Snakewood

by Adrian Selby

  The wareshouses were built over two storeys. We hoped they would keep us out of sight of the Indra spotters on the roofs of the rows of hovels that stood between the wareshouses and The Riddle itself. A horn sounded, over west in the Linney, followed by another nearer, no doubt for those around The Riddle, who would be drinking their own brews and getting ready for them.

  We ran along the side of the wareshouse nearest to the slum. Laun looked out to the hovels of the slum between us and The Riddle. All silent. She gestured the militia with her crew to cross the lane and get inside the houses there. They began running out, and I about to follow them, when bowshots from both ends of the lane and the open shutters of the hovels opposite struck three of the militia. Laun pushed me over as the arrows came in and they cracked and clattered about me as I scrambled back behind the wall of the wareshouse.

  We heard whistling. A few of the Indra were communicating with their mouthpieces, the clicks and chirps their own sort of code that we would not be able to decipher.

  The militiamen, now only twelve, looked to Laun. They weren’t used to even modest fightbrew mixes, and they stamped and fussed with their blood up. She had given them their mix and as with any novice on the rise, the fear of it, the wrestle with it, makes one afraid to be far from one’s cook, crew leader or drudha. We were quicker than they were due to the brew we were on, so Laun picked us to offer covering shots while the militiamen dashed for the houses to get in them and out of the killing zone of the lane separating us from the slum.

  She led us out and as we cleared the side of the shed we each put arrowbags through the open shutters of as many of the nearby buildings as we could, not waiting to see which were and weren’t occupied.

  The twelve militia charged out and ran across the killzone. Three more took arrows but the sporebags had given those in the houses pause. The militia spread to four of the houses across the lane and those with heavy hammers smashed through the doors while we kept putting arrows into every open window we could. I heard screaming some way off, a rapidly spreading riot. A militiaman gestured for us to join them. We ran for the doorway. As we did so I looked up to the rooftops we intended to climb to better understand what lay beyond around The Riddle. He rose from a crouch, the assassin I’d seen in Povey’s Valley, now in Agent leathers, and he shot twice while I raised the warning. Ry’le fell, along with another of Laun’s crew. She must have seen or heard them fall, and judged where the shots came from in an instant, because, without breaking stride, she raised her own bow and put an arrow inches over his head.

  As we burst through the door she turned to look back at the two of her crew lying dead.

  “Fuck it! Fuck! Fuck!” She kicked the door shut and kicked it again so hard one of the hinges was ripped off and it sagged half across the doorway.

  “The assassin, he’s in our leathers,” I said.

  She nodded and signed for her crew to get upstairs and kill the resistance there. With a deep breath she pushed past me, bidding me follow. We now knew how Syle and Faré had died.

  We walked through to the room at the far side of the house, a hearth, a shelf with some woollens and a few pallets of straw were all those dwelling here had, though they had fled presumably to facilitate this ambush. There was yelling as our men got to work on the gangers in the houses about us.

  I gently teased open the shutter to the street beyond; another, wider street between us and the houses and The Riddle opposite. I saw, among its chimney stacks, half hidden, the outlines of men lying in wait. Laun looked out from behind me. Her eyes were full and she dabbed her thumb to them. Ry’le had been with her from the start.

  “Stay here, shoot anyone leaving The Riddle. If they get within twenty yards get upstairs, do not, am I clear, do not try to take them on your own. Now my whole crew is brewed up properly, that assassin will not escape us. Once he’s dead we wait for the main force to push through the Lanes to The Riddle on its far side and then we can approach it.”

  She left and ran up the stairs to the floor above, joining in the butchery. I closed my eyes, succumbing to the song of the world and what it could tell me. The militia were fighting people in the next house along, the floorboards echoing with running and stamping as we engaged with the gangers. I heard more shouting from outside, from the houses where we’d been ambushed moments ago.

