Snakewood

by Adrian Selby

  “Say the word, my lady, we will do what we can to protect you,” said an old man at her side.

  “There’s little to be done here. This man, he has paid the colour, and richly. He wears a drudha’s belt besides. Those with the lady are Agents of the Post. There are none among us could draw a sword and live, especially given how quickly Turan and Ancel were killed. There is no purse for your life, Imbrit, none either for the children or any of you. You must go back to your homes while I understand what this gentleman wants. I am sure this fine young lady and her husband are not his contractors.”

  They moved before an Agent or any of Alon’s men could countermand her, a lady clearly high born and much used to dominion over the men about her. Soon we stood around her alone, the sound of the children calling and crying for her to follow diminishing.

  “You have little in the way of a guard for such an estate, my lady,” said Laun.

  “The others are with our shipment of oranges, making its way now to the coast to be pressed and mixed. Few in the lands about are ignorant of this estate’s landowner. Would you come inside, I have wine and hams, the children too have been baking.”

  “We are not here to dine with you,” said Alon.

  “Oh, I had not guessed, nor yet do I have your acquaintance. Still, whatever you have in store for me goes none the better for me offering you wine and some hams, I’m sure. Your men at least must eat if their work goes as far as destroying what has been built here.”

  She turned her back on us once more and walked through the line of clearly lustful soldiers to the main doors to the house.

  After applying the barrier I took a handful of the Weeper rub to wipe over my face and hands, her contact with which would shortly make her a good deal more open to enquiry. I regretted this course for a moment, for she was a fine and fearless woman. Galathia stared at me as she dismounted, demanding something to be done about this defiance, though I doubt she was aware that it was Araliah’s resembling her own self that galled her. Alon followed behind us.

  Araliah brought from her kitchen boards with legs of smoked hams, as well as fruit and jugs of wine. She bade Laun help her set them out.

  “It is wonderful to see a woman rise to lead a crew of Agents. There has never been a Fieldswoman, only men, I’m told. My mother is cousin to the Harudanian emperor. I find it wonderful that he maintains he has never met The Red. What power that man must have, that emperors speak such obvious lies on his behalf.”

  Laun flushed slightly and looked over at Galathia, who nodded that she should help Araliah.

  “Were you of the Twenty?” she asked me, pouring the wine into cups.

  As she reached over the table to give me my cup I grasped her bare wrist and bent her forward. She did not flinch at this sudden violence.

  “Yes. I’m Kigan, long-time drudha to your husband. I would say I’m sorry for what has gone on here and indeed what’s about to happen, but you matter little to me except for what you can tell me.”

  Galathia poured herself some wine, enjoying the moment. Araliah maintained her composure.

  “She should try this wine first, Kigan. I don’t trust her.”

  I took my cup, brought it to my nose and put it down again. I saw her smell the air between us, shaking her head as the Weeper’s vapours filled her senses.

  “The wine smells fine, Galathia. Now, Araliah, did you know Kailen was dead?”

  I saw the question in her eyes. She realised that to speak was to speak true, the same wide-eyed realisation Milu had had. She shook her head.

  “I need you to say it, Araliah. Did you know he was dead?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes filled with tears and she tried to pull herself away again. With my other hand I pulled at her hair and brought her close to me, pressing my face to hers, our cheeks together.

  “Who told you this?” I whispered.

  She trembled, “G-Gant and Shale.” She breathed rapidly, still trying to assert control.

  “Did you fuck them?” asked Galathia, nursing her cup.

  “Gant.”

  Galathia cackled delightedly. “Was he good?”

  Araliah nodded and shook her head, the trembling becoming more violent. I let her go. The Weeper was in her, flattening her will.

  “Sit down,” I said. With that the trembling stopped and she sat obediently. For a few hours at least she could not shit unless I commanded it.

  “Where are Gant and Shale now?”

  “They will look for Bense and Valdir. They set out to look for you. The poster.”

  “Good. If nothing else their attempt to free Bense will deliver them.”

  Tears rolled down Araliah’s face. She was still attempting to control her words.

