by Luke Scull
‘I take it you’ve heard,’ she said, standing in such a way that her cleavage seemed to drag his eyes downwards with irresistible force. ‘Shadowport’s no more. The City of Shades has been destroyed by Salazar himself.’ The tone of her voice changed slightly, a hint of sarcasm creeping in. ‘Strange that he waited to act until after our navy was crushed.’
Cole said nothing, settling instead on a non-committal shrug. He wasn’t about to voice treason against the Tyrant of Dorminia in the middle of a crowded market. He wasn’t stupid.
The woman leaned in close to him and her voice became a whisper. ‘I lost my husband to the Black Lottery four years ago, you know. He was a brave man.’ Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘There aren’t many like him around these days. Men prepared to take a stand.’
Cole puffed out his chest and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. If only you knew, he thought. If only you knew.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he lied. ‘I’m sure your husband and I would have had much in common.’ He gave her a winsome grin, and was rewarded with a shy smile in response.
‘How did you come by those bruises?’ she asked, placing a gentle hand to his face. He felt his body respond and shifted uncomfortably.
‘Let’s just say the Watch and I don’t always see eye to eye,’ he replied. He couldn’t resist giving her a conspiratorial wink. She looked thoughtful and bowed her head.
He noticed abrupt movement in the corner of his vision. One of the tradesmen the woman had been speaking with was suddenly grabbed from the back. His surprised face was visible for a split second before he disappeared behind the mass of humanity. There was a yelp, cut off as suddenly as it had begun, and then a young woman was also forcibly removed from the throng, her arms flailing before she faded from view.
A worried murmuring spread. Faces glanced left and right and behind them. Two more people were suddenly pulled from the crowd: an old woman and a man of middling years.
A dark foreboding seized Cole. He stared at the woman opposite him. She frowned as if trying to figure out some puzzle. Her eyes had changed. The wetness was gone. There was no tender recollection there, no earnest longing. They were as hard as stone.
‘I can’t work this one out,’ she said, and it took Cole a second to realize her words had been directed at someone behind him. He spun around to find a large man dressed in commoner’s garb looming over him, preparing to grab his arms. He was about to go for the dagger concealed in his sleeve when he felt a prick on the back of his neck and suddenly his body refused to listen to his brain. He was completely paralysed. Even his chest protested at drawing breath.
Cole listened to the sound of air whistling through his nose as the woman moved to stand in front of him. She held a hairpin in one hand, its pointed tip glistening red. With her other hand she removed a stud from her right ear, which had been hidden underneath her hair. Both adornments glowed softly.
‘Magic!’ he tried to exclaim, but nothing issued from his frozen mouth save for an unintelligible moan.
‘What shall we do with him, Goodlady Cyreena?’ the burly male asked.
The woman stared at Cole as she might an insect that had performed an interesting trick. ‘My earring could not read his thoughts,’ she said. ‘This has never happened before. Carry him to the safehouse on Kraken Street. I would experiment.’
Davarus Cole struggled with all his strength, but the best he could manage was to close his eyes. The day had suddenly taken a turn for the worse.
‘Look at me. Look at me or I’ll tear your prick off and feed it to you.’
Cole opened one eyelid a fraction. His whole body ached from being thrown across the shoulder of the disguised goon and carried like a sack of potatoes. He appeared to be lying on a stone table in an abandoned warehouse. A small torch provided the only illumination.
The woman who had instigated his kidnapping, Goodlady Cyreena, hovered next to a table covered in evil-looking metal instruments. Her face was as passionless as death. She regarded him with those pitiless eyes. There was something vaguely familiar about them, he thought, but he couldn’t quite work out what it was.
‘Can you feel the sensation creeping back into your muscles?’ the goodlady asked. ‘It will be hours before you can so much as walk unaided. Don’t think about escaping.’
Cole tried to work his mouth and found that his tongue had loosened enough to form mangled words. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked. ‘I’m innocent!’
