The Best Laid Plans

by K. T. Davies

  It wasn’t pretty, more butchery than skilled blade work, but it was quick as the bear hacked him open from shoulder to balls. The bandit I was facing licked his dry lips.

  “What if I surrender?”

  I grinned.

  “You miserable, filthy by-blow,” he cursed and then lunged at me. He was sluggish and heavy on the forehand, and his eyes glistened with unshed tears. Even with the injury to his arm, he could have done better. This wasn’t an attack, it was suicide, not an uncommon reaction for a human faced with an aggressive warspawn. Most of them only saw a monster when they looked at people like me. They saw only death in tooth and claw rather than someone like them who was making it up as they went along. Do not mistake me, I wasn’t complaining, his misconceptions made my life easier. I sidestepped his leaden attack, turned my blade inside his lax guard, and opened his throat. He gasped, spraying a mist of blood into the silvered night. His gaze clouded as he got busy choking to death on his claret and staring into the yawning void of eternity.

  I turned to see the barbarian wiping his ax on his attacker’s jerkin. When he was done, he straightened, rolled his massive, fur-clad shoulders, and hammered his fist against his chest. To be polite, I did likewise.

  “Ah, no, it’s not a salute,” he said. “I was just showing you that I’m wearing a breastplate under this.”

  “I knew that.” Happily, I don’t flush when I’m embarrassed.

  As the bandits bled out, the barbarian checked his pack, tutted, muttered, and grumbled. “Timely arrival there, friend,” he said at last, although, even then it seemed like a difficult admission. “It would have been a mite harder to put them down had you not shown up when you did. The gods must be watching.” There was so much wrong with his statement all I could bring myself to do was nod. “What’s your name, friend?”

  “Amberley. Chas Amberley at your service,” I lied smoothly and inclined my head.

  “You’re thoasa?”

  I nodded. “Close enough.”

  “My name is Ulthvarr Urisson.” He grinned evidently proud of his name. “My friends call me Uli.” He spat on his hand and offered it to me. I was tempted to slot him and rob the lot of them. But it was late, and he might prove useful, so I took his hand. It felt like I’d wrapped a steak around my fist. To give him his due, he didn’t flinch away from my cold, scaly skin as most humans did, and to give me my due, I didn’t balk at grasping a handful of sputum. “Where are you heading, Uli?”

  “To Valen and then back home to Grundvelt.” I swiftly concluded that traveling with this fellow would be a sensible precaution given that the greenshanks were looking for a lone warspawn. Added to which, he was handy in a fight, if a little on the messy side. “These hills are dangerous,” he said in case I hadn’t noticed the dead bandits. “We should maybe travel together a ways. What say you, Amberley?”

  I pretended to think about it before speaking. “I’d be delighted,” I said at last.

  “Just one thing,” he added. “I have to make a slight detour, to help an old friend.”

  This was not part of my plan. “I wish you well and good luck on your quest, friend, but I must be on my way.”

  “I can pay you for the inconvenience. It’s not far.”

  Ah, the magic words. “How much?”

  The barbarian gave me a dirty look. “Time was a fellow could ask for aid and it would be given without the need to barter coin. What happened to courage and honor?”

  “They died of starvation, as will I if I don’t earn my keep. Look at me, friend-from- Grundvelt.” I spread my arms. “Do I inspire charity? Or do you perhaps think an army of adoring benefactors shower me with gold? Let me answer that for you. No, I do not, and the only things I am ever showered with is rain or the contents of a well-aimed chamber pot. If I don’t work, I don’t eat.”

  He thought about it for a while, his hooded eyes glittered beneath bristling brows, and then his mustache twitched, and he gave vent to a deep laugh. “Aye. I can see that. I have eighteen crowns. He patted his massive gut, kindly indicating where he kept his coin pouch. Will nine do you?”

  “Say ten and you have a deal.”

  He frowned, huffed and rubbed his chin, making such a show of thinking about it that I regretted not asking for more. “Very well, ten it is, but not a penny more.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, sirrah,” I said and resolved to steal the rest at the earliest opportunity.

