Shadow Phantoms

by H. P. Mallory

  Panic! At the Disco blared from my headphones at an ungodly volume. I managed to walk the rest of the way to the dorm without thinking any thoughts at all.

  NINE

  PAGAN

  The walls of the tent flapped noisily, the wind buffeting them as it blew in from across the sea. I sat, cross-legged, staring at the sheet of paper in my hands, shaking my head.

  “No.”

  Matherson shrugged his massive shoulders. “I’m sorry, Pagan. I’ve checked twice. That’s all of them.”

  My eyes went back to the list of names, illuminated by the LED lamp that sat on the ground between myself and Matherson, my closest friend and most loyal lieutenant.

  They were the names of the people who were camped here with us on the narrow spit of land called Worm’s Head or Pen Pyrod, jutting out from the Gower Peninsula on the south Welsh coast. They were the names of the Order of the Templars as it now stood. They were the names of those who not been killed or captured by the King’s Alliance and that bastard Duine.

  “What about Dockery?” I asked, scanning the list.

  “No.”

  “Or Brie? Surely she…”

  “Pagan,” Matherson placed a hand, the size of a dinner plate, on the paper, hiding it from my eyes. “Those whose names are there are the extent of those we have left. Anyone whose name isn’t listed is either dead or a prisoner. I’m sorry, my friend.”

  The hideous mixed mash of emotions bubbled inside me as I tried to deal with this information. Anger was there, and sadness too, but above all was hot, red guilt. I wanted to say sorry. To Dockery and Brie and all the others. I needed to apologize for letting this happen to them, but I could not. Obviously.

  “It wasn’t your fault.” Sometimes it seemed as if Matherson could read my mind.

  “How many taken or dead?”

  “As many as there are on the list.”

  “I didn’t count.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “How many?”

  “Twenty-seven,” said Matherson, and his gruff voice seemed harsher than usual as he fought back emotions of his own.

  “How many remaining?”

  “Twenty-nine, all told.”

  “The army of the Templars,” I spat the words bitterly.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I’ll punch you across that handsome fucking face of yours if you say that again.”

  “Do it if it’ll make you feel better,” said Matherson with a well-intended shrug. “But I think we both know how it’ll end up.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. His name meant ‘bear’, and that was how he struck people. Matherson was six-foot-eight inches tall, as broad as a bus and as strong as an ox. In battle, he was a terror who cleaved a path through those who didn’t have the sense to run when they saw him bearing down on them. He was also as faithful as a dog and as sweet as a lamb to those who knew him. To see Matherson with children was to understand the term ‘gentle giant’.

  “Should have moved camp sooner.” I folded up the piece of paper and tucked it away in the folds of my cloak. “When Bowen didn’t come back.”

  “He’d asked you to give him time.”

  I shook my head. “I knew better than to send an assassin. That’s not how I wanted this to be.”

  “Huh,” Matherson rumbled. “You’re happy with a big fight, but shy away from the death of one man.”

  “I’m happy to meet an enemy face to face,” I returned. “It’s this sneaking around that I’m not comfortable with.”

  “If we could end this with the death of one man, then why shouldn’t we try?” said Matherson. “If Duine dies, the King’s Alliance—or at least this bastardized version of it—dies with him.”

  “I wonder.” I wished I could have as simple a view of the world as the one my friend had, but I saw all the shades of grey. “Or would someone worse take his place?”

  “Worse than Duine?” Matherson shook his head, his long beard swaying from side to side. He reminded me of some enormous Viking warlord from the old world. “I’d as soon not think about that.”

  “He was there.”

  “You can’t be sure.”

  I shot a look at Matherson and he raised his hands in capitulation. “Alright, maybe you can be sure. But so what if he was, what of it?”

  “We didn’t need to send an assassin,” I pressed. “Maybe… Maybe if I’d challenged Duine there and then, we could have met in single combat and that would have been an end of it.”

