The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  The bubble moved abruptly away from him, apparently not pleased with this levity. It cruised pettishly about the cell in figure eights for a few moments, then retreated to the latrine corner and sank abruptly out of sight down the hole. Sharkmaster Wyr bid it good-bye with one inanely waving hand, then stifled his laughter and shook water from his beard and hair. He listened intently. Sprayborne creaked around him, but there was silence aboard. Whatever had been done to Gort was over, and his fellow prisoners had either been similarly silenced or were crouched in their cells, awaiting whatever came next.

  On the cell floor, he saw the mound of water’s departing dance had severed his chains in a couple of places, leaving handy lengths rusted apart at each end. Quietly, he moved—still dizzy with the unconstrained ease of doing it—and gathered up the nearest length. He crouched as if in a dream, wrapped the links slowly around his fist, pulled them taut with trembling hands. He’d have to wait until someone came to check on him, but, Hoiran’s barbed and twisted cock, when they did, the first man through that fucking door …

  Splinter and crack—the door exploded outward, torn from its hinges and frame, tossed out into the corridor like a playing card.

  “Fuck.”

  The curse yanked involuntarily from his lips. He crouched at bay, bare feet planted firm on the damp planking. Rusted chain link ends swaying fractionally where they hung from his knotted-up right hand. He waited to see what would come through the hole where the door had been.

  Nothing did.

  He straightened slowly up, eyes pinned to the wrenched and splintered doorjamb. He listened hard, heard nothing at all. Crept finally out into the corridor.

  In his first year of captivity, he’d dreamed of walking this passage, night after night, only to wake each time to the cold grasp of the chains on his wrists and ankles. Sometimes it happened in vague, mist-tinged tones, but in other dreams, the details were more real—a hidden key smuggled in by one of his men who had somehow escaped, a regal pardon from the Chancellery for some convoluted clerkish reason or other. Sometimes they came for him because there was war brewing in the southern seas, and he the wronged hero of the hour …

  Sometimes he walked the corridor freely.

  Sometimes he fought every inch of the way, and that was better.

  Now he had to clench his fist hard on the rusted iron chain, time and again, to remind himself this was not a dream. To stop himself from trembling.

  He found Gort at the far end of the passage, near the companionway. The jailer sat slumped on the floor among his spilled and tumbled pails, back to one of the cell doors. His guts were dumped out in his lap like a meal he could no longer manage. Something had slashed him open side to side, and then torn out his throat. From the bloody handprints and the mess, it looked as if he’d tried to climb the companionway with his guts hanging out, but had been dragged back down by something for the finish.

  By some thing.

  Wyr pursed his lips and looked warily up the companionway to the open deck hatch above. The pale light of day awaited. For a moment, he’d taken his trembling for fear, but now it dawned on him that whatever was waiting up there, he’d gladly face it with no better weapon than the chain in his fist, just for the chance to stand on Sprayborne’s deck again and feel the breeze that blew across it. He’d face it and he’d fucking kill it, whatever it was, whatever that took, just so he could stand there a few moments longer in the open air.

  He sniffed hard, hefted the chain once more, and then he climbed the companionway as swiftly as his stiff and unaccustomed limbs would allow.

  “GOOD.”

  The voice came while he was still clambering out of the hatch, pitched loud across the deck from the port rail. Sharkmaster Wyr scrambled out and pivoted on his bare feet, dropped to a fighting crouch again.

  Saw a single cloaked form at the rail, back turned to him. He took a step forward and his heel skidded on something. He swayed and nearly went down, staggered for balance, and some rusted old boarding party reflex kept him on his feet. The figure at the rail didn’t move, didn’t turn. He saw it wore a long sword sheathed across its back, doubted it could clear the blade with any great speed, and felt himself relax just a fraction.

  He spared a downward glance, and saw he’d stepped in blood.

  Saw, in fact, that the deck was painted with the stuff, splashes and streaks and pools of it, spread between four scattered bodies, one of which was still moving, but not very much.

