Angelslayer: The Winnowing War (2 page)

Still, the boy was good. More kills than his years, and that by Darke's count alone. Who knew how many more in the scream of battle? The sword the boy had chosen was heavy and whetted with a taste for blood. Darke had seen him working it for long years now. That was not the reason Taran had been chosen; the reason was that the boy's only chance of surviving was to learn. This was to be one of those occasions where one either lived or more likely died—but it was certain one would learn something, something of critical importance.

“Taran, prepare a longboat.”

Taran nodded and quickly dropped over the forecastle railing to begin paying out the longboat lines. Sometimes Darke wondered how he saw through the long, sandy hair so often in his eyes.

Danwyar had climbed the ladder to the forecastle and now waited silently. Danwyar was small and bald on the whole of his body from a disease that had caused his hair to fall out. If anything, it made him all the swifter. His bow and short sword moved like the tongue of a serpent, and he could see well enough to navigate by stars even though cloud cover would discourage the most seasoned pilot. He was descended of the princes of the second city of Tarshish, and his father had been Ryhall, the king of Ichnosh. Not only was he the named second of Darke, but also he was far and away the best man the captain had.

“You will take the helm, Danwyar,” Darke said. “Anything proves wrong, gut the Etlantian. Sink her.”

Danwyar nodded.

“Storan, you will come with me.”

Storan merely chuckled. “You can kiss my sweet flowery ass on that,” he said. No one could stop Storan from coming if the life of Darke, his king, was to be in danger.

“And Marsyas,” Darke said.

Marsyas was full-blood Etlantian, ugly to begin with, and standing near seven foot. A blow had once split open his face, and he had been found among the dead of battle. Not a Nephilim, he was a lesser born—a third generation born. Nephilim were firstborn only, direct descendants of an angel. But Marsyas had been born powerful, intelligent, and strong, and he had brought down ten men that battle. Darke kept his life, and Marsyas had sworn oath. It was said the children of Marsyas's generation, the third generation of the sons of the Angel's Isle, had fallen to the curse of Enoch such that only the meat and blood of men would quench them, but if the curse was with Marsyas, he kept his blood-taking to those who, in his own opinion, deserved to be drained. Darke always held his hand, as he would in a tight game of dice: there were bad Etlantians, but many were still good, many still men of lineage. Some of the older princes of the firstborn were of the light and so were, in Darke's mind, many of the angels. They had to be. They had been bred pure of God's blood; their eyes had seen God's light. Foolish men said they had fallen for woman, for the daughters of men, but Darke would hedge his bet on that.

Marsyas, though a third-generation descendant of the angels, was one of the best comrades Darke had met on this small world. He was as loyal as Storan.

Marsyas had but half a tongue. He could speak, but seldom did. In response to Darke's command, he only brought his big fist to his chest.

Darke was satisfied—Taran, Marsyas, and Storan—enough for a good killing, certainly enough for a chat with an angel.

In the longboat, they passed slowly beneath the stern of the angel's Etlantian galley. Dull light filtered through thick, semiopaque windows of the cabin structure. From the deep of the lagoon, it had looked abandoned, but now, along the top railings, figures watched them pass. They seemed to have no focus, no faces. They might have been nothing more than shadows.

Once past the Etlantian hull, the keel of Darke's longboat hit the sand. Storan and the boy leapt out, wading through warm water, to set the shoring blocks.

The four pirates assembled on the beach. The tent, lit by braziers from within, was down the shoreline some twenty yards. Storan let his thick fingers curl about the worn haft of his axe, but he did not draw it.

Darke looked to his brother. “Taran, you stay here with the boat. Should anything happen to us, try to get back to the ship to warn the others.” Taran nodded.

Darke, Marsyas, and Storan walked slowly along the water's edge. The only sound was that of the shallow surf. The trees and vegetation should have been humming with insects, but they were dark and silent. Near the brigantine ship and the single, unadorned tent in the sand, the foliage had begun to die. There was even a stink to it. From the corner of his eye, Darke noticed the body of a cormorant, lying on its back, its legs stiff, its head twisted full about, face into the sand. It seemed an odd sight.

Marsyas walked silently, without emotion, but the closer they got, the more nervous Storan became.

“Sweet and holy Goddess as my witness,” Storan muttered. “I do not like this, Captain. My mother would tell us to turn back now, she would. I know that to speak to you at this moment will be no more productive than to piss in the wind, but there will be no good to come of this; I promise you that. ‘Tis a bad season, this. I feel the turning in the air. We'd be coming into a storm not of this world.”

“Are you going to talk the whole night, Storan?”

“Why? Will you listen to what I say?”

As the tent of the angel became clearer in the night, what appeared to have been black canvas was instead dark red, glistening slightly from the dull torchlight within. The smell of it was certain. It was coated in blood that had not yet dried. There were fields of slaughter that held this smell, this sour, slightly metallic taste. The stakes anchoring the tent's edges turned out to be leg bones, snapped at the kneecaps and driven into the sand. Darke would be damned if the tent had not been made wholly of the flesh and bone of men. Here and there were swatches of stiff human hair.

“Oh, lovely,” remarked Storan. “Studied protocol, this angel. Takes people and makes tents of them.”

“Stop here.”

