Shadowmasque

by Michael Cobley

  “Where would I find one?” Calabos said.

  “Not on the streets, you may be sure. They’re the messengers of power so they’ll only leave the Citadel on missions of import…”

  Two Hornghosts sauntered over to stand behind him, a silent warning. Culri shrugged and, pretending not to notice them, started to stroll towards the chamber entrance. But he paused to give Calabos a sidelong look.

  “Only the half-death can make you forget your nature,” he said. “Do not squander the opportunity.”

  Then, with a jaunty whistle, he passed through the shadowy doors and was gone, leaving Calabos caught between frustration and bleakness.

  The fog of night cleared at last, revealing the eye-defying dark and close-packed roofscape of the Nightrealm, a black and glittering panorama of buildings crammed relentlessly against each other and sloping up towards a gloom-shrouded convergence. There was no source of true light, only the strange, all-pervasive ashen radiance so it was difficult to make far-away details or to gauge distances. But Calabos thought he could just discern a wide array of sheer cliffs with a huge fortification at their midpoint, reaching to their full height. It was, he reckoned, perhaps 50 or 60 miles away.

  Here and there across the crowded, colossal city, tapering towers rose above the chaos of roofs and streets, each a leaden column with a bulbous bastion at its apex. One of Kerna’s serjeants told him that they were the tower fastnesses of the Overseers, and when Calabos asked where Kerna’s sister was being held, the man pointed to a cluster of squat, conical forts about 15 miles upslope.

  “The Red Scabbard,” he said. “The lair of Grachek’s Daggerdogs.”

  Calabos nodded, his mind turning over ideas for the forthcoming raid. A short while later he went to Kerna with a plan to which she listened carefully. When he finished she paced back and forth, mulling it over and occasionally glancing over at Qothan and the other Daemonkind. At last she nodded.

  “I like it,” she said. “We’ll do it your way.”

  The rest of that morning and afternoon the Hornghosts spent hurrying in twos and threes through less well-used streets on their way to the vicinity of the Red Scabbard. Due to their stature and the bulky visibility of their wings, the Daemonkind were forced to travel across the rooftops while watching for any observers, above or below. Calabos, accompanied by two of Kerna’s most skilled men, followed her own route through the ebony districts and was the last to arrive. By the first onset of evening, everyone was in position and the raid began.

  Posing as Overseers, Qothan, Viras and Yostil forced their way into Grachek’s Red Scabbard fortress under the pretext of an inspection demanded by the Great Shadow himself. With this assertion they demanded and got access to the prison levels, leading various officials and warders through the cell-flanked passages while Kerna and the Hornghosts followed, eliminating guards and barricading doors into other areas of the Scabbard. Calabos was with Kerna, guarding the approaches when news came back that her sister Nilka had been found alive. When she finally appeared with Qothan and the others, looking battered and bruised, Calabos was privately amazed to see that she was indeed Kerna’s twin. Yet Nilka was possessed of a vibrant charisma that made Kerna seem mild and easygoing by comparison.

  But misfortune struck as they retraced their steps out of the prison corridors. The balconied entrance hall by which they had entered was the scene of fighting as Hornghosts battled Daggerdogs in shadowy, pillared cloisters. A burly, one-eyed man in skins and wood armour emerged onto the overlooking balcony and bawled, “Lay down your weapons! — You’re outnumbered, you can’t win! Surrender and I’ll promise you a quick half-death, no torture…”

  It was Grachek. Then, behind him, another figure came into view, at which many of the Hornghosts muttered fearfully. It was a man in a full suit of armour which shimmered smokily and whose visor was sculpted like a face. The dark figure casually crossed its arms, as if relaxed and expecting some entertainment.

  “A Murknight,” Kerna muttered to her sister who spat an oath and ordered her men to close ranks.

  Calabos stared up at the newcomer, at the armour, then in farspeech said; Qothan, get me up there!

  Immediately, the Murknight unfolded his arms and the visor face spoke; “Who are you?”

