The Fell Sword (47 page)

‘I think the whole pack fed on deer meat, and now they will sleep,’ Nita Qwan said. ‘But we must find Ta-se-ho if we can. He may be dead. But if he is not, a night this cool could kill him.’ He took a torch and went back to the corpse of the monster, which in flickering torchlight looked almost as terrifying as it had alive.

There was something to the glistening pile of its tentacles that made his stomach turn.

He forced himself to breathe, in and out, and walked past the massive rack of antlers that had miraculously not fallen on his face and killed him.

As usual, everything was bigger at night. He couldn’t find the tree that Ta-se-ho had been in – he had no moccasins and his feet were being crucified by the sharp gravel and sticks.

He stepped on the older hunter in the dark – a soft resistance, a yielding—

Something grabbed his leg and threw him to the ground – he rolled on his shoulder and turned, torch lost. He must have shouted out as he fell.

Ta-se-ho sat up. ‘You almost killed me,’ he said, and managed a weak laugh.

They took turns keeping the hunter warm. He had a badly broken collarbone, and he couldn’t use his left arm at all. He was also in shock, and despite his attempts to fend off their help, he needed every hot cup of tea, and every blanket they had. As the feeling returned to Nita Qwan’s feet, he became more mobile, and he and the boy scrounged for firewood in the damp dark.

But in the morning, the sun rose. Nita Qwan had feared rain, but it was a beautiful day. Until the effort of downing a standing dead tree in the dawn light showed that he had cracked ribs.

He returned to camp to find Ta-se-ho coaching the boy on extracting all the best parts of the deadly
hastenoch.
By daylight the monster was smaller and less terrifying than Nita Qwan could have imagined, and as the boy meticulously removed its head plates and its tendons for sinew, it became first pitiful and then merely meat.

Ta-se-ho took tobacco from his pouch, cast it over the dead thing and sang a song for its spirit. When he was done, he sipped tea. ‘You up to making a boat?’ he asked, and coughed.

Nita Qwan thought of protesting about his ribs, or his inexperience. But the other two seemed untroubled by the debacle. So he tried to shrug it off, too. ‘Sure,’ he said.

‘We will have many strong things from papa here,’ said Ta-se-ho. ‘They eat us. We use them.’ He laughed. ‘Is it different, down south?’

Nita Qwan piled up his cut firewood and then sat by the wounded man, who was laboriously lighting a pipe. Nita Qwan knelt and lit his char cloth and passed a lit taper of paper birch to the other man, who sat back in what appeared to be complete contentment.

‘I was never really in the south,’ he said. ‘I’m from beyond the sea.’

‘Etrusca?’ asked the old hunter. He took a deep draught of smoke and handed the pipe to Nita Qwan.

‘No, Ifriqu’ya.’ He took smoke himself.

‘Is everyone there as dark as you?’ the other man asked. ‘I have always wanted to ask how you came to be so dark, but it seemed rude.’

Nita Qwan remembered Peter’s youth, and smiled. ‘Everyone is,’ he said.

‘Very handsome. Good in the woods, too.’ Ta-se-ho nodded, as if this defined what was good. ‘You saved my life.’

‘Perhaps you drew the creature to yourself.’ Nita Qwan passed the pipe back.

‘Hah! I was a fool. I thought I had it – a trap, a trick, and my bow.’ He shook his head. ‘It should be a saying: never try to fight a monster by yourself.’ He grunted, took smoke, and handed the pipe back. ‘Of course there is another saying: there’s no fool like an old fool.’

Greatly daring, the boy reached out for the pipe. Nita Qwan handed it to him. ‘Truthfully, we both owe our lives to this boy,’ he said.

The older man smiled at the boy and ruffled his hair. ‘Ah – it will only make him insufferable,’ he said. He pointed with the pipe’s reed stem at the white birch standing at the water’s edge. ‘Were those what brought you here?’ he asked.

‘Yes – the nearest one. I thought it might make a good boat.’ Nita Qwan shrugged.

