Blackwood Marauders

by K. S. Villoso

  Luc wasn’t sure how he would’ve reacted if Ceri hadn’t brought Grandmother with her. He didn’t realize how angry he had been with her until she had accused him of abandoning his family. Hadn’t she asked him to do the exact same thing when she suggested they run away to Tilarthan together?

  Yesterday’s problems, he realized. Yesterday’s problems that he had no desire to unearth. Mind still reeling, he noticed that Roena was still clutching onto his arm. Something seemed to click inside of him. He turned to her and placed his freezing hand over her warm cheek. When she didn’t move away, he bent down to kiss her.

  He didn’t know why he did it. Hunger, for one thing—a desire to taste her again despite everything that had happened, everything that she’d done. And it confirmed what he was starting to suspect—that she was part of the reason why he was finding it difficult to walk away from this new life. A steady source of coin, respect, and a warm, willing woman…these were things he could’ve only dreamed of back in the farm, and the fact that they were within his grasp created a heady sensation that crested with the way his lips sought hers. Forget the army. General Luc wouldn’t have happened in a week. All of this was falling into place now. He would be a fool to let the opportunity slip by him.

  They stopped to catch their breath. Her fingers were still tangled in his hair. “We have to rent some horses,” he found himself saying.

  She smirked as she slowly pulled away. She loved that he reacted like this to her. He didn’t know what that made him feel. “Afraid your grandmother will see us?”

  He rubbed the back of his head. “Among other things.”

  “Did you give her all your money?”

  “I still have the funds from Lady Isobel. We’ll be fine.”

  “That’s not what I was asking. That looked like everything you earned from my father’s job.”

  Luc shrugged. “We can always make more. That’s how this works, right? You did say you were in this for the long haul, now. As I am.”

  She didn’t seem to disagree. He looked away to resist the urge to begin exploring her again and focused on the task at hand. Horses. He knew very little about them—they only had the one old mare up at the farm, the one that died last year—but Roena took over, haggling with the stable owner with an ease that told him this really wasn’t the first time she’d run away from home. The more harassed the stable owner looked, the more pleased she seemed to get.

  They secured eleven of the beasts and enough supplies for the journey north, and then they found themselves behind locked doors in an inn, continuing where they had left off. Luc thought he had been thorough that first time—he didn’t realize it was possible for the same woman to feel differently, for her to yield to him in ways that was both hard and soft at once. Her mouth on his shoulder, biting and kissing him all in the same breath, her body slick and hungry for his fingers and then the rest of him…it made him feel powerful. Needed. Invincible. He never wanted to leave.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The snow continued to fall in large clumps that piled up on the road, transforming what would’ve been a seven-day trip at most into a trudge through a seemingly endless white field. It was easier the first few days—there were enough towns and villages along the way that they didn’t really have to camp out on the snow, but settlements began to get scarce the further north they got. A little over halfway through, they reached what travellers affectionately called the Dead Lands—a wide expanse of sparse woods and marshlands. Despite the name, it wasn’t completely barren…creatures were said to lurk in the murky waters, and the area was home to wyverns, false basilisks, and mud serpents, among other things.

  But no lord ruled over those lands. There was nothing to rule. Luc was told that the nobles occasionally journeyed out here to hunt—stuffed wyvern heads were fashionable in Tilarthan—but otherwise, only the roads served of any importance to the realm. It connected the city of Sein Canal to both Blackwood and Gorrhen’s Pass to the south, creating a land trade route from Hafod to the city-states of Cael and Kiel. And even then, they were only maintained during the fairer seasons. By the time Luc and his party reached the roads, they were indistinguishable from the frozen slush—only the iced-over bridges and footprints made by other haphazard travellers marked the rest of the route.

  Lady Isobel’s men were camped in an abandoned guard tower a day into the Dead Lands. They directed Luc’s party through a path that opened up to the courtyard of the ruins, where a large fire was burning. “Why so far from the city?” Tasha wheezed.

