The Stealers' War (52 page)

Kani Yargul brought his sabre down in a blow that would have split Alexamir in half if it had met his skull, but the younger nomad blocked the blow with his sword and lashed out with a boot, trying to break one of the ruler’s ankles. Yargul twisted to the side, grunting and swung his dagger arm around to try to bury it in Alexamir’s ear. Alexamir rocked back, rolled to the side, and came up and out in a murderous sabre swing that Yargul barely avoided. More and more onlookers came sprinting or galloping over, swelling the mob as word spread that the horde’s ruler was involved in a death match.

Both fighters moved with a preternatural speed that made Cassandra dizzy just watching. She knew that Nijumeti differences went beyond the cobalt tone of their skin and a hardy resistance to cold. They possessed endurance enough that a relay of five normal men would be hard pressed to keep up with a single nomad. Their tendons and tissues worked differently too. As they stirred up into a killing anger, their heavily muscled bodies bulged and hardened, like a Vandian tank’s hydraulic machinery quickening for combat. The rage enabled them to fight like bears, almost impervious to pain.
Like monsters
. The Nijumeti called the state
pockdparb
. In Vandia, it would have been labelled a berserker fury. They couldn’t fight long at this heightened level before they tired.
But who can stand against them while they are in it?

She saw Paetro among the prisoners watching the challenge in awed shock and she knew just what her old trainer was thinking.
What legionaries these nomads would make if they could be trained properly in the full range of killing arts.

Kani Yargul must have been three times the age of Alexamir, but he hadn’t risen to command a clan and unify the tribes into a horde by sitting on a silk-cushioned throne. There was only a single quality that mattered in the steppes. Victory in battle over those you faced. Be it an entire clan or a single man.
No, Alexamir. Don’t fight him like this. Don’t match him savagery for savagery. Throw yourself against his weaknesses, not his strength. Fight Yargul where he isn’t.

‘Your father’s line ends with you,’ snarled Yargul, his dagger swaying like a cobra in his hand.

‘A pity we’re not raiding in the mountains, then,’ said Alexamir. ‘You could wait until I was asleep and roll me off a cliff.’

Yargul roared at the calumny and rushed forward, swinging his sabre. Alexamir met the charge with both blades. Their angry battering of steel was like a war drum, hypnotizing, each fighter whirling around the other, whipping, clacking metal, block and thrust, every blow capable of severing a limb away or gutting an opponent. The fight went on with a savagery Cassandra had never witnessed before, not even in the great arena of Vandis, but at last she detected the combat slowing, their berserker fury gradually dissipating.

As he tired, Yargul made a mistake, overextending his dagger hand’s reach. Alexamir flung his sabre forward, towards the gap that had been left, his sabre’s tip heading for the Great Krul’s chest. But at the last second Yargul turned – the brief opening revealed as a feint. He caught Alexamir’s sword arm and plunged his dagger through the young nomad’s forearm. Alexamir yelled in shock, his sabre falling towards the yard’s earth. Yargul drove his curved sabre’s buckler into Alexamir’s nose, using the steel as a knuckle-duster. There was a horrible crack of breaking bone and Alexamir began to slip down to the ground, utterly unconscious. Yargul caught the limp body before it hit the soil and flourished his sword theatrically.

No. Please, let him survive!
Cassandra struggled against the two Nijumeti warriors, but they restrained her as tight as iron chains.

‘Atamva blesses the righteous blade,’ roared Kani Yargul. ‘I treated this young fool as one of my own blood and see how he repays me . . . with foul lies, curses and disobedience. Let this be the fate of all such oathbreakers!’ He rotated the sabre around the air, preparing to send Alexamir’s head rolling off toward Prince Gyal’s.

‘No!’ screamed Cassandra.

Yargul raised Alexamir’s limp body by the scalp and steadied his sword for the killing blow, but someone bolted out from the mob of onlookers –
Nurai
. The witch rider seized the ruler’s hand and yanked it back. She couldn’t disarm him, but she hung on to his arm like an anchor. Infuriated, Kani Yargul shouldered her aside and lashed out with his sabre. Nurai fell, clutching the wound gushing blood out from her chest. She tumbled to her knees, groaning. It was a fatal blow. Cassandra felt a strange tug of affinity for the woman; for all that they had regarded each other as foes.
The only thing we had in common you died to save. You deserved better than this, woman.

‘I dream-walked your end,’ moaned Nurai, raising blood-stained fingers toward Kani Yargul. ‘The end of us all.’

Yargul’s eyes narrowed. ‘Your end, witch rider. Not mine.’

Nurai’s hand dropped and she tumbled over, stopping moving. A low moaning rose from the nomad crowd. To kill a witch rider in such a manner was to be forever cursed by the gods. Cassandra took advantage of the shock of the warriors restraining her. She slipped out of their grip and sprinted forward, imposing herself between Alexamir and the horde’s ruler.

