by Adrian Selby
“Teyr,” says Three, looking down at the shaft and the dribble of blood seeping from it, looking back at me, “we had no choice. It was a recipe might have saved Hillfast.” She shivers. My black eye can see her song diminishing, blending with the world.
“We know. Salia’s purse is to recover it. For Farlsgrad. But if it was for saving Hillfast, why fuck us over back there? Don’t matter though, does it. You’re dead now, old girl.”
She’s bewildered by this, shudders, falls to her knees. “Nazz, he …” Her eyes widen, death quickening in her. “Tell him that what he gave me I had no right to expect. He saved me. Tell him.” She falls to her side, dead a moment later. Shouts go up nearby, whiteboys move on Ruifsen and Yame. No more time to look upon this girl, the troubles she had and the troubles she give me as we made our fortunes over the world. I draw my sword and Salia wastes no time either in getting hers and coating it again with the paste in her scabbard.
Ruifsen and Yame do a good enough job with the whiteboys and cut them down. I look up in the trees for sign of Cherry but she’s moved, hopefully to get a better view down onto my fort.
“They might have moved further uphill. I need to get in the fort—there’s a way, cave around the far side, a narrow tunnel into our longhouse. The only sure route bar scaling a cliff is down and right around the fort. Salia, I need you with me. I got nothing for the white spiders in the tunnel, so we’ll have to hope we don’t get our faces in a web.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“What about us?” says Yame, looking at Salia, nervous about being left with a far less capable sword for a partner.
“Kill whiteboys. Use the chalk, act like one of them till you’re close enough,” says Salia.
“She’s right, the confusion Nazz and his crew have caused will be enough to make them think twice,” says Ru.
“Salia, can you find Cherry and get her read of what’s going on in the fort, then follow me.” I point out the route around the fort to the river at the far side where we’d meet before I take her to the cave.
Far off, a deeper horn sounds. More like a war horn. It’s only then I remember where I’d heard it before, for it brings a tear to my eye before I even recognise it. It sounded in Khiese’s camp, that night, in triumph as I dug the hole for Mosa.
We say nothing more, we have to get in the fort and at least try and kill Gruma, hurt Khiese as much as we can before he comes and ends it.
I move swiftly downhill, no more whiteboys ascending towards Nazz’s crew, no guards on the walls of the fort, though the shouting and crying is increasing. A horn then, blowing its screech, silencing them a moment.
Gruma calls out, “Khiese comes! You should run, Teyr Amondsen. You do not want to be killed alongside your brother and his child. Let them pay the price for your return, as Mosa did, as Aude will.”
The children in the fort can’t help themselves, they cry out again. I don’t break my stride. I pick my way through the thickets of trees on the far side of the plant runs that fan out from the main gate. As I near the river, a clash of swords. There’s bodies of whiteboys lying about, as good as a trail. I duck behind a tree, hiding myself from that direction, and I see to my right Heddirn’s body. Blood still rolls out of his wounds, the steam of his body on the brew still giving off a wisp. Around him are eight or nine whiteboys dead. I lean out and see Nazz, two whiteboys on him. He’s holding his side, his glove black with blood. Looks like there’s four or five more dead around him. His sword wavers as they move in, a trick. He parries with surprising speed and power, runs one of them through, brings his sword up just as the other one, with an axe, swings side on at him. His sword takes most of the force out of it but the axe still hits him, the blade unable to bite, stopped by his own steel. I sprint towards him as the whiteboy goes to swing the axe again, Nazz on one knee, dropped and gasping from the power of the first blow, but I’m too late, the axe lodges in his collarbone and he cries out in fury more than pain, that it ends like this. The whiteboy turns, eyes widening as he sees my sword slide into him. Held by his ribs, I use the sword and my free hand to pull him down, then finish him.
“You’ll finish me as well then?” Nazz says as I stand over him. He’s breathing hard with the brew. There’s a fear in his eyes that he thinks I might mistake for anger or hate.
