Snakewood

by Adrian Selby

  “It gets difficult for the good people about if we feel like you’re refusing to help us,” I said.

  She glanced at the belts and pockets full of our field gear. We’d come ready for a fight.

  “I have to speak to my cap.”

  We stood up. “We’ll come wi’ you.”

  At our standing up a few of the boys also stood, having seen the whores move and seeing this woman obviously in a situation.

  She turned about and saw them all.

  “For fuck’s sake, sit down, ’less you all want to be killed.”

  Amz walks over to her, a few more stands up.

  “She’s not leaving with you boys I’m afraid. You don’t really know where you are, do you?”

  “Fuck, Amz, these are proper soldiers.”

  He give her an angry look. “I ain’t?” As he was looking at her he threw a right and whipped out a dagger at his belt. Sad really. His right was caught in Shale’s hand, held fast, and I moved in, knocked his wrist into his side so he dropped the dagger. He struggled for a moment, but may as well have been trying to pull his hand out of a wall.

  “I’m goin’ to let go o’ your hand,” said Shale. “Don’t throw it at me again or it’s comin’ off. Are we good?”

  He looked at Aniy, who nodded. Shale let him go.

  “Lead the way,” I said.

  We followed her through the silent tavern, some twitching, most smelling of doubt.

  After a word with a boy she passed to run an errand for her, though we both suspected it was a coded message, she led us up a short hill to a leatherer’s, a few of them what must have been curriers or cordwiners sat on benches outside after their day, smoking a pipe before heading home. It was one of the few buildings round here seemed made of proper stone.

  They stood as we approached.

  “Aniy!” shouts one, sizing us up. He was about our age, colour faded a bit, face only a mother could love. Must’ve been the cap. They kissed and embraced and she had no idea we could hear pretty much everything, on a brew, that was said or done a good twenty or thirty feet around us no matter how quiet. There were other men here, in the hovels about us.

  “Send one in and get Darin down and out,” she said to the cap. “They’re brewed, signal the men behind them.”

  “No need to trouble yer men behind us, Aniy,” said Shale. “If he’s in there we can get this over and done with in there.”

  She turned to look at him, surprised.

  I drew my sword. “I can feel you thinkin’ it. Don’t.”

  “If those boys behind me shoots them arrows,” said Shale, “yer all goin’ to get torn up like a joint of ham left in the mud fer the dogs.”

  The old man give a nod over our shoulder. “It’s not just them you have to worry about, you arrogant fuckers.”

  There were eight in front of us come out of the leatherer’s, they were on some sort of brew, hot and ready, and they took up clubs, a few with hand-axes, something soldiers of Hevendor were fond of.

  “Darin’s busy and you’re friendless here. Aniy, go inside.”

  Shutters opened in a few of the hovels and workshops about.

  “Lot more arrows than you can manage, gentlemen. Let’s have your belts.”

  We looked at each other, me and Shale, and took some steps forward as though figuring what we ought to do. Then we jumped. I was at the cap as he raised his club to strike. Shale was past me and at the others. None had masks, so once I’d knocked his club up and put him on the back foot I pulled a sporebag off my belt and threw it at the three nearest me. Arrows come in from the sides, a few from behind us, the fewer for us being among their own, one catching in the leather on my leg. It was a chance we had to take. Shale disarmed the one of them and as he died Shale used him to shield himself from the arrows about. I saw more inside taking some brews. Aniy had jumped back and run to some side door into the shop.

  Those with the cap I threw my spores at were quick with masks, but enough had got in them that they were struggling and choking. I got out a knife to help with the parrying as they swung in at me. Shale dragged the body shielding him from attack and swung it in through the door to the shop and followed behind it, having dropped three of them that were stood before us a moment ago. I managed to catch one of those on me, sheared through his arm and he fell quick with the poison. One managed to slice my thigh as I braced for two others coming at me but I didn’t feel any weakening so it must have been something our dayer could cope with.

