by Watson Davis
With the passing of time, seconds, minutes, hours, I entered the meditative state of a hunter taught to me by my mother, reinforced by Eddard, my sense of self fading away, waiting until I heard something outside, a new breath emerged, fast, someone light, young, stomping through the snow like a couple of drunken ice-wyrms performing their mating dance. I waved my right hand, gesturing toward the wall, scratching against the wall with my left hand, looking back into the room.
Arcled rose from his box, holding his hand out toward us palm down. Agholor’s hand snaked out, grasping his bow, bringing it close to him.
Something nudged my shoulder. I glanced back. Highsmith moved his fingers, gesturing for me to follow him, to move away from the window.
I wanted to stay there, to learn more about this new person as I had learned about the poor woman waiting outside the window, but I trailed the orc. The two humans moved into my place.
Agholor bent his bow, stringing it, withdrawing an arrow from his quiver.
Dagger in hand, the blade blackened with ash, the hilt plain and worn, Highsmith skulked to the door, easing the door open, slipping his bulk through the gap, creeping out into the snow, glancing back to make sure I followed, his breath billowing in a fog around him.
I drew my sword, placing my feet in the orc’s footprints, regulating my breath to minimize the mist, sipping the air, sliding up beside the orc. I pointed to the small footprints in the snow, my hand and my gaze tracing them to where a boy crouched behind a snow covered half-wall, peeking through a gap where a gate had once been, a gate long gone.
“Psst.” The boy craned forward, looking away from the orc and me, waving his hand toward someone around in the front of the palace, the woman I’d been spying on. He whispered, “I’m over here.”
I froze.
The orc lunged forward, seizing Rucker’s head with one monstrous hand, covering Rucker’s mouth, muffling his cries, wrapping his arm around Rucker’s waist, lifting him out of the snow. Rucker kicked his feet, squirming, screaming for help.
I watched, unable to move.
The orc stomped past me, saying, “Smooth the snow, and get rid of the tracks.”
I nodded, realizing now who the woman out front was, who the bait was, who the trap was for, a sick feeling growing in my gut. I cast the spell, making the snow pristine, untouched, removing the traces of the struggle, the signs of the pursuit, changing Rucker’s prints to make them appear to have gone another direction.
# # #
The blue-skinned coulven girl stood quivering in a square by an old palace, her breath made manifest by the mist, her movements less graceful with each heartbeat, the shivers taking over, a collar around her thin neck.
“She is frozen almost to death.” Silverhewer’s voice rumbled, a hint of pleasure in the tone of her words. The snow-covered boulder beside Fi Cheen shifted for the first time in hours, dislodging hunks of snow that slid to the ground. A part of the boulder detached from the rest, rising up to reveal her hideous face, smiling. “Is that part of your plan, too? Lure him out with a coulven icicle?”
“Be silent, General,” Fi Cheen snapped, arms folded over his chest, lips puckered as though tasting something bitter. “You will warn him away.”
“You do not order me, human.” The smile on Silverhewer’s face never wavered, the glint in her eye only growing colder, deadlier, more dangerous. “If he has not come by now, he is not coming.”
“He will come, if he is not here already.” Fi Cheen floated away from Silverhewer’s side, the soles of his boots brushing against the snow, levitating in the air, the long sleeves of his coat fluttering in the breeze. The black sticks of trees dead for the winter reached up like the legs of dead black spiders from the snow, tilting right and left in the stiff wind, bits of snow lifting from the drifts, swirling. The deserted buildings of a once thriving city surrendered by its people, broken by the power of the empress, destroyed by her armies, huddled as silent witnesses judging the folly of resistance.
Beyond Silverhewer, a squad of orcs and humans hunkered behind the skeletal remains of a wall. Lyu-ra hovered in the midst of the soldiers, eyes closed, legs crossed, lips moving in a silent chant casting spells to warm them, feeding power to Fi Cheen’s spell to conceal them, the strain of the casting visible in her furrowed brow, and the glittering of sweat on her forehead.
