Dark Key: Book Two of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  “What bit of trash have you dredged up now, writer?” Roger was still grinning. “You could gain employment as a rag picker, it would seem.”

  “An old scabbard, with a bit of belt still attached.” The historian held up the sheath, the leather dried to the consistency of thinly-cut wood.

  “I saw it, no metal on it at all,” the swordsman shrugged. “You’ll not find gold lying about here.”

  “I wasn’t looking for loot,” Maxmillian smiled good-naturedly. “I just wanted a look at it. This trail has seen no end of fighting: Eyade, Hand, Direthrell, fortune seekers, Felher, all sorts of Goblins, Orcs, just about everyone. “

  “And your point is?” Roger sneered.

  “No point, just interest. I keep looking at these sort of things because often they have markings on them, and in the time we’ve been out here I’ve found any number of Eyade items, some Hand of Chaos, a few Direthrell, and so on; I’ve never seen such things before, junk or not. I was hoping that there might be something lost by a Undead since after all, the Sea of Woe is but nine hundred miles from here; the ruined city of Avilia on an island in its center is the hub of the Sundered Gate cult, so it wouldn’t be impossible for a wandering necromancer or vampire to have passed this way...”

  “Vampires,” the bearded Badger shook his head. “You would be less rapt if you’d actually met one of the Anointed of the Night King in person, word-slinger, instead of spending all those years sitting on your fat butt in the heart of the Empire reading books about the world.”

  Maxmillian flushed beet red, crushing the time-rotted scabbard in unconscious fury. Before he could reply Dmitri eased his horse forward to where he could see Roger. “You mean the way you were sitting while we stood off a Darkhost at the Orc fort, Turin? I was there, and no one was just sitting around, you either fought or you died, and some did both.”

  “What, are you his protector now, Dmitri?” Roger snarled. “If not, mind your own business.”

  “I’ve seen the historian fight,” the big Kerbian shrugged unconcernedly. “He doesn’t need a protector. No, I’m just sick of listening to you run your mouth, and I’m considering shutting it for you since Maxmillian is too polite to give you the beating you’ve been needing for the last six hundred miles.”

  The threat, delivered in slow, unhurried words, gave the former Legionnaire pause; Roger was no coward, but neither was he a fool: Dmitri was the type no one really wanted to face in a brawl. The inevitable fight was adverted by Elonia, who, weary of days of bickering, broke the tension with a loud raspberry. “Look at the three of you, bickering and threatening like schoolboys. Why don’t all of you just go behind some bush, drop your breeches, compare sizes, and get on with the mission.”

  Shocked into an embarrassed silence, the three men settled red-faced into their saddles and rode on without another word.

  An hour later Janna spotted the first horseman in the distance while scouting ahead. It was a brief glimpse in the hazy depths of the Plains, but she had lived too long by her instincts to ignore such a hint. The Silver Eagle swung her horse towards the east and moved a few hundred yards out at a walk, watching carefully. The second sighting lasted long enough to get some details, and the third caused her to turn her horse at a trot towards the main body. Pulling her mount alongside Durek, she towered about the komad-riding Dwarf. “We’ve company, Captain,” she gestured towards the east. “Horsemen, a good distance out but pacing us.”

  “Horsemen, good, at least it isn’t Orcs,” the Dwarf nodded. “Direthrell, Eyade, or bandits, do you suppose?”

  “I would guess Eyade from the way they rode,” the Silver Eagle shrugged. “And those bastards are bad news, no matter what we look like.”

  Durek grunted, eyeing his forces: Rolf, Kroh, and Henri were driving wagons, Starr and Bridget were leading the spare mounts, Arian was riding rear guard, and the other four Badgers were a sullen group a hundred yards ahead of the wagons. “Pull everyone in close to the wagons,” he told Janna. “We’ll see what kind of game they’re up to; after all, we’re Gold Serpent now, respected traders in the eyes of most Void-followers.” Turning Brown Axe, his war pig mount, he warned the wagon drivers and horse herders of the new development.

  Twenty minutes later a troop of horsemen suddenly appeared, riding out of a gully that looked too shallow to have hidden their approach; Durek ordered the wagons halted and the oxen tethered, with the mounts picketed behind the wagons. The dismounted Badgers spread out on and in front of the wagons and waited for the horsemen to arrive.

