The Iron Wolves (4 page)

“You are under arrest, madam,” said the leader, who wore his black beard neatly trimmed and had dark eyes under shaggy brows. “In the name of the King.”

“Do you know who I am?” Kiki said, voice soft.

“Yes, madam. No sudden moves. We’ve been instructed to bring you in alive, but if you force us into action we have authority to use maximum force. We are men of honour. None of us here likes to hurt a lady.”

“That’s good, then, captain,” smiled Kiki, moving towards them, arms outstretched, hands crossed in a sign of surrender. She saw the guards’ shoulders relax, just that little bit. Behind her, Lars was making gurgling noises. “Because I’m no lady.”

The throwing knife went from baldric to the captain’s eye socket in one swift, single slash. He staggered back as Kiki accelerated, another knife in her fist as she leapt, feinting left past a blade, kicking from the wall and punching her blade into the second guard’s throat. He gurgled, ejecting blood, and she rode him to the ground as another blade whistled horizontally over her head, crashing into the shoulder of a fellow guard. He cried out as steel struck chainmail, taking a step back. Kiki hit the ground, shifting into a forward roll and leaping again with the balance of an acrobat. All was chaos. In the confines of the room the guards were crammed in too tight to use their swords effectively. One pulled his own dagger, but Kiki was too close – close enough to kiss and she rammed her blade low, into his groin between the panels of chainmail and plate. She jerked it up. It bit him like acid and he groaned, staggering forward onto her as his femoral artery was snicked open and his lifeblood pumped out to rich thick carpets. She let him fall, taking his dagger so that now she held two, and twisted away, dropping to a crouch, pausing. Her face was speckled with blood, both fists glistening crimson. Three dead. Two left. They backed away, staring at her in horror.

“Run to your mothers,” she growled, rising from her crouch and stretching her back. “Before I gut you like sour fucking fish.” But they could not, and she understood their hesitancy. These were King’s Guards. She was one little lady, without a sword. To retreat? The King would not look favourably on such an action. In her mind’s eye, Kiki pictured a large oak tree and a strong thick noose.

“Get the others,” growled one guard, the senior by the grey in his beard. The younger of the two slipped through the broken door, thankfully.

They were left alone. Lars had stopped kicking on the bed and was groaning, a low sound of self-pity as consciousness slipped away. The silk sheets were crimson in a wide pool.

“Well then. It’s just me and you now, woman,” this final guard said.

A curious silence settled on the room as Lars passed, thankfully, into a state of unconsciousness. Outside, Kiki heard the stomping of hooves, a whinny, the patter of rain on cobbles, the shout of a distant late-night food seller.

Kiki watched him, and took a careful step back. Warily, the guard leant his sword against the wall and pulled free two long knives. His eyes were gleaming and he licked his lips. “These fools wanted to bring you in alive. But me? I’m happy to hear you sing like a skewered bird. Do you want to sing for me, pretty one?”

Kiki stepped back around the bed, and the guard advanced, both knives before him. There was a hint of cruelty around his mouth, his eyes fixed on her with a certain intensity, and Kiki got the sudden chill feeling this man was a born killer; a murderer, hiding inside the honourable livery of Vagandrak’s military.

“You get off, killing women?” she said, voice husky, taking another step back. And another. She was analysing his movements; wary now. He was smooth, well-balanced, like an oiled machine. Not like the others. He had waited at the back, weighing her up. Watching her. Studying her movements. Clever.

“Men. Women. Children. There is an intimacy in death, don’t you find? To drive in that knife through soft resistance. An immortal embrace. To feel the last dying breath on your cheek, like a kiss from God. To see the sparkling life-light fade from understanding eyes. It is a beautiful moment. Exquisite. Perfect. Eternal. A moment to share. A moment to be stolen.”

Kiki said nothing. She was near the wall, and the window which overlooked the street. But turning to slide open the portal was not an option. Turn your back on this man and he’d put a knife through your kidney.

“What’s your name?”

“Jahrell,” he said.

“I am Kiki.”

“I know. And we need to know these things. To share them. Before I kill you. Before you die.” He smiled, gently, like a doting father to a treasured daughter.

