Thief of the Ancients

by Mike Wild

  During the past days, wherever in Scholten or beyond Fitch had been, he had been also – unseen, undetected, undetained. And on each occasion he had sent Fitch a message to let him know he was there, an arrow despatched from whichever hiding place he had used which could almost, but not quite, have dropped him dead where he stood. By these means he had gradually robbed Fitch of the very same things the bastard had taken from Jenna, reducing him to his current state – a furtive, quivering hostage to mortality, unable to do anything or go anywhere without the presence of the living shield of bodyguards he had so desperately employed.

  There the bodyguards were now, Fitch huddled in their midst. The passage along which he walked was one that rose from the cells and torture chambers beneath Scholten Cathedral to the central level of the Final Faith’s sprawling underground complex. It was a route Fitch followed daily at roughly the same time, depending on how thoroughly he had attended to his ‘guests.’ The fact that he had not varied his routine was probably reflective of the fact that he considered himself safe in the bowels of the secret stronghold, but the time had come to prove him wrong.

  Slowhand waited until Fitch was outlined in the dead centre of the one inch square and let his arrow fly. It cut perfectly through the grille, flew through the narrow gap between supply crates that blocked the flue from view and then embedded itself solidly into the wall next to Fitch’s face. The psychic manipulator and his guards fell into immediate, blind panic; Fitch, clearly torn between gathering them more closely about him or sending them in search of the origin of the arrow, settled for half and half. Some guards pounded towards the flue, while others bundled Fitch away, swords raised defensively as they attempted to get their charge out of sight.

  As the first batch of guards kicked open the flue and examined its interior, Slowhand was already gone, having slipped out and replaced the grille the moment he’d released the arrow. Now he circled the crates, keeping out of sight but, as the opportunities presented themselves, unleashing more arrows in Fitch’s wake, until a line of them dotted the wall of the passage along which he fled.

  Turning with a look of horror each time one hit, Fitch made the decision that might make these his final moments after all. He ordered his protectors to guard his flank.

  No problem, as far as Slowhand was concerned – he simply clambered up onto a stack of crates, leapt for a support beam and passed over the guards’ heads.

  Fitch, he thought, you really should have invested full gold and bought in decent mercenaries from Allantia. The kind with brains, because you only get what you pay for.

  It was just him and the psychic manipulator now. As Fitch fled into the warehouse and distribution area, Slowhand followed, passing the Faith workers there unopposed, creating confusion as they hurried through. Once or twice Fitch looked to his rear, trying to defend himself by unleashing fireballs, but, born of haste and panic, they ricocheted wildly off the walls.

  Querilous Fitch reached the other side of the central area and entered one of the railway tunnels that fanned off it, dodging between the couplings of stationary wagons. The expansive network of tunnels that spread far across the peninsula – beneath both Vos and Pontaine – were thought to be the remains of dwarven mines which the Faith had extended into a transport network, and the cable-driven, funicular trains which rode their rails simply developments of the ore-collectors once used. It was what the Faith did – purloined technology and then adapted it for their own insidious purposes – but it gave Querilous Fitch no advantage here.

  Just the opposite, in fact. In his panic, Fitch had clearly neglected to take into account what lay some distance into the tunnels – and Slowhand knew what lay there because he’d had to bypass one to enter the Cathedral.

  Since last Slowhand had been here with Hooper, security had been upped dramatically on the surface, and without offing every guard between himself and Fitch he would have had the pits’ own job of reaching him undetected. But, as was so often the way, when security was increased on one front, it was often left vulnerable on another. Instead of heading for Scholten Slowhand had made his way to a tiny and purposefully underwhelming Faith mission some leagues east. The Church of Divine Intervention was more than it seemed, the fact that it had never been open for worship a clue that it had another purpose more fitting to its title. The mission was but a hollow shell concealing an access shaft to one of the Faith tunnels that led from Scholten to Volonne.

  The mission also had only one guard, and he was swiftly despatched with an iron-tipped arrow to the helmet that concussed rather than killed. After that it had been easy to gain entry to the shaft and drop onto the first train heading back west. The train had been carrying naphtha for the cathedral gibbets, and he had used some of the oil mixed with grime to apply facial camouflage before he reached the complex.

  But before the complex, of course, had been the shields.

  Fitch had forgotten about the shields.

  Slowhand smiled. The tunnel along which the psychic manipulator now fled was not the one through which he had rode the train – appeared, in fact, to be long unused – but that didn’t matter, for its defences would be the same. He allowed Fitch his rein, letting him increase the distance between them, exhaust himself as he fled into the darkness. Slowhand followed at his own pace, knowing he had all the time in the world.

  Fitch now gasping and staggering had negotiated most of a broad bend in the tunnel, and the blue glow that he could see illuminating the walls seemed to him to be some kind of salvation, a heavenly exit, perhaps, which would end this dark pursuit. It was nothing of the kind, of course, and as Slowhand appeared along the tunnel behind him, the stark reality of what he faced hit home.