  3

  My new friend and I stripped the brigands of their valuables. It wasn’t greed, more a tax on the stupid which amounted to the princely sum of two crowns in assorted coinage, a decent dagger, and a gold hoop earring. One of them was wearing a good pair of boots, but Uli’s feet were twice the size of the bandit’s and mine don’t conform to the shape of human feet. We dumped the bodies in the house with the collapsed roof. It was a small consideration; giving them a more dignified resting place than they deserved, but despite appearances, I’m not a monster.

  The bear lit the fire he’d set before he was attacked and made camp for the second time that eve. It was an unnecessary delay as far as I was concerned. I didn’t need much sleep, I didn’t eat often, and the concept of ‘rest’ was lost on me. Humans, however, tend to get cranky if they don’t get a few hours kip every day. While he rummaged in his pack, I sat back and enjoyed the olfactory banquet to which my companion was happily oblivious. I could taste the iron stink of congealing blood and the sickly, rancid flux that was beginning to ooze from the dead bandits. The noxious taste of recent death clung to my bifurcated tongue along with the rotten meat smell of the fungus spores blooming on the fertilizer we’d just dropped into their midst. In a few weeks’ time, fruit would set on the bodies— a gangrenous lesson in how not to run a bandit crew. It was a lesson from which the dead could learn nothing, but the wise cull who’d legged it might return and gain some insight.

  Ulthvarr tossed a piece of the broken well cover onto the fire sending a swarm of embers spinning into the sky. How he’d never set himself alight being as he was covered in wild, bushy hair and wearing furs was a minor miracle. I tasted the air again, just to make sure he really was human and not some bearish creature masquing as one. Not that I would have regarded him with less esteem if he wasn’t. I was just curious.

  “So, they got the drop on you, eh?” I said.

  He stiffened. “Not as such. The woman came in openly enough, said she was lost, smiled sweetly as they do, and then tried to cut my throat. If I hadn’t had my pack in my hands when she came at me, she might have succeeded.” He laughed, shook his head, and spoke into the flames. “I’m getting old. I should have sniffed that honeytrap a mile off.”

  “Aye. You should.” I grinned.

  “I’ve always been a fool for a pretty face. Ask Murai when we see her. She and I were mercenaries in the Ferric Cohort. We served under Imperator Septima in the Greenstahl campaign… are you listening?”

  “Yes, absolutely.” I wasn’t. I was scanning the crowding shadows in case the escaped bandit was foolish enough to return and try his luck. “That battle happened before my time.”

  “It was twenty years ago.”

  “Like I say, before my time.”

  He didn’t look like he believed me which was an irony, as for once I wasn’t lying. But even had I been alive, I wouldn’t have known what he was talking about. Coves like me didn’t care who was fighting or why. What mattered was how many whores and how much pel the weary warriors could afford and how my guild could supply them. Given that there always seemed to be a war somewhere, business was good for kings and queens of every stripe, even those who dwelt in the shadows. “What kind of trouble is your friend in? Is it money?”

  His face darkened. “I don’t know. I received a missive from here saying that she needed help. We Ferrics know the meaning of loyalty. We swore a blood oath to each other and the Empire.”

  “Twenty years ago?”

  “Aye.” He settled into a storyteller’s hunch, and I
composed an attentive face. “When the Greenstahl campaign ended, our platoon decided to stay together. We became sellswords and damn good we were.” His eyes shone, lit by the warmth of remembrance. “Many of my comrades fell. Alas, a beautiful death in battle was denied me, and I retired, alive and well. But once a Ferric, always a Ferric.” He spat in the fire, locked his raw-knuckled fingers together, and cracked them. “I became a farmer. Can you imagine that?”

  I could indeed imagine the big ox pulling a plow. “No. Not at all. Although, I’m sure such a cunning cove as your good self has mastered the intricacies of the business.”

