The Dark Defiles (5 page)

Then stop them, why don’t you?

A gossamer smile touches Firfirdar’s mouth at the corners, but it’s etched with that same sadness. Her eyes tilt to the sky.

That was tried,
she says quietly.
Once. And your sky still bears the scars.

He follows her gaze upward. The source of the eerie radiance slips from behind the clouds—the dying, pockmarked little sun he’s heard the dwenda call
muhn.
He shrugs.

So try again.

It will not be permitted again. Even if we could find some way to press upon the sky as hard and deeply as before, such powers must remain leashed. That was the pact, the gift of mending the Book-Keepers gave. We are bound by the codes they wrote.

Ringil stares into the orange-red heart of the bonfire, as if he could pull some of its heat out and cup it to himself.
So much for the gods. Maybe I should just talk to one of these book-keepers instead.

You already have, Ringil Eskiath. How else would you have returned through the Dark Gate except with its blessing? How else would you have come back from the crossroads?

Memory stabs at him on that last word. The Creature at the Crossroads, the book it held in its multiple arms. The razor talons it touched him with.

I should hate to tear you asunder. You show a lot of promise.

The branches buried in the heart of the fire suddenly look a lot like bones in a pyre. He turns away. He stares away along the shoreline, where the wind is piling up waves and dumping them out incessantly on the sand. Over the sound it makes, he grows aware that Firfirdar is watching him.

That was the book-keeper?
he asks reluctantly.

One of them, yes.

He locks down another shiver. Sets his jaw.
I was under the impression that I owed my passage through this Dark Gate of yours to Kwelgrish and Dakovash.

In a manner of speaking, yes, you do. But—come.
Firfirdar gestures, away along the ghost-lit beach and into the gloom.
Walk with me. Let us talk it through. All will become clear.

Yeah?
Ringil grimaces.
That’d be a first.

But he walks with her anyway, away from the useless glare of the bonfire, the heat it apparently cannot give him. He lets her link her arm through his—he can feel the chill it gives off through his clothing and hers—and she leads him away, under the dwenda
muhn.

In the ghost light it casts, he notices, looking back, that her feet leave no trace on the sand at all.

After a while, nor do his.

hen the doctor was done with Shendanak, Egar went out onto the stairs and called in a couple of the cousins for witness. He picked two faces he knew, men he’d shared grog and grumbling with on the long voyage north. Both had been down off the steppe for a good few years, both had survived in Yhelteth in a number of more or less thuggish capacities before they went to work for Shendanak. They had a flexible city manner about them as a result, and ought to understand the situation beyond any initial dumb-as-fuck tribal loyalties they still might own.

He hoped.

He led them to Shendanak’s bedside and let them look.

“See,” he told them breezily. “Cleaned up and sleeping like a baby.”

“Yeah?” Durhan, the younger of the two, glowered across to where Salbak Barla was packing up his doctor’s satchel. “So when’s he going to wake up?”

Egar shot Barla a warning look.

“Sleep is a great healer,” the doctor said smoothly. “It unmounts the rider of consciousness so that the horse—the body—may rest from its exertions and recover from any wounds it has sustained. The wise rider does not attempt to mount an ill-used horse too soon.”

Durhan was not appeased. “Don’t fucking talk to me about horses, you city-dwelling twat. I asked you when he’s going to wake up.”

“Couple of days,” Egar improvised rapidly. “Right, Doc?”

Barla nodded. “Yes, I was going to say. Given the nature of his wounds, a few days should suffice.”

Durhan’s companion—a blunt, taciturn Ishlinak by the name of Gart—nodded slowly and fixed Egar with a speculative look.

“You sure about that, Dragonbane?” he rumbled. “Couple of days? That’s the word you want put out?”

Egar feigned lack of concern. “You heard the bone man.”

“Yeah. But I wouldn’t want to be you or your pet bone man here, three days hence, if Klarn still hasn’t made it back. That happens, the brothers are going to take it hard.”

“That happens,” Durhan echoed, “the brothers are going to want blood.”

Egar grinned fiercely, no need to fake it this time. “Anyone wants blood, that can be arranged. You just tell them to come see the Dragonbane.”

Alarm on Salbak Barla’s face, but the two Majak just grunted acknowledgment. It was steppe custom, close enough. It would wash.

“Couple of days it is,” said Gart.

“Yeah.” Durhan nodded at the doctor. “You keep him well, bone man, you hear? If you know what’s good for you.”

“Right, good.” Egar, shepherding them out of the bedchamber. “Now get everybody off the stairs and about their business. I want a sickbed honor vigil out there at most—five men or less, cool heads. You pick them. And no more shaking down the locals in the meantime. We need that shit like a pony needs skates.”

