Scarlet and the White Wolf, #1 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Scarlet and the White Wolf

  Scarlet

  Liall

  A Restless Night

  Soldier of the Vine

  Peysho’s Story

  Grandma Goes Up the Mountain

  The Wolf’s Clothing

  Shadow of the Past

  Two Coins

  Fate Dealer

  Two Paths

  Volkovoi

  Into the North

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, including the right of reproduction in whole or part in any form.

  DIGITAL EDITION

  Cover Art by Analise Dubner

  Editor: Reya Starck

  The Pedlar and the Bandit King, Book One of Scarlet and the White Wolf

  Copyright © 2005 by Kirby Crow

  Copyright © 2015 Bonecamp Books (revised edition)

  Scarlet and the White Wolf

  Book One:

  The Pedlar and the Bandit King

  Kirby Crow

  CHAPTER INDEX

  SCARLET

  Liall

  A Restless Night

  Soldier of the Vine

  Peysho’s Story

  Grandma Goes Up the Mountain

  Wolf’s Clothing

  Shadow of the Past

  Two Coins

  Fate Dealer

  Two Paths

  Volkovoi

  Into the North

  About the Author

  Scarlet

  AUTUMN, THE MONTH OF Ashes.

  THE SERPENT BANNER of Om-Ret fluttered over the great souk of Ankar, crowning the jumbled din of camels, horses, men, slaves, tinkers, dogs, whores, hawkers, cutpurses, soldiers, and merchants with a constant flapping sound like the wings of gulls. Scarlet, son of Scaja, swiped at the gritty red dust on his brow and surveyed the colorful row of furled ribbons the tradeswoman had laid out for him.

  “For your wife, little Byzan?” she asked him coyly, her golden eyes glittering above her embroidered veil. Here, far north of Byzantur, all Morturii men and women who were not soldiers or whores hid their faces behind layers of filmy gauze or bright-colored cotton or jeweled silk. Scarlet was not Morturii and hid nothing.

  “Sister,” he answered shortly, and pointed to the red ribbons. “The blue and green, too, and a yard of the white silk and a yard of the green,” he added, mentally wincing at the price. The woman bowed as he paid her with half of a silver sellivar. He collected his package and left, threading his way through the crowded, stinking alleys of the marketplace. Avid seagulls, fresh from feeding on entrails thrown from the many fishing vessels swarming the glittering bay, swooped low over the crowds. One black-winged gull darted past him, wings slashing, and stole a fragment of flesh from a meat-sellers stall.

  “Greedy!” the man cried, shaking his fist after the departing bird.

  Scarlet came to the Street of Doves and Flowers and pursed his mouth in distaste, for he disliked having to take this route. He navigated his way past a noisy ghilan, a two-story dwelling whose function was made known by the series of carved frescoes that depicted a young, shapely woman being chased through a lush forest by an armored Morturii soldier. The soldier pursued her through various stages of undress, with the last panel culminating in him mounting her thighs amid a flowering field.

  Next on the street was a bhoros house, constructed almost identically to the white-walled ghilan, with doorways tiled in blue and fine bronze screens guarding all the windows. The only difference between the houses was the subject of their graphic frescoes. Before the street opened up into the wide main avenue of the souk, Scarlet averted his eyes from a marble panel depicting a laughing young man sprawled on his back in the grass, a lean soldier kneeling over him, both of them very bare.

  Scarlet came upon a kneeling Fate with eyes like two raisins pinned on a shrunken apple; all he could see of her behind her veil. The crone extended her wizened hand to him.

  “Read your fate, red-coat?”

  He shook his head and went on, intent on making his way back to Masdren’s stall. Morturii, the land of metal and magic, abounded in soothsayers, seers, fate dealers, and crones. They were almost as prevalent as the blacksmiths, armorers, and master weapon-smiths, and in some parts, the land was under a permanent pall of black smoke from the smithies.

