by Jon Sprunk
Caim sat there until the bathwater got cold. Then he got out, scrounged something half-clean from his pack, and started to dress. He was bending down for his boots when he decided to skip the meal. He crawled into a bed instead, not even minding the scratchy straw poking through the thin mattress cover as he laid down his head. He drooped one arm over the side, fingers within easy reach of his knives.
Caim was eating a bowl of bean soup in the inn's common room when Svart walked in. The room was otherwise empty except for an old woman in a gray smock wiping down tables.
“Ah, my friend!” the Northman said as he stamped his boots by the door and came across the room.
“You're here.” Caim put down his spoon. “I wasn't sure you were going to show up.”
“Me? No, no. I am good for my word. You are ready?”
“Where's the guide?”
“I take you to him. Not far from here.”
Caim hooked a thumb in his belt. “That wasn't the deal. You were supposed to bring him here.”
“Is not far. Come, my friend. A short walk. You will see.”
“All right. Let me go up and wake my friends.”
Svart held out his hands. “Better to go now. Guide is very busy. Won't take long.”
Caim turned away as he swung his cloak around his shoulders and pulled on his gloves. The shadows whispered in the corners, watching it all. Svart just smiled and nodded several times as they walked to the door.
Outside, it was dark even though the time was about a candlemark past what should have been dawn. Not completely dark. The sky was more gray-black than midnight dark, but still it felt strange not to see the sun coming up. The streets were deserted except for a few people slugging through the muddy snow. Svart lit a torch from a firepot by the door and started down the lane.
“How you like our northern weather?” the Northman asked with a chuckle. His breath filled the air with jets of steam.
Caim pulled up his collar. “Does it ever get warm up here?”
“This is very warm for us. Two moon ago, a man froze to death in these street.” He shrugged. “South man like you. Not used to the cold.”
Caim stepped around an ice puddle in the middle of the street. “Is it true the sun never comes out in this land?”
The Northman shook his head and made his short beard wiggle back and forth. “No. No sun. Always dark.”
“But it wasn't always like that, huh?”
Svart's voice dropped to a confidential murmur. “Best not to talk of such things, my friend. We have a saying here: ‘The Dark has eyes.’”
Caim scanned the buildings lining the street. He hadn't expected a real answer, but the Northman's hushed admonition surprised him. Perhaps it shouldn't have. The Eregoths lived in fear, too, and they weren't living under a constant reminder of the Shadow's influence.
At first, Caim thought Svart was taking him to the one of the larger buildings at the village center, but the Northman led him around a collection of fenced pastures filled with livestock and carts, into an area of narrower streets. Caim could tell they'd entered the lower section of the settlement by the condition of the shacks they passed and the general atmosphere. Every town and city had a slum, even if they didn't call it such, a place where the dregs could eke out their lives away from the palaces of the mighty.
Svart turned down a narrow alley between two long, low buildings that looked like storehouses. There weren't many people around this far from the trading paddocks. Caim caught up with the Northman beside a closed door.
“Hell of a place for a meeting,” Caim said.
“He does not like crowds.” Svart lifted the handle. “This is more quiet. You understand?”
I think I do. Caim resisted the urge to reach for his knives as Svart opened the door. This whole escapade had seemed too convenient from the start. He'd been through similar situations before. All the predators came sniffing around when you're new in town. He wasn't eager to go through it again, but the impatient look on Svart's face convinced him to play his part for a little longer.
Caim got a glimpse of a long, empty interior before Svart extinguished his torch into a snowbank, plunging them into near-absolute darkness. Or so the Northman must have assumed as he muttered for Caim to watch his step, but Caim's night vision adjusted quick enough. The building was some kind of storage house, mostly vacant now except for a few wooden crates. A musty odor rose from the scuffed floorboards. Caim discerned a figure standing near the center of the floor. He was a “proper” Northman, as tall as Dray or Aemon, wearing a hide jerkin over a thick woolen shirt. Caim couldn't tell if the man was armed. He waited to see how they were going to run the game. Would they play their roles for a little longer, or go right to making threats?
