Dark Key: Book Two of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

"Good; give me two, and keep one for emergencies."

  Agyra the Axe hesitated in mid-step, causing his standard bearer to bump into him. Ignoring the Threll’s whispered apology, the Anlarc, or Champion of the Dark One, remained absolutely still, gaunt body held in an attitude of listening. His personal Talon and the Arm of the Dark One that he commanded straggled to a stop when they realized that their leader was not moving with them.

  "Fist Lords to me," the emaciated officer whispered, and then repeated his order in a more carrying tone; an aide sprang to carry the order. While he waited, Agyra walked in a circle, eyes fixed on the ground, muttering to himself. The Anlarc was a foreboding figure: after years of ingesting andern-laced potions to enhance his fighting abilities and wearing or wielding weapons and armor augmented by dark sorceries his body had been warped and changed a dozen-fold. He was no taller than before, but so painfully thin as to appear a mere shadow of himself, although all who served him knew his twisted frame held a terrible strength. None knew if he ever removed the chitinous gray armor he wore, or even if he could; the strange material seemed a cross between metal and horn, and unnerved all who examined it or its thick coating of occult symbols too closely. One or two of his longest-serving minions had seen him without the ornate skull-faced helm that covered his entire head, but none would speak of how he had appeared.

  When the Direbreed officers had gathered, the Minion of the Dark One halted his pacing and faced them. "An egran opens nearby; the fools opening it believe that they are made safe by their isolation, aided in no small part by the confusion and those bumbling idiots our masters call Watchers. No doubt it is a band of Felher infiltrators attempting to flank our defensive lines. You, you, and you; take your Fists directly to the base of the wall and flank it in that direction. Let us move smartly, as only minutes remain before the Gate opens and the raid is refreshed."

  Starr crouched on the roof of the north warehouse, keeping watch on the alley and nearby street while the rest of her fellows dug in. Up to now the only traffic on the road that the warehouse faced had been a couple units of Direthrell troops hurrying past, reinforcements heading for the fighting that, from the level of noise, was dying out; so far no one had paid any attention to the narrow alley that led to their position.

  That happy situation came to an abrupt end as the nimble little Lanthrell saw the twisted figures of Direthrell moving along the street, a reinforced Arm, it appeared; when they reached the alley the entire force halted, and regrouped. Moments later three Fists moved out at the double heading past, while one Fist began to navigate the alley. Moving carefully but with speed, Starr lifted a hooded lantern and opened the front plate, sending warning flashes of light down into the compound. Catching up a stout length of rope, she swung it around her head, grunting at the weight of three fire-pots. Whirling it twice for momentum she heaved it towards the shadowy figures in the alley, staggering at the sudden release of weight. The pots, extended to the full distance permitted by their connecting ropes by the twirling swing, dropped into the midst of the Fist and shattered, sending sticky fire splashing in all directions.

  Without waiting to see the effects of her cast she scrambled to the rope tied to the weathercock on the peak of the roof; the taut line was anchored to the cart in the center of the corral. Looping a short length of rope over the line, the little Lanthrell stepped to the edge of the roof with her quiver strap held in her teeth and kicked up her legs, her weight immediately sending her whizzing down into the corral, the loop of rope taking the burning friction.

  Just short of the cart she let go and somersaulted across the ground, rolling to offset the impact, having dropped her quiver before she released the hand-rope so her bow and shafts would not be damaged. Springing up with several bruises from her dagger-hilts but basically unhurt, she cut the line to prevent its use against them, recovered her quiver, and hastened to Durek. "An Arm, plus others! They sent three Fists on past."

  The Captain nodded. "They'll circle around and come along the wall to the southeast. Warn the other posts and come back here."

  Agyra was not concerned with the loss of most of one Fist because hecla would not harm the Breedstones. Giving orders in a smooth, unhurried voice, he deployed his Fists for the charge through the narrow alley, and positioned the archers from his Talon to sweep the rooftops of any more lurking snipers. The archers made up half of his personal retinue of Thanes; the rest were heavily armed and armored fighters. He planned to send several Fists through to test the mettle of the defenders and spring their traps before leading the melee portion of his Talon through. Speed was imperative: from the sounds, the Felher raid was being mopped up to the north, but if the Fleher got this egran open the fighting could begin anew.

