by Watson Davis
The receptionist curled his lip, staring down in horror. “What does he think he’s doing?”
Yaj Yath stepped away from the counter and looked at a door at the far end of the room.
A moment later the door opened and a large Shrian man rushed into the room, several pages in his hand, sweat trickling down the side of his face, his eyes on the receptionist. “We need to amend the Aruta order, the Samoth one for the…”
“Mr. Fortesku,” Kalo said, raising the order slip in her hand, stomping across the floor to stand before him. “Your lackey has been most unhelpful.”
“Captain Autut?” Fortesku bowed, a smile finding its way onto his face. “Always a pleasure to see you, my dear. You are lovely, as always. Red is your color. And such a fine quality of silk.” He grabbed the opening of her sleeve, running his fingertips over it. “I fear you’ve been holding back on us.”
“And this commission you placed with me?” she asked, holding the order before his face. “Your lackey seems to have a problem with it.”
“Oh.” Fortesku leaned back, his eyes skimming the paper. “That order.”
“Yes?” she said, moving closer to him, pushing the page ever closer.
“The client canceled that order, I’m afraid.” Fortesku shrugged. “I tried to send word to you, but you know communicating over the Flux Sea is never a sure bet. The ship with the message will probably reach the Nayen coast in a week. So sorry.”
Behind her, Yaj Yath’s oracle bones fell onto the counter once more and in Nayen, Yaj Yath mumbled, “We should leave now.”
Kalo ignored him, her attention and her ire on the large Shrian before her. “And all the silver mirrors in my hold? How much will you pay me for those?”
“That’s the danger of doing business, my dear.” Fortesku smiled and shrugged.
Kalo dropped her right hand, the hand holding the order, but her left hand shot up, now armed with a dagger, the blade of the dagger resting against Fortesku’s throat in an instant.
“We should leave now, Mian-on,” Yaj Yath said behind her. “Stop her before this gets out of hand.”
“You owe me a handsome sum, Mr. Fortesku,” Kalo said.
“Let’s find another way,” Mian-on whispered in Kalo’s ear, wrapping his arms around her waist, picking her up, and walking away with her squirming in his arms.
Mr. Fortesku relaxed, slumping over the counter, his breathing ragged, with one hand flat on the counter’s surface. He pointed toward Kalo. “You’ll be lucky to sell any shipment in Shria after that little outburst,” he spat.
“Well?” Kalo pointed at him, trying to speak between Mian-on’s hurried steps, yelling, “You can tell your customers they will get nothing more from the Eternal Lands!”
Yaj Yath held a small bone between his forefinger and thumb. He whispered some words and tossed the bone into the air. The bone flew back, whizzing through the air, directly into Fortesku’s open mouth.
Fortesku clutched his throat, his eyes widening with surprise, and gagging, trying to breathe, he fell to his knees, his face turning blue.
Kalo stared at Yaj Yath as Mian-on dragged her away, a cold seed of fear in her guts. Yaj Yath turned and smiled back at her, winking.
The Shrian Capital
Gartan guided the fat purelander ship toward the entrance to the harbor of Shria, leaning against the wheel, hunkering down to help disguise his height, trying to appear weary. Most of the sails were furled except for a couple up front, allowing his crew to hide near the tops of the masts and below deck.
Davina stood behind Gartan, next to their wind mage, Gekisha Nezidotter. Davina chanted, her voice lower than Gekisha’s, weaving a spell of a different type, a spell of illusion, changing the color of their skin to a rosy pink, changing the color of their hair to brown, making them appear smaller.
The disk of the sun sat on the waves behind them to their larboard, their left side, the sun descending into the horizon in a cloudless sky. A light breeze blew from the north, while Gekisha summoned a wind from the southwest to fill their forward sails and push the ship along.
Two Shrian warships guarded the entrance, both ships sleeker than the fat Gersarken ship Gartan steered. One warship bobbed in the waves near the middle of the entrance, the other looping out and around as Gartan’s ship approached, and now crept up beside Gartan’s ship from the outside.
