Red Axe, Black Sun

by Michael Karner

“I don’t think I have that long to live. Might as well do something good. How many of my group have survived?”

  Soma didn’t answer and grimly shook her head instead.

  The man let out a resigned sigh.

  “I have Vanik’s blood on my hands, cleric,” Joric said. “I left the post and was too much a coward to step forward when tried.”

  “I remember,” Freya said, fury building up in her.

  Soma felt she had to hold her back from the dying man, or else she might advance his state.

  “I was there,” Freya said. “Don’t think Vanik’s is the only blood on your hands. The five aspirants that died in the Kolanthel attack are also on you. You let the assassin slip in.”

  “Give me one opportunity to do something good, then, lictor,” he pleaded. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. The murder of a young aspirant the eve before battle, a terrible incident. However, I think I could do something to help you find the perpetrator. I was running errands around the time these incidents happened. My master from the drug cartel…”

  “You shouldn’t talk any further in my presence, soldier,” Freya said. “Or in anyone else’s, for that matter.”

  Joric shrugged. “I’m a dead man, either way. My master told me about the killed boy. The way he acted made me strongly believe he was killed by one of our clients.”

  The women exchanged looks with one another.

  “Can you tell us a name?” Freya asked.

  Joric slowly shook his head. “No name, lictor.”

  KYRA CRUSHED A HELMET beneath the heel of her boot. When she returned to Skybridge, it didn’t invoke the feeling in her that she had hoped to have. She knew Dryston had exited the war zone in time and retired to his crypt hideout. But the reason she had come back was to find Connor.

  The air around the city gate was static and charged in a way that made the hair on her arms rise. Magic had been practiced here, and not the uncontrolled outbursts she was experiencing but clear, calculated arts. The scars it had left in reality were sensible to every being responsive to the unnatural powers: sorcerers, witches, non-humans. To the rest, it could be seen in the destruction it had brought to the gate, like a part of the sun had melted through iron. It was a strange feeling to know that there were powers at work that surpassed her own superhuman skills again. Like back in the days in Falkensvard, when she delved into the guarded knowledge behind the gates of the academy of the gifted. It made her remember which place she had taken in the world and that it wasn’t remotely as high as she had hoped it would be.

  Troopers occupying the gate searched her and let her pass. She didn’t get information about her betrothed from them, but she caught snippets of what had happened in the last few hours from their banter.

  She proceeded along the roadside, which was crowded with soldiers camping on house walls, drinking, cheering, passing smokes, and trying to gather strength for their next action.

  Kyra walked until she reached the new frontline, a ring around the old town ghetto, formed by opposing occupied houses and barricades. The wall around Old Town district was defaced with runes and symbols she had never seen before. An orc with a mohawk was explaining them to a woman in black clothes.

  “Now, this is interesting,” the orc told the woman as Kyra approached them. He held a leaflet in his big, bloodied fingers. “Kolanthel rise,” the orc read the header of the slip out loud. Dozens of identical leaflets were pinned along the ghetto wall and drifting loose with the falling snow. “Propaganda,” he concluded, looking around them and only now grasping the enormous scale.

  “Like the one with which we are brainwashed from both sides of the frontline,” the woman answered. “Like there is no need to continue the bloodshed in the name of tyrants that don’t care about us but only their own good. Like we are people from the same bloodline and shouldn’t wage such futile civil war against one another. Like we can return home to our loved ones, if we lay down our weapons right now.”

  The orc shrugged his massive shoulders, over which his cruel war-bow was stretched, and referred back to the message on the leaflet. “No, Ysara. This one is different. This could hurt us all, if the thought takes root when both sides are weakened.”

  Out of nowhere, the leaflet, together with others drifting in the wind, caught fire. The orc turned his head to see two menacing figures approaching: Fire mages. Arch enemies and victims of many Kolanthel assassinations.

  “They find better use that way,” one of the characters said.

  “I agree,” the orc replied, still offended to have something burned out of his hands.

  Kyra flinched when she recognized the figures approaching and involuntarily made way for them.

