“Naivety, boy. Better you harden up fast, or this world will chew you up and spit you out, and tread on your mulch-corpse as it walks on by, laughing.”
It was quite an image. They rode on for a while, no one saying anything. Then Del mumbled, “I’m not called Dellard, by the way. Just Del. It’s not short for anything.”
“I know. But I prefer Dellard, so I will call you Dellard. And in turn you may call me a name of your own choosing. Think of one, Dellard. You will have plenty of time to think.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. Another hour went by, and another, and another, each of them hotter than the last. The road took one of those wretched turns inland, through a series of craggy canyons where the air grew so still and close that Saska wondered if it would ever stir again. Sweat poured down her back, soaking into her linen underclothes, the padded garments she wore beneath her armour.
That armour was polished and pristine, glittering beneath the sun in fine silver, with a soft blue undertone glimmering upon the breastplate. The pauldrons were tessellated with squares of silver and azure, the faulds and cuisses lobstered with exquisite overlapping lengths of godsteel plate. Saska had trained for months in mismatched armour, procured by the Butcher, and shortly before the battle that armour had been upgraded. Yet nothing like this. This was a gift of Robbert Lukar, left in the chest for her to wear, thrice-beaten and more durable than anything she had worn before. She did not know who it had belonged to before - perhaps it was even his, when he was a little younger - though it fit her beautifully whoever it was.
But the blue, she thought. The silver and blue. Those were not Tukoran colours, but Vandarian. Robbert had seen the dagger she bore, Varin’s dagger, passed down through the kings of his line. Did he recognise it? Does he know who I am? She could not say for sure, though that armour had certainly offered a hint. She hoped to have the chance to ask him, one day.
The maze of canyons wended a few miles inland, before opening out to a view of the plains to the northwest, barren and brown, blowing with dust, shimmering with insufferable heat. Ahead they spotted a town, windblown and dust-scarred, the buildings short and stubby and painted in a variety of colours; ochre, copper, bloody red, all peeling and stripping from the cracked, sun-baked walls.
The town seemed abandoned, not a soul stirring as they passed through and into the central square. Here they found a well, a scaffold above it, with a winch and bucket for drawing up water. “We stop here,” Saska heard Sunrider Tantario call out. “Fetch water for the horses. Search the buildings.”
While that was being seen to, some of the leaders gathered beside an old, dusty fountain. The Wall, Sunrider Tantario, the Baker, the Surgeon, and Kaa Sokari had assembled. Saska dismounted and strode to join them. “What are they searching for?” she asked
“Fugitives,” said Tantario. “From the battle.”
“And if they’re found?”
The Baker made a throat-slitting gesture.
“No,” Tantario said. “Any man who willingly surrenders will not be slain. He will be chained and sent to Aram to face judgement. Lord Hasham’s orders, Serenity.”
“Stupid orders,” said the Baker, pulling off his golden spectacles. He drew out a piece of pristine cloth from a pocket and began polishing the lenses. “No captive can be trusted to return to Aram of his own accord, and thus must be escorted. The more captives, the more men to escort them. Your host will soon begin to thin, Tantario, if you follow the moonlord’s command.”
“I will follow them, sellsword. As I have all my life.” Alym Tantario straightened out one of his ruffled feathers, raised his shaven chin, and looked at Saska. “Apologies, Serenity. I do not wish to speak so curtly in your presence, but these are my explicit commands. With luck we will not find any captives along our way, or those we do will…”
A shout sounded from inside one of the buildings.
All turned to the doorway of a single-storey house, hardly more than a block of stone, paint peeling, walls weatherworn. There were sounds of a scuffle, then a scrape of steel, and a scream. A man tumbled out backward through the door, clutching at his neck. A long dagger had been planted there. Blood ran down his craw and soaked into his feathered cloak.
Then the rest came rushing through.
One, two, ten, more of them, boiling like ants from a hill. Tukorans, Saska knew at once. They were pale-skinned, bearded, their foreheads and cheeks and noses red and blistered from the sun, armoured in leather and mail and bits of old plate. A few wore breastplates, gauntlets, gorgets, the essentials. She saw godsteel too, misting, saw men moving as only Bladeborn could, quicker than the rest, more deadly. Suddenly there were twenty, thirty, forty, all charging from a dozen different doors, hacking through the men who had entered to investigate.
