Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion) (19 page)

Rathe set to work again. “Sitting still makes me nervous.”

With a shake of his head, Loro shucked his dagger and began running the sharpening stone over the blade. “That’s a sickness, brother. Must be. Why, I could lay about half the day, and not feel a bit of unease.”

Rathe gave him a lopsided grinned. “When I’m your age, I’ll likely feel the same.”

“I’m not so old as that, you spindly shit. I just look it because my hair started falling out when I was still on the teat.” Loro scratched his chin, eyes narrowed in thought. “No, I expect your need to labor is on account of being fidgety. For myself,” he went on, ignoring Rathe’s scowl, “I see no need to exert myself without reason. Waste of energy.”

“Some call that sloth,” Rathe laughed, arming more sweat from his brow.

Loro grinned wryly. “Fidgety folk invented the word sloth to make themselves feel better about being so fidgety. Look at you, working up a sweat on such a cold day. None of the crewmen are working so hard.”

Rathe glanced at the sailors in question, and wondered what Loro saw that he didn’t. A few held their hands over a smoldering brazier near the mainmast, but the rest were taking turns clearing the deck of snow, or knocking ice from the rails, yardarms, and shrouds. Gnat used a long brass eyeglass to search the banks of the river. After the first glimpse of Edrik’s company shadowing the
Lamprey
, they hadn’t been seen since.

Rathe set to clearing the deck again. “I grew up hoeing poor soil, planting crops, reaping crops, chopping wood for the cook stove. The work was endless,” he said, remembering the aches that formed in his hands and shoulders, the baking heat of the sun in high summer cooking his head, the way dirt migrated into every crevice on his body, leaving him chapped and raw in places he would rather not consider.

“Seems like you’d have learned your lesson,” Loro said.

“I learned to hate cabbage and parsnips,” Rathe admitted. “Too much work to grow something that doesn’t do a thing to fill your belly. I feel the same about most things that come out of the ground.”

“From the stories I’ve heard about the Ghosts of Ahnok, you must’ve also had an abiding hatred for crofters.”

Rathe cringed at the rush of memories. Wizened Captain Nariq, seeking levies for King Tazzim’s legions, had traded Rathe’s hoe for the hilt of a sword when he was no more than ten years old, setting him on the path of a soldier. Nothing he had ever done was harder, and he had earned much glory, but he had also spilled much blood. Toward the end, most of it had fallen from innocent crofters and village folk. “I was a soldier. I received my orders, and I followed them.”
To my regret
, he didn’t add.

“We of the City Watch had orders, too,” Loro drawled. “Course, I rarely followed them. I remember once—”

Murmurs went through the crew, cutting Loro short. Rathe glanced over his shoulder to see Fira crossing the deck with Nesaea by her side. The fire-haired woman had washed her face and hair, and other than a slight green tint to her cheeks, she looked much better.

“Seems Liamas’s potion worked,” Rathe observed.

Loro slid his bulk off the barrel and sauntered toward her with a wide grin. Fira brushed by him without a word and made her way to Liamas, who was also grinning. His grin grew wider when she stretched up and planted a lingering kiss on his lips.

For a moment, the only sound was crunching ice and creaking oars. Then the crew exploded with a round of hoots and catcalls. Fira blushed furiously, Nesaea’s mouth fell open, and Liamas puffed up. Rathe glanced at Loro. His great bald head had developed a scrawling map of throbbing veins.

“Let it be,” Rathe began, but Loro was already stalking forward, his dark eyes fixed on the Prythian giant. He swept Fira behind him. She slid on the icy deck and plopped down on her arse.

“Fool!” she cried, wincing as she tried to stand with Nesaea’s help.

Liamas’s grinning mouth became a flat, bloodless line. Loro glared back. All at once, the crew was in motion, making a broad ring around the two men, somehow managing to cut out Rathe and Nesaea, but leaving Loro, Fira, and Liamas in the center.

“I wonder if you should do something?” Nesaea asked, standing on her tiptoes to get a better look.

Rathe shook his head, resigned. Sometimes a rock was too big to stop from rolling downhill. “From the start, these two have been at each other like strange dogs. Now, with Fira kissing Liamas, well….”