Durhan balked. “Tand’s men—”

“The lady Archeth has gone to deal with Tand. That’s her end, this is ours. You get the brothers straightened out for me, we’ll talk about the rest later.”

He got them to the door, ejected them into the hall, and nodded to Rakan’s men to close up again. Through the wooden panels of the door, he heard Gart’s voice raised against a growing storm of questions in Majak. He closed his eyes, allowed himself the brief moment.

Here we go again.

Back in Yhelteth, he’d sworn he was done giving other men orders. He wanted no rank, he wanted no responsibility. He’d tagged along on the expedition for a whole tangle of reasons that he now had trouble teasing apart, but longing for command was not one of them. There was gratitude to Ringil, some vague sense of obligation to Archeth—he was, after all, supposed to be her bodyguard these days—and the common-sense discretion attached to getting out of town after his clash with clan Ashant. And underlying, he knew, was a generous helping of nostalgia for the camaraderie of the war years. The quest had
felt
like the war again, at least the preparatory part. But he’d reasoned that while there might indeed be some fighting along the way—pirates, unruly locals, maybe finally the minions of this long undead warlord they couldn’t seem to find—still, he’d thought he could take his place in the line without having to worry about what other men thought or feared or needed.

Yeah, some fucking chance.

He went back through to the bedchamber, found Barla fastening up his satchel and looking distinctly queasy. He manufactured an easy grin.

“Don’t worry, Doc. I’ll walk you out.”

“Is that, uh …” The doctor swallowed. “Really necessary?”

“No, probably not,” Egar lied. “But it’s best not to take any chances, tempers the way they are right now.”

Also best not to mention that for most of Shendanak’s crew, the ones who hadn’t been off the steppe longer than a couple of years, a doctor was just a shaman without the Sky Dwellers to call upon. And fail to deliver the magical goods without the gods at your back, you could end up in a ditch with a slit throat—he’d seen it happen more than once to itinerant doctors from the south in Ishlin-ichan.

“Yes, well, uhm.” Barla put both hands on the closed satchel and looked down at it, as if considering a rapid change of profession. “Thank you. But could not captain Rakan and his men, uh … ?”

“Better if it’s me.” Egar’s smile was starting to feel like smeared jam on his face. “Come on, let’s get you back aboard the
Pride.
Shanta could probably use another one of those stinking herbal infusions you make, and he won’t drink it if you’re not there to force it down.”

In the other chamber, Rakan heard the plan and nodded agreement with barely a word. He was a pretty shrewd lad for his age; he saw the sense in this. But as his men got the door, he beckoned Egar aside for a moment and the Dragonbane saw how his youth leaked through the façade of soldierly calm.

“When do you think my lord Ringil will return?” he asked quietly.

Egar shook his head. “Your guess is as good as mine, Captain. A day there by boat, they said. A day back. That’s two, plus a day to do the digging and rest …”

“It’s been four days already. What if something’s wrong?”

“Well, they might have a hard time finding the grave marker, sure. Or, if the weather’s against them—”

“No.” Rakan’s voice grew tighter, lower. “Not that. What if this time he
found
the Illwrack Changeling?”

Near the opened door, Salbak Barla cleared his throat. Egar shot a glance that way, saw Rakan’s men hanging off their captain’s every word. He pitched his own voice loud and brisk.

“If that has happened, Captain, then pity the Changeling. Because Gil’s going to be bringing us his head on a spike and his balls wrapped around the haft.”

It raised weak grins among the men, which he counted a victory of sorts. He wagged a finger in salute at Rakan, led Barla out the door.

To his relief, both corridor and stairs outside were cleared of men. Durhan and Gart appeared to have followed their instructions to the letter. Downstairs in the tavern’s main bar, four Majak sat at a table, burning a blessing taper and playing halfheartedly at dice. Serving staff and a couple of local patrons aside, they were the bar’s only occupants. They grew quieter as the doctor and the Dragonbane came down the stairs, but they all lowered their eyes with appropriate respect. Egar paused at the table and sketched obeisance at the taper, nodded acknowledgment at the man he judged the eldest. Then he ushered Salbak Barla past, one proprietary hand on the doctor’s shoulder for all to see.

He felt their stares at his back, all the way to tavern’s front door.

Out in the street, it was still raining and the daylight had all but given up. A damp gray gloom hung over everything. Ornley had no formal street lighting, even here on League street, one of the town’s main thoroughfares. There was a local ordinance commanding residents to burn candles in their windows during the hours of darkness, but around here this kind of murk apparently didn’t count as dark, so—no candles yet. Egar and the doctor picked their way with care over rain-slick cobbles they could barely make out, and presently the street began to slope downward toward the harbor.

