Scarlet and the White Wolf--Book One

by Kirby Crow

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  Torquere Press

  www.torquerepress.com

  Copyright ©2005 by Kirby Crow

  First published in www.torquerepress.com, 2006

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  1.

  Scarlet

  Autumn, the Month of Ashes.

  The serpent banner of Om-Ret fluttered over the great souk of Ankar, crowning the jumbled din of camels, horses, men, slaves, tinkers, dogs, whores, hawkers, cutpurses, soldiers, and merchants with a constant flapping sound like the wings of gulls. Scarlet, son of Scaja, swiped at the gritty red dust on his face and surveyed the colorful row of furled ribbons the tradeswoman laid out for him.

  "For your wife, little Byzan?” she asked him coyly, her golden eyes glittering above the hem of her embroidered veil. Here, far north of Byzantur, all Morturii men and women who were not soldiers or whores hid their faces behind layers of filmy gauze or bright-colored cotton or jeweled silk. Scarlet was not Morturii and hid nothing.

  "Sister,” he answered shortly, and pointed to the red ribbons. “The blue and green, too, and a yard of the white silk and a yard of the green,” he added, mentally wincing at the price. The woman bowed as he paid her with half of a silver sellivar. He collected his package and left, threading his way through the crowded, stinking alleys of the marketplace. Avid seagulls, fresh from feeding on entrails thrown from the many fishing vessels crowding the glittering bay, swooped low over the crowds. One black-winged gull darted past him, wings slashing, and stole a fragment of flesh from a meat-sellers stall.

  "Greedy!” the man cried, shaking his fist after the departing bird.

  Scarlet came to the Street of Doves and Flowers and pursed his mouth in distaste, for he disliked having to take this route. He navigated his way past a noisy ghilan, a two-story dwelling whose function was made known by the series of carved frescoes that depicted a young, shapely woman being chased through a lush forest by an armored Morturii soldier. The soldier pursued her through various stages of undress, with the last panel culminating in the soldier mounting her thighs amid a flowering field.

  Next on the street was a bhoros house, constructed almost identically to the white-walled ghilan, with fine bronze screens at all the windows and the doorways tiled in blue. The main difference were the frescoes, and in the last marble panel before the street opened up into the wide main avenue of the souk, a laughing young man lay sprawled on his back in the grass with a lean soldier kneeling over him, both of them very bare.

  Scarlet came upon a kneeling Fate with eyes like two raisins pinned on a shrunken apple; all he could see of her behind her veil. The crone extended her wizened hand to him.

  "Read your fate, red-coat?"

  He shook his head and went on, intent on making his way back to Masdren's stall. Morturii, the land of metal and magic, abounded in soothsayers, seers, fate dealers, and crones. They were almost as prevalent as the blacksmiths, armorers, and master weapon-smiths, and in some parts, the land was under a permanent pall of black smoke from the smithies.

  A pair of long-knives hanging in a corner smithy caught Scarlet's eye, and he stopped to admire them with frank longing. Like all Morturii weapons, the knives had smooth hafts made of spun wire and the blades themselves were black as jet. Inscribed on the blades were many curling designs of leaves, trees, human faces in torment, and stretched, eviscerated animal bodies, all swirling together in finely-etched silver lines to form a depiction of Deva's creation of the world. The weapons were ugly and terribly beautiful at the same time, and Scarlet lingered to stare as the foot-traffic flowed around him.

  The burly Morturii smith stirred from his forge and pointed. “Ye want try ‘em out?” he asked in poor Bizye.

  After a long moment, Scarlet shook his head. He did, but he could never afford the smith's price.

  "He'll take them,” said a familiar voice.

  Scarlet turned and frowned at Masdren. “I will not,” he said in Falx, the local language. His accent was flawless. “Sit down, blacksmith. I don't have that much silver."

  "But I do.” Masdren nodded at the smith. Masdren was a black-haired Byzan as well, one of perhaps a hundred in all of Ankar, and much older than Scarlet. “Wrap them up. Never mind the sheaths; I've got better in my shop."

