Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 (33 page)

The second rope gave. A knife thrust into his side but he still wore his bone and leather vest and the blade skittered over it. He twisted his head away from another knife thrust, slit that wrist and took the knife away even as the hand reflexively opened. That knife then went straight across the nearest throat. An arm closed round his neck from behind. He punched up over his shoulder with the thin blade extended, exactly where one eye should be, and was rewarded by the scream of a hit; the arm yanked away in a slither of commingled sweat and blood.

None of them had even stood up yet. They grappled and twisted, heaved and wrestled in a slick hot heap. A kick from Dorin sent one into the brazier pot, upending it, and the fellow rolled away shrieking and batting himself. Greasy fingers groped and tried to gouge his eyes with broken nails; hands sought to twist and capture his arms. Sweat-slick, he slithered about, gasping and hissing his effort, and slid the knife down his side, opening up someone’s stomach in a gush of hot blood and bile.

A blade entered his thigh and another licked his neck. He twisted again, panicked. His groping hand found the grip of a second knife in a corpse’s belt. With both he slashed and thrust all about himself in a paroxysm of loathing and disgust. Then it was over – a bare four or five heartbeats was all it took. Yet already Dorin regretted it. He’d succumbed to blind fury and savagery in the moment. Now only he moved with any purpose among the piled bodies; all those who still lived clenched wounds, or spasmed in anguish.

No hands held him. All the limbs lying over him were flaccid. The bodies pressing against him were motionless or shuddering in the grip of fatal wounds. He straightened from the heap, pushed the slick limp arms from himself. Tottering, blood running in streaks down his legs and arms, he stepped over the dead and the maimed survivors. One fellow lay face up, gingerly fingering the blade standing from one eye as if he couldn’t believe it was actually there. Dorin calmly made for the nearest crossbow.

Pung had backed away until his rear pressed up against the forge; his face held a mixture of disbelief, rage, and horror. ‘Bastard!’ he yelled, and threw the bar, which flew wide. Dorin turned to him, a crossbow in each hand, the stocks braced against his sides. Blinking, Pung seemed to come to himself. He ducked from sight behind the forge.

‘You can’t escape,’ Dorin called. He raised the crossbows. ‘I’ve got you covered.’

The black market boss straightened up then, but he was not alone: he held a squirming youth before him by the neck. It was the lad from the bellows.

Dorin cursed silently as the man now slowly edged towards a rear door. He dropped one weapon to steady his aim; he’d have a shot, but the kid kept struggling, kicking his feet and flailing his arms.

‘Better run!’ Pung yelled. ‘I’ll find you, and I’ll have your head!’

Dorin advanced to keep a close shot, sighting carefully down the stock.

Then the ground shook and an enormous gust of dust and dirt came shooting up the tunnel mouth. The beaten-earth floor of the warehouse actually subsided in folds as Dorin staggered, blinking in the dust. He saw Pung similarly struggling to keep his footing. The roof groaned in a creaking and explosive snapping of thick timbers.

Dorin glimpsed the kid clamping his mouth on Pung’s forearm and heard the crime boss’s shout of pain and outrage. Then the boy was scampering away and Dorin snapped off a shot, but the earth was rocking and bucking and the bolt went wide. Pung darted out of the door.

A full section of the warehouse wall groaned, sagging, and Dorin spotted the lad. He was laughing and dancing some kind of jig amid the clouds of dust. Dorin snatched his arm and ran for the nearest way out.

‘It worked!’ the boy was laughing. ‘Worked!’

‘What worked?’

‘His trap! Ha ha!’

‘Trap? You mean this was deliberate? Not an accident?’

‘A’course! They come down there and whoosh! Buried!’

Coughing, Dorin waved the suspended dirt from his face. ‘What about the other lad?’

The boy stopped laughing, then shrugged. ‘Pillip? He knew. Musta run.’

At the wide front doors, Dorin propelled the lad onward, then paused. He glanced back to the buckled dirt floor and snorted his amazement, together with a kind of grudging respect. He saluted the dusty air with the crossbow then threw it in.
Well done, you crazy bastard. Well done.

More of Pung’s people, youths, enforcers and thugs, had all gathered to stare at the canted warehouse. But as he limped between them, shedding droplets of blood, smeared in dust and dirt, none challenged him as he headed for the main gate. They only stared with wide eyes at what he imagined must resemble a corpse that had dragged itself free of the freshly opened earth.

