The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

The dispossessed prince smiles. Did you think it would be easy?

  Not to learn, no—but I thought it might be a bit handier than this once I had it down.

  Your mistake, then.

  Yeah.

  He edged out of the watchtower doorway, squinted around the curve of the wall to his right. From the raised promontory of Dako’s Point, a broad, stepped causeway descended southward over a chaotic tumble of boulders and chunks of collapsed cliff façade each the size of a modest galleon. Beyond, dimly through the fog and the strengthening glimmer of dawn, the lights of Ornley harbor beckoned.

  Footfalls to his left. He whipped around and saw Hald emerge from the gloom, sword in hand. Black marine combat rig and cloak, soot-smeared features—Ringil was expecting him, but it was still a little like meeting an unquiet ghost.

  “All right?”

  The marine commander gestured over his shoulder. “They’re coming up now. Had to brace our way up a chimney from that inlet. Higher than we thought.”

  “Yeah, well, the good news is it looks like we guessed right about these guys. I don’t see anyone on the causeway.”

  Hald grunted and took his own peek round the curve of the tower.

  “It is sense,” he allowed. “If I held the town, and could assume a good watch in the tower, I would not waste men, either, by stringing them out this far from the harbor.”

  More black-clad figures, out of the gloom at his back as he spoke—the marines gathering, two and three at a time, blades out, sooted faces grim. Hald snapped his fingers, gestured for positions. They formed up in a small phalanx. Someone brought up helm and shield for Ringil, the Ravensfriend in its scabbard, a marine-issue cloak and his boots—he put it all on, hefted the shield a couple of times to settle it on his arm, then he faced the men and drew the Ravensfriend from his back. Most of them hadn’t seen that trick before, how fast the Kiriath sheath would deliver up the blade. It sent a brief murmur through the ranks. Gil showed them the slice of a smile.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know how many of these motherfuckers we’re dealing with down in the harbor,” he began. “But I can tell you this much for nothing—the ones in the tower died pretty easily. These are League privateers we’re dealing with, not soldiers. They’re pirate freebooters, out for easy coin. No match for imperial marines, and they do not know we’re coming.”

  Carnivorous grins on some of the faces now, and the murmuring in the ranks grew. Hald tried to look aloof from it, but he couldn’t keep the gleam of anticipation off his face, either. Ringil kept his smile, wore it like a mask. He was underselling the privateers, he knew; they were generally a pretty hard-bitten lot, the League’s hard-nosed mercantile version, in fact, of the Empire’s marine soldiery. Back before the war, privateer crews under men like Critlin Blacksail and Sharkmaster Wyr had shown themselves pretty effective in routing imperial forces both aboard ship and on land. They were maybe not as intensively trained nor regimentally committed as the marines, but most among them would be similarly seasoned in the acts of piracy and coastal assault that passed for naval warfare on the western seaboard. They’d be as savage, as hungry for the slaughter.

  Truth was, barring terminology and the ink on a few contractual documents signed by men who could barely read what they’d put their names to, there really wasn’t a lot to choose between the two sides here.

  But now was not the time for that truth. Some of these men would be dead before the hour was out, and collectively they knew it. So keep up the incentive beat, Gil. Let’s give them that at least.

  “You have the element of surprise,” he said. “And you have your training. Follow my lead, keep my pace. We start slow, but we’ll be taking the harbor wall at a charge. They’re never going to know what hit them. We clean them out, kill anything that gets in our way. And—this is important—if any of them go into the water in the fight, forget them, they’re done. They won’t be getting back out again, that’s a promise.”

  “Yeah, and what if we fall in?” called someone at the back, a grin in the voice.

  “Don’t,” he told them, and the grins all evaporated at the chill in his tone. “I won’t be able to help you, there won’t be time. Now enough of this advisory shit—who wants to open some pirate throats?”

  Growling assent. It wasn’t dissimilar to the elemental thunder he’d set prowling the sky the night before.

  He let it in, he let it carry him forward. Raised an arm. Let it fall.

