Red Axe, Black Sun

by Michael Karner

  “He is hosting a ball in honor of the apocalypse, while his city is wartorn?” Kyra said. “That tells me enough about who we are dealing with. What would you like me to do with him?”

  “If possible, seize and capture him in this mayhem,” Jarnsaxa said. “Then bring him to me. I would set a bounty on his head and inform the whole warband, but that would shatter the focus of our actual goal. And I still can’t trust Godsmite. You have to do this for me. You are a sorceress; you are not bound by the warband’s hierarchy and can go wherever you please.”

  Kyra sighed. “I have someone here who is very dear to me. I can’t risk losing him again. I’ll have to stay with him and be at his side when the fighting starts. I made a promise.”

  “Does he mean everything to you?” Jarnsaxa asked. “Would you do everything for him, just because you believe that he is the one you need in your life?”

  “Yes,” Kyra answered.

  “Then you know how it is,” Jarnsaxa said. “Godsmite is the one for me, and he is the one hope for the whole barbarian kingdom. The sooner you help him to exonerate himself, the sooner this will be over, and then you and your man can get out of here.”

  “We should push our luck one last time?” Kyra said. “Can you vouch for Connor Wyle’s safety?”

  “No,” Jarnsaxa said. “I’ll be honest, I cannot. It’s war: you know that I can’t guarantee anything. But I will ensure that he stays in his function as skald, and that he will not be sacrificed futilely.”

  Kyra shrugged and shook her head. “I’ll see what I can do, but it’s not easy what you demand. First, the place I have to go lies in Old Town gangland territory, a ghetto of non-humans, where our assassin probably fled.”

  “I will send Ysara Horne and Ravage with you,” Jarnsaxa said. “And Barknar. They had more than their share of the Kolanthel.”

  Kyra breathed out heavily and bit her lip.

  “Who are they?”

  “The first two are from King Tancred’s army, but from a special branch, specialized in seeking and combating Kolanthel.”

  “Do you trust them?”

  “I haven’t met them before, but from what I heard from one of my men, they look like they know what they’re doing. Asukara Uryah, a crossbow-marksman of mine, has been hanging on their tail since the first Kolanthel raid before the battle. He wants to be with them when they track down the assassin. I think the assassin is the reason he lost his eye. Guess it has gotten personal now.”

  “It always gets personal,” Kyra said. “In the beginning, we all say it’s either business, or duty, or loyalty. But the moment we are in it, man against man, and we start to lose things, it all becomes personal in one matter of life and death.”

  “I fear you’re right,” Jarnsaxa said. “Barknar, the last, is from my warband. An influential man with great respect and fearsome reputation. He has seen the Kolanthel. He volunteered for the action.”

  “Very well,” Kyra mumbled. “But second, how does Godsmite know a gangland boss?”

  “He told me he was out there in Skybridge weeks ago,” Jarnsaxa said. “A lone berserker, roaming the streets. He met a girl who has a dragon tattoo. It is said that she carries a list of criminals that need to be taken care of. The man you are after is on that list.”

  Kyra felt a clump build up in her throat.

  “What’s his name?”

  “It’s Argis Cairn-breaker,” Jarnsaxa said.

  “I know that name,” Kyra said. “And I know that girl.”

  “She is with King Tancred now. Together with parts of your old group.”

  “Who?”

  Jarnsaxa laughed. “I thought you knew. Dryston of Decia and Jade Cyrus are out to hunt for Godfrey.”

  “Why is Dryston with the king?” Kyra was shocked.

  “I guess because of his connections to the shire reeves,” Jarnsaxa said. “Tancred elected him his bodyguard.”

  “I didn’t know he was still here,” Kyra said with the sudden realization.

  “HE WILL BE HOLDING A BALL, a pandemonium-ball,” the hired muscle had told Dryston in the locked staff quarters of the old brotherhood mansion. He remembered the words when he traveled through the dark alleys of Old Town. Dark, not because of the lack of daylight, or the shadows of towering buildings, but the blackened stone and ramshackle walls.

