The King's Blood

Marcus

Sometime, centuries before, someone had built a low wall along the top of the rise. In the moonlight, the scattered rocks reminded Marcus of knucklebones. He knelt, one hand on the dew-slick grass. In the cove below him, three ships rested at anchor. Shallow-bottomed with paired masts. Faster and more maneuverable than the round-bellied trade ships that they hunted. One showed a mark on the side where she’d been struck not too many weeks before, the new timber of the patch bright and unweathered.

On the sand, a cookfire still burned, its orange glow the only warmth in the spring night. From where they stood, Marcus counted a dozen structures—more than tents, less than huts—scattered just above the tide line. A wellestablished camp, then. That was good. A half dozen stretchedleather boats rested near the water.

Yardem Hane grunted softly and pointed a wide hand to the east. A tree a hundred feet or so from the water towered up toward the sky. A glimmer, moonlight on metal, less than a third of the way to its tip showed where the sentry perched. Marcus pointed out at the ships. High in the rigging of the one nearest the shore, another dark figure.

Yardem held up two fingers, wide brows rising in question. Two watchers?

Marcus shook his head, holding up a third finger. One more.

The pair sat still in the shadows made darker by the spray of fallen stone. The moon shifted slowly in its arc. The movement was subtle. A single branch on the distant tree that moved in the breeze more slowly. Marcus pointed. Yardem flicked an ear silently; he wore no earrings when they were scouting. Marcus looked over the cove one last time, cataloging it as best he could. They faded back down the rise, into the shadows. They walked north, and then west. They didn’t speak until they’d traveled twice as far as their low voices would carry.

“How many do you make out?” Marcus asked.

Yardem spat thoughtfully.

“Not more than seventy, sir,” he said.

“That’s my count too.”

The path was hardly more than a deer trail. Thin spaces in the trees. It wouldn’t be many weeks before the leaves of summer choked the path, but tonight their steps were muffled by well-rotted litter and a spring’s soft moss. The moon was no more than a scattering of pale dapples in the darkness under the leaves.

“We could go back to the city,” Yardem said. “Raise a hundred men. Maybe a ship.”

“You think Pyk would pay out the coin?”

“Could borrow it from someone.”

In the brush, a small animal skittered, fleeing before them as if they were a fire.

“The one farthest from shore was riding lower than the others,” Marcus said.

“Was.”

“We come in with a ship, they’ll see us. It’ll be empty water by the time we’re there.”

Yardem was quiet apart from a small grunt when his head bumped against a low branch. Marcus kept his eyes on the darkness, not really seeing. His legs shifted and moved easily. His mind gnawed at the puzzle.

“If they see us coming on land,” he said, “they haul out boats and wave to us from the sea. We trap them on land in a fair fight with the men we have now, they have numbers and territory on us. We wait to get more sword-and-bows, and they may have moved on.”

“Difficult, sir.”

“Ideas?”

“Hire on for an honest war.”

Marcus chuckled sourly.

His company was camped dark, but the sound of their voices and the smells of their food traveled in the darkness. He had fifty men of several races—otterpelted Kurtadam, black-chitined Timzinae, Firstblood. Even half a dozen bronzes-caled Jasuru hired on at the last minute when their contract as house guards fell through. It made for more tension in the camp, but the usual racial slurs were absent. They were Kurtadam and Timzinae and Jasuru, not clickers and roaches and pennies. And no one said a bad word about the Firstblood when it was a Firstblood who’d decide who dug the latrines.

And, to the point, the mixture gave Marcus options.

Ahariel Akkabrian had been one of the first guards when the Porte Oliva branch of the Medean bank had been a highstakes gamble with all odds against. His pelt was going grey, especially around his mouth and back, but the beads woven into it were silver instead of glass. He sat up on his cot as Marcus ducked into the tent. His eyes were bleary with sleep, but his voice was crisp.

“Captain Wester, sir. Yardem.”

“Sorry to wake you,” Yardem said.

“Ahariel,” Marcus said. “How long could you swim in the sea?”

“Me, you mean, sir? Or someone like me?”

“Kurtadam.”

“Long as you’d like.”

“No boasting. It’s not summer. The water’s cold. How long?”

Ahariel yawned deeply and shook his head, setting the beads to clicking.

“The dragons built us for water, Captain. The only people who can swim longer and colder than we can are the Drowned, and they can’t fight for shit.”

Marcus closed his eyes, seeing the moonlit cove again. The ships at anchor, the shelters, the hide boats. The coals of the fire glowing. He had eleven Kurtadam, Ahariel included. If he sent them into the water, that left a bit over thirty. Against twice that number. Marcus bit his lip and looked up at his second in command. In the light of the single candle, Yardem looked placid. Marcus cleared his throat.

“The day you throw me in a ditch and take control of the company?”

“Not today, sir,” Yardem said.

“Afraid you’d say that. Only one thing to do then. Ahariel? You’re going to need some knives.”