  Scarlet opened his mouth to protest and Masdren put a restraining hand on his arm. “How many summers have you worked for me in the souk, lad? Four at last count? And your dad is still one of my best friends. Take the knives. I know you know how to use them, and I want Scaja to see his son again."

  "But I don't want—"

  "Do as you're told, boy."

  Though he knew Masdren was right, Scarlet felt his tenuous hold on his volatile temper slipping. The roads in Morturii were safe enough, but he was headed home for Byzantur on foot. Many a young man or woman who traveled a Byzantur road alone often wound up as chained work-slaves for sale in Minh. More infrequently—depending on their beauty—they woke up from a drugged stupor as painted and perfumed bhoros boys or ghilan girls, sold into whoredom by any of a dozen slave brokers who eked a steady living from the southern roads.

  Rannon, the lean and soft-spoken karwaneer who had led Scarlet's first caravan, had taught him the art of knives. Although Scarlet was no warrior, he could run swift as a deer and possessed an almost uncanny sense of direction. A foot-traveling pedlar's life is best paced slow and steady, but sometimes the only hope he had was to run like Deva's imps were after him. He was marked for luck: born with only four fingers on his left hand, a sign of Deva's favor. Running had saved his life more than once.

  The smith was holding the cloth-wrapped pair of knives out to Scarlet and Masdren was reaching for his pouch to pay. He watched as Masdren counted out forty sellivar, almost half a year's pay for a pedlar, and he found himself ducking his head sullenly to thank him. He would have preferred to buy his own weapons, but Masdren was his elder, so he bit his lip and thought of how disgraced Scaja would be if he lost his temper in public again. His black moods and immodest speech had caused his father enough embarrassment over the years. The fact that Masdren was one of Scaja's oldest friends helped to restrain him, but he sometimes resented this man's ability to make him feel like an unruly boy in need of a good dressing-down.

  The aged leathersmith waved Scarlet's thanks away. “None of that. Come on, I'll walk you to the walls.” He was a big man compared to most Hilurin, black-haired and very pale-skinned like all those who belong to the First People, and with large, ink-dark eyes, shiny as obsidian.

  They stopped at Masdren's shop and the leathersmith sent one of his many boisterous children for Scarlet's walking stick and a pair of tool-worked leather sheaths, black to match the knives. They were indeed far better than the ones at the blacksmith's stall. Masdren was a master.

  "These are too fine,” Scarlet said as a last protest, and Masdren smiled ruefully and pushed them into his hands. Masdren shooed his children back to their work and took Scarlet's arm to steer him to the gates as if he were five years old himself.

  They were challenged briefly at the city's high, stone walls, but it was perfunctory. The bored, leather-armored bravos scratched and swatted at flies as they let the pair of foreigners through the gaping iron teeth of the massive gate into the flat, brown lands surrounding the port city. To the east
was the wide Channel, its white-capped blue waters sparkling in the sun. A thin breeze of cooling air carried the taste of salt.

  Masdren made him a final gift of a pair of storm-gray leather gloves, custom-fitted to accommodate his left hand with its missing fifth finger. Again, Scarlet's thanks were deflected gently. “What will you do when you get home?” Masdren asked.

  Scarlet sighed and shot Masdren a tired, affectionate look. “You know I won't stay there for long."

  "When did you ever? No, I'm only asking because I want you to think about working for me permanent next year, not just the summer."

  He hesitated, surprised by the proposal. “You want me to move to Ankar, make it my home?"

  Masdren's mood suddenly changed. He fidgeted. “It would be best,” he said, averting his eyes. “I didn't want to worry you, but the news from Byzantur is bad: more Hilurin families killed, farms razed to the ground, cattle stolen, wells poisoned. There's been talk of public burnings, too, and worse.” Masdren looked at him with large eyes. “Much worse. If you can, convince Scaja to bring your mother and sister out before it's too late."