Nesaea grinned mischievously. “She was only thanking him.”

“That’s not how Liamas or Loro sees it, nor the crew.”

Nesaea glanced his way, eyebrows raised. “Surely you are not saying this is her fault?”

Rathe was not about to let himself be dragged into what he considered childish foolery. “A kiss on the cheek might’ve gone over better. Of course, we are talking about Loro—a smile and a word might’ve been too much for him.”

“Fira is almost as bad.” Nesaea said. “I expect she wanted to goad him, which might turn out worse than she believed.”

As the crew began chanting for a fight, Loro and the hulking quartermaster continued to stare at one another, deadly silent.

“Hopefully they won’t kill one another,” Rathe said. “I don’t fancy Captain Ostre tossing us overboard.”

Nesaea’s eyes went wide. “You don’t think it will come to that, do you—killing, I mean?”

Rathe allowed himself a rueful chuckle. “There’ll be a fair amount of blood and bruises, but no more than that.”
I hope
.

Nesaea’s worried look fell on Loro, and Rathe knew she understood what he did. Loro was a man of few passions, but they were fierce. Losing didn’t necessarily mean he would quit.

“Enough!” Ostre’s roar froze everyone. Glowering, he shoved his way through the circle of men. “What’s all this?”

“This reeking heap of pigshit wants a fight,” Liamas said, stripping off his coat and tunic to reveal a towering frame corded with muscle and sheathed in scarred, golden skin. Loro scowled so fiercely that the crew’s thundering approval of their champion fell silent. Even Captain Oster waited in silence.

Loro flung off his bearskin cloak, then pointed at Liamas. “Have a good look, friends, for I’m about to bathe this poxy whoreson in his own blood.”

Liamas’s grin came back. Having fought beside Prythians from the first day he joined the legions, Rathe knew the warriors of Pryth fought for the sheer joy of it, even if that meant fighting amongst themselves.

Loro showed no concern. He wrenched off his steel-scaled jerkin and the padded tunic beneath, and hurled them into the ring of onlookers. Where Liamas was golden, Loro was nut-brown and covered in a pelt of bristling black hair. While he might not have the teats of a grandmother, as observed by the tailor Master Abyk, he was unquestionably fatter than Liamas. Yet, under all that drooping suet, he carried a bull’s size and strength.

“So be it,” Captain Ostre said. “But before we begin, I’d hear the grievance.”

Loro spoke up first. “This bastard’s been itching to get my woman out of her clothes since she came aboard. Now he’s gone and given her a witch’s brew to get her all wet—”

Fira’s full-armed slap cracked against Loro’s face. He backed up a step, his jaw bunching under the red handprint forming on his stubbled cheek. He shouted something at her, but the rowdy crew overrode him.

“Enough!” Ostre bellowed again. When all was quiet, he went on. “I cannot be rid of my quartermaster—” he wheeled toward Loro “—and I cannot in good conscious toss your wretched arse over the rail, so I see no choice but to let you two settle this with fists.”

“Aye,” Loro and Liamas declared at once.

Fira’s brow knotted in worry, but whatever she might have said was lost when the crew gently but firmly hauled her outside the ring.

“Liamas will crush him,” she said, joining Rathe and Nesaea.

Rathe didn’t want to believe it, but Nesaea had detailed Liamas’s exploits against the crew of the
Crimson Gull
. While he had no doubt about Loro’s fighting abilities, the Prythian stood a head and a half taller than Loro, and had most likely been fighting since he could walk.

Ostre laid out the rules. “There’ll be no biting or tearing at the other man’s tenders, and no trying to break his neck. When the contest is over, I expect the winner and the loser to put all this nonsense aside. We’ve a ship to sail, and the gods of winter are bent on making sure we stay in the Iron Marches.”

“Agreed,” Liamas said.

“Agreed,” Loro said.

Ostre, looking somewhat excited, joined Rathe and the others. “There’s no need for you ladies to watch,” he said to Nesaea and Fira.

“He’s my lover,” Fira said grudgingly. “I must make sure he doesn’t get killed.”

“There’ll be none of that,” Ostre assured her.

