The remains of a sheep smoldered in the fire and greasy bones were still strewn about on the ground. The air was smoky and humid, and stank of latrines too close by.
Black Tur laughed and folded his arms. “We’ve been hard at work, shaman, getting the spoils you see here. Now my men take their ease.”
Loku’s lip curled. “But can you get them up when the time comes to strike?”
“They’ll do their job,” Black Tur gruffly replied. “With another hundred like this I could take Belsoria itself. When our blood’s up we fight like cornered lions.”
“I know nothing of lions, outlaw. What I see here are like the swine we steal and eat from your countrymen’s farms.”
The men standing around growled their discontent at that remark, and a few more blades came out.
Black Tur raised his hands. “You’d find these ones tough to chew, shaman. Did you come to insult my men, or to make me an offer?”
Loku eyed those standing around, and then nodded toward a more private space behind the bandit leader’s tent. “Let us deal in private. I feel greedy eyes on my back.”
Black Tur gestured to his tent. “There’s room in here.”
But Loku shook his head. “Too easy for a knife to find its way into my ribs there. I know the kind of man that leads this band of brigands.”
The outlaw leader laughed again, and led the way into a semi-sheltered alcove between the back of his tent and a towering stack of boxes. Loku made a gesture to his acolytes, and they instantly squatted in place, glaring murderously at the Ostoran thieves around them. Then Loku joined Black Tur.
Shaking something free from a woven pouch he carried, he held it up so the outlaw could see the dying sun’s rays glowing through it. A sizable chunk of greenstone, enough to make any robber’s fingers twitch.
“This is a payment of, how do you call it, at the front? There is more when the task is complete, much more.”
Black Tur took the stone and rubbed his thumb along a smooth face of it. “How much more?”
“A bag full of those,” the shaman replied, holding up his hands to indicate a sizable container. “But here is what you must do. I need Ostoran women, six of them, alive. Any age, bound and delivered to me on the night of the next full moon.”
The outlaw’s eyes narrowed as he inspected the face of the shaman. “You want us to kidnap a handful of civilians? For what?”
“For the gods. They must be virgins all, and see that they stay that way until you deliver them to me.”
Black Tur nodded. “I see. Sacrifices.” He frowned in thought. “Where shall I get them?”
“That is up to you and your men. The Kerathi generals have left these shores and can no more forbid you or I from piercing the settled areas; pick the town you hate the most, where the defenses are weakest. But there must be six virgins, as I said, alive and healthy. Don’t bring me a pack of diseased harlots.”
Black Tur weighed the green gem in his hand. “It won’t make us any more popular in these parts. But it sounds easy enough.”
He chuckled as a wicked gleam came into his eye.
“There’s a town a few miles from here, Dura, where half the menfolk are always off hunting in the mountains and the women strut brazenly through their fields without protection. They don’t think they need it because a few of them banded together and slew four of my men who came calling a while back.” He gripped the gem in his fist. “I think it’s time they learned to fear the name of Black Tur like the other villages do.”
Loku smiled. “So you see, we can both serve our interests at the same time. You must not miss the deadline, though—the night of the full moon.”
“We’ll get them a few days early and hold them in our camp, then.”
“Untouched.”
“Yes. As you say.” Black Tur’s eyes turned this way and that as he mentally calculated the logistics of the kidnapping. Then he turned them on Loku. “What assurance have I that your full payment will come through? Once I attack that town, I can’t back out of this even if you do.”
“You have my word.”
“The word of an outcast, despised of his people? What if you vanish into the wilderness with your gemstones, then what will I do?”
Loku shrugged, making his shaven head bob like a snake, and the tattoos seemed to writhe with a life all their own. “You’d still have the women, to do with as you like. And another defiant frontier village will then be paying you ransom.”
The outlaw nodded. “Just remember that without me, you’ve got no way to appease those dark gods of yours. You wouldn’t get within a mile of Dura without them sounding the alarm on you.” He stared into the dead eyes of the barbarian shaman. “Play me false and I’ll have you gutted. For all your dread magic, sorcerer, you’re still an outcast, a renegade in exile like me. No one will hide you from me if I turn my blades your way.”
