Avempartha

by Michael J. Sullivan

  “I was the first to settle here,” he said with a sad voice. “My house stood right there, the closest to this here well. I remember when most of you were considered newcomers, strangers even. I had great hopes for this place. I donated eight bushels of barley every year to the village church, though all I seen come of it was this here bell. I stayed here through the hard frost five years ago and I stayed here when people started to go missing. Like the rest ’a you, I thought I could live with it. People die tragically everywhere, be it from the pox, the plague, starvation, the cold, or a blade. Sure, Dahlgren seemed cursed, and maybe it is, but it was still the best place I’d ever lived. Maybe the best place I ever will live, mostly because of you all and the fact that the nobles hardly ever bothered us, but all that’s over now. There’s nothing here no more, not even the trees that was here before we came, and I don’t fancy spending another night in the well.” He wiped his eyes clear. “I’m leaving Dahlgren, I ’spose many ’a you will be too, and I just wanted to say that when you all came here I saw you as strangers, but as I am leaving, I feel I’m gonna be saying goodbye to family, a family that has gone through a lot together. I…I just wanted you all to know that.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement and exchanged muttered conversations with the person nearest them. It was decided by all that Dahlgren was dead and that they would leave. There was talk about trying to stay together, but it was only talk. They would travel as a group, including Sir Erlic and the woodsman Danthen south at least as far as Alburn where some would turn west hoping to find relatives while others would continue south hoping to find a new start.

  “So much for the church’s help,” Dillon McDern said to Hadrian. “They were here two nights and look.”

  Dillon and Russell Bothwick walked over to where Theron sat against a blackened stump.

  “’Spect you’ll be staying to find Thrace?” Dillon asked.

  Theron nodded. The big man had not bothered to wash and he was coated in dirt and soot. He had the broken blade on his lap and stared at it.

  “You think it’ll be back tonight, do ya?” Russell asked.

  “I think so. It wants this. Maybe if I give it back, it will give Thrace to me.”

  The two men nodded.

  “You want us to stay behind and give you hand?” Russell asked.

  “A hand with what?” the old farmer asked. “Nothing you can do, either of ’ya. Go on, you both have families of your own. Get out while you can. Enough good people have died here.”

  The two men nodded again.

  “Good luck to you, Theron,” Dillon said.

  “We’ll wait a while in Alburn to see if you show up,” Russell told him. “Good luck.”

  Russell and Tad fashioned a sled from charred saplings and loaded what little they had on it. Lena mashed up a salve, which she applied to Hilfred’s burns, and left it and a pile of bandages with Tomas who took it on himself to stay with the soldier. And so it was, that with only a few things to pack up and carry with them, the bulk of the villagers were on their way westward by early afternoon. No one wanted to be anywhere near Dahlgren after sunset.

  ———

  “What are we doing here?” Royce asked Hadrian as the two sat on a partially burned tree trunk. They were just up the old village path from the well near where the Caswell’s two little wooden grave markers used to be. Like everything else, they were gone, nothing left to mark their passing. They could see Deacon Tomas sitting with Hilfred who still lay unconscious.

  “This job has cost us two horses, over a week’s worth of provisions, and for what?” Royce went on, and with a sigh broke off a bit of charred bark and absently tossed it. “We should head out with the rest of them. The girl is likely dead already. I mean why would it keep her alive? The Gilarabrywn holds all the cards. It can kill us at will, but we can’t harm it. It has hostages, while all we have is half a sword that it doesn’t really need, but apparently would just like to have. If we had both parts of the sword Magnus could put them back together and we could at least bargain from a position of some strength. We could even have the dwarf make us all swords, and maybe even spears with the right name on it. Then we could have a go at the bastard, but right now, we have nothing. We are no threat to it at all. Theron thinks he’s going to bargain, but he doesn’t have anything to bargain with. The Gilarabrywn set this up only to save itself the tedium of hunting for that sword.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Sure we do. It won’t keep those girls alive. It probably had them for lunch already and when night comes, old Theron will be standing out there like a fool with exactly what it wants. He’ll die and that will be that. On the other hand, his stupidity will buy time for the rest of us to get away. Considering his whole family is gone and his daughter is most likely already dead, it’s probably for the best.”

