And Night Descends (The Third Book of the Small Gods Series) (32 page)

As long as he did, he’d have opportunity to stick the bastard Trenan with it.

A familiar pain filled Stirk’s body, like his blood heating to near the point of boiling. He closed his eye, not wanting to view the sickening sights that presented themselves when the healer moved him.

A moment later, all sensation disappeared.

***

Trenan stared down at what had once been an imposing man but was now little more than a log. No legs, flesh missing, one eye, no left arm and his right gone at the elbow. He used this foreshortened appendage in an attempt to drag himself across the dirt toward Trenan. The dagger Stirk held in his teeth caused the master swordsman no more concern than if a mosquito buzzed around his head.

Despite the horrific nature of what he gazed upon, he laughed.

“Will you stick me with that? Nod fast and use it to saw my foot from my leg?”

He laughed again and returned Godsbane to its sheath. One step to his right kept him beyond Stirk’s pathetic range. The man ceased his scrabbling on the ground and stared up at the master swordsman, eye gleaming with hatred and death. Trenan strode past him and Stirk rolled onto his side, flopping like a fish to reposition himself to follow.

Trenan ignored him, making his way to where Dansil lay in a heap, his blood soaking the dirt beneath him to soggy mud. Before he reached his side, the master swordsman noticed his chest rising and falling with labored breath.

“Damn.” Things would be much easier if the queen’s guard died here this night.

He knelt beside the man, assessing the situation. The wound was long and jagged and, judging by the amount of blood he’d lost, deep as well, but its location suggested it shouldn’t be fatal. At least not unless someone left him to bleed to death.

Trenan sighed and glanced back at the sound of Stirk scraping across the dirt. The man’s gaze still bore into him; sweat ran from his forehead and the stump at his elbow was scraped and bleeding, slowing his already snail-like pace. Trenan turned back to Dansil.

The thought of leaving the man behind tempted him but he’d been taught his duty to his fellow soldiers since his first days at the outpost. It may be true no one else could ever suspect what happened here, but Trenan himself would always know. Were the roles reversed, he didn’t doubt the queen’s guard would leave him to die, but he was not Dansil, and he refused to abandon a soldier in need.

“Damn,” he cursed again and grabbed his companion’s wrist, pulled him to a sitting position.

The queen’s guard’s dead weight proved difficult to get up onto his shoulder, but Trenan accomplished the task. Enough life had passed with a single arm, he’d figured out how to overcome such challenges. He shifted to settle his load properly, then turned, intending to take Dansil to his horse, strap him to the saddle and dress his wound, but found Stirk nearly at his feet, the man’s neck stretched out as he stared up at the master swordsman. The dagger he’d held in his teeth lay in the dirt a body’s length behind him and the gleam of hatred in his eye had faded to something else.

“I see you made good progress,” Trenan commented as he stepped around the man.

Stirk fell onto his side, reached out with his shortened arm, the scraped and raw end brushing Trenan’s foot. The master swordsman paused, staring at his one-time adversary, and kicked the stump away. Stirk collapsed with an expulsion of breath.

“You can’t leave me this way,” he croaked.

Trenan raised an eyebrow but didn’t reply. He glared down at the man, feeling far more revulsion than pity.

“Kill me,” Stirk begged. “Don’t leave me to the forest creatures or—”

“Mercy? You ask me for mercy? Look at you. You sacrificed your body for an opportunity to take my life, and now you ask mercy from the man you intended to kill?”

If Stirk had lips and cheeks, the expression his face contorted into might have been one of sadness, or perhaps pleading. Tears welled in his eye, but both only furthered Trenan’s anger.

“Please.”

The master swordsman turned his back on Stirk, ignoring the man’s pleas as he strode across the clearing to the waiting horses.

***

It took a surprisingly short time for the one-armed man to dress his companion’s wounds and lash him into the saddle. That task completed, he struck the half-set camp, mounted his own horse, and led the wounded man away into the night.

Stirk continued begging for the man to kill him as they rode away but stopped when his raw and ragged throat gave out. After that, he settled for watching, hoping Trenan would find compassion in his heart and return to end this pitiful existence.

It’s my fault I’m here. My choice.

