Hardway

by David Pilling

  The lion’s claws had left permanent marks on the left side of Vazul’s face. Tyrell had a plain golden mask made to cover Vazul’s empty eye-socket and the worst of his injuries.

  The effect was both sinister and forbidding, as Vazul appreciated when he was strong enough to sit up and study his reflection in a mirror.

  He carefully donned the mask, turning it this way and that and running his fingers over the smooth polished surface.

  “Not bad,” he said grudgingly.

  Tyrell bowed stiffly. He was an extremely tall man, stooped with age and obliged to wear a wooden corset to keep his failing body upright. Like most doctors, he wore a long black robe and a skull-cap, and his white beard almost reached to his ankles.

  “Fetch me the beastmaster,” said Vazul. “I want to interrogate him personally. The lion was supposed to be drugged.”

  Iron boots rang on flagstones as the captain of his bodyguard stepped forward.

  “I sent men to arrest him, lord,” he said, “the moment you were carried from the arena. He had already made good his escape.”

  Vazul’s hands curled into fists. “You mean he got away?”

  The captain’s beefy face broke into a smile. “No, lord. I predicted your orders, and dispatched Shadow to find him.”

  “Good,” said Vazul, mollified. “She has never failed me yet. I want him alive and able to speak.”

  “So he can, lord, though he won’t be drugging any more lions. Or wiping his own arse. Shadow tracked him down to the docks, where he was about to hire a boat. He showed fight, so she was obliged to remove his hands.”

  Vazul nodded indifferently. “Just so long as she hasn’t taken his tongue. Go fetch her and the prisoner to the Dragonhall. I will see them in an hour.”

  “Are you sure, lord?” asked Tyrell after the captain had departed. “You are still weak from your injuries and should rest awhile. I advise you to sleep. See them tomorrow.”

  Vazul’s remaining eye regarded the surgeon with suspicious loathing. “You think me weak, do you?” he snarled. “Fit only for lying abed, like a frightened child? I’ll show you otherwise. Get out, and take that gaggle of sawbones with you.”

  Tyrell inclined his head and shuffled out, followed by his assistants. When he was sure he was alone, Vazul allowed himself the luxury of lying back on his pillows.

  Gods, he was tired. Sleep called to him, wrapped her soft, beguiling arms around him. For a moment he almost succumbed.

  No! I am the Dragon. Even in private, the Dragon does not show weakness.

  Trembling with effort, he swung his legs out of bed and reached for his clothes. After donning a loose tunic, breeches and white sandals, he made his way shakily through the grey corridors and galleries of his home towards the Dragonhall.

  The Dragonhall was the central chamber of Dragonkeep, the great hilltop castle overlooking the sea that Vazul’s father had reoccupied and made his capital. Records of the castle’s history were virtually non-existent. Vazul suspected it had once been the country retreat of some baron of the Old Kingdom, back in the distant glory days when the entire continent was ruled by the High Kings. By the time Haresh found it, the castle had long since been abandoned and decayed into an empty, wind-haunted ruin.

  His builders and engineers had repaired the crumbling mortar of the walls, mended the roofs, shored up the towers and filled the place with carved images of dragons: a huge winged serpent worked in stone stood poised over the main gate, and the battlements were decorated with snarling dragon heads.

  A town had rapidly sprung up outside the walls, the original inhabitants encouraged (often at spearpoint) to leave their scattered villages and make new homes under the shadow of the Dragon. Vazul’s father had encouraged trade, built temples and baths and the Arena, and generally done all he could to lay the foundations of a city. Now, thirty years later, the place was thriving and home to over twenty thousand people.

  The Dragonhall was a huge cavern with a vaulted ceiling. Once a smoke-filled vault where the barons of old had chewed their meat with bloody fingers, it was converted into a place of grave ceremony where Vazul heard complaints, dispensed justice and presided over assemblies of high priests and army officers.

  All a sham, thought Vazul as he entered the hall and climbed the twelve wide steps to the Dragonchair, a gigantic statue of a crouching dragon with outspread wings that almost spanned the length of the hall. The claws on its forelegs were cupped to form a seat.

