The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  Rakan nodded, barely seen in the gloom, and sank into a comfortable crouch in the space where the door would hinge back. As if on cue, the hurrying multitude stomp of feet on wood came from somewhere overhead.

  But it faded again and no one came.

  “Think it’s another ship,” murmured Rakan. “Heard the crow’s nest call out something just before I came down here. I mean, I don’t speak Naomic or anything, but if there’s one word I have picked up in the last couple of months, it’s ship. Gave me my best chance to move, too. Must have had every man on deck over at the rail to look.”

  “You couldn’t work out anything else they said?”

  Rakan’s dimly seen form shook its head. “Nothing. They sounded pretty pissed off, though.”

  An Empire warship this far north was a flat-out impossibility. And Ringil couldn’t see any reason why sighting random League traffic of any sort would upset the privateers.

  Which left only one explanation, really.

  “Get ready,” he told the Throne Eternal cheerfully. “If this is what I think it is, we’re about to have some very angry company.”

  A solid, jolting impact nearly tipped Noyal Rakan out of his crouch. Then another, less violent, and then a couple more gentle bumps. Shouts of satisfaction from above. Gil recognized the pattern from the time they’d been boarded by a customs frigate on the run-in to Lanatray. Whatever ship Klithren’s lookout had sighted, they’d come up on it now and were engaged. Grappling irons and boathooks would lock the two vessels together until they could be properly lashed. Meantime, the privateers were amply competent to swing or leap aboard, take stock, and then …

  They waited.

  They didn’t have to wait long. A shocked cry came in the porthole, then others, high pitched with fear and disgust. A wider chaos of yelling above as men still on board this ship tried to get sense out of those who had boarded the other.

  Now he wondered if they shouldn’t have tried to sneak out of the cabin after all. There’d be enough confusion on deck to maybe let them find some other place to hide. Leave an empty cot and the loose coils of rope, a vanishing trick from the terrifying black mage they’d so foolishly taken captive …

  Yeah, and then what, Gil?

  Over the side and swim? We’d drown before we got halfway to the coast.

  Stow away on a boat full of privateers out for blood who know her stem to stern? How long’s that going to last?

  And even if we could, even if you could somehow buy time to use the ikinri ‘ska and kill them all off—who’s going to sail us back to Ornley? Elementals again? The akyia? It was hard enough last time, with a fully competent crew to keep Dragon’s Demise trimmed. We’re two men, and neither of us knows any sea-craft worth a back-alley fuck.

  You need to own this ship, Gil. Ship and crew, stem to stern. There is no other way.

  There is nothing wrong with a defensive strategy, he’d written in his treatise on warfare, back when he still thought it might see the published light of day, save that it hands over the initiative to the enemy. So you’d better hope you’re strong enough, fortified enough in defense, to withstand whatever that enemy decides, in the luxury of time and choice you’ve given them, to start throwing at you.

  And if you are not that strong—then offense and a colossal bluff may be the better option.

  He heard boots stamping down on companionway steps close by.

  “Show time,” he hissed at Rakan.

  The latch. The door flung back. Klithren stormed into the cabin amid a spill of light from outside. He hadn’t bothered to take the lantern down from its bracket.

  “What the fuck have you done, Eskiath? What the fu—”

  Rakan hit him from the side like something demonic. Chopping blows into neck and temple, a savage stomp into the back of one knee to fold and take him down, and a vicious kidney punch as the Throne Eternal rode his victim to the floor. Klithren convulsed and groaned, tried to get up, and found an arm across his throat, a dagger point at his eye.

  “I’d lie still if I were you.” Ringil told him, up off the cot at a speed he felt quite pleased with, all things considered. “That’s a Throne Eternal blade in your face.”

  He limped rapidly to the cabin door, hooked the lantern on his arm and brought it in, shut the door solidly, and turned back to his new captive. He set the lantern down, well away from Klithren and Rakan’s clinch on the floor. He grinned down at the floored mercenary.

  “Change of dealer,” he said. “But the game remains much the same.”

