Scion of the Serpent Page 25

  Then he saw the object of their attention and gasped. Teferi was on the floor, forced to his knees by five guardians who pinned his arms and held him despite his struggles. His face was bruised, and blood tricked from his mouth.

  Ramsa Aál glanced up at him. “Acolyte! This foolish savage invaded our temple in broad daylight and was quickly captured. I thought you should see him die, since he kept calling your name.” The priest studied Anok’s face with interest. “You know this . . . Kushite.”

  Anok looked at Teferi desperately. Then he nodded to Ramsa Aál. “He is my friend, master. I beg you spare him.”

  The priest looked at Anok, his head tilting oddly. “An acolyte of Set has no friends, Anok Wati. He has only those masters he obeys, lessers that he commands, and enemies that he crushes.” He made a signal to the captain of the guard, who raised his sword and started toward Teferi.

  Anok leapt in front of him. “Stop!”

  Ramsa Aál looked at him with curiosity. “You have something to say, acolyte?”

  Anok thought furiously. How could he save Teferi’s life? “I’ve deceived you, master. I was ashamed. I told you once I desired wealth, power—servants. I was a poor orphan in the slum, but I came into a sum of wealth through my adventures, and in my false pride, I hired this Kushite as a servant. He is even now in my employ. He only comes to bring me a message. He means well, but as you can see”—he glanced sadly at Teferi—“he is stupid.”

  The priest considered. “A message? You should have left your old life behind when you came here, Anok Wati. An acolyte of Set should be past such concerns.”

  Anok bowed his head. “You are right, my master. I have acted incorrectly.”

  “But I am curious now”—he looked at Teferi again—“what matter was important enough for this invasion. Let us at least hear that before we kill him.”

  Anok started when heard this last, but said nothing. He couldn’t give up hope if something could still be salvaged. He stepped up in front of Teferi. They looked at each other for a moment. Then Anok slapped him hard in the face with the back of his hand. “Moron! Idiot! You come here and embarrass me! You are not worth the sliver of silver I pay you each month! Better I should let them take your head and be rid of you!

  The anger and rage in Teferi’s eyes as he looked up at Anok was real, and it stung him deeply.

  Teferi spat a mouthful of blood on the floor at his feet, then looked up again. “Sheriti is dead.”

  Anok’s body and mind froze. It was as though he had been turned into a statue, Teferi’s words frozen at the entrance to his mind, where he refused to let them in. Then, finally, his burning lungs reminded him to breathe. He gasped and coughed. “Sheriti?”

  Ramsa Aál looked at him with cold interest. “A woman, Anok Wati? Love for a woman weakens the sorcerer’s focus. It is well to taste of the flesh. That is why we have whores here. But congress of the heart is for lesser men. You are better off without her.”

  Anok ignored him, his attention focused on Teferi. “How?”

  “Murdered.”

  “Who? Who did this?”

  Teferi shook his head.

  Anok took a deep breath. He knew already. “Wosret. It has to be.” He felt the rage welling up in him, washing away all other emotion. “The dog must die!”

  Ramsa Aál took a step closer. “Rage?” He stepped in front of Anok, studying his face. “Anger is the friend of sorcery. In rage we tap power. In rage we find out who we truly are.” He walked around Anok, studying him. “Perhaps something useful can come of this. Do you wish revenge, Anok Wati?”

  He nodded. “Yes, master.”

  Ramsa Aál nodded slowly. “Then go find it, with my blessing. When you have had your fill, return to us, and we will see what you have learned.”

  “My servant, master. He is stupid, but he fights well. I may need his help.”

  The priest glanced down at Teferi, as though he had forgotten him. “Very well. Release him.”

  The guardians holding Teferi stepped back, throwing him to the floor as they did. He lay sprawled there for a moment before pulling himself slowly to his feet.

  Another of the guardians put Teferi’s captured swords and dagger on the smooth floor, and kicked them across to him.

