by William King
“He’s mine,” he said. “I killed him.”
Weasel looked miffed but the Barbarian nodded. “He killed him.”
“Fair enough,” said Weasel.
“What about the others?” Rik asked.
“Lieutenant’s down but still breathing. So is Gunther. Pigeon caught it. Leon’s unconscious. Severin is dead. The rest of them legged it.”
Rik wondered yet again how so much could have happened without him noticing it. It took some getting used to, even though he had enough experience to know that combat was chaos.
Weasel moved off down the corridor to see what he could find, the torch making his shadow dance behind him. Rik found an amulet on the wizard’s neck, and a number of pouches, some containing powder, inside the remains of his robe. Many of these had been spilled by the Barbarian’s blade. Rik was careful to avoid touching the ripped containers and their contents, while shoving the rest of them into his own pouch.
“Might be jewels there,” said the Barbarian as if regretting his earlier support. “If there is, just remember I did my part.”
“Fair enough,” said Rik. “Let’s see what we can do for the others.”
“I’m no good at stitching. I’ll help Weasel.” Rik shrugged and returned to his unconscious comrades. It looked like Weasel had actually bothered to perform basic first aid on them, which somewhat surprised Rik.
He checked Leon’s wounds first, and saw that the boy had just taken a hard knock to the head, maybe when the Ultari had started flailing about. Astonishingly, his clay pipe lay nearby unbroken. Rik stuck it in Leon’s tunic pocket along with the lucky feather from his hat then inspected the rest of his comrades.
Gunther looked pale and shocked and his breathing was shallow. Severin was dead. Pigeon’s head had been covered with his own tunic, and when he removed it Rik saw why. His skull had been split like a melon and brains had poured out onto the floor. Rik fought down the urge to be sick, made the Elder Sign of Passage over him, and gave his attention to the Lieutenant.
He looked around. There was nobody else present at the moment. Like a bolt sent straight from Shadow it struck him that he could simply put his hand over Sardec’s mouth and suffocate him. The Terrarch was paler even than Gunther and his breathing was shallow already. For a moment, his hand hovered over the Lieutenant’s face. He could take his own personal revenge on the Terrarch race right here, right now, if he wished and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him.
Nothing, he thought, except that he could not bring himself to kill someone so helpless; nothing except that his soul would go straight to the Shadow; nothing except the fact that somebody might return at any minute. He shook his head and tried to ignore his aches and pains. What was he thinking? He wiped the truesilver blade and returned it to its scabbard, then hunted around for his own weapons. Carefully he bit open a cartridge and loaded and primed the pistol, then set himself down to wait until his companions returned and could help him to move the wounded.
It was not long before Weasel and the Barbarian appeared. “We found something,” said the poacher.
Chapter Eight
“What have you found?” Rik asked Weasel.
“Books, Halfbreed.”
“I said we’d best burn them,” said the Barbarian. “They are wizard’s books. No good can come of them. No good ever came of any book.”
“But?” said Rik. He allowed his tiredness and impatience to show in his voice. He knew this pair. If they had wanted to, they would simply have burned the books. They would not have come to consult with him. Therefore they must think there was something to be gained from this.
“Weasel said they might be treasure. He said that the right people pay well for such books.”
Rik knew in his gut that he had come to one of the cross-roads of his life. These books had belonged to a dark wizard, one who had been up to no good whatsoever down here. If they were what he suspected, they contained forbidden lore, the kind that a man could get burned at the stake for possessing. The mage they had just fought had been no saint. Quite possibly his own knowledge had driven him mad. The best thing to do with the books was to burn them. And yet…
And yet, those books and that knowledge in them represented the gateway to a world he had always wanted to be part of, the world of the sorcerer. Perhaps they contained something that would let him forge a different destiny, that could steer him away from the early death or the poorhouse, or the life of an itinerant limbless beggar that waited many ex-soldiers.
Perhaps there was something in them that could let him better himself, or at least seize some control of his life. A flash of rebelliousness passed through him. He felt the lure of the forbidden.
What if the knowledge in those books was dark, frowned on by society? What had society ever done for him? And more than anything else, he was curious.
He saw the others staring at him. Weasel licked his lips, and fumbled at the hilt of his knife. Rik realised that they were nervous too but for different reasons. They were making an offer which if reported to the wrong people could get them burned at the stake.
He could almost read Weasel’s mind. His life was on the line here in more ways than one. If this pair thought he might report them to the Inquisition, he would not leave this place alive. They were waiting for an answer, one on which his life could well depend.
“He’s right,” said Rik. He paused for a moment, to weigh his next few words, but the Barbarian leapt in eagerly.
“You mean you think we found treasure?”
“I mean we may have found it, if those books are grimoires. There are people who pay well for spell books and such. At least there were in Sorrow.”
Weasel shot the Barbarian an I-told-you-so look.
“How much?” the big man asked. Rik looked around meaningfully, concentrating his gaze on the Lieutenant. This was not the sort of conversation you wanted overheard. The others had known it already. They were speaking in very low tones indeed. All three of them shuffled towards the chamber from which Weasel and the Barbarian had come. It was a small gallery containing a rickety wooden table, a stool and a pallet for sleeping on.
