Bone Jack

Rain dominated everything that happened next. Rain, that great equalizer, that fell on everything the same, and made all the world the same cold, quagmire of mud. It clutched at the ship wheels, slowing all sailing to an ailing slog. The air, though near motionless, clutched at heart and lung. It was rotten weather for a battle.

Itzal found the rain pleasant. He said so, saying he liked the way the damp rose from the grasses. Everyone within earshot snapped him to silence, assuring him from many angles that he should hold his tongue, and that landsmen and peace lovers do not understand the seriousness of such things.

The ship, after that, sailed nearer the battle in silence. No one had anything to say, but only their jobs to do.

Itzal tried to maintain the silence. It felt so sober, and he saw that he ought to respect it.

“Why do you look so smug?” someone said, and he looked around to give them a stern look. Then it turned out it had been him who spoke, which put his stern look in an awkward position. Resigning himself to it, Itzal stuck to his position, and instead of looking sternly at the speaker, he looked at the person who looked so smug.

It was Negui who looked smug, if the slight bending of his wrinkles and slight glinting of his saggy eyes could be called anything of the sort. Negui took his time answering, sucking smoke from his pipe for a while before saying anything.

“You see the soldiers,” he said, pointing to the mass of soldiers slogging through the mud toward the sentry keep. The razor grass had ended, and the ship inched through buffalo grass—or what would be buffalo grass in good weather. In this rain, the wheels gummed drooping furrows through mud.

The soldiers nearly had to wade. Itzal felt sorry for the few horses, being pushed to walk through the mud. Modris Khan rode one of those horses. Itzal saw his standard, carried near him.

Several yards ahead of Modris Khan, a lone figure led the whole, slow charge. At this distance, Itzal couldn’t make out any features of the figure. Something about the lolloping walk niggled at Itzal’s memory. Something about its bored walk, faster than it seemed, with its hand perpetually fidgeting.

“You see, I have no great love for Old Bad News,” Negui said. “He negotiated weapons that would bring Modris Khan victory in this battle. And, against the delivery of those weapons, Old Bad News staked his own skin.” Negui nearly smiled. “A cruel irony that we should arrive, with the weapons here, close enough to watch the battle, and not close enough to join it. We are too late.”

Itzal frowned at that. He said the first thing that came to mind, and he couldn’t decide quite why he said it. He let his mouth get away from him, and he followed it.

“I am not too late,” he said. And he meant it. After all, Lilywhite looked like he was still alive, even if he marched at the head of an army toward the defensive batteries of a fortress.

Itzal held a few whispered words with Caesura. He got from the slave a piece of cloth with Ben’s mouse-and-crossed-swords symbol at the top and words in Alwatan embroidered down the middle. “It’s a detail of my unit,” Caesura said. “You’d call it an inventory, I suppose.”

Taking it and shoving it into one of the pockets of the Tal Khumuus finery he still wore, Itzal jumped onto the railing of the ship.

“Do you know what running is?” Itzal asked Negui. “It’s falling down on purpose, and catching yourself before you hit the ground.”

“What do you plan to do?” Negui said, the scoffing sound implicit in his throat, even if he didn’t quite make the sound.

“I will run,” Itzal felt himself trembling. He was ready to go.

“It hardly matters what you do,” Negui said. “Modris Khan has his own grudge against Old Bad News.”

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you,” Itzal said, “that you matter?”

Negui paughed. That’s how it sounded, anyway.

“You will follow me, Caesura,” Itzal said. “At your leisure. Bring the Full Kits.”

“Yes, sir,” Caesura said.

Itzal ran and took a soaring leap from the bowsprit of the ship.

A few moments later, a great wave of mud swooped up in front of Modris Khan’s soldiers. When it splattered to the ground, Itzal crouched in the middle of it where he had slid to a halt. The mud soaked his blue Tal Khumuus finery.

Modris Khan’s excellent front line of soldiers attacked him right away. Because he came so unexpectedly, they only attacked with half a heart, and only a few of them. Itzal kicked one to slop into the ground. Another, who came at him with a large club, went head over heels by Itzal’s toss. A few more soldiers came swinging at him.

A more attentive, more knowledgeable Modris Khan had a different idea. A sharp shout from him stopped all his soldiers motionless. Everyone looked around at him, waiting for orders. He sat on a mottled stallion, with the rain plinking off his armor. The waiting horde made not a sound.

He, squinting against the rain, stared at Itzal.

Itzal, still panting from his run, stared back. He took a deep breath and fetched the embroidered cloth from his pocket. He tossed it to Modris Khan. Modris Khan caught it, looked at it for a moment, then thought about it. He tapped his horse forward toward Lilywhite. Handing the piece of embroidered cloth to Lilywhite, Modris Khan looked back at Itzal.

