Curse: The Dark God Book 2 (30 page)

33

Nightingale

IT WAS DARK, and Argoth was in his chamber sitting on a bench against the wall, holding Nettle who’d been shaking. Serah lay sleeping on the bed with the girls.

Argoth and Shim had received Urban’s report earlier, and Blue Towers was indeed preparing itself. The town merchants were stocking up. The dock masters were clearing all the boats and ships from their moorings to make room for others. Up in the fortress, the Fir-Noy commanders were making room in their barracks and in the fields around the fortress for what appeared to be a large host of men. An enormous quantity of grain and other food was being brought in on wagons. All the mills along the river were grinding at full capacity. And probably the most telling of all, Fir-Noy soldiers had been positioned up and down the river and on the docks.

The plan Shim had come up with was risky. In an hour or so, he and the others would move out and try to get in position at Blue Towers. Ke would lead a small force that included Urban’s crew. Argoth would lead another, Shim the third. Tomorrow they’d know if Loyal was speaking the truth. If he was, they’d engage in a bold attack against the Kains that, if successful, would shake Mokad’s army. A bold attack with a high likelihood of failure.

On a table next to Argoth lay the nightingale weave Loyal of Nilliam had given him. It was a weave similar to other healing weaves he’d seen. He’d quickened it and used it on himself to see if it was a trap, but had not detected anything ill. He believed Loyal had been telling the truth about its operation.

Argoth’s leg was going to sleep on the bench, so he shifted Nettle in his lap and rocked slightly back and forth and felt Nettle begin to shake again. His tremors had been coming with greater frequency and intensity. This one built much quicker than the last one. He pulled Nettle close, except this time the shaking didn’t pass. It continued and grew.

“I’m here, son,” Argoth whispered. “I’m here.”

Nettle twisted and accidentally struck Argoth in the face.

Argoth grabbed the arm. “You’re going to be okay,” he said.

But the tremors grew, and Nettle scrunched up his face and began to grunt in pain.

“It’s okay,” Argoth murmured and rocked on.

But the spasms built, and then Nettle tensed up and contorted as stiff as a board. He stopped breathing. Argoth waited, waited. Nettle gasped for a small bit of air, couldn’t get it. His eyes were wide with fear.

Argoth hesitated for a moment, then retrieved the nightingale weave. He quickened it, then pressed it into Nettle’s clenched fist.

Nettle remained frozen for a few moments more, then suddenly drew in a great gasp of air. He continued panting, gaining his breath.

Serah rolled over in the bed. “What’s wrong?” She whispered in alarm.

“Nothing,” Argoth said. Nettle’s breathing slowed back to normal. He relaxed, clutching the nightingale at his chest.

“There we go,” Argoth said and smoothed his hair back. In the spasms and twitching Nettle had worked loose of his blanket. Argoth gathered it up and wrapped it around his son.

The tremors had been coming every thousand counts or so. Argoth sat and waited for the next one, not quite believing the weave had worked. But the next one didn’t come. He waited, counting another thousand, and then another, until Nettle fell into a relaxed sleep.

Argoth continued to hold Nettle, thinking on Loyal’s words. Sometime later a soft knock came for him to prepare for the mission at Blue Towers. Nettle was still sleeping peacefully, the weave secure in his fist.

Argoth took the weave and strung it around Nettle’s neck. Then he tucked him into his narrow bed. He looked down at his boy. Tomorrow would tell him much about Loyal and Nilliam and the course of this war.

34

Beetle

BEROSUS WATCHED SHIM’S new dreadmen soldiers don their armor in the light of the lamps and moon. They moved as quietly as they could, but it was hard to mask the chinking of armor and whispers of two hundred men. Nor could they keep the horses quiet as they led them out of the stalls and saddled them. In the smithy two men sat at grindstones sharpening up an axe and a long knife.

He’d asked a number of the soldiers what their destination and mission was, but none of them knew it. Shim and Argoth were obviously keeping that to themselves until the last moment, probably when they were a number of miles from here, when they were sure it couldn’t be given away. It was a very wise policy.

But that didn’t mean Berosus couldn’t add two and two together: this mission probably involved the landing of his army on the morrow—it was simply too great a coincidence.

