by Cam Banks
“I don’t have much money on me at the moment,” said Vanderjack, smoothly turning away the captain’s sword strokes, wondering whether the captain was really trying. “Can you leave me with the bill, and-”
“Above you!” shouted the Hunter, cutting Vanderjack off. Vanderjack hadn’t expected an attack from that direction, but he knew better than to question the ghost’s warning. He bent low and spun away.
A hawk’s talons narrowly missed Vanderjack’s scalp. The bird was completely silent, highly trained. Annaud was laughing, still coming forward with the easily defended yet constant swing of his blade. “Impressive,” he said, as Vanderjack rose again to fend off the attacks. “Most men don’t hear Rajan coming.”
The hawk had flown in swift and low but was wheeling around in the air above the street, clearly looking for another opening. Vanderjack spared Etharion a quick glance. The cook was once again hiding, then beside a pair of stacked wine barrels underneath a canvas canopy. Safe from marauding birds, Vanderjack thought. Unlike me.
“What can I say? I’m the best in the business,” he offered, crossing right foot over left, keeping himself moving. The captain had taken a step back, his sword raised and pointed at the sellsword in a formal fighting stance Vanderjack had seen only once or twice before.
“I’m told you were one of ours,” Annaud said. “Before you fled like a coward. Vingaard, wasn’t it?”
Vanderjack shrugged, watching the ghosts for a signal. Both he and the captain were circling each other, a classic standoff. Vanderjack hated classic standoffs. “I don’t remember,” he called back. “It was all so long ago. Back when you guys were actually winning.”
Annaud frowned and Vanderjack grinned. So the captain had a chink in his armor after all. “I am not the one scraping together his last steel pieces for a drink,” said the captain, all humor gone from his voice. “Soon you will have nothing but a windowless cell in Wulfgar beneath the horse track, where I am told the highmaster keeps all of her favorite prisoners.”
File that one away for later, Vanderjack thought: dungeons underneath the famous horse arena of Wulfgar. The constant drumming overhead of the races would drive a man mad, not to mention all of the dung and refuse that would drop on top of any poor soul unlucky enough to have a window. And the smell! He had heard the highmaster was a nasty piece of work, but he didn’t know she was that nasty.
“It’s nice to be so well thought of,” Vanderjack beamed, switching styles gradually over the course of three sword strokes. He could tell Annaud was comfortable in at least four of the commonly practiced Nerakese martial disciplines, none of which were known for their finesse. He had to respond with just as much brute force as Annaud was dishing out.
Turning his side to Annaud, Vanderjack grasped the hilt of Lifecleaver at an odd angle with both hands, whirling it about in a crescent-moon cut. The captain flinched, snarled, and kicked outward. The two warriors resumed their exchanges, throwing more and more of their strength into the blows. Vanderjack felt that Annaud could put that curved blade through the neck of a horse without so much as a pause, and he had no desire to confirm his hunch.
“The hawk!” called out the Hunter.
“Move to the right! Quick!” said the Cavalier.
Vanderjack did as he was told, lurching sideways as Annaud’s hawk screeched by his ear. Once again Annaud had that look of shock across his face, that look of mounting disbelief.
“The cook!” warned the Balladeer.
As he spun about, readying his blade for a chopping motion across Annaud’s arms, Vanderjack scanned for Etharion. Incredibly, the stocky cook had stepped out of his place under the canopy, wielding a broom in both hands like a gigantic greatsword. Vanderjack watched as Etharion drew the broom back and swung it out in a fierce motion, swatting at Captain Annaud’s hawk and, amazingly, knocking it out of the air. The hawk was rendered an unconscious pile of feathers.
The sellsword and the captain’s dance of blades had brought them close to the canopy area where Etharion was standing; Captain Annaud, driven by anger at the incapacitation of his raptor, reached to grab the cook.
“His guard is down!” said the Cavalier, practically screaming in Vanderjack’s ear.
“Here’s your chance!” joined the Aristocrat.
They were right. Annaud had thrown open his defenses in order to clutch at Etharion, who was standing there, looking mighty pleased with himself. Vanderjack had to do something quickly; it was his chance.
