The fall of Highwatch con-1

by Mark Sehestedt

  "You!" Guric said, and shook him again. "You did this!"

  "At your behest! At your command."

  "Because you said it would bring her back."

  "And it will! It will, my lord. But not without sacrifice. These things you see before you. Abominations, you named them. They are… an experiment of sorts. And it worked. It worked, my lord!"

  Guric's resolve fractured. He kept a tight hold on Argalath's robes, but he lowered the man's feet back to the ground. "Explain."

  "That thing in your wife, I do not think it will leave as promised. Its hunger is insatiable, and now that it has come into the world, surrounded by so much life, it will not go back willingly. And truth be told, it is beyond my skills to force back. But we can send it elsewhere. Give it a new home. A new body. A body we can control."

  Guric looked to the creatures, none of which had moved during this confrontation. "We can control them?"

  "A new army, my lord. One that does not know fear or feel pain or cold. One that can endure injuries that would kill the hardiest soldier. We were forced to allow such a being in Soran. But I realized, if this can be done once, why not twice? Or thrice? Or a hundred times? Yet with even one of them at your side, you will not need me to take the cities and forts of Damara. We will need to devise a new ruse, to be sure. So there are my three reasons." Argalath's voice softened. "All true. And all give you your heart's desire."

  Guric let it sink it. "Yet every one requires murder."

  Argalath sighed and looked away. "So it does, my lord. But if you will look"-he pointed to the first of the creatures on the left-"there is Lakan, one of the Creel responsible for the mishap with Valia's rite. The man you ordered slain, as you'll recall. Next to him is another of the same order. That hulking brute beyond him was found raping the hostler's wife in Kistrad-which was strictly forbidden, and by your orders punishable by death. You see my point. Is it murder if we use those deserving death anyway? This is Narfell, my lord. There will be no shortage of such men."

  Had it really come to this? Guric had told himself that the death of the house of Highwatch was only justice for what they had done to Valia-and a small price to pay to get her back. But this…

  Still, if it was the only way to get her back…

  "Show me," he said.

  "My lord?"

  "You ask me to put great faith in these things. Show me what they can do for me. Show me now."

  Argalath smiled. "As you command."

  Guric let him go. Argalath pointed at the creatures and said something in a language Guric did not understand. All but one of the creatures walked out of the bowl, stepping through the body parts and vermin with no reaction. The one who remained had once been a Nar warrior-average height for his people, but this one was unusually muscular. He was dressed only in a ragged loincloth that fell to his knees. The strike that had killed him-a precise thrust of a knife between the ribs and into the heart, had been expertly stitched over.

  Argalath turned to his acolytes. "Bring them."

  Three of the Nar walked around the edge of the room and disappeared behind the altar. Guric looked to Argalath.

  "A storage area below the altar, my lord," said Argalath. "Quite sizeable."

  "What are they doing?"

  Argalath nodded in the direction of the altar, and Guric looked. The Nar were returning, one leading and two following a procession of five men, all with arms bound and joined by a chain that ran through a collar around their necks. All of them were Nar-Creel as near as Guric could tell-but they were a dejected, disheveled lot.

  "Criminals, my lord," said Argalath.

  "Nar deal with their own criminals."

  "Ah," said Argalath. "These five did not break any laws of their own people. They violated your commands, my lord."

  Guric grunted in response. He knew what those were likely to be. He had very few commands enforced on his Nar allies. During the taking of Highwatch, they had killed and pillaged at his command. Everything in the village and every weapon taken in battle was theirs for the taking. He placed only two restrictions upon them. Women and children were to be spared, and raping was strictly forbidden. Breaking either of these commands was a death sentence.

  The prisoners were led into the bowl. Their eyes went wide at the sight of the carnage, and their steps faltered, but the Nar pulled them on. At the sight of the creature standing amid the charnel and more of his fellows looking down upon them, two dropped to their knees and screamed for mercy. The others tried to run.

  "Be still!" Argalath shouted. He raised one arm, and the sleeve of his robe fell back. The mottled blue patches of skin along his arm and head began to glow. His reputation among the Creel was well known, and the prisoners stopped. "Hear me," Argalath continued. "You men are condemned to death for crimes against Lord Guric. But your lord is not without mercy. Among his people of the west, his gods of justice allow trial by combat. This man"-Argalath pointed to the creature, still standing motionless several feet from the prisoners-"is Lord Guric's champion. Kill him and prove your innocence. Stay alive, and you will leave here free men."

  Argalath stepped away and called to one of the Nar. The man untied the prisoners and removed the collars from their necks, then he and the other Nar stepped back. The prisoners still looked scared, but they were warriors. The thought of leaving this place had enlivened them, and the promise of a fight seemed to have given them strength. But as they rubbed blood back into their arms, every one of them kept looking at the torn body parts all around them. Guric knew such a sight would have completely unmanned one of his own knights.

  "Argalath?" said Guric. "You said this… experiment was a success."

  "Yes, my lord."

  "Then whose are the body parts?" He pointed at the carnage in the bowl. "And why are they… in pieces?"

  Argalath shrugged. "The end result was a success. But I fear it took… several attempts."

