by RW Krpoun
“I could eat.”
“No, you can’t,” Derek announced as he bustled up. “Time to pay the rent.”
“What?” Shad scratched his head with the butt of an etching pick.
“The Iron Fan’s boy sent word: there are three places for us to check out. Well, you, really.”
“All in town, right?” Fred finished the disk and brushed stray bits of sawdust from his tunic front.
“Yeah.”
“Then there is time for lunch.”
“Well, this sucks,” Fred muttered to Derek as Jeff and Shad searched the hovel that served both as home and shop for a peasant tile-maker. The artisan, his wife, four children, and an elderly female relative stood in a row before the Ronin, heads bowed and hands clasped in front of them. “Look at them: completely beat down. They never even asked us why we’re doing this.”
“Nobles don’t need to justify their actions to the common folk,” Derek explained. “Welcome to the feudal life. And around here they apply the feudal with a capital ‘F’. As in eff you, peasant.”
“At least in Iraq they hated us. This is worse.”
“Yeah.”
Shad came over, rubbing his hands on a kerchief. “That was wasted time. I don’t know where Iron Fan’s boy is getting his information, but he is getting ripped off.”
“Neighborhood feuds, you suppose?” Fred asked.
The warder shrugged, moodily studying the hovels that closed in on all sides. “You can’t fart here without three families hearing it. The practice of forbidden arts punishable by death requires privacy.”
“So we’re just added a level of suckage to these peoples’ lives,” Derek observed glumly. “And to the two places before.”
“We were gentle with their belongings, for what it is worth,” Shad fingered his sword hilt as he studied three men struggling to drag a decrepit cart loaded with deadfall around a corner. “But that won’t count for much. Kids shouldn’t have to see their parents being humiliated.”
“I can see why Iron Fan’s pet undead-herder farms these jobs out,” Jeff joined them. “This place stinks. Who would put a secret cult base in this sort of population density?”
“Nobody,” Shad grunted as the four started down the rutted dirt street. “I thought you said the locals were experts at catching spies, Derek?”
“They are, but those are their secret police, and they watch the Samurai and their attendants. The warder is on his own.”
“He’s a moron,” Shad waved off a group of whining Hanni beggars, who wisely scooted away from the grim-faced warder. “We searched two tile-makers, a wainwright, and three coopers.”
“Two wainwrights,” Fred corrected. “Seven buildings spread between three locations.”
“Whatever. A warder with two weeks on the job would know that you don’t find necromancers in those environs.”
“They were probably glad for the break, anyway,” Jeff observed cheerfully. “They had plenty of stock on hand. It looked like they were working around the clock.”
“Probably why their neighbors threw them to us,” Derek mused. “A little payback for success.”
“People are like that,” Fred nodded. “Mark Twain said something along that line.”
“Mark Twain said something about everything,” Shad shrugged, stopping at a squalid intersection.
“We go straight,” Derek said helpfully as the warder side-stepped to his left.
“No, we get ambushed,” Shad checked behind. “The kids and beggars are gone.”
“Shit.” Derek rubbed his hands on his sleeves as the last of the Hiemin faded from the street, each minding his or her business with a visible intensity. “We’ve been here before.”
“Yes, we have,” Jeff nodded somberly as he loosened his swords in their scabbards.
A half-dozen tough-looking men, Hiemin by their wiry build, work scars, and worn clothing came from the Talons’ right, their sweat-darkened blue clothing making the bright red strips of cloth around their waists and left arms stand out sharply. Three held slightly curved knives with foot-long blades, while the other three carried long-hafted brass-headed hammers.
“The Red Dragon, I presume,” Jeff drawled. “What did we do to warrant a personal meeting?”
“People of the Koke,” one of the six, a man with sun-beaten features and the leathery hands of a stoneworker, called out. “The Dragon has no claim against you. We only hold accountable those whose hands are drenched with the blood of the common people, and their lackeys. You may depart.”
“Dude, you’re a lackey,” Derek chortled, elbowing Jeff.