  I needed to get inside so needed a gap before someone got a clear shot. I flipped the knife I had, threw it to shift the cap out of the way and got my hand into a pouch of dust to throw it out. It give pause a moment and I took my chance with a couple of blows, dropping a young one, sad to say, while another got hit by one of their arrows and I forced the cap back so I could get in the door.

  Shale had already got three more of them what were inside, the scapo stood back with Aniy as they squared off. They didn’t look too pleased to see me and how it was going. Others come at Shale but each was put back with ease and soon it settled into them fearing to come at him, knowing that the poison, from a few screeching their last, would finish them with only a nick of skin taken.

  The cap fought a bit as he come in after me, but whatever dayer he was on wasn’t up to it. He defended well enough but once I forced him to the wall by the door, kicking it shut on those outside, I got him across his thigh then into his chest. Those outside were retching now and some run out from the houses about to help them. Darin stood then, stepping among us.

  “Stop, just stop, everyone,” he said.

  Shale took a cloth from a bench nearby and wiped some blood off his face and leathers.

  “We told him that, told Aniy too. None of you seems to want to listen,” I said, pointing to the cap going spasmic with the poison, shaking out his last bit of life.

  “Just wants to talk to you about Ostler an’ what went on over in the Indra Quarter,” said Shale, putting his sword back in its scabbard.

  He had a leatherworker’s punch on him, Darin, and was stood by some moulds. If they were his, he was fine at decorating. I had a pain in my belly then. Though bound up well, the fight had pulled at the stitching Shale done on me a few days back. I sat on a stool to ease it.

  “My friend Ostler’s been put in jail by the Master and there’s some that see my offer of support to those he looks after as…”

  “A land grab,” Shale said.

  “Indeed, a terrible accusation and one that requires I be cautious until my beneficence is more clearly understood.”

  “Aren’t you a slippery cunt wi’ words.”

  Brew gives us a short temper for sure. His men were dead or shit scared outside, half of them dead in here. I was angry as much for the pointlessness of it and the attention it was going to bring on us.

  “Can you tell us what were goin’ on?” I asked.

  “Few of my boys got killed, someone after information about an old mercenary, Kailen. Then I get summoned to a Marschal and it seems there’s others wants this mercenary too, only Ostler was protecting him. This merc someone you know?”

  “He was. We’re thinkin’ of visitin’ those who were after him,” said Shale. “Mind telling us who that might be?”

  “Some big guildmaster, called Alon Filston, from Issana. Had Agents and a Marschal so I heard, a lot of influence too it seems, to get the Master of the Crag and his men to join with them looking for this Kailen. Nobody seems to know who the other killer was.”

  “There, wasn’t that easy, Aniy?” said Shale. She looked at Darin but had nothing to come back with, perhaps afraid of him.

  “Whoever that fucking merc was, he’s responsible for half my crew being cleaned out, with you two showing up for him. Pleased he’s dead. Might actually get back to business now.”

  Shale raised his eyebrows. I saw a twitch, but they didn’t. His knife left his hand, whipped from his belt, smooth as running water. It hit Darin in the che
st. He stepped back with a question forming somewhere in his mouth. He looked over at Aniy, eyes widening as he fell dead. As the others sparked up we tore a few sporebags from our belts. It give them pause.

  “Happy to kill every one of you, less people to point us out when we leave,” I said, “but we makes a point of not killing anyone we in’t been paid to or in’t trying it on, though in his case disrespecting Kailen’s not something we tolerate.”

  Aniy dropped to where Darin had fallen.

  “She got a good way with her,” I said, to those on the brink of joining Darin and their captain. “You could do worse than take a few orders from Aniy. You want to build something what’s been tore down, choose a woman. You want to tear something down, choose a man. Right now seems you need a woman.”

  We hooked the bags back on our belts and I asked Aniy for a way out that wasn’t the way we come in. She obliged and we climbed through some shutters at the back and headed down a lane the other side of the hill, heading in a loop south then round and up the river to the quarter where we left the horses.

