“Int'sting,” replied Gloo.
“Don't skirt the subject, Gloo, you've fucked us again. Are you even listening? This wagon of shit is worth nothing to anyone. They're half-dead, they clearly haven't eaten for days, if not longer. We'll get nothing for them at market.”
“Hmmm.” Gloo scratched the back of his head. “Int'sting, I picked these up way down in Rockharbour, where the Jabal Kish meets the sea. It is a long way. They had already had a long voyage. They've actually improved since they came into my care.”
“Bullshit, Gloo. You said you had top quality merchandise, how are these vermin going to sell if they don't have the strength to stand? I bet you've got a wagon full of food and you've not fed 'em a bean.”
The fat, bearded one walked over to the wagon. As he did so, Gloo stood up, looking panicky. The other men stood and drew knifes.
“Sit down!” barked the smaller, scarred man. The third, a stocky, screw-faced bully with lank hair hanging from beneath a battered broad-brimmed hat and a nasty looking boil on his chin, had remained silent. But his anger was just as evident as he edged around the fire towards Gloo.
Gloo froze, clearly a man bereft of the courage to deal with any confrontation and unable to decide what to do next.
The fat man approached Gloo as the other two came around either side of the fire.
“You've fucked us about for the last time.” Scarface was seething with a mixture of rage and excitement.
The fat man grabbed Gloo by the scruff, dragged him over to the wagon and pushed him against it. Now Colken could see Gloo's face in the fire light. His beady eyes were set very close together and left just enough room for a thin, triangular nose to be squeezed between them and his top lip over hung his bottom, a string of spittle permanently linking the two. Colken had never seen a face that inspired less trust or confidence.
“We're going to cut you up, Gloo,” continued Scarface, “and then we're taking whatever you have of value as recompense for our wasted journey.” The other two crowded round eagerly now, pinning Gloo to receive his punishment.
He wailed and shut his eyes as the fat man's knife came up to his face. But the knife stopped inches away. The fat man made a strangled gurgling sound and slumped forward. Scarface and the bully frowned at each other and then looked down at their partner, who was now face-down in the dust with the handle of a dagger protruding from his back.
“What the f—,” the bully’s words were cut short by the steel fist at the base of Colken's spear as it sank into his belly. Before Scarface could react with anything more than a raised eyebrow, his legs were taken brutally from beneath him, his head hit the ground and he was knocked unconscious.
Gloo cowered against the wagon, a look of utter bewilderment on his face. He stared up at Colken, who stood silhouetted against the fire behind him.
“Who are you?”
“I seek a child. His name is Sorrow. He was last seen in the Burned Earth.”
“Uh, well,” replied Gloo, laughing nervously, “a child would not last long in the Burned Earth.”
Colken glanced down to see Scarface reaching for a knife with a shaking hand. He stamped on the fallen man’s arm. There was a loud crack and a shriek of pain. Then he bent down and tugged at the handle of the dagger, drawing it with some difficulty from between the now deceased fat man's shoulders.
“You know this land. Imagine the child lives. Where might he have gone?”
“Well, I don't know these parts as well as my former business associates here.” Gloo gestured towards the two groaning men and their dead partner at his feet.
Colken glanced down at the fat man.
At that moment Gloo produced a small cross-bow and levelled it at Colken, who frowned at him.
“Your weapons please, immediately, then into the cage with the rest.” Gloo's closely set eyes blinked at Colken with a flicker of something like defiance.
Colken looked at the cage and for the first time he saw a human hand gripping one of the bars. He realised Gloo was not transporting livestock, but slaves. What happened next occurred in the blink of an eye.
There was a flash of silver from beneath the wagon and Gloo cried out in pain. Colken heard a twang as the crossbow went off and the bolt made a loud ping as it ricocheted off his steel chest and lodged itself in the side of the wagon.
The dog who had become Colken's daylight companion had chosen the right moment to make an appearance, leaping from his hiding place beneath Gloo's wagon and snapping at the man’s leg. In his panic, Gloo was still a good shot, but unfortunately for him he had fired his weapon at the only man in The World Apparent with a steel chest and no heart.
