The Fifth Empire of Man

by Rob J. Hayes

  Elaina sniffed, then grunted her agreement. “Might be there’s others want that piece too. Grab that bottle, Alf. Reckon it’s best we head on back to the ship. See who’s been about.”

  As dawn started to peek up over the horizon, Elaina found herself standing on the docks, staring out towards the rising sun. Her feet hurt like all the Hells from the walking, but she didn’t give one drop about the pain. Her ship was gone.

  Elaina and Alfer had arrived to find Starry Dawn missing from its berth, and the harbour master – not the same man as before – had simply shrugged and told her to bugger off. Frustration and fear had made her rash, and the harbour master had found himself sprawling on the ground with a couple of loose teeth. He’d crawled away, threatening to call the Clerics, and Alfer had quickly offered to find out if their ship had simply been moved. It was pointless. Elaina didn’t need Alfer to confirm the truth for her. Her ship was gone.

  The rising sun set the gentle waves of the bay on fire, and the sea looked like burnished gold. On any other day Elaina might have thought the sight beautiful. Today she couldn’t appreciate it. For the second time in her life she’d had a ship stolen out from under her.

  “I need you to come with me, ma’am.” Elaina didn’t bother turning to look at the female Cleric. “You have assaulted a Larkos official, and that’s a crime here.”

  “Whoa, whoa there,” shouted Alfer. He sounded out of breath. Elaina didn’t look at him either. “Just a misunderstanding, I assure you.”

  There was a pause. “That woman assaulted…” the Cleric started again.

  “That woman is Captain Black,” Alfer wheezed out. “Believe me when I tell you Brother Hernhold wouldn’t look favourably on ya if ya throw her in a cell, eh?”

  “Cap,” shouted another voice, and a moment later Four-Eyed Pollick appeared. His cheeks were flushed and his right eye was swollen almost shut.

  “Who was it?” Elaina growled. She squinted as the sun, now rising above the horizon, became so bright it hurt.

  “Rovel,” Pollick said. “Near as soon as you were out of eyesight, he set about a mutiny. Convinced the crew they was better off under a pirate.”

  Elaina turned a furious gaze on her crewman. “And what the fuck am I then?”

  Pavel, the ship’s priest and doctor, walked up next to Pollick. Elaina turned her stare on him as well, but he didn’t look cowed. The bastard probably believed his golden god would save him from harm.

  “This is all that’s left?” Elaina said. “Out of my entire fucking crew, you two are the only ones that didn’t mutiny?”

  Pollick dropped his eyes to the deck while Pavel gave a sympathetic smile that Elaina wanted to remove with a slap.

  “Cap,” Alfer said quietly. “Reckon I got ’em calmed, but we need to get off the docks. They ain’t happy with the scene.”

  Elaina turned around, and for the first time saw how big a crowd she had staring her way. Merchants, slaves, sailors, Clerics, whores, and good folk, and all of them were watching her.

  “All ain’t lost yet, Cap,” Alfer whispered.

  “But my ship is,” she hissed.

  “Ain’t we here to convince the Council to give you more ships?”

  Alfer was right. If she could get ships from the Council of Thirteen then she could go after Starry Dawn and take her back. She would gut Rovel and feed him to the beasties of the deep. But if she was to convince the Council, she needed to bargain from a position of strength, and having lost her own ship she was in a decidedly weak position.

  “Find us an inn, Alfer,” she said quietly. “We might be here a while. One way or another, I’m getting a new ship from this fucking city.”

  Chapter 22 - Fortune

  Beck closed her eyes and let out a heavy sigh. When she opened them again, they were set with determination. She raised her right arm and aimed her pistol at the target, a splotch of paint on an empty wooden barrel.

  Her arm shook. Her hand shook. Her pistol shook. She pulled the trigger.

  The sand behind the barrel accepted the bullet with silent indifference.

  “Shit,” she said quietly. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” She raised her left arm and aimed a second pistol.

  The centre of the target splintered as the bullet burst through the barrel. Beck dropped both pistols onto the cloth she’d spread on the ground and spun around, dropping onto her arse in the sand and staring out at the sea. The sight of the endless blue gave her no relief, only made her homesick for the crystal clear canals of Sarth.

