by Ben Stivers
“Three? Well, that is an accomplishment. He has good teachers.”
“He did well enough, I suppose. Better than you at that age, probably.”
Wolf delivered his friend a phony look of indignation. “Well, we know how it started, but do we know what it was about?”
“That,” Arthur said, “is how we are going to spend the rest of our day. If that crew thought to haul him off to sea, that was one thing, but usually shipmen do not take a beating like that to do so. They prey on the weak. Yet, they called out an armed man. He had weapons. Visible weapons. He rode a warhorse. I find it hard to believe anyone in this town does not know his name. Does that sound like a simple ‘all aboard’ to you?”
“No,” Wolf replied, looking down at the ground. “Do you think they are still in the harbor?”
“There was a crowd, but it dispersed. How many were sent, I did not assess. I was more concerned with Adam. I know this, though. At least three of them remain in Ploor. They were in no shape to sail. Broken bones, all. The fat man brandished his anger on Adam. The crowd stirred the boiling pot. You heard his story.”
“Arthur, if I put Adam in danger because of what I said—.”
Arthur cut him off. “That discussion about the stream—I never thought of battle lust quite that way, Wolf. If you fail at bartending, maybe Nerva could use a philosopher outside of the clergy.”
Wolf laughed. “You are not exactly the most open person. If you are going to be his father, he should know what to expect. Your orneriness takes some getting used to.”
Arthur smiled evenly. “If that fat one did not die, I would be surprised. Still, we should be able to get information from the other two even if he did.”
“Want to go then or wait for Adam?”
Arthur looked back over his shoulder and replied, “I am sure not going to go back in there until she calms herself. My mother taught me to stay wide of a woman’s wrath. Nothing I can say will get me out of the fire. Only time and internal reflection can do that. The warrior in her will eventually reason out that the two of us are not culpable in this.”
Wolf interlaced his fingers and cracked his knuckles satisfactorily.
“It was not just a fight,” Wolf observed. “Someone comes after you with a knife, they usually tend away from good intentions.”
“No,” Arthur replied and left the porch.
Wolf accompanied Arthur to Baldja’s stable. The stable master fidgeted, ill at ease, when they approached and the stable hands stayed to the rear of the stables when usually they came to greet Arthur and Wolf.
“Arthur, I was not here when Adam came this morning. If I had been—.”
“Rest your anxiety. I have no grievance with you, Baldja. If you see Shanay, though, stay out of her way. What is Artex’s condition?”
“He’s fine. My lads have already groomed him. He has no marks.”
“Good, Adam will be glad to hear it. Have you heard any rumors?”
Baldja admitted he had. “A few. Some make no sense. None seem material.”
Arthur smirked, “That is why they call them rumors.”
“What have you heard?” Wolf asked, leaning on Baldja’s anvil.
“Around midday one reached me of a naked woman at the harbor last night, but that cannot be right. Someone’s drunken hallucination. You know how sailors are, Wolf. You are usually the reason they are drunk. They could mistake a troll for a woman—don’t tell Scralz I said that—let alone a striking nearly-naked woman.”
Arthur and Wolf agreed. They had seen their share of drunks speak to apparitions in their day.
Arthur interjected, “Don’t worry about Scralz. If she hears it, I will tell her Wolf said it. What else?”
“A fat man was hauled off the street when the vendors opened this morning. He was quite dead.” Wolf looked at Arthur, who looked down at his feet. “They found this knife in his chest,” Baldja continued. He reached over a stall rail and produced the shiv.
Arthur examined it. “Adam never drew his knife. This is not his. It was there though, but it was lying in the street.”
“Never said it was his. It could be from anywhere. Common among ship hands.”
Baldja settled Arthur’s thinking. “Adam did not kill any of them. However, they certainly received more than they gave.” Baldja shook his head. “That is the word on the street. He tried to ride away, but the crowd goaded him into a fight. The lad shouldn’t be blamed.”
