King of the Bastards Read online

  “I’ll clout you for that,” Rogan promised. “But first I must rest.”

  §

  It took them the rest of the day to skin and clean the bear, and it was dusk by the time they were finished. They washed their hands in the ocean, cleaning them of the sticky blood. They moved on down the way a piece, and then Javan started a fire behind a dune to prepare dinner. The meat gleaned from the kill ran tough and gamy. Gulls darted over their heads, begging for scraps. Rogan growled at them, and the shrieking scavengers fled into the night.

  As they ate, Javan eyed the skeleton of the bireme in the distance.

  “I was correct, sire. The ship is deeper in the sand now and will not be sucked out to sea.”

  “If we ever see Albion again,” Rogan said around a mouthful of half-cooked bear flesh, “I shall have Rohain give you a medal. After we’ve defeated my bastard son’s plot against him, of course.”

  “We will get back, sire. Some way, some how, we will.”

  Rogan shrugged, sucking the marrow from a bone. “Perhaps my destiny is to die here.”

  “Banish such thoughts, sire!”

  The fire popped, sending a brief shower of burning embers into the night sky.

  “If it is my time to die, you get to watch. Your father would say it is a grand joke of fate, eh?”

  Javan tilted his head to one side. “My father would never give in to fate.”

  Rogan nodded, thinking on old Thyssen and their adventures as revolutionaries. His smile was faint. Old ghosts danced in the flickering firelight. The night of a thousand knives. The whore with three breasts and the secret she’d told in the dark.

  “True. You are young. You have space in your gut for fighting fate. My belly has wrestled that demon-whore for eons. She is a tireless bitch and I grow weary of her.”

  “I am not ready to die.”

  “No man ever is,” Rogan replied. “Yes, you can cheat death, but you can never be ready for it. Think of Wagnar and Harkon. Or Captain Huxira—old as he was, I dare say he was not ready to die. When death comes, it comes. All that you can do is to meet it.”

  The fire crackled again. A second later, a twig snapped in response. Both men were instantly on their feet. The hair on Javan’s arms stood up. Rogan tensed, alert and ready for whatever new danger lay in store.

  Javan pointed to the bushes, suddenly alive with creeping shadows.

  “Uncle—look!”

  The shadows detached themselves from the bushes, and a group of humans stepped forward, just outside the circle of light. They were slender, clad in tan loincloths and deerskin cloaks. The strangers carried wooden staffs with tied stone spearheads, and several sported bows of a style that neither Rogan nor Javan had ever seen before. The flames flickered off their dense, ruddy complexions and red-tinged skin. Their obsidian hair shone in the moonlight as if their flat manes were slick and wet.

  “Javan,” Rogan ordered, “your bow.”

  But the weapon was already in the boy’s hands.

  Silently, the group stepped into the dying firelight. A few of the natives bore odd deformities; elongated heads, misshapen ears, one limb longer than another, even bizarre double noses. None made a move to attack. They seemed docile and curious. None of them spoke.

  Another figure emerged, dressed in the skins of a gray wolf, the snout and muzzle still intact over his wrinkled forehead. The wolf-man’s eyes glistened in the darkness, and Rogan surmised that his difference in dress made him a leader of some sort.

  The odd individual held out his arms, showing the two strangers what he held: The gray, ropy intestines of the dead bear. Flies buzzed around them.

  Javan’s nose wrinkled in disgust at the slaughterhouse stench wafting off the guts. Slowly, he raised his bow, counting their numbers and wondering about the strength and reach of their spears.

  Rogan drew his broadsword, gripping the handle so tightly that his sunburned knuckles turned white.

  “Javan?”

  “Yes, sire?”

  “Speak to me again of fate, when we are done here.”

  The moon rose higher, bathing them in its cold light. Another log popped on the fire, sending more embers spiraling into the air. Nobody moved. Somewhere in the darkness, a whippoorwill cried out.

  When he was a child, Javan’s nursemaid had told him that when one heard the song of a whippoorwill, it meant that someone was about to die. Rogan’s words rang in his head.

  When death comes, it comes. All that you can do is to meet it.

