The Conquerors Shadow

by Ari Marmell

  The soldier staggered abruptly, eyes wide and visibly glazing over. For a moment he stood, hesitantly raising a hand to the side of his head, just above his temple; he seemed puzzled by the blood that came away on his fingers. And then he collapsed, the impact sending a cloud of dust to swirl around Corvis’s ankles.

  Bellowing to shame the thunder, Tuvold redoubled his pace, his squad hot on his heels.

  “We’re too old for this,” Corvis muttered.

  Seilloah shook her head, her own eyes fixed on the rapidly advancing soldiers. “You’re never too old to run away.”

  Corvis slashed Rascal’s tether with a quick flick of Sunder as he hurled himself into the saddle. A quick yank lifted Seilloah behind him, and his heels dug with rib-bruising force into the horse’s side. With a startled grunt, Rascal leapt forward, easily outdistancing the enraged soldiers. It wasn’t a pace he could maintain long, but it would get them out of town. Once they’d gotten back to Davro and Rover, they could put a more comfortable distance between them and their pursuers.

  Finally satisfied that any possible pursuit had fallen behind, Corvis reined the panting horse to a brisk walk and circled around toward their hidden camp. “Going back isn’t really an option at this point, though. If the man survived, then he survived. Not a damn thing I can do about it.”

  “This,” Seilloah noted glumly, “is going to come back to haunt us.”

  There was little enough Corvis could say. As they neared the copse of trees, he dismounted, motioning for Seilloah to do the same.

  Seilloah lifted a hand to brush her hair from her face, opened her mouth to say something—and froze, her arm half raised, as the sounds of faint conversation floated to them from the copse of trees.

  Corvis nodded sharply—he’d heard it, too. With a bare whisper of noise he once again drew his axe, gripping it one-handed, Rascal’s reins in his left fist.

  The conversation continued, and Corvis’s brow furrowed in bewilderment as they crept closer. He recognized one voice as Davro’s, and the ogre sounded neither pained nor angry. But if the other speaker wasn’t hostile, who the hell was he?

  Deciding they were near enough, Corvis draped Rascal’s reins over a low-hanging branch, and then leapt into the clearing, Sunder at the ready. Seilloah followed a step behind, lips already mouthing an incantation.

  Davro jumped to his feet, hands reaching for his spear. The other figure moved not at all, except to allow an amused smile to cross his face.

  “Gods below, Rebaine!” Davro exclaimed. “You startled me out of at least ten years! I …”

  Corvis paid the ogre no attention at all, fixing his gaze, instead, on the campsite’s new visitor. His jaw fell slack at the sight of the one man he’d least expected to find.

  “What’s the matter, Lord Rebaine?” Valescienn asked, rising smoothly to his feet. “Weren’t you here to see me?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Ivriel was a nothing little flea-speck of a village, one that should’ve had absolutely no value to anyone whatsoever—except that it sat right on the edge of a line that existed only on a map. And which side of the line it sat on depended pretty heavily on whose map you were looking at.

  None of the border skirmishes between Imphallion and Cephira had ever started over the worthless village, but with the talks over the trade city of Rahariem on the verge of breaking down—again—nearby Ivriel almost couldn’t help but be caught up in any coming struggle.

  So, just in case they proved necessary, several squads of Imphallion’s army—the real army, the loyal army, not the mercenary (if better-equipped, better-paid, larger, and possibly better-trained) forces of the Guilds—wandered the tiny roads of tiny Ivriel, occupied every tiny room in the town’s tiny inn, and bitched to one another about how tiny the place was.

  Off-duty and not quite drunk enough to earn their commander’s ire, two young officers wandered the earthen roads through the center of town (which looked rather remarkably like every other part of town). They examined the wooden hovels, many only a single room that played home to families of nearly a dozen, and saw rag-clad children playing in the yards, chasing cats and rats that might, if things got even a little more desperate, quickly find themselves reassigned from playthings to meals.

  “I don’t get it, Valescienn. I really don’t.”

  The straw-haired officer, slightly taller than his companion, glanced contemptuously around. “It’s a pretty vile way to live, isn’t it?” he agreed.

