by J M D Reid
“You want to be setting up camp when you’re tripping over Stone’s big feet?” Ōbhin asked.
“Fine,” Ust grunted. “Let’s camp.”
“You heard ‘em, boys!” Hook said. “Let’s make camp. Creg, don’t think you can slink off to find ‘firewood.’ If you do, I’ll ram my hook so deep up your bunghole, you’ll be my feast day puppet.”
Ust paced as the camp was arranged. Soon, a thick stew boiled on a bright flame. Fog spilled out of the woods, the chill creeping through the air. Ōbhin sank down on his wagon beside Carstin, wrapped up in his blanket, and watched his friend as the fire slowly died. Night’s chill grew. He found himself nodding off.
The dreams of the mines didn’t find him.
When Ōbhin awoke the next day, he felt a change in himself. The world didn’t weigh so heavily on him. Avena was checking on Carstin. His friend still lived.
After passing his water behind a tree, he climbed up into the wagon bed and chewed on hard jerky for his breakfast. He worked the salted beef with hard bites, his jaw muscles growing sore with the exercise as he guided the wagon slowly ahead.
Ust steamed as he marched up and down and around the wagon. His shoulders squirmed. His eyes glared at Ōbhin again and again. Fury burned in them, Ust resonating with Otsar’s fiery Tone perverted by Niszeh’s Black disharmony. Ōbhin didn’t care. He’d faced worse than a bully like Ust could mete out.
At noon, the explosion came.
Ust’s sword whipped out of its scabbard. He rounded on the wagon and snarled, “If none of you Black-damned boys have the stones to do it, I’ll put him out of his misery.”
Ōbhin hopped down from the wagon bed, the horses coming to a stop. He stood before Ust, black spittle running out of the corners of the bandit leader’s mouth to stain his beard. Bloodshot eyes fixed on Ōbhin.
“Out of the way, dirt-stained heathen!”
Chapter Four
Ust’s words offended Avena.
She hadn’t spent a sleepless night attending to Carstin to let him die. She’d woken up time and time again to give him fortified tea and honey, nursing him through the night while Ōbhin snored, oblivious to the world. The weariness she felt vanished in a flash of hot black. The dark flames kindled in her. Anger went against Patience and Compassion. It led to harm. To loss of self-control.
Right now, she didn’t care.
“You are not about to put down my patient!” she hissed as she leaped off the side of the wagon, uncaring that her skirt flared up and flashed stocking-clad ankles. She landed on her heeled boots in a crunch of hard soil and crinkling pine needles. “Have you no Compassion coloring your heart? Huh? Is it too Black to have any Orange bleeding through?”
She came up alongside Ōbhin and faced the odious Ust.
“You sure you want to do this?” Ōbhin asked, his voice quiet.
Avena gave a fierce nod, a lock of brown hair sliding over the scarlet blazing in her fair cheeks. She glared at the bandit leader with the intensity of the summer sun beating upon an uncovered head. She did not care that he stood a cubit taller than her and weighed easily fifty or more stones. She didn’t care about the foul Tethyrian root staining his bristling beard or the look of murder gleaming in his bloodshot eyes.
“Huh?” she demanded. “You think you can just mete out life and death? That you’re above the judgment of Elohm?” Frustration at the entire situation boiled through her. “Just attacking us! You could have spoken to us. Asked us to meet with this ‘boss’ that has you pissing your britches like a runt cowering before his littermates.”
“Runt?” snarled Ust, his sword twitching in his grip, muscles bulging in his forearm.
“Yes, runt!” she hissed. “Just barking and barking, trying to look tougher than all these dangerous men around you.”
Ōbhin arched an eyebrow beside her, his entire body tensed in the fashion of a man prepared to commit violence.
“Put that sword away so we can continue on to your ‘boss’ and maybe, just maybe, your friend will survive,” she continued. “Then you’ll have someone you can easily bully. A cripple!”
A bandit sniggered.
“Who did that?” Hook snarled, rounding on the others while a dangerous shade of puce suffused Ust’s cheeks, bleeding through his thick beard in spots. “Huh?”
Ust’s arm tensed.
“You know she’s his daughter,” Ōbhin said, his voice cool like a dark shadow on a hot day. “Don’t want to harm her. Lose out on the ransom for the Boss.”
