by Dave Freer
Her appeal did the trick, as she had known it would. He nodded, and the very act broke through his wall of fear. He felt the assegai shaft. Who was Kemp to be petrified of anyway? Old Marou would have made mincemeat of three of him. He felt a gentle touch on his shoulder. It was S'kith. There was almost a trace of expression on his face. Worry. With shock Keilin realized the emotional spillover from his mind must have touched the otherwise puzzled man. The shaven-headed man forced his face . . . into a sort of smile. "Friend," he said quietly. It was only one word, but Keilin knew exactly what it meant. It meant that Keilin's enemies were S'kith's enemies. And S'kith's answer to any threat was a preemptive strike. Right now that would get them all killed. He'd have to stop S'kith from going off the deep end too soon.
Shael handed back the small knife as they walked through the archway into the palace. Keilin wondered vaguely if her trimming had been judicious, while walking. She'd cut her nails, that she'd so carefully cared for, into rather pointed things. By the look of them she ought to rather have just cleaned them. They were plainly dirty, very unlike her, with her vanity. He must buy her some more cream too. He'd no idea where she'd got this lot from, but it smelled of fish. Then, as the heavy gates clanged shut behind them, it occurred to him that he might not get an opportunity to buy anything again.
It was a large hall, with a balcony, lined with crossbow men. The Patrician turned, "Take thith girl, and that other one over there down to my . . . chamber. I'd never thought of two. How exthiting. I'll enjoy one while the other getth into the mood, watching." The giggle would have frightened crocodiles.
"Wait, you promised . . ." Cap burst out.
"And the retht of them. Take them to thee my withard," the Patrician said with a lighthearted wave. "Ditharmed of course. He'll be fathinated to hear what thomeone claiming to be Crew wantth here. Abtholutely fathinated. You thee, my landth are not platheth of tranthit. We're a dead end, thurrounded by dethert or thea, or Morkth territory."
He stepped through an archway and disappeared, leaving them to face the aimed crossbows.
"It's no use thinking of hostages," the Guard Commander sneered. "The only hostage worth taking just left. Drop your weapons." They had little option but to comply. A couple of men led Leyla and Shael away, as the rest were searched. As one of the searcher's hands travelled down Keilin's leg, S'kith stood on the man's foot, while looking the other way. The searcher turned to cuff him. S'kith simply stood, but Keilin's ankle pouch remained undiscovered. The pile of confiscated weapons grew. Jewels and money were also removed. When they took the core sections from Cap, danger flashed in his eyes. However, all their goods were simply piled onto a low trolley, and not looted. "The wizard will examine it first," commented one searcher, replying to Beywulf's sarcastic comment.
"Come now. Take me to this magician or whatever. I am in a hurry to sort things out, and be on my way," said Cap with a show of his customary arrogance. Keilin just kept his mouth shut. He noticed with relief however that while they were being searched Kemp had left and followed his master.
One of the soldiers shuddered. "I'd rather be questioned by a shark, mister."
"Shut up, Trooper. March them through." Something in the corporal's tone suggested that he agreed with what the soldier had just said.
The wizard had a long beaky nose and a too-broad face. He also sat too still in his robes on the high-backed carved chair. The air outside was hot, and dry. Here in this room it was positively steamy. "Close the door, soldier. It's too dry out there." The voice was curiously atonal, and its cadences somehow wrong. Keilin found himself staring carefully at the speaker's face. Something else was tugging at the sleeve of his memory.
"You claim to be part of the Crew, on business here. Explain." The man's lips were not in perfect synch with the words. The memory tugged more urgently. Smell . . . lavender . . . and something far less pleasant?
At his side S'kith began bioenhancement rituals. "Morkth," he said quietly. And Keilin recognized the smell.
"I am the senior surviving crew officer. Those who thwart me will regret it. My business is not here, it is with the Morkth invasion. Tell your master he'd better return my property and my female companions immediately, and I will say no more of the matter."
A snort came from the seated figure. "The real Crew were killed. The Patrician chooses what females he wants. Tell me more of your business with the Morkth."
Keilin had sidled up behind Cap. "He is Morkth!" he whispered urgently.
Cap's eagle eyes narrowed.
