Blades Broken

By Stuart Kurth

Pelt’s dreams of conquest and glory ignited an entire realm to war. Too late did he realise they made a poor shield against the jagged edge of his own pride. Instead of uniting the eastern half of Varri-Mennyn to his banner and raising himself up to be a beacon of strength and hope, he turned himself into its enemy and paid a high price for defeat. His freedom. General Fleet and the King’s Men have finally caught up to him, and now he must face a reckoning with King Goring Saedren in the west. One that he can no longer run from.

Halling’s dreams of a life of hedonism and vice and vengeance were all he lived for. He glutted himself on the hate and fear of all who stumbled upon him, and he became blinded to his own poisonous vanity. After picking one fight too many, the veneer shattered, and Halling now lies broken and alone with only the singing mother for company.

And while the brothers languish in the prison of violence they made for themselves, bereft of their true-steel weaponry, other powers begin to stir in the east. The Dels of the Great Desert are never idle, and they have recruited new agents. Kannath Meadowmere, scourge of the north, has joined his forces with a powerful new ally. Nillis Catgut. The Man with Two Voices. The Demon Haunted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stuart Kurth
• Release date: Apr 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005882747

Stuart Kurth

When I'm not writing books, I'm doing other things. Like eating cheese. Mainly though, I write fantasy. The grimmer and darker the better but I also do YA and general epic fantasy. You will NOT find an elf, or a dwarf, or an orc anywhere in my work. I'm from New Zealand and I'm older than I used to be. Other than cheese, I like powerlifting.

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To you, the reader, for keeping the art alive.

CHAPTER ONE: PRINCES AND PRISONERS

1

‘Fuckin’ kids!’ A loaf of bread came spinning out of the steam. ‘Stay the holy fuck out of my kitchen! If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times!’

Rakkan Saedren, already short for his age, didn’t have to duck down very far to avoid it. He burst out laughing when the loaf slapped his brother Ryfe square in the face. Didn’t matter how far down that fat idiot ducked, it still would’ve hit him.

Holding his crumby face Ryfe howled, ‘Hey! Do you know who I am?’

‘Oh I sure do, boy-o!’ The head cook lumbered around her work bench brandishing a huge rolling pin. She looked like a pudding herself, fat and wobbling. ‘And if I ever catch the three o’ you down here again I’ll dice you up and serve you in a fuckin’ pie! You little bastards! You’ve gone and got water all over my floor!’

‘That was your fault, fatty!’ Rakkan screamed through a triumphant laugh. ‘You huge fat suckling sow! Why don’t you put yourself in a pie instead? I bet you could feed the whole city for a thousand years!’

He took off when the cook started eyeing up the nearest knife to throw, skipping around the legs of the other cooks and dipping under the huge tureens and bowls they were holding. Alka, his sister, stood up the steps at the open door, one arm gesturing toward safety in the hallway beyond, the other loaded up with all the sweetmeats and tarts she’d pinched. ‘Come on! I thought you said you’re as swift as the wind.’

‘I am.’ Halling dashed out of the way of a pair of grasping hands. ‘It were Ryfe’s fault. He’s as swift as a bog.’

‘I heard that!’

Ryfe waddled toward them red in the face and sweating. Instead of nimbly dodging the cooks like Rakkan had done, he just barged right through them. He’d even dropped all the food he’d stolen. ‘Go, go! What are you waiting for?’

‘You, y’great fat pig.’

‘I’m…not…that…fat!’

They were through the door in a flurry of breadcrumbs and off up the dim passage before the master cook had the chance to drop her rolling pin and pick up a clever. Rakkan almost laughed himself sick as he trotted, his sister’s face shining with glee beside him. Of course, when they were out of danger a little bit more they had to stop and wait for Ryfe to catch them up.

Alka struggled for breath between the giggles. ‘Rake, gods I’d forgotten what it’s like to have you around. I’m so glad you’re back.’

It filled Rakkan’s chest up to hear it. To see her smile even in this dim, dingy corridor. He plucked a cherry tart from his rolled up tunic and bit into it. Didn’t taste half as good as he remembered but Alka liked them so he thought they were the best thing ever made. ‘Same here.’ He really wasn’t. In fact, besides seeing her, he hated being back.

She had her good dress on still, and the folds all down the front were messy with crumbs and a smear of jam. Her hair was falling out of its nest of pins and glittery clasps. ‘Please say you’ll both be staying this time. Father isn’t planning on sending you off again, is he? Has he said anything?’

That soured the taste in Rakkan’s mouth. ‘Hmph. If he’s got anything to say to me, it’s how I’ve done something wrong, or done something I shouldn’t. How should I know what he’ll do next?’

‘But you’re only seven, and—’

Sister or not, such a slight could not go uncorrected. ‘I’m nearly eight!’

‘Exactly my point. You’re far too young to be sent off to those kinds of places. And Ryfe too. He’s not much older.’

Speak of the Betrayer, Ryfe his jiggling self came huffing and puffing out of the gloom. He struggled to breathe around a mouthful of bread. ‘What are you two idiots doing? They haven’t stopped just because we escaped the kitchens. Keep going!’

So they ran on. Rakkan with his little legs found it hard to keep up with his sister’s stride. Fifteen years old and tall like their old man. But she wasn’t cold and hard like him, or brooding and sour like the queen. She was beautiful and…and other words that Rakkan stumbled over. He was convinced that she wasn’t a Saedren. That she was really an Aspect sent from Evithia. With jam smeared at the corners of her lips.

When they couldn’t run any further—actually when Ryfe couldn’t run any further—they stopped again. There were no signs of pursuit. Rakkan leant against the cold stone of the passage, still laughing. ‘They’re worse than I remember. Did they always smack that hard?’

Alka groaned in commiseration. ‘Trust me, it gets harder as you grow up.’

The world through the enormous windows in the wall above their heads was grey. Rain spattered against the glass and winter winds howled. Further down the way, two guards in blue and red livery stood guard before a door.

Ryfe grunted through his wheezing, ‘You just grew soft while you were away in the north.’

Rakkan bristled. ‘Did not!’

‘Did too.’

‘You…you just grew fatter. Where’d father send you again? A buttery?’

‘I am not fat!’ Ryfe shot to his feet, piggy eyes popping.

‘Oh yeah, well what are you then?’

‘I’m…I’m healthy for my height. Wilks says so.’

