A Gathering of Fools

by James Evans

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  A Gathering of Fools

  By James Evans

  Copyright © 2018 James Evans

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used

  in any manner without the express written permission of the author.

  Visit the author’s website:

  http://jamesevansbooks.co.uk

  PROLOGUE

  SEEN FROM AFAR, a corpse in the surf tells few tales worth hearing. A dozen corpses strewn along a beach littered with nautical wreckage might suggest a story of storm and wind, of rolling sea and breaking rope, of timber and terror and death.

  But what if one of those corpses should cough and retch and roll onto its back as the crabs scurried and the seagulls cried in alarm? If that happened then, surely, there might be a story worth telling, a story worth hearing. More importantly, there might be a story that some people might want to bury alongside its incompletely deceased owner.

  As awakenings go, the almost-corpse in the surf could see no merit in splashes of cold seawater. He hacked and coughed and scraped sand from his face as he tried to work out where he was and why he was on his back, staring at the sky.

  He remembered the storm, the creaking of ill-maintained woodwork and the shouts of the deckhands as they struggled with the sails. He remembered the crack as the mast snapped and the awful sound of men screaming as they were swept overboard. He remembered the crash of the wave that capsized the ship, the horror as he realised what was happening and the fear that there might be no escape from the cell in which he had been locked. To wake on a beach, wet and desolate though it might have been, was a considerable surprise.

  He levered himself upright and looked around, shading his eyes against the early morning sun. His fellow travellers seemed to have been short of luck and some at least were now feeding the local wildlife. Still, on the bright side, maybe he could find some proper clothes to replace the rags he was wearing.

  A search of the nearby corpses yielded a serviceable coat, a reasonable shirt and a pair of trousers that would just about fit. Stripping corpses was a grim task but he worked quickly, discarding his rags with a quick prayer of thanks to whichever deity might currently be watching over him. He had searched most of the corpses before he found one, a guard, with boots. The fit was far from perfect but he pulled them on anyway and cursed all barefoot sailors as he stuffed torn lengths of shirt into the boots to pad them out.

  The booted guard also had a dagger, which the man wedged into the pocket of his newly stolen coat, but he found no swords or money and precious little else of value. Some of the guards had carried charmed weapons and other tools but they hadn't made it to shore. As the sun rose and the new day began he stood, clothed and booted, on an unknown shore without food or water, money, friends or charms. Revenge, long dreamt of, was as far away as ever. But at least he was free.

  And now he could run.

  CHAPTER ONE

  PRISON; SMALL ROOMS, bad food, beatings and curses. Confinement had given Marrinek long months to think but no opportunity to act.

  Now he was free.

  He shook his head, unsure about what to do next. He thought he remembered a shipwreck but it wasn't clear. The beach was strewn with wreckage and corpses but his memories were jumbled and confused.

  He wasn’t sure how long he had been at sea. He didn't know when they had moved him from the cell on the mainland to the windowless wooden cage on the ship. He could still feel the effects of the stupefying drugs they had fed him but he had no memory of the voyage except for the hour of mind-numbing terror as the ship had broken apart around him.

  He shook his head again, trying to focus. He was free, at least for now, and beyond the reach of his enemies. He had schemed and planned in his prison cell in the rare moments of lucidity between meals but none of his schemes or plans had started with shipwreck.

  He thought the ship had been heading for the prison island of Ankeron West but he couldn’t be sure. Prisoners had no rights and his questions had brought only discouraging beatings. He had stopped asking, after a while, and focussed on staying alive.

  He looked around, searching for landmarks. There was a beach, a wide sweeping bay, the sea to the south, low cliffs to the north. The Tardean Sea, he thought, maybe at the south-western edge of the Empire, near the border, if he was lucky.

  Dying on a windswept beach, as he surely would if his enemies caught him, was not what Marrinek had planned. Leaving the Empire would be his best option for survival, which meant heading west.

  First, though, he had to get off this beach and find food and shelter.

  He stood for a few more minutes, shaking his head to try to clear the effects of whatever drug his jailers had fed him but that only brought him a twinge of nausea and pain. Then he turned and stumbled away from the surf, abandoning the ship’s crew to dry in the morning sun as the waves lapped ever lower down the beach.

  He had a twinge of guilt as he left the bodies unattended. Imperial servants, even the sailors and guards who had imprisoned him, deserved better. Then he looked at the rising sun and the ebbing tide and felt the exhaustion in his limbs, the growing ache in his head. There was nothing he could do for these men. He had no tools and burying their bodies would take time he didn't have and energy he couldn't spare.

  He nodded once, a silent tribute to the men who had died. Then he turned his back to the shore and began to trudge towards the cliffs that rose behind the beach.

