by Stephen Deas
‘Get off! Get off me!’
Skjorl was drunk enough to almost lose his balance. He staggered. ‘You’ll not find better.’ He glanced down at Siff and laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you want that one?’
‘You may not touch me!’
‘I’ll make you moan, woman. You haven’t had it if you haven’t had it from an Adamantine Man.’ He stumbled towards her again. The alchemist dodged out of the way, picked up an empty bottle and smashed it over his head. Siff almost burst out laughing. The Adamantine Man swayed, but he didn’t go down.
The alchemist kicked Skjorl between the legs, hard enough that Siff couldn’t help but wince, even as he watched with glee. Skjorl doubled up, clutching himself, gasping while the alchemist stood over him, screaming in his ear. ‘You don’t touch me! Never! You never, ever touch me, you hear? You think after what you tried to do to me that I’d feel anything but loathing for you? You pig! You thuggish witless pig!’
Skjorl growled. The pain on his face was delicious. Siff reckoned that anyone ordinary would be on the floor, rolling in agony, but the Adamantine Man was beginning to straighten up.
The alchemist brought a second bottle down on his head. This time the Adamantine Man fell as though it had been an axe. Siff grinned.
‘And you!’ She rounded on Siff. ‘You’re no better! Filth, both of you.’ She went off into the furthest corner she could find and curled up on the floor. Up above, the first rays of daylight were creeping in past the trapdoor.
‘Maybe so, alchemist, but this filth is the one you need. You don’t need that one. Not once we get to the Raksheh.’
‘You don’t even know what you are!’ she spat back at Siff. ‘What are you?’
‘A man trying to stay alive in a world that doesn’t like him much,’ he said. He didn’t get an answer to that.
The Adamantine Man started to snore, as if going out of his way to prove that he really wasn’t dead. He was going to be in the king of all foul moods when he woke up. Siff sighed. He listened carefully to the alchemist’s breathing through the racket the Adamantine Man was making, waiting until she was asleep. Then he started at the ropes holding him fast. Most days, if he’d ever managed to free himself, he’d have had Skjorl to deal with — the oversized bastard slept with one eye open and woke up if Siff as much as moved. Not today though. Today he probably wouldn’t even wake up if a dragon landed on him.
An hour later he gave up. As it turned out, the Adamantine Man knew what he was doing with a rope even when he was roaring drunk. Pity. Siff closed his eyes and let himself drift off. Sooner or later the big man would slip up. Besides, he had a surprise waiting for him in the Raksheh. They all did.
47
Jasaan
Twenty-two days before the Black Mausoleum
They flew by moonlight, out across the plains west of the Pinnacles with one set of wings each, gliding ever lower. There was a moment of terror, of sheer panic as he was sure he was going to die, because that’s what happened if you jumped off a mile-high cliff. The wings took him, though, and then Jasaan watched the landscape drift beneath him in shades of moonlit grey. From up high you could still see the lines in the land where the roads used to be, even though they were overgrown and sometimes hard to spot on the ground. Clusters of dark stains marked where villages and farms had stood, ash blots in the flat expanse of rolling grassland.
The wings carried them for miles and Jasaan had no idea how far or for how long. It seemed for ever at first, and then suddenly a field was rushing up and he was struggling to put his feet down in front of him as the wings pitched back and dumped him down. He sat there, dazed for a moment and amazed too. He’d flown. Adamantine Men didn’t fly. Rarely, perhaps, they would ride on the back of a dragon on some urgent errand for the Night Watchman. Quiet Vish had flown with the old speaker to Bloodsalt once, and a dragon had taken Jasaan to Sand just before the Adamantine Palace had burned; but today he hadn’t been carried, he’d flown.
He took a moment while his head stopped spinning and then he unbuckled himself and looked about for the others. He saw one, a hundred feet up in the air, sailing past him. He ran to the nearest rise and looked about from there, for the ruin of a tower, a black silhouette in the moonlight, the place where they were supposed to meet. Once he saw it, he went back to his wings and set about gathering them together. It was like dragging two dead comrades behind him lashed to their shields. When he reached the tower, the others were waiting for him.