When Rakkan burst out laughing, he was picked up by the hem of his tunic and tossed halfway across the hall. He popped back up again already swinging his fists and snarling. All the other boys, and even most of the grown soldiers, at Count Mortlock’s knew not to pick a fight with him but it looked like during their year apart his dumb brother had forgotten. ‘I’ll kill you for that!’

‘Not before I eat you for supper you scrawny weasel.’

They tussled, Rakkan shocked at how strong his brother had become. This time he was ready though. When he went sailing through the air he landed in a roll. ‘Better than being a fat runny cunt!’

Alka gasped, clapped two hands across her mouth. ‘Rake! That’s a horrible thing to say.’

‘What did you just call me?’ All the blood in Ryfe’s cheeks drained out.

Rakkan had learned all sorts of great things at Castle Mortlock. ‘Runny cunt, runny cunt!’

Ryfe lunged and fell in a heap when Rakkan darted clear. ‘You can’t say that to me. I’m second in line to the throne! One day I’ll be your king.’

Laughing, Rakkan cut a bow like the way all them fools in the throne room did for their father. ‘All hail, King Runny Cu—OUCH!’

Alka slapped him hard across the back of the head. ‘How dare you use that language?’ There was nothing but hurt and outrage in her perfect face now. As if no laughter had ever touched it before. To see it stung far worse than the slapping and Rakkan felt instantly ashamed. Him and his brother might’ve gone away and learned a few things and become hard fighters in the process, but their sister had only become lovelier. Yes. That was the right word for it.

For all that he whined, ‘But look at him.’

‘No! He’s your brother. We love each other. The gods know nobody else will. Say sorry to him.’

As lovely as she was, that was pushing things a bit far. ‘Great warriors never apologise.’

Alka gave him a face. ‘You’re seven. Now you just turn around and—’

‘NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON AN ENEMY!’

Ryfe came barrelling through the gloom straight into Rakkan’s ribs. He was so huge and heavy that he carried on going into Alka, who squawked in fright and sailed straight into a nearby vase. Everyone fell about the floor while the huge thing toppled and smashed against the stone, sending white shards flying.

Everyone went still. Waiting for the sounds of running boots, cries of outrage. Down the hall, Rakkan saw the two door guards peering curiously at them.

At a muffled sob he looked around. Alka’s dress was slashed down the sleeve and she held up a bloodied hand, the skin of her face chalk white. The look she gave shrivelled the guts right out of him. ‘What happened to the two of you? It feels like you were gone a hundred years, not one.’

Ryfe untangled himself and stood with chubby hand held out. ‘We’re warriors now. That’s why father sent us away. To learn to be men and lead battles and become kings.’

Alka got up by herself, refusing Ryfe’s hand. ‘And what about me? While you go off and see the world I have to stay here and be the same as I always am. I don’t want to lose the two of you.’

Rakkan hung his head. ‘You won’t lose us. We’ll always come back.’

‘Aye, always,’ Ryfe agreed. ‘But not as boys, as chivalrous knights. Like from the stories.’

‘I don’t want knights,’ Alka said as she cupped her hand. ‘I want my brothers back.’

A voice sharp and sudden as a whip crack made the three of them whirl around. ‘You’re right, sister. They’re not boys or knights. They’re rats. Seems our infestation problem has come back.’

Rennik walked up the hall flanked by his two sneering mates. They all wore silks and hose beneath their heavy winter cloaks. All the fur in the world wouldn’t help to make the bastard’s smile any less cold. And when he saw the ruin of Alka’s dress, and her hand, that smile became jagged.

‘Well well, what’s been happening here? Playing at being a rat too, were we little sister?’ Rennik was sixteen, the oldest of them. ‘Have you forgotten you’re due at table at six sharp tonight? Aunt Enelia won’t be happy to see what you’ve done to yourself. She had that dress made especially for you, isn’t that right?’

Rakkan found himself rubbing shoulders with Ryfe as they presented a united front. All the anger at each other from a moment ago burned away in the face of the hate they shared for their elder brother. ‘Piss off, you weasel. It was an accident.’

And Ryfe said, stupidly, ‘If you want to fight us, draw your steel.’

That made Rennik tip his head back and laugh. His friends did the same thing too. ‘Fight you? You’re mistaken. I’m the crown prince, not a cleaner. When I want the filth swept up I’ll call for someone. Now how about we take this little grievance before our father? He’ll want to know what his two sons have turned into, I’m sure.’

Alka came between Rakkan and Ryfe. ‘Rake’s right. It was an accident. We didn’t mean for it to go so far. I’ll go and get changed and it need not be spoken of.’ To Rakkan’s boiling fury, she even stepped forward and took Rennik’s hand with her good one. ‘Please. Father’s burdened by enough cares as it is. We can spare him this one, can’t we? And the queen won’t even notice I’m there, let alone what dress I’m wearing.’ Her voice turned even more bitter than the weather.

Rennik cupped her hand in both of his. He tried to look contrite but Rakkan saw straight through it to the lies beneath. This arsehole couldn’t tell the truth if his life depended on it. ‘I suppose you’re right. Tell you what. I’ll escort you to the feast tonight, and that way there will be no awkward questions asked. Allow me to be your personal shield.’

‘Thank you, Ren. They were just being boys.’

‘No, sister. Boys adhere to their tutelage, just as I did at their age. They are Saedren sons, and they need to start acting like it.’ At that, Rennik turned and shouted over one shoulder. ‘Isn’t that right, father?’

To Rakkan’s horror, the door down the hall was open, and walking through it was a bear on its back legs. A bear in a thick fur cloak trimmed by a grey wolf pelt. The king. He’d been there the whole time and Rennik was just toying with them. He felt such a spike of hatred and fury in that moment that he jerked, clenched his teeth. His every muscle snapped taut as a wire and he had to force himself to relax, to remember what they used to call him back at Count Mortlock’s. Trembles. Anger, he’d been told, often brought on his seizures.

King Saedren swept down the hall, grey hair fluttering above the wolf fur. And what was worse, Queen Enelia followed him, along with a few dozen of their trailing maids and squires and courtiers.

‘Look what these beasts did to Alka’s dress,’ Rennik crowed eagerly. ‘And her hand. And that vase. That was third century Eldachian, wasn’t it? I said they shouldn’t have been allowed back in, and now look what they’ve done.’

