by Ben Galley
Farden submersed himself again.
Water.
CHAPTER 30
BETRAYAL’S TOLL
There will always be war. So long as man has more or less than his neighbour, there will be war.
EASTEREALM PROVERB
Crimson wine splashed the golden sands at Irien’s feet.
‘To Haspha, goddess of magick,’ Belerod intoned.
From every damn glass of wine, he spilled a little to the earth for the goddess. It was a waste, and as he grew drunker, the offerings came closer to splashing her. The warlord was toasting his new additions, as saturated as the red sand.
‘As I was saying, you’ve done well, Lady Irien,’ Belerod continued over the braying of the bowed lutes and chatter of other courtiers. A sickle of moon put a sheen to Belerod’s already shining scalp. ‘You shall be handsomely rewarded when we march north. Lands in Lezembor. Caskets of gold.’
A knight bustled from between the silk-clad crowd to interrupt. ‘An envoy approaches from the coast, my Lord Belerod. They are of the northern fleet our spies spotted.’
Belerod dismissed him with a wave. ‘They shall not bother me tonight! Tonight is for celebration.’ He took a swig of his wine, dribbling a good deal of it in his beard. ‘You spoke truthfully. They are tight-knit exactly as you described. Friends true and all. The fools. Compassion is a weakness in war, Lady Irien, as I am sure you understand,’ he said in his usual practical tone. The only emotions the man seemed to understand was victory and anger.
‘War is business,’ Irien answered with a broad smile. She felt Belerod’s stare upon her as she watched the soldiers continue trying to pick up the minotaur’s hammer. Most curiously, the golem refused to touch it. Haunted, they called it. Beyond their game, the dragon crouched and smouldered in her cage. Her blue scales appeared silver at night. Nothing broke her stare. Not a burst of flame from the fire-eaters. Not any of the braying laughter from the courtiers. She watched Belerod with a predator’s focus.
‘How pleased I am that our paths crossed. A highly profitable encounter for both of us, I would wager. I have new weapons for the war, and you have successfully avoided Golikar’s wrath. I confess, I doubted your intentions at first and suspected a trick. But I see a fellow soul of practicality in you. As you said,’ he chuckled. ‘Business.’
Irien raised her wine. ‘Business.’
She held her smile as long as she could while she got to her feet. ‘Even the nights here are too hot for me, it seems! I believe I’ll take a walk to shake some of the sand from me and find a breeze.’
‘I see.’ Belerod watched her over his flute of wine. Irien bowed deeply, bade goodnight, and walked slowly through the crowds, even pausing to speak her wishes to others she knew amongst the court.
Irien made sure to drift past Fleetstar’s cage as she wandered into the night of campfires and noise. Irien did not break pace; Belerod’s gaze burned in the back of her skull.
The dragon shifted her enormous eyes only momentarily, long enough to murmur, ‘Traitor,’ before Irien was out of earshot.
‘What are you doing?’ Mithrid had grown bored of the silence.
Farden had been propped at the corner of his bars since sunset. ‘Watching. Waiting.’
‘Waiting for what?’
‘Currently? An end to these questions,’ Farden said with a sharp look.
The vampyre appeared lost without his books. Weakened without feeding, it seemed. Durnus’ grey skin looked clammy and his eyes were raw from the sun. He sat in the cell diagonally from Mithrid, dejected and slumped, yet breathing hard as if he simmered with outrage. They couldn’t exactly ask for a fresh body for the vampyre. The food on his plate had gone uneaten until Warbringer snuffled it up.
‘What’s the plan?’ she asked him.
‘Up to Farden,’ he growled. ‘Dragonfire and swift feet, I presume. Otherwise, Belerod will take us back north, or Malvus will come for us, and all of this effort will be for nothing.’
‘Out of the question,’ Farden said. ‘This is now the final stretch. A race to Gunnir. Loki knows we are close. I won’t let him swoop in like the vulture he is.’
Mithrid had given their plight plenty of thought. She counted each problem on her fingers. ‘But Belerod has our weapons, the Grimsayer, and map. The inkweld fell to the sand and might be lost or stolen. And not to mention, the cursed keys were in Durnus’ satchel! What if Loki has already—’
The mage looked smug.
