by D. P. Prior
“This ol’ dwarf came rolling home.”
The instant Ilesa got to her feet, she was slammed back down by a wall of bludgeoning limbs. Nameless roared and cut a swath through rotting flesh, spilling gore all over her. Nils was up and running, but an arm took him across the throat, and he dropped like a stone.
Nameless was relentless, swinging his axe in great chopping arcs, the inexorable press of zombies doing nothing to curb his good mood.
“This ol’ dwarf…” Hack. “He killed… ten? Eleven?” Chop. “Shog it, lost count.” Crunch. “You hear that, you putrid shoggers? Made me lose track.”
He drew the axe back for another blow and froze. The zombie before him was suddenly shorter, and sporting a beard.
“What the shog?”
He twisted away, seeking another target, but each face was now thick with hair, and deep-set eyes bright with moisture looked at him in horror. He whirled this way and that, heart pounding in his ears, breaths coming faster and faster.
“No,” he muttered. “What have I…? Oh, sweet Arnoch, no.”
“Nameless!” Nils screamed. “Nameless, help me!”
He backed toward the voice, stumbled and nearly fell.
“Nameless!” Ilesa this time, shrill and despairing.
He took a shaky step toward her, saw the zombie about to rip out her throat, raised his axe. But it wasn’t a zombie… or was it?
“No,” he moaned. “I can’t. No more. I can’t…”
Cold hands gripped him from behind, spread their chill into his bones. Faces pressed up close, one moment ghoulish with peeling skin, the next dwarfish and terrified, accusing. Rank breath assailed his nostrils… or was it stale beer?
He tried to lift his axe, but his arms had turned to lead.
“Nameless!”—Nils.
“Nameless!”—Ilesa.
Then each of the dwarven faces crowding around him called out, building into a garbled chorus that made him drop his axe so he could cover his ears. He spun to face each and every one of them; those he had betrayed; his people.
His victims.
Nameless fell to his knees, pounding at his ears with his palms. Fingers tugged at his armor, curled around his throat. A lone voice within cried out danger, but all he could see was his kin, and the terrible things he’d done to them filled his mind to bursting.
He began to choke as clammy hands throttled the life from him. The skin of his arms was aflame with cuts and tears. A swollen cloud obscured his vision. He was falling. Falling.
A crack of thunder.
A rush of heat, as if he were caught in a sandstorm in the scorching sun.
The hands left him, let him topple face first to the dirt. There were voices. Voices he dimly recognized.
“Run! Come on, before they close the gap!”—Silas. A way off by the sounds of it.
“But Nameless…”—The lad, Nils.
“Forget him.”—Ilesa. “Come on!”
The dirt tasted wholesome, gave Nameless something to cling to. He was swooning, spiraling into a bottomless pit.
“No way.”—Nils again. “I’m a Night Hawk, remember? We don’t leave our mates.”
Hands grabbed him roughly, pulled him across the ground. It felt like someone had opened a window to let in the noise from outside, and the moaning started again, a great swelling tide rolling toward him.
“For shog’s sake,” Ilesa said, and Nameless felt himself hoisted to his feet and dragged along on the tips of his toes.
“Move it!” Silas shouted from somewhere up ahead.
“We’re moving,” Nils said. “We’re moving.”
Nameless shook his head, tried to clear it. He needed to speak, needed to say something; but whatever it was swirled from his mind like a dark fog.
“Quickly,’ Silas said. “And don’t look back.”
They half-carried Nameless now, his feet barely touching the ground. He could hear Ilesa panting in one ear, Nils in the other.
The groaning was falling behind, but they kept up their pace. Something flicked into Nameless’s face, caused him to blink. He saw blurs of green and brown, felt leaves brushing his skin, brambles pricking at him. The heat of the suns gave way to a cool dampness, and at last they slowed to a walk.
“They’re going back,” Silas said. “Put him down. We can rest up here a while.”
“Thank shog for that,” Ilesa said, ducking out from under Nameless’s arm and letting him tumble toward the ground.
Nils hung on best he could, then got down on one knee to straighten Nameless out, make him comfy.
