The Sable City tnc-1

by M. Edward McNally

  Shikashe said something that sounded like “ Loong?” The shukenja nodded. There were beads of sweat on her forehead.

  Nesha-tari finally shook herself free of her bedding and stood with her feet apart, hands balled into fists at her side and looking rather fetching in the knee-shorts and heavy shirt in which she slept. Zeb tried not to notice, and turned to Amatesu. He began to ask a question in Minaun Danoric, then for some reason in Antersian, before finally finding his way to Codian.

  “What the hells was that?”

  “A dragon,” Amatesu answered, probably in Codian though it really didn’t matter as dragon was the one word that was the same in every language spoken on the continent of Noroth. Some said it was the first word Man had been taught to speak.

  Nesha-tari barked a question at Amatesu. Zeb waited for an answer until Amatesu turned to him and lifted an eyebrow.

  “Zebulon?”

  “What?”

  “I still do not speak Zantish.”

  “Oh. Right. What color was the, the…thing?”

  “I do not know. I could see nothing of it against the darkness, but I heard the great wings as it flew to the south.”

  Zeb managed to turn most of that into Zantish. Nesha-tari growled and stomped a bare foot.

  “An evil place, surely,” Heggenauer muttered.

  Something approaching sanity was returning to Tilda’s eyes, though she was still panting and holding her two daggers level in front of her, ready to attack with either. She turned toward Zeb and met his eyes, blinked, and her open mouth turned up at the side. She laughed, almost giggled.

  “What?” Zeb looked around, and noticed that the helmet on his head had long cheek guards extending down from the steel dome, with a thick leather face mask hanging unbuckled at one side. Zeb was wearing Shikashe’s ornate helmet, along with only a long shirt and drawers of Doonish linen. He still had his crossbow raised over his head. The samurai stared at him, then joined Tilda in a hearty laugh.

  “You think that’s bad,” Deskata said. “The Exlander’s dingus is hanging out.”

  Zeb glanced across the room and Tilda spun around rather quickly, but Heggenauer had moved his shield modestly over his groin. He blushed, and Zeb had to chuckle as well.

  “I thought Jobe’s priests did not carry swords, Brother,” Deskata added.

  The quivering fear caused by the dragon’s earsplitting flyover had begun to recede, and the laughter banished the last of it. It was replaced by the general anxiety of being in Vod’Adia. No one returned to the roof and the door outside was wedged shut. Deskata and Shikashe moved to the adjoining corner room to watch over the streets.

  Nesha-tari alone returned to her bedding and curled up within it. Zeb and Heggenauer dressed and remained awake with Tilda and Amatesu, sitting in a circle in the middle of the gallery, facing out in the darkness and not talking, with their weapons at their sides. With the worst of the fear gone the exhaustion of the last two days returned, and at some point people started nodding off, either hunched over or half-stretched out backward on the floor.

  Zeb slept that way, sprawled on his back but with his legs still crossed and his axe lying beside him. A few hours later when the gray light of dawn began to pierce the room from the tall arrow slits on the outer wall, the first thing Zeb became aware of on waking was the painful stiffness in his knees. The second was Matilda Lanai.

  The Miilarkian had been sitting on Zeb’s right, and at some point after he had leaned back and dozed-off she had succumbed to her own fatigue and slid down against him. She was still asleep with her head pillowed on Zeb’s belly, with the coil of her braided hair lying on his chest like a small snake. Her face was turned up, mouth slightly open, and soft breath passed steadily between her lips. Her tan skin was smudged with the gray dust that was everywhere in Vod’Adia, but it did not detract at all from her appearance.

  The door down to the courtyard was open and Zeb heard quiet voices from below, but he was in no particular hurry this morning. In all likelihood he would be killed today, and he saw no point in hurrying to meet that fate. He slowly pushed himself up to his elbows, but otherwise remained still. Tilda murmured but settled, and Zeb watched her sleep for another few minutes, noting the smoothness of her skin and the thickness of her eyelashes, and the curve of her slightly pursed lips.

