Warlords and Wastrels

by Julia Knight

  “Yes, well.” Determined to steer the conversation as far away from Carrola as possible, Vocho said, “And do we know why he hated the guild to start with?”

  “Red Brook, something to do with that–all I or anyone else seems to know. Shattered him pretty bad, that did, and it’s only in the last couple of months he’s been back on duty and got this troop. Left him very twitchy by all accounts.”

  “I could tell that by myself.”

  “Yeah, well you be careful. He’s bandying about threats, empty or otherwise, and all sorts. He’s got it in for you, make no mistake. Kass too, though I think that’s more complicated.”

  “I gathered. Cospel…” Vocho hesitated, which made twice in one day, and that was unheard of. He thought of Carrola and her grey eyes and the way she’d spat her words at him before slamming the door. He thought about the jollop hidden in his tunic and Petri’s ravaged face, Kass waking up and the Skull and all the lies he’d told and was still telling. What telling even part of the truth had got him and what telling the whole truth now would unleash. “Never mind. Hand over that rum, will you?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “So the prelate has sent extra men?” Scar grinned at the news, twisting her scar in new directions. “Excellent.”

  Petri sat at the back of the tiny hut, wreathed in darkness, watching and wondering.

  Morro cracked a smile. “Exactly what you wanted, yes. We–you–can show them they were wrong to write off all these men and women.”

  Scar’s grin faltered as though she suddenly wasn’t so sure, but it soon came back.

  Only this wasn’t what Scar had hoped for once. Now, with Morro clearing the way, making sure no one could track them, things had changed, and so had she. She was worse this last month, seeing obstacles everywhere, questioning Petri constantly about Kass, about his loyalty. Sometimes he thought she was sinking into herself, spiralling inwards at an ever-increasing rate. The rest too. Kepa had begun to mutter to himself; others were acting strangely, and where Petri had been at least friendly with some, and more so with Kepa, now they spoke to him less and less, yet whispered in corners just on the edges of his hearing. No matter how he tried, Petri could never catch Morro using magic on any of them. He never took off his gloves; the smell of cooking blood never tainted the air of the valley except when he used it to melt snow. Just his voice, telling Scar this was what she wanted, what she’d always wanted.

  “Just what we wanted. Isn’t it?” Scar said, this time to Petri.

  “Yes.” What else to say when she was so excited, so fired up? When Morro sat and smiled at Petri like he was imagining how cutting Petri’s throat would feel.

  “God’s cogs, Pet, you could sound more enthusiastic.” Scar waved away her messenger and came to crouch next to him, put a gentle scarred hand on his arm.

  Careful, that’s what he had to be. Strong or not, careful was the way to go. And did it matter, if he got what he wanted? He glanced behind Morro to where Maitea stood, wreathed in the shadows that seemed to follow her everywhere. Like her father, Petri thought suddenly, shadowed and unexplained, waiting for the right time. She was holding herself with careful patience until she got whatever it was she wanted. A timely reminder to do the same.

  “What next?” he said. “Where next?”

  “That’s better. Well, I think we need to deal with this new batch of prelate’s men, don’t you? Show him he made the wrong choice about you.”

  The wrong choice–yes. He could feel it all bubbling up now behind what was left of his face. The rails and gears behind the world didn’t rule him; he was going to make his own fate. He was going to be, finally, free–that had been his thought when she’d begun this. He could still do it.

  He looked at Morro, at the smug little smile as he watched the two of them. Petri needed to know if what Maitea had told him about Morro was true. Until then he needed no suspicion from either of them. He had to play his new part as well as he could, be canny with it. The disturbing bit was, part of him wanted what Scar now did, wanted to show every last fucking one of them. Maybe he could use Morro until that was done.

  “We have to do this now,” she said, perhaps sensing his reticence. “In winter, with Morro helping us, we have a chance. If we can beat them now, maybe the prelate will let us be for a time. Until the thaw, which will come when Morro lets it come. Or at least until the towns agree to treat with us, pay us tribute. Food and wood and whatever we need. If we want them to do that, then we need to show them they have no choice, no protection. Not even from the prelate.”

