The orc remained impassive, gazing stoically back at Logan. He turned to Kloin.
“My pass, if you wish to see it, though it seems to be somewhat illegible now, I’m afraid. I’ll have to procure a new one from the town watchmaster.”
He made a show of the mud-smeared paper, letting the men-at-arms wonder whether he’d seen Kloin throw the pass in the dirt earlier. That seemed to do it. Kloin nodded.
“My apologies, sir. We didn’t realize he was your strong-arm. We thought he was another vagabond looking to cause trouble. We’ve had too many of those here lately.”
“An entirely understandable mistake,” Logan said brusquely. “My thanks for finding him for me, captain.”
As he spoke he made brief eye contact with the orc, before remounting Ishbel and taking back her reins. He snapped his fingers, summoning the orc from the midst of the men-at-arms.
“Come, Kruk! We’ve wasted enough time as it is. If I am late for my appointment with the master of the roc hatcheries, you will be sharing the horse’s feed again for the rest of the week!”
After a moment’s hesitation, the orc fell in alongside Ishbel. Logan fished in the heavy-looking purse hanging from his saddle’s pommel and tossed a silver crown towards Kloin, which the captain caught deftly.
“A token of my thanks, for your assistance,” Logan said, touching his spurs to his mount’s flanks. “Rest assured I shall put in a good word with the baroness when I next sup with her.”
He’d made it a good ten paces, the orc still sticking by his side, before Kloin answered.
“Sir?”
Logan fought the urge to dig his spurs in, wondering if he’d overdone the act. He twisted in the saddle.
“Captain?”
“Be careful,” Kloin said, examining the coin. “These are troubled times in Forthyn. Some of the good people of Highmont may not be quite as… accepting of outsiders as I am. Adventurers aren’t welcome.”
Logan managed to summon up a smile, silently damning the arrogant, unwelcoming bastard. “Don’t worry, captain. Neither of us intend to outstay our welcome.”
• • •
He said nothing to the orc until they had turned up the next street and then paused in the shadows of an alleyway. Logan dismounted, tied the uncomplaining Ishbel to a hitching post at the alley’s entrance, and paused to check the street beyond was quiet before turning to the orc looming behind him.
“I believe this is yours,” he said, fishing into his cloak’s pocket. He drew out his travel pass, then the dirty one he’d taken off Kloin, and beneath it found the scrap of paper that had brought him halfway across Terrinoth. On it, written in a heavy but legible hand, was a short note. Remember Sudreyr. The White Roc Tavern, Highmont. Beneath it was a signature, an X bisected by a vertical line – the mark of a pathfinder of the Broken Plains. Logan held the paper out.
“You came,” the orc grunted, looking down at the note he had written without taking it.
“And lucky you are, too,” Logan said. “Fighting seven men-at-arms all at the same time is a bit much at your age, Durik.”
The orc lunged. Before he could react, Logan found himself being crushed in a fearsome bearhug. He wheezed, accidentally inhaling the orc’s musky armpit, and gave the big pathfinder a pat on the back.
“Easy there, ‘Kruk,’” he managed. Durik broke the hug and held Logan at arms’ length, golden eyes surveying him in the alleyway’s fetid gloom.
“You have grown old, little rogue,” he said. “And you are still a skinny wretch.”
“That’s skinny, rich wretch to you, pathfinder,” Logan corrected, returning the unclaimed letter to his pocket. “I was quite happily enjoying my retirement before your little message. All this way just for insults. I see you haven’t changed!”
Durik laughed at the faux outrage and gave Logan a meaty slap on the shoulder. “And you still talk too fast! It will be just like old times.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Logan said. “Are you going to tell me just what ‘it’ is? Why did you bring me all the way out here? And how did you find me in the first place?”
“How did Pathfinder Durik, chief scout of the Guk’gor tribe and first master of the Wilderness, find you?” Durik echoed, bearing his tusks in a grin. Logan pouted.
“Then at least tell me I haven’t traveled all this way just to swap old stories, O great pathfinder? Actually, no. Please tell me that’s exactly what I’ve traveled all this way for, and that there won’t be any sort of harebrained adventure that’s finally going to finish us both off?”
