Warlords and Wastrels

by Julia Knight

  Vocho wondered what was going through her head and gave up in the end–it could be anything, but he didn’t think she was telling him what the real problem was. He got through the ensuing silence by relishing the thought of Carrola riding double with him later. An excellent chance to dig further into the puzzle that was Eder, not to mention it would be cosy and a chance to dig into what was Carrola. Maybe he could make her laugh.

  Laughing seemed to be off the agenda as they packed the last of the tents. Over in Eder’s camp raised voices leaked towards Vocho. Eder and Carrola, if he wasn’t mistaken.

  He tried to ignore the voices and got his horse ready for the trek ahead before mounting and, to a grin of Cospel’s, riding down to Eder’s troop.

  “What the hells do you want?” the captain snarled.

  Vocho took a breath and tried to remember what Kass had said as they’d packed–do our best not to antagonise. Do not rub in that we are guild. Try not to make him hate us worse than he already does. Please, Voch. Just this once.

  It was a lot harder than it looked.

  “I promised Carrola she could ride double with me, seeing as how her horse isn’t available.”

  Eder snorted. “Not yours to promise. She rides with me.”

  “But—” Eder’s glare cut Carrola off before she got started, though Vocho thought it was a fair bet she’d be saying plenty later.

  Vocho took a look at Eder’s horse–one that had been wounded by the wolves, if not seriously. A second rider would do it no favours. Vocho glanced back at Kass, got a shake of the head and reined his horse about. Fine. If Eder wanted to be a dick, he could be one. Vocho could find Carrola later.

  They rode out, and Vocho was not slow to notice the way Eder harangued Carrola as they left, though not loud enough for him to catch the words.

  The day was otherwise uneventful, except for the worsening weather as they climbed. They stopped at noon, and Eder’s troop wouldn’t even look at the duellists. Kass managed to get a few words out of Eder in the afternoon, though when she turned her back he gave her a look like bloody murder. Vocho began to wonder if it wasn’t him pissing off Eder that was the problem. What had Kass done while they were in that tent to warrant a look like that? At least she got him to agree to find somewhere indoors for the night.

  The village lay curled into a little valley away from the worst of the weather. Which was just as well because, despite the supposed thaw, a frigid wind whipped down from the mountains and across Vocho’s face as they approached it. Their little band sat ahorse, heads down against the first flurries of snow, but it got everywhere. At least it was warmer now than it would have been two months ago, when this Scar and Skull band had begun branching out. They must have cast-iron skin, Vocho thought. Or cast-iron balls. Maybe they had better gear–with the thaw supposedly well on the way, the guards and duellists had packed maybe a little too lightly. He knew that his hip had seized up like sand in clockwork, and it made him short-tempered and want, with an aching need that worried him, to find somewhere quiet to slip a bit of jollop. Until that happened he found occasion to be sarcastic to everyone within earshot.

  The village was small, more a bleeding-together of houses than a group, so that it seemed one long rambling building with a myriad of doors that thumbed a collective nose at the snow.

  Eder had sent a scout ahead, and the inn was ready for them. It couldn’t take them all, so the owner had arranged lodgings for some of the troop in a neighbouring house, or possibly just an extension of the inn, it was hard to tell. The horses were stabled in a barn just up the little stream that lay half frozen and miserable in the centre of the narrow valley, and some of the troop elected to stay there and haggle for a horse to replace Carrola’s. At least it’d be warm in with the horses. The rest of them got the inn.

  Vocho, ever a connoisseur of places where ale was drunk, gave it the once-over. It wasn’t big–the nearby road was the main route through to Ikaras, but not many stopped off in this little out-of-the-way place when there was a larger, and much more pleasant, inn a few miles up the road. In fact this was more a tavern than an inn, with only a few rooms available.

  Someone had taken some care trying to make the place look cheerful, with colourful upholstery on the benches that was now terminally beer stained, and the walls washed a pale yellow that had turned an ugly brown in the corners. But there were some odd touches that this careful cheer only brought into sharper relief. Gaps on the wall surrounded by soot stains where things had been taken down. A small pile of bright cogs and mangled gears by the fire, as though someone had recently pulled apart a clock and then stamped on it for good measure.

