Exile (Bloodforge Book 1) (12 page)

He was staring at the
knife that the soldier had dropped. It had stuck point-first into the wood of
the platform and stayed there quivering, unnoticed by the soldier, who still
held him by the hair and by the hand.

It
must be a throwing blade,
thought Callistan. The way it had landed
suggested that the weight was concentrated at the tip rather than balanced
where the handle met the blade. Callistan allowed his head to be turned so that
he could look at the Doppelganger. The false Callistan was still in full flow,
inciting the crowd to a righteous vengeance. Callistan tried to pull his left
hand from the soldier’s grip, but the soldier squeezed harder, simultaneously
loosening his grip on Callistan’s hair. Callistan let the weight of his head
drop, so that he could look at the knife. It lay just out of reach, but if he
stretched…

“What am I to do with
this thing that would steal my very image?” asked the Doppelganger. A great
clamour arose in the square and people began to shout out suggestions.

“Hang ‘im!”

“Cut his throat,
milord!”

“Off with his head!”
yelled one who then fell silent, as those around him grumbled and threw things
once meant for Callistan in his direction.

“Too quick! Too quick
for 'im!”

“Skin him! Skin him,
milord!” came one voice that was taken up by the rest. Soon everybody in the
square was crying the refrain. “Skin him! Skin him!”

Callistan reached out a
hand, making it look as if he was steadying himself but all the while edging
ever nearer to the blade.

A shadow bent over him
and a gloved hand plucked the knife from the wood.

Damn
.

“Skin him?” came the
voice of the Doppelganger, Callistan’s own voice. Callistan looked up at his
double who, dismissing the soldier, curled the fingers of his free hand in his
captive’s filthy hair and placed the knife at his throat with the other. “Good
people, I had not thought your bloodlust so strong.” He snatched the blade
away, leaving a thin streak of blood. “Alas, I cannot skin him, for—”

“Skin him!” a wizened
crone near the front screamed, throwing a rotten cabbage with remarkable
strength to land at the feet of the Doppelganger.

The false Callistan held
up a hand as he had so often before, yet now there were the beginnings of panic
on his borrowed features. “Good people of Temple,” he beseeched, “have you no
care for the thoughts of your victorious soldiers? Have they not seen enough
blood—”

“Skin him!” cried
another, younger voice. “Show us what he really looks like!” A roar of assent
rumbled through the assembled masses. Like the first breakers that herald a
storm-wave, the crowd began to sway and jostle. The thin line of soldiers
between the stage and the mob edged backwards, locking their shields together.
Callistan felt himself nodding.
Torn
apart by peasants. It is to be that after all.

The Doppelganger
released Callistan’s hair and approached the front of the stage. “But listen, I
have shown you enough. Too much, in fact. He must face the Empron. Illis alone
will decide his fate.”

“We want to see!” cried
the red-faced man, emboldened by the seething mass behind him. “Give him to
us!”

“People of Temple,
listen to your—” the Doppelganger did not get to finish, as the red-faced
man struck a young soldier in front of him and turned everything to chaos.

Like a dam giving way
before the flood, the crowd tore through the flimsy line of sentries, ripping
down their shield wall and swirling around the high stage like water on rock.

“Fly, Lord!” came the
harsh bark of the vetero behind the Doppelganger, and the false Callistan was
dragged bodily from the stage, still screaming like a madman.

“No. The Face-Stealer!
He must not be harmed! His purpose is greater!” He kicked and lashed out at the
men trying to save him, but it was to no avail.

Callistan closed his
eyes and tried to control his breathing. Soon he would be gone from this world,
dragged away from the torment.

Raiya
. The name of
his wife came unbidden to his mind. Sweet, gentle Raiya, with red hair and skin
as pale as milk.
Farilion
, his son,
bright-eyed and as strong as his father had been at his age.
Mela
, his beautiful daughter, as
wholesome as summer fruit and as warm as spring rain. His mind was a swirl of
colour. So much of his life had escaped him, twirling away from the grasping
hands of his mind like spectral mist, yet now, just as his mind had stopped
searching, the gods had sent him this final teasing vision, a barb from all he
left behind.

His eyes snapped open,
and behind that dark, penetrating gaze, the mind of a warrior awoke. By all the
gods, it was time to fight.

