And Night Descends (The Third Book of the Small Gods Series) Page 3

  With his face near the stump, the odor of cedar and the coppery stink of his mother’s death penetrated his nostrils, clogging his already constricted throat with the threat of nausea. He swallowed hard and Dansil pushed him forward. Stirk turned his head, his cheek pressing against the blood-dampened wood, eyes finding his mother’s slack, dead face; he immediately wished he’d chosen to face the other direction.

  Trenan, the one-armed sword master, stood to the right, the tip of the crown blade destined to end Stirk’s life dangling above the platform’s floorboards. His tears transformed the sunlight shining on the blade into shimmering stars, dazzling him. The sword tip disappeared from his view, raised above his line of sight. He chose not to follow its path, knowing what it meant.

  Dansil pressed hard against his back, holding him in place so Trenan could end his life with one killing blow. The buzz of the crowd diminished and Stirk closed his eyes. Never had he wondered what became of a man at the end of his days. People sometimes talked of new lives, or a different world; with the stench of blood in his nose and the sweat of fear on his brow, he was less convinced than ever such might be the case.

  But if it’s true, will I see mother again?

  The thought didn’t ease his tension.

  The crowd fell silent and Stirk imagined how Trenan must look with Godsbane raised skyward, pausing before administering Stirk’s punishment for imprisoning the prince and planning to ransom him. A smile would curl the sword master’s lips, the way one had tilted Dansil’s when his axe separated Bieta’s head from her neck. Stirk parted his lips to explain he hadn’t realized who the boy was, to blame his mother for the idea, but the time for pleading and excuses had passed. If they didn’t work before, they’d do him no good now.

  Sweat rolled along Stirk’s temple and down his nose. In the breath-held silence, he imagined he heard the droplet trace its path along his flesh and his mother’s blood drying in the sun. He thought—

  “Trenan! No!”

  The words broke the hush like the blast of a trumpet and Stirk’s lids snapped open.

  I’m still alive.

  He saw the one-armed swordsman’s feet shift as he faced the crowd, searching for the owner of the voice who’d called out, and Stirk knew he’d continue living at least a moment longer. He blinked to clear the grief and fear from his eyes.

  Godsbane’s tip returned to his view and Stirk’s heart thumped in his chest. The blade dangled for a second, catching the sunlight, nearly blinding him, then Trenan’s feet shuffled and he jumped from the platform. The crowd came back to life with a mixture of worried murmurs and shocked gasps that combined and grew to a dull roar. Someone shouted for blood, others took up the chorus.

  “Trenan,” Dansil called after the sword master. He must have straightened to get a look where his companion went, for the pressure on Stirk’s back eased. Air came easier to his lungs. “Trenan!”

  The weight on him lessened again and Stirk gulped a coppery breath. This would be his one chance for life to continue.

  He jerked back, using his size and weight and surprise to catch Dansil off guard. It worked and the man stumbled away a step, releasing his hold. Stirk leaped to his feet and bounded over his mother’s corpse then dove into the crowd. People parted before him, scared of getting in his way.

  “Hey!” Dansil roared.

  The clomp of a boot on the wooden platform reached his ears, followed by a louder thump. He glanced back over his shoulder to see the king’s soldier had slipped in a puddle of Bieta’s blood, his feet going out from under him and throwing him to his ass. Stirk longed to stop and laugh at the man’s misfortune, enjoy the elation of escape, but he caught sight of his mother’s head lying on the boards. Her wide eye stared at him, her mouth frozen open as though it might yell at him to stop gawking and run.

  Stirk turned, lowered his face, and did just that.

  ***

  The stitch in Stirk’s side from running felt how he imagined it must be if someone inserted the tip of a pike between his ribs.

  He stopped and bent at the waist, one hand and one stump planted on his knees as he gasped whooping breaths into his chest to satisfy his aching lungs. The first few didn’t make it in, the pain in his side squelching them, but after a struggle, some air made it through.

  It tasted of salt and creosote, of bird shit baking in the sun. He fought to keep it from bringing nausea to his throat and making it more difficult to breathe.

  I’m near the docks.

