by Mark Acres
“I was nearest the Fifth Legion,” Bagsby said, calling up the one unit name of which he could be certain. “There was so much confusion, once the fighting started, I’m not even sure which Legions were engaged, or if all our troops got to take part in the rout.”
“Hmm,” the officer snorted. If this man was a liar, he was a shrewd liar. Seemed harmless enough. “And now you’re headed where?” Frisung asked.
“Laga,” Bagsby replied. “Is that other chicken done? Been a long time since I’ve had real food. Been on the road since the battle.”
“Why didn’t you stay with the army?” the young soldier asked. “Many of the soldiers must have been loaded with plunder after a fight like that—plenty to barter with.”
“True enough, true enough,” Bagsby said sadly, sitting down by the fire and hacking a leg off the still roasting chicken with his dagger. “But I had nothing left to sell, once my wagon was ruined by those Argolian scum. Besides, the army is so rich now, you need more than the standard geegaws to coax their money and plunder away. I’m off to Laga, where I figure to get a wagonload of k’alah, the wine of the desert people. It’ll be new to most of them—exotic, kind of,” Bagsby explained.
“Hmmph,” Frisung snorted again. “Well, well, that’s enough now.” The old veteran grabbed the spit from the fire, raised it to his mouth, and bit into the hot white meat. “Put out this fire and prepare to move out,” he called to his tiny corps of recruits.
Bagsby moved back from the fire, strolling casually behind Frisung. He glanced about cautiously as the men, a few grumbling, most laughing, slowly rose and began gathering their gear. One man picked up a shovel and began tossing dry earth over the cooking fire. Bagsby continued to stroll randomly about until he stood very near the officer’s horse. As he had hoped, the horse was still saddled; the brutish fellow hadn’t even bothered to lighten its load by removing his saddle roll and bags. No doubt there would be a bit of gold left from the recruiter’s money....
Bagsby was on the horse in a flash. Before the startled officer could even shout a protest, the little man had ridden beside him, reached down, grabbed him beneath the chin, and yanked him off his feet with one arm. In Bagsby’s left hand, a dagger flashed. He pressed the tip against the officer’s throat.
“What! Treachery! Thief!” one of the men cried. The youths scrambled up in their inexperienced way, drawing their swords with a great clatter, glancing at one another, uncertain what to do.
“Sorry, lads, but war is dangerous,” Bagsby said, grinning. “Now back away, or this officer dies.” The helpless Frisung tried to scream an order, but his throat was already nearly crushed in Bagsby’s arm; a stifled gawk was all he could manage. The youths spread out into a semicircle, slowly retreating.
“That’s better,” Bagsby said, grinning. “Now, you boys know that the next place you can get any supplies is a two days’ march to the west. If you try to come east, you’ll hit the desert. True, there is a merchant camp there, but without your money,” Bagsby glanced at the bags tied to the saddle, “you’ll find little aid there. I suggest you start marching.”
“What about him?” the boldest of the young men cried, pointing with his sword to Frisung.
“Him?” Bagsby asked. “Oh, well,” he said, plunging the point of the dagger into the man’s neck and neatly slitting his throat as he let him fall to the ground, “he won’t be joining you.” Bagsby grabbed the reins, turned the horse, and headed east, spurring his mount to a canter.
There were shouts of youthful rage behind him, and two of the duller recruits even tried to chase him on foot. In the end, they were reduced to hurling clods of the dry, plains earth at him, their breath having given out and the horse easily outdistancing them. Fools, Bagsby thought. They don’t even realize that I could just as easily have killed them all.
Bagsby rode east a few miles before stopping to take account of his booty. As he’d hoped, there was gold in one of the bags, more than enough to provide all he needed for his journey across the Eastern Desert to Laga. As an added bonus, he found a list with the names of the recruits and their families. Good, he thought. It had been many, many years since Bagsby had been in Laga. It was always a good thing to have the names of a few contacts.
