Kings of the Wyld

by Nicholas Eames

  Is he fool enough to believe she might make him a king? Clay could almost pity the boy if he actually thought so. Lilith would no more want for another husband than she’d want a rotting pumpkin for a head. It was likely she’d assumed upon marrying Matrick that he would drink himself into an eternal stupor and leave the governing to her. Instead he had risen to the task and become, by all accounts, a competent, compassionate king. Now she would rule alone, without the need to keep her rapacious desires in check.

  Once again Clay had spent too long inside the maze of his own head. He found the exit in time to hear the priest invoke the gentler half of the Holy Tetrea, consigning Matrick’s soul to the Summer Lord’s eternal care and the Spring Maiden’s everlasting ministrations. Matty, were he not actively engaged in the act of faking his own death, would no doubt have made a joke at precisely that moment. Finally the boat was shoved off from the shore, where the quickening current took hold and carried it east downriver.

  “This is fine,” said Moog, leaning in. “Better, actually. We don’t even need to dig him up. Just follow the course of the river and collect him later. Did you see all that gold they sent off with him? We’ll be rich!”

  Gabriel didn’t look as confident. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “What’s to stop anyone else from doing the same? There could be brigands downriver just waiting to loot the king’s boat. Why would …” He trailed off. “Oh.”

  Clay followed his gaze and saw Lokan holding a longbow. The northman had an arrow already nocked, and was holding its pitch-smeared tip over the flame of a small brazier.

  The Kaskars did not, apparently, simply send their dead kings floating peacefully downriver. They also set them on fire.

  Suddenly every eye in the assembly was upon him, and Clay realized he’d just screamed “NO!” at the top of his lungs.

  Roll with it, Cooper, his mind goaded. And fast—they’re all looking at you.

  “No,” he repeated. He took a step forward, still unsure of what to say or do next, and then found himself reaching for the bow in Lokan’s hands. “Let me. He was my friend. I would send him to the gods myself. Please,” he added, as the northman looked to his queen for confirmation. Lilith appeared skeptical for a moment, but then nodded, and Lokan handed the weapon over like a child forced by his mother to share his new toy with a sibling.

  Clay claimed the bow, purposefully bringing the arrow’s flaming tip close to Lokan’s face as he squared himself to the river. The boat was little more than a hundred yards off—a shot even someone who’d never shot a bow in their life could make with careful aim and a bit of luck.

  He drew. He fired. He missed. Badly.

  Clay heard a few groans behind him; a couple snickers as well. “Sorry,” he said lamely. “Blinded by grief. Let me try again.” The Kaskar handed off another arrow, and Clay took his time setting the tip alight. Finally he took aim, and this time he missed by a much more narrow margin.

  “Damn that wind,” he muttered, beckoning Lokan to pass him another arrow. The northman regarded him skeptically, probably because there was no discernible breeze whatsoever.

  His third shot splashed down just short of the boat, which was nearing a bend in the river that would take it out of sight. Already it was shrouded in a cloud of white fog rolling out from behind the distant tree line.

  The queen sighed. “Lokan, will you please show this oaf how to properly set the body of my dear, departed husband on fire?”

  The northman’s smarmy smile returned. “Of course, My Queen.”

  “Your Highness—” Clay started to protest, but Lilith cut him short.

  “Enough. You’ve made a mockery of this hallowed ritual. It is lucky for us that Lokan is a master of the bow—and of several other weapons besides,” she added coyly.

  It was all Clay could do not to roll his eyes at the innuendo. He relinquished the bow, and took a short step away, waiting as the young northman casually put another arrow to string and set it alight.

  Cocky little bastard’s making a show of it, Clay realized. He saw Gabriel shift nervously in his periphery.

  Lokan planted his feet and set his sight on the king’s boat, now barely visible for the fog. Difficult as the shot would be from so far off, Clay had little doubt the queen’s champion was capable of making it, and so he waited until the man had drawn the bow to its full extent before he said, too quietly for anyone but the northman to hear, “Have you picked out a name for your son yet?”

  “Wha—!?” The string snapped. The arrow went backward, spinning dangerously into the crowd. As the mourners scrambled from the missile’s errant path, Lokan wheeled on Clay. His face went from pink to red to livid purple, coloured by anger, or shame, but probably anger.