“I know him.” Fi Cheen pulled his gaze from Lyu-ra, and back to the coulven girl. “I understand him. He saved her, traveled with her, and bonded with her. He will be drawn to her like a snow leopard to the mewling of an injured fox.”
“Pfft. He is Onei, an animal of the wastes. Do not predict his actions as you would those of a regular human person,” Silverhewer said. “It’s time to give up this foolishness and return to my fortress. I’m hungry, and so, so bored.”
Fi Cheen spat. “Perhaps if your soldiers had done a better job of capturing the boy, Caldane would not have been warned off.”
“Look at the snow by that gate.” Silverhewer stood, shrugging the snow from her back and shoulders, shaking herself, flinging nuggets of ice through the air that spattered against Fi Cheen. She lifted her right arm, gesturing toward the place where the boy had been taken. “Nary a trace of magic, nary a trace of the boy’s passage, nary a trace of his abduction: you cannot fault my soldiers for their skill at erasing tracks. That’s a masterful job. I may give that soldier a medal. Or extra rations. Or both.”
“Yes.” Fi Cheen had to agree, bowing his head. “The soldier who erased the boy’s trail did a satisfactory job, but I would expect nothing less of soldiers who hunt Onei. The boy shouldn’t have escaped the brewery in the first place.”
“I had it on excellent advice, your advice, that a coulven girl and a young Onei man would accompany the boy and she would not put up a fight.” Silverhewer smiled, arching her eyebrow toward Fi Cheen. “Not a boy accompanied by a coulven girl disgused as an Onei, a coulven who proved to be rather more resourceful and deadly than you’d led me to believe.”
Fi Cheen ground his teeth, trying to think of something to say, a way to defend his honor and his judgment. “How was I to know she could disguise herself so? Or that she would separate from Caldane?”
Silverhewer asked, to no one in particular. “I wonder if the teams around the fortress have had better luck.”
“A moment.” Fi Cheen reached out, calling to the sheriff psychically, requesting an update. Fi Cheen shook his head. “He hasn’t been spotted there, either.”
“I’ve had enough of this dragonshit.” Silverhewer charged forward, throwing her fists out before her, knocking down the wall separating them and their band of soldiers from the square, pulling it to pieces with her hands, wooden beams splintering, rocks and mortar sliding apart, crashing to the ground.
Angered, Fi Cheen’s mind pulled at the threads of the spell he’d woven to help camouflage the soldiers, to dampen their sounds, obscure them from vision, yanking the spell out of Lyu-ra’s control, unraveling it in a thought, destroying the traces. Lyu-ra gasped, her soul reaching out to retrieve the threads, threads now gone, her back straightening, her eyes opening, her levitation faltering. She looked to Fi Cheen.
He ignored her, glaring at Silverhewer’s back.
The coulven girl pulled back, eyes wide, looking to her right and left as soldiers materialized in the trees, on tops of the buildings.
“Round ‘em up.” Silverhewer called, moving her hand in a circle above her head, her voice reverberating, icicles snapping off and falling from the corners of the buildings’ eaves. “Fall in, and form up in squads.”
Soldiers descended on the square, stomping through the snow from the shelter of other ruins, from the trees, from behind walls. They lined up, standing at attention, eyes pointing up into the sky over Fi Cheen’s head.
Lyu-ra, her breathing ragged, stood at Fi Cheen’s right elbow, head high, nostrils flaring with each breath.
The shuttered windows opened to either side of the coulven girl
on the wall against which she was secured. A couple of orcs and a few human men in shabby cloaks slid through the windows, the Rucker boy in their grasp, and they grabbed the girl by her arms, one of their number throwing a spell to free her from that spot, the spot she’d been placed as bait.
Silverhewer stomped forward, the ground trembling beneath her feet, to a position near the coulven girl. “Lieutenant Arcled?”
The larger orc spun toward Silverhewer, pressing his fist to his chest, inclining his head with a familiarity bordering on insubordination. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Good job on capturing the boy.” Silverhewer glanced back in Fi Cheen’s direction, smirking. “Even our esteemed guest commented on the quality of spellcrafting. Who do we have to thank for that?”