  Grandmaster Pyrone and Magister Sol’al-Rus. She had heard stories about them back at the academy in Falkensvard.

  “Out to take a breath and burn paper, gentlemen?” Ysara asked the pyromancers.

  They both nodded their greetings and regarded Kyra with slightly disdainful looks.

  “The recounting of the battle taking place in the grand west hall was straining on our patience,” Grandmaster Pyrone said, his head stretched to what seemed to more important tasks. “We supported the bards and skalds to grasp our achievement at the breakthrough of the gate, but their understanding is even more limited than their vocabulary.”

  “Well, at least for the afterworld, it will suffice,” Sol’al-Rus said.

  “It is a nuisance, Magister,” Pyrone said. “If they really think the melting of some iron bars was the reason why the Order sent two of its most versed representatives, then their minds are even less blessed than I already feared.”

  “What is it, then, Grandmaster, that drew the interest of the Order?” Kyra asked.

  The pyromancers shifted, as if overhearing the question and continuing to stroll on their way.

  “Did any of you know what part this special place will be playing in the days to come?” Pyrone asked. The grand mage waited for a reaction then continued without surprise. “No? Or did any of you know which days are to come at all? The transition of a sun-cycle.” He answered the question himself. “The foundations of Skybridge seem to be built with the constellation in mind.”

  “The city streets are aligned in a very particular way,” Sol’al-Rus added, standing before the shanty town’s wall.

  Ysara Horne coughed slightly. “Even if they were drawn by a five-year-old, I wouldn’t venture on them further. Not here, not now, between the frontlines with non-human territory ahead and Kolanthel propaganda at the wayside.”

  Sol’al-Rus smiled. “Your welfare humors me. Lady Ornsdottir will maintain the deadlock until word from King Tancred is received. In the meanwhile, they are gathering in the tavern southwest of here.” He turned to Kyra now. “You should be here to help break open Old Town’s wall when that happens, sorceress, because we might be elsewhere.”

  “Receive Tancred’s word about what?” Kyra asked.

  “Whether he will succeed in confronting Godfrey,” Sol’al-Rus replied. “Meanwhile, the army will stay entrenched and won’t move further as leverage like a drawn bow. There is no pressure left once everything is destroyed.”

  THE STYXIAN OARSMAN was one of the few places that had weathered the bombardment exceptionally well. It bore its proud name on a swinging wooden shield, standing bulky on the corner of the street Kyra was frequenting. The dwarven bouncer in blue-white striped pants let her in after she tipped him generously. A tavern in a warzone was like a lantern to moths. The Oarsman’s patron was at a point where he could choose which customers he let in, and his mead-hall was one with the best reputation.

  “Two drinks a head,” the bouncer told her. “The first and the last. Of those in between, I don’t want to know.”

  When the bouncer closed the door behind Kyra, an avalanche of snow fell from the roof of the building and left the night behind. Heat, light, laughter and music backwashed into her face. There would be no night today in the candlelit place.
It was crowded full with soldiers of the king, partly in shining armor plates, topless barbarians, flanked by scantily clad women. The walls and ceilings were sweating, the glow of candles and the hearth touching every skin and surface and creating a wet glimmer, like in a grotto. Banter, clapping, laughing, the clanking of horns and kegs was overwhelming. Then there was the music, blaring out of pipes, beating from drums, moving everything in its rhythm. The tension was palpable. The sweat, the sweet perfumes, the tang of spilt ale, mead, and vodka invaded her nostrils. There was no air to breathe. The patrons were shaking, moving in their seats, bodies grinding against each other. Elven and orcish dancers moved their bodies on top of the tables, past stapled coins from dice and card play. A human and an elven bargirl were serving drinks and smokes on tablets, sashaying through the customers. Kyra shoved herself past a few drunkards to the bar.

  The bartender was a short man with a chest like a barrel, ex-army judging from the standard issue mace hanging behind him under loads of booze. “What do you want, lady?” The bartender raised his voice over the noise. “Looking for a friend,” Kyra replied.

  “Plenty of friends here,” the man said while moving on to the next customer. “You just don’t know it yet.” He inclined his head to a figure closing in on Kyra’s left.