THE JOURNEY OUT
of Li Heng proved uneventful. Silk sat on the lead wagon, next to a grey-haired veteran scout named Buell, who kept a wad of some gods-forsaken leaves and dark sticky resin tucked into one cheek. The habit had stained his teeth the colour of leather. The train of ten wagons was guarded by a column of twenty Hengan regulars commanded by a young lieutenant named Venaralan.

As representative of the Protectress, Silk was officially in charge of the expedition. But he did not participate in any of the organization or daily running of the train, leaving that to Buell, and sat instead wrapped in a cloak, with his legs extended straight, a wide-brimmed hat low over his face against the sun, and dozed.

He knew that, as lifelong Hengans, soldiers and scouts alike were profoundly uneasy to be leaving behind the walls of their city and venturing out northward across the plains. He also knew that despite the Protectress’s assurances that they were safe from the predations of the man-beast, not one person with him today believed that he could defend them from the creature should it attack. He did not blame them for this lack of confidence in his abilities – not even he believed he could defend the column against Ryllandaras. No, what he chose to put faith in was the beast’s self-proclaimed devotion to Shalmanat. After all, such dedication was something he understood quite well.

And so he affected complete indifference, and the implied – he hoped – self-confidence this projected to the men and women.

The wagon wheels screeched and creaked, the seat rocked beneath him, and the mules pulled with surprising eagerness, their eyes rolling all white and their ears laid back flat in terror of the lingering scent of the man-beast. Buell reclined lazily with Silk, only occasionally snapping the long-handled switch in his hand, now and then leaning over the side to eject a stream of the sticky brown fluid from his mouth, and keeping up a streaming conversation for both of them.

‘Cold winter this year, neh?’ he observed, then carried on without even waiting for a response: ‘Bad for us. There’s those in the city who say the Kanese mages whipped it up, hey? What say you? Don’t think so m’self. After all, them Kanese must be freezing their peckers off, hey? What do you think of our fair-haired lieutenant? Sweet-cheeks I call him! Ain’t even felt a razor yet I don’t doubt, let alone the cheeks of a woman. Not that it matters if he was Greymane hisself should the beast come for us. I mean, it’s not like we’re gonna jump on to the mules and race to safety, is it?’

Uncomfortable with this topic, Silk tilted his head to cast the man a glance from under his wide hat. ‘Don’t you think ten wagons is a bit optimistic?’

‘No sir. Them Kanese emptied the barns and lofts all right. But these villagers are under orders to keep hidden stocks – caches and cellars, ’n’ such. Long overdue supplies owed to the city, this is – plus extra fees for being late. Ha! My fear is the damned Kanese will burn it all around our ears before we make it back.’

Silk thought he had a far greater chance of defending the wagons from the Kanese cavalry than from Ryllandaras and so he said, ‘Don’t worry about them.’

Buell chortled a laugh and spat out a stream of the chew. ‘Ho! Rather take on them fancy lancers, hey?’ And he laughed on and off for the rest of the afternoon, much to Silk’s irritation.

The gathering proceeded much as Buell predicted, though after the first sad collection of farmers’ hovels Silk couldn’t call it gathering so much as outright raiding and pillaging. The Hengan soldiers, footsore and chilled to the bone, gladly ransacked the huts and barns, stripping them of all stores. Further, as a lesson to all those slow to respond to their demands, they set fire to one farmer’s house.

Silk sat on a wagon bench, one foot up on the brake, feeling rather like the odd man out. He watched while farmers were beaten to reveal any further secret caches or cellars and deals struck for favours among both sexes. His one contribution was, when the soldiers began drinking, to send a look to Venaralan, as if to ask
Do we really have time for this?

The lieutenant, belatedly roused to assert his control over the men, set to shouting commands and beating the worst offenders with the flat of his blade. Order – if the word can be applied to wholesale stealing – was restored and the column rumbled off to the next hamlet.

One enraged peasant yelled after them: ‘We’d prefer a visit from the beast!’

The troops answered with rude gestures, heckling, and mocking laughter.

Once every hamlet and tiny clutch of farmers’ huts within two days’ travel had been visited, the column headed back towards Heng. Most of the wagons were full of barrels, crates and bales of staples such as barley, millet, preserves, and smoked or salted meat. The scouts had been out hunting as well; they trickled in through the day, in groups of three or four, carrying butchered haunches and sides wrapped in burlap that they heaved bodily on to the wagons.