  Took us a bath and a heavy meal before we took saddles to the stables and got the horses groomed and ready. We knew Filston was in Issana, wouldn’t be difficult to find him, but we had some answers perhaps in Kailen’s things, and a need to do right by his wife Araliah. So we headed down to Harudan, southern edge of the Old Kingdoms, what looked out and had a say in the Gulf of Merea.

  Between us and Harudan was Hisca. Not much to say of it. We took ourselves out the way some, finding a path through the stars and keeping low in the days under bluffs and in long grasses far from tracks and roads. Shale had him some fanny on a stop to buy some bacon and bread at a farm, her man out in the fields somewhere. He still needed it from time to time. She was perky for us both but I haven’t been feeling it for a few years. Pissing was all my cock seemed to have a mind for lately, even after that savage joy that comes with surviving a battle.

  Lots of men would wave it about when they’re soaked in blood and screaming at the sky for being alive at the end of a fight. Brews were a part of it. Whatever gets men’s blood up seems to get their cock up too as often as not. I recall Bresken saying it got her excited, but she was careful enough of course not to go within the Twenty for some. I was sorry to hear, later on, that she had been killed and all.

  Times enough, now my warring days are over, I can’t sleep for those I killed that floods my eyes when I shut them, having begged for and got no mercy at the end of my sword. A fair share of women with child, duts of boys and girls, old men, I took them all if a scorching was called for. It don’t take long for you to get so as you can just shut off the screaming and begging, but deep down it’s still there it feels like, coming back more and more over the years, my dreams getting more crowded and nasty, my killings returning so real I could feel them in my muscles again, their howling once more in my ears. Like most soldiers I need plant to sleep, though my saying it here is for the record, I’m not expecting pity.

  Shortly enough we were through Hisca to the Gap of Irudan, a ridge of mountains what were the northern border to Harudan. I’d been that way four summers before, also heading to the south of Harudan where you haven’t seen the likes in many places, except maybe what I hear of the Dust Coast and Jua of course.

  Harudan got fierce war academies and the high communes. They reckon a magist been seen too in the mountains here. It’s rich, with the highlands fertile enough for the commune farms to grow masses of shiel and ska for shipping. It was the heart of the old Orange Empire what give us the measure of our years for historical reckoning. We were heading south to the coast, following the stone roads with the other travellers heading to the main ports at Melradan and Filden’s Spur. On the higher land were the vineyards and farms made of the bright orange stone what was mined from the peaks north and you saw through all Harudan.

  It was a fine sight from up in the Gap looking south to the far coast and then your gaze tracks west to the mountains you’re leaving as the range cuts round. I juiced some luta leaves and Shale helped with the pasting of them under my eyelids. It was the last time I was seeing this I knew, and once the juice filled up my eyes I took my horse up a pass leading off the road and Shale even joined for a snifter of brandy while I rested up.

  Being where I could see a big piece of the world always made me feel I wasn’t worth a scrap, but the same made me feel there was something fine about that.

  It wasn’t more than a couple of weeks along the roads and we were at the coast and getting the soldiers or the locals we saw to point us to Kailen’s estate, a few leagues past Melradan. There were a lot of estates about these parts, palaces of the orange stone and the blue slate roofs what they got from the peaks of Jua and Mount Hope Province. The Senate and their fluffers had places all about, Kailen’s da even, though he never got on with him.

  Kailen got the top medal from their war academy when he was sixteen winters, youngest who ever got it. His da was made up, as he told it, thought Kailen would get a big naval command against the pirates or a field command pushing their interests somewhere out east.

  Kailen just flat turned it down, said the commanders he trained with, a big pile of the Senate’s sons and fuckers to a man, treated him like shit all through it. His da was blacksmith born. The pride he had for his da and ma with getting through was all burned up by the time he was speaking at the Senate as the star of their academy.