  “Eyade,” Maxmillian observed glumly, absently working his sword-arm.

  “Eyade, eh, word-chaser? Suppose you enlighten those of us who did their fighting elsewhere from this grassy pancake,” Roger drawled, weighing the balance of a javelin in his hand. “Pass on a bit of your experience.”

  “I only know what I read while on my fat butt back in the nice, safe Empire,” the historian glared at Roger. “But I know that the Eyade helped run the Hobrec off these plains, which is no mean endorsement of their fighting skills in and of itself. They are nomads whose lives revolve around their herds of long-horned, long-haired cattle called yalla, which are communally owned. They have no nations, just moorugh, which are clans tied to specific herds, and the yalla are tended by the young and noncombatants who have no rights or protection within the moorugh. Only warriors and a few select skilled persons have any status or rights; those with rights are called birlike, and may own those who have no rights, who are called domuz. The warriors are formed into nokta, warrior societies, groups whose customs and traditions date back centuries; each moorugh will have several different nokta chapters, although no moorugh has all twenty-six nokta represented within their ranks. The Eyade don’t fight much amongst themselves anymore beyond ritualized yalla-stealing as they’ve gone over to the Hand of Chaos to a man, and the Hand keeps them busy, not to mention better-armed than they would be otherwise. They are the greatest light cavalry in the world, and reputed to be the most cruel Humans you could find anywhere. Even the Plains Orcs respect them.”

  “Moo-arrrghs, huh? Named their people after cows,” Roger grinned.

  “I wouldn’t laugh, Roger,” Dmitri observed sourly. “I’ve faced Eyade before, and it’s nothing to look forward to. They’re vicious bastards, fight like madmen, care nothing about losses, and can ride a hundred miles between dawns if they deem it needful. Those pieced clay globes on their saddles are dula, war-whistles they spin when they charge; they make a screeching that you have to hear to believe.” The big Kerbian squinted at the approaching troop. “These would seem to be Moon Howler nokta.”

  “What moo-haha are they from?” Roger was elaborately unconcerned.

  The Serjeant shrugged. “Can’t really tell, but it wouldn’t matter much; moorugh are secondary to the nokta in terms of personal loyalties.”

  “Then why do they bother with the moorughs at all?” Henri asked. “Why doesn't each nokta maintain its own herd and be done with it?”

  Dmitri shrugged, so Maxmillian felt bold enough to answer. “Tradition in part, but the largest part is that the nokta are not just fraternal in nature, but rather represent a mind-set and fighting style which attracts like-minded recruits; for instance, amongst other things these Moon Howlers are known for their intricate, ritualized group rapes conducted by the light of the moon. Each moorugh is led by elders who have left their nokta to lead the herd. This group appears to be of the Starsong moorugh.”

  “Seems to be a lot of astronomic naming to these Eyade,” Henri observed.

  “I imagine after a day spent staring at the south ends of a northbound herd of yalla the Eyade feel like looking up at the stars,” Dmitri chuckled.

  “Ugly bastards, aren’t they?” Durek observed as he trudged up to the group. “Maxmillian, be ready for your Tradesmaster routine.”

  The Badgers watched the troop trot up, weapons to hand, helms on, senses alert. There were twenty-one Eyade mounted on short, shaggy horse
s that looked unkempt and flea-ridden but who also seemed to be keeping up a brisk pace without any signs of strain. Their riders were squat, bow-legged, walnut-brown men with flat features and wispy facial hair. Their hair was shaved on the sides and back with just a filthy patch of black or dark brown hair covering the tops of their skulls. They wore sleeveless leather jacks, some with metal studs or plates for added protection, pointed helms of boiled leather with flaps of leather or mail protecting the sides and back of the neck, and carried lances, horn composite bows, hide shields, and either a lightly-curved sabre or a Orcish renac. Every patch of exposed skin, including their faces and shaved side-scalps, was decorated with tattooed swirls and dots of various sizes; each wore several earrings in their ears plus additional rings in their noses, eyebrows, and lips, as well as necklaces, arm bands, and bracelets in considerable profusion. Lances, shields, and helms bore scalps, strings of fingers, and leathery bits of dried body parts. Their clothing was uniformly made and uniformly filthy: leather boots that reached to mid-calf, snug flannel trousers reinforced with leather on the butt and insides of the thighs, and sleeveless cotton under-tunics to prevent chafing by their armor. They looked dangerous, vicious, and unpredictable.