Loku’s eyelids lowered, hooded and dim. “None of that is forgotten, great chief of thieves. My vengeance on my people will be as dire, when that time comes, as any justice meted out to the pawtoon. Just see that you have my hostages by the river when the full moon comes.”
Black Tur smoldered for a moment, then nodded. “We’ll be there. If your riches show up on time.”
He smiled with a false creasing of the eyes that hinted at unfriendly thoughts, and laughed brutishly.
Loku hungered for the day when the bandit’s wily face could be made to dance with horror and pain instead of forced mirth.
There was a commotion in the camp beyond the tent, and both leaders hastened back to the open area.
A cluster of outlaws were hedging in the much smaller group of Loku’s acolytes, one of whom lay bleeding out on the ground. One look at the Wolfsbane man and both leaders knew he was doomed—his life was pouring out through a frightful hole in his lean chest. Loku hissed in anger.
“Who dared to assault our allies?” Black Tur bellowed, looking around. “What’s the cause of this?”
There was a shuffle, but no man stepped forward.
“They struck first, chief,” a burly outlaw claimed.
“Struck at you?”
“Not me.” The man held up his hands to show the lack of weaponry that could have been used in the killing.
No doubt the killer had already run into the trees nearby, and his friends wouldn’t be likely to deliver him up now. Black Tur snarled as he held up the green gem Loku had given him. “Here I am, trying to stuff plunder down yer gullets, and you can’t keep your daggers sheathed for five minutes in a row!”
“They’re raff,” a different bandit grumbled. “We ought to kill ‘em all off while we have them in camp.”
“Blood must be repaid with blood,” Loku told the leader of the cutthroats, ignoring the hateful men circled round. “If you cannot turn over the killer, I will take another man in his place. And then you will not see us again until the full moon.”
Black Tur slowly nodded, untrustful of the shaman but eager to preserve the deal he’d made. “Who would you have, then?”
“A life for a life. Kill me… that one.” Loku’s finger pointed upwards at the hickory tree with the sentry half hidden in its boughs.
Black Tur scowled. “Four-Finger? What’s he got to do with it? There’s no arrow in your man’s back.”
“Not this time. Yet it is his life I want in payment for my lost acolyte. I see many things you do not, bandit-chief. And I will have my kill, or our partnership is at an end.”
“Then you’ll not hold us liable for the other, whoever did this and now hides?”
“The life of an outlaw is short,” Loku sneered. “Today’s killer will meet with justice soon enough, I have no doubt. I will consider the blood debt paid if your sentry in the tree dies now.”
The watching men grumbled, but fear prevented any from speaking out.
The other acolytes were forming up around the shaman, ignoring the body of their fallen comrade on the ground. They all faced the bandit chieftain,
waiting to see what would happen.
Black Tur shrugged, his tense face suddenly calm. “Aimer!” he murmured to a man standing nearby, a wiry one who carried a short spear in his hands. “Scale that tree and throw the man down to us. Let’s have an end of this business.”
The men all watched as the wiry man dashed to the foot of the tree and used a rope knotted there to quickly climb into its branches. A shout came from above, but no man moved to interfere.
Loku stepped behind two of his men just before an arrow sailed out of the branches in his direction. It skipped harmlessly away on the packed dirt, and Loku stepped out into the open next to Black Tur again, smiling in satisfaction.
The body of the sentry fell from the tree and landed with a thud twenty paces from where the two leaders stood. Blood seeped from a stab wound in the four-fingered man’s gut, but it was the fall that had finished him so quickly.
“Well enough,” Loku nodded. He turned to the leader of the cutthroats. “The full moon, by the river. I will find you, and you’d better have what I need.”
“You’d better have what I need,” Black Tur replied, his tone surly but not overly bothered by what had just occurred.
