by James Lowder
The Beast shoved Ganelon away. “The deal is this,” he said, stroking the food-crusted hair on his chin. “You bring us red roses, and I lift the madness from Helain’s mind. You’ll find a field of crimson beauties just over the Invidian border. They’re a bit livelier than most flora, but you’ll manage.”
“Cure her first,” Ganelon said. “I’ll do whatever you want if you cure her first.”
“You must prove yourself before we can reward you,” the White Rose answered coldly.
“We traffic in justice here,” the Beast chimed in, “not mercy.”
“I’m not leaving here without her.”
“We did not intend for you to do so,” said the Rose, though the Beast seemed surprised at the news. “You will take Helain, and as many of the Beast’s wards as you wish, when you make your journey. They can carry the bundles back.”
“What about the elves? At least they can follow orders.”
“The wild elves who tend the cauldrons are the only ones left. The rest have already taken up the quest,” the White Rose said. “You have heard our offer, Ganelon. What is your answer?”
Ganelon slumped onto the ground. “What choice do I have?”
“There is always a choice,” the White Rose said. For the first time, anger had crept into her voice. It was a terrible thing to hear. “You walk the path of honor or you do not.”
The Beast cowered, hands covering his hideous face. A chill swept over Ganelon, not a sensation born of fear, but a palpable cold that radiated from the White Rose. It damped even the heat of the cauldron’s blaze.
The anger in the Rose’s voice, the fear it inspired in the Beast, did not sway Ganelon to the quest. It was love of Helain that prompted him to accept. “I’ll storm Nedragaard Keep if that’s what it takes to save her,” he said at last.
“Do not make such offers lightly,” the White Rose noted. Once more she held out a silk-gloved hand for Ganelon to kiss. As she did, her sleeve rode up just enough to reveal a glimpse of her charred and skeletal arm. “You may be called to account for such oaths in ways you never expect.”
With a shudder, Ganelon touched his lips to her stiff, cold fingers.
Twelve
The day was unlike any other for the Wanderers. For the first time since Magda formed the troupe all those years ago in Gundarak, the dawn found the Vistani in the same camp they’d used the night before.
Superstition had prompted the troupe to seek a new site each day. Magda’s ancestor, the fabled Vistani hero Kulchek, had suffered under a curse that required him never to sleep in the same place twice. As she carried Kulchek’s cudgel and traveled with a hound descended from his own faithful Sabak, so Magda took his customs upon herself. Her tribe had no choice but to follow her wishes.
Inza felt no such compunction, even though she, too, carried more of Kulchek’s legacy than some vague blood tie. The dagger she wielded was none other than the hero’s own storied blade, Novgor. That needle-pointed, ever-sharp blade had freed Kulchek from the chains the nine boyars used to enslave him. With it he’d picked the lock to the tower in which the giant hid his beautiful daughter. Novgor was the only weapon sharp enough to cut the tree the Wanderer found at the top of the world, the tree from which he fashioned his cudgel, Gard.
It was the only weapon sharp enough to score that same unbreakable cudgel, to render it useless in Magda’s hands on the night of the salt shadow attack.
That dark deed had caused Inza no discomfort. How, then, could abandoning Kulchek’s habit bring her harm? The curse, after all, had been leveled against him, and he was long dead.
So Inza had stopped the caravan from breaking camp the afternoon before. “We’ve found no better site on the edge of the Fumewood,” was the only reason she gave.
Some of the Wanderers grumbled. A few even took their bedrolls and went off to sleep in the woods. Most of the gypsies, exhausted from a week of scouring the Fumewood for some trace of Bratu, merely slouched off to their vardos to get a few extra hours’ sleep.
Now, in the still moments before dawn, when the whole world seemed to hold its breath in anticipation of the day to come, Inza walked quietly through the sleeping camp. Alexi nodded a somber greeting to her from his station at the low-banked fire. She stifled the urge to laugh. Whether keeping watch over the vardos or celebrating a well-run scam on some giorgio, the man maintained the same comically grim expression. It was as if he’d just eaten something so sour he couldn’t open his mouth again to spit it out.
