by David Benem
“We do this,” Karnag growled.
He returned his attention to the firelight, studying the Lector and his party. The Lector seemed frail and unacquainted with the demands of travel. The man shivered in spite of the spring night’s warmth and the heat of his fire. His robes were frayed and he bore bruises hinting at a spill from horseback. He sat with his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth moved in a murmur of prayer.
Beside him squatted a manservant, head cocked in constant regard of the Lector. Behind them were several dark-robed men with the reverent bearing of clerics, likely acolytes of the Ancient Sanctum. They seemed contemplative sorts, speaking infrequently as they read in the firelight or gazed at the night sky. They would prove no trouble in combat.
Five loudmouthed louts wore coin purses and rusty weapons on their belts. Karnag reckoned they were hired strongmen. They were big men, but unscarred and fat-handed. Tavern brawlers, enough to scare off brigands but little match for trained killers. Karnag thought it odd the Lector of the Sanctum would not travel with royal soldiers, but he wasted no thought on politics.
Finally, there was a square-jawed man far from the fire, a green cloak pulled tightly about him. He did not laugh at the men’s jokes nor did he partake of the wine offered to him. Karnag detected the outline of a weapon beneath the cloak, and reckoned the man knew how to use it.
“Paddyn,” he whispered, “if things go amiss, I want an arrow through that man’s heart.”
The young archer nodded firmly, making a decent show of steady nerves.
Karnag turned his eyes back to the camp. He fingered the hilts of his blades, each one in turn. His moment was coming.
Soon.
It was not long before the Lector retired to his tent. Shortly after, a rhythmic snoring sounded. The manservant slept on a bedroll adjacent to the tent, the clerics in their own tents, and the strongmen passed out around the fire. The cloaked man did not move.
“Is he standing watch?” Drenj whispered.
Karnag found a stone and flung it to the far side of the camp, producing a minor racket. The cloaked man’s hand moved to his weapon and he turned his head. “He’ll have to sleep at some point,” Karnag said. “We’ll wait.”
Two hours passed. The campfire dimmed to a smolder. At last the cloaked man stood, but only to retrieve an armful of firewood from the clearing’s far edge.
“When will he sleep?” Drenj said. “Should we rush him?”
Karnag shook his head. The thought had occurred to him, but the confusion certain to result was not likely to produce good results. Chaos, by definition, was the bearer of the unexpected, and any good killing required a plan.
More time passed. Karnag was reluctant to have his company position themselves, worried the cloaked man would detect their movements. Instead, they waited as the sliver of the moon crept across the sky.
Finally, the cloaked man arose again and strode toward the sleeping strongmen. He prodded one awake, and the big dullard grumbled as he staggered upright. The oaf grabbed a half-emptied bottle and plopped upon a fallen tree. The cloaked man disappeared in the darkness on the far side of the encampment. Karnag didn’t like that he couldn’t see the man, but then murder was rarely an easy thing.
Within minutes the strongman was swaying in his seat. Karnag motioned for Paddyn to move along the edge of the encampment to find a clear shot at the cloaked man. He gestured to Fencress to position herself at the opposite side of the camp. Drenj, however, was succumbing to sleep. “Stay here,” Karnag said, figuring the Khaldisian was better asleep than half awake.
Karnag focused on the fire’s dance. His heart slowed and his body stilled. His mind drifted, and he recalled the day in his youth when he was forced to flee his northern highlands. His father had dishonored their clan in battle. “Coward,” the chieftain had proclaimed, spitting on the funeral pyre as the body burned. His mother and sisters were raped and slaughtered, as was custom, and he and his brothers were cast from the highlands.
Karnag had defined himself that day. He would never suffer the same fate. He would become the deadliest slayer the world had ever known, and one day he would return for the chieftain’s head.
Such thoughts calmed him.
He arose, ready. He counted his blades and refastened the straps of his jerkin and scabbards. He then set out, creeping around the encampment’s perimeter and staying just beyond the yellow fingers of firelight.
