by Stephen Deas
‘Take them back on your own, Sergeant Tarn. Berren stays here.’ When Tarn cocked his head as if to ask why, Talon laughed. ‘Because I’m going to ask him to help me kill a warlock, that’s why.’ He turned to Berren. Half a smile played around the corners of his mouth. ‘I know what Syannis offered you in Tethis. She’s here. She wants to talk to you. She wants you to kill Saffran Kuy. Can’t say as I’d object.’ He turned back to Tarn. ‘Does that satisfy you, Sergeant?’
Tarn wrinkled his nose. He nodded. Then, when Berren didn’t say anything, he shrugged and pulled his cart slowly away into the rain. Talon watched him go.
‘We both have a lot to be sorry for,’ he said without looking at Berren. ‘Syannis couldn’t bring back your sword-monk and you can’t bring back Syannis. You said Saffran Kuy made you kill Radek?’
‘Yeh.’ Berren spoke softly, words almost lost in the rain. He remembered perfectly how the warlock had come, a thing made of shadows, how he’d wrapped a part of himself around Radek’s neck, and the voice inside Berren’s head: Kill! Kill him now! A voice he’d had no choice but to obey.
‘Princess Gelisya’s bondswoman is here of her own accord. She ran away. If we lose, she’ll be hanged. She ran away because, she says, Saffran Kuy is turning her mistress into something terrible.’ He wrenched his eyes away from wherever they were and looked at Berren instead. ‘I’ve not forgotten that you once said the same. If it were down to me, I’d make peace with Meridian long enough to have Kuy and his like hunted down and strung up. Too late for that now, but Kuy still has to be stopped.’
‘Tell me how!’ said Berren. ‘I’ll hunt him down and I’ll kill him.’
Talon’s eyes strayed back to the horizon. ‘It won’t be easy. I know he’s touched you. He’ll feel you coming.’
‘So be it.’
The Prince of Swords nodded and sniffed. ‘Meridian is no fool. Beating him will be difficult. But it’s my homeland. I will know the battlefield. But I do not know which side Saffran Kuy will be on. I do not want him on mine. But I do not want him on Meridian’s either. If he’s near when we come to battle, I want him gone. Forever.’
‘I’m a thief,’ whispered Berren. ‘I’ll slip in like a shadow, put a knife through his eye and slip away again.’
Talon half-smiled. He slipped his sword out of its scabbard and stared at the blade. ‘Killing a warlock isn’t such an easy thing. I thought you knew that already. And I have little advice to offer. Come with me!’
He jerked his head towards the town and strode away from the cursing men on the waterfront, through the Forgenver streets.
‘The bondswoman is in here. Make whatever deal you like with her. Maybe she can help you. When Meridian is dead you can have her if you want her. Do with her what you will. Release her if you wish. I will see to it she doesn’t hang for abandoning her mistress.’ His restless eyes settled on Berren again as he stopped at a travellers’ tavern and pushed open the door. ‘When this war is over, Aimes will still be king of Tethis. She will belong to him. He’s simple and will be easily swayed.’
He led Berren inside, through the commons and up some stairs. There were soldiers here, lots of them, not all in their armour or carrying their spears, but he saw them nonetheless. Lancers from Aria. Talon stopped at an arched door.
‘Here. I don’t know what she wants, save that Saffran Kuy’s head on a pike is a part of it. Freedom, I suppose. Her life. Don’t we all?’ His eyes glittered. ‘Although it’s possible she wants to murder you for that flogging you gave her, so keep your on guard and keep your wits with you in there, Berren of Deephaven.’
With that he left. Berren watched him go, and when Talon was out of sight, he pushed on the door. He knew this place. The rooms were comfortable, the sort used by traders come to Forgenver for a few days to buy and sell before moving on to the next port up the coast. A hovel beside the Captains’ Rest and the Watchman’s Arms of Deephaven, but immeasurably better than a soldier’s tent. It even had a bathtub.
Gelisya’s bonds-maid was sitting on the bed. Clad in white with a veil over her face, she could have been anyone. Berren took off his cloak and his coat, shaking rain onto the floor; as he did, she turned to look at him. Between the dark of the room and her veil, all Berren could see of her was a sinuous shape that once again made him think of Tasahre. This was a woman he’d whipped. His jaw locked. He struggled for words. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to. I had no choice. But they all died in his throat. Sorry wouldn’t take away the scars. Didn’t want to? But he’d done it anyway. Had no choice? None at all? They both knew that wasn’t true, not really.
