An Empire Unacquainted With Defeat

by Glen Cook

  I pounded. And pounded again.

  Feet shuffled behind the heavy gate. The shield over the peephole slid aside. An old man's eye glared through. "What the hell you want?" he demanded sleepily.

  Colgrave dropped the cloth concealing his face. "Open the gate." He used the voice that had made Mica forget a skirt, that had driven a drunk aboard Dragon.

  The old man croaked, "Gah . . . . Gah . . . ."

  "Open the gate," Colgrave told him.

  For a moment I did not think that he would.

  The gate creaked inward an inch.

  Colgrave hit it with his shoulder. I lunged through after him, nocking an arrow. Colgrave seized the gateman's shirt, demanded, "Where us he? The thing in red?"

  I do not think he knew the answer. But he talked.

  Something growled. Barley eased past us and opened the mastiff's skull with a brutal sword stroke. Priest silenced a second growler.

  Men charged toward us from behind shrubbery, from behind trees. They had no intention of talking things over. They had blades in their hands and murder on their minds.

  Yet it was not an ambush. Ambushers do not pull their pants on as they attack.

  "I don't think we be welcome," the Trolledyngjan drawled laconically.

  I sped a half-dozen arrows. Men dropped. The crew counter-charged the rest.

  "Do it quietly!" Colgrave ordered.

  They did. Not a word was spoken. Not a warcry disturbed the morning song birds. Only the clang of blades violated the stillness.

  I sped a couple more arrows. But the men did not need my help. They had the defenders outnumbered. I turned to Colgrave.

  He had the gatekeeper babbling. Aside, he told me, "Lock the gate." I did.

  "Come on, Bowman." Colgrave stalked toward the mansion. He left the gatekeeper lying in a widening lake of blood.

  A black bird scolded from the limestone wall.

  This was the Colgrave of old. This was the mad captain who killed without thought or remorse, who fed on the agony and fear of his victims . . . .

  The creature in red was not going to be pleased with him.

  I recovered my spent arrows, running from victim to victim so I could keep up with the Old Man. I recognized some of the dead. They had crewed the sorcerer's ship.

  The thing they dreaded had overtaken them after all.

  "Where are we headed?" I asked Colgrave.

  "Cellars. The thing's got to be hiding under the house somewhere."

  "Hey! What's going on?" A sleepy, puzzled, powerfully built gentleman of middle years had come onto the mansion's front porch. He still wore his night clothes. Servants peeped fearfully from the doorway behind him.

  I never found out who he was. Somebody important. Somebody who had thought he could get the world by the ass if he allied his money and political pull with the magical might of the creature in red. Somebody driven by greed and addicted to power. Somebody laboring under the false impression that his mere presence would be enough to cow low-life rogues like ourselves. Somebody who did not know that deals with devils never come out.

  He was in for a big disappointment quick. Nobody faced Colgrave down.

  The Old Man grabbed him exactly the way he had grabbed the gateman. The man lunged, could not break Colgrave's hold. "The thing in your cellar. What is it?"

  The man's struggles ceased. He became as pale as a corpse. "You know?" he croaked. "That's impossible. Nobody knows. He said that nobody would ever find out . . . ."

  "He did? Who is he? What is he?" Aside, "Tor. Toke. Surround the house. Be ready to fire it if I call."

  "No! Don't burn . . . ."

  "Colgrave does whatever he damn well pleases. Answer me. Where is he? Why did he call us back . . . ?"

  "Colgrave?"

  "Colgrave. Yes. That Colgrave."

  "My God! What has he done?"

  I bowed mockingly. "They call me Bowman. Or the Archer."

  He fainted.

  The servants scattered. Their screams dwindled into the depths of the house.

  "Priest. Barley. Mica. Bowman. Trolledyngjan. Come with me." Colgrave stepped over our host, into the house.

  "Catch one of the servants."

  Mica came up with one in seconds. She was about sixteen. His leer betrayed his thinking.

  "Not now," Colgrave growled.

  Mica, too, was reverting.

  "Girl," Colgrave said, "show us the way to the cellar."

