Stalking Darkness

by Lynn Flewelling

  Their plan was to strike the coast and follow it north again in the hope of meeting a friendly force.

  What Beka wasn’t certain of was just how far south their raiding had driven them, or where the Skalan line currently was. Whatever the case, they’d have to fight like true urgazhi to get back.

  “It’s only me, Lieutenant!”

  Beka opened her eyes to find Rhylin’s long, homely face just inches above hers.

  “It’s almost sundown. You said to wake you,” he said, hunkering down beside her.

  Beka sat up and rubbed a hand over her face. “Thanks. I wasn’t sleeping so well anyway.”

  Rhylin handed her his drinking skin, then ran a hand over the brown scruff of beard covering his jaw. “The fever hasn’t come back on you, has it?”

  “No, the leg’s fine.” Beka took a drink and handed it back.

  They’d made camp in a beech grove. Buds were just breaking out on the branches overhead and through them she could see the first golden streaks of sunset.

  “But you’ve still got the dreams, eh?” he asked, then shrugged when Beka glanced up sharply. “You’ve been thrashing and muttering some in your sleep.”

  “Well, I wish you’d tell me what I’m saying,” Beka replied, hoping it was dark enough not to betray the color that rose in her cheeks. “I don’t remember a damn thing when I wake up. Any word from Mirn or Gilly yet?”

  “That’s what I came to report. Kallas and Ariani just got back from tracking them. It looks like they’ve been captured.”

  “Damn.” From what they’d seen so far, the Plenimarans weren’t keeping prisoners alive, and her urgazhi had suffered losses enough already.

  Getting to her feet, she glanced around the clearing. In Braknil’s decuria only Kallas, Ariani, Arbelus, and one-eyed Steb were left. Rhylin had Nikides, Syra, Tealah, Jareel, Tare, Marten, Kaylah, and Zir. Of those, Tealah had suffered a sword cut during the third raid and couldn’t use her left arm. Zir and Jareel had festering wounds, and Steb, still recovering from the loss of an eye, had a bad case of the scours.

  Now Mirn and Gilly were gone.

  “Who’s out now?” she asked.

  “Syra has the watch. Arbelus and Steb went scouting about an hour ago.”

  “Go wake the others and tell them to eat quickly. We ride as soon as it’s full dark.”

  Rhylin gave a quick salute and started around the camp. Beka let out a slow, exasperated breath. She’d hoped the others hadn’t noticed her nightly struggles. At least it had been Rhylin who’d brought it to her attention. Despite his ungainly appearance, he’d proven a good choice for sergeant. He had a calm steadiness about him that only seemed to increase under adversity.

  Still, the last thing any of them needed right now was an officer who had bad dreams behind lines; yelling in your sleep was a good way to bring the enemy down on your neck. Rubbing her eyes again, she tried to remember what the dream had been, but nothing would come except a vague feeling of anxiety.

  Giving up, she turned her thoughts to more practical matters. Reaching for her tucker sack, she dipped out a cupful of soaked meal and hastily downed it. Coarse and full of grit, the barley meal they’d captured in the last raid was hard on both teeth and stomach. Most of the time they couldn’t chance a fire to boil it into porridge. Instead, they threw it into a leather bag with some water and fragments of dried fish for a few hours until it swelled into a gluey mass Nikides had dubbed “broken tooth pudding.”

  They were just saddling up for the night’s ride when Steb came riding back.

  “We found Mirn and Gilly, Lieutenant!” he informed Beka.

  “Praise Sakor! Where?” Beka demanded as the others crowded around in uneasy silence.

  “There’s a Plenimaran column ahead about two miles. They’ve just stopped to make camp for the night. It’s big, Lieutenant, fifty soldiers at least. And maybe twice that in prisoners marching afoot in chains.”

  “Prisoners?” Rhylin raised an eyebrow. “That’s the first we’ve heard of that. And you’re sure you saw Gilly and Mirn?”

  Steb nodded, his good eye blazing with grief and anger. “The whoreson bastards planked them.”

  Braknil cursed, then spat angrily over his left shoulder.

  “What do you mean, planked?” Beka demanded.

