by D. P. Prior
“Stay outside in the dark, if you like,” the Warlord said, “but I’m gasping for a cup of tea.” He passed through next, and the survivors of his group followed.
Feeling a little foolish, Nameless gritted his teeth and took a step forward. He hesitated and said, “After you, laddie.”
Shadrak sighed and shook his head. “For shog’s sake.” He swirled his cloak about him and entered the settlement on the other side of the fence of lights.
“Just being polite,” Nameless said, shutting his eyes as he stepped across the threshold. He felt the prickle of heat, and the buzzing of the staves peaked for an instant in his ears. Once inside the barrier, there was such a change of atmosphere, he breathed a sigh of relief. The air felt cooler, crisper, and there was a pervasive sense of calm.
The Warlord relayed some commands, and within moments a team arrived with a stretcher. They were dressed like the others in padded black outfits that left nothing exposed but their heads, and even they were capped with the same snub-nosed masks, ready to be pulled down in an instant.
Nameless lowered Grimwart to the stretcher, and they carried him away to one of the tents.
When Nameless started to follow, the Warlord said, “He’ll be fine. A shot of antibiotics, and adrenaline, if needed. The secret is to treat it fast, before the venom does too much harm. Thanatos is a deadly planet, a world geared up only to kill.”
“Scutting shithole, is what it is,” Shadrak said.
Kadee chastised him with a click of her tongue.
The Warlord’s attention, though, switched to the husk girl. With a series of subtle nods, he dismissed the party that had accompanied him and said, “Dwarves I’ve encountered before.” He frowned as he said it. “And you’ve told me Shadrak is your son, Kadee.”
Nameless almost corrected him and said “foster son,” but maybe Kadee didn’t refer to Shadrak that way for a reason. Maybe she wanted to increase the sense that they belonged to each other, that they were family. And who was Nameless to deny it? There was an energy between the two, a frisson that formed the missing key to the mystery of his friend’s personality. Whatever Shadrak might have grown into, from a very early age, he’d been Kadee’s son, and she’d loved him, same as Droom had loved Nameless, and Yyalla would have, too, had she’d lived past his birth. It vindicated Nameless’s defense of Shadrak, in spite of all the terrible things the assassin had done. No one else saw it—the streak of good in him—but now Nameless could see where it came from, and his sense of kinship with the midget had gone up a notch.
“But the girl,” the Warlord said, walking a tight circle around her, pausing to study the bony nubs on her back. “She is from Urddynoor?”
“The Dreaming,” Kadee said.
“Aethir,” Nameless corrected.
The Warlord shrugged. “Besides what you told me before,” he said to Kadee, “that means nothing to me. To be honest, I thought it was some sort of mumbo jumbo, like a shamanic vision, or the Classical underworld. What interests me, though, is that none of you are from the city: you lack the waxy complexion, the hollow eyes and gauntness; and you’re way too feisty to be from the villages. The only other place on Thanatos you could possibly have come from is the Forest of Lost Souls, but that is a sanctuary for the once dead.” He looked at Kadee and chewed his lip, then turned to take in Nameless, Shadrak, and the husk girl. “And you all strike me as very much alive.”
“They arrived at the portal, same as you did,” Kadee said.
“Really?” The Warlord’s eyes widened, and he slipped his hand inside the pocket of his padded jacket. It must have been an unconscious movement, as the moment he realized he was doing it, he withdrew his hand. “But you are not from Urddynoor, you say?”
“Aethir, laddie,” Nameless said. “There was another portal in the citadel of Arnoch, the ancestral home of the Dwarf Lords.”
The Warlord stiffened. “Which brings me to my next question. You are clearly different to the Dwarf Lords of the Dark Citadel, because we are still alive, still talking.”
“Which presumably has something to do with why you tried to kill us,” Nameless said.
“Kill or be killed. That’s the only law here on Thanatos. And believe me, there are none better at it than the Dwarf Lords. We are at war with them. At least, we would be, if we didn’t avoid each other like the plague. But let’s save that. Surely, you need to eat.”
“You’re not wrong there, laddie. All I’ve had is water since Arnoch. We were in such a hurry, we didn’t think to pack lunch.”
