Three Axes to Fall, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Sam Sykes
Cover design by Lauren Panepinto
Cover illustration by Jeremy Wilson
Cover copyright © 2022 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Map by Tim Paul
Author photograph by Libbi Rich
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sykes, Sam, 1984– author. | Paul, Tim, cartographer.
Title: Three axes to fall / Sam Sykes ; [Map by Tim Paul].
Description: First edition. | New York : Orbit, 2022. | Series: The Grave of Empires ; book 3
Identifiers: LCCN 2022007652 | ISBN 9780316363525 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780316363532 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3619.Y545 T57 2022 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022007652
ISBNs: 9780316363525 (trade paperback), 9780316363532 (ebook)
E3-20221029-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
For Those Returning to the Scar…
One: The Scar
Two: The Scar
Three: The Scar
Four: The Scar
Five: The Scar
Six: Six Walls
Seven: New Vigil
Eight: The Scar
Nine: Ocytus Outskirts
Ten: Ocytus
Eleven: Central Ocytus
Twelve: Elsewhere
Thirteen: Ocytus
Fourteen: Ocytus
Fifteen: Ocytus Outskirts
Sixteen: Booty Haul
Seventeen: Booty Haul
Eighteen: Booty Haul
Nineteen: New Vigil
Twenty: The Scar
Twenty-One: Bitterdrink
Twenty-Two: Bitterdrink
Twenty-Three: Toadback
Twenty-Four: Toadback
Twenty-Five: Elsewhere
Twenty-Six: Toadback
Twenty-Seven: Toadback
Twenty-Eight: New Vigil
Twenty-Nine: The Nails
Thirty: The Nails
Thirty-One: The Nails
Thirty-Two: New Vigil
Thirty-Three: New Vigil
Thirty-Four: New Vigil
Thirty-Five: New Vigil
Thirty-Six: New Vigil
Thirty-Seven: New Vigil
Thirty-Eight: New Vigil
Thirty-Nine: New Vigil
Forty: New Vigil
Forty-One: New Vigil
Forty-Two: New Vigil
Forty-Three: Elsewhere
Forty-Four: New Vigil
Forty-Five: New Vigil
Forty-Six: Elsewhere
Forty-Seven: New Vigil
Forty-Eight: New Vigil
Forty-Nine: New Vigil
Fifty: Elsewhere
Fifty-One: New Vigil
Fifty-Two: The Scar
Acknowledgments
Discover More
Meet the Author
Also by Sam Sykes
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FOR THOSE RETURNING TO THE SCAR…
All right, bear with me. A lot happened and not all of it is my fault. Just keep that in mind as we talk.
Some know me as a meddler, others as a bad dream, and a few as an excellent taste in whiskey. Sal the Cacophony. Vagrant. Oathbreaker. Wielder of the most terrible weapon in existence.
Pleased to meet you.
It wasn’t so long ago I went by another name, though. They called me Red Cloud. And my magic was like nothing the world had ever seen. Those I thought I could trust agreed—they stole my magic from me. And in exchange, I put all thirty-three of their names on a list and started looking for them.
I was doing fairly well at it, too.
Until I started a war.
Now, it’s not technically me that started the war. Or at least, I wasn’t the only one there.
I followed the name of one of my betrayers, Darrish the Flint, to the Borrus Valley: a cold little place where the Imperium and the Revolution, two nations with quite a lot of weaponry to spare, had designs on each other.
In the midst of my hunt, I was recruited into an operation for what I thought were noble purposes. Or, at least, purposes that were so self-serving that I wanted to call them noble.
Two Lonely Old Men, inventor and architect, plotted to hijack a great weapon from the Revolution’s legendary fleet of airships, the Ten Arrows. A suitably motley crew of colorful Vagrants and myself signed on for the plan. And, after a reasonable number of things going wrong, managed to make it onto the airship itself.
And that’s when I learned everything at once.
I learned Liette, the woman I couldn’t give up my revenge for, was aboard the airship and working with the Revolution to solve the mysteries of the great weapon we were there to steal.
I learned that Two Lonely Old Men had betrayed us all without knowing it and that what we did to the airships actually made them drop their bombs upon settlements, forcing an Imperial retaliation.
And I also learned that Culven Loyal, one of the most trusted and powerful lieutenants of the Revolution, was actually an otherworldly being inhabiting a husk of a human.
That seems important to note.
The weapon itself turned out to be the prison of another such being, a Scrath. Rather than allow Loyal to devour it, it chose to inhabit the closest vessel to hide in.
Liette.
We survived the airship. We escaped the Valley. But we couldn’t stop the war.
