by A. C. Cobble
“When we return, I’ll speak with him,” promised Oliver. “I just wish… I wish I knew what was going on. These murders, those things we saw…”
“Sorcery,” responded Sam. “Dark magic like Enhover hasn’t seen in two decades. The Church says it’s impossible, but we’ve seen it. Countess Dalyrimple, the governor, Captain Haines, even the officers in your uncle’s command. It is not a coincidence or some accident. Everyone who touches this is dead. This is real.”
“We’re not dead,” said Oliver. “Yet.”
Sam laughed, brushing back her jet-black hair and grinning at him. “Not yet.”
If Harwick had a sister, Swinpool was it. Perched on the opposite side of Enhover, the place looked like it had been designed by the same master planner. The buildings were limestone instead of granite, thatch on the roofs instead of moss-covered planks, but the same small structures rose from an identical-looking harbor. They fished for cod instead of whale, and while southwestern Enhover wasn’t quite as chill and bleak as the northeastern shore, the overpowering scent of the sea and the claustrophobia-inducing cliffs rising behind the village were much the same.
Staring up at the cliffs, Sam complained, “Can’t they find some nice, sandy shore for these places?”
Oliver grinned. “Steep cliffs on shore mean steep drop-offs under the water. Deeper harbors mean bigger ships. Fishing, shipping, whatever it may be, a village will spring up where the ships can anchor. Not to mention, man has never figured a way to make thicker walls than nature. Before our time, when Enhover and Finavia were locked in constant skirmishes, the extra protection of cliffs behind a village meant there was only one way they had to watch for raiders.”
“Oh,” murmured Sam. “I didn’t know all of that.”
“It’s my job,” said Oliver. He looked up and down the stone-paved street. “An inspector who served with the former Lieutenant Standish Taft claimed he’d been on holiday here and saw the man. When I was requesting the inspectors find anyone who’d served with my uncle, Taft was the only one it seems that is still alive. He’s been in hiding, though, and I worry he may not be happy to see us.”
“So, where do we find this Standish Taft?” asked Sam.
“A tavern in Swinpool,” replied Oliver. “The inspector was a little vague about which. He clearly recalled that Taft owned a tavern here, but it’d been a few years, and I suspect there was more than a few drinks involved. He couldn’t for the life of him recall which tavern it was.”
“So, your plan is to just drop into every tavern in this village until we find the one Standish Taft owns?”
Oliver shrugged. “I figure we ought to stop in, order a drink, and observe the place until we can figure out who the proprietor is. Let’s feel out the situation before we approach Taft or let anyone else in the village know we’re looking for him. The man’s not collecting his military pension. I checked. That means he doesn’t want to be found. What do you think? Do you have a better idea?”
“Spend all day loitering in taverns and drinking?” replied Sam. “No, I don’t have a better idea.”
Five taverns later, the sun was setting, igniting the surface of the sea like a field of a thousand candles. The sky above was glowing shades of orange and gold, and Oliver was feeling rather loose.
“Was that ale?” asked Sam, blinking heavily. “It packed a punch.”
“You had two of them,” reminded Oliver. He ran his hand over his hair, checking to ensure it was still bound tightly behind his head, and then commented, “Why does a village this small need so many damned taverns?”
“There’s just one more,” muttered Sam, “unless those sailors at the last place were lying.”
“The last one,” grumbled Oliver. “Want to bet the last one is the one Taft owns?”
“What’s the wager?” asked Sam as they walked toward the open door of the noisy pub. “You know what? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. If he doesn’t own this one, then he doesn’t own any of them, and this entire endeavor was a waste.”
“A waste of time or not, we’re here, so we ought to make it interesting.”
“What are the stakes?” asked Sam, eyeing the tavern doubtfully.
“One hundred pounds sterling?” suggested Oliver.
Sam coughed and stumbled.
“What?” he asked, grabbing her arm and helping her upright.
“That’s a lot of sterling. Who has one hundred pounds to splash about?” she barked.
