by GJ Kelly
“Aye, the canal is exposed, and so would we be if we’d stayed on the path. We must be close to the lock gates and the dock now. Reesen?”
The elf, squatting on his haunches, looked up, stepped out a little, and peered south. Then he shook his head, more in apology than as a sign he’d seen nothing.
“Peepers sleepy,” and Reesen blinked, and shrugged. “Eem siennes, miThal. Sorry.”
“Mitak, mifrith,” Gawain announced quietly but sincerely. He’d didn’t know how much of strain continually calling upon the Sight must be for the elf, but he did know that it had been a long day, and a longer night before it.
“That’s it. We’ll rest here. I won’t risk advancing into a force of unknown strength in the dark. Stay alert and ready to move in haste. No lamps, no sound unless it’s absolutely necessary. I don’t want noises travelling the canal and alerting the enemy to our presence.”
And thus they made themselves as comfortable as they could, keeping backpacks strapped in place, weapons close to hand, leaning back against trees and eating frak in the comparative brightness of a clear and starlit night.
Further into the forest, fog still clung low above the ground like a heaving blanket, stirring in the breezes that swirled through the trees. But the canal and the tree-less avenues either side of it remained crystal clear, the northerly gusts sweeping away any mist that might otherwise form before it had a chance to gather.
On a sudden whim, Gawain wiped his boot knife on the soft leather of his over-trousers, and with it flipped over a clod of dirt, exposing a shocked and wriggling worm. Allazar noted the deed, and his eyebrows raised while he too, and then the rest of the silent group, did likewise. Here, north of Calhaneth and on the banks of the canal, life yet dwelled in the soil.
It was while Gawain was leaning back against the tree, chewing frak and pondering the significance, if any, of the worm, that a brief flash, briefer than the blink of an eye, drew his attention, facing south as he was. There was nothing, of course, when he looked, and he was about to dismiss the spark as a shooting-star or tiredness of the eyes when a distant but distinct concussion jolted them all upright.
“A maroon!” Gawain gasped, and they leapt to their feet, facing towards the unseen city.
A ball of light, made tiny by the distance, floated up in the air, perhaps a little over a mile away, it was difficult to judge. Then another, and another, three distinct points of light hanging above the horizon in the darkness, bright against the backdrop of winking stars and falling slowly.
Two more lights flew silently upwards, and then they moved, slowly, westward, and were hidden from view beyond the trees at the canal’s edge.
A scream, then, and a clash of steel, faint and broken by the breezes wafting south along the channel cut through the forest, as more lights floated skyward in the distance to replace the three that were hovering and winking out. And then the distant whump-whump! of double concussions rolled along the canal, then two more, and another two, and then a gust of wind blew the sound back towards the south and away from the five companions rooted to the spot, watching the spectacle before them in utter astonishment.
Another light rose into the southern sky, much larger than those which had preceded it, hovering low, and a short time later they heard another double-concussion, and then a ripping roar like distant lightning, the sound drifting along the canal though no flash had preceded it. Suddenly, the light winked out, as though it were a distant candle, snuffed. There were more sounds, screams and the clash of steel, and then came two metallic booms like immense bells being rung.
“Barges,” Gawain whispered, knowing instantly what the sounds were. “Barges in the pond colliding. There is a battle being fought at the docking pool.”
More of the deep booming, and more ringing of steel striking steel. But no more lights came. And finally, silence like a fog settled once more upon the Canal of Thal-Marrahan.
“We must remain alert. Survivors may flee this way.”
“What’s this pool like, melord?”
“Large, and shallow. A rectangle, a hundred yards one side by a hundred and fifty on the other, like an immense stone bath. A dozen or more large metal barges are moored in the middle of it. That’s the booming noise we heard, the barges colliding with each other.”
“And they fought a battle there? At night? Daft buggers.”
“The defending force likely thought it a good place to hold, no possibility of a sneak attack, surrounded by water on all sides.”
“I wonder which side won,” Allazar whispered, clutching the staff tightly, eyes wide in the gloom.
“We’ll find out in the morning.”
