Rhune Shadow

by Vaughn Heppner

  Their grins vanished.

  “You cannot stay here,” the oldest brother said.

  “I’m sorry,” Elissa said.

  He blinked, lowered his head, nodded, and drew his hatchet. Behind him, his brothers did likewise. They moved toward her.

  “I am a Rhune,” she said. “You cannot kill me.”

  The oldest brother paused. He led the way, so the others were forced to pause, too. “If you escape,” he said, “the Tyrant will slay two of us.”

  “So don’t go back,” Elissa said.

  “Our brother—”

  “Would understand,” Elissa said.

  Once more, he lowered his head and soon shook it. “There are three of us and only one of you.”

  “One Rhune,” she said.

  He resumed advancing. So did his brothers.

  Elissa pushed away from the wall and retreated around the tower.

  The brothers followed, and stopped in shocked surprise. Five Karchedonian soldiers with shields and spears stood before Elissa.

  “What does this mean?” the oldest brother asked.

  “The chain is down,” Elissa said. “The way into the quays is open. If I were you, I would tell the Tyrant you slew me while I was trying to escape.”

  “Lie to him?” the oldest brother asked.

  “Does the Tyrant deserve the truth?”

  “What do his actions have to do with our honesty?”

  “You’ll have to decide that for yourself,” Elissa said.

  “You promised us.”

  “Good bye,” she said, “and good luck.”

  The brothers glanced at each other. The youngest shouted and hurled his hatchet. A soldier stepped up and with a clang intercepted it with his shield. The hatchet clattered onto the paving.

  “You tried.” Elissa felt so desperately weary. “Now you’d better go while you still can.”

  The oldest brother gave Elissa the saddest look she had ever seen. He dropped his hatchet. The third brother did likewise. The three of them turned away, ran and dove into the sea.

  -23-

  Himilco cursed under his breath. This was taking too long. He marched beside the Gray Wolf. All around them, Gepids raced from buildings to bushes to trees, to buildings again. They had scouts all around and detoured constantly. Three times, they’d huddled in abandoned buildings as Nasamons galloped past. The last time, a shivering group of Karchedonian women had waited in silence with them.

  “What will happen to us?” one of the women whimpered to Himilco after the immediate danger had passed.

  He’d torn himself free from their clutching hands and silently stumbled back onto the street.

  “We should blast straight through,” Himilco now told the Gray Wolf.

  “They’re horsemen,” the Gray Wolf rumbled. “Once they know about us, they can gallop ahead and set up a barricade. Or they can climb houses and rain javelins on our heads.”

  Himilco stumbled with weariness and fright. “You should have killed Dabar.”

  The Gray Wolf shrugged with a jangle of mail.

  Part of Himilco wilted at the obvious evidence of the diminution of his power. Another part seethed. The Gray Wolf would not have dared shrug yesterday. How could everything have dissolved so quickly? It was the Prophetess. She was mad. She should have feted him, not tried to sacrifice him to the god. He had given her the city. He’d given her access to Bel Ruk. Maybe he should have dealt with the war-chieftain instead. That old war leader was calculating and cunning, the kind of man who understood deals, who understood that you should reward traitors.

  Himilco wearily shook his head. He wasn’t a traitor. He was a clear thinker. He—

  “Fire,” the Gray Wolf said.

  Before Himilco could ask where, a barbarian ran down the street. He soon stood panting before the Gray Wolf.

  “The quays are on fire,” the scout said.

  “What?” Himilco cried.

  “It’s worse than that,” the scout said. “They have broken inside.”

  “This morning, the Karchedonians still manned the walls,” Himilco said.

  Another scout dashed to them. “War-galleys flood the harbor.”

  “Are you mad?” Himilco cried. “What is this?”

  “I climbed up there.” The scout pointed at a towering obelisk. “The war-galleys are packed with the Tyrant’s soldiers.”

  Himilco groaned. He shook his head. Everything conspired to ruin him all at once. He buried his face in his hands.

  “Did you see into the quays?” the Gray Wolf asked.

  “There’s fierce fighting,” the scout said, “the Nasamons against the Tyrant’s soldiers.”

  It took Himilco a moment to understand his words. He lifted his face out of his hands. “What did you say?”

