The King's Blood (60 page)

"Well, a tower shouldn't be so hard to find. They tend to stick out a bit," she said encouragingly as Aldrin slipped all his research away. In the commotion, the still poorly secured sword dropped to the ground.

He scooped it up and tried to slot it back into place. The rusty blade was becoming his personal signature. Taban, in a moment of pity for the thing, offered to put it out of its misery, but Aldrin refused. The edge was still mostly sharp, and there was a good chance he could kill someone with lockjaw. The assassin mumbled something about 'underfed snowmen dressed in rags waving about broken farm equipment' but did not continue the discussion. Aldrin, in a pique of teenage stubbornness, began to carry the sword everywhere, even if it didn't want to be.
 

"Well, tomorrow we find if we're on the right track to the Tower, one way or the other." Absently checking the hidden pommel of her own dagger, Ciara rose and returned back to the tent.

Aldrin's mouth opened, hoping something brilliant would fill it.

But instead an exasperated scream cracked through the woods, "...thank the heavenly bowl of noodles! It makes as much sense!"

At the witch's outburst the two teenagers giggled. Aldrin sighed theatrically and turned back to his little fire, "Here's hoping we last that long."

"I spy with my little eye...."

"My fist in your face."

"Isa, that's cheating. You've made the same guess each time," Kynton chided as he danced away from the witch.

"And she's been correct each time, as well," Taban muttered, trying to not chuckle at the pair. Travel was tedious, even in the best of times. It was a strangely refreshing pace to add a few companions into the mix. Though he could do without the sulking prince.

Aldrin wasn't sulking; he was brooding as a wayward patch of snow made its way towards his underthings. It was inevitable that a snowball fight were to break out; started, of course, by the priest who pranced about in the slush as if he'd never seen it before.

"Oooh! I bet I can make a snow demon!" Kynton shouted before flopping flat on his face into a drift and turning his knees inward to mimic the hind legs of a deer.

No one was in a rush to tell him the traditional route of snow monster making was done on ones back, instead they all paused their march through desolate fields as the priest pushed off his demonic knees to rise and take in his work. A large clump of snow pelted into the back of his cropped hair. His head snapped around, searching for the source of the snowball, just as another smacked into his chin, joining its fellow snow brethren.
 

As he wiped the cold sting from his eyes he glared at the witch, whose hands were wrapped tightly around her walking stick, nary a snowball in sight. Isa glared back, making certain he knew she was above such things.

Kynton looked just in time as the desert blossom scooped another handful of white into her black palm and took aim, a bright smile taking over her stern face. "Oh ho! Well two can play at that game," he taunted, leaning over and scooping as much of the white stuff into his oversized fists as he could.
 

He lined up the shot, raising his arm high over his head, when another snowball, thrown from behind, smashed into his elbow, causing his own to crash onto his head. The princeling gave the most unroyal of snorts after his snowball hit.

"Two against one, that is most unfair. You, assassin," he called to Taban, who watched the children the way a father supervises playtime around dangerous open pits, "Join my side. We have biscuits!"

Taban didn't flinch his arms; he only blinked slowly at the sight of a snow-drenched priest begging for his assistance, when a blob of muddied snow splatted into the scar along his cheek. The assassin wiped the offender off and turned to Ciara, who grinned widely and threw another that lost itself in the folds of his overcoat.

"The battle is joined," he said, dashing into the trees, Kynton hot on his heels.

It was not a battle the bards would ever sing of, or the poets would ever write of, or ol' Roger the Limerick Maker of Parts Unknown would ever put to bathroom stall, but for those brief hours it was life and death for the warriors. Well, life and slightly colder and wetter life.

Isa tapped her foot impatiently, slowly melting the snow below her with the friction of anger. She tried to ignore the quartet of idiots running about the small clearing, lobbing hunks of ice and snow at each other while shouting "For the motherland!" or "From Hell's Heart I Lob at Thee!"

