Dark Practices: Book Four of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  Years of training wiped any trace of realization from his seamed face even as the reading came to him; Dooaun scrambled to his feet and stood humbly in front of his cushions, hands clasped together at his belt. “Good day, Orbi. May I be of assistance?”

  The dark, slightly slanted eyes were aimed at him like a brace of loaded crossbows. “I am Choralon Miara. Who are you?”

  “Dooaun 315-446, Orbi; Seer and custodian of these devices.”

  “What are you?”

  “Orbi?” The verbal salute of a slave to any non-slave was a conditioned survival reflex by now, but beyond it Dooaun was caught off guard. This Threll’s abrupt manner and steel-straight inquires had rattled him.

  “Are you Human or mixed blood?”

  “Half-Human, half-Goblin, Orbi.”

  “Who is in command of this post?”

  “Chorapel Vargrat commands here, Orbi.”

  “I see.” Miara looked over the room’s interior. “How long have you been assigned here?”

  “Twenty years, Orbi.”

  “So you were here when a Pargaie officer named Kustar came through last year on a mission for the Hold Master.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes, Orbi.” Careful, careful; it was at that time that he had gone from burying the truth in twisting phrases to twisting the truth itself when reporting to his masters.

  “Do you know how she came to die?”

  “I know a bit, Orbi,” Dooaun said slowly. “But my skills are weak and much was unclear. I reported all I knew to Chorapel Vargrat, who relayed it to Alantarn.”

  “In the report it was said that she was slain by Goblins and her corpse sold to the minions of the White Necromancer shortly before the liche was itself slain.”

  “My input was that Kustar Pravas died before the White Necromancer was slain, that the exact means of her death was unknown to me, and that her corpse, along with those of her escort and assistant, were in Tiria before the liche was slain, Orbi. Of course, Chorapel Vargrat did not rely upon my information alone when he conducted his investigation.”

  “As is proper.” Miara strode briskly to the door leading outside. “Direct me to the Chorapel’s headquarters.”

  “Ah, the door is barred from the outside, Orbi; a moment while I alert the guards.” Dooaun tugged on a bell-cord hanging near to hand.

  “You are locked in?” Miara cocked an eyebrow.

  “Yes, Orbi, for security reasons pertaining to the Gate.” ‘Because Vargrat is afraid horrible things from the Void will break through this magical weak point in space and time,’ Dooaun thought to himself. ‘The dolt.’

  “Have you explained to your commander that the two portions of a Gate are attuned to one another and that no one and nothing can come out one without having entered the other first?” Miara strode briskly to the pull cord and gave it a dozen measured yanks.

  “He has never inquired as to the mechanics of the device, Orbi.”

  The guards finally noticed the bell and opened the door, their surly attitude vanishing at the sight of the senior officer awaiting them. Dooaun heaved a large sigh of relief when the arrow-straight woman marched off into the cold with one of the half-Orc guards as an escort. Seating himself in his cushions, he plucked a pipe at random from his rack and packed it with shaking fingers. He knew more of how Kustar had died than he ever reported; She had prompted him to lie, the one whose name he had never spoken aloud: Elonia Starshine, a former slave of Arbmante’s just as he was, but one who had thrown off her yoke and struck grievous blows against her former masters, blows whose after-shocks still echoed through the Dark Threll’s world. He had never laid eyes upon her in the flesh, just watched and loved across the miles through the medium of his keenly refined Art, watched as she and a handful of daring comrades had crossed the Wastes to beard the liche in its lair and end a centuries-old horror.

  Her defiance of the Dark Threll had moved him to subtle twisting of the truth and careful omissions which had insured that the Phantom Badger’s involvement in the liche’s deaths was hidden from Vargrat. He had also seen to it that no one learned that the Badgers, and Elonia, were responsible for Kustar’s death. Since then the wise old bee had gotten over his infatuation, thinking of her only with the warm nostalgia of a former lover with whom one has parted with on good, but final, terms; gotten over her, but never forgotten the lesson that even gentle old bees still had their stingers. He had looked at the world with new eyes, and had visited no end of mischief on Pargaie operations in this area by slanting the information he gave to Vargrat.

