Blood's Pride (Shattered Kingdoms) Page 10

she answered darkly.

  Rho had never cared about the garrison’s reputation – his only goal had been to get as far away as possible from his family’s infighting – but Frea had far grander aspirations, and her only chance of being recalled to Norland was to somehow impress the emperor with her management of the colony. Now it looked as though all of her efforts had gone up in smoke in a single night.

  he said, moving closer to her, trying to reach the vulnerability that he knew was buried somewhere beneath the silver and leather, so much more alluring to him than the chiselled perfection of her face or the erotic promise of her flawless body.

  she commanded, marching towards the centre of the mining camp. His stomach muscles contracted. What had Ongen called him – a mangy dog? But he still followed.

  The situation in the camp had not improved much. The slaves were frantically trying to dig out the shaft, but the more they dug, the more rocks and dirt – and dead – came pouring out. The ground in front of the shaft was already littered with crushed bodies, some unlucky enough to still be breathing. Those slaves who’d escaped the collapse were being rounded up, but many were just flopping around on the ground, howling and weeping.

  another soldier cried, rushing up to her,

  Frea asked, bristling.

  But before the soldier could answer, a strange, taut silence swept through the compound, flattening the noise and confusion like a shockwave. The emotions of the Norlanders charged the air like an electrical storm; Rho felt his skin bristling with it. He turned and looked in the same direction as everyone else, over the entrance to the mines.

  The Mongrel.

  She was ethereal but unmistakable: the eye-patch like a hole on one side of her face, the tangle of black hair and the aura of invincibility pulsating through the air around her. She was bare-armed, and stood with both hands behind her back.

  How the piss-poor Shadari had ever managed to hire the most notorious mercenary commander who had ever lived, he couldn’t begin to imagine, but there she was, standing on a rocky outcrop over the entrance to the mines.

  Just then a sibilant noise scratched at his ears: the Shadari were whispering. The Mongrel brought her hands out from behind her back to reveal a bundle hanging from each fist. The two round objects transcribed an arc against the moonlit sky and landed in front of Frea’s boots with a thump. The metallic smell of fresh blood wafted up to him. With a twinge of satisfaction that shocked him, he recognised the one on the left as Beorun, her latest lover, his successor to her bed.

  Frea said. She slid Blood’s Pride from its scabbard with a heady anticipation that flooded through Rho’s senses like strong wine. He noticed her exaggerated gait as she stepped over the two disembodied heads, almost as if she could already feel the sway and roll of the ship that would carry her back to Norland in triumph. The mines, the colony, none of it would matter if she became the first – the only – warrior to bring down the Mongrel. Her name would be the toast of every hall; her chair would be pushed to the head of every table. To the rest of the Norlanders, she said

  A sound ripped the air behind him, a sharp-pitched yell that set his bones buzzing. He turned to see a Shadari slave standing straight as a rod with one fist upraised.

  Frea roared without even turning around, and a white-caped soldier swept over and clouted the slave over the head with the pommel of his sword. Then another shout sounded from the back of the crowd, and another answered it, and then, with a blaring screech of common intent, the Shadari riot erupted.

  Rho said to himself, drawing Fortune’s Blight as Shadari rushed into the camp from all directions.

  Many of the slaves were armed, most with mining implements but some had actual weapons, or at least the battered remains of actual weapons. The Norlanders’ arms were more formidable but they were heavily outnumbered.

  Frea’s order yanked him back like a tug on a leash.

  The Mongrel was forging a path straight towards them through the confusion and he needed all of his self-control to keep from looking away from her. The scaly pink scar-tissue crawling over her right forearm brought the bile to his mouth. Her mangled face was far more intimidating than Frea’s silver helmet.

  The Mongrel halted a few paces off and said the last thing he expected.

  Blood’s Pride twitched in Frea’s hands.

  she answered, extending her bare arms. She spoke the Norlander language in its pure, unaccented form, but she was as emotionless as a corpse.

  Frea informed her bluntly.

  the Mongrel asked, as impassive as a puddle of water.

  Rho flipped his sword around and grasped the un-honed section of the blade just above the hilt. he said, forcing himself to look into her disfigured face.

  She glanced at the sword and then at him, and he felt a glimmer of some feeling from her, but it was too veiled for him to identify it. She made no movement to take the sword.

  he insisted angrily, and then tossed Fortune’s Blight into the sand at her feet. With a flush of satisfaction, he watched her pick it up.

  Frea crowed, and charged.

  Her first sweeping blow came down squarely on the Mongrel’s parry with a shock that Rho felt thrilling up through his own arms. He circled back out of the way as Frea struck again, a blow to her opponent’s right side, and again the Mongrel’s block sent waves of sound thudding over the sand. They circled. Frea feinted and changed direction and again they circled. Then she tried a complicated move to her left, a lightning-fast change of grip followed by a thrust that Rho knew well from the vicious sparring matches that she preferred to more traditional foreplay. The Mongrel slid to the side and avoided the blow without contact. Frea was caught off-balance and needed a stuttering step forward to come back on guard, but instead of capitalising on her opponent’s mistake, the Mongrel stepped back.

