Fierce Gods

by Col Buchanan

  In the shadow of the hull, a figure was speaking up to the handsome Rōshun they called Aléas. As she approached, the figure cast up his bow to Aléas as though by way of a parting gift, calling out a farewell in clear Longalla, and as he turned away the breath caught in her throat, for Shard saw that it was Sky In His Eyes, right here in Bar-Khos, today of all days.

  ‘Hah!’ he said. ‘I said we would meet again, did I not?’

  He was pleased with himself as he came towards her, his Contrarè appearance so incongruous amongst all the others.

  ‘I didn’t know you were in the city,’ Shard managed, trying to sound composed.

  It seemed so long ago since this man had come to her aid in the Windrush forest. Sky In His Eye’s striking blue gaze roved up and down her, liking what he saw of this civilized Contrarè with her glimmering skin.

  ‘We meet again,’ he said, ‘even as you are departing. It cannot be.’

  Was it too late to change her mind and stay on for another day here?

  Yes, it really was too late. The skud was loaded with her gear. And there was no guarantee when she could catch another one out.

  ‘Come with me then,’ she said before even thinking about it. ‘Come with me to Salina, and let me show you the island.’

  ‘Salina is a long way from the Windrush, Walks With Herself.’

  ‘Well that’s the point. Come and see another part of the world while you can.’

  ‘Hah! It is good to see you again. Good to see you are still part of the Great Dreaming. You almost tempt me with your offer!’

  Shard glanced across the field towards the figure of young Blame, standing in front of the inkworks laughing heartily at something. Her assistant was staying behind in the city, to liaise with Coya on all things related to communications security during the negotiations. He chatted to another young man, the one they called Nico. Making friends, perhaps.

  ‘Please, come with me,’ she said to Sky In His Eyes, and she took a step closer, breathing fast. ‘We can spend some time together. Get to know one another.’

  His gentle smile was an infectious one, and it crept and stretched upon her own lips until she felt herself blushing.

  ‘You really wish me to come?’

  ‘I really do.’

  ‘Then thank you. I accept your invitation with all my heart.’

  *

  As the canopy of gas bore the skyboat aloft into the air, Shard felt her own body lightening too as excitement fluttered in her belly.

  Crewmen wove through the press to trim the skuls and tighten lines. They shouted people out of their way, not in annoyance but in simple necessity, for they were headed home too, at long last.

  Rising higher, she could see clear across the city to the northern wall, and beyond it to the churned-up plain, covered now with the camp debris left behind by the departed Imperial Expeditionary Force.

  To the east, along the coastline, smoke rose from the temporary imperial encampment that had been established near the delta of the Chilos, from where both Mercian and Mannian ships were transporting the imperial forces across to Pathia as fast as they could.

  But Shard seemed to be the only one looking at any of that right now. The civilians and Rōshun gathered along the rail were intent upon the ground below, upon the inkworks and the figures waving them off from its expanse of grass.

  Shard leaned over the rail too, and saw some rangers firing their rifles wildly into the air in farewell to their young medico, Curl.

  And there, further back, she saw Blame standing with the young man Nico, both of them holding their fists in the air.

  And there was Coya too, her dear friend, staring up from his crooked stance with a hand shielding his eyes.

  With a roar the skud’s thrusters started blasting on full, and the vessel soared above the city, heading west.

  The people below were mere specks now on the grass of the inkworks, the whole of All Fools coming into view. Still they fired their rifles and pumped their fists in the air.

  Shard raised her hand to them all, to the whole city falling away below. Ice crystals spilled from her fingertips and went raining over the side, ever more of them as the skud climbed higher, until a blizzard of ice was spreading out in their wake, sparkling in the sunlight as it fell, filling the sky with her happiness at leaving it all behind.

  EPILOGUE

  Beginnings

  At least they could say it was a good day for a funeral.

  In a cloudless sky the sun blazed away too brightly to look at, soaking the air with enough heat that he could almost forget it was still winter here in his homeland of Khos.

  For days now this spell of balmy weather had hung across the city. A False Spring, some called these early breaks in the winter, a common phenomenon at this time of year; reminders to everyone that spring would soon be on its way for real.

  Nico breathed it all in as he hiked along the flattened summit of the Mount of Truth, leading the way ahead of his father and mother. Below them the city murmured with the sounds of traffic and reconstruction; citizens picking up the pieces of their lives, or burning what remained of them out on the funeral pyres across the northern plain.

  ‘Hurry up,’ he called back to his parents, for they were dallying behind him again, his father walking as slowly as he could arm in arm with Reese, not wanting to do this. ‘We’re going to be late as it is!’

  Cole’s eyes glinted for a moment beneath the rim of his hat. He was not a man to be hurried, least of all today.

  Late for his own brother’s funeral, thought Nico with a shake of his head.

