself how little it took to change his outlook on violence. He was ashamed at himself after he stopped being proud.

  Renir said his goodbyes, walking off with the laden Thud to the town’s armoury in the hope of a deal. After tethering Harlot and paying a bald and bent old man to watch the horse, Drun and Shorn entered.

  “Interesting place you picked, Drun,” said Shorn, as he ducked under the door to allow his blade to pass.

  “Well,” Drun turned and closed the door behind him. “Morry’s Gransald, while not the safest place in Naeth, is the safest place for us.”

  Drun took a seat in one of the many dar
ker corners of the tavern while Shorn approached the bar. Gouges in the beams and rafters bore witness to the countless fights that had taken place below. The smoked wood leaked darkness like water throughout the tavern and its patrons sank into it. The darkness belied the sunny day outside. It was midday and the majority of the town’s populous wandered outside or worked in some capacity. The place was full of seedy, swarthy men; there were no women.

  Shorn spoke quietly – everyone here spoke quietly – to the barman and ordered ale and stew. He lent over the bar as he did so and passed some coin, then returned to the table and sat. The tip of his sword watched the other drinkers for him. He was not subtle but most drinkers here minded their business most days. Two or three cast glances their way. The broad sword slung across his back was incentive enough for them to look away.

  Drun had sat with his back to the bar. Shorn knew better.

  The two men ate their stew in silence. Shorn watched a man out the corner of his eye shovelling food into his mouth with a spoon. He always pushed it into his mouth and over to the left side. He wondered at it a while, until Drun said, “He does that because he has no tongue.” He did not look behind him. Shorn reassessed the man again, as he had many times in the short while they known each other.

  It did not take long for company to find them. A dark shadow parted the smoky air and fell on the table. A barrelled man with odd sized arms thumped his leaden fists down and leaned over. He wore a knife in his boot that Drun did not see. The rest of his outfit was, to Shorn’s eye at least, inconsequential.

  The stranger’s voice matched his odd appearance. It was too high for his face. He looked at Drun as he said, “Outsiders are not welcome here.”

  The man stood taller than Shorn and his shoulders were wider, although he looked as though he had borrowed someone else’s arms. Shorn thought it a possibility. A man who lived by brawn. And luck, thought Shorn, as he caught the hint of scar across the man’s throat in the muted light. Shorn did not look up but took a sip of his ale. He caught Drun’s eye and Drun understood: Let me work.