Ink Mage

by Victor Gischler

  Unlike the front gate, the back gate admitted no commerce, no traders or wagons going to market, no visiting royalty, nothing, and Tosh had mused more than once that a lack of all such activity might be the reason the Backgate neighborhood was an utter ruin, completely deserted except for criminals and prostitutes.

  Tosh wasn’t optimistic. He clung to some shred of hope that in the confusion of battle, maybe the Perranese hadn’t gotten to the back gate yet. No such luck. A half-dozen soldiers in the livery of Klaar lay dead in the street before the guardhouse. Smoke rose from the guardhouse’s chimney. The new tenants had taken over. Tosh looked up. Two Perranese guards passed each other on the parapet walkway atop the gate wall. The gate itself was shut tight and barred.

  So the back gate was guarded. Tosh didn’t really have much hope it would be otherwise. But there were far fewer Perranese troops here than at the front gate, so maybe he could cobble together some kind of plan. Possibly he could get over the wall under cover of night, but that would put him in the middle of the frozen, inhospitable wilderness. He’d need travel furs, food, a fire-starting kit. It would take preparation. So okay. He’d prepare. He wished he could get his hands on a map to plan his route once he was over the wall. Once things calmed down a bit, maybe he could get on the roof of one of the structures built up against the other wall. From there he could reach the top and climb over. Not all the dilapidated buildings looked safe enough to climb on, but a few seemed okay if he were careful enough to—

  Tosh pulled back, watched a Perranese warrior emerge from the guardhouse, stretch and yawn and take in some fresh air. Tosh had done the same thing himself many times. With a bunch of sweaty men smoking and belching and farting in the small guardhouse … well, even on the coldest days he had found the need to go outside for a breather.

  A beggar in rags shambled past, paused at the Perranese warrior with an open palm. The beggar was either very brave or simply had nothing to lose. There’s always more to lose, Tosh thought. But the warrior didn’t run the beggar through with his sword. He did what almost everyone does when a beggar approaches with his hand out. The warrior shook his head, gestured the beggar away dismissively before turning back to the warmth of the guardhouse.

  The beggar resumed his shamble.

  Seemed like the Perranese were already in occupy mode. Leastways, they weren’t hacking down random citizens. Tosh decided it was time to abandon the armor and blend in with the rest of the Klaarian people. As long as he wasn’t wearing the military livery, he’d probably be okay.

  He looked about. The street was clear.

  Tosh dashed across the street to a narrow alley. He rounded the corner where there was a small open space between a building and the city wall. He sniffed and wrinkled his nose, the acrid smell of urine almost making him gag. He eyed the muddy slash in the ground along the city wall with mild revulsion. Evidently, the guardhouse soldiers had relocated their piss trench since Tosh had been stationed here.

  He tried to ignore the stench, rapidly unbuckling the foreign armor, fingers fumbling with the unfamiliar straps.

  Footfalls in the mud, the clank of armor. Somebody approaching.

  Tosh considered the Perranese sword hanging at his side but immediately discarded the idea. He’d never trained with the weapon, and anyway, he had a better blade for close-quarter fighting. He pulled the ten-inch dagger, held his breath and waited.

  A second later, a Perranese warrior rounded the corner, scale mail skirt parted in front, breeches open, his pecker in his hand. Tosh was already thrusting the dagger, and the warrior’s eyes shot wide, his other hand coming up fast to catch Tosh’s wrist.

  He’s quick! Even with one hand full of his own genitalia, the warrior had almost negated Tosh’s advantage of surprise.

  Tosh twisted, brought his knee up hard into the man’s exposed groin. The warrior grunted, the air going out of him, but didn’t release Tosh’s wrist.

  They grappled, and Tosh felt the heel of his boot skid along the mud, both of them going down in a heap. Tosh tried to roll on top and bring the dagger to bear, but they kept rolling.

  Into the piss trench.