“I remember,” Nameless mumbled.
“What?” Nils said. “What do you remember?”
“My axe. I dropped my…” But before he could finish, his jaw set like dwarvish cement, and an old familiar sludge oozed through his veins, cloyed his thoughts, until he was nothing more than a brooding presence entombed in his own flesh.
NILS
The three moons took over the sky with unnatural quickness. One minute it was day, the next it was night. Nils was shivering, his clothes still sodden from where he’d washed them in a stream to get off the worst of the shite. Better on than off, though, he told himself. Last thing he wanted was for Ilesa to see him starkers.
He was relieved when Silas clapped his hands and a fire sprang up in their midst, complete with a pig on a spit, turning and dripping fat that sizzled in the flames.
Fresh baked bread appeared in a hamper at Nils’s feet.
Silas winked, though there was little humor in it. His face was deathly pale. It may have been the pallid glow of Raphoe, but Nils thought the wizard had sickened rapidly since their flight from the village. His cheeks appeared sunken, his eyes bloodshot and set in deep cavities. He had the look of a skull about him. Even his hair was thinner, somehow, straggly, and in need of a good wash.
Ilesa looked about as on edge as Nils felt. She turned her nose up at the display of magic and constantly shifted from foot to foot. Her fingers brushed the pommel of her sword, eyes flitting this way and that, as if she expected the zombies to lumber from the trees at any moment. Nils caught her watching Nameless once or twice, but the dwarf did nothing to hold her attention. He was flat out, or so it seemed. Nils couldn’t be too sure, because Nameless had his eyes open, although they were fixed and unblinking.
“Don’t all thank me at once,” Silas said as he seated himself cross-legged on the ground. “It might not look like much, but it’s quite an effort rustling up food for four.”
Nils grabbed some still-warm bread and crammed a chunk in his mouth. “Thanks,” he grunted.
“Don’t mention it.”
Ilesa crouched by the spitted pig and sliced off a haunch with her dagger. “Great wizard like you, fries a couple of dozen zombies and then makes a fuss about a minor cantrip.”
“So minor that it escaped your meager abilities.” Silas’s eyelids drooped shut, and he steepled his fingers beneath his nose.
“I make no claims to wizardry.” Ilesa sat back against a tree.
“Yeah, right,” Nils said, reaching for the pig and realizing he had nothing but his sword to cut it with. He’d nearly lost a finger last time he did that, and what with the way his luck was going, he didn’t want to chance it. “Mind if I…?”
“Help yourself.” Ilesa reversed her blade and passed it to him.
“Yeah, like I was saying,” Nils said as he sawed himself a slice of meat, “I wouldn’t call them spells of yours meager. Gaw, had them fooled good and proper, you did.”
Ilesa held her hand out until Nils returned her dagger. “Who says it was a spell?”
“Well what else—?” Silas started, but Ilesa cut him off.
“I’ve told you nothing and see no reason for that to change.”
“Mystery woman, eh?” Silas looked up, a thin smile crossing his face. “I’m impressed.”
Nils felt the tension between them like the heaviness that sets in before a thunderstorm. How many times had
he felt that at home? How many times had he stopped Mom and Dad going at each other hammer and tongs with a bit of a laugh and a joke?
“Should’ve seen her as a zombie, Silas. Dead funny, she was. Get it? Dead funny?”
“Shut up, piss pants,” Ilesa said, sucking the grease from her fingers.
Nils gave a shrill laugh and swiftly tried to deepen it. “It weren’t piss,” he said, praying the silvery moonlight would keep her from seeing his cheeks redden. “It was blood and pig shit.”
“Whatever.”
“It shogging was, I tell you. Silas—”
“I’m staying out of it.” The wizard still hadn’t touched the food. His fingers were drumming against the satchel that contained his big leather book, and he had a faraway look in his eyes. “Why don’t you two lovebirds just kiss and make up?”
Ilesa gave a contemptuous snort that stung Nils down to the bone.
“Shog off,” Nils said, doing his best to sound as dismissive of her as she’d been of him. “Credit me with some taste.”
