Nights of Villjamur Read online

  Ghuda looked up as the skies cleared, red sunlight now skidding off the wet cobbles, and the streets appeared to rust. He stepped from the shelter of the doorway into the relative brightness of the morning. He needed to get to the Council Spire to start the day's work.

  Whether it was a symptom of his guilt, he didn't know, but he felt certain he was being watched. He never requested a guard to escort him anywhere, in fact usually slipped away before one might appear.

  There was much to deal with for the day ahead. Primarily he had to deal with the increasing refugee problems: the labourers from elsewhere that were flocking to Villjamur to survive the coming ice age.

  People were heading to the various irens to trade and shop, overseen by soldiers from the Regiment of Foot, who patrolled along the streets in pairs. It was a trenchant policy of safety he'd personally initiated to ease the citizens' concern in these anxious times. You didn't want general panic to set in, even though the public fear of crime was more intense than its current levels actually warranted.

  Up the winding roads and passageways, he continued.

  On the way he encountered an elderly man sitting on a stool with a sign beside him that said 'Scribe - Discretion Guaranteed'. With one palm resting flat on the small table to one side, he sipped a steaming drink with a contented look on his face. There were quite a few of these men around the city, writing love letters or death threats on behalf of those who couldn't write themselves, including those whose fingers had been broken by the Inquisition. Ghuda speculated on what he might write to Tuya, the redhead he had just spent the night with. What would he say to her? That he would like to fuck her some more because she was so good at it? That was hardly the basis of an ongoing relationship.

  The incline had become a strain on Ghuda's legs, so for a while he rested on a pile of logs heaped outside one of the terraced houses. Again, he had the uneasy sensation that someone was watching him. He looked around at the quiet streets, then up at the bridges. Perhaps someone was looking down at him.

  He rose to go and heard footsteps behind him, running into the distance.

  A short cut led through to an iren, a trading area located in a courtyard of stone. As he stepped through a high and narrow alleyway, seemingly endless, his heart began to beat a little faster.

  He quickened his pace.

  He burst out onto the busy iren . . .

  Then he felt as if his chest had exploded and its contents were spilling onto the cobbles. Except it hadn't, he was still in one piece, he was still alive, but he gaped down at the wound as it expanded, at his shredded robes exposing his flesh to the cold, damp air.

  A truculent pain shot through him, and he screamed, trying to look behind him, but through welling eyes saw only a silhouette heading back, bizarrely upwards, into the darkness. He stumbled forwards, his hands clutching for wet stones, then began to spit blood on the ground. People were now crowding around him, watching wide-eyed, pointing. Sensing his life fluid filling the cracks between cobbles, the blood beetles came and began to smother him, till his screams could be heard amplified between the high walls of the courtyard. One even scurried into his mouth, scraping eagerly at his gums and tongue. He bit down so he wouldn't choke, split its shell in two, and spat it out, but he could still taste its ichors.

  Councillor Ghuda was violently febrile.

  *

  Standing outside a bistro with a rumbling stomach and a small pie raised in one hand, Randur watched the unsteady figure shamble towards him. People scrambled in fear, men holding their women protectively, as glossy beetles began to pullulate around the victim's gaping wound.

  Randur stepped aside into an alley by a gallery, too stunned now to take a first bite of the pie. A small child screamed and turned to run, while the dying man - eyes wide and aghast, and coughing blood - stumbled on into the same small passageway.

  He stared straight at Randur, hunching to his knees just paces away from him. He continued to howl as the insects ripped at his flesh, tossing it into the air in a fine pink mist. He fell forwards, and was silent.

  Within moments, a banshee appeared in the passageway, as if she had been following the incident all this time. Cocooned in a shawl, her face was gaunt and striking against the untidy strands of jet-black hair. With a distant look in her eyes, she sucked in a deep breath, then began her keen, her mouth opening impossibly wide.

