The Silent Army (11 page)

Hard, callused hands grabbed Callan and pulled him to his feet. He did his best not to scream at the pain in his calf. It was bandaged and he could see that it had been cleaned, but still.

Despite being a dead shade of gray, she was attractive enough. Still, he blinked when the scars around her mouth moved as she smiled her approval. As a rule, he found all women a worthwhile pursuit. He decided he could make an exception in this case.

“You can stand. Good. Come with me.”

Donaie Swarl moved and he followed. Her back was to him. He had no weapons, but if he were fast enough he could surely take her.

Callan shook his head. No. The way she moved, he had no doubt it would be a mistake. And anyway, there was nowhere to flee. They wanted him alive. There would be chances to escape later once darkness fell.

Callan could see other cells down the hallway they walked. They were, universally, uninhabited. They were slavers’ cells. He recognized them easily enough to understand that he was not on one of the black ships. This was a Brellar ship. Above him the deck would be vast, with enough space for three hundred men to stand comfortably apart from each other.

As they walked up the narrow stairwell to the top level – several flights that made his calf scream with each stair climbed – Callan’s eyes adjusted to the changing light. He saw more and more of the scars that crossed the woman’s body. The Brellar inflicted scars on themselves, but these were different. He could see that they overlapped in many cases and some were faint with age, others newer. This was a lifetime of fighting and injuries. He had heard of the Sa’ba Taalor from Tataya, but he had never seen them up close until now.

They were scary people. They were, judging by this one, survivors at any cost.

The sky outside was overcast, and a quick look around told him they were near the shores of Roathes. The villages that should have been there were little more than ashes among more ashes. The hot air here was acrid, but calmer than the last time he had been through. Far behind him, he knew, there was an island growing in the sea. A fiery mountain at the center of that island continued to bellow fire and smoke and cast lightning into the waters. But it did so with less violence than before.

The waters around the ship were littered with flotsam, jetsam and corpses. The sharks would come soon, he knew, even through the ashes that poisoned the waters, for they could not possibly resist a feast of this scale. Close enough to see but not to get caught in any currents, two of the great black ships waited, their decks covered with more of the gray-skins.

The deck Callan stood on was covered with the prone forms of the Brellar. They were not dead, but they had been beaten and subdued.

Standing among them were dozens of the Sa’ba Taalor. He looked first to the Brellar, who mostly lay still, their eyes searching their environs or closed to avoid the glare of the day. The Sa’ba Taalor did not wear much by way of armor and several of them had cuts freely bleeding, or newly crusted. They also had weapons. Sorts he had never seen before. There were swords, to be true, but there were other things that looked designed to break bones and heads with ease.

Judging by the ruined flesh on a few of the Brellar, they did their jobs quite well.

“You will speak for me.” Donaie Swarl looked his way. “And you will speak for them. Do not lie to me. I will know. My god will tell me.”

“Othea is my god. Also a god of the sea.”

Donaie looked at him for a moment. “What does your god tell you right now, Callan?”

“Nothing.” He frowned.

“Then listen to my god and listen well. Ask the questions. Answer them truthfully, and you will walk away from this intact.” She tilted her head for a moment and nodded. “Wheklam says you may even have this ship if you do this thing. You like to barter, yes?”

“Yes. I do. Indeed.”

“Then that is the offer that Wheklam makes. Safety and this ship in exchange for truths.”

“What of the people already on the ship?”

“You will be captain. That will be your decision to make.”

He nodded his head. As they’d spoken, several of the Brellar had looked around to see his face. He recognized Tomms, one of the chieftains of the Brellar.

“Tomms. You are alive.”

Tomms looked his way. “Yes, and thanks to you, they now know my name.”

Callan shook his head. “They want to speak to you. I am to translate.”

Tomms sat up. No one stopped him. His face was swollen on one side, bruised and bashed. His lip on that side was smashed and bloodied and would heal poorly. The scars on his body glistened in the sunlight.

