Kings of Ash

by Richard Nell

“No, please, please, no,” she cried, as if not afraid for herself, but for what would happen next.

  Altan tried to rise and charge to an honorable death, but his legs wouldn’t move. The begging voices that should form laughter, the soft white hands that clutched him as children but now gripped each other in panic—they were poison in his veins.

  They spread a numbness down his spine that locked his limbs as he shook, the heat of rage snuffed out in an icy bath of fear and disbelief. He thought back to the passive coward he’d killed those years ago to claim this life, and felt the justice, the understanding. The horror.

  “Enough,” said black-beard, “she’s the matron, she’s responsible. You know your orders. Do it.” His men didn’t move.

  “Goddess’ll send us to the mountain, brother. Let’s just leave ‘er. Who’s to know?”

  The killer spit. “Her priestesses ordered it, why would she punish you? I won’t tell you again. Kill her.”

  Still they didn’t move, and Altan felt like his heart would burst from his chest. They can’t do it, they’ll just take her back. Oh thank you mother of laws, thank you and please forgive me for doubting you and being a fool.

  Blood sprayed and a few drops landed warm on Altan’s face. For a moment he couldn’t understand from where. He heard the gurgled chokes and saw black-beard’s arm rise and fall.

  His daughters didn’t cry out, they didn’t move as Noyon collapsed, the men all still and stunned, except the killer, who cleaned his blade.

  Ana screamed, and kept at it, one shrill pierce after another, the only sound in the world. She knelt down to her mother and the men were too frozen to stop her. She curled her small hands around the cut throat as if she could put the blood back in.

  Altan clenched his fist around the haft of Bukayag’s axe as his gut heaved. He tried to rise and still had no strength, nor could he even think of what he’d do if he had.

  “Keep looking, there should be two men.” The bastard frowned at his dirty cloth and wiped his sword on the grass, like a cat cleaning its claws before moving off into the night.

  I’ll kill him, Altan thought, though he still couldn’t rise. It doesn’t matter what happens now. I’ll kill just that man and die with my Noyon.

  He stood up from wobbly knees, blood flowing back from his chest to his limbs. I’m sorry, my love, he almost said out loud, I should be stronger and live and try to save your daughters, but I’m a coward. I can’t live with this, I can’t.

  He stepped forward to his death and only idly wondered where Bukayag was.

  An arm wrapped around his neck, a huge hand over his mouth. He felt himself fighting, pitifully, trying to say he had to help his family, to take revenge. He managed to look up and see the stars mixed with the smoke of his burning life, smell the salt of the sea mixed with the flesh of his pigs, and no doubt his sons. As the lights and sounds of the world faded, he used his last thoughts to hate himself, and welcome death.

  “Get him on board,” Ruka said as Arun dragged the farmer by his leg through wet sand.

  The tide was coming in, but the ship was still completely out of water—hidden in a spot that took Altan, all his sons, both islanders and a horse to slide it to in the first place.

  “We’ll pull together,” Bukayag offered.

  Ruka snorted and watched the shoreline for bandits. There was still nothing, but surely it was a matter of time. The neighbor must have told the Order everything—his name, about the ship, the dark-skinned foreigners.

  “The priestesses might not trust their dogs with such things,” Bukayag said, his tone holding its normal venom, the perceived insult to his gender or upbringing that he took personally, as with all things possible.

  Of course, that didn’t make him wrong. These men may not know who or why they were ordered to kill—told only to slaughter everyone they found responsible. But not the girls, he reminded himself. The girls it seemed they would only take back to their masters.

  The thought of Noyon dead, of her daughters taken as prisoners, made Ruka angry even in his Grove— enough to stop him from grabbing ropes from dead men he hoped could somehow help him do another impossible thing.

  “They make no difference to our plans, brother. Forget them.”

  Ruka knew Bukayag was right, but still, the words annoyed him. His gaze left the beach to rest on his unconscious host.

  The Midlander’s weakness and failure at his family’s death was surprising. Ruka could have perhaps stopped or delayed what happened—could have skewered half-blind chiefless in the dark till they panicked. At first, that was his plan.