  It had been a good two moons or more since the attack on New Sev’relain, and still Beck was feeling the injuries she’d received. Her right arm was weak and weary much of the time, and occasionally took to hurting for no reason the doctors could fathom. The bruising had faded, as had the swelling around her ribs and face, but she still had a couple of ugly burn scars on her arms. And her hair… Beck had always liked to keep her hair long, but the fire had burned much of it away and her scissors had cut away even more. What was left barely reached past her ears, and it seemed to have lost its golden shine. For a woman who liked to pride herself on her appearance, the scars and her ruined hair were almost more than she could bear. Beck knew that scars faded and hair grew back, yet it brought her no solace. To make matters worse, she had no idea whether her right arm would ever regain its strength.

  A slight breeze picked up, blowing through her blouse and cooling her skin. Beck took in a deep breath and picked up a familiar scent on the wind.

  “Good morning, Drake,” she said without looking his way. It was strange – she couldn’t look at the man without feeling guilty for something she hadn’t even done. It was why she’d thrown herself so wholeheartedly into the defence of New Sev’relain, and it was why she hadn’t fucked the captain since their return. Beck knew he wanted it, and she wanted it too, but the Inquisition had given her new orders, and those orders were going to cause Drake pain.

  “How’s the arm?” Drake said. Beck hadn’t told him about her problems, but the man was too damned perceptive for his own good.

  “How’s the crown?” she shot back.

  “Heavy,” Drake conceded. “Can’t really call it a crown just yet though. Any fool with a slip of land and a few mouths to feed can call himself a king. It takes recognition to really sit a throne. I need Sarth and the Five Kingdoms to recognise us as legitimate, not just a bunch of criminals to be stepped on.”

  Drake sat down in the sand next to Beck, and she couldn’t help but notice him staring at her cleavage. The man could be subtle when he wanted to be; he could also be as blatant as an open wound, and Beck wagered that was also by design.

  “Nice secluded spot you found here,” Drake said.

  Beck readied herself for an argument she didn’t want. “Tell me about the Drurr.”

  Drake went from hot to cold in an instant, and Beck could feel his frustration. But some things were more important than the pirate’s feelings, and she needed to know how much he knew about the Drurr.

  “Ain’t important,” he said sullenly. “Nice way to kill the mood though, eh?”

  “It is important, Drake. As far as we know, you’re the only person ever to have escaped the Drurr. You’ve… seen things. You probably know more about the Drurr than anyone. We need to know what you know.”

  “We,” Drake echoed with a bitter laugh. “You mean the Inquisition?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a way of contacting them?”

  Beck said nothing. The Inquisition’s methods of remaining in contact with their Arbiters had always been kept secret. Arbiter Darkheart severing their old lines of communication had only made the Inquisitors even more determined to secrecy with their new methods.

  “Well, I don’t give a fuck what your Inquisition wants, Arbiter,” Drake said. “But if it’s you who wants to know, then ask away.”

  There were a hundred questions the Inquisition wanted her to extract the answers to. There were some Beck wanted to k
now herself.

  “The matriarch. Who is she, and why is she after you?”

  “Did you know the Drurr used to rule over us like slaves?” Drake said. “At least, until the Dread Lords broke their civilisation and your Inquisition hunted them nearly to extinction. You drove them all underground, but you far from finished them off. It’s fair to say they ain’t too pleased about their current standing in the world. Most of them would like nothing more than to rise up and crush us all beneath their heels for a second time.

  “But they can’t do that. Life is hard underground in the dark places the Drurr inhabit, Arbiter. There are things down there. Monsters your Inquisition hasn’t wiped out yet. They walk right out of the walls and snatch children from their beds. Some of them digest their food before eating it. Folk still alive with their skin melting…”

  Beck glanced sideways at Drake. Tears were welling up in his eyes. She’d known her questions would cause him pain, but she’d never thought to see the man cry.

