Unfettered III

by Shawn Speakman (ed)

  Klyst leaned close to her, bared a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. “I do not do this for you, ugly Thasha He-Seek. Come, we will swim, I will see you through the door. But first you must promise.”

  “What, you as well?” said Thasha. “Oh, naturally. Go ahead, name your price.”

  Klyst put a hand into the white thicket of her hair. Thasha saw now it was braided with thousands upon thousands of tiny, exquisite shells. When she lowered her hand, one lay there upon her palm, white and perfect. Klyst held it out like a gift, but when Thasha extended her hand, the murth-girl suddenly pressed it, very hard, against Thasha’s own palm. A jolt ran up Thasha’s arm. The shell had vanished, as though it had melted into her skin.

  The murth-girl tapped Thasha’s forehead. “I can find you anywhere, now. I can punish you.”

  It was an odd promise Klyst demanded: that Thasha avoid the sea for the rest of her life, staying belowdecks if she should travel, living miles from any shore. “You will swim ashore today and that will end it. You will walk inland, never to return.”

  To spare you the sight of me, thought Thasha. Aya Rin, what did I do?

  But the ferocity of Klyst’s gaze left no room for discussion. “I promise,” said Thasha. “I swear on my mother and my father, and Hercól and Ramachni, and—well, everyone I love. Is that sufficient?”

  Klyst blinked at her, startled. Had she expected Thasha to refuse? Whatever the cause, she now looked distinctly less hostile. Even, perhaps, a bit ashamed.

  “Come, then.” Gently, she reached for Thasha’s hand. She stepped in the direction of the cave mouth. But Thasha resisted, glancing back over her shoulder. Rose stood near the fire with his back to them. When Thasha called his name, he turned with a start.

  “She’s taking me, Captain.”

  “Of course she is.”

  “But you haven’t named your favor.” And I’ll never see you again, you ass!

  “Ah yes. The favor.”

  Rose lumbered toward them. Klyst backed waist-deep into the water, as though she could not stand to be near the man. Then Rose took something from his mouth.

  It was the least probable thing imaginable: a glass eye. Not a human eye, either, but a feline organ, the eye of a panther, or a leopard, or a lynx.

  “You may fight for Alifros,” he said, “but I will fight a little longer for revenge. The man who killed me yet lives—and he knows this bauble is my calling card. You will keep it. And should you find yourself again in conflict with this abominable killer, you will show it to him at the moment of his death. He will understand that Nilus Rotheby Rose outsmarted him, and worked for his downfall even from the grave.”

  “I know who you’re speaking of,” said Thasha with a shudder, “but why do you think I’ll ever see that bastard again?”

  “Instinct,” said Rose. “Do you promise?”

  She promised. His satisfaction made her queasy. “Open your mouth,” he said.

  Thasha hesitated. There was no other way to carry the thing, true enough. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just rinse it first, oral hygiene, I know it’s a bit—”

  “OPEN!”

  She opened. Captain Rose, smiling his worst smile of conspiracy and glee, tucked it into the pouch of her cheek.

  And he was gone, vanished. Thasha reached out a hand to where he’d stood.

  Goodbye, you old monster. Then she turned her gaze to the tunnel back into darkness, saw in her mind an old, old woman, exhausted, ghost-beset, dropping to her knees on the trail.

  Goodbye.

  Klyst lifted the shawl from Thasha’s shoulders, folded it, set it gently on the rocks. “We will go now, Thasha.”

  She walked away into the water. Thasha turned to follow, but something on the cave wall made her look again. It was a single word, scrawled in soot above the dying fire.

  pAZEL

  Rose had not disobeyed, exactly. He had not spoken the name aloud.

  Thasha waded after Klyst, and soon found herself swimming. The surf grew loud; the miles of tunnel flew by. When Thasha tired, the murth-girl came to her beaming and took her hand.

  “You promised. I trust you. I see now why he—why others—never mind, hush, here’s the door.”

  Barely a pinch as they swam through. Was that all it took, to skip between worlds? The shock of the sunlight was much greater: after her sojourn in the dark (was it months, was it years?), Thasha was quite literally blind.