  One of the men, who had introduced himself as Ston, waved a torch at her. “There’s a reason we hired you. There’s not enough of us.”

  Luc counted four of them, all huddled around the fire. Although they were armed, they didn’t look like soldiers. “Lady Isobel mentioned another group, and that they’re just as interested in these journals.”

  The man nodded. “We got here before they did, actually, but as soon as we realized we were outnumbered, we got out as fast as we could. I don’t think they saw us. We wanted to keep it that way.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  The man glanced at his companions. “A dozen? Maybe more?”

  “Shit,” Treda breathed.

  “Nothing we haven’t handled before,” Hana said happily. “Remember, Demon? That time with the mountain bandits…”

  “These aren’t bandits,” Ston said. “These are soldiers.”

  “No one said anything about soldiers,” Jona snarled.

  “I don’t see what the problem is,” Caiso interjected. “Soldiers are people, too. They’ll bleed just like everyone else.”

  Isobel’s man gave a quick shiver, one that had nothing to do with the cold. “You want to find out if they will? They’re Dageians. And they’ve got mages with them.”

  “Shit,” Treda said again.

  “This sounds like something she would do,” Roena broke in with a laugh. “Give the rest of the details only once we’ve travelled all the way out here. We should’ve questioned her further. I swear, Luc, you need a better way to handle your jobs.”

  Tasha glanced at Luc before gritting her teeth. “Not the least of our problems.”

  “I say we back out now,” Jona said. “I sure as fuck didn’t sign up to deal with Dageian mages. Tell this Lady Isobel to shove this job back where the sun don’t shine.” He started to stomp back to his horse.

  Luc cleared his throat. “Stop, Jona.”

  “Make me.”

  “How long do you think before he drops dead out there?” Roena asked innocently. “Before or after the snowstorm?”

  Jona’s face tightened. “What snowstorm?”

  Roena looked at the sky. “You’ve been on the road all this time, I’m surprised you don’t know storm clouds when you see them. I’d say the weather’s about to get worse tonight.”

  “You’re fucking with me,” Jona snarled.

  “She’s right,” another of Isobel’s men spoke up. “You’d want to be in the city when it hits. The walls will keep the worst of the wind out, at least. Unless you’re volunteering to stay out here with the horses? Someone has to.”

  Jona shook his head. “Those walls will also keep us with whatever the fuck’s inside.”

  “Safety in numbers,” Luc quipped.

  “You’re fucking crazy,” Jona said. “You and your bitches, and all of you. One mage is bad enough. Over a dozen soldiers and mages…”

  “Look at him pissing his trousers,” Demon laughed. “Reason enough for me to go.” He swung his sword.

  “Shit,” Treda said a third time.

  Luc patted him on the shoulder before striding over to where Ston was unrolling the map Isobel had sent with them. “We didn’t have one when we first got here,” he said with a sniff. “Lady Isobel couldn’t get it in time. These are almost impossible to come by these days—she wasn’t even really sure she could get one. Windroost. City of spells.” He looked amused.

  “Is it really?
” Luc asked.

  Ston shook his head. “Not that we could see. We were half-expecting something to blow up when we went through the gates. No, the worst part about the city isn’t the stuff out of stories. It’s the empty streets. The empty buildings. Felt eerie. Like you’d run into ghosts just walking through it.”

  One of the other men pointed at the building Isobel had marked as the library. “We’d just found this one when we saw the Dageians arrive. Good thing we had Pol on the roof or they would’ve walked right in on us.”

  The one called Pol rubbed his nose. “There were at least three mages.”

  “How did you know that?” Roena asked. “Did they have a sign on their heads or something?”

