The Archon's Assassin

by D. P. Prior

  Nameless took a step toward him, but the rasp of cloth, the creak of joints brought him up short.

  “Where the ruddy Abyss are we?” A bullish man in a brocaded jacket lurched to his feet. He had a bushy mustache and whiskers but no beard. There was a name for such people in the Ravine City, though Nameless was shogged if he could remember it. Something to do with goats and rutting. Before it could come into focus, another name muscled its way to mind: Galen. The oaf from the Perfect Peak.

  Galen straightened his uniform and shook the grog from his head.

  Behind him, a half-naked savage—Ekyls—hissed and rose to a crouch, sniffing the air and squinting. He still had his hatchet, which struck Nameless as odd, but no odder than him retaining his axe, and Galen his saber. Clearly, their captor didn’t see them as a threat. The thought could have been intimidating, Nameless supposed, but to him, it was a challenge, and one he would gladly accept, if ever he got the chance.

  The old priest, or whatever he was, Ludo, was starting to rouse, hands clutching a black book.

  The fat slimy one—Albert—was sprawled against the body of a dead mule. Their mule. Quintus, the poisoner had called him, after the poet. Seemed the poor beast’s luck was as bad as his namesake’s verse.

  There was no sign of Shadrak. Nameless dimly recalled the assassin had been below when that monstrous face burst from the lava, its cavernous mouth spewing fumes over them.

  He clutched his stomach as it gurgled and complained. It never shogging stopped. Surely it had gotten the message by now. Nothing solid had passed its way in months. Probably never would again, the way things were going.

  “Right, now,” Galen said. “Observations.” No one said anything, so he pressed on. “Well, the way I see it, we’re trapped in a chamber of sorts—could be a cell.” He rapped the wall with his knuckles. “Iron, I’d say. Now, the first thing to do in a situation such as—”

  “Shut your mouth, fool!” Ekyls gave him an eviscerating look, and Galen stuttered to a stop.

  The savage was on his belly beside Nameless, scratching around the outline of the door.

  With a snort that became a yawn, Albert rolled away from the mule, rubbed his thumb against his fingers, and sniffed.

  “Rotten eggs.” He pulled a copper coin from his pocket and turned it over, examining it keenly before tossing it to Nameless.

  There was a slight discoloration to the metal, nothing more. Nameless shrugged and flipped it back.

  “Sulfur Dioxide.” Albert held the coin up, turning so the others could see. “It would seem our friend from the lava lake has a bad case of halitosis.”

  “Bad breath?” Galen pulled a face.

  “Stank like shit,” Ekyls growled, nose ferreting around the door.

  Ludo didn’t appear to be listening. He licked his thumb and riffled through his book.

  “Here we are!” He jabbed at the page as if he’d found the answer to all their problems.

  Albert flicked a look at the cover. “What are you reading? Oh, of course. You’re one of them. Just thank your lucky stars we’re not in Sahul. I’ve seen people garroted for less and sent bobbing away down the Soulsong.”

  Galen frowned and twiddled with his mustache, curling up one end, which flopped the second he let go. “What does it say, Eminence? Oh, you don’t have the new Liber, do you? Thought we weren’t to use Aeternam anymore.”

  Ludo shot him a withering look. “I’ll translate as I go.” He found his place with a finger and read aloud:

  “Tunc Nabuchodonosor repletus est furore: et aspectus faciei illius immutatus est super Sidrach, Misach, et Abdenago—Then was Nabuchodonosor filled with fury, and the countenance of his face was changed against Sidrach, Misach, and Abdenago.”

  “The three young men?” Galen said. “What the deuce has that to do with what’s going on here?”

  “Patience, Galen. You will see.”

  “Poppycock!” Albert said, and turned to study the tubes around the bottom of the walls.

  Nameless was starting to feel stifled again. It was bad enough being trapped in the helm, but this additional confinement was Arx Gravis all over again.

  “Anagogic interpretation is what is needed,” Ludo was saying, peering over the rim of his spectacles at a red-faced and blustering Galen. “But it works best in the original tongue.”

  “It’s a most parlous position you put me in, Eminence,” Galen said. “Ipsissimus Silvanus insists on the vernacular, and I am pledged to obedience.” He muttered something under his breath, which may have been, “As we all are.”

