by K. J. Coble
Illah turned to see Skinners moving past the buckling line of defense, splashing hip-deep in the river to get past its flank. She followed Rhenn as he lurched towards the breakthrough. A quick look to the left showed the last of the villagers flowing onto the boat, now sitting dangerously low in the water.
Rhenn slogged into the muck and water, bellowing a challenge to the approaching barbarians. They forgot their flanking maneuver and concentrated towards him, growling. Illah came to his side and braced herself, fighting back pain and a pall of fatigue that seeped through even the adrenal fire holding her muscles taught.
The nearest Skinner charged Rhenn. The ship captain waited until the last moment before bringing his notched blade up from the ready to block the barbarian’s overhand swing. He accepted the blow, shifting back on his right foot and letting the Face’s furious energy carry the man stumbling past him into the churning water. Rhenn vaulted over the fallen man’s back, leaping away from a second attacker, whose swing cut empty air and sent him tumbling into the water to join his comrade.
But Rhenn’s gamble carried him into Illah’s way, fouling her stance. She skipped back, cursing the clumsy, yeoman fighting-style. She settled into a low guard in time to meet a Skinner pounding up the beach with a leveled spear.
Pirouetting away from the point a fraction of moment before it pierced her corslet, Illah let the Skinner careen past, driving her boot into the back of his knee and crumpling him into the muddy water. Illah thrust her saber into the fallen man’s back, then ducked under the swing of a second barbarian she’d sensed rushing her. She pivoted on her left foot, slashing across her front and opening the newcomer’s chest. He froze, then cupped his throat to hold in blood pouring from the gash Illah’s reverse stroke had drawn across his windpipe.
Side-stepping as the barbarian dropped, Illah spied Vohl Rhenn surrounded. One Skinner moved on his back with a raised axe and Illah wondered if she hadn’t heard the last of the man’s wisecracks. But a shrilly bawling shape hurtled into the mix. A hammer flashed through spumes of kicked-up water, glancing off kneecaps and shins. Grunting Skinners folded over or jumped away, clenching savaged legs. The ball of wild attacks unfurled into a stumpy-legged shape, a gnome come to stand at Rhenn’s side, dripping and shivering with both chill and frenzy.
Lighting crashed from the hilltop, shocking the din from Illah’s ears for a few moments. Danelle’s phantom-fires guttered low and Illah saw the girl running for the docks. She sought Jayce further uphill and saw the man, wreathed in his sorcery, yet backing away, fanning cyan wildly before him. She cast about for sight of another, her hearting hammering sick currents of fear through her frame.
He is up there, somewhere. I can feel him. If he finds me...
“Is everyone aboard?” a voice hollered into her ear.
Illah turned to Vohl Rhenn, having apparently come out of his tangle intact and wheezing for breath. She shook her head and looked uphill again. Jayce had turned away and was sprinting for the docks.
Seeing this, Rhenn nodded and turned to bellow, “I’m not paying you dogs to be dead! Let’s get out of here!”
The holdouts broke from the combat, one or two lingering a few seconds to offer succor to beleaguered comrades. It cost one of them, a member of the ship’s compliment parrying a blow that would have opened a companion’s skull only to take a blade in the chest as barbarians overran him. Rhenn hollered from the edge of the pier, wheeling his arm over and over again as his people fled onto the docks.
Illah backed away as the Skinners closed in from the left and cascaded downhill from around the tower. She came to stand beside Rhenn and Jayce, the three of them the last still on the beach as the circle of death closed around them. Vohl cried to the half-breed, on the bow of the ship with a pole in his hand, to push off. The gnome shrieked for them to hurry from the half-breed’s side.
Jayce murmured something and fog purled from the ground before the Skinners. To a man, the barbarians recoiled, their eyes reflecting the terror of more magical punishment. But some were already edging around it, sighting the ship escaping through the haze. Cresting bloodlust pushed them past fear.
“Go now!” Jayce whispered tightly. “It’s only fog! I’ve no more strength for offensive spells!”
