Dark Key: Book Two of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  Recocking her crossbow, she thrust the bloody shaft into place, leaned the weapon against the wall out of sight of the door, and placed her sword belt beside it. Time was passing; this close to the end, with a third of her revenge complete and the rest immediately to hand she had to be strong.

  Opening the door, she stepped smoothly in through as small an aperture as she could; the Captain’s corpse was off to the wrong side to be seen, but this close to success she took no chances. Clarevia Dak-hella sat in an ordinary chair, a tall, spare Direthrell of august years, her hair a flowing mist-fall of white, clad in an elegant gown of cobalt blue with subtle gold stitching swirling at hem, sleeve, and bosom. There was no age in the amber eyes that pierced Elonia though; no age and less remorse.

  With difficulty the Badger tore her gaze away and noted the ornate baton of rank lying on a low table at the Hold-Mistress' elbow, next to a golden bell mounted on a base of black jade. Should Clarevia touch that bell guards would be summoned, the enchanted collars that they wore leading them directly to her.

  "A Nepas," The Hold-Mistress' voice was smooth and even, devoid of warmth or feeling. "Rogue, or servant, I wonder? No matter. The secrets you included in your letter sent a high Era to her death this night, filling in as it did the last piece in a puzzle of treachery. A book of seventy-two pages would be worth a great deal to me, and no other. I do not haggle with gold; you must be aware of the value of that which you sell. Name a fair price, and tell me how you wish to convey it. For a tenth part more of your price, I would buy the information on how you acquired it, if you're inclined to sell the knowledge."

  "Ten thousand Imperial marks in good cut gemstones," Elonia forced her voice to be level, stepping forward casually. Pulling a piece of parchment from her boot, she held it up. "And the source is given for a tenth part more, in advance to show our good will."

  Clarevia was old in the ways of deceit and treachery; she could sense the fear and hatred in the woman before her but saw it as normal in one engaged in covert action. Her hand strayed to the side table, paused, and then picked up her baton. She was in the heart of her fortress and the half-breed had been disarmed and searched by the most trusted of henchmen, who even now stood just outside the door wearing one of his troop's collars so as to be instantly summon-able. Yet something tickled at the back of her mind, warning that this was no dealer in illicit secrets.

  "Place it on that side table," the Hold-mistress instructed. "Your offer is accepted; how..."

  The question was never finished; aware that in all likelihood Clarevia was protected against poison and missiles by various charms, Elonia snapped the fold of parchment at her. Earlier, she had cut open a Storm of Disruption, ruining it for its original purpose, and gathering a pinch of the enchanted powder into the fold of parchment. Although only a tiny fraction of the intended enchantment remained, it surrounded the Hold Mistress' head and shoulders in a brief swirl of dust, blinding her and causing her to gag.

  Leaping in like a striking adder, Elonia seized the chair's arm nearest the table and pulled with all her strength, tumbling Clarevia onto the floor away from her deadly bell. Ripping a leather-wrapped Felher adze from the back of her breeches-belt, the Seeress fell on her enemy, slamming the heavy steel head of the poorly-forged weapon into the Hold-Mistress’ body with vicious blows. Clarevia fought back, but age had taken its toll and it had been more decades than Elonia had lived since the Direthrell’s last physical fight. A lucky blow shattered the Hold-Mistress’ jaw and turned her piercing screams into painful mumbling, which died away under the rain of blows until the battered body fell silent and unmoving.

  The Seer straightened, blood-spattered and breathing heavily, leaving the weapon embedded in the corpse. Taking a moment to gather her thoughts, she knelt and picked up the leather sheet that had prevented the weapon from coming into prolonged contact with her; even a master Seer would gain nothing useful about the killer from the weapon, and might even deduce the wielder to be a Felher from old traces. She caught up Clarevia's baton of rank, fifteen inches of rich black ivory liberally decorated with gold and jewels, and rifled the purse on the Hold-Mistress' belt, taking a set of wrought-iron keys that she hoped would open the Hall's doors. She refrained from taking any other items; now was not the time for tampering with enchanted trinkets whose use she did not know.

