The Fighters: Ghostwalker

by Erik Scott Debie

  "A ghost that walks. ..." he breathed. The legend of Walker of the woods had long been the subject of hunters' whispers and boys' blustering—but it was just a ghost story. Nothing more than foolish child's play.

  He blinked, and the dark figure was gone as though it had never been.

  The Lord Singer realized he had paused for a full breath at his father's name, and the villagers were looking at him in shock. He gave a little shrug and tried to begin again, but he had lost the note. He flashed a dazzling smile, bowed, and proceeded to hurry off the stage to uncertain applause. Meris was there, smirking, and near him the sharp-eyed Torlic, but Greyt skulked past. Speaker Geth Stonar, mopping his thick forehead, moved to stop him, but the bard stormed on.

  His mind reeled. He wanted to dismiss the incident as a mere trick of the light, or the result of too much wine, but those had never broken his song before. Perhaps he was just getting old.

  It began to rain, a bitter, cold cloudburst, and Lord Dharan Greyt shivered.

  * * * *

  The streets emptied soon after the rain began. The few hun­dred citizens of Quaervarr dispersed into the town's several common rooms to celebrate with ales and friends or scurried back to their homes, where they might celebrate in a more private, intimate fashion.

  For Drex Redgill, the latter was the case. Roaring drunk, the man bid farewell to his friend Bilgren and staggered home with his squire and servants, eagerly seeking his room and the half-elf lass hired for the occasion. His was a large house in the south part of town, girded on every corner by watchtowers and guards.

  The stranger knew this because he watched it all from the shadows.

  Walker considered the scale of this duel. Guards didn't make for a fair confrontation. Of course, once Walker pen­etrated the house, the scales would tip in the other direction. Did two inequalities make equality? He did not care. Fair­ness seemed like something his father would scold him about. If Tarm could speak, that was.

  As for how to get in... There was only one way in.

  "Cold as winter," he whispered. His voice was a deep rasp.

  * * * *

  The guards started when a man dressed in black melted from the shadows a short distance away and took a step toward them. A sweeping, tattered cloak fanned out behind him. Dark, rain-slick hair that might have been brown fell to his shoulders in a ragged mass. His collar was pulled up high, obscuring his mouth. But more than anything else, he wore resolution around him like a mantle. The intensity of his deep blue eyes was chilling. This man seemed a demon in flesh.

  "Oi, where did ye come from?" the scarred one asked. "Ye don't be no friend o' Jarthon, do ye?" The second, much younger guard shook himself from his stupor and hefted his halberd.

  The phantom man planted a fist in the first man's face. Blood burst from the guard's nose and he staggered back. The young man let the halberd fall from his cold fingers in surprise. The weapon clattered to the ground with a loud rattle and he grabbed for it with an oath.

  The scarred guard yanked out a sword and thrust, but the phantom slapped the blade away and punched the guard hard in the stomach. The older man went down to his knees.

  "Gods be curs—" the guard managed. Then a foot met his face and ended his obscenities.

  The younger guard, eyes wild with terror, managed to draw his short sword. As if he had sensed the blade, the dark man turned toward the guard, throwing his cloak out wide.

  Shaking, the guard thrust blindly into the shadow.

  To his surprise, the blade sank home, drawing blood, and the phantom staggered and fell to the ground. The guard's blade went with it, red fluid leaking around the sharp steel.

  The clouds chose that moment to release their rain.

  It took the younger guard twenty breaths to steady himself. He was too terrified to be ashamed, shaking like a goblin before a dragon.

  The other guard, recovered from the stranger's attack, slapped him on the side of the head. "Oaf!" he shouted at the boy. "Ye didn't 'ave to kill him! How're we going to explain this? A drunk wanders up after the party an' ye spit him? Are ye stupid?"

  "But..." the youth stammered as his scarred companion knelt to examine the body. He had never killed a man before. "I didn't mean—"

  "Oh, 'tis sure ye didn't mean," the older guard mocked. He felt at the dark man's throat. "Damn. 'E be dead." He reached out and punched the youth's thigh. "Idiot! At least help me dispose o' the poor bastard, aye?"

