Black River

by Peter Fugazzotto

  But then they gathered to their leader Shield at the far end of the column, and they surged at one of the mud men like a pack of wolves, surrounding him, attacking him from the backside, blades flicking out. They held the mud man at bay.

  But Vincius could see that it would matter little. The heart of the column had been trampled and the other ten mud men were crushing and tearing apart the Dhurmans. Even if the Hounds were able to destroy that one mud man, who had now fallen to his knees and raised his arms uselessly against the drop of metal, they had no chance against ten more of these creatures of dark magic.

  To win, they needed to eliminate the warlock. It was as simple as that.

  But Vincius could see that none of the men could do that. The Dhurman soldiers were being slaughtered wholesale. Fat Pullo and Spear were fending off one mud man, and the three other Hounds were bringing down another other of the magical creatures. But soon the Dhurman column would be completely destroyed and the Northmen would be outnumbered.

  It would be up to Vincius to bring the warlock down.

  While Vincius despised the warlock, he saw that they were the same – men of the mind in an age of warriors, men who made their way through hard scrabbling and intellect when the only thing that was valued was might and wealth. In another world, in another time, they might have been master and mentor, but here in the Northlands in the time of the Dhurman Empire they could only be enemies and one would have to destroy the other. It was that simple and Vincius's blood burned with the desire to destroy the warlock, to do his role in ridding the world of dark magic, of paying his penance in the hopes of erasing the mistakes of his parents. That fire had never been enough to cleanse him.

  He drew the stiletto from the folds of his robes. The metal glinted in the dim Northern light. Men screamed on either side of him as the mud men brought down fist and arm. Vincius was trapped between two horses but he realized that he was also hidden from the sight of the mud men, so he prodded the frightened horses forward, just enough to create a small escort through the heart of the battle.

  Then he was beyond it and stumbling across peat and mud and muck towards the warlock. His breath filled his chest and his legs burned.

  The clear path between him and the warlock vanished. A mud man, leg of a Dhurman soldier in hand, stepped into the space between the Apprentice and Northern warlock. A fist hit the ground where Vincius had been standing a moment before. He rolled out of the muck and darted to the left. Another fist hit the ground. He tried to prick it with the stiletto but the blade found only mud, not the human bodied encased in layers of earth and muck.

  He would need to plunge his arm near shoulder deep to find human flesh and even then would he be able to find a vein or organ?

  Then he lost his footing and fell on his back, the mud sucking at him as if holding him to the ground. The monster raised his arm.

  A word slipped from Vincius's lips.

  It was a word that he had stolen from his father, a word imprinted before the betrayal, the cleansing fire.

  The word of power burst from his lips, and the mud and sticks and stones were torn from the beast before him.

  A Painted Man stood before him, naked.

  Vincius rolled forward, stiletto leading and the cold metal punctured the skin of the Northman's belly, deep into his body. Vincius's arm shook as the life emptied from the man's eyes and the hot blood ran to his elbow.

  Then another mud man raced towards him and Vincius was lost, his mouth trembling in tears. He knew he could not muster another word. He could not remember even what he had said. He wanted nothing more than to lie down in the cold ground and be swallowed up by it, for all of this to end.

  He was ready to die, ready to face his parents in the underworld and answer to them for his betrayal. What is worse than a son who betrays his parents?

  Then he was in the air, feet floating above the ground, the mane of a horse itching his face, and the voice of the Northman Shield, filled his ears. "Hold on, Chronicler."

  Pools of murky water and islands of peat flashed beneath the hooves of the horse. Vincius clung to man and horse alike, his fists locked tight, and he knew that if the horse were to take a single misstep that they would collapse broken to the earth, helpless beneath the fury of the warlock and his mud men.

  So Vincius clung on for life and prayed to the gods for just one more step, one more step away from the horror.