  “Where is Valdir?” I asked.

  “Kailen thought he may have returned home to Langer’s End, Marola.”

  “I see. I have no idea where that is, but the Post has some use in that regard. Laun, we must get a message through to the Post to that effect.”

  Alon was carving up a ham. “Why would they go after Bense if he’s imprisoned, in Jua of all places? After the vineyard anyone with colour will be stopped and questioned.”

  “Loyalty. All those I’ve killed that I spoke with still felt something for the Twenty. Gant and Shale are on the run, as much now from the Post as us after recent events. They are looking for answers, to understand who it is that is killing them all. They may be hoping Bense and Valdir know.”

  I turned to Araliah. “Do you know where Mirisham is?”

  “No.”

  Alon continued speaking through mouthfuls of the honeyed ham he tore at on the table in front of him. “Will Bense feel that loyalty, should they get to him? Thirty Reds couldn’t stop them.”

  “He’s broken, Alon. Even before I began my work on him he had long become soaked on the Harosin. I switched him onto a betony mix of such potency I have effectively bound him to me. If they get to him, he will do what he can to let us know where he is. If not, I also have a man watching the jail Bense is in. He will get word to us if they attempt to get at him.”

  “We must find Valdir then. There are few left who can know of what happened to Galathia’s wealth.”

  “Of course,” I said, “though we may spend many weeks hunting him if the Post are not successful during our journey out of Harudan. I recommend we instead go to Bense. Gant and Shale know where he is, as do we. We may therefore find they come to us if we wait at Cusston. I suggest too we leave here immediately. The obvious loyalty her serfs feel for her will no doubt lead them to the nearest officers of law. Have the horses killed, it will give us the time we need.”

  “Laun, can you do this for us?” said Galathia.

  “Of course. Tofi, Prennen, let’s find Midgie and Omara. We’ll torch the stores, split and cover a circle of two leagues around this estate, burn these people’s homes.”

  “No, Laun, please,” cried Araliah.

  “Only the homes, woman. We’re the Post.”

  She left with the others.

  “There is another reason to go straight north to Bense, rather than spend time trying to find Valdir over west,” said Galathia. “Something I wasn’t ready to share with Laun. I need her with me until such news travels to the heart of the Old Kingdoms and the Post call her in. We don’t have much time. This letter was delivered to me yesterday. It’s from Petir.” From a fold in her gown she produced it, worn and mottled from damp and travel.

  “You know that he is with a warlord, Caragula, at the head of a vast army. That army marches for the Old Kingdoms. It has begun. They were amassing and ready to march from deep in the Wild to the Vilmorian border when he wrote the letter and they mean to head for the Citadels. The Old Kingdoms are finished. I want my revenge before such chaos engulfs us.”

  “The Post is also finished then,” said Alon. “Excellent. Nothing would please me more than to see them cut down. The opportunities for my guild will be boundless. I trust we will be great allies for Caragula.”<
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  “Don’t underestimate the Post,” I said. “Too few on their thrones and cushions in the Old Kingdoms credit it enough for their wealth and security. Of course there will be many of those kingdoms and provinces north and south of the Old Kingdoms that will also be gladdened by its demise, for it has them on a leash, but it commands more men, as far as an army goes, than any other. Besides, if Caragula’s army is as large as you say, Galathia, word will get ahead of it.”

  “I disagree, Kigan,” said Alon. “If the Post represents all that’s wrong with the Old Kingdoms Caragula will end it, if he means to do what Petir leads us to believe.”

  I would have corrected Alon’s perception of the Post at length, had Galathia not cut us short. The success and the organisation of the Post, its ability to reinforce, to control routes in and through hostile lands, if these were harnessed properly by The Red, Caragula would have a far harder task without their support.

  “The birds that fly west, warning of this army, will not greatly outpace them,” said Galathia. “Who will believe those at the borders, no matter how impassioned their pleas. No army of any great organisation or discipline has ever come from the Wild, not in a century of winters. This is their greatest and most decisive advantage.”

