Arrowmask: Godkillers of the Shrouded Vast

by John Ruch

  Regulus rose and motioned for Arrowmask to join him at a table near the fire, where he refreshed their goblets of brandy.

  “Well played, Arrowmask,” he said, stopping the decanter. “You know, I believe I read about that strategy in Massacus. Twenty-two moves to a bare emperor, I recall?”

  “Oh,” said Arrowmask, blinking and half-turning his head toward the game board. “I actually kind of hate Check. Way too logical. I wasn’t trying at all.”

  Regulus froze for a moment, then chuckled and shook his head.

  “Quite a trick to pull on your employer.”

  “Former employer, Counsel.”

  “Well, let’s not be hasty. The end of one job may be the beginning of another. We share a skill at uncovering the mysterious, and a taste in fine brandy. And though we have quite different methods of excelling at them, we know how to win our games.”

  “I note that you prefer one where the pieces are tactically vital, but strategically expendable,” Arrowmask said with a politely tiny sneer.

  “Quite,” Regulus allowed with a smile. “You will find that is the rule of every game. Come, and bring your drink. There’s a much larger puzzle I’d like to show you.”

  The adjacent room was lined with provincial maps and sea charts, many of them chipped and browned with age. In one corner stood a globe cunningly crafted to include the moonlet belt of Atel’s Trail encircling its equator.

  Occupying one wall was dark wooden paneling inlaid with the heraldic shield of the Tetragate, with its four swords and four portcullises. One for each of their largely self-proclaimed rulers: Sir Ulther Eldershaw, Dame Maud Threlkeld, Sir Heddon Coldwyn, and Sir Claudis Aberdarron. In theory they were all equals, but there was a hint about their inside politics in whose face showed up on which denomination of coin. Sir Ulther’s was on the gold in Ashton’s pocket.

  The paneling comprised two doors that Regulus spread apart and slid into recesses behind flanking bookcases. Revealed behind them was a nearly floor-to-ceiling map of the known world. The roughly rectangular border of the empire surrounded the map’s center, divided into its twelve provinces and dotted with its cities and landmarks.

  Arrowmask sipped from his brandy as he looked over the enormous landmasses of Trelpas to the west and Kundh to the east, their appearance something like an opened clam with Cor Cordum as a pearl in the very center. A great city was inevitable there at the northernmost reach of the Godsblood sea and alongside the Atelrush, the longest and widest river yet discovered.

  “Why, I think I’ve seen this somewhere before,” Arrowmask cracked. “I wouldn’t say no to a bonus, but you’re not offering all this to me, are you?”

  Regulus ignored his base jesting and picked up a stick from a tray at the map’s base. “The Corcorid Empire at its height five hundred years ago, and as we still like to think of it today. The shape remains on the maps we publish and the flags we fly.” He half-heartedly traced the Empire’s border with the point of the stick.

  “Perhaps it even still looks this way in reality. But the fact is, we don’t know. We don’t know what’s happening on most of the borders. Some cities have become isolated. Some procounsels haven’t been heard from at all.”

  Regulus was aware he wasn’t telling a reasonably educated traveler such as Arrowmask anything he didn’t already surmise. The invasions of the Weàlae from western Trelpas two to three hundred years ago rocked the Empire and changed its face forever, from slaves to emperors; Arrowmask himself was plainly of Blue Weàlae descent. But the Imperial government also rarely admitted doubts or disorders. He suspected the rogue would be impressed with the significance of such plainspeaking.

  “Our intelligence networks broke down long ago. It is possible the Weàlae or the Cynricas tribes in the north have taken over and are massing to push farther into the Empire. Or perhaps legionnaires have switched allegiance, or some common calamity has afflicted friend and foe alike. Then there are the stranger mysteries affecting us all.”

  “The decline of magica,” the rogue offered.

  “Indeed. Not the only troubling curiosity, but first among equals.”

  “The loss of taxes and tributes must be right up there, too. I guess this would be a bad time to ask for a raise.”

  “We wouldn’t say no to higher revenues, naturally. But it is hardly the first concern.”

