by Arthur Slade
I gestured to the tall barn, hoping to distract both of them from their I’m tougher than you display. The building had what looked to be living quarters on the top. “Is this your home?”
“No!” Thord said. “This is our sheep hutch. My brothers and I would take turns staying here in winter to feed the sheep. The swans and Brax can hide in the barn. It’ll be big enough for them.”
The interior of the barn was surprisingly pleasant smelling. Well, if one liked the smell of straw. Each of us bunked down near our mounts and fell asleep.
An hour or two later Thord shook my shoulder. “It’s time to get up.”
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and nodded. The dragon eye was always the first to focus, and it outlined him in a red glow. I stretched.
“Just to make this clear,” Brax said without opening his eye. “You’re going down into a dangerous city populated by smelly barbarians, and you’re leaving the fire-breathing dragon behind. Is that wise?”
“There isn’t another way,” I said. “You can’t flap around there during daylight. You know that. They’d put a thousand bolts through you. And it’s hard to sneak around with a dragon hanging over your shoulder.”
“Yes, but I wanted to point out that I won’t be able to hear your sad hoots for help.”
“The three of us should be safe enough together.” I made sure my daggers were held properly in their sheaths. “But I appreciate your worry.”
“I’m not worried. If you die, our contract is broken and I am free.” He still hadn’t opened his eye.
I snuck out of the barn, following my companions. Thord led us down a long grassy hill, pointing out landmarks as we travelled. He and his brothers had spent most of their youths hunting and playing among these hills and rocks. All the other assassins had memories of the places they’d grown up. Megan had Allessaria and stories about the endless waves of the eastern coast. But Corwin and I only remembered the fortress. It was the only place we had called home.
And he had burned out its insides and left the walls covered with student blood. I put my hands on my daggers.
“We can’t visit my parents,” Thord said as he pointed at a long house nestled between two hills. “But that’s my home. I’d give my left arm for another bowl of her mutton stew.” The family home was large enough to house a small army. He came from what counted as wealth in Woden. There were torches lit out front, and it had a chimney that rose high into the air. The place looked so warm and inviting. It wasn’t hard to imagine some breakfast porridge bubbling in the hearth. “Corwin may have figured out who our families are and where they live,” Thord continued. “The Empire’s agents are likely watching for my return.”
When we were over the next hill, the city of Gudheim stood below us. It was not anywhere near as impressive as Avenus or Myra. The protective wall was high and wide, but it was constructed of wood. It guarded a massive collection of huts that looked like a giant had plucked them up and popped them down any which way. I didn’t know if there were actual streets in the city. “We are getting close — prepare yourselves.” Thord pulled a wax mask out of his pocket and placed it over his face, waiting for the heat of his body to make it stick. “Someone might recognize me,” he said.
“It looks like you have a pimple,” Megan said, and she pressed her finger against his face. “There, got rid of that air bubble.”
Megan didn’t bother with a mask, and I whispered my charm to make my eye look human.
We scaled the wall easily, threw ourselves silently over the ramparts, and climbed down the other side without the sentries noticing. We landed in a backyard pen of one hut. A pig, completely nonplussed, watched as we stepped through the muck. “Oh, wonderful! Pig poop,” Megan said.
The gloop we’d stepped in was thick and stuck to my boots. It made it hard to walk.
“We’ll fit right in,” Thord said. He put his hand on her shoulder, and I did feel a moment of envy. “Pig poop is the smell of home for me. Sheep dung too.”
“What a romantic notion,” she said. And she leaned toward him.
“So where are we going?” I worked myself between them, so that all three of us were walking side by side down an alley.
“Well,” Thord said. “Besides the eye of Hokum Flower, skull of Bardur fox, and berry of Black Lotus vine, the scroll had that little riddle: The messenger has one arm. The blade will come. We just have to find the messenger with one arm, and Banderius will come to us.”
“Do you know anyone with one arm?” Megan asked.
“That’s the hard part,” he admitted. “Every man and woman in this town carries a blade and tends to hack away after the slightest insult. We have a horde of one-armed men and women.”
“Then how will we figure out who it is?” I asked. The manure had hardened enough that my feet didn’t stick to the path.
“Oh, I may have the answer to that,” he said.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I hadn’t realized that he had a mischievous side. He was always so serious in class.
“It’s nice to be a step ahead of you two.”
“That extra step is only because you live here,” Megan said. “If it was anywhere else, we’d be using you to wipe the floor. Intellectually speaking, that is.”
“Which is why I am so enjoying this moment. I’m enjoying it so much I almost don’t want to say this: here we are.”
We turned the corner around a hut. A giant one-armed man stood before us.
Chapter 17
The Wolf Fighter
The twelve-foot-tall man’s hand was stretched toward the rising sun as though in welcome.
He didn’t move. That was because he was made of wicker that had been banded together to form his arms and legs and body. He was wearing trousers made from living leaves. His anguished face had been carved from the wood of a large tree.
“I give you Tor,” Thord said. “He who lost his arm to the wolf that swallowed the moon. He who saved the world from being eaten.”