  “Which way will they come?” Petri asked her eventually, his hand on hers now, a thumb gently along the skin that recalled another hand, other days, other nights, long ago and when he was a different person.

  “Up the Razor Gorge, I expect.”

  “Then let’s be ready for them. Let’s show them who we are.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Kass looked up at a fall of snow so thick she could barely see the other side of the square and wondered if perhaps a day or two would make any difference. Eder would argue it, of course, but she was in charge of this mission. A sideways glance at Vocho as he stood next to her, pretending that his hip wasn’t bothering him at all.

  He paced jerkily up and down, seeming purposeful, but if you looked there was a care to that stride, a swing of the good leg to disguise the hitch in the bad. She was about to say the weather would hold them here until it cleared, as much for him as anything else, when Danel bowled up, out of breath and red faced behind the fringe of fur that almost obscured him.

  “Is this snow going to last?” she asked. Then, because she caught a glimpse of what looked like panic, “What is it?”

  “Eder, miss. I told him, I did, last night I told him the weather was unpredictable and we probably wouldn’t be going anywhere for a day or so. But he went anyway. Him and all his troop.”

  “Gone? Where? When?”

  “Before first light, miss. And up the mountain, where else? Skull country, No Man’s Land, whatever you want to call it. Bad country, that’s what it is, even with no Skull. They left before the snow started. Any mountain man could have told him how the weather was going to close in, but he didn’t take no mountain man, or none of us is missing.”

  Kass swore viciously under her breath.

  Vocho strode over, all false bluster and pretence. “Why would he do that?”

  “Why do you think, Voch? Because he’s got an axe to grind against the guild. He wants to prove, to us and everyone else, that he doesn’t need the guild. Come on.”

  Danel showed them the rapidly filling tracks by the gate.

  “It’s going to be a proper blow, and no mistake,” he said. “Looked like it was warming up too, that maybe we’d seen the back of this winter barring a flurry or two. But mountains always like to have the last laugh. You can’t trust them. He wouldn’t know that. Told one of my men that we was worrying over nothing, being too cautious; it’d blow out like the last one. I could have told him not to trust to that, or lowlander thinking, not up here, miss, but there you are. He’s gone, and him and all his troop are up on the mountain in that, and probably getting lost with it.”

  Well, fuck. Bakar had been most insistent about everyone coming back from this little expedition, and her responsibility to his men and women as well. “What about their gear?”

  “Well, it’d do if it were thaw or this was just a little flurry, but for this? He’s only got what they brought with them, lowlander stuff like yours and them poncy little furs from the inn. The traders offered to lend them better gear, but he said no.”

  “Lend?”

  “Well, more like rent, I expect.” Danel grinned nervously. “Get money out of snow itself, they could. But Eder turned them down. Not authorised to spend that kind of money or something.”

  “Stupid bastard,” Kass said. Eder, driven by pride, even if it was all tangled up. Trying to be the good man, do his duty, but it twisted in on itself. She l
ooked at the tracks, which by now were the faintest hint of depressions in the pristine expanse of snow, and up at the mountain behind the curtain of the weather. It seemed to fill her whole vision. Eder was out there, and pride wouldn’t keep him and his troop warm, or alive. She shut her eyes against a memory that flashed up. She hadn’t been able to save Petri because she’d hesitated, been too slow. No making that mistake twice. Eder wasn’t him, didn’t own the voice in her memories, but she’d failed to save Petri. She wasn’t going to fail again.

  “Well then,” she said. “Looks like we’re going whether we like it or not.”

  “Are we?” Vocho said with a hint of desperation. “I mean if Danel says the weather’s too harsh…”

  “Then they’ll freeze to death if we don’t find them and bring them back.”

  A long drawn-out sigh from her brother. “The good thing, huh?”

  “Yes, the good thing. I thought that was what this was all about, you and Bakar making me be me again and thinking you were being so secret about it? Well, this is part of that–me being me.”