‘You came down too fast,’ snapped Hellas. Hellas was leading the riders and probably thought he was in charge of Jasaan too. Jasaan shrugged. There wasn’t much he could do about that. ‘We’re late now. We have another fifteen miles to cover before dawn to reach our shelter. You lead!’
The moon was still high and they had eight, maybe nine hours of darkness left. Fifteen miles? Easy, and it was probably no bad thing to be at the front — better to have the eyes of an Adamantine Man scouting the way for danger than some rider bred in an eyrie who only ever saw the land from far above on the back of a dragon. The rest of them toiled in his wake, slow and labouring. He pulled ahead, stopped to scout, waited for them to catch up and did the same again. The moon reached its zenith and began to crawl its way back towards the horizon.
He counted the miles. Every one of them brought another ruin, another collection of homes trampled, burned and shattered into shards. Sometimes a few pieces of wood scattered over the road was all there was left, or else a milestone with the name of a place carved into it. Elsewhere, grass and sapling trees grew among the walls of smashed houses, thorn bushes around the remains of tumbled halls.
When he’d covered about twelve miles, he looked for the broad tree that marked where to leave the road. He waited for the riders and then ran on ahead again, to a stream and on to the corpse of yet another village, just like all the others. Rain and wind and grass had overgrown the scorched black earth and made it green again. Here and there the broken old bones of houses poked through the undergrowth, their jagged tips still charred black. Like the others, the village was empty.
Something snapped with a loud crack under his feet. A small branch, perhaps, except there were no trees. When he crouched down, he saw it was a bone. As he crept among the grass and the ruins, he found more: ribs, vertebrae, all sorts, scattered evenly about. People.
The riders were breathing hard when they finally caught up. Worn out. One night of walking and they were already tired, and how far was it to the Raksheh? He kept his thoughts to himself as Hellas took them along an overgrown path to an old well hidden among the bushes. Jasaan stretched. People had been here not all that long ago, and they came regularly enough to make a path. The riders, he supposed.
‘You have men out here a lot then,’ he said.
Hellas shook his head. ‘Not your concern.’ He pulled back the branches around the well. There was a ladder running down inside. A metal one. Its rungs shone in the waning moonlight.
‘There’s people been here in the last few days,’ Jasaan murmured. ‘No way to tell how many. Yours?’
‘There are no riders on the plains,’ grumbled Hellas. ‘There are no people at all. The plains are dead. The dragons killed everyone.’
‘No.’ Jasaan understood the bones now, why they’d found so many here and hardly any anywhere else. They hadn’t been left by dragons, they’d been scattered later by men. Warning others away maybe. ‘Look at the ladder,’ he whispered. ‘See how it shines.’ Six men with swords and dragon-scale could hold their own against a lot of ferals if they knew what they were doing, but not if the ferals had bows. ‘Worn clean. This is a home for-’
The first arrow hissed through the foot of space between him and Hellas, close enough that Jasaan felt a brush of air on his wrist. He was moving before any of the others even blinked, shoving Hellas out of the way and pushing him to the ground. Another arrow zipped straight into a second rider. Jasaan didn’t know his name, didn’t know any of them except Hellas. None of them h
ad thought to tell him and it hadn’t occurred to him to ask. It was easier not to care about men who didn’t have names.
The rider with the arrow sticking out of his side just stood there, looking surprised. Jasaan tumbled into the deepest piece of undergrowth he could find and lay flat, waiting for the arrows to turn into a hail; instead, he heard a chorus of shouts. Figures rose from among the bushes nearby. Ten, maybe a dozen, armed with sticks and dressed in rags.
The rider with the arrow in him bellowed something about victory and honour and hurled himself at the first one to come near him, waving his sword like a madman. The other riders just stood there, gawping as though they’d never been in a close fight before.
Oh ancestors, no! They hadn’t. They’d fought on the backs of their dragons and they’d fought in a practice ring, and that was it. Jasaan rolled to his feet and shoved his short sword into the nearest convenient feral.
‘Hyrkallan!’ cried another rider. Two ferals jumped on him, pulling him down. A third piled in. Jasaan saw a stick rise and fall. Another rider ran to help. Too late, probably. The rider with the arrow in him hacked the hand off someone. There was a scream.