  Of the twenty-one, eighteen were warriors of the rank-and-file, one bore the group’s standard (a spear-shaft supporting a painted yalla’s skull decorated with hawk’s feathers, and a plank mounted along the shaft that was nearly covered with marks, sigils, and runic carvings), one wore a short cape made from a wolf’s skin and bore no lance, shield, or bow, and an older warrior who, besides more jewelry than any other two warriors, wore a finely worked torc around his neck. The Eyade spread out on line as they approached, shields slung across their backs or hung on their saddles, lances or bows in hand but not at the ready. They did not seem surprised or upset by the Badger’s obviously defensive formation: out here on the Blasted Plains no one trusted strangers.

  “There’s women amongst them,” Bridget marveled. “It’s hard to tell, though: they all wear their hair the same way, and they all look alike.”

  “The Eyade don’t care about what sex you are, they figure if you’re mean enough, you can fight,” Dmitri shrugged. “There’s a couple nokta which are exclusively female, and a couple that won’t take women, I’ve heard. These Moon Howlers, now, they only take pure-blooded Eyade which is why they all look alike.”

  Maxmillian nodded, watch the horsemen ride up. “That’s what I’ve read; I’ve also heard that the jewelry represents honors earned in battle, although I’m not sure how they’re awarded. Who’s the fellow with the wolf’s skin?”

  “Shaman, a practitioner of what we call Torna Inge, or the Gray Art. It skirts the Void on a very narrow path, neither completely evil nor free of Void-taint. You see it amongst some Goblins, primitive Humans, and the Akur.” Henri eyed the shaman from his perch on the central wagon. “Damned hedge-wizard is what he is.”

  “And Torc-boy must be the leader,” Roger grunted. “They’re out here without pack animals, unless they left ‘em in the gully.”

  “No pack animals, the Eyade wouldn’t leave warriors behind to guard them. They travel hundreds of miles without anything more than what is in their saddlebags; odds are good that this is a scouting group out keeping an eye on the approaches to Alantarn for their masters in the Hand.” Dmitri hefted his crossbow, eyeing the line of horsemen.

  The line of riders halted ten yards short of the Badgers, while the leader and the standard bearer, whom they could see was a woman, rode forward to meet Maxmillian and Durek, who had walked a few paces out from their fellows. Maxmillian called a greeting in Pradian; the leader shrugged and replied in a language neither Badger understood. Maxmillian shrugged elaborately and tried Arturian with no luck, and could not understand the leader’s second try in another language.

  “This is going nowhere fast,” Roger observed, eyeing the horsemen, who were chattering amongst themselves. “Looks like that one thinks your bow is funny, Janna.”

  The Silver Eagle studied the laughing Eyade warrior, her six-foot yew bow held with a yard-long arrow nocked. “Only because he’s never seen one used.”

  The Eyade began to get restless as the shaman and Henri moved up to try and breach the language barrier; after a few obvious catcalls and comments to the Badgers, especially the women, one of the bolder warriors rode his horse a few feet forward and stood in the stirrups, opening his breeches to expose himself to the watching ‘Den’. His fellows burst into laughter as Elonia leaned forward and made an exaggerated effort of squinting before aping considerable surprise, holding two fingers rather close together at an arm’s length as if measuring. The warrior flushed with anger, doing up his breeches and fingering his lance while he stared at the Seer.

  “This is just lovely,” Maxmillian muttered to Durek as Henri struggled to communicate with the shaman. “Shouldn’t we be able to talk to them, Den to Eyade, I mean? After all, we’re supposed to be merchants, and whoever heard of merchants who go into a new territory without having an interpreter along?”

  “You would think,” the Captain nodded grimly. “Felher and Direthrell are used to Human tongues, but I hadn’t thought about meeting these bastards, although hiring an interpreter is out of the question anyway. I just wish one of us spoke Figann.”