  For the village’s only inn, and one welcoming an unusual group of travellers, where the locals might expect to make a bit of money or at least get the chance to flirt outrageously with someone new, the main bar was almost empty. When he peered out of the windows into the gathering dark, only one or two houses had any lights. The woman who stood behind the bar was matronly and welcoming as you’d expect, but had a massive yellowing bruise across one side of her face.

  “What a shit hole,” was Cospel’s muttered comment, accompanied by a grimace of distaste.

  Vocho couldn’t really disagree, and became even surer of it when dinner arrived and proved to be grey, greasy and almost cold. The bread that came with it could have made a half-decent cosh.

  Eder kept himself to himself over in one corner with a few of his troop, Carrola included. He’d been on edge since their stop at noon, had hardly spoken a word to either Kass or Vocho, and barely even looked their way, except to snap at Carrola when he caught her grinning at Vocho. Now it looked like she was getting the full treatment. Eder leaned across the table with a twisted scowl and a jabbing, accusing forefinger while Carrola looked him dead in the eye and kept her face blank.

  Kass persuaded the woman behind the bar to come and talk to them. “This is Vedora. They got raided two weeks or so ago, right in the middle of a snowstorm,” she said to Vocho. “This is my brother Vocho. We’ve come to—”

  The woman interrupted her with a frown. “Vocho, isn’t he the one what killed that priest?”

  God’s cogs, would that never stop following him around? Couldn’t people remember him saving the bloody city instead? “Yes, madam. And under the right provocation I might put on a repeat performance. Not necessarily a priest next time. I’m thinking of diversifying.”

  Vedora glared at him like she’d caught him stealing her underwear and then ignored him in favour of Kass. For once he didn’t mind.

  “Came out of nowhere, they did,” she said. “Or leastways seemed like it. We was all battened down for the storm, a good half the village in here. Next thing we know, the storm went all funny.”

  “Funny?” Vocho asked. His hip ground in its socket every time he shifted, and he couldn’t help himself. “It told a joke?”

  Kass sliced him a warning glare and Vedora ignored him. “Was snowing fit to bust, a good ten, twelve inches we’d had since noon, and it were still coming down. We was all tucked up nice and cosy though, like I say, and then the snow stopped.”

  “I was under the impression it didn’t snow all the time here. Only twenty-three hours a day.”

  “Voch.”

  He shifted, winced, tried a sneaky pass at the jollop bottle, but Kass was looking at him like her eyes could bore through his and out the back of his skull. He buried his face in his beer and kept all his thoughts to himself.

  “The snow stopped,” Kass prompted, and Vedora ceased glaring at Vocho and carried on.

  “Was still cold enough to freeze a man where he stood, seemed like, and the wind still whipped around the chimney like a hell-witch, but the snow weren’t snow no more. Rain and plenty of it, so it puddled under the door and I used all my best towels trying to mop it. Then, all of a sudden, by the door it weren’t cold, it was hot like spring, like summer, and the rain stopped like someone was pouring a bucket and it ran out. I’d just said a word I p
robably shouldn’t have, and then there’s bunch of men and women at back door and front, all armed with swords and them new-fangled gun things standing in a bunch of fog.”

  Vocho snuck a look at Kass, and she was thinking the same thing as he was–magicians, like that old bugger at the previous village had said. There had to be a way Scar was gettng around in the snow and the prelate’s men couldn’t, and here it was. They were moving around because they had a bloody magician to do something to the weather.

  “Took damn near everything we got,” Vedora went on, seemingly not noticing their sudden interest. “And then everything froze back up after, worse than afore, drifts six foot deep and more and frozen solid. Took us days to dig everything out, what with more snow coming down. Not enough food to see us through until spring now, or not the whole village anyways, so most of them went off up the way to Kastroa. Bigger town, got a wall and everything.”

  “Just tell us what happened here.”

  Vedroa looked up as Eder loomed over the table. “I told him already.”

  “It was in my report,” he said. “Though I don’t suppose you cared to read it.”

