meet the author
Photo Credit: Kyle Zimmerman
DANIEL ABRAHAM is the author of the critically acclaimed Long Price Quartet. He has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards, and has won the International Horror Guild Award. He also writes as MLN Hanover and (with Ty Franck) James S. A. Corey. He lives in New Mexico.
introducing
If you enjoyed
THE SPIDER’S WAR,
look out for
SNAKEWOOD
by Adrian Selby
Once they were a band of mercenaries who shook the pillars of the world through cunning, alchemical brews, and cold steel. Whoever met their price won.
Now, their glory days behind them, scattered to the wind, and their genius leader in hiding, they are being hunted down and eliminated one by one.
A lifetime of enemies has its own price.
Chapter 1
Gant
My name’s Gant and I’m sorry for my poor writing. I was a mercenary soldier who never took to it till Kailen taught us. It’s for him and all the boys that I wanted to put this down, a telling of what become of Kailen’s Twenty.
Seems right to begin it the day me and Shale got sold out, at the heart of the summer just gone, down in the Red Hills Confederacy.
It was the day I began dying.
It was a job with a crew to ambush a supply caravan. It went badly for us and I took an arrow, the poison from which will shortly kill me.
I woke up sodden with dew and rain like the boys, soaked all over from the trees above us, but my mouth was dusty like sand. Rivers couldn’t wet it. The compound I use to ease my bones leaches my spit. I speak soft.
I could hardly crack a whistle at the boys wrapped like a nest of slugs in their oilskins against the winds of the plains these woods were edged against. I’m old. I just kicked them up before getting my bow out of the sack I put it in to keep rain off the string. It was a beauty what I called Juletta and I had her for most of my life.
The boys were slow to get going, blowing and fussing as the freezing air got to work in that bit of dawn. They were quiet, and grim like ghosts in this light, pairing up to strap their leathers and get the swords pasted with poison.
I patted heads and squeezed shoulders and gave words as I moved through the crew so they knew I was about and watching.
“Paste it thick,” I said as they put on the mittens and rubbed their blades with the soaked rags from the pot Remy had opened.
I looked around the boys I shared skins and pipes with under the moon those last few weeks. Good crew.
There was Remy, looking up at me from his mixing, face all scarred like a milky walnut and speaking lispy from razor fights and rackets he ran with before joining up for a pardon. He had a poison of his own he made, less refined than my own mix, less quick, more agony.
Yasthin was crouched next to him. He was still having to shake the cramp off his leg that took a mace a month before. Saved his money for his brother, told me he was investing it. The boys said his brother gambled it and laughed him up.
Dolly was next to Yasthin, chewing some bacon rinds. Told me how her da chased her soak of a mother through the streets, had done since she was young. Kids followed her da too, singing with him but staying clear of his knives. She joined so’s she could help her da keep her younger brother.
All of them got sorrows that led them to the likes of me and a fat purse for a crossroads job, which I mean to say is a do-or-die.
Soon enough they’re lined up and waiting for the Honour, Kailen’s Honour, the best fightbrew Kigan ever mixed, so the best fightbrew ever mixed, even all these years later. The boys had been talking up this brew since I took command, makes you feel like you could punch holes in mountains when you’ve risen on it.
Yasthin was first in line for a measure. I had to stand on my toes to pour it in, lots of the boys taller than me. Then a kiss. The lips are the raw end of your terror and love. No steel can toughen lips, they betray more than the eyes when you’re looking for intent and the kiss is for telling them there’s always some way to die.
Little Booey was the tenth and last of the crew to get the measure. I took a slug myself and Rirgwil fixed my leathers. I waited for our teeth to chatter like aristos, then went over the plan again.
“In the trees north, beyond those fields, is Trukhar’s supply caravan,” I said. “Find it, kill who you can, but burn the wagons, supplies, and then go for the craftsmen. Shale’s leadin’ his crew in from east an’ we got them pincered when we meet, red bands left arm so as you know. It’s a do-or-die purse, you’re there ’til the job is done or you’re dead anyway.”
It was getting real for them now I could see, a couple were starting shakes with their first full measure of the brew, despite all the prep the previous few days.
“I taught you how to focus what’s happening to you boys. This brew can win wars and it’ll deliver this purse if you can keep tight. Now move out.”
No more words, it was hand signs now to the forest.
Jonah front, Yasthin, Booey and Henny with me. Remy group northeast at tree line.
We ran through the silver grass, chests shuddering with the crackle of our blood as the brew stretched our veins and filled our bones with iron and fire. The song of the earth was filling my ears.
Ahead of us was the wall of trees and within, the camp of the Blackhands. Remy’s boys split from us and moved away.
Slow, I signed.
Juletta was warm in my hands, the arrow in my fingers humming to fly. Then, the brew fierce in my eyes, I saw it, the red glow of a pipe some seventy yards ahead at the tree line.
Two men. On mark.
I moved forward to take the shot and stepped into a nest of eggs. The bird, a big grey Weger, screeched at me and flapped madly into the air inches from my face, its cry filling the sky. One of the boys shouted out, in his prime on the brew, and the two men saw us. We were dead. My boys’ arrows followed mine, the two men were hit, only half a pip of a horn escaping for warning, but it was surely enough.
Run.
I had killed us all. We went in anyway, that was the purse, and these boys primed like this weren’t leaving without bloodshed.
As we hit the trees we spread out.
Enemy left, signed Jonah.
Three were nearing through the trunks, draining their own brew as they came to from some half-eyed slumber. They were a clear shot so I led again, arrows hitting and a muffled crack of bones. All down.
In my brewed-up ears I could hear then the crack of bowstrings pulling at some way off, but it was all around us. The whistle of arrows proved us flanked as we dropped to the ground.
The boys opened up, moving as we practiced, aiming to surprise any flanks and split them off so a group of us could move in directly to the caravan. It was shooting practice for Trukhar’s soldiers.
I never saw Henny or Jonah again, just heard some laughing and screaming and the sound of blades at work before it died off.
I stayed put, watching for the enemy’s movements. I was in the outroots of a tree, unspotted. You feel eyes on you with this brew. Then I saw two scouts moving right, following Booey and Datschke’s run.