“This is a statue of a god?” I asked.
“Yes,” Thord said. “One of many. Gods, that is. And we burn it on the first day of winter because that’s when he climbed down to Knifheim, and when the snow melted, he returned with wheat kernels. The priests and priestesses rebuild him every spring.”
Megan reached up to touch the giant. “So he’ll tell us where Banderius is?” She pulled on his hand. “He seems kind of quiet. And woody.”
“My guess is someone in there will help us.” Thord pointed at the long house behind the statue. It was surrounded by so many wooden gods I assumed it was a religious building. It was timber-framed, the walls green with growing moss, and the roof was thatched. Ravens sat in a row along the crest of the house. “We’ll go inside and pray. Then — and I’m crossing my fingers as I say this — our answer will come.”
“Pray?” I asked. The only deity I’d ever prayed to was Belaz, the goddess of assassins.
“Yes, pray,” Thord said, in a somewhat lecturing tone. “That is what people do in holy houses. It won’t hurt, I promise. Follow me.”
He led us through the open wooden doors and into a large central room. It was dark and the only light came from a fire in a central hearth. The smell of smoke and the stink of something dead hit me. This was a holy house?
“There are many sacrifices here,” Thord explained. “Sometimes they leave the bodies.”
“Human?” Megan asked.
“Not until harvest, so we’re safe.” He smiled as he said this last bit. Was he kidding?
A bald man in a hooded robe nodded to us. His head had a score of tattoos that looked like they’d been written in Oldtongue. Maybe they were magical wards. He gestured to the benches around the central hearth.
“That’s a gothi,” Thord whispered when the man left the room. “He’s a priest.”
We sat on the wooden bench. It was whittled from a massive old tree stump and looked as if it had been there for a thousand years. We inhaled t
he smoke. More robed men came in and out and we waited. One thickset bald woman in similar robes to the men strode right up to us, stared openly for several moments, then departed.
“She’s a gythia,” Thord whispered. “A priestess.”
“I love how he talks as if we don’t have a brain between us,” Megan said.
I kept my laughter silent.
We waited with our heads bent, and I watched through the top of my hood. As the morning progressed other prayerful people arrived: farmers, tinkerers, old women with their knitted shawls. One man, who was as thin as a post, brought in a chicken and sacrificed it in a bowl-like indentation in the hearth, then left the body. A monk emerged a few minutes later and took the carcass away. At least the sacrifices weren’t wasted.
Doubt was growing in my mind. Did we have the right place? There may be another one-armed man in some tavern waiting for us to arrive.
Or the letter I’d found with Banderius’s name on it was fake.
“This is taking too long,” I said.
Thord blessed me with a frown. “Just pretend to pray. Even the simplest farmer can do it.”
By Belak I’ll strangle him, I thought. That was as close as I could get to a prayer.
Then a bald gythia, her face and neck a series of swirling circular tattoos, came and stood in front of Thord. One of her eyes was white with cataracts. When she looked at me I felt a sharp pain in my dragon eye.
“You are our sisters and brothers from the red robes,” she said.
“Yes. We are,” Thord answered.
“You are not a stranger, Thord son of Thangbrand.” She had recognized him despite his mask. “These two are.”
“They are graduates of the red robes. We are searching for an old friend.”
“We were told to expect you by a man who once did work for us. You are not the first to come.”
That must mean others had been searching for Banderius. More survivors!
“How many others?” I asked.
She gave me a long stare. “It is not a large number, but it is not small.”
Oh, why did religious people speak in such riddles?
“The one who told you to expect us,” Thord whispered. “Where is he?”
She handed something to Thord that I couldn’t see. Thord looked at the item in his palm, then pocketed it. “Follow the spear,” she said. “It will lead you to him.”
More riddles! I’d have much preferred a “Banderius is in the third house on the left after the brown state house.”
“There are other strangers in Gudheim,” the priestess said. “Their eyes are on us now. You are in mortal danger.”
I glanced around. Two square-shouldered men had come in and were sitting at a bench behind us. Hoods hid their faces, and their cloaks were dirty. They had been travelling on horseback, judging by the splashes of mud. The men sat very straight, which indicated military training. They blocked our way to the door we’d entered. On the other side of the room were two more figures. One was large and the other smaller — I was pretty certain that one was a woman.
A gothi went up and the woman waved him away. Metal glinted under her robe.
Armour.
The waving motion made her hood move enough that the dim light revealed her face. It was a face I’d last seen on graduation night.
Scyllia. My classmate.
My enemy.
“We have to go now,” I whispered. “Scyllia is here.”
“Scyllia!” Megan hissed. “Are you certain?”
“Yes. With three others. She’s wearing armour and I’m sure they are too. We have to get out of here.”
“The one-eyed one speaks truth,” the gythia said. I didn’t know if she was referring to herself or to me. I had two eyes. “You must come with me. Now.”
She turned away from us and we looked at each other. Thord shrugged and we followed her. I glanced back just as we stepped through a curtain to see that all four of the newly arrived were on their feet and heading in our direction.