“It’s a job,” Durik answered.
“I rather feared it would be.”
“If you feared, you would not be here, little rogue.”
“What does it involve?”
“I will show you. Get back on your horse.”
Logan huffed but did as the orc suggested, untying Ishbel as Durik fondled the horse’s muzzle and fed her an apple he produced from a tusker-pelt satchel. Ishbel crunched noisily as Logan clambered into the saddle.
“If we get accosted by any more pea-skull men-at-arms, let me do the talking,” he said. “How you even managed to gain entry to a town like this is beyond me.”
“The plains and forest and mountains are my domain,” Durik said, making way so Logan could walk Ishbel into the street. “But even in a town like this, it is easier to travel unseen than you might think. Make for the castle.”
“The castle,” Logan repeated in surprise. “You couldn’t even lay low in a tavern by the east gate without being hounded by a pack of guards. How far do you think you’ll get up the esplanade?”
“I have a letter,” Durik said.
“The one that oaf of a captain assumed was a forgery? The one that’s now crumpled and caked with mud? How did you get a travel pass within the walls anyway? The town watch doesn’t exactly seem welcoming to humans, let alone an old Broken Plain nomad with more scars than teeth.”
“I was summoned here,” the orc replied simply.
“You were summoned to Forthyn?” Logan asked, his voice colored by his surprise. They were climbing the street once more, passing a small yard where a set of wheelwright’s apprentices were hammering iron strakes. Logan had to force himself to keep his voice down.
“Who summoned you?” he demanded.
“Baroness Adelynn.”
“The ruler of one of the twelve baronies of Forthyn summoned you, a Broken Plains orc, express to her citadel?”
“She summoned a master tracker and a hero of the lost city of Sudanya,” Durik corrected.
“Well no wonder those men-at-arms thought the letter was a forgery. Kellos’s flames, what have I gotten myself into?”
Durik said nothing, walking alongside Ishbel. A sudden thought occurred to Logan, one that caused an unexpected mixture of both worry and hope.
“Is Dezra here?” he asked. “Or Ulma?”
“I sent the same letter to all of you,” Durik said. “The little alchemist responded first. She arrived here three days ago and left yesterday to Upper Forthyn. She is traveling ahead of us.”
“For the love of all the gods, what is there for us in Upper Forthyn? It’s the only place I can image that’s more inhospitable than here. And what about Dezra?”
“The sorceress has not responded,” Durik said. “I fear my letter did not find her.”
“Not such a mighty tracker after all, then?” Logan asked. Durik said nothing.
To the left of them the street had opened up into a square of leveled ground, set before the arching windows and impressive clock tower of what Logan took to be Highmont’s main guildhall. The space was occupied by the afternoon market, an artificial town in miniature – open-sided wagons and portable stalls formed little streets and alleyways, bedecked in pelts and rugs, dashed through with colorful silks and exotic e
mbroidery. The air was pungent with the smells of fresh meat and fish, spices and manure, and filled with the chatter of hagglers, the cries of sellers and the lowing of cattle from the livestock pens. It was, Logan considered, the perfect spectacle of a noisy, smelly, dirty provincial town.
They were forced to make way for a fresh herd of tuskers being driven down the street, the undersides of their shaggy red pelts matted with muck, their breath steaming in the cold sunlight. They were being chivvied along by a pair of northern clansmen, both youths, their foreheads marked with blue woad. They brandished sticks at the beasts and shouted at them in a language Logan didn’t understand. He saw the trio of town guardsman standing by the entrance to the square eyeing the boys darkly, and was abruptly thankful of their presence – if Highmont’s men-at-arms were considering their dislike for the northern clans they were at least too busy to be doing the same towards the likes of Durik. Logan set Ishbel back on the street after the herd had passed by, grimacing at how their hooves had churned the dirt and dung into a quagmire.