  "Criminals all?"

  "Of course."

  Guric didn't believe it. But he realized that he no longer cared. They were Nar after all, and Creel-the lowest of a low people. If killing a few of them brought Valia back, he would lose no sleep over it.

  Two of the acolytes stepped to the edge of the bowl. They had long wedges of sharp steel that Guric supposed were some sort of swords, though they seemed to him more like cleavers. The Nar tossed the blades down to the prisoners. They picked them up, dropped into defensive crouches, and surrounded the creature.

  The man directly in front screamed and charged, while the man behind him came in quietly, but just as quick.

  The creature didn't move. Didn't even flinch.

  The Creel prisoners knew their business. The one charging head-on brought his blade around in an arc and buried it in the flesh between the creature's neck and right shoulder. Guric heard bone snap, but the creature did not fall, barely even stumbled at the blow. The man coming in from behind showed less skill, but put much more strength into his blow, aiming for the creature's back.

  The creature moved at last, with a quickness beyond anything human. He turned to the man behind him. The one in front still had hold of his blade and was dragged along, apparently so surprised that he didn't think to let go. The second man's blade fell, but the creature's arm shot up and caught the man's wrists. The creature squeezed, and even over the man's screams Guric heard bones crumbling. The first man still hadn't let go.

  The creature brought the second man around, smashing him into his companion. Both went down. The creature stepped over the second man's discarded sword and reached up to grab the handle of the blade still embedded in his shoulder. As the blade came free, the men at his feet screamed and scrambled in different directions.

  Swinging the blade sideways, more like a paddle than a blade, the creature swatted the nearest man onto his back. The prisoner raised his arms to ward off the next strike, but the creature threw the blade aside-with such strength that one of the Nar acolytes standing on the rim had to jump out of the way-and
leaped on the man. It reminded Guric of the time he'd seen one of the local tundra tigers take down a swiftstag.

  Guric looked away, but he could still hear the man screaming as if he were being flayed.

  "Forgive me, my lord," said Argalath, "but you should see this."

  Guric clamped his jaw shut, took a deep breath through his nose, and looked up. The man was quite dead, his head hanging limply from the remains of his savaged neck. The creature standing over him-still chewing, Guric noticed with a grimace-was black with blood from his face down to his waist. But even as Guric watched, the creature's grievous wound closed. A stunned silence had filled the room so that Guric was able to hear the broken bone snap back into place.

  "You see," said Argalath, "the spirits inside are able to keep their bodies alive by feeding on living flesh. They can heal from the most savage wounds-though the greater the wound the more… um…"

  "Food?"

  "Very good, my lord. The more food required to repair the damage."

  The four remaining prisoners-one of them now weaponless-were not fools. They saw the hopelessness of their cause. All it took was one to make the first move-turning and charging the rim in hopes of escape-and his fellows followed. Each chose a different spot to try to escape, but each met with the same fate. One of Argalath's monsters simply grabbed the man and tossed him back into the bowl.

  Guric did not need to see the rest. He turned his back on his counselor and walked out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The sun would be down soon. Kadrigul cursed his luck. After the fight with the tundra tigers and whatever those little monsters were-a fight in which he'd lost almost half his Nar-it had taken the survivors most of the day to regroup and find their mounts. He supposed it was a small blessing that those Creel who survived the fight had fled the scene. Had they seen what Soran had done in order to heal his wounds, Kadrigul never would have been able to rally them again. As it was, they'd crept back like beaten dogs, skittish and uncertain.

  They'd followed Hweilan's trail yesterday, deeper and deeper into the mountains, until it was too dark to see. They made a cold camp where they stopped. Back at it at first light, and now with the day dying around them, they still hadn't found her.

  Not long after finding the trail yesterday, the two sets of tracks they'd been following had been overtaken by many others-tundra tigers, and the smaller, stranger tracks that even the Creel could not identify. It was obvious that Hweilan and whoever was with her had been captured. It went a long way to explaining why Soran could no longer sense the girl. If she had been killed…

  But by whom?

  The Creel were frightened to the point of breaking. They held these hills in a superstitious dread, and fighting the tigers and those little hunters had pushed their loyalty to its bounds. The only thing keeping them here now was that they were still more afraid of Soran and Kadrigul than whatever might be lurking in the hills.

  If the girl had been killed, whoever had done it had left no trace of a body. Tigers might have eaten most of a dead body. They might even have broken the bones to get at the marrow, but they would have left the bones. There would have been signs. And Soran and Kadrigul had found none.

  The sun slipped behind the mountains as their company left the treeline. They were in a high, rocky country now, walking in mountain twilight, sometimes passing beside deep ravines or under high cliffs. The thick snowfall made following their quarry easy, but it also hid rocks and cracks in the ground. They could not run the horses for fear of breaking a leg.

  Their company skirted the edge of a bare, snow-covered hill, the heights of the Giantspires looming beyond. The Creel snaked out in a long line behind him, every man leading his horse. Soran was just ahead, dragging his mount behind him. He'd taken the lead early that morning, and Kadrigul let him have it. The Creel seemed more than eager to put as much distance between themselves and Soran as Kadrigul would allow.

