The Towering Flame

by Robert I. Katz

  “Huh?” Terence said.

  “Am I nattering on? Forgive me. Occasionally, I let it my enthusiasm run away with me; a different sort of fanaticism, in its way.”

  Terence stared at him. “So,” the little man said. “Let me clarify a few things. I am Adolf Kraus, the Viceroy’s chief physician. I have been put in charge of your care. Do you understand?”

  “I understand that I’m alive,” Terence said.

  Adolf Kraus chortled. “That would be a reasonable summation, but officially, no; you are not alive. Officially, you’re dead, and Thierry Jorge Garcia has succeeded in carrying out his vendetta.”

  Terence stared at him. “Why?”

  Adolf Kraus cleared his throat. “Why, what? Why are you here? Why have we let it be known that Terence Sergei Allen has been sadly ejected from this mortal coil? I’ll let someone else explain. Lie back. Rest for a bit.”

  A good idea. He still felt fuzzy.

  “Thank you,” Terence said.

  Adolf Kraus patted him on the arm and left the room. Terence sank back into the pillows. The room was plain, with a tile floor, white walls and no furniture other than the bed he was lying on plus a single, uncomfortable looking chair. Above his head, numbers shone on a glass screen. A blinking light marched across its center, rising and falling with each beat of Terence’s heart. Terence had never heard of such a thing. Technology, without a doubt: the knowledge of the ancients, possessed now, only by the Viceroy. He drew a deep breath. The door opened. A woman dressed in white, evidently a servant, wheeled in a cart, with a tray of food sitting on top. The wheels of the cart fit underneath the bed. The tray swung over Terence’s lap. “You should eat,” the servant said. “You need to regain your strength.”

  Terence drew a deep breath. “Thank you.”

  She smiled at him and walked out. A few pieces of plain chicken, a cup of weak tea, some mashed potatoes and bland looking green beans, with a small square of chocolate cake for dessert. Not the most appetizing meal, but Terence found that he was hungry and he ate it all. When he had finished, he felt stronger. A few minutes later, the door opened and a man, dressed in the uniform of the Viceroy’s guard, walked in.

  “Remember me?” the man said.

  Terence stared at him. “Gregor Cerf,” he said.

  “Very good.” Gregor Cerf sat down in the chair near the bed and crossed his legs. “So, let me explain; the servant who poisoned you, Ranald, has been identified as an agent of the military commander of the armies of Fomaut.” Gregor Cerf raised an eyebrow. “That would be Alejandro Garcia. We know of several such agents. We suspected that one or another might turn up at Briony and we warned your father, not that there was anything specific to warn him about, and not that we could tell him anything he did not already know. That is why your brother, Hans, was there. Hans spent ten years in the Viceroy’s service. He’s a very capable man.”

  “Hans was, what? Guarding me?”

  “That was the idea.”

  “Then I can’t say I’m impressed with the quality of his work.”

  Gregor Cerf grimaced. “The odds of stopping a random assassination are good, if the target is isolated and surrounded only by those known to be loyal. Have all your servants been vetted? How well do you know the men and women in your employ?”

  “Me, personally? I don’t. Does anybody? I have no idea.”

  “No, you don’t. You were an easy target. Aside from the Viceroy, the citizens of Varanisi have not had to think in this way for decades. It’s a difficult way to live, always suspicious of everyone you meet, always on the watch for a random strike in the dark. Frankly, your best option was to change your name and disappear.” Gregor Cerf shrugged. “We weren’t counting on poison, but your brother knew enough to keep you breathing until we could get you here.”

  “Ranald was newly hired. I know that much.”

  Gregor Cerf gave Terence a thin smile. “Yes, he was. Your father’s head man took him on only a few days ago. He’s being questioned about that.”

  “And what has happened to Ranald?”

  “Oh, he escaped in the initial confusion. We could have tried to pursue him but by the time we were made aware of what had happened, he was long gone, and we wouldn’t have done so, anyway. In this, Ranald is behaving exactly as we wish. By now, he is halfway back to Fomaut, carrying the news of his success.”