  As the wolf-headed leader stepped closer, Javan shivered.

  Rogan thought of home, and his children.

  THE LEADER HELD forth his grisly offering but remained still, even when the halo of flies moved from the intestines to his wolf’s head crown. He seemed to be awaiting a response from Rogan and Javan. When it became clear that none was forthcoming, he finally spoke, chattering to his companions.

  Rogan frowned. “What in the name of Wodan is he saying?”

  Javan, a master interpreter of most known languages because of his studies in Albion’s famed university, concentrated on the speech patterns.

  “They do not appear angry, but I cannot pick it up, sire. It is a strange tongue. Give me time.”

  “We don’t have time. I think they deceive us. The wolf-headed fellow holds the guts of the bear the way a midwife holds a new babe. With my luck, I probably killed his accursed god.”

  “I don’t think so. Look at his body language, the way he holds himself. He is not angry with us. Indeed, he seems to be trying to communicate.”

  “My eyes and my wits aren’t dull. Of course he’s trying to communicate. The question is; what do they want? Be they friend or foe?”

  Cautiously, Javan motioned to the leader. “By his vestments, headdress, and voice inflection, I’d say he is their leader or perhaps their priest.”

  The old man babbled emphatically, as if he’d understood the youth. Javan tried other dialects. After a few moments, he grew excited.

  “It is amazing, Uncle Rogan. I believe they speak a bastardized form of the language of those in northern Hyrcania. It’s almost like a lost dialect I read of in class used only in Anthelia! I know it only because my teachers made such jest of the lingo.”

  Rogan remained silent but vigilant as Javan struggled to talk to the natives in this tongue. The red-skinned men seemed to understand him, at least partially. Several smiled, revealing jagged teeth. Then one of them laughed. Javan grinned as well.

  “Do you understand them, boy?”

  “I do, sire.”

  “Good. Now they can tell us for certain if we killed their god.”

  Javan shook his head. “No, I was correct. The man wearing the wolf’s head is their priest or wizard. He calls himself a—shaman.”

  “Wizard. Shaman. It makes no difference.” Rogan’s blue eyes appraised the leader. “A female dog is still a bitch, different breed or no.”

  “The bear isn’t his god, and he respects us for besting it.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “That when one of their tribe has reached your age, they are usually content to sit beside the fire all day. He wonders if that is your normal position.”

  Rogan was not amused. “Inform this shaman that I could toss him into the fire and then warm myself in that glow.”

  “I’d better not, sire.”

  “Why does he hold the animal’s entrails in his hands?”

  After some discourse, Javan replied, “He uses them in a ceremony to divine the future.”

  Rogan’s brow furrowed. “Wizardry no matter where I set my foot! Are there no peoples that simply hunt, drink, and fornicate? Wizards reading guts for fortune, even in unknown lands…”

  The shaman’s eyebrows narrowed. Javan frowned at Rogan and then spoke reassuringly to the shaman. Then he turned back to his uncle again.

  “Sire,” he said calmly, as if speaking to a child, “we are in their land. We should respect their ways.”

&
nbsp; Rogan eyed the group. “I could kill them all with no help from an archer. Why should I show them grace?”

  “Uncle…”

  Rogan shook his head in frustration. “So what has he seen, this shaman?”

  Again, Javan translated, “He says that there is a great sadness where we come from.”

  “Bah! He’s a huckster. How would he know where we come from, let alone the mood of its citizenry?”

  Javan put both of his hands on his temples as he listened to the shaman talk.

  “He claims the spirits told him through the entrails that the land where we come from is in chaos.”

  Rogan’s patience vanished. His fingers played across the hilt of his broadsword. The natives stirred uneasily.

  “Tell him to listen harder to those guts, root his snout among them like a swine, and tell me the name of our land—or he will hear what secrets his own guts have to tell with my blade buried in them.”

  “Sire,” Javan exclaimed, his eyes wide. “Please?”

  The two old men stepped to within inches of each other. The grim smile on the shaman’s face matched Rogan’s own. They stared into each other’s eyes, and neither flinched or gave ground. A conversation seemed to be going on in their faces.