A short, fat man was
trying to climb to the stage. He held a dark and pitted blade between his teeth
that pinned the jowly flesh of his cheeks back on either side in a strange
rictus. Callistan stood and stalked over to the fat man, kneeling and clutching
awkwardly at the worn leather handle of the knife with bound hands. With a
savage jerk, he tore the knife from the fat man’s mouth, tearing a ragged smile
across the man’s face and snapping off a golden tooth that landed with a click
on the wood below. The fat man howled with agony and fell back into the surging
sea of humanity below. The crowd screamed as they saw their would-be champion
brought low.

Callistan cut his hands
free and paused to gather up the tooth, which he wrapped in a fold of his
soiled clothing. Taking a quick look around him, he could see that, other than
the bodies on the gallows, he was alone on the platform. Towards the back, a
tight knot of soldiers were beating their way to safety, the Doppelganger
gleaming in their midst. A few soldiers were pressed against the sides of the
stage, fighting to prevent being overwhelmed, if not for their lives. For the
moment they were holding the stairs, breaking heads and mashing lips into teeth
with mailed fists. However, one or two knives were flickering in the struggle,
and soon bruises would become blood.

Eyes
front,
Callistan
told himself. His battle was before him at the foot of the stage. They wanted
his blood. Worse, they wanted to flay him, to take back flesh they thought
stolen. Callistan wondered if they would be disappointed when they found
nothing but meat and bone underneath.
Don’t
give them the chance to find out.

A lanky boy no older
than fourteen summers clambered up on to the stage with startling speed,
climbing on the shoulders of those beneath him. Callistan stood still and
spread his arms. He breathed out in one quick puff and then became a statue.
The boy came stumbling on, his face split in a crooked grin at the honour he
was about to win. He came with a flat-tipped flensing knife held low — a
useless weapon, but then this boy was no warrior, most likely a tanner’s
apprentice, fuelled by dreams of glory.

But glory was a killer.

Callistan sidestepped
the boy’s clumsy lunge and rammed the hilt of his borrowed blade into the base
of his opponent’s skull. The tanner’s apprentice dropped like a boned fish and
Callistan winced at the impact. Foolishness was no reason for death.

He strode to the front
of the stage and flung his arms wide. “Come! Come, dance with me!” he screamed
with a bestial rage. The people before him paused and then, as one, lurched
forward, bellowing their hatred.

Callistan laughed, for
the battle-fury was upon him, and his was a world in sharp focus, moving at a
slower pace. A shout brought him back to reality. From the right, four robed
and hooded figures made their way through the crowd. People were falling over
themselves to clear a path for the men because they were clothed as thralls of
the Temple Deep and were not to be stopped. A queer hush began to settle over
the raging masses, as news of the black thralls spread. No man wanted Callistan
to escape, but if the Black God wanted him then so be it. It was unwise to come
between the Unnamed and his prey.

Callistan took a step
backwards as the thralls reached the stairs and pushed the sentries aside with
a gesture. He shouldn’t have known who they were, but he did. Whether it was
the reaction of the crowd or a deeply ingrained survival instinct, he knew that
these were men to be feared, men of dark power and darker purpose. He ran to
the other side of the stage and looked down. Moments before, the people there
would have welcomed him down to their level so that they might carve his flesh
from him; now they fended him off as if he were a leper. Callistan had been
marked by the Temple Deep and they would not stain themselves with his sin.

“You’re theirs now,
beast,” said an elderly priest in the sea-blue robes of a Temple Main. “They
will strip the skin from you and give you to Him.” A murmur of agreement
whispered through the crowd.

“Don’t think you can
escape. This is the gods’ justice,” a decrepit old man, thin as a stick, made a
sign to ward off evil.

Callistan looked over
his shoulder. The hooded men were a few paces away, approaching with an
agonising slowness. Every eye in the crowd was wide open, every mouth closed,
or parted slightly to allow a nervous breath. It seemed as if all of Temple was
waiting for something to happen.

So Callistan made it
happen.

He turned and leapt from
the platform into the horde. They screamed and scattered as if he were on fire,
but some were slow enough that they broke his fall on to the hard cobblestones
underneath. He struggled to stand, batting away the pawing hands of those who
would give him to the men that sought to take him. Then he froze.

