I hate it here. Wish I could leave this city and accompany Dak on some adventure. He’s like one of those heroes from the old stories. She’d heard her fair share of those tales as a child, listening to her friend Arlo, a kindly old bard, and all the heroes of old were strong, confident, and fearless like Creel.
Ferret nearly lay back down to try to sleep once more, but she didn’t. The fog made her uneasy. She’d lived in Ammon Nor her whole life and never seen such thick fog before. She shivered involuntarily as her eyes sought to pierce the thick wall of whiteness.
I wonder if Dak is well. That fog is like to be cold and bad for his aching bones. But then she remembered she’d brought him some warmed wine and food earlier, as well as his potion the previous night, so he should have been fine. But he’d surely welcome a cloak. A surge of annoyance filled her at her concern for the warrior. She’d never been worried about anyone but herself, and she’d managed to survive so long by keeping it that way. Disgusted with herself, she nearly turned away again for her pallet but then realized the fog was the opportunity she’d been waiting for.
I can free him. Nobody will be able to see a damned thing out there! She donned her ragged cloak and worn boots, preparing to head out and come back straightaway once she picked the lock and sent Creel on his way. Her earlier thoughts wouldn’t let her off so easily, though. Irritated, she tried to shove them away, but that was no use. Talk him into taking you with him, an inner voice seemed to say. Get him to give his word before you spring the lock, for he’s honorable like that. She stopped, glancing out the window again, nervous and undecided. He does owe me after all I’ve been doing for him—he’ll agree to take me with, and then I can kiss this pit goodbye.
Ferret was halfway across the room before she realized she’d made up her mind. She silently stepped over and around her sleeping fellow tribe members. A young boy who had seen barely ten summers muttered something in his sleep and rolled over, his arm falling across Ferret’s foot. Gently, she slid her foot free and was nearly to the door when the ember of a pipe abruptly flared in the darkness just inside the doorway.
“Where ya think you’re goin’ at this hour, Ferret?” Mudge squinted at her through a small cloud of pipe smoke, his eyes bleary. The cask of ale he’d stolen from an unattended wagon outside an inn that morning was tapped and the cup in his hand half empty. Without waiting for a reply, he stood up and tried his best to loom over her. “Wench, you ain’t earnin’ your keep, lately. Mayhap I’ll talk to Rosie over at The Sweet Berry and have you do some whorin’ to make up the difference.” He grinned, displaying his crooked brown teeth, but his expression lacked any humor.
Ferret stood her ground. Mudge was a bully who’d gained his place as tribe leader by intimidating the others. He and a few of his older thugs had taken over this abandoned home, making it into the current flophouse for the tribe, which brought him some respect among the urchins seeking a leader to follow. Ferret herself had been a homeless street urchin until gravitating toward the tribe, attracted by the sense of fellowship and security at the time. Mudge was an inch shorter than Ferret but twice as wide, and even though he had barely seen twenty summers, he already had a sizable potbelly from his love of ale.
“I’m just going out for a walk. What’s it to you?” she asked more defensively than she intended.
Mudge’s eyes narrowed, and he stepped closer until their faces were a handbreadth apart. She could smell the sour stink of ale and tobacco smoke on his breath. “What’re you up to, huh?” He gripped a handful of her tunic roughly and slammed her against the wall. “You didn’t answer me about spreadin’ yer legs for coin.”
“You want an answer? Then the answer’s ‘Go bugger yourself.’”
His small eyes glittered cruelly as he scowled at her. “You sittin’ on a stash of coin I ain’t aware of, wench?”
Ferret had to restrain the urge to punch and scratch at him, to fight him off. She knew submission was normally what it would take to get off without a beating, but Mudge desired coin more than anything, and she knew already her best ploy to get free of him.
“I was thinking, with the fog, I’d have better luck avoiding the patrols,” she said in an easier tone. “The drunks will be easy marks. I should bring back enough coin tonight to catch up on what I owe you.”