  A pair of long-knives hanging in a corner smithy caught Scarlet’s eye, and he stopped to admire them with frank longing. Like all Morturii weapons, the knives had smooth hafts made of spun wire. The blades themselves were black as jet. Inscribed on the blades were many curling designs of leaves, trees, human faces in torment, and stretched, eviscerated animal bodies, all swirling together in finely-etched silver lines to form a depiction of Deva’s creation of the world. The weapons were ugly and terribly beautiful at the same time, and Scarlet lingered to stare as the foot-traffic flowed around him.

  The burly Morturii smith stirred from his forge and pointed. “Ye want try ‘em out?” he asked in poor Bizye.

  After a long moment, Scarlet shook his head. He did, but he could never afford the smith’s price.

  “He’ll take them,” said a familiar voice.

  Scarlet turned and frowned at Masdren. “I will not,” he said in Falx, the local language. His accent was flawless. “Sit down, blacksmith. I don’t have that much silver.”

  “But I do.” Masdren nodded at the smith. Masdren was a black-haired Byzan as well, one of perhaps a hundred in all of Ankar, and much older than Scarlet. “Wrap them up. Never mind the sheaths; I’ve got better in my shop.”

  Scarlet opened his mouth to protest and Masdren put a restraining hand on his arm. “How many summers have you worked for me in the souk, lad? Four at last count? And your dad is still one of my best friends. Take the knives. I know you know how to use them, and I want Scaja to see his son again.”

  “But I don’t want—”

  “Do as you’re told, boy.”

  Though he knew Masdren was being kind, Scarlet felt his tenuous hold on his volatile temper slipping. The roads in Morturii were safe enough, but he was headed home for Byzantur on foot. Many a young man or woman who traveled a Byzantur road alone often wound up as chained work-slaves for sale in Minh. More infrequently —depending on their beauty—they woke up from a drugged stupor as painted and perfumed bhoros boys or ghilan girls, sold into whoredom by any of a dozen slave brokers who eked a steady living from the southern roads.

  Rannon, the lean and soft-spoken karwaneer who had led Scarlet’s first caravan, had taught him the art of knives. Although Scarlet was no warrior, he could run swift as a deer and possessed an almost uncanny sense of direction. A foot-traveling pedlar’s life was best paced slow and steady, but sometimes the only hope he had was to run like Deva’s imps were after him. He was marked for luck: born with only four fingers on his left hand, a sign of Deva’s favor. Running had saved his life more than once.

  The smith was holding the cloth-wrapped pair of knives o
ut to Scarlet, and Masdren was reaching for his pouch to pay. Scarlet watched as Masdren counted out forty sellivar, almost half a year’s pay for a pedlar, and he found himself ducking his head sullenly to thank him. He would have preferred to buy his own weapons, but Masdren was his elder, so he bit his lip and thought of how disgraced Scaja would be if he lost his temper in public again. His black moods and immodest speech had caused his father enough embarrassment over the years. The fact that Masdren was one of Scaja’s oldest friends helped to restrain him, but he sometimes resented this man’s ability to make him feel like an unruly boy in need of a good dressing-down.

  The aged leathersmith waved Scarlet’s thanks away. “None of that. Come on, I’ll walk you to the walls.” He was a big man compared to most Hilurin, black-haired and very pale-skinned like all those who belonged to the First People, and with large, ink-dark eyes, shiny as obsidian.

  They stopped at Masdren’s shop and the leathersmith sent one of his many boisterous children for Scarlet’s walking stick and a pair of tool-worked leather sheaths, black to match the knives. They were indeed far better than the ones at the blacksmith’s stall. Masdren was a master.

  “These are too fine,” Scarlet said as a last protest, and Masdren smiled ruefully and pushed them into his hands. Masdren shooed his children back to their work and took Scarlet’s arm to steer him to the gates as if he, too, were five years old.

