Alexamir didn’t like where this conversation was heading, not in the slightest. ‘What was your friend’s name?’
Nocks smiled slyly. ‘Why, he’d be Artdan Arinnbold.’
That cannot be. My father! He died on a hunting expedition with the Krul of Kruls, gored to death by a hill lion.
Alexamir gazed at the ugly Weylander, desperately trying to conceal his shock. ‘What was the bad blood?’
Nocks casually shrugged. ‘Woman, I think. Or maybe it was a gambling debt that ended in murder. Everyone in the free companies has a sad story. You get tired of hearing ’em after the first year, even your own.’
Alexamir thought of his mother, living in the Great Krul’s palace. Supposedly taken in as an honour debt to a dead saddle-brother. Alexamir raised almost as one of the Krul’s sons, always favoured among the riders.
Was that an honour debt or an act of thievery? Was that an honour debt or the guilt of black treachery twisting in the Great Krul’s heart?
His mother taken as a prize while his father narrowly escaped a cowardly ambush and fled? Was everything Alexamir thought he’d known of his life as a rider a lie? ‘And this nomad’s fate . . . ?’
‘Hell if I know, now. I got myself a chance to come home to Weyland and serve in the royal army. Didn’t appeal much to Artdan. Soft living, he called it. Cursed me for a silk-a-bed. He stayed fighting as a sell-sword in the Burn. Maybe he’s still out there. Could be he’s dead. Free companies always offer good fighting. Never offered much by the way of guarantees. If anyone could survive out there, it’d be that ol’ killer, though. You learnt the art of fighting marching in Artdan’s shadow. He could put a quarrel from a great-bow straight through an armoured foe’s helm at four hundred yards, draw two swords and slice a horse in half with the man in the saddle split from helm to belt. Surely wish that big wolf was fighting by my side the last few months, though. Could have used him at Midsburg, bullets as thick as flies down there.’
Alexamir nearly choked on his words as they came out. ‘A hard man to kill.’
Everything a lie. The Krul I serve. Out here, risking my neck for his wizard. No
, a voice deep down called to him.
Risking your neck for the Golden Fox. Not for the Great Krul
.
‘Just like me,’ grunted Nocks, running his finger down the red cable splitting his face. ‘Man who did this to me is going to regret it one day.’
‘Not a recent wound,’ said Alexamir, masking his distress with empty words.
The Krul of Kruls. Curse the man to hell
. And how did he get to be the horde’s master? By killing every clan chief who stood in his way, making alliances and intimidating the rest. It wasn’t just the wizard’s counsel that had served Kani Yargul so well. He was the ultimate thief. Ruthless and brutal. Stealing what he wanted and putting those in the dirt who stood in his way. Was Alexamir’s mother among his prizes? Kani Yargul’s saddle-brother another among his tally of cruel victories?
‘Didn’t pick it up in the civil war,’ said Nocks. ‘But it smarts every day. Some nights I can’t get to sleep for my little memento throbbing like I just took the wound fresh.’
‘A sabre slash?’
Perhaps his story is a coincidence? No, it can’t be. A rider with the same name and similar enough in face to me for this Weylander to see the resemblance. My father is not dead. I was lied to. Deceived.
Nocks shook his head. ‘No. I did it myself. With a pistol. It misfired and took my face off rather than blowing my brains out, which was what I was aiming for at the time.’
Alexamir stared at the soldier as if he was insane.
Is he raving or speaking the truth?
‘
Why
?’ Nocks convulsed into a barking laugh as filthy as a sewer. ‘That’s the question, ain’t it? There were a bunch of forest savages coming to crucify me against a tree, build a fire around my boots and roast poor ol’ Nocks for supper. Creatures so twisted they hardly count as human anymore. The bullet was a mercy.’
‘But you said a man did this to you?’
‘It was the man who tossed me a single bullet as the Lord’s own clemency, right before he left me for dead. But I don’t reckon ol’ Nocks can die. Not unless I choose to. Perhaps not even then.’ Nocks hooted loudly, amused by his self-proclaimed invincibility. ‘That’s what those forest cannibals thought, anyhow. Staked me out to die, like a haunch of beef that needed ageing. After I survived for five days nailed to that tree, the savages started to worship me, before they sent me on my way riding a timber-wolf the size of a plough horse. Nocks, holy Nocks, blessed by the stealers for his fine ways with a blade and a gun.’ He fell into a fit of dirty laughter again.
Alexamir was half-convinced that this Weylander had become demented during his trials.
