by Jackson Lear
“Little that’s useful, sir. We’re standing on solid rock. A groove in the ground has been cut away for sewage to run through. Three feet from the end of this wall is a sheer drop onto a courtyard below, twenty feet down with nothing to soften our landing. There are a couple of buildings down there with chimneys at full smoke. That’s it, I’m afraid. I can’t see the lake or a boat and I’ve only seen one person moving down there, but that was a quick walk-past and they were gone.”
So, we had nothing to do except ‘stay sharp’ or ‘be prepared.’ I found a section of wall to sit against, closed my eyes, and hoped that I would get some rest, yet no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t put Alysia’s absence out of my mind. Was she in a dungeon right now with a ransom note being drawn up? Was Draegor getting some personal revenge on her for what her father had done to his people? Or was she actually handling it as well as I could hope?
“Raike?”
I opened my eyes.
Loken stared back at me. “Any ideas?”
“Some. A high priority is soon going to be conserving water. No one’s going to like it but from now on we should only use the hole in the ground for one function, not for two. And I would suggest giving everyone the same story to tell for when they interrogate us.”
“Everyone in the vanguard have proven to be able to hold their tongue.”
“Silence is useful for a while, but every so often you need to give them something, even if it’s a slew of insults. But since they’re trying to get us to fuck up I suggest avoiding the insults and instead give people something to tell them. Is there a vow people take when they join the army? Or the vanguard?”
Loken’s eyes started to hone in. “There is.”
“Good. If they have to say something, get them to say that. Aside from that there might be one or two of those murder holes in the roof that someone could climb through, but it’ll be quicker if the mages blow the doors to the dungeon.”
“We’d need our weapons for that.”
“Not necessarily. Zara and I could sneak out. We won’t exactly have free reign to explore as whoever is watching the door will need to be silenced and their absence will be noticed, but we would have a couple of minutes.”
“How would you get out through the front door without blowing it open?”
“Get two mages with your seeing rods to lock in on the beam outside, use magic to lift it, and Zara and I could slip out quickly. Maybe even use a spell to drag the guards forward.”
He nodded, slowly. “I’ll think about it.” He strolled away, returning to test the walls for any obvious weakness.
I had informally met Loken and the cavalry portion of the vanguard once before. General Kasera had stopped his cavalry – two hundred strong – right in front of me in a moment that could’ve easily ended my life. Loken was right behind him. The rest of our cavalry members were quick to memorize my face as well. So imagine my surprise all these months later when I’m being assigned to work alongside them when the last thing they remembered of me was that Kasera was a second away from ordering my execution.
Truth be told, the last few months have been an utter misery. I had my own room at Lavarta’s fort but that was the height of my luxury. There was a wooden walkway alongside my door. It clanged and bounced whenever someone walked by, and when you’re living in a small fort with six hundred soldiers alongside you, on duty day and night, on high alert for an attack which was guaranteed to happen, and with only one walkway to reach the permanent quarters and guard towers, you can better believe that people stomped by all the fucking time. It was an endless stream of creaks and groans and thumps and chatter, all right outside my door.
I was somehow deemed qualified enough to train the cohort in how to fight a vampire attack. Back when I was in the Governor’s Hand we had faced four of the fuckers in a prolonged cat-and-mouse fray that lasted a few days. We lost good people. Since then we had all adopted a ‘never again’ attitude towards engaging vampires, despite the potential reward for clearing out a nest of them. Unfortunately for me, I was unceremoniously kicked out of the company and had to find gainful employment elsewhere, so my ‘never again’ suddenly became a lot less resolute.
I had spent the last twenty years avoiding uniformed soldiers as best I could. Now look: I was surrounded by them, working for a general who distrusted me probably more than I distrusted him, all because his daughter took it on herself to vouch for me when I needed it most.