Inza knew the man feared her, so perhaps the expression was one he reserved only for her. It didn’t matter. Alexi did what she ordered, without question, without hesitation. If he was lucky, he might still be around to help her put her final plans into motion, but she wasn’t counting on it. Better, she knew, to rely only upon herself.
Still musing on the value of self-reliance, Inza made her way down a winding path to a spring-fed pool she had discovered two days ago. It was one of the things that made the site so attractive for a camp. When she came to the cool, clear water, Inza neither drank nor washed her face. Instead, she sat on the mossy bank and waited.
Just after the sun topped the Fumewood’s twisted trees, a shout of alarm startled the raunie to her feet. She drew Novgor from the special sheath in her boot and took a step toward the vardos. She paused as the single shout was echoed by a second and a third cry of alarm. Finally, when the screams of horses and the clash of steel sounded from the camp, she set off at a run.
Inza surveyed the cramped battlefield from the edge of the clearing. A group of ogres stormed through the camp. Instead of the usual flea-ridden furs and tattered rags, these brutes were clad in plate armor or chain mail. Decorated helms hid their warty faces and greasy locks, and they carried weapons of a fine enough forge to satisfy any soldier. Though they wore no insignia and carried no standard, the colors of their cloaks-purple and black-declared their allegiance to Malocchio Aderre.
A quick count totaled the number of ogres at twenty. The Vistani were outnumbered, even if all of them were included as worthwhile fighters. Many of the older men and women simply were not. Still, the Wanderers seemed to be holding their own. Ten bodies lay bleeding into the dirt; the casualties were split evenly between the Vistani and the ogres.
Alexi in particular seemed to be acquitting himself well. At the moment he was driving not one, but two of the brutes into retreat. Whoever had shown the Vistana how to wield a sword, they’d taught him well.
“Regroup with me,” Alexi shouted. Inza and the remaining Vistani retreated to his position, placing the arc of vardos at their backs. The ogres formed a semicircle of their own. Slowly they began to close in on the cornered gypsies.
“They were separating us,” Alexi explained breathlessly. “We can hold off their charge, but only if we stay together.” He gave Inza that familiar sour-faced look. “If there’s some fey magic at your disposal, raunie, now would be the time to use it.”
Inza didn’t get a chance to answer. One of the wagons that the Wanderers had been counting on to keep the ogres from encircling them suddenly flipped over. Two Vistani were caught beneath the vardo, killed instantly. A second wagon toppled, then a third. The ogres surrounded them. With a cry of “Invidia!” they charged.
Greta, a blonde beauty who had promised to wed Piotr come spring, was trapped between two of the brutes. She fought valiantly. One blow from her staff and the shorter of her attackers dropped to the ground, broken nose gushing blood. The other snatched her from the ground even as she raised her staff to strike again. With a swiftness startling for his size, the ogre brought one knee up to waist height and cracked the girl over it like a bundle of dry firewood.
From across the camp, Piotr howled his anguish. He brought his sword down with such force that it bit into an ogre’s armored shoulder and stuck there. The brute spun away, clutching at the weapon. In doing so, he dropped the pike he’d been carrying. Piotr grabbed it and charged the ogre that had killed his beloved Greta.<
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The pike’s spiked tip lodged in the ogre’s gut. The force of the blow knocked him from his feet. But the brute would not die. Even as Piotr twisted the polearm and jammed it deeper into his stomach, the ogre struggled to free himself. He was either too stupid or too tough to realize the severity of his wounds.
When it was clear that the pike was not going to finish the job, Piotr seized a large piece of firewood. As the brute wrestled with the blood-slicked weapon protruding from his stomach, the Vistana tore off his helmet and caved in his skull.
The screams, blood, and chaos set Inza’s heart aflutter. She hung back from the brawl, Novgor clutched before her. The ogres left her alone. Time and again they ran right past her, as if she were invisible.