  “True, you don’t look like you’re missing many dinners.” Arrowmask smirked and gestured with his goblet. “You’ve got the Godsblood under control, anyhow.”

  Regulus looked at the vast central sea with its thousands of harbors and islands. It was a yard wide on the map, and in reality, seven hundred leagues or more of supreme wealth in fisheries, trade routes, shipbuilders, salt manufactories and vacation resorts.

  “Yes—at least, as much as the Old Empire ever had it under control from the occasional sea monsters and perpetual piracy.” He glanced knowingly at his guest.

  “But here…” The counsel dragged the stick’s point through the Godsblood’s only outlet, the narrow southern mouth called the Twelve Pillars, and into the Dunelf Sea. The stick sailed five thousand miles south in a moment to the great continent of Shardai.

  “The Shardaian trade was our richest a century ago. Virtually nonexistent now. I’m sure you’ve heard all the quayside rumors. A political shift toward isolationism. A tidal wave that destroyed its northern harbors.”

  “The one certainty being that captains who do sail south rarely return.”

  Regulus nodded and moved the stick to the Empire’s three southeastern provinces. “The Greenarch. We know almost nothing of its condition beyond the coastline.” He tapped Millennium, the fabled thousand islands in the Godsblood, and home province of Arrowmask; then Jadal, along the eastern border, where the Green Weàlae made their jungle homes; and finally Archaia on the southern coast.

  The stick moved offshore to a great island, once an entire Weàlae nation unto itself, then similarly its own Imperial province.

  “Bastion. We’ve heard nothing from procounsel, solider, commoner—anyone—for near a decade.”

  “They say constant storms make it impossible to reach,” Arrowmask said. He considered his goblet a moment. “Also that the Tetragate keeps inconvenient prisoners there.”

  “They say a lot of things,” Regulus replied. He slapped the eastern half of the map with a professorial air: “Kundh.”

  One of the most ancient names in the Empire, and thus one of the most widely used. In broadest terms, Kundh was the entire East, largely unknown due to the Kundhmur, thousands of square leagues of towering mountains walling off the Corcorids and Kundhiis from each other.

  “Kundh” also referred variously to a specific great nation beyond the Kundhmur that had some trade with the Empire via the southern nation of Vyrkania as middleman; to the eastern coastal section of the Empire between the Godsblood and the mountain range; and to a specific Imperial province therein. In short, there was Their Kundh and Our Kundh. Exactly where the line was drawn at the moment, Regulus devoutly wished the Tetragate could know.

  “The East remains secure,” the counsel continued, resting the pointer on Kundh Province on the east-central shore of the Godsblood. “Border fortresses in Duxum”—the stick slid to the northeastern province—“and in The Twelve”—it slid down to the southeast—“remain essentially intact and well-garrisoned. But our intelligence beyond the borders is weak. Several forts in the foothills are unaccounted for. Even records of their locations are incomplete.”

  The stick jumped the Godsblood like a magical hero of legend and landed on the western provinces of Argentum and Eastreach. The Silverhold Mountains here were smaller and less extensive than those of Kundh, but performed the same role as an unbeatable border defense.

  “A similar situation in Silverhold. In the mountains, fortresses and towns lost or forgotten. In Eastreach, a secure line of fortresses remains across the lowlands, but leagues farther east than the old Imperial borders, and no certainty o
f what lies beyond.”

  “And then, of course, there is the Shrouded Vast. As shrouded as it ever was.” Regulus swept the stick across the entire north. Thousands of miles of ancient forest and trackless fens surrounded the gigantic, yet-unsounded lakes of Frostmyrr and Stjarnafall. The Vast was the latest addition to the Empire, taken a half-millennium ago in battle with a legendary tribal leader variously known as Ultio or Hefnd. It was conquered, but never tamed, its borders ever contested and its forests forever hiding secrets. Its winters were as daunting as its barbarians and killed more surely.

  “A second home for your family line, I’m told,” Regulus remarked.

  “An expert in genealogy as well as geography,” the rogue replied. The “Godkillers” affair of seventy-five years earlier was a popular legend, though not everyone knew the names of all the players. “I didn’t inherit any loot or anything, sorry to say.”