“You look done as it is and I’m not sorry, Nazz. Marola was evil after what I did for you, but leaving us to die out here? You was never going for Khiese, were you? We worked it out. Salia come over from Farlsgrad to track who it was won the bet for the recipe, and your girl Caryd was the subject of the wager. She smelled it on you all back at Crimore—Gaddy’s Mash. You’re on their army’s new fightbrew. But Othbutter finds out you won the recipe, don’t he, and he’s got his claws in you, which is why you been a success so long. So before Khiese comes for him he’s looking to make some sort of pact then, with who, Citadel Forontir? Argir? An army to come in and take the Circle back for him?”
“Clever girl, Salia. Caryd didn’t look much going through the tourney, but that’s her way. This lord of Farlsgrad had his champion, a good one, and the betting was against her. I made a lot of coin, but the recipe was going to set me up purple and gold. Until Othbutter found out. Othbutter threatened to have me shipped to Farlsgrad—it’d ruin him if they thought he was involved—but then this cunt Khiese starts up and Othbutter knows he’s fucked and got nothing more to lose. He can’t sell it to Khiese because he’s a zealot, a man of ideas, not coin. He won’t be bought because he’s after the staff. Othbutter can’t turn to Farlsgrad of course, while the Crutters and Kreigh, even Carl, they all got an idea to be chief clan so he can’t go to them. We both know he’s fucking useless. So yes, I was going to Forontir, Argir, whoever would put up soldiers to help him, if we gave them this fightbrew. There was nobody better to get us through the Circle than you, but then we hit Khiese in Crimore and it was clear he was mad to get at you. I can’t pretend I’m proud of what I did leaving you back there, but everything I worked for is on the line and you weren’t getting in my way. Khiese finds you, he forgets about me and my crew.”
“Why did I expect anything more of you? But why you, Nazz? You could’ve sent a crew, not come yourself.”
“I told you, this brew sets me up for life. I wasn’t trusting anyone else to bring it through and couldn’t trust many anyway if word got out I had it. Gangers’ friends are only a good purse from being enemies. So he sends me out here hoping he can make some proper alliance if we can get through. You being caught and back at Hillfast sealed it. We knew you wouldn’t come back out here, not for a purse, not looking at what you are now.”
I want to cave his head in, but it won’t help me. “I’ll have the recipe for this fightbrew and the bags of it on your belt. Tell me you don’t want me to get revenge on Khiese. Revenge for my son.”
“Won’t bring him back, will it. You made your choices, I made my choices. We got people killed we wish we hadn’t, all our lives. Only difference between us is you think you can pay out, but you can never pay out because the colour takes everything you have, one way or another. I didn’t hide from it.”
“No, the only difference between us was that there was a point where the killing started to hurt me. You never got that far. You got cold about it. I got nothing more to say to you, Nazz.”
“You haven’t. She hasn’t, has she, Talley?”
Fucker. The tip of Talley’s sword touches my neck. “Sword, Amondsen.”
Nazz can’t smile, like he would have. He’s blowing, trying to control the pain even through the brew. I hold my hand out, drop my sword. I loved that face once, his eyes that could speak almost better than he could, though he never learned how to use them. I throw myself forward onto him, for Talley’s high on their brew and will be too fast for me to turn and attack her. I unsheathe my knife as I drop; my knee hits his chest, and I cut away a bag of their fightbrew from his shoulder belt before rolling off him and away from her. He grunts in agony. She st
eps forward to engage me, caught out a moment, but I’m crouched and stepping away in a stance. Bloody stupid really, with only a knife. I’m betting she doesn’t have the heart to finish someone so recently sharing her cause.
“Another time then, Teyr,” she says. “Have you seen Threeboots?”
“I have.” She’s not showing an intent to take me on; her mind’s on her own master’s wounds, a challenge to heal him, keep him alive.
He’ll know what I meant by my words, and her last words I’ll keep for he didn’t deserve the comfort her final words might have brought him. I run on through the trees, feeling like they’ll somehow, he’ll somehow, get away from this. Like he always does.
Salia is at the river signing to Cherry up in the trees on the far side of the camp on the hill. She’s already seen me running towards her.
“What’s happening?” I says.
“Gruma’s got the whole family out in the main run, outside the longhouse. Ten whiteboys in there, thirty or more killed out here. Nazz’s crew did some good work at least on Gaddy’s Mash.”
“We have to get in there. The tunnel, we drop into it. Won’t be pleasant—bats, other things, the spiders that live on them all. I know the route through. Stay close, I’m immune to their venom.”
