Dark Obligations: Book One of the Phantom Badgers

by Krpoun, RW

  Easing backward an inch at a time, pausing at irregular intervals to break up the pattern of her movement, the dark Badger slipped below the crest to join her companions, knowing that Trellan’s eyes were locked on the seat of her tight riding breeches as she wriggled backwards, and wondering for the thousandth time why Durek kept the demented little bastard around.

  “Trellan, go back and report to Durek,” she kept her voice to a bare whisper, outlining what she had seen and what she summarized. “Starr and I are going to circle around and see where the trail leads. We’ll report back when we know more.”

  Moving at a crouch, the two scouts circled around to the east, moving with caution and in complete silence, ears straining for any hint of danger. It was slow moving, careful steps taken with irregular pauses to look and listen, wary like a wild animal. Gabriella had been jealous of the young Lanthrell’s scouting skills during the two day’s travel through the forests to reach the Ward, skills honed by Threll training and five decades spent in an ancient forest, but here on the plains she was still Starr’s superior, albeit not by a huge margin.

  The two crawled the last fifty feet to the crest of a shallow rise that should afford them a view of the dip the trail had disappeared into, the better to conceal their approach. As she eased through the grass, Gabriella noted approvingly that Starr had drawn and strung her bow, and crawled with an arrow clenched between her teeth; the dark knife-fighter’s sling was held loosely in her hand, a lead ball already fitted within the weapon’s pouch.

  When the pair gained the crest and peered through the frost-browned grass they saw the makers of the trail and an odd scene laid out below them. The expanse of grassland between the crest the trail had last surmounted and the next high point in the rolling prairie was broader than either scout had been able to determine at a distance, being over three hundred yards across. Squarely in the middle of this sizeable meadow was an odd stone structure, a roughly circular floor of slate panels twenty feet across with eleven crudely-hewn pillars of tarred and iron-banded wood set at irregular intervals around the ‘floor’s’ circumference, each post half again as tall as a man, although none stood at the same height. A short stump of blackened and heat-warped iron was set into the slate panels near the center of the floor.

  The incongruous structure, the first artificial construction they had seen in over two hundred miles of riding trapped their attention for longer than an experienced scout would consider wise, but the structure’s lack of any symmetrical proportions, spacing, or scale held the eye like a magnet gripping iron. Finally Gabriella broke the numbing fascination of the odd pavilion and rubbed her eyes, reaching blindly to her side and jabbing the Threll in her mail-covered ribs until Starr hissed a response.

  Blinking hard in the manner of one crossing snowy ground on a very sunny day, Gabriella ignored the pavilion (as she chose to term the strange structure) and was shocked to see that the meadow was well-occupied, a fact that had completely eluded her until now. From the sighing grunt next to her she knew Starr was just realizing that they were not alone.

  Below them was parked a two wheeled cart such as they themselves had brought along on this expedition, a high-wheeled, durable vehicle that could be easily drawn by a single sturdy mule across the roughest terrain; this cart was still loaded, a worn tarp stretched tightly over its load, the harness hung neatly from the driver’s seat. A patch of ground had been cleared of grass and a circle of stones for an evening cook fire had been assembled, a five-gallon water bag and a partially opened sack filled with dried dung for fuel nearby. Five bedrolls were laid out near the fire pit and two more a short distance away.

  A person was slumped against the inner side of one wheel of the cart, barely visible at this angle; two armed men lay a few feet from the pavilion’s edge, either dead or unconscious. No mounts were visible, although a length of rope still tied to a picket pin was visible a short distance from the cart. None of the figures were stirring, and nothing about them gave any clue as to their origins or alliegences at this distance.

  After studying the scene for several minutes, Gabriella eased over and tapped Starr on the elbow. Without lifting her head, the Lanthrell turned her face towards the knife-fighter and wagged her eyes in the gesture that equaled a helpless shrug. The dark woman moved one finger in a half-circle and pointed with her chin towards the pavilion, whose ability to fascinate seemed to be broken. Slipping back from the crest, the two circled around to enter the meadow with the pavilion between themselves and the cart.