Goodlady Cyreena pushed her hair back from her face, revealing the silver stud gleaming softly in her ear. ‘Words weren’t necessary,’ she said. ‘I could tell by the way you reacted to my mummer’s show that you harbour treacherous appetites. Usually, my bondmagic’ — she tapped the glowing metal at her ear — ‘confirms the intentions of those I suspect of treason.’ She walked over to him and placed one smooth hand on his brow. ‘You, however, refused to yield anything. No thoughts at all. That should not be possible. You are going to explain to me why I cannot read your mind.’ She looked down at him expectantly.
‘I don’t know,’ slurred Cole. ‘I was drinking last night. Maybe-’
The woman looming over him grabbed a handful of his hair and slammed his head down onto the table.
‘You will tell me how you are immune to thought-mining,’ the Augmentor said calmly, ‘or I will cut open your skull.’ She crossed back over to the table and picked up a wicked-looking scalpel. ‘I can send part of your brain for analysis,’ she said. ‘You would not survive the process. Alternatively, you can save us both some unpleasantness and tell me the truth.’
Cole felt dazed and nauseous and his mouth was suddenly as dry as a desert. He hacked up phlegm from the back of his throat to moisten his mouth. ‘I took a soporific,’ he managed. ‘A friend gave it to me.’
Goodlady Cyreena said nothing for a time. Finally, she nodded. ‘I will require a urine sample.’
‘Yes,’ Cole hastily replied. ‘I’ll need help with…’ His voice trailed off as the woman reached down to the table and picked up a huge needle connected to a tube, which in turn was affixed to the bladder of an animal. She walked over to him and began to untie his breeches, tugging them down over his boots and ankles. For the second time in two days, Davarus Cole’s flaccid manhood was subjected to a humiliating inspection.
The Augmentor’s lips pursed. ‘Do you find me attractive?’ she asked. Her face betrayed no emotion. She simply waited for his response.
Only the spot right between your eyes, Cole thought. He wished he had Magebane to hand. Not that it would have done much good, since he couldn’t even move his hand. ‘Yes, very much so,’ he said. He licked his lips nervously.
Her face melted into a smile. His own lips twitched upwards in response. She might be an Augmentor and quite possibly a sadist, but when it came right down to it a woman was a woman and he was Davarus-
‘Argh!’ he bellowed as her balled fist smashed him right between the legs. An explosion of pain surged upwards through his entire body. He could hardly breathe for the agony. She hit him again, even harder, and bright lights danced in front of his eyes. He wanted to curl up and die, but his body simply wouldn’t respond. He was helpless.
The goodlady raised the unfeasibly long needle she held and positioned it just above his groin. Sudden horror filled him. ‘Wait!’ he gasped. ‘You don’t need to do that! I can-’
White piercing agony reduced his words to a whine as the Augmentor pushed the needle through his skin and deep into his bladder. Tears streamed down his cheeks and he prayed desperately for Garrett and the Shards to storm in and rescue him. Whenever he had been in trouble in the past, the fat old merchant had always been there to bail him out.
‘Does it hurt?’ Goodlady Cyreena asked in a mocking tone. She had a faint smile on her face as she steadily leached the piss from his body and listened to his shrill screams. ‘Consider yourself fortunate. You won’t die on this table. Lord Salazar has a need for healthy young men.’
Her final words seem to drift towards him, as if floating from some great distance. ‘Tonight you set sail for the Swell…’
Hearts of Iron
Barandas adjusted his sword one last time and surveyed the street before him. The Hook had emptied almost immediately once he and the other Augmentors arrived on the northern edge of the plaza. A horse and cart trundled away towards the east gate, heading towards one of the farms or villages dotting the fertile stretch of land beyond Dorminia. With the city under lockdown, however, the cart’s owner would not be going anywhere fast. Further down the Tyrant’s Road, small crowds stared up at them, fear and curiosity warring on the faces of young and old alike.
All in all it was a pleasant morning. The storm had broken during the night, leaving the streets smelling of damp. There was something else in the air too — something aside from the sour, slightly rotten stench that was always present when one passed the gates of the Noble Quarter. It was the smell of death.
