by Jeff Wilson
“How did you answer?”
“I told ‘em everything I knew, which was exactly nothing. I don’t know no Lord Aisen of House Edorin or where he might be. I didn’t know where Fleet Navarch Aelsian was nor what he was up to neither. Sir, I don’t know how you got mixed up with these creatures, but I don’t never want to see one again.”
“When you said there was a rumor, you didn’t tell me that you were its source,” Aelsian said. As Hedrick’s face flushed, covered with guilt and shame, Aelsian continued to question him, trying to see how widespread the damage might be. “Who have you spoken with about this?”
“None as really believed what I told ‘em,” Captain Hedrick admitted.
His officer had clearly been left terrified by his encounter with the returned, but Aelsian had no desire to waste any sympathy on the man. Worse, he did not have the luxury of appropriately disciplining Captain Hedrick, not if he wished to avoid drawing unwanted attention to the situation.
“We are not trying to catch that ship,” Aelsian said to Captain Hedrick. “We are trying to outrun it.”
This was pleasant news to Hedrick, who relaxed visibly, but his improved comfort lasted only a moment before it was broken when the fleet navarch pronounced his judgment.
“I will need names by this afternoon,” Aelsian said, “of candidates I can promote in your place. If you speak further to anyone else about any of this, or if you fail to reach An Innis before the other vessel does, I will deprive you of rank and you will be held on charges until we return to Ossia—that is if I don’t decide to toss you over chained to a draugr who will feed upon your corpse.”
Captain Hedrick’s face went white. Aelsian’s ridiculous threats were not entirely hollow, except for the last one, but in judging the effect they had produced in the captain, he was reasonably assured that there would be no more trouble. They had lost hours on the ship carrying the draugar, hours Aelsian could hardly hope to make up. He would need very favorable winds to blow if the Interdiction and its crew were to have any chance of reaching An Innis in time.
Chapter 19
The Rise of the Ascomanni
All attempts at limiting the influence of the Sigil Corps warriors had gone horribly wrong. Logaeir could not deny that. This had become clear from the moment he had returned to the encampment with Neysim and Krin not even two full days after the soldiers had first arrived. It was not possible to isolate them completely. They were already close with Krin and his crew, and interactions during meals when food was shared made developing friendships inevitable.
Then there were the daily practice sessions at the top of a rise in a hill that overlooked the encampment. Logaeir was sure that it was being done deliberately, in as conspicuous and spectacular a fashion as possible. The mock battles were almost theatre, violent entertainment that captivated the entire camp. The displays had also drawn interest from the residents of a sheltered community hidden in the woods near the encampment, comprised of the families of the Ascomanni people who had been displaced from An Innis over the years. They were beginning to come to watch in numbers that increased daily.
Two of Logaeir’s men were dead of injuries sustained while participating in an attempt by a group of the Ascomanni to imitate what they had watched the day before. Logaeir wasn’t about to put a stop to any of it. He would instead take full advantage.
Logaeir found Oren, and together they worked throughout the afternoon on staging a scenario that would simulate the planned attacks on the strongholds of the harbormasters. Oren was no less loyal to his captain than the others, but he was the most eager of them to work with the Ascomanni. A part of Logaeir regretted that things were not quite going the way he had planned them, but he was smart enough recognize that this was in reality far better than what was he had at first envisioned.
Taking and holding at least one of the piers was paramount. Realistically, he hoped to take both of them. Today’s exercise would walk his men through this phase of the assault. Reserve forces, who would not directly participate in this initial part of the attack, were being prepared to play the role of the enemy. Woven mats had been laid out across a flat stretch of land west of the camp, accurately representing the rough dimensions of the two piers. Piles of loose stones marked out important structures, open mooring points, and significant ships that they would attempt to secure.
Logaeir could not be more pleased with the level of discipline and motivation that the men of the Sigil Corps had infused into his forces just by being among them in the camp. Swollen with confidence, he felt ever more certain of success. If preparations went well today and tomorrow, they would take a day to rest and the attack would proceed the following night.
“I still think we should disguise our true objectives by sending a diversionary force over land,” Oren said. “We could attack one of the more poorly defended warehouses and then retreat as soon as we come under threat. That would pull the enemy away from the docks. All that matters is winning that first foothold. With their forces fractured the way that they are now, we can overwhelm them piece by piece, as long as we can secure our entry point.”
“That would pose problems,” Logaeir said, disagreeing with Oren. “We would win, but it would shift most of the heavy fighting into the city, where we would lose control of our own forces, pulled in ten different directions by different elements of no less than five disparate factions that will oppose us. It would turn into a blood bath where we are killing random men and women as we rampage through the town.”
Oren accepted the wisdom of Logaeir’s position. The Ascomanni were an imposing force, but they did not have the discipline of a professional army. There was a very real certainty that men would lose all purpose in the confusion that came with battle when communications broke down as they inevitably would.