  The scrap of parchment was the last item to be taken; after looking to ensure that she had left nothing else, she left the room. As she buckled on her sword belt she wished she could have told Clarevia why she was to die, but the risk had been too great. Dragging her father's corpse into the chamber was the final act of her independent operation; while nothing could be done with the puddle of blood where he had lain, she did at least extinguish the wall lamps in that area. Hissing at the passage of time, she raced back to the doorway and gave the all clear even as the alarm-bells began to toll.

  Bridget was angry at the delay but wasted no time in recriminations; leaving Rolf on 'guard', and Maxmillian to cover him she led the other three to the Hall proper. The key ring Elonia had taken proved to be as she hoped; obviously the Hold-Mistress had not wished to involve a lowly building-keeper in a covert meeting. Moving through the servant's passages, the Badgers entered the Great Hall.

  As Great Halls go, it had a certain horrific charm, but an austere, cold atmosphere. The Hall was large, fifty yards on a side, with the great dome arcing upwards to disappear into the darkness; also up in the darkness, Elonia knew, was an archer's catwalk to grant a greater degree of security. At the north end a massive blasted granite Tree represented Arbmante, the owning nation, sweeping upwards over thirty feet in height; carved into its base was a throne-like seat for the ruler of the Hold. In flanking wings on either side were chairs decorated with the crests of the various power factions of the Hold, and several seats for distinguished guests.

  The rest of the Hall was currently empty, and only dimly lit by a few scattered lamps, but it was bright enough to pick out the dark symbols formed by somberly colored tiles in the floor. The walls were the Badger's goal; a smoothly functional railing separated a yard-wide strip of floor from the rest of the Hall on the east and west sides, this place being populated by the trophies of Alantarn. Displayed were battle standards, weapons, and similar leavings of victory.

  What was unusual about this display was that each trophy was held in the hands of a skeleton of some notable foe or noble victim, the bones posed with the aid of cunningly concealed brass wire and ivory stalks. The skeletons knelt, bowed, and otherwise contorted their bare limbs in attitudes of submission and defeat. Beneath each display were two neat brass plaques identifying both trophy and bearer.

  Moving quickly, alert to the possibility that guards might enter at any moment, the raiders jumped the rail and went from display to display, examining the plaques. All were in Nuadh, the Direthrell language, but Elonia had claimed to have made a study of the written language, sufficient at this point to be able to decipher the inscriptions. In truth, it was her first language, spoken or written. Swiftly six Lanthrell skeletons were knocked loose of their moorings, carefully bent into a compact shape, and bound in a leather harness that would allow it to be carried like a backpack; each one's brass plate tied to the bundle with silk cord to facilitate identification.

  While Starr, by prearrangement, distracted Bridget, and Kroh was busy grabbing several Dwarven banners, Elonia took a seventh skeleton: her mother's. It went into the largest of her belt pouches, the one enchanted so as to have the interior capacity of a good-sized trunk. The pouch was key to all her plots and plans: without it she could not have brought along the documents and papers she had planted at Beydar's Way, or smuggled out her mother's remains.

  Starr sized two Lanthrell guideons and stuffed them under her belt as they made their way out, each wearing a 'bone-harness', and with Elonia carrying the extra two. They had to wait in the entryway for several minutes while a large troop of the Hold-Mistress' personal guard passed by, looking c
onfused; after they had passed Rolf commented that the officer in charge was consulting a crystal disk as if using it to track something, but the disk did not seem to be working correctly. Luckily, the guards had paid no attention to the ‘sentry’.

  By the time the six set off from the Hall the fighting was raging near the Site and the entire Inner Keep was bathed in dancing light from burning buildings. Moving with care and keeping well inside the shadows the little party inched towards their rally point. Coming across a number of dead servants lying amidst their fire-fighting equipment across from a burning warehouse whose roof had already collapsed, Elonia paused and searched amongst the fallen. Choosing a human woman of roughly the same height and build, she emptied the corpse's pouch and removed the medallion that served as her mark of rank. Into the corpse's pouch she placed her own peta, a Golden Serpent ring, two gemstones, and a fistful of coins. As she dragged the body towards the blazing warehouse, Rolf, Maxmillian, and Bridget followed, dragging their own victims.

