The Undead King: The Saga of Jai Lin: Book One (13 page)

“Watch the rest of them, Skrim. Let’s go, henpecker. We’re going to the river.”

Bob loosed Crow from the post he had been tied to and prodded him along. Crow itched all over but couldn’t do anything about it as he still had his hands tied behind his back. As they came closer to the mess tent, the other slavers waved, and asked where Bob was going.

“I’m bringing this henpecker to the Hud for a dunking!” Bob yelled, excitedly. Some of the other slavers cheered. The girl with the back tattoo watched, as did Matchless, his arm around her waist. On his mountainous back was strapped his bastard sword, while the gun he had shot into the air the evening before was propped up against the table next to him.

“You come back quick, Bob. You hear me? I don’t want the Boat People seeing you dunking our product. They’ll turn around and buy from another group of slavers downriver.”

“Yes sir, Matchless, sir. I’ll be back right quick. Just got to cool this henpecker down.” Bob pushed Crow, so hard that he almost fell. The slavers all laughed, the loudest of all being the fat oaf who had Crow’s knives. He tottered on his stumpy legs, drunk on whatever the slavers were drinking with their slop, and had one of the sharp knives in his hand. Crow watched as the fat man turned and threw one of the knives at a goat that was tied to a stake and weakly bleating. The knife embedded itself in the creature’s hide, adding to the other wounds that marked its body. The goat fell to the ground and exhaled its last breath while the fat man cheered his easy sport.

Crow felt his insides wrapping around themselves and his cheeks growing hot at his father’s knives being used for such a disgusting game. The fat man pulled on the thin silver thread that was attached to the knife’s hilt, bringing it back to him. His hands were too clumsy, though, and he was off in catching it. The sausage-link fingers wrapped around the blade, and the whole camp filled with a howl of pain. Blood began to pour from the fat man’s hand. Crow smiled to himself in silent triumph, hoping that the fat man would throw the knives back in the munitions cart and take up a spear or gun in exchange.

“What you smiling at, henpecker?” Bob asked, roughly pushing him again. The hill was sloping down to the shore of the Hud, the grass giving way to a sandy mixture of clay and stone. The squat stone ruins surrounded them on both sides, and what had once been a fence made of linked metal wire was now trampled into the mud, small islands of criss-crossed highways in a sea of dirt. The river Bob was pushing Crow towards was brown and violent from the autumn rains. Driftwood floated by in regular intervals, gulls watching them pass disinterestedly from their perches atop the buildings.

“Let’s go!” Bob said when they got up to their thighs in water. “Down on your knees!”

“You should just let me go, Bob. Or else I’m not only going to kill you, but every single person in that tent. And it won’t be a quick death, oh no. I’ll_” Bob cracked Crow in the back of the head with the butt of his spear, then put another well-placed hit to the back of Crow’s knees. Crow dropped, his head now ringing with a high pitched screech.

“You shut your hole, henpecker, before Matchless stitches it up for you. Don’t think he won’t. I’ve seen him do it to slaves less bothersome than you. Now, stick your head in that water there, and don’t bring it up until I tap you on the back. You hear me?”

“Yeah… I… hear you…” That last hit on the back of his head had been a hard one, and his head wasn’t clearing as quick as it had before. The ringing wasn’t going away.

“If you hear me then do as I say! Quick! Before I give you another crack!” Crow did as he was told, gulping down a big breath of air before dipping his head underwater. The water was cold as winter, but was just what was needed to shake the fuzz from his head and quiet the ringing. He didn’t think this was what the dunking would be like. He had pictured more of a wrestling match, where Bob would wrap his grubby fingers in Crow’s hair and plunge his head under the water, bringing him to the verge of drowning before he’d bring him back up. Under, out, under, out, until Crow’s spirit was broken. That’s how Crow envisioned it, but this way, well, it wasn’t so bad, was it?

He could already feel his lungs start to burn, but still no tap. Ah, now he saw how this worked: if he were to lift his head up too early, before Bob tapped him on the back, then he was sure to get a crack from the slaver’s fist or spear butt. Then he’d have to go under again and wrestle with his own mind on whether he should go back up and take the hit or wait for the tap that was likely never to come. He’d eventually break or drown, neither prospect more appealing than the other.