Several of the scouts reported to Lieutenant Venaralan, who then ambled over to walk beside the lead wagon where Silk lounged. ‘We’re being shadowed,’ he said.

Silk raised his hat, sitting up, ‘Not . . .’

Venaralan shook his head. ‘No, not him. Riders. Crimson Guard. They’re hanging far back, but the scouts spotted them.’

‘Hunh. Why shadow us?’ Silk wondered aloud.

‘Can’t you guess?’ Buell answered, spitting. ‘They’re waitin’ for the beast to show, that’s what. Then they’ll pounce.’

Outraged, Silk sat up straighter, peering to the rear. ‘Burn-damned bastards . . .’

Buell chortled anew. ‘That’s the spirit! Why don’t you show ’em one of your fancy-pants tricks?’

Silk shot the fellow a glare. ‘In any case,’ Venaralan offered, ‘it’s nothing to us. All we can do is hope they’re disappointed, yes?’

Silk sat back, sighing and adjusting the brim of his hat against the lowering sun. He waved to the mules. ‘Can’t these things go any faster?’

‘Don’t see you pushin’,’ Buell answered.

They were still more than a day’s journey out when calls went up of glinting reflections to the east. Buell clambered up on to the tallest barrel and peered in that direction, shading his gaze. ‘Damn it to the Taker . . .’ he muttered.

‘What is it?’ Silk asked.

‘Armoured cavalry. Looks like them Kanese lancers.’

Silk couldn’t believe it. ‘Here in the north?’

Buell thumped down and snapped his switch over the mules. ‘East. Must be pickets guarding the trader road. Caught sight of us.’ He flicked the switch furiously; the mules brayed their complaints, but Silk detected no increase in their speed – not that it would make any difference.

‘No point in that,’ he commented.

Buell spat, growling his frustration. Venaralan jogged up to their side. ‘Circle the carts and wagons,’ he ordered.

Watching the column of cavalry approaching, their bright mail winking and glittering in the sun, their long green pennants flying, Silk had an idea. ‘No!’ he said. ‘Stay in line.’

The young lieutenant gaped at him. ‘That’s suicide! We must defend.’

‘I want them coming at us straight in a charge.’

‘They’ll slaughter us!’ Venaralan waved a negative. ‘With all respect, you’re not the military commander here.’

Silk stood up on the wagon, squinted out over the man to the closing column. ‘With all respect, I speak for the Protectress – so do as I command!’

‘Let the man shoot his bolt,’ Buell drawled. ‘I got ten Hengan rounds says he’ll do them dirty.’

The young lieutenant regarded the wagon-master darkly. ‘None of us will live to collect,’ he said, and dashed off, shouting to his troop, ‘Ready crossbows!’

Silk steadied his footing as the wagon bucked and rocked across the grassland. He threw off his wide hat and set to summoning his Warren. ‘Do you really have ten rounds on me?’ he asked Buell.

The old scout pushed more leaves into his cheek, grinning. ‘Naw. I’m just sicka all your boasting an’ big talk.’

‘Thanks for your support.’

‘No problem at all.’ Buell drew a short hunting bow from under the seat and readied a bag of arrows.

Silk reached within, but not for the familiar and ready entry of his Thyr paths. He reached far beyond his usual territory, and searched out instead that glimpse he’d been granted of the far heights of Liosan, or Thyrllan, as some sources name it. There, if he could but tap into it, resided far more potency than he would need. If he didn’t destroy himself in the act of summoning it.

He kept an eye on the lancers; they were cantering now, closing, bringing their lances to bear. They’d swing past in line, he knew, each taking a thrust as they thundered past the train. He waited for the chance to catch them all in line, and as close as possible.

‘Mage . . .’ Buell warned, uneasy, ‘time’s a-wastin’ . . .’

‘Soon . . .’ he murmured, fingertips on his forehead.
Gods! Dare I reach there? What will happen? Will I burn, as I’ve read of others foolish enough to push so far into the Warren? Well, dead is dead
. . .

As the column of Kanese cavalry swung close, dirt now flying from the charging hooves, their lances couched and lowered, Silk reached deeply into the churning puissance of raw power that was Thyr itself, searching for that brightness he’d glimpsed in the Protectress, and he touched something there far upon its distant boundary, something utterly alien to his mind.