by Jackson Lear
Alysia gave him a courteous nod. “This goes both ways. If you respect us then we will respect you. So far you are failing your king and making a mockery of his rule.” For the first time in my life I heard Alysia rise with authority. “None of these people are expendable. Nor are the ones you’ve ambushed, imprisoned, or are currently spying on. If you have any sense about you, you will pull your boats back across your border and never set foot in the empire again.”
The vampire shook his head at us, a violent desperation creeping into his voice. “I am to take you to him. Believe me, you would not still be alive if I had come to kill you.”
“I refuse your invitation.”
He flexed his hand out from beside his shield – a signal to the boats.
I hissed at Mikael. “You’re about to die.”
Mikael dipped to the side and strode forward, like a gifted diplomat overseeing a simple misunderstanding. “Everyone, please? There is no need to let our bravura defeat us today, not when we all want the same thing.” He came to rest between the infantry and the vampire, his voice quivering with every uneven heartbeat. “Our plan was always open for possible change and we should embrace that while we have the opportunity. We came to seek a resolution with a foe. This is our chance. It has not come in the way we expected but we have yet to be attacked, so maybe we can use this to bridge our differences and form a new friendship.”
“The first boat is landing,” said Gaynun.
“Adalyn?” called the lieutenant.
“Nothing from the forest, sir.”
Mikael turned to the vampire, his arms still stretched out wide – either for an embrace or to show that he was unarmed, except for the pitiful dagger at his waist. “My name is Mikael. I was born in … well, across the lake. Had my parents stayed there for long enough I would now be a man of Vasslehün and Draegor would be my king. You already know of Miss Kasera. What can we call you?”
“I am not here for pleasantries,” snapped the vampire.
“I understand, but if we are to build trust between us then names are a good place to start.”
“I am here to speak with the daughter of Kasera. No one else.”
“I believe you and I am here to help in any way I can. Perhaps you can tell us how long are we expected to stay in Vasslehün?”
“You are a traitor to your people, Mikael of Faersrock. Speak again and I will rip your tongue out through your throat.”
I said, “How about you go fuck yourself? And tell your treasonous king the same.”
The vampire’s hand fell to his sword. His fingers curled around its handle. “He’s not my king, he’s the king. And just know he’s been aware of your little incursion for some time. You will join us on the lake.” He held his attention dead onto me. “All of you. Do it and you might learn how many of my kind are currently heading towards your allies in the south.”
“Please!” cried Mikael, raising his hands to the sky. “Everyone? If we are to die then let it be trying to do something beneficial for our brothers and sisters, parents and loved ones, wherever they may be. Dying is not always a fool’s death but it will be one if we do it here tonight. Perhaps the king genuinely wants our help. I’ll be honest, all we know about him are rumors, reports from merchants who have an agenda and an uncertain mythos growing around him. Perhaps we should find out more from the man himself before making any life-changing decisions.”
I waited for the vampire to remove Mikael’s tongue. He did not. Instead he tssked at us. “You will all join us. But know this: only the daughter of Kasera will be granted safety before the king.”
“The daughter of Kasera has you outnumbered,” said Alysia. “You will either grant us all safety or I will immediately hand over our conversation – and command of the vanguard – to someone else. Choose wisely.”
The vampire’s eyes flickered as he read us all like it amused him. “Precious girl. So young. Spouting off from a prepared list of threats and retorts while hiding behind those who are terrified of my being.” He shifted his attention, his soulless eyes falling upon each and every one of us, marking us with a unique curiosity. “Half of you are drained already. Panicked. The poison of fear sapping your mind and muscles.”
“No one here is expendable,” Alysia said again. “And you know very well what will happen to you and your king if I am taken against my will.”
“Yes … I wonder, will your empire wash their hands of you when they realize your incursion into foreign lands has failed? Will they say you were acting on your own, or will they strike your name from the relics of history as though you never existed in the first place?”
The horses wrestled against their masters. The northern row boats hit the shore, sliding up onto the sand. The rowers climbed out, waiting nervously in case we were about to strike.
Alysia said: “If I go with you there will be no mistreatment of my people, or of anyone we know or interact with.”
“I will make no promise on behalf of the king,” said the vampire.
“Then you should be quick to tell him that I am traveling with thirty three official emissaries of Ispar and a guide who falls under my protection. I will hold you accountable for your actions, not your intent. I will hold you and the king responsible for any indiscretion against anyone – for any reason – no matter which side of the lake they’re from. I will not be taken under duress. I will instead allow your king to justify his alliance with your kind. Should he fail to satisfy my curiosity then it won’t be just the daughter of Kasera you’ll have to face, it’ll be an entire imperial legion.”
“So be it.” The vampire stepped back, loosening up. Our infantry shifted, ready for the attack. The vampire pointed to the village. “You may house your horses over there. Bring whatever you can carry. I suggest you practice your kneeling. It might spare your head.” He pointed to me. “But this one ... he is no emissary of Ispar.”
I answered back. “And your loyalty to a mortal is pathetic. I’ve seen eunuchs and lapdogs with more self-respect than you.”
