by Tom Lloyd
I knew joining this lot would be a mistake, Lynx thought to himself, but his eyes lingered on Toil for long enough that he realised it wasn’t just orders or some sense of responsibility towards Sitain taking him east. There was a fascination, too, with this wild agent of some city-state he didn’t even know yet. Willing to march time and again into the jaws of danger, clearly driven by something deeper than greed, there was more to Toil than Lynx knew. He realised now that he craved answers to that puzzle. Toil was as darkly alluring as Shadows Deep, beauty and danger moving as one, and Lynx knew he wasn’t a man to always desire what was good for him.
‘Someone give Sitain a gun,’ he called. ‘Can’t ask anyone to go there unarmed.’
Payl nodded and handed over a mage-pistol and cartridge pouch which Sitain awkwardly belted around her waist.
‘Shadows Deep?’ she asked in a hoarse voice. ‘What have I just agreed to?’
Lynx forced a smile. ‘Sure it’s not as bad as it sounds. You know how mercenaries like to whine.’
Chapter 16
Uvrel refused to simply stop and wait for Sauren’s promised reinforcements to catch up. She reluctantly lessened the dragoons’ pace to at least give them a chance, and save the horses they’d brought, but they still moved quickly and rested infrequently. As the sun brushed the outer edge of the Skyriver she raised her hand to bring her small column to a halt, Sauren waiting just a moment before ordering the dragoons to dismount.
‘Sir?’ the lieutenant asked quietly. ‘Shall I order rations?’
‘How far ahead do you think they are?’ Uvrel asked, staring off down the road.
They had glimpsed one of their scouts half an hour earlier, the man returning just far enough to give a signal before retracing his steps. Other than that, they’d had precious little trace of their prey, just one exhausted horse tied up by the road and a second that had been put out of its misery.
‘Not far at all. Their pace must be slowing by now, surely?’
‘Let us hope. Once they reach those caravans they’ll see they can’t all escape us. Mercenaries won’t sacrifice themselves.’
‘Will they fight?’
Uvrel scratched her armpit irritably. ‘There’s no way to tell. With reinforcements we can flank them, they’ll see our numbers and then surrender, I’d say. Probably put an icer in the brain of their captain themselves. If we catch them as we are, they’ll believe they have a chance.’
‘We could be walking into an ambush.’
‘If they have the guts for it,’ Uvrel said dismissively. ‘No reason they got a good look at our numbers before they fled the city.’
‘But if it’s their only chance?’
‘They still have to wait for a good ambush point and we’ve passed none since dawn.’
‘Should I ride ahead? It’ll make any ambush all the harder. They might not even try it if they lose the advantage of surprise.’
‘Surrender instead? A small hope, Lieutenant, but the idea is a good one. Do it. Keep well within sight though.’
‘Exalted!’
Uvrel turned at the voice from the rear of the column, but no explanation was necessary as a rider was coming up hard behind. Not a dragoon, but wearing the black and white of the Knights-Charnel all the same. His cloak flapped free behind him as he tore towards them, mage-gun visible in a white saddle holster. He jumped down from his horse and abandoned it as he stumbled towards Uvrel and offered a sloppy salute.
‘Exalted Uvrel.’ He was an evil-looking man with sandy hair and blotchy, uneven cheeks that made him look like a brawler or a drinker, most likely both.
‘Yes, Trooper? You’re ahead of my reinforcements?’
‘Yes, sir. Commander Quentes sends his compliments. They’re about an hour behind, if you hold here.’
‘That I will not, Trooper, we’ve still got the numbers to deal with them so Quentes will have to catch us. Dragoons, make ready to move on!’ Uvrel shouted to the rest. ‘Time to earn your pay!’
‘Shall I wait for my commander, sir?’ the trooper asked, more out of hope than anything else.
It was clear he’d be keen for the rest, having pushed on to catch them and only earning a regular man’s wage, but Uvrel wanted all the numbers she could muster if an ambush was imminent.
‘You too, Trooper. Lieutenant Sauren, go up ahead and keep within sight. Drop back if you spot an ambush site or anything else unusual.’
