Stranger of Tempest: Book One of The God Fragments

by Tom Lloyd

  He swept out, noting the smothered smiles as he went but mostly just keen to leave the argument behind. The courtyard was bathed in sunlight as he emerged and he slowed, blinking around at the milling mercenaries, before he spotted a broad woman with a tray full of battered tankards. He headed over, noticing a slate with tally marks by the door that indicated they’d gone through a dozen tankards already.

  So this is on Anatin, Lynx thought as he pushed his way forward and grabbed a beer. Until pay day that is, I bet. Never known a merc captain who wasn’t tight-fisted and sneaky and I doubt I’ve met one now.

  As he got comfortable on one of the benches, he spotted Sitain lurking away from the rest of the mercenaries. The young woman had her arms wrapped tight around herself as she watched the unruly crowd, then glanced at the open gate. Lynx sighed inwardly as he realised she was debating with herself if she wouldn’t be better off alone, but before she came to a decision he caught her eye.

  Sitain froze like a rabbit in an eagle’s shadow, a flush of guilt in her cheeks before she could help herself, but Lynx only raised his tankard and pointed to it, beckoning her over. There was a moment of agonised indecision writ large across her face, then her shoulders sagged and she walked forward. Lynx got up, scooping up an unclaimed beer and heading round to meet her.

  ‘Stay for one night,’ he said, holding the beer out. ‘If you want out, fine – I’ll even help.’

  Her resignation turned into astonishment. ‘Don’t you understand? I don’t want your help. I don’t know you. You’re not responsible for me!’ Her voice softened a touch. ‘I owe you for those Charnelers, I know that, but I’m responsible for me. I got sold out to them by someone in my own village, someone I must’ve known my whole life, and that’ll happen again and again if I rely on anyone but myself.’

  Lynx raised his hands and backed off a step. ‘Fine. That’s how you want it, I’m done. A man can only offer his help so many times. Not my fault if you’re dumb enough to throw it back in my face, so bollocks to you.’

  ‘Dumb?’ she said hotly. ‘Dumb to trust some stranger and the honour of his mercenary friends?’

  ‘Dumb enough to think you’ll do better by yourself,’ Lynx snapped, ‘in a city you don’t know, with no friends and no money.’

  ‘Fucking So Han types,’ said a woman loudly behind him, ‘can’t help themselves but fight, even if it’s with their own bastard kind.’

  Lynx turned sharply, fists tightening. ‘Get to fuck, Braqe, this is nothing to do with you.’

  The mercenary gave him a scornful look. ‘Except you’re disturbing my drinking, fat boy.’

  ‘Still not your business. If you want to take a swing at me, stop standing there with your thumb up your arse and get on with it. I’ve only been with the company a few days and I’m already bored to shit with your miserable face.’

  ‘Hey!’ Anatin called from across the courtyard. ‘The pair of you, stow it.’

  ‘You know she won’t,’ Lynx said, keeping his eyes on Braqe. ‘Better we get it all out, right here.’

  ‘Sure, that’ll work well. One of you gets knocked down and we’re all friends again. Happens all the time, I find. You’ll discover a wellspring o’ respect for each other and fight side by side for all the years of your life.’

  Anatin stepped between them and pressed his fingers into the cheek of each until they turned away. Just in case there was any confusion over what would happen if they turned on him, the silent giant, Reft, eased into the commander’s lee.

  ‘The pair of you – don’t speak or even fucking look at each other until we’re out of this city and our job’s done. The first one who starts something gets shot in the head, understand?’

  ‘I’ve given years to this company!’ the woman protested. ‘And suddenly this tattooed scum swans in like some blessed son? He giving the orders round here? You too scared of this murdering shite to kick him out?’

  ‘He ain’t some blessed son,’ Anatin said in a low, angry voice. ‘He’s far from that, but he’s on the roster and I’ve got bigger things to care about than him. He stays until I say otherwise, and you know why?’

  Braqe looked him straight in the eye and shook her head.

