Black River (The Hounds of the North Book 2)

by Peter Fugazzotto

  Screams had greeted the Northmen when they returned to the street of the market. Screams not of horror at the Hophts and their dark magic but at Shield, the giant aged Northman who stood in their midst, a monster from the stories of childhood when the North was the enemy, a severed head clutched in his fist, blood polluting their streets.

  Shield should not have cared and would not have cared but for the small girl, brown ringlets, bare dirty feet, who burst into sudden tears.

  Who was the monster that roamed the streets of Vas Dhurma? A monster that would parade around a head in front of a child. Is this what he had become?

  He stared back into his cup, his reflected face undulating on the surface of the sticky wine.

  His rumination of the day was interrupted by the crashing open of the tavern door. The patrons, every last one of them and in varying stages of drunkenness, lurched to their feet, calloused hands to hilts, eyes fierce as wild animals.

  "The Hounds of the North," said Cassius, resplendent in white tunic and gilded red robe. The First Captain smiled widely as he shoved the door behind him leaving an escort of armored Dhurman soldiers in the torchlight and chill of night. "I had a feeling this is where I would find you."

  Shield signaled the other men in the tavern with a nod and they sat back down, mute for a moment before the drinks sloshed, bone die rolled across the table and the laughter once again mingled with the smoke.

  One of the men cleared a space on the bench next to Shield so Cassius could sit.

  Shield looked at Cassius's side. "Lost the gilded sword."

  "I play a role. I play their game but I will never fucking forget where I come from and what I am capable of." His palm touched the leather wrapped handle of his sword, the simple sword issued to the common soldiers of Empire, the one that he had worn at his side through so many campaigns.

  Cassius winced with the first sip of the wine. "Maybe I have forgotten some of where I came from. This wine tastes like piss."

  He then bought the first round of jugs of wine for all the tables.

  After the third round, laughter reigned in the dark room.

  Towards the break of dawn, Cassius, with words slurring, bent in to Shield. "I too miss our days of old, and to be honest I have dug myself too deep a shit hole here to step away and still have my head sitting on my shoulders. Did I tell you I'm to fucking wed General Fortius's niece? Actually a beauty and has wits about her. Never in my god damned life could I have imagined having risen so high. Son of a peasant, not so bad here in Vas Dhurma."

  "Congratulations," said Shield barely lifting his cup.

  "No, not like that. Didn't come to gloat."

  "Just want to live vicariously through the Hounds?"

  "Always, Shield, always."

  "Well, if we have not served, then at least we have served to entertain."

  "Faithful as you Hounds are to me, I am to you, you bastard. You've never doubted that, have you, Shield?"

  "Loyalty without power means little."

  Cassius pursed his lips, began to speak, then held his words. He took another gulp of wine and then, having gathered his thoughts, spoke. "I can get you out of Vas Dhurma."

  "To the East?"

  The Dhurman Captain shook his head. "My influence is not so strong. Maybe after the marriage, if I can produce some heirs. Years off, my friend, to pull off what you ask."

  "Then what? A silver merchant? A king of spice?"

  "May not be want you want to hear. I know there's history. But I can get you the North."

  "The North?" Shield's belly tightened.

  "With your swords. Serving Empire in a different way. More like what we did in Hopht. What you did there and what you did here today in the market have been noticed. The Master Chronicler is organizing a man to go the North. They never cleared out the warlocks and wizards."

  "Across the Black River?" asked Shield.

  "No. Only as far Cullan. They are leaving the lands beyond the Black River to you Northmen. Not worth the bloodshed for what we get in return. But the Master Chronicler feels that there are words that can be harvested in the North. That the old magic is strong among your people. That there is much to extract from the villages around Cullan. He wants the Hounds to be the fist for his man that he sends north. Go north and root out the old magic."

  Harad shoved his head between the two of them. "North? We can go to the North again? The gods do have ears after all. Wine, more wine, the last of this foul wine. We return to the mead halls."

  Shield's head spun, the room falling out of focus, his image reflected in the cup bending, stretching and finally splitting in two. Shield Scyldmund, scourge of many men, was returning to the North.

  After all these years.

  His mind filled with memories of heather and fen, of bearded warriors and scowling women.

  Memories of villages burning and the blood of his people on his sword.

  Of Birgid.

  Of all that he left behind.

  WITCH

  EVEN WITHIN THE walls of the stone tower, hunched close to the fireplace, Birgid Wordswallow could not escape the cold. It was deep within her as if her bones were made of ice. It had been that way for near half a year now, ever since she braided her words with the warlock. Back then, in the height of the Northern summer, the chill in her body had been welcome. Now it ate at her in this tower far north and she wondered whether she had chosen the wrong path when she had finally given in to Fennewyn.

  Birgid huddled to the fire, putting her hands so close that they were nearly in the flames. Still the heat felt distant. The flames actually seemed to shy away from her, bending in the opposite direction. What was it that had been awakened in her? Or was it something impregnated in her by the joining of the magic itself?

  Through the narrow window slit of her tower room, the boglands stretched until they were lost in the hills and mists. The rain had let up, turning to a thickening mist. The rain would return again, darkening the skies as they always did, and then the seasons would turn and snow would blanket the ground, smothering the distances.