  Rogan’s softened first.

  Javan gaped. He had seen Rogan break traitors to the kingdom and deserters from the army with a single stare. But now his uncle’s will seemed to give under the unknown powers of this native, a man who had seen more winters than Rogan himself.

  “What does he see, Javan? A cataclysm? A flood? I’ve heard the crazy prophets beyond the land of Shynar preach such an end is due the world; that we will all drown when Dagon’s watery kingdom engulfs our lands, and the fledgling cult of the One true god near Ur floods us all. That eventually, we will all end up as floating bait for Leviathan and his ilk.”

  Javan considered admonishing his uncle for speaking aloud of one of the Thirteen, but then thought better of it.

  “No, sire,” he said. “He does not speak of a worldwide disaster. It is more personal. Albion is in tumult. The shaman says that dark men have overthrown the kingdom, and placed the sitting king in chains deep within the dungeons.”

  “Rohain?” Rogan asked, half-believing. “If that is so, then it is as the pirates testified.”

  “It appears so, sire,” Javan said. “I fear for my cousins. And I—”

  His voice trailed away.

  “What is it, lad?”

  “My father, sire.”

  “Thyssen? What of him?”

  “The shaman has no news of him. Indeed, he cannot see him at all.”

  Rogan silently appraised the old man. Then he turned, placing one big hand on his nephew’s shoulder.

  “Javan, it is like my dream. I saw the evil of the world encroaching on Albion, like the wings of a bat. Rohain in chains—this was a fear of mine as well, but the vision was unclear.”

  Beyond the tree line, a great cat howled in the darkness. Rogan looked toward the forest, and the hairs on the back of his neck twitched. A feeling of uneasiness crept over him.

  “By Wodan, Javan—they bring me such good news, these savages. Ask them if they are skilled at rowing a boat. Perhaps they can replace the Olmek-Tikalize.”

  The shaman spoke quickly. Javan hesitated.

  Rogan raged at his inability to understand the conversation and barked, “What is he saying now?”

  “They are aware of our plight, sire, and would like to help. But…”

  “But what? What is it they seek? Gold? They suck at dry tits there.”

  “They are oppressed by an evil shaman named Amazarak, who dwells high up yonder mountain. This Amazarak serves a traveler—a strange being from afar. This traveler has enslaved many of their tribe, and is also the reason for the deformities that mar many of these folk.”

  Rogan studied the freakish appearance of a few of the red-skinned men. Now that they were illuminated fully by both the fire and moonlight, he could make out even more. Some had two noses or three eyes. Others were covered in boils or oozing sores. Many were completely hairless. One of them possessed a left eye that looked like a figure eight as it split into two orbs. And still another seemed to possess genitalia of extraordinary length and girth, if the bulge in his loincloth were any indication. Rogan had known concubines that would consider that last one a blessing rather than a curse.

  Somewhere in the distance, a twig snapped. Again, the forest seemed to be alive, watching him, yet he could not see a thing.

  “Oppressed by a wizard? Hah. Who isn’t, these days? Why should we care?”

  “Because he understood your words, sire, and sees that your son is in dire peril from his half-brother. The shaman calls his folk Kennebeck. He comprehends our plight that we are castaways here in the Kennebeck lands, and that we wish to leave.”

  “Then he’s a powerful shaman.” Rogan snorted, and looked at the foaming sea. “And he talks fast, too. He chatters like a monkey.”

  The old man kept talking and Javan interpreted. “There is a great tribal disagreement over what to do about this Amazarak. The Kennebeck have tried to fight him, yet they are powerless to defeat him. They hate to leave their sacred grounds of their kindred but are about to abandon them anyway.”

  “They flee?”

  “They must escape, sire. To stay means enslavement or death. They have no choice but to leave. Yet they are loathe to abandon their imprisoned brothers.”

  “What does Amazarak want with slaves?”

  “He does not. They are used by the one he serves, the one from afar. But the shaman knows not for what purpose. His visions do not show him, and no sentry has ever returned from the mountain.”

  “From hence does this foreign man come, this traveler? Near our home?”

