by RW Krpoun
“It’s called lividity.”
“Yeah. If there is a hole at your lowest point blood will drain out; otherwise it stays inside.”
“OK.”
“So what I have found are areas with blood splatter on the surface, then four areas where large amounts of blood soaked in deep and thick. Areas roughly the size of a male torso.”
Shad thought about that. “So the four were killed, then chopped up as they lay, causing blood and fluids to drain out. Or could they just have drained from their fatal wounds?”
“You find much blood on the wall?”
“Not much.”
“Then no.”
Shad tossed Fred an object. “Makes sense. I dug this out of the wall.”
Fred examined it closely, digging his fingernail to test its surface strength. “A lead ball, deformed from impact. You think they got shot?”
“Yeah. That looks to be about a third of an inch in diameter; I figure they used crude muskets, about .75 caliber, each loaded with three or four of those balls. From the angle I would say a volley from the rafters started the dance, but that is just a guess. There are holes where other balls passed completely through the wall. I expect that mauling the bodies was to hide the gunshot wounds, and maybe to recover the balls.”
“Gunpowder didn’t work in the Prison.”
“We’re not in the Prison. I think someone stumbled upon the mixture, and they don’t want people to know what they have learned. I expect the warder was nosing around something that made the killers nervous, and they ambushed him.”
“Not the Death Lords?”
“No. Gunpower and chemistry don’t play well with magic, and they have lethal methods that are cheaper.”
“So this is another player in the game.”
“Yeah, and they don’t want to be known. Another reason they chopped the bodies up because Undead generally leave a mess. It is easy to get fooled when you are seeing things that meet your expectations.”
“Why has everything got to be so complicated? We invade Iraq to deal with Saddam, and suddenly we get factions killing each other faster than we can kill either side. Every place we have been to has turned out to be a mess with people willing to kill each other at the drop of a hat.”
“People are strange,” Shad rubbed his scar. “So this new bunch has gunpowder, and are homicidal. Could it be the Red Dragon?”
“Might. Trouble is, we don’t know enough of local politics to weigh the odds.”
The warder tossed the misshapen ball and caught it. “They will have matchlocks at best, maybe just touchhole guns. Freaky the first time you encounter them, but after the shock wears off the bushi will go through them like a commercial-grade paper shredder eating single sheets.”
“Which means we are dealing with peasants,” Fred pointed out. “That is why they had to risk using their secret weapon: they couldn’t handle facing the bodyguards with steel.”
“Before the advent of rifling black powder firearms required infantry standing shoulder to shoulder in three or four ranks, firing by volleys to be effective; you need iron discipline and frequent drill to make that work,” Shad said thoughtfully. “In the real world cannons appeared first to deal with fortifications. These guys are trying to level the playing field so they went with personal weapons first.”
“Bad idea,” Fred shrugged. “I saw Derek and Jeff practicing; they can put out a lot of arrows accurately in the time it takes to reload a musket.”
“It takes years to train a combat archer, but only days to train a man to use a musket,” Shad nodded. “That’s why gunpowder rose to dominance in our world. Here you have an entire social class trained from childhood with bows, so there is no shortage of archers.”
“Nothing to worry about, then,” Fred shrugged. “Although we need to keep alert for the smell of burning slow match cord.”
Strolling back to the inn, the pair stopped for a snack purchased from a food cart on the edge of a busy square.
“The streets are much more to a standard width here than they were in the Prison,” Shad observed as they lounged against a handy wall eating breaded fried onions.
“The dominant culture has an ingrained fear of earthquakes and fire,” Fred pointed out. “That sort of thing lingers. These aren’t streets so much as firebreaks.”
“Makes sense.”
The pair people-watched as they finished their orders and purchased another round. “You really can’t mistake who is who, social-wise,” Shad mused. “The stamp of their upbringing really tells.”
“For one thing, poor kids are working,” Fred agreed. “Look at the kid tending the stove in the cart we bought these from: he’s probably eight, and he’s got calluses you could strike a match on, and charcoal dust so embedded in the skin from the elbow down that I bet pumice wouldn’t remove it all.”
“I don’t recall the Prison being so rigid.”
“It wasn’t,” Fred chewed thoughtfully. “Being a peasant sucked there, but the social lines were more blurred, and based more upon money than anything else.”
“You going somewhere with this?”
“Yeah. You aren’t a parent so you wouldn’t see it, but how do you think that boy’s father feels when he looks at his kid? Eight years old and working his tail off, and the best the kid can look forward to is to inherit the food cart. If he has another son, that second kid is doubly screwed, because there is only one cart.”
“There are poor people everywhere,” Shad shrugged.
“Yeah, but in most societies money is all that separates them from the rich. They work hard or get lucky, they or their kids can stop being poor. It doesn’t happen a lot anywhere, but it is possible, and that creates hope. Here there is no moving up; no amount of luck will let that kid move up in the world. If his dad somehow came upon a cache of gold the Samurai would simply take it from him, if the criminals didn’t get it first.”
“Again, it is back to the golden rule: it sucks to be on the bottom of the food chain.”