  “It’s an old Plenimaran soldier’s trick, Lieutenant,” the sergeant scowled. “You take a man, tie a plank across his shoulders, and then nail his hands to it.”

  Beka stood silent for a moment, feeling a black void opening in her heart. They’d been lucky so far, facing no more than a decuria or two of fighters and panicked wagoneers. And so far, they’d left no one behind but the dead. This was different.

  She gripped her sword hilt and growled, “Let’s go have a look.”

  Taking Braknil and Kallas, Beka followed Steb. What must this be like for him? she wondered, stealing a look at Steb’s drawn face; the bond between him and Mirn was strong. The two were always together, whether it was around the fire at night, or fighting side by side like twin avenging furies. They usually took scout duty together, too. What had happened today?

  The young rider remained grim and silent as he led them to the little hillside gully where Arbelus was keeping watch. Less than a mile below, the scattered campfires of the Plenimaran column winked in the darkness. Beyond the camp, the black expanse of the Inner Sea glimmered with the light of the first stars. The wind was coming off the water tonight and Beka caught a faint, unsettling sound on the air. After a moment she realized it was only the distant crash of surf growling like a hound in its sleep against the rocky cliffs.

  “There’s an old road that runs along above the shore,” Arbelus told her. “They set up camp on the landward side of it.”

  “You’re certain our men are still alive?” Beka asked, squinting down at the pattern of campfires.

  “They were at sundown. I saw the guards prodding them in with the other prisoners for the night.”

  Beka chewed at her lip, still glowering at the enemy encampment. At last she turned to Braknil. “It’s the first real force we’ve encountered so far. What do you think? Any chance of grabbing them out tonight?”

  Braknil scratched under his bearded chin a moment, looking down at the fires. “I’d say not much, Lieutenant. They’ll have the perimeter sewed tighter than a virgin’s bodice. Even if we did manage to slip in, we’d never fight our way out if they tumbled to us.”

  Beka let out an exasperated sigh. “Sakor’s Fist, first they aren’t taking prisoners, then they’ve got a couple hundred. And where in hell did they get that many this far inside their own borders?”

  Braknil shrugged. “That’s a good question.”

  Arbelus looked up in surprise. “I never thought of that. But I’ll tell you something even stranger.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Before they settled down for the night, they were marching north.”

  “North!” Beka exclaimed softly. “The Mycenian border can’t be more than fifty miles from here, and not a single Plenimaran city in between. If they’re going to all the trouble to take that many prisoners, why on earth aren’t they taking them south where they could use them?”

  She rested a hand on Steb’s rigid shoulder. “Still, it makes our task easier. We planned to turn north along the coast anyway. We’ll trail them, haunt them, by the gods, and watch for a chance to grab Mirn and Gilly!”

  41

  PECULIAR HOSPITALITY

  The guards handled Alec with superstitious care after Gossol’s sacrifice, but they clearly blamed him for the death of their “soldier brother.”

  Ashnazai came less often, too, although he still paid occasional visits in the middle of the night. Starting up out of some nightmare, Alec would smell the man’s unclean odor in the darkness, feel the touch of cold fingers on his skin as Ashnazai plunged him into another punishing miasma of torment.

  Locked alone in his tiny dark cabin, Alec grew increasingly desponde
nt. He’d searched in vain for some means of escape, even if it meant throwing himself overboard, but there was none. Left with nothing to do, he slept a great deal, but his dreams were full of violence and omens. The dream of the headless arrow came far more often now, sometimes twice in one day.

  Under such desperate conditions, he grew to look forward to his daily walk on deck with Mardus. Despite his chilling revelation at the ceremony, Mardus continued to treat him with a strange sort of solicitude, as if he enjoyed Alec’s company.

  At midmorning each day Alec was given a cloak and escorted above under guard. Fair weather or foul, Mardus would be waiting for him, ready to hold forth on whatever subject had taken his fancy that day. To Alec’s considerable surprise, Mardus was a remarkably intelligent, well-spoken man, with interests as broad and varied as Seregil’s. He was as likely to launch into a discussion of Plenimaran war tactics or a detailed comparison of Plenimaran and Skalan musical conventions, although his discourses often took a darker turn.