“No, I want the fighting concentrated here,” Logaeir said, pointing at a map of the stone structures that extended out from the island into the ocean. “We make them believe that they can repel us, and once we have concentrated enough of them together, we will slaughter them.”
There was no emotion as Logaeir said any of this, just simple calculation.
“And you won’t need my men to help with that?” Oren said, doubting the wisdom of holding his soldiers in reserve.
“Not at first. I need to be able to quickly move your soldiers where they are needed most, so I can’t tie you up in the initial fighting. But don’t worry—your men are going to carry more than their share. A counter offensive will come, and when it does, you will break it and lead the fighting as we enter the city.”
Oren was pleased with that. He had never actually fought in what could be called a real battle before, but he had trained all his life for this and he had a solid grasp of what he and the other soldiers fighting with him were capable of. Soon everyone would know.
***
Edryd had persuaded Irial to return to the meadow by pointing out that there were still more ripe blackberries, but it hadn’t actually required convincing. In the end it didn’t even seem like it had been his idea. The days were getting warmer, with more stretches of clear weather, and Edryd wanted to use this opening to try something. He wanted to confirm for himself, whether he could see the cracks that Seoras had spoken of in the concealing shroud around him.
Irial sat down not far away, and removing a sandal, submerged her right foot in the fast moving water of the stream. It was running higher than it had just a couple of weeks ago. Picking the same spot as before, Edryd settled onto his back and closed his eyes as he tried to exclude everything else and focus only on his ability to sense the ways in which the world around him shaped the dark. It wasn’t working. It didn’t feel like the same place. The meadow had changed somehow. Or maybe he had.
The biggest difference, he realized, was the woman who sat only a few feet away. Irial had been there before, but she had been at the periphery of the meadow and in the woods beyond its edge. Now she distracted his attentions, no matter how hard he
tried to divert his thoughts. His eyes were closed, but he could not banish the afterimage he could still see of this woman sitting beside the mountain stream. He heard her humming gently, but when he tried to concentrate on the sound it was gone, only to return whenever he gave up trying to make it out.
Abandoning any attempt at imposing control on the experience, he allowed himself to focus on Irial. He could see her after a fashion. Both of her feet were now taking comfort in the cold water. Edryd traced the water, travelling a winding path up to its source high in the hills above them. Losing his hold on the place, he washed back down the water’s descending track and was deposited on its banks beside Irial who really was humming a tune now.
“This is nice,” she said.
Edryd felt disoriented. He saw Irial, created from sensory images in his mind that were not fed to him through his eyes, but he continued to hear her in an ordinary fashion. He didn’t yet have a good understanding of how to reconcile these two things at once without feeling confused. Irial was not a part of the dark, but she was something akin to it, nestled within its confines, and illuminating the things that she touched.
Edryd shifted his perspective, allowing a vantage from which to see himself as Irial would see him now if she were able to attune her mind to perceive the patterns in the dark. Where there should have been light, he saw darkness. He would have been impossible to distinguish from the ever present flows within the dark itself, but for the fissures in his shroud, where an angry red light fought to escape.
Edryd pulled even further away, trying to determine how noticeable he was from a distance. Without the concealment, he understood that he would indeed be a beacon to anyone nearby who could shape the dark. As it was, he was no longer invisible. Edryd expanded his perspective even further. He had no frame of reference from which to understand what he was doing, or just how much he was taking in, but it overwhelmed him. He couldn’t resolve any of it. Returning his focus to Irial, everything faded, except for one unmistakable impression.
“Something is wrong,” he said to Irial as he sat up and opened his eyes. He now perceived two images, each the same in many ways but different in others. One was the simple worried look on Irial’s sunburnt face, and the other was a separate visual sense for the concern that his comment had inspired, contravened by Irial’s desire to remain in the meadow with her feet in the water. The ideas were entirely compatible, but trying to consolidate the two into a unified perception was making him to feel lightheaded.
“I don’t mean right here or right now,” he clarified. Edryd’s altered discernment was still influencing him, but it was balanced by the sights and sounds that were also competing for attention. “There is something out there gathering its focus on An Innis, and perhaps on me,” Edryd continued, feeling more ridiculous and uncertain with each additional word that he spoke.
“That might have been expected I suppose,” Irial sighed. “Something has been different about you since you came back from the mainland. I think you are about to awaken, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed.”
Edryd could tell the word awaken meant something specific to Irial. Something from that book of hers that she had gotten from Uleth. He didn’t know where she had put it, but he had an idea of how to learn a little bit more about it when they got back to the cottage tonight.
“I don’t know what that means,” he said, “but we can’t wait. Ruach and Neysim can steal a boat from the Ascomanni and we can sail up the coast. We will find a way to meet up with Aelsian later, but we need to be gone before the attack happens, and you need to go with us.”
Irial looked frightened, but she did not disagree with him, not completely.
“We need to set this in in motion now,” Edryd said, “or it will be too late.”
“Do it,” she agreed.
Edryd smiled with relief. This was what he wanted. He didn’t know where they would go, but he was kept afloat by the hope that he was going to be able to keep Irial safe.
