Path of Revenge

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  The shouting below grew louder, coming both from the captives and from the longboats. The two Neherians set flame to the buildings to the accompaniment of shrieks from the boats.

  ‘Never surrender to a Neherian, Bregor,’ Noetos said, his head aching with memory. ‘If you do, he will take your mother and torture her in front of your eyes. He will take your brothers and hamstring them one by one, then set his dogs on them. He will rape your sisters while shouting vileness at you, before cutting their throats. He will take your father and behead him with his own sword, taking care to spatter you with his lifeblood. Then he will let you live, though you beg him to kill you.’ The fisherman clamped his mouth shut, too late to stop his memories spilling out.

  The Hegeoman’s mouth opened wide enough for both of them.

  One of the buildings was a fish-processing house, it seemed, for the fire caught at once and burned ferociously, sending thick black smoke billowing into the sky. Noetos had smelled burning fish oil before, but never mixed with the smell of charred human flesh. He found himself dry-retching, the Hegeoman’s unsteady hand on his back.

  ‘You’ve never seen death like this before, have you,’ Noetos said, spitting bitter saliva from his mouth. ‘It should be you throwing up.’

  The white-faced man gave no answer. Noetos took a closer look at the Hegeoman’s features: his eyes did not see the desperate scene below them, but gazed inward on some dreadful private vision. Alarm bells rang inside the fisherman’s mind.

  He was about to press Bregor for answers, but was distracted by the two Neherian figures throwing down their firebrands and rushing to the beach. There they signalled to their fellows, a few of whom came ashore, beaching their boats in a hurry, uncaring of keel damage. So unlike the Neherians, normally fastidious about such things. What had them so worried? The newly arrived Neherians took pails from their boats, dipped them hurriedly in the water and ran with them to the burning market. Ah, I see. They were worried about the black smoke, which could only mean one thing.

  A further thought occurred to him. As a result, several seemingly unrelated things the Hegeoman had said came together, sending a chill through his body.

  ‘This is not an isolated raid.’ He turned to the man kneeling beside him.

  ‘No.’ A voice thinned by shock.

  ‘Which way are they working? North or south?’ He held his breath.

  ‘North.’ Little more than a whisper.

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Three things. First, you were nervous when I burned the Arathé, but I assumed it was because I threatened to tie you up and burn you with it. Second, you are distressed because the village leadership has just been put to death. And third, the Neherians don’t want their burning to get out of control. You know what these three things say to me? They say the Neherians are razing the coast one village at a time, and because they don’t want the next village to know what is coming they’ve launched their raids in the spring, when the prevailing winds are nor-easterly, and are working their way north. It says to me you knew this was coming, you stinking cur, and you sold us out on the promise of gentle treatment. How were you going to signal them? Smoke, perhaps? Did you think I’d called them down when I fired my vessel? And now you’ve seen what happens to village leaders who surrender to the raiders, you are rightly filled with fear. You look down at this village—Kymos I assume—and see Fossa. Don’t you? Don’t you?’

  He grabbed the man by the throat with one burly hand, with no thought other than to crush his windpipe.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I take you down for a closer look? A discussion, perhaps, with your allies? What do you think they would do with you?’ Saliva spat from his lips; he barely noticed it. The Hegeoman’s hands opened and closed convulsively. ‘How much did they pay you? What did they offer you? Your own worthless life? Or—or, dear Alkuon, did you honestly think you were doing the right thing? Did they tell you this was inevitable? Did they impress you with their sophistication and wealth? Did they guarantee no deaths? Alkuon drown you, have you never listened to the tales of the Neherian Wars? How many men, women and children have died because of you, you worthless cliff-scum?’

  The hands twitched closed one last time, then slowly uncurled. Noetos’s vision cleared, though a red mist remained: the face above his throttling hand had turned blue and the mouth lolled open.

  ‘Ah, you were never any good,’ the fisherman declared, near to sobbing, and dropped the Hegeoman to the ground.