  Javan asked the shaman, and the old man pointed to the sky.

  “The sky? So we fight more gods?” Rogan sheathed his weapon. “Does this dark traveler from the stars who is not a man have a name?”

  Javan’s eyes grew wide when he learned the answer. He was afraid to say the name out loud and refused to translate.

  “Well?” Rogan shifted with impatience. “Whom do we fight?”

  Javan whispered so quietly that Rogan had to strain to hear him.

  “Croatoan.”

  The word hung in the still night air. Several of the Kennebeck tribe shivered.

  “Never heard of him,” Rogan frowned. “He must be from some paltry pantheon.”

  “Sire,” Javan whispered, swallowing loudly. “Croatoan is another name for Meeble, who is one of the Thirteen, those who are not angel or demon, god or devil. Those who come from elsewhere.”

  After a deep breath, Rogan squeezed his eyes shut for a few moments. “I know who the Thirteen are, dammit. I saw you flinch when I mentioned Leviathan earlier. I know them well, and I don’t fear them enough to memorize their names and sigils and houses.” Rogan paused and muttered, “Meeble? Shit fire and save the flints.” He cleared his throat and spoke louder. “What is our wolf-headed host’s name?”

  “This is Akibeel, sire.”

  Rogan shrugged and thrust out his hand. The shaman let the dripping intestines slip from his fingers and clasped it. The old man’s slick, gnarled hands were warm and strong.

  “Akibeel wishes for Amazarak to be destroyed and Croatoan to be sealed away from this world, before the tribe is all dead, and this great evil is loosed upon the rest of the land. Something terrible is brewing in the caves beneath the mountain’s peak. Akibeel asks our help, for he sees experience with such matters in you, sire.”

  Rogan laughed. “Tell him that, as he has pointed out, I’m no longer a young man, and that I’m certainly no wizard. What can I do against this Croatoan, or Meeble, or whatever they wish to call him? The Thirteen may not be gods or devils, but they aren’t mortal either. You know the legends as well as I do, Javan. I don’t have the means to banish Croatoan from this level. I work with swords, axes, and pikes, and wit
h my own two hands—not sigils, potions, and spells. Can the bastard bleed? If so, then perhaps we can talk.”

  “Akibeel does not know for sure, sire, but he believes that he may be able to provide a means if we can aid him. If Meeble gets loose in this world, he will go from community to community and destroy all.”

  Rogan started to reply, but then he grew distracted. He studied the restlessly milling natives, noticing their apparel.

  “Why do they all wear necklaces of human fingers and ears?”

  “Trophies, or totems as they call them, mementos of their conquered foes.”

  Akibeel was silent. He seemed to be waiting on Rogan’s answer.

  Rogan kicked the sand with his boot heel. “So, I must be a mercenary again, aye; a general for these Kennebeck? Perhaps I should’ve stayed in my bed in Albion after all and perished from oral oblations of the maids. That would have been a fine way to die; drained dry.”

  “Akibeel warns that if we do not help, there will be no world to go back to. Croatoan will move on to destroy more and more of the planet, until it is all gone.”

  “There isn’t one man amongst his kin who will rise to the challenge?”

  “He has some help, but not enough to attack Amazarak’s black lodge.”

  “Is that his help that I smell in the woods?”

  Javan translated for the shaman. Akibeel’s smile faded and confusion clouded his face.

  “I can smell the musk of a woman a mile off, Kennebeck man!” Rogan laughed. “Especially one in heat. Give me the wind and a stiff will and they are mine. A woman has never been able to hide from me, so why hide some in the forest?”

  Akibeel understood Rogan’s inference, if not his words. He muttered beneath his breath.

  Javan said, “The women in the forest are not of his tribe, but aide his kin in their quest.”

  “Ask him why we should help him kill this shaman if he has a couple of women on his side? What do they need an old man and a boy for if he has a few tough women to hold his sack for him? Can he spirit me back to Albion if I do?”

  “He promises to place enough men to man the boat at our disposal. They will help us repair it, thus to return home, if we aide his tribe. A few will also agree to serve as crew. And they will provide enough provisions to see us on our journey back across the sea.”