Snakewood

by Adrian Selby

  “Darin is a puppet of the militia, but Andarin has been informing them about all Darin’s crew’s movements and thus Andarin was, until very recently, King Scapo. Reed, however, is your more deadly enemy. Andarin’s dealings with the militia, now compromised by the removal of his lackey that he talked of the other evening, means he lacked the capacity or intelligence to spread his bet. Thus he is weak, particularly so now, as this assault on your slum will be painted as an uprising of gangers threatening order for their own greed. You need to look at Reed’s quarter. He has a number of guilds with wareshouses there. Can you name the four biggest, besides the Post?” He shook his head. “No. I thought not. That will be your next move, when you have worked out how to overcome Darin and reclaim the Indra Quarter. Find out who those guilds are; you’ll find out that they have influence over the Crag’s Master, then find out what that influence is. Then you have the Master. When you have him, you will have Andarin and Darin, for they have no allies in power here, and you will be able to trade the knowledge of that influence to those in power to further your own end and simultaneously weaken Reed.”

  “How do you propose I do all that from a cell?”

  “There is one other thing I will give you for free. This cap, these gangers, I’ve worked with them this past week, they are very capable men. I’m sorry you lost so many. You lean on them and they run things for you, but that is not the same as trusting them, nor do you support or listen to them. They are good soldiers, they’ve not deserted you or me and for this I promise recompense will come. Throw away that betony inla mix, find a kannab mix that weans you down but will keep you alert enough to make decisions. Win them back, as you won them to you on your way to Scapo. Start by taking at least half your stash, wherever it is, and sharing it among them for their families. In particular, there’s one of Senis’s crew, he sacrificed his life for me. He’ll be dead nearby, wearing the wamba I had, the grey one, black stitching. These men will repay your kindness many times over in the years to come.”

  I gave him a few moments to absorb my advice.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked. “You’re not going to surrender.”

  “I’m going to give myself a quick and painless death, something I’ll very much be denied by those downstairs. Araliah will run my estate, she’s been doing it for years.”

  He nodded. “It was an honour.” I shook hands with him and his men as they gathered at the top of the stairs that led down into the bar.

  I closed the door to my room and sat on the floor, listening to the hollering of a negotiation.

  The assassin would now know I was at The Riddle, and he had known I would be there at some point. The Agents from the docks will have converged also. There was no other way out, not with this calibre of ally and not without my fieldbelt and bow. I sensed the fall was coming too, the brew wearing off. And there would be torture. I had never been tortured deeply, though I knew enough of the procedure. I could not risk revealing what I knew of the whereabouts of any of the Twenty I had recently seen, Stixie, Bense, or the location of Gant and Shale, never mind my beloved wife and those other interests that of necessity were to remain private. From a pocket in my wamba I took a small vial, kept back from the fieldbelt I gave my decoy. It is a powerful mix that I have no time to outline the origin and rarity of. I confess that I wished to meet the man who had brought me to this, for instinct told me who it must be. I had so many questions for him, but not at this price.

  And I was tired. I’ve been tired for such a long time. The years “brown and wither me” as the saying goes, and the world over which I’ve had some mastery has pressed me slowly into its history from its present. Until now. Perhaps now I can sleep.

  I’m sorry, Araliah, my love. You deserved better.

  Kailen and The Corner

  An account, by General Lin of the Ten Clan, of how Kailen brought a potentially lengthy siege to an almost immediate and profitable conclusion, circa 641 OE.

  Goran

  I was lieutenant of a small crew and we were fighting at “The Corner”, the stretch of our border with the Red Hills that also bordered the Wilds. Incursions from the Wilds were bad enough but those Red Hills shitholes would have a scorching and be leaving about signs enough to make it seem it was Wildmen. Then, when we send a force there we find there’s Red Hills soldiers telling us they had killed the Wildmen and claimed the land for themselves, knowing a dispute over their actions would have repercussions.

  There were a few years where the border was pushed back a fair way because of this, some four hundred square miles and some parts of the Hiscan Road, losing us the emporia and the levies we could charge. More than this, it was causing us a plant problem. We were using the calabar bean in our pastes. The southern Virates had recently been shipping it over after some of the guilds got Post backing to buy land over there. The calabar was effective against the Wildmen, and without it we were back on our own white narcissus, which they were getting a counter for.

  We knew we had to take our land back, so three of the clans put word out for mercenaries to bolster our combined army, which I’m sorry to say was a bit of a shambles, infighting all over. I didn’t know then Kailen’s Twenty or any of the other mercenaries that were with our column, one of four columns that the generals had decided on, and we were to reclaim two big forts that were once ours near the Red Hills border fifty miles south of The Corner. General we had at the time was a cock, fair at swordplay and cards but bloody useless at managing the army, so this mercenary who was hired, Kailen, took that on after a couple of the captains fell ill. He had his drudhas cooking our mixes. Fuck me, never risen like that before or since. I heard our Captain had let them have the run of our drudha tents but fewer come out of them than we would have thought and they were always arguing with Kailen, the younger one in particular.

