Veil of the Deserters Read online

  VEIL of the DESERTERS

  VEIL of the DESERTERS

  Bloodsounder’s Arc Book Two

  JEFF SALYARDS

  NIGHT SHADE BOOKS

  AN IMPRINT OF START PUBLISHING LLC

  NEW YORK

  Veil of the Deserters © 2014 by Jeff Salyards

  Cover Illustration by: Michael C. Hayes

  Interior layout and design by: Amy Popovich

  Map Illustration by: William MacAusland

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Night Shade Books, 609 Greenwich Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10014.

  Published by Night Shade Books,

  an imprint of Start Publishing LLC

  New York, New York

  Please visit us on the web at

  www.start-media.com.

  ISBN 978-1-59780-491-2

  To Jane, who always treated me as her own flesh and blood.

  VEIL of the DESERTERS

  While my trek to the heart of the Great Fair had been filled with wondrous aromas and sights, the same trip back to the Grieving Dog inn felt as if I were walking to the gallows. Which, all things considered, might not have been far off.

  Walking to the bazaar, I’d noticed the rich smells of breads and meats and cook fires burning; returning, only the strong reek of urine emanating from alleyways, hot and rancid; before, I’d been so buoyed by my newfound sense of freedom, I failed to notice just how powerful and heinous the stench was. So, too, I’d felt a lightness in my step as I left the Syldoon behind to go exploring; heading back to the Dog, it was now mud, horse and dog feces, and other sucking sludge I couldn’t place, all trying to steal a shoe or spoil the hose. Odorous, odious quicksand.

  Even the faces and voices took on a new cast. Where I’d seen and heard joy, mirth, and wonder on the streets on my way to the bazaar, I now saw irritation as someone felt at how light their purse had become, or disgust on a fiefholder’s face at having to rub shoulders with his lessers, or the dull blankness the whores wore like masks as they moved among the throng halfheartedly trying to lure patrons to one establishment or the other, or the shrill shout of a mother scolding her disobedient children.

  The journey both ways was identical—surely not much could have changed in so short a time—but my mood and perceptions couldn’t have been more different. Amazing how one small thing could utterly transform one’s perception of the world. The bruised face of the young Hornman in the crowd, the mutual recognition, him darting off, and the realization that urging Braylar to spare his life in the grass might prove to be everyone’s undoing. It was enough to ruin a perfectly good day, and possibly ensure there weren’t many more to follow, good or bad.

  I forced one foot in front of the other, each heavier than the last, as I was filled with dread and my stomach rolled and heaved the closer I got. I was committed to returning to the Grieving Dog and telling the captain what I’d seen. He’d spin off into a rage, no doubt. And I would bear the brunt of it. Justifiably, as it happened. But the alternatives were less pleasant. I wasn’t about to run to the baron or to try to flee Alespell. Seeing the captain wouldn’t end well, but those routes only led to worse. I briefly considered saying nothing at all, pretending I hadn’t identified the Hornman. But I knew if Braylar somehow discovered I failed to confess what I’d seen, as unlikely as that possibility might have been, that would surely only result in my body adding to the momentous stink in the alleys.

  Still, as I closed in on the inn, I couldn’t make myself take the final few turns. I moved off in the other direction, hoping the pressure on my chest might lighten, that my heart might stop beating like a frenzied bird in a cage. I decided to follow the crowd, at least for a little bit, to ride the jetty and surge wherever it took me, and forget all of this for a time, no matter how short. I wasn’t ready to deliver the news of what I’d seen. Not yet. Moving, moving was the key.

  After heading to the thoroughfare, it didn’t take long for me to get my wish, as I was carried along almost immediately. I should have been hungry or thirsty—I hadn’t even finished the ale and scallops I’d choked on earlier—but I couldn’t really think of eating just then—my stomach felt rebellious and angry. I was perfectly content to follow the ever-shifting currents of humanity around me, barely paying attention to landmarks or the chipped enameled bars on the walls. Even without anything stronger than water in my belly, I would probably have trouble finding my way back to the Dog, but at that moment, I just didn’t care.