At exactly the same moment, three things happened: Vanderjack tensed, then leaped forward, thrusting Lifecleaver out in a deadly lunge; Captain Annaud’s mailed hand seized Etharion’s collar and pulled him close and into a chokehold; and all seven ghosts wailed like banshees, a deafening keening sound of warning, shock, and grief.
Lifecleaver’s star metal blade, sharper and stronger than any other sword, plunged right through Etharion’s heart and into that of Captain Annaud.
The screaming of the ghosts stopped.
Theodenes paced back and forth in the sheltered courtyard, waiting.
He and Gredchen, who sat patiently on a bench beside Pentar’s east-facing wall, had been there for more than fifteen minutes. If he had a chronospectus on his person, he’d know for sure how long. He could keep exact, precise account of how much time and money were being wasted on waiting for the sellsword to return. Then, he thought, he could enter the details into his ledger, tally the figures, and perhaps add a small percentage increase on account of the precipitation he was being forced to endure.
Theo’s ledger, his accounting equipment, and his chronospectus were all back at the Monkey’s Ear. Theo had no doubt that the forces of the Red Dragonarmy were poring over his meticulous records, trying to ascertain the reason for his association with the infamous mercenary. They would learn of the costs of running a mercenary enterprise (the overheads were really quite phenomenal), and they would perhaps find the itemized list of taverns, inns, bars, and public houses Theodenes had stayed in for the past year, stretching all the way back to Southern Ergoth. But none of that would tell them what they wanted to know.
Theodenes had first met Vand Erj-Ackal, son of a pirate queen, in the foothills of the Last Gaard Mountains. Vanderjack had been with another motley group of sellswords, hired killers, and soldiers at the time; Vanderjack’s Band, the mercenary had called them, somewhat unoriginally. They were all searching for the Treasure of Huma, tipped off by the dragonarmies or the Solamnics or both; it didn’t seem to matter to Vanderjack.
Back then, Theo had already been traveling for some time. He’d left Mount Nevermind, abandoning all of his research and his guild to pursue the ultimate of field tests-personal, singular, and decisive melee combat. As a young gnome, Theodenes had chosen a lifequest that made his entire family proud. “Buildtheperfect-tool,” his father had repeated rapidly when he’d told him. “Excellent! Yourmotherwouldbesoproudifshewerealiveandnoteatenbysharks.” His mother, who had indeed been eaten by sharks, would probably have been just as pleased.
However, as he had grown older, “Build the Perfect Tool” had seemed too comprehensive, too broad. All of Theo’s other siblings, friends, and associates had chosen highly specific and individualized lifequests, such as “Catalog the Ferro-Pervasive Nature of the Lesser Striped Rust Monster” or “Retroactively Establish a Connection between Two Points in Culinary Space-Time through Steady Application of Seafood and Dairy Products.” Theo needed something more … interesting.
So as news of war on the continent had reached Mount Nevermind and visitors had started to arrive, bringing such things as dragon orbs and kender into the gnome homeland, Theodenes realized then that his lifequest ought to have some relevancy to the great struggle going on in the world outside. He had logged his changes with the Guild of Planning, Records, Patents, and Preliminary Schema, and they had approved it after much deliberation. “Build the Perfect Handheld Martial Weapon” was Theo’s ultimate ambition in life, and he had the guild’s thir
teen stamps, certificates, and watermarked letters to prove it.
With his prototype in hand, Theodenes had performed some initial tests in-house, but the reluctance of any other gnomes to engage him in direct physical conflict was a problem. He stumbled upon a gnome work crew, an expeditionary team bound for the legendary Isle of Gargath, far across the sea. They suggested that Theo accompany them in the almost-certain likelihood that there would be ferocious examples of wildlife to fend off, and what better test of his prototype than that?
So it had been that Theo and eighteen other gnomes piled into a corkscrew-propelled watercraft, rocketed across the waves for a week, and landed on a distant, jungle-covered island. The nautical charts claimed that it was Gargath, birthplace of the dwarves and kender and, according to legend, the site where gnome ingenuity had unleashed the potent power of the Graygem.
