Unfettered III

by Shawn Speakman (ed)

  The man was still staring into Crys’s eyes, so Crys glanced away, then squatted down side-on. The herder leaned forward, trying to see again, but Crys wasn’t playing that game. He should be used to it by now, but growing up amid the whispers, the rumours that had followed him into the army, hadn’t taught him any patience for the folktales and stories about “his kind.”

  “Not much,” the man said eventually. “My herd’s intact, anyway, though I’ve heard tell some others have lost a few. Wouldn’t expect it just yet—weather’s not bad enough—so it might be the Dead. Might just be bad luck. Might be Rilporians for all I know, some desperate man lost all he owns to the king’s taxes. Gods forbid, could be disease.”

  He made the sign against evil, a little too close to Crys for his liking, and then gestured to his herd. “That’s why I’m keeping them to themselves for a while. Don’t want a case of the strangles running through this lot; they’re for market come spring.”

  Crys stared out at the river and the rain, the dull shape of the Fifty hunched beside their fractious mounts, rain capes blurring their outlines. “They’re fine beasts, for sure. Trickster’s luck at market. Do you know where these other herds were when it was discovered there were animals missing?”

  “Further east than this, half a day’s ride, maybe.” The man shifted again. “Should I be worried?” he asked. “These horses are my life, Lieutenant. Can’t afford to lose any.”

  Crys patted the man’s knee, earning another flinch, and stood. “Maybe move south a day’s walk for a week or so, let us check things out. Just to be safe, like you said. But I wouldn’t expect there to be trouble. A scuffle or two, perhaps. But if you do see the Dead,” he added, and his tone made the herder squint up at him, “you get on one of your horses and you ride, you hear? You say these animals are your life, but you know what they’ll do to you if they catch you.”

  The herder nodded, then spat. “Yer a good man, for a soldier,” he said. “For a splitsoul,” he added under his breath, but Crys had good hearing. His lip curled at the phrase, but he held his tongue, turning away and heading back to Bedras and the Fifty instead.

  Splitsoul, they called him. Cursed. Crys huffed out a plume of vapour. They’re just eyes, you know. For seeing with. The colour doesn’t mean anything.

  “Well?” Bedras demanded and Crys focused on the major’s damp, pasty face.

  “Reports of a few herds losing animals half a day east. Nothing here, sir,” he reported. Please not east, please not east, please not east. Home, and warm, and sleep.

  “All right, mount up. Let’s push east a few miles alongside this bastard river and see if we can find our horse thieves, eh? Bit of action should liven up the boys.”

  “As you say, sir,” Crys said in his blandest voice. “Come on then, Fifty. Got somewhere you’d rather be than riding through Rilpor in service of king and country?”

  They were clever lads, and they knew exactly what the answer to that question was, so they jogged out to their horses and swung up into their saddles without a word.

  The best thing about riding east?

  Fuck it, there was nothing good about riding east. There was nothing out here, just miles and miles of endless rolling plain and brown moorland dotted with stands of stunted trees, bogs and pools, and the looming forests of Listre over the river.

  Crys could see all the way to the end of the sky, it seemed, and it was black and roiling, muttering with thunder and lit by periodic sheet lightning. The rain had stopped, but it was getting colder and Crys knew they were in for another bitch of a storm. Winter was coming early, and she was angry.

  He glanced yet again at Bedras, but the major was apparently determined to do something heroic before returning to the forts. Funny thing about senior officers, though, was their heroic was every other soldier’s bloody stupid. Crys wondered whether Bedras’s heroic would include allowing his command to freeze to death in the wastes. Though if the good major suffered the same fate, it might almost be worth it.

  Crys hunched his shoulders and dislodged a tiny puddle of rainwater from his cape. It slid down his neck and chest and he shuddered. “Sir? It’s not long until dusk. Perhaps we should—”

  The thunderclap was so loud and unexpected that every horse in the Fifty leapt in the air and bolted. While most of the animals carried on east into the plain, Crys’s, Bedras’s, and those of two other soldiers reared and galloped north, heedless of their cursing riders. The cold and storm had made the horses bad-tempered, and once they began to run, there was going to be no stopping them until they were blown.