  He raised his head, sweat and tears streaming down his cheeks. He wiped an arm across his stinging eyes, shaded them from the blinding sunlight with a hand at his brow.

  I dropped the whelp off somewhere close to here.

  Thinking of the prince made him grind his back teeth. He lowered his gaze to the stump at the end of his left arm, created in payment to save the fucker so he and Bieta might ransom him, profit from his misfortune. It hadn’t turned out well—he’d ended up short the prince to be ransomed, one hand, and a mother, too.

  “Mother.”

  He straightened and strode forward three paces, ignoring the now-bearable pain in his side. Gripping the edges of crates to steady himself, he continued on to where he’d left their captive, to where he’d brought Trenan and the others to find the young man gone.

  If he’d been there, would my mother be dead? If they’d seen we made sure he stayed alive, what might have happened?

  His teeth pressed together tighter, biting hard enough his jaw ached. His belly clenched along with it, his sweat-beaded brow creased.

  “If you weren’t gone, mother’d be alive.”

  He kicked a crate hard enough to splinter the wood and make himself wince at the pain it caused his toe, then booted it again anyway. A gull crawked at him from its perch atop a nearby building, tilted its head like it didn’t know why he’d do such a thing. Stirk picked up a piece of wood broken from the crate and heaved it at the shithawk, missing by a wide margin but sending the bird squawking into the sky.

  The big man breathed hard in and out through his nose, nostrils flaring at the briny stink of the sea and the tang of his own sweat. Hauling the salty air into his lungs made him angrier. He balled his hand into a fist, fingernails digging into the fleshy part of his palm. He imagined feeling the same sensation at the end of his left arm where his other hand used to be not so long ago.

  Anger boiled over into rage.

  “You killed my mother,” he said aloud between his clenched teeth. “If we didn’t help you, she’d be alive.”

  Stirk grabbed the edge of the crate he’d kicked and pushed it hard. It rattled back and crashed into another behind it, sending more chunks of wood tumbling to the ground. He held his other hand up in front of his face, glaring at the smooth skin at the end of his wrist.

  “Mother’d be alive and I’d have both hands.”

  He bit his lower lip hard enough to draw blood, spat the bitter flavor from his tongue, then titled his head back and roared at the sky. The sound contained no words, only rage and grief. Another gull squawked at him, as though chastising him for the noise, then took off from its perch, winging its way toward the sea. Stirk watched it go.

  “I’ll kill him,” he said after the bird like he imagined it cared to hear his plans. “I’ll find the prince and kill him for what they did to my mother.”

  Saying it out loud, he realized how difficult fulfilling the promise might be. He didn’t know what happened to the prince, where he’d gone. Had he woken from his prolonged swoon and walked away, headed for home? Did someone find him and return him to the castle? In either case, he’d soon be back behind fortified walls, gone forever from Stirk’s reach, protected from his revenge. But if he’d gone in such manner, he’d have left signs of his passing.

  Stirk cast his eyes to the ground, searching through dirt and pieces of packing straw, splatters of bird shit and streaks of grime. He was no tracker, having spent his entire life in the Horseshoe, so the hodgepodge of scattere
d bits and streaked splotches all looked the same to him—possibly footprints, more likely something else. He located no clues on the ground around his feet.

  Because the prince was gone didn’t mean he’d been rescued. The soldiers’d been fired up about finding him when Stirk brought them here and found the lad gone, their interest turning to severing necks instead of finding the heir to the throne. Did they see something he didn’t? He bent at the waist, squinted, but the dirt and rocks and bird shit continued telling him nothing.

  Another idea occurred to him as he straightened again: Perhaps a denizen of the docks came upon the prince and hatched the same plan he and Bieta failed at so miserably. If so, they may have the lad hidden nearby.

  Stirk surveyed the buildings lining both sides of the street leading to the pier. Not a door stood open and most of the structures, being warehouses and the like, had no windows. They stretched before him and behind; each block to his right and left looked the same. It would take a great amount of time to check them all—time he didn’t have. The men he’d escaped from would find him long before he finished searching.