  Durek's dispositions were complete: the two south posts each had two Badgers fighting and one throwing fire-pots and firing crossbows; his post would have three Badgers fighting (himself, Roger, Kroh) and two (Starr, Rolf) throwing pots until the supply was exhausted, whereupon Rolf would join the line as well. There was no need to conserve the hecla: if the enemy was inclined to pull back and regroup after the first rush, all the better: he would find an empty corral on the second attack.

  The Direbreed burst out of the alley mouth with a commendable show of enthusiasm; as he heaved his pot and grabbed up his axe the Captain could hear the two south posts go into action. Their foes were experienced veterans, he saw, and damnably well-equipped: each beast-man wore a leather jack and steel cap, and bore good-quality weapons. The first Fist and nearly all of the second died in the volley of fire-pots; the next two were badly depleted by the hecla as well, but survivors reached the barricade and the manual work began.

  It was easy at first, although the Dwarf was keenly aware of the lack of his finely crafted breast-and-back, and desperately missed his axe: after years of wielding an enchanted weapon ordinary steel seemed inadequate. Nevertheless, it was simple work to wipe out the first attackers as they struggled with the barricade, but damage was done to the barrier and the next wave had an easier time of it. Then the fire-pots ran out, and Rolf, after employing all the loaded crossbows, joined the fighting while Starr sniped away with her short bow. Lighting was no problem as all three warehouses had caught fire from the sprays of burning fluid.

  Durek side-stepped a wild mace-swing and riposted, drawing blood. Lunging forward he slapped aside the mace before it could be recovered and drove the head of his axe into his foe's jaw, following it up with a short chop that killed the stunned Direbreed. Tossing a Storm into the confused ranks before him, he leapt in and cut down two beast-men before they recovered from the dust. That gave him a moment's respite as the battered enemy fell back a short distance, and he stepped back, sucking in deep breaths and wishing that he had time for a drink of water. The enemy had not wasted any time trying to regain their formations: they had simply charged in an effort to overwhelm the defenders. Obviously they understood the significance of Henri's actions, if completely wrong about the desired effect: the Badgers were trying to get out, not bring in more help.

  Their position was holding, but the barricade was pretty much destroyed and virtually every member of the little band except Starr was wounded to a degree; he himself was bleeding in two places where the mail had failed to stop the full impact of the blows. Both south points had held, being less hotly pressed and facing smaller openings.

  The sounds of orders given in Nuadh jerked his attention back to the alley; cursing, he cast about for options and found none. Flowing between the burning building were a full score of Thanes clad in mail and armed with spear, shield, and sheathed broadswords. At their head was a weird spindly figure in a skull-faced helm and gray armor that seemed to grow on him like moss on a stone. This parody of a humanoid form bore a twisted axe that had a strange look to it, almost as if it glowed in some color not of this world. A Minion of the Void, Durek realized, an anlarc as the Direthrell called them, and his personal Talon of hand-picked fighters. The Badgers were well and truly
in the soup.

  The Arturian hunting horn's crisp call did nothing to lift his spirits; withdrawing while facing this bunch was going to be bad. Moving quickly from Badger to Badger, he warned his little group of what to expect. When the Anlarc gave a reedy howl and led the charge, the Captain pitched a Storm at his feet and the Badgers began to back carefully towards the Gate. Two horn blasts gave them a little hope.

  Starr cursed the loss of her last two enchanted arrows while dealing with the Sevenguard back at the Hand caravan; ordinary arrows would not penetrate the Void-blessed armor the Direthrell leader wore, although she spent several shafts in the hopes that the kinetic shock of the arrow’s impact would at least distract the Anlarc.

  Hopping nimbly back she sent an arrow into the face of a burly Human Thane as he clambered over the ruins of their barricade, the steel arrowhead punching through the thin bone at his left temple and killing him instantly.