Greed filled Mudge’s bleary eyes, and his grip slackened. “Aye, that’s good thinkin’. You better come back with a pair o’ silvers, or I’m marching yer bony arse over to Rosie’s tomorrow.” He leered at her and slid his hand across her hip and squeezed her rear before letting her go free.
Ferret slipped past him with practiced ease although the encounter made her feel dirty and sick to her stomach. I’m not going to have to see this little prick ever again—I won’t come back here. The thought abruptly popped into her head, and her mind was made up in but a moment. Elation filled her, then it was replaced by something else—a hot flare of rage at his years of threats and beatings and mistreatment.
She stopped, one hand on the rickety door, which was letting a cold draft through. “Mudge. There’s one other thing.”
The tribe leader slopped some ale on the front of his grungy tunic as he lowered the cup from his mouth. “Eh?”
Ferret was on him before he could react. She was proficient enough in street fighting to have survived all sixteen of her summers without being killed or raped though she’d sustained her share of beatings in her life, many of them at the hands of this lout. She drove her knee into Mudge’s groin with nearly enough force to lift the bastard off his feet. He gave a pained hurk sound and hunched over. Her small fist smashed into his bulbous nose, flattening it and causing blood to spew out. Mudge squealed like a rutting hog and staggered into the wall, still clutching his bruised stones.
Then she was out the door and running as fast as she could. A quick glance to the left, toward the old ruins, revealed the fog was nonexistent there. The tribe’s flophouse was on the far north edge of town, near the ruins, which made people superstitious and hesitant to settle there. Ferret herself felt a queer sensation whenever she had tried to summon up enough courage to explore the ruins, so she understood the reluctance.
The fog was much thicker as she headed south into town, like running into a sudden wall a few paces from the front door. She nearly lost her footing in the slick mud when she turned the corner of a building, but she was agile and recovered. She dropped to her knees by the back corner of the flophouse and pulled a loose brick aside to secure her small sack of trinkets—her only belongings, mostly worthless except for sentimental reasons, though she did have a couple dozen coppers saved up that Mudge would have normally confiscated.
Mudge’s angry shout came from around the front of the house. She could hear his boots slapping the muddy ground as he raced after her.
She said a silent thanks to Sabyl for the fog’s concealment as she disappeared around the back of the next building. Within moments, she had lost Mudge.
However, she soon ran into a much greater cause for concern. Within a few minutes, hard-faced soldiers suddenly appeared out of the fog before her, dressed in the same colors as those of the Nebaran corpses she’d looted on the battlefield. She counted five men, and the fog stirred with the shapes of many more behind those.
She skidded to a halt, nearly bowling right into the arms of a large, bearded man with drawn steel—steel coated with blood.
The soldier swung his sword at Ferret, but she was already dodging frantically. The blade whistled harmlessly past, and she was fleeing, veering sharply to her right, toward the west side of the town, hoping the soldiers weren’t everywhere. A muffled shout came from behind her, but the fog swallowed her then and hid her from sight. A cold knot of fear clenched her belly at the thought of a sneak attack, with Nebarans murdering the Ketanian soldiers in their bedrolls, for she knew instinctively that was what the unnatural fog portended.
Ferret relied on her stealth and intimate knowledge of the town once she eluded the initial p
ursuit. She crept alongside buildings and hid behind bushes as she made her way toward the palisade, which still had several openings where it wasn’t fully shored up yet. She angled toward a gap she’d passed through numerous times on the western wall.
The alarm—why hasn’t the bloody alarm been raised? She could picture the big alarm bell on a guard tower at the main gate, which had been rung several times in recent days for the soldiers conducting city-defense drills. This night, though, it was silent, a fact that chilled her more than the fog. Someone needs to raise the alarm! A foolish urge to run and sound the alarm herself seized her, and for a moment she started in that direction, but then she nearly choked with bitter laughter at her own foolishness.
Who the Abyss am I to try to be a hero? I’m a damn homeless and penniless thief. I’ll free Dak—he can ring the bell. He’s the hero, not me. Despite her thoughts to the contrary, her traitorous feet were still taking her toward the guard tower. She sighed but decided taking a quick peek wouldn’t hurt.