  “And what about me? What happens now?”

  “Now? To you?” Gregor Cerf grinned. “Now, you have an opportunity to make a new life for yourself. It might not be an opportunity you would have chosen, but sometimes, circumstances make these choices for us.

  “Welcome, my boy, to His Majesty’s Secret Service.”

  Part Two

  Chapter 12

  It had been a long day on the road. Blake Pierce was hungry, dusty and tired. He was looking forward to a hot bath, a hot meal and a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed. He was sadly aware, however, that all these things were going to be delayed. The night had gone silent. His horse’s ears were pricked forward, its head held high. Even the pack mule, usually the most calm and stolid of beasts, seemed skittish.

  Blake Pierce had travelled this road before. It was a main highway between Wolford and Fomaut, and heavily patrolled by the Primate’s men…not at the moment, however. Not here, at least.

  Blake sighed.

  The road twisted up ahead, with trees coming close to the cobbled surface, large branches overhanging the highway. Plenty of places for an enterprising criminal or two to hide and plot an ambush. Blake Pierce knew how to wield a sword, a knife and a bow. Few were better, and he had other resources that were not so apparent, but he was only one man. He swung his leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground, then loosely tied both the horse and the mule to a tree and slipped into the woods. Luckily, all three moons were high, casting just enough light to see by. Alert, he moved silently, circling forward, sniffing the air, feeling ahead with his senses.

  Once, he thought he heard the crackle of dried wood. He froze, but nothing else happened and after a few minutes, he again inched forward. There…ahead, one man crouched behind fallen branches, two others hiding behind the trunks of tall trees.

  Blake waited. Three were bad enough. He needed to know if there were more.

  One of them whispered something to another, who whispered something back and shook his head.

  Blake continued to circle, quartering the area. A fox was about to eat a bird’s egg. An owl had its eye on a wood rat. The wood rat, unaware of the owl, chewed on a grub. Blake found an old, sway-backed horse hitched to a wooden wagon in a clearing in the woods. Nothing else for at least a hundred meters. The three men were alone.

  Very well. Inwardly, Blake relaxed, just a bit. He moved back through the woods, flitting from tree trunk to shadow, until he stood no more than five meters behind the three, whose attention was still on the road. Blake reached to a sheath on his belt, extracted four sharp spikes and held them up. The spikes floated up into the air and spread out around him. Then he nocked an arrow to his bow and said, “Turn around. Make no sudden movements.”

  All three froze for an instant, then, without a word, they turned and charged, brandishing knives. Blake shot one in the chest. He fell at Blake’s feet, his breath whistling out in a soft, agonized sigh. The other two were almost upon him when the metal spikes flew past Blake’s head and struck them both in the shoulders. They stumbled forward. Blake stepped to the side and both crashed to the ground, rolled over once, twice, tried to rise and then fell back, lying still.

  The spikes rose and floated toward Blake. He plucked them from the air, careful not to touch the points, cleaned them, re-applied a dark, tarry substance from a small bottle, put the spikes and the bottle back onto his belt, then went over to the first man who had attacked him. He was dead. Blake extracted the arrow. The point was intact. He cleaned it and returned the arrow to his quiver. He walked back to the other two and tied their hands and feet. Then he waited.r />
  Blake took a canteen from his pack, drank some water and chewed on a piece of jerky. Not exactly the dinner he had been looking forward to, but he might not be getting to the inn for quite some time. An hour or so later, one of the two men moaned, then the other.

  Soon, both began to thrash around and a few minutes later, they opened their eyes. They saw Blake, stolidly sitting on a log, and froze.

  “Nothing to say?”

  They continued to stare.

  “Just as well. You would probably only piss me off. You don’t want to do that. I’m not in the best of moods.” He rose to his feet, stretched his neck and said, “What was your plan? You did have a plan, didn’t you?”

  “Plan?” one of them said.

  Blake raised an eyebrow. “Is the word too difficult for you? Should we try ‘goal?’ How about ‘objective?’” Both men looked bewildered.

  Blake let out a low whistle. “Well then, let me ask you this: were you waiting for me, specifically, or were you intending to simply rob the next person who came along?”