  I moved along like that, following the crowd, and when it threatened to thin as I reached side streets or residential neighborhoods, I turned until I found another press moving in a different direction. Even with so many having returned to their homesteads and farms, and the street stalls pulling their small leather and faded canvas awnings down, there was still an impressive number of people in attendance, so it wasn’t difficult to find new groups to carry me somewhere, anywhere.

  As I entered a plaza, I heard a cacophony of sounds—squeals of delight, and possibly fear (it was difficult to determine), as well as a great deal of murmuring, the kind where people turn to the person next to them and speak with animation, but still quietly, as if they are anxious as well as excited or in awe. A single voice shouting above the din with a practiced pitch of some kind. And there was periodically something else. An alien sound, something between a piercing screech and a roar that made your stomach clench and your breath catch, forcing all the other noise to stop momentarily before it slowly built up again.

  The people had formed a fairly dense circle around the center of the plaza. Driven by something I couldn’t quite name just then, I pushed my way forward in a fashion Mulldoos might have been proud of, though I lacked the bulk to separate people quickly, and earned curses and glares when people realized it was only a reedy lad trying to get closer. Though I had never heard sounds like those coming from the center of the plaza before, I somehow knew what was making them, and as I made out the top of a tall cage, I was positive I was right.

  Though all the certainty in the world didn’t prepare me for what I found.

  Every time I’d heard a monster story as a child, I’d tried to imagine if the beast’s eyes glowed like lanterns, if it was foul like dung or something worse, what kind of noise its claws would make scuffling across the wooden planks of the inn or in the dirt just behind me in the fields, and especially what kind of roar or outburst it made. Craning my neck to look over folks in front of me, I was about to glimpse my first monster in the flesh.

  There was a large, extremely tall cage forming a rectangle, roughly sixty feet by ninety. In the far corner, an opening leading to a caged ramp up to a robust wagon, with bars for walls and a solid wooden roof, and no beasts of burden attached to pull it. There was another large, flatbed wagon a little further away, yoked to six oxen that were also decidedly nervous.

  On one side of the cage, there was a gate, locked tight, and a short caged corridor leading to a smaller rectangular cage in the interior of the larger one. That’s when I saw the creature, circling that small caged area in the middle, though it was presently unoccupied.

  It was a massive bird, at least eight or nine feet tall, with mottled yellow and black feathers, a thick, muscular neck, and a head nearly as large as a horse’s with that dense looking beak at the front.

  Just as Lloi had described, it had no wings, but instead, thin feathered limbs ending in three talons, two very short, with a much longer curved talon between that was like a bone scythe blade. Its legs were muscular and stout as tree trunks, and led down to huge talo
ns that kicked up dust as it paced around the cage, its small black eyes staring out at the crowd of onlookers.

  The hawker was circling as well, though of course on the outside of the cage, a leather vest over his oiled chest, hair and forked beard equally oiled, nose and ears housing countless hoops and studs glinting in the setting sun, and a long goad in one hand. Two younger versions of himself, different only in that they had stubble rather than a full beard, and their pants were puffier, also moved around the edge of the crowd, one with a bucket of meat, the other with a bucket for collecting coins.

  Though certainly not a Grass Dog, it appeared the hawker was trying to approximate one, and he called out, “This is a genuine ripper, my lords and ladies. The most dangerous predator on the Green Sea. I’ve witnessed it kill a horse in one blow, ripping its throat out in the entirety.”