He caught the eyes of Paddyn and Fencress in the gloom and nodded to them both. The three of them had worked together on many occasions and knew their business.
Karnag crept low to the ground, timing his footfalls with the rhythmic snores of the Lector. No one stirred. The camp was serene, the only movement that of the teetering guardsman on the fallen tree. Karnag noticed the lout still caressed a wine bottle in slackening hands. He knew he could not tarry, suspecting it was only a matter of moments before the bottle dropped and clattered on the ground.
At last he reached the rear of the Lector’s tent. It was closed and tied down, presenting a triangular wall of linen. He withdrew the hunting knife from his boot and poked a hole at the level of his knee. He then worked the opening with his fingers, again timing the fabric’s rip with the man’s snoring. In time he’d formed an entrance.
He sank to the ground and pulled his torso into the shadows of the tent. There was the bald head of the Lector, the man on his back and snoring deeply. Karnag would sever the jugular and carve out most of the man’s throat. It would prevent the Lector from calling out, but the body would convulse and blood would spray. There was a reasonable chance the nearby manservant would be awakened by the struggle, so he would need to be killed as well.
Karnag grabbed the Lector’s dry scalp and held the head in place. The man slept soundly. He readied his blade and guided it to a point above the Lector’s throat.
Just then there was a clamor. The strongman had dropped the bottle. A low groan followed as the lout oriented himself. “What?” A pause, then the sound of the oaf shuffling upright. Clumsy at first, but then the sound of urgency. “Who goes there?”
Someone had made a mistake. Karnag shook his head and plunged his blade deep into the Lector’s gullet. He shoved the knife all the way through the spine, then pulled it across the width of the man’s neck for good measure. The man jerked and quivered, and warm blood gushed from the wound. It was messier than Karnag would have liked, but there was no longer time to be neat.
Suddenly there came a rumble like the sound of a thunderhead, then a swift string of words. “Necrista traellus a abridalusi Yrghul y ogo alliata,” hissed a strange voice. “Illienne cradus e Warduren renden e sallem orn argo apocha.”
Karnag blinked. The words had come from the Lector’s lifeless form. And the man’s lips had not moved.
Were these words spoken aloud, or whispered only in my head? How?
The manservant stirred. “Sleep…” the manservant grumbled. “Go back to sleep…”
“Wake up, boys!” came the bellow of the strongman. “It seems we’ve caught ourselves a bandit!”
Chaos. Precisely the thing Karnag always prepared against. He pressed the strange words from his mind and withdrew from the Lector’s tent, into the dark.
A glance at the encampment revealed what had transpired. Drenj stood frozen in the firelight, arms laden with purses he’d swiped from the sleeping strongmen, and the strongmen were awake and encircling the Khaldisian. Karnag noticed Drenj’s breeches were discolored. He’d pissed himself. Karnag cursed under his breath. The greedy lad must have figured he’d steal a few coins and run off, leaving Karnag and the rest to deal with the consequences.
In an instant Fencress was within the camp, darting amidst the strongmen like a flickering shadow with her twin blades drawn. There was the sound of steel on steel and the thrumming of Paddyn’s bow. Then the manservant began screaming and there was commotion from where the clerics slept.
“Ah, hell,” Karnag said, jerking his short sword fr
ee of its scabbard.
He moved toward the encampment but then glimpsed a swift movement to his right. He spun about to see the cloaked man facing him in a wide stance, blade poised overhead. A genuine swordsman, Karnag thought, a wicked smile crossing his face.
In the twenty-odd years since he’d left the highlands of his youth, Karnag had learned from many teachers. A Harkane blademaster, a guild assassin, a Scarlet Sword of Rune. None had taught him anything more valuable than his time as a slave forced to fight by his merchant master in the slums of Riverweave. The fight wasn’t always won by the strongest or the quickest. Rather, the advantage was held by the first recognize the stakes. The first to know—to truly understand—the contest was to the death. To life’s utter end, with no second chances.