  Despite Crys’s dislike of the man, Bedras was an expert rider, and he kept his seat as his horse took the lead. Crys concentrated on staying in the saddle, paying little attention until the thunder of hooves was echoed by more thunder—water. Fogg’s Bane had twisted away from them as they rode but now it loomed ahead, white and in full spate as it tumbled over a short fall and raced on.

  “Stop!” Crys yelled, hauling on his reins, but his gelding snorted and tossed its head, ears pinned back. It wasn’t stopping until Bedras’s mount stopped.

  “Stop!” Crys bellowed again, but then they were all of them up on an outcrop over the river and the other side was close, too close, and the horses were lengthening stride and Oh Fox God’s hairy bollocks we’re in Listre. We’re soldiers of His Majesty’s North Rank, wearing his colours and bearing his arms.

  We’ve just invaded Listre.

  Bedras seemed to have grasped the same, because he hauled on the reins so hard his horse screamed and flung itself back on its haunches, then slipped, falling on its side. Bedras threw himself clear.

  It was as if the other horses realized what they’d done, too, for they slowed out of their mad gallop into a canter, a trot, a walk, and Crys managed to lead them around in a circle and back to Bedras. The major was standing, but swaying, blood sheeting down one side of his face and his eyes glassier than a dead fish’s.

  “Major? Major, we need to get back over the river right now. Where’s your horse? Major, where’s your horse?”

  Bedras pointed a wobbling finger and Crys followed it to the animal, standing by a sudden outcrop of rock, reins held by a shadowy figure.

  “Oh, shit.”

  More figures emerged from the rocks and the gloom and the thunder lent them an aura of threat that was completely unnecessary in the circumstances. Crys already knew they were a threat.

  He reached down for Bedras. “Get up behind me, sir, right bloody now,” he hissed. Bedras blinked.

  “You two, do not draw weapons,” he added as one of the men, Alba, reached for the bow wrapped in oilskin and strapped behind his saddle. “We back away, we let them keep the horse, and this doesn’t become a diplomatic incident. Or, worse, one that sees us with our cocks nailed to the nearest trees.”

  Bedras was staring at him in concussed outrage. “Leave my horse? Leave my horse, Lieutenant? Are you completely out of your mind?” He stepped away from Crys and raised his voice. “You there, return my horse at once and we’ll forget all about this.”

  Crys groaned and for a single, heady second contemplated leaving the idiot behind. Then he urged his mount forward and grabbed Bedras under the arms and heaved the man into his lap. “Go,” he roared, kicking his gelding into a laboured trot back toward the river.

  We’ll never make it back over the same way, that outcrop’s too high to jump onto from this side. We’ll need to find a ford. I’m pretty sure they’re not going to let us find a ford.

  We’re going to have to fight.

  Bedras was shouting something into Crys’s knee, but Crys ignored him and turned west, parallel to the river and back the way they’d come. Toward civilization, albeit on the wrong side of the border.

  “Find a crossing,” he shouted over his shoulder to Alba and Ned, but there were no acknowledging bellows. He risked a glance. They were both down, arrows and spears sticking out of them like a hedgehog’s spines. Behind them, half a dozen of
the Dead Legion were aiming bows at him.

  Crys pulled his mount to a halt and let Bedras slide to the ground. “Arm yourself,” he hissed before the major could start shouting. Bedras hesitated, hand going automatically to his scabbard. Then he looked behind and squawked.

  Bedras grabbed Crys’s boot and shoved it out of the stirrup. “Dismount,” he spluttered. “Get off the fucking horse.”

  Crys did so, though he’d had a vague idea of trying to ride down the Dead, scatter them at least, chase them off at best. He eyed the approaching warriors, rolling his shoulders and drawing his sword, and then Bedras was up on his horse and kicking it into movement.

  “Hold them,” he heard, and Bedras was away, screeching to coax more speed out of the panicked animal.

