Dark Key: Book Two of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  Dark Key

  Book Two of the Phantom Badgers

  By RW Krpoun

  Published by Randall Krpoun

  Copyright 2014 by Randall Krpoun

  ISBN: 9781311854834

  Dedicated to my wife, Ann, and to my long-scattered friends from the glorious days of the UND Raiders.

  A glossary of terms is included at the end of this novel, followed by information on the author.

  Chapter One

  The entire debacle had begun when the scouts had spotted marks where a winch had been spiked to a granite shelf overhanging a deep mountain lake. The Phantom Badgers had just returned to the surface from raiding in the abandoned Dwarven city of Gradrek Helleth, so the lake’s proximity to the abandoned hold had led them to suspect that a party of Dwarves fleeing the lost city had used the winch to hide bulk goods they could not remove. In short, an opportunity for loot.

  Durek Toolsmaster, the Dwarven Captain of the pan-racial mercenary company, had thought it warranted exploration, especially since the pickings in the abandoned Dwarven city had been somewhat lean on this run. Ropes tied to heavy rocks were thrown into the water to let swimmers ‘climb’ down to the bottom twelve feet below, and a tarred keg turned upside down and weighted with rocks held enough air to allow an explorer to stay on the bottom for several minutes. Bridget cast a light-glow upon several stout sticks while Axel had figured out a way to create weighted belts from strips of canvas and rocks. Wheel grease from the cart buckets kept off the worst of the cold, and a raft made from the carts’ tail gates lashed together gave them a platform from which a watch could be kept on the divers.

  Loot had begun coming up from the lake’s gavel bed with regularity: the Dwarves had lowered a supply of ten-pound ingots into the water, loaf-sized lumps of iron, steel, and copper coated in an inch-thick layer of clay to protect them from the water. Dwarven metal had the best refining possible and commanded a solid price in Human lands, so the Badgers set about recovering the ingots with a will.

  The Captain had been taking his turn on the raft while Gabriella dove and the other divers warmed themselves at the fire, lying on his stomach with his short sword in hand, watching for any signs of trouble. The northern waters were home to water drakes, fierce cousins of river pikes who would unpredictably attack anything within their domain regardless of its origin or edibility.

  It was a perfect summer day, the sun was shining from a rich blue sky and the slopes that rose from the edges of the narrow lake were a green sea of quaking aspen, some of the older trees topping a hundred feet in height. Birds darted overhead, squirrels tumbled under the trees, and the water was cool and crystal clear, a good day for a picnic or a pleasant stroll. Or for wrestling valuable ingots out of a lake bed, for that matter.

  He saw the movement first, a flickering to his left that became a silvery-green shape gliding towards where Gabriella was loading ingots into the cargo net they had fashioned out of rope and an extra mule harness. It was a water drake, a twelve-foot arrow of a fish attracted by the movement of the salvage process. Grabbing the light cord attached to Gabriella’s belt, the Captain gave it a tug that should have alerted the woman to the danger, but the line hung limp in his hand.

  Durek took three fast deep breaths and rolled off the raft, his sword and weighted belt dragging him down like a rock even as the drake swept in to attack Gabriella. Dwarf and pike collided two feet short of the dark-skinned knife-fighter who had been unconcernedly wrestling ingots into the cargo net.

  Luck and hasty calculation had brought the two into contact; Durek slammed into the scaly attacker which felt like a log wrapped in good scale armor, the impact costing him a couple stones from his weight-belt and a mouthful of air. The drake twisted and thrashed, shocked at the sudden contact, and Durek flailed frantically at the beast, knowing that if he didn’t get a grip on the creature he would be floating helplessly in the face of a mouth filled with spike-like teeth. His left hand skipped across slick silvery scales, feeling the smooth shift of powerful muscles beneath the armored hide, then suddenly sank into a slit in the beast’s side. Clamping down on this sudden purchase like a vise, the Captain felt feathery scales slapping at the back of his hand and realized he was holding onto the lip of one of the beast’s gills even as the outraged drake snapped its body like a whip and shot off into the middle of the lake.