  Whimpering, she led us to the kitchens.

  "Barley, you go down first."

  Barley took a candle. He was back in a minute. "Wine and turnips, Captain."

  "Girl, I'll give you to Mica if . . . ."

  Something screeched. Lamps overturned and pottery broke in a room behind us. I whirled. A black bird waddled into the kitchens.

  I said, "She probably doesn't know, Captain. It's probably a hidden doorway."

  Hatred flamed from Colgrave's eye when he glanced my way. "Uhm. Probably." He fingered the gold ring he had plundered from Mica's hoard. "Ah. This way."

  We surged back into the front rooms. Everyone pounded panels. "Here," said Colgrave. "Trolledyngjan."

  The northman swung his ax. Three resounding blows shattered the panel.

  A dark, descending stairway lay behind it. I seized a lamp.

  "Barley goes first," the Old Man said. "I'll carry the lamp. Bowman. I want you behind me with an arrow ready."

  It would be tight for drawing, but I had my orders.

  XII

  The stair consisted of more than a hundred steps. I lost count around eighty. It was darker than the bottom side of a buried coffin.

  Then light began seeping up to meet us. It was a pale, spectral light, like the glow that sometimes formed on our mastheads in spooky weather. Colgrave stopped.

  I glanced back up. The servant girl stood limned in the hole through the panel. The waddling silhouette of a black bird squeezed past her legs. Another fluttered clumsily behind her, awaiting its turn.

  We went on. The stair ended. An open door faced its foot. The pale light came splashing through, making Barley look like a ghost.

  He went on. He was shaking all over. There was nothing in the universe more deadly than a terrified Barley.

  Colgrave followed him. I followed Colgrave. Priest, Mica, and the Trolledyngjan crowded us. We spread out to receive whatever greeting awaited us. Barley was a step or two ahead.

  The creature in red reposed on a dark basaltic throne. The floor surrounding it had been inscribed with a pentagram of live fire. The signs and sigils defining its angles and points wriggled and gleamed. The floor itself seemed darker than a midnight sky.

  This was the source of light. The only source. There were torches atop the red thing's throne, but they were not alight.

  The creature's eyes were closed. A gentle smile lay upon its delicate lips.

  "Kill it?" I whispered to Colgrave. I bent my bow.

  "Wait. Move aside a little and be ready."

  Barley started forward, blade rising. Colgrave caught his sleeve.

  At the same instant one of the black birds flopped past us, positioned itself in Barley's path.

  "We're here," Colgrave said softly, to himself. "So what do we do now?"

  He had altered again. Once more he was the mellowed Colgrave. The old Colgrave did not know the word we.

  "You don't know?" I whispered.

  "Bowman, I'm a man of action. Action begets action, till resolution . . . . My goal has been to get here. I haven't thought past that. Now I must. For instance, what happens if we do kill this thing? What happens if we don't? To us, I mean. And to everyone else. Those aren't the kinds of things Colgrave usually worries about."

  I understood. Tomorrow had never mattered aboard Dragon. Life on that devil ship had been a perpetually frozen Now. Looking backward had been a glance at a foggy place where everything quickly became lost. Looking ahead had consisted of waiting for the next battle, the next victim ship, with perhaps hope for
a little rape or drunkenness before we fired her and leaned back to enjoy the screams of her crew. Tomorrow had always been beyond our control, entirely in the hands of whimsical gods.

  They had taken remarkable care of us for so long, till they slipped us that left-handed one with the Itaskian sorcerer . . . .

  Here we stood at a crossroads. We had to decide on a path, and both went down the back side of a hill. We could only guess which was the better.

  If we could even glean a hint of what they were. The trails were virtually invisible from this side of the crest.

  "Ready your arrows, Bowman," Colgrave told me. "If he needs it, put the first one between his eyes. Or down his throat. Don't give him time to cast a spell."

  "What'll your signal be?"

  "You make the decision. There won't be time for signals."

  We locked gazes. This was a new Colgrave indeed. Technique was my private province, but the decision to shoot had never been mine.