Rhenn grabbed Illah’s arm and she let herself be led up the pier towards the ship. She looked back to make certain Jayce was on their heels. He was, practically driving them before him. The ship was already pulling away. Rhenn leapt the widening span and turned to wave Illah after him.
“Now you,” Illah said to Jayce. He looked at her and began to shake his head. “No more heroics! I will follow!”
The wizard glanced over his shoulder. From the shore, roars of outrage and released fury erupted. Skinners burst through the harmless wizard’s mist. Jayce turned and vaulted across to the boat.
Illah waited a moment longer as the barbarians reached the pier and came charging up its length. Something held her, some irrational desire to see him. But Lonadiel’s face was not amongst the onrushing attackers and she turned and jumped. She struck the side of the boat, her free arm hooking over the gunwale. Pain coursed through her, heightened by the chill of the water. Dark, liquid nothingness beckoned her to let it all go, just slide into its welcoming oblivion.
But hands clamped on her arm. She got the other over and released her sword, letting her hand grasp one outstretched to help. She was hauled over with the sound of sling-bullets slapping the water around her. Then she was in the arms of Jayce and Rhenn.
The villagers and crew of the ship cheered as the vessel trudged away from the docks. On the shore, the Skinners roared their frustration.
Shivering, Illah allowed a villager to drape a blanket over her shoulders. I am alive, she thought, not yet trusting that it was true. I am alive.
Chapter Seven
Regroupings
The Norothar dwarves hummed a deep-throated dirge as a pair of their fellows shoveled a last few slops of fen mud over the mound entombing three more of their dead. Goblins had fallen upon one of the sentries the previous night, when the expedition made camp. When two of his comrades came rushing at the alarm, they too fell to ambush before the rest of the camp roused to drive out the attackers.
The Frigid Fens and their denizens had bled away a quarter of the expedition’s strength.
Sarcha watched the somber ritual with impatience she dared not voice. The last few days the dwarves had stopped hiding their displeasure with her. Even now, one or two cast glances of accusation her way from the funeral.
Let them, she thought. They can hate me all they want, as long as they keep going.
Clegg Greatclub detached himself from the bowed-headed group to drift towards her. He returned his iron-studded helm to his head, eyes to the mist-wreathed ground as he came to her side.
“We have a problem,” the dwarf said, pitching his voice low and casting a nervous glance over his shoulder.
“I know,” Sarcha replied. “We’re behind schedule.”
Clegg met her gaze, his eyes flaring momentarily with the fire she had only seen when he was in battle. It dissipated as he mastered himself. “No,” began again, slowly, “losing Borivar, especially, was a hard blow to the lads. He was a veteran and popular. They are taking this as a sign.”
“Did any of them think this quest would be without danger?” Sarcha asked. “They knew where we were going.”
“So much has gone wrong,” Clegg pressed. “And there have been other signs—”
“Some statue falls down in a square and you all perceive the gods’ curses are upon us?” Sarcha snapped, unable to keep the mocking from her tone.
The fire returned to Clegg’s eyes. “Arrogance is one sign, my lady that my people do not appreciate.”
Sarcha clenched her jaw. Out of the corner of her sight she saw the funeral breaking up and the looks piercing the haze to reach her. “What do you want me to say?” she asked.
Clegg folded his arms before him
. “Maybe it’s time we talked about how far this can go.”
“You mean give up.”
“I mean we need to place limits.” He waved about them at hip-deep fog and hazy outlines of dead trees. “We are in the middle of nowhere, my lady. Do you even know where we are?”
“I know where we are,” Sarcha insisted, though the reality of the lie caught in her voice. “I have my map.”
“Ah, yes,” Clegg said with a snort, “the map that none of us has seen.”
Sarcha opened her mouth to retort then snapped it shut. She looked away, knowing she had reached a dangerous point. Manipulation had been sufficient with Vennitius and the Elders, but is no longer enough. I had hoped not to have to go this far so soon, but motivation is what is now needed. She nodded. “Your point is well-made, Master Greatclub. I apologize for the secrecy and for...well, for my ways. They have been with reason, but...perhaps it is time I shined a little more light for you.”
“Any light would be appreciated,” Clegg said without hiding anger.
