Path of Revenge (69 page)

In almost comical fashion the Recruiters swung around again. Behind Noetos, Papunas, the rest of the miners and the remaining villagers lined out across the road. All but Dagla had their weapons out; the young lad struggled to draw his sword from a reluctant scabbard. He gave up, bent and picked up a stone.

Noetos withdrew the carving of Arathé from its place on his belt.

A deadly quiet fell.

‘Oh my,’ Noetos said, his voice loud, as it needed to be, echoing from Saros Rake to his right.

‘In the name of Andratan—’ one of the Recruiters began. Noetos never found out what the man was about to say, as at that moment the world exploded.

It was a much larger detonation than Noetos had expected. The air blurred with the force of it. Despite having braced himself when he signalled the alchemist, Noetos was knocked sideways by the blast; it lifted him from the road and hurled him onto the grass. All around him screams mixed with the
thumps of rocks and pattering of stones. Noetos fought to regain his feet as a cloud of dust descended upon him. A deep rumble came from the direction of the nearby cliff.

The over-enthusiastic idiot had brought down Saros Rake upon them. His plan was breaking apart.

As the rumbling above him grew louder, Noetos ran through the dust in the direction of his wife and son. He stumbled over a body—not Anomer’s but one of the young recruits, the girl, blood-spattered and broken. As he bent over her, his soldier’s sense gave him the merest warning: the blade that might have taken his head instead caught him with the flat on his left shoulder. Still strong enough to score the leather jerkin he wore—courtesy of some nameless victim at Makyra Bay—and knock him off balance.

The follow-up stroke came with a speed Noetos would not have believed possible. A killing blow. The fisherman thrust up his left hand to intercept the stroke. The sword took his smallest finger at the first knuckle and cracked against the huanu stone. Noetos roared in anger and tried to pull his hand back, a reflex from the intense pain.

His hand would not move.

The swordsman, the Recruiter with his cowl thrown back, struggled to retrieve his sword. It was fixed to the huanu stone in Noetos’s hand. The man’s eyes grew wider as it became clear he was trapped. The stone in the fisherman’s hand began to vibrate, to…
draw.
Through the sword. It pulled something from the Recruiter, something he tried to resist, judging by the look of terror in his eyes.

‘Let me go!’ the man screeched, spittle flying.

‘No,’ Noetos said.

Whatever the stone was doing to the Recruiter took less than a minute, perhaps twenty beats of the heart. In that time the sorcerer’s face went from
anger through shock to utter despair. He cast his head about, looking for help, but the dust haze obscured everything. The world condensed to two men on a country road. When the stone had accomplished its task it let the Recruiter go. The man slumped to the gravel, his sword clattering to the ground beside him.

‘What happened?’ Noetos asked hoarsely.

‘It took my magic,’ the stunned man breathed.

‘So, you are one of us now, courtesy of the stone you wanted to steal,’ Noetos said. ‘How does it feel?’

‘Kill me,’ the man rasped, his eyes dead.

‘That is a mercy I’ll grant.’ Noetos put the carving of Arathé back in his belt, then positioned the tip of his sword in the correct place, between the ribs, and slid it home using his left hand to push, spattering drops of his own blood onto the man’s robe. The Recruiter puffed out a single breath, the life leaving him as Noetos watched. He pulled the blade out and wiped it carefully on the dead man’s cowl, then tore off a strip of the fabric to bind his damaged finger.

Revenge is a bitter drink,
said Cyclamere.

You’re wrong, old man. I’ve never tasted anything sweeter. Now be silent while I seek out more.

A further rumbling, then a loud crack. ‘Oh, oh my, get out of the way!’ someone cried from high above them. Silence, then a roar that shook the earth.

Noetos wanted to remain where he was, intending to search for Anomer and Opuntia, but his feet had no intention of staying. He had gone perhaps fifty strides when Saros Rake came down behind him in a blast of air and rock.

This time the fisherman found shelter behind a large angular boulder that had no doubt arrived as a result of the first explosion. As he ducked behind the rock he saw that its edge had come to rest on the torso of a second Recruiter.

‘You’re not having much luck today,’ Noetos said to him, but the man’s eyes were rolled up in his head. Unconscious.

Noetos raised his blade and, despite the growing pain in his left hand, made sure the Recruiter remained that way.