Ust’s grin grew. “Won’t hurt a single hair on her head. Now Carstin, he—”
Ōbhin’s gloved fist slammed into Ust’s jaw. Avena gasped at the blur of violence as Ōbhin followed it up with a low blow to the bandit leader’s guts.
*
Ōbhin had had enough.
The night before, he’d slept without nightmares. Now life stirred in him again. Concern. Not for himself, but Carstin. He took responsibility for his friend. He wouldn’t let the bullying, strutting, swaggering, Tone-deaf Ust swell his ego by stealing away Carstin’s chance for life. To breathe. To love. To mourn. To have all the experiences Ōbhin had squandered away since the mines.
Two faces flashed through his mind, a man shocked in betrayal, a woman masked in lies.
His third blow, a hard, right hook, sent Ust falling to the ground. Ust landed on his back. Blood spilled from a broken nose down to chapped lips. He tightened his grip on his backsword’s hilt. The toe of Ōbhin’s boot slammed into Ust’s hand.
The crack echoed down the road.
The blade tumbled from the bandit leader. His mouth opened in a pain-filled shout. Ōbhin felt awakened from his shadowed stupor. He had just existed since leaving Guirreu. Since leaving her behind. Black strangled his heart, but the grip of compassion had pried back those dark fingers enough to let him feel the pulse of life again.
To remember it.
“You Black-cursed roach!” Ust snarled, voice nasally. “I’ll gut you and—”
A wild shout, raw and ragged, burst from Ōbhin’s throat as he slammed his boot into Ust’s guts. Air exploded from his lungs. Ōbhin lifted his foot up and crashed it down into the middle of Ust’s stomach again. The fleshy impact brought a curling smile at the corner of Ōbhin’s lips. He reveled in this moment. He’d eaten so much dirt from Ust. The bloodfire was just the most recent life Ōbhin had spilled in his apathetic haze.
“Dirt-skinned bastard!” hissed Hook, the only bandit to rush to Ust’s defense.
Stone’s face paled. The huge man took a step back. Whiner Creg grinned, wiping at his runny nose. Handsome Baill’s split lip peeled back. Others trembled, looking wild-eyed as Hook charged in, raising his rusted namesake.
Ōbhin seized the slashing appendage in a black-gloved hand. Leather creaked as he twisted. A buckle snapped. Hook gasped as Ōbhin wrenched the rusty implement from the stump of the sniveling boot-lapper’s arm, a broken strap dangling from the stiff cuff. He slammed the hook into its owner’s face, cutting open the older man’s brow with the sharp tip. Hook reeled back and tripped over Ust wheezing on the dirt. Hook fell hard. Ōbhin threw the rusted metal into the bush and stared at the other bandits.
“Someone . . . cut off . . . his damned . . . head . . .” panted Ust, struggling to rise.
Ōbhin kicked him in the temple.
“Double . . . pay . . .” groaned Ust, a knot swelling.
Whiner Creg laughed louder and rushed forward. The skinny man crossed the distance with a confident strut, hand reaching for his blade.
Ōbhin rested his gloved hand on the pommel of his tulwar, staring at the bandit.
“Bugger this,” Creg muttered, halting. “He killed that bloodfire. You handle him, Ust.”
“You still think it’s a good idea to put one of us down?” Ōbhin asked, staring down at the wheezing Ust, blood flowing down his cheek and matting his side whiskers.
“Pus-filled, dirt-stained cockroach!” Ust spat bloody phlegm at Ōbhin. I
t landed before his boot.
Ōbhin slid his hand down to grip the handle. “Well, Ust? You’re wounded. I could put you down. You don’t want to go through life with a bent nose.”
Whiner Creg cackled.
“You all should wear skirts and have dolls tucked under your arms!” Ust snarled, sitting up. “Cowards all. He’s one man.”
“You don’t pay that much,” said Handsome Baill.
“Keep the bastard alive,” snarled Ust as he rose, an acrid stink rising from him. “He can pound your arse in the dark for all I care.” He wiped blood from his nose and looked at his men. “What are all you useless runts doing? You can change the piss from your britches when we camp. Move!”
“Only one of us pissed his britches,” Whiner Creg said.
Ust glowered at him.
