by Dave Duncan
The wind still gusted, but the rain had stopped. The predawn sky was lurid green and purple, especially to the north. She could see a silhouette of hills that way, the hills around Eldritch. What she couldn’t see, not anywhere, was Vly. A bugler emerged from the guardhouse and blew the reveille, as if anyone up there needed it or anyone below would hear it. The rest of the night guard followed him out, surly and unshaven, but obviously relieved to find her still alive. They insisted they had not heard Vly—and couldn’t have done unless he’d beaten on the bronze door with a sledge. No one had gone in. No Vly.
A few wisps of smoke were rising from Svinhofdarhrauk. … Irona’s brief glance suddenly became a stare of wonder. There were trogs in the water, a line of them, up to their waists. Barely visible in the half-light, they were heading west, but in a few moments the leader turned south and the rest followed. She had assumed they came and went between islet and rock by boat. No one had told her that Lake Eboga was fordable, but she had never asked. It might have silted up since Eboga’s time. She filed the fact away for later action and continued her hunt for Vly. Nothing else mattered, and yet cold reason insisted that he had gone; she was never going to find him alive.
The parapet around the edge of the compound was in just as bad repair as everything else. A man could step over it in most places, scramble over it anywhere. The sides of the rock were nowhere truly vertical, so a falling body would bounce and roll and eventually slide down steep slopes of sharp gravel. Nowhere would it have landed in water, neither in the moat to the south nor Lake Eboga to the north, so his body must be down there somewhere. If he were still alive, he must be horribly injured. She ran back to the sentries and told them to sound the alarm.
Quebrada Bericha was furious. Morale was already dismal and now the governor’s boy toy had fallen or jumped—driven over the edge by monsters from the Dread Lands, no doubt. After what she had heard in the night, Irona herself was inclined to believe something along those lines, except that she thought the monsters had been inside his head.
Eventually they found where he had gone over. Daun’s sharp eyes noticed a smear of blood on the edge of the low parapet, at a spot where it was barely knee-high. Another smear of blood on the first rock below showed where he must have struck, and bounced. If he had jumped to his death, he would have first stepped up on the wall. Instead, he must have walked into it, barked his shin, and toppled. After that he could only have tumbled and rolled all the way to the ground, arriving both dead and shredded by the sharp gravel of the scree slope. His corpse was not there now, nor was his sword.
Whose name had he screamed to Bane in his death curse?
Morale sank even lower. Irona’s efforts to belittle the ghouls and banshees had failed utterly. The only reason the governor was not interrogating her on suspicion of murder was that she was the governor. That, and the lack of a body.
But when Commander Bericha suggested she choose new quarters, the cross-grained stubbornness she had inherited from her father reared up like a grizzly bear. “Never!” she said. “I have made my choice and here I stay. I do not walk in my sleep. And I am not scared by banshees.”
The thought that Vly’s rotting corpse might return some other night was not to be considered.
All day Bericha kept both garrisons, old and new, feverishly cleaning up the base. Crews gathered reeds from the delta to make brooms, which served until they fell to pieces. Much of the bedding, and even furniture, was only good for burning, and some of it made a handy contribution to the governor’s woodpile.
Irona chose a barren little shed next to the reception hall to be her study. That might have been its original purpose, for it had a fireplace and parchment-covered windows that provided more light than the fungus down in the tunnels. Except in very heavy rainstorms, she could see well enough to write and was reasonably, if not comfortably, warm when she wore her furs.
She had set Daun Bukit to work packing the departing governor’s possessions, because Zajic seemed incapable of doing anything now. Sazen Hostin was still grubbing among the rats in the archives. She could procrastinate no longer.
She ought to write to Velny Lavice, Vly’s mother, but she had nothing to tell her except that Vly had disappeared. Sea Dog would leave on the morrow, because the fortress was grossly overcrowded, but Sea Death and Sea Danger would arrive soon, so that letter could wait until there was more definite news.
