Black River

by Peter Fugazzotto

  "Why would I lie?"

  "To hide your cowardice. To distract us from the fact that you abandoned your brothers in the heart of battle."

  "Wish I had deserted long time ago. We need to get out of here, warn Vas Dhurma, get as far away as we can."

  "I've seen dark magic before," said Pullo, scratching at his beard. "A warlock's song and a man and a thorny bramble came together, but we just chopped him and the warlock down, one, two, three, and problem solved. Raising the dead is stuff made up to scare the kiddies."

  Justio furrowed his hair with his fingers. "Gods, man, are you thick? We need to get out of here." He sprung up and made for the main gates of the fortress but before he had covered a few steps, a single hard slap of Pullo's palm sent him to the ground.

  "We're not going anywhere until I have orders – whether from Urbidis or from the generals down in Vas Dhurma. A soldier of Dhurma does not run. Ever."

  Justio's lips trembled. He looked around at the gathered men – the Hounds, Spear and his crew, Vincius, the three dozen remaining Dhurmans. "Will no one believe me? Do you all think I am crazy?"

  Spear chuckled. "Some folks are just not cut out for the North."

  Shield, who had been standing in the shadows near the horse stalls, stepped forward, his scarred hands on his sword belt. "I believe you."

  "I know what you're trying to do," said Pullo. "Put the fear of some ungodly warlock in us so I'll abandon my post. Finally get your victory against Dhurma. But it won't work. Because even if we get infected with fear, twice as many will return and the fury will cleanse these lands."

  "I've seen the dead rising. Heard the song of the witch of the sands," said Shield. "Far beyond the Black River."

  "I've heard nothing of this," said Pullo. "Warlocks bend the weather, make mud and twigs stick onto men, possess animals but raise the dead? You're all fools."

  "I'm with you, Pullo," said Spear. "Never heard such a thing."

  "Then that's that," said the sergeant. "Justio, you will be tried as a deserter. We will wait until Urbidis returns and then you'll get close and intimate with outpost justice, slow and painful."

  "Do not be so hasty, Pullo." It was Vincius who spoke.

  "Oh no, not you too." The fellow Xichil rolled his eyes and threw his hands to the heavens. "Don't tell me that you've seen the dead rise."

  Vincius shook his head. "I have not."

  "Good. Then let's be done with this foolishness. Urbidis will return soon and if we do not hear anything within a week, we'll send Spear north to find out what happened."

  "I am a Chronicler," said Vincius. "I have spent four years in the Grand Collegium. Dark magic is our trade. I have read the histories, have studied those that have come before us. I know what is possible."

  "What is possible is very different from what is."

  "I was brought into the house of the Master Chronicler. I had my ear to meetings of the elders that were held behind closed doors." His chest rose as he gathered his courage. "We have heard accounts from our own Chroniclers, well-trusted men. We did not believe it at first. The men were interrogated, the stories corroborated. There is dark ancient magic afoot again. We saw it in Hopht and I have no doubts that it is happening here as well. Armies of the dead are being raised and we must do something about it before they find their way to Vas Dhurma."

  "I'm in charge of the garrison," said Pullo. "We wait until Urbidis returns. I will not abandon my charge. We wait a week and then send Spear north. That is my final word."

  "Your final word means nothing to me," said Vincius. "My duty is to seek out the words of power and to destroy the warlock and witches who will not yield. If we do not quell the dark magic that is growing here, it will sweep across the Black River."

  "Do what you want, Vincius. But me and mine will stay here, and if this army of undead comes, we will defeat them from these walls."

  "And me and mine will go north across the Black River," answered Vincius. "I would rather have a fellow country man at my side, but if you choose to remain here to where you feel your duty lies I will understand. I was hoping that blood would run deeper."

  Pullo's face twisted and then he was gone, dragging Justio by the arm towards a post and manacles near the center of the garrison fortress.

  Vincius nodded at Shield. "Have your men ready in several days."

