Devil's Gambit

by Nicholas Woode-Smith

  “Kat, snap out of it. We have to get out of here,” Treth yelled again, sounding fearful himself. He’d been anxious in the past – Treth was a nervy guy – but I’d never heard this much terror in his voice. It only drove me further into the abyss. That dark, chaotic chasm of fear and animalistic terror, where only instinct rules and one would throw themselves off a cliff to make it stop.

  The small voice in my head, not Treth’s, told me to get a grip. To realise that this terror was unfounded. That I’d just get a new sword. The man-creature had told me to go. He didn’t mean to give chase. But then why did my heart threaten to beat out of my chest and run away itself?

  “Get up, Kat,” Treth said, pleadingly.

  My eyes had already been open, but I truly opened them. I was on all fours, puking my guts out onto the bushes that I’d fallen onto. I retched, and retched, until there was nothing left.

  “Get to the station. We need to regroup.”

  Treth was remaining calm, even though I knew he was also terrified. I lifted myself up and felt the wind chill the sweat on my back.

  “Where?” I asked, meekly. Where was the cable station? I had run towards the Citadel. At least, what I thought was the Citadel. But no lights were on. My flash light, I now noticed, had been destroyed by whatever wave of force had shattered my sword. I was in the dark. Only the moonlight, the distant city lights and the still flickering pipe in the distance.

  “I…don’t know…” Treth finally answered.

  “The lights were on earlier, right?” I still had a stammer to my voice but was slowly trying to regain my composure.

  Come on, Kat. You’ve been through so much worse.

  But I wasn’t sure that I had. Not really. There was a menace around that creature that I couldn’t put my finger on but felt more intense than anything I’d ever faced before.

  “Did we go in the wrong direction?” I asked.

  “No, I don’t think so… There is the Citadel, I think. That small red light is the camera.”

  “Then the cable station should be near it. And it was lit up earlier.”

  I froze in place and felt a shiver go up my spine. The cable station’s lights were off. Which meant the security wasn’t there? Which meant I wouldn’t be able to get off the mountain.

  “Kat, calm down.”

  “I am calm!” I lied, my heart racing.

  Stuck on the mountain. In the dark. With that…thing.

  Oh, Rifts. I’d need a raise after this.

  That’s not what I cared about right now, though. All I wanted was to get as far from that creature as possible.

  I headed to the red light and found that Treth was correct. I felt for the doorbell and rang it.

  Nothing.

  I rang it again. And knocked the door with the pommel of my sword.

  Nothing.

  “Fuck…”

  I felt moisture in my eyes. I just wanted to get back to my apartment. To my bed. To Alex. To Duer. I wanted to phone Trudie and hear her voice. To talk about the albums we’d bought earlier today. Anything to distract me from what I’d experienced.

  “Follow the path, Kat. See if the station is still manned.”

  I heard the doubt in his voice. He knew what I knew. The station was abandoned. The bastard on duty had clocked out early. I’d make sure he lost his head because of it.

  The lack of reply when I banged on the door and shouted only added to my angst. I was alone. Well, we were alone. Me, Treth and the man-creature with the pipe.

  I rubbed my shoulders. My surviving sword had been sheathed a while ago. It had already been proven ineffective. That thought stung. A lot. Stung more than the chill. My jacket wasn’t enough for this night air. The cold fear and sweat made it worse.

  The Citadel wasn’t letting me in. The cable station was closed. There was a monster far surpassing my abilities on the peak with me and the night was only getting colder.

  My lip quivered in a way that shamed me, but I stopped the moisture in my eyes from collecting any further.

  I pounded on the cable station door one more time and then slumped to the floor.

  “What do I do, Treth?” I asked, a quaver to my voice. I trembled. Half from cold, half from fearful desperation.

  “Find shelter,” he said. “Get out of the wind.”

