It was that afternoon that Cor caught sight of a small group of men coming the other direction. In the sloping, twisting gorge it was hard to tell how far away they were or how fast they moved, but they came on foot toward him up the pass. Once he was perhaps forty feet away, Cor quickly dismounted and double checked the buckles on his hauberk and legguards. He hoped these men came at him with purpose and were not just sentries come to intercept an intruder, but he was taking no chances. He tethered Kelli and then stood a few yards in front of her, waiting for the men to approach.
There were five of them, all wearing black leather jerkins and breeches with heavy wool cloaks. Four of the men were relatively nondescript as compared to typical Westerners, but the fifth, their leader, reminded Cor of the man who killed his parents. He did not look like the Loszian necromancer, but his limbs, joints and fingers looked slightly distended, slightly out of proportion with the rest of his body. He signaled for two of the men to stay back, both of whom carried loaded crossbows, a significant fact that was not lost on Cor. The other two and the leader approached closer; all were armed with a sword of some type or another, but they kept their weapons sheathed and close at hand.
“Are you Dahken Cor?” the leader asked, bringing his men to a halt.
“I am.”
“Why would you seek entrance into Losz? To do so means death for a Westerner.”
“I am no Westerner, and I answer to no monarch or god of that realm.” Cor reached into his belt pouch and tossed the tattooed skin at the leader, who caught it one handed. “I seek the Loszian noble who owns this mark. He and I have met before, and we have much to talk about.”
“I am Wrelk,” said the man, folding the flap of skin and placing it in his own pouch, “and I serve the lord you seek. I have been sent to bring you safely to him. You are lucky he knew you were coming; had you reached our gate, the men there would have slaughtered you without asking questions. No Westerner enters the Loszian Empire without a dozen crossbow bolts in his chest, and it was expensive to secure your access through the gate.
“Hand over your sword,” Wrelk commanded him.
“You are the second person to demand my sword in the last few weeks. Will you be as wise as the last in letting me keep it?” Cor asked him.
“It would not do to have you assassinate my lord once I bring you to him, Dahken Cor.”
“If I wanted to assassinate him, I’d have paid a Loszian to do the job. At the least I would have myself smuggled in aboard a ship from Tigol, not have walked in plain sight through the Spine. I go with you, but I keep my sword,” Cor said, his tone making it clear that it was his final word on the matter.
Wrelk rolled his eyes and stepped back; he motioned at Cor with his right hand, and the other two men stepped forward, hands on their swords. The first made a clumsy reach for Cor’s sword hilt, and Cor in a much practiced manner drew Soulmourn and took the man’s left hand off at the wrist before he even realized what had happened. Grasping Ebonwing in his left hand, Cor plunged Soulmourn through the man’s breastbone while he, still clearly in shock, slowly attempted to draw his own sword with his right hand.
Cor heard the smooth sound of steel pulled from a sheath behind him, and he kicked the dying man off of his sword. He turned just in time to catch a two handed blow on his right armguard; had he not turned, the stroke’s angle would have likely led the sword to sever his sword arm just below the shoulder. As it was, the heavy blow knocked him sideways and bent the armor painfully into his upper arm. As Cor recovered his balance, the man brought his bastard sword back around in a stroke meant to hack deeply into Cor’s shoulder, scale mail hauberk or not. Cor weaved his upper body back away from the blade and, using the flat edge of Soulmourn, pushed the passing blade faster in its arc down and to Cor’s left. The swordsman was suddenly off balance with the massive weapon and realized too late he was overextended. In a backhanded stroke, Cor whipped Soulmourn up and to his right, hacking diagonally through the man’s head, and it shattered as if it were a melon, chunks of bone, brain and gore blasting out in an arc away from where the body slumped to the ground.
Wrelk stood about ten feet away from Cor, a longsword in one hand and his other hand held in a fist at head height. Though urged to lunge at the man, Cor could see the crossbows trained on him from twenty feet away, and he couldn’t be sure as to how much protection his armor would afford him against a weapon with such power at this range.
