Dark Tide: Book Five of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  The port-city of Sagenhoft is home to some seventy thousand souls living in a clean city of broad cobble-stoned streets and attractive half-timbered buildings that usually rise two or three stories to make best use of the finite space within the city’s massive walls. There were actually three parts of Sagenhoft, commonly referred to as North Town, South Town, and the Dragon Isle. The city is split by the channel and mouth of the Bercer river where it enters the Ascendi Sea; the North and South Towns were built on the appropriate banks, while the Dragon Isle is a granite outcropping in the center of the bay created by Dwarven stone-magic hundreds of years before. The Isle, which is joined to each bank by massive Dwarven-built stone bridges is capped at its east end with a mighty fort, and at its west end by the Duchy’s naval base; between the two are located the Ducal Treasury and the Duke’s Palace. Besides being quite picturesque, the Isle is both a communication point (the bridges allowed the Duke’s Path, the city’s main boulevard, to run uninterrupted across the city), and a strong point.

  Dominating the south bank was an eatery called the Amphitheater, a large cleared area surrounded on three sides by ivy-covered stone walls; the Amphitheater was commonly used for banquets and other large affairs, as the area enclosed within the walls was a lovely garden-like park, with small trees, thick grass, and several fountains, the open north side offering an excellent view of the bay and the ships coming and going in the port.

  A small band was playing, and servants in livery stood at the buffet tables and bar as local dignitaries wandered about the grassy park. The scene was only slightly marred by the four ships moored at the stone piers at the north side; the piers were normally empty but the demands of war had forced the owners of the Amphitheater to allow their usage.

  All four vessels were of the Cog style, the most common vessel used in and around Alhenland, each clinker-built craft being about a hundred feet long, twenty-four feet wide at their center, with a single square sail and eight sweeps for harbor use. All four sat low in the water from their weight of cargo, the decks being nearly hidden by rows of canvas-covered hogsheads. Scores of similar vessels could be seen throughout the port.

  Their invitations checked by the Lifeguards who patrolled all entrances to the Amphitheater, the Badger contingent moved uncertainly into the Amphitheater and stood in a nervous mass, eyeing the local nobility who stared with no small surprise at the sudden appearance of a band of heavily armed mercenaries in their midst. The awkward moment was ended by the Duke himself who strode across the grass, the new Lord Marshal at his side. “Ah, Captain Durek, how good of you to come. You know my son, Heth the Younger, Lord Marshal of our army, of course. Please, make free of the food and drink.” He shook hands with the Captain and Axel, kissed Bridget’s hand, and waved over several military officers. “May I introduce Michel Letort, Fleet Captain of our navy...”

  Having broken the ice, the Duke resumed circulating as Lady Eithne, wearing riding breeches, a fancier but still enveloping tunic, and her sword, came over to greet Starr and Kroh, dragging a group of giggling young ‘ladies’ with her. Within minutes the Badger contingent broke up into smaller groups, and finally fragmented into couples and individuals as the shock of their appearance subsided and the other locals took their master’s cue and returned to the party.

  Durek was introduced by the Duke to each of the three Lord Protectors, the Duchy’s equivalent to Barons, each of the men overseeing a third of the rural areas of the Duchy. None of the three men had been with the Sagenhoftian forces in the field, and none left a good impression on the mercenary. He also met the Marquis De Melere, the Arturian ambassador to the Duchy, Lord Mayor Peter Hackl, and Lord Captain Hergo Pittman, the city’s elderly garrison commander.

  It was a pleasant summer’s day, the food and drinks were first-rate, and the setting was beautiful, but the reception could not be said to be a rousing success. It was clear to all present that more than one of the Lord Protectors had cherished the hope the Sorgen line would perish in the fighting to the east, and most of the lesser nobility were unhappy at being denied their party garb and at having to share the gathering with junior officers from the three cohorts and cavalry division that had served with the Heartland army, and mercenaries, of all things.

