The Shadow Realm (The Age of Dawn Book 4)

by Everet Martins

  “You’ll get used to it my friend.” Scab dropped his voice. “Otherwise you’ll find yourself no longer my third, you understand?”

  Hook let out a rumbling growl, kicked his horse and walked towards a pack of mercenaries trailing behind.

  “No one gets between me and my marks. Some dogs need to be put down, you understand.” Scab nodded at Wart.

  Wart’s eyebrows bobbed up and a gleeful smile crept across his face. Wart spurred his horse, galloping up behind Hook. The points on his mace glinted as he lifted it up over his shoulder. Hook turned, his face contorting when he saw Wart bearing down on him. He spurred his horse, but it was much too late for that.

  Wart’s mace smashed into the back of Hook’s head, producing a sickening crunch, tossing him from his saddle. Hook fell, sprawled out onto the grasses. His hand twitched by his side as if trying to reach for his sword, but not responding properly to his mind’s commands. The side of his head was stoved in and blood spurted from the wound. There was a soft groaning like he was waking from a good night’s rest. Wart dismounted, seeming to move as slow as honey. He strode over to the fallen third, raised his mace up overhead in both hands and brought it down in a vicious arc. There was a popping sound as the front of Hook’s head collapsed, brain matter spilling out the sides. Wart grinned, planted his boot on Hook’s chest as he wrenched his mace free with a squelch.

  Scab nodded at Walter. “He is my best second. Dutifully obedient.”

  Walter knew he should have felt unmoved at seeing that. He’d seen worse, so much worse. The thought didn’t do anything to prevent his stomach from churning into knots though.

  Grimbald’s face was as pale as the moon. His hands rested on either side of his shoulders, fingers wrapped around the hafts of his axes. His eyes shifted from Walter to Wart then to Scab. “You’re a madman.” The muscles in Grimbald’s veiny arms flexed and tightened, murder a muscle’s twitch away.

  Walter knitted his brows and shook his head at Grimbald. They needed him. Grimbald’s forearms relaxed and his veins retreated below his skin. He let out a big sigh and his arms fell by his side.

  Scab twiddled his mustache, eyes pausing on Grimbald, then meeting Walter’s. “It seems you have an obedient second as well. You and I will make excellent partners. The future is bright for us, friend.” Scab clapped Walter on the shoulder. His skin crawled at his touch. A mercenary is my friend? Life was no doubt rife with surprises.

  Walter blew out his cheeks and turned to Grimbald. “Shit. See Juzo around today?”

  Grimbald swallowed and his lips pressed into a hard line. “Haven’t seen him since he left the campfire last night. It was strange. We were talking about home when all of a sudden he stood up and said he had to go. Looked like maybe he had a big turd he needed to take care of or something,” he chuckled.

  Scab joined in, roaring with laughter as if it were the best joke he’d ever heard. Wart rode up behind, one side of his face spattered with trickles of blood. Walter noticed there was a lot of dried blood on his coat in various stages of aging. How many other thirds had met the end of his mace?

  “Anyone else see him?” Walter’s voice cracked.

  Scab shook his head, laughter bubbling from his throat.

  “That your pale-faced friend? The one who looks like he lives in a damn cave?” Wart barked.

  “That’d be him. You’ve seen him?”

  Wart pulled out a once-white handkerchief, now soiled with filth and wiped his face. He stuffed it into his coat sleeve, leaving a smear of pink down his scarred cheek. “Aye, I seen him. He left in the wee hours of the morning, with a couple other of his white-as-death-faced friends.”

  “Shit.” Not again, Juzo. We need you. “See where he went?”

  Wart shrugged. “West. A fearsome bunch, glad to have them gone to be honest. They were making the men jumpy with those damn red eyes of theirs. Jumpiness isn’t good for men itchy for killing, understand?”

  Walter tilted his back and closed his eye, bathing his face in the warmth of the sun. Was the world truly conspiring against him? “Don’t worry,” he said to the sky. “You’ll get more killing than you’d bargained for, that’s a promise.”

  Walter heard Wart’s lips suck as they parted from his teeth in that grisly smile.

  “Should we search for him, Walt?” Grimbald said into his ear.