“I'm going to say something, Captain, going to say it once, then speak no more. Turn away from this. In the name of the Goddess who watches over us and blesses our ways, turn from this. Let us walk back to the dory and return to the ship.”

Darke never took Storan's counsel lightly. In times of battle, Storan might joke or swear through his own and others' fear of dying, but always his advice was well founded, and this time his voice was deep and certain. He was correct, and Darke knew it, but everything that was correct was not necessarily right.

“I cannot do that, Storan,” Darke said. “Sorry, friend. And there is worse news yet. You are to wait here, outside of the tent, both of you.”

Marsyas nodded.

“Frogs fuck my liver and worms suck dry my balls to withered stones before I wait outside, letting you go in there and face some bastard mistake of Elyon's creation. I have been your left hand since you were born wet and naked, and I will not let you go in there alone, Captain. Maybe he has us here to chat, this angel, or maybe he just needs another tent, and you are the right size for it. Whatever his plan, you have two choices: kill me where I stand or allow me and my grandpa's axe to go in there with you.”

“The angel gave me explicit terms, Storan.”

“I give a flying shit in a hard wind.”

Darke sighed. He glanced at Marsyas.

Marsyas nodded. “Noise,” Marsyas grumbled with his broken tongue, “any bad noise, I come as well; otherwise, I stand here as commanded.”

“Why can you not be as agreeable as Marsyas?” Darke asked Storan.

Storan smiled. “I am agreeable. I am agreeing to go in there and give this sweet, cunning bastard a kiss on his pimpled ass. If that is not agreeable, my mother taught me ill all these years.”

The tales had always fascinated Darke, but he had never seen one—an angel who had fallen from the sky. It was said they were members of the choirs of Elyon, the Most High, said that they sang the
Holy-Holy-Holy
that created the Earth. However, by word of Enoch, all of them now were damned, though Darke did not really countenance Enochians. Elyon's business, in his opinion, had nothing to do with charity or damnation. The Lord of Hosts killed good men and made the wicked rich. Darke had little use for Enochian priests and their promise of Elyon's grace in this world.

Darke lifted the still damp parchment of human skin that was the tent's doorway. He expected a giant, as were the sons of angels, as were the Etlantians, as were the few Nephilim he had seen and killed; but then he remembered how his grandmother had told it: “They begot the giants, Little One; they were never giants themselves. They, as we, are the image and expression of Elyon, the Most High, but they were never meant to have children, you see. They are immortal. They need no children to continue as men do, so when they cohabitated with women, their offspring were cursed, and the mark of the curse was that all were giants so no man would mistake them for a child of Elyon.”

However, seeing the creature sitting on a bronze throne inside the tent, Darke would never have guessed him to have been a star that stepped from heaven. He looked not only mortal in size and bearing but also far from beautiful, as the ancient legends claimed angels to be. To see an angel was to see perfection, but this angel had apparently been scourged by age.

Satariel was hideous: his hair was a sullied white, his pallid skin harrowed by wrinkles, his robes unclean, his smell rancid. His eyes were grayish blurs difficult to look into because of the ring of blinding light at the edges, but Darke defied his own fears and looked dead into them for a moment, a challenge, but it stung. He was forced to look away and was left confused, disoriented. The angel chuckled, an aged, whispery sound.

“Try not to look directly into my eyes unless I tell you to do so, mortal,” he said carefully, in the language of men, with no hint of an ancient accent, nor did he use words known before the Earth was made.

His hands, where they rested on the arms of his chair, were no more than knotted claws covered with the thinnest of leathered flesh. In fact, but for this loose, scabbed, craggy skin, he was skeletal.

Storan knew enough not to speak; he had faced enough horrors to know when merely to step back and wait. Expressionless, axe sheathed, he kept his eyes directly ahead and unfocused. His interest here was only in his captain.

“Captain Darke,” the angel mused. He then motioned Storan. “Here you are, but I do not remember agreeing to a second.”

In response, Darke motioned toward some batlike creature the size of a dog standing near the leg of the angel's throne. “Why not? It appears you have one,” Darke answered calmly. When mentioned by Darke, the creature crept under the table with a shudder and wet itself.

The white eyes of the angel shifted to Storan as if inviting a response, but Storan did not flinch.

“Should you want me to piss my leggings,” Storan replied without moving, “you will damned well have to do more than sit there looking ugly.”

“Quiet, Storan,” Darke commanded sharply.

Satariel chuckled. “One thing Elyon granted humans—a sense of mirth. Even in the darkest hours. How droll I find you all.” With an intelligent sigh, the angel leaned forward, the glow in his eyes dimmed.

“You may now look at me,” the angel commanded.

When he did, Darke could feel his mind being probed as though cold fingers were touching.

“Enough,” Darke swore when the searching brought a sting of pain.

Satariel smiled and withdrew the probe. “Do you know who I am, corsair?”

“You are the killer of ships, the Etlantian bastard angel common legends name Satariel. More than that, I know not. I keep little stock of myth.”

“Then we shall not bore each other with lineage. I shall tell you why I have sent for you, Shadow-Hawk. It is all quite simple: I can obtain something you want, and you can obtain something I want; we exchange the two, and all is well under heaven. We sail our different ways and never meet again.”

“What could you have that I would possibly desire?”