  But it had not been his test. Ruka was not interested in saving those who would not fight to save themselves. The woman’s murder would harden Altan’s heart; it would shake his faith in the god of law and re-shape it to older, darker idols. Now he would re-gain his purpose, or fade to nothing.

  Ruka hoped for the former. He had use for the old warrior’s knowledge of Northern conflict and the Midland hills, not to mention his experience as a grain farmer. He hoped he would renew himself and earn a place amongst the living, because if nothing else, Ruka liked the man’s company.

  As he stood debating how to move his ship, Kwal tied clever Pyu knots in rope around the farmer’s round middle. He clambered up ladder-like netting past the rail, then heaved hand over hand as Arun pushed up from below.

  Ruka ignored them now. He walked to the stern looking for holes, hooks, or anything at all to tie onto, unsure exactly what he intended.

  Through the trees on the closest bank he heard voices and men hacking at branches as they searched. He looked to Arun, but the Ching master moved without instruction, Ruka’s knife in hand and stance low as he crept into the brush.

  “What’s the plan, sir?” Kwal whispered panting from the deck.

  You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Ruka thought.

  “Raise the sails, Captain. We go East down the coast.”

  Kwal blinked because they were land-locked with no clear solution, two men’s length at least between their ship and a drop of water. Still, he nodded, and Ruka thought: Now there is a proper servant.

  Then he pulled thick rope from his Grove and tied it where he could with Pyu knots. He wrapped the other ends around his waist and arms, knowing the tender flesh of his still-healing hands couldn’t bear the weight without tearing. And what of my leg and ribs? he wondered. But he had no choice. The answer made no difference.

  Shouting came from the trees as Arun found targets. Other men were coming down the bank now into view. Some pointed and called out, then raced with torches across the beach.

  “Now, brother, I will carry it.”

  Bukayag stretched his neck and flexed his shoulders, excited as always it seemed at the chance of his own destruction.

  To me! Ruka called to the dead in his Grove, standing by the green-water lake surrounded by pine. The many men he’d killed gathered at his side in silence and took their places.

  We must send the ropes back, brother. Somehow they must linger in both worlds as we work.

  Bukayag snorted like a bull, his calves and forearms flexing as he leaned his weight back.

  “Do what you like. I will hold them.”

  Ruka smiled at his brother’s boldness, then closed his eyes and called the feel of fibers to his hands, the rough pokes and strength of the lacing threads. He looked at the patch of white sand before him in his Grove where there should be mud, remembering the feel of turning something into nothing, then reached his hands down into the river.

  Follow me, he willed, and the dead clambered to plunge cold, dirty hands into colder water.

  We’re ready, he assured, then stood up holding a drenched line, not truly knowing where the ends went or how, knowing only they entered the waters of imagination and death and mystery and would come out in a man’s rough hands in the living.

  “Pull!” Ruka screamed, and Bukayag growled like a beast as his body went rigid, muscles flexing from toes to jaw.
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  Ruka seized reality with his mind, with his will, and with the weight of the dead, and pulled. One more law to shatter, he thought, one more sea to cross to find a world reserved for the bold.

  All the men he’d killed found their feet and joined him, sinking down into muck as they heaved, the ropes rising and tightening in their hands. They sprung taut on Bukayag’s body as he leaned forward. Heat crackled in the air as dead men’s strength became the livings, all hatreds forgotten with the promise of toil.

  Sand crushed under Bukayag’s feet, grating as the Trung ship jerked and wobbled on its keel, then turned slightly to match the angle of the pull. With a snarl like one of Altan’s dead wolves, and with Kwal watching in open-mouthed awe, Bukayag stepped one foot behind the other. The ship dragged behind him towards the waves.

  Chapter 42

  Altan woke to a swaying, dark blue sky. He remembered only fire and a swelling sadness that stopped him from even raising his head, or trying to understand where he was.

  “Good. I thought perhaps you wouldn’t wake.”