  Decades of axe and pick work had given the Dwarf a grip and arm strength that was far above the norm for a Man; kicking frantically, Durek moved with the sudden pressure of the passing water into a position parallel to the pike’s body, lying half on top of the creature with his left hand gripping the gill’s lip and his left arm curled around its body in the manner of one cradling a rather larger lover. Hauling himself up along the body against the resistance of water passage, keenly aware that his ability to fight was measured in seconds as his lungs used up their precious cargo of air, the Dwarf shifted his grip on his short sword so the weapon was held point down, and then stabbed the creature with all his strength directly in the top of its body, going for the spine.

  The master-forged Dwarven blade slid through the scales and surface flesh before grating on bone; with the expertise born of dozens of melee actions Durek rocked the blade back and forth without pulling back, the point sliding across bone until it suddenly sunk into softer flesh. Throwing his weight forward, the Captain bore down on the sword as the drake erupted into a wild series of bucks that slammed the Dwarf against its hard body once, twice, three times, until he spiraled off into the dark cold water, his weight belt shedding its cargo of rocks.

  Kicking frantically Durek broke surface, gasping for air, sword still clutched in his right hand. He realized he was near the center of the narrow lake- two hundred yards away Gabriella and Axel were on the raft paddling towards him. With a massive eruption of water the drake leapt clear of the lake twenty feet to his left and fell back with a splash that drenched the already-soaked Captain; seconds later the fish leapt from the water again and twisted madly in the air before crashing back into the water.

  Mystified at the drake’s wild behavior but thankful it wasn’t coming after him, Durek began clumsily dog-paddling towards the raft. The pike continued to hurl itself insanely about the surface of the lake as raft and Dwarf drew together, finally subsiding into limp twitching on the surface as Axel carefully hauled his Caption onto the flimsy craft.

  “What in blazes did you do to it?” the Wizard asked. “I couldn’t see any wounds.”

  “I only got one thrust in...ah,” Durek nodded and held up his sword: the point and over two inches of the blade were gone, snapped off cleanly. “I left the better part of three inches of steel between two joints in its backbone, and I expect all that thrashing around must have worked it in deeper.” Thirty yards away the fish twitched, the movement against the lake’s surface making an odd sound, one very much like wood being rapped.

  “Time to get up, sir,” Gabriella said in a voice too hesitant and young for the vibrant knife-fighter. Durek frowned at the incongruous statement even as the lake and his friends faded away.

  Opening his eyes, he realized he was in a bed in a small room, a rented room in an inn, lit only by a single thin candle in a night-lamp, wearing an old pair of breeches and soft camp shoes, his axe lying across his chest. “Yes, I hear you,” he called thickly, and coughed to clear his throat. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, sir,” the voice on the other side of his door replied, likely a young serving girl; he could hear her moving off down the hall.

  Flipping off the blanket, the Dwarf sat on the edge of the narrow bed and rubbed his face, groggy after the intensity of his dream. Shak
ing his bleary head, he drew the dirk from its scabbard and studied the blade. A master Dwarven sword-smith had been able to put another point on the damaged weapon, reducing the sword down to dirk length and ruining two-thirds of the blade’s engraving while retaining the excellence of the weapon’s edge and temper. The incident with the water drake in his dream was five years past, back in forty-eight, it was, on the same raid in which he had acquired the enchanted axe that lay across his knees. Gabriella was two years dead now, and Axel was still recovering from injuries he had received in the year fifty, yet the memory-dream had been as clear as the day it happened. They had had a fish fry that night, thick white slabs of pike with salt and vinegar, a happy gathering of old comrades, several of whom had since died. He had been awarded the Ruby Claw for saving Gabriella, and he had a couple of the drake’s larger teeth in his quarters back at Oramere.