  There was a silent sharpness to the air that raised Kadrigul's hackles. He took his scabbard from where it hung off his saddle, slid it under his belt, then loosened the knot on his cloak so that he could throw it off quickly if need be.

  They continued on, rounding the shoulder of the hill. Below them, in a round hollow between the hill and the next, were a jumble of shapes that at first glance Kadrigul thought was some sort of building, long fallen to ruin. The trail they followed headed in that direction.

  As they grew closer, he saw it wasn't a ruin at all, but a series of standing stones, some fallen at haphazard angles.

  When they closed to within a hundred feet or so, he saw that he'd been wrong yet again. If the shapes were standing stones, they were like none he'd ever seen before. They looked more like broken shards of ice thrust up from the ground. Some almost straight up, but most at varying angles, no two seemingly alike, and in no discernible pattern that he could see. The bases of most were far enough apart that three men could have walked between them, side by side, but the way many leaned past one another formed odd pathways, some open to the sky, and some covered by leaning pillars of ice.

  Soran stopped in front of the nearest, its pinnacle leaning over him.

  Kadrigul stopped behind him. "What is it?"

  "I do not know," said Soran, no emotion in his voice whatsoever. His gaze seemed to strain at the deep blue shadows between the great shards, and his nostrils flared as he took in a great lungful of air. But Kadrigul could see it was an effort for him to do so. It wouldn't be long now.

  "Anything?" said Kadrigul.

  "She was here."

  "But no longer?"

  Soran gave a strong wrench on his mount's reins and began pacing around the structure, circling it.

  Shifting his own horse's reins from one hand to the other, Kadrigul turned to the Creel, who had stopped several feet away. They were staring at the strange structure, and Kadrigul saw one of them clutching some sort of talisman.

  "You men," he called in their own tongue, "do you know this place?"

  "No, lord," said one of them.

  One of the Creel in the back of the group called out, "We must leave this unclean place!"

  The first said, "It is getting dark, lord. Should we not find a place to camp for the night? Some place else?"

  Kadrigul looked up. The eastern sky, mantling the arm of the mountains as it stretched out onto the steppe, was already a muted purple, and the first stars peeked out. The western sky, where the mountains piled up against the sky, still held a blue glow of evening. Even if they left now, they wouldn't get far before full night fell, and the breeze off the mountains was getting colder by the moment.

  "We'll camp here," Kadrigul told the Creel. "Get the tents up and sort out the last of the fuel. We'll need a fire tonight. Picket the horses nearby. They'll need the warmth as well."

  None of the Creel moved, other than to exchange nervous glances.

  "We can't sleep here, my lord," one said.

  Kadrigul walked over to them, leading his horse behind. He walked up to the Creel who had been doing most of the talking. He didn't get too close. Kadrigul wasn't one of those blustering fools who counted on intimidation to win his fights. He acted or didn't. If he did, better let it come as a surprise.

  "And why is that?" he asked. He pitched his voice for all to hear, but he kept his gaze on the nearest man.

  "L-look at this place, my lord." The man pointed at the structure. "That… not right. Not natural. We've come too close as it is. The girl isn't here, lord! This place is lakhot!"

  Kadrigul wasn't sure of the exact meaning there. Unholy perhaps, though not in the way most thought of it. Many of the Creel had returned to their ancestors' devil worship and demon binding, so the concept of holy was not really in their thinking. Lakhot meant something older, some other than mortal men-and best left alone.

  He pulled his left glove off with his teeth and was about to reach for his sword-perhaps killing this mouthy one would put the rest back in line-when he heard hoofbeats. They al
l turned to see Soran coming around from the opposite side of the structure from which he'd departed. He was riding his horse now, the great beast billowing out clouds of steam in the cold. Soran had a tight hold on the reins, but he rode hunched over, as if wounded or sick. Kadrigul knew it wouldn't be long now. Better to leave all the Creel alive in case they were needed for other purposes.

  "You've found something?" Kadrigul called.

  Soran pulled up beside the Creel and stopped his mount just in time. He looked down at Kadrigul and said, "Their trail leads into that structure. It doesn't come out again. Whoever took the girl took her in there and didn't come out again."

  "Then in we go," said Kadrigul.

  "My lord, please!" said the Creel. "At least wait for the sun. Please, I beg you."

  "We look now," said Kadrigul. "She's in there, or she isn't. Either way, our hunt ends here tonight. If she isn't there, we head home with the sun."

  "You swear?"

  Kadrigul ground his teeth.

  "Come," he said. "It shouldn't take long. But we'll need light"

  Weaving through the leaning shards of ice, the horses would have been more hindrance than help, so Kadrigul chose two of the Creel to stay behind with their horses and supplies. The other five, three holding torches, gathered with Kadrigul and Soran at the edge of the structure.

  Soran led the way, plunging in without a torch. Kadrigul drew his sword and motioned the Creel after him.

  The boldest of them licked his lips and said, "After you, my lord."

  "You men get in there now," said Kadrigul, "or I'll have Soran come back and hold two of you by the neck. Which two will it be?"