  Down the broad stepped flow of the causeway, skulking at first, some caution in the pace. Shields carried low, eyes and ears sharp for any straggling resupply coming up for the watchtower guard. Soft, hurried trample of booted feet behind him, no sign of anyone in their path. And now, sketched in fog below, the blunt outlines of the harbor wall looming closer. Nothing to indicate they’d yet been seen. Caution crumbling, flaking away before the heated fact of what they were about to do. Pace already picked up way past any chance of braking—they were sprinting now, they were falling forward, pouring down the steps unstoppable, the heads of men becoming vaguely visible here and there above the line of the harbor wall, there’d be bowmen among them, keep it tight and silent, keep that shrill, hooting cry fenced back behind your teeth. Lips peeling back, grinning hard from the sprint, breath beginning to cost something now each time it’s drawn—

  “’ware raiders!”

  It rang out, high and panicky, from somewhere on the wall.

  Way too late.

  GIL LEAPT THE LAST TWO STEPS TO THE WALL, LANDED AMONG MEN NODding at the edges of sleep. They had perhaps a glimpse of him—a darkened form unfolding, the terrible hiss and glide of the Ravensfriend in the gloom, then it was all blood and screaming as the Kiriath steel found flesh and laid it open. He barely saw the men he killed—pale, blurred faces in the whirl of first contact, shocked, gaping mouths—he knew only that he took the throat out of one—chopped open the neck on a second—took down a third with a slice to the thigh, batted him into the harbor waters with a blow from his shield, the man screamed once, was pulled down, was gone—gutted a fourth on his way past. None among them had managed to even clear their weapons. None among them got out any kind of articulate word before they died.

  Ringil hooked back his head as the howl inside him came loose. The fog eddied, seemed to tear apart around him with the sound.

  And back came cries from along the wall, as if in answer.

  “’ware raiders! This is it, lads!”

  A sneer painted itself on his lips like a lover’s smeared kiss. He piled forward, full tilt into the eddies of fog and vaguely seen forms ahead.

  If the harbor wall was for defense against seaborne enemies and the elements, the causeway behind was made with blunt haulage and commerce in mind. It was wide enough to take an ox cart—or a dozen armed and armored men abreast. Ringil led the imperials in an iron wedge, short swords out to hack and stab. They tore into the disarrayed ranks of the privateers, rolled up a dozen yards of the wall before anyone could grasp what was going on.

  Then, somewhere down the line, a voice of gruff command.

  “They’re coming off the fucking stair!”

  Something dark snapped and snarled inside Gil, something reached out smokily for whoever that fucking loudmouth was. But he lacked the tools to equip it, to send it on its way, and anyway, whatever the dark thing was, it could not find the speaker in the fog, nor break his tongue in time—

  “They’ve taken the tower! Brace up the north end!”

  The cry was taken up. It was the sound of order in the chaos, the sound of their advantage burning down. Ringil reached inside himself. Dredged up a warped, grating roar. Threw back his head again.

  “Whore sons of Trelayne!” He barely understood it as his own voice, it was like something from the Grey Places speaking through him. “Whore sons of Trelayne—come meet your unmaker!”

  And on down the red-running causeway path, bringing the killing steel as he came.

  IT WAS LESS THAN A HUNDRED YARDS TO
THE END OF THE WALL, BUT BY halfway, he was running into harder pellets of resistance and losing men. That rallying, command voice had done something, built something here that wouldn’t give.

  At his left shoulder, the first casualty—some privateer with a cutlass proving more than equal to imperial marine training. The marine went down with a groan. But the wedge held—his replacement stepped right over his body and avenged his death in five savage cut-and-thrust blows. Further on, another imperial grappled with a privateer on Gil’s right, lost the white-knuckled struggle for grip and took a knife blade in the guts, staggered backward with a howl. But he clung on and took his killer with him, over the edge of the causeway into the harbor below. Boiling thrash of water, vaguely seen through the fog, then both men were gone.

  The next imperial slotted right into the gap. The wedge rolled on.

  Salt on the marsh. Mother says …

  It was the boy, Gerin, the cold voice in his ear. Always the same rote words, the icy urchin touch at the nape of his neck that he’d learned better than to ignore in moments like these. Tugging him downward to a crouch …

  Arrow fire came slicing out of the fog.