  Together, they hoisted the dark figure up and dragged him to the alley near Drex's house, where they unceremo­niously dumped the body. The youth started off, shaking, but remembered and reclaimed his short sword, yanking it from the dark man's belly. The blade made a sickly squish­ing sound coming out of the flesh. The youth wiped it on the dead man's cloak.

  Not much blood. The man didn't seem to bleed much, now that he was dead.

  The older guard drew the man's silvery sword and stuck it in the hole in his side. The handle was bitterly cold, and the blade seemed almost translucent in the moonlight, prompt­ing both guards to make the warding gesture of Silvanus.

  An accident, a passerby would think, with Tymora's bless­ing. Lord Singer Greyt would be another matter, but he need not know.

  "C'mon." The scarred guardsman spat at the youth. "Come, afore someone be seein' us."

  They left the body slumped in the alleyway and hurried away.

  The rain chilled to the bone.

  * * * *

  Walker waited until they were gone before opening his eyes. The sword—his sword—in his side hurt, but Walker was used to pain. He grasped the sword hilt and pulled the weapon out. The wound began to mend, thanks to his ring. He rubbed the silver wolf's head with its single sapphire eye and empty socket. At least the guards had not noticed the shine of silver and taken the ring from his cold, "dead" finger.

  "Still as death," Walker said quietly as he sheathed his sword.

  He had almost achieved his goal. The wall of the house of Drex was not an arm's length away.

  Closing his eyes and laying his hands upon the stones, Walker allowed himself to slip into the Ethereal, where he existed but could barely feel his body. Only the heat of his hate differentiated him from the icy darkness. The world became dusky, shapes and objects mere blurry masses, and the moonlight turned into a soft, muddy radiance. He let his body relax, felt his weight lighten, and he could feel a gentle tug, the pull toward somewhere else....

  Walker tapped into powers few could understand and even fewer dared touch and walked into the wall.

  And through the wall.

  In a heartbeat, he was inside Drex's mansion. He let the ghostly power slide from him but maintained his focus. His body became heavier and he could feel the air around him. He sensed the warmth radiating from a distant hearth, where a fire still smoldered. He was tempted to move toward that heat, but he put the ache aside.

  He would not fail in this. He could not fail.

  He moved through the hallways as a black fish moves through a dark stream. Two servants passed, carrying a basket of woolens and a platter of empty plates and tankards respectively, and Walker did not hinder them, hiding against the wall with ease.

  As Walker turned a corner, a guardsman carrying a candle almost ran into him. "Wha—" the man started.

  Walker's sword was out, darting for the guard's life. Light from the spilling candle flashed along its mithral surface, dazzling the guard. The man stumbled back and set a hand on his own weapon, but before he could draw he stopped, shuddered, and slumped down, gagging. The dying guard glimpsed the dagger standing out of his throat then stared at the gleam of Walker's mithral blade, still distracting him even after the real attack had come.

  Walker whispered an apology over the body—the guard had not been his target. He knelt and recovered his knife with a quick jerk. Blood splashed on his cloak but did not discolor the black.

  Black absorbs blood, Walker mused wryly. Black covers all things and hides all hurts.

&nbs
p; Drex's bedchamber stood within half a dozen paces. Though he had no foreknowledge of the house, he could recognize the grunting and yelping sounds coming from behind the door easily enough. With a dismissive shake of his head, he turned the handle, silently opened the door, and slipped into the warm room.

  Drex was in bed, and he was not alone. Walker averted his eyes and drifted silently over to an axe on the mantelpiece.

  Rain pounded on the wooden roof overhead and on the shutters. A fire was sputtering and dying on the hearth, and he could feel the enticing heat as he neared it. Walker had known so little warmth that he found it succulent, fulfill­ing, and altogether intoxicating. He could have forgotten his purpose and just sat, watching the fading flames spark and flicker. They called to him....

  But the voices he heard were those of spirits rather than flames, hissing whispers of unwanted memories of pain and hatred. The fragments of words cut like knives.

  He stood, tall and slim, and pulled his cloak around him. Lightning flashed and thunder growled outside. He waited, motionless and prepared. It fell to his enemy to make the first move. Drex would notice his presence when he was no longer distracted.