Eresh quietly moved through the men, inspecting their buckles and deportment, giving them a good word. He crossed over to some men hauling a casket out of the cellar where the seafire was kept and spotted Berosus. He faced him and put his hands on his hips. “You can go,” he said.

“I’m waiting to report to Argoth,” Berosus replied.

“You can wait until tomorrow. This is my fortress. I want you out of it now.”

Technically it wasn’t anything of the sort. “It’s obvious you’re gearing up for something. Let me help.”

“Sure,” Eresh said. “I dropped my lamp down the privy hole. Be a dear and fetch it for me.”

Berosus smiled. “I’m on that,” he said. “I’ll have it back to you in a jiffy.”

Eresh said nothing, just stood there with his hands on his hips and glared at Berosus with his one good eye.

Berosus moved off. Argoth and Ke and Sugar had left a number of hours ago with another group. It was significant that the whole command except for Eresh had gone. It was significant they’d taken Sugar. Legs had revealed to him that they were training her to be a Walker. They were up to something big, and he needed to know what it was.

He walked over to the cellar where Legs slept, except Legs wasn’t behind the doors sleeping. He was outside sitting on a barrel, wrapped up in a blanket against the cold. It was the boy’s habit to wait for his sister when he was worried.

Berosus approached him. When he was still a number of feet away, Legs said, “So it sounds like you and Commander Eresh have begun courting again.”

It was uncanny how the boy knew he was there, and without any multiplication. He must have the ears of an owl. “All his coy protestations only serve to reinforce my determination to win his deepest affections.”

Legs laughed. “Sounds like you’re stuck here just like me.”

Berosus drew up next to Legs and reached in his pocket for some dried pork to share with him. “I was out scouting. I think they assumed I wouldn’t be back in time.”

“Their loss, my gain,” said Legs. “Maybe you can tell me the rest of that business you had with the Urzarians.”

“This looks big,” Berosus said. “They’re going to need every sword they can get. Did Sugar tell you where they were going?”

“No,” Legs said, but Berosus had lived and worked with fabulous liars for decades: he could spot the boy’s lie a mile away.

“I saw a number of things tonight that they should know about. Things that might affect a raid being conducted deep inside Fir-Noy territory. Especially around the port at Blue Towers,” he guessed. “Your sister is going to run into unexpected trouble there.”

Legs shifted on his seat and took just a little too long to reply. “I don’t know anything about a port.”

Another lie. However, he didn’t have time to play cat and mouse with Legs. He tapped a piece of dried pork against Legs’s hand. “Want a bite?”

Legs accepted the jerked meat and bit into it, working a piece free.

Berosus leaned casually up against the wall next to Legs. “I don’t feel like stories tonight. However, you said before that you hoped to learn more about the lore of Kains.”

Legs’s face lit up in the moonlight. “River says I have a knack.”

“Then I suppose with us two being left behind to guard the goats and chickens, now might be the perfect time to learn a bit about how weaves are made. Some basics, nothing dangerous.” In another pocket he kept a pouch that contained a minor thrall. It was the work of the Mungonese house of Kains. It wasn’t a massively powerful weave, but a small thing in the form of a beetle, a bauble really. He’d found the simple things were often the most effective. There was no sense raising an alarm with a frontal attack when the barest whisper of persuasion would do. He pulled the weave out and placed it in Legs’s hand. “This is a practice piece.”

Legs took it and explored it with his fingers. It moved, and he made a small exclamation of delight. “Is this alive?”

“It is,” Berosus said. The thrall righted itself, then crept across Legs’s palm to one of his fingers. It latched on like a ring.

“Oh,” Legs said in delight. “What does it do?”

“Open yourself and see.”

Legs hesitated. “We’re not supposed to accept weaves from anyone but Argoth himself.”

“It’s harmless. And it’s not like I’m some candidate playing with things above my understanding. But if you don’t want to go forward, I understand. Rules are important to keep you safe.”

Legs gave it a bit more thought, then shrugged. “I’m okay,” he said. Moments later Berosus felt the faintest link to the boy’s mind. Just enough for him to oh-so-carefully nudge the boy in the right direction.

And, indeed, not an hour later he was on the road to Blue Towers having deftly persuaded Legs to offer up everything he knew. He didn’t have all the details because Legs hadn’t known them, but he knew enough. Shim’s plan was bold. It might even work. He shook his head and smiled. By Regret’s stones, he liked Shim’s style.

