Shadowmage

by Max Keith

  A second arrow, whistling in through the night.

  A howl from Firkis.

  The whispering, ugly slither of a blade passing through somebody’s body; a sick gagging noise followed hard on its heels.

  A shadow passed quickly into the room, a dagger catching the wan light.

  And then, the words squeezing themselves from Poildrin’s parchment throat, the spell hit.

  The force of it was quite unintended, catching Alorin just as she began to retrieve her blade from the body wrapped around it, and sending her shrieking into the far wall with her prey. They landed halfway out the door. The other man, with the dagger, smashed hard against the doorjamb, grunting with an unexpectedly soft voice, and at long last Aimee’s bowstring snapped another bolt out the window. She was rewarded by a cry from out there, and then Alorin was up, her man gasping and writhing at her feet, to seek a new foe. Firkis lunged blindly toward the door to back her up, and now Poildrin, his ears ringing and his vision doubled, muttered a simple spell that gave him a ball of weird blue light, dancing in his left hand; his right was sweeping across the floor in wide arcs, looking for his blade.

  And it was all over in that short space of time, the frightened cries of fleeing men filling the night as lamps flickered on in nearby houses. Slowly, the softer sensations began to emerge, as they always did after a battle; the gasps as Aimee struggled to get the crossbow cocked again, the blue light falling on limbs moving in slow motion, the thick mewling of a man with a belly full of blood, a quick tight whimper from Firkis, his hand at the side of his head with blood gushing from between his fingers, the smells of blood and shit from a wounded man’s bowels.

  Drinn of Fiveoaks would have been rushing out into the night, shouting a hoarse battle cry while trying to claw a proper sword out of his sheath; Alorin just crouched in the doorway, her sleek body edged in the weak silvery moonlight, peering down at the man she’d stabbed. Poildrin looked away; he knew she’d be trying to figure out whether he’d survive. If not, there were steps she’d need to take; the mage had seen her do it before, and had scant interest in seeing it again.

  Aimee threw the crossbow to the straw, her hair even more wildly disheveled than usual, the waves and curls flying everywhere as she glared over at Poildrin. “What happened to not striking until two of them were in the room? I did not need to be awakened by an arrow parting my hair.” She was shaking.

  The mage looked sullenly over at the door, his eyes sorting themselves out and the ringing at last fading in his ears. “I see two men that came in,” he pointed out irritably. “The rest took care of itself.” The man with the dagger lay brokenly in the corner, flailing his arms like a weak bird. “Go see to the wounded. There’ll be at least three, from the sound of things.” He needed the man with the dagger to be Florin, otherwise his prediction would have been proven false. He’d look like an idiot.

  “Motherfuckers!” came a shout from outside the shed, but Poildrin paid it no mind; this was not a band of killers. These were townfolk, expecting an easy night of mayhem, no doubt having been promised free beer by Florin. They would not come back. The blue light flickered as Poildrin reached for Aimee’s pack to dig out her oil lamp; the ball of blue light looked mysterious and awe-inspiring to the non-magical, but to him it merely meant another headache.

  “Will he live?” Alorin’s voice from the doorway was urgent, for her odd homeland’s weird customs said she could not kill a man without first emptying his balls. This could be done in several ways, but most of the ones she used after stabbing a man did not bear watching. “I tried to miss the liver but, you know, in the dark…”

  “Shut up.” The groaning heap on the ground was now in her care, and Aimee was not interested in having her patient’s scrotum slashed open. “He’ll be fine once I’m through with him. Go clean your sword or something.” The valkyrie’s eyes were unreadable in the dark as they passed over Aimee’s face, but she simply nodded and drifted off outside, keeping to the shadows.

  Firkis’ face, pale and fearful came into soft orange focus as the oil flame grew. “What happened?” Poildrin asked, reaching out gently to pry the smith’s fingers from the side of his head. “Is it bad?”

  “I don’t know.” Firkis was prodding his ear gently. “My eyes don’t reach that far around.” The lamp, lifted beside the big man’s face, showed the shredded stump of his upper ear, sending a steady flow of rich blood into his beard. “I think it was the second arrow,” he added in wonder. “It should have gone through my eye.”