  A hundred yards away they skirted an intersection where a fierce battle had been fought; Thane and Felher dead and dying littered the street and slumped in the broken doorways of the adjacent buildings, several of which were burning. As they passed, Kroh cheerfully finished off any and all who came to reach, and then paused to equip a dying Black Dwarf with his peta and cult gear before hurling the feebly struggling Darkling into a blazing window.

  Starr used the halt to finish off three badly wounded Felher and, having acquired a bundle of pitch-jars from one of them, set three more buildings burning.

  Bridget motioned for the group to stop and knelt, hidden behind an overturned wheelbarrow. The lithe advocate studied the group before her with rapt interest; the Badgers were only a few hundred yards from the rally point, and had gone to ground in the alley they had been traversing when they had heard a fight break out nearby.

  The fight was between a Remur section that had been escorting a slave-drawn cart; the twenty Felher ambushers crouching on the roof of a warehouse had opened with a volley of slung bullets and darts, and then swarmed down to engage in melee before the startled Thane guards could unlimber their crossbows. One major mistake had been to concentrate their fire on the bunched slaves pulling the cart rather than the armed guards; while a half-dozen slaves lay dead or dying and the rest scattered, only three Thanes were down when melee was joined.

  Bridget guessed the Felher to be from a Tak-level Pack because they had only spears and their theebs, and virtually no armor beyond a couple wicker shields and a single steel helm that had no doubt been acquired on this very raid. They made a poor match for the Thanes, who were in mail, helm, and round shield; in the initial clash they did manage to drag two Thanes down, but could not prevent the Direthrell followers from forming together. Working as a team, the Thanes began inflicting serious losses on the rat-men.

  The Badger serjeant thoughtfully studied the fighting while she fitted a bullet into the pouch of her sling. Several of the Felher were employing weighted ropes in an attempt to ensnare their foe's weapon-arms, but it made little difference: nine Felher were down with no further losses by the Thanes. Bobbing up, Bridget sent a sling bullet screaming in to take the section's Dora full in the back; the half-Orc collapsed, spine broken. A nimble Felher darted into the gap and crippled another Thane before falling, and the gap then widened as the Felher pressed in. Another bullet from her staff sling smashed a Thane's skull, allowing the Felher to mop up one of the Thane groups.

  The odds were now eight Felher to three Thanes, but the latter had their backs to a wall; the priestess could not cast without taking the risk that they would see her. Motioning carefully, she brought the rest of her group forward, as it was time to do some killing for the general good.

  The Felher had regrouped and prepared to rush the cornered Thanes, having equipped themselves with shields from the dead. Just as they took the first steps a swirling dust storm exploded in their midst; before the Felher could recover the Badgers had charged from the alley and taken them from behind.

  Bridget ran the point of her snake-hilted rapier into and through the neck of a rat-man, twisting and dragging to the side as she withdrew to open the large blood vessels. A twist of her parrying dagger fouled a spear long enough for Elonia to run its wielder through, and then the Badgers were standing in the street facing three bewildered Thanes. For a moment the street was silent but for the moans of the wounded and the noises of the fighting drifting in from the direction of the Site as the two groups stared at each other. Then the center Thane made a half-laughing comment and stepped forward to greet the Badgers, obviously mistaking them for a Remur unit like themselves, perhaps guards from one of the 'Mana.

  One Thane moving away from the wall was all it took; Bridget punched the point of her sword through his eye and into the brain while Kroh and Rolf leapt forward to cut down the other two before they could react. Maxmillian and Elonia immediately turned to finishing off the wounded, while Starr wiped and sheathed her blade as she trotted over to a good vantage point, alert for trouble.

  While general mayhem had been her main point in this exercise, the contents of the cart had intrigued Bridget as well. It was no fire-fighter's cart with a massive water tub and mop-like water-flails, but an ordinary light cart such as every race built. The tongue was intended for a horse or mule; it intrigued Bridget as to why the Remur, undoubtedly acting under higher orders, had been moving cargo around in the middle of a raid.