  “Their robes,” Pol replied, looking upset that Roena would doubt him. “It’s distinct, you know. Dageian mages have to study in this school, and I’ve seen pictures in story books…”

  “Anyway, I’ve been to Dageis,” Ston finished for him. “And I can confirm the uniforms. Dageian mages and soldiers. We heard them talking and they were clearly looking for the same texts we were.”

  Roena crossed her arms. “What’s so special about these journals, anyway? Why does Isobel want them?”

  “We really don’t question clients,” Tasha grumbled.

  “You should,” Roena said. “That’s why we end up about to begin a job hearing things like Dageian mages for the first time. What’s next, monsters?”

  Ston gave a weak grin.

  ~~~

  Windroost had once been larger than Blackwood, and the Dead Lands a corridor of villages that thrived on an economy of peat and cranberries. It was one of the two cities founded by Agartes Allaicras in an effort to push further east, into the elusive Kag wilderness he had been so intent on conquering. Although it was a few days’ travel from Sein Canal, the promise of the riches waiting for those who dared settle there had been so strong that within a few short years, Windroost had grown from a small settlement to a bustling city, populated mostly by merchants, builders, and their families.

  Agartes’ fame relied on his insistence that the monsters of the Kag weren’t as much of a threat as people believed. That they were nothing but beasts, animals that could be killed by skilled enough warriors. The fact that he had struck off the heads of a few that wandered through the plains where Crossfingers now stood had been proof enough for him. And so Windroost became a city that dared to sit as close to the forest as possible—the entire northern wall was built right at the edge of the woods, with towers and bridges overlooking sections of the forest.

  The attacks came slowly. The guards were vigilant, confident in their ability to handle the beasts as Agartes had instructed. Most had an inhuman strength that made them difficult to confront directly, but you could bait them, trap them, and then kill them. It became a game. Spot something from the bridges and then be the first to take the creature down, to the merriment and envy of your peers. It almost looked as if Agartes would be right, after all, and that in no time they would all begin to enjoy the life he had painted for them.

  The dream didn’t last very long.

  It started with a single dead soldier, from what Roena could remember reading about. In his friends’ haste to try to save him, they found themselves succumbing to one of the creatures, which then proceeded to grow in size and strength. The game turned deadly. Every mistake provided food for the creature, which made it stronger, which paved the way for more mistakes. By the time Agartes had arrived with his soldiers, most of the garrison was dead—whatever was left was holed up inside the towers and temples, begging for the gods’ mercy.

  There was nothing Agartes could’ve done. They saved what few they could and the city was barred from the outside. Everyone who couldn’t get out succumbed to the beasts or starvation. The villages along the road were abandoned. It was decades before anyone would ever use it again—decades before Agartes returned after he had retired as general. The books say that he was accompanied by ka-eng, who created the spells in an attempt to try to draw the creatures away from Blackwood and the rest of the settlements along those woods. Come to Windroost, the spells were supposed to call out. Come and stay there.

  Stories, Roena reminded herself as she gazed up at those same gates now with the beginning of a blizzard behind them. Nothing but children’s stories. Because no one could really say, for sure, what had actually transpired behind those walls. There were never any official accounts and the historians all argued with each other. Roena had never cared enough about her lessons to know the nuances of it—it was the children’s stories that remained, most of which had been swathed in fiction. She had one that said Agartes later turned into a dragon, that even now he still swoops through the skies, looking for people to save.

  “We didn’t see anything when we were here,” Ston said as he took them past the locked gates to the eastern walls. “But you know, there were things…things we couldn’t exactly explain.”

  “I told you it was just your imagination,” Pol mumbled. “Maybe it was a cat, or a dog. Maybe those mages conjured something.”

  “So it’s not exactly like the stories claim,” Roena spoke up. “It’s not crawling from top to bottom with monsters.”