  “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s … Why are we fighting for this place?”

  “Just maybe because Cephira wants it? You weren’t already drunk at the briefing, were you?”

  “Valescienn, we don’t want this place! Look at it! If it actually meant anything to the kingdom, to the regent, would we really have let it get this bad? Hell, the people here probably welcome this sort of conflict! At least it brings in a little outside coin when we rent out the inn.”

  “We’re not renting it. We’ve commandeered it.” Valescienn continued on several steps, only slowly realizing his companion had stopped short.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Commandeered?” The tone was incredulous, and Valescienn honestly hadn’t realized the other’s voice could get that high. “Why? These are our own people we’re starving!”

  “No money. You know damn well that if this flares up into a war, the regent’s going to need the Guilds to pitch in. The army’s not spending one coin more than it has to. We’re lucky we’re still getting paid at all, and you know it.”

  “So we’re perfectly happy spending the money to defend the place, but not to keep it alive?”

  Valescienn shrugged. “It costs the Guilds and the regent—in reputation, if not in money—to let Cephira conquer the place. Doesn’t cost them a damn thing to let it fade away into the dust.”

  “That’s astoundingly shortsighted, Valescienn.”

  “Fine. You go tell them that.”

  “I just might,” Officer Rebaine replied.

  CORVIS, axe dangling from fingers gone slack, gazed numbly at the man he’d come to find. Seilloah stared at Corvis. Davro watched them both, still on edge. And Valescienn’s face remained locked in that quirky grin. Neither tapestry nor sculpture could have been more lifeless, more static, than that frozen tableau.

  Almost languidly, Davro’s eye blinked, and at that signal life resumed. Corvis, grinning abruptly, tossed Sunder to his left hand and extended his right. Valescienn did the same, and the two men clasped arms, one warrior to another.

  “I found Valescienn,” the ogre said. “You can blackmail him now.”

  “Davro,” Seilloah spat, “hush!”

  Fortunately, Corvis seemed not to hear. “What are you doing out here, damn it all? We’ve been all over town looking for you.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Valescienn told him.

  “Heard from whom?”

  “As for what I’m doing out here,” the scar-faced man continued, ignoring the question, “Davro’s been asking me that same question.”

  The ogre nodded. “He wouldn’t answer me, though. Kept telling me to be patient.”

  “But of course,” Valescienn told him. “I wanted you all together for this.”

  It was a cue if ever there was one. The clearing grew chill, a low-lying fog pouring from the earth. It moved in waves, wisps darting this way and that. Tree roots, bushes, and boots reflected a dull crimson in its wake. The air grew thick with a salty, coppery scent.

  Rascal whinnied, dancing as he strove to keep his hooves from the haze, and Rover ambled awkwardly into the trees. Davro and Seilloah backed away from the center of the clearing, the witch, a glimmer of recognition in her saucer-wide eyes, already whispering an incantation.

  Valescienn, too, moved to step back, only to find his arm locked in an unyielding grip. Corvis’s fingers dug into his flesh. Even through the thick leather, the warrior knew he must already sport deep bruises.

  “Corvis, what—
”

  “Has it been so long, Valescienn, that you take me for a fool?” A furious scowl wiped all traces of the grin from Corvis’s face. “Have I supposedly become such a dullard that I’ll walk into any trap some half-wit lays before me?”

  With his free hand, Valescienn grabbed for the flail at his hip, but Corvis proved the quicker, twisting with every bit of strength that middle age had left him.

  Valescienn was the stronger man, and well trained, and thus escaped the worst of the injury. Rather than snapping like a twig, his arm simply slipped from its socket with a moist pop.

  Swallowing his agony, Valescienn turned completely about, his injured arm hanging behind his back as no healthy limb could have done. He lashed out with his left elbow, a brutal, bone-crushing strike. Corvis dodged the blow, avoiding a broken nose, but lost his grip in the process.

  “You—you …” Left hand clutched to right shoulder, his arm hanging flaccid beneath it, Valescienn retreated. His jaw was clenched, his eyes burning.

  Corvis smoothly shifted Sunder into his favored two-handed grip. “You picked the wrong side, traitor.”