"Answer or I will have one of your number killed. Painfully." The voice remained atonal.
"Voice synthesizer." Cap spoke with grim satisfaction. There was a brief searing bright scarlet bolt from the hand he had tucked into his jacket. There were twelve guards in the room, with four unarmed prisoners. In seconds Keilin realized that Cap didn't need anything more than his hands and feet. These were chopping blades themselves. And the blades of the fallen were in the hands of Beywulf and S'kith. S'kith bioenhanced and Beywulf headed into berserker madness.
But Keilin was outclassed and unarmed. A few seconds later he found the burly corporal's chin bristles brushing his ear, with a sword at his throat. "Hold off, or the boy is dead!"
Cap laughed. "Kill away. He's not particularly valuable to me."
But both S'kith and Bey had halted. Keilin felt an inner calmness, despite his dire situation. By the looks of the corporal's dark broad face he'd been recruited from the refugee swarm from across the narrow sea. Keilin spoke as if having a sword at his throat happened twice every morning before tea. "Corporal. Look. The wizard is a Morkth warrior."
The hand which was twisting and forcing Keilin's arm upward went slack. The man's eyes goggled at the corpse. As well he might. The thing's death rictus had shredded its robes, and pieces of non-human body were exposed. A clawed gray limb kicked at the sky.
The corporal was old enough to have been an adult when the Morkth hoards swept through the rich irrigated lands of Beshtan, killing, destroying and enslaving. By the bitterness in his voice he remembered it only too well. "Motherfucking shiteaters! What the hell is going on?"
"You are fighting the wrong people, Corporal." Keilin made no attempt to move. "My master is one of the Cru. He has come to rid Tinarana of the Morkth filth."
"Hold your swords, boys." The corporal spoke to his surviving compatriots.
"But, Corp, they've killed—" protested one of the men.
"Hold, I said! Shut your face, Josen. I don't blame people for killing bugs. Or anything that fights on their side." The corporal let go of Keilin. "Come on, boy. Let's go and have a look." They walked over to the body. The corporal prodded the face with the sword point. The rubbery mask split, revealing the huge faceted eye beneath.
"Holy . . . we must tell the Patrician at once," said Josen. His paler cast of skin and narrower features made him likely to be a local man.
"I'll bet the bastard knows," the corporal said harshly. "He's been behaving like a mixture between a mouse and a rabid dog ever since this"—he kicked at the Morkth's body—"turned up a couple of years ago."
"He knows," said Keilin, with absolute conviction. Somehow it would have been impossible to doubt him.
"We'll kill the bastard!" Red fury burned in the other young trooper's eyes. He too looked to be the offspring of a refugee.
Cap looked at them. "Very well. You may take part in my plan. Corporal, send this young man to fetch others to view this . . . thing. Men who do not love the Morkth. Help me now and your serving of the enemy is forgiven. I will see if I can help the fallen. I am a doctor, as well as a member of the Crew. Keep this . . . Josen fellow in here; he is not to be trusted."
The corporal looked at him and then at Keilin, as if seeking confirmation. Keilin nodded imperceptibly. "Serra. Fetch Captain Belvin, and Sergeant Rood. Tell them I sent you. Tell them `red lentil,' nothing else, and say to come now."
He looked around the chamber, and then turned and calmly h
it Josen over the head with his sword butt, and watched him fall. "Can't trust him, the bloody little brown-nose squeaker. He's always up the Guard Commander's butt. These other lads are right enough. Been a tide rising against this `wizard' and Vedas. We were planning a coup in maybe a month's time."
Minutes later two men came back with the guardman. Both of the newcomers were plainly also from across the narrow sea. The spare gray-haired one was already talking as he came in. "Halen. What do you mean using this boy as a messenger? Plain bloody stupid—oh!" He saw the "wizard" and his half displayed face. "Oh, holy Dana!! I see. Sergeant. You and Corporal Halen go and muster your troops. I want them in here within three minutes."
Keilin's mind could not leave Shael's need in other's hands. He turned to the captain. "Can I have a guard please? To show me the way down to the chambers underneath. I must go there." She needed him now.
The captain looked at him strangely. "Things happen down there, boy, that I don't know about. Lots of screaming. That's one reason I'm neck deep in this mess. Now you want me to send you down there?"
