Bodies had collected in an eddy pool upstream from Kykai, a pond of red and purple-rotting flesh painting the fringe of the stark yellow fields and skies. Zanna’s skiff rushed past the liquid crypt. Ahead, a cloud of black smoke hung over the white clay walls of the river town. The gate on the land-side was hidden from view and the docks on the water-side blocked by smoke and the trees on the banks between.
The Queen’s force had camped for a week on the shore a day’s journey upstream. To treat with the bandits, Zanna had sent Lord Reeth and three armed warriors to invite the murderers forth. They spoke of what the Queen now saw: bodies in the nets between wooden stakes in the murky shallows, painted words of defiance on the walls that read ‘My town’ and beneath ‘No, mine!’, overturned wagons of timber and vegetables, hardened men with swords and knives and axes more varied than their war paint. They had killed almost all of the original inhabitants, according to Zanna’s scouts, but some of the bandits had brought families with them.
Men in war paint and blades-assorted waited for the Just Queen of Maga on a beach. There were four, in black and brown clothes, some tattered, some fine. They had looted, freshly, Zanna read on her approach, gorging their appetite on the people they had killed in Kykai. There were clean boots, and there a fine shirt.
Zanna leapt from her longboat first, with Reeth and another guard following quickly. She splashed through the shallows and onto the beach, planting her spear in the ground before turning and helping them drag the hull of their canoe onto the sandy bank. The sun made the ground glow white.
“Another one,” one of the brigands muttered. His voice drifted down the stream on the dry wind. “All we eat is crayfish. Should have kept some man to make me vittles.”
Tylan descended from the boat last, unaccustomed to the aggressiveness of those called lords and rulers. The group left their skiff marooned and advanced across the sand. While the man kept complaining about his appetite, Zanna yanked the spear free of the sand. The leather tunic she wore was more square copper studs than animal hide, and shone in the sunlight as she marched between the reeds and across the sand toward them.
One of the men paced ahead of his men, putting some ten feet between himself and either group. Zanna walked forward similarly and met their leader in the void between friend and foe. She sized up her rival—a man with a clean shaven jaw and combed hair, with the dark skin of a Numa, with a scar on his arm and a grey drawing of a sword on his left hand. He smiled and raised his hand with knuckles folded, a casual greeting. His other hand held the hilt of a short axe buckled a black belt. “’Name’s Rory, Queen Zanna. What can I do fer you?”
Zanna inhaled sharply. Why ask me that? she wondered. She looked at the river, at the fields of tall golden grass and at the scattered trees. Behind Rory, the dusty walls of the river town rose. There were corpses hanging over the top—one missing a leg. Zanna didn’t want to talk to these men, but she did. “You’ve killed a lot of my people.”
“Some did. Not me,” Rory said. “I killed only two. One guard. One baker.”
“The seer baker,” one of the other bandits said, and the others chuckled. Rory only smiled.
Zanna looked at her friends, then back at the criminals. “My scouts say you have families with you. Surrender now and only your men will be jailed.”
Rory chuckled. “No.”
“Why did you take the town?” Lord Reeth asked. “You had to know it would not go well.”
“Took the town ‘cause we wanted to,” Rory said, tilting his head. “We killed only who we wanted to. We won’t leave Kykai, ‘cause we don’t want to.”
“Your families will suffer,” Tylan said. “Jail is no place for—”
“Our families will do whatever they want,” Rory said, smiling. “We are all the same, people on the beach.”
Zanna broke her silence. “Do you mean status? Are you a revolutionary, a rebel?”
“A what?” Rory laughed. He looked across the river, his profile against the sunlight showing his open mouth and his chuckling. “If I said this to you, Queen Zanna, would you not be insulted? No, no, everyone on this beach is royalty.”
“You’re a nobody,” Lord Reeth said. “Soon, just a body in a cell.”
“Surrender or be subdued,” Zanna said. They would put all the bandits in cells, she decided.
Rory drew his sword. It was a single edged blade, with a square hilt and a stylish, square tip. “We don’t want to do that, do we, boys?”