Karnag roared as he charged, not a battle cry of the highlands but something more feral. The cloaked man shifted into a defensive posture, trying to protect life rather than take it.
At that moment Karnag knew the fight was won.
The cloaked man steadied his blade crossways before him, readying to parry a strike. Karnag obliged, swinging his short sword in a tight arc. With a clang he pinned the man’s blade low. The man tried to slide free to his right, the side of his sword hand, just as Karnag expected. Karnag pulled loose a dagger with his free hand and punched it toward the man’s gut as he tried to shift away.
Impossibly, the man forced aside the blow with the hilt of his blade, which now glowed with a faint greenish hue. The man jumped into the camp’s clearing and moved his blade slowly before him. Fencress, Drenj and the two remaining strongmen struggled behind him, but the man’s attention remained solely upon Karnag.
“You fool!” the man wailed. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Karnag’s eyes darkened. He dropped his sword and his hands sought the long hilt of his two-handed blade, Gravemaker. This was a killing he would relish.
The man traced a circle with his steel. “So the enemy resorts to hiring common killers now? No matter. The Sentinels will receive the Lector’s summons, and you and your vile ilk will not stop the vigilant.”
The man screamed and rushed at Karnag, forcing him backward with a barrage of strikes with his blade. Karnag deflected the blows with swift movements of his sword, waiting to sense either a rhythm or the man’s fatigue. His moment would come.
Karnag shoved the man forward with his weapon, trying to force him off balance. The man stumbled for an instant and Karnag thrust his sword at the man’s chest. Again, though, the man moved with inhuman quickness, a green blur against the backdrop of the campfire. He recovered just in time to fend away the strike.
The man pressed again, redoubling his attack. He was strong and quick and Karnag’s sinews burned. Karnag retreated a stride, toward the trees. A thought occurred to him just then, and he foresaw the fight’s conclusion. He took another stride backward, placing himself just beside a stout tree.
The man struck with overhead sweeps of his weapon, shouting words without meaning. And then it happened, just as Karnag had anticipated. In his fury the man struck wide, his sword biting into the trunk of the tree.
Karnag grinned as the man wrestled with his weapon. He tightened his hands about the hilt and then swung Gravemaker in a deadly arc overhead. He caught the man’s hip, the sword cleaving deep and severing the man’s leg. The man cried out and collapsed at Karnag’s feet. Karnag leered over him, watching as dark blood pooled on the ground.
The man choked as he fumbled with his mortal wound. He looked at Karnag with sad eyes. “Why?” He choked again, his face twisted with pain. He groped for his missing leg and his voice was measured as he settled into shock. “The Sentinels… They must be summoned…”
Karnag spat and looked at the man grimly. “Not by you, it seems.”
The man choked back a sob. “Why do you do this? For the High King? For the Necrists?”
“No, lad. For a few hundred coins.”
The man shuddered and sobbed. Karnag took a tall step over him and strode into the light of the campfire, Gravemaker before him.
There were a few who yet stood.
4
THE ABSURDITY OF HAVING HOPED
ZANDRACHUS BALE HUNCHED over a candlelit desk in the darkest corner of the Abbey’s library, lost in thought. What had been requested of him was daunting, and he felt profoundly inadequate.
I am too weak an instrument.
He pulled a long strand of graying hair from his eyes and tucked it behind his ear. He folded the scullery maid’s note into a tight, tiny triangle, as though he could make it disappear. Then he unfolded it, as though the words could change. He reckoned he’d done this a few dozen times, and the parchment frayed at the folds.
Repetition grants comfort to the troubled mind.
He rubbed away a dribble of snot from his overlarge nose and read the note again, slowly and deliberately. Not surprisingly, the message still read the same. He chuckled at the absurdity of having hoped it would be different, somehow.
“The King is being poisoned. That’s why he’s gone mad, and why he’s making no babies. He is in grave danger. Beware of the chamberlain. He speaks much with a man whose face is made of stitches.”
