Circle In The Deep (The Outcast Royal Book 1) Read online

  Ax-Wed still rested her hand on the head of her weapon and regarded him coldly as his fingers closed around the shaft of an arrow.

  “You’re a fine shot, Norlen,” she said in the same sanguine tone. “But don’t be stupid. Not twice in one day.”

  He tugged the arrow halfway from the quiver and her fingers tightened enough that her gloves creaked slightly.

  “Oh, this one isn’t for you,” he retorted venomously as he rolled the arrow between his fingers so the barbed head clicked against the others. “I think this one will be for your little friend.”

  She tilted her head enough to look down the passage through the barbican where the woman and her son emerged from the shadow of the wall.

  “Don’t.”

  Steel had returned to her voice but this time, he merely sneered.

  “It’s a far stretch on a small target but you said it.” He chuckled cruelly through bared teeth as he drew the arrow completely from the quiver. “I’m a fine shot.”

  The ax seemed to fly into her hands and one hand grasped high while the other slid toward the bottom of the haft. There was no further word of warning this time but a low, wet snarl rose from deep in the lioness’ chest.

  Brekah’s gaze darted from one to the other, his eyes wide and frightened. His mouth gaped and lips twitched as half-formed admonitions bubbled in the back of his throat.

  “W-wait…n-now… Ho-hold…”

  An eternal second stretched as poisoned glare met smoldering glower, then Norlen’s mouth moved as he raised the shaft to his bow.

  “This’ll teach y—”

  The ax whistled gently before a dull, fleshy thud drew a ragged groan from Brekah. The sound was followed by the heavy thump as Norlen fell on the bloody cobbles. His limbs spasmed and organs voided to leave nothing but a sharp fecal stink in the air.

  For a moment, an unnatural silence seemed to settle over that corner of the city as Ax-Wed drew a rag from her belt. Brekah turned away and shook his head.

  The lioness had barely begun to clean her blade when he turned to face her, his eyes glittering and huge.

  “No need for that, me thinkz,” he warned in a hoarse whisper and hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

  Almost a dozen wretches in disheveled finery staggered up the abattoir of a street and looked over their shoulders constantly as if harried in their approach. They appeared to be a handful of small families and couples, all wearing or adorned by the kind of casual finery that inspired loathing and avarice in those denied such things. Some seemed to have had time to throw bundles together or retrieve small chests, but others appeared to have only what they wore.

  At first, they seemed to be driven by the sight of the burning city but Ax-Wed’s gaze settled on the rangy figures arrayed behind them. The light of moon and flame gleamed on battle-greased blades and glinted off hard-worn armor. With cruel laughs and rough threats, they drove their herd toward the Goat Gate, their smiles keen and sharp as they all anticipated a good shearing.

  “You run now they won’t chaze, me thinkz.” Brekah grunted and his gaze slid off her to Norlen’s cooling corpse as his nose crinkled. “Too buzy to follow, but you ztay and there’ll be more blood, me thinkz.”

  She squared her shoulders, tucked the stained rag into her belt, and settled both her hands atop the ax head.

  “I won’t run.” She shrugged and nodded toward Norlen’s body. “I gave him a chance. It’s not my fault he was too stupid to take it.”

  The man shook his head and stole a glance over his shoulder.

  “Norlen more popular than you, me thinkz,” he stated matter of factly. “More popular and been two-backing with Targhli for pazt few monthz. She’ll want zatizfaction, me thinkz.”

  Now, it was her turn to shake her head.

  “Even if he brought it on himself for wanting his way with a desperate woman?”

  Brekah shrugged and turned toward the street again.

  “Never bothered her before,” he grunted, the words slow and sour. “Won’t matter now, me thinkz.”

  Ax-Wed’s chest swelled to answer but her shoulders sagged and she let the retort dissolve into a long, low sigh.

  “What will you do?” she asked finally and raised her gaze to confirm that the divested nobles were barely a stone’s throw from the gatehouse.

