The Storm's Own Son (Book 1) (2 page)
Read The Storm's Own Son (Book 1) Online
Authors: Anthony Gillis
THE STORM'S OWN SON
BOOK
ONE
It was a clear moonlit night in the great city of Carai. A laughing young man strode down a narrow back street with a woman on each arm. He was tall and athletic, in his mid twenties, with short, tousled black hair and a fair, olive-complexioned face set against improbably bright blue eyes. He was dressed in black, with a sleeveless knee-length tunic over a closely fitted long-sleeved under-tunic and pants, and a lightweight cloak thrown loosely back over his shoulders. His belt, crossing baldrics, and high boots were black leather fitted with silver, and carried many weapons. His movements had the predatory ease of a hunting beast.
The
women were a few years younger, and quite different from each other.
One of the
them had long, dark brown hair tied back, large flashing eyes over a small mouth, arched eyebrows, and a hint of wickedness in her smile. Her dark clothes were trimmed in red. She wore a knee-length, concealing, short-sleeved dress, slit on both sides and tight over her slender frame. Under the dress were form-fitting pants and boots. A light wind blew her cloak back for a moment, revealing a pair of daggers at the back of the belt on her tiny waist.
The other woman was
tall, with blonde hair in two long braids. She wore a loose, revealingly cut pale dress that flowed over her buxom, yet taut, hourglass form, and sandals with laces that wrapped up her calves. She had gray eyes and full lips in a calm expression, but there was a graceful strength and suppressed purposefulness to the movements of her body.
The three of them talked as
if without a care in the world. By the hint of stumble in their steps and slur in their voices, they seemed to have taken more than their share of wine. The man's hands moved carelessly over the women's hips, and they pressed themselves close.
At last, they came to a secluded place.
There, a little courtyard surrounded a fountain of plain design, where fresh water for drinking and washing came through pipes from the city's aqueducts. He and the young women sat on the low wall around the fountain and began to kiss. Hands roamed bodies, heated and oblivious to the world. Time passed.
Tall buildings loomed
all around, closely spaced. Here and there were black alleys thick with shadows. From those shadows crept silent figures. Many figures cloaked and hooded in dark colors. There was a glint of steel.
The young man
leapt up in seeming drunken confusion, and the women followed him clumsily. A growling voice came from a big heavyset shape among the shadowed figures.
"Got you at last
Talaos, you laughing bastard!"
"
Can't you see I'm busy, Borras?" smiled the young man, his voice clear and deep.
"
You think this is a joke? There's twenty of us, and one of you."
"
I count three."
"My quarrel's with you, not
your drunken girls. You, girls! Your man chose the wrong side. Let people know it was his last mistake. Get out of here. Now," said Borras. When he got no immediate reaction, he continued, "Well, get going!"
In reply, the blonde
drew herself up straight, with a suddenly grim expression, while the dark haired woman made a lopsided smile, dropped to a low crouch and drew her daggers.
There was an awkward pause.
Borras turned his hooded head in the direction of the dark haired woman. Long swords gleamed in his gloved hands. He shrugged wearily.
"All right then," he muttered
. "No mercy, men."
Talaos
quipped, nonchalantly, "About now, you might want to look up."
"Huh?"
Several things happened at once. The courtyard brightened as lamps suddenly lit on two flat rooftops above - roofs now seen to be crowded with archers. In that same moment, Talaos sprang into action. In one smooth lunging motion, he drew a short sword and ran it through the nearest enemy, one of three who directly blocked his way. The dark haired woman threw one of her daggers full into the face of the second enemy and slashed the knee tendons of the third as she spun past. The blonde woman aimed a kick with one of her long bare legs. A sandaled foot struck the man's injured knee and sent him toppling backwards, shin bent at a sickly angle.
Then,
as Talaos and the women darted for cover, the archers above let loose. Borras and a dozen of his men fell, each with many arrows in their bodies, while a handful of survivors escaped into the darkness. It had all taken but a few seconds.
Talaos
laughed once more as the young women returned to his side.
"He didn't even pick up on the clue I gave him..."
"Eh?" smirked the dark haired woman.
"Sorya,
you too? When I answered him in a clear voice, and no slur of wine, he should have known something was up..."
"
Exactly," said a man's voice from one of the rooftops. The tone was light, even joking, yet with a cold edge beneath. "Next time, be more careful."
"I
thought I'd give him a fighting chance, or running, as the case might be," replied Talaos casually.
"Not with my money on the line," answered the
voice.
A lean
man slipped effortlessly down a wall. He had a thin scarred face and wore darkly rich clothes. The cold-edged voice was his, "Still, that was well done. You took a great risk. If I had changed my mind, and we'd not been in place, or they'd caught you before you got here..."
"Then we'd have had to take them by ourselves!" smiled
Talaos in return. "One of these days, you'll worry yourself to death, Palaeon."
"My worry is
what keeps me alive," replied the latter, now on the ground. "This little war of Cratus and his allies makes no sense to me, but now that Borras and his lads are in the hells, maybe he'll see reason... and you might get your wish and can go back to easy living."
"
I hope so, because if I wanted war, I'd go east. But right now, I want wine and good company," smiled Talaos with an eye to the women at his side.
Palaeon pulled
the younger man aside and spoke in a low voice. His hard eyes glittered in the dark. "Speaking of them... they're quite a pair. Sorya I recognize, from every now and then. Too bad for Borras he didn't. Who's that other one with the golden hair and the amazing chest?"
"Katara. She's from
far away north."