When the king held up a gnarled hand, the frothing idiot fell silent and bowed his head. Slabs of granite were warmer than the old man’s craggy face. ‘You summoned me for this?’

Looked like Rennik had just discovered maggots floating in his soup. ‘B-but father! Look at her hand. It was their fault, I saw the whole thing.’

‘Child,’ the queen snapped stepping forward. ‘Come with me. Let’s get you cleaned up and out of those rags.’ The chill in her voice made it sound like she really wanted to chain Alka up and whip her, not help her.

Stricken, Alka looked Rakkan dead in his eye. ‘Please, just…don’t say anything. It’ll go easier on you.’ And she was gone with the queen as she and all her ladies-in-waiting retreated up the hall.

That left Rakkan and Ryfe alone with their father and his icy-faced attendants. He was as still and silent as the statues lining the Kings’ Process outside. But not half so friendly. ‘Is this true? Were the two of you antagonising your sister?’

Rakkan couldn’t help himself. He knew Alka was right, that he should just hang his head and take his punishment without a word. But he couldn’t. ‘Rennik’s lying! We were playing, it was a mistake! Ask Alka, she’ll tell you.’

‘That’s enough.’ The king didn’t bark, or shout, or even growl. In fact for a man so big his voice was a mouse’s rustle in the thatch. ‘The pair of you have been back less than a week and look at how you treat your home. Your own kin. I expected a year apart would have at least tempered your child’s thoughtlessness.’

From behind Rennik muttered, ‘You can’t expect too much from a pair of mongrels. All they did was grow a little bigger. Or in Ryfe’s case, a lot bigger.’

‘SHUT UP!’ Ryfe couldn’t help himself.

Rakkan’s fury went scurrying back down his gullet. The narrowing of his father’s eyes packed more of a wallop than his fist or boot ever could. ‘You I hold little hope for.’ Their father turned to Ryfe. ‘But you. You are older and strive to appear wiser than your years. It is long past time that you put that theory into practice.’

At the king’s pointed look, Ryfe’s bloated bladder of a body punctured and deflated. He seemed to fold in on himself. ‘I’m sorry, father. I wasn’t thinking. It’s like Rake said. We were just roughhousing. We didn’t mean for Alka to get hurt.’

This time the king grunted in dissatisfaction. Around his brow sat the senovium circlet glittering glacial blue. It’d left long blue streaks down his face and stained his hair and beard. To Rakkan’s eye it looked a size too small for his skull. The skin around it top and bottom was red. And did he look thinner than a year ago, his eyes more sunken? Rakkan couldn’t remember. They hardly ever came this close.

‘You two miscreants have forgotten courtly etiquette, it appears. Bow to me.’ At that, Rakkan watched Ryfe sink to his knees, and did it too even though it prickled at him. What was so great about their father anyway? He was just another old man. So he’d won a bunch of wars a thousand years ago. All he ever did was walk around the palace or sit in his big chair giving out orders. If that’s what being a king meant, his two brothers were welcome to it. They could go off and be kings and he’d get Alka all to himself.

‘Tell me, boy.’ He realised with a jolt that his father was speaking directly to him. ‘You were with Mortlock a year. What did you learn?’

Everyone stared at him. The courtiers with sour dislike, Rennik with a huge evil smile. Ryfe still had his head bowed, wheezing. Rakkan came up blank. What had he done all that time? ‘I…they taught me to fight in a shieldwall, fa—sire.’

A grunt. ‘Anything else?’

‘And…and the longbow, but it’s a coward’s weapon.’

Rennik snorted. ‘Only because one’s too big for you to hold.’

‘IT IS NOT!’

He shot forward straight into the king’s swinging boot. Felt a flash of pain in his ribs and flopped to the dusty carpet. The king then stamped on his arm.

‘I will suffer no thuggery in my court.’ The man still spoke in a near whisper, yet everyone heard him. ‘I did not send you two away to learn to become murderers and thieves, or to disgrace your royal name, and mine, with your behaviour.’

From behind, Ryfe piped up. ‘I…I learned loads of things, sire. Baron Gartshore showed me his long-glass and taught me the names of the stars and how they process through the heavens. We…we used charts. I learned—’

‘A year wasted on idle fripperies.’ Rakkan sneered at the look on his brother’s pale face, until the boot still crushing his arm pushed harder. ‘One of you has turned into a baker and a dreamer, the other into a foul-mouthed brawler.’ The king grimaced, looked to the window. ‘The fault is mine. I clearly chose the wrong tutors. You both need stern discipline. Men who will teach you the true value and nature of life, and how to govern it. Come morning, I will arrange for new placements. You,’ he removed his boot from Rakkan’s arm, ‘will go to an old friend in the north. Duke Reigorm. And you will travel south to Duke Fraem,’ he said to Ryfe. ‘Perhaps they can teach you what we cannot. But if you return in a year’s time in a similar state…’

He left the rest unsaid. Either he couldn’t think of a good threat, or more likely didn’t care enough to even finish speaking. Just carried on up the hall as if he’d forgotten all about them. Rakkan couldn’t stomach the unfairness of it. He didn’t care that he was a prince, or that his father was king. All he saw was Alka’s disappointment at hearing the news. ‘But we just got back! You can’t send us away again so soon.’

Everyone stopped, parted. The king turned. Had him a frown on his face like he thought he heard a voice but not knowing where it came from. For a moment it looked like he was going to storm back up the hall and do a whole lot worse than stamp on Rakkan’s arm. After all, he’d killed greater men for lesser crimes.

Ryfe hissed at him with his face nearly in the carpet. ‘Shut up! Do you want to get us both flayed?’

‘You see, father,’ Rennik said loudly. ‘Give them all the tutelage you want. Nothing’s going to change. If you let them roam free they’ll do worse damage than break a vase and ruin Alka’s dress.’ He shivered and made a face. ‘If you leave them alive too long they might start to breed.’

Rakkan could feel it beneath his anger. The flurries in his muscles, the cramping of his bowels. His mouth started to fill with spit. He’d gone and worked himself into another seizure. And to do it here in front of his father and brothers made it all the more horrible. At Count Mortlock’s, nobody had known who he really was.

‘Fine,’ the king said on a breath. ‘While I await replies from Reigorm and Fraem, these two shall ruminate upon their choices in the dungeons. A month, or thereabouts, should do it. Unless the messages are waylaid somewhere along the line.’ And he turned away again.