  “No,” Ston replied with a sheepish grin. “But occasionally, I’d notice the shadows move in the distance, or a sign creaking in the absence of wind.”

  “Shit,” Treda sighed.

  “Are all your jobs like this?” Luc asked. He didn’t look too worried, but Roena couldn’t be sure. He did a fair job of acting like he wasn’t.

  “Not even close,” the one who called himself Demon—as if that made him seem scarier than he was—grumbled. “Bandits, wild animals…”

  “Construction work,” Hana whistled. She didn’t look too worried, either. Roena wondered whether she ought to be relieved or concerned. Around Blackwood, she had a bit of a reputation as foolhardy and impetuous—things she couldn’t entirely disagree with—but this was different.

  Was she actually frightened?

  She didn’t really know. Every time she tried to poke at the feeling, she heard Ylir’s words all over again. Pampered nobleman’s daughter. No…she couldn’t really be frightened, not when admitting that would mean admitting he was right after all. There was something else there, something that made her feel a little jittery—like she’d drank too much wine on an empty stomach.

  She found herself walking next to Luc just as the wind let loose another howl. “You’ve faced one of these monsters,” she murmured.

  “That is what impressed you in the first place, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Just that.”

  “Hold on…”

  She blew a quick breath. “I suppose if you could survive, it couldn’t be too bad.” They reached the edge of a bank where the sewers once drained into. It was completely dry, now, and so full of snow that the only indication of what it had once been were the rusted sluice gates at the bottom of the wall. The bars had been cut loose, leaving only the frame of the gates. They were big enough for a person to duck under. She glanced back to the others. “Shouldn’t we leave someone to keep watch?”

  Jona snorted. “What kind of a leader lets his woman talk so much?”

  “I’m not his woman,” Roena snapped.

  “Is that right? Could’ve fooled me with all the noise you were making last night.”

  She had him against the wall before he could speak another word, the edge of her sword on his neck. “Say that again,” she hissed, nicking him just close enough to draw a lick of blood.

  “Roena,” Luc broke in.

  She ignored him. “Say that again,” she repeated. “I’ll give you a close shave. A very close one.”

  The sneer hadn’t quite left Jona’s face, but he held his hands up. “You’re tough. All right. I get it. I won’t make the same mistake.”

  It wasn’t quite an apology, and she wasn’t sure if he meant it, but she allowed him to breathe. “You just volunteered for guard duty,” she
said. “And if Luc has something to say about that, he can deal with me.” She turned to him, daring him to argue.

  Luc grimaced before nodding.

  “Glad we all cleared that up,” Roena said as she went through the gate, though she wasn’t sure if anyone had heard her at all. She could see the other mercenaries giving her wary glances. Figures. She had guessed that their tolerance of her had just been out of deference for Luc. She slid the sword back into its sheath and turned her attention to their surroundings. The first thing she noticed was that there was no snow on the street.

  “It’s warm,” Caiso said, unclasping his cloak. He pulled it off, a look of wonder on his face.

  “Spells?” she asked.

  “Probably. Not the worst thing in the world with a snowstorm ten paces away.” He folded his cloak over his arm. Feeling the heat rising on her skin, she paused to do the same.

  “You’re Lord Willen’s son, aren’t you?” Roena asked when she realized Caiso was still standing next to her. “I was wondering where I’d seen you before. It must’ve been years ago.”

  Caiso smiled. “Drat. I was hoping you wouldn’t recognize me. Agartes knows, I’ve tried to keep away from court life as best as I could.”

  “Do the others know about you?”

  Caiso shrugged. “Some. I don’t think they care. I don’t really talk about it. It means nothing to them, as far as I can see.”

  “How did you get them to accept you?”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re asking, Lady Roena.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m my father’s heir, yet I remain worthless unless I subject myself to the whims of the gentry. Unless I married someone.”

  “I don’t know how much gossip you’ve heard these last few years, but you must understand it was exactly the same way with me.”

  She turned to him. She had heard rumours—they had said he had been involved with another lord’s son and that it was after his lover’s death from an illness that he chose to leave his father’s home—but she had never been the sort to pay that much attention.