  The sated blood beetles having scurried out of the passageway, a gathering crowd soon cast a shadow over the body. Randur, having lost his appetite, handed the pie to an urchin in filthy rags.

  'Welcome to Villjamur,' Randur muttered.

  TWO

  It was the explosion that woke him, a bass shudder that seemed to shift the ground beneath him. Commander Brynd Lathraea opened his eyes, panting in the cold air, and looked up to realize that he was lying on the floor of a betula forest with dead twigs stabbing into his back. By his fingertips were wet knuckles of roots. He used them to help pull himself up, but his grip failed. He fell back, nauseous.

  He tried to make sense of things.

  Through the gaps in the trees, he watched a corkscrewing cloud of smoke, as branches swayed in the chilling wind. His ears were ringing. Strands of white hair blew across his face.

  How had he got here?

  The deck of a ship.

  Then a blast.

  He pushed himself upright, realizing how much his entire body hurt.

  Next to him lay the remains of a wooden door, which he recognized as a hatch on his longship. His sabre and short-axe were nowhere to be seen. Had his knife remained in his boot? Yes - good.

  Through his daze, thoughts gradually returned.

  As a commander of the Night Guard he had sailed to the shore recently, following the Emperor's useless orders. He had set out from Villiren, that sprawling mess of a trade city, their mission ensuring that Villjamur had a good supply of firegrain before the icy weather became too severe. He considered it a pointless task.

  At the next attempt he managed to stand. Brynd then stumbled through the aphotic fagus forest, peering between its mottled bark for any sign of movement. His eyes caught subtleties, as he gripped branches, slipped on moss-laden rocks. At some distance on, he passed the disaggregated body of one of his Night Guard - and could tell it was Voren by the elaborate bow cast to one side. Dog-like black gheels lingered around the corpse, their triple tongues and double sets of eyes shifting in rhythmic twitches around the open wounds, in a ritual as old as the land itself. Bones crunched.

  Shapes shifted in the far umbrage either side and he questioned their meaning.

  He recognized the boundaries of the Kull fjord, hills towering on either side of it, then fading into the distance. This was Daluk Point, a natural port, but one rarely heard of outside military circles. Its rocky shores led down several feet to where the deep saline waters began.

  The horizon was gradually filled with black terns flying in arcs towards the north. A strange serenity, as ominous skies loomed over the snow-tipped tundra in the distance. Brynd noticed an arrangement of stones on one dark hillside, signifying an upsul. It meant the Aes tribe had already moved further west across the island, perhaps to reach their winter camps. They'd be staying there a long time.

  Above the constant sound of water on stone, the screams came echoing back, along the shoreline.

  He limped around a nook of the forest that leaned over the water.

  'Fuck.'

  Two of his three longships had been totally destroyed. The smell of burning fuel was pungent. Tiny pyres floated on the water's surface, shattered wood and cargo were strewn around the shoreline, once-proud sails had become burning rags, propped up by masts that were sinking even as he watched. Three Night Guardsmen floated face-down, their cloaks ballooning with trapped air. Several soldiers were still fighting on the shore. At that moment one of them fell under the incoming arrows. They were fighting in close combat, with dozens of clansmen already dead or dying at their feet.

  More
tribesmen kept streaming towards them from beneath the trees, axes in hand. One shambled across his line of vision, his half-severed left arm gripped in his right hand. Blood stained the man's furs, war paint mixed with the sweat streaking down his face. Then an arrow exploded into the back of his head, shattering his skull.

  Attempting to assess the situation, Brynd glanced across to the forest clearing nearest to the ships, where a few horses were still tethered to the trees.

  As he shifted closer to the engagement, an arrow whipped across his face, and it skimmed across the stones to pierce the water. Following its origin, more figures were moving amongst the trees further up the shore, their axes glinting dully within the gloom.

  He heaved an axe from a dead man's head, and shambled through the shadows until he came alongside a tight cluster of four of his men fighting under the remnants of the third and surviving ship. They looked to him when they could, then followed his directions.