  Matherson’s laugh competed with the wind that still hammered at the tent. “You think Duine would have played fair, do you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And when you won; then what?”

  “Then the King’s Alliance would have backed down. If they’ve any honor.”

  Matherson’s eyes twinkled beneath his bushy brows. “And if you lost?”

  “Well… then you would keep up the good fight.”

  He shook his head and chuckled deeply. “Clearly you’ve thought this through very thoroughly.”

  “I just want there to be another way.”

  From my earliest school days, teachers had written the phrase ‘leadership qualities’ on my report cards. I had been captain of every sports team I’d ever belonged to, even if I wasn’t the best player (though I usually was). Maybe I’d started to believe my own hype. It had been said to me so often that I was ‘a natural leader’ that I knew it to be true and I’d become a leader. People did as I said. There was no point in being modest about it, I had a quality—charisma if you wanted to call it—that made people listen to me, that made people follow me. It also made people do dangerous things when I asked them, and not all of them came back.

  Matherson was a good case in point.

  The first time we met, eight years ago now, we’d fought. I was too quick and maybe too clever for him to hit, but me hitting him had little real effect. We fought to a standstill, a dead heat, a totally equal result. But he followed me, and there had never been any question of it being the other way around. He could pick me up and break me in half if he wanted, but he hadn’t wanted to. Instead, he’d followed me. And here we were.

  Right now, I was starting to wonder if my life to this point, all the things everyone had said about me and expected of me, had badly misled me. I didn’t feel like a leader. I damn sure didn’t want to be one. There had been more than fifty of us at Tintagel. Now there was twenty nine. No matter how many times Matherson said it wasn’t my fault, I knew better. It was my fault. It was all my fault.

  That was what being a leader meant; you got the glory but you also got the responsibility. Some could let such losses wash off them, but I knew when I tried to sleep tonight, it would be with the faces of the lost before my eyes, and their names on my tongue.

  “Is it really worth it?” I growled, half to myself.

  Matherson looked up sharply. “Say that again and I’ll box your ears.”

  “You’re telling me those people’s lives were worth losing…”

  “They thought so,” Matherson didn’t even let me finish. “They thought it was worth the sacrifice. And if you start saying it wasn’t worth it, then you’re insulting their memory.” He leaned towards me. “You know what Duine is. You know what he’s doing and you know how it’ll end up if we don’t stop fighting him. Maybe we can’t win, but if we don’t try then what use are we? We mourn our dead, but we can take whatever comfort there is to be had from the knowledge they died for something.”

  “We’d better be right.”

  Leaning back, Matherson unzipped the tent and held his hand out into the night. When he brought it back in, moths flapped about his appendage as if it were a brilliant light.

  “This is what we believe, Pagan. In nature. In the wild magic. It may not look like much to you now, but it’s worth something. Do you want to see all this,” he twisted his hand and the moths circled, dancing between his fingers, “corrupted? Do you want to see this same powe
r used to subjugate people to the will of a dictator? Duine won’t stop with the King’s Alliance, he won’t stop with the warlocks and witches. He’s got his sights set on all the factions. All that used to be good in the Underworld he’ll turn to evil in his own selfish quest for power. He’ll drain the wild places of what magic they have and turn that magic on those who can’t defend themselves. And we are pledged to stop him.”

  I took a deep breath. “You’re right.”

  “Of course I’m fuckin’ right!” he bellowed at me. “Now, off you go,” he spoke this last sentence to the moths, who flew out of the tent.

  “There’s twenty-nine of us,” I pointed out. “The odds were against us before. Now…”

  Matherson shrugged. “Then you’d better have a very good plan. And some very good speeches because the people out there lost friends today and they want blood.”

  More by luck than judgment, in our headlong flight from Tintagel, we’d taken a few prisoners of our own, soldiers of the King’s Alliance. I knew there were those in my camp who wanted to kill them and send their bodies to Duine as a message that we weren’t going anywhere. Still others wanted to torture the prisoners, to extract information that might help us in another assassination attempt on the High Mage (as Duine arrogantly called himself). I had forbidden such behavior. How much longer would they keep following me if I kept forbidding things?

