Path of Revenge (6 page)

Sudden shouts erupted behind him, somewhere down the end of the hallway that led to the kitchen and bedrooms. Fear gripped his heart then, and he leaped down from the chair just in time to watch his front door collapse in a sheet of flame that washed outwards, then vanished. Behind the magic flame the two Recruiters, swords drawn, strode into his house. The might of Andratan.

It was nearly twenty years since Noetos had fought in the Neherian war. He’d been a teenager when he last drew a killing sword, fighting beside his father. He slew Neherians, took wounds, but the fields of battle lost their lustre well before the time he found himself sitting on a rocky Neherian field, his father’s head in his lap, sightless eyes staring into his own.

Twenty years, but it seemed his arm remembered the sword all too well. He threw himself backwards across the room to the hallway, then took a position at the entrance. Behind him the sounds of fighting continued, blade on blade. Anomer must have retrieved his short sword from his bedroom, or perhaps he’d picked up his sister’s blade.
Good. If it has gone on this long, Anomer must have secured some kind of advantage.

Within seconds the Recruiters were upon him. There was no cry, no challenge, no quarter. Just blows swifter than he could imagine, heavier than anything the Neherians had brought to bear on him. His arm remembered the sword, but he had never been accounted a good defensive swordsman. His years of training had not prepared him for this.

He backed further into the hallway, defending grimly but bleeding from a nick to his sword arm, and drew the two swordsmen in. Now they were constricted, and could not make the swings necessary for their fearsome blows. It became a contest of thrust and parry, rapier-like, with swords ill suited for the purpose. The fisherman expected more magic from the Recruiters at any moment, but none came: perhaps they had over-extended themselves with the door? He could only hope.

Risking the briefest glance over his shoulder, Noetos caught a pale flash—Anomer, he thought—fighting off two swordsmen identical to those in front of him.
This can end only one way,
the fisherman admitted, and tried out an idea just forming in his mind. Slashing upwards, he brought down the night curtain separating the hallway from the gathering room. The falling cloth took the Recruiters by surprise, fouling their blades.

‘Now, Anomer!’ he cried, hoping that the boy remained sharp-witted. As he turned he was relieved to see his son slipping through the kitchen door.
Noetos made it through moments before the Recruiters came storming down the hallway. Not a substantial door. He grabbed at the kitchen table, tipped the remains of the midday meal onto the floor with a clatter, and wedged it across the door. A few more seconds bought.

Arathé stood there, still looking nothing like the daughter he knew, with a bloody sword in her hands. ‘She got one of them, father,’ Anomer said. ‘She said something and he just froze…’

‘Scullery window!’ Noetos whispered urgently. ‘Now!’ Behind him the Recruiters did not bother with magic this time. Instead they beat at the door with their sword-hilts, blows that rattled the bar and loosened the hinges. ‘Hurry!’

Noetos flung himself at the narrow window, bruising his shoulders in an attempt to clamber through. A hand reached out and pulled him forward. For a moment the fisherman stuck, his hips wedged fast, but he twisted back and forth until he came free, accompanied by a ripping sound. He had thought the hand was his son’s, but as he emerged into the shadows under the cliff he found himself looking into the grim face of his wife.

After nodding his thanks, he spun around and reached back through the window, clasping his daughter’s cold hands in his. She struggled up onto the bench, gritted her teeth and tried to squeeze through, but it was immediately apparent that she would never make it. Half in, half out, she hissed in frustration, looked into her father’s eyes and slipped her hand from his.

‘Nngo!’ she said, twisting her mouth to shape the words. ‘Ngo!’

She still had the Voice. Noetos found himself scrambling with his wife and son down the narrow gully behind the house, under the cliff, at her command. He
could not resist her even though her words cut against his deepest desire. The Voice relaxed its hold on him, however, and instantly he turned and headed back up the gully—just in time to hear a woman scream, then to witness some sort of detonation accompanied by a blue flash. The ground rocked beneath them.

‘Arathé!’ he cried, as two more explosions followed, caving in the rear of the Fisher House and bringing rocks cascading down from the cliff above them. ‘Arathé!’

