by Jackson Lear
“Not sure. I was watching the crowd when Draegor mentioned Agnarr by name. The nobles Mikael described didn’t seem caught off guard but the mercenaries did. There were a few glances for confirmation and a couple of nods from those in the know. But there were some grimaces from the nobles, like it was a recent discovery.” I drew in a deep breath, a knot forming in my stomach; whispering that we may be more at fault here than I cared to admit. “Is there any chance you brought some letters with you that mentioned Agnarr by name? Or Faersrock in particular?”
A ghost seemed to slip through Alysia’s soul as her features dropped into place. Her mouth hung open in dismay, her eyes cracking with defeat.
“Right. So there’s a pretty good chance that Draegor knew someone was plotting against him, he just didn’t know who. Not until he went through our stuff.”
An audible groan escape Alysia as she covered her face with her hands. “They took something else as well. A letter for you.”
“From?”
“Día.”
It was my turn to groan.
“And a drawing from Kel.”
“Oh, gods. Why?”
“Because you’ve avoided all contact with them for a year and they want to know why.”
“I met them once.”
“A significant once since it unquestionably changed their lives for the better. It’s also the main reason the vanguard here trust you.”
“I can tell when you’re lying, you know.”
“It’s not a lie.”
“In that case I’m willing to bet that your father’s people distrust me because of exactly what happened to Día.”
Alysia nodded towards several members of the vanguard. “Loken has been teaching her how to ride. Berik has been helping Kel improve his drawing. Odalis has been telling them jokes that neither should repeat in polite company. Saskia has got them working on their high Isparian.”
“And what about your father?”
“He’s given them a place to live and work to do.”
“I meant about me. We’re a long way from home and we’re surrounded by people who will suffer a terrible fate if they disobey his orders.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
I glanced towards Zara. “He has an assassin on his personal payroll.”
“That’s not all she does.”
I returned to the fire, provoking Alysia into a response.
She lowered her head, covering her mouth from anyone who might be listening in. “Before we rode off they had a meeting. Just the two of them. That’s not uncommon. Both of them have refused to tell me what it was about. Again, that’s not uncommon. But what I do know is that he didn’t want you to come with me until he and Zara spoke. After that he gave me your authorization to give to Auron. Loken might say that you are the worst person to have up here in case anything went wrong but my father seems to disagree.”
“So when something goes wrong …?”
“Me first. Loken second. Zara third. You fourth.”
A heavy thump, thump reverberated across the wooden door. Someone’s fist calling for our attention. We waited. Twenty sets of leather armor gnawing and creaking in our cold, barren holding cell.
A scream. A man’s, desperately crying out, “No! No! NOOOOO!” before it fell into a terrified shriek, louder and louder, until another thump silenced it in an instant.
The beam was lifted free. The door swung open. The bear peered inside, growling something in his northern tongue.
Mikael wiped his brow with a trembling hand. “The king will see us again. Me and you.”
Lying in the courtyard just a few feet away lay the bloodied heap of a body, one who had just been thrown to his death from the top of the castle.
The bear snapped again.
“M’lady, please …”
“I thought I made myself very clear,” said Alysia, to the bear.
He snarled at her. Grunted a threat.
Mikael hurried to Alysia. “He said the crew will be next if we don’t hurry. All of them. Please.”
“Very well,” said Alysia. She glanced back to me. “I can do this.” She marched through the doorway, leg’s shaking, into the open, and past Agnarr’s dead son.
Chapter Seven
It was easy to lose track of time in a windowless dungeon with winter upon us. Apparently if we went far enough north the sun didn’t rise for months at a time. I’m still not quite sure how that works but it helps to explain why the vampires love it here. Then again, the sun is also supposed to stay up all day in the summer. Perhaps vampires migrate. Or they live underground. Who knows.
Zara went from leaning against the cold brick wall to pacing, working off a nervous energy as the one person she was supposed to protect was no longer in her sight. The rest of the troops separated into small groups. Sat. Lay down. Tried to get comfortable but finding it impossible to do so. Most of us huddled by the glowing embers in the middle of the room.
Loken held his position by the door with Saskia, the eyes to the outside world, and Lindum, the ears.
“Are we sure that’s a noble on the ground?” asked Loken.
Saskia shifted her angle. “Hard to tell. He landed face down. Dark hair. Fur cloak. No weapons on him.”
“Shh!” snapped Lindum.
Loken and Saskia fell silent.
“‘That’s what traitors get,’” translated Lindum. He froze, leaned back with annoyance, and took the listening wire away from his ear. “They know we’re watching them.”
“So keep watching,” said Loken. He trotted over to the shit-hole, where Helga was staring through a similar silver wire to Saskia’s. “Anything?”
“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 w
ith 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 crimes. 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 te
ll 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.”
