by Iain Lindsay
“Ach!” Talin managed to catch the thrust with the buckler just in time, stepping back.
“Close quarters!” Odestin was shouting, as he spun, swinging his sword to miss the next guard but drive him back. Tal didn’t know what he meant, he jumped back from another lunge and the guard’s cruel smile, before he felt his back hit the wall. Oh no.
Burandin’s guard wasn’t one of these untrained oafs given a sash and a helmet, he didn’t rush forward, he didn’t overstep himself as he settled into a crouch in front of the youth, using his sword like a skewer to dart in, and…
Clang! Talin managed to bat the blow away. But he knew it would only be a matter of time before the guard was luckier than he was. Clang! Another parry with the buckler, as the guards now managed to surround the maddened Odestin, despite his frenzied attacks.
This is how I die? Talin had a moment to think, just as a dark shadow flipped over the landing balcony to land in a crouch, white hair flaring around her.
“Urk!” One of Odestin’s guards fell as Lura had struck him on her way down. The tyl hissed, tail swiping behind her as she moved, stabbing another in the calf with her thin tyl blade, as she span to chop at the man’s head with the heavier borrowed scimitar. He went down.
“What?” Tal’s guard was distracted by the sudden attack for just a moment, and the desperate youth charged.
“Raaaargh!” Buckler up, he thumped into the man’s shoulder, flinging his sword arm wide as he stabbed forward with Gulbrand’s long knife. It punched into the man with a sickening thud, and the guard gurgled, stepping back with Talin’s blade still stuck in his side. For a horrible moment Tal saw the hate and confusion in the man’s face as he dropped his sword and fell to the floor.
No time to think about what you did. Help Odestin. Help Lura. Talin picked up the man’s sword – it was heavier than he had expected as he turned.
Lura moved like a dancer, spinning to score a line of red across one guard with her tyl blade before clobbering the same one with the heavier scimitar. At her feet was a circle of bodies. Talin was stunned at her speed as he saw her catch one guard’s blade on one of her own, and slide her other into an adjacent guard. Odestin too, seemed to be holding his own; although not as graceful as his smaller ally, he grinned as he jumped and slashed, hacked and punched until between them all of Burandin’s guards in the hallway had fallen, either dead or groaning on the blood-spattered floor.
Leaving the ones with crossbows on the landing above.
“Oh fish-spit,” Odestin had a chance to say, as there was a sudden flash of light and a deafening boom.
Talin’s ears rang, and there was a plume of white smoke lifting to the ceiling as Captain Tremaine was thumped against the wall from where he had just fired the Manners. The blunderbuss smoked, and at least two of the crossbowmen were falling down the stairs.
Thock! Sevesti emerged from the doorway to the back of the mansion, releasing a bolt into a third, and suddenly it was all over apart from the groaning.
“Dear gods” the Captain dropped the Manners with a heavy clang, massaging his shoulder. “I don’t know which end is worse with that thing,” he kicked the gun.
“The loud bangy end, clearly,” Sevesti looked at the bodies of the guards, now peppered with shot.
“Where’s Burandin?” Tremaine was shouting, shaking his head to clear it of gun-smoke.
“The little beggar ran for it.” Odestin was crouching over the men that he killed, already freeing them of their worldly wealth.
“Right. Odestin and Sevesti – search upstairs. Lura and Tal, you’re down here with me.” Tremaine barked, picking up the gun and looking at it for a moment, before slinging it over his shoulder on its leather strap, and instead drew a fine rapier whose blade seemed to shimmer in the shaking lamplight. “Room by room, people,” he snarled.
“Tal?” Someone was saying to him, and the Nhkari looked up to see that Lura was there. “Blade down, Tal.” She said in a softer voice, nodding for him to put down the guard sword he had been holding up before him in a shaking hand. Tal watched as Lura crouched over his own fallen enemy, retrieved Gulbrand’s long knife with a wrench, cleaned it off, and liberate the man of his coin purse. Both items she offered to him. “The Quartermaster would hate to hear you lost his blade,” she said “And you earned this. Blood-pay.”