  “The allies have turned on each other.”

  Himilco blinked, but the accumulated fatigue and the fear of these past hours had finally dulled his wits. He stared at his cavalry boots. “That’s it then,” he said. “I’m finished, dead. We’re all dead, and after all I’ve done.”

  “Should I climb back up there?” the scout asked. “Take another look?”

  The Gray Wolf clamped a huge hand around Himilco’s arm. He marched Himilco to a fountain and leaned him against the basin.

  Himilco looked up with a hopeless stare. “They blocked my route. It’s as if powers are arranged against me, determined to keep me in this hellhole.”

  The Gray Wolf yanked a knife from his wrist sheath.

  Himilco’s eyes widened. His chin quivered. “Not you too,” he whispered.

  Impassively, the giant Gepid unhooked a small bag from his belt. With his teeth, he tore off the string. Ever so carefully, the huge barbarian poured a grainy black powder onto the blade of his knife. He dropped the empty bag and, with his now-empty massive hand, grasped the top of Himilco’s head. The priest whimpered. In response, the Gray Wolf’s face became stony. He gripped Himilco’s head and brought the blade lengthways under Himilco’s nose.

  “Breathe deeply,” the Gray Wolf said. “Snort it. All of it. Or I’ll ram my knife into your belly and leave you here to bleed to death.”

  Himilco inhaled sharply. Black powder of the lotus disappeared from the blade. Himilco’s head jerked, but the Gray Wolf’s grip held tight. Himilco began to twitch. His eyelids fluttered. He moved his mouth back and forth. He might have collapsed. The Gray Wolf had already sheathed the dagger and now held Himilco up, the one hand still clamping the short man’s head and the other now gripping one arm.

  Strength soon returned to Himilco’s legs. He tried to nod.

  The Gray Wolf released him.

  “I didn’t know you had any,” Himilco whispered.

  “Before you ran out, I took a bag from your room,” the Gray Wolf said. “I took it for such a time as this.”

  Himilco swallowed in a dry throat and laughed.

  “Are we defeated?” the Gray Wolf asked.

  Himilco looked at him with shining eyes. “No. I have a plan.”

  Himilco ran a hand over his bald pate. He stepped toward the waiting scouts. Then he stopped and looked up at the Gray Wolf. He nodded slightly.

  The Gray Wolf’s impassive face showed nothing, although there was a fierce light in his barbaric blue eyes and an all but imperceptible return of the nod.

  “We must return to the Temple Mount,” Himilco said, “to the Great Temple as quickly as possible.”

  The Gray Wolf blew into his cupped hands, making the sound of the northern loon. From all around, Gepids appeared, drawing knives and long-swords. The Gray Wolf shouted orders. They began to form into a boar’s wedge formation, aimed at the heart of Karchedon, the Temple Mount.

  -24-

  Elissa was amazed as she stood upon the battlements of the war harbor.

  Giant galleys jammed the docks and the open waters of the square-built quay. More of the Tyrant’s galleys waited at the entrance. Soldiers climbed down from the packed ships and int
o waiting launches. They were ferried toward the docks. Some soldiers in their heavy armor leaped across open water to land with what surely must have been a crashing jar. They raced to their embattled brethren.

  “You’re a genius,” the white-bearded magistrate said.

  Elissa shook her head.

  “You have your father’s cunning,” he added.

  She heard the admiration in his voice. It was an elementary plan that should have worked maybe one time in five. She’d never expected this. She frowned. She was dead tired. Her mind was fuzzy. She wanted to sleep for a month. Yet something nagged at her. She peered past the fighting, past the wall that separated the quays from the city proper and up at the Temple Mount in the middle of Karchedon. It startled her to see an eerie, eldritch glow at the top of the two-hundred-foot acropolis.

  “Look,” she said, pointing there.

  “What?” the magistrate asked.

  “The strange glow,” she said.

  His armor creaked as he glanced at her. “Maybe it is time you chose a ship,” he said.

  “You don’t see it?” she asked.

  “I see our captured acropolis,” he said. “What else should I see?”

  She actually rubbed her eyes. It was still there. Did she see a glow because she was tired?