  “But it didn’t.” Poildrin usually chose to be brisk at moments like this. “You’ll be fine, but uglier. Sit and rest in the corner until Aimee can get to you.” He saw Alorin go darting past outside, crouching with her shortsword held low. “We’ll be fine now,” he added vaguely, and then it was the turn of the man with the dagger.

  The mage was relieved when the flickering flame of the lamp showed bristly red side-whiskers. “Up, innkeeper,” he said roughly, kicking at the man’s belly. “You’re not seriously hurt.” He noticed the dagger, forgotten on the ground, and his foot sent it skittering across the earth until a clump of straw stopped it. “Come on.”

  “Shit,” Florin said thickly. He lifted an arm painfully high to rub at his neck. “What happened?”

  “I blew you into the wall.” Poildrin stood, looking down impatiently while the taverner glared up into the lamplight. “We’ll discuss a refund when you feel up to it,” he added nastily. “I don’t think my companion Firkis is satisfied with your hospitality.”

  Florin went very still at that, and then smiled unexpectedly. “I knew I was right. You’re not woolen merchants from the lowlands.” His eyes glimmered as he stared at the mage. “We thought you might come this way.”

  Poildrin frowned. There was suddenly something very important here. He shook off his headache and paid attention, summoning all his senses back to their duty. “We,” he said flatly.

  “We.” Florin got his butt underneath him against the wall gathering his knees to his chest with a harsh grimace. “Word spreads fast in these hills.”

  Poildrin thought about Aimee’s lengths of cord, but something told him this man did not need to be bound. Florin sat calmly, recovering, eyeing the mage. At length, he nodded to himself. “I think we can both see that neither of us is what we might seem.”

  The mage rolled his eyes, and made sure the big man saw it. “You seem unimpressive, innkeeper.” From outside the window, he heard Alorin’s voice, hushed and slow. Aimee was finishing up with the ashen fellow in the doorway; by lifting the lamp, Poildrin saw that he was barely a boy. “Unimpressive,” he repeated. “And foolish. You send a boy through the door first?”

  Florin glanced sideways, considering. He nodded to himself. “My sister’s boy, Inno. He’s a worthless piece of shit. Got taken up for theft last month; going first was what we told him he needed to do to avoid losing a finger.” He shrugged, wincing slightly. “Atonement’s a bitch.”

  “May lose more than a finger,” Poildrin murmured, thinking of Alorin Kaye and her little knife. “Will he live, Aimee?”

  The healer’s gaze was brief and cool in the lamplight. “He will if we keep him away from Alorin.”

  “I heard that,” came the valkyrie’s voice from the other side of the house. “When you’re through with him, you might want to come see to this one. You put a bolt through his cheek.”

  Aimee frowned. “What, his ass?” she called.

  “No.” Alorin’s voice, endlessly patient, showed no emotion. “The real cheek. The fool had his mouth open, or you’d have taken off his jaw.”

  “I guess I’m lucky, then.” The voice was bitter, the pronunciation sounding like the speaker was chewing on his own tongue. They heard a smack. “Ow!”

  “Or I could just kill you now. You choose.” They heard the sound of Alorin getting to her feet and brushing off her nightdress. “I’ve things to do, knave.”

  Florin had been listening closely, and now
he stared hard at Poildrin. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Someone who does not intend to answer harsh questions from a man who just tried to kill us,” snapped the mage.

  “You’re on my property,” Florin grated. “I’ve a right to defend my own from ruffians in the hills.” He looked pointedly at the blade in Poildrin’s hand. “I’d say you folk aren’t pure as the driven snow, either. And this is my village, not yours. So if you’re not going to put us all to the sword,” he spat, “tell me who you are.”

  Poildrin considered. He remembered what he and Alorin had said to each other before dinner, and took a small gamble. “What did Jerren say about us?”

  The breath, harshly indrawn, told the mage he’d hit the mark, and he nodded to himself. Perfect. This fat innkeeper would spend the rest of his days telling the story of how a shadowmage had read his mind. He watched as the man stroked his sideburns, pondering at some length. “All right,” he allowed. “It seems perhaps I was wrong to attack you.”

  “Apology accepted. I’ll have my gold back, too.”