Nothing should be harder to write than a letter telling a mother her son was dead, but Irona’s obligatory report to the Seven came close. She had arrived and assumed her post. What else was she to say? That Maleficence had infected the fortress with an epidemic of idiocy? That after a few weeks here both she and the men under her command would probably succumb to the same? That her mission was doomed to fail before it even began? She did not know how to fight an evil as deadly and insubstantial as the north wind.
The door flew open. Sazen and the wind entered together. He was filthy, unshaven, and red-eyed. He had probably not eaten, slept, or even drunk since the day before, but he was croaking in triumph, waving a tablet.
“Sit down!” Irona commanded, striding across to the door to shut it. “What have you found?”
Sazen took her chair, as it was the only seat in sight. “It had to have started in Redkev’s first term, right? Whatever it was, that was when the change took place. Twelve years ago.”
Irona leaned against an empty bookcase. “Makes sense.”
“I found this. It’s part of a journal the governors used to keep. It says, ‘Although they are not human, the trogs’ pitiful deaths upset the men and are bad for morale. I ordered that the garbage and offal be tipped into Lake Eboga instead of the moat, so the trogs can retrieve it without going near the moat eels.’ That’s it!”
“It is?”
He turned the slab over and peered at the minute writing. “Almost. There’s this, a few months earlier. ‘Trogs have been seen on an islet about three hundred paces north of the fortress, in Lake Eboga. The men call it Svinhofdarhrauk, which apparently means something funny in Osopan.’”
Yes, yes, yes! Sense at last!
“Oh, well done! We must find you something to eat. Have a drink first.” Irona handed him a bottle of wine she had just unpacked from her luggage. Then she took him out into the wind and down to the former governor’s quarters, where she found Daun Bukit stuffing dirty clothing into a chest. Zajic had been confined in a cell, deeper in the rock, and was reported to be almost catatonic.
“Leave that for now,” she said. “Sazen desperately needs something to eat and a place to catch up on his sleep and he doesn’t know his way around yet. Will you help him, please? And get word to Commander Bericha that I need to speak with him urgently.”
Daun said “Yes, ma’am!” very happily. He looked as if he were about to add something about what he had been doing, then changed his mind, repeated, “Yes, ma’am!” and dashed out.
Irona was back on the summit making notes for her report to the Seven when Bericha banged on the door, walked in, and slammed it behind him. Her face must have given her away because his lit up at once.
“You’ve found him?”
“What? No, not Vlyplatin. But Sazen’s discovered what happened. Back in Redkev’s first term, twelve years ago, trogs turned up and settled on that tongue-twister sandbank. The garrison used to throw its trash in the moat—so the river would carry it away, I suppose—and the trogs would try to scavenge it and get eaten by the eels. So Redkev told the men to throw it into the lake.”
The commander was not as stupid as he looked. He nodded approvingly. “Then the brutes started making themselves useful, the marines were happy to let them do the grunt work, and pretty soon the Empire’s finest were lying around, rotting, doing nothing all day long!”
No doubt human laziness had been part of it, but Irona was certain that there had been other, more sinister, influences
at work also. “Do you know how the trogs come to work in the morning?”
Bericha opened his mouth and then shut it again. There had been no canoes or coracles lying on the shingle yesterday. “No, ma’am.”
“They wade. The Eboga wall is only a couple of feet high. There will be deep channels, I’m sure, but most of the lake must be very shallow. This place is not as secure as we thought, Commander.”
“So what are you ordering me to do, ma’am?” His smile was menacing, but she did not feel that the threat was directed at her.
“Drive out the trogs. Kill them if they won’t go. Burn that settlement of theirs down to the mud. Patrol the lake to make sure they don’t return.” She was encouraged by his grudging nods of approval. “Dump the daily trash in the moat or, even better, somewhere far away down the channel. Double-check every grating to make sure trogs aren’t feeding people to the worms, or even nesting here under our feet.”
“Done that. We found one loose grill, only one. It’s tight now.”
One would be enough.
