by Damien Lake
Colbey had followed it all with keen interest. How had the poison struck the command structure? Had it found its way to this army’s leaders? Was the army’s core vulnerable to similar such attacks?
And also interesting was how the soldiers responded to the act of poisoning. He had followed the group that arrested the merchant’s family, hoping to learn whatever he could. How would the soldiers treat a poisoner? Would their anger or revulsion blind their sight in certain areas? Would they focus so exclusively on the poisoner who attacked them that their attentions wandered from other defensive areas?
When they brought the weeping, beaten man out to dig his grave, they declared he had admitted to being part of a resistance ring organized by outside influences. Meaning the frantic remains of the Tullainian government, supposedly. That amused Colbey, while he also disdained it. How typical of all the outlanders beyond the forest. They had decided that they knew the answer beforehand, so ‘interrogated’ their prisoner until he told them what they wanted to hear. Judging from the fresh scars Colbey had studied while the man dug his hole, hoping to learn what techniques these invaders used to torture a man, the interrogation lasted until the merchant screamed anything he could to make them stop.
It was informative, though useless in any practical application. He had already known these invaders were brutal, savage killers who would find justifications to suit any atrocity they cared to commit. If the Rovasii Guardians needed an answer out of a man, as happened once in a great while, torture would never even be a last resort. Also, his people were aware that answers sought were not always the answers desired, and accounted for that during the questioning.
Full dark still lay a half-mark off. Colbey needed to kill time before his night’s activities could commence. He walked to the iron-covered hole to look down on the man. The merchant was curled in the pit’s westernmost corner, staying out of the sunlight. Perhaps he would die of dehydration by tomorrow night.
At last you see what comes of your greed, Colbey thought, malice tingeing his thoughts. Instead of fighting for your land and your freedom, for the lives of those slain in the invasion of your home, you sought only gold. You did not work to push the invaders back. You chose to feed them with the fruits of your kingdom in exchange for coins. You ignored their sins to satisfy your lust for comforts. You are an enemy to all who seek justice with their blood watering the soil!
The rage boiled inside him anew. He could nearly hear the voices of his friends who were cruelly murdered in a place of safety. A place kept safe through the efforts of the Guardians.
A hand on his shoulder nearly made him strike with all his deadly skill. The foggy blurring around his vision vanished as he choked down his instincts.
He heard a guttural bark while he turned to see three soldiers in their alien armor. They had descended on him without notice, it shocked him to realize. His rage had caught him up, stealing his awareness of the world around him.
They were also clearly aggressive. “I do not understand,” he told them in Tullainian. “I’m sorry?”
“They want to know why you watch him so,” a female voice explained. A woman, different from the one who had spoken with him days ago, stepped forward. She was dressed in an identical manner.
“I was curious,” Colbey told her. “I saw the posted notice.”
Words in Traders were exchanged. Colbey’s halting command of the language supplied him an extra moment to craft his replies. “They say you watch him with suspicious curiosity,” she translated. “They want to know if you have ever met this man before.” She added without changing expression, “We have been watching this square all day. I think they are waiting for an attempt by his other spy friends to help him.”
“Tell them I have never met this man before.” It was the truth, after all. “I only marveled at the foolishness of a man who would rebel against our new lords.” He bowed in Tullainian fashion.
This would not be enough to satisfy them, unfortunately. One reached a hand to grasp his shirt and hurled unintelligible syllables into his face. The speaker passed mangled words to the woman. Her tone wavered, nervous this time as she spoke. “They are going to take you in to ask you questions. He says they have been ordered to watch for any other spies trying to contact this man.”
Colbey spent a split instant in consideration. If they took him in, then he would be past the security and finally inside! Except there was no guarantee the place they took him to would be the estate complex, and they would most assuredly divest him of his sword. The pommel rested under its cloth against his neck, concealed as long as his movements were taken with care. Killing them all meant he could leave, but the uproar would interfere his activities.
He decided against it, yet he needed a sacrificial lamb to take their attention away from him. Perhaps the gods were favoring me.
With a careful trace of fear, he said, “I am no spy, nor friend to any. Not knowingly!”
The soldier grasping his shirt clamped a hand down hard on his shoulder. Colbey was careful not to let it twist his pack around to where his sword would be uncovered.
“They want to question you,” she told him with resignation. “I am afraid there is nothing to be done.”
“No! Listen, tell them this! Tell them that if there are any spies about this night, then they are lurking in a taproom a few streets over! A man I saw is surely no more a true Tullainian than you or I!”
She translated, the words catching their interest.
“Truly, I can show you to him. Peace to our new lords,” he told them, his voice full of obsequiousness. Colbey felt the vile slime squelching through his fingers, his hair, his chest...his soul. He bowed low again.
The soldiers barked at each other before reaching a consensus. Colbey’s new friend kept his hand clamped on his shoulder while marching behind. With their catch thus secured, they allowed Colbey to guide them back to the taproom he had left minutes earlier.
“There, in the far corner,” he whispered while they peered through the street window.
