The Heron Kings

by Eric Lewis

  The sun was just setting when six shades crept upon Curlew’s estate. They made their way up the slope along a rotted fence that separated a long-fallow millet field from grazeland devoid of cattle and shrieking with crickets. The whole place reeked of neglect, and of things more sinister. Harsh laughter erupted from the building.

  “Stay low,” Ulnoth whispered, not sure if there would be any sentries. “No windows on this side, but keep near the ground anyhow.” Smoke billowed from one chimney, black against the midnight blue sky. Far above, the Antabolid meteor shower presaged the coming of winter.

  Corren knelt next to Ulnoth. “How do you wanna go in? Wait ’til they’re asleep?”

  “Nah,” Ulnoth replied, “lights out’d put bows at a disadvantage, wouldn’t it? Fair fight’s currently the last thing on my mind.”

  “What, you’ve been paying attention to my lectures?”

  Ulnoth grinned. “Much as I can stand. You smell that? I been in there a few times – place has a separate kitchen over the other side with a window. Whoever’s cooking won’t be too much on guard, ken’ee? I say we go in there, take ’em down fast then move on.”

  “What if it’s just landbound they got slaving for ’em?” asked Nan.

  “Then they’d better not be wearing green.”

  They circled round the low grounds, keeping below the tops of the wild grass and behind outbuildings. Something had been propped up along the pathway to the front entrance, but the sneaking, snaking train couldn’t figure out what until they passed close. They smelled it before they saw it, of course. They crouched around the grotesque display, Staphenil and Gant open-mouthed.

  “Lupold,” said Ulnoth bitterly. “Has to be. A good old fellow.” The corpse had been strung up on a crossbeam – no, not the corpse. The last bit of light showed that the caretaker of his baron’s estate had been nailed up, quite alive most probably, and left to die of exposure and blood loss, a warning to others perhaps. “I’ll pay ’em back as best I can, Lupold. For as long as I can.”

  Flickering lamplight poured from the window on the kitchen side. The air shimmered where heat escaped. Ulnoth and Dannek led them two by two with the newcomers at the rear right up to the edge of the house. They heard a hard, slow repeating thud, a low male voice with an Argovani accent, and a nervous female one. The smell of meat roasting.

  “I think that’s enough garlic,” said the female voice.

  “Shut up, I know my business. You ain’t put enough in last time, I told you.”

  “It’s already burning my eyes!”

  “Well, you ain’t eatin’ it, is ya? Now shut your cockhole and add more garlic!” Thud.

  Pressed against the outer wall, Ulnoth craned his neck to risk a peek inside. One man, chopping at what he hoped was a pork shoulder, and a woman tending a cauldron with her back to the window. Ulnoth raised a hand toward the others behind him. Wait, he mouthed. He unslung his bow from his shoulder and notched an arrow.

  “Can I at least hold some back for my little one? She’s so hungry.”

  “We’ll see, depends on how well you perform tonight. Now shut up.”

  Thud. Another chop at the meat. Gods but it smells good, Ulnoth thought. Except for the too-much garlic.

  “How many must I ‘perform’ for this time?”

  Thud.

  Ulnoth had the rhythm now. At the right instant he stood, bow drawn. Just as the cleaver fell to chop again Ulnoth loosed. Thwung. At such close range the greasy, gap-toothed man didn’t even get the chance to cry out at the arrow that nailed his skull to the far wall. He convulsed slightly but so well-timed was the shot that the woman didn’t trouble to look up from her cauldron.

  “What,” she said, “not even going to answer me now? Nice—”

  Ulnoth leaped through the window, followed by Dannek and Nan. While the two smugglers scrambled in last, Ulnoth reached around and clamped a hand over the woman’s mouth. She started to struggle.

  “Ssh!” He turned her head so she could see the dying man, and her eyes bulged with fright. “You see that? Lest you want the like you keep quiet!”