"Ah. They might just be
the prettiest women in the city with skills like that. Smart trap for Borras, but it must have cost you some good coin to hire them."
"Hire? They're my dates."
Palaeon laughed, a quiet predatory laugh. Then he took a step back as a new thought flickered across his face. He spoke more loudly, in earshot of all, "You know, there'll be a lot of room for my organization to grow, with Borras and the others in this part of town gone. I could probably use a new crew captain or two... You'd have to take the oaths of course, and get a little better at following orders, but..."
"Following orders is the main problem, and being freelance keeps that to a minimum."
"Suit yourself," smiled Palaeon. Then, with another, suddenly reflective expression, he added, "Orders or not, war in one form or another might find you yet, Talaos. Like finds like. Another reason you're called the storm's own son."
"
Oh?" retorted Talaos with a smirk, "I'd say it has a more pragmatic explanation."
"
Yes I know, lad. I was an honest young pickpocket with an ear for news, when they found you. But, what I say is true in its own deeper way," said Palaeon with a catlike smile.
Talaos gave an arched eyebrow
in reply.
"Till next time
," said Palaeon as he tossed Talaos a bag of gold.
The young man
caught it with casual grace and with his companions, stepped lightly down the street toward a tavern he knew in a much nicer part of the city.
~
The small, clean, soft-lit room was filled with happy, drunken patrons. Outside, the moon shone on a clear starlit sky. Inside, little tables were packed close atop a black and red tile floor. The majority of the men wore knee-length sleeveless tunics trimmed with geometric patterns, and all bore weapons of some kind. Most of the women were in long, low cut sleeveless dresses, held by clasps at the shoulders, and slit up to and clasped tight at the waist in what was called the city style. They had painted lips and eyes lined with kohl.
Talaos smiled, and took it all in.
He sat in a corner near the front, with a small lattice window a few feet to his right. Katara sat to his left, and Sorya to his right. They were still in their clothes from the earlier street battle, though they'd washed off the blood. With them was Talaos's old friend Arax, a lank-haired young man with a sharp-eyed look and a scar across his forehead.
Everyone had earthenware cups of wine.
Sorya was telling Arax her version of the night's events, small mouth smiling and big eyes flashing, "...Borras said 'huh?' They uncovered the lanterns, and he just stood there staring for a second while all hell broke loose, until the arrows hit him."
"His last words were
'huh?' Just like Borras, to go that way!" laughed Arax, "Wish I could've seen the look on his face. Say Sorya, was that the first time you ever met Borras?"
"And
the last," said Sorya with a wicked smile.
"Any chance Palaeon's
going to join us?" asked Arax.
Talaos replied
with mild amusement, "What do you think?"
"He was never much for taverns," added
Sorya, "But these days he's getting so serious it's scary..."
"
He is, but it works. He's the second biggest boss in Carai now," answered Talaos.
"
Second biggest, till he gets done with Cratus," smirked Sorya.
Arax interjected, with a kind of
dark humor, "Looks like it wasn't such a bad idea after all Tal, way back when you quit with Cratus. Though at least he used to know how to throw a good party, before he went grim and crazy."
"
Cratus was crazy before that," corrected Talaos, "it just took a while to see it."
Talaos knew
all too well the appeal of the legendary boss's former lifestyle of wine, women, and adventure, and of his pretenses at being a champion for the people of the streets. There'd been a time when it had made gang life seem grand, almost heroic.
"Still," replied Arax, "things are getting really strange in his organization these days. H
e and his higher ups are getting as cold and serious as Palaeon. And those Eastlanders he's had hanging around? I even heard he has a bunch of foreign bodyguards now."
"
True," replied Talaos thoughtfully, "and there've been a lot of disappearances. Then there is the war. Palaeon doesn't think it makes sense either, and Cratus has been fighting it in a really murderous way. It must be costing a lot of gold. It's all odd, and all bad."
Sorya and Arax nodded. Then the latter
began with a new thought, "Tal, I bet Palaeon will offer you a job as a crew captain."
Talaos, casual again, replied, "He already did, and I turned it down.
I like being free. Now, enough about Palaeon and Cratus. Let's get some more wine."
After a moment, the barmaid, a
young woman with brown hair curled in spirals, and a red-brown dress cut low and revealingly even for Carai, arrived and took their orders. She leaned in close to Talaos with her ample chest almost touching him.
Sorya flashed her a glare.
For his part, Talaos ordered the wine, then looked happily elsewhere around the room.
He noticed
the arrival of another friend of his, a very young, dark-haired man named Pallas, who was known for his skill with a sword, his signature brocaded black and gold cloak, and his turbulent ups and downs with women.
Tonight however,
there were two changes around Pallas. The first was that he wore a pair of sturdy new swords with a long blade and a short in the dueling style, the second was that he arrived with a slender, foreign-looking young woman. She had dark bronze skin, long black hair in loose waves, and big dark eyes. She wore a red dress in the city style of Carai, and she seemed pleased enough with Pallas thus far.
"Everyone,"
Pallas said with a dramatic sweep of his cloak to the side as he swept an arm their way, "this... is Injraya!"
There were greetings in reply as
Pallas guided Injraya toward their table.
"
And, this," he said to Injraya, gesturing a hand toward Talaos, "is my friend, Talaos."
"It is an honor, Talaos
," she replied. Her Imperial was heavily accented, and she had difficulty pronouncing his name.
"Tah-lay-os
," Pallas corrected her, drawing out the proper pronunciation of Talaos's name for emphasis.