  He did the count, ingrained habits from his plundering days taking over while the disbelief in his head sang a high, whining note like the sound of too much silence in your ears. Four men, all well armed. Two in loose, unremarkable garb with short swords sheathed at the hip, one of them with an eye patch—Gort’s broken-down war veterans no doubt, paid mainly to row—and two more in cheap mail vests and open-face helmets, apparently armed with short-shafted ax-head pikes; by the weapons, Wyr made them for port authority guardsmen. They were all dead, bar the one with the eye patch, who was down but still trying to drag himself toward the stern, an inch at a time on his belly in a broad-painted trail of his own blood.

  Apparently not one of the four had managed to get their steel drawn or blooded.

  Sharkmaster Wyr raised his head once more to the figure at the rail.

  “Salt Lord?” he husked. “Dakovash?”

  “No.” The figure turned now to look at him. “But I get that a lot. Did you pray to that fucker for something, too?”

  The face was gaunt and scarred down one cheek, the dark hair gathered back from features that might once have been handsome, but now held only a commanding hunger. The eyes were dead as stones, but there seemed to be no threat in them right now. And something in the narrowed gaze unlocked a chamber inside Wyr, let out what was coiled up inside.

  “My family.”

  “Ah.”

  “I called on the Dark Court for aid; they did not come. My family died in cages instead. I called on the Salt Lord to free me for vengeance, I swore to spill blood from the ocean to the Eastern gate in his name, and he did not come then, either.”

  “I’m always late,” the figure murmured obscurely. “Well, you’re free now, Sharkmaster Wyr. What will you do with your freedom, I wonder?”

  Wyr made himself look away from the figure, look instead at the blood and strewn bodies that lay between them. The man with the eye patch had almost pulled himself clear of the carnage. Wyr’s rage was abruptly loose in his head. Red veined bolts of it split his vision apart—he strode to where the injured man lay. Stood over him a moment, trembling, then lashed down with the chain his fist was wrapped in. His aim was off, his arm shaky and weaker than he’d reckoned with. It took a couple of blows across the man’s hunched shoulders before he got it right. Eye Patch made a choked noise and redoubled his efforts to crawl. The rusted chain caught him in the side of the head, wrapped around. Wyr yanked it loose, flailed down again. Blood flew, the man made a thin, hopeless bawling sound, and then, on the fourth or fifth blow, he slumped flat to the deck. Wyr found he could not stop—he went on flailing until the chain links were clotted with gore, and the noise they made on impact was soggy, and the muscles in his arm ached from shoulder to wrist.

  In the end, only a fresh fit of coughing stopped him.

  He beat the cough out, bracing his free hand on one knee to stay upright. Cleared his throat and spat on the corpse he’d just made. He lifted the chain in his right hand and turned his head sideways to stare at it as it dripped. His face felt hot and wet. His fist opened as if of its own accord and he shook his hand free of the rusted links, watched them pile stickily up on Eye Patch’s shoulder.

  He got some breath back, got himself upright. Turned back to the figure at the rail.

  “This—all this,” he said hoarsely. “I have you to thank?”

  “Yes.”

  Sharkmaster Wyr sniffed. Wiped his right hand up over his face and through his hair. It came away streaked with blood.

 
“And you are not of the Dark Court?”

  “Loosely attached, let’s say.”

  Wyr put out his bloodied hand. “Then you have my thanks. I am in your debt. Will you give me your name?”

  “Ringil Eskiath.” They made the clasp. “But I’m proscribed the use of that name these days. You can call me Ringil.”

  Wyr frowned, chasing vague memory. “Hero of Gallows Gap? That Eskiath?”

  “For what it’s worth.”

  “And … you were at the siege as well. They gave you a fucking medal, didn’t they? I thought you were dead, I thought you died fighting imperials in Naral. Or Ennishmin.”

  “That’s one story. Just not an accurate one. Tell me, Sharkmaster Wyr. Now you are free, as you once asked of the Salt Lord, how will you go about obtaining your revenge?”

  Wyr cast about in the cold morning light. The other hulks sat chop-masted and rotting in the delta waters around him, like some waiting fleet of ghost vessels raised from the ocean floor. The three plague ships rode at anchor on the outer edge with the promise of death fluttering at their masts. Beyond all that, Trelayne rose on the skyline to port. And to starboard …

  “The marsh,” he said.

