Kings of Ash

by Richard Nell

  He felt a sudden panic, but wasn’t sure exactly why, or what to do. It would be some new creation, he supposed, something he’d never seen from the East. He knew much now about the usual visitors and local sailors, but by no means was he a sea-man.

  How many men could be aboard such a thing, he wondered? And why make it so large instead of simply using another ship?

  The answers left his mouth dry, and his bowel’s gurgling. He ran back to his house shouting through the yard.

  “Get weapons! Boys, get out here, right now!”

  Altan scrounged in his shed for axes and anything resembling a spear, his youngest sons came first and asked foolish questions as they played.

  “Where are the damn bows,” Altan muttered, hating himself. “Why are there no god-cursed bows in the North?”

  The eldest twins finally came up panting.

  “There’s a ship,” he said as he met their eyes, “I don’t recognize it.”

  “We’re ready, father,” said the older second-born, and Altan smiled. Carst was always best in a crisis.

  “Good lad,” he pat the boy’s shoulder and handed him a scythe. “Tell your sisters to sharpen some knives, bar the door and guard it. Then tell your mother to take the horse and run to the neighbor’s for help, then get my wolves.”

  The boy nodded and ran off pale but steady, and Altan took the others down to the beach. He stopped at the hill and felt his breath catch. His sons froze in their tracks at his panic.

  Somehow—impossibly, considering the distance he’d seen it—the boat had already arrived.

  Its hull looked half destroyed, and even bigger than he’d imagined. It had rammed wildly into the sand with no attempt to slow or dock. The sails had no frame, drooped now and held by more ropes than Altan had ever seen, somehow stretched across the mast but otherwise free.

  “I see no men or tracks, father,” said Galin, the first-born youngest, now thirteen and a serious boy who only spoke when he was sure.

  “Nor I.” Altan gripped his old axe—the only one not made for cutting wood. He tried to keep his thoughts in the now, and not on old crimes and miseries, and the vengeful dead.

  “There!”

  The oldest pointed and they all looked together. Altan saw a body laying on the beach. It looked thrown several man-lengths away from the ship with no footprints, sprawled flat down on its front.

  Altan felt the urge to turn around, and run.

  Without explanation he considered for a moment packing up his family and leaving his wealth and farm without looking back. But his son returned with their four wolf-dogs snarling, leashed but snapping for an unknown foe, feeling their master’s fear. Their courage renewed his own.

  “Come.” He started down the bank, eyes searching trees and bushes and tool sheds, counting the men who might be hidden and knowing it was few.

  His own trials in combat were not forgotten. I can handle what comes.

  He looked at his young but strong sons and well-trained dogs and knew they’d do him proud.

  So why do I feel so afraid?

  * * *

  Rise, brother.

  Bukayag lay cold and helpless from the weeks of Grove-sleep. Ruka tried to look through the blotchy greyness with his own eyes but failed, blinking away tears and trying to take in where he was. The ground did not sway, it seemed. Did this mean he was on land?

  He moved an arm beneath him and lifted it to his face. He found dried blood and maybe sand—but not island sand—it was coarse and yellow and mixed with dirt.

  He heard voices as if through water, genderless and unknowable except for tones raised at the end as if in question. He ignored them, going back to recall failed attempts to fish and what might have happened to Arun and Kwal.

  He remembered failing winds, then rain and waves battering his coastal hull near to breaking. He knew they’d survived this and limped along the sea with water but no food while Ruka rested. But after that, nothing.

  Bukayag managed to raise their head, spitting and coughing as his hands went to the earth to lift. They heard dogs barking and Ruka felt Bukayag snarl in answer.

  “Are you alright?”

  The voice sounded closer now. It spoke in Ruka’s native tongue with the staccato’d sounds of a Northerner, and Ruka didn’t know if he should celebrate, or curse.

  “Water,” he answered, reminded for a moment of his trip the other way and being captured and bound in silk ropes by pirates.

  “Be calm,” said the voice. “Are there more of you? Are you alone?”

  Ruka tried to shake his head but lacked control. A shape loomed close and blurry with something in its hands and Bukayag almost struck.