  Seconds later another Storm enveloped the Talon, granting the Badgers another six feet towards their goal. Then the Anlarc had them charging; the little Lanthrell dropped a howling Black Dwarf with a shaft through the throat before the badly disorganized wedge of Thanes crashed into their line. The Badgers gave ground smoothly, fighting hard; Starr danced back and forth, sending arrows into the flanking Chaos-followers, all too aware of the disparity in numbers and the growing emptiness of her quiver. With a sinking heart she knew that they were about to be flanked and overrun.

  Then Janna and Arian struck from one side and Dmitri and Maxmillian from the other even as the horn sounded three times close behind her. For a moment the Talon was halted, losing three warriors to these flank attacks and another to an arrow from Starr, her last. Elonia fired her crossbow before passing through the Gate; although it only ripped open a half-Orc's cheek, he staggered and clutched his chest as the poison bit in, allowing Rolf to split his skull.

  Bridget arrived at her side, staff sling whirling. "To the Gate!" the priestess yelled. "Starr, go!"

  As she started to turn the little Badger saw the Anlarc shoulder his way to the fore and confront Dmitri. The big Kerbian feinted and struck hard with an axe that gleamed darkly with Thane blood; the Champion ignored the blow, swinging in with terrible force, catching the big Badger square in the chest. The serjeant's breastplate should have turned the blow, but the weird axe hewed through the metal and the padding beneath to split the breastbone, sending shards of bone into the heart.

  As Dmitri fell, Maxmillian finished a Human Thane he had been trading blows with and struck the Direthrell officer with a two-handed blow on the outside of the left knee with a force that snapped his sword blade in two. The stroke failed to penetrate the armor but the impact swept the leg out from under the dread warrior, tumbling the Anlarc to the ground. The scholar leapt in and tried to ram the jagged stump of his blade between the breastplate and helm's bottom; although muddy-looking blood splashed the ground, the wound did not prevent a one-armed blow that sent the historian tumbling.

  Bridget hurled a Storm into the confused Talon's ranks, and another to either side to hold back the Direbreed who were beginning to press forward. Using the length of her rapier to its fullest extent and desperately wishing she had her belt, pendant, and bracelet to augment her fighting abilities, she covered Maxmillian and Starr while they carried Dmitri through the Gate. Her magic was primarily Healing; what killing spells she knew either took too much time or were too indiscriminate for a tight melee such as this.

  The Storms and their leader falling broke the Talon's drive, at least for the moment; the surviving nine Thanes fell back to group protectively around their downed leader, guarding him as he clambered to his feet. Direbreed continued to harry the Badgers, although not as fiercely as before, their Fist organizations hopelessly disrupted by battle loss and the confusing effects of the Storms.

  Durek ordered first Bridget, then Arian out as the rest of the Badgers fell back into a tight half-circle on the Gate. Blocking a thrust with the haft of his axe, the Captain drove the butt of the weapon into the Direbreed's midriff and then decapitated it with his backswing. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rolf disembowel a Thane as the remnants of the Talon closed again; as planned, the big half-Orc then grabbed Kroh from behind and pulled him back into the faintly glowing panel of grayness that marked the Gate.

  "Two more gone," he gasped. "Three left! The worst is past, you bastards."

  There was a sudden whistling, whirring noise followed a split second later by a brilliant eruption of flame; dazed, eyes involuntarily shut against a sudden glare, Durek took a hard blow to the head, protected at least in part by his helm, and another in the ribs. He collapsed, blood flowing freely down his face.

  Janna had been facing away and had thus been spared the dazzle that had blinded Durek. Later, she would establish that the burning buildings had finally attracted the attention of a ballista crew in the tower to the southwest; they had slewed their repeating weapon around and released a full volley of javelins into the surging mass in the corral, each six-foot weapon bearing a pot of hecla. It was a flare of those fire-pots breaking that had blinded Durek and most of their foes.