  It was a fair swim, and not without its risks, but he knew in his newly freed bones that he’d do it. He’d take sustenance from Gort’s spilled buckets, knives from among the slaughtered men for any chance meeting with alligator or dragon eel. And once to the mudflat shallows, it was just wade and stomp and flounder through to the marsh itself, one thigh-deep, sucking step after another and no real risk other than weariness and fading will. Beat those treacherous, seeping enemies and there was really nothing worse to fear—the mudflats were home to thick clouds of stinging flies, but he’d endure them, small lizards and mud-weasels and spiders, but he’d kill and eat them raw before they could bite him, and beyond that, well …

  “I am owed debts among the marsh dwellers,” he added. “They will hide me while I gather strength. While I gather men and arms.”

  “Hmm. There’s a war on, had you heard?”

  “Against the Empire.” Wyr nodded. “The jailers have tattled to me. Hinerion is fallen, imperial forces are in the peninsula. What of it? Should I care?”

  “Perhaps you should. You may have a hard time bidding high enough to gather much in the way of men or arms right now. Both will be at a premium.” Ringil Eskiath made him a thin, cold smile. “Who knows? A few more months and perhaps you yourself would have been pardoned back into privateer service.”

  Sharkmaster Wyr spat on the blood-streaked deck. “Yeah—just long enough to sail upriver and burn their fucking Glades mansions to the ground.”

  Something unreadable flickered on the other man’s face. There and then gone, so fast Wyr thought he might have imagined it. Ringil Eskiath’s voice came across the space between them as gently as a lover’s.

  “There is no need to swim ashore, Sharkmaster Wyr. Nor take shelter in the marsh.” A gesture at the deck around their feet. “There are arms here, for the taking. And men with vengeance in their hearts below.”

  Wyr blinked. “You’ll free my men, too?”

  “Well,” Ringil examined the nails of one hand. “It’s a tiring trick, that one with the door. Why don’t you free them yourself? The jailer had keys, didn’t he?”

  It dawned on Wyr then how worn down he was, how very tired. How fogged and short of capacity to think straight. Rage and joy had carried him, brought him up unquestioning out of the cell with chain link in his fist and murder in his heart. But now, abruptly, his footing seemed to fall out from under him. He stood numbly, feeling it all for the first time. He understood then, vaguely, that if he had attempted to swim ashore, he would undoubtedly have died in the water.

  “I free my men,” he said flatly. “And then what? We have a pair of ax-head pikes, a handful of knives and short swords between us, and a ship with no masts.”

  Ringil nodded out across the water at the other prison hulks. “In fact, Sharkmaster, you have an entire fleet out there with no masts. All crewed by condemned men of similar stripe to your own. Could you honestly wish for a better-suited force with which to bring your retribution down on the Fair City?”

  “I could wish,” Wyr enunciated with bitten force, “for some fucking masts, and some sails to rig on them.”

  “You will not need them. I’ll provide your vessels with all the motive force they need. I will break their chains the way I broke yours, I will sail them right into the city harbor and past its defenses, I will ram them ashore on the banks of the upper Trel.”

  Wyr stared at him.

  “You sure you’re not sent here by the Dark Court?”

  “Not entirely.” Ringil Eskiath stirred and looked back over his shoulder to where Trelayne rose on the horizon. “But I will hold you to the same terms you offered them. Blood from ocean to the Eastern gate. Can you do that for me, Sharkmaster Wyr?”

  A vibrating force seemed to come up through the bloodied planking under Wyr’s feet. He felt it climb his legs and leave new strength there, felt it wrap around his belly and chest like a constricting snake, pour icy clarity into his head. He reached down among the corpses and picked up one of the ax-head pikes.

  “Just watch me,” he said grimly.

  CHAPTER 43

  ater, she’d have time to realize that the ground gave less than a couple of yards under her feet, that more than collapse, it was slide, and that the real subsidence was outside. But whatever the dragon had done out there, whatever crucial bracing beam or member it had found a way to tear loose, it opened a sinkhole that sucked the rubble out of the gateway like water down a millrace at spring thaw.

  They all went with it.

