Path of Revenge

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  Only one person spoke to Noetos that night. The Hegeoman made his bed next to the fisherman and, just before settling down to sleep, whispered: ‘You have not failed.’

  Noetos wished he could find a way to tell Bregor just how much those words meant to him.

  As a gentle rosy dawn tinctured the plains, Noetos detailed two of the Makyra Bay men to take their dead townsman home, using one of the mules. The miner with the broken wrist had a bad night, but elected to stay with the army. No one spoke of the previous evening’s events, presumably, Noetos suspected, in order not to invoke bad luck.

  The remaining mules, of course, trotted happily across the Saar River just after dawn. This angered Noetos unreasonably, and it took him an hour to calm himself. He forced his mind to focus on the coming clash with the Recruiters.

  An ambush is a chancy tactic, said Noetos’s memory of Cyclamere. It works best with numerical and technical superiority, and can be turned by a clever opponent.

  Technical superiority—the phrase gnawed away at the fisherman as they came to the Tochar road, a well-used gravel track running, as most Old Roudhos roads did, in a straight line, uncaring of mere topography. Technical superiority. Now he knew what the huanu stone could do he intended to exploit it, and hoped it might neutralise much of the Recruiters’ sorcery. But there was something else…

  They had reached the base of Saros Rake when it came to him. The steep slope looming above them reminded him of the walls of Eisarn Pit, in and under which the miners toiled day and night, using a combination of hard labour and alchemical explosions to free the ore from the grip of its enclosing strata…

  ‘Omiy!’ Noetos cried, startling those around him. ‘Alchemist!’ He tched in annoyance. ‘Where is that man?’

  ‘He stopped a while ago to help the wrangler with a loose pannier on one of the mules,’ Papunas said.

  ‘Send someone to get him, would you?’ I am addle-headed. How could I not have thought of Omiy?

  ‘Yes, friend Noetos, you wished to speak to me, did you not?’ Alone of them all, the alchemist seemed unaffected by yesterday’s events. Noetos doubted anything would change his manner of address.

  ‘I do. To be blunt, have you brought any of your alchemical devices and powders with you?’

  The man frowned, as though witnessing some base indiscretion. ‘I am here, am I not? How could I be here without my equipment? Not all of it has survived the rigours of the journey, oh my no, I have lost a glass vial and water has dampened one of my packets of sulphur. Nevertheless, I present myself to you as an alchemist, with the tools of my trade at your service, yes indeed, such as they are. But, oh my, I thought we were intending to fight Recruiters, not play with chemicals. What do you want me to do—bring down this wall of rock?’

  To his credit, the man had worked it out even before Noetos raised an eyebrow in the direction of Saros Rake.

  ‘I was going to send a detachment of men up to the summit with instructions to find large boulders and ready them to be rolled down ahead of and behind our enemy,’ Noetos said. ‘I don’t want to harm them, for fear of hurting their hostages. I intend to sow confusion among them, which we can rush in and take advantage of. But with you here, Omiy, that is not necessary, is it?’

  Noetos sent the man with the broken wrist northwards on a mule, to look for any sign that the Recruiters had already passed this place. It seemed unlikely, given the rate the men had travelled northwards thus far, but not impossible. He’d tried to allow a margin for error in his own estimates, and for a quickening in the Recruiters’ pace, but he hoped—depended upon, really—that they were still travelling slowly, trying to lure him north. Besides, sending the injured man north kept him out of trouble, and Noetos wanted to be responsible for as few deaths as possible.

  Seren he sent southwards, saddling him with the more dangerous task of ascertaining how far behind them the Recruiters were, or if indeed they had chosen this road to travel northwards. It seemed the likeliest choice, especially if they sought to draw the huanu stone to them, but again there were no guarantees. Certainly Noetos wanted some word of their location before he went to the trouble of setting his trap.

  Seren returned first. ‘They approach us at a leisurely pace,’ he said. ‘They will make camp tonight p’raps a league or two south of here. Can’t imagine they’ll make it this far. And no, b’fore you ask, they didn’t see me.’