  “Hey, what’s all the—”

  Thwung-slap! Ulnoth looked up to see another marauder entering the kitchen also sprout a shaft, this one in his belly. Corren jumped forward and cut the soldier’s throat before he could scream, then lowered the body to the floor as blood poured over his hands and into the rushes. Ulnoth glanced back over his shoulder to see Dannek with another arrow already drawn. “Thanks,” he breathed.

  “Gods’ tits,” said Gant, nearly fainting at the easy violence.

  “Shut up.” Ulnoth looked back at the woman he held fast. “Where you from?”

  “E-Eikenstead,” she said, quivering, when Ulnoth relaxed his hand slightly. “P-past Lenocca. Please, they made me, they took me with—”

  “You see that window? Go out it, start running and don’t stop ’til you hit Eikenstead again.”

  “But, my daughter! They have her chained up in the barn, said they’ll cut her up and roast her if I don’t—”

  “Oh for….”

  “Go to the barn,” said Nan. “Stay there. With luck all this’ll be over in a bit.”

  “But who are—”

  “Go!”

  The next room was the main hall where Curlew would receive guests on the rare occasion that he had any. There were three or four reavers lounging about with another moving to investigate the racket coming from the kitchen. Corren surprised that one with a sword swipe, and while they struggled Nan loosed an arrow at another. The shot bounced off a helmet and knocked out a tiny lamp hanging on the far wall. The room went darker, lit only by a smoldering hearth at the far end. There was the sound of yelling, and a heavy door slamming shut. Ulnoth leaped at one of the shadows, and Dannek’s shot was rewarded with a pained scream. Staphenil tripped over something and he crashed to the floor. A drunk and almost unconscious reaver mumbled something, and Staphenil kicked away frantically while the shape began to crawl. Gant took his knife and fell onto it, hesitant at first, then in a frenzy of stabs.

  Corren nearly had his man pinned, and shouted, “Shoot!” to any who had the means.

  Nan notched another arrow from across the room. But the reaver struggled, and in the dark it was hard to tell who was whom. “Which one?” The two shadows twisted and tumbled. Just as she was about to make her choice a great mass fell atop her from above. One end of the hall included a small loft from which a marauder had watched the attack. He dropped onto Nan with blade drawn. She tried to scream when cold iron bit into her face.

  Dannek took the shot. One of the shadows jerked, then stilled. Ulnoth finished pounding a man’s face into offal when yet another dropped from the loft onto his back to strangle him. Staphenil came up from behind and tried to drag his knife across the man’s throat, but the blade was in terrible need of sharpening and the reaver managed to pull it away, spin around, and twist Staphenil’s wrist backward to force the smuggler to stab his own chest. He inhaled sharply and barely had time to see Ulnoth turn and gut the reaver before he fell to the floor in a sloshing pool of his own blood. “Oh shit,” he said, over and over. “Shit…oh….”

  Dannek and Gant wrestled the last marauder off of Nan before he could do any more damage and Gant went mad with his blade again. Dannek relit the lamp from the dying embers of the hearth to reveal the full measure of what they’d wrought in the space of a minute: bodies everywhere, blood spreading on the floor. Corren lay against a wall breathing heavily and eyeing the body before him. Nan sat with a hand to her face over a long, ugly slash. Staphenil lay in a fetal position as the last of his life drained out, his first and last raid concluded.

  Gant knelt over Staphenil’s body as the madness passed. “I’m sorry,” said Ulnoth. “Shouldn’t have let you two come along. Fool likely saved my life. For what, I dunno.” Ulnoth’s teeth gnashe
d in anger, mostly at himself.

  “We…volunteered,” said Gant shakily. “Our choice. Coulda been me. Next time…might be.” He hung his head.

  “How about you?” Corren asked Nan. “Is it bad?”

  “Ish not good,” she replied, talking out of one side of her mouth while the other bled.

  Dannek unwrapped a woolen winding from about one of his chausses and pressed it against Nan’s wound. “Here. We need to get you back home.”