  Scarlet shook his head. “Scaja will never leave Lysia. I know he won't.” Scaja was a stubborn man and Scarlet's second mother, Linhona, had already lost one family to Minh raiders. She had lived in an eastern settlement of Byzantur above the marshy lands known as the Fens, far closer to Minh than Lysia was. She would not want to leave her beloved adopted home, no matter how great the danger.

  "He has to,” Masdren said urgently. “Oh Deva, does he want to die? Do you? For the god's sake, leave Byzantur while you can. You'll never be able to hide what you are with that face, nor will Annaya or Scaja or Linhona. You're all Hilurin to the bone and they'll kill you for it."

  Scarlet was alarmed, but some part of him still refused to believe that his own countrymen had turned so completely against them. Surely something would happen, someone in power would intervene, and the fighting would stop soon? “The Flower Prince...” he began.

  "The yeva bilan can't stop what's happening,” Masdren finished. “He's offered to step down."

  Scarlet was dismayed. The Hilurin were a dying race outnumbered fifty to one by the Aralyrin in Byzantur, yet the only men of any power in the governing palace at Rusa were pure Hilurin, a thing that had garnered enormous resentment among the Aralyrin population. There had been a failed military coup last year, brought on by dissension in the army ranks, and it was then that talk began of electing a non-Hilurin for yeva bilan next term.

  "The Flower Prince has been Hilurin for the past two thousand years,” Scarlet said, shaken. It was a requirement, for the sacred legends taught that if the deified prince was not pure-blooded First People, he would not have the ancient Gift and Deva would not speak to him. Few remembered this except the priests of Deva and the Hilurin themselves. “What'll happen to us when they find out that the goddess only answers the Hilurin?"

  Masdren only stared at him sadly, and did not reply. Scarlet found himself mumbling a promise to send word of his decision and to see Masdren next spring, at the very least.

  The elder left him in the busy thoroughfare outside the walls, and Scarlet stood there for a little while after. The long road home would take him nearly ten days on foot, and he was not sure he was ready to begin. Passersby saw little to remark on: a slight Byzan youth of about seventeen with the beardless, flower-pale face of a Hilurin, black hair, and black eyes. If they were asked later to describe him, they would have remembered that he wore the long crimson coat of a pedlar with its characteristic broad hood, and that his face was very fair to look on, his features both delicate and masculine with a subtlety of secrets about the eyes. As Hilurin are a very handsome race and beauty is not uncommon among them, looks alone could not distinguish him, but the crimson coat would.

  To see a Hilurin at all outside of Byzantur is a rarity, for they are, on the whole, a secretive, withdrawn folk, and a bold traveling pedlar with a Hilurin face would most certainly be noticed.

  Scarlet frowned and sourly eyed the crowded southern path that would take him eventually to the Common Road and home. The winding road looped over the rocky hills as far as he could see, vanishing at last over a black knoll that hid the rising smoke from the city of Sondek. There were a few battered wagons outlined on the horizon, reminding him that there would be Kasiri bands thick as flies on the road. There would also be slavers, Bledlanders, bandits, and just plain rogues bent on whatever ill deeds kept their bellies fed and their hands to mischief. It would be a long and tiring trek.

  The sound of his father's voice, brittle with disapproval, echoed in his mind: This is no life for a proper Hilurin.

  "It's my life and I'll do as I please with it,” he muttered resentfully, feeling once again like a scolded child. “No one pens me in.” So saying, he gripped his walking stick firmly, adjusted his leather satchel higher on his shoulder, and started off.

  Not being a true warrior, Scarlet had no defense against slavers, other than to be swift and on his guard. The trick with Kasiri is not to be too much of a temptation. A pedlar's long red coat is known everywhere, and it is a lure to some. For the most part, the nomadic Kasiri tribes roam the southern roads between Lysia and Rusa, and are shunned by all and welcome nowhere. They are petty thieves and cheap charlatans, dirty and underhanded and sly, and there is not a town or city in the whole continent where they are not despised. Yet, even jackals have their good qualities and no one had ever heard of a Kasiri gypsy taking slaves, though they would take anything else not nailed down.