“Before one of us dies, surely?”

“As you say.”

They paused, weighing one another up.

“You don’t have to do this,” said Kiki.

“That’s what they all say.”

“You’ve done this before? This murder?”

“Oh yes.”

“A lot?”

“Many, many times, my beautiful little songbird.”

“How long have you got away with this… trickery?”

“All my life,” smiled Jahrell. It was a sickly smile, when it came.

“Ahh. I see. So… you’re one of those,” said Kiki, darkly.

“I am not ashamed of my actions. I have done nothing wrong. I am holy in what I do. Blessed, so to speak. It is the greatest honour to take a life; and I do so enjoy earning that honour.”

“I need to thank you,” said Kiki.

“Thanks?”

“Yes. You’ve removed my guilt.”

“What guilt?”

“Any guilt I might have felt at cutting your fucking throat,” she said – and launched at him. His knives came up fast, for he was supremely skilled despite his psychopathic tendencies; steel clashed, singing a metal song, a series of incredibly quick blows first from Kiki, defended by Jahrell, then by Jahrell, defended by nimble fast sure strong movements from Kiki.

She stepped back.

Horse hooves stomped outside. Men shouted.

Time was… limited.

“Good,” breathed Jahrell. “You’re one of the best. I’ll enjoy tasting you. Every, single part of you.” He licked his lips, which gleamed.

“You’ll have to earn it,” said Kiki, sinking lower, into that place down below combat, down below war and fighting and anger and hate; she sank into a world where there was nothing more than the blades in her hands and the blades in her enemy’s fists. Rain filled with ice drummed the streets. Gushed in the gutters. His eyes sparkled. She could see sweat on the stubble on his upper, unshaved lip. He was smiling.

He was sure, despite her skill.

Fuck you, she thought. I despise your arrogance. I pity your superiority. I mock your pointless dedication.

I’ll show you. Show you something
new
…

He came this time, blades a dazzling blur, his movements more urgent. He knew his comrades would be dismounting, walking through the hall, climbing the stairs. And if they arrived too early he wouldn’t have his fun. His playtime would be over. He had to kill her fast. Had to earn his reward. The life-light leaving her pretty, pretty eyes…

And she led him on, like an eager, spotted teenager with a priapic cock.

It wasn’t difficult. She’d done it before.

That was the problem with men.

Always ruled by their petty, simple lusts.

Just… No. Fucking. Intelligence.

Blades clashed, clanged, deflected; his blade cut her upper arm and she yelped, sighed, turning to one side, injured, in pain, agony firing her eyes, deflating, and he came in fast for the kill but too fast and too eager and too ready to get the job done and finished. He was a premature ejaculation. Her knife cut into his belly and he gasped, choked, coughed heavily.

He slumped against her, his arms suddenly weak and useless. She supported him as he gasped again, and it was intimate. She looked into his eyes, blade still buried in his guts, supporting his weight. He fought to lift his own weapons, but he could not. She smiled directly in his face.

“Do you have a wife?” Her words were soft.

He gave a nod.

“And children?”

Again, a nod. He fought again to raise his long knives, but Kiki jerked her own blade and he groaned. No doubt the pain bit him like acid. No doubt it filled his mind with a bright hot fire and everything else was receding to a dull world of nothing; all that remained was the pain and the knife in his flesh like molten iron.

And the knowledge. The knowledge he was going to die.

“Sometimes,” said Kiki, leaning close, her mouth by his ear, aware he could smell her scent, her perfume, her stench of recent sex, “sometimes, I hate to kill. Not like you. For me, it is a duty. Sometimes, I kill to stay alive. I kill for honour, for king, and for country. I kill so that I may live.”