  He sat a little taller. “I do all right, but a long, healthy life is worthless. A warrior must earn his place in the House of Eagles where the glorious dead go to roost in the Eyrie of the Gods.”

  “I long to die in my bed, preferably in my sleep, and with a bellyful of ale. I’ll concern myself with the afterlife when I’m in it.”

  He gave me a look that could have cracked stone. “Each to their own, I suppose, but it is not the way of my clan. We seek the glory of a beautiful death, fighting for a worthy cause, preferably against overwhelming odds.”

  With such a self-destructive tenet at their core, I was surprised any of his ilk had lived long enough to form a clan. He rummaged in his tattered pack, took out a sewing kit, and repeatedly failed to thread a needle. As entertaining as it was to watch his impression of a someone playing a tiny, invisible trumpet, I decided to put the myopic cove out of his misery.

  “Allow me,” I offered. “I’m good with needles.”

  “Are you a tailor?”

  “Nah. I’m just good with sharp things.”

  “Tailoring aside, your kind are good fighters, strong and fast. What happened to your tail?”

  I’d never had a tail, but I wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t tell that I was only half thoasa. Humans, in particular, didn’t seem to notice those elements of my physiognomy that coincided with their own. It was almost as though they didn’t want to think that there was anything human in a monster like me. “It got bitten off by a brachuri, made a terrible mess. Where are we headed?” I rolled the thread around the eye and poked the stiffened tip through the hole before handing it back. It’s an excellent technique if you have claws or thick fingers. I was taught the trick by an upstanding fellow who used to sew shrouds for an undertaker of Mother’s acquaintance. He sold her bodies that she sold on at a profit to anatomists and necromancers. It could not be said that I had a happy childhood, but it was certainly interesting.

  “My thanks.” He started to sew the rents in his pack, the needle little more than a gleaming splinter gripped in his meaty paw. “There’s a keep about half a day’s walk from here, I’d guess. I’ve got directions that came with the missive. It’s a bit vague, but Murai wouldn’t lead me wrong.”

  “Why send a message to you? No offense, but if she’s being held against her will that’s greenshank— I mean, imperial guard business and there are dozens of outposts closer than Grundvelt. Why waste time getting a message to you instead of them?”

  He jabbed the needle into the pack like he was trying to kill it. “The Ferric’s swore a blood oath. Honour demands that we help each other. Murai wouldn’t dream of going to the guards for help while one of us yet lived. None of us would. You wouldn’t understand. I’ll bet you’ve never stood beneath a silken banner, shoulder-to-shoulder with your comrades on the battlefield.”

  I laughed at the thought. “Sweet salvation, no.” I warmed my feet by the fire, enjoyed the tickle of heat and the hot ash between my claws.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “A beautiful death?”

  “Aye. Death and honor! Courage and Blood!” He thumped his barrel chest.

  “I’m more, ‘Life and Ale!’ ‘Hard beds and soft whores!’”

  I laughed alone.

  * * *

  Dawn came. The suns didn’t rise, glum clouds gathered like mourners at a funeral, and a thick mist rolled down from the mountains and bound the deserted town in gauzy grey.

  I hadn’t slept, I’d sat and watched shadows dance and later, as the sky lightened, iron bright dewdrops grow and spread until they’d battened the ground as thick as nails in the deck of a ship. Ulthvarr had dozed off for a couple of hours, snoring and cuddling his ax to his breast like a lover. I could have cut his throat and taken his gold, but I wasn’t a murderer as such. But I also wasn’t shackled by honor, that particular form of moral bondage being favoured by the likes of the bear who was snoring and drooling on the other side of the dead fire. I preferred to play things by ear, to weigh each situation on its own merits which seemed so much fairer. Certainly, I’d killed without compunction those culls who’d crossed Mother. I had also inhumed several counterparts in other ignoble houses of the Midnight Court of Appleton without losing sleep over the matter. But I wasn’t an executioner, or so in love with coin that I’d slay with impunity to get my hands on it, not unless there was a great deal of coin at stake and then who knows?

