The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  Could have told them that.

  But the truth was he could not have done, nor could he now. He was too drained of strength to do anything other than loll in the grip of the men who held him. Even the smirk slipped off his face, let go by muscles too sapped to hang on to it any longer.

  “Get him to the other end of the deck,” a voice decided. “Get his sword off, it’s dragging. One of us is going to trip on that and go arse over elbow. Someone go wake up the captain.”

  He felt himself hefted higher again, carried along under the vast pale billow of sails overhead, the arch of the band and the stars …

  They laid him down on something softer than planking—later he’d discover it was one of the weave mats provided for sleeping on deck in warmer climes. They stood back and he let his head roll to the side. Along the line of the deck planks, he could make out his cabin door at the other end of the ship’s waist, still swinging gently open on its hinges. Lurid, slow-shifting lights from within, tendrils of damp mist crawling out, faint groaning. Now and then, sounds like something wet and heavy being dropped, or the scuttle of claws over stone.

  He watched it incuriously, while chunks of recollection rained down in his mind like rocks flung from the wall of a city under siege. The most recent were the easiest to pick up—scratching the glyphs off the door hinges, lockplate, and jamb with his bradawl, braced against the door to hold himself up while he did it—stumbling out into the cool night air, falling over—voices, human voices above him on the rear deck—clinging to the companionway as he climbed, one colossally weighted boot step at a time, up toward that human sound …

  “My lord Ringil? Prophet’s breath! My lord!”

  Ah. Fucking Nyanar.

  The captain of Dragon’s Demise stood above him, holding a dressing gown awkwardly closed across his chest. From the look of it, he’d been so mesmerized by what was happening at the door of Ringil’s cabin that he’d almost tripped over Ringil himself.

  “My lord Ringil.”

  “How—” It was no good, he couldn’t even hold his head up. His voice came out a breathless husk. “How far home are we?”

  “Home?” Nyanar’s mouth contracted primly. “We are sailing to Trelayne, my lord. Under your expressed orders.”

  “Yeah, what I … meant. How … much farther?”

  “We should raise the Gergis coast day after tomorrow, if my calculations are correct.”

  Big if. Even his thoughts were truncated, sludgy with the effort they took. “And the … other ships?”

  “With us, both of them. Visible and with us. But, my lor—”

  “Good. Well done.” Gil managed a feeble nod upward. He could feel himself guttering like a spent candle. “Reef the sails. Heave to. Signal the others … do the same. I’m going across … Sea Eagle’s Daughter … soon as I’m … rested.”

  “But, my lord.”

  “What?”

  Nyanar, pointing aghast. “What about your cabin?”

  He rolled his head again, took in the lights and the crawling, moaning mist.

  “Oh,” he said faintly. “That. Just … just close the door. Lock … from the outside. It’ll all … all go away by the morning.”

  IT DID, MORE OR LESS.

  He woke four hours later with the first gray flush of dawn and the voices of watch changeover from the stern. Slow rocking of the ship beneath him, and he opened his eyes on the stark loom of masts with sails fully furled, like towering crucifixion platforms set against the paling sky. He moved stiffly and sat up. Found himself under a generous pile of blankets, shoved them aside and got groggily to his feet, peered out across the water. Sea Eagle’s Daughter and Mayne’s Moor Blooded both sat a couple of hundred yards off to starboard, riding the swells in the same gentle rhythm he could feel under his feet. He thought there were a few figures out on deck, peering back at him.

  He saw the Ravensfriend poking out under the blankets—it seemed he’d slept with it. He gathered it up and went with leaden steps along the deck to his cabin door. Tried the door and found it locked. Right. And they’d taken the key. He was turning to find someone to ask after it, when memory shifted in his head like poorly stowed crates in a bad sea.

  A small smile bent his lips.

  He looked at the lock and it yielded. He heard the snap as the mechanism turned and the bolt went back. He clicked his tongue and the door opened obligingly.

  Inside was a cabin and not much else.

