The Last Swordmage (the swordmage trilogy)

by Martin Hengst

  The Last Swordmage

  ( The Swordmage trilogy )

  Martin Hengst

  Martin Hengst

  The Last Swordmage

  Chapter 1 — Innocence Lost

  Winter had come to the Frozen Frontier and with it, hunger and desperation. The autumn harvest had been meager, marred by drought and constant incursions by rival clans.

  Salt was the primary ingredient in any meal of late, Tiadaria thought bitterly. Salted beef and salted fish had become all too common. At least the salt made it harder to taste the less than palatable side dishes that accompanied the main meal. Her stomach rumbled in protest, loudly reminding her that portion sizes had suffered as much as quality had. The men and boys ate first. Whatever was left was split among the women and girls. This was the way of the clan.

  She shifted the yoke across her shoulders, careful not to splash any water out of the buckets that hung on each end of the curved pole. She glanced up and down the field. There was no one else about. The men had gone hunting and the majority of the women and children were gathered together in the long house, weaving rushes into mats. The rough mats were uncomfortable, but at least it was better than sleeping on the frigid ground. Tiadaria sighed and with a last survey of the area, tugged the rope loop from the gate and slipped inside, closing it behind her.

  Her father had scolded her time and again for cutting through the paddock instead of going around. It spooked the animals and made them harder to feed and milk, he said. The aurochs never seemed to mind her presence, lowing to her in their mournful voice whether she passed through the paddock or not.

  Still, he was the Folkledre of her clan and she suspected that his loud, often public berating of her shortcomings served to reinforce his claim of impartiality when it came to clan business. Tiadaria received no preferential treatment. Regardless of being the Folkledre’s daughter, she was still a girl, and therefore less important than even the babes who had been blessed with the good fortune to be born male.

  Approaching the far end of the paddock, Tiadaria saw that she had picked the worst possible day to defy her father. He stood at the gate, his expression black. Another man stood beside the Folkledre. He was only about as tall as Tiadaria, but he was wrapped in so many sleek furs that he looked more like a miniature bear than a man.

  A wagon was parked not too far off, with a long string of pack animals spread out behind it. They pulled at their tethers, obviously unhappy to be stuck in a place with nothing to graze on but ice and snow. The horses that drew the wagon were the finest beasts that Tia had ever seen. Their manes were long and silky, their coats lustrous under the winter sun. They were absolutely beautiful, not the scrawny, threadbare beasts that the clan had traded for.

  When she reached the gate, her father swung it open. She passed through without a word. She was familiar with the expression he wore and had often born the bruises that had resulted from it. Silence was the better option. Tiadaria would speak when spoken to, and only when spoken to. Then, maybe, she would be able to spare herself the full fire of his wrath.

  “Put those down, girl,” the smaller man said. His voice put Tia in mind of a squealing piglet, high pitched, nasal and grating. “Let me get a look at you.”

  She looked to the Folkledre, not as the head of her clan, but as her father, seeking some comfort or reassurance there and finding none. He nodded curtly and motioned for her to deposit the yoke and its burden beside the paddock fence. As she bent to relieve herself of the load, she felt the little man’s hand on her rump. Tia jerked upright, stepping away from his grasping hand even as she spun on her heel, her arm outstretched.

  The Folkledre caught her wrist in a grip as cold and tight as a vice. Tia’s stomach turned over. The sudden assault from two different fronts was making her ill. Her father had never been warm to her, true, but she had always attributed that to his station and responsibilities. She was a mere girl, but was it really possible that she meant nothing at all to him?

  “She has spirit,” the little man laughed. “What about my other terms?”

  “She is clean and pure,” the Folkledre replied, speaking for the first time. His voice was cold and harsh, like the wind that blew along the paddock fence. “You have my word, Cerrin.”

  “Surely you don’t expect me to take you at your word?” The little man’s eyes widened, feigning surprise. “Would you take me at mine?”

