The Seventh Friend (Book 1)

by Tim Stead

  He insisted again on seeing their prisoner alone. He banished the guards to a distance, closed a door behind them to make sure that the two of them would be unobserved, and then he undid the chains and offered the spy a glass of wine.

  “Not poisoned,” he said. “Why would I poison you?”

  The small man sipped the wine. He looked scared, huddled against the cold stone walls of his cell. There were grazes on his knees where the guards had dragged him, cuts on his fingers, a purple bruise blooming on the side of his face and neck.

  “You’re a clever man,” Narak said. “A master of the rule.” The comment found its mark. The man’s eyes snapped up.

  “No,” he said.

  “But you would have been.” It had to be so. They needed someone who could learn; someone who could adapt and yet still remain loyal.

  The prisoner nodded. “I would have been,” he confirmed.

  “Your name?”

  “I am Keb, son of Jarl.”

  “You know who I am, Keb.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a message for me?”

  Keb looked surprised and uncomfortable, but Narak knew that it must be true. The man had set out to be caught; not easily. Each step had been intentionally difficult to follow, yet possible. He had not attempted to throw off the scent. He would have known that he would be hunted down.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I will tell you how it goes,” Narak said. He sat down opposite Keb. “You are a loyal servant of Seth Yarra. You have been caught by the evil wolf god, Fenris God Killer. You will be tortured, and given enough time, probably about an hour, you will break and reveal the secret that you hold.”

  “I will tell you nothing.”

  “Everybody talks,” Narak assured him. “Heroes and cowards alike. If they had not meant me to have the information that you know you would not know it. The men that I captured at Bel Arac knew nothing. The men that Havil took in Berash knew nothing. You do. You are their gift to me.”

  He could see the sense of it cutting through to Keb’s mind, the horror that he was abandoned, that he had been used. Yet it was their right to use him. If it was done in the name of their one god, then anything was excusable.

  “Now,” Narak said. “I have given you an hour. That is how long you might have resisted, but your body would be broken, your mind destroyed, and I would have your secret. I will confess to you that I do not enjoy torture, but if you insist I will send for a brazier, a set of irons and a blade and we shall see how long you really would hold out. Otherwise you can tell me what you know and you can avoid all that pain. I will allow you to live because it will save me considerable unpleasant labour.”

  “But if you are meant to know what I know, then it cannot be true.”

  “As I said: you are a clever man.”

  “So if I tell you something else – a lie – then it may be the truth, but you will believe it a lie.”

  “You want to be tortured?”

  Keb shook his head. “I’m just trying to think,” he said. “What if they knew that you would know?”

  “Did you mean to be taken? Was that part of the plan?”

  “No. I fled when you returned. I was told to do so if I thought myself discovered. I followed instructions.”

  “Nobody is as clever as you think, Keb. You are a sacrifice. What you know is what you are meant to tell me. Do not second guess your masters.”

  “Very well,” Keb said. “What I know is this. An army gathers in the east, somewhere north of Afael. I do not know the numbers, but if I escaped here I was to follow the borderlands eastwards, then turn north at the coast.”

  “Thank you, Keb. Now I must decide what your masters intended.” He put the wine bottle down next to the prisoner. “I will try to get your conditions improved.”

  Narak opened the door and called to the guards.

  “Just one thing,” Keb said.

  “What is it?” He looked at the Seth Yarra spy, afraid and curled back against the wall.

  “Would you really have tortured me?”

  Narak smiled. He did not answer the question, but turned away as the guards came towards him, remembering.

  Four centuries ago they had caught the man who killed Remard. They had brought the assassin to Narak, and Narak had not been merciful. The Seth Yarra had taken a day to die, but die he had, burned and broken, so far beyond mere pain that he could no longer scream, but whimpered instead, eyeless, drooling, more of a thing than a man.

  Could he torture Keb? It was a question he could not answer without the hot knife in his hand. Part of him hoped that he could, and part of him that he could not. He liked the latter part better.

  16. The Sirash

  Wolf Narak was back in the Sirash, floating and flying, gliding and sliding. He was in a sea of lights that were not lights, ocean phosphorescence in a night sky of jewels that sparkled to a sense other than sight. He touched wolves on the plains, bid them move to the east, he looked through their eyes, but the closest was still several dozen miles from the coast, and he saw nothing.

  The east, he had decided, was the first place to look. Keb had pointed him east, and he judged it a fair chance that this was a lie, but Keb was right in one way. They might have expected him to look west, to read it as a bluff, but he chose a double bluff instead. Clever. Perhaps.

  The one thing that he knew for sure was that Seth Yarra planned to invade again, soon, and armed with blood silver this time.

  He went back to the wolves that he had set to follow the Marquis of Bel Arac, and was rewarded with the knowledge that Bel Arac had changed direction. He was moving north, and east, following the same borderlands that Keb had named as his escape.