  He didn't recognize the attacking tribe's origins, but they fought inefficiently. He cleaved one in the head, then snatched the man's sword from his slackening grip. He pulled the axe free and threw it at another assailant. It wedged into his shoulder, and while the enemy was pinned in agony, Brynd rammed his sword through the front of his ribs. Warm blood poured onto his hands as Brynd tugged to free both weapons.

  By now the remaining tribesmen were looking at him with wary fear - not for his fighting skills, but because of his colour.

  Perhaps they assumed him a ghost.

  Another approached him. Brynd managed to knock away the savage's blade. He made a quick strike which his attacker tried to avoid, the blow splitting his left cheek. The clansman collapsed with a high-pitched scream.

  One of Brynd's soldiers, meanwhile, had his head smashed in with a mace. Another received an arrow through his eye. In his peripheral vision, Brynd could see the gheels had arrived to maul the dead, flensing, then hauling out innards, trails of intestines vividly colourful against the grey stones.

  Everyone suddenly looked up and the scene became inactive.

  A flaming orb ripped through the sky from deep within the forest.

  Crashed into the remaining ship.

  Throwing up great hunks of wood.

  'Fuck!' Brynd yelled. 'Get away from here!'

  The Night Guard retreated quickly up the shore.

  'Head up into the forest!'

  The fire spread rapidly, then another orb landed in the water. Brynd counted the time until the flames reached the cargo.

  A white flash, and he pulled his cloak up to shelter his eyes, falling to the ground as the third ship exploded.

  Noise saturated the air. Debris clattered on the stones around him, raked across the water, rattled the trees.

  Men screamed as they were hit by burning shrapnel.

  'Commander!'

  Brynd stood and pulled back his cloak as he looked up to see who called his name. He shambled up the bank, glancing around wildly, whilst his men fought on.

  'Commander,' the voice beckoned, nearer now - from the darkness of the trees.

  Fyir was lying on the ground, and as Brynd approached he noted he was clutching what was left of his leg. The stump had bloodied rags tied crudely around the end.

  'Sir . . .' Fyir pleaded again, before screaming, tears covering his blackened face.

  Brynd squatted beside him. 'Lie still.'

  He peeled back the rags: Fyir's lower leg must have been destroyed in the explosion. The blond man's ear was also missing, a fragment of skull glistening in its place. 'Don't think about this,' Brynd said. 'Think of something. Anything . . . Do you know who's attacking us?' He then slid a strip of bark between Fyir's teeth.

  Fyir shook his head, wincing as Brynd tied some of his own torn-up cloak around the wound, and he screamed again, spat out the bark, moaning, 'Ambushed . . .'

  'Sabotaged,' Brynd muttered. 'No one was supposed to know we were here. There, that should hold it. You'll live, so that'll at least stop the gheels getting you. How badly does your head hurt?'

  Fyir closed his eyes, squeezed out more tears, whispered, 'Cultists?'

  Brynd shook his head. 'I doubt it was cultists. Since when do they use something as simple as arrows and axes? Have you seen anyone else?'

  'What about . . . orbs?'

  'Yes? What indeed?' Brynd reached into his top pocket, pulled out a small silver box. Inside it there were several coloured powders in tiny compartments. He pinched a bit of the blue, and placed it under Fyir's nose. Within seconds the man's eyes rolled back and he passed out. Brynd stood up, placing the box back in his pocket. He was vaguely surprised at the severity of these wounds. The Night Guard were artificially enhanced, albeit slightly, and they were meant to recover quickly, suffer wounds hardly at all.

  As he moved away, he gathered up a sword lying on the ground, a sharp Jamur sabre. Pieces of butchered flesh littered the shore like after a cull of seals, and the skies around the fjord were black with smoke.

  Another arrow skimmed past, and Brynd dived to grab a ragged piece of ship's timber on the rocks nearby. Using it as a shield, he advanced towards the archers firing from the darkness of the trees. Shafts drove into the wood or clipped the stones around his feet, as he ran into the relative safety of the forest. Casting the timber aside, he headed further along the shore to hunt down the archers and whatever it was that had launched the fire upon his ships.