  Kanan Shent tried to grab her hand, but the drop threw them apart before he could reach. She heard him yell, saw him go over on his back, and then she was fighting not to go down herself in the tumble and grinding slide of masonry all around her. Somehow staggering, windmilling her arms, she stayed upright. Kept her feet, tore free each time a boot started to sink into the funneling carpet of debris. Made it outside into dull gray light and down to the end of what was actually, Archidi, a fairly shallow slope—

  At which point she slammed into a vertical block of stone wedged up at the bottom of the slide. She took the impact low across left hip and thigh, was spun and flung down like some sulky child’s discarded rag doll. She hit the jagged ground hard—white-hot twang of pain up her side as stitches in her wound tore out, and her head took a glancing blow. She lay there on her side, looking groggily at ragged chunks of masonry inches from her nose.

  Triumphant shriek somewhere overhead, and the dragon’s shadow fell on her.

  EGAR RODE THE DROP WITH THE SAME INSTINCTIVE HORSE-BREAKER’S poise he’d ridden out the earth tremor back in Yhelteth that first time. It helped to be drunk, but you could do it sober if you tried. The real problem was being surrounded by seemingly solid walls and floor and ceiling when in reality everything was shaking like a belly dancer’s tits. It confused your senses, fooled your expectations. It threw you out.

  He didn’t have that problem here.

  The rubble under him slithered and rumbled directly forward and down. He danced to keep up, leaping steps between what he had to hope were more or less solid chunks and blocks of stone in the flow. Two bounds took him out under the gateway and he knew, there and then, he had to weave or he was dead. Because that fucking dragon had to have planned this, knew they were in there, knew exactly how to flush them out, and would pick them off now, like berries off a branch, if he didn’t …

  The beast was on his right. He leapt that way, across the flow of the fall, across its muzzle and aim. Heard a shrill scream, a convulsive gagging sound, and something slopped hotly through the air just ahead of him. He caught the acid sting of it in his nose and eyes, heard it hiss and sizzle as it hit the ground. There was just time to glimpse the dragon, crouched on the edge of the sinkhole slope, jaws still gaping wide for the gob of
venom it had just coughed at him. Then he tripped and went headlong amidst the rubble. Clipped his head on a chunk of stone, lay still.

  It was probably what saved him.

  The dragon came slithering and scrabbling downslope from its perch at the edge of the funneling debris, kicking down fresh spills of rubble as it came. One massive rear claw crunched down a scant six feet from his head; he felt the masonry he lay on shift with the impact. Reek of sandalwood and scorching, like a slap in the face. Egar wasn’t sure if the creature thought its spit had already taken him down, or it just had other, more mobile prey to fry. Either way, it wasn’t stopping to eat him. It plunged past, uttered another shriek he knew meant attack.

  He lurched upright in the loose rubble, clutching the staff lance for support. Blood ran down the side of his face. He saw Archeth below, sprawled full length in the bottom of the shallow sinkhole, trying dazedly to sit up, right in the dragon’s path. Kanan Shent, scrambling down toward her from the other side, more on his arse than his feet, battle-ax still in hand but he’d get there late, too fucking late, had never faced a dragon before anyway and—

  No sign of Nash. Assume he’s dead.

  Egar did the only thing he could. He raised the staff lance high in his right hand and howled—high and hollow, long drawn out, the ululating Majak berserker call.

  “Turn, motherfucker! Face me!”

  Fleeting realization—he’d screamed the words in his people’s tongue. The call and the language, rooted as one in the soil of the steppes he’d left behind. The dragon braked its rush, flailed about on the loose surface. No dim-brained blunderer here—a threat to the rear was a threat you’d better turn and face, especially if it makes a noise like that. The Dragonbane dropped the staff lance into both hands, gripped hard at the alloy shaft—see what this iron demon’s like as a bladesmith, shall we, Eg—and charged in across the rubble.

  He had, he guessed, about a half dozen heartbeats before the dragon sorted itself out, saw what the actual threat was, and decided what to do about it. He cut right, in at the tail and hindquarters. It was shit ground, yielding under his feet, but the beast would have to snap its own spine sideways before it could line up another venom spit and hit him in this close. He leapt the last three yards, staff lance up and out to the side as if to pole vault like the tumblers in Ynval park. He came down hard and uneven, would have staggered, but he buried the leading lance blade in the dragon’s haunch with a yell. Saw the Kiriath steel split and splinter scales like they were coins of cheap gray glass.