by Tom Lloyd
‘They’re human!’ Aben called in reply. ‘The folk on the road anyway. That’s good enough for me.’
‘And if they’re Charnelers?’
‘Then they’re fucked before they get through that gate. In the meantime, best we scare away whatever horrors are following them up this way.’
There was a pause up above. ‘Do it,’ Toil said. ‘Burners first in case they don’t like the light.’
‘Aye, boss.’ Aben set the crate down and selected a red-tipped bolt. The mage-sphere on the end was little bigger than a grenade, but shaped to fly better. Once Lynx had cranked the arm into firing position Aben carefully settled the bolt. They ran it forward until the tip was outside the line of the walls.
Lynx manoeuvred the ballista around with a degree of difficulty while Aben went to help Haphori. Finally, he had it lined up the way he wanted – clear of the road and possibly his friends walking up it. He had no idea about elevation, but knew machines like this could fire five hundred yards from a castle wall. With the slope it had to be further.
‘Range, anyone?’ he muttered to himself. The humans were no less than two hundred yards away, Lynx estimated. He inwardly shrugged and set the machine as level as he could above the point he was aiming for. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be!’
‘What are you waiting for then?’ Aben retorted.
Lynx pulled the trigger. The whole ballista shuddered as it hurled the bolt out into the night. He twisted around the machine to get a better look, breath caught in his chest as he waited for the result. Suddenly a plume of flame exploded through the night, further down the slope than the ascending party. Orange fire spread and cast its hideous light, illuminating dark shapes that certainly weren’t human. It was only a glimpse, but one was enough to bring him back to some of their more recent nightmares.
‘Fucking maspids!’ Lynx moaned as someone above shouted the same. ‘Out on the surface too. That’s never going to be good.’
Haphori fired as he spoke, targeting the opposite side and shooting shorter. The fire-bolt dropped just short of the ascending party, twenty yards off the road. Lynx caught sight of one creature caught in the fire, writhing madly before it was enveloped, while another scrabbled away from the flames.
More fire-bolts lit up the nearer ground, fired from above. Long splashes of orange and yellow spread across the scrub ground. By the time those were spent Lynx had a lightning-bolt loaded and was taking aim once more. He chose the darkest ground near that stretch of road, well clear of the flames serving as a flickering barrier. He landed the bolt almost exactly on target. Darting claws of lightning burst out in all directions. The trailing figures on the road there scrambled forward.
‘Hold fire!’ Toil called. ‘Has that done it?’
Lynx slid the ballista back and craned his head out in its place. From what he could make out of the slope, there were no maspids higher up. They would be mad to follow and from all Toil had said, the creatures were clever in their own way. They were unlikely to risk it, but he saw Haphori load his weapon again anyway.
‘It’s the Cards!’ Sitain shouted from up above. ‘I can see Reft!’
‘Someone check the valley side, see if that lot attracted any attention,’ Toil ordered. ‘Lynx, Aben, get to the gate.’
The pair descended, Aben in the lead with his gun levelled. ‘Might be something unfriendly lurking on this side of the wall too,’ he reminded Lynx. ‘This whole valley lies above a Duegar city-ruin, remember?’
‘Aye, whole thing’s probably infested with horrors,’ Lynx said. ‘Seems a crazy place to build a charnel vault, but I guess they are fanatics. And this is holy ground too.’
‘Fanatics who employ relic hunters and mages,’ Aben pointed out. ‘Most likely they’ve sealed the vault sections, left the rest to the wildlife.’
All was quiet at ground level. Lynx and Aben did a sweep of the ground behind the rampart and saw nothing out of place. It was pitch black beneath the gatehouse, the short tunnel beneath having a gate at either end. Lynx went back to fetch a torch while Aben opened up the inner gate.
‘Open up you trigger-happy cockstains!’ roared a voice from beyond the outer gate.
Lynx and Aben shared a grin. ‘Anatin,’ they said together as they set about unbarring it.
The bulk of Anatin’s Mercenary Deck barrelled in through the gate, almost crushing Lynx underfoot as they came. Many were swearing, faces gleaming with sweat in the flickering torch light. All had a wild-eyed look and Lynx could sympathise. He’d been stalked by maspids before, it was bewildering and terrifying. Above ground, where they could come from any direction, and with scarcely any light, might actually be worse. Especially with an exhausting slope to climb.