  “Don’t leave me!” she gasped, and nearly swallowed Rose’s eyeball. She closed her own eyes, and Klyst held her effortlessly afloat.

  “Land-girl,” said her voice in Thasha’s ear. “I will never see you again, but I know you now, and my heart will never lose this.” A cool hand touched her cheek. “Do not forget me, lovely Thasha. I shall make music for you, touch your dreams, be your sister in the sea.”

  Thasha was crying. She was alive and home. Hate was gone, her eyes like her memories were healing, shards of glass resolving into waves, clouds, rocky islands, anchored boats. She looked: Klyst’s face was shining. The murth-girl’s lips met her own for an instant, and then she spun upside down and vanished like an arrow in the depths.

  The crowd on the beach saw her coming, and the strongest among them stripped and launched themselves into the sea. On the rising swells they shouted to her: Thasha! Thasha! Hercól’s voice. And there were Marila and Fiffengurt and other survivors of the voyage, and Jorl and Syzyt baying and prancing in the breakers, and her old stout father waving a stick, on the brink of plunging in himself.

  With the eye in her mouth, Thasha could not answer them, but she waved, and they cheered. They would lift her naked from the water and examine her, see she was no counterfeit. Body and mind and heart, she had returned.

  And that missing piece of the puzzle, that stubborn gap—

  She twisted to look back, even as her foot touched sand. Eight or ten small islands; no telling which held the cave. Dozens of big boats at anchor, small craft rowing shoreward, the popping of deck cannon, sailors raising flags of triumph on the masts.

  And at the edge of it all, on a black rock that came and went with the ocean swells—rising, vanishing, rising again—a young man stood watching her progress, at home in the violent surf, nearly naked, one hand shielding his eyes.

  He was dark skinned and strongly muscled. He did not wave at her like the rest. But as Thasha paused in her stroke he grew quite still, as though he felt her gaze. Then he slipped into the water and was gone.

  ANNA STEPHENS

  “HOW NOT TO INVADE A COUNTRY” IS A STORY THAT WAS BORN OUT OF a few seemingly throwaway lines of dialogue in my debut novel, Godblind: “Major Bedras found himself surrounded by the Dead Legion. It seemed appropriate to save him.”

  The protagonist, Crys Tailorson, has proven to be a favourite, not just of mine but with many readers, and when I was offered the chance to contribute to Unfettered III and help support such an amazing cause, Crys was the character I knew I wanted to write about, and that was the story I wanted to expand upon. His attitude to serving in the army and his acute sense of the absurd are always a joy to write, and I hope that shines through here.

  You don’t need to have read Godblind to read this story—though I do hope you’ll want to know more about Crys and the world he lives in once you have. The sequels, Darksoul and Bloodchild, complete his epic, dangerous story, with the latter being available in late 2019.

  Anna Stephens

  How Not to Invade a Country

  Anna Stephens

  Rilpor’s Horse Lands were wide and endless, aptly named for the huge herds of half-wild horses and their semi-nomadic herders, and spotted with marshes, moorlands, and manure. A veritable paradise—if you were a horse.

  Lieutenant Crys Tailorson was not a horse and nor was he a herder. He was a soldier, guarding a border that hadn’t been disputed or crossed in force for a decade. For him, the Horse Lands were no paradise; they were as boring and predictable as a bad gambler.

  Lost amid
the rolling grasslands and moorlands crouched the four palisaded forts of the North Rank, home to five thousand highly-trained, squabbling soldiers. Crys had the dubious honour of being one of them.

  On a clear day, looking west from one of the watchtowers, the shadow of the Gilgoras Mountains was occasionally visible. At their base, everyone knew, sat the famed and ever-vigilant West Rank, and hidden high in the snowy eyries above, Rilpor’s centuries-old enemy, the Mireces.

  The West Rank—all the danger and glory a soldier could wish for, as well as a real chance of promotion, of recognition. Of excitement.

  But Crys wasn’t in the famed West Rank and he wasn’t standing on a watchtower on a clear day. Crys was a newly-demoted lieutenant in the North Rank, it was the small hours of the night, and the north wind was blowing rain in his face with what felt suspiciously like malicious glee.

