“He’s alive,” she found herself saying, if only to argue. “Robbert’s still alive, I know it.”
“I hope so. The boy is brave, but courage counts for nothing at sea. Not to a Bladeborn.”
“He has Seaborn with him too. Del told us. All the best ships were crewed by Rasals. If there’s anyone who could get him home…”
“It is them. I know. But this weather is not usual. The heat, the storms, the sinkholes. The extremities of the world are becoming uninhabitable, and this world is surrounded by sea. When we reach Eagle’s Perch, we must take ship…we will have no choice but to cross from there, but here? No. We will stay on the road.”
“That is my decision,’ Saska snapped at him. “Not yours. Mine.”
He stared at her, silent, his horribly pocked and pitted head cast in grim detail by the moonlight. It took only a few moments for her to realise she was being unreasonable, arguing for the sake of it. Not for the first time, not even for the hundredth, she realised she was not made to be a leader. But she had to keep trying. Much as she wanted to hand over the reins, she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, give up so easily.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m just frustrated. All the muttering from the men. The pleas of the smallfolk. And with the sellswords being at each other’s throats as well…” She gave a sigh. That was another concern. The Butcher and the Baker had no love for the Tigress, and had only grown more suspicious of her since that night at the river. “There’s going to be blood between them one night, I know it. This business with Merinius…”
“The Baker has no proof of that,” Sir Ralston came in. His upper lip did flicker, though, showing how much he was disturbed by the Baker’s accusation. “He saw a shadow, hovering over Merinius’s body, no more. It may just have been one of those creatures.”
“And blood on the sand,” Saska said. “Where Merry died. He says there was blood.”
No one else had seen it, but the Baker swore that the Tigress had cut open Merinius’s neck, and drank his blood as he lay dead at the border of the camp. The sand demons of Hrang’kor may have killed him, like they had two dozen others, but the Baker was adamant the Tigress had supped when she might have tried to save him, before his body was dragged beneath the dirt.
It was a foul allegation to be sure, and Saska’s skin had crawled when she’d heard it. The Surgeon had continually claimed that the Tigress only ever drank the blood of the Bladeborn men she slew, evil men or so he called them, men who deserved it. But Merinius was far from evil. He was a bright-eyed man, kind and faithful, and everyone had liked him. No one argued that the Tigress had killed him herself, though there was a growing sense that the Baker was not lying, and that she had seen a chance to have a taste of Bladeborn blood and taken it, thinking no one would ever know.
Now the talk had turned to casting her out. The Baker and his brother did not want to fight beside her, and yet if Saska dismissed the Tigress from her service, she would only lose the Surgeon as well, and with him Gutter and Gore and Scalpel and Savage, all of whom had proven their worth. So far Saska had prevaricated over that problem, hoping it would go away, and that tensions would settle, but they hadn’t. Only two nights ago, the sellswords had come together in a fierce clash of words over it all, the Surgeon defending the Tigress’s honour, calling the Baker a liar, the Baker and the Butcher angrily pointing fingers and making their gruesome claims. In the end, it was one word against another and the matter had been put to bed. But not to sleep, Saska knew. This grim business was like to rear its ugly head once more, and when it did, it would be more than a clash of words she’d have to worry about.
She sighed again. Of the two factions of Bloody Traders, she would sooner keep the Baker and the Butcher, and with them Umberto and the Gravedigger, their men, but she would prefer not to have to make that choice. “How are we to solve his, Rolly? The Butcher has asked that we settle it with steel. Blade against blade, to let the gods decide her guilt. Do you think I should let them?”
He pondered it. “They will not accept anything less than a fight to the death, Saska. This will be no duel to first blood. You would have to be happy accepting that the Butcher may die.”
She hated the idea of losing him. And would the Baker stay in her service if his brother was slain? Would the Surgeon if he lost the Tigress? “Do you think the Butcher would lose?”
“There is every chance. I have seen the Butcher fight up close many times. He is a formidable warrior. But the Tigress is as well, from the glimpses I have seen of her. Such a fight could go either way.”
She ran a hand across her forehead. It came back slick with sweat. It was still so close here, so damnably humid. It wasn’t helping with anyone’s mood. “We need to find a way to bring them back together. This division weakens us all.”
