[Lost Mark 01] - Marked for Death

by Matt Forbeck - (ebook by Undead)

  Temmah looked at Kandler. “Will you come peacefully, justicar?” His eyes pleaded with his friend to make this easy.

  Before Kandler could answer, the knights stepped into the circle formed around Kandler, their swords drawn and ready. “He’s not going anywhere,” Deothen said.

  Kandler shook his head in exasperation. He understood why Burch had loosed a bolt without waiting for a signal. Despite the shifter’s laconic facade, he always stood ready for a good fight. Kandler had thought Deothen and the knights would have been better disciplined though. “Can’t anyone around here do what I tell them?” he asked.

  “By Dol Arrah’s sacred sword,” said Mardak, a dark vein pulsing in his forehead as he spoke to the knights, “this is an internal matter. It has nothing to do with you. I’ll thank you to stay out of this.”

  “Don’t do me any favors,” Kandler said to Deothen. He tried to sound as confident about it as he wanted to be. “I can handle this.”

  “Really?” said Sallah. “You could take on a few score of battle-hardened veterans yourself? I’d like to see that.”

  “Step back, and you might get a chance,” Mardak said, his voice dripping with desperate menace.

  “Are you out of your mind?” called a strong feminine voice. Kandler turned back around to see Mardak’s wife Priscinta smack him in the back of the head. He hadn’t seen her march up with the others. She must have followed Mardak from the square and watched from a distance until she figured out what he and his people were up to.

  Enraged, Mardak turned to slap his wife, but she snatched his arm before he could land the blow. “This is Kandler,” she said, “not some wandering beggar worshiping some upstart god!”

  Sallah started to object, but Priscinta kept talking. “Kandler founded Mardakine with you, and he’s saved our little settlement more times than I care to count. Who slew that carcass crab when it came crawling out of the Mournland looking for a meal?”

  Mardak opened his mouth to say something, but Priscinta kept rolling. “And Burch,” she said as she pointed up to the shifter’s rooftop perch, “he brought down three of that flight of harpies before these archers of yours even unslung their bows. I think they’ve earned their place with us.”

  Mardak took advantage of the fact his wife was looking away to slap her to the ground. Everyone gasped. Mardak looked down at his hand as if it had just come to life on its own. His face, red with anger only moments before, blanched pale as a skeleton left out in the desert sun.

  Priscinta sat on the ash-coated crater floor, her hand covering the red mark Mardak’s blow had placed on her ivory skin. She stood with painstaking care and brushed the ash from her skirts. Then she turned to her husband and spat blood from her mouth on the ground before him. Where it landed, it turned the ash black.

  Without a word, Priscinta launched herself at Mardak. Before she could reach him, Rislinto stepped between them and held her at bay. “Don’t!” he said. “He’s not worth it!”

  “He’s not worth my blood, but he’s already had some of that!” Priscinta said. “I was a warrior-maiden!” she said as tears streamed down her flushed cheeks. “I gave that up to bear your children, you spiteful bastard!”

  “That’s right,” Rislinto said. “Your children. Like Pradak, who’s standing right there!”

  Priscinta turned to see her eldest son gaping at his parents. The fight fled from her. With that, Rislinto wrapped his thick arms around Priscinta, and she collapsed against his barrel chest. She pressed hard against him, muffling her sobs.

  Mardak stared at his wife for a moment. Kandler could see the tears welling up in the man, but he knew that Mardak would never allow them to flow, never admit that he was wrong in front of so many other people. Mardak’s eyes went to his son, and his face burned with shame.

  “None of that matters right now,” Mardak said, more to himself than anyone else, then louder he said, “We are under siege by forces unknown. If we are to survive, everyone must follow orders. No one is exempt.” He turned to Kandler. The justicar could see that all of his old friend’s shame and fear was now hammered into a red-hot blade of righteous rage, its new-forged tip pointed straight at him. “Not even our finest.”

  Kandler let loose a hard laugh. “So,” he said, “what are you saying exactly?”

  “You’re not that dumb, justicar.”