  The overseer’s words set Noetos’s stomach churning. Part of him wanted to abandon his elaborate plan and instead go charging down the road, his sword in his hand. He wiped sweat from his brow.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Help yourself to what remains of our supplies. There’s not much. Leave some for Mika, he might return this evening, though I doubt it. Meanwhile, Omiy and I have work to do. I will tell everyone else the plan tomorrow morning.’

  Noetos stood in the road, a solitary figure, as the Recruiters crested a gentle rise and came into view. Every muscle in his body tightened. Doubt is the real enemy, Cyclamere said, but the didactic memory did not continue. The fisherman knew the lesson, and so fixed on an image to stir his anger. Anger to smother the doubt.

  Arathé on the floor, a knife in her back.

  He had chosen his position with care, having identified a section of road that curved eastwards. The sun would be in their eyes, placing an element of uncertainty in their minds. They would know who he was, but not for sure. Not for a few moments yet.

  He schooled himself to stillness. The first words would not be his. He tried not to strain his eyes, but he couldn’t help counting. Nine. Nine? They had left Fossa as seven.

  ‘Fisherman!’ one of the men called to him. He held Anomer by the arm. ‘Isn’t it a splendid morning to be out?’

  They would be expecting him to respond, so he did not. All the old lessons were proving themselves. He’d mocked his tutors, doubted their wisdom. He blessed them now.

  ‘It is a cool morning, but your tongue will not freeze if you use it,’ the Recruiter continued. ‘Why not use it to greet your son?’ He thrust Anomer in front of him.

  Noetos forbore checking his son for injuries, resisted looking at his face. He kept his eyes on the Recruiter who had spoken.

  ‘Or perhaps your wife?’ said a second man. ‘She would answer you; she’s very friendly.’

  ‘Very,’ the first Recruiter agreed.

  The Recruiters and their captives—and what looked like two young recruits, a boy and a girl—halted twenty paces from where Noetos stood.

  ‘This conversation is lacking something, have you noticed?’ said the man holding Anomer. ‘Our friend does not seem happy to see us. Which is strange, given how far he has come, how assiduously he has sought our company.’

  ‘We appear to be his only friends,’ the second Recruiter commented. ‘No wonder he has forgotten how to speak. Without his family, he has no one to speak to.’

  ‘We’ve been talking to your wife and son, fisherman,’ said a third Recruiter, his cowl down. This man’s voice exhibited none of the hearty playfulness employed by his two fellows. ‘They have told us a great deal about you, about your past. From the scraps you allowed them to know, we have pieced together the shameful tapestry of your life. Scion of Roudhos, heir to the Fisher Coast. Coward. Your family is disappointed in you for keeping secrets. As you can imagine, they did not talk to us willingly at first. We had to do a little damage. Why not talk to us now and save us having to damage them further?’

  Noetos did nothing more than shift his head slightly, so he could look directly at the speaker. Then he nodded.

  ‘You are skilled with swords, you have magic by all accounts, and you outnumber Noetos. Why do you hesitate to attack him?’

  The four Recruiters spun as one to face the speaker, Bregor, who stood at the head of Noetos’s sworn men and half the Makyra Bay villagers, some fifty paces behind them. All had their swords drawn. Silence settled on the scene as the Recruiters considered this development.

  ‘Good ques
tion, unless o’ course they are afraid of the huanu stone.’

  In almost comical fashion the Recruiters swung around again. Behind Noetos, Papunas, the rest of the miners and the remaining villagers lined out across the road. All but Dagla had their weapons out; the young lad struggled to draw his sword from a reluctant scabbard. He gave up, bent and picked up a stone.

  Noetos withdrew the carving of Arathé from its place on his belt.

  A deadly quiet fell.

  ‘Oh my,’ Noetos said, his voice loud, as it needed to be, echoing from Saros Rake to his right.

  ‘In the name of Andratan—’ one of the Recruiters began. Noetos never found out what the man was about to say, as at that moment the world exploded.