Colbey waited on the street with his guard while the woman and the other two entered. The instant the Galemaran realized they headed deliberately for him, he tried to bolt. They captured him after breaking several chairs, then examined his hand without bothering to question him. Since the man was shouting, he probably would not have answered in any case.
Back on the street, the soldier who spoke directly with the woman paused a moment to examine Colbey’s own tattoo. Colbey was unable to follow the mutilated Traders this time. The soldier abandoned them both to help with the struggling prisoner.
“He says you may go and to thank you for your upstanding citizenship.”
Colbey bowed to the departing soldiers while the woman followed after. When they rounded a corner, his obsequiousness vanished.
Now his bumbling about won’t stir up a witch hunt. It is best left to me, anyway. I won’t be discovered so easily, and I’ll learn everything there is to learn.
Still, Colbey admitted grudgingly, he fought. He brought what little skills he had against these murderers. For that, he has earned a merciful end.
He dashed at top speed to the nearest, easily scalable building. Kallied’s buildings were mostly long, continuous structures with only thick walls separating one home or business from the next. Several hops across short gaps had him paralleling the street the soldiers walked down. If they continued in this direction, then they surely headed for the main military headquarters in the city proper. Colbey stayed with them until they passed the turning that would have brought them toward a lesser post in a requisitioned trading hall.
Yes, they were assuredly heading for the main headquarters, stationed in the former Auctioneer’s Plaza. Satisfied, Colbey shrugged off his pack before leaping with all his Guardian’s speed across the rooftops. His nighttime studies had revealed the watch locations throughout the city. One lay only three blocks away. At times soldiers manned that lookout while at others they chose a diffe
rent vantage to watch for trouble.
Luck continued to cloak Colbey this night. Two men, armed with bows, sat on the egg-shaped balcony patio jutting out from the third floor of a building once belonging to a wealthy owner. The patio afforded a grand view of Kallied’s southern reaches, which made it an ideal watch post. Colbey dropped onto the patio from above with hardly a noise.
The pair would have been surprised if Colbey had not killed the first as he landed, then slashed the other across the throat before he could react. A quick check inside the balcony doors revealed no one else who needed to be dealt with.
Colbey collected a bow before arranging the bodies so it appeared they had simultaneously killed one another. The scenario would likely be suspect, but given how foolish the outlanders persisted in being, he would not be surprised if they actually believed it. Enough doubt would exist to keep a retaliation throughout the city to a minimum.
Across the rooftops the Euvea Guardian flew, leaping gaps as a stag bounding over fallen trees. He arrived across from the headquarters before the land-bound soldiers who struggled with their catch. Several moments passed until they came into sight down the long, open street.
The scout was glad to see that the spy had calmed down. He knew he’d been caught and that there would be no escape. It would make the shot an easy one. Come and take your escape through me.
A simple shot for him, who had been trained to hunt in the deep forest. The soldiers were long in realizing that an arrow had pierced their prize’s neck, so unexpected was it. Only when blood exploded from the spy’s gasping mouth did they slowly become alert. Colbey dropped the bow with its remaining arrows on the rooftop.
Let them find this. Let them find one of their own bows. It will only confuse them and start a search among their own for traitors.
He left, bounding across the rooftops.
* * * * *
Jide happily wiped the soot of Durrac from his boots. The place was a blackened smudge on the landscape. It had stopped smoking by the time he arrived almost an eightday ago, but the acrid smell persisted in stinging his nostrils.
He had told Adrian there would be nothing to find, and nothing was exactly what he’d gotten. Jide, riding north, ran his fingers over the eye patch, a gesture so ingrained it was deeper than habit. His fingers lightly rubbed across the worn-smooth leather while he allowed his thoughts free rein.
No one remained in Durrac. This was an absence that also encompassed the Arronathian Armed Forces units that had been assigned to the town. They had pulled back to other stations after the destruction of the ‘rebellious’ citizens. Jide had been forced to take command of a patrol unit to bring him to the ruins.
Or so the unit believed, after they had broken from their regular route for the day to escort him. Jide had chosen them for their history with Durrac and questioned them during the ride. The end result was gut certainties beyond confirmation.
Without doubt, some witless fool had attacked a Taur controller. Her body had been discovered in the night by off-duty soldiers looking for a new tavern to patronize. As Adrian said, this sort of rebelliousness should be expected. It was when they couldn’t see the dominated straining against their bonds…then they needed to start worrying.
The patrol unit captain knew well Jide’s legend, though the two had never met previously. Knowing what he did, or thinking he knew, the man had been eager to tell everything, including facts he spun from whole cloth in all likelihood. Jide thought the captain a festering boil, a sycophantic rat always looking for the quick score or an easy coin.
But that was the very reason Jide had chosen this unit of all those previously stationed at Durrac. He grinned with a knowing smirk whenever The Boil related information he believed was a secret. He studied The Boil with the calculating one-eyed gaze that always made others wonder what transpired in his mind. He asked The Boil questions designed to make the man spend the next month wondering if he had overlooked an opportunity.
Because these types thought of little else, Jide knew. They lusted for power over others, or wealth, or both. ‘Never miss an opportunity’ was usually their credo. And to every one, Jide was the idolized role model they aspired to be.
