by Jackson Lear
“No. It was to get him to come to Galinnia so he could have a face to face chat in the comfort of the empire where they could lavish him with one indulgence after another. I guess they caught wind of something going wrong with spies and the like, so we came instead. If everything had gone right he would’ve been there and back already. Only he’s been dicking us around this whole time. You too. That I don’t mind so much – you helped us more than you realize and I hope we can work together one day – but him? He’s been pissing me off and we have a job to do that’s getting more time sensitive with every passing day. Hand him over.”
“How did you find us?”
“Nice try. Hand him over.”
“Do something,” whispered Agnarr.
Elizandria signaled to her people. They formed a quick defensive line. “We’ll never be able to work in Vasslehün again if I give a noble to Ispar.”
I gave her some time to think it over, allowing the restless assholes to simmer. Twenty seconds. Thirty. Forty was probably long enough. I whistled a signal. Menrihk fired off his next spell. One of the sailors broke into a tirade of korla-this, korla-that, and a lot of korla-us. His brothers scrambled to pick up the loose coins running away from them.
I called out. “We don’t want to kill him. I mean, we do want to kill him but we’re not going to. We’re just going to bring him back to Orkust. If necessary we’ll drop him off in Lietsmar and let his people pick him up. He won’t die but I assure you: he is coming with us today. Him and Berik. The rest of you can leave with whatever money hasn’t fallen to the ground. Agnarr’s not supposed to be gone for long, just a few days. If we leave empty handed then we’re gonna have to tell Ispar that the vaults are empty and Brilskeep is prime for the taking. We’ll also tell them who now has all of that gold and where it’s heading.”
“We’ll be long gone before they ever come for us,” said Elizandria.
“Yes, but you’ll have to be gone. It’s not as easy to set up somewhere else as you think it is.”
Murmurs spread through the northerners. Awkward looks as well. Agnarr snapped at them, reminding them all of who was boss.
I gave him one last chance. “If he comes willingly he’ll be back in Faersrock in five days. If we have to take him by force we’ll keep him for a month. Can his house remain in charge of Faersrock for that long, or will someone like Elmark take his chance and become the new nobleman of the fjord? It’s your choice. All you have to do is meet our employer. You’ll have the chance of coming back strong with a southern ally who will help you deal with your enemies, or you will come back deposed, possibly kicked out of Faersrock and handed over to Brilskeep for orchestrating a coup, a heist, and for personally inviting Ispar onto your shores and into your broken homes. You’ve heard they have a new emperor. Emperor’s like to expand their territory as soon as they can to prove their strength. They usually don’t need an excuse to start a war, just a target. Agnarr has given him both.”
The would-be king glared through the trees, still trying to find us. With a quick command, four of Agnarr’s raiders sprung forward, racing towards me. And towards the spikes we had wedged into the ground and covered with leaves and snow.
The first leapt over the obvious looking trip wire and landed, bounded, and seized immediately with a hiss as the first spike skewered his foot. Ewen activated the ramming rod, the end slamming into the leaper’s chest, skewering him through is back and throwing him to the ground.
Three arrows flew through the air, the first catching the second raider in the neck, the second hitting the third in the back.
The fourth raider charged forward. Ewen swung the ramming rod towards his face. Gilmero swiped from down low, slicing through the raider’s knee. Scrambled back. Ewen deactivated the ramming rod.
The raider hissed and limped, enraged with blood lust but with no one close enough to fight. He tried to put weight on his injured leg. Hissed and hopped about again. Found Saskia tied to a tree. Just as he was about to call out our numbers and positions Elgrid and Gilmero engaged him, both nervously checking his attacks and getting haphazard strikes across his arm, mid-section, then chest.
Annoyingly, I had to stride in. Rammed my sword through the raider’s chest. Twisted. Stepped back. Glared at the two apologetic soldiers. Yes, he should’ve surrendered. Yes, the fight was heavily in their favor.