The Warlord frowned at the costrel hanging from Nameless’s belt. “You brought your own water, I hope?”
“A gift from the villagers, from a fellow named Ardo.”
“Ardo the Great? You met him?” The Warlord smiled and shook his head. “Ah, if only you’d brought him with you. We could use a man like that.”
“So he said, laddie. And he’ll come round, given time, assuming your cause is just.”
“Oh, it’s just, all right,” the Warlord said. “But before I bore you with the details, let’s eat, and you can tell me what stupidity brings you to Thanatos.”
He led them inside one of the white tents. A soft violet glow effused from tubes of crystal hanging from the frame. At the rear, a bedroll had been bundled into a corner, and there were metal boxes stacked up against the canvas walls. The Warlord opened one and took a shiny black cylinder from it. He set it on the groundsheet and screwed a wire-framed circle to its top. When he turned a knob on its side, blue fire sprang up. A few more twists, and it settled into a wavering orange flame.
The Warlord gestured for them to be seated around the fire, and then located a brass kettle, which he filled with water from a flask and placed atop the flame. As he set out tin mugs and put a gauze bag filled with brown leaves in each of them, he encouraged Nameless to tell their story.
By the time Nameless got to the bit about the five-headed dragon and the plane ship, Grimwart was ushered into the tent by a woman, who nodded to the Warlord the dwarf was going to be all right before leaving.
Nameless made room for the Kryptès, and the Warlord handed him a cup of steaming brew, which he called tea.
“Milk and sugar?” the Warlord asked.
Nameless stared long and hard at the brown liquid in his mug. “Don’t suppose you have any beer?”
“Afraid not. Maybe on my next trip home.”
Nameless took a sip and scolded his lips. “Milk then, laddie. And why not a bit of sugar? After all that fighting, I’m sure it won’t do me any harm.”
What the Warlord referred to as milk came in packets of powder, and the sugar was meted out in individually portioned sachets, which reminded Nameless of the measured loads of shot Ardo’s assistant had filled the globes of his barbell with. The parallel raised his fear of gaining weight, of losing his abs, and he held up a hand to tell the Warlord one sachet was enough.
“So, let me get this straight,” the Warlord said. “On Aethir, your people, the dwarves, are in danger of extinction due to a gigantic dragon with five heads attacking their citadel, and the only hope you have of saving them is if you can find and persuade the Dwarf Lords to return with you?”
“That’s about the long and the short of it,” Nameless said.
“But your people have had no contact with the Dwarf Lords for some time.”
“Centuries,” Grimwart said in between slurps of tea. He was still looking a bit pasty, but the black veins emanating from the welt on his neck had retreated, and the bite mark was covered by thin white strips that gave off an astringent smell.
“Centuries,” the Warlord echoed. “A lot can happen in all that time. People can change.”
“I’m aware of that,” Nameless said, “but heroes are always heroes, at the end of the day.”
Shadrak snorted at that, but when Nameless glared, he went back to concentrating on drinking his tea without burning himself.
Kadee’s tea sat untouched in front of her. She stared into the nox
ious brew as if she could see things in it. Judging by the frown etched into her face, it was nothing good.
“Biscuit, anyone?” the Warlord said, fishing about in one of his boxes and coming up with a cylindrical packet colored a glossy blue. “Or do you call them cookies?” There were words in white all about the packet’s surface, inked no doubt with some mystical pen of perfect handwriting.
Flat, overcooked cakes, barely big enough for a single mouthful, is what they looked like to Nameless, but he took one anyway and bit into it. Anything had to be better than tea.
The crunch brought with it a subtle sweetness that had him instantly salivating and grunting appreciatively.
“Even better if you dunk,” the Warlord said, dipping his biscuit in his tea and then biting into its sodden texture. He closed his eyes as he savored the taste.
Nameless did the same, then washed it down with a few rapid slurps of tea, filtering the heat out with his lips. Somehow, miraculously, the biscuit made the tea taste better. It was almost palatable.