  "Think for Dragon," he said. And I realized that that was what he was trying to do, and had been for the past several days. And Colgrave was unaccustomed to thinking for or about anyone but himself.

  As was I. As was I.

  A tremor passed through my limbs. Colgrave saw it. His eyebrows rose in question.

  "I'll be all right." I nocked a different arrow. The motion was old and familiar. My hands stopped trembling. "You see?"

  He nodded once, jerkily, then spun to face the creature in red.

  It remained unchanged. It slept, wearing that insouciant smile. "Wake him up," Colgrave ordered.

  Barley started forward.

  "Don't enter the pentacle!" the Old Man snapped. "Find another way."

  The Trolledyngjan took an amulet from round his neck. "This be having no potency here anyway," he said. He flung it at the sleeper.

  It coruscated as it flew. It trailed smoke and droplets of flame. It fell into the sorcerer's lap.

  The creature jumped as if stung. Its eyes sprang open. I pulled my arrow to my ear.

  Mine were the first eyes it met. It looked down the length of my shaft and slowly settled back to its throne, its hand folded over the amulet in its lap. We had dealt it a stunning surprise, but after that first reaction it hid it well. It turned its gaze from me to Colgrave.

  They stared at one another. Neither spoke for several minutes. Time stretched into an eternity. Then the thing in red said, "There is no evading fate, Captain. I see what you mean to do. But you cannot redeem yourself by killing me instead of those whom I desire slain. In fact, unless I misread you, you have slain to reach me. Wherefore, then, can you expect redemption?"

  His lips were parted a quarter inch, still smiling. They never moved while he spoke. And I was never sure whether I was hearing with my ears or brain.

  I do not know what was on Colgrave's mind. The sorcerer's remarks did not deflate him. So I presume that he had seen the paradox already.

  "Nor can you win redemption simply through performing acts. There must be sincerity." There was no inflection in his voice, but I swear he was mocking us.

  I remembered an old friend who had disappeared long ago. Whaleboats had never been very sincere. Unless he had hidden it damned well.

  "The damned can be no more damned than they already are," Colgrave countered. A grim rictus of a smile crossed his tortured face. "Perhaps the not-yet-damned can be spared the horror of those who are."

  My eyes never left my target, but my mind ran wild and free. This was Colgrave, the mad captain of the ghost ship? The terror of every man who put to sea? I had known him forever, it seemed, and had never sensed this in him.

  We all have our mysterious deeps, I guess. I had been learning a lot about my shipmates lately.

  "There is life for you in my service," the sorcerer argued. "There is no life in defying me. What I have once called up I can also banish."

  "This be no life," the Trolledyngjan muttered. "We be but oskoreien of the sea."

  Priest nodded.

  Barley was poised to charge. Colgrave caught his sleeve lightly. Like the faithful old dog he was, Barley relaxed.

  I relaxed too, letting my bow slack to quarter pull. It was one of the most powerful ever made. Even I could not hold it at full draw long.

  I stopped watching the sorcerer's eyes. There was something hypnotic about them, something aimed specially at me.

  His hands caught my attention. They began moving as he argued with Colgrave, and I ignored his words for fear there would be something compelling hidden in his voice. His hands, too, were playing at treacheries.

  I whipped my shaft back to my ear.

  His hands dropped into his lap. He stopped talking, closed his eyes.

  A wave of power inundated me. The creature was terrified of me! Of me!

  It was the power I had felt as Dragon's second most famous crewman, while standing on her poop as we bore down on a victim, my arrows about to slay her helmsman and officers. It was the power that had made me the second most feared phenomenon of the western seas.

  It was the absolute power of life and death.

  And in that way, I soon realized, he was using me too.

  I had the power, and he did fear me, but he was playing to my weakness for that power, hoping that it would betray me into his hands. In fact, he was counting on using all our weaknesses . . . .

  He was a bold, courageous, and subtle one, that creature in red. Whatever the stakes in his game, he was not reluctant to risk losing. Not one man in a million would have faced Dragon's crew for a chance at an empire, let alone have recalled us from our fog-bound grave.