‘Is that everyone?’ Aben shouted above the hubbub.
‘Close enough!’ Anatin replied, panting for breath while Payl did a quick headcount.
‘Stand still, you fucks!’ she yelled, losing track again. It wasn’t easy in the light of a single torch but eventually Payl checked them all and nodded. ‘We’re here.’
‘How many of them?’ Lynx asked.
‘How in the fucking deepest black are we supposed to know?’ Anatin roared, lurching forwards and grabbing Lynx’s jacket with his one good hand. ‘You’re the bastards with the magic eyes, you tell us!’
Lynx exchanged a look with Aben. ‘I only saw one, you?’
‘Yeah – one. A runt probably, mebbe the size of a small cat. But at least it hurried this lot up.’
The suggestion left Anatin momentarily speechless with fury. Before he could rally, Toil appeared.
‘Everyone safe? Do we have injured?’
‘Yeah, don’t worry,’ Payl said, heading out for a look at the holy valley. ‘We’ve done the caring bit, we’re back to being arseholes.’
‘Dammit, what a waste of effort. I’d taken a proper run-up at it too. Who wants a drink then?’
‘There’s booze?’
‘Damn right. This must be the most boring posting in the Riven Kingdom – until recently anyway. They clearly kept the garrison lubricated.’
‘And the garrison themselves?’ Payl asked as the rest of the Cards started to push past her.
‘Just a handful, skeleton crew only.’
‘Anyone else think that’s a worrying sign?’
Toil nodded. ‘You just found out why.’
‘They got et?’ asked one of the passing mercenaries, red-haired Darm.
‘We’re not so lucky as that.’
‘What then?’ Payl said.
‘They got marched down into the valley weeks back,’ Toil said. ‘We took some kid prisoner and he spilled. Something nasty’s going on around the charnel vaults and we can probably guess what that is.’
‘More bugs to kill?’
‘Damn right.’
Payl grimaced. ‘Lead on to the booze then. This might be our last chance to get pissed.’
‘Aye, that’s the spirit.’
Chapter 32
It was a happier mercenary company that greeted the dawn that morning. Footsore and weary from their long march north, they ate and drank well through the early hours of the morning. Sleeping in shifts, they set a guard to watch both sides of their bastion but saw no one.
As the first rays of dawn finally crept into the sky, Lynx found himself up top with Toil, Kas and Safir. The northern sky was dark, the forbidding face of Insar’s Seat a glowering grey ghost below. Sinuous curls of cloud hung above it while the lonely calls of a few birds marked the dawn.
The jagged cliffs of the valley spread wide before him. They ran for miles until they reached the craggy base of the mountain and became impassable barriers of another sort. Lynx imagined this place would be beautiful in spring, a peaceful enclave from the cares of the world beyond. Right now, it was veiled in the shadows of dawn and each one might reveal a danger.
The Cards had manhandled some of the smaller siege weapons around, aiming them towards the more likely danger. Beyond their furthest ran
ge, the ethereal sight of houses started to emerge from the gloom. Incongruous, elegant shapes for an isolated valley. From what Lynx could see, they were abandoned. Likely it was a toss-up which direction the occupants had fled when news of danger came.
The sun rose and … And nothing happened. Not long after dawn the entire company were awake and on the main platform of the gatehouse – guns at the ready. Instinct told them to be prepared, even though Anatin gave no orders, and yet before long it seemed unnecessary. No soldiers or civilians approached the wall. The abandoned villages and towns of the plain beyond lay still.
Brief bursts of sunlight punctuated the morning as the Cards waited. The jangle of fatigue and nervous energy faded only slowly. They were still deep in enemy territory, the greatest obstacle surmounted but far from safe whichever direction they now moved.
Midday came and went. Drained by the long weeks of marching and familiar with the needs of a campaign, the Cards were glad to catch a day of rest. Despite a cold breeze, many of those on watch went without boots, desperate to give their sore and bleeding feet a rest. There was a brief moment of noise when the first of the garrison woke from Sitain’s ministrations, but Toil was soon there to speak with them.