  Frea demanded.

  said the Mongrel.

  Frea’s rage was a cold white flame.

  As if only to oblige her, the Mongrel struck out with a tremendous sweeping blow that would have taken her arm off at the elbow if it had connected, but she twisted around just in time to block it and then scrambled to repel two more attacks. She answered with a series of cuts to alternating sides. The Mongrel paced back amenably, but continued to frustrate every offensive. Then she halted Frea’s advance with a blinding series of swipes, driving her back and then flitting past her with a quickness like bats’ wings.

  Frea spun around to face her.

  Rho never even saw the blow that knocked Blood’s Pride from Frea’s hand and sent it bouncing across the sand. She lunged after her sword, rolling onto her shoulder to retrieve it and then vaulting back up again, but before she could assume a fighting stance the Mongrel had the point of Fortune’s Blight aimed at her throat. He could hear the tip softly scraping against the lower edge of her helmet.

  Frea challenged the Mongrel, breathing hard.

  The tip of the sword wavered.

  But she wanted to. It was the first and only thing he had felt from her: a thirst for kill
ing squeezing out between the cracks of the tight-shut vault of her emotions. He watched Fortune’s Blight tremble in her grey hands and saw the gleam of the blade that he had whet with his own hands to the keenness of a razor.

  But instead of thrusting the point into Frea’s throat, the Mongrel dropped the sword into the sand. Then she reached up and slowly tugged the eye-patch down around her neck.

  Frea froze. she said, staring at the Mongrel through the unblinking eyes of her silver helmet. He felt Frea’s consternation like a blinding light, too glaring to look into. Blood’s Pride drooped in her hand until its point hit the sand.

 

  Blood’s Pride fell from Frea’s limp hand as if every muscle in her body had suddenly liquefied.

  the Mongrel advised as she replaced the eye-patch. Then without another word of explanation, or another look at Frea or at Rho, she turned and loped off towards the mountains.

  He grabbed Fortune’s Blight from the sand and seized her arm. he urged, understanding little of what had just happened except that she was squandering the miraculous chance she’d been given.

  Frea swung out with her gauntleted fist and struck him viciously across the side of his face. His neck snapped around with the force of her blow and he pitched sideways into the sand. He clutched at his ringing head and for a moment he could do nothing else but lie there, waiting for the blackness in front of his eyes to clear. He could taste blood in his mouth and he could feel his left eye already beginning to swell.

  Frea was standing over him, waiting. She’d returned Blood’s Pride to its sheath and had regained some control of her emotions. she said again.

  Groggily he pushed himself up, blinking the glittery spots away from in front of his eyes. He noticed several of his fellow soldiers standing close by, unsuccessfully pretending that they hadn’t seen what had just happened. Ongen was openly radiating satisfaction. The uprising was already over, its momentum having evaporated along with the Mongrel’s departure. Some of the slaves had simply run away from the camp in the confusion while the rest were kneeling before the guards in quaking ranks, most with some kind of injury.

  Frea stood in front of him. For one moment, he thought she was going to apologise, but instead she said,

  He looked at the distorted reflection of his face in her silver helmet. he asked.

  She said nothing, but he felt it: the encounter with the Mongrel had shaken her to the core and she didn’t want to be alone. She had no one else she could turn to but him. And, mangy dog that he was, she knew he wouldn’t refuse her.

  she told him. He heard her giving more orders as he left for the paddock:

  Over in the paddock the triffons were nervously butting their heads and twining their long tails together, restless after the two earthquakes. He could smell the reek of the beasts’ anxiety as he passed through the gate and sought out Trakkar. He was surprised to find him in a corner by himself, lying contentedly with his head between his paws. Then he saw why.

  ‘Get out of here,’ he said hurriedly to the little Shadari boy standing on the other side of Trakkar’s head with his stubby fingers buried into the bristly brown fur between the triffon’s ears. ‘You can’t be here.’

  ‘He likes me,’ said the boy. His high, childish voice was as sharp as a needle. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Trakkar,’ Rho answered, dumbfounded. It was impossible for a child to be here at all, and insane for him not to run away the moment he was discovered, but the boy only pressed back a little closer to Trakkar’s shoulder, as if he expected the triffon to protect him. Something must be wrong with him.

  ‘Is he yours?’

  ‘No,’ he answered; the boy’s behaviour was so odd he wasn’t sure what else to do other than answer. ‘Guards don’t get their own triffons.’

  ‘Who does he belong to?’

  ‘Lady Frea.’

  ‘Oh.’ His eyes widened, but it still didn’t look like fear. ‘I want to be a soldier when I grow up, but I want to have my own dereshadi.’

  ‘You want to be a soldier?’

  ‘Yes, like you.’ He pointed a chubby finger at Fortune’s Blight. ‘I like your sword. I want to learn how to fight, but there’s no one to teach me. Maybe you could teach me some day?’

