by Rye Sobo
“A pudgy half-orc named Starrik was the garrison’s commander. He brought Aurellis and the rest of us up to the battlements. Looking over, he pointed to the fishing village down the beach from where our landing skiffs were beached. Starrik said three months earlier, there was nothing here. The village and all its inhabitants were Nivs, washed up on the beach and made an encampment that grew and grew. There were supposed to be two other camps further west just as big as the one near the fort. I swear Aurellis nearly threw that mixed verdi bastard right off the battlement.
“We took four days and nights to disembark. Since there was no enemy army, we built our encampment on the highlands around the southern side of the fortress. Over a few months, Callum Heights had gone from a desolate outpost on the farthest reaches of Laetia to a tent city with as many residents as Fortis or Drakkas Port.
“They tasked me with construction of palisades around our encampment, if the Nivs were hostile, we needed to hold them back at least long enough to fall back into the fortress. With housing and support services tended to, we needed to find out what had driven the ice-eaters to brave the chaotic waters of the Narrows to Laetia.
“On our fifth day, General Aurellis assembled the officer corps at the fort. He split the army into three, one for each Niv encampment along the coast. They dubbed the camps Lar, Fida, and Carnum, after the deities of the home, truth, and health, respectively.
“Commander Lorenzo Rayner, my commanding officer, would assume the title of Commandant to oversee coordination between the three armies. My feet ached at the thought of the endless miles I was about to undertake, running back and forth between the three encampments. Two months on a barge. A war that never came. Now I was a messenger. It could have been worse.
“Commander Gaius Laudon was placed in command of the First Army. He would oversee Encampment Lar, the western most camp, about a day’s march from the fortress. Commander Remus Stormjaw, a fierce dwarven tactician, took command of the Second Army at Encampment Fida, the center of this new trail of cities. And then the General bellowed a line I’ll never forget. ‘Commander Demetric Pictus will take the Third Army to Carnum.’”
“I was as slack-jawed then as you are now, Fer. I left Drakkas Port a grunt with a handful of rookies that looked up to me. I knew nothing of how to command an army. I could lay siege to a city of forty thousand, but run one?”
“I took a small detachment with me the first time I entered Carnum. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sights or the smell—raw sewage, disease, and death. Gaunt women, flesh pulled tight against their bones, wrapped in the furs of mangy creatures. Pale children, only half clothed, ran through waste that flowed in channels between the makeshift hovels of the town. They constructed houses from driftwood, sail fragments, parts of the boats they had arrived on, and anything else they could scavenge from the surrounding area. Carnum made Smuggler’s Scourge look like the Gilded Hill. Make no mistake, when I hear the clerics speak of the depths of the Ten Hells, I think of what I saw on that shore.”
Dem sat dead still for a long, painful moment. His eyes sliced through the floor to somewhere else. I sat in silence, waiting for my friend to return as I had done so many times.
“I—” Dem struggled for the words, “I had to help them as best I could.”
“I know you did,” I said. “Because that’s who you are. You’re a good man.”
Dem tossed back his whiskey and wiped his face with his hand. He poured himself another four fingers, looked at me, and nodded.
“I set two units to digging a channel from the encampment to the sea. We used the tides to flush the filth out of the channels between buildings. There were four columns of healers attached to the Third Army, I had ordered them to work their way through the camp doing what they could to comfort the sick and dying. We dedicated six columns of men to building pyres higher up the beach to begin the grim task of handling the scores of dead.
“After setting the duties I found the healers in the mess hall. Grabbing one by his armor, I demanded to know why they weren’t in the encampment as I had ordered. Another of the healers spoke first, said the Nivs turned them away, shouting, screaming about ‘The Darkness.’ These were simple folk. They were afraid of the arcanists, or so I thought.
“I returned to the encampment with a single column of healers, ten medics proficient in healing without magic. An old woman wielding a large carving knife, the kind the rangers used to field dress deer before bringing them back to camp, met us at the edge of the encampment.
