Storm of Sharks (22 page)

Vorhaas raised the axe and banged its heavy
head against the entrance three times. The doors opened, the bright light of a fine
spring day flooding the hall and illuminating the Werelord in all his finery. Vorhaas
marched on to the wooden steps that rose from the street to the Boarlord’s
mansion. Two Redcloaks held the doors open, as the acting lord of the Dalelands marched
down to the dusty street. A dozen crimson-caped soldiers flanked his route as he strode
towards the scaffold that had become a fixture in the town square. Beyond the Lionguard
stood the assembled people of Redmire, crowded into the street with more Redcloaks at
their back.

Major Krupha had not returned to Hedgemoor
since the attack on the Low Dale Road, extending his stay in Redmire while he recovered.
He just needed to witness this day’s events before acquiring a handful of the
general’s better outriders to accompany him back to Hedgemoor. Krupha had
witnessed the ruthless efficiency with which the Harriers had ambushed his men. He
wouldn’t underestimate them again.

As the general stamped up the wooden steps
of the scaffold, the brisk rap of a drummer’s batons accompanied the
Ratlord’s progress. Krupha remained on the mansion’s porch, his eyes fixed
upon the crowd. A sea of bowed heads spread out before him, the eyes of Redmire fixed
firmly on the ground. He estimated that there were well over a thousand present, filling
the square and the streets that led into it. This was far more
than
Krupha had wanted, but it was what Vorhaas had demanded. Every man, woman and child had
been forced to attend. Previous executions had barely drawn an audience, only a handful
of those sympathetic to their new masters. But the Ratlord wanted all the people to see
first-hand what any attempts at revolution would bring them.

Krupha looked up at the sun, sitting high
over the rolling hills that loomed north of the town. Noon: now was the time. His gaze
passed over the busy rooftops that surrounded the square, terracotta tiles, timbers and
thatches jammed together higgledy-piggledy. The major scratched his frequently broken
nose nervously, eyes narrowed as he inspected the skyline. He turned back to the pair of
Redcloaks who stood to attention beside the double doors.

‘You two have a fine vantage point
here. Keep your eyes fixed on the crowd at all times. Any sudden movements, let me
know.’

The Lionguard grunted their acknowledgement
as the major looked back to the scaffold. He shook his head as he watched the townsfolk,
wishing once again that he was back in Hedgemoor.
Things must be bad,
he
thought,
if I’m pining for the Fox city and not Braga
.
Stupid
peasants. If only they knew just how powerful they were: they outnumber us fifty to
one. If they had backbones we’d be in trouble.

‘Come on, Vorhaas,’ Krupha
muttered out loud, in earshot of the Redcloaks. ‘Let’s get this charade done
with.’

A box wagon rolled out of the garrison
building beside the mansion house, led by a pair of shire horses. A single driver rode
on the bench up front, the wooden cell bouncing at his
back, its
contents safely under lock and key. Six Redcloaks pushed the crowd apart as the wagon
drove forward towards the scaffold, their pikes prompting the townsfolk to break before
them like waves on a ship’s prow.

Krupha shook his head as cries came from the
mob; the people crushed against one another as the Lionguard and prison wagon forced
their way through their midst.
This could have been done behind closed doors. His
head on a spike would’ve served the same purpose.

‘People of Redmire,’ shouted
Vorhaas, turning slowly on the scaffold as he addressed the audience. ‘Lift your
faces so I may be graced by your full attention!’

Right on cue the soldiers at the front of
the crowd began to poke and jab the civilians. Within moments the panicked assembly were
all looking Vorhaas’s way, their anxiety rising.

‘You’re all aware of the
punishments I’ve meted out over the past few months,’ continued the Ratlord.
‘Those who break the king’s law face the king’s justice.’ He
raised the axe in the air to drive home the point before allowing it to fall with a
thunk
into the executioner’s block.

‘It gives me no pleasure to carry out
these acts,’ Vorhaas lied. ‘This is a necessity, the only way we show the
miscreants and rabble-rousers who would sow unrest in the Dalelands that their acts of
terrorism and lawlessness will not be tolerated. These “Harriers of
Hedgemoor” seem to have garnered a foolish following in some quarters of this
realm. Well, let me tell you: should news of anyone’s sympathy with these villains
reach my ears, the same fate will befall them as that which awaits today’s
prisoner.’

He turned to the wagon as it rolled to a halt
at the foot of the scaffold.

‘Bring him out!’

The driver jumped round to the back of his
vehicle, unlocking the box wagon’s door. He stood to one side as a Lionguard
emerged from within, leading a manacled man out after him, a bag bound around his head.
Krupha allowed himself a smile. It had been quite a coup capturing the man, a rare
victory for the Lionguard in the Dalelands. Much loved by the people of Redmire, this
had been the man the Harriers had rallied around when they’d first formed, a
symbol of happier times when a Boarlord sat on the throne. Krupha and Vorhaas only hoped
the man’s execution would sound the death knell of the band of brigands.

The prisoner was led up the steps and on to
the platform, as the crowd’s nervous murmurs began to build in pitch. Some in the
crowd no doubt knew who the man was – Krupha could almost hear the man’s
whispered name flitting from lips to ear through the throng – but most were
unaware of who was about to be executed. The Lionguard had caught him a week previously,
when the fortuitous words of a snitch had directed the Redcloaks to the man’s next
attack.

General Vorhaas stepped up and whipped the
hood from the prisoner’s head.

‘I give you Captain Lars Gerard,
leader of the rogues known as the Harriers of Hedgemoor and enemy of the free people of
Lyssia.’