  The clansman didn’t reply. His hand still around Tia’s wrist, he pulled her to stand in front of the swarthy little man. The Folkledre pulled her arm up behind her back, his other hand grasping her shoulder firmly.

  Between the pain and the betrayal, Tiadaria panicked. She tried to strike out at her father with her free hand, and finding no way in which she could reach him, batted ineffectually at the man standing before her. Cerrin laughed and slapped her hand away. The grip on her shoulder intensified and the arm her father held behind her back was wrenched up so forcefully that she thought it would break.

  “Stand still,” the Folkledre snarled in her ear. “You dishonor the clan with your foolishness.”

  Stepping forward, Cerrin kicked her legs apart and grabbed the front of her breeches with one hand. Tia tried to scream, but all that came out was a hoarse croak. It dishonored the clan to try to fight for her own honor? Tears of anger, fear, and shame spilled from the corners of her eyes.

  The slaver’s free hand slid down her belly like a cold snake, his thick fingers probing at the crease between her legs. She closed her eyes, begging to all the Gods she knew to either let her die, or wake her up from this horrific nightmare she had stumbled into. Please, she pleaded silently, please just let this be over. Her sobbing had become uncontrollable, a ragged gasping that made her tremble from head to foot. Cerrin’s finger pressed deeper inside her, stopping as it met the resistance of her maidenhead.

  Cerrin nodded, a broad smile spreading across his feral face. Her father released his grip on her, casting her unceremoniously aside. Tiadaria collapsed to the frozen ground, unable to stand, unable to do anything but cry and shake like the last autumnal leaf on a storm-ravaged tree.

  “Your offer is acceptable, Folkledre.” Cerrin said, taking a small wooden chest from the back of the wagon. He produced a thin metal band, a circlet the color of storm clouds with a thin wedge cut out of it. With the band in one hand, and an ominous looking black tool in the other, he knelt beside Tiadaria.

  The fight had gone out of her. The violation had left her cold. Colder than the chill of winter in her barren, frost covered homeland. She felt as if she was observing herself from high above; a snow hawk on the wing looking down on her torment. Tia saw him fit the metal band around her neck and place the ends into the tool he carried. As he squeezed the device, a searing pain shot into the back of her neck and spread down her spine, branching out until it felt as if she had been plunged into the red hot fury of a forge’s fire.

  Tiadaria screamed, a raw, primal sound that tore at her throat and added to the agony coursing through her body. Just as she thought she wouldn’t be able to endure any more, the pain was suddenly gone. Her entire body tingled, a lingering after effect of the systemic shock. She lay there, whimpering, on the ground, her fingers twitching spasmodically. When Cerrin slipped a pair of steel shackles around her wrists and locked them tight she offered no resistance or even any indication that she was aware of his actions.

  Later, Tiadaria would remember the minutest details. The clink of the coins landing in her father’s palm; the words they exchanged as her father selected the two finest aurochs Cerrin had in his train; the wave of dread and despair that made the gorge rise in the back of her throat and the
sudden, unavoidable knowledge that she had been sold into slavery by her own father. At the moment, however, she could only feel the tracks of her tears freezing in the bitterly cold winter morning.

  Tiadaria’s staring eyes reached the door to the long house, across the common square from the wagon and from where she lay shivering on the ground. Her mother stood in the doorway, her face expressionless, and her eyes blank pools of darkness. She turned and disappeared from view. No sign that she had witnessed what had just happened to her daughter, or cared.

  Cerrin lifted her up. He was surprisingly strong for such a tiny man. He swung open the metal-braced door at the back of the wagon and shoved her through, into darkness. The door slammed behind her and Tia heard a clink of metal, the creaking of wood, and then the crack of a whip. The wagon lurched forward, bumping over the uneven ground.

  Pushing herself upright, Tiadaria saw that she wasn’t alone. A single candle burned in a lantern at the front of the wagon. Its pale, wavering light shone on two rough benches, separated by a much worn table. Four other girls were seated on the benches, two to a side.

