Under A Colder Sun (Khale the Wanderer Book 1) (2 page)

“Here we are,” the mercenary said.

The ground became firmer, and the mist retreated somewhat, revealing an isle in the midst of the marsh. Tents of cured skins were arranged before her, supported by stanchions fashioned from wood and animal bones. A low light burned within the largest one.

The mercenary stepped forward and drew the tent flap aside, allowing Murtagh, and then Leste, to crouch and enter. The light in the tent came from a fire that burned without smoke. Leste glanced around and saw as many tomes and grimoires as there were ornamental chests, strips of hide armour, and weapons hanging in sheaths and scabbards. Someone sat across from them, on the other side of the fire.

When Leste’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw that it was a man. His body was solid, firm muscle underneath a patchwork armour of furs and leathery skins. His hair and beard were a dirty, greying mane with the skulls of small animals woven into its threads. His eyes were shielded by the crags of his forehead, which cast his face deep into shadow.

Leste waited, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, as Murtagh stood calmly with his arms at his sides.

The man in shadow was immersed in a papyrus scroll held between his thick fingers. He had not looked up since they entered.

Murtagh grumbled in his throat.

The man in shadow did not raise his face, but Leste saw his eyes flash to the fire at the sound Murtagh made. They were yellow, but not as a wolf’s or a cat’s eyes—more like a snake’s. Her mouth became dry when they turned on her and held her gaze for a moment, before returning to the scroll.

“We are here to see Khale,” Murtagh said.

“Khale sees you,” he said.

 “We are here to speak with you.”

“Then speak. Khale hears you.”

Murtagh nodded and went on, “Will he do me the courtesy of addressing me face-to-face?”

“Do not weary my temper, old man. I can have your throats cut, your bodies reamed and then thrown into the marshes, where they will never be found. If it comes to that, I can do the same to those you love.”

“We are not children for you to threaten,” Murtagh said. “We are of the City-Watch and here on the King’s orders.”

“You
are
children to me,” Khale said, still not looking at them. “You are nothing to me. I value the message you bring and the promise of gold that comes with it. Now, speak and tell me the words of your King.”

Leste’s hand searched for the hilt of her sword. This thief, this swamp-dwelling brigand had dared to insult them, to say they were nothing. She could feel a pulse pounding in her temples and heat coursing through her veins.

“We will tell you nothing,” she said, “until you face us like a man and recant your words. You are a brigand and a thief. You cannot speak to us without respect.”

Khale stopped his reading. He curled the scroll and fastened it with a clasp of fashioned brass. Then he set it aside, rose quietly to his feet, and raised his face out of shadow to meet her indignant gaze.

Leste’s mouth went dry once more. She felt a queer sickness pass through her body and come to rest in her bowels. Khale’s eyes were colder suns even than the one that hung in the sky. Their tainted yellow hue made her think of disease, rot, and mildew. There was no humour in the worn, scarred lips that spoke. “So, now we are face-to-face, little girl. Tell me what your King wants of me.”

Leste licked her lips, trying to wet them, but her tongue was a sand-worm that refused to move.

“Speak,” Khale said, now having moved around the fire to stand over her as a mountain stands over a stunted sapling that is desperate for nourishing light. “
Speak!
Or I will call my men so they can rape your tight little arsehole before they throw you in the water to drown.”

She could feel the flesh at the nape of her neck beginning to creep and itch as she continued to meet Khale’s unwavering gaze. Something inside this man was deeply rotten, and there was no balm or cure for it.

Finally, she found the strength to look away. She steadied herself, pressing her hands together. Taking a breath, she returned her gaze to his face but avoided meeting his stare.

“Something ails you?” he said, without empathy. “Perhaps being this far from safe walls does not agree with you.”

“I am well,” she said.

Khale turned his gaze on Murtagh. “Go on, old man. I would hear why your King has sent you out into the marshes on the
Subote
to seek counsel with me. I thought the Church of Four kept a curfew on every eighth day until dawn”—he smiled—“or are you not of the one true faith?”

“An errand,” Murtagh said, ignoring Khale’s slight. “The King wishes you to perform ... an errand.”