  Ludo lowered the Liber to his lap and sighed. “Fads come and go, Galen. The Templum is old enough and big enough to live with them, but always the truth will out.” He sucked in his cheeks as he watched Galen’s discomfort. “But if it will save you conflict, Brother, I will follow the new rules. Perhaps you will report as much to His Divinity, if ever we are recalled.”

  “You have my word, Eminence. And my thanks.”

  Ludo gave a thin smile and went back to the text. “… and he commanded that the…”

  “Furnace,” Albert interjected, rising from his inspection.

  “You know the passage?”

  “What? No, this is a furnace. See, these are gas vents. If I’m not very much mistaken—and I sincerely hope I am—we’re in a massive oven.”

  The blood drained from Ludo’s face. “Oh, no… I chose the text for an entirely different reason. I meant simply to show the need for faith in such—”

  “Be silent, idiot!” Ekyls was tense and shaking, eyes wide and fearful. “You get us out?”

  Albert rubbed his chin. “I’ll do my best. The irony of the master chef becoming the main course is not altogether lost on me.”

  He began to rummage around in the packs on the dead mule.

  Nameless prodded the beast with his axe haft, just to be sure.

  “Don’t waste your time,” Albert said. “The old boy’s snuffed it. Shame, really. Now you strapping lads will have to shoulder his burden.” He took in Nameless and Galen with a glance, but puffed his cheeks out when he got to Ludo.

  Bird suddenly shook himself, his cloak parting like a cocoon.

  “Those names you read…” His voice sounded harsh, his tongue thick with the words. “Sidrach—”

  “Well I’ll be damned,” Galen said, looking to Ludo. “Isn’t that—”

  “Shadrak.” Ludo closed the book. “Now that’s how the Liber speaks to us, unless you believe in synchronicity.” He squinted back at Galen over his glasses.

  “Always was a shifty little devil,” Albert said, holding up a slim metal pick. “Us cooped up in here awaiting a roasting, and the midget out there, invisible, biding his time till he gets to pick over our charred and crispy carcasses.”

  Ekyls brandished his hatchet and spat. “Me say he not be trusted.”

  “Let’s not be so hasty,” Galen said. “Just because the ruddy fellow was canny enough not to get caught like the rest of us.”

  Albert started to scrape around the edges of the door, inserting the pick as far as it would go and then trying further along. “Strange that the creature should strike just after he left us. Call me cynical, but what if that was the plan all along? It’s not like he’s been forthcoming with the details of this little escapade.”

  “Thought you were friends, laddie,” Nameless said. He slapped the haft of his axe from palm to palm. “Or was I mistaken?” He’d not taken to Albert from the first, and now, finally, the poisoner’s lack of mettle was starting to show. He had all the makings of a dwarven politician, and that was nothing to boast about.

  “I am,” Albert said. “We are. Need-to-know basis, I assume, with some of us needing more than others. Don’t worry. I understand. It’s the Sicarii way. I’d probably do the same in his position.”

  “Aye, laddie, I’m sure you would. Last thing we need is second-guessing, or theology.” He turned his helm on Ludo. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s
a lot of prattle about nothing. Less of the gab and more action.” He looked back at Albert. “Take my advice, and we’ll have that belly down to size in no time.”

  Albert’s hands flew to his stomach. He gave a nervous laugh, but Nameless was astute enough to see it for what it was: a weak man’s attempt at a weak disguise. He was livid, and likely to exact revenge at some later date.

  Nameless threw his axe over his shoulder so suddenly that Albert jumped back. “You,”—he jabbed a finger at Ekyls—“get on with your digging. It’s likely useless, but it’s still better then prattle.”

  Ekyls snarled and gnashed his teeth. Nameless was sorely tempted to break them for him.

  “Come, Ekyls,” Albert said. “We’re all friends here.”

  Ekyls’ eyes narrowed to angry slits, but he backed down anyway. Most people did that around Nameless, and these savage types were as easy to dominate as dogs. It was all in the bearing, the posture. Of course, it didn’t hurt having the muscle to back it up.

