Ian Esslemont - Assail

Reuth glanced to Ieleen then shook himself, remembering her blindness. ‘What should I do?’ he whispered.

She waved him onward. ‘Give him permission, lad!’

He hurried to the side. It was that barrel-shaped Genabackan captain. ‘Granted,’ he answered.

The big fellow came puffing up the gangplank. He was all smiles behind his greying beard. ‘Morning! Morning. And a damned frosty one too! Cold enough to freeze the tits from a-’ He caught sight of Ieleen and clamped his lips shut. ‘Sorry, ma’am.’

But she just smiled indulgently as she drew on the pipe then exhaled a great gout of blue smoke. ‘Look at us three,’ she murmured, choosing to ignore her own handicap. ‘A Falaran pilot, a Genabackan mariner, and a Mare navigator. We three smell it. Us with the knack of sensing the currents of sea and air. Yes, Enguf?’

The Genabackan was nodding as he stroked his beard. ‘Aye. The wind’s changed. It’s strong out of the north now. Not a good sign for us.’

‘I agree,’ Ieleen said around the stem of the pipe. ‘We must be ready. We may have to slip anchor in a rush.’

The Genabackan pirate cocked a brow. ‘Think you so? Unsettling news. The lads and lasses won’t like that.’

‘They sound miserable already.’

Enguf winced and dragged his fingers through his beard. ‘Aye. This whole venture’s been nothing but one disaster after another. I’ve had to put down three, ah … spirited debates regarding my leadership.’

Ieleen laughed with the pipe stem clamped between her teeth. ‘Look at it this way. You might be the only ship to return to the Confederacy. You can tell whatever stories all you damned well please, then.’

Enguf laughed uproariously and slapped Reuth’s shoulder. The fellow rather reminded him of his uncle. ‘And I shall!’ he promised. ‘You can be damned certain of that!’ He straightened. ‘I’ll keep your words in mind. Always prudent to weigh the words of a Falaran sea-witch. Until later, then.’ He clomped off to the gangway.

Reuth’s eyes had grown large at the man’s words. A sea-witch! Growing up in Mare, he’d heard nothing but ghastly stories of such sorceresses. Human sacrifices, eating babies, drinking blood! Every wicked practice imaginable! Swallowing to wet his throat, he ventured, ‘He called you a sea-witch.’

The old woman’s blind hoarfrost-white orbs swung to directly meet his own. Her wrinkled lips rose in a slow smile that seemed to promise she knew all he was thinking.

‘It’s just a term of affection,’ she said.

* * *

Mist sensed the approach of yet more newcomers. She was pacing before her throne, hands clasped behind her back, wondering on the mystery of this untimely chill flowing down from the north like an unwelcome breath. Had these pathetic invaders caused more trouble than she’d imagined?

Who, she wondered, would dare approach now in the mid-day? None of the horns had sounded announcing landing vessels; and she was certain none of her people would neglect that. Still, in the past, some parties had arrived overland, harrowing though the passage might be. She turned to the rear of the great meeting hall, calling: ‘Anger! Wrath! Rouse yourselves, you sodden wineskins! We have unannounced guests.’ Deep basso grumblings answered her from the dark.

She sat on the wooden seat, arranged the long trailing tag-ends of her gown, and summoned her sorcery. It was a melding she had crafted over the centuries of her innate access to Omtose Phellack and such lesser portals to power as were available in these southern lands.

Shadows moved in the light streaming in through the open way, out beyond the entrance hall. The flickering light pulled her gaze and she paused, bemused by what she sensed there. Something unfamiliar, yet also teasingly recognizable; like something she had sensed recently. Something she hadn’t liked.

Her magery now swirled about her in gossamer filaments and ribbons, spreading out to enmesh the entire hall in readiness. She turned her attention to the figures now entering the hall and the twitching tag-ends of coalesced fog, together with the scarves of vapour, all flinched as one.

Creatures out of legend. The threat so long predicted she’d long since laughed it away. The unrelenting, undying hunters. The Army of Dust and Bone.

The lead figure wore a cloak of stiff hide on which only a few sad patches of what was once perhaps white fur still remained. The eyeless head of the beast rode atop a mummified mien hardly any better preserved. A forest of bear claws rattled and clattered at his hollow chest. Ragged tattered pelts and skins wrapped a torso of flesh hard to differentiate from the leathers. A blade of pale brown flint, its grip wrapped in a leather strip, rode at a belt of woven leather.

The next one was in even worse shape, could that be possible. She, for Mist intuited that the dried cadaver had been female, had obviously been driven through by many savage blows. The cured leather of her hides hung in shreds. Wide tannin-stained cheekbones seemed to elongate the empty orbits of the eyes. Upper canines glinted copper-sheathed.

Behind these two leaders more of the undying entered, spreading out across the hall. Bony feet slid and clacked on the stone flags of the floor, dry hides brushed and rubbed. Mist imagined she could almost hear their joints creak and grate as the hoary ancients swung their heads to regard her.

She found that a sea of dark empty sockets casts a heavy weight.

She remembered who she was — her lineage — and loosed her grip on the armrests of her throne. She raised her chin, defiant even in the face of these foretold avengers, and worked to force the usual disdain into her voice. ‘What is it you wish, accursed ones?’

‘You know what we have come for,’ the lead undying answered — its voice was as the desiccated brushing of dead twigs across stone.

‘Then you have travelled far for nothing, as you shall not leave this hall.’

‘We shall see.’ He lifted a gnarled mangled hand of sinew and ligament-wound bone to his fellows.

‘A moment,’ Mist called, ‘if you would.’

At a small gesture from the foremost the female undying paused. ‘What is it?’ she answered, utterly uninflected.

‘May I know the names of those who would presume to level their ages-old judgement upon me?’

The lead one fractionally inclined its ravaged head. ‘I am Ut’el Anag of the Kerluhm T’lan Imass.’ He indicated the one next to him. ‘And this is Lanas Tog of my clan.’

Mist bowed her head a touch. ‘Greetings, ancients. I am Mist. And, with your permission, won’t you allow me to introduce my two sons?’ She raised her hand, beckoning, and to her hidden relief, heavy thumping steps sounded from the rear.

Unlike all her previous audiences, however, these visitors did not flinch nor back away as her sons emerged. She spared a glance upwards and saw that they, too, were not acting as usual: instead of their confident laughing grins they now wore hardened expressions. Their eyes were slit and lips compressed. Only the tips of their blunt yellowed tusks showed. They held their weapons readied.

‘This is Anger,’ she indicated, ‘and Wrath.’

Ut’el Anag regarded each in turn. ‘Such guards will not help you escape us.’

‘You misjudge me, Ut’el. I have no intention of escaping.’ And she swept her arms forward, unleashing her sorceries.

The closest ancients made straight for her throne; sweeps from Wrath’s man-tall sword and Anger’s great broad-axe knocked them all flying backwards to crash into the stone walls in a clatter of bone and fallen stone weapons.

Mist clenched her fists, enmeshing all within the tangling coils of her scarves of fog. Without thinking, she wasted precious seconds squeezing their throats, then remembered just who, and what, these were, and cursed herself.