He looked up. The gibbets in the centre of the square hung sullenly, their occupants in varying stages of desperation, madness or decay. One of the cages was empty: Admiral Kramer had been released by the Watch earlier that morning, a development with which Barandas was quietly pleased. He’d always respected the erstwhile admiral of Dorminia’s navy, who was loyal and forthright if somewhat uptight. Kramer would need all of his experience to handle a crew comprised mainly of convicted criminals, especially out on the Swell. The corpse of the god Malantis corrupted the waters of that dreaded stretch of the Broken Sea. Mining the region for magic was so fraught with peril that it had never been seriously attempted in the past. Still, desperate times called for desperate measures. Barandas supposed anything was better than dying in a gibbet.
He turned to the three men he had chosen to accompany him on this bloody assignment. In truth, there wasn’t a great deal of choice in the matter. Most of his Augmentors were still recovering from the siphoning. Goodlady Cyreena was a notable exception, but her skills did not lend themselves to the nature of the black work the four of them were about to undertake. He cleared his throat.
‘You know why we’re here. One of the most powerful merchants in the city has been secretly funding a terrorist group for the last decade or more. It is time they faced justice.’
He stared at the dilapidated old temple across the way. Whoever this rebel leader was, he had succeeded in evading discovery for longer than most. He had to admire the cunning of the man, to have chosen a base so conspicuous and yet so widely shunned that few ever gave it a second thought.
‘Our informant told us to expect a dozen rebels.’ Barandas paused for a moment. It was unpleasant, but it couldn’t be helped. ‘We are to execute them all. Including the girl.’
‘There’s a girl? Huh. First we get to kill. Then I get to fuck.’
Although they were standing in the morning sun, the looming presence of Garmond the Black seemed to sap the very colour from the world. Fully seven feet tall and as wide as two normal men, the huge Augmentor wore a suit of enchanted plate armour that devoured nearby light. As a result, he resembled a gigantic shadow. The horned helmet that enclosed his entire head only added to his nightmarish appearance.
Garmond carried no weapon — his reinforced iron gauntlets and terrifying strength were enough to shatter a man’s spine or collapse a skull with a single punch. Behind his enchanted armour the huge Augmentor was near invincible.
Legwynd, on the other hand, wore very little protection save for a leather vest. His belt bristled with daggers of all shapes and sizes, and his boots glowed with the faint blue that signified magic. ‘I’m ready,’ he said. As if to prove it, his legs suddenly began vibrating in a blur too fast for the eyes to follow.
‘Enough,’ ordered Barandas. ‘You’re going to draw attention to us.’
‘So?’ demanded Thurbal. He was a burly middle-aged man with close-cropped grey hair and chainmail. His sword hand fell to the pommel of the terrible weapon at his belt. ‘We’re Augmentors. It does these peasants good to fear us.’
‘I said enough.’ Barandas dropped a hand to his own weapon.
Thurbal might be a bastard and a killer and a murderer rivalled only by Garmond the Black, but he knew better than to challenge the Supreme Augmentor. ‘As you say, Commandant,’ he conceded.
Barandas relaxed and drew a deep breath. ‘There’s our target,’ he said, nodding at the ruined temple of the Mother. ‘Ready yourselves. They won’t be expecting us, but if any manage to get away… Legwynd, you know what to do.’
The wiry Augmentor flashed an almost beatific smile and licked his lips. Barandas shook his head and sighed.
Time to get this over with.
There was no response to their careful knocking at the door, so Garmond put his shoulder to it and literally tore it from its hinges. The massive warrior stumbled up into the sanctum of the old temple, holding the door out before him as a shield. Crossbow quarrels thudded into the wood and bounced off his armour, but not one of them managed to find flesh. With a roar, Garmond hurled the door across the room into a small group of the rebels, sending them scattering in all directions.
One of the men, calmer than the rest, took aim, his weapon locked on Barandas’s head. There was a blur, and suddenly the man was staring down in confusion at the dagger buried in his neck. His crossbow bounced off the floor and he sank to his knees, blood welling up around his fingers as he clutched at his throat. Legwynd grinned and drew another dagger.