  Fennewyn would come to her soon, returning to the tower with his gathering army of Northerners. His game had been set in motion. Dhurma would come for him soon, cross the Black River and send legion after legion to find him and exterminate him like some wild animal. But that was what he wanted. He would not be satisfied until the highlands and peat bogs and meadows of heather were filled with blood and he cared not whether the blood was Dhurman or Northman as long as it was spilled to sate his desire for revenge.

  As her time with the warlock lengthened, Birgid saw that his thirst for revenge was unquenchable. Nothing would bring his daughter back. Nothing would erase what the Dhurmans had done to her.

  At first Birgid thought Fennewyn driven, but now she simply saw that he was insane, a man's whose shattered emotions had broken him.

  She opened her palms to the fire, but no heat came to her. She was broken in her own way because even though what he offered was insane and horrific, it made sense to her.

  Or at least it had made sense at first.

  But what he asked of her now she was not sure that she could give. She had fled from Fennewyn, hurried back north to his tower, leaving his question unanswered.

  She lifted a kettle from the fire and filled a ceramic teacup. Herbs floated to the top. She covered them with a small dish and closed her eyes, counting her breaths, doing her best not to remember Eliode, but the memory of her own daughter swept back to her.

  She would return to Eliode. She would return the old world to her daughter. She would not leave her sweet child to Dhurma.

  Birgid brought the cup uncovered to her face, felt the breath of the steam. Still the cold remained. She set the cup down before her, ran her knife across her palm, and letting the blood drip into the tea, she brought forth the words from her lips.

  All she needed was a glance of Eliode to know that she was safe. That would reassure Birgid that what she was doing w
as what must be done to preserve their way.

  The blood swirled in the tea, twisting and spiraling, until a face other than her own reflected on the surface.

  But it was not Eliode that she saw on the surface.

  It was Shield Scyldmund, the man who had left her those twenty years prior, and she saw that he was coming north, would cross the Black River, and would find the stone tower of Fennewyn. He came with men on horses, armed soldiers of the Empire.

  Shield was coming for her.

  Suddenly the heat of the cup in her hands was too great, nearly burning her palms, and she dropped it and it shatter into hundreds of pieces on the floor, fragments that could never be put together again.

  TRYR

  HARAD INHALED THE brisk air of the North, savoring each breath as it filled his chest.

  He sat his horse comfortably, relaxing into the predictable and familiar rhythm of the animal's steps on the road of broken stones north. After weeks of travel, they were only a few days out of Cullan.

  If he closed his eyes, he almost could imagine that the wheel of time had been turned back and that the Hounds had never left their homeland.

  Ahead of him, the Dhurman irregulars, bunched together in the wagon, were already blowing in their fists and wrapping their shoulders in their blankets despite still being days from the Black River where the North truly began. Harad, on the other hand, kept his head and arms bare, the neck of his shirt untied, letting the cool air of the North wash over his skin.

  To be back again, what exhilaration. And he knew that Shield and Patch felt the same way, or at least, he suspected that they must have, for how could they not feel the land in their bones and blood once again. If only Night and Cook had held true to them. If only Hawk, the Brothers Bull and the others had not fallen.

  They were aged, worn down and now only three, but the Hounds were coming home.

  The book bounced solidly in the shoulder bag at his ribs. Harad brought something back. He returned to the North with a gift that could change his people. He could only imagine the wide-eyed wonder of the children when he first unfurled the Song of the Southern Sword.

  The Hounds traveled under the nominal command of Apprentice Chronicler Vincius, an overly preened Xichil who unlike the others from the South seemed unaffected by the cold, with his small escort of Dhurman irregulars – veterans, untested youth, and a freed slave or two – to the fortress in Cullan town. Harad was not sure what these others would add to their mission to ferret out witches and warlocks. More likely Vincius or the Master Chronicler did not fully trust the Hounds, especially back in the North.

  The party had already been through three weeks of hard travel. The Hounds' adventure in the market with the mud man had apparently caught the eye of the Master Chronicler, in no small part due to the fact that the Northern clansmen had saved his daughter from being killed by the Hophtian warlock.

  But their mission also was part of a grander effort in the Dhurman scheme.

  Despite how far the Chroniclers had rooted out magic in the reaches of Empire, killing the remnant warlocks and witches, something had shifted in the balance of the world.

  Harad had heard the heralds announce the gatherings of Chroniclers, the edicts from the Emperor, the gold promised to informers, and the list of magicians and suspected magicians that he been found and brought to the sword. Harad had seen the naked men and women in the cages suspended above the markets, emaciated, skin torn from lashes, mouths bloodied and burned from the taking of their tongues. He had also seen children, those who were suspected of having the gift of words. He had to turn his eyes from the children.

  At first, the crowds gathered and mocked and tormented. Months later, no one's eyes rose to the whimpering and extended hands of the neighborhood healers, the old story tellers or the once bright-eyed children that hung above their heads. Faces turned from the cages of death that swayed between the common man and the heavens.