  Shouting drew his attention away from the body at his feet. A handful of the Neherians gestured up at the cliffs, in his direction, at him. The wind carried the sound of their excited jabbering to him, though he could not make out words; how loudly must he have been shouting? We’re no threat, leave us alone. But he knew they would not. The meaning of their signals, the heads bent together, the searching for a cliff path, left no doubt.

  He had not killed the Hegeoman. Part of him burned to finish the task; another part knew it for the action of a frustrated, powerless man, an action he would regret should he complete it. Behind his words and actions a great grief began building up, like water behind a dam of sticks.

  Noetos swore fervently. If only he had the courage to leave the Hegeoman where he had fallen; if only he was prepared to face the voice already crying in his mind. Don’t leave me, son, it cried; stay with me, bury your family, avenge our deaths…

  He could not refuse. He picked up the unconscious Bregor and slung him over his shoulder, grunting at the weight of the man and his backpack. Running was easiest bent well forward, with the weight working to his advantage, but the hot tears in his eyes made the dash to the road a dangerous one. In his mind he ran from a clearing twenty years ago, and from the gruesome scattering of mutilated bodies lying there, but this time he carried his dead father who whispered to him, ‘Avenge us, avenge us.’ His whispering was overlaid by the Neherians laughing and fingering their swords as they debated how much of a head-start they would grant him. Noetos cried and cried as the bitter memories possessed him, the memories he had tried to escape by hiding in the fishing village, memories now emerging from their hiding places with their sounds and their smells and their begging and pleading and cruel laughter, goading him on along the road, directing him to a copse of privet and bramble, the darkness beckoning him in, offering him a shadowy place to hide, ringed by cliffs, where no one knew who he was or what he had done—avenge us, avenge us, avenge us…

  Groaning, sounds of distress, tugs at his shoulder. Noetos jerked awake, snatching at and missing the hand resting on his arm. The burden of his memories crashed in on him, catching him without his usual preparedness, and the breath caught in his throat, making him retch. A hand entered his vision, offering him a container filled with water. He took it and upended it down his throat, trying to wash out the constriction there, but the dam held. Memories lodged in his gullet. His hand began to shake, and the container fell to the shadowed ground with a soft thump.

  A moment later, he followed.

  Fossa’s village leader knelt next to the unconscious form of the fisherman, by turns pinching his nose and covering his mouth, trying to silence the man’s snoring. Somewhere near their hiding place, outside the copse, the Neherians searched for the people who had spied on them. In the confines of the hideaway, the snorting, blowing sounds the fisherman made sounded outrageously loud. Bregor had to hope they would not attract attention.

  At least the snoring was better than the talking. The fisherman had an annoying habit of talking in his sleep. In fact, on the second night north of Fossa Noetos had held a long discussion with himself. It would have been funny had Bregor not been trying to sleep. With the Neherians nearby it might well be fatal.

  He tried to swallow and cringed with the pain. Fisher the Madman had done him some sort of damage; he could not speak at all, able only to make harsh honking sounds which hurt dreadfully, and he frequently spat up blood. In the evening and night since, he had
been able to swallow water only with extreme determination. He had not tried to eat.

  Yet he knew he had been fortunate. His mind kept painting lurid pictures of Fossa; of the burning houses, the members of the Village Council wriggling and screaming amid the flames, the rest of the villagers chained in the longboats, heading out through The Rhoos for the last time. He saw himself surrounded by Neherians, their sincere smiles replaced by hungry looks as they prepared to…to…

  That night he did not sleep. He found himself starting at every rustle in the copse, and doubted his ruined throat would allow him to settle in any case. At some point he went to make water, and in the distance he saw at least three separate glows from fires near the road. Parties of Neherians searching for them, perhaps; or maybe placed to intercept anyone who might see the destruction they had wrought and rush ahead to warn villages to the north. Their presence denied him what would otherwise have been the ideal opportunity to escape Noetos’s clutches.