Ta-se-ho nodded. ‘I may make a hunter of you yet. Listen – this is what we should do. Today, you two cut firewood. Lots of it. Yes? Then, tomorrow, we cut the tree and take the bark. Next day I’ll be better – we move camp to the sea. Then we build the boat.’

‘How many days before we are on our way?’ Peter asked.

The hunter gave him an impatient look. ‘However many it takes,’ he said.

Liviapolis – Ser Thomas Lachlan

The defeat of the Etruscans was a three-day wonder. Within the company, they knew that the victory was not as good as it seemed, and Bad Tom was rapidly coming to regret accepting the task of hunting spies.

The company – with a hundred Morean shipwrights and labourers – had built three heavy galleys in a week – or rather, the new ships were framed on the quays, waiting for the long work of nailing planks. The planks had to be adzed to shape, and the trees had to be felled before that, and it seemed that Andronicus, the former Duke of Thrake, controlled most of the long, straight spruce and oak in Morea. Ser Jehan took twenty men-at-arms and as many archers into the hills with orders to fetch in enough lumber to complete ten row-galleys. He went with good grace. The second day after he left, he sent a report of an attempted ambush.

In the city, Tom chased phantoms.

Every archer received a handbill written out carefully by a scribe who’d never read Alban, announcing that every man who deserted from the company would receive fifty gold nobles and a free pass to Alba – or higher wages in the armies of the
true Duke of Thrake, fighting for the true Emperor.

Whoever had written the handbills had mistaken the archers for men who cared which side was in the right. A great deal of ink had been spent on describing the Princess Irene as a scheming usurper and Duke Andronicus as a loyal supporter of the Emperor.

Bad Tom sat in his ‘office’, a table in the guardroom where the senior officers stood watches, and read it carefully. Across the table, Cully sat with his hands folded.

‘Cap’n – which I mean the Duke – won’t think I want to run, would he?’ Cully asked. The Captain’s temper had been sour since they left Lissen Carrak and now verged on poisonous.

Bad Tom shrugged. ‘If he does, he’s fucked in the head. Where would you go? Who’d take you?’

Cully struggled to decide whether he should defend his status as a master archer or his loyalty.

Tom threw the bill back at him. ‘Anyone tempted?’ he asked. Long Paw had brought him the same bill, and now sat with his feet up.

Long Paw made a face. ‘There’s the usual awkward sods. We don’t have enough choir boys, that much I can tell ye. And skipping a pay parade – well that started some mutters.’ Long Paw had a low, gravelly voice that utterly belied his gentle nature and correctly warned the listener of his danger, too. He cleared his throat – half of them had colds. ‘No one will run now. Miss two or three more pay days; someone will run then.’

Bad Tom nodded his agreement.

Bent came in to the guardroom, spoke briefly to the officer of the day, Ser George Brewes, who sat with his armoured feet on a table and drank wine. Brewes was, in many ways, the worst soldier imaginable – he was a terrible example and he was bad for discipline.

The men loved him, so he got away with it.

Bent tossed a casual salute to Ser George and came up to Bad Tom’s table. He reached into the breast of his doublet and withdrew a crumpled handbill.

Bad Tom passed his eyes over it and nodded. ‘Sit,’ he muttered. ‘How would you three like to desert?’

Bent narrowed his eyes. ‘They’d never buy it. We’re master archers. Well, some of us are.’ Bent shot a glance at Cully, who rolled his eyes.

Bad Tom sighed. ‘I need to get a more private place to meet. For the nonce, I am assuming that everyone in the company is reliable. But listen. Whoever’s up to this ain’t ten feet tall. They think we care whose side we’re on. They don’t know us. Stands to reason we can feed them a few archers.’

Bent flexed his hands.

Long Paw studied his nails the way a woman might. ‘What’s in it for us?’ he asked.

‘A good fight?’ asked Bad Tom. ‘Money?’ he tried.

All three men brightened up.

‘Shares? Man-at-arm’s shares?’ Long Paw leaned forward.

Tom rolled his eyes. ‘As long as you three realise I’ve never made one thin clipped silver leopard from my share.’

