The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle)

by M. Edward; mimulux McNally

  “Tell your boss his girl is here,” the Sarge said, hopping as he pulled on a boot.

  The minion had no eyebrows as his entire head was shaved clean. The skin where eyebrows would have been lifted, and he shut the door.

  The Sarge and Rickard were strapping on breast plates. Ty stood in the doorway fingering the pommel of the heavy short sword on his hip and glancing back toward the stairs.

  “What is going on?” Phin finally decided to ask.

  “Nothing you need be concerned about, Wizard.” The Sarge belted his own sword around his waist. “Though it looks as if we may be getting into Vod’Adia on time after all.”

  Ty chuckled and clashed a gauntleted hand against his tower shield. Soft chanting began in the next bunkroom, and red light played across the floorboards from the crack under the door.

  *

  Nesha-tari’s people had been given space in a Shugak barracks, but she spent her days and nights up in a watch tower out of which a stern blue glare had cleared the hobgoblin guards. By the last night before the Opening of Vod’Adia she was lying on her side and curled into a ball next to the trapdoor leading below, knees to her chest and eyes screwed shut. Every inhalation brought the stench of humanity into her nostrils and made her shudder as her stomach growled.

  She heard the slap of bullywug feet approaching at a hop on the ground below, and recognized Kerek by his jingling adornments. Nesha-tari’s eyes snapped open like two blue lamps in the night. She scrambled to the edge of the tower to look down.

  “You found him?” she hissed, but Kerek heard her plainly.

  “He has finally activated a spell. A call unto his god. Your people are getting ready.”

  Nesha-tari was ready. She put a hand on the railing and pounced over it, landing on the ground four stories below on her toes and fingertips.

  *

  Tilda and Dugan stood up as a middle-aged Jobian woman approached in a long blue dress and a leather apron. The Builder’s device was stitched on the apron and her hair was wrapped in cloth in the style of an Orstavian bushka. She was of a matronly demeanor, and smiled warmly.

  “The Builder’s blessing be upon you. I am Sister Paveline. I am told you seek some folk who may have sought our aid?”

  “Yes, Sister,” Dugan answered and Tilda allowed him to speak, figuring he was more familiar with Codian priests and their customs.

  “It would have been as many as five men, but maybe less. All Codians, Beoan or Gwethellen, from their twenties to one balding fellow about forty. They may have seemed like Legion men in their manners, though they were probably not in uniform.”

  Sister Paveline raised a brown eyebrow with a grey streak.

  “Veterans?”

  “Ah, no Ma’am. They are renegade.”

  The priestess frowned sharply.

  “Their leader would have had green eyes, Sister,” Tilda said. “Very striking.”

  Sister Paveline looked surprised, but she shook her head.

  “I am sorry, but the only men we have seen here who looked like legionnaires, were actual legionnaires. There was a green-eyed fellow and two others, but they were in full uniform. Nor did they seek our aid, nor succor.”

  “Wait,” Dugan held up a hand. “The Empire has soldiers stationed here?”

  “I did not think so, but these men were on a mission.” Paveline looked between Dugan and Tilda. “The two of you arrived here with the pair from Daul, yes?”

  “Yes,” Tilda said. “Why?”

  “Well, the Legion men were here specifically to greet anyone from Daul seeking refuge in the Empire. Given the cost and danger of traversing the Wilds we hardly expected anyone like that to show up here, and no one had. Until tonight.”

  Tilda stared, and a bead of cold sweat trickled down her spine to the small of her back under her layered clothing and armor. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. She did not know quite what it was, but she was sure of it.

  “Where did Claudja and Towsan go?” she asked.

  “Those are your friends from Daul? I understand Brother Heggenauer was taking them to meet the legionnaires at their inn, south of here.”

  “What inn?” Dugan asked calmly. Sister Paveline winced.

  “It is called the Dead Possum. Five blocks down at an intersection with a willow tree in the center. You can’t miss it as the sign is very…graphic.”