  The light from the arrow slits across the room was interrupted as John Deskata walked in, brawny in the Legion armor of steel and chain breastplate, with heavy greaves on his shins flaring up to cover his knees.

  From what Zeb had understood of the conversation between Tilda and Deskata in the inn across from the ruins of the Dead Possum, their relationship was, to say the least, complicated. Something about John traveling incognito until that very moment, a dead Captain named Block, Miilarkian Houses, lies and exiles and assassinations. Zeb felt like he had witnessed the end of Tilda and Deskata’s friendship that morning, but he was unclear just how close that friendship had been. He knew for sure that no woman whom he had not slept with at some point had ever ended up glaring at Zeb with the same fierce rage that Tilda had leveled on John.

  Deskata looked across the room and stopped as he saw Zeb’s open eyes and Tilda curled up beside him. Though from that same conversation Zeb had the sense that Deskata was a born Miilarkian as well, the man looked nothing like it with his lighter complexion and a dark beard, short but thick. Zeb did know however that a lot of Miilarkians did not look much like typical Islanders. Something about Varanchian lineage, and “Ship People.”

  Zeb shrugged his shoulders at Deskata and Matilda’s head rocked gently on his belly. She gave a small irritated moan and put a hand on his chest. Deskata rolled his eyes and shook his head, which was something of a relief to Zeb. The ex-legionnaire walked on to where his pack and bedroll still lay, but swerved over to give Tilda’s foot a passing poke with the toe of his marching sandal.

  Tilda’s warm, nut-brown eyes fluttered before they settled on Zeb’s. He watched the surprise and confusion wash over her expressive face, and smiled at her broadly.

  “Good morning, Miss Matilda,” he said. Tilda lifted her head, drawing her long braid rather pleasantly over Zeb’s belly, and blinked around the room. John was gathering his things and Nesha-tari was just sitting upright and stretching her arms with a toothy yawn. Through the open door to the room on the corner, Heggenauer was visible kneeling on the floor as though in prayer. Tilda turned back to Zeb.

  “Good morning, Mr. Zebulon,” she said, not seeming to be troubled by their proximity. Zeb chose to take that as a good sign.

  “Did you sleep well?” he asked. “After the dragon flew by, I mean.”

  Tilda had noticed her braid lying across Zeb’s stomach and she gave her head a little toss to pull it off of him. He was sorry to feel it go.

  “Sure, after that,” she said, and noticed Zeb’s crossed legs. “Did you sleep like that?”

  “I did. I’m fairly sure I am crippled now.”

  Tilda sat up and Zeb unfolded his legs, wincing as pins and needles played up and down both.

  “Mind the axe,” Zeb said, for one of Tilda’s hands was on the floor near the double-headed blade.

  “Whoops,” Tilda said. “Good thing we didn’t roll around last night.”

  “Actually, I was thinking that had been something of a shame.”

  Tilda arched a dark eyebrow, which had a bit of a downward turn to begin with that gave her face a contemplative look. She smiled and her teeth were very white in the gray light.

  “Zebulon,” she said, her Island accent stressing the middle syllable. “We are in a lost city, full of demons and dragons and the gods-know-what-all. Are you hitting on me right now?”

  Nesha-tari had put her cloak around her shoulders and was changing her clothes beneath it with her back to the room. Zeb avoided breaking eye contact with Tilda to look in that direction, but it took a little effort.

  “That depends,” he said. “Might I ask you a personal question?”r />
  “Okay,” Tilda said, still with a smile but a suspicious tone.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any strange, mystical powers, would you? Something that makes men doe-eyed and foolish?”

  “I wish.”

  “I guess it is not a spell, then.”

  Tilda rolled her eyes and stood up, but not so fast that Zeb failed to see the side of her mouth turn up in a smirk.

  “You are a strange, strange fellow, Zebulon Baj Nif,” she said, extending a hand down to him. Zeb took it and felt a wiry strength as Tilda leaned back and pulled him to his feet. Despite the bulk of Tilda’s heavy trousers, sweater, vest, and half-cloak, there was cause to suspect the existence of a wicked little body within all that fabric.