So I trained Lavarta’s cohort in the art of guerrilla warfare. They liked to fight in formation. I didn’t. They trusted that strength in numbers always worked. I argued that maneuverability was a stronger advantage than numbers any day. I spent the evenings with Commander Lavarta, working through training strategies to marry our differing styles of combat together – to figure out how to lure the vampires into an attack by appearing to be in formation and then turning it around on them. How to do that was a mystery, given that I was the apparent expert with the experience of only four days and four vampires.
We crossed the border to set traps in the hope of capturing one but we were in the wrong seasons, so they brought animals in. Hell hounds. Giant lizards that spat burning venom. Anything that would get the troops used to fighting unpredictable creatures. But it wasn’t the same. I’ve seen vampires run faster than a galloping horse and leap over walls. They could land behind our formations and strike someone’s back. By the time everyone has regrouped they will have hit a new target somewhere else. The best I could suggest was for the mages to work together to slow them down, knock them over, and pin them in until a hundred swords could run in and kill the thing.
I put up with that misery for months. Living like a soldier. Eating like a soldier. Sleeping in a noisy room all by myself with a status the grunts only dreamed of. We also had to exhaust ourselves to prepare our magic. I had grown up with some of the best mages in the province, so naturally I expected the current army mages to think like the former army mages. That was not the case. Former army now turned mercenary mages were a lot freer in their combat ethics. This lot seemed to follow a certain protocol on which type of effects were acceptable and which were not. I thought the whole point of fighting your enemy in combat was to win by any means necessary – but no. There was no money in killing. The money came from ransoming soldiers back to home. That doesn’t exactly work when engaging vampires.
For a while I wanted to see if I was better at exhausting myself than an Isparian mage. They were practically toddlers compared to the years I had on most of them. The first three days of staying awake alongside them weren’t too bad. I ate one meal a day. So did they. I exercised and barked orders. They exercised and received orders. We’d skirmish with training blades and the like. Then came the cold baths. Holy fuck … the cold baths ...
On day four I tapped out. The voices were starting to speak to me from beyond the grave, my vision was swirling about, I’m pretty sure I made a pass at one of mages … I was done. I focused the effect I wanted and the word that would charge it. Kept on focusing, kept on remembering, over and over, until I passed out. The pimple-faced kids bearing the insignia of an imperial mage made it to day five. A couple to day six.
Recovery was a pain in the ass. I woke up in the early hours of night with nothing to do and even less to see. I was practically dead again by dawn. Was awoken by a heavy banging on my door with some asswipe telling me I was late. So I barked orders while my head was stinging like all hell. Passed out again at dusk. Wide awake an hour later and unable to fall back to sleep. On it went for four more days – my whole body thrown completely off course to prepare just one spell. The young mages slept for one day straight, got up, and began preparing themselves again. From then on I mostly stuck to sharpening my blade, dreaming of a hot bath somewhere in the south with a sharp-tongued woman to my side.
Then one day Lavarta asked me to his office. He had a letter with him, one that I first thought was a warrant for my arrest, for any number of a thousand past cri
mes. Nope. It was from Alysia, his wife. She’s bringing a contingent of her father’s vanguard up north to meet with a warlord along the Dead Lake in the hope of riding Draegor’s alliance with the vampires. The vanguard will stop by the fort for some last minute preparations. And Alysia had asked for me to join them. Wonderful! Let me just go pack my bags.
Not so fast, apparently. I was supposed to train the vanguard to deal with the potential vampire threat as well.
‘How long are they staying for?’
‘Two weeks.’
‘That’s not enough time.’
‘It’s all they can afford.’
‘Why not send some of your troops instead?’
‘I can’t authorize that, only the governor can. But General Kasera is permitted to send his own troops to go with Alysia.’
‘Without the governor’s knowledge?’
The commander stared back at me. ‘The less the governor knows about Alysia being in enemy territory, the better.’
So, that was that. General Kasera’s best of the best were to learn the art of fighting vampires from a professional thug they had once wanted to kill. As a bonus they would no doubt learn how to fight people exactly like me, which was something of a sticking point even if my old friends had kicked me out of the company for reasons I don’t really want to get into right now.
