Black River

by Peter Fugazzotto

  "Business done? Where's Pullo and the others?"

  "I'm the only one returned."

  "Shield too?"

  Spear nodded.

  Cruhund laughed, his jumbled teeth shiny. "That's the thing I know. I know how Spear Spyrchylde gets business done."

  "No legion yet?"

  Cruhund's jagged teeth flashed again. "How would a legion come if no word ever made it south?"

  "The messenger from the fortress?"

  "Long miles between here and there. Sometimes a man falls from his horse, or drowns in a puddle in the road, or never wakes from his sleep."

  "Word will find its way."

  "I'll deal with that when it happens."

  Spear could see Cruhund wishing to take back his words but it was too late. Everything here had changed.

  As they began passing through the hovels of the displaced clans people, the neighborhood of those caught between two worlds, a few more riders emerged from the alleys. Spear's men, all in shiny new breast plates, all calling greeting to Spear, all looking silently at Cruhund, eyes waiting.

  Soon Spear was surrounded. He could see hands on handles of swords, hear the nervous swallowing of men, and smell the sweat of fear. They would come for him, but not when he rode among them armed. The way of the clans was lost. They would come in the dark with numbers and clubs and sharp stabbing blades. They would come as he taught them and drop his corpse into the swift moving waters. He knew what lay ahead in Cullan town and the quick hard fight that would turn things. He should have killed Cruhund at the edge of the town.

  Now things would not be so simple.

  "Let's go to the mead hall," said Cruhund. "We'll fill you up with cups and you'll fill us up with story." They would ply him with drink and then stab him, he thought.

  "Yes," said Spear. "The mead hall. I'll meet you there. But first I go to Yriel."

  The others laughed, all but Cruhund, but then he caught himself not laughing and forced an odd sound from his mouth, a croak. "Of course, we'll see you there."

  "When it's dark, my friend. And we'll drink until the sun breaks on the river."

  They all paused waiting for the other to go first. Finally, the gravity of the group, the desire for drink from those who did not read the language beneath, pulled Cruhund towards the mead hall. "If you don't come after dark, we'll come looking for you."

  "Where else would I go?"

  Cruhund's teeth flashed again, not in smile, but in grimace and he turned his horse hard and led the others down the slope, through the mud and shit and rot, towards the ribbon of the river, the hiss of the water and the low building where blades would be sharpened and the strength of betrayal bolstered with drink turned bitter.

  Spear found Yriel in their house, and she rushed into his arms and he held her tight, lost in the comfort of her soft skin, the tickle of her hair against his cheek and the citrusy smell that clung to her.

  "Cruhund," she said when they finally parted.

  "I know."

  "He thinks he is you. He dares to take all that belongs to you."

  He nodded. Their room, their home, felt cramped, filled with Dhurman pots, bolts of cloth from the south, shiny bits of armor from Empire. The noises from the neighborhood weeped through their walls. He could barely hear the hum of the river and the wind running through the grasses.

  "He will kill you."

  "That's his plan."

  She pulled away from him, head tilted. "What happened up there? You're different."

  "I returned to the North."

  She laughed. "Returned? Where exactly did you go? You just went across the Black River and now you are here again. Still in the North."

  His eyes fell to their bed, the urn filled with coins beneath folds of cloth, the old spearhead his father had given him but that he had replaced with one of Dhurma.

  "So many things we have here."

  "What happened up there? Where is Shield? And the others?"

  "All dead. Well, mostly all dead. A few survived. Shield burned her body on top of the tower. It broke him. He had expected it to end better. All this talk of a final great adventure, of being the hero he was meant to be, and then he loses her. I think he had held it in his heart, hidden away, that he and Birgid would be united forever, that the past would slip away and that they would grow old and in love together. But they spent more of their lives apart than together. Even in those few final moments it was only to slip past the edge and into death."

  "And where is he? Is he coming back?"

  Spear shook his head. He had last seen Shield heading further north in the wastelands. The man looked haggard, slouched on his horse, arm bound to his side, blood still caked to his face. Spear had tried to convince him to rest a few days, or to head back south with him, but the old Hound shook his head, saying that he needed to head North, that his destiny lay to the North.

  Spear from the top of the tower had watched him go. He had thought about riding out after him, but he was not sure whether he would pull him back or just settle in beside him wherever Shield led him. Instead, he stood, hands on the cold stone walls of the tower, watching until his old mate vanished into the mists and distances.

  Spear had stayed in that tower for a few more days helping the idiot Pullo pull armor and weapons off bodies and drag them to a pile which they fortressed in what little wood they could gather and burned. Spear would have been content to let the bodies rot and sink in the bog or let the wild dogs and clouds of ravens consume the bodies but Pullo had insisted. So Spear had helped him but mostly to give himself something to do and also to avoid the decision about what to do next. They never found the bodies of Vincius or Eliode.

  The battle had addled Pullo. It must have been the blow from the wizard when he first breeched the rooftop of the tower. The Dhurman's eyes wandered to the distances, unable to focus on what was in front of him and his words slurred. When Spear had finally decided to return to Cullan town, Pullo refused to go. He had said that he had won this tower and that it was his to defend. The ancient ones told him so. They told him that they were returning and needed him. Spear gave up on the Dhurman sergeant and imagined a war party finding his bones years later on that tower rooftop. He wondered if any would even know of Fennewyn, the loss of the legion, and the great assault on the tower, or if it would just be remembered as a place where there were a pile of bones.