“With any luck, my lord,” Jerryn ported his crossbow, “They’ll have done our work for us.”
“Alas, I don’t think we could be that lucky. We’ll stay close together, there, by that tree. Reesen, you and Ognorm sleep first. Allazar, you can snooze, Jerryn and I will take first watch. This will be a long night.”
oOo
36. …And Shadow
Mist clung low in the forest, hampering their progress a little, but Gawain dared not risk advancing along the clear ground adjacent the canal, nor could he expose his group by using the tow-path itself. Breezes swept the canal and its avenue through the trees clear of the chill, damp fog, but those breezes had little effect deeper in the forest, and the night had remained clear.
The night had also, for the most part, remained silent. Several screams had reached their ears from far to the south, survivors of the battle in pain perhaps, or a brief continuance of the fighting, they did not know. Sleep was fitful, though Reesen was spared a watch; they would need his Sight next day, and were happy to let the elf sleep through until dawn.
Now, a mile or more south from the spot where they’d rested, Reesen was padding silently in the van once more, mist swirling around his knees and clinging to his cloak as he moved cautiously through the trees. The eerie silence which had hung over Calhaneth and its surrounds since their arrival was oppressive, and suddenly broken by the booming of a barge from slightly south of east.
Reesen immediately squatted on his haunches, bow presented in the direction of the sound, eyes scanning, head swivelling. He moved a little, taking half a step as though peering around a tree, and then he gave a hand-signal. Five. He had seen five of something, to the east.
Another metallic boom, this time accompanied by the squealing protest of metal against stone.
Gawain signalled a change in course, directly towards the sound, and tightened the string on the arrow held at the ready in his gloved right hand. Slowly at first, and then moving in spurts from tree to tree, they moved towards the southern terminus of the canal. Trees thinned, weeds and ferns began to proliferate, and then Reesen signalled an urgent halt.
Breaths held, they waited, and watched as the elf Ranger edged more to the south, crouching low, bow presented and the fingers of his right hand resting lightly on the string ready to draw and shoot. Then he signalled them forward, and they breathed again.
Finally, after another five hundred yards of stalking, Reesen eased himself down beside a mound of brambles billowing up from the mist-shrouded ground, and signalled them forward.
To their credit, no-one made a sound when they gazed through the undergrowth at the vast stone expanse of the docks, and the barge scraping against the blue-stone poolside. Five men, dressed in hard-wearing Gorian farm clothing, stood beside a sixth, lying on the dockside, and beside them on the ground, a small, dull metal casket bound tightly shut with leather straps. They were big men, too, and well-armed with sword, crossbows, and two with powerful shortbows.
In the water, bodies floated, and more were scattered about the dockside. Alarmingly, one of the corpses, perhaps a hundred yards further south near the corner of the dock, seemed more of a silhouette than a body, until they realised it was a mould-corpse, green and black, and rotting. Here and there, the broad expanse of blue-stone, mottled by lichen, was scorched bla
ck, and further to the south, soil was torn up and saplings shattered.
“Reesen, any more?”
“Nai, miThal. Six lights. One… go.”
“Crossbows aren’t cocked, my lord,” Jerryn whispered, though Gawain had already noted the disposition of the enemy’s weapons.
“One of them looks ill, and has lost his right arm, recently too, by the looks,” Allazar announced softly.
“We outnumber them, my lord.”
“Wait. Dump the packs, quietly. Be ready to move.”
Gawain shifted his weight, eyeing the Gorians. One by one, they squatted by the recumbent form of their dying comrade, and rested a comforting hand upon the fellow’s shoulder before standing and moving slightly away. Finally, the fifth man knelt, rested his left hand lightly over his fallen comrade’s eyes, while drawing a broad-bladed knife from a sheath in the small of his back. With a single quick thrust of the blade to the heart, the dying man’s misery, and his life, was ended.
It was an act of mercy which surprised them all, an honourable deed from an enemy they least expected to show such compassion. The sight of it, and the evident sorrow of the survivors, moved Gawain, but it was the mould-corpse further to the south that made his decision for him, sudden aquamire insight providing understanding. The dying man had been spared more than pain.