“Yes,” he managed. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

“But this time,” said Kiki, shifting back a little so she could face him, to look deep into his eyes, and she kissed him then, a full bodied kiss, tasting him, tasting his decadence, “this time I love it. This time, Jahrell, you lost the game. But I will find your wife. I will find your children. I will tell them what you did. What you were. I have friends in the military; I’m an
Iron Wolf,
after all.” The irony was not lost on her. “And I will have your name scraped from the Hall of Heroes in Vagan.” She began to cut with the dagger, sawing upwards, opening him like a gutted fish. He moaned, dropping his knives, fingers grasping at her, clawing her, and she continued to saw like a butcher with a slab on the block, and his insides came spilling out and he stank like the dead he would soon become.

Kiki pushed away the corpse, moved away, pulled on and laced up her boots. She grabbed a sword as she heard boots on the stairs and, giving one final glance at Lars – poor dumb back-stabbing pointless Lars, whom she did consider murdering for a moment, putting him out of his misery, but then decided against it. His petty existence was his punishment, and he fucking knew it. She moved swiftly to the window. She prized open the latch with her knife, slid up the six panes and climbed out onto the narrow stone ledge.

Wind and rain and ice slapped her. She gasped, and laughed.

She was alive.
Alive.

Alive for now, bitch,
whispered her dark sister in the mirror.

For a moment, vertigo gripped her and it felt as if the whole world was moving; the whole world was crumbling, falling down in some incredible vast collapsing earthquake. Kiki breathed deeply and controlled herself, and controlled the world around her, and the vertigo drifted away like smoke from a fire.

She climbed swiftly to the roof, strong fingers finding gaps in crumbling brickwork and stone lintels, and then she was running fast across ice-slick slates. Shouts echoed hollow behind her. Shock, awe, horror. She’d emptied Jahrell like a knife-cut sack of shit.

You were right, she thought, as she sprinted through the rain and icy hail.

There is an intimacy in death. An intimacy I do not care for.

The Pass of Splintered Bones cut like a knife wound through the vast, savage mountain range named the Mountains of Skarandos. Acting as a natural border between the lands of Vagandrak to the north, and the deserts and grasslands of Zakora to the south, the Mountains of Skarandos numbered perhaps a thousand peaks, many reaching three or four leagues up into the heavens, the lower slopes jet black, and dark grey granite and slate, angular, steep, unforgiving, sporting little life and many dark valleys into which an unwary explorer could tumble and die and rot and turn to dust. The upper flanks and towering peaks were permanently shrouded in snow, split by vast narrow crevasses like deep throats spiralling down into Hell or the Furnace. What few routes did exist through the mountains were few and far between, high and narrow and treacherous with ice. Wolves hunted throughout the Mountains of Skarandos, and there had even been sightings of snow lions. The mountains cut across the horizon like a toothed saw blade, separating sky from land, separating north from south, and this natural barrier was the main and
only
reason there had not been more wars between the lands of Vagandrak and Zakora; for they were bordered to the west by the vast impenetrable salt plains, and to the east by the Plague Ocean in which to swim, or even sail, was to die.

And so Vagandrak and Zakora were afforded a wall erected by Nature, albeit a wall with one implicit flaw: the Pass of Splintered Bones, a valley between the towering peaks, a chasm perhaps fifty feet wide in places, as much as a hundred feet in others, weaving like a contorted snake beneath sheer walls of gleaming slate and rock. Nobody knew the true history of the pass, but it was a road of bones: a pathway of splintered femurs; broken clavicles; cracked radius; crushed vertebrae; fractured fibulas; and split skulls, many in pieces, but some part-whole, their dead black eye sockets a sober warning to those who travelled the pass, that this particular place had a very dark and nasty history.

Scholars in Vagandrak had multiple theories, many involving slave labour, ritual sacrifice and even the magick of the Equiem; in truth, nobody could even begin to know the true story of how many tens of thousands of corpses had ended up paving this twisting roadway through the Mountains of Skarandos.

However, many hundreds of years ago, after centuries of sporadic battle, after centuries of Zenta tribesmen raiding the southern villages of Vagandrak in the name of honour and earning their manhood, and with increased rumours of a united tribe army, so King Esekra the Great had conceived and built a mighty fortress, named Desekra, four mighty walls with wide battlements and high crenellations, a narrow passage and gate that could be blocked in an instant. And thus Desekra Fortress rose from the splintered bones of thousands of fallen, its stones mined from the very mountains themselves and creating a vast network of underground tunnels deep into the heart of the mountains and out like a web under the plains beyond the walls.

