by Adrian Selby
“Slums. Don’t know if you know the gangers there but he’s with the Indra Quarter Crew. Find them and you find him.”
It was weeks since we were marched out of camp and I was still angry that we had been forced to leave our horses there. Been with mine for two years and she was one of the best I’d had. The horses that Achi had brought along were good enough for the journey we’d need to make, however. Shale’s seemed skittish with him but he soon got him under control. We both knew a bit of the horse singing and had mouthpieces for it. Some cured bacon and cold tea, oils and rubs and we rode with them northwest towards Hevendor.
A few days later we saw off Achi and his boys. Not much to tell of the journey to the Crag. We pushed northwest out of the Red Hill Confederacy and then west more directly into Hevendor. We saw nobody save some nomads we got some bread and wine from.
I did some thinking. We didn’t speak much at all that week. He wasn’t sleeping though. It’d been a long time since we give much thought to the old crew. I was thinking about my sister Emelt too, though. I sent her coin for years for the hast. She’d pass it on to the council and all, see that they could keep trading for iron and salt and what plant they needed if they didn’t get the crops or livestock to trade. She had a boy too, Goran.
She been bidding me come back for years, no more the shame to my da now he was gone and Amila that I had loved now with that boy who must be on the council after all this time. I heard from Emelt the new council was practical, it needed swords. Trouble is, all around Upper Lagrad where I was born and raised there were chiefs and hast-lords needed steel and brutal doings, not least for the borders to the Wilds unmapped. My little sister got a viper’s tongue for getting the council to listen to the herders and keep some peace in our lands. I missed her. There was often a stab of longing to get back to those fierce hills and cold forests. Now my guts set me for it.
But I did wonder about Kailen too. Kailen’s Twenty must have split up near fifteen years ago. We were guarding the royals of Citadel Argir, the king and his two children. He was on his way out, the king, paid us off, and by then of course we were fighting each other, sodden with the brews, snuffs and drink. Kailen saw it–we were embarrassing, not tight with each other like we were before–so he called it.
There were ructions of course. Kailen got us all rich, got the victories, read the wars and leaders and picked us right for gold and glory. The crew went their separate ways, alone or a few together. Me and Shale banded up because we were tight from early when Kailen picked us up. Some stayed a while with Kailen but the stories from the Post and caravans dried up as our legend faded.
Seems like he went back to Harudan as I’d thought; he wouldn’t have kept looking for a purse with shittier men when he had his gold and family connections at home with the aristos. He had nothing to prove; hand to hand he was unbeaten, though we were all unsure he would’ve beaten Shale. First time they fight, Shale landed awkward and Kailen waited for his foot to heal before they went at it again, which they did with nobody watching. He wasn’t telling how it come out though, and Shale was the only other man I ever saw unbeaten with a sword, duel or otherwise.
Shale had been wondering about whatever was the cause of all this, our being taken by the Post and Kailen being in trouble, and spoke of it one night a few days out of the Hills as he prepped a rabbit.
“Don’t know who could still be havin’ a problem with the Twenty all these years on. How many of us are still warrin’, Gant, takin’ purses? You see the lifers fallin’ down, only the gold we made could get us the prep an’ strains from the best recipe books. Harudanian an’ Juan drudharchs been preppin’ all our mixes fer years. Most o’ the brews out there just breaks soldiers up, sends ’em mad. Ibsey were mixin’ up some fierce stuff fer us to rise on. Stixie Four, Digs, Sword Sho, Ibsey an’ all, none could run the forms for the shakes an’ drink. Fuck it, Gant, any one o’ those kids we hit back on that ambush could have dropped more’n a few of us at the end, never mind now.”
Said well. I couldn’t even keep Kailen’s weapon forms right these days; my knees were going, my back can only straighten out with a compound of black sugar oil or salmon oil and copper salts. I look in a bowl of water and I see only bits of hair between all the scars and burns and my skin’s greening over my usual mash of colour, because of the compound. I look like I’m covered in mould. Pair of us got our ritual for the oils for each other. He’s less fucked than me, but he needs the iridus oils dropping in his eyes and his shoulder needs treating when it flares up.
