Swords & Dark Magic

by Jonathan Strahan; Lou Anders

  Snotty nodded. “A normal day in Glory.”

  “I’m thinking,” mused Graves, “I probably shouldn’t have put up the rags, though. Soldiers can count that high, mostly, if they need to. Wonder if it got them thinking.”

  “We could find out, when we get back to the bar.”

  “Might be we’re not done afore dark, boy.”

  “They’re soljers, they’ll stay late, drinking and carousing.”

  Graves smiled. “Carousing? That’s quite the imagination you got there.”

  “Taking turns with Slim, I mean, and getting drunk, too, and maybe getting into a few fights—”

  “With who?”

  “With each other, I guess, or even Swillman.”

  “Swillman wouldn’t fight to save his life, boy. Besides, he’ll be happy enough if the soldiers pay for what they take. If they don’t, well, there’s not much he can do about it, is there?” He paused, squinting toward town. “Taking turns with Slim. Maybe. Have to be blind drunk, though.”

  “She shows ’em her ring and that’ll do.”

  Graves shot the boy a hard look. “How you know about that?”

  “My birthday present, last time.”

  “I doubt you is—”

  “That’s what her tongue’s for, ain’t it?”

  “You’re too young to know anything about that. Slim—that wretched hag, what was she thinking?”

  “It was the only present she had t’give me, she said.”

  Graves put the cup away. “Break’s over. Don’t want them t’drink up all the ale afore we get there, do we?”

  “No, sir, that’d be bad.”

  The sun was down and the muggy moon yet to rise when Flapp went off with Slim into the lone back room behind the bar.

  Huggs snorted. “That man’s taste…can you believe it?”

  Shrugging, Wither drained her tankard and thumped it down on the bar. “More, Swilly!” She turned to Huggs. “He’s always been that way. Picks the ugliest ones or the oldest ones and if he can, the ugliest oldest ones if the two fit the same whore.”

  “This time he’s got it all and no choice besides. Must be a happy man.”

  “I’d expect so.”

  Captain Skint had gone to one of the two tables in the bar and was working hard emptying the first cask all by herself. Dullbreath sat beside her, mouth hanging open, staring at not much. He’d taken a mace to the side of his head a week back, cracking open his helmet but not his skull. Hit that hard anywhere else and he’d be in trouble. But it was just his head, so now he was back to normal and his eyes didn’t cross no more. Unless he got mad. As far as Wither could tell, there’d be no reason for Dullbreath to get mad here and on this night. This place was lively as a boy’s Cut Night after three days of fasting and no booze.

  She and Huggs glanced over when a man and a snot-faced boy came into the bar.

  “He ain’t so bad,” Huggs said. “Think he’s for hire?”

  “Y’can ask him.”

  “Maybe I will. Get his face cleaned up first, though.”

  “Them two was the diggers.”

  Huggs grunted. “You’re right. Could be we can find out who did all the dying.”

  Wither raised her voice, “You two, leave off that table and come here. We’re buying.”

  The older man tipped his head. “Obliged. And the lad?”

  “Whatever he wants.”

  Sure enough the boy moved up to stand close beside Huggs, wiping at his nose with a dirt-smeared forearm. His sudden smile showed a row of even white teeth. Huggs shot Wither a glance and aye, things were looking up.

  A life on the march sure messed with the bent of soldiers, Wither reflected. Camp followers were mostly people with nothing left to lose and lives going nowhere, and plenty of scrawny orphans and bastards among ’em, and so a soldier’s tastes got twisted pretty quick. She thought the older man looked normal enough. A grave digger like every other grave digger and she’d met more than a few. “Swilly, more ale here.”

  The digger was quiet enough as he drank and he showed plenty of practice doing that drinking.

  Wither eyed him a moment and then said, “Five graves. Who up and died?”

  He glanced at her, finished his tankard, and then stepped back. “Obliged again,” he said. “Snotty, you coming?”

  “I’ll stay a bit, Graves.”

  “As you like.”

  The man left. Wither stared after him, and then turned to say something to Huggs, but she had her hand down the front of the boy’s trousers and he was clearly old enough to come awake.