  The magical force barrier that sealed all of the tunnels against intruders into the sub-levels of Scholten Cathedral closed off the tunnel, its surface rippling gently. The only things capable of passage through its lethal charge were the trains, their front carriages embedded with crystals that momentarily nullified its destructive effects. Given time, Fitch might have been able to use his own sorcerous powers to break the barrier down, but time was something he no longer had. The psychic manipulator weaved left and right, as if trying to find some alternative escape route, but unless the first train in who-knew-how-long came through the shield in the next few seconds, there was no way out.

  Fitch turned to stand against Slowhand, his brow darkening and hands dancing in an attempt to weave threads. Slowhand gave him no chance, rapidly loosing two arrows that nicked the tops of Fitch’s hands and drew blood, breaking his concentration. Fitch tried again and Slowhand loosed more arrows, deepening the same wounds. The archer’s message was clear: he was in absolute control. Any of his arrows could be solidly embedded in Fitch’s forehead in an instant, if he so wished.

  That, though, would be far too quick.

  Slowhand didn’t want it to be quick.

  The archer sighed and closed on the man responsible for Jenna’s death, Suresight now slung casually by his side. As he came, Fitch fell to his knees, tearing away parts of his robe to wrap around his bloodied hands. He stared up at his nemesis, trying and failing to disguise the fearful bobbing of his adam’s apple, and was wise enough not to raise his hands again. He studied Slowhand intently, working out his identity through the smears of camouflage the archer still wore.

  “The brother,” he said, with disdain. “So it was you all this time.”

  “The brother,” Slowhand confirmed. “But isn’t that a redundant term?”

  Fitch smiled coldly. “From what I’ve heard, she died at your order, not mine.”

  Slowhand paused. For Fitch to know that meant there had to have been a survivor of the Makennon and he’d thought all hands had gone down in the battle with the airship above the Crucible. Not that a survivor was necessarily a bad thing. News of the Faith’s comprehensive defeat might very well serve to deter them from taking to the skies again anytime soon. In any case, it didn’t alter the facts – Jenna would not h
ave even been aboard the Makennon when it crashed in flames, were it not for Querilous Fitch meddling with her very being.

  Speaking of which, the bastard was trying it with him, right now.

  Slowhand recognised the slight dip of the head and pulsing of the temples that signified Fitch was trying to influence his actions as they spoke, but he wasn’t going to be turning his bow on himself today, thank you very much. He tutted and raised Suresight, aiming an arrow directly at the manipulator’s head.

  “Don’t try it, stick-insect. If I feel the slightest scratching in my mind...”

  Fitch capitulated but, Slowhand got the impression, not wholly because of the warning he had just received. The man seemed confused, troubled somehow, as if he had been trying to gather the mental reserves to pull off his insidious little trick but had, for some reason, failed.

  “Maybe you should try to talk me round, instead,” Slowhand suggested. “Though I can’t really guarantee that will work.”

  Fitch glared up at him, but there was an element of desperation in his gaze.

  “There’s something...” he began, then shook his head, unable to grasp what. His mind was, in any case, on other matters. “So what happens now, brother? Do you plan to execute me in cold blood?”

  “Actually it’s running a little hot at the moment. But yes, that’s the plan.”

  Fitch began to laugh, softly at first, but then with a volume Slowhand knew was designed to unnerve him. It was exactly the type of tactic he’d have expected – mind games of a more prosaic nature than Fitch usually played, but mind-games nonetheless. And he knew what they were about. Fitch didn’t believe that Slowhand had it in him. He saw him as one of the good guys who, when it came to it, wouldn’t actually murder someone in revenge.

  Fitch didn’t know Slowhand at all. Didn’t know what had made him not really care.

  Slowhand drew the bow tauter still, pressing Fitch’s head down with the tip of his arrow. The creaking of the weapon was the only sound in the silent tunnel.

  “Say goodbye, Querilous Fitch.”

  The psychic manipulator began to tremble beneath him, waiting for the arrow that, in all likelihood, he would never feel. And in the eternity that he seemed to wait he became aware that Slowhand could play mind games, too.

  “What are you waiting for?” He hissed. “Do it!”

  “Get up,” Slowhand said.

  “What?”

  “On your feet, you bastard. Move away from the shield.”

  Fitch sneered. “What is this, some kind of trick?”

  “No trick. Do it.”

  Dazed and pained, Fitch regarded him with confusion. But Slowhand’s attention was fixed above him. Because what had stayed his delivery of the fatal arrow hadn’t been sadism on his part. As he’d been about to loose his killing shot something had drawn his gaze. Something beyond the energy barrier.

  A horde of people – hundreds of them – were approaching. And each and every one of them appeared to the archer to be dead.

  He plucked Fitch up and span him around. “You wanna tell me who they are?”

  Fitch gasped, actually staggered back. The apparently dead things, meanwhile, walked into the barrier in a single mass, recoiling from its charge in waves, but otherwise unharmed.

  “I think they want to come in,” Slowhand said. “Fitch, are these things your doing?”

  “No,” Fitch said quietly.

  From his expression, though, he clearly recognised what he was seeing, and his face was as white as those beyond the barrier. Even when he’d been facing death Slowhand wasn’t sure he had looked so afraid.