  The two were closing on the odd structure when sudden movement in a clump of low bushes sent Gabriella diving for cover, the harsh snap of Starr’s bow and a ragged scream ripping the silence. As the dark Badger rolled to her feet she heard the bow release again and the sobbing howl abruptly cut off.

  “Moving,” she warned the Threll, shoving her sling (she had lost the bullet when she had ducked) under her belt and drawing her yataghans, the deadly Navian fighting dirks whose expert use rivals the quarterstaff and the sword-rapier in terms of death-art. Darting to the twitching form in the bushes, she kicked the figure in the shoulder, rolling the Human male out onto the grass. It only took a moment’s glance to know that he was no longer a threat: one arrow, likely the first fired, had caught him high on the chest, going in at a steep angle between the left shoulder and the throat; the other, likely the second shot, had struck him in the center of the throat, sliced open the airway and at least one major blood vessel, and then embedded itself in his spine.

  The man had been in his late twenties, a fighting type from his build and equipment, Gabriella noted as she expertly searched the body while Starr knelt nearby on guard, arrow nocked and ready. He had been dressed in unremarkable clothes, with a padded undertunic marked with the snags and rust marks from being worn under a mail shirt. He had a broadsword and a dagger of good quality at his belt, and a belt pouch that yielded a few coins and the usual odds and ends a traveler accumulates.

  “Take a look at this,” Gabriella called the other Badger over. She indicated the man’s face: the left side was unmarked and normal; the right, however, was blistered and puffy, the eye swollen shut and oozing sticky fluid. The line between healthy and injured flesh was unnaturally straight, running vertically from the hairline to the tunic’s collar and very nearly centered on his nose.

  “Plague?”

  The knife-fighter shook her head. “I don’t think so: too neat of a line. I would guess sorcery of some sort. Aha.” She had slit the man’s tunic as she spoke; the chest below was unmarked, but it was the talisman around his neck that she was interested in. “Hand of Chaos; he was a long ways from home,” she observed cutting the pendant free. She wondered what a soldier from the nation-cult that controlled the far northeast coast of Alhenland was doing on this side of the Thunderpeaks. Nothing good, she would bet.

  “No loss, then,” Starr echoed her feeling. Pulling the broken shaft from the dead cult-soldier’s throat, she examined the damage before tossing the ruined arrow aside. Using the warrior’s own dagger, she laboriously cut the wickedly barbed arrow free of his chest. Wiping it clean on the grass, she examined it critically. “It should be all right once I sharpen it.”

  “Cover me, and let’s try to take the next one alive, not that I’m complaining, of course.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Yataghans in hand, Gabriella moved up to, and circled the pavilion carefully; at this close range she could see that the stone and wood were marked with the signs of extreme age, and that each of the posts had several sets of manacles attached to the inner side. On the floor was a scattering of fly-covered fragments of flesh, bits of cloth, and melted blobs of metal. She could also see that in radiating swathes from between each post out to about twenty feet the upper three inches of the dry prairie grass had been cut away as cleanly as if each stalk had been severed with a ruler and scalpel. In the center of one such swath she found a pair of sturdy boots, an inch of their owner’s legs and a drooping fri
nge of trouser-leg protruding from the top of each.

  Both the prone figures on the far side if the pavilion were of a type with the warrior Starr had killed, including Hand of Chaos insignia; one was missing an arm, and the other his entire left side, these portions having been within the arc of the cut-grass swathes she had noted. Both also had some blistering on their faces on the side of severed areas.

  When Starr joined her in response to her wave, she pointed out the evidence. “Spellcaster in the pavilion makes a blunder, dies, there is a wave or pulse of some sort of magical energy, three guards standing by die. The one you shot must have been standing sideways to the pavilion nearly in the shadow of a post.”

  “There’s someone under the wagon, not moving,” Starr nodded. “Seven bedrolls, I figure five warriors, the spellweaver and an assistant. Unless the assistant was inside the posts with the spellcaster, we’re short one.”