“Wanker,” Ilesa said, her mouth curling into a knowing smile that had Nils seething inside.
“I ain’t rising to that,” he said, rummaging about in his belt pouch and pulling out the crumpled map he’d copied by hand before setting off to bring Nameless to the borderlands.
“Oh, please,” Ilesa said. “Don’t pretend you’re going to read.”
“It ain’t reading,” Nils said, holding the map up for them both to see.
Silas leaned over and snatched it from his hand. “You draw this?”
Nils nodded, not sure whether to feel pride or embarrassment.
“Not bad. The lettering’s a bit shaky, like it was written by a drunken spider.”
Nils snatched it back. “Well, I ain’t no writer, am I?”
“Ain’t no magsman, neither.” Ilesa mimicked his voice.
“Wanna bet? I can thieve better’n most. They don’t let just anyone into the Night Hawks, you know.”
“No, just whiney boys who piss their pants.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Ilesa said.
“Least I don’t abandon my friends.”
“No friend of mine. Maybe that’s something you better learn, if you’re gonna live long in this business. Just because you’re traveling with someone, doesn’t mean you owe them your life. Next time, I’ll leave you both behind. This isn’t any place for cowards and wannabe rogues.”
Nils half-expected Nameless to leap up and clobber her for disrespecting him, but the dwarf may as well have been dead, he was so still.
“Whatever you might say about our friend the Nameless Dwarf here,” Silas said, “he’s no coward. Believe me, I’ve seen firsthand.”
“Me too,” Nils said. “Saw him kick your arse, Missy-I’m-so-tough.”
Ilesa’s eyes flashed like a cat’s in the dark. “We didn’t fight, if you remember.”
“No,” Nils guffawed. “You shat yourself and legged it before he could get hold of you.”
That shut her up. She just looked down at her dagger and twisted it in the earth. A heavy silence ensued, the only sounds the crackling of the flames, the spitting of fat, and the drum, drum, drum of Silas’s fingers on his satchel.
Finally, Silas sighed and took out the tome. He wetted his lips, drew in a deep breath, and began to leaf through its thick pages.
Nils glanced at Ilesa out the corner of his eye, but she had her head turned away, chin tilted to the sky, looking for all the world like she was lost in thought.
Ain’t no fury like a woman slighted, Dad used to say. Nils reckoned he would’ve been right about this one. The thought of her sticking him while he slept gave him the jitters.
“What’s that, then?” He shuffled closer to Silas and peered at the open page.
Silas narrowed his eyes and held the book out to him. “See for yourself.”
Nils recognized some of the letters but couldn’t make no words out of them. There were strange squiggles, too, and odd pictures made up of lines and numbers. “Can’t read,” he said in a low voice, trusting Ilesa wouldn’t hear.
“Not at all?”
“No need for it, Dad said. Couldn’t see no use for it.”
“No use? But I thought you said your father was—”
“Boss of the Night Hawks. Yeah, he is. That stunted little freak Shadrak made him up just before he cleared off.”
“Shadrak the Unseen?”
“That’s him. You know him?”
“Heard of him.” Silas closed the book and let it rest on his lap while he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “What’s he like, this dad of yours.”
“Top man in the guild. Reckon everyone knows him, and everyone respects him.”
Silas fixed Nils with an unnerving stare. His pupils had swollen to black pits that made Nils want to look away, in case he saw something he didn’t want to see.
Suddenly, Silas was racked with coughing. He put his fist to his mouth, and when he stilled, there were dark flecks on the back of his hand.
“A man…” Silas coughed again, this time to clear his throat. “Man who doesn’t see the use of reading and writing…” He shook his head. “What kind of man is that?”
Nils felt his hackles rising. He was about to give Silas a piece of his mind, but the wizard raised a hand and went on.
“Didn’t you ever want to learn? I mean, haven’t you ever seen a book or a letter and wondered what it says?”
Nils racked his brains. None of the kids in the neighborhood could read, and books weren’t things you came across that much. Except at the school, that is, but he’d only been there a few short weeks, and Magistra Archyr hadn’t exactly been the most patient teacher.