  No, the troubadour said in her mind. You’re seeing with the eyes of a Rhune.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “What is what?” the magistrate asked.

  Choose a ship, the troubadour said in her mind. It’s time to flee Karchedon for good.

  “Madam Magonid,” the magistrate said. “I’m going to insist you choose a ship. This wall won’t be safe much longer.”

  Elissa nodded absently. Below them in the quays, the Tyrant’s soldiers waged bitter war against the howling sons of the desert. It had been her idea, a clever one. It was why the magistrate had ordered his men to lower the sea-chain.

  Some of the foreigners docked in the quays had proven stubborn and refused to cooperate. Most of those were dead now, slaughtered aboard their merchant ships. The magistrate had not ordered that. The Tyrant’s soldiers had done the deed.

  The plan had been simple. Its execution had been a matter of exquisite timing. Soldiers, merchants and Karchedonian citizens who had fled into the quays had dragged as many merchant ships as possible. They had towed and rowed them through the narrow channel into the war harbor. At the same time, soldiers had marched out of the walled compound into the city proper in search of Nasamons to butcher. The desert sons had been easy to find.

  Rams horns had soon wailed, summoning more Nasamons. They had boiled out like bees from a threatened hive. Successive charges had forced the massed Karchedonians back behind the quay’s walls. With their blood whetted, the desert sons had charged the wall that separated the city proper from the quays. Some had hurled hooks onto the battlements and shimmied up the knotted ropes. Others had used wooden furniture and rammed the pieces against hastily shut gates.

  Then, as a Rhune might say, the gods of luck had granted them a stunning roll of the dice of fate. The first quinqueremes had already nosed past the lowered chain into the strangely empty quay. Delium captains had seen the last merchant ships escaping into the war harbor. Karchedonians had madly cranked the wheel that had closed the heavy gates to the channel between harbors.

  Then the stubborn foreign merchants had finally recognized their error. They had scrambled to ready their ships for sail.

  Maybe that was what had goaded the Tyrant’s captains. They’d surged into the quay. No doubt, each captain had wished to be the first to board a ship in order to claim it as his war prize. That quickness allowed many arrogant galleys to sail into Karchedon’s trading heart.

  Meanwhile, the last city soldiery had hurried through narrow doors into the war harbor’s battlements. Behind them howled the blood-maddened Nasamons. Some daring desert son had opened a gate from the city into the quays. Horsemen had surged through. Likely, most of them had retold each other a thousand times during the siege the legends of Karchedon’s wealth in trade. Now, at last, they had broken into the quays. Warriors had furiously galloped to the storehouses and other buildings, each wanting to be the first warrior to pluck them clean.

  Elissa had witnessed the first clash. Greedy Delium soldiers had already begun to ransack storehouses from the direction of the quay. Then howling Nasamons had erupted from hidden lanes. Maybe the Nasamons had believed the Tyrant’s soldiers were Karchedonians. They’d attacked with wild cries and daring tactics. They’d hurled javelins at soldiers who had left their shields behind to carry more plunder. The Nasamons had lit off their nimble steeds. With frenzied courage, the mantle-clad warriors had drawn their knives and plunged them into exposed Delium throats.

  The abomination born of that misunderstanding had created the bedlam Elissa now witnessed. Javelins rattled against bronze shields. Spears hammered helmets, punched through elephant-hide shields and cracked bones. Nasamons swarmed the soldiers. With teeth gleaming and eyes bulging, they gripped shield edges and yanked them down. Others grappled hand-to-hand with the taller, stronger men of Delium. Lariats snaked over flowing horsetail helmets to land around necks. Stallions galloped, and shouting champions dragged clanking, clattering soldiers through the storehouse lanes.

  Then, a wall of soldiers appeared. Into the narrow lanes they charged with spears lowered. They drove cloth-clad Nasamons before them. The desert fallen met a swift death. When a soldier walked over a Nasamon, the soldier used the spike on the other end of his spear and jabbed it into flesh.

  Other Nasamons quickly clambered up the storehouses and rained javelins down on the phalanx.

  “They’re gripped with madness,” Elissa said.

  “It’s called fighting,” the magistrate said. “And it is a form of madness, I suppose. Without it, all men would run in terror from battle. Now go. You’ve done enough for today. My ship is over there. I want you aboard it.”

