He wasn’t a Protector anymore. This was none of his affair. He had orders from the highest levels of the government. Getting involved here would only draw unwanted attention. The correct thing to do would be to walk away.
“Let her up.”
A miner pulled the girl back by the hair. She heaved and gasped. The trough had been frozen over too, but from the fresh cuts they’d broken through the ice with her forehead. Diluted blood ran quickly down her face. The boy called his sister’s name, but a miner shoved him over with his boot, sliding him across the ice.
“My apologies for waking you up with all the noise, honored guest.” The innkeep didn’t want to chase off any customers, but a man in the mood to murder had very little patience. “But she’s mine and she stole. Law says I can do what I want.”
The Law didn’t care what anyone wanted. “What did she steal?” Ashok asked, already suspecting the answer.
“A blanket and some food. We caught her round back passing out good meat to some of the other fish-eaters. You’d best check your wagon, merchant.” One of the miners laughed. “They’ll rob anything not nailed down.”
This altercation was his fault. “There’s been a misunderstanding. Those things weren’t stolen. I gave them as a gift.”
“The hell you did. Who gives away good stuff to untouchables?” The innkeeper yanked the girl around by her wet hair. She fell hard, curled into a ball, and covered her face. “Ah, trading a little skin on the side now, are you? I’m surprised you thought this one was worth that much. Well, she’s mine, so I should have gotten paid for that, not her. Not passing it on? Law says that’s stealing either way.”
Ashok ground his teeth together until the muscles of his jaw ached. Sensing his mood, Angruvadal didn’t even bother suggesting how to kill these fools. They weren’t worth the sword’s effort. “Don’t try to quote the Law at me, you ignorant swine.”
The miners shared nervous glances. They’d just come out here to participate in the fun of drowning a disobedient untouchable, and hadn’t expected a fight. “Easy, friend. No need to get riled up over the likes of these,” the youngest of them said.
“You want to speak of Law?” The cold air did nothing to calm Ashok’s anger. He crunched across the ice, heading toward the innkeeper. “The Law says overseers are supposed to provide adequate sustenance. They’re nearly starved to death, with a fat ass like you in charge that tells me you’ve been stuffing your face with their rations. These untouchables belong to your Thakoor, who places them as he sees fit. They’re owned by your house, not you. They’re not to be used up and thrown away stupidly by some pathetic scum like you.”
“You keep running your mouth, you’re likely to get hurt,” another miner warned. Technically, a merchant was of higher status than they were, but they were in a backwoods village, in the middle of nowhere, behind a barn, with no witnesses. Status didn’t mean much in such situations. They’d seen he had a sword at his side, and were eyeing it nervously, but there were four of them, and one of him. And after all, it wasn’t like anyone expected a merchant to really know how to use a sword.
He stopped right in front of them, knowing what was coming because he could feel it in the charged air.
A miner swung a fist at Ashok’s face. He caught it in the flat of his palm and squeezed. The miner shrieked as fingers broke. That startled them. Ashok twisted the arm, levering him around, and hurled him into the next miner, sending them both sliding into the fence. The third lumbered toward him, but Ashok blocked that arm, and used the miner’s momentum to roll him over one hip and toss him to the ground.
“Stop before I hurt you,” Ashok warned as the miners got up and surrounded him. They were red-faced, furious, feeling the blood rush of impending violence, their breath coming out in fast gouts of steam.
A knife was drawn.
Ashok spun around the thrust, snapped that wrist, and sent the knife flipping high into the air. He swept the miner around, and flung him headfirst into the fence, breaking boards. The next was caught on the way in, and Ashok’s elbow shattered his jaw. The last miner’s clumsy attack was intercepted, and Ashok threw him against the trough hard enough to break both it and several bones. A hundred-gallon flood of water and ice chunks spilled out, washing over Ashok’s bare feet.
The innkeeper took a step forward. Ashok kicked him in the chest and sent him ten steps back.
Thump. The knife landed in the snow.