“My point is that having no hope is bad, but knowing your children have no hope from day one is a lot worse,” Fred said slowly, brow furrowed. “It could make a man desperate.”
“This society has been around for centuries,” Shad waved a hand dismissively. “It is built on the prowess of the bushi. Only Hollywood lets peasants or Ewoks beat professionals.”
“What if someone told you they had a way to beat the bushi?” Fred asked. “A new weapon?”
“Talk is cheap,” Shad said uneasily.
“What if they showed you something that looked and sounded like it could beat the bushi?”
The warder stared across the square, jaw set. “There is trouble brewing up north; the Death Lords are planning a move, everyone knows that.”
“So the Samurai could be hit on two fronts,” Fred shrugged. “Remember Iraq? Chaos equals opportunities.”
“The Russian Revolution,” Shad sighed. “You think that the Red Dragon has this in mind?”
“What do they have to lose?”
“Not much,” the warder admitted. “And right now the Samurai are distracted by the big question of strategy and personal ambition; the Reds might not wait for the Death Lords to strike.”
“If I were a Death Lord I would want to give the Reds a little help; nothing too dramatic, just enough to rock the foundations.”
Shad thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Of course they’re helping! Where do you think gunpowder came from? If the Death Lords in the Realm can send word back, they could easily send back a description of how to mix gunpowder, probably even how to build a matchlock or flintlock weapon. Rifling is too much for the method of communication and the local tech, but they could cut out decades of R&D.”
“Crap,” Fred grunted. “That puts a new spin on things. We could get caught in a revolution.”
“It would make things easier for the Death Lords.”
“You think the Death Lords started the Reds?”
Their evening meal was consumed in a grim mood. Shad and Fred explained their findings of the day and Fred’s observations. Derek and Jeff exchanged a glance and then Derek sighed and pushed away his plate.
“We hit the archives for two days and it is depressing as hell; it is a collection of intelligence material going back decades, and it isn’t pleasant reading. The Wind of Souls is called forth from the Rift of Dreams when the World Stone is completed. The Stone is a large construct that can be moved, sort of like a self-propelled temple structure. As it moves and is fed by lives the Stone opens the Rift and calls forth the Wind of Souls. Once the Rift has been opened beyond a certain point a cumulative effect kicks in, and it cannot be closed and the Wind cannot be stopped.”
“So what exactly does the Wind do?” Fred asked
“We are not completely sure, but all the material agrees it will not bring joy or happiness,” Derek tossed off a shot of apricot brandy. “The Stone has been ready and waiting for decades, but it lacks a key part, the heart of the thing.”
“The Staff,” Shad nodded.
“It refers to a Bone Lance, actually, but I’m sure the Staff will work.”
“But we have time, right?” Fred fidgeted with his rat-tail. “Cecil has to close off the leaks.”
“Maybe. It looks like closing off the leaks would make the Stone work faster, but even in first gear it can eventually get to where it needs to go.”
“Which is where, exactly?” Shad dropped a half-eaten pancake onto his plate and pushed his meal aside.
“Not sure; from various hints I expect it will just head into the most populated regions. Once the body count reaches X, the Wind of Souls is a permanent feature, and eventually the Isle is no different than the sphere on the other end of the Rift.”
“So, the Wind of Souls is just a necromantic terra-former?” Fred shrugged.
“Worse: once the Isle is fully formed into whatever the other sphere is, a rift can be opened to the Realm. And so forth.”
“The dead sphere is generally called the Dark or Death Lands,” Jeff added for clarification.
“A happy tale,” Shad observed glumly.
“There is more. The Samurai are pretty literal-minded, and their intelligence operations focus upon military aspects of the Death Lords: logistics, preparation for raids, the build-up of troops, that sort of thing. Military intelligence, in other words. The other stuff gets glanced at and then stuffed away on shelves, which is where Jeff and I have been looking. Jeff found a folio that was mixed up with some other stuff, and we think it has been lost since it was received over a hundred years ago. It was an investigation into the World Stone; apparently a scholar claimed that the Stone was very nearly activated around two hundred years ago but that the Bone Lance was intercepted and hidden.”
“So the Bone Lance and the Staff are two different things?” Shad scowled.
“We think they are both dragon bone. Since the Death Lords lost the Lance, they went looking for a replacement for the Lance.”
“You would think it would be easier to just find something on their own sphere,” Fred observed.
“Here’s a neat fact we never heard about: dragon bone is untraceable by magical means; the older the dragon, the worse it is. And not just any dragon bone will do for the Stone, but dragon bone affected by the Old Powers.”
“You would think that they would be combing Death Valley in the Prison, then,” Shad shrugged.
Jeff grinned. “Where do you think the revenants came from? They weren’t drawn by the effects of the battle, they were the bodyguards of Death Lords sent to comb the debris for loot. Specifically looking for dragon bone impregnated with the Old Power. The search team is long dead, but the revenants are like a virus. That is where they found the Bone Lance, in fact. Remember that the Council got their start studying the Great Field: I bet the Death Lords inspired them to build the roads. Gave them the foundation of their research through example.”
“Really?” Shad was startled.