  Walter slowly shook his head. “We don’t have time for that now. There’s too much at stake. His leaving… was his choice.”

  Grimbald sighed and licked his lips. “Alright. Getting anxious to see my Pa, been too long. Hope he’s alright.”

  “I’m sure he’s fine.” Walter met his eyes, blue as the sky. He hadn’t the faintest idea if he was all right, but wasn’t that the right thing to say? Did trifling words really help anybody? He reckoned not.

  The Wall loomed up faster than Walter had anticipated. The sunken eyes of Falcon soldiers looked like black pits in recesses of their helmets. Their heads cocked, faces peered out, and whispering voices spread across the battlements as they drew close to the portcullis. It looked to be in good shape, scoured and oiled without a speck of rust. Spears shone in the light, interspersed between mirror bright shields held at the ready. Walter, Grimbald, Scab and Wart rode at the front and stopped, followed by the ramshackle band of mercenaries about thirty paces behind.

  Walter looked to Grimbald and gestured for him to speak.

  “Your names and business in the great city of Midgaard?” a voice demanded. The walls were incongruously tall, about the height of five houses stacked up. Death Spawn would have a hard time scaling it, but Shattered Wings…

  He peered up, looking for the source of the voice and found a man in head to toe armor. On his helmet was a twin pair of red plumes swaying in the breeze like bloody horns.

  “Me?” Grimbald whispered to Walter.

  “Do you know of any other Midgaard Falcon Captain?”

  “Right.” His hands traced the golden knots on his collar.

  “A Captain? Why didn’t you tell me we were traveling with a man of such prestige?” Scab smirked and nudged Walter’s arm.

  Wart and his horse snorted in unison.

  “Grimbald Landon, Captain of the Falcon, Tower company,” Grimbald shouted up the wall.

  Disbelieving mutterings spread across the battlements. “The Tower fell. You mean to say you survived?”

  “We did,” Grimbald replied. “A few of my men did too.They’re back at Helm’s Reach, rebuilding the Tower’s presence there.”

  “Very well, think I heard of that. Sorry about the questions, Captain. And your losses. I suppose you can guess why we’ve had to tighten up security. Who are your men? Don’t look like soldiers to me. More like a team of bandits.”

  Scab raised his hand, index finger going up, mouth opening. Walter grabbed his arm and shook his head. “Stay quiet for once in your life,” he hissed at Scab. Scab’s mouth closed and he frowned at Walter.

  Grimbald exhaled, cast a sidelong glance at Walter, then back up the wall. “They’re volunteers from Helm’s Reach. They’ll stay out of the heart of the city, mainly looking for beds and drink.”

  “Very well. Plenty of taverns looking for patrons… people are scared to travel these days. Raise the gates!”

  “Raise the gates!” Another voice echoed the command down to the men working the wheels and levers.

  The clinking of great chains and the thumping of gears echoed from behind the massive stone blocks. The portcullis yawned open inch by inch and eventually yielded enough room to pass through. Walter’s horse walked into the shade of the archway, its cool air felt refreshing on his skin. He had to duck his head to avoid the gate’s jagged bottom.

  Not much appeared to have changed on the outskirts of the city. There was a path scarred by wagon wheels and hooves that ran between farms on either side. The farms stretched out like green vistas to either end of the Wall, just a sliver of stone at this distance. These were the Nobel’s farms. Peasant
’s farms were mostly outside the Wall’s protection. The farm owners weren’t nobles themselves, but merely employed by them.

  A voice carried on the wind. “Move it, you lazy bastards. I don’t pay you to stand around and gossip, you’re here to work damn it!” The man wore well-tailored, clean clothing and shouted his orders from a low porch.

  A shepherd prodded the hindquarters of a couple goats veering too far from the herd. They had departed from the main dirt path onto another’s farm to pilfer vegetables. The path was forged in a perfect line directly under the Blood Gates, marked with a pair of newly constructed archer’s towers on either side.

  He grinned up at seeing the Midgaard palace looming on top of the mighty hill, almost a mountain, gleaming white like fresh cream in the light. Geodesic domes capped the palace’s towers, wide stretches of glass unlike the world had ever seen. The outlines of towers in the lower city stabbed into the sky, interspersed between houses with irregular rooflines. Walter didn’t understand it, but he’d overheard architects calling the odd rooflines art before. Art of the most useless type. They certainly were not designed for dispersing water or volcanic ash.