The soldier did not mind the flies, the heat, the stink, and the noise of Laga’s crowded, winding and incredibly dusty streets. He did not mind because he was dead. There was nothing left of the soul of Harold Otison—whom the man had been in life—in the body that now walked awkwardly down the narrow alley. The corpse was now animated by a fragment of the great wizard Valdaimon’s life force. It was Valdaimon’s intelligence—or rather, a tiny part of it that guided the man’s movements, moved his lips, and raised his legs. And Valdaimon’s intelligence cared nothing for any discomfort the corpse might experience.
The armored figure stalked on down the sandy street, head turning this way and that in a constant searching motion, looking, always looking, for one man, and one man only. Somewhere in Laga, Valdaimon knew, there was a holy man, a man who was said to know the secret of the Golden Eggs of Parona, the secret of the fire from heaven that could consume all things. This zombie’s task was to find that man and, in the crudest way possible, persuade him to divulge that secret.
The small part of Valdaimon’s mind that inhabited the zombie recoiled in disgust from this city. Laga had never been kind to Valdaimon. He remembered an earlier journey here, many years ago, on this same mission. Maddened by the constant, swirling sand that infested everything in Laga including eyes, shoes, hair, and lungs of anyone so foolish as to be in the city, Valdaimon had killed a passing man who crossed him—only to be attacked by the man’s brazen five-year-old child. The little monster had escaped Valdaimon’s wrath then, and he had lived to become the thief, Bagsby, who was proving Valdaimon’s bane now. That earlier mission had been cut short. Valdaimon had never found the holy man he sought. But this time there would be no Bagsby, and there would be no failure.
It had taken the zombie a long time to journey from Lundlow Keep to Laga—two weeks, for its progress on foot was slow, and its coordination too poor to allow it to ride. The journey on foot had not been kind to the corpse. A few very simple magics disguised the extent of its corruption, but a careful observer would note that the lips hung limply, never tightening except when the man would speak, and the strange, ugly patches of purplish green discoloration about the eyes and beneath the nostrils, neither of which ever widened or contracted. Had anyone save the gods been watching, they would have noticed, too, that this soldier never slept. He simply walked the streets, looking, looking, always looking. But the citizens of Laga paid no heed. Men in armor were a constant sight, what with the war and all. Soldiers came to Laga, raised recruits, and led them out. More soldiers came; other soldiers left. It was all the routine of war; the merchants, harlots, and thieves of Laga prospered, which meant that most everyone in the city prospered, for few of the permanent inhabitants failed to fall into one of those classes.
Bagsby was exuberant when he passed through the gates into the city of his birth. The desert sun poured its yellow gold with special favor on the sandy streets, and the endless parade of people in their colorful garb—each costumed more extravagantly than the one before—lifted his spirits even more. After a long odyssey, Bagsby was home at last.
He did not remember the city well from his childhood days, and it had grown much since. But the basic flavor was the same, that he could tell at a glance. Here was the place where the dark desert nomads came—each tribe once a year—to barter the goods of dwarfs from the eastern mountains and even the unknown lands beyond for the necessities of their roaming desert life. Here, thieves in bulky silk trousers of yellow, blue, or red and short open vests ran barefoot and bare-chested through the streets, skillfully cutting the purses of those same nomads. Here were the great gambling houses, where the merchants of the caravans could while away their lei
sure hours losing all the profits of their long journeys from the western coast, while being charmed by the most beautiful, seductive, flattering, and thieving of women.
Bagsby breathed deeply of the aromas of the city before starting down the great, wide street. He led his horse, carrying two daggers conspicuously in his belt, and in one hand held a staff that he had fashioned on his trip from a tree limb. When a horde of laughing, naked children came running toward him from his right, Bagsby quickly stepped to his right and swept low with the staff, sending the leaders of the wave sprawling. His own guffaws blended with theirs, and the urchins sped away toward the next mark coming through the gate; this one knew their ways.
“At least I thought I knew their ways,” Bagsby said half aloud, lifting his foot to look at the sole of one of the fine leather boots he had bought en route. He had successfully avoided the thievery of the children, but not the steaming piles of dung that littered the main thoroughfare everywhere. When the desert men came into the city, they brought with them everything—their goats, camels, horses, and cattle. It was said that the winds that constantly swept Laga’s sandy streets would have long since blown those streets away were it not for the manure constantly worked into the sand by the passage of thousands of feet over the droppings of thousands of animals.