  Soon enough, Drex's eye happened to wander the room and alight on Walker. Or, rather, his looming shadow on the wall.

  "Who's there?" Drex stuttered, shoving the lass away.

  Walker didn't answer. He merely stood, blending in with the surrounding dark, but Drex met his terrible gaze and the rest of the world seemed to slide away.

  Drex sat bolt upright in bed, startling his courtesan. "Who in the Nine Hells are you?" he roared, now angry. The older man was from the south, by his accent. Walker remembered that.

  And more.

  A memory washed over him: Pain, blood. Drex's laughter. Swords... death....

  "I am tears on the mountain," Walker said. His voice was a rasp, a deep, throaty whisper. "I am the chill in the night. I hunt with the spirits, and I walk with the dead... as will you." He put his hand on his sword hilt. "Soon."

  Drex shivered at the intensity of that glare, but he sprang from bed all the same. He yanked the blanket with him, revealing the cowering woman, who screamed and curled into a ball. He wound it around himself to cover his nakedness.

  In truth, Walker did not care. He kept his arms crossed and his gaze level.

  "Pretty speech," Drex chuckled. His hair was gray now. Different. "One of Greyt's 'prentices, eh?"

  Walker felt a flicker of irony, but the feeling passed. His neutral frown was hidden behind the twin flaps of his high collar. Lightning flashed again. Drex was approach­ing fifty now, almost double Walker's age. They stalked around each other.

  "Sounds like something out of the Singer's songs, lad," Drex said. "So what, you barge into my room in the night to tell me a children's rhyme? You think I'm in the mood?" He laughed and gestured to the terrified woman.

  "Apparently not," Walker replied in a monotone. He remembered the axe, the blood running down his chest and arms, the murderers standing over him...

  "Then speak, boy." Drex's voice became irate. "Speak quickly. As you can see, I'm occupied at the moment." The woman had rolled off the bed and was hiding beside it. "What is it you want?" he demanded.

  "Your life," Walker replied.

  Drex froze, staring at the ghostwalker in outright shock. His expression turned to one of anger, then disdain, then contempt.

  "I have no time for the games of Dharan Greyt or that bastard son of his," said Drex. He spat at Walker's feet, then reached over and hefted the great woodsman's axe from the mantelpiece. "Now get out, or I'll send you out... in several small bundles."

  "No," Walker said. "You will not."

  Drex slashed his axe at him in reply, his shout slurred with too much ale.

  Walker sidestepped and brought his arm around with a snap as though embracing Drex, allowing the axe to swipe past and the drunken lord's momentum to carry him staggering toward the opposite wall. The heel of Walker's hand darted for Drex's back and should have put him down, but the lord dived, rolled, and came up, his axe slashing across in a blur. Walker fell back, and the blade tore a long gash through his cloak.

  Drex kept up the assault, egged on by the ripping of fabric, and reversed his slash.

  Dark cloak trailing, Walker leaped horizontally over the flashing steel and rolled away from the deadly side chop—even when half-drunk, Drex was fast—and the steel burst wood chips from the side of a desk. Walker came up with his hand on his sword hilt and his knees bent. His hard eyes cut into Drex's watery ones. The lord was growing sober.

  "You move like Torlic," growled Drex as he pulled the axe free, splintering the hardwood desk. "All jumping an' twirlin' like a lass."

  "Torlic," repeated Walker, the name crashing against his mind like a wave. Torlic...

  Seeing his opponent distracted, Drex slashed low.

  Walker leaped, his black boots clearing the glittering steel by a hair's breadth, and turned in the air, lashing out with one foot. He caught Drex on the chin and sent him staggering back a few steps. Walker landed with a creak of wood even as Drex crashed backward into a nightstand, spilling several tankards and a pouch of coins to the floor.

  The woodsman felt at the blood coming from his split lip and looked at Walker in surprise. Then his face twisted in outrage. "You're going to die now, boy!" Drex growled.

  Walker shuddered, a memory flooding through him: Drex's face, red with blood that wasn't his, laughing at those same words. Walker's eyes narrowed. The world slowed as a dead calm flooded his limbs.

  You're going to die now, boy!

