by Lee Carlon
The Lord of Frake’s Peak
The Bastard Cadre #4
Lee Carlon
Cyborg Books
Copyright © 2017 by Lee Carlon
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
The Lord of Frake’s Peak
1. Dead Men’s Boots
2. The Wicked and the Unjust
3. Peace Talks
4. Martyrs
5. Turintar
6. A Good Man
7. In This Life and the Next
8. Welcome Party
9. Rough Diplomacy
10. Uncomfortable Possibilities
11. The Cost of Peace
12. Perspective
13. The Varied Paths to Peace
14. Unnatural Allies
15. A Rigged Game
16. Chosen
17. Unshakable Certainties
Author’s Note
Immortal Intrigues
Also by Lee Carlon
The Lord of Frake’s Peak
Two years after the Cleansing, Lord Obdurin’s enemies are gathered against him, but Obdurin refuses to wait for the conqueror’s terms or the assassin’s blade and embarks on a bold plan to reshape Central Newterra. Other players: chosen, immortals, and at least one aspirant who would claim Obdurin’s place as The Lord of Frake’s Peak are determined to beat him at his own game.
Vincent d’Rhyne, the son of Lord Obdurin’s predecessor—Lord Benshi—swore a debt of gratitude on the day Obdurin killed Vincent’s father and took Rhysin’s heart. Now eight years later, Vincent is given his chance to repay that debt, but did he misjudge Obdurin in his gratitude? Is Obdurin the peace loving man that he appears to be, or is he a subtle tyrant and much worse than bloodthirsty Lord Benshi ever was?
The Lord of Frake’s Peak is the fourth book in an ambitious epic science fiction saga that features anti-heroes, heroines, and villains in a fight against the Gods. Set in a futuristic dystopia where dragons soar above cities of technological splendor, and what’s left of humanity seems determined to destroy itself.
1
Dead Men’s Boots
492nd year of the True Gods
2 years after the Cleansing
Chen’s scream still reverberated in Vincent d’Rhyne’s mind.
He kept his eyes forward but didn’t see the empty corridor through Frake’s Stronghold stretching out before him. The sound of two sets of boot heels striking the smooth stone floor echoed away from him. He kept his feet moving so as not to break the rhythm. If he could focus on the sound of the footfalls, Chen’s screams might leave him. The blood on Vincent’s face and hands had dried, and his skin crawled with anxiety to scrub it away. His throat was dry, and he ached in several places where he could feel the aftereffects of the blast that had detonated in Peak City and killed Chen.
The man next to him spoke, “You were lucky to survive.”
“Yes, sir. Lucky.” The words were an automatic response to a superior officer. Vincent didn’t know the officer’s identity, or even how he himself came to be walking along the disused corridors where he had played as a child, so he fell back on protocol to get through.
Chen was still alive when he’d reached her. Her legs were gone, and she was blind from the flash, but she could still talk... and scream. It couldn’t have taken her long to die, but Vincent had held her hands for an eternity.
“Your companion—”
“Is dead, sir.” Vincent had no wish to talk about the dead.
Chen would crowd his thoughts later when he was alone. Chen and the others who had died in this war with Damar. Chen and the people who had died in the Cleansing. Vincent’s own—
Vincent killed the thought. They could crowd his thoughts later.
Why didn’t she listen to me? Vincent thought. She should have let me reset the blast counter. She was never going to get away in time.
“You’re being reassigned,” the man in lockstep with Vincent said.
“Yes, sir.” Surprised, Vincent glanced at the man and was confused when he realized it was Councilor Walden. Not an officer at all, but one of Lord Obdurin’s advisers. Why did I assume he was an officer? How did I get here?
He remembered being pulled away from Chen’s remains. He glanced at Walden’s hands for signs of blood, but the councilor’s hands were perfectly clean. He pushed the memory away, knowing Walden wouldn’t have been that close to the frontline.
Did he say reassigned?
They see it too. Every mission. Every companion. Everything I touch.
“The people you’ll be working with…”
Walden kept talking, but Vincent stopped walking and listening. He thought, Don’t they see what happens to the people with me?
“I should be assigned to missions I can accomplish on my own.”
Walden stopped to face Vincent. “Of course, it goes without saying you need to prove yourself in any company you serve with, but these—”
It’s useless, he doesn’t understand. He won’t listen. “I understand, sir.”
Walden looked at Vincent for a moment longer. “What you did was incredibly brave.”
“Which company, sir?”
Walden sighed. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Vincent acknowledged Walden’s words with a nod, but he knew his expression betrayed him.
“It’s not a company as such,” Walden said and resumed their course along the corridor. “A handful of people picked for their skills and a singularity of purpose.”
“Yes, sir,” Vincent said, then thought, A singularity of purpose? A death-wish? That’s what they say about me. Am I to join a suicide squad then? Fine. Let’s end it.
Walden stopped at a closed door along the corridor. Vincent felt Walden watching him and knew he was trying to find the right words.
