Blackguards

by J. M. Martin

  “When Shawn and his men chased the lady’s carriage, Roy whipped the horse and made a run for it. Killed himself when the carriage flipped. Her ladyship was busted up bad too. There was no saving her. But she told Kristin to run, and she did, right into the forest. Clyde and Shawn had to borrow Blake Everett’s hounds to find her. Mean dogs they are. One bit the girl.”

  “So why didn’t Shawn just take Kristin and run?” Royce asked.

  “Might have been better if he did. But two people were dead, and one was the Port Minister’s wife. No getting around that. There was going to be a crackdown and business would suffer. The king would have the high constable poking around. It would be a big mess.”

  “And how did the whole werewolf thing come about?”

  “That was Shawn’s idea too. Little girl thought Everett’s hounds were wolves. So Shawn tells her that’s exactly what they were—said the beasts killed her mother, but he saved her. Then he got to thinking about stories he’d heard in Calis, and since the girl had been bitten…”

  “And how do you fit in?” Royce stared at Leta.

  She took a step back. “I didn’t do much. Griswold had a smugglers’ hole Lord Darren didn’t know about. Shawn had his men take the Medusa up north to catch a wolf, a big one. It was my job to drag Kristin out and get the wolf in. Just needed a little food to lure it. After a while, it was sort of trained, although Shawn used to beat it to keep the animal vicious. Then just before dawn, I’d put Kristin back. Was easy when she was little—a lot harder as she and I got older.”

  “But why?” Lord Darren asked. “Why do all this?”

  “Best time to navigate the Galewyr is when there’s a full moon,” Royce said. “And if you can be sure the Port Minister will be home looking after his ‘poor daughter’ you can move a lot of black market goods.”

  Leta nodded. “Shawn would unload his ship at Roe and send his long boats up the river to Medford. Clyde bribed the port watch and his crew off-loaded right at the dock. Two nights of work was all that was needed to clear Shawn’s hold. Then they’d have a month to trade before the next shipment.”

  “So why did you let the wolf out?” Lord Darren asked.

  “Because you were going to go to the king,” Royce said.

  Leta looked at them both. “Shawn and Clyde could just disappear, but me? Where would I go? How would I make money? How could I survive?”

  “You were going to keep Kristin thinking she was a monster and feed off her like a leech?” Lord Darren glared at the housekeeper.

  “She was all I had!” Leta cried. “I—I was desperate, don’t you see?”

  Lord Darren shook his head in disgust. He took several breaths to calm down, then focused on Hadrian and Royce. “And how about you two? Why’d you come back?”

  Hadrian stared at his partner, mirroring his lordship’s quizzical look.

  “Professional integrity,” Royce said.

  Hadrian rolled his eyes.

  Royce glared at him. “It’s true. I knew someone was deceiving me, maybe using me. Thought it might have been your daughter, could have been part of a group. Maybe the Hand trying something. Easy mistake to make, the way she tried to hire us with such a sickly-sweet, wide-eyed, wholesome act. I was positive it was a swindle or game of some sort. No one is that cute.” He shook his head and turned to Kristin. “I was wrong. You’re just a freak of nature.”

  Kristin smiled back. “Better than being a werewolf.”

  “True.” Royce nodded. “Anyway, I don’t like being used. I go to great lengths to make certain those who try regret it. It would hurt business if I let something like that slip. So I needed to know what was really going on and, if possible, make certain those responsible never did it again.”

  Lord Darren nodded. “Well, thank you—both of you.” He was still holding his daughter like he was terrified of ever letting go. “But—well, who are you? Who are you really?”

  Royce smiled. “Riyria.”

  “Riyria? I don’t understand?”

  “Why would you? It’s elvish for two.”

