Bane and Shadow

by Jon Skovron

  A biomancer inspected the foremost row carefully. Beside him stood a man in the ragged brown robes that Hope knew were worn by the Jackal Lords. The hood was thrown back, so she could see that he had chin-length blond hair and skin as pale as hers.

  It wasn’t that she’d disbelieved what Brigga Lin said. But to actually see someone who could have easily come from her home village, and watch him coldly examine one of the rigid, naked girls, brought a welter of questions and fears into her mind. Perhaps Brigga Lin was right, that Hurlo had been trying to shield her from the truth. But now it made her question her entire heritage. Had her parents known about the Jackal Lords? Had there even been one among the people of her village? She didn’t remember seeing anyone in a brown robe when she was a girl, but her memory of those early years was patchy at best. What if her people hadn’t simply settled in that inhospitable land out of a desire to find peace and simplicity? What if, centuries ago, they had been exiled there? Maybe when Northerners spoke of the savagery of the Southern Isles, this is what they’d meant.

  The necromancer turned to one of the biomancers. His voice was a whisper, yet somehow it carried through the tent, like an invisible but inescapable stench.

  “That’s the last of the raw material we had on hand. When does this month’s shipment arrive?”

  “Any day now,” said the biomancer.

  Hope suspected that the “shipment” they were referring to was the group of girls she had just rescued. She allowed herself a grim smile that they would be disappointed when it didn’t arrive.

  “I hope your people are more careful about keeping them alive than they were with the last shipment,” said the necromancer. “There are several days of predeath steps to the process that are required if you want them controllable.”

  “We must have complete dominance over them. Any who die during transit should simply be discarded.”

  “Waste of material,” said the necromancer.

  “Gathering the subjects is none of your concern,” the biomancer said tersely. “You will be furnished with as many as you need.”

  The necromancer gazed at him with his pale eyes. “And how many is that, exactly? You still haven’t told me.”

  “Until the council tells us to stop.”

  The necromancer shrugged. “I suppose that guarantees my continued usefulness for the foreseeable future.” He went back to inspecting the stacks of corpses.

  Nettles whispered in Hope’s ear, “Am I right in thinking they’re making a pissing army of the dead?”

  “It ends now.” Hope’s hand shook as she pinched the slit in the tent shut and turned to Nettles and Brigga Lin. “There are only ten biomancers and one Jackal Lord. We can take them.”

  “What if they can wake that army whenever they want?” asked Brigga Lin. “Clearly, the ones lying down are still being prepared. But the much larger group on their feet look as though they are merely waiting for the command to move. If we charge in there, we may find ourselves facing that army of the dead all on our own.”

  Hope stared at her for a moment, then looked back through the slit in the tent at the rows of girls. How many more islands like High Guster?

  “Hope…” Nettles’s voice was uncharacteristically soft. “You know we’re wags and I trust you with my life. And seeing those poor dead girls, all naked and stacked up like wooden soldiers, makes me sick. But I don’t think even you two can handle this on your own.”

  “I’m not sure what effect my biomancery would even have on the dead,” admitted Brigga Lin. “One reason biomancers have always distrusted necromancers in the past is because we have no power over their creatures.”

  Hope closed her eyes. For as long as she could remember, the image of her dead village in that tent had haunted her. She had not realized it before, but she had drawn strength from that image. It was the source of that darkness that had driven her onward for the last ten years.

  But now when she closed her eyes, she saw this tent instead. She saw row upon row of dead girls treated like objects. And looming over it all was someone who might well have been a neighbor. She found she could draw no strength from that. Only grief.

  “Okay,” she said at last, her voice sounding strained in her own ears. “We’ll go back to the ship and talk to the rest of the crew. Maybe together we can come up with a better plan.”

  Brigga Lin and Nettles looked at each other.

  “Hope…,” said Brigga Lin. “When I said ‘your people,’ I didn’t mean—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Hope. “Let’s go.”