***
Pedrin Eksar was an unhappy man. He was the owner and captain of a first rate vessel of the very best construction and design, but he had no say over where that ship went. He had been forced to cede the great cabin, the only place of any space or comfort on the ship, to a pair of returned and their human thralls. This arrangement, which Pedrin swore had turned most of his hair grey, had persisted for more than three years now, and he had little hope that it would ever end.
It wasn’t without benefits. Money was never in short supply, and his position as a captain on a ship frequented by draugar had earned him a dangerous reputation that he treasured. Pedrin Eksar ate well, having become modestly fat in fact, and the occasional trips to An Innis had its consolations as well. Esivh Rhol had an assortment of entertainments that appealed to Eksar. He just wished that he could also have the same freedoms that had once drawn him to this life on the open ocean.
“I’m pleased,” spluttered a deep guttural voice from behind Pedrin. The voice belonged to, Áledhuir, a tall powerfully built monster, large even by draugr standards. Pedrin Eksar flinched. Even after three years, he cringed every time he heard these creatures speak.
“Yes, Pedrin,” said another voice, this one clear and sweet, and disembodied. “We made good time.” The words were in his head, he knew that much. She sounded to him like a girl from his youth, a former lover who he supposed was by now long dead, her voice appropriated by this ghostly woman that he had never once actually seen, who answered to the name Aodra. He would never get used to either of these masters of his, but Pedrin preferred the horrible burbling of the big ugly one to the morbid mental intrusions of the apparition.
They were approaching the island now. They had not seen any Ascomanni ships, but that was usually more of a problem on the way out of An Innis than it was on your way in. He almost hoped someone would try to stop them. Let them try to board his ship if they liked, they would regret it if they did.
They eased into an open berth near the end of one of the piers, in a section that was controlled by the Ard Ri. A group of Esivh Rhol’s men were there to help secure the ship to its mooring points. They recognized the ship and its captain. The expressions on their faces told Eksar that some of them knew enough to associate this ship with the dangerous passengers it carried.
“You’ll be wanting to visit the Ard Ri’s palace,” one of the men said, knowing of Pedrin Eksar’s habits. “I’ll send word to Aed Seoras and let him know you are here as well,” he added.
“Seoras has been protecting him,” said the woman’s voice in Eksar’s head. “He mustn’t know we are here.”
“It would be a favor to me if Seoras doesn’t learn I am here,” Pedrin said, tossing the man a coin. The worker’s eyes were drawn for a moment towards Pedrin’s coat, where it was weighted down in an interior pocket by the heavy bag from which the coin had been taken. “My business is with the Ard Ri, and I don’t want to involve anyone else,” Pedrin emphasized to the distracted worker.
Esivh Rhol’s man looked relieved. The poor fellow preferred to have as little to do with Aed Seoras as possible, something Pedrin could sympathize with. Aed Seoras was about the only thing that frightened Pedrin more than the draugar did.
“If he learns you are here, it won’t be from us,” the man readily agreed as he collected the coin.
Given the attention that the man had shown towards the money which Pedrin carried, he might have been concerned that the dockworker’s greed had set some plans in motion, if he were not so absurdly well protected. Aodra was somewhere beside him, Pedrin guessed, while Áledhuir hung back in the shadows. The tall draugr had a way of not being seen when he wanted to avoid being noticed. Pedrin suspected that Aodra helped him with that. She could make you see what she wanted, or hide things from your senses, with all manner of illusory manipulations.
Three thralls also travelled with Pedrin as he made his way into the city and up the sloping streets. The thralls also seemed to slip from your awareness if you were not pa
ying attention, as if they were beneath notice and not really there at all. They rarely spoke, except amongst themselves or to the draugar, and when they did it was as agents acting on behalf of their masters. Aed Seoras had trained these men, but they were weaker versions of their teacher. They seemed to wear down quickly in their service to the draugar, responding to the strain of supplying to their masters a reserve of strength and stability that was soon exhausted by the demands placed upon them.
Pedrin tried not to think about the thralls as they climbed higher. He had an unpleasant feeling of kinship with them, an association he did not care to make. He didn’t want to understand even as much as he did about how these men were tethered to their masters. He too served the draugar, but in a lesser way that did not exact quite as heavy a toll.
As they came nearer to Esivh Rhol’s palace, Pedrin began to distract himself with notions of how he would spend the money he had brought with him. It was a welcome diversion from thinking about the thralls and the draugar. He was still running these ideas through his head when they stopped at the heavy wooden gates set inside of the white outer walls of the palace. Guards let them through a passageway beside the gates, and they followed a finely dressed servant as he walked over white marble floors and past brightly washed stone colonnades.
The interior was warmed by a complex of heated baths, and the air was perfumed everywhere with pleasant scents. Pedrin welcomed all of it. He appreciated the perfumes in particular. They were a much needed contrast from the sickly sweet smell that came from the salve that the thralls regularly applied to Áledhuir in an effort to preserve his decaying skin.