Ryfe was sobbing now, blubbing that he didn’t want to be locked away. But Rakkan took the opportunity to stand up tall before the seizure folded him in half. If he was going to shame himself and be locked up, he might as well earn it. ‘If…if we’re rats, what the fuck does that make you?’

Everyone froze, gasped. Rennik turned a fearful eye upon the king, who’d stopped again. Slowly he looked over one furry shoulder, and it chilled Rakkan’s boiling blood to see his grim smile. The king never smiled.

‘It makes me the cat, boy.’

2

Halling felt a bubble of old wine rise up his throat. He fell into the alley’s dripping wall and bent forward, heaved up an ugly mixture of yellow bile and watery blood. There was no half digested food in it because he hadn’t eaten anything for days, but anger and bitterness and rotting regret, well he always had a gutsful of those. Plenty of memories coming up now, as well.

‘Fuck…’

Wiped his stinging lips and peered up with one eye at the cloudless blue sky above the rooftops. How long had the old man left him and Pelt simmering in the dungeons for? At least a month. They’d dumped him in one of the deep cells, the ones with no windows, or grates in the doors. Just demons in the darkness and rats nibbling on his toes for company. Nobody there to hear his screams, nobody to roll him onto his side when a seizure clamped him in its icy grip so he didn’t choke on his own foaming spit, nobody to wipe the shit off his legs. Worse than any torture, to be left alone like that at seven years old.

Maybe he had escaped from that cell, but was the broken prison of his body any better? Fuck, I can’t think which I’d prefer.

Shivering, he worried for a moment that his childhood seizures were returning. Most likely it was just the cold. This little town sat in the frigid shadow of the Tulkro Mountains. It froze during the nights and he’d never endured anything colder. He counted it a small miracle to wake up alive every morning. Or maybe a large curse.

Was this the right place? The alleys and streets here all looked the same. He rubbed his stinging eyes. Rubbed his stinging eye, rather. He only had the one now and it was stinging enough for both.

All that remained of the left one was a suppurating ruin, an open grave. No matter where he turned, that darkness followed, stuffed full of the cackling ghouls of his former strength and glory. Nothing he could do to bring the old Halling back, either. He weren’t nothing more than a memory riding around in a moving corpse.

By the gods he was still drunk. The awful poison these squatters brewed up in their barrels was as corrosive as etching acid. Staggering across the alley he took the true-steel rapier out from under his rags and bashed at a door with its hilt. With an eye gone his depth perception was all wonky, and he missed on the first attempt.

‘Hey!’ Voice a hoarse croak. ‘Haniish! You in there? Open up.’

Been here nearly two weeks and he still didn’t know the name of the place. Some shithole town straddling the invisible border between the Shaad and the rest of Mennyn. Between sand and grass. Weren’t much of either, funnily enough.

‘It’s freezing out here!’ He waited a moment. ‘If you don’t open the door you little bastard, I’m going to…’ To what? Claw weakly at it until he opens it up, and then puke on him? Why are you even carrying the sword around anyway? It’s not like you could ever use it.

Halling looked up and down the alley. Fearful not of the town’s many thieves and vagrants finding him, but of Pelt, or Fleet.

He’d had the notion to escape over the Tulkro into the Shaad, knowing they’d never dare look for him there. But he never made it. His injuries were crippling, and the mountains looked impassable. Every morning there they’d be looming over him smug and unassailable, mocking him. Hello again you merry fuck-up, so nice to see you’re still grovelling away in the gutter in your own shit. Going to try to climb us today? No? Didn’t think so. Maybe tomorrow. Fuckin’ mountains. He hated them.

But he knew that Fleet and his brother weren’t coming. With any luck they’d both killed each other. And if not, Pelt had probably forgotten about him by now. He’d made it plain that he never needed Halling’s help. Hated the pair of them. In fact there weren’t much he didn’t hate these days.

‘I said open the—’

There came a shriek of rusted hinges, but it was from down the alley. A small boy’s head poked out, face indignant. ‘Stop shouting, One-eye. And you’re at the wrong door.’

With one arm tucked to his burning stab wound, Halling hobbled through the slush. His cuts were oozing and aflame with red infection, the hole in his head pooling with cold wind. Probably he should put something in there, like a rock, or cover it with a patch. If he didn’t, there was nothing stopping a rat coming by and shitting in it while he slept. The thought of little rat turds rattling around his hole made him hack up a grunt. High hilarity from him these days.

‘I’ve run dry. Need more. Your old grandma cooking today?’

The Shaadi boy was scrawny, with a shapeless red cap on his head and a thin rag around his neck. ‘No, but she told me to give you something.’

‘Oh? What?’

The boy brandished a loaf of fresh bread, still steaming.

‘What the fuck’s this? I said cooking, not baking. I want more shil, not bread.’

‘Vaados Gorma says it’s an offering.’

‘To who?’

‘You. She says you’re a demon, and that if we offer you morning bread on our threshold, you won’t come in during the night and bite out fingers off.’

Halling scoffed, gestured at himself. ‘I’m not a stray dog. Go in there and find me some shil or I’ll cut your willy off.’

It was a sorry state of affairs indeed when a weedy little kid could square up to him and not back down. Halling knew if Haniish threw a punch, he’d probably go down. ‘Got any coin?’

‘Give me the shil first and I’ll go fetch a few.’ Although how he’d accomplish that he couldn’t say. He couldn’t work and wasn’t hale enough to steal, so he ate anger and drank bitterness and was thankful to get it. His fighting days had been cut away from him just as Javan Kenedal had cut away his eye.

Haniish laughed at him. ‘If you are a demon you’re not a very good one. The bread’s all you get.’

For a moment Halling was tempted to bash it out of the boy’s hands. But it did smell delicious, so he snatched angrily at it, wincing when the sudden movement tore the scabs of his wounds. ‘Don’t know why I bother. As soon as I swallow it’ll just fall out of my stab hole. Now you go back in there and tell your craven bitch grandmother to have some shil cooked up by tonight. I’ll…I’ll have something to pay her with by then. All right?’

‘So, you won’t come back and bite our fingers off?’

‘What?’

‘Vaados Gorma said I had to hear you say it. The bread’s a lanaam. A…’ Haniish snapped his fingers, searching for the western word. ‘A charm for good luck. I have to hear your promise.’

‘If I say it will she make me what I want?’

The boy rolled his eyes. ‘Best I can do is ask.’

