Snakewood

by Adrian Selby

  The following day the food they ate would have my own mixtures in it. They now lived or died by my whim.

  I faced Valdir, getting up close to him, savouring a most subtle shade of fear in his skin.

  “Haven’t you killed me yet?” he said.

  “I haven’t finished with you.”

  He’d had a bad day once I’d brought him to. Paralysed where he fell when the arrow caught him, Achi’s men couldn’t reach him with our archers waiting for the attempt. We finally shot his archer at the head of the valley, making our run to the north bank easier. I led the remaining Reds across the river to end the resistance Kailen’s men were putting up. There were a few arrows shot at me as I took the lead, but none could find me, so slow they seemed in comparison to my sense of them on the brews of old. Achi and his men must have taken some poison before engaging with us. They fought well for men thinking and reacting more slowly than those with me. I finished them myself, my cuts putting them into the state Valdir was in, except they then died, one final trick played on me, one I could have done nothing about. They were loyal to the end.

  “What more do you want of me, Kigan? Bense? Bense, you cowardly plant-addled cocksmoker!”

  Behind me, curled up in an oilskin, Bense stirred, groggy with his Harosin mix.

  “Bense, Valdir is annoyed with you. You betrayed him.”

  “You’re like a child,” hissed Valdir.

  Bense sat up, nodding as though it was expected rather than because he understood the question. He wiped some drool from his cheek and was struggling to pull some thoughts together into activity.

  “I, have you got any tea, Ki, I need some tea to drink, that’s it.” He stood, shivering with cold and the fall as the evening spread through the valley. Only the high peaks retained the last carnelian red of the sun on their crowns.

  Valdir was sweating, the flushes coming on hot and cold, his body beginning to shut down. The whole valley will soon drown in the noise of his agony.

  “It must have been a good purse, Bense,” he said. He shook his head then, convinced of the pointlessness of conversing with a drooper even as he said it.

  Bense hung a small pot over the fire that Alon’s remaining men sat around. They were concentrating on ignoring what was going on. Few men had the stomach for torture. It was music to me.

  I leaned into Valdir’s ear as he hung, limbs bound, from a tree.

  “Bense is on a Harosin mix, cut with some peyot. I’ve added a little extra to it. He’ll die at about the same time as you, just more peacefully.”

  “Bense, you’re next! He’s going to kill you with your next pipe you drooped-out fucker! It’s in your mix.”

  Bense scratched his head as he squinted at Valdir.

  “These mixes are good, Valdir, the best. I gave you to Ki, I’m useful to him. He kills you and the rest but he sees me right. Man of his word is Kigan.”

  Valdir shook his head as he looked at me, then hissed with a spasm. “Well played. And when you’ve killed all of us, Kigan, what will you do with yourself?”

  “I shall see what use I can be to the new master of the world.”

  I said it confidently enough. I thought of Galathia as I said it, but the thought of adopting a cause, the thought of a purse or obeying someone that I might fulfil their ambition left me numb. I knew I could not follow the will of another. There was so little of me left, gnawing at these thoughts; of faces or names or stories, not able to sort them into the right arrangements. I could recall the memories were there, that I had them, but not what they contained. This was work enough, this occupied me, more so as I returned east of the Sar. My bones carried the indifference in their marrow now, indifference to all but that girl and her brother. A life with them in a land of pines and ice? I thought of the jungle then, its fierce noise and the solitude of Lorom Haluim’s hold pulled at me.

  “Why did you do it, Valdir? Why betray us?” I asked. I did not have a lot of time, or rather, he did not.

  “Because I couldn’t give a shit about you, your willingness to deliver that last purse, the richest of them all; two children into the wealthy arms of Jua. Mirisham it was decided it differently. He thought you were tight with him, tighter than you were the rest of us. He found that hard to believe, that you wouldn’t be persuaded to take the wealth on offer, because of how much you loved that girl and her brother. We were looking at a purse that we could pay out on, no more crossroads for men like us getting old and damaged. You put them before us, your crew.” He managed to look up at me then, and smile. “So Kailen, Mirisham, The Prince, Moadd and me, we took your fucking jewels, the coin, the plant and the recipe book. We sold it and we split it and we spent it. I ain’t sorry, except that we didn’t kill you back then.”