“I—”
“Never mind,” she said, shaking herself free of his grip and glaring at him. “How about this? If we find the lieutenant in here, I’ll buy a round. If not, you give me one hundred pounds sterling.”
Oliver chuckled and then led them inside. There were a handful of patrons huddled close around tables. The bar was open, and Oliver nodded to a broad-shouldered man behind it. The man had wispy hair, somewhere between blond and silver. His arms and shoulders were thick with muscle, and his belly was thick with fat. His skin was lined from years out in the elements.
“This could be our man,” murmured Oliver under his breath.
“He could be a former fisherman, too,” retorted Sam just as quietly. They weaved through the half-full room to the bar, and both took stools and leaned on the worn surface, elbows nearly touching. “If it’s him, and he’s been in hiding, how will we know?”
“Standish,” snapped Oliver. “Two ales.”
The man behind the bar ducked and came up with two empty mugs. He turned to his taps and then stopped.
“Standish Taft,” said Oliver.
The man looked back at them, the mugs still held in his hands.
“We need to talk,” said the duke. “Is there somewhere private we can go?”
“I think you must have me confused with someone else, son,” rumbled the man. “I don’t know of anyone by that name.”
Oliver smirked. “Yes, you do. Come on now. We don’t have time for this. Some things have happened, things that haven’t happened since you served in the Coldlands.”
“I can’t help you,” growled the man. He set the mugs down on the bar, empty. “I can’t help you, and I think you oughta leave. Leave right now.”
“No.”
The man crossed his arms, and Oliver saw heavy muscle and old, pale scars bunching beneath a thick mat of blond hairs. A glower was fixed on the man’s face and his lips were pressed tightly shut.
Oliver waited, meeting the man’s eyes, knowing that eventually he’d crack.
Finally, the old soldier asked, “How did you find me?”
“I asked around,” said Oliver. “One of your friends from the campaign in Rhensar said they’d seen you here.”
“Not a friend if they was talkin’ to… who are you?” asked Taft. “What do you want with me?”
“You’re not an easy man to find,” continued Oliver, “but I don’t understand why not. Why don’t you take your military pension? Why don’t you remain connected with your old war mates?”
The man kept his arms crossed, his corded muscle taut underneath battle-scarred skin.
“You have children around?” guessed Sam, her voice slow and slurred. “That’s why you’ve stayed in Enhover, so you could see them.”
“It seems you know who I am,” said the former lieutenant, glancing between the duke and the priestess. “I won’t deny it, but I don’t see as how anyone would have any business with me. The war was a dark time, and I’d forget it if I could. I don’t talk to my old mates because… because that’s the only thing we talked about. I’m done with that life. I paid my debts and moved on. Now that we have that clear, what do you want with me?”
“As I said,” replied Oliver, “we need to ask you some questions. This is Sam. She’s a priestess with the Church. I am Duke Oliver Wellesley, and we’ve been investigating a series of bizarre—”
“Duke Wellesley,” hissed the man. “One of William’s nephews?”
Oliver nodded slowly.
Taft�
�s eyes were darting wildly, looking behind Sam and the duke. “You shouldn’t have come here. You don’t know what—”
Suddenly, he ducked, and when he came back up from behind the bar, he was holding two brass-barreled blunderbusses, one in each hand.
“Duck!” screeched Sam, flipping back off her stool and falling to the dirty, sawdust-covered floor.
Oliver was a heartbeat behind her, and as he dropped below the edge of the bar, twin eruptions shattered the air above him. The spit of fire and billow of burnt powder flashed over the bar.
Temporarily deafened by the explosions, Oliver barely heard the screams of surprise and pain behind him. He snapped back up, drawing his broadsword as he rose.
On the other side of the bar, Standish Taft had apparently ducked after firing and was rising again as well, this time a thick-bladed short sword in his right hand and a clay sphere gripped in his left.
“Is that— Duck!” screamed Oliver, flopping back down and landing heavily on Sam, who was in the process of pushing herself off the dirty tavern floor.