  "I remember you," he pronounced, as though intoning an elegy. "Standing over me...."

  "As I will be in a moment," Drex growled. His words spoke of confidence, but his eyes held doubt.

  Walker drew his sword, letting the mithral glow with silver fire. The weapon seemed ghostly, almost translucent, though surely it was a trick of the light.

  "The time has come for a reckoning, Drex Redgill," Walker said softly. A familiar bleak power filled him—a terrible emptiness in which nothing existed.

  Nothing but vengeance.

  The axe darted, but Walker flowed out of the way. It missed cutting through his floating cloak by a breath. Drex reversed the blow, but Walker almost lazily swept his long sword down, catching the axe and throwing it back as though Drex were a child. The lord roared in frustration and slashed at him again and again, but Walker turned it aside each time.

  Each time, he felt the pain of those first blows, struck so long ago...

  After the fifth chop, Walker countered, his movement casual but blindingly fast. The sword seemed to snap into his left hand, startling Drex so that he missed the parry. Walker's blade slashed a line across Drex's naked torso.

  Pained, the lord grunted and slashed, but Walker easily parried and countered, stabbing Drex in the thigh.

  The warrior slashed again, hit nothing, took a third cut to his belly, and roared.

  Drex chopped high to low with his axe. Walker parried it high and the blades locked. Drex punched Walker's shoulder, but the dark man shrugged off the blow, shifted the sword to his right hand, and answered with a left hook to Drex's jaw. The lord staggered back, Walker chopped at Drex's weapon, and the mithral blade cut through it like paper, laying the axe blade in two.

  Drex looked as though he would have said something, but Walker sliced open his throat. Blood splattered the half-elf courtesan's face. Without a word, Drex slumped onto his belly.

  Lightning crackled and thunder roiled. The man in black stood over him and reached a tentative hand up to touch his own shoulder.

  The woman whimpered. After a heartbeat, Walker regarded her.

  Then he vanished as lightning struck.

  Chapter 2

  25 Tarsakh

  The day was born stormy, brooding in a shifting downpour that grew in intensity and slackened off unpredictably. The weather seemed unable to decide whether to rage viciously or merely to simmer
with mocking drizzles.

  For Lord Singer Dharan Greyt, on the other hand, there was no such ambivalence: This was not a pleasant morning.

  The capricious weather spoiled any chance of decent hunting. He had a terrible headache such that even being awake was a trial. Meris was nowhere to be found. And, finally, the man Greyt liked least in the Silver Marches had come to call.

  "Why Speaker, what a pleasant surprise," he said to the large man in his sitting room. Then he muttered sarcastically under his breath, "I was just hoping for banality at sunrise."

  With one meaty hand, Speaker Geth Stonar smoothed his bountiful moustache. "Well met to you, too," the lord said with a note of weariness in his voice.

  "Won't you sit down? Can I offer you some wine—Cormyrean red? I have a bottle of feywine, but I'm saving that for a special occasion."

  From his expression, it was clear the gruff Lord Speaker had missed the subtle barb.

  Greyt sighed. Typically oblivious.

  The sitting room was large and lavish, as was the rest of Greyt's home. In a town where every building had at least five—and usually eight or more—residents, Dharan Greyt and three others lived in an expansive house that could have held thirty or forty comfortably. It was a frontier manor, and Greyt had decorated the interior appropriately, with tapestries depicting epic battles, monsters, and legends. He kept it, he said, in the style of Waterdhavian high society. The trinkets and treasures he had won in his adventuring days were scattered around the mansion—many were cheap imitations, but starry-eyed youth rarely knew the difference. A trip to Greyt Manor was a journey into the castles of old, like walking into a dragon's chamber.

  "If you'll just look over these papers and documents, I'll deliver them to Alustriel in Silverymoon," Stonar said brusquely. He declined the drink but took a seat. "She's calling a council of the league within the month, and several matters need to be handled before I can give her my report."

  "Matters such as getting the hunters to stop talking about the mythical silver pheasant?" Greyt asked. "Or perhaps redecorating the Whistling Stag? Indeed, I have no doubt those are tasks for Alustriel's personal attention." Then, softly: "The hag."