  But Qothan and Viras already had Calabos in their grip and were lifting him up onto the balcony. Grachek tried attacking with an axe but a sweeping wingtalon pitched him over the balcony. The Murknight drew his own heavy blade to meet Calabos’ weapon, the sword of powers, and at the first clash the Murknight’s blade shattered. Yet even as the Murknight flung the useless sword aside his free hand flared with emerald power and jagged bolts sprang forth. As Calabos and the Daemonkind countered this attack, their enemy whirled and dashed away along an upper corridor.

  Calabos, Qothan and Viras gave chase, eventually cornering him in a high chamber decked with banners and grim trophies. Prepared for the Murknight’s attacks, Qothan and Viras were swift to lay hands on him and tear him limb from limb. But when the first arms was wrenched from the shoulder not blood but a heavy black vapour poured forth. At the same time, all resistance ceased and the black-encased form fell apart in the Daemonkinds’ grip, armoured section clattering to the floor amid boiling gouts of the same black, leaden mist.

  By the time Calabos and the Daemonkind rejoined the Hornghosts, with the Murknight armour lashed to Qothan’s back, Daggerdog reinforcements were arriving. Led by Kerna and Nilka, the Hornghosts withdrew from the Red Scabbard along planned escape routes through tortuous back alley mazes choked with icy night fog. The pre-arranged meeting place was the top floor of an abandoned chapterhouse, by a ruined Skyhorse temple. But when Calabos and the Daemonkind reached it, someone was waiting for them — the old man, Culri.

  “So you got the armour,” he said. “Did the Murknight give you a good fight?”

  It was a long room of rotten floorboards, cracked rafters and large gaps in the roof tiles through which the chill moistness of the night vapours trickled.

  “The thing dissolved,” Calabos said. “Melted away into black smoke. What are they?”

  “It is said that they are all sorcerous images of one man, one of the Great Shadow’s enemies from the earliest age of the Nightrealm.” The old man tightened a ragged brown cloak about his shoulders and met Calabos’ gaze. “But listen — there is news from across the realm, news that I’m sure you will find intriguing.”

  Calabos glanced at Qothan who had doffed the burden of armour and was retying the pieces into a more comfortable load. Qothan gave a wintry smile and a faint shrug.

  “So what’s your news?” Calabos said. “Don’t tell me that street crime has risen again.”

  Culris laughed darkly.

  “One of the Overseer strongholds, Orlag Tower, has fallen to the new chieftain of the Roaring Gauntlets, an easterly militia army. This chieftain rose from being the headman of a petty warband just a few days ago, and already he’s challenging the Nightrealm’s rulers. Do you want to know his name?”

  All the old man’s words seemed filled with foreboding, but Calabos merely nodded. “Tell me.”

  “He calls himself Byrnak,” Culri said. “Byrnak the Protector.”

  Calabos was stunned, caught up in a gathering wave of realisation, and his body felt as hollow as a bell in which fate and doom began to toll.

  Chapter Twenty

  Faces of night dance with faces of day,

  Ghosts of ice dance with ghosts of fire,

  Swords of hate dance with swords of blood,

  While the weavers of fate dance alone.

  —Mogaun seer chant

  Smoke from the burning waterfront buildings drifted through the streets of northern Sejeend, a grey haze that was growing murky as the afternoon wore to its close. From a third floor window overlooking Yarram Square, Tashil sniffed the charred air and gazed south. More smoke was rising from unseen locations close to the fortified garrison of Hubranda Lock where High Steward Roldur, D
ardan, Inryk and a handful of nobles and about 500 men were struggling to hold against the growing ranks of the Black Host. And with evening approaching, conditions for a successful assault on the garrison would be greatly enhanced.

  A woman was screaming with grief somewhere down in the the square, screaming her son’s name over and over again, and feelings of grim sorrow passed through Tashil’s thoughts. Even though a hasty evacuation had begun before the attack of the archer, hundreds, perhaps thousands of had perished in the ensuing rain of death. Now the north of the city was largely deserted, although some houses and estates on the fringes had been swamped by the sick and the elderly, and children separated from their parents. The main roads north and west to the Rukangs were filled with continuous streams of refugees, about whom brigands and kidnappers circled like flies drawn to a dying animal.