His reputation among the army sleazes had always been well known, and the fact that it was well known made him even more notorious. Everyone knew Jide was a thief, a blackmailer, a back-alley cutthroat, a supply bandit, a classified information broker and an all-around power magnate. The top officers were aware of his activities, yet Jide always slipped through their fingers. Other payroll skimmers or weapon scalpers were tried and hung. Jide outlasted them all. He was eternal.
Everyone knew him for a prince among thieves. Everyone knew he would never be caught.
What none of them knew was the truth. All those other rotten apples in the army barrel had not fallen by the wayside because they lacked his exquisite skill. They had fallen because they made the mistake of trusting him.
Adrian had been in the army for five years when Jide first met him. Jide had only been in his second year but already his criminal activities had netted him fat pouches filled with silver. The future general caught him while smuggling a crate of blades from a warehouse.
Back then, Adrian had been too junior in rank to hang him outright. Instead he dragged him to a cell to face an inquiry later on.
Jide, frightened and terrified, threw every story he could conceive on Adrian. In the cell that night, Adrian had questioned him. The interrogation gradually evolved into a conversation, and Jide discovered a man blessed with charisma and ideals.
That night changed him in ways he never would have believed, in ways he still laughed at himself for. Adrian could sweep a man away with nothing except the force of his words when he chose to. He could make the other feel about matters the way he did. The crusade they would eventually embark upon had not yet begun, but both felt its seeds within the corrupted army around them.
Though full of ideals, Adrian was always a practical man. He had known that light could never fully banish the darkness, and that there were corners only other shadows would ever reach. The filthiest among the corrupt officers would never trust anyone. Never, unless the other proved as filthy as they.
That type of man possessed a sixth sense for their own. They could smell an imposter before he finished crossing the threshold. Jide, already dirty, would be an ideal stalking horse.
He and Adrian spent the next thirty years cleaning house. They were careful never to act on Jide’s information until sufficient time had passed. If too many fell immediately after confiding in Jide, the rest would smell him out.
Riding with the festering boil of a captain, Jide found it amusing to ponder what the other must be thinking. Jide had reached a high position in the ranks, so why come all the way out to a wasteland of a town in person? The Boil spent the entire ride hoping to foster a kinship with Jide. This type, as he well knew, always wanted to attach like leeches to those with greater power.
After two days wandering the blackened ground, he sent the patrol back alone. It was almost funny, the disappointment on The Boil’s face when he realized he would not discover whatever secret had brought the super-scalper. Jide maintained his demeanor. Once alone, he began a thorough study of the countryside.
He discovered nothing, not from the terrain and not from his questioning of The Boil. He’d expected nothing else. Adrian wanted proof that Mendell had killed an entire town because he enjoyed wielding the power his rank afforded him. Proof of that sort would never be found here.
Mendell claimed to have uncovered a conspiracy that encompassed the entire town. He offered no proof, yet no contrary evidence proved him false either. Nothing in the surrounding countryside indicated ulterior motives. No gold mines or rich deposits of precious minerals that might have sparked a greed to harvest the riches for his own gain.
A complete waste of time, as Jide had known it would be. The other unit captains from Durrac would tell the same story, he knew, and what p
hysical proof could he uncover to prove Mendell for a bloodthirsty maniac? A written diary filled with confessions the colonel had carelessly dropped in the ashes? Jide nearly laughed.
He spurred his horse toward Kallied. Adrian would never find the kind of proof he could take to an army tribunal to have Mendell expelled, if not jailed. Except for Mendell’s connections to Xenos, Adrian could forego dancing these ridiculous steps. The general of the Arronathian army could simply remove him on the spot for no reason whatsoever, if he chose.
Jide rode, working out how he could convince Adrian that harder steps were going to be needed. He could set up Mendell for a fall, but that would mean going behind Adrian’s back. That was a step he would never take without desperate need.
Except left unchecked, Mendell could undo the hells own work they had put in over the past few decades. He rode north, rubbing his eye patch, lost in thought.
Chapter 19
After a half-mark spent gaining the fat man’s trust, Marik began to feel a tingle. Exactly what he could not say, it being unlike his mage talent sensing foreign magics, yet a flickering awareness tugged at his mind.
“An item…a friend of his made?” The sweating fat man gazed blankly at Marik. He returned his gaze to Ilona. “I assume, well…I could ask you and you would say you understand, though the truth is you probably don’t. But I’ll ask it anyway. I assume that you are aware how…delicate…carrying any sort of…item…like that would be for a business man?”
Ilona nodded. “Delicate. Very delicate. I assure you I am aware.”
The fat man nodded behind his counter. Oceanic perspiration patches stained the armpits of his tent-sized shirt. Marik could smell, familiar after so many winter months in a crowded barracks, the sour reek of crotch sweat gone gummy due to the fat man’s bulging thighs rubbing together the entire morning. “I knew you would say that. But why is this a problem for you? If a friend of yours,” he directed his gaze at Marik, “crafted an item you need, why don’t you ask him to make you a new one? And why can’t you get him to tell you where to find it?”