Dark Key: Book Two of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  As they had burst through the inner wall, each bearing three empty backpacks, Henri had cast a spell of light on the butt of a Felher dart and driven it into a ceiling beam, lighting the strong-room. Their maps had indicated that this was a storeroom of potent magic items not currently in use by the Direthrell; it was their fervent belief and hope that the Torc resided here, based on their study of the documents they had captured and Elonia’s Sight.

  The room was not large, perhaps twenty feet on a side, with a well-locked door opening onto a small entryway marked off with a waist-high railing. Two desks and a file-chest sat within the railing; the rest of the room was filled with racks bearing a bewildering quantity of items and goods, with small brass plates bearing runes indicated a filing system of some sort. Henri wasted no time in casting a spell upon the door's locks, holding them fast even against their own keys.

  Arian pulled a small sledge hammer from his belt and smashed the locks on the desks and the chest; working quickly, he ripped through them, tossing a bulky ledger and two slender journals onto the nearest desk. Search done, he splashed the drawers and file-chest interior with a flask of oil, leaving the empty flask and sledge nestled on the papers. Pulling open the ledger, he ran his finger down the columns, lips moving-after weeks of study and translating captured documents the monk had little difficulty reading the inventories.

  While the monk was at this Henri roved the aisles hoping to chance upon the Torc by luck, and tossing interesting articles into the packs he carried. He seized a wide sword belt, a plain chalice-style pewter cup, a quiver of twenty arrows, a bundle of elaborately carved rods, each bound about with a parchment sheet, and a plain case of wyvern hide that, from its shape, would seem to contain a length of planking a foot and a half wide and three long. His hands trembled as he stuffed that one in the pack, as he suspected what it was. An aisle of nothing but rare volumes on magic and spell-casting absorbed him; in seconds all three packs were full. Slinging the one that held the board onto his back, he lugged the other two to Arian and grabbed the empty three.

  "Any luck?" He gasped to the monk, heart racing at the sounds of battle in the corridor; the Direthrell had the advantage of numbers, while the Badgers had experience, the shock of an unexpected attack, and a narrow frontage to defend. Sooner or later, though, the Threll would send a force around the outside of the building, and then they would really be in the soup.

  "Not yet," Arian swung a loaded pack onto his back. "Keep grabbing."

  Henri filled two more packs with books, and then, with a heavy heart, used a simple spell to set a half-dozen widely-separated volumes on fire. Racing down the rest of the aisles, he grabbed three scabbarded swords, a war hammer, and a pair of hand axes.

  Arian shouted; grabbing up the loaded packs the wizard had left by him he dashed the lamp onto the desk, setting it ablaze. Hurling a burning journal into the file box, he raced down the rows of racks, looking for a specific rune. Finding what he wanted even as the door began to ring with the impact of a light ram, the monk ran down the aisle, Henri close behind him. Midway down he stopped and grabbed three wooden boxes off the shelf, coughing in the growing smoke of the room. The first held a series of bone fragments, which he tossed aside; Henri grabbed the second, which held a dozen glass balls that appeared to be very similar to Orbs of Destruction; closing it carefully, he thrust it into the last pack as Arian yelled in triumph: nestled in the silk lining of the third box was a torc of rich gold strands, a massive ruby glowing with arcane power at each end. Racing towards the wall opening the monk thrust the box containing the torc into his belt pouch.

  Outside the fighting was brisk; Durek had used two Storms to break the enemies' charges, and they were helped by the fact that the Dark Threll had to negotiate a corner and the bodies of the dead and dying to reach them, but all four Badgers were hotly pressed and borne minor wounds.

  Henri hurled a Storm to right and left as he raced out of the vault and on to the outside; under the cover of this the Badgers withdrew. As the last one exited the building Henri cast a ward on the opening, plunging it into unnatural darkness; wary, the guards hesitated to rush through it blindly, giving the Badgers time to retreat, dropping a Felher helm and wicker shield behind in the hopes of sowing a little confusion as to who had mounted the raid. Most of the lamps in the hallway had been smashed in the fighting so with a little luck the guards would not be clear on the exact races of those they had fought. Garrison troops, no matter how elite, saw little combat and would have much more blurred memories of the fight than veterans such as the Badgers, for whom fighting was a regular occurrence.