‘What?’
Farden hooked a thumb beneath the collar of his armour and hooked out a thin chain. Crystal, bone, and obsidian poked above the gold metal.
‘You bastard!’ Durnus snapped, angrier than Mithrid expected. His fangs were proud in his snarl. He rattled his iron bars. ‘I have been torturing myself thinking they were lost, broken by the knights!’
Farden looked at him, abruptly concerned. ‘I took them out of your satchel when Mithrid came rolling back down that sand dune. I can’t tell you how oddly heavy and uncomfortable they are.’
As Durnus slowly fell back to his arse, she pressed them harder. ‘Our weapons and the inkweld are still a problem.’
‘Full of problems and no solutions. Come on, Mithrid, what do you propose? You fought in the siege just as we did.’
‘Durnus uses a shield spell, we crouch behind Fleetstar and dash into the night.’
Farden and Durnus shook their heads. ‘How far would we get, with the whole camp behind us and a wounded dragon that can’t fly? Unless you plan to burn another fifty thousand men and women just because they’re in your way.’
‘Seems like a plan you’d be all for,’ Mithrid hissed. His doubt and lack of trust were not just grating, they were becoming insulting. The Forever King’s glamour had dulled to rust and dirt.
‘Durnus is weakened, as am I. These bars would take some fire to break through. The guards, what few there are, would notice.’
‘So… what? How do we escape? Or have you given up?’
‘We need be sneaky,’ grunted Warbringer, doing foul business in the corner of her cage that none of them dared look or sniff at.
‘Warbringer is right,’ said Farden. ‘That’s why we wait.’
‘Some race,’ Mithrid huffed. Patience was a skill she hadn’t trained in. She tried to copy the vampyre’s cross-legged approach, eyes half-closed in meditation and calm breath. She lasted moments before being distracted by passing guards. Braziers burned around cages as if they were quarantined. The light hid the tents beyond.
‘I don’t know how you do it,’ she confessed.
‘Imagine a battle in your mind. That is how I passed the time in the cages of my past. Imagined every slash and dodge, different ways to catch a man off-guard and spill his insides. Your muscles might be shackled but your mind is not.’
Mithrid nodded. She had done plenty of that since the fight with Malvus. But before she could imagine three different ways of ramming a sword down his throat, Farden hissed something she couldn’t make out.
‘And it seems we do not have to wait long,’ muttered the vampyre.
‘About time,’ Farden hissed.
The hooded figure walked the murk between the pools of brazier light. The shaded tent kept the moon and firelight from them. Noises of dancing and songs kept the soldiers distracted. Belerod was so confident in his bars and his mastery of his captives, he hadn’t set much of a guard. It felt the perfect trap, but Farden had seen the victory smirk on the warlord’s hairy face. That kind of man was drunk on success.
‘If it isn’t the Lady of Whispers?’ he greeted her, arms crossed and voice a whisper.
Irien paused to stare at him in the half-light of the flames. ‘You look… older, Farden. Years looked like they’ve passed you by, not a week and more. What has the road done to you?’
‘Just a few bruises and cuts, is all. And if you came here to insult me instead of to explain yourself, then you can turn around right now and fuck off somewhere else.’
&nb
sp; Irien pressed herself up against the bars to meld with their shadow. Farden stepped away. Mithrid and Durnus stood, like a haughty council for Irien to appeal to, despite the fact she only looked to the mage.
‘After we fled Dathazh, I came south. Like I said, I had plenty of whispers to sell in Lezembor. I was on the cusp of the city when Belerod’s caravan crossed my path. He and I have had dealings over artefacts in the past. He’d no doubt seen me with you, and as such, asked if the Lady of Whispers knew of a way to get an audience with you. A meeting, is what he called it.’ Irien winced as she heard her own words aloud. ‘I didn’t expect him to do this.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘Your names and of your homes. Nothing of this quest you seem to have survived. Only that there was a likelihood of you coming south.’
‘How did you know?’ Mithrid chipped in.
‘I didn’t. A guess that I thought could buy me into his good graces while I found more ways to leverage enough gold to either stay on the winning side of this war, or avoid it altogether. I know a lot of the north’s secrets. And you can wipe that look off your faces. I left a lot of my wealth behind because of you.’
