“Your own troops killed each other?” asked Cormack.
“In a public bar, no less,” said Jarnsaxa. “Now, my scouts are either dead or hiding from the authorities, and the local populace is on the lookout for two strangers who look like northern barbarians. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but practically my entire camp fits that description. I can’t send more scouts, I can’t get information, and I can’t even send my troops in to try to hunt the bastards down.”
“I take it we’ll be paid for this?” asked Thaena.
“The natives have offered a bounty on their heads. Since these were my men and they blundered my operation, I’d rather you hand them over to me than the locals. I’ll offer double what they are offering, as long as you bring them to me alive or can give me a full explanation for their screwed up behavior.”
“Well, then, let’s hope they’re still alive,” Dryston said. “How can we find them?”
“You travel to Skybridge and look around until you see their ugly faces,” Jarnsaxa said. “If they are stupid, they might even still be staying at the room they rented together with the other scouts.”
“Names?”
“They go by Sifnar Red-Shoal and Gorm War-Anvil.”
“Why is your army here, in the first place?” Thaena asked.
“On King Tancred’s command, we’re heading east,” Jarnsaxa said. “But we aren’t at his beck and call any longer. Grave times require grave measures.”
“What do you mean by that?” Jade asked.
“This is one of those tales,” Jarnsaxa said, “that will either see us as traitors if we fail or saviors if we succeed.”
Dryston noticed that the other members of his band shifted uneasily, except for Cormack, who wore a fierce expression with a hint of a smile.
Cormack said, “You weren’t kidding before, when you said we could join you in the battle of the end-times. You think those times are upon us.”
Jarnsaxa nodded seriously, then continued. “The warband I’m commanding no longer stands under King Tancred’s rule. I have made the decision to separate from him and have gone renegade to follow a bigger, more important path. We are spurred on by the bitterness of the state of mankind’s realm. The fight for the battle at the end of the universe – the Wolftime – draws near. It is said that the barbarian king will return one day, to fight alongside his people when the end time arrives.”
“Where is this barbarian king now?” Thaena asked.
“No one knows,” Cormack explained. “He abandoned his people and made us the warring tribes we are today.”
“What were his motives, then?” Jade asked.
“He hates us, his people,” the brute explained. “He thinks anyone who can’t live a wild and unrestrained life in the wilderness is too weak and not worthy of his reign. That’s why he despises us. He is no true leader, just a mad warrior. But whatever else he is, he is the fiercest fighter of all time.”
“Then he hasn’t met me yet,” Dryston blustered.
“You are making a very high-stakes bet, lady Ornsdottir,” Jade said, “on someone who knows no responsibility. He doesn’t sound like the kind of man who cares that you are waiting for him to return, with or without an army. When I ran away from home, I didn’t come back for a reason.”
“I know,” Jarnsaxa said. “My life, and the lives of those who follow me, is one big gamble. Now that I have told you, you should consider your positions carefully. If you decide to reveal my intentions to the king, no one will believe you, and you will stand alone. If you work for my cause, I can provide you with food, shelter, weapons and an income. Choose your fate.”
“We just want to get paid, with no other strings attached,” Dryston said. He wanted no part of a mad gamble to find a warrior king who had left his own people.
“Have you found any traces of him, the barbarian king?” asked Jade.
“Rumor has it that he was somewhere in the region near Skybridge,” Jarnsaxa said. “I was delighted when King Tancred sent me out this way, but it could be an empty trail. I sent scouts ahead of the army, but as you heard, two of them seem to have gone crazy and ruined my chances of quietly finding some information.”
“You said you sent a sorceress to investigate the situation in Skybridge as well,” Dryston said. “Do you know where she is right now?”
“I imagine she’s almost to the city,” Jarnsaxa said. “She left this morning. Let’s fill you in with the details, and maybe you can catch up to her.”