  “The guests will be masked.” The man’s voice from the night before was in Dryston’s head. He winced and glanced at Jade and Skadi flanking him, who were both startled from the shrieking arrow of Tancred’s special forces.

  The signal released a cascade of roars from a hundred assembled throats. The war cries from beyond the wall were audible in the ghetto as a constant boom, an ambient noise like in a static snowstorm. They were breaching the gate to the heart of the city.

  “There will be reveling like there will be no tomorrow,” Dryston remembered the housecarl saying. “They know every dance could be their last.”

  The three hunters approached the residence of the underworld-boss. Like cats, Jade and Skadi moved alongside the walls, melting with shadows. They stuck to the cover of hedgerows in the labyrinthine garden adjoining the estate, leaving three guests lying outside in the cold snow.

  “Take their clothes and masks,” Dryston instructed silently with sign language. He hunched over the male sojourner’s body and put on his mask.

  “But you will recognize Cairn-breaker,” the housecarl had said. “You definitely will recognize him.”

  Dryston believed him.

  THE FLOOR BOARDS of the west-wing’s marble hall shook. There were several booming concussions, like during construction works. At least this was what it sounded to the fearful listener, who blended out what it really was and replaced it with a more plausible and soothing explanation. Of course, it was the sound of something trying to get through and breaking into the jarl’s hall from underneath. The floor panel lifted and scraped sideways over the surrounding tiles. A loaded crossbow emerged out of the hole first, followed by a pair of eyes peeking carefully over the edge into the hall.

  Belrand blew up dust as he exhaled slowly and rose from the hole. Tancred followed close behind, then two special forces, and lastly the mansion’s serf who had led them there.

  Tancred considered him with a glance as he tried to sneak through the empty halls. “I told you, you can go back to where it’s safe.”

  They were in the jarl’s hall now, flanked by statues of regents whose history Tancred was all too familiar with.

  The serf looked around and shook his head eagerly.

  “The day began exciting, with me being for the first time in your presence, Your Highness,” he whispered. “And now, walking through those famous halls, having the opportunity to meet the jarl in this history-charged moment, I simply can’t return.”

  The king exchanged glances with his retinue and nodded after some consideration.

  “Very well,” Tancred said. “This is just what we do. Mind you, it will be less pleasant than you expect.”

  They accelerated their stride and broke into a run once steps and voices got loud in the adjoining room. Belrand and another specialist took up center with their shoulders pressed against the doors. Tancred positioned himself behind them in the middle, taking up most of the door frame. He waited with his sword drawn and kept the serf close while listening to the footsteps.

  THEY WAITED TILL the very last moment, till the steps echoed on the other side of the door. Belrand and his companion tore open the doors and surprised the group of Godfrey’s personal guard behind. They took the luxury to wait a second to acknowledge who they were going to fight. Belrand and his fellow fired their bolts point-blank and got rid of their crossbows immediately.

  Arterial blood sprayed against the door, but Tancred didn’t wait and stormed in nevertheless, followed by Belrand and the others. The serf covered his face and got shoved out of the way by more of Tancred’s elite, charging into the thick of the fight.

  “That’s King Tancred
,” a hearthman shouted. “Shoot him!”

  Tancred grabbed the serf at the collar and turned him into the line of fire. He caught an arrow for his king and slumped down gasping.

  They wanted the king dead as much as Tancred wanted Godfrey dead, to end the conflict with one swift stroke.

  The jarl’s hearthmen wore long chainmail and carried tower shields with spears and halberds. Tancred’s special forces were the exact opposite: lithe and mean. They wielded short swords made for confined spaces and wore light armor for stealth and mobility. When they got trapped and forced to fight head-to-head, they lost not only the fight, the lost ears, hands, arms, legs, heads. When they had space to outmanoeuvre the heavy infantry, they claimed throats, eyes, hearts, and lives in return.

  WHEN THE SERF CAME TO, the fight was over. Bodies lay on the marble floor in pools of blood. Tancred and a handful of his surviving finest moved on to the throne room, all splattered in gore.

  “Where are you hiding, Godfrey?” Tancred cried. It was an outcry that echoed through the jarl’s hall and let the pillars vibrate. The king waited at the junction to the throne room with his blade dripping.