They all four shook hands on it.

Long Paw went to the taverna that was listed on his handbill. He was the only archer who spoke the Morean version of Archaic, and he dressed in a heavy linen overshirt and a broad straw hat and walked all the way around the city – outside the walls – to enter at the Vardariot gate driving a small pig.

Either his disguise was excellent or no one was watching him. He scouted the taverna, behind the Academy and in a seedy slum of small tenements and three-storey stuccoed houses with flat roofs, and returned without incident.

When he came back, the whole company was turned out in armour, standing at attention in the Outer Court. Bad Tom had already taken twenty lances to the Navy Yard.

Someone had torched their new ships on the stocks, and someone else had poisoned a great many of the company’s horses.

The Captain – whose beautiful new horse was dead – walked up and down in front of his company, obviously deep in rage.

Long Paw slipped into the guardroom. Wilful Murder was the duty archer – he was leaning in the doorway of the guardroom watching the fun.

‘Christ on the cross – you’ll catch it,’ Wilful said. He was delighted to see someone so senior as Long Paw so deeply in the shit.

‘Heh,’ Long Paw grunted. ‘What’s the Cap’n on about?’

‘We turned out for the alarm, and there ain’t forty horses fit to ride. Turns out he ordered the stables guarded, but they weren’t. Ser Jehan ain’t here to say one way or another, see?’ Wilful shook his head. ‘Ser Milus said – right on parade, in front of everybody – that the Cap’n clean forgot to order the stables guarded.’

Long Paw grunted, slipped into the barracks and had a nap.

The next day, a maid, one of the Princess Irene’s servants and a pretty thing already chased by half a dozen Scholae, two Nordikans, and Francis Atcourt, died of poison in the palace kitchen. Bad Tom ran through the palace to get to her corpse as soon as he heard, but by the time he reached the kitchens she had been taken for burial and all of the people who might have had something to say were gone to their duties.

He did find Harald Derkensun and his pretty whore Anna. The two men clasped arms. They spoke briefly, and Anna nodded several times.

That night Bad Tom reported to his Captain, who had lines on his face and dark circles under his eyes and was sitting drinking wine with Ser Milus, who looked as bad or worse.

‘Sorry, Captain – er, my lord Duke.’ Bad Tom paused in the doorway of the Captain’s outer office.

Ser Milus rose stiffly. ‘I should go,’ he said.

‘You can hear anything Tom has to say. Milus – I’m
sorry.
My temper got the best of me.’ The Duke put a hand on his standard bearer’s shoulder, but the older knight simply bowed and withdrew – gracefully enough that it was hard to see if he was angry or not.

‘You must hae’ cocked up proper. Ne’er heard you speak so small to any man.’ Tom grinned.

‘I was an arse of the first water, and the worst of it, Tom, is that I feel as if I’m losing my mind. Nay – forget I said that. Anything saved on the docks?’ The Duke mixed something into his wine with the tip of his fighting knife.

‘Master Aeneas thinks we can save one hull out of the three,’ Tom said. ‘I doubled the guard and put him to it. For what it’s worth, I accept that it’s my fault and ye can do as ye like.’

There was a silence.

‘Well, I accept that it was my fault too, so we can both sulk together. You won’t be rid of this job so easily.’ The Duke tossed off a cup of wine.

‘Ye’r drinking hard these days.’ Tom poured some for himself. Toby was making himself scarce – he looked like he was going to have a prime black eye, too.

‘Yes, well, some days it
is like I have a fucking voice inside my head and I’m never alone!
’ He spat.

Tom laughed. ‘Nah, that’s just Sauce.’

The Captain spat out some of his wine. ‘You make me laugh, Tom,’ he said. ‘I wonder if that means I’ve lost my mind.’

‘Like eno,’ said Tom. ‘Listen, Cap’n – I’d like to send Bent and Cully to pretend to be deserters. Long Paw will cover them.’

The Captain sighed. ‘We can ill afford to lose three of our best men. But – yes. It’s your command. Any word from Jehan?’