  “He won’t be standing there alone,” Hadrian said.

  Royce turned with a sick look on his face. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  Hadrian shook his head.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re right, because everything you just said will happen if we leave.”

  “And you think if we stay it will be different?”

  “We’ve never quit a job before, Royce.”

  “What are you talking about? What job?”

  “She paid us to get the sword for her.”

  “I got the sword. Her old man’s got it right now.”

  “Only part of it and the job won’t be finished until he has both parts in his hands. That’s what we were hired to do.”

  “Hadrian.” Royce ran a hand over his face and shook his head. “For the love of Maribor, she paid us ten silver!”

  “You accepted it.”

  “I hate it when you get like this.” Royce stood suddenly, picking up a charred piece of scrap. “Damn it,” he threw it into a pile of smoking wood that was once the Bothwick’s home. “You’re just going to get us killed, you know that, right?”

  “You don’t have to stay. This is my decision.”

  “And what are you going to do? Fight it when it comes? Are you going to stand there in the dark swinging at it with swords that can’t hurt it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re insane,” Royce told him. “The rumors are all true; Hadrian Blackwater is a damn loon!”

  Hadrian stood to face his friend. “I’m not going to abandon Theron, Thrace, and Arista. And what about Hilfred. Do you think he can travel? You try dragging him through the woods and he’ll be dead before nightfall, or do you want to try stuffing him in a well all night and think he’ll be just fine in the morning? And what about Tobis? How far do you think he’ll get on a broken leg? Or don’t you give a damn about them? Has your heart gotten so black you can just walk away and let them all die?”

  “They will all die anyway,” Royce snapped at him. “That’s just my point. We can’t stop it from killing them. All we can do is decide whether to die with them or not, and I really don’t see the benefit in sympathy suicide.”

  “We can do something,” Hadrian asserted. “We’re the ones who stole the treasure from the Crown Tower and put it back the very next night. The same two that broke into the invincible Drumindor, we put a human head in the Earl of Chadwick’s lap while he slept in his tower, and busted Esrahaddon out of Gutaria, the most secure prison ever built. I mean we can do something!”

  “Like what?”

  “Well…” Hadrian thought, “we can dig a pit, lure it there and trap it.”

  “We’d have better luck asking Tomas to pray for Maribor to strike the Gilarabrywn dead. We really don’t have the time or the manpower for excavating a pit.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “I’m sure I could come up with something better than luring it into a pit we can’t dig.”

  “Like what?”

  Royce began walking around the still smoldering stick forest, angrily kicking anything in his path. “I don’t know, y
ou’re the one who thinks we can do something, but I know one thing; we can’t do squat unless we can get the other half of that sword. So the first thing I would do is steal it tonight while it’s gone.”

  “It would kill Thrace and Arista for certain if you did that,” Hadrian pointed out.

  “But then you could kill it. At least there would be the closure of revenge.”

  Hadrian shook his head. “Not good enough.”

  Royce smirked, “I could always steal the sword while you and Theron fool it with the blade Rufus was using.” Royce allowed himself a morbid chuckle. “There’s at least about a single chance in a million that might work.”

  Hadrian’s brow furrowed in thought, and he sat down slowly.

  “Oh no, I was joking,” Royce backpedaled. “If it could tell the blade was missing last night, it can tell the difference between the real thing and a copy.”

  “But even if it doesn’t work,” Hadrian said, “it might give me time to get the girls away from it. Then we could dive in a hole—a small hole, that we do have time to dig.”

  “And hope it doesn’t dig you out? I’ve seen its claws, it won’t be hard.”