“Enough Dahken Cor,” Wrelk said. “My master would be very upset with me should I bring you back as a corpse. Though he has powers to make you his slave after death, I believe he has other intentions.”
“Don’t think you’ll live long enough to experience his displeasure,” Cor growled back menacingly, taking a measured step in Wrelk’s direction. The man laughed and sheathed his own sword, lowering his raised fist.
“Very well, Dahken, keep your sword then. My lord did not actually order me to take it, so he is clearly not concerned about you. Let us go. We have some miles to go before you meet him.”
Cor wiped the blood off of Soulmourn onto the wool cloak of one of the dead men and then sheathed it, and he could feel an odd melancholy settle over him at the prospect of no more bloodshed. He walked back to Kelli, who had watched the entire exchange wide eyed, and unbuckled his right armguard. Inspecting it, he hoped he could repair it easily enough, and he placed the piece of armor into a saddlebag. His arm, which was in immense throbbing pain moments ago, no longer hurt, and Cor knew not even a bruise would show itself. Bruises were nothing but bleeding under the skin, and like all of his wounds, they healed as he slew his foes. Cor untied Kelli and walked with her, following Wrelk out of the mountain pass.
27.
It was not much further to the Loszians’ end of the pass, only about another hour on foot. Clearly, Wrelk had been watching Cor and waited until he was certain Cor would actually make it that far. The Loszians had their own wall and fort, theirs made of a curious black stone that shined purple with reflected light. Cor had yet to see anything like it in his travels; walls and buildings were always made of limestone, granite and sandstone, perhaps even marble, and this black stone was unlike them all. He vaguely recalled the Chronicler mentioning in his writings the black and purple towers of Losz on several occasions. The stone wall was roughly the same height as Fort Haldon’s wooden stockade with battlements and four large square towers, all made from the same black rock. A black iron gate with portcullis was set in the center.
“Halt,” a voice called from above when they grew near. “Wrelk, you have found the Westerner for which your master sent you?”
“Yes Lord,” Wrelk replied, shouting to make his voice heard above.
“You left with four men. What happened to the other two?”
“I’m afraid they met an unfortunate and unexpected end. You see, a large boulder simply fell down the mountain and crushed them.” Wrelk lied with ease; the tone of his voice was light and reasonable, as if no other occurrence could have possible happened.
“A most unfortunate end, indeed. Perhaps they should have been more careful.”
Cor could hear the mirth in the voice from above, and he suspected the speaker knew Wrelk’s words were untrue, but would make no issue of it. He wondered why they even bothered with the pretense at all; surely, it would be easier to simply tell the truth. The voice shouted for the gate to be opened, and the iron portcullis began to lift with the sound of scraping metal and heavy chains. The group advanced, passing through the gate to the other side of the wall.
The Loszian fort looked very little different from Fort Haldon, with a mass of buildings for the assembled troops, though these were all made of the same black stone as the wall. However, the Loszians did have one large square building at the center of the others to which the group was led. Forced to leave Kelli outside, and with a warning of violence should anything happen to her, Cor and Wrelk were ushered into this building through a heavy oaken door.
Inside w
as a single room, the length and width of which were the same dimension, roughly forty feet by Cor’s eye. In the far right corner sat a massive plush bed, on which sat two stark naked women chained by the throat to the headboard itself. The back wall was adorned with a giant map of the area, apparently showing a span of about five hundred miles in every direction from the center of the mountain pass, and a huge round mahogany table sat in the center of the room. Gold and loot of all kinds lay in a massive heap in the other rear corner. Smoky torches burned in sconces at even intervals around the room, and several others were placed in iron stands around the table.
At the table, his back to the map sat a man writing on parchment with a charcoal pencil. Though sitting, Cor could tell that the man was at least a foot taller than he, and he was impossibly narrow of frame. His fingers, each six inches or more long, reminded Cor of the enormous spider he fought and slew to the south. This man was a true Loszian, and he was even more alien than the first Cor had encountered. His head and neck alone made up two feet of his height, longer than his shoulders were wide.