‘Fine. I promise I won’t come in during the dead of night and cut you all to bloody ribbons with my sword. Or bite any of your fingers off. Happy? Is this morning bread thing going to become regular?’

‘No! It’s just this once. Now don’t come back!’

And the door slammed in Halling’s face.

He tottered up the alley and slumped down the wall into a patch of warm morning sun. The bread tasted like blood in his mouth and he could feel it sliding reluctantly down into the putrid swamp of his guts. How long it’d stay there was a mystery for now. He was beginning to tremble, the pain growing and growing. Soon it’d swamp him if he didn’t get more smoke.

Shil vaados, the local Shaadi called it. The singing mother, in the common tongue. Hadn’t known why until the first time he’d sucked in the bitter smoke and coughed at the grit sticking in his throat. A moment or three hours later, he didn’t know which, he felt like he was a piece of sound, entire body trembling in harmony with a woman’s singing voice made solid. A caressing touch soothing his knotted muscles, easing his pains until he was nothing but a puff of cloud on a warm summer’s afternoon. Bliss. At least until it wore off and he spent the next few hours puking up brown and red liquid. Still, worth it for all that.

But it wasn’t cheap, or plentiful. As horrible as things were, he knew he needed to get to the markets in the middle of town and try to scrounge up a few coppers. Enough to pay the old lady for more. Begging was the only path the gods had left for him so he thought he might as well take it. From a master swordsman and a feared bruiser to a weakened husk begging in the gutter. What a joke. If there was one thing Halling did best of all these days, it was weakness.

When he felt up to it he returned doggedly to his feet and shuffled down the wall toward the main street, holding his guts in with both hands. Weeks on and Ma Kannum’s good work had all been undone, the stab wound feeling as fresh and raw as the day it’d happened.

It was just as he’d said all them years ago to the old man’s face. He really was a rat.

3

The wagon jostled and Pelt’s head cracked against the roof.

‘Ouch! Can’t you arseholes keep it level?’ Punched the wooden panelling like it’d make a lick of difference. Just made his fist sore.

Maybe the walls were too thick for the driver to hear, or maybe the prick had been instructed not to answer. Days and days Pelt yelled at the timbers, raged at them with boots and fists. And then with shouts and threats and hurtful words. And then with the sheer bottled fury of his manly glare. All of it had about the same effect.

He slumped back onto the bench and rubbed his face with both hands. Heavy iron manacles gripped his wrists tight, the skin chafed raw beneath. He needed to get out, and more than just to relieve himself twice a day. Needed a shave and a wash and to beat somebody’s head in.

Needed his axe most of all. It’d been taken and never had he felt a loss more keenly. It got so bad he now swung it in his dreams and would wake up bashing his hands against the wall. His fingers tingled with phantom pain, as if he’d lost a limb.

‘Safely out of your reach,’ Fleet had said when he’d asked where it was. ‘Trust me, that axe is the least of your concerns now.’

Sadly that was all too true. A sudden uncomfortable pressure in his bladder made him squirm. ‘Hey, I need to piss. It’s been hours. Let me out. I’m not a fucking animal!’ At the last second he clamped down on the words that nearly came bursting out of him, I’m your crown prince! ‘Fucking bastards. Fleet! FLEET I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME!’

Nothing. His moving prison jarred again and the nausea lurched in his chest, made him burp and grimace. There were no windows, the light coming by way of gaps around the back door and knots in the timbers. Nothing to look at or do or turn his mind to other than his own failures. And there were many.

The nights were the worst. Fleet’s convoy of cunts bedded down and the creaking of the wagon would grow silent, the floodgates of his threadbare mind swinging open to let the memories gush in unchecked.

He remembered that rainy day in the palace when Rennik had ratted him and Halling out, got them sent to the dungeons. As torturous as that was, it was nothing to the shame he’d felt looking up at his father in fear so deep that he couldn’t even breathe. That fear nursed the hatred in the darkness until it nested into the very darkest recess of his soul. Even now he feared no man but one, and each day’s arduous rolling brought that unhappy reunion just a little bit closer.

He remembered staggering down the empty corridor, seeing first the pool of blood questing out of the open door to Alka’s chambers. Rounding the frame not wanting to but unable to stop himself. Halling sprawled out in the bloody pond clutching at Alka’s foot, sobbing, saying how sorry he was. Seeing that it wasn’t his sister at all. Just a pile of meat slumped against the wall.

He remembered walking through his own front door not all that long after. Everything just as he remembered from the cups hanging by their handles beneath the cupboard, to the dirty dishes in the sink and even the splinters in the table from Lacey gouging it with a bread knife. Blood soaked into the grain. Melody lying dead slumped over it and the ghoulish glowing eyes of his two daughters peering out from the shadows at the top of the stairs. All silence except for the deafening pitter-patter of blood hitting the floor.

He remembered the cold accusation in his father’s eyes, the distance in them like he stared down at a criminal condemned to hang rather than his own flesh and blood. ‘No son of mine would ever commit such atrocious acts of callousness.’ As if his hands weren’t bloody to the shoulder with all the nasty, evil shit he’d done in his lifetime. ‘You were tasked with rooting out rebels, boy.’ A man grown and not once had his father acknowledged it. Always a boy, always less than he was. ‘Instead I hear you’re stringing up loyal citizens by their necks and drowning them in boiling water! You are a drunkard and a thug and you are hereby stripped of your rank and colours. You’re a disgrace, and I never want to see you at court again. It’s the outer city wall’s garrison for you. A mean task fit for your mean temper and limited intellect. Pray you don’t fail in that role either, or it will be the noose next.’

Funny how the mind always brought up the worst shit. Why couldn’t he recall something nice about his past for a change?

He pictured next the night the Mikani appeared at his campfire, when Halling escaped into the darkness. The night General Fleet caught him, knelt on the boards of this very wagon, as it happened. His whole world had warped, blurred, shifted. It was as if the ground ripped apart and down tumbling he went into oblivion. He remembered feeling sick, and that followed by a strange dawning wonder as a host of new possibilities spiralled away from him into a thousand different futures. Him, the crown prince. Rennik, his older brother, was dead.

‘You what?’ he’d croaked out at the time. ‘How’d he go? Assassination?’