  Shield looked at the Xichil, Spear and then the Hounds. "I will kill the warlock."

  "Spear," said the Apprentice Chronicler, "I know you have some allegiance to the garrison and Cullan, but I have coin if you come across the Black River with us."

  Spear chuckled. "Not enough coin to drop in my hand to make me leave. Not for what you might find up there."

  "Coward," Shield muttered.

  Spear's men stared at their feet, all except Cruhund whose lips curled in a sneer. Spear's fists clenched and his face tightened. Then he was gone through the front gate, and within a moment lost in swirl of the market.

  REFUGEES

  SPEAR HUDDLED WITH his men over cups of mead.

  "Calling me a coward," he said casting a glance down the long table of the hall. At the far end, Shield and the Hounds sat before their cups but they were silent, hardly a word passing between them. "The one who smiled as he killed the Warlock King. Now he's going to cross the Black River with that little foreigner. Not even a true Dhurman, that one. He's up to something, Shield is, I can see it. I've changed my mind. I'm going with them. So I'll need you to hold things down here. I'm counting on you."

  "What do you want of us?" asked Cruhund, tugging at the battered Dhurman chest plate that was several sizes too small and cinched together with leather and twine.

  "If anyone makes a play for the docks or the market, you slip a blade in his back."

  "I'm no Dhurman sneak thief. I'm a clansman and I'll face my enemy before I send him to the underworld."

  "Don't be a fool," hissed Spear.

  Cruhund shook his head but said nothing more.

  "Urbidis, the fat bastard, is gone – whether for good or for only a bit," said Spear. "Now is our chance; by the gods, I wish I did not have to go. Now is our chance to own the docks, cinch things tight." He gave them instructions about how they were to put the squeeze on the boatmen, to raise the fee for landing, and to sit down with the merchants who supplied the fortress. With Urbidis gone, Spear was going to shift the docks towards him – raise prices on everything, and contain the entire trade of Cullan beneath his thumb.

  His men listened, nodded, and drank. Except for Cruhund who picked at the leg bone of a lamb with the tip of his blade.

  ***

  Later Spear returned to Yriel.

  After she had fallen asleep, he lay beneath their furs, body still sweaty and hot from their love making. He thought about getting up from the bed but he knew the cold would sweep over him. Better to enjoy the warmth now. Soon he would be out of Cullan town and back in the true North. Here below the Black River everything was corrupted, himself included. What choice had there been but to give in to Empire, to find that place between the oppressor and the oppressed? He knew that he was not admired by the other Northerners, the ones who thought that he should have never acquiesced. But he was as free as any Northerner could be living under the yoke of Empire, and each year his power and wealth grew. Soon he would have enough to buy his citizenship. He had played his muscle and threats and flattery in just the right way so that he had become the thread between the garrison and the merchants.

  Shield was the true traitor. He was the one who had abandoned the North. He had killed their hope. Spear had never left. One day the tide would turn and Dhurma would abandon Cullan and, when it did, Spear and his army of remainders would step through those abandoned gates of the fortress, ready to lord over his own little kingdom.

  Spear was woken well before dawn, in that darkest part of the night when the cold seizes the world. He was woken by the wailing. Yriel was awake beside him, a dagger in her fist already, breasts bared. He quick
ly armored up and pushed out into the cold and the dark.

  Torches reflected against the broken surface of the Black River, orange smears swallowed by the turbulent waters just east of the docks. The wind pressed hard at him, howling, foretelling the coming of a cold storm, perhaps even the first snow. A mass of dark figures moved among the torches. Voices rose, wailing, moaning, crying, infants.

  His men were already there.

  Spear pushed through the cold wind, wishing he had wrapped himself in his furs, wondering what he was thinking of dressing up like a Dhurman in the bitter cold like this.

  He came amidst the swirl of figures and the light of the torches caught their faces. They were clans people from North, from across the Black River, women and children, one or two old men.