She lifted her veil and her eyes were wide and sad. She stared at Berren and Berren stared back. He tried to remember Tasahre, to put the two of them side by side, and found he couldn’t. The sword-monk’s face kept slipping between the fingers of his memory; and sometimes he thought it was a wilful thing, that her memories had slowly chosen to leave him because of the awful things he’d done: for the old woman after the battle of the beach, for the bloody whipping in the castle yard of Tethis and for the guard under the castle whose throat he hadn’t slit.
‘My mistress says your name is Berren,’ she said.
Berren nodded.
‘Bondsmen don’t have names.’ Her eyes bored into him. ‘But when I did have one, it was Fasha. Master Berren, I have not been truthful. I have not run away. I have come to humbly petition you on behalf of my mistress, Princess Gelisya of Tethis, daughter of the regent Meridian, for your aid.’
‘My aid? In what?’ He was staring at her. He couldn’t help it.
Fasha’s voice grew urgent. ‘The warlock. He has touched my mistress. I fear for her. He will ruin her. He’s touched you too.’ She sank carefully to her knees and bowed her head. ‘Master Berren, my mistress pleads with you: she begs you to help her. Will you do this?’
‘Why ask me?’
When she looked up, her face was torn with grief. ‘My mistress says you are the only one who can stop him. She says she has seen it, that it must be you. I will give you gold.’
‘I don’t want gold. Not for this. I’ll kill Saffran Kuy out of spite.’
‘You will help us?’ Berren nodded. A moment later she was on her feet. She stood right in front of him, so close that they were almost touching and he could smell her skin, a slight tang of rain and sweat. She looked up at him, face brimming with hope. ‘Truly? You will help us?’
‘If the help you seek is the murder of Saffran Kuy, then yes.’ When did it become so easy to be a killer?
She took a step away from him. ‘Best not speak it aloud.’
‘This is a war.’ Berren tore his eyes off her. ‘Wars are filled with vicious deeds. When it’s done, I’ll free you. Both of you. And I’ll not take your gold, but I might take some from your mistress.’ Her closeness was making his heart beat fast. Two years at sea and then another as a soldier and he’d almost forgotten what it was like to be close to a woman. What it had been like with Tasahre, standing among the stolen relics of the House of Cats and Gulls; but now he felt it again, a hunger and a longing almost too great to hold back.
‘Thank you.’ Fasha reached a hand to touch his face and Berren took it in his own, pressing her fingers against his skin. His other hand touched her hip, drawing her gently closer. She put a hand over his heart. ‘If you will help us, I am to give you a gift.’
‘I don’t a need a gift.’ But he did. His hand went from her fingers to her face, cupping her cheek, tilting back her chin, running slowly down the pale naked skin of her neck; and if she’d pulled away now, he wasn’t sure he could have stopped himself from pulling her back, and what sort of monster was he for that? But she didn’t. She pressed herself closer and his hand on her neck slipped to her breast and felt the stiffness and the beating heart beneath as she drew his head to hers and closed her eyes.
‘Berren,’ she murmured. ‘Berren. Whisper your name to me.’ And he did, and she kissed him, slowly at first and then with a desperate
passion, the both of them like starving men stumbling upon an unexpected feast. She moaned and cried out as Berren’s fingers found her, and Berren gasped as hers did the same, as they tore each other naked and devoured one another, clawing and urgent and oblivious to the world beyond the circles of their embrace. And when their first throes of passion were done, Fasha took his face in her hands and led him to the bed and they lay down together, one beside the other, and simply stared into one another and stroked and touched and explored with fingers and tongues, all through the night until the first cracks of morning eased their way through the shutters on the window and the dawn roosters crowed.
‘I must go.’ The words brushed Berren’s ear like perfumed silk. He let his eyes watch her as she dressed and then he called her to him and ran his hands over her skin once more. His fingers lingered over the scars on her back.