  “We’re not done yet,” said Ulnoth. He nodded at the locked door. “The bedchamber. There’s more in there, I saw ’em scramble. No windows on that side. Leave if you want. I ain’t until I get every last one.”

  Corren shook his head. “Can’t leave this half done. Can we force the door?”

  “Nah, it’s Qassorian oak. Just about the only thing o’ value old Curlew owned. Steel locks.”

  “What then?”

  Ulnoth looked around the manor. He walked over to the hearth where a heavy iron key hung from a peg. He took it and handed it to Gant. “Check for that woman and her kid.”

  “Right.”

  “Baron Curlew,” said Ulnoth, “weren’t no filthy rich highborn. Just a bit above the rest of us. His whole life was bound up in this land, worked it hard as we did ours. He left more ’n a year ago and ain’t returned. Way I figure it that means he’s in the dirt somewhere. Wife’s dead of pneumony, sons killed early in the war. So if the choice is to give this place over to the greens or reds…I say we burn it, like they did for me. Burn them bastards out, and cut ’em down.” He pulled an old, cheap-looking tapestry from the plastered wall and tossed it into the hearth. Flames and smoke roiled out, and soon the fabric was alight.

  They gathered up Staphenil’s body, spread the flames as best they could and shut the windows, then filed out of the manor through the front door. Gant came running up holding a familiar-looking cleaver. “Gone,” he said. “I checked all the buildings. All I found was this, and a smashed chain.”

  “Didn’t want to wait around eh?” grunted Ulnoth. “I don’t blame her.”

  They waited. The night wore on and the fire enveloped the manor. When it was almost obscured by smoke they heard screams and pounding at the walls of the bedchamber. At last the first reaver came stumbling out the front door. He got barely three paces before Dannek put an arrow in him. Another soon followed, this one tripping over the body of the first. It was almost funny, though no one felt like laughing.

  As the manor began to collapse, the last of their enemies crawled out on hands and knees. Dannek raised his bow again to shoot him down, then halted. “Gods damn it….” It was a boy, younger than himself. “Um….”

  The boy shambled to his feet, tears and smoke in his eyes, and began to run when he saw the five killers in front of him. Corren sprinted after him. Dannek loosed an arrow across his path, causing the boy to trip to the side. Corren caught him in a tight grip, dragged him back kicking and struggling, and dumped him inside the circle formed by the others.

  “What is this?” Ulnoth muttered. “Bring ’im here.” By the stinging firelight the captive looked up into the hundred different notions reflected in their faces. “Queen’s all out of men, I guess.” That reminded him of something, but he couldn’t quite recall what. “Where’d you come from, boy?”

  “Uh….” The lad trembled, seeming to set the green serpent sewn onto his chest rattling. “M-Murento…I was born in Mur—”

  “No. I mean your little crew we just toasted. Where were you based?”

  “Oh. ’N-’Nocca. By the old citadel. P-please. I only joined up ’cause there weren’t no other work—”

  “No uvver work!” Nandine pulled a hand away from her wound and slapped the boy, leaving a streak of her own blood across his face. “No uvver work but pillish and murder? You lil shickenshit! I’ll—”

  “All right,” said Corren calmly. He spun the boy around to face him. “Are there any more of you here? Anyone away who might return soon? Don’t you dare lie to me now.”

  The boy shook his head. “J-just us. Relief s’posed to come next week, a hundred men. That’s what Sarge Morvyn says.”

  “And where is Sarge Morvyn?”

  The boy pointed to one of the corpses piled near the doorway. “That’s all I know, I swear!”

  Nan made a disgusted sound. “He shwearsh. Well vhen….”

  Corren patted the lad on the shoulder. “That’s good.” He looked to Ulnoth. “What do you think?”

  “I think we prob’ly have enough time to get out of town before a hundred cocksuckers show up.” He glanced once at the boy. “Assuming a clean head start.” Corren seemed to take his meaning with a shudder. Ulnoth looked to the others and read their grim silence as…what? Assent? No one left to tell the tale.