  A short walk took him beyond the high tide line and into the lightly grassed dunes. The cliffs weren't high but he was out of shape and he didn't fancy his chances, even on a short climb. Instead he turned west and walked along the dunes until he found a ravine that cut upwards, away from the beach.

  He sweated his way through the ravine, scrambling through the brush to emerge at the top of the cliffs. From up here, the narrow path, hidden from below and easily missed, was clear to see. It wound up from the beach like rope draped over rough stone and he cursed his luck at missing it.

  He stood near the cliff edge for some minutes, looking south and east toward the wreckage of the prison ship. Only a few broken timbers had reached the beach. A mast lay tangled with a large rock further out to sea but there was nothing else to be seen, no fishing boats, no smoke, no people. He was alone, except for the corpses.

  Then, as he turned to head inland, something moved.

  He hesitated, searching for the thing that had caught his eye. A rider. No, four riders! Local watchmen, maybe, from the uniforms and the glint of arm
our, coming along the beach from the east. They hadn’t reached the corpses, might not even have seen them amongst the rocks, but they surely would if they stuck to their current path.

  Cursing his luck, Marrinek ducked down into the vegetation and hurried away from the beach, heading for the forest. The shrubbery, wind-blown and salt-laden, tore at his feet and grasped at his stolen trousers as he pushed desperately through it.

  The indignity of headlong flight from a group of provincial heavies was merely the latest in a long list of humiliations he had suffered since his fall from grace. That he, a man once known and respected across the Empire, should be forced to run for his life, was extremely annoying.

  But run he did, straightening now as the edge of the cliff fell away behind him. He risked a glance over his shoulder and caught his toe on a tree root. He fell heavily into the bushes and gasped with new pain as he pulled himself upright, cursing again. Anyone following would see the damage to the bush and the marks on the ground and would know which path he had taken.

  He hobbled on, ignoring the pain from the ill-fitting boots and the tears in his hands from the thistles that had broken his fall. He ached all over and he was tired, so tired. All he wanted to do was sit in the shade and rest until his headache had passed but instead he pressed on. He had to put as many miles as possible between himself and the corpses of eleven men and a ship. It wouldn't do to be caught near the wreck by the local Watch. There was no telling what they might do to him if they thought he had robbed the dead, even if they didn't recognise him.

  So, on he stumbled, wearing the clothes and boots of dead men, carrying the seawater that had killed them and the lice - now dead, drowned like their former hosts - that had ridden on them. He pushed through bracken and ducked around holly trees as the forest thickened and darkened.

  A mile from the cliff's edge he stopped to check for sounds of pursuit. The forest was quiet and still; even the birds were silent. If there was anyone nearby or following his trail then they were better woodsmen than he.

  He pushed himself on, moving as quickly as he could but as the undergrowth thickened and the trees grew taller, he was forced to slow to a walk. He was soon sweating inside his rescued coat, damp though it was, and his breathing was laboured as he struggled through the undergrowth.

  Another hour brought him to a clearing through which a chalk stream babbled. He stopped, slumping down on the bank and cupping his hands to drink. The water was warm and tasted of muddy forest but it washed the salt from his mouth. He ducked his head to clean his hair then pulled off his boots to look at his feet.

  Sore, blistered and unused to so much walking, his feet were suffering in the uncomfortable boots. He washed them in the stream as best he could, cleaning away the dirt from months of imprisonment before resting them up on a stone to dry. Then he pulled on his boots and sat looking at them. They were not the most stylish footwear he had ever owned and they certainly weren’t appropriate for a ball at the royal court. Today, though, they were the finest shoes he possessed.

  Marrinek considered his position. He would have plenty of water if he stayed near the stream and his clothes were drying as the air warmed. He was free and he had a pair of boots and a knife but that was the end of the good news. He had no money, no weapons and no charms. He had no food and to find anything more exciting than berries he was going to need tools for cutting, scraping and bludgeoning. Not good. He had to get out of the forest and back to a city, or at least a large town, where he might find people and resources and tools.

  Then he found himself thinking about weapons. He turned the knife in his hands. A workman’s blade, sharp and rust-free, it would be useful for dressing meat but it wasn’t going to help in a fight. His preferred weapon would be a well-seasoned staff, a solid length of oak or ash, shod in iron and shaped for his hands. A peasant's weapon, ignored by nobles and disdained by the gentry but one with which he had always excelled.

  Out here in the forest, though, the wood was still green and growing. Imperfect, maybe, but still useful if he could find something of about the right size and length. Given time, and assuming the bloody drugs ever wore off, he could fashion a staff from almost any piece of wood. Here, with the continuing fear of recapture, he resolved to take the first piece of wood that was about the right thickness and length.