  Spinning, she was greeted by a tableau from the netherworld: a fence of burning stakes (the javelins) were embedded in a row that roughly marked the line between the two groups of combatants. Direbreed and Thanes were falling back, leaving two dead, pierced through by javelins; Durek was down and a Direbreed, fur smoldering, was leaping past him towards the egran, which was miraculously still standing. Roger, coated in flame and pinned to the ground by a javelin through his leg, howled in mindless agony as he tried to roll to put out the flames.

  The Silver Eagle leapt to intercept the beast-man, blade flashing forward; the Direbreed parried and tried to side step, only to stumble on an abandoned crossbow. Janna's blade ripped open his throat before he could recover his balance, and then plunged deep into his belly to ensure that the dying creature did nothing to interfere with the fragile Gate structure. Tossing her sword through the Gate, she grabbed the Captain and, with a strength that surprised herself, heaved him through the glowing portal. Snatching up Durek’s axe, she shattered the chest of an attacking Direbreed as his spear punched through her mail and into her side. Gasping with the pain, which sent a red haze dancing before her eyes, she pulled the spear out and threw it aside.

  Then Arian, somehow, was at her side, sword in hand. "Out! The Gate!" He shouted and was gone. Using the axe as a crutch, she lurched through the glowing portal.

  The monk caught a spear on his shield, which splintered alarmingly; nothing remained of the cult insignia that had once decorated its surface, and the rest of it wasn't in very good shape either. His sword licked out and tore a line of red nearly the length of the Thane's arm; howling, the warrior fell back. Two strokes cut the javelin shaft pinning a softly-moaning Roger to the ground; hurling his ruined shield into the face of an advancing Direbreed, Arian grabbed Roger's legs and dragged him back through the egran, ignoring the swordsman’s suddenly renewed screams.

  The instant Roger cleared the sparkling edges of the Gate's egress, Rolf kicked the egrai's tripod apart; with a flash of brilliant sparks the Gate closed, snipping off a spear-point coming through the portal like shears made of light.

  The way was closed.

  The Badgers were out of Alantarn.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kustar Pravas made one more circuit of the plaza, checking the scene against the sketch map she had made; satisfied, she signaled the foreman in charge of the cleanup crew to begin to clear away the mess.

  Yawning, she worked her shoulders as she led her team towards the next site, wishing she had time for a hot bath and ten hour's sleep. The former had been completely absent and the latter nearly so in the three days since the raid; the Nepas officer was dirty, bone-tired, and feeling much better than she had since her station had been overrun. An active, challenge-oriented individual by nature, the high intensity pace of the last few days had filled
her with a strong sense of accomplishment.

  It gave her a new hope for her future as well: a raid of this scope would really shake up the hierarchy, and since she was out of favor already she had nowhere to go but up. It would be a twisted justice, she felt, that one raid would topple her career and another to restore it.

  That she expected a lot out of the aftermath of this raid was justified, in her judgment, by the effect of the raid itself. The Felher had rocked Alantarn to its foundations by the sudden strike into the very heart of the Inner Keep. The actual damage had been bad: a dozen buildings had destroyed and even more had been damaged; the garrison, made up of troops of the highest loyalty, had taken punishing losses, to which were added heavy casualties amongst support and staff personnel, as well as the deaths of scores of valuable slaves who had been caught in the middle.

  The aftershocks were nearly as bad, and lasted far longer, than the raid itself: caught by surprise, numerous key members of the fortress' command structure were killed or wounded by the Felher, including the Hold-Mistress and the Captain of her personal Guard, creating a power vacuum and resource-draining infighting amongst the surviving leaders until a Gate was opened back to Arbmante and a new Hold-Master could come in to take charge, accompanied by sixty guards and a score of staff officers.

  Hold-Master Peria swiftly put an end to the bickering and jockeying for position but there were still a daunting number of problems to be faced. The first phase of recovery required that the entire Hold be searched from top to bottom to winkle out any Felher stragglers and to ensure that there were no other Gate egran left behind by the raiders; in the second phase a comprehensive inventory of personnel and equipment had to be made to determine the losses suffered and to estimate the damage done to the hold, and the garrison had to be rebuilt in case another raid was imminent. The third phase would involve new security procedures being devised and implemented to prevent a repeat occurrence of such a raid, and so forth.