  He shook his head; the metal in the ingots was sold and long-since made into finished goods, the money was spent, the damage to his blade was repaired, half of those who had been there for that raid were dead or gone on to other endeavors, and the thought of all of it filled him with a bone-deep melancholy. The new Badgers that filled the ranks of his Company didn’t know the story of how their Captain had ridden a water drake, who Gabriella was, or the way the Badgers had managed to lift all those ingots off of a lake-bottom, and that bothered Durek in a way that he couldn’t explain. The good times, the moments of close friendship, shared triumphs, and happy times all seemed so fleeting, so quick to disappear from living memory. Not for the first time did Durek wonder if his people were cursed by their centuries-long life spans, rather than blessed.

  Sighing, he sheathed the blade and bathed as best he could with the cold water in the pitcher, wishing he had remembered to instruct the inn-keeper that the wake-up should be accompanied by a bucket of hot water. Having dressed in wool trousers, stout leather boots, and a black cotton tunic, the Captain carefully brushed and braided his waist-length walnut beard, his close-cropped hair needing no attention other than a good rubbing with a wet cloth; braided into his beard was his brass and silver zurnal, or beard-broach. Finished, he stood and studied his reflection in the battered tin mirror hanging on the wall: a male Dwarf of mature years and hard visage, his beard and hair hardly touched with gray despite over a century’s life having passed, a sturdy figure an inch shy of four and a half feet in height.

  Strapping on the bracer that bore his rank and Company insignia, he buckled on his belt, checked the positioning of his pouch, dirk, and dagger, and shouldered his enchanted long axe Aran Kir Rauko. Ready for the day, he unbarred his door and marched out into the hall. Noises from the adjoining rooms indicated that the rest of his detachment were up and stirring, so he strode down the stairs and across the inn’s common room to take a look outside the doorway to see what the weather was like. Durek was an Umherr, a Dwarf who had left his clan to travel in the lands of Men, aiding the shorter-lived race in the war between Light and the Void, an honored path but also a lonely one. Despite decades spent living above ground, however, Durek retained a Dwarf’s fascination and dread for the vagaries of weather in the outside world, an unconscious nervousness in the face of such a random natural process.

  The eighth of Kammteil (the fourth month of the Imperial calendar) in the fifty-third year of the Third Age had just dawned cool and clear with a brisk breeze blowing from the east off the land-locked Ascendi Sea, carrying with it the scent of salt water and sea life. The red dawn’s light washed over Tarnhen, a port town nestled on the west coast of the Ascendi Sea, a quiet, cheery city of some ten thousand souls.

  After carefully studying the rosy dawn sky for a few moments, nodding to a passing tinker leading a loaded mule towards the city gates, Durek stepped back into the common room and took a seat at one of the battered tables, motioning a serving girl to bring him breakfast, which consisted of a concoction the Arturians called an omelet and fluffy biscuits shaped sort of like a ram’s horn. It was not a bad meal, but the Captain preferred heartier Dwarven fare, or at least the solid breakfasts one got in the Eisenalder Empire where he and his Company normally operated.

  Mid-way through his meal he was joined by Serjeant Dmitri Sergeyevitch Telsehev, a native of southern Kerbia and a professional soldier’s professional soldier. Big and burly, coated in thick red hair from the close-cropped crown of his head to the tops of his toes (a distance of three inches over six feet), his beard worn long, braided, and plaited with good-luck charms whose effectiveness he explained by pointing out that he was entering his fourth decade, Dmitri looked like a man who killed for a living. He wore a battle-scarred breast and back plate over a padded leather shirt whose sleeves and skirts were studded to increase their protective capabilities, leather pants, and stout jackboots; at one glance a viewer could see that Dmitri cared for fashion the way Forest Goblins cared for Lanthrell. A crossbow rode on his back, a thick leather belt covered with brass scales supported a short sword, a fighting knife, and quiver of quarrels, and a massive double-headed battle axe of Dwarven craftsmanship was near to hand.

  The two ate in comradely silence, two vastly dissimilar people joined by a common profession, personal respect, shared hardship, and similar outlooks. Durek drank two more cups of tea while Dmitri worked his way through a second omelet, then paid for both breakfasts. The morning meal dealt with, the two left the inn and headed for the city gates, the streets around them having come to life as the sun cleared the horizon.

