Grudgebearer

by J. F. Lewis

  That’s silly, Vander thought at Kholster. You’d never leave the Dwarves undefended.

  And for that matter, Kholster answered cheerfully, I’d been planning to go by boat.

  “You’ve never met one, brother,” Rivvek began. “Believe me—”

  “Enough!” Dolvek growled. He reached out and placed a palm on Bloodmane’s breastplate.

  Must I kill him now? the armor’s voice echoed in Kholster’s mind. Lest you be Foresworn?

  Hold, Kholster answered. Technically he hasn’t actually moved you. Maybe Wylant can still—

  “This is simply armor. Magic? No.” He drew back and rapped the breastplate with his knuckles hard enough for the contact to echo hollowly within. “It’s empty metal. That’s all it is. Kholster is not watching us, like some nosy Long Speaker in a Hulsite school. The Aern,” he rapped the armor again, “have no,” he rapped it harder, “magic!” And with that final word he shoved the warsuit with increasing strength.

  Ought I let him—?

  Yes, Kholster thought back. Let him think he pushed you over.

  Bloodmane clattered to the stone floor, half on and half off the royal purple carpeting Dolvek had only recently had laid out in the room.

  Kholster felt all five thousand of the Armored waiting for him to react, could sense their minds reaching out for his. He imagined them asking, Do we kill them now? Do we march?

  Get back up, Kholster told Bloodmane. But do not yet attack.

  The armor stood.

  Go back to where you were when he knocked you down, as if you are simply resuming your position.

  Of course, Kholster.

  Rivvek shook his head, but Wylant turned on her heel and left. “You are all dead,” she said without looking back. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to arrange for patrols to find the Zaur before my planned departure.”

  “What Zaur?” Rivvek asked numbly.

  “My allergies are acting up, and that means there are Zaur on Eldrennai land . . . somewhere. My . . . gift . . . from the god of war.”

  “What do you mean ‘you are all dead’?” Dolvek asked. “Assuming that was anything more than a basic maintenance charm, the armor simply resuming its position. . . . If the Aern set out to kill all Eldrennai, they would surely include you!”

  “No,” Wylant answered, “for I wear Kholster’s scars on my back. I fought him and beat him at the Sundering, just as I vowed I would. To him, that makes me Aiannai, an Oathkeeper. His vengeance comes only for the Eldrennai, the Oathbreakers.”

  The pattern on the back of Wylant’s black doublet was worked in light-colored leather, almost white. Two symmetrical right-angled wedges, a finger’s length each, angled inward near her shoulder blades. Between them, a thumb-width line ran along her spine, stopping two fingers short of the fist-sized leather diamond appliquéd over the small of her back with two parallel lines thickly embroidered along each of its four sides.

  Must we attack them? Bloodmane asked.

  No. Not yet. The oath I swore did not specify the time of their death. I must think first. How far back have they gone searching through the warsuits?

  They stopped when they found the ten they wanted, Bloodmane answered.

  Good, Kholster thought for a moment. Have Hunter, Eye Spike, Wind Song, and Scout each take a unit of thirty out through the old sewer access without being seen. Even if they have to tunnel their way out, I want them to range out to Fort Sunder and see if it has been left abandoned as we instructed.

  And then?

  Let’s just start with that. I have also sworn that I or my representative would attend the next Grand Conjunction. I must do so, but after that . . . Kholster let his words stop. When he opened his eyes, he saw the laundry room, just as he’d left it, but he couldn’t get the thought of Wylant wearing his scars on her doublet out of his head. He wondered if she would manage to beat him a second time. She would, of course, aid the Eldrennai, but after that . . . after they were all dead . . . when only the Aiannai remained . . .

  He sighed. Either way, he looked forward to their meeting. Six hundred years was a long time between . . . meetings.

  CHAPTER 5

  WYLANT’S WISDOM

  Wylant cut an imposing figure as she threw open the doors of the Royal Museum exiting the new Aernese exhibit and walking out into the main hall, where the bones of Ivory, the Great Dragon, dominated the space. Behind her, the twelve-foot banded iron doors slipped silently closed when what she really wanted out of them was a good strong slam. She kept her composure, however. It would have been acceptable for a male in her situation to leave the room cursing and hurling invectives at the top of his lungs, but a female who did the same . . .