Why any gnome would want to travel all the way to a mythical land in order to poke about a ruined castle for clues about the use of a legendary magical rock was beyond Theo’s comprehension. It didn’t matter much to him. He quickly became used to driving off marauding beasts, some with more than the usual number of heads or limbs, others flapping and gurgling about, still more gnashing terrible teeth. At least, that’s what Theodenes remembered.
It was on the island, somewhere in that primeval jungle, that Theo had stumbled upon the hunting grounds of a mighty saber-toothed cat. The animal was obviously a predator and clearly unhappy to have been found by a large group of gnomes. It attacked, killing at least half of the group and rendering many of the rest wounded or incapacitated before Theo defeated it. Despite the fact that his multipurpose hooked hammer, the prototype that he had brought from Mount Nevermind, had snapped in half delivering the final blow, Theodenes at least proved his initial hypothesis and saved the day.
With only a handful of gnomes remaining, the expeditionary force determined to return to the ship and limp back to Sancrist. Theo had cautioned them to make sure there were no more saber-toothed surprises waiting for them, so he scouted around the area, looking for the cat’s lair. He found it, high on a rocky crag, and within the dark confines of the cave he discovered the only prize the cat had left behind-a small, fuzzy kitten with enormous canine teeth.
Theo named the kitten Star, after the star-shaped white patch on its forehead, and carried his new discovery back to the ship, where he hoped the other gnomes would be waiting. Unfortunately, in his search for the saber-toothed cat’s lair, Theo had missed out on the rare opportunity to be eaten alive by a ferocious manticore. The other gnomes were all dead, and he had no idea how to pilot the corkscrew ship back home.
A gnome is never without a spot of ingenuity even if it falls outside of his field of expertise. Within twenty-four hours, and with Star helpfully fending off any further attacks by manticores (who would have guessed that manticores are terrified of saber-toothed kittens?) he was off again. The ship was incredibly complicated, in the gnome fashion, but Theo was determined. Weeks later, he reached what he hoped was the coast of Sancrist, just in time for the boat’s corkscrew to grind out of its threading.
It wasn’t Sancrist, of course. Theodenes had piloted the ship straight past Sancrist, through the western isles and right into the southeast coast of Southern Ergoth. He and Star escaped the vessel, which was hopelessly beached upon the sand, and subsequently managed to wander into ogre lands. The ogres, residents of the ruined city of Daltigoth, chased Theodenes and Star for days; the hill giant Thunderbane, son of the ogre city’s dictator, Stormogre, made it his mission to destroy the gnome and his cat for any number of imagined crimes that Theo was never certain about.
When Theodenes finally ran into Vanderjack’s Band, he was tired, hungry, exhausted from running, and desperate for help. Vanderjack offered his services, or rather, offered Theo a position in his band. That appealed to Theo, who was, after all, in the martial weapon business, and so began a three-month stint as a mercenary, scout, and freebooter.
It didn’t matter that there didn’t appear to be any Treasure of Huma or that, even if there had been, a band of heroes from the mainland had managed to do all the interesting things at Huma’s Tomb instead. Theo was sure becoming a mercenary was going to lead to bigger and better things.
Theo began to get worried when, fleeing from more ogres and dragons, Vanderjack admitted he didn’t have any money to pay Theo for his services. For added insult, Vanderjack was revealed to be a drunk, his entire band turned out to be shapeshifting sivak draconians, and Star was horribly murdered. Theo returned from a scouting trip to discover all of that. He had never known such bitterness, anger, and frustration in his entire life.
“Theo?” asked Gredchen, interrupting Theo’s reverie.
“Yes?” he responded, blinking a couple of times to remember where he was.
“You’ve been amazingly quiet. What were you thinking about?”
Theodenes looked back at the ugly woman, marveling at how her hair did nothing at all for her. He wondered if she had any idea just how bad Vanderjack was and what he had done; trouble seemed to follow the sellsword everywhere he went.
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing whatsoever.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Vanderjack was surrounded by corpses.