  The innkeeper snorted. “No thank you. Not all of it; I stabled your horses well, and you’ll pay for it. And breakfast.” He did the math swiftly in his head. “Six mergansers.”

  “Four,” the mage said at once. “Our horses are well-behaved.”

  “Five.” Florin leaned forward. “Five, and I’ll give you some information.” He waited while Poildrin digested that. “I’m a rather special man, hereabouts,” he went quietly on. “A man who might be useful to you.”

  “Doubtful.” Poildrin sat, carefully. A man had come sidling slowly up out of the night, his hands spread before him, and had waited for Aimee’s nod before dragging the pale, whimpering boy away. Behind them, the healer was tending to Firkis, and Alorin remained casually thumbing her blade by the door. She stared balefully after the man who dragged the boy toward the houses below. “Well?” he said at last, leaving his dagger stuck into the dirt near at hand. The lamp he set behind him for Aimee.

  Florin gathered himself together, thought about what he should say, and in the end just decided to plunge in. “It’s like this,” he began. “I’m not a wise man, but I’m a loyal one. I grew up when the Starkhorn belonged to your King, and then when I was a young man the Emperor took over. I didn’t like that much. His men paid nothing, and their patrols were worse than yours.”

  “Killings?”

  “Rapes.” Florin’s thick face hardened. “Burnings. They’d steal our livestock and cut our hands off if we objected. So, when you Royals took the fortress back, oh, perhaps ten years ago? Things went well, for a time.” Poildrin looked away, knowing what he’d hear next. The Imperials had come back, a sneak attack from an unexpected direction, while he and the Princess had dispatched Drinn and Cashel to warn the garrison. He’d have been better off sending a dog and a parakeet. The two had spent one day too many, whoring down in Port Forwin, and by the time they’d come slogging up the pass the fort was already an Imperial stronghold again. “So then the Emperor’s boys came back, and now we’re through getting hassled.”

  “His patrols. How often do they come here?” It was good information, he knew, with the King sending another army to take the place. If Traxtell’s plot failed, the siege would still go on. The Royal general would want to know how the Starkhorn’s scouts worked.

  “Less often than they used to.” Florin paused, his eyes narrowing. “We found a patrol, late in the spring, and sent them back down to the fortress. Their heads, anyway. In a bag, in the hands of the youngest among them.” He smiled slowly. “We’re no longer interested in being pushed around up here.”

  The mage paused. “Hard to imagine the Imperials approved of that,” he said softly, and Florin’s look hardened.

  “We’re done.” He looked away into the shadows. “They come up here in force every now and again, and kill or burn or steal, but now we’ve a chief who knows how to make them hurt.” He looked fiercely back at Poildrin. “You see, we’re getting bolder too. We’ve even got people inside the fortress itself, making mischief. Why, just last week my own daughter was down there, gathering information.”

  The mage went still. “A chief,” he mused carefully. He looked once more at Florin, then nodded. “A short one? Dark hair?” Florin cocked his head. “Green eyes, perhaps?”

  The taverner looked at Poildrin for a long time, then bowed his head. “I was foolish tonight,” he admitted. “I wasn’t sure about you, but she said to watch for you. I thought she meant you were dangerous.”

  “We are.”

  “No. Not the way the Imperials are.” He sighed heavily. “You’ll want me to take you to her in the morning, I expect, after this.”

  Poildrin tried to ignore the sudden quickening of his heartbeat. “I suppose that would be the wise thing to do,” he agreed diffidently. He decided a gesture of goodwill was called for. “And keep the six gold pieces. Give four to your sister’s son and the other two to the man we shot in the face.” He jerked a head out the window. “The person we had on the crossbow,” he allowed, “might not have been the most experienced sort. But if your nephew survives, it’ll be because of her.”

  “Surely.” Florin got slowly and warily to his feet, still rubbing his shoulder. “I’m off to bed, then. I’ll see you're not disturbed further.” Their eyes met. “If you’ll still trust to my hospitality, I mean.”

  “We’ve little choice.” Truly, what were they to do? These were the high, trackless mountains, in the middle of the night. Leaving now was out of the question; the horses would need to be roused and saddled, and Firkis needed attention. “Until morning then, innkeeper.”