  Soon as Kailen took charge, seemed we all got paid on time and fed, and one of his crew, we ended up calling him Digs, he put the mining crews together and got them singing, getting the column’s forts up and down faster than they’d ever done them on our march to the border. Then we hear him shouting at a captain; hard not to, being as the lieutenants’ tents were near the captains. Seemed there were orders being given by the general that were contrary to what Kailen and the others were commanding. I heard then that Kailen went to the general and was giving him an earful. The general was saying that he’d never be lectured to by a mercenary. His captains were in uproar, not liking I think how these mercs were showing them how it was done, showing them up too, getting their ranks through their names and nought else. But the merc said he’d pay the general twice his purse if the siege lasted longer than four days. Couldn’t back down then the general, he says yes. Then this Kailen spends a few hours talking to the soldiers that were camped up, his whole crew did and all, these mercs handing out brandy and some threaded kannab that their drudha worked up and the soldiers were happy to wag chins with him.

  Then he gets us lieutenants together, tells us he thinks the captains and general are a pack of cocks who weren’t fit to drink our piss and that we’d get this siege done and the fort taken the following night. His man Elimar was one for wine and he had a cask that Kailen’s crew sat with us and drank and there wasn’t a song they didn’t know and they had a woman in their crew, Bresken, singing as dirty as the rest of them, a fair voice too what paired well with another of them, Bense. A fine night I can recall even now.

  He then promptly goes off the following day and doesn’t return until sundown the following evening, him and a few of his crew. We all thought him and his crew had done one on account of his bet, because the purse they took was big by all accounts. General had lost it by then, demanded a siege council to sort out a plan, and when he called Kailen to him he demanded they get working on his plan because he didn’t need their gold just to get out of a bet they couldn’t deliver; he was going to have their sweat and effort.

  At this Kailen just makes the general another wager; had to know th
at he loved gambling. He says that if he can take the fort without a single drop of blood being shed the following morning the general was to swap out his captains for the lieutenants, and he named us, and he then told him he could be assured that his generalcy would be a glorious one if he did it. Would he accept it? The captains were all for cutting Kailen out of the purse at that point, but by then of course the quartermasters and us lieutenants piped up seeing as how we’d got fed and organised better since they came along and we had little time for the shower of shit the general surrounded himself with. The general laughed at him, conceded it to an approving roar from his captains and told us to prepare for the siege once we’d reached midday. The captains joined him as well in that, giving Kailen their opinion of his attitude and arrogance. I shut my mouth of course, the rest of us did, because we could see there was something in this crew, but the others couldn’t see it; they said he was a man coasting on the excellence of his drudhas, and it may be that was true in part.

  Kailen and his crew then proceed to get lashed and snore away the night. The next morning he rolls a parch on an arrow and his man Stixie puts it over the wall with that massive bow of his. Not an hour later out walks the castellan with a child in his arms, his own, and he’s on his knees before the general begging for the antidote to save his boy’s life. He’s shaking, pale like he’d been vomiting.

  There’s a cheer goes up at that, the general is red faced, as furious as I ever saw him. Terms were accepted and the garrison is led out.

  I got drunk with Kailen that night, me and the lieutenants that he had promoted, because we weren’t letting those fuckers switch it back about somehow. I had to ask how he did it. He was dismissive, said he just asked all the soldiers he could who of them had hailed from these parts and if any had been to the fort, asked about the fort, when it was built, and he asked about the family lines in this district. Then he went looking for those living all about here that had been dispossessed of their land, living wild or enslaved or otherwise and asked them too, and some told him of the cave that was the secret entrance a mile or so out, as there was always one where a large fort on the borders was concerned and they told him also that the garrison had families that travelled with it after the initial occupation. Others that had traded in there before the occupation were able to give him the lie of it inside. Then he got a man in there on the secret way with some concoction of his drudhas strong enough only to put the children out and make the rest that ate that morning sick. All he had to do then was just put the letter over the wall describing to them what was happening and that we had the antidote and that the children would get worse and die horrible. He wasn’t lying, for some did. But it was a poison that stopped the blood, so the bet was won after all, and many lives saved.

  So if I became a general, and if the Ten Clan took back much of the land they’d lost, it was because Kailen taught me to ignore privilege and to understand, properly understand, the field of battle before committing a man or woman to it.

  Chapter 5

  Galathia

  This continues Galathia’s account of the events at the Crag. I’ve separated it because it concerns events immediately after Kailen’s own account of the siege and its conclusion.

  Goran

  “Galathia, we could not expect to have had a chance to confront him,” said Laun. “You saw what it was like out there. That assassin has killed as many of us as he has gangers. We did not have control of the assault.”

  “He’s killed Kailen. Who knows what he learned of the Twenty before Kailen died.”

  “This ganger, Ostler, denies that the assassin could have reached Kailen,” said Laun.

  He could have been sleeping, except he was too still. It was some comfort to see this man, considered a legend by so many, dead in a ghastly little inn. It was fitting, although I understand Laun might not have been happy for me to say that, herself a mercenary. He looked older of course than when last I saw him as a girl, smaller, the way they all shrink once they’re paid out, though he hadn’t gone to fat, still must have led a disciplined life.

