The Fifth Empire of Man (Best Laid Plans Book 2)

by Rob J. Hayes

  As Lady Tsokei closed on them, both men dropped the steel in their hands and their shouts died in their throats. One of the guards collapsed onto the deck, curling into a ball and sobbing quietly, while the other began to claw at the wall, trying to escape the horror bearing down upon him.

  The enslaved officer barged past T’ruck, running past the witch and picking up one of the dropped swords. The man first stabbed the soldier on the deck before cleaving the other guard’s head in two. As swiftly as it had begun, the oppressive fear emanating from the witch disappeared. T’ruck realised he was frozen in place, his entire crew similarly caught.

  “I suggest you arm yourselves,” Lady Tsokei said without turning to look at the pirates. “Not all will die as easily as these two.”

  “Fetch me a sword and shield,” T’ruck ordered Brendin, one of the youngest surviving members of his crew. He stepped closer to the witch. “That magic affects us too.”

  “It is difficult to control,” the witch said, turning her dark gaze on T’ruck. “Those in front of me are most affected, but everyone around me will experience a similar fear.”

  “We can’t fight like that,” T’ruck snapped. “I could barely bring myself to move.”

  The witch nodded. “I will try something different. But Captain Khan, those above and below me will also have experienced that fear.”

  T’ruck glanced upwards. “The knights?”

  Another nod.

  “Then we deal with them first,” T’ruck growled, taking a sword and shield from Brendin. He turned and stormed back towards the ladder, a grin spreading across his face. It had been years since he’d last had a chance to kill a knight of the Five Kingdoms. Not since he’d been driven from his home, leaving his murdered family behind. He was going to enjoy the night’s activities.

  Nerine Tsokei was angry. It was the type of anger that boils over and quickly turns from a hot, burning rage into a cold, calculated fury. She knew the limits of her magic, and she knew the limits of her ability to channel power from the Void, but she would push past those limits to strip away everything these Five Kingdoms pigs held dear. The despair of her enslaved officer was a balm to her soul. He could do nothing but serve her now, his will no longer his own, hers until she released him. And she had no intention of doing that until the man witnessed just what his fervour had cost him.

  The fools had plucked her out of the water, soaked through and shivering, on the verge of drowning as she struggled to hold on to the wreckage that had been North Gale. They saw her iron collar and assumed she was a slave serving the pirates, and they put her to use accordingly, giving her to the chef to work her way back to the Five Kingdoms. For days and days she’d scrubbed floors, stirred broth, and cleaned pots until her fingers bled.

  Her anger built daily. Nobody had ever treated Nerine Tsokei, lady of the red ice, Keeper of Shadows, that way. She endured the disgrace, willing to put up with a little indignity if it allowed her survival. She’d eluded the Inquisition for decades – she would survive this too. Nerine had already set her mind upon sinking the ship and escaping as soon as it made port somewhere with a civilised population. Preferably somewhere not allied to Sarth. One witch hunter she could deal with, but the six that chased her included an Inquisitor, and she needed to evade them at all costs.

  Her plan, and all resolve to suffer the undignified treatment the crew showed her, disappeared the moment the fool of an officer decided he wanted what was beneath her dress. Nerine had let him take her back to his quarters before she took control of him and turned him into her slave using nothing but her will and the barest hint of magic. She’d long ago learned that lusting men were the easiest to dominate.

  Once Nerine had enslaved the man, she no longer had a choice. She couldn’t continue to control him while she slept, and she would need to sleep eventually. It was at that point that she decided to release Captain Khan, so he could in turn release her from the infernal collar that kept her powers constrained.

  Setting a foot to the ladder, Nerine began to climb, Captain Khan’s call to wait falling on deaf ears. Before long she reached the level where the knights they’d passed earlier were quartered. But this time she didn’t bother to hide her presence.

  The casual atmosphere on the deck had disappeared. Some of the knights were busy encasing themselves in armour while others stood guard with drawn steel. Three men approached Nerine as she finished her climb. The first was tall and muscular with a perfectly groomed moustache in the shape of a horseshoe; he held out a hand to Nerine.