  They were passing the walls of the Ministry of War now, a tall white-stone building perched there on the brow of the hill, right in the middle of the parkland. Many of its windows were boarded up, and one wing was blackened with fire, but it was still very much in use, if the figures rushing to and fro were anything to go by, and the many Red Guards still positioned in the fresh earthworks around it. Some trees had been sheared in two by bomb blasts. Others stood black and bare.

  The delegation from Zanzahar would be talking inside with representatives of the League, discussing the terms for keeping the charts of the Isles a secret. But Nico didn’t care for any of that right then. It was all too abstract for his present mood, this moment in which he was alive and here to mark the passing of one of their own.

  Everything was shining with a subtle lustre as he stepped along the gravel trail. It could so easily have been Nico having his ashes scattered today in the wind. During the worst of the fighting he had thrown himself at the enemy like a man possessed. Yet he had survived, when so many others had fallen.

  Maybe it was fate, he thought. Maybe it just hadn’t been his time.

  Or maybe, when you’d already died once before, the odds of it happening again were just that much less.

  Remember me! Remember my name!

  In his mind he heard the men calling out their names in the smoky chaos of the chee house, hoping to leave something of themselves behind before the Imperials overran them.

  Nico recited every one of their names again, recalling each face as he did so.

  Already, it all seemed like a lifetime ago.

  *

  On the southern point of the Mount of Truth, a grassy field sloped down towards the sea and the Lansway and the walls of the Shield in gentle corrugations, like tiers in some natural theatre.

  It was a popular spot with the locals for the views that it afforded, and it was here where the family of Bahn Calvone had gathered to scatter his ashes into the breeze, at the request of his last testament.

  Nico and his father had ridden out onto the plain on the heels of the departing Mannians, to find Bahn, hoping to bring back his body for a proper funeral. Up on Beacon Heights the bodies still lay where they had fallen, and they had come upon Bahn at the top of the watchtower, lying on his back alone with his dead eyes staring at the sky.

  Cole had said nothing as they bundled his brother in a cloak an
d lifted his stiffened body across the back of a zel.

  Now, on the Mount of Truth, with the monk’s words coming to an end and their tears still salting the ground at their feet, the mourners watched as Cole cast his brother’s ashes into the wind, his expression set into a fierce scowl.

  Marlee wept into her hands, a widow like so many others now, while Reese and a sister held her in their arms. The two children were there too, Juno and Ariale, though few others had turned up for the ceremony. Certainly none of Bahn’s companions from the Red Guard. Not even his bitter crone of a mother.

  Rest in peace, thought Nico, staring at the ashes sweeping away in the breeze, the last remains of a man he hadn’t really known, when all was said and done. For Bahn had always been an enigma to Nico, much like his own father.

  When he looked around once more at the small gathering, Nico was surprised to see Coya Zeziké standing there in attendance, the young man leaning over his cane with a sad and thoughtful countenance.

  The famed League Delegate roused himself as the monk blessed everyone, marking the end of the ceremony with sweeps of burning incense. People stirred and cleared their throats. His father stood with his back turned to them all.

  Coya made the sign of the Golden Spiral across his chest, then walked towards Nico over the grass while his two minders remained behind.

  ‘Ah, Nico Calvone. I was told I would find you here today. Bahn was your uncle, I understand?’

  ‘You knew Bahn?’

  ‘I ate dinner with him once, if that counts as knowing a person. I’m sorry for your loss.’

  If Coya knew of the circumstances of Bahn’s death, how he had killed the Lord Protector, he was tactful enough not to mention it.

  Nico’s father had already made a report to the Ministry of Defence concerning what he knew of his brother’s actions, and how they were the result of torture and manipulation at the hands of his previous Mannian captors. He hoped to clear his brother’s name in some small way, though the authorities had cast some scepticism on his accounts. Indeed they had seemed more interested in where Cole had been all these years after he had deserted the army. Only the fact that the war was over had stopped them from putting him in chains.

  Even now they were still looking for General Creed’s body amongst the many dead. Maybe the Mannians had burned it. Maybe they had even taken the corpse with them as some macabre trophy. Though Nico had heard that a proper Khosian state funeral was still being prepared anyway.

  ‘Forgive my timing,’ said Coya, brushing a blond lock from his eye. ‘I was hoping you might have a moment to spare. Please, walk with me a while?’

  Nico’s father was watching them as they both walked away from the funeral. His mother too, trying to rub some heat into Marlee’s bones, stared after him with narrowed eyes.

  After everything that Nico had been through, it did not seem so strange to be walking side by side with the most renowned Delegate of the democras and ancestor of Zeziké. Coya was smaller than Nico, hunched over his cane. A young man trapped in an old man’s twisted frame.

  ‘Here, take a drink of this,’ said Coya, holding out a hip flask. It sounded like a command rather than an offering, and Nico stared at him for a moment before he took it, and swallowed down a mouthful. He grimaced. It tasted like Cheem Fire.