He tried one last time to feel after the Glory of Mokad through his own thrall to send a warning which could then be relayed to the Skir Master, but the distance was too great. Berosus would simply have to take the message in person. He felt after the captain of his dreadmen through his escrum and told him to leave enough of the men to watch the fortress and follow with the rest.

The night breeze gusted through the trees. Everything smelled fresh from the recent rain. It was quite lovely. He began to jog, then increased his speed and increased it again. The road flew under him in the moonlight. It was still dark, but the first light of morning was not far away. If he ran hard, he just might make it in time and effect his own surprise.

He increased his speed again, until anyone who saw him would have thought him nothing more than a flicker of a night shadow.

35

Kains

SUGAR HID WITH Soddam in a two-story house that fronted the main road running up from the docks through the Fir-Noy town of Blue Towers. The road led to the fortress on the hill from which the town got its name. Blue Towers had once been an outpost, but the town had grown up and was now one of the Fir-Noy’s biggest with more than fifteen thousand inhabitants. Today it was getting a lot bigger as Mokad’s army, and the many people and animals needed to feed, maintain, and supply it, debarked at the docks and made their way up the road.

The house where Sugar hid, which had been scouted by one of Shim’s many eyes and ears, belonged to the old widow of a cobbler who had died the previous year. The widow herself had been gone for two weeks now, visiting relatives out across the bay in Fog Town, and had closed the house up nice and tight.

The dark workshop on the first floor still held the implements of the cobbler’s trade. There were shelves for leather, drawers for stitching and nails, and lines of hooks on a wall upon which hung the cobbler’s assortment of awls, leather cutters, hammers, and various wooden shoe trees. Over in one corner stood a low cobbler’s stool along with a number of lasts of different sizes the cobbler would have used to form the shoes and boots into the right shape and hammer and stitch them together. There was a pair of gorgeous knee-high boots set out as if the cobbler had just stepped away from his shop, indicating that the widow or her sons must be continuing with the business. Sugar and the others had entered via the back and wedged the front door with shims and barricaded it with a work table.

On the second floor were the living quarters—four rooms with beds and desks. Three of Urban’s men were stationed in a bedroom with a window that looked down over the main road. With them stood a deep barrel of seafire, a force-pump, a firelance, which was a three-foot brass tube with a flared nozzle and burning igniter at the tip, and lengths of leather hose to hook the firelance to the pump and the pump to the barrel. There were also thick leather gloves, an apron, and a face mask for the one who would hold the lance. Right now Sugar and the others were all watching the crowds below through the shutter the men had cracked open.

The docks lay just down the road and over the bluff. From her position, Sugar could hear the raucous cry of flocks of gulls and see the forest of ship’s masts at the docks as well as many others offshore waiting their turn to unload their people and cargo. The breeze was blowing in from the bay, filling the air with the scent of the sea.

People lined the street from the docks all the way to the fortress, watching the army march up to the fortress and the western fields where a good number of them would set up camp. They cheered as each group passed, even those driving wagons and carts laden with cargo. When a unit of soldiers marched by, they threw a few late-season flowers and autumn leaves. Sometimes they ran out with a basket of apples or meat pies to give to the men they obviously saw as their deliverers from Shim. Children with baskets of food for sale moved through the crowd.

It was a festive atmosphere, but the whole sight struck terror in her heart—she’d never seen an army this big in her life. Already some six thousand troops had marched up the road, and the ships had only just begun to unload. And here she was in the middle of it, a Koramite, on the verge of attacking the army’s core.

Furthermore, Mokad had kitemen in the sky, riding the winds, keeping an eye on things below. She and the others were going to be hard pressed to make a clean escape with them above.

Half a dozen more of Urban’s men were on the street below, some of them standing in the crowd, some of them, including Urban himself, keeping a low profile in an alley up the road. Ke and his fist manned an alley at the other end of this section of street.

A number of wagons laden with grain and other stores rolled up the cobbled street, pulled by teams of horses.

“The ship’s coming in,” Soddam said. “Time to ferret.”