  A few feet past where the cut-grass swathes ended they found a lap desk lying on its side, a spilled ink pot making a bright green puddle against the brown grass. Two open books lay nearby; Starr kicked them shut without looking at the pages. Signs of someone crawling led from the area of the desk to the cart.

  Approaching cautiously, they saw that the huddled figure under the cart was that of a young woman in a fine travelling dress. She lay with her back to them, but it was apparent at she had been dead for some time. Gabriella slipped under the wagon, caught the woman by the hair, and dragged the corpse out into the open.

  The woman had driven the blade of an ornate dagger up under her breastbone with both hands; her face was a swollen mass of blisters and seared flesh, as was the back of her left hand. Both shoulders and her back bore tattooing that included symbols of the Hand of Chaos, they discovered when they cut her dress away.

  “The assistant,” Starr guessed. “That leaves one warrior.”

  Gabriella nodded from her perch on the driver’s seat of the cart as she scanned the surrounding area. “The woman hasn’t been dead for much better than a day,” she observed. “If the last guard wasn’t in the ‘pavilion’ with the spellcaster, than he or she must have grabbed a horse and fled.”

  “No, there’s six saddles stacked here,” Starr called from the back of the cart. “Six bridles, too; figure one for a cart driver and that’s the lot. Unless the warrior rode bareback.”

  “Probably not,” the knife-fighter admitted. “No sign of him that I can see. Why don’t you circle for tracks while I start inventorying the cart. The others ought to be here soon.”

  The rest of the Badger force arrived before Gabriella or Starr had finished their respective tasks. Durek reined in his war pig next to the cart while the rest of the Badgers fanned out in a defensive perimeter. When the dark Badger had finished her explanation and suppositions, the Captain nodded. “Good work. Bridget, inspect the bodies and that structure; Arian, give Gabriella a hand sorting the cart’s goods, see if anything is contaminated or drugged, we’ll take what food and grain such is useable. This will be a windfall for us, supply-wise. Starr, what did you find?”

  The short Lanthrell shrugged. “It looks as if the last warrior set off after the mounts not long after they bolted. Where he ended up is anyone’s guess.”

  “Fine job you two have done here,” Durek observed. “This’ll be part of a larger caravan, the rest waiting back in the mountains, I would guess. I wonder what they were trying to do in that thing.” He jerked a thumb towards the pavilion.

  “Nothing good, that’s certain,” Bridget advised as she walked up. “The scouts were correct in their estimates: the spellcaster inside the structure either released something or fumbled at a critical stage, and in either case the effects are plain to see. There is no lingering threat to us, magically speaking, and no one here was any great loss.”

  The Captain glowered at the structure. “I’d like some answers about what they hoped to achieve.” He thumped his saddle in frustration. “Damn it all, I hate mysteries, especially out here. Still, we can’t brood too long on it, not with night coming and a hard day ahead. Bridget, you and Arian have a look at the written material and then burn all of it. We’ll take as much of their food and grain as we can carry back to our camp with us; it’ll help in the days ahead, especially if we run into snow on the way back.”

  “Now there’s a happy thought,” the advocate observed, a wiry grin tugging at her lips. “Bad weather and corpses, that’s what the Wastes never lack.”

  Starr had first watch that night, perched on the riverbank at a particularly good vantage point. As was his custom, Kroh stood it with her; as his watch followed hers, she often returned the favor. She sat on a rock (used by those amongst the Badgers too short to sit on the ground at the guard point and have a clear view) and watched the plains, which on this evening were bathed in sharp silver light by a near-full moon. Kroh sat on the ground nearby, idly rooting in the dirt with a stick.

  The little Threll was feeling homesick out on the treeless Waste, and not too confident about an extended foray underground. Glancing at her companion, she wondered if he had ever felt thus.

  “Hardly a good omen today, those dead people,” she ventured. “Reminds you of how it could go with us, out here.”