  “Traitor? I haven’t served you for seventeen years—and when I did, it was you who abandoned us!”

  Corvis merely shrugged and raised his blade.

  “Corvis!”

  He spun at Seilloah’s call. She herself was unharmed, for her spell of protection held the creature at bay. But she’d been unable to do the same for their large companion.

  The last wisps of fog coalesced into a man-shaped pillar, the features flushing with roiling blood, congealing into a corporeal creature. A wiry hand clasped the towering ogre, forcing him to his knees. Corvis, gorge rising, watched as the creature placed fleshy lips upon Davro’s face. The ogre fell limp as the pores on his cheek widened and began to pump blood into his attacker’s mouth.

  Shouting, Corvis hurled Sunder across the clearing. The blade glinted in the light, finally sinking deep into the enemy’s back. The creature reared in pain, its face aimed skyward. It screamed, an inhuman wail of agony, and Davro’s stolen blood erupted from its mouth, showering the campsite in gore.

  Even as they watched, the body rotted into a sodden lump of refuse, moldering flesh sliding from bone to form a growing pool. Mist poured from the skull and whipped away into the forest, an undulating serpent of poison. The residue in its wake was thin and sickly, nigh undetectable. Sunder landed with a dull thump in the putrescent mass.

  Before the body rotted completely away, Corvis spun to face Valescienn once more, drawing the sword from his left hip.

  The enemy was nowhere to be seen. Brief examination of footprints left in the soft soil suggested Valescienn had taken two steps and simply vanished. Corvis knew well that his former vassal had no head for magic, and that someone else must have been waiting to teleport him to safety.

  He allowed himself a single shout of anger, lopping the nearest branch from an inoffensive tree. Then, sheathing his sword with a vicious snap, he crossed the gore-encrusted grass to stand beside Seilloah.

  “How is he?”

  “Weak,” Seilloah replied from beside Davro’s stricken form. “He lost an astonishing amount of blood. But given a few days, I think he’ll recover.”

  “What …” Davro’s hand rose feebly from his attacker’s remains, dripping a crimson sludge. “What was it?”

  “It turned into mist and sucked your blood out through your skin, Davro,” Seilloah said. “What does that sound like to you?”

  Davro’s shudder ran from horn to heels. Even the ogres had their horror stories of the Endless Legion. “But it’s dead?”

  Seilloah knew well that it might not be. Dwelling on the border between life and death, the creature could survive only briefly without a mortal body to inhabit. Having that body ripped out from under it was, legend told, a terrible injury. Still, if it found someone sick, or sleeping, or otherwise vulnerable to inhabitation before it starved, someone whose body it could use to feed off others, it might survive.

  Davro needed know none of this, just now. “Yes,” she told him. “It’s dead.”

  The ogre grunted.

  “Corvis,” Seilloah said, rising to her feet and striding away from the resting ogre, “we have to talk.” Bemused, Corvis retrieved Sunder—it repelled the surrounding blood, rising clean from the fluids in which it lay—and followed.

  “It’s daytime,” he noted, almost to himself. “Those things are weaker during the day, aren’t they?”

  “Very good, Corvis. And what does that tell you?”

  “They’re desperate. Or they want us to think they’re desperate.” His voice was thoughtful. “I wish I’d killed it properly.”

  “Next time,” she barked at him. “While you’re waiting, you’ve got a choice to make.”

  “Seilloah …”

  “Our enemies are teleporting people around, they’re sending the undead after us. Corvis, my magic won’t be enough!”

  “Seilloah, I told you, I won’t even consider—”

  He reared back, face stinging from her sudden slap.

  “What the hell was that for?”

  “I’m trying to knock some sense into you, you imbecile! We need him!”

  “Seilloah, you’ve no idea what you’re asking.”

  “I’m asking no less of you than you are of us, Corvis. No less than you demanded of Davro. We can’t do you, Tyannon, or your children any good if we die out here. What if Audriss had sent five of those things instead of one? What if he’d sent a dozen? I can’t fight that many, and I can’t prevent him from finding us.”