  An ache formed at the bottom of Stirk’s gut, clawed up into his chest, brought nausea into his throat. It soon made its way to his head, causing it to throb and making him see his plan for vengeance dying before it started. The man responsible for his mother’s death couldn’t be found; he’d go on living while Bieta was no more.

  Stirk’s knees went watery and he stumbled forward a step, catching the edge of a crate with his hand to steady himself. The rage that had consumed him, tightening his muscles and knotting his jaw, melted way, leaving grief behind to wrap itself around him. It weighed on his shoulders, pushing on him until he crumpled and sank to the ground.

  He sat with his back against a crate, face buried in his arms. His body shook with sobs. As long ago as he remembered, he’d never been alone—not for long, at least. Bieta had always taken care for him, guided him, told him what to do. Many times he’d resented the way she treated him, as if she considered him a child trapped in the body of a man, but now he didn’t know how he’d live without her wisdom and guidance. Who’d feed him? Who’d comfort him and give him pleasure?

  Who would be his mother?

  Eyes closed tight, he pictured Elishbieta’s face smiling at him, her tongue prodding the space between her front teeth as it so often did. The vision of her calmed him, and the sobs faded. He snuffled snot back into his nose and wiped his face with his sleeve.

  “Mama,” he whispered.

  Her expression in his imagination changed. Her smile disappeared and her eyelids widened to a stare filled with fear. From out of nowhere, an axe sliced the air, and then her neck. His mother’s head flew up, tumbling end over end until it hit the ground with a dull thump, bounced once, and settled. Blood gushed out of her neck and her corpse leaned and toppled revealing the one-armed man standing behind her, laughing and brandishing the axe.

  Stirk’s eyes snapped open and his body spasmed once, a massive shudder shaking him as if a malevolent spirit had passed through him. He shook his head to clear the vision and wrapped his arms around himself to stop the shiver quaking him despite the hot day. The grisly apparition of his mother disappeared from his mind, but the laughing sword master remained, blood dripping from the edge of the axe blade.

  The big man’s breath caught in his throat and his eyes narrowed. How had it eluded him before?

  The prince was gone; he knew he wouldn’t find the man responsible for setting in motion the events leading to his mother’s execution. But Teryk wasn’t the only one on whom responsibility for her death should fall. There was also the soldier who’d wielded the axe, and the one who gave him the order to take her life.

  Stirk pushed himself to his feet, wiped his face on his sleeve. No more time for grief; there’d be no more whimpering and crying. He curled his hand into a fist and set his jaw, ready to undertake the work that lay ahead.

  Trenan and Dansil must die.

  IV Horace—Floatin’

  Blue sky.

  It hung o’er ol’ Horace, stretchin’ up and up and up with no more but it for him to see. A gull flew by once, its gray wings flappin’; considerin’ the luck he were havin’, he more’n half expected the damned thing to shit in his eye, but it didn’t.

  Cold sea water washed around him, sometimes splashin’ up onto his cheeks or into his mouth. He didn’t swallow any because he couldn’t swallow any more’n he might’ve blinked or stroked his way to the shore. Limbs, mouth, eyelids, all refused to move. Eventually the salty water spilled back outta his mouth and o’er his chin to rejoin the rest o’ the ocean.

  After a short while, he paid no attention to the waves carryin’ him away or the sun creepin’ across the endless sky. His mind turned to Thorn and the two men what’d carried him off.

  He didn’t know what the big gray feller and the one what’d tried to drown him wanted with the Small God, but he s’pposed it might be easy to guess: he were a Small God from outta the Green, after all. That little man had magic in him and maybe they knew how to get it out.

  Should’ve found a way to stop them.

  The thought bounced around his head, but ev’rytime the guilt got its teeth into him, he recalled the tip o’ the big gray feller’s finger brushing his chest and endin’ him up floatin’ ‘round like a chunk o’ driftwood. Truly, he coudn’t’ve done nothin’ to stop them.

  Sorry, Thorn.

