Legends Page 14

  “Things must be going downhill.” And with a twitch of her face and a flex of her muscular arm she snapped the first man’s neck and let his body flop to the floor. “The temple used to stretch to a better class of thug.” She dipped her shoulder and flung the other one bodily through a window and into the street, tearing the shutters free, his despairing squeal cut off as his head tore a chunk from a supporting pillar with him.

  “The best I could find at short notice,” said Weylen, reaching behind her back. “But it always was going to come to this.” And she drew a curved sword, the long blade seeming to Shev’s eye to be made of a writhing black smoke.

  “It need not,” said Javre. “You have two choices, just as Hanama and Birke did. You can go back to Thond. Go back to the High Priestess and tell her I will be no one’s slave. Not ever. Tell her I am free.”

  “Free? Ha! Do you suppose the High Priestess will accept that answer?”

  Javre shrugged. “Then tell her you couldn’t find me. Tell her whatever you please.”

  Weylen’s mouth bitterly twisted. “And what would be my other –”

  “I show you the sword,” said Javre, and there was a popping of joints as she shifted her shoulders, boots scraping into a wider stance, and from inside her coat she drew a bundle, long and slender, a thing of bandages and rags, but near the end Shev caught the glint of gold.

  Weylen lifted her chin, and did not so much smile as show her teeth. “You know there is no choice for us.”

  Javre gave a nod. “I know. Shevedieh?”

  “Yes?” croaked Shev.

  “Close your eyes.”

  She jammed them shut as Weylen sprang over a table with a fighting scream, high, harsh and horrible. She heard quick footsteps on the boards, rushing up with inhuman speed.

  There was a ringing of metal and Shev flinched as a sudden bright light shone pink through her lids. A scraping, and a croaking gasp, and the light was gone.

  “Shevedieh.”

  “Yes?” she croaked.

  “You can open them now.”

  Javre still held the bundle in one hand, torn rags flapping about it. With the other she held Weylen up, her limp arms flopping back, steel cased knuckles scraping the floor. There was a red stain on her chest, but she seemed peaceful. Aside from the black blood pouring from her back to spatter on the boards in spurts and dashes.

  “They will find you, Javre,” she whispered, blood specking her lips.

  “I know,” said Javre. “And they each will have their choice.” She lowered Weylen to the boards, into the spreading pool of her blood, and gently brushed her eyelids closed over her green, green eyes.

  “May the Mother have mercy on you,” she murmured.

  “May she have mercy on us first,” muttered Shevedieh, wiping the blood from under her throbbing nose as she approached the counter, dagger at the ready, and peered over. The inn’s owner was cowering behind, and cringed even further as he saw her. “Don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!”

  “I won’t.” She hid the dagger behind her back and showed him her open palm. “No one will. It’s alright, they’ve...” She wanted to say ‘gone’, but, glancing around the wreckage of the inn, was forced to say, rather croakily, “died. You can get up.”

  He slowly stood, trembling, peered over the counter, and his jaw dropped open. “By the...”

  “I must apologise for the damage,” said Javre. “It looks worse than it is.”

  Part of the far wall, riddled with cracks, chose that moment to collapse into the street, sending up a cloud of stone dust and making Shev step back coughing.

  Javre pushed her lips out and put one considering fingertip against them. “Perhaps it is exactly as bad as it looks.”

  Shev heaved up an aching sigh. Not the first she’d given in the company of Javre, Lioness of Hoskopp, and she doubted it would be the last. “What’s a girl to do?” she muttered. And she pulled the pouch out from her shirt, undid the strings, and let the jewel roll out onto the split counter, where it sat glinting.

  “For your trouble,” she said to the gawping innkeeper. Then she wiped her dagger on the jacket of the nearest man and slid it back into its sheath, turned without another word, stepped over the splintered remains of the door and out into the street.

  Dawn was coming. The sun bringing the faintest grey smudge to the eastern sky above the ramshackle roofs. Shev took a long breath, and shook her head at it. “Damn it, Shevedieh,” she whispered to herself, “but a conscience is a hell of an encumbrance to a thief.”

