Sometimes, though, a guy’s gotta ask for help.
“Let me toss a question at you,” I said to Rovid. We sat with our backs against the stepped hillside, sweat pouring down both our faces. The sweat seemed to vanish like a droplet of water into the sea as it bled into Rovid’s black eyes. “Let’s say you’re in a war, and you’re outnumbered. Someone tells you they’ve got ten thousand reaped that they can deliver to your front lines at any time. Do you take them up on the offer?”
Rovid thought about it. “What’s the price?”
“Free.”
“That’s a good price. There’s no catch?”
“There is a catch,” I said. “Those ten thousand reaped… they’re not reaped yet. They’re still alive — or dead, however you term it — in Amortis.”
Rovid drew back, withdrawing his head in like a turtle. “Then, no. Absolutely not.” He cupped his mouth for a while, as if deep in thought. “Someone came to you with an offer, didn’t they? Reapers?”
“A rebellious one, yes.”
“That’s not surprising,” Rovid said. “He wants out, just like I want out. Like every reaper eventually wants out. No one in their right mind wants to ruin a man, woman or child for eternity. And that’s what we do, right? We ruin them forever. Look, I know you assassin types have your own atrocities to deal with. I mean, shit — everyone does. Life’s tough. It’s fuckin’… it’s rough out there. I get that. But none of it compares to what reapers are put through.
“And I’m not meaning to vaunt my own hardships here, you know? I’m just warning you. You take up that offer, it’s not like you’re killing ten thousand people. You’re torturing ten thousand people, and their families. For eternity. You get that? Forever. How do you even wrap your mind around that? Can’t even quantify it, can you?”
I exchanged the skin of water for a skin of wine, took a nice gulp. “Why haven’t the reapers rebelled before?”
“What makes you think some haven’t? Occrum, he shuts them down.” Rovid snapped his fingers. “That quickly. Murders them. Then, for those unlucky enough to pass on into our version of Amortis — the one we know of — he yanks them right back out, turns ’em into reaped. Murders them again. Then they’re mindless husks, forever and for always.”
I wiped the sweat off my brow, swished around some wine and thought unpleasant things.
“I was wrong about you,” Rovid said.
I lifted my eyes from the bottom of my wine skin.
“Thought you the same as Occrum. You didn’t care about anything except the final outcome. You would’ve skinned your own mother’s back if it had meant accomplishing your goals. That’s what I thought. Then I saw how you acted with Lysa. You care for her.”
“Not like that,” I said.
“No, like a father cares for his daughter. And your Rots, they’re your brothers and sisters. That’s why you’re here, right now, to save them. You’re not freeing them so they can play a big part in your plan. How could they play any part? You can probably see their bones. Not one of ’em can likely hold down so much as a handful of minced meat.” He raised his skin to me and said, “You have a family, and you care about them. And I… I respect that.”
Had I disguised my intentions that thinly? Oh well. No sense in keeping up the farce now. The wine had begun seeping into my veins like a warm broth after a cold day in the fields. It put me at ease, and I laid my head back against gritty rock and relaxed my inhibitions.
We talked for a good while, Rovid and I. He told some interesting stories, let loose with a few good jokes, and even managed to humanize himself.
He had been almost forty when they came in the night, overturned his hamlet. They’d kept the men, slaughtered the women and children. His boy and beautiful wife whose chocolate hair gleamed like a moonlit lake didn’t make it out. That was ninety years ago.
Occrum required more reapers for a special project. And he isn’t the kind of guy to put up fliers requesting volunteers. Go figure.
There were about two hundred men with him, Rovid said. Only forty passed the trials. Each received a handful of pills from Occrum himself, who told them they held the secrets of history in their hands, that their lives would persist forever so long as they were loyal.
Then came the modifications. Some men were fools, told Occrum what they wanted most was to see their families again. The thing about these modifications is they’re intended to make reapers more efficient in servitude. And so these poor fucks saw the faces of their children and the orgasmic screams of their wives every passing second that they didn’t work for their master.