  THE BOY

  URBIDIS TWISTED THE reeds one last time and then bent the top to create the head. He placed the small figurine on the dirt of his pen. It stood. It looked enough like a horse.

  A toy horse for the boy.

  The boy had been watching the pen since the riders had gone off in search of the Painted Men. Urbidis had not noticed him at first. The Dhurman's eyes and voice had been for the men and women who worked through their chores in the village. He had called and cajoled, begged and promised. But they had ignored him.

  He wondered if they had understood what he said. Only the old woman wrapped in furs, the betrayer who tricked him into his prison, acknowledged him – with distant curses and the cutting of her fingers at him.

  She and the boy.

  The boy had already taken a small reed figure of a soldier that Urbidis had twisted out of the pliant grasses that were layered on the floor. The boy had been hesitant at first, afraid he would be seen by the others. Eventually he came out from behind the stack of wood and darted across the clearing to the little hut.

  "Open it," Urbidis had said but the boy only stayed long enough to snatch the little soldier before turning on his heel and sprinting back for the pile of logs. The commander had hoped the boy would come back but he did not. Instead he hid behind the logs, the small reed soldier occasionally seen moving, fighting, dancing across the ground, held loosely in the boy's grubby fingers.

  Urbidis had tried to wave the boy back. When the commander had caught the boy's eye, the little Northerner frowned and shook his head.

  Now the Dhurman hoped the boy would come for the horse. Then Urbidis would grab the boy through one of the wooden bars of his pen, twist his arm hard and force him to lift the latch. Then Urbidis would be out, in his hand the thighbone of one of those who did not escape. Threatening to kill the boy, he would get a sword and a horse and be gone before the Painted Men were led to him.

  That was his plan. First he had to lure the boy close enough to him.

  "The Painted Men come." The old woman in furs appeared, holding a dead marsh bird by the feet, its long black bill open to the muddy ground.

  "Let me go. I've done nothing to you. I just want to go back to my family, my daughters, my wife. I have not seen them in so long." He left the reed horse by his feet and clutched at the wooden bars.

  "You the Dhurman from Cullan."

  "I'll go back. I won't come across the Black River again. I'll make sure this village is spared. No, I will make sure this village is rewarded. You want gold? Horses? Anything."

  "Anything?"

  He nodded. Was it possible that he could bluff his way to freedom? He would come back here with a full legion and decimate this village. They never should have plotted to give him to the Painted Men. "Anything," he said.

  "Who are you to give me anything?"

  He wondered whether her words were a trap. If she fished out that he was the commander of the fortress at Cullan town, would that better her bargaining position with the Painted Men? Or did she have in mind her own plan to ransom him back to Empire? How much gold could she demand for the commander of a frontier fort? He imagined the generals in Vas Dhurma, shrugging, asking who this Urbidis was and whether it was just better to put the gold towards more foot soldiers to overrun the North.

  But what did this old woman of the North know?

  What other choice did he really have?

  "I am Urbidis, commander of the fortress at Cullan town. All trade goes through my hands. I control the Black River. What do you want? Gold? I can get gold. Horses? I can get yo
u warhorses from the South, not like these little ponies that you Northerners ride. Real horses. Your village clan will be the most powerful of all the tribes north of the Black River. Do you want horses? I can get you horses. And armor? What about Dhurman armor?"

  "That's not what I want."

  "What then? Tell me."

  "A son."

  He looked at her. She was old, too old to have a child. What was it that she was asking? Did she want some bastard child, half Dhurman, half Northman?

  "A son that I once had."

  "I don't know how I can help you. I don't know anything of your son. Did he come to Cullan town?"

  "He is about your age. A big man like you with broad shoulders. A warrior among warriors. But now he has gone to fields of the sky."

  "I'm sorry," muttered Urbidis.

  "You will pay for my son."

  "How much?

