by Luke Scull
‘Hush. I would never abandon you. Why would you even think that? I ran into a little trouble but I’m here now.’ Cole came closer and inspected her injuries and the concern in his grey eyes almost made her cry again. ‘You’re badly hurt.’
‘My ankle’s broken.’
Cole inspected the injury and winced. ‘How did that happen? Never mind, I’ll get you out of here.’ He turned and called to an odd pair waiting a little further up the street and together they ambled over. One was clearly a hunchback, with an oversized brow and big, watery eyes. The other—
‘Ed,’ Cole said patiently. ‘Why’d you take your top off?’
The big fellow Cole referred to as Ed stared down at his badly scarred body. He looked as though someone had recently tried to carve him up with a knife. ‘I wanted to show your girlfriend my scars,’ he rumbled.
Cole gave Sasha an embarrassed look. ‘I never said that. That you’re my girlfriend I mean. Damn it, Ed, just help her up! Derkin, you lead the way. You know these streets better than me.’
Sasha gasped softly as Ed lifted her from the rubble with a combination of fearsome strength and surprising gentleness. Her body hurt all over but seeing Cole’s face again soothed her pain and for the first time in months she felt safe, despite the fact the city was collapsing and an angry Magelord was still circling the skies above.
‘You’re pretty,’ Ed rumbled. He sounded like a child. Sasha looked up at his simple face and forced herself to smile.
‘Thank you,’ she said. She glanced at Cole. There was something different about him. ‘Are these men your new henchmen?’ she asked, remembering Three-Finger and suppressing a shudder.
‘Henchmen?’ Cole looked puzzled. ‘No. These are my friends.’
Sasha stared at Cole again. He had changed; she saw that now. The way he carried himself, the way he spoke… he was less certain. Less sure of himself. ‘What happened to you?’ she said quietly.
Cole hesitated and then shook his head. ‘There’s no time to explain. We need to get to the harbour before this place falls apart.’
They joined the mass of people stampeding through the streets towards the docks. Sasha looked back one final time at the collapsed house, at her sister’s tomb. Cole must have noticed the tears in her eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Why are you crying?’
‘Someone dear to me is buried underneath that rubble. She… she sacrificed herself to save my life.’
Cole slowed and looked as if he were about to turn around. ‘We can go back if you want. Maybe she survived. Maybe we can dig her out—’
‘No. Please, Cole. It’s over. She’s gone.’
Cole’s mouth opened and he looked like he might argue, but a moment later he bit his lip and nodded. The old Cole would never have shown such restraint and she wondered again at the change in his personality. Then her thoughts returned to her sister.
‘Goodbye, Ambryl,’ she whispered, blinking back tears. To her surprise Ed squeezed her tighter as he carried her in his arms, a gesture meant to comfort.
They hurried on, saying little as the rain continued to pour down and those fleeing the city converged on the harbour. It was heaving with people when they finally arrived, soaking wet and short of breath, especially poor Derkin. An elderly woman waved at him and he broke away from the group to join her, protesting animatedly as she smothered him in hugs and kisses.
Despite the stormy conditions, several ships were already full as city folk sought the sanctuary of the open sea. Those already on the ships stared back at the crowded docks with sympathetic faces. No one wanted to be on solid land in the event the city’s foundations gave out.
Sasha gazed out across the churning green water as Ed carried her across the soaking wooden boards that formed the docks. The endless sheets of rain made it hard to be certain, but as her eyes scanned the ships floating in the harbour she thought she could make out large shapes approaching through the grey haze of mist beyond.
The captain of one of the smaller vessels leaned over the rail and waved at the crowd waiting on the docks. ‘No need to panic,’ he called out. ‘More ships are returning to harbour. At least three. Hang on, make that four. Wait… what in the hells?’
Uproar broke out on those ships whose passengers were close enough to get a good look at the approaching fleet. Seconds later screams rolled across the wharf, a tide of panic rising like floodwater as the crowd finally saw what it was that approached.
‘Let’s get closer for a better look,’ Cole suggested, and he and Ed pushed their way through the crowd. Sasha clung tightly to the big simpleton, and as he barged his way to the edge of the docks she looked up to see a large crow soaring overhead, its wings badly damaged and its dark feathers singed as if it had been caught in a fire.