When she rounded a corner, her foot came down on something spongy, and she nearly screamed in horror. She was stepping on someone’s hand—a refugee’s. The man was sprawled on his back with an arm slung out wide and his throat a red ruin. She gasped as she took in men, women, and children, all of them murdered where they’d bedded down for the night. A score of them must have been there, at least that she could see, their numbers fading into the fog. Blood was everywhere.
Soldiers were marching in through the gate, the sounds of their footsteps carrying oddly, almost as if she could reach out and touch them, though she knew the gate was yet a few dozen paces away. Gods, there must be hundreds of them coming in—mayhap the whole bloody Nebaran army!
Summoning all the courage she had, she darted across the open space to the base of the guard tower before she could second-guess herself. A pair of bodies lay on the ground, looking like pincushions from the arrows protruding from their throats and chests, men dressed in the Ketanian colors.
“Bloody good plan, wouldn’t you say?” a voice asked in a thick Nebaran accent from atop the guard tower overhead. “That warlord knows her business. What’s left of their wretched garrison won’t know what hit ’em.”
A harsh laugh sounded. “Aye, just watch the yellow-bellied curs run for the hills.”
She couldn’t see the men in the fog but knew they wouldn’t hesitate to run a sword through her guts if they saw her. The bastards are guarding the bell. Time to spring Dak—he’ll know what to do.
Ferret crept away in the fog, searching for the opening in the wall she could slip through, sorely tempted to run away into the night but knowing if she didn’t act, the whole city could be done for.
Chapter 32
Nesnys reveled in the chill air on her face as she glided smoothly through the inky night. She was pleased at what she saw before her. Silver Syllanos had become a black moon, retreating from the sky, the land below lying in deep darkness. Thousands of campfires glowed in the blackness across the rolling plains south of the mighty Black Channel, her forces stretching away to the south and east. North of the river was the encampment of the Ammon Nor garrison. The army of the king of Ketania had nearly arrived, camped about five miles from the garrison along the road to Llantry. In the morn, the forces would unite and march across the Black Channel to face her army.
Her intentions were for that plan to never come to fruition. The Ketanians had mustered an impressive force, over twelve thousand strong combined, and they had the familiarity with the terrain and the motivation to defend hearth and home. The invasion would prove long and costly. The Nebarans could eventually prevail with their greater numbers, she assumed, barring any unforeseen circumstances, but the fighting would be long and grueling, and they would pay dearly for every pace of ground they conquered. Nesnys didn’t particularly care about the humans’ losses one way or the other, but such a timeline didn’t suit her plans.
No, I must deliver a stunning defeat to these Ketanians. Thus, my Inquisition and soldiers shall have free reign to trample this land beneath the soles of their boots and shake every bush and kick in every door. Pain and misery will flourish, and Neratiri’s whelp will be driven out of hiding.
General Leodegar had failed to secure the ford with the vanguard of her army, and they’d been defeated more than a week past. The result wasn’t unexpected, but the gamble had been a worthwhile one even though it had failed. At least the general had the good grace to die in the battle, likely fearing Nesnys’s wrath more than the tip of a Ketanian spear.
Nesnys pursed her lips, briefly considering what she had seen in the city of Ryedale earlier that week. After losing contact with her inquisitor Tellast, she had sent Scaixal to investigate. A mage of some considerable talent had wiped out Tellast’s unit of inquisitors, who had been operating from that city. The handiwork was crude but effective. She had flown there to see for herself the destruction wrought, and she rather fancied the grotesque stone sculpture that had been formed—a great earthen hand twice the height of a man, with the crushed and mangled bodies of the inquisitors within, stained dark with blood and the occasional white shard of bone poking free. The sight of mortals returned to the dust in such a brutal fashion was starkly beautiful.
Upon her direction, Scaixal dragged a number of villagers into the square until she found a couple believable witnesses. The mortals were more than happy to talk, their tongues loosened by fear of Nesnys and Scaixal combined with the promise of coin.