“Any word about the other two men?” Wolf asked, attempting to move the conversation off Adam and back to their investigation.
“I know where they are.”
Arthur turned his gaze back to the stablemaster. “Tell me where. Wolf and I will get what we need from them. You need not involve yourself further.”
Baldja frowned and rubbed his dirty hand on his cheek. “You are not going to like it.”
“Where?” Arthur asked again.
“They are at the smithy. There is quite a stir there.”
Wolf and Arthur quickly started away.
“Wait. No hurry!”
They paused.
A thunderstorm had overcome Baldja’s usually jovial face. “The men were killed, gruesomely.”
Arthur cocked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“Someone smashed their skulls under a pair of anvils. Picked them right up and dropped them on them. Squished them flat.”
Wolf squinted, but Arthur let seriousness take his face. “Anvils weigh half a horse. In some cases as much as a horse. Who could drag off two men and drop a hideous death on them and no one hear that? For that matter, how does one go about dropping an anvil on someone’s head?”
“If Shanay had her way,” Wolf started, but Arthur’s sharp glance silenced his humor.
Baldja picked up a pitchfork and replied, “No one that I know of could do such a thing. If they could, I would not cross them.”
He moved off into the stable, his evident desire to disengage the conversation plain as the sky.
“Send a message to Ptolomus,” Arthur suggested. “Perhaps it is time to let Overlord City take care of itself. We should station the Templars here in Ploor—a policing action of sorts. Nerva has no reach here. Ptolomus can sort out this mystery and find out who did this. It will keep his men fresh.”
Wolf nodded, but neither returned to the tavern until the next morning.
Three days later, the Templars arrived. Arthur, Shanay, Adam and some of their tradesmen left for the site of their aspiring estate, great dreams rising while the memories of Ploor rotted in a shallow grave.
In the early summer, Arthur left his estate in the hands of Shanay, Adam, and the tradesmen. Progress accelerated. Wolf’s ability to choose talent showcased in the craftsmen that had come to the estate. The stonemasons had actually traveled from the Overlord City and the men were glad to have the work. They said that paid work in the city came hard.
“The city struggles for money to pay us. We have to feed our families. Nerva did not pay us for the last two months due.”
Arthur made a mental note and put them to work straightaway. The first order of business had been to build the barracks and it was there the tradesmen bunked.
Work proceeded quickly onto the main house and the outbuildings.
Shanay and Adam had just returned from their daily combat practice. Adam trained gruelingly with Arthur, but Shanay also took a strong interest in honing her son’s skills.
Arthur had sat on Blade for the last half an hour passing out orders to the workmen and saying goodbye at least half a dozen times. Blade fidgeted, ready to go.
“I am sure the two of you are quite capable of managing these men,” Arthur said, searching for any last minute instructions.
“Don’t dally,” Shanay coaxed. “You are irritating that patient horse of yours.”
“He will be fine,” Arthur replied, and started to order another worker to perform some task, but Shanay interrupted, “You and Wolf try not to irritate Scralz. I would like to have yo
u back without broken bones.”
Arthur chuckled throatily.
“That will be quite the task,” he replied. He had not returned to Hellsgate since the Great War. This would be his first time back. “Where did you acquire that sword, Adam?”
“The blacksmiths delivered it this morning. I made a few friends while we were in Ploor. Some of them arrived today to work. They brought this.”
He handed the weapon to Arthur, who quickly inspected the sword and returned it to his son.
“A fitting blade for a warrior,” was all that he said, but to Adam a higher praise could not have been stated.
When he raised his hand in a signal to depart, Shanay reiterated, “If you don’t go, you cannot hurry home.”
Arthur nodded, turned Blade, and rode away.
Adam looked at his mother, “He did not say goodbye.”
Shanay watched Arthur until he disappeared around a bend in the road. They had chosen to put the estate in the same spot Reg had died and the place where Blade had returned.