  Corren nodded once with grinding teeth, then raised the boy to his feet, careful to keep his attention. “Now listen to me very closely, son. Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything at all?”

  “Um.” He frowned. “Don’t think so. Sarge said he knows the locals is hidin’ food, jus’ ain’t figured where yet. Said if I found out I could have first go at the next girl we took – er, um…that’s it.”

  “Good,” said Corren, “very good. You’ve done…very well.”

  The boy’s expression eased just a little. “Eh? Thanks. Listen, if you folks could just see your way to letting me g—”

  It was mercifully done, no denying that. The kid never saw nor heard the blow that pierced upward through the base of his skull and deep into his brain in one stroke. His face registered a moment of surprise, but that was all. Two seconds later he dropped to the ground a lifeless husk. Ulnoth braced his boot between the boy’s shoulder blades and yanked, and the sword came out with a sucking sound. He handed it back to Nandine, who had tears in her eyes despite her flare of temper.

  “Saints,” said Dannek, shaking. “I thought we were the good guys.”

  Ulnoth shook his head. “Ain’t no good left. Just bad and worse.”

  “It’s done,” said Gant. “Let’s get out of this cursed place.” He hoisted Staphenil’s body over his shoulder, not really sure what he intended on doing with it.

  “You all go ahead,” said Ulnoth. “There’s one more thing I need to do.”

  * * *

  “Halt! Who goes—”

  “Out of my way, Banwick,” said Gant, swiping the man aside with a swing of Staphenil’s limp limbs. The camp was nearly dark, with only a single fire alight to guide them home.

  “Oh shit. What happened?”

  “What haffened,” Nan grumbled when Alessia asked the same minutes later, “ish I misshed an easy shot and screwed our shances for shome nishe clean kills!”

  “Hold still. You can’t blame yourself,” said Alessia later as she examined Nan’s face and readied her stitching needle. “We’re none of us perfect, even with all the training Corren puts us through.”

  “Tell that to Shtaphenil.”

  Alessia gently pulled away the improvised bandages. “It’s not near your mouth – if you must speak you can do so normally. Listen to me, if you drown yourself in guilt you’ll become just like Ulnoth. And one of him is quite enough.”

  “That’sh another thing,” Nan said gingerly. “Maybe it was a mistake to go with him, I dunno. But there wasn’t any stopping him. He’s going to get us killed if he keeps up these little crusades. What if he’s captured?”

  “I know. I’ve been talking to Corren, some of the others. It’s time to put a stop to that.” Alessia waved Emony over to assist her. “Now hold still, I only need to stitch in one place, but it’s going to hurt like a firedrake’s cock.” Emony wrapped her surprisingly strong arms around Nan’s head and clamped it in place.

  “Such language from a good sister, how scanda— Aaargh!” Nan screwed her eyes shut as Alessia’s needle dug into her c
heek with gut thread dragging behind. It hurt far more than the knife that’d made the cut, for that at least had been quick. Ten times she endured it, for ten stitches. When it was over Emony handed Nan a cup of herb-infused brandy that she gulped down.

  “Everybody complains that I keep the liquor locked up, until they actually need it,” Alessia remarked.

  “Does that mean there’s more?” Nan lay back on the cot while a new poulticed bandage was applied.

  “No. We’re running low on everything. I was hoping the village could help with that….”

  “They have even less than we do,” said Corren as he sat down next to the cot. “All carried off by those jackals. How is she?”

  “She’ll have quite the battle scar, no doubt of that,” replied Alessia, “but otherwise she should be fine assuming I can keep infection away.”

  “There goes my career as a high-class whore,” Nan said sleepily. “Sorry, Duelleigh!”

  “We’ll have to move out again soon,” said Corren. “More of them are coming – too many even for Ulnoth to take on.”

  Alessia frowned. “Already? How do you know? You took a prisoner?”

  Corren clenched his jaw, glanced at Nan.

  “No,” Nan drawled seconds before dropping into a dreamless sleep. “No prisoners.”