They were conditioned to enjoy harvesting reaped.
Rovid said he was born the son of a cobbler. Takes a certain amount of wit and a good sense of desires, he said, to sell shoes when people can’t afford food. Both those qualities were passed down to him, he claimed, and he foresaw the intention behind Occrum’s question, What do you desire most?
Figured if he could see in the dark, he could get away from there that night. Instead, he cried and hissed and wished death upon himself as he felt the forceps of Occrum’s fingers pluck out his eyes. Felt the air rush into his empty sockets, pooling like a trapped current behind the bones of his cheeks.
In the end, he didn’t escape, obviously. But he did get new eyes.
I switched from wine to water as the moon relieved the sun of its duties. Tomorrow would be a hard day, and hard days are even less enjoyable when you’re retching and pleading with the gods to either make your head stop pounding or just make the motherfucker explode already.
Nighttime in the Swamplands was not something I endeavored to experience, but as the insects chirped and bats careened through the air, I prepared myself for the inevitable. And the inevitable, as it is wont to do, approached.
A fist-sized piece of bark slapped me in the face. To an outsider, it probably would have seemed like bad luck. But luck doesn’t peruse this forest. The most annoying animals that have ever existed do.
They’ve two tiny legs and four creepy arms that look like spindles. Their blood-red eyes sit low above their malformed concave snout which I assume is the cause of their heinous snorting. They live high in the trees, hollowing out their homes in the trunks. They sleep during the day, but at night, the little misbegotten creatures swing from branch to branch, gnash their teeth, which I guess is their fucked-up mating call, and pepper passersby with nuts, bark, twigs, bones of small birds, and whatever else they can find.
And they’re goddamned chickenshits. I’ve climbed halfway up a towering oak once, and they ran with their tails between their legs and their spindly arms flying in the wind like threads of string.
They’re called Orphills. And I hate them. They exist only in a small pocket in eastern Mizridahl. Apparently the world hated them just as much and drove them to extinction everywhere else.
Throughout the night, they chittered, bombarding Rovid and me with weapons from their bags of forest abominations. We slept maybe two hours, and most of that came when dawn chased the little fucks back into their homes.
I splashed water on my face in the morning. Or at least I thought it was water. Turned out to be wine. Turns out wine stings your eyes about as badly as placing sliced onions beneath your lids and claiming you’re the onion monster. For the record, I was a stupid child with an equally stupid imagination.
I took my ebon dagger in hand, fisted a clomp of beard and chopped it off. Then another fistful, and another slice. Once I’d shaved most of the hair from my face, I had Rovid stand square to me and provide me with instructions.
“Up,” he said. “Right. No, no, my right. There. Ah… no. You missed a patch there.”
The blood on my blade reminded me why I never shaved. Well, that and because I looked like a baby-faced boy, and that’s no good as an assassin. But I couldn’t well waltz into Erior looking like myself. Most wouldn’t recognize me without my beard and with a hat I’d bought from a merchant.
“You think this
will work?” Rovid asked. “If the powder doesn’t catch, or the guards stop you…”
I went to twirl the hairs beneath my chin, forgetting they weren’t there. “In the wise words of my father, come whatever may.” The man might have been a bloody asshole, but he had some good sayings.
After hammering some old linen sheets to the sides of the wagon — to serve as caparisons to conceal the small adjustments I’d made — we were off. The mules happily hauled the heavy wagon, containing my supplies, myself and Rovid, up the mother of a ramp that didn’t know when to stop. When it finally leveled off, it was a mostly straight jaunt across bouldered terrain till we got to the immense wall of Erior. Rovid jumped out before then, trailing beside the cart in the high shrubs.
I jammed the wooden shaft we’d built to the left, opening the dispenser. Rovid gave me a thumbs-up, which meant the powder was flowing well. I tossed him my ebon swords and my belt. Wouldn’t look much like a trader if I was packing ebon, would I?
I pushed the mules onward, while Rovid remained behind, in the shrubs.