They were running out of ideas and at one point a bedraggled Kynton shouted, "Shave and a Hair Cut!" catching what was supposed to be a hiding Aldrin who responded with, "Two Bites," and got pelted in the face.

"A hem," Isa coughed quietly, finally reaching her wit's end. The assassin ran past her, his thighs struggling in the drifts near the trees, as Ciara followed from behind, her skirt tucked inside her boots. She shouted something wild and, as Taban turned to face her, she dodged to the side, catching a bemused and slightly lost Aldrin. The two plopped to the ground, disappearing into the drifts.

It should have been the end of it, but as the prince and his servant struggled back to their feet, the vultures circled around, eyeing up their prize. Kynton and Taban wadded as much snow into their mitts as they could manage. A burst of light cracked from Isa's hand, the force of magic stronger than thunder. Every eye turned back on the witch who radiated rage like the summer sun.

"Look upon yourselves! Each of you, wasting your time, your energy, for what?"

"There's this thing called 'fun.' Perhaps you've heard of it," Kynton tried to break her mood but he stepped deep into a pit he had no hopes of escaping.

"Fun?" the pale eyes somehow glared down at his, "It is fun for a man to run from his duty, from his god, from everything that makes him a man?"

"Ah...sometimes."

"And you," the witch turned to Taban, "You know what duty means. It is how you convince yourself you are no murderer."

The assassin crossed his arms, a pants wetting move, as anyone in Dunner knew it meant his palms were already wrapped around something sharp. But the witch brushed it off, rounding on the prince who was still trying to steady himself on Ciara.

"Lord Aldrin, Prince of Ostero, who spends his nights knee deep in the common muck."

"If he's using his knee the kid needs a few more anatomy lessons," Kynton mumbled behind his hand.

"You look to everyone else to lead for you, every other eye to see what you refuse to, every other mind to decide what you dare not, every other vein to bleed for you. As a king, you'd watch your own kingdom crumble around you."

Aldrin stood up and glared into the pale eyes, trying to find his own defense hiding within. Any argument slipped from his tongue as sparks of blue danced within Isa's white iris. The witch smiled bitterly, "My mother chose wisely, there are few with spines as frail as yours." She turned to walk away from the broken group slowly shifting away from each other.

"And what of me," Ciara cut in, the only one to face down the witch and her wordy attack, "what condemnation do you have for me?"

Isa paused, and without looking over her shoulder said coldly, "I would expect no less from a servant."
 

Everyone fell into a darkened line after that, occasionally shooting their own evil eye at the smug witch. Kynton shook her barbs off first, as if they hadn't snagged, trying to get her to have a moment of joy. The assassin had walked enough of his worlds, answered to fitful nights, and risen to bloody mornings, to let the words of some barely fully woman cadî dig under his flesh. Ciara ignored her as she always did, wishing the curse Aldrin's rescue had placed upon them would magic her own ass far away. Only the princeling seethed, his steps falling heavy beside Ciara who'd watched with some concern his head sinking deep into his chest in anger and shame. It seemed a certain way to cause irreparable spine damage.

"Smell that?" Kynton said as he took in a deep breath, "sea air."

He thumped his chest as if he were about to charge a fellow blue back gorilla and spread his arms wide. Isa raised her stick as if she were afraid the priest was about to transform into something otherworldly. As Kynton's eyes slowly lolled open, memories of his younger days by the seaside castle flitting away, he watched the witch waving her staff about in terror and smiled. "What? You've never smelled the sea before?"

She refused to put down her weapon, pale eyes watching the priest's still outstretched hands for something dangerous, "Enough to know that is not a reaction of normals. The sea smells of rotten fish and seagull dung."

"I know," he smiled wide enough his cheeks would burst, "just like home."

"You come from the rotting carcass of a whale?" Isa pressed, fighting off her own unhappy memories of a sea and a trip away from an uneventful life.

Kynton bowed, "My lady, isn't that a bit too formal for us? Our parents haven't even been introduced."