Only the gnaw of twisting leather filled the silence as quite a few people wished that I had held onto the strong and silent angle a little longer.
The vampire glared back at me. “Yours will be long … and drawn out.”
Alysia flashed a signal. Two fingers swiping to the side. Follow my lead. Shame. I was kinda wishing she rotated her flat palm ninety degrees. “We’ll go with you. All except for one.”
“All of you,” growled the vampire, with a hungry look my way.
“I’m not talking about him. One of my riders is going to deliver a message to my allies in the south. If I’m not back in five days then the emperor will learn that you abducted imperial soldiers on imperial lands under orders from King Draegor. You and your king have five days to convince me of your great benevolence before Ispar rides to war.”
The vampire glared once more. “Be quick about it.”
Alysia nodded to the arctic-blond rider. With the whole encounter locked in her memory she kicked her horse into a gallop, taking a wide berth around the vampire and darting along the narrow road that was no doubt being watched upon by spies from both sides of Ispar’s rule.
The vampire called out to the oarsmen. “Take the chest.”
The lumbering duo from the first row boat shuffled forward, lifted the chest of wine from the ground and trudged back to the water’s edge.
Mikael clapped his hands together and strolled towards us, nervously awaiting his fate. “I would just like to emphasize caution.”
“Torunn betrayed us,” I said.
“No, he most definitely did not.”
“He was sloppy and was ambushed. He then led our enemies directly to us. That’s a betrayal.”
“No, that’s … being forced to do something against your will.”
“Then he better be crystal clear with his retelling of the events before I force something long and sharp into his will the moment I see fit.”
“Raike?” murmu
red Alysia, as she dismounted. Zara followed.
I sidled up to Alysia, Zara, and Lieutenant Loken. “Say the word.”
“Not yet,” cautioned Alysia. “We’re onto the golden leaf. Understood?”
Translation: we do this under Alysia’s diplomatic leadership until the first swing of an attack occurs, at which point we were all fully committed to the assault. It also meant that we would immediately be under full military leadership, a prospect that was akin to climbing into wet undergarments, only to discover that they were wet because someone else had pissed in them. I had just spent the last few months training members of the army. Serving under them would be a nightmare come true. Still, we all nodded.
Alysia did her best to hide the terror of being woefully in over her head, with all of the philosophical training from a classroom and none of the brutal experience. She looked to me. “You’re the only one who’s been this far north before. Please tell us you know at least one of the warlord nobles.”
“None.”
“That might be a good thing,” said Zara.
“It is.”
“Why?” asked Alysia.
“Because the last time I was up here I had to kill a lot of people just to make it back home.”
Alysia grumbled. “What are our chances?”
“That depends. Can you convince the king we came to kill to break the best alliance he’s ever had with nothing more than some gold and a few bottles of wine?”
Chapter Three
Daylight broke some hours later. We were sailing north-west on a sea-faring longboat. Longer, wider, and more robust than the ones designed to traverse rivers while on a raid. Two red sails pulled us along while a number of crewmen manned the oars beneath, leaving the passengers on the cut-out upper deck battling a torrent of seasickness. The salt air was one thing, the sweat from the fellas below was another, but the constant rocking from side to side screwed with my stomach like a hangover that refused to improve.
The different groups on board refused to look at each other. The easiest to identify were the sailors who served under the would-be-king Agnarr, as they had been ambushed by the actual-king Draegor. They had presumably committed treason against the king by aiding the allies of a usurper and it would be impossible for them to prove their innocence, considering that they had set off to ferry thirty-four imperial escorts and a Lady of Ispar to meet a renowned member of Draegor’s opposition. The thugs of Draegor who had ambushed the sailors strolled around like they owned the place, but we out-numbered them six to one so they ignored us while barking orders at the captured crew of the ship. Interestingly, they refused to engage the vampire, who remained in the sail’s shade as soon as the sun graced us with its presence. Kasera’s vanguard kept an eye on everyone they could but avoided making eye contact with the vampire, still fearing his menace. Alysia kept her attention away from Mikael. Mikael kept his attention away from his cousin Torunn. Only Zara, the vampire, and I had the wherewithal to look at whoever we wanted to look at, which mostly included a whole lot of soldiers fighting seasickness for the first time in their life, disgruntled sailors, keeping an eye on Draegor’s ambush ship which followed us across the lake, and staring down an undead creature with the face of a miscarriage.
“You knew,” Alysia murmured to me from the front of the ship. “You knew before we saw the row boats that it was a trap.”
“I’m not psychic but there were too many ways for this to go wrong and only one way for it to go right.”
Alysia looked over to Zara who had refused to leave Alysia’s side despite being only one breath away from throwing up all over herself. “Torunn was vetted, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, ma’am. I … I don’t know how this happened.”
“Someone was either sloppy or they betrayed us.” Alysia bit her tongue, now in the worst predicament of her life with little hope of a rescue. “What should we have done instead?”
“You should’ve sent Zara on her own,” I said.
Zara burned me with a glare.
“She has the grace for negotiations and the experience to keep herself out of trouble.”
“Fuck you.”
Alysia said, “I suppose you would’ve volunteered to go with her?”