Ashok hadn’t been this mad since the night he’d confronted Bidaya about the truth. He walked through the slush toward the panting, heaving innkeeper. “The Law doesn’t exist to satisfy petty greed.” The soles of his feet were sticking to the ice, and each step tore at his skin. “It isn’t about justifying your stupid desires. What you want is irrelevant. The Law is supposed to be more. It’s supposed to be greater than any of us. It isn’t some club for you to beat your inferiors with. I’m sick of people like you.”
“People like me?” the innkeeper squeaked.
“Those who pervert the Law and use it to justify their whims.” Ashok reached down, grabbed the innkeeper’s ear, and pulled. It didn’t take much to convince the man that regardless of the newly broken ribs, he’d best stand up. “You don’t have the right to execute someone without evidence.”
“But they’re not people!” the innkeeper squealed.
“Who are you to decide?”
“The Law! The Law says they aren’t people!”
He was right. Ashok looked down at the girl. She’d been swept away by the water, and was lying there, shivering, bruised and bloodied from the beating the workers had administered. The boy was crawling toward her, leaving droplets of blood on the white behind him from a leaking cut over his eye. They were weak and frozen and suffering and malnourished and afraid . . . but they weren’t people.
How could I forget?
The disconcerting thought shook him to his core. He stood there for a time, rattled by his own weakness. He might have even forgotten the innkeeper if he’d not opened his stupid mouth again.
“Please, don’t murder me over some non-people, merchant. I didn’t mean no offense to you.”
“But offense was given, and offense was taken. I said I gave a gift. You should have taken me at my word.” Ashok let go of his ear. “You’re unfit to be an overseer. You’ll never lay a hand on either of these again. Understand?” The fat man nodded vigorously. Ashok turned to go, then thought better of it, turned back, and punched the innkeeper in the face, smashing his nose flat. The fat man lay down, whimpering and bleeding. “Be glad that’s all you get.”
Ashok turned to walk away. The best thing to do would be to fetch Keta and Thera, and then get out of town as quickly as possible. He cursed himself for his foolishness. Outlaws couldn’t afford the attention. He walked around a moaning worker, but paused when he heard the girl’s weeping. Once these men talked, the villagers would be outraged, and someone would have to pay. Casteless were routinely executed for far less.
What did it matter? The innkeeper was right. They weren’t really people . . .
He went over and took the girl by the arm. “Stand up.” She flinched away from him, but Ashok pulled her to her feet anyway. “Come on. You too,” he snapped at the boy.
“I’m sorry,” she said through shaking, blue lips. “I shouldn’t have shared. The master wouldn’t have seen. It’s my fault.”
“When these get up, they’ll be mad, and I won’t be able to help you if a mob of workers comes looking for revenge. Do you have a place you can go in the casteless quarter? Is there a barracks that’ll take you in?”
“I think so.” Blood dripped from her cuts and spattered on Ashok’s fine merchant’s coat. “Maybe.”
“Go there and hide until this calms down.”
Her legs were visibly trembling. He could feel the vibration of her thin bones in the palm of his hand. “I don’t think I can walk.”
As he carried both children away, Ashok looked up at the bright blue
sky. Far above a single hawk circled.
Chapter 39
“Are you certain it was him?”
“Positive, Sikasso. It is either the fallen, or the swiftest warrior who has ever lived is in Jharlang dressed as a merchant. He just dropped four men . . .” Bhorlatar drew one of his many daggers, held it out, and then let go. It stuck point down in the dirt between them. “In the time it took a knife to fall.”
None of his men were given to much exaggeration, and Bhorlatar’s magical constructs not only looked like hawks, but they had the vision to match. “Very well,” Sikasso nodded. “That has to be him. I don’t know Jharlang. Where is it?”
Bhorlatar unrolled his map and pointed at an area in House Thao lands. “About here, in a canyon off the trade road.”
The fallen wasn’t that far away, especially to those who could soar above the mountains. Sikasso glanced around the camp. There were four of his men here. The rest of them were spread out across the other houses that bordered Vadal, all on the lookout for their target. Now that Ashok had been spotted, they could track him as the Grand Inquisitor had commissioned them to, and make sure there was sufficient carnage left in his wake.
