Kings of Ash

by Richard Nell

  Altan felt himself standing taller at the attention, perhaps trying to be worthy of the weapon in the young man’s eyes.

  The Gods are watching. Everything you do matters now.

  “My name is Altan. Go tell your chief about the axe. He will see me.”

  The warrior blinked and nodded, pausing slightly but pushing through the double door. He returned and jerked his head to follow, glancing around the street as if to see if anyone watched.

  Altan had no memory of the inside of Kormet’s hall, and perhaps he’d never gone in. A handful of young men sat at a round table eating maybe mutton with their hands. Their much older chief leaned against his high-chair at the far end.

  Even sitting he looked short, and perhaps fat. A dark, patchy beard covered his round cheeks and a red neck. Altan tried to remember him but failed, until he smiled. His voice was loud, and almost shrill.

  “You old cock. How long has it been?” The chief’s chair legs screeched across the floor-boards as he rose, and his gut shook the table. He held out his arms for an embrace, and Altan took one arm and held it as if the axe made anything more impossible.

  “Too long,” he said, with a friendliness he did not feel.

  “My sons,” the chief flicked a hand towards the others in introduction. “Now here’s a man,” he said, with a prouder tone, reaching up to put his arm on Altan’s shoulder, “who knew your Da in his prime.” He winked and laughed. “Tell them, brother, tell them what fierce, fucking savages we were. Not like these coddled virgins.”

  “Fierce as you please.”

  The chief—Halvar, though all the raiders had called him Mouth—howled and pulled harder at Altan’s shoulder. “Fierce as you please, aye.” He waved again at his sons. “Now get the fuck out. Out! Not you, fool boy, you stay.”

  More chairs scuffed the dirty wood, and after sullen looks and grumbling, eventually the hall’s door slammed. Only Altan, Mouth, and his apparently favorite son remained.

  “So,” the old rogue and murderer sat and poured himself more beer, “what do you want?”

  Ruka brought more sail from his Grove, then focused on the silver. The dead had already found considerable stores of the metal beneath his cave, and separated the ore from rock with water, picks and scrapers. Ruka needed it shaped at least roughly into a form his countrymen would recognize and accept.

  He helped the dead use his furnaces and forges and build the molds, and now they worked on their own filling small chests with different sized pieces. Others twisted strands of flax to make rope, others hammered new swords and axes for gifts. Over the years, Stable-boy-from-Alverel had become a master. He now apprenticed some of the Pyu dead on Ruka’s techniques, teaching them in utter silence.

  “I don’t trust him.” Arun watched from below the rail then ducked back down. Ruka blinked and lay his head back against the ship’s rail.

  “You are untrustworthy, pirate. Of course you don’t trust him.”

  Arun snorted at that. “We don’t need him. You can make our coin and supplies with…well, whatever you do. Let’s just pay mercenaries. We can buy ships, why bother building them?”

  Because my people are cut-off and ignorant and we don’t have ‘mercenaries’ or a single ship worthy of that damn turbulent sea, Ruka wanted to say.

  “Our ships are too small, pirate. We must build them bigger.”

  Ruka watched the beach and small patch of woods for ambush, knowing Kwal would scout for ships down the coast. His only plan was to bribe whatever chief Altan brought him. What came after would depend on the man’s ambition, or his cowardice. While he waited he rubbed dirt on the silver and chests in his Grove.

  “They look too new,” he explained, when Stableboy-from-Alverel frowned with his eyes.

  “They’re coming, sir.” Kwal dropped from his perch atop the mast.

  Ruka blinked and returned his focus to the world of the living. “Hide below. Both of you. The ship will be strange enough for them for one day.”

  Kwal nodded and of course went instantly, Arun slower and with narrowed eyes.

  Altan and a group of men followed the dirt path South from Kormet, their pace leisurely as they spoke and laughed. The man beside Altan stood a head shorter. He was plump and ruddy and loud, and if he was chief it meant he’d got there through cunning and charm, or perhaps ruthlessness, and not strength. Ruka sighed. He’d have preferred a big, dumb ox.

  When the group came close enough to see the Pyu boat in full profile, the men stopped and silenced.