  The Dwarf grunted, rocking a small stone free of the sod. “Not really: we don’t muck around with enchanted places like that one. Bad business, magic.” He critically examined the rock he had unearthed, carefully brushing the dirt from it. “‘Course, you could say it was a good omen: any time you find a bunch of your enemies dead and unlooted, well, that’s a fine thing.”

  The young Lanthrell pondered this for a bit. “I suppose.” She waited for Kroh to continue the conversation, but he was intently engaged in peeling the bark off his digging-stick. He wasn’t too talkative under most conditions, although he would carry his end once the conversation got started.

  “I suppose there’ll be fighting once we’re inside Grad-whatever,” she observed mournfully. “Maybe even a big battle.”

  “Definitely a big battle, maybe more than one, and plenty of little ones,” Kroh agreed with enthusiasm. “Gradrek Heleth won’t be no Market Day stroll, let me tell you. I did a foray there once, back before I joined the Badgers, of course. Plenty there to see and kill.”

  That was definitely not what she wanted to hear. “That’s what I was concerned about, a big fight. The set-to with the Undead was my first real battle, you know, up close and personal. I’m an archer, not a swordswoman, I don’t like melee. Plus this sword isn’t right for me, too long: it’s my father’s, and he insisted I take it.”

  “Not a lot of need for a bow in the caverns, although it won’t be completely useless. There’s still some Dwarven weapons left in Gradrek Heleth, so maybe we can find you a better one if you’re not afraid of honest steel, rather than that crystal stuff you people work. As for the one you’ve got, it’s all in the arm. I’ll work with you on the rest of the trip, get you ready for corridor fighting. Fought in dozens of corridor fights, I have, nothing to it.” He thumped her knee. “Don’t worry, little one: I’ll protect you until you’ve got enough fighting under your belt to stand alone.”

  “Thank you.” She meant it. Many thought their friendship odd, Threll and Dwarves as peoples having had very little contact with each other due to their mutually exclusive living conditions, but she had grown very fond of the gnarled mass of muscle. She felt that under his basic Dwarven absurdities, fighting rages, and battle-lust there dwelt a truly good soul, and she was proud to call him friend.

  “I suppose it will all work out for the best,” she observed, feeling much better.

  “And if it doesn't, I’ll kill everything in our way until it does,” Kroh rumbled as he bound the rock to his now-bare digging stick with strips of bark. “I’m good at that.”

  Chapter Three

  The arrival at their entrance to Gradrek Heleth was anticlimactic; indeed, few knew they had arrived until Durek gave the order to halt. They had turned east and en
tered the foothills late in the afternoon the day before and had been steadily climbing ever since, making very good time on an old, frost-battered gravel road complete with Dwarven mile markers. Three hours and nine miles ago they had left the road, ascended a shallow ravine, and proceeded to struggle up one slope after another until Durek gave the order to halt and pronounced their arrival. To the eyes of those Badgers who had never made the trip before the deepening twilight held no sign of an entrance to an abandoned Dwarven city, but they offered no argument, being glad that the day’s travels were at an end.

  Durek dispatched Gabriella and Star to scout the way to the entrance as Bridget oversaw the distribution of a cold meal and Janna walked the camp’s perimeter, choosing guard posts and compiling the night’s sentry roster. The Badgers set up camp with a weary precision born of long experience.

  By the time the carts were man-handled into position, the mounts cared for, the scouts returned and the excess gear stacked it was fully dark. The night air was chilly, and since there was to be no fire (although one would be lit in the morning for a hot breakfast before the Badgers entered Gradrek Heleth), those Badgers not assigned to first watch hastily washed away the worst of the trail grime with water warmed by lying in a leather flask against their mount’s bodies all day, wolfed down a meal of hard trail biscuits, dried meat and raw potatoes, and rolled into their blankets.

  Durek briefed Bridget, Janna, Gottri, and Kurt as to the morning’s events, and turned in himself, glad that the planning was coming to an end and the doing would soon start.