The Road to Death: The Lost Mark, Book 2

by Forbeck, Matt

The shifter slid a pair of small, low glasses—filled with a dark, pungent fluid—toward Brendis and Kandler. Then he turned back to pour others for Sallah, Xalt, and himself from a black-painted bottle bearing a Cyran seal.

  Kandler handed his glass to Sallah and waited for Burch to fill all their hands. When they were ready, he raised his three fingers of brandy to offer a toast. “To Cyre,” he said. “May she someday rise again.”

  The five friends clinked their glasses together and drank—except for Xalt who sniffed the liquor’s strong bouquet instead. As they did, another creature slammed into one of the sets of shutters again.

  Brendis, who’d only managed to choke down half his strong drink, dropped his glass at the noise. It shattered on the slate floor.

  Burch shook his head as he reached for a fresh glass for the young knight. “Waste of good drink,” the shifter said sadly.

  Xalt hummed to himself for having missed another chance to guess which window would be hit, and he moved in front of the shutters nearest the door. A moment later, a creature smashed into that set and fell back. The warforged clicked his tongue and stayed right where he was.

  Kandler savored a mouthful of brandy as he looked into Sallah’s eyes. The smell of the place, though muted, brought back a flood of memories—that and the taste of the liquor. It had been over a year since he’d had a taste of such spirits, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it.

  Still, it felt good—felt right—to be here, sharing a drink with a beautiful young woman again. He could almost forget that Metrol was as dead as his beloved wife, and that only an inch of good, ironbound wood separated them from the pack of glowing, howling monsters that wanted their blood.

  “This is good,” Sallah said, allowing a sly smile to dance across her lips.

  “Better than it has any right to be,” Kandler agreed.

  “Got that right,” Burch said as he held his pint up to his eyes and examined it curiously. “After two years in an opened bottle, this shouldn’t be much more than dirty water. It ain’t natural.”

  “What is in the Mournland?” Kandler said as another beast slammed into the window in front of Xalt. The warforged stayed where he was again. “Nothing decays here. Magic doesn’t work so well.” He looked directly into Sallah’s emerald eyes. “What can you trust?”

  “You are correct,” Xalt announced, looking back from the window at Kandler.

  “Damn right,” Kandler said, taking another swig of his drink. “What are you talking about?”

  “Magic here doesn’t work how it should.”

  “True,” Burch said, pointing a claw-tipped finger at Kandler. “Remember those living fireballs wandering around the crater before we threw up Mardakine there? Now those were—”

  Kandler held up a hand to cut the shifter off. He called over to the warforged. “What did you mean, Xalt?”

  The warforged pointed a thick, stubby finger at the shutters. “The magic that once held these fast is weak. Perhaps even gone.”

  Kandler emptied his glass and set it down on the bar, then put his hand on the hilt of his sword. “What are you trying to say?”

  Xalt turned to look at the justicar. “The ghostbeasts have figured this out. They’ve also decided to focus their efforts on this shutter in an effort to weaken it quickly. Once they break it down, they will come streaming through to join us here.” At this, the warforged glanced at each of the others in turn. “To kill us.”

  A massive weight slammed into the shutters in front of Xalt again. This time, Kandler heard the wood crack. Xalt was right. The ghostbeasts would beat their way into the pub. It was only a matter of time.

  Kandler fell in next to Xalt, his blade raised and ready. Burch leaped up to kneel atop the bar, his crossbow in his hands loaded and ready, trained on the shutters before Xalt. Brendis gulped down the rest of his drink before taking up his flaming sword and standing to Kandler’s left.

  “By the flame,” said Sallah, staring at her empty hands. “What I wouldn’t give for a good blade right now.”

  Kandler nodded at Burch. “Give it to her,” he said.

  Without a word of acknowledgement, the shifter reached into his quiver of bolts and extracted a long knife with a blade so black it seemed to soak up the light around it. He reversed the handle and pitched it over to the lady knight.

  Sallah caught the knife by its grip and turned it over in her hand, staring at it. “This belonged to the changeling,” she said. “You took it after the battle in Construct?”

