Read The Queen of Thieves: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three Online
Authors: Craig R. Saunders,Craig Saunders
'Bastards.
Bastards!
'
The captain of the
Hierarch's flagship slowed and skirted around the wide wreckage of too many
ships, through the floating bodies and jetsam of broken boats. In among the
carnage floated what seemed to be living trees, and the detritus of the Feewar
ships. It was spread far and wide, but the remaining mages hit the carcass of
the great ships with everything they had, blowing them apart with unnatural
fire.
No bodies, the
captain noted. Not one. Those that had fallen in the early collision would have
gone down with the ships.
The seers saw the
attack. They had been prepared. But they had not been prepared for the sheer
power of the Feewar. Just one man had steered the awesome ships into the
Hierarch fleet.
'Bastard,' swore the
captain again.
It slowed them down,
thinned their numbers, but their force was still vast.
Landfall would not be
long. Then, the seers aboard the ship assured him, would come an easy battle. He
wasn't sure just how much he trusted his seers' foresight any longer.
So thinking, he spied
the first hint of land on the horizon. Behind him, the Protectorate soldier's
felt the coming battle, too.
An easy battle?
They'd just lost too many men, too many ships, and they hadn't even made
landfall, yet. He was angry. His men were angry. They'd been tricked, and
soldiers lives had been sold cheap.
But it would be a
different matter upon land. They would sell their lives dear. Yet as he looked
out upon the shoreline he was the glint of barbarian steel in the cold winter's
sunshine. It was a force to be reckoned with. He could not take it lightly.
The Protocrats made
little noise as they took on their light armour, so that they would not sink as
they fought their way to the shore.
After a short time,
the armada slowed, and the darkness faded surrounding the ships faded.
'Light them up,' said
the Captain, largely to himself, as he saw the force of barbarians on the
frozen shores of the land they called Sturma.
'Light them up, damn
it,' wished the Captain once again. So he could go home, and be warm, and be done
with this pointless war. He was a Protocrat, yes, but not all Protocrats were
build equally. The captain had little taste for bloodshed. He was a captain of
a warship, but he had his men to mete out destruction. He did not often taste
blood and pain himself. Even so, he would quite happily revel in the carnage as
his men tore into the barbarians that had dragged him to this godsforsaken
land.
He was about to shout
out once more for his mages to attack, but it proved unnecessary.
Brightness lit the
sky, even brighter than the suns for an instant. The mages aboard his ship
began to rain fire on the forces massed on the shore. A hail of arrows
answered, but they did not have the range of the magic.
The human force fell
back...they had little choice.
'Go, go, go!' shouted
the captains of each boat, seemingly as one.
With practised ease
through training the protectorate soldiers, the tenthers, alighted to smaller
ships and took up oars. With powerful strokes they made for the shore and the
slaughter that surely waited. Fire rained down on the waiting armies, arcing
over the landing ships.
Devastation. The
captain grinned. Perhaps the seers were right this time after all.
*
A Hierarch known as Klan Freynard
smoked the pungent Seer's grass as he walked ahead of the Hierophant's inner
circle of mages in the frozen northlands. It was no mean feat, to see the
shimmering patterns of the future and to put one foot in front of the other at
the same time. Yet Klan Freynard had grown to maturity far from the folds of
his brethren, on the southern marshes of the Lianthran continent. There, a nip
from many a creature, the sandpipers, the Southern Tempath, spiders too
numerous to count...any one of a thousand creatures could prove fatal to a
careless walker. But Freynard still lived.
He wasn't sure about
everybody else.
Smoke hung thick
around his head in the cold air. He smoked through a pipe, as was the new
fashion. His eyes watered and he could not see straight, but for a man
accustomed to dodging poisonous snakes and the like, wandering the white hazy
wastes was nothing.
There was no magic on
Sturma, the Hierophant had told them yet again. But what of the strange white
beasts?
And what of the song?
Because, strangely,
Freynard could hear music. A beautiful song sung with many voices, lilting,
alluring...and confusing.
Because they were in
the wastes, weren't they?
And music was magic.
With frost crusting
his cheeks where his tears froze, he turned to seek out the Hierophant.
In his vision,
unusually for him, he had heard the song. There was never sound nor smell,
taste nor touch, in his visions of the future. Solely sight. And yet under the
influence on the Seers' Grass, he heard song. He was sure of it. It was
something their leader needed to know. Freynard was the seer, and there was
magic ahead. Waiting. Waiting in the cold pass to the south.
He walked back
through the ranks of Protocrats as they marched tirelessly south. He approached
the Hierophant, carefully, ensuring he made enough noise to be heard over the
cacophony of marching soldiers.
The Hierophant's eyes
were closed, despite that he walked. Almost as though he were playing a game,
to see how far he could walk without sight.
'Lord,' he said. 'I
have had a vision.'