The two horses disappeared into the darkness, leaving Stirk alone with the night sounds of the forest. His gaze darted from tree to tree, examining each shadow, expecting to spy red eyes and bared teeth amongst them. His heart beat faster in his chest, cool sweat formed on his brow and ran into his eye, stinging it. He blinked hard to clear it and, when his lid opened, the robed figure standing over him startled him. His fright became relief when he realized it was the healer come to end his misery.

“Is that truly what you think? That I will release you from the miserable prison you created for yourself?”

Stirk opened his mouth to speak, though he didn’t know what he might have said. It didn’t matter as his throat failed to produce words.

The healer kneeled beside him, put a hand on Stirk’s shoulder. An unpleasant sensation started where he touched, a tingling that increased until it became painful, like fine thorns dragged across his flesh. It spread through the remainder of his body; he felt it in phantom limbs and missing skin. The discomfort brought him hope for the end of his life.

“Tch, tch. I told you I have no use for dead flesh. Nor your soul. No, Stirk, I have other plans for you.”

Pain grew in Stirk’s chest, and the world grew darker. He tried to close his eye, but it refused. Vertigo gripped him, agony enveloped him, then the world exploded.

XXXI Teryk—Storm

The act of gripping the handle of a mop and drawing it back and forth across the deck brought blisters to the tops of Teryk’s palms within an hour of the first time he held it. They didn’t burst until the second day, and it took a couple more sunrises after that before the pain they caused diminished to a reasonable level. His shoulders ached, his knuckles hurt, the muscles in his chest and back wound themselves into knots. Each night when he set his head on the skinny pillow Ash had provided along with a threadbare blanket, he fell asleep faster than he could have imagined.

Learning to use a sword and spear, being instructed in the ways of fighting for a few hours a day was one thing, but spending almost every waking minute working from the time the sun rose until it set again was something completely different.

The mop splashed in the bucket, slopping brown water over the side and onto the deck.

“Careful,” Ash said. “Just makin’ more work for yourself.”

Teryk leaned on the wooden handle and wiped an arm across his forehead. Doing so stung, and he knew that, if he caught sight of himself in a looking glass, he’d find his face red from his time in the sun. He looked up at the clear sky, licked his lips and wondered if they’d be able to have a break to get a mouthful of water soon. Lowering his eyes, he spied a bank of dark clouds on the far horizon; perhaps they’d bring rain and relief from the heat.

Will I have to swab the deck in the rain?

His hands smarted at the idea and he wondered if he’d have been better off telling the captain his true identity. No sooner did the thought enter his mind than another followed.

The firstborn child of the rightful king.

Blisters and aches and pains or not, the kingdom needed saving. Despite his misgivings and the torture of prolonged labor, he had to trust the prophecy to lead him on the path he was meant to follow.

Everything has a reason.

Teryk flopped the mop head onto the deck and dragged it back and forth more enthusiastically, the wet wood glistening in the sun. He threw himself into the work, invigorated by the knowledge his life had a purpose, pondering where this voyage might lead him, when he realized Ash had spoken to him.

“What?” Teryk asked, leaning on the mop again.

The cabin boy looked at him with one eye closed against the glare of the sun, his shoulder length brown hair tussled to the point of being knotted.

“I said you ain’t spent much time ‘board a ship, have ya?”

Teryk stifled a laugh; the way Ash affected the lilt of the older sailors amused him. He’d heard the boy speak without dropping letters and with proper words instead of slang—mostly when he was tired or talking to himself and didn’t realize anyone else heard him—but Ash insisted on adopting their way of speaking to feel more a part of the crew. Here was a lad who seemed to know where his life would lead him.

“No, I haven’t,” Teryk admitted. “Only once, when I’d seen fewer turns of the seasons than you have.”

“Thought so. You ain’t got much in the way o’ sea legs.”

The prince glanced at his legs, an image of red crab appendages flashing through his mind. He knew it wasn’t what Ash meant, but it amused him, anyway.

“I guess one short trip on the Devil of the Deep isn’t enough for me to earn them.”

“The Devil, was it? That be quite a co-in…co-in…. That’s kinda weird.”

“Weird?” Teryk raised an eyebrow. “What’s weird?”

“The Whalebone be asea in search o’ the Devil.”

