Jonik panted like a predator and turned about, searching for his next kill. Nims was dancing about, flicking his knives, leaping from table to table as Harden chased him down. The other Bladeborn, Truss or Hunter, was duelling Gerrin, but would not last long. You have no idea who you’re fighting, he thought. Nor you. He turned to the big man.

They came face to face at the heart of the room. The other men were dead or fled or dying. His foe held a hand at his side where Jonik had cut him, blood leaking out through his fingers. His other hand clung to his warhammer, a rare weapon, but Jonik didn’t care for it.

“That sword,” he said once more. “Where did you get it?”

The man said nothing.

“Tell me and I’ll make it quick.”

“Found it,” he said. “On a dying man.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

“Here?”

“Aye. Right here in this pissing inn. There’s a man upstairs, sick as a dog…didn’t think he’d need it. Well, that boy who was tending him thought otherwise, but I’ve always hated boys. Shouted at me to leave him be, but you think I was gonna listen to that? Men were coming to take him away, he said. Bollocks, I said back. Then I cut his pretty throat.”

Jonik’s fist tightened about his blade. “You admit to murder?”

“Good to admit your sins before you die. Might save me.”

“It won’t. Where are the innkeeper and his wife?”

“Outside. We were going to bury them, but couldn’t be bothered, so just threw them into the field. There’s some beast out in them woods nearby, we heard. Thought we’d leave it a meal, keep it from our door.”

Jonik scowled. “And this boy?”

“Him too. Annoying little runt, he was, thinking himself all high and mighty. Said he’d served with heroes. Boasted the Barrel Knight was a friend. That ghost as well. Lying little cretin deserved what he got.”

Jonik’s breath stilled in his lungs. His eyes narrowed, fist tightening about his blade. Devin? he thought.

He took a hard step forward.

The big man stood his ground, hefting his warhammer, pulling out that kraken-blade. Blood oozed freely from his side, trickling down through the links in his ringmail, soaking into his leathers and wools. His face twisted in pain. “Let’s get this done.” He thrust with the blade, bringing the warhammer down behind it.

Jonik faded left, right, swung upward. The tip of Mother’s Mercy tore through the bottom of the man’s bearded chin, splitting it. A gurgly grunt erupted, teeth and blood spraying. The man stumbled backward. Jonik slipped sideways, quick as a whip, slicing through his lumpen nose, then rushed forward, gripped his neck before he could fall, lifted, squeezed, saw his eyes widen, bulge, burst out from the sockets of his skull, closed his gauntlet about his throat, ripped it out as he tossed the man aside. Blood poured from his flank, and his neck, and from the hole where his nose once was. His eyes dangled out on thin tendrils of ragged sinew. Jonik spat on him, then ran for the stairs, smashing the planks beneath his weight as he rushed upward.

He reached the landing, the floor groaning as though it might collapse, saw open doors leading into the rooms where the deserters had slept. One door at the end was closed. He stamped toward it, turned the handle, pulled. The stink of piss and pestilence rolled out, thick in his nostrils. The interior was pitch dark, the drapes drawn, the patter of rain heavy on the roof. There was a groaning sound, a man in a fever lying on a bed, unwashed and uncleaned and untended and unfed.

Jonik snatched a candle from an alcove outside and stepped in, waving the light across the room. The figure in the bed had a young face, a face barely older than his, a face he knew. The kraken-blade had been his, taken from the chests that Lord Humphrey Merrymarsh had given them, an age ago when they’d landed in Calmwater after their long voyage from the south.

Jonik rushed forward, set the candle on the bedside table. He pulled off a glove and a gauntlet and put a hand to the man’s forehead. “Sir Lenard,” he whispered. “Lenard, can you hear me?”

The young knight’s eyes flickered, but did not open. He groaned, moving in his sleep, shifting over the soiled linens. He had not been cleaned for long days, even weeks. Jonik drew back the filthy cover, saw his skinny body beneath, the wounds that raked across his chest covered in a bloody bandage, going brown. There was a plate of food beside him, but the food was mouldy, rotten, a cup of water dry as a bone. A fury boiled in Jonik’s guts. He wanted to go back down there and kill those men all over again, but that was done and they were dead.