Sweeter still,
he told the memory of his tutor.

After a while the grinding and crashing stopped, and Noetos emerged from behind the boulder to see the destruction Omiy had wrought.
At your behest,
he reminded himself, but he had not intended such a singularly catastrophic event. The dust from the second blast had settled somewhat, so he could see that the skyline had been forever altered. What had once been a steep slope of shale and broken rock, topped by a dark cliff-line, was now a hole torn from the escarpment’s roots. Grass, bushes and even trees had come down in the massive landslide.

Here and there other people began to emerge from whatever bolt-holes they had sheltered in. They looked around, eyes dazed, mouths agape.

‘Noetos! Over here!’

He ran in the direction of the shout, but it was not Anomer, just the third of the Recruiters, Ataphaxus, their leader, surrounded by Seren and his miners. A stand-off. Noetos wanted to ignore the summons. Let them deal with the man, while he went in search…

‘Where is my son?’

The Recruiter’s face set in a look of disdain. ‘Under the rubble. Who cares? This is about you, Roudhos, you and your stone. Give us the stone, surrender yourself to us, and we will allow everyone left alive here to go on their way.’

‘Us?’ Noetos said. ‘You are mistaken; there is no longer any “us”. Seren, take three of your men and bring back the bodies of the Recruiters. I want this man to reassess the position from which he attempts
to bargain. Don’t worry, he won’t try to escape, not with the huanu stone in my possession. We’ll wait here for your return.’

He sent as many as he could spare to begin the bleak task of searching through the debris. He desperately wanted to go with them, but wanted none of the Recruiters left alive.

By the time the miners returned, the last of the dust had settled. Still no sign of Anomer or Opuntia, and the fourth Recruiter and the remaining servant had not revealed themselves. Two of the returning miners carried between them the body of the first Recruiter Noetos had executed, while Seren bore a severed arm, which the miner eyed with revulsion.

‘Had to cut it off, fisherman,’ he said in explanation. ‘The boulder was too heavy t’ lift.’ The overseer threw the limb down at the feet of the Recruiter, whose face paled by the barest margin.

‘So I can no longer bargain with you, Roudhos. No matter; there is still plenty to discuss.’

‘Call me that again and I will kill you,’ Noetos said.

‘Fisherman, then. I merely intended to indicate that, with a word from Andratan, I could place you on the throne of a revived kingdom of Roudhos. Bring the arrogant Neherians down at a stroke, to place them under your feet. Does that appeal, fisherman?’

All around Noetos the miners stilled as the implications came home to them. Questions would follow, Noetos knew. Curse the man.

‘Ignore him, boys. The man’s a snake. He knows nothing of my past.’

‘Oh? Enough to know you would relish the chance to strike at Neherius.’

‘Who wouldn’t?’ one of the miners said, only to be shushed by his fellows.

‘I would relish a meeting with my son or my wife far more,’ Nooetos said. ‘Should either of them be
harmed, my anger at Neherians will be as nothing to the rage I’ll let loose on Andratan and its servants. Disarm him, Seren.’

‘I offer you this, then, in good faith,’ said the Recruiter as he gave up his sword. ‘Your Hegeoman and his men came upon us at the moment of chaos.’ He cast an awed glance up at the profile of Saros Rake. ‘After that I saw nothing of either prisoner. The rubble may have taken them, in which case I judge you to be responsible for their deaths for initiating such a foolish, indiscriminate ambush. Or they may lie to the south of us, having escaped the rock fall.’

‘Come with me, then,
prisoner
,’ Noetos snarled. ‘And if you think to escape, remember I subdued your fellows with sword and stone. I have no doubt I can do the same to you.’

The Recruiter, cowl askew, stumbled forward at the point of Noetos’s sword. The miners he sent in various directions, to search a second time for any sign of the living amongst the detritus spread over the Tochar road.

He found Opuntia dying in the arms of Bregor, some distance from the road, in a brake of thorn bushes.

‘She was carved by one of the Recruiters,’ Bregor whispered, his eyes averted from the bright red blood staining her pale robe. ‘Just after your explosion. Before I could get to her.’

‘Opuntia, I—’ Noetos began.

‘Leave us be, fisherman,’ Bregor growled, his face misshapen with grief. ‘Let her pass in peace. She was always far more mine than yours.’