  “Shields!” he bellowed. His own was already up—the shafts split and feathered it like magic, took down three less wary imperials in an eye blink. They cursed and groaned and tumbled, twisted and fell atop the bodies of men they’d just killed.

  “That’s it, lads! Hold the line!”

  That fucking voice again.

  Yelling from across the harbor at the docks, lanterns coming on. Any element of surprise they’d once had was fast transmuting into the dross of a messy pitched battle. If he didn’t get this nailed down pretty fast …

  He summoned force, summoned voice.

  “Men of Trelayne!” Grateful for once that his own men would mostly not be able to follow the Naomic well enough for it to affect them. “Men of Trelayne, look to the water! The kraken wakes!”

  And leapt forward behind his shield, into the fog and the figures that bulked there.

  He heard the oaths and yelps of shock. A shrill, terrified cry went up from somewhere, a volley of arrows scattered wide and harmless. Briefly, he glimpsed the terror that he’d set loose in their minds, the towering, tentacled bulk, rearing over the harbor wall like some vast, uprooted, upended oak tree, studded with unblinking obsidian eyes. Gray flicker glimpse, there and gone. It didn’t look a lot like the real article he’d faced a few weeks back—way too big, for one thing—but these men were seafarers and they’d come up on a dripping, woven mass of tales about this beast, each more outlandish and distended than the last. Some few might be smart or awake enough to shake off the glamour for what it was, but not many. For the others, their deepest nightmares and fears would do the rest.

  A young privateer ran screaming along the causeway at him, eyes blind with fear. Ringil blocked a wild cutlass slash, stepped aside, tripped the man, and shoved him into the water on the harbor side. Something sinuous and muscular coiled up and around him as he flailed, Gil caught a glimpse of the man’s screaming face being engulfed and really wished he hadn’t …

  “Rally!” The command voice, higher pitched now with desperation. “Rally, you fools! It’s a trick! There’s nothing there!”

  “No, no—there’s something in the water, there is!”

  “The kraken!”

  “It took Perit!”

  “Stand, you fools!”

  Right.

  Time to finish this.

  He cut down two more privateers on his way to the commander. It wasn’t hard to do, the state they were in. Block and slice, hack out the leg from under one, pommel into the face of the other, then the short chop to the throat as he staggered back. He shouldered them out of the way, cleared space for himself with the Ravensfriend and now—the fog was finally clearing, burning off as the day got under way—he spotted the rallying point. The commander stood there on a crate, bellowing at the panicking muddle of men around him.

  “You!” He stalked forward, sword point raised at the man. “Yeah, you! Want to come down off there and give me a fight?”

  The moment seemed to lock up. Men froze in midmotion, weapons half raised, staring. Tendrils of fog, curling back, blown away on a new breeze.

  “It’s him,” someone yelled. “It’s Eskiath, I told you he’s not fucking hu—”

  The commander—by his jacket badges a mere sergeant—came leaping off the crate, blade in his right hand, short ax in his left.

  “With me, lads! Throw this filth back into the sea!”

  Ringil met him in a whirl, shield up to block the ax, Ravensfriend swooping low. Forced the other man to parry clumsily downward with his sword. The ax hit and bounced off the Kiriath blade—evil, twanging pain up through Gil’s elbow and shoulder with the impact. He rode it, jerked the shield edge in, looking for a chop into face or head. But the privateer sergeant was too canny a fighter—he’d already backed up, two looping rearward steps, weaving a figure-of-eight blur with his two weapons to cover.

  “Get in behind this fuck,” he yelled. “Chop him down.”

  But the imperial wedge was already rolling up behind Gil, and the other privateers had opponents of their own to worry about now. Battle was joined, tangled up and snarling across the corpse-littered causeway flagstones. They stared at each other through waxing morning light and an odd moment of calm. Ringil lifted shield and sword, querying.

  “Need a rest?”

  The sergeant brandished his weapons and roared. “Outlaw faggot scum!”

  “Oh, please.”