“Granmar,” Svart called out. “Cuvo der skipa?”
“Ja.” The stranger lifted his arm and opened the shutter of a lantern. Caim blinked as a shaft of bright light struck his eyes.
“Ah. There you are.” Svart turned to Caim. “This is guide. Very good.”
The man nodded, but didn't come any closer. “I am Granmar.”
His accent was so thick Caim barely understood even those simple words. And it was hard to get a good look at him with the lantern shining in his eyes. Caim handed Svart his fee, and caught a hint of movement on the far side of the room near a stack of crates. “Can you take me north?”
“North. East. West,” the man replied. “I can take.”
Kit appeared beside Caim and wrapped her immaterial hands around his upper arm. “So you know there's eight of them. Right, love?”
Caim swallowed the smile that had been threatening to play across his lips. He'd only counted four. He was losing his touch. “Care to point them out?” he whispered under his breath.
She didn't have to bother as seven lanky shapes emerged from their hiding places. All big men, two of them bigger than Malig. That was a concern. He told his muscles to relax. With the light shining in his eyes, they had to assume he couldn't see them yet. He didn't do anything to disabuse them of that notion.
Kit floated around to his other side. “The second one from the right has a bad knee.”
Caim looked, but didn't move his head. “Which one?”
“The second from the-”
“Which knee?”
Granmar held the lantern a little higher. “You bring silver?”
Caim looked over his shoulder as the door creaked behind him. Svart was gone. He sighed. Enough games. He had two options, fight or capitulate. He untied his purse and held it up. “Right here.”
Granmar approached with lumbering strides. Caim waited in a casual stance, feet spread shoulder-width apart, right arm down by his side, head tilted slightly to the left as if bored. He was almost convinced the Northman meant to deal honestly, but then he spotted a gleam of metal in the guide's off-hand. A knife held against his thigh. At least an eight-inch blade, probably single-edged with a triangular point. Caim shifted his weight a little more onto his left foot. When Granmar started to raise the hidden knife, Caim twisted at the hips while drawing his seax and slashing upward in the same movement. Granmar stepped back, his eyes wide under scraggly brows. The lantern dropped as he pressed his hand to the deep cut slicing him open from navel to collarbone. Glass shattered, but Caim was already moving as darkness smothered the room. The Northman with the bad knee was the next to fall, kicked so he would topple sideways, and then cut across his abdomen.
Another Northman swung a long club that looked like a sheared-off fence post. Caim dipped in behind the swing and stabbed the Northman in the thigh before he could bring the cudgel back around. Instead of falling back, the man stepped up closer. It would have been a simple thing for Caim to plunge both knives into the northerner's unprotected belly and rip him open, but he hesitated. Big hands grabbed him around the neck from behind. The wooden post crashed into his stomach, and Caim gasped as the breath rushed from his lungs. A sharp point dug into the back of his shoulder. Caim dipped h
is chin and spun out of the grasp of the rough fingers gouging his throat. His knives lashed out, and the Northman behind him fell to his knees, his slippery entrails spilling to the floor.
Caim crouched under another swing of a club. The Northmen could see better in the dark than he anticipated, but just like the fight against the Suete, he moved too fast for them to catch. A vicious, rusty shank stabbed at him. Caim knocked the thrust aside and ran the tip of his suete knife up the Northman's arm, splitting the sleeve of his wooly coat and tearing a deep gouge in the skin underneath. As his enemy retreated, making room for the others, Caim maneuvered back toward the exit.
He was almost to the door when a burst of light exploded behind his eyes, accompanied by a blinding headache. Caim put out his left hand as his balance wavered. It felt like he'd taken a blow to the head, but he didn't recall the impact.