The Walls: Sanderlek, Tranta-Kell, Kubosa and Jandallakla – leading to Zula, a huge stocky keep, black and grim and foreboding, more like a prison than the core of a fortress. Zula meant
peace,
in the old Equiem tongue; and it had been here, on his deathbed, that old King Esekra had indeed found peace, secure in the knowledge he had built not just a protective barrier to guard his people of the north. No. It also stood as a monument to the greatest Battle King ever to walk the lands of Vagandrak.

Now, as winter caressed the horizon and rain filled with sleet slammed down from the towering Skarandos peaks looming overhead, so two soldiers from the Vagandrak Army stood on Sanderlek, having drawn a six hour night watch, from ten till four. They were not happy about the situation.

Diagonal sheets slammed down at them, rain and sleet and knives, and they huddled beneath oiled leather cloaks, hands outstretched to a half-shielded brazier on which glowing coals crackled and spat.

Sanderlek stretched off into blackness in both directions, slick and wet and vast, but the two men were more occupied by attempting to bleach warmth from the brazier than standing watch searching for possible enemies in the wild storm beyond the fortress.

Jagan was a farmer who, thanks to consistent fallow fields over three years, had lost his land holdings to the King. Whilst bitter about the whole situation, and the fact his wife and child had to move back home with her parents in distant Rokroth, he was still young and strong, and knew a career in the army would at least put food in his child’s mouth until he could work out what other profession to invest his time in. Whilst not a massively intelligent man, he was intelligent enough to recognise he had few skills other than his strength and youth. His mother-in-law had suggested going to work in the tanneries or fish markets, but Jagan was a man of the land, open fields and fresh air. The thought of being enclosed made his head spin, as did the aromas from close gatherings of stench-ridden people. No. The army had seemed as good a place as any. That had been four long years ago, and Jagan had been lucky to keep his position when Yoon made vast and drastic cuts, sending tens of thousands of men back home and leaving the fortress feeling almost empty. Yes, it still had a garrison of ten thousand, but what the common man did not realise was that included staff, cooks and carpenters, builders, serving maids, ostlers and smiths. In terms of fighting force, they were perhaps seven thousand strong, and even
those
worked on rotation, with at least three thousand being out on training manoeuvres or on leave at any one time. Desekra was designed for a full complement of fifty thousand in times of war. Now, it seemed almost like a ghost town.

The second man was tall and slim, with a narrow, pointed face like a ferret. He looked dark and mean, and quite out of place in a soldier’s uniform. His face was constantly twisted into a cynical sneer, and his excessive love of liquor had ended with more than one night in military prison.

His name was Reegez. In a different world, in a different time, he would have had nothing to do with the likes of Jagan, and Jagan knew it. But here and now, forced together in the endurance of a soldier’s life, with hard physical training and long periods of boredom on various duties of watch, they had become good friends. Reegez had taught Jagan all he knew about cards and playing knuckle-dice; Jagan had bored Reegez with the thrills of crop-rotation and how to fix a broken plough.

On this harsh night as the storm accosted the fortress from the south, howling like demons over the plain, so their conversation was muted. They’d been on duty for three hours, and water had ingressed both leather cloaks making the men cold and uncomfortable.

“This is beyond a bad joke,” moaned Reegez, wriggling under the leather, shifting his shoulders in an attempt to block out some annoying draught. “Five times this month I caught a night-time watch, and five bloody times it’s rained like the Plague Ocean has been tipped over my head.”

“I know. I’ve been with you all five times,” said Jagan, shuffling a little closer to the brazier. “I think the rain will stop soon.”

“You said that two hours ago.”

“You’re in a foul mood tonight!”

“Well, it’s this horse shit weather, and this horse shit situation. Look out there! Go on, just bloody look!”

Pandering to his friend, Jagan leant sideways and made an effort to glance between the crennellations. Water slapped him in the face like an irate lover. He gasped, dribbling water, and retreated back to the brazier like an injured kitten.