Before him stood four
more men, also hooded and cloaked, their faces hidden in shadow. He turned
to escape but could not see past the four thralls behind him who, having
climbed gracefully down from the stage, began to close the circle around him.
Callistan cursed. His indecision had been for a moment, yet it had been enough.
Now he was trapped in the slowly shrinking enclave of temple thralls, surrounded
by a swarm of people who wanted his skin.

“Callistan,” said a
voice, deep and hollow and as dark as the shadowy hood it came from.

And then, under the
terrified gaze of a thousand people, they took him.

“A jug of
ale, and hurry yourself about it. We dremani don’t like waiting.” The soldier
turned back to his companions, who sniggered and shouted obscenities.

Hari nodded and fought
to keep his expression neutral as he walked back behind the bar: a dark wooden
beam propped on barrels. “Hana, get the biggest jug from the pantry and make
sure it’s clean.”

“But it’s got milk in
it, Papa,” said the girl.

“I don’t care,” he
snapped. “Throw it away, wash it out and fill it full of ale.”

“None of the local piss,
man,” said the soldier, with an arrogant wave of his hand. “We want real ale.
Ale to put hair on your bollocks.” They all laughed.

Hana, Hari’s daughter,
raised an eyebrow. “Now!” Hari thundered and she scurried away, hurt in her
eyes. It pained him to speak to her so, but she was a wilful child and would
never find a husband if she carried on trying to prove herself to the world.

Hari scowled, careful to
make sure that he had his back to the three soldiers. These fools were not
dremani. The men of His Imperial Majesty’s Dremon were serious men, all blooded
against enemies of the Empron, and none much given to mirth and laughter.
Besides, rumour had it that the Dremon were warring in the Southlands, helping
King Asterfal of Carpathin make up his mind about joining the empire. Doubtless
the three soldiers — none of them far out of their teenage years —
thought him a country simpleton, too stupid to tell dremani apart from standard
conscripts in their bright but poorly painted crimson plate. But Hari was not a
simpleton; he was an old soldier. True, he had not been dremani, but he had
fought alongside them often enough and knew the damage those dark men in darker
red armour could do.

He spat. The only damage
these three had done was to his winter stores. Still, they had flashed good
solid silver so he could not complain. Not yet.

Hari busied himself with
cleaning tankards. The soldiers were unwelcome and rude but he needed what
little they would pay him. With winter approaching, it was all that mattered.
Attracting customers this high up in the mountains was improbable at best and
the few regular patrons that Wort could cough up were old men who, while
charming, drank themselves to sleep after a few ales. He looked around the
tavern. Apart from the soldiers, his catch this day was made up of two dozing
drunks and a thin woman with a scarf wrapped around the lower half of her face.

Hari rubbed at a
stubborn stain crusted on to a pewter mug. He had wanted to set up in Kressel,
or at least nearer. Kressel was a port city and produced a never-ending stream
of soldiers and sailors with thirst enough to drain a brewery. Alas, a
soldier’s pension was a meagre thing and what little there was did not last
long.
Too many old soldiers,
thought
Hari,
and not enough trouble to keep the
young ones occupied
. If the news from the Greenlands was true and the
rebellion had been broken, Veria would soon have a glut of bored soldiers.

He had seen it coming,
of course. What with forced conscription and constantly increasing levies on
grain, trouble had been stirring for years, leading up to the ugly business in
Iero. Had the rebellion gathered more strength or been better led, it could
have caused real problems. Instead, it had flashed and died within half a year,
even though its main opposition had been an army of conscripts.

The whole thing had been
dismissed as the last action of the renegade Sons of Iss, a shady organisation
of Respini assassins that had endured decades of Verian rule, living in the
cracks between the past and the present. The rebellion had nothing to do with them,
of course, that was just convenient propaganda, but Hari still hadn’t decided
where his sympathies lay. He was a patriot and had fought for Illis, but he
also knew that rebellions didn’t happen by accident. Perhaps it had just needed
a slower fuse.

Too
many old soldiers, and I’m just one more,
he thought. At least he
was surrounded by strong drink. The soldiers were right: it was piss, but it
helped you forget.