  “I certainly did,” Kass snapped back, and Vocho was glad she had, because he’d not bothered. “But hearing it from the people who experienced it can’t hurt, can it? Unless you don’t want us to help? Besides there’s a detail or two you neglected to mention.” She turned back to the landlady. “Vedora, could you describe any of them?”

  “Not rightly, no, not most of them. Scarves and whatnot over their faces, some of them. Most of the rest just looked like men and women. One bloke were right big though. Banged his head on the beam over there, almost knocked hisself out on it. Bald as a coot, he was, with a big fat face and a nose like a potato.”

  Eder cocked a cool eyebrow Kacha’s way. “This was all in my report.”

  She ignored him. “Any others?”

  “Well, like I say, most of them just looked like regular people. Except two–couldn’t mistake those two. Scars, see? She had a knife mark up her face. Shame really–she’d be handsome without–but it’s a great big puckered thing starting at her chin and going right up over her eye and into her hair. Can’t miss it. O’ course, that was nothing to the fella. His scars were enough to give me nightmares.”

  Vocho shuddered in sympathy and in recollection of the last time he’d seen Petri Egimont, which had given him a nightmare or two as well. That his first thought had been Petri made another shudder ripple across his shoulders, so that Kass frowned. But Petri had still had his face left, even if it wasn’t pretty. Besides, Petri was probably only second to Vocho in never wanting to see a magician again. He’d not work with one again if he could help it, Vocho was pretty sure. He waved at Kass for her to carry on.

  “One side of his face was all but missing,” Vedora went on. “Lost an eye, and not much left of his cheek, and that now nothing but bone, and scarred bone at that. The edges that are left are all twisted and pink like. Shiny in places. Wore a mask over the rest of his face so I couldn’t tell you about that. Ever such a posh accent he had; you could have etched glass with it. Anyway, I told him his family would be ashamed of him, and what he was doing now that all his ancestors would be a-turning in their posh graves. You know what he said? He said, ‘I think my father would applaud me. He never could abide weakness.’”

  Vocho stared at her, aware that Kacha was giving him an odd look. “Did you notice anything else about him? Height, hair colour, anything?” he asked.

  Vedora gave him a sideways glance. “About your height. Maybe not so broad. And for all his posh accent he didn’t have his hair done in that curly mare’s tail you got on your shoulder–you know, like all the nobs do. Dark hair it was, but he’d left it all wild. Odd though, he was. He was growling and snapping like a baited bear, but… you get to my age, you can see when someone’s heart ain’t in it. He was like a man who didn’t want to be there, but if he had to be then he was going to play the part.” She blew out her cheeks and her hands waved as though despairing. “They took or smashed near everything. Lot of people have upped sticks, gone down to relatives on the plains or to the city, and I don’t blame them neither.”

  She shivered theatrically and went off to see about pulling some more pints.

  “He can’t really have half his face missing. Can he?” Vocho kept thinking of Petri’s face, which had been bad enough. There had been some terrible business in the city during the battle for Reyes as well–adding magicians to a battle didn’t do anything but make it worse seemed to be the lesson–and Vocho had seen more than one man with bits missing, but a face down to the bone?

  “I did see one man who survived the Red Brook,” Eder said grudgingly. “An Ikaran. He didn’t have any skin or muscle left on one hand. It rained hot blood, hot enough to strip skin from bone. This Ikaran was wounded that way, and it got infected later. The surgeon didn’t want to amputate–the man was in such a state he didn’t think he’d survive it–so he cut away all the infection, the skin and muscle that were left, right down to the bone. He lived, but his hand… He’ll never do anything with it again, but at least he lived. Plenty of us didn’t.”

  “You were at Red Brook?” Kass asked.

  “Yes” was all Eder said before he shoved back his chair with a scrape of wood on stone and stalked off towards the door that led to the stables, muttering about checking on the horses.

  “Touchy subject,” Vocho said when he was out of earshot.

  “I’m not surprised,” Kass replied, frowning after the captain. “Could explain him being so twitchy. You hear what happened?”

  “I have been rather busy running your guild, Kass. I haven’t had time to read the gossip sheets.” Except when they mentioned him, naturally. “So, what did happen?” He knew the basics–Red Brook had been a clusterfuck, in a nutshell–but that was about it.