“In search of? You mean the Devil of the Deep is missing?”

Ash nodded, a grave expression pulling the corners of his mouth into a frown. Teryk rubbed his cheek, palm brushing against the sparse stubble he supposed made him look more sailor than prince.

“I didn’t think that ship could sink.”

“Didn’t say she sank,” Ash replied.

“No, I guess you didn’t.” Teryk dunked the mop in the bucket again, swished it around in the water. “What do you suppose happened?”

“No way o’ knowin’ lest we find her. Maybe the crew got fed up and took a cruise to the land across the sea.”

Teryk stopped with the mop pulled half out of the bucket, water streaming from its strands onto the deck. The speed of his heartbeat jumped and he had to consciously keep his voice from shaking. “Isn’t the land across the sea a myth?”

“Bah,” Ash scoffed. “I s’pose you think the man what lives on the moon and the fairy who takes your lost teeth are myths, too.”

Teryk did, but he didn’t say so. Instead, he took the cabin boy’s comment to mean he believed it real.

“Have you ever been there?”

“To the moon?”

The prince laughed a false laugh in attempt to hide his excitement. “No, to the land across the sea.”

Ash’s expression shifted. He stared at Teryk as though he’d spoken without moving his mouth, or like his head had gone missing. His face didn’t change until he finally shook his head.

“Course not. No one’s ever been there. Strayin’ out to sea means death in the jaws of the God o’ the Deep.” Ash looked away and his voice grew quiet. “Prob’ly what happened to the crew o’ the Devil.”

Teryk stared at his companion, barely noticing the wind rising, cooling and drying the sweat on his face. They stayed that way until a footstep drew their attention. A man with a scar on his cheek and his beard trimmed to a point glared at them, hands on his hips. Teryk had seen the man before but hadn’t spoken to him in his brief time on the Whalebone. He’d learned he was appropriately named for the path his life had taken: Seaman. Rilum Seaman.

“Get to work, ya lazy layabouts. Deck needs t’be swabbed afore the storm hits.” He tilted his head back and to the left; Teryk’s gaze followed.

The wind had risen further, pushing the clouds from the horizon closer. A gray haze blurred the space between sky and sea; Teryk recognized it as sheets of rain. Beside him, Ash dunked his mop.

“Yes, father. It’ll be done.”

Rilum grunted, glared at Teryk, then spun on his boot heel and left them to their work as he likely headed off to harass another crew member into doing their job faster.

The prince resumed mopping, eyes still on the dark gray billows of cloud as they closed the distance toward the ship. Overhead, the sails billowed and snapped in the rising wind and men clambered up rope ladders and masts to do whatever they needed to do to contain and protect them.

“I didn’t realize Rilum’s your father,” Teryk commented, turning his attention back to the job at hand.

“He doesn’t like it when I call him that.”

“He’s sort of—”

“Grumpy?”

Teryk smiled but Ash wasn’t looking at him to see it.

“Not the word I was thinking of, but yes: grumpy.”

“He has good reason to be.” Ash’s sailor speak had vanished.

“Why is that?”

“My grandfather was part of the crew of the Devil.”

The first drop of rain spattered on Teryk’s forehead and he raised his eyes skyward. The sun and the blue of the firmament were gone, hidden behind angry, boiling clouds. Teryk stared, surprised at how quickly the storm overtook them.

***

The storm fell upon the Whalebone like a hungry beast upon its prey. Wind whipped the sails as men worked frantically to tame them and stow them. Anything not lashed down shifted and moved as the growing waves tossed the ship around; Teryk’s mop bucket had slid across the deck until it hit a coil of rope, tipped over and rolled away. Rain pelted his face hard enough to sting.

“Get ye below,” Rilum Seaman yelled as he hurried by, his beard dripping rain from its tip. “Lash the cargo afore we lose it all.”

Ash snagged Teryk’s sleeve and pulled him toward the hatch. The ship’s motion sent them both reeling, but Ash’s sea legs kept him upright and his grip helped the prince remain the same. They weaved their way across the deck, wind howling through ropes, sails snapping, wood creaking. A huge wave crashed against the side of the ship, sending spray over the wale and splashing on the deck.

“Hurry,” Ash shouted, throwing the hatch open.