I whistled again. Menrihk fired off the last spell he had to irritate the raiders. The third satchel of silver split, spilling the coins to the ground, leaving the sailors with a quarter of what they started with.
We waited. The wind kicked the snowfall into our faces, leaving most of us to shiver while the northerners dealt with the cold well.
I whistled in a double burst. New command. An arrow flew, skewering the raider kneeling next to Agnarr. He cried out, the arrow sticking through his chest and likely through one lung as well. Still alive but not for long.
We waited.
Agnarr bellowed. “My people are going to chase you down. I have seven captains loyal to me. We know where you live. We know how to strike at you.”
I whistled again – twice. Two more raiders dropped.
Agnarr carried on. “They will strip the skin from you and leave you hanging for a hundred years as a reminder of your grave mistake.”
We waited.
“That’s it? Out of arrows? Out of threats?”
A crack of wood. A barrel splitting open. And two mercenaries scrambling out of the way. “Back! Back! Everyone back!” Adalyn had found their Galinnean Fire and was ready to ignite it.
Elizandria threw her hands up. “Okay! You can take him!”
Agnarr spun. “Fuck you!”
The entirety of Elizandria’s mercenaries turned their weapons on Agnarr’s raiders, outnumbering them forty eight to eighteen. The raiders began raising their hands to surrender.
Elizandria called out. “Take him!”
Agnarr growled back at her. “I will kill you myself.”
Elizandria stepped back. Gave the order to her people. The mercenaries pulled away, creeping up the mountainside, nervously checking both sides of the path as well as Agnarr’s people behind them. Ten feet. Ten yards. Twenty. If Elizandria changed her mind now then we’d be royally fucked.
She stepped away from Agnarr, eyeballing him carefully. Her scouts had us located easily enough from their higher vantage point. They also knew we had a vampire with us with Kilmur’s hand on the quick release.
The blue-eyed mercenary queen gave me one last look in my direction before disappearing through the snow.
The raiders remained. Agnarr turned his glare onto Berik. Issued a quiet command, one that looked an awful lot like ‘kill him.’ The guy holding Berik prisoner lifted his sword towards Berik’s throat. Jarmella obliterated his hand from thirty yards away.
The two raiders standing the closest to Berik stepped away, wanting nothing more than to keep their limbs in tact. It also gave Agnarr a moment of consideration.
I called out. “Berik? Head down the mountain a quarter of a mile. We’ll find you.”
Berik took a nervous step back. The raiders growled at him, furious at losing their best bargaining chip but also refusing to strike when we had them outnumbered and overpowered.
Berik retreated, stumbling back with quick glances over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t about to tumble ass-over-head. After thirty yards he stepped behind a tree, turned, and ran for his life.
The energy within Agnarr’s people dissipated.
“We only want Agnarr. The rest of you can leave.”
Looks abounded. Threats of, “Don’t you fucking dare,” fell upon deaf ears. One by one the raiders gave up, scooped up as many of the silver coins as they could, and started following Elizandria’s people up the mountain.
“Cowards!” shouted Agnarr. “I will skin you all and your children for this!”
Their numbers dwindled. Some helped the injured raiders away, wrapping their wounds and throwing arms over sho
ulders to help them move, until Agnarr was all alone.
He spun his sword through his fingers, keeping his energy alive. “I have spells for all of you. Twenty years I’ve been preparing for this. Twenty years of restless nights, of starving myself in the winter. Twenty years of bad harvests helping to make me stronger! You’re all going to fucking die before the sun goes down, so who’s first? Raike? Come on, let’s see what you have. You and me. One cheating motherfucker to another.”
I pulled the knot free on Saskia’s restraints. “Get him.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Saskia sprinted towards the would-be king. Agnarr’s attention shifted from dismissing it as a lone soldier on a suicide run to a look of concern. She wasn’t armed. She was breathing strangely. And there was blood lust in her eyes. The moment Agnarr realized that she was a vampire he side-stepped defensively, sword out, ready to run with no hope of out pacing her, panic flooding his veins. Twenty yards away. Ten. Five.
