Kings of Ash

by Richard Nell

  * * *

  Ruka watched the spray of the narwhales rise as high as a Kingmaker’s mast, then raised a hand to signal the ten fisher ships. In his Grove he stood next to a line of harpoons, though he hoped to need only one.

  “Let’s get their attention.” He smiled, and the old captain with him nodded, crinkled skin wet as their ship splashed through the waves. The spear-throwers in every boat rose to their task, and the other crew splashed their oars and readied the ropes.

  His three Kingmakers waited beyond, further out to sea, with little to do but wait and if necessary try and chase the whales back towards land.

  Ruka held until the fearsome creatures came as close as he dared. The crew moved opposite to balance as he leaned over the side, arm back and body taut with strain as he gathered every ounce of momentum and arc in the cramped space. He held back his weapon, and released with a grunt.

  The javelin slipped into the foam then vanished in a swirl of white and red. Their boat rose and lurched as the creature spasmed and thrashed. A huge, grey tail rose, then slapped down hard to spray water over their ship. Ruka could only hold on and trust to the ropes wrapped around his waist and legs.

  Almost in unison, as if the pack of whales had heard some horn of war, the bulls turned and circled around the females and their young. Ruka’s men roared and smacked the sea with their oars and threw their spears down the line, moving forward now in a mad hope the beasts would flee.

  The ropes attached to Ruka’s target snapped taut as it tried to dive. The men seized the pommel and tried to keep the wood and steel from coming apart. They dropped their oars, no longer needing to row. From here out, they would be dragged.

  Ruka looked at his terrified but still controlled men and laughed. “Scream, cousins! Scream like you burn in the mountain! We’re the hunters, not them! Now scream!”

  The men saw his excitement and took up the shout, the line of fishing boats releasing their sails as the rowers pumped like madmen in pursuit, some few with lines attached to their own targets.

  Ruka had both feet planted firmly in the thrower’s nook, gloved-hands on his rope, arms straining as the waves pummeled the ship and soaked him again and again. It felt as if he or the ship or the spear might come apart at any moment, as if everything he had ever built could fall to ruin in the blink of the sea god’s eye. He had never felt so alive.

  The whales fled straight before them, panicked and surprised to be hunted by some creature they couldn’t see or understand from above. Many of the stronger and faster beasts turned and slipped past the long line of ships and escaped. Most did not.

  Ruka thought back to an open plain of grass with nothing except sky and field and the hunt. He had once chased a full-grown buck on foot with nothing but a knife, overcoming a great runner in its prime, facing strength with strength and wits as a lone hunter.

  But like dogs and wolves, men were pack animals. They were not meant to hunt alone. There on the waves, with the calls and tools of the sons of Imler and the men of ash, for a pure moment Ruka felt the strength of his tribe beside him.

  With his body focused and steady as it bent to his task, he looked at the brave, competent men doing a thing their ancestors had never imagined. He felt the kinship, wanting them to succeed and to be part of it. He looked at the other men battling with the whales and the waves, their bits of wood and rope and nails propelling them madly through forces so huge and elemental they should bring only terror. He looked on their courage with pride.

  The shore loomed ever closer. The men’s voices cracked and broke from the screaming, their red faces twisted with agony as they strained beyond mortal endurance, or sanity, until only their grit and purpose gave them the will to hold on.

  With a soft, almost gentle slide and crush of dirt and sand, the first whale struck the beach in panicked flight, and beached.

  Men from the shore raced into the water throwing spears and ropes. More whales swam at full speed into the coast, their weight carrying them the length of ten men into water too shallow to escape. First there were five, and then ten.

  Ruka and his hunters came up behind them but did not help in the killing. Instead they dropped to the dark sand, or lay back in their boats with heads resting against bloody hands, or the trembling backs of their fellows.

  Ruka stepped out and held up his captain’s arm, and the men on shore laughed and started the cheer that swept the town of Kormet, most of whom had come to the docks to watch a thing never seen in the land of ash. Children and matrons cried out their praise, knowing the feast before them would keep all from hunger for weeks, and with enough salt, maybe months.