  The answer was immediately obvious when she stepped up onto a wheel and looked in; stacked in neat sheaves were long javelins, each fitted with canvas streamers to stabilize it in flight after being fired from a ballista. No doubt the Direthrell were deploying light field engines in an attempt to overrun the Felher egran and put an end to the raid, and this was either to resupply a weapon in place or an advance deposit of ammunition for an engine that had not been assembled yet. What cheered her the most, however, was the narrow cylindrical clay pots that each javelin wore, the shafts passing through a central channel in the pot, which was then seated in place with tar and stout cord. The pots, she was confident, were filled with hecla, a liquid concoction of the Direthrell's that burst into flame when suddenly exposed to the air.

  "Rolf, Kroh, heave some dead Felher into the cart, quickly! Elonia, Maxmillian, gather their weapons. Starr, help me gather the Thanes’ crossbows and bolts. This could be quite a useful encounter."

  Durek was relieved to see the rest of his Badgers arrive within minutes of Vault group reaching the rally point, and especially with all members present and largely unwounded, although he had hardly expected them to be pulling a cart. The fighting was still raging across the central area of the Inner Keep but there were signs that the Felher’s bolt had been shot and the Captain wanted to flee the fortress before the Direthrell began large-scale mopping-up operations.

  He hadn’t let his people remain idle: after dragging out whatever barrels and crates were near to hand they wedged and spiked shut the doors facing their corral. With the doors and windows of the carriage-houses secured the only avenues of attack left were the alley to the northwest, and the passages along the wall to the southwest and southeast. All that remained for them was to fortify these points with the barrels and boxes they had scrounged, and wait. Janna used a Felher adze to dig several knee-deep holes in each avenue of attack: should a charging attacker accidentally step into one, he would charge no more on that leg.

  "Why the cart? Just how much loot did you take out of the Hall?" The Captain was perplexed when Bridget first reported to him.

  "Just what we said," Bridget grinned, looking very young in the poor light. "The cart is full of ballista javelins with pots of hecla attached; we tossed in eight dead Felher and some crossbows we took off of dead Thanes. How soon before we leave?"

  "Not soon enough," the Captain studied his dispositions. “Throne group, stack the bones by the Gate; Bridget, take a crossbow for Janna and as many javelins as you can carry, and go to
the southeast. Tell Janna and Arian to come get some more. Separate the pots from the javelins; plant the javelins at an angle at the fence, and tie about a three-foot length of rope to each pot; we can throw them that way."

  "Good idea; where's the rope?" The priestess was in good spirits.

  "Near Henri, to his left. Kroh, Rolf, Starr, you'll be at the northeast with me and Roger. Unload half the javelins there. Maxmillian, Elonia, you'll go to the southwest; Dmitri is by himself there."

  The corral seethed with work as the Badgers, too seasoned of veterans to ever bemoan labor spent on defensive works, dug in ever more fiercely. The cart was emptied and tipped on its side to protect Henri as he worked on the Gate; the dead Felher were distributed at each defensive point, and the fire-bombs were carefully detached from their javelins and fitted with ropes to be hurled. Ominously, the noise of the fighting to the north was beginning to slacken, and the possibility of the Felher raid ending before they could escape was a fearful one. Once the Gates were sealed off, the Direthrell would turn their full attention to searching for leftover Felher, escaping slaves, and anyone else who was not where they belonged, such as the Badgers.

  Durek was wrestling a javelin shaft deeper into the ground and cursing the lack of tools when Henri tapped him on the back. "I'm going to begin the incantations. Ten minutes and it'll be open."

  The Dwarf straightened, dusting off his hands. "Fine; when it's open sound the horn one time; once Elonia joins you, go through and make sure that the coast is clear and throw a rock back, or something. Tell Elonia to make two blasts on the horn, and then start heaving packs and bones through. When that's done, three blasts and we withdraw to the Gate. Wounded first, then the Healers, the light combatants, and then heavies; I'll be last out. Go warn the southeast post and then get started; I'll brief Elonia. Wait; how many Storms do you have left?"

  "Three."