  The low fieldstone wall before the Blood Gates had been built up to about fifteen strides and was now supported at the back with pillars of wood. Walter swallowed at seeing that. It reminded him of the Death Spawn horde pushing through the blown apart gates at the Tower. There was a lot of ground to cover between The Wall and the Blood Gates. There were at least ten archer’s towers between the barriers, now mainly guarding workers from pocketing vegetables. That was good, but was it enough to stop Death Spawn?

  “The defenses look good. Better than I remember.” Grimbald echoed his thoughts.

  Walter nodded at him. “Keep your eyes open for any weaknesses in their defenses.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “Out da’ way peasants, coming through!” a voice roared from behind. They pulled off to the side to let the creaking cart pass, loaded up with sacks of potatoes.

  “Mind the berries, child.” A woman scowled at Walter. He looked down and found his mare’s hooves were trampling on a flourishing strawberry plant.

  “Sorry about that.” He smiled uncomfortably and reined his horse back onto the road. She shook her head and spat. She resumed taking plucking strawberries from vines and putting them in a basket.

  “It’s as if they’re preparing for war.” Scab rubbed his eye, yellow and green puss flaking off. “We’re safe here, aren’t we? I did not agree to defend against a siege.”

  Walter snickered and gestured wildly like Scab. “Life is chaos. You’ve got to just accept things as they are, my dear friend.” He turned, grinning at him.

  “Very clever, you bastard.” Scab grinned and the hint of metal gleamed from a tooth. “There’s no worry a good drink won’t solve.”

  “Even a siege?” Walter could joke about it, even while remembering the horrors of it as if they had happened hours ago. It muted the pain, ever so slightly.

  “Most things.” Scab pursed his cracked lips.

  Walter peered over his shoulder to watch as the band made their way under the gates. More than a few soldiers threw wicked stares at them. Walter guessed it was their attempt at intimidation to prevent them from making bad decisions. The band walked in a respectful line along the road, huddled up together as fearful as a bunch of whipped dogs. Their wild bravado seemed to have departed. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “Ah, we don’t go to major cities too often. Helm’s Reach never lets us in, nor the Tower, the Great Retreat… so they’ve come to making up stories about the plagues city folk carry. I give ‘em ‘til tonight before they’ll be ravaging the streets,” Scab said.

  Walter groaned. “Try to keep them quiet before then. I’d like to make it least a night here before you get thrown out.”

  He squinted his eye, searching for the familiar shape of the Lair’s spear-tip spire. There it was, his tower, standing alone down near the market quarters, built straight as an arrow. His father would have appreciated its craftsmanship. It was built with minimal frills. A small garden circled the top to gather the unobstructed sun and water. There were square windows surrounding the upper rooms, wide enough to let the air pass through, but under an overhang to prevent rain from flowing in.

  “The Lair,” he whispered.

  “Mm.” Grimbald hummed beside him.

  He wanted to go there, to see if his bed still smelled like Nyset. Dragons did he miss her. Why had he left things so poorly with her? The thought of her angry at him gnawed like a biting Rot Fly you couldn’t get rid of no matter how many times you swatted at it.

  When had he last been there? He had to think about it for a minute. It had been over three months. He would have to ask Baylan to… Baylan. No, he was dead, lost in the Shadow Realm. Like so many others. Baylan set a ward trap before they left that he was supposed to figure out how to disarm. Unless it had been triggered, he didn’t know how to get into his own home.

  He let out a dejected sigh.

  “What is it?” Grimbald asked.

  “Nothing. We have to go see King Ezra. Will you come with me, Grim?”

  Grimbald’s lips twisted.

  “I could use the support.”

  “Okay. As long as we stop by my favorite bakery after. Grumble’s Fiddlesticks.”

