Tide of Shadows and Other Stories (2 page)

Oh, the things we'll do for the clink of two coins in our pocket.
It isn't the first time he's had the thought, and likely won't be the last, either. People say he’s daft, but he just likes to point out the truths in life—the way things are, not the way you think they should be. Ain't no daftness in that.

Not that any of it matters much up here in the cold, endless north. There weren't no art in the tundra. No theatre. No music. Least none that the Northmen didn't make themselves—even the best of them singin' was hardly music. It was too bad his lute was broken. Now,
that
instrument made some damn fine music. "Bastard tagalong Northman, breakin' it over his knee," he mutters to nobody. Northmen don't know music, and that's one o' those truths to life.

Dandelion plucks at invisible strings, a phantom lute his only companion. Just a simple melody of silent notes to keep the ghosts at bay.

And why keep postin' a guard every night? It's been days or weeks since they've seen another soul besides themselves—feels like years, even. There was the buck they shot a week back. Pity to leave all that meat steaming in the snow. It'd sure feel mighty fine now, resting in the pit o' his belly. Better than stringy dried rabbit. But who's he to argue? Tahir said they needed to watch for northern ghosts, watch out for anybody on their trail. Dandelion certainly wasn't gonna fight him on it, put his neck on the choppin' block.
Tahir’s the boss,
Dandelion thought,
and they'd be nowhere better if it weren't for him.

"Probably in hell. That’s where we'd be without him,” Dandelion mutters, though the watchman isn't supposed to make a sound. "Precautions," Tahir had said. "They keep you alive up here."

At least it's hot in hell. There ain't no snow falling from the sky, no cold in the ground.

Dandelion chuckles at his own wit—impressive still, even with ice on the brain.

Snap
.

"Who's there?" Dandelion whispers. Time for a change already? Each watch was goin' faster than the last. Never thought he'd get used to these endless nights, 'specially not with the spectre of the Massacre at his back.

Snick
. That was metal—like a blade sliding from a scabbard.

"Not funny," Dandelion says to the shadows. He still can't see who's coming through the trees, but the sound of their approach is just a whisper under the wind. "Is it time already? I was just gettin' comfortable out here!" A pause. "Who's there?" Dandelion stands, a hand on the pommel of his battered blade. A shadow stalks through the trees, a big body, hand raised in greeting.

Must be the Northman. He doesn't say much, not with that broken tongue o' his.

Dandelion raises his own hand. He feels like one of the heroes from the theatre, greeting a brave companion in the dead of night. "Hail, good sir!" he calls, mimicking the actors he’d seen on stage.

The shadow drops its hand suddenly, a swift chop of the air. It is the only warning given before a callused hand clamps over Dandelion's mouth. He bites the hand, tastes blood. He’s pushed to his knees, and his head is yanked back. A feeble cry is lost in his assailant's hand.

A line of heat blossoms across his neck then spills down his chest. He doesn't know what has happened until he remembers a play he saw once, at a theatre in Innskarrl. The hero, a dashing youth called the Spitting Dragon, had, as always, slain the demon prince, shorn off his head. As the lifeless head rolled around on stage, red syrup erupted from the dummy—the spurting fake blood set the crowd afire with cheers, hurrahs, and cries of dismay in equal force.

Dandelion tries to cry out, to warn his friends, but all he can manage is a pathetic gurgle. Warmth spreads through his body as the first tendrils of hell wrap themselves around his sin.

At least he'd finally be warm. But is there theatre in hell?

2

The shield lay hidden among the leftovers of battle, half-covered by a cloak beside a bedroll. It was my shield, though I had never blocked a blow with it nor held it with my hands except to scour the rust
 
when the Old Knight was still alive. It had been his shield then.
 

I was his squire, and proud to be so. He treated me fairly, as knights go. He fed me, never beat me too badly, and promised me his shield when I was old enough to wield it, old enough to bear its weight—emotional and physical both.

The Old Knight was not one of the bodies left for me to bury. He died in the Massacre, struck down by the heavy blade of a Northman. Just like that. Dead. As a piece of flotsam on the boiling sea of battle, I had watched it happen. Looking back now, I am amazed I was not killed immediately during that bloody battle. I was a still target among the moving many.

I watched, unable to move, as Tahir appeared from out of the storm of swords. He was covered in blood—his own and others'. His helmet was dented. His shield was cloven in two and dangled from the leather straps around his arm. He saw the Old Knight, dropped the broken shield, and stooped over the body to replace one shield with another.

Time seemed to slow as our eyes met. He challenged me to say anything, to claim the shield as my own. I said nothing, and he was swept away by the flow of battle. I was broken by the death of the Old Knight
—
a coward
—
so I hid among the chaos as best I could. I killed a man who wasn't looking out for someone so small. I stabbed the back of his knee, slit his throat.

One kill. Was I now a knight? A weak, cowardly knight, perhaps. The rules are different in this land of barbarians.

I let the memory of that day dissipate, too painful to hold on to for so long. My master's shield had a lion painted on it—a crude crest that reminded me of home. He'd had it painted after saving a young boy from a lion, cementing his glory and fame among my people. I was that young boy. It was supposed to be my crest, but I lost it to Tahir through cowardice. And now, far from where the Old Knight had been killed, I reclaimed it—not through valour but through luck. Tahir—my enemy and travelling companion—was dead and I lived. He could not steal it from me again. The shield had done him little good in the end.