Sasha’s attention snapped back to the harbour as she heard Cole’s horrified gasp. A moment later her own breath caught in her throat. All around them people were shouting. No small number were retching, sickened by what they saw drifting towards them.
The ghost fleet was empty of both crew and passengers, or at least of those still among the living. All they contained were heads. Hundreds of heads piled high in grisly pyramids, their worm-eaten eyes staring out unseeing above sallow cheeks turning green with rot.
Yet more ships came into view, all of them carrying the same ghastly cargo. The dead must have numbered in the thousands, men and women who only a few months ago had set sail from Dorminia dreaming of untold riches or just a warm meal to fill their family’s bellies.
‘The Pioneers,’ Sasha said numbly, almost choking on bile. The ships sent to the Celestial Isles had returned.
The Better Man
Sir Meredith flexed his hand as he approached the hill, marvelling at how strong it felt. Shranree had done an admirable job of healing the terrible injury he had brought back from the Greenwild. The sorceress had teased the bone back together with fingers as supple as her tongue and sealed the wound with a brief unveiling of magic that had eased the pain. Now, a scant few weeks after the tragedy, he was restored to his glorious best.
The guards at the west gate huddled miserably against the wall, trying to escape the biting wind that brought with it endless flurries of snow. Sir Meredith sneered at them behind his helm, wondering at the lack of mental alacrity that would compel a man to such menial duty. He hoped these two performed their roles with greater enthusiasm than the previous guards. He noticed their bodies in the corpse pit as he passed it. The thick snow hid their wounds, and he considered that something of a shame. He rather enjoyed admiring his handiwork.
Red Rayne caught up with him as he was halfway up the hill. A glance at the wretch’s face confirmed that he was high on jhaeld again. Sir Meredith shook his head in disgust and ignored Rayne’s muttered greeting. Attending the King in such a state bespoke a man of abhorrent character. Admittedly, neither of them was supposed to be present at Krazka’s side this day. But a knight’s devotion never wavered, which was exactly why Sir Meredith’s armour had already been polished and donned when Krazka’s unexpected summons arrived. Rayne on the other hand looked as though he had just crawled out of a brothel, which in all probability he had. Sir Meredith consoled himself with the knowledge that Shranree’s ministrations had been less successful when it had come to the fireplant-addicted degenerate; Rayne would never hold a sword in his right hand again.
When the two men reached the top of the hill, they found Krazka staring out across the snow-blanketed fields of the King’s Reaching. Bagha and the pasty-fleshed Northman, Wulgreth, were guarding him. Orgrim Foehammer stood nearby, concern plastered over his face.
Shranree was also present. Sir Meredith amused himself wondering if the sorceress still walked with a slight limp after the night they’d spent together. Her appetites were surprising indeed, but then a knight understood how to treat a lady. Knew how to unlock all the hidden passions his artless countrymen couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
Disappointingly, Shranree didn’t seem pleased to
see him. Her eyes met his, and he thought he glimpsed worry there before they flicked away.
Krazka finally turned, the white cloak he wore dancing wildly in the strong wind. The King held a strange device in his hand. It looked like a brass tube, tapering somewhat along its length. There was a thick layer of glass at the wide end. The King must have noticed Sir Meredith’s puzzled expression, for he tapped the strange gadget and smiled a humourless smile.
‘You ain’t never seen my looking tube before, sir knight? Here.’ Krazka tossed the device at Sir Meredith, who after a heart-stopping moment in which he almost fumbled the tube to the snow managed to catch it in his gauntlets.
He stared at it for a moment, examining the bronze casing. Then he raised his visor and brought the tube up to his face. He squinted through the glass but saw only a blur. ‘It’s broken.’
‘The other end,’ Krazka said patiently. Bagha grinned at his error, a blatant expression of ridicule that had Sir Meredith itching to knock the brute’s oversized teeth out of his mouth. He turned the device around and brought the narrow end up to his eye.