Sugar nodded. They’d been waiting for one of Mokad’s big death ships with the red eye of Mokad upon its sails. Her job was to verify that there were no skir protecting the Kains when the moment to strike came—it simply would not do to have seafire thrown back in their faces.

Soddam took a coal from the hearth where they’d made a small fire and lit a candle with it.

One of the three men in the house with them grinned. “Good luck, Oh Great Master of Balls.”

Despite his protests, Soddam had been assigned to the roof, not to shoot arrows, but to rain down two-dozen hollow pottery balls the size of a man’s head. Argoth called them fireshot because each five to six pound ball held a half gallon of seafire.

“Large flaming balls,” the second corrected.

Soddam narrowed his eyes. “You’ll think flaming balls when I put one through this window.”

All three men broke up laughing.

Soddam picked up his candle and the staff sling. “Come on,” he said to Sugar. “Can’t reason with those who are full of envy.”

That only made them laugh harder.

She followed Soddam up the ladder into the attic. It was hot and the candle threw odd shadows. The windows at either end were shuttered up tight. Soddam led her to the one in the front and leaned the staff sling against the wall.

The staff sling was bigger than normal. Regular staves for slings were four feet long. This one was five. Someone had painted “Havoc” on it in white letters. The end of the large strap that made the sling hung about seven inches from the head of the staff. The other end of the strap looped around the curved iron horn that extended from the head of the staff.

To use the staff, a slinger would cast from back to front in an arc over his head, whipping the attached sling. As the staff came forward in front of the slinger, the looped end of the sling would slide off the iron horn, and the missile would fly. You could cast stones much harder and farther with a staff sling than you could with one you whirled about your head. It was the only way to hurl the big clay balls.

Soddam shook his head at the staff, “Those fireshot belong in a ballista.”

“I think you’re big enough you could be a ballista.”

He smiled. “Have you ever thrown six-pounders?”

“No,” she said.

“Neither have I. This is going to be interesting.” He cracked the shutter, peered across the street to make sure nobody was looking. “You’re a brave one,” he said, “just like your beautiful mother.”

Sugar waited, hoping he’d go on about Mother, but he opened the shutter instead. “Time to ferret. You remember what you’re looking for?”

“Yes,” she said and sat down against the wall. She put on her mother’s necklace, took a breath, then closed her eyes and quickened the weave. In moments she felt the tearing along her bones, and swore it was worse now than it had been last night when she’d scouted their way in. The wave of pain crested and receded, and she stepped out of her body into the yellow world. The attic and Soddam were recognizable, although the colors and textures were different. She looked about for danger, saw and felt none, then retrieved the skenning and put it on. Last of all she picked up her blackspine.

“I’m ready,” she said with the mouth of her flesh.

Soddam moved aside, and she crawled out of the window onto the shingle roof with her soul. Withers had said some souls could speak to the living, voices and whispers on the wind, but he didn’t know how it was accomplished. So she was forced to communicate with her body. “I’m out,” she said. Up the roof a bit were the crates filled with fireshot that Soddam and another of the men had positioned before the sun had risen.

Above her the sky was yellow and lavender. At her feet the shingles gave a little like hard wet sand. She could still hear the muffled sounds of the street with her body in the attic, but she now also heard the sounds of this world. A trumpeting carried from out in the bay where three skir flew above the ships.

The creatures looked like giant manta rays. Except they were immense—hundreds of yards across, dwarfing the ships below them.They trailed long black whips from their chins, although she could only surmise it was their chins for she saw no mouth or eyes. Their coloring was mottled fading to a lighter blue on their huge wings. “Lords,” she said and described them to Soddam.

“They are urgom,” he said, “the largest skir men can control. It usually requires three masters to enthrall them. There are skir even larger, huge beasts that live in the vents of volcanoes or the depths of the sea. But they are too powerful for even a hammer of Skir Masters. Those that try to harness them eventually break.”

She was happy they were out over the bay. Such mountainous creatures could probably inhale her and not even know it.

“Can you see the ship?” Soddam asked.

“I can,” she replied. It was already in its mooring. Far above her Mokad’s kitemen looked like shadows; she hoped they couldn’t see her. She scanned the rest of the skies. In the distance past the urgom, a small flock of orange skir flew. Withers had told her to watch out for those. There was nothing else in the skies surrounding the town and fortress, just a small group of amber creatures milling about the chimney stones. Nevertheless, Sugar felt exposed.