  “Easy, brother. It’s your drink,” said the voice. Ruka grabbed and gulped from what felt like a wooden cup, knowing his need was too high to worry on poison.

  “I need to know if you’re armed, and if there’s more of you. But if you’re honest, and peaceful, we’ll help you. You have my word.”

  Ruka thought that rather reasonable, considering. Bukayag just balled a fist.

  “There’s…two men on board,” he managed , not bothering to add ‘I hope’. Then he used the last few drops of water to wash sand from his face. The blurry men gasped.

  Ruka’s pulse picked up and he blinked till his vision cleared, thinking I’m a damn fool.

  He took in the wide eyes of four teens holding farm tools, and a muscled farmer with a war-axe.

  They stared and he knew it was at his birth-mark, his now open yellow eyes, and his deformities—their fear and superstition showed plain on healthy faces. I have been in Pyu too long, he thought.

  “Be calm,” said the farmer as the dogs hunched.

  Ruka’s reminder of his difference, even in his homeland, sent a flush of heat through his body, and he felt his brother’s anger.

  “I am Bukayag, son of Beyla.” Ruka stood tall and threw down the cup. “I am Vishan and Rune-shaman. I mean you no harm.”

  The man and boys froze and stared at his strangeness, and perhaps his size. Ruka knew it always best to act when others failed, so he turned with clumsy limbs to inspect his ship, hoping with a few moments rest to climb and search for his foreign servants.

  The sound of hooves interrupted him, splashing along the coast.

  Bukayag crouched to the sand, one hand closing around a sharp, black rock.

  “Get me a sword,” he hissed. But Ruka felt a weakness in his mind, too.

  The air in his Grove was hazy and swamped in fog, and the mere thought of pulling something from nothing bounced his empty guts.

  “Be calm, be calm,” soothed the farmer, more urgently.

  Ruka blinked still trying to clear his eyes, then he saw the riders more clearly—settling on the long hair.

  “Priestess,” Bukayag growled, his toes curling sand as he braced, ready to charge, ready to kill everything he saw with his bare hands.

  Ruka looked for a white shawl and saw nothing. He knew it could be covered by her clothes, though, and time dragged as he weighed the risk of climbing back aboard, swimming out, or trying to arm his brother.

  One of the boys yelled as if in surprise. The four wolf-hounds howled and surged forward, crossing the sand in leaps as their lips drew back to reveal huge fangs.

  “No! Down!” cried the farmer. But the dogs charged on, thralled now by the hunt and the pack and the fear.

  Bukayag rose up and snarled.

  He bashed the first with a violent, desperate swing with his rock, and caved its skull. The second clamped on his still-wounded thigh while he dropped his weapon and caught the others.

  Bukayag roared and crushed both animals in his hands, fingers curling around the necks like Lawspeaker Bodil’s.

  The fourth released its bite, leaping up Ruka’s body using his leg as a stand, its wide jaw stretched and reaching for his face or neck.

  It jerked before it could strike, whining as it fell, crawling away with short kicks of its hind legs. A blue-steel kn
ife jutted from its side.

  Ruka looked and saw Arun slumped over a rail. He was thin, face drawn, yet still managed to seem smug.

  Bukayag looked at the others and saw no sign of further violence. He collapsed and stared at the chewed flesh of his still-broken leg, and sighed.

  “Let’s try your way,” he muttered. The pain rushed up so fast Ruka almost moaned. He put his hands up with open palms and looked to the farmer.

  “Peace. I swear to Nanot, we’ve not come for violence.”

  The farmer dropped his axe and came forward with face flushed. “I’m sorry…” his eyes searched the wound, “my son…he…it was an accident.”

  The horses had arrived now and their riders dismounted. The woman was healthy and sun-dark, perhaps thirty-five, wearing common clothes; the man was lean and holding a butcher’s knife with shaking hands.

  Just more rich farmers, Ruka snorted. You’re as jumpy as those dead dogs, brother.

  “We’re starving and wounded,” he said, wondering if Kwal was still alive, and noticing the farmer’s gaze had strayed to the brown-skinned foreigner half-dead up above. “I can pay well for your help,” Ruka added, not sure if it mattered to this man.