  Troll Trouble

  Richard Lee Byers

  I’ve written several stories about Selden and plan to write many more. A former mercenary, he gave up war to settle in Balathex, the City of Fountains, and set up shop as a fencing master. But old habits die hard, and a man can use a secondary source of income when he has a habit of picking losing horses at the hippodrome. So he still hires out his sword on occasion and generally finds himself enmeshed in supernatural mysteries and fighting sorcerers, demons, and the like. “Troll Trouble” is set before the other published Selden stories and is an origin of sorts. It relates how he first got himself established in Balathex.

  ~

  The Forest of Thorns is well named. Briars scratched and snagged me with every step, or at least it seemed that way. Meanwhile, the soft ground mired my boots, and cold rainwater dripped on me from the weave of branches overhead.

  In other words, this little excursion into the wild was unpleasant enough to remind me of one reason why I’d abandoned the life of a mercenary—marching in the snow and heat, eating half-spoiled rations or none at all, and sleeping rough—to set up shop as a fencing master in Balathex, City of Fountains. I strove to stay alert lest discomfort distract me.

  Yet despite my caution, when I first glimpsed the troll peeking out at me, he was only a few strides away. It seemed unfair that a creature so large could nonetheless hide so successfully, even behind the broad, mossy trunk of an ancient oak.

  Truly, though, there was no reason why he shouldn’t, because he wasn’t as tall as a tree. Such towering specimens may have existed long ago. They may still, in far corners of the world. But in all my wandering, I’ve never seen one.

  No, his long arms knotted with muscle, hide mottled brown and gray, red eyes shining under a ridged brow and fanged mouth smirking and slavering at the prospect of cruel sport and fresh meat, this fellow merely loomed half again as tall as I was. That was still big enough to make a sensible man turn tail.

  I didn’t, though. Nor did I reach for my broadsword in its scabbard, though my fingers itched for the hilt. Instead, as the creature shambled into the open, I gave him a nod and said, “Hello. My name is Selden. I come as an envoy of the August Assembly of Balathex.”

  Then I studied his brutish face in an effort to determine whether he believed the lie, and if so, whether it mattered.

  #

  My errand began three nights earlier, in the shop I’d rented and through hard and fumbling work—I’m no carpenter—transformed into a space suitable for teaching swordplay and associated arts. Effort wasted, it seemed, for no students had presented themselves to study there.

  The problem was that I was a stranger. No one in Balathex knew me as a successful duelist or an instructor capable of raising others to proficiency. The obvious remedy was to pick a few quarrels, but I was reluctant to go down that path.

  I’d grown tired of killing for no better reason than to put silver in my purse, and besides, I was loath to start my new life by instigating feuds. I didn’t need vengeful brothers, sons, and friends of the deceased leaping out at me for years thereafter.

  Unfortunately, that unsatisfactory scheme was the only plan I’d been able to devise. Thus, on the night in question, I sat alone drinking cheap Ghentoy red laced with raw spirit, and never mind that I’d squandered coin originally intended for next week’s rent to purchase the jugs. Morose as I was, I had more immediate needs.

  Someone rapped on the door.

  My first half-tipsy thought was that I’d lost track of the date, and the landlord had come for his due, but a moment’s reflection assured me that couldn’t be so. Perhaps here was my first pupil, then, unlikely as that seemed at this late hour.

  I straightened my jerkin, smoothed down my hair, and hurried to answer the knock. When I did, a stooped old woman squinted at me from the other side of the threshold.

  She wore charms, talismans of made of
bone and feathers and other items hidden in little cloth bags, dangling around her wrinkled neck. But had you seen her, you wouldn’t have thought sorceress. You would have thought witch.

  For there was nothing about her to suggest the sort of citified mage who pores over grimoires, compounds elixirs from rare ingredients, and commands devils via complex ritual and force of will. Rather, she was manifestly a village wise woman who knew only the patchy lore her mother passed down to her, brewed dubious remedies from whatever happened to grow nearby, and dickered with goblins in a manner little different than she’d haggle with a neighbor.

  Surprised, I said, “Mother Elkinda.”

  She sniffed twice. “You stink of drink.”

  “Whereas you stink of the usual.” It was true. There are rustic folk who give the lie to the insult dirty peasant, but she wasn’t one of them. “And I suppose that, as we both smell already, a hug won’t make it any worse.”

