by Cam Banks
“I thought it was because you were cursed by the Smith God to be obsessed with everything from water-wheels to tinderboxes,” Vanderjack said.
“While it is true that many of my kinsgnomes are considerably more attuned to the scientific qualities and properties of the world, I would not call it a curse,” Theodenes replied. “Theological experts within Mount Nevermind have attributed this belief to ignorance on the part of the other peoples. That, or pathological envy.”
“Right,” said Vanderjack, grinning. “We’re all jealous of you.”
“As you should be,” said Theodenes, ignoring the sarcasm in Vanderjack’s voice.
“All right,” Gredchen said, lifting a hand. “I think we’re closing in on where the castle’s located. It’s in the foothills of the Emerald Peaks and rests upon a solid base of bedrock. Baron Glayward’s family chose it hundreds of years ago for its defensive advantages.”
“I do not wish to interrupt your fascinating conversation,” said Star, his voice loud and resonant. “But we are about to be engaged by the enemy.”
The sellsword, the baron’s aide, and the gnome all looked around, shielding their eyes from the afternoon sun and scanning the horizon to catch sight of what the dragonne was warning them about. Vanderjack was the first to spot them, flying low over the trees to the southeast, in the general direction of where Gredchen said Castle Glayward was.
“Draconians!” he called out, pointing at them. “Sivaks, by the size of them. Ackal’s Teeth, that’s all we need.”
“The highmaster is said to have a small cadre of sivaks as part of a gift from the emperor,” said Gredchen. “Red Watch sivaks, hailing from the City of Darkness itself.”
“Red Watch?” Vanderjack asked.
“Red Watch!” repeated Theodenes.
Vanderjack thought back to his dream and to his recollection of the shapeshifting draconians who had replaced his war band back in Southern Ergoth. They, too, bore red dragonarmy insignia. Theo must have known that the Red Watch sivaks were the emperor’s elite, but he probably didn’t know they were responsible for the death of his beloved saber-toothed tiger kitten. It might not be the time to impart that information. On the other hand …
“Theo,” Vanderjack shouted, drawing his sword in a swift motion and readying it for when the sivaks came close enough. “There’s something I needed to tell you.”
“I cannot possibly imagine what that would be,” Theodenes replied, gripping his polearm tightly, his thumb pressing a button that added a foot of razor sharp steel to the end of the weapon. “We are about to engage in battle with draconians, so idle conversation is most likely nonefficacious.”
“Forget that,” Vanderjack said as the Sword Chorus manifested around him. They had a marvelous ability to keep up with the swift speed of the dragonne, who had angled himself into an interception trajectory with the approaching sivaks. “I had a dream,” he shouted to Theodenes, “about the job we were on during the war. About you and Star. I think Red Watch sivaks killed my men and replaced them and then killed your cat.”
Theodenes spun about, staring straight at the sell-sword, his already-tanned face darkening. “What in the name of the Great Engine would possess you to tell me that now?” he shrieked.
Vanderjack shrugged. “I don’t know. Better now than never, right?”
The gnome turned away. “We will talk more about this,” he called back, lifting his polearm-turned-spear in readiness.
“That was hardly fair,” said the Aristocrat, finally voicing his opinion.
“A most unusual and unorthodox strategy to engender fury in the gnome against the enemy,” said the Cavalier.
“It has a good chance of backfiring,” said the Balladeer.
The Cook was close by, spectral features blurring and shifting as if his ethereal form were affected by the wind. “Vanderjack. I have a suspicion about those sivaks.”
“Perhaps you suspect that they’re going to attack us,” Vanderjack said, out of earshot of the others. “Because I think I figured that out myself.”
“I shall find out if the Cook is right,” said the Hunter peremptorily. Heedless of the altitude or gravity, the Hunter’s spirit raced away through the air, away from Star and toward the sivaks. Vanderjack watched with a frown as the ghost flew unseen around the draconians, who were less than a hundred yards from the dragonne, and a heartbeat later was back among the others in the Chorus.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” the Cook said.