  “Who is your chief?” demanded the black-haired Matron in a strong, sure voice. What she meant was: ‘are you an outlaw?’

  Ruka considered picking one at random or hoping Aiden of Husavik still lived. Though he paused, feeling the urge to spit and say he needed no chief.

  “His name is Bukayag, Noyon,” said the farmer, and the woman’s eyes widened along with the horseman’s.

  Ruka watched their faces in silence, surprised for a moment they knew who he was. He wondered if they had heard the ‘Tale of the Last Rune-Shaman’ as spread by Egil or some other skald. Or perhaps it was his murderous exploits in Alverel they’d heard of. What have the priestesses said in my absence?

  “You can stay here until you’re ready to move on,” said the farmer, “whatever you can pay will be fine.” Then he motioned at his sons to come help him lift.

  “They’re going to tend to us, pirate,” Ruka called to Arun in Pyu Common, watching the family exchange looks.

  The Ching master groaned, then lifted himself enough to look down. He spoke in a voice hoarse from disuse. “Your women. They aren’t so ugly. I’d been picturing you with breasts.”

  The farmer and his sons groaned as they lifted Ruka to his feet.

  He looked at the half-destroyed ship, the dead dogs, and the Pyu islander, half-corpse but still making jokes. And perhaps it was his crossing an uncrossable sea for the second time—or surviving kings and gods to return from paradise to a land of ash—but Ruka pictured himself as a woman, and smiled. He spasmed and laughed, carrying on even when the farmer’s boys startled, and nearly dropped him.

  Chapter 40

  Two weeks later.

  Bukayag the Bastard. That was what the Order called him. He supposed Imler already took the ‘Betrayer’.

  They said he’d been killed in Alverel two years before, then spread the news of his crimes and death with skalds along the Spiral—the major roadway of the Ascom.

  His limbs, they said, were hung in the corners of the continent, his head staked next to the holy rock of law as a warning to all other outlaws and religious rabble-rousers. Ruka wondered what poor, deformed cripple they’d used in his stead, and if he’d been killed quickly or suffered in display for a crowd. His hosts didn’t seem to know.

  “Keep it straight!”

  Altan barked at his sons, neck and shoulders bulged with the weight of the long, oak post in his grasp.

  Ruka watched and stopped himself from guiding it down the support hole, knowing the man wanted his sons to learn. Earlier he had provided an iron rod hammered into the center of the post to strengthen the hold, which he’d convinced Altan would let him add more weight to the roof.

  A thousand more improvements could be made from his own experience and watching the Pyu, of course, but now was not the time. In the future he would make a guild of house builders—set standards to guide all men in the ways of safe, warm walls and hearths, whether made of wood or stone.

  The boys circled with their father, pushing and angling till the post slotted with the iron and slid down on its own, grinning as they wiped the honest sweat of toil, though the morning was cool.

  It was nearly summer now. The coast of the Ascom was temperate, barely freezing in winter but never truly hot—at least not as the islanders of the far North would reckon. If the sun hid behind clouds, no matter the season, it could be cool. But after his many months in Pyu, the cold mountain breezes felt like home to Ruka.

  A strange thing, he thought it, to miss a land that called him outlaw and nearly destroyed him. And yet, it was the truth.

  He’d missed the forests and snows and open plains without a man, woman or child for days; he’d missed the crisp, dry air so refreshing it could wake him from the deepest sleep as a boy. Back when I slept, he thought.

  He closed his eyes and filled his lungs with it. Near two years without a proper breath. Already his skin dried and began to pale, covered now always in long cloth shirts and pants, but he felt comfortable and at ease.

  “A few more before lunch,” Altan said, walking to the heavy pile of posts near-by, his sons trudging behind.

  One would be placed—rather sloppily—every man-length or so surrounding the whole house. It would have oval sides and a sloped, thatched roof, built much in the same way as Ascomi ships.

  But not her new ships, Ruka thought with a smile, waving at Altan as he walked down to the coast to his foreign servants.