  As he trotted Durek cursed a badly bruised rib where a spear had broken against his armor; all four of the covering Badgers bore light wounds, but Arian had signaled that they had been successful, and there were at least eight critically wounded or dead Direthrell behind them. The benefit of the andern traded to the Direthrell was beginning to be offset; let them escape with the packs that Arian and Henri were passing to each Badger as they moved and the score would be more than evened.

  The sounds of fighting and the glow of fires had destroyed the peace of the Inner Keep as the Felher Pacs spilled from the Gates into the fortress. The bell had stopped ringing, but horns could be heard from all quarters, adding an eerie quality to the night.

  The noise hadn't overwhelmed Janna's hearing, however; she gave a low warning cry, a single word the Badgers used to mark an ambush, a second before a section of Direthrell swept around the corner of the vault building, sent belatedly on the flanking maneuver the mercenaries had been concerned about. The Silver Eagle’s hurled hand axe took the Dora in charge full in the face, cracking her skull like an egg hit by a cleaver; Janna rushed the others, ripping out a Dark Threll’s throat with the point of her sword, and snapping off two spear shafts with deft blows before executing a whirling assault that wounded a Threll and left the Badger with her back to the building's wall.

  Dmitri was quick to follow, cutting down one Threll while he tried to draw his sword and further disrupting the section. Arian, right behind the Serjeant, fended off a spear-thrust with his shield and shot the wielder in the face with his crossbow as Henri cut down another foe with a beam of brilliant light. Roger wounded another with his last javelin before he and Durek piled in, breaking the section completely.

  With the sudden attack and a radical shift in the odds throwing them into disarray the Direthrell fell back, allowing the Badgers to form up and work together. Henri followed behind the heavier-armored combatants, finishing off the downed Threll with Felher darts in the hopes of muddying the assignment of blame that would follow this battle.

  When they had forced the Direthrell back far enough, Durek whistled sharply and threw a Storm, allowing the Badgers to disengage and take to their heels. Killing Dark Threll was fine and good, but it was not why they were here. Moving quickly, keenly aware that until they could find a place to stop and reload their crossbows their only available missile weapon was Henri's sling, the Badgers worked their way to the rally point.

  The night was steadily being transformed into a whirlwind of darting shadows by the spreading fires, one of which should be the warehouse where they had left the Thane bodies. At least one other seemed to be a barracks building, which boded well for the success of the Felher raid; Durek personally hoped that the little bastards would kill plenty of the Direthrell and their troops while taking heavy losses themselves.

  The Inner Keep was beginning to seethe like a kicked anthill as troops rushed towards the fighting and noncombatants fled it; bands of slaves dragged fire-fighting gear here and there, trying to battle the fires while avoiding the fighting. As the Badgers worked their way to the rally point the multi-racial nature of Alantarn came to their aid: by now the word had spread that it was a Felher raid, and Vault group appeared to be nothing more than a battered Remur half-section, perhaps all that remained of a patrol or response force.

  In any organization there is always the dedicat
ed who strive beyond the norm; in this case, as the Badgers paused between two warehouses to reload their crossbows and finish sharing out the packs of loot a Nepas officer wearing only boots, breeches and swordbelt came running over to them flourishing a rank-baton and barking orders which Dmitri guessed had to do with guarding the warehouses themselves. It was not until the officer was right on top of them that he noticed the lack of unit badges and the unfamiliar, non-issue weaponry, but by then it was too late. The big Kerbian leapt forward, catching him by the neck with one hand while he drove the blade of a Felher stirrup-knife into his chest three times, leaving the blade in for good measure. They tucked the corpse behind a water barrel and moved on.