“Right about what? What are you talking about?” said Vanderjack. He estimated that they had about thirty seconds before the draconians would be in striking range.
“They are the same draconians,” said the Hunter.
Vanderjack narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“Those four are the Red Watch draconians who killed your mercenary friends,” explained the Cook.
“Well, then,” said Vanderjack. “This should be entertaining on all kinds of levels.”
He was aware then of Gredchen crying out, “Here they come!” and the gnome responding with “Strike from above!” As he turned Lifecleaver around in his right hand, letting the years of martial training bound tightly within his muscle memory take control, Vanderjack also heard the mighty roar of Star. It was a paean of grief forged from the failure of the great cats of the Dragon Isles, Star’s ancestors, to defend the eggs of the metallic dragons. It was a soul-wrenching scream that immediately preceded the loud, violent collision between the sivaks and the dragonne’s passengers.
Two of the sivaks were sent reeling backward by the shock of Star’s roar. The other two, one of whom was a very large and physically impressive specimen with the markings of a draconian commander, shrugged it off and swung upward with their huge serrated great-swords. Star evaded those weapons, but in doing so had to twist sideways. Gredchen had to seize hold of Star’s fur to keep from flying off his back. Theo, who had his polearm braced for the engagement, thrust it forward and let Star’s motion and the sivak’s attack keep him in place. The spearhead caught the sivak commander’s wingman in the shoulder, right beneath the curving metal plate that protected that part of his body. Black blood splashed forth along the length of the polearm, whisked into a froth by the velocity of the combatants; Vanderjack turned his head away to avoid befouling his eyes.
“Now!” said the Cavalier.
Still looking away, Vanderjack lifted himself into a straddling position on the dragonne’s broad back and thrust his sword downward, into the space between Star’s wing and his head, right where the sivak commander had appeared. Their swords clashed together. The serrated edges of the sivak’s weapon caught Lifecleaver, the force of the collision carrying upward into Vanderjack’s arms. Lifecleaver, forged from star metal, was not so easily pinned; Lifecleaver continued through the serrations and severed them from the sivak’s blade. The triangular remnants were sent up and away, one of them catching Gredchen in the thigh. The sivak flew right over the dragonne’s neck. Just as quickly as they had come together, they were all separated again, and Star flew down and down.
“Ready for the next strike!” Vanderjack yelled. He spared a moment to look over at Theo, who still held the polearm, slick with draconian ichor. Star was unharmed. Gredchen was binding her leg with a strip of cloth.
Vanderjack’s mind was racing. If they were the same draconians who had, years earlier, brought death to his band and killed Theodenes’ feline companion, what kind of forces were at work to bring them into contact again, so far from Ergoth?
“Why now?” he found himself saying to the Sword
Chorus. “What’s going on?”
“Prepare yourself,” said the Cavalier.
“Set aside your concerns, and trust to your sword arm,” said the Philosopher.
“It does seem a little strange,” said the Cook, but the other ghosts glared at him. Vanderjack shook his head and gritted his teeth. Star had flown in an upward-curving arc, soaring around to intercept the sivaks yet again.
“Sound your roar again!” shouted Theo above the whistling gale. “It’s already taken out two of them!”
Sure enough, the two sivaks who had been sent spi-raling away from the battle by the dragonne’s roar had not yet managed to regain control of their flight. They were plummeting toward the jungle along the slopes of the Emerald Peaks. There was a good chance that when they hit the upper canopy of the rainforest, their bones would be pulverized and they would become part of the landscape.
The sivak commander and his wounded companion were not yet out of the fight, however. Star’s next roar was deafening, but they were ready for it, so when Theo, Vanderjack, Gredchen, and the dragonne charged them again, it was all they could do to avoid being struck by the sivaks’ wickedly serrated blades.
The sivak commander’s weapon caught Star across his front flank, cleaving through his brass scales and opening a horrible wound. Star screamed, jerking upward. Gredchen couldn’t hold on, and the momentum of the upward flight sent her end over end into the sky above the conflict. Theo had both hands on his polearm, striving to bury the spearhead in the same sivak as before. The draconian reached out a clawed hand and grasped the shaft of the weapon, using it as a lever to flip the gnome off the back of the dragonne and into the open void.