  “Pretend I am.”

  Mardak sighed. “You and Burch shall surrender yourselves into my custody now.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “Not even you two can stand against so many of us. You may manage to kill many who have called you friend, but we will bring you down.”

  Kandler scanned the faces arrayed against him. Many of them, like Temmah, refused to meet his eyes. They stood tall, though, with their hands on the hilts of their weapons. He had fought alongside many of them, and since the founding of the town he had trained with them all. He had worked to instill in them a sense of duty to their town, to each other. He had never guessed that this would be used against him.

  How many of them could he bear to kill? If he tried to run, the archers would bring him down before he reached the crater’s wall. If he stood and fought, he would be forced to murder his friends or die at their hands. Once such a fight began, there would be no turning back.

  “Priscinta is right,” Kandler said. “You are a bastard.” He glared at the mayor, measuring the distance between the two. He knew he could draw his blade and slice through Mardak’s throat before the man could even raise his sword. He considered it. The thought felt good.

  “Sticks and stones, Brelander,” said Mardak. “What will it be?”

  Chapter

  8

  “You did a good thing,” Sallah said through the barred window in the door of the jail. Her words echoed off the walls of the room dug deep into the stone beneath the town hall, and they sounded hollow in Kandler’s ears.

  The justicar sat up from where he’d been lying on the smooth, gray stone floor. The same material made up the walls, which were featureless but for two things—the anchors to which Temmah and Rislinto had attached the prisoners’ manacles and the pair of cold fire torches that burned without smoke or heat, their flickering light lending a bit of illusory warmth that did nothing to push back the room’s gravelike chill. Kandler’s chains clinked as he stood up and stretched as far as the links would let him.

  Across the room, Burch remained seated in his iron chains, the pupils of his yellow eyes gleaming in the torchlight. Still as a statue, he glared at the window in the door, the only window in the room, just as he had since he first heard the footsteps coming down the stairs. Kandler could feel the frustration radiating from his friend, as silent and cold as the unnatural torches.

  “Temmah,” Kandler said. “Is it our custom to let strangers visit with prisoners?”

  “No,” the dwarf called up at the window from the other side of the door, too short to speak directly through the aperture. “Well, actually, I don’t really know. You two are the first prisoners we’ve ever had.”

  “Do you think I’d approve?” Kandler arched an eyebrow at the door. He thought he saw Sallah smiling at him through the bars. She turned away, though, before he could be sure.

  Kandler could almost hear the dwarf pull at his beard as he puzzled over the question. “Normally, no,” he said, “but these circumstances aren’t particularly normal.”

  Kandler nodded, even though he knew Temmah couldn’t see him. “You’re one smart dwarf, Temmah,” he said. “When your world changes, you change with it.”

  “I wish we could say as much of our town’s leader.”

  Kandler and Burch both laughed at that. The echoes reminded them of where they were, and the sound trailed off fast. Kandler sat thinking for a moment. He wasn’t sure just how he’d gotten himself into this mess, but he knew he needed to get out.

  “How long we here for, Temmah?” Burch asked.

  The dwarf hemmed and hawed for a moment. �
��Well, that all depends. We’ve never imprisoned any of our own before—or anyone else for that matter. You’re our inaugural guests.”

  “Some honor,” said Burch. Kandler knew the shifter would have preferred to fight, but once the justicar gave himself up, Burch followed his lead. They hadn’t talked much since Mardak had thrown them in chains.

  Kandler got up and started to pace the floor as far as his chains would let him. He could only go about three steps before he had to turnaround. “This is a fine jail you built, Temmah,” he said.

  The dwarf laughed, a low merry rumble. “With all respect, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Compared to even the humble bolt hole in the Mror Holds where I was whelped, this is little more than an outhouse.”

  Kandler nodded. “It’s better than any of the rest of us could have managed.” He stopped pacing to turn to the door and ask, “What are the plans for us?”

  Kandler saw Sallah look down at Temmah. When she looked back up, she passed along the dwarf’s shrug.

