The Iron Wolves (6 page)

Rokroth was a town bordering on the size of a small city. It was busy, in that buildings crowded one another and the population outweighed the housing. The vast Rokroth Marshes to the south and west provided much employment, for they were warm and rich in fast-breeding eels; a delicacy favoured in the wealthy capital city of Drakerath, and the military capital of Vagan, and also sought out by minor nobles and dignitaries throughout Vagandrak seeking to impress by replicating the dishes on the royal table. There were other uses for the creatures; as well as food, eel-skin leather was smooth and very strong, and an eel’s blood was toxic to humans and formed the basis for various apothecary drugs and poisons.

Throughout Rokroth, street gangs of homeless children ran through the mud. Dogs barked. Whores whored and dandies paraded. The rain came down hard. It always rained in Rokroth. It was an ongoing joke, although few found it truly funny. Especially those who lived there.

It was seven in the morning, and an optimistic sun was attempting to burn the mist from the streets and fields and marshes. Winter was nearly here and soon the lands of Vagandrak would be conquered by the Gods of Ice and Snow.

Kiki lay in a cellar back room. It was not an underground tavern exactly, it was just a place to go.

It was dark. The room was filled with low, comfy couches. Smoke filled the air. Thick, and choking, but ultimately, a smoke of comfort.

Figures sprawled throughout the gloom like discarded gloves.

Kiki lay on a couch against the far wall, away from doors and the narrow, ceiling-level windows. Her back rested against solid underground stone. It was the way she liked it. The way it had to be. She’d seen too many friends stabbed in the back – metaphorically, as well as physically – to squander her liver without a fight. Even under the effects of the leaf.

The honey-leaf.

A flower of beauty, honesty, power, truth, pain and misery. Kiki laughed to herself. A small trickle of brown spit dribbled from the corner of her mouth.

You survived, she told herself.

You always survive.

He was close,
said her sister in the mirror.
He nearly had you. Nearly killed you. Nearly fucked you over; took your body and soul. Once, Kiki, you would have taken him in the blink of an eye.

What are you trying to say?

Smoke drifted, thick and cloying. Voices burbled, unreal a background chatter of noise and stench and casual sex.

I’m not trying to say anything. I
am
saying – you are growing old. Slow. Fat. Decadent. Pointless. Pointless, Kiki; you’ve changed, woman. You’ve changed from being a lethal awesome warrior, a killing machine, to being a slow fat slave. You rule the drug; the drug never rules you. That’s what you told me. Told me a million times over. And now look at you. Look at the state of you. You’re a fucking disgrace. Soon, you’ll be opening your legs just for a taste of the leaf. When the money’s gone. And the money always goes.

Kiki considered this.

“Go to hell,” she laughed, she giggled, and placed another leaf under her tongue. Then she put her hand over her mouth and gasped, eyes wide. “But then, how can you go to hell, Suza? You’re already there, right? You had your dead child and you took your own life. Now you rot in the torture pits and you’re pissed I’m not there with you; so you haunt me through the mirror. Go ahead, bitch. Do your best. Do your worst. I do not care. Life and death; who gives a fuck? What’s left for me? Nothing. Nothing at all. I am as you see me: an empty shell.”

People came and went. Time accelerated, then went slow. Infinitely slow.

Kiki lay, slumbering, twisting and turning in an uneasy half-life.

Lights flickered. Candles and firelight. And then, the dawn.

A shadow blocked out the light, and she covered her eyes.

If this was the King’s Guard – well.

She chuckled to herself.

She was totally wasted.

“Collect your weapons.”

“Who are you to tell… me… tell me, what to do?” Life, the world, infinity, all swam in and out of focus. She went as if to place another honey-leaf under her tongue, but a large hand knocked it from her grasp.

She tutted, annoyed, but did not have the energy to scrabble on the floor. It was gone and done.

Once, she would have killed the bastard for that.

A face loomed close, and if the drugs hadn’t been so strong she would have flinched in disbelief. She struggled backwards on the couch, seeking to be free, and suddenly cowering in on herself, folding in on herself; suddenly brittle, and weak, and breakable, like kiln-fired porcelain.

It’s the leaf, she told herself.

It’s the
leaf.

But it wasn’t. And he slapped her and she screamed and struggled, but he picked her up and Kiki lay cradled in his powerful arms like a child, crying bitter, salted tears, as he carried her from the smoky den up the narrow stone steps and out into the rain.

She gazed up into his face.

“Father?” she said.

“No,” he said, words more gentle now. “But I’m close enough. Come on, Kiki. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

It was the Guild of Spice Merchants’ Annual Dinner, and flurries of snow kicked down the street past the ancient Guild House. Six hundred years old, of ancient stone and black carved oak, the building was one of the oldest, and most architecturally admired, in the Vagandrak War Capital of Vagan.

The cobbled streets and lanes were dark, empty and decorated with light sprinklings of snow. Not so in the Guild House. Cheers went up and the five fat chimneys pumped smoke into a charcoal sky.