“Piss off,” Shad said without heat.
The stoneworker looked startled. “Excuse me?”
“I said you can take your memorized speech and shove it: I don’t take orders from pissant yokels. I go or stay as I wish, and if you don’t want to die here today I suggest you get the hell out of our way.”
“We have powers the like of which you have never seen,” the stoneworker warned, gaining back his composure.
“I seriously doubt it. Now you better beat feet while you’re still upright.”
“We have a purpose,” the Hiemin said with great sincerity.
“Well, I tried. No one can say I didn’t try to value the lives of others,” Shad grinned at the six, who were spread out on line across the intersection.
“I am going to cut off your heads and shit into your lungs,” Jeff announced.
“Gross,” Derek shook his head. “No class.”
“Yeah,” Fred grunted. “Don’t encourage them to fight harder.”
“Besides, once you’ve cut off their heads, why would they care what you did to their corpses?” Shad pointed out. “Dead is dead.”
“Look,” Derek stepped forward. “You’ve delivered your message, and we get it: you have legitimate complaints about the structure of the social order. But attacking one honest Ronin and his lackeys won’t change anything, and it will certainly cost you far more lives than you take.”
“Because you aren’t taking any of our lives,” Jeff interjected.
“My point,” Derek plowed determinedly along. “Is that violence here, today, won’t change anything. You’ve delivered your message and you have convinced us of your sincerity, so why don’t you go home to your families and count the job as done? No one has to die here.”
“We have about twenty more coming up behind us,” Fred pointed out. “I was wondering why this bunch was so brave.”
“Last chance to live,” Shad advised the six in front of the Talons.
“Our cause is just,” the leader said with quiet dignity.
“That counts for squat when the steel starts to sing; the side with the most firepower and the best training tends to win.” Shad glanced behind him. “Wedge formation, blitz through. I’ll cover the rear.”
“My honor dictates I go first,” Derek declared, striding further forward.
“Screw honor, that’s your job,” Fred pointed out. “You chose a frontline fighter class.”
“Shut up,” Derek rolled his eyes. Straightening the lay of his kimono, he waved a hand imperiously. “Peasants be gone.”
“Great, he is about to start rapping,” Jeff muttered to Fred, who grinned.
“You sure you have enough people to take us?” Shad addressed the group of sullen Hiemin approaching the Talon’s rear. “You want to take a minute, hand out more red cloth?” His stomach was a ball of greasy ice, but he kept his voice hard and contemptuous; if there was any chance to face these men down he wanted to take it. He didn’t mind killing non-Humans, but the Red Dragon’s cause wasn’t something he wanted to shed any blood over, especially his own.
Derek looked the leader squarely in the eye. “This is your last chance to see your loved ones again. Take it.” He held his breath, hoping the man would step aside; he didn’t want to kill anyone else, not Humans anyway.
The stoneworker dropped into a crouch, knife at the ready as Derek stepped forward and drew, his
katana flashing from its scabbard with a sound like tearing silk. At the apex of its draw the tip of the blade slid delicately across the side of the man’s throat, opening a major blood vessel and damaging the windpipe.
A Dragon lunged at Derek from his right, thrusting clumsily with his knife, but the Talon spun out of the way, bringing his katana down two-handed to decapitate the knife-wielder.
Shad flipped a coin midway between himself and the group to the rear who were advancing cautiously. Black smoke billowed up from the dirt, and as it swelled across the lane flashes of purple light danced through its center.
Turning back as he drew his sword, Shad saw the last of the six getting his skull pulped by Fred. “Double time,” he snapped, taking to his heels.
“I am really unhappy about how this place is turning out,” Derek sighed as he wiped his blade clean. The Black Talons were well out of the slums district, and were cleaning themselves up at a handy public well. “This is the second time we have had a morally ambiguous fight in the Isle.”
“They wouldn’t listen to reason,” Fred shrugged. “It was fight or die. But I don’t like it either.”