  “Looks like you’re in charge, then,” Galen said. “Can’t complain about that. I admire a man of action. Considered myself one, back in the dragoons. What are your orders?”

  “We”—Nameless made sure Ludo was listening as well—“need to see if anything can be done about these vents.” Or, more likely, inlets that could very well start streaming fire at any moment. He was thinking of bashing them closed. Something needed bashing, that was for sure.

  Bird rustled alongside him, head cocked, stony eyes peering into the great helm.

  “I will look.” He warped and shrunk into a bright green bird, no bigger than an insect. His wings were a giddy blur as he hovered into one of the pipes.

  Nameless stooped to examine an adjacent tube, and gave it a rap with his axe.

  Albert let out a dramatic sigh. “If your aim is to draw attention, then by all means, carry on.”

  Galen slipped out of his backpack and unfastened the straps. “The way I see it, if attention is drawn, we need to be prepared, wot.”

  Nameless angled his helm at that. “Prepared how, laddie?”

  Galen removed a tubular contraption, like a trumpet with a wooden stock and a trigger. Whipping out a handkerchief, he spat into it and proceeded to polish the metal, humming affectionately as he did so.

  “Brother,” Ludo said, “that goes beyond the spirit of Berdini’s definition of proportionate resistance, don’t you think?”

  Galen blew into the tapered end of the trumpet, coughed, and then upended the contraption to peer down its length. Satisfied, he gave it a shake and a pat, and then pulled a pouch from his pack.

  “What is it the Luminary says, Eminence? ‘All things have their season. A time for war. A time to kill.’’’ He poured some black powder into the trumpet. Then, like he had all the time in the world, he unclipped a metal rod and used it to ram the powder home.

  Ludo snatched off his glasses and rubbed them on his cassock. “‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’’’

  “Duty, Eminence. Ordered by the Ipsissimus to protect you, and that requires the use of arms. His Divinity’s word, unless I’m very much mistaken, trumps even yours. The constitution of the Elect makes specific provision—”

  Nameless brought his axe down hard on a tube-mouth and sheered right through it.

  “Well, that’ll be a big help,” Albert said. He was scraping at the rust around the door.

  Ekyls sprang up and stood rigid. “Something come.”

  “Remember its breath,” Albert said, taking a couple of steps back. “When the door opens, cover your mouth and nose.”

  Nameless flattened himself against the wall to one side of the door. If the vapors didn’t overcome him, he’d take one shog of a swing at that ugly face; maybe get lucky and crush the shogger’s nose, drive bone-splinters into its brain. He was starting to puff up with the anticipation of a fight, could feel his muscles filling with blood. He twirled the axe in his hands, and had to use all his willpower not to burst into song. The luck was upon him. He could feel it.

  Ekyls crouched in the opposite corner, tense and ready to pounce. His fingers curled and uncurled around the handle of his hatchet. They were crusted with blood and dirt from his digging.

  Albert squeezed in behind him. He was unarmed, hands clasped over his belly.

  Galen waved Ludo to the far side of the dead mule and gestured for him to get down. When he was satisfied his charge was as safe as he could be in the circumstances, he swung back to the door and raised his trumpet-barreled weapon.

  “This,” he said to Nameless in a stage-whisper, “is how we do it in Latia.”

  “Praise be for Aeterna-Tech,” Ludo mumbled dryly from behind the mule. “I’ll eat my cassock if it works.”

  A grating and clanking came from beyond the door. The metal chamber juddered, and wafts of rank gas rose from the tubes.

  Ludo coughed and spluttered. Ekyls looked too angry—or frightened—to notice. Albert had a sly expression on his face; and Galen was stern as stone, eyes never wavering from the door. To Nameless’s way of thinking, he was as close to being a dwarf as a human could get at that moment.

  More grating, and the screech of tortured metal. There was an agonizing pause, and then the door protested as it started to open outward.

  “Steady,” Galen muttered like a ventriloquist. Only the twitching of his mustache gave him away as the speaker.

  Gigantic fingers curled around the door.

  “Steady…”

  Smoke billowed into the chamber, but Nameless was already holding his breath. He shifted the weight of the axe, rolled his shoulders.