  He nearly got what he was hoping at that moment, for my knife was in my hand in a moment and I was ready to gut him. I could hardly breathe for hearing it, to finally know.

  “Do it, Kigan, don’t be weak.”

  No.

  “You betrayed a purse. You know what happens, Valdir.”

  “Your purse, Kigan, not ours. I see the difficulty you had. You killed enough children in your time, orphaned more than you could now count, we all did, though how many of yours died in pursuit of your recipes? But they were none you knew, so it’s easy to see them like animals, not children. You don’t remember it, do you? That night in the tavern in Snakewood?”

  “I remembered some of it, the ephedra took the rest.”

  “Seven or eight jugs to the wind and you’re telling us about the wealth that had been smuggled out of Argir. A royal recipe book and jars of henbane and jewels and so on. You went on about how you were going to set them up in Juan society, you, a warrior-drudha, a man of the colour, in that society. We laughed ourselves ragged, how could we not?” He bowed his head and panted as his guts were burning. With a gasp he lost control of himself, a sudden, sickly sweet smell and a curdling sound as his bowels emptied.

  “You were saying, Valdir?”

  “Fuck you. Here now and back then and ever since, fuck you. You would have lived in the luxury required to introduce them to Juan high society. The rest of us? The rest of us had fifteen gold pieces, no drudha to mix the plant needed to fix what other plant did to us, except to pay through the cock’s eye at an academy. We were heading back out onto the battlefield. We wanted more than that, those of us listening to you shooting off. I wanted more and what was stopping me was a man getting self-righteous about some spoiled children after all those years poisoning and abusing prisoners with his plant and the many children among them. Pity on a whim, pity for a purse, is no pity at all.”

  “Fifteen gold pieces is fifteen gold pieces, earned, like all of you earned it, because Kailen could manage a battlefield and I could furnish you with brews to make you legends. Your lack of gratitude is pathetic. Doran chose me for that purse, and none of you. You feel aggrieved, you stole my life for it, but once I’d accepted it, it was none of your business. You are paying the price for your greed now. But let us talk of betrayal. It seems you also were betrayed, Valdir, for here you are, dying in a valley, abandoned by your remaining friends, far from your wife and son. Gant and Shale fished you up beautifully. What was the bait? That I would come for your family? I had no idea where you were. You might have been the only one to escape me.”

  “How did you know of them? My family?”

  “We spoke of it earlier, before you passed out. You’ve been singing, a verse or two about the path to Mirisham’s township, a verse or two regarding your lovely wife, a cripple now though, a lonely cripple.” He spat in my face, bucked and strained against his bindings, frenzied. He spoke in short, weak breaths.

  “You might yet win this purse you’ve devoted your life to, but one evening with Gant and Shale makes a lie of this petty abuse. We took one last chance to pay what we all owed Kailen and each other. I’m only sorry I’m not there to see Gant and Shale finish you. Goodbye, Kigan.”

  He would have said mor
e, but was reduced to a muttering as his eyes rolled back and his head fell forward to his chest. With death a few hours away he would say no more. His nerves were about to catch fire while his muscles decomposed. I tucked the black coin into a pocket on his belt and turned to the men around us.

  “Return to Meddyman’s Harbour. Galathia and Alon have gone to meet her brother Petir, whose army is heading for Fort Donag and Mirisham. It is better you don’t join back up with them; the fewer there are in their party the less attention they’ll attract.”

  “You’re going alone to this Mirisham?” asked one of Alon’s men.

  “Better that I do. Petir’s army is days away, and the township of Mirisham’s is a principal target, a gateway to the high mountains and Mount Hope itself. You shan’t be much use to Alon there and we shan’t catch Gant and Shale before they get there because if I know them, the horses and your man guarding them will be dead.”