“Blood-pay?” Talin asked as he accepted both. Gulbrand’s blade was better. Much lighter.
“You heard the Master Rigger, lad,” Tremaine was stalking past him as the others were hurrying up the stairs. “In my crew, you get to keep what tried to kill you.”
“Oh.” Talin said, feeling shaky and unsure if he even deserved it. It had been luck. Nothing else.
“Call it a reward for surviving. But you do have to survive first, mind,” Tremaine paused at the far doorway across the hall, nodded to Lura who shook her hair, and then ran in ahead of him.
The first room was some sort of meeting room, with a large wooden table and chairs, none of which held either Burandin or Gulbrand. A door at the back was kicked open by the Captain before Lura rolled in to reveal a much more private and ornate meeting place, a couple of antique chairs around a cold fire, a decanter of Ausbridge Brandy and crystal glasses. Talin watched as the Captain’s hands hovered over the brandy for a moment, before shaking his head. A last door led into the back hallway and the open doors through which Gulbrand and the Captain had already come.
“Damnit.” Tremaine snapped. “I already came through the other side of the house, he must be upstairs.”
“Not necessarily, Captain,” Lura kicked aside the fur rug of some striped and surprised-looking cat on the floor, to reveal a trapdoor.
“Outstanding,” The Captain pulled a face. “You lift it, I’ll go down first.” He whispered.
“I’ve got better eyes than you, human,” Lura shook her head, “You open the trapdoor, and I’ll go down.”
“Fine. Tal? Grab that side-lantern there, and stand at the side,” Tremaine gestured to the table where the small metal oil map sputtered weakly.
“1…2…3!” Tremaine heaved on the trapdoor’s pull, Talin at his side, as Lura raised her swords.
Thock! Something flashed just past the Rigger’s shoulders and embedded itself into the wall behind her.
The Rigger hissed and jumped down. “Captain!” She shouted a moment later, and Tremaine and Tal followed behind.
Talin’s feet hit the hardened packed earth of the basement floor a moment after the Captain, to see that they were in a narrow but very long underground chamber. The roof was made of the heavy wooden beams and supports of the flooring above, and the walls were of the same stone and hardened earth as the ground.
It wasn’t empty. There were crates and barrels stacked along the sides of the walls, racks of blades next to spider-dusted wine bottles, and, at the far end, a yellowing glow coming from around a ‘wall’ of crates.
“This way!” Lura was already racing ahead, her steps following the heavier panting of another man – not Burandin, this one was thinner and younger, on the floor he had discarded the crossbow and was fumbling at his belt for something as he rounded the wall of crates-
“Yagh!” Lura threw her tyl blade, hilt over end, in a spinning arc that thumped into the human guard’s back, driving him against the wall, to slump on the floor with a bloodied gurgle.
“You got him? Is he there?” The Captain was calling as Lura stepped around the wall of crates, holding her remaining heavy scimitar in both hands now.
“Root and Rot!” Talin heard her gasp, and both he and the Captain ran even faster to join her.
The Quartermaster sat on a chair at the back of the tunnel, heavy manacles securing his wrists and feet to the chair. At his side was a table with a selection of sharp and strange implements. Talin suddenly gagged as he realized what this was. “They were torturing him?” He said.
“They. Tried…to…” A groan, and the slumped form of Gulbrand lifted his head. His eyelid
s were heavy and pupils small, his chest was panting under the strength of the poison they had poured into his system, but he was awake. Amazingly.
“Gulbrand, your horns!” Tremaine gasped when he saw what the real damage to the heimr had been. His swept-back horns of hardened bone had been sawed down, now only lengths of a few finger’s breadths remained.
A deep, rumbling moan from Gulbrand’s chest, rising louder and louder, becoming a booming echo of misery. He howled.
“I know,” the heimr shuddered after his anguished howl, and Talin realized that he was weeping. He had never thought that the trolls could weep.
“Tal, go see if you can find some water somewhere,” the Captain said hurriedly. “Losing one’s horns is a very disrespectful and shaming thing in Old Heim.”