“I can’t see anything,” he gasped.

“Exactly. What’s the bloody point us standing out here in this horse shit, when we couldn’t even see a warhost of ten thousand camped five bloody feet from the wall? It’s pointless! They should let us inside until after the storm has passed. Get some warm tea and toasted bread down us. That would make more sense.”

“You’ll be asking for a warm bed on your watch, next.”

“Would that be so bad? A few hours’ kip. Why do they need two of us? It’s bureaucracy, is what it is. The bloody generals and captains don’t know what the hell they’re doing; they sit there in their ivory towers…”

“There are no ivory towers at Desekra.”

“…ivory towers
so to speak,
and drink coffee and smoke cigars and dream up ever more pointless ways for us to waste our time. You know yesterday? They had twenty of us scrubbing the cobbles in the east stables;
scrubbing the cobbles!
On our bloody hands and knees, we had to do it till the stone was gleaming. And what for? All so the cavalry can put their bloody horses back in there to stamp their hooves and shit on everything. It was a disgrace, it was.”

“So I see,” grinned Jagan, and patted his friend’s arm. “But come on, it’s not that bad. You have good company to while away the hours, and a good solid Vagan-built stone fortress between you and any possible enemy!”

“Pah! Enemy? What enemy? I don’t see no enemy, and I’m not just talking about the darkness of the storm. We’ve been hearing these rumours for months, mud-orc this, mud-orc that, as if they want another bloody War of Zakora. Lots of would-be heroes in the making, frothing at the mouth for a taste of warfare when in reality, they wouldn’t know what to do with a fucking mud-orc if it shoved a spear in their belly. I tell you, it’s all a lot of hot air and nonsense, and the King himself says it’s all good. If Yoon says it, then that’s good enough for me.”

“Those merchants who passed through last week seemed pretty twitched. Telling stories of being hunted by some kind of monster in the dark. It scared them bad.”

“Rubbish! Little girls frightened by their own shadows.”

Jagan shrugged, sending a cascade of water onto the coals, which hissed and spat. Lowering his voice, he leaned a little closer to Reegez. “Some say the King is the one who doesn’t know his backside from his elbow, and that downsizing the army was the wrong thing to do. And when,
if,
an enemy were to attack then we’d surely be overrun in a matter of hours. The walls are just too long.”

“Shh,” warned Reegez, his eyes narrowing. “That’s the sort of talk gets a man intimate with the noose.”

“Ah. Oh. I wasn’t thinking…”

“Who was it you heard?”

“Captain Torquata and Captain Elmagesh. I was fetching water from the Kubosa well, they were sheltering from the wind which blows down the pass. They didn’t see me.”

Reegez’s eyes went even narrower, so they were slits in the glow from the coals. A few wisps of smoke rose from the brazier, and for a moment he really did look to Jagan as if he were some terrible bleak demon escaped from the Furnace.

“I’m not a clever man,” said Reegez, slowly. He rubbed at his stubbled chin. “I never claimed to be and, if I’m brutally honest, I’m glad it’s that way. Politics are for those people who have a crazy love of themselves and a need to control other people. And teacherin, well that’s something I’ll never understand or want a part of. But what I
do
know is what’s right and what’s wrong, and what I do know is when somebody’s talking dangerous, talking dangerous to the extent of losing their life.” He met Jagan’s stare. “You keep away from people like that, Jagan. Keep away from them like your life depends on it, for surely it does. Now forget you ever heard the conversation and we’ll both forget we ever had this one. I don’t know whether the mud-orcs are coming or not, and I don’t rightly care at this moment in time. But whatever the outcome, I’d rather not dance a jig on the end of a bloody noose. I like my neck fine, just the way it is. You get me?”

“I understand,” said Jagan, quietly, hands out to the coals. “Let’s talk about something pleasant. If the mud-orcs are coming, I’d hate my last days on these walls in the storm to be filled with talk about hanging and an insane king.”

“Yeah,” grinned Reegez, and slapped his friend on the back. “Let’s talk about how I’m going to cream you at knuckle-dice at the tournament tomorrow!”