“Her name was Baba Kerushk, a de facto matriarch for the encampment. She pointed the large blade at the healers, their white tunics caked in mud and filth.
“’No magic,’ I explained to her. I kept my hands outstretched to show her I meant no harm. ‘But I want medics to look after the sick.’
“To my surprise, the old Niv spoke a formal dialect of Imperial with a thick accent. ‘Healers may tend to the sick, but the arcane may not touch the dead,’ she said. ‘We have seen The Darkness.’
“I explained that none of the men with me were arcanists. She nodded and waved them forward with her large knife. I asked her what she meant by ‘having seen The Darkness.’ It was what they called whatever they were fleeing from.
“According to Baba Kerushk, an army of malevolent forces was marching down from the far north across Nivalis. This force, The Darkness, brought unspeakable violence. Entire cities overrun, slaughtered to the man or submitted to the force. She mentioned Niv men from one town being forced to attack the next. Word of this army spread far across the continent.
“One day, a runner said The Darkness was a day from Baba Kerushk’s village. Her sons vowed to stay and fight. She took the women and children and ran. They did not stop running until they reached the sea where they found thousands more fleeing for their lives.
“In a rotted skiff with forty other Nivs, she pushed off into the Narrows, hoping to cross into Laetia. The old boat took on water as soon as they shoved off. Those who were not rowing or paddling bailed the vessel or shoved pieces of fabric into the holes to keep it afloat. After three days the tiny boat slid onto the shore, the rotted wood giving way to the sand as it ran aground, close to the fortress.
“Soon, Baba Kerushk said, more pushed onto the shore, hundreds more, then thousands more. She explained how they used the wood from the wreckages to build crude structures to protect them from the battering winds and rain. The shelter grew into a village, then a town, then a city.
“As the city grew, so did the number of dead. The Nivs feared the dead. So instead of burying or burning the bodies, they left them in whatever structure they had died in and moved the living out. Half the city, by her estimation, was a necropolis.
“I told her that my men could remove the dead. That to help the living, the dead needed to be dealt with. She agreed, however reluctant she was. I met with Commandant Rayner and told him of what I had learned, this ‘Darkness,’ the fear of the dead, and the story of Baba Kerushk. The following day, I ordered five thousand soldiers to enter Carnum, retrieve the dead, and bring them to the pyres near the cliffs.
“The fires burned day and night for a span. Not just at Carnum, the light of cremation pyres could be seen at night from Lar and Fida. Forty-five thousand, two hundred and thirty-seven dead in the first purging of the three encampments. Not one male over the age of seven, only women and children. And every day hundreds more arrived on the shore. Some even said they had followed the macabre lighthouses from across the Narrows. Hundreds more floated in on the waves, claimed by Aequor in the voyage.”
“Couldn’t you have used the dragons?” I asked. “To search for boats in the Narrows, help rescue people out at sea.”
Dem shook his head, “We tried. But even in a confined stretch of sea, trying to find a single vessel among the waves is impossible.”
“We tried?” I repeated. “Did—did you ride a dragon, Dem?”
Dem’s mouth pulled back into a wry smile. “Being a
Commander has its perks.”
My eyes grew larger than saucers. “Seraplaun!” I swore. “What was it like? Which one did you ride? Was it Balenax? I bet it was Balenax. Did you go over the water? What did he feel like? How—”
My interrogation was cut short as the door of the Sextant was kicked in. Five men in steel armor entered the common room. The soldiers scattered around the room jumped to their feet and pulled their weapons.
CHAPTER NINE
“We are looking for the Pirate Captain Gustavo Blanco,” said the lead man, I recognized from the white plume on his helmet as Captain Wilhelm Striker of the Watch.
The room once again busted into laughter. My antics from earlier in the night had left an impression.
“Those aren’t my men, Fer,” Dem whispered to me.
“Aye, that’s me,” said one sailor near the front door. “Are ye wantin’ to see me legendary cock?”
“Wanted for the murder of the daughter of a Lord of Drakkas Port,” Captain Striker said. “And unless you’re three feet tall, you, sir, are not who I am looking for.”
