The Archon's Assassin

by D. P. Prior

  “Keep Ludo safe,” she heard the Archon whisper inside her mind. “And look to your reward.”

  She thrashed about on the ground, trying to find him, but all her remaining senses told her he was gone. She started to whimper, a cry that welled into a scream.

  Hands grabbed her, lifted her roughly. She blinked furiously, tried to see, but all remained white.

  She was bustled along at a brisk pace, feet dragging furrows in the snow. She had no sense of direction, where they were taking her, who they even were. Ice clutched at her stomach, wound its frosty fingers around her ribs.

  “Ain help me,” she whispered over and over again as the horror started to sink in.

  She was blind.

  VICTIMS OF THE LICHE LORD

  Verusia, Earth

  Curiosity might have killed the shogging cat, but Shadrak couldn’t help it: he needed to see; needed to know he was right; needed to know what made this Prior tick. Because Ludo was almost certainly right: how many lords of the castle could there be in Wolfmalen? It had to be Blightey, and the spikes skirting the curtain walls were his handiwork.

  Galen hadn’t stopped muttering to himself since they left the settlement. He took the lead up the incline that rose in slopes and steps to the castle.

  Albert seemed more concerned about the cold, and the ruinous effect trudging calf-deep in snow was having on his Gallic trousers.

  Ekyls scampered beside him, refusing the hardship, refusing the bluish tint that had seeped into his skin.

  Ludo’s long legs were made for the deep snow, but his spectacles kept frosting over. He repeatedly took them off to wipe the lenses on his cassock.

  Nameless trailed the group, trudging sluggishly, axe slung carelessly over one shoulder, like he’d seen this sort of thing a thousand times and really couldn’t be bothered.

  Shadrak had to work at it to keep ahead of him. He was by far the shortest, and the snow came up to his thighs. He spotted a depression to the left of the footprints the others left for him to follow in. Didn’t take much to figure the snow might be thinner there. He fought his way toward it, lifting one foot high, setting it down again as far in front as he could manage; repeating with the other.

  “Laddie?” Nameless called from behind. “What are you doing?”

  “Better ground,” Shadrak growled through gritted teeth.

  He lunged for the depression… and plunged into snow up to his waist. He let out a torrent of curses that had Galen turn round and scowl. Ludo backed up to offer him a hand. The cold was too damned leaching to climb out by himself, so Shadrak felt no shame in taking it.

  Thankfully, the higher they climbed, the more the snow thinned out. Cold damp clung to his britches, but it was getting easier to walk.

  Scudding clouds marbled the white ground with shadows. Up ahead, the sun lent a sickly corona to the castle’s highest tower.

  A skirl of the breeze brought him the whiff of putrescence: pungent, rank, tainted with the stink of blood and shite. It only got worse as they drew closer. A couple of hundred yards from the spikes, and he had all the confirmation he needed. They were bodies all right. Bodies impaled arse to mouth on wooden poles whittled to vicious points.

  “By all that’s holy!” Galen bent double, heaving and puking. Time he was done, his breakfast was a spatter of yellow and brown all over his crimson jacket. Tears bled from his eyes, and oysters of snot clung to his mustache.

  Leaving the dragoon to clean himself up, Shadrak pressed on ahead, vaguely aware the others were following at a reluctant pace.

  Up close, the smell was even worse: ordure and rotting flesh; ammonia wafting from the pools of piss and gore slickening the bases of the spikes.

  “Forest of the dead,” Ekyls said. He licked his cracked and cyanosed lips, and glared defiantly at the carcasses, as if any sign of weakness he showed would bring them down from their stakes to tear him limb from limb.

  “Think that’s going to scare me, shogger?” Nameless muttered, as he stared up at the castle. “I still aim to have your armor, and if you get in my way…” He slammed his axe into the ground at the base of a spike.

  “He’s not trying to scare you,” Albert said, studying the bodies with detached fascination. “This is for the townsfolk, I’d say. Keeps the sheep penned in.”

  Shadrak shared the fascination. He only wished he shared the detachment. What if it was him hanging there? Or someone he cared for? No one came to mind, save Kadee, but she was mercifully already dead.