  “You’re the cook’s slave. Away from there, wench, and tell us what you’ve seen,” he said in a voice as pompous as his facial hair.

  Nerine opened herself up to the icy call of the Void, sending out a request for power. She didn’t bother to ask the name of the being who answered her – she didn’t care. Nerine never cared; she just hoped whichever creature answered opposed Volmar and his Inquisition.

  With power flowing through her and the spell whispering out from between her lips like an invisible serpent, Nerine knelt down and tore at her shadow. It ripped in two, and one half shattered into thirty shards that slithered away along the deck, seeking out living targets.

  The three knights in front of Nerine stumbled backwards, attempting to jump out of the way of her snake-like shadows, but the spell wasn’t targeting them; she had very little control over whom they would attack.

  The first man to die did so with barely a sound as a shard latched onto his own shadow, distorting and growing until it reached up from the deck behind him and tore open his throat. The knights around him didn’t die so quietly. Before long there were plenty of screams.

  “Witch!” the man with the moustache shouted. A shadow in the shape of a monstrous dog leapt out from a dark corner and pounced on one of his comrades, bearing him to the ground and savaging him.

  The knight charged at Nerine, followed closely by his surviving companion. As the moustached knight swung his sword, Nerine stepped sideways into the attack, the blade skimming past her stomach, and quickly slammed her shoulder into the man’s chest. Despite weighing twice what she did, he flew away from her, and she plucked the sword from his hand as he went. The second knight attempted to catch her off guard, but Nerine was never off guard. She parried the strike as smoothly as water flows and stepped past him, leaving the moustached knight’s sword in his companion’s chest.

  As his comrade dropped to the deck, the first knight regained his feet and leapt at Nerine, this time without the protection of a weapon. Waiting until the last moment, Nerine sidestepped the knight’s bullish charge, catching his flailing arm and dragging him about with his own momentum. Then she wrenched, dislocating the arm and sending the man to the floor once more. All the while, Nerine’s shadow creatures continued their gruesome work, each one finding a single victim and slaughtering them before vanishing like mist.

  Captain Khan gained the deck from the ladder and wasted no time in stabbing the downed knight through the neck. He took in the sight in front of him with a curl of his lip and then looked at Nerine.

  “You know how to fight,” the captain said as more of his crew scrambled up the ladder.

  “Better, I would imagine, than you,” Nerine said. “I have sown the seeds of death and chaos, Captain Khan. I suggest your crew capitalise on that distraction.”

  The giant pirate grinned and charged off to join the battle. There were precious few of Nerine’s shadow creatures left, and the pirates still had plenty of killing to do. She could have killed them all, but she needed to preserve her strength.

  It didn’t take long for T’ruck and his crew to finish off the knights, distracted as they were by the shadows. Not a single one of the fools escaped, but the battle had made more than enough noise and Nerine was certain the alarm had been raised. The rest of the night wouldn’t go nearly so easily.

  Chapter 6 - North Gale

  T’ruck slumped against the wall, looking up at the ladder that led to the main
deck of the ship. He could hear the creak of rope and canvas, the shuffling feet of nervous men, and the occasional shout from those in charge to keep steady. He looked back at his own crew, all as weary as him and all spattered with blood both fresh and long since dried.

  One of his pirates, Pocket, a younger lad with a crooked nose and heavy jaw, had collapsed onto the deck and was leaning against a wall, sobbing quietly into his hands. T’ruck would have loved to leave the man to his sorrow. They all needed time to come to terms with the things they’d done, but there were precious few of his crew left now. Of the twenty-two pirates who had escaped the brig, only twelve remained in any sort of fighting condition, and they were lucky that many of them had survived.

  “On your feet, lad,” T’ruck said, walking over to his grieving pirate and trying to hide how much effort just that small feat took.

  Pocket didn’t respond.