Marcus rode to the west, shield slung on his back and sword at his side. The sun rose behind him, pushing his shadow out ahead like a gigantic version of himself. To his left, the sea was as bright as beaten gold. The sentry tree was just in sight. The poor bastard on duty would be squinting into the brightness. The danger, of course, being that he wouldn’t look at all. If Marcus managed an actual surprise attack, they were doomed. He had the uncomfortable sense that God’s sense of humor went along lines very much like that.

“Spread out,” he called back down the line. “Broken file. We want to look bigger than we are.”

The call came back, voice after voice repeating the order. Timing was going to matter a great deal. The land looked different in the sunlight. The cove wasn’t as distant as it had seemed in the night. Marcus sat high in his saddle.

“Come on,” he murmured. “See us. Look over here and see us. We’re right here.”

A shiver along a wide branch. The leaves sent back light brighter than gold. A horn blared.

“That was it,” Yardem rumbled.

“Was,” Marcus said. He pictured the little shelters, the sailors scuttling for their belongings, for their boats. He counted ten silent breaths, then pulled his shield to the front and drew his sword.

“Sound the charge,” he said. “Let’s get this done.”

When they rounded the bend that led into the cove, a ragged volley of arrows met them. Marcus shouted, and his soldiers picked up the call. From the far end of the strip of sand, ten archers stood ground, loosing arrows and preparing to jump into the last hide boat and take to the safety of the water, the ships, and the sea. The other boats were already away, rowing fast toward the ships and loaded with enough men to defeat Marcus’s force.

The first boat was a dozen yards from shore and already sinking.

In the bright water, hidden by the glare of the sun, nearly a dozen Kurtadam with long knives put new holes in the boats.

Marcus pulled up, waving to his own archers to take the shoreline while the Jasuru charged the enemy and their boat, howling like mad animals. A few figures appeared on the ships, staring out at the spectacle on shore and in the tide-pool. The first boat vanished. The second was staying more nearly afloat as the men in it bailed frantically with helmets and hands. They weren’t rowing, though. It wouldn’t get them any farther.

Marcus lifted his hand and his archers raised bows.

“Surrender now and you won’t be harmed!” he shouted over the surf. “Or flee and be killed. Your choice.”

In the surf, one of the sailors started kicking for the ships. Marcus pointed at him with his sword. It took three volleys before he stopped. As if on cue, the black bobbing heads of Ahariel and the other Kurtadam appeared in a rough line between the sinking boats and the ships. As Marcus watched, the swimming Kurtadam lifted their knives above the water, like the ocean growing teeth.

“Leave your weapons in the water,” Marcus called. “Let’s end this gently.”

They emerged from the waves, sullen and bedraggled. Marcus’s soldiers took them one by one, bound them, and left them sitting under guard.

“Fifty-eight,” Yardem said.

“There’s a few still on the ships,” Marcus said. “And there’s the one we poked full of arrows.”

“Fifty-nine, then.”

“Still outnumbered. Badly outnumbered,” Marcus said. And then, “We can exaggerate when we take it to the taphouse.”

A young Firstblood man walked out of the sea. His beard was braided in the style of Cabral. His eyes were bright green, his face thin and sharp. His silk robe clung to his body, making his potbelly impossible to hide. Marcus kicked his horse and trotted up to him. He looked like a kitten that fell in a creek.

“Maceo Rinál?”

The pirate captain looked up at Marcus with contempt that was as good as acknowledgment.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Marcus said.

The man said something obscene.

Marcus had his tent set up at the top of the rise. The stretched leather clung to the frames and kept the wind out, if not the flies. Maceo Rinál sat on a cushion, wrapped in a wool blanket and stinking of brine. Marcus sat at his field desk with a plate of sausage and bread. Below them, as if on a stage, Marcus’s forces were involved with the long process of unloading the surrendered ship, hauling the cargo to land, and loading it onto wagons.

“You picked the wrong ship,” Marcus said.

“You picked the wrong man,” Rinál said. He had a smaller voice than Marcus had expected.

“Five weeks ago, a ship called the Stormcrow was coming east from the cape. It didn’t make it. Waylaid and sunk, but no sign of the cargo. Is this sounding familiar?”

“I am the cousin of King Sephan of Cabral. You and your magistrates have no power over me,” Rinál said, lifting his chin as he spoke. “I invoke the Treaty of Carcedon.”

Marcus took a bite of sausage and chewed slowly. When he spoke, he drew the syllables out.

“Captain Rinál? Look at me. Do I seem like a magistrate’s blade?”

The chin didn’t descend, but a flicker of uncertainty came to the young man’s eyes.

“I work for the Medean bank. My employers insured the Stormcrow. When you took the crates off that ship, you weren’t stealing from the sailors who were carrying them.

You weren’t even stealing from the merchants who owned them. You were stealing from us.”

The pirate’s face went grey. The leather flap opened with a rustle and Yardem came in. His earrings were back in place.

“News?” Marcus said.

“The cargo here matches the manifests,” Yardem said. He was scowling, playing to the dangerous reputation of the Tralgu. Marcus assumed it amused him. “We’re in the right place, sir.”