Not all Tal Khumuus had the blank face of Negui and Ganzorig. Modris Khan struck Itzal as the type of man who would be pleasant to play poker and other games of bluffing with. His face moved a great deal. His eyebrow arched with a question when he saw the embroidered cloth. They lowered just right when he looked at Itzal, as if to say he wondered what he beheld. Now he smiled at Itzal, leaning in a relaxed way on his saddle bow, saying as clearly as if he’d spoken that Itzal was a curiosity, but a curiosity one or two wrong moves from incurring displeasure. In short, the map of Modris Khan’s mind seemed to move about on his face in clear lines.

Which, Itzal reminded himself, meant that Modris Khan would be the worst person in the worlds to play at cards. A man with such control over his face could easily lie.

Lilywhite, with the embroidered cloth in his hand, said a few words to Modris Khan. The words made Modris Khan laugh, as if he had won. And he may have won.

“They’re coming,” Itzal said. “In fact…you can let them through your troops now.”

Modris Khan considered. Itzal didn’t know if the khan understood the words, but he understood the suggestion. After a ponderous moment, as if he wanted to relish it, or as if he wanted to weigh the possibility of deception, Modris Khan spoke an order. His lieutenants repeated it louder. Then a gap appeared in his soldiers.

The Full Kits walked up the gap, taking their time, clearly sure that the fighting would not start till they arrived. Caesura, leading them, could not be said to lack a sense of drama.

As if they required no greater attention, Modris Khan gave a brief nod and a glad smile to Itzal and Lilywhite. He turned his horse and got back onto the front line of his soldiers. They fell in behind him, paying no further attention to the Bone Jacks.

The only people who acknowledged Itzal and Lilywhite were the Full Kits. They all gave their two fingers over the heart salute as they passed, grinning at Itzal. Itzal bowed back.

“Master forgive, if I speak out of turn,” Caesura said when it came his turn. “You’ve found him,” he said, nodding to Lilywhite.

“I have,” Itzal said.

Caesura nodded. He gave his salute. “I hope to see you again before the afterlife.”

“I hope that too, Caesura,” Itzal said.

Caesura bowed. He joined the Full Kits.

Modris Khan’s army resumed their march. Within seconds, the wall batteries would begin firing. Itzal did not know the compliment of this keep, but he would be surprised if they would withstand this charge. He could not predict, and did not care to predict, what this charge would do to the socioeconomic climate of the neighborhood. It would shake things, for certain.

“About time you show,” Lilywhite said. His tone, to Itzal’s surprise, had annoyed crispness in it. “Days late. It should not have taken this long. It took every ounce of personality I had to delay till this hour. Can you imagine how close I’ve just come to…to…well, I don’t like to think of it. And…what are you smiling about?”

“Am I smiling?” Itzal said.

“It looks like a smile.”

“I didn’t mean to smile,” Itzal said, and tried to frown. He didn’t know how to do that on purpose.

“Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”

“Nothing.”

“Humph. Far from satisfactory.”

“I suppose…”

“Come, come, the day wastes, such as this grimful deluge can be called that. Bring forth your dawdling words.”

“I suppose I do have one thing to say.”

“Say on, then, and may the old gods hear.”

“Are you ready for more?”

“Adventures?” Lilywhite said.

“Yes.”

“Of course I am,” Lilywhite said.

“I am too,” Itzal said.

Lilywhite, his face thoughtful behind his dark beard, nodded. He clapped Itzal on the shoulder.

They didn’t have more to say on that field. Soon, they disappeared from its mud and its thick rain. And where they went next, another story shall need to tell, for this one has reached an end.

Order of the Pinnacle, a knighthood awarded for services to the Royal House of Knochen.↩

A place of fantasy and the setting of a series of novels by Alistair Creedy, the well-known poet and lesser-known architect.↩

Translation: a man who makes honest lies↩

Translation: language↩

Translation: people of the plains↩

“Chapter Three: An Introduction to Investigation”↩

Explained in “Chapter Six: Getting Caught”↩

The Talk↩

Respectively: stallion, mare, foal, bad teeth, stumbling barrel.↩

Translation: Isle of Pine↩

Mix Chinese, Mayan, and Berber.↩

The noted accidental explorer and less noted cobbler, whose personal records of his own abductions and escapes have provided some of the framework for more intentional explorations, especially of the Razorgrass Sea and its surrounding areas.↩

People↩

Homeland↩

“Arsonist’s Lullabye” by Hozier↩