And now she and I make our way across the Scar, trailed by the ruin of the war as we head east, trying to escape the conflict and find a way to get the Scrath out of Liette before Loyal finds us.
Or before the war consumes us.
Or before the thing inside her assumes control of her.
Or before the—
Actually, maybe I’d better just stop there. This is getting a little depressing.
ONE
THE SCAR
Ozhma was not having a good day.
The inn had been out of breakfast potatoes. She’d had to change a wagon wheel an hour out of town. And now she was being asked to prevent thousands from dying needlessly in a hellstorm of flame and fury.
She hadn’t even worn the right shoes for it.
Her nice little red boots were made for dazzling buyers, charming customers, and not—as she specifically said when she joined Avonin & Family Whiskeymakers—trekking her magnificent ass up an incredibly steep cliff.
Maybe not specifically, but she was sure that cliffs were covered in the reasonably long list of places she would not haul her ass. But then, she reasoned, she was pretty sure she’d never have agreed to be escorted up a cliff by the threat of painful death should she not.
“Listen, you want to sit still back there?”
And yet…
She glowered up from beneath her hat—her very, very sweaty hat—at the back of the man’s messy head of hair. Man was as close a descriptor as she could decide on for him—he was male, tall, and with the lean fighting muscle she liked so well, but the rest of him was a mystery.
His clothes were an ill-fitting shirt and baggy trousers, cinched in some vague attempt at the Imperial style by a thick cloth sash. An immense amount of skin, marred by scars and a tattoo of a thick tree trunk, was on display—which she didn’t mind—but his long brown hair was a greasy mess, a match for his stubble-caked face—which she did mind.
He looked like a bandit. She’d have been happy to call him one. But bandits rarely smelled so strongly of silkgrass, and the pipe dangling from his lip positively reeked. And no bandit she had ever heard of carried a thick piece of wood at their hip instead of a sword.
“Not to complain or anything.” The man exhaled a cloud of smoke that coiled over the crown of his head to blow back into her face. “Actually, a lot of people—including me—are going to die if you fuck this up. So I guess I do mean to complain a little.”
“Wow, what amazing advice,” Ozhma replied, her breath heavy with nerves. “This entire time, I’ve been wondering what I could possibly do to make your life easier.” She glowered at the back of his head as hard as she could—he couldn’t see it, but she damn well hoped he would feel it. “Need I remind you, sir, that I am doing a service for you.”
“You’re doing it because we’re dead if you don’t.”
“That doesn’t make it not a service. And, if you hadn’t noticed”—she gestured to her own short, chubby, and impeccably dressed self—“I’m not particularly built for this.”
“I had noticed, actually.” He struggled to cast a glare over his shoulder at her. Which, considering their position, was difficult. “Why the fuck do you think I agreed to carry you? Your perfume isn’t that nice.”
Ozhma furrowed her brow. “It’s not like I enjoy this, either. I left a lot—and I must stress a lot—of whiskey back with my wagon that I would hate to lose while I’m doing this favor for you.”
“I told you I’m good to cover whatever you lose.” The man snorted twin plumes of smoke out his nostrils. “Your war profiteering won’t suffer.”
Despite everything else about him, Ozhma had actually been rather close to liking him before he said that. But the words did not so much cut her as fashion themselves into a huge fucking axe and embed themselves in her back.
It wasn’t the first time she’d been accused of that. How could it be? Once the Borrus Valley exploded, the rest of the Scar wasn’t far behind. There wasn’t a freehold, a town, a hamlet, or even a fucking hovel between here and the Valley that hadn’t been wracked by the Imperium’s and Revolution’s latest cock-measuring contest.
Nor was there anything new about that. Being crushed between the two powers was something every Scarfolk expected.
Normally.
But that had been before. Before the Valley and the Ten Arrows. Before the Imperial retaliation. Before the Revolution started conscripting every civilian they could find and forcing them into battlefields their bones would decorate and before the Imperium started burying entire towns alive.
And normally, she could let his words slide.
Normally.
“NO!”
But not today.
Her hands curled into fists around his clothes. Her thighs squeezed around his middle. Her entire body shook so hard upon his back that he had to stop and find his footing again.
“Take it back,” she said.
“Huh?”
“I am not a war profiteer. Take it back.”
“Look, we don’t have—”
“Take it back,” she said, making to hop off of his back, “or I’ll leave. You can do whatever you want about that, but neither you nor I will go one step farther unless you take. That. Back.”
There were many, many important lessons one learned in the Scar and almost all of them revolved around not angering things that could kill you. Not angering a tall, muscular, drug-addled son of a bitch with a weapon was number six. But there were also many, many things a woman like Ozhma was ready to get angry over.
And one of those things was letting someone else tell her what she was.