Hari shuddered as the
memory of another rebellion decades ago strode unbidden to the forefront of his
mind. Illis’ rebellion. It had begun brilliantly. Illis had landed at Kressel
with the Forgotten, a feared band of mercenaries led by the Helhammer. The
council there, sick of Respini dominance, declared for him and gave him the
support of the small standing army based in the mighty port city. They also
raised a militia to swell the ranks. Hari could still remember how proud he had
been to stand alongside thousands of other Verians, the stench of newly treated
leather in his nostrils and the weight of an old, scarred sword at his hip. It
felt like being at the top of a mountain, looking down.

Word of the unrest
reached leaked Respini ears and they sent a huge force from the mountain
fortress of Ruum to crush the uprising. Led by the Helhammer, Illis’ forces
crushed the much larger enemy army and marched over their broken troops to take
Ruum itself. That’s when Bellephon had joined, the man that people called the
Hammerfist. Bellephon was a member of the Higard, Respin’s most elite soldiers,
but he was also a Verian. Hari had been there when the lone figure clad in
glowing bronze armour had walked from the doomed fortress, clasping hands with
the Helhammer as if they were old friends. Gods, but his ears still rang at the
thought of how the men had roared. They were invincible.

Encouraged, Illis
marched on Fend, the border fortress on the eastern coast. Respin had led their
oppression of Veria from Fend for generations, and it was as good a symbol as
any to demonstrate Verian intentions. But Illis had overreached, and found
himself and his small force surrounded and overwhelmed by an ambushing regiment
of Higard. So had risen the Helhammer once more, seizing the moment and leading
Illis' beleaguered forces out of the ambush and up into the high mountains of
the Heartland Range. There they had struggled and suffered for weeks, but had
emerged unbowed and unbroken in the foothills of Iss.

Iss.
There
was a name he wished to forget. It had all turned sour at Iss. Veria had broken
its bonds and was now the undisputed power in Daegermund, but to take the crown
they had to kill the King, and Respin had died hard. The Verian empire had been
born at Iss, but it was not a glorious birth. Instead it was a hateful thing
that had slithered out of its womb in the bloodstained streets of a gentle
city. Hari was proud of his country and his part in what it had achieved, but
not that.
A nation’s shame.

He wiped a dented
tankard dry and folded the rag into quarters. In the poor light that seeped in
through the gaps in the timbers, the marks on the cloth looked too much like
bloodstains.

Hari considered the
boisterous soldiers — if they could be called that. There were three of
them and the youngest was blind drunk. As Hari watched, the boy-soldier speared
a chunk of beefsteak with his dagger and lanced it into his mouth. As he bit
into the steak, so the blade bit into him, splitting his upper lip apart and
sending a torrent of blood down to darken his tunic and run down his
breastplate in rivulets. The other two thought it was the funniest thing they
had ever seen.

Posturing
fools.
From the look of them, these three would struggle to put their boots on the
right way, let alone defeat a battle-hardened warrior. Dremani indeed. Gods be
thanked that the hard days were over. No more Threshian berserkers to cut down,
no need to fear the Respini Higard, disbanded after its nation’s surrender. Any
one of the Higard would have cut through this trio of boy-soldiers like a knife
through butter.
A hot knife,
thought
Hari,
through melted butter. Are these
the men that guard our borders?
Maybe it was a good thing the rebels had
been so poorly organised. If they had reached this far East, one of these
idiots might have actually had to wield a sword rather than just wear it.

Hana elbowed past him
with the jug of ale, sloshing a good amount on to his sleeve. He grinned. Such
a firebrand. He would have to look further afield than Wort to find a match for
her. Perhaps if he sold the old carthorse, Gustav, he could provide her with a
suitable dowry. Poor old Gustav, past his prime as a warhorse, reduced to
lugging around fat merchants and those too weak or too lazy to walk. For the
moment, he was contentedly munching overripe grain in his lean-to behind the
tavern, but Hari couldn’t afford to keep him for much longer. He was losing too
much value. Nobody would take him now for anything other than meat and glue.
Past his prime, like me,
thought Hari.
Good thing they can’t make glue out of me.

“You call this ale?”
spat the first soldier, standing and seizing Hana by the wrist.

