Tome of the Undergates - Sam Sykes

‘Well,’ Lenk replied, admiring his own blade, ‘you must admit. . it is pretty large.’

The boy’s face turned as red as his eyes had just been as he staggered past the young man and disappeared into some corner of the ship, muttering under his breath.

Lenk paid it no mind as he walked to the railing and the angry chew-mark where the chain had been dislodged. The Linkmaster continued to dominate the horizon, even as it became a black beetle on the water. Even as its prey continued to outrun it, he could see no hurry aboard, no frenzy of movement as orders were barked for the ship to give chase. It faded into the distance, until he could see nothing of the men aboard it, hear nothing of their voices.

But he continued to hear, continued to see. The bell’s song lingered, echoing inside his head just as loudly as if it were next to him. Just as if they were before him, he could see the black-clad man’s bone-white lips, twisted into a wide and knowing smile.

And, lingering behind them all like gently falling snow, the sound of a thought given a voice, muttering. .

‘Are you aware that we won?’

He whirled about with a start to see Kataria smiling, leaning on her bow. Her eyes were soft now, two emeralds gleaming lazily under heavy lids.

‘If you want to cheer,’ she said, ‘I won’t think any less of you than I already do.’

‘If there’s anyone who should be cheering and demeaning themselves, it’s you,’ he replied, glancing at the cleanup taking place along the deck. ‘Lots of dead humans. . must be a good day for you.’

‘Only a few over a dozen,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Barely a dent in their numbers. Nothing worth celebrating.’

‘You’re aware that I’m human, right? Because, really, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take that remark.’

‘Well, it’s not as if any of the humans I like died.’ She followed his gaze as a drowsy-looking Quillian appeared to assist Asper. ‘In fact, several humans I don’t like survived.’ She sniffed the air, scratched herself. ‘Still, good day.’

Supposedly.

He suspected he should agree; a day that ended with someone else dead instead of himself usually qualified as ‘good’ for an adventurer. He suspected that his next thought should have disturbed him quite a bit more than it did.

This time, dead bodies just aren’t enough.

Had this been a chance raid, some simple act of piracy like he had originally suspected, of course he could take pride in the fact that he could still stab people and thus was still employable. But this hadn’t been a chance raid, there were too many factors screaming that this was something worse.

The calm demeanour of a famously bloodthirsty and deranged breed of murderers, a man who had no business being in the company of such towering and fierce creatures, a bell that sang instead of a ballista that shot.

A chill crept up his spine.

‘Staring. .’

He could feel it immediately, almost heard her eyes turn hard behind him as they bore into him, digging under flesh, searching, studying. He gritted his teeth, tried not to twitch under her gaze. But something inside him lacked willpower. He felt something shift under his skin.

‘Make her stop.’

‘You’re worried.’

When he turned, her smile was gone. He saw her, then, without the heat of battle to cloud his mind. She was weary: sweat slicked her skin and seeped into the cuts on her muscular physique, her hair clung in dirty clumps and the feathers she wore whipped about her wildly. She was the very vision of savagery, the image conjured up when people spat the name ‘shict’.

And she was staring at him with eyes full of concern.

‘You’re thinking.’ Her ears twitched, as if hearing his very thoughts.

His breath caught in his throat at that idea. ‘We won,’ he gasped, ‘they lost.’

She nodded intently.

‘But they didn’t curse. They didn’t scream. Wouldn’t you have?’

‘If we had lost and I wasn’t dead, probably.’

‘They were calm.’ He turned a glower over the sea. ‘They shouldn’t have been.’

A hand was laid on his shoulder. He felt her through the leather of her glove and the cloth of his tunic, felt her heartbeat just as he knew she could hear his. Just as he knew he should pull away, just as he knew that she didn’t touch humans if she wasn’t pulling arrows out of them.

Just as he knew he could not.

Everything went silent inside him. The wailing drone ceased, the smile vanished from his mind. He could feel himself grow warm again, feel the blood pump through him, coursing under her touch.

She turned him to face her, he did not resist. Her eyes were not soft, but not hard. He had no idea what lurked behind her green orbs as she stared into him, just as he had no idea what to do.

‘It’s over,’ she said with a certainty he hadn’t heard from her before. She smiled. ‘Stop thinking.’

He watched her lay her bow upon her shoulders, looping her arms up and over it. Her hair drifted in the breeze and carried the scent of her sweat into his nostrils as she walked away. It filled his breath, now deep and regular again as he repeated calming words to himself.

‘It’s over.’ He rubbed his eyes, laid his sword against the railing and leaned backwards. ‘It’s over.’

He heard the voice. It was soft, fading even as it spoke, but he heard it. He heard it speak a single word, ask a single question.

‘Over?’

And then, he heard it laugh.