  If he squinted and slanted his gaze, he got brief flickers of blue light in corners, like threadbare curtains or cobwebs touched by a breeze; the odd gargoyle gape of something he’d rather not look at, peering out at him. But mostly the haunting he’d brought back was gone. He had one severe moment when the wood paneling on the back wall became wet limestone, an inward leaning loom of rock dripping musical droplets of water into puddles at its base—etched everywhere with glyphs that blew cold breath down his spine, and faintly overhead, the retreating scuttle of bony limbs …

  He blinked it away. Went in and propped the Ravensfriend in a corner. He was tempted to lie down on the bunk and go back to sleep for a few hours, but there were things to be done, and besides the ceiling might still drip on him if he didn’t keep an eye on it. It will come looking for you now, Hjel tells him on their second night camped out at the cliffs. When you leave the Margins for your own world, bits of the possibilities in the ikinri ‘ska that you’ve touched will squeeze through after you. They won’t harm you, and probably not anyone else, but they can hang around like a bad smell for days if the breach is hurried. Try to plan, to slip through smoothly if you can; it keeps that shit to a minimum.

  Well, he hadn’t slipped through smoothly on this occasion. He’d—

  Let’s leave that alone for now, shall we, Gil?

  They dropped a boat and got him across to Sea Eagle’s Daughter in short order. The two oarsmen who took him were marines, both faces he recognized from the assault on Ornley but could not put names to. They offered him respectful salutes as he climbed down into the boat, and kept silent on the way across, but for the rhythmic grunt of their stroke.

  Rakan was waiting for him when he came up the ladder at the other side.

  “My lord.” The longing in his look was almost palpable. Ringil had a flash of recall—Hjel, bent over into his lap in the tent, mouth working—and felt briefly guilty. But then it was gone. Too much else to worry about right now.

  “Rakan.” He touched the other man’s arm lightly. “Good to see you again, Captain. I’ll need you to give me a good, thorough briefing when we can both grab a moment.”

  Flicker of a wink. The Throne Eternal caught it and flushed visibly in the early morning light. He swallowed hard. “Yes, my lord.”

  Pack it in, Gil.

  “But right now, I need you to rig the block and tackle and get the Helmsman up on deck for me.”

  Rakan blinked. “Anasharal, my lord?”

  “The very metal motherfucker. Probably going to take half a dozen men, but we’re not going anywhere for a while, so you can spare them.” He looked around the ship’s waist. “We’ll put it over there, by the port bulwark. Upside down.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Rakan saluted and went off to gather his men.

  “May I ask what you intend?” The soft-over-shrieking unstable layers of the Helmsman’s voice, out of the air at his ear.

  Ringil grinned like leaking blood. “Yeah, you can ask.”

  Then he went over to the bulwark and hinged the gangway section open, so the space it left gaped out over the ocean beyond.

  CHAPTER 31

  own at street level, the wind was less of a presence, but it still moaned in the tangled wreckage over their heads, as if in long mourning for the city it blew through. They wandered in awe along vast boulevards, past rearing, palace-sized piles of rubble, and the wind was their constant, softly keening companion. It funneled up certain thoroughfares, ambushed them around corners in the thickening light, flung sudden fistfuls of g
rit in their eyes when least expected. It was the single audible intrusion into the silent evening gloom, if you skipped the crunch of their own boots on the detritus-laden streets and the hushed groundswell of muttering between the men.

  “Pipe down back there, keep your eyes peeled,” Egar found himself finally driven to bark. “Just ’cause we’re fed and armed don’t make us fucking blade proof.”

  He heard a defiant mention of ghosts. Swung about.

  “Yeah, ghosts. Ghosts, I’m not fucking worried about. They’re dead already. You see one, wave and smile. Anything else, you kill. Now shut the fuck up and watch your quarters.”

  Truth was, he couldn’t really blame them. He could feel the cold, abandoned weight of the city himself, pressing down like something palpable between his shoulder blades and at the nape of his neck. If An-Kirilnar had seemed—and after a fashion, he supposed, was—haunted, this place made it look positively welcoming by comparison. There was a desolation here that beat out anything the Kiriath fortress had to offer. Even the lifeless wasteland they’d just crossed had not seemed so emptied and abandoned. Wind or no wind, he was increasingly sorry that he’d persuaded Archeth not to camp back up on the overlooking ridge.