“All right, fine. I take it back.” He sighed, adjusted her on his back. “You’re a fucking saint for doing this. I’ll erect a damn statue of you and tell my grandchildren of your grace. Fuck me, sorry.”
Ozhma beamed, her mouth falling open in delight. “I didn’t know you were a grandpa!”
“I’m not. Can we go?”
“Oh, sure.”
Immediately assuming someone’s sincerity was not necessarily a hard lesson she’d learned, but it just made her life a little easier and also he was a tall, muscular, drug-addled son of a bitch with a weapon.
“And not that I’m trying to bring it up again,” he said, “but there’s a lot riding on us getting to the top of this mountain soon, so I’ve got to ask… is there anything that would make it go faster?”
She paused, thinking. “I always find trips seem shorter with a little pleasant chatter.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Well, why not? You’re asking me to help with a task whose exact nature you can’t tell me but which has a lot riding on it. I can accept that, but it seems just plain rude for you to ask that of me and not even tell me your name.”
Ozhma had only recently been promoted to representative-at-large in the company, but she’d found a truth that spanned across the many townships and cities she’d visited: be it Revolutionary, Imperial, Haven, or worse, people bought things the same way. The currencies changed—sometimes it was whiskey, sometimes it was trust, sometimes it was patience she asked for—but the sale was always the same.
And it started the same way in the man’s bristly face. Reluctance melted away into a sigh of smoke and exhaustion and—dare she hope—just a little kindness.
“Rudu,” he said.
“There,” she began to say, “now—”
“Rudu the Cudgel.”
Her lips puckered as those last two words sank into her.
The Cudgel.
The tattoos. The weird clothes. The bizarre weapon.
Holy shit, she told herself as her eyes widened and her brow glistened, holy shit, he’s a fucking Vagrant.
“That make you nervous?” Rudu asked.
“NO, WHY WOULD IT?” Ozhma shouted nonchalantly.
“If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t be carrying you, would I?” He grunted, adjusted her on his back. “And if you didn’t want to hurt me, you could sit up a little, for fuck’s sake.”
“Right, I… I trust you,” she said and somehow believed it, a little. “It’s just… you weren’t kidding, were you?”
He took a deep drag of his pipe. “I wasn’t.”
“People are in danger?”
He held his breath. “They are.”
She swallowed, afraid to ask. “Vagrant danger?”
Rudu exhaled a shimmering cloud, pointed skyward with his chin. “What do you know about what’s on the other side of this cliff?”
She followed his gaze. The horizon of the Nails’ towering cliffs and mesas was stained dark here and there, the sound of distant earth shifting a bare whisper from this far away.
“It’s… New Vigil, right? The city?”
Rudu let out a bleak chuckle. “Yeah, it might have been that, at one point. Before people decided it was worth fighting over, anyway.”
Ozhma wrinkled her nose. “Fighting over? Really?” She glanced around the desolate cliffs. “Isn’t it out in the Nails? The place people very specifically avoid because it very plainly is not worth killing over?”
She herself had only traveled this close to the forsaken land because it cut a few hours off her journey. And because no one—a broad group including bandits, armies, and herself—thought it was worth fucking much. Ideal traveling, if you kept your eyes open.
“I didn’t say it was worth killing over.” He sucked on his pipe, let out a cloud of shimmering pink smoke. “I said it’s worth fighting over.”
Ozhma grimaced a little. “Uh, can you… maybe explain the difference?”
“Many years and wizard drugs ago, I could have.”
Ozhma’s chest tightened. She swallowed something bile-bitter. She tried to take a deep breath and tasted only the rancid reek of Rudu’s pipe smoke.
And for the first time since she’d taken this job, Ozhma began to think that, perhaps, things were getting out of hand.
It was a chilling thought. She hadn’t exactly lived a dangerous life—her parents had died horribly after she’d moved out, which by the standards of the Scar was considered lucky—but she’d never before felt that there was something she couldn’t handle. She’d learned how to run the family business, how to fend off debtors, how to stretch a piece of metal to its utmost limit, all before she was fifteen.
Honestly, even when her wagon had been stopped by a scruffy-looking weirdo who reeked of drugs and looked like he’d just mugged a beggar for his clothes, she hadn’t panicked. This was, after all, the same Ozhma who’d been waylaid by bandits three weeks ago and walked away having sold them some very fine whiskey and not had her head chopped off.
That was it, wasn’t it? she asked herself. That was the moment you thought you could handle anything, be it bandits or debtors or… or… Her eyes drifted toward Rudu. Or a fucking renegade mage high off his fucking ass on silkgrass asking you to handle a city—a whole fucking city—of people who are about to die and… and…