  They could both have been lied to. Bel Arac was hardly a major part of their plan, he guessed. What he had learned of Seth Yarra in the last war suggested that a rogue nobleman was something that would have to be disposed of sooner or later, so the Marquis could also be a blind.

  Whatever transpired he had his proof.

  The other members of Pelion’s Benetheon were easy to find in the Sirash. Of the twenty that had once lived now only seventeen remained, and the lords of the ocean were more fish than man , having taken too much of their lives to the sea, dwelt there, and rarely if ever walked on legs. He touched them all, lords of forest, plain, air and ocean, weaving a net of connections so that when he spoke all would hear.

  When it was done he raised his voice and spoke, but this being the Sirash there was no sound.

  “Hear me now, brother gods of the Benetheon,” he said.

  He felt eyes turn to him, attention swing like sunlight on his face. He also felt five of the connections die away. Four of those were lords of the ocean, and the fifth was Pascha. She would still not hear him.

  “I am Wolf Narak, lord of the forest, master of the hunt,” he announced.

  “What of it?” Beloff said. The bear was always a tough audience, had no time for formality and form.

  “Seth Yarra has returned,” he said.

  A dozen queries came at once. He sensed doubt, disbelief, even annoyance. He told them about Havil, he told them about Bel Arac, and he told them what the spy had said.

  “They are really here?” Beloff again. Doubting again.

  “Truly. They come once more, and now with blood silver arrows and blood silver blades. It is us they have come to kill.”

  “Then we must kill them.” It was a new voice. Jiddian, god of eagles, an ally from the last war, often called the far-seeing eye, and perhaps the best bowman that had ever lived. “I will send eyes east and west, and we will know.”

  Narak appreciated his support. Jiddian was one of the most influential. Others would follow where he led; particularly the lords of the air.

  Fashmanion Black Wing spoke. The crow god was also a powerful influence, but he was no friend of Narak. In the Great War he had opposed the fight, stayed away until the last moment, and even then had questioned Rem
ard’s right to lead and proposed his own plan to attack Afael. He had been brushed aside by Narak in his rage at Remard’s death. They had not spoken since that day. “If what we are told is true it may be east, if at all. There has been a great fire on the east coast. All eyes were driven away, all food burned. It is a place they would not be seen. I will investigate.”

  The danger with the Benetheon, when they were together like this, was that they all wanted to control. They were all gods, creatures of great power, and reluctant to recognise any authority. Each seemed to trust only their own allies, share with only their particular clique. A room could seem crowded with three powerful men present. How much more crowded, then, was this place with twelve gods vying for their chance to lead, to impose their will.

  “The armies of men must be raised," Beloff suggested. “Narak is best suited to that task in the east, they love him there.”

  “Let him deal with the men of the west also,” Fashmanion said. “None of us is as comfortable with the short lived as he.”

  “I have seen their ships.”

  The bald statement silenced even Fashmanion, even Beloff. The voice was awkward with disuse, high pitched, but not feminine; more like the whine of a saw that accidentally touches metal. It was the voice of the Shark god, Bondoro, otherwise Red Tooth.

  “Where have you seen them, lord of the ocean?” It was the Serpent Sithmaree who posed the question. She had a sweet, low voice. It was said that she could steal men’s minds with her words. She was a beauty, too, tall and dark and slender with still, long fingered hands, eyes as black as coals, swarthy Afaeli skin.

  “Beyond the land,” the shark replied. “East and west, north and south, alone and together, like jacks that hunt the pretty anthias above the coral they feign indifference until they strike.”

  “Useless.” Beloff again. “His mind is full of salt water.”

  Narak wanted to stamp on his foot beneath the imaginary table. It was extraordinary enough that Bondoro was with them at all, even more so that he should speak, that he should help them. Bondoro saw things that none of the others could see.

  “The seas are cooling, Bondoro,” Sithmaree said. “Since they began to cool where have you seen the ships of Seth Yarra gather?”

  “East. In the channel that men call Ebardine, around the island called Finchbeak. They come and go, but they go with smaller hulls.”

  It was a moment before Narak understood what he meant. Smaller hulls seen from below meant they rode higher in the water. It meant that they came full and left empty.

  “It is the same place,” Fashmanion crowed. “It is the place where the fire has killed the land.”

  Could it be? Keb’s knowledge had been correct, and Bel Arac fled towards genuine allies? The army lay in the east? Narak had guessed that he might be wrong. It was a half chance only, but even so he had tamed his expectations.

  “We must be sure that they have not begun to march,” he said.

  “They have not,” Jiddian said. “An eagle watches even now. Seven ships stand in the Ebardine Channel. Banks and ditches have been built, and thousands of men swarm around black tents.”