Fleet wasn’t comfortable relaying it, Pelt remembered thinking at the time. ‘Knowing your father as I do, I’m sure he thinks so. In truth I don’t know the whole story, only what I read in the message. That Rennik had died in some accident in the training square. Can’t see it happening, personally. I mean that’s a hard place to get killed, especially him. A damned shame, and a waste. He had such promise.’

Pelt knew that Fleet loved Rennik. Everybody did, though no-one more so than Rennik himself. And after it had time to sink in a bit, he’d said, ‘So what happens now?’ And old Fleet hadn’t looked at him. Just sat back on the bench rubbing his knuckles and frowning.

Apparently this was what happened. Caught like a thief and locked in irons. He was to be ferried without delay back to the west, back to Nostalla, to answer for the black crime of being the king’s second-born son. Or fourth born son if his two bastards Nock and Willem counted.

And while he was here jostling around in a wagon like the last bad apple in a basket, who knew what was going on elsewhere? That was almost the most maddening part of this whole disaster. He had no news, and Fleet wasn’t inclined to tell him even if he knew. What of Scoul Del Maedr, or Fenning Vitchek? Had they come to blows, killed each other and left the Five Valleys ungoverned and lawless? Most worryingly of all, where were Kannath Meadowmere and Ronn Del Turing in all of this? Scheming and plotting, invading some other luckless noble, or marching an army over the Tulkro for all he knew.

Pelt clenched his fists so hard his knuckles creaked. For the first time he wished Halling were in here with him. He could really use the little rat’s help. After all, he’d a proven record of getting out of locked wagons. The great grinding machine of history lumbered on and here he was fallen off and lying in the dust.

He bashed the boards again. ‘FLEET LET ME OUT! FUCK ALL OF YOU BASTARD CUNTS!’ He slumped again, chest heaving. Tired and dizzy and hungry and he needed to piss so bad it was making his cock ache. They only fed him twice a day, and that with meagre rations too. An insult. He needed thrice the amount of food as a normal man. Looking down at himself he saw a wasted husk in danger of falling into a pile of bones on the floor.

Once again the wagon lurched, this time coming to a squeaking stop. Pelt sagged and then instantly clamped his thighs together. At the possibility of being able to piss his bladder loosened in anticipation. ‘Fuck! Open the door. Quick.’

Merry voices of the free and unconcerned came close. Fleet’s own rumbling over them. ‘He’s still dangerous. Don’t take your eyes off him.’

Light flooded the wagon as the doors were unlocked and tugged open. The old man stood off to the side, half using the door as a shield and poking his stupid ginger and white beard around it like a dog peeking in for scraps. Beyond him, his clustering brood of King’s Men and hard-eyed legionnaires waited, swords drawn.

‘Ryfe, as always I warn you against any foolish attempts at escape. My men are instructed to—’

‘Fuck out the way, old-timer, I’m about to explode.’

Where he was or what time of the day it was didn’t matter, not until he’d done his business. Caught the vague suggestion of trees, the waters of a lake and that doing nothing good for his current predicament. The men all shuffled back, tense, murmuring, gripping sword hilts. The day was bright, the sky cloudless blue. There were hills, snow, green grass. The road was slushy and crusted with ice crystals, bushes to the verge.

He went that way tripping and slipping and waddling like a duck. Fingers fumbling at his laces, squeaking when he felt a dribble of piss trickle down his thigh. Couldn’t hold it much longer. Fucking knots…why’d he have to go lacing the fucking bitches so tight?

‘Shit…come on, come on.’

A King’s Man gave him a warning murmur, waved his sword. Pelt ignored him, mind only on his breeches, tugging on the damn strings getting them more tangled. ‘Fuck! Godsdamn…shit.’ More piss down his leg. At this rate he’d fill his own boot before he managed to water the shrubs at road’s edge. Some of the other King’s Men sniggered and he had no doubt this would become a legend back in the west in no time. Did you hear the story? Our newest crown prince pissed all over himself. Heard it from a joker who knew a man who saw the whole thing. Trousers going dark and everything. Have you heard of anything funnier, I ask you!

Got his breeches torn open at long fucking last and sent out a showering spray across the bushes like he was a war horse with splayed back legs and tail raised. ‘Ahhhhhh fuck me that feels good.’ What didn’t feel good was the piss already cooling on his trousers but he could let that pass. There was only the blessed relief. Tilted his head back to bask in his little moment of sunny glory. His piss steamed in the cold. ‘By the gods.’

The King’s Man was far too close for comfort so he turned, nearly showering him with it. ‘My hands are shackled, mate. Mind giving it a quick shake?’

The bastard’s smarmy face twisted up into a look of hateful disgust. Almost twisted all the way off. ‘You’re a fuckin’ animal, you know that? And you nearly got me. Put that thing away before I cut it off.’

‘Hah,’ Pelt barked. He jiggled a bit, bent at the knees and laced his pants back up. ‘Saw that happen not long back. A Nollingul spy had his cock chopped off and skewered on a stick over a fire. Damndest thing I ever saw.’

When he turned the whole sorry pack of mongrels was ranged before him. Some openly scowling, others looking away scared to catch his eye. All in rich red capes over blue surcoats and polished steel. King’s Men. Back-biting, bottom-feeding cockroaches to a man. He sniffed and said, ‘What the fuck are all you cunts staring at?’ and stumped back toward the wagon. Weren’t no use in doing anything else. If he resisted he’d get a bashing anyway.

Fleet stepped in front of him, the same tired resignation on his face. ‘Just a moment, Ryfe. There’s been news.’ As stocky as an old pine trunk and about as sticky.

Irked Pelt that the crusty old fool never put prince in front of his name, and irked him more that he even cared. Still, his lust for information eclipsed all that. ‘What? What’s going on?’ Looked from face to face seeing only a line-up of arseholes. ‘What’s happened? Is it Vitchek? Or Meadowmere?’

A frown of irritation and Fleet shook his head. There was a lot more grey in his ginger beard these days. ‘Best you start forgetting all about the Five Valleys now, boy. You’re not going that way, you’re headed back west.’

It was a particular King’s Man who muttered just loud enough for Pelt to hear. ‘Good thing too, seeing how it were your fault the Five Valleys got so fucked up in the first place.’

Pelt turned a slow-burning look of hate on him, and was impressed to see the man stand his ground. Hard bugger with a dense black beard. Blacklock, his name was. ‘If you like I can fuck you up next.’

