A moment later, more men with swords in their hands raced out of the steam, blinking and rubbing their eyes. Berren lay still and these ones ran straight past too. Warm air wafted over him, filled with the stink of burning. As the last one came by, Berren jumped at him and wrapped his arms around the man’s legs. The man went down like he’d been shot, flinging his arms out to catch himself but still cracking his face on the stones; he cried out and rolled onto his back, clutching his face, blood pouring from his nose. Berren sprang onto him, snarling, and bashed his head into the ground one more time. Then he grabbed the man’s sword, one of the long curved weapons he was so used to seeing on Deephaven’s snuffers. He stood for a moment, ready to use it, but stopped. The man was helpless now, unarmed. He was as tanned as Berren, not pale-skinned like most of the people who lived in Kalda.
He was a Deephaven snuffer.
‘Slug-leavings! Sheet-stain!’ Berren screamed at him. ‘What was that for? Why?’ Screaming took the edge off the pain.
The snuffer groaned and feebly rolled away. Berren left him to it and ran on down the street, but after a few dozen steps he staggered to a halt, gasping for breath. Gods, but his back hurt! And his shoulders too and the backs of his legs, a burning pain from the flames, soothed only a little by the rain. He looked up and down the street but Talon and the others were out of sight now. All he could see were the two bodies on the ground and the man whose sword he’d taken, slowly crawling away. Where would Talon go? The Bitch Queen, perhaps, although Berren wasn’t sure he ever wanted to go back in there, not on his own.
His breathing was all wrong, too quick and too shallow. Everything still moved so nothing was broken, but the pain was excruciating. He could feel his strength ebbing away. He staggered back up the hill to Talon’s house, the only place he could think to go, but when he got near he saw yet more armed men. They wore no colours to say who they were but their arms and armour were the same as the ones who’d attacked him in the street, and so was the colour of their skin. Deephaven snuffers. This time he was sure, although what a company from Aria was doing here across the ocean was anyone’s guess. He watched for a while in case the snuffers left and then slunk away. The docks then. That was the place to look. The pain was all over him now, weighing him down. He needed to get off his feet. To rest. Sleep.
A hand grabbed his shoulder, yanking him back into the shadows of an alley. He yelped, and then another hand clamped across his mouth and Tarn’s voice was whispering in his ear: ‘Quiet!’
Tarn let go. Berren stood very still, panting and gasping at what felt like a hundred knives all flaying the skin off his shoulder where Tarn had held him.
‘Path of the Sun, look at you!’
Berren closed his eyes. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t hurt, that was too much to ask, but he was damned if he was going to let Tarn see how bad it was. He took a few deep breaths until he could trust himself to speak without whimpering. ‘What’s going on?’
Tarn shrugged. ‘You’ve seen as much as I have. As to who or why, we’re not short on choice. Campaign season’s about to start. Could be another company trying to cripple us. Could be anyone. And Talon’s got enemies all of his own; you know that. Turn round.’ Gently, Tarn twisted Berren around and looked him up and down. ‘That must hurt. You’ve been burned from top to toe.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what that soldier threw at us.’
‘Talon?’
‘He’s fine. We only lost one man. That fire didn’t do them any favours. Flash blinded them and we just cut through them and ran. They didn’t chase after us for long. Rain and a good thick coat and most of us got away lightly.’ Tarn glanced down. The back of his sword hand was bright red. ‘Going to hurt in the morning, that, but it’ll heal quick enough. You, though, you look bad.’ He smirked. ‘That’ll teach you go around wearing nothing but a shirt. Armour, boy, that’s what you need. Never be without it. Come on, I’ll take you down to the ship. Gods! I thought we’d lost you, but when there was no body I reckoned you’d come back here if you could still walk.’
Berren followed Tarn down the slope of the city once more, breathing hard. By the time they reached the docks and the waterfront, it was all he could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. There was a longboat waiting, filled with soldiers Berren didn’t recognise but whom Tarn seemed to know. Berren sat with his head in his hands while they rowed out into the river. The back of his head hurt too. Most of his hair was gone.
‘You’re lucky it was raining.’ As they turned towards one of the ships anchored in the Triere, Tarn pointed up to the flag fluttering atop the foremast, a diving silver hawk on a black field. ‘That’s us.’
‘You’ve got your own ship?’
Tarn chuckled. ‘You ask me, I’d have preferred one of those sleek Taki ones for crossing the ocean. They’re twice as fast but it turns out you can fit three times as much cargo into this flat-bellied monster and we’ve got a whole company to move.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘You have no idea how much work goes into just getting from one place to another. It’s all food and shelter and how good are the roads, and where will be able to get water and then more food again. Ugh! Talon’s not going to thank me for bringing you aboard but I can’t leave you running around like that.’
Berren stared at the ship as they drew closer. From a distance it didn’t seem much different from the one that had brought him here, but as they came alongside he could see it was bigger, taller and fatter. A ladder made of short planks of wood and two long knotted ropes dropped down. Talon let the other soldiers in the boat climb up first, then gestured to Berren.
‘You up to climbing that?’
‘I spent two years on the sea as a skag. I’ve climbed worse than this half-dead before, when it was keep working or be thrown into the sea.’ Weary, he hauled himself up.
As he reached the top of the ladder and almost fell over the rail, the ship rocked with such a noise that Berren stopped for a moment, trying to work out what it was. Not the usual shouting and swearing of surly sailors with empty pockets and sore heads. Cheering, that’s what it was. Soldiers and sailors alike were cheering, while Talon held his hands aloft with the setting sun behind him. The deck was packed. There were soldiers everywhere, nearly all in black shirts with the emblem of a diving silver hawk on the front. Some were crude, painted on by an unskilled hand. Others were exquisite, embroidered with silver thread.
‘The Hawks have new blood!’ Talon shouted over the din. You wouldn’t have known from looking at him that someone had tried to kill him only an hour ago. ‘You’ll see them among you, in your cohorts, in your tents. Treat them the way you were treated when you first joined us. Let them know what’s what and what it means to be a Fighting Hawk. Take them with you to the best taverns wherever we go! See they have their fair shares of all that matters. Of food and water. Of boots and swords and arrows. Of the fighting and of the plunder!’ Talon drew his sword and thrust it into the air. ‘The Fighting Hawks!’ he cried to another thunderous cheer.