Battle-crazed
. To be possessed by the gods during a confrontation was to be blessed, being sent the red rage a sign of their favour. But it became a curse if the spirits did not immediately flee after the fight. Staying inside a rider, worming into his soul and heart, tipping him into killing furies over spilt drinks or accidental jostles around the camp fire. Perhaps this Weylander who claimed to have fought with a father Alexamir long believed dead, this Nocks, was truly insane.
Can this devil be a test, sent by the gods to make me doubt my task? If so, they will fail. I will succeed for Lady Cassandra’s sake. Temmell will give me her healing in return for a handful of stolen pages. Let Kani Yargul be cursed and trampled under Atamva’s hooves. Does my father truly still live? Truly?
‘How long did it take you to cross the ocean and reach the other shore?’
‘Six months crossing by trading ship with stopovers at the Rottnest Isles and Furinn Point. Picking worms out of biscuits with my dagger when I wasn’t so seasick I couldn’t eat ’em anyway. Never much had a liking for the Lancean Ocean. Storms and sea-serpents and pirates. You show me a sailor and I’ll show you a dunce with a sail too stupid to make a living any other way.’
Alexamir’s people called it the Endless Ocean. Six months sailing over the cursed salted wastes. It might as well be endless. And if Alexamir made the journey and survived it, what would he find in the war-torn countries on the other side of the sea? An old warrior who barely remembered his young son? A boy who served the same Krul who had attempted to have Artdan Arinnbold murdered, who had stolen his wife.
What if I came to him with the tale of how I slit Kani Yargul’s treacherous throat? What if I came to him bearing the joyous news that his exile was at last over. That he could return home to the clans?
But how would Alexamir do that? He was an exceptional thief, not a mighty sorcerer like Temmell. If he managed to slip past the Krul of Krul’s guards and kill the leader, what then? Kani Yargul had united the clans. Promised them fabulous victories over the filthy foreigners who kept the Nijumeti contained inside the steppes as though the grasslands were the riders’ cage. What would Alexamir have to offer hundreds of angry clan elders and warriors who presently stood so high within the horde? Their leader’s untimely death in a now ancient blood feud, repayment for bad dealing over a stolen wife? Alexamir would be earning his own death with Kani Yargul’s blood.
But perhaps that is a price worth paying
?
‘Sure is odd,’ said Nocks. ‘You being the spit of Artdan. Wide and wagon-heavy for a Rodalian, too. Course, if that old wolf had come raiding down this way and left a bun warming the oven of some village girl, you’d have a blue tint to your skin, wouldn’t you,
Norbu?
’
Yes, it was as though the unsightly soldier saw straight through Temmell’s enchantment. Alexamir tapped the air-mask hanging around his neck. ‘Nomads never raid the Mask Heights.’
‘True enough,’ leered Nocks. ‘Nijumeti maraud for the sheer devilment of it, and ’tain’t much fun scaling slopes so high you need to keep your hut stocked with air tanks to live there.’
They sailed on for another three days and nights, carried fast by the current. It took until the fourth day for the voyage to turn ugly. Alexamir was leaning against the vessel’s side, watching the crew work around him. Ahead of them another bluff-bowed and widebeamed fishing boat drifted in the stream, her planking carved from red alpine wood, a crew of four casting a net while managing her single white main-sail. A day hadn’t passed without Alexamir passing a dozen similar shallow-drafts plying their trade in the Yarl. Identical craft worked out of every river village. As he looked closer, this boat seemed to be having difficulties. Her crew struggled wildly with their netting; one of the sailors abruptly pulled off his feet and catapulted across the small deck. Out in the currents, the fishing boat suddenly started to spin madly as though she had been captured by a whirlpool.
This unexpected sight hadn’t escaped the attention of a rigger up in the
Arrow
’s sails; his yells rousing crewmen across the deck, halting them mid-task. ‘Tusoteth!
Tusoteth
!’
Alexamir grabbed a sailor running past. ‘What is he calling?’ The riverman pushed past Alexamir as though the passenger before him didn’t exist, not bothering to answer, sprinting towards the hold. The look of pure panic on his face spoke volumes, however.
Are we to fight the river’s wild, mischievous currents now?
It was as though Rodal wished to end Alexamir’s incursion into the mountains before he stole the spirits’ power.
First it sends winds to chase me. Now this. Whatever this is
. ‘Atamva protect me,’ muttered Alexamir. ‘Show these devilish spirits why you never allow them to trouble the grasslands. Show them why you are the most powerful of all among the gods.’
Nocks appeared on the bow, his eyes blinking as though he had just been roused from a slumber. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘Trouble,’ said Alexamir. ‘There is a fishing boat ahead in difficulty on the river. But our crew—’ He indicated the mad flurry of action all around them. ‘They understand well enough whatever woe it is we face.’