  The rally point was a corral on the southernmost point in the Inner Keep, a simple rail-fence enclosure forty feet on a side. The Inner Keep's thorny wall stood a mere six feet from the south side, with fighting towers visible a hundred feet in each direction. The corral itself was partially hidden from the towers by story-and-a-half coach houses to the north, east, and west; the east and west structures ended six feet from the defensive wall, as required by regulations intended to protect the vines from the flames of burning buildings, and the east and north building joined, leaving only a passageway at the northwest corner. Only trader's wagons and mounts were stabled in the Inner Keep; for unknown reasons all others were required to be housed in the Outer Keep.

  "Dmitri, have the packs stacked by the Gate," he called, keeping his voice low. "Much as I hate to, we'll have to dig in a bit. There's only three ways in: Dmitri, you cover the southwest corner, Janna and Arian take the southeast, and Roger is with me at the northeast. Henri, start putting the Gate together."

  The young Arturian nodded, and began unpacking the device. Durek grabbed Arian as he trotted past. "You got it, truly?"

  The monk grinned and tossed the Dwarf a circlet of gold before hurrying off. The Captain absently turned the Torc in his hands, feeling the craftsmanship in the thing’s construction. Both of the large rubies were etched with strange symbols and burned with an inner radiance; the inner side of the band had been smoothed, both for comfort and to accommodate rows of tiny but precise symbols and characters. He shook his head; Johann had died so they could get this, and it was not impossible that more Badgers would fall before they were out of Alantarn. But at least they had gotten it; he looked at the lights of burning buildings and the sounds of fighting that came from the heart of Alantarn, and smiled. The andern they had sold the Direthrell would not offset the harm done to the fortress. Now all he had to do was get his people out of here.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Throne group left nearly an hour after Vault group, having no meetings to attend to. They moved with Elonia out ahead and the rest in a close group centered on Bridget, who had cast a ward of silence so that no sound betrayed them. The Seeress was far enough ahead so as to retain the use of her ears; slipping silently from shadow to shadow, she scouted the way and signaled her comrades when it was clear to proceed.

  She was filled with an icy calm, one that gripped her ever more strongly with every step she had taken past the Outer Keep. This was Alantarn, where she had been raised, the fortress where even as a toddler she needed a faked disease to prevent her use as a sexual plaything. These were the people who had enslaved, abused, and ultimately murdered her mother. Now she was back, and they were going to pay.

  The Inner Keep had changed a bit since she had seen it last; Felher and Hand raids into the Keep had accounted for some buildings she had known, and time had taken others. Still, she knew it well enough, and her walks this afternoon had refreshed her memories.

  Security was good, as was warranted by the many raids the fortress had suffered over the years, but 'good' and 'many' were relative terms. The last serious raid had been years past, and the best of the patrols were less alert than her fellow Badgers would have been when standing watch on a night camp after a hard day's travel. The greatest danger these garrison troops faced was the occasional escaping or berserk slave; even the veterans among them had drawn their blood out on the Lines or on campaign elsewhere. Trained warriors they might be, but they lacked the hard edge that came from active campaigning.

  Only once did she have a close call: near the Great Hall, a patrol had come around a corner too quickly and quietly; she had darted into an alley, but made noise doing so. As the patrol moved towards the alley she slid her short sword from its scabbard while leaning back against an old hogshead and settling her feet. Rocking rhythmically so that the barrel tapped against the wall, she began to gasp and moan as if in the throes of passion. She heard the tread of the patrol draw near and pause at the alley mouth to listen, and intensified her efforts. Chuckling and bantering comments back and forth, the troops moved on. When she judged them safely away, she halted her performance and mopped away the sweat that had been brought on only partially by the exertions of rocking the barrel.

  Their destination was the Stalharn, or Great Hall, the formal seat of power within Alantarn. The Hall was for ceremonial purposes as Hold-Mistress Clarevia did the day-to-day business of command from a fortified complex several hundred yards to the east; Alantarn and the interests of Arbmante it managed were too large to be ruled from a throne like some barbarian fief.