  ‘It’s because of you, Braqe – all down to you. I’d half-thought to tell him to get fucked and make his own way in the city, beat a separate path to us, but you’ve been whining for days and it’s really pissed me off.’ Anatin jabbed a finger into her chest. ‘You don’t give the orders round here. You don’t get to decide who goes and who stays. I’m in command here and so long as you need reminding of that, the man stays. Now, walk away. Go inside and have a drink, eat some food and get ready to lose all your money once we start a game.’

  Not wanting to give her time to reply in anger, Teshen appeared and slipped an arm over Braqe’s shoulders to walk her inside. Braqe had the sense to accept his urging rather than shrug him off and Lynx watched them all the way into the main building before finally relaxing.

  ‘Now keep your head down,’ Anatin growled at him as the conversations at the tables slowly started up again. ‘She fought in the Hand Valleys; she’s got a right to hold a grudge against So Han—’

  ‘Doesn’t make it my fault,’ Lynx replied, careful to keep his voice quiet and calm, ‘and if that’s what her grudge is about, you know she’ll come at me again. You’re the commander, I know that, but a man might observe that someone taking her gun away from her while we’re in close confines could be safer for everyone nearby.’

  Anatin paused. ‘The observation’s noted,’ he said frostily, ‘it’ll be mentioned to Teshen.’

  Lynx nodded, realising he’d be pushing his luck by suggesting anything more there. ‘Curfew lasting beyond the morning?’

  ‘There’s work to do in the morning.’

  ‘Any for me?’

  ‘You’ll do what your sergeant orders.’

  ‘Aye, sir, sure there’ll be something that can keep me out of the way.’

  ‘Count on it.’ Anatin stamped off towards the main building, but paused before he reached the door and caught the elbow of the waitress. ‘That one pays for his own drinks,’ Anatin said, jabbing a thumb back at Lynx.

  She nodded and gave Lynx a level look. For want of anything to say he shrugged and raised his current beer in toast to her. A small smile appeared on the woman’s face as she started to gather up empty tankards and Lynx turned to Sitain.

  ‘Now, where were we? Stupid and friendless, right?’

  She gave a snort and shook her head. ‘Oh shut up and give me that beer.’

  Chapter 9

  Sitain floated in the dimness of near-waking, adrift in sleep but tethered by some small thread of the world beyond. Her thoughts were clouds in a pre-dawn sky; dark, drifting formless shapes, while the glow of faint awareness edged the horizon. Elusive glimpses of shadow shards danced at the edge of her thoughts, the memory of the night elemental.

  Her eyes jerked open. At first she could see nothing, then a grey outline of the bunkroom unfolded. There was a figure beside her bed, unmoving, the thin gleam of a blade in its hand. Sitain gasped, in shock, in fear, and the figure flinched. It took a step back and the weak light showed enough to outline a woman’s face, broad build, dark skin – Braqe.

  Braqe’s mouth opened, but whatever she intended to say went silent. Sitain felt a tingle rise from deep inside her, an involuntary welling up that swiftly built and seemed to take hold of her body like a sneeze. She felt it run out to her fingers, sparkling motes of blackness distorting the air around her fingers. Braqe’s eyes widened, a white gleam of fear echoed in the shine of her blade as she instinctively raised it.

  Sitain threw herself against the wall behind her, scrabbling to be out of the knife’s reach. As she slammed her shoulders into the wood the magic in her fingers spat out like venom. Fractured shadows swallowed Braqe and the woman reeled – fell back a step then folded and crashed to the ground.

  Curses and shouts rang out all around
the bunkroom. A figure jumped down from her right and for a moment the air before Sitain went black as a haze of magic burst out. When she could see again there was a man staggering drunkenly, she couldn’t see who. Before he could fall someone else scrambled out of their bunk and grabbed him, ducking under the reeling man’s shoulder.

  Faces started appearing all around the room, shock and fear made grotesque in the gloom. Panic started bubbling up from inside her then the tingle of magic again. Sitain tried to back away but all she could do was wedge herself into a corner of the bunk’s wooden frame. More and more mercenaries got up, growling curses, demanding to know what was going on, some just pointing accusingly at her.