The room had four doors. The priestess made a motion and two burly gothi went through the curtain. A moment later there was yelling.
“All doors to the outside are being watched by Akkad soldiers,” the gythia said. “We knew one day this path to your friend would be closed.”
“Then where do we go?” Megan asked.
With surprising strength the gythia pushed a stone table aside, pulled a rug up, and revealed a door in the grass floor. She opened it and practically shoved us down the darkened steps. “May Tor watch over you. And remember to follow the spear.”
The door slammed above us. I heard her dragging the table into place.
Light appeared. Megan was holding a glowing light bauble above her head. It revealed a timber-supported tunnel that stretched a long distance into darkness.
The dim echo of metal on metal came through the door. “Are your priests armed?” Megan asked.
“Of course,” Thord said. “And the priestesses too.”
“Then maybe they’ll hold them for a bit,” I said. “We had better run.”
And so we ran.
Chapter 18
The Spear
I took the lead because I could see the farthest. The tunnel itself had a smooth floor and there were no cobwebs. I turned back to look and saw no sign of pursuit.
Then a crash echoed down the tunnel, and shouting followed. I swear I heard Scyllia’s voice.
“Faster!” Megan said.
The tunnel suddenly branched in three directions. “Which one?” Thord asked. I could see down all three with my dragon eye, and they each looked the same. I tried to picture what direction we were running and how far we’d gone under the city.
“We’ve been running north,” I said. “Do you think one of these comes up in another holy house?”
“There is only one house of the Raven Gods,” Thord said.
“I’ll make a decision,” Megan said. “Let’s take the one on the right.”
It was as good a tunnel as any, and I rushed down it. All I could hear now was the sound of our breathing and, despite trying to run as quietly as possible, the echoes of our footsteps. The tunnel curved ahead.
“This better not be a dead end,” I said.
We came around a sharp corner and I was pleased to skid to a stop in front of a set of stairs. At the top was a stone trap door. It was heavy, but with all three of us pushing we could lift it a few inches. There was a fallow field and no sign of any buildings. “We’re outside the city walls!” Megan said.
We put our backs into it and pushed until the trap door was open a foot or two, the bright light blinding me. The door wouldn’t go any further, so Thord held it open with his back while the two of us crawled out. Then we grabbed on and lifted.
“You can let it go,” Megan said. “We’ve got it.”
He did so, but the door slipped out of our hands and thumped down. Thord pushed on it but could only lift it the span of his hand.
“It’s so heavy,” I said. “How did those priests ever open it?”
“Just leave me.” Thord passed something to me, and I glanced down and recognized it as the thing the priestess had given him. I put it in the deepest pocket of my cloak.
“No,” Megan said. “We won’t leave you.”
“No,” I said a second later. “They’ll kill you.”
Then I leaned down and grabbed hold of the door as tight as I could. I stared at my hands, at the door, and with a grunt pulled up. My dragon eye seemed to flash, and my blood felt so hot it was burning in my veins. The door slowly lifted.
When I looked across, I saw that Megan wasn’t helping — she was standing back and her eyes were wide. And so were Thord’s eyes. “Get out!” I shouted.
He jumped out. I let go and the trap door slammed shut.
“Umm …” Thord was pointing at the stone door. “How … how the Hades did you do that?”
I looked at my hands. The blood continued to burn inside every vein
. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Scyllia will be here in moments. We don’t want to meet her.”
“She’s right,” Megan said. “They’ll be able to track us if they have dogs or are half good at what they do. We need to get back to our swans.”
Thord led us along the hills. We raced past his parents’ home again. It must be odd, I realized, to know they were only a few hundred strides away. Eventually we made it back to the stone barn. The sheep were still nervously pressed against the fence.
The moment we entered the swans made angry honking sounds. “They’re hungry,” Thord said, and he hunted around until he found two pails of wheat, which he set down in front of them. They ate as Megan and Thord saddled them. Brax hadn’t stirred from his sleep.
“What did that gythia give us?” Thord asked.
I pulled out the small object and a small chain unfolded, with a spear at the end. “It’s a toy spear.”
“It’s a compass,” Megan said. “But how will that help us find Banderius?”
We watched as it turned in the air and pointed to the west.
“It doesn’t even point north,” Thord said. “It’s broken.”
It seemed to glow, but when I blinked the glow had vanished.
“Let me see it.” Megan stretched out her hand and I dropped it in her palm. She turned around the room. She was unkempt, but somehow it made her appear even more attractive. “No matter what direction I move, it points to the west. It’s not broken.”
“It just doesn’t know where north is,” I said. “So it’s no help.”
“No,” Megan said. “Remember what that witch woman told us?”
“She’s not a witch, she’s a gythia,” Thord said.
“Whatever.” Megan waved her free hand. “She said to follow the spear. This spear always points in one direction, so it must be charmed. Maybe he wears a similar spear — its twin.”
“If you’re right,” Thord said, “then we just have to follow this to … to Banderius.”
“There’s one problem with that,” I said. “And it’s a big one.”