Keilin nodded. "My friends are down there." The fear demon was gone now. All he knew was the need for haste.
Cap's eyes narrowed again. "Would our gear be accessible?" he asked the guards.
One of the remaining men nodded. "They'll be in the red vestibule off the great hall."
Cap smiled, all teeth. "Captain, I must insist that the boy is right. Send these two with us to collect our gear. Then we'll give you a good deal of commotion. Just leave down below to us. Do you want your Patrician alive or dead?"
The captain looked startled. "Uh, what?!"
"Two escorts," Cap said impatiently.
With a blinding suddenness Keilin realized that all Cap really wanted was to recover the core sections.
They were marched as if they were still prisoners across to the entrance hall and into a vestibule hung with red drapes. It was all Keilin could do not to run.
Keilin reached for his assegai, S'kith and Beywulf for their swords. Cap burrowed through the pile of belongings until he found a black leather pouch. Only then did he take his sword. Stashing knives hastily, Keilin grabbed his small pack . . . and Shael's. "Bey, better bring Leyla's gear. Likely they'll need clothes."
Now Keilin didn't even wait for his escort. He was off and running for the archway down which the girls had been taken. He heard Bey thundering along behind him, and an abruptly cutoff word of challenge. He ran on heedlessly around the corner.
The two guards on the door were chosen for size. But they weren't really expecting anyone. One even had his helmet off and was picking nits out of his long hair when Keilin arrived at a full sprint.
The helmet went flying. But Keilin's second stroke missed. He wrenched at the door-embedded assegai desperately.
And then S'kith and Beywulf barrelled up, closely followed by Cap.
"Bugger me, youth. Don't run so damn fast next time," panted Bey, kicking the door in, as he wrenched his sword out of the dead guard's chest.
It didn't stop Keilin again totally outpacing them down the stairs.
It was a huge room. The walls were hung with grisly mementos . . . and implements of torture. And a terrible thin screaming came from the far side of it.
Commander Kemp knocked Keilin butt-over-tea-kettle as he ran for the door. The Guard Commander didn't stop, but he did yell "Need a doctor!" in his sprint for the stairs. And he did evade the rest of the party, and gain his freedom via the stairs.
Keilin staggered to his feet and continued to run toward the screams.
Both of the women were stark naked. Leyla had been strapped to a vast bed. In the candlelight he could see both the old and the new blood stains. Shael was spreadeagled on a hanging steel pentacle, steel manacles about her ankles and wrists. On either side of her head jutted vicious spikes so that she had to look at the bed. Around the victims stood racks of cruel, sharp-edged things. A small brazier burned, despite the heat . . . and the air was tainted with the smell of burnt flesh, as well as the reek of blood and fear. Shael's back was scored with five fine lines, with trickles of blood running down onto her buttocks. Keilin ran forward. The screaming did not come from her.
On the floor writhed a naked Patrician Vedas. He was plainly in terrible pain, his face blueish and contorted, his muscles jerking in uncontrollable spasms. Blood trickled from his nose, and from deep scratches on his shoulder.
Keilin moved forward to spear him.
"Leave him." The words came from Leyla. "Just get us loose, and out of here." Keilin's assegai blade made short work of her straps, and by the time S'kith came up, he'd found a key and was struggling to unlock Shael's manacles. S'kith too was about to make an end of the man on the floor, but Leyla told him to leave the vermin.
Bey arrived, his face white. "Hell's teeth." He kicked the writhing man. "We lost the other one, I'm afraid. Cap's gone to secure the stair. Come away. You can put clothes on there. Keil said you'd need your packs, so we brought them."
Half carrying the girls, they ran back. Shael still hadn't said a word. Keilin noticed she had her arm tight around him, but she was keeping her fingers very carefully straight. When they arrived at the staircase, she said in a small voice. "Cay . . . please take my dress out of my pack, and . . . and help me put it on. I'm scared to scratch anything. I've got tetrodotoxin on my fingernails."
"What?" Keilin started.
"Puffer-fish liver. That's how I killed him. Please give me some clothes. I'm cold." She shivered.