  When they returned to the Kraken Hunter in the predawn light, the rest of the crew was waiting for them.

  “Didn’t any of you sleep through the night?” asked Hope as they climbed aboard.

  “Piss on that,” said Sadie, her eyes eager. “Judging by your grave looks, you’ve got things to say.”

  Hope took a slow breath. “It appears that the biomancers have enlisted the aid of a Jackal Lord to raise an army of the dead.”

  “Little girls,” said Nettles flatly. “Made into little monsters.”

  Alash’s eyes widened. “That’s what the girls on that cargo ship were meant to be?”

  “Aye,” said Hope. “Obviously that wasn’t the first ship. And from what we overheard, monthly shipments are coming in with no end in sight from all over the empire.”

  “What could they want with such a thing?” asked Finn.

  “There is only one reason they would be driven to such desperate methods,” said Brigga Lin. “They must believe an invasion from Aukbontar is imminent.”

  “How would Aukbontar invade from across the Dark Sea?” asked Jilly. “And why?”

  Brigga Lin shrugged. “I don’t know. But the Dark Mage predicted it would happen.”

  “Didn’t the Dark Mage die centuries ago?” asked Alash.

  “Old men cling to their prophecies,” said Brigga Lin. “I used to believe it, too.”

  “And now?” asked Hope.

  “To massacre thousands of the empire’s children in order to protect that empire is utter madness,” Brigga Lin said calmly.

  “Maybe you’re coming around to my way of seeing things.” Nettles turned to Hope. “So what are we going to do about it?”

  “What can we do?” Hope asked. “Even mortars would be out of range of the main tent, so we can’t simply raze the island. And we don’t have enough people for a frontal assault. What’s worse, we’ve already lost the element of surprise. If they don’t already know we were there, they soon will.”

  “Don’t blame yourself for putting that one out of its misery,” said Nettles. “I’d been just about to do the same thing myself.”

  “Hope has a point, though,” said Brigga Lin. “Once they realize they’ve been discovered, they’ll bring down imperial frigates from Vance Post. They’ll probably fortify the shores as well. It won’t be easy to get even this close again.”

  “So, what’re we going to do?” asked Jilly, her eyes showing both eagerness and dread.

  They all looked expectantly at Hope, but she had nothing to offer them except the sickness and grief in her heart.

  “You know, I been thinking lately,” said Nettles finally. “Seems like we keep taking imp ships, and it don’t make much difference.”

  “These things take time,” Alash said quickly.

  “But I don’t think it needs to,” said Nettles. “See, that’s where the original Dire Bane went wrong. He always wanted to go it alone. But he didn’t have to. And we don’t either.”

  Sadie’s eyes narrowed. “I think I see where you’re going with this.” She turned to Hope. “If we had more ships and people, could we take the island?”

  “Probably,” said Hope. “But where would we get them?”

  “Paradise Circle, of course,” said Nettles. “Biggest shipyard outside of Stonepeak.”

  “We were able to recruit people to defend their own neighborhood,” said Hope. “You think those people will fo
llow us halfway across the empire?”

  “Once I explain how they don’t want an army of dead girls showing up at their doorstep.”

  “We don’t even know who’s controlling the neighborhood now,” said Hope.

  Nettles shrugged. “Whoever they are, I’m sure they’ll be willing to negotiate with enough coin. We got all that money we been taking from the imp ships. We hardly use any of it.”

  “It makes a certain amount of sense,” said Sadie.

  “You agree with this, then?” asked Hope.

  “Seems to me,” said Sadie, “that this is a perfect opportunity.”

  “For what?” asked Hope.

  Sadie turned to Brigga Lin. “Them biomancers got a lot riding on this project, right?”

  “To fall in with a necromancer? I should say so.”

  “So if we take this down, not only do we stop them from killing a bunch of girls, but we kick them biomancers right in the balls so’s they feel it. Maybe then they’ll finally be ready to talk about freeing Red. This could be the chance we’ve been waiting for.”