Sarcha forced a warm smile. “Come away from the others with me, please.”
Clegg followed her into the mists, to a drooping, gnarled tree that put them largely out of sight of the rest of the dwarves. Sarcha shrugged out of her pack and knelt to undo its ties. Clegg remained standing, eyeing her with furrowed brows and unease obvious as he tugged at a strand of his beard.
Sarcha fished into the pack and pulled out the ivory scroll tube. She unscrewed the top and drew forth the desiccated parchment that some in Thyrria had suggested was the dried flesh of a human being. Unrolling the map, she pointed to symbols that bore passing resemblance to the topography of the modern Remordan Valley.
Ugly, hatch-mark writings in rusty red stood out around familiar landmarks, seemed to warm to a richer crimson as her fingertips caressed them. Though she knew one a simple as this dwarven fool could not sense it, the parchment thrummed at her touch, seemed alive with the will of presences that had once held the whole world in their mailed fists.
“We are here,” she said.
Clegg leaned close. “Yes. That is the Icing River and these are the Frigid Fens.” He shook his head. “But, my lady, this does not tell us where we are, only generalities.”
“We keep going east, yes?” Sarcha said, easing the map into the dwarf’s hands. “Due east and we will hit the Labyrinthines.”
Clegg took the map in his hands, eyes narrowing in concentration. His attention riveted, Sarcha reached into her pack for something else.
“Some of this landscape is not how it is now,” Clegg said. He shook his head. “My lady, please. We must seriously talk about...”
“Look at this, Clegg,” Sarcha said, producing from her pack an item wrapped in silk rags. She unfolded the fabric to reveal a golden skull, etched all over its surface with hatch-markings like the writing on the map, a pair of rubies glimmering from its sockets.
Clegg froze, surprise and sudden greed surging into his face. He rolled up the map and handed it back to her, accepting the skull in exchange. He cupped the artifact in both hands and a strange smile split through his mud-matted beard. “What is it?” he asked in hushed voice.
“A brooch,” Sarcha replied, grinning as she saw the dwarf foreman beginning to drift back into her control. “A bauble of little value in its time; probably used to clasp the cloak of one of the Vullian Tyrants.”
“One of theirs?” Clegg asked, looking up at her in wonder.
“Look at it,” Sarcha commanded, rising to her feet to stand at the dwarf’s side. He did as she said and she touched his shoulder, at the same time speaking a word taught to her by co-conspirators in Thyrr who knew that the item was much more than a brooch; was a tool of the Tyrants’ domination.
“It’s beautiful, yes, but—” Clegg’s voice cut off, as if throttled by a clenching fist. The ruby eyes gleamed with warm, bloody-hued light. Muscles stood out around Clegg’s eyes, which seemed to fight to close, to wrench away from the artifact’s otherworldly stare. The tension eased and his face settled into an expression of well-being.
“The others follow you, Clegg Greatclub,” Sarcha whispered into his ear. “If you tell them all is well, that we are on the threshold of discovery and glory, they will believe. But you must first believe. Do you?”
Clegg shivered, still some fight in him.
“Do you believe?”
The dwarf relaxed. Well-being became ecstasy on his features. “I believe, my lady.”
“Go and tell the others, then,” Sarcha said, swiping the skull from Clegg’s hands. He blinked and looked up at her, a fogginess clinging still about his eyes. “You will remember nothing of this, only that I have shown you the way.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
“Go.”
Sarcha watched the dwarf slog back towards his fellows, his strides becoming more certain as the vision of success and glory implanted itself firmly in his mind. She glanced down at the artifact, saw a hint of the fire still in the rubies and fought back the urge to stare into them, too. She shivered and thrust it back into its silken wrappings. Hiding it in the lowest corner of her pack, she knew she must keep it from Clegg’s sight. Its power was not so great with the ages separating it from its creators so vast. Were the dwarf to see it again, knowledge of what had been done would flood through him and the spell would unravel.
So, too, would her fortunes.