‘Because of an agreement you proposed,’ Farden corrected her. ‘What? Didn’t you have enough of the dragon in Dathazh?’
‘I swear to you, Belerod said nothing of his plans! And now it seems I am a prisoner of his also. An advisor, at least until it suits him to get rid of me. You and I are in the same position.’
Mithrid snorted in disbelief. ‘Yet you’re the one on that side of the cage.’
‘For now.’
Farden let her conscience eat away at her, what little she had of one. Self-preservation drove her, no doubt. He had hoped for more, and as such, he let her stew. Petty, perhaps, or the only chip he had to bargain with.
‘So are you going to let us out of here or what?’ he grunted at last.
Irien tutted. ‘Of course. I was beginning to wonder if you wanted to argue all night.’
But she didn’t move, merely looking to the north and muttered to herself.
‘What in Hel are you doing?’
‘Hush, mage. All will become apparent momentarily.’
Irien didn’t finish her sentence before a fountain of white sparks shone over the faraway peaks of the tents. Hot sparks, palm-wood, and canvas never mixed well, especially in desert climes. Shouts of danger chased the whooping of drunken soldiers as the flames crawled up the palms and turned their leaves to torches. Tents began to crackle.
‘That’s the problem with these southerners,’ Irien said, her face orange in the light of the flames that now billowed. ‘They enjoy mixing all kinds of magick powders and tinctures together to see what happens. Sometimes, or so they whisper, an accident or two can happen.’
‘Where are you going?’ hissed Farden. Irien strode away as if her work was done.
A flood of soldiers swarmed past the other side of the cages. Golden knights surrounded Lord Belerod as he came to check upon his prizes before rushing on to the fire. Farden and the others shrugged or waved nonchalantly, not having to pretend they were innocent. Irien had thought this through.
As soon as Belerod had passed, Irien was back at the bars with hands full of gold cloaks. She slid a thin and serrated blade from the wrist of her wooden arm. The Lady of Whispers was full of all kinds of surprises.
The cages each had four locks of varying sizes spread across their latches. It seemed the Lady of Whispers was not unused to picking locks, either. She poked the blade into the keyholes of each one and worked away until they came apart with reticent clanks. It took far too long for Farden’s liking, even with Warbringer snapping one lock from her cage with her bare hands.
As soon as each door was open, some inner mechanism clunked free, and the doors of the cages opened in clockwise order. Ingenious, but Farden had no time to marvel. He was first from his prison, and he wasted not a second in seizing Irien by the throat. The mage pressed her against the iron, and squeezed just enough to let her know this was not for show.
‘You give me one reason not to snap your neck for your betrayal right now.’
Irien’s eyes flared, not afraid and far from angry. Almost daring him. ‘Belerod tricked me just the same.’ She thrust her chin out. ‘And because I know you’re done with killing, Farden. I can see it in your eyes. Even in the Scarlet Tourney you had no taste for it. You couldn’t kill Tartavor for his trickery and you won’t kill me for an honest mistake.’
Farden could see Mithrid in his peripheries, watching and listening intently. Though he let Irien go from his fist, he leaned closer to her, almost touching noses. ‘Fail to get us out of here, and I might show you how wrong you are.’
A dark shadow came over them as Warbringer loomed. ‘If I may?’ she asked, before brushing Farden aside with her big paw. She also seized Irien, and she had no qualms about throttling the woman. Warbringer lifted her three feet off the sand and slammed her against the iron. Irien croaked and pried ineffectively at the minotaur’s thick mitts.
‘Warbringer…’
Her question was simple. ‘Where is my Voidaran?’
Irien couldn’t so much answer as point and pat her with assurance. She was dropped to the ground and left to sprawl against the bars. ‘Well, that’s one experience I never expected to have,’ she rasped.
Farden scoffed. ‘And if you don’t want to see what comes after, I’d get moving.’
Irien flashed him a hurt look, but she led them on all the same, at first, along with the bustle of soldiers to the fire that had set the palm trees on fire, and then, curving back around to the court of Belerod. Hoods up and looking precisely more or less like Khandri and Hasp soldiers, nobody gave them a second look, even the hulk of the minotaur, swaddled under four cloaks.
