Ричард Морган: The Dark Defiles

“My cousins are getting restless, Dragonbane. They were promised an adventure in a floating alien city and a battle to the death against a black shaman warrior king. So far, both those things have been conspicuous by their absence.”

“And you think beating the shit out of the local populace is going to help?”

“No, of course not.” Shendanak leaned up and peered over the table at where the islander lay collapsed on the greasy cobbles. He settled back in his seat. “But it will let the men work out some of their frustration. It will exercise them. And anyway, like I said, I really can’t lose face to a sack of shit like Menith Tand.”

“I’m going to talk to Tand,” growled Egar. “Right now.”

Shendanak shrugged. “Do that. But I think you’ll find he doesn’t believe these interrogations are going to help any more than I do. That’s not what this is about. Tand’s men are better trained than mine, but in the end they’re soldiers just the same. And you and I both know what soldiers are like. They need the violence. They crave it, and if you starve them of it for long enough, you’re going to have trouble.”

“Trouble.” Egar spoke the word as if he were weighing it up. “So let me get this straight—you and Tand are doing this because you want to avoid trouble?”

“In essence, yes.”

“In essence, is it?” Fucking court-crawling wannabe excuse for a … He held it down. Measured his tone. “Let me tell you a little war story, Klarn. You know, the war you managed to sit out, back in the capital with your horse farms and your investments?”

“Oh, here we fucking go.”

“Yeah, well. You talk about soldiers like you were one, so I thought I’d better set you straight. Back in the war, when we came down out of the mountains at Gallows Gap, I had this little half-pint guy marching at my side. League volunteer, never knew his name. But we talked some, the way you do. He told me he came from the Hironish isles, cursed the day he ever left. You want to know why?”

Shendanak sighed. “I guess you’re going to tell me.”

“He left the islands, married a League woman, and made a home in Rajal. When the Scaled Folk came, he saw his wife and kids roasted and eaten. Only made it out himself because the roasting pit collapsed in on itself that night and he got buried in the ash. You want to try and imagine that for a moment? Lying there choking in hot ash, in silence, surrounded by the picked bones of your family, until the lizards fuck off to dig another pit? He burned his bonds off in the embers—I saw the scarring on his arms—then he crawled a quarter of a mile along Rajal beach through the battle dead to get away. Are you listening to me, you brigand fuckwit?”

Shendanak’s gaze kindled, but he never moved from the chair. Horse thief, bandit, and cutthroat in his youth, he’d likely still be handy in a scrap, despite his advancing years and the prodigious belly he’d grown. But they both knew how it’d come out if he and the Dragonbane clashed. He made a pained face, sat back, and folded his arms.

“Yes, Dragonbane, I’m listening to you.”

“At Gallows Gap, that same little guy saved my life. He took down a pair of reptile peons that got the jump on me. Lost his ax to the first one; he split its skull and while it was thrashing about dying, it tore the haft right out of his grip. So he took the other one down with his bare hands. He died with his arm stuffed down its throat to block the bite. Tore out its tongue before he bled out. Am I getting through to you at all?”

“He was from here. Tough little motherfucker. Yeah, I get it.”

“Yeah. If you or Tand stir these people up, you’re going to have a local peasant uprising on your hands. We won’t cope with that; we’re not an army of occupation. In fact”—Egar’s lip curled—“we’re not an army of any kind. And we are a long way from home.”

“We have the marines, and the Throne Eternal.”

“Oh, don’t be a fucking idiot. Even with Tand’s mercenaries and your thug cousins, we have a fighting muster under two hundred men. That’s not even garrison strength for a town this size. These people know the countryside, they know the in-shore waters. They’ll melt out of Ornley and the hamlets, they’ll disappear, and then start picking us off at their leisure. We’ll be forced back to the ships—if some fisher crew doesn’t manage to sneak in and burn those to the waterline as well—and we haven’t even provisioned for the trip back yet. It’s better than three weeks south to Gergis, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to do it on skewered rat and rainwater.”

“Well, now.” Shendanak made a show of examining his nails—it was pure court performance, something he must have picked up on the long climb to wealth and power back in Yhelteth. It made Egar want to crush his skull. “Getting a bit precious about our campaigning in our old age, aren’t we? Tell me, did you really kill that dragon back in the war? I mean, it’s just—you don’t talk much like a spit-blood-and-die dragon-slayer.”

Egar bared his teeth in a rictus grin. “You want a spanking, Klarn, right in front of your men? I’ll be happy to oblige. Just keep riding me.”

Again, the glint of suppressed rage in Shendanak’s eye. His jaw set, his voice came out soft and silky.

“Don’t get carried away here, Dragonbane. You’re not your faggot friend, you know. And he’s not here to back you up, either.”

Egar swore later, if it hadn’t been for that last comment, he would have let it slide.

“You are not being reasonable, daughter of Flaradnam.”

Archeth grunted, gritted her teeth, and hauled on the rope again. Below her, the Helmsman Anasharal spindled about and bumped up a couple more of the companionway steps. Its weighty iron carapace clanked dully on the wood, its underfolded limbs twitched feebly about. As ever, it looked and moved like a crippled giant crab.

And talked like an exasperated schoolmaster.

“Krinzanz has clouded your judgment.”

“Uh-huh.”

She took a turn of rope about her forearm, set her boot against the hatch frame, and leaned her weight steadily backward. She’d run the rope over the top strut of the companionway rail and then under the rail itself to create a makeshift pulley. Now the cabled hemp came slithering round the polished wood rail at really a quite promising speed. She staggered backward, semicontrolled. Anasharal came up again, a solid yard this time. Whatever krinzanz was or was not doing to her judgment, it ran in her muscles like liquid rage.

“You are going to regret this.”

“Doubt it.” Words bitten off, she was panting hard from the exertion. “This is… the best fucking idea… I’ve had in months. ”

Another savage tug backward on the last word and she made three more steps across the deck, away from the hatch at a tight angle that kept the rope pulleyed around that strut. Damp gray daylight, and the cold wrap of drizzle across her face. Summer in the Hironish. If the sun was up there somewhere, you’d never have known it. The rail was beginning to warp visibly with Anasharal’s weight, but there was a krinzanz certainty in her head that said it would hold, if she could just…

Knees bent almost to sitting, Archeth dropped her weight near the deck to stop her feet slipping on the rain-greased timbers. She heaved backward, felt the throb of a krin-elevated pulse in her neck as she strained. The companionway was built amidships and equidistant from either bulwark. Sea Eagle’s Daughter was a decent-sized ship, starboard was a good fifteen feet away, but once Anasharal was up on deck, dragging it across the wet planking would be child’s play. She wasn’t quite sure how she’d get the Helmsman up and over the bulwark—work something out once she got that far. Truth was, she hadn’t been much in the mood for careful planning when she went below with the rope.