  He moved from one grisly corpse to the next, craned his head to look up at the blood-soaked tips of the stakes jutting from gaping mouths. He drank in every detail, as if studying the horror, subjecting it to the same scrupulosity he applied to his work, could ward him from having to experience it himself. Chins encrusted with gore, jaws forced open past the point of no return, eyes rolled up white, facing skyward like a vain plea to the deaf, dumb, and mute lord of Araboth, or whatever the poor scuts had believed in.

  Ludo was fumbling through his Liber with shaky fingers. He tried to read something, but his eyes kept leaving the page, drawn relentlessly to the bodies on the stakes.

  Albert bent down to examine the insertion point on one of them. He nodded, as if acknowledging fine craftsmanship. “Astonishing.” He looked around to see if he had everyone’s attention. He didn’t. They were all held by some dark spell, even Galen, who’d obviously been rubbing snow into his mustache and jacket in an attempt to clean them. “Whoever did this found a way from the rectum to the mouth without asphyxiating the victim.”

  “Enough, Albert,” Shadrak said. He didn’t want to think about it any more than he had to.

  “But imagine,” Albert went on. “Who could do such a thing?”

  “Your mother?” Nameless grumbled.

  “Besides her,” Albert said. If he was offended, he didn’t show it. If anything, he seemed amused by the idea. “I mean, the poor sods probably hung there for hours, maybe even days, like fishes on hooks. Every limb paralyzed, windpipe almost totally occluded. What do you suppose the cause of death was?” He looked to Shadrak. “Loss of blood? Perforated bowel?”

  The wind turned again, and carried with it voices from back the way they’d come.

  A gaggle of locals had gathered at the foot of the incline. Heads were shaken, and then someone pointed up at the castle.

  Shadrak spun round to look. Scores of black shapes were pouring out of the gatehouse.

  “Sweet Nous,” Galen said. “What are they?”

  Ludo closed his book and stared. His face had the same gray cast as the sky. “At Trajinot, the Liche Lord’s legions were said to be undead.”

  Shadrak pulled his goggles on. Instantly, the figures turned to blotches of vivid red. “These scuts are living, right enough.” As his eyes adjusted to the goggles, the blurs took on greater focus. “They’re men, dressed in black, head to toe; and those things they’re carrying are staffs—some kind of fighting sticks.”

  “Crowd control?” Galen asked. “Same as they use in Aeterna on holy days of obligation?”

  Shadrak lifted the goggles. “Let’s go.” He started down the bank toward the crowd and the town beyond.

  “And leave empty-handed?” Nameless said.

  “We’re scouting, remember?” Shadrak said. “Gathering information, so we can plan. Why is it so hard for people to get that?”

  Nameless yanked his axe free and swung it at the base of a spike. He sheered right through, and both pole and corpse toppled toward him. “Oops,” he said, throwing out a gauntleted hand to hold it up. With an effortless shove, he sent it back the other way, where it crashed into another spike, which fell into another, until up to a dozen were leaning at precarious angles or half-buried in the snow.

  “Stay, if you like,” Shadrak said. “But I’m off.” In his line of work, you didn’t take chances. He’d hoped to learn something useful, something that might teach them about who and what they were facing; give them some clue as to how the
y were going to steal the Liche Lord’s armor without having spikes shoved up their arses. Last thing they needed was a pitched bloody battle with an enemy they knew nothing about.

  Nameless shouldered his axe and strode through the impaled dead toward the horde swarming down from the castle. He’d need an army at his back to stand a chance, but he either hadn’t thought about that, or he didn’t care.

  Ludo followed Shadrak as he started down the bank. Albert had a head start on them, Ekyls hot on his heels. Galen drew his saber and went after Nameless.

  “Galen!” Ludo cried in a voice that carried like an actor’s. “We need to leave.”

  “Leave, I’ll be damned!” Galen called back. “I’m a dragoon first, Eminence, your servant next. Never leave a man behind, we always say.”

  Going down was far quicker than going up. Shadrak stumbled, slid, and tumbled through the snow drifts, gathering speed near the bottom and hitting the flat at a run.