“Approach Wrelk,” the Loszian said in an oddly deep voice. “I assume you have found the Westerner.”
Wrelk did not answer right away and shot Cor a meaningful look, which Cor took to mean he was expected to approach as well. He walked alongside the man, stopping a few feet short of the table’s end, about ten feet from the Loszian. This close Cor could see the Loszian had extremely pale skin, quite unlike his own pallor, and blue veins were spidered their way across his hands and face. He wore black and blood red robes of silk adorned with various symbols Cor could only assume were magical in nature, and something warned him against touching this Loszian.
“Yes lord, and my lord thanks you for your consideration,” Wrelk said.
“To the abyss with his thanks Wrelk; I have his gold, and that is what matters.” The Loszian stopped his scribblings and looked up at the two men, staring at Cor intently. For just a moment, a subtle squint came over his visage and his eyes glinted in the torchlight.
“If this man is a Westerner, then he is a walking corpse as he looks as if he comes from the grave. But no, I see his chest rise and fall, and I can see the rhythm of a strong heart. Wrelk, I know not what your master plans, but his gold is not enough for me to hold my tongue. Inform him that he owes me a great boon for allowing this abomination to pass.”
* * *
Wrelk and his two underlings had horses in the Loszian stable, and the four men left the mountains behind heading northeast. They rode swiftly with the few hours of daylight that remained, and Cor was pleased to let Kelli stretch her legs on less treacherous ground. They did not use roads, clearly on a more direct path to their final destination, and they rode until the sun had completely dipped below the horizon, Wrelk declaring it too dark to continue.
After a warm supper, Wrelk set a watch order, explaining to Cor that it was not wise to sleep unprotected in Losz, and he took the first watch himself. Cor had a few questions he wanted answered and said he would stay up for a bit, so long as Wrelk did not mind the company. He did not trust Wrelk, and he doubted Wrelk trusted anyone, possibly not even himself. Cor waited until the two crossbowmen were asleep, or at least pretending to be so, before slowly sauntering over to Wrelk, who sat on a small rock a few feet out of camp.
“You should sleep Dahken Cor,” he said without turning. “You may soon need your rest.”
“I’m restless. Wrelk, where do we ride to?”
“My master’s stronghold is a day and a half’s ride to the northeast.”
“I have met him once, and it wasn’t under the best of circumstances. How do I know he won’t just kill me when we arrive?” Cor asked.
“I suppose you don’t, but I imagine if he wanted you dead, he would have let the border guard kill you,” Wrelk answered. He never looked at Cor, always keeping his eyes attuned to the darkness beyond the camp.
“I owe your master a debt for killing my parents. What’s to stop me from killing him?” At this question, Cor saw a slight, wry smile touch the corners of Wrelk’s mouth.
“Its none of my affair, but I wish you luck in that endeavor,” Wrelk replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Cor waited a few minutes in silence before deciding to change the subject; he had some other questions he wanted to ask.
“You are part Loszian, aren’t you?”
“My grandfather was half Loszian; his father was a noble who took liberty with peasants and slaves.”
Though the West had no shortage of peasants and indentured servants, in all cases it was purely a business transaction that either party could leave at any time without fear of retribution or recrimination. Outright slavery was illegal and considered to be one of the highest crimes in the Shining West. Cor had a hard time fathoming misery of such an existence, especially with the knowledge that one’s oppressors may “take liberties” at any time. The thought of his mother being subjected to such an atrocity came unbidden to his mind and suddenly made his blood begin to boil.
“You must hate the Loszians,” Cor said, receiving a puzzled look from Wrelk.
“Why would I? It’s my Loszian blood that makes me better than the slaves or peasants. Over the centuries, the Loszians created a sub nobility I suppose you might say. Those of us with mixed blood have more freedom and power than the masses. Our lords select us for tasks, and we work to make ourselves more useful to them. I have no wife or daughter, but if I did, I would happily allow a full blooded Loszian, even half blooded, to take her. Any child from that union would live better than I.”