  “You’re welcome,” the shifter said before returning his attention to the battered shutters.

  As he did, they bent inward far enough for Kandler to see an inch or two of glowing flesh framed between the shutters’ halves. Near the top, a wide eye with tiny, constricted pupils glared through the gap at them.

  Burch loosed a bolt at the creature, and it zipped straight through the small opening. The glowing monster fell back, howling more bitterly than ever.

  “That’ll teach them to come knocking on our door,” Kandler said with a spare grin for his friend.

  Silence fell over the room for a full minute. Outside, Kandler thought he could hear the creatures shuffling around, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Do you think they’re gone?” Brendis asked.

  “No,” Xalt said quietly. “I think they’re learning from Burch’s lesson.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” the young knight said, unable to conceal the irritation in his voice. Kandler didn’t blame Brendis for his frayed nerves. They were all on edge, and for good reason.

  Before Xalt could reply, a heavy mass slammed into all four of the sets of shutters at once.

  Sallah screamed in surprise. Brendis leaped back and nearly dropped his sword. Kandler dropped back toward the bar and swept his sword back and forth at all four covered windows.

  The creatures smashed into the windows again. And again.

  The justicar adjusted his grip on his sword. Soon the creatures would break through, maybe in four different places at once, and they would be fighting for their lives.

  Kandler gritted his teeth in rage. This wasn’t the sort of thing he needed to deal with right now. He had to find Esprë, and every delay like this was lost time, another hour or more that the changeling could get his daughter farther away from him in their stolen airship.

  He found that he wanted the creatures to break through and to do it now—the faster, the better. He couldn’t stand being holed up here any more anyhow. He was ready to kill his way to Esprë’s side or die trying.

  It was then that Kandler realized that the creatures had stopped battering the shutters. Instead, a horrible howl went up from the square outside, a cacophonous choir of wails that spoke of anger, hatred, and eternal frustration. Some of the screeches ended abruptly. Others transformed into cries of pain.

  A whooping noise erupted in the square and quickly turned to a cheer. Then there were voices, chattering something in the common tongue of the land.

  “Trap?” Burch said.

  “Either way, we hold tight,” Kandler said.

  “What choice do we have?” Sallah said.

  After a long moment, Kandler heard someone outside shuffling up to the door. He checked to see that Burch had him covered, then moved to stand an arm’s length away from the door, his sword pointed straight at it.

  A meaty hand pounded on the door, followed by a voice as deep as a canyon. “Whoever you are in there, you can come out now,” it said. “The ghostbeasts are gone.”

  Kandler frowned. “We’re just fine in here, thanks,” he said.

  “You are strangers here in Metrol,” the voice said. “The boss insists.”

  “He’s not our boss.”

  The voice laughed low and evil. “In Metrol, everyone answers to Ikar the Black.”

  Kandler’s stomach flipped. Ikar and his band of scavengers—“salvage experts,” as they liked to be called—were the landed equivalent to pirates of the worst kin
d. He’d dealt with some of them in Mardakine before. Then he’d had a few dozen well-armed villagers backing him up. Now he would be entirely at the mercy of these black-hearted thieves.

  “Hey, boss,” Burch said. “Ask him if we can have the ghostbeasts back instead.”

  We can’t let Ikar take us,” Kandler said. “We don’t have the time to deal with him. Esprë gets farther away from us every minute.”

  “We should take the battle to them,” Sallah said. “If we charge straight at them, we might be able to break through their lines before they can stop us.”

  “Might work,” Burch said from where he perched on a table jammed up under one of the shuttered windows, peeking through the gap a ghostbeast had battered there. “If they had a line.”

  “How many of them are out there?” Brendis asked, apparently not caring anymore if anyone could hear the tremor in his voice.

  Burch bared his teeth as he peered at what he could see of the square. “A score, at least,” he said. “Maybe more.”

  “What about the horses?” Xalt said. Kandler had seen the warforged cringe at having to leave the trusty mounts to the nonexistent mercies of the ghostbeasts who had chased them in here.