He did his best with the wound each day, cleaning and dressing it up. We got some maggots for it but all in all I could feel it creeping into me, sore like I been punched through.
We got to Hevendor and down through it peaceful. The Crag was a big riverport for the East-West passage, part of the network what made up the Hiscan Road. Old Kingdoms shinies, plant, wines and stuff went east; slaves, skins, metals and other plant come back. Not much went south with the river as it cut through the Ten Clan lands. They’ve been good purses on and off these last few years, mind.
We followed a caravan in, wagons of slaves looking at us with the light out of their eyes, only enough sense left in them to eat. They were on the Droop. Most had the shakes and were whining for it. None needs shackling when they’re on the Droop.
It was only as we headed for the Slums to find some gangers that we saw the streets and alleys were full of militia, all over the roofs and all, with a thick pall of smoke over everything. A lot of buildings there had fallen down and burned, rioting had got widespread it seemed and I never saw so many soldiers except when a town or city was besieged. There was wreckage everywhere, stalls turned, bodies piled up or strewn about; the deadcarts and their hooded crews were overworked. A lot of Post were about as well, so we found an inn to put the horses with so we could go in on foot, quick and quiet. Whoever was after Kailen had called for a scorching, and if a scorching had happened we could see we’d missed it. Weren’t good odds for him if he had militia and Reds against him and a few gangers, but he’d made it through worse, and I was looking forward to seeing him.
Destination: Candar Prime, Q2 670 OE
Eastern Sar Main routed
CONFIDENTIAL FOR THE RED ONLY
Report of: Fieldsman 84
Debriefing of: Marschal Laun. Guildmaster Alon Filston of Filston-Blackmore Guild.
Marschal Laun, assigned to Galathia, has reported a further mercenary killed, in the Virates, a place called Povey’s Valley. It is another of the long disbanded mercenary crew Kailen’s Twenty. His name was Sho. As previously reported, Digs and Connas’q of that same crew have been pursued and killed through the purse of Galathia’s husband, Alon Filston.
Marschal Laun’s report refers to an unknown individual present at Sho’s execution, that the Marschal suspects was there also to kill Sho. Marschal Laun escaped with Galathia and the rest of her crew, at the loss of an Agent Kolm and four Reds, as per her duty to protect Galathia. This would-be assassin has not surfaced since.
I reprimanded Marschal Laun and Alon Filston for indulging Galathia, as per your instruction. Both were reminded of their instruction to ensure Galathia’s safety while we lay the groundwork for her reinstatement to the throne of Argir. Marschal Laun was reminded again that Galathia’s pursuit of mercenaries once of the crew Kailen’s Twenty was explicitly forbidden.
She is clearly frustrated by our concern that Galathia is not being kept safely enough. She requests recognition that judgement of risk remains hers and she requests recognition that the pursuit of targets of no political value accords with our overall goal, while also asking that we recognise these targets are so important to Galathia she believes it would be impossible to persuade her, short of physical restraint, from pursuing them. She also requests recognition through the accompanying field reports that her targets were isolated and incapacitated before Galathia was exposed to them. I made clear it was our view that the state of the Ten Clan and Red Hills in h
igh summer, particularly a summer our Post Houses report is the worst they’ve witnessed, was a great deal more risk than she should have been exposed to irrespective of the threat her targets posed as experienced mercenaries engaging in their own field operations.
Alon Filston was instructed to coordinate with his allied guilds, the Darrun-Luke Family of the Citadel Eural and our Reeves regarding signatures for a new ruling council and re-investiture of his wife Galathia and her royal line in Argir.
However, Galathia’s pursuit of the Twenty continues. Gant and Shale of the Twenty have been captured by Agent Gilgul’s crew, who were recruited by Filston via Marschal Laun. The arrest was made without incident in the northern Red Hills Confederacy (their purse was to counter a border incursion by the Blackhands). Kailen himself has also been identified at the Crag, Hevendor. Galathia’s intention is to apprehend and kill them all, utilising Laun and a further complement of Reds, the additional fees covered also by Filston.