Belerod had not yet returned, and it looked as though plenty of his courtiers had scurried after him. The remaining few dozen were too drunk, fat, or lazy to follow. To Farden’s fury, Belerod had parked Fleetstar’s caged wagon directly in front of his dais. Handfuls of the rich folk stepped around Fleetstar’s bars, daring themselves closer while the dragon whipped her tail against the iron and snarled. They would giggle and whoop and skip away in their fright.
One skipped right into Farden’s armoured fist.
The man fell away, his nose mashed into his bloody face and mouth too full of loose teeth to scream. The rest fled before the imposing silhouette of Warbringer. She took one look at the game being played with her hammer by the drunken soldiers and began to charge. She didn’t stop until she had swept Voidaran into her hands and swung it directly through Belerod’s map table. The wood exploded under the force, as did one soldier who unfortunately chose to cower instead of run.
Their weapons and belongings were spread across another table like spoils of war. Mithrid seized her axe and held it close before fighting for the satchel with Durnus. The vampyre snatched it away, pawing within before letting out an enraged bark.
‘The inkweld is gone!’ he cried.
‘I told you!’ Mithrid hissed. They must have left it behind in the desert.’
At least the Grimsayer remained, sat open and still. Belerod had clearly not been smart enough to figure its value. The purple elvish tome was shown the light.
‘How are we going to find the others?’
‘Another bridge to cross at a later hour!’ Farden yelled back.
While he reached for Loki’s knife, one of the Khandri swords lying forgotten nearby caught his eye: the ones shaped like a question mark. The blade had an impeccable balance and finer steel than his borrowed Cathak swords. He hooked it over his shoulder and yelled to the others. Their definition of sneaky had changed somewhat; the camp was already in uproar.
‘Help me get this cage open, Warbringer!’
‘No!’ Irien hissed.
‘What do you mean?’ snarled Fleetstar.
‘The whole camp is abuzz with the idea of a caged dragon in their midst, but to see
one strolling between the tents is another thing altogether. We keep you in the cage until the edge of the camp.’
Fleetstar cursed in guttural dragonspeak but otherwise pressed herself against the bars as Warbringer picked up the yoke of her wagon and heaved. Her hooves dug troughs in the sand, but the brute force of Warbringer got the wagon to gather momentum and begin rattling south. Not for the first time on this accursed quest, Farden found himself thanking his stars for a minotaur.
None of the passing soldiers and camp slaves did more than gawp at the passing dragon and nudge their comrades as they sprinted to the fire. It seemed Irien’s distraction had caused quite the blaze. She must have guessed Farden’s thoughts as he stared over his shoulder, for she shrugged.
‘All of Golikar is out for your blood, say the whispers that come down from the north. The seas are full of Golikan ships looking for a minotaur and a red-gold man.’
Farden held his tongue.
‘What is it you’re chasing, I wonder? What is worth so much that you would have the entire Easterealm up in arms just to get to it?’ Irien asked. Again, as Farden clung to silence, she pressed him. ‘Is it something to do with her? Mithrid?’
That got his attention. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She’s got a fire in her, more than I ever saw in Vensk. You, however, keep checking her with every other look, making sure she’s nearby. You look… scared of her, Farden. What happened between you two?’
‘Nothing I care to repeat or speculate about. All that matters is the present and getting out of here. Going to find the forge of Ivald…’ Farden bit his tongue as they passed another hurrying patrol. Irien bid some Khandri greeting to them and waved a hand at the fire.
‘Did you say Ivald?’ Irien said, seizing him by the hand.
‘Why?’ Farden could see Durnus had heard them, hovering close. ‘Have you heard of the clan of Ivald?’
‘Ivald wasn’t a clan. He was an elf. The elf who forged the Allfather’s mighty spear. The same spear the Allfather later gifted to Sigrimur when he was a man, only to then betray him by killing him and turning his flesh to stone. What most don’t know is that Ivald was Sigrimur’s father. That’s why some of the oldest songs paint Sigrimur as half-elf. Even part of his name, imur, used to mean elf in some dialects. That is the truth only we ancestors are told—’