  “Gone. Dead or stolen, but gone just the same.”

  “What are we going to do?” The words came from Brendis, but they echoed the thoughts in everyone’s head, Kandler knew. The others’ eyes all fell on him.

  “Out back,” he said, already leading the way through the rear rooms of the pub. “They might not have covered it yet.”

  Kandler threaded his way through the dark hallways like a cat in the night. Although it was pitch black, except for Brendis’s sword far behind him, he’d spent enough nights in the place that it was still like walking through his own home.

  When he reached the back door, he gestured for the others to stay back. Then he reached up and undid the latch that Xalt had fastened just moments ago. It slid back on well-oiled rails.

  Kandler cracked the door open a hair and peeked out. The alley led straight away from Ginty’s back door. It was empty, so he opened the door some more.

  Litter flittered around the place on a stiff night breeze. Bags of garbage sat piled high along one wall, much higher than Kandler ever remembered them.

  “Looks clear,” he said, stepping through the door and motioning for the others to follow him. They filed out right behind him as he prowled toward the open end of the alley, a few dozen yards ahead.

  Somewhere, a bird called.

  Kandler swore. No birds lived in the Mournland.

  “Trap!” Burch shouted. The shifter leaped back toward Ginty’s rear door, but he hauled up short when a load of bricks smashed into the pavement before it, sealing it shut.

  Glancing up, Kandler spotted a cackling figure peering over the roof, surveying his handiwork. Others no doubt crouched near the two other doors that opened into the alley, ready with heavy loads of their own. Holding his sword before him, the justicar sprinted toward the free end of the street. Before he covered half the distance, though, a swath of bodies swept in and blocked off the exit.

  “Surrender!” a deep-throated voice growled from the center of that mass.

  Kandler could see the speaker in the light of an everburning torch a nearby lackey carried. He stood a foot taller than the justicar, or any of those near him, with a chest like a barrel and arms strapped with corded muscles. A black, spiky crest of hair fell back from a low, mean brow that shaded his beady, ebony eyes. He showed all his jagged, yellow teeth in a savage smile that stood out sharply against his wart-crusted, dark gray skin.

  “Hello, Ikar,” Kandler said.

  The half-orc opened his mouth to reply, then stopped. He grinned at those surrounding him, a malignant pack of muscle as coarse and ugly as the band’s leader. The crew hunkered around him, instinctively protecting him from a bolt from Burch’s crossbow or some other assault.

  “My fame precedes me,” Ikar said, clearly pleased. “Then you should know what I want from you.”

  “What’s that?” Xalt said earnestly.

  “Everything, of course.”

  Kandler considered charging straight into battle, perhaps before the bandits were ready, but he suspected it was already too late for that. They’d corralled Kandler and his friends in this alley like rats, and they’d taken the time to plug all the holes.

  The justicar didn’t see that he had a choice here. He strode straight up to Ikar and his crew. Without looking back, he knew that Burch would sweep the others forward behind him, keeping them all together in case everything went wrong.

  Of course, Kandler couldn’t see any way for it to go right.

  “I haven’t got time for this,” Kandler said as he stepped into the bandits’ torchlight. “I’m on a mission for King Boranel. I need transport across the Cyre River. Now.”

  Ikar glared down at Kandler for a moment. The Brelander could almost hear the gears whirring in the half-orc’s brain. Then a smile split Ikar’s mug.

  “Not even a ‘thank you’ for saving you from the ghostbeasts?” Ikar rumbled, bemused. “That hardly seems polite, justicar. Although after the reception you gave us the last time we were in Mardakine, I don’t suppose I should expect any better.”

  “I don’t recall that,” Kandler lied. “I spend so much time running ghouls like you and your crew out of town that they all blend together.”

  “Well,” Ikar said with an evil smirk, “you’re in my town now.”

  Kandler sighed. “Look,” he said, “we’re both professionals here. Let’s do this the easy way. Let us go on our way, and we’ll be out of your hair for good.”

  Ikar raised an eyebrow. “You mean to say there won’t be any problems for us in Mardakine too?”

