by Adrian Selby
“Stone it, Amo!”
Ruifsen’s right. He’s speared each of them once, then again, each in turn as they hold hands over the holes he’s making, retching or whining feebly. He seems calm, a bit sad, like being on a brew is putting on an old and favourite coat that don’t quite fit, and that was how it always was when he was risen. I only feel sad because I have to let this boy drop when I haven’t finished breaking his head up, and I take up my sword, hope there’s someone else I can kill.
I’m outside. I can’t think. Talley’s overdone the brew, I want to squat and shit it out, but I can hear screaming and I want to be about it. It didn’t used to be like this, did it? Yame, Heddirn and Caryd step out of the longhouse, Cherry following. She’s singing a song, bits of flesh and bone in her hair, on her cheek. Caryd’s hands are shaking as she tries to fill a betony pipe in the doorway, green eyes filled with hunger for it.
Then I clear, I resolve, a drooper cresting the hill of her return to the brew’s bab, peeling the scabs off to better infect herself. Helsen is lifting and smashing a heavy mallet into a couple of bodies, putting his heart and back into it. He got wounded and he’s telling them about it. To the side of the longhouse, at the smithy, I see Gravy holding down a man before him, over a horse trough, knife at his throat, other hand pulling down his leggings.
“They’re not all dead, Gravy, we still got work to do. What the fuck are you doing?” I shout.
He flashes me a look, his eyes are empty, wild. The brew’s got hold of him when it should be the other way around.
Agura comes up behind me, says, “Leave him. Least they deserve and he probably hasn’t had it in a long time.”
“That’s right, Ag. I’m takin’ this one, goin’ to give him something big to die on.”
“No fucking way.” Course it shouldn’t matter to me after what these whiteboys have done, the good people nailed to the walls, but we’re not them. Take the life, pay it back clean, win over the beaten, whatever side they’re on. I run over, and being honest, I don’t like Gravy. Rain’s heavier now, a frenzy in it, a hate. I’m behind him and get a good swing at his side, his ribs, as he starts jabbing at the man, who’s keening and cowed with fear.
Gravy don’t feel the blow at first, kicks the man’s legs a bit further apart. So I kick the back of his knee and he falls to the side, jumps back up, knife held out, leggings at his feet. The other man hobbles away, unable to move much either with his own pants at his feet, and he begins pulling them up. Nazz steps up to the whiteboy as he’s dragging his leggings up to his waist and flattens him just as Agura splashes up behind me, a moment too quick for me to react, her own fist smashing into the back of my head, sending me to my knees. Gravy steps to me then, and his arm goes back, ready to stab me. I spin out of the way to the side of him, my balance gone. She hit me good.
“Put your cock away, Gravy, we’re done,” says Nazz. “Agura, step back or I’ll cut you to fucking pieces.”
My hand twitches, the blade in it is too dry, thirsty. “In’t there more to kill, Nazz?”
“No, Teyr, we’re done. They’re all dead bar this one Gravy was fancying. You need to stone it out now, go cold. And it isn’t Nazz, it’s Captain.”
I smell Ruifsen then, the underlying stink of peat in summer seemed always to be his smell when he was wet and worn out from a battle. He comes over from the almshouse, head to foot black and slick with blood. The smell of them all, alive, new dead, old dead, comes at me like a thousand voices demanding attention. I put a hand to my nose, start crying. Ru kneels next to me, puts a hand on my shoulder and begins the hum, the note I use for stoning. There’s no other sound now than the rain, the breathing of us all about the outpost, the sickening smell of the dead that have been opened. It don’t last a moment.
“I’ll fuckin’ kill her. I’ll kill you, Amondsen, you pox-ridden cratch!”
“What’s up, Gravy?” says Drogg.
“No fucking, apparently.”
“No rape, no,” I says.
“Amondsen, leave it,” says Nazz. He looks up, looking to the cold rain for his words.
“No rape, not this crew. I learned once you have to win the hearts and thoughts of those you leave behind, or they’ll just be an enemy behind you.”
Gravy snorts at that.