Vanderjack’s ghosts were calling out a number of options for him, all of them conservative. He was alone on the back of a wounded dragon-tiger, his two companions falling to their deaths. There were two sivak draconians, easily more adept in the air than he was, and likely the same draconians who had once destroyed his mercenary company in Southern Ergoth and were responsible for years of division between the sellsword and Theodenes. Vanderjack didn’t really want to hear conservative options.
As Star fought to remain upright, bleeding and beating at the air with his draconic wings, Vanderjack gripped the hilt of Lifecleaver with both hands, shouted “For Southern Ergoth, you scaly bastards!” and leaped at the sivak commander.
Somewhere between leaving Star’s back and cutting the arm off the sivak, Vanderjack’s head exploded with a thundering wave of darkness.
Highmaster Rivven Cairn watched the evening rain wash away the blood on the clay surface of Wulfgar’s Horseman’s Arena.
She and Cear had returned only a few hours earlier, southwest of Willik, which she had left to the ghouls. After reporting the passage of Gredchen and Theodenes to her Black Robe agent, the highmaster decided to return to her base of operations. Wulfgar was, for all intents and purposes, home; even Cear appreciated the place. Perhaps the dragon liked it because he’d already staked his claim with fire and claw back when Rivven had flown in with her forces, driving the famous Feathered Plumes of Wulfgar into the jungle and overwhelming the city.
Another reason she had returned was to watch the fighting in the arena. There, steel and iron were set against claw and horn as humans and other races engaged in life-and-death battle with all manner of monstrous opponents. Many of the inhuman gladiators were chained and bound, in part to prevent them from leaping into the stands and tearing the spectators to pieces, but also to limit their movement and give the slave combatants a sporting chance.
It was the day before the chariot races; Rivven enjoyed the spectacle every year. They combined all the thrill of competitive racing with the brutality of gladiator combat. Weeks of bloodthirsty conflict led up to it, with the victors earning the chance to take part in the chariot race and perhaps win their freedom.
Rivven grew up alongside gladiators. Before she became an apprentice mage, she was entertainment, a token half-breed in a pit fighter’s house in Lemish. Her owner was a thick-necked human with a wispy excuse for a beard, a man she later killed in the course of her escape. He would force her to take on one opponent after the other, sometimes in the dark of night, sometimes under the hot light of day. She learned to kill with a knife, with a sword, with her own fists. She made no friends, saw no future, until the day she understood her owner’s weakness.
Yasmut Shaad had a thing for meek and shy girls. Rivven was anything but. For twelve years, years that most humans would have grown too old for the kind of blood sport her master was making money from, her elf blood kept her body young and undeveloped. Her time in the pit hardened her, made her lean and wiry. Then she realized that her only way out would be to get close enough to Shaad to kill him. Rivven knew that she would have to feign weakness while remaining alive just long enough to use her anger.
The rain grew stronger, pounding on her helmet, collecting in bloody puddles around her boots. She was taken back to the Shaad’s pit again by the thum-thum-thum of the rain, which in her mind became the percussion of bucketfuls of water dumped on her from above. The blood at her feet was the blood of her last opponent, a pale human body on the ground before her with her knife in his chest. Her own chest heaved, lungs burning, and she looked up and saw the man she hated more than anything else.
Engorged with the food and wine that her killing had bought him, Yasmut Shaad did not spare his champion even a glance. He was fawned over by a trio of curvy girls, Lemishites with rich fathers who curried favor with Shaad and his men. Rivven’s vision was blurry, a cut across her forehead bleeding into her eyes and making her face ache, as the girls draped themselves across Shaad’s lap, fed him dates and figs and other luxuries brought in across the mountains from the east. She saw how close they were to him.