  Despite the clampdown by the Emperor and the Chroniclers, vengeful magic flooded into Dhurma from the conquered lands, an unstoppable tide. Increasingly, dark magic was becoming more overt in Vas Dhurma itself. Senators killed. Beasts in the river. An attack at the palace. A threat to Empire.

  It was rumored that the magic came from the conquered lands: Hopht, Sasarra, Xichil and the North.

  So the Master Chronicler and the Grand Collegium launched a new campaign to fight dark magic before it took hold in the beloved city of Vas Dhurma. Apprentices with armed escorts were being sent to the conquered lands to root out the warlocks and witches and therefore never give them a chance to undermine the great city.

  Thus the Hounds went to Cullan and the lands south of the Black River with their apprentice to hunt those who touched the words.

  But Harad was not sure how successful they would be. He had seen the indecision of the Apprentice Chronicler Vincius in the market, his freezing in the face of danger. The big Northman doubted the apprentice would be of much value to the greater Dhurman cause. Perhaps he would capture a few words here and there from a country healer but what would he do when faced with a wielder of dark magic?

  Harad did not care as long as he was returning home.

  Three weeks they had traveled, leaving the crowded streets of Vas Dhurma and passing through the city gates without fanfare, a ragtag band of irregulars, outsiders leaving the great city. Under the command of Vincius, they set a fast pace north through the rolling farmlands of olive and wheat and past the remains of northern towns that were still charred from the civil war many years past. Then they hurried a few days along the foothills of the Alpise, the great snow peaked mountains swirling and constant on their shoulders. The roads beyond the Alpise fell into greater disrepair, muddy, cobbles stolen, stone markers defaced, and Vincius's reckless pace ended up in the loss of one of the oxen and the two freed men who disappeared one night in the farmlands.

  As they squeezed through the low stone wall that marked the border of the traditional lands of Dhurma, their pace fell into the rhythm of the land, slowing as they picked their way through the thick forests of Caulle, wary of the unmarked forks in the road, a week of growing cold and increasingly distant villages. Here Dhurma stilled ruled, for they had conquered. The Dhurman outposts had native influence, half the soldiers of Caullish blood, long-haired, speaking a pidgin, and still welcoming to official travelers from Vas Dhurma. In these outposts, the band rested overnight, restocked, switched out draft animals, and then with the coming of the sun in the east turned their horses north towards the dark lands.

  Another week through the forests and wide plains of Caulle and they reached the southernmost part of the North, the territory that had been untamed for so long but that had also been the proving ground for the Emperor when he was a mere upstart general of the Dhurman republic. The campaign in the North had made him.

  When they finally forded the River Arcyn, they nearly lost their wagon in the sweep of water and unexpected timber. But as they came ashore, they set foot in the true North. That moment they crossed the river, Harad knew they were close but not yet home, not the home to his clan nor that of Shield or Patch. There was more land to be traversed and then the Black River and beyond.

  The land north of the River Arcyn opened up. The thick forests were broken with wide plains of heather and stone. Here the soil was too poor to support much in the way of the farming. No great empire could ever take hold in the North as long as men were dependent on the bounty of an untamed land.

  The land was rugged, swept by a fierce wind from the western seas, sodden with the sudden squalls and storms that darkened the skies and smothered the sun. The earth was never warm nor full of life, but cold like death. As they traveled north, skeletons of farm houses stood like bleached bones in the distances, landmarks of the failed efforts of Dhurman settlers who gave up their dreams after breaking their plows and beasts of burden on the rocky ground. The land would not give in to being tamed.

  A hard land produced a hard people. There
was no comfort, no guarantee of a life well lived. Instead, chaos ruled and the only certainty was that at the edges of your domain another clan hid behind the trunks of trees or crouched among the heather, watching, coveting, waiting for the night that they would raid your village and take what was yours because they had been forced out of where they once had been. The clan never belonged to a place. Even if a clan could squeeze a life out of the unforgiving earth, within a generation, there were too many mouths to feed and the young men were exiled to claim land and women of their own.

  A handful of days south of Cullan, they descended into the valley of Tryr.

  Evening was fast approaching, and the black clouds in the distant west sheeted rain on the horizon.

  "We'll need to find lodging here," said Vincius from the seat of the wagon.

  "We should go further and lay camp. Rain won't be here for another hour," said Shield reining in his gray dappled mare. It danced between his legs.

  "We'll put up in the fort. A warm meal and dry place to lay down our rolls will do us good."

  Shield held his horse in place. "I'll find you later."

  The Apprentice shrugged. "Do what you will, but when we get to Cullan, I'll expect discipline."

  As much as Harad welcomed the return to the North, he was not so foolish as to spend a night in the rain in the rolling hills outside of Tryr. He had plenty of nights in the elements over the years and the mornings were always less painful when he had a warm, dry place to sleep, so he kicked his horse forward with Vincius and the wagon and the rest of the travelers, leaving Shield a lone silhouette on the rise behind them. Patch trailed the wagon, reluctant to leave his leader, but in the end followed the others.

  The village had not grown much in the years since the Hounds had last passed through – a dozen or so round thatched houses bordering a small fort, a walled Dhurman compound.