  “Deal.” Walter chuckled.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nothing Changes

  “Phoenix Shield: This spell requires journeyman experience with the Phoenix before it can be properly summoned. A blue aura surrounds the affected area and shimmers in the air, warping the light behind it. The shield will stay bound to the area protected until dissipated. It can be used to deflect objects of most types, however does nothing to mitigate the impact of the blows received.” -The Lost Spells of Zoria

  “Damn it, Thurber. Do you ever listen to a word I say? The walls make better notes of my orders.” King Ezra let out a rumbling belch. “I asked you months ago to tell the masons that they were to make the windows open.”

  “But my liege, they do open.” Thurber said quietly. He turned to face the windows, a candle burned to a nub and fluttering on the end of his clipboard.

  “Nonsense!” King Ezra waved his jeweled goblet, splashing at least half of its contents onto the marbled floor. It formed a pool of scarlet beside the golden throne. “They’re hardly cracked open, I want them able to be fully opened, damn it. The point is to allow the air to move through this damned room. Is that too hard for your elixir bean sized brain to understand, Thurber? My damned fruits are sticking to my legs.”

  “No, sir.” Thurber said flatly, pretending to be scribbling something on his paper.

  “Let me show you, Thurber.” King Ezra rose from his chair on wobbly legs and faced the windows. “Must I do everything myself?” he muttered. He hobbled over to the stained glass windows, slow as a tortoise, and jammed his tiny fist through the opening. His arm stopped when the window’s edge caught it. He twisted his hand around in the outside air. “See? My hand doesn’t even pass through the opening.” The beard shrouding his mouth in cottony hair vibrated as he spoke.

  “Sir, your hand is outside.” Thurber peered at the King over his silver-rimmed spectacles.

  “No more games Thurber. We have work to do. Who’s next?” The King shrugged his heavy brown and black spotted furs over his bony shoulders. He trudged back to his throne and fell into it when he drew near, as if his muscles had turned to dust.

  “A peasant, sir.”

  “Peasants,” he muttered. He thrust out his goblet and left it hanging in the air, expectant. Feet shuffled from behind the ornate dais and a boy in simple robes filled his cup to the brim with red wine.

  “The noble King Ezra, how I’ve missed him,” Walter whispered into Grimbald’s ear.

  “This place is amazing!” Grimbald’s head turned every way, taking it all in.

  “Who’s that sitting beside him?”

  “Yo
u’re joking?” Grimbald snickered.

  Walter shrugged and narrowed his eyes at the saintly figure beside King Ezra. She wore cream-colored silks interwoven with tiny diamonds, making her body shine like light on water when she shifted in her seat. There was a volcanic eruption of ruffles that started at her neckline and trailed down her chest and around her shoulders.

  On her head was a circlet with at least ten power diamond marks. Walter could make out the tiny Dragons trapped within, like a fireflies in beads of glass. In a time unknown, wizards could infuse marks with the essence of the Dragon. The art has long been lost, making them an incredibly precious commodity. Men were such strange creatures, only valuing possessions by their rarity rather than intrinsic utility.

  It was rumored that the marks could be drained of their power to supplement one’s own, also a lost art. Walter guessed there would be little of the power in those tiny spheres and not much use.

  “So who is it?” his voice felt distant as his eyes feasted on her curves.

  “The Princess.” Grimbald replied.

  Her eyes shifted from Thurber’s to his, a luminous blue. His heart jumped, his pulse hammering against his temples. She blinked at him, her lush eyelashes opening and closing like butterfly wings. She lowered her eyes and the beginnings of a coy smile touched her lips.

  “Stay quiet until the King calls on you,” a member of the Black Guard hissed at him.

  Walter felt his whole body jump as if struck. He forced himself to take a few deep breaths to get his heart rate down and ease his nerves.

  The Black Guard’s scarred hands rested on his belt, studded with four daggers and a long sword. He wore overlapping leather armor, cut in hard angles and black as tar. Walter thought it unwise to have so many weapons around the king. There were that many more opportunities for a weapon to be stolen from your own belt and used against you. If Juzo were here, he could’ve grabbed a dagger and plunged into the king’s heart before anyone knew what happened.

  Grimbald grunted, met the man’s eyes and turned away. He looked the floor to ceiling painting up and down. It depicted troops on the Wall fighting against an army of men riding cats the size of horses. Supposedly, they were the Tigerian’s and had tried to take the realm over five-hundred years ago.