  “Loa,” Ruka called, leaning on his stick as he eased his leg down the slope to the sands, clenching his teeth as pain raced up his ribs.

  “Sir.” Kwal gave his half-bow, crisp and formal as always, bandages now hidden beneath Ascomi clothes.

  “How are we doing, Captain?”

  “Better if it wasn’t so god-cursed cold,” said Arun, now wrapped in winter furs and huddled against a bank to avoid the wind.

  Ruka’s gaze swept the mostly-patched coastal vessel, then the skeleton of the first new ship.

  “It’s summer, pirate, stop embarrassing yourself. How many men do you think you’ll need, Captain?”

  Kwal shrugged. “More is better. I’m not a ship-builder, sir, but with trial and error and enough men and supplies, we can manage in your timeline.”

  Ruka nodded, as ever admiring the man’s competence and plain-speaking. If the young marine said he could manage, Ruka had no doubt that he could. He’d been clear since the start about what he knew and what he didn’t of construction, always undaunted by the task.

  But only if I can get him enough men and supplies, Ruka thought. He wondered again if he could drag a ship whole from his Grove, built in his mind entirely by the dead. Perhaps the question was how, and not if.

  “In this land you are the Master Builder, Captain. I’ll get you as much as I can.”

  Ruka walked back to the farmer’s main house, gritting his teeth as he near tripped over weeds and grass-clumps, stomach rumbling from a morning without breakfast.

  Altan’s daughters sat outside weaving and patching clothes on stools. They were all pretty like their mother, but the first-born twin, Ana, had a courage that let her smile at Ruka politely while her siblings gaped or stared at the dirt. It gave her a true beauty in his eyes.

  “Bukayag,” she said, and he tried to control the flush because perhaps he’d been staring. She approached him clutching her work, composed and without shyness. “Mother said these were for your men.” She held out thin summer-wool blankets, her eyes firmly aimed at his, and not down or roaming his face.

  “Thank you, Ana.” He smiled and took them, and her hand absently touched his. The skin was cold but soft, and the feel of it stood hairs all over Ruka’s body.

  Girl-From-Trung’s-Pit stared at him in his Grove.

  Ruka imagined the green and purple bruises on her
neck instead wrapped around Ana’s like a collar, and he cleared his throat, and turned away.

  “Sit and eat,” said Noyon as he stooped and entered through the thick, open door, leaving his boots and walking stick outside so as not to track dirt. “You can leave those on,” she said, as usual, and he went in without them as usual, moving to his place on one of the long benches around the low-burning hearth.

  He resisted the urge to brush dirt from his seat. This was a rich house and certainly cleaner than most farms, but he had begun to notice the filth at once. It was so much cleaner in Pyu.

  People bathed or washed their clothes there almost daily, the water warm and pleasant for use; they swept their wooden floors habitually, abandoning shoes and washing feet at doorways, even children treating dirt like an enemy.

  Ruka’s people stunk like old sweat and filth. They scratched at fleas and lice and tromped through kitchens and bedrooms with muddy boots, with even rich Northern farmers like Altan and his family grime-caked rubes by Pyu standards.

  “Will your men be joining us?” Noyon asked, though they never did—eating and sleeping instead on the ship no matter the weather.

  “They are too busy,” Ruka said, “I’ll bring them something later, if you agree.”

  The Matron nodded, and their ritual was finished. Entering the house at all made the islanders turn up their noses as they avoided touching benches or walls. And the smell of Noyon’s cooking made them gag.

  She ladled steaming pork and oat stew into a deep bowl, and Altan and his children joined them, the girls sitting far from Ruka out of custom rather than disgust. The boys’ spirits were high from sharing work with their father and they tussled and joked. Ruka tried not to hate them.

  “Seef bless us,” muttered Altan over his bowl, always quiet with his faith as if embarrassed, perhaps because Ruka was a ‘Rune-Shaman’, or perhaps because the Order called him a heretic. “How’s your leg?” he asked to break the following silence, then cleared his throat.

  “Better, thank you.”

  Ruka had been exaggerating his limp for many days now to buy time. It still hurt and slowed him down, but he was more than able to travel.