  Sighing, Wither collected her cup and went over to join Skint and Dullbreath. “A piss pit of a town,” she pronounced as she slumped down in a chair. “Captain, you scrape an eye o’er that keep on the hill? Looks like it’s got a walled courtyard. Stables.”

  Dullbreath looked at her. “It’s a Jheranang motte and bailey, Wither. That conquest was a thousand years ago. The Jheran Concord’s been dust half that long. I doubt a single inner roof’s standing. And since we’re on the border to the Demon Plain, it was probably overrun in the Birthing Wars. Probably stinks of ghosts and murder, and that’s why it stays empty.”

  “It stays empty because this valley’s been forgotten by whoever rules the land, and there’s nothing to garrison or guard. Upkeep on a pile like that is a pig.”

  Dullbreath nodded. “That too. Anyway, it should do us fine. Nice and quiet.”

  “For a change.”

  Skint stirred. “One more round for the lot,” she said, “and then we ride on up.”

  Wither rose. “I’ll tell Huggs t’get on with it, then. Boys that age it’s short but often—she’ll just have to settle with that.”

  The Broken Moon dragged its pieces above the horizon, throwing smudged shadows on the empty street, as the troop dragged themselves back into their saddles and set off for the ruin.

  Graves stood in the gloom between two gutted houses and watched them pass, his shoulders hunched against the night air. He heard a noise behind him and turned. Herribut the blind cobbler edged closer, and behind him was a half-dozen villagers—most of the population, in fact.

  “Y’think?” Herribut asked.

  Graves scowled. “Ya, the usual. First pick’s mine, as always.”

  Herribut nodded. “Lots drawn on after ya. I won.” He grinned toothlessly. “Imagine that! I never had a touch of luck in my whole life, not once! But I won tonight!”

  “Happy for ya, cobbler. Now, alla you, go get some sleep, and be sure to stopper your ears. Nobody’s fault but your own if you’re all grainy-eyed and slow come the morning pickings.”

  They shuffled off, chattering amongst themselves.

  Exciting times in Glory, and how often could anyone say that without a bitter spit into the dust and then a sour smile? Graves stepped out into the street. The soldiers had reached the base of the hill, where they had paused to stare up at the black, brooding fortification.

  “Go on,” Graves whispered. “It’s quiet. It’s perfect. Go on, damn you.”

  And then they did, and he sagged in relief.

  Nobody invited any of this, so nobody was to blame, not for anything. Just came down to making a living, that’s all. People got the right to that, he figured. It wasn’t a rule or anything like it, not some kingly law or natural truth. It was just one of those ideas people said aloud as often as they could, to make it more real and more true than it really was. When the fact was, people got no rights to anything. Not a single thing, not air to breathe, food to eat, ale to drink. Not the sweet smile between the legs, not a warm body beside you at night. Not land to own, not even a place to stand. But it made it easier, didn’t it, saying that people got the right to a living, and honest hard work, like digging graves and carving capstones, well, that earned just rewards because that’s how things should be.

  The boy came out from the bar, weaving his way into the street. The woman had gotten him drunk besides stained in the crotch.
r />   Graves set out to collect Snotty and take him to his solitary shack close to his own house. Couldn’t be nice, he imagined, to end up just being abandoned by his ma and da when they were all passing through, and left to survive on his own. That was three years back, and Graves knew the boy had latched on to him to fill the holes in his growing up, and that was all right. To be expected. The boy would be in no shape for anything come the morning, but Graves would pluck a thing or two for him anyway. It was the least he could do.

  The cobbled ramp climbed the hillside in three sharp switchbacks that would have cramped any supply wagon and likely made a mess of stocking the keep. The path was overgrown and cluttered with chunks of masonry, but otherwise picked clean.

  Sergeant Flapp shifted uncomfortably in the saddle as his horse clumped up the sharp incline. That whore still had teeth, damn her, and that ring had been way too small. His snake felt strangled. He noticed, in passing, that all the anchor rings on the walls to either side had been dug out and carried off, leaving rusty-ringed holes. “They stripped this place right down,” he said. “Doubt we’ll find a single door, a single hinge or fitting. And now they’ll probably sneak up and try and rob us tonight.”

