“Traamis chose him, and the people followed,” Falhadn had explained, desperate for breath. “Sheep.”
Falhill’s heart had beat faster and faster. “But, that would turn the tables.”
“The balance in congress? Falhill, you need to think about yourself for a second! Hrabhill has threatened to kill you. He is your sworn enemy, and he cannot be handed power.”
“Congress still has to approve him—”
“Kraek, Theral, and Yrnhill are for him. And, honestly, the rest would be thick as a rock to go against Traamis the True. The way that would look — the congress versus the faith. You know how the people will choose. And they will make sure we know their choice — with pitchforks and rusted iron.”
“Calm down. We will vote the idea down, and Traamis can nominate a new confidant to spy for him.”
“The people will not stand for it. I hear how they speak. Their children tell me everything there is to know. You are hated. And not feared.”
“The congress operates in such a way that—”
Falhadn had scoffed, the first of what would be many scoffs that night. “What it comes down to…is that Hrabhill needs to be dealt with.”
The discussion had devolved into an argument, and Falhadn wasted no time pulling from her vast collection of emasculating insults. But now, Falhill found himself contemplating murder.
Falhill walked to the door. “I don’t need an overcoat, Falhadn. Just one more thing to clean the blood from.” The sound of Falhadn’s frantic steps ceased. Falhill’s breath grew heavier. His heart pumped less and less blood as his eyes dried out. His fingertips trembled, but his lips stretched into a grin, which disturbed even him.
From beside the door, he unsheathed the small dagger. He had never used it, but it made Falhill feel safer. He looked back to his wife, who wore an expression of utter ambivalence. She doesn’t believe I will do it. But I will. Falhill reached for the door handle when a stout rap at that same door drove Falhadn to yelp.
Falhill froze in place as Falhadn covered her mouth. After a moment, Falhill went to sheath the dagger, but another forceful rap caused him to drop the small blade on the floor. Falhill stooped to pick it up when the door burst open, off its hinges. The oaken slab that used to be a door crushed Falhill and broke his nose.
“Where is he?!” a young male voice shouted. If Falhill hadn’t been reeling from his crushed nose, he might have realized that smooth, youthful voice could not be Hrabhill the elder’s. “Falhill?!”
Falhadn had to shout over the din of the downpour. “What do you think you’re doing?” The violent wind swept in the night rain, and Falhill slipped trying to rise.
The young voice yelped, then the door flew from atop Falhill. A warm syrup filled his mouth, and the cold from without rain misted over his face. Falhill blinked the moisture from his eyes to find the young sailor Henhall.
Falhill opened his mouth to speak and nearly choked on his own blood. “H— Henhall?”
The fire in the young sailor’s eyes reignited when Henhall saw past the bloodied nose and registered that Falhill lay before him. “You killed her.” On his face was impressed a red shadow of a hand. Who had slapped him so recently? And so violently? Henhall clutched onto a rusted fishing spear. “You sent her to die!”
“Who?” Falhill replied on reflex, but he knew within the next instant. Falhill had thought it passing strange when the ambassador Balsithedeen said her modest goodbyes but dropped all pretense to lustily kiss this dirt-cheeked sailor boy. “Balsithe—”
“Don’t you say her name!” Henhall raised his spear — not intended for combat, but Falhill was unwilling to test this theory. Falhill’s left leg was lodged under the oaken door, and the floor had grown too slippery to rise with haste. The spear descended quickly, but Falhadn was quicker. Falhadn had run her full weight into the sailor boy, and they fell outside.
Falhill had to take his time to rise, but once he had, he retrieved the small dagger he had dropped — careful not to slip. His wife needed him.
The grunts between Falhadn and Henhall were but whispers underneath the black inundation. The lightless rain pounded onto Falhill’s face as he exited his hovel. There, Henhall struck Falhadn across the cheek. Before he could land another blow, Falhill sunk the small dagger into Henhall’s side. The downpour drowned out his expletives.
Falhill removed his dagger and prepared for another, but Henhall twisted like a cyclone. His sinewy arms flailed about and smashed into Falhill’s chin. The lightning uppercut shook Falhill’s teeth, and he bit his tongue.