“How much?” the Barbarian repeated.
“Gold,” said Rik.
“Lots of gold?” The Barbarian looked excited.
“I don’t know,” said Rik. He thought of the Old Witch and her web of dubious connections. “It was never my field. I knew someone who dealt in these things sometimes.”
“You would not be trying to put one over on your old comrades now?” asked Weasel with a slight undertone of menace in his voice. Rik shook his head. It was typical of the man, he thought. He was always trying to put one over on the world, so he thought the world was always trying to do the same back.
“Let’s see these books,” Rik said.
There were books, and lots of other stuff besides, scattered about what had obviously been the wizards temporary sanctum in a small gallery just off the main tunnel. Rik counted the books. There were half a dozen of them.
They were small, leather bound, some with flakes of embossing on their sides. He flicked through them. He was certain one was a spell-book. It contained the almost musical notation he remembered from the Old Witch’s books. Another looked like a journal. It contained a maps of what he guessed was this mine. Flicking through it, he could see that if it were correct then the whole complex was much deeper and stranger than anyone had guessed.
Most of the books were in the old tongues. They were annotated in modern Exalted by someone with very bad handwriting. Rik guessed it was the wizard.
Part of him exulted. He had actually found grimoires, although what he could do with them was anybody’s guess. He knew that just looking at them put his soul in peril of Shadow, but he could not help himself. He had always been more than curious about such things and now, perhaps, he had found a gateway to freedom and wealth. At the very least, he knew they had found something that certain curious souls would pay a great deal of
money for.
“You were right,” he told Weasel. “These must be worth a fortune to the right people. We only got to find them.”
Rik stuck one of the volumes within his tunic and another couple into his knapsack. He folded up the map and put it inside one of the books. Weasel and the Barbarian began to pack away the rest.
“Not a word about these to anybody,” he said. “Not to anybody. I’ll go over them later and try to make a proper evaluation. If we can find the right buyer we split the money three ways equally.”
“That’s fair,” said the Barbarian. Weasel looked as if he were trying to find some way to haggle about it, but there was only one real angle of attack.
“We found them,” he said.
“I can read them,” said Rik. “Some of them at least. And I know people who might buy them. Who would you rather trust, me or a stranger?” Weasel gave him a hard stare and then grinned.
“Nothing good ever came from reading a book,” said the Barbarian, as if repeating a truth that had been drummed into him very young.
Weasel held up his hand for silence and stalked back the way they had come. He waited and listened for a while and then returned.
“What was that?” Rik asked.
“Nothing. I thought I heard something but there was no one there.”
“Let’s hope.”
They all looked nervously down the gallery in the direction the Ultari had vanished in. What if there was more than one of them, Rik wondered?
“Come on, let’s go get the others and get out of here,” he said. Weasel held up a hand.
“Wait,” he said.
“What?”
“We don’t want anybody to come back down here checking this place,” Weasel said.
“And we don’t want that thing finding its way back up to the surface,” said the Barbarian. Rik was so wrapped up in his own thoughts, he realised he was talking about the Ultari.
“Let’s fire this place,” said Weasel.
“Dangerous,” said Rik. “It might bring the whole mine down on us.”
“No more dangerous than the other thing we are doing,” said Weasel. They were already talking around the subject. Rik thought there was perhaps something stronger that could be done. He had an uncomfortable guilty feeling that someone might already be eavesdropping on them, but when he looked around no one was there.
“That could get us burned as well,” he said. “If one of us peaches to the wrong person…”
“Now who would do that?” said Weasel.
“Not me,” said the Barbarian. “Not on a comrade.”
“Your oath on it? On your soul and hope of rebirth in the Light,” Rik said. It was the strongest oath he could think of, although not one that people who were thinking about dealing in forbidden elder lore really should be swearing by.
“By my soul and hope of rebirth,” said the Barbarian. Weasel paused for a moment. He appeared to be considering things from all angles again. Rik was surprised. The poacher was not a man who he would have expected to be all that bothered by breaking an oath. He seemed to be taking this one seriously though.
“By my soul and hope of rebirth in paradise,” he swore eventually. Both of them looked at Rik. He swore the oath. They set about looking for anything other than the precious papers that would burn. There was plenty of wood and lantern oil. It did not take long for them to pile it around the props in the ceiling that looked weakest. It took them even less time to get them alight. After that it was only a matter of running back and dragging the others clear.
As they made their way upwards, Rik thought about what they had done. He was at once excited and very scared. Lodged against his chest the books felt heavy with the promise of forbidden knowledge. He could barely wait to read them, even though it might mean the damnation of his soul and the ending of his life. He wondered what his companions would do if they knew he intended to read these books before they sold them? He knew now that he could not part with them until he had at least tried.
His fear came from the fact that impulsively they had put their feet on a very dangerous path and had not even considered what tale they would tell when they got to the surface. They would need to get their story straight on the way up, and pray nobody thought enough about what they had done to send for an Inquisitor.