“Aye, he’s about three feet,” said the drunkard. “Ye want to have a chat with the fella?”
The crowd burst out in cheers and laughter, bolstering the sailor.
On the other hand, I was sweating Iron Pins. Murder? An unsatisfied romp, perhaps. Stolen virginity, sure. But murder? No. I hadn’t even punched someone. Everything I’ve done was completely consensual, encouraged even, by whoever I was with. Murder? No.
“Fer, leave,” Dem said.
“I didn’t—”
“Go. Now,” Dem said, trying to keep his voice under the riotous laughter of the room.
I disappeared through the open back door into the night air. I ducked behind a stack of barrels in the alley behind the Rusted Sextant and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. A column of steel-clad guards blocked either end of the alley. I could hear more stomping on the stone sea wall in front of the Sextant. Half the Watch in Drakkas Port marched through the streets.
The Sextant backed up to the wall separating the docks from the Smuggler’s Scourge, the slums of the city. Waiting until the guards on either side were distracted, I tried to time my movement to not be seen. I jumped on the barrels behind the pub and leaped, grabbed hold of the wall, and kicked up and over.
“There!” shouted one of the Watch, “Over the wall.”
There was a flurry of clanking armor and heavy foot falls as some guards ran into the alley while others ran toward the nearest gap in the wall, several blocks away. I landed on the balls of my feet and rolled across the wooden roof of a hovel. I had made a point in my life of avoiding the Scourge at all costs. Travelers who wandered into the Scourge by mistake never made it out.
I figured my best chance was to run as fast as I could toward the Gate of Pane, where the monks would bring food to the poor, and try to push my way into the Temple District. If I could make it to the Temple of Res, god of justice, I could call for asylum, at least until I could figure out what was happening. Looking over the rooftops of the Scourge, I could see the large dome of the Temple of Res peering over the stone walls that separated the Temple District from the rest of the city. It was leagues of murderers, and thieves, and all manner of scoundrels that would kill you for an Iron Pin and the shoes you were wearing.
Half a dozen Watch gathered at the gap in the wall on the Docks side. Not even the Watch would enter Smuggler’s Scourge in the middle of the night without reinforcements. I climbed off the roof of the hovel and into a dark alley. Peering around a corner, I could see no further than the edge of the building before the tangle of streets curved away.
Quiet as a drunken rat, I pushed south into the heart of the Scourge. With only a slight sliver of a single moon, the alleys and streets were full of shadows. I carefully slid from corner to corner, listening intently for the slightest sound. Getting to the edge of a makeshift building, I sprinted as hard as I could to get to the next corner and dropped into the shadows, hoping I was alone in the darkness.
Ten blocks from the Docks Wall, I paused and listened. Above my heartbeat there was a rhythmic thumping of metal on metal. The Watch had gathered enough men to enter the Scourge. I had seen the Watch enter Smuggler’s Scourge a few times before, from a safe spot in the Market District. Standing three across shoulder-to-shoulder, and at least five deep, they would beat their swords against shields to announce their presence as they progressed. They would move slow in formation.
Step, Step, Clang.
Deep in the maze, it was hard to pinpoint where they were, but dozens of blocks away toward the east. The Watch was still far off, but they would insert units every dozen streets. I had to stay ahead of them, or they would intercept me before the Temple District walls.
I continued south, hurrying my pace while doing my best to avoid drawing attention to myself. I had made it a dozen blocks when I froze in my tracks. The sound of a heavy impact from the next street over. It was the unmistakable sound of someone getting beaten bloody, at least two or three against one. The Watch was just one problem. I could be attacked in the dark, run through and gutted for the handful of copper and silver coins in my purse. I could be pulled off the street by a “helpful citizen,” and turned over to the Watch for reward or a ransom demanded from Zori.
The sounds of fists on flesh fell silent. I couldn’t hear the Watch marching forward. There was silence in the Scourge as if all the denizens of the slums stopped and listened for my footsteps. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and a knot formed in my stomach. I held my breath.