  “They’re going to fucking kill you now, Eskiath.” The words choked out of Klithren. “Nothing I can do, nothing anyone can do. You think one imperial sneak assassin at your back is going to change that?”

  Ringil nodded up at the cabin ceiling. “That one of your flotilla up there, is it? Drifting with the wind?”

  “What did you do to that ship? What filthy piece of sorcery did you work on those men?”

  “Me? Nothing. We sneaked past your picket in the fog, close enough to hear their hour call on the breeze.”

  Klithren glared up at him. “You lie. There are … fucking pieces of dead men all over her deck. Blood everywhere. They’ve been … chewed on, you piece of shit.”

  Ringil knew. He’d seen the Sileta brothers after the merroigai got through with them.

  “Let’s just say I’ve got some friends you’d prefer not to meet,” he said. “And if you don’t want your crew meeting them, either, I suggest you do exactly what I tell you.

  He crouched over Klithren.

  “Now where’s my fucking sword?”

  A RAPID SEARCH OF KLITHREN FOR WEAPONS YIELDED A COUPLE OF NASTY little knuckle blades tucked up in interesting places, as well as the big killing knife on his hip and a slimmer, nicely balanced piece of cutlery in his right boot.

  It wasn’t the Ravensfriend, but it was a start. They shared out the blades and took Klithren up on deck.

  The companionway was the trickiest part. Gil had Rakan lead; he at least knew the ship’s layout a little, would have some sense of what they were climbing up into. The Throne Eternal went up, lifted the companionway hatch by inches to check for close bystanders, then flagged an all clear to them and clambered up and out. Klithren went next, far enough behind not to grab at the Throne Eternal’s ankles, and Gil brought up the rear, the slim, balanced blade pressed close against the artery in the mercenary’s inner thigh as he climbed. The moment the mercenary’s head cleared the top of the companionway, Rakan’s dagger snicked in under his chin, and the Throne Eternal drew him painstakingly up and out like some big, vicious fish he’d just hooked. Gil came swiftly up behind and settled the slim blade in Klithren’s back.

  “Easy there,” he murmured.

  They crouched in a corner of the raised foredeck, shadowed by the rail and the foremast rigging in band-lit bars and squares.

  By now, the hubbub down on the main deck was total. The other vessel was roped in tight to the port rail and a mob of men crowded there, yelling and brandishing weapons. Others clung to the mainmast rigging for a ladder and stared down onto the other ship’s deck. Even the steersman and his boy had left the wheel and were crowding the poop deck rail in an attempt to see what was going on.

  You’re not going to get a better chance than this, Gil.

  He took the slim balanced knife out of Klithren’s back and weighed it loosely on his palm. Knew, with a sudden conviction, that the weapon was worth less to him now than his two empty, unbound hands.

  “Don’t you fucking move,” he warned the mercenary. “Noy, you take this blade, keep it right-handed, ready for a throw. Dagger in your left and hard up against our pal here’s kidneys. Soon as I give you the nod, get him up against the rail to my left. And get your mask back up. Try to look, uhm, shadowy. Hunched.”

  He ignored the look the Throne Eternal shot him, flexed his fingers, wishing they weren’t still quite so stiff, and drew in one deep, hard breath. Then he nodded at Rakan and went to
stand upright at the rail.

  “Men of Trelayne!” Voice pitched to roll sonorously out across the main deck below. “Look upon my work, and repent! I hold your souls in the balance!”

  The men in the rigging heard him first, swung from their points of purchase to stare. So far so good—no one climbs rigging with a primed crossbow, and the range was too great for accurate throwing of knives or clubs.

  Down on the deck, though—that was going to be a different matter …

  “Noy, this is going to be your moment.” He figured the muttered Tethanne was safe enough, was likely going to sound to the rattled northerners below like some kind of spell or incantation, if they heard it at all. “They’ll all have their eyes on me. Reckon you can throw down there accurately, take out the first man that gets too close?”

  The Throne Eternal hefted the slim knife below the level of the rail without change of expression or stance.

