Taziar laced his fingers on the tabletop, his thoughts distant. If we leave tonight, we’ll still have to travel hard to reach Sverigehavn Port in time. From there, if we push on just as hard, we should make Cullingsberg with a few days to spare before Aga’arin’s High Holy Day. “Could you describe the person who gave you the message?”
The stranger poked a thumb through a knothole in the tabletop. His face crinkled into a mask of consideration. “Tall, thin. He had that withered look of someone who’d weathered plagues that killed his young ones. Had a healthy amount of Norse blood in him, too, by his coloring. But his accent was full barony. In fact, he used that funny speech of the villages south of Cullinsberg.” The stranger continued, clipping off final syllables with greatly exaggerated precision to demonstrate. “He migh’ o’ co’ from Souberg or Wilsberg origina’.” He laughed at his own mimicry. “Never could figure out how they did that so easily. Always seemed like more effort than it was worth.”
Taziar’s answering chuckle was strained. “Thanks for the information.” He tossed a pair of Northern gold coins, watched them skitter across the table and clink to a halt against the mug. “That should cover the drink, too.” The payment had come from reflex. Abruptly, Taziar realized his mistake. He winced as the stranger reached for his purse to claim the money.
An elbow brushed the precariously balanced pouch. It overbalanced. Ducats and silvers clattered across the polished floor. The barroom went silent, except for the thin rasp of coins rolling on edge, followed by the sputter as they fell flat to the planks.
The stranger remained seated, blinking in silent wonderment. He glanced at Taziar, but addressed no one in particular. “Odd. Now how do you suppose that happened?”
Taziar rose, suddenly glad the stranger had positioned himself beyond reach while they chatted; it took the blame from him. “I couldn’t begin to guess.” He trotted back to his own table, leaving the stranger to collect his scattered coins.
Reclaiming his chair, Taziar gathered breath to convince his companions of the necessity of traveling quickly to Cullinsberg. Then, realizing it would take more than a few delicately chosen arguments, he sighed and addressed Larson. “You know those drinks you owe me?”
Larson nodded.
“Any chance I could have all of them right now?”
Taziar’s concern heightened during the week of land and ocean travel that brought them from Norway’s icy autumn to the barony of Cullinsberg. He spent many sleepless nights agonizing over a summons he believed had come from Shylar. What do I know? What skill do I have that Shylar might need desperately enough to send a beggar to find me? And always, Taziar discovered the same answers. He knew the city streets, but others closer and more recently familiar could supply her with the same information. Though a master thief, Taziar retained enough modesty to believe others with determination could accomplish anything he could. Only two skills seemed uniquely his. As a youth, Taziar had always loved to climb, practicing until his companions bragged, with little exaggeration, that he could scale a straight pane of glass.
Taziar hoped this was the ability Shylar sought, because the other filled him with dread. In the centuries of the barony’s dominance, only Taziar had escaped its dungeons, and even he had needed the aid of a barbarian prince. Taziar had paid with seven days in coma and a beating that still striped his body with scars. It was an experience he would not wish even upon enemies, and, despite his love for impossible challenges, he harbored no desire to repeat it. I doubt my knowledge will serve Shylar, yet I have no choice but to try.
Two days before Aga’arin’s High Holy Day, Taziar Medakan peered forth from between the huddled oaks and hickories of the Kielwald Forest. Across a fire-cleared plain, the chiseled stone walls enclosing the city of Cullins-berg stretched toward the sky, broad, dark, and unwelcoming. A crescent moon peeked above the colored rings of sunset, drawing glittering lines along the spires of the baron’s keep in the northern quarter and the four thin towers of Aga’arin’s temple to the east. The squat walls hid the remainder of the city, but Taziar knew every building and corner from memory.
Taziar crept closer. From habit, he sifted movement from the stagnant scene of the sleeping city. Sentries paced the flat summit of the walls, their gaits grown lazy in the decade of peace since the Barbarian Wars. Taziar knew their presence was a formality. The city gates stood open, and no one would question the entrance of Taziar and his friends. Unless the guards recognize me. The thought made Taziar frown. He turned and started toward the denser center of forest where his companions were camped.
An acrid whiff of fire halted Taziar in mid-stride. It seemed odd someone would choose to set a woodland camp so close to the comforts of a city. Taziar twisted back to face the walls. His blue eyes scanned the tangled copse of trees. Eventually, he discerned a sinuous thread of smoke shimmering between the trunks. Curious, he flitted toward it, his gray cloak and tunic nearly invisible in the evening haze. He pulled his hood over unruly, black hair, hiding his face in shadow.