Loku half turned to go, but then swiveled his head and fixed Black Tur with one blazing eye. His voice was raised in sudden intensity.
“A last warning for you, bandit king. You’d do well to bulk up your strength of numbers while you can. The absence of Kerathi troops in these lands makes for many opportunities. I foresee cycles of bloodshed in the coming months, but only those with the stomach for it and the manpower to see it through will benefit.”
Black Tur gazed back at the man. “We’re a tight-knit lot. That’s our strength.”
“It won’t be enough, not when it comes to pitched battle. Recruit from among the ranks of the disaffected and the leaderless, and you’ll have what it takes to become a true force to be feared in this land.”
“You’re thinking of starting some fights you don’t know if you can handle alone, is that it?”
“Just mark these words. Now is the time to grow your robbers’ band. Soon it will be too late, and you’ll either fall alongside the rest or you will cling to survival at the whim of the dark gods in the forest.”
With that, the Wolfsbane shaman and his surviving men walked quickly out of the camp, faces blank and stony. They left their dead without a glance.
Black Tur shivered as his chosen assassin left the tree and sauntered back to his side, wiping the spear-blade in the dust.
“Those are cold, strange men, Aimer,” he told the man.
“The devil-spawn shaman seems to have deeply laid plans, sir. Let’s never turn our backs to him.”
“Aye. We’ll take the riches he offers. And then we’ll cut his throat before he can cut ours.”
CHAPTER 5: AN ALLY IN TIME OF NEED
Captain Pelekarr opened his eyes and found himself staring at a stone ceiling, vaulted and joined. Clearly he was in one of the older buildings in Belsoria, probably a government building. Probably a jail.
He studied the stonework dispassionately, unwilling to sit up and face the world yet. A world where both his general’s killers lived on while he rotted in jail wasn’t one he was eager to contemplate.
Lying flat on his back on the cool, hard floor made his body ache. How long had he lain there? His head was splitting and his mouth was painfully dry.
He shifted slightly and realized he was still wearing his breastplate and greaves. That would explain some of the aches. But his helmet was gone, which momentarily angered him. It had been a beauty of craftsmanship, a custom job crested with a flowing mane of white horsehair. It would fetch a good price in whatever market his captors pawned it away to, and Pelekarr doubted he would ever see it again.
Another mark in his tally against Chiss Felca.
Water dripped somewhere, and the clink of chains came from the next room over. Leather boot soles slapped on stone flooring as someone heavy sauntered down a hallway outside the chamber he was in, and there were distant groans and mumbled curses echoing around the building. Pelekarr knew a dungeon when he heard one, although this was his first experience as a prisoner.
With a vicious oath he finally attempted to sit up. Lurching upright in a bronze breastplate was difficult enough, and the movement made his head spin so that he was forced to sit still for a long moment.
The light in the cell came from a high window, grated, near the ceiling. From outside he could faintly hear the creak of cart axles, many voices shouting, raucous street music. He had to be near the outer wall of this place. That was something; the darker cells deeper in the dungeon would be reserved for men destined never to be seen again. The fact he wasn’t in one of them meant he might be granted a fair hearing and an opportunity to buy his way out of jail. It also confirmed that Chiss Felca hadn’t died of the wound Pelekarr had given him. Pity.
His head slowly cleared and he discovered he was not alone. A man sat on a stone bench across from him, leaning against the far wall. A young, strong-looking man with the bearing of a soldier. Not unlike Pelekarr himself in age and appearance. Dark brown eyes, dark curly hair a little shaggier than Pelekarr’s. A pronounced jaw and cheekbones with coppery skin. And this man also wore armor, but his was the kit of the Kerathi infantry. A hoplite’s breastplate, greaves, bracers.
Pelekarr knew him, vaguely. It had been nearly a year since they’d arrived at Ostora as newly minted officers in their respective cadres.
“Captain… Damicos, is it?
The other man nodded. “I’m gratified you remember, Ios Pelekarr.”
“My memory is even better when my head isn’t throbbing. We met during joint maneuvers. You’re with the Storm Furies.”