  “What, and still looked hunched and shadowy?” he muttered back, deadpan.

  “Good lad.” Gil raised his hands, switched back to sonorous Naomic. “Look upon what I have done! Know the power you face!”

  Curses now, panicked and raging in about equal measure. The crammed pack of men at the ship’s rail loosened, unknotting itself, spreading back out across the ship’s waist as the privateers turned and saw the dark figure up on the foredeck.

  A new chaos of voices boiled up among them.

  “He’s loose!” one of them yelled. “He’s out!”

  “How the f—”

  “Look, Klithren—he’s sold us out!” A panicking bellow. “He’s traded our fucking souls!”

  “No, no, use your eyes—the mage’s familiar has him!”

  “Black mage, black mage! Hoiran ward us!”

  “Shit, it’s true, like that fat git Hort said, he’s—”

  “Black mage! In Hoiran and Firfirdar’s name, ward us!”

  So forth.

  Out of the mess, Ringil tracked the dangerous men—snaking their way through the press, largely silent, eyes fixed balefully on the foredeck rail and the dark lord stood there who’d apparently butchered their comrades. Perhaps predictably, at least half of them wore Skirmish Ranger rig. He let them come on, tried to stave off the rising itch of unarmed exposure it set loose in his guts. Trusting to Rakan’s eye and arm rather a lot here, actually. If the ikinri ‘ska had spells for taking thrown weapons safely out of the air or deflecting them away—and he supposed it probably did—Hjel hadn’t gotten around to teaching them to him just yet. And the men down on deck were going to cut loose as soon as they thought they were in safe range, which might or might not be inside a distance Throne Eternal training allowed for, so if even one of them looked like …

  That one for example, Ranger rig, out now ahead of the pack, spiked killing club in hand, still moving fleet-footed forward but settling into this sliding crouch that presaged—

  Fuck this shit.

  He threw up his arm and pointed. Shouted in Tethanne, words spaced in his best attempt at sounding like a spell. “That one there, Noy!”

  The privateer got his throwing arm up, almost back—went choking, stumbling backward instead with Rakan’s knife in his throat. The tipped weight in his stance took him over in a tumble, no time to see if he landed with the knife clearly visible or not, if anyone was interested in checking such details with the black mage calling at them from the rail …

  “Will you harm me with your petty blades and clubs?” he roared at them. “Will you stand against me? Will I bring the kraken’s doom upon you all? Don’t touch him!”

  This last to a privateer pacing up to the newly made corpse. There was nothing of magic in the shout, just the years of desperate command from the war, but the man froze as if turned to stone. Gil, balanced on the hard edge of the seconds it bought him, saw what had to be done next to keep control—

  Did it.

  Leapt without thinking.

  Up and over the rail, gut-swoop moment of the fall and his cloak flapping out behind him like tattered black wings—with luck they’d see that and believe he flew. He hit the main deck in a solid crouch, dared not roll to absorb the impact—it was only going to wreck the hard-bought dark lord poise of it all—took it in the knees and spine instead, jagged tug and flare through the bone, then straighten up out of the crouch, as if the pain were not there.

  You jumped out of raided warehouse windows twice that high, back in the day, back in Trelayne.

  Yeah, you were half the age as well.

  Flickering stab of nostalgia for the youth and long withered innocence of those years—it hurt almost as much as the fall. He shook off both, stalked into the scattered ranks of the privateers with hands rising in finger-splayed claws at his sides.

  “Who wants to die next then?”

  Now it was time for the ikinri ‘ska, and he welcomed it in—the liquid stir it made through him, the trembling potential in his fingertips. Yeah and half a hundred more subjects than you can put away with it here, Gil. Let’s not get cocky. He still had the positions of the men he’d marked from the rail, the dangerous ones. He saw a raised hand ax out of the corner of his eye, swung on the man who wielded it. Carved a glyph from the air and pointed.

  “You. You’re on your knees.”

  And the privateer dropped there, like a puppet with strings abruptly cut.

  “That’s not an ax, it’s a snake.”