  “Plant over iron. They will perish,” said Araliah, who found herself able to speak freely if she spoke truly.

  “Araliah,” said Galathia, “go to Alon’s men. You shall pleasure them all as they see fit.”

  She stood unsteadily, as though sleepwalking, all colour gone from her face. She slipped off her gown and walked haltingly from the dining hall to the main door.

  “Alon, would you like to join them?”

  “No, Galathia, I…”

  “Oh leave us. Your drooling has upset me. Ensure she dies in the next few hours, with whoever else chose not to leave the estate when she gave them the chance.”

  He stuck the ham with a very pretty dagger and took it outside. A bustling and swell of laughter filled the corridor outside.

  Galathia stood and closed the doors as the cheering started.

  “I shall be on the throne of Argir in a matter of weeks. The thought of it wets me.” She came and sat on the table in front of me and lifted her skirts to better spread her legs.

  “Don’t be gentle.”

  Kailen

  They told me I couldn’t see her body.

  But she was brilliant. She had saved us.

  My Araliah.

  I had been kept in the cellar of The Riddle, a dead ganger filling the sack that went into my pit in the Crag’s graveyard. Em and Robbo pulled me feet first out of the narrow pit under the flagstones of the cellar, a concealed breathing hole keeping me alive. I had been lucky; too few, in its secret history, have understood how much to take of the mix I cannot here record.

  Coming out of that death-sleep took four days. I came awake within hours but was not able to move. Men have gone mad in those days, but I never lost the certainty that my strength, the mastery of my own body, would return.

  It was many more days after that before I could manage a full meal, but it would be many weeks before I could do the Forms.

  When eventually I was well enough to ride for Harudan it was too late.

  They wouldn’t let me see her body, nor tell me why, but their faces were revealing enough. Turan and Ancel were the only full guards on my estate. Araliah had sent the others away. I only realised why much later. The two men were buried near the burned-out husks of their own homes along with those others that, according to the survivors, put up a resistance in defence of their homes.

  Jawen, the estate quarter, looked for instruction. He needed none, his recounting of the work being undertaken proved my judgement of his competence in managing the estate. The house was being repaired, stores distributed, hands secured from nearby estates to help with the work. Merchants were sent to secure the materials needed to house my people and to find horses fit for work.

  The children of the estate had made flower sticks and fruit baskets for her, which they put in piles around the plot where she was buried, on a knoll that looked over the orange groves. We had our coupling rites there, though our families would not come.

  None would blame me for being away. That burden was my own. Those who had killed her came unannounced. She had left no note, or message. I chose to leave her and the estate to pursue the answers to whoever was killing my old crew, when first I’d heard of the black coins. I chose the Twenty, I chose the past, over her.

  There was a Harudanian playwright, born of common stock like my father, who wrote a play, Trials of the Orange Giant, a thinly disguised satire on the old empire out of which the republic of Harudan rose, and it was his masterpiece. The Orange Giant was a legendary soldier, the play his life, and he returned home for the first time in years to find his own wife buried (as the Orange Empire, indebted from its wars, found its people dead from drought and the corruption destroying it):

  This earth’s embrace, the purse for my soldiery,

  These sons also stand apart,

  I killed a thousand men, I did my duty,

  For war I starved your faithful heart.

  Who watches the days and weeks bleed into the months and years, each kiss goodbye tallying silently for this inevitable reckoning. The deceptions grew with the months I was away, as my ambitions found their zenith. Only I can weigh the worth of those hours, the purse for my soldiery. It is not a judgement I can bring myself to write here. It’s in my blood and it fills my heart.

  I took lunch and a pipe with Imbrit, the day I left. He had lived on the estate before I took it over, having managed it also for the previous owners. He told me it was a guildmaster, a drudha and Agents of the Post that came. The guildmaster’s wife was bone white, long red hair, a Citadels woman. He asked if I would kill them. It would be the least I’d do. I had all the information I needed.

  Chapter 16

  Gant

  Bense was better with some more betony and some bread and veg we got from the settlement. Valdir was quiet, he was dreaming bad, had to be settled with more kannab.