  Hadrian ignored him and went on with his train of thought. “Then you could bring the other half of the sword, have Magnus forge it and then I can kill it—see it was a good thing you didn’t kill him after all.”

  “You realize how stupid this is, right? That thing decimated this whole village and the castle last night, and you are going to take it on with an old farmer, two women, and a broken sword?”

  Hadrian said nothing.

  Royce sighed and sat down beside his friend, shaking his head. He reached into his robe and pulled his dagger out. Still in its sheath, he held it out.

  “Here,” he said, “take Alverstone.”

  “Why?” Hadrian looked at him, puzzled.

  “Well, I’m not saying Magnus is right, but, well, I’ve never found anything that this dagger can’t cut, and if Magnus is right, if the father of the gods did forge this, I would think it could come in handy even against an invincible beast.”

  “So you’re leaving?”

  “No.” Royce scowled and looked in the direction of the tower of Avempartha. “Apparently I have a job to finish.”

  Hadrian smiled at his friend, took the dagger, and weighed it in his hand. “I’ll give it back to you tomorrow then.”

  “Right,” Royce replied.

  ———

  “Did your partner leave?” Theron asked as Hadrian approached him walking up the slope of the scorched hill that once was the castle. The old farmer stood on the blackened hillside holding the shattered sword and looking up at the sky.

  “No, well sort of, he’s headed back inside Avempartha to steal the other half of the sword just in case the Gilarabrywn tries to double cross us. There is even a chance it might leave Thrace and Arista in the tower while it comes here, and if it does Royce, can get them out.”

  Theron nodded thoughtfully.

  “You two have been real good to me and my daughter. I still don’t know why, and don’t tell me it’s the money,” Theron sighed. “You know, I never gave her credit for much. I ignored her, pushed her away for so many years. She was only my daughter, not a son—an extra mouth to feed that would cost us money to marry off. How she ever found the two of you and got you to come all this way to help us is…well, I just don’t think I will ever understand that.”

  “Hadrian,” Fanen called to him. “Come down here and see what we’ve got.”

  Hadrian followed Fanen down the hill to the north edge of the burn line where he found Tobis, Mauvin, and Magnus working on a huge contraption.

  “This is my catapult,” Tobis declared, standing proudly next to a wagon on which a wooden machine sat. Tobis looked comical in his loud-colored court clothes propped up on a crutch Magnus had fashioned for him, his broken leg strapped down between two stiff pieces of wood. “They dragged it out here when I was bumped from the roster. She’s exquisite, isn’t she? I named her Persephone after Novron’s wife. Only fitting, I thought, since I studied ancient imperial history to devise it. Not easy to do either, I had to learn the ancient languages just to read the books.”

  “Did you just build this?”

  “No, of course not, you silly man. I am a professor at Sheridan. That’s in Ghent by the way. You know the same place as the seat of the Nyphron Church? Well, being brilliant, I bribed some church officials who let slip the true nature of the competition. It would not be a ridiculous bashing match between sawdust-filled heads, but a challenge to defeat a legendary creature. This was a puzzle I could solve; one that I knew did not require muscle and a lack of teeth, but rather a staggering intellect such as mine.”

  Hadrian walked around the device. A massive center beam rose up a good twelve-feet, and the long thick arm was a foot or two longer than that. It had a sack bucket joined to a lower beam with torsion producing chords. On either side of the wagon were two massive hand cranks connected to a series of gears.

  “Well, I must say I have seen catapults before and this doesn’t look much like them.”

  “That’s because I modified it for fighting the Gilarabrywn.”

  “Well, he tried,” Magnus added. “It wouldn’t have worked the way he had it set up, but it will now.”

  “In fact, we fired a few rocks already,” Mauvin reported.

  “I’ve had some experience with siege weapons before,” Hadrian said. “And I know they can be useful against something big like a field of soldiers or something that doesn’t move like a wall, but they’re useless against a solitary moving enemy. They just aren’t that fast or accurate.”

