Read Online The Great Rift by Edward W. Robertson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Edward W. Robertson
Tags: Fantasy
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"Then I'll put myself on the line, too. I'm from Narashtovik. I'm the agent of Callimandicus, highest priest of Arawn. I'm here to help."
"Narashtovik is a part of Gask like anywhere else."
"And if the capital finds out we're here, we'll be invaded the minute they're finished with you."
Banning slung the wrapped painting onto the forest floor. "Tell them anything you like. I don't give a damn about my reputation. And I don't know who took your people or who they sold them to." He stepped on the package. The wooden frame cracked beneath his weight. "But I do know who took them downriver."
"Who?"
"You give me your word."
Dante nodded. "No one will know who told me."
The old man grinned, a savage thing that bristled his beard like a wall of thorns. "Oh, I want the ones who did it to know. What I want you to promise is you'll scream my name before you kill every last one of them."
3
Haggling for the barge strained Dante's patience as hard as the days-long process of watching Banning's meetings. Before he could even begin to bargain with the captain, Dante first had to convince Orlen and Vee that hiring a boat was necessary to begin with, a requirement that seemed self-evident to him—when your quarry is river pirates, you won't have much luck hunting them down on foot—but which took the better part of the night to hash out. By the next morning's walk to the docks, he was ready to give up on talking and try hitting instead.
River pirates. It was simple enough that Dante considered it a major blow to Josun Joh's credibility that the mercurial god hadn't passed that info along directly rather than shooing them in the vague direction of a recalcitrant old man. But once Banning had been ready to speak, he'd spoken like he might never have the chance to speak again.
The slaveship had docked in Cling just over a month ago. The dockhands had seen the eyes glittering from the darkness belowdecks. There had been talk in town, when the pirates debarked, of slaughtering them then and there, but none of the captives were known to be family of anyone in Cling, and it had been pointed out that these weren't just a slapdash rowboat of common pirates, but the Bloody Knuckles, a multi-vessel armada headed by the three-decked galley the Ransom . The last village to threaten the Bloody Knuckles had been so thoroughly robbed, raped, murdered, and torched that six years later the only remnant of the settlement were the cinders of its dead and the nightmares of their relatives.
And so a conspiracy of silence had been enacted by the town of Cling—or those few who knew about the slaves, anyway, a shortlist including the dockside witnesses, Banning, and a handful of the port's elders and most highly-feared warriors—which Banning didn't break until witnessing Dante summon the nether from the forest floor. In that moment, he decided the Clan of the Nine Pines and its two human allies had a real chance to wipe out the Bloody Knuckles in a single blow.
If only Dante could afford a boat.
In theory, he had access to the full treasury of the Sealed Citadel of Narashtovik. The city had grown substantially in the last few years, propelled by Cally's new policies and the refugees from the war with Mallon, who, finding abandoned homes available for the taking in the city's outer rings, had flocked by the thousands to the foreign city, bringing new businesses, trade routes, and labor in equal measure. Despite Cally's covert funding of the operations in the Norren Territories, the city was rich by any objective measure.
In practice, Dante couldn't just sign his name to a receipt of credit for the same reason a traitor can't stroll into the palace with a smile and a wave. Strictly speaking, he was a traitor. To Gask, anyway. He had plenty of silver cached in their base of norren operations in Dunran, but that was 150 miles overland in the wrong direction, and even on the horses he couldn't afford, making that trip would set them back at least a
"Narashtovik is a part of Gask like anywhere else."
"And if the capital finds out we're here, we'll be invaded the minute they're finished with you."
Banning slung the wrapped painting onto the forest floor. "Tell them anything you like. I don't give a damn about my reputation. And I don't know who took your people or who they sold them to." He stepped on the package. The wooden frame cracked beneath his weight. "But I do know who took them downriver."
"Who?"
"You give me your word."
Dante nodded. "No one will know who told me."
The old man grinned, a savage thing that bristled his beard like a wall of thorns. "Oh, I want the ones who did it to know. What I want you to promise is you'll scream my name before you kill every last one of them."
3
Haggling for the barge strained Dante's patience as hard as the days-long process of watching Banning's meetings. Before he could even begin to bargain with the captain, Dante first had to convince Orlen and Vee that hiring a boat was necessary to begin with, a requirement that seemed self-evident to him—when your quarry is river pirates, you won't have much luck hunting them down on foot—but which took the better part of the night to hash out. By the next morning's walk to the docks, he was ready to give up on talking and try hitting instead.
River pirates. It was simple enough that Dante considered it a major blow to Josun Joh's credibility that the mercurial god hadn't passed that info along directly rather than shooing them in the vague direction of a recalcitrant old man. But once Banning had been ready to speak, he'd spoken like he might never have the chance to speak again.
The slaveship had docked in Cling just over a month ago. The dockhands had seen the eyes glittering from the darkness belowdecks. There had been talk in town, when the pirates debarked, of slaughtering them then and there, but none of the captives were known to be family of anyone in Cling, and it had been pointed out that these weren't just a slapdash rowboat of common pirates, but the Bloody Knuckles, a multi-vessel armada headed by the three-decked galley the Ransom . The last village to threaten the Bloody Knuckles had been so thoroughly robbed, raped, murdered, and torched that six years later the only remnant of the settlement were the cinders of its dead and the nightmares of their relatives.
And so a conspiracy of silence had been enacted by the town of Cling—or those few who knew about the slaves, anyway, a shortlist including the dockside witnesses, Banning, and a handful of the port's elders and most highly-feared warriors—which Banning didn't break until witnessing Dante summon the nether from the forest floor. In that moment, he decided the Clan of the Nine Pines and its two human allies had a real chance to wipe out the Bloody Knuckles in a single blow.
If only Dante could afford a boat.
In theory, he had access to the full treasury of the Sealed Citadel of Narashtovik. The city had grown substantially in the last few years, propelled by Cally's new policies and the refugees from the war with Mallon, who, finding abandoned homes available for the taking in the city's outer rings, had flocked by the thousands to the foreign city, bringing new businesses, trade routes, and labor in equal measure. Despite Cally's covert funding of the operations in the Norren Territories, the city was rich by any objective measure.
In practice, Dante couldn't just sign his name to a receipt of credit for the same reason a traitor can't stroll into the palace with a smile and a wave. Strictly speaking, he was a traitor. To Gask, anyway. He had plenty of silver cached in their base of norren operations in Dunran, but that was 150 miles overland in the wrong direction, and even on the horses he couldn't afford, making that trip would set them back at least a
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