Half a dozen paces brought Taziar to the edge of a small clearing. A campfire burned in a circle of gathered stones. The reflected light of its flickering flames danced across the trunks of oak defining the borders of the glade. A man slouched over the fire. Though his posture seemed relaxed, his gaze darted along the tree line. He wore a sword at his hip, a quiver across his back, and a strung bow lay within easy reach. Four other men occupied the clearing, in various stages of repose. Each wore a cloak of black, brown or green to protect against the autumn chill. Bunched or crouched against the trees, they appeared like wolves on the edge of sleep, and Taziar suspected the slightest noise would bring them fully awake.
Taziar considered returning to his own camp. He had no reason to believe these people meant Cullinsberg any harm, and the baron’s soldiers could certainly handle an army of five men. Still, their presence this near the city seemed too odd for Taziar to pass without investigation. Noiselessly, he inched closer.
As Taziar narrowed the gap, the man before the fire shifted to a crouch. Flames sparked red highlights through a curled tangle of dark hair. The pocked features were familiar to Taziar. He recognized Faldrenk, a friend from his days among the underground. Though not above thievery, Faldrenk had specialized in political intrigue and espionage. Surprised and thrilled to discover an old ally, Taziar studied the other men in the scattered firelight. With time, he made out the thickly-muscled form and sallow features of Richmund, a bumbling pickpocket who scarcely obtained enough copper to feed his voracious appetite. In leaner times, he often joined the baron’s guards and always knew which sentries could be bribed. The other three men were strangers.
Taziar tempered the urge to greet his long-unseen comrades with his knowledge of the changes in Cullinsberg and the realization that they might be performing a scam easily ruined by his interference. The evident weaponry seemed incongruous. Like most of the thieves, gamblers, and black marketeers of the underground, Faldrenk and Richmund were relatively harmless, catering to the greed and illegal vices of men rather than dealing in violence. Taziar stepped into the clearing. Avoiding names, he chose his words with care. “Nice night for hunting?”
Every head jerked up. Faldrenk shouted as if in warning. “Taz!” Bow in hand, he leaped to his feet, flicking an arrow from his quiver to the string. Faldrenk’s companions scrambled to their feet.
Taziar’s smile wilted. Shocked by his friends’ reactions, he went still.
Faldrenk raised his bow and drew. Taziar dodged back into the forest. The arrow scraped an ancient oak, passed through the place where Taziar had stood, and grazed a furrow of flesh from his arm. Pain mobilized him. He charged through the forest, leaping deadfalls and brush with a speed born of desperation. He wasted a second regaining his bearings, aware he needed the aid of his companions to face this threat. An attack from men who had once been allies seemed nonsensical, but Taziar did not waste time pondering. He raced deeper into the forest. Branches tore his cloak.
A twig whipped through his torn sleeve and across his wound, stinging nearly as much as the arrow.
Taziar careened around an autumn-brown copse of blackberry and nearly collided with a man, an instinctive side step all that saved him from impaling himself on the stranger’s sword. The man followed, lunging for Taziar’s chest. Taziar sprang backward, pawing for his own hilt. His heel mired in a puddle. He fell. The stranger’s sword whisked over his head, then curled back and thrust for Taziar’s neck. Taziar rolled into the wild snarl of brambles. The stranger’s blade plowed through mud, splashing slime and water across the vines.
Taziar floundered free of the encumbering vines, heedless of the thorns that tore welts in his skin. He caught his swordgrip in both fists and wrenched. Vines snapped, and the sword lurched gracelessly from its sheath. The stranger swept for Taziar’s head. Taziar spun aside. “Why?” he managed to ask before the stranger cut to Taziar’s left side. This time, Taziar took the blow on his sword. The stranger’s blade scratched down Taziar’s, locked momentarily on the crossguard. Small and a scarcely adequate swordsman, Taziar realized, with alarm, he had little chance against his opponent’s superior size and strength.
“Traitor!” the stranger screamed. A sudden push sent Taziar stumbling backward.
Taziar could hear the crash of his pursuers, growing closer. He dropped to his haunches, gaining balance with ease but feigning instability. The stranger pressed his advantage. He stabbed with bold commitment. Taziar skirted the thrust and dove between closely-spaced trunks. He hit the ground with head tucked, rolled, and ran, oblivious to the shouts behind him. His thoughts swirled past like the endless ranks of oaks. Everyone’s gone mad! What in Karana’s deepest hell is going on?