Lynx could hear her voice from where he stoked a fire, heating water for a long-overdue wash. In uncharacteristic fashion, Toil explained they were all rather tired and didn’t want to massacre anyone if they didn’t have to. Whatever discussion went on, the Charneler garrison seemed to be far from the pick of their elite. They meekly submitted and made no further trouble while the Cards went back to their day of blessed idleness.
The hours came and went. The Cards drifted around the guardhouse, walked the rampart and nosed through the towers with a listless curiosity. Everyone had their weapons to hand, this was enemy territory after all, and yet this strange purgatory seemed oddly peaceful. Whatever was going on down in the valley, at most a dozen miles long, this upper half was entirely empty. There could have been frantic fighting at the other end, Lynx knew, but it mostly would be underground and the sound wouldn’t carry.
‘Reckon they’re all dead?’ Lynx asked as they sat playing tashot on the top platform of the guardhouse. ‘Wouldn’t that be a fun twist?’
Toil looked over her shoulder. She spent a long time regarding the far end of the valley – Insar’s Seat huge and looming over the small human settlements.
‘Guess that smoke could be the last scraps of a blaze,’ she said at last. ‘If the people got massacred by maspids or something, chances are a fire would’ve followed.’ She turned back to the game. ‘I raise.’
‘Now that’s a thought,’ Anatin said, chewing away on a cigar. Without looking at his cards or the table itself he flicked a coin into the middle to match Toil’s. ‘We take a walk down that way and everyone’s dead. It’s all empty, all open.’
‘Except for the horde of creatures from the deepest black,’ Himbel pointed out, scowling at his own cards. The company surgeon threw two more coins in and sat there glaring at the others as though resentful of being forced to play.
There were six of them left in: Lynx, Toil, Anatin, Himbel, Suth and Payl. Another game was going on in the mess hall down at ground level, but Toil had insisted a table be brought up here. Lynx sympathised. This strange, unearthly moment of quiet was bugging him too. He got itchy every time he took both eyes off the ground beyond the keep.
The rest matched Himbel and he harrumphed softly as Payl dealt a Stranger of Tempest to go with the other cards on the table – fourteen of Sun, ten of Stars, sixteen of Blood and the face-down card left to appease the god Banesh.
Lynx frowned at the sight of his own card as one or two of the players sniggered. This was Anatin’s own deck, a new one too, and Lynx couldn’t help but notice that the figure pictured on the Stranger of Tempest was a little rounder than normally depicted.
In his own hand Lynx had the eight of Blood and Knight of Stars. That second card was getting a poor reputation in the company. Folk had started looking at it with suspicion since the last two mercenaries to wear it had died, but it gave Lynx a chance to win.
‘How many bugs does it take to kill an army?’ mused Anatin. ‘Nah, I don’t buy it.’
‘Why not?’
‘If I’m getting overrun and I’ve got Highkeep Sanctuary close by, I’m blowin’ some shit up.’
‘Maybe they already have, we just can’t see,’ Himbel argued as Lynx bet on his own card and the rest matched.
‘They left the dregs here,’ Anatin pointed out. ‘They’d have heard any boom that big an’ run away.’
The last card came down, a seven of Blood. It was no use to Lynx, he’d need another card of Blood on the table for that, but he was pleased to see it anyway. It might tempt someone with a weaker hand than his own.
‘Raise,’ Anatin declared, tossing a few coins forward.
‘The Sons will be here tomorrow,’ Toil declared, passing her cards back to the dealer. ‘We’ll find out soon enough.’
‘Do we have a plan?’ Suth asked, matching the bet.
Lynx took one more look at the table cards. Decided there was nothing much in the hand and matched it too.
‘Plan? Us?’
Toil gave him a falsely sweet smile. ‘Depends on the Sons. They’re the ones bringing the biggest army to the party.’
‘So size means you get to make the decisions now?’ Lynx asked as Payl went in too. ‘That’s good to know.’
‘Shame you’ve slimmed down then,’ Toil said. ‘Come on, show us what you’ve got.’
‘Get a damned room, the pair of you,’ Anatin growled. He laid down his cards and Lynx grinned. An eight of Snow and two of Sun – the Stranger of Tempest had tempted him. A seven, eight and Stranger in adjacent suits was a mercenary run. It beat Suth’s pair of fourteens and Payl’s high card, but Lynx had a better mercenary run.