“I’m not disputing that these Dwarf Lords of old were the heroes you claim,” the Warlord said. “But I can only go by experience. The dwarves I ran into here in their Dark Citadel were anything but heroes. Quite the opposite, I’d say. But they claimed they were Lords who’d traveled to Thanatos from a distant world when their ancestral home sunk beneath the waves. It is a tale startlingly like your own. Oh, they weren’t the original immigrants I met. They have been here for generations, so they told me.”
Shadrak set down his teacup and brushed biscuit crumbs from his stubbly beard. “Sounds to me you were quite pally. What happened?”
The Warlord chewed his lip, then his eyes suddenly flicked to the husk girl and her untouched cup of tea.
“Not drinking?”
Nameless expected her usual dumbness, but the girl looked to Kadee, as if for permission. When Kadee nodded, the girl took her cup in both hands and lowered her head to sip. When she peered above the rim, her eyes shone brilliant blue, sparkling with gratitude.
The Warlord coughed into his fist, clearly unsettled. With an effort, he drew his focus back to Shadrak.
“What happened, you ask?” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a hexagon of stone. “This happened. I’m ashamed to say, I stole it from them.”
Nameless leaned forward and reached for the stone, but the Warlord snatched it back. It was the same shape and size as the keystone to the arch beneath Arnoch, and that made it a perfect fit for the portal outside the Forest of Lost Souls.
“When I first arrived on Thanatos,” the Warlord said, “like the Dwarf Lords, I was a very different person. He cocked his head and spoke directly to Kadee. “You asked me once why I adopted the name Warlord, Kadee.” He chuckled to himself. “Before coming here, I was anything but. If Thanatos taught me anything useful, though, it is that names are vitally important.”
“Tell me about it,” Nameless said. He set his cup down. The tea had gone back to tasting worse than Ironbelly’s.
“This place is cruel, uncompromising. You either harden up, and quickly, or you die. The name is like a mask: it bestows an identity. It reminds me of what I must be to survive; if I am to help my people survive.”
“Thought you could come and go,” Shadrak said. He pointed at the hexagonal stone in the Warlord’s hand. “And I’m guessing that’s how. So, why not just shog off where you came from and not come back? Or do you like the thrill of being here? The thrill of killing just to stay alive?”
The Warlord gave an enigmatic smile and dropped his chin to his chest. There was a long pause before he answered.
“On Urddynoor, I was a scholar. It doesn’t matter what of. Most people yawn whenever I start talking about it. Suffice it to say, my studies were all-consuming, and they cost me a great deal. I didn’t realize at the time, but you never do, until it’s too late.”
Kadee reached over and rested her hand on his arm. “The Warlord was married onUrddynoor,” she said. “And he had a son and a daughter.”
The Warlord sighed, and a shudder ran beneath his padded clothing. “I didn’t come here by choice. I came here as a result of my work, of the obsessions that drove my family away, and set me on a path into mysteries that no man should live to see.”
“What mysteries?” Grimwart said. His eyes were narrowed, and his imagination was clearly fired.
It struck Nameless this was the sort of thing the Kryptès lived for these days: the hunting out of any scrap of information that might somehow further his cause. Or rather, the cause of the Council. Nameless instantly chastised himself for allowing his cynicism to start undoing his new understanding of what Grimwart was about. It was always a danger, backsliding into negativity and suspicion. All Grimwart had done, was to look out for Cordy. Just because he’d joined the Krypteia, didn’t mean he was a scut like the rest of them.
The Warlord waved off Grimwart’s question. “It doesn’t matter. What does matter, is that Thanatos changed me. In many ways, for the worse. It toughened me up, made me into the Warlord. But it also whittled away my self-absorption and made me care more about others, about the people I found here in the villages. People who are penned in between the black mountains, the Forest of Lost Souls, and the city. They are cattle, fattened for the slaughter. Just thank your lucky stars you never made it to the city.”
It was a strange irony, becoming the Warlord making him more caring of others. Still, hadn’t something similar happened to Nameless, after his name had been stripped from him? Certainly, after the black axe’s hold over him had been broken.
“I often wondered what manner of name I would choose for myself,” Nameless said. By way of explanation, he told the Warlord, “Mine was taken from me in punishment for my crimes. I’ve been called plenty of other names since, but none seemed to fit.”
“I don’t know,” Shadrak said, “Lard-arse worked for me.”