  Ruka watched carefully but saw no white flag, only five armed townsfolk who looked too clean and anxious to be real warriors. Some looked little taller than their chief and were perhaps his sons.

  Finally they stepped forward, and Ruka rose. He lifted a boarding plank and dropped it down from the rail to sand, then stepped carefully to the beach as the wood bent and creaked from his weight.

  He watched with satisfaction as the group took him in and faltered, hands moving to still-tied scabbards and eyes shifting to their fellows.

  “Halvar, meet Bukayag, son of Beyla.”

  The chief nodded, if only slightly. Ruka returned it.

  “Is it true?” The little man called with a voice larger than he was. He cocked a brow and smiled as if he enjoyed some private joke. Ruka indulged him.

  “Is what true, Chief Halvar?”

  “Did you kill a lawspeaker in Alverel? Right on the bloody Noss-cursed stone?”

  Ruka took this as a positive sign. He summoned the memory of Lawspeaker Bodil’s judgment when he was a boy, then her terror and the soft flesh of her neck before he crushed it.

  “With my own hands.” He held them up, splaying his nine fingers.

  Halvar looked to Altan, then to his sons, and laughed. The sound lingered and the man spasmed twice with a dry cough before he met Ruka’s eyes.

  “Couldn’t have been hard, killing an old woman,” he said with a harsher tone. Then he turned and gestured to Altan. “I came because this one said I could benefit. So tell me how before I need a shit.”

  Ruka stared and waited until he felt the group’s discomfort. He didn’t like the man’s words, his petty cleverness or his tone. “I will make you rich, Halvar. Far richer than you can dream.”

  Halvar snorted. “A chief keeps no wealth. The matrons and the Order I protect provide.”

  Ruka smiled faintly at this, wondering if even a single chief in the Ascom believed or followed the official custom. He looked long and hard for some twitch or sign of greed in the man’s eyes, though, and found none.

  Pride is his coin, then, Ruka guessed. Or perhaps it was cruelty and simple power like Trung, but he hoped not.

  “As you wish,” he said, and turned. “The choice is yours. Perhaps neighboring chiefs will feel differently. Perhaps they will find uses for silver, and god-forged iron for their retainers.” Ruka waved at Altan to follow as he stepped away.

  “They call you heretic, ‘shaman’,” called Halvar. “The Order would come and cut down anyone who helped you, if they knew you were here.”

  Ruka stopped and spoke over his shoulder. “They may try. But then the Order says I’m dead.” He turned and pointed to his new farmer ally. “They killed Altan’s Matron, chief, just for seeing me. Imagine what they would do to a man.”

  Halvar took this in and smiled with a huge cluster of teeth, though it didn’t touch his eyes. “Tell me, shaman, before I let you sail from my coast. What would you ask my rivals to do in exchange for your silver, and your…’god-forged iron’?”

  You will not ‘let’ me do anything, little creature, Ruka thought. But he ignored this and relaxed. No doubt the many hurdles to come, he decided, the man had agreed.

  “I would ask them to protect my work, and keep it secret—help my men with supplies, and ship-building, and sending messages. For this simple task, such a chief would be paid his sons’ weight in silver. And later, considerably more.”

  Halvar’s eyes sparkled, then he spat. �
�Not so simple. And some sons are heavier than others.” He snorted up another wad of phlegm, as if in preparation. “Help your men, you say. And what about you? What will the great Bukayag be doing while my rival dotes on his men and ships?”

  Ruka grew bored of the negotiation now that it was finished. He turned and watched the waves, mind moving beyond the ships, and even the raid to come—to the impossible future of freedom, and conquest, and knowledge—to an armada of ash and sand, and a great plain of killers mounted on mighty steeds. The thought made him smile, as did the answer.

  “Recruiting,” he said, then waved at Kwal to prepare to beach.

  * * *

  Ruka raced through rocky hills on foot, and thought of his youth. How far I’ve come, he thought, and yet how far I have to go.

  He pictured his first perilous journey to find Beyla’s kin, only to be turned away by an old Vishan crone, dangerous indifference in her eyes. The capital, Orhus, was only a few days East now. Ruka instead turned back North to the coast, his direction set on the word of a sailor he’d met in the same fishing village he’d left for Pyu.