  “They still take slaves,” Drake continued. “Pretty much as many as they can. For the most part the slaves are given the worst jobs. Mining out new areas, harvesting the fungi, scouting out the darkness when new tunnels are unearthed, feeding the trolls, being fed to the trolls. Pretty much anything the Drurr don’t want to do themselves, or anything deemed too dangerous to risk a Drurr life.

  “The matriarch who…” Drake trailed off, and for a while said nothing. “The bitch who owned me was a sadistic fuck. She liked to pull the odd slave from the deepest, darkest of jobs and treat them with kindness. Make them grateful to her. She wanted to make them love her. Then she’d have them tortured. Nothing permanent – she wanted her pets whole.”

  Drake shuddered, and Beck resisted the urge to comfort him.

  “She’d torture them, then save them and treat them kind, like a lover, to make them love her again. Then she’d send them back for more torture. I reckon it was some sort of game to her. See how many times she could break a person before there was nothing of them left. I saw people kill themselves by biting open their own wrists just to escape the cycle of torment. Never saw anyone try to kill the bitch though. They all loved her too much, I guess. Despite what was done.” He sniffed loudly and fell silent.

  “How did you escape?”

  “Not all Drurr are evil fucked-up bastards bent on slaving and torturing us lesser folk. There’s plenty of them ain’t like that, and they find some of the things the others do as deplorable as we do. I managed to find one of these sympathisers and convinced them to help me escape.”

  “What about the other slaves?”

  “What about them? This ain’t like the Black Thorn’s liberation of Solantis, Arbiter. I couldn’t just open a few cages and tell the slaves to fight for their freedom. I sneaked out as quietly as possible and never looked back.”

  “What is it like underground?”

  “Dark. They don’t use torches. Instead they mine these crystals and infuse them with some sort of magic that makes them glow. It’s a soft light, reaches a fair ways, but it’s far from bright. After a few years underground the sun is… blinding. And if you ever find yourself without one of those glowy crystals…” Drake paused and let out a bitter bark of laughter. “The darkness is complete, and there’s things down there that come out when it gets that dark. Things that whisper and click and purr.

  “Folk are kept in pens, like sheep. They get let out when their services are needed, like mining. The trolls do the digging, but they ain’t exactly suited to delicate work, so the Drurr use slaves to mine the tunnels once they’re dug. They use slaves to collect the shrooms too. It’s pretty much all they eat, and there’s whole caverns dedicated to growing the rubbery things. Strange thing is, some of the shrooms have a glow all of their own, light up the cavern. The shroom caverns would probably be the safest place down there if not for the Choomar.”

  “Choomar?”

  “It’s a Drurr word. Doesn’t really have a translation, but the Choomar are… aggressive shrooms. They’re edible like the others, but the Drurr don’t eat them – they try to eradicate them. The Choomar look just like dark-root shrooms, almost exactly like, but they release spores that grow inside of a person and control them. Folk start acting strange when they’re infested. They walk and talk pretty much like normal, but they start doing odd things when they think no one’s watching. They gnaw on their own digits and scratch themselves bloody, like they got an itch that just won’t quit. Then they start to get violent. Only against the Drurr though. I never heard of a Choomar-infected slave attacking any of the others.

  “I once saw one of the poor bastards leap at a passing patriarch, biting and clawing until a couple of guards pulled him away. They started beating on him, and he screamed bloody murder and then his head just popped.”

  Beck glanced at Drake. His expression was deadly serious. She knew just how loose the pirate liked to play with the truth, but there were some things a person couldn’t fake, and reliving the horrors of his life underground seemed to be one of them for Drake.

  “What about the Drurr,” she said. “How do they live?”

  Drake smiled. “Like kings and queens. They build great caverns underground, hundreds of feet high, and their homes are built into the very walls all the way up to the roof. The matriarchs and patriarchs live the highest, and those in favour live close to them. The closer to the ground you are, the less important you are.

  “Sometimes, while she slept, I used to stare out the window at the great cavern of Bolimar spread out below me. The little lights on the cavern floor where traders made their wares, the fighting pits where slaves were fed to trolls for the amusement of their owners. From up high it was beautiful.” He sighed. “Why the questions all of a sudden, Arbiter? You’ve been content without the answers for a good long while, yet now you’ve a pressing need to know.”