The rest of the Wanderers were not so lucky. Before long, Inza could see only four men standing. Alexi and Piotr were holding their own, but Katan, the troupe’s youngest, was staggering from a nasty leg wound. Nikolas flanked him, offering some meager protection as the two tried to find some suitable place to make their final stand.
Inza smiled. It was time.
“On my mother’s soul, upon your sacred oath, I call to you, Lord Soth! Defend me!”
The sound of the battle and the cries of the dying all but drowned out Inza’s words. She knew, though, that Soth would hear them, wherever he was. If her mother had been telling the truth in all those dreadfully boring tales she used to tell over the campfire, Soth would uphold the oath he’d sworn to her. He would come to poor little Inza’s rescue, if only to show how hollow and meaningless such noble actions were. After all, if a thing of darkness such as Soth could take on a guise of honor, who was to say that all men who appeared honorable might not secretly share his heart of darkness?
Just as some women who feign helplessness might share his warrior’s spirit, Inza noted silently.
As if to prove that statement’s truth, she lunged at a passing ogre. Needle-pointed Novgor bit through the plate mail covering his chest, through the flesh and bone beneath. The blade finally came to rest in the brute’s massive heart. He was dead before the startled gasp left his snaggletoothed mouth and the iron-spiked club slipped from his thick fingers.
As the club struck the ground, Lord Soth emerged from the shadow of a shattered vardo. The cold of the grave rolled out of the darkness with him, washing over the camp like some icy tide. Orange eyes ablaze, he surveyed the carnage. There was no need for Inza to say anything. The situation was plain enough.
An unsuspecting ogre, startled by the sudden blast of cold, literally stumbled into the death knight’s grasp. Soth clamped one gauntleted hand around the soldier’s throat. No blow, no gasp for mercy could make him slacken that grip. He squeezed until the ogre’s eyes bulged and his mottled tongue lolled from his mouth. Satisfied the brute was dead, Soth dropped him like a child bored with his toy and waded into the fray.
The battle turned immediately. Inza could see the astonishment register on the ogres’ faces. “Betrayed!” some of them cried as they fled into the Fumewood. Others tried to reach Inza, their faces florid with anger. Novgor decapitated the first who rushed her. The rest turned back.
Like Death itself, Lord Soth strode across the camp toward Inza. Every Invidian in his path fell before him. At first he did not draw his sword. His fists were weapons enough. When two ogres charged him, he smashed their heads together with such force that the skulls split open like old melons. The two sank down in a heap, purple brains and gore staining the ground.
It was only when he came upon Alexi, locked in mortal combat with one of the brutes, that Soth drew his ancient blade. The death knight did not slacken his pace, merely called to the Invidian as he came.
“Face me,” he rumbled, “or flee. There is no third way.”
The ogre turned, hesitated. Soth slashed open the brute’s throat and continued on.
As his opponent crumpled, Alexi stood staring at the Knight of the Black Rose. He felt certain that Soth had not even seen him. The death knight was simply clearing a path to Inza.
As abruptly as it had started, the battle was over.
Only four of Inza’s troupe remained alive. Piotr and Nikolas tried to offer their thanks to Lord Soth. They hesitantly approached the death knight, but he did not acknowledge them. Instead, he stood stone still among the dead, eyes focused on something in the carnage.
Inza wiped the blood from Novgor and came to Soth’s side. “They were Aderre’s lackeys,” she offered, “sent here to slaughter us.”
When Soth remained silent, Inza followed his gaze to the ground. A burst of silver and gold coins spread across the dirt, spilled from a leather pouch one of the ogres had been carrying. The Vistana knelt. Some of the coins were Invidian, others Sithican or Barovian. She held up one silver piece whose mint she could not recognize.
“Where is Palanthas?” she asked.
“Far from here,” Soth said, his mind awash in a memory of that city’s never-conquered walls falling before his magic.
The death knight pushed the remembrance aside and walked to the next fallen ogre. With the tip of his blade he opened the corpse’s purse. A similar fortune in gold and silver slid onto the ground. He turned and seized Inza by the arm.