She collapsed under his unexpected weight and began a stream of distressingly foul curses until another blast rocked the room, and this time, they were showered with a hail of debris.
Oliver looked up, confused. The grenado Taft had been holding hadn’t landed anywhere near them. If it had, they’d be dead. From the look of the room, the munition struck near the doorway, shattering the frame, blowing the door off its hinges, and scattering the wooden tables and chairs that had sat near it. Half a dozen men and women were lying on the floor crying out and bleeding. Several more appeared to have fallen outside on the street.
Half a dozen innocent people maimed or killed. Enraged, Oliver began to stand, but before he could spin and leap over the bar at the former lieutenant, his attention was caught by a cloaked figure who strode confidently through the ruined doorway.
A black mask covering his face, the man ignored the dead and dying that littered the floor. He ignored the cries and wails of the wounded, the scattered debris, and the small flames that flickered on ruined furniture. Instead, the figure stalked directly toward the bar. From underneath a dark wool cloak, the man removed a forearm-length golden scepter. It was capped on each end by the circular ouroboros symbol, similar to the one they’d found in Archtan.
“Uh, Sam…” muttered Oliver, gripping his broadsword, thinking about how he’d rather be behind the bar than in front of it.
“Duck!” screamed the priestess, and she kicked his feet out from under him.
Oliver crashed back to the floor. With jaw agape, he watched as the cloaked figure snapped the scepter in two over his knee. The golden rod shattered like hollow crystal, and the man threw the two pieces onto the floor.
“What is—” He didn’t need to finish. He saw.
Billowing shadow swirled up from the two pieces of broken rod, twisting together, forming one column of dark smoke. Thick but not entirely opaque, it surged into the air like smoke from a fast-burning fire. The cloud boiled higher before suddenly stopping. It hung in the air, writhing as if it was being burned, and twisted into a humanoid shape, though it was a pace taller than Oliver and twice as wide.
“This isn’t good,” mumbled Sam, pushing his leg off of her. She made no move to rise, though.
Oliver shifted, clambering to one knee, allowing her room to stand, but she still didn’t.
“Shouldn’t you—”
The shadow-monster, or whatever the frozen hell it was, lunged forward, moving with shocking speed and running straight toward them. Oliver raised his broadsword, but the thing vaulted over him, the heavy thud of its foot on the bar behind him belying its insubstantial form.
Behind the bar, Standish Taft began to scream.
Sam bolted up and whipped her two kris daggers free. She wasn’t facing the monstrosity attacking Taft, though. She was squaring off against the cloaked figure in front of them.
“Don’t let him leave,” she hissed.
The cloaked man reached back under his cloak but, instead of another scepter, drew a steel khopesh. Light from the hearth and the flickering fires from the grenado gleamed along the weapon’s razor-sharp, sickle-shaped edge.
Around the figure, several thugs were entering the tavern through the shattered door. On the other side of the bar, Standish Taft’s screams abruptly stopped, but the noise did not. Disgustingly, Oliver could hear a sound which was frighteningly close to two starving dogs fighting over scraps thrown from the table.
Six men, dressed like commoners and holding short-swords, spread out around their leader.
“No witnesses,” hissed the masked man.
“Keep them off me,” instructed Sam, and she charged directly at the masked leader.
Cursing, Oliver ran after her.
The leader of the band rushed to meet Sam, his khopesh whistling through the dust-filled air as he swung it at her head.
She ducked, trying to dart forward with her sinuous daggers, but the figure kicked, connecting a boot with her shoulder and sending her spinning to the floor. She rolled, narrowly avoiding the sickle-shaped blade of the man’s weapon as he spun it and lashed down at her.
Oliver offered a silent hope she was all right then lost sight of her as two of the short sword-wielding men closed on him. They split, hoping to come at him from two angles, which he knew he couldn’t defend against. So, eschewing the rules of civilized combat that had been drilled into him since he had been a boy, he used his longer weapon and lunged forward on one leg, thrusting with his broadsword.