  In the middle of one broad boulevard, they came upon a chunk of fallen rubble, itself almost the size of an Ornley croft house. There was carving on one side, letters nearly as tall as a man in what looked to Egar like Naom script, though he couldn’t make head or tail of what it actually said. He brushed his fingers over the stonework, curious. It was faintly warm to the touch.

  He whistled for attention, beckoned to the nearest of the privateers.

  “You. You recognize this?”

  The man shook his head. “Don’t read, my lord. You want to ask Tidnir, he’s got letters. Went to school and everything, before his old man got wrecked off the cape.”

  “Tidnir. Which one’s—”

  The privateer nodded obligingly, turned and pointed at someone farther back in the loose group they’d all bunched up into.

  “Hoy, Tid,” he barked. “Get over here. Dragonbane wants this shit read.”

  Another privateer, younger, but with a shrewd intelligence around the eyes, came warily up to the front. He stood beside Egar and stared up at the march of huge characters carved into the stonework. His lips moved silently.

  “So?”

  “It’s myrlic, my lord. The ancestor tongue.”

  “Well, what does it say?”

  “Dunno.” Tidnir scratched his head. “It’s … I think it’s a prayer or s—”

  Something tore him down.

  It happened faster than you could blink. One moment the young privateer was standing there talking, the next he was gone, and Egar’s face was painted with the sudden hot spray of his blood. The Dragonbane had a flash glimpse of something pallid and fanged as it bore Tidnir to the ground, heard a noise out of battles a decade gone, knew—

  Screams from the rear.

  “Lizards! ’ware lizards!”

  As if the present caved in under him like rotten flooring, dropped him through into the dim nightmare sludge of a past he’d thought buried long ago.

  The all-alloy staff lance the Warhelm had made for him—trussed to the pack on his back, blades at either end still clad in their soft Kiriath fabric sheaths—no time, no fucking time, Eg. Forget it. He shed the weapon with his pack, the shrugging work of an instant. But the chain was slung loosely around his neck, halfway ironic ornament of rank, some faint, inexplicable urge had made him keep and wear it that way, and now …

  Rip it free sideways in one fist, whip and heft, the harsh pain as the iron links wrapped hard around his tightened knuckles and a barely felt gouge where one of the bolt ends caught as it dragged off his neck. The reptile peon that had torn down Tidnir swung up at him. Only the size of a small, malnourished man but all fangs, all reaching claws, all snarl, and in that fresh nightmare sludge of time slowed down, Egar yelled and swung the chain full force.

  Dragonbane!

  The lizard leapt, the bolt ends of the chain came flailing in from the side, took it in the skull and knocked it over in a thrashing, hissing mess. Egar used the backswing and hit it again, keep this fucker down, stepped in and lifted the chain high with another yell. Into the skull again, with the savage force of revulsion. The peon’s blood came out, dark in the evening light, almost a human hue. The creature thrashed and tried to roll away. The Dragonbane stamped a boot on it, flailed down again with the chain. He was shouting now, wordless affirmation of his savagery, building to the berserker rage. Twice more and the reptile peon’s thrashing died. It was still twitching, but he knew from hard-won experience that it was done.

  Whirl about, check the men.

  Their attackers seemed to have come out of the ground, or dropped from the sky. They were on all sides and the company had pulled instinctively into a circle, Throne Eternal shoulder to shoulder with Majak with privateer with Menith Tand’s mercenaries. Most had managed to shed their baggage, a few had shields to hand, but two men were out of the protective formation and down. One still lived, ax haft braced up against the snapping jaws of the lizard that had him pinned …

  Egar strode in yelling, long scooping blow with the chain, caught the reptile peon around the head and jaw, the bolt ends snagged and the chain wrapped up. He bellowed and yanked hard, tore the lizard off the man like a herdsmen roping away a buffalo calf. The thing came snapping and snarling and thrashing, on its back but trying to right itself. Keep dragging back, Dragonbane, keep the tension on. He drew a knife left-handed, blade down. Spotted an eye amid the thrashing, coiling fury. Flexed his right arm as if for an uppercut and hauled on the chain, dragged the lizard up close, stabbed down hard into the eye socket. The creature went into spasms, he jerked the knife free and blood gouted thickly from the eye. He stood on the dying reptile and tore the chain loose from its mangled jaws.