Ōbhin relaxed as the others turned and headed down the dirt road while pale-faced Stone helped Hook stand. Ust marched ahead, his shoulders tight. Embarrassment stiffened every muscle. He stamped forward, splashing through a puddle, kicking up mud. A weight fell from Ōbhin. He was done with Ust and his bandits.
He wished he’d shaken off the shadows and left long ago. It was just easier staying. Following orders. He didn’t have to think. Only wallow.
Avena nodded beside him, satisfaction painted across her exposed face. She glanced at him. “You know he’s not my father.”
Ōbhin frowned. “Dualayn? But you call him that.”
She looked away. “We should go.”
Before he could ask another question, she scrambled back up onto the wagon, using the wheel as a ladder. As she climbed in, her skirt rode up, flashing the petticoats she wore and the dark-brown stockings cladding her calves. She shoved her skirts down as she righted, her cheeks flaring pink.
He shook his head. Shows her face, but flashing some leg makes her blush?
Ōbhin feared he’d never understand these pale people. Lothonians, Onderians, and Roidaneses were all mad. Worse than the Tethyrian immigrants he was always mistaken for.
Grunting, he climbed back into the wagon and followed the bandits, sniggers and laughs echoing behind Ust’s back. Ōbhin couldn’t help the smile. It felt good to finally knock the blustering fool on his backside.
Chapter Five
A growing tension mounted in Avena as the wagon trundled down the farm lane. Near an hour ago, they’d left the Upfing Forest for the cultivated farmland of the Colonization, lands conquered from Ondere. They’d turned off onto the first side road, passing fields where tanned men and boys trudged through the fields, bare feet caked in dirt, the spring planting growing.
They neared where this boss waited.
It started as a tightening in the pit of her stomach, a distraction from monitoring her patient. She knelt in the back, making sure the one-way water valve allowed him to breathe. He hovered on the edge of death. Air wheezed. Sweat coated his face. A pallid sheen clad his cheeks. The first signs of infection nibbled at his wounds, red lines creeping up the veins from his severed leg and radiating around the hole in his chest.
She glanced at the brooding Tethyrian, his shoulders sagged. Studying him lifted her thoughts from the ratcheting of her guts. He seemed listless as he drove the wagon, adrift. He’d risked whatever status he had in his band for his friend. It was noble, at odds with the other brigands.
He did not fit. Her thoughts kept lingering on the young, shadowed man.
But it wasn’t the only question. Dualayn seemed to know this “boss.” She bit her lip. She had never questioned the older man’s judgment. He’d given her employment and a place to live since her fifteenth year. He tutored her on care and compassion. She couldn’t count the times she’d accompanied him to the Hospital of the Prism’s Grace and assisted him. After Chames died, he’d held her as she wept until she felt hollowed of all emotion . . .
The old guilt bruised her heart.
“Father,” she said, her words low, barely rising over the clatter of the wheels.
He glanced at her with those deep, brown eyes. Wrinkles radiated out from the corners, crow’s feet flexing as his brow furrowed. The tail of his graying hair shifted as he looked back at the patient. “You wonder why we are in this predicament.”
“I know why,” Avena said. “Men killed Ni’mod and captured us, but . . . who is this boss?”
“Leader of the Brotherhood.” His shoulders shifted, a flush darkening his plump cheeks.
She swallowed as a cold shiver ran through her. “Oh.”
“Oh, indeed,” Dualayn said.
Avena knew of the Brotherhood. Everyone living in Kash, the capital of Lothon, knew of them. Perhaps the entire kingdom, save the most backward areas, feared them. Once a guild of stonecutters and builders, they’d organized into something nefarious. If honest men worked with Elohm’s Colours, the Brotherhood delved into the Black. The forbidden. Tethyrian weed and other illicit drugs, girls or boys to satiate carnal pleasures, strong-arming honest men to pay for their “protection,” running dens of gambling and flophouses of lewd vice, smuggling, and a whole host of other trades. They vied with the Rangers. Street gangs, brigands, and thugs swore allegiance to one or the other group.
“How could you . . . ?” She trailed off, close to taking his actions in the darkest hue. She must be charitable. He’d earned that from her. “Did they . . . compel you?”
“Not then.” He glanced at her, his face sad. “They funded my research. I was desperate, you know. Still am.” He rubbed his gnarled hands together.