  We put that to the test, and afterward, I ushered her inside.

  “How did you know I was in the city?” I asked.

  “The wind whispered it to me, and then I dowsed my way to your door.” She hefted a gnarled walking stick.

  “Well, it’s good you came when you did,” I said. “In a week or two, I’ll likely be gone.” Soldiering again, if I could find a captain to take me on this late in the season.

  I don’t think she even registered the glumness in my tone. “I need your help,” she said. “I…may have done a bad thing.”

  Concern nudged aside my self-pity. I waved her on toward the rickety table.

  She stumbled before she got there. It was a long hike from her little forest village to the city, and she’d exhausted herself making it. I caught her, got her into a chair, poured her a cup of wine, and sat back down across from her. “Tell me,” I said.

  She took a long drink first. When she set the goblet down, she said, “There are trolls in the wood.”

  More concerned now, I nodded. “I know.”

  “Well, what you may not know is that sometimes they need blessings and medicine just like people do. Then they come to me.”

  I frowned. “That’s like trafficking with outlaws, only worse. People would hang you if they found out.”

  She glowered. “I give the trolls things they need, and in return, they leave the village alone. We couldn’t live where we do, otherwise.”

  “I can believe it,” I said. “And I wasn’t condemning you, just worried for your sake. Please, go on.”

  “Well…two of the trolls who came to me were Skav Hearteater, their chieftain, and Ojojum, his mate. Their problem was, she couldn’t conceive.”

  “And that upset them?”

  “Yes. In some ways, trolls and people are alike. Through my craft, I discovered the fault lay with Skav, but when I tried to quicken his seed with the usual remedies, nothing happened.”

  “So you tried something unusual?”

  “Once I was fool enough to tell the trolls the notion that had come to me, they insisted. Had I refused, how do you think it would have ended?”

  “With your flesh in their bellies,” I said. “So what did you do?”

  “I called a spirit of lust and fertility and put it inside the Hearteater. My thought was that he would share the imp’s vigor the next time he and Ojojum coupled.” She smiled. “And I was right. She’s with child.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  The smile disappeared. “Skav changed. He’d always doted on Ojojum. But afterward, he started beating her until, fearful she’d lose the baby, she ran away.”

  “Ran away and came to you. Because she suspected your magic was to blame? More to the point, do you think it’s to blame?”

  Elkinda sighed. “Perhaps. When the spirit came, I sensed it was something crueler and less biddable than I meant to catch. Something from the netherworld and not just out of Nature.”

  “You should have tossed it back and tried again.”

  “That’s easy to say now, but I’d had trouble summoning anything. I didn’t know if I’d be lucky a second time, and with the trolls watching and waiting…”

  “I understand,” I said. “Well, partly. Do you believe the spirit’s touch poisoned Skav’s mind?”

  “Worse. I fear it didn’t leave his body when it was supposed to. I need you to find out if it’s still inside.”

  “What, now?”

  “I can fix it so you’re able to see the incubus once you’re close enough. I need to know for a fact that it’s there and how it looks before I can set about casting it out.”

  “Then go peer at Skav yourself. You’re the one who’s friendly with him.”

  She shook her head. “The spirit would be suspicious of me.”

  “Whereas the trolls will eat me simply because they’re hungry.”

  She grimaced. “I know what I’m asking. But dangerous as trolls are, the ones hereabout mostly leave people alone. They won’t do that much longer if a demon has possessed their chief. They’ll start hunting humans every chance they get, and you’re the only one I can ask to help me keep it from happening.”

  She didn’t add that I owed her my life. Apparently she trusted me to remember that for myself.

  I came down with the plague called the Bloody Noose when my mercenary company was chasing bandits on the fringe of the Forest of Thorns. For fear of contagion, my comrades abandoned me. Mother Elkinda found me a day later.