  The downed man—one of Tand’s mercenaries—rolling shakily to his feet, nodding thanks. Egar bared teeth at him, nodded back, made a sound in his throat that was barely human and swung away.

  “Dragonbane!”

  He was bellowing it now, gone into the killing rage, bloodied knife in one hand, chain in the other, striding amid the fray, flailing and stabbing, taking down the reptile peons like the incarnation of his own legend, pulling them off his men, putting them away. It felt almost easy, like something he was born for, it felt like release

  “Dragonbane! Dragonbane!”

  And a cry that seemed to answer from the other side of the boulevard’s expanse.

  “Indamaninarmal! Indamaninarmal! My father’s house!”

  He swung about at the call, grinning fiercely.

  Found Archeth across the street, about to go under.

  SHE’D THOUGHT IT WAS THE FIRE SPRITE—FLICKER OF MOTION AT THE corner of her eye, somewhere up amid the piles of rubble on her right. She drifted out across the desolate space of the boulevard, staring upward, scanning the tumbled, tangled mess of broken architecture for another glimpse. Though what the sprite was doing all the way up there …

  Vague, unwinding tendril of unease in her chest.

  And the first reptile peon jumped her.

  Came leaping fanged and snarling down out of some darkened juncture of tumbled masonry above head height, like the screaming wartime past returned.

  Knocked her to the stony floor.

  She hit and scrabbled back, frantic. Her pack jammed against the ground, the lizard loomed over her, jaws agape. Reflexive combat memories from the war sparking down her nerves, become their own survival imperative, and a million miles from conscious thought, her body followed the command. She lashed out with one booted foot, smashed hard into the snout with her heel. Her right hand clapped to the inverted grip of Wraithslayer, there on her chest. The reptile peon shook itself, came snarling at her again. She rolled up into a crouch, left arm raised to an instinctive guard across her throat and face. She snatched the knife clear of its sheath. T
he lizard hit and bowled her back over, she slammed her guarding arm forward, drove the snapping, slavering jaws aside and up, away from her face for the time she would need. The reptile peon grabbed at her wrist with a taloned forelimb, would either bite her arm down to the bone or twist and drag it out of the way and take her face instead. But Wraithslayer was loose in her hand now, and there was a noise rising in her throat to match the lizard’s snarl.

  “You lie down, motherfucker!” she screamed, and plunged the knife in.

  Kiriath steel.

  In under the jaws and up—Wraithslayer ripped the lizard’s throat out with no more effort than opening a sealed letter. The reptile peon’s blood gushed out over Archeth’s hand and forearm, exploded out between the snapping fangs, and the creature went down on its side, thrashing a cloud of detritus and dust from the ancient paving as it died. Archeth staggered to her feet coughing, sweeping her surroundings, saw the company beset on all sides and more skulking figures moving in the rubble her attacker had come from.

  “Lizards! ’ware lizards!” someone was howling, a bit superfluously.

  Bandgleam was in her left hand—she had no memory of unsheathing it—she shrugged clear of her pack, lifted both blades and her chin in invitation to the figures that lurked above her.

  “Come on, then!”

  They came bounding down the ledges and slopes of the collapsed ruins like scree panthers on the hunt—two lean, armored forms, spined and crested and almost twice the size of the reptile peon she’d just killed. She drew a hard breath in over her teeth. Warrior caste. Sooted, grayish-dark scaled hides, shifted to match the hue of the environment around them—she’d forgotten they could do that. In Demlarashan, they’d been sandstone yellow, in Gergis a piney green. Reared up on their hind legs, they’d tower a full foot or more over her head. They had prehensile tails three yards long that ended as often as not in a savagely barbed spike they knew only too well how to use, and they were smart in a way the reptile peons were not. Warrior caste Scaled Folk had been known to pick up and use discarded human weapons on the battlefield, or to fight with long thorny staffs of bone that appeared to grow out of the same webbed material they were hatched from themselves. But mostly they favored their own heavily armored forelimbs, tipped as they were with taloned claws and razor-sharp elbow spurs. In battle, she’d seen one of those limbs take a blow from a two-handed imperial war ax and not break. Seen the lizard dip and swing, clout the ax owner to the ground with a tail lash, then pounce and plunge an elbow spur down through the soldier’s helmet visor with pinpoint accuracy.