Rivven knew that later that evening Shaad would come by her cell to inspect her for injuries and remind her how easily she could be replaced if she disappointed him. As Shaad’s burly thugs dragged her out of the pit and toward that cell, she fought away the fire within her heart, forced it down into a tight knot in her stomach, allowed her body to relax and subside. By the time Shaad came by, still popping figs into his mouth but alone, she was curled up in the corner of the cell, small and white.
The slave owner was visibly astonished at first. He yelled at her to get up, which normally would have provoked an angry outburst from Rivven. He would then berate her and call her names, and that would be the end of it. But that night his yelling provoked no response. His eyebrow lifted with curiosity, and he stood there for some time, watching her.
Eventually, Shaad beckoned her over, using a softer voice, perhaps to test her reaction. She knew exactly what she needed to do; she meekly looked away then slowly crawled over to the bars. In her stomach the knot of fire grew more intense, but outwardly she was cold, shivering. Shaad’s questions and inquiries were all responded to with shrugs and shakes of her head. He grinned toothlessly, an expression that sent her mind spinning into a whorl of rage. All Shaad saw was a young girl responding to his clumsy attempts at soothing utterances with fragile acceptance.
Shaad opened the cell door and drew Rivven to him. As he sought what his base instincts demanded, Rivven saw to hers. She took the curved paring knife from his belt, the knife she’d seen him use hundreds of times to peel Haltigothian citrus fruits, and drove it into his brain.
Rivven left Yasmut Shaad twitching there in the hallway of the dungeon and ran. She didn’t stop running until she had fled Lemish, making it all the way into Estwilde. She left slavery behind, but she carried the fiery spark within her and her memory of using deception and guile to get ahead. It was that same deception and that same fire that laid the path toward her arcane studies and from there to Ariakas.
Rivven opened her eyes. She was back in Wulfgar, soaked to the bone. The arena was empty. Somebody had come and taken away all the corpses, patched up all of the living. Maybe they had seen her standing there the whole time, her helm hiding any indication that her mind had been back in Lemish. Wisely, they had left her alone.
She turned, looked up at the stands, and saw a single figure moving at a brisk pace down the central stairs to the arena floor. As he approached, she lifted her hands, palms upward, and spoke a word of magic. The arcane power rippled within her, bright and hot, and the water on her body and armor boiled away into steam. It was easy to keep dry
when you were a pyromancer.
“Hello, Aubec,” Rivven said to the man.
“My lady,” the Nordmaaran aide-de-camp said, out of breath. “A message for you.”
Rivven took the folded note from Aubec, who stood in the downpour as his mistress’s spell continued to keep the rain off her. Opening it, she looked over the contents then handed it back to him.
“We’ve got him,” she said and smiled widely behind the mask.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Vanderjack opened his eyes, seeing nothing but black.
He had a ferocious headache. He felt his neck and the back of his shaved head, felt the telltale lump, and knew that the sivak’s wingman had probably smacked him with the flat of the sword. He didn’t feel the wetness of blood, only the damp floor beneath him, which smelled like urine and rotting straw.
“Gredchen?” he said, speaking into the dark. No response. He felt around, hoping to rest his hand on something he recognized. “Theo?”
There was a moan off to his right. He couldn’t tell if it was the girl or the gnome. Then he remembered his sword.
It was gone—no scabbard, no Lifecleaver. In fact, all of his gear was stripped from him. He had the arming doublet but not Captain Annaud’s dragonarmor. He had no knife, nothing. Combined with the darkness and the horrid smell, he realized that he’d been captured and tossed in a cell.
“Gredchen? Theo?”
“Vanderjack?” came the gnome’s voice. “I might have known. Star? Star?”
“It’s good to hear your voice too, shorty,” Vanderjack said stoically. “We’re in the clink. Somehow I don’t think the big brass tiger’s with us.”
Theodenes sighed. The moan came again too, and Vanderjack knew it was Gredchen. Shifting position, he rose to kneeling, and tried to use the wall beside him to get up.
He almost collapsed from the rush of blood to his brain. “Sivaks got me in the head,” he said. “Are you all right?”