  She always claimed the foul potions and gruels she gave me cured me of my affliction. I had my doubts. But I didn’t doubt that after the delirium passed and I was breathing normally again, my lingering weakness would still have killed me had she not nursed me through the two long months of my recovery.

  Now the debt had come due. I poured us each another drink and said, “Tell me how I’ll be able to spot the imp.”

  #

  Now you know how I came to find myself deep in the woods facing a troll. But you may still wonder why I approached the creatures openly when I might have spied on them instead.

  This was my thinking. Mother Elkinda knew the trolls; she watched the trails in the heart of the wood, but not where they laired. I could have crept around for days before I found the place, and even when I had, I might not recognize Skav. I’d never seen him before, and to human eyes, one naked beast-man tends to looks like another. And once I did identify him, I’d still need to come close to discern the incubus inside, close enough to make concealment problematic.

  Thus, passing myself off as an emissary seemed a better option. Or at least it did until the troll roared and rushed me with ham-sized, jagged-clawed hands outstretched.

  I jumped aside, and he lunged past me. As he lurched back around, I snatched my sword out. He hesitated, but not, I judged, because the blade frightened him. He was simply considering how to contend with it.

  At least that gave me another chance to talk. “I know where Ojojum is,” I told him. “I think the Hearteater will want to hear, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he growled, then instantly swatted at the sword in an attempt to knock it aside.

  I twitched the blade above the arc of the blow and sliced him across the knuckles. He snatched his hand back, and in that instant, I lunged closer and set sharp steel against his dangling, warty genitals. He froze.

  “Give me your word,” I said, “that you’ll take me to Skav without any more nonsense. Or I swear I’ll geld you.”

  “I’ll take you,” he said. His voice still sounded like growls and coughs. It reminded me of the lions I’d seen in the grasslands of Lazvalla.

  I shifted my sword away from his maleness and returned it to its scabbard. I didn’t like doing it, but it seemed unwieldy to approach Skav as an envoy and a hostage taker, too.

  To my relief, the creature before me didn’t try another attack. Instead, he led me on down the path. Evidently the feel of a blade against his tender parts had made a lasting impression.

  His cooperation notwithstanding, I never dropped my
guard. But eventually I relaxed somewhat, and then I asked, “What sort of mood is the Hearteater in today?”

  My guide gave me a glower. “Angry. Hungry.” Then he stepped into a spot where the tangle of branches overhead was thin and winced at the wan light leaking down from the sky.

  That’s how trolls are. It’s a myth that sunlight turns them to stone, but they’re sensitive to it. Had my companion not been charged with keeping watch on the trail, he might well have opted to sleep by day and roam around at night.

  Certainly, that was the case with the majority of his fellows. They lay snoring in heaps of leaves and pine needles in a particularly shady portion of the forest floor.

  Despite the crudity of the sleeping arrangements, the place had the air of a home and not just a camp where nomads had stopped for a day. The trolls had taken the trouble to wedge racks of antlers and skulls, some of them human, in the crotches of trees and to scratch crude drawings on the trunks.

  That was all I had time to take in before one of the wakeful trolls noticed me. He roared a warning, whereupon his fellows roused and, glaring and slavering, came shambling to surround me.

  I didn’t realize when one reached to grab me from behind. Fortunately, my guide noticed. He snarled, slashed with his claws, and sent my would-be assailant reeling backward with a gashed face.

  It was more assistance than I had any right to expect. But I’d entered the trolls’ home at the side of my reluctant escort, and maybe that meant an attempt to harm me implied disrespect for him.

  The balked troll swiped at his flowing blood and gathered himself to lunge. Fearing that a general brawl was imminent, I shouted, “I speak for the lords of Balathex, and I can tell you what’s become of Ojojum!”

  Some part of that was surprising or intriguing enough to make the creatures around me falter. Then another troll, one who hadn’t rushed to encircle me with the others, prowled out of the gloom.

  Upon observing him, I decided I’d been wrong about one thing. I would have recognized Skav Hearteater on sight. He was even bigger than the others and had dried blood and yellow earth streaked on his face and chest.