“And then, I think, we should give this place the most thorough cleaning it’s ever had. Before we left I asked the Office of Decency what fixes actually looked like, and they said almost anything: lotions, ointment, nonsensical writing, bats’ nests, drawings on a wall, dirt in a corner, rat shit …”
The commander shrugged bull shoulders. “Polish till it shines, then? Aye, ma’am.” He saluted her, which was a first, and spun around to leave.
“And, Commander?”
He turned.
“I suspect that strip-searching the departing garrison is not going to find anything. I don’t think they’ve been bribed, I think they’ve mostly been stupefied until they don’t care. The fixes probably aren’t sold at all.”
He looked at her as if she had gone insane.
“Don’t you see?” she said. “Whatever horrors live at Eldritch or anywhere else in the Dread Lands don’t want our money. Why would Shapeless need money? They leave their vileness somewhere as a free gift for someone. When the supply boats from Fueguino arrive, watch to see if they make any detours coming through the delta. You might even organize a hunt for marked caches before they get here. Or fishing boats, coming in to sell their catch. If there’s smuggling going on, I think that’s how it has to be done.”
Quebrada Bericha barked, “Aye, ma’am! Brilliant, if I may say so.” He marched out, looking happier than she could ever recall seeing him. She had given him something for his hands to do.
Irona turned back to her own work.
The tablet on top said:
You gave me a promise. You are forgetting how grateful you were. I told you I might ask a favor in return some day, and you said you would do anything I asked. “Anything” was the word you used.
Whatever did that mean? Irona had no memory of writing it, and it wasn’t in her handwriting.
The report she ultimately sent to the Seven was cautiously optimistic. Already the fortress was a functional military base again. The trogs had been driven away, excepting a few who had refused to go and had been slaughtered and fed to the giant eels of the delta. After Svinhofdarhrauk had been burned, bones had been found in the ashes. While some trogs’ bones were hard to distinguish from human, others were so deformed that their origin was obvious; trogs’ teeth were more like dogs’ or pigs’, but some skulls and jawbones were definitely human. Weapons and fragments of armor had been recovered, also, so marines had certainly died on the islet. Vly’s sword had been a standard issue, without distinguishing marks.
She mentioned her theory that there had been no treason in Vult, only folly, which Maleficence had exploited. She suggested that dealers received their wares for free and profiteering started downstream. She recommended that the Geographical Section investigate the traders who brought in the station’s supplies from Fueguino. While she had authority to do that herself, she could not turn up there in a galley full of marines without alerting the culprits, if any.
She wrote to Velny Lavice, too, and that sad news also went south on Sea Death.
About a week after the galley left, Irona awoke one morning certain that she was pregnant. It was far too early to tell by most women’s standards, but her mother had always known, and Irona had no doubts. Of course she had wondered ever since the night Vly died whether that had been the whole purpose of that brutal attack. Was she carrying her dead lover’s child or a monster? The priests claimed that maleficent creations could not themselves create life. Time would tell in this case.
Two days after that, while Irona and Sazen were reviewing tablets in her office, Daun Bukit appeared with word that the commander requested the governor’s presence in the reception hall. Could be a breakthrough, he said. Without bothering to wrap up in a cloak, Irona dodged out one door and in the next, doubled over against the wind and rain; Daun and Sazen came scampering at her heels.
Quebrada Bericha was there already, looking ominously pleased with himself. So was the bosun of Sea Dragon, plus two dozen of his oar pullers, looking even more so. The marines were grouped in fours, and each group contained a prisoner, hands bound and mouth stuffed with rags: four men and two youths. Their expressions varied from defiant to terrified, and it must be hard to feel otherwise in such circumstances.
“Pursuant to your instructions, ma’am,” the commander boomed, “the delta has been kept under close surveillance. Yesterday a red rag that had been tied to driftwood above high-water mark at the mouth of a minor channel was observed, ma’am. The vicinity was then explored and a heap of eight bulging bags was discovered stacked on the eastern bank. This location was staked out, and this morning, a fishing smack was observed approaching under cover of a rainsquall. The galley was summoned and these individuals were apprehended while loading the bags aboard. Upon questioning, the suspects refused to say who they were or where they came from, ma’am.”