  The night gave him plenty of time to reflect on what he ought to do. I have been played for a fool. The betrayer betrayed. Yet his intention had been pure, had been in the village’s best interest. The promises he’d received that first night when approached by the Neherian agent had been signed by the Duke of Neherius himself, inviolable, watertight. Surely the village would have understood. The Neherians were determined to have the coast; they were the only ones who made use of it, after all. The coastal villages would be suffered to remain, would fall under Neherian protection, were guaranteed buying rights for Neherian produce, including fish, at very favourable prices. The agent had spoken in such a gentle, reasonable voice. The Neherians did not want the farmland, and wasn’t that where the Fossan men of substance earned their living? Palestran possession of the lands above the cliff-top would remain undisturbed, while the lands below the cliff-top would be ceded to Neherius. Some villages would resist, their leaders mired in outdated concepts of ownership, the agent said sorrowfully. They would be cleansed. Now, make your mark here.

  The Recruiters had been a complication. The Hegeoman had received a message a few days before they arrived, advising him to send a signal immediately they left. A small fire at the top of the cliff would suffice, the unsigned note said. He had decided to delay matters long enough to alert a few people, giving them time to relocate themselves and their possessions inland. His family, of course, and some of those on The Circle. Simple prudence. But Noetos had interfered, burning his boat and no doubt inadvertently signalling the Neherian fleet with the smoke it had made.

  At least he could deny signalling them himself.

  His thoughts had only just softened on the borders of sleep when the fisherman awoke, tried to stand and fell against him, sending them both rolling into the brambles. The man’s absurdly large hands fumbled unsuccessfully for his sword.

  ‘Well, my friend, welcome to a bitter day,’ he said in an altogether too loud voice. Bregor assumed the man spoke to him, but he could not be sure. He couldn’t answer in any case.

  A meaty hand pulled him out into the sunlight. The fisherman’s red-bearded face stared directly into his own.

  ‘You’re quiet. Does your throat hurt?’

  The Hegeoman nodded, his throat working to make a whine not unlike a cur under a boot. It summed up his feelings precisely.

  ‘I have done some damage, haven’t I? Good. You’ll not be making any traitorous promises with that mouth for some time.’ Noetos smiled bitterly.

  ‘We have a decision to make,’ he continued after a pause. ‘Do we maintain our pursuit of the Recruiters, try to warn the next village to the north of the Neherian fleet, or return to Fossa and aid any survivors? Any preference? I’ll talk the three options through. You indicate if any of them make sense.’

  You forgot the fourth option, the Hegeoman wanted to say. Flee. Flee inland as far from the Neherian death fleet as we can. Call into the Palestran capital and warn them if we must; at least it will make our cowardice seem sensible, if not noble. Though no one in Tochar would credit us, and they do not have the soldiery or sea-craft to defend themselves against the fleet even if they did believe. The Neherians had recently signed a series of non-aggression treaties; the false comfort offered by such documents would far outweigh the garbled reports of two provincials.

  ‘First, we could leave the Neherians to their month or more of slaughter—I assume they will work their way north through Palestra to Saros, reuniting Greater Rhoudhos under their own banner—and carry on our pursuit of the Recruiters. The chaos ahead might even work in our favour, though I admit I have yet to think of any sane way of rescuing my family and taking my revenge.’

  Bregor raised an eyebrow, trying to indicate ambivalence. It has always been a mad plan, fool fisherman, he wanted to say. If you had remained in Fossa the Recruiters would have released your family. Though you would be dead by now, of course: knowing you, you would have taken on the entire Neherian fleet in your boat, screaming defiance as you rammed their flagship.

  ‘When I first saw the fleet at Kymos and worked out the extent of your treachery I wanted to return to Fossa. Any chance they have been left alone until the fleet returns south?’

  A shake of the head disposed of that hope. The Hegeoman watched the shutters draw over Noetos’s eyes.

  ‘I doubt, then, there will be anyone left in Fossa to benefit from our aid,’ he continued. ‘So that leaves the third option. How fast can you run?’

  Bregor shook his head, indicating his damaged throat.

