Grudgebearer

by J. F. Lewis

  May I address the Oathbreaker?

  You may do anything you wish, Old Friend.

  “Wisdom Keeper,” the armor intoned. “How foolish it is that you should be called so.”

  “What?” Dolvek asked, stunned. “You . . . you can speak?”

  “In many languages,” Bloodmane acknowledged. “Did you not hear me address the noble Vael? I said, ‘I speak Vaelish’?”

  Zillek’s blood flows too boldly through that one, Kholster thought in disgust. Anything you want him to understand should be inscribed on a spike and driven through his skull.

  “Before King Zillek broke his oath and in so doing shattered the mystic bonds which held the Aern in thrall to your kind, you were called Eldrennai by all. In High Eldrennaic, the word Eldren means ‘wisdom’ and the suffix nai implies a ‘keeper of.’ So Wisdom Keeper. But you are not wise, Oathbreaker prince. If you were, then you would not dare to refer to the Vael as Vaelsilyn in our presence.”

  The prince scowled derisively. “Why, in the opinion of a suit of armor, should we not call the Vaelsilyn by the full and beautiful name of their race?”

  “Because is it offensive to us and to them,” Bloodmane announced. “Surely though High Eldrennaic is no longer a common tongue, you have studied it. Tell me what you think it means, Leash Holder.”

  “I am not,” Dolvek paused, gathering his thoughts, “absolutely not going to debate the finer points of language with a murderous artifact which has just killed two of my Lance.”

  “Ah. You mean you do not know.”

  Kholster watched the Vael out of the periphery of Bloodmane’s vision. Embarrassed by the exchange, she shifted from one foot to the other, ears twitching nervously. Seeing her that nervous set Kholster on edge. He was tempted to call Bloodmane’s attention to her discomfort but feared preventing Bloodmane from completing the discussion would only serve to further highlight the fact that a suit of armor locked away for six hundred years had access to a change in nomenclature which had occurred well after it had been shut away. If Kholster did nothing, Dolvek wouldn’t realize he’d been given an important detail until Torgrimm explained it to him in the afterlife, if then.

  “Of course I know.” The Oathbreaker prince ran a hand nervously through his hair. “I am an expert on the past, on history and language, on what really happened versus what the Aern claim happened. Let me see. Vael means ‘lovely’ and the suffix –silyn implies that the aforementioned loveliness has been ransomed.”

  “No.” Bloodmane shifted slightly as if to step toward the prince, but the Vael pushed against his breastplate with the back of her hand, gently pleading with him to stay put. Visor shifting, the armor took in the Vael’s unspoken request, the pained look in her eyes, nodded, took a step back before continuing. “Even using modern translations, Vaelsilyn means ‘the lovely ransom.’”

  “Same thing,” the Oathbreaker objected with a wave of his hands.

  “No.” Bloodmane’s voice was gentle but firm.

  Going easy on him, old friend?

  He is only an Oathbreaker, Maker.

  “Must we? May I?” Kholster whispered. “Only an Oathbreaker.” He hissed a curse. He could feel Rae’en’s fingers tighten on his elbow.

  “The Vael are kind enough not to point it out,” Bloodmane continued, “because Uled created them to desire harmonious coexistence, to be willing to put up with almost anything in the spirit of maintaining peace, but the name implies that the Vael are a ‘ransom of loveliness,’” the armor gestured at the Vael’s ears as if he were a human street performer summoning an imaginary coin from it, holding the nonexistent coin up for the Oathbreaker to see, “a currency of sorts, to be paid to the Aern. The name is a very polite term for a whore.” He tossed the imaginary coin at the prince’s feet, causing Dolvek to take an involuntary step back. “And you wonder why they object . . .”

  “Kill him,” Kholster whispered, tempted to give Bloodmane access to his auditory input, to send the words as thought and therefore order, but to do so . . .

  “Kill who?” Cadence asked.

  “Shut up, addict,” Rae’en said in a happy sing-song voice, still trying to keep the babe happy while steering Kholster along the road.