  I opened my eyes again to the street and the assassin was stood before me, filling my view, staring at me through the partly open shutter. The point of his sword was a hair’s breadth from my eye. I staggered back as though I had been struck, for so aware was I of everything in the world when risen, so familiar is that state of all-knowing, that the silence with which he had descended from the roof was shocking. I could see only his eyes but it was obvious he recognised me from seeing only the part of my face not hidden by my own mask. He shook his head, as if to break himself out of a dream or some recollection, before spinning around and heading for The Riddle, from which smokebags were being dropped from the upper windows.

  I tried to raise my bow to shoot him but something stopped me, the shock, I thought at first, of him appearing without warning only inches from my face.

  As two shutters opened in The Riddle, from which a hail of arrows was aimed at him, some gangers from the nearby hovels and storehouses rushed out to stop him. I watched him turn and charge the men coming at him, knowing it would stop those in the houses from shooting, and I realised then what held my arrow. I knew him.

  Kailen’s Twenty and the Clan Razhani

  I record here an account, from the current Razhani Clan leader Rhain, of how, after their success at Ahmstad and previous to that with her father, Rhain hired Kailen’s Twenty. Kailen ensured her clan became both the principal clan of the Province and the nemesis of the Wildmen that plagued their borders at that time. This was eight years before Snakewood.

  I am given to speculate that, with what has subsequently transpired with the Wildmen, Kailen may unwittingly have unleashed a great peril on the Old Kingdoms in the course of achieving success with this purse.

  Goran

  Kailen’s Twenty, though they commanded a steep purse, did well for my da.

  Talk around the clans at our Meets was all about what he did with the Ahmstad against that ass Turis. We was waiting for word that Turis was taking Ahmstad but it never come. Now our people that I put in and around his city says the word is he’s killing those he sees are his enemies at his court, those critical of him for how he lost those clans to the Ahmstad.

  My da had hired Kailen’s crew once previous to that to help with Vilmor. They had been with Turis for a bit and knew what he had planned I think and from what Kailen had said to my da he didn’t think much of Turis, which you couldn’t say the same of his da, Torin, who had the respect of everyone, being a peacemaker, which us borderlands needs with the Wilds all around us.

  When my da died Kailen and his men come to the Sending. While a few was a bit pissed at this, thinking him come to see what work was around while they was paying respects to him, he didn’t approach me that week and was all set to leave when I was ready to see him. I admit I was a bit in awe of him back then, him and his crew, and this was as much because of his drudhas. We knew so little compared. Their colouring, how Kailen could read those of us he spoke to like he knew our minds, was fearsome enough. But worse I struggled a bit around him because I did find him kinny, which is a way of saying I wanted him, and whenever he was about I used to think he could see what I was thinking, eyes like mountain pools he had, and he was special to look at anyway because of some accident at the academy he trained at back in his homeland that turned his skin all mottled and callused, like snakewood.

  Reason I needed him for a purse was that my da was ill for a long while, and word had got out. He hated me to see it at the end, when he was all shrunk and coughing and wouldn’t have me nursing him though who else could do it right without our ma there that died winters before. He missed her fiercely. I suppose he could bear the servants
even less than me to care for him and it was as much at his bedside as at the classes I was given that I learned what statecraft I could pick up about the agreements we had and who was fighting who and the troubles that all clans have with their underclans.

  While he was ill though, those herders and growers that paid goods by way of tithe for protection started slowing up with their deliveries and then those on the borders, the underclans, had Wildmen come in worse than they ever had and at Meets were demanding a new leader. I couldn’t let it be my brother–he was a droop, fucking useless–but my da saw it too, and with my uncle and his other advisers, they said to give me the chain, this one I’m wearing now, that all leaders of the Razhani wear. We saw my brother off so he wouldn’t cause me trouble and I got the Clanguard out into our bit of the province and letting them know that tithes was owed and I was leader and if they had a problem then the court was here at Heje.