  I didn’t expect him to say it. It came out so naturally. As if Treth had been a camper in his life. He may have been, for all I knew. Treth didn’t talk about his life that much. All I knew was that he’d been a paladin in an order of undead hunters and had been killed by his own brother who had become a lich. Sounds like a lot but trust me. It wasn’t much. Treth and I were pretty private. All he knew about me was that I’d watched my parents be sacrificed for a necromantic ritual. So, not much.

  I stood up.

  “What do I look for?”

  I really didn’t know. I’m a city-dweller. The top of Table Mountain is effectively wilderness. I was out of my element.

  “Go towards the dark silhouettes. Those small hills, over there. I think I saw some small caves when we were patrolling during the day.”

  I took one step and stopped.

  “Fuck, Treth. I have a class in the morning. I should be in bed. Maybe Trudie is right. I should stop doing this. Should try to be…normal.”

  “I know, Kat,” he said, soothingly and very much out of character. “But we’re here now. Can’t change that now. We’ll see if you want to be normal when we’re warmer and safer.”

  I nodded and went forward. One step at a time.

  Eventually, I found a cave in the darkness. The small twinkle of my lighter illuminated it. It looked safe enough, and even had some dead and dry foliage inside to light, for some temporary warmth. We didn’t worry about the creature. If he wanted us dead, we’d be dead. For whatever reason, he let us live. That was somehow scarier than the necromancers and zombies who kept trying to kill me. I crawled into the opening, hit my head on the rock ceiling, recovered, and then lit the kindling. The light and warmth were a short but worthy blessing. It killed most of the chill. I curled up near the embers as it was extinguished. There were no better pieces of wood outside to make a more sustainable fire, and I didn’t want to go out again. This would need to be warm enough.

  The rock floor was sandy, and I had only my hard backpack as a pillow. I held my knees with my arms, my hands in either sleeve to keep them warm.

  Wasn’t the most pleasant experience I’ve had.

  “Worst hunt?” I asked.

  “Can’t be worse than the mimic,” Treth said.

  I snorted. I’d been swallowed by the shapeshifting beast while wearing a new dress for a date. A white dress, I might add. It was red when I was done with the creature.

  “At least we killed that monster. This thing…”

  “Hmmm…”

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  “I…don’t know.”

  “A demon, I think.”

  I felt Treth’s assent.

  “Pretty poetic. I was studying them this afternoon, realising how little I knew, and then…we face one here.”

  “Poetic indeed. As if it was foreshadowed.”

  “It looked very human.”

  I felt Treth’s agreement again, and his fear. He felt what I felt. It was that eerie humanness that made the creature so much scarier. It wasn’t merely uncanny. It didn’t look like it was imitating humanity or was even a deformed human – like a mutant or zombie. It looked exactly human. Living, breathing. If not for the horns, I would have thought I was facing a sorcerer.

  It was more than the horns, though. There was an air of intense…evil? No, not that. But it was scary. Too scary to just be a human with fake horns. It was a creature not of this world. I knew that much.

  Treth must have felt my anxiety pick up, as he spoke, in that soothing voice I was not used to from him. He was my drill instructor, my mentor, and my comrade…but he’d never really comforted me. Just shouted at me until I got back
up.

  “I haven’t been in a cave like this for…I don’t know how long.”

  “I thought you lived in a church, or some sort of castle.”

  “I did…near the end.”

  There was something I recognised. That hesitation in his voice. Not just the hesitation to tell me, I sensed, but the reluctance to recall it at all.

  I closed my eyes. To attempt to sleep, but also to show Treth that he didn’t need to open any shut doors. He could keep his secrets, like I did mine. Our demons, not like the one with his pipe, belonged behind locked doors.

  Treth sighed. Heavily, exasperated.

  “You don’t need to tell me, Treth,” I murmured, cheek pressed up against the bag.

  “I…know. But, I want to.”

  I went silent and let him speak. He was quiet too, then spoke, after what seemed an eternity.