Falhadn had avoided the attack and stumbled for Henhall’s harpoon on the other side of the deck. She slipped and pierced her thigh on a large splinter. But her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the long spear. “Enough!” she shouted above the din of the deluge.
Henhall started to rise but stopped all of a sudden. The twenty-one-year-old sailor eyed his harpoon within Falhadn’s hands. “Teacher Falhadn, stay out of this,” Henhall screamed. “Auntie Fal told me everything. Your husband sent her to die.”
She answered at once, “Balsithedeen volunteered!”
“When she came before the congress, she told us it was you who first told her about the undertaking,” Falhill added, creeping backwards.
“Shut up!” the sailor screeched. He stood there silent for a moment, drenched from the westward torrent. He sniffled and continued, “It was you. Congresser Falhill, you would send the people you claim to govern to their deaths. And for what?” One step towards Falhill. “She’s dead out there, in the wilderness. And you are here, in your hovel, safe from the rain. Her mangled corpse lies by the ocean shore somewhere — what the wolves and vultures left to rot cannot find shelter from this vile tempest.” Another step towards Falhill. “She loved me. I loved her. My father tried to force me to betroth Kraek’s eldest, or Balgray’s daughter. Even Sarahill’s daughter, just last solar cycle. But I have always loved one woman!” The harpoon rushed into Henhall’s shoulder and pinned him to the threshold of the cottage. He barely acknowledged it, only glancing at the spear for a moment before looking back to Falhill, who had been stunned dumb. Henhall tried to pull away from the wooden wall, but the pain nearly knocked him out. His eyes rolled. “Please, Falhill. I want to be with her.”
The dagger pierced beneath his jaw. Falhill twisted the dagger, and Henhall’s eyes opened wide. “Be with her, then.” Falhill pulled the dagger from Henhall’s neck, and blood sprayed across the deck. The rain made quick work of the splatter, and Falhill wiped the lifeblood from the dagger.
The adrenaline pumped through husband and wife’s veins. They looked in one another’s eyes for the first time since the door had burst open. In Falhadn’s eyes was pride. Fear. Lust. Falhill knew his wife well enough to know she was seldom in awe. Falhill drank in the expression, memorized it.
“Are you alright?” Falhill asked, his feet motionless.
“My thigh…” she replied, standing and wincing. “I’ll make it. Your nose is bleeding.” She yanked the dagger’s hilt from his hand. “I’ll hide this under the deck. For now.”
“We need Aerhall,” Falhill said, looking to their neighbor’s hovel. “For you. And for the sailor.” Falhill had killed a man before. Back in Enesma. The loyalist soldier had threatened his wife and sister’s lives. He tasted blood on his upper lip. We incapacitated him, he tried not to think. We should have arrested him. But Falhill had a plan — a plan corrupt of both legality and morality. “Lay back down.”
Falhill darted to the next house over. He pounded on Physician Aerhall’s thick oaken entranceway. While the wind whipped Falhill’s black hair this way and that, a suspicious Aerhall opened his door.
Aerhall shielded his eyes. “Falhill? What is it?”
“There’s been a murder. And my wife is hurt.”
Aerhall the Amputator followed Falhill to his wife, struggling to rise from the slatted deck. “Falhadn, what happened?”
Falhadn looked to her husband, the
n to Aerhall. “I fell and my thigh caught on a large splinter.”
Brow furrowed, Falhill added, “The murderer thought he’d leave this body on my doorstep and run away. He meant to frame me, Aerhall. But my wife heard creaking and went to the door. He attacked her, pushed her to the ground.”
Aerhall was aghast. “Did you see this man?”
Falhadn looked to her husband, who nodded. She answered, “Hrabhill the elder.”
“Miner Hrabhill? He’s Traamis’s most loyal supporter — among Hrash’s most devout followers. Why?”
Falhill answered, “I won’t presume to know a man’s evil intentions. But perhaps he thought this would gain him favor with Hrash or Traamis. I cannot know how such a perverted mind operates. All I know is he slew that boy with his own harpoon! And he means to pin the murder on me!”
The physician tended to Falhadn’s thigh with thick cloth bandages from his waistpouch and helped her inside, then hurried to Henhall’s waterlogged corpse, dangling from his own spear.
Falhadn pulled Falhill’s sleeve, and he knelt beside her. “What if he has an alibi?”