  With bedrolls and packs secured, the full party assembled down in the courtyard, where Amatesu had kindled a small fire to heat a tea of oddly-shaped leaves that had been included in the Shugak provisions. It was extremely bitter, but adequate to soften the hard biscuits with which the party broke their fast. The group passed around a single ladle as no one had a cup, and the talk was all small. Nothing about where they were, or what they had heard in the night.

  The tent pegs used to seal the ground floor doors over night were pulled and replaced in packs. After a few quick words Amatesu opened a door and stepped aside, allowing Zeb and Tilda to lean out and scan the quiet street over their readied bows. When neither saw anything the party emerged and resumed their march, moving due south as much as the city allowed. Though Vod’Adia was cold this morning, and no less spooky than it had been the day before, as Zeb marched in the rear of the line next to Heggenauer he often caught himself smiling. The Jobian caught him, too.

  “Are you feeling all right, Zebulon?” Heggenauer asked after a while.

  “Brother, it is a beautiful day to die,” Zeb answered.

  Zeb changed his mind an hour later, when they found the bodies.

  *

  There were a half-dozen of them at least, though it was hard to be sure. They were lying in the street and in the first room through an open doorway to a tall building, an unremarkable location apart from the fact that it had been the scene of terrible butchery the night before. They had been men, as near as could be determined, swordsmen in plate and chain mail of good quality that had been battered and hacked open like shells. Pieces of armor, helmets, broken swords, emptied packs, and body parts lay all around. The copious blood shone against the black cobblestones and walls. The smell was unspeakable.

  Tilda and the rest of the party mostly kept their distance, but John Deskata approached near enough to squat beside a torso.

  “Most of the wounds are claws and fangs,” he called back to the particular pleasure of no one. “The cutting was done with weapons, though. Cleavers or axes. Maybe pole-arms.”

  “We should bury them,” Heggenauer said, loud enough for John to hear. The party was mostly standing in the street but the priest had gone to one knee.

  John stood and walked back, slapping a sandal against the street.

  “We aren’t burying anyone without a pick-axe,“ he said. “Besides, they weren’t Codians.”

  “How can he tell?” Tilda asked no one. She had turned her back on the scene, ostensibly to keep her eyes and ready bow on windows and rooflines, but she had looked long enough to feel very queasy.

  Heggenauer had heard her and he tapped a finger against the inside of his shield. Tilda glanced over and saw a stenciled insignia in an upper corner, the shape of a shield with a triangular bottom and a stylized “S” within it.

  “Shanatar?” she asked, and Heggenauer nodded.

  “All shields crafted in the Empire are inscribed by the priests of the Protector. The Shield Maiden’s blessing gives them added strength.”

  “Makes them lighter, too,” John said, easily hoisting his own tower shield, the standard issue of the Legions.

  Heggenauer rose to meet him.

  “The origins of these people do not matter. Their remains should not be allowed to lie in the street.”

  “Not in a perfect world, no,” John said. “But in a perfect world, it wouldn’t matter how long we left the Duchess of Chengdea to the mercies of three legionnaires either, now would it? Pretty girl, that one. What kind of trip do you suppose she’s having, Brother Heggenauer?”

  Tilda glared at Deskata but he never looked at her, only marched up to stare directly into Heggenauer’s eyes while color rose in the Jobian’s face.

  “We are moving too slow,” John said, loud enough that it was clearly meant for everyone.

  “Then why are we standing here?” Tilda said. She moved past John and Heggenauer back to the front of the line, and set off at a trot around the worst of the carnage.

  Tilda set a steady pace, but the next few hours were marred by more frustration than threat. In an area of great buildings with pillars and domes, each set on tall foundations with horseshoe staircases in front, there was a long section of street and sidewalk glowing dully with a sickly green sheen. After a quick conference it was decided not to walk through the stuff, and the party had to backtrack a good distance before hitting another cross street around the area. It was a while before they found another street heading southerly, for Tilda was beginning to appreciate that the layout of Vod’Adia was wholly chaotic. The day-to-day convenience of the people who had lived here long ago had seemingly had no part in the design.