Donaie walked Callan closer, holding his arm.

“I want to know about his scars. Why does he scar himself? Do his gods demand it?”

Callan asked the questions, moderately curious as to how Tomms would answer.

“My gods demand nothing. We write our victories on our flesh. We tell stories of what we have achieved in our lifetimes.”

Callan looked to Donaie Swarl and answered truthfully.

Her face took on a different look. Rage made her terrifying as she bared her teeth and her scars split baring even more.

“What do his gods say to this?”

Callan translated.

Tomms answered, “We have no need of gods. We find our own way. We are our own gods.”

Callan hesitated for a moment. He did not know that the Sa’ba Taalor would not like the answer, but he could guess.

“These are his words, yes? Not mine.”

Donaie Swarl nodded agreement and he repeated Tomms’s answer.

The woman of the Sa’ba Taalor strode over to where Tomms lay and grabbed him by his hair. She ripped hard and he followed, screaming in pain even as he stood.

Tomms brought his arm around and struck her in her side, his fist dealing a brutal blow. None of the Brellar were bound, they were merely subdued. At the sound of combat several of them started to rise.

Donaie Swarl barely flinched. She brought her free arm around and slammed Tomms in the face with the palm of her hand, sending him staggering back as she let go of his hair.

“Tell them to stop or they die faster!”

Callan repeated the message and the Brellars who were rising either froze where they were or stood the rest of the way with their hands above their heads, clearly showing that they had no weapons.

Donaie spoke again. “Tell them. Let them know that they have marked themselves and bragged for the last time. The gods decide who survives scarring, no one else.”

He repeated the words, and Tomms looked directly at the King in Lead and spat blood and a tooth onto the deck. Through his ruined lips he said, “Fuck your gods.”

And Callan sighed and repeated the words exactly.

The reaction was immediate. The Sa’ba Taalor brought all their fury upon the Brellar. Not a single one of them touched Callan, but as he looked on, the Brellar were cut, beaten and broken. Some used their hands. Others used swords. Some brought up their metallic clubs with heads the size of Pabba fruit and smashed them down on the skulls of their enemy.

Through it all, Callan watched. The Sa’ba Taalor acted with rage. They did not forgive and they took no quarter.

It took a few minutes to finish the massacre. Callan stood still throughout it, not daring to move, lest he catch the attention of the gray-skins.

When it was done, Donaie Swarl gestured to one of her followers, who took up a horn from a satchel at her hip and blew a sharp note. Moments later one of the black ships started moving in their direction.

“The ship is yours.” She dismissed Callan with those words.

“Why did you kill them all?”

“His words offended our gods. His scars offend our gods. His people offend our gods, and so we will kill all of them.”

“What of the corpses?” When Callan spoke that time it was more to himself.

Still, the king answered, “It is your ship. Do with them what you will.”

He did not speak to her again as she climbed the rope cast down from the black ship. A score of ropes fell and the Sa’ba Taalor scaled them.

Callan was left alone with the dead.

He waited until the black ships were far in the distance before he started screaming.

The keep ahead of them was not large, but the gods wanted it taken. That was enough for Tarag Paedori.

He looked back at Kallir Lundt, and asked, “Do you know this place, Kallir?”

The Fellein looked at the tower and the surrounding walls with metallic eyes. His face was metal, a gift from Truska-Pren.

“I do not. The town we passed, Inbrough, that I know. I have seen it on trips down the river in the past, but this?” He shook his head in the way of his people. “This has been built in the last few years.”

Tarag looked the structure over. It was large enough to host as many as twenty, he guessed. Had they built it into the side of a mountain the size would be impossible to guess, but the short tower and the surrounding wall were freestanding. The wall surrounding it was only fifteen feet in height. That barely qualified as anything but decoration in the Taalor valley.

Without any preamble Tarag urged his mount forward. The great beast let out an amiable rumble and obeyed. The path leading to the strange standalone tower was hardpacked dirt and little else.

The others followed as he knew they would.