Saskia bolted from the door, snapping the same signal as Loken had done previously: a quick circle above her head.
The door thumped. Opened. Two of Draegor’s cubs peered inside. Axes drawn. They pushed a bound and blindfolded sailor through the doorway. He yelped to a stop, jittering and turning in every direction quickly, reaching slowly for his face but hesitant to pull the blindfold free. The two cubs backed away. Closed the door. Reinforced it.
Saskia gripped the man’s arm. “Easy …”
He jolted with fright. Saskia peeled the blindfold away. Torunn – Mikael’s cousin – blinked back at us, shaking from head to toe.
“Are you okay?” asked Saskia.
Torunn drew in a shallow breath, trying to keep regain his sense of safety. Loken went over to help with his binds. Zara did the same.
“What happened?” asked Loken.
“The bear … hit m-me.”
“Let’s bring him to the fire,” said Zara.
I couldn’t tell if Torunn’s stammer was because of fright, the cold, or a natural affliction, but every ‘m’ was unusually elongated and every ‘p’ was difficult to follow up on. “I’mmm sorry. We did not know about the ammmbush.”
“How did it happen?” asked Zara.
“They found us. We were coming from near Lietsmar. Everything was quiet until captain shouted at us, that someone was about to crash us.” He corrected himself. “Crash into us. One of Draegor’s ships at full sails and oars coming right for us. It hit. Before we could stand up the vampire dropped down and attacked us, knocking half of us overboard. We …” He held both hands up.
“Surrendered?”
“Yes. We surrendered. Draegor’s p-people said if we not do what they want they break our arms and legs and throw us into lake. It is not first time they have done that so we believed them. They knew we were coming to see you. They wanted us to keep going and to p-pick you up.”
I said, “They just happened to find you in the whole lake a couple of hours before meeting us?”
“They m-must have been waiting for us. Or for you. We were only ten miles away from Orkust. We got our friends out of water and told to move onto their ship. It was bigger. Harder to row. Most of Draegor’s raiders moved onto our ship and followed us to Orkust.”
I asked, “How did they know when and where to pick us up?”
“I don’t know. Really I don’t.”
“How did you and Mikael arrange all of this?”
“You know already, yes?”
“I know how it should’ve been, so either there was a leak or a betrayal. I’d like to find out which so that if we ever come back here I’ll know who to trust and who needs an unpleasant talking to. Perhaps it was you.”
“I not betray anyone!”
“Then tell me how you and Mikael arranged for all of this to happen.”
Torunn didn’t waste much time. “I met him at the end of summer in Lietsmar, on your side of lake. He said you wanted to find someone who could break alliance between Draegor and vampires. I sailed back to Faersrock and told Gunther. He told someone else. Soon Agnarr talked to me.”
“Tell me exactly how that conversation went.”
He was tired and rolled his eyes towards a, ‘I was going to,’ then it occurred to him that I was probably being just as serious as the people who ambushed his crew and who had threatened to break his arms and legs. “He said he heard I was talking to someone in Lietsmar about Draegor. ‘My cousin,’ I said. I told him a little about M-Mikael.”
“Which was?”
“That he was – how you say – loud-mouth merchant who knows someone from everywhere. I told Agnarr Mikael had been in Anglattera and met someone from Ispar. Mikael said she was most beautiful woman he had seen. Scary, too. Kind of scary where she could drink you stupid and still show you good time.”
I pointed to Zara. “Was it her?”
Torunn’s eyes widened with embarrassment. “Maybe.”
Zara remained impassive but I swear I caught the slightest smile of pride as soon as Torunn turned away from her.
“I don’t suppose Mikael said that he’d slept with her?”