Three

By the time Lenk clambered up the stairs leading to the helm, the cheering had died down. A few fellows enthused at not being killed had dared to clap him on the back once Kataria had left his side, finding boldness in the absence of his maligned companion. Their enthusiasm was slain as surely as their fellows, however, when they cast a glance upon the deck and surveyed the work that had to be done.

There were dead to tend.

Lenk spared a glancing frown for the men below. Some were veterans, having seen the deaths of comrades before, though likely none so gruesome. Most were young men who’d only seen elders pass away in their sleep. He hesitated at the top of the helm, his gaze lingering upon a young man dragging one of the dead from the deck.

A part of him wanted to turn back around, put a hand on the young man’s shoulder and move him below where Asper tended to the wounded, mortally or otherwise. The sailor was possibly the same age as Lenk. Hands on shoulders should be wrinkled, he thought, weathered with age and experience, broad from embracing children and wives. Young hands, calloused hands, were not meant to be placed on shoulders.

Old hands grip people. Young hands grip swords.

His grandfather had told him that once. His grandfather’s hands had been young to the day he died. He blinked, drew in a deep breath. Something in his mind stirred: the roar of fire, shadows dancing against sheets of orange, people falling beneath flashes of silver, smiles that twisted into screams. His grandfather. .

No. He commanded himself to force the images from his mind. Not today. Not now.

He turned his back on the deck. There were plenty of men with weathered, wrinkled hands on the ship. His still gripped a sword.

At the ship’s impressive wheel stood Captain Argaol, looking decidedly less fazed than he should have with dead men on his deck. His dark features were stern, eyes fixed straight ahead, not even looking at the young man. His only movement was to reach down and smooth the sash of commendation medals he had earned from his various charters.

His mate, Sebast, a man who had spent so much time in the sun that he had both the appearance and smell of jerked beef, dutifully moved aside as Lenk stepped onto the quarterdeck. He sniffed, dipped a mop into a wooden bucket and proceeded to wipe away the blood that had been spilled on the ship’s timbers as casually as if he were wiping away the lunch that Lenk had spilled some days earlier.

Lenk gave him a cursory nod before stepping up to the captain’s side.

‘Well, we did it.’ His voice sounded alien to his own ears.

‘Did what?’ The captain’s voice seemed much deeper than it should have, given his size. The man stood only a little taller than Lenk, his height perhaps diminished due to the lack of hair upon his head.

‘Drove off the pirates.’

‘And?’

‘I thought you’d like to know.’

‘I can see the whole Gods-cursed ship from up here, boy. You think I didn’t see that?’ He glanced at the young man with a sneer. ‘What? You wanted some credit for breaking the chain? Smart move there — wish you’d thought of it early enough to spare my men.’

‘It was a fight,’ Lenk replied coldly. ‘People die.’

‘How fortunate we have you to be so casually nonchalant about it. I’ve been in this business awhile, boy. I know what happens.’

‘Then you’ll also know to choose your insults carefully. Many more of your men would have died if not for us.’ The young man gestured to the deck. ‘Or did you not see how many pirates we killed?’

‘Oh, I saw,’ the captain replied, seething. ‘I also saw you making eyes at the escape vessel while you were down there.’ He levelled an accusing finger. ‘You’d have run like the heathens you are and left the rest of us to die if you could have.’ He grunted and glowered at his first mate. ‘What’d I tell you about taking adventurers aboard?’

‘Bad idea,’ Sebast replied without looking up. ‘Bad philosophically, bad practically. Still, they did undoubtedly save about as many as they killed, Captain. Perhaps a little gratitude wouldn’t be inappropriate?’

‘I’m grateful enough that the heathen scum didn’t decide to slaughter us to try and curry favour with the Cragscum, aye,’ the captain agreed.

The adventurer reputation for opportune betrayal was not unknown to Lenk, but he still took slight offence at Argaol’s accusation. It wasn’t as though he had seriously considered turning on the crew.

Not until now, anyway.

‘So, you’ll forgive me if I’m not at the pinnacle of appreciativeness’ Argaol continued, scowling at the young man. ‘And you’ll forgive me for saying that if you ever so much as think of fleeing and leaving my men without escape again, I’ll chop you up and serve you in the mess.’

‘Hope you’ve got a bigger sword,’ Lenk muttered under his breath.

‘What was that?’

‘I said if you’re so concerned for your crew, perhaps you should be down there moving corpses and grieving.’ Lenk cast a sneer of his own back at the captain. ‘I promise I won’t look if you start crying.’

‘Ah, we’ve got a merry jester here, in addition to a filthy adventurer. I bet a man of such diverse talents would like a lovely strawberry tart.’ He snapped two thin fingers. ‘Sebast, fetch the fanciful adventurer a tart!’