‘His guides mislead him and he thinks it was done a-purpose. He killed one.’ Tom shrugged.

‘We could be so unpopular here, Tom.’ The Duke shrugged. ‘But Jehan knows what he’s doing. We need that wood.’ He looked up. ‘Any word from Sauce?’

‘She’s chatting with people; people she knew here.’ Tom shrugged. ‘She’s a strange one. She was a whore, here?’

‘Right here in this city,’ the Red Knight said.

‘Aweel. She’s off tonight to talk to an armourer. Says that this man witch was one of his father’s apprentices, fifty years back.’ Tom didn’t sound very interested. ‘She’s also found me some useful people.’

‘Paid informants?’ the Red Knight asked. ‘Spies? Whores? Tavern ruffians?’

Bad Tom nodded. ‘Aye.’

The Red Knight grimaced. ‘We are living in the very annals of chivalry, ain’t we?’

Chapter Eleven

The Sacred Island – Thorn

T
horn had been using the moths more and more – they were tough, agile, and very quick to breed. The spring of power, Deseronto, as the locals called it, now had so many moths and their larvae that the soft beat of their fragile wings was actually a noise when they were disturbed, and Thorn spent more time on them than on some of his more immediate projects. He told himself that they would all be useful in time, but the truth – a truth he admitted freely – was that he had fallen in love with the species and sought to redesign them to suit his many ends and for purely aesthetic expression.

He had a paradoxical thought that he had once hated moths, but he dismissed it.

In the centre of the open, unroofed chamber of natural rock from which both water and raw power gushed, he had placed a low marble table, and on it sat the two black eggs, which had altered in shape and size. They were now the size of a man’s breastplate, and the eggs had developed the ridges of a pumpkin and the warts of an aged animal. Things moved within them, almost visible against the tough elasticity of the shell, and still they grew, and the marble table groaned under their weight.

They generated an effect that was, itself, the cause for concern. All the moths that gestated near the eggs were born wizened and black, as if the eggs leached their essence before they ever had a chance to feed and form a chrysalis.

But because Thorn was a careful observer, he saw that in each generation of moth larvae placed close to the eggs, a few were of remarkable dimensions and weight. The larvae were the size of earthworms or larger, jet black, and without markings.

For three patient generations, he massacred the little ones and bred the large ones – some left close to the eggs, and some given a safer berth.

As summer fled to autumn, and leaves across the Sacred Island went to red and gold, and then began to wither and fall in the driving rains and sudden winds, the black eggs grew as big as witches’ cauldrons. And Thorn watched the first generations of Black Moths emerge from their cocoons – the size of a peregrine falcon, with a thousand matte black eyes and a single probiscus, like a misshapen unicorn.

He dominated them easily and sent them north. One fell victim to a windstorm. One he lost in the woods – possibly attacked by an owl. The remaining three descended on a Sossag village.

They were quick, their needle-like probiscae were deadly, their venom instantaneous, the paralysis and subsequent jellification of the victim magnificent in effect. But the Sossag were themselves agile and strong – a nine-year-old girl scored the first kill with her father’s snow snake, ripping a Black Moth from the air with a practised strike even as her mother’s bones disintegrated. Before he could withdraw his predators, they were dead.

Thorn reviewed their performance and decided that the Black Moths made a better tool of assassination than of terror. He worked on the second generation.

The use of insects as spies now took up a sizeable portion of his attention, but allowed him an unguessed-at level of knowledge. He could watch a person or an event from fifteen or twenty vectors, allowing him a godlike perspective on events. The effort involved was less than he had experienced with mammals but the diffuse creatures and directions required a level of minute adjustment that cost him in both power and time every day.

In return, however, he began to see things that he knew he should have ensured he saw before he attempted Lissen Carrak. The greatest limitations on his newfound powers of espionage lay in the old spells and workings built into the structures and palaces of the powerful – and even into some shepherds’ cots. It took a great warding to resist Thorn for even a moment, but it took only the will of the village witch to keep his ensorcelled insects from the door, and a new commercial hermeticism in Liviapolis – a warded amulet that prevented insects from entering a house, sold to goodwives and travellers by the University – was like to make every home in the Empire immune from his creatures.