  "Your life. You Dhurmans came into the North. You brought war and death. You brought your legions of death. You upset the peace among the tribes. He died by a Dhurman sword. Maybe it was you. I swore to the gods I would avenge his death, and until yesterday I thought I would die first. But then you came, a gift to me. Life flows from these bones and flesh. But you are here now. Urbidis, my gift, the life for the life that was taken."

  "I had nothing to do with the death of your son. Please, don't do this."

  "You are a Dhurman." She spat through the bars and vanished into the darkness of her roundhouse.

  The Painted Men were coming and no one here in this village would help him. The only person who could understand his words wanted him dead.

  And it looked like she would get her wish.

  He threw his shoulder against the door of his pen again and again, but the structure only bruised his shoulder and jarred his bones. He screamed at the heavens. He would not die here, not here. He had a wife and daughters and his own promise to keep.

  Dark clouds filled the sky. The wind tore over the hills in anticipation of the cold rain. In the distance, the rain sheeted the land. Somewhere out there the Painted Men were one step closer to him.

  But he had a promise to keep.

  He slipped his hand between the wooden bars and put the reed horse on the ground. It galloped and cantered and charged in his hand, running tight loops, rising defiantly off the ground, and above all, capturing the eyes of the grubby little boy, Urbidis's last hope of escape.

  SPLIT

  SPEAR AND PULLO wandered through the mists and the swampy earth finally picking up the sporadic trail of hoof prints.

  "This is their path," said Spear bending over his horse.

  Pullo pressed a finger into the swelling to the left of his eye. "How can we be sure? How do we know it's not just the warlock baiting us again?"

  "The shield wall broke too easily. You should have kept them together."

  "What do I know of that?"

  "You command men."

  The fat Xichilian shook his head. "I'm a sergeant. I keep the men in line. I relay commands. I discipline. But mostly I just follow orders. That's what I do."

  "You should have stayed back in Cullan."

  "Yeah, but Urbidis is out here somewhere. I couldn't just leave him."

  "You think he would have done the same for you?"

  The sergeant shrugged. "Will the warlock come after us?"

  "We should find the others before dark."

  Spear reflected on the hopeless battle. Pullo's force had been routed by the warlock and his men of mud. The mighty shield wall of Dhurma, the wall that had been the centerpiece of so many battles over the last twenty years, had been crushed, and the men, an inexperienced remaindered lot, had met their deaths, expending their lives for an empire that did not care for them.

  Suddenly Spear and Pullo were free of the claustrophobic mists and returned to a land of a dead sky, portending the return of rain and a cold night ahead unless they could find shelter. They moved forward over small rocky outcroppings where the lands folded into hills and ravines.

  "They will be close," said Spear.

  As they climbed a narrow goat herder's trail, a voice broke the silence.

  "Hey there, Spear. Up here." Harad's red-bearded face peered from behind a large craggy stone at the top of a rise. He waved them up with his hammer.

  The other survivors, Shield, Harad, Patch and Vincius, sat gnawing on hard biscuits and gulping water in a circle of a half dozen standing stones. In the center was a large flat stone, glassy black, a contrast to the craggy white stones that stood like guardians around it. This was a place of magic and mystery. Spear had been to other such spots of power in his journeys throughout the lands of the North, but never one quite like this. He could almost feel the air thick with magic and it made him uncomfortable, as did all things that he could not understand or control.

  "Maybe he was just content with killing the Dhurmans," said Patch as he stared out through a gap between the stones and out over the misty swamp. "Allowed the Northmen to live. Maybe not such a bad thing."

  "Are we all that is left?" asked Pullo. He eased himself from the saddle to the ground. "Are the rest lost?"

  "There was nothing that we could do," said Shield. "We walked into a trap. He knew we would come to the village. He's leaving a trail to drag a legion in."

  "What the hell?" asked Patch. "Did your men even raise their swords?"

  Pullo hung his head. "They were taken by surprise."

  "They didn't know how to fight," said Patch. "Led to the slaughter. You never should've brought them."