  The Great Hall often went days or even weeks without significant traffic. It was a large building dominated by a central dome that lifted four stories high and flanked by single-story wings. It was unfortified and only lightly guarded at night; before any ceremonial use it would be searched and placed under a cordon of guards.

  They gathered in an alley within sight of the domed Hall; Bridget dispelled her silence and consulted the lantern. "Only minutes before the Gates should open, if the Felher honor their pact and reckon the time as we do." The Priestess closed the lantern. "Elonia, can we get in without using the Orbs?"

  "Easily; there's a side door with only one guard; let me take Rolf and Starr, and I'll go in and scout while Rolf takes the guard's place and Starr covers him. So long as there's no late-night users of the Hall we'll have a cake-walk."

  "Go ahead." The priestess did not waste breath warning her to be careful. With the oppressive weight of the enemy fortress weighing upon them all only a fool would be careless. Even Kroh appeared to be thoughtful in the face of these odds.

  The entrance she sought was towards the back of the Hall, a set of double doors used by servants, and for that reason one of the few that had a lock and not simply barred from the inside. Because it had a lock, a bored sentry stood watch there; Elonia laid her crossbow on the rim of a rain barrel and sighted carefully.

  "Let me," Starr hissed.

  Elonia shook her head ever so slightly, sighed out half a breath to steady her aim, and released. The bolt caught the guard in the thigh, but instead of raising the alarm, he gave a queer coughing grunt, took three stumbling steps, and fell to the ground. Elonia re-cocked her crossbow and then caught up with the other two Badgers, who had rushed to the sentry only to find him so near death as to preclude other action. Starr stripped off his shield, cloak, and helm while Rolf replaced the bolt in his leg with a Felher dart and thrust another through his throat for appearances.

  "Those quills from the Direthrell station?" Starr breathed as the Seer knelt and applied her lock-picks to the door.

  Elonia nodded. "Knives and quarrels both; hang on to the quarrel, will you?"

  The lock was a good one, well-made and cunningly fitted; it took far longer than normal before Elonia could ease open the door and ensure that the entryway beyond was empty. Swiftly repacking her tools into their leather roll, she slipped into the darkness while Rolf and Starr moved the corpse inside.

  The Hall had not changed at all since she had left; she had been here on various work details as a child, and had been smuggled in twice late at night by her mother shortly before she died. Moving with a silent sureness, she made for the audience chamber at the back of the building.

  There, in the hallway outside the doo
r was a lean, elegant Direthrell warrior of middle years whose dark tunic displayed the insignia of the Captain of the Hold-Mistress' personal guard. Halradtic, her father and Clarevia's strong right arm. It had been with considerable satisfaction that she had learned that he had never left the position he had occupied when her mother had been brought here; to have done otherwise would have allowed him to escape her revenge.

  Her unpoisoned quarrel caught him on the hinge of the jaw, a tricky shot given the poor light, the impact sending him sprawling to his knees. The audience chambers were sound-proofed, but the Seer preferred to take no chances. Sprinting forward, she kicked him hard in the solar plexus, and then dropped to kneel on his chest, Felher knife ready. Gripping his hair in one hand, she thrust her face close to his ruined features, glad to see the awareness in his eyes.

  "Greetings from Star Brightchild, by way of her daughter and yours, Halradtic. For long decades I betrayed you, your nation, and your race, betrayed them to their deadliest enemies; even now my tools open the gates of Alantarn for the foe." She waited until comprehension reached the pain-racked eyes, and then drove the blade home.

  She stood, breathing hard, a buzzing in her ears nearly deafening her; to her surprise, tears blurred her vision. She shook them angrily aside as she ripped the bolt from his jaw; patricide or not, this was a Dark Threll whose nature was vile even buy the standards of an evil race. That his blood ran in her veins could not, would not, be a reason for remorse.