Chapter 15
15
K ANTHE STOOD SULLENLY in the rain.
He could have sought shelter in the covered livery sledge, where the highmayor of Fiskur and his daughter were offloading a mountain of the girl’s chests and crates. The pair of bullocks at the front looked no happier than him, with their pelts sodden and dripping, huffing heavily and stamping the splay of their three-toed hooves.
He saw no reason to be over there. His breeches were already soaked to the skin. His boots squelched with mud and bogwater. His hair was pasted to his scalp. It seemed like ages since he’d been dry, though it had only been a dozen or so days. Not that he was confident in his accounting. The large company had left the port of Azantiia during a lull in the stormfront. Still, winds had tossed the seas into frothing white peaks. His stomach still had not fully settled from the voyage.
When they finally made landfall at Fiskur, the squall strengthened again. The skies blackened, split with jagged spears of lightning. Thunder boomed loud enough to shake the stilts that held up the town. They had been trapped in Fiskur for four long days, where the only fodder had been salted, dried fish and equally briny ale.
Kanthe had initially been relieved to escape Fiskur as the black skies turned gray and the worst of the storm blew off to the east. Then came days of sucking mud, bellowing beasts, pushing through clouds of bloodsucking meskers or stinging botflies that left worms under the skin. All along, whether they were on foot, huddled on sledges, or poled on rafts, the swamps tried to trap them. Thorny vines tugged at clothes or pulled caps from heads. Then again, better that than be grabbed by the fanged jaws of the multitudinous adders and pit-vipers that draped from mossy branches or slithered across the water.
Kanthe cursed his father with every hard-earned league. He now wished he had allowed Mikaen to intercede on his behalf and convince the king to spare him this torturous trek.
Their group’s only advantage lay in their numbers. The passage of a hundred knights and a score of Vyrllian Guards had kept the worst of the swamp’s denizens away. And the storm god Tytan—perhaps apologizing for his temper—had granted them a rare boon with a well-aimed bolt of lightning.
Kanthe looked past the livery sledge to a raft being poled toward the rocky shore. A large wrapped cage rested atop it. The two bullocks nearby lowed a note of distress and shifted away from the approaching raft, dragging the livery to one side. The driver had to crack a whip over their haunches to root them back in place. Still, the beasts shivered their flanks in anxiety.
Despite the bullocks’ warning, Kanthe found himself crossing in that direction. It felt good to feel solid ground under his feet. Plus, he didn’t want to be conscripted into setting up the tents or gathering firewood. Out in the swamps, his princely status had held no sway. It was hard to maintain a royal decorum when groaning as one shite over the edge of a sledge.
Curiosity also drew him toward the raft and cage. He had barely caught a glimpse of the large Myr bat as it had been dragged in a tangle of ropes and chains from the swamp. The victory had been celebrated with boisterous cheers and the battering of swords on shields, as if a major battle had been won. Though, according to the fireside chatter later, it wasn’t much of a fight. A chance lightning bolt had shattered the cottongum where the beast had unfortunately roosted during the storm. A clutch of six Vyrllians had stumbled upon it, discovering it weak and dazed, a wing burned clean through. Still, they had peppered it with a flurry of arrows before netting and roping it.
Kanthe had watched the beast be caged with a pang of pity. The captured bat was the size of a small pony. And even bleeding from wounds and pained by burns, it had thrashed and screeched, struggling for freedom.
He had understood that desire all too well. And maybe that was what drew him now. A mix of guilt and pity. Unfortunately, he was not the only one who gathered toward the caged prize.
“Let’s take a look at it,” Anskar said, hopping deftly onto the tall raft. “Before we drag it upward.”
Anskar vy Donn was the head of the Vyrllian detachment. Kanthe’s head barely reached the height of the man’s chest. And the vy-knight was as muscled as an ox. He had not only inked his face and shaved head in crimson, as was traditional, but also his legs and arms, both of which were also tattooed in black thorny vines. Kanthe had heard he added another thorn for every man he killed.
Maybe that’s why the king had secretly assigned the vy-knight to be his bodyguard, though it was never stated as such. Still, Anskar had been his shadow throughout this journey, seldom letting him out of his sight, even when Kanthe was wiping his arse. Despite that, Kanthe had come to respect the man’s hard, but amiable nature. By now, Anskar already felt more like a stern older brother than a bodyguard.
Kanthe climbed up onto the raft to join the knight.