  He judged the man’s rush, broke it on the instant with his own leaping attack. Led with the Ravensfriend, let the sergeant beat it back with a wild, looping parry and swung in hard with his shield. Got the other man in the chest. Got ground. The ax whistled down and he flung the shield higher, whipped the pommel of the Ravensfriend into the sergeant’s face. Hooked the ax head on the shield edge, ripped the privateer forward off balance, and chopped in under his ribs. The man screamed, swung wildly with his sword arm, but the ax was still snagged and Ringil just leapt back, hauling the clinch. The sergeant tripped or slipped on blood, fell headlong forward at Gil’s feet, still dragged on ax and shield. Ringil flipped the Ravensfriend over from horizontal guard to downward jag, stabbed down hard between the man’s back ribs, shoulder turn and full weight behind the blow. There was mail over the man’s jerkin, but lightweight and cheap, links most likely rusted with time at sea; the Kiriath steel went through it like an arrow at full draw. The sergeant spasmed and groaned, let go his ax haft, and Gil’s shield came free.

  He withdrew the Ravensfriend, judged the man done, looked about for fresh targets.

  But the fight was all but finished. The imperials were still rolling forward, and any discipline the privateers had once had was broken. Strictly mopping up from here on in. Gil stalked about anyway, hamstrung a man here, belted another in the head with his shield, just to speed things up. The imperials fell on his victims and finished them.

  Unexpected glint off the Ravensfriend’s edge—he peered upward through the clearing fog.

  Looked like the sun was going to come out after all.

  CHAPTER 13

  hey came down off the flat rock in single file behind the Dragonbane, giving clefts and blowholes a suitably wide berth. There was more debris from the wreck along the way—crates here and there, like lost dice from some abandoned game among giants; spars and tangled rigging, some of it up-jutting out of gaps in the rock where wind and waves had driven it or perhaps—she shivered slightly at the thought—where it had later been dragged. Here, the smashed ribs and soggy white spill of a shattered flour barrel. There, a scattering of galley pans. And just once, like so much knotted-up wet laundry flung down, a privateer corpse, sprawled bonelessly on the rock.

  A couple of the men made sketched gestures of blessing over the dead man as they went past, some business with open palm and a couple of fingers kissed. Hand to chest, briefly
bowed head. It dawned on a groggy Archeth, as she watched the ritual, that at least half her rescue party were also privateers.

  The others she made for Tand’s men, with the exception of a single young Majak and a pair of marines. But they all followed the Dragonbane as one.

  She went up the line, caught him up.

  “Got these guys eating out of your hand, don’t you?” she said in Tethanne. “How’d you swing that one?”

  Egar shrugged. “Someone’s got to be in charge.”

  “Okay. But … a prisoner of war?”

  “Look around you, Archidi. Things have changed.”

  She let that go, looked out in silence to the rinsed gray horizon and the unquiet sea. The curve of a shingle beach just ahead of them, the rise of jagged uplands beyond. It was a pretty bleak shore they’d wrecked on.

  “You recognize anything?” she asked, more quietly.

  “Not here, no. We’ve got to be a long way farther north than the expeditionary ever made it.” He pointed ahead. “Follow this coast far enough south, there’s a big river delta with Kiriath ruins on the northern shore. It’s where we burned the lizard rafts with your father’s machines. We need to find that river. Then I’ll know where we are. Then I can get us home.”

  They reached the limits of the flat rock, jumped down into the crunch of the shingle. More flotsam strewn along the strand ahead of them, some of it still washing around in the shallows. She stopped, shaded her eyes, and looked farther out, saw a bobbing carpet of the stuff there as well. No sign of any intact portion of the ship itself.

  Further along the beach, someone had built a driftwood fire. Pale flames, barely visible in the harsh gray daylight. Men huddled around, jostling for warmth.

  Archeth nodded at them. “How many we got?”

  “Thirty-four, all told. I sent another party to scout the rocks southward, see if we find anybody else.”

  She glanced back at her rescue party. “What’s the split?”

  Another shrug. “What you see there—some League, some of Tand’s freebooters, a few marines mixed in. There’s a few Eternals, too, but I left them in charge of the other party and the fire.”