Crow wasn’t much of a swimmer and feared drowning more than being run through with a sword. Still, even with his head submerged under water and his hands tied behind his back, he found he could think clearly. It was times like these, when the pressure was greatest and the situation most dire, that he could really, truly think. There was a way out of this, there had to be. He just had to figure it out.Rather than lament his situation and panic, Crow opened his eyes and scanned around his face for anything that might be of use.

It didn’t take long before he located a small piece of jagged metal, semi-submerged under clay and stone. He reached his head down and took it between his teeth. The piece was as small as an acorn cap, and he knew he could choke on it, but the only way to conceal it from Bob was to hide it in his mouth.

With the piece of metal in his mouth and his lungs about to burst, Crow realized that no matter how long he stayed underwater, Bob was not going to tap him. He wanted Crow to come up first so that he could hit him. It was an unavoidable first act of this twisted circus he had been roped into, and he had to play his part.

Crow lifted his head, and just as quickly there was a heavy boot kicking him in the neck, back into the water. He had been kicked further into the river, where the water was deeper, quicker. Panic began to set in, particularly because he had not been able to get a good gasp of air when he went above surface. With his hands tied behind his back, he felt for sure he was going to drown. Then he found a firm footing upon some larger rocks and was able to stand up and gulp in some air. Bob was quickly upon him, this time with his fists.

“Stay down until I say otherwise!” Bob screamed, knocking Crow upside the head. The slaver dragged Crow back to the shore, back to the place where the dunking had begun. “Back down, henpecker!”

Crow did as he was told, his breath barely caught. He felt for sure he was going to drown. Then an idea struck. He began to flounder in the water, as if struggling against his own will to obey Bob’s commands despite his need for oxygen. He could imagine Bob chuckling to himself as he watched Crow drown. The image stoked the anger within his belly to such an intense heat that Crow felt his will grow white hot, his lung capacity limitless. He’d stay underwater for as long as it took the plan to work.

He made a few more mock thrashes against the water, and then went still. He allowed his body to float downriver a bit, despite his fear of drowning. He was confident Bob would grab him and drag him back to shore. Even if the slaver didn’t, he could hold his breath for as long as it took to drift away from the slaver camp and escape.

Sure enough, Bob grabbed Crow by the ropes which bound his wrists behind his back and dragged him back to shore. The Black Wing did his best not to breath, which was a chore, as he wanted so badly to soothe his burning lungs. The pain stoked the embers of his anger, of his thirst for vengeance, until he felt sure he was about to burst into a ball of flame. Once Crow’s head was on the shore, his body still in the water, he dropped the jagged piece of metal from his mouth and onto the sand.

“Wake up, you maggot,” Bob said. “I know you ain’t drowned. Get up!” Bob kicked Crow square in the stomach, which snapped Crow out of his act and made him scrunch in on himself like a poked caterpillar. “Let’s go, before the Boat People come. Get up!”

Crow made a show of rolling around on the sand, trying to get the wind back into his lungs. Though the blow had hurt, it hadn’t as badly as he was letting on. Taking a punch or kick to the stomach was a skill that every Black Wing took great pains to master, a technique called Stone Belly. Running Stag had always been the most masterful, once taking a war-hammer to the stomach, but Crow was no slouch. He had instinctively tightened his stomach when Bob kicked him, so he was in full control of his senses to feel around for the jagged piece of metal.

“Let’s go!”

“I… I just need…” The seconds were clicking in conjunction with his teeth, his drenched clothes and clammy skin like sponges for the cold. Time was not on his side. When his hand alighted on the piece of metal, however, he knew that Elon had finally decided to be kind to him. He wrapped his fingers around it before staggering back to his feet. Though he was sopping wet and his black clothes covered in muck, he felt as if he was being bathed in rays of divine sunshine. His salvation was at hand, and it was in the form of a small piece of bent metal.