  Tosh ended up on top, pushed the warrior’s head down into the urine-soaked mud. The warrior’s other hand came out of the mud and latched onto Tosh’s throat. Tosh grabbed the pinky finger of the hand choking him, bent it back. At this point, most men would let go. The Perranese didn’t. The finger snapped. Tosh had to break the next finger too before the man released his hold.

  The warrior’s helmet had shifted back on his head. Tosh leaned forward, smashed his forehead into the warrior’s nose, flattening it and splattering mud, blood and urine. That took the rest of the fight out of him, and the warrior released Tosh’s wrist.

  Tosh plunged the dagger into his neck where there was no armor. Blood gushed. He pulled the dagger out, stabbed again; the warrior’s body quivered under him. Another stab. Again.

  The warrior went stiff then eased into death, lying quiet and half-submerged in the mud.

  Tosh rolled off him, climbed the bank of the shallow trench and kneeled there panting, covered in filth and blood.

  He looked up into the pale face of a little girl.

  Tosh blinked. She blinked back.

  She was maybe eight years old, face smudged, fine blonde hair blowing in the icy wind. She looked at him blankly with huge blue eyes. Her clothes were far too thin for the cold, and she clutched a tattered rag doll to her chest.

  Tosh looked from his bloody dagger, back to the little girl. “Uh … hey. It’s okay. That was a bad man. He—”

  She turned and ran without a word.

  That’s just fucking fantastic.

  He looked down at himself. He was a disgusting mess. He finished unstrapping the Perranese armor. He tossed it through the open window of an abandoned building.

  He glanced back at the dead warrior in the piss trench.

  Hell and damnation.

  Eventually, another warrior would come for a piss, and when they saw their fallen comrade they’d put Backgate into an uproar looking for the murderer. The last thing Tosh needed was troops swarming the neighborhood while he was trying to arrange his escape from the city.

  He stepped back into the piss trench, sinking past his ankles into the mud. He reached under the dead warrior’s armpits, up to his own shoulders in filth. He dragged the warrior out of the trench and over to the window where he’d stashed the armor. Tosh would need a bath and a change of clothes immediately. Smelling himself almost made him retch.

  He heaved the corpse into the window, but it stuck at the waist, legs dangling limply. Tosh shoved. Get in there, you dead bastard.

  Tosh was shoving for all he was worth when the two men came around the corner. One was as wide as a hay barn, muscles bulging under his clothes, a wide bald head like a melon and a flat nose. His thighs were as thick as brandy casks.

  The other man was bigger.

  Both held cudgels in tight fists.

  The little girl stood in front of them and pointed an accusing finger at Tosh. “There he is!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Rina felt the old mage’s wrist for a pulse, confirmed his demise. She noted it coolly, realized in some objective way that she might have a more emotional response to it later.

  It was time to leave.

  She walked to the tub where she’d bathed earlier, felt like she was floating. The power hummed along her limbs, pulsed deep within her. Rina welcomed the hot fire down her spine. It felt like strength. It was hers to direct and control.

  She looked down at her discarded clothes next to the tub, soiled and ripped. They wouldn’t do, but she needed something to wear. The cold couldn’t touch her, but she couldn’t go back among people in the raw. Drawing that kind of attention would be … counterproductive.

  Kork’s cloak was blood splattered but still in relatively good shape. It was a quality garment made of fine, heavy cloth. She picked it up, draped it loosely over one sho
ulder.

  The cave now seemed like something from a dream, an illusion, as if she could wave her hand and it would all swirl away like smoke. The world turned around her like something unsubstantial, unimportant, like Rina herself was the only thing solid, real, the sum total of everything that existed. And yet at the same time, the cave was more vivid. She saw every pebble on the floor, every crack in the wall, a drop of water from the ceiling falling, landing.

  Rina found herself at the mouth of the cave with only a vague memory of getting there. She looked down at Kork. The snowfall came gently now, puffy flakes drifting by on a light breeze. The valley spread out below her like a white wonderland, the city of Klaar distant and deceptively peaceful.