  The jarl came out eventually, geared up. There was no misconception in how this would end.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  FORSAKEN CHAPEL

  “TANCRED, YOU STUPID FOOL!” Godfrey exclaimed, shaking his head. “Why have you done this? Couldn’t you have at least come to talk to me first?”

  “I’ve seen enough,” Tancred said. “You broke the law, stole from me, lied, gathered followers around you behind my back, all the while conspiring in your domain. I’m not the kind of man who acts loyal and puts a knife in someone’s back as soon as he turns around. I will tell you straight to your face that if you turn around, I will put that knife in your back. I know the outcome of when you try to talk to rebels. You know it, too. You were with me in Cimbra. They sent back our negotiators with the tops of their heads sawn off and empty skulls.”

  “Right, I was with you then,” Godfrey said. “You should recognize your supporters, not try to kill them in your paranoia. I’ve always been on your side. If you had come to talk to me, you would have seen the truth.”

  “No, you turned on me, like them,” the king answered. “Now look what you have made me do, traitor.”

  “I heard the signal,” the jarl said. “You could have stopped it when your troops were on the wall. You prove your point. Instead, you led them on to another attack. Tancred of Treveria was always one for pointless bloodshed, and only after earning military victories. That’s how you will be remembered after all see your failure.”

  “This has nothing to do with me,” Tancred replied. “I had to do it, because a retainer turned on me and was jeopardizing the mission to find you. You know how it is, being only a handful behind enemy lines. You have to trust every one of the closest around you, but if that trust is broken, things turn ugly. I could not allow him to blow our cover.”

  “Enemy lines…This is your own city, brother,” Godfrey said. “Your people, your bloodline. The same line of ancestors. This is Treveria!” He looked up, remembering his purpose. “Which I swore to you to protect. We have been surrounded by dangers ever since, but if we turn on one another, we are lost.”

  “Then why did you do this?” Tancred asked. “Separate from me, disobey the laws, start a rebellion?”

  “Because I had to,” Godfrey confessed. “My pleadings weren’t heard. I requested audience at your court in Nevgorod long ago, laying out my demands to your scribes. They were all ignored. My warnings went unnoticed.”

  Tancred considered the words. He didn’t believe them. They were ramblings of a madman clinging on to his life, to his ears.

  “I haven’t heard of them,” he said. “I can assure you, if my scribes had found a germ of truth in it, they would have passed it on to me.”

  “Maybe they are the ones turning on you,” Godfrey answered.

  “You are making things up now,” Tancred said. “What would you have needed additional resources for, if not strengthening your own presence? I can see you established a personality cult around here, maybe trying to build your own domain. You thought yourself out of reach, here in the wilds, and used the catastrophes that cut off the roads and messageways to separate.”

  “I was on my own,” Godfrey said, “to hold back the tide of darkness alone.”

  It was a citation of ancient texts, some sort of prophecy of a pending calamity.

  “I needed more men and resources for this,” the jarl continued. “And now you have taken them away and destroyed our chance to survive.”

  “Enough of this,” Tancred said, shaking off the thoughts that accompanied Godfrey’s words and planted doubts in his own mind. “I can’t spare you after what you’ve done. There’s no time or place for reasoning; you’re not going to come on terms with me. There’s only one place I’m going to put you: in the dirt, Godfrey, in the dirt.”

  The jarl nodded and adjusted his stance. There was just no room for mercy.

  Godfrey’s knees were shaking from the prospect of confronting Tancred in combat. He couldn’t kill a king. In his subconscious, he must have known he was only fighting to survive and not to kill. Tancred, on the other hand, was there to punish.

  The serf’s eyes opened in awe, as the two figures clashed. Tancred went in with his sword, dealing the first blow with unmatched determination. Godfrey shifted his scepter to block. The king’s blade passed his defense and cut him open deep from the shoulder to the collarbone with the first stroke. Blood was gushing out of the wound as Tancred wrenched out the locked blade, leaving malformed armor parts dug into the flesh. Tancred turned away to bring his weapon to bear. Godfrey’s scepter, in his intact hand, hit him square across the jaw, busting the rings of his chainmail hood and knocking him nearly unconsciousness.

