Dark Tide: Book Five of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  ‘Excellent.” Fussock went to the loft door and called a clerk, giving him the note and careful instructions. “What about Tolver?”

  “Dead, of course,” Mane glanced up at his deputy. “He was in the main work area.”

  “Good.” As he passed Tryza the deputy station commander drew a dagger from the back of his belt and expertly stabbed her in the base of the neck.

  Arthol straightened, reaching for his sword, only to freeze as the staff officer leveled a cocked and loaded crossbow at him, the ready quarrel only inches from his left shoulder. The Markan-Hern slowly raised his hands and placed them on his head.

  “A shame, the station commander, his hand-picked operations officer, and all his bodyguards slain in a daring raid on the headquarters,” Fussock purred, stepping around Tryza as the bodyguard convulsed in her death-throes. “Fortunately, Quat Fussock was there to save the day. Now, if you give me....”

  Mane didn’t wait to hear what Fussock wanted; having uncorked the slender tube hidden in the cuff of his sleeve, he snapped his arm at the staff officer, splashing the thin fluid across the man’s face and neck. Snatching the crossbow from the staffer’s paralyzed hands, Arthol brought it to his shoulder and shot Fussock squarely in the chest as his deputy ripped his sword from its scabbard and tried to lunge across the distance between the two, the impact of the bolt spinning him around.

  After checking that Fussock was too near death to be a danger, Arthol took a dagger from the man’s body and walked over to the paralyzed staff officer, who had fallen to the floor, still frozen in the act of pointing a crossbow. “I was issued two of those tubes some time ago on another detail,” he advised the man as he heaved the stiff body into a better position. “I used only one, but reported both expended as they’re very useful. Fussock is dead so I’m denied my revenge upon him, but I should have about two minutes to demonstrate to you the follies of treason.”

  Although fully rigid, Mane soon discovered, the man could still scream.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Arthol Mane looked up as Markan-Fet Zenon, the priest he had appointed to replace Tolver as his operations officer, stepped into the cubicle that served the Station commander as an office. “Is that the final accounting?”

  “Yes, sir,” Zenon handed the document over. “Roughly one-third of our associates, one-fourth of our field agents, several Markan assigned to field duties, and, as you know, our primary support staff.”

  Mane studied the lists of names. “What about artisans and assets?”

  “Minor losses so far, but some of the associates were taken alive and will surrender names before dying, so we can expect further losses.”

  “What about the internal probe?”

  “The section has been formed from the best people we have, as you instructed,” Zenon handed him a second list. “They are beginning with the lists of our losses, acting on the principal that the traitor or traitors will have faked their own deaths in order to escape the wrath of the Hand. Our asset at the corpse-barge loading quay will be checking the bodies of every one of our people as they are loaded; unless the traitors arranged for the tattoos to be duplicated it shouldn’t be long before we see who is missing from the roster of the dead.”

  “Yes, yes. Here,” Arthol indicated a name on the list. “Tell them to check Loudon Simer especially carefully; he was a nobody until all at once he started doing expert work.” The station chief frowned at the list. “He did especially well in finding where the Badgers had Meredith hidden, which turned out to be a trap, and in hunting down their criminal contacts. No doubt they fed him information to make his counsel seem wise.” He tapped the paper. “We had an associate survive the Hobrec raid, didn’t we? A woman, I spoke with her on the docks. The Badgers could have taken her and turned her.”

  “It would be very difficult to turn one of our associates,” Zenon ventured. “Would you think a mercenary unit could accomplish it?”

  “I didn’t before, and look where it put us. No, these are not ordinary mercenaries, not all of them, anyway. I suspect they’ve acquired some two-stage poison, or a similar enchantment.”

  “That would work,” the operations officer nodded, thumbing through a bound ledger. “Here we are, Luella Blackthorn is the associate you’re referring to.”

  “And just like Simer, she’s listed as having been killed while trying to escape, and a body turned in. Check on her as well.”

  “What about retaliation against the mercenaries?”