  Regulus did not care for genealogy, but background investigations of his hirelings were interesting indeed, and the strange times demanded of him a command of events once dismissed as legend and fairy tale. Three-quarters of a century ago, the bards recounted and Legion logbooks partly confirmed, a powerful entity claimed to be a barbarian deity was invoked deep in the Vast—either by the tribes themselves or Imperial agents, depending on which side was doing the remembering. As it broke loose and threatened indiscriminate destruction, a small group of Imperial and barbarian adventurers put aside their differences and came together to stop it. Among them was a thief and assassin called Nire Arrowmask. They slew the god, at the price of their own lives, and established a legend in both cultures.

  Whether Ashton actually was her grandson was hard to say; that he at least claimed to be was intriguing.

  The rogue raised his cup toward the top of the map. “I hear the Vast is pretty popular in your bosses’ family, too.”

  Regulus raised his eyebrows at the rogue’s acumen. Not many people outside of the political realm bothered to learn the complicated history of the Tetragate paladins.

  It indeed began in the Vast, centuries ago at the time of the Weàlae invasions, where a Weàlae paladin called Sir Doublegate reputedly unmasked an evil spirit disguised as a procounsel. In more recent, yet still ancient, times, another Weàlae paladin who called himself Sir Triplegate in tribute to his nation’s hero defended the Empire from magically talented foes in a series of spectacular battles across the provinces. Scholars described his foes as a wizard cabal. Minstrels and tale-keepers claimed they were the resurrected children of Atel, the giant who ruled the Godsblood in the near-forgotten millennia before the Corcorids defeated him and founded the Empire. Either way, Triplegate remained the Empire’s most popular legend and the date of his adventures the basis for the Common Count calendar.

  When Sir Ulther Eldershaw, a modern paladin of Order, a score-and-five years ago began his campaign to restore the fallen Empire, he took the name “Tetragate” to honor the palatine tradition— and to reflect the scope of his ambition. Following Ulther’s early successes, he saw the need for assistance and turned his chosen name into a blueprint for a ruling quartet of paladins. All took on the honorary surname Tetragate.

  “The paladins inherited nothing, either, except continued trouble in the Vast,” Regulus said. “But there is something to be said for drawing inspiration from legends.”

  Arrowmask swallowed his mouthful of brandy. “I don’t know why they don’t just go all-out and call themselves the Milliongate. Modesty will get them nowhere.”

  “I’ll be sure to pass that along,” Regulus said dryly. “But I fear they have greater concerns in the Vast.”

  Turning back to the oversized map, he traced the mighty Atelrush from its origin in Duxum westward across the heart of the empire and northwest into the Vast. He circled the far northwestern province, on the outskirts of the old Weàlae kingdoms, that contained the area where the river emptied into the Kriegschiff Sea.

  “We have essentially retreated to heavily fortifying the river harbor in Riparia. The actual province we call the Vast—it appears to have returned to a wild frontier. More than two-dozen legions posted there were never reinforced and their fates are unknown.”

  The rogue set his goblet down on the rim of the stand supporting the globe. “Well, as fun as it is to hear about our nation imploding, I must say I don’t see much coin in it for me. It sounds like a job for the Tetragate.”

  “It certainly will be in the end. But first we need intelligence. Which means we need spies, explorers, thieves.”

  The counsel circled the Imperial city with his stick. “We may have uncertainty and decay on a dozen fronts, but we also have a solid advantage to rely upon.” The stick traced five dark lines emanating from the dot of Cor Cordum like rays of a star.

  “The Old Ways,” Arrowmask said.

  Regulus nodded. “The ancient roads of the Old Empire, built two millennia ago for trade and military reinforcement, and still solid today. We know from experience that even where they go unmaintained for centuries, scarred by war and weather, they remain passable.”

  He waited as Arrowmask’s eye followed some of the lines, snaking through the Silverholds, across the jungles of Jadal, deep into the Shrouded Vast, and skirting the cliffs of the Kundhmur.