This, indeed, was a breakthrough! Caught red-handed!
“Very good work, Commander! There will be bonuses for all concerned. Where are the bags?”
“Still in the fishing boat, ma’am. Eight bags. One of them moves a bit; must be something ’live in it.”
“And any sign of gold or silver for payment?”
“None at all, ma’am.” Bericha had hesitated a bit there. It would be asking a lot of common seamen to turn in the prisoners, the loot, and the money, if any had been found. Even two out of three was good.
Irona looked over the prisoners and chose the hairiest. “Remove his gag! Now, you, what’s your name?”
The result was a flood of gibberish, of which she understood about one word in four.
“We think that’s meant to be Benesh with a Genodesan accent,” the bosun said. “He won’t speak good Benesh, but he understands it well enough. I told him I was going to stuff a marline spike up his … um, nose, ma’am, and he understood me well ’nuff.”
“He said they’re all honest fisherman and they come into the delta for catfish.” The quiet voice belonged to Daun Bukit. He had served on the Genodesan galley Swiftest.
More gibberish. “And the bags were just flotsam they found, washed up by the waves.”
“Crab shit,” said the bosun. “Begging your pardon, ma’am. No waves there. And they were well above high-water mark.”
“They will have to be interrogated separately,” Irona declared. Her stomach cringed at the implications of what she was saying. She looked apologetically at her aide. “Daun, since you can understand them, will you head up the inquisition?”
“Yes, ma’am.” No hesitation. “If Citizen Hostin will advise me on technique?” He looked to Sazen, formerly of the Geographical Section.
“Happy to, ma’am,” Sazen said. “Quick or slow?”
“What’s the difference?”
“About a month. Three days for the quick way, but the damage is permanent.” The victi
ms were listening, of course. The softening up had begun.
“It’s getting late in the shipping season. Do it the quick way.”
“General,” Bukit said, “have I your permission to call for volunteer torturers?”
Hands shot up all over. It makes you want to be evil.
Three days later, as Irona was nibbling her normal breakfast of black bread and watered wine, her team returned, Daun and Sazen. She had not seen them since they went off with the prisoners. In fact, she had hardly seen anyone except the marines repairing the stonework on the summit.
Daun and Sazen were both unshaven, red eyed, and haggard, but they could not have slept much while conducting six interrogations at once and maintaining pressure on the victims.
“Guilty,” Daun said, handing her some tablets. “All six gulls singing like canaries.”
“From the same songbook,” Sazen added. “Naming names and placing places.”
“Lots of names!”
“They don’t know what’s in the bags. Were warned not to open them. They all agreed on that much right at the start! They come every full moon, and they’re paid ten dolphins per bag on delivery.”
So whatever inside was much more than old clothes.
Irona said, “Very well done! One of the galleys will have to rush these statements straight back to Benign.” Quebrada Bericha would be outraged at losing half his force. Why should that worry her? “Are the prisoners fit to travel?”
Daun shook his head.
“Gangrene setting in already,” Sazen murmured sadly. “Internal bleeding … You know how it is.”
So Irona would have to hang six dying men and confiscate their boat. She had already burned the evidence, as too dangerous to keep. “Very well done,” she repeated. “You both look like you have some sleep to catch up on.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sazen said.
Daun muttered, “That’s going to be another problem.”
With the possible exception of the penal island of Maasok, Vult must be the worst place in the Empire to live. For Irona, in her aerie atop the rock, the wind never stopped, howling in every pitch and discord, speaking with the voice of every bird or beast. When the clouds weren’t pouring down rain, they threw hail, or sleet, or snow. Thunder and lightning came with all those, and clear sky could be any color except blue. Conditions within the rock were no more cheerful, for the rock itself seemed to speak as the wind boomed through the tunnels, and the constant scritch-scritch of the worms drove some men to distraction.