  ‘Me? I don’t know, maybe.’ He forced himself to focus. Frea could be coming into the paddock at any moment, and there were guards roaming all over the place. If they caught the boy he’d be lucky to escape with a bad beating. ‘You need to go home now. Go on – get out of here.’

  ‘Why are all those people crying?’

  ‘The mine caved in,’ he said, but by now he was reaching under his tabard into his shirt pocket, remembering something he’d learned from dealing with his little cousins in Norland. ‘Here,’ he said, drawing out Daem’s leaf-wrapped sweet, ‘I’ll give you this if you go right now.’

  ‘Okay.’ The boy’s arm shot out without hesitation, but as Rho dropped the treat into his hand, he heard the gate creak open behind him. He was too late. Frea had entered the paddock.

  ‘Get down. Hide,’ he whispered, stepping aside and pretending to examine the buckles on Frea’s harness. She passed him without a word and hooked her foot into Trakkar’s stirrup.

  ‘I can help.’

  A shudder quivered up Rho’s spine. ‘Don’t—’ Rho whispered to him, but before he could finish his warning, the boy looked up at Frea and spoke again.

  ‘I can help,’ he repeated. ‘Look, I’ll show you.’ The boy reached out his right hand towards the mineshaft.

  Rho looked over and saw the guards positioned in front of the mine’s entrance suddenly hop into an odd little dance, mincing over the sand and shaking dirt out of their white hair. He stared harder. This time he clearly saw a wedge of dirt detach itself from the pile and sheet down to the ground, revealing a deeper cross-section of lifeless bodies and smashed equipment. Norlanders and slaves alike scrambled backwards to avoid being swept off their feet.

  He turned back to the boy. The child’s hand was still stretched out and his small face was wrinkled up like an old fruit.

  Then he heard a loud, muffled thump, like the sound of a cushion being punched, and an avalanche of dirt and rock swept out over the flat ground, followed by a rush of stale air. Scores of gasping slaves poured out from the depths, trampling over the bodies of the dead and dying in their frenzied need for air. The collapse had been confined to the entrance to the shaft: most of the slaves trapped behind it had been slowly suffocating, but were otherwise mostly unharmed.

  ‘See?’ crowed the boy.

  Rho looked up at Frea, who was still sitting on Trakkar’s back, watching the liberated slaves cavorting in front of the mine. Her emotions were a throbbing but inscrutable blur. she said slowly, without looking down at him,

  A deep eddy of uneasiness rippled through him, but Frea was waiting for him to follow her command.

  ‘Would you like to ride on the dereshadi?’ At the same time, he was trying to remember what exactly the Mongrel had just said. She had mentioned a boy, hadn’t she? His head was pounding …

  ‘Really?’ the boy cried out, jumping up and down with excitement. ‘Yes, please!’ Rho put his hands on the boy’s waist, glad that he had his heavy gloves to shield him from the heat, and hoisted him up onto the saddle behind Frea and strapped him in.

  Stay away from the boy. That’s what she’d said.

  ‘Dramash – Dramash!’ A wild cry cut through the noise of the camp as a dishevelled Shadari woman in a blue patterned head-scarf flung herself towards
them.

  Frea commanded,

  Rho stepped out to block the woman’s progress. She cut around him, but he seized her arm by the wrist and pulled her back, grabbing her other wrist at the same time and holding her in front of him. Even with his gloves on, the heat was intense. She struggled, but she wasn’t very strong and he had no difficulty holding on to her. But then she unexpectedly kicked back and her foot caught him painfully in the shin. Cursing, he transferred both of her thin wrists to his left hand and drew his dagger with his right. He held the point of the dagger warningly against the back of her neck, underneath her black hair where the boy wouldn’t see it.

  he heard Ongen snicker. Ongen, Ingeld, and Daem were all watching with thinly veiled curiosity.

  ‘That’s my mother!’ the boy announced to Frea as she snatched up Trakkar’s reins. The triffon snorted and tossed his head and then stretched his wings out lazily. ‘Can she come, too?’

  Rho glanced down at the Shadari woman’s fear-bleached face and then back at the boy. Frea reached into her pocket and drew out a single imperial eagle. The child’s eyes caught the shine of the gold and widened into two large, round mirrors: that was probably more money than his family had possessed in his entire lifetime.

  Frea tossed the coin down. It glinted in the moonlight as it hit the sand in front of the woman’s feet.

  Ongen interjected, leaning against the gate and enjoying the amusement he was providing for the others.

  Rho tried to ignore him. The woman had calmed under the influence of his knife and he relaxed his grip on her wrists. Her shoulders sagged and she gestured her head downwards towards the coin. He stepped back so that she could bend down to pick it up.

  Frea snapped the reins impatiently and whistled to Trakkar. The creature tensed his stumpy back legs and sprang into the air.

  The Shadari woman rushed forward. Rho lunged after her, grabbing her and pulling her back against him, though the heat radiating from her body was nearly unbearable. He raised his dagger again, this time holding it up against her throat.