Inside, down corridors of thick, richly patterned carpets, past panels of oak and marble busts of Guild Masters dating back three centuries, drifted snippets of conversation and song, the aroma of a whole roasting pig and the clink of crystal containing Vagandrak’s finest port and brandy. The main speaker, one Lord Deltari, current Guild Master, huge and bulbous, red of cheek, bald of head, and wearing a black velvet coat adorned with glittering jewels normally only found on ladies of ill repute, was just winding down his annual speech with a tale of how he’d made his fortune by identifying a niche in the market for ground and dried exotic spices from deepest southern Zakora, and from thence importing one of the most current and popular hot spices after an argument with his brother over a dog. The tale had an ironic, slapstick ending that made Lord Deltari appear witty and smart, and his brother the village idiot. And Deltari ended up with the dog. A poodle, apparently, called Charles. Another cheer went up and, amidst clinking glasses and guffaws and a discrete applause, Deltari sat down to an animated table of sycophantic chatter and over-friendly back-slapping.

In the corner sat Great Dale, William de Pepper and Lord Rokroth, from the House of Rokroth, whose main trade was eel meat from the Rokroth Marshes, but who also traded in various spiced variations of dried eel, his buying power thus earning him a place in the Guild, and therefore attendance at the Guild Annual Dinner.

“… an idiot,” Great Dale was saying, and buttered himself a warm roll.

Rokroth nodded, rubbing his grey whiskers as a serving maid poured him a large measure of brandy. He swirled the amber liquid, watching the rich dance inside the many faceted crystal chamber. “The man’s a buffoon. And just because he’s President of the Guild, and Lord
through marriage,
I’ll have you note, as opposed to direct bloodline, we have to endure his terminal self-congratulatory speech; and I use the term ‘
speech
’ in its broadest possible sense. I don’t know about you, gentlemen, but personally I’d rather stick my own head up my own backside. Or even, and this ably illustrates my despair, up
his
backside!”

They broke into laughter, but they caught the chatter at the next round table and faces soon soured.

“Pepper, what have you heard about these new tax increases? Do you think there’s any meat to it?” Rokroth took a hefty gulp of brandy, dribbling just a few drops down his rich gold waistcoat.

“Not from the King himself, but the rumour mill is hard at work. If the gossip is to be believed, we are due another hefty tax hike, not just on imports, which affects us all, but on the bloody sales! And only six months after the previous inflation. It’s said Yoon wishes to extend his bloody Moon Tower by another thirty levels and we,
we
have to pay for the folly!”

“A disgrace.”

“Ridiculous.”

“A bloody outrage is what it is.”

They chatted about the changes in King Yoon’s tax policies for the next ten minutes, then talk turned to the King himself.

Rokroth lowered his voice, and looked around in an almost conspiratorial manner. “Some say his outfits have become more and more garish, and more and more expensive. He has started wearing thick make-up like the players who walk the Vagandrak stage, and that he giggles at random moments like some child embarrassed about a puddle on the kitchen floor.”

“There have definitely been changes to his character during this past year,” said Pepper, his face growing serious. “Not only does he seem obsessed with the building of this tower, what was it called again? The Tower of the Moon? He has a thousand men working round the clock, which must be costing our Kingdom a pretty penny. But worse, you remember last winter, the army was cut back?”

“By forty thousand men,” said Rokroth, grimly. “Now, we have barely enough to patrol our borders with Zakora and the Plague Lands.”

“Yoon claims they can be called up in an instant, if needed; yet Desekra Fortress is manned by a skeletal force, less than ten thousand, and the navy lies hobbled far north at the Crystal Sea. Why use so many war triremes if there are no experienced crews?”

Great Dale was nodding. “It is a drastic cost-cutting tactic, I’d wager.”

“But why? To build this damn tower? I tell you, the man is obsessed. But it cannot
just
be for that. Forty thousand men stood down! I swear by all the gods, if King Tarek were alive to see the mess Yoon is making of his realm.” He sighed. “I miss the old bastard. He was a hard man, but fair.”

Rokroth nodded. “And spinning in his ancestral tomb, no doubt, at the effeminate, gold-pissing popinjay into which his son has metamorphosed. Serving girl! More brandy! Over here, girl!”

“I swear, people are getting nervous on the streets. There is less laughter. People walk on, with hurried gait, heads down, not wishing to offend. And have you noticed the King’s Guard?”

“I doubt it, he travels in a gilt-laden carriage!” laughed Great Dale, and they laughed alongside him.

“No man, but seriously,” persisted Pepper. “There are more guards.”

“You’re imagining it, man, surely?”

“I tell you, I am not!” and he slammed down his glass so that brandy slopped over the rim.

There came a sudden disturbance at the entrance to the hall, accompanied by raised voices. There was a shine of armour and a man marched forward, King’s Guard, with a short black plume denoting captain. He strode down the central carpet, and behind followed another twenty men. But what was most disturbing was they all carried swords, unsheathed, and their eyes were hard as steel.

“What is this outrage?” boomed Lord Deltari, huge frame waddling forward to meet the intrusion. “You, sir, what is your name? Identify yourself! You dare enter the Guild House with drawn weapons? I shall see you hang for this, in the name of the King!”