I picked it up. It was heavy as my heart as I placed it with the rest of my pilfered items.

Sitting next to the bedroll was Tahir's journal. The leather cover was scarred from the hard life it chronicled. I flipped through the pages. No words, only scribbled images.

I dropped the book in Tahir's grave. He deserved at least the comfort of his drawings, even if his greed and poor judgment had led them all to their deaths.

My father was never buried. He rotted under the hot sun, eyes plucked out by vultures and guts picked clean by hyenas. We watched for days as his body was defiled—me, my brothers and sisters. My mother cried but could do nothing. My grandfather watched grim-faced as the son he'd killed bloated under the hot sun.

To be left unburied is to be denied the gods' embrace. My father was a good man, but he rotted alongside murderers and rapists.

He was caught with another man, a childhood friend. My father denied it to no avail. My grandfather was an important man in our village, so he was dishonoured and disgraced by my father's actions. Justice had to be served and dispensed by the hands of those who proclaim it. Hours after he was discovered, my father was dead.

He would not raise a hand against my grandfather, even as the heavy club splintered his skull, even with his children watching, tears streaking their uncomprehending faces. He did not utter a single cry, but his eyes screamed his pain and sadness.

I loved him so much. I was too young to understand why he had to die, too young to be angry at him, no matter what he did.

There was no justice served to my grandfather. My father was a dirty sinner, an affront to the gods. Former friends spat on his corpse. His lover was castrated and hanged in front of a jeering crowd—spared death because he was not married. There was no room for them in heaven, my grandfather said. They could wander the earth as lost spirits and ponder their sins until the sun burned the world and its people away.

I fled home after that—too ashamed to face my grandfather, too sad to watch the sun bleach my father's bones. A good man deserves to be buried, even if he does not deserve to live.

Who can you forgive, Grandfather, if not the dead?

The first of the night's snowflakes drifted down on a lazy breeze. It landed delicately atop the body but was soon covered as I shovelled dirt into the grave.

Tahir is awake, watching the stars wind their ponderous way across the heavens. He should be asleep, but rest is for the wicked—and the worthy. He is neither.

It is not easy to lead those who have lost faith, who have betrayed the idea that they still have something to fight for.
 

He’d never asked for this, for the lives of four other men to be placed upon his shoulders. When he left the hot plains of his homeland, hired alongside hundreds of other mercenaries to wage battle in the cold north for sums of money undreamt, he'd been green as they come, skilled with a hunting bow but unused to battle with sword or spear.

Now he is hardened. Seven kills to his name, if he remembers right. More than any of the others who sleep beside him. Except, perhaps, the bearded Northman—blood stains his hands deeply. Tahir's seven kills have made him leader.

The corpses were steaming in the snow, still freshly dead, when the other survivors first looked to him for guidance. Tahir was as scared and lost as the rest of them, but he walked with a swagger he did not feel and spoke with a confidence that sounded like a lie to his own ears. It was dark when they named him leader; perhaps they could not see his fear through the shadows that veiled his face; perhaps they only saw the light of the moon reflected in his eyes and mistook it for hope.

They are all that remain after the Massacre. His brothers are dead, nearly eighty of them. His enemies are dead also, though their number is unknowable. A meaningless battle fought on the whims of rich politicians living in opulent mansions in the safety of cities far from the battlefields—eager only for iron and gold. So, the remaining few of his once proud mercenary band flee through this labyrinthine forest, destination unknown.
 

He cannot tell them that they're lost. They probably know.

He misses the beautiful women back home—long of limb, skin the colour of coffee. He misses his wife and his two daughters. Are they happy? Still alive?

His son is dead. Killed in battle. Butchered with gold coin tinkling in his pocket. Life is not just, nor is death. Gold is of little use to a ghost.

"Hail, good sir!"

In the quiet of deep night, the voice is clear. The amber-skinned scout. He does not remember rising, but Tahir is already running toward the call.

The fool!

He slows, tries to make no sound.

In the clearing are three men. One dead, two whispering fiercely. They are tall and strong of arm. Men as mountains. Golden hair brushes their broad shoulders, twisted into knotted dreadlocks. One gestures to the darkness, away from Tahir's sleeping companions.
 

More men are hidden in the shadows.

Tahir turns and runs back to camp. When he is close, he yells an alarm to his stirring companions.

A spear stabs suddenly from the shadows, nearly gutting Tahir, but a heavy swing of his sword knocks the spear to the ground. The spear’s owner is a looming giant, now drawing an axe. Moonlight catches on the metal scales sewn to his armour. Tahir's first thought is that he is betrayed from within his own camp. But it's not Eyvindur—the Northman he has been travelling with. This one has red hair and a missing eye.

The giant swings his heavy axe. Tahir dodges, narrowly missing his death for a second time in mere seconds.

Thud!
The giant grunts, curses as his axe catches in a tree. Tahir tries to think of some witty comment, but he has never been clever. Instead, he buries his sword in the helpless Northerner.

Eight kills.

A powerful blow takes Tahir in the shoulder and sends him tumbling. The cold ground catches him, momentum flips him onto his back, takes the wind from his lungs. Something snags as he slides—the sound of snapping wood, the burn of tearing skin.

An arrow juts from his shoulder, its haft broken in by the fall. No blood trickles from the wound. Numbness spreads down his arm. He stands and faces the darkness, lifts his blade with his good arm. His shield is back with his bedroll, a hard pillow—useless now. The confused yells of his roused companions fill the night.