The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  “You know where I’ve been,” he said.

  Klithren gestured. “Whatever, man. You going to fill this up again? I mean, since we’re drinking buddies all of a sudden.”

  Ringil set down his empty goblet. “Did they take you there?”

  “Take me where? Who?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  Locked gazes across the table. They were alone up here on the forecastle deck, the minimal crew aboard confined to stern and waist or belowdecks at Ringil’s order. Ringil leaned in.

  “I am not your enemy,” he said softly. “I grow tired of telling you that.”

  Klithren sniffed, reached for the bottle. Gil let him have it. He watched as the mercenary poured his goblet full, set down the bottle, drank deep.

  “You not got anything stronger than this piss?”

  “You know we do. But I don’t think that’s going to help you.”

  Klithren drained the rest of his goblet. Cradled it empty in his hands, stared down into it for a while.

  “I have … dreams,” he muttered finally. “Crazy fucking shit. Like …”

  He shook his head.

  “Nothing like that in years, you know. Not since … I don’t know, it’s got to be nearly twenty years I don’t dream like that anymore. But this … ”

  Ringil nodded. “Yeah. In all probability, they took you to the Grey Places to prepare you, then hid the memory from you. Had I not taken you there again, it’s a memory that might have stayed buried for the rest of your life.”

  “Am I supposed to thank you for that?”

  “No. You’re supposed to hate. Believe me, that does help. But you need to direct your hatred where it belongs.”

  Klithren grinned savagely. “Do I see some squirming on the hook there?”

  “Our agreement stands, if that’s what you mean. You still want a shot at avenging your asshole axman friend? When we’re done in Trelayne, I’ll be happy to oblige. But you’re looking for the wrong vengeance.”

  “Yeah—don’t tell me. I should be fighting the good fight alongside you and your imperial pals. Siding with the Empire against my own people.”

  “You never brought in League marauders for Tlanmar?”

  “That’s different.”

  “So is this. I’m going to war with the dwenda, not Trelayne. Findrich and the cabal, they’re just in the way.”

  “That so?” Klithren tipped his chair back and studied Ringil with an expression that was suddenly shrewd and sober. “I thought you came to get your friends.”

  Oops.

  “That, too.” Came out smoothly enough—he hurried on. “But I made a promise awhile back to rip the living heart out of the next dwenda I saw walking around like he had a right to be here. And I have it on pretty good authority they’re busy doing exactly that in Trelayne.”

  The mercenary poured himself another goblet full of wine. “Pretty good authority?”

  “Yes.”

  “What authority’d that be, then?”

  He isn’t going to say the dark queen Firfirdar, because the words are going to sound ridiculous coming out of his mouth with light still in the sky, and anyway it isn’t strictly true. Firfirdar never told him there were dwenda in Trelayne. He’s reading between the lines now, like any other worshipper grasping at straws. He gestures dismissively, impatient as much at himself as the other man.

  “You know where I’ve been,” he says. “You want to argue black mage vision with me now? The dwenda are there, in Trelayne, and we’re likely going to have to carve a path through them. Believe me or don’t. What I want to know is whether I’d be able to count on you in that particular fight or not.”

  “Right.” The mercenary drank. Looked at him speculatively over the rim of the goblet before he put it down. “Tell me, black mage. Why’d you hate them so much?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? You want to go back and have another look at those heads, refresh your fucking memory or something?”

  “No.” A shudder, not quite held down. “But …”

  “But what?”

  Klithren got up and walked to the starboard rail. Took the bottle with him. He leaned there for a while, not drinking, staring at the setting sun. Ringil waited, long enough to understand that no more was going to be forthcoming at this distance. He rolled his eyes and went to join the mercenary at the rail.

  Klithren glanced sideways at him, maybe slightly surprised, but he offered the bottle. Ringil took it, wiped the neck with his sleeve—he’d left his goblet on the table, was fucked if he’d go back for it now—and drank deep. The mercenary looked on with what might have been approval. Gil lowered the bottle and wiped his mouth. Handed it back.