The orc rose, his hand indicating one of the human soldiers, a soldier breathing deep, sucking in the cold air, a sparkling glaze of sweat on his brow, a hint of infernal spells surrounding him in the shimmer of the air. Fi Cheen’s eyes narrowing, his head tilting, he studied the human who stepped forward, bowing his head, uncomfortable at the attention, something familiar about his face, about the odd magics surrounding him.
“I requisitioned him from the new batch,” Arcled said. “Name of Silmon, but we call him Sparks.”
“Fine spellwork for a newbie.” Silverhewer leaned forward toward him. “You earned extra rations for your whole squad.”
The other soldiers around this Silmon stood a little straighter, their eyes a little brighter, holding back their smiles by compressing their lips.
“We lost our prey, but we still have our bait.” Silverhewer straightened up to her full height, the height of two grown men, putting her fists on her hips, gazing out and around, a frown on her face. “Take them back to the Tower of Tears double-time. If you lose them, I will have you for breakfast.”
# # #
Two squads followed Arcled, his squad and another led by a human sergeant, all on guard against a surprise attack by a ferocious Onei shaman, an escaped slave. The soldiers guarding the gate to Windhaven Castle nodded to us, scanning over our number, waving us through. I strutted right in with the others, over the causeway, the river below churning chunks of ice, some discolored by some process I could not imagine, the ice banging against the thick stone footers. We marched through the inner gate, an inner yard surrounded by shops like a city square, through an alley to a tower rising up from the outer wall on the northwestern side of the fortress.
Arcled halted us at the door to a tall, thick-walled tower snuggled away at the back of the castle, halted us on the steps before the great wooden door braced with black iron at the tower’s base. “Thanks for the support, Darril. You and your men can go on back and get some grub.”
“Thanks to you, lieut.” The human sergeant bowed, a rough but respectful bending from his waist, and waved his arm to his men. “Come on, ya wankers. You heard what the lieut said. Back to the barracks.”
Darril and his men separated from Arcled’s squad without another word, separating around Aissal and Rucker, who huddled side by side with their heads bowed. Darril and his soldiers jogged away down a narrow path between the stone buildings looming to either side, their stone walls seeming to lean in and strangle the air.
“Sparks.” Arcled pointed at me. “You can go with them, and rejoin the bunch of Shrian ninnies you came with, if you like, or you can stick around with some real badasses for a little bit longer and pray to whatever gods you pray to that some of our badassery wears off on you.”
I shrugged, the buzz of a headache growing in my temples, my mouth dry, chest tight. I said, “Or are you praying to whatever gods you pray to that some of my badassery will wear off on you?”
Agholor snorted.
Arcled nodded, a slow smile spreading on his face. “Who’d you come in with?”
I blinked, my head buzzing, hard to think, wanting to drop my spells and go to bed. “Sir?”
“Who’s your commander? Surto or Lollingwirth?”
“Surto, sir.” I hoped that made sense, having never heard of either person before in my life, my heart speeding up at the lie.
“Right.” Arcled harrumped, pursing his lips. I glanced around at the other guys in the squad, searching for some hint as to whether I’d said something stupid, if I’d blown my disguise.
Arcled hunched up his massive shoulders, inserted a key from a loop of keys on his belt, and opened the door. He stomped into the darkness inside and we followed.
I placed my hand on Aissal’s elbow, taking hold of her, keeping my grasp even as she tried to pull away, guiding her forward, up into the dark chamber beyond. She glowered at me, her lips twisting in disgust, revulsion. She squinted, tilting her head, her eyes widening, gasping. She bowed her head, edging toward me, dragging Rucker with her, a ghost of a smile on her lips.
Some men and orcs in rumpled livery sat at a table in the middle of the round room, battered cards in their hands, a pile of money in the middle of the table, mugs by most of the soldiers, weapons propped up against the table and along the wall, a fire burning in the fireplace. The room stank of sweat, smoke, and skunky beer. My stomach flipped over, threatening to unleash its contents, but I gulped it back, feeling the acrid sting and bitter taste of bile against the back of my throat.
“More company for you,” Arcled said, ignoring the men, striding up the stone staircase leading up to the next level. I peered past Agholor, studying the men inside, gauging them, their readiness, trying to devise some plan to attack them.
