Ричард Морган: The Dark Defiles

“Well, that’s that, I suppose.”

Ringil Eskiath weighed the desiccated human jawbone glumly in the palm of his hand. He crouched on the edge of the opened grave, fighting off a vague urge to jump down into it.

Looks cozy down there. Out of the wind, dark and warm …

He rubbed at his unshaven chin instead. Three days of stubble, rasping on calloused fingers, itching on hollow cheeks. His cloak, puddled about him where he crouched, was soiled at the border and soaking up water from the rain-drenched grass. The shoulder of his sword arm nagged from the unrelenting damp.

He shut out the ache and brooded on what lay below him in the grave.

They’d come a long way for this.

There wasn’t much—shards of wood that might once have formed a casket, a few long strips of leather, cured stiff and crumbling. A mess of small bone fragments, like the leavings of some overenthusiastic soothsayer on the scry…

Gil sighed and levered himself back to his feet. Tossed the jawbone back in with the rest.

“Fucking waste of five months.”

“My lord?”

Shahn, the marine sergeant, who’d climbed back out of the grave and now waited close by the mounds of earth his men had dug out. Behind him, the work party stood around, soil- and sweat-streaked, entrenching tools in hand, scowling against the weather. Whoever dug this plot all those centuries ago, they’d chosen a spot close to the cliffs, and right now there was a blustery wind coming in off the ocean, laced with fistfuls of sleet and the promise of another storm. The three Hironish guides they’d hired back in Ornley already had their hoods up—they stood farther from the grave, watching the sky and conversing in low tones.

Ringil brushed the traces of dirt off his hands.

“We’re all done here,” he announced loudly. “If this is the Illwrack Changeling, the worms sorted him out for us awhile back. Stow tools, let’s get back to the boats.”

A tremor of hesitation—hands working at tool handles, feet shifting. The sergeant cleared his throat. Gestured halfheartedly at the soft-mounded earth beside the grave.

“Sire, should we not…?”

“Fill that in?” Ringil grinned harshly. “Listen, if those bones stand up and follow us down to the beach, I’ll be very surprised. But you know what—if they do, I’ll deal with it.”

His words carved out their own patch of quiet in the rising wind. Among the men, a touching of talismans. Some muttering.

Ringil cut them a surreptitious glance, counting faces without seeming to. A couple of those he saw had been around when he took down the kraken, but most were on the other ships at the time; or they were aboard Dragon’s Demise but in their bunks. It had been a filthy night anyway—rain and howling wind, bandlight muffled up in thick, scudding cloud, and the encounter was over almost as soon as it began. All but a handful missed the action.

They had reports from their comrades, of course, but Ringil couldn’t blame them for doubting it. Killing a kraken, at the height and heart of an ocean storm by night—yeah, right. It was a stock scene out of myth, a lantern-light story to frighten the cabin boy with. It was a fucking tale.

It was five weeks now, and no one was calling him Krakenbane that he’d noticed.

He supposed it was for the best. He’d held enough commands in the past to know how it went. Best not to disabuse your men of their tight-held notions, whatever those might be. That went in equal measure for those who doubted him and those who told tales of his prowess. The actual truth would probably scare both parties out of their wits, and that, right here and now, was going to be counterproductive.

They were twitchy enough as it was.

He faced them. Put one booted foot on the forlorn, shin-high chunk of mossed-over granite that served the grave as marker. He pitched his voice for them all to hear—pearls of dark wisdom from the swordsman sorcerer in your midst.

“All right, people, listen up. Anyone wants to sprinkle salt, go right ahead, get it done. But if we stay here to fill this hole in, we’re going to get drenched.”

He nodded westward, out to sea. It was not long past noon, but the sour afternoon light was already closing down. Clouds raced in from the north, boiling up like ink poured in a glass of water. Overhead, the sky was turning the black of a hanged man’s face.

Yeah—be calling that an omen before you know it.

HIS MOOD DIDN’T IMPROVE MUCH ON THE WAY BACK TO THE BOATS. HE took point on the meandering sheep track that brought them down off the cliffs. Set a punishing pace over the yielding, peaty ground. No one made the mistake of trying to stay abreast or talk to him.

By way of contrast, there was raucous good cheer at his back. The marines had loosened up with the permission to lay wards. Now they tramped boisterously along behind him, good-natured bickering and jeering in the ranks. It was as if they’d poured out their misgivings with the salt from their tooled leather bags, left it all behind them in the tiny white traceries they’d made.

Which, Ringil supposed, they had, and wasn’t that the whole point of religion anyway?

But he was honest enough to recognize his own released tension as well. Because, despite all the other pointless, empty graves, despite his own increasingly solid conviction that they were wasting their time, he, too, had gone up to those cliffs expecting a fight.

Wanting a fight.

Little vestiges of the feeling still quivered at the nape of his neck and in his hands. Enough to know it had been there, even if he hadn’t spotted it at the time.

Last resting place of the Illwrack Changeling.

Again.

This being the ninth last resting place to date. The ninth grave of the legendary Dark King they’d dug up, only to find the detritus of common mortality beneath.

Has to be an easier way to do this shit.

Really, though, there wasn’t, and he knew it. They were all strangers here, himself included. Oh, he’d read about the Hironish isles in his father’s library as a boy, learned the arid almanac facts from his tutors. And growing up in Trelayne he’d known a handful of people who’d spent time there in exile. But this was not knowledge with practical application, and anyway it was decades out of date. Fluent Naomic aside, he had no useful advantage over his fellow expedition members.