Caim reversed his grip on both knives as his vision cleared. Pushing away from the wall, he moved like black quicksilver through the warehouse. Blood dripped from his blades, coated his gloves. Twice he evaded blows that he had been certain would connect. The Northmen fell back from his onslaught. He felt the shadows creeping along the ceiling, huddled in the eaves, hungry to get into the action. Finally he gave in. Come on, you little bastards. Get a taste.
An ice-cold pain ripped through Caim's chest. His breath froze in his lungs. Unable to move, Caim watched the advancing Northmen. Their weapons rose up. Just another couple steps would bring them within range. Caim fought to break through the sudden paralysis. Answer me, damn you! Come and-
Caim gasped as the pain drained out of him as quick as it had come. Suddenly he could move again, and almost tripped over his own feet backing away. But he needn't have bothered. The shadows rained down from the rafters. His ambushers batted at them, their efforts becoming frantic as the shadows covered them in growing numbers. Grunts and curses turned to yells, and then to hoarse screams. Wood crackled as one man tried to dive through a boarded window and became stuck in the half-broken boards, driving the splintered edges deeper as he thrashed. His cries became choked, gasping, and then he fell silent.
Two men made for the exit. The door crashed open, and three men appeared. Malig's familiar bellow filled the frigid air as he entered in front of Aemon and Dray. Caim reined in the shadows. It was harder than ever before. His arms and legs shook, and a sharp throbbing took up residence over his eyes, but they slowly retreated to the room's dim corners.
As Caim took a deep breath and wiped his brow with the back of a sleeve, he saw his crew had matters well in hand. The last Northmen were dead. Malig shook the blood from his axe while Dray peered about the room. Aemon stood back, breathing hard, his weapon clean. They gathered as Caim approached.
“Looks like you were right,” Dray said. “You figure them for thieves?”
Caim looked down at the gore-streaked faces. “What else? We don't know anyone here.”
He hoped that was true. They'd taken pains to appear like caravan guards, beneath anyone's notice.
Malig hiked a thumb toward the door. “We got your friend outside trussed up like a Yuletide goat. You want to gut him and see what spills out?”
“No.” Caim put his knives away and left his hands behind his back to hide their trembling. “Let's get back to the hostel. We're leaving.”
“What about finding a guide?” Aemon asked.
The shadows waited. Caim felt them watching from the edges of the room, felt their hunger. “We'll get directions to the next town and pick up someone there.”
Malig exchanged a look with Dray, but it was Aemon who spoke up. “Where are we headed, Caim? You haven't said nothing since we crossed the mountains.”
Caim started toward the door, ignoring the gazes of his crew and the newly dead alike. “North.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Darkness reached down from the chamber's high ceiling and distant walls to enfold Balaam as he stepped out onto the receiving platform. The sensation was both familiar and disconcerting to one who had been born under the ebon skies of the Shadowlands, a bitter remembrance of a home he would never see again. Wrapping himself in his cloak, he descended the long, winding steps to the floor far below.
He left the chamber through a mammoth doorway and passed into a corridor sheathed in polished onyx. His footsteps echoed as he navigated the empty halls and passed by windows of frosted glass looking down on the citadel below, a vast, empty city of glittering black stone.
Six Northmen, armed with poleaxes, stood before the entrance to the Grand Hall. As he approached, the bronze valve doors opened, and a slim figure wrapped in a long cloak emerged. Wisps of brown hair poked from under the deep cowl. A mortal. He paused to let her go by, and then entered the chamber.
Curving walls of alabaster enclosed the great hall. Black pillars carved from obsidian reached to the arched ceiling. Accents of wrought iron and black diamond glistened in the luminance of smoky braziers. Elegant women and men in somber dress stood about the room. Their faces were impassive, as if they were watching a pageant, while slaves in a variety of skin shades, from pale white to deepest ebony, passed among them offering libations and whatever else the lords and ladies desired. Here and there a noble supped on the sweet liquor of blood and agony from an accommodating vessel. Despite the languorous heat radiating from the feedings, Balaam's gaze was drawn to the colossal basalt throne at the far end. A powerful presence seized him as he stepped across the threshold, like an iron fist closing around his throat. The Master reclined in a swathe of shadow, hidden from sight, though his power dominated the hall.