  In his mind, Ruka saw the ever greater potential of a land and people behind for so long. They were behind the rest of the world in so many ways, especially in knowledge. But their suffering, he knew, had made them strong.

  The threat of a greater world perhaps would unite them as nothing could. Farahi would send grain, and Ruka would teach them. All was possible now. They had crossed an uncrossable sea, they had hunted Sigun’s beasts. It would take time but they would rise from the snow and ash like Tegrin, or Noss from his mountain of fire. You were right, mother, as usual, he thought. The stories of the book were true, in their way. They were true after all.

  * * *

  In the two days it took to butcher the whales and figure out what to do with the meat, bone and oil, Orhus attacked.

  Several scouts came first. They moved openly through the hills led by an Arbman on horseback, almost brazen in their loose formation and movement in the day. Tahar and his men spotted them long before they arrived.

  Ruka had to at least applaud their ambition. By their numbers it seemed a single chief had come for glory with a hundred men, thinking to seize the opportunity before his rivals acted. They had near as many men as Ruka, of course, with Aiden away. And if they’d attacked in broad daylight in good order Ruka might very well have considered running to prevent his losses. Instead they moved to the village outskirts, and waited.

  Their main force hid on a rise before the sloping ground of Kormet, and Ruka quickly realized they meant to raid at night.

  He told Folvar and his men to get ready—to gather every bow and every spear or axe made for throwing, and to have their matrons prepared to extinguish every flame in every house. The young man quirked a brow.

  “There is little moon, shaman. We will be as blind as they in the dark.” The new chief spoke without reservation and showed no fear, and Ruka’s pleasure in his rise increased.

  “A seer can see where other men are blind,” he answered. “I will reveal your enemy with fire. When you see them, you will attack.”

  Folvar frowned, but nodded, and did as he was told. As the light faded Ruka waited until Kormet’s warriors crept to hide behind houses and fences, or along the hills and high grass, waiting for his signal.

  He waited until the sun descended entirely beneath the horizon, knowing the enemy would give the men of Kormet time to drink, relax, and sleep. Then in the heart of darkness, they would come quietly over the rise like a pack of wolves, throwing torches at houses, slaughtering any man who fled the flames.

  When they had killed or chased away every last man, they would march to the hall and wait for the matrons, and offer them their ‘protection’. They would expect to be chosen by the women and replace their mates, or else they’d slaughter their boys, too.

  But Ruka would not let them reach the town at all.

  In the darkness, he moved out quietly to the sloping ground with wineskins filled with whale oil. He emptied one after another on the rocky ground in a circle, and for his own amusement and perhaps for the gods, if they existed, he drew a rune in oil that meant ‘surprise’.

  He walked out into the deep darkness of the night, around the edge of the enemy’s hill until he came close enough to see them fortifying their courage with drink, readying their weapons and torches and looking out for ambush.

  A man patrolled the edge of their
camp. He stared straight into the dark and squinted, then smirked and nudged his fellow. “A coyote, eh? Maybe a wolf? Brave to come so close to men.”

  The other looked, too, and Ruka stared. He could see them clearly. The tiny glint of moonlight peeking through the clouds cascaded over the earth for his eyes, lighting it in a cold, gray light. Ruka knew he belonged to that shallow gloom—beyond the day creatures of Galdra, a pale black reflection. It had maybe always been thus. Like Noss’ wolves in the night he would cull the weak of mankind, and make the whole stronger.

  He raised his hand. A shower of fire spewed from the air as Bukayag drew his first javelin from the realm of the dead. The men blinked and stepped away in panic, and Ruka hurled his weapon through the first man’s chest. He drew a long, cutting sword and rushed, hacking at the other’s back before slashing indiscriminately at confused and idle warriors sitting with skins.

  “Ambush!”