A feral ran right in front of him. Jasaan ran him through and then looked for Hellas, but by then the ferals had already had enough. They turned and ran and vanished into the night like ghosts.
Three riders left standing. When he looked, Jasaan found the one who’d been pulled to the ground. They’d got his helm off and caved in the side of his skull with a stick. Dead was dead, so Jasaan ignored him and went to see the rider who’d been shot instead. Out in the open like this was no place to be carrying wounded. An Adamantine Man understood that the injured were best left to fend for themselves or else given a quick and merciful death. Riders, Jasaan supposed, probably saw things differently.
He found the rider sitting with his back to a smashed wooden wall. He was breathing hard and pasty-faced, but he wasn’t coughing blood. The arrow, when Jasaan carefully cut its shaft and pulled off the rider’s armour to look, had gone in about as far as one finger joint. Either the feral who’d fired it had been feeble or he had some self-made bow with all the punch of a night girl’s tongue. The dragon-scale armour had done the rest.
‘You know what we call a wound like that,’ Jasaan said. ‘A dream-lover’s kiss. Leaves a nice red mark and that’s all there is to it.’ He pulled the arrow out. The rider screwed up his face but at least he didn’t shriek. There were no barbs. It was just a crude thing. Wasn’t even quite straight. ‘You have anything to dress this?’
The rider nodded and pointed to a pouch at his belt. Jasaan had a look. Mud. A roll of ripped cloth. Rubbish, but that was what you got for killing all your alchemists. Jasaan reached into his own. He didn’t know what any of the powders he carried were, only what to do with them. Alchemists handed them out, packaged up into pouches.
‘Got a name, rider?’ he asked. There, now he’d gone and made some trouble for himself. Now he’d probably do something stupid like make a friend just in time to watch him die.
‘Nezak.’ The rider winced.
‘You lived in the north before all this, didn’t you?’ Jasaan unwrapped a tiny paper bundle and carefully took a pinch of the dark powder inside. In daylight you could see it wasn’t quite black. In moonlight… well, under the moon, everything looked grey.
‘Sand,’ said Nezak.
‘You know how I can tell? It’s the skin. Different colour, you see. You’re a long way from home. Lie down.’
The rider lay back. Blood ran out of the hole in his ribs in a slow but steady pulse.
‘I was in Sand when the dragons came.’ Nezak probably didn’t want to hear about that, but it would keep his mind off what Jasaan was doing to the hole where the arrow had been. ‘They flew in circles around the city, pouring their fire over everything until even the stones of the monastery cracked in the heat and they still didn’t stop. Places like Sand and Bloodsalt, out in the open, there’s nowhere to run. People hid as best they could. They hid in their cellars where they thought the fire wouldn’t reach them, but the dragons made the city burn for days. The ones who went underground died anyway. Cooked. After that the dragons smashed it flat. I was in the caves under the monastery. Those and the tunnels under the eyrie were the only places deep enough.’
There. That had rider Nezak’s attention. Nothing like telling a man that his whole family was dead to focus his mind. While he had it, he pushed the pinch of dark powder into Nezak’s wound. The rider yelped.
‘The powder will stop the wound from going bad.’
‘Vishmir’s cock! It burns!’
‘Yes, it does.’ Jasaan smeared on some of Nezak’s mud. ‘This will help it heal. We killed every dragon in Sand before they came. We poisoned them and smashed their eggs with our axes and our hammers. There wasn’t a single monster left in the eyrie by the time the rogues reached us. We did what we could.’ They’d killed a good few riders too to get to those dragons and those eggs, but there didn’t seem much need to be mentioning that.
‘It wasn’t enough.’
‘No.’ Bandages now. A wad of cloth to keep the mud in place, that was all he needed. ‘Sit up while I wrap this around you. I’m sorry for your family. My family were the Guard. Most of them are dead too.’ He looked at Nezak carefully. ‘Not everyone died. A lot of riders survived under the eyrie. I remember one who looked a lot like you. Older though.’