  “They wouldn’t be that suicidal,” Wither said.

  Flapp belched. “Maybe not. That Slim was one eager whore, though.”

  They rounded the last turn and came within sight of the gate. The portcullis was gone, as expected, all that iron, and the arched passageway yawned black as a cave mouth. Flapp followed Skint in. The drop chutes and murder holes were all plugged with muddy, guano-streaked martin nests, and they could hear the birds moving restlessly as they rode past.

  The passage opened out to a yard overgrown with brambles. A stone-lined well marked the center, all its fittings removed. To the right was a low building running the length of one high wall. “Stables,” Flapp said. “But we’ll have to use the last of our fodder.”

  Skint pointed to a stone trough close to the stables. “Wither, check that, make sure it’s not cracked. Huggs, collect up the water gourds and rig up a rope—let’s see what we can scoop from the well. Flapp and Dullbreath, you’re with me. Let’s check out the main house.”

  That building was built to withstand its own siege. No windows on the lower floors, a narrow aperture preceding the doorway, arrow slits on the two squat towers flanking the inner facing. The slanted roof, they saw, was slate-tiled and holed through here and there.

  “I’d wager the towers are solid and probably cleaner than anywhere else,” said Flapp.

  They dismounted. Walked toward the entrance.

  The slow drumbeat of horse hoofs on the cobbles had awakened them, and now, in scores of chambers in the keep, figures stirred. Long, gnarled limbs unfolded, slitted eyes glittered as heads lifted, jaws stretching open to reveal rows of thin, vertical fangs. Twin hearts that had thumped in agonizingly slow syncopation for months now thudded faster, rushing blood and heat through tall, rope-muscled bodies. Talons clicked at the ends of unfurling hands.

  The slaughterers of the garrison five hundred years ago, demons from the cursed plain beyond the mountains, awoke once more. A night of swift blood awaited them. A few soft-skinned travelers, such as haplessly sought shelter in this place every now and then. Food to share out, a mouthful of pulped meat—if that—and there would be fierce struggle over even such modest morsels. They’d eat everything but the bones and they’d split the bones and suck out the marrow and then leave the rubbish outside the gate before dawn arrived.

  The imp commanding the demons ate its way out from its woven cocoon of human hair and scrambled, claws skittering, on all fours down the south tower’s spiral staircase. Nostrils flaring at the sweet scent of horse and human meat, it clacked its teeth in hungry anticipation. Shin-high, the creature wore a tiny hauberk of scaled armor, a belted sword at its hip not longer than a bear’s canine and nearly as dull. Its head was bare, victim to vanity, permitting its bright stiff shock of white hair to stand fully upright. Its eyes, a lurid yellow, flared with excitement.

  Its fiends were awake, but the time for summoning must wait. The imp needed to see the victims with its own eyes, needed to feast on their growing fear. Needed them, indeed, trapped and then devoured by that terrifying realization. A silent command unveiled dark sorcery, swallowing the gatehouse in a swirling miasma of foul vapors, vitriolic and deadly. No, there would be no escape. There never was.

  Soon, so very soon, the slaughter would begin. First the humans, and then the horses.

  Dullbreath halted in the center of the broad, high-vaulted, pillar-lined hallway just inside the keep’s narrow entrance. He sniffed the air. “Ghosts,” he muttered. “This place was overrun, Captain. Plenty died in here.”

  Skint glanced back at the man, studied him for a moment, and then turned her attention once more to the far wall with its row of gaping doorways.

  Flapp scanned the mosaic floor and frowned at the black, crumbly streaks all over it. He looked up to peer at the ceiling, but it was too dark to see much of anything up there—no obvious gap open to moonlight, though. “Smells kinda scaly in here.”

  Huggs stumped in. “Captain, we got a problem.”

  “What?”

  “Horses getting edgy. And some kind of ward’s sprung up at the gate. Stinks, burns the eyes and throat just getting close. Probably kill us if we tried to push through.”