  The bargirl was with us in the room, covering Kailen over with a sheet in preparation to wrap him and take him out.

  “What are we doing to Ostler to ensure he has given us all the information he has regarding Kailen?”

  “He appears to know very little,” said Alon, who had the shutter open and was leaning on the ledge, looking out to the wareshouses.

  “I suppose some gentle questioning was all that was required.”

  “Galathia, please, we must defer here to the militia and the Master of the Crag. This is their territory. Ostler is their prisoner.”

  “Not good enough. I want to see him. Laun, can the Reeve intervene?”

  “We have lost many Reds and some Agents. The Reeve is aware of our request. I’m sorry, Galathia, but it appears Kailen had rigged the entire quarter against us, every doorway, sill, the lanes themselves. Bowmen everywhere. We could not get here sooner without losing more, and I was not losing any more of my crew today. Four dead since we arrived. Galathia, please, listen to Alon. I have men to bury and work to do.”

  She was shivering, the fall was building. She would need to rest soon, pay the colour.

  I felt for her of course, I had known Ry’le and Ranz well, as I had Syle and Faré. Nevertheless, it was almost unheard of for a Marschal to lose so many of their crew, especially one of the best. I couldn’t help that this frustrated me, that the situation couldn’t have been anticipated better. Laun was a remarkable woman, Ranz particularly adored her I think, and she, of course, knew it.

  A man entered, introducing himself as the proprietor of The Riddle.

  “We has to take ’im,” he said. “It isn’t the custom ’ere for the dead to stay above ground overnight. Don’t know what ’e took an’ what infection ’e has neither.” The proprietor kept his head bowed. Both he and the bargirl took an arm and dragged Kailen past us towards the door. A vial rolled away across the floor. Laun picked it up and sniffed it. It must not have been obvious what the ingredients were.

  “Tofi?” she called. “Stand back from him, ’keep. His body isn’t moving until my drudha has inspected it. It appears he might have poisoned himself.”

  “Will he have been infected with something we could catch?” I asked.

  “You might get that kind of behaviour west of the Sar; Rhosidians or those savages in Cassica; but not here,” said Alon.

  “We should see the Reeve, I wish to see this Ostler,” I said. I had no intention of letting up.

  “Leave it, woman!” Alon had some colour in his cheeks it seemed, almost as much as the last time he was underneath me.

  “What’s bothering you, husband?” I asked. I enjoyed his outbursts.

  “You. Everyone here is trying to protect you. Over a hundred dead, I’m sure, from the piles of bodies they’ve been carting off to the fields. You’ve almost had your own head taken off through your sheer bloody refusal to stay away from bloodshed and you have the temerity to criticise the Marschal paid to protect you on your travels about the hell-holes of the world looking for some of the most dangerous mercenaries that ever lived.”

  “You’re paying the bills, you agreed to it. You know how important this is, to revenge my father and our family.”

  “I know it better than you do, it seems, or you wouldn’t be dressing up to play as an Agent.”

  He was being ridiculous; he knew full well what I had endured in the years following my exile from Citadel Argir.

  “Come now, Alon, the reason we were here is Kailen. We cannot leave until we’ve learned everything he’s shared with those that had chosen to put their lives down for him. They aren’t going to share if they’re not going to be punished.”

  “You sound like you wish to apply the irons yourself.”

  Tofi, Laun’s drudha, came in. He had a second fieldbelt over his shoulder, his hands were covered in blood from treating the wounded outside.

  “Can you
tell if there’s anything in this room we should be worried about?” asked Laun. She gave him the vial that had been on Kailen.

  He sniffed the vial, then took a small flask from his belt, swigged, spat and poked out his tongue.

  “Cannot tell what this vial contained, but you need to get out of here, now. The air is thick with aconite. That explains why some of those gangers were coughing up blood. I thought it was spores. Downstairs, we’ll have the shutters open please, throughout the inn.”

  “Can we take the body now?” said the bargirl.

  “Yes,” he said.

  The bar was full of militia and Reds. There were two boys at the serving table, one crying as he served the men cup after cup, some fresh loss being endured while he worked.

  “Laun, fetch us a bottle of wine. We should sit over here, this booth will allow us to talk freely.”

  She went behind the serving table to one of the crates of wine and brought a bottle and three cups back, first folding some coins into the tearful boy’s hand. Then she gestured for three of her crew to sit near us. The assassin was unaccounted for.

  “Aconite is a very powerful poison, is it not? Very rare?”

  “Yes, Gala. It puzzles me why it is so thick in the air if The Riddle has been closed off to all outsiders for at least a day. We shouldn’t be affected after this short time.”

  “This proves my point,” said Alon. “Galathia, I have been tolerant of your wish to discover what happened to the Argir Book, containing the royal recipes, and your heirlooms, but you forget that these things do not confer your right to rule as does your blood. Your people, the people of Argir, there is a mood there, a dissatisfaction with the council that administrate its affairs. Taxes have been raised, but promises have been broken. There is call to establish your royal line again, the line of Welvale.”