Rathe noted the eager sheen in Nesaea’s violet eyes when she said, “I cannot think of a better way to pass the time.”
My goddess of snow and silver
, he thought, remembering how she had worn a similar expression the few times he had seen her fight.

“Very well,” Ostre said, and led them up a short flight of stairs to the poop deck. After brushing snow off the rail, he leaned forward. “Are the contestants ready?

Liamas answered by rolling his thick neck.

“Let’s get on with it!” Loro bellowed, slamming a fist against his chest.

“They’re like a pair of cocksure roosters,” Fira said, her voice somewhere between marveling and fearful.

“They’re men with bruised pride,” Rathe said.

“Pride is nothing but a cause for trouble,” Fira said, as if she had not known that provoking Loro might lead to this.

For himself, Rathe knew that if a man had been sniffing around Nesaea, his weapon of choice would not have been fists, but steel … and steel had a nasty way of stilling hearts.

“Begin!” Oster called.

Loro and Liamas began circling each other in the falling snow, their feet leaving prints on the slushy deck. Liamas resembled a great cat, hungry and determined. Loro was akin to a bear that had enjoyed a good long season of feasting.

“Are they going to do something?” Nesaea asked, after the opponents had spent several minutes taunting each other.

“Liamas is just taking a measure of your fat friend,” Ostre said confidently. He leaned over to Rathe. “Care to wager a spot of gold?”

Rathe didn’t have much choice but to choose the side of his companion, but he did so willingly. Irritating as Loro could be, the man had stood at his side when others fled. “Free passage if Loro wins. If he loses, then double your price.”

Ostre nodded enthusiastically.

Loro has a better than fair chance
, Rathe was telling himself, when Liamas’s fist suddenly hooked across his body, blindingly fast, and cracked against Loro’s chin with a sound akin to mallet thudding into a wheel of cheese. The watchers roared as Loro staggered away, his arms windmilling. When Loro regained his balance and set his feet, their exuberance faded to murmurs of awe. Growling, Loro shook his head. The quartermaster’s victorious grin collapsed.

“Damn me,” Ostre muttered. “Never seen a man take such a blow from Liamas…. But have no fear, my quartermaster has faced strong men before.”

“He’s never faced Loro,” Rathe said, voice low. He had seen Loro chew the face off a Hilyoth before, one of the Shadenmok’s devil-hounds.

Loro laughed as he stalked close. “If you wanted to kiss and tickle, then why not say so?”

The crew erupted in cheers.

When the Prythian’s fist struck again, Loro absorbed the punch and laughed all the harder. Rathe found himself growing excited enough to forget the perpetual cold and snow. He did, however, notice Nesaea pressing against him, her eyes wild and beautiful. Fira’s lips formed a delicate pink circle, but she didn’t speak a word.

Loro ducked when Liamas swung a third time, and the Prythian’s fist smacked against the top of Loro’s skull. Dancing backward, shaking his wounded hand, the quartermaster cursed in pain. Loro plowed forward, head lowered, and smashed into the Prythian. With a strangled
oof
, the quartermaster floundered into the ring of crewmen, who shoved him back.

While Liamas struggled to draw a wheezy gasp, Loro raised his fists to the sky and made a slow turn. “Better get another champion! This one’s soft as an old whore’s teats!”

Liamas’s face went ugly, and he charged.

“Behind you!” Fira shouted.

Loro spun. When Liamas’s fist came swooping in, Loro lowered his head again. This time the cracking sound was different, more of a sodden crunch. Liamas jumped away, hand held against his chest. Three of the fingers looked like a mangled claws.

“Broke his fool hand on the man’s skull!” Ostre gasped in dismay.

“Double the wager?” Rathe asked.

Ostre’s black beard shook in agitation. “Aye,” he rumbled.

Loro swung around the big Prythian, shouting insults against everyone from the man’s mother to his unborn children, before bulling his way inside the quartermaster’s guarded stance. Instead of battering Loro’s head again, Liamas hammered an elbow against Loro’s spine. The fat man’s feet went out from under him and he crashed to his knees. Liamas landed a thudding kick to the side of Loro’s face, knocking him sprawling. Nesaea clutched at Rathe’s arm, and Fira moaned behind a raised hand.