  Before noon the party came upon a tall black wall built athwart their intended direction. The street running in front and parallel to it was lined with small buildings that had been shops, judging by the fact that each had a stone post extending out from the front facade above the main doorway, though the signs and chains they had hung from were long gone. The party headed east until they reached an impassable intersection where the street had collapsed, leaving a huge crater full of murky gray water that gave off a sulfurous smell. They doubled-back again and headed west parallel to the wall.

  After another half an hour, Tilda quickened her pace as the great wall on the left-hand side seemed to end up ahead. She and Amatesu reached a circular plaza with a standing obelisk on a dais in the center, broken off about thirty feet above the ground. Several streets connected there and the wall ended at a round tower with no visible point of entry on this side, but then it continued to the south as far as could be seen owing to the misty atmosphere and more tall buildings.

  Before the rest of the party now strung-out behind them reached the plaza, Tilda turned to Amatesu.

  “You may want to keep a little distance from me,” Tilda said between deep breaths. Amatesu, who was not breathing hard at all, only gave her a curious glance.

  “I stopped looking for traps hours ago,” Tilda admitted. “If I hit something, you may want to be back a ways.”

  “Do not worry,“ Amatesu said. “I am still looking for both of us.”

  Deskata, Uriako Shikashe, and Nesha-tari arrived and looked around. Zeb and Heggenauer clanged up behind them, both perspiring in their heavy ring mail and plate armor and looking flushed.

  “I have decided,” Zeb breathed, bending to put his hands on his knees. “Not to buy…a summer home here. Architect…was an idjit.”

  Tilda did not smile, for she was mildly annoyed with Zeb. She felt guilty that she had been enjoying talking, and perhaps even flirting with him earlier, and had not been thinking about Claudja and what she might be going through right now.

  Heggenauer caught his breath and shook his head. “These streets are not an accident,” the priest of the Builder said with some authority. “This place was designed to keep movement between neighborhoods inconvenient.”

  “Why would someone design a city like that?” Tilda asked.

  “To keep people in their place.”

  Deskata whistled sharply and everyone looked at him, then followed his gaze to the broken obelisk.

  “Company,” John said as he drew his sword behind his shield.

  Standing in front of the dais beneath
the broken column were six figures in hooded white robes, each holding across its body a stout weapon with almost as much blade as shaft, something like shortened halberds or glaives. Tilda was sure they had not been there a moment before.

  “Archers,” John said as an order, quietly but with the tone he would have used as a Legion Centurion. Tilda pulled an arrow from the open quiver on her back and nocked it to the string, while Zeb stepped up beside her with his ready crossbow. John moved a bit to the left of them, shield raised and his sword still behind it, while Shikashe stepped out to the right with his hands near the matching pommels of his swords.

  For several moments no one moved. Not much detail could be perceived at the distance, which was beyond Tilda’s range of anything but a high arcing shot, but if any of the shrouded figures did so much as twitch it went unnoticed.

  “Perhaps they are a party of adventurers?” Heggenauer asked without sounding very hopeful. The acolyte was keeping protectively close to Amatesu and Nesha-tari.

  “They are not human,” the shukenja said with some authority. Tilda glanced back at her and saw that Amatesu had slid a tonfa from her sleeve into her hand, a peasant weapon of the Far West based on the cranking handle of a mill stone. It was a heavy square club not so different than a Miilarkian buksu, but iron-shod on one side and with a pin through the end as a handle.

  “Does anybody want to talk to these guys?” Zeb asked.

  Uriako Shikashe abruptly barked at the figures, startling the party but getting no response from the strangers. He drew his katana with one hand, and made a beckoning gesture with the other.

  “There are moments when I hate that man,” Tilda heard Zeb mutter.

  There was movement then, though still not from the shrouded figures. On the dais above and behind them a seventh shape appeared, strolling out from behind the broken obelisk. This one was not in white but instead seemed to be wearing some sort of suit of dark, charcoal gray, complete with a waistcoat. His head was uncovered and he had jet-black hair, and a forked beard. His skin was a pale, ashy gray and his eyes smoldered red, even from across the distance.