It had stopped raining. Pentar’s shocked residents stared at the bloody carnage in the street, at the dragonarmy uniforms, and at the sellsword standing in the middle of it all. They didn’t notice the dead cook lying at Vanderjack’s feet, a nondescript and pale-featured, slightly overweight corpse that could have been anybody; they were all staring at the bodies of the officer and his men. Vanderjack, however, was staring at the body of Etharion Cordaric.
His sword had fallen from his hand shortly after he drew it out of Etharion and Captain Annaud. Both men had crumpled to the blood-soaked cobblestones, each with his own look of shock permanently fixed across his face. Without the sword, Vanderjack had no ghosts. He didn’t notice.
The sellsword came to his senses when one of the onlookers came up to him and prodded his arm with a broom, perhaps to determine for himself if the man was actually alive and not a statue or merely an upright corpse. Vanderjack jerked away from the touch of the broom, spun about, and knocked it away with his mailed hand.
“Ackal’s Teeth!” he cursed. “Back off and leave me alone!”
The other man held up his hands, backing slowly away. “Seaguard’s going to be here soon, hombo,” the man said, in the local Nordmaaran patois. “Jamba trouble you start. Nobody they like the Red Scale Men, but this mess …” He gestured around at the panorama of death. “Know what I mean, gabeej?”
Vanderjack rubbed at his bare scalp and recovered his breath. He was astounded that the man was so calm and full of sensible advice. It spoke much of Pentar that its folk were inured to the possibility of such violence and more concerned with keeping disturbances quiet.
“Gabeej,” Vanderjack said, repeating the local word for understanding. “Sorry about this.” He looked down at Etharion’s body. It was a completely unintended development.
Sure that he would regret it, Vanderjack bent down and retrieved Lifecleaver from the ground. The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt, the Sword Chorus materialized around him, filling his senses.
“You killed an innocent!” said the Apothecary.
“In all the time we have been with you, you’ve never been this reckless,” said the Aristocrat.
“You are losing your edge,” said the Cavalier.
“If he ever had it without us,” said the Conjuror.
“Annaud was too quick. And you weren’t fast enough,” Vanderjack muttered. “Why pick this time to be so slow off the mark?”
“Don’t place the blame on us!” the Cavalier said, angry.
“You were aware of Annaud’s skill,” the Hunter said.
“You knew how well he could fight,” the Aristocrat added.
Vanderjack shoved the sword into its sheath, dismissing the ghosts. He briefly
poked at the cook’s body to see if there was anything to be salvaged from it then looked at the dead Captain Annaud.
A dragonarmy officer carries only enough on his person to get by, a testament to Ariakas’s executive talents, but the heyday of the dragon emperor’s influence was long gone. The remaining highmasters, flight marshals, and captains were swiftly becoming independent, following their greed or ambition without guidance. Captain Annaud seemed to be one of those, a self-styled celebrity in his part of the world. He was technically serving under Highmaster Cairn, which meant there was even more direct influence from the late Ariakas, but Rivven had a broad region to command, and Annaud was frequently out of her sight.
Annaud was wearing amazingly well-crafted armor, tooled leather and scale mail with no stains, signs of wear, or degradation. With the skill and speed of a seasoned looter, the sellsword drew Annaud’s knife from the dead man’s belt, cut a number of critical straps, and hauled the bulk of the armor from the body in less than a minute.
The people in the street, who had until that point stayed clear, seemed to be offended at his carefree looting of a dead body. Several of them ran off to call the Seaguard, while others rushed up to interfere with Vanderjack’s actions. The sellsword looked up and brandished the knife threateningly, driving them off; when he was done gathering the armor together, he pushed his way out of the crowd without further trouble.
Vanderjack ducked down a side street and located a large sack on a pile outside the rear entrance to an off-street eating house that smelled strongly of hops and barley. He dumped the armor into the sack, tied the end with a length of cord he kept on his person, and left the alleyway with the sack over his shoulder as if nothing had happened. On the way, he wiped at his own armor and sleeves, cleaning off blood and grime; he doubted he would be stopped on the street, but it didn’t hurt to present an innocent appearance.