A gasp went up around the square. Curses and
cries were thrown at the scaffold as the Lionguard momentarily had a
fight on their hands. Some of the townsfolk surged forward, horrified by the sight of
one of their own, a man so highly regarded, manacled and about to kneel before the
block. This was too easy for the Redcloaks, the soldiers jabbing with pike, spear and
sword as the peasants fell on to their blades. The panic didn’t die down, instead
reaching new heights as the crowd now tumbled back, clambering over one another to avoid
the sadistic Lionguard.

Krupha shook his head wearily. For all
Vorhaas’s love of pomp and ceremony, he failed to see the implications of this
execution. Gerard, the former captain of Baron Huth’s house guard, was a symbol of
hope for these people so long as he was alive. Snuffing out that life would break the
back of their resistance. But dangling him here before them, alive, invited chaos to
erupt at any moment. The major placed his hand on his sword hilt, rattling it in his
scabbard.

‘Be alert,’ he said to the
guards behind him. ‘This could turn ugly.’

As if in response to his words, Vorhaas
released a full-throated bellow, a screeching roar that echoed around the square and
commanded everyone’s attention.

The dark armour groaned as the
therianthrope’s torso expanded and elongated, his legs and arms thickening as he
shook his axe in the air. His head seemed to buckle and fold in on itself, the top of
his skull broadening and flattening. His flesh rippled as oily black hairs split the
skin, erupting from every inch of his body. His jaws visibly dislocated as he threw his
head back, his tongue lolling out swollen and fat as his neck ballooned and trembled. A
snarling snout ripped forth, jagged
teeth interlocking over one
another as the Wererat’s jaws clapped with monstrous delight.

Vorhaas now stood nine feet tall, squat legs
apart and supporting his lengthy frame. The onlookers screamed; even the Lionguard were
in awe of the transformed Ratlord. The mighty axe was now far more deadly, the strength
of a transformed Wererat more than triple that of a man. Krupha had seen Vorhaas’s
act before; it held no mystique for him. His eyes were on the rooftops, where he briefly
caught sight of a Redcloak moving from one building to another, bow in hand. He turned
to the soldiers behind.

‘Tell me, do we have any men on the
rooftops?’

‘No, sir, not that I’m aware of.
They’re all at street level.’

Krupha looked back, searching for the figure
again. He didn’t see the same one, but he did spy another Redcloak on a roof a
hundred yards further around the square, sheltering in the shade of a chimney stack.
This one also had a longbow raised, by the look of it. Old as the major was, his
eyesight was still good, as was his knowledge of the Lionguard’s weapons.
Crossbows were standard issue for the Redcloaks; longbows were unheard of.

It came to Krupha just as the attack
commenced. Of the thirty Lionguard he’d lost on the Low Dale Road, not one body
had been found: their armour, their shields, their swords – their
red
cloaks –
were all gone. How could they have been such fools? How could the
pathetic soldiers, this poor excuse for an army he’d been forced to work with,
have been so lax? They’d gifted the Harriers disguises, and the outlaws had leapt
upon the opportunity.

Two Lionguard leapt on to the scaffold behind
Vorhaas, triggering the release of a flurry of arrows, whistling down the roof and
finding their mark in the Redcloak guards. Vorhaas remained oblivious as the two
disguised Harriers approached, the hood of one fluttering down to reveal the long hair
of the girl so familiar to Krupha. With each step she changed, her skin shifting to
become a shimmering russet coat as the Werefox emerged. She leapt high as Vorhaas
turned, alerted to the drama unfolding at his back by the startled faces in the
crowd.

She landed on his head, limbs enveloping his
jaws and pinning them shut. Gretchen wrapped herself around the Wererat’s long
skull, squeezing tight as he threw his head this way and that, trying in vain to shake
her loose. Gerard leapt clear into the crowd and was quickly enveloped by the mob. The
frantic Rat brought the axe back and tried to scythe at her, only for the second faux
Redcloak to get in its way, deflecting the blow with the deft parry of a shining
longsword.
Silver,
realized Krupha with dread, as the crowd boiled over into an
outright uprising.

Before the Ratlord could launch another
desperate attack, the young blond Harrier with the sword lunged, while the Werefox still
clung to the general’s head. The blade disappeared into a gap in the
Wererat’s elaborate armour beneath the armpit. General Vorhaas, acting lord of the
Dalelands, crashed to the scaffold like a felled tree as the Werefox girl leapt
gracefully from the body, the longsword still stuck through his chest. Lady Gretchen of
Hedgemoor turned her attention to Redmire Hall, as her companion bent to retrieve
the Wolfshead blade from the slain Wererat. The two stared at Krupha
over the sea of cheering townsfolk as the guards behind him disappeared into the
mansion.

Not for the first time, Krupha ran.

Like a twisted wooden spear erupting from
the ocean, Ghul’s sea fortress reached high into the gloomy heavens, defying the
wind and waves of the White Sea. Around its base, a multitude of craft gathered, lashed
to one another and the tower itself. Piers and pontoons branched out from the structure,
like the twisted spokes on a broken wagon wheel, covering the surface of the sea. Dusk
cast her dark shawl over the ramshackle taverns that crowded the jetties, Ghul’s
men making merry within.

The drink-fuelled din wasn’t the only
noise that filled the air. The cries of Ghul’s prisoners floated down from the
walls high overhead. More than fifty men remained lashed to the fortress or suspended
from gibbets, many of them captains who had served Baron Bosa. Some were simply the
outspoken loved ones of pirates who were still at large, sympathizers with
the Wolf. Many more were imprisoned within, hostages who kept the
Squidlord safe. One by one, the Kraken’s enemies had turned themselves in,
switching sides or surrendering their ships as they discovered their families were in
danger. Bosa’s fleet had dwindled in the last month, only a handful of vessels
remaining loyal to the Whale. Soon none would remain.