We run low along the side of the river, out of sight of the walls, facing the sheer side of the hill that the fort is built against. Over the noise of the stream there’s shouting, screaming. Something awful is happening inside the fort. Salia isn’t saying if Cherry has signed what it is.
I find the footholds and handholds. She follows my lead, up twenty feet or so to a lip, edge along the lip, the face of the rock flattens, the size of a bed perhaps. There’s a hole there, our family’s secret exit out of the fort. I look down inside it, my black eye revealing the heat off the mound of bat dung, the crawling insects and beetles over it are loud enough, as is the scritching of bats, a sharp green flicker to the eye. I drop, land shin-deep in their shit, near the bottom of the mound. Salia drops rather more stealthy behind me, a sharp breath as she tries to control the urge to gag and vomit. I find the leftmost of the four holes dug to lead any unwanted people away to their deaths and whisper for her to crawl after me, her luta allowing her some sense in the blackness beyond the cone of light from the entrance. Hoods up, masks on and heads down, we move through the tunnel, thankful the bats wasn’t aggravated by us.
Water runs over our hands, holes in the rock around us, a larger cave then, the ledge cut across it slick with dung. I feel the subtle pressure of a web, smooth as a Roan headdress, as my hands and head push through it. It gives me pause. A big web anchored here and no doubt the cavern’s roof a few feet above us. We’re being watched. I doubt Salia feels it as I do, but still she senses the web.
“How big?” she whispers.
“The only ones I saw was about the size of your hand. Da said he saw one bigger, size of a dog, but I think he was trying to scare me. What would it eat down here?”
“Keep moving, Teyr.”
Something skitters in front of me, eyes glowing. I flick my hands out as they move forward, but it drops away out of sight before I can get it. Then we’re back in a hole for a few feet more crawling and out into a space where we can stand again. This at least seems clear of webs. I’m dizzy with the thick hot air from the dung; there isn’t long before I’m going to pay the colour.
“What’s this?” she says, feeling the wooden boards before us.
“They lift off in a specific order. I have to hope that it’s only the store cupboard that’s still in front of them.”
Taking each down from where they were slotted, I listen against the panel behind them. Nothing nearby.
The panel creaks as I move it aside. The cupboard is in the longhouse larder. Before us are piled furs—musty, feeding moths. I feel for the catch and open the door into the larder. The door is shut at the end of a narrow room that is piled with shelves on either side, smells of oil, cheese, barrels of barley and beer, though all are overpowered by the stench of us, what we’ve crawled through. The longhouse beyond is also quiet, all the noise outside now. I risk opening the door a touch. Salia is unshouldering her bow, unbuckling the cap on her quiver. She covers me as I step into our longhouse, lets me take her sword, a simple weapon of exquisite steel, almost as beautiful as she is.
The doors at the far end of the hall are open. The firepits are lit, smoke making it hard to see the gathering beyond, but the wailing is clear enough. I get a lump in my throat, for the cries are hoarse and beyond despair.
“Your rope is ending, Amondsen! How many more must I kill before you have the belly to face me?”
Gruma, calling out still. I sign what I can see to Salia behind my back with my spare hand as I walk through the hall and out onto the steps that lead down to the main run; four spears left of the doors, three spears right, bows right forty paces, left thirty and sixty, eight more spears, Gruma with two letnants, two guards and the children. Two dead, one with Gruma, knife at his throat.
“I’m here, Gruma Khiese.” I have to call it over the crying, a woman I don’t recall kneeling over her boy lost in her grief. I feel weak for a moment, me and Aude the same before Mosa. Now Gruma stands, chain armour, my nephew Drun against him and a wicked knife at his throat. Thruun and Skershe are also on their knees, as though he’s prepared the same scene for me. I grit my teeth.
“I knew you were here, for Samma sent us ravens to warn us of a crow. Your crew are giving us good sport up in the trees about us.”
“Your whiteboys are all dead, Gruma. Let Drun go. These people have sworn to your banner; you need kill no more children.”
“I need not have killed any, old crow, had you and your crew obeyed sooner. Not your uncle Kerrig, who put up something of a fight early on. He stood facing us on his own, all these good people leaving him to die, not one standing with him. Not even you, Thruun, though your keep scritched and scritched at you. Not had time to hang what’s left of that old cunt on the fort’s gates, but we will.”