“I was.”
“Well, yes. Infantry unit, no older than my Cold Spears as I recall.”
“Commissioned the same day, along with the Sun Swords.”
Pelekarr winced, feeling his scalp where a thick scab had formed. “What happened to your general?”
“Actually, he’d transferred away just prior to that ugly fight on the beach, and we hadn’t received a replacement yet. So I’ve been leaderless a few days longer than you have.” Damicos hesitated. “I heard about what happened to General Jaimesh. Shameful treachery. I’m sorry.”
“Courtesy of Lord Iscabos.” Pelekarr’s eyes glinted. “Nothing’s forgotten.”
“A bad business all around.”
Pelekarr slowly stood, letting the pain of his aching head and blurred vision fuel the rage he felt deep in his gut. He reached out an arm to the wall to steady himself.
“Those circling wolves laid you down hard,” offered Damicos. “I remember their faces, every one. When we get out of here, when you’re ready to go after them again, I can point them out for you.”
Pelekarr met the other’s gaze squarely. “I’ll take you up on that, Damicos. I’m in your debt already for taking my part in the tavern melee.”
Damicos stretched his legs out and rested his head against the brickwork behind him. “One junior officer must aid another in circumstances such as those. And like I said, I’d heard of the part Felca played in General Jaimesh’s assassination. I was getting sick to my stomach watching him carouse with girls and wine, knowing what he’d done and whose bloody coin was paying for his revelry.”
Pelekarr nodded. “You’re a good man. But it wasn’t your fight, and it’s a shame they dragged you in here with me.” He walked to the cell door. A tall wooden barrier of solid construction with a small bronze grille set at head height, through which nothing could be seen save an empty corridor lit by one torch.
“They’d have sunk their knives into your back before the governor’s guards arrived,” Damicos replied. “And I suppose I was spoiling for a fight anyway. Everything has crumbled so fast on these distant shores… it was either drink until the blackness overtook me, or a find way to fight the chaos. You came through that door with blood in your eyes, and I had to get
involved.” He laughed quietly. “I broke one man’s ankle with a stomp of my boot. If I’d had my sword at my side, I could have done much more.”
Pelekarr eyed the other man, shorter than he by two inches and stockier in build, though lean and muscled enough for spearman. “They do say you’re a vicious fighter, when it comes to it.”
“Do they?” Damicos sat up. “I wasn’t aware I’d achieved anything in the way of a reputation in Ostora yet.”
“When your Storm Furies got into the spirit of the mock warring a little too much, back in the Month of the Olive?”
“Those killings weren’t our fault, and a general’s commission cleared me of the whole affair. They started it.”
“As you say. But a reputation was born.”
Damicos grinned with some satisfaction. “And how about yourself? Captain Pelekarr, the brilliant hothead that Lord Jaimesh always had to reign in. A rising young star from a rich family, with influence at court in Kerath. One to watch.”
Pelekarr rolled his eyes. “Not so rich and influential after all, it seems. Here I am in a cell in Ostora, far from king and country.”
“I like it here,” Damicos meekly replied. “It’s a good place.”
“What, the governor’s jail?” Pelekarr scoffed.
“The jail, not so much. But Ostora, Pelekarr, Ostora. I wouldn’t turn my back on this land so quickly as did those who sailed.”
Pelekarr rubbed thoughtfully at a couple of deep new scratches in his breastplate, the results of the tavern fight. “No. No, neither could I, when it came to it. I was glad of Jaimesh’s stance. I was not ready to leave this place. I’ve hardly sunk my teeth into it yet.” He shook his head and paced the cell. “Only the gods know the future, though, of Ostora or of two young officers who got in over their heads at a bar in Belsoria. What charges are we faced with? Have you been told yet?”
Damicos shook his head. “I know not. But we wounded a few men between us, and at least one will be a cripple. If some die of their wounds…”
“Serious charges, then.” Pelekarr was silent a moment. “But Felca goes unscathed.”
Tooth and Blade Page 4