The upper slopes of the town lay ahead. Highmont sat upon a steep hill that gave the town its name – the high mont, or mound. The streets closest to the wall that circled the hill’s base were, typically, the poorest. The higher a traveler climbed, the wealthier the neighborhoods he found himself in. Here, in the shadow of the pinnacle crag that bore the town’s citadel, the houses were wider and more regular, with slate roofs and exterior wall carvings decorated with rocs and drakes or hunting hounds and deer. A few were even built from stone. The crowds were thinner, and Logan noted a more genteel style of dress – nothing to match his own quality, of course, but garb more befitting the denizens of one of the baronial capitals of Terrinoth. A few passers-by even nodded to him, though they gave Durik a wide birth. For the most part, orcs in Lower Forthyn served as bodyguards, enforcers and hired muscle. That at least gave them a believable dynamic to work with. The last thing he needed was word getting out that Durik the Pathfinder had been spotted abroad in Forthyn with a handsome old human rogue.
Logan had almost started to relax, flashing a smile at two young women snatching wide-eyed glances at the orc. Then he spotted the castle esplanade ahead. It was a cleared, cobbled space leading up the citadel’s crag, a mustering point or kill zone depending on the needs of the town’s garrison. To the right of it stood a squat tower, the guardhouse and headquarters of the town watch. Ahead and above, the citadel itself loomed, sheer gray walls above a sheer gray rock face, flanked by circular towers and overhung with machicolations and wooden hoardings. The heraldic pennants of Highmont, Forthyn and the town’s guilds and burgesses fluttered from its ramparts, while a silk banner bearing the personal arms of Baroness Adelynn blazed in the autumnal sunlight above the keep that crowned the crag. The gatehouse at the end of the esplanade had its drawbridge lowered over a sheer chasm carved into the approaching slope, and its portcullis was raised. There were, however, rather a lot of men-at-arms and watchmen between them and the open gateway. Logan gulped.
“My travel pass doesn’t extend to the damned citadel,” he muttered to Durik. “How are we supposed to get in there with only your ruined piece of paper?”
“I thought you would talk us in,” Durik said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“For the love of Fortuna,” Logan snapped. “You’re the one who received a personal summons from the baroness, not me! I’m just a very wealthy, very retired gentleman of fortune. I don’t even know what I’m doing here… Ah, captain!”
The last words were uttered to a man-at-arms who had just stepped out of the guardhouse as they passed by. It was Kloin. He was wearing a smile that looked decidedly unfriendly.
“Well met again, Lord Durik,” he said, falling in alongside as they carried on up the esplanade. “It is Durik, is it not? That’s the name I seem to recall from your pass. You said you gave it to the orc, but it does belong to you, doesn’t it? That’s what you said?”
The captain carried on before Logan could conjure a response, his arrogant tone forcing the rogue to wrestle with the urge to lash out at him. “Funny name though, if you don’t mind me saying, sir. Sounds a little bit… orcish to me. If you don’t mind me saying.”
Logan tried to mask his fear with a glare, fishing in his cloak pocket for the pass, pretending to fumble it while he made sure the dirt had fully obscured Durik’s name. He’d been regretting traveling under a false identity since reaching Highmont – several rather rampant parties of debt collectors on the road east had made the ruse a necessity. Now it had become over-complicated.
“It’s Dur-Roc, captain,” he said imperiously. “You should remember a name like that. My mother is second cousin to your baroness. Not that you’d be able to read the name now, thanks to your earlier clumsiness.”
He waved the ruined paper in Kloin’s face. The captain was still smiling.
“My mistake, sir. It’s strange though. Downright unusual. I got back to the wardroom just a few moments ago. It just so happened that the last shift from the town gate had also recently returned. A few of the lads said there was a gentleman who’d just arrived at the town, a curious sort of fellow. His pass said his name was Gelbin. Not from around here either. West Terrinoth type. Wealthy, but not born to it, apparently. A bit vulgar, you know the sort. Almost rogue-like. Come to think of it, the description sounded a lot like you, sir.”