  "What are you going to do about Cruhund?" Yriel asked. "He will not wait long. He will come for you and he has the men with him." She pulled at his arm. "If you strike him down quick, the others will do nothing. But if you sit too long, his strength will grow and you will have no one at your back."

  "Nothing left but a pile of bones."

  "Go at him now while he is trying to gather his courage. The others will wait to see who is the last one standing. All of Cullan town is at stake. He has already begun stealing the Dhurmans' favor from you. Gifts are passing back and forth. Soon he will be too deep among them for you to pull him out, especially now that Urbidis and Pullo are gone. You will have no one left."

  "How many Dhurmans remain in the fort?"

  "By day, near a dozen. At night, maybe one or two. They drink with Cruhund every night. He plies them with mead and women. You need to make things right."

  Spear left her in the place that they had made their home. He left the coin with her and only took his father's spearhead bundled in a fold of old sheepskin. Night had fallen and the streets were dark. Yriel had offered him a brazier to light his way but he preferred the shadows. The mead hall was a black blur against the river. Wedges of light escaped from beneath the door.

  Had anything changed?

  The lone watchman at the fortress let Spear in. He was one of the old timers, a man from the outer provinces who would never see his home again.

  "Best to get out," said Spear.

  "Can't hold it all by yourself," said the old timer.

  "Take a horse, Craxius. Sell the armor. They'll never come after you."
>
  The old timer gazed south. "There was a girl that I was supposed to marry. I gave her a necklace of daisies in the shadow of the oak by the river."

  "The river will still be there."

  Spear waited for the old timer to get some distance, to be clear of the town, before he began his work. He started in the middle of the fortress where the rooms were smallest, the wooden wall and ceilings smothering. He hacked open the top of the small barrel and began laying a small trickle of oil, along the floor, between rooms, up the walls. He built small streams leading back to the central storage where the Dhurmans kept their arms and stock of oil. A few more barrels and then he moved along the catwalk soaking the old boards.

  He opened the stalls and let the horses and the pigs free. The horses ran out the gate but the pigs just rooted around trying to get at the trash heap for apples, scraps of meat, and rotting vegetables.

  Spear held one horse back, climbed to its back with a torch in hand, and then began touching the flame to the wood, to the streams, to anything that would catch. The flames came quick, almost too quick, as if the wood had been waiting. Fire leapt up the walls, ringing Spear in. Then the flames raced to the central barracks, the wood crackling and snapping. He stared at the flames, the shapes of light, the ghosts in the smoke, and then the store room, full of barrels of oil, exploded, and Spear was nearly thrown from his horse by the hot blast, but he held on and let the horse run, guiding it through the streets, hooves, splashing in the shit and piss, his own figure a dark silhouette against the flames in the eyes of all who stared mouths hanging.

  Their lives here were destroyed. He wondered how many would leave, return home.

  Beyond the huts and fields, he slowed his horse, slapping her neck and whispering in her ear. She settled beneath his touch.

  The cries of men rose behind him. The Dhurmans would try to put the flames out and Cruhund and his men would help. Spear could see the flames growing and he wondered how far away the burning of Cullan town could be seen.

  He did not stop to look back as he steered his horse across Oron's Belt. But when he reached the other side of the River, he slid from his horse.

  The eyeless heads of clansmen stared at him. He knew none of them, warriors who had risen in arms against Dhurma, men who in death drew a line at the Black River, who served as a warning that resistance against Empire would only mean death.

  Heads on stakes.

  He pulled the heads off, tore the stakes from the ground, and then one by one kissed the heads and pushed them out in the river. They would be lost forever from the eyes of man but they would be returned to the North.

  The fortress burned bright against the night sky, bright against the surface of the Black River, but soon the fire would die and the true dark would return to the North, a darkness broken only by the stars and the spirit of the clans.

  Spear sat his horse again and rode north to find his place beyond the Black River.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PETER FUGAZZOTTO IS a writer of fantasy and science fiction. His short story "Jiro" was published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly in 2013 and The Hounds of the North series was launched with The Witch of the Sands in 2014. He is a graduate of Stanford University with a degree in English and a minor in Creative Writing.

  In addition to his writing, he is a lifelong student of the martial arts and has won a World Championship in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He lives in Northern California with his wife and daughter and an assortment of animals.

  http://peterfugazzotto.com

  @peterfugazzotto

  SPECIAL GIFT TO MY READERS

  DEAR READER,

  I want to thank you for reading Black River. I hope you enjoyed reading this novel as much as I did writing it.

  The grim adventures of both Shield and Spear will continue in The Song of the Witch, the next book in The Hounds of the North series.

  As an author, sitting alone at my desk for long hours, I welcome your feedback. So tell me what you loved, what you hated, or what your favorite scene was. You can reach me at peterfugazzotto@comcast.net or contact me through my website http://peterfugazzotto.com

  As a special gift to you, if you sign up for my email list, I will send you a free fantasy story.

  You can sign up here: http://peterfugazzotto.com/free-story/

  I will also send you notifications about The Song of the Witch, other upcoming books and more free stories when they are ready.

  I also have a favor to ask you. To help me gather more readers like you, please leave an honest review about Black River on Amazon, GoodReads and other sites.

  I appreciate your support.

  -Peter

  PS - In case, you can't get enough of the Hounds of the North, The Witch of the Sands, a novella featuring Shield and the Hounds, is available on Amazon.