  The wizard turned to the ‘tradesmaster’. “All right, it turns out he speaks some Navian so we can get ideas across, not anything complicated, but at least basic haggling. He’s pretty damn suspicious that we don’t have any of the more common eastern languages at our disposal but I’ve indicated that we came from the west to start new trading out here, so perhaps we’ve pulled that one off. Anyway, he’s sensed or scryed the andern, and they want some.”

  “Bugger that,” Maxmillian shook his head. “We’ve plans for it, and besides, that stuff’s worth more than its weight in gold; what would these scabby goat-robbers have to trade for it?”

  “Raw gold and some coins,” the Arturian gestured towards the shaman, who produced several bags, several of which were obviously heavy. “Plus various herbs and tubers of value.”

  “Tell him to piss up a picket rope,” the scholar was red-faced and angry: first Roger had taken to riding him all day, and now some damned steppe-monkey was waving his privates at Elonia. Maxmillian von Sheer IV had had just about all he was going to take from anyone today and was perfectly willing to let his broadsword do his talking for him.

  “I think he’s also offering safe passage,” Henri kept his eyes on the angry ‘tradesmaster’ while trying to point his words at his Captain. “You know, no fighting if we give up a little andern for a reasonable price.”

  “Does he?” Durek studied the line of horsemen. “You know, I’m of a mind to just take his gold, roots, and horses and leave the tattooed cow-chaser to walk home; it’ll be a cold day in the Sufland before we pay a toll to these bastards.”

  “Right,” Maxmillian hitched his shield forward a bit. “Tell him to take a running leap, Henri.”

  The taunts and posturing of the Eyade were ignored by Janna, Dmitri , Roger, Arian, Rolf, and, surprisingly, Kroh; these veterans stood rock-steady, fingering their weapons and watching the horsemen with cool, calculating eyes, picking targets, planning moves, waiting and ready. Starr was mortified and disgusted to the point of immobility, the spectacle being completely outside of any frame of reference in her experience; Elonia ignored them for the most part, occasionally responding to a rude sally with a quick wit and cutting efficiency. Bridget, however, was quickly becoming the focus of the horsemen’s ‘wit’, displaying both embarrassment and outrage in equal and obvious, measures, and thus encouraging even more outrageous antics.

  “That’s a child’s hand on his helm,” the advocate sputtered, red faced and gasping, clutching her staff sling in the manner of a drowning woman clinging to a log.

  The Eyade in question, catching the gist of her outburst from facial expressions, plucked the mummified limb from his helm and held it up
for the Badger serjeant’s inspection before leaning forward to bite off one leathery digit.

  The sling bullet caught him just below and to the left of his nose, striking with enough force to blast through his sinus cavities and plow into his brain pan, splitting his skull and cracking two vertebrae from the whip-lash of the impact, killing him instantly.

  Janna caught the eye of the Eyade who had been laughing at her, and winked as she pulled to a full draw. The yard-long shaft leapt from her bow, drilled through the two layers of dried leather on the nomad’s shield’s face, slipped through the wicker base that held the shield together, passed through the horseman’s arm, punched through his leather jack and his grubby under tunic, split his breastbone, slid neatly through his chest cavity, was slightly deflected while passing between two ribs, came out through the back of the under tunic, sliced through his leather jack from the inside, and flew about ten feet beyond the rider, wobbling badly as the fletching had been stripped off when the shaft had passed through the nomad’s breastbone.

  Elonia shot a horse with her crossbow, snatched up Maxmillian’s crossbow and shot another mount, each quarrel augmented with three poison quills; beside her Arian dropped an Eyade as the warrior-woman nocked an arrow. Dmitri and Rolf shot the same nomad off his horse as Roger killed another’s horse with a well-aimed javelin.

  The shaman and Henri reacted instantly to the sound of a lead ball slamming into flesh, but the Arturian was quicker: his beam of light ripped open the shaman’s chest a split second before the Eyade could finish his spell; twenty yards away a purple-green fireball scorched a ten-foot circle of grass as its dying caster toppled off his horse. Durek shot the leader square in the chest and dropped his crossbow as he ripped his axe free while Maxmillian sprang at the standardbearer, grabbing the woman’s sheathed sabre and arm before kicking his feet out and falling back, pure dead weight as the nomad’s horse bolted forward, tumbling the Eyade from her saddle.