  “You were saying?”

  Still, it took awhile. Silence hung between them like a third unwelcome companion at the rail.

  Finally, Klithren cleared his throat. “You know the first battle I ever saw? Back in thirty-nine, when Baldaran tried to take Hinerion over the transit taxes. I was just a kid in mortgaged mail back then, no idea what I was getting into. Threw up a half dozen times in the ranks, just waiting for it all to kick off.”

  Ringil nodded, as if in recognition. Truth was, he’d never gotten sick in battle—those nerves, he’d beaten out long before, running in his teens with Harbor End gangs like the Brides of Silt and the Basement Boys, then later with Grace of Heaven’s more methodical thief squads and enforcers. What little sensitivity of stomach he had left after that lot was taken from him by Jelim Dasnal’s execution, and then the collegial brutality of the Trelayne military academy.

  Actual war, when it came, seemed almost clean by comparison.

  “Well.” Klithren drank from the bottle, goblet empty and apparently forgotten in his left hand. He came up for air, shivered a little. “When the fight with Baldaran was done, I knew well enough what I’d gotten into. We left four hundred of their levy, prisoners we’d taken, impaled on their own pike shafts in the Hin valley as warning to the rest. Most of them were still living when we marched out of there. We cut trophies off them before we went. I took this one guy’s ears, while he hung there, begging for water. Kid not much older than I was at the time. When I started cutting, he was screaming at me to just kill him. But I didn’t. Didn’t give him the water, didn’t kill him, either. Just cut off his ears one by one and left him there.” Klithren peered into the goblet of wine, as if the memory floated there. “Hard to remember now, but I think I was laughing at him when I did it.”

  Ringil grunted.

  “Point is, Eskiath, I’ve seen and done some pretty fucking grim things in the last twenty years. I’ve taken orders from commanders that if they cropped up in a tale, you’d say they were demons out of hell. What you showed me in that … place? Yeah, it’s some bad shit. But does it make these dwenda any worse than us? Any different, really?”

  “That’s one way of living with it.”

  He saw how the mercenary tried for a smile, but it was as if the evening breeze came and wiped it off his face before it could take hold. Klithren weighed the bottle in his hand. Poured his goblet full.

  “I’m a blade for hire, man.” There’s something a little like desperation in his tone. “Doing rather well, too, in the current climate. You tell me—why would I care who the overlords are, as long as they pay?”

  “You’d care,” Ringil said grimly. “You think a lost memory and some iffy dreams are as bad as it’s going to get? I’ve seen the inside of the glamours the dwenda cast. I know what it’s like when they come for you. It’s a fog you move in, where nothing makes sense, where your acts aren’t your own, where horrors come and go and you don’t question any of it, you just accept it all and do what you’re told.”

  Klithren shrugged. “Sounds just like the war. Come to that, it sounds like a lot of my life, war or peace regardless. I think your noble upbringing has spoiled you for this world, my lord Eskiath. Most of us already live the way you describe.”

  “Yeah. Spare me the pr
ofessions of rank and file, knight commander. That kid in mortgaged mail, cutting off ears and laughing? He’s dead and gone now, whatever nightmares you might be having about him at the moment. It’s too late for him. Your acts of slaughter are all your own these days, Klithren of Hinerion, you’ve made your choices and you live by them. And if I’m not much mistaken, that’s exactly the way you like it.”

  The mercenary said something inaudible. Buried his face in his drink. Ringil stared down at his own empty hands.