  “Even if that were true, which it isn’t,” the Oathbreaker interrupted, “when I say ‘Vaelsilyn’ I don’t mean to imply any such thing. When I refer to our noble and beautiful Vaelsilyn—”

  “Keep it up, Oathbreaker,” Kholster hissed into his cupped hands, fingers curled almost into fists. “Make Bloodmane angry. If he gets his bloodlust back, it will spare me no end of grief.”

  Kholster felt Bloodmane shift his stance, preparing to move. All of Kholster’s nerve endings came alive as for a brief instant he and Bloodmane were close to one in thought and deed . . . almost in sync. He’d almost forgotten the feeling.

  “Go wait in the hallway, Prince Dolvek,” the Vael snapped at the Oathbreaker. The moment was lost.

  “Go wait in the hallway, Prince Dolvek,” Kholster parroted aloud. He breathed a ragged breath and fought his way back from the edge of the Arvash’ae. “Saved by the Vael. What did you do in a past life that earned you such boons from the gods, you stump-eared maggot?”

  Dolvek opened his mouth, jaw quivering, but with ten warsuits staring at him, their red crystal eyes flashing and flaring brightly, he appeared to see the folly in refusing. “If you need anything, if anyone tries anything, Princess Yavi . . .” he stammered.

  “I’ll call for you,” Yavi assured him.

  “If anything attacks you here,” Bloodmane assured her, “my brothers and I will kill it before the Leash Holder’s tiny ears hear your call.”

  Dolvek’s eyes narrowed in anger at the armor’s words. He turned on his heel and stormed out of the room rather than act on whatever suicidal impulse had occurred to him.

  Another missed meal.

  Maker?

  Nothing, Old Friend.

  Yavi waited for the knights to leave, then for Jagged and Blackbow to close the heavy doors. She turned and looked at Bloodmane. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity. Kholster recalled a thousand other Vael staring at him with that same look of intensity. “So you can talk. I’m guessing that’s not a new thing?”

  A memory of the Grand Conjunction and Kari. A look, a kiss, a night. The mixture of sadness and joy in Queen Kari’s eyes when she’d brought Irka back to him because even as gentle as he was, he was Aern. He needed to rip and tear and rend, but more than that . . . to connect with other Aern.

  Kholster opened his eyes, cleared his throat, and spat. Still listening but no longer wanting to see. Ahead the Guild Cities loomed.

  Caz would already have been there for a day or more along with other Bone Finders, getting into position in the event something happened to him or to Rae’en and their bones needed rescuing. Or perhaps Caz was already in Castleguard or in The Parliament of Ages. Kholster found himself wishing he was there, too. He no longer had the stomach for walking through the close press of humanity the Guild Cities had to offer. He’d been almost looking forward to walking Rae’en through it and showing her the wonders of the greatest marketplace Barrone had to offer short of Midian.

  He regretted the decision not to kill the mother and child. The child meant a trip to the Harvester’s temple. The mother meant a visit with the Dean of the College of the Mental Arts. Distractions both.

  One foe he couldn’t reach and a friend he would not fight. How could Bloodmane have shared all the memories of the Oathbreaker’s abuses and not hate them? Why are we growing apart?

  Around Kholster walked farmers, peasants, merchants and thieves—a motley press of the poorly dressed and the richly garbed. For a brief moment Kholster wanted to lash out at all of them, to raise them over his head and dash out their brains upon the cobbles beneath his feet. The stone walls ahead of him seemed like the thick walls of a banker’s vault holding in the goods and coin the humans loved so much, and he longed to break them, too.

  As
if in answer, a hawk’s shrill cry rose up from the warpick on his back. He rarely heard the spirit inside Grudge, that piece of him interred within. Something about hearing it now, knowing that Grudge shared his feelings . . . helped. And the moment passed, like clouds over a battlefield masking the horrors below.

  “No.” Bloodmane’s hesitant answer reverberated within the confines of his empty metal body.

  “How long have you been able to do that?” the Vael asked wonderingly.

  “Always,” he answered slowly. “Since the maker, Kholster, built me . . . but we didn’t realize it until we were apart . . . until the Sundering . . . when the Oathbreakers took us hostage.”

  “But why didn’t you fight?” Yavi asked. Bloodmane brushed the crystal from the velvet display upon which Hunger had rested, and Yavi took a seat there, her feet dangling a few fingers from the floor. “The Eldrennai . . . they couldn’t have stopped you.”