  Vazul sank his backside onto it, wincing slightly at the touch of cold stone, and sighed as he glanced around the hall.

  Yes, a sham. The dragon imagery was something his father had extracted from the histories of the Old Kingdom, or such fragments as survived. Tales of evil fire-breathing serpents occasionally surfaced in the records. Their origin was uncertain, and no one seems to have taken them seriously until Haresh came along and proclaimed himself The Dragon Reborn. A man with the blood of dragons in his veins, imbued with the strength and ferocity of that ancient lizard race.

  Pompous old fool.

  Haresh would never have got away with such absurdities had he not also been the greatest warlord of the age and an unholy terror to anyone who defied him. His invented title had passed on to his son, who was obliged to play the mummer’s farce until he died.

  On good days Vazul enjoyed playing the Dragon. On bad days he despised it, and thought wistfully of fleeing Dragonkeep at night and starting a new life somewhere far away, where no one knew him.

  The huge ironbound double doors at the southern end of the hall yawned open, and a troop of guards entered. Big, powerful men in scale mail and plate armour, their conical helms engraved with an image of a dragon in flight.

  A slender figure entered ahead of the guards, so light on her feet she almost seemed to float across the flagstones. This was Shadow, one of Vazul’s small but elite team of assassins.

  He studied her appreciatively. Just fifteen, she possessed the thin and dexterous form of one who had spent all her formative years in training—hard, painful and relentless training, intended to push body and mind to their limits. Few survived more than six months of it before dropping out. Shadow had survived twelve years.

  Shadow was her assassin’s name. Her birth name had been wiped from her memory. Like all assassins, she wore a loose-fitting grey tunic and breeches, gathered in at the waist by a belt made of silver links, and leather sandals. Her buttery yellow hair was cropped brutally short, leaving just a blonde fuzz. She was not pretty in the conventional sense, but had a firm, strong-boned set to her features that Vazul found appealing. Not that he would dream of taking her to his bed. The Dragon did not lie with snakes.

  He turned his attention to the wretched prisoner. A steel collar had been fitted to the beastmaster’s thick neck, and he was being led along via a chain, like a dog. He sounded like one, too, whimpering and snuffling as he was dragged towards the Dragonchair.

  His arms ended in bandaged stumps, soaked in blood. Shadow carried no weapon—only the Dragon and his personal guards were allowed to carry weapons in the Dragonhall—but Vazul could picture the sickle-like blade Shadow had used to neatly sever the beastmaster’s hands. The Curvehook was a favourite weapon of the assassins.

  Shadow halted at the foot of the Dragonchair and executed a graceful bow, bending low from the waist.

  “Lord,” she said in her soft voice, “here is your traitor.”

  “What’s left of him,” Vazul said drily, shifting in his comfortless chair. “A beastmaster with no hands is of limited value.”

  She shrugged. “Traitors are of no value at all, lord. He came at me with a knife.”

  “How remarkably foolish of him.”

  She hadn’t batted an eyelid at the sight of his mask, Vazul noticed. Nothing surprised an assassin or upset their lethal rhythm.

  He switched his attention to the cowering beastmaster. “I have one question for you,” he said. “Why?”

  The prisoner failed to answer
, but continued to make low, animal-like whining noises and avert his eyes from the Dragonchair. The guardsman holding his chain leaned over and cuffed him across the back of the head.

  “Speak when the Dragon demands,” the guard snarled, “or you’ll lose more than your hands.”

  Another hard blow brought the beastmaster to his senses. His little eyes widened in shock when he risked a glance at the chair.

  “Yes, take a good look,” said Vazul, tapping his mask. “This is your handiwork. The damage might have been worse if not for the courage and loyalty of my guards. Speak. Why did you plot my death?”

  The beastmaster’s mouth worked. “Why?” he managed. His voice was a ridiculous high-pitched squeak, frigid with terror.

  “Indeed.” Vazul spread his hands. “What have I ever done to you? Have I not ruled with justice and mercy? As my beastmaster, were you not comfortable and well-paid?”