The dog darted away as Gloo drew a knife, and stood growling in front of the fire. Gloo launched himself at Colken with surprising speed, intending to bury the blade in his throat, but Colken stood to one side and delivered a brutal elbow to the side of his head. Gloo bounced off his wagon and rebounded into a hail-storm of fists as Colken proceeded to beat him senseless.
Every moment of his life aboard the Jagged Blade flashed through Colken's mind as blood and teeth shot from Gloo's face in all directions. Finally Colken stamped down, snapping Gloo's right leg like a twig just below the knee. Before Gloo could drop to the earth, his blood-curdling scream was cut short as he found himself in a tight choke-hold.
Colken slowly squeezed, cutting off the air supply to Gloo's lungs as the slave-trader struggled vainly for breath. Gloo's eye's bulged.
“I seek a child,” repeated Colken quietly, “named Sorrow. He wandered into the Burned Earth. Where could he have gone?” Colken released his grip and Gloo gasped in a ragged lungful of air. Then Colken lifted him off his feet and held him over the fire so that his toes began to scorch in the flames. Gloo shrieked and wailed as his boots began to heat up.
“Where!” Colken bellowed in his face.
“The Moon-Walkers! The Moon-Walkers would have taken him! Please!” Gloo sobbed and screamed as Colken pulled him away from the fire.
“Who are these Moon-Walkers? Speak!”
“They dwell to the north of the Burned Earth!” Gloo sobbed as he spoke, his voice reduced to a strangled, high-pitched whine. “They are slave-traders, they take slaves from tribes in the surrounding areas, or anyone else who might be passing through. They take them north to the slave markets on the coasts beyond the High Places.”
“The High Places,” replied Colken, “that's where your friends came from.” Colken looked over at the two who still lived, and appeared to be slowly regaining consciousness. “They also sell slaves up there?”
Gloo nodded, his glassy eyes began to close up under the swelling as he fought to control his breath.
“You were to sell them people to take to this slave-market.” Colken could feel the rage welling up inside him again. Gloo began to sob.
The dog began to growl and bark excitedly as Colken's fury erupted.
“To sell them into slavery!” Colken shook Gloo's ruined body like an old sack and tossed it onto the fire.
Gloo's shrieking reached fever pitch as he thrashed about in the fire and the smell of roast pork filled Colken's nostrils. The dog tossed his head back and howled as Gloo finally stopped moving.
Colken turned to the two remaining souls who lay in front of the wagon. He walked over to the bully and stamped on his neck, ending his life with a crunch. Being a man of few words had worked against him since Colken was looking for a man who would talk.
He reached down and hauled Scarface upright.
“What is your name?” Colken asked him.
“Cane.” Cane stared back at Colken with a look of resignation on his face, as though he knew he would die and had come to terms with it. Colken noticed movement in the slave cage. His brutal murder of their former master had stirred the gaggle of slaves and they no longer looked like hopeless zombies; he could see their eyes twinkling in the firelight as they reached through the bars.
He looked back at Cane, whose eyes were
flicking nervously between Colken and the human remains inside the cage, as though he knew what the Djanki was thinking.
“The Moon-Walkers,” said Colken, “have you seen them on your way here from the High Places?”
“If I tell you, let me go before you release them. Let me have my horse.”
Colken looked around at the three horses.
“Very well.”
“Yes, we saw a small party who were travelling behind a larger caravan taking slaves to the High Places to sell at market.” Believing Colken would release him, he was eager to tell. “They mentioned they had purchased a strange child from a tall foreigner. He had been beaten by the Moon-Walker children, and he had gone into a trance-like state, they found him very unsettling.”
“And they are taking this child to the High Places too?”
“Yes, that is what they said.” Cane still glanced worriedly at the slaves inside their cage.