Gartan leaned against the wheel, resting on his forearms, staring not at the ship approaching, but the other ship, the one in the middle of the entrance, hoping it would move a bit closer, but it didn’t budge. He watched the waves between him and that other ship, seeing the occasional platinum-haired head bob up for a breath before sinking back down, hoping the Shrians didn’t spot them.
A sailor stood on the rear deck of the approaching ship, waving his hands over his head. He shouted some things in Shrian, “Ahoy” and “Katydid” and some other words Gartan couldn’t quite put together.
Gartan, now wishing he’d given Tethan the task of getting the ship into harbor, now glad he didn’t, waved his hand over his head, yelling, “Ahoy. Many sick. Stay away.”
The sailor stood there staring as the warship drew closer. Gartan waved his hand, shaking his head, shouting, “Go away. We sick. Many sick. Very. Be safenesses and go away.”
The sailor called out and said some things, a whole string of syllables that were probably words but that blended together into an unintelligible glop.
Gartan leaned on the wheel, getting his ship to drift away from the Shrian warship approaching, angling toward the other one sitting in the middle of the entrance. A white shape climbed up the hull of the ship in the entrance, another followed, and more after that, and fear knotted Gartan’s innards, fear that the sailors on the approaching ship would look back and see. He whispered, “Gekisha, could you give me just a little more speed?”
The sailor on the other ship began to scream something. A man in an ornate uniform ran up the steps, wiping the corners of his mouth with a piece of folded cloth, glaring at Gartan as the sailor who’d done all the screaming spoke to him, gesticulating with his arms, flailing them toward Gartan.
The man in the uniform barked out orders, and more sailors climbed up to man their positions on the deck, including a line of battlemages preparing their braziers to cast their spells.
A frost-tit, a kind of bird from Windhaven, warbled; another answered. The white shapes on the other ship threw themselves over the rail.
Gartan said, “Bring us to a stop.”
Gekisha changed her chant, the direction of her breeze whipping around, now coming from in front of the ship, slowing them down.
The nearer warship, however, approached to within hailing distance.
Gartan walked to the side of the ship, smiling, his arms open wide. “Problem, is there?”
The warship’s captain pointed at Gartan, yelling at him in a stream of syllables Gartan could not understand. The warship’s sailors threw lines with grappling hooks over the rail.
Gartan grimaced. “Don’t. Don’t hurt my damned ship.”
The Shrian sailors called out their orders and pulled the lines taut until the warship knocked up against the side of the Katydid, wood splintering.
“Enahu damn you.” Gartan shook his head, a sickened look on his face.
Shrian sailors leapt over the sides, cutlasses in their hands, their battlemages standing by their braziers, their fires only barely started.
A light flashed, a fire on the other ship, the ship from the middle of the entrance, a white shape waving its arms. That warship now belonged to the Onei.
Gartan lifted his axe from his belt and, in the Onei tongue, screamed, “Alright, then, let’s teach these fish-fuckers some manners!”
On the far side of the warship, Onei warriors surged over the railing, water dripping down their half-naked bodies, axes in their hands, screaming their war cries. From the masts of the Katydid, Onei warriors leapt, breaking Davina’s illusions, falling upon the confu
sed Shrian sailors.
The warship’s captain barked out orders, pulling a cutlass from the scabbard at his waist.
Gartan sprinted across the deck, launching himself from the railing toward the warship’s captain. The captain snarled, stabbing up with his cutlass at Gartan’s stomach, but Gartan twisted in the air, landing on his feet on the warship’s deck, swinging his axe to slice the man’s hamstring.
The captain screamed and tumbled to the deck, his cutlass flying from his hand, now worried more about the agony in his leg. Gartan grabbed the ship’s wind mage by the throat, tossed her into the man at the wheel, and whipped around, his axe ripping out the throat of the sailor who had hailed them. He flung himself onto the back of the wind mage and smashed her head into the deck, her body going limp beneath him.
The man who’d been steering the ship lay on the deck, his face now almost as white as an Onei, eyes wide, raising his empty hands to signal his surrender. Gartan grabbed him by the hair and lifted him to his feet, shoving him toward the stairs leading down to the main deck.