  The crowd parted as Albert and Ekyls headed straight for them. Albert was no fool; he knew the difference between wolves and sheep, same as Shadrak did. Scuts like this were timid as shog without a sheepdog.

  Shadrak was next through, with Ludo close behind.

  A flurry of movement in the town made him falter, then stop. More figures in black were streaming out of the domed basilica and advancing along the main concourse. They looked identical: every inch of their bodies was covered in black, their heads wound in strips of cloth with only the narrowest slit to see out of. Shadrak had known men like this all his life: thugs or assassins. Henchmen. Goons. Thing that made him wonder was their weapons: the same long sticks the others wielded. There were any number of better things to kill with. Maybe the aim was to capture. Maybe they were seeking new victims for the spikes.

  “Oh, cripes,” Albert said. “Tits up one way, fanny fart the—”

  Shadrak cut him off with a pistol blast. He got one of the goons smack bang in the middle of his face. Dropped him like a big black turd in the snow. The rest of them balked for a moment, then started to fan out.

  “Back to the slope,” Shadrak yelled, drawing the second pistol and letting rip, both guns bucking in his grasp. Two more turds, then two more. He risked quick glances behind, to make sure the others had got the start they needed.

  The townsfolk ran for their homes, covering their ears against the thunder-cracks.

  Albert and Ekyls veered off the beaten track, weaving away to the right. They skirted the hole Shadrak had fallen into and disappeared behind a snowdrift.

  Ludo made a beeline for Galen standing shoulder to shoulder with Nameless among the impaled dead.

  Shadrak blasted relentlessly till he ran out of bullets. He holstered both guns, then reached behind for his old thundershot. A black-garb grew cocky and came at him with a stick, but all he got for his troubles was an eruption of brains out the back of his head.

  And then Shadrak was off up the hill, treading in the furrows they’d made coming down mostly on their arses. Behind him, an angry cry went up. He glanced back; confirmed the goons were coming, and coming fast: a swelling tide of blackness spewing out onto the white-coated ground.

  Nameless was still facing the castle when Shadrak made it back in among the stakes. The dwarf was leaning on his axe and whistling tunelessly from within the scarolite helm. Galen stood ramrod stiff beside him, saber hanging loose in is grasp. Both a study in calm. Both relaxed and waiting. In Nameless’s case, it was like he’d been born for such things; but with Galen it seemed more a sense of duty; the learned stoicism of a professional soldier.

  The roars behind were drowned out by those in front, as the horde from the castle surged down the slope like an avalanche.

  “Hold positions,” Galen barked, as if he had an army to command.

  Shadrak thrust the thundershot in the back of his belt; drew out two cartridges from a pouch and slammed them into the butts of the pistols.

  “Hold…” Galen said, a waver of tension in his voice. “Hol—”

  Nameless tore into the front ranks, crushing his axe through ribs and cleaving a man in two at the waist. The ferocity of his blows stunned the attackers at first. They’d clearly never seen anything like the strength the giant’s gauntlets gave him.

  But quickly, they recovered and came at him en masse. Wood clattered on scarolite, sticks thwacked into chainmail.

  A black-garb rolled past Nameless. Galen cut him down. More fanned around the sides, but Nameless powered on as if it didn’t matter.

  “Your flanks, man!” Galen yelled, butchering one attacker through the clavicle and punching another in the head. Both went down. “Give a little. Keep them before you!”

  A goon flung himself on Nameless’s back, arm locked about where the helm was welded to the skin of the dwarf’s neck. Another tackled him round the middle. Nameless staggered under a barrage of stick blows, and he almost fell as one took him on the back of his knee.

  Shadrak shot two out from behind the dwarf, but didn’t want to risk aiming at those still trying to wrestle Nameless to the ground. One got an axe haft in the head, and he dropped like a sack of shit. Then Nameless reached behind his shoulder, grabbed the other by the scruff and hurled him like a javelin—a flailing, floppy rag doll of a javelin that screeched like a girl. The goon cannoned into his comrades, and cut a swath through them at least ten ranks deep.

  Nameless started to swat men aside with sweeps of one arm, even as his axe resumed its relentless rise and fall. Blood stained the snow, spattered the great helm. It seemed to Shadrak the dwarf was gone, and in his place a murderous demon had come to destroy, to dismember, to butcher.