  Florin nodded, then went off to collect the man with the hole in his cheek.

  When the mage returned to the far corner, where the fragments of the burst arrow still lay scattered around, Firkis looked hopefully up at Aimee in the guttering lamplight. “Can you find the… well, the other piece?”

  She frowned, mixing a small poultice in her little bowl. “Piece?”

  “The… the rest of it. Of my ear.” He was glancing around in the shadowy straw, and Aimee simply stared.

  “Firkis, love,” she said softly, “no. I’m not crawling around in the dark, in the straw, looking for half your ear.” She gave her queer little half-shrug, the one she saved for patients who, she felt, needed no comfort. “Besides, it’s probably already started drying out. If I sewed it back on now, it’d just rot away again.” She looked critically at him. “You’ll be fine,” she went on, with an encouraging smile. “Some women will even find you more attractive!”

  The hope in his eyes was so pitiful, Poildrin thought, that the poor man would have gladly given the other ear if it meant Aimee would fuck him. He squeezed the smith’s shoulder. “Get some rest. We’re leaving when the sun comes up, so try to sleep.”

  Aimee looked quickly up, her finger stirring the mess in her bowl. “And me?”

  The mage sighed. “We’ll be fine. No more trouble from the locals tonight. Myself and the innkeeper have an understanding.” He rose, then crossed back over to the door. Alorin remained there, carefully on guard. “Dawn,” he told her shortly. “We go to find the woman from the waterfall.”

  Grey eyes swept briefly over his face. “Looking to get laid or something?”

  “She’s some sort of rebel leader,” Poildrin replied, ignoring the jest. “No doubt if we’ve got mischief to make up here, we can make more with her than we can without her.”

  The valkyrie shrugged. “Sounds reasonable,” she allowed. She glanced back into the night. “They won’t be coming back, you know.”

  Poildrin nodded, his hearing at last back to normal. “I’ll put it this way: I plan on sleeping long and soundly.”

  “Then I do, too.” Alorin was warrior enough to know you get your rest wherever you can. For that matter, so was Poildrin.

  Six

  The track to Upper Thead was the worst they’d traveled so far, plainly meant for nothing
larger than mules. So they’d left the horses down below, in Florin’s stable. For free.

  “The Imperials don’t really come up past timberline,” the innkeeper pointed out. Indeed, the trees had dwindled down to mere clumps of green on the yellow-grass slopes. “It’s why we keep her up here, despite the fact that Upper Thead’s nought but a few huts and some tailings.”

  “Sounds thrilling.” Aimee walked alongside Firkis, who was trying to act as though nothing had happened to his ear. A lumpy bandage there was hidden by his shapeless red cap.

  “What’s the price on your chief’s head?” Poildrin hoped he sounded neutral, even uncaring; he had an image to maintain, for all that his head was addled by the near prospect of the woman with the avocado eyes. He’d, of course, woken up with another hard-on. “I’m assuming they know who she is.”

  “One hundred and twenty Imperials.” Alorin, in the rear, gave a low whistle. “In silver, but still. It's more than our whole village earns in a year, and we’re doing pretty well compared to our neighbors.”

  “Hundred and twenty,” Poildrin echoed, and he began to wonder what he was on to. A mountainside rebel in an old mining camp did not merit anywhere near such a bounty. Jerren must be busier than Florin realized. But not busier than the Emperor realized. He cast his mind back twelve years and tried to dredge up what he remembered, what she might not have been telling the truth about: was she some sort of Imperial relative? Highborn, or low? From the Rumps, or the Empire proper? Had she traveled?

  He knew the answers to none of these. Bleakly, he began to wonder whether she’d been some sort of spy, even back then. Even while she was fucking him. Which then raised another kind of question: if so, then why him?

  He’d been nothing back then, as far as he knew. He’d been nothing at all, until the day Stacefield had sent for him. But it had always bothered him a little, the fact that the Princess trusted him so implicitly, so immediately, based on the choice of Stacefield, a man she detested and, in fact, had probably had murdered. He’d asked her about it just last spring, just after the two of them had sent Cashel off on some sort of quest involving a lost shipment of jewels.