A hand took him by the shoulder; he struck at it half-heartedly, eyes still on the spot where the kitchen had been, now a place of blue fire and rising smoke and dust. ‘They will kill us if they catch us,’ Anomer said. ‘Fetch help from the village. Hurry!’

Finally his son’s urgency reached him, and within moments Noetos and what remained of his family stood on The Circle.

‘I will get help from the Hegeoman,’ Opuntia said huskily, her first words since the Recruiters had invaded their home. ‘Anomer will protect me.’

‘And I will raise Old Fossa,’ said the big fisherman grimly, nodding towards the ruins of his house. ‘Then nothing will protect them.’

His wife and son ran along The Circle, disappearing around a curve in the road, safe for the moment. He had to check. She might be lying there, wounded or dying. But he could not leave. He’d run away before, twenty years ago, had abandoned his family, leaving them in a Neherian clearing on a terrible day of ambush, betrayal and torture. He had lived then, when everyone else had died.

He’d hated himself ever since.

Noetos turned from the top of the Zig Zag and crept back towards the Fisher House. This was madness. The Recruiters would be waiting with their swords and their
magic. Suicidal madness, a special sort of insanity born of the irreconcilable clash of guilt and love. But a worse insanity waited to seize him if he chose to flee. He had abandoned her once; he could not do it again.

He made it to the front door without glimpsing his attackers. A quick glance inside: still no sign of them. He eased through the remains of the door, picked his way past scattered furniture and ventured carefully towards the hallway. Faint scuffling sounds came from ahead of him; blue smoke drifted out of the darkened entrance, clearing enough for him to see a robed figure lying face down in the hallway. Bald-headed, limbs splayed brokenly, kitchen knife protruding from her back, unmoving. He froze.

Two cowled figures glided out of the blue mist, swords raised. Noetos, shouting in grief and frustration, backed away from them. One of the Recruiters barked a word of command, and from their swords came two bright blue flashes. The crack of magical power lifted Noetos off his feet, throwing him back against the wall, knocking his sword from his hand.

His foot bumped against something—the sculpture of his daughter—and he snatched it from its plinth, ready to throw it if the Recruiters came closer. They did not need to. The fisherman did not see what happened then, as he closed his eyes against the killing magic. There was a rumble, a blue flare against his eyelids, then shouts of chagrin from the Recruiters. When Noetos opened his eyes all that remained was a momentary blue crackling around the bust in his hand, then nothing. His two foes looked at each other, astonished.

Noetos jerked himself upright, tucking the carving into his belt. He could not leave it. His daughter was beyond saving, his sword was beyond reach, and clearly he could not defeat two wielders of such magic. In a swift motion he leapt high into the air, his hands awkwardly grasping the base of the cupola, then swung
himself up into the light-filled space. Safe from swords for a moment, but exposed even so. As the Recruiters ran towards the spot where he had been, he snatched the carving from his belt and smashed at a pane of glass with it. He heaved himself through the hole he had made.

Rapid as thought he picked himself up, then ran across the roof and hurled himself over the edge, across the three-pace gap to the flat roof of his bathhouse. Encumbered by the carving, he barely gained purchase on the small flat roof. He considered throwing the object away, but found he could not. It was all he had left of her.

First one, then the other of the Recruiters emerged onto the roof of the Fisher House and looked around in bewilderment, which grew into incomprehension and shouts of anger when a thorough search of the roof and grounds failed to reveal any sign of the man.

There were mysteries tied up in riddles here in this village. A boy who handled a sword like a warrior, who had answered Ataphaxus in a Voice so pure it could, with training, shape anything its owner put his mind to, and who had intelligence to go with his skill. What could he become once he discovered his power? His father was a bluff fisherman who wielded with real skill a sword marked with the device of the legendary Duke of Rhoudhos, and who, to pile wonder on wonder, carried a carving made of pure huanu stone, surely the largest piece in existence. And their own tongueless servant who had unerringly found her way to these extraordinary people, who had then risked their lives to protect her. These people had to be found. Questions had to be asked, connections made. And the huanu stone had, at all costs, to be recovered.

Noetos heard the shouting. It encouraged him to run even faster along The Circle towards the spur that led down to the shore. A quick glance behind him revealed nothing. He saw the entrance to the little-used Bridge Path, ducked to his right and set off along the stony track.
Along here, down to the beach, then back up to Old Fossa.