But these were the elements that made the life and path of ascent Thorn had chosen so rewarding. That autumn he was challenged and delighted, and he worked hard to prepare his series of strokes.

Thorn waited, and watched.

He tried not to believe that he was a tool.

He watched as his eggs grew and matured, lit from within with a curious black fire that defied his own sorcery.

He watched four ships come up the Great River, their straight masts and round sides utterly alien in the world of trees. He saw them from a great height, circling as an owl, and later, as a raven with a sixty-foot wingspan. His powers had made a great leap forward, and his heart beat with renewed vitality. Once, he had been a man, and he made himself a new form. Now he could adopt many forms, and in adopting them his sense of himself altered.

It is happening
he allowed himself to think.

He had access to unbelievable amounts of raw
potentia.
He swam in it – he bathed in it. He worked small things and great with reckless profusion, making tools for the future.

He went in various forms to the creatures on either side of the Inner Sea, and listened. A few he bound to his will, but now he preferred to whisper some words and let the sweetness of his suggestions work their own magics.

He watched Ghause. For every one of his sendings she destroyed he placed another, and another, until he could watch her all day, from many angles. Naked. Clothed. Working the
aether
or reading a book, rutting with her lumpen husband or preparing her revenge.

She fascinated him. Repelled him. But she was like the perfect tool, built to fit his hand. And he desired her, as a woman. It was many, many years since he had felt any such desire, and he revelled in it. It was not weakness, but strength, he told himself. He watched her work, naked, and he watched the intent rapture she displayed as she gathered
potentia
in the
aether
and cast great gouts of
ops
and he wanted her. His pale grey moths let him see her from nine directions as she rose on her toes, like a dancer, her belly moving faster and faster in her rhythmic chant—

I will take her, and have her and use her, and she will serve me. And in so doing, I will strike at the King, cripple the Red Knight, and destroy the Earl, and grow yet more powerful. And when I am tired with her, I will subsume her. And grow yet more powerful still.

He was in the body of Speaker of Tongues, and so he could smile.

He was still chuckling when the ambassadors from the Sossag found him.

They were strong men, warriors all, and they hated him. And feared him. He could smell their fear and their hesitation – indeed, he had felt their fear so far away that he’d had time to create a house in which to host them, and a table at which to sit with them, and a fire on a hearth – and to refine this body.

They introduced themselves, one by one, and he admired their courage the way a man buying slaves admires strength.

‘Where is the sorcerer, Thorn?’ asked the bravest. ‘We have come to see him.’

Thorn bowed, the way no Sossag would ever bow. ‘I am he,’ he said.

‘You are one of our own shamans!’ said a man with the scars of nine kills on his right ear.

But the very bravest one shook his head and bent his knee. ‘He is Thorn. I served him this spring, against the rock.’

The old shaman smiled. ‘And we failed, you and I. And you took your warriors and left me.’

The warrior nodded. ‘It seemed best, lord. You were defeated – and you were not my lord, but merely an ally.’

‘Bold talk,’ Thorn said.

‘Now the matrons send me to make peace,’ said the brave one.

Thorn brushed aside the man’s protections, and skimmed his name from the muddle that was his thoughts. ‘You are Ota Qwan, who took the place of Tadaio as paramount warrior,’ he said. He altered the tenor of his voice to make it sound more like Ota Qwan’s own voice. ‘You were the bravest warrior at the fight at the ford.’

The other warriors looked at Ota Qwan with suspicion.

He glanced at them, and Thorn took their names from his surface thoughts.

‘Do the Sossag offer the same sort of lies and betrayal they offered in the spring? I need them not. I have the Huran as my own.’ He didn’t smile, but merely leaned forward like an elder making a point. ‘Ah – you were a lord among men in the south, as well.’

Now the other warriors edged away from Ota Qwan.