  Tilda was still for one second. Then she dropped her pack and saddlebags and was running flat out.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Heggenauer, the Duchess Claudja, and her knight protector Sir Towsan were led through the Dead Possum’s bawdy common room by two legionnaires while the third had gone upstairs to fetch his commanding officer. Heggenauer felt a pang for the debauchery on display was hardly suitable for a woman of the Duchess’s high station, but on being informed by Father Corallo that there were Codian Legionnaires in Camp Town awaiting the arrival of anyone from Daul, the Duchess had insisted on being taken to them immediately rather than having them summoned to the Builder’s House. Sir Towsan had not been pleased, but the noblewoman who no amount of rude outfitting could make look common had been adamant.

  They were led down a hall away from the noise and smell and ushered into a narrow room where the light from a lantern illuminated towers of spent ale kegs lining the walls. Towsan looked about dubiously and turned to eye the legionnaires with his arms folded across his chest.

  “Sorry ’bout this,” one of them said. “The Sarge will find a better place for a talk.”

  Heggenauer looked between the two soldiers. Their armor and weapons were spotless but the clothes underneath deeply soiled. Their chinstraps crossed faces badly needing shaves, and one of their helmets was not even Legion issue. Heggenauer looked at that man’s tower shield, noting the identifying numerals under the Book-from-the-Water standard.

  “Where is the 34 Foot now stationed, soldier?”

  “Orstaf, sir.”

  “You are a long way from there.”

  “Detached special duty, sir.”

  The man’s answers were smartly given but Heggenauer still did not like his looks. Before he could ask anything else boots clopped in the hall and the door was opened by another bearded Legion man wearing the plain helmet of a sergeant-of-the-line, and boots instead of marching sandals. He carried no tower shield and looked over all those in the room with shining green eyes, smiling broadly and snapping a salute.

  “Good evening, or very early morning,” he chirped in the cadence of a native Gweiyerman. “Sorry about the digs…”

  The Duchess squeezed around Heggenauer and Towsan.

  “We were told there is a Codian official here awaiting us,” she said, then gave the sergeant a haughty looking-over. “Would you be him?”

  “Indeed no, your Highness. He awaits just across the rear yard. Fetching wine and what not to the empty stable there. It is clean, and altogether nicer. Won’t you step this way?”

  The sergeant backed into the hall and stepped to the right. The Duchess and her knight exchanged a look before the old man led the way with her close behind. Heggenauer moved to follow them but when Claudja was through the doorway the two legionnaires still in the room leaned their shields across it.

  “We have it from here, Brother,” one said. “Best go back to your temple.”

  “Legion business, sir,” said the other. “No need for you to be involved.”

  “Involved in what?” Heggenauer demanded.

  The Duchess shrieked, and Heggenauer snatched up his mace by its wrist cord even faster than the Legion men drew their swords.

  *

  Zeb ran awkwardly and with his helmet bouncing on his head for they had left the Shugak palisade so fast he had not had time to cinch-up his armor. He had barely gotten his boots on.

  Amatesu noticed him struggling and dropped back, leaving Shikashe a quarter block ahead and Nesha-tari out in front even farther. The shukenja ran alongside Zeb and managed to pull the straps of his ring mail jer
kin tight on the fly. He handed her his crossbow and buckled his chin strap, crashed to the ground and rolled once, but stumbled up and kept running.

  Amatesu handed the crossbow back and before she sprinted ahead Zeb managed to shout between gasps.

  “Will you tell me where we are going now?”

  Amatesu looked back at him.

  “We are going to kill a priest.”

  Zeb hitched a step and Amatesu began to pull away.

  “What? Wait! Why?”

  “He is not a nice priest,” Amatesu called over her shoulder.

  They ran for several blocks, managing the crowd as all the men in the street seemed to have stopped what they were doing when Nesha-tari ran by. They were standing still and staring silently in the direction she had gone even as Amatesu and Zeb passed them.

  They reached an intersection, Zeb trundling up last as Shikashe, Nesha-tari, and Amatesu stood in a row under a willow tree, facing an inn. There was a colorful but revolting sign painted on the front of an opossum squashed flat by a wagon wheel.