  He intended to find his old retainers, if they lived, and would start with the bravest, and the most loyal.

  “A warhorse,” he’d repeated, again and again to men who shied away from his size and drawn hood. “Huge and black with a grey stripe down its face, and grey hooves.”

  The fishing village he’d found and stolen a ship from was little different than two years before. He’d handed out wine to the oldest men, hoping someone would remember such a beast as Sula.

  “Aye, a huge black monster, I remember,” said the kennelmaster, in the end. “Group o’ young men found him, and he came quiet-like despite his size.”

  “Were they locals? Did they sell him? Try and ride him? Did they have a chief?”

  Ruka had shivered to think of the mighty animal munching oats and shackled, put to stud in its prime. The kennel-master shrugged and swept his dirty floor, and Ruka handed him a piece of silver, which disappeared in the man’s pouch in an instant.

  “Chief Densro,” he said, “in Vinskild, not far from here. If they brought him as they should, though, or just sold him, I can’t rightly say.”

  Ruka nodded, then all but ran from the village.

  He’d left Kwal, Altan and Arun with Chief Halvar to begin construction of his ships, working out the plans with Kwal and all the supplies needed first. Without Ruka to translate they would of course have problems, but the captain had more than he needed to begin, and was clever enough to make the farmer understand. Ruka couldn’t be sure of Halvar’s loyalty, and Arun had paced in rage and fear at being abandoned. But the risk was necessary.

  “I will return with warriors. You must protect Kwal and the ships while I’m gone. I need you here.”

  The pirate had ground his teeth and eventually hunkered down inside his cabin, lighting tobacco. “Make sure there’s plenty to drink,” he’d yelled. “I’ll wait, savage, but I won’t do it bloody sober.”

  Ruka smiled at the memory, then crested the last rocky mound before a dip and almost valley-sized crater that held the outskirts of Vinskild. With the right crop and effort it would be good and fertile ground, he suspected. But instead the men of ash chose it as a village in ancient times, no doubt for protection no longer required.

  Ruka watched and waited at the outskirts. When he’d seen enough to expect little danger, he climbed down the now-dry, weed-filled edge of the gully, scattering two rabbits hidden in the brush. He skirted the central road that lead to the Spiral, entering the town on the richest side, which was closest to the sea.

  He squinted against the drooping sun, hoping to find some sign of a stables. Many of the houses were closed within fences and blocked from sight, but he could see sheds and barns attached to many.

  Silent and still as he focused, he almost missed movement close-by. But he froze and waited, and spotted an animal climbing over the ridge of the gully.

  Ruka blinked, disbelieving.

  He watched a horse and rider crest the near-by hill and run across open ground—a dark horse streaked with grey, saddled, groomed and washed, shining in the early dusk.

  Picking his way through the growth, Ruka watched them ride on open grass and feared they’d turn towards a road and leave the town. But he could see no supplies, and no weapons. He rides only for the pleasure, Ruka decided, not to go anywhere.

  He stood and watched Sula’s grace and power as he sprinted full speed, mane and tail flying in the wind. The impulse to follow and kill or at least remove the rider faded.

  Sula had been treated well in Ruka’s absence. He looked healthy and content, and for a moment Ruka thought perhaps he should leave him where he was.

  Bukayag snarled.

  “He’s ours. The rider means nothing.”

  Ruka sighed, and in his heart knew he agreed. He followed, and as the light slowly faded, Sula and his rider turned at a trot towards home.

  He may have forgotten me, he realized, frightened at the possibility.

  “He’s a warrior,” Bukayag said without a hint of doubt. “We are his master. He will remember.”

  Ruka wasn’t so sure. He had an urge to turn South and never learn the truth, but pushed this down and smothered it as Bukayag walked them forward.

  To calm himself, Ruka strolled through Beyla’s garden, which now sprawled in rows over more land than the house, filled with the green leafy spread of Ascomi potatoes and squash. Further out he’d planted three kinds of bamboo, which clustered and sprouted higher than a grown man. Beneath them taro and yam fought for false light, and Ruka found Girl-From-Trung’s-Pit kneeling in the dirt pulling weeds.