  The man let go his weapon with a yell of revulsion. Exultation surged through Ringil. He saw a wave of reaction run through the other privateers, steps stumbling backward in most, away from the black-cloaked thing walking into their midst. He picked another man who’d still not given ground. A glyph like tearing open, another pointing finger—

  “You, you’re choking.”

  And watched him go down, clutching at his throat. Another Skirmish Ranger off to his left—

  “Corpsemite! It’s on your back!”

  The victim, screaming and staggering, thrashing fit to snap his own spine backward …

  “You—where are your weapons? What’s that on your thumbs?”

  And the privateer rearing back, hands held up in horror. The exhilaration of the ikinri ‘ska washed through Ringil now like flandrijn, washed around him like the summery blue and white slop of waves on the beach at Lanatray in his youth. Something had changed, something had shifted inside him. Somehow, the overreach he’d forced through on the sloping street in Ornley had pulled something along with it. Like a knot threaded back through itself and then hauled on so hard it pops out of existence and leaves the cable running clean. Like a muscle, torn up with too much strain, knitting harder and tougher again …

  A man in Ranger rig came at him howling, cutlass raised for the chop. He locked gazes, spoke the simple word No, not even very loud. Saw the waver of the upflung blade, the sudden stammer in the Skirmish Ranger’s step. He stepped in, blocked the cutlass blow with an imperial empty-hand technique, hooked and hauled the arm down, smashed an open palm into the man’s chest, put him on the deck on his back—

  “Lie still—you are in your grave!”

  The Skirmish Ranger convulsed on the planking, as if pinned there by an iron spike. He flailed with hands in front of his face, weeping. Ringil turned away, on to the next …

  He should be weakening, this should be tiring him by now.

  “Marsh spider—there in your shirt!”

  But all he feels is the appetite for more. He strides unarmed into the midst of his enemies, and it’s as if he’s wearing tailored plate; as if the Ravensfriend is there in his hand. The privateers are backing away now, scrambling to get clear of him, clear of the clawing, raking, stabbing gestures from raised hands he barely seems to own anymore …

  “Oh, you think you’re going to shoot me with that? It’s not strung, you twat. And your eyes are bleeding!”

  The arbalest, tumbling to the deck, landing—reach in there and flip—upside down, muffled twank and the bolt discharged, spent into the deck
planking. The man who’d held it clapped hands to his face and bawled something incomprehensible …

  Enough.

  He bent and gathered up the crossbow, held it briefly aloft in one hand.

  “You think this is going to save you?”

  And threw it to the deck at his feet. Raised his voice for them all.

  “There are two kinds of men aboard this ship! Those who oppose me—and those who will live to see the dawn!” He snapped out the blade of one hand, gestured at a trembling privateer on his left. Stared into the man’s face. “Which are you?”

  Frozen pause.

  Then the man’s head bowed and he dropped on one knee to the deck. He threw his club away.

  Ringil turned his head, and it was like a wave sweeping through the privateers wherever his gaze fell. They began to kneel. By ones and twos at first—then more—then most—and finally the very few stiff-backed resilient ones, broken by his stare as it swept over the bowed heads of their comrades and found them, put the same silent question to them that the others had already faced and answered for themselves.

  Soft clatter and thump of discarded weaponry across the deck.

  And the slow leak inside of a feeling Ringil couldn’t place at first. He thought it might only be the sinking away of the ikinri ‘ska as it faded into the background again, and he looked around at the men he would not now need to fight and kill …

  Then he had it. Saw the sensation for what it really was.

  Disappointment.

  CHAPTER 21

  t seemed like a very long time they stood in silence, while the Warhelm’s accusation soaked away into the quiet. Archeth might have been a statue, rooted to the polished alloy floor where she’d leapt to her feet.

  “You said what?” Staring balefully up at the iron-beamed ceiling now. “You’d better back that shit up, Warhelm. You’d better fucking explain to me why my father would cripple and blind one of his most powerful allies in the fight against the dwenda. Are you accusing him of treachery? Why would he commit such an act of violence against you?”