“He never does,” she said, suddenly, as if snapping from a reverie. “He never does.” Putting her arm through his, she continued, “Come, let us go see how work proceeds on the house. Your father will protest if we let them slack.”
Adam snickered.
“Complain? I cannot imagine,” he replied. In truth, he felt that sometimes his father proved practically understandable.
Few agreed.
Chapter 9
Hellsgate. Arthur found himself juxtaposed between love and hate. Already, he missed Shanay and Adam and wished he were there on the estate with them, with little concern except the background noise that Ploor echoed in the countryside.
On the other hand, he found Hellsgate to be like a bad drug. He could walk away from it, wipe thoughts of the place from his mind, avoid it and state his loathing for the damned place, but still he had looked forward to coming. Poised at the threshold to Pagan’s Way, the entry road to arguably the most hazardous town in the world, a longing tugged on his mind, comfortableness with danger that he craved.
Sitting on their horses in the darkness of both night and storm, Arthur said to Wolf, “If I were a town, but for the grace of Shanay and you, would I be.”
Wolf did not reply. The two of them had fit back together as smoothly as a horse and saddle their first day of the ride. They had been through many battles, suffered and laughed together, and had nearly tamed a healthy portion of Hellsgate in their youth.
Washing away the stars, a deluge of warm rain played a dirge upon the puddles and upon their leathers. Arthur let the rain bleed down his face, surveying the obvious townscape before them. Blade waited patiently for Arthur to move their way forward. One did not hurry in Hellsgate.
A bright stroke of lightning jumped three quarters of the sky and lit up the night, rapidly flashing on and off, and then gone again in an instant. Thunder pounded bass upon the underbelly of gravel clouds. Hefty raindrops smacked staccato tenor notes on the roofs and upon the mud of Hellsgate’s main road. Drops pelted Arthur and Wolf as they slowly traveled their horses into Hellsgate.
Arthur took his time. Though he maintained contact with occupants of the town, he did not delude himself that Hellsgate could be the way it had been when he knew it. If anything, the place might be more hazardous.
“Nothing like a mild rain to welcome one to Hellsgate,” Wolf offered.
A cynical smile pinned the edges of Arthur’s mouth. Letting Hellsgate enter his pores, he put away the years that had passed, and clothed himself in the Arthur that Hellsgate knew.
“I like the rain,” he commented and Wolf would catch his meaning. Smart people stayed out of the rain, especially in Hellsgate. They stayed out of the night for the same reasons. Arriving on a rainy night was a dare to the darker powers of Hellsgate to try to have their way, and Arthur felt quite at home placing that dare on the street.
The downpour whisked the dust from his hair and off his face after their long ride across the edge of the Syrillian Desert. Their leathers kept most of the water out, but rain always found a path, whether to wet your hands or slither down the base of your neck, but the two friends had been waterlogged more than once in their days.
They did not curse the desert or its demanding bright eye. They did not chastise the sky for its cloudburst before they reached their destination. If they had been doused in a bucket of water by a stranger, they could not have been less—grateful.
Since rumination of the rain would to nothing to further their cause, they reconnoitered Hellsgate. The town had been all but destroyed during the last war, but that pretty much meant the buildings. The populace of Hellsgate, an unyielding underbelly of the world, would not be deterred by a mere razing. The town had survived Rome. It survived the many wars that passed its way. To live here, one developed a thirst for torment and violence, or one died. There were no other options if you wished to stay. That was the dues of the town. Information, gold and blood were its currencies.
Unlike Overlord City, no edifices populated the winding roads through the town. The modest structures along the main road had always been thrown-together compositions. Assembled by whatever one owner after the next could put together themselves or barter for. Dozens of twisting roads led off Pagan’s Way, giving rise to butchers, cobblers, tanners, taverns and a cornucopia of seedy establishments. The backstreets of the town held mostly local traffic. During the day, the businesses that wished hawked their wares on the stretch of Pagan’s Way where everyone must pass.