I shouted out to the mages. “Bring them down!”
A pair of spells knocked both Agnarr and Saskia off their feet at the last second, sending the vampire colliding into the nobleman. She landed on top of him, buried her face into Agnarr’s throat and broke his skin. Agnarr grunted a winded and terrified cry, shifting his body to try to push Saskia off him, but she was pinned to his throat and using all of her strength to drink her fill.
“Grab her!”
We raced in, wrenching her free with all five infantrymen struggling to overpower her and another four mages to keep Agnarr still while he screamed bloody murder. Saskia seethed, hissed, and shuddered, her first taste of human blood intoxicating her to the point of delirium. The infantrymen bound her, wrapping her in more rope than we could afford to use and cocooning her, pinning her down next to Agnarr.
I pushed my sapphire wrap against Saskia’s cheek. “Lick his wound closed.”
She hissed, breathing quickly to the point of almost hyperventilating as she eyed me up as her next victim.
I pushed my other wrap against her forehead, her skin starting to sizzle. “Lick his wound.”
Agnarr screamed, his voice twisting in fright as the poison from Saskia’s mouth started to paralyze him, numbing his wound and sapping his strength.
Saskia howled at me – “I’ll kill you!” Not yet realizing her full strength but definitely learning quickly. She forced Elgrid off his feet and managed to buck Kilmur away. I skewered her thigh – howls, shrieks, and cries deafened me – and twisted my sword for good measure.
“Lick his wound.”
Hissing and growling, Saskia pushed her jaw forward and began licking, drinking up the last of the blood pumping from Agnarr’s throat and slowly – almost too slowly – closing his wound. Agnarr lay on his back, eyes staring at the clouds above, breathing deeply as a whirlwind of death-bed panic consumed him. Too young to die, too fucked to give himself a fighting chance.
Wilbur scooped up a handful of silver coins. “Sir?”
“Everyone grab as much as you can. It’s our payday.”
We met Berik and Jarmella’s team half a mile away, moving quickly in case any of Agnarr’s or Elizandria’s people decided to take us on after all.
Berik was gasping for air and massaging his wrists, his eyes watering with tears, arms coming out for hugs all around. “Thank you. Oh, to every god out there, thank you.”
Jarmella’s voice cracked under the strain. “I’m sorry we left you behind.”
“I’m just relieved you got me out before it was too late.” Berik glanced around at our weary faces, sensing something wrong but unsure of the full extent of our situation. “Miss Kasera Lavarta?”
I looked to Jarmella. “You tell him. I have a nobleman to question.” We propped Agnarr up against a tree, giving him a chance to sit upright while the shock of Saskia’s poisonous bite started to subside. “You remember me?”
Agnarr’s eyes narrowed upon mine. “Of course I remember you. I will always remember you.”
I prodded his chest. “I’m the one who beat you.”
“You haven’t gotten me yet.”
Admittedly, I’ve said something similar, bound and manacled, held against my will with no obvious way out. So he certainly had a chance of escaping, no question there. “I followed you that night to the boat.”
“I let you,” slurred Agnarr.
“Then thank you. It really helped me out a lot. Hasn’t quite helped you as much as you wanted but I’m perfectly okay with that. I gotta say though I am thoroughly impressed. If I’m right then you just pulled off one of the ballsiest heists I have ever heard of and I love hearing about ballsy heists. That’s what it was, right? Please tell me yes.”
Agnarr couldn’t shake his glare. “Not just a heist.”
“Oh, no doubt, just like how our mission here wasn’t just diplomatic, nor was it just about breaking the alliance between Brilskeep and the vampires. Still, you lured us into a trap and even with all of our planning we walked into it. Now you’re mine. Not theirs, not ours – mine. For your sake Miss Kasera better still be alive.”
Agnarr bored his eyes into me. “I make no promises. Your people initiated contact and were going to come even if we told them not to.”
“Time was against us, thanks to Draegor.”
“You set a vampire onto me.”
“You’re still alive. A lot of my people are not.”