  It was a much larger detonation than Noetos had expected. The air blurred with the force of it. Despite having braced himself when he signalled the alchemist, Noetos was knocked sideways by the blast; it lifted him from the road and hurled him onto the grass. All around him screams mixed with the thumps of rocks and pattering of stones. Noetos fought to regain his feet as a cloud of dust descended upon him. A deep rumble came from the direction of the nearby cliff.

  The over-enthusiastic idiot had brought down Saros Rake upon them. His plan was breaking apart.

  As the rumbling above him grew louder, Noetos ran through the dust in the direction of his wife and son. He stumbled over a body—not Anomer’s but one of the young recruits, the girl, blood-spattered and broken. As he bent over her, his soldier’s sense gave him the merest warning: the blade that might have taken his head instead caught him with the flat on his left shoulder. Still strong enough to score the leather jerkin he wore—courtesy of some nameless victim at Makyra Bay—and knock him off balance.

  The follow-up stroke came with a speed Noetos would not have believed possible. A killing blow. The fisherman thrust up his left hand to intercept the stroke. The sword took his smallest finger at the first knuckle and cracked against the huanu stone. Noetos roared in anger and tried to pull his hand back, a reflex from the intense pain.

  His hand would not move.

  The swordsman, the Recruiter with his cowl thrown back, struggled to retrieve his sword. It was fixed to the huanu stone in Noetos’s hand. The man’s eyes grew wider as it became clear he was trapped. The stone in the fisherman’s hand began to vibrate, to…draw. Through the sword. It pulled something from the Recruiter, something he tried to resist, judging by the look of terror in his eyes.

  ‘Let me go!’ the man screeched, spittle flying.

  ‘No,’ Noetos said.

  Whatever the stone was doing to the Recruiter took less than a minute, perhaps twenty beats of the heart. In that time the sorcerer’s face went from anger through shock to utter despair. He cast his head about, looking for help, but the dust haze obscured everything. The world condensed to two men on a country road. When the stone had accomplished its task it let the Recruiter go. The man slumped to the gravel, his sword clattering to the ground beside him.

  ‘What happened?’ Noetos asked hoarsely.

  ‘It took my magic,’ the stunned man breathed.

  ‘So, you are one of us now, courtesy of the stone you wanted to steal,’ Noetos said. ‘How does it feel?’

  ‘Kill me,’ the man rasped, his eyes dead.

  ‘That is a mercy I’ll grant.’ Noetos put the carving of Arathé back in his belt, then positioned the tip of his sword in the correct place, between the ribs, and slid it home using his left hand to push, spattering drops of his own blood onto the man’s robe. The Recruiter puffed out a single breath, the life leaving him as Noetos watched. He pulled the blade out and wiped it carefully on the dead man’s cowl, then tore off a strip of the fabric to bind his damaged finger.

  Revenge is a bitter drink, said Cyclamere.

  You’re wrong, old man. I’ve never tasted anything sweeter. Now be silent while I seek out more.

  A further rumbling, then a loud crack. ‘Oh, oh my, get out of the way!’ someone cried from high above them. Silence, then a roar that shook the earth.

  Noetos wanted to remain where he was, intending to search for Anomer and Opuntia, but his feet had no intention of staying. He had gone perhaps fifty strides when Saros Rake came down behind him in a blast of air and rock.

  This time the fisherman found shelter behind a large angular boulder that had no doubt arrived as a result of the first explosion. As he ducked behind the rock he saw that its edge had come to rest on the torso of a second Recruiter.

  ‘You’re not having much luck today,’ Noetos said to him, but the man’s eyes were rolled up in his head. Unconscious.

  Noetos raised his blade and, despite the growing pain in his left hand, made sure the Recruiter remained that way.

  Sweeter still, he told the memory of his tutor.

  After a while the grinding and crashing stopped, and Noetos emerged from behind the boulder to see the destruction Omiy had wrought. At your behest, he reminded himself, but he had not intended such a singularly catastrophic event. The dust from the second blast had settled somewhat, so he could see that the skyline had been forever altered. What had once been a steep slope of shale and broken rock, topped by a dark cliff-line, was now a hole torn from the escarpment’s roots. Grass, bushes and even trees had come down in the massive landslide.