It occurred to him, now that he had time to think about it, that there was no way they would not. Soldiers of the Queen had encountered a dark wizard and an Elder World demon involved in an unholy ritual. It was the sort of thing that would draw Inquisitors the way honey drew flies. Behind him he could smell burning as the flames spread.
He hoped it was not a premonition of the fate that awaited them all.
Chapter Nine
Night had fallen. The funeral service was over. Some of the Foragers watched the prisoners; most of the others were taking a few celebratory swigs of the rum Sergeant Hef had broken out. They all felt that strange sad exultation where grief mingled with triumph. The Foragers had taken Rik and his friends at their word when they claimed the wizard was dead and the demon sent scurrying underground. They had the mage’s staff, head and hands as proof. But they had lost comrades. Pigeon was just one more added to a long roll. A few of the wounded in the battle for the mansion house had passed on too.
Rik, Weasel and the Barbarian sat around their fire outside the captured manor, looking down on the ruins of Achenar. The bridgebacks loomed over them as if they would warm themselves by the blaze if they could. As ever their massive presence made Rik uneasy. He seemed to sense their brooding violence and hunger. He would have moved away if he could but there was nowhere else to go, so instead he stared into the fire.
He did not want to remember the long trudge back up through the mine, carrying the wounded, and dragging the bodies of the dead, while the smell of burning came from below them. It had been horrible, and made all the more so by thoughts of the demons that might be below them. He stared into the flames.
They immediately brought back memories of the funeral ceremony. They had given their comrades the traditional pyre despite the effort of building one in the cold. In the absence of any officers capable of performing the ceremony, Sergeant Hef had spoken the words that sent their souls on to the Light. There had been no incense for the bodies, no unguents to anoint them with, and even though they had built the pyres a good distance from the camp, the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh still hung in the air. Now all that remained of Pigeon and the others were a few charred bones on which the carrion birds would feed. In the morning, they would consign those to the grave.
Rik remembered the way the flesh had been consumed, fat sizzling in the blaze, odd popping sounds emerging from the fire, and thought that one day that would be him. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next time they fought, maybe not in battle at all but still someday, he would be on that pyre.
Like the Sergeant always said, nothing like a good funeral to make you think about these things. He had not been particularly close to Pigeon but he had known him, had gotten used to seeing him around the camp, had gotten drunk with him and his woman Ana.
And now Pigeon was simply not there. If the Prophets were right, his soul had gone to dwell with the Light. If some of the new sacrilegious philosophers were closer to the truth, he was simply gone. All that was left of him was a burnt carcass and some memories that would slowly fade. Even now the memory of the melting flesh of the corpse had partially blotted out Rik’s recollection of the man when he was still alive.
One day that will be me, he thought again, and took another sip of the rum. He tried hard to concentrate on what Weasel and the Barbarian were saying, the story they had concocted for the benefit of the Terrarchs but his own morose mood was a distraction. Currently no one seemed in the slightest bit suspicious. Rik suspected that would all change when the Lieutenant awoke. Fortunately that would not be for a while. One of the bridgebacks was being set up so that a stretcher could be laid inside the howdah for Sardec and Master Severin�
��s body.
He moved closer to the fire, and stretched out his hands to warm them. “All agreed then?” Weasel said. Rik and the Barbarian nodded. It was going to be best to stick closest to the facts. They would tell all of it straight, right down to burning the wizard’s body and that causing the fire that had brought down the lower levels of the mine. They would even mention using his papers as kindling. The only thing they would leave out was the fact they had preserved most of them.
“All agreed on what?” said Sergeant Hef, moving closer to the fire. They looked up at him, starting a little guiltily. Rik wondered how long he had been standing there listening. The Sergeant could move with considerable stealth when he wanted to. He cursed the rum, it was making them slow, and then he took another swig against the cold.
“Nothing, Sergeant,” said Weasel.
“Nothing, is it? And you three being thick as thieves since you got back from the mine and all.” So he had noticed that, had he? The Sergeant was too damned sharp by half. Rik wondered what else he had noticed. Hef grinned at them.
“You did a good job back there. You got out with the Lieutenant, and the rest of the lads, and you got the wizard. Those were his bits, weren’t they? You did get him- didn’t you?”
“Look at that head you have in the bag, Sergeant,” said Rik. “That’s a Terrarch head, isn’t it?”
“Of course we got him, Sergeant,” said the Barbarian. “Rik killed him deader than Emperor Goran- with my help, of course.”
“Well even if you didn’t, he won’t be getting out of that mine any time soon if all the lower levels are collapsed. Nor will the demon. A smart bit of work that. If the lower levels collapsed.”
Rik exchanged a look with Weasel. The Sergeant was fishing for information. Rik wished the Barbarian was not part of their little conspiracy. Weasel could keep his mouth shut, but it would not take an Inquisitor to get what he knew out of the Barbarian. He was not the brightest spark the Light had ever illuminated.