  He spoke again. And again he made weapons of his hands, his eyes, his voice. But he no longer directed them my way.

  He chose Barley. It made a certain sense. Barley was the most wicked killer of us all. But I held the power of death, and Barley would have to get past Colgrave and Priest to take it away from me.

  He whirled and charged. And the Trolledyngjan smacked the back of his head with the flat of his ax. Barley pitched forward. He lay still. Colgrave knelt beside him, his eye burning with the old hatred as he glared at the creature in red.

  I nodded to the Trolledyngjan. I was pleased to see that I was not alone in my awareness of what the sorcerer was doing.

  "I think you just made a mistake," Colgrave said.

  "Perhaps. Perhaps I'll send you back to your waiting place. There are other means to my ends. But they're much slower . . . ."

  "You shouldn't ought to have done that," Priest said. "Barley was my friend."

  What? I thought. You never had a friend in your life, Priest.

  One of the black birds shrieked warningly. Colgrave reached out . . . .

  Too late. Priest's left hand blurred. A throwing knife flamed across the space between himself and the creature in red.

  The sorcerer writhed aside. The blade slashed his left shoulder. His left hand rose, a finger pointing. He screamed something.

  "Wizard!" I snarled.

  And loosed my shaft.

  It passed through his hand and smoked away into darkness. He looked down the length of my next shaft. His bloody hand dropped into his lap. Pain and rage seethed in him, but he fought for control. He wadded his robe around his hand.

  My gaze flicked to Colgrave. We had a stand-off here. And unless the Old Man did something, that wizard would pick us off one by one. Colgrave had to decide which way to jump.

  Colgrave had to? But he had told me . . . . But . . . .

  XIII

  All the black birds had joined us. They were big. I called them albatrosses, but their size was the only thing they had in common. They lined up between us and the wizard. Their pupilless yellow eyes seemed to take in everything at the same time.

  They were doing their damnedest to make sure we knew they were there.

  I had always been aware of them. For me they had become as much a part of Dragon as Colgrave or myself. What were they? Lurkers over carrion? Celestial emissaries? Sometimes,
because I sympathized with their plight, I wanted to make them something more that what they were.

  Those sentinels posted by a dead man were as trapped as we. Maybe more than we were. Their exit might be even narrower.

  Neither Colgrave nor the creature in red paid them any heed. To those two the birds were squawking nuisances left from another time.

  Those squawking nuisances had been trying to guide us since our recall. We had seldom heeded them. Maybe we should have.

  Why were they trying to intercede? That had to be beyond their original writ. That, surely, had been but to keep their summoner informed of what was happening amongst things he could only banish, not destroy.

  I suppose his last-second death compelled them to interpret their mission for themselves.

  One squawked and threw itself into the pentagram.

  There were sorceries upon that bird. It was nothing of this world. The spells shielding the thing in red were less efficacious against it than they had been against arrow, dagger, or amulet.

  Nonetheless, it fell before it reached the sorcerer. The stench of smoldering feathers assailed my nostrils. Smoke boiled off the writhing bird. It emitted some of the most pathetic sounds I had ever heard.

  Then, like the bird the sorcerer had downed at sea, it became a snake of smoke and slithered off like black lightning, through air and cellar wall . . . . I presumed.

  The thing in red had begun some silent enchantment. We now faced it amidst a vast plain, walled by mists instead of limestone.

  A second bird threw itself into the pentacle the instant the first changed and hurtled off.

  It penetrated a foot farther. Then a third flopped clumsily forward, achieving perhaps fourteen inches more than the second.

  Mica's voice echoed eerily from the mist behind us. "Captain. Bowman. Hurry up. There's a big mob in the street. They're armed. We're in trouble if they break in."

  Another bird hurled itself at the sorcerer. This one managed to sink a beak into an ankle.

  The sorcerer called down a thunderbolt. It scattered flesh and feathers.

  Another leapt.

  The Old Man said, "Have Toke and Tor gather the men behind the house, Sailmaker. If we're not up in ten minutes, go back to Dragon. Tell them not to wait for us. They'll have to clear the Estuary before the fleet gets back from Cape Blood."