  ‘I … I didn’t, I just …’

  Words failed her in the face of mounting anger and fear, but before anyone could move or the magic demanded a release, Lynx shoved his way forward. The man wore only his small things, his pale belly rounded like an egg, hair wild and plastered across his face until he swept it back. The tattoo on his cheek was as black as midnight in the dark; it seemed to hover just above his skin as though it was some fragment of night magic that he wore as a charm. With one hand Lynx hauled back the mercenary nearest to Sitain, showing the power inside his bulky frame as he almost pulled the man off his feet.

  ‘All o’ you step back,’ he growled.

  The angry faces turned his way as he placed himself between the mob and Sitain.

  ‘Are you fucking mad?’ demanded one. ‘Look at what she did to Braqe!’

  ‘I saw it all right. I saw Braqe had a knife in her hand – she was standing over Sitain with it. I thought for a moment she was going to stick her, was reaching for my gun when Sitain woke.’

  Lynx turned side on to point down at the discarded blade and his back caught what little of the Skyriver’s light crept through the window shutters. Sitain gasped, not at the weapon but at the mass of lines and ridges that marked Lynx’s back. There was barely a scrap of skin that was smooth flesh. From shoulder to buttock there was just a haphazard mess of scarring. A landscape of brutal and repeated punishment. Sitain had never seen anything like it but her hands trembled as she imagined the pain it depicted.

  He heard her gasp and glanced at Sitain, his face tightening as he realised what she was looking at, but he didn’t pause.

  ‘She’s a night mage,’ Lynx continued. ‘Someone check Braqe, my money’s on her just being out for the count. She’ll wake up with a sore head and that’s all.’

  There was a long pause before Himbel stepped forward. The company surgeon knelt at Braqe’s side and put his fingers to her jugular.

  ‘Alive,’ the scowling, dishevelled man pronounced. ‘Pulse is steady.’ He straightened up then crouched back down and with two stubby fingers grabbed Braqe’s upper lip, giving it a hard twist. The woman didn’t move and Himbel was grinning when he stood again. ‘She’s not waking any time soon. You’ll be useful when we get injuries, girl!’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about injuries,’ another mercenary muttered, looking at Sitain uneasily, ‘you keep your cursed magic away from me, hear?’

  Sitain bobbed her head, still curled up on her bunk and too startled to speak, but Himbel shuffled forward before the woman could say anything more about Sitain’s magic.

  ‘You’ll feel different after a battle,’ the ageing doctor pronounced, ‘whatever superstitions your head’s filled with.’

  ‘Sitain,’ Lynx said, ‘maybe best you get out of here for the rest of the night. Go find Kas and Estal, they took a room. Better’n this one waking up right in front of you anyway.’

  ‘I’ll stay up with Braqe,’ Himbel said. He glanced over at the dazed man who was sat on the edge of a bunk, lolling with both hands wrapped around a support to keep him upright. ‘Darm too. Guess I need to make some observations if this magic’s going to be useful.’

  Sitain didn’t move. She found she couldn’t tear her eyes off the woman she’d felled.

  ‘Sitain,’ Lynx prompted.

  She flinched and stared up at the big man’s face with incomprehension for a moment until her wits returned. ‘Oh. Yes, okay.’

  She had just a shift on because of the warmth in the bunkroom and suddenly felt vulnerable, but with her blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a cloak, Sitain managed to get out of bed and pick her way around Braqe before scampering to the door.

  ‘Darm,’ she said suddenly, surprising even herself. A few of the nearer mercenaries actually drew back at the sound before they realised she wasn’t talking to them. The groggy man looked up, frowning as he struggled to focus on her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, at first just managing a whisper before she repeated herself. ‘Sorry. She’d frightened me, then you surprised me. I didn’t mean … well, I’m sorry.’

  Darm, a red-haired white man with a spider-pattern tattoo on his chest, blinked at her as though he couldn’t understand what she was saying, but eventually it filtered through to his confused mind. He gave a grunt and nodded, head sagging as though the effort to look and think was too much for his night-struck mind.

  ‘You’ll sleep if off,’ she added, ‘I did it to my brother once. Give it a few hours and you’ll be fine.’

  ‘Go on now, Sitain,’ Lynx said. ‘Everyone get some rest.’

  Lynx failed to sleep. He watched Braqe’s chest rise and fall, her limbs never moving throughout those hours of magical sleep. As the dawn light appeared and sounds of activity came from outside he sighed and slipped off his bunk. He would get no more rest, better he be dressed and ready for the day once Anatin found out what had happened.