  All in less than a day, Tashil thought. From the appearance of Vashad and his Black Host this morning to the encirclement of Hubranda Lock — just a matter of hours.

  The arrows fired across the Valewater by the Black Host’s archers had turned out to possess a range of deadly qualities. Some had burst on impact in fiery gouts, spreading flame across roofs; some had razor-edged splines which sprang out just after entering a victim’s body. Others, however, seemed to be half-alive and burrowed into the body, killing from within, while still others broke apart into clouds of insects with lethal stings and bites.

  After that deluge of horror, the mass of the Black Host crossed the Valewater on barges captured at the Silver Landings and other wharf along the eastern bay. Disorganised and lacking clear orders, some squads of the city guard had charged the first wave of invaders and were cut to pieces. The same happened when Baron Cortain led thirty Roharkan heavy horse against them — just two riders had managed to escape the enemy’s hooked spears and poleaxes. The remaining groups of guards or Imperial troops either fled north and west, or sought refuge within the staunch walls of Hubranda Lock.

  While Dardan and Inryk went to lend aid to the High Steward’s defences, Tashil, Sounek and Dybel had gone in search of the high priest of the Earthmother temple north of Sejeend, talking with them a grisly cargo in a wagon.

  “Right, we’re just about done here,” came Sounek’s voice from behind her in the.

  Turning back from the window, she saw Dybel tying a cloth hood over one end of a four-foot hollow cane tube which he then fitted into a canvas sack alongside another nine or ten. There were another three sacks full of the same sitting next to the door.

  Tashil nodded. “Good. Have the scouts come up with any other suggestions for a likely course?”

  Sounek laughed. “Every way is as good or as bad as any other,” he said. “You can approach the gates of Hubranda Lock from north or south, along narrow streets, or from the west along that big road with the statues — it matters not for those Black Host troops are everywhere. They’ve also posted more archers on the roofs of buildings closest to the garrison so any approach is going to come under attack from them as well as any on the streets.”

  “That’s why we need to send a party and one of the sacks up onto the roofs overlooking the northern course.” Tashil said.

  “A very exposed position,” said Dybel. “Even after sunset.”

  “I know,” said Tashil, “which is why I’ll be the one to take charge of it.”

  Sounek and Dybel objected strenuously and in unison, pointing out a mutliplicity of reasons why either of them were better qualified for the role, vying with each other for it. But less than an hour later it was Tashil who was leading six reliable guardsmen with shields on their backs, through the rear courts of a deserted residential terrace, which adjoined the lairages and goods yards behind the trading houses that faced Hubranda Lock. The failing light offered cover from observing eyes but concealed underfoot hazards like the rotting refuse of overflowing middens and the vermin it attracted. More than once she bit back a curse when their passage through the stinking darkness disturbed packs of rats and sent them swarming around their feet.

  After breaking through an old wooden gate, they found that the ostlers quarters by the stable had a doorway into the mercantile building. From a tiled scullery a servant staircase led up to the first floor — Tashil knew that there were six floors and a loft and knew from scout reports that Black Host archers were firing into Hubranda Lock from balconies on the sixth floor. But she also knew that there were black-armoured sentries on every floor, a tricky obstacle to silent infiltration.

  It took a combination of stealth, detours along window ledges and the thought-canto Smother for them to finally reach a sturdy ladder which led up to the loft. But with magesight Tashil quickly saw that the loft’s flooring was either rotted with damp and woodworm or missing altogether, and decided that they would have to climb up onto the peaked roof itself and traverse the length of the building that way. To her surprise it proved a straightforward route for them all, with plenty of tiler pegs to provide solid footing, then a climb up to the peak and down the other side to bring them to the corner directly above the archers on their balconies.

  There were other archers in the building opposite, just visible in the dusk, but she knew that she had to deal with the nearer ones first and hope that her guardsmen’s shields would give her enough time.