  “I’ve always thought ‘Orag’ had a noble ring to it. A good northman’s name, that.”

  Lokan was obviously furious, but when the youth took a step toward him Clay matched his gaze. “Fuckin’ try it,” he said, quiet and cold as an ice-mantled mountain. The Kaskar stopped dead in his tracks.

  The gathering had gone quiet again, and after a few moments Lokan blinked as though released from a spell. “My Lady, I am sorry. I …” his eyes flitted to the crowd, to Clay, then back to his queen. He bowed his head. “I have failed you.”

  “No matter,” Lilith said breezily. She straightened, pulling her black shawl up over slim white shoulders. “The fire is just a formality, after all. It is well that my husband’s soul is gone, for his body will be broken on the Teeth of Adragos.”

  “The Teeth of who now?” asked Moog.

  It was right about then Clay realized the fog on the river was not fog at all. It was mist. Which was sometimes a vastly different thing altogether.

  In the end, it was being dead that saved Matrick’s life.

  They found him at dusk, sitting on a rock near the base of the falls. There was a nasty gash across the left half of his face that had sheared off the lobe of one ear, and he was covered head to toe with dark bruises. The eye above his injury was terribly swollen, so that when he saw them and smiled it shut completely.

  “Glif be praised! I’m free!” he yelled, his voice almost lost to the roar and rush of water.

  The others were gazing up at the towering waterfall, apparently known as the Teeth of Adragos, likely due to the spires of sharp black stone that jutted from the lake below.

  “How …?” Moog seemed unable to finish the question, and so Gabriel asked it himself.

  “How did you survive?”

  The self-exiled king of Agria shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “I woke up right before I went over, but the drug—that shaderoot, or whatever—hadn’t quite worn off yet. I couldn’t move, at least not until I’d taken a couple knocks on the way down, which loosened me up enough I could swim to shore when it was all over. Still, I think being a bit limp was what spared me getting all smashed up. Well, more smashed up. Anyway, I managed to keep these ladies safe.” He patted the pair of daggers resting beside him on the rock.

  The wizard moved to the edge and peered down into the churning water. “The boat? The treasure?”

  “Lost, I’m afraid. Except what I’ve got on me.” Matrick brandished his hands, glittering with golden rings. He was still wearing several chains as well, but the crown was gone. Nevertheless, they’d left the castle with full rations, and what remained on Matrick’s person could be pawned for more than enough to keep them fed for however long the gods saw fit to let them live.

  “Lucky,” said Gabriel.

  Clay glanced at him sidelong. “I’m not sure that word means what you think it means.”

  “We should keep moving,” Moog declared. “There might be folk seeking a scrap of that treasure. Or Lilith might wise up and send someone out to look for us.”

  “True enough,” Clay agreed. He scratched at his beard and looked to Gabriel. “You sure about Fivecourt?”

  “What’s in Fivecourt?” Matrick asked. He reached tentative fingers to his wounded ear and
winced in pain.

  “Ganelon,” said Clay and Gabriel at once.

  The king frowned at his bloody fingers. “Really? Fivecourt’s backtracking a bit, though …”

  “Even so,” said Gabriel, glancing over at Clay. “We need him. If we’re going to cross the Heartwyld. If we’re to have any hope at all of getting Rose out of Castia. He is—”

  “He’s Ganelon,” Clay said. “I know. And I know we need him. I just … don’t think he’ll be all that happy to see us.”

  “Yeah, well. We have to try.”

  Clay exhaled. “Okay. All right. Fivecourt it is.”

  “We can follow the river right to it,” Matrick suggested. “Four, maybe five days through these woods? It’s not as fast as the road, but we should keep a low profile anyway, right? If someone sees us and Lilith finds out I’m still alive she’ll have my head on a platter. All our heads, in fact.”

  “And its likely Kallorek knows where we’re going,” added Gabriel. “He’ll have men on the road, I should think.”

  Fantastic, Clay mused. A spiteful queen and a vengeful booker to watch out for. As if heading into a monster-infested forest on our way to a hopelessly besieged city wasn’t trouble enough. Whoever wants us dead should just sit back and let us kill ourselves.