  “We can use the prisoners,” I said, hopefully. “An exchange. I’m going to send one of the King’s Alliance back to Duine as a gesture of good faith and ask that he release our people in return for his own.”

  I didn’t know how many of my Templars Duine had captured, but any who could be returned felt like a victory.

  Matherson nodded. “None of the prisoners know where we are. We made sure of that.”

  “Alright. Get Eirin to blindfold one of Duine’s and take him into the Gower, then let him loose and give him his instructions. She’s to tell him that if he doesn’t do as we ask, she will come for him.”

  Matherson nodded. “That’s enough to put the fear of God into any man. Should she wait for him to return?”

  “Yes. Shouldn’t be more than a few days.”

  “You don’t want anyone else to go with her?”

  I shook my head and smiled. “Eirin can take care of herself.”

  Matherson smiled broadly. “That she can.”

  ###

  It was a few days later than Eirin returned. But she did so alone.

  “He didn’t come back?” I asked, frowning.

  Eirin nodded. “He came back. In a manner of speaking. But I wasn’t about to carry a corpse all the way from the Gower.”

  Matherson grimaced. “Duine killed his own man?”

  “And sent his body back as a message for us,” nodded Eirin. “They’re not interested in a trade. They’ve got what they want.”

  The three of us were silent for moment, contemplating the ruthlessness of Duine and the King’s Alliance.

  “Did you make sure they didn’t follow you back?” Matherson asked.

  Eirin shot a sharp look at him.

  He lifted his hands and shrugged. “Sorry. Had to ask.”

  “No, you damn well didn’t, Matherson,” she blared at him. “You’ve known me long enough to trust me not to do anything as all fire dumb as that.”

  Eirin was small to start with and standing beside Matherson, she looked like a doll, but the red-headed woman was all fire on the inside. No one messed with Eirin. At least not more than once. She now turned to me.

  “We need to send a message back to them, Pagan.”

  “Let me guess,” I said, reluctantly.

  “We’ve still got people of theirs…”

  “No.”

  “If we don’t answer in kind, we look weak.”

  I rounded on her. “If we kill helpless prisoners then we are weak. Clearly their men don’t matter to them so what would the point of this message even be?”

  “To prove that we’re as willing to shed blood as they are,” Eirin snapped back.

  “To prove we’re as bad as they are?”

  “We’d be killing their people! Not our own!”

  “We don’t kill unless we have to,” I spoke with the authority of law. “That is not who we are and I will not let Duine change us. Killing defenseless men is the very essence of the corruption of magic.”

  Eirin remained unconvinced. “They killed our people. Those men we’ve got tied up over there, eating our food each day? They killed our friends.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “But you’re unwilling to do anything about it.”

  “I’m unwilling to do what you’re suggesting.”

  “Okay.” Eirin gave a little shrug. “You’re the boss, I would never question that. So what are we going to do with them? We can’t keep them indefinitely. There’s no legal body we can turn them over to, and even if there was, we’re the outlaws. In fact, the way I see it, there are only two options, Pagan; we kill them or we let them go, and watch them run back to their master. So you tell me which, and I’ll go tell the rest of the camp. I’m sure they’ll all be fascinated to hear what you plan to do with the men who murdered their comrades.”

  Eirin was one of those people of whom you said ‘I’m glad she’s on our side’. But she didn’t seem to be on mine right now.

  “I haven’t decided what to do yet,” I replied and breathed in deeply. I had a headache and I was sure it had everything to do with this fucked up situation.

  “You let me know when you figure it out. Okay?”

  She headed off, back to the tents. Like Matherson, I sometimes wondered why Eirin followed me. We were on the same side, but often differed in our philosophies. This incident a case in point. And yet she did follow me, and I knew that whatever order I gave, she would do it, whether she agreed or not.