It must be like losing one’s homeland, Talin thought. He was no stranger to that type of misery, having seen the hurt, confusion, rage and sorrow on the face of his own mother many times. He stepped over the body of the guard, as Lura joined him, pulling her blade from the human’s back and patting down the man’s pockets.
“Here, Captain” Lura pulled the chain and round of ugly little keys from the man’s neck and passing it back.
Tal meanwhile, took his small side-lantern with him and started searching Burandin’s trove. The crates that had stacked to make the wall had various Marduk stamps burned into their sides, but nothing sloshed or dripped when he tried to shift them. The Nhkari moved around the avenue made up of crates and sacks, finding dried grains, cloths and even packed clothes, but still no water.
There had been wine at the front of the tunnel, he thought. That had to be better than nothing, right? He thought as picked up his steps, reaching the top of the tunnel and retrieving the wine. When he found his way back to them, he found that both Lura and the Captain turned quickly to stare at him in alarm.
“It’s me, I found some wine,” Talin held up a deep green bottle. The Quartermaster was now freed, but he still hadn’t left the chair. There were scrapes and marks across his heavy fists and arms where it seems they had tried to damage him, but all they had done was cracked scales. He raised his great head, now bereft of his horns to stare at Talin with a fierce intensity.
“What? Gulbrand?” Talin said nervously.
“Easy now, old friend, we’ll get to the bottom of this in time,” Tremaine patted the Quartermaster hesitantly on his bare shoulder, eliciting a growl. “The Quartermaster told us that he wasn’t beaten for information about the Storm or the rest of us, but for information about you, Talin of the Nhkari.”
22. Trophies
“He was a tough one, alright,” Garn grimaced, massaging his bruised knuckles through his gauntlet. The thrall and the Overseer were trudging through the cobbled streets of the city, tired and disappointed in equal shares. The troll hadn’t talked. The merchant Burandin didn’t know anything.
“That fool Burandin fed him too much poppy,” Jekkers said angrily. “I should have let you kill him.”
“Which one, the fat merchant or the troll?” Garn murmured, wishing that he had a roaring fire in front of him, a roast bit of meat in one hand, and a flagon of ale in the other.
“Either. Both,” the Overseer shrugged. “I don’t care. Death would probably be an improvement for the rats who live here,” he scowled at a beggar sitting in a doorway. The night had grown old, and the sky was already beginning to turn a lighter blue to the east. Above the sounds of an unquiet city there was the static hiss of the birds of the reedbeds, many thousands of them about to take flight.
“So, what now, boss? Do we try again tomorrow?” Garn’s stomach rumbled. Today, he thought dismally.
“No wonder you ended up a thrall, barbarian,” Jekkers snapped. The Overseer felt tired in a distant sort of way, but his physical distress was something that he could ignore easier now. All sensations from his body felt far away, like they might be happening to someone else, or that he floated in a dream. The only thing that hurt was strong sunlight, strangely. But right now, in the gloom of the morning dusk, he felt a fine thrum of tension running through his body. “Just because the troll didn’t give up where they were holing up in this cesspit, it doesn’t mean that our trail has ended.” The Overseer turned and sniffed at the faint saltiness of the air, coming up from the docks.
“What was it Burandin said? They will be back to pay up for their Quartermaster today, no doubt – but before that there is one place where we can go.” Jekkers started to grin in the greying light. “The Storm. They have to return to their boat eventually, don’t they?”
The thrall groaned, but he didn’t argue. He knew that it would be a while yet he got that roaring fire and the frothy head of ale, but in that way of thralls and soldiers – those who have had to endure many long seasons of torment and physical discomfort, the large man just hunched his shoulders and trudged after the smaller.
In one of his jacket pockets, the Overseer’s gloved hands turned over and over two hardened, curving objects. Twin spikes of bone-horn, freshly sawn from the head of the Storm’s Quartermaster.
23. Sky-Metal
Talin gulped as he looked between the glowering and bloody face of the Quartermaster, the narrowed eyes of Tremaine, and the look of shock on Lura’s face.
“But… why would he want to know about me?” he said in a small voice.