  The warning sounded and the men rushed up all at once. Some loosed arrows in panic at rocks or bushes, others threw axes or knives. Ruka stepped away and faded again into the darkness.

  He rushed over the rise and down towards Kormet, hearing the men’s angry shouts, knowing they might decide instead to withdraw. He hoped they would. Many lives might be spared, and perhaps many more men of ash might see paradise. But if they came as planned, if they raced ahead to burn homes and threaten little boys, he would slaughter them without mercy.

  Their chief growled and shouted and stepped over the hill, and his men followed. Ruka watched, and waited.

  So be it.

  At the edge of the oil-sodden earth he held his horn to his lips. The men advanced towards the distant lights of Kormet in a cluster, the men on the outskirts already formed in a shield-wall. Ruka was impressed by their discipline. They came down the slope together, and he waited in silence before them. He drew another spear from his Grove, and the sparks flew and floated to the earth, lighting the oil. He blew his horn.

  Fire spread through the fuel and raced over the ground. At the sound of the horn, every campfire in Kormet began to extinguish, until the only light in the world burned beneath the men’s feet.

  Ruka heard the arrows before he saw them. Folvar and his men came from their hiding places in the grass and hills and began loosing missiles.

  Some of the raiders panicked and fled from the flames, others kicked dirt and came together behind their shield-wall. The chief was calling for his men to come to him and backing away. Ruka waited in the night. He cut down any man who strayed too far from the fire, cleaving any who thought to find safety in the shadows.

  Arrows struck man after man and Ruka circled throwing javelins. The fire lit him as Bukayag growled and laughed, and a few men charged together. He took two swords and met them in the flickering light. He spun between them breaking shields and roaring, his body sheathed in steel rings and padding that mocked their blades.

  “To the hills!” cried the raider’s chief.

  Bukayag kicked the man before him down, took another javelin, and threw it through the chief’s throat.

  All those around him cried in alarm and fell back or scattered. They held their shields above them as arrows fell dark and terrible and unseen. Most broke and ran, the wide fear of prey now in their eyes, lost to the mindless fear of flight.

  Ruka let his brother chase and kill several who stumbled on the uneven ground. He watched the others running terrified and left them because they weren’t truly his enemies. He turned back, and put the worst of the wounded from their misery.

  Two thirds of the raiders lay dead or bleeding on the rocks. The men of Kormet had gathered now, staring at Ruka and the field of corpses. They looked at his eyes, the blood covering his armor, and the men lying flat and skewered by javelins pulled from nothing. But Folvar had seen it all before. He unstrung his bow, and met Ruka’s gaze with courage.

  “Should we bury them, shaman?”

  Ruka glanced at the carnage but put it from his mind. It was done, and more would follow. For now they must act.

  “Burn them,” he walked back towards the village. “You men will need your strength. Tomorrow, we start on the trench.”

  “What trench, shaman?” called the chief after a pause.

  For now Ruka said nothing. In his Grove he carried more rock with the dead, waiting for them to plaster a layer of mortar so he could start on the next level. Unlike the living, the workers in his Grove never tired, which in this case was all. They had little time, and a great deal of work to do.

  Chapter 60

  “We need a priestess, shaman. Too many of the women are sick. You must come.”

  Ruka sighed and leaned on his shovel, looking up from the trench. It was a relatively cool day, and much more pleasant working here than Sri Kon in the baking sun. He supposed Hemi wouldn’t have thought so, and memories of the man made him smile.

  “They are likely just tired, cold and miserable,” he said, preparing to rise. “And the priestesses know far less of herbs and medicines than I, Folvar. But if you wish, I will come.” With a groan he stepped over the edge and looked back. They had made reasonable progress. From the beach to the site of their battle, ground was being dug and flattened in a straight and measured line. The men had stared in disbelief when Ruka told them the task.

  “We must build a trench,” he’d said at the light of dawn. “It will need to be the length of two stakes, and as deep as a half. It must run from this coast to the other edge of the peninsula.”

  Folvar had squinted and looked up from Ruka’s crude map drawn in the dirt.