As instructed, I forbade the pursuit and apprehension of Kailen as a highly dangerous target. I have instructed Filston to broach the subject of her return to the throne and I have suggested how this may be done. I have instructed the Private Cleark to begin drafting a speech for such an occasion, as well as instructed him to engage Juan and Mount Hope metal workers to fashion gifts and prepare a banquet for the nobles she will be returning to.
Expecting, regarding Kailen, that my order may not be enforced, I have informed the High Reeve of Hevendor and Crag officials to give help where required. In all respects except for controlling Galathia’s wilfulness, Marschal Laun has won her confidence and friendship and will be a close ally in steering her opinion in our favour.
Instructions to the High Reeve regarding Kailen, with a briefing of the Indra Quarter, have been provided.
Chapter 3
Galathia
I have constructed an account of the Princess Galathia’s part in the downfall of Kailen’s Twenty, using letters she had written to her brother Petir that my patron was in a position to secure transcripts of, and her subsequent account of these events to me while she was in captivity. Below are letters to her brother outlining her pursuit of Kailen’s Twenty, and a statement she gave me of her part in the assault on the Indra Quarter.
Goran
Written 669 OE, regarding events 668–9 OE
Dear brother,
I wonder how you felt when you first drank a fightbrew? The training brews don’t really prepare you for it, do they?
The first time I drank a full measure, I shivered in the desert winds of the Ten Clan steppe. It was to kill Digs, the beginning of my ambition to get us revenge on Kailen’s Twenty. My husband, Alon, purchased the services of a Marschal of the Post, Laun, and her crew, to assist me. Laun has proved the Post’s efficiency in gathering news of these old mercenaries. Digs was the first we’d tracked down.
We had led camels for two weeks into a drought in Ten Clan lands such as none of us had seen. The dead were littered across the main tracks. Men tried to sell their children to us for rice or coin, their women mute and dazed or throwing stones at us to forbid the trade with what little strength they had. We had no use for children. The nearer to the Red Hill borders the worse it got, the same lack of rains was causing their own starving to move into Ten Clan territory. Here were the nomads, long used to enduring the summers at the heart of the Ten Clan, now setting traps for refugees, their families waiting like statues as they traded water for some bilt. I saw many campfires where animals picked over the remains of whole families. The dead were burned in pyres where some remnant of community remained.
Digs and his crew were taking a caravan of grains and cured fish from the coast to the soldiers at their borders. It wasn’t just the Red Hills refugees flooding in that needed to be repelled. The Wilds bordered on both territories, and the borders needed defending from their incursions as well.
I had learned that Digs had been on the caravans for a number of summers. It was unlikely therefore that he would have the answer to my inheritance, but like the others, he betrayed me, he betrayed you.
The nomads had traded us some knowledge of the trails through the Ten Clan heartlands. Digs’s caravan had stopped on a ridge overlooking a stony plain ahead north.
I was given a set of Agent leathers and a belt, for me to understand better the drills and how to use the armour and its plant while in combat.
Laun and Midgie had dressed me, and then we dressed Laun. Her closecut promised blonde, the common colouring of Farlsgrad women. In another life she would have been a prize for any prince or lord, had she been born of any social status. I was a sufficient prize for Alon with my red hair and white skin. The colour the brews have given me since seeking my revenge had attracted open comment at the gatherings and feasts Alon’s guild held or attended. I was not the plump gossiping jewel his peers required to reflect their status. I had drilled for years since my days at the Juan High Commune. He was considered to be too indulgent with me. He knew better, knew what I had been through. It had taken the death of one concubine to discourage his taking of others.
Laun had watched me drink my measure of the fightbrew. It was the texture of custard, an awful flavour of boiled weeds and soil, a dry chalk-like feeling that made it hard to swallow for hours afterwards, a coating to resist swelling if vapours or powders were inhaled. She would not give me the recipe of course, so I cannot pass it on.