‘Hey.’ Fleet’s bark drew the man’s attention. ‘Don’t talk to him, understand? I don’t want any trouble from either side. That’s an order.’ And to Pelt he said, ‘No, it’s got nothing to do with all of that.’ Pointed to one Observer loitering at the back next to a huge grey horse. Looked like a scout. ‘Wynt there says he’s found your brother.’

For a moment they stared at each other. Pelt’s voice seemed to be stuck on a particular set of stubborn words. He had to know just the same, no matter how hard it might be. ‘Dead?’

The old soldier grunted. He was flexing his left hand open and closed, the biting wind ruffling his thinning hair. ‘If only. That would make this whole mission that much simpler. No, he’s very much alive and up to his old ways, apparently.’ Pointed to the hills lurking in the distance across the lake. ‘He’s in a border town over those fells. Can’t see them from here but we’re close to the Tulkro.’

Pelt’s guts clenched to hear it. For a moment he heard the screams of Shandir’s women riding the cold winds, the clash of Meadowmere’s blades and the breathy snigger of that green-eyed, swaggering Mikani trickster.

‘We’re going after him,’ Fleet grumbled. ‘We get him and head west as straight as the arrow flies.’ With flashing eyes and a heavy hand on Pelt’s filthy jerkin he snarled, ‘There will be no funny business, am I clear? I’m to fetch you both back, but if you put up any kind of resistance, any at all, I have leave to kill you both and return your corpses. Seems like the king doesn’t really mind what state you’re in when you come back.’ Pelt knew the old codger didn’t have the imagination for empty threats. And besides that, he was a little surprised his father even wanted him back alive in the first place.

Holding the wagon door open and cutting a mock bow, Fleet said, ‘Back in the wagon, my prince.’

Pelt cast his eye out over the rest of the men in the road. Twenty five King’s Men and another forty legionnaires. All of them with guarded enmity in their eyes as they stared back. All except Blacklock, whose face was as black as his name, hatred curling off him like steam off a new shit. He could see he was about as popular as the plague, so with a weary sigh he nodded to Fleet and carried his carcass back into his rolling prison.

CHAPTER TWO: THE MAN WITH TWO VOICES

1

Four weeks earlier…

Nillis Catgut came to a stop when his boot nudged something soft. A body lying in the dusty, ash-strewn lane. He hadn’t even seen it, so fixed was his gaze upon the faces and blades and buildings in the street beyond. ‘What’s this, now?’

With the sounds of wild slaughter and savage jubilation echoing from all quarters, he squatted down on his haunches, bloody hands dangling over his knees. The body was that of a young woman. Lustrous black Shaadi hair lay spread and splayed in the dust, her thin dress clinging to her curves. High born or low, Shaadi women were forbidden to cut their hair. Once they died it would be shorn and bound and burned, the spirit offered within the smoke to Muulkuk, the beetle god of the Great Desert. It was the most severe punishment for a woman to have her hair cut while she lived. He’d seen the ragged creatures in the streets of Trallabak, lower than beggars, lower than even the rats in the gutters.

To this one he whispered, ‘Peace now, my dear. You need not worry a moment more.’ He reached down to tease an errant strand behind one ear, stroked her cheek with the back of two fingers. It was hard to tell how she’d been killed. There was no blood or bruising, but she was still warm. Alive perhaps a few minutes before. Death had softened the lines of grinding anxiety and pinching hunger in her face. She was just skin and bone, only accentuating her bulging belly, and when he placed his hand on it he could feel movement through her dress.

What was her name? What hopes and intentions had she nursed all these months knowing she was pregnant? Was the baby’s father somewhere near? Among those still fighting, or dead, or fled in his shame and terror?

Whatever the girl’s story, here was its end, and Catgut was the only one besides the Judge to witness it. ‘What a tale yours must be, and how fortunate am I to be the one to close the book.’ His free hand crept toward his throat, and the blood-soaked material of the vraahkii wrapped around it. At the last moment he clenched his trembling fist and lowered his arm. ‘But where one tale ends, another begins. As the Gatherer says, the wheel of existence is always turning, and never breaks.’

The curved boning knife he drew from his belt parted her pearlescent skin, blade so sharp he hardly felt any resistance at all. Under such pressure, the woman’s belly opened up of its own accord, both sides of the cut yawning wide to let an upwelling of deep red blood flow free. Mustn’t cut too deep, not when she was so far along in her term.

‘And what have we here, my dear? Did you know what it would be, or shall I surprise you?’

The woman did not answer.

Reaching in was like dipping his hands into a basin of warm water. Questing fingers searched for and found the smooth roundness of the infant’s head, and with careful movements he worked that tiny little body out, curled in on itself, legs crossed over the purple cord, face looking like a crumpled sheaf of red parchment, hair as black as jet. It coughed, jerked, wriggled, perhaps offended that it had been torn from its nice warm cocoon so early.

‘None of us are ever ready, me least of all.’

Lifting the woman’s arm, he placed the squirming thing near her bosom and stood to admire the touching scene. A woman with her newborn. A picture. All he saw was her sleeping face, pretending she was cradling her baby daughter.

‘All is as it should be. The sacred bond of a mother and her child. I never knew my mother, and the gods have seen fit that you will never know yours.’ He peered up at the swirls of brown dust clouds and smoke hovering over the buildings. ‘Or should I say the Great Beetle? I do not think the Siblings visit the Shaad very much these days, if they ever did.’

Bootsteps in the alley behind him caught his attention. Ramshackle sidled up in that crab-walk of his, looking worriedly down at the corpse in the dust.

‘Boss, there you are. What have you been doing?’

Catgut gestured. ‘Witnessing a poignant moment in history, Ram. What does it look like?’

‘Well, messing about with a—is that baby alive?’ Ramshackle shook his head. He looked fearful, but not about the body. ‘We’ve got an issue. General Vadeem’s come early. With twenty of his guards. He must’ve ridden up while we were busy getting through the gate. Nobody thought to warn us.’ Speaking made the thick burn scars on his face bunch and writhe. ‘He’s asking for you. Demanding, more like, the arrogant wanker. He sits about in his tent while we do all the hard work, and then he comes in here parading about like it was his—’

Catgut held up a blood-red hand. ‘Now Ram. You know better. It’s rude to talk of your employer that way. Let us be polite and go see what he wants.’

‘He ain’t my employer,’ the little man grumbled as he fell into Catgut’s step, ‘You are.’