“Do we follow him?”
“That’s what we’ve been hired to do.”
However, if they waited like they were supposed to, there was always the risk that the precious sword would be lost, or worse, fall into the hands of rival wizards. The Lost House had big plans and needed that black steel. It was always better to have such things sooner rather than later.
His subordinate knew what he was thinking, and Bhorlatar was just as eager to get that sword as he was. “The fallen has proven to be a slippery one, but he’ll be stuck in Jharlang for a bit. I doubt he knows it yet, but a flash flood wrecked the bridge back to the trade road last night. The only other clear path is up the mountain toward the Somsak homeland. Unless he wants to try climbing up canyon walls covered in ice sheets, he’ll be there until it melts some.”
“How big is this place?”
“Maybe a thousand people, a handful of warriors, and I didn’t see a single banner of the first caste. If it wasn’t for a favorable mountain wind I never would have seen the place at all. No one will miss it.”
“I doubt any of these poor mountain folk are personally acquainted with the Grand Inquisitor,” Sikasso mused. “You make some good points, Bhorlatar.”
“Dead now, dead later, really, does it matter as long as the work gets done?” Bhorlatar had a savage grin. “Come on, you know you want to kill this bastard and be done with it. Do you really want to waste our time following the Black Heart all over Lok? And what happens when he realizes he’s being followed? Better to strike while he’s unaware. Omand never has to know.”
The others had heard the conversation and stopped their meditations to listen. They were all looking to Sikasso for permission. Their hungry expressions reminded him of the poppy addicts he’d seen in the hidden smoke dens of the Capitol. His men were desperate for new magic. If he didn’t allow them to strike now, it was only a matter of time before one of them stepped out of line and made a move on his own.
Sikasso walked to the edge of the cliff and looked across the ancient mountains of Thao. The view was breathtaking, displaying miles and miles of new ice and rising steam. The five wizards had made camp perched high in the peaks, because how could anyone hide from you when you could see the whole world?
For five generations his people had remained hidden. In the official histories, his house was listed as extinct, their bloodline extinguished, and their heritage erased. They had once been the greatest wizards in the world, so mighty that they had threatened to upstage the Law itself, so the Capitol had crushed them. The survivors had pieced together an existence, selling their skills to the highest bidder, but never forgetting what they’d learned. All those generations in the darkness they’d waited, knowing that if they reclaimed too much magic at once it would attract the full wrath of the judges, but here they were today, with the Inquisition practically giving a whole ancestor blade worth of black steel to them as a present. Houses had risen and fallen over far less.
And if he could take Angruvadal whole . . . That would change everything.
From Sikasso’s lofty vantage point the terraced hills of the Thao farm country seemed unnatural, far too orderly and sculpted to exist in such a rugged place. His eyes followed the mountains until he found the steep canyons where Jharlang lay hidden. Something on the mountainside above that was reflecting the sunrise, glass or polished metal perhaps. There was no way to tell from here. Sikasso glanced at the map again and traced the dotted lines. That shining beacon he was seeing had to be the old Somsak fortress. Like all rational men, Sikasso didn’t believe in gods, but if he had then he’d have known this was a sign.
“Five against one is good, but an army against one is better. Bhorlatar!”
“Yes, my Thakoor,” the wizard approached, eager to hunt.
“Fetch my bag of body parts. I need to give someone a gift.”
* * *
The reflection had come from a massive steel shield, polished mirror smooth and set on top of the tallest tower of an ancient keep. Even the backwoods mountain folk liked a bit of flash.
Sikasso brazenly landed in the field in front of the stone fortress in the form of a great black buzzard, changed back into a man, and then walked right up to the front gate. Several crossbows were trained on him the whole time. He spread his arms wide and opened his hands to show that he was unarmed, not that such a thing mattered to someone who was obviously a wizard. “I come in peace and bearing gifts for the terrible and mighty Somsak.” There was shouting from the walls as a guard found someone of high enough rank to decide whether to open the gate or not.