CHAPTER THREE
SKYBRIDGE
“SIFNAR RED-SHOAL AND GORM WAR-ANVIL,” Dryston repeated, after they had left Jarnsaxa’s company with all the clues she could give them: family relations, troop affiliation, behavior, cast of mind, fighting preferences, accomplishments in the warband. The two looked like average line infantry soldiers, not veterans who had gotten tired of the same old, but also not inexperienced recruits who were about to flee before they would first see action. But sometimes, those ordinary troopers hid the darkest secrets. Some escapades during gambling and betting on pit-fights to keep them entertained, sure, this was to be expected, but Dryston doubted that their absence had anything to do with it. He sensed something bigger behind it.
“Cormack?” Dryston asked, when they reached the exit barricade of the warband camp.
“Yes?”
“About your name.”
“What about it?” Cormack said without stopping.
Barbarians were standing to attention at the east gate, recognizing Cormack as one of their own kin. They didn’t stand like Treverian soldiers or those of any of the northern kingdoms, Dryston noticed. They stood broad-legged and uneasy as if looking for trouble.
“I was wondering how you barbarians get your name,” Dryston said, noting the hefty halberds the guards were lifting in greeting as they passed.
“What do you mean, how we get our name?” Cormack said, returning with a grim nod.
Cormack shrugged. “You know, sometimes those nicknames go by contraries.”
“Yes, sometimes,” Dryston said, getting serious. “But like with Sifnar Red-Shoal and Gorm War-Anvil, who knows when it’s real and when it’s contrary?”
Cormack soaked up the fresh morning air, as if the realization hit him only now. “That is always the big question with barbarians. You have to cross blades and find out on your own if it was a façade or the real thing.”
“SOMETHING DOESN’T FEEL RIGHT,” Thaena Ashcroft said. “Why search for a man and defect from the king? What difference could he make, even if Jarnsaxa finds him?”
The group had left the warband’s camp and journeyed on the road to Skybridge. King Tancred’s ancestors had compelled its construction with stones when the land had still been wild and untamed. It was an artery that broke into the non-human wilderness and had replaced the old paths used by orcs, elves and dwarves, like so many others. The clouds had broken up and revealed gnarly trees slumped over grass soaked with rain.
“The northern tribes want a leader,” Cormack said. “It would make things easier. At the moment, the Vacomani are ravaged by anarchy and chaos. Don’t get me wrong, it’s basically what has been occurring the last thousand years, every time before a new king can be found, but this time no one seems to be up for the job. You have to imagine what it’s like out there. You southerners are living in paradise compared to the northern world. Nature alone can kill you. Just the wind can freeze and tear flesh from the bones. The iceland we inhabited is breaking up and more and more swallowed by the sea, or desolated by geysers. For generations, we’ve always been on the move, unable to build an empire or unite ourselves. On the contrary, as land gets scarce and we are crowded together, we cull out the weak by wars. As pastures fade, grazers starve and the predators turn on us, driven mad by hunger. No one wants to do this. The most promising contender, the only one I had trust in to be strong enough from the stories I heard, left us. But maybe Jarnsaxa can bring the barbarian king back. Behind every strong man needs to
stand a strong woman.”
“You know why that is true, Cormack?” Dryston asked.
Cormack chuckled. “It’s so that his energy stays focused and he’s not wandering around. I have to admit, though, that she most likely would have to bring strong arguments to persuade him.”
Dryston smiled, knowing what Cormack was referring to.
SKYBRIDGE WAS SWAMPED from six days of heavy rain. Fading traces led through the muddy paths to the town, and the entrance into the settlement was not possible entirely on foot. The long access footbridge that normally wound through the reflective surface of the swampland was flooded. They had to cross the swampland by boat.
“Awful weather,” Cormack muttered. “I hate to get my feet wet.”
Small fishing smacks, ferries, and an old patrol boat lay on the shore, now taken out of their service during daytime. There were several longboats, used for military operations and raids, left there as a far reaching hand from Skybridge. The place was a small outpost, crowded onto the lakeshore together with stables with horses for rent, so people could quickly get to the capital, or the other bordering kingdoms. Camps like this were common throughout Treveria.