  “My brother and I grew up poor. Street urchins. Products of a war between lords who were enemies one season and feasting buddies the next. My family had a smallholding, once, but when our father was pressed into the poor fucking infantry and my mother was raped and killed by soldiers from our side or the other, whatever that means, my brother and I fled. Orphans, for all intents and purposes. We never found out what happened to our dad, but we kinda knew. Pikemen don’t live that long. They hold the line without any armour or shield. Only a long piece of sharpened wood, meant to stop a charge of metal and hooves…”

  There was a strain in his voice that hurt me, deeply.

  “Treth…”

  He ignored me and continued.

  “We lived in caves like this for ages afterwards. We lived in different lords’ lands, never stopping for more than a day. We poached fish and animals. Lost food to rangers, bandits and bigger predators more often than not. But, we got better. We got used to it. The caves stopped being cold and dank. They became home. A different home every day, but somehow the same. It was our place to be safe. We became better at finding food. We stopped eating the berries that gave us the runs and learnt how to trap the bears that kept stealing our salmon. We even got on the good side of some rangers, who turned a blind eye to our poaching. Ages passed, and I even came to enjoy the life we had.”

  He paused, and I felt him look around this small, stony shelter. What did he see in this blackness that I did not? Was he alone, with me or with another? Would I ever know?

  “That all changed, as things often do. We were pushed out of the greens, the forests and the plains. A rot came to the land, heralding a darkness that forced us peasant and hunter-gathering folk into the cities.”

  “The undead?” I asked, hushed. Treth’s silence was confirmation enough.

  “The cities were safe from the necromancers and undead, but they weren’t safe from other things. Gangs ruled. The local lords and nobles were barely distinguishable from them. My brother…protected me.”

  I knew why Treth hesitated. His brother had become a lich, a powerful undead necromancer, and then slain him. Treth lived in permanent guilt that he had not killed his own brother. I didn’t blame him.

  Treth must have read my thoughts about his brother.

  “Alain wasn’t always the evil that sent my spirit reeling across worlds. He loved me, and I loved him. If not, then I would have been able to kill him. I would have been able to recognise his evil and put him in the dirt where he belonged…”

  “He was your brother, Treth.”

  “Yes… He was…And he had been there for me on the streets of Gazore. Those dark, stinking streets. Worse than the slums here.”

  “We’ve never been to the true slums.”

  “The border slums then, but it was an unceasing darkness for us. Food was harder to come by. Can’t just catch a rabbit. Best we could do in the city was catch rats. And that’s if we could find one that hadn’t been caught by someone else first. One night, my brother came home with meat and I almost refused to eat it. I didn’t know where or how he’d got it. But I was so hungry. I still don’t know where it was from, and I don’t want to know. What matters is that Alain kept me safe, but in his desire to keep me safe, he fell in with a bad crowd. A street gang. I joined them as well…”

  He stopped.

  “What happened next?” I pressed. He had my curiosity now, and while I know that I should not press a man talking about painful memories, I was never one for tenderness. Plus, Treth is kind of a part of me. I felt that I needed to know.

  “Alain pushed me to do worse and worse things. Theft, vandalism, murder. But, one day I tried to rob a man armoured in white and gold. He caught me and brought me to his chapel. He became my master. Sir Arden of Drambyre, Knight-Paladin of the Order of Albin. He indentured me to his service as a page, and then a squire…and then a knight. Alain disappeared, and I couldn’t find him. But, I did not want to. The Order taught me discipline, respect, and gave me a home with principles that I could be proud of. When I met Alain again, he was no longer truly alive. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and felt an overwhelming guilt that if I had tried to find him, he could have embraced the light like me…”

  There was almost a desperate sob in the last sentence. I didn’t press again. Treth was a proud man. I shouldn’t make him cry.

  Treth remained silent.

  “Thank you, Treth.”

  “For what?”

  “For telling me…this. We’ve been together for so long, but we don’t know all that much about each other. We’re closed books, you and I, but maybe it’s time we’re more open.”

  Treth nodded. “Learn from my mistakes, Kat.”

  “Mistakes?”