  She clamped down that line of thought, labeled it pointless, and filed it away in the recesses of her mind in the area reserved for thoughts she would explore when she didn’t have anything urgent to do. A list she intended to get started on a few candlemarks after her death, hopefully sometime before the Harvester came to collect her soul and take it to the afterworld.

  With a frown, she added talking with the king to the same set of files. Talking with King Grivek would be pointless; Wylant knew that as certainly as she knew the patrols she was about to dispatch to search for the Zaur wouldn’t find them yet. Why Dienox, the god of war, couldn’t have blessed her with a magic map which displayed a giant glowing X over the site of each new incursion by the Zaur, she had no clue . . .

  That was a lie.

  She did know.

  There would have been no sport in that for Dienox.

  At times she felt the god deliberately withheld information from her until the reptilian invaders were sufficiently embedded to make the fight a glorious one. Not that he didn’t have every right, she supposed. After all, it had been over six hundred years since she’d prayed to him. . . . She’d had nothing to say to Dienox since she’d watched her husband—EX-husband, she reminded herself—go into exile.

  The memory of Kholster and the exiles marching away from Port Ammond rose unbidden in her mind’s eye. Her husband’s last words to her still rang in her head like the remnants of a fireball. “My congratulations, General. Dienox chose well, when he chose you. I’m proud of you.”

  “Proud?” she’d stammered.

  “Of course.” He’d grinned that wolfish grin of his and kissed her on the cheek. “You promised to do whatever you could to protect your people. And you did.”

  “But I killed millions,” she had replied, truly grieved. “Millions.”

  “Don’t brag,” he’d said as he turned away from her. “From this day forth, you are Aiannai. An Oathkeeper. Any oaths I have sworn against the Oathbreakers do not apply to you. Fight well, First Wife. If you ever tire of your life with the Oathbreakers, come and find me.” She’d almost run after him.

  Almost.

  Her . . . sword, Vax, stirred in his scabbard and Wylant placed a hand on the pommel to quiet him. She had beaten the Aern, had been the mighty general responsible for the deaths of all those who could be killed. Only the five thousand Armored, the Undying Aern, who could only truly die if they surrendered to death, had survived. Those five thousand Aern would yet have won, destroying her people in their wrath, had not the Vael stopped the fighting, convinced the Armored and the Eldrennai to come to terms. All that blood remained on Wylant’s hands.

  Frown deepening, she stalked down the ornate hallways of the prince’s refurbished Royal Museum, past the workmen carrying furnishings and equipment to and from the secret Aernese exhibit hall and the equally new but well-publicized Vaelsilyn exhibit hall. Suppressing the desire to draw her sword and slash through the banner over the entrance to that exhibit, to let the archaic “silyn” portion of the banner fall to the floor, Wylant steered herself to the heavy blood oak doors of the museum’s main entrance and out onto steps leading down to the Lane of Review.

  Overhead, the moon rose high and a sea hawk flew across it: supposedly a good omen from Dienox. She spat and shook her head
.

  “General?” Jolsit, the captain of the guard, called to her from across the way. He, unlike Wylant, wore crystalline armor befitting an Eldrennai of the crystal order. Wylant noted with a rueful smile that, unlike many, Jolsit at least had the good sense to wear the enchantment over a mail shirt with boiled leather plates providing additional protection at his elbows, chest, and vitals. If a Zaur or an Aern came to blows with him, their magic-impairing abilities wouldn’t leave him unprotected.

  “Yes, Captain?” Wylant responded. She half-turned and waited, right hand on the pommel of her sword.

  “Did the armor of Bloodmane really move?”

  “It did,” she answered curtly. “If you’ll excuse me, Captain.”

  Jolsit responded with the customary fist double-tap against his breastplate in salute. “Of course, sir. But . . . General?”

  She cocked her head to one side, a query she would have once conveyed with a raised eyebrow.

  “I was told you were departing Port Ammond?” his mild tenor voice rose at the finish, making the statement a question.