  She shrugged. “Same thing that happens every time people fight battles. Things go wrong. A series of screw-ups leads to, well, one monster screw-up. All that magic flying about, it was probably bound to happen–sections get separated, turned about, ordered the wrong way. Then it rained hot blood, which would be enough to send anyone screwy. It ended up with two sections of Reyens, under specific orders from their commanders, attacking each other, each thinking the others were Ikarans. It was dark, it was the middle of a battle, and by the time they realised their mistake–saw the uniforms perhaps or recognised a face–it was too late. One crazy screw-up that pretty much wiped out the Reyens there, those who hadn’t run away by then. Didn’t know he was in it though.”

  Kass stared after Eder with a sharp line between her brows, one that meant she was thinking hard. At least her thoughts were no longer spiralling around Petri, had moved on to what was happening outside her head, for which Vocho could be grateful. And not just because all the time she was pondering Eder and magicians she wasn’t watching him sliding up to his room for a nip of jollop.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Three months ago

  The valley lay under a thick blanket of snow. Others, men who’d lived in these mountains all their lives, said it was the harshest winter they could recall. Every day when Petri left Scar’s hut, the snow lay thicker, the air struck his face colder. Every day it snowed, now big fat flakes that swirled the senses so a man could become lost between this hut and the next, and then an hour later small stinging bullets that seemed to flay what flesh he had left on his face.

  Scar paced and chafed; Petri watched through one half-lidded eye; Kepa grunted his observations, which were often surprisingly astute, and they planned how they would go forward. Scar worried about food, or the lack of it, about how to best serve these men and women who looked to her now to save them. Two men died, of cold or hunger, no one was sure which. Others weren’t far behind. Even Kepa was beginning to look gaunt, and it would be weeks yet, maybe months, until the thaw set in enough for them to move around the mountains.

  Scar insisted he keep up the training, w
hich was held inside the mess hut now.

  “The sooner they can fight properly, the better. The easier it will be. We need to think bigger, go further, if we’re to survive. And more than survive.”

  She said nothing about how they’d reach wherever to fight whoever, though he could see her thinking on Morro’s words, that snow would be no problem for them if they let him help. Snow blocked every pass, every nook and cranny, drifted in great mounds, scoured by the ever-present wind. Unless they could deal with the snow, they were doomed. They had the means perhaps, if they were willing to use a magician, but he said nothing, and neither did she. Morro and Maitea slept in the mess hall, where there was always someone to keep an eye on them. Scar wasn’t trusting him just yet.

  In the mess Kepa had moved the tables against the walls of the hut, and two dozen men and women shivered in front of the mean fire–food wasn’t all that was running low. Every tree within reach had been burned or sat chopped under eaves, but what was left wasn’t even close to enough to see them through.

  Petri got out the practice swords and had them all warming up, a phrase that had taken on a whole new meaning in the last weeks.

  One man didn’t join in–Morro. He sat huddled in the corner as though afraid to show the world too much of himself. He sat and watched while he ate what little there was to eat, Kepa close by with a knife ready. Scar had some plan, but she wasn’t so stupid as to let Morro get an edge, which comforted Petri.

  The training went well enough. Three or four seemed to have picked up the knack of swordplay almost by instinct. With a little more practice they’d be the match of most men they’d find in the towns, though against trained guards they’d still need to be careful. The rest at least were showing progress. Kepa handed over his knife, and his watch on the magician, to another and came for his turn.

  The practice sword seemed far too small for his hands, which seemed like bludgeons all on their own. Still, he’d picked up the way of it quick enough, and Petri had to pull out a trick or two to save himself the indignity of being put on his arse. At least his own technique with his off hand was also improving, along with the strength in his wrist and arm. Finally, he managed to disarm Kepa with a crafty dodge that would have had him out of the guild in a heartbeat. But he wasn’t teaching them guild fighting. Sportsmanship would get anyone killed outside the guild walls and the sandy arena where elaborate duels to strict laws were waged, and wagered upon. Even a guildsman had to bend those laws once he got through the gates.