  Mane sighed and tapped his desk. “Much as I would like to, I have to recognize that it is merely a desire for revenge, to atone for our defeat. Personal feelings are unprofessional, and harmful; the Badgers are immaterial to the defense of Sagenhoft. Besides, with our reduced forces, we need to focus ever more clearly upon the mission before us. Resolve the siege, and that will resolve the future of these meddlers as well.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  On the tenth Durek convened a meeting to review the effects of the raid, summoning Axel, Bridget, Arian, Henri, Doctor Kuhler, and Elonia. “Is everything taken on the raid sorted out? Doctor?”

  “My task was the simplest: we recovered coins to the value of just over seven thousand ducats from the vault and the bodies, with gemstones equal to three thousand seven hundred twenty-six ducats and change. In addition, while we missed the main reward, we received seven thousand five hundred ducats bounty on the Hand operatives killed at the headquarters, and one thousand ducats for the lists of names we turned in.”

  “They went cheap on the value of the information,” Henri snorted, and the others murmured their agreement.

  “We gave each of our two informants five hundred ducats, and spent another hundred getting them out of the city.”

  “Waste of money,” Henri declared, to some agreement.

  “That may be,” Durek shrugged off the observation. “Axel?”

  “We captured twenty-one enchanted items, all but one being of the most minor sort, while expending the remainder of the enchanted climbing wax. In all, we captured eleven Rods of Light, six Storms of Disruption, and five Orbs of Flashing, which instead of being made with glass balls were created using a hollow duck’s egg, a very interesting adaptation. Anyway, minor stuff, very useful but all expendable items.”

  “What was the one good item?”

  “One of the torcs that protects the head; both Kroh and Rolf declined it, so Henri got the honor.”

  “And the paperwork. Arian?”

  “Elonia and I have been reading non-stop for five days, and I for one am heartily sick of it. The ordinary documents made extensive use of code-names, and the code-books were thrown into the stove they used to heat tea early on in the fighting. That, coupled with the destruction of the archives has minimized the danger the documents pose to the Hand. The paperwork captured in the commander’s office and quarters, however, have helped. We know the station commander is a Markan-Hern named Arthol Mane, and we know we killed the Operations Officer, a Markan-Fet named Tolver, and accounted for virtually all their primary headquarters staff. Beyond that, we’re still digging, but the going is slow, and the promise is not great. Elonia has another angle, however.”

  “The girl we found in the cellar, the only person in the building without Hand tattoos,” Elonia rubbed her neck wearily. “She was naked and manacled by one wrist to a piece of equipment, and then killed by a single stab to the base of the neck. One of the four cells was regularly and recently occupied, with traces of hair that match the girl’s. The girl bore a resemblance to Lady Eithne which had been heightened by cutting and styling her hair in the latest style. She had been subjected to low-grade torture over a period of time, and molested as well. It is my belief that Mane was tormenting her on a regular basis with the eventual design being the destruction of her mind.”

  “Why?” Durek asked. “In the middle of a siege Mane is going to drop everything and torture a girl that looks like the next Duchess? Is it some sort of Dark Art aimed at Lady
Eithne?”

  “No, I think it was just for entertainment, something Mane did for an hour or two each day to take his mind off his work,” the Seeress said. “We found a policy he had established recently to keep his people clear-headed, a roster of sleep and relaxation periods; there was a water-clock outside the girl’s cell so she could see how long she had until the next play-time. Her resemblance to Lady Eithne was just to amuse Mane.”

  “How does this help us? There are thousands of young girls in the city, and scores who resemble Lady Eithne.” Durek was unimpressed.

  “The girl was left alone for nearly all of the day, with a lamp shining into her cell so she could see the clock. Mane liked her because her spirit was holding up long enough to give him amusement over a protracted period of time, but he never considered that this strength could manifest itself in other ways.” Elonia held up a small metal box. “The cell she was in was crudely made, and apparently the Hand had no real jailers on their staff; most likely Mane used one of his bodyguards to oversee the girl. The bodyguards were Markan-Ra warrior-priests, good fighters but not trained to watch prisoners.”