  “Watch,” he replied over his shoulder. “Tell them what happened if they azk but they won’t wazte time azking, me thinkz.”

  She nodded and forced herself to wait in stillness and silence as the predator-stalked herd approached. Almost in counterpoint to the warrior’s poised position, the fallen nobles began to bleat their fearful entreaties.

  “Please, have mercy,” they pleaded as their gait slowed to a nervous shuffle and they stared in terror at the bared blades behind them. “This is all we have left in the world. Mercy, please!”

  Brekah drew a deep breath, coughed a little when the latrine stink of Norlen filled his nostrils, and raised a bellowing cry.

  “One line, single file!” he ordered with the certainty and volume of a battle-seasoned commander. “No pushing and no cutting.”

  “Yeah, no cutting,” snickered one of the she-jackals who nipped at the heels of the herd and flicked a red blade before her. "ʼLess you want us to cut you."

  From the looks of things, a few had already received such treatment. Near the head of the forming column was a gray-headed man with craggy features who clutched a crimsoned scrap of velvet to his face. Behind him, a paunchy woman sniffed and winced as she tried to squint around a freshly broken nose that leaked blood down her face.

  "Now, now," admonished a tall, lean man who emerged from the circling pack. "We are escorts for these fine people, after all."

  His clothing and armor were finer than the others but no less battered and battle-stained. He sauntered toward Brekah through the frightened folk who parted before him. An ivory-hilted sword hung on his belt and a steel-rimmed buckler held lightly in his left hand both seemed parts of his anatomy.

  He stopped short when he noticed Norlen’s body a pace away from the grisly totem of his head. A face that might have been beautiful were it not so scar-crossed and soot-smeared scowled first at the corpse and then at the blood still clinging to the ax.

  “Explain,” he ordered between clenched teeth and lowered his free hand to the sword at his belt.

  “Well, Jaggor,” Brekah began and sucked his teeth again in a death’s head grimace.

  Before anything further could be said, the blade-brandishing she-jackal uttered a horrible shriek.

  “Norlen!” Targhli screeched and shoved through the cowering civilians. “Norlen!”

  Her long-bladed knife still in one hand, she threw herself on the ground before her lover’s sightless eyes in a perverse imitation of worship. Her hard, wild gaze searched the slack expression and then swung upward toward the towering woman with the bloody ax.

  “You! You bitch. I’ll kill you!”

  The long-knife trembled but the woman didn’t rise from her crouch.

  Ax-Wed glared at her and her burning gaze determined the measure of the woman in an instant. She dismissed her easily and turned her lioness’ gaze to Jaggor.

  “We had a disagreement,” she said, her voice steady and flat.

  The corner of his mouth twitched upward and for a second, cold, reptilian speculation slid behind his eyes. One less share in what was bound to be a prolific haul wasn’t something to ignore.

  “You’ll pay for this.” Targhli yowled where she still crouched and the knife quivered in her hand. “I swear it by all the gods and every demon that’s earned a name.”

  Ax-Wed didn’t bother to turn her head when she replied.

  “There’s no need to pester them. I’m standing right here.”

  The woman screamed like a wild cat but when she did not pounce, all understood what the warrior woman already knew.

  “What was the disagreement about?” Jaggor asked and his eyes trailed to the pile of
booty at Brekah’s feet. More calculations slithered behind his eyes and the rest of the crew seemed to sense it as they began to creep forward between the confused and still terrified flock.

  Brekah noticed the change with one sweep of his eyes and took half a step back.

  “About a woman,” he said quickly, one hand raised in placation while the other remained fixed on his sword. “Norlen was for taking a woman and Ax-Wed disagreez.”

  Jaggor’s fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword.

  “So she killed him for having his way with a prisoner?” he asked while the icy arithmetic slid the information on his mental abacus.

  “No,” the big man said and took another half a step back when he realized some of the band had begun to creep along the flanks. “He intended to kill the woman’z boy or might have, me thinkz.”

  Targhli rose and bared her teeth along with the long-knife in her hand.