  He pulled on his clothes, draped his jacket over one arm and paused with his hand hovering over his mage-gun.

  ‘Leave it,’ Himbel yawned from his vigil beside Braqe. ‘No shooting before breakfast.’

  ‘So that’s the rule,’ Lynx said, ‘I’d been meaning to ask.’

  ‘Not where you’re from, mebbe. You commandos did all your best work at dawn, no?’

  Lynx felt his face fall. ‘Yeah, we left the shitty bits for later.’

  ‘She won’t come after you with a gun,’ Himbel advised. ‘She won’t come after you at all, not once Teshen hears about it I reckon, but she ain’t one to shoot a man in the back.’

  ‘Even me?’

  ‘You ain’t that special.’

  ‘Tell that to my ma.’

  Himbel chuckled. ‘So that’s why you left home. Mine was the same, bless her. If she’d had her way I’d have been too fat to leave town and too swamped by children to find time to try.’ He stood and stretched his back, tilting his head to one side then the other and grimacing at the pops and cracks that came from his joints. ‘Braqe’s a different sort o’ woman, but she ain’t the type to murder you. She’ll pick a fight mebbe, but you’ll see her coming that’s for damn sure.’

  ‘What about earlier? Fucking looked like she was—’

  Himbel cut him off with an angry hiss. ‘Woman’s a skilled soldier. If she wanted Sitain dead, she had more’n enough chance. That was all about herself and her memories. She fought in the Hand Valleys, never forgave your lot for that, but she had it under control or we’d be waking to Sitain’s open throat.’

  ‘I never forgave my lot for it either,’ Lynx commented bitterly, ‘seems no one gives a shit about that, though.’

  ‘Funny, you’d think they’d be full of sympathy for a slightly different commando to the ones who butchered their friends and family.’

  Lynx gave a snort and headed for the door. ‘Want me to bring you anything?’

  ‘I’m good, you go find your girl and sit on her ’til Teshen or Anatin feel the need to scream at someone.’

  ‘Teshen screams?’

  Himbel cocked his head to one side. ‘If he ever does, you fucking run,’ he said slowly. ‘Leave the women and children behind and run for your life.’

  Outside, Lynx discovered the soft light of dawn had lent a yellow warmth to the now tidy courtyard and he felt a moment of peace settle
on his shoulders. He stopped in the middle of the courtyard and took in a few deep breaths, trying to shake off the nagging cloud of fatigue.

  ‘Coffee?’

  He turned in surprise to find the waitress from last night leaning out of a window, clearly in the middle of her morning chores.

  ‘Coffee sounds good,’ Lynx agreed.

  ‘Sit out there and I’ll bring you a mug. I’m mopping in here so you keep your boots out.’

  Lynx hesitated a moment then realised if Sitain was coming down, she’d be passing this way most likely anyway. Or she ran in the night and is long gone now. Either way, coffee will make the world a shade better.

  ‘Gladly,’ he said with a smile. ‘Got anything to eat too?’

  ‘The baker’s boy’ll be along soon.’

  ‘Guess I’ll make myself comfortable, then.’

  Lynx settled in and listened to the sounds of the inn and its patrons waking around him. With a tall ceramic pot of coffee and an end of bread, he was content to let the hubbub of the inn and the city beyond flow over him, exchanging grunted greetings to mercenaries as they passed or joined him at the table. Before Sitain arrived, however, the rather more formidable sight of Payl appeared in front of him. She didn’t say anything at first, content to let him squint up at her and savour the sinking feeling in his gut.

  ‘Is every day going to be trouble when you’re around?’ she said eventually.

  ‘To be fair, there’s been at least two that haven’t,’ Lynx replied. From Payl’s expression, his levity wasn’t helping. ‘Hey, I don’t always get to choose when trouble seeks me out and what Braqe does ain’t my fault.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean you’re worth keeping around.’

  ‘Does that come from Anatin?’

  She paused. ‘He’s determined you’ll be useful for this job. If I were you, I’d think on that detail a while. He’s never been one for giving much of a shit about anyone he doesn’t know well.’