The captain halted and relaxed and his eyes raked the room, finally coming to rest on Lord Deltari, face puffed and red, his blood up after too much port and brandy, his velvet jacket slightly skewed.

The man was tall, powerful and had a commanding stance. Beneath his helm was neat white hair, a neatly trimmed white moustache and a hard face with tracings of pale old scars beneath a dark tan which spoke of many years in the field. “I,” he said, once more scanning the room of wealthy spice barons and lords, “am Captain Dokta; Captain of the King’s Guard.”

A sigh escaped many present. Captain Dokta was infamous for having committed many acts of cruelty the length and breadth of Vagandrak over the last few years; acts which had, supposedly, gone unpunished, and were maybe even sanctioned by the king.

“I… I…” stuttered Deltari.

“I what, you fat buffoon? Well, I’ll tell you I what,” snarled Dokta suddenly, and at this point he gave a quick glance towards Great Dale, who stood up and gave a solemn meaningful nod, “this entire room is under arrest in the
name
of King Yoon. I have been sent here to serve you notice, gentlemen.”

“Arrested?” managed Deltari, huffing and puffing, spittle on his chin. “But that is preposterous! On what charges? Come on, man, spit it out!”

“On the count of treason,” said Dokta, voice low, words little more than a hot exhalation.

Silence fell across the Guild Hall like ash.

Lord Deltari staggered forward. “Ridiculous!” he bellowed, face frowning, his pompousness and affront returning like a surge. “An absolute mockery to the name of justice! I demand…” and his hand came up, finger poking Sergeant Dokta in the chest, but his sentence got no further.

Dokta’s sword flickered up, removing Lord Deltari’s hand at the wrist. The severed hand slapped on rich rugs, index finger twitching, jewelled fingers sparkling, and blood pumped out as Deltari cried out, staggered back clutching his stump, then fell over unceremoniously. There came a shocked hush, before servants rushed to their master’s aid.

Great Dale moved to stand behind Dokta and his armed men.

Captain Dokta swept the room with narrowed eyes, and slowly the group began to back away. To the rear of the hall, several spice merchants and lords had tried to slip from the Guild Hall unnoticed, only to discover the rearward doors had been barricaded.

“You have all been condemned by King Yoon,” said Dokta, voice clear across the finely tuned acoustics of the Hall. They carried to every guild member. They carried to every frightened man and woman, no matter what their station.

More men appeared behind the King’s Guard, and they each carried wooden flasks, several with barrels, which they rolled silently across thick rugs and carpets. They moved forward and began pouring oil over furniture, carpets, and splashing it up the walls.

Lord Rokroth surged forward this time. “Captain! What, in the name of the Three Gods and the Holy Mother,
are you doing
?”

“You have all been found guilty of treason. Your sentence is to burn,” said Dokta, as barrels were cast down and smashed with axes. Nostrils twitched. A flaming torch was brought forward; the gathered annual meeting of spice merchants were looking extremely panicked now. Several had drawn decorative sabres, but most were plump and old, and even if they had been swordsmen in their day, wealth and hedonistic excess had stolen any skill they might once have possessed.

The brand was tossed forward, and a
whoosh
filled the hall as a curtain of flame rose in sudden combustion. Now, every merchant and spice lord rushed for the back of the Guild Hall only to discover, as had their comrades, that they had been trapped. Shouts rang out and several men ran, leaping through the flames which ignited their clothing and perfume and powdered wigs as easily as if they’d been soaked in oil themselves. Lord Rokroth sprinted forward, leaping through the roaring fire and screaming as he did so. He landed, burning, coat on fire and sabre raised, only to be met by Dokta.

“Get back in there and burn,” Dokta snarled, his boot coming up as he front-kicked Lord Rokroth in the chest. Rokroth grunted and was sent sprawling back into the flames where he screamed and screamed and quickly sank, crumpling, into a foetal position.

The tapestries and wood panelling were roaring now, the air hot and filled with smoke and ash. The ancient, six hundred year-old oak beams had caught like kindling thanks to the oil and, satisfied, the King’s Guard backed from the Guild Hall as a hundred pleading screams, cries for help, and promises of wealth followed them.

Captain Dokta strode down the magnificent steps, breathing deeply on crisp, iced air. He gave a narrow smile which had nothing to do with humour, and sheathed his sword. Several small groups of people had gathered, but Dokta bellowed, “Move on! There’s nothing to see here!” as behind him the screams continued. For a moment Dokta was transported back to the slaughterhouse he had worked in as a youth: the pigs, in narrow channelled rows, being dragged forward one by one on lengths of rope, and the screaming, the pigs screaming, screaming like children as he stood at the head of the tunnel, bloodied knife in one hand, rope in the other and a grim focused determination glittering in his eyes…

“Are you well, sir?”

“Yes, Glader. Secure the perimeter. Make sure nobody gets in. Or more importantly, out. Any resistance from civilians, kill them. We’ll give it twenty minutes, then form a line bringing water from the river. Pass around the word.”

“Yes, sir. And… can I just say something, sir?”

“Of course, Glader.”

The man’s eyes were shining, face almost… euphoric.

“I just wanted to say, it’s fabulous to finally work with you, Captain Dokta.”