The sight of four very distinct souls coming from each part of the world together was not.
The ferryman crawled out of his rocking chair and walked down the handrail of the boathouse’s porch. He had a torn mariner’s cap on his head and regarded the arrivals suspiciously. The ferryman’s hair was greyed and his face wrinkled. He was of a generation that had witnessed one or two great wars and probably had seen it all.
Dryston held up his fingers in a V-sign to salute him. It was a greeting inherited from Kaeiwieli archers that had spread through all the kingdoms and stayed even when its origin had been forgotten. It meant for the archers that they hadn’t been captured by enemy troops, as it was customary to cut off the two fingers required to draw a bow from captives. It meant that they were still able to give their enemies hell.
The man smiled slightly. His face darkened as he saw the wolf amulet of a shire reeve on Dryston’s chest. For someone not knowing the background of how Dryston really acquired the badge of office, it meant he was operating under political authority.
“That is nice armor,” the ferryman tried to distract from the amulet he had been staring at too long and wandered his gaze over to Dryston’s chest.
Dryston stepped closer to him, leaving only the boathouse’s veranda between the two of them. He pulled out a cigarette of swampweed and offered it to the ferryman, igniting it with the embers left in the man’s pipe.
“We need a lift to Skybridge,” he said.
The ferryman pulled on his smoke and nodded.
“Higher rates at nightfall,” the man said. Dryston noticed the man hadn’t forgotten his badge, even if he tried to avoid looking at it. The man considered the swampweed he had gotten from Dryston. “But for you, I guess we can make a better price.”
Dryston didn’t show any expression.
“Let me get the boat ready,” the man eventually said to cut the uncomfortable silence.
Dryston let the ferryman move down the veranda and pass him to head for the boat racks.
“Erm, one thing,” Dryston added. “Have you seen a woman come by here?”
“Yes, why?” the ferryman stopped to answer. “She was traveling alone to Skybridge, about an hour ago. Had some weird kind of clothes.”
“Hm,” Dryston replied, faking ignorance about the descriptions of Kyra. “Not the one I was looking for.”
THE CREAKING SOUND of encumbered wood accompanied each time the ferryman leaned back for an oar-stroke, bringing them closer to the quays.
“There are objects in the water,” Thaena Ashcroft pointed out. She stood at the prow.
Dryston came over to her to look at the things in the water. There were chains that held them beneath the surface and dark shapes.
“Obstacles?” Cormack guessed.
One of the objects turned as a bow wave shoved it aside. A white, slick surface showed, a face bobbed to the surface.
“These are bodies,” the ferryman said.
Dryston stared into the water, seeing more of the floating corpses.
“Doomsday cult?” he asked.
The ferryman grunted. “The repression, blood money, everything. The doom of an ending world didn’t help.”
Dryston had heard the stories. The corpses in the water wouldn’t be the only victims. The cities were full of the hidden dead, buried in the woods, cemented in walls, or dumped into waters. Often, those were the results of rituals, offerings to dark, unknown gods to prevent someone’s own harm, either carried out by religious groups or paranoid non-humans against humans. Of course, the reverse could also be said. Non-humans often got accused of witchery and were hunted down relentlessly. Human houses intrigued against members of others in a constant struggle for supremacy beyond the reach of the jarl’s reign.
These were political enemies, Dryston guessed, or victims who just got involved with the wrong sort of people.
DRYSTON WAS THE FIRST to set his boots on the quay. The two deserters had last been seen in a habitation block, a multi-leveled stone house with several apartments. Kyra must have also known that much from Jarnsaxa Ornsdottir, who had been the one providing the funds to rent the premises used by her scouts as undercover sleeping places while they pretended to be looking for work. These facilities needed to be changed every month, Dryston thought, along with the spies inhabitating them. Buildings like the one used by the two deserters were rare, but not in Skybridge.