  His heart ached, his throat tightened, restrictin’ his breathin’—the only thing he were capable of. He wished to close his eyes and cease starin’ at the sky and the way it encouraged him into considerin’ there might be a way out o’ his predicament. But he were afraid that, if he closed them, he’d see Thorn’s face, or that o’ his son Rilum what Thorn’d turned into when they snuck up on the town o’ Haven. Other’n when it showed up as the Small God’s disguise, Horace hadn’t pictured Rilum’s face in a long, long while.

  Instead o’ blinkin’—which he couldn’t do—or thinkin’ o’ his son—which he didn’t want to do—Horace continued starin’ at the vast blue emptiness above him. If nothin’ else, doin’ so kept him from imagin’ what might be swimmin’ past in the green depths below. Wouldn’t be no God o’ the Deep—he were sure he hadn’t bobbed his way so far from the shore—but a lot o’ other creatures in the sea might wanna make a meal outta one gristly ol’ sailor.

  The sky o’erhead went misty and blurred, and Horace thought his eyes might’ve been stingin’ if he were able to feel anythin’. Might’ve been from the salty water splashin’ up into them, might’ve been tears what he didn’t even know he’d cried. Either way, nothin’ for him to do to clear the new, murky nature o’ his sight, so he continued starin’ at the smudgy heavens.

  A larger wave washed against him, tiltin’ him onto his side. Horace stopped his breathin’ to keep from suckin’ the ocean into his lungs. While doin’ so, he glimpsed a smear o’ another color off to his starboard, but then his floatin’ body righted itself and nothin’ but sky filled his vision again.

  The shore!

  His heart beat faster, hammerin’ against his ribs. One o’ them might’ve still hurt from when Thorn fell outta nowhere on top o’ him, but his current condition kept him from knowin’.

  I ain’t floated so far as I figured.

  Realizin’ it stirred remnants o’ hope in his chest, but it didn’t last. Didn’t matter how close he were to the shore if he couldn’t find his way onto the beach. And even if he did, what would he do when he arrived? Lay on the sand until seaweed attached itself to him, the sun bleached him white, and crabs made homes underneath him, just like all the other driftwood? No, the time’d come for the ol’ sailor to recognize his life were near its end. The only question left to answer were how long until his final demise.

  His view o’ the sky went even more blurry and this time Horace knew no waves was washin’ into his eyes. The blurriness came from regret.

  Salty tears sat on top
o’ his unblinkin’ eyes. His ears heard the swish o’ water rinsin’ in and outta them; his nose sniffed the briny scent o’ the deep what he’d come to hate durin’ near thirty-five turns o’ the seasons knockin’ boot heels on one deck or another. When Dunal’d knocked him o’er the side o’ the Devil o’ the Deep, he’d conceded his life’d end in the ocean, but he came out alive somehow. Wouldn’t happen twice.

  Weren’t that much luck left in his world. If there were, Thorn’d still be with him.

  His vision cleared a little as the sun dried his tears, stickin’ the leftov’r salt to his eyeballs. Another gull passed by, then a second. A minute later, a third flew o’er, but the bird did somethin’ funny.

  It stopped midair as though it’d flown into an obstruction, but there weren’t nothin’ for it to fly into.

  Had he been able to raise a brow or crinkle up his forehead, Horace would’ve done so, but even that sort o’ movement were beyond him. He owned no ability but to breathe and to stare where the gull’d flown into before turnin’ ‘round and takin’ off the other direction. His hazy vision showed him nothin’ but sky.

  Nothin’ to see.

  He bobbed and bobbed, gaze fixed on the spot. Once upon a time, he wouldn’t’ve entertained the notion o’ somethin’ invisible in the air, but that were before two towns named Haven and Demise seemed like they must’ve grown legs and moved ‘round just to confuse him. And before a small gray man fell outta the sky and turned ev’rythin’ he believed and knew inside out.

  Ten breaths entered and left his lungs. A wave tilted him and he lost track o’ the place the bird’d hit. His air caught in his throat as he stared, ev’ry handspan o’ air above him lookin’ same as the others. A feelin’ like his heart sinkin’ into his stomach came o’er him, crushin’ the sliver o’ hope seein’ the shore’d brought as it did. The moment the last o’ it disappeared and the ol’ sailor’d settled himself back into the idea o’ dyin’ in the ocean, another strange thing happened.