  “Any ideas at all?” Kandler said.

  Sallah spoke, her voice calm and even. “Your leader doesn’t seem to think there’s any need for a trial.”

  Kandler smiled and wiped a hand across his brow. “Priscinta and Rislinto finally got him to calm down? That’s a relief.”

  “Ah, no,” Temmah called up through the window. “I’m afraid it’s worse than that.”

  “Worse?” Burch asked. He leaped to his feet, his chains jangling around him. “What’s worse than cooking to death?”

  Temmah cleared his throat but no words came out.

  “Temmah?” said Kandler. The dwarf’s silence unnerved him, but he wanted an answer to Burch’s question.

  Sallah spoke up. “Mardak says your actions were treasonous. Everyone in town saw you, so there’s no need for a trial.”

  “No cookfire for us, at least,” Burch said.

  Without taking his eyes from Sallah’s, Kandler put up his hand to silence his friend. “What’s the penalty for treason?” he asked.

  The lady knight looked down at the ground, away from Temmah. “You’re to be executed,” she said.

  Burch jumped back, rattling his chains. “That’s a joke, right?”

  “Sorry, lad,” said Temmah. “They’re dead—uh, I mean, they’re entirely serious. At least Mardak is.”

  “Won’t this Mardak see reason once he calms down?” asked Sallah.

  A chill ran through Kandler’s guts. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. He’s had a bad few weeks, and today was the worst. We embarrassed him in front of the town.”

  “He hit Priscinta,” Burch said.

  “He’ll pay for that for a while,” Kandler said with a rueful smile. “Priscinta will get her pound of flesh from him a painful ounce at a time. But he knows that, and it won’t improve his mood.”

  “He was wrong about us,” Sallah said.

  Kandler could hear in her voice that she knew how little comfort that would be to him. “Has he admitted that yet?”

  “He’s having dinner with Sir Deothen right now.” Sallah gazed through the bars at Kandler. He noticed how green her eyes were in the light from the cold fire torch in the sconce outside the door.

  “You weren’t invited?”

  Sallah smirked. “I was. I declined.”

  Kandler smiled and peered out at the knight’s earnest face framed in the barred window. “So what are you doing here?”

  “She wanted to say thanks,” Temmah called up through the window.

  Kandler thought he could see Sallah blush. She cleared her throat before she spoke. “As Knights of the Silver Flame, we’re usually the ones who come to the rescue.”

  “Happy to oblige.” Kandler tried to keep the irony from his voice. •

  “You saved the lives of many of your friends.”

  “I—” Kandler stopped. “Yeah, I suppose we did.”

  “We will not permit you to be executed for our sake, of course.”

  The shifter perked his ears at this idea. “How will you stop it?” Burch asked.

  “As we speak, Sir Deothen is arguing for your lives.”

  The dwarf standing next to Sallah snorted. She glared down at him as if he was a beetle she wanted to stomp beneath her boot.

  Kandler shook his head. “Temmah?”

  “Yes?”

  “What do you think of that?”

  “Permission to speak freely?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “That jackass needs someone to pay for his mistakes. You and Burch, you’re at the top of his list.”

  “You don’t think Deothen is going to hold any sway with him?” Kandler knew the answer, but he wanted Sallah to hear it.

  The-dwarf scoffed. “I’m surprised he didn’t throw the whole lot of those armored pansies down here to rot with you. Begging your pardon, miss,” Temmah said to Sallah, “but if Priscinta hadn’t had Mardak scared enough to nearly wet himself, that’s just what would have happened.”

  “That’s appalling,” Sallah said. “What about the Code of Justice?”

  “You’re a long way from civilization out here,” Kandler said. He’d lived by the code of justice for most of his life, and he’d spent the last two years here enforcing it here. It pained him to see people he’d once trusted throw it aside so casually. “They don’t hold trials by fire in Sham.”

  “Nor in Flamekeep,” said Sallah. “You are the justicar here. Do you not hold any sway over this place?”

  “You’re asking me that question through a set of bars.”