“You know, Arthur, from what I have heard of your carpentry, you could have built Hellsgate,” Wolf chided, holding his horse’s reins in one hand and allowing his other to rest on the pommel of his sword.
Arthur realized that he had done the same, a habit, and one he welcomed.
“Not funny,” Arthur ground, feeling that actually Wolf’s comment struck him quite comical.
“Pretty funny,” Wolf replied, and they chuckled quietly, not wishing to wake up anyone who did not already watch them.
The town had been rebuilt or at least repaired since the devastation years before, but looking at the various buildings, a stranger might have believed them to be a century old. The placards for the stables, a blacksmith, and a tanner had all warped under the bright sun that usually shined so close to the desert. If there had ever been a thought to keep the buildings painted, it did not show.
“Still a thriving center of commerce,” Arthur commented, riding determinedly slow along the road, letting the sights and the memories soak in. He had met Shanay here. He had killed Apostles in this street.
“Another brothel opened on Pagan’s Way,” Wolf pointed out. The shingle held a faintly legible picture of a woman and a ghost. Under that, the words, “Haunted Virgin.”
Arthur looked that way. At one time, the Dark Embrace had been the main brothel in Hellsgate. It still sat down the street at the branch where Pagan’s Way turned into the main town and the right hand road led to a worse place. In its heyday, declared a ‘safe zone’, the Dark Embrace had prospered. Even unscrupulous men needed a place to find comfort. At least that had been the theory before Arthur killed an entire group of the Apostles’ soldiers in one night.
For the sake of revenge, he had violated the basic premise of Dark Embrace. Every man died horribly. However, that had not ended the Dark Embrace as an establishment. Even so, after the town burned to the ground, the owner had never again been seen though the new structure stood on its grounds.
As it always had, Pagan’s Way split, the right side emptying into the worst part of town named, the Downs. Unless you had business that you determined of more value than your life, you did not enter. Those who occupied that area of town were hard down lethal and probably considered dead in some part of the world. The Downs was a secure, impenetrable place to be if you wished to hide, but you had best be able to pay for that protection. If that were not bad enough, you had better be able to pay protectors to protect you from your pr
otectors. They could as easily decide they would just take the money and not the duty.
“This town will always be soiled,” Arthur said, eyeing the rooftops. He let his magic run the street and up the walls. As he suspected, at least a dozen different buildings had watchmen, scouts or snitches. Wolf and Arthur’s presence would be known throughout Hellsgate before they got to where they intended. Underneath of the normal wickedness, Arthur felt malady in the mud and made note to ask of Scralz of his intuition.
“At least the street does not smell like baked piss,” Wolf remarked.
There had been days when it did, troughs running down each side of the street to run into the endless labyrinth below the town.
“I imagine tomorrow that will change,” Arthur replied. “The rain stifles the stench. At least there is some relief for these poor souls.”
They traveled down the road a few more paces when both Arthur and Blade simultaneously alerted. Blade stopped without being told. Wolf’s horse took one more step, and then followed Blade’s example.
The rain intensified, trying to conceal a new secret, but Arthur saw the twisting yellow rope-like creature burst out of a puddle ten paces from them. The elongated thing was incredibly fast. Twisting multiple tentacles at one time, the thing skimmed across the mud, a slightly bulbous head with a slick scaled body as thick as a common man’s forearm.
Arthur’s skin crawled.
“What the hell?” Wolf muttered. With both hands on his saddle, he leaned forward as the creature squeezed down a small hole in the sewage trough and into the labyrinth that ran underneath Hellsgate’s streets. “Do you think ‘that’ is dangerous?”
Arthur had seen things in this town, such as Necros, dead things that raised dead things. His intuition had held true to its nature. He probed the immediate surface but found no other creatures. The path the thing had taken from puddle to hole shimmered to Arthur’s senses, a feeling he had not felt before, but one his father had spoken of many times. “My sense from the road fouls my mouth, the sense a gift from my father’s passing.”
Wolf raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”