Bagsby’s first order of business—aside from protecting his belongings—was to find a room. The main street near the gate was lined with elegant hostelries, competing for space with the richest of the merchant shops, which in turn were half hidden by the carts of countless vendors whose hawking could be heard well into the small hours of the night. But Bagsby was a native; he knew that any such elegant place of repose would soon leave him stripped of everything he owned—either by outright theft, which was common enough, or by the clever means of pandering to his every human desire and adding it to the bill he owed. Escape from such bills was virtually impossible except for the most experienced of scoundrels, for each hostelry employed teams of cutthroats who specialized in collecting.
No, not there, Bagsby thought. To find a safe room, he would need to go deep into the city, into streets where the endless rows of whitewashed buildings were mainly the shops and residences of artisan merchants and tradesmen. Somewhere there, he would find a shop run by a widow or orphaned daughter, who would gladly give him safe room and board in exchange for a few coins and the relative safety of his presence.
Bagsby made his way from the main street down the maze of connecting side streets into such an area. His fine, new boots were covered with dungy grit and the sand stung his eyes, but he felt a warmth that had been lacking in his soul for many years as he surveyed the shop fronts and smiled at the enticements of the women who leaned from the occasional upper balcony. His progress was so pleasant that he hardly noticed the gangly, awkward soldier until he nearly walked into the man.
“Oops,” Bagsby said absently.
“Bagsby,” the mail-clad form growled. One arm shot forward and grabbed the reins of Bagsby’s horse from the little man’s grasp; the other put forth a hand that closed with a crushing grip on his windpipe.
“Bagsby,” the form muttered again, lifting him off his feet with the one strong arm. “Time to die, Bagsby.”
The little man kicked out violently, felt the toes of his boots strike the chain-mail shirt, then the jarring, sickening thud of impact as his toes met the rigid flesh beneath the armor. Bagsby’s eyes bugged out wildly; the strangely rotting face of this odd behemoth filled his vision, and the constant scents of animal dung, men’s sweat, and cheap perfume were driven from his consciousness by the sickening stench that came from the man’s mouth as he spoke.
Then Bagsby heard wild cheers. Even as the vision slowly faded and his lungs filled with pain, he knew at some deep, distant level what was happening. Thieves were coming, swarming from the countless doorways and windows, stripping the horse, knocking aside the soldier’s restraining arm, stealing the mount and all that was on it. The native of Laga, however, had no vain illusions that any of these thieves would for an instant do anything to help him.
Bagsby’s kicks became more feeble, and he felt the cold, greasy death-grip on his throat become even stronger, if indeed that was possible. Only one thing to do, he thought, his vision starting to swim. He kept his eyes locked as best he could on his foe’s face and kicked ever more weakly to distract the strange man. Fumbling with his arms and hands, he finally purchased a grip on one dagger with his right hand, which was already starting to tingle and grow numb. He raised the knife high and struck the strongest blow he could, cutting into the man’s arm just above the wrist. The blade bit into the cold flesh and sliced through the meat, but it jarred to a stop against the bone. Again Bagsby raised the dagger, striking a second blow, and then a third. The bone gave way, and the steel cut through the remainder of the stringy flesh. Bagsby fell to the street, the ice-cold hand still locked about his throat.
The soldier stood motionless. Bagsby rolled onto his back, clutched the hand that continued to choke him, and pried back the thumb. He hurled the severed member into the crowd that had gathered to laugh, jeer, cheer, and strip the soldier’s body of anything that could be cut loose from it. The man seemed not to even notice their presence. He stood, Bagsby assumed, stunned, looking blankly at the empty space that a moment before had contained his hand and Bagsby’s head. Very, very slowly, a few droplets of black blood began to drip from the severed end of his wrist.
No time to waste. Bagsby rolled his head in the sandy muck of the street, and saw his staff which he had dropped when the man grabbed him. He rolled, grasped the weapon, hopped to his feet, and then doubled over as his lungs vomited up the fluid that had begun to fill them. Bagsby hacked and gagged, coughing violently, trying to suck in great gasps the air that his burning lungs rejected.