  “Found out there’s a stables o’ the Post not far off Forstway, about three leagues north if the men here are true,” said Shale.

  “We trust them?” I said.

  “They get a shit price fer their wood an’ the eggs they has to give free or the Post got other settlements it can go to. One of ’em said the Post’s bin jittery lately, they’re hearing news of some army comin’ out o’ the Wild.”

  I nodded. “Guessin’ we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “You got some thorns going after the Reds, boys,” said Bense. “Easier ways to get a few ganneys, easier still to just walk it.”

  “Post horses’ll get us further faster,” I said. “Fuck the Post, they can’t touch us.”

  “You might be dying, Gant, but I don’t plan to. Too much sweet B and too little time,” said Bense.

  Shale shook his head, miffed. “You got all the B yer want if you can put yer mind to helpin’ us get to Mirisham an’ sort out this mess we’re all in. And anyway, who was it that were givin’ you plant and had stopped wi’ you, according to those on that Lord Fesden’s estate. They said you had a drudha lookin’ after you.”

  Bense give that slow easy nod that droopers had to stuff they didn’t want the hassle of. He was once a ganger that ended up in fighting pits in Jua. His record drew them in from leagues about, master of a spear. Looked like all that power was gone and we had need of it.

  “Saw Kailen of course, he came and looked to feed me up. Always trying to fix your problems, isn’t he? See’s what he thinks then you all got to go along with it. Put me in prison, that fucker did. Not even my captain. The other they must’ve seen was Stixie. It was him told Kailen where I was, but he must’ve meant well. I didn’t have a drudha with me.”

  “You saw Stixie? How is he?”

  “He’s a good man, a good man. Always finds time for Bense he does. Drops me some B w
hen he stops in, a friend he is to me, not like anyone else came knocking all this time.”

  “What you bin up to all these years, Bense,” I said.

  “Don’t recall half of it. Came back to Jua after a few years. Couldn’t take the brews any more. Our purse was pretty good so I got myself some land. That was hard, lot more than I thought, never slept so heavy. I wasn’t much for running a farm or anything though, but the gangs was good easy coin, so got into that again. Somehow I ended up getting approached by that Fesden and took his coin, just for standing about looking pretty. Then I’m in jail, Kailen trying to save me. I guess you’re here because he wants you to save me and all. Where is he? Ho, Shale, I’m old enough to manage my own pouch.”

  Shale put the betony pouch back in a skin on his belt and give Bense a rub of it from his finger.

  “Yer fuckin’ kiddin’ me, Bense. How’s yer eyes now. Skin still looks a bit sore from where you was dippin’ into a pouch o’ pure agave, never mind yer nearly got us killed.”

  Something was a bit off with how little Bense took care of what happened to him, but then droopers have little interest in their own interests, it seems.

  “Well, he in’t goin’ to try save you any more. He’s dead. Kailen’s dead. We think Kigan killed him and he’s going to kill you. So, we’re goin’ to get those horses from the Post, take some Reds’ cloaks to make out we’re Post too an’ get up Forstway. They need to be paid fer that dance at the vineyard. Need to find you some proper swords an’ all,” Shale said. “We got to get back on the forms an’ some sparrin’.”

  I nodded. He was right in a way. Been worrying too much on running and hiding, not on what would be unexpected to them. Wearing the Red would help keep eyes off us.

  The Forstway was the old Juan highway to Lake Issan, legacy of Amulith, eighth and wealthiest of the Seruat, according to Bense, who recalled all manner of the wars in these parts, sparking off the learnings Shale and I forgot when we were at the academy here. I was never for the scrolls and what made Jua great and all that. His rambling filled the hours as we passed the smashed or vine-choked monuments to this or that forgotten lord or general, or he called out ruins of forts what were Issanaian from their invasions. Even Mount Hope, what Jua had as the enemy on its other border long ago, he could tell their walls or stone, even the names of some of the nearby places what the Forstway signed, “Mantha Sul” and “Mantha Cree”, where “Mantha” was their word for fort.