  Arthol Mane studied the reception from his vantage point on the roof of a four-story inn immediately to the south of the Amphitheater; he wasn’t pleased that so many guests were both military officers and armed, nor by the sudden appearance of a large group of armed guests who appeared to be soldiers, although they weren’t wearing the livery of Duchy troops. He had heard that the Lord Chancellor had hired a personal guard of mercenaries before the Duke’s court set off to join the Heartland Army, but it was extremely unlikely that mercenaries of any sort would be invited to such a gathering. “Find out who that last bunch was,” he instructed one of the two agents who shared the roof with him. As the man scrambled across the mossy clay tiles to the trap door the Markan-Hern turned his attention back to the reception.

  Despite the additional factors of armed guests and a far heavier cordon of Lifeguards than was usual for the Duke, who had been known for a rather casual attitude towards personal and court security in the pre-war days, things were staying fairly well within the bounds of his planning.

  “Send the signal,” he instructed the remaining agent. “It is time to begin.”

  “I’m going to get another load,” Arian announced, dropping a well-gnawed rib onto his plate. “Can I get you anything?”

  “A couple more rolls and some butter.” Like the rest of the Badgers, Janna and Arian had given up on social discourse, merely exchanging greetings with officers they knew from the units which had served in the east before raiding the buffet; after weeks of trail rations the repast was greatly appreciated. The two Serjeants had moved to a bench near the piers to enjoy their repast, somewhat removed from the rest of the gathering, which had converged near the southern end of the dining area.

  Janna settled back on the bench and nibbled at a carrot-stick, enjoying the breeze coming off the Sea and the sleepy afternoon noises. Lady Eithne and four of her companions were a giggling, muttering circle halfway between her bench and the piers, engrossed in some business of accusation and shrieking denial.

  The five’s antics brought to mind the girls in Arian’s home village last winter when she had accompanied him on a trip home. It had scandalized the entire village, his bringing a warrior-woman lover to meet his family, and it had taken quite some time for the locals to stop staring. It had been a pleasant visit all the same, and a look at the family and village life that she had left behind so many years ago had been a bittersweet stroll down a path of what-ifs and could-have-been. She had lugged babies, changed diapers, chased after toddlers, and came away refreshed and glad of the course of her life. It had been fun to play mother and village-wife for a few weeks, but when the visit had ended she strapped on Rosemist (having to let out the belt a few notches after a month of farm cooking) and left with no regrets. She was a swordswoman, a mercenary, and proud of it; she was happy with her life, and regretted but few of the choices she had made. She patted her sword belt’s buckle; it was a notch tighter than it had been before she left to visit with Arian; like most in the Company she put on weight in the winter months knowing that hard living and field cooking in the warm months would strip her back down.

  She was leaning back against the bench’s stone backrest, another carrot stick held between her teeth in the manner of Arian smoking a cheroot, watching a gull swoop and flare above her when the sudden change in the girl’s shrieks and the thunder of booted feet jerked her back to reality; sitting up, she saw the five girls frozen in horror, staring at the four merchant ships whose canvas cargo covers had suddenly been torn away to allow a horde of Hobrec reavers to pour across the decks and onto the piers, the ‘hogsheads’ now exposed as simple frameworks used to hide the attackers.

  The Hobrec, like the Felher, are a created race, spawned by lost Void-ar
ts during the two hundred year Age of Darkness that followed the Wars of the Gods. They had broken with other followers and lived for centuries on the Blasted Plains until driven from those lands by Hand-backed Orcs and Eyade, settling on the east coast of Sufland and various islands, becoming the most feared pirates the world had ever seen. Each stood around six feet tall, with thick, clumpy dark hair, scaly orange-red skin, and opposing thumbs on a three-fingered hand. Their savage fury glittered in their widely-spaced, deeply sunken eyes; their slit-noses, lipless mouths, and neck gill-slits that served them as hearing organs added to the horrific appearance.