  After our fighting with Vilmor, we had troubles too among the clans. The Lorzh had been hit hard by it and there was a need for a clan to step up to be the Arch Clan because there was a few brothers in the Lorzh that was looking for that chain and instead they was making it all worse for their people.

  Us Razhani had a way with the alka we got from our grain, of purifying it, a distillation our drudhas call it and we get a lot of trade from it. The Post and other guilds come out to us to buy it from all over the Old Kingdoms.

  Kailen says he would look at what was needed to stop these Wildmen now they was looking to make slaves of my people and steal our crops, if we give him the secret of that distillation. He had this queer drudha Kigan, quiet, not the sack of tremors Ibsey was, his other drudha. Kigan had a sort of loneliness on him, always drawing in his book, and asking for animals or anyone we was putting to death that he could use. He was saying how he could use what we supplied to make the recipes we had much better.

  My drudhas was fierce angry, that we would let these mercenaries look at our book, as you know out here the recipe book is what decides which clans rule and which are the underclans.

  My da believed Kailen was different. Honourable if that can be believed. Still, I overruled my drudhas and let this Kigan and the other one Ibsey see the book and on this understanding Kailen give his service for free. And he never give the recipes away as far as I know.

  Kailen did one simple thing that give us a victory against the Wildmen and made the Province the Razhani Province instead of the Lorzh Province. It wasn’t simple looking at it the other way. He bid me put out for the levies from the underclans, and my Clanguard; got them all on parade on a plain near Heje. I was proud of them all there, a good turnout and all, according to our agreements, accounted for.

  Kailen was troubled. Him and his men made them stand there while they went about them, his giant black Harlain, the sad-looking one Valdir, the one that was always cracking jokes and teasing Kailen that he called Bense. The others were quieter and didn’t speak much. The two he seemed to confide in the most was one called Mirisham and another that was a prince from somewhere over the Sar. The three of them says to me that my army wasn’t fit for the troubles we had. I took my captains about with them and learned a lesson about war as I did, when he showed me the state of their weapons, the chain and leather, the boys that shivered when they stood up close to them. These was just bodies.

  “You put brews in them,” he said, “and they’ll fight of course, for the brews make you crave blood, but the colouring is poor, and if we took them through some forms now, I think you’d wish you could give the clan to your brother.”

  “What Wildmen could put out anywhere near eight thousand like this,” I said.

  He nodded. “You have six hundred horse, more than they could muster I believe. My men Bense, Gant and Milu are our best with horses. They think it’s about all you can be proud of and they have work to do with them and their singers besides.”

  I waited. What was there to say? And none of my captains said much back either and it made me think that they all thought as much. I thought then that they could not have trusted me and this was a lesson to learn.

  “Have you asked the underclans why they turn out men like this?”

  I shook my head. Seemed obvious and I was too ashamed to say it.

  “She’s not been leader for long, Kailen,” said my second, who was my uncle on my ma’s side.

  “Sshh, unc, don’t matter, leader can’t make excuses and I should’ve done it.”

  “And that’s why your da made you leader,” said Kailen’s man Mirisham, who was a bit older than the rest of the Twenty. “A leader doesn’t hide, they see a mistake, accept it and fix it.”

  “So how do I fix it?” I asked.

  “When Ibsey and Kigan are done with your drudhas your recipe book will be the envy of the clans. You know war is about fightbrews, but you can grow a mouse this much, and a leopard this much.” And he gestured as such. “You’re better with half as many men coming here better armoured and with the same supply for their keep, and you’ll have brews the Wildmen have no counter for. Your underclans can afford that levy better, because that’s what I asked them as we inspected your army. I asked your leaders and they told me they struggled to meet the quotas. The levies are the very men that farm plant and food or raise children or keep herds. There aren’t enough, or enough to bring the caravans without which they go hungry.”