A couple of the heads twisted toward us. One man leaned back, laying his cards face down on the table, rubbing at his crotch, saying, “I love me a blue-skinned coulven.”
I glared at the man, setting my jaw, readying my diminished power to throw something, anything, preparing to defend Aissal, wondering what I could cast and not get killed. Aissal’s fingertips brushed my arm, stopping me, beckoning me to wait. A couple of the men leered at Aissal and Rucker, snorting, but they continued their game, and I relaxed, realizing their talk was just that, talk, for now.
Aissal and Rucker followed along with the rest of the squad, trudging up four flights of stairs, a few floors from the top. Winds whistled in through barred and shuttered windows, the shutters ill-fitting and cracked with age. Fires flickered from crude torches resting in sconces on the wall well away from the cells.
Cells lined one wall, crisscrossed iron bars set in grates, woven like a basket, the square spaces between the iron too small for even a human child to wriggle through. Five doors, five cells, each cell had three cots jammed in, prisoners occupied the two cells on the far sides. One prisoner rested on a cot facing away, a woman by the shape of her with thin shoulders and wide hips, her skin the pure white of an Onei. In the adjacent cell, Cole sat staring down at the floor between his feet, eyelids drooping, breathing through his mouth, skin pale, streaked with dirt and filth.
An old, gray orc, his face disfigured with a web of scars, his tusks jagged and broken, feathers and stones hanging from the extended lobes of his ears, wide red and black lines smeared on his face under his eyes, sat on a chair with his feet up by a fire in a brazier, an Onei wedding blanket covering his upper body, keys dangling from his belt. He stared at each one of us as we climbed up the stairway to the floor, examining each of us, his eyes giving no indication of his judgment.
“Cole?” Rucker said. He broke away from Gunnar Highsmith, darting past and through the entire squad to the press himself against the bars of Cole’s cell. “Cole! We thought you would be in Morrin by now?”
Agholor jumped over and grabbed Rucker, wrapping his burly arm around the boy’s waist, yanking him from the bars, Rucker holding on with his fingertips, crying as his fingers pulled free.
Aissal moved to join Rucker, or try to save him from Agholor’s rough grasp, but I wrapped my fingers around her arm, stopping her, shushing her. She grew still, bowing her head, glaring at me with the corner of her eye, edging closer to me.
Cole raised
his eyes to greet us, no joy on his face, his eyes swollen, lip cut. He sighed, dropping his head, shaking it from side to side. “I prayed you wouldn’t come.”
“Old-timer.” Arcled snapped his fingers at the ancient orc standing guard, and gestured to the empty cell in the middle, separated by empty cells on each side. “Give me the keys to the middle cell there.”
The old guard, grunting, moving stiffly, wincing as he shifted position beneath the blanket, reached a gnarled hand out and pulled the keys from his belt. He threw them to Arcled, never moving his feet from their spot on the stool, never standing.
I don’t know what I expected, but Arcled ignored the disrespect, seemed to expect it. His hand shot out, snatching the keys from the air. He motioned us forward. “We’ll lock them both up in there.”
Agholor carried Rucker, and one of the humans approached to help me drag Aissal to the cell. She shied away from him, into my hands, and at my touch and direction, went in quiet, meek, her head low.
“I think she likes you, Sparks,” Arcled laughed.
“Yeah, you gotta show me how you did that,” Agholor said, tossing Rucker in behind her. Arcled clanged the door shut, locking it in place, engaging a spell that appeared far too simple to my eye. There had to be something more to these defenses.
I feared the pain in my head and the drain on my magic to keep up my disguise had played tricks on my magesight. I didn’t know if I perceived the extent of the defenses, and I pushed my magesight, straining, searching for something I couldn’t see, something I didn’t know, the exertion wreaking havoc on my already sensitive stomach.
Arcled pitched the keys back to the old orc, the keys landing in the middle of the old one’s belly. Arcled strutted to the stairway down, motioning for us to follow. “Come on, you pea-suckers,” he said. “Time for some chow. Extra rations on the new kid.”