  ‘That fast? Excellent. I would hate to leave you on your own, with nothing but burned villages and angry Neherians for company. My time of leaving people behind is over.’

  The Hegeoman sighed. And how will two men, one injured and both on foot, keep pace with a sailing fleet? Not a question he could ask with hands and eyebrows, but Noetos seemed to understand the objection nevertheless.

  ‘The Neherians will take a day, at least, to pacify each fishing village and move on to the next,’ he said, musing. ‘We may not be able to pass them today or tomorrow but, if we bypass the next few villages, we should be able to get ahead of them. I don’t wish to leave anyone to the Neherians, but there are at least thirty settlements between Fossa and Raceme. The more we save, the happier I’ll be. And you, weasel man, have a chance to redeem yourself.’

  He drew his sword, looked sourly at the naked blade, and slapped the Hegeoman lightly on his rump with the flat. ‘As long as you hold nothing back this time, that is. Every minute we save could mean another village kept out of Neherian hands. If we leave now and make use of the road…Ach!’ He swore. ‘We cannot use the road; the Neherians will undoubtedly have set watch on it north and south of their fleet, to prevent word getting out. Weak fool! We should have made our escape north last night, using the darkness as our cover. How will we avoid them today? I don’t want to sacrifice another village by waiting for nightfall!’

  He turned and spat on the ground. ‘I should have been gentler with you,’ he conceded. ‘I could benefit from your ideas. How long…Can you…’

  The Hegeoman shook his head. He had tried shaping speech, but no matter how careful he was, the wreck of his larynx responded only with pain. Likely a depressingly long recovery period.

  ‘Very well, then.’ The big fisherman shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘We will look for an inland path, or think of something else while on our feet. Come on, my friend, gather up our belongings. The one thing we cannot do is remain here.’

  No, Bregor thought. The one thing we cannot do is rescue your family, if they need rescuing. Or have you forgotten?

  Neither Noetos nor the Hegeoman could recall the name of the fishing village immediately north of Kymos. Neherian control of offshore fishing denied Fossans easy access outside their bay and the chance to meet other fishermen, so Noetos had very little idea of how far north the village was, or even how large it might be. Of course, had the Hegeoman known the name, he would not have been able to speak it. The fisherman knew he wou
ld regret his attack of rage, even though he felt it justified.

  Any time in the previous four days since they had left Fossa, Noetos would have welcomed the resulting silence. The man had spouted a constant flow of babble, as though he was fuelled by words. Politicians worked with speech, but fishermen understood the need for silence. Out on the dangerous, inscrutable water every sense had to be focused on the task and, until the catch was made, talk was kept to a minimum. Today, however, the silence resulting from the Hegeoman’s injury meant Noetos had no relief from his spiralling thoughts.

  He had always been a deep thinker. His mother said it whenever visitors came to the estate, mostly to explain his tendency as a child to answer every query with a monosyllable. But it was true: as a youngster he seldom indulged in what his father called ‘chitchat’. Saw no point in it. Who benefited from his dutiful rendition of the expected answer? As a sort of rebellion against his family’s expectations he went through a phase of answering every question honestly, until his father beat him for responding to a simple query about his health by describing in lurid detail the effects of a recent bout of chickenpox. He understood why his father punished him, knew just how insolent his inappropriate honesty had been, but judged the problem to be with the flippant question, not the detailed, overlong answer. If they don’t want to know, they shouldn’t ask.

  His tendency to contemplation and solitude had led him to the written word. Recognising this, his father, despairing for a time of imparting more important skills such as swordplay and accountancy, gave the young boy access to the family library. Noetos is a third son, his father said to his mother: let him be a scholar. There, once the huge oaken doors were closed, sealing his world away from that of others, his self-imposed studies absorbed him completely. He had never been happier than during the summers spent in the library, lying on the floor with maps and scrolls spread out all around him. A musty smell, the sound of a fly buzzing against a shutter, a discreet whisper as someone sought not to interrupt him: all could cause his heart to turn over in sweet memory. Alone with his thoughts, he could travel around the world and back in time to when…