  Kork still slouched against the cave wall. He would never rise again. His skin had gone gray, and a pool of blood spread from where he sat, a frosting of snow where the blood puddle had reached the mouth of the cave. The hand holding his side was completely red. His wounds had been far worse than Rina had realized earlier. He’d never said a word.

  He looked up at her with eyes as old as the world. “You saw him?”

  “Yes.” She’d spoken softly, but it had sounded loud in her mind, like her voice would fill up the sky if she wanted it to.

  Kork nodded, a sigh leaking out of him, long and final.

  With his other hand he reached for his sword, dragged it toward him with stiff fingers. He couldn’t make his hand close around the hilt. “Take … take it.”

  She bent, took the sword, lifted it one-handed. It seemed to weigh no more than her rapier now.

  He watched her with the sword, nodded again, approving. “R-Rina …”

  She watched the light go out of his eyes. One moment Kork was there, and then he wasn’t. Just like that the final connection to her old life had been stripped away.

  Grief rushed in so quickly that it almost broke through to touch her. But she’d tapped into the spirit. Felt the power of it pulsing through her. Rina told grief to wait until later. If she allowed it in now, she’d collapse beneath the weight of it.

  She looked one last time a Kork. She wanted to remember his face, to remember this moment, so she could add it to her list of grievances against Giffen, a personal litany of hatred.

  Rina left the cave, flakes falling silently around her, and began her descent, bare feet crunching in the snow.

  The howls drew her attention. Wolves? No, these were more like guttural wails than howls. Up this high in the mountains it could only be snow devils. The creatures were the reason most trappers didn’t venture to this altitude.

  She lifted her sword, counting calmly as she watched them come through the mist from below, three of them coming up the stairs, loping apelike, running half hunched over, using their arms, snarling and snapping.

  Two more coming down the steep slope to her left. A full hunter pack.

  She dropped Kork’s cloak so it wouldn’t tangle her up, spread her arms, held her sword high in one of the basic stances Kork had taught her to receive an attack from multiple foes.

  She wondered idly what their blood would look like on the clean, white snow.

  EPISODE THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Tell us again how you killed him in the piss trench,” the little girl said.

  “No,” said one of the prostitutes, the big redhead. “Tell us again about falling off the horse at the front gate. I like a good laugh.”

  All the whores gathered around laughed at that. They seemed eager to laugh, needed it.

  This room in the brothel looked like any other tavern he’d ever patronized: rough wooden tables, a long bar along one wall and a big roaring fireplace. Another place where the establishment could separate clients from their coin while they waited for their turn with one of the women.

  Tosh titled the flagon back, drained the beer, wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand and belched. “Ladies, ladies, never fear. I will give a full account again for any latecomers. Only too happy to share my adventures with such gracious hosts.” He shrugged, smiled sheepishly. “But it is thirsty work.”

  Another cold flagon appeared instantly on the table in front of him.

  Tosh drank deeply, wondering if he were going to wake up and find out this was all a dream. The little girl was the daughter of one of the whores—which one again? The faces and names were beginning to blur, but he thought the little girl was the daughter of the skinny blonde with the enormous blue eyes. They fed him, let him wash and change out of his muddy, urine-soaked clothes. But it was more than simple hospitality.

  The women of the Wounded Bird were treating Tosh like he was some kind of hero.

  One might not think of whores as patriotic, but they were every bit as much citizens of Klaar as was Tosh, and they’d watched furtively through the cracks in shuttered windows as the Perranese troops had swept through Backgate. Many of the fallen were regular customers of the girls of the Wounded Bird, men they had known and serviced for years. Helpless women save for the two enormous bruisers with cudgels Tosh had met earlier. They were a pair of brothers and served as the brothel’s bouncers. He’d forgotten their names as well.

  He drank half the beer in a gulp.