Taziar jammed his sword into his sheath as he tore through underbrush and wove between a copse of pine trees toward the clearing that sheltered his companions. The sweet wood odor of a campfire reaffirmed his bearings, the snap of its flames lost beneath the crash of bootfalls. Shouting a warning to his friends, Taziar cut across a deer path and skittered into the camp, the bandits on his heels.
Silme stood at the far end of the glade, her manner alert and her stance characteristically bold. Head low, but gaze twisted toward the new threat, Astryd muttered spell words in a furious incantation. Larson charged without question, his swordmaster’s katana lit red by flame. Taziar ducked as Larson’s sword blocked a strike intended for the Shadow Climber’s head. Caught by surprise, the bandit missed his dodge. Larson’s hilt crashed into his face, staggering him. The follow-through cut severed the bandit’s head.
Taziar dodged past, Faldrenk and his companions in close pursuit. Taziar caught a glimpse of Astryd, abandoning a magical defense foiled by the proximity of battle. He pitched over the fire. Rolling to his feet, he used the moment this maneuver gained him to catch his breath and his balance. Larson thrust for the trailing bandit. The bandit whirled to tend to his own defense, and Richmund came to his aid. Faldrenk and his remaining ally advanced on Taziar from opposite sides of the campfire.
Taziar crouched. Desperate and uncertain, he swept a brand from the blaze and hurled it at Faldrenk’s companion. Heat singed Taziar’s fingers, the pain delayed by callus, but the bandit cried out in distress. Taziar scuttled backward. Faldrenk’s blade missed Taziar’s chest by a finger’s breadth of air.
“Faldrenk!” Taziar seized his sword hilt as his old friend jabbed sharpened steel for the Climber’s abdomen. Taziar lurched sideways, freeing his blade in the same motion. He caught Faldrenk’s next sweep on his sword. “Stop! Don’t! Faldrenk, we’re friends ...”
Steel chimed beyond the firelight as Larson returned strikes and parries with a ferocity that would have pleased his teacher. Faldrenk slashed. “Adal was your friend, too.”
Taziar batted Faldrenk’s blade aside, not daring to return the attack. “And that’s not changed. Why ... ?”
Faldrenk bore in, slicing for Taziar in an angry frenzy. Hard-pressed, Taziar gave ground freely. He kept his strokes short, intended only for defense. Sweat-matted hair fell, stinging, into his eyes. From the edge of his vision, he saw Faldrenk’s companion closing from around the fire. “Faldrenk, why?”
Faldrenk’s voice held a contempt once reserved for guards who abused peasants in the streets. “Because you’re a foul, filthy, shit-stinking traitor.” His blade whistled for Taziar’s face. “Karana’s pit, treason runs in Medakan blood!”
The gibe hurt worse than Faldrenk’s betrayal. Taziar spun aside, but shock cost him his timing. Faldrenk’s blade nicked Taziar’s ear, and blood trickled down his collar in a warm stream. The remaining bandit charged into sword range. Taziar abandoned speech as he blocked the stranger’s strike with his sword. The force of the blow jarred him to the shoulders. Before he could muster a riposte, the stranger’s sword hammered against his again. Impact staggered Taziar. Driven to the edge of the clearing, he felt branches prickle into his back.
Again, Faldrenk lunged, blade sweeping. Taziar leaped backward. Twigs snapped, jabbing into his skin like knives. His spine struck an oak; breath whistled through his teeth. The stranger cut for Taziar’s head. Taziar ducked, and the blade bit deeply into the trunk. Taziar seized the opening; he skirted beneath the stranger’s arm as the sword came free in a shower of bark.
“Faldrenk, listen ...” Taziar gasped, nearly breathless. The stranger paid the words no heed. His blade arced toward Taziar. The Climber spun to meet the charge. Their blades crashed together.
Silme’s anxious voice rose above the din. “Shadow, behind you!” Astryd screamed a high-pitched, wordless noise.
Taziar spun, slashing to counter Faldrenk’s strike. But his friend had gone unnaturally still, sword poised for a blow. Instead of steel, Taziar’s blade found flesh. It cleaved beneath Faldrenk’s left arm and halfway through his chest. Blood splashed on Taziar and ran along his crossguard, but he noticed only Faldrenk’s eyes. The pale orbs revealed fear and shock before they glazed in death. The corpse crumpled, wrenching the sword from Taziar’s grip.