Bridge Path led from The Circle into a small embayment in the cliffs known as The Crater, where the dead of Fossa enjoyed their final rest. Open only to the east, and that a narrow entrance surrounded by bluffs, The Crater was shrouded in almost perpetual shadow. Near Tipper Bridge the fisherman stopped for a moment, undecided about his route, and heard the rattle of stones behind him.

They had not given up.

The village must surely have been roused by now. Opuntia and Anomer would have enlisted the aid of their Hegeoman, who would have gathered dozens of villagers. The explosions must have echoed around the cliffs, and the smoke would draw a crowd. Surely there was little even four such as the Recruiters could do against a whole village.

Around the bluff and into the entrance to The Crater came his two pursuers, then a third, running hard. Noetos waited where he was a moment longer, expecting to see villagers sprinting after them, but the path behind them remained stubbornly empty.

Across the bridge or a scramble up the slope?
He chose the bridge, then remembered the mechanism and blessed his choice. There was a pin as long as a man’s arm at either end, serving to tie the Tipper Bridge firmly to its supports. Removed, the bridge would sway either side of its one central pivot. These pins had been part of the bridge for centuries, the bridge itself one element of an elaborate defence the ancient Fossans had devised against their enemies. The Hegeoman had
recently reinstituted the yearly task of taking the pins out and cleaning them.
Just as well,
the fisherman thought as he bent down to pull out the first pin.

Sweat plastering his hair to his scalp and flicking into his eyes, Noetos dashed across the bridge in a few heartbeats, stopping to draw the second pin out of its sleeve. Tipper Bridge creaked, but made no other sound.

His pursuers approached. He willed them onto the bridge, but the three of them stood in plain view on the far side, perhaps twenty paces from him, and made no move to hazard the narrow structure.

‘Don’t you want me?’ the fisherman asked them, hoping the sneer in his voice masked the fear underneath. ‘Isn’t that why you’ve come this far?’ Then a more frightening thought struck him. Could they hurl that blue fire across the rocky gully? Instantly he regretted his provocative words.

‘Want you? What would we want with a worn-out fisherman from a village scared of its own shadow?’ The smooth voice of the lead Recruiter floated across the space between them, echoing around the cliffs above the bridge.

‘I was wondering that myself,’ Noetos said conversationally. Why, indeed, were they still pursuing him? ‘Perhaps you have heard of my prowess with a net, and wish to learn my secrets? If so, you have not been civil enough in your asking. I will keep my fish-lore to myself.’ His eyes flicked over their shoulders, but still he could see no villagers coming to his aid.
Delay, delay.

‘You wonder where your townsmen are, why they have not yet come to help you,’ the voice continued, and Noetos felt the stirrings of real fear at the words. ‘You sent your wife and son to your village leader in the belief that he would be sympathetic to your predicament, that he would raise the village to defend you against the Recruiters who threatened you. The
problem with this course of action should become clear to you if you take a moment to reflect. Tell me, fisherman, would the Hegeoman of this puerile village give you or your family a moment’s thought if threatened with the loss of the hundred gold coins we offer for your son? Would he not be much more likely to hand your family over to the two Recruiters who followed them to his house?’

‘Betrayer!’ Noetos cried, consumed by fury, and leapt at his tormentors. The bridge gave way under his left foot.

Yawing crazily, it threw him towards the gully twenty paces below. His right foot snagged in the sleeve that housed the pin. His ankle twisted painfully, but held. For a moment he hung out over the gully, and the dry, rocky watercourse below him spiralled as he swung; then the bridge tilted back and he dragged himself up to the path. Improbably, the stone carving still remained nestled in his belt.

The leader of the Recruiters hissed his annoyance—his reaction telling the fisherman they wished him dead—and signalled his fellows to scramble across the gully as best they could. Noetos turned and ran.

Despair rose to smother his fear. Undoubtedly the beast told the truth. He had lost everything in one dreadful afternoon except his own life, and that now appeared forfeit. He sprinted away from The Crater, down towards Red Rocks Lane and the sea, working feeling into his ankle as he ran.