  “If the dwenda make a comeback, you can kiss all that good-bye. Knowing, understanding, choosing. You aren’t going to recognize this world once they’ve turned it inside out to suit, and you won’t ever again know if your actions are your own.” Ringil jerked a thumb back at the pommel of the Ravensfriend where it rose over his shoulder. “This blade? The dwenda let me carry it on my back through the Grey Places just like this, and I never knew I had it on me the whole time. If I’d been attacked, I would have died with empty hands, like some bent-backed peasant, without even trying to draw steel, because I did not know it was there for me to draw. They stole that from me—the truth of my own capacity to resist. I think they may have stolen my will to it as well, for a while anyway. But the truth is I can’t be sure. Another time, they tied me to my own guilt and grief out there, and they let it eat me alive—literally, I’m talking about. Literally eaten alive, then brought back to life so it could happen all over again. I was torn apart a thousand fucking times on that plain I showed you, by a demon I’d hacked to death in this world. But it lived on out there because they gave it power.”

  Because you gave it power, too, Gil. Let’s not forget that.

  A stir of curious voices down on the main deck. He became aware he’d been shouting. He drew a harsh breath and nailed down his rage. Compressed his mouth to a thin line.

  “That’s what they did to me,” he said quietly. “For my sins. You? Well, they sent you north to bring me in dead or broken and bound, and instead you end up helping me to disarm your own men. You hand over your ships and your command, and now you stand at my side as an ally. What do you think they’ll do to you for that, my sellsword friend?”

  “I could always change sides again.”

  “Yeah, you could do that.” Ringil put out his hand for the bottle. “Question is—are you going to?”

  They watched the sunset in silence. It seemed like quite a while before the mercenary handed over the wine. Gil tilted the bottle and looked at the level. Not a lot left in there anymore, and the color was darkening slowly from blood red to black as evening came on. He shrugged, drained it to the dregs, tossed the emptied bottle down into the ocean’s rise and fall. He wiped his mouth.

  “So?”

  “So. For all I know, everything you showed me could be a glamour.” But there was no real accusation in the other man’s voice anymore. Klithren just sounded tired. “This dwenda invasion shit—all I have is your word.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And last time I trusted you, you murdered my friend, waited until my back was turned, and then took me from behind.”

  Ringil’s lips twitched. “So to speak.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Are you fucking laughing about this?”

  “No …”

  “Because it’s not fucking funny. All right?” Klithren went to straighten up off the rail and his elbow slipped. He lurched. Ringil bit his lip.

  “I said—”

  “Not funny.” Gil shook his head with emphatic, slightly drunken solemnity. “Absolutely. No, it’s not.”

  “That’s right,” the mercenary said, in tones that would have been severe if they hadn’t come out so slurred. “It isn’t. Wouldn’t let you near my fucking arse with a barge pole.”

  There was a brief, perplexed silence.

  “What would I want a barge p—”

  “I didn’t mean … I meant.” Klithren glowered at him. “Look, will you stop fucking—”

  “I’m not … ”

  A stifled snort got out through someone’s lips—later, neither would remember which one of them it was. They traded an ill-advised glance. Ringil clung to what he hoped was an expression midway between polite and serious …

  And then, out of nowhere, both men were cackling helplessly.

  Helplessly. Out loud, at nothing at all.

  Like some pair of maniacs abruptly loosed from the chains that had until now stopped them doing harm to themselves, each other, and the rest of the sane, waking world.

  CHAPTER 39

  e woke from a dream of winter sunset out on the steppe, long, low spearing rays of reddish light that spilled and dazzled across his eyes as he rode, but failed to warm him at all. He was riding somewhere important, he knew, had something to deliver he thought, but there was a faint terror rising in him that whatever it was, he’d lost it or left it behind somewhere on this long, cold ride, and now the remainder of his journey was a hollow act. He should have been able to see the Skaranak encampment by now, the thin rise of campfire smoke on the horizon, or the dark, nudging mass of grazing buffalo herds at least. He raised up in the saddle, twisted about, scanning ahead and side to side, but there was nothing, nothing out here at all. He was riding alone, into a rising chill and a dwindling red orange glow …

  Egar blinked and found the fire sprite hovering in his face.