The captain of the ship groaned and called out. Gartan kicked him in the head and he stopped moving.
On the main deck of both the Katydid and the warship, Onei crouched with most of the Shrians dead, and the rest being bound.
“Nohel?” Gartan called out, his eyes searching for his second in command but not finding him.
Natham, Nohel’s brother, looked up from tying a mage’s hands and fingers and said, “He’s clearing out the decks below.”
“Good,” Gartan said, nodding, smiling. “Davina?”
“Over here,” she answered, jogging up to his side.
He looped his arm around her waist and they kissed.
“Signal the fleet,” he told her.
# # #
Tethan followed behind Simthil Greathouse and Mitta Brightfox, his head bowed, approaching the northern gate of the Shrian capital. The gatehouse was a gray stone building with a brown clay tile roof, with circular towers on either side.
“Hurry up now,” a Shrian guardsman yelled, wearing a clean white tabard, waving his arms at the farmers and merchants hobbling through, their carts filled with fresh produce, hay, and pots. “You don’t make it in, you’re sleeping outside.”
The giant doors—wooden planks, thick, reinforced with pig-iron—creaked as they inched closer together. Two more guards waited inside the gate, one checking the contents of a cart full of hay, stabbing into it with his sword.
Tethan moved forward, his fingertips caressing the two axes affixed to his belt and covered by his gray woolen cloak, the hood of his cloak pulled down to hide his silvery hair, mud smeared on his face and hands to conceal the whiteness of his skin. Tayna walked by his side, using her unstrung bow as a walking stick, her cloak draping over the quiver on her back making her appear deformed, her hand on his elbow, guiding him forward.
A guard raised his hand, stopping a cart. “Gates are closed. Everyone beyond this point will have to come back in tomorrow morning.”
“Oh no!” someone said. “I’ve got to get to Fortesku’s tonight.”
Simthil stopped, craning his head back toward Tethan and, in Onei, asked, “Do you know what he said?”
Tethan answered, “Gates are closing for the night.”
“No!” A farmer stood up in his cart. “You can’t turn us away now.”
“We have to get in.”
Simthil, head down, sped up his pace, bulling his way through, passing a cart. The horse neighed, shaking its head, spraying spit in all directions, shying as Tethan and Tayna strode past.
“Hey there, now!” a farmer called down from the seat of his wagon, pointing at Simthil, Tethan, and more of the Onei warriors as they passed him, a thick gray coat covering his peasant’s clothes, a brown cap pulled down around his ears. “Where do y’all think y’all are going?”
Simthil shoved a protesting merchant out of his way, knocking the man to his knees.
The guard stepped forward, hands raised, saying, “Sorry, you’re going to have to head back to Gehend and spend the night there.”
Simthil’s meaty fist snapped out from beneath his cloak, a fierce uppercut that picked the soldier up off his feet, sending him stretched out, unconscious, through the air, to land flat on his back on the slate stones of the street.
One of the guards inside the gate whirled to stare at his compatriot. “Rohas?”
Tethan broke into a sprint, his axes slapping against his thighs. He knocked purelander men and women from his path with swipes of his forearms, darting past the great doors of the gate, turning sharply to his left toward the door leading into the gatehouse from the rear, the door leading to this gate’s guards and controls. He yanked the axes from his belt.
“Let’s go!” he yelled, charging at the door, bursting through it, the wood splintering and iron bending, the room far too hot and stinking of human sweat.
Three guards stood, spinning toward him, moronic expressions on their pink-skinned faces. They wore chainmail armor under white tabards with blue stripes crossing their chests, and carried swords in scabbards on their hips; a fire roared in a stone hearth, under a stone chimney adorned with battered shields.
Tethan threw himself at them, his right axe beheading one man, following a bloody arc, then slicing through another man’s arm to plunge into his ribcage. Tethan barreled into the third man, striking him with his shoulder and knocking him down. He twisted, driving forward with his hips, bringing his other axe around and splitting the last man’s head in two.