  Altan knew at once he was alive and almost wept—no man could ever fail to recognize Bukayag’s voice. With a groan he rose to a sit and stared at an orange morning horizon, then briefly at the strange, flat hull beneath him. Bukayag and one of his bizarre retainers rested against the rail as the other stood at a huge rudder at the stern.

  “Some things need decisions,” said the shaman.

  Altan met the huge demon or half-god or maybe prophet’s glowing eyes, and found them burying into his skin. “My sons…,” he said, feeling as if it must be said out loud, must be acknowledged. “My matron. They’re all dead.”

  His gut heaved at the words, as if saying them made it true. Again he saw his lover spraying blood and choking in the dirt.

  “But not her daughters, Midlander. And you yet live.”

  Altan shook and would have screamed if the rage could escape the numbness. “For now,” he said, and looked away. As if it matters.

  He lay back down on the creaking wood, listening to gentle waves slosh against the hull, thinking I always wanted to be a sailor.

  “Have you forgotten, Midlander?” Bukayag stepped over him and blocked the view. He seemed to fill all the world as he reached down and seized Altan’s bloody shirt, lifting him to his feet with one arm and monstrous strength. In his other hand he carried a rune-covered axe. He held it reversed, as if in offering. “You are chosen, Altan. Do you think the waves care for your pain? The sky? Do you think it absolves you?”

  Altan shivered as he met the man’s merciless gaze. He looked at the blood-stained axe and wanted to spit and throw it in the sea and curse the gods. He felt tears on his cheeks, but took it with trembling hands. The shaman stepped back and met his eyes.

  “The first decision is this, Altan. You can be a rich farmer who has lost all and now lies broken, wallowing in his useless, stupid misery. Or, you can be a chiefless dog, who never did deserve his luck, yet somehow still has two daughters who can yet be held to his breast—if his will and courage holds. One of those men belongs to Noss, Midlander, and each day the burning god will give him vengeance to sustain him. Now decide.”

  Altan swallowed and saw no mockery or deception in the shaman’s eyes. There was only truth. It did not belong on the prophet of Noss, perhaps, yet did. Altan shook his head and gripped the axe tighter, willing himself to believe.

  “What is to be done?” he said flatly.

  Bukayag held his eyes and the axe for a moment longer before he released with a nod. “Next we decide where to sail, and who to trust. I require land and perhaps even a chief to protect my ship and efforts to recruit and gather supplies. The Order may still be looking.”

  Altan blinked and tried to shake the frozen hurt that clogged his mind and senses. He thought of his many brothers from a former life, the grain-war veterans who would no doubt still live in the North and perhaps serve chiefs. Some might even be chiefs themselves.

  “I have some old allies, and some neighbors I’ve known for…”

  “Allies like the man who betrayed us?”

  Whatever tenderness had before found the shaman’s tone vanished, and Altan grit his teeth. He thought of Tabin dead in the dirt, feeling only angry he would never get the chance to kill him personally.

  “No.” He took a deep breath. “Maybe. It’s been many years. I’ll have to see.”

  Bukayag seemed to accept this and turned to his retainers, speaking in a quick gibberish of sounds that Altan couldn’t decipher. The man at the stern seemed to understand and heaved at the rudder, and the huge ship slowly turned as the wide sail angled.

  “We will head to a town.” Bukayag eased back to the deck with a groan, his breaths seemingly painful. “And Altan,” the golden orbs turned to slits. “Now that you’ve decided— when Noss calls, he does not mean ‘maybe’. We’d best not fail.”

  In the big, strangely sailed ship, the journey to the closest town took only that morning. They’d first made some distance from the shore, so as not to be spotted by fishermen or merchants, then cut towards land when they spotted smoke.

  Altan saw the watchtower first, then the old abandoned wall that people said once covered half the coast.

  “This is Kormet,” he said, mostly to himself.

  “We’ll land there.” Bukayag pointed to a small beach and patch of foliage West of the town, then muttered gibberish to his men. Altan had wished to ask about this strange code of theirs many times but always refrained.

  “Are those words from a Southern tribe?”