  The newcomer touched Kyra’s shoulder ungently to turn her around.

  “What do we have here?” the stranger asked. “Want me to buy you a drink?”

  “I don’t drink,” Kyra answered curtly and moved a foot back. She bumped into another bystander.

  “This is a strange outfit,” the drunkard stated, apparently only now sizing up her full appearance. He pressed Kyra with her back against the counter and leaned in to leave her no way to retreat “I lost my brother, you know?”

  Kyra swallowed, feeling the electrical tension in her palms rise. “Sorry to hear it.”

  The man’s gaze turned away into an empty stare. “They said he died in a fire. But I don’t believe it. I have seen the body. He had wounds no fire on earth could cause.” His eyes turned back to Kyra. “It was magic.”

  Kyra felt uncomfortable being in his presence. She felt as if she had seen this man’s face, in an image that had burned itself into her memory. The image of a man she had killed rescuing Skadi.

  “I know what you are,” the mourning brother said. “And I know there aren’t many like you.”

  She nodded.

  “But I had told him that he was meddling with the wrong people. Bad people. He should have known better. Maybe he only got what he deserved.”

  He broke off from Kyra’s gaze and vanished back into the crowd.

  SHE CONTINUED TO SCAN the room for familiar faces. A dark-elf seneschal acknowledged her with a nod in her direction, ready to intervene. His violet hands, nose, and ears were adorned with pompous trinkets. She didn’t know him. He returned to mending the hearth fire, in front of which dancers intimately writhed their bodies. People were watching her from the safe distance of the upper floor, resting their frames on the balustrade, drinks in hand.

  Kyra spotted Barknar in a corner, sitting under piles of hunting trophies and racks with items on the wall that were placed there for decoration. He was brooding, while his brotherhood dealt the cards and gambled huge amounts on the table in front of him. He was only partially following. His keg was still full. Times like these meant good business for the cartel, but tonight he didn’t look like he was in the mood for celebrating.

  IN THE MIDDLE OF A CIRCLE, Godsmite sat on a chair at the end of the hall’s long table. Jarnsaxa Ornsdottir, their matriarch, sat on his lap with her arms around his neck, even though she didn’t know his name. She was lost in those deep meaningful eyes again. What they had seen? He was the returned lover, the mysterious man who didn’t speak with his tongue, who spoke with deeds and his body. His calm presence was awe-inspiring. Around him were the mightiest heroes and the most beautiful of maidens. They treated him like a king. He had taken the wall while Jarnsaxa had taken the gate. Together they had smashed Godfrey’s defenses like hammer and anvil. Now their bodies were united, muscles, skin, and scars together in a perfect form. But the focus was not on them. It was on the skald recounting their tale.

  “So, I was there, when the ramp of the siege tower opened,” the bard narrated with an excessive gesture that made him spill over bits of his mead. “The Unnamed One before me, the man with the biggest arm and the greatest charm, king of wolves, when he charged into the enemy. I ran behind him to feel the blood he spilt on my skin, struggling to gather the skulls he was reaping together with my brothers Geilir, Ruschil, Halof, Gunnlaug, Yasemin, all worthy names.” He acknowledged each of them with an outstretched arm.

  THE SKALD DREW KYRA’S ATTENTION, the posture and voice, even when rough from drinking and shouting, were familiar to her. She walked around the bard to catch a look at his face.

  “Connor?” she breathed, before breaking out in laughter.

  Connor Wyle turned to her, unable to hold back. He closed her laughing into his arms.

  “Oh, my God, what are you doing here?” Kyra jumped on him and fell into his embrace. Their lips met intensely when they kissed.

  “And this is how that happened.” Connor Wyle closed his recounting of the saga. He raised his drinking horn to the seat of Godsmite and Jarnsaxa. “Hail to the barbarian king!”

  He turned back to kissing Kyra, leaving the raging crowd be.

  “Hail to the barbarian king!” the shouts echoed laughing through the mead-hall.