  “Yes, well that is why I devised this one to fire not only projectiles but nets as well,” Tobis said proudly. “I’m very clever that way you see. The nets are designed to launch like large balls that open in mid-flight and snare the beast as it is flying, dropping it to the ground where it will lie helpless while I reload and take my time crushing it.”

  “And this works?” Hadrian asked impressed.

  “In theory,” Tobis replied.

  Hadrian shrugged. “What the heck, it couldn’t hurt.”

  “Just need to get it in position,” Mauvin said. “Care to help push?”

  They all put their backs to the catapult, except, of course, for Tobis, who limped along spouting orders. They rolled it to the ditch that ringed the bottom of the motte and within range to fire on anything in the area near the old manor house.

  “Might want to get something to hide it—rubble or burnt wood maybe, so that it looks like a pile of trash,” Hadrian said. “Which shouldn’t be hard to do. Magnus, I was wondering if you could do me a favor?”

  “What kind?” he asked as Hadrian led him back up the hill toward the ruins of the manor house. The grass was gone, and they walked on a surface of ash and roots that made Hadrian think of warm snow.

  “Remember that sword you made for Lord Rufus? I found it, still with him and his horse on the hill. I want you to fix it.”

  “Fix it?” The dwarf looked offended. “It’s not my fault the sword didn’t work, I did a perfect replica. The records were likely at fault.”

  “That’s fine because I have the original, or part of it at least. I need you to make an exact copy of what we have. Can you do it?”

  “Of course I can, and I will, in return for you’re getting Royce to let me look at the Alverstone.”

  “Are you crazy? He wants you dead. I saved your neck from him once already. Doesn’t that count?”

  The dwarf stood firm his arms crossed over the braids in his beard. “That’s my price.”

  “I will talk to him, but I can’t guarantee it.”

  The dwarf pursed his lips, which made his beard and moustache bristle. “Very well, where are these swords?”

  Theron agreed to the plan as long as he got the piece back and brought the broken blade to the manor’s smithy, which now consisted of no more than the brick forg
e and the anvil. He would hold the blade during the exchange and hand it over immediately should the ruse be discovered.

  “Hrumph!” The dwarf looked disgusted.

  “What?” Hadrian asked.

  “No wonder it didn’t work. There are markings on both sides. There’s this whole other inscription. See, this is the incantation I bet.” The dwarf showed Hadrian the blade where a seemingly incomprehensible spider web of thin sweeping lines formed a long design. Then he flipped it over to reveal a significantly shorter design on the back. “And this side I’m guessing holds the name that Esrahaddon mentioned. It makes sense that all the incantations are the same, only the name is unique.”

  “Does that mean you can create a weapon that will work?”

  “No, it’s broken right along the middle of the name, but I can make an awfully good copy of this at least.”

  The dwarf removed his tool belt hidden beneath his clothes and laid it on the anvil. He had a number of hammers of different sizes and shapes, and chisels all in separate loops. He unrolled a leather apron and tied it on. Then he took Rufus’ sword and strapped it to the anvil.

  “Carry those everywhere, do you?” Hadrian asked.

  “You won’t catch me leaving them on a horse’s saddle,” Magnus replied.

  Hadrian and Theron began digging a pit on the side of the courtyard. They dug it on the site of the old smokehouse, making use of the already turned soil to ease their effort. Without a shovel, they used old boards that left their hands black. Within a couple hours, they had a small hole big enough for the two of them to get down fully under the earth. It was not deep enough to avoid being dug up, but it might hide them from a blast of fire so long as it did not come straight down. If it did, they would be like a couple of clay pots fired in sand.

  “Won’t be long now,” Hadrian told Theron as the two men sat covered in dirt and ash looking up at the fading light. Magnus was using his smallest hammer, tapping away with a resounding tink, tink. He muttered something, then pulled a heavy cloth from a pouch on his belt and began rubbing the surface of the metal.