‘I should never have done that to you,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry. I had no choice.’ And he felt Tasahre’s memory turn and walk away, sad and shaking her head. There is always a choice, Berren. Always a choice. And she was right. Don’t look to ease the harm, Berren. Look to do good. There is a difference.
‘You weren’t the one who made me a bonds-maid.’ Fasha closed her eyes. ‘And I thought you were a warlock’s boy. I knew what would come of what I did.’
He dressed. As he did, he caught a glimpse of something that lay under the bed, something that glittered in the candlelight. He reached for it and his fingers closed around something small and made of glass. He heard Fasha gasp and then he held what he’d found up in front of his face, a small vial. Another like the ones from Deephaven, with tiny words carefully etched into the glass, like the one he’d seen again in Tethis from the soap-maker’s house: The blood of the Funeral Tree, only this was one of the others. His heart beat faster.
Let them drink this and fall asleep. Whisper a name three times in their ear, so that name may become the object of their obsessions and desires.
Berren almost dropped it. ‘What? What is this?’ He stared at it and then at Fasha. She looked horrified.
‘I . . . I . . . I did not . . .’
‘You tricked me! You ensorcelled me! And you call me the warlock’s boy!’
‘No!’ she cried. ‘No, I did not! Look!’ She lunged and grabbed Berren’s hand, forcing the vial up close to his face. ‘See! It’s full! My mistress . . . she gave it to me, yes, and I could hardly refuse it to her face. But I didn’t use it! I would not. And you agreed to help, freely. Please!’ She clutched at him. ‘Please!’
Berren shook his head. ‘I would have hunted Kuy anyway.’
In a flash she grabbed the vial out of his hand and opened it and held it to her lips. She looked at him and then closed her eyes. ‘Berren, Berren,’ she breathed. ‘Say your name if you must. Say it for the third time.’
‘No!’ Berren grasped her hand and held it fast. ‘Go!’ he said. ‘Keep your freedom! Go and tell your mistress that you’ve done what you came to do. And if you’ve got any sense, you’ll throw that potion into the sea.’
After she was gone, Berren lay still. He gazed at the ceiling, lost in a reverie of bliss and remembered sensation. He only had to close his eyes and she was with him once again, her face aglow with lust, her eyes wide with desire. He lay there and dozed and thanked all the gods he knew, and tried to forget their vicious little twist with Kuy’s potion vial. After all, like she said, she hadn’t used it. She hadn’t.
And then later he got up and walked away and joined the Hawks as they marched out of their camp, as they turned towards the south and towards the war that the thief-taker had made.
PART FOUR
THE PROPHET OF THE BLACK MOON
24
THE TURNIP FIELD
The rains had made the roads hopeless for wagons, but Talon’s mules didn’t much care, and it seemed that the prince had quietly bought up every one of them for a hundred miles around. Each day the Hawks marched through rain and mud to the next nameless farming hamlet, and each one turned out to have half a cohort of men already shacked up in every barn, a mountain of dry firewood and enough food for the army to eat its fill. And so it went for a twelvenight and a day until they reached the outskirts of Galsmouth. By then word of their approach had raced ahead despite the rains and the atrocious roads. The garrison fled before them, and Talon had his first victory for nothing.
The people of the town endured the arrival of so many soldiers with a tired fortitude. Talon seemed in no hurry to move on, and his men were in no mood to argue about food and shelter and a few warm dry nights with a proper roof over their heads. Every building became a barracks and every house was soon bulging at the seams. This was his homeland, Talon reminded them, soldiers and citizens alike. His country, and so an uneasy peace reigned. Meridian sent out a cohort of cavalry, but since Galsmouth was brimming with food for the winter, there was little they could do. They tried to foul the river but the rain defeated them.
A week passed and suddenly, without any warning, Talon ordered them on. Every mule and horse in the town was rounded up and loaded up with as much food as it could carry. He made a speech that was largely lost to the wind and the rain and then they marched again, with full bellies and dry feet and warm winter cloaks. Which, it seemed to Berren, was all that most of the soldiers cared about. They marched in the open, making no effort to hide their approach ever closer to Tethis, and it seemed for a while that they’d march right up to the castle gates themselves before anyone tried to stop them; but then, a day from Tethis, Talon led them away from the road, out into a sea of mud that had once been fields full of turnips. The Hawks formed up into their battle lines, shields locked together, spears held at the ready, and waited. Meridian was coming.