  “But even assuming we could get enough people here,” said Hope, “should we? Is it right for us to put them in this much danger?”

  “Look,” said Nettles. “You promised me a year ago that you were taking up the name of Dire Bane, champion of the people?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “Then you better start putting some faith in the people. It’s a pissing insult to treat them all like a load of frightened babies. They face danger every day in Paradise Circle, and for a lot less than we’re offering. This is their empire, too, and if you ask me, it’s about pissing time they stepped up and did their part.”

  “A whole armada under the flag of Dire Bane…,” Finn said quietly.

  Sadie laughed delightedly. “It would scare them biomancers right out of their robes!”

  “It’s about time they were the scared ones for once,” Jilly said.

  Hope had never felt such doubt before. They were all looking at her with such enthusiasm now. And what they said made sense. But she was reluctant to spearhead such a massive undertaking, even if it was for a good cause.

  She turned to Filler. “What do you think?”

  “Is it so different from what we did to Drem?” he asked. “Bigger scale, maybe. But we inspired people to be more than they usually were. And they did it. They stood up for what was right and they won. What if we could do the same thing, but for the whole empire?”

  “But do we have the right?” Hope asked.

  “Are you seeking permission?” Brigga Lin said, her expression scathing. Perhaps even disappointed. “Why do I suddenly feel like we’re back at that tavern in Stonepeak? Remember when you tried to tell me it was our fault for being women who wanted to do more within a patriarchal society? When you said we were the ones to blame for stepping outside an oppressive system?”

  “It’s not the same thing,” objected Hope.

  “Isn’t it? You think it’s a coincidence they’re using girls for this experiment? They’ve been taking the boys into conscript to fill out their ranks for the war they believe is coming against Aukbontar. But not the girls, because girls don’t belong in ships or in regular armies. Apparently they think the only way girls can serve any useful function in war is if they’re turned into mindless, murdering corpses. So you tell me if it’s the same thing.”

  Hope looked at her helplessly. Everything they said made sense. And yet something held her back.

  Alash tentatively touched Hope’s arm. “I think I understand your hesitation. Difficult though it is for me to believe, perhaps even you lose confidence in yourself in the face of a daunting task.”

  Was that it? Were her own fear and ego getting in the way? Perhaps even her shame at learning about her heritage? A leader should try to look at the larger picture. This was bigger than her, or even freeing Red. It was bigger than any one person. There was a passage in The Book of Storms that spoke of the people like drops of water. Individually, they might make little impact. But when they rose up together as a wave, nothing could stand against them. The biomancers knew this. It was why they purposefully instilled such fear. Perhaps there needed to be a symbol to combat that. Bleak Hope could never be that. But perhaps Dire Bane, champion of the people, could.

  She looked around at them all again. This family she had collected over the last year. She might doubt herself, but judging by the look in their eyes, they did not doubt her. She had asked them to trust her many times in the past. Perhaps it was time for her to trust them.

  “If we are all agreed, then that’s what we’ll do.” With each word she spoke, her voice grew stronger. More certain. “Then what we have done up till now was only to prepare us for this. If the biomancers are so eager for a war, Aukbontar may not oblige, but we will.”

  PART TWO

  For most people, the darkness descends unexpected and cruel. It is a torment they would rather be rid of. But for some of us, it is as impossible to escape the darkness as it is to escape from ourselves.

  —from the secret writings of the Dark Mage

  10

  Captain Vaderton clung to the wheel of the Guardian because there was a very real risk he might fall over if he let go. He had not slept for any substantial length of time in days. He would allow himself to doze against the wheel for short periods, but the risk of anything longer was too great. In sleep, he might miss sighting land. Or he might run aground somewhere. Or he might encounter more pirates. With a dead crew and no cannons, even a tiny sloop of the lowliest cutthroats could take his ship as a prize.