“Don’t fucking push me, Gravy. No rape.” I look up at Nazz and he’s struggling, as much, I expect, to stone what the brew’s taking as he is laying down his orders. This isn’t how a successful raid ends. And it gnaws at me that something’s not right with him.
“Happy to agree to that,” says Cherry, calling over from where she is looking after Caryd.
“Me too.” That’s Ruifsen.
“And me,” says Talley, who was up on the outpost’s wall near us, her bow still in her hand. The inked tears on her head shine with the rain and the torchlight. She should be prepping us for paying colour, but her speaking seals Nazz’s authority, as it should. Drogg is about to say something but Gravy knows better and puts a hand up to silence him. You might think many things of the captain you’ve been given to lead you, and you might feel that a few bad calls give you the right to mutiny, or slack or make his life hell. But if your drudha speaks, you listen. Your drudha’s your life, raises you up, brings you down, heals you, mixes your copper coin recipes, even improves them if they’re well disposed towards you.
Ru’s humming has stopped. He’s putting an ointment on the back of my head where Agura’s glove broke the skin.
“You,” says Nazz, calling over the man Gravy was about to mount. He stands up, stumbles forward, head bowed. Nazz motions for Heddirn to step forward from the longhouse to the man’s side.
“You don’t need much imagination to know how many ways we can make things bad for you, so let’s do this respectfully. Can we do that?”
He nods. Heddirn puts a hand on his shoulder, which he tries to shrink away from, shoulders all turned in with fear. He’s a young man, lumps of the white chalk gluing fragments of his beard and hair together where he hasn’t washed them properly. His cheekbones draw strong lines, small nose, fairly obvious why Gravy had juice for him.
“Where you from?”
“I’m Eeghersen, east of Elder Hill.”
“Eeghersens have sworn for Khiese, then.”
He nods again.
“Elder Hill?”
“Belongs to the Crutters.”
That got a murmur, and my heart sinks a bit. Might as well be a war now. I see Nazz look up at Talley. Threeboots has joined her, slippy enough that none of us noticed, but that was always her way. Word of this seems to give them a shared pause, like it means something else. I look then for Salia and she’s standing under the bit of thatch overhanging the doorway to the stables. She’s also watching Nazz and Talley.
“Where’s Khiese?” he says to the whiteboy.
“I don’t know. I really don’t. You don’t have to—”
“Don’t I?” Nazz growls.
“We were to hold this until more of us—well, his men—got here. He don’t tell us where he’ll be; it makes sure we’re ready in case he comes.”
Nazz looks at him, eyebrows raised, for here we are, him the only one alive. He glances at Heddirn. It takes a moment, his arm hooking around the young man’s throat, a jerk, his neck cracks and he falls to the ground. Nazz turns to face us all then.
“We’re going south in the morning, to Ablitch Fort. We need to know it’s still loyal to the chief. We move into the Circle through the Gassies. Sedgeway’ll be rife with wagging chins, and seems like the Crutters might’ve cut a deal with Khiese, the way they were going on at Othbutter. I seen some big pots of this chalk paste they’re using in the longhouse there. I think it’ll help us.”
It was miserable news for all it was the right call. The mosquies and the bogs’d be hell, but first we had to pay the colour. The next day or so we spent among the dead while we retched and shat, cried and smoked mixes that give us feathers and stopped us from breaking
our bones with the shakes.
Ablitch
There’s theits around Ablitch that have dug out dykes to drain parts of the marshes to plant barley, flax and wheat. Going into Ablitch was easy in that regard for these are the older clans that live about, more trails making the going easier, and a few of these trails was where my own company had started to drain the land around before it all went wrong.
Takes three silver pieces to get one of the marsh Families to give us rubs to help with the bites and leeches, for we have much further to go east and none of us knows the ways. No amount of coin is going to get anyone to join us however; every good hand is priceless making good the harvest while the plant and crops was growing freely and the birds, deer and salmon in such good supply. Who’d go into the Circle now anyway?
