Adrianos, hero of the Nomarl raid, the last commander to have personally led a successful offensive against the Imperial Fourth Army. The city’s hero had been found in several different pieces in his fine apartment just off the Grand Bazaar. He had been gagged and bound and tortured. Parts of him had been flayed.
Next to his carcass, Bull had sat, wearing nothing but blood.
‘Hello, brother,’ Bahn said to him in a hush.
Bull took a step towards him. ‘Bahn?’ he asked, incredulous.
‘Yes.’
Bull stepped closer, the chain unravelling from his arm as it stretched tight behind him. The jailer at Bahn’s side shifted uneasily, weighing the club in his hand. Bull refused to acknowledge him. He remained focused on Bahn, his massive arm held against his stomach, the knuckles of his hand disfigured by swelling, the skin recently torn and bloody. ‘What brings you here then, eh? Are you lost?’
His voice rasped as though he hadn’t used it for a very long time. ‘Speak up,’ growled Bull. ‘I’m doubting this is a social call. What is it?’
All at once, as Bahn listened to the lilt in the man’s voice, and stared into the dark eyes above his sharp cheekbones, he was taken back to the days of the early war, hunkering down behind a parapet as Bull grinned in his face, slapping his back to stop him coughing and enjoying every moment of it, the crazy barkbeating bastard.
‘The Mannians have landed in force in Pearl Bay.’
Bull narrowed his eyes, pushed his head forward to scrutinize him more closely.
‘I’m here for the veterans. To see if any of you are fit to stand with us.’
‘Another judge, then,’ Bull spat, half turning away.
‘What? You think you’ve been judged unfairly?’
The chain snapped tight as Bull towered over him. Bahn fought the urge to step back a pace.
‘Easy, now,’ soothed the jailer as he poked his club into Bull’s bare chest.
Still Bull ignored him, stared instead at Bahn. ‘No, I suppose I don’t. But then neither was Adrianos. You understand? When I judged him.’
‘They call you the slayer, did you know that? A monster only fit for chaining up in a hole.’
Bull’s expression remained the same; curious, wrathful.
‘Will you stand with us, and fight for your people?’
‘My people?’ he asked, incredulous.
‘Aye. For the people of Bar-Khos, like your father. And for your mother’s people in the Windrush.’
Suddenly, a wide smile creased his face like the gash of a knife. Two of his front teeth were missing, Bahn saw. The rest looked to be rotting. ‘I owe no loyalty to anyone, least of all the people of Bar-Khos.’
‘Will you fight for us?’
‘Is it a pardon. Is that what you’re offering?’
‘Yes. If that’s what it will take.’
‘And all I have to do is kill some Mannians in the name of my people, is that it? You’ll take the slayer into your ranks even if he’s a cold-blooded murdering bastard of a barkbeater, is that how it’s to be, Bahn?’
For a long moment Bahn swayed in his armour, feeling tired and out of place here.
‘Believe me, Bull,’ he told his old comrade plainly. ‘Where we are going, we’ll have great need of men like you.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Free Enterprise
Mistress Cheer was clearly a woman who knew how to land on her feet. In the space of a single day, amidst the confusion and high emotions of the beachhead, she obtained for herself a wagon and a mule, a cartload of supplies, and enough home comforts to create a small camp for her and her women on the seaward edge of the dunes.
By evening, awnings had been erected over two sides of the wagon and the sand underneath covered in mats of woven grasses. There were stools to sit on, and a fire smoked beneath a hanging kettle and pot, with water and stew warming in them. Mistress Cheer had even procured three tents for them all, which she instructed Ash to pitch not far from the wagon, though far enough for some privacy.
The women relaxed at last, preening themselves in clear view of the men surrounding the camp, squabbling amongst themselves whenever their mistress was beyond earshot. A few casually flirted with Ash, sporting with him over the colour of his skin, the firmness of his old body. He chuckled in pleasure, giving as good as he got.
Ash had overheard that the place itself was called Whittle Bay, a broad cove within the larger sweep of Pearl Bay, which was located on the eastern coastline of Khos. It was a pretty enough location, with its hills to the west and the high peaks of mountains both north and south, and the rocky, gull-covered island out in the greater bay. In many ways the scene reminded Ash of northern Honshu, though it was spoiled somewhat by the stink of the army deployed across the beachhead, and by the closer press of thousands of camp followers, who had accompanied the invasion force all this way to Khos, like Mistress Cheer, in hope of making a profit.
The fleet lay at anchor out in the clear deep waters just beyond the coastal shelf of the cove. Its ships bobbed in tight formation, looking weather-beaten even from here, with spars and masts missing or hanging broken amongst wrappings of sails, some of the hulls listing too far to one side. The work was hardly slackening with the falling twilight. It seemed that a great deal still required unloading before the army could set forth in the morning.
Ash rested as best he could. His cough was worse today. Every now and again his limbs would shake as if from some inner chill, though his clothes were blessedly dry for once, and he kept the oiled cloak wrapped tight about him, and refused to stray long from the warmth of the fire.
Occasionally Mistress Cheer would cast him one of her pointed stares. He would groan to himself and climb to his feet, before wandering around the camp with his sheathed sword in his hand for show, scowling at the soldiers and non-enlisted men camped all around their small oasis of perfume and stockings and girlish laughter.
As the sun finally set, Mistress Cheer put the women to work with sharp claps of her hands and practised words of encouragement. They were hardly the only prostitutes on the beach – far from it – but still, soon enough, a long line of soldiers stretched from their little camp as they waited their turn, drunk and boisterous on this foreign beach far from home. Ash maintained order within the camp itself as the girls took turns leading the clientele into the tents, their business brief.
His mind was barely on the job. To the south, where the ground rose up towards the ruins of the burned village, he could see the palisade and tents of the Matriarch’s camp, with her standard flying high. It seemed to call to him each time he turned his attention elsewhere.
There was little trouble with the men that evening. It was late when the women’s calls for respite grew loud enough for Mistress Cheer to acknowledge them, and to declare an end to business for the night. A number of drunken soldiers still awaited their turn, but their complaints died quickly at Mistress Cheer’s glare and the hard, silent farlander by her side.
Rather than preparing for sleep, the girls set about having a small party instead.
Ash was weary after the long day. He excused himself, and with reluctance left the warmth of the fire, and found a spot on top of a nearby dune and huddled down in his cloak where he could keep an eye on them, but remain alone. With his sword lying by his side, he studied the lights of the distant camp of the Matriarch, the lie of the moonlit land around it. He looked for movement amongst the many fires that were merely glimmers from here. He wished he had his eyeglass with him; even a pair of eyes younger than his own.
Ash coughed once more, spat phlegm, wiped his mouth dry. Clouds were drifting in from the north, ponderous and heavy. More rain on its way, maybe. They would obscure the waxing moons and make a darkness of the land beneath them.
A good night for it, he thought to himself.
‘See something of interest up there?’
He smelled her musky perfume even before she sat down on the sand, and fixed her dress over her legs as