  There were no savage, merciless Mireces to face and overcome. No chances of glory here in the north. Instead, the Rank was tasked with finding Listran smugglers bringing opium over the border and with repelling the few ragtag members of the Dead Legion out to prove their status as warriors.

  It was a bloody shambles of a posting, and the Rank spent more time riding patrols that never saw anything and helping herders pull horses out of bogs than they did fighting to protect Rilpor from its enemies.

  Gods, it might pay my wages, but it’s dull. It’s so bloody dull.

  And cold.

  And dull.

  Crys yawned, and then winced at the pain stabbing through his face. A week in the Rank’s hospital and his jaw still clicked when he moved it. He’d got in a few decent punches before they’d overwhelmed him, but he was still more pissed off that they’d thought he was a cheat than at the beating they’d dealt him for it.

  Crys didn’t cheat. Not in the purest sense of the meaning, anyway. He was just . . . more observant than his opponents. Not his fault the other men at the table were bad losers. He’d even let them use their own cards, knowing they’d be marked. What more could he possibly do? Lose on purpose? If they didn’t like it, they shouldn’t be playing. It was called gambling for a bloody reason.

  The wind cut into his cheek and he shivered and hunched his shoulders, right hand slowly going numb on the halberd as he peered into the night from the northwest tower of Fort Three. The watch bell had sounded and Orril hadn’t arrived to take over from Pike. Third time this week.

  Pike had been standing in the rain for four hours, so Crys had sent him off to bed and was waiting in his place for Orril to arrive. Orril’s tardiness was becoming a problem. Crys’s problem was that he was getting wet—because of Orril. Orril was going to be lucky if Crys didn’t throw him from the top of the tower when he finally deigned to show his warty little face.

  Crys’s demotion from captain was punishment for the brawl, and General Tariq had added in shovelling latrine pits for a month. A commissioned officer, up to the armpits in shit with the same soldiers who’d kicked it out of him. Crys could almost admire Tariq’s peculiar brand of discipline; it had cured him of any predilection for brawling, for a start, and there was a certain level of camaraderie built between men who spent an hour every day retching among the shit pits, despite any history of bad blood, alleged cheating, and violence.

  Crys snorted and blew rainwater off his nose, convinced the fragrance still clung to his clothes and hair. Trickster’s cock, where’s Orril?

  Still, a beating and demotion and extra duties? Aside from the humiliation and the cut in pay, the fact that nothing much had happened in the first six months of his two-year posting with the North didn’t inspire much confidence that he’d have the opportunity to win back his rank. And if he wasn’t reinstated as captain by the end of this rotation, his reputation wherever they posted him next would be in tatters.

  More tattered than it is now? he asked himself and shifted in his dampening uniform, water running from his hair down the back of his neck. Irritation and self-pity vied for attention, while sleep beckoned with coy fingers.

  “The fuck have you been?” he demanded when Orril finally shambled through the trapdoor and onto the watch platform. Crys shoved the halberd at him, then took in the man’s miserable, waxy face and strained expression. “Third time this week, isn’t it? Somewhere else you’d rather be?”

  Orril grimaced but made no move to take the weapon. He was clearly preoccupied with something more important. “Sorry, Lieutenant. I’ve had the shits since supper. Major Bedras insisted I still take my watch and—” His eyes bulged and he grabbed his belly and spun, aiming for the trapdoor and practically falling down it in his haste.

  “Fucking great,” Crys muttered, tucking the halberd back into position as he peered over the guard wall and watched Orril sprint from the base of the tower toward the latrines. Then he groaned and put his free hand over his eyes. “Gods, the pits. Your aim better be good, Orril, my lad, or I’ll be using your sodding bedsheets to scour them out tomorrow. Even if you’re still sleeping in them. Especially if you are.”

  Crys glanced at the other towers, at the small, warm, dry guardroom over the main gate, and then gusted a sigh. He took a stealthy step closer to the brazier and stared into the rain and the black, straining his ears for anything unusual. The tower couldn’t be left unmanned. Orril wasn’t coming back, not this side of emptying his arse anyway. Crys set his feet, let the halberd take a little of his weight, and began to watch.

  “Tailorson. Get a patrol together. We’re taking a Fifty to recce that bastard river. Suspicion of movement.”