  It was ash, as it turned out, from a grove a short walk west of his spot by the stream. A sapling, decently long and straight, just waiting to be harvested.

  As Marrinek focussed power to slice free the wood he needed, he was wracked by a tremendous wave of nausea. He sat down quickly, hands shaking like a teenager suffering his first hangover, and waited for the spots to disappear from his vision.

  “Fuck,” he said quietly as the trees swam slowly back into focus.

  The drugs, clearly. Some sort of side effect that brought on nausea while still blocking his talent.

  He pulled out the knife again and crouched down at the base of the sapling. Hacking through the wood, removing the branches and trimming the top of the stave took a good deal of effort. The knife was sharp but not at all suited to hewing trees. It took thirty minutes of hard work to produce a usable and almost straight staff about six feet long. He made an effort to tidy the ends of the staff before realising he was just wasting time. It was better to get moving and craft the staff once he had eaten something.

  He grabbed a bunch of the thinner branches with the idea he might strip the bark to make snares to catch rabbits. Twisting rope would take time and he might need to leave the snares out overnight but by tomorrow, if he could find a likely run, he might have fresh meat. Branches under his right arm, staff in his left hand, he continued along the bank of the stream. He walked north west and paid little attention to his surroundings, planning the details of tomorrow’s breakfast as he went.

  Suddenly he froze, hardly breathing, abruptly aware that he wasn't alone in the forest. From downstream, back the way he had come, a horse whinnied.

  Horses didn't wander forests alone, they would have riders. That was bad news for Marrinek and he cursed with frustration. They might be local farmers walking the pathless forest for their own amusement but he didn’t believe that. It was far more likely that someone - the Watchmen he had seen on the beach, probably - had found the bodies and followed his path across the beach and into the forest, wanting to know why he had left in such a hurry.

  He crept up the bank until he had a clump of low bushes between him and the stream. Setting his branches down on the forest floor, he took a firm grip on his staff and peered through the leaves. It sounded like two men were leading horses along the stream itself.

  He shook his head at his own lack of care but what else could he have done? They must have tracked him across the dunes and into the forest, found the butchered sapling, followed the footprints he hadn’t bothered to hide. They might want only to talk about his time on the high seas but Marrinek had learned to expect the worst of people.

  Could he run? He shook his head again, discarding the idea almost immediately. Running wouldn't have been an option even if his boots had fitted, he had been well rested and he had known where he was going. As it was, he’d be lucky to stay ahead of them in the forest once they realised how close they were. There would be no way to hide from them once he made it beyond the woods. Horse against human over unknown ground in broad daylight? No contest; running wouldn’t help.

  And so he squatted down behind his bushes and waited for them to come into view along the stream. Maybe they would talk, maybe they would offer him food, maybe they would have tools or weapons he could use. Whoever they were, and whatever they wanted, he wouldn’t let them take him back to prison.

  He sat, quiet and still, barely breathing, and waited.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SERGEANT SNARE WAS a 20-year veteran of the Imperial army. Upon retiring from the ranks, he had found service in the Watch of a small harbour town at the western edge of the Empire. It was an easy life, safer and far more
comfortable than military service but also somewhat dull. His duties mostly consisted of keeping the peace in the dockside taverns or patrolling the market square, dealing with petty disputes or crimes. After a big storm, though, like the one that had come down from the west last night, he would ride the beach and the cliffs checking for debris that might indicate that a ship had been lost.

  This morning the sea was calm and the clouds were clearing as Snare rode along the beach with the three near-useless constables from today’s roster. He sighed as he guided his horse toward the wet sand where the going was easier. His three constables weren’t just young and ignorant, having strayed no more than a day’s ride from Heberon their entire lives, they were also crushingly keen and eager to impress. After three weeks of haphazard training they knew which end of a sword to hold and roughly how to use it but their general lack of life experience made them unreliable and unpredictable.

  Better avoid stressful or dangerous situations, Snare thought, as if that was likely in the Watch, and so they made their way along the beach looking for shipwrecks. The sight of the first corpse counted, in Snare’s opinion, as a stressful situation. He reined in his horse and paused to think, allowing the constables to catch up.

  “Is that a body?” asked Jared, staring with his mouth open and eyes wide as if this was the first time he had seen a corpse.

  “Hmm,” said Snare, “could be. We’d better take a look.”

  They rode closer and quickly saw that, no, it wasn’t a corpse, it was just the first of many bodies. They were laid out along the beach where the surf had left them, like dolls discarded by a careless child.

  He signalled a stop but something further down the beach caught his eye - movement of some sort at the top of the low cliffs. A person, turning away after watching their approach, maybe? He stared but there was no further movement and his attention shifted back to the beach and the sea and the bodies.