The masses of the buildings surrounding them left the group marveling. In no other town under Godfrey’s reign could buildings that big be seen. The cult of his personality became evident the time they passed the first statues of the governor that were seamed with roses and other flowers of admiration. His mission to defend the denizens that lived under his strong hand must have been well executed, if his popularity among his people was anything to go by. He was a protector of humanity, even if there was nothing human left on the streets now by nightfall.
The courtyard they found themselves in was devoid of any form of higher life. Ravens settled on the trees and the roofs, gathering for their journey into the surrounding forests.
Dryston went on, glimpsing the habitation block. A burning smell penetrated his nose. It was only a heartbeat later that Dryston saw smoke rise from the building.
“Thaena, am I right in assuming that you shot swamp-rats in the crypt with your crossbow?” he whispered and broke into a run.
His companions followed him.
“Yes, why?”
“Now would be the right time to use that skill.”
Thaena swallowed. “I’m not sure if I can do that, Dryston.”
“Thaena, it’s okay if you’re scared. I could finish every sentence that goes through your mind right now; I know how you feel.”
“I fear I’m just too afraid to do this,” she said.
“It’s okay,” Dryston told her. “Everyone feels that way and I can tell you it never goes away. But you have to accept it and learn to live with it.”
“I don’t want to fail you,” Thaena said.
“They always tell you failure is not an option,” Dryston said. “That’s nonsense. Failure is always an option; it is the easy option. But it is a choice. You can go this way with us to victory, or you can go the easy way back to defeat. Now, come. I know you can do it.”
They took cover behind the edge of another building, taking off their rucksacks and lying on their gear.
Dryston unbuckled his fist weapons and slid into them. He held them up and grabbed the grip hard in each hand.
“Now, Sifnar Red-Shoal and Gorm War-Anvil,” Dryston said to himself. “What do you think about those names, Cormack, real or contrary?”
Cormack snorted at the potshot.
Thaena was bracing her crossbow.
Dryston gave them signs to spread out, with Thaena at the front.
She nodded, took the vanguard and laid a bolt from her thigh quiver on the crossbow.
Dryston followed her, the weight of his immense metal fists being comfortable to feel, while the burden of his rucksack was missing from his back. This was it, the feeling when you lay off your equipment to travel and survive in the wilderness, knowing that there would be fighting instead. And after it was done, you would return and pick it up again. Still, there was the nagging thought at the back of one’s mind that this would happen only if everything went according to plan. There was no guarantee of that. There were so many possibilities that things could go wrong, that it left a bad feeling behind.
His guts twisted as the heightened sensation of danger pumped up his poisoned metabolism. His knees were weak and he knew his companions felt the same at that moment. That wasn’t good. He had to fight the thrill and get acclimatized. It had been too long now, since he last had seen real action, outside the practice drills. You forgot how well you could fight and how it felt over time. Dryston had to focus to get all the memories back, his confidence in his heart, mind and body, and the memories of his muscles over his skills. It was there. Deep down, he knew that it was still there, waiting to be awakened.
Dryston broke into a run and sprinted over the courtyard. His thoughts for Kyra were a sting in his chest and sent a shudder through his spine and knees. If she had arrived an hour earlier, he hoped she had proceeded with more caution than they had. Then there would be a chance they would catch up with her before she got into any trouble. They were four, she was alone out there. Empathizing with her, Dryston would have used fear and paranoia alone to proceed to the objective extra cautiously, circling the building and closing in from several angles while surveying the surroundings. With vigilant eyes, he observed their own route of approach. They only had one shot, straight into it without the luxury of time to check for traps or an ambush. His heart raced and made the collar around his neck feel uncomfortably closer. Was she nearby? Was her life in danger? With grim concern, he swore to himself that anyone trying to harm her would witness his wrath as the last thing that they would feel in life.
Red Axe, Black Sun Page 3