  Major Bedras took three steps past the curtain separating the lieutenants’ quarters from the rest of the barracks, but Crys was already on his feet and standing at attention. Army life tended to have that effect, despite the fact that he’d fallen asleep what felt like three seconds before.

  Everyone knew Crys was on night duty. Bedras knew Crys was on night duty. Yet here he was, with dawn still blushing on the horizon, dragging him out of sleep and into a full day’s patrol out to the border.

  Probably doesn’t realize I stood Orril’s watch so the poor bastard could spend the night in the shit pits wishing for death.

  Crys watched Bedras from his peripheral vision, noted the small, triumphant smile. Oh, no, he knew all right; he knew Crys had stood a watch instead of dozing in the guardroom and had been off duty for only a matter of minutes. He could see that Crys’s uniform was still wet from the rain. That his hair was still wet. Apparently none of those things meant one of Orril’s runny shits to Major Bedras.

  Crys ripped off a salute that was almost an insult in its crisp perfection. “At once, sir,” he said, his enthusiasm precisely calculated to walk the line between genuine respect and total mockery.

  The major’s eyes narrowed, but he couldn’t reprimand a junior officer for obeying his orders, could he?

  “And hurry up, man,” Bedras added. “I want to be at that bastard river in good time.”

  He left before Crys could respond. That bastard river. It was what the Rankers called the river that marked the border between Rilpor and Listre. Its real name was Fogg’s Bane, though the Dead Legion of Listre called it the White Tail. And no one over the rank of captain should ever, ever call it “that bastard river.”

  Bedras thought it made him one of the men. Then again, Bedras thought money made a major. Bedras thought a lot of things, most of them wrong, and all of them annoying. Bedras was a shit.

  A Major shit. Ha.

  Crys slid into his spare uniform, swallowing a yawn with a cup of scalding mint tea taken from the kettle on the brazier as he scrubbed a towel through his hair. He shrugged into his armour and clattered out of the door. It was still raining. Of course it was still raining.

  Fort Three was home to the Fourth Thousand, and it would be so easy for Crys to pick the laziest, most sullen fifty to make Bedras’s day trip something to remember. He didn’t, because he knew his tiredness would make him short-tempered and it was probably a good idea to have decent m
en between him and his superior, but also because he was, at heart, a decent soldier. Or so he liked to believe.

  So it was that Bedras and Crys led a patrol out of Fort Three not long after dawn and trotted north into the teeth of a gale, Crys loudly chewing bread and butter he’d snagged from the mess in the moments before they left. He dared Bedras to mention the breach of protocol, but it seemed the major was being magnanimous in his victory. The bastard.

  The Horse Lands appeared wide and empty on first glance, but the gentle undulations made it surprisingly difficult to spot an enemy before they were on you, so despite the weather, the men kept their gripes to themselves and their eyes sharp.

  Fogg’s Bane, the White Tail, that bastard river, came into view just before noon. The storm had swelled it almost to bursting its banks, and it roared white and fast between the rocks. A hundred paces before the river was a small wood, and in it, smoking a long pipe among his sheltering animals, a herder.

  Bedras rode through his herd, forcing them to part around him, stamping their hooves and nickering annoyance. “You, man, any trouble around here lately? Seen any of the Dead, have you?” Bedras called.

  The herder stared out from his hood and sucked his teeth, silent. Crys dismounted and ambled over. “Dancer’s grace upon you,” he said with a friendly smile. “Filthy fucking weather, eh? Couldn’t be wetter if I fell in the Bane.”

  The herder focused on Crys, and Crys saw the exact moment the man spotted the peculiarity of his eyes—one blue, one brown. The slightest recoil, the merest suggestion of a hand moving for an amulet or charm inside his shirt, and then he was still.

  Every. Fucking. Time.

  Like I’m some sort of freak. It’s your bastard superstition, not mine.

  “Dancer’s grace,” the man returned the greeting. “Weather’s been better, aye. Didn’t think to see your lot out here today.”

  “Routine patrol,” Crys lied automatically. “Which is unfortunate in this weather, eh? So here we are, wet and miserable. But while I’m here, do you have any concerns? Lost any of your herd recently, spotted any tracks, debris, anything out of the ordinary we should know about?”