  They were uniform in appearance, differing only in scars and occasionally in the tint of their hair, which was normally a muddy brown, the sameness extending to their equipment: each wore leather sandals, loose baggy cotton trousers emblazoned with the color-pattern of their migdaf, or clan-fleet, cord-armor tunics (made of thousands of strands of cord tightly bound together) dyed in the colors of their magnef, or ship-home, reinforced by plates of treated whale-bone; their helms were of sea-snake leather or walrus hide and plated with whalebone. Each bore a small buckler of wood and a varka, a slightly curved single-edged cleaver-sword whose long, pommel-less, and very lightly down-curved hilt was well-suited to their alien hands. Besides their sword, each bore either a number of chan (a bola of three sand-filled pouches connected by leather straps), fighting nets, or mungal, throwing weapons shaped like a four-pointed star whose six-inch arms are sharpened steel, and whose cross-piece was wrapped in wire to afford a safe grip when throwing.

  Thirty-five sprang from each of the four cogs even as the crews cast off and manned their sweeps, the reavers charging silently, wasting no breath on war cries, battle songs, taunts, jeers, or challenges; a grim people who scorned pity, mercy, or kindness, the Hobrec were difficult to understand, admire, or respect. There were a dozen Lifeguards on the stone walkway that edged the port area, twelve veterans who were better armed and armored but desperately outnumbered; they engaged the attackers without hesitation, but most of the Hobrec simply raced past, having larger game within view.

  The ex-Silver Eagle bounded to her feet, her plate flying off to shatter unnoticed as the reavers raced across the stone walkway and entered the grassy Amphitheater, a throwing axe flashing from her fingers to glance off an enemy buckler. Her second axe shattered a whalebone helm and stunned the wearer; as she drew the first of the pair of axes from her right hip Janna became aware that Lady Eithne and her friends were standing frozen and slack-jawed, staring at the charging humanoids. “Eithne! Run!” the Badger shouted, sending her axe flashing end-over-end into the enemy ranks, wounding a fodra, or ordinary Hobrec crew member, in the thigh.

  The girls broke and raced away like a covey of quail, but the Hobrec were too close; a spinning chan wrapped itself around one girl’s legs, sending her crashing to the ground as a mungal embedded one of its dagger-points into another’s back. Janna walked forward as she drew and cast her last axe, catching a Thul (Hobrec junior petty officer) square between the eyes. Eithne raced desperately back towards the ex-Silver Eagle, who was still striding forward one calm pace at a time as Rosemist slid from its scabbard. A third girl went down with a chan striking her neck, the weighted ends spinning madly about the girl’s head as their motion wrapped the binding-cords tight enough to crush her windpipe and close the great blood vessels.

  One reaver paused to jerk the girl who had been brought down by a chan around her legs upright using a fistful of hair as a hold. With a smooth, efficient gesture the Hobrec opened her throat with a mungal’s edge and heaved the thrashing corpse aside.

  A dozen feet short of Janna Lady Eithne tripped and landed hard, tumbling across the ground as a half a score of Hobrec raced up in pursuit. Janna sighed and swept Rosemist in a figure eight pattern to loosen her shoulders; things were not looking too well. Although she was still a few feet from Eithne, who was on all fours crawling dazedly, the reavers ignored the girl and flung themselves at the Badger.

  Suddenly darting forward as a chan flashed through the place her legs had been a moment before, and a mungal rattled off her breastplate leaving a bright silver line in its wake, Janna closed with the lead Hobrec, their bucklers up and ready to parry. Their shields did them no good, however, as Rosemist’s blade faded to a smoky shadow; Janna struck twice and darted forward as the two reavers collapsed, clutching sundered chests that bled through their undamaged armor tunics. Two more were cut down before the Hobrec understood that they faced enchantment, and a Thula (Hobrec lesser petty officer) found his heart transfixed by a blade that ignored buckler, armor, and under-tunic even as realization dawned.

  Rosemist flashed through a parrying blade and disemboweled a fodra who ducked too slowly before darkening into black steel once more. Using the surprise and shock of her enchanted assault, Janna side-stepped and backed away as reavers charged past her on both sides, heading deeper into the Amphitheater. Five remained facing her, however, obviously intent upon killing Lady Eithne, who had crawled beneath the bench Janna had been sitting upon just moments before. The ex-Silver Eagle hefted her sword, held at the middle-ready position in front of her and eyed her opponents, one Thulan (senior Hobrec petty officer), one Thul, and three fodra; the leaders had mungals in hand, while the three ordinary reavers had their swords ready.