  They set off east. Gabriel took the lead, with Moog and Matrick chatting excitedly behind, while Clay brought up the rear, still lost in thought.

  Ah, but look on the bright side, Cooper: You have friends by your side, food to eat, and gold to spend.

  He didn’t know it then, of course, but by noon the next day he would lose two of the three.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Breakfast with Thieves

  They stopped for a rest shortly before sunrise. Matrick offered to keep watch while the others snatched an hour or two of precious sleep, and so Clay set his back against the mossy corpse of a fallen tree and was out within minutes.

  He dreamt of home, imagining his house filled with frogs of every shape and size as Tally pulled more and more from inside her pockets. Next he was swimming in Kallorek’s so-called pool, when suddenly one of the tiled walls fell away and he plunged over the edge into black oblivion. Finally Clay dreamt of Jain, the woman who had robbed him and Gabriel on the road to Conthas. He saw her standing over him in those silly patchwork clothes, a bow in her hands and a great big smile on her dirt-smeared face.

  “Mornin’, Slowhand.”

  He blinked. Could you blink in your dreams?

  “Rise and shine, man!” Jain kicked him gently with her boot, and he glimpsed one of his wife’s knitted socks peeking out the top.

  His voice was a hoarse croak. “I’m not dreaming.”

  The brigand snorted at that. “Course not. Or I wouldn’t be wearing so many bleedin’ clothes now, would I?”

  Clay straightened and glanced around. Jain’s gang—the Silk Arrows—were scattered around the camp. They were all of them armed, but none looked particularly threatening. In fact it looked as though they’d been here for a while before Clay had finally stirred awake. They’d long since relieved Matrick of what valuables he’d managed to salvage from his funeral, jamming rings onto already ring-crowded fingers and adding chains of gold and silver to the numerous scarves and shawls around their necks. A few were sitting with Moog while the wizard regaled them with some story that required him to flail his arms like a pair of flapping wings. His audience laughed and clapped, and so Moog—an entertainer at heart—redoubled his efforts, which drew another bout of laughter from his crowd.

  He spotted Gabriel sitting by a small fire, eating eggs out of a frying pan. When his friend saw that Clay was awake he swallowed and set down his fork. “We’re being robbed,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Evidently.” Clay rubbed at his eyes to clear them. He looked at Matrick, who was leaning sullenly against a nearby tree. “Weren’t you supposed to be keeping watch?”

  “Sure was,” said Matty. “I watched them appear out of nowhere with bows.”

  Clay frowned. “Fair enough.”

  Jain prodded him again with her foot. “Up and at ’em, Slowhand. There’s eggs and bacon—maybe even a few sausages left, if your friends haven’t gobbled them up already. Just cause we’re taking your stuff don’t mean we can’t be civilized about it. We’ve had some fair good fortune since we saw you last. More than you anyway, from what I’ve heard.”

  Sure enough, the profusion of garments on Jain’s person did seem to be of slightly higher quality than when he’d seen her last week. When she saw him eyeing her black silk gloves, the bandit raised her hand and pushed her sleeve up to the elbow to show it off.

  “You like?” she asked. Jain had cut the tips off the thumb and the first two fingers so she could draw an arrow without losing her grip. Clay had to admire the woman’s pragmatism, if not her fashion sense. “Scooped these off some highborn lady on her way to the king’s funeral,” she said, before kissing the exposed fingers and touching her heart. “May the Summer Lord light his way.”

  She hasn’t recognized Matrick, Clay realized. They don’t know who he is. Better to keep it that way, he figured. Once Lilith discovered their deception—and she would, eventually, of that he had no doubt—she would come after them like a dragon who’d counted its hoard and found it a penny short. Which was to say: swiftly, and with terrible vengeance.

  Clay climbed slowly to his feet. His back ached, and his knees popped when he straightened them. He was careful not to make any sudden move that Jain or one of her lady-thugs might perceive as aggression. Getting an arrow in the chest was a sure way to spoil a good breakfast, and if he was going to be robbed he might as well score some bacon in the deal.