  The other man stared at his bleeding stumps. “Justice and mercy,” he muttered, “justice and mercy.”

  Suddenly he straightened his back, and looked direct at Vazul with no trace of fear in his eyes.

  “Great Dragon,” he said in a calm, flat voice, “you are a liar and a murderer. Ten years ago your armies exterminated the Red Eye clan. Do you remember?”

  Vazul’s guards turned, faces contorted in rage, to beat him to a pulp for daring to insult their master.

  “Wait!” cried Vazul. “Hear him out. Yes, I remember the Red Eyes. A mountain clan. I sent them numerous messages requesting their fealty, along with many rich gifts and fair promises. They spat on my offers and foully insulted my messengers. I had no choice but to march and destroy them.”

  The beastmaster squared his heavy shoulders. “Destroy them? Not quite, lord. Some survived. Some few of us managed to run or crawl away from the pitiless blades of your warriors. I was thirteen years old. I watched my mother and three sisters raped and butchered before my eyes. When I tried to defend them, one of your brave men put his spear through my body. I was left for dead, but the Gods saw fit to spare me.”

  His chain jangled as he took a step closer to the dais. “They spared me for one reason, or so I thought. To slay the Dragon.”

  The beastmaster’s eyes were narrowed to pinpricks. Vazul could almost feel the heat of his malice radiating from them.

  “The Gods lied to you,” he said, “or they were no gods at all, but demons. You failed. The Dragon lives.”

  He leaned forward, folding his hands in his lap. “Where were you planning to go, when my assassin caught you trying to hire a boat?”

  It was a pointless question. There was only one certain refuge for a would-be regicide.

  “Hardway,” the beastmaster replied, confirming what Vazul knew already.

  Vazul’s hands curled into fists. Hardway. That Gods-damned cesspit into which drained all manner of human filth.

  Every outlaw and fugitive in Vazul’s kingdom fled to Hardway. The island lay just fifteen miles to the west of Dragonkeep, and there were always sea-captains willing to ferry criminals over to their island refuge in exchange for a little cash.

  Vazul had considered forbidding the transport of any of his subjects to Hardway, but his advisers persuaded him that such a law would be difficult to enforce and might affect trade. His fledgling kingdom had yet to be taken seriously by the major powers, such as Temeria and the Winter Realm. He could not risk offending them by persecuting their merchants and sailors.

  He glanced at Shadow, and thought he saw the lights of burning ships in her gold-flecked eyes. Twelve years previously her father, old General Dusek, had been entrusted with a fleet and ordered to capture the island.

  Dusek, until then undefeated in battle, had failed spectacularly. More than two-thirds of his ships and most of his men were sent to the bottom of the sea. The general had crawled back to Dragonkeep in disgrace and thrown himself on Vazul’s mercy.

  Vazul remembered how angry he had been, the day he stood on the battlements and watched the pitiful remnants of his once-proud fleet limp into harbour. He had exacted a terrible revenge on Dusek. Perhaps excessively terrible. Vazul was young then, new to power and the Dragonchair, and full of pride.

  “Take this one out and behead him,” he said, flicking a finger at the beastmaster. “Have his head set up on a pole over the city gates, and his body suspended in an iron cage in the plaza as a warning to others.”

  His guards seized the prisoner, who offered no resistance as he was hustled away. He continued to look straight at Vazul, his eyes full of fearless and undying hatred, until the doors swung shut and hid him from view.

  Only Shadow remained in the hall with Vazul. He might have felt uncomfortable at being alone in the company of such a deadly killer, but years of intense conditioning had drummed absolute loyalty into her. Loyalty to the man who sat in the Dragonchair.

  Whoever that man might be, he reminded himself.

  He drummed his fingers on one of the stone talons that formed his seat. “We must do something about Hardway,” he remarked. “My enemies are encouraged by the existence of such a haven. They must learn there is nowhere to hide from my vengeance.”

  “Traitors never prosper, lord,” said Shadow.