The world seemed to grow fivefold. The row of pines on the hill over the river loomed large enough for him to make out individual trees. He turned slowly, staring out over Heartstone in wonder. Even at this distance, he could make out the faces of the townsfolk. It was as if someone had granted him the vision of a hawk. He scanned the buildings until he found the Great Lodge, then directed his gaze to the pinnacle. He spotted what he was looking for on the roof. A wicker cage housed a naked and filthy prisoner. Sir Meredith could make out the lacerations on the young man’s body, the fresh shit that had been smeared into his wounds.
‘This has to be some kind of magic,’ Sir Meredith exclaimed, lowering the looking tube and turning it over in his hands. Bagha guffawed at that, and the knight’s good humour drained away like piss down a latrine. ‘Mock me again and I swear to you, brute, I shall break this over your ugly head!’ he roared.
The King’s lone eye narrowed on him. ‘That’s one of a kind. You damage it and I won’t be happy, sir knight. Wulgreth found it in the same place he found this.’ Krazka reached down to his belt and patted the handle of the long-barrelled projectile weapon with which he’d put a hole in the Shaman. The strange artefact still made Sir Meredith nervous. It struck him as perverse that such devastating power could be housed in so small a form.
‘To answer your question,’ Wulgreth said softly, ‘it is not magic. The hidden grotto I discovered while lost in the North Reaching contained all manner of strange objects. Long before men walked these mountains, another race dwelled here. In that cave were paintings of a forgotten people. They were tall and white-skinned, with eyes like obsidian. And they built weapons that could humble the gods.’
Sir Meredith listened with gritted teeth, hating Wulgreth and the foul perversions he knew sickened the man’s mind. The bastard struck him as too smart by half and there was something about his eyes, always bloodshot and hungry, that bothered the knight, that offended his honour.
‘There’s something I want you to see,’ Krazka grated. He gestured at the looking tube. ‘Twist the end. It changes the distance. Set it as far as it’ll go and take a gander due south.’
Sir Meredith did as the King commanded. Shranree looked uneasy, which was a strange sight indeed in a woman who had proven so hard to shock in the bedroom. He rotated the end of the tube until it clicked and would go no further, and then he peered through it. This time he couldn’t suppress a gasp. He could see for miles, the excellent vantage the hill provided offering him a breathtaking view of the King’s Reaching.
There was something odd about the horizon. A dark cloud of grey was visible beyond the white sheets of snow, and it took him a moment to realize that it was smoke. Too much smoke to come from any single village. No, it had to be the work of a great many men. An army, less than a day’s march away.
He heard a clicking noise on the hill behind him. He lowered the looking tube and turned – only to stare down the barrel of the King’s deadly weapon.
Krazka’s disfigured face twisted into a scowl. ‘Some stupid fucker decided to go and murder a bunch of Greenmen and their wives and children. You might not have heard but they call me the Butcher of Beregund down there. I weren’t a popular man as it was. Turns out even I’m less popular since half my Kingsmen went on a murdering spree.’
‘The Green Reaching has responded by revoking its neutrality,’ Wulgreth said in his smooth voice. ‘It has declared for the Shaman.’
Sir Meredith swallowed hard in the silence that followed. Could it be that he’d miscalculated? The Greenmen were supposed to come crawling back to Krazka, begging for his mercy after they’d been brought to heel. The stratagem had always worked for the Rag King back in the old days.
The King pointed his weapon at Red Rayne, the other man to have accompanied Sir Meredith on their ill-fated quest and returned to tell the tale. That dogfaced bastard Ryder had apparently not made it out of the Greenwild.
‘I thought about sending your heads to Southhaven as a peace offering,’ the King mused. ‘But I reckon we’re beyond salvaging the situation. Their army’s already camped out in my own Reaching, ready to attack as soon as they’ve marshalled their forces. I got that cocksucker Carn Bloodfist to the west, Mace to the north, and now Brandwyn the Younger to the south. All I need is the Shaman miraculously recovering and the Sword of the North showing his face and this little clusterfuck will be complete. Lucky for us the Herald’s on its way back soon. We just need to hold out for a while longer.’