The air stunk of salt and soiled meat, rich with a gritty, searing haze. That was my cue. Wouldn’t be long before the parapet of crimson-clothed guards would gaze down upon me. So I pulled on the reins, idling the mules. Then I shifted the wooden shaft, closed the dispenser, and hopped back into the bed of the wagon. I yanked out the dispensing bucket from its holding compartment that I’d carved out, and replaced it with a full one. The used bucket got chucked out into the wilds; it’d served its purpose.
Back in the seat, I took a deep breath and told my mules we were about to have some fun, or experience the most dreadful day the three of us would ever know. They didn’t seem to worry. Mules never worry.
I needed to be more like a mule.
Erior’s gate that looked carved out of a mountain was open. A man sixty feet up ordered me to halt, then hollered down below.
Two miserable guards trudged through the heat, sweat glossing up their arms. They each took a position to either side of the cart.
“Name,” the one said. “Business?”
Shit. I hadn’t thought of a good merchant name. “Er… Ervan,” I said in an accent. “Here to sell some stock. Got me some good apples back there. One for each of ya, if you don’t give me no trouble.”
The guard waved his hand. “Let’s see it.”
I waded into the bed of the wagon, snapped off the lids to each bucket, taking care to not trip on the false floor that concealed the one responsible for dispensing my lovely powder.
The men peered into each bucket topped with apples, then rocked back on their heels in a satisfied fashion.
“Go on,” the one said. “Be aware entry to the Gleam is prohibited until further notice.”
I tossed an apple to each, then got on my merry way, keeping a steady hand on the reins to ensure my hasty mules wouldn’t pass the guardsmen on their way back. I didn’t need a comment on how I was leaking black powder out my ass.
Once inside the city, I was less concerned about that. You couldn’t so much as take two steps without smudging your soles in dog shit, fish guts, drunkard-spewed puke, oils and spices from street chefs, and all other marvels of city life.
I parked the wagon near an empty hut. Spicy smoke hissed from an adjacent stall, suffusing my lungs with the scents of charred cedar, lemony mollusks and buttered cod.
“Cheaper than catchin’ it yourself and just as fresh!” the merchant claimed as he turned the spit over his mobile hearth.
A few fine gentleman gathered outside my wagon. They helped me unload the buckets. We pretended to exchange payment, in case anyone was watching, and then I thanked my buyers and climbed into the seat again.
“You boys will be happy,” I told the mules. “Lighter load to carry now.” I elbowed the shaft, opening the dispenser, then got the mules to moving again.
The wagon wobbled on uneven cobbles through the commons — also known as the first of three plateaus that made up the city —stopping and starting abruptly as mindless shoppers meandered through the streets. The kids were the worst. Little bastards would bolt from hidden corners, giggling and laughing as they almost ran their faces into the pure muscle of a mule. Take a mule shoulder to the nose and there ain’t much laughing to be had, I guarantee that.
But the children wouldn’t be running about madly for long. One of the sellswords I’d hired for this job took his position far away from where the wagon rolled along and dusted the cobbles in black powder. He had a large sack slung over his shoulder, which he dropped at his feet.
“Come, come, little ones!” he boomed. “Masks, all types of masks. Scary ones and cheerful ones and sad ones and piggies and monkeys and tigers! Come on, now! Nary a copper a piece it’ll cost you. Free to every young’un out there.”
The kids all ran to him, elbows and knees bouncing wildly, far away from the black powder.
From the center of the commons, where a fountain of some naked gal — probably a goddess — had run dry and been crusted over with salt, I could see the ocean behind the keep of Erior. The keep sat high above the commons, on the third plateau whose rear plunged one hundred feet to the ground, into a labyrinth of spikes and crags. Beyond, sand eventually smoothed out the terrain, meeting with the bluster of the Sapphire Sea.
The waves were always heavy and unfriendly here, but today they seemed particularly violent. Inflated, even — as if an armada patrolled beyond the haze, the sloshing of a thousand oars churning the ocean.