Grimwart sniggered. “We used to speculate about what your real name was, me and Kal. He reckoned it was Nigel, but I always thought it would have been something like Fart-Ripper.”
“When they tried to make me king,” Nameless said, doing his best not to laugh, “the Council wanted to call me Arios II, but I thought it was disrespectful. I mean, I met him once, when Arnoch was under the sea the first time. No more than a skeleton, he was, but still more of a dwarf than any I’ve seen before or since.”
“Yeah, well I’ve grown used to Nameless,” Shadrak said.
Actually, it was the only name the assassin had known him by, and he’d been the one to come up with it all that time ago, when they’d met at Arx Gravis.
“And I’ve grown used to Warlord,” the Warlord said, “though it will always sound melodramatic to my ears. My real name is far less striking, and it tells nothing about who I am, which is the point I was trying to make. Call yourself a warrior, and you’ll fight. Call yourself a survivor, and you might just live; but go by the name of Harry Chesterton…” He raised is eyes to the ceiling of the tent.
“But that is a name that means something to your children,” Kadee said. “To Charlie and Claire.”
The Warlord drew in a long, slow breath; let it trickle out so imperceptibly Nameless half-wondered if he was holding it in till he burst apart from the strain.
The silence that clung uncomfortably to the inside of the tent was broken by the hubbub of voices from outside. Shadows passed across the canvas, and then a large man ducked inside. More than large: a veritable giant.
“Ardo,” the Warlord said, standing to greet the strongman.
Nameless stood, too, and shook Ardo’s hand with vigor. For a moment, he thought the strongman wasn’t going to let go, but with a twinkle in his eye, he did.
Ardo was still dressed in his stage gear: sandals laced to his knees, and a loincloth. His massively muscular frame was riddled with bites and stings, laddered with scars from where thorny vegetation must have raked across it. He looked pale and haggard, and Nameless figured a les
ser man wouldn’t still be alive, given the amount of toxin probably running through his veins.
“Sit,” the Warlord commanded. “You need treatment.”
“Nonsense,” Ardo said. “I’ve built up an immunity after years of getting stung.”
“Even so,” the Warlord said. He rummaged about in his boxes and set about cleaning Ardo’s wounds, applying lotions, and jabbing him with a needle.
While the Warlord worked, Ardo spoke.
“What you did back there,” he said to Nameless first, then took in Shadrak and Grimwart, “set a fire in my belly. The Warlord has been after me to fight for ages, but seeing it done, seeing you stand up to the Pressers, while the rest of us did nothing, put me to shame. I’ve come to join you, Warlord. I only hope you’ll do me a favor in return. You see, Nameless here has twice taught me a lesson. The one I’ve already mentioned, and the other was not to cheat. That even in losing there is courage and no shame.”
“So,” the Warlord said, capping the needle and dropping it into a yellow container, “what’s this going to cost me?”
“Food, for one thing,” Ardo said. “I’m half-starved.”
“Hear, hear,” Nameless said. “I don’t want to be rude, but when you mentioned eating, I envisaged a spit-roasted hog, not a wafer-thin biscuit and a cup of tea.”
“Forgive me,” the Warlord said. “Tea’s something of a ritual, but you’re right, I promised you food.” He went back to his boxes and dug out rectangular packets, which he handed to each of them. Kadee declined, but everyone else, including the husk girl, ripped open the packets and set about the contents with a gusto.
Nameless didn’t know whether to gag or sigh with pleasure. The moist, chewy bar within was a strange combination of sweetness and salt, and it had a metallic aftertaste that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
“Good,” Ardo mumbled around a mouthful. “The real reason I came. I’ve missed these. But in all seriousness, my friend, I would ask something more of you. Lead Nameless and his companions to the Dwarf Lords, then use the keystone you showed me to get them home.”
“I had already made up my mind to help,” the Warlord said. “For Kadee. But having you here, Ardo, is a godsend.” He faced Shadrak. “When I first stumbled upon the portal on Urddynoor and came to Thanatos, I appeared in the Forest of Lost Souls, but unlike the others there, I was not dead. I did not die on Urddynoor. I merely got caught up in something I should have left well alone.”