‘Now this is a bad joke,’ growled Yargul, turning his attention back to Alexamir’s comatose body.

Cassandra drew her sword. A short stabbing blade half the length of a sabre. But it was the closest weapon to a legionary’s standard sword. As familiar to her as a favourite pair of worn boots. ‘Laugh and meet my challenge, then, mighty Krul of Kruls. Or would you have it said that you were afraid to fight a Vandian-born slip of a girl?’ She contemptuously indicated Nurai’s still corpse. ‘Or perhaps you would prefer me to toss my steel aside? You can slay me with the same bravery you use to murder an unarmed witch rider?’

The gathered warriors hooted their assent for the challenge. Kani Yargul glanced at them vexed, but he was no fool. He realized how low his reputation would sink if he refused Alexamir’s little Golden Fox. Nurai’s murder was bad enough an omen to bear, even given the horde’s victory in Weyland.

Yargul leaned to the side of Cassandra and kicked Alexamir’s unconscious body, letting it roll across the ground. ‘I will prise your own blade from your fingers and use it to hack off this ungrateful cur’s head. Then I shall toss you into the palace’s harem and let my other wives whip just enough spirit out of you to render you pleasing to a true Nijumet.’

Cassandra brandished her short sword. ‘Here’s my spirit. Take it.’

FIFTEEN

AN ARMY OF WIDOWS

Willow was still shivering with the shock of escaping from Northhaven in Black Barnaby’s shuttle plane, a large two-decker flying boat tied up in the White Wolf River. They had barely avoided being run through by the lances of Nijumeti horsemen before they had faced a gauntlet of crude nomad fighter aircraft, the river waters jumping with shell fire as they sped across the surface and took off. Only the fact that the flying boat’s powerful engines were designed to transport a hold packed full of captured booty allowed Aurora on the stick to outrun their primitive pursuers. Willow gazed back towards Northhaven.
This is the second time I’ve left my home in flames.
She said a prayer for the poor unfortunates left behind, trying not to feel guilty about surviving the nomads’ shocking surprise invasion. And just as Willow dared to hope she might be safe, flying north over Rodal’s heights for hours, their shuttle approached a ragtag armada of aerial carriers. Skels and free company fliers holding at high altitude. The same hounds the usurper had paid to add to his leash.

After Willow landed on board Black Barnaby’s carrier, the
Plunderbird
, she had been expecting many things. Torture perhaps. The hateful revenge of Bad Marcus or one of his lackeys. But never the sight of the man waiting for them in what passed for the pirate captain’s throne chamber.
Jacob Carnehan. Have they captured him, too?

Black Barnaby raised a dismissive hand. ‘Done. I even burnt the radio-guild’s hold for you to ensure there won’t be anybody tracing where the missives went and to whom they were addressed.’

Willow stared in disbelief at Jacob Carnehan. ‘You’re not a prisoner here?’

‘No,’ said Jacob; the simplicity of his answer startled her.

‘But those are the usurper’s carriers out there?’ said Willow.

‘That’s the trouble with mercenaries,’ said Jacob, glancing at Black Barnaby. ‘When you fight for money, the only real question is “how much?” ’

‘There’s gratitude for you,’ grinned Barnaby. ‘Named a sell-sword, rather than the honourable profession of privateer.’

‘There’s a difference?’ asked Jacob.

Barnaby slapped the canvas-stretched fuselage of the
Plunderbird
. ‘Yes, full ownership of your cannons and your destiny. I hand you your own skyguard on a platter, Jacob, and that’s all the thanks I get.’

Jacob grunted. ‘It’s a platter the Rodalians had to fight a fierce boarding action over.’

‘Pah. Rodalians toss their children rocks to suck on. A quarrelsome, argumentative people. Mountain ambushes are just practice for them. All useless without me giving you the location of the royalist squadron’s home holding-pattern.’

‘You didn’t
giv
e it to me. You
sold
it to me.’

‘The same old tricks,’ said Aurora. ‘You’ve boasted often enough, Father, of how many times you and your brother fought on opposite sides of a conflict, ensuring you always had a winner on the victorious side.’

‘Not at all the same ruse,’ argued Black Barnaby. ‘Back in the Burn we rarely cared which piece of quality won. But Weyland? You want to fight for some martinet whose nickname is the
Shoemaker
? Besides, I preferred Weyland when it didn’t have a skyguard worthy of the name to protect its shipping.’

Jacob shrugged. ‘That nickname was before the usurper disbanded half the assembly and strung the rest of parliament up from Arcadia’s lampposts. Now it’s Bad Marcus.’

Willow allowed a glimmer of hope to enter her heart.
Sweet Saints. Maybe we’ll survive this after all. ‘
Then those carriers are flying for Prince Owen?’