The column continued on in the same manner as before, a quick pace for travelling but a curtailed pursuit. As the afternoon warmed and the sweat built under her tunic, Uvrel felt her frustration wax with every passing mile. She watched Sauren keep as far ahead as possible on the long, straight road, dropping back a shade when there were other travellers, but this was a path many avoided. It verged too close to the wild of Shadows Deep for most tastes, the majority of traders taking the north road from Grasiel instead.
To her intense frustration they did pass an escorted caravan train from the coastal towns of the inland sea, Parthain, where the mercenaries were likely heading. From one of those they could hire a ship and set out across that great inland sea to any of the three city-states that might be behind this murder.
There was a sizeable escort to the caravan, all wearing a green uniform flashed with red that marked them as Knights of the Sacred Mountain – a warlike Militant Order dedicated to Ulfer. While the two orders were not exactly allied, scripture and regional politics meant the Mountain Knights would likely have joined any battle as Uvrel’s allies, had they come across the mercenaries at the same time.
As it was, the captain commanding the escort was happy to stop and answer Uvrel’s questions. They had indeed passed a mercenary company a few hours earlier and a smaller group no more than half an hour after that. The two would have met up by now given the pace set by the second party, their numbers and insignias conforming to what Uvrel already knew.
They parted quickly after that, the captain offering Ulfer’s blessing on their mission and regretting that he was already commissioned to a duty. Exalted Uvrel was brief in her thanks, not wanting Ulfer’s blessing when it didn’t come with additional guns, and pressed on. There was a renewed eagerness in her troops, however, having heard solid news of their prey, and in less than an hour Uvrel found herself standing at a bend in the road with both local scouts, hooded against the sun, and Lieutenant Sauren, glowering at a river ford.
‘You’re sure they parted company?’
‘Someone did, sir,’ the scout replied. ‘Saw nine riders break off and their tracks lead out of the ford, heading into the wilds. The rest of the company carried on down the road.’
‘And where is our assassin? Where is the mage?’ she wondered, looking past the ford at the grassy plain beyond.
‘If I might, Exalted?’ the scout continued, hesitantly. He was a middle-aged man with white stubble on his chin, eyes looking black in the shadow of his hood.
‘Go on.’
‘I’ve gone a way into the wilds here before. It’s no more’n two days of plains before you reach hills and ravines, easy to track horses over that. If they know what they’re about, no decoy would try to lead you off that way.’
‘Surely they could buy enough time for the rest?’ Sauren argued.
‘If they were Knights-Charnel, fine. We’ll obey orders and run off round the wilds, but mercenaries? Not a chance they’ll risk their hides like that.’
‘What if they’re not in fact mercenaries?’
‘Then they’re damn loyal troops, doing that for the others. They ain’t getting out of the wilds easy. We can track and encircle ’em on the plain, they’re pinned by the river on this flank and Shadows Deep beyond.’
‘And they can’t get back around us, not if they’re returning to the road. They must expect us to have some form of reinforcements following.’
‘Exactly, sir. They’re running for Shadows Deep is my guess. Mercs often sign up with adventurers to serve as added muscle; maybe they’ve been th
ere before and know a path.’
‘And they’re banking on us not, or following the main company who can just stop and deny everything. If they don’t put up a fight and there’s none of the faces we’ve seen, what evidence do we have to offer the Lord-Exalted? The best we can hope for is names and descriptions to put a bounty on.’
‘It’s still not a move you make lightly,’ Sauren said, doing a fair job of keeping the apprehension from her voice.
‘When the Knights-Charnel are your pursuers, there are no easy choices,’ Uvrel replied. ‘Sauren, hold here and direct the rest after us into the wild. Have a company hold position at this ford to watch our backs in case the rest of the mercenaries try to double back. You had grenadiers and light infantry following you, Sauren, correct?’
‘Yes, Exalted.’
‘Good. We’ll want the light infantry to follow them in the wild.’ A tight smile appeared on Uvrel’s face. ‘And grenadiers are mad enough to enjoy the many delights of Shadows Deep.’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’
‘Indeed. Dragoons! Ride as hard as you can! A Duegar ruin awaits us if we fail!’