  On reflection, it might be foolish to attempt to eliminate personally an enemy that had obviously planned this attack in such detail.

  But who? Why? All he was doing here was handling the collection of fuel. The Emperor had insisted on sending men he could trust, men for whom his paranoia was at a minimum. The Night Guard.

  One of the enemy could be seen crouching at the forest's edge, peering out across the fjord. Like a hunter, Brynd stalked wide so as to keep outside of his target's range of vision, drew the dagger from inside his boot. The crackle of the burning ships was enough to enable some stealth in his approach, and when Brynd was just twenty yards from his target, he flung the blade through the air.

  It lodged in the archer's face and he fell silently to the ground. A second tribesman ran to his side. Brynd was on him, immediately scraping his sabre across the man's throat.

  This tribe wasn't from Jokull, or any other of the Empire's islands. The clothing wasn't local for a start, and there was no adornment save the bone charm hung around the remains of the man's neck. Brynd withdrew his dagger from the first victim, cleaned it off, placed it back in his boot.

  Gheels crouched in the half-light, awaiting their moment. He decided to go back and wait near Fyir, killing only those who approached him. Revenge could wait until later.

  *

  Night-time, and in these moments Brynd's mind became ultra-rational. Things became lists, strategies, probabilities. He knelt next to Fyir, a man in a resting state, now calm and peaceful. Whilst he'd been away, blood beetles had begun feasting on Fyir's damaged leg, shredding the cloth Brynd had used to staunch the bleeding, and reducing his truncated leg by at least a hand span. In the process, the fist-sized insects had secreted a resin that stopped the bleeding and induced healing, so maybe they weren't completely a bad thing. Brynd had to scrape the creatures off with a sabre, then split them down the centre of their shells to kill them.

  The skies cleared, and the world became unbearably cold. He couldn't yet light a fire because it would inevitably draw attention. Three horses were hidden deeper within the forest so they wouldn't be stolen. What strategy now? If only he'd brought Nelum along, a man who could generate plots in his head with simplicity, but Nelum was back in Villjamur, because Brynd hadn't thought he'd need him.

  There had been several more explosions, sparks that shattered the darkness as barrels of firegrain were touched by the spreading flames, but Brynd was confident that the night ahead would be calm. Thirteen of the Night Guard were dead. That left five more unaccounted for, so he assumed them dead too.

&n
bsp; Shadows had moved in front of flames for a while, a few hours back.

  A featureless ship had rowed away.

  Eerie stillness now lingered.

  He could barely remember a time when the Night Guard were made to look so easy to defeat. The Empire's forces usually dominated battles, clearing rebel islands with brutal efficiency. All those years of early confidence since he'd begun his service for the current Emperor in the Regiment of Foot, then transferred to the Dragoons, and finally to the Night Guard. For his loyalty and renowned fighting skills, he had climbed to the rank of commander. Was he really so loyal? Or, because of the colour of his skin, did he feel he always had something to prove?

  He needed to show he was normal, steadfastly loyal to the Empire. That made his life easier. Being one of only a few albinos known in the Jamur Empire, he was used to being considered as a permanent outsider. True, people found him curious more than anything else. Their gaze usually settled on his red-tinted eyes, hesitating there a moment because of either fear or amazement, he'd never know - because people liked to stare, didn't they? As a result of his abnormality, he had worked on improving his fitness and knowledge with remarkable dedication.

  He stared out from the cover of the trees at the fires that still burned where the firegrain had spread amongst the debris. Most of the grain would be underwater, soaked and useless. Some of it had caught on the wreckage floating along the fjord, and small fires lit its passage to the sea as if there was a festival for the water god, Sul. He wondered vaguely if priests from the Aes would come down to the shore to look for shells as a result of these fires to supply their divinations.