  “What do you mean.”

  “I mean what I said, chief. I need a trench that crosses the fertile ring.”

  Still he balked. “The whole…the entire peninsula?” When Ruka said nothing more he shook his head and snorted. “That’s…I’m sorry but that’s impossible, shaman. That’s too far. I have only two hundred men, it would take us…I don’t know, months, maybe.”

  “We have one week. It will require your matrons and children, and the women we took from paradise. I have sent for more men.”

  “What good is a trench, shaman? We can fight at the edge, of course, but…not across the whole peninsula at any rate. They’ll still get around.”

  This was rather reasonable and true, but Ruka was not willing to say more. They had argued for a time, but in the end, as usual, Ruka’s miracles allowed him to overcome good sense.

  Soon enough the people of Kormet had come with their children, their spades, picks and shovels, gathering all along the line Ruka had marked with stakes, and begun to dig.

  Now Ruka looked up at the growing cloud and hoped it wouldn’t rain. He stepped from the dip in the earth and rose up towering over Folvar, then followed him towards the town. They passed the newly started bases of the rounded grain bins, which would have to wait now for the trench. But they would not be needed until spring in any case. Ruka only hoped they were truly needed—that Farahi would come and do as he hoped. For if not, than the Ascom would starve, and all Ruka’s work would fall to ruin, death and war.

  Worrying, however, made no difference. Ruka could forget nothing but he put this concern to a corner of his mind and left it like a stone moved from a well-trodden path. “Why are we going to the hall?” he asked when he realized. He had assumed the sick women would be recovering in the houses of the matron’s who had taken them in.

  “There’s too many now,” said Folvar. “Only the hall was big enough.”

  This hurried Ruka’s steps.

  Kormet was largely abandoned now save for new mothers and their infants, and some few of the old and sick, so the way was clear. Ruka saw the empty streets and sped to a run. He raced along narrow gravel and dirt roads to the huge horns sprouting from Kormet’s hall. The smell hit him as he pulled open the doors.

  The foreign women of Halin lay in blankets or huddled around the main hearthfire. Their wan, sagging faces turned up towards the sudden light with bleary eyes. Ruka saw waste
buckets near them, others by his feet, yet more near the floor-hole used to dump waste outside.

  “It is as if they drank foul water, shaman,” explained Folvar, panting. “But they drink what we drink, and none of us are sick.”

  Ruka nodded and stepped inside. He thought this a wise observation. The water in Pyu had been clean beyond belief. Perhaps the women’s constitutions couldn’t handle the sediment or some other impurity from the rivers and wells of the Ascom. But Arun and Kwal had seemed fine.

  “What is your name?” He leaned down to one of the women strong enough to help the others, then dropped to a knee to be of equal height. Like most of those taken she was young and beautiful with dark hair and eyes. She cowered as Ruka approached, but when he spoke in her native tongue she blinked and looked to the others.

  “Lia…Liana, lord.”

  “Good. I am called Bukayag, a priest to my people, not a lord. You need not fear me for I will not hurt you or allow you to be hurt. Tell me of your illness, please.”

  She looked worn, uncomfortable, and perhaps skeptical. He did not blame her. Since the raid and capture she had known only weeks at sea—only misery and fear since meeting the men of ash. Ruka had always known some would not survive the process, whether because of illness like this, or a destruction of spirit. One day he would pay for it.

  With a deep and determined breath the girl lowered her eyes and spoke of the vomiting, the loose bowels, the rashes and myriad of other symptoms. Ruka nodded throughout and asked her what they had been eating and drinking and how their hosts had been treating them. Nothing seemed unusual.

  “Thank you, Liana,” he said when she had answered, then he went to stand but paused. He met the girl’s eyes, and saw a courage within. “We have wronged you. But soon enough you will be given houses. You will be allowed to choose husbands and live as respected wives and mothers here, protected and more or less equal to other women. Life is unjust, but you can survive and even prosper, if you have the will.”