  “How long do you think we’ve got until she leaves us to join Nyx?” asked Matherson, watching her go.

  “I’m more wondering how long I’ve got till she kills me as I sleep.”

  Matherson shook his head and chuckled deeply. It was no secret he lusted after Eirin and had since he’d met her. Yet, she wanted nothing to do with him. I had a feeling she might be more interested in women.

  “Eirin would wake you up first.” He gazed after her. “Little spitfire isn’t she?”

  “Still got a crush on her, huh?”

  Matherson blushed behind his beard. “Maybe. Is it weird that the angrier she gets, the more I fancy her?”

  “Frankly? Yeah.”

  Matherson sighed and shook his shaggy head. “I bet she’s a hellcat in the sack.”

  “Ask her if she’s interested.” I reached up to pat my enormous friend on the shoulder. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “I could die.” It was funny how a man like Matherson, who showed no fear in battle and had looked death in the face without blinking could be too nervous to ask a woman on a date. Well, Eirin wasn’t just any woman.

  “We could all die tomorrow, my friend,” I pointed out. “The life we live; it doesn’t pay to put stuff off.”

  “What are you going to do with those prisoners?”

  I looked across to the little group of bound men, and as I saw one of their faces I recalled the last time I’d seen it, in battle on the beach of Tintagel. That face had been spotted with blood, the blood of my friends. A flash of hatred seared through me. Why shouldn’t I kill them? This was war, damn it. They’d attacked us, not the other way around. Furthermore, they were too low-ranking to tell me anything useful about Duine and the King’s Alliance.

  Thus, what else was there to do? My own people wanted their blood, it wasn’t just Eirin, they were all baying for blood and I couldn’t blame them. Though I tried to suppress it, I wanted to kill the prisoners as much as any of my men did, because that was all we could now do for our fallen comrades. We had nothing left to give them, but the blood of their foes. Yes, they were defenseless prisoners,
but they’d known what they were getting into and it wasn’t as if they’d shown any mercy to my people.

  But that was the point, of course.

  That was why we showed mercy; to prove we were different.

  “Moment passed?” asked Matherson, quietly.

  “Yeah.”

  “Your eyes went red there for a minute.”

  I nodded. “The whole damn world went red there for a minute.”

  “Know what you’re going to do?”

  I nodded slowly. “I’m going to scour them.”

  Matherson pondered this. “Decent middle path, but Eirin won’t like it.”

  “She’s not in charge. I am.”

  If you happen to be born a charismatic and natural leader, then you may as well use it. It’s not all good, but it’s not all bad either.

  ###

  That evening, I commanded the prisoners be brought before me.

  “What are you…? Eirin began, but I silenced her with a look.

  “Bring them to me.”

  The soldiers of the King’s Alliance had fear in their eyes as they were dragged through our makeshift camp towards me. They knew who I was and they’d been told stories about me, no doubt. Which of course meant they knew nothing about me. As far as they were concerned, Pagan was the scary revolutionary who had slaughtered mages and probably sacrificed babies to the old gods of the four winds. My face tattoos helped. My father had inked them himself and among my people they conveyed the anonymity of leadership; the leader was always the same, you saw the mask not the man.

  It was useful to me that my enemies saw me as such, but they would have been very surprised to learn I was the only reason they were still alive.

  “On their knees,” I growled.

  The wind whipped around us and I reached out to it, urging it on. I beckoned the clouds to glower down and asked the thunder to rumble. It was gratifying to see the fear, sharp and blank in their eyes as I glared down at them.

  As the weather gathered, I could feel the wild magic at its edge. I could feel it in the earth and the bedrock. I could feel it in the roots of the trees. I drew it to me, coaxing it forth to borrow what I needed. And for what I was about to attempt, I would need a lot of power. This was not Tintagel or one of those other places where the land was riven with the wild magic, but magic is always there in the natural world if you know where to look and how to ask.