  “So she killed Norlen, one of her own, for some war-chaff’s whelp.” She growled in fury. “It seems to me like she merely wanted a bigger share.”

  Soft murmurs of assent slid between the mercenaries as they crept closer.

  “After all, didn’t you hear her say we would have never taken the gate without her?”

  Ax-Wed weathered the accusing question without retort, which stoked the discontented current that crackled between the hot-blooded brigands. She rested her hands on her ax and fixed her gaze on Jaggor, their leader, and waited patiently.

  Brekah slunk into the shadow of the gate and clear of the encircling band as Jaggor reached the end of his calculations. The leader of the sell-swords stood behind the shrinking circle and with a speculative glance, he assessed the scene with a cool smile.

  Ax-Wed read the smile in an instant—one less rival, one less share. With a grimace, she adjusted her footing subtly.

  “I suppose I should have known better than to trust a Thulian.” Jaggor sighed and expertly feigned self-deprecating resignation. “She couldn’t help it, I suppose.”

  A hate-filled murmur passed through the gathered mercenaries as horrified whispers wove through their captives. All eyes turned to the warrior woman and some of the defeated even squared their shoulders as they stood a little taller.

  Yes, a Thulian explained everything, didn’t it? No mortal man could defeat Khardalis but Hasriim had not sent mere men but a demon in mortal flesh. There was no shame in defeat when it took one of such a race to conquer them. After all, weren’t so many ancient stories full of these monsters from the sea, armored giants who worked foul magic with their very breath?

  “That’s why its face is covered,” a captive muttered. “To hide the streaked hair and the fangs.”

  Ax-Wed chuckled as the pack of jackals closed in.

  Again, the ax was in her hands as though it had sprung there of its own volition.

  “You can walk away,” she said quietly and smoothly, her gaze still on Jaggor. “You don’t have to make Norlen’s mistake.”

  A cruel laugh rose in answer, swirled among the mercenaries like a bitter wind, and made the onlooking refugees shudder. Gory weapons glinted hungrily in the growing light of the fire-swathed city.

  She sighed as she set her shoulders and her burning gaze lowered for a single contemplative second.

  “When you all wake up in hell, you can talk about what a bad idea this was.”

  As the first spear thrust lunged toward her heart, she looked up and was already moving.

  Her ax a blur of motion, she swatted the impaling point up and away as she drove forward and closed on the first mercenary with the temerity to attack her. The offender scuttled back as she launched a heavy stroke but the swing wasn’t meant for him.

  Instead, it scythed toward Targhli, who’d prowled forward in search of an opening. For her effort, the singing ax-blade carved across her chest and down through her belly.

  The knife tumbled from her fingers and the she-jackal pitched onto her side and gaped like a landed fish.

  “I assume the gods were busy,” Ax-Wed roared as she drove forward into the next assailant. “And demons know my name.”

  Disorganized and dismayed, the predators had become prey in the blink of an eye. She vaulted over Targhli and swept the butt of her ax into a face before she caught a sword stroke with the blade. With a sharp twist, she spun the sword away and drove the horn of the ax into the sword bearer’s throat. For good measure, she whirled and split the face she’d pummeled previously.

  Before the others could grasp that half their numbers had been felled in a few heartbeats, she pounced. She fell upon a scrambling spearman and cleaved his weapon with one swing and an outstretched arm with another. Jaggor and the remaining two mercenaries shrank back as their comrade spilled his lifeblood across the street in a red rush.

  She stood among the remains of her onslaught, the dripping ax still held easily in her strong hands.

  “I told you this was a bad idea,” she said simply and stalked forward across the gory cobbles.

  Jaggor raised sword and buckler together and stepped forward. The bronze-chafed scales of his armor made a soft, serpentine rustle and a simmering pool of vitriol born of wounded pride bubbled in his eyes.

  “Those were my warriors.” He hissed his outrage like a miser coming up short after his count.

  Ax-Wed threw her head back and laughed, a fell sound that might have been beautiful if it weren’t so chilling.