  They were challenged briefly at the city’s high, stone walls, but it was perfunctory. The bored, leather-armored bravos scratched themselves and swatted at flies as they let the pair of foreigners through the gaping iron teeth of the massive gate into the flat, brown lands surrounding the port city. To the east was the wide Channel, its white-capped blue waters sparkling in the sun. A thin breeze of cooling air carried the taste of salt.

  Masdren made him a final gift of a pair of storm-gray leather gloves, custom-fitted to accommodate his left hand with its missing fifth finger. Again, Scarlet’s thanks were deflected gently.

  “What will you do when you get home?” Masdren asked.

  Scarlet sighed and shot him a tired, affectionate look. “You know I won’t stay there for long.”

  “When did you ever? No, I’m only asking because I want you to think about working for me permanent next year, not just the summer.”

  Scarlet hesitated, surprised by the proposal. “You want me to move to Ankar? Make it my home?”

  Masdren’s mood suddenly changed. He fidgeted. “It would be best,” he said, averting his eyes. “I didn’t want to worry you, but the news from Byzantur is bad: more Hilurin families killed, farms razed to the ground, cattle stolen, wells poisoned. There’s been talk of public burnings, too, and worse.” He looked at Scarlet with large eyes. “Much worse. If you can, convince Scaja to bring your mother and sister out before it’s too late.”

  Scarlet shook his head. “He will never leave Lysia. I know he won’t.” Scaja was a stubborn man and Scarlet’s second mother, Linhona, had already lost one family to Minh raiders. She had lived in an eastern settlement of Byzantur above the marshy lands known as the Fens, far closer to Minh than Lysia was. She would not want to leave her beloved adopted home, no matter how great the danger.

  “He has to,” Masdren said urgently. “Oh Deva, does he want to die? Do you? For the god’s sake, leave Byzantur while you can. You’ll never be able to hide what you are with that face, nor will Annaya or Scaja or Linhona. You’re all Hilurin to the bone and they’ll kill you for it.”

  Scarlet was alarmed, but some part of him still refused to believe that his own countrymen had turned so completely against them. Surely something would happen, someone in power would intervene, and the fighting would stop soon? “The Flower Prince...” he began.

  “The yeva bilan can’t stop what’s happening,” Masdren finished. “He’s offered to step down.”

  Scarlet was dismayed. The Hilurin were a dying race outnumbered fifty to one by the Aralyrin in Byzantur, yet the only men of any power in the governing palace at Rusa were pure Hilurin, a thing that had garnered enormous resentment among the Aralyrin population. There had been a failed military coup last year, brought on by dissension in the army ranks, and it was then that talk began of electing a non-Hilurin for yeva bilan next term.

  “The Flower Prince has been Hilurin for the past two thousand years,” Scarlet said, shaken. It was a requirement, for the sacred legends taught that if the deified prince was not pure-blooded First People, he would not have the ancient Gift and Deva would not speak to him. Few remembered this except the priests of Deva and the Hilurin themselves. “What’ll happen to us when they find out that the goddess only answers the Hilurin?”

  Masdren only stared at him sadly, and did not reply. Scarlet found himself mumbling a promise to send word of his decision and to see Masdren next spring, at the very least.

  The elder left him in the busy thoroughfare outside the walls, and Scarlet stood there for a little while after. The long road home would take him nearly ten days on foot, and he was not sure he was ready to begin. Passersby saw little to remark on: a slight Byzan youth of about seventeen with the beardless, flower-pale face of a Hilurin, black hair, and black eyes. If they were asked later to describe him, they would have remembered that he wore the long crimson coat of a pedlar with its characteristic broad hood, and that his face was very fair to look on, his features both delicate and masculine with a subtlety of secrets about the eyes. As Hilurin were a very handsome race and beauty was not uncommon among them, looks alone could not distinguish him, but the crimson coat would.