There are moments then where the stomach curdles, a revulsion throughout one’s guts, but it soon warms, then gets hot, hot even to touch the skin as it soaks into the body. Veins thicken, muscle thickens and then what some soldiers have called the song of the world, as one’s head fills with the brew. This cold night soon brightened, all those points of light in the sky seemed themselves filled, a black fabric that held back some great light beyond, pregnant and about to burst. I cannot convey the speed of thought, the awareness, the sense all at once of every hair on your arms touched by the breeze, the breeze itself almost visible, its shifts and flow on the edge of prediction. We could feel something move far beneath our feet, water perhaps, and I could smell now the campfires of the caravan, the meat they were burning, the stink of their camels. Laun and Syle took my hand, I was dizzy with the brew, had been every time I had risen, so we chanted, mumbling as novice soldiers do the ’cants to focus oneself, to “stone the brew” as they would say, meaning to become still, without thought.
I followed them as we ran hunched over towards Digs’s camp, a hollow and some thorn bushes providing cover within arrowshot of their camp. There were seven of us. Three of the caravan were on watch at the head of the ridge, two near us at the back. Laun signed for us to move forward, Syle and Omara making two perfect shots with their bows, the two guards falling silently.
Laun had guessed that the sound of our bows would alert the other guards, on mixes that heightened the senses. We needed to be at the camp before their own brews could begin to diminish our advantage. As we ran, Syle, Midgie and the others shot sporebags at the camp. The camels started snorting and stamping at their ties and the camp was alerted. The bags were driven open by the points of the arrows and the dust spread. Men threw open their tents and brought their bows up to shoot. It was remarkable how slowly they moved. They launched arrows, some getting masks on before shooting, but it would be too late for them. On the fightbrew I could see the arrows bend and leap from the bows, knew instantly if I needed to drop or keep running according to my judgement of their flight. We reached their camp and, as instructed, I held myself back a few paces. I would have expected to feel frightened, perhaps inadequate as we engaged, due to my only having held a sword in training, but the brew made me fearless, potent, perhaps for the first time in my life; the desire to fight, to kill, was thrilling. Two men jumped from a tent to ambush Syle, who was engaged with one of the guards alerted by our initial assault. Their brew hadn’t given them their full vigour, they were breathing too hard, willing the rise, but, so much slower in movement an
d thought, I parried a swipe and got the first few inches of my sword into the chest of the first of them out of the tent. He staggered back in shock and in moments was wheezing, then choking. Our poison was a Farlsgrad recipe, known throughout the Post to have efficacy against the Ten Clan.
Syle spun in front of me and disarmed the other one before running him through, while I edged the guard who was on Syle backward, with a lunge intending to buy her that moment to focus on him.
Others came running, some having been sleeping on the wagons when we struck. None fitted the description of Digs, who was considered unnaturally tall. They had to have been waiting in a tent for the rise before coming out and taking us on. I ran quickly for the fire at the heart of the camp, an arrow flying inches behind my head as I moved, the whip of air pimpling the skin of my neck. I grabbed a branch, its one end charred red, a lick of flame on it. I ran from tent to tent and set them alight, determined to flush Digs and his crew out before they’d fully risen.
Laun’s crew were more than a match for the mercs and clan driving the caravan. When Digs emerged with four of his men it was obvious they weren’t prepared. One of Laun’s crew, Prennen, saw them and took one down with his bow before Digs closed on him. I ran up from behind and ran through another of his men; the third turned and I managed to cut him. Then I lost the initiative for a moment as the fourth joined him and forced me back. It was a defining moment in my life, once more at threat after so many years. I was thinking too much of what my training required of me, yet all the training had been about stoning the brew, unthinking. It was the difference between describing a flavour and tasting it. The song that soldiers spoke of was being sung; to think was to be deaf to it. I forced myself to just watch them and feel their movement, my mind ready to predict it. As one of them thrust I moved, a parry and counter, my blade slicing across his gut, a slight tug on my arm as it opened him, then a reverse cut into his leg. I saw the other’s blade sweep down and put my own up to block it, a crack that went through me, my knees wobbling with it as I twisted and fell off balance deflecting its force. The moments froze as I tried to bring my now numb arm up for what I thought would be the blow to kill me, when he stiffened, Syle’s sword erupting from his chest and vanishing back as swiftly as a snake’s tongue. I would have been dead if they had risen fully on their own brew.