  He tried to hide his relief, his crew avoiding my eye, nodding and staring at their cups. I took up my belts and sword.

  “He’ll start screaming shortly. Don’t kill him, just leave.”

  I set off along the bank. It wasn’t long before I picked up their tracks. There was blood. One of them must have been badly wounded.

  Chapter 18

  Kailen

  Midgie loved Laun. She called her name over and over as she staggered back to the hollow where Alon, Galathia, Laun and what remained of her crew set their camp in the early evening, on the edge of some deep woods just inside the Ahmstad border.

  I had the good fortune to meet Midgie once. Well, we couldn’t meet properly, but I watched her as Laun was going through their drills and forms, Midgie always looking to her, asking questions of her, fussing her. Now, as she was falling unconscious, falling to her knees, her arm was outstretched for Laun, who came running to her while signing for Omara, Prennen and Tofi to spread out around Galathia and Alon and ready their bows.

  Omara drank his brew and rubbed his eyes with some luta oil to try and see better into the twilight of the trees around them. He took a dart to the neck, staggered as though drunk before falling to his knees, hand to his face. He shuddered, spasmic, and fell still.

  “Laun,” hissed Alon, “do something.”

  She glanced briefly at him, a vicious look. I called out to them.

  “If you’ll hold your arrows I’d like to step forward and speak to you. Midgie and Omara are not dead. They’re just sleeping. It wouldn’t do me to be killing Agents of the Post.”

  They whispered among themselves, but Laun it was had the final word, demanding they allow this, arguing that they’d all be dead if that was my intention.

  “Step forward,” she said.

  I stepped out from a tree trunk and walked down the bank towards them, my hands behind my back, for I held something I did not yet want them to see.

  Needless to say, their faces dropped, and Galathia shook her head.

  “We killed you,” she said. “I kicked your dead body.”

  “It cannot be you,” said Laun. “I… I don’t understand. I saw you dead.”

  Laun kneeled next to Midgie, checking her pulse to confirm I spoke truly. She was wary, and looked behind me.

  “Don’t make a move, he isn’t alone.”

  “Fuck, Laun, they won’t draw if we engage him now, we’ve got him,” said Tofi. He drew his sword and ran for me, his hand drawing out a bag from his satchel, no doubt powders as I was not masked.

  “No!” shouted Laun. He had made half the distance when an arrow went through his raised arm. He dropped his sword and fumbled in his belt for something to put on the wound. He fell forward mumbling, in the same state as the other two.

  “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Kailen, I once ran a very successful mercenary crew. Our last purse, as Galathia knows, was for her father, King Doran, of the Citadel Argir.

  “Now, because it’s necessary for Galathia to understand what’s going on here, and because you’ll give me all the time I need because you think it will help you concoct some way of escape or retaliation, I’m going to explain what happened to King Doran, Galathia’s father.

  “Doran had a problem. The Post had strengthened ties with the Citadels surrounding Argir, for the use and maintenance of routes through their territories. Key to all of those routes south is what the Post calls the North Passage. The North Passage goes through Argir. Perhaps you can see where this is going.”

  “Yes, Kailen,” said Galathia, “I knew this much, Kigan told me, Alon told me. Caravans cannot go around Argir without passing through Upper Lagrad, which is too dangerous, their nomads a constant threat.”

  “Did you know there were guilds south of Argir that also suffered. Those guilds numbered four: Walling Trading Company, The Quartet, Kursmeier and Filston-Blackmore. They too needed someone ruling Argir who was more amenable to the Post’s proposition, namely, that everything would go very profitably for everyone, Argir included, if that troublesome king could be ousted.”

  I paused briefly, to see how Galathia took the mention of her husband’s guild. Alon stared at me, shaking his head.

  “Alon?” she said.

  “Galathia, this has nothing to do with me, how could it? It…”

  “Stop it. Don’t insult me. Keep on, Kailen, you’re clearly enjoying yourself.”

  “Alon, you don’t need to listen to her any more. She can’t hurt you now, so you can admit that you’ve been involved in this since you were made a guildmaster. You’ve known for a long time.”