‘And he is mine. This has been a long campaign, with no coin up front. He’s probably just come to check on progress.’

They emerged into the town’s main street. Wreckage from the breaking of the gates lay strewn everywhere, across the rutted rock, in doorways, clogging up alleys. Ash and dust rode the cold Desert winds, and further away the gates themselves were still wreathed in smoke and flame. Men capered about in the reeks like demons. Most of them his loyal Sun Falcons, but a few shuffled about staring, hugging themselves, trying to pick up the broken pieces of their lives. The town’s folk he’d ordered spared. If he went about decimating entire townships left and right, who would be left to spread his legend?

It was almost noon, though Catgut could barely tell through the early twilight swiftly sweeping across the sky. Grit stuck in his eyes, his ears, grinding like grist between his teeth. It had already worked its way into the wounds around his throat so that it was a wearisome effort to keep from scratching at them. As it was his leathers and steel all down his front were caked with sandy blood. He twitched the hem of his tattered vraahkii up over his nose in an attempt to stop any more sand from finding its way in. Not that it did any good.

To protect themselves from the scouring sands and dusts, Shaadi men wore ceremonial scarves, called vraahkii, at all times. It was a man’s symbol of status, of caste and wealth and pride. It covered the vulnerable veins of the neck and shielded a man’s truth from the world he walked in. That truth was meant only for his wife and the thousand eyes of the Great Beetle. In his experience they didn’t work very well.

Catgut’s master sat on the far side of the street, on a stump, peeling an apple with a small knife. His thick grey beard had flecks of juice in it already. ‘You’ll come to find that the Shaadi love their pomp and pageantry. Their hair, their clothes, their swords, it’s all nothing but cheap ornamentation. The only thing of substance beneath the ostentation is their arrogance. That’s made out of iron.’

That was true of the nobility in the Shaad, certainly, from all Catgut had seen. The lower classes, the peasants and the destitute, the farmers, they were the same the world over. You can’t eat arrogance or ornaments, after all. Catgut was happy to see his master attending to his apple, for once declining to reply.

Frowning at him, Ramshackle pointed up the street. ‘Where are you going, boss? The Shaadi’s this way.’

A queue of dusty and tattered soldiers snaked out from a tall building’s ruined front doors. All men. All his men. Mennyn with a few wayward Mendrans scattered through, and yes, even a fair few Shaadi as well. And when they caught sight of him their grimaces, their frowns and their uncomfortable scowls turned to smiles. Some waved, some catcalled and hooted, swinging sheathed weapons. He favoured them with a nod and a gesture as he walked by.

‘Chief! How do?’

‘Boss! We won!’

‘Boss, I was first up my ladder. That’s two silvers for me, right?’

‘How about a drink tonight? Your shout?’ At that, the whole queue and everyone milling around it roared with good-natured laughter. Men slapped him on the back, faces beneath the dust shining. Catgut let them bask in their glory a while longer. And why shouldn’t they? It’d been a hard won battle. It’d been their battle. Vadeem had provided not so much as a drummer boy to help.

‘Boss! We did it, finally. Who would’ve thought such a piddling town could have such strong walls, eh? I mean we’re in the middle of nowhere. Who’d be attacking this place apart from us?’

Catgut winked at the soldier. ‘Oh those walls weren’t built to hold off an army of people, Hodder, trust me.’

As usual when he spoke, even to men who’d been hearing his voice for years, he saw a moment’s hesitation, and fear. Hodder blinked. ‘You what?’ And when Catgut just smiled enigmatically back, he said, ‘Don’t fuck about, boss. What do you mean? What were they built for? Boss?’

Catgut and Ramshackle walked on. The Miser would be inside with his strongboxes, dolling out the gold and silver to the men and jotting down their names in his great ledger. Every man got paid, and every man got his due. Catgut was insistent upon fairness for all in his company, regardless of their rank. If a man was willing to fight, and work, he would be well rewarded, regardless of his birth.

His old master nodded. ‘What should a leader inspire in the hearts of the men he leads? Fear? Respect? Loyalty? Those are merely the ingredients. The greatest generals of antiquity were revered, boy. Looked at as if they were gods walking among mortal men. Give your men a reason to worship you, and you will have their hearts until the day they die.’

As they walked, he felt sand grinding in the sensitive scabs of his throat. Its nagging never left him day or night. He knew that there were a thousand different names and nuances to the Desert’s dusts and sands and swirling storms. Shaadi bards and philosophers had written whole tomes about it, in fact, but it all paled into insignificance compared to Ramshackle’s effortless eloquence.

He reached into his trousers to adjust himself and barked, ‘Whichever god thought mixing dust and wind was a good idea is a fucking moron. My arsehole could strip the bark off a tree branch, it’s that sandy. I swear, all I am is dust. I’m bloody sick of it, boss.’

‘So am I, Ram, so am I.’

‘Looks like a sandstorm is on the way. Fan-fucking-tastic.’

Swirling dusts made a faded dome of the sky, the sun a burnished copper disc. Dry winds scoured the pocked faces of buildings, tumbled down the dusty streets. Murals and mosaics high on the walls, now faded, spoke of prosperity and pride long lost. Still, the bones of the town were strong.

The little man said, ‘How many of these skirmishes have we led in the last six months? Twenty? They don’t call him the Miser for nothing, and even he’s grumbling about how low the strongboxes are getting. Says he can even see the bottom of a couple of them.’ He then shiftily looked up and down the street. Aside from the odd staggering, coughing local, and their own men drunk on another ignoble victory, only the corpses were listening. And they weren’t about to go telling anybody any time soon. ‘These Shaadi nobles, these Dels, they’re as like to pay in treachery as they are in solid metal. How far do you think our luck will last?’

‘It’s lasted this far. Do you not trust me, Ram?’

‘’Course I do, boss. So do the men, you know that. Follow you to Gethai if we need to.’

Catgut snorted, looked around. ‘Some would argue we’re already there.’

His sun-faded leathers and rust-eaten steel were covered by thin brown robes, his shaggy black hair by a hood. Amongst his men he didn’t wear the vraahkii, as he couldn’t abide even the thinnest, most luxuriant fabrics touching the delicate scabs circumnavigating his throat. But his contractors were here waiting for him, and it would not do to cause offence, so he bore the itching, stinging, maddening discomfort in silence. It was, after all, just one more punishment for him to endure.

His master grinned up at him from his stump. ‘Discipline, boy. That is what