  Both of their faces grew suddenly blank.

  Blake frowned. “If I don’t get answers from you two idiots, I’m going to slit your throats and be on my way. You’ve already caused me far more trouble than you’re worth.”

  The tallest one swallowed, and said, “Anyone. We can’t afford to be picky.”

  Blake relaxed. A random attack, then—this had seemed likely, but better to be certain. “I thought the Primate’s men patrolled this road.”

  The smaller one, Blake saw, was testing his bonds, flexing and relaxing his wrists. “Don’t bother,” Blake said to him. “I know how to tie knots.”

  The smaller one stopped and looked away.

  “What are your names?” Blake asked.

  “Travis,” the taller one said.

  “Hiram.”

  “So,” Blake said. “Tell me about the Primate’s men?”

  “The guardians patrol on schedule,” Travis said. “They’ll be along in another hour or so. It’s not hard to stay out of their way.”

  “Fine.” Blake rose to his feet. He drew his sword and cut the ropes tying the two men’s feet. “Get up,” Blake said. “Walk in front of me.”

  “Where are we going?” Hiram said.

  “To the inn, where I’m going to leave you for the local authorities.” He smiled. “And with a bit of luck, I’ll never have to see, hear or think of either of you ever again.”

  After hitching his horse and pack mule to the wagon, he had Hiram and Travis lay down in the back and re-tied their legs. They didn’t bother to protest. The inn was an hour’s ride down the road, a small but clean and well-tended place, typical of Fomaut. Inns along the Highway were not allowed to operate without a license and the standards for maintaining a license were high. A hostler met them, smiled at Blake, frowned at Travis and Hiram, and summoned the inn’s two security guards. As soon as the guards arrived, Travis and Hiram tried to claim that they had been unjustly attacked by Blake. The guards listened to their pleas with bored skepticism.

  “Why would he bring you here?” one of them said. “Far easier to kill you and leave your bodies in the woods.”

  Still protesting, Hiram and Travis were marched inside, to be confined until the Primate’s men could be notified. The hostler took the horses and mule to the stable. Blake gave his name to a clerk at a desk in the pleasant, wooden lobby.

  “Unfortunately, the dining room is closed for the night, but the kitchen is always open. We can deliver something to your room, if you would like?” The clerk was a slight, unassuming young man with blonde hair and pale skin. He seemed to know his job.

  “That would be excellent,” Blake said.

  The room was larger than Blake had expected, with running water and a shower. A serving girl soon arrived with the promised food: a slice of roast beef, a small plate of pickled vegetables, a jug of beer, and a basket of soft rolls with butter and strawberry preserves. Blake ate it all gratefully, then stretched out on the very comfortable bed and was asleep within seconds.

  He was eating breakfast in the dining room in the morning when the guardians arrived. One of them, clearly in charge, walked up to Blake and said, “Morning, sir. Mind if I sit down?”

  Blake was quite aware that the Primate’s guardians did not need his permission. “Please do,” Blake said.

  The guardian was a large man with dark skin, sharp eyes, a short beard, and a scar across one cheek. He sat and nodded to the serving girl, who walked into the kitchen and returned with a plate full of toast, jam, fried tubers and scrambled eggs. Blake hoped that he was not going to be charged for the guardian’s breakfast.

  The guardian smiled down at his plate, seeming very pleased with himself. He ate every bite of his meal, scraping up the last bit of egg with a piece of toast, before sighing, leaning back in his seat and giving Blake a thin smile. “So,” he said. “You killed one man who was trying to rob you and captured two others.”

  Blake nodded. “I did.”

  “All three are well-known troublemakers. They like to drink too much and beat up people who annoy them.”

  Blake allowed a wistful look to pass across his face. “The simple joys of youth. How I miss those carefree days.”

  The guardian grinned. “They won’t be getting into any more trouble for a long time. They’ll be condemned to the mines. Not a pleasant way to serve one’s sentence.”

  Blake shrugged. The fate of Hiram and Travis concerned him not in the slightest.