Ablitch Fort is where things start getting worse, though it’s not Khiese’s yet. There’s about fifty of Othbutter’s men there, some of which come with me on the first trip. They ask how things went and I tell them, and they have been wary of the news north and the whiteboys, though Ablitch won’t be easy to overrun till the Gassies marshes freeze in winter. The men are repairing the walls with the trees about. We stop for a day and a few of us help Helsen sniff about for the plant for our belts. He sniffed plant for me prior to all this of course so I knew he was good and the drudhas Talley and Yame are glad of him. Those at Ablitch that had come with me on the first run through the Circle light candles for our dead. Some remember Mosa fondly for he was always about the van asking questions and wasn’t shy. Nazz makes a good impression while we’re there, is good telling them to hold Ablitch and protect their own families. At one point he says that a big crew didn’t do us no favours first time through and it won’t now. His comment has Cherry mouthing off, feeling he’s insulting me and Eirin; and I’m not able to calm her much. Feel like we need to kill some whiteboys to give us a sense of our shared purpose.
We’re a walking banquet in the marshes. The rubs we bought were shit, might as well be adding seasoning to our necks, eyelids, hands and anything else exposed while we walk and sleep. Horses are all jumpy with it and all. Those of us with proper colour don’t have it as bad, but it seems the mosquies are willing to drink almost anything. I laughed at Gravy yesterday for his lip and an eye was puffy with bites, told him it looked like the mosquies had the better of him in a bar fight. Took Heddirn and Ruifsen to get him off me and he split my lip in exchange for me flattening his ballbag. I think we all felt a bit better after that, letting go some of the bitterness we was feeling.
Now the afternoon’s getting on and we have rain, no cover either out here barring the odd few copses, just the bogs, lakes and grasses, treacherous going for all it feeds us and gives Talley some fresh plant for her recipes. Helsen proves himself again today as he has done since we got into the Gassies, finding butterbur and blue flag, and fresh lobelia most of all, for it is strong at easing the price of the colour.
“You seem to have an eye for a good path, Teyr, so how come we’re here?” says Salia. Salia’s drudha, Yame, laughs at this, standing with us at the edge of a lake I’d led us to. The reeds and grasses I thought was a path disguised a treacherous run of big pools, deeper than they first looked, and then this lake.
“We’ll set here for tonight,” calls Nazz. “Hedd, once we’ve set camp, take Gravy and Helsen with you, back to that copse, get us some wood. Keep to the markers, the Gassies is always hungry.”
I spend a moment looking for something to come back at Salia’s shitty comment with but I’m tired.
“Why don’t you try a spot of fishing instead of behaving like a puckered cinch?” I says. This gets a snigger from Heddirn, sensing something’s off.
She smiles then, reminding me of better times. “I meant nothing by it, Teyr. Bad enough with Gravy, Drogg and that awful Agura. The purse will bind us, hand and heart.”
“Hand and heart,” I say, looking to draw a line under it so I can get on my pipe and get some sleep.
“Didn’t seem to matter down in Marola, the purse,” says Ruifsen.
“Back off, Ru,” says Nazz. “This is old, it won’t help us now.”
“Besides,” says Threeboots, “you in’t exactly blameless, as I recall.”
“Wait, wait,” says Caryd. “I want to get my pipe for this, enjoy it properly.”
“What happened, Master? Can we trust them?” says Cherry.
This has gone bad rather quick. Fucking Ru. I love him, but I can see now, the look that’s on him, he’s still carrying the guilt he felt when first we saw each other back here in Hillfast after Marola, when he was cutting himself with the betony and had to be tied up so his brother could do his nails to stop him ripping his skin off. None of us was innocent in Marola, but I thought we’d never shit on each other till it happened.
“We got greedy, if you lot want a story,” I says. “Might as well get it out there so we can put it away again. We landed in Jua, me, Ru, Nazz, Threeboots and Salia here. There was a drudha with us too, Thad.” I take a moment, remembering us at the Almet, his delight at seeing the seed. His arm around me.