  He had chartered a course for Kelvacka, which was the island they’d disembarked from before encountering the Kraken Hunter. Kelvacka had a small but well-maintained imperial station. Better still, he knew the officers there would remember him from his recent visit, and he hoped that would give him some credibility. He would need it, if he wanted them to believe the fantastical news he had to impart.

  But they must believe him. Days earlier, he had watched the Kraken Hunter sail away, leaving him bereft of ammunition, crew, and honor. He had sworn that he would survive long enough to reach an imperial outpost and warn them of this terrible new threat to the empire. He’d been able to get the Guardian moving, although not at any great pace. It should have been only three or four days to Kelvacka, but with only a few sails set on this hulking mass of a ship, it would take a week or more. And that was if the weather and wind held. A ship like the Guardian was not meant to be sailed by one man.

  The only thing he didn’t need to worry about was supplies. There was enough food and drink to last two hundred men a month. It would go bad before he could eat it all. But that didn’t mean there was no urgency in his task. After all, he had to warn everyone about Dire Bane as soon as possible. He feared this had been merely her opening gambit in a much larger and more ferocious campaign to terrorize the seas. His superiors needed to know about her unconventional methods of attack before she took another ship as big as the Guardian. Before any more men died.

  He had debated for some time on what to do with his own crew of dead men. Naval law dictated that in times of conflict, burial at sea was acceptable. But he could not bring himself to simply throw two hundred men over the side of the ship. Besides, what if the officers at Kelvacka wanted proof of what had happened? If they didn’t believe that Dire Bane had a woman capable of biomancery among her crew, the grotesque corpses she had left behind would quell their doubts. So he had dragged all those on deck down to join their fellows on the gun deck to await inspection and proper burial. Unfortunately, the smell permeated everything below, including the captain’s cabin. He had to remain topside at all times. And even then, as he stood hour after hour, day after day at the wheel, he thought he caught the stench of death seeping up through the deck now and then. But perhaps that was his imagination.

  Once the decks were clear, there was little else to do but keep the ship pointed in the correct direction for as long as
it took. All he had to do was stay awake and stay sane.

  The second task was at times even more challenging than the first. He’d seen prisoners interrogated with any number of methods, including sleep deprival, so he knew what lack of sleep could do to a man. But foreknowledge didn’t make it any easier. There would be moments he would find himself disoriented, unable to remember where he was and what he was trying to do. Eventually, in one of his more lucid moments, he found a small bucket of tar and painted the direction and purpose on the deck next to him:

  Head 38° north-northeast to Kelvacka to warn them about Dire Bane!

  As the days and nights bled into one another, that black scrawl at his feet became a lifeline. He read it aloud frequently. In general, he found talking out loud a great comfort. He decided to rehearse what he would say to the officers on Kelvacka. After all, he would need to be careful he didn’t come across as a lunatic. Even if they recalled the calm sobriety with which he had conducted himself during his last inspection, the things he needed to tell them—about decoy phantoms and invisible ships, about sword-handed Vinchen warrior women and lady biomancers who could cast from afar… if he did not deliver this information with a calm equanimity, they might think he had gone mad. They might even accuse him of murdering his own crew, as preposterous as that seemed. He had to convince them of the urgency of his news without resorting to hysterics. Captain Vaderton had never been hysterical in his life. But he had never been given to sudden fits of laughter either, and he’d caught himself doing that several times now. It was oddly like a sneezing fit. Something he seemed unable to predict or control. He needed to be more vigilant against such outbursts.

  Day after day, he held it in and stayed the course and reminded himself why he must. Then, finally, on a pleasant, sunny afternoon, he spotted land.

  “Land ho!” he cried. To celebrate, he allowed himself the hysterical laughter he had been holding back for a while. But the trouble was, once he started, he couldn’t stop. It felt like a geyser bubbling up from deep within. He laughed so hard, his insides ached. He laughed so long that rather than find a dock, he simply ran the ship aground on an empty stretch of beach about as far from the imperial station as one could get. It wasn’t until he heard the thunderous crack of timbers in the hull of his great warship that his laughter subsided.