  I coaxed the fire back to life, found some black bread and hard tack in the poorly sewn pack, and toasted them in the lackluster flames. The smell of hot, moldy yeast, dried meat, and rancid fat worked its magic and woke him from his slumber, putting me and the local wildlife out of our stertor-induced misery. He farted and eyed me suspiciously as though I’d done the deed before spying his pack that I’d left open beside him. “You better not have stolen anything.”

  I slow blinked my disdain. “I was bored of waiting for you to wake up, so I thought I’d get some food going. Fear not, I resisted the urge to steal your spare breechcloth, whetstone, and sewing kit. Although the ball of twine was tempting.”

  He grunted and fixed me with a sullen stare, but the hard line of his shoulders relaxed. He ate the bread and tack without comment and stared gloomily into the guttering flames, the shreds of a troubling dream clinging to his waking mind like the oppressive mist hanging over the town. We shared a drink of stale water that had been mulling in his flask for gods knew how long. Like the barbarian he was, he cleaned his teeth with the muddy hem of his woolen cloak. Being a well-bred cove, I used a sweet wood twig to keep my fangs in bite-worthy condition, although, after six months this one was wearing thin.

  We left the road a short way out of town and headed higher into the foothills along an overgrown, cobbled trackway. Judging by the wear, it must have once been a busy artery, thronged with rustics and their beasts going back and forth to the market in the town we’d just left. What blight had befallen these hardy souls was lost to history, but the remains of their steads lay scattered like old bones across the hillside ossuary. I wondered if perhaps we were near an old Schism battle site and the land had been poisoned by foul magic. Either way, it was an inhospitable place wedged between jagged crags. The thin air was playing havoc with my aging barbarian friend whose face beneath his whiskers was as red as a slapped arse by the time we reached our destination.

  “There,” he said between labored breaths, as though I hadn’t spotted the looming towers spearing through the gloom on the far side of a crumbling bridge. When the mist briefly parted, I could see that the gate was bound with chains and marked by sigils of warding which was rarely a good sign. To emphasize the point that this place was proscribed the Holy Eye had also been crudely painted above the gate. There were no signs of life, and the shrieking winds driving through the keep were infused with a sepulchral smell of decay.

  To my surprise, my companion was bent almost double after crossing the snowline where hills became mountain. I’d expected a rugged Grundvelt barbarian to be at home in such terrain, but his bellows breathing said otherwise. Despite his apparent discomfort, he trudged on with a bovine tenacity that I had to admire.

  The bridge had once been a grand affair, as befitted the forbidding edifice before us. Like Ulthvarr, it was past its best. Rock slides had taken bites out of it over the years, pocked the masonry and beheaded the statues of mighty
warriors that flanked the walkway. Above us, tattered banners bearing the faded arms of a noble house fluttered bravely from the lofty ramparts. As we crossed, I glanced below and saw the remains of carts and carriages scattered on rocky ledges and caught up in the branches of sickly pines. The remains of the occupants lay in various states of decomposition amid the wreckage. That some appeared to be recently deceased was a matter of concern.

  “They didn’t fall down there by accident.” My words were absorbed by the dense brume and carried no distance at all, forcing the warrior to lean in to hear me.

  “It is a treacherous path, to be sure.” His acknowledgment was half-hearted. I guessed that he thought I’d do a runner if he admitted what we both could see. He was mistaken. After coming this far, I wasn’t going anywhere without the gold he’d promised me.

  “Someone or thing threw those carts down there, along with the unfortunate cargo,” I observed casually. “And then hid their tracks.”

  He shrugged. “Your imagination is running away with you. It was probably landslides. Now hurry, whatever happened this is a dangerous place to loiter.”

  “Yes, let's go into the keep marked by the Holy Eye, and is that a human skull hanging from the gate?”

  He gave me a knowing look. “It’s probably been put there to scare away thieves. Come on, it’s bloody freezing out here.”

  “I thought you were a barbarian?”

  He stopped, framed by the black maw of the gateway. “You’re judging me by what I look like?”