  Jain led him to the fire, where he settled down beside Gabe. She passed him a skillet and a crude wooden fork before claiming one for herself and squatting to eat. The eggs were cold, but there was a thick slab of salted pork belly and a few fat sausages that were still warm when he bit into them. All in all, a pretty square meal.

  “The birds say there’s a bounty out for the pair o’ you,” said Jain, nodding toward him and Gabe.

  Clay froze with his mouth full. He glanced over at Gabriel, hoping to catch his friend’s eye, but Saga’s frontman was staring determinedly into his empty skillet.

  Jain chuckled and waved her fork dismissively. “No need to piss your britches, Slowhand. I ain’t no bounty hunter. There’s a long shot between the occasional robbery and trading a man’s life for a few lousy courtmarks. Heck, I’d bet the Maiden’s Virtue there’s a fair price on my head to boot.” She snorted a laugh. “I’d be insulted otherwise.”

  “Do you think it was Lilith?” asked Matrick, before Clay could tell him to keep his stupid, stupid mouth shut.

  Jain’s brow furrowed. “You mean the Ice Queen of Agria? Why would …” She cocked her head at Matrick. The king’s face was still mangled from his fall. The welt beneath his left eye had swollen to the size of a plum, sealing his eye shut. Clay held his breath, praying the brigand wouldn’t identify the battered old rogue, but the light of awareness crept across her face, certain as a new day dawning. “Well fuck me with a Phantran’s salty dick, you’re Matty Skulldrummer!”

  The king grinned sheepishly. “I used to be,” he said.

  Jain laughed and slapped her knee. “My daddy always said you were the fastest son’bitch with a knife there ever was. Said you could carve up a turkey ’fore the thing even knew it was dead!”

  “And eat it, too,” said Matrick, patting his prodigious gut.

  Jain got another laugh at that. She wolfed down another sausage and licked grease from her bare fingers. When she’d finished she asked Clay, “So what’s all this about, eh? Last we met I figured you and not-so-Golden Gabe here for a couple of old coots bound to get your rocks off in Conthas—and yet here you are: halfway to Fivecourt, with Magic Moog and Matty Skulldrummer in tow. Now your wizard’s clearly a few arrows short of a full quiver”—as if to prove her point Moog was now j
umping in circles and quacking like a duck—“but why would a summer-kissed king shirk his crown to slum it in the woods with you three? Unless …” She paused to swallow, and a wry grin tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Don’t tell me you’re getting the band back together?”

  “We’re getting the band back together,” Clay admitted. Gods, but it sounded dumb when he said it out loud.

  The brigand’s next question was obvious. “What the hell for?”

  Clay blew out a sigh. He shared a questing look with Gabriel, who offered a scant nod in response, and then he explained why they were trying to re-form Saga, and what they intended to do once they had.

  By the time he’d finished the rest of Jain’s girls had all stopped to listen. Jain herself simply stared at him for a bit, chewing salt pork like a cow working down a mouthful of cud. “Y’all are fucking crazy,” she said finally.

  When breakfast was done and the dishes rinsed clean in the river, Lady Jain and the Silk Arrows finished robbing them. Matrick was permitted to keep his knives, and Clay his shield, but the sword he’d managed to plunder from the palace armoury was confiscated. Moog’s enchanted bag appeared empty, so they left him that. Everyone but Clay and Gabe had a good laugh when Gabriel dumped the same collection of dull rocks from his pack. They were permitted to keep the rations they’d brought from Agria, thankfully, but one of the girls took a shining to Matrick’s good leather boots, which left the man who had ruled a kingdom just three days ago wearing naught but a pair of wool socks on his feet. The Silk Arrows left him those, at least; they had no need of socks, after all.

  “Listen,” said Clay, sidling as close as he dared to Jain and lowering his voice, “we went to some trouble faking Matty’s death. If Lilith found out he were still alive—”

  “No worries, Slowhand,” Jain assured him. “We won’t go spilling your secret. Me and mine have no love for the Ice Queen of Agria, I’ll you tell that. Far as we’re concerned, Old King Matrick is dead and gone.” She threw a wink in Matty’s direction. “Long live the king.”