Cor listened incredulously to Wrelk continue on about the social and economic advantages of allowing the rape of his hypothetical daughter or wife at the hands of a Loszian lord. Wrelk explained that it should purely be viewed as a business transaction, or an attempt at raising one’s status, and the man’s detached matter of fact perspective appalled him. His mind whirled with the disgusting logic of it, and that the people of Losz had simply come to accept this as the way of things. Again, Cor allowed the discussion to simply die out, before asking another question.
“Who was the Loszian that spoke to us back in the mountains?”
“Lord Menak. He was once a powerful noble and sorcerer. I do not know the entire story, but I know he chose to leave his lands in favor of the border, away from the center of machinations in the empire.”
“He’s a full blooded Loszian, isn’t he?” Cor asked, knowing the answer.
“Yes, like most of the lords.”
“Most,” said Cor slowly, watching Wrelk’s reaction, “but not all, like your lord. When I saw him, I only assumed he was a true Loszian, but after meeting Menak, I know that’s not true. What’s his name?”
“Taraq’nok, and I will not discuss my lord’s birth or his private matters,” Wrelk said, turning his face to Cor. “I serve him, and it is his business what he shares with you. Go to sleep Dahken Cor; we have much riding to do tomorrow.”
Cor had heard that tone in a person’s voice many times over the years, and it always came when he had asked one too many questions. It carried a note of finality that his parents had taught him meant to drop the issue lest he pay the consequences. He returned to his bedroll and forced himself to sleep.
* * *
Cor found that the Loszian countryside looked little different than that of Aquis. It was rather boring and uneventful, and Wrelk kept to himself the rest of the journey. Cor did not even attempt to engage the man, or his cohorts, in conversation. They kept up their pace, and they reached their destination before noon on the second day since leaving the mountains behind. The group topped a small hill and upon looking down in the valley, Cor knew where they headed. In the center of the small valley stood a small black castle, similar in size to what Sanctum once was. A black curtain wall surrounded the castle with towers at each of the four corners; it was a relatively unimaginative design, but Cor didn’t doubt its effectiveness. A cluster of small buildings stood directly outside the wa
lls, and farms extended outward for several miles around.
As they descended into the valley and passed through the farmland, what Cor saw shocked him. The various crops were not well tended; Cor doubted that even half of the impending harvest would be edible. The people, mostly men, he saw working the fields were filthy and emaciated, driven only by a lack of anything else to do or the whip of an overseer. The workers looked no different from other Westerners, but the armored overseers clearly had varying amounts of Loszian blood.
As they approached the castle, Cor could see that the wall and castle were made from the same black stone he had seen at the Loszian side of the Spine. The stone shined dark purple with light reflected off of it, and it clearly had some special significance for the Loszians. Cor idly wondered if they somehow made the stone themselves through their sorcery. Just outside the curtain walls stood a number of squat buildings; a few were made from timber, but most of them were clay and mud huts. He could see into some of the huts, as they had no doors except perhaps and animal skin, and they were stark and filthy inside. Children ran freely here playing, but not with the same joy Cor remembered as a boy, while teenaged girls sat or stood nearby idly watching.
A wide, deep moat surrounded the walls, though it was empty, and a ten foot wide drawbridge crossed the moat allowing entrance into the castle. As they passed through the gate, Cor noted the heavy black iron portcullis drawn up overhead, clearly another affectation popular with the Loszians. The wall’s interior was far larger than Sanctum’s had been, but the spaciousness was lost to a large number of black stone buildings. He spotted the usual services a castle would need, such as a blacksmith, armory and cooper, but there were many nondescript buildings with closed doors. Wrelk explained that Taraq’nok’s captains and agents of Loszian blood lived within these, while his lieutenants and direct servants stayed within the castle. The castle itself looked very little different from Sanctum outside of the color and one large tower that was completely open to the outside at the spire.
Blood and Steel Page 21