  The pair’s destination was a field used for fairs, militia drill, and similar functions on the far outskirts of the city, finding it empty save for a sleeping peddler and his two pack mules. Durek surveyed the expanse of bare ground and shook his head. “I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised; Arturians have no concept of time. ‘We march an hour after dawn’, they say. Here its dawn, and they haven't even gotten to the departure point, much less formed up.”

  Dmitri grunted agreement and followed his Captain as the Dwarf crossed the field and climbed the grassy slope of a gentle knoll that afforded them a good view of the area. Seating himself on a large rock, the Captain drew out his tinderbox and set about lighting a stub of a candle. “There ought to be a better way to start fires,” he remarked as he struck steel and flint together.

  “There ought to be a better way to conduct a raid,” Dmitri shook his head. “Or at least some way to talk that idiot scholar out of this stupidity.”

  Two days earlier the Marquis de Morand had announced that Watchers had warned him of a group of cultists who were raising a force of Direbreed some one hundred miles to the west in the foothills of the Thunderpeak Mountains, and proclaimed his intention to lead a punitive expedition to destroy them. It had sparked enormous excitement within Tarnhen: flags and patriotic bunting were flown, rousing statements were made with much pounding of bar tops, old battles and deeds of heroism were recalled, and the garrison enjoyed its greatest popularity in living memory. In all, the city seemed glad of the entire undertaking, which promised to enliven an otherwise ordinary spring. The Badger detachment had received the news without much concern either way: they were going north, not west, and other people’s wars were not their problem unless they were paid to take an interest.

  “He’s not daft, just completely ignorant of what a battle really is, because he’s read a hundred books about war but has never swung a blade or seen a charge coming at him. This expedition might be a good thing: it’ll give him a taste of the business before we head into the wild lands, and keep him out from underfoot while we do the rest of our research. I do hate splitting our group, however.”

  The big Kerbian grunted noncommittally and settled back on the grass, spreading a clean handkerchief across his face. Presently a soft snore rumbled from his motionless form.

  Having coaxed a small ball of oily raw wool to catch fire from the sparks he had been making, the Dwarf quickly lit a candle stub from the burning wool, then used the candle to light his pipe. Dmitri was right: it would have been
better if Maximilian von Sheer IV, their paymaster at the moment, had not insisted upon accompanying the Marquis’ expedition, but there were few clear arguments available to sway the scholar from the undertaking. After all, he had hired a section of the Phantom Badgers as guards to protect him while he explored the eastern edge of the civilized lands; what would be more natural than accompanying such an expedition?

  It was playing a double-blind that did it, of course: if this were just a straightforward escort and guard job Durek would have done it differently. After all, it was Maximilian's idea to accompany the punitive expedition in the hopes of getting a stirring front-row seat to a grand military triumph, ignoring the learned opinion of the experts he had hired for protection who had warned him the expedition’s outcome might very well amount to something less than victory. Normally the Captain would have assigned him two Badgers with enough woodcraft to escape and evade should the expedition stick its collective neck into a trap, which, given the Arturian ways of warfare had a better-than-fair chance of happening. If they got the client out that would be nice, but there were always more paymasters, and he had told Maximilian not to go.

  The trouble was that it was not just a simple escort and guard job, rather, the Badgers had taken this job because Maximilian's itinerary took them where they wanted to go without it being obvious that was where they wanted to go. Just thinking about it made Durek's head hurt.

  Some years earlier the Badgers had bagged a petty necromancer for the Imperial bounty on practitioners of the Dark Arts, only to learn that their victim had been a servitor of the White Necromancer. A year or so later they ambushed a group of smugglers who were trading arms north of the Emperor’s Ward, only to find out that the smugglers had been trafficking in human skeletons with the ultimate beneficiary being the White Necromancer. When the Badgers had taken out a secret temple dedicated to the Dark One three years ago, they also managed to capture (and ultimately destroy) six volumes on the Dark Arts that were in transit to the liche, who had already paid a staggering sum for the books in advance.