“Carry on.”

Yardem nodded and left. Marcus took another bite of sausage.

“My cousin,” Rinál said. “King Sephan—”

“My name’s Marcus Wester.”

Rinál’s eyes grew wide and he sank back on the cushion.

“You’ve heard of me,” Marcus said. “So you know that the appeal-to-noble-blood strategy may not be your best choice. Your mother was a minor priestess who got drunk with a monarch’s exiled uncle. That’s your protection. Me? I’ve killed kings.”

“Kings?”

“Well, just the one, but you take the point.”

Rinál tried to speak, swallowed to loosen his throat, and then tried again.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to reclaim our property, or as much of it as you have left. I don’t expect it’ll make up the losses, but it’s a beginning.”

“What are you going to do with me?”

“You mean if I don’t take you to justice? I’m going to come to an understanding with you.”

A cry rose up from the beach below them. Dozens of voices raised in alarm. Marcus nodded to the captive, and together they walked out into the light. On the bright water below them, the ship farthest from the shore was afire. A plume of white smoke rose from it, and thin red snake-tongues licked at the mast, visible even from here. Rinál cried out, and as if in answer a roll of sudden black smoke bellied out from the flame.

“Don’t worry,” Marcus said. “We’re only burning one of them.”

“I’ll see you dead,” Rinál said, but there was no power in his voice. Marcus put a hand on the man’s shoulder and steered him back into the shade of the tent.

“If I kill you or if I burn all your ships,” Marcus said, “then by this time next year, there’s just going to be another bunch like yours in the cove. The bank’s investments are just as much at risk. Nothing changes, and I have to come back here and have this same talk with someone else.”

“You’ve burned her. You burned my ship.”

“Try to stay with me,” Marcus said, lowering Rinál back to the ground. The pirate put his head in his hands. Marcus took the two steps to his field desk and took out the paper Cithrin had prepared for him. He’d meant to drop it haughtily at the pirate’s feet, but the man seemed so shaken, he tucked it into his lap instead.

“That’s a list of the ships we insure out of Porte Oliva. If I have to find you again, offering yourself to the magistrate is the best thing that could happen.”

The breeze shifted and the smell of burning pitch filled the tent and spoiled the taste of the sausages. The leather walls chuffed like tiny sails. Rinál opened the papers.

“If the ship’s not listed here…”

“Then it’s no business of mine.”

“I’m not the only ships on these waters,” he said. “If someone else…”

“You should discourage them.”

The color was starting to come back to Rinál’s cheeks. The shock had begun to fade and the old righteousness return, but it was tempered now. The voices coming up from the water were brighter now, laughing. Those would be Marcus’s soldiers. A wagon creaked. It was time to move on.

“You’ll travel with us as far as Cemmis township,” Marcus said. “That’s not too far to walk back from before your people get sick from thirst.”

“You think you’re such a big man, no one can take you down,” the pirate said. “You think you’re better than me. You’re no different.”

Marcus leaned against the field desk, looking down at the pirate. In truth, Rinál was a young man. For all his bluster and taking on airs, he was the same sort who tripped drunk men in taprooms and groped women in the street. He was a badly behaved child who, instead of growing to manhood, had found a few ships and taken his bullying out in the world where it could turn him a profit.

A dozen replies came to Marcus. When you’ve watched your family die, say that again and Grow up, boy, while you still have the chance and Yes, I’m better than you; my ship isn’t burning.

“We’ll leave soon,” he said. “I have guards posted. Don’t try to go without us.”

Outside, the little two-masted ship roared in flame. Black smoke billowed from her, carrying sparks and embers up to wheeling birds. Marcus walked down the rise to where the carts were lining up, prepared to head back home. One of his younger Kurtadam was in the medical wagon, his arm being shaved and bound. Beneath the pelt, his skin looked just like a Firstblood’s.

The dead enemy sailor was laid out under tarps. The rest, bound in ranks with arms bent back, were sullen and angry. Marcus’s men were grinning and trading jokes. It was like the aftermath of a battle, only this time there’d hardly been any bloodshed. The wet sand was smooth where the waves washed their footprints away. The mules, ignoring the smell of flames and the banter of soldiers, pulled wagons filled with silks and worked brass back toward the road. The smells of salt and smoke mixed.

Marcus felt the first tug of returning darkness at the back of his mind. The aftermath of any fight—great battle or tap-room dance—always had that touch of bleakness. The brightness and immediacy of the fight gave way, and the world and all its history poured back in. It was worse when he lost, but even in victory, the darkness was there. He put it aside. There was real work to be done.

Yardem stood by the head wagon, a Cinnae boy on a lathered horse at his side. A messenger. As he approached, the boy dropped down and led his mount away to be cared for.

“Where do we stand?” Marcus asked.

“Ready to start back, sir. But might be best if I led the column. The magistra wants you back at the house as soon as you can get there.”

“What’s happened?”

Yardem shrugged eloquently.

“An honest war,” he said.