  "He came," one of the women said clutching Spear's forearm. "He brought with him an army of corpses, Dhurmans, rotting, shambling, and even our own kind, but they lived. She sang and they moved. We were to pledge ourselves to him or die. Our men refused and his army fell on them and then they left."

  "Who is he?"

  "He is Fennewyn. He is a warlock and he intends on destroying the world."

  CALL OF BIRGID

  CULLAN WAS CHAOS.

  Refugees had flooded the market town. Families huddled together in the day begging for food near the gates of the fortress. Pullo had opened the grain reserves and doled out bowls of hot porridge with bits of salted meat in the morning but, when the lines formed again in the afternoon, the fat sergeant told the displaced settlers and clans people that they would have to rely on their own, or the merchants, or those who farmed the land around the town to fill their bellies.

  Shield lay in the folds of his sleeping furs, late into the day, watching the tavern keeper turn away family after family, telling them that they would have to find another place to shelter. Many had gone down to the docks and built rough structures among the empty barrels and stacks of timber waiting to be brought south.

  Three days of refugees pouring into Cullan. Not just from the settler's farms but also from clan villages where the men had resisted serving under the warlock Fennewyn. Would he destroy the entirety of the North? Shield had heard that those who pledged themselves to the warlock grew. He was solidifying the Northmen across the Black River, sending south those who refused to be a part of his new nation. A unified North was always the dream but through dark magic?

  It brought back memories of the Warlock King.

  Shield rolled out of the furs. He would have to face the day, the pleading women, the stretched out hands of children. Not what he had wanted.

  Harad and Patch were down in the hall, seated at the end of the table as far from the front door and the refugees as possible. They had already eaten and had no interest in mead this morning.

  Harad hunched over his book, finger trying to draw his attention away from the constant argument and begging at the front door.

  "I'll be happy to get out of here," said Patch. "The tavern keeper says he won't be able to keep the families out for too much longer."

  Shield felt the heat of the hearth against his cheeks. He knew he should be thinking about crossing the Black River but his mind kept returning to the idea of a new Warlock King rising. He just could not get his mind around it. All these years of crushing magic in other parts of Empire only to come back to find the greatest threat in his homeland.

  "I can't wait to be North," said Harad. "Across the Black River. Freedom"

  "Are we going to be free there?" asked Patch. "Wage slaves again to Empire, hired expendable swords. Never be rich enough to be free. At least with the warlock, we would be among our own. Would not be beholden to foul Dhurma. North I could wet my sword with Dhurman blood. They will come. Word's been sent south. Legions will be called up."

  Shield imagined the coming of the legions, the armored men marching in tight columns up the decayed roads, the glare of the sun off their shields and helms, the steady cadence of their feet on the earth. They would come and the white tents would be set into the earth, the fires built, the perimeters defined. He imagined Cassius pried away from his desk job and part of the command.

  Would they come seek out the Hounds for what they did best? Assassinate the threat? They were in the North again. Surely they would see the value of the Hounds again and, after the work was done, what choice would they have but to bring the Hounds back into the fold? He would negotiate it with them ahead of time, bond them to a promise that the Hounds would be a part of the legions for as long as they desired and that they would get land afterwards, a place to settle in their old bones.

  A cold wind broke across the men as the door of the tavern pushed open.

  Vincius, bent against the cold, darted into the warmth of the hall. He stood near the door for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. He found the Hounds and came to where they sat.

  "A word?"

  Shield nodded. "What you say to me you say to all of us."

  "I know what you did in Hopht and I am reassured to walk into the shadows of men who will not turn, who will not run when faced with dark magic. What you did in the market of Vas Dhurma gave you this opportunity to escape the life of a market guard. After we capture the words of power, I will let you go. You can do as you like. You will no longer be beholden to Empire."