  “Someone wants us to stay the night,” Dullbreath said, his breathing loud and whistling in the chamber.

  “Lonely ghosts?” asked Flapp.

  Dullbreath shrugged. “Could be.”

  “All right,” Skint said, “we pick us a room with one way in and one way out—”

  “Ghosts go through walls, Captain—”

  “Huggs, how’s the wound?”

  “Wither dug it out. It’ll do.”

  Skint nodded and looked around once more. “Fuck ghosts,” she said, “this ain’t ghosts.”

  “Shit,” said Huggs, and she walked back outside.

  “Stay here, Dull,” ordered Skint. “Sergeant, fire up that lantern and let’s go find us a room.”

  “Never thought you cared, Captain.”

  The first three chambers along the row in front of them were dark, stinking hovels with passages through to secondary rooms—and those rooms opened out to both sides, their facing walls revealing the keep’s heavy stones where rotted sheets of plaster had peeled away. The two mercenaries did little more than peer into those back chambers. The fourth room was an old armory, picked bare.

  Flapp lifted the lantern and said, “See that? There, far corner—a trapdoor.”

  They walked to it. The brass ring was gone and the wood looked rotted through. “Give it a prod with your sword,” Skint said.

  “You sure?”

  “Do it.”

  He handed her the lantern and withdrew his long blade of blued Aren steel. As soon as he touched the tip to the door, the planks crumpled, fell in a cloudy whoosh through the hatch. They heard sifting sounds from below.

  “That ain’t been used in a long time,” Flapp observed.

  Skint edged closer and brought the lantern over the hole. “Iron ladder, Sergeant. Looks like the looters lost their courage.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he replied.

  “Still drunk, Sergeant?”

  “No. Mostly…no.”

  “We might want to take a look down there.”

  He nodded.

  “I think,” she said slowly, turning to face him, “we got ourselves a demon.”

  “That’s the smell all right.”

  They heard clattering from the main hall.

  Skint led the way back to the others.

  Wither and Huggs had brought in the crossbows and dart-bags and were pulling and dividing up quarrels. Dullbreath was ratcheting tight the cords on the all-metal fist-punchers, smearing gobs of grease into the thick braids.

  “Light the rest of the lanterns, Sergeant,” said Skint, tighten
ing the straps of her gauntlets. “Where’s my helmet, Withy?”

  “Behind Dullbreath, Captain.”

  “Everybody suit up. The night’s gonna start with a bang. Then we can get some rest.”

  “I thought we’d left crap-face demons behind us,” griped Huggs.

  “One got out and squirreled up here, that’s all.”

  “A magic-shitter, too.”

  “It’ll show, we drive it back, corner it, and kill the fucker.”

  The others nodded.

  High in the rafters, the imp stared down at the five fools. Soldiers! How exciting. They had managed well reining in their panic, but the imp could smell their acrid sweat, that pungent betrayal of terror. It watched as they assembled their weapons, went over each other’s armor—what was left of it—and then, arranging the five lanterns in a broad circle, they donned their helmets—one of those badly cracked, the one on the taller of the two men—and, slotting quarrels into the crossbows, settled into a circle well inside the ring of fitful light.

  Sound defensive positioning.

  The demon they were now discussing could come from anywhere, after all, any of the doorways, including the one leading outside. Could come from the ceiling, too, for that matter. And the imp grinned with its needle teeth.

  All very good, very impressive.

  But there wasn’t just one demon, was there?

  No. There were lots. And lots. And lots.

  The imp awoke sorcery again, sealing the keep’s doorway. One of the women caught the stench of that and she swore. That one had a nose for magic, she did. Too bad it wasn’t going to help.

  Still grinning, the imp summoned its fiends.

  In the stable, the horses, sensitive to such things, began shrilling and screaming.

  Flapp saw the captain lift her head, as if trying to hear something behind the maddened horses. A moment later, she straightened. “Collect up the lanterns. Time to retreat to our room.”

  Burdened with gear, crossbows cradled, the lanterns slung by their handles over the stirrups, the group moved in a contracting circle toward a lone gaping doorway.