Gulbrand shrugged; a mountainous movement. “I don’t know why you look so worried, little human. You weren’t the one shackled to a chair.”
“Tal,” The Captain stalked forward to snatch the wine from the youth’s hand, and prod him, hard, in the chest. “If you’ve brought danger to my boat…”
“But Captain…” the Rigger’s eyes moved between the two. “We’ve always been in danger.”
“I don’t know why Burandin wants to know anything about me.” Talin said quickly.
“It wasn’t Burandin.” Gulbrand groaned, leaning forward to rest massive arms on his knees. “Burandin brought the pair of them down here, they seemed to have an agreement. It was that one from the Reach. And another, a human thrall, big fellow. What did you call him? The Overseer.”
Jekkers is alive? Talin felt his mouth go dry. But no. His mother had him pinned to the floor. She was going to kill him. She must have killed him. Unless she died first, the treacherous through slid into the back of his mind. He had known that she was dead, of course – there was no way that she couldn’t be – but the fact of the Overseer being here only underlined his loss. Talin felt his knees go weak.
“This Overseer of yours kept asking where ‘the Nhka’ was, where we had been, what we had done, and where we were going.” Gulbrand looked up, dark eyes finding Tal’s, before flicking to the table of cruel devices beside him. “That was his work.”
But then the Quartermaster shrugged. “I’ve been interrogated before. I didn’t say anything. But this Overseer…he was changed.”
“Changed how?” Tremaine said in a terse voice.
The Quartermaster explained the strange vitality that seemed to lend strength to his tormentor. The greyish-pale skin, the tracery of black lines. “And his eyes. Like a Sword Shark’s.”
“Hsss” Lura snarled, her tail lashing behind her. “Demonkind?”
“What?” Tremaine looked at his Rigger in alarm.
“There is a legend that the tylaethi tell: more of a nightmare, really.” The Rigger looked troubled. “A race of spirits we call the Mnemoth who take on human form, consuming the soul of those possessed to further their conquest of the mortal realms. In those myths the Mnemoth come as strangers or travelers, but they are always found out because they cannot hide the black orbs that their eyes have become, nor the rot spreading under their skin.”
“Outstanding.” The Captain muttered under his breath. “This night just keeps on giving, doesn’t it?” His accusing stare returned to Talin. “Explain.”
“It’s clear that he doesn’t know, Captain.” Lura said. “There’s nothing that the youth could have done to
call the attention of a Mnemoth. He’s spent his entire life as a slave on the Reach, for heaven’s sake.”
The Captain turned on his heel, passing the wine bottle to the Quartermaster. “And yet we are left with the fact that this youth has caught the attention of possessed demon-people. And I have a new job for us, one that I don’t need getting any more complicated than it already is! Do I have to remind you, Tal, that your life is paid for by the Master Riggers blood? You owe her, and she owes me.” He said severely. “There must be something that happened, something that you saw, something about you that means that my Quartermaster was treated as a carnival punching-dolly!”
Talin opened and closed his mouth uselessly. There was nothing. Apart from the Overseer’s hate for his people – but even that wouldn’t explain this. The fact that he was an escaped slave? But why would the Breakers allow the Overseer to leave the Reach to chase after one homeless Reach child? Then there was the business with the demon-possession. Talin had never even been particularly religious.
But there was something that he had seen, wasn’t there? Talin started. A room in the middle of an airship where he should never have been. Talin drew out the off-gold medallion. “All I have is this. I don’t even know what it is, but I took it from a ship at the Reach.”
“Sweet Airs!” Tremaine stepped back from the proffered disk. “Drop it, Tal.”
He did. It did not clatter to the ground. Instead, it somersaulted downwards a few feet before hanging, shaking in the air between them.
“Sky-metal.” Lura frowned.
“I was going to use it to buy mine and my mother’s way out of there, but Jekkers found it and took it for himself. That was why he was going to kill me when you arrived…” Talin said, as Tremaine slowly gestured for him to step away from the spinning gold disk.
“That’s a ship’s medallion, and they’re keyed into a ship and her Captain alone. I should know, because there is one just like it in the center of the Storm.”