  Each of them were collared and shackled as she was. Tia, stood, wanting to sit on the bench rather than stay sprawled on the floor. As she got to her feet, the wagon hit a particularly deep rut and she was thrown forward. She careened off the edge of the table and into the girls on the opposite bench. A girl with long dark hair and oval eyes pushed her hard, slamming her back into the wall of the wagon. Tia slid down to the floor, her eyes watering from the unexpected assault.

  “What’s your name?” A petite blond on the end of the nearest bench asked quietly.

  The girl with the dark hair kicked her under the table, slamming the toe of her thin boot into the other girl’s shin.

  “Shut your whore mouth, Darcy.”

  Darcy bowed her head and the dark-haired girl glared at Tiadaria.

  “I’m in charge here, new girl. You’ll do what I say, when I say. Got it?”

  Tiadaria remained silent. She had had enough experience with her father’s volatile temper and her brothers’ harsh treatment to know that sometimes no answer was the best answer. She rapidly discovered that ignoring the problem wouldn’t make her go away, as the dark-haired girl stood up, grinding her heel into Tiadaria’s boot.

  “Come on, girls,” the leader said with quiet malice. “Let’s welcome the fresh meat.”

  The others fell on her, pinning Tia to the floor of the wagon. They punched her, slapped her, and pulled her hair. She tried to fight back, but the three of them held her down. They stripped off her boots and over tunic, tearing ragged holes in her breeches and blouse. They crowed with delight as purplish marks began to mar her fair skin where they struck her over and over again with clenched fists and the broad side of the shackles they wore.

  Every girl in the wagon had a shot at her, all except Darcy, who huddled on the end of the bench and wept. When they were done with her, she was a bleeding, bruised mass huddled near the door to the wagon. The pain and shock had driven everything else out of her mind. Everything seemed gray and lifeless.

  The passage of time meant nothing to her. They could have traveled an hour or a day and it wouldn’t have mattered. Even when the wagon ground to a stop and Cerrin dragged her out by her hair, she hardly felt it. She was pushed roughly into a small room, the other girls thrown in behind her. The only sound that seemed to penetrate the fog surrounding her was the thud of a bar being dropped into place on the other side of the door. Never before had Tia felt so trapped and so utterly alone.

  Darcy skittered to the corner of the room like a surprised insect and curled into a ball, hugging her knees to her chest. She looked as haunted as Tia felt. Tia wanted to go to the girl, the only one who had shown her any kindness. Darcy seemed safe. Tia wanted that limited comfort and to find out what she knew. She wanted to know what would happen to them, but the dark-haired girl stood in the middle of the room, swinging the chain between her shackled wrists in a menacing circle.

  Without any warning or provocation, she darted to Tiadaria and kicked her hard in the ribs. From some distance, Tiadaria heard herself scream. The pain in her side was like nothing she had ever experienced. The girl kicked her again and again, and finally Tiadaria could bear it no longer. She retched, vomiting a thin froth onto the straw-covered floor. At least she was lucky enough that she had had nothing other than a bit of gruel that morning. The act of throwing up made her chest burn twice as badly.

  Her tormentor laughed loudly, encouraging the other girls to come and see what she had done and join in. Darcy wasn’t the only one to abstain this time. The fight seemed to have gone out of them. While they weren’t curled up like Darcy, they looked away from the girl who was trying to egg them on. When she realized that her former co-conspirators were unwilling to rise to the occasion, she spit at them, and instead bent to grab Tiadaria by the hair.

  “Filthy little whore, aren’t you?” Steering her with a handful of hair, the girl forced Tia’s face into her own vomit. “Lick it up. All of it.”

  Tiadaria managed to turn her head, which earned her a punch in the back of the skull. Lights flashed and her vision swam. She was suddenly very sure she was going to die. Please just let it end quickly, she begged no one in particular. Let me sleep and never wake up.

  The dark-haired girl raised her hands to strike again and Darcy shot off of the wall as if she had been fired from a canon. Her legs propelled her forward with such speed that for a moment, Tiadaria thought she was in two places at once. Darcy lowered her head and shoulders like a bull and slammed into the tormentor’s stomach. Her momentum carried the two of them to the far wall. They crashed into it together and then Darcy was atop the other girl, her eyes burning with murderous rage.