“That is our theory.”
“So we’ve been in operating in circles. I wish Fu Hao was here,” the warder sighed.
“We could use her,” Derek agreed.
“Today is day twelve and Cecil came in within a hundred miles or so of our position,” Shad scowled. “By now he has made contact with his bosses, and there will be Undead stacked ten deep around the World Stone. We’re screwed.”
“Maybe not,” Derek poured himself another shot. “The folio Jeff found, which we stole, indicates the Death Lords will never stop looking for the Lance. We confirmed it with more recent reports”
“I bet they have now,” Fred mumbled sourly.
“Maybe not. While details are sparse the overview is that they need Cecil wielding the Staff to control the Stone. Like a driver and a steering system. If we had the Lance we could attempt to control the Stone as well.”
“Cecil is far more powerful than I am,” Shad said grimly. “Besides, we won’t get within a mile of the Stone.”
“I don’t think we need to,” Jeff shook his head. “I think we can use the Lance to jam the Staff’s input.”
“Until they send an army of Undead to kill us,” Fred picked up a shot-glass-sized cup and filled it with apricot brandy.
“Maybe not,” Shad frowned into the distance. “Cecil doesn’t have the old, high-voltage power; nobody does. Handling the Staff is going to be a risky business under the best circumstances, so if we hit him at a high pressure moment and he fumbles, he is toast. Without Cecil the Stone is driverless and the Death Lords are out of luck until they get someone else trained.”
“They are planning to destroy the world, so bribery is out, and it’s not like they can threaten to kill a mage unless he operates the Stone,” Derek agreed.
“Which brings up the question of why Cecil wants a front-row seat to an apocalypse,” Fred countered.
“Same reason as the other Death Lords,” Jeff shrugged. “The question is whether they will have local spellcasters in their pocket.”
“The answer to that is ‘unlikely’,” Shad rubbed his scar. “This culture has strong taboos about death and Undead. Even touching corpses is pretty iffy, and done only when necessary. A local allying themselves with the Death Lords would have no better social standing than a pedophile with a taste for three-year-olds back home. Less, really, because the values here are a lot more absolute. Say a pedophile in prison general population. So their recruits are more likely low-ranking types with deep-seated grudges.”
“That is an interesting point, now that you mention it,” Jeff frowned. “Derek found a ledger on traitors caught and executed, and if the records are honest they have one hell of a system of picking off Death Lord agents very early in their careers.”
“I wish them good hunting.” Shad toyed with his cup of cider. “So it looks like we screwed up: the only way we can affect Cecil or the Death Lords is via an item that the Death Lords have been searching for and failing to find for generations. Maybe we ought to gear up, head north, and drop three Death Lords, close out our wards.”
“Take a ticket to ride,” Derek slurred, spilling some brandy as he refilled his glass. “Go home.”
“Hey, we tried,” Jeff pointed out. “We rescued four kids from being devoured, Derek got to be a genuine Ronin, and all it took was twelve days here and about twenty-five real minutes back home. It certainly won’t do any harm to these good people of the Isle if we whack a few Death Lords, and then we are back home quicker than wintering in Bloodseep. We can tip off the Iron Fan about Cecil and the Staff before we go and call it a win.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Fred nodded.
Fred half-carried the soused Derek as the Bl
ack Talons made their way to their rooms, only to find a pensive Three and Four seated on the floor next to the door, waiting for them. “Why aren’t you in bed?” the big man rumbled reflexively. “It’s late.”
Four stood quickly, concern stamped on her face, and motioned Jeff forward. The Shop teacher knelt and she whispered urgently into his ear. He thought for a moment, and whispered back; after replying Four grabbed Three’s hand and the pair scampered down the hall.
Unlocking the door Jeff motioned them inside the room. “We need to keep it quiet.”
“That is not a problem,” Shad produced a coin, gestured carefully, and then tossed the coin up. Immediately the air temperature noticeably dropped. “You could scream your lungs out for the next five minutes and no one would hear you.”
“Hey, is that the thing whats-her-face did? At the place, you know? Ale, chess, it was hot,” Derek muttered as Fred dumped him onto a handy futon.
“Yeah, except she was better at it. What did Four tell you?”
“There is trouble coming,” Jeff said quietly, glancing around. “How big is the area of effect?’
“The material confines of this room, three-sixty coverage. What kind of trouble?”
“The Red Dragon.”
“How does a ten year old know about the Dragon?”
“They controlled the village we came through.”
“The ones trading with Orcs to get unregistered iron ore,” Fred shook his head.
“So are they after us personally?” Shad unbuckled his sword belt and arranged it at the head of his futon.
“No more than they are after any other enemies of the People. But the point is that she says there is big trouble coming. No one pays attention to Hanni children who are under someone’s protection; they rate less than stray cats.”
“How big and what kind of trouble?”
“Big, and soon.”
“I hate being burdened with details. She’s just a kid, anyway.”
“She’s ten, and a homeless girl from a small village. But she also has lived by her wits since she was four, and they had a lot of trouble catching her and her little crew. They were the last of the Hanni in the town, by the way.”