But Falhill’s face remained cold stone. “Then they are coconspirators. You will gather a crowd to witness his execution at the Mouth. You know whom to gather?”
She nodded. “You must act swiftly. Now. Before the storm lets up. Before sunrise.”
As he rose from his wife, Falhill interrupted, “I know.”
He left his bandaged wife, the physician with his fresh corpse, his modest cottage. Down the Boulevard, he rapped upon a chestnut door. Rudfynhill answered so swiftly that he could not have been asleep. “Come with me,” Falhill commanded, before the congress’s personal protector could speak.
Rudfynhill obeyed quickly. He fetched his ornate longsword and shut the door behind him.
Raindrops pounding against pate, Falhill led him to the house of Hrabhill the elder. He kicked his way through the ingress. The entrance hall branched into the pantry to the right, the reception hall to the left, and the stairway to the bedrooms straight ahead. From the pantry emerged young Hrabhall, apples and rye loaves in tow. “What in—?”
“Stand down, Hrabhall,” Falhill instructed.
“But what are you—?”
“Stand down!”
Hrabhall dropped some apples, and Falhill charged up the stairway.
In investigating the attempt on Traamis’s life, Falhill knew in which bedroom Hrabhill slept. Falhill shouldered his way into the room, and Hrabhill the elder awoke straightaway. “Falhill?” A shortsword appeared from underneath his head sheet. “What is the meaning of this?”
“I charge you with the murder of Sailor Henhall, and the attempt to frame a congresser for said murder.” Falhill’s words drew a gasp from Rudfynhill and a profanity from Hrabhill the elder. “Lower your blade and submit to your authorities.”
“My sole authority dwells not on land amongst mortals! Praise be unto Hrash!”
“The congress and its laws derive from Hrash, and His Law is our law. Lower your blade and submit.”
“Go straight to the fiery pits, Falhill!” Hrabhill the elder spit at him, and Rudfynhill charged at the fifty-four-year-old. Their blades met with a shrill clink. “Slumswain, this is no river tourney.” But Hrabhill had just awoken. Rudfynhill exhausted the old miner with four strong blows. The soldier kicked Hrabhill in his face, and the shortsword fell at Falhill’s feet. Falhill seized it and threw it out of Hrabhill’s milky glass window, shattering the thick glass. The ferocious tempest rushed inside. Falhill breathed in the storm.
“Hold him still.” Falhill approached the apprehended zealot. In Hrabhill’s ear, he whispered, “You said, ‘Maybe an inquisition is what we need’.” Hrabhill’s breath left his lungs, and his umber eyes opened wide as acorns. “Soldier, follow me.”
Rudfynhill carried the old man downstairs. When young Hrabhall drew his iron shortsword to challenge Falhill and his soldier, Falhill evaded the apprentice’s unsteady swing and pushed the boy to the floor. “If you would like to follow us, you may, but do not try and stop us.”
Falhill led the way along the river. He passed three hovels where fathers sat awake on their humble porticoes, and several men guffawed outside Sarahill’s tavern. The spectacle had attracted a tail of half a dozen followers. Then a dozen. By the time Falhill reached the Mouth, he had twenty-one people behind him, all shivering in the cold rain.
Falhadn had gathered just as many: Drea and his grandson, Balgray and her wedbrother, Denhall and his mother, young Baljesshall, Sithill and his family, Balhenhill and his witch wife, Zannahill and his wife and children, Nudntryhill and his family, as well as Aerhall and Primhill. All our allies, Falhill knew. She had fetched the exact people they needed.
Behind him, Yeznahadn and Sarahedeen whispered to one another. The simpleton Rudrud strummed at his harp. Apprentice Hrabhall wept. The alchemist Gaerhill Graymatter had followed the scene but fled — Falhill knew he only had minutes before Theral knew of the execution. And he could not risk Theral and Kraek strong-arming him. A chance at any speck of power would never again appear if Falhill stopped here. He had to carry out his fell deed.
“Congressers, this man Miner Hrabhill the elder is accused of murdering Sailor Henhall. He tried to frame a congresser of the murder, but Teacher Falhadn witnessed his subterfuge.” Falhill gestured to Aerhall. “Beyond myself and Falhadn, our neighbor Aerhall can attest to the validity of our account.”