  “A force small enough, mobile enough, adaptable enough, could use the Old Ways to access almost every obscured corner of the Empire without drawing excessive attention or bogging down in the terrain,” he concluded.

  “They’d also be sitting ducks for not only whatever barbarian threat might exist, but also for bandits, wild animals—who knows what else.”

  “That in turn can make the force underestimated. I daresay you know something about using false flags and deceptively small attack vessels in your adventures on the Godsblood.”

  “True enough. But if this is such a good idea, why hasn’t the Legion done it already? Or one of the trading cartels?”

  “The military is still stretched thin from the wars and the efforts to rebuild the Imperial government—thinner than we admit. The cartels are in a similar position. Their rebuilding is largely based on sea trade, legal and otherwise, as you likely know better than I. I daresay a few indeed are pushing to recapture lost overland routes, but if they are doing so successfully, they are keeping them as trade secrets.”

  The counsel toyed with his map pointer. “There is another factor as well. It took the Tetragate years to arrive at this idea. Longer than, in retrospect, it should have taken. I suspect that, despite your years of smuggling, extensive use of the Old Ways never occurred to you, either.”

  Arrowmask rubbed his hawkish nose. “No, it didn’t. Are you saying something is preventing everyone in the Empire from reading a map? Another ‘curiosity’ like the loss of magica?”

  “It is quite a coincidence, isn’t it? Now that we do have the concept of using the Old Ways, however, any prior amnesia perhaps no longer matters. Though, stranger still, many of us here at court forget the idea ourselves from time to time, and must be reminded by our fellows.”

  “I’ll admit it’s a decent idea—if you ignore the extreme-danger part.”

  “It’s more than an idea. It’s a plan. We are already commissioning four teams to ride to the ends of the Empire. Three are preparing at this very moment to go east, west and south. We need only someone to lead a team into the Vast.”

  The counsel tapped the end of the stick against his dark goatee as he awaited the rogue’s reaction.

  Arrowmask snorted. “Dear old grandma would be so proud. Why in Night would I want to do that?”

  “It could cause a half-dozen arrest warrants to be erased rather than executed immediately, for one thing,” Regulus offered.

  “You must get some great bargains at the marketplace,” Arrowmask said, sliding one hand onto the hilt of his freshly looted sword with a feline air of faked nonchalance.

  “Allow me to continue. Assuming you return with useful information, you can expect five thousand aurei
and a villa in Laternium. Financial security in return for the Empire’s security.”

  “Also, I suspect you are a bit bored,” the counsel added.

  “Money and excitement. You certainly have my attention. But what exactly is your big plan? I pack my lunch and ride off down the Old Ways on a mail coach?”

  “A trading caravan armed and outfitted to your specifications at the government’s expense.”

  “And who staffs this caravan?”

  “A small squad of legionnaires as guards, and up to three professionals you may hire yourself, with my approval.” He watched for a moment as his hook sunk into the fish’s mouth.

  “I suppose you’ve thought up something to prevent me and my new friends from just selling off this lovely wagon full of loot.”

  “The legionnaires are disgraced former officers, recently freed from prison, who will regain their titles and lands if they return with useful information, the caravan and yourself. That is worth far more to them than the equipment’s value, or any bribe you are likely to be able to afford.”

  Arrowmask smiled like a man who appreciates a clever plan, even though he’s terrible at making one himself.

  “Well, camping on a half-erased part of the map amid barbarians with a squad of ex-prisoners—I mean, who could say no to that?” He smirked at the counsel. “Just one other obvious question. Why me? You don’t trust me.”

  “Nor you me.”

  “True. But you paid me.” Arrowmask patted his newly fat purse.

  “And you delivered as promised. It is not a common thing these days. If I may be permitted to sound dramatic, it’s the stuff an empire may be founded on.”

  The rogue crossed his arms and considered Regulus with a half-grin. “I haven’t forgotten the type of game you like to play.”

  “I haven’t forgotten your method of winning it.”

  Arrowmask laughed. “I almost got killed tonight. I fell—uhm, pounced—onto a Mix-Fiend about six stories down in the Old Empire ruins. It must be near dawn by now. Can I have some time to think about it?”