In the silence, Vincent looked at the door before them. He recognized it though he hadn’t thought of it for years, had probably never consciously thought about the door, but his battered mind seized onto the object before him and dredged up old recollections.
As a boy living in Frake’s Stronghold, Vincent had run messages back and forth from his father to his father’s cadres. Lord Benshi had presided over one of the most technologically advanced societies in history, but paranoid about bugging devices and electronic eavesdroppers he had used his sons as running boys.
In his mind’s eye, Vincent’s older brother Luke reached for the battered wooden door, but it opened before he laid a hand on it. A large man stinking of sweat peered down at them from the doorway.
“Yeah?”
Luke’s hand had trembled as he held out the folded paper Lord Benshi had entrusted to them.
At ten and twelve years old, both boys knew their father expected them to be attentive and report what they saw. They watched the large man read the note and stepped back when he turned his furious stare on them. Vincent remembered being too scared to run as the man came for them. If it hadn’t been for a voice from inside the barracks, Vincent thought that man might have killed them both in the corridor.
“They’re his sons.”
The large man ignored the comment for a second, but he eventually stopped and glowered down at the brothers before turning and kicking the already battered wooden door with a heavy boot. The boys had fled like startled desert rats, and Vincent hadn’t thought about the encounter again until now. He glanced down at the doo
r and saw the scar the large bondsan’s boot had left there all those years ago.
Walden still hadn’t opened the door.
Vincent thought, Give up. There are no right words.
He wondered again, How did I get here? He didn’t remember leaving the battlefield or traveling up Frake’s Peak to the stronghold. I lose the wrong parts. I remember every detail of Chen’s death and dozens of others, but mundane details, details I could bury myself in elude me. Even as he wished he could erase Chen’s death from his memory, he knew he would never choose to forget her or what she had done. You can’t honor the dead if you don’t remember them.
Tired of waiting, Vincent looked at Walden. The councilor’s hair was gray at the temples, and the crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes were pronounced. He was a slim, well-dressed man who looked better suited to a life of bureaucracy and meetings than dealing with men on the frontline, but he didn’t flinch from Vincent’s ragged, blood-soaked appearance, and Vincent thought he deserved some respect for that.
He’s uncomfortable knowing what I’ve seen, but when we part ways he can forget and go back to his life.
Walden gave up and pushed the door open.
The room looked smaller, diminished by time in the decades since Vincent had last been there. It was so far from everywhere in the stronghold that he was surprised people lived there at all. Before the Cleansing, living space had been guarded jealously, and even bondsan took status from the closeness of their barracks to the Lord of Frake’s Peak’s personal chambers, but the Cleansing had changed that. Now, people lived wherever they wanted to.
A blocky man with a scarred face and thick forearms sat on the edge of a couch sharpening a long sword with a stone. His head moved slightly to see who had entered the room, but he offered no greeting and continued working.
On one of two beds in the barracks, a sickly youth sat cross-legged with her eyes closed. Vincent looked away almost as soon as he saw her, the barely buried instinct to protect himself against infection asserting itself.
The other bed was at the far end of the barracks. It was immaculately made, and a sword had been placed on its center with the point toward the foot of the bed.
Great. I’m to fill a dead man’s shoes.
A fat man sat at a small table with a glass of red wine and a half empty bottle before him.
Walden indicated the sink in the far corner and told Vincent, “You can wash up over there. You’ll find fresh clothes in the lockers.”
“Will he now?” the man bent over the sword asked.
“Yes, Pete, he will,” Walden said.
Pete made a show of examining Vincent. “Couldn’t you find anyone greener?”
Vincent ignored the obvious taunt and crossed the room to the sink.
“He’d better not take any of Hull’s stuff,” Pete said.
Vincent glanced at the bed and then back at Pete. He said, “Understood.”
A woman dressed in leather armor designed as much for its appearance as for any practical benefit stepped into a doorway from an adjoining room. She wore several long knives on belts around her waist. The vambraces she wore were well used and scarred.
She looked at Vincent with a sleepy expression and asked, “Do you dance?”
Vincent only cared about washing Chen’s blood from his skin. He turned the water on and scrubbed his arms. Dance? What sort of circus is this?
“Dance? He’s as green as they come,” Pete said.
“He looks positively crimson to me,” the fat man said between sips of wine.
“Crimson, yeah, very good,” Pete said. “But you ain’t the one who’ll be relying on him in a tight spot are you? And it wouldn’t matter if you were. We ain’t all immortal, Fahlim. I say we’re better off without him. I’d rather have nobody at my back than a green recruit I ain’t had the chance to knock into shape. I ain’t risking my back to watch his.”
Vincent removed his torn, bloodstained shirt and resumed washing. He glanced sideways at Pete who was still perched on the edge of the couch halfway across the room.
The woman said, “I am Corsari, the rude one is Pete, he’s Fahlim, and the little-lost-girl is Doran.”