  “I knew there was something I didn’t miss about you, and now I recall what it was.”

  “Get your fur knickers on, Voch. You’re going to need them.”

  Vocho struggled into the thicker furs that Imanol had loaned to them at a “reasonable” rate. Solid wolf furs in good condition and not smelling of dead meat, which was a vast improvement. Better than the gear they had anyway, but so they should be for the price. At least, Danel had promised him, they were windproof, near as anything could be. They also had handy pockets. A quick nip to steady his shaky hands while hiding in the shadow of his horse and he was ready.

  A last plea for sanity. “Kass, are you sure—”

  “Yes” was all she said in the tone of voice that meant she was going whether he liked it or not. She gave some last-minute instructions to the couple of fellow guildsmen they were leaving in Kastroa. Vocho wished he could be one of them–they were grinning like fools because naturally they saw a future that held warm fires and possibly a few light games of chance–for wagers of course–while Vocho’s future appeared to involve freezing his cogs off on a sodding mountain rescuing someone who didn’t want rescuing because of his stupid pride.

  “As soon as the snow clears,” Kass said, “one of you is to go down to the nearest outpost, get a message sent on to Bakar, and I want my position on his fool of a captain made quite clear.”

  “I don’t see why they get to be left behind, Kass.”

  “Because there’s no point risking all of us out in that, and if we need to get a message to Bakar I wouldn’t trust it to that snake Imanol. We take Danel because he knows his way about, and once we find Eder, maybe he can stop us all freezing to death. You and I and Cospel are going because I won’t ask anyone to do something I won’t do myself.” She wouldn’t catch his eye on that last point, but he knew he wouldn’t stay if she was going. “The rest can stay here–any more people won’t help and might hinder.” She turned back to the guildsmen. “If we aren’t back in three days, a message to Bakar, and you get some guides and come looking with as many people as you can, OK? Kick Imanol’s arse until he agrees to help because if anything goes wrong I don’t want to be stranded with no one to watch our backs.”

  Snow fell in great feathered clumps as they left the stables, sticking to Vocho’s face, his horse’s mane, everywhere it could get. The wind had picked up since they’d looked at the tracks by the north gate and now it howled and tore at his wolfskin cloak, but Danel was right: the furs were very nearly windproof. Which didn’t stop Vocho’s face going numb.

  The snow slackened soon enough, but the storm didn’t, whipping up snow and ice and driving it at them with ever-increasing force. It was bad enough in the good furs–the Clockwork God knew how bad it must be for Eder and his crew. Maybe Kass was right. Vocho thought about Carrola freezing to death out here in not much more than woollens and thin furs that stank of old meat. The good thing. Hey, he could save Carrola and be a hero, right, just as Kass could save Eder? Maybe then Carrola would speak to him again; he could explain, and she’d laugh at one of his stories. Vocho the Great Saves Guards with Stupid Captain from Freezing to Death. That thought cheered him immensely.

  The tracks were, to Vocho’s eyes, invisible, but Danel said he could follow them, though he made them stop twice while he dismounted and cast about for signs. They came to a narrow winding valley that protected them from the worst of the wind, and the tracks were still clear–to Danel anyway.

  “Straight on to Skull country,” Cospel said gloomily.

  By the afternoon they were sure they were gaining on Eder, but the weather began to turn again.

  “I thought you said—” Kass eyed the lowering clouds.

  “I also said the mountains like a laugh,” Danel replied. “You can’t never be sure what they’ll do, which is why you got to be prepared. That’s what Eder didn’t understand.”

  “Wonderful,” Cospel muttered in the background. “Sounds like the story of my life, that. Having to be prepared for all manner of shit.”

  “Ah, a mountain man?”

  “No, I just work for these two.”

  “I resent that!” Vocho said.

  “No, you resemble it.” Kass nudged her horse closer. “What now, Danel?”

  “Well if we were sensible, we’d find somewhere out of the wind to camp until it blows over.”