  Arian would have had something witty to say, but her mouth was too dry and her heart was pounding too fast to bother; the scarred Badger lifted each finger off the leather of her sword’s grip in turn, a simple trick that relaxed her hands and made her grip more sure. The next minute or so, she was sure, would be very interesting.

  The only Badger to have breached the social barriers, Henri was talking earnestly with a handsome noblewoman in her early thirties who had recently buried a much older husband when the clatter of steel and the screams of Lady Eithne’s companions jerked his attention to the piers; taking in the scene at a second, the Arturian jerked his staff out at an arm’s length and barked an incantation; a ball of fire ten feet across erupted on the stern of the east-most cog as it pulled away from the pier. Blazing crewmen leapt from the burning sweeps and dove overboard. The widow with the bedroom eyes was shrieking beside him, something the Badger wizard could easily ignore as he directed a second fire-ball into the rear ranks of the attacking reavers, but when she suddenly lunged into him, clawing madly at his tunic-front it interrupted a third incantation in mid-sentence, a dangerous thing.

  He violently shoved her away before he saw the bloody head of a crossbow bolt standing out from her midriff and realized that she had taken a quarrel meant for himself. Spinning, he saw that several stone blocks had been pulled out of the south wall at shoulder height and that crossbowmen were using the holes as firing slits. A gesture sent a beam of light to slice open a skull at the nearest hole as panic swept the crowd. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a Sagenhoftian infantry officer kneeling by the prone Lord Marshal, Heth the Younger, pressing linen napkins around the bases of the two bolts which jutted from the young man’s chest, but it was not something that concerned the wizard at the moment. Gesturing, he filled two of the slits with inky shadow, eliminating their use as firing ports before ducking behind a table two cavalry officers had turned on end to act as a barrier to missile fire.

  Maxmillian had been engrossed in an infantry officer’s description of the fighting on Pecheux’s Hill at the Battle of Mancin; swiftly growing bored, Elonia had wandered off in search of a good tot of brandy and ended up sipping aquavit and picking dead leaves off the ivy at the back wall, ready to leave but aware that she had a good twenty minutes to go before Durek would allow any departures. Kroh was sitting with his back to the wall twenty paces down from where she stood, a platter loaded with ribs and chicken resting in his lap and a tankard of ale close to hand; the Dwarf was absorbed in his eating, and ignored the Seeress after a single nod.

  The screams and weapons clatter from the pier caught her attention, but she was more surprised when Kroh
leapt up, spilling his mug and scattering his food, and scrambled up the ivy-trellis nailed to the stonework. The Waybrother seized the cocking-stirrup of a crossbow being aimed through a hole in the wall and jerked back, the muscles in his thick arm straining; releasing the weapon, Kroh reached in and grabbed a fistful of the firer’s hair, possible because the woman’s grip on her weapon had pulled her up against the slit, and proceeded to slam her head against the stonework.

  Seeing other slits open, Elonia threw aside her glass and leapt onto the wall, climbing the trellis and praying that the ladder-like lattice of thin, old wood would hold her weight. Cross-pieces broke and vertical supports pulled away from the wall but the ivy was surprisingly strong, and held long enough for her to scramble to the wall’s narrow top.

  Heaving herself up to lie along the top stones of the wall, an inch of powdery bird dung crumbling beneath her body, Elonia drew and cast a net at one of the attackers on the other side of the wall, the net being deflected by the bolt he fired at the Seeress, the weight of her net throwing the quarrel off as well. Dropping his empty weapon the man raced up the alley between the Amphitheater and the inn next door, followed closely by his loader, who was still clutching a crossbow. She hurled a knife at the next figure to race by, and was gratified to see him fall, the bare steel jutting from his shoulder, a minor wound but for the poison.

  Eyeing the shadowy ally that was a twenty-foot drop below her, she decided against jumping down by herself, and contented herself with throwing knives at another sniper team which raced past her, missing both times.