  She heard Javre’s heavy footsteps behind, felt her looming presence at her shoulder, heard her deep voice as she leaned to speak in Shev’s ear.

  “Would you like to skip town now?”

  Shev nodded. “Yes, I think we’d better.”

  The Land of the Eagle

  Juliet McKenna

  “... and the brass eagle stood proud on the highest pinnacle of the castle gate, overlooking the town grown up around the margrave’s walls. Flying high on our flags, it was the token of our luck and so the eagle itself was carried into battle against the River Kingdom’s army...”

  Nedirin ducked his head to hide a yawn. He’d had a tiring day, herding obstinate goats in these gullies and thickets between the river and the uplands. Now that the herds were penned for the night with the dogs on watch, he wanted to wrap himself in his blankets and yield to his weariness. He’d heard old Thulle’s stories so often that he could recite them in his sleep.

  They all could, from the dog boys younger than Nedi to the grey-bearded herd masters as old as his grandsire. Their town had yielded to the men of the River Kingdom when Thulle was still a babe in arms.

  If someone other than Thulle was telling the tale, the brass eagle had been cast into a charnel pit with the battlefield dead, or fallen into the river, or been stolen by the Paramount King’s men to be thrown in their furnaces far away to the south, in their capital city where the ruddy brown Tane flowing from the upland plains met the pale silty waters of the mighty Dore. That distant river cut through grasslands bounded only by the horizon to east and west and by mighty forests to the south. So folk said but no one from Hatalys had ever travelled so far to seek their fortune and returned to confirm such stories of woodlands without end.

  Still, listening to old Thulle was the price which Nedi must pay for a seat by the fire pit, and the weather was growing colder as the hazel and ash trees turned to autumn gold. So he hid his boredom and edged closer to the embers.

  “If the eagle ever returns,” Thulle continued, “Hatalys will be free.”

  That was the one thing which all the tales agreed on, though ever since he was small Nedi had wondered how that could happen if the bird had been melted down and turned into door knobs or buttons for fancy waistcoats.

  “Give it up, for pity’s sake,” growled Uderil from the far side of the stone-lined pit.

  Some of the men who had already forsaken the fireside for their bedrolls murmured agreement. Nedi’s mother’s youngest brother and his father’s next elder were among them. They had promised to watch over him as he tended his family’s goats while his father’s broken ankle mended. They couldn’t afford to abandon this last trip into the hills to fatten the billygoats born in the spring and now destined for salting and smoking after autumn’s slaughters.

  Uderil was still speaking. “I’ll take the River Kingdom’s grain and fine horses and black powder weapons to keep moor dogs from killing my goats over foraging for nuts and fruit and hunting hill elk with bow and arrow.”

  Seeing Thulle’s eyes widen with outrage, Nedi gazed mute into the flames, keeping his face as blank as a freshly wiped slate. Antagonizing the spiteful old man was never a good idea. Nedi would wager his best gloves that Uderil’s most highly prized goats would lose their bells and stray over the next few days or fall victim to stinking flux. Not that anyone ever caught Thulle wreaking such revenge.

  “It’s worth it, is it?” A new voice spoke up fro
m the shadows on the far side of the fire. “Paying for black powder and lead shot carried a hundred leagues upstream? Paying tithes in coin and in kind to the Paramount King to feed and clothe the garrison who watch over us? Bending our necks to the justice of strangers?”

  “Getting our necks stretched, more like,” Plore said quietly.

  Nedi remembered his father and mother talking in low tones, sitting in their chairs on either side of the stove at home, the evening after Plore’s cousin had been hanged. They hadn’t realised Nedi was listening, crouched behind the curtain hiding the stair to the loft where he and his brothers and sisters slept, four to a bed. Nedi had got too used to sleeping alone in his blankets now that he was old enough to go herding goats with their father through the summer, only returning to the town each market day.