  “I believe they’re here,” Beck said before she could stop herself. “The Inquisition has spies all over the world, and some have reported seeing a Drurr corsair sailing the waters of the isles.”

  Drake’s jaw set, and he turned hostile eyes on Beck. “How long ago did you hear about this?”

  “A few days,” she admitted.

  “And you’re just telling me now.” He snorted. “Only one reason the bastards would come here.”

  Drake launched to his feet and started walking down the beach. Beck gathered her dropped pistols and rushed after him. “Where are we going?” she said.

  “To find them before they find me.”

  Chapter 23 - Starry Dawn

  Things were moving quickly for Elaina. It had been just one week since she’d arrived in Larkos, and one week since the traitorous cur, Rovel, had stolen her ship out from under her. In that week she’d met with four of the thirteen guilds.

  Brother Hernhold was first. Elaina had no wish to become his ally if she could help it. The Cleric was as pious as his guild name, as was every single one of their order. They worshipped Pelsing, the golden god of the Five Kingdoms, and every aspect of their lives was given over to worship or earning gold, which happened to be one of the forms of worship.

  Hernhold had extended a gracious offer to introduce Elaina to the Council of Thirteen as his very own honoured guest, and claimed he would back her bid for aid in the form of both ships and men. The problem with men who worshipped the golden god, as far as Elaina knew them, was that everything was a business transaction and they gave nothing away for free. She had no doubt the Clerics could, and would, help her, but they would extract a hefty price for that aid sometime in the future. If there was one thing life as a pirate had impressed upon Elaina, it was that it’s always best to take as much as possible without giving anything back.

  Elaina’s second offer of help had come from the Nightborne. Their leader was Red, an Acanthian woman with fiery hair and not an ounce of fat on her. She was slim and no taller than Elaina, but she appeared to be made all from muscle, sinew, and bone. She talked in a distant,
emotionless voice, and regarded Elaina in much the same way she imagined a dragon would regard a goat. Elaina had taken an instant dislike to the woman and the guild she represented.

  The Nightborne were notorious for their questionable rituals, and Elaina had even heard rumours they drained the blood of the criminals they arrested to be served instead of wine at their banquets. The Nightborne had offered Elaina a deal very similar to the Clerics’, but also threw in deep connections to the Guild in Acanthia. It was a sweet deal, and no mistake. But despite their power and prestige, Elaina wanted nothing to do with the Acanthian Guild.

  On the third day of her stay in Larkos the leader of the Red Hands came to her himself. Terk Ferrywold was a brute of a man who walked around topless, despite the chill, in order to show off his muscled, well-oiled chest. It wasn’t a fashion Elaina found attractive. The man appeared to be all bluster. He ordered drinks for the entire tavern and a hearty meal for himself and Elaina. She’d picked at the food while Terk stuffed as much meat down his throat as he was able, all while attempting to impress upon Elaina the importance and power of his guild.

  The Red Hands ran the Moon district, a large and wealthy housing area just west of central, and they were no doubt both rich and powerful, but Elaina didn’t agree with their leader’s need to shout about the impressiveness of his own guild. Terk had offered Elaina ships and men, and the God Emperor of Sarth’s head upon a pike. He’d also suggested that he and Elaina seal their deal amidst the silken sheets of his bed. Elaina had resisted the urge to beat him senseless with her tankard and agreed to think about his proposal. In truth she would rather have sided with the pious Clerics.

  The fifth day in Larkos brought with it an emissary from the slaving guild. He was a huge man, as fat as he was tall, and he was certainly tall. He waddled into the tavern surrounded by guards who were no doubt needed to protect his obvious wealth. The man wore gemstone rings on every finger and had a variety of piercings all over his face, each ring and stud sporting a hefty jewel. The fat man announced himself as Orkus Uon, ambassador and messenger of Somolous Tain, the head of the slaving guild. Elaina despised those who traded in flesh, but she couldn’t afford to make any enemies among the Council of Thirteen so agreed to hear Orkus out.