“What will you do if Shendanak does not waken in three days?” Barla asked him when they’d negotiated a hairpin curve that took them out of sight of the tavern.

“I’ll think of something.”

“That’s very reassuring.”

Egar shrugged. “Look on the bright side. Maybe he’ll be up and about day after tomorrow. I didn’t hit him that hard in the head.”

“No, but you did it repeatedly. Which makes it far more like …”

Volume soaking out of Barla’s voice like piss into sand. Then silence. Egar glanced over at him curiously.

Saw where the doctor was staring and followed his gaze, down League street to the next bend, over the low roofs of houses to the harbor waters beyond.

And the big, lean League man-of-war anchored there.

H
E SPRINTED THE REST OF THE SLOPE DOWNWARD, LEAVING
B
ARLA PUFF
ing in his wake. Skidded on greasy cobbles, stayed upright with the long habit of battlefield charges in his past. Around the final curve on League street, where it splayed wide to meet the wharf, down the broad cobbled mound it made, and so out onto the waterfront proper. He let his pace bleed down to a slow jog and came to a halt at the edge of the wharf, staring out at the new arrival.

Trying to calculate exactly how much bad news this might be.

The League ship was a little smaller than
Pride of Yhelteth,
but with that sole exception, she dominated the harbor. Her bulk dwarfed the few local fishing boats tied up along the southern quay, her lines rebuked the sturdy merchantman build of
Pride
and
Sea Eagle’s Daughter,
and she somehow gave the impression of having shunted the moored imperial vessels aside to make room for herself in the center of the little bay. Shielded archer’s platforms armored her railings fore and aft. The cumbersome snout of a war-fire tube poked over her bows like some huge sleeping serpent’s head.

She was anchored squarely across the harbor exit.

Her colors flapped wetly at stern and mainmast—he’d recognized them from that first glimpse up on the hill, had seen plenty like them on the ships in Lanatray harbor a few weeks back, while the expedition restocked provisions and waited on the diplomatic niceties. The eleven-star-and-band combination of the League topped the mainmast, above a bigger flag denoting city of origin—in this case some piece of nonsense involving a gate, a river, sacks of silver, and a couple of large buzzards; Trelayne itself, he recalled. The League flag was repeated at the stern, and dark reddish pennants flew off both secondary masts. He’d seen those before, too; couldn’t remember where. Couldn’t remember what they meant.

Footfalls behind him—he glanced round, saw Barla crossing the deserted wharf at a limping trot, lugging his bag from one hand to the other as he came.

“Sacred Mother of Revelation,” he panted. “What’s that doing here?”

Egar shook his head. “I’d love to believe it’s a standard patrol. But from what we heard in Lanatray, I don’t think they bother with that sort of thing up here. Fits with what Gil told me, too—no one in the League gives a shit about these islands.”

“Apparently they do now.”

“Yeah.”

Movement on
Pride of Yhelteth
’s main deck. Egar squinted in the failing light, made it for Mahmal Shanta, up out of his cabin for the first time in days, huddled in a heavy blanket and trailed by solicitous slaves. He stood at the starboard rail with a spyglass at his eye, scoping the League vessel. Egar saw him turn to one of his retinue and issue commands. The man bowed and went below again.

“All right, come on.” Egar jogged along the wharf to
Pride
’s gangplank, waited for Barla to catch him up, and then went aboard. The watchmen waved them through, clearly distracted. Which, Egar reflected grimly, wasn’t good to see in men supposedly trained to marine standard.

We’re all getting way too slack. This place is sapping us. We’re in no shape to
… 

To what?

He joined Mahmal Shanta at the starboard rail.

“Dragonbane.” The old naval engineer did not take the spyglass from his eye. His voice was hoarse with long bouts of coughing. “You’ve seen our new friends, I take it?”

Egar grunted. “Hard to miss.”

“Indeed. Hard to take as coincidence, too. One doubts such savage beauty graces Ornley harbor on a regular basis.”

“Beauty?”

“Beauty.” Reedy emphasis on the word. Shanta lowered the spyglass and looked at the Dragonbane. He’d grown gaunt with his illness, but his eyes still gleamed. “I don’t expect anyone from a horse tribe to appreciate it, but that’s a poem in timber floating out there, a veritable ode to maritime speed and maneuverability. There’s a reason the Empire always comes off worse in naval engagements with the League, and you’re looking at it. Superior design, borne of constant competition between city-states warring for an edge.”

“Right.” Egar gestured. “You know what those red pennants mean?”

“Indeed I do—”