Colken gazed at him thoughtfully, still holding him in a vice-like grip as the orange tip of the rising sun peeked over the eastern horizon behind him to shed light on the blood-stained wagon and Gloo's smouldering corpse. As the morning light fell across the slave cage Colken realised just how many people were squeezed in there. Then he came to a decision and walked the man towards the tethered horses. Cane breathed a sigh of relief.
Before they reached the horses Colken turned to the back of the slave cage and threw open the bolt that locked it shut. As the slaves came spilling out of the cage Colken kicked the back of Cane's legs and shoved him towards them. Cane stumbled forward onto his face and looked up just in time to see the slaves fall upon him like wild beasts. Men, women, and children, all of them with the same fury in their eyes, beat Cane until long after he was dead.
Colken was not overly keen on riding, but he knew he had a long journey ahead and he could make up the ground a lot quicker on horseback. One of the horses was a fine, high-stepping black mare, her saddle laden with supplies. Colken patted the horse gently and whispered in its ear before heaving himself into the saddle.
Leaving Gloo's wagon and the other two horses with their supplies for the slaves, Colken turned his horse north and nudged it into motion. After a few paces he turned in his saddle and gave a shrill whistle.
Blue trotted alongside Colken's horse and they headed north. Following the trail of Sorrow.
8.
Bail rubbed his thin hands together and thought fondly of fires. The evenings were cold up here in the mountains and getting colder as they ventured further towards the peaks that rose ever higher like colossal icebergs through the oceans of mist. But a fire could not be risked since it might draw prowling High Bloods to them.
He glanced at Sorrow, who sat staring into nothing, and thought the boy looked paler than usual. “Here,” he said, offering some fragments of biscuit, “it’s not much, but all I have left. We’re going to be living on what we can scavenge for a while.”
Sorrow looked owlishly at the hand that offered the food and shook his head.
“Oh, come on,” Bail sighed, “I know you have no reason to trust me, but I’m hardly likely to poison you, am I? You’re too valuable.”
“The prophecy named you well,” said Sorrow, returning to his intense study. “You are the Crooked Man, crooked in every word and deed. I would not trust you if you asked for water when dying of thirst. I’ll accept nothing from you.”
“Oh, enough,” Bail snapped. “Yes, I sold you into slavery, but let it serve as a lesson to you. The world is a hard place, full of hard people. And listen, I’m scum and a bad lot and I know it, but at least I came back for you. That has to count for something, surely?”
Sorrow thought before replying. “You did not come back out of the goodness of your heart,” he said eventually. “The Crooked Man thinks of his own profit, always. What happened to the money you got for selling me?”
Bail looked sharply at him. “You’re uncommonly shrewd for a brat. Sometimes it pays to keep your mouth shut and not ask awkward questions.”
“Does it? And why should I be cautious? You listen for a moment. I have nothing. My mother and father are dead, along with all my kin. I am the last of my people, the only one in the whole of the living world. All I have is you, a criminal who betrayed me for the sake of a few coins, and you don’t want me asking awkward questions. Well, to the Hells with you, blue-eyes.”
Such forcefulness coming from a child’s mouth made Bail feel uneasy, and he wondered, not for the first time, if he had made a mistake in rescuing Sorrow. “I imagine the tribe that spawned you would be a match for anyone,” he said, rubbing his bristly jaw.
“We were nomads and thinkers, not fighters, though we would fight if we had to. Men covered in metal came and slaughtered my people during the night. I lived, thanks to a blow to my head that knocked me out but did not kill me. More is the pity.”
Bail wondered who had committed the massacre. Some roving band of cutthroats, out for food and plunder? There were enough of them roaming the land in the aftermath of the civil wars, remnants of defeated armies or soldiers cut loose without pay now that their services were no longer needed. The forests and highways were also plagued with another class of robber, once peaceful men turned to banditry after the loss of their homes and families. To any of these, a group of peaceful nomads like Sorrow’s kin would have been easy meat.
Bail felt a twinge of pity for the boy. It wasn’t much, a mere pinprick in the solid wall of self-interest that made up most of his character, but it was there. Perhaps he did owe some sort of explanation.