  “I would guess you intuited rather than being told, as I just made up my mind, but yes, I am.”

  Jolsit flushed. “May I ask where you are headed?”

  “To The Parliament of Ages to see Queen Kari.” Wylant wondered if Jolsit would ask for clarification. When he didn’t, she snorted and told him anyway. “If Kholster is going to attack, he’ll wait until after the Great Conjunction to do it. The Vael saved us six hundred years ago. I have to make sure that their representative has what it takes to do it again. This time, I fear the burden of peace will be carried by the Vael alone.” Because Dolvek is an idiot.

  CHAPTER 6

  OLD SOLDIERS

  Captain Conwrath looked up from his gruel to see five tall Grudgebearers stalking down the mountain road that led into the valley. At the sight of the one in the middle, his blood ran cold. Setting down his wooden bowl, gruel unfinished, the mercenary stood, knees creaking, and made his way to the edge of the lake where he washed his hands and scooped up two handfuls of bracing water to splash on his face.

  Phantom scents of remembered fire, blood, and wheat seemed to fill his nostrils as the leader of the five reached the encampment on the other side of the bridge. The Dwarven-Aernese Collective side. The young female, the leader of the Elevens, and her fellow Elevens flocked around the five adults hugging and whooping. A sixth full-grown Aern came over the rise reverently carrying something Marcus couldn’t make out.

  “Izzat a bucket?” Japesh, Conwrath’s second, asked as he walked over to crouch next to him.

  “Could be.” Conwrath squinted at the other man in the morning light. Japesh had never looked the same since he’d started losing the hair atop his narrow head and trying to compensate for it with what scraggly growth of beard he could manage in uneven patches along his jawline. But Japesh was an old campaigner, so Conwrath had learned to overlook the man’s odd appearance in favor of his sharp eyes. “You tell me.”

  “Izzat an Aernese birthin’ bucket?” Japesh said, sucking at his teeth.

  “Never seen one, but if there’s blood in it, I reckon that may be one.” Conwrath looked away from the straggler back to the Aern he recognized. Fiery-red hair, cut close to the skull like a Castleguard knight’s or Hulsite marine’s. A full beard, cut nearly as close to the skin. That bronze-colored skin. And those ears, long, pointed, and slightly higher up than seemed right for sentient folk . . . more like an animal’s. Conwrath watched the Grudgebearer start across the bridge flanked by the leader of the little ones and marveled. “I swear, I don’t think he’s changed a bit in fourteen years.”

  “New boots,” Japesh muttered. “New pants. Same mail. Same bloody warpick.”

  “Same smile.” Conwrath frowned.

  Kholster wore rough black denim leggings (steam-loomed, if Conwrath had to guess) secured with a corded chain belt from which two medium-sized leather pouches hung. Aernese saddle-bags, he and his men called them. Kholster’s hobnail boots thudded down like hammers on the bridge planks betraying the unexpected additional weight of all Aern.

  “Metal bones,” Conwrath whispered to himself. A shirt of bone-steel chain with sleeves that came to ragged edges at mid-bicep caught the light less than it should have. Conwrath winced at the sight of skin visible through the fine-wrought links of chain—the Aern wore no gambeson.

  “Lieutenant Conwrath,” Kholster called amicably, as if his Elevens hadn’t killed and eaten seven full-grown men with whom Conwrath had been traveling the previous day.

  Conwrath raised a hand by way of greeting and went to meet the Aern, Japesh quietly shadowing him. “Ho, Grudger,” he said as they closed the distance and clasped forearms.

  Kholster nodded at the man’s notched earlobe. “Captain now, I see.”

  “Rae’en,” Kholster glanced at his daughter. “Captain Conwrath fought a group of Elevens a few years before you were born.”

  “Did he surrender then, too?” Rae’en beamed. Conwrath saw a world of youthful arrogance in that smile. He’d seen the same grin on his adopted son Randall’s face when he’d left to set out on this Khalvadian contract.

  “No,” Kholster answered. “He and his men killed them, then brought their bone metal back to me in an ox cart.”

  “Then why . . .” Rae’en balked.