  He’d been so busy since he left Pyu, he felt he’d neglected her. But she looked up and smiled, shifting the scarf she now wore to hide her neck bruises. He roamed the beauty of her smooth, cool skin with his eyes, and wished he could explain how pleased he was to see her happy.

  In the world of the living, Bukayag had stalked Sula’s rider to a large, newer-looking house, an open view of the sea at its lone window. He climbed the pitiful fence and hid in the shadow of a small oak, and Ruka watched the man dismount.

  He seemed young, perhaps only sixteen or seventeen, and had called no servants to help with the horse. He whispered to Sula and poured water to a copper jug, then moved to untie his saddle.

  “The animal. It isn’t yours.”

  Bukayag stepped into the tall, dim entrance. Sula’s ears flattened, the rider startling and reaching a hand to his belt, perhaps for a sword that wasn’t there.

  “What is this? Who are you?”

  Ruka stepped forward and lowered his hood, ignoring the boy. “Sula,” he said firmly.

  The stallion’s nostrils flared. Its head turned back and forth as it pawed at the straw-covered earth, and the rider settled one hand on his flank, perhaps to calm him, or hold him back.

  “Sula.” Bukayag growled. “Come. Now.”

  The animal’s tail twitched as if it swatted flies, one leg raised and stomped as its eyes flared. Its rider now gripped hair firmly in a fist, his shoulders flexed as he held it.

  “Get out! Get out before I cut your throat,” he yelled in panic.

  Ruka raised his hand and smiled as warmth flooded his gut. He felt the strength of the pull now, he saw the excitement, the memory of endless fields of grass and charging terrified men in combat. “Sula,” he said more quietly. “Come.”

  With a snort the animal shook his head and lurched his massive weight to the side, throwing the young rider to crash against the wall. He stepped forward and sniffed Ruka’s hand.

  Ruka seized the hard, leather pommel and lifted himself on Sula’s back. He felt the strength, and the eagerness—the urge to run again across the world, no fear of the dark, or of strangeness, or of anything.

  Ruka took a large piece of silver from his pouch and tossed it to the earth. “For the saddle,” he called, then rode into the night.

  Chapter
43

  For five days Ruka rode South to Alverel, hoping it was for the last time. Along the way he stopped at two towns, asking if they had seen the skald known as Egil.

  Townsfolk in both shook their heads and said not for two years, and so Ruka moved closer to the last place he knew the man had been.

  If Egil had survived the valley’s chaos, Ruka assumed he would return to his old ways. He would ply his trade from town to town, hall to hall, filling his stomach and drinking himself to oblivion.

  Or perhaps the journeying had become too hard after Ruka’s torture. Perhaps he’d been forced to settle with a single chief, or a rich matron, playing in a single hall. If so, then he’d have gone to Orhus, or be close to Alverel, perhaps playing for the travelers there.

  Or he was recognized as one of mine, and the Order took him, and instead he died screaming.

  Ruka winced at the thought. Without Egil, finding his former retainers would be harder. Recruiting more men would be harder. Amazing, the power of a storyteller, he thought. A little music, some showmanship, and oh how my cousins swell.

  Ruka admitted, as well, he also just missed the man. Perhaps not the constant greed or cowardice, nor the frequent whining. But Egil knew him. He had been there from the beginning. His face and voice and presence felt natural in a way other men’s did not, and Ruka felt the urge to tell the skald all he had seen in the North—about Trung and Farahi, about the great mainland beyond with a hundred more races of men, religions and kings, and even an emperor.

  The world had grown so very large since he last saw his first retainer. Perhaps in that growth the torture and past would shrink, and in the future Egil could be more than just a retainer. Perhaps he could forget the past and be like Farahi, to be a friend.

  Bukayag rolled their eyes and Ruka urged Sula forward. He raised his plain, brown hood as he crossed Bray’s river into the valley, expecting he wouldn’t be paid much attention. His timing was good—most priestesses would be in the capital for summer elections.

  On the outskirts he dismounted and asked the first unarmed men he found if they knew of any skalds in the valley. He expected the Ascom had only so many, and that most would know of the others. The men mumbled and couldn’t agree and Ruka soon found himself re-tracing old steps, wandering straight into one of two great sources of the Order’s power.