  I said he was a big reader and strong with his words. He wove them pretty to the Senate, speaking strong about the haves and have-nots, the rules they got and the rules we got that are bent to serve them and keep them in their fine stone halls. The papers rained on him from the Silks, shouting with rage and some even laughing for the bullock’s balls he had standing there and telling them about their exploiting of the poor and slaves and such.

  His da was burned, his ma as proud as you like, though she a fine young daughter of a Senator. Strange how it was. I think his ma saw as he did what a man could make of himself given a fierce will. His da was born poor but was ashamed for he wanted to be one of them.

  Kailen for his part found the fine learnings to be so much mist blown away with swords and arrows of the armies that decided things for real. So he took his learnings and he left to become a merc. But not, of course, just any merc. He wanted to be the best, saw that if you could put together a group of the best swords and pirates and drudhas and the like you could charge a fat purse for them to fix the battle in your favour, teaching tactics to the fat rich aristos who held rank, leading crews to learn a few things to ensure you get the odds for a win. It was about him showing all of them that were born to riches that it meant nothing.

  What was less obvious to them was the fact his readings of history, heraldry, family lines and so on was fierce enough that he knew which sides to take, which men had the more belly for a fight, which could be counted on to see it through. That was how we got our reputation for never losing a battle we contested, not even at Tharos Falls when it was us twenty held the line and the line could not be crossed.

  We stopped at the gate to the estate. Most of the land about was his, olive groves and fruit and a good bit of common land we saw too for his serfs.

  Two stood guard, no question as to being trained by Kailen. You could see the drilling in the posture and balance and how they looked us over as we approached. Their scabbard fixings and sword hilts were well worn with use. I didn’t recognise them as being with Achi when he freed us from the Post.

  We dismounted and Shale explained who we were. I showed them the necklace and we were through. They blew for a girl to come for the horses. It was remarkable but expected, I guess, how she whispered and got them easy to leave us for the stables. One of the guards walked along the avenue that run up to the villa and we waited at the gate with the other till a whistle give us call to head up there.

  A few hundred yards of summer sun away we saw Kailen’s wife stepping out from the doors of the house. She had black hai
r and was taller than most men; hazelnut skin and in a thin jade-blue robe. The indigo dye was rare enough around Harudan, let alone the strain for that colour. She was a rich widow. I haven’t seen such a beauty in a fair few summers.

  She knew about Kailen though, it was on us fierce.

  “Gant. Shale. I’m Araliah.” She put her arms around each of us and kissed each cheek in the aristo way. Her eyes didn’t flinch but they wetted up enough when I held up the necklace and his satchel with his papers. Tears tumbled heavy down her face, her fist whitened with clutching the chain and she held me again, trusting me to keep hold of her for she lost herself with crying. She was strong smelling of cloves and fruit, her hair was soft like rainwater to touch and I couldn’t see how Kailen could have left this woman and this home for anything.

  I squeezed her so as she’d come to and, stepping aside and wiping her nose on her arm like a dut, she moved us inside to the courtyard. She took Shale’s arm and I followed them through the door. She was still shaking.

  As we moved in it was busy with what seemed to be the quartermaster and the farmers yabbering about the cases of oil and marmalades from the smell of it all. This was all laughing though, not the haggling and vicious yelling of most estates we’d been to. Seems like he brought something of the book learning back here after he laid his sword down. They stopped a moment as she moved through. The quartermaster saw something was wrong but after a quick glance at us he read it right and he ushered the others to continue their work, knowing the time was not yet for speaking of what happened to Kailen.

  Through some shutters we were led to the main dining tables, easy to seat thirty I reckoned. We were about to start untying our leathers when she began it for us. Fast and strong with much practice, she took off the wambas and jerkins and found us some of his wool shirts, using these moments to let it all sink in. Shale give me a swift look that showed he was moved by her attentions. It cut him up fierce, her showing us the courtesies and airs what weren’t due the likes of us. It was clear we stank from the weeks out and my wound was not doing well. She didn’t once scrunch her nose.