The Hierophant's eyes
opened, and Freynard was struck once again at just how old the Hierophant
seemed. As for himself, he was barely two hundred years old. The Hierophant's
hair was white, where most Hierarchs sported black or red hair. His face even
bore wrinkles.
His eyes were turning
red. The mark of true greatness, or so the current wisdom was. When a
Hierarch's eyes became as red as blood, they would ascend to true power.
Klan Freynard could
not imagine the Hierophant becoming more powerful. He seemed a terrible,
implacable force as it was.
If that was the price
of leadership, the Hierophant could keep it.
'And? Klan Freynard,
is it? And?'
'There is magic yet
to come. Magic in the mountains. I advise caution,' he said.
The Hierophant nodded
and raised a hand to wave the troublesome Freynard away...paused.
'You hear that?' said
the Hierophant, confusion on his face. His hand faltered.
The force came to a
halt before the pass.
Then Freynard heard
the music he had heard under the influence of the Seer's Grass. A slow tune,
passionate and unlike anything he had ever heard. It was anathema to him,
tearing into his sadist's soul. Like the memory of beauty.
The Protectorate
force and the Hierarch mages alike, a huge snake through the icy pass, all came
to a halt in the face of the music.
And there, in the
pass above and ahead, maybe a hundred warriors, singing lustily, with their
swords pointing a challenge at the superior force.
With towering,
swinging beauty, with their ancient song, the Blade Singers issued their challenge.
Freynard's vision was
coming true, and he was afraid.
Afraid of the Song of
Swords.
*
Rena watched Asram's back as he
walked through the undergrowth. The unlikely companions were perhaps a week's
ride from Naeth. Word travelled fast to the towns and villages they passed
through. There was war. There were rumours of war. Alien creatures from across
the sea. The Draymen were rising. The Seafarers had made shore...
Rumours abound in the
countryside.
In the dark, watching
Asram and Shawford breaking their trail, she could almost forget that there was
so much riding on their tiny party. Were word to get out...were people to know
whose child it was she carried in her sling...
Would they make it to
Naeth? Of course they would not, not even with the strangely charming Crale and
the deadly Fell.
And what of you, Rena?
she thought.
What of the young
witch, wife to the last king, mother to the last of the line of kings...
It would make for a
pretty tale.
The young witch shook
herself from her thoughts and tried to concentrate on the journey ahead,
instead of childish fables.
Both men were
sure-footed in the darkness, leaving Rena to pick her way across rocks and
roots and snowfall as she followed on behind them. Little Tarn slept soundly in
his sling. Her back ached from carrying him for so long. She wished they could
rest up, or at least take horses for the remainder of the journey, but Asram
told her a horse had a habit of rushing into danger. He was a careful man.
And something else,
too. Asram did not like Shawford. That much was clear. Shawford, for his part,
was gracious where Asram and Rena and even her gurgling, giggling babe were
concerned. Asram was right on the border of rude when it came to Shawford
Crale, although he was nothing but courteous to Rena.
The road had been
hard for her and Tarn. Asram and Shawford took each night's journey easily, and
did not complain about the lack of sleep, or tiredness, or aching bones.
Asram asked her time
and again if he could carry Tarn for her, but she would have none of it. She,
nor her babe, would be a burden on the passage north.
But she feared she
might become so, because she was getting sick.
*
Rena was tired, so tired.
She was worried, too,
because of her dreams.
The party of four
travelled at night. Asram always made sure to take them far from the roads
where the going would be easier. Travelling through the snow, each wearing
heavy clothes (apart from Crale), and walked on whether the night was dark or
moonlit, in snow or cold. The babe did not seem to mind, and slept most of the
night through. Rena, on the other hand, felt herself sickening with something.
Knew she was ill.
Though the arrow wound
in her shoulder ached, it was not a sickness from that. It had healed well,
with poultices that she knew the making of, even well enough to find the
ingredients she needed in the frozen earth and the crisp slumbering plants that
grew further north.
The flora was
different the further north they went, but she still knew the plants. Mia had
taught her well.
On the road one
night, thinking of her mother, of husband but for a short time, Tarn, and even
the old witch Tulathia, and Tarn's adoptive mother and father, Molly and Gard, she
shed an unashamed tear. She was surprised to find when she wiped her eyes clear
that her tear was black in the moonlight.
Blood.
She was crying blood.
Asram noticed, too,
how red her eyes were.
Rena had no doubt that
the illness was worsening with each passing cycle of the day.
And yes, she
suffered. But not from malaise. No, she suffered from her dreams, which grew
more terrifying each day.
Shawford Crale was
never a part of these dreams, because when the suns rose he was gone. She knew
not where. Asram was a part of her dreams, as was Tarn and Mia and Molly and
Gard, though Tulathia never visited those frightening dreamscapes from which
she tried to run but could not.
So she dreamed, and
cried blood tears, and grew more afraid.
*