The air in the room was hot and still. Yet her arm was chilly, and her body beaded with a fine cold sweat. Her eyes were very wide. Hastily Keilin took the first garment from the top of her pack, and helped her into it. Then, still with his arm around her, they hurried up the stairs and out into the light.
Cap had been busy. Six more bodies lay there. "Come on," he said roughly. "That captain couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery, never mind a bloody coup."
Whatever the captain's organizational abilities were, the coup attempt had bred phenomenal chaos. The sounds of fighting, shouting and running echoed down the passages, and the gate was deserted. "Now, local boy. Get us the hell out of here." Cap pushed him forward.
Keilin wove them down the maze of alleyways, keeping away from the main roads, except for one hurried crossing. He stopped them just short of the North Gate, in the shadow of one of the overhanging buildings. He wondered if any of the others had even seen the gang boys watching their passage. He wondered if any of the watchers had recognized him. He doubted it. He didn't even feel like the Keilin who had lived like a rat in these alleys. It was almost as if that life belonged to someone else now.
The gate was open, but the guards were doing a spot of contraband and dutiable goods examination, as well as a bit of freestyle direct taxation. "Keep my assegai and pack. I'll tell the guards there are Morkth loose in the palace."
Keilin ran up, panting, to the gate guard, who was in the act of appropriating a juicy tomato from an angry vendor, on the grounds that it could possibly be infectious.
Keilin grabbed the guard, getting a spear butt poked in his midriff for his presumption. He ignored it and gasped his message. "Go to the palace . . . Captain Belvin's orders . . . Morkth killed the Patrician . . . Run! . . . Need you all!"
The guard looked at him owlishly, then grabbed Keilin, and started to run to the palace, accompanied by five of his fellows. Keilin tripped himself and sprawled on the cobbles when he was opposite Beywulf. Bey seized him. "I'll hold him for you, sir. You go after the other soldiers." In a minute they'd slipped through the gates with the crush of locals who were taking advantage of the lack of supervision. Within five minutes they were at the camel market, to find Keilin's rumor had beaten them there, and was already driving up the price of the beasts.
Keilin could see fires raging inside the walls as they rode away from the market, their newly acquired beasts laden with saddlebags and water skins. He wondered vaguely who would win .
. . and whether Kemp had escaped? They circled the outer wall of the city and then rode along the beach. When they arrived at the sea, Shael spoke up. "Can we stop? I need to wash my hands . . . and I'd also like to change out of my nightdress."
This drew a chuckle even from Cap. "You might as well have a swim. This is the last time you'll see water for a good few weeks. We'll keep watch from the rocks over there."
It was enough of an invitation for Leyla. She was already stripping off her clothes. There was an angry red welt across one nipple. "Come on, little sister. Let's wash the filth of that place off us. You lot, b' off for a few minutes. There are times for looking at the merchandise, and this isn't one of 'em." She ruefully felt her breast. "In fact, I think the shops are closed for a while. Go away."
Soon the girls were back, wet haired, and dressed for riding. As they headed through a familiar melon field, this time with an angry farmer shouting at them, Keilin felt the hot wind coming out of the interior, full of dry dust and emptiness. It was like a welcoming kiss. Without a backward glance at the city or the sea, he urged the camel into an ungainly trot forward, into the barren lands. He'd always thought about going back to the port. To pay off old scores. To show the people what he had become. He realized suddenly that it didn't actually matter a damn. He wanted the future now, not the past. And he wanted to get the Princess far away from the pain.
CHAPTER 14
Keilin didn't even admit to himself that he was taking the desert slowly. It was secure. Its bleakness was clean. And here . . . Skyann's spirit roamed, and Keilin's spirits rose with it. To be honest, he didn't even notice the others' discomfort. Nor did it occur to him that anyone might be following them.
Thus, the first warning they had was the clinking of a horse's harness. It was midmorning, three days' ride out of Port Tinarana and they had come into the edges of Marou's old range. Around them the ochre hills already throbbed with heat. Sound carries a long way in the desert stillness . . . but they were close, too close. Keilin had made no attempt to hide their tracks up to this point, but now he led the camels across bare rock and over to a narrow gorge, hardly more than a crack in the red cliffs. Then, ghosting among the broken boulders on the high slopes he slipped back.