He laid his cards down. Anatin was so annoyed when he saw the Knight of Stars he could only give a hoarse croak that was probably meant to be a bad word.
‘Don’t think of it as me fucking up your hand,’ Lynx said with a smirk. ‘Instead just picture Teshen laughing at you from beyond the grave.’
Anatin went still for a moment, just long enough for Lynx to wonder if he was going to get shot, then the commander gave a bark of laughter.
‘Damn it all, the cold-hand bastard would sneak out o’ paradise ta do it.’
He took a long puff on his cigar and blew the smoke out at Lynx, fixing him with a less than friendly stare. Without warning he tossed the cigar off the edge and stood up. There was a yell from down below, but he ignored it and stamped away. His remaining coins stayed on the table.
‘Oh thanks for that, Lynx,’ Payl muttered. ‘Man’s gonna be in a mood all day now.’
‘Fuck his mood,’ Lynx retorted. ‘If I’d not had the winning hand, the fucker would be banging on about that Stranger card for another ten minutes. You know he would.’
‘Aye. So what?’
‘So when did we start worrying about moods?’
She leaned forward. ‘Difference is, I don’t give a shit about your mood. Toil gets to deal with that an’ more fool her, but not the rest of us. Anatin’ll take it out on someone, you know he will. I’m either picking up the pieces or talking him down – neither of which I much care for.’
Lynx took a breath before replying. Payl was more distant and brittle these days. The death of her lover Fashail in the Mage Islands had hit her harder than anyone wanted to point out. The strain of marching meant they were all less than sunny, but he didn’t need to pick a fight.
‘I’ll go find him later,’ he said eventually. ‘He can yell all he likes at me.’
Toil snorted. ‘Sure, cos that never goes wrong. I’ll go—’ She raised a finger as Himbel’s sour face brightened. ‘After we finish the game, I’m not defaulting.’
‘You’ll go?’ Payl asked. ‘Queen of self-control and restraint as you are?’
‘You’re never gonna
let me live Jarrazir down, are you?’
‘Nope. What if some other ghost from your past appears at just the wrong time?’
‘We’re here to kill people,’ Toil observed. ‘Strikes me there’s likely to be less of a conflict.’
‘We’re here to do the job.’
Toil nodded. ‘Aye, I know. Don’t worry, it was a slip. Won’t happen again.’
‘Cos Bade’s died in that fire or cos you’re filled with self-awareness?’
Toil signed and snatched up the cards to shuffle them. ‘Both,’ she said. ‘Either. There’s no man like Sotorian Bade in my affections. Lynx, I hope you’ll forgive me there, but the man’s got a special place in my heart. All the same, we’ve got a job to do and I’ll not be caught unprepared again. Even if the fucker made it out of Jarrazir, he can wait. There’s someone – something – else I want to kill more.’
Lynx nodded. What they intended to do, the sheer breathtaking audacity that had driven them here, made this day all the more surreal. And so they sat quietly and tried to distract themselves with drink and gambling, but it fooled no one. The stores were plentiful and that much free booze in any city would have seen the Cards unconscious by now. As it was, even Varain was being restrained.
Times have got so bad, Lynx reflected over the next hand, even the Cards are acting responsible. If that ain’t a sign of the last days I don’t know what is. He smiled. Come to think of it, that must be a good sign. Pretty much what we came here for.
The afternoon drew on towards dusk and a chill descended. The valley faded from view behind a pale mist that crept up from the lower reaches. With fitful cloud cover the skyriver made that mist faintly glow, something they had to hope would dissuade the creatures of the deepest black. Other than the wind there was no sound at all. The Cards found themselves watching the inexorable creep of the mist, each wondering what might lie inside.
As night moved on, the mist started to hint at its secrets. With little wind, the movement of something inside the mist was marked by drifting. Lynx spent a long while with the other Marked Cards, ballistae at the ready. Once it looked like there was a large shape pursued by several others. They vanished almost as abruptly as they appeared and the mist settled to calm again. The Cards were left to wonder what it was they’d actually seen, but nothing came close enough for them to risk shooting. Night elementals were in abundance and no doubt others too, but discerning elemental from monster was a harder prospect. Toil was determined they pass the night as quietly as possible.