“A young man it was—his eyes blazing like Shaol himself!” one of the local men had claimed. “I saw him wave his hands, and the crowd was swept aside like a wave crashing on a shore. I was lucky to just not get between him and those inquisitors.” The man had fled the scene before actually witnessing the battle, but Nesnys had no doubt the young mage had been the one responsible for the stone fist.
“I looked out my window and seen that inquisitor racing down the lane as if all the demons of the Abyss was snappin’ at his heels!” a washerwoman said. “A lot of good it did him though—he suddenly got split in twain, him and that horse o’ his, like they was on some god’s butcher block. Splat, just like that!” There was a certain satisfaction in the woman’s eyes when she said that.
Nesnys found the rotting remains of Tellast and his mount lying in the middle of the street, bloated and maggot infested. The entire town of superstitious fools had left the dead to rot where they had fallen, terrified of the “deviltry” that had been committed that day.
Descriptions of the mage varied wildly, but the fact that he was a young man with blazing orange eyes rang true, corroborated by several other witnesses. Nesnys was touched by the fact that he had his mother’s eyes, which she remembered very well from their encounter in Achronia.
It shan’t be long till I find our young sculptor—he cannot hide from me forever. First, though, I must wage this war.
Nesnys tucked her wings behind her back and dove low in the sky, gliding over the Ketanian army encampment. Soldiers, weary from a long march, sat around campfires with cook pots, drinking from wineskins and dicing in their downtime. Officers walked among the campfires, checking on their men, while sentries patrolled the camp’s perimeter.
Confident that the army was complacent enough for her plan to work, she banked sharply and headed back across the Black Channel and to the welcome party she had arranged. The Ketanians were assuming that since the river east of the ford was deep and swift, the fight would be at the crossing at Ammon Nor, but they were mistaken. Nesnys had other plans.
“Taananzu, commence with the river crossing. All is in order.” She used her inherent psionic talent to telepathically contact the fiend she had left to direct the Hundred Scorpions.
“So it shall be.” The reply came almost instantly. Taananzu was as eager for bloodshed as she.
Nesnys circled back toward Ammon Nor and was pleased at what she found. Taananzu had summoned a thick magical fog, which flowed north across the ford and into the city
itself. Her first surprise of the night was already underway, soon to be followed by the second, five miles away at the Ketanian king’s army encampment.
When she rendezvoused back at the rally point, Taananzu was already in the midst of spellcasting. The creature seemed heartier, the greater the strife and violence they stoked. Its voluminous robes were filled out, seeming fuller than the scrawny thing it had started as, though no corporeal form was visible within its garments.
Nesnys landed nearby but remained silent so she wouldn’t disrupt the spell. The thousand soldiers—cutthroat killers, in actuality—whom she had selected for the grim task waited a short distance away. Faces were darkened with mud or soot, and they wore no uniforms or armor, instead dressed in all dark clothing to conceal their presence so no armor would jingle or reflect the light. The men’s eyes darted around nervously, filled with unease at the presence of Taananzu. They had come to accept Nesnys as their warlord, but the other demon was simply too alien and frightening to them.
The sickly green glow of Taananzu’s magic illuminated the gorge with the roaring Black Channel. The cloaked fiend stood upon the precipice of the gorge, which dropped off a dozen paces to the swiftly flowing waters below, and a magical green nimbus flowed from the empty arms of its sleeves, matching its flaring green eyes. Its voice was the low, rasping sound of serpents sliding over one another, the words of the fell speech taking form.
After a few moments, the stones on the opposite side of the river, fifteen paces away, bulged and strained upward from the ground. Boulders grated together, and the earth rumbled, audible even over the sound of the roaring river below. Rocks and dirt cascaded into the river as the earthen dome increased in size, thrusting from the ground like some foul birthing. The rocky dome took on a roughly humanoid form, standing on blocky legs as thick as a horse from nose to tail. Long arms dragged the ground, attached to a thick torso of stone mortared with mud. A craggy brow jutted out over cavernous eyes burning with the same sickly green fire as the elemental’s summoner.
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