  Galathia leaped for Alon before Laun could stop her. He barely got a hand up to stop her, but he appeared to be no match. She’d got her hands around his throat before Laun tore her off him and slapped her. Alon was on an elbow, holding his throat and coughing.

  “You are a mad whore, a selfish mad whore I will no longer tolerate!” he gasped.

  Galathia was straining to get back at him.

  “Get control of yourself, Gala, this isn’t going to help you,” hissed Laun.

  “Laun is right, Galathia, and I take no enjoyment in this. This is a reckoning and it’s important you understand what is really going on, because it is going to help you in the months of reflection to come. The Post approached the nobles and guilds of Argir, to persuade Doran to relent on his unreasonable stance regarding the Post’s proposed treaties. And he would not relent. So they, the Post’s allies, starved out his resistance, and that of the people; they pillaged, stores grew low and the riots began. Fortunately for the Post, and unfortunately for you and Petir, it found enough nobles able to secure the militia and put a puppet in charge.

  “The ringleaders of this coup perhaps expected that your heirlooms; the plant, the Argir Book; would be theirs, but who could foresee Doran entrusting it all to one of my mercenaries, Kigan. Needless to say, they have hunted for the book ever since. You can trust a mercenary with a purse, but the treasure of a kingdom?”

  Galathia approached me then, halting abruptly when she heard the draw of a bow from behind me. “You are wrong, Kailen, Kigan was betrayed. Doran chose the right man, a man loyal to Petir and I, who has continued to seek those who betrayed him without the knowledge I was alive, to find your scum crew and kill them, until our common purpose brought us together. When he finds you this time he’s going to gut you like a fish. There will be nothing you can do, as those you once led have all found out. He has a coin for you.” Laun stepped forward and put her hand on Galathia’s shoulder to stop her coming closer.

  “There will be no repeat of the Crag, Galathia. He failed to kill me then and will fail again. Kigan was little loved among my crew I’ll admit; he deceived me, he deceived us all. I did not do enough to curb him then, did not look into the evidence or the accusations of his experiments, those men, women and children who were forced to drink his mixes, trial his poisons, dying while he made notes in his book. Indeed, I looked the other way, truth to tell. I believe all the truly great drudhas do not become so without these sacrifi
ces and we benefited handsomely from the awful things he did for many years. There is much I’m not proud of, much more that my failings have cost me. But to learn then he was to run to Jua with you and all that wealth? That he would not, with such wealth in his hands, remember us? Five of us decided against it. We split the wealth, the Argir Book you’ll see soon enough.

  “Well now, the Post, your uncle and those four guilds all looking to extract their share of the plant and the jewellery that was taken, went looking for it. They eventually found Mirisham and Valdir, just north of here, settled among Mirisham’s people, building up the reputation of his tribes, arming them and winning back land they’d lost. The Post left Mirisham his life in exchange for his share of the wealth not yet spent, and the use of his routes through Mount Hope. He had done a splendid job. He got rid of Valdir, as part of the arrangement he made. He would do nothing to jeopardise what he’d built with his people, and Valdir fled penniless. Some summers later, the Post and I found each other.”

  I turned and nodded for my companions to step forward. There were two, standing twenty yards either side of me.

  “Just three of you?” said Laun. Then her eyes widened as she looked more closely at the woman to my right.

  “If there’s only three then I’m brewed, Laun, let’s go!” said Prennen, dropping his bow and drawing his sword. “I’m in the mood to slice this arrogant fucker to pieces.”

  “Laun, kill this piece of shit and my deceitful cunt of a husband and you can have one of his ships,” said Galathia.

  “No! Stand down, Prennen, can’t you see, she’s, she’s a Fieldsman? That’s a Fieldsman’s formal dress, I saw it once, in Candar.”

  I held out before me then what I was carrying behind my back: an old waxed leather satchel. The stitching was lost in places, the strap thin, soft as silk from wear, the leather almost black with centuries of treatment. I unclasped the buckles and lifted the flap, then dropped the bag and held up in my hands what it had contained.