  “They are Oathbreakers,” Bloodmane said dismissively, going down on one knee so that Yavi’s head was higher than his helm. “We are Oathkeepers. We must not be Foresworn.”

  “So because you promised. Because the Aern promised, you’ve waited here for centuries.” Yavi leaned forward and laid a soft kiss upon his helm. “That’s so sad.”

  “Don’t be sad, Yavi,” said the armor. “We will be . . .”

  Kholster felt his heart in his throat. He closed his eyes quickly to see what Bloodmane saw. The urge to interfere rode high. He could order Bloodmane not to reveal anything. . . . No. He would let Bloodmane do what the warsuit would. Bloodmane was free or he wasn’t.

  “. . . together again one day,” the armor amended.

  Thank you. You didn’t lie, but you didn’t tell her about the plan.

  “I . . .” Yavi wiped a tear from her eye. “I’ll come back and see you, if I can. I’m here for another thirty-nine days.” She glanced behind her at the doors. “If I keep him waiting too long . . .”

  “He will think that you are in danger,” the armor scoffed, “here where you are safest. You are free to go or stay as you please. We need no explanation. We hold no leashes here.”

  “Nor here, old friend,” Kholster whispered.

  Yavi headed to the door and stopped, not facing the armor. “I didn’t know any of that language stuff, you know. We just think that Vaelsilyn is too long a word. We like short, simple words, like . . . well, like Vael or Aern.” She removed her samir, briefly displaying a dazzling smile and an unsullied dental ridge, and retied it more securely.

  Through Bloodmane’s eyes, Kholster watched her leave. The warsuits all marched back to their places, setting their weapons down in the shattered remains of their reserved cases.

  You did well, Kholster told the armor.

  Thank you, Kholster.

  How goes the battle?

  The Eldrennai merchants are having their first experience with Dwarven cannon and rifles.

  Show me.

  CHAPTER 26

  BLOOD AND

  BLACK POWDER

  As doom came for him, Captain Gheest of the Eldrennai merchant vessel Her Imminent Glory was belowdecks after dinner. The thin-faced Thunder Speaker sat at the head of an antique blood oak table entertaining his officers with a new song he’d learned from a Zalizian scholar. If the way the mage light fell upon the silver foci at his throat casting strange flares of light upon his chin and chest disturbed them, they showed no sign.

  And so the king with fiery sting

  did force the manitou to wing

  A whining as they fled.

  The first barrage struck as he reached the chorus.

  They might have seen him spill the wine.

  They never saw him dead.

  By then, it was too late.

  “Shields!” he shouted with thunderous volume. The second barrage struck with a sound as if the world was breaking. Particulates filled the air as the walls of the officers’ mess exploded, shards of wood and bits of metal wreaking havoc upon his men. Turgot, his first mate, was spun around and thrown off of the stair, landing dumbly at his captain’s feet. Gheest stared in horror at the spot where Turgot’s right arm had once been.

  The screams of the dying, the injured, and the rhythmic percussion of what had to be some strange new mystical attack drowned out his commands. Casting an air spell, Gheest flew out through the massive hole in the side of his cabin and into the open air where he saw a massacre in progress. One of his best Aeromancers, Kai, hurled lightning at the figures manning the strange weapons on the decks of the opposing vessels, but one of the crew on the other ship leapt into the way of the bolt, absorbing it undamaged, and returned fire with a long curious hollow rod, a metal stick with a wooden base.

  “Aern!” Gheest shouted. “Target the ships, not the crew! It’s the Aern!” He summoned the air to carry his voice farther but lost his words as he saw the extent of their peril. At least sixty Aernese warships dotted the water, each brimming with Aern. Most wielded the long wood-hafted hollow iron rods as well as their traditional Aernese weapons. He spotted the larger metal tubes that spat fire, realized instantly how his cabin came to be ventilated, but what caught his breath and stilled his tongue was the great fiery light which welled up from the rear of the Aernese formation. Flames licked the wings of a dragon, playing along its body.

  “Ko-a-hul!” Gheest gasped, the ancient—though not true—name catching in his throat. The Aern have brought the great gray dragon with them.