  Tashil turned to the man carrying the sack of tubes, a lantern-jawed Kejani called Habrul.

  “Let’s have two to begin with,” she whispered.

  Habrul nodded, quietly pulled two from the sack and passed them to her. Tashil laid them softly on the tiles and slid them down to rest on the guttering, one poking over the front, one over the side. A flight of arrows leaped up from the unseen archers below, causing her to freeze and hold her breath for a moment. Then she removed the hoods on the upper ends and wound the tear cord of the front-facing one around her fingers. She paused, remembering how that morning the vial of bone-dust had eaten into the grey blight and later now Dardan’s second vial had stopped a Black Host swordsman in his tracks, its contents chewing through the inky armour in seconds then through the man beneath. It had been an ugly sight, but a revelatory one. After that they had raced to a burial grove and filled a wagon with plundered bones then headed north to the Earthmother temple at Harring. There, she had persuaded the high priest to let them use the big flour mills to grind down the bones, and then to bless the resultant powder.

  Consecrated bone dust, she thought as she prepared herself. It seems absurd yet it works….

  “Be ready with the shields,” she muttered and sharply tugged the tear cord. Then she gripped the upper half of the tube and swung it to and fro along the edge of the guttering and the bonedust poured out to fall in pale clouds.

  Sounds of surprise were followed by curses and the first gasps of fear, but by then more dust clouds were falling on the balconies round the corner as well.

  Dardan, she said with farspeech. Time to move — now!

  (We’re going, we’re going…)

  Then out the corner of her eye she saw an arrow hurtling towards her and for a second thought that death had found her….until a shield swept down and the arrow hammered into it, splinters flying as a gleaming black spike punched through it, missing the guardsman’s arm by a finger’s width. Tashil snatched another dust tube out of the sack, tore off the hood and called up the thought-canto Ram in her mind. Then she raised the tube to level it at the archers on the building opposite, yanked on the tear cord and cast Ram down the tube. A bolus of bonedust shot from the other end, leaving a trail in the gloom as it arced across the street and burst against the stonework, enveloping most of the building’s frontage in choking clouds. The shrieks of torment rising from the nearby balconies soon began to be echoed from over there.

  Suddenly one of her shieldmen cried out as he was dragged backwards and tossed aside. Driven by fear and instinct she threw herself sideway, up the slope of the roof, and turned with her hands still gripping the dust tube. It slammed into the upraised sword arm of a black-a
rmoured invader and bonedust residue was jarred loose, covering the man’s helm and shoulders. He managed one downward cut which she parried with the tube which broke apart, then he groaned and staggered backwards, dropped his nightblack blade and began to claw at his helm’s faceplate. Howling with pain he went down on his knees and rolled down to the eaves and gripped the guttering with one hand. Tashil caught a glimpse of gore and the paleness of exposed bone before he fell and was gone.

  There seemed to be a long suspended moment when all she did was half-sit, half-lie on the side of the roof, listening to the sounds of fighting and cries near and distant, as if the battle had somehow dropped away.

  Then a large arrow thudded into the roof tiles a few feet away and promptly split into half a dozen coiling snake things. Eyeless, they began to squirm towards her until Habrul seized one of the bonedust tube, tore at the cord and upended the contents on them. As they writhed and hissed, blackening amid the layer of powder, Habrul grinned.

  “Even their false creatures are slain by our ancestors’ bones…”

  Then another arrow flew out of the night and struck the roof at his feet, bursting into flame. In a moment he was a gasping, screaming mass of fire, so blinded by pain that he lost his footing and fell burning to the street below.

  Shaken, Tashil swore and order the rest of her shieldsmen over to the other side of the roof. Even as they scrambled up, she felt a tickle of farspeech — Dardan.

  (Can you see what is happening?)

  We’ve had to seek cover from those cursed archers, she said. What do you mean?

  (We’ve been fighting our way through, and the bonedust has worked wonders. But all of a sudden they’re pulling back, towards the wharves between here and the seagates, it seems. We’re almost at Hubranda Lock’s main gate and no-one’s here to stop us)