  All that took on a new light when he received the reading off Miara: the entire world was going to be stood upon its ear, the established order was going to be rocked upon its foundations, and soon. When the pipe was drawing well Dooaun tapped the warm mouthpiece against his forehead and commanded himself to think as he had never thought before. What would she do in his situation? Kill, he realized, kill, escape, and sow discord, things alien to his way of being, but things he might have to learn. He touched the case that held his amber plate. She and her Company were killing Goblins this day; he had Watched them raid a village of his ancestors, and thought well of them for it; Dooaun held no love for Goblins despite being half of that blood. Murderous little sods was his view of the entire race.

  Pulling out his calendar, he perused the dates. The Direthrell of Arbmante, as with most races and nations, had adopted the Imperial Calendar as a way of accurately measuring the passage of time. The Imperial Calendar divided the year into twelve months of four eight-day weeks each; today was the thirty-second day of Chiffteil, the second month of the year; winter still had another month and a half in the Northern Wastes, with a couple weeks of mud immobilizing everything immediately afterwards as the snow melted. The trouble coming wouldn’t wait on the weather; even if it were high summer, though, there was no way a simple old bee could traverse the Northern Wastes on foot and hope to survive. Dooaun stared sightlessly at the far wall, thoughts tumbling energetically.

  Standing on a low hill near the center of the land granted to the Phantom Badgers by their Imperial Charter, the ex-Dwarven outpost of Oramere dominated the surrounding terrain, a stout stone tower seven stories tall rising from within a hundred-yard square compound bound by neatly-dressed ten-foot stone walls; the slopes of the hill were cleared of all cover, and the thick drifts of snow hid wide belts of stakes and three lines of abatis. Although puny when compared to the massive forts erected by the Empire with its limitless manpower, Oramere bulked large in the eyes of the Goblins of the Purple Spider.

  In the tower were the fort’s cooking and pantry areas, two dining halls, quarters for the Company’s officers (Corporal and above), the Grand Hall, armory, library, and vault; stone buildings built into the perimeter walls provided warehouse space, stables, living quarters for the support staff, and barracks for the Company rank and file. Only Starr was an exception: she lived in a traditional Threll tree house built in the upper reaches of four mighty oaks in the southeast quarter of the compound.

  Elonia Starshine kicked her feet into open-heeled slippers as she twisted her damp hair into place and bound it with a colorful scarf, her loose robe swaying with the motions of her arms. Tugging the robe’s belt and smoothing the fuzzy wool garment into place, the Badger gathered up her towels, bath kit, and knife-belt, a faint smile on her face. It was late, or early depending upon how you looked at it, nearly five hours after midnight on the third day of Marlt, the third month of the year; she had spent the night with Maxmillian in her room, rising with the scholar when he had gotten up for guard duty an hour ago. She had just completed a long, hot bath (the Dwarves who had refurbished Oramere had installed excellent charcoal-fired water heaters and glazed clay pipe plumbing in the hold), and was heading back to bed with every intention of dozing the morning away.

  Her quarters were on the third floor of the tower, along with the bathroom, two empty quarters, and a double-sized suite used as living space and office by Durek, all op
ening off a small central landing and served by a circular stairway. Soft footsteps were coming up the stairs as the Seeress paused to move the slide on the plaque next to the bathroom’s door from the red square which meant a female was inside on past the blue which indicated a male to the blank space which meant unoccupied; turning, she saw Rolf in full battle gear trudging up the stairs, his yalla-hide parka in hand. Janna maintained a constant roster of guards for the fort, one sentry on each wall and four more plus a Corporal standing by in the smithy, the entire force rotated every four hours; Rolf had been relieved by Maxmillian, but the big half-Orc had probably stayed around to play a game of draughts or talk with the new shift as was his custom.