  A goon got past Galen’s defense of Nameless’s back. Shadrak shot him. Another scut was going for a wide flank. Shot him, too.

  Albert popped up from a snow pile to the right and flung a spray of darts, each finding its mark. The victims tore them free with disdain but promptly went limp and dropped.

  Ekyls launched himself from the ground beside the poisoner, snow cascading from his tattooed frame. It showered from his hair as he charged, howling like a wolf. Black-garbs turned away from Nameless to meet him. Ekyls ignored the smack of a stick and buried his hatchet in the man’s skull. Another caught him on the back of the head, but Shadrak gunned the shogger down.

  “Look out behind!” Ludo cried in his actor’s voice.

  Shit! Shadrak had forgotten the ones from the town.

  He holstered one pistol, reached into a pouch for a glass sphere. When the mob was within twenty paces, he lobbed the sphere into the front ranks. Some twat swiped it out of midair with a stick. Big mistake. There was a boom, a blinding flash. Bodies were hurled skyward, and those behind flung themselves face down in the snow.

  Something struck Shadrak on the head. He tried to turn, but he was hit hard on the cheek and sent reeling to the ground. A fist caught him in the face before he could fire. His vision swam. He tried to roll away, but someone fell on top of him. He threw out an elbow, heard something crack. The man rolled off, but before Shadrak could stand, another dived. Shadrak got his foot up in time, booted the goon overhead. Two more came, sticks swinging down—

  Something dark got in the way.

  —Ludo.

  The priest didn’t fight. Nor did he attempt to block the blows raining down on him. But he’d created an opening, and Shadrak sat up blasting. One man flew back in a spray of gore. The other grabbed Ludo round the neck and used him as a shield.

  “Shog,” Shadrak growled.

  He sprang to his feet and ran at the priest, seamlessly holstering the pistol and palming a dagger. At the last second, he sprang, vaulted over Ludo, and flipped in midair. Before the goon could react, Shadrak landed softly behind him and plunged the blade through his kidney.

  In the thick of it, Nameless was obviously being too successful. More broke away from him and Galen and rushed at Ludo and Shadrak.

  Shadrak skimmed a couple of razor stars into them. One took a shogger in the eye, but t
he other thudded harmlessly into the top of a stick.

  He drew the second pistol and backed away firing at two targets at a time, keeping Ludo behind him.

  Galen’s balding head showed above the fray for a moment. “Eminence! Eminence, I’m coming!”

  He dropped down beneath the throng, but then he roared, and black-garbs fell back into each other.

  Galen emerged from the pack like a raging bull. Nameless had his back now, hacking left and right, armor slick with blood, the black helm a devil’s head, bobbing and weaving, swiveling to keep the next victim in sight.

  Shadrak fumbled with two more cartridges, got one half in a pistol butt, when a black-garb dived at him. He swayed out of the way and punched the scut in the ribs. Before the goon recovered, Shadrak hammered the pistol butt into his head, and the cartridge clicked into place. He spun the gun on his finger and fired.

  One man went down. The second swore and clapped a hand to his thigh. A third shot put a hole in his head.

  Galen dragged Ludo away from a stick blow and almost decapitated the assailant in response.

  The goons from the town found their balls once more and charged from the rear.

  Shadrak let off a flurry of shots, till one pistol clicked empty, then the other. He holstered them, reached for the rifle on his back, but he’d left it too late: they were too close.

  Galen blocked a stick with his saber, and his back-slash was rewarded with the slop of steaming entrails hitting the snow. Another leapt at him, but Shadrak flicked his hand out, and a razor star sliced into the man’s bindings near the neck. The goon staggered back, but Shadrak flung another, spitting an eye, and that did for him.

  Ludo grunted as a stick caught him on the temple. Shadrak kicked the legs from under the attacker, but another was there instantly. He thrust with his palm, felt the man’s nose snap; drew his punch daggers, ducked under a stick, and punctured the living shog out of a shogger’s lungs.

  A dozen more pressed toward him.

  Galen stepped in front, blocked one, gutted another.