The witch scowled and lowered her stick, as if it were any danger outside of some slight swelling along his abdomen. But Aldrin snagged an opportunity he rarely took to pile onto Isa, "Her mother is a big scary witch. I doubt any would want to meet her."

It wasn't his best, but it did have the intended effect of digging under Isa's scales. Her pale eyes turned on him and a finger badly in need of a manicure waved under his nose, "Do not speak of things you do not understand, boy."

"Why not? How else will one learn?" Aldrin asked back with such sincerity Isa was dumbstruck. She snapped her head from the priest, to the servant, and back at the prince before gathering up her skirt's edge and climbing up the hill obscuring the horizon, muttering curses under her breath.

Kynton slugged Aldrin in the back, causing some minor spine damage on his own, "That was bloody beautiful my boy! But next time, try'n bring up her weight. That always pisses girls off."

The priest's blessing made Aldrin feel dirtier than he already did.
 
He hung his head and looked sheepishly over at Ciara, who, in a strange fit of womanly camaraderie, followed after Isa. The witch was struggling with the hill; her smaller stride unable to find purchase in the slippery ground but the walking staff provided remarkable assistance. For once, Ciara wished she had one.

Isa's plump posterior rose in front of her as the witch claimed the hill as her own before disappearing over the side. Ciara dropped to her hands to help steady herself against the ice, clinging to clumps of snow she was suddenly in no mood to toss at anyone. Her eyes were still on the ground as she rose to the top to join Isa.

"That was a right pain in the ass. Scepticar should install stairs in some of these hills," Ciara muttered to herself. As she brushed the mud off her hands and looked up, her voice fell silent.

Like burst cherries upon the snow, tossed and broken where they fell, clumps of bodies dotted the horizon below them. The blood, aged to the color of wine, ate away at most of the snow before freezing itself and turning a sickening purple. Swords and other broken weapons were all that marked the incredibly shallow graves of the forgotten and fallen warriors. The only movements were the black birds, dancing about the corpses, hunting for their own loot from the decomposing treasure chests.

Aldrin, broken free from the man's club, joined the women staring in shock at the battlefield. "Oh gods, what happened here?"
 

"Your war," Isa said simply, "Part of it, at least."

The prince shook his head, as if that could erase the memory of the crow dislodging an axe buried deep inside some poor nameless man's brain to peck at the gray matter below. "No. How? The Empire's...somewhere else," he tried to argue, finding it difficult to piece together his thoughts on cartography as the sea air carried the sadly familiar scent of decay and death.

"Look around you, boy," Isa scolded, "Your war has begun, whether you admit it to yourself or not."

"You do not know it is the Empire, it could be a local skirmish," Ciara argued, knowing all too well how often those would break out if someone let their prized hounds crap all over someone else's hunting grounds.

Taban coughed politely. The assassin was dangerously light on his feet and knew when to make a more pronounced entrance. "Their corpses will offer identification."

Rather than waiting for the boy prince to object he walked down the hill solemnly, slotting his bow back across his shoulders after drawing it at the child's outburst. Ciara looked over at Aldrin who was still dumbstruck at the seemingly limitless bodies stretched across the frozen land. His frozen land.

"Who died?" Kynton asked, slapping Aldrin on the shoulder, before looking out towards the seascape, "Oh, everyone."

The witch didn't even bother zapping the inelegant priest and, taking her skirt into her hand, followed behind the assassin with Ciara trailing both. A dark hand, uncovered despite the snow in deference for the dirty job, slid aside a fallen arm revealing a chest of armor that had been a washtub in another life. A crudely painted bird graced the front, its tongue lashing out to the side. Ignoring the anatomical confusion of a bird with a tongue, Taban flipped over the man piled on top of him, this one in armor he purchased off one of those wandering peddlers who are in no way yanking it off the dead, repainting it, and selling for a serious markup *wink wink*. The painted eagle was replaced by a bat? Bear? Cougar with a head cold? It was difficult to tell, but its tongue also leaned to the right.