  Altan had heard accents before. He knew steppemen to speak so strangely their words could hardly be deciphered. But nothing he had ever heard sounded like the flowing, constant noises Bukayag and his men produced.

  The shaman glanced at him and carried the hint of a smile, then turned back to watch the land. “One day I will explain this and many other things, I give you my word. But not today.”

  Altan found this answer strange, but said nothing. Everything about the shaman was strange. More than strange, and Altan’s curiosity easily crumbled beneath the dull apathy of a life destroyed.

  He watched the dark waters of the shore, wondering if it would hurt to drown as Bukayag and his men took down the sails and threw a huge iron anchor. Ruka tied the ship to the trees, then handed Altan a white strip of cloth.

  “If you expect betrayal, wave this as you return.” He put a burnt and four-fingered hand on Altan’s shoulder. “The gods are watching you now. Remember that. Everything you do matters.”

  Dirty sand crunched as Altan stepped over the rail. The last time he was in Kormet, he’d come as little more than a bloody-fisted raider. He and his brothers killed and robbed the chief and the richest men, and the sons who didn’t flee. Matrons and mothers had watched and tried to shame them with their eyes, others with their words. A few had claimed the killers as mates. At the time, Altan had only laughed.

  Now his face burned at the memory. On the sparsely forested outskirts of the town he stopped and looked at his blood and dirt stained pants and sweat-marked shirt. He hadn’t washed any part of himself in days.

  His eyes drifted slowly to the rune-covered axe, almost forgotten in his hands. The blade was single-sided and curved, utterly smooth and polished, as if the elaborate runes simply emerged from the blue-grey iron instead of having been inscribed. Even the handle was iron, he realized, attached smoothly to the blade as if a single piece, only sheathed in hardened leather grips. It was a weapon out of myth, to be held by the great heroes of an ancient age.

  And Bukayag pulled it from fire and air. And now it’s mine.

  It would be stared at, he realized, if men saw. And perhaps that’s what the shaman intended. Perhaps Altan was to claim some special mission from the gods. Or should I say little, and let them wonder?

  He smoothed his sleeves and tightened the ties of his belt, running a hand over his now untrimmed beard and disheveled hair. For a moment he tried to comb hi
s fingers to unravel knots and scrape out dirt, then growled and walked forward.

  He would know and be known by some of the men of this place, or not, and his appearance made no difference.

  The pale morning light had given way to a cloudless, afternoon glare. Like most Ascomi towns, Kormet had been built largely in a ring. The houses were solid and well-kept, a reflection of Northern prosperity. A few young men laughed as they worked expanding a large house on the outer edge, some carrying carved and smoothed lumber, others laying out hammers and nails.

  Altan looked away, sealing off the memories of his sons as if cauterizing a wound. No one seemed to notice him, though he didn’t try to hide, walking plainly along the town’s southern crossroad.

  Kormet had grown since his first arrival. What had once been perhaps a few hundred seemed now closer to a thousand, merchant-houses marked with wooden signs, mothers inspecting wares with their children in tow.

  He had no scabbard or belt-loop that fit his axe, so he rest it over his shoulder as he walked towards the circle-center. He passed boys tousling in the streets, chasing dogs in happy games, and meant to smile at them, but caught himself and focused on his path.

  He saw the huge, curved horn attached to the strange square roof of Kormet’s hall, remembering it and glad he and his brothers hadn’t burned it down. Or perhaps we did, he realized, and they re-built it. In truth he couldn’t remember. Either was possible.

  A young man stood guard at the entrance, chewing orange root and spitting at rocks on the road. Smoke rose from the hearth-hole above him, thatch covering pushed aside no doubt till the season turned. Altan expected the chief ate inside.

  He breathed and felt strange, as if he’d lived this moment before. The young retainer’s face blurred with images of other young men guarding other halls, staring wide-eyed in terror as Altan and his Southern killers tore down their lives with the Order’s backing, their only crime serving the wrong masters.

  “Hall’s closed.” The guard’s eyes found Bukayag’s axe. “Come back…come…later...”