I directed the mules through a wide alleyway, then stopped and looked back. No one seemed to have followed me, so I continued on. The alley spilled out into a flatness of cobblestones. Straight ahead the cobbles sunk into the dirt like the vestige of a road swallowed back into the earth by neglect and time.
Keep on that path and you’d find yourself in the dross of Erior. There, guards rarely patrolled, and if they did, they’d come in groups of tens and twenties. There, the smell of decay festered, and the wood of buildings and shacks was clomped over with cottony mold. If I’d gone much deeper into those streets, my wagon would’ve likely been taken from me, along with my life.
But I made a few turns and stood at the edge of a retaining wall, peering out into the farmlands below. And there, amongst the now-drought-afflicted corn and potatoes and tomatoes and other fruits and veggies, lay this kingdom’s weakness.
From the outside, Erior appears an impregnable fortress. If you approach from the sea, you’re forced to follow the edge of the crags while archers and artillery decimate you from above. If you approach the front wall, good luck knocking down sixty feet of stone while battling the largest army this world has to offer. Trust that it doesn’t take long for Braddock Glannondil to mobilize his bannermen.
Inside these walls, however, things can burn, and fire spreads. And when it spreads, it consumes. The trick is to find the most flammable objects you can. And as drunken accidents have taught me, nothing burns quite as fierce as dry, parched farmland. It’s a sight to behold.
I kept a tight hold on the reins, easing the mules down the steep steps that led from the retaining wall. I didn’t need to flip the cart over here and ruin all my meticulous planning. I glanced back a couple times, making sure the powder was still flowing freely. It was.
Soon as the wagon wheels touched the crusty soil of the farmlands, I began making figure-eight patterns through the fields.
This angered many farmers, the wrath of whom spread across the farmlands in the form of pitchforks, spades, and hoes, tools that were either wielded as angry fists or chucked at my wagon as spears. Farmers were coming out of their houses now, hollering and hooting.
I managed to avoid physical confrontation long enough to have blackened much of their soil with powder — at which point, I jumped into the bed of the now-idle wagon, tore away the false floor and retrieved the bow I’d stowed away.
I leapt out of the cart and somersaulted into a crop of corn. Most of the vegetation was wilted, corn slip
ping out of their husks, which took on a sickly beige color. Remaining crouched and, for now, out of sight of my pitchfork-wielding pursuants, I fiddled with my bow. I used to be a marksman, back when I was a younger nomad, living the forest life. Probably lost most that skill, but in this case aim didn’t matter so much as distance.
As the fletching of the arrow I’d nocked hissed past my ear, I tilted my head up slowly, watching the feathery tail sail high into the air. Arcing now, making its descent back to earth. It vanished into the dross of Erior.
Rovid better be paying attention, I thought. The arrow was his signal to light a fire that would punish Braddock Glannondil forevermore.
I dropped the bow and rolled up my pant leg, retrieving the dagger I’d secured to my shin. I’d only brought along three arrows, so the bow was of little use now. If any farmers got in my way as I tried to haul ass out of there, an ebon dagger would work just fine.
Springing to my feet, I spotted a handful of lads with red faces. And they spotted me. I ran, toward the steps opposite those I had come down. More importantly, toward stone — a surface that doesn’t catch fire easily.
Luckily for my pursuants, they also ran toward the steps. Because approximately fifteen seconds later, their farmlands burned.
It approached not with the subtleness of an assassin, but with the swagger of a storm. It bellowed a deep, throaty roar that, for a moment, the commons drowned out with a symphony of voices that screeched and squealed in horror. But the roar, it breathed again, lurching into the dross, winnowing down the steps. Eating and engulfing every morsel of food I’d left it.
What the farmers who stayed behind did as their stalks of corn wavered like molten cat tails beneath an ash sky, I couldn’t say. I’d already made the decision that they were sacrificial victims — I had to press on. Move up the steps, meet with Rovid.
The Miscreant (An Assassin's Blade Book 2) Page 22