Two warriors, Tordra Preashadotter and Snupesk of the Icefangs, followed him in, their axes ready to deal death, their eyes searching for an enemy to fight.
“Up!” Tethan pointed to the stairs. “Break through the doors!”
Their boots pounded on the stone stairs. A soldier on the stairs jabbed down with his sword, the point spearing Snupesk’s shoulder. Snupesk yelled in rage, bringing his right forearm up into the flat of the blade as he shifted his weight to the outside of the stairs. Tordra, now holding her axe in her left hand, swept upward with her axe, striking the Shrian guard in the knee.
The guard fell back onto the steps, screaming for help until Tordra’s axe silenced him. She dashed ahead.
Tethan stopped beside Snupesk and yanked on the sword, ignoring Snupesk’s animal-like growls, until he freed it from the bone in the man’s shoulder and tossed it aside. Tethan ran up into the room above, finding no more guards, only the mechanism for opening and shutting the doors and the portcullis, and Tordra. Snupesk followed him in, an axe in his right hand, his left arm hanging limp, blood streaming down his side.
Tordra raised her axe.
“No!” Tethan yelled. “Cut that rope and you’ll drop the portcullis.”
Too late; her axe fell, slicing through the rope. The rope whipped through the mechanism, something metal outside screeched, people below shrieked, and the portcullis slammed down, crushing people and shaking the entire gatehouse.
Tordra peered at Tethan, her eyes wide, her jaw slack. She shrugged. “Oops?”
“Well, fine.” Tethan tied his axes onto his belt, freeing his hands to hold Snupesk. “Let’s get downstairs and see how many of us got in.”
“Yes, sir.” Tordra bobbed her head. “I’m sorry.”
“Let me go,” Snupesk said.
Tethan looked at him, staring into the man’s eyes, trying to gauge his rationality in that moment, before nodding. “Fine.”
Then Tethan jogged down the stairs. He darted through the door in a crouch, scanning the buildings for archers, the streets for Shrian soldiers, but found only fleeing civilians screaming for help, chickens squawking, and horses whinnying.
Tayna, breathing heavily, an arrow nocked on her bow, looking like a goddess of the hunt, stood beside Simthil, ringed by Onei warriors. A few of the younger warriors ran after the people of Shria, swinging their axes, whooping.
“Get your asses back in line!” Simthil bellowed.
Tethan glanced at the carnage caused when the doors had slammed shut, quickly turning his eyes away from the dead and dying warriors and farmers. “How many of us got through?”
Simthil spun, snarling, his eyes raging with fury. “Hopefully enough, no thanks to you.”
Tethan swallowed and nodded, knowing nothing he could say would save the men who’d die from this mistake.
“Here they come,” Tayna said, drawing back her bowstring, letting her arrow fly.
A column of chainmailed soldiers rushed toward them, filling the main road of the street from one side to the other, all semblance of discipline gone, waving their pikes, swords, and spears over their heads.
“For the Skybear!” Tethan screamed, raising both of his axes in the air and charging forward.
“For the Greathouse!” Simthil screamed.
Onei arrows flew over their heads, doing little to stay the mass of flesh and steel surging toward them.
Surrounded by his enemies, Tethan sped forward, hitting the Shrian line first, his axes rising and falling, swinging with his right and his left. His axe head bashed against someone’s throat, and a sword sliced across Tethan’s chest as he twisted away, his axe beheading a man while a halberd raked across his ribs.
Tethan swung his axe, slicing through a young Shrian man’s paltry defense, sword and axe clanging together, the noise joining the din and chaos of the swords and axes and shields meeting in battle. The impact yanked the man’s sword from his gloved fingers, and both his sword and Tethan’s axe crushed his skull. The unexpected collapse of the man’s defense surprised Tethan, pulling him forward.
He slipped on the blood-soaked stones of the street, falling to one knee, his hand slapping on the stone. He rolled to his feet, mindful to keep moving so as not to find himself on someone else’s steel, whirling and spinning, hacking and slashing, his feral growls joining those of his clansmen, of his Onei brethren, and those of the Shrian guards.