  “Evil isn’t always rotting. It can be something you love. Something you loved. But it is evil all the same.”

  I imagined the demon with the pipe. He had sad eyes, in an attractive face. Without the horns, he would be someone I’d find appealing.

  But he was evil. He had to be. And while I may have failed, I felt charging him was the right thing to do.

  “You have an early class tomorrow, Kat. Get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

  “Thanks, Treth…” I yawned. “Thanks…for…being there…”

  Despite the rocky floor below, darkness took me, and I drifted into the land of sleep.

  I dreamt of castles, of hunting animals and of death. A lot of death.

  Chapter 8.

  Cranky

  I awoke to a sea of green, mingling between bulwarks of solid grey rock. A thin layer of moisture adhered to it all, reflecting the morning sun. I heard running water. It had rained in the night, forming thin rivulets of moisture on smoothed rocks. I hoped that meant clean water. My throat felt like an ashtray. There was a pleasant smell, at least, as the wet soil emitted a clean aroma across the land. It leant a freshness to the air.

  “Good morning, Kat,” Treth said. He didn’t sound like he had been awake all night. To my knowledge, he never slept. He didn’t need to. He had no body to get tired.

  I let out a yawn, lifted myself up, and then swore loudly as I hit my head on the roof of my rock shelter.

  “A good shitty morning to you too, Treth,” I said, through gritted teeth. I felt a wave of amusement emanate from my incorporeal companion.

  “Nothing assailed you in your sleep. Nothing that I can detect, at least,” he said.

  “I guessed so. I’d hope you’d wake me up if something was to assail me.”

  “A little bit cranky this morning?” I imagined a juvenile grin on his face.

  “A little bit inappropriately joyful?” I retorted. He did have an irritating hint of cheer to his voice.

  “Not all memories of my life are unpleasant. This smell…it reminds me of the good times.”

  I couldn’t empathise with his nostalgic joy, as I pulled myself out from the little cave where I’d spent the night. My everything ached.

  I was alive, at least. I’d survived the night on top of a mountain with a monster I was really not sure I could slay. I still felt like shit, though.

  I retrieved m
y backpack, squashed by my head during the night. There was a flask inside. The coffee would be cold now, but cold coffee was better than no coffee. But the flask was empty.

  I raised an incredulous eyebrow.

  “Treth, did I drink any coffee while I slept?”

  He thought for a second. “No, and I can’t recall you drinking any of it last night.”

  I tipped the flask over for good measure. Nothing. Dry as the northern, ogre-infested desert. I didn’t want to think about how it had got that way. I guessed it had something to do with that demon. When he had done whatever had destroyed my sword, it might have also dissipated my beverage.

  That was last night, though. It was now today. And I was very thirsty.

  “It rained last night,” Treth said. “Must be some place where the water was caught.”

  After some searching, I found a small little rock bowl, indented into the surface of a boulder submerged into the fynbos-covered soil. A good amount of water had collected in the bowl, mingling with the dirt.

  I stuck my nose up at it. I was a city slicker, after all. Never camped. Never left the city. My idea of roughing it was staking out an abandoned building, not drinking water out of a dirty pool.

  Treth laughed. “It won’t kill you, Kat. Drink it. Better than anything out of a bottle.”

  I bent down to collect some with the cup of my flask.

  “Too much city, Kat. Drink with your hands. Feel the water. The minerals…”

  I rolled my eyes but did so. The water was refreshingly cool on my hands, lips and throat. Despite a little bit of dirt, it might as well have been the best thing I’d ever tasted. Don’t knock true thirst’s ability to make things seem nicer than they are. After I had quenched my thirst, I splashed water on my face. That woke me up and got rid of a lot of my morning crankiness. Not all of it though. I had enough to throw at the people who’d kept me on this mountain all night.

  After that, I took care of private matters and made my way towards the Citadel. It was a shimmering black behemoth as the morning damp clung to it like a thin waterfall on a rockface. Along the way to the Citadel, I was side-tracked by thin sparkles of light in the bushes.