“I didn’t even want to go to Anglaterra, let alone here. I had done Galinnia before. Never again.”
“We’re no longer in Galinnia. And going with Zara would’ve gotten you out of the army camp.”
“I’m not sure if an infiltrator really needs a bodyguard to keep her safe.” I glanced over at the vampire and shifted my attention to Zara. “Let’s assume he can hear us. We know he speaks Isparian. I need you to ask her.”
Alysia furrowed her eyebrows. “Ask me what?”
Zara glared at me once again, reading me as best she could.
Alysia shifted into Telucian. “Ask me what?” At least, that’s what I think she said.
Zara leaned in, whispered into Alysia’s ear. I caught a couple of sounds but nothing that I could recognize. Given the look Alysia gave me, I assume that Zara read me correctly.
“No.”
I stared back at her, giving her the: ‘no matter what?’ look.
“Even then: no.”
Which was a pity because I had never killed a king before. I had no grand illusion of his neck splitting open and showering me with golden light, or that I would witness a thousand angels guiding his soul in one direction or the other with my blade breaking through his chest. I was pretty sure that he would’ve flopped to the ground much like a beggar stabbed between the ribs. But, you know, these things appear on your list of unusual dreams to accomplish from out of no where. You didn’t know it was there until the possibility actually occurred to you, but it’s there nonetheless, much like seducing a queen would be for a swift talker, heisting the vault of a royal family for a captain, or having an entire nation shit themselves at the mere mention of your alter-ego if you were a rattler.
Mikael approached us. “Pardon me, m’lady, but we’re about to reach Brilskeep.”
“Thank you. What do we need to know before we land?”
“Well, the people are fishermen, mostly. There are very few trees to be seen for miles around, just shrubs and wild grass. None of it is ideal for farming. When they’re not being fishermen they’re raiders. Sometimes they’ll strike the coastal villages along the lake, sometimes they’ll find a river to take and hit places a hundred miles inland. The king – Draegor, that is – is related to each of the warlord nobles all around us. They swear a fealty to him and offer a portion of whatever they’ve raided, and in return he doesn’t have them killed. The custom is that the king arranges all the marriages between the nobles in the land. If he becomes tired of your marriage and thinks that a better alliance between two other families is called for then he will throw one partner off the highest point of the castle and have the grieving widow or widower married to someone else by the end of the day. You’d be surprised how often that happens.”
The look on Alysia’s face soured.
“It’s the way things are done here,” said Mikael with his hands raised in apology. “One thing you should keep in mind at all times is that they absolutely despise Ispar up here.”
“Even though they like us enough to raid year after year?”
“That’s sport and their livelihood, m’lady. They don’t get much sun or heat in these parts. Maybe a few days of the year are pleasantly warm and their slaves from the south rejoice, but for the locals it looks like the southerners are as weak as they come. You lot can’t survive the cold. You complain about it all the time, you can’t stomach the ale, you’re miserable in the long winters … you do nothing but talk about how much better the south is. But they also hate the south because you lot outnumber them. Whenever the nobles get the chance to put a southerner in their place, they’re going to take it.”
“So we’re in for a spectacle?”
“I fear so. It’s probably going to be very public and it will pro
bably be uniquely unpleasant. The king will be looking for any excuse to make a fool out of you and to prove that he has the power up here, not you.”
“What will he do?”
“Well, he can’t throw you off the top of his castle, not unless he wants to start a war with Ispar – which he might actually want to do now that he has vampires on his side – but he might throw someone off from high up in the vanguard.”
I shifted uncomfortably.
“Not you,” said Mikael. “Most likely: Lieutenant Loken.”
Loken was near enough to glance over when he heard his name. He trod over, keeping one hand firmly on the ship’s rail to steady his balance. “My lady?”
“Tell him,” said Alysia.
Mikael smiled apologetically. “Just as a warning, Lieutenant, and I really mean no disrespect, but if I say that Lady Kasera here can lick my balls and–”
Loken’s hand snapped out, grabbing onto Mikael’s throat and squeezing tightly. Mikael gasped and tried to slap Loken’s gloved hand away, all to no avail. “Disrespect her and you disrespect me.”
“Example,” spluttered Mikael.
“Release him, please,” said Alysia.
Loken did so.
Mikael recoiled, grasping his throat and holding his hand tightly there to protect himself. “I’m sorry m’lady, and to you Lieutenant, but that’s the sort of thing I was talking about.”
“You will watch you tongue or you won’t have one for much longer,” cautioned Loken.
“I understand,” said Alysia.
“Good,” said Mikael. “The king will be trying to start a fight. He will use every insult he has to attack you all. Whoever stands up to him is going to die.”
We glanced back at Loken.
Mikael continued. “I like Lieutenant Loken. I really do. But he’s the one most likely to die today. If anyone in the vanguard speaks to Draegor like the Lieutenant spoke to me then Draegor will throw the Lieutenant from his castle. It’s a power move. The rest of us will have to continue in shock while he’ll be more emboldened. He’s famous for it. If you accept all of his insults then you’re weak. If you snap back at him he kills you. Simple, but effective.”