  Winking at the tall Badger, who had blushed at the sight of her despite the fact that the voluminous robe covered all but a few inches of her calves and half of her hands, Elonia crossed the narrow space to her door and stepped through, hearing Rolf continue up the stairs. It was hard not to tease Rolf sometimes: he was like a child in his dealings with women, so easy to embarrass. She and Starr had studied every newly-hired female warrior the Badgers recruited (there were nine women in the Badgers, four officers and five rank and file) with an eye to finding the half-Orc a girlfriend, but the search had as yet come to naught. Rolf, of course, would have been horrified to learn of their plotting.

  After stowing away her bath gear and arranging the towels near her little stove to dry, Elonia hung her knife belt on the head board and exchanged the robe for a clean flannel sleeping shirt before blowing out the candle and snuggling beneath the covers. Lying there, warm, clean, and content beneath linen sheets, wool blankets, and a bearskin cover she felt herself relax, the muscles in her legs and back loosening, her breathing becoming smooth and slow. Slipping one hand free of the covers, she took a three-sided rod of blue crystal from one of the several pouches on her knife belt and held it between her breasts until the crystal was warmed to her body temperature; fingering the symbols carved into the device, she laid the rod on her forehead and closed her eyes, letting herself drift with the Sight.

  Seconds later she was pounding on Durek’s door.

  Corporal Starr Brightgift eased around an elegantly sculpted snowdrift that had built up over a deadfall and swore silently to herself as a clump of snow was knocked off a branch overhead by the weak breeze and dropped with exact precision down the back of her neck; it was a sure indication of Kroh’s influence upon the little Badger that when she cursed, it was in fluent Fiadaich, the Dwarven language, rather than in her native Comhla. Of course, the Lanthrell language was eminently unsuited for harsh language, possessing very few really good vulgar epithets as cursing was considered extremely unseemly by her people. Dwarves, on the other hand, see considerable value in words of one syllable which can be hissed, barked, or bellowed out when things went wrong.

  Dawn was hours past and the sunlight was bouncing off the accumulated snow with enough intensity to make goggles of amber-colored glass essential while lacking the warmth to bring the temperature to a point above freezing. The little Badger eased forward another few feet and paused to study her surroundings, senses alert. She had been awakened well before dawn by Maxmillian, who was Corporal of the Guard at the moment, with orders to report to Durek in full battle gear and equipped for a long patrol. Her Captain had advised her that Elonia had Seen a grave danger approaching their holdings from the direction of the old tombs they had found last summer while clearing out a nest of Titan forest spiders; the exact time frame for this bad event was unclear, but the Seeress was sure that it wasn’t far off. In any case, she had been dispatched with a small patrol to examine the area in question, to be followed by a strong fighting patrol later.

  A sudden eruption of sparrows from the trees a hundred yards ahead made her freeze in place, keenly aware from decades of forest-dwelling that nothing natural had made the birds explode outwards in such a pattern. After sixty heartbeats she turned and carefully waved the rest of her patrol forward.

  For this scouting mission she had Duna Kadal, better known as Eclipse for her rich walnut skin hue and habit of attempting to outdo everyone at everything, and Philip Milden, a wiry man of thirty years who somehow always looked far shorter than his height of five feet, eight inches. The two were among the better of the Company’s scouts, and not incidentally, two of their more competent missile troops as well. When the pair joined her she gave the hand signal for ‘wait here’, and slipped forward again. The two might be among the best (she had, in fact, trained Duna herself) scouts the Company had among the rankers, but she was the best of the best, and the deadliest archer as well; there wasn’t anything in these woods that could out-stalk her.

  The tombs were only a few hundred yards from where she had left the rest of her patrol, but she moved with precision and expertise, planning each step, choosing each movement with care, easing forward with the deliberation of a sun-cast shadow. It was Lanthrell stealth at its best, and Starr’s best was very, very good; the first bored sentry didn’t see her, nor did the second, and then the little Badger was through the defensive line and easing up on the center of activity.