  Zeb put the head of his crossbow on the ground and wriggled a foot into the stirrup. He had already cranked it but now placed a bolt in the groove atop the shaft. He stood up straight and began to gasp a question, but stopped as Nesha-tari threw her cloak back off of her shoulders.

  She was magnificent. Zeb was well aware that she was some sort of dangerous monster, but in that moment he could not have cared any less. Her body in loose trousers and shirt was plainly ridiculous, both supple and strong. Her face was sharp and beautiful in a corona of tumbling red hair, and her blue eyes blazed.

  Nesha-tari pulled her gloves off with her perfect white teeth on the leather fingers and it was the most fascinating process Zeb had ever seen. She said something Zeb did not hear, and when she turned her eyes on him he nearly swooned. Then she snarled and slapped the vacant look off his face.

  Zeb yelled and grabbed his nose, which was bleeding across the bridge.

  “You split open my nose!” Zeb said accusingly, and as the sharp sting of it cleared his head for a moment he understood Nesha-tari as she repeated herself with a growl.

  “Tell Shikashe he is with me, through the front door. You and Amatesu go ‘round the back. Kill anyone coming out who looks like a Zant.”

  Zeb translated into Codian automatically and Amatesu did so into Ashinese even as he spoke. On the last few words Amatesu stopped speaking and gave Nesha-tari an alarmed look, but the woman was already rolling like a storm for the Dead Possum’s porch and the open front door. Uriako Shikashe strode at her side and drew both of his swords.

  Amatesu ran for an alley on the right side of the inn and as his head was still clearer than it had been in a good long time, Zeb hesitated before following her. Killing priests could not possibly be good luck, and none of this had anything to do with him. He should be in the lines at Larbonne with his mates, or better-yet home in Wakminau sniffing around a barroom for a mate of a different sort. There was a place high on the bluffs with a glorious cherry wine, half bitter and half sweet, that would have tasted like the most wonderful thing in the world right now. And really, he did not owe any of the people here a thing. He had been kidnapped and enchanted and Nesha-tari had just cut his nose open, and it stung like hell.

  In short, a man of the Riven Kingdoms had to know when to run if he was to live for long.

  Amatesu disappeared into the dark alley. Zeb knew the shukenja was formidable but she looked very small and alone in that moment.

  Zeb spit out blood that was trickling into his mouth and cursed himself. He hoisted his crossbow and ran into the alley.

  It was pitch black and he could not see Amatesu. What he did see was light from an enclosed yard behind the inn, and as he stumbled toward it over mounded refuse and through foul puddles he heard the unmistakable clash of arms.

  Zeb leaned around the corner to look into the yard and tried to make sense of what he saw. There was a tall old man laying about with a long sword while two Codian legionnaires crouched behind their tower shields trying to maneuver behind him, both darting forward in turn to poke at him with their short gladius swords. As they shuffled, swung, and parried, a third legionnaire tumbled out of the inn’s backdoor followed closely by a blonde fellow with mace and shield, fighting him.

  Before Zeb could determine if this was something he was supposed to be concerned with, or which side of the fight he might be on, a man cursed from the darkness away from the door. Zeb turned and saw another man in a Legion breastplate struggling with a little slip of a girl. The bearded fellow reared back an arm and just smashed her across the face, leveling her to the ground and making Zeb’s mind up for him.

  “Drop your weapons!” Zeb bawled in Codian, stepping into the yard and raising his crossbow to look down the bolt right at the bearded man’s forehead. The girl was a motionless heap at his feet.

  No one dropped anything but the bearded man in the helmet of a Legion Sergeant at least made no move toward the sword on his hip.

  “Who the hells are you?” he demanded, his green eyes boring into Zeb‘s.

  Before Zeb could come up with a witty answer the doors of a low building backing the yard burst open and out rushed four bulky figures in heavy plate and round helmets with only eye slits, wielding enormous swords. One rushed at Zeb and he swung his bow while triggering it, but he split the difference and the bolt zipped between the sergeant and the figure clanking toward him.