  To see a Hilurin at all outside of Byzantur was a rarity, for they were, on the whole, a secretive, withdrawn folk, and a bold traveling pedlar with a Hilurin face would most certainly be noticed.

  Scarlet frowned and sourly eyed the crowded southern path that would take him eventually to the Common Road and home. The winding road looped over the rocky hills as far as he could see, vanishing at last over a black knoll that hid the rising smoke from the city of Sondek. There were a few battered wagons outlined on the horizon, reminding him that there would be Kasiri bands as thick as flies on the road. There would also be slavers, Bledlanders, bandits, and just plain rogues bent on whatever ill deeds kept their bellies fed and their hands to mischief. It would be a long and tiring trek.

  The sound of his father’s voice, brittle with disapproval, echoed in his mind: This is no life for a proper Hilurin.

  Not being a true warrior, Scarlet had no defense against slavers, other than to be swift and on his guard. The trick with Kasiri was not to be too much of a temptation. A pedlar’s long red coat was known everywhere, and it was a lure to some. For the most part, the nomadic Kasiri tribes roamed the southern roads between Lysia and Rusa, and were shunned by all and welcome nowhere. They were petty thieves and cheap charlatans, dirty and underhanded and sly, and there was not a town or city in the whole continent where they were not despised. But even jackals had their good qualities, and no one had ever heard of a Kasiri gypsy taking slaves, though they would take anything else not nailed down.

  “It’s my life and I’ll do as I please with it,” Scarlet muttered resentfully, feeling once again like a scolded child. “No one pens me in.” So saying, he gripped his walking stick firmly, adjusted his leather satchel higher on his shoulder, and started off.

  TO SCARLET’S SURPRISE, it was not a Kasiri who menaced him eight days later on the lonely riverside road outside of Sondek, but a grizzled Bled. The fierce, bearded warrior eyed Scarlet as he walked by on the rocky path, and Scarlet’s hand tightened on his leather pack and he fretted at the thought of the good pouch of silver coins hidden in his belt.

  The Bledlander’s excellent knives and the ragged scars covering his bare chest recommended him as a skilled fighter, and Scarlet got a good look at both before giving the man a cursory nod and hurrying past. The spot between his shoulder blades tingled as he left the Bledlander behind, but he resisted the urge to look back. The Bled were like d
ogs: show them an ounce of fear and they’d be all over you.

  For Scarlet, who was a skilled woodsman and had no fear of beasts, bad weather, or hunger, survival depended mostly on his wits and his ability to outrun those predators who went on two legs instead of four. The Bled might give him some trouble in that quarter.

  He itched to look back at the Bled as he continued to walk at a brisk pace, his legs moving tirelessly beneath him. There had been trouble between the lawless Bledlands and Byzantur all season, and it was a lean year; the roads filled with hungry men. He took no chances and looked back a minute or so later, only to see the warrior had vanished. His heart gave a little jolt, and a quick glance to the stand of spare cedars to the west showed him a glimpse of tall shadow slinking behind a tree. It was all the warning he needed.

  He took off like a rabbit and left the skulking Bledlander in the dust, silently thanking Deva for her gifts. If she had taken the littlest finger of his left hand before he was born, she had made up for it by giving him two good legs. He did not mind never having the finger, honestly, though it did make his left hand too slender for any normal glove to fit, since the long bone that ran from the wrist to the knuckle was gone, too.

  With the Bledlander far behind him, Scarlet slowed to a trot until he neared the turnoff to the Patra Ferry. He halted in the middle of the road, his hands on his hips, and caught his breath while he thought. The air had cooled, hinting of the mild winter season that was almost upon them. He fished a furled apple from his pack and bit into it with strong white teeth as he pondered his options. Walking all the way home presented problems: he was tiring from his run and would be less able to run again if more trouble presented itself. If he took a ship down the river all the way to Tradepoint, he would shorten his journey and avoid any further trouble on the road, but he was equally likely to run into slavers or bandit boats on the water.