  “I will need my swords as well, master.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Will you? You may be surprised. But if you think so . . .” He looked at the captain of the guardians. “Go to my chambers. In the cupboard near the window, in the bottom, you will find a leather shoulder bag and two swords. Bring them here.”

  The guardian nodded respectfully. “Yes, lord.”

  Anok gestured at Teferi to follow, then went after the guardian.

  “Anok.”

  Anok turned back to the priest. “Yes, master?”

  “Come back to us, acolyte. To have a talent such as yours extinguished by some street thug . . . It would be . . . unbecoming.”

  22

  ANOK AND TEFERI jogged through the streets of Odji, headed back for the Nest. For a long time, nothing was said. Anok was numb, from shock, from lack of sleep. He should have been physically exhausted as well, but he wasn’t. He felt charged, physically invigorated, his wounds practically healed, and he couldn’t help but think that the throbbing tingle at his left wrist had much to do with it.

  “I’m sorry,” said Anok, finally, “about what happened in the temple.”

  “If you ever touch me like that again, I will beat you until but a spark of life remains in your body.”

  A voice within him said, I’d like to see you try, and it frightened even Anok. Where had that come from? He tried to brush past it. “In case you didn’t notice, I was saving your life back there. Only by making you seem beneath his notice, could I shake Ramsa Aál of the idea of executing you. I didn’t.” He choked on his own words. “I didn’t want to lose my two best friends in one day.”

  “The day is young,” said Teferi, grimly. “What will we do now?”

  “Kill Wosret, painfully, if at all possible.”

  “That will not be easy.”

  “I think it can be done,” said Anok. “The real trick is staying alive afterwards.”

  “How will we go in?”

  “The front door. They won’t be expecting that, especially in broad daylight.”

  “I’ve tried that plan once already today. It didn’t go well.”

  “You were one. Now we are two.”

  “Against a small army of thugs and bodyguards. And none, save us, in all of Odji would be foolish enough to stand against Wosret, no matter how they hate him. Perhaps we should find the barbarian woman. For enough gold, she might aid us.”

  “There’s no time,” he said. “We will have to be enough.”

  “We’ll need more weapons then.”

  “That,” said Anok, trotting up to the door of the Nest, “is why we’re here.”

  They unlatched the door, went inside, and headed immediately for their weapons cache.

  Anok strapped on an arming sword, to supplement the two shorter ones he already wore on his back. He slipped a pair of good throwing knives and a dagger into his belt. Then, after a moment’s thought, he removed the dagger, wrapped it with a piece of papyrus, and tied it with a bit of leather cord. This package he tucked back into his belt with the knives.

  Teferi added a backup sword and picked up his powerful Stygian bow and a quiver of arrows.

  It was then he heard a muffled sob from somewhere behind him. He turned, and saw that the trapdoor to the brothel was open. He looked at Teferi. “You brought her here?”

  Teferi nodded sadly. “Where else?”

  Anok licked his dry lips. “I’ll be a minute. Wait here.”

  He climbed the narrow steps up through the trapdoor, and followed the sound back into the living quarters. Whores watched him from several doorways, their appearance strange to him because they were all fully dressed. He looked back and saw that the front of the brothel was shuttered tight,
closed for the mourning he surmised.

  He followed the sobs to an open door near the rear of the building. He was passed in the doorway by a young Kushite whore, tears streaming down her face, who ran into another room and slammed the door behind her.

  He stepped into the room. Two sturdy chairs had been set up in the middle of the room, a pair of bed rails slipped between them, and blankets draped across the top to form a kind of high bed. On it, a body, so surprisingly small, lay wrapped in silk. The room was heavily perfumed, and incense burners smoked in every corner. But none of it could completely hide the unmistakable smell of death.

  A single high-backed chair crouched next to the makeshift bed. On it sat a tall woman, dark-haired, slender, and graceful, that Anok immediately recognized as Kifi, Sheriti’s mother. Her long neck arched gracefully, and she carried her head high, as though posing for a portrait. Her features were, as he remembered them, beautiful in a fragile way. He could see a bit of Sheriti’s beauty there in her face. She wore a dress of golden-orange silk that covered her from neck to feet, and the light from the windows behind her turned her hair into kind of a halo.