‘What?’

‘She hates you, cretin. Hates your selfishness, your wickedness, your deception. Thanks to the Recruiters, she dies knowing she could have been a queen. Do you think she wants you here to witness her final humiliation?’

‘I didn’t mean…’

His explanation came to a halt. There had to be something he could say, some way of making her understand him, but her face was turned away from him, buried in the Hegeoman’s shoulder. Noetos watched her chest rise and fall, slowly, shallowly, unevenly.

‘Go and look for her son. Opuntia tells me he was alive and unharmed, borne away by the Recruiter who cut her. Go. Leave her to someone who loved her.’

Eyes blurring as if trying to erase the tableau before him, his heart clenched in the merciless fist of truth, Noetos could do nothing but obey.

‘This is the sort of thing the King of Roudhos could have prevented,’ said Ataphaxus conversationally. ‘With my help—’

Noetos sunk a fist into the man’s stomach. The Recruiter folded around the blow, then crashed to the ground, trying to catch his breath.

‘You are to blame for this, not me,’ Noetos said, his voice rattling in a constricted throat. ‘We have nothing to talk about.’

It took a series of gasping breath before the Recruiter was able to nod his head in agreement.

Noetos had used his right hand for the blow. He could feel nothing from his injured left hand.
Shock is an effective pain killer.

As they reached the road, Noetos heard a rattling sigh, accompanied by a loud sob from the Hegeoman.

The fisherman’s dream of a normal life, of a quiet existence, one far removed from the destiny to which he’d been raised and run from, had just died.

Anomer they found alive.

His son sat on rocks down by the Saar River, a few hundred paces from the road. The landslide had reached even here, flowing in a rush across the river,
damming three channels, though water seeped through. Two bodies lay floating in the water behind the dam, and Anomer watched them spin slowly in the spiralling water.

Noetos climbed gingerly over the crumpled debris, signalled the Recruiter to stand where he could be seen, and sat himself down next to Anomer.

‘Your mother is dead,’ he told his son.

The boy made no movement at the sound of his father’s voice. ‘That’s Cutalian, the servant of the Recruiters, floating in the water,’ he said in a voice so low Noetos had to struggle to hear it. ‘He told me I’d make a great sorcerer.’

Noetos said nothing.

‘And there’s Jamik beside him. Such a gifted swordsman, and he was only thirteen. He always defeated me when we sparred. Why? Why did they have to die?’

My boy thinks he’s dead, too,
Noetos realised.
The shock has him. He sees himself lying face down in a river, or crushed under rock.

‘I saw Mother slain,’ his son said. ‘Bilitharn slid his long knife into her, right to the hilt. She didn’t say anything, even when it came out with her blood on it. He went for me next, but Ataphaxus stopped him.’

‘So I should be thankful one member of my family remains alive?’ Noetos said, unable to keep the pain from his voice.

‘But Mother is dead,’ Anomer said, his own voice breaking. ‘Why did you interfere? They promised we would be unharmed if you surrendered to them. They would be restrained in their dealings with us, they said. Instead…’ He indicated the bodies in the water pooling behind the landslide. ‘How many have died?’

Noetos grabbed his son’s arm in what he hoped was a painful grip. ‘Have you forgotten your sister? Where
was the Recruiters’ restraint then? How could I leave you in their hands?’

‘They were not all evil,’ Anomer said. ‘Ataphaxus protected me from Bilitharn.’

‘Are you asking me for mercy on his behalf?’ Noetos jerked a thumb at the Recruiter. How could Anomer wish for such a thing? These were the men who had enslaved and used Arathé, who had killed Opuntia. The boy was not thinking clearly. Shock, no doubt. He did not answer Noetos’s question.

Noetos himself was finding it difficult to think with any clarity.
Opuntia.
Her name clattered through his mind like a landslide. Her white face staring at the wreck of her daughter.
Clatter, clatter.
Her slim fingers unlacing his tunic.
Clatter.
Her voice, measured and precise, giving assent to his wedding vows.
Clatter.
The memories threatened to bury him. Yet her face was hazy in his mind’s eye, as though obscured by dust.

Mercy? He owed the man Ataphaxus nothing. The Recruiters had destroyed his life. What he would do to the man was just.

He called for the others in a loud voice. Eventually the miners made their way down from the road and gathered around him.