  “Why didn’t I kill your lot?” Conwrath asked. He eyed the warpick peeking out at him from where it was slung over Kholster’s shoulder. The head of the warpick was cruel, narrow, and hooked like a beak at one end, rounded with a flat edge at the other, exactly as Conwrath remembered it . . . except this time, the blood oak leaf engraving work on the head wasn’t stained red and brown with blood.

  Such a handsome thing when the blasted Grudger isn’t trying to kill me with it, Conwrath thought. Aernese warpicks served two purposes, one, the most obvious, as implements of death . . . the other, as works of art, signs of discipline and craftsmanship. This close to Kholster’s weapon, the scar concealed beneath Conwrath’s tunic, a scar which ran in a crooked line across his chest, itched like mad.

  Grudge.

  Conwrath caught himself on the verge of whispering the weapon’s name and frowned. It was heavier than it looked, heavier than most warpicks, and made to be wielded two-handed, the haft slightly more than four hands long with a grip Kholster’d wrapped in leather the color of old bone. Conwrath knew all that without ever having held the weapon. He knew it like he knew his own hammer toes or the ache in his back when the nights grew cold. He’d seen it in action when Kholster had come to collect the bodies of the dead Elevens only to find that one of Conwrath’s men had tried to withhold a femur.

  He’d felt the spirit of the thing, heard it cry like a bird of prey, and had come close to wetting himself when he felt it deliberately decide not to kill him. The warpick had struck but a glancing blow, when it could have struck true and deep, gifting him with a scratch instead of a death wound.

  Sometimes, Conwrath hated the little spark of long sight he’d inherited from his mother’s side, but not that time, because that once it had let him learn the most important lesson of his life: if the Grudgebearers said they weren’t angry about something—they weren’t. If they offered to call a halt to hostilities, they meant it. Others could claim to let their word be their bond, but the Grudgers lived it or they stopped being Grudgebearers. He’d seen deep into the spirit of the being who’d forged that pick and Conwrath had seen true. Kholster didn’t want to kill anyone, but he was willing to kill everyone. Every living thing. If he had to.

  From that day on, Conwrath had made it his business to make sure he stayed off the Grudgers’ Needs Killing list. He looked across the lake and took a deep breath as one of the adult Aern oversaw the cleaning of the bones before they were stacked and tied for their return to the families of the departed.

  “I’m too old to fight Grudgers.” Conwrath shook his head. “Too fond of breathing and too wise to knowingly sign up al
ongside idiots with a Grudger’s words against them. Besides, when I saw young miss come galloping over yon bridge like the Horned Queen herself was after her, I saw she was trying to spare these men’s lives before they brought your words down on themselves. I knew the lay of the land then.

  “If we’d fought, Japesh and I might have made it through alive, but we’d have been the only ones.” Conwrath nodded at the bucket. “You’re going to talk to the magistrate? Give him the whole show?”

  “Yes,” Kholster said, his mouth set in a grim line. “If the magistrate can’t be made to understand things then—”

  “Then the Khalvadians will need a new magistrate.” Rae’en beamed.

  “I suppose they might,” Conwrath agreed. “But let’s hope he sees reason, eh? I only took this job because he’s my wife’s cousin.”

  *

  Ten days later, Conwrath sat astride his horse, taking a long pull of water from his canteen. Battered and beaten, the thing looked like something to be cast aside, but the Dwarven runes on the side made it worth ten times its weight in gold. The Dwarf who’d given it to him had tried to explain how it worked . . . something about magic drawing bits of water out of the air so small you couldn’t see them. All Conwrath knew was, even in the driest of weather, it usually filled up at least three times a day.

  In the oppressive heat of a Khalvadian summer, Conwrath caught himself silently thanking the Dwarf again. Japesh rode over and Conwrath held out the canteen. Japesh took a grateful swig and handed it back.

  “Are we not supposed to notice the Grudgers back behind us?” Japesh asked, looking back toward the hill country.

  “I wouldn’t have spotted them.” Conwrath looked back and saw a cattle range, hills, and their big brothers—the New Forge mountains—wreathed in clouds off in the distance. “How many?”