  ‘Good. You will now forget everything I say here in about ten minutes’ time. Unless I give you the antidote first.’

  Nico stared hard at the man. He wasn’t sure if he believed him or not, but he was intrigued.

  ‘You were the apprentice of Ash,’ said Coya. ‘The young man he brought back from the dead. The only apprentice, I understand, who Ash ever chose in all his years as a Rōshun. He thought very highly of you.’

  ‘And I him.’

  The tip of Coya’s cane stabbed little holes in the turf before their footsteps. ‘He was certainly one of the good ones, for all that he was an assassin.’

  ‘He was a spectacular old bastard, is what he was. The world is a lesser place without him. Now, how can I help you?’

  Coya glanced behind to see if anyone was close by. ‘I heard how you fought in the battle for the barricades,’ he said. ‘You held people together. You even took the leg of General Romano himself. Tell me. Did Ash ever mention the Few?’

  ‘What view?’

  ‘The Few. A secret network of like-minded citizens. Banded together across the Free Ports to fight concentrations of power and outside threats. We ensure the democras has a fighting chance to thrive.’

  The man blinked at Nico’s incomprehension. Coya looked down to the city, and he cast his hand towards it.

  ‘Don’t be fooled by appearances here. This is hardly the end of our troubles. More than ever, we need the likes of you in our organization.’

  ‘The likes of me?’

  ‘People of action. Of experience. Of heart.’

  Nico recalled the moment back in the Bar-Khosian gaol cell all that time ago, when he had first agreed to become Ash’s apprentice. A decision that had changed the entire course of his life.

  ‘It sounds dangerous, this work you’re offering.’

  ‘Not work. A vocation. A cause.’

  ‘Still . . .’

  ‘Join us, and I promise you will see and know things beyond your wildest imaginings, Nico.’

  ‘Well, I have a pretty wild imagination, I should warn you.’

  The crooked man stopped and turned to face him, his lively gaze engaging his own. Coya’s sudden zeal was like a hot wind blowing right at him. ‘I’ll even introduce you to a woman from another world, if you like.’

  Nico could still taste the Cheem Fire in his mouth. His head was starting to feel groggy.

  ‘There really was something in that drink, wasn’t there?’

  ‘A simple memory blocker. I have a vial of the antidote right here in my pocket.’

  ‘Don’t you think this is all a little sudden?’

  ‘We always do it this way. Right in your face and in the heat of the moment. So, will you join us, Nico Calvone?’

  ‘There must be a catch. There’s always a catch.’

  ‘No catch. Only a commitment.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To the betterment of all, Calvone. To your heart. To your spirit. To all that’s wild and free in this world. To the good fight!’ Coya smiled and slapped his arm in play. ‘Now do you choose to forget these words of mine, or do you join us?’

  Nico’s parents were still watching from afar. They had lost him once already, after he’d made a bargain just like this one. His ashes had even been scattered in the back yard.

  Yet everyone dies in the end, and that was the scary truth of it.

  What mattered was how you chose to live in the present.

  ‘This woman you mentioned,’ Nico ventured, turning away from his parents. ‘Did you say she’s from another world?’

  The End

  Praise for the Farlander novels

  ‘Something special . . . Buchanan writes vividly and well, and the story grips from the astonishing opening sequence to the unexpected conclusion’

  The Times

  ‘Two pages into Farlander I was hooked . . . Nice one Mr Buchanan’

  Neal Asher

  ‘With steampunk, magical and historical influences, this is one of the most refreshing new fantasies out there’

  SFX

  ‘Well rendered and nicely paced . . . Stirring combat and vivid details’

  Kirkus

  ‘If you’re a fan of blood-drenched epic fantasy then this is a series that you should keep an eye on’

  Fantasy Book Review

  ‘The battle scenes are intense and brilliantly written . . . If you like your fantasy grand in scope but intimate in detail and character-driven, then the series is perfect for you’

  Civilian Reader

  ‘I’m a sucker for political intrigue in my fantasy books, and Stands a Shadow delivers this in bucketloads . . . A brilliant read’

&nbs
p; Mithril Wisdom

  ‘A searing new fantasy series that sets the blood pumping . . . this is series to be reckoned with. Everyone take note’

  The Truth about Books

  Fierce Gods

  Col Buchanan is an Irish writer who was born in Lisburn in 1973, and now lives on the west coast of Connemara. In recent years he has mostly settled down, and loves nothing more than late-night gatherings around a fire with good friends. Fierce Gods is the fourth of the Farlander novels.

  By Col Buchanan

  The Farlander Novels

  FARLANDER

  STANDS A SHADOW

  THE BLACK DREAM

  FIERCE GODS

  First published 2017 by Pan Books

  This electronic edition published 2017 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-230-76398-2

  Copyright © Colin Buchanan, 2017

  Cover Illustration © Larry Rostant

  The right of Colin Buchanan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.