  Shield remembered entering the chamber of the witch in Hopht. She had not been what he had expected. She was a girl with tears in her eyes. She was crying; she was desperate. He could see the pleading in her eyes. But he had heard the struggles of his own brothers and knew that one of them would have to yield to the other. For him to yield to her would mean the end of the Hounds, the end of himself. Even as he kicked her over and hacked his heavy blade across her neck, he was filled with regret, filled with horror at the life that he had made for himself.

  "I know my duty," said Shield.

  Vincius smiled. "We leave at first light tomorrow."

  At the end of the day, when the rains came cold and hard, Shield stood alone at the banks of the Black River staring at the distant shore. The water sounded angry, cracking and snapping against the stones that littered its bed, surging and howling as it filled with rain. He could feel its desire, the race of the water through its veins, the fury to leap the banks and tear at, rip apart and consume the land that constrained it. So simple to be the river.

  A youth was then alongside Shield in the darkness, his approach masked by the voice of the river and hiss of the rain. He was not yet a warrior, limbs too long for his body, face devoid of all but whispers of hair.

  "What of it, boy?"

  "Birgid needs you. You must come to Lake's End."

  Then the boy was gone in the sudden sheeting of rain and the river surged, buckled, threatened to jump the banks, a black river roaring in the dark night.

  GATHERING OF THE BAND

  THEY ASSEMBLED AT first light. Heavy mist fell from the gray sky.

  Vincius stood uncomfortably by the large horse, the smooth skin of its shoulder quivering. The others were already on their horses. Pullo was leaning over talking to one of the handful of men he was leaving behind to watch the fortress. Beside him, the deserter Justio slumped on his horse among the other two dozen soldiers of Dhurma who were coming along. A distance off, Spear blew into his cupped hands.

  Vincius ran a palm along the horse's snout in the hope of soothing it but the beast snorted and bumped the little man with its head. Sergeant Pullo had claimed that this one, a large chestnut, was the most docile left in the garrison fortress.

  Vincius pulled hard with the lead line which only seemed to agitate the beast and the Apprentice Chronicler had to hop back to avoid getting his foot crushed beneath a sudden hoof.

  This was not how he wanted to begin the trip north.

  "Are you going to get on that horse?" asked Pullo.

  "Have you changed your mind?" asked the Vincius. He allowed some slack and the horse jerked its head to the dank grass below.

  "No. Me
and my men will ride with you only as far as the village. That's it. Urbidis has been good to me, despite all the years, and I owe it to him to bring his body back to the fortress."

  "You will change your mind."

  "My duty tells me otherwise. And dammit, Vincius, do you really expect me to follow you on your mad quest deep into the Northlands to pursue a warlock?"

  "Can you not see the threat? Are you so blind to the machinations of dark magic?"

  "The only thing I see are settlers pouring into Cullan. I need to find out what happened to Urbidis."

  Beside Pullo sat Justio on his horse. "I can tell you where the village is. You don't need me along. You'll find his body there."

  "If you try to run again, I'll break your legs," said Pullo.

  "Break my legs now. Leave me here," said Justio.

  It took Vincius three attempts to seat his horse. It turned wildly beneath him before Spear grabbed its reins and quieted it.

  "Is Shield coming?" asked Spear.

  "He will meet us by the river," answered Vincius. "The garrison would not advance us the supplies."

  Pullo laughed. "The Grand Collegium has coin to spend. Maybe we should get Spear here to bring along a couple of his men if he is so worried."

  The strongman shook his head. "I might be able to spare one but I have to maintain a presence here in Cullan or else the dogs will rise up out the trenches."

  "I wonder the same thing," said Pullo.

  Spear frowned. "Urbidis trusted me. You'd do well to do the same. Worked out well for both of us."

  "I have sent a runner south. A legion will arrive."

  "We shouldn't be crossing the River," said Justio. The man had overburdened his horse with extra weapons: spears, swords, a two-handed axe, and a spare shield. The horse already sagged beneath the weight. "Better to wait word of the commanders south. What difference does a few days make?"