“Let go of me!” she
screamed, batting at his hand.

“This is old man’s
piss!” continued the soldier. “Your old man has been pissing in the tankard and
charging me for it!” The two soldiers with him laughed and blood bubbled from the
youngest’s torn mouth.

“Let her go,” said Hari,
stepping from behind his makeshift bar and wrapping his hand around a hard
wooden billy club he had hidden in two leather loops underneath.

The soldier paused as if
unsure how to continue, then a burst of laughter from his friend gave him
courage and he went on. “Come, old man. She’s a pretty one, isn’t she? We
dremani can be very forgiving. I’ll forget about your pissy ale if you go back
behind your bar,” he pointed, “and leave this little slut to me and my friends
here.” He turned and grinned at his companions and then turned back to Hari.
“We’ll be gentle, but then from the look of her, I’m guessing she likes it
rough.”

Hana screamed and tried
to pull away but the soldier hugged her towards him and gripped her by the
chin, kissing her roughly on the cheek. Hari started forward, club in hand,
ready to crack the heads of these fools who would threaten his daughter. Yet
before he could take more than a few steps, the lithe figure of the woman with
the scarf over her face, until now sitting forgotten in the corner, tiptoed up
behind the soldier and twisted her fingers into his greasy blonde hair. She
slipped a small but evil-looking knife from her sleeve and placed it carefully
at his jugular. The boy-soldier froze and his expression of cocky drunken lust
melted into one of pure terror.

“What is your name,
boy?” her voice was that of a young woman but it carried a power of command
entirely alien in this rustic setting.

“Tollett,” came the
response, little more than a whimper.

“I suggest you let her
go,” said the woman. “This is Esha,” she quickly flashed the knife in front of
his eyes and then placed it back at his jugular, “and she hasn’t tasted blood
in a very long time.”

The boy took her meaning
and released Hana without protest. She ran crying back to her father’s meaty
arms. Hari kissed the top of her head and looked back up at the young woman
with the knife named Esha. She was tall for a woman and slim, and wore a long
cloak of dark blue with the hood up, as well as tight, form-fitting leggings in
the fashion of man. She was dressed for travelling, with a fur vest over a
woollen tunic and high knee-length riding boots of cracked and worn leather.

“I wasn’t going to do
anything,” said the boy-soldier called Tollett. His two companions were still
in their seats, though the youngest with the bloody mouth was slumped down,
snoring softly and dribbling blood on to his already soiled tunic. “We were
just having a laugh, weren’t we lads?” He tried to turn his head to look at his
friends, but Esha pricked into the goose-bumped skin of his neck, and a ruby
droplet of blood showed bright there.

“
We
weren’t doing anything,” said the second soldier. “It was you.”
He held his hands up to show he meant no harm.

“Nice friends you have,”
said the woman.

Tollett swallowed and
his flesh swelled against the blade at his throat.

“Now, if I’m to let you
go,” said the woman, “you must first promise me that this was all a
misunderstanding. That you will sit down and drink your pissy ale—”

“It’s good ale,” said
Hari indignantly, annoyed at losing his chance to break Tollett’s head.

“No, old man, it is
piss. He was right about that.” She continued. “You will sit down and say no
more. Then you will leave, but not before you have suitably compensated this
man,” she pointed at Hari, “for his time, his hospitality, and the grief you
have caused him. Are we agreed?” she asked sweetly.

Tollett nodded and she
released him, tucking Esha back into a sheath hidden in her sleeve. Tollett sat
down on legs that seemed suddenly nerveless, and stared into the jug of ale,
all pretence of violence stripped away to show the scared child in armour
underneath. The young woman leant over him and plucked his coin purse from the
table, drawing out two silver finns and a handful of copper dussets. She palmed
one of the silver coins but gave the remaining finn and all of the dussets to
Hari.

“Thank you,” he said
gruffly, looking into her brown eyes. The scarf that covered the lower half of
her face was dark red, but it could not hide her beauty, nor could the hood she
wore stop a few curls of woven gold from poking out.
A Kaleni,
he thought.
Do they
make them as fair anywhere else?
“I don’t have anything to give you, short
of food and drink and a bed for the night. Well, as long as you want. We don’t
get many guests here.”