The mercenaries rode in silence for an hour. The plain had a steady, gentle slope for the main and they made good time, but in the distance a dark shape lurked. Lynx felt it preying on his mind and as the ground beneath them climbed, the presence of Shadows Deep loomed larger.
‘What exactly are we riding into?’ he called to Toil, unable to hold out any longer.
‘Don’t you know?’
‘A Duegar ruin, I get that much, but I’ve never seen one. It was a city? There are streets and buildings?’
‘Ah – not like you’ve ever seen. Well, there are, but mostly underground. They didn’t build on one level but followed the course of the ground and the minerals they mined. Folk call it Shadows Deep after the rifts, two of them. One’s open to the air, the second is deeper but you’ll only find it underground.’
‘There are bridges?’
‘Dozens!’ She laughed. ‘But it’s been a while since there were Duegar stone mages to maintain them. Lots will have fallen, many more you wouldn’t want to cross.’
‘So we have a plan here?’
Toil glanced back at him. ‘Getting anxious there, Lynx?’
‘Course not, what’s there to be worried about? Walking into the unknown where most folk are too sensible to go? Where the nicest bits are the wilds where elementals rule?’
‘Oh, take me home,’ Toil sang out, ‘where the elementals roam!’
‘That knock to your head worse than we thought, Toil?’
‘Pah, you people all fear the wilds and you’ve never really seen them. Duegar ruins are sights to beat any human city. Sure there’s danger, but there’s beauty too and you’ve got to realise the rules you live by don’t mean so much in there. Fear this place and it’ll eat you alive, embrace it and it’ll live inside you all your years to come.’
There was a pause.
‘Like some sort of grub?’ Anatin asked finally. ‘Flies laying eggs in a wound?’
‘You just wait,’ was all Toil would say in response, refusing to rise to the bait.
After their first rest the ground started to break up more. Great boulders the size of houses, then palaces, jutting up out of the landscape, sharp gullies where streams flowed and the horses could barely negotiate their way. The sound of birds and cicadas grew more distant, though eagles circled high above and Lynx saw beetles gleaming red and blue as they buzzed through the air or scrambled through the grass around the horses’ hooves.
The haze on the horizon remained, however – a bank of grey that could have been cloud but for its jagged profile. To the south of that, three mismatched peaks too slender to be mountains, too large to be any sort of towers Lynx had ever seen. It was the underground that Lynx feared, though, the thought of scrambling through narrow cracks in the rock and the horrors that might lurk in the deepest black beyond.
I do know one thing about Shadows Deep, Lynx reminded himself. Those great rifts and the lowest mines of the Duegar. Didn’t I meet a man in some town who’d been an adventurer? A relic hunter? One leg and seven fingers left, that bit stuck in my memory – that and the fact his mind was cracked.
He had a maspid tooth on a cord round his neck, a trophy of the one that’d almost got him. Didn’t mind telling that story, did he, but then he got to the great rift. Someone asked how deep it went, what you could see there, and he went from laughing to crazed drunk in a heartbeat. Whatever he saw in that fissure, it broke his mind.
A hiss from Toil brought him back from his reverie and at a gesture the company slowed. She raised a hand to ward off the inevitable questions and the mercenaries readied their guns. For a while there was nothing, but then Lynx heard a tremble run through the ground. It came and went, slowly growing in intensity, before the rise ahead of them began to shudder and distort.
‘Everyone stay calm,’ Toil said without looking back. ‘No need for guns, so put them away again.’
No one obeyed until she turned, the anger clear on her face, whereupon Reft slung his gun back over his shoulder and the rest followed suit.
‘Good. Guns wouldn’t be a clever idea.’ She nodded towards Kas. ‘That bow, on the other hand, might be useful.’