  Elonia had been right, but far too generous in her estimate that trouble was coming soon, Starr determined: for a fact, it was here now, and likely had been moving into place when the Seeress had detected it. Lying beneath a small snow-covered pine, careful not to bump any of the laden branches or get too much dirt on her bleached linen coverings, Starr had an excellent view of the stone vent that led to the underground room the tombs opened off of, and of the persons who, individually and as a group, represented the ‘trouble’ she had been sent out here to find.

  It was a raiding party of Felher, the twisted underground-dwelling Void-worshipping rat-men, descendants of unholy enchantment and evil practices that had created the race from the flesh-seed of lesser creatures. Each stooped Felher stood a few inches over five feet tall, with legs that seemed too short for their torso length and so bow-legged that it seemed their knees were jointed to bend at the side; although each was swaddled in heavy winter clothing she knew that save for their arms their body was covered with short gray-brown fur, while the coarse gray skin of their arms would be heavily tattooed. Their faces were out of a nightmare: bat ears, ferret’s jaw, Goblin’s snout, eyes like rotten olives floating in pus.

  There were about ninety warriors present, most huddling around smokeless fires near the vent with a light screen of sentries out, plus at least two Clefts, Felher wizards, with a score of helpers and assistants, and a supply train of about twenty-five pack-carrying slaves. The latter were predominately Human, although several were Goblins and there were one or two other races represented. It was obvious that the Felher were intending to open and pillage the tombs; the Badgers had discovered the complex, and later had lured a Direthrell-Goblin reprisal force to this spot, where the Goblin Shaman had foolishly opened the primary tomb and released a still-active vampire, the killing of which severely weakened the reprisal force and left them vulnerable to a Badger assault. Starr had been part of that battle, a fierce one which had cost the Company a veteran Badger killed and several others wounded. There were eight more tomb-chambers below, but Durek had ordered them left alone, planning to do something about them in the spring; apparently the Felher had detected them somehow and were planning on looting them.

  After studying the intruders for twenty minutes, the little Badger slipped back through the sentry line without alerting any of the miserable, half-frozen guards, and rejoined her patrol. She hoped the fighting patrol following them was strong enough for the job to hand.

  Janna was leading the fighting patrol herself, with Arian, Rolf, Kroh, Henri, and a dozen Badgers to round out the force; the tall Silver Eagle listened to Starr’s report without a change of expression, kneeling in the snow with her scabbarded sword leaning against her shoulder. “Black Thunder Weehoc, eh? They’re a long way from home.”

  “Me ‘n Arian cleaned out a ree of Black Thunder in Gradrek Heleth on the
raid where we rescued Rolf,” Kroh observed happily. “We’ll sort this bunch out too, in short order.”

  “Henri, how long will it take them to loot the tombs?” Janna eyed the diagram of the Felher dispositions Starr had drawn in the snow.

  “Eight chambers, and the likelihood that at least one or more of the occupants will still be active... I would take a couple days to do the job, if I were in charge. As near as we can determine, these chambers were used to seal off a Goblin vampire who was also skilled at necromancy and his retinue several hundred years ago; the vampire was still active, so it wouldn’t be surprising if his strongest henchmen were still capable of action. Others might have set up trap-enchantments on their chambers and property to extract revenge upon looters before expiring.”

  Janna mulled this for a bit; she wasn’t too worried about the Felher as warriors despite the four to one odds, since very few would have any sort of armor, and that usually boiled leather, and they rarely used shields of any sort, but two or more Clefts radically altered the picture. “How good do you suppose those Clefts are?’

  “Good.” Henri was emphatic. “Near Axel’s level would be my guess based on their entourages, plus two or three underlings who have some sort of spellcasting ability.”

  “Damn. Could you take them from ambush?”

  “One, I’m pretty sure, but not two. They’ll be concentrating their wards against whatever’s in the tombs, so I’ll have a chance to kill or cripple one, but the other’ll shift focus before I can cast another bolt. The best time to try this is when one or both are in the tomb area.”