Curiosity must have outweighed their superstition. Chains rattled and the way was opened for him. Ten warriors marched out, dressed in mismatched hand-me-down armor, and surrounded him with drawn swords.
“Who are you, wizard?” the one with the most tattoos on his face demanded. That must have been how the Somsak denoted rank. Assuming the more ink the face had, the more status, this one must have killed scores of men in his day.
“I am Sikasso of the Lost House and I bring an offer of alliance and gifts of friendship for Nadan Somsak.”
Wary glances were exchanged. They’d heard legends of the Lost House, dark and powerful. “The Thakoor does not speak to uninvited strangers.”
“I’ve been told your Thakoor doesn’t speak to anyone since the Black Heart chopped off his tongue and left him a crippled mute.” The circle of swords closed in at the insult. The Somsak used a straight, two-edged blade, and they were close enough now that Sikasso could see the quality of their steel. The blades weren’t up to his exacting standards, but still sharp enough to hack him to bits. “One of the gifts I bear will cure that condition and give him back his speech. The other will grant the Somsak their revenge.”
“Your words interest us.” The officer nodded, and a runner was dispatched into the keep. While they waited for the response, the swords barely wavered. The mountain folk had strong arms, that was for sure. “You’d better not be wasting our time. Our Thakoor is not a patient man.”
From what he’d heard from his sources, ever since losing his duel their Thakoor had alternated between bouts of impotent rage and suicidal depression. After his defeat, he’d taken out his rage on his holdings, raising taxes, and executing anyone who questioned the sanity of having a ruler who could no longer speak. Rumor suggested that the leadership of Great House Thao was growing tired of their subordinate’s petulant anger, so it would surprise no one if they ordered him to be retired, banished, or even executed. So Nadan Somsak had absolutely nothing to lose.
Sikasso gave a polite bow. “Of course.”
A few minutes later the runner came back and whispered something to the officer. He seemed surprised, but gave a signal and the sword points pulled back enough for Sikasso to pass. “I thought for s
ure he’d have us hack you to bits, but he will see you. Follow.”
Sikasso was escorted into the keep. Compared to the nobility of the other houses or the opulence of the Capitol, the Somsak keep was like stepping back into a more barbaric time. This must have been how the warriors lived back during the Age of Kings, when the houses were little more than subservient tribes. Scores of men watched him suspiciously as he passed. They wore rough leathers and chainmail shirts that had been continually repaired and passed down for generations. Their decorations tended toward crow feathers and slapped-on paint. The once proud Somsak were little more than thugs now. They were a vassal house in name only. Letting them collect taxes from the terrace farmers kept them from turning to banditry, and whenever there got to be too many of them, House Thao would simply rent out their savages as mercenary raiders to their neighbors.
From the large number already gathered here and outfitted for war, it looked as if the Thao had been about to send them on a raid anyway, probably into Vadal lands to take advantage of their misfortune. They appeared ready to strike. Today was Sikasso’s lucky day.
Their great hall stank of sweat and smoke. Massive war dogs were gnawing on the bones left over from the warriors’ breakfast. A muscular, scarred man sat on a massive chair decorated with antlers, coldly studying Sikasso as the wizard entered. His cheeks had been roughly stitched back together from where Angruvadal had split open his face. The artistic tattoos there had been ruined by the black steel’s passing. The wizard gave a very respectful bow. “Thakoor Somsak, I am Sikasso.”
Nadan didn’t so much as nod. He growled some unintelligible command, but the warrior escort seemed to understand, since they all turned and left the hall, leaving Sikasso alone with their master.
The two men measured each other up. Nadan was as imposing as Sikasso was unremarkable. Most of his exposed skin was covered in tattoos that told the story of his many raids and victorious duels, but his eyes told a much different story, one of defeat and shame, and as Sikasso peered through the Somsak leader he saw a desperate killer teetering on the edge of madness.
Son of the Black Sword Page 36