  He flailed at its red orange radiance with a stifled yelp. One blank moment of panic. Then full wakefulness caught up.

  He sat up in his blankets and stared around. A pallid dawn held the eastern sky, pouring dull gray light across the sleep-curled forms in their bedrolls around him, the scattered packs and the blue radiant bowls now gone opaque and glassy, like so many big stones gathered from a river’s bed. Across at the stairway entrance they’d come in, Alwar Nash waved casually from where he sat huddled at last watch. Everyone else was still out cold.

  “Early yet,” the Throne Eternal commented when Egar had stumbled to his feet and wandered over to join him. “Another hour to full light at least. But our friend there seems pretty agitated about something.”

  He gestured and the Dragonbane saw how the sprite was now floating directly above Archeth’s sleeping form, flickering rapid shades of orange in her face.

  “It tried her first,” Nash said. “Guess she’s too wrung out to notice.”

  Egar shook his head. “Always been that way. When she sleeps, she really sleeps. Seen her snore right through a siege assault at Shenshenath once.”

  “Must be that Black Folk blood.”

  “Must be. Had the lizards a hundred deep at the walls that time, couple of blunderers smashing their heads in against the stonework because they were too stupid to find the gates …” Lost in the skeins of memory for a moment, and then understanding hit him in the head like a bucket of cold water. “Shit! Nash—start kicking them awake. We got to move.”

  “Move? But—”

  “Scaled Folk.” He was already on his way to Archeth, calling back over his shoulder. “Lizards don’t get up early. Something to do with their blood; their heritage or … Look, just get everyone moving.”

  Can’t believe you forgot that, Eg. Not like the war was that long ago, is it?

  Is it?

  And he had a couple of seconds to feel suddenly very old, as he realized that Nash, in common with most of the others, had not only not fought in the war, he had in all probability never even seen a living lizard before yesterday’s fight.

  THEY GOT EVERYONE AWAKE INSIDE A COUPLE OF MINUTES, GAVE SOFT INstructions to load up and be ready to move out. When Archeth blinked initial sleepy incomprehension at him, Egar gestured at the fire sprite’s agitated bobbing and flickering.

  “Someone’s in a hurry here. My guess? It wants to get us someplace before the lizard hour.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, shit. Got to be, yeah.”

  She flung off her blankets. Flinched as the movement caught the wound he’d stitched for her the night before. Impatient grunt of
pain held down and the flare of anger in her eyes at her own unwelcome weakness. She settled her harness and knives about her with a blunt lack of care that looked to the Dragonbane like punishment. She must have tugged on the wound more than a few times in the process, but to watch her, you’d never have known.

  “All right, then,” she said tightly when she was done. “Let’s go.”

  They filed rapidly down the staircase behind the sprite and let it lead them out into the street. Any actual sunrise was still a good way off, and down at ground level there was a lot of gloom. The jut and slump of broken architecture around them worried at the Dragonbane’s attention, sketched hints of a thousand phantom enemies, crouched to pounce every few yards. Every darkened gap in the rubble they passed seemed to promise an ambush, every glint of something shiny in the low light was a reptile peon’s eye. Egar, yawning despite the heightened tension, marched with a prickling at the nape of his neck and tried to recall useful detail from the tactical lectures given by Kiriath commanders during the war.

  Like any reptiles, the Scaled Folk like heat better than cold, but they seem to have adapted beyond this in ways their smaller cousins on this continent have not. They do not depend on warmth to the same extent, and can function quite sufficiently well in cooler conditions. Yet their ancestry tells upon them in a number of ways that may be helpful to us. They are drawn instinctively to warmer climes and to discrete heat sources; they appear to accord some sacred significance to the roasting pits they build and ignite; and they do not stir early in the day if they can avoid it.

  Sounds like me, muttered Ringil to him in the back rank where they stood, and Egar tried to stifle an explosive snigger.