He thought for a long moment on that last sentence. He’d studied in the library’s darkest depths, and had read accounts of an ancient sect of necromancers loyal to Yrghul the Lord of Nightmares. Necrists, whose faces were said to be stitched together from the flesh of their sacrifices.
Could she have been referring to a Necrist?
Nonsense, he thought. The Sanctum’s scholars held that the Necrists had been defeated long ago. They were now widely regarded to be as much myth as anything else, and the thought of one communing with Rune’s chamberlain inside the very walls of Ironmoor was ridiculous.
The woman’s likely cracked in the head.
Nevertheless, Bale admired the scullery maid’s pluck. She’d risked her life in delivering the note, and under the very nose of Chamberlain Alamis! Bale knew he could never have been so courageous. He held a deep dislike for the chamberlain—he disliked most if not all people—but to act so directly against the man required something wholly more, something he simply lacked.
Bale reckoned the woman’s courage deserved to be rewarded, somehow, and he thought of taking the note to his superiors. But then he thought of Prefect Kreer laughing nasally in his face, and knew he’d be best served to gather more compelling evidence before taking things further.
But must I do that? To protect the High King?
The Faith instructed that the line of the High King of Rune was sacred and the Sanctum was bound to protect it. Bale was a skeptic when it came to most things. He would never place his trust in people, and he knew people—people in power most of all—were given to twisting the truth to serve their own ends.
He did, however, believe in such things as goodness and righteousness. He knew implicitly there were truths greater than the truths of men, and it was only in the pursuit of such truths that the betterment of men could be found.
He believed also in Illienne the Light Eternal, or at least in the idea of her. He believed in the notion of eternal goodness, and believed there was something of her that survived her descent into oblivion a millennium before. Not necessarily a power or an influence, but an ideal that inspired the hearts of men in their darkest hours. Not many folk believed such notions, but Bale knew them to be true.
The Faith held that Illienne blessed the first High King of Rune, Deranthol, and the Kingdom’s seven greatest heroes—known now as the Sentinels—with measures of her divinity. It was through this blessing the dark god Yrghul, Lord of Nightmares, was deceived and drawn into oblivion with Illienne. Doctrine taught that the Godswell, a place deep within the Bastion, was the site of that descent, and that the High Kings were blessed with the unique power to touch that place, to guard over it. The High Kings were blessed to rule by Illienne herself, and the Sanctum was bound to serve the royal line as a resu
lt.
Bale questioned many precepts of the Faith, and this was one. He reckoned he’d spent years digging about the library, satisfying one curiosity or another. He’d read countless histories, certainly enough to know that many of the men who’d sat upon Rune’s throne were despicable creatures, utterly lacking any touch of goodness, much less godliness. Some old scrolls told that High King Derthane cast his second-born son from the Tower of Lords when the boy proved too sickly for his liking. A few ancient scholars mentioned that High King Derreft shared a bed with his own mother until she’d died at the ripe old age of sixty-seven, then for six weeks after that. A largely redacted document from the Magistrate Examiner mentioned that High King Derashtor was suspected in the murders of dozens of prostitutes.
These are the men I should be compelled to protect?
The accepted histories held that the Seven Sentinels lusted for power and tried to usurp High King Derganfel the Purer, many hundreds of years ago. But Bale had read older, more credible accounts holding that it was the High King who grew mad with jealousy, and thus decided to banish the Sentinels rather than share his power. Bale tended to believe the latter.
As he contemplated these things, Bale wondered whether Rune truly would suffer if the High King died without an heir. He wondered whether the alternatives to the High King’s line would prove any more depraved, any more bereft of righteousness. The chamberlain had a slippery feel to him, certainly, but would Rune truly be condemned with his rump polishing the throne?
Bale read the note once more. He examined the clumsy, almost childlike script of the scullery maid. Though she’d seemed an earnest sort, Bale reminded himself she was likely a simpleton whose position granted her only a sliver of understanding when it came to the goings-on within Bastion’s walls. A word misheard or a statement taken out of context would certainly cause all sorts of unfounded speculation.