  “Great Aldo,” he whispered. “The king, I must warn—”

  Captain Gheest spun skyward on a gust of elemental air, intending to flee when he saw a bald Aern at the prow of the lead vessel aim one of the hollow tubes at him. Gheest wrapped himself in a defensive shield of wind and lightning so quickly that it would have made his old teacher, Hasimak, proud . . . but with a flare at the end of the barrel and a booming crack, Gheest felt pain blossom within his chest. His air spell disrupted, Captain Gheest was seized by the inexorable pull of gravity as he fell to the deck with a thud and the world blurred.

  When his vision cleared once more, the ship was listing badly and a figure stood over him. It was the bald Aern.

  “How?” Gheest choked, “did Aern learn magic?”

  “The only thing magic about gunpowder,” the Aern told him as he drew a warpick over his head, “is having it when your opponent doesn’t.” The warpick came down, and Gheest felt nothing more. His body, like the bodies of his crew, was tied to the bulk of his former vessel and consigned to the depths.

  His last thought was to wonder whether this attack was punishment for having dared to sail through the Strait of Mioden and whether it had been the men of Castleguard who had betrayed them to the Aern or if it had all been horrible luck. Perhaps the sea goddess Queelay would tell him. He had a moment to wonder if it was true what they said that she claimed the souls of those who died at sea. But it was not Queelay who came. It was the Harvester, clad in his bone armor. Torgrimm has come for me, he thought. The Harvester, Gheest fancied, had the look of an old tired mage surprised by an unannounced visit from a favorite pupil who has given up the craft. A complex emotion.

  Further shock registered briefly as Gheest felt the Harvester’s hands on his soul.

  “Try again,” the Harvester’s voice said softly. “You can do better.”

  CHAPTER 27

  GUILD CITY GATES

  The sun dipped over the exterior wall, casting dark shadows over Kholster and his companions as they reached the western-most entrance to the city. Inverted keyhole embrasures, formed by merlons carved to resemble wary gargoyles, created strange bands of light piercing the ground shadow, highlighting Kholster amid those making their way toward the city gates. Catching the eye of an archer staring down at him as he stepped into such a patch, the Aern grinned. To his credit the archer did not react.

  I wonder when they removed the roof? Kholster thought to Vander, forgetting for a moment that his Overwatch was on down cycle.

  A vague qu
estioning blur of sleepy thought reached Kholster. Need something?

  No. It’s fine. Sorry. It was odd to be on a different sleep cycle from Vander. Not that all of the One Hundred were asleep. His other three core Overwatches were awake, and another twenty of the One Hundred, even Zhan, but he’d never been as close to them as he was to Vander. He hoped the same problem would not befall Rae’en when she took his place.

  A century ago, Kholster had been unable to rest a hand on this side of the wall. A ditch dug round the city and filled with water and muck had prevented it. Now he rested a bare hand against the cool granite surface, his gloves having been burned beyond repair in his initial encounter with Cadence—not to mention his facial hair and the Dwarven denim pants he’d been wearing. Thank Aldo, he’d opted to leave the rifle and gunpowder Glinfolgo had dedicated for his use with the fleet.

  Two centuries ago, the walls had been only partially completed. A century before that, the Guild Cities themselves were just beginning to come to fruition. In another century, would the walls be lined not with archers but with riflemen?

  I wonder how long before my use of gunpowder makes other weapons irrelevant? Kholster concentrated on deliberately keeping the thought to himself. The longer the war with the Oathbreakers went on, the more likely the humans would catch scent of what was happening. If Kholster or his Aern had to try to make any gunpowder in the field, he knew the ox would be out of the paddock.

  I’m surprised the Dwarves have kept a bag over everyone’s head as long as they have.

  How the simple security measure the Dwarves had taken of using magic to turn the “jun” powder pink, of ordering Dienoxin crystal and allowing a portion of the recipe to be “stolen,” detailing the importance of the Dienoxin crystal and its proper processing . . . how that had worked so long to keep the humans and the gnomes from figuring it out seemed miraculous. Kholster knew it to be part miracle and part assassination.

  Assassination. Hmmm.

  Zhan, Kholster thought, what are your Armored doing?