“Battle usually does that. A common foe.” He shrugged. “Saving that, time can prove a healer. My advice is to let this play out naturally. If these men are truly committed to you, they will put their personal resentments aside and work out how to get along.”
Saska preferred that option. “We’ll give it time, then.” The men at the well were stirring, and that could only mean one thing. She peered up the road toward the glow of the city, and saw a host of riders returning. “Tantario,” she said. “Let’s hope he has good news.”
That hope, like many others, was dashed when they went to greet him. Sunrider Tantario dismounted his sunwolf Santarinio with a grave look cast on his face. The men gathered around to listen. “There has been an earthquake,” he told them. “Beyond the city. It has torn a great rift in the earth, we are told. The Capital Road is impassable that way.”
There were murmurs from the men. “Then we stop here,” said one. “We can go no further. We return to Aram.”
Tantario glared at him. “We will continue to the Perch, as ordered by Moonlord Hasham. How often must I say it?”
Once more, Saska thought. Always once more.
“What of the feast?” called another of the men.
“And the featherbeds,” said a third.
Tantario shook his head. “We will camp here tonight. There are fears that the earth will tremble once more, and the city is no longer safe. Many buildings have collapsed, even some of the stone towers, and sinkholes are appearing. Tomorrow, we will head for the lake and take barges across the water. This will take us back onto the road.” He talked sharply, in a voice that brooked no dissent, and before any of the men might call out their complaints, he looked to Saska and said, “Serenity. Does that serve?”
Everyone looked at her. She could feel their eyes upon her. “If…if you think it’s the right course, Sunrider.”
“It is the only course,” he said. Then he stepped closer to her. “Walk with me, my lady.”
They left the others behind, grumbling and grousing, and moved out across the yard to where the animals were tied and stabled. From the coast, Saska saw the shadowed forms of Del and Kaa Sokari reappear, much to her relief, and Jaito as well, Del’s tent-mate and friend who’d been helping him with his training. She was musing on how glad that made her, for Del to have his own friend here, when Alym Tantario said, “I am sorry for my men, my lady. They shame me with their behaviour, and I assure you, it is quite unlike them. They were all chosen for this charge for their sense of duty, and yet too many are now losing their faith. I can only apologise. I hope you will accept it.”
She smiled at his grizzled face, deeply rutted at the eyes and forehead. It seemed to Saska that more lines had appeared during their weeks on the road, and they still had so far to go. “You don’t need to apologise, Alym. They are sun-weary and grief-struck and afraid, that’s all.”
“They are soldiers. Fine spearmen and knights, even Lightborn. They should know better how to control their emotions. But there is a rot in too many of them, eating away. It is the shroud of the Ever-War, permeating all. The creatures. This weather. Even the men are being corrupted.”
“Then send them home,” Saska found herself saying. “Let them return to their wives and their children.”
He frowned at her. “I cannot. Men of duty and oath are the last bastion against anarchy. If they should be allowed to abandon their posts, every city and town will fall to ruin.” He shook his head. “We will take you to Eagle’s Perch, as is our charge. The road is impassable here, as I said, and to go west around the lake would take time, and prove perilous. Crossing the lake would be quickest, though is not without its dangers.” He looked into the darkness. “I had hoped to speak to Princess Talasha about that. I take it she has found somewhere to rest for the night?”
“The hills,” Saska said, looking to the shadows in the distance. “She’ll spend the night up there.”
“Then I will speak to her on the morrow.” His jaw was tight, his eyes tense and weary. “It will take several days to cross the lake, my lady. And the barges are not large enough to take us all. We will have to take three, for the men and the mounts. But even then it will be tight, and these divisions…”
She understood. “We’ll split them up accordingly. Make sure the sellswords are separated. And the worst of the dissenters too.”
“That would be wise,” he said.
The look on his face suggested this was not the option he would have preferred. But no road was safe anymore. The sea was crawling, the plains as well, and the lake seemed the lesser of those evils. All the same, Saska could not help but think of Robbert Lukar, and the words that Lord Hasham had said.
“The seas will judge him,” the old moonlord had intoned.
And now the lake will stand judgement on us, she thought.