  Here and there other people began to emerge from whatever bolt-holes they had sheltered in. They looked around, eyes dazed, mouths agape.

  ‘Noetos! Over here!’

  He ran in the direction of the shout, but it was not Anomer, just the third of the Recruiters, Ataphaxus, their leader, surrounded by Seren and his miners. A stand-off. Noetos wanted to ignore the summons. Let them deal with the man, while he went in search…

  ‘Where is my son?’

  The Recruiter’s face set in a look of disdain. ‘Under the rubble. Who cares? This is about you, Roudhos, you and your stone. Give us the stone, surrender yourself to us, and we will allow everyone left alive here to go on their way.’

  ‘Us?’ Noetos said. ‘You are mistaken; there is no longer any “us”. Seren, take three of your men and bring back the bodies of the Recruiters. I want this man to reassess the position from which he attempts to bargain. Don’t worry, he won’t try to escape, not with the huanu stone in my possession. We’ll wait here for your return.’

  He sent as many as he could spare to begin the bleak task of searching through the debris. He desperately wanted to go with them, but wanted none of the Recruiters left alive.

  By the time the miners returned, the last of the dust had settled. Still no sign of Anomer or Opuntia, and the fourth Recruiter and the remaining servant had not revealed themselves. Two of the returning miners carried between them the body of the first Recruiter Noetos had executed, while Seren bore a severed arm, which the miner eyed with revulsion.

  ‘Had to cut it off, fisherman,’ he said in explanation. ‘The boulder was too heavy t’ lift.’ The overseer threw the limb down at the feet of the Recruiter, whose face paled by the barest margin.

  ‘So I can no longer bargain with you, Roudhos. No matter; there is still plenty to discuss.’

  ‘Call me that again and I will kill you,’ Noetos said.

  ‘Fisherman, then. I merely intended to indicate that, with a word from Andratan, I could place you on the throne of a revived kingdom of Roudhos. Bring the arrogant Neherians down at a stroke, to place them under your feet. Does that appeal, fisherman?’

  All around Noetos the miners stilled as the implications came home to them. Questions would follow, Noetos knew. Curse the man.

  ‘Ignore him, boys. The man’s a snake. He knows nothing of my past.’

  ‘Oh? Enough to know you would relish the chance to strike at Neherius.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’ one of the miners said, only to be shushed by his fellows.

  ‘I would relish a meeting with my son or my wife far more,’ Nooetos said. ‘Should either of them be harmed, my anger at Neherians will be as nothing to the
rage I’ll let loose on Andratan and its servants. Disarm him, Seren.’

  ‘I offer you this, then, in good faith,’ said the Recruiter as he gave up his sword. ‘Your Hegeoman and his men came upon us at the moment of chaos.’ He cast an awed glance up at the profile of Saros Rake. ‘After that I saw nothing of either prisoner. The rubble may have taken them, in which case I judge you to be responsible for their deaths for initiating such a foolish, indiscriminate ambush. Or they may lie to the south of us, having escaped the rock fall.’

  ‘Come with me, then, prisoner,’ Noetos snarled. ‘And if you think to escape, remember I subdued your fellows with sword and stone. I have no doubt I can do the same to you.’

  The Recruiter, cowl askew, stumbled forward at the point of Noetos’s sword. The miners he sent in various directions, to search a second time for any sign of the living amongst the detritus spread over the Tochar road.

  He found Opuntia dying in the arms of Bregor, some distance from the road, in a brake of thorn bushes.

  ‘She was carved by one of the Recruiters,’ Bregor whispered, his eyes averted from the bright red blood staining her pale robe. ‘Just after your explosion. Before I could get to her.’

  ‘Opuntia, I—’ Noetos began.

  ‘Leave us be, fisherman,’ Bregor growled, his face misshapen with grief. ‘Let her pass in peace. She was always far more mine than yours.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She hates you, cretin. Hates your selfishness, your wickedness, your deception. Thanks to the Recruiters, she dies knowing she could have been a queen. Do you think she wants you here to witness her final humiliation?’

  ‘I didn’t mean…’