  "They were soldiers of Dhurma," said Pullo, his teeth exposed behind curling lips. "Speak no ill of them. They served proudly and I will see to it that they are remembered as the heroes that they were."

  Patch harrumphed but said no more.

  "What do we do now?" asked Harad. He used a bunch of grass to wipe blood from his hammer.

  Spear could not contain himself any more. "Vincius, what was it that you did?"

  The little Xichilian shook his head, focused on picking the dried mud off his robes.

  "We saw it. We all did."

  "I stabbed one of them, if that's what you mean."

  Spear laughed. "Right after you stripped the mud off him. How in the names of the gods of the underworld did you do that? You said something. I couldn't understand it, but you said something."

  "I don't know."

  "You don't know. What else don't you know? Is this what you've been doing all this time? Stealing the words from our warlocks and witches to hoard for yourself? And all this time I thought you were failing, unable to capture a single word. What you are up to? Trying to become some great warlock yourself while pretending to be a Chronicler."

  "Leave me alone."

  "Why would I leave you alone? I don't trust you. A dirty Xichilian worm at the foot of Dhurma. What the hell are you doing up here?"

  "I owe you no explanation. I am here to rid the world of dark magic. That is my charge as a Chronicler of the Grand Collegium. I am sworn to it."

  "And yet words of power flow easy as water from your own mouth? Rotten, it is, rotten."

  "Leave him alone," said Shield. The Northman rose putting himself between Spear and Vincius. "Don't overstep your bounds."

  "My bounds, is it?" Spear spat on the ground and held Shield's gaze. "Back for such a short time and already thinking of lording over us again?"

  "You are bound to him with coin," said Shield.

  "I am bound to no man, not if his quest takes us to the edge of death. I told him that before and I will tell him that again. There are bigger things here at play than just a handful of coins. And, Shield, who are you to question any man's honor?"

  Harad moved between the two Northmen. "We are Hounds, all of us. No need for fighting."

  "Ha. No need for fighting among the Hounds," said Spear. "Did you get knocked so hard in the head down in Hopht that you've forgotten the trails we have ridden? The Hounds have never been together, not since those first days, those day
s long ago, back when Sword was alive. You remember him, don't you? He was one of us, of us three that led the Hounds. At least he was until Shield could stand it no longer."

  "We are Hounds."

  "We are nothing, dogs begging scraps from Dhurmans, all of us. We pretend we are otherwise, but we serve them, serve the men who beat us into the ground and still do so. We hearken back to the days of old. But we had no greatness back then either. Just tribes killing each other over blood feuds. We are savages, a people trapped in time, and as the world moves forward, we retreat. There will be no great rising of the North again. We are a dying people. Soon they'll come across the Black River, farmers, settlers, merchants, too many, with legions to back them up. The warlock thinks he baits them to him, but they are baiting him to them. He gives Vas Dhurma what it wants: the reason to exterminate us, drive us to the far ice fields of the North. We are as good as dead."

  "No," said Shield. "While we're alive, there's hope for our clans."

  "The dreams of a child, Shield. You don't know the North any more. You've not been here to watch it slowly die. I've seen what's left and it's nothing."

  "So you give up?"

  "No, I don't give up. I give it up. I accept the future. I accept Dhurma. I may not be able to defeat their legions but I can find a place among them. Not an equal yet. But time will be on the side of those who persist and I will persist and my children will have the blood of Dhurmans in them and one day my grandchildren will no longer be seen as savages from the North but citizens of a province of Dhurma. Not the dream we all were fed as children but the reality of the world before us. And I choose to serve that reality. That's why I'm here across the Black River. I am a part of Empire and I lend my sword to help it rid the world of dark magic, the ancient remnants, so that the world can be washed clean and I can walk into an unclouded future."

  "And what about you, Shield?" asked Vincius. The Apprentice Chronicle's hands were buried beneath the folds of his clothes. "Where do you stand?"