The rumbling from the rise continued and as Kas nocked an arrow, not really knowing what she was going to be aiming at, the rise itself distended and a stretch of earth heaved up. Almost as one, the horses shied away and it took a while to get the startled beasts under control. As they fought with the reins of their own mounts and spares, a pair of grouse flew up from the undergrowth in a flash of white and red and the musky scent of earth filled the air. The earth continued to shudder from some great pressure rising deep under the ground and Lynx’s horse stumbled, the party grinding to a halt as the shaking became too great to safely walk through.
In the next moment brown streaks flashed away off to the south, three then four rabbits fleeing their burrows and risking the open ground. As the shaking subsided Kas let fly but missed and they were gone, then more followed. Kas fired again at a second pair just before they reached the cover of bushes. She hit the larger of the two and the arrow slammed it backwards, feet hammering frantically for another few moments before falling still.
‘Earth elemental,’ Toil said in a low voice. ‘Don’t think it’ll break the surface. I’ve never seen one.’
The knots of long grass on the rise waved and shook as though a strong wind was moving slowly over the length of it. The earth rose again then fell back and split open as a crater appeared in one flank of the rise. Then it moved on towards a copse of trees that had grown up just downwind and Lynx heard the creak and snap of wood as they writhed amid its passage. One tree seemed to snag the monster and the roots were ripped out from under it as the entire tree lurched and almost fell. The ground gave another shudder of movement then all was still again, the distant shaking Lynx could feel through his horse swiftly falling away to nothing.
The tang of cold, damp earth was all that lingered and soon Toil motioned for them to move on. Lynx found himself wanting to ask her questions, but his eyes were drawn to the wrecked tree that had been almost entirely uprooted without much apparent effort. The sight alone was enough to keep him quiet for a while longer and when they next rested, Anatin took Toil aside to converse quietly.
Lynx dropped down on a hump of ground and cut himself a few slices of cured sausage while he gave his aching thighs a chance to rest. Before long Kas arrived beside him and squatted down on the ground, nodding towards the meat.
‘Cut me a piece?’
Lynx did so and handed over a finger-joint-sized chunk, the meat stained red and speckled with fat. They chewed in thoughtful silence, the dried meat slowly succumbing and releasing such a rich flavour that Lynx found his aches and worries fading away for one brief, wonderful moment.
‘What do you think of her?’ Kas asked, nudging his boot to bring L
ynx back to reality.
‘Who? Toil?’
‘Aye.’
Lynx shrugged. ‘Don’t know yet.’
Kas smiled. ‘No thoughts at all?’
‘Sounds like you have.’
‘No more’n the rest of us. She’s beautiful an’ she knows it.’
‘Don’t you?’
Kas made a dismissive sound. ‘That woman wields beauty like a weapon. My guess is, there’s a sharp edge there too. I suggest you be careful.’
‘Me?’
‘All o’ you men. Ain’t hard to see the effect she’s had. I’m not telling you anything specific, just saying to be careful.’
‘Nothing specific?’ Lynx frowned at her. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Pfft. I don’t share men – I don’t own ’em, neither. That detail’s all your concern, but she’s not a Card; she’s some prince-elect’s agent. And just like a Charneler, she’s got a mission she believes in.’
He nodded. ‘Whatever gets the job done? Believe it or not, I’ve met the type before.’
‘Did you make puppy eyes at those others too?’ Kas said with a smile. ‘Ah, I’m only messing, don’t look so hurt. You’re a big boy, if I thought she was going to lead you by the nose all the way across Shadows Deep, I’d not be risking my own oh-so-perfect hide.’
She looked around at the rest of the group. ‘It’s still worth saying, mind. Anatin’s a suspicious old sod who’s misused his own charm more often than he can count, I’d guess. Teshen’s got no soul and Reft ain’t interested. Out o’ the rest of us, she’ll likely not waste her efforts on the girls so that leaves just you an’ Varain.’
She winked at Lynx. ‘Him, you’re prettier than,’ she said, nodding towards the battered and drink-scarred veteran currently shaking a stone from his boot then sniffing at it. ‘But mebbe that’s just me.’
‘Prettier than Varain,’ Lynx mused. ‘Guess that’s something.’
‘Hey, you’re happier’n Himbel too.’