  She did not look at him or acknowledge his arrival. She simply stared straight ahead.

  Anok stepped up to Sheriti’s body, placing his hand gently on her head, stroking her hair. Her skin was ghostly white, save for a purple bruise across one cheek. A silk scarf wrapped around her neck showed traces of soaked-through blood.

  He bent down and kissed her cold and lifeless lips.

  He was startled when Kifi suddenly spoke. “We live in a world of men,” she said, “cruel and violent. It is not a world that is kind to those unfortunate enough to be born women. This place, this brothel, is a kind of fortress of women, under eternal siege by the world of men. Yet they find us useful, and so we survive each assault and live another day.”

  She looked, Anok noticed for the first time, much older than she had only weeks before. Her eyes were puffy and lined, her lips narrow and drawn.

  She continued, “Some say I was wrong to bring a daughter into such a place, and it could be that they were right. But I loved her, and did what I could for her, and looked for a way to give her a better life than I myself have lived. For all my years of struggle, I have achieved some measure now of property and wealth, rare for a woman in Stygia. But of happiness, Sheriti was all I had, all I ever will have.

  “So for her, too, I sought some kind of happiness, without success. Until that day when you rescued her from those bandits. I will never forget when you returned her to me in the market. You were filthy and thin, and yet you carried yourself proudly. And I remember the way she clung to your arm, the way she smiled when she described the rescue. She begged me to let you live in the stables under the brothel. Truth be told, she did not have to beg very hard.” She turned and looked at him for the first time. “She was proud of what you taught her, the reading and writing, and it brought her great joy. As for the rest, even though I knew her adventures with you were dangerous, you made her happy, something I could never do. For that, I will forever be grateful.”

  “I know who killed her,” he said. “Lord Wosret of the White Scorpions. He killed her because of me.”

  “He killed her because he is an animal, and that is what animals do. What will you do, Anok Wati?”

  “Teferi and I go to find Wosret to extract our revenge. I promise you that he will be dead by nightfall. I will not allow him to live another night with her blood on his hands. That is my pledge to you.”

  She shook her head sadly. “I ask no such pledge of you, Anok. No vengeance will bring our Sheriti back to us. No vengeance will make the short days of her life any sweeter or her memories more dear. You cannot save her.”

  He hung his head. I couldn’t save her. I went away and let her die. “I do what I must.” He turned to leave.

  “I don’t know why you joined that foul cult, Anok. I know you must have your reasons for that as well. But you cannot save Sheriti, Anok.

  “Why don’t you see if you can instead save yourself.”

  THE WHITE SCORPION compound was located on the eastern edge of Odji, at the foot of the hills above the city. It was a large, two-story villa surrounded by gardens and a low wall. In some ways it resembled a newer, shoddier, somewhat-less-secure version of the house where Anok had lived as a child.

  Teferi and Anok observed the front of the compound from an alley a short distance away.

  The front gates were open, and half a dozen tough-looking men stood just inside those gates. More men patrolled the gardens around the house or stood vigilant on its balconies. He noted that many of them still seemed to be shaking off the effects of their Festival revelries. Some looked asleep on their feet. Others rubbed their heads constantly, as though suffering from throbbing pain. Considering how completely Anok and Teferi were outnumbered, it was a small advantage, but better than none at all.

  Anok noted a flat-roofed building across the street from the compound, with a large pile of hay piled up against one wall. Around the corner, a rickety-looking wooden ladder leaned against the wall, just out of sight of the compound. “There,” he said, “is your position. You will station yourself there with your bow and pick off the guards as they come out.”

  “And what will you be doing?”

  “I,” he said, “will be bait.”

  “That will be cutting things close.”

  “You’re a good shot. I hope you’re not still too angry about my hitting you.”

  Teferi smiled humorlessly. “We will see.”