  “Then why aren’t we dead already?” Corvis challenged.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’re not enough of a threat. Maybe Valescienn was keeping an eye on his old stomping grounds and saw us nosing about. Maybe Audriss didn’t actually arrange this, though I find that hard to believe. But we’ve been stupid lucky so far, and you know it! I’ll fight for you, Corvis, but I won’t throw my life away because you’re too stubborn to accept the truth.

  “We need him, Corvis. We need Khanda.”

  And Corvis, suddenly as weary as he could ever recall, fell back against the nearest tree, at last admitting to himself that Seilloah was right.

  Gods help them all.

  “YOU’RE WHAT?”

  “I said,” Corvis repeated as he double-checked the heavy winter clothes they’d recently acquired, “I’m going alone.”

  They were currently ensconced in a copse of trees some ten miles from their previous camp. The aroma of thick soil permeated the air, and the plants, other than those trampled by Davro’s stumbling gait, bloomed brightly in the summer warmth. The weakened ogre wasn’t easy to move, but all three agreed that they’d little choice. Kervone’s soldiers still sought the strangers who’d assaulted their commander, to say nothing of the distinct possibility of Valescienn’s sudden return.

  Food was no issue: Corvis and Seilloah had waylaid a farmer driving a few cattle into town. The animals provided sustenance for Corvis and the ogre (who consumed a whole cow at one sitting), while Seilloah made herself a meal of … Well, Corvis wasn’t certain what the meal was, but he did notice, without making any comment, the absence of the farmer’s body. He’d have preferred to let the man go—he’d shed too much blood, brought back too many memories—but nobody could be permitted to report on their whereabouts.

  It was also from among the trunks carried by these unfortunate folks that Corvis acquired a bundle of furs, blankets, and other cold-weather apparel. When Seilloah asked him if those were necessary for retrieving Khanda, Corvis had answered in the affirmative. That was also when he’d told them the other part of the plan.

  “I’m going alone.”

  “You’re insane!” Seilloah shouted at him, actually waving her hands over her head. “You’re going to get yourself killed!”

  “Weren’t you just telling me that we needed Khanda so I wouldn’t get us killed?” he asked mildly.

  “Yes
, but I didn’t mean for you to go traipsing off by yourself to Arhylla-knows-where to do it! You need us!”

  “I do not now,” Corvis protested lamely, “nor have I ever, ‘traipsed.’”

  Davro, back to his old self save for a slight pallor in the face, nodded once. “Got to agree with him here, Seilloah. I think, even at his most carefree, the best I’ve seen was a semi-frolic, with maybe a half skip.”

  “I do need you, Seilloah,” he told her, briefly wondering why he’d bothered to save the ogre. “I need you to keep working while I’m gone.”

  “Working on what?”

  Corvis sighed. “Audriss is moving, the ogres are assembling, and we still lack an army. I need you to tell the ogres where to assemble, and I need there to be an army waiting for them when they get there.”

  Seilloah and Davro stared blankly.

  “I made a point of listening for any news while we were hunting for Valescienn. Rumor has it Audriss’s army is continuing west. The next major cities that way are Orthessis and Abtheum, and unless he’s foolish enough to take his army off-road, he’s got to pass through Vorringar.”

  “How the hell do you remember all this?” Davro asked sourly.

  “Years spent studying every map I could find. You might recall that I made a fairly serious effort at conquering this damn kingdom?”

  “You seem to be forgetting,” Seilloah interjected, “that Davro and I don’t know the first thing about finding mercenaries. It’s why you wanted Valescienn to begin with. And even if we managed, what would you have us pay them with? Our winning smiles?”

  Davro offered his best toothy grin, replete with dangling bits of cow sinew.

  “We don’t have the option of doing things the traditional way anymore,” Corvis said flatly, placing one booted foot in the stirrup. “You’re a witch, Seilloah. Come up with something.”

  “But …”

  He overrode her. “Once you’ve got my army, assemble at Vorringar. If you gather most of your soldiers from farther west, you should get there before Audriss does. It’s, what, midsummer now. My best guess is, he won’t reach Vorringar until the frost. If I’m not back by then, Seilloah, you’re in command.”