Surprised, Aerhall responded, “Yes, they came to my hovel straightaway. There was no deception on their part.”
“Congress? Sentence this man to death.”
Drea, Balgray, and Denhall all responded, “Aye.”
“Aye,” agreed Falhill. “Congresser Denhall?”
Denhall tapped his apprentice’s shoulder. “Baljesshall, my axe.”
The boy unsheathed the headsman’s axe, and Rudfynhill pushed Hrabhill to the spot where Balweanhill had lost his head two months past. Denhall grasped the heavy axe with both hands.
Hrabhill’s teary-eyed grandson cried, “His last words?! Please! Falhill!”
Falhill looked to Denhall and shook his head. Miner Hrabhill the elder started to gain his lucidity. Coward, murderer, he had labeled Falhill. Sister killer. Without this nagging old buffoon, Falhill could achieve what he knew was right.
Denhall raised his axe, and Hrabhall ran to try and stop him. But the moonlit axe cut through the downpour, then flesh, then bone, then flesh. One strike was all it took to cut through that spine. Just like with Shelwyn. When Hrabhall arrived at his grandfather’s body, the blood gushed into his eyes. Blinded, he tried to keep his grandfather’s corpse from falling limply to the sands below. But he ended up falling with it. He lay sobbing, unable to let go of the headless body.
Meanwhile, the confused expression on Hrabhill’s face rolled towards Falhill’s feet. Before the thunderstorm could wash the gore away, Falhill could have sworn he spotted a dove painted with blood on the shifting sands.
Chapter fourteen
Victory Tour
Falhadn smiled. She had trouble not smiling since last night, when her husband took matters into his own hands. And now Falhadn could delight in Kraek’s abject humiliation.
Generals Kraek and Laebm loaded thin wooden sparring swords into a covered wain. Their sons Kraekhill and Laebmhill carried the wooden kite shields, and the boys Gaerhall and Rudfynhall brought over the rack of padded helmets. When Rudfynhall passed her on the way back, Falhadn pulled him to her side and squeezed his shoulders with stern affection.
Kraek walked up to Falhadn while the others finished loading up their weapons. “Teacher Falhadn, is there anything else I can do for you?”
Yes, but it’s not appropriate for boy’s ears. “Not at this moment, no. But, please, do not try and employ any other method of brainwashing my students. I’m having a hard enough time teaching them simple grammar. There’s not enough room in their head for warcraft and fearmongering as well.”
/> Kraek suppressed a grin. “You’re cheeky.”
“No more than usual, General.”
“I prefer to be called Congresser. Laebm Lionheart is our colony’s war chief. He alone deserves the style General.”
Falhadn tapped young Rudfynhall on his shoulder, and Rudfynhall ran to his friends. “Now that a sword doesn’t mean power in the colony, it makes sense you would want to distance yourself from the title. Sailor Henhall was your weddaughter’s twin brother, wasn’t he? Such a shame.”
“You think you’re smart and cunning and shrewd. But you’re nobody — the wife of a coward. Your proclivity for language is your only talent, and I have to say it’s about the worst talent a person can have. I once knew a man who could pop his eye out whenever he pleased, and that proved useless as a mule’s member. But at least he could see around corners.”
“I’m smart enough to see what you’re doing. And when the people turn on you, there’s no coming back.”
“The people love a general who keeps them safe. I’m not worried.”
“You’re not a general, though, remember? And the people hate congressers.”
“I would hate to keep you any longer from teaching these malleable children how to conjugate verbs. So I shall take my very sharp weapons and return to the high-walled barracks upriver. Truly a pleasure.” Kraek took her hand and brushed his lips against her supple flesh. His forced smile receded from Falhadn’s field of vision as the covered wain wobbled out of the woods. The faint smell of rain lingered from the night before, and the ground had turned to viscid mud, and Falhadn’s thigh radiated with sweet pain. A reminder of the night my husband did what needed to be done.
“Where’d Grandfather go?” The seven-year-old Jeulgaerhall sat on the verge of tears. “He said he and Uncle Laebm would teach us all sorts of fighting stuff.”
The Heirs of History: A Nation From Nothing Page 17