“I’m not interested in getting involved in the class struggles of this place, no matter how unjust the system is,” Shad agreed. “That isn’t why we came here, and it isn’t our fight. Before we came to this dump I hadn’t regretted any Humans we offed.” The image of the young muleskinner in the Realm flickered in his mind, but the image was fading and losing force. “It’s bad enough we have to deal with Derek killing hookers without the local politics impacting on us as well.”
“They pissed me off,” Jeff sheathed his swords. “I’m getting tired of people pushing us into stuff that isn’t our business. And so far that is just about everyone we meet. When did we become the universe’s bitches, anyway?”
“What was that you cast back there, Shad?” Derek asked.
“Smoke and light,” the warder shrugged. “Wouldn’t hurt a mosquito, but it looks impressive as hell. I figured the peasants weren’t going to risk running into it.”
“It did the job,” Fred nodded. “Now what?”
“We head back to the inn and relax. First thing tomorrow we take the kids and scope out the contact the dreams told us about. After that it depends on what we get told, but if the locals keep trying to kill us I for one will be re-thinking the risks I am willing to undertake to save them from the Wind.”
“There is an ass-whipping looking for a place to happen,” Fred mumbled as the Talons got out of the way of a city Watch patrol stalking down the center of the street. “Those guys have blood in their eyes and violent death on their minds.”
“And they’re the third group of enforcers we’ve seen in ten blocks,” Derek nodded thoughtfully. “Somebody has seriously pissed off the local government.”
“The question is what lit the fuse,” Shad eyed the peasants in the streets who were utterly focused on their tasks. “Not the attack on us, that’s certain.”
“We don’t blend like we used to,” Jeff sighed. “We are separate from the peasants in a way we weren’t in the Prison or the Realm. We were able to talk to common people there. Here, we can’t. If class warfare breaks out we won’t be able to avoid taking sides.”
“If class warfare breaks out the class with the weapons, expertise, and magic will win,” Shad observed. “Which is not the peasants.”
“So why are they going for broke with the entire Empire mobilizing?” Derek wondered.
“I think a mix of Death Lord intrigue and liberal thinking,” Shad grunted sourly.
“Oh, crap, he used the L-word,” Jeff shook his head. “That ranks right up there with ‘the locals don’t know how to live right’ in terms of endless rants. I spent a whole tour listening to the shortcomings of Middle Eastern culture.”
“Bite me.” Shad gave the Shop teacher the finger. “You know I am right.”
“I don’t know what is right anymore,” Jeff grinned. “A year of brainwashing will do that to a person.”
“I think it is more idealism than liberalism,” Derek mused, sticking to the topic at hand. “I think the obvious justice of their cause has blinded them to the difficulties of effecting real change.”
“Hate that,” Jeff jabbed Shad in the ribs.
“Piss off. I don’t hate that many things.”
“Your trouble is that you like things you shouldn’t like, such as shooting camels or blowing up people’s houses,” Fred pointed out.
“Or firefights,” Derek added.
“Or breaking the rules of engagement, doctrine, DoD policy, the laws of land warfare, half the UCMJ,…” Jeff ticked off the points on his fingers.
“You can all kiss my ass,” Shad shook his head disgustedly.
“You’re the last centurion,” Fred thumped the warder on the shoulder. “You’ll fight for the Empire until your last breath.”
“I need better friends,” Shad glowered at the trio.
“Who said we were friends?” Jeff grinned.
“What did you find out?” Shad demanded when Jeff bustled into their room. The Talons had been back at the inn for half an hour.
“Trouble all over town, attacks on lone Samurai by the Dragon. Plus on their servitors.”
“The Dragon go after any armed men?” Derek asked.
“A few lone bushi, plus they clipped the Iron Fan’s pet warder in a bath house.”
“What about ronin?”
“None I heard about, and everyone is talking.”
Fred shook his head. “Four of us, and the only ronin jumped. That wasn’t random.”
“Why us?” Jeff sat on a chest. “What did we do to deserve special treatment?”
“We’re on the Death Lords’ hit list,” Shad flipped an un-engraved brass coin into the air and caught it. “They figured out where we are.”