  He waited as the crowd murmured their appreciation, then continued, “And here is the chance you’ve been waiting for. For a mere pittance, you can feed the beasts from the safety of the outside of the cage. But for those more stalwart among you,” he gestured at the cage in the middle with his goad, “you can experience coming to grips with the ripper, to feel what it is to be prey in your final moments before being torn to shreds.” Several in the crowd gasped, and he smiled, showing several silver teeth. “Fear not—though beast of prodigious strength and speed, no ripper can break the bars, nor jump them. You would be safe. And yet, you would have an experience unlike any other.” He raised his voice still louder, “So, who among you will feed the beast, whose thirst for blood cannot be slaked.” He looked at the ripper and then back to the crowd. “And who among you will brave the inner cage? You?” He pointed the goad at a terrified-looking girl. “Or you?” to a man a few rows back. “Or you, young sir?” He pointed at a farmer who had his girl pulled tight to his side.

  After a brief hesitation, a boy ran up, dropping a coin in the bucket. The hawker’s son stuck a piece of raw meat on the end of a long two-pronged fork, issued some instructions, though they must have only amounted to, “Don’t stick your arm inside,” and then moved aside as the boy walked slowly up to the cage, the meat held before him, though not high enough for me to see.

  He stood several feet from the bars, the meat barely sticking in. The ripper, though, didn’t need much encouragement. In two quick strides, it crossed the whole cage with surprising speed. The boy jumped back, dropping the fork as the crowd erupted in laughter, and the ripper cut it short, raising its beak and issuing another shriek sharp enough to still blood. The crowd again murmured, as the hawker encouraged the boy to stick the meat in again. “The bars protect you, boy! Master yourself and feed the beast!”

  The boy stepped forward, as a few other boys hooted from the crowd. He stuck the meat through the bars and the ripper whirled around and snatched it from the tongs, nearly pulling the fork through as well.

  The crowd cheered. Pale and shaken, the boy raised his arm, as if he had triumphed over some superior foe, or cheated death itself.

  Then one of the boy’s friends, clearly trying to show him up, marched up to the hawker’s son with the buckets and asked, loudly enough for all to hear, “How much to go inside?”

  It would have been more inspiring if his voice hadn’t cracked, or if his eyes hadn’t been obscured by disheveled hair, but still, a passable bit of bravado. I’m not sure when lads are more stupid—trying to impress their own sex or the other. Either way, the crowd gave appreciative applause, as if this were a scripted puppet theatre and not a boy willingly putting himself as close as possible to a dire threat.

  The hawker clapped twice. “Very good, very good! This way, my boy, this way!” He led the lad to the cage corridor and unlocked the gate. The ripper didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the idiot boy as the hawker handed him a long fork with a large chunk of bloody meat on the end. “Now mind, boy, once you’re in there, stay well back from the bars.”

  The youth snatched the fork. “I’ll mind whatever I plaguing have a mind to mind, old man. Don’t tell me nothing.”

  Something rippled across the hawker’s face so quickly I wasn’t sure if it was simply the play of shadows or anger, but if the latter, the presence of a paying audience made it disappear in an instant. He bowed. “As you will, young sir. Still, my sons will be close by, never fear.”

  “Never do,” the boy replied, taking a few steps down the caged corridor, the first two full of the same foolishness youth can summon without any exertion at all, but the third a bit more halting as the ripper looked at him from across the other side of the enclosure, as if curious. Or measuring. The boy saw that, felt that, and stalled.

  The hawker called out, “To the center, boy, the center. Safer there. Move to the center, and feed it from there.”

  With the ripper looking directly at him, dark eyes tender as molten stones, and the reality perhaps sinking in a bit, the boy hurried along, no longer concerned with impressing anyone just then, the hawker’s sons just behind him.

  The ripper opened its huge beak, and I was expecting another baleful screech, but instead it only let out a long, slow hiss and continued tracking the boy as he moved. The youth stepped into the larger caged area in the middle and then stood there, staring back at this creature that surely seemed much more imposing and deadly real than it had when he was standing among other stupid boys in the crowd.