  Crys just stood there for a second. Then he sucked in a breath. “Bastard!” he shouted at the fleeing man, but it seemed the Dead Legion were even more keen on stopping him than Crys was, because three arrows sprouted from his horse’s haunches and a fourth stuck deep into its flank, going in to the fletchings—a killing shot. The gelding screamed and crashed onto its side, and Bedras was thrown again.

  The major was a coward and a bastard, but Crys needed him, so he sprinted toward the man, hauled him to his feet, spun him to face the oncoming attackers, and shouted him into drawing his sword. Crys stood on Bedras’s right, prepared to use him as a shield where possible, and they watched the Dead Legion approach, the feathers and bones of their headdresses and cloaks dull and flat from the wet.

  They were young and skinny, three boys and two girls, hair plastered down with red mud and rain so it looked like blood ran down their faces. Their eyes were bright and their hatchets brighter, and Crys recognized the strings of teeth around their necks. Human teeth.

  “Blood-hunting,” he hissed at Bedras, tightening his grip on his sword and scanning the ground in front of them for any natural advantages.

  “What?”

  Gods alive, does the man know nothing about the border, or Listre’s people and customs? About his godsdamn command?

  “They’re blood-hunters, sir. Each member of the Dead Legion, male and female, must take an enemy head and return it to the Legion’s inner council before they can choose mates. It’s a test, to prove themselves adults and so be eligible to marry and have children.”

  Bedras was mystified.

  “So it’s unlikely they’ll just let us go, sir,” Crys added. “They will try and kill us. They remain children until they succeed.”

  “But, but,” Bedras began, his bulging eyes almost popping from his head. “They are children.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re asking me to fight children?”

  Crys couldn’t tell whether Bedras was horrified or offended. “I’m afraid so, sir. They must kill us or they fail. So we kill them first, or at least make taking our heads too much like hard work. They might search for easier prey.” The herder’s face floated in Crys’s vision—the very definition of “easy prey.”

  “Two of them are female, Lieutenant,” Bedras gasped, as if embarrassment had drowned out the fear he should be feeling.

  “Fine,” Crys snapped. “I’ll kill them, you kill the three boys.”

  Bedras wasn’t happy with that solution, either, funnily enough, but Crys ignored him as he once more began to protest. Instead, Crys watched the eyes and hands and feet of the approaching enemy, forcing himself to name them as such because “children” really didn’t help his state of mind. Besides, they were tall enough and well-armed enough that in Rilpor they’d already be counted full-grown.

  Alba and Ned are dead already. They’ve already got two heads. Can’t they just share?

  It wasn’t fair for Alba and Ned, but they weren’t going to complain, so Crys didn’t worry too much what they thought about it. He gestured at the distant corpses with his free hand. “You’ve killed two of our men, and whatever you may think, we’re not here with hostile intentions. But look, multiple wounds means you all killed them, eh? So you’re all grown-ups—congratulations! Off you go.”

  The Listrans had halted with his first words, and now two exchanged a glance that made Crys’s heart leap. They were going for it. Then one of the girls slashed her hand through the air, cutting off the beginnings of a muttered conversation.

  “You fight over scraps,” she snarled, her accent guttural and muffled by the bone stud in her lower lip, “and get low-caste mates in return for a shared kill. I will mate high. Take them to present to the Mother if that is all you are worthy of. My commitment is greater; She will receive a man killed by me alone in return for my right to mate. One warrior: one kill.” She thumped her chest, making the teeth rattle. “High caste.”

  They all knew what would happen now, of course, with the exception perhaps of Bedras, who was still goggling over her intention to kill him. The two who’d been willing to run stepped over the corpses and advanced with the others, five on two.

  “Listen, they’re going to rush us,” Crys began, “so we need to—”

  Bedras dropped his sword and raised his hands. “I surrender!”

  The move had one thing in its favour—it shocked the shit out of the Dead. Crys wasted a second gaping along with everyone else, then he grabbed Bedras’s sleeve in his fist and began to run, head down, knees pumping, dragging the idiot in his wake. He didn’t even know why he was doing it; Bedras was plainly too stupid to live, but he supposed the man was some sort of shield between Crys and the likelihood of arrows, so why not? If it looked like the Dead were gaining on them, well, he’d just let go. Fastest runner in the North Rank, was Crys Tailorson, and right now, he didn’t need to outrun the enemy. He just needed to outrun Bedras.