Balaam moved behind the crowd and found a vantage point where he could see the dais. Two of his brother Talons, their features concealed behind steely visors, stood at the bottom of the steps. Members of the Shadow Lord's elite cadre of enforcers, only they were permitted to bear arms in the Master's presence.
Six mortals clad in animal furs-their faces obscured behind great, bushy beards and long locks of hair in strange hues of orange, yellow, and brown-stood before the assemblage. One of them, a stout man with strands of gray shot through his ruddy hair and a stuffed bear head perched on his shoulder, addressed the court in the brusque tongue of the humans.
“O Great Lord, defender of the north, bringer of the grasses which feed and sustain us. For all the gifts you have given to us, we pay you this homage.”
While he spoke, his kinsmen laid objects on the floor-bundles of cloth from the Southlands, tusks of ivory, cedar chests filled with incense, and a stack of silver ingots.
“And one hundred new slaves,” the Northman said, “captured in raids against your enemies. All this we give to you, Great Lord.”
The Northman finished with a deep bow. As he and his men backed away, a voice from atop the dais spoke. “You and your people honor us, Chief Vanar.” It was not the Master, but a robed figure standing beside the throne. Lord Malphas, the Master's majordomo. His voice clipped each word with precise inflection. “In his infinite generosity, the Master grants the Bear tribe additional hunting lands in the west and permission to collect tithes in the Jurengaard region.”
As Balaam listened, a female in black armor migrated toward him through the crowd. A coiled chain whip hung on her belt.
“I greet you, shalifar,” she said.
“I see you, Deumas.”
“It is good to have you back. There were whispers that you may have encountered difficulty in the south.”
Balaam looked back to the front of the hall. As the Northmen filed out of the hall, trailing their fur cloaks, a side door opened to admit a squadron of soldiers with a prisoner. “There was no difficulty.”
Balaam squinted, not sure he could believe his eyes. The man under guard was Lord Oriax, commander of the eastern armies. Balaam had served with him, albeit briefly, years ago during the first stage of the northern conquest. Oriax was from an old bloodline and was known for the high regard in which his men held him.
The guards brought Oriax before the da
is and forced him to kneel. Balaam moved closer as Lord Malphas addressed the prisoner. “Lord Oriax of House Umberal, you have been summoned before this court to answer for your treasons.”
Oriax lifted his gaze. “I have committed no treasons against our Great Lord. I swear it upon the Mother and my family's sacred name.”
Lord Malphas reached into his sleeve and produced a rolled parchment from which he read. “Twelve thousand human soldiers. Four thousand draft animals. Sixteen tons of timber. Seven tons of iron. Two coteries of imperial knights…”
“This is not well done,” Deumas said. “Kobal and I were the ones sent to retrieve him from Sirion. I tell you, shalifar, this is not the empire we once knew.”
Balaam turned his head slightly. No one was close enough to overhear their words, but the shadows were everywhere. “I was not aware of this operation.”
Deumas nodded toward the dais. “Lord Malphas now directs the Talons.” She lowered her voice. “Be wary, shalifar. That serpent has long fangs.”
With a nod, Deumas turned and left the hall. Balaam returned his attention to the audience. The Talons were the Master's instruments, to be used as he desired. It should not have rankled him that the majordomo was given control over his team, and yet…
“Enough!” Oriax shouted as Malphas continued to read from a long list of goods and materials. “I do not understand. What does this have to do with treason?”
Lord Malphas rolled up the parchment. “This is a list of the resources that have been placed under your command. Resources that have been squandered and wasted in a fruitless campaign.”
“Wasted?” Oriax tried to rise to his feet, but the soldiers held him down. “I have won dozens of victories, captured many towns and fortresses. Virtually the whole of Einar is under my-”