  The king staggered and followed up with another blow, not allowing himself to give in. The sword cut from beneath the knee-cap up to the inner thigh. It collided with a dull clank against Godfrey’s scepter; the jarl had somehow had managed to evade and bring his weapon down. Tancred shifted and yanked his sword up, striking it both-handed against Godfrey’s wrist. Godfrey answered with a blow to Tancred’s chest. Several ribs broke in the king’s ribcage, even though his gambeson cushioned most of the impact.

  Godfrey’s mangled hand made it impossible to defend against one side now. Tancred brought in the cold steel low and beat against Godfrey’s knee then struck at his head. Godfrey swung his scepter upwards as he staggered back. Tancred parried nearly without effort. The king followed Godfrey like a hunter after a wounded animal. Godfrey’s arm hung down slack, grinding his scepter over the marble floor and dragging his leg behind. His head was tilted, and his mouth released a thick curtain of blood. Tancred pursued him and put in his weight to chop his sword against Godfrey’s form like felling a tree. He lunged again and hit the jarl’s neck, decapitating him nearly, but not quite. He thrust his blade tip first into Godfrey’s chest and let the jarl dash hard against the stone floor. Then he let go of his enemy, his once brother in arms, panting, gasping, and bleeding, realizing what he had done.

  SENDEL VARON SAW OLD TOWN GATE obliterate a heartbeat before he felt it. The blast of the explosion was a deafening boom followed by the backlash of kinetic force. From his distance, it was only a hot, tangible breeze.

  Old Town was not defended like the city walls the day before. There, the fight had been balanced, with either side able to win. Here, at the last hideout of the resistance, the will to stand against the attackers was already broken. Vacomani barbarians, Treverian kingtroops and foreign mercenaries made it clear that whoever opposed them got cut down. It was a mop up of the last rebels who still believed that dying for their jarl was a good cause.

  Sendel saw the hordes roaming through Old Town market coming at him and ran. Normally he would have been safer to lie low and hide, but not this time. The marauding warband stripped everyone of their weapons, looti
ng as they went, and left no stone unturned. He had left enough scorched earth and dead bodies behind that they would know him. He had to flee now. This was not a fight that could be won, and even when he still had goals to reach, he couldn’t change anything about it. Like his precedessors before him, he had neutralized the mages. But this was not all that had to be done, only a beginning. He had to enter the underground, gather as many Kolanthel devotees as he could muster, and wrench an ancient weapon out of the hands of those kinmen who were on the wrong path. Difficult, yes, but with the right people, it would be doable.

  THEY CALLED HIM THE CAIRN-BREAKER. Underground prince. His house was an abandoned cathedral, turned into a new residence when the other belief took root. It didn’t need pews for mass attendees these days, or symbols of worship. The basins of holy water had dried. Most important, it didn’t need the light-symphonies radiating through towering stained glass windows anymore. The precious glass had long since been broken out of their frames, sold for much more usable items and replaced with planks. The atmosphere this change left was dire. Sparse rays fell into the inner sanctum only through gaps of hastily barricaded portals. Mass instruments, statues and images of saints whose guidance wasn’t needed were covered by blankets, gathering dust like in an old art exhibition.

  The Cairn-breaker let his fingers stroke over the keys of an organ. It was one of the fitments that, after all these years, still served its purpose. The sounds were off tune and hollow, but there was still life in the ornate instrument. Instead of a flock of worshippers, it entertained a crowd of masked individuals. Their origins were concealed, be they human or non-human. In the Cairn-breaker’s home, race didn’t matter. What mattered was their allegiance, or rather whose laws they were not following. Every one of them was an outcast of society and still somehow taking nourishment from its core. They had gathered this morning to celebrate its downfall.

  Argis, the one they called the Cairn-breaker, strode through the crowd of his guests with an appropriate grotesque leather face. The masked heads in the parting crowd nodded to him respectfully in a world that otherwise knew no respect.