‘That noble little arsewipe,’ growled Black Barnaby. ‘You could store a hold full of his gratitude next door to his cant. Do me the favour of shooting him next time, Brother.’ The pirate captain hesitated. ‘Although best wait till he pays me what you promised. A general can run the north as well as a buck prince.’

‘If those carriers are under parliament’s command then we’re flying the wrong way!’ insisted Willow. ‘Northhaven’s being attacked. The nomads crossed the mountains with a crude skyguard force.’

‘Not so much Northhaven that’s being attacked,’ said Black Barnaby, ‘More the royalist forces and their Vandian friends.’

Willow was horrified. ‘But our people live there!’

‘And they were there when the southern army marched in and occupied the prefecture,’ said Jacob. ‘The difference between the usurper’s forces and the Nijumeti is that the horde will ride south and keep on going, following the scent of richer pickings. Let’s see how easy Bad Marcus finds holding his royalist regiments north of the Spotswood line when his mill owners and aristocrats are fighting off raiding clansmen.’

‘You can’t allow this to happen,’ protested Willow. ‘You have to help halt the horde. How many northern farms will be burnt and our towns sacked before the Nijumeti reach Humont and Bolesland?’

‘Allow it to happen?’ laughed Black Barnaby. ‘He
planned
it, girl.’

Willow was finding it hard to breathe properly with the sudden turn of events. ‘You can’t have planned it. That’s simply impossible.’

‘I owe you an apology, Willow,’ said Jacob.

Black Barnaby shook with laughter. ‘Oh girl, we would have opened the gates of the Chalhand Pass and invited the horde to pass through the mountains, but the rice-eaters wouldn’t wear it and the nomads would never have ridden through Rodal without a scrap. It’s simply not in their twisted cobalt blood.’

‘Be quiet, Barnaby, you’re not helping matters.’

‘Why apologize?’ Willow demanded of Jacob.

‘Sariel spotted an infiltrator arriving at Hadra-Hareer shortly before he set out with Carter. A young Nijumet with the mark of Sariel’s people upon him,’ explained Jacob. ‘An enchantment that allowed the clansman to swap his features for those of a Rodalian. I had the intruder followed and he went exactly where Sariel predicted he would. When the nomad visited the High Temple of the Winds, it was obvious he hadn’t come on a private pilgrimage. The most valuable object in the temple is the Deb-rlung’rta – Rodal’s master book of the winds.’

‘He’d come to steal it?’

‘Copy it,’ said Barnaby. ‘Steal it and the wind priests would change the openings and closings of their great timber wind dams, create a new pattern of deadly gales to navigate.’

‘I ordered a false master book created,’ said Jacob. ‘Fast northsouthers that should have been near-to-fatal redrawn as invasion routes straight into the heart of Rodal. That’s the book the thief found.’

‘They weren’t fatal,’ said Willow, enraged at how recklessly the pastor has gambled with the lives of the northern residents. ‘Not nearly fatal enough for the Nijumeti.’
Only for Northhaven and the rest of the kingdom.
‘I can’t believe that Prince Owen and the assembly agreed to this.’

‘They didn’t need to,’ said Jacob. ‘Only the Speaker of the Winds knew all the details of my battle plan. Rodal is her nation. She was glad enough to have Rodal’s invaders blown off course.’

‘This is monstrous!’

‘I didn’t know the nomad raider would kidnap you,’ said Jacob. He sounded tortured. ‘That the nomad thief had assistance from southern spies inside the capital.’

‘And would you have stopped him if you had?’ shouted Willow, her cheeks flushed with fury. ‘When that would have spoiled your little scheme for setting the horde on Bad Marcus?’

Jacob didn’t answer her question. ‘I promised Carter I would keep you safe. I thought you would be protected inside Hadra-Hareer.’

‘Instead you as good as gave me to Nocks,’ accused Willow. ‘Nocks and Holten murdered my father today . . . tried to kill me so Holten could claim the house.’

‘Benner Landor is dead?’ said Jacob, seeming genuinely disturbed.

‘One less for you to kill, is it now?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Of course you’re not. My father was in the royalist army. You would have shot him on sight as a traitor to the assembly.’

‘Sorry for you,’ said Jacob. ‘Not for Benner.’

‘That, at least, is the truth,’ wheezed Willow.

‘Benner Landor was a good man, once. Before he let his position and wealth twist him.’

‘How dare you speak of my father like that! Take a good hard gaze in your mirror. You’re not a pastor anymore. You’re a warlord.’ Willow gazed out of the porthole at the carriers circling in the sky. ‘Jake Silver. A murderous brigand chief with a fine new armada. You’ve opened the walls of the league to the steppes and allowed a terrible enemy to cross into Weyland. How many thousands of innocent people will die by the sword to purchase your cursed victory?’