“We picked up with a company of Juan spears going south into Marola. This was the end of the Orange Empire, the Harudans, who had occupied Marola and all those other lands about. The Marolans wanted to resettle their lands, which had Harudan families on them for generations. Started out as a bloodbath. Our job was to see the Marolans and Harudans agree a peaceful repatriation. Soon enough we got the Harudans moved off the lands without much bother, taking whatever wealth they could pack on a wagon, leaving soil, crops, groves and the rest unsullied. We did some killing at the start, while all this was getting settled, but soon we found ourselves earning plenty of coin for little more than overseeing that the Harudans did just that, leave peacefully taking nothing more than they was due. In turn we’d ensure the Marolans didn’t get bloodthirsty about it.
“Soon become obvious that coin could be made on top of the purse to ensure that the scrolls was forwarded and processed more quickly, or that a bit more might be taken away than was formally agreed and scrolls adjusted with the rubbing of some treated guira. It all got even easier when we was moved down to the border between Harudan and Marola, where the disputes and the opportunities to profit from them multiplied as land was parcelled up and split. I was given more and more of the responsibility for the central borders, more clearks, more soldiers, and so Nazz here said he could pick up half of it. He used to be a good captain, he was my captain for a while so I know. I just didn’t think this lot would fuck me over. I thought I could trust them to keep things easy and quiet, not get greedy.” There’s a heavy moment then, those not in that old crew thinking it would kick off, but Threeboots and Salia are making their pipes, Ru has his head bowed and Nazz is just staring straight at me, cold as ice.
“Word gets to me of some Marolans and Harudans who wasn’t so badly disposed to each other finding Nazz and his clearks are skimming them both. I have to assume he’s a useful ganger these days because then he learned how completely fucked-up stupid that is. So I’m put on the spot, aren’t I? I have to investigate him. Well I told him, didn’t I. I said, ‘Nazz, what the fuck is going on. Cool it down while I make amends.’ And I made out it was scroll errors and got rid of some clearks, even cut a couple of hands off, sold them out to protect this one here. ‘You’re right, Master,’ he says. ‘We’ll settle it down.’ And they didn’t.”
“You’re forgetting, Teyr, you’d been stashing the gold that Khasgal showered on you all over the Sar, your castellan tithes, while we had only silver to count,” says Nazz.
“Fuck me, you whining bastard,” says Gravy. “‘Only silver to count.’ Hear that, Drogg? He’s all miserable at the silver coins they got themselves piles of. You got no fucking clue what suffering is sat on your dock fleecing honest workers of their coin at the tip of a dagger from one of these bootlickers.”
He’s forgot himself. Threeboots stands, as do Heddirn and Caryd—her betony shakes gone
, with some of her good sense. Caryd takes her bow from the ground, arrow from the quiver next to it, and I don’t even get the chance to do more than breathe in to shout before her arrow’s through Gravy’s face. He tries to get up, his eyes looking down a moment at the shaft in his cheekbone. Then he’s gone, a moment later. Heddirn’s sword is up at Drogg, who’s also risen but looks shocked at what’s just happened. I look back at Caryd, and she’s already aimed another arrow at me.
“You should, Caryd—put an arrow in me. It’ll stop me dreaming. Stop me waking.”
“Shut up, Amondsen. Nazz is our captain. You’ve forgotten how a crew works? I’m not wondering any longer why you fucked it last time out, and now your self-pity and bitterness is getting people killed.”
I look down at Gravy and I’m sorry for him. I got no answer for her, despite her twisted reasoning. I told my story and got bitter about it in the telling. Silence, barring the life around us chipping, croaking and calling. Ru’s on his feet, then everyone is. I stand and step forward, a movement she matches.
“Teyr,” says Nazz, “don’t. She’ll do it. She’s cold.” And she is. Betony takes a lot of what makes someone sympathetic. Caryd seems empty, for all that she’s shining with that sureness of being young and rightful.
“She’s right, Captain, I shouldn’t have talked about you that way. I’m going to take a spade from the packie, going to bury Gravy just over there, it’s high enough he won’t be led in water. Tomorrow I hope I’ll find us a way out of here. I’ve had some luck so far. Helsen, Ru, can you help me with the body?”
Digging’s good for working out anger. I need to save it for Khiese. Nazz goes over to Drogg, who had obviously known Gravy some years. He’s shouting and stabbing his finger at Caryd, and Nazz talks him down.