  “There is a legend in our home,” Jarnsaxa said to the nameless man, when her eyes locked to his, “that the wolf king will return to become our savior at the world’s end.”

  He smiled and opened his mouth, as if to say something, then closed in to kiss her.

  “I REALLY THOUGHT I HAD LOST YOU,” Kyra told Connor, the man of her dreams, and pulled him closer. “I came looking for you, twice. In the woods, at the lake, in our house, but you were gone.”

  “I know,” Connor said. “Tancred’s men came one evening and took me with them. I was out in the yard cutting firewood for a cold night, when they surprised me. Three riders in Treveria’s black and red. I could have fought them. I was thinking about it that moment with my axe still in hand. Three on one; I would have needed all the luck the gods could have given me, but I could have tried. But where to hide the bodies? Burn them in the fireplace or back in the yard? The glow and smell would have lasted through the whole night to the early morning hours and given me away. I could have dumped their chainmail and swords in the lake and hoped that no one would come looking for them. But I knew more would come eventually, and I would not be able to hide it forever. I was afraid it would be traced back to you, and everything we had built together would be taken away from us. So many thoughts, even before I had to fight. I hesitated, and they got me. Took me to the siege camp after raiding our rations.”

  “Gosh, I was so scared I’d never see you again,” Kyra said. “Promise me you will never leave my side.”

  Connor Wyle chuckled. “You are the one who’s always leaving.”

  “It’s not funny,” the sorceress replied. “I mean, it’s only coincidence that I found you. We had no way to contact each other if we were separated. Just no way to meet at the right time or the right place. Can you imagine?”

  “I would have found you one day,” Connor assured her.

  “Yes, but when?” Kyra said. “I would have sat in the empty house by the lake, watching for the days and nights to go by, till I would no longer be able to bear it, and then I’d have done something about it. Set out to look for you in other places. But how would I have been able to find you? I wouldn’t have known if you were still alive or among the fallen of Skybridge. I could only have examined the records and tombstones and asked in every town if they had seen you; I’d always be behind, like chasing horses. Undoubtly, you would have returned to the house someday, having the same feeling I had when I found it empty. And then, maybe,
after months, we would have met, when fate wanted it, but it wouldn’t have been the same anymore. One of us would have moved on in our lives and left our love behind.”

  “No, it wouldn’t have been me,” Connor said.

  “You sure about that?” Kyra said. “Promise me you’ll never let this happen again.”

  “You, too,” Connor said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  LION AMONG LAMBS

  THE DWARVEN BOUNCER was about to get busy again. He shifted from one blue-white striped leg to the other and rubbed his hands against the cold. Lictor Freya approached him straightway down the road from the clerics’ billet. He was about to stop her, but this looked to be a severe matter. This looked like business. Freya had unstrapped her fasces to loosen the axe-head hidden in the bundle of birch rods. He respectfully stepped aside and let her enter.

  She grabbed the first drunkard in her way by the collar and shoved aside everyone who was in her way. The crowd parted, disturbed by Freya’s appearance in full lictor wargear.

  Barknar’s watchful eyes followed her every movement. He instructed his companions to stop playing and lay down the cards.

  Freya approached the long table at the center and touched Jarnsaxa Ornsdottir on the shoulder.

  She eyed the brute who had his arms wrapped around the warlord’s waist.

  “Lady Jarnsaxa,” she said. “I need to talk to you. Alone.”

  The warlord got up from Godsmite’s lap and followed her to the hearth. Leery gazes chased the two women. The dark-elf seneschal tending the fire turned away to leave them in private.

  “How long have you known this man?” Freya asked.

  Jarnsaxa raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure what you are implying, Freya.”

  “I mean, what do you know about him?” Freya said with a troubled sigh.

  “I know nothing about his past,” Jarnsaxa answered. “But I do know his presence and what he did at the assault. He is the savior we were looking for. People are jokingly calling him king, even Tancred’s men who were at his side. You know humor is not far away from seriousness. This could be it, our greatest chance. We have been looking for it and undertaken risks bigger than we could imagine. Vacomany wants a leader, and he could unite us without uttering a single word.”