The gate in the wall was open. The King in Iron rode toward it with one hand on his sword’s hilt and looked around carefully.

He slowed only when he realized that the aperture in the wall didn’t have an open gate. It had no gate at all.

That was enough to give him pause. True, there were no other structures around, but that didn’t mean there were never visitors. The paved pathway was a sign of that.

“What sort of town builds a wall and forgets to build a gate as well?”

Kallir shook his head. “None that I have seen of any size. Most of the towns I’ve seen that had a gate needed it to keep out marauders. The land is mostly calm, but there are always exceptions.”

Tarag shook his head and moved forward again, riding through the opening, his eyes sliding over the landscape inside.

There was only the one structure and none other.

No people were moving about the courtyard.

The tower was large enough. Close to fifty feet in height, and built of good stone, if he could judge by appearances.

Its door was too small for his mount to join him, so Paedori slid off the great beast’s back and passed through, drawing his sword.

There was only one person standing on the other side of the door. He was a broadshouldered man, balding and bearded, wearing casual clothes.

“You are Tarag Paedori, the King in Iron.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes I am.”

“Good. Excellent.” The man nodded and moved away from a table where he’d been looking at several thick volumes. “My name is Jeron. I am a sorcerer. We are going to have a discussion.”

“What do we have to discuss?” The man was a fool. But he was also a sorcerer, or at least made that claim and, having seen what one of the sorcerers could do, it was best to at least hear him out.

“Why you are going to leave Fellein and never come back.”

“Truska-Pren demands that I be here. He will have his revenge for what the people of Fellein did to the people of Korwa.” He would have laughed under many circumstances. But the man was an unknown quantity. It was best to respect the unknown.

“The people of Fellein did not destroy Korwa.” The man looked at him with cold eyes. “The Wellish Overlords did that.”

“So you say. My god says otherwise.”

“Your god is wrong.”

He kept his place, but it was not easy. To insult the gods was beyond mere folly.

Jeron smiled. “I have proof. I have testimonies from hundreds of witnesses.”

Tarag looked on, not moving. “Where are these people?”

“Well, they’re dead.” He shrugged and gestured back to the books. “They have been dead for almost as long as Korwa, but they were there to see the final days. They survived the experience. They wrote their tales down and I have spent hundreds of years collecting them. The truth has always been my passion.”

“You would have me believe books over my god?”

“I would have you consider all possibilities, the better to decide if this war should happen.” As the man spoke there was a change in the pressure in the room. Tarag Paedori looked around and noticed that the door through which he had entered was gone.

“Truska-Pren has given me life. He has offered me a kingdom and the chance to lead the greatest armies that the whole of the world has ever known. Do you know what he asks in exchange for this?”

“No. I do not.” The sorcerer had crossed his arms over his chest.

“That I obey him.”

“Well, isn’t that what every god asks?”

“I do not know every god. I only know Truska-Pren.” A small lie. He had spent time in the presence of all the gods, as virtually every member of the Sa’ba Taalor did.

“We have so much we could share, Tarag Paedori. We have a different world filled with its own wonders. You could teach us of your gods and we could teach you the history of the world beyond the Seven Forges.”

The King in Iron stepped closer. “I know your world. I have listened to a thousand tales about it from one of your own. A soldier who has seen much of your Empire. If I need to know more, I can ask him. Or I can ask Truska-Pren. Either way, I would learn what I need to know.”

Jeron opened his mouth to counter, but before he could, Tarag continued. “Do you know of my people? Of my gods?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Yet you would have me choose your words over those of my gods?” He simply stared as he spoke. This man, Jeron, was mad.

“Well.”

“We will teach you of our gods when you are given the choice to follow them or to die.”

“That’s not the best solution.”

“It is the only solution. It is what the Daxar Taalor demand and they are the gods of my people.”

Tarag did not alter his position. He did not have to. He merely continued to stare at the sorcerer, letting the learned man make his first move.

“I cannot let you attack Canhoon.”