  So the Perranese were not loved at The Wounded Bird. In the minds of the prostitutes, Tosh’s desperate act of self-defense against a lone Perranese warrior who’d merely wanted to relieve himself was nothing less than a defense of the honor of Backgate itself. Or at least that’s how it seemed to Tosh, the way the women were fussing over him. It may simply have been that the brothel was empty of patrons, many of whom now lay dead in the streets. And now here was Tosh, a soldier of Klaar, fighting for their pride.

  Sort of.

  He decided to retell the bit about falling off the horse. That seemed to be a crowd-pleaser, and he launched into it with the enthusiasm of a carnival jester. He exaggerated his clumsiness this time, the terror of the incident almost forgotten after four flagons of beer. When he told about crawling along the ground after the horse had thrown him, he pantomimed covering his head with his arms, his ass sticking high in the air as he scooted along. The woman clapped and laughed.

  Another mug of beer appeared.

  During a lull in the laughter, a lean, hawkish brunette with a shawl wrapped around herself leaned in and asked, “Did you happen to pass the guard station on Temple Street?”

  The others turned to her, and she lowered her head, embarrassed. “My … my brother is posted there.”

  Then he’s dead. “I’m sorry. I didn’t pass Temple Street.”

  That started them all talking at once.

  “Did you see Tailor’s Row? My uncle—”

  “My sister lives in East Side—”

  “Was Boar’s Head hit hard? I have friends who—”

  “My aunt is a maid in one of the manor houses on High Point—”

  “My father—”

  “My cousin—”

  “My priest –”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” said the blonde whom Tosh had identified as the little girl’s mother. “Let the poor man be.”

  Tosh was grateful. Reality had come crashing back down on him, the earlier whimsy obliterated. He felt suddenly exhausted. He sipped the last of the beer slowly. “I’m sorry, ladies. I guess I don’t really know too much.”

  “I just wonder if they’ll shut us down.” The brunette pulled the shawl tighter around her. “They’ll get around to us sooner or later.”

  “They won’t,” the blonde said. “Armies need brothels. Even foreign savages.”

  “Don’t know if I like the idea of that,” spoke up a chubby one with frizzy hair. “Men folk from strange lands might have odd … needs. All perverted like.”

  “What’s it matter which sweaty bastard is riding you?” said the red head. “Long as he pays up.”

  That set off everyone talking at once again, speculating about living under Perranese rule and giving detailed accounts of just exactly what some men expec
ted for their money, which made Tosh squirm in his seat. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up into the face of the blonde.

  “You must be tired.”

  “Yes.”

  “Darshia will show you to a room,” she said. “You can rest. You’ve earned it.”

  The red-haired woman lead him away from the others, down a dim hallway. Darshia, the redhead’s name is Darshia.

  She opened a door and gestured him inside.

  The room was small but clean, a double bed with a small nightstand and a whale oil lamp next to it. He pulled off his boots, thought about removing the rest of his clothes, decided he didn’t have the energy and fell face first onto the bed. It was soft. Fresh sheets. He heard the door click shut, raised himself on one elbow and turned to look.

  Darshia was still there.

  Tosh raised an eyebrow. “Uh …”

  She reached behind her back, untied her dress. “You didn’t think The Wounded Bird’s hospitality was limited to food and drink, did you?”

  “I … uh …”

  She let the dress fall. Naked. Darshia’s skin was impossibly white, like fresh snowfall, nipples bright as raspberries. She pulled her coppery hair loose and it fell in waves past her shoulders. The red patch between her legs had been cropped into a narrow strip.

  The less-exhausted parts of Tosh’s anatomy immediately rose to the occasion.

  Darshia climbed onto the bed, straddled him. His hands immediately went to her plush backside. She leaned toward the small table next to the bed, and one of her pendulous breasts brushed Tosh’s face. He went dizzy. She blew out the lamp.

  In the total darkness, he felt fingers tugging at his belt.