  Vazul glanced uneasily at her. She had been just three years old when her father was blinded and sent into exile. Since then her instructors had worked assiduously to erase any memory of him from her mind. Their brainwashing techniques were remarkably effective, but still he wondered…

  “It has taken me many years to build up my fleet again,” he added, “and to replace all those men General Dusek lost when he tried to take Hardway. I am reluctant to risk losing all again.”

  “Lead the fleet yourself this time, lord,” said Shadow. “You are the Dragon. The Dragon cannot be defeated.”

  Vazul ignored her. Assassins were conditioned to believe the Dragon was both indestructible and infallible. Their faith was vital, their advice useless.

  On this occasion she was right. So long as Hardway continued to exist as an independent state, offering safe haven and asylum to criminals, he would never feel secure. There would be more attempts on his life, and the number of heads on spikes over the gates would multiply. Until, one day—he felt sick at the thought—his own head joined the throng.

  “Hardway must fall,” he muttered, and in his mind’s eye beheld the glow of burning ships.

  * * * *

  It seems a long time since I was born, and yet it seems like it was yesterday. Perhaps yesterday was longer ago than I realise. It seems as though a lot has changed, and yet everything is the same. Is change a constant, counter-acting the effects of time—cancelling each other out? The World Apparent is circular in more ways than one, and so it has moulded man in its own shape, giving him cycles and seasons. Every drama in life repeats itself over and over.

  Each town and city is a microcosm, reflecting the nature of the world as it revolves, just as each man is shaped by his environment. Consequently, man has his moods, just as the world has elements which dictate its nature. And man, too, has levels of consciousness, just as the world has spiritual levels—one celestial, one physical and one infernal—each as real and tangible as the last.

  But man is not alone in this world. There were things here before him, and things that have come into being since he first crawled from the mud. Things that were given life by his own mind; his hope, his fear, his rage. Even his grief. It is a paradoxical creature that unknowingly creates something more powerful than itself, something self-aware, with its very emotions. And yet man knows nothing of what he does. I have despaired for him at his wanton cruelty, wept with him in his sorrow, and rejoiced at the power of his love.

  For the most part, man sees what he wants to see and his senses dismiss that which does not fit with his stunted view of the world, lest the truth of what surrounds him drives him insane. Those few whose eyes are truly open, who can see beyond the physical world, are persecuted as witches or simply branded lunatics.
/>
  As I linger in the World Apparent, I see its cycle reflected in the everyday dramas of its inhabitants. Love and hate, right and wrong, life and death, justice and crime—every action with its opposite, every virtue with an equal vice. Every act of kindness delivering a new god to the celestial sphere and every act of selfishness and hate spawning a new demon in hell.

  And so I turn with the world, a thrall to my maker; the timeless emotions of man. Ever changing, ever constant.

  4.

  The Celestial Temple was by far the largest building in Hardway. A vast, white stone construction of tall, thick pillars and high arches, topped with shining domes and spires rising high into the sky. The outer walls were intricately carved with interwoven vines that appeared to wrap themselves around the building and creep up the pillars. Amongst the carved vines were scenes of war and destruction punctuated by writhing serpents and bizarre animals, the likes of which Maximilian had never seen. He wondered if any of these outlandish beasts existed somewhere in the World Apparent; if they were spiritual deities or just figments of the imagination of the artist who had so deftly wielded hammer and chisel to pick them out of the stone.

  As Maximilian’s gaze was drawn up the temple walls by the climbing stone vines, he saw various grimacing gargoyles lurking above the relief. Some appeared to clamber randomly over the dizzying arches, others perched in strategic positions and gazed into the distance as if protecting the temple from whatever attacks the monks inside believed might come.

  He had mixed feelings about his new commission—particularly shame and embarrassment at realising what a fool he had been and how he was only alive because his debt effectively made him Tulgan’s property and so protected from all those dubious characters from whom he had begged, stolen and borrowed. He had disrespected and enraged half of Hardway’s criminal underground at one time or another. Hard people. Uncompromising people. People with good memories and poor senses of humour. He shuddered to think, if he put a foot wrong and Tulgan decided he was not worth the trouble, he would be abandoned. A lamb left to the wolves.