‘My brother perhaps.’ Nezak grasped Jasaan’s shoulder. ‘Was his beard thicker than mine, and black? Was he still limping? What was his name?’
Jasaan shrugged. ‘I don’t remember a limp and I didn’t speak to him so I have no name to give you. The beard though, yes. Thick and black.’ It wasn’t likely, was it, that Nezak would ever get back to Sand and discover he’d been lied to? Hope was a healer. He’d learned that from the very alchemist he was hunting. ‘The riders stayed to see what could be done. I left with the other Adamantine Men.’ Each to their own duties. ‘I met a man in Sand,’ he said quietly as he worked. ‘An Adamantine Man. They came from Outwatch. They walked. Across the desert. I don’t know how far that is.’
Nezak shook his head. He smiled over a grimace of pain. ‘It’s a half-day ride even on the back of a dragon. On the back of a horse, four or five. To walk?’ He shook his head. ‘The road from Outwatch to Sand is not one for walking. The heat kills. There’s no water.’
‘Still, walk is what they did. They were Adamantine Men who had fought dragons and lost. They’d smashed the eggs and they were burned in their turn. Hatchlings scoured the tunnels. When the dragons were gone, there were a dozen of them left. They walked all the way to Sand and found us at the monastery. The dragons had learned by the time they came to us. They’d learned to be thorough. They lingered to make sure they finished us all, but they couldn’t burn us out from the tunnels. When we came out there was nothing left. Nothing at all except these dozen men who’d simply watched from afar for day after day, dying of thirst, waiting for the dragons to leave. There.’ Jasaan tied the bandage off. ‘Shouldn’t slow you down much. It’ll hurt, though.’
Rider Nezak closed his eyes. ‘Sand.’ He held his head in his hands.
‘Everywhere is gone, rider. All across the realms, everything is destroyed.’ Jasaan stepped back. He’d done what he could. The rider would live. Whether he had the strength to cross half a realm to the Aardish Caves was another matter, but Hellas could worry about that. ‘The Adamantine Man who is with the alchemist we hunt. Hellas says his name is Skjorl. It was a Skjorl who led the survivors out of Outwatch, on foot and across the desert. After Sand, the Skjorl I knew led his company to Evenspire, to Scarsdale and all the way to the Silver River. Across half the realms, the barren half, on foot. If it’s the same man, then he’s been up the Sapphire River to Bloodsalt and back again across the moors. He’s the perfect Adamantine Guardsman, strong, remorseless, untiring, fearless and brutal. If this Skjorl is the same man then I will wager you that your alchemis
t is still alive.’
48
Skjorl
Thirteen days before the Black Mausoleum
Pain. Pain and hardship. You learned to live with them. Sometimes they were friends, telling you things you needed to know. More often they were adversaries, but they were old foes and known ones. They were comfortable companions if not welcome ones.
Took him a while when he woke up to realise where he was. For a bit he thought he was back in the catacombs under Bloodsalt, that the dragon throwing rocks at him had finally hit him. He could even see someone lying beside him. Vish. Or maybe not.
After that he thought he must be dying. Certainly felt like it.
Bits of memory landed like snowflakes. Bloodsalt, that had been a long time ago, hadn’t it? Or was the time he’d spent in the Pinnacles somehow before?
There was an alchemist. That was after.
That man on the floor there wasn’t Vish.
He saw a bottle. Wine. Yes, he remembered. There had been wine.
He let out a low groan. He’d drunk himself stupid enough times. It had never been like this. Wine must have had something in it. Where was he?
He rolled onto his front, crawled into a corner and was sick. Stale fish. Ancestors but that was bad.
When his stomach stopped heaving, he took a few breaths then sat up. He rubbed his eyes. There were steps. Wooden slats above. Bright sunlight streaming between them. A trapdoor. A cellar then. Yes, slowly it was coming back, where he was and why and where he was going. He was in Scarsdale and everything had burned and they were running from the dragons. Always. Running home, even if they all knew they were never going to get there.
Carelessly he rubbed his head. Almost screamed, the pain was that blinding. Touched more softly now. There was blood crusted through his hair. A lump the size of an egg.
That explained the pain then. Vishmir’s cock!