She couldn’t help but give him a comforting pat on his shoulder. She hadn’t known Bravine before her accident, but Dualayn cared for his catatonic wife. His quest to repair her had led him to invent one of the great miracles of the jewelchine revolution: the topaz healers.
“When I found a better source to collaborate, my colleague from the Democh Empire, I did not need the Brotherhood’s stained funds. I broke ties with them. My Demochian friends provided me Ni’mod to protect us against . . . reprisals. Honestly, I thought the Brotherhood did not care. They had exploited some of my inventions for their own gain. I let them know we were finished and had not heard from them until yesterday.”
“What will this boss do to us?” she asked, the sweep of fear washing through her. The sun sank lower and lower before them. The haze of the Border Fangs stretched purple beneath the blinding sphere.
“Negotiate,” Dualayn said, his face going even paler. “And, I am afraid, I have little to bargain with.”
She glanced at the Recorder as ice pumped through her veins. Her hands shook as she prepared the next dose of Carstin’s medicine.
*
Ōbhin’s stared at the ruined farmhouse ahead. Half the thatched roof had collapsed, leaving ragged holes. Other parts sagged. The fields before it sprouted with thick brush. His shoulders squirmed as he felt eyes upon him. He held the reins in his gloved hands, tension mounting.
What would happen here?
Ust quickened his pace, marching with a swagger like Ōbhin hadn’t beaten his face bloody hours ago. Ōbhin’s knuckles still ached from the impacts. He flexed his right hand against the tenderness as his eyes searched for the watchers.
A few surly men lounged around the farmhouse. They straightened at the sight of the approaching bandits. One leaned into the open doorway of the farmhouse, speaking inside.
Avena slipped over the back of the wagon and settled on the driver bench beside Ōbhin, smoothing her dark skirts. A strand of her light-brown hair brushed her pale cheek. She looked whiter than before. Cheap linen, his people called those who lived out on the distant Arngelsh Isles. Skin as light as linen, their emotions blushing through. Weak people were unable to weather a Qoth winter.
Of course, how many Qothian women would face down a bloodthirsty bandit leader? wondered Ōbhin, glancing again at the young woman, the profile of her face delicate. Enticing.
A man stepped out of the farmhouse. Grey Kalon, the leader of the Brotherhood of Masons and Builders. Even
from a distance, Ōbhin could see the straight-back stance of the man, shoulders broad. He had near-black hair and a close-cropped beard following the lines of his jaw. Thick arms folded before him as he watched Ust approach.
“That’s him, isn’t it?” Avena whispered. “The Boss.”
Ōbhin nodded. He flicked the reins, guiding the wagon around a rut. The horses plodded on, not caring where they walked. One lifted a tail and defecated. The stench momentarily filled his nose before the wagon trundled on.
Ust pointed back at the wagon, gesticulating. Though he stood taller than Grey by two or three fingers, he seemed to cower before the man. Words drifted as the wagon trundled closer. Grey’s eyes fixed on them.
“So, you see,” Ust’s words became clearer as they came closer, “lost a few. Got a man badly wounded. Had to go slow on his account. That’s why we’re late. You didn’t tell us we were up against a Black-damned bloodfire.”
As Ōbhin reined up the wagon, Grey said, “I knew your men could handle it.”
“‘Course they could,” Ust said. “My boys are the meanest pack of outlaws this side of the Border Fangs.”
“I see you were in the thick of it,” Grey said.
“The bloodfire tried to cut my head off, but he just got a lucky punch in, that’s all.” Ust glanced murder at Ōbhin.
Whiner Creg let out a cackling laugh. Hook cuffed his head.
“Well, you and your men can relax in the smokehouse. Food’s in there.” Grey stepped out from the porch, walking past Ust like he mattered hardly a whit. He gave a nod to Ōbhin as he approached the wagon, his strides long, his bearing that of a man who took decisive action. No hesitation.
A leader.
“Dualayn,” said Grey.
“You’re in charge now?” asked Dualayn. “Not your father?”
“His soul rose to Elohm’s Colours two years ago. I run things now.” He held out a hand. “Let me help you down, old friend.”
“Friend?” asked Dualayn. “You sent bandits to capture me.”
“Escort you,” said Grey. His smile was genial. “I am sorry your bloodfire felt the need to object. Rare fighter, those. The world’s lessened by his absence. I hope his soul rose up to Elohm’s bosom.”