  “Can you say how many men?”

  “In time. It will take time to count, but there are many thousands. We must be swift. They are well set.”

  “I shall leave you, Brother Gods of the Benetheon,” Narak said. “I go to Bas Erinor, to Tor Silas and Afael, and we will see what army marches to meet Seth Yarra.”

  He felt the approval of the others, and withdrew from the Sirash to find himself once more in the private chamber at Wolfguard, surrounded by candles and familiar books. He closed his eyes for a moment a savoured the ordinary darkness it brought. It had gone better than he expected. Most of them would help – even Fashmanion.

  He had not told them about the Bren. There were those, he suspected, who would take the Bren’s message as a reason to stand off, to let Seth Yarra have their way with the men of the six kingdoms. After all, if the Bren were going to deal with Seth Yarra in just over a year, there were ways of staying clear of them for so short a time. There was no call to risk their very long lives in the cause of the short lived.

  Narak thought differently. He was still a man. They were all still men, no matter what changes Pelion had wrought in them. The god of the underworld had not given them life, and they owed that especial debt to mankind.

  17. Bel Erinor to Bas Erinor

  Arbak had decided that he needed a promotion. It was all very well being a rich man, or appearing to be a rich man, but without some sort of social standing he would always be looked down on. Former sergeant Arbak would always be charged more, gulled more, cheated more than former captain Arbak. This was not true among people of his own humble station, the corporals, sergeants, innkeepers, waggoners, muleteers, and shopkeepers that he habitually dealt with, but the better sort of people, and he used the word ‘better’ somewhat grudgingly, had little regard for common folk.

  He’d discovered this almost at once. Riding south after his extraordinary encounter with Wolf Narak he had been in grave need of medical help. The pain in his severed wrist had grown with each mile, and he feared that the injury had become infected. It looked inflamed, red, and though there was no sign of pus, a sure damnation, he badly needed to get it fixed.

  The town was called Kinwood. It was big enough to have two physics, and he went to the best. He had the money. The physic, however, saw things differently. He was a portly man of middle years, thick, mousy hair tied back in a powdered queue. He dressed like a gentleman, polished his boots, and he didn’t have time for ruffians. The moment he laid eyes on Arbak he sniffed, ignored him and spoke to his secretary.

  “What is this man doing here?”

  “He has come for treatment, Physic,” the secretary said. “His arm…”

  “Send him to Jereman. Jereman will dose him.”

  “He can pay, Physic,” the secretary said.

  “Pay. I should think so. He’d have to pay a fortune to get me anywhere near him.”

  “I have ears,” Arbak said. “You want to say something, you say it to me.”

  The physic peered over spectacles at him, and down at the notes that the secretary had written. “Arbak,” he said. “You can’t afford me.”

  Arbak was angry. He knew that he could get the man to treat him by invoking Wolf Narak, but the pompous, arrogant little deer dropping would still sneer and cant every moment that he could. He wanted the man to know that he was not the no-account idler that he took him for, and so he promoted himself.

  “Captain Arbak to you, Physic,” he said. “My family’s as old as yours, and better bred, I’d wager.”

  The physic looked at him again, more carefully this time. “You’re an officer?” he asked, clearly disbelieving.

  “Physic, I have been attacked and severely injured. Two of my men were killed and the others have gone on ahead. I look rough because it is easier to travel that way in the border country. There are no baths and tailors in the areas that I patrol. You will forgive me,” and here his voice began to swell into a shouting crescendo, “if I think it reasonable to get a severed hand dealt with before I have a shave and a bath!”

  He felt hot and the wrist throbbed terribly. He knew that he must look frightful, angry, even sick. He was all those things.

  The physic was still for a moment, and then the decision was made.

  “Bring him through,” he said to the relieved secretary. “Captain Arbak, I will treat you at once. By the look of that arm you are in danger of losing it.”

  So the arm was saved because he was an officer. He spent a week in the physic’s house, and he had a bath and a shave, sent out for a suit of clothes more fitting for an officer, new boots, a cloak. He played the part of Captain Arbak with conviction. He’d seen enough captains, both good and bad, to know how to do it. He bowed to ladies, ate carefully with knife and fork, avoided swearing in female company, held his glass by the stem, and shaved and bathed at
every opportunity.

  The physic charged him two gold guineas, which all things considered was a fair price. He had spent another half on clothes and wine, and when he set out for Bas Erinor he had left the physic as a friend, although he still couldn’t bring himself to like the man.

  “I am sorry that we began so poorly,” the physic said as he saddled his horse. It was difficult with only one hand, but he waved away offers of help from the groom’s lad. “You have proven yourself to be a gentleman indeed. Will you accept my apology?”

  “I will, sir,” Arbak said. “You have been a friend to me, and to my poor arm.”