Sir Meredith breathed a small sigh of relief, thinking the conversation was returning to calmer waters. His respite proved short-lived as Krazka swung the weapon back towards him.
‘I want to know which of you is responsible for ignoring my orders. I can tolerate murderers and sadists and even a shit-for-brains like Bagha here. But if there’s one thing I ain’t gonna stand for, it’s an independent thinker. You never get anything done with men like that at your back. We all know Ryder weren’t no leader. It was one of you two that fucked up.’
Red Rayne pointed a trembling finger at Sir Meredith, the mangled digit next to the ruin of his ring finger. It wasn’t clear if he was shaking from fear or the jhaeld in his system. ‘It was his idea. The iron man. He said they was your orders.’
Krazka shifted the barrel back towards Sir Meredith. ‘That right, sir knight?’
Sir Meredith’s heart was racing now. Sweat beaded his brow; he could feel it soaking his undertunic beneath his mail. He couldn’t take his eyes off the lethal weapon pointed at his face. ‘He’s lying,’ he replied, though he heard a slight tremor in his voice and inwardly cursed. He was a knight. He wouldn’t show weakness in the face of this savage!
‘I implored that witless cur to focus on the quest in hand!’ Meredith snapped, recovering himself somewhat. ‘The fireplant resin coursing through his feeble brain turned him into a rabid dog. He raped and murdered his way through so many poor families that Ryder and I lost count. The delay his reprehensible actions cost us allowed the foundlings to escape to the Greenwild.’
‘You weasel-tongued bastard!’ Rayne roared. His hands shot to the scimitars at his sides a moment before he realized he could no longer use his right hand, his stronger hand. ‘That’s bullshit and you know it!’
Sir Meredith reached for his own sabre then. ‘I will not be called a liar by a reprobate such as you!’ he barked. He knew Rayne didn’t stand a chance, not with his mutilated hand. The man’s days as a worthwhile member of the Six were past, if indeed they had ever been present. ‘Let a contest of steel reveal the truth of your deception!’
The King shook his head. ‘There’ll be no duelling. That’d hardly be fair on old ninefingers there. No, we’re gonna take a vote. Like civilized men.’
‘A vote?’ Meredith said uncomfortably.
Krazka raised an eyebrow. ‘You know, it don’t hurt to address your king with a bit of respect. Se
eing as I pay you handsomely and all.’
‘You pay me what I deserve,’ Sir Meredith replied, the words tumbling out of him before he’d given them proper consideration. He stared at the weapon the King carried and swallowed hard.
The King’s eye flashed in anger, but he smiled and turned to Bagha. ‘What d’you reckon, bearface? Who’s to blame for bringing the goat-fuckers to my doorstep?’
Bagha scratched his head.‘Huh. I think the iron’s man guilty.’
What you think is worth less than a goat’s shit, Sir Meredith wanted to bark, but he managed to keep the words inside this time.
The King leered at Sir Meredith, who was suddenly reminded of dark nights long ago. His knightly courage began to waver as the memories flooded back. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No.’
‘What’s that? You say something?’ The King shook the barrel at him, and the sudden movement made Sir Meredith jump.
I’m a knight, he thought desperately. Knights fear no one.
‘Wulgreth,’ the King said abruptly. ‘What’s your opinion?’
Sir Meredith could see that the Northman knew the truth. He could read it in his bloodshot eyes and the smirk on his face. But when Wulgreth answered it wasn’t the response the knight had been dreading. ‘I believe Red Rayne is guilty, my king.’
Krazka nodded. ‘That’s one vote each. What about you, Foehammer?’
Orgrim Foehammer shook his head. The former chieftain of the East Reaching looked like a broken man. As if everything he had ever believed in had unravelled right before his eyes. ‘I don’t care.’
‘Now, don’t be a spoilsport. You get a vote here the same as everyone else.’
The big Easterman crossed his meaty arms and spat. ‘I got no say in any of this. I shouldn’t be here. I should be back at Eastmeet, back with my people. Fighting to keep the Fangs safe. Fighting to turn back the demons you permitted to invade our land.’
‘Don’t make this all about you, Foehammer. I got more than one bullet for this weapon, if you catch my drift. Give me a name.’