  “Torture is an undervalued art form,” he remarked as they strolled up and down with Vargûl Ashnazai one brisk morning. “Most people assume that if you cause enough pain you will achieve your end. While this may be true in some cases, I’ve always found that outright brutality is often counterproductive. Consider your own recent experience, Alec. Without drawing so much as a drop of blood, we were able to extract every scrap of information from you.”

  “Necromancy is a subtle art,” Ashnazai interjected smugly.

  “It can be,” Mardus amended dryly, “although ‘subtle’ is hardly how I’d describe many of the necromantic procedures I have witnessed. But to return to the subject at hand, I assure you that had it not been for the prohibition against shedding blood, I could have accomplished the same result without such an extraordinary expenditure of magic.”

  Giving Alec a poisonous smile, Ashnazai asked, “I am curious, my lord, as to what your method would have been?”

  Mardus clasped his hands behind him, considering the question as coolly as if Ashnazai had asked what he thought the price of grain would be this year. “I often begin with the genitals. While the blood loss is negligible, the pain and emotional anguish are exquisite. Once that level of pain is established, the prisoner is usually quite easy to manipulate. In Alec’s case, I could leave him still fit for the slave markets. Only a fool would destroy such a pretty creature unnecessarily.”

  Trapped at sea in such company, Alec nearly succumbed to despair. By day he was the toy of his executioners. By night the muffled cries that sometimes came up from the hold below increased his sense of helplessness. The few times he dreamed of better days with Seregil or his father only made things worse when he woke up. Lying in the darkness, he would try to recall the smell of their rooms at the Cockerel or the color of Beka’s eyes. Mostly, however, he thought of Seregil and cursed Mardus for the seeds of doubt he’d planted.

  “He didn’t abandon me. He didn’t!” he whispered into the darkness one night when his spirits were at their lowest. He forced himself to recall his friend’s grin when Alec had mastered a new skill, the delight Seregil took in tormenting Thero, the grip of Seregil’s hand when he’d pulled him back from the edge of the cliff after the ambush below Cirna.

  And the way he’d looked that night at the Street of Lights. Alec suddenly remembered the guilty pleasure he’d felt that evening, and later at the casual touch of Seregil’s hand resting on his shoulder or the back of his neck—

  His cheeks went warm now at the memory of that touch. It was too painful to think of, now that he’d never feel it again—

  “Stop it!” he hissed aloud. “He could come. He could be following right now!”

  But not even Micum could track a ship across water.

  Foundering in his own misery, Alec pulled the thin blanket around himself and tried to recall fragments of conversation he and Seregil had shared, just to imagine a friendly voice. He dreamed of him that night, although he couldn’t recall any particulars when he awoke. But something had come back to him, nonetheless. Seated on the bunk that morning, he chewed his breakfast thoughtfully, summoning various lessons Seregil had instilled in him over the long months of their acquaintance.

  Everyone on board considered him powerless, a prisoner of little consequence beyond whatever fate Mardus had in store for him. It was time to put aside fear and begin to pay attention, real attention, to what was going on around him, and then to ask questions—small, inconsequential ones at first—as he tested the water. After all, he wouldn’t die any faster for at least trying.

  Learn and live, Seregil’s voice whispered approvingly at the back of his mind.

  The soldiers’ newfound wariness of him made it slightly easier to talk to them, though Alec quickly discovered that all that mattered to them was their unswerving loyalty to Mardus, a fact which made any overtures to them pointless. But he did learn that they were making for some point on the northwestern coast of Plenimar.

  Later that same morning he made more of an effort at conversation with Mardus during their daily walk, allowing himself to be drawn into a discussion of archery. The next day they spoke of wines and poisons. Mardus seemed pleasantly surprised and began sending for him more frequently.

  On deck Alec saw with alarm that the ritual space had been prepared again. A line of soldiers held torches to illuminate the freshly laid square of canvas where Irtuk Beshar was already bent over the bowl and crown. Beside her, Vargûl Ashnazai stood ready with the stone ax.

  On the fifth day following Gossol’s sacrifice, Tildus came for him at sunset. The bearded captain said nothing, but Alec didn’t like the smug, secret smile Tildus gave him as they went above.