Anskar lifted a flap of leather covering tied around the cage. Kanthe bent to peek under it.
“Not too close,” Anskar warned.
“No worries there. I’d like to keep my nose where it’s at.”
From two steps away, Kanthe peered into the shrouded darkness. It took him a breath to discern the darker shadow within. He spotted no movement. Maybe it’s already dead, succumbed to its injuries. It would be a mercy, considering its fate from here.
He glanced to the top of the school. The Cloistery was similar in shape to Kepenhill, only a quarter smaller. Twin flames smoked at the top. Alchymist Frell had already abandoned his pupil, climbing toward the summit. Frell had wanted to meet with the head of the school, a prioress who had once taught the man. Kanthe had tried to follow him, but Frell asked for his patience, abandoning the prince on this rocky shore.
Kanthe returned his attention to the cage—only to discover a pair of red eyes glowering back at him.
So not dead. But more likely—
The shadow burst toward him, crashing into the ironwood bars and rocking the entire pen. Kanthe fell backward, landing on his backside. He scooted farther away as teeth snapped and gnashed at the cage. A slavering poison, glowing in the darkness against the black wood, seeped down the bars’ lengths.
Anskar laughed and jabbed his sword at the face of the beast, driving it into the shadows again. Once it retreated, he let the flap of leather fall back over. He then faced Kanthe, towering over him.
“Looks like our guest is mending itself right smartly, don’t ya think?” The vy-knight held out a thick, calloused hand. “Up with ya. Can’t have a prince of the realm sitting on his arse in front of half the town here.”
Kanthe accepted the offer and allowed himself to be pulled back to his feet. “Thanks,” he mumbled, his cheeks heating up.
He turned to discover the commotion had drawn others to the raft. A circle of faces stared; a few heads whispered to one another. They were mostly townspeople, but their attention was not on the cage or the prince, but on the pair who had approached and stood silently next to the raft.
It had to be a rare sight.
A boulder-shouldered Gyn from across the seas stood bare-chested in the rain, his flesh branded with strange sigils. The mute made even Anskar look like a dwarf. He stood glumly, his heavy brows shadowing small, dull eyes. He held aloft a canopy over the head of his companion.
The Shrive leaned on a gnarled length of silvery bane-alder, whose sap was said to weaken the borders between this world and the mysteries beyond. Its length was as equally branded with sigils as the massive Gyn.
During the journey, Kanthe had kept well clear of the man, sensing both enmity and danger curled within his withered form. The Shrive’s tattooed brow looked especially dark under the drape of his cloak’s hood and set against his pale skin. And though the man was thin-limbed, saggy jowls hung from cheek and chin, as if all the fat and flesh had been sucked from him, leaving only this wrinkled drape of skin over bone.
No doubt an Iflelen, Kanthe thought, but at least it’s not that bastard Wryth.
The Shrive’s eyes, ashine with avarice, were not on Kanthe or the cage, but on the poison pooled atop the raft’s planks. He pointed his cane. “Do not wash that away,” he rasped to Anskar. “I will bring my vials to collect what I can. Though I’d prefer to dissect the venom glands while the creature still lives.”
“If you wish to wander in there, Shrive Vythaas,” Anskar said, “you are more than welcome. But I’m not risking any of my men. Besides, this beastie is already claimed in the name of vengeance, and I made a blood oath to honor it, to burn the first bat to the gods. Especially as the thunderous god Tytan so graciously dropped this sacrifice in our path.”
The Shrive lowered his cane, looking none too happy.
Kanthe knew the holy man had been sent here by will of the king, to gather poison and distill it into a weapon of great malignancy. But once their party dispensed with their first obligation—to deliver the highmayor’s daughter here and make a blood sacrifice atop the school’s pyre—then the great hunt could begin in earnest. They would slaughter as many of the Myr bats as they could over the next turn of the moon. By that time, Vythaas should have a mountain of poison glands with which to perform his experiments.
But patience was running thin, and not just for the Shrive.
A gruff voice shouted at them, “What are you all waiting for?”
The crowd skirted apart for a portly belly. The man who approached could pass for a wine cask that had sprouted legs, arms, and a gray-whiskered face. It didn’t help that he wore a set of oiled breeches and tunic that was a smatter too small for his bulk, allowing an edge of his hairy stomach to protrude over a thick leather belt, which tried its best to hold back the rest of his ale-swelled gut.