  Darcy brought her hands together and slammed her wrists into the other girl’s face. There was a sickening crunch, and blood sprayed across Darcy’s face. There was a thin wail from the dark-haired girl that abruptly turned into a choking gurgle as Darcy brought the shackles down again and again. By the fifth blow, even the gurgle had stopped, but still the little blond girl continued her savage, animalistic attack. To Tiadaria, the entire thing happened skewed to one side. She couldn’t move, or even raise her head to gain the proper perspective.

  Finally, the girl seemed to come to her senses. She sat astride her victim, blood and bits of hair and flesh clinging to the chain between her shackles. The other girls had cowered in the far corner of the room, clinging to each other in shock and terror. All the color had gone out of them and deep inside her, Tiadaria sympathized. The part of her that was nearer to the surface, however, rejoiced in Darcy’s savage revenge. Tiadaria’s only regret was that she hadn’t been able to be a part of it.

  On the periphery of her senses, Tiadaria was aware of shouting from outside the door. Her eyes were fixed on the blood that was slowly soaking the straw under the dark-haired girl’s head. She heard the bar being lifted from the door and tried to lift her head and found she couldn’t. Tia wondered, without much real concern, if the girl had left her paralyzed, unable to move for the rest of her life. She found that she could wiggle her toes in her thin boots and was reassured, just a little.

  Hysteria and her sense of the absurd suddenly clashed together. Here she was, laying in a pool of her own vomit, a dead girl bleeding onto the floor not ten feet away, and she was thrilled that she could wiggle her toes. A thin rail of laughter burst out of her and the girls huddled together in the corner started to scream.

  The door burst open and Cerrin dashed in, two other men on his heels.

  “What the hell-” The slaver’s outburst was cut short as he caught site of Darcy, who still hadn’t moved from her place straddling what was left of the dark haired girl. She looked up at Cerrin and smiled. Her smile sent an ice cold shiver up Tiadaria’s spine.

  Whatever was inside that girl, it was no longer human. It looked up at them with no more reason or remorse than a wild animal. She just sat there, covered in
blood, staring and smiling, smiling and staring. The slaver backed away, taking up a position near the door. His eyes darted from the girls in the corner to the murderous creature in front of him. He seemed not to notice Tiadaria for a long time. When he did, he swore under his breath. He turned to one of the men who had entered with him.

  “Get her out of here, into another cell…and get a cleric. If she dies, I’m out twenty crowns and two prize beasts.”

  The man grabbed Tiadaria by the chain between her shackles and began to drag her across the floor to the door. Before he had pulled her into the hallway, she heard Cerrin speak again.

  “Leave those two here. Move that one into another cell…and do something with the dead meat. There’s a river down in the valley. We don’t need the landlord asking too many questions. I’ve lost enough crowns today already.”

  Tia passed out, succumbing to the welcome blackness.

  Chapter 2 — Unexpected Complications

  There was a knock at the door and Royce looked up from the pile of parchment he was working his way through. It was the Magistrate, a man who looked far too much like a weasel for the Constable’s peace of mind. He stood in the doorway, a rat in men’s clothes, his robes blocking out most of the sun that streamed in behind him.

  “Constable,” the Magistrate droned in his bee-like voice. Royce ground his teeth. “The executioner is ready to begin.”

  Royce flicked his hand and dropped his eyes to the parchment before him. “So let him begin.”

  The Magistrate sighed, a drawn out sound of long-suffering.

  “Your presence is required, Constable. The executions cannot begin until you have taken your customary place on the platform.”

  Royce would have loved nothing better at that moment than to tell the Magistrate exactly where he could shove his custom and what he could do with it when he got it positioned there. He sighed. Still, the man wasn’t wrong. It was the customary duty of the Constable to attend every execution to see that every aspect of the king’s law was followed to the letter.