  Elissa nodded wearily. She turned from the mayhem she’d helped create. The soldiers couldn’t win this fight. They were too few, and they kept entering the battle piecemeal. Still, with the amount of blood shed between the two, it should create hatred one side for the other.

  It wasn’t over yet, she knew. The Tyrant needed to commit all his dreaded galleys into funneling more soldiers, and maybe his hireling archers, into the quay.

  Elissa carefully climbed down a ladder. The war harbor was jammed with merchant ships and the few still-useable triremes. Soldiers, merchants and citizens flailed with picks at the northern wall. One group of merchants had found a ram. They wheeled it into position.

  It was a desperate idea. And it would take time, maybe too much time. The idea was to create a new opening into the war harbor, one that led directly out into the Great Sea. If the battle lasted long enough in the quays, if the Tyrant committed his quinqueremes to ferrying soldiers there, or if he sailed away in disgust, the people here had a chance of sailing to safety. That slender chance was enough to make those down there work like feverish demons, swinging picks and hauling broken bricks and stone.

  Elissa glanced once more at the Temple Mount. The weird glow was still there. She wasn’t seeing it just because she was exhausted. Something sinister was taking place up there. She half-believed it was what caused the Nasamons and the Tyrant’s soldiers to fight with such crazed fury. There was a madness loose in Karchedon that had not been here before.

  Elissa shuddered, and she almost toppled over. Then she focused her weary mind on getting down to the magistrate’s galley.

  -25-

  “Prophetess,” a strangely bright-eyed Himilco said.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Thirmida said. She wore her peacock robe and clutched a small wooden box. An attendant was combing her long hair.

  Javan burst into the carpeted chamber. He gripped a knife with fierce resolve. Three other nomads followed. They were the three that had guarded Himilco last night. Each of them seemed gri
mly determined as well.

  “Stand aside, Prophetess,” Javan said through clenched teeth.

  Thirmida blinked slowly as if her mind was sluggish. “You hold a knife, cousin.”

  Javan pointed it at Himilco. “He’s a traitor. Now he’s about to die.”

  Thirmida seemed to struggle with the concept. Finally, she stamped her foot. “Put that away. And don’t ever say that again. He serves Bel Ruk. That precedes all other considerations.”

  Himilco nodded knowingly.

  “Outlanders laid hands on me,” Javan snarled. “His servants held us, allowing this snake to enter your chamber. The war-chieftain has ordered this traitor—”

  Thirmida raised the small box in anger.

  Something in the motion arrested Javan’s speech. He lowered his knife, although he refused to sheathe it. “The war-chieftain has ordered us to slay this conniving Karchedonian on sight.”

  Thirmida lowered the box as she frowned. She seemed to search for words, finally saying, “I thought you were loyal to me.”

  “I am loyal,” Javan said. “But Thirmida—”

  “How dare you? Don’t you know who I am now?”

  It took Javan a moment, as he looked upon his cousin with surprise. “Prophetess,” he said. “The Karchedonian ran away in disguise. He slew Nasamons—”

  “That’s a lie,” Himilco said. His eyes were as bright as ever and he had a half-smile on his wan face. He’d begun to wonder what was in Thirmida’s box.

  “Dabar swears—” Javan said.

  “Dabar stole from me,” Himilco said, interrupting. “He stole from me because he has a demon in his heart. He must return my item or face Bel Ruk’s anger.”

  “Don’t listen to the priest,” Javan told Thirmida. “He’s a snake, a liar and a murderer. He must die. He slew—”

  “Silence,” Thirmida said.

  “Please, Prophetess,” Javan said. “Don’t let him spew his lies. He’s played us for fools. The war-chieftain says—”

  “You listen to me,” Thirmida said, and there was a new note of confidence in her voice. “The war-leader serves Bel Ruk just as I do. This is supposed to be a glorious moment. Yet, look at us. We’re bickering among ourselves. Don’t you see what’s happening? The others have let their jealousy run amok. We Nasamons have always distrusted outlanders. With Bel Ruk’s help, I have learned to see more deeply. Who told us last night that we needed to help the old Prophetess? The suffete did.”