He took a pull from his flask and wiped his mouth with a grimy hand. “I’m going to tell you a few bits of truth, Sorrow,” he said, “which you should take as a compliment, because truth is not something I deal in very often. I came back for you because the money the Moon-Walkers gave me was false, a clever enchantment. A couple of days after leaving you, I woke up in a roadside inn with the innkeeper in a red rage hammering on my door. The coin I had given him had turned to mud overnight, as had all the money in my purse.”
Sorrow looked at him, and a wry smile crawled up one side of his face. He clearly liked what he was hearing.
“To jump out of bed, ignoring the protests of the cheap slut next to me, drag on my clothes, and hop out of the window was easy. What did not come easy was dealing with my sense of outrage and desire for vengeance. Let me tell you, there are many criminals in this world—crooks and cut-purses, blackmailers and murderers—but the worst are those who renege on a deal. I determined to have my revenge on the chief of the Moon-Walkers, and rode back the way I had come until I picked up on their trail. I had been trailing them ever since, waiting for the best time
“The best time?” asked Sorrow. Bail nodded and pulled out a slender wooden tube from the recesses of his filthy, travel-stained robe.
“The people of these mountains are not the only ones to use blowpipes,” he said. “I waited until the Moon-Walkers were passing beneath one of the towers, and then shot their chief with a dart. My darts are very small and tipped with an ingenious poison, the ingredients of which I learned from…well, never mind. It paralyses on impact, though the victim remains very much conscious, and is conscious as the poison burns through his veins and pollutes his blood. A horrible death to inflict on anyone, no? But most satisfying.”
Sorrow was no longer smiling. Sensing his disapproval, Bail shrugged and put away the blowpipe. “He deserved it, just as his people deserve to be slaughtered by those savages from the tower. Nobody makes a fool out of me.”
“A crooked man, and a killer,” said Sorrow in a sad voice, and Bail nodded.
“I am, yes, but much more than that,” he replied, “for I am a prince among killers, a slayer of whole nations. You know I am from the Winter Realm?”
Sorrow nodded. “A freezing island in the middle of stormy seas, full of tall men with cold blue eyes and hair the colour of straw. My people knew one or two stories about the place. I didn’t like them much.”
“Then you will probably know the realm was governed by kings, but no longer. The last King, old Samuel, died a few years ago. Both his sons had died before him, and he left behind only his granddaughter, a sickly girl just three months old, to be queen.”
He paused, relishing the climax of his tale. The wind had dropped, and silence had fallen like a blanket over the stark, mountainous landscape.
“I killed her,” he said, with a note of pride in his voice, “I poisoned both her and her mother in one fell swoop. The Queen was well guarded, you see, and almost impossible to get to. Then it dawned on me that all I had to do was poison her mother, whom I knew insisted on breast-feeding the child herself. That way the poison would pass from mother to daughter. The ploy worked like a dream, and to this day ranks as my finest achievement. With the line of monarchs now extinct, the Winter Realm soon slid into chaos, and it is all my doing.”
A round of applause was not forthcoming. Sorrow was staring at him with wide eyes. He said nothing, but Sorrow’s expression was eloquent enough.
Again, Bail shrugged it off. “You think me a monster, but it was all in the line of business,” he said, stifling a yawn. “Unfortunately, my master met with an accident not long after, and I was forced to flee my homeland. I wound up here, in ancient, civilised, rotting Temeria. After many wanderings, I took up employment with the late General Harsu, who thought to make himself emperor and unite the land. I killed him as well, partly for money, and partly out of spite. Harsu was a sick dog, and I like to think I did the world a favour.”
“If I was old enough and strong enough,” said Sorrow, very slowly and seriously, “I would kill you.”
“Perhaps you will have the chance, one day, but for now you are my property, and I will use you as I like. There are many other slavers in Temeria, proper men of business whose money will not turn to shit in my hand, and I intend to find one and sell you again.”
The Path of Sorrow Page 14