  “Interesting, but get to the point,” Henri interjected.

  “I’m getting there. They cut the girl’s hair in her cell and didn’t bother to clear away the cuttings; they also never searched her before returning her to her cell. In one corner of her cell I found names scratched into the wall with a stone: Arthol Mane, Tryza, Tolver, and others, all members of the staff and Mane’s guards. Mane’s name was carved next to a crack into the wall, and in the crack was a button and several short lengths of braided hair, the girl’s which had been cut to make her look more like Lady Eithne. The braids are no more than an inch long and had been soaked in various bodily fluids, which I would guess were Mane’s. I found some more braids in a crack in the floor near her cell; I imagine she made them and threw them out of her cell, then recovered them after she was cleaned up for a session and hid them on her person, most likely in her hair, which would have been easy in the style favored by Lady Eithne.”

  “Why would she do that?” Durek asked, a look of distaste twisting his beard.

  “Because I believe that before she was a refugee she was from a well-to-do family; from her hands and feet I would say she had lived well enough. I think she knew that a skilled Seer could track the person whose fluids were on the braids.”

  “But they were on her hair, wouldn’t her readings confuse the issue?” Arian asked.

  “Not if she were dead,” Elonia shook her head wearily. “I think the girl knew what was coming, and simply wanted revenge. She hoped that a raid would come, and her cell searched.”

  “But you captured his bed, clothing, personal belongs, even his chamber-pot,” Doctor Kuhler pointed out. “If those won’t serve to lead us to him, how could those braids?”

  “Because Arthol had someone go over his room and wardrobe every couple days with a Rod of Obstruction, wiping out all the traces of his personality. His bedding was changed every day, and he used a communal latrine, so there are no decent traces of him in that entire building. But these traces, on the hair of a person who is both dead and connected to him by his ‘pleasures’, could lead us directly to him.”

  “Can you find him?” Henri asked.

  “I said a skilled Seer, Henri,” Elonia pointed out, a wry twist to her lips. “I can tell you the weather is going to be for the next few days, but that’s about it.”

  “Sorry,” the wizard shrugged, obviously embarrassed. “Different Arts, you know...”

  “Let’s take him alive and explain how were found him,” Doctor Kuhler suggested. “And then coat him in tar and set it on fire.”

  “Good idea,” Henri nodded.

  “First we have to find him,” Durek interrupted the plans for revenge. “Elonia, find us a good Seer who can be trusted to keep their mouth shut. We’ll wait for a few days, or a week, after we’ve found him, to let him relax a bit and get comfortable after his escape. Then we’ll take him.”

  “Alive,” Henri interjected. “This is a port town, tar’s easy to come by.”

  On the fifteenth the Hand’s heavy siege train reached Sagenhoft; all around the battlements the defenders watched as the long lines of wains rumbled up from the east bearing the heavy war engines that would move the siege into the next stage.

  On the sixteenth Durek hired two more Healers, Doctor Esmond Agenor and his newly-trained apprentice Brandywine Stebbs, the pair having been employed by the Duchy since the start of the siege to help combat the rising tide of sickness amongst the refugees. As the disturbances grew wilder, however, more and more Healers were leaving public service for billets with merchant houses and the better mercenary companies for greater personal security.

  On the seventeenth the first ranging shots from the heavy war engines began to fall upon the walls of Sagenhoft.

  “Ack-er-unu-min-ter,” Starr gasped, flailing madly as a rat leapt off a window still, landed on her shoulder and sprang away into the darkness. “Ick.”

  “Sssh,” Kroh snapped, clamping a tattooed paw onto the Threll’s head to stop her dancing about. The little Badger promptly kicked the Dwarf, without visible effect; the pair were part of a small group of Badgers gathered in an alley behind a warehouse that stood katty-corner to Mane’s new headquarters.

  A light rod tucked behind one ear, the yellowing quality of the light indicating that the enchantment was fading in the glowing crystal, Henri studied the door, running his fingers carefully over the fame and lintel, muttering an arcane word now and again. Finally he placed his palms against the door on either side of the lock and spat a short phrase; Elonia, crouching at his side, heard the faint sounds of metal sliding and clock-works moving.