“An errand?” Khale burst out laughing. “
An errand?
Does he think I’m his squire? Tell him to go fuck himself.”

Murtagh and Leste did not move.

“Go on, both of you. Get out and thank the Gods’ bones you made me laugh. I’ve grown short of good humour in these marshes.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Leste said.

Khale’s laughter trailed off. He drew himself erect once more. “I said go. It’ll be worse for you if you stay. These men are hungry. They’re angry. They’ve not had a woman in months, and an old man will do just as well for some of them. I’ll give you to them. You’ll be dead by morning.”

Leste stared into his eyes. “I understand your ... unwillingness, Master Khale. Men you call companions have been slain by the Watch. You do not wish to take coin from those who have ordered their deaths.”

Khale snorted. “These men are mine, but they’re not my brothers nor my friends. There’s no honour among thieves, little girl. Whoever’s knife is the sharpest wins. Whoever holds the most power is the strongest, that is the law. The only law.”

For some reason, she felt he was talking of more than the law of brigands.

“Then, why do you refuse?”

“For one thousand golden-eyes? My man already told you. I have ten thousand golden-eyes to spare. I want more than I’ve got.”

“How much more?”

“Make it double and we have something to talk about.”

“Twenty thousand golden-eyes?” she whispered.

“Aye, that’s more like it.”

“That’s a fortune. Ten fortunes, at least.”

“Kings have fortunes, do they not? I want Alosse’s in my saddlebags. Unless he does not have twenty thousand. Does he?”

“I ... I don’t know.” Leste stammered.

Murtagh shook his head, bewildered.

“Then you’d better go and ask him.” Khale laughed. “I’ll have a man at
The Black Rat
just before sundown tomorrow. Be there. He’ll find you. Then, we can talk terms about this errand of the King’s.”

Leste could tell he was not bluffing. He would not move from this camp for less than twenty thousand golden-eyes. Colm was poor; he knew it, and yet he was trying to bankrupt the city with his price.

He nodded towards the tent flap. She went through after Murtagh. There was a strange air about Khale, something more than mere grace or authority. She would have said it was power, strength perhaps, but the flickering yellow sheen of his eyes made her think of worse terms to describe his presence: malevolent, corrupt, benighted.

Evil.

*

They left the camp without being molested, though she could feel eyes watching her, and she heard a few tuneless whistles echo from among the rabble of tents. She guided her horse with care through the marshes; it felt a long, lonesome ride before the dim lights of Colm showed them the way through the mist.

Murtagh was not in a talkative mood. His eyes were set dead ahead, and he was no doubt thinking of the grim news he was bringing the King.

A wolf-whistle pierced the gloom, and dark figures emerged from the mist. Their faces were haggard, and she recognised the one leading—Ihlos, the mercenary from
The Black Rat
; the one whose cock she’d notched with her knife.

Murtagh saw them and spoke. “We have no quarrel with you. We have spoken with Khale, and we are returning to Colm.”

“Well, that may be,” the mercenary said, “but I have a quarrel with you.”

Leste dismounted and drew her sword.

“Leste, don’t be a fool,” Murtagh said.

She ignored him, watching them come. They were swaying on their feet, drunk and in a raping mood. It was in their eyes. She wanted to disembowel every single one of them, and she was certain they could see the anger etched across her face.

Leste breathed in as slowly as she could and tried to centre herself, tried to look them in the eyes. She saw in them only promises to do to her what had been done to the Red Woman of the old tales. One of them roared, and she braced herself as they came for her. Clumsy fists collided with air, thighs and calves were sliced by the flash of her sword, and arms raked by quick, nimble strikes. Murtagh still on his horse, rode into them with a cry of,
“Colm and the King!”

Murtagh’s sword flickered, a silver tongue in the night, and one of the mob lost his head. It fell to the boggy ground and sank down into the marsh. Leste watched the face sink, seeing how young it was and seeing also a curious change come over the others. Murtagh had slain the youngest, the pup, and the eyes of the others seemed to burn all the blacker for it. The set of their shoulders became meaner. Before, this had been a drunken frolic, as much as rape and murder could be, but the death of one of their own made things serious. They closed in around Leste and Murtagh. The older man yelled as a meaty hand grabbed his leg and dragged him from his horse. The animal reared, kicked, and bolted, leaving them to their fate. Leste’s steed soon followed its brother.