  Thero was there, too, standing next to Mardus as slack-jawed as ever. All eyes seemed to turn to Alec as he approached.

  “O Illior,” he whispered hoarsely, feeling his knees go weak. Mardus had had some change of heart, his god had sent different instructions, Alec’s questioning had led him into some fatal misstep—

  Tildus gripped his arm more tightly and muttered, “Easy, man child. Not your time yet!”

  “Good evening, Alec!” Mardus said, smiling as he swept a hand toward the eastern horizon. “Look there, can you make out the coastline in the distance?”

  “Yes,” Alec replied, a fresh coil of apprehension running up his back at the sight.

  “That is Plenimar, our destination. Seriamaius has been kind, guiding us so smoothly along our course. And now it is time for the second act of preparation.”

  As Alec watched with mounting dread, ten men and women were dragged up on deck by the black-clad marines. This was the source of the weeping he heard in the night. This had all been planned in advance, the sacrificial victims packed away in the hold as carefully as the wine and oil and flour.

  They were not soldiers, but thin, pale, ordinary-looking souls who blinked and wept as they were herded together near the rail. Most were ragged or dressed as laborers, just innocent victims, he guessed, plucked from the darkened streets of whatever ports the ship had put into before Rhíminee.

  “O Illior,” Alec whispered as Mardus came to stand beside him, hardly knowing that he spoke aloud. “No, please. Not this.”

  Mardus slipped an arm around his shoulders and closed his hand over the back of Alec’s neck. Giving him a playful shake, he purred, “Ah, but you should savor it. Don’t you understand yet how great a part you played in bringing this about?”

  Faint with revulsion, Alec made the mistake of looking up at Mardus. For the first time he saw the depths of naked cruelty in his eyes, and in that awful moment he knew as certainly as he’d ever known anything that Mardus had purposefully allowed him to see behind the mask, was delighting in his fear and confusion, savoring it the way another man might savor the first caress of a long-desired lover. And perhaps worse even than this was the conviction that Mardus was nonetheless sane.

  Some of the prisoners were staring at Alec, mistaking him for one of their murderer
s.

  He couldn’t watch this again. Tildus had moved away when his master had come over, and the rest of the soldiers were watching the ceremony. Jerking out of Mardus’ grip, Alec dashed to the rail behind him with some instinctive, half-formed notion of throwing himself overboard, swimming as far as he could toward the shore, giving up if he had to—

  He’d gone no more than two paces when a deadly coldness engulfed him, locking his joints, forcing him painfully to his knees. Some unseen power forced his head around to see Vargûl Ashnazai holding up a small vial of some sort that hung around his scrawny neck on a chain.

  “Nicely done, Vargûl Ashnazai,” said Mardus. “Move him a bit closer so that he can see.”

  Unable to turn his head or blink, Alec had no choice but to watch as the ten victims were dragged down onto the deck at Ashnazai’s feet. Ten times the blade rose and fell with deadly efficiency and each heart was taken by the dyrmagnos and drained into the reeking cup.

  Thero stood just beyond her and through his own helpless tears of rage and impotence, Alec saw tears coursing slowly down Thero’s cheeks. It was an eerie sight, like watching a statue weep, but it gave him a sudden thrill of hope in the midst of the nightmare being acted out before him.

  The white canvas was scarlet by the time the necromancer had finished. He and the dyrmagnos were smeared to the elbows, their robes sodden, hair matted with it. Blood had soaked across the deck to where Alec knelt, staining his bare knees.

  Leaving the soldiers to pitch the bodies overboard, Mardus took Thero below again.

  Vargûl Ashnazai walked over to Alec and laid one bloody hand on his head, breaking the spell.

  Alec doubled over retching. Ashnazai snatched the hem of his blood-soaked gown out of the way with a grunt of disgust, then gave Alec a shove with one foot that sent him sprawling in sticky blood and vomit.

  “I look forward to cutting you open,” he sneered.

  Scrambling back to his hands and knees, Alec glared defiantly back at him. The necromancer took an involuntary step back, raising his hand. Alec braced for some new agony, but Ashnazai merely turned on his heel and stalked away, snarling something to Captain Tildus as he passed.