  “Is it open?” she whispered.

  “Not yet; in addition to a first-rate lock and a spring-loaded device that is a trap of some sort, there’s a bar as well,” he whispered back. “Kind of stupid, really: so many precautions are like a sign: ‘escape route’.” Gesturing gently with both hands at waist level, he hissed a pair of words at regular intervals as he moved his fingers. “There, the bar’s on the ground just inside the door.”

  Elonia slipped into the building first, carefully setting the bar out of the way, followed by Henri, Rolf, Kroh, Starr, Dayyan, Duna, and Jothan. Gold Platoon was nearby with Axel and two Healers, but the new Hand headquarters was staffed by less than twenty people, and Arian wanted to try stealth in the dead of night.

  “All right, no one’s in here,” Elonia reported back to the group, and two light-rods came to life. “The cellar entrance is over there, Kroh.”

  “I hope Arian knows what he’s talking about,” Henri muttered to Starr, who was scrubbing her shoulder with a bandage.

  “It jumped on me, on my shoulder.”

  “I suppose they’ll have an underground exit, the locks on the door would suggest it, but this is the third building we’ve checked, after all.”

  The warehouse stored furniture; Jothan dragged a dust-cover off a divan and he and Duna settled down to wait in comfort. “So, what’s a nice lass like you doing in a place like this?” the interpreter grinned, putting his hand on the dark archer’s knee.

  Duna giggled and pushed his hand away. “Behave yourself, sailor.”

  “Shoddy work,” Kroh grunted disgustedly. “Grain’s not even close to being aligned.”

  “Where?” Rolf asked.

  “The seams aren’t even spliced, and the lintel’s stained from handling,” The Dwarf waved a hand at the wall. “You can see the flaking from here.”

  “I don’t see it,” Elonia confessed. “Where is it?”

  “And the hinges, by the Eight, is there no attention to detail these days?” Kroh threw up his arms in disgust.

  The Seeress reined in her temper and tapped the Waybrother on his armored shoulder. “I can’t see anything wrong with the wall,” she hissed. “Mark the door with chalk while I fetch Henri and the others.”

  �
�Call this a hidden door,” Kroh grumbled as he dug a chunk of chalk from his pouch. “Like one of them women what dances with the scarves on, this is. Hide a bear in a parlor easier.”

  Rolf slipped Squeak a small piece of salt pork and stroked the cave rat, which was crouched on his left shoulder. “Squeak wants to see some action.”

  “Him and me both. I remember what his father did back in Hohenfels that time,” Kroh finished and stepped back as the rest of the team joined them.

  “Yep, old Eek was a first-rate brawler in his day,” Rolf nodded happily. “Too old and fat now, though.”

  Arthol Mane sat in the pool of light provided by a lamp, sipping wine and working his way through the stacks of reports and messages that accumulated each day. The Badger raid on his primary headquarters and the accompanying actions by the garrison had forced his organization underground for a few days, but there had been carefully-formulated plans to deal with just such contingencies, and after the coast was clear it was a simple matter to get the system back on line. The losses were difficult to deal with, but hardly insurmountable, and in the last few days a new deputy station commander and ten more Markan-Fets had been smuggled in by ship, alleviating the worst of his losses.

  The internal survey team had checked out every associate and trusted artisan, eliminating two whose loyalty might not have been as strong as it should have been, and by deduction had confirmed that the moles had been Simer and Blackthorn. Further proof came with the report from their contact on the corpse-barge loading point, who saw no tattoos on the two bodies purported to be the two associates’. The news of the traitors had been passed on to higher authority who would find them and extract revenge.

  Hand intelligence operations within the city had been disrupted for a short while, but they were back in full operation and things were getting grim for the defenders as the death toll mounted within as the walls began taking serious damage from without. The Phantom Badgers were back to patrolling and riot duty, showing no interest in re-establishing the net of contacts that had bagged them Simer and Blackthorn, and so were no further threat to Hand intelligence operations.