“How?” Derek objected.
“We’re still in our first lunar cycle, so we can be tracked, at least in theory. How else do you explain it?”
“Maybe bringing the books with us caused a problem,” Fred suggested.
“Or maybe it was what we were doing today,” Jeff countered. “Maybe we got too close to what the Dragon is working on.”
“There wasn’t anything better than a kitchen knife in any of the hovels we searched,” Shad shook his head. “We didn’t come within a mile of Dragon operations.”
“We would have spotted anything remotely related to gunpowder or firearms,” Derek agreed.
“So if they know who we are, why did they hit us with a bunch of second-stringers while we were on the move?” Jeff countered. “Cecil knows we aren’t pushovers.”
“Could be a local leader panicked and jumped us,” Fred mused. “Those guys looked like they had just come from work, all sweaty and armed with tools.”
No one had an answer to that. “Well, they’ll certainly come for us tonight,” Shad said after a lengthy pause. “We have to remember that the enemy makes mistakes, too.”
“The Death Lords and Cecil haven’t made many,” Jeff disagreed. “We went after Cecil with everything we had, and he left us in the dust.”
“We need to stock up on rations and get whatever field gear we need today,” Shad decided. “We need to be ready to bug out, regardless of what plan we go with.”
“Why don’t we just go see the girl today?” Derek asked.
“We’re down to two hours’ of daylight. If the Death Lords sent us the dream I don’t want to end up in a running fight in the dark,” Shad sighed. “In retrospect we should have gone this morning.”
“Maybe,” Fred shrugged. “But we learned something about the Dragon today.”
A serving girl brought a small package to Derek and beamed at the silver coin he pressed upon her. “We know something else,” he announced after examining the contents. “They’ve hired men to come kill us.”
“Is that a warning? Who would take our side?” Shad frowned.
“The killers.”
/> “What sort of assassin warns the target beforehand?”
“The ninja.”
Chapter Seven
“Bunking with the lackeys,” Derek sighed. “This is a low point for me.”
“You can stay in your own room and die,” Shad offered.
“It was nice being able to sleep without worrying about being mistaken for a goat,” Jeff agreed.
“So, we do this like the 13th Warrior,” Fred dragged the conversation back on topic. “Heads to the center of the room, feet outboard, pretend to sleep, right?”
“Yeah. Shad opens with a Light spell,” Derek nodded.
“This is a lot of bother about a death threat,” Shad grumbled as he dragged his futon into the star formation they were making. “For all we know the Dragon sent that warning to demoralize us. Why am I next to Fred?”
“I don’t snore that loud,” the big healer protested.
“True, but you fart like a steam engine, and I know you had onions today. Even your ordinary emissions are banned under Geneva accords.”
“We’ll all suffer,” Derek sighed.
“But I’m in the primary blast zone.”
“It could be worse: he could be a cuddler,” Jeff grinned.
Shad lay in the darkness, his sheathed cane knife on his chest. To his left Fred snored, possibly for real. To his right Jeff shifted sightly and sighed in a convincing imitation of a man asleep. They might actually be asleep, the warder knew: any of them could snap awake with the unsettling speed of a veteran. It had taken a year before Shad slept normally after his return from Iraq and from the Prison, and he was quick to slip back into the habit of waking fast and completely when back in hostile country.
Derek wasn’t very tired because the Talons were coming off a period of extended rest, but because he shouldn’t sleep, he wanted to. A thing denied is a thing desired, as he had read somewhere. To distract himself from the beckoning siren call of slumber he pondered the situation they had found themselves in. It was like trying to assemble a puzzle where the picture remained blank until you had it together, and they were missing half of the pieces.
The frustrating thing was that they had the gist of the situation: Cecil was in the employ of the Death Lords, and their purpose was to bring forth the Wind of Souls. They were sponsoring rebellion in the Empire to further this undertaking as a sidebar as well. But what was the Wind of Souls? Something bad, certainly, but without specifics the Talons had no handle on the situation.