‘Hold fast, lad,’ muttered Tarn. Men pressed either side of Berren and behind him too, a battle line three ranks deep and more than a hundred wide. ‘Keep your shield up. Keep your eyes open and watch your feet!’ Meridian’s line would be longer, Tarn had already said that, and now Tarn was standing right next to him and Berren’s eyes were wide and ready to fight. ‘If they come at us with horse, get down on your knees. Hold your spear steady and let the crossbows behind you do their work.’ Not that he hadn’t told them the same thing a hundred times, not that they hadn’t practised it with the lancers. ‘When it comes to the push and shove, watch your feet. You slip over and go down – and men will in this mud – you’ll never get up. When they come at you, you stab them in the face with your spear or you stab them in the foot, because that’s all you’ll be able to reach. Your spear gets stuck, drop it and use your sword. Your life belongs to the men either side of you and theirs to you. Remember that.’
Berren’s heart started to beat faster. He thought about how he’d always wanted to learn to fight, how he’d spent every day of his life in Deephaven yearning for it. But this would be no scattered chaos like the battle on the beach where every man had fought for himself; no, here was a real battle, the real thing, where men were crushed together, where it started with a rain of arrows or a charge of horse and all came down to who broke first, and learning swords had nothing to do with it.
Somewhere off through the rain he heard distant shouting. Talon rode along the battle line. Two hundred men lifted their shields and locked them together. The fear started to rise in Berren’s throat. He had nowhere to go, nowhere to run. What use were quick feet and a flashing sword when there were men pressed in all around him?
And then Talon stopped in front of him. ‘You!’ He pointed at Berren. ‘Out of the line! Now!’
Berren couldn’t bring himself to look at the faces of the men around him as he stepped out. A lot of them were going to die. He was no better than them and they knew it – he knew it. He ought to be with them, facing what they faced, fighting with them, fighting for them, dying perhaps, and yet he was shaking with relief. Talon stopped again a moment later as he rode along the line, and then again, each time picking a man to come with him. The shorter men, Berre
n realised. The small ones. The ones who might be quick and fast but might not be as strong as the rest. The weak links! He almost gasped. That was him! For all his skill with a sword, in this battle line where everything would come down to strength and grunts, he was weak!
‘Put your shields down,’ Talon said quietly, voice half lost in the wind. ‘You won’t be needing those.’ He handed each of them a crossbow and pointed through the rain. ‘There’s a farm half a mile that way. That’s where Meridian will be. The lancers will come around the right flank towards it and draw out his reserve. You will circle around to the left. Do whatever damage you can. Good luck.’ He saluted. The other men saluted back but Berren just stared. Then Talon rode along the front of the Hawks’ battle line, shouting rousing cries while the soldiers shouted back. In the lashing rain, men banged their spears and swords against their shields. The others Talon had chosen ran off into the sodden haze. Some, perhaps, were simply running away. Was that why Talon had chosen them? Did he know they were the ones who would break? Berren stayed where he was. He watched, creeping forward, keeping pace with the edge of the line. He couldn’t simply leave, could he? Leave the men he’d fought with on the beach, the men he’d lived with through the summer?
Meridian’s army emerged out of the rain like a wall of ghosts, banging their own spears and shields. Shouts went up from both sides: The Hawks! The Panther! The Black Swords! For Talon! For Meridian! Talon had three ranks to Meridian’s five. Somewhere in the haze Berren thought he heard galloping hooves, or perhaps he felt them through the earth, for he certainly didn’t see any horsemen.
The Hawks checked their advance – the front rank dropped to a crouch with their spears at the ready, revealing both ranks behind with crossbows. The strings were wet and sloppy, but the range was short, and four hundred bolts slammed into Meridian’s wall of shields. Men fell. In the mud, soldiers tripped and slipped over the bodies of the fallen, but the wall of shields came on, and now they returned a barrage of their own. The Hawks rose to their feet. Another shout tore through the rain. Meridian’s men began to run – not a flat-out charge, but a steady trot, keeping their wall intact. As Berren watched, the back ranks of the Hawks threw their crossbows away, high and over their shoulders. They readied their spears.