The roofs were of different heights, but they butted up against each other.She moved down a few houses to a roof that was a few feet lower than the others and crouched in a space between a chimney and a house wall.

Below her the procession moved along the street. She heard the sounds with the ears of her body and saw with the eyes of her soul. It was a little disorienting, but she was getting used to it. All last night she’d scouted the way for Argoth and the others in the pitch black, helping them navigate the boats and avoid detection while stealing through the woods, into the town, and setting up in the widow’s house.

She spied a young boy hurrying along one of the back alleys with a basket of meat pies. “I think I see the messenger,” she said.

“How many pies?”

The boy turned down the nearest alley out of her sight. Sugar moved over the peak of the roof, spotted him, and looked down in the basket. “Three pies. There are some small cheese rounds and golden apples as well.”

Argoth and his fist were stationed down at the docks with seafire. Their job was to mark how many Kains debarked, wait for the attack to begin, then cause a massive distraction. If the Kains rode in carriages, Argoth was to specify which carriages they rode in. The boy knew nothing of this. He was simply someone Argoth paid to deliver food to a certain man standing in front of Marsh the Cobbler’s house. They’d already worked out what the food items would mean. The meat pies represented carriages. The other items represented the number of Kains. All that was left was to know in which carriages the Kains rode.

She watched the boy weave his way past people in the alley, then turn into the crowd on the main road and make his way to one of Urban’s men. The boy delivered the goods. They exchanged words, then Urban’s man gave the boy a green scarf to take back to Argoth as a sign of thanks. Once the boy returned with the scarf, Argoth would know his message had been delivered and pay the boy.

Urban’s man on the street unobtrusively signaled up to the house by running his fingers through his hair and scratching the back of his neck. Three carriages, five Kains, two in the second carriage, three in the last.

Sugar couldn’t believe they were about to do this.

“Any skir, darling?” Soddam asked.

Sugar searched the sky. The urgom were still out over the ships. She looked down the road. Most of the last supply wagons had passed. “All’s clear as far as I can see,” she said.

A roar of cheering rose down by the docks.

“I suspect that clamor means the Kains are on the move,” Soddam said.

She listened as they waited and could mark the approach as the cheering moved closer. A drum beat a marching cadence to the sound of the soldier’s boots striking the cobbled stones. A low chorus of voices mixed in with the cheering. The chorus built as the men singing the slow haunting march song approached the top of the hill. The column was five men wide. The soldiers wore the blue and orange of the Fir-Noy as well as helms with pheasant feathers arrayed on one side. An escort of Fir-Noy armsmen—their best troops.

The crowd went wild, clapping and whistling. The soldiers were led by their standard bearer and captain on his stallion. Five wide and twenty men long—a full terror, followed by about a dozen more mounted Fir-Noy officers.

Their march song was punctuated by shouts. The crowd continued to hoot and holler as the unit passed, but then some beast barked down the road. The sound was so low and full of menace that it silenced the crowd. Moments later three giant men walked up the road amidst a pack of monstrous dogs.

“Regret’s eyes,” Soddam cursed.

Sugar had never seen a dogman of Toth before. They were indeed men, but they were so distant a race that the offspring born to human-dogmen crosses were often as sterile as mules. According to the dogmen, men had been giants in the beginning, but only the dogmen had kept their original size. All others had diminished with inferior breeding.

The lead dogman here must have stood seven to eight feet tall. He was broad, at least four feet at the shoulder. His chest was deep. He would have fangs. Not huge canines, but they would be much more pronounced than those of a Mokaddian.

Their faces were angular. Long black hair ran down their backs. But their size, Lords!

She said with the mouth of her flesh. “And I thought you were big, Soddam.”

They carried poleaxes. The weapon weren’t huge, but these dogmen obviously knew they were going to be fighting humans, probably dreadmen. Those poleaxes would be light as a stick in their hands, and more than enough to pierce armor and sever limbs.

“They make the armsmen look puny,” she said. “I think I’d rather face a hammer of dreadmen.”

“They
are
dreadmen,” he said.

Sugar gulped imagining such multiplied might. “I suppose we should look on the positive side. Their size will make them fine targets.”