  “Rislinto,” Burch said. “He’ll stop Mardak. For sure.” He started to pace the floor, just as Kandler had done before. The sound of his chains dragging back and forth on the stone floor seemed to soothe him.

  For Kandler, the noise sounded horribly close to that of an executioner whetting his blade.

  Chapter

  9

  “Temmah?” Kandler said, trying to keep any hint of cunning from his voice.

  “Yes?”

  “How late is it?”

  “The sun was setting as we came in.”

  “You’d better start your patrol.”

  The dwarf gulped. “By myself?”

  “I don’t think Burch and I can join you tonight.”

  “All—all right.”

  Kandler heard the dwarf turn to go, leaving Sallah still standing at the door. The justicar waited for a moment, then said, “Temmah?”

  “Yes?” The dwarf dashed back down the few steps he’d taken up toward the town hall proper.

  Temmah was a good dwarf, but he wasn’t the brightest star in the sky. Kandler feared that he’d really try to manage the patrol alone. “You’re the justicar now. You can deputize some help.”

  “That’s right!” The dwarf’s voice brightened for a moment, then darkened again. “But who would be willing?”

  “What about those men who brought Kandler and Burch in?” Sallah asked. “They seemed handy enough with their weapons.”

  Kandler snorted. “Most of them haven’t been in a fight since the end of the war. Two years is long enough for a blade to rust.”

  “They’re better than nothing,” Temmah said. “They were enough to haul you in.”

  “We surrendered,” Burch spat. “If somethin’ wanders out of the Mournland, it won’t be so kind.”

  “Right,” Temmah said, as if he’d somehow forgotten.

  “What about your friends, lady knight?” Kandler asked. “They look sharp and ready.”

  “That we are,” said Sallah, “but would Mardak allow them to serve?”

  “He’s not the justicar.”

  Temmah rumbled with laughter.

  “Take them aside and ask them quietly,” Kandler called to the dwarf. “Mardak doesn’t need to know. If he finds out… well, it’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”

  “Excellent!” Temmah said with a little laugh. “I’m off.”

  Before the dwarf got more than a few
steps away, Kandler called after him once more. “Temmah?”

  “Yes?” The dwarf dragged himself back to the door again.

  “If you’re going to leave this lady to watch over us, shouldn’t she be able to open the door?” Kandler held his breath after the words left his mouth. He hoped his friend would either be dumb enough to fall for this or smart enough to play along.

  Kandler heard the dwarf rummage around in his pockets. Through the window, he saw Sallah reach down to accept something from the dwarf, but then Temmah stopped. “Is this wise? She’s a knight of Thrane.”

  “Aren’t you about to deputize her friends?”

  The dwarf didn’t answer for a long moment.

  “I can’t see you, Temmah,” said Kandler. “You have to speak.”

  “Uh, yes. I nodded yes. Sorry.”

  “Then…” Kandler said, drawing it out and hoping that Temmah would beat him to the punch. It didn’t happen. “Make her your first deputy.”

  “A stupendous idea!” Temmah said. “Sallah?”

  “Yes?” The young knight answered sweetly.

  “Would you do us the honor of being a deputy justicar for the fair town of Mardakine?”

  Sallah stifled a laugh, then said solemnly, “The honor is mine.”

  No one said a word for a moment. “Give her the key,” Burch growled.

  “Oh!” Temmah said. “Hereyou are, miss.”

  Sallah thanked him, then held the key up to the window for Kandler and Burch to see.

  Temmah cleared his throat and spoke. “That’s all there is to it?”

  “Less even. You’d better find some deputies and get to work. It’s sure to be dark by now, and the town lies undefended.”

  “Your Mardak didn’t think this through well, did he?” said Sallah. Her eyes sparkled as she spoke.

  Kandler smiled. “Go, Temmah,” he called.

  “Yes, yes!” The dwarf stumped up the stairs and was gone.

  Sallah shook her head as she watched him go. Kandler could see her red curls swinging in the torchlight. She turned back to the cell and pressed her face between the cold, iron bars. “Why do you protect these people?”