Step, Step, Clang.
Step, Step, Clang.
Step, Step, Clang.
I exhaled hard, caught my breath and sprinted. Flying between alleyways, pushing past crates piled in the street. I cut through a small courtyard amid the hovels and turned a corner back into the darkness.
Step, Step, Clang.
Step, Step, Clang.
The Watch was closing the distance. As best as I could count, there were at least six phalanx of guardsmen that had entered the Scourge. It was more than I had ever heard used in a manhunt. And they were all looking for me. Why?
Step, Step, Clang.
I stopped to catch my breath near the center of the Scourge. I looked down a narrow alleyway. At the end of the row of shanty houses rose the prow of a ship vertically into the air. My eyes widened, and I could feel the blood in my veins run cold as ice. It was the Kraken’s Maw, the home base of the Wharf Rats, one of the most violent criminal syndicates in Drakkas Port.
Three-Fingered Fern, a pickpocket who stopped by the Sextant for a drink on slow nights, once told me about the Rats. He said he once got caught lifting a purse on Rats’ territory. Three-Fingered said he was beaten to a mash and told if he ever tried to lift a purse in the Scourge again, the Watch would pull what was left of him from the harbor. Three-Fingered said they called their base the Kraken’s Maw, because much like the real thing, anyone who saw it never lived to tell a soul.
And there it was.
The whiskey clawed its way back up my throat and my head spun. I slipped across the alley way and stumbled further south until I found a corner with good cover and a dark recess. I bent over, grabbed my knees, and vomited. My eyes watered and my throat felt like it was on fire.
Step, Step, Clang.
I looked out on to the street and seeing it clear, motioned to run, but my foot slid against the cobblestones. I looked down, hoping it was only the contents of my stomach. In the faint moonlight, I could see the thick, dark liquid I stepped in. I traced the path of the fluid with my eyes further into the crevice between buildings and found its source. I let out a gasp and then doubled over and retched.
Slumped against one building was a human man, young, maybe in his twenties. His eyes were open, and he stared straight at me. Three daggers stuck out of his chest and his throat slit. My heavy breathing became labored. My head spun. I closed my eyes to fight off the dizziness, but I
could still see the young man’s eyes staring at me. His mouth was agape as if to whisper “this could be you.” I had never seen a corpse before.
Was he right? Was this the fate that awaited me? Could I hope to outrun the entire Watch? And even if I did, what then, would I hide in a temple for the next five hundred years?
I snapped out of my thoughts to the thunderous sound of the Watch a few blocks away.
Step, Step, Clang.
Step, Step, Clang.
Step, Step, Clang.
The Gates of Pane were only a few blocks away. I dug deep and ran as hard as I could, darting between the last few rows of houses on the northern most part of the Scourge. When I got within eyesight of the Gates, I ducked behind a cluster of crates at the end of the alley and looked out. The two large wrought iron gates stood fifty feet high with a golden horn-of-plenty on each gate. Just in front of the gate, two guards in shining steel armor stood watching for any movement from the Scourge.
I could wait for one to turn away from me. If I ran fast enough, I could tackle one guard and throw my dagger into the other. I could take out both and slide through the Gates of Pane into the Temple District to safety, covered in blood. No, that’s not who I am. That would be a cold-blooded murder. I couldn’t do that.
As I looked up and down the wall separating The Scourge from the Temple District, a hand grabbed my shoulder.
CHAPTER TEN
“Boy,” a low raspy voice said behind me.
My heart froze. I was dead. The Watch had caught up with me. Or the Rats had found the reason for the disturbance in the Scourge. Either way, I was dead. I turned around, heart beating in my ears. The fire crawling up my throat. An old man, doubled over with age, was holding my shoulder.
“You hear ‘em, boy?” the old man said. “S’not safe out there. C’mon.”
The man motioned to the open door behind him. I tried to look past him, into the dark shadows of the room as he frantically motioned me inside. From the corner of my eye I caught the flicker of torchlight down the alley I left moments ago.