  “You’ve done us all a public service,” the guardian said. “Still, I must ask: who are you and where are you going?”

  “Blake Pierce, mercenary. I have accepted a commission with Lord Emilio Montoya. I am travelling to his keep: Miramar.”

  The guardian cocked his head to the side. “Can you prove that statement?”

  “Of course.” Blake reached into his pack and extracted a letter. He handed it over to the guardian, who read it, nodded his head and handed it back.

  “You’re a ronin,” the guardian said.

  “I am.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Cathay.”

  “I’ve never been there,” the guardian said. “What is it like?”

  “Closer to the equator, so less variation in the seasons. It’s always warm in Cathay. High mountains, fertile plains and a tropical sea. The Doge’s city, Cheng-duo, is full of shops and taverns. The streets are wide, and the buildings painted every color of the rainbow. It’s a beautiful country and a prosperous city. I miss it.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  Blake wistfully smiled. “I have three older brothers and two sisters who require a dowry. My father is a cobbler. He makes a decent living but there isn’t much room in the shop for the youngest son and I won’t be in a position to inherit. Also, I find making shoes to be boring.”

  “A useful talent, though. We all need shoes.”

  “This is true. I know how to repair a shoe. I haven’t bought one in years.”

  “And so you learned the sword?”

  “I did,” Blake said. “And the knife and the bow.”

  “Hiram and Travis both have relatives, as did Harold, the man you killed. I wouldn’t put it past any of them to look for a little payback. I wouldn’t dawdle, if I were you. Lord Montoya’s keep is two days ride to the west.”

  “Unless someone else tries to rob me,” Blake said. “Then it might take longer.”

  There is the City, Varanisi, which is much more than a city, and there are the seven nations: Cathay, Fomaut, Wolford, Venecia, Trebizond, Juno and Bretagne, all settled over four thousand years ago. The list of nations is fluid. There used to be three more, but Alora and Trebeck and Grandison were long ago conquered by their neighbors and no longer exist as separate nations. Soon, there might be more again, since the city-states comprising Venecia are semi-independent, hold little allegiance to each other and exist in an uneasy truce, punctuated by frequent bouts of confli
ct.

  Far to the east lie a series of islands, populated by aggressive tribes, who travel by dugout canoes, spurn any pretense to civilized behavior and make constant war on their neighbors. Over the ocean to the west lies the small continent of Cragamore, rocky, harsh and cold, occupied by large, surly people who make their living from the sea, and past Cragamore is the even smaller continent of Merain, a land of volcanoes, that spew ash and poison gas into the heavens. Merain, it is said, was once inhabited by a race of giants, who were all killed in an eruption that sank half the continent into the sea.

  Beyond the world, far off across the endless sky, lies the Empire of Mankind, or so the legends say. None now know the truth of it, except, perhaps, the Viceroy and his retainers, and perhaps the Inquisitoria.

  Blake Pierce had changed considerably over the ten years he had spent wandering the seven kingdoms. It wasn’t an unpleasant life, if you didn’t mind fighting and risking death and occasionally killing people who you had nothing against. Blake had a talent, or perhaps it was a flaw, for acceptance. He had more than once been described as complacent. Blake Pierce took things as they came and dealt with them. There were some things that could not be helped, the nature of the world, for one.

  A wandering ronin had a lot of time to think.

  Five years prior, Fomaut had invaded Wolford, led by their warlord, Alejandro Garcia and Garcia’s principal lieutenant, his son, Thierry Jorge Garcia. The fighting had been fierce and unrelenting and in the end, Fomaut had managed to seize only a few narrow strips of farmland. Neither side was happy with the results.

  Blake Pierce had fought for Wolford. The King of Wolford, Aarne Berentson, was a dour, unsmiling man, as were most of his people, but he was respected. He had been resisting Fomaut’s incursions for twenty years. The latest peace was not likely to last, but for now, the war was over. Wolford was a harsh, cold, mountainous country, with little in the way of riches, and the King of Wolford could not afford to keep un-needed troops. Wolford, despite the inevitable return of hostilities, was not the best place for a ronin during peacetime.