  T’ruck glanced around at the rest of his crew, who were all watching the exchange. He knew that if he let just one of his crew break now, they would all follow suit – and there was still plenty of slaughter left to do. Even Yu’truda looked on the verge of giving up.

  “Get up, Pocket,” he said again, in a voice that sounded weary even to his own ears.

  Still the lad just wept into his hands.

  T’ruck leaned his blood-soaked sword against the wall and reached down, grabbing hold of Pocket’s shirt and wrenching the man to his feet. He pinned him against the wall and gave him the full force of his captain’s stare.

  “I’m a monster,” Pocket said with a sob, his eyes crazed and red with tears. “We’re all monsters. So much blood. So much… I… I lost count.”

  T’ruck cuffed the lad on the side of the head. “Aye, you’re a monster. Tonight we all are. We’re monsters ’cos monsters is what we need to be.”

  T’ruck dropped the lad back to his feet. Pocket stayed standing, his eyes blank. T’ruck had seen it before, warriors on the battlefield coming out of the bloodlust and realising just what atrocities they’d committed. Every one of his crew had killed during the night, and every one had killed again and again. With the help of the demons Lady Tsokei had been summoning, they’d murdered hundreds of men. What they’d accomplished so far was nothing short of a miracle, a bloody miracle that would likely see them all damned in the eyes of whichever god they believed in. Unfortunately, what they’d accomplished so far wasn’t the end of it.

  T’ruck and his crew had moved from deck to deck, room to room, ambushing soldiers with steel and monsters formed of shadow. Hundreds upon hundreds of men had fallen, and blood washed every deck of the ship except one. The last of Storm Herald’s resistance were gathered above decks under the command of Admiral Peter Verit, and there they waited, no doubt with bows ready to ambush the surviving members of T’ruck’s crew. T’ruck himself could barely lift his sword, his arm aching like fire in his veins, but unless they stormed the deck and finished off the admiral and his soldiers, they would surely die just as if they’d stayed in their cells.

  “We need to be monsters for just a little bit longer,” T’ruck said. “Up there are the last bastards standing between us and freedom. We kill them, and we’ve done the impossible, so I need you to be strong. We either finish them off now or we all die when they come for us, so I… we need you all to be strong for just a while longer.”

  Pocket looked up at his captain and nodded slowly.

  “Pick up your sword, lad,” T’ruck said.

  The witch was standing apart from his crew. Her back was straight, but she was swaying on her feet and her eyes looked distant. Her skin was pale and her hair was plastered to her head with sweat. They all looked terrible, exhausted and speckled with blood, but Lady Tsokei looked like she had nothing left to give. She’d joined each battle with the rest of the crew and had tipped the scales of each encounter in their favour with her magic. T’ruck worried she wouldn’t have the strength to complete the taking of the ship, and he knew they would fail without her.

  “Are you…” he started.

  “I am fine, Captain Khan,” Lady Tsokei said. Her voice lacked its usual iron and ice. “This much contact with the Void… I feel raw, used up.”

  “I have a plan,” T’ruck said. “Can you summon any more of those… um… shadow monsters?”

  The witch nodded, and a sigh escaped her lips. “I believe I can do that once more, Captain Khan. But that will be all the magic I can…” She trailed off, tears in her eyes.

  “Aye, it’ll be enough. Stay here with Yu’truda and Connel. They’re gonna make some noise, make it sound like we got an army down here. I’ll take the rest of us to the aft deck ladder. Give us a few minutes, then release your monsters. We’ll wait until the chaos is good and started and then we’ll charge up the ladder, take the bastards from the rear.”

  Lady Tsokei nodded, saying nothing, her eyes fixed on the ladder. Without another word, T’ruck turned to his crew.

  “Make plenty of noise, Yu’truda,” he said with a forced grin. “The more of those fuckers looking this way, the less likely any will be pointing bows at us. Once the fight is on, you pop up the ladder yourselves. We’ll need you.”

  “Aye, Cap’n,” Yu’truda said without a hint of emotion. Between the loss of her husband and the death she’d seen over the last few hours, T’ruck wondered if the last surviving member of his clan would ever be the same.