Her arm went numb immediately from the unearthly cold of his touch. “What is it?” she asked, panic making her voice shrill. “What does all that money mean?”
“That someone within my domain has bought the allegiance of this rabble,” the death knight replied flatly. “They are garbed as Invidian soldiers and surely crossed into Sithicus as such. Yet even Malocchio Aderre is not fool enough to pay his army before a battle is fought or let them take their wages on campaign.”
Soth indicated the battlefield with a swipe of his sword. “If I am correct, then this has been a simple diversion.”
“Diversion?” Inza sputtered. She pulled free of Soth’s grip. “There are but four of us left standing. Our vardos are smashed, our horses frightened off. This is the stuff of a diversion? The Wanderers are extinct!”
“In the larger war that will be fought, you and your tribe are meaningless,” Soth said coldly. “You have been a pawn in this, put in peril to draw me away from the main army’s true objective. Come, we must return to Nedragaard Keep.”
Alexi stepped forward as though he meant to challenge Soth, to demand he release their raunie. But Inza flashed him a warning look, and he stopped in his tracks.
“What about the rest of my people, mighty lord?” she asked.
���They are not my concern.”
“But they are my concern,” Inza snapped. “They were my mother’s concern, too. In her name, if not in mine, help them.” She swallowed hard, as if the next word were barbed in her throat. “Please.”
Soth regarded the men coolly. “Very well. Make your way on foot to my castle. You will be permitted to stay there.”
“Alone and on foot they will be dead before noon,” Inza said. “Only you saved us from this ‘diversion.’ What if they encounter another?”
“You demand much of me, raunie? Soth warned.
“Only what is fair. My mother’s benediction is surely worth this small beneficence for her people.”
Turning to Alexi, Soth said, “I will summon guards to protect you, but their number will be yours to determine.”
“How so?” the grim Vistana asked.
“Shall your fallen kin be part of this guard or no?”
Alexi’s face blanched. “No,” he gasped. “Our ancestors would-”
“Enough,” Soth rumbled. “You have chosen.”
The death knight strode to the center of the camp and raised his arms. A sudden wind howled around him, billowing his purple cloak. Soth clenched his hands into fists, and midnight-black clouds blossomed in the sky, obscuring the sun. The wind’s howl grew more strident. There was another sound, too, faint at first but growing more insistent with each passing moment. It was the awful moan of souls in torment.
The slaughtered ogres rose fr
om the battlefield. There was an awkward, disjointed quality to their movements that made them terrible to watch. They shambled toward Soth, eyes fixed sightlessly ahead. Their arms hung limp at their sides. The zombies carried no weapons, save those still buried in their flesh.
“You will follow this man’s orders,” the death knight said, indicating Alexi. “You will escort him and his companions to Nedragaard Keep, killing anyone who tries to detain or harm them.”
With that, Soth turned his back on them and approached Inza. “Now,” he intoned gravely, “we are leaving.”
“Of course, mighty lord,” the Vistana said demurely. She glanced at Alexi and called out, “Bring the chest from my vardo. It has supplies you’ll need on the journey.”
Soth put his arm across Inza’s shoulders and ushered her into the shadow of a gaunt oak. The Wanderers watched their raunie disappear into the dark. When she was gone, Alexi turned to the others.
“We have our orders,” he said brusquely. “We are to travel to the keep as quickly as possible. We take the raunie’s strongbox, but anything else that might slow us down must be left behind.” He cast a meaningful look at Katan.
The boy’s wounds were grave. He might survive the day, but without the medicines only Inza knew how to concoct, his wounds were all but certain to fester. Moving him would be tantamount to torture. But to delay, even for a few hours, might mean losing their raunie forever. Without her, the Wanderers would have to disband. The men would be outcasts, stray dogs in a society that valued the pack above all.
“Thank you for all you’ve given and done, Brother,” Nikolas whispered to Katan. He kissed the boy on each cheek and then thrust his short sword between the youth’s ribs. Katan died instantly. The zombies watched it all with patient, passionless gazes, as if they expected the boy to rise up and join their ranks.