  Mirisham spoke then. “Send half of these men back home, leave the other half with us, along with the best weapons and armour. A big walking army isn’t the force you need for the hit and run the Wildmen are plaguing you with. You know this, Rhain. We take half the mice you’ve got out there and turn them into leopards. On a fightbrew they will be worth more than the half you’ve given back to your people, which will thank you the more for it.”

  I agreed the change in levy with the underclans, we drank on it and they left their captains and we put the men left in the hands of Kailen and his band.

  Over the months that followed we hit settlements, went further into the Wilds than we’d been before, because as Kailen said, we needed to know more about what we was dealing with. We burned what we found, and his drudhas, the quiet one in particular, did things on those we found. Him and Kailen would argue, but he learned things from those he tortured and we found and captured the one that was leading the attacks that had become more organised and his name was Caragula, and a few summers younger than I was then. The tribes sent people for him, because he said he could deliver peace on our border and a peace was agreed. He give a lot of mouth while he was imprisoned. I think his lip got him a few beatings but the peace was on condition he was returned so, much as me and Kailen wanted to kill him, we let him go.

  Kailen’s man Digs and another called Kheld was put in charge then of getting forts put up and at the next Meet of the main clans word had got about of our brews and our victories against the Wildmen and in the matter of choosing the Arch Clan, Kailen asked me what I thought the Province needed, and how would I make it stronger. Seemed to me that Hevendor needed allying, as much because of Vilmor as of the Wilds, and our clan was best placed to secure that, and my da had always had a good settlement with them and trade was good for our alka. Kailen agreed and it was his man that was a prince took my uncle and my second and settled an alliance with the north of Hevendor on our common border with the Wilds. There was few could then dispute that with the Clanguard I had and our brews I could head up the Province’s council, making it the Razhani Province, after my clan’s name.

  I learned a lot from Kailen, and have had sore need of him since, but his change to my levy, which seemed madness to me on the surface, give us a backbone we needed ever since, though nobody, not even Kailen, could have expected Caragula to come back like he has done.

  Chapter 4

  Kailen

  “Kailen, old friend, you can give me a little can’t you, bring me back all even?”

  I looked to the drudha. Bense was lying on his bunk, I was sat next to him, and his fi
ngers traced across my robe, looking for my belt, looking for a rise.

  “You say there’s betony in that?” I asked.

  The drudha picking through Bense’s shit in a pot near the door nodded.

  “Colouring suggests it, shit’s black. His lips are broken up, scabby, he’s sweating hard. What do you think?”

  The drudha was competent enough, though he had not realised the sores on Bense’s skin suggested a far stronger and purer mix than a guard of this rank of lord could afford, or indulge if he was looking to keep his employment. It was obvious in his eyes, the discs enlarged, and how he trembled intermittently.

  I had opened the shutters over his bed, in an outbuilding near the villa of his master; minor Juan lord, Lord Fesden, modest ranking, flatback (meaning newly rich), his father having made a great fortune from cargoes, his uncles drinking and smoking away the fortune as fast as it was being earned. Their banner was hastily conceived, three blue waves and a shield, as drab as the prestige of the three families that have so far pledged to it.

  Bense started trying to open a pouch on my belt. I eased his fingers off, his skin like butter.

  “Drudha, thank you, your expertise has been most valuable. Could you fetch over the jug of water before you leave?”

  He handed me the jug and I waited till I could hear his footsteps on the stones outside.

  From my saddlebag I took some caffin powder, tincture of betony.

  I tipped out most of the water, shook it up with the mix and dribbled it into Bense’s mouth. The gums were shrunk back, most of his teeth missing, a common problem rubbing betony or chewing khaat. He had been a great pitfighter, his legend drawing me out of my way to see him all those years ago when I was building the crew. He always had a problem taking orders from men who couldn’t match him in practice, come his training. Even then it was clear he was addicted to betony, and in a land that was not tolerant of plant for anyone apart from its soldiery. Our single combat was a formality between him and the purses that would bring him the very finest plant east of the Sar. Once with me he showed a formidable talent in the cavalry, a natural with horses.