  “Those weren’t warriors.” She chuckled and strode forward. “Merely children playing at war.”

  The leader’s nerve failed and his cold facade crumbled as she came for him. His gaze darted around him and he shoved the two remaining pawns toward her, but she swept them to the left and right without even slowing.

  As he backpedaled desperately, Jaggor swept his sword before him and slashed the air as if to dare her to close the distance.

  “I’m a daughter of the House of Xhulth,” she intoned as the ax met his weapon with a shivering stroke. “The Eight Felling Strokes were my birthright, given by the Grim Handmaiden herself.”

  He punched with his buckler but again, the ax head answered and the disk split as did the hand holding it. The brigand chief staggered back with a sharp cry as he clutched his broken hand. The butt of the ax cracked across his jaw and he landed hard on his knees to look into the face of death itself.

  The hot copper eyes glared at him through the sockets of her helm and he could see a cold smile there.

  “Don’t forget to remind the others,” she stated softly. “I warned you this was a bad idea.”

  He managed half a scream through his broken mouth before the blade found his neck.

  Her last enemy still twitched in his death throes when Ax-Wed turned with a cold glare to the huddled herd who’d born witness.

  “Shouldn’t you be running?”

  Without a word, they began to first shuffle, then scurry through the open gate.

  She watched them trample the fallen, men and women she’d once broken bread and shed blood with. A part of her knew something should be stirred by the thought but in that moment, she felt only a hard, hollow patch within. She didn’t regret what she had done, from beginning to end, although it was not what she would have chosen.

  I curse you! I curse you to the Bitter Road. Long may you walk it.

  The words echoed from a lifetime ago and her shoulders drooped.

  With a single, barely trembling hand, she reached under the curtain of mail veiling her face and loosened the straps of her helm.

  A thick braid of black hair streaked with blue fell across her shoulder and for the first time, she turned her unarmored face to the ruin of Khardalis. In the light of the city she’d opened for destruction, her proud and strong features looked on impassively. As the flames flashed and flared, the scars across the left side of her face traced jagged fissures akin to spidery fingers or maybe a lattice of forked lightning.

  “Well, I suppose this is merely one more step,” she whispered, u
nwilling to allow the tears welling in her eyes to fall. “Mother knows best, after all.”

  She stood before the gatehouse for a few moments longer and let the sights and sounds of slaughter and ruin beat against her naked face. This was her road and she accepted it.

  Without another word, she replaced her helm, collected what she could from the dead, and set off through the Goat Gate.

  Chapter One

  The Gate to the East, Jehadim, loomed large before Ax-Wed as the sun burned toward the edge of the horizon.

  With a grimace, she adjusted the pack on her shoulders and estimated the remaining ground she still had to cover and the passage of the sinking orb overhead.

  Footsore and loaded as she was, she wouldn’t reach her destination until some time after sundown. Beneath the mailed veil over her helm, she sighed a curse in the razored, lilting tongue of Thule. Whether out of superstition or something more reasonable, the city sealed itself tightly for the night. Other eastern cities would close their main gates but still allow a trickle of traffic to pass through smaller posterns manned by the night watch, but she was all too aware that such was not the case in Jehadim.

  She sniffed and cleared her throat as she remembered the last time she’d been left outside the gates. It drew another curse from her as she set off again to trudge wearily toward the looming city.

  The memory remained vivid—her cradling Noka’s head in her lap as each breath grew shallower. She wasn’t sure it would have mattered if they’d been able to enter the city and find a physician but he had been so young and soft-spoken. He didn’t deserve to die in a beggar’s hovel outside the walls like an unmourned outcast.

  He was the first sword-brother she’d lost who had meant anything to her but certainly not the last. It had been both easier and lonelier since Khardalis some three years earlier as her fell reputation ensured that she found work but almost always alone. Despite this, she found companions along the way among those who crossed her path, and as surely as she found them, they met with some tragedy or another and she was forced to walk the Ashen Road alone again.