Highmayor Goren shoved between the Shrive and the raft. “Day’s a-wasting. We need to get that foul cur to the blasted top of this rock. I want that beast charred to smoking ash before the last clang of Eventoll.”
The man was accompanied by his daughter, a gangly-limbed girl about Kanthe’s age, with mud-brown hair that she tried to brighten with a few silk ribbons. Though only a smidgen above homely, she carried herself as if a stick had been planted square up her arse at birth. During the trek here, she had never dared to extend a slipper out of the sledge. Instead, she stayed nestled among her tall stack of chests, likely full of dainties and perfumes.
Unfortunately, someone must have alerted her that a prince was among them. She had spent considerable time in her covered livery doing her best to shove her surprisingly generous breasts high whenever he happened to pass. Still, even if the two weren’t distantly related, those were two peaks he would never climb.
Anskar cast his gaze up the tiers of the school, eyeing the twin pyres with a scathing glare. He swiped one palm over his crimson scalp and scratched his nethers with the other. “That’s a long haul, especially with bullocks balking at even getting their horns near that cage.”
“I had considered as much,” Goren said. He lifted an arm and motioned off to the side, past the raft. “I sent a man to fetch someone who knows bullocks right better than anyone else in these swamps. Here he comes now.”
Kanthe turned as a well-weathered swamper crossed through the crowd, thumping along on a cane. The man looked like he had spent all of his life here, along with generations before him. Kanthe half expected moss to be growing in his beard. And though the fellow was aged and worn, he carried himself with a measure of stubborn strength. He was accompanied by a taller and stouter young man, hale of limb and brighter of eye.
No doubt his son.
Goren crossed to the old swamper. The two gripped each other’s forearms, not warmly, more in a greeting of respect. Both had likely managed the breadth of these swamps all their lives.
“This is Trademan Polder, the best bullock drover in all of Myr.”
The swamper merely shrugged, accepting the compliment as fact, not bothering with any false modesty. “I a-heard your problem,” he said, leaning over to inspect the cage on the raft. “Bullocks know to keep clear of those winged daemons. Nothing but problems them are. Somethin’ I know all too well.”
Anskar grunted his disappointment. “Then looks like we’ll have to shove poles through the cursed cage and try to haul it upwards ourselves.” He turned to the highmayor. “Or we can stoke a bonfire on these rocky shores and burn the beast, cage and all, right here. And be done with it.”
Goren’s face darkened to an angry bruise. “Sard that!” he swore. “My son died up there, so will that bastard.”
Anskar looked like he wanted to argue, but clearly he was under an order to appease Goren. Not only was the highmayor distantly related to the king, but trade with Fiskur—a town that culled a rich bounty of hides and salted meat from the swamp’s wilderness—was important to Azantiia. A small measure of courtesy and accommodation here would serve the realm well.
The impasse was broken by Trademan Polder. “I didn’t say I couldn’t get no bullock to help. I got an old ’un that fears nothing. I can put blinders on ’im and hang a bag of fresh-ground bitterroot under his nose to mask any scent.” He thumbed at his son. “As extra measure, I’ll have Bastan guide him up by hand, too. To help keep the bullock calm.”
The big lad nodded his assent. “Gramblebuck won’t disappoint.”
The old man added one warning: “’Course, best you keep that beast bundled up right tight.”
Goren crossed his arms and sneered at Anskar. “What’d I tell ya.”
Anskar shrugged. “Then we better get things moving if we want to be done by Eventoll.”
The two swampers turned and headed back the way they’d come.
Kanthe started the other way, only to note Goren’s daughter lift up on her toes and whisper in the highmayor’s ear. She pointed at the departing pair.
Goren’s eyes went wide, and he scolded the girl under his breath. “Trademan Polder’s daughter? You’re saying she was the one up there with Byrd? Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
She cowered before his anger and shook her head, clearly having no answer.
Goren glanced over to the old man and his son. The highmayor’s eyes had narrowed, glowering and angry. “Then I swear by all gods above, I’ll burn the lot of ’em.”
Kanthe backed from that fury. He slipped away before the highmayor realized his threat was overheard. Still, he stared after the two swampers, baffled by whatever politics were at play here. It seemed in a heartbeat old colleagues had become enemies. At least, on one side.
Kanthe sighed. What did it matter?
I’ll be gone by the morrow.
He headed toward a fresh bonfire blazing along the shore, promising the possibility of dry clothes. As to everything else going on here…
Not my problem.