Instinctively, Taziar whirled to face his other opponent, dodging to evade an unseen strike. But the stranger, too, had noticed Faldrenk’s sudden immobility. Wide-eyed, he backed away from Taziar signing a broad, religious gesture in the air. Once beyond sword range, he turned and ran.
Apparently, Larson’s opponents also abandoned their assault; the world went eerily silent. Taziar stared at the lifeless body, once a friend, who had berated him with insults as cruel as murder. The scene glazed to red fog. Unable to discern Faldrenk’s features, Taziar knelt. Only then did he recognize the tears in his own eyes. And the realization brought a rush of grief. He placed a hand on the shapeless blur of Faldrenk’s corpse, felt life’s last warmth fleeing beneath his touch.
Taziar lowered his head. He knew what would come next. In the past, the mere idea of killing had brought memories vivid as reality. Thoughts of his troubled childhood had remained quiescent since the familiar restless attraction to danger had driven him to chase down and slay his father’s murderer, and seek adventure in the strange realms north of the Kattegat. Now, back on his home ground, steeped in a friend’s blood, Taziar cringed beneath an onslaught of remembrance.
Images battered his conscience like physical blows. He saw his mother’s frail form, withered by the accusations against his father. He heard her wine-slurred voice berating her only son with words heavy with reproach and accusation. He recalled how she had trapped him into promising to take her life and forced him to keep that vow, the jagged tear of the knife through flesh, the reek of blood like tide-wrack on a summer beach. Taziar’s stomach knotted with cramps. He dropped to his hands and knees, fighting the urge to retch.
A firm hand clamped on Taziar’s shoulder and steered him beyond the sight and odor. Larson’s tone was soft and nonjudgmental, but liberally tinged with surprise. “Your first?”
Taziar rubbed his vision clear. He shook his head, not yet trusting himself to speak. Despite heated battles fought at L
arson’s side against wolves and conjured dragons, Taziar had not killed a man since he slew the traitor in Sweden’s forest. “Third,” he confessed. He did not elaborate further. “It’s a weakness.”
Larson slapped Taziar’s back with comradely force. “Ha! So you’re not perfect after all. If you have to have a flaw, I can’t think of one more normal than hating killing men.”
Taziar smiled weakly. “Thanks.” As the excitement of combat dissipated, his legs felt as flaccid as rubber. His arm throbbed where the arrow had nicked it, his fingers smarted, and his ear felt hot. Yet, despite pain and fatigue, Taziar dredged up the inner resolve to make a vow. I’ll take my own life before I cause another innocent death. And I’ll not allow any other wrongful execution on the baron’s gallows.
Taziar turned his head, noticing for the first time that Astryd stood on shaky feet, her eyes slitted and most of her weight supported by Silme. Alarmed, he ran to her side, ashamed of the time wasted on his own inner turmoil. “What happened?”
Silme explained with composed practicality. “She tapped her life energy harder than she should have. She’ll be all right.” She added, her tone harsh with rebuke, “And she’ll learn.”
Taziar caught Astryd to him, relieving Silme of the burden. He knew the spell that weakened Astryd was the one that had frozen Faldrenk, preventing an attack that might otherwise have taken Taziar’s life. Sick with guilt and concern, it did not occur to him to wonder why Silme had not aided in the battle.
* * *
CHAPTER 2 : Shadows in the City
Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.
—Aesop The Dog and the Shadow
Sleep eluded Taziar, leaving him awash in pain. He lay on his stomach to avoid aggravating the jabs and scratches in his back. He tucked his arrow-slashed arm against his side; the other rested across Astryd’s abdomen, attuned to the exhaustion-deep rise and fall of her every breath. His ear throbbed, and he kept his head turned to the opposite side. But the ache of superficial wounds dulled beneath the anguish and confusion inspired by Faldrenk’s betrayal. He called me traitor. Why? I’ve not set foot near Cullinsberg in months. Taziar considered, seeking answers he lacked the knowledge to deduce. Maybe that’s it. Perhaps Shylar needed me, and I wasn’t here. He drummed his fingers in the dirt, ignoring the flaring sting of his burns. That makes no sense. My friends know I fled with Cullinsberg’s army at my heels; how could they hold such a thing against me?
Mickey Zucker Reichert - Shadows Realm Page 5