  With a final scream of dry hinges, the door swung open, and an enormous head thrust into the entrance, eyes flashing from cavernous sockets. Lava sloughed around the mouth and nose, falling from the chin in a steaming beard. The lips were crusted magma, vapor spilling from them in swirls and puffs. As the mouth opened, a wave of scorching heat rolled into the chamber.

  Galen pulled the trigger. Fire and thunder blasted from the funnel. The recoil flung him back against the mule. The giant bellowed as tiny craters spattered its cheek.

  Nameless swung into the opening and crashed his axe into the giant’s nose, just like he’d imagined. Heat shot along the haft, singeing his palms, but he held on. A second chop opened a crevasse between its eyes.

  Ekyls screamed and hacked at its nose repeatedly. Gouts of flame roared from the giant’s mouth, driving them back. The blade of Nameless’s axe was burning with white heat, the haft smoldering.

  The massive head withdrew, and in its place, an iron-clad hand pushed inside, feeling about with splayed fingers, each as big as a sapling.

  Albert stepped away from the wall. He glanced at a scrap of paper in his hand, then thrust it in his jacket pocket. “Sartis,” he cried out. “Sartis, Lord of the Jötunn, Son of the Flame, Rightful King of Aethir.”

  Someone had been doing their research.

  The giant’s voice erupted from a cloud of soot. “I am known? I am known! Ah, the aeons pass slowly. How many since my name was last spoken?”

  Albert edged toward the opening, palms raised, head lowered. “I bring you gifts, o mightiest of the Jötunn.” He swept his hand out to encompass the chamber. “A feast of flesh, and with it, the finest culinary skills on Aethir.” He bowed deeply, as the flickering shadows of Sartis’s face fell over him.

  Ekyls glared daggers at Albert. Galen struggled to his feet and tugged his jacket straight. He raised a questioning eyebrow at Nameless.

  Ludo sat up, one arm resting on the mule. He seemed to have grasped the situation. His eyes narrowed with what looked like resignation, as if betrayal were always the inevitable outcome. He could have been right, too, but Nameless was willing to give Albert the benefit of the doubt, on account of the situation. If the shogger was indeed a turncoat, there was little chance of him outrunning a flung axe, not with a physique like that.

  “How do you know of me, fat man?” the gia
nt rumbled. “I thought the world had forgotten.”

  Nameless studied the charred face, watched the flames lapping across its brow. Globs of magma formed around the pockmarks left by Galen’s weapon, the damage done by hatchet and axe. They seeped and rolled like quicksilver. Sartis ran a finger as big as a man through the conflagration of his beard.

  “The world remembers, Lord Sartis,” Albert continued to fawn. “It remembers your stand against the Jötunn, the pain you endured.”

  Sartis nodded and looked at his hands. They were encased in gauntlets of red-hot metal with wide flaring cuffs and articulated bands extending over the fingers.

  “My people. Gone. No one left to withstand the Technocrat.”

  “Your people fought Gandaw?” Nameless asked.

  The giant rolled its huge head to look at him.

  Albert scowled his annoyance. Maybe he had a plan, after all. Or maybe he just didn’t like being upstaged.

  “What manner of creature are you, with your head encased in scarolite?” Sartis asked.

  Any answer Nameless might have given bubbled up into his throat and tasted of bile. He felt exposed, vulnerable. His heart thumped out the rhythm of fear, but he’d long known how to change it to a more dwarven tune.

  “You really don’t want to know, laddie.” He almost chuckled at that: him, a dwarf, calling a giant “laddie.” If only Thumil could have heard him. It’d make for a tavern tale worth the telling, that’s for sure. Except he couldn’t drink with the shogging helm on his head, and no dwarven tavern would admit him after what he’d done. The thought his Arx Gravis drinking days were lost forever twisted his mood a shade darker, and any trepidation he might have felt was swallowed up by a belligerence that had landed him in trouble more times than he cared to remember. “I asked about Gandaw.”

  The giant’s eyes were clouded by steam, and a low rumble sounded at the back of his throat, its echo vibrating from the iron walls of the chamber. With a flicker of flame, his eyes cleared, and he said, “The Technocrat sent his metal men against me, once my people were out of the way. The heat of the lava vents hides me from them, and I dare not leave their protection.”