  To Scarlet's mild surprise, it was not a Kasiri who menaced him eight days later on the lonely riverside road outside of Sondek, but a grizzled Bled. The fierce, bearded warrior eyed Scarlet as he walked by on the rocky path, and Scarlet's hand tightened on his leather pack and he fretted at the thought of the good pouch of silver coins hidden in his belt.

  The Bledlander's excellent knives and the ragged scars covering his bare chest recommended him as a skilled fighter, and Scarlet got a good look at both before giving the man a cursory nod and hurrying past. The spot between his shoulder blades tingled as he left the Bledlander behind, but he resisted the urge to look back. The Bled were like dogs: show them an ounce of fear and they'd be all over you.

  For Scarlet, who was a skilled woodsman and had no fear of beasts, bad weather, or hunger, survival depended mostly on his wits and his ability to outrun those predators who went on two legs instead of four. The Bled might give him some trouble in that quarter.

  He glanced over his shoulder at the Bled as he continued to walk at a brisk pace, his legs moving tirelessly beneath him. There had been trouble between the lawless Bledlands and Byzantur all season, and it was a lean year; the roads filled with hungry men. He took no chances and looked back a minute or so later, only to see the warrior had vanished. His heart gave a little jolt, and a quick glance to the stand of spare cedars to the west showed him a glimpse of tall shadow slinking behind a tree. It was all the warning he needed.

  He took off like a rabbit and left the skulking Bledlander in the dust, silently thanking Deva for her gifts. If she had taken the littlest finger of his left hand before he was born, she had made up for it by giving him two good legs. He did not mind never having the finger, honestly, though it did make his left hand too slender for any normal glove to fit, since the long bone that ran from the wrist to the knuckle was gone, too.

  With the Bledlander far behind him, Scarlet slowed to a trot until he neared the turnoff to the Patra Ferry. He halted in the middle of the road, his hands on his hips, and caught his breath while he thought. The air had cooled, hinting of the mild winter season that was almost upon them. He fished a furled apple from his pack and bit into it with strong white teeth as he pondered his options. Walking all the way home presented problems: he was tiring from his run and would be less able to run again if more trouble presented itself. If he took a ship down the river all the way to Tradepoint, he would shorten his journey and avoid an
y further trouble on the road, but he was equally likely to run into slavers or bandit boats on the water.

  Scarlet ate a little more of the apple, his clear brow furrowing as he chewed. This job was getting almost too dangerous, though once he would have insisted otherwise. His love for the pedlar's life was as strong as ever, but even he had to admit that he had been extremely lucky thus far. Numerous hazards had brushed past him, death and rape among them, but he had always managed to escape. He recalled Masdren's offer and toyed with the idea of settling in Ankar or Sondek, or perhaps even far south in Rusa, the colorful capital of Byzantur, where there were Hilurin who actually lived in walled cities instead of rustic, undefended villages.

  Finishing the apple, Scarlet looked around at the dry, yellow country surrounding the road. He chose a likely spot: a little mound of earth out of the shade of a stand of wind-blasted oaks, and dug a shallow hole to drop the apple core into. That done, he glanced quickly around him to make certain no eyes would witness, scraped a little dirt over the gnawed core, and laid his palm over the earth. Warmth crawled up Scarlet's wrist as he closed his dark eyes and chanted the short verse, and then he was up and walking down the road to the ferry, dusting off his hands.

  Behind him, a thin, fragile, tendril of green curled out of the mound and tested the air.

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  The boat was a skiff, the waters choppy, and the captain was roaring drunk. Not the best way to navigate the Iron River from Patra to Lysia, but it had to do. The deck heaved under Scarlet like a wild Bledlands’ mare, the captain stank like a distillery, and he was vastly relieved to finally see the lowland dock of Skeld's Ferry with the usual loiterers hanging around. He waved at a figure seated on shore just as the skiff's bow slammed into the dock and landed him on his rump.

  One of the old men smoking his pipe in the sun grinned and raised a hand to him as he was getting to his feet. “High time you returned, Scarlet-lad."