Instead he turned and bellowed out, “Gerrin! Water! Now! Lenard Borrington is dying! Bring water! Now!”

16

The caravel was beached at the bottom of a cliff, inaccessible to them lest they risk a perilous climb down, caught on the rocks a hundred metres from the shore. The masts had all been snapped clean free, the sails shredded and torn apart, the gunwales and bulwarks battered, and the ship was listing badly. There were holes in the side of the vessel, Saska saw, and on the decks she could see what looked like bodies too, scattered here and there.

“So, what are we thinking?” asked Leshie, standing at the edge of the cliff with Saska, Del, and Rolly. The rest of the host were taking a moment to water the horses and camels, hiding from the sun in the shade of a grove of Aramatian cypress trees. There was a small roadside tavern on the other side of the Capital Road here, with a working well in the back. The innkeep and his wife and children were all hard at work bringing out trays of water for the host, and plates of fruit as well, mangos and pears, apples and dates, which the men - the sellswords in particular - were gobbling down greedily. “Do you think they foundered in that storm?” Leshie went on. “Looks like they were washed ashore.”

That storm, Saska thought. They had seen it from the coast, a brutal tempest that had turned all the southern skies dark for a full two days. ‘Weather of the new world’, Sunrider Alym Tantario had called it. He said that this was to be expected during the Ever-War, these apocalyptic weather events. And here was me thinking it was just gods and monsters we had to worry about. No. Apparently, they could expect tornados and superstorms and city-swallowing earthquakes too.

“It wasn’t the storm,” Sir Ralston said. “That ship has been there too long.”

Leshie looked up at him. “How do you know?”

“The bodies on deck. They’re entering a later stage of decomposition. Those men have been dead for several weeks.”

Saska took a grip of her Varin dagger, which she had come to find enhanced her sight just a little more than regular godsteel. There were several dead men on deck wearing sun-scorched cloaks and bits of rusting armour. That alone suggested they’d been lying there a while. The fact that there were crabs picking at what remained of their flesh was a better sign, however.

She nodded. “A few weeks sounds about right.”

Leshie frowned at her. She wasn’t able to see so far, not in such detail anyway. “I’ll have to take your word for it. Or I guess we could just ask the innkeeper. He’ll be able to tell us when they ran aground.”

“Several weeks ago,” Rolly repeated. “There’s no need to trouble the man.”

The Red Blade shrugged. “If you say so. So who are they, then? Tukoran?”

“It would seem likely,” Sir Ralston said. “By their clothing.”

“But not the ship,” Saska pointed out. She knew enough about the styles of northern and southern ships to see that this caravel was of Aramatian design. The differences were subtle, if noticeable for someone looking for them, and what remained of the figurehead showed a snarling sunwolf. “It’s Aramatian.”

Leshie bit her lip, trying to puzzle it out. “Shall we go down and investigate?” She took a step forward, looking over the edge of the cliff. “I can get down there, no problem.”

“And how would you reach the ship?” the Wall asked her. “It’s a hundred metres from the beach.”

“Hmmm, I wonder,” the girl said, rubbing her chin. “I don’t know, maybe I’d…swim? And not in my armour, before you ask. I’d take that off first, obviously.”

The Wall shook his head. “These are shark-infested waters. You would only be risking your life and for no profit whatsoever. Most likely this ship was a part of the coalition armada that sailed south from Eagle’s Perch. By the damage to the vessel it was likely attacked. Torn masts and holes in the bulwarks suggest the work of a kraken.”

Leshie whistled through her lips. “That’s a battle I’d have liked to see.”

“Wasn’t much of a battle, by the look of the ship,” Saska remarked.

“I think I know who they are,” said Del.

Everyone looked at him. Leshie jabbed him in the arm. “Go on then, Squire. Enlighten us.”

“Sir Clive Fanning,” Del said, in that way of his, as though he wasn’t quite sure. Sometimes he made answers sound like questions, by the cadence of his voice, the unsure frame of his eyes. “I think, anyway.”

“And who’s Clive Fanning?” Saska asked him.