The other bandits drew their own swords and Tylan and Reeth followed suit. Zanna spun her spear around her side as the criminals charged. Rory dodged the point, then the butt. Step by step, he fell back, until Zanna had to pause her direct assault for fear of her sides. Reeth clashed with another brigand, a big fellow with a bald head who fought with a heavy wooden staff. The Lord’s sword flecked splinters of wood away with each hit, but the brigand held his ground. The first blood to splatter the sand was shed by Captain Mogin, the guard who had accompanied them. He lost a hunk of flesh from his shoulder but killed the man who hew it forth. The first body fell into the lapping waves on the bank.
Rory seized the distraction to step past Zanna’s spear point. He invaded the Queen’s space, jabbing at her with a winding knife blade. The Queen leapt back a pace, quick as a snake. She spun the shaft of her golden spear down with bulging muscles, snapping the bones in the bandit’s hand. Rory’s knife landed in the dirt and his curses shook the air.
“Where are the others?” Rory screeched. As Zanna’s friends drew closer, he grabbed one of the others with his unbroken hand and shoved him toward the foliage. “Get them, get them!”
That man dashed for the field’s edge, only to find Tylan waiting for him. The prince used a pointed jabbing sword as they wielded on the Torn Shore, and expertly sidestepped the bandit’s surprised attack, countering with his own thrust.
While Reeth and the guard tag teamed the third bandit, Rory charged toward the skirmish near the grass. Zanna gave chase.
The bandit Tylan faced soon fell to the sands with a pointed blade through his hamstring, but Rory stormed him from behind. Zanna shouted, “Tylan!” Rory’s raised sword was in his healthy hand, swinging down, and grazing the tall golden grass as Tylan sidestepped once more.
Zanna’s dash ended with a spear thrust for Rory’s gut, but the bandit smashed his square hilt off the point of Zanna’s spear, knocking it to the sand. Rory jabbed toward Zanna, but Tylan leapt over the spear, his knee and weight knocking the bandit spinning. Zanna recovered her spear and set after the sprawling duo. Tylan quickly reclaimed his feet as the Queen brushed past.
Kicking up sand, the bandit leader came to his feet and rushed Zanna. When she lanced her weapon at him, he swiftly knocked it aside with his broken hand. He cried out, but made it past her offences—his sword flew towards her stomach. Zanna threw herself to the right, out of harm’s way and onto the hard beach. But the thrust had not been meant for her.
Tylan’s tunic splashed red as Rory’s square-pointed blade chipped between his ribs and out his back. With a twist, Rory had the blade free and the Queb of Tal’lashar fell to his knees with globs of blood irrigating the dry sand below. Zanna forced herself to her feet again, as Rory pranced around to face her. He held his sword at Tylan’s neck as Zanna’s spear wavered in front of him.
“He’s the only one left,” Reeth said, marching toward the stand-off. Captain Mogin had pinned the third bandit to the ground. The one who had tried fleeing was still crawling through the grass, but practically their prisoner. “Stand down, bandit.”
Rory was breathing heavy, but he looked at Zanna without blinking. He knew he was her prisoner now, but his blade still rested on the back of Tylan’s neck. The Queb was gasping up blood, and still bleeding profusely from his torso. “Stand down,” the Queen ordered Rory.
The bandit shrugged. “I don’t want to,” he said, and drove downward with his sword, pushed Tylan downward, shoved the sword right on through into the sand. By the time the motion was done, Zanna’s spear was through his heart. The Queen knocked the bandit through the grass and off his feet. Rory, the bandit leader, was dead before his head hit the ground.
She stood over Tylan for a moment, as the prisoners were dropped into the bottom of their grounded boat. She didn’t have time for emotions about it; she felt them, she tucked them away, and she moved on. The battle of Kykai was inevitable now. She would imprison as many of these men as she could. Bandits killed people—they’d killed Tylan—and Zanna would not resort to their depths.
They boarded the skiff. Zanna sat beside Tylan’s body the whole way back. It would not make it back to Tal’lashar—she’d have her people build a pyre at the camp. They left Rory and the other dead bandit on the beach where they had died.