“Reckon it’s enough to write my own name. Beyond that, don’t see no need for it. People that read too much go soft in the head, my dad says. It’s all just someone else’s ideas. Reckon I got enough of my own.”
Silas fished about in his pocket and produced a slim black tube flecked with green.
“That scarolite?” Nils bent forward to take a closer look.
“From the mines outside Arx Gravis,” Silas said. “Had it made by a mage called Magwitch the Meddler according to some instructions I found in the Academy’s scriptorium. You’ve seen a quill, right? Well, this does the same thing, only you don’t need to keep dipping it in ink. It’s called a pen.”
“Must’ve cost an arm and a leg,” Nils said. “What with it being scarolite and all.” Not to mention being made by Magwitch. Probably cost the other arm and the other leg, too, from what Nils had heard.
“It’s yours.” Silas tossed it to him. “If you can write your name for me.”
Silas reached inside his long coat and drew out a leather-bound notepad, like the sort Crapstan the Money used as a ledger for keeping track of the guild’s merchandise. “Here, write it on the flyleaf.”
Nils took the book and opened it with shaky fingers. “Well, I don’t know about—”
He watched as Ilesa rose from her spot by the tree and prodded Nameless with her boot. The dwarf groaned but remained perfectly still. She sat beside him and pressed her fingers to his neck, tilting her head to one side as if listening.
“Go on,” Silas said. “It’s all right if you’ve forgotten.”
“Look, mate,” Nils said. “I know what your game is, but I don’t need no help with writing. I told you—”
“Write it,” Silas said.
Nils swallowed and pressed the pen to the paper. He glanced up at Silas and then made his mark as swiftly and confidently as he could. Silas turned the book round so he could see.
“Is that what you want me to call you from now on?”
Nils felt his cheeks flush again. “What’s wrong with it?”
Silas gave a good-natured chuckle and turned the book back for Nils to read. “It says Mills Farting.”
Nils shut the book. “No it don’t.”
“How do you know?”
“
Beause…” Nils started and then saw where this was going. “I spelled it how Magistra Archyr showed me, all right. If you don’t like it, take it up with her.”
Silas reached over and put his hand on Nils’s arm. “You’re right, Nils. It didn’t say ‘Farting’. I was just trying to make a point. It could have said that, and you’d never have known.”
“I—”
“Would you?”
Nils dropped his chin to his chest. “No.”
Silas’s gaze wandered toward Ilesa and Nameless.
Nils craned his neck to see. Ilesa had her hand inside Nameless’s chainmail and appeared to be rubbing his chest.
“You did spell it ‘Mils’, though. My point is, if you’re going to get on in the underworld, you need to be able to read and write, otherwise how are you going to know when you’re being duped?”
Nils nodded, all the while watching what Ilesa was doing. “Too late to learn now,” he said as she undid Nameless’s belt.
“It’s never too late,” Silas said. “Let me teach you. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s illiteracy in a grown man.”
Grown man? That’s something Nils hadn’t been called before. The sound of it made his chest swell. “Well, if you don’t take the piss—Hey, what you doing? Get your hand out of his britches.”
Ilesa gave him a sultry smile. “I’m trying to rouse him. In case you two scholars haven’t noticed, he’s not moved an inch since we brought him here.”
Silas stood and went to frown down at Nameless. “Touching to see you’re so caring all of a sudden.”
“Like you can talk,” she said. “Back there, you were just as ready to leave him behind as I was.”
“So. Can’t save everyone, you know. You could at least show some gratitude for me saving you from having your guts ripped out like a string of sausages.”
Ilesa turned her cattish eyes on him. “Yes, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. How come a half-rate sorcerer who whines about magicking up a bit of food can cast a spell strong enough to blow a hole through all those zombies?”
“Book,” Nameless mumbled, as if in his sleep.
Nils got up and went to him, turning the dwarf’s face from side to side and peering into his eyes. Nameless blinked, and his lips parted. They were dry and cracked.