Torunn’s look of embarrassment deepened. “He is famous for bullshit. I gave Mikael’s message to Agnarr, that someone from Ispar would pay well if someone from north could break alliance between Vasslehün and vampires. Agnarr asked for more information. How much? And who was offering? I returned to Lietsmar. Mikael wasn’t there so I sent messenger. Next time I was in Lietsmar, Mikael was back. I told him alliance didn’t exist between Vasslehün and vampires, only Draegor and vampires, and I knew a noble who knew other nobles who weren’t happy about this and they were thinking of fighting Draegor to death. Mikael was very excited about this. He said he had done research and he thought he knew who from Ispar was behind this, but I should keep my … voice? Face?”
“Reaction?”
“Maybe. I should keep my reaction quiet because I probably was not going to like answer.”
“And did you?”
“I thought I did, until he said single name: Kasera. And shit, that name doesn’t stand well with Agnarr and our people.” He rolled his eyes up to his forehead. “Stand well? Sit? Sit well with Agnarr.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Kasera name makes problems for Agnarr and other nobles.”
“Why?”
“Because General Kasera killed last resistance of northerners in Galinnia! I fought against him. We all did. At first it really did sound like someone wanted to break alliance. Now it sounded like Ispar was pushing north again, trying to overthrow Draegor and put their own king in charge – or worse – put them in charge. Mikael did what he could to convince me it was real, that Ispar had no plan to cross lake, but that is only because war just ended. In five years – maybe ten – things will be different. Only thing that actually convinced me this wasn’t some great plan of Snake Emperor was when Mikael said Ispar does not actually know what is happening. This was private mission. That confused hell out of me until Mikael said this thing happens in south all time. Rich family makes some problem go away for one of two reasons: to look stronger in eyes of other families; or to end problem for good so they can turn their attention onto another problem somewhere else. Mikael told me it was second thing that Kaseras were trying to do. With Draegor and vampires gone they could shift their focus towards Ispar. He said Kasera wants to be emperor one day. This would help him and Agnarr too.”
I peered over to Zara and Loken. ‘Emperor Kasera’ seemed to be news to both of them.
“And it made sense,” said Torunn. “If Agnarr helped future emperor of Ispar then it could help him a lot. A pact of
non-aggression or something that sounded like that. Maybe some land. And if Kasera ever fucked him then Agnarr could tell Ispar of Kasera’s plans and they would kill him before he became emperor.” Torunn’s eyes shifted quickly to the Kasera party behind me. “I mean, I don’t know if any of that was serious. It was talk, you know? Sometimes you talk about weird things that might never happen.”
“I understand. Either way, Mikael convinced you that trusting a Kasera might be a good thing.”
“Yes! Well, I suppose. I gave him Agnarr’s name and then next thing I know, Kasera’s daughter wants meeting with Agnarr. By now our captain was sitting in on meetings with me and Mikael to make sure everything was going well. I was just messenger. Captain is only one who can let people onboard, you know? That’s how it happened. Mikael found me, talked you up, I told Agnarr, and we had conversation over thousands of miles.”
“When did you settle upon the pick-up point?”
Torunn squinted at me, lost for a moment.
“Why Orkust?”
“Oh. You choose it.”
“We did?”
“Yes. We gave you three potential places a month ago. We suggested Lietsmar, but that’s not in imperial lands and we did not realize you were bringing so many people with you. Last I heard was you would leave message in Lietsmar giving your actual location when you were ready. We knew it would be just after harvest time and we got it four days ago, so we sailed to get you.”
“Did someone from Draegor’s side get to Lietsmar first?”
“I don’t know how. Mikael and me never spoke of this in public. We never spoke in same place twice. We didn’t have a pattern. Mikael and I visited Lietsmar often over the years so I don’t think anything seemed unusual.”
“But he left a message with someone,” I said.
“Well, yeah, that is how these things go. I did not see what was written. Captain picked it up.”
I looked back to Zara. “Was it encoded?”
“The letters were scrambled.”
“And you followed Mikael and Torunn around?”