Only a great shape, suddenly storming out of the night, deterred the would-be murderers from their task. It was him—Leste saw the wan light of his reptilian eyes.

It was Khale.

She watched as he took the mob apart.

Leste had been taught to fight by men who thought in terms of grace and honour. Khale was something else; he fought as a brute though there was skill in his movements. The kind that is born in the blood rather than taught by ageing tutors. For every blow he landed with his sword’s edge, he drove an elbow into a throat, a knee into chest or groin. He used his heavy feet to grind the whining flesh and bone of those who had fallen.

Khale’s arms fastened around the throat of Ihlos, the mercenary. He twisted the head sharply. She heard bone and cartilage crack. The mercenary dropped to the ground—dead. She was not sorry to see him die.

Khale spared her a glance, “Go! Get back to Colm and your barracks. I have to discipline these dogs.” He broke a man’s arm across his knee to punctuate the last word.

Leste nodded.

Murtagh took her arm, and they ran for Colm’s gates. She wondered why Khale had followed them. Had he meant to protect them on the road back to Colm? Or was he a predator himself, a cur in the dark, seeking slaughter and no more?

*

The city of Colm had seen better days—much, much better.

The King’s castle sat upon an earthwork hill overlooking its four districts. The earthwork was enclosed by a bailey with high, spiked battlements that bore numerous murder-holes and arrow-slits, as well as the rotting heads of traitors, murderers and unfortunates. A deep moat separated the King from his beloved subjects.

The defences of the city itself were less splendid with the watch-towers atop the gates falling into ruin, held in place by fate and chance as much as timbers and mortar.

The Kingsway, which Leste and Murtagh walked along, formed the boundary between the Merchant and Highblood districts. The road also divided the Church’s district so that it was able to flank the castle on both sides. The Pig District, the poorest, was to the rear of the castle and was considered to be beneath all others. But decades of poverty and war had brought all of the districts down at the heel in many ways.

Leste could feel the weight of bodies around her; all of them dreamed and hoped that the King would keep them safe from the war that was ripping the land apart. Brigand-chiefs like Khale were not the worst of the self-declared lords, barons, or dukes out there; they were just the ones that lacked of great halls and thrones to sit upon.

Leste had been born long after the war began. She knew no different. Her adoptive grandmother had told her stories when she was little; about the great Kings who once ruled from far-off Anaerthe Morn. The Bright City of the Kings was lost now, and there had been war ever since, as men and women who dreamed of absolute power repeatedly carved up the land again and again between themselves. None were ever satisfied with what they gained; they always craved more. And so the bloodshed went on, with no end in sight. Some said it had lasted for only a few hundred years, others said it was nearing a thousand. The land was tired and worn from the fighting. The days grew darker and the sun was seen less and less in the sky.

Soon
, she thought,
there must come an end to this Hell. There must be a way.

She knew the King saw not how to bring peace to all of the land, but he did wish to protect his city and its people.

That was why he needed Khale.

But Khale wanted money, a lot of money.

Leste did not expect their audience with the King to go well.

Chapter Three

“How much?” asked King Alosse.

“Twenty thousand golden-eyes, your Grace,” Leste repeated.

The old man on the throne became even more shrunken and withered than he already was. His crown of polished blackwood looked too heavy for his brow, and his frail limbs were swallowed by his rich, but aged, robes of green and burgundy.

“Twenty thousand. Do we have twenty thousand, Murtagh?”

“Barely, your Grace,” said the Captain.

“The man’s a monster, demanding so much of us. Can’t he see we are weak, that we are poor? He would see this kingdom bleed and weep just to fatten his purse,” the King spat.

“With respect, your Grace,” Leste said. “Khale is a lowlife, a lawless creature that haunts fenlands and barrows with a blade in his hand to cut the throats of the innocent for a few coins. We cannot, and should not, expect gentle treatment from such a man.”