With the map returned to its place, Sarcha strode back towards the gathered dwarves, listening now to their foreman. A few gazes rose to pin her with suspicion. But they didn’t remain upon her long, light beginning to warm muddy dwarven features as the sun broke through the overcast above. Mist fell away and they began to babble in excitement at something behind Sarcha. She turned. To the east, a jagged line of snow-capped peaks became apparent.
Sarcha grinned like the skull in her pack.
The Labyrinthine Mountains were in sight.
THE River Imp limped south along the Talos, its cramped decks quiet, save occasional whimpers from the dispossessed. Families huddled together, some groups shivering with sobs for lost members. Others lingered near the gunwales, their eyes dull with shock as they watched the miles drift by. A child wandered back and forth along the decks until a lone young woman pulled him into her arms. The gleam of a spring morning sun did little to warm the folk of Edon Village.
Jayce sat with Vohl and Dodso near the stern of the ship. Eyeing Vohl and the melancholy expression on his face, Jayce managed a smile and touched his friend’s arm. “If you haven’t already heard it enough, thank you; not just for me—” Jayce waved a hand across the deck “—but for all of them.”
A lop-sided smile cracked the gloom shrouding Vohl’s face. “You’re right. I have heard it enough.”
Jayce chuckled. Like the mountains and the seasons, Vohl Rhenn hadn’t changed. Theirs was a strange friendship, he had to admit, having initially had little in common with the the crass, brawling, common-roots man. But time and business proceedings had led to mutual admiration, Vohl possessing a surprisingly keen mind with an interest in history, lore, and a cautious fascination with the occult.
In return, Jayce enjoyed having a man about who didn’t cringe when he lit a candle with an arcane word rather than a flint—someone who accepted him as a man, not as a foreigner to be watched at all times.
“I’m still trying to figure how much I’m going to bill you for this,” Vohl said, scratching his stubbled chin in mock concentration.
Jayce laughed again, clapping Vohl on the shoulder. This brought a wince from the other man. “Are you hurt?” Jayce asked.
Vohl shook his head as he worked his arm in circles. “It’s just muscles I haven’t used in a long time.” He looked at Jayce with furrowed brows. “I was actually wondering just what the hell you got yourself into this time, wizard. How did you bring the Skinners down upon you?”
“Not on me,” Jayce said. He gestured towards the bow, where Illah sat sharpening her saber on a
whetstone. “She says they were after her.”
Vohl frowned. “One girl?”
“Not a girl, Vohl,” Jayce said. “She’s Yntuil. She says her whole Order in the Valley has been betrayed and wiped out.”
“The elf soldier-priests?” Dodso piped up. “Why would anyone want to kill them off? All they do is ride around, talking to trees or spirits or some nonsense like that.”
“More than that, friend Dodso,” Jayce said. “They are guardians against the resurgence of powers that are best not named, even by daylight.”
Dodso waved a dismissive hand.
“What do you think brought them, Jayce?” Vohl asked.
Jayce blew out his breath, his thoughts momentarily shuddering with storms of spell-fire from the night before. “All I know is the Arhem brought Illah to me after she was attacked by the Skinners. A day later they were besieging the village. What’s more, they had a wizard with them. I think this wizard has somehow united them.”
“Maybe some Glittran wizard-lordling has his sights on carving out his own little empire in the Valley?” Vohl asked.
“That could be,” Jayce said with a nod. He decided not to mention the familiarity of his adversary’s magic. “Killing off the Yntuil will have created the necessary power vacuum for someone to slip in and assume control. But that lacks the subtlety I’d have expected of a Glittran. It would bring the Legions north and I’m pretty certain no upstart wants a tangle with the Empire.”
“No matter what it is, we need to bring in the Legions,” Dodso said. He bobbed to his feet. “Those scum have attacked an Imperial settlement! And it doesn’t look like they intend to stop there!”
Jayce nodded. “That much seems true.”
“Look, I’m a Speaker.” Dodso’s voice rose with excitement. “We’ve got Fletcher, there, a second Speaker. Between the two of us, we could call for an emergency session of the Assembly. We could call for a mobilization!”
“Slow down for a moment.” Vohl gave Dodso a strange look. “Now the rebel wants to place the Valley under martial law?”