He shrugged. ‘Mighty Thorn, we know you have sent the giants to destroy our villages.’

Thorn smiled. ‘No,’ he said.

Ota Qwan took a breath. The other five looked at each other.

‘No,’ Thorn said. ‘I am not some
man
with whom you can negotiate. These are my terms. You – Ota Qwan – will come and be my captain. I need a man – a man of war – to command my forces. It was for the lack of such a man that I failed at the rock. Among the Huran there is no warrior as redoubtable as you. And you have wide experience in the south, as well. In exchange, I will give you powers beyond anything you can imagine. And I will, if you like, lift my hand from the Sossag, who are merely one hut circle of near-animals in an endless forest of them. I need no more punishment for the Sossag than to leave them to their own devices.’

The least brave of the six – and he was very brave – sprang to his feet. ‘You
lie
!’ he said.

Thorn laughed and stripped away his soul and subsumed it. The man’s flesh fell with a thump.

‘Lying is for the weak,’ he said. ‘I have no need to lie. You others? Will you serve as my captains?’

Ota Qwan forced a smile. He was nodding.

He has already decided to serve me, but now he will posture a little
, Thorn thought. Men bored him.

‘Why would I serve you? I do not crave power.’ The man met Thorn’s human eyes. ‘You have nothing I want.’

You lie
, Thorn thought. Then he skimmed along the man’s thoughts again, like a man braiding a child’s hair, feeling the knots, the burrs, the places where the hair hadn’t been brushed. He ran tendrils of power through the man’s head and he read a name.

Orley.

He laughed aloud. It was as if he was destined to attain his desire. Everything fell into his hand. Or had the black place done this?

He no longer cared.

Ota Qwan recoiled from the laughter.

Another of the six drew his short Alban sword.

Thorn cast.

An amulet on the man’s chest flared – the man’s blade cut, and cut well, severing Speaker’s left hand. Blood spurted.

Thorn stumbled out of his chair – and then raised his left arm into the man’s second slash. He sprayed blood into the man’s face and blocked his sword by catching it in the bone of his left arm.

He burned the man’s amulet to dust with one burst using a concoction of minor workings he had designed to baffle amulets. It was foolish of him to forget that these powerful warriors would have some protections.

He touched the man on the arm, and cast a gentle curse that excited every nerve on the man’s skin. Every single nerve.

The man fell screaming, and began to thrash with no regard for his own body – bashing his head, dislocating a shoulder as he lost control of every function. His screams ripped out, one laid over the next like a shingled roof. The remaining four Sossag paled.

Thorn picked up his severed hand and put it back on the end of his arm. Healing was the least of his powers – but this he did to show them. He spent a day’s power profligately, to replace the hand on his arm. It was, after all, merely a form he wore, like a cloak.

The Sossag trembled.

‘I am like a god, am I not?’ he said, conversationally. ‘If any of you would like to try and kill me, I am here. Ready. At your pleasure, as men say.’ His comments were punctuated with the screams ripping out of his victim.

‘You torture prisoners – come, I know you do. You do it to prove their courage. Well – this one has failed, wouldn’t you say?’ He smiled.

The man on the floor had voided his bowels and bladder and still he thrashed, as if in the grip of a monster, and he screamed so fast it didn’t seem that he could catch a breath. As they watched, he fetched his head against the marble table that held the eggs, and one hand was thrown out – touched the rightmost egg, and he was subsumed before their eyes, reduced to ash.

The egg flared for a moment – a purple-black light shot from it, and then it was still.

Even Thorn was taken aback. He stepped over to the eggs, paused to don his most heavily armoured semblance, and looked carefully in all the spectra he could command.

The eggs were drinking
potentia.
They emitted none.

Thorn knew a frisson of fear, and he backed away from the eggs. But he – even he – dared not show fear in front of his potential servants. So he forced a cruel laugh.

‘Fascinating,’ he said aloud. He whirled, keeping his skeletal tree branch arms well clear of the eggs.

The four Sossag had drawn into a corner, and a thousand moths fluttered around them.