  Zeb dropped his crossbow and whipped his axe from his back, but the man came on too fast. Zeb never would have raised his weapon in time to ward off an overhand blow coming for his head, but Amatesu darted out of the shadows and threw herself into the charging man’s legs. Iron greaves bashed the shukenja’s shoulder and side but she twisted the man off balance, sending him stumbling toward Zeb who rolled his hips and spun on the balls of his feet while swinging his axe sideways in both hands, connecting blade to helmet with an impact that shook his arms. The man’s helmet was thick and well made and did not split, but its wearer did sprawl stunned to the ground.

  The sergeant was on Zeb in an instant, stabbing for his back but just scraping his blade on ring mail as Zeb stumbled sideways from the force of his own axe blow. The sergeant tried to get inside Zeb’s reach but the Minaun spread his hands wide on the shaft of his axe while moving backwards, not able to attack but warding off two more stabs. Amatesu was on her feet behind the sergeant, but rather busy with another black-armored man and his great sword. The shukenja had slipped a weapon of some kind out of her sleeve, a block of wood as long as her forearm with one iron-shod side and an odd sort of crank handle at the end. She sidestepped sword blows and darted in to deliver strikes with the thing, but her club only rang off her opponent’s plate mail.

  The green-eyed sergeant drove Zeb back and threw a swipe at his face that Zeb only avoided by leaning back so far he had to scramble away to recover. The sergeant took advantage to break away and run across the yard for the old man, whose back was to them as he fought another legionnaire. Zeb had no idea what the fellow’s name was so shouted only, “Old man! Behind you!” as a warning. Before he could move to anyone’s assistance firelight bloomed behind him and Zeb turned to find the first man he had knocked down back on his feet. Flames were dancing along the long blade of his great sword, and Zeb abruptly knew what he was fighting.

  “Oh, gods! You’re a Destroyer?” Zeb asked, for the fearsome warriors of the fiery god Ayon had a presence in Larbonne. The man’s helmet was dented and turned sideways on his face, but he tore it off to reveal that he was not a he at all.

  “And you are the destroyed,” the bald woman growled, and lunged.

  Zeb knocked the first blow of the flaming sword aside with the head of his axe, but he could feel the heat of it washing over him. The swords of the other Destroyers were blooming into flames around the yard, casting hellish, struggling shadows on the walls. A legionnaire’s helmet came sailing out of the back door of the Dead Possum and struck t
he ground with such a heavy sound that Zeb knew there was still a head in it. Uriako Shikashe came out behind it, saw Amatesu fighting a Destroyer, and charged at the nearest man in the same black armor.

  Zeb’s opponent made a thrust that came close enough to his side to leave his jerkin smoking. He could feel the warming rings of his mail like ingots through leather gloves. He swept for her legs but she hopped over the blow and then the two of them were spinning almost like a dance, neither quite able to land a blow with what were rather inelegant weapons, better suited for hacking than for parry and thrust. But sweat was running into Zeb’s eyes while the woman’s smirking face was cool and calm. She had him and she knew it, right up until blue light cracked across the yard and a bolt of lightning sent her flying into a wall.

  Nesha-tari was framed in the back doorway of the inn, her hair standing out on end and her indescribable face illuminated by blue lightning humming between her raised hands. Her eyes raked the yard and she threw out another lash of crackling blue fire that spun a legionnaire to the ground and staggered a Destroyer, allowing Shikashe to lock the longer of his two swords high against the man’s flaming weapon. The samurai stabbed his shorter sword deep into the Destroyer’s chest through his armpit.

  The light faded but Nesha-tari advanced into the yard like an angel of death and the remaining Destroyers and legionnaires drew back from her. Shikashe and Amatesu were on their feet but the blonde fellow was kneeling by the sprawled old man. Zeb took the moment to race to his crossbow and work the crank after spilling out bolts to the ground next to it.

  “Horayachus!” Nesha-tari roared, and for an answer a jet of flames erupted at her from the building out of which the Destroyers had come. Nesha-tari brought both hands up in front of her, palms out, and the flames scattered in the air before her as though they had hit a solid stone wall. She rocked back and staggered to the ground.