The silver steel blade plunged into one of the men before he could react, and two hands’ worth of sharp metal skewered the poor bastard.
His accomplice took advantage of Oliver’s blade being stuck in the first man’s body and struck with his short sword, hacking at Oliver like he was chopping his way through a thick jungle.
Oliver dodged, twisted, and stumbled out of the way of the man’s blade until, finally, he had no choice but to throw up his forearm and absorb a strike with meat and bone. The weapon sliced into his flesh, cutting skin and muscle and smashing against bone. Oliver yelped in agony as the blade bit, but he held his arm up, refusing to let the short sword come closer for a fatal strike.
Murder in his eyes, the man came after him, keeping within the guard of Oliver’s broadsword.
Oliver did what he had to do to stay alive, the only thing he could do. He kicked the man in the square between the legs.
His attacker’s eyes rolled up into his head and the man dropped his short sword and doubled over.
Oliver stepped back and spun his own blade, raising it above his head and then bringing it down in a powerful strike. He severed his assailant’s head from his neck and watched in disgust as the head flew one direction and the body toppled in the other.
The room was chaos around them as the few patrons who’d survived Taft’s grenado were locked in combat with their attackers. No witnesses meant no one was going to stay out of the fight. The fishermen and craftsmen who frequented the tavern had thrown themselves into the battle, but it appeared none of them had been armed. They were attempting to hold their own with broken chairs, fists, and, in one grim case, teeth.
“Duke!” shouted Sam.
He spun to see her go tumbling across the floor again. The man with the khopesh jumped after her, and Oliver charged, holding his injured arm close to his body, recklessly sweeping his broadsword at the man’s neck.
The khopesh rose to parry his strike, and the cloaked figure caught the broadsword with the interior curve of his blade. He twisted the khopesh, and a small hook at the end of the weapon snagged against the edge of Oliver’s broadsword. With a jerk, the man pulled it from Oliver’s hand.
“Damn,” muttered the duke, watching his sword clatter amongst the debris on the tavern floor.
The cloaked figure drew back his khopesh, preparing for a devastating slash.
He’d already started fighting dirty, though, and now didn�
��t seem like a good time to stop. Oliver lunged forward, flinging a headbutt at the masked man’s face, hoping there was nothing more than cloth covering his nose. The cloaked figure ducked his head, and the crown of Oliver’s skull cracked against the crown of the other man’s.
Blinking stars, Oliver looked up just in time to see the man’s free hand chop down on his lacerated and bloody arm. A hot jolt of pain flashed down the arm, freezing the left side of his body with agony as the edge of the man’s hand impacted the torn skin and muscle.
“Son of a whore,” hissed Oliver, holding his arm against his chest, barely able to move it through the pain. Then, without thought, he lunged and slammed his good thumb into the cloaked man’s eye.
The man squealed in pain, stumbling back but whipping up his khopesh as he did, a wild strike slashing toward Oliver’s face.
Clutching his bloody arm against his chest, Oliver scrambled away, the tip of the curved blade clipping his chin, leaving a shallow, bloody groove.
Blinking his injured eye beneath his mask, trying to hold it open, the cloaked figure stalked toward Oliver. Oliver backed up, weaponless and with only one usable arm.
Sam streaked into view, crashing against the side of the man and stabbing one of her sinuous kris daggers into his gut, twisting it and yanking it back out, along with a shower of blood and gore. The second dagger plunged into the side of the man’s neck, and she left that one in, sawing a ragged gap along the entire front of his throat. She held him tight, pressing with her knives, and then let go. The figure collapsed face-first onto the wreckage-strewn tavern floor.
Around the room, the fight was ending, and a dozen more bar patrons lay dead. Only four remained standing, and three of those didn’t look like they would be for long. The six thugs who had accompanied the masked man were dead as well, and Sam cursed.
Oliver spat, his injured arm still gripped tightly to his body and his head ringing from where he’d headbutted their attacker. “Good riddance. I’d kill them all over again if we could.”