  T’ruck and nine of his crew jogged quickly to the aft of the ship, not even bothering to check the rooms they passed. They’d been this way earlier and cleared it of soldiers and sailors alike, and there were plenty of bodies both in the corridors and in the otherwise empty rooms. T’ruck ignored the dead, concentrating instead on not slipping on the pooling blood left behind.

  The ship was sitting still in the water, no doubt stopped while the crew dealt with the escaped prisoners, but there was still a slight sway as her massive frame moved with the waves. T’ruck prayed a storm would rise up out of somewhere; it would provide them with an extra distraction and some protection from the archers. Aiming with a bow was next to impossible when standing on a deck that couldn’t decide which way was up.

  They slowed their pace as they came close to their destination, attempting to keep as quiet as possible so the men up on the aft deck wouldn’t know they were there. T’ruck waved for everyone to stay silent and approached the ladder at a crouch. He could hear a dull, rhythmic banging, and guessed it was the noise he’d asked for. He crept closer to the ladder and waited for the witch to do her final part.

  It didn’t take long for the shouting and screaming to start.

  T’ruck held up a hand to his crew, making them wait a bit longer. He wanted as many of the folk up on deck distracted as possible, and a few extra seconds of staring into the face of a rampaging shadow monster was fairly distracting.

  After a tortuously long count of ten, T’ruck grabbed hold of the ladder and started to climb as quickly as he could with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. The hatch to the deck was open and T’ruck rushed up through it. Something struck his shield with a solid thud, and pain erupted in his chest, near his right shoulder. T’ruck ignored it – he needed to get up out of the hatch and out of the way so the rest of his crew could follow him.

  The sky was a dirty orange dotted with clouds, obscured by giant masts stretching up to greet them. There was a small group of soldiers watching the hatch, two busy reloading crossbows while another two were armed with swords. They charged at T’ruck even as he got a knee onto the deck.

  With a roar of fury T’ruck swung his shield, swatting away the first soldier’s attack while he blocked the other with his sword, swallowing down the agony in his shoulder. He pushed off from the foot he had on the deck and launched himself at the two men, barrelling into both of them at once and bearing them down with his weight. The world twisted beneath him and the pain from his shoulder reduced his vision to a tunnel. T’ruck had no idea where he was, let alone where the soldiers were. He
surged back onto his knees and began to lay about himself with his sword, the pain in his shoulder fuelling his rage.

  “Cap’n! Cap’n!” one of his sailors shouted, and T’ruck stopped his wild flailing and opened his eyes. His own crew were gathered in front of him. The two soldiers with the crossbows and their guards were down, dead or dying. The two men he’d dragged to the deck with him had died where they fell, plenty of bloody gashes in each from T’ruck’s wild sword-swinging.

  “We need to get into the fight, Cap’n,” said Pocket, a numb sorrow in his eyes.

  T’ruck glanced down and saw a bolt sticking out of his flesh. Only a finger’s width still showed. He knew it would need removing and that his body would need time to heal, but time was something he didn’t have. He would have to ignore the wooden intruder for now and hope one of his surviving crew would know how to patch him up later.

  Struggling to his feet, T’ruck limped forwards and stared down at the main deck, where the majority of the fighting was taking place. Soldiers were everywhere, struggling with the witch’s shadow monsters. T’ruck saw a giant, four-legged shadow lumber out from the darkness cast by the main mast. The creature scooped up the first soldier it came across and dashed the man into the deck, before turning to face a knot of men who had started hacking at it with swords. Whether or not the steel had any effect, T’ruck couldn’t tell, but it certainly seemed to enrage the beast, and soon it was slamming two more soldiers into the deck with its massive paws.

  More and more shadows were pouring from one of the hatches on the main deck, each one like a snake slithering across the wood to find a larger patch of darkness to feed it. Everywhere T’ruck looked, soldiers were dying to the witch’s magic, and he could only wonder how she had the strength to manage it in her state of exhaustion.