‘Ain’t no blow coming,’ said Nocks, raising a finger to test the air. ‘And we’re not running for a wind harbour.’
Sailors emerged from below decks clutching swords, boat hooks and harpoons.
And you don’t need steel to fight this land’s wind devils
.
‘Damned if there ain’t a dance being thrown and nobody invited me,’ said Nocks. The soldier cast around for the grey-uniformed fighters he travelled with. He found the Weylanders among the press of running crew and startled passengers and barked orders at them. ‘Grab me my rifle and sabre and get your own too. Lively at it!’
‘But the skipper said—’
‘Shan may be a captain, but hell if he’s commissioned in the Army of the Perryfax. These water-rats are as jumpy as spit on a hot skillet and Nocks needs the feel of steel in his fist.’
Out on the Yarl, Alexamir noticed the fishing boat’s rotations slowing. For a moment he thought their panic was to be short-lived, but then he caught sight of exactly what had halted the vessel’s mad spin. Pushing out of the currents came a long grey tentacle, dripping wet and covered with razored suckers. It rose forty feet above the fishing vessel, growing like a mighty tree given sorcerous life from a seed. As quickly as it rose it plunged down, smashing into the fishing boat’s centre and sending an explosion of timber into the air. The flat-bottomed ship split in two, both halves of the vessel caught by the current and dragged into the path of the
Arrow
. Half her crew spilled into the river and madly swam for shore. These were fast wide waters in the Yarl and it was hard enough for competent swimmers to make it to land at the best of times.
These aren’t the best of times.
A hill of wet flesh appeared in front of the fishermen, a great barbed beak rising from the water to snap them up. It was as though they had simply been dragged into a cave by a riptide – but this cave happened to be attached to a gut and a fierce appetite. None of the
Arrow
’s crew made any attempt to appease the creature; to hope that its appetite might be satisfied with the fishing vessel and leave the larger trading cog alone. The thud of crossbow bolts and curved short-bow arrows sounded across the decking, sailors aiming directly into the now sinking bulk of flesh. It absorbed their volley and wore it like hairs across its slimy, slipping mass. The single tentacle spun around in a rude gesture of defiance, whipping into the fishing boat’s retreating remains, snapping what was left of her sail and clearing the remaining fishermen into the water. They vainly attempted to swim towards the hollering sailors on board the
Arrow
, but the fishermen hadn’t made ten strokes before they vanished from the water, yanked below the surface by the monster. They disappeared with the speed of lead weights dropped into the current. It only took seconds for the last fisherman to pass from sight before the vast tree of flesh started ascending again. It rose on the
Arrow
’s starboard side. The limb climbed high and curved trembling above the cog, water streaming from its long ridge of barbed suckers. Then, as though there were eyes on the cursed thing, the tentacle heaved down to curl around two sailors on the main deck, standing their ground and firing arrow after arrow into the limb. The knot of flesh closed around the men, lifting them struggling into the air, banging against the mast, waving the half-dead crewmen tauntingly at the remaining sailors and passengers.
Atamva preserve me. This thing is a demon, a river demon. It cares nothing for me or the book I travel to steal. It merely means to make us its meal. Rice-eater, rider and Weylander alike
.
Alexamir leapt on to a barrel and threw himself on to the broken rigging, using the rope to carry him past the far side of the evil limb. He rode the line’s momentum as a pendulum, and at the end of the swing dropped down on to the tentacle’s wet back, driving his sharp Rodalian dagger deep into the flesh. It felt like the rare rubber Temmell traded for with the Hellenise smugglers, but gushed thick oily blood while Alexamir rode gravity down towards the deck, giving the beast a long scar on the way down to remember well.
You think I am afraid of you just because I travel on the water? You think to catch a hero of my ilk trembling like a foal with a fever merely because you attack me on a deep, fast river? You do not know this Nijumeti.
It kept hold of the two sailors, this tussle-tooth, despite the wound he had given it, before flipping the sailors sideways and casting them howling overboard into the Yarl to add to its supper.
I will have my prize and you will have my dagger and the Golden Fox will have her legs back.
The now empty tentacle came switching around in search of Alexamir and he ducked below it, carving out its flesh with a flash of steel.
The damn knife is sharp, but too shallow to sever the limb
. His hand was soaked in dark oily gore. He might as well have been pulling a calf out of a steer. But it was death he was about this day, not life. Perhaps his.
I shall slice you a thousand times and not think it too much. The river will run black with your blood
.