“Go on,” voices from the crowd shouted. “Kill him!”
“Somebody get that horse,” another called.
“Can’t make him let go of it,” answered another man, who was prying at the zombie’s grip on the reins. “Have to cut bridle and reins, I guess....”
The zombie whirled, rocking unsteadily on its feet, and landed a crushing blow with the bloody stump of its right arm against the side of the man’s head. The thief went sprawling.
Bagsby managed to stand erect, and he saw the would-be owner of his horse go flying into the crowd. He hefted his staff, lowered his head, and swung—aiming for his assailant’s unprotected shins, which protruded from below the mid-calf length of the chain mail. The blow landed solidly; Bagsby felt pain in his hands as the staff shattered from the impact.
Unnoticed by the jeering crowd and the stunned Bagsby, a decrepit, fat, old crow circled lazily down from the sky far overhead to land on a nearby rooftop.
Bagsby stared at his opponent, not believing what he saw. The man had not even flinched from the blow that should have filled his mind with overwhelming pain. Bagsby thought he might even have broken the shinbone, or at least cracked it. But the soldier showed no reaction. He turned his head slowly to face the shorter man, and his dull eyes seemed to gleam for an instant.
“Bagsby,” he growled, spitting the word into the air.
“Nice to see you again,” Bagsby taunted back. “But I really have no time for a chat just now. Maybe later!” Bagsby dropped the worthless staff, swept up his dagger, and took a running leap into the crowd that circled the two combatants. A well-placed boot here and a fist there soon cleared him a path. The little man ran down the narrow street, came to the first intersecting alleyway, turned, and ran some more. He kept running, taking widening circles through the backstreets for several minutes, until he was well away from the scene of the fight, and the crowds no longer recognized him as the little man who had just been half-killed by the strange, one-handed soldier.
Finally he stopped running, drawing up to rest against the whitewashed wall of a two-story building. He leaned back
and drew quick, deep breaths. What in the name of all the gods, he wondered, had that been about? He was sure he didn’t recognize the man, and most of the victims of the more elaborate swindles he had pulled he would certainly know on sight. Other victims of his vocation either did not know him or seldom lived to describe him, and the young soldiers he’d robbed on the road were still days away from Laga by foot—even if they had come east instead of west. Bagsby shook his head. It didn’t make sense. He tried again to picture the soldier in his mind. Was there something about the livery markings that was familiar? But Bagsby had never really had a good look at anything except the man’s face and legs.
He stood up straight and began threading his way down the street, sidestepping to avoid three goats driven by a nomad in his black desert clothes, jumping aside again to avoid a nobleman on horseback who rode straight down the middle of the street, little caring whom or what his horse stepped upon. Overhead, the fat crow cawed once, gleefully, but the sound was drowned by the perpetual noise of Laga—to all sets of ears save one.
Bagsby continued walking, only half-noticing where he was going. Now he had no money; he’d have to revert to stealing in a town full of thieves, and wary of thieves’ tricks. He heard the voice behind him just an instant before the cold, clammy hand tried to clutch the back of his neck.
“Bagsby,” the low voice grumbled.
With reflexes trained by a lifetime, Bagsby dove forward into the muck of the street, somersaulting. The dead hand scraped harmlessly down the back of his tunic as he spun in the air. He came to his feet, whirled around, and saw the man drawing back a great broadsword with his one remaining hand. Bagsby ducked the blow, heard the blade swish just above his hair, and felt the wind of its passing. He jumped back, spun, and ran.
“Bagsby!” the figure shouted, lumbering awkwardly after him, the sword arm raised to strike if the soldier could only close the range. Bagsby called on his aching calves for another burst of speed. He turned at the first junction he came to, bounced off a fat woman trundling a cart of baubles down the middle of the narrow lane, stumbled over the ragged children who tugged at the hem of her dress, and blundered on ahead through the milling crowd—most of them moving in the opposite direction and laden with piles of sweet fruits. He ducked past a fruit vendor’s small white shack, then stopped cold in front of the three-foot wall that sealed any exit from the alley. Dead end! A large crow landed on the edge of the wall, looking down at Bagsby, cocking its head and cawing.