He scoffed and pulled at his restraints. “You were given an exit and you didn’t take it. After leaving Brilskeep my crew were willing to take you back to Orkust but the Kasera girl insisted on Faersrock instead. I am not responsible for that.”
“That’s not how blame works. It’s held in the eyes of the accuser, and I’m accusing you of being responsible for the deaths of a hundred people in the last six days.”
“Ohhhh, fuck you. You didn’t come here for our benefit. You came to begin your conquest of the north.”
“No. We came to break Draegor’s alliance with the vampires.”
“Bullshit. If you wanted that you would’ve sailed straight for Brilskeep and met with him intentionally. What you really wanted was for one of his own people to stab him in the back, start all of the nobles fighting amongst themselves, and then when we were at our weakest your armies would’ve landed on our shores and taken us with little effort. I see through you.”
“Of course you do. Was that really your son who fell to his death?”
There wasn’t even a slight shift in his eyes. Whatever emotion he had in there was overwhelmed by his anger at being caught. “The only child I had left from my first wife.”
“Did you know he was going to die?”
“I had a feeling he would.”
“You didn’t care for him?”
“I did. My new wife didn’t.”
“That’s pretty cold of you.”
“He had a chance to talk his way out.”
“And you had a chance for Elizandria to save him, but you favored the gold in Draegor’s vault over your own son.”
Agnarr offered a feeble shrug. “You’ve never chosen gold over a loved one?”
I carried on. “So you found out that we were eager to meet you in secret so you and Elizandria hatched a little plan. She told Draegor that her spies had found out an imperial escort was coming to meet a usurper. He probably had Desdola confirm that we were on our way but it took too long to figure out who the usurper was … am I right so far?”
Agnarr shrugged. “I asked Elizandria if everything went according to plan. She said yes. I didn’t ask for any more details except for how much gold and silver we got.”
“How much was it?”
“A lot, but not enough to buy off all the nobles.”
“Got it. You knew that everyone would converge on the castle at the same time with the year’s takings from raids and harvests. We were also brought along with all of our gold. It wasn’t a lot but it was enough for Draegor to want to keep it for himself and put into his vault. Normally n
o one would’ve had the balls to strike because of the sheer number of opponents you would be up against but this year two things were different: the alliance with the vampires, and us. Few of you wanted the vampires so paying off any necessary nobles to look the other way would be easier than before. You managed to practically empty the castle – a brave move, I must say, going with a plan that required Draegor to unleash a bunch of vampires onto you.”
“I had to. It was the only way to clear the castle of them.”
“Still brave. While that was going on Elizandria engineered a distraction within the castle and allowed us to escape while her people broke into Draegor’s vault. You probably embedded some of your own raiders as her mercenaries just to keep an eye on things. With all the guards chasing after us she and the heisters snuck out, met with you and your crew, and … why did she give you any of the silver when she did most of the hard work?”
Agnarr coughed again. “I did the hard work. I came up with the plan. I put myself at risk by inviting you to Faersrock. I put myself at risk by organizing for you all to be caught and interrogated. And I made sure that you were able to get back to Orkust without any more of your people dying, only your Kasera girl fucked everything up! How the hell did she think she could salvage things after escaping Brilskeep?”
“Pride, maybe. A sense of honor for not running away when things looked grim. She came here to meet you and she wasn’t going to leave without trying her best to make that happen. Surely you thought it was a possibility, that maybe Draegor wouldn’t be able to ambush us and that you would have to entertain her for a day or two while a Plan B was put into play?”
“Aye, I had a Plan B.”
“You could’ve sent us back on the boat to Orkust instead of sneaking off on it that night.”
“Couldn’t. I had people who needed paying otherwise I would’ve returned with no gold at all. And your lieutenant said Draegor’s cavalry would get to Faersrock sooner than expected.”
“So when something went wrong you panicked and left Faersrock earlier than you originally planned for. Tell me: you had seven captains and seven crews out on the water supposedly looking for us. I assume that’s bullshit. Where are they really?”