  “So,” Fitch continued, “the First Enemy moves at last.”

  “The First Enemy?”

  “We have to get out of here,” Fitch declared, pushing past him. “Now.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, tiger,” Slowhand persisted, grabbing him by the arm. “Whatever these things are, we’re safe behind the barrier, right?”

  “It was designed to be impenetrable.”

  “Then why are you so afraid?”

  It was Fitch’s turn to rail on Slowhand. “Because the barrier is shutting down.”

  “What?” Slowhand said, and saw that what Fitch said was true.

  The Final Faith’s shield was flickering on and off, as if something was interfering with the magic that made it whole. He stared at the figures pushing against it.

  “Are they doing this?” He asked. “The First Enemy?”

  Despite his evident fear, Fitch began to chuckle. “They are not the First Enemy, archer. They are only his representatives here.”

  “Fitch, what in the pits of Kerberos is go –”

  Slowhand didn’t finish his question. The barrier had vanished completely. His nose wrinkled as it was flooded with the stale air of the long unused tunnel, but it was nothing compared to the stench of those who approached them now.

  Slowhand could see that his first impression of their health hadn’t been entirely accurate, but neither had it been wide of the mark. Grey of flesh and white of eye, with chests that barely rose with breath, they were alive, but not in any usual sense of the term. They seemed suspended, somehow, between life and death, and had an odour about them that reminded him of an outbreak of the tic. An odour that came when bodies ceased to function properly, when things were fundamentally wrong inside. The odd thing was, none of the people seemed wounded or showed any obvious illness. It seemed to Slowhand to be more of a spiritual thing.

  That was it, he thought. The clothing these people – men, women, and even a few children – wore was blackened or torn but still recognisable, and it betrayed them as being from the woodcutting villages that bordered the Sardenne. He knew these people, had spent time with their kind, and they were hard-working, rugged individuals. But now, from their empty eyes, to their emotionless expressions and the way they moved as one, they may as well have been the walking corpses he had first taken them for.

  They began to move towards himself and Fitch. Each shambling figure brandished an axe, cleaver or scythe.

  “What the hells?” Slowhand breathed.

  The archer raised Suresight and unleashed an arrow which thudded into the chest of a man at their front. He faltered slightly but continued walking. He hadn’t made a sound. Slowhand swallowed and unleashed another into a different target, with the same effect. As the group continued to advance towards them, he backed Fitch along the tunnel and loosed Suresight again and again, into hearts, necks, right between the eyes. The shambling group just kept coming.

  “That will do little good, archer,” Fitch said. “As you’ve seen for yourself, these things are no longer normal flesh and blood.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They have become puppets. As such, even an arrow into the brain will barely slow them.”

  “Whose puppets? No, forget it. You wanna tell me what can stop them?”

  “I can,” Fitch said after a second.

  Slowhand shot him a look. The psychic manipulator was displaying his bandaged hands, clearly seeking permission to use his powers without penalty.

  “Magic is the only thing that can stop them,” Fitch insisted.

  “Do it.” Slowhand said.

  Fitch raised his arms towards the group, his temples pulsing. But moments passed and there was no sign of lightning bolts or fireballs or any offensive magic at all. Not a fizzle.

  “Fitch,” Slowhand said, “this is no time for projectile dysfunction.”

  “I – I don’t understand,” Fitch said.

  “What’s to understand?” Slowhand countered. “This, Fitch, is the day the magic died.”

  The stick insect gave him a horrified glance. “What do we do?”

  Slowhand glanced towards the approaching figures. The walking pace which they had so far adopted was turning into more of a trot.

  “Run maybe?”

  “For once, archer, we are in agreement.”

  The two of them began to pound back alon
g the tunnel, but at the same time the pace of their pursuers increased even more, until it was almost a charge. The eerie thing was that, other than for the sound of their footfalls, they proceeded in absolute silence. There was no need for them to utter a battle cry to chill the blood because the thud, thud, thud of their relentless and accelerating progress was chilling enough. Within seconds, Slowhand and Fitch were near to being overwhelmed, and the archer pushed the manipulator to the side of the tunnel, deciding the only thing to do was to make a last stand.

  He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or offended by the fact that, other than an instinctive swing of weapons from those on the group’s edge, their supposed attackers passed them by. It made him sure of something else though. These things weren’t interested in the two of them, they were merely in the way. The horde’s purpose was to reach the cathedral.

  “We have to warn them,” Slowhand said, and pushed Fitch on.

  Paralleling the horde’s advance now, he could see the light of the warehouse sublevel and, silhouetted before it, the wagons Fitch had dodged between on his way in. There were now also a number of workers who, guided by some Eminence, were delicately loading boxes onto them, oblivious to the deadly wave heading towards their way.

  Slowhand had no love for anyone of the Faith but they were people. “Get out of there!” He shouted. “Get out of there now!”

  The workers looked toward the sound of his cry, and tools were instantly dropped. They stared in incomprehension, something for which Slowhand could hardly blame them, but that reaction and their position – right in the path of the horde – cost them their lives. The horde met them and they were reduced to a pile of twitching, dismembered body parts by axe and cleaver and scythe.