“Come on now, you henpecker! Let’s go! Dragging you up that beach made me hungry again, and you better hope for your sake that all of Salty’s stew was not ate ‘fore  I_ uck!” The metal had cut through the rope quickly, and quick as a raven’s caw, Crow had his hands around Bob’s thin neck, choking him with all his strength. Bob tried to wrestle out of Crow’s grip, but the Black Wing wasn’t about to let go.

They went down to the ground, rolling over each other like a tumbleweed of sopping wet clothes. Bob clawed at Crow’s face with his nails, while a creaking moan escaped from his constricted throat. The slaver’s face was turning blue, purple, was taking on the same coloration as the puddles of black blood that leaked from the old cart carriages when they mixed with a fresh rain. The creaking stopped when the delicate bone and cartilage in the slaver’s neck broke to pieces.

Bob’s eyes were like bulging leather skins at a water pump; Crow saw something in them akin to a plea for clemency, for a second chance. Had this wretched man finally come to regret his ways, with death looming so close? Hesitation seized Crow then and his grip slightly eased, as he thought of what the wandering Apostle said long ago, when Old Wren had him to supper on the longest night of the year, about how the Bleeding Christ said to love one’s enemies, to show them mercy.

Then he thought of his mother, of how the slavers stole her, broke her, killed her when he was but a boy. He thought of his father’s knives in the bloated hands of that sloven slaver, of Matchless roughly handling the girl with the gray eyes, of his being stolen away from his sister. The anger he had kept white hot while underwater, the seething hate he had used to survive, returned.

Crow pushed down on Bob’s windpipe with all his weight. His body was a piston, shoulders heaving up and down. Bob’s tongue was distended from his lips like meat from a hopper, snaking out further from his mouth with each jounce of Crow’s body. Droplets of water fell on Bob’s face and Crow wasn’t sure whether it was spittle, rain or his tears. There was no going back from this. Finally, Bob’s eyes rolled back into his skull and his struggling ceased.

Crow rolled off of the slaver’s corpse and lay on his back, his chest heaving, dark crow eyes closed. He was tired and ached in places he didn’t think possible, but knew that things were going to get a lot more heated before he could relax. He was at least a full day’s march from the Black Wing camp and surrounded on all sides by wild country. There were cannibals in the Seven Streams, or so it was said, and that was just to the north, while the Boat People who traversed the Hud were no friends to a Black Wing. Alone, he would have to travel a fairly dangerous road back to the camp and the more civilized country to the west. First, though, there was unfinished business he had to take care of back at the slaver camp. He needed his knives back, and there were at least three dozen Wandering Bastards that needed killing.

Crow left Bob’s body in the mud and ran up the embankment on a pair of silent feet. The ruins of the buildings gave him good cover, but once he was beyond their walls and at the top of the slope, the slavers would have a clear view of his approach. He had to find a way to stay hidden, to get as close to the camp as possible without them knowing he had freed himself. While Elon had been good to him, time was not as benevolent a friend, and would not be on his side for long. He had to be quick, before they realized Bob had been gone for too long.

Close to the top of the hill was an archway that led into one of the buildings, which Crow ducked under. He saw that if he went along the length of the building to its other side, there was a thick cover of high grass and small trees through which he could safely approach the slaver camp.

The going was slow: the floors were piled high with rubble and the broken bits of old machines, and his clothes were waterlogged and heavy. More than once his cloak snagged on a nail or twisted piece of steel, each time eliciting a silent thread of curses. Despite this, Crow eventually reached the room on the far side of the building, the wall of which was partially crumbled away. Through it he could see over the high grass, to where the remaining slavers milled about, noticeably anxious. He could just hear them over the sparey birds cooing in the tree branches outside.

“Where the hell is Bob?” The voice belonged to the large oaf who had cut himself on Crow’s knives. “Those Black Wings are a tricky lot. Never underestimate them. Probably hypnotized Bob with some magic and made the poor sap drown himself.”

“Shut up, Gregory,” Matchless hissed. The fat man, Gregory, did as he was told, finding interest in his feet, which he rubbed in the dirt as if he were a child. “Alain, Tyson, go down to the river and see what mess Bob has gotten himself into.”