“My brother’s a noke, Gruma—what could he have done, what good would it do?” I look over at Skershe, hoping she’ll not speak against me for this. Her eyes speak plenty. Thruun’s eyes are only on Drun and the knife. I swallow, for I cannot let Gruma see my tears for Kerrig.
“You killed my son and you thought you’d killed me, but here I am, back like the Ildesmur from the dead to avenge him. You’ll die first, Gruma Khiese, then your little brother.”
He’s quiet for a moment, before a smile and then a hearty laugh break out, a cue for some of his soldiers. The guards holding Thruun and Skershe are the two chittering idiots from the Almet who stole the offerings. The woman that was with him then stands as one of the closest spears. Her eyes are moving from him to me. She doesn’t see I am still signing positions to Salia, for I have not stepped forward enough for anybody to see the fingers of my free hand working against the small of my back. Once I’m done I bring my hand round to hold the sword in both. I breathe deeply and focus on Gruma. Prick isn’t going to knife Drun, but I need to make sure of it.
“Your crew will tell Samma that I offered a duel, a chance for you to subdue me yourself, being younger and stronger than me, but you turned it down. You talk of my rope, Amondsen rope, being cut for good. Yet these are all sworn to Khiese now; it’s your own rope you are killing. No honour in that, as you know. I saw cowardice in you at the Almet, Gruma, a shortened step when you stood at the offering bowl and spat. You’re no master, Gruma. Your woman there, your crew, all grovel to your runt of a brother, the littlest of Finn’s boys but the cleverest. Tell me, can Gruma subdue this old crow, from whom his brother has taken everything but he has taken nothing?”
It is silent now in the fort. His jawline tenses, relaxes, tenses.
In these moments he is reminding himself of his size and strength, his youth and speed, for I have reminded him of them. A flush is coming over him, fuelled by his brew, which they either cannot or choose
not to stone, and it’s persuading him that whatever skill I have, I cannot hope to match his bind, resist his parrying or his blows. He glows now with the sense of his own power, breathes in, that great chest stretching his mail shirt, arms the equal in girth to Drun’s legs. He’s almost shivering with his brew’s bloodlust, as I’d hoped, though hope’s a strong word for I cannot see the outcome of this until I get a sense of his training, his tells.
He draws his sword to a cheer from his crew. I see the woman who shared his horse back at the Almet lick her lips, smile at me. From his belt he takes a rag and wipes his blade clean. Whistles and more cheering, for he is giving me the advantage in a sense, though he cannot afford for his poison to kill Samma’s prize, for Samma has promised I would die at his own hand.
The knife comes away from Drun’s throat and Gruma lets him go. He runs to Skershe, whose hands are bound and cannot hold him so she kisses him desperately, savagely.
“Come at me then, one sad Khiedsen spimrag about to get cut up by an old Southie cratch with one eye.”
Hard to believe the goading works so well as he steps forward to test me. The tops of our blades are close enough to kiss, both middle standing form. He moves in, swings low. We bind, but I read his line, his weight; I drop the blade to parry, step in and kick his knee, snapping it back flat before pushing his blade off. He steps on the leg gingerly, shakes it. One of his men laughs but cuts it off quickly. I rush him, a thrust, test his footwork. His parry is strong but I keep moving in. He hasn’t anticipated I’d be willing to get close enough for him to use his strength. He’s lost initiative. Before he can grapple or hold me, I kick the side of his other knee, step back ready for a counter.
“Come on, kin killer, this is easy.”
There seems to be a well of heat in him—my eye reads it well—like he brightens, cut out from the air about us.
Two blows, predictable, but he’s using his strength, asserting himself. A moment later he almost kills me. I’m a fraction late in recovering from a cleverly concealed blow, and he’s thrust, sword passing between my leather and the skin of my side, a long cut. It holds there a moment, my armour and body’s movement stopping him from withdrawing the thrust for another. I twist, cry out as the sword bites into my side, get a hand on his wrist to hold him and push my sword into his thigh. I step back as he freezes, stiffens. There’s a thin, vicious line of pain and warmth as I step away from his blade. I’m not bleeding much, feel the leather beginning to stick to the blood as it thickens and clots with the brew in it.