Vincent glanced at each person as they were named. He recognized Fahlim, another of Lord Obdurin’s advisers. The girl, Doran, was still cross-legged on her bed. Her eyes were closed, and she showed no sign of knowing there were other people present. A little-lost-girl. He hadn’t heard that phrase before, but it covered the situation well enough.
“It ain’t rude when you speak the truth,” Pete said. “People might say it’s rude, but that’s only because they’re too chicken-shit to speak it themselves.”
Vincent found the soap on the sink and lathered his arms. He didn’t want to deal with these people. He didn’t know why Walden had brought him here, and he didn’t care, but he recognized Pete’s attitude and knew he had to address it sooner or later.
“You seem like a man with an in-depth knowledge of chicken-shit,” Vincent said, figuring sooner was better than later.
“Oh,” Fahlim chuckled, “we didn’t know you were old friends.”
“Aye, I know it when I see it,” Pete said. “Take Fahlim, he’s so full of it I assume he eats it for breakfast.”
Vincent washed the soap from his arms, making his actions deliberate and unhurried.
“And you,” suddenly Pete’s voice was at Vincent’s ear.
Vincent started, he’d just looked at Pete, and he’d been halfway across the long barracks. Vincent hadn’t heard Pete move, and he hadn’t had enough time to cross the barracks unheard. Is he a skimmer too?
“I see it smeared all over you. It’s oozing out of your pores. You’d better watch your back!” Pete prodded Vincent hard between the shoulders with a thick finger.
Better now than later, Vincent thought.
He stepped back onto his right heel to make Pete think he would turn and fight, but as soon as he’d shifted his weight, he changed direction and skimmed. To everybody watching it would look like Vincent disappeared and reappeared an instant later behind Pete.
Vincent shoved Pete into the wall next to the sink. Pete’s face struck hard ceramic tiles, and Vincent held him there, not caring if his reaction to the usual fresh meat bullying went too far. He wished he were green. He wished he hadn’t seen or done half the things he’d seen and done, but that wasn’t so. Either way, he wasn’t going to be pushed around by this oaf.
“If we’re going to work together, I’ll watch your back and my own, even if you’re too chicken-shit to do your job,” Vincent said.
When Pete struggled against him without vanishing and coming at Vincent from a different direction, Vincent thought, He’s not a skimmer, so how did he get so close?
Corsari chuckled and said, “You should pick your dance partners with more care, Peter dear.”
“That’s enough,” Walden snapped from the center of the room.
Vincent let go of Pete and forced himself to continue washing Chen’s blood from his hands.
Pete leaned in close to Vincent, his bottom lip swollen. When Vincent glanced at the wall, he saw a smear of blood where Pete had struck it.
“We’ll have a talk later, you and me,” Pete said.
Vincent held Pete’s stare until Pete spat blood into the sink and walked away.
“I said enough, Pete,” Walden said.
“I heard what you said, I just ain’t interested. Why don’t you go back to sitting in council and arguing about what color the pretty new uniforms will be?”
Fahlim said, “Why, Pete, you’re the most charming specimen I have ever come across. Why is it you’re not happily married with a brood of children flocking around your ankles?”
Pete resumed sharpening his sword. “I’ve sired a brood, all right, I just ain’t claiming ‘em and spending my days wiping their shitty little behinds, that’s all. No need to hang around when the party is already over.”
Corsari said, “You must have a k
nack for meeting very stupid and very inebriated women.”
Pete grinned at her. “It’s just a matter of knowing where to look, sweetheart, but enough about me. Do you idiots know who this green sack of shit is?” When nobody answered Pete said, “Well I do, now that he’s cleaned that pretty makeup off his face, though I doubt he recognizes me. He’s Vincent d’Rhyne, Lord Benshi’s whelp.”
Fahlim sat forward with a surprised expression on his face, “Is that true?”
Vincent nodded. “Lord Benshi was my father.”
“And yet you stayed at Frake’s Peak when Lord Obdurin,” Fahlim paused dramatically as though looking for the right word.
“Killed him. Yes. Though I stayed in Peak City, not Frake’s Peak.”
“My, my, but Obdurin plays some interesting games,” Fahlim said.
“Stupid, careless games. He’s lucky he ain’t dead yet,” Pete said. “He should’ve killed this one too. Get rid of anybody with a connection to their predecessor and their God. That’s the normal course of action when a new lord takes the reigns, ain’t it?”
Vincent met Pete’s angry stare. Have our paths crossed before? Is he angry because of some past insult or just because of who I am?
“That’s a common occurrence,” Vincent said.
“Clearly not common enough,” Pete said.
“I am not my father,” Vincent said in as level a tone as he could manage. It was eight years since his father’s death and Lord Obdurin’s ascension to Lord of Rhyne, and Vincent still found himself saying those words to himself and others. It was almost a personal mantra. I am not my father.
“I was drafted into Lord Benshi’s army when I was twelve years old,” Pete’s words were hot with anger. “Do you know what sort of training they used to put recruits through? It was a point of honor with the Rhynsian armies under Lord Benshi that only the toughest survived the training.”