  The major seemed to realize that he wanted to live after all, because soon enough he tore his sleeve from Crys’s grasp and panted along at his side, unencumbered by the sword he’d dropped. The river was narrowing up ahead; they might be able to jump across, find the rest of the Fifty . . . an arrow thumped into the sod just in front of Crys’s foot. He leapt it and kept running, realized Bedras wasn’t with him, kept running anyway, and—

  “Shit,” he panted. He stopped, turned, took in the scene, and began sprinting back. The silly fuck had fallen, twisted his ankle in a rabbit hole, probably, and was howling on his knees with the Dead closing in and vying to be the first to stab him.

  Crys scooped up the arrow in his free hand and barrelled into the group, stabbed the first to come within reach in the face—arrow into his cheek and back out—and then again under the jaw, the barb tearing him open. Not fatal, but any cut to the neck is terrifying in its own unique way, so the boy fell screaming and clutching at his throat.

  Crys still had the arrow but no time to use it, ducking a hatchet and chopping his sword into the girl’s knee, dislocating it. She shrieked and fell and Crys spun past her, deflected the spear thrust of a third and riposted, a wild backhand slice that carved upward and into the boy’s chest, opening him to the bone.

  More screaming, and over it Bedras bubbling prayers and snot and clutching his leg. Broken ankle, maybe, not just twisted. Because things weren’t bad enough already.

  Still two left unhurt, untested, unfought, but they were backing away with wide eyes in their muddy faces, looking at the three on the ground at Crys’s feet. The Dead didn’t wear armour, believing their faith would turn blades and arrows. Silly fuckers. But helpful, if you were Crys Tailorson and you were both outnumbered and tethered to a gigantic arse of an officer.

  Standard procedure said to take them prisoner or execute them—the Dead Legion was small, but those who claimed a head and became adults were vicious killers and a constant threat in service of their peculiar cult.

  I’m not killing children. And I can’t get the jolly fucking major out of here along with three prisoners, either.

  “Bedras, get up.”

  Bedras mumbled something unintelligible and Crys whooped, lunged at the nearest of the still-standing foe. The girl screa
med and leapt back, swinging wildly with her hatchet and knife both and more in danger of hurting herself than him.

  “I said get up. Now, Major. Now or I leave you here.”

  “No. No! You can’t, mustn’t. I’m your superior officer and—”

  “And you just invaded Listre, so shut up, get up, and head for the river. That is an order, sir.” Crys didn’t even bother looking. The Dead were closing in again, the girl with the broken knee screaming at them to take him and doing her best to stand, using the downed boy’s spear as a crutch. She was making a far better job of it than Bedras with his ankle. Crys was impressed.

  Crys was worried.

  Crys, to be honest, was shitting himself.

  Killed by a bunch of children with borrowed weapons and no armour. Ma and Da are going to love that when they get the letter. And the death purse for a lieutenant, let’s not forget. Barely enough to bury what’s left of me.

  Thunder rumbled again and the rain finally came, cold as snow, heavy as a waterfall. The plain vanished into greyness, the Dead becoming wraiths and more frightening for it. Crys took a step back. The girl was standing now, spitting blood and rainwater, pointing at him with a hatchet that shook in her grip. “For Mother and Son!” she screeched and hobbled for him.

  Crys took another step back and nearly fell over Bedras. “I swear by the Fox God I will kill you myself if you do not get the fuck up, Major,” he snarled. He reached down and grabbed Bedras, hauled on his arm so the man had no choice but to stand, a shriek bursting from his lips as he put weight on his bad foot.

  “My leg,” he moaned.

  “It’ll be your fucking head you need to worry about,” Crys muttered. “Walk. Backward, slowly. Don’t take your eyes off them.”

  “Shouldn’t you, you know,” Bedras made vague stabbing gestures, “finish them off?”