  Plore’s cousin had been a violent fool. His parents agreed on that. But did he deserve to hang for being the only man caught by the troopers after a drunken brawl where another bully had died? Any one of twenty men could have struck the fatal blow. Even the dead man’s brothers and wife said so.

  Father recalled the old margrave’s lesser sentences. A man got a chance to mend his ways if he was punished with a flogging or a spell in the stocks or the pillory. But the new margrave had gone south and the castellan handing down judgements stamped with the Paramount King’s seal only ever sent men to the gallows.

  Nedi’s mother was more distressed to hear that the hanged man’s body had been given to the Horned God’s temple, for the masked priests’ secret rites before he was buried. Plore’s family would have laid him out in a funerary gully, she wept, to be unmade by the beasts and birds of hill and valley to release his soul.

  Nedi had crept silently back to the crowded bed, privately vowing to never fall foul of the Paramount King’s garrison.

  “Granted, there’s bitter to go with the sweet.” Uderil glanced at Plore, apologetic. “But we have to live each day as best we can.”

  “Do we?” the voice challenged. “Can’t we make our own choices?”

  “How?” Zanner, his mother’s brother, sat up.

  Nedi was startled to hear the hope in his young uncle’s words.

  “We look to our own lore,” Thulle said robustly. “We all know that the eagle flew away when the Horned God’s priests conjured monsters to break down the castle’s gates. The king of the skies went to rally the beasts and birds to fight with our forefathers. Before he could bring them salvation though, the fools had surrendered for lack of faith!”

  Along with everyone else, Nedi looked at Thulle. Only the crackle of burning wood broke the silence around the campfire.

  Did the old man truly believe that the Horned God’s priests had summoned up ogres to smash the city’s defences? That griffins had soared up to the ramparts, rending the brave defenders with deadly beaks and talons?

  “The eagle could win back our freedom, together with our own courage and resolve.” The stranger walked into the soft orange light, carrying a heavy sacking-swathed bundle.

  Uderil shuffled aside and the man knelt to begin unwrapping whatever it was. He was dressed much the same as everyone else; buff leather breeches and high topped boots to foil the thorn thickets, a leather jerkin over woollen shirts layered to keep out the cold. He had sturdy gloves tucked through his belt and a knitted cap warming his head. His complexion was weather-worn, his brows and stubble dark and his eyes brown, like everyone Nedi had known all his life.

  The herdsmen all gasped as the last fold of sacking fell away. A statue shone golden in the firelight. It was an eagle rearing upright with mighty wings outspread and its head turned to one side. Flowing lines marked every detail of its feathers while carved facets gave the eye turned towards Nedi a piercing glint.

  “The king of the skies has returned!” Thulle was so ecstatic that he almost fell into the fire pit as he scrambled to his feet. As it was, he brushed so close to the flames that Nedi smelled leather scorching. Tears glistening on his wrinkled cheeks, the old man dropped to his knees before the brass statue.

  It was a sizeable thing, at least a cubit tall, with the bird perched on a square pedestal which had four stubby feet. Thulle stretched out a trembling hand only to snatch it back before his fingertips touched the gleaming metal.

  “Where did you find that?” Uderil wondered aloud.

  “How is that effigy going to restore our liberties?” Uncle Zanner demanded. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Sincai,” the newcomer told him, “and I believe this statue can help Hatalys regain its freedom if you men are brave enough to follow me to the town.”

  “We will follow you anywhere!” Thulle still gazed at the statue, rapt.

  “Speak for yourself,” Uderil snapped.

  “Hear me out before you make any decision.” The newcomer surveyed the assembled men. Even those who’d already fallen asleep were tossing aside their blankets, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

  “The River Kingdom has overreached itself.” Sincai rose and tugged a long stick from the firewood piled close to the pit. He scraped swift lines in the dirt.

  “Here is the Tane coming down from the plains and here is Hatalys. Here is the Dore, cutting the grassland from sunset to sunrise.”

  Then, to Nedi’s surprise, he drew a second river joining the Dore far to the west.