Two men ran towards Barandas, both clutching swords. The Supreme Augmentor parried one and then reversed his grip, thrusting behind him to skewer the third man who had tried to sneak up on him.
Thurbal sidled into view, his jagged scimitar raised in a defensive posture. The rebel who had swung at Barandas launched a diagonal downward swipe at the grey Augmentor, who casually raised his glowing weapon to parry. There was a screeching sound, and suddenly the rebel was missing the top half of his sword.
Thurbal took advantage of his opponent’s confusion to launch a swing at his neck. The blow was almost desultory, lacking any real power, yet the scimitar sheared through flesh and vertebrae as easily as it had steel. The head lolled horribly for a second before tumbling to the ground. The body toppled down next to it and proceeded to pump blood all over the ruined floor of the temple.
Legwynd had closed the distance with the crossbowman lurking in the nave, and now they fought hand to hand, dagger against dagger. Almost too late, Barandas noticed another man targeting him from behind a pillar. The crossbow clicked. Time stood still.
The bolt bounced off his longsword and ricocheted harmlessly off a wall.
The Supreme Augmentor had devoted countless hours to studying every text on the art of combat that could be found in the city. He had regularly spent entire nights practising his swordsmanship, performing routines of such tedium and precision they would drive most men mad. It had cost him much, but Barandas had not achieved his current position by luck. He stalked towards his attacker. The crossbow clicked, and again his sword was there, deflecting the quarrel. He leaped forwards and came up in a roll just before the pillar. The rebel discarded his crossbow and went for the mace at his belt, but he fumbled it. Barandas waited for him to pick the weapon up off the floor. It would make no difference to the outcome.
A quick exchange of blows and the rebel was sagging back against the pillar, his punctured heart leaking blood down his chest to pool around his lifeless legs. The sight gave Barandas pause.
Battle cries split the air, and two large men burst into view. One wielded a hatchet, the other a wooden club spiked with iron rivets. Garmond, gore dripping from his bloodied gauntlets, immediately focused his attention on them. ‘Mine!’ he growled. The two rebels circled him warily.
The brother with the club — they were twins, Barandas realiz
ed — swung at Garmond, a powerful blow that would have flattened a lesser man. Garmond the Black raised an arm and deflected it with his vambrace. At the same time, the other brother yanked a loaded crossbow from where it had been hidden underneath his cloak and fired it. The bolt flew true, hitting the steel gorget around the Augmentor’s neck. It should have snapped it, damaged Garmond’s windpipe at the very least, but the enchanted metal held and the quarrel bounced away.
With incredible speed for a man of his size, Garmond launched himself forwards and unleashed a right-handed hook at his would-be killer, who had dropped the crossbow. The man twisted to avoid the full impact, but the gauntleted fist caught him a glancing blow and sent him flying to the ground.
Suddenly Garmond stumbled and went down to one knee. The other brother was attempting to tackle him from behind. The rebel was himself large by any normal measure, but Garmond the Black could not be compared to other men.
The Augmentor reached behind him with one arm, dragging his opponent away from his legs and along the ground towards him. With his other hand, he shoved his fingers into the rebel’s eyes, pushing down with terrible strength. Screams erupted from his unfortunate victim and rivulets of blood welled up beside Garmond’s fingers as they probed ever deeper.
A hatchet suddenly crashed into the back of the Augmentor’s helmet with enough force to jolt his head viciously forwards. Barandas thought Garmond might be in serious trouble, but the giant stumbled to his feet in time to catch the follow-up blow in his open gauntlets. Blood dripped from his hands where the hatchet had made its mark.
Garmond didn’t seem to care. Snarling from behind his horned helm, he tore the hatchet from the rebel’s grip and sent it hurtling across the temple. The twin reached desperately at his belt for another weapon, but he was out of time. Garmond was upon him, his mighty fists shattering the man’s cheekbones, then his jaw, and finally opening his skull with a sickening crack.