Saska glanced aside, saw Leshie with Del, caught her eyes. Protect him. Leshie understood, grabbing the boy, pulling him back. You too, Saska thought, to Joy, and the starcat growled and pounced away. Then she tore her blade from its sheath, and launched herself into battle.
Others had already entered. The Butcher, laughing, the Tigress, hissing. The Wall was stomping forward, pulling a greatsword from its scabbard, grunting. Sunrider Tantario was calling for his men to engage, shouting, “To arms, men! For Aramatia! For Lumo!”
Arrows came spitting from the bowmen. The mounted spearmen, currently dismounted, lowered their spears and charged. Paladin knights drew great curved scimitar swords, coloured robes billowing as they entered the fray. The riders of sun and star in the company leapt in upon their wolves and cats.
Yet the Tukorans kept coming. Like lava from a fissure, they boiled up to the surface, from the vaults and baking basements in which they’d been hiding. Some took one look at the Wall, stuttered to a stop, and ran, scampering away into the hills. Most decided it was better to die here than out there, with steel in their grasp and iron in the air. Some even went right for the Wall himself as though to get it over with quickly. He obliged them, swinging through them simple as that, like a farmer scything wheat, limbs and offal flying everywhere.
Others didn’t last much longer. There were some formidable fighters here, in the company, Lightborn and Bladeborn both. Saska hesitated as she set forth, realising that there was no sense in her killing Tukorans unless necessary, and with such a strong company about her, her blade wasn’t needed. She stepped back instead, retreating to the rear, to watch. The Wall will be proud of me, she thought. That alone was reason enough to stand down.
She studied the men. Ahead, amid the bloodshed, the Butcher was doing what he did best, and green-eyed Merinius as well, a nimble and skilful fighter. She got her first look of the Baker in action as well; a more compact, measured combatant than his brother, though effective for all that, grinning that white smile as he cut and cleaved.
The Tigress was adding to her five hundred kills, hunting and hissing, a maelstrom of death. Saska watched her more than anyone, mesmerised by the towering woman, orange and black cloak swishing as she ducked, weaved, struck, slew, killing one man and then another with an astonishing mix of stalking grace and sudden, brutal violence.
“I said she was good, did I not?” a voice said to her. “The best sellsword in all the world.”
Saska turned. The Surgeon was standing right beside her, with that proud look on his face.
She nodded at his remark. “She’s…quite something. I’m glad to have her on my side.”
“As I have been, through all these years. She has long been as a daughter to me, even though she is much older.”
Saska took his age for about forty-five summers or so. “So these rumours…about her drinking blood, to stay young?”
“Are quite true.” He raised a finger, pointing. “Look how she seeks out that Bladeborn warrior, do see you? Her eyes are set on him. She wants to be the one to slay him, my lady. Only then will she allow herself to drink the man’s Varin blood.”
Saska swallowed, discomfited. She could not tell if he was serious or not. “Varin’s blood flows strongly in my veins,” she pointed out. “More than anyone else’s. She won’t…”
“Seek to have a sup of yours?” He smiled one of those flat smiles of his. “No, you need not fear her, my lady. It is only the blood of the wicked she seeks.”
The fighting was fierce before them, the sunbaked stone of the square quickly filling with blood and bodies. There were grunts, and death-cries, snarls and howls from the cats and wolves, horses whickering and neighing in alarm, camels honking.
“Do you not want to bloody your blade?” Saska asked the Surgeon, over all that.
“Here? No. There is no need, Serenity. Let the others have their fun.” He spoke as a man used to these skirmishes, cold eyes studying the strength of friend and foe, concluding a simple victory. “Look, see Gutter and Gore?” He pointed at the pair, fighting side by side. “Now you see how they got their names.”
They gut, and they gore, she thought, as the two men lived up to their tags. The other two warriors under the Surgeon’s charge - a man and a woman, they were, and husband and wife if what Leshie said was to be believed - were called Scalpel and Savage. Scalpel was as advertised; precise, clean, a killer after the Surgeon’s heart. Savage, too, earned the name. The woman was fury personified.
“I thought they would be the other way around,” Saska said. She gestured to Savage, a diminutive, heavy tattooed woman with her hair shaven down one side of her head, braided on the other, as she screamed and ran, jumping onto the back of a big Tukoran axeman, biting at his neck with sharpened teeth, tearing.
“Ah. You thought Savage would be the man, Scalpel the woman?”