The drawbridge was barely a dozen paces away, the portcullis-fanged maw of the gatehouse over it. Kloin put his hand on Ishbel’s bridle, bringing her to a stop. A trio of men-at-arms, heavily armored in plate mail and carrying maces, began to approach from the gate’s archway.
“This is an outrage,” Logan began to say, deciding his only hope was to push the “furious nobleman” trick. Kloin spoke through him.
“I don’t think your name is Durik,” he said. “That may be your orc friend’s name, but it’s not yours. As a matter of fact, I don’t think it’s Gelbin either.”
“Trouble, captain?” one of the armored men-at-arms asked as he approached. Kloin’s smile broadened and he held Logan’s gaze as he answered.
“I hope so.”
“Listen, captain,” Logan said, dropping the act and leaning over in his saddle, almost conspiratorial. He lowered his voice. “You’re on the brink of making a very unfortunate mistake. Unfortunate for you, that is. Not me. Let us pass and we’ll forget both this little incident and the one back down in the town.”
“I like being intimidated even less than I like being tricked,” Kloin replied, his smile disappearing like a spring frost. “I don’t know who you are, or what you hope to achieve by talking your way into the citadel, but I fully intend to find out. Probably as slowly and as painfully as possible.”
He turned to the men-at-arms who had approached and pointed at Logan.
“Seize them both!”
Logan’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword, and Durik made to draw his dagger, tusks bared. That was as far as anyone got before an angry shout cut the air.
“Kloin!”
Logan saw the captain close his eyes in a look of pure frustration, struggling to contain his own relief as the man turned towards the citadel’s open gate. There, flanked by several more men-at-arms, stood an aged woman. She was tall and gaunt, draped in the furs of a thick tusker pelt, the garment drawn over what looked like several layers of thin, gossamer silk. Her hair was silver-gray like her clothing, and she wore it long, hanging down almost to her waist. Her features were severe, haughty, with an air of nobility. Logan suspected that in her youth she had been both very beautiful and very used to having her every word obeyed. He had no doubt that the latter was still the case.
“What are you doing, Captain Kloin?” she demanded in a firm voice, striding out from the gatehouse’s shadow and across the drawbridge.
“Lady Damhán!” Kloin exclaimed, forcing a smile. “I thought you were atten
ding the noon guild council?”
“You make it sound as though you didn’t expect to see me, Kloin,” the woman said. “Or that you wish you hadn’t. Why have you waylaid the baroness’s guests?”
“I didn’t realize they were the baroness’s guests,” Kloin said, his expression closing up. It was clear where this was going. Logan couldn’t quite keep the smile off his face.
“Did you not show him the pass I gave you?” the woman demanded of Durik. She had reached them across the drawbridge, and, despite her apparent frailty, looked the orc in the eye as she spoke. She was almost as tall as he was.
“The captain struggled to believe we are who we say we are,” Logan said, glancing sideways at the helpless Kloin. The woman turned her gaze on him, and it was all he could do to hold it.
“It is difficult to judge just how great a transgression that is, given that I don’t know who you are myself,” she said. “Though the evidence points towards Logan Lashley, former rogue, now master of Sixspan Hall. Am I correct?”
“At your service, my lady,” Logan responded, inclining his head while wondering just what had given him away. He needed to have a word with Durik about sharing his identity too readily with his employers. The last thing he needed was one of those damned debt collectors picking up his trail again.
“My name is Lady Damhán,” the woman said. “And if you are quite done being harassed by the captain here, we have a council meeting to interrupt.”
Without another word, Damhán turned and strode back across the drawbridge. Logan glanced at Durik, who shrugged.
“Logan Lashley,” Kloin said, his voice incredulous. “The Logan Lashley of Sixspan Hall? One of the Borderland Four?”
“If you want to hear some of my adventure stories, captain, you now know where to find me,” Logan said, patting Kloin on the helmet before spurring Ishbel forward across the drawbridge. Durik followed him.
“I’ll see you again, Logan,” Kloin called out after him, his voice dark. Logan didn’t turn, but made an obscene gesture over his shoulder. The gatehouse’s shadows swallowed him up.
The Doom of Fallowhearth Page 2