  The hawker, now walking around the perimeter of the enclosure again, yelled, “The meat, boy. Step to the bars—close, but not too close—and stick it out there for the beast. Help him, Askill.” The boy didn’t respond, standing still in the cage, arms at his sides as if tied there, as the hawker’s larger son stepped alongside and tried to show him how to proceed while the other watched the ripper watching them.

  A few of the boy’s friends called out from the crowd, though it was hard to tell if it was encouragement or derision. Likely some of both.

  The boy looked back at the audience, now seeming even younger than his years, clearly wishing he’d held his tongue and maintained his place. But he stepped closer to the bars, careful to listen to Askill’s advice though, and very slowly raised the fork and stuck it out a foot, the meat dangling on the end.

  I was wondering what animal it once belonged to when the ripper raised its head, its small talons clicking against the much longer scythe claw at the end of those thin limbs, as it alternated staring directly at the boy, then to what he was holding just outside the bars, almost as if the creature was surveying and calculating, assessing the boy to determine how powerful it was. Or quick.

  It took a few steps toward the center, eyes again locked with the boy’s, who continued holding the fork out between two bars. And then, as if it had transfixed the boy and rooted him to the spot, it took three strides, so long and unexpected and blinding fast it was difficult to believe. One instant it was twenty paces from the cage in the middle, and the next, just outside the bars, its beak clamped down on the fork.

  The ripper jerked its large head sideways, but instead of letting go of the fork as he’d probably been instructed, the boy held on and he was pulled into the bars, slamming into them with his shoulder. He finally released the handle, but it was too late—the ripper’s thin arms snaked between the bars and small talons fastened on the boy’s wrist. He screamed then, and the hawker’s sons stepped forward with their goads, but couldn’t move quickly enough. The ripper pulled the boy’s arm through the bars, dropping the fork from its maw as the huge beak crushed down on the forearm between its talons.

  Askill and his brother jabbed their goads into the ripper’s side, but it knocked one free with the scythe talon on the other limb and ripped it free. Askill jumped back, as the ripper ignored the other brother’s goad, biting down twice, snapping bones and rending flesh while its prey screamed. And then the boy fell back into the smaller hawker’s son, knocking him and his goad back as blood pulsed out of the severed forearm.

  The ripper jumped away from the cage out of the reach of any
more goading, and then crunched the hand in its beak twice before swallowing it.

  Where the crowd had mostly been watching in hushed tones, aside from a few boys who occasionally called out taunts, now noise erupted everywhere. Yelling, cries for the city watch, a final scream from the boy before he fell back in the dirt, staring at the blood pumping out of his stump, Askill yelling for his father, the other covering up the wound with his tunic and trying to staunch the flow as much as possible, looking around for help.

  Seeing that foolish boy cradling his wrist, in shock that it no longer ended in his hand, which was now dissolving in a ripper’s gullet, all I could think of was how Lloi had been mutilated and reduced herself. I wondered how her family had done it, and if she had looked at the small bloody nubs after, in shock that she no longer had real fingers, even though she probably knew the punishment was coming. Can you ever be prepared to have some part of you lopped off forever? Had she accepted her fate, or had she fought and had to be restrained by those she once considered kin? Given what I’d known of her, I suspected she fought hard and bloodied some folks of her own before the deed was done.

  I wondered what she would have made about this captive ripper and the Anjurian and his boys who saw fit to wheel it from city to city, a dangerous attraction for those seeking cheap thrills. Would she have hated him, wished him harm? Probably not—she didn’t even hate her own people who’d mistreated her so.

  But that didn’t stop me. The whole scene made me angry, and I had the impulse to shout at the keeper that he was a fraud and a villain, that it was him who deserved to lose a limb. He hadn’t mutilated the boy himself, but he might as well have, and he certainly profited. For a mad moment, I wondered—if I could somehow open the cage, would the beast attack him, its captor and tormentor? Or would it simply run, or rip open some other innocent nearby?