  Kandler shook his head. “Not from me, or Burch either—or any of the rest of us. We have no business here. We’re just passing through.”

  Ikar scratched at the scruffy goatee that stuck out from his chin. Then he nodded. “All right,” he said. “I can wrap my head around that.”

  “Thank the Flame,” Sallah said solemnly.

  Kandler didn’t relax though. He knew that Ikar wasn’t done yet.

  “Of course …” the half-orc started. His thugs sniggered at his offhand tone. “Those who pass through Metrol and enjoy the security that we offer them must return the favor with some sort of recompense.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sallah said, stepping up beside Kandler and pushing aside the hand he put out to keep her calm. “Speak plainly.”

  “A tax,” Ikar said, mischief dancing in his eyes.

  “You mean to rob us?” Sallah said, glaring up into the half-orc’s sharklike eyes.

  Ikar shook his head sadly at Sallah. “I prefer to call it a toll.” He glanced at Kandler. “I thought you wanted to handle this professionally.”

  Kandler put a hand on Sallah’s shoulder to pull her back, but she shrugged it away. When she spoke to Ikar next, she held her tone even.

  “How much?” she said. “We have little to spare.”

  “Not much,” the half-orc said, his eyes wandering over Sallah and the others like a starving man in a butcher shop. His gaze fell on the blazing sword in Brendis’s hand. “Just all of your blades.”

  “Never!” Brendis said, clutching the blade close enough to himself that Kandler could see the young knight starting to sweat. “The sword of a Knight of the Silver Flame is sacred! The twain are not to be parted.”

  Ikar nodded, then looked at Sallah with a wolfish grin. “What happened to yours?” The crew around him cackled.

  “It’s a long story,” Kandler said.

  “Why bargain with these curs?” Brendis said, rattled. “We should cut them down and be done with it.”

  Ikar’s lips curled into a sneer. “Look all around you, little knight,” he said cruelly. “Then, if you think you have it in you, do give it your best effort.”

  Brendis stared at the half-orc for a moment, then swiveled h
is neck about. Kandler heard a gasp as the young knight finally spotted the archers stationed around the edges of the roofs overlooking the alley. There had to be a dozen of them at least.

  “There were another dozen warriors in the square too,” Xalt said softly.

  Brendis flushed red. “My blade will only leave my grasp when the Flame has taken my soul.”

  “Don’t tempt them,” Kandler said.

  Ikar loosed a throaty laugh. “Fear not, little knight,” he said. “Keep your burning trinket. I’m more interested in something else you have. Hand it over, and I’ll consider it a fair price for escorting you lot from this blasted land.”

  “What’s that?” Kandler asked, dreading the answer.

  Ikar’s eyes blazed with greed as he spoke. “Why, your warforged there, of course.”

  Done!”

  Kandler pivoted to goggle at Xalt, unable to believe the warforged had given in to the bandit leader’s demands so quickly.

  “No,” he said to Xalt. “If anyone should give himself up for the rest, it should be me.”

  Ikar snorted. “I don’t want you, justicar. I want the warforged.”

  Xalt stepped forward and put his hand on Kandler’s shoulder. One of his wide fingers was missing, lost when the warforged had first stood up for Kandler and his friends. “You need to move on,” he said. “Fast. You don’t need me.”

  “We don’t leave friends behind,” Sallah said over Xalt’s shoulder.

  The warforged huffed in pained happiness. “To think that I might have friends.” He fixed Kandler in his ebony eyes. “I will be all right. I can make a new life here. Go.”

  “Don’t press your luck,” Ikar hissed at Kandler’s ear. “The warforged wants to stay with us. You get to move on. Everybody’s happy.”

  Kandler stared into Xalt’s eyes, wishing that the warforged could somehow wink at him or give him another sort of signal that everything here would be all right. Maybe the warforged didn’t dare risk it with Ikar watching like a hawk, but the justicar felt that Xalt had something in mind other than making himself into the bandits’ slave.

  “All right,” he said to Ikar, never taking his eyes off Xalt. “It’s a deal.”