‘Only until Bad Marcus falls,’ said Jacob.

‘And the horde will go home then, will they?’

‘We’re not the richest land in the league. The horde will do what a horde always does. It’ll ride. The ones that don’t die in the south will keep on raiding across the border at Ortheris. They’ll follow the coast until their grandchildren finally reach the Pontellosk Ocean.’

‘That’s your plan? Let them sweep across Pellas killing until history finally assimilates them? You told me I was to act as your conscience, once. This plan is pure evil.’

‘It was the only way to beat Bad Marcus and his allies. Rodal was the anvil. The nomads are the hammer.’

‘And now your hammer will beat on our people.’

‘We’ll harry the nomads south,’ said Jacob. ‘What was left of parliament’s army after the fall of Midsburg was never beaten in the field, only dispersed. Our soldiers hiding in the wilds or their uniforms temporarily turned for a farmer’s jacket and breeches. Those messages that Barnaby sent out were to our commanders. We have our own skyguard. Rodal has been brought into the war. The north is picking up its swords again.’

‘What else are they to do?’ cried Willow, ‘when they’re led by Quicksilver?’

‘You should get hitched to Prince Owen, girl,’ said Black Barnaby. ‘You can fill the palace nursery with high-minded little aristocrats, wobbling about and speechifying at each other. How the hell did you believe wars are won? By fine oration until the bastards on the other side realize the error of their ways, apologize and surrender? Everyone has a nice tearful hug together while we try to find forgiveness in our hearts?’ Barnaby snorted in amusement. ‘War leaves a kingdom with four armies: an army of thieves, an army of cripples, an army of widows and an army of orphans. The churchman you grew up with doesn’t exist. He never did. The assembly didn’t appoint Jacob Carnehan high general of all the northern armies. They called for Quicksilver, not some simple Weyland preacher. Quicksilver. The man who never lost a war. Whatever the cost, however long the butcher’s bill. And I should know better than anyone, for the saints preserve me, I flew under his banner in the Burn.’

‘So that’s what Weyland is now,’ said Willow. ‘That’s what you’re going to turn the Lanca into – a twin to that never-ending slaughterhouse across the ocean.’

‘Victory is all you can look to me for,’ said Jacob. ‘I don’t have much more than that inside me anymore. I’ll find Nocks and kill him. Hang your step-mother for murder too, if I can.’

‘You would have done that anyway.’ Willow felt lightheaded and queasy.
Is that from the altitude or my present company?

‘Then ask me to spare them,’ said Jacob. ‘Ask me to spare them and I’ll do that for you. I owe you that much for what you’ve been through. I owe Carter that much.’

Willow thought of Holten standing triumphant over her father’s strangled corpse. Nocks’ leering face. Duncan wounded and close to death after the challenge, all because of Holten’s schemes to take control of their house.
It would be the right thing to do. To show mercy. Holten’s the mother to my baby step-brother. I know what it’s like to grow up in the shadow of a dead mother.

‘What’s your answer?’ pressed Jacob.

Damn you for making your point
. But Quicksilver was far beyond that.
And what about me?
Willow struggled for an answer, but then her lips moved and it was hardly her speaking at all. ‘Put Leyla Holten on trial. I’ll testify and see her swing for what she did to my father.’
As long as those two killers are alive, nobody with the family name Landor will ever be safe from assassination. Not in Northhaven or anywhere in Weyland. Perhaps not even Asher Landor, when the baby’s served his purpose.
But deep inside, Willow knew that was the lie she needed to tell herself. A little mound of lies. Compared to a mountain.

Jacob nodded as though Willow had given the correct answer. ‘War never determines who is right – only who is left.’

One of Barnaby’s crewmen came into the chamber bearing a red leather message tube. ‘A Rodalian flying wing touched down in the hangar carrying this. For General Carnehan.’

Black Barnaby waved the pirate messenger over to his brother. Jacob broke the wax seal, opened the tube and scanned the message. He seemed to almost tremble when he passed it to Willow to read.

What is this? What can move him?
Willow’s eyes widened as she read the short communication carried from the great fortress at Dalranga.

‘What is it?’ asked Aurora, unable to contain her curiosity anymore.

‘Your cousin Carter and some good friends of ours have turned up at the Rodalian border,’ said Jacob.

He’s alive.
Willow moaned, but it wasn’t from the happiness she should be feeling at the glorious news. It was as if something had lit a burning fire below her.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Jacob.

Aurora came running over. ‘You may know your way around a battlefield, but damned if you aren’t a fool for surprising a woman with such quick tidings. Her waters have broken. Send for our sot of a surgeon.’

Willow barely saw the courier sprinting past as she swayed, wracked by the spasms of her first contractions. She fell to the deck, clutched by Barnaby’s daughter, an intensity of pain that was entirely new to her as her belly began to be squeezed and squeezed.