  “This is the Fasil and the town of Gotesh.” Sincai dug a little hole in the ground where the two rivers met. “That has been a River Kingdom town for five generations but Hedvin and Bastrys –” he marked two more towns some distance further upstream on each river “– they drove the Paramount King’s armies away in their grandfathers’ day and the plainsmen have never returned.”

  He swept the stick across to the other side of his dirt map and scraped four rivers fanning out eastward from the River Dore. “You’ve heard tell of the Nalgeh Marsh? It’s bounded by three cities, Scafet, Julach and Avelsir. They have never fallen to the plainsmen. The most westerly River Kingdom town is here –” He stabbed the dirt a good way short of the sprawling marsh. “– Usenas.”

  “What has this to do with us?” Zanner asked impatiently.

  Sincai drew a slow circle around his map. Nedi saw the stick’s tip pass through the marks signifying Gostesh in the east and Usenas in the west. It cut through the writhing line of the Tane to the south and east of Hatalys. The triangle of land between the Tane and the Dore, where the capital city ruled over the bridges and all river trade up and down stream, was at the centre.

  “Here’s where the River Mothar joins the Tane.” Sincai drew a second line coming down from the north. It met the Tane just where the circle crossed the river. “Where the plainsmen hold Mithess.”

  Nedi longed to visit Mithess. The town was only four days travel down river by barge. Three days, so Uncle Zanner said, when the spring swelled the Tane with snowmelt from the mountains far beyond the high plains. When he was older, his father said. If his mother agreed.

  “Wait.” Nedi’s Uncle Isom walked forward to study the scrawled map. “We’re the only town outside that circle which is under the River Kingdom’s heel?”

  Sincai nodded. “Anything beyond is too far from the Kingdom’s heart, as the folk of Hedvin and Bastrys showed and so did the men and women of Scafet and the Nalgeh Mire. When their people rebelled, the Paramount King’s cavalry couldn’t arrive in time. Not before the townsfolk drove out all those sworn to the Paramount King.”

  Sincai raised a warning finger as the men murmured surprised approval.

  “They let them leave with food for themselves and their horses. They didn’t put the River Kingdom castellan or garrison to the sword or drag them to the gallows. They didn’t ravage the Horned God’s temple or tear down the Sun Goddess’ statues. They simply restored their old rites alongside the new.”

  He raised his voice over Thulle’s muttered outrage.

  “They chose trustworthy men to serve as constables to keep order in every district and to make up a jury for an assi
ze at every third full moon, with a judge chosen by drawing lots among them. Merchants honoured their agreements with traders up and downstream. They proved that they did not need the Paramount King’s rule to secure peace and prosperity so he had no excuse to send his cavalry against them.”

  “Good for them,” one of the old men sneered.

  “We could do the same,” Sincai assured him. “Winter is nearly here. Drive out the castellan and his men and even if one of them sends a pigeon flying with the news, the Paramount King’s army won’t get here before the first snows fall.”

  “The castellan in Mithess could send his cavalry to join forces with the men we’ve thrown out,” Uderil countered.

  “As long as Hatalys men hold the walls and gates, all they can do is sit outside and battle the frosts,” Sincai insisted

  “While they wonder if Mithess’ people are contemplating their own rebellion,” Isom mused, “while their garrison’s elsewhere.”

  “Quite so.” Sincai grinned.

  “The harvests are all in,” someone beyond the fire observed. “Even if we couldn’t go hunting for fear of the Paramount King’s men, we wouldn’t starve within the town.”

  “The storehouses will only stay full until the castellan starts sending barges downstream,” Zanner said abruptly.

  Nedi saw the men stiffen and glanced at each other, grim-faced. Nedi remembered the hungry days at the end of last winter when the snows and the river ice had endured for a full half-moon longer than usual.

  Even the thriftiest bakers had run out of flour so there was no bread and the men couldn’t hunt or fish to ease their wives’ struggles to eke out their pantries’ dwindling supplies. Old Mistress Tigad, who ran the dame-school where Nedi had learned his letters and numbers, had been found dead and cold in her bed.