  “I’ll move as soon as you’re in position.”

  Teferi nodded and started to leave, then hesitated and turned back. He put out his hand. “Brother.”

  Anok hesitated a moment, then clasped his arm. “Brother. If I fall, you must finish the task.”

  He nodded. “If we do not meet again, may our spirits hunt together in the eternal forest.” Then he turned and, crouching low so as not to be seen, trotted toward the ladder.

  Anok crouched behind a cart across the street, where he could see both Teferi and the gate. The black giant tested the ladder carefully before climbing slowly up, trying each rung before climbing to the next, keeping his feet near the outside so as to put the least strain on the dry-rotted wood. The ladder did not quite reach the top of the wall, but it got him close enough to reach the clay tiles surrounding the edge, and pull himself up and over.

  Finally, he was lost to Anok’s sight. Anok could only imagine his friend crawling across the rooftop to his position, taking out his bow, nocking the arrow, and while keeping it parallel to the roof so as not to be seen, drawing the mighty Stygian bow, muscles glistening with strain, waiting for the moment.

  Anok stood and walked across the dusty street, calm and purposeful in his gait, a smile on his face. His marked wrist itched and burned, and he found himself unconsciously rubbing it. Give me strength, he thought. Give me speed.

  The guards watched as he approached the gate, but there was no sign of recognition. They put their hands on their swords but did not draw. They would be used to seeing a man wearing his swords on his belt. Unless they were sharp, they might not notice the hilts of the two swords peeking occasionally over his shoulders, and he had moved his other knives to the back of his belt. Their eyes were on the arming sword he wore at his waist, and that suited him fine.

  “Greetings,” he said while he was still well out of sword range. “I’ve come to have audience with Lord Wosret. I have a proposal that will gain you all much gold.”

  The men looked at him skeptically. They wore light leather armor on their chests, shoulders, and shins, and dome-shaped helmets that left their faces and ears exposed. They also wore arming swords, though poorly made blades considerably inferior to his own. The man on his left, he noted with interest, leaned with his hand against a stout wooden post that supported the iron gate.

  Anok reached casually behind his back. Before leaving the Nest, he had wrapped one of his dagg
ers in a piece of rolled papyrus and tied it with a piece of leather cord. “Let me show you this map.” He causally pulled out the disguised dagger and held it over his head. If they had been smarter, they might have noticed the curious, overhand way that he held it.

  Another man, wearing a mail shirt, a small chest plate, and a broadsword, appeared a few steps behind the other men. He looked at Anok, and his eyes widened. “Wait,” he said. “I know you! You killed—”

  Two more steps.

  One.

  Now!

  He slammed the dagger down through the bones of the first man’s hand and deep into the wood, pinning him in place. The man screamed and tried to pull it out. He succeeded only in removing the blood-spattered papyrus wrapping so that the blade gleamed in the sun.

  Anok stepped back, spinning out of the way just as something buzzed past him like an angry hornet. The arrow appeared buried deep in the second guard’s chest, and he staggered back.

  He could hear shouts from across the compound as the alarm sounded, and the third man drew his broadsword.

  Anok answered with his arming sword in time to deflect a flailing roundhouse by the armored man. An arrow flashed past and rebounded off the chest plate with a loud thunk, followed by another that pierced the mail and buried itself in the guard’s left arm.

  Anok took advantage of the distraction, slashing the side of the man’s leg just above the shin armor, then knocking the sword out of his hands as he toppled.

  Another dozen men, swords drawn, charged in from either side. But even before they reached him, their numbers were thinned. The arrows fell with uncanny accuracy. To his right a man fell, then to his left, then to his right, then the leading man to his left, slowing the others behind him.

  Anok turned to his right. Grabbing the hilt and swinging the sword over his head, he brought it down two-handed into the chest of the first attacker, sidestepping past the man’s oncoming blade. His arming sword pierced the first man’s leather armor like silk, catching only against the back side of his doublet. He pushed the man away into his followers, letting the large sword fall with him.