  Kass gave Vocho a look he knew well enough just as the snow started again, great lazy flakes that flipped and danced in the wind. “Are we being sensible?”

  He thought about Carrola, and the good thing, and how much jollop he had left, and Kass needing to prove something to herself. “I doubt it. We aren’t usually.”

  “See?” Cospel said. “See what I have to put up with?”

  They stopped twice more along the way, once to rest the horses and check their feet and leg wrappings–ice had formed on the snow crust and with every step they risked a cut. Danel had made sure they all had leg wrappings before they started, but they were in danger of working loose. They rewrapped them and gave the horses each a share of the grain they carried. While Kass was busy trying not to get kicked in the head, Vocho managed a slug of the jollop. It kept him warmer than any fur could, and made the rest of the slog, through driving snow and a worsening wind, possible to bear.

  As light started to grow dim in the short day, they came to a narrowing of the way with steep upward slopes on either side. As they passed into the defile, the wind dropped abruptly, as though someone had turned it off. The snow that had been whizzing past their heads and into their faces and every bloody cranny it could find dropped lazily before it too stopped, leaving behind an unnatural stillness, a silence that seemed to echo in his head. Vocho was reminded all too forcibly of the rumours about magicians and weather.

  The first hint of anything untoward was a dark splotch in the snow ahead surrounded by a great billowing depression as though someone had delighted in kicking the snow about. When they got closer, the dark splotch was red, the depression horse-made–in at least two places hoof marks were clearly visible.

  No one said anything, but they all pushed their by-now-tired horses on. Around a shallow bend, and a dead horse lay in a patch of red snow, darkly fletched arrows sticking out from neck and rump. Their own horses grew skittish, and Kass’s briefly threatened to have her off.

  Danel swore under his breath and looked up. Kass and Vocho did the same. The walls of the defile narrowed above them, almost met in places, leaving handy gaps to shoot a gun or bow through.

  “Just about as perfect a place for an ambush as you could wish for,” Kass said.

  “Then let’s not go any further, because it only gets more so.” Vocho nodded to where the trail narrowed to a track that would only take one horse at a time. The defile ended, and the cliff on one side disappeared, becoming a drop that descended with dizzying swiftness far below them. The snow on the trail was all churned int
o spikes, and one or two arrows and crossbow bolts stuck out like spines on a hedgehog.

  “Any way up there from here?” Kass asked Danel, pointing to the top of the cliff.

  “Not easily, miss. If we go back about five miles, perhaps. Or you can get to it from higher up on the trail, I suppose. If you could climb like a goat there might be a way.”

  Kass muttered about stupid bloody captains having stupid bloody ideas. “What in hell did he think he was going to achieve?”

  “Catching the Skull without our help, I expect. Doesn’t look like it’s turned out too well.” Vocho had just spotted what was up at the next corner–a dark bundle half covered by snow with more arrows sticking out of it. Not big enough to be a horse. A sudden sweat under his furs, and he didn’t think about ambush or narrowing tracks with sudden drops. He didn’t think about anything except wanting, needing, to know who that was up there.

  His horse shied as he gave it an unexpected kick, but it shifted, picking its way along the slippery track. Kass called out from behind, telling him another person being stupid wouldn’t help, but he ignored her.

  Besides, “There’s no one up there now,” he called back over his shoulder. No shadows at the edge above, no telltale clumps of snow falling as men moved around. If anyone was there, they’d have shot as soon as Vocho and the rest had turned the corner, not waited for them to stand around and look at a dead horse.

  He half climbed, half fell off his horse, staggered in knee-deep snow and knelt awkwardly by the bundle. Blood soaked the snow underneath it, but he could see movement–whoever it was they were still breathing.

  His hand shook as he reached out to brush the wind-blown snow from the face, and not from the cold. Dark hair, like hers, cropped short, like hers. But–the snow fell away–not hers. Relief made him bark out a laugh, until the woman’s eyes fluttered open at the sound. One of Eder’s people; he recognised her even if he couldn’t recall the woman’s name.