“We’ll rush them, and give them the chance to surrender themselves and the Orb.”
“Longsword!” Allazar gasped urgently, “The Orb is all that matters, it must be destroyed!”
“It shall be. If they refuse to surrender it and themselves, then they die. Not before. We’re not brigands. Understood?”
Heads nodded, and Allazar hurriedly translated for Reesen.
“On my signal.”
Gawain reached back over his shoulder with his left hand, loosening the longsword. Satisfied, he tightened again the string on his arrow, drew a breath, and gave a single sharp nod.
As one, they burst from the brambles, charging forward, taking the Gorian contingent utterly by surprise.
“Stand still! Stand still! Don’t move!” Gawain screamed.
“Drop your arms! Drop your weapons!” Jerryn cried.
“Stand still! Stand still!”
The Gorians, stunned for a moment, dropped to their knees, hands a blur, dragging back strings on crossbows, drawing bolts and arrows from quivers.
“Don’t move!” Gawain screamed again as they sprinted, closing the distance to about twenty yards. “Yield! Yield or die!”
But he saw the hardness in their eyes, saw the utterly professional calm with which their hands moved, weapons being readied swiftly and efficiently. It took long years of practice to respond to a threat in such a manner. These men were most certainly not slave labourers, nor mercenary guardsmen.
“Stent thool! Nai murthen!” Reesen commanded, drawing his bow, aiming at one of the shortbowmen who was even now nocking an arrow.
Allazar ended it all, holding forth the Dymendin, screaming in the language of wizards, loosing an immense tree of lightning over the Gorians’ heads, blinding them, shocking them, robbing them briefly of their senses.
When their vision and their breath returned, the Gorians found themselves gazing up at weapons held unwavering in their faces, and at the piercing steel-grey eyes of a young man who clearly held their lives now in his hands.
“I am Gawain, King of Raheen,” he announced, his voice hard as glass. “You have something Eastland-made and foul, which must be destroyed. Surrender it, and keep your lives. My word on it.”
“Why should we take the word of a threken Eastlander boy?” the one-armed Gorian demanded, shortsword still held clumsily in his left hand.
“Enough, Farayan!”
It was the Gorian who had administered the coup de grâce to his fallen comrade who spoke, and with the unmistakeable edge of command in his voice. “You’ve lost your arm already. No need to lose your head. Lay down your weapons. We can’t hope to prevail against a wizard such as theirs.”
“Keep your weapons,” Gawain announced, utterly astounding everyone on the dockside. “Though bolts and arrows are to be removed, blades sheathed, and strings released.”
With a nod from their astonished leader, the Gorians complied.
“Stand,” Gawain ordered, replacing his arrow in his quiver. Then, staring at the Gorian leader, demanded, “I would know your names. You are neither who nor what you appear to be.”
The five men stood, and Gawain’s companions relaxed. A little.
“I am Berek, Imperator Praetor of the first Zanatheum Cohort.”
“You are Imperial Praetorians?” Allazar gasped.
“We are,” Berek asserted, fiercely. “Who are you?”
“My name you already know,” Gawain announced. “The wizard you address is Allazar, White Staff and First of Raheen. Have a care, Imperator Berek, do not take offence where none was intended. He could as easily have fried you in your boots, as others have discovered to their cost. You can hardly blame him for suspecting deception, dressed as you are in the garb of slaves, or those who claim to be of the Pellarn Resistance.”
For a moment, the Gorian held Gawain’s gaze, braced as if to attack, and then the tension seemed to drain from the man’s powerful frame.
“We are the Pellarn Resistance. Or at least a part of it.”
Gawain eyed them, trying to keep doubt and shock from his expression. And then Berek slowly reached up, releasing the toggles of his crude leather jerkin one by one, then held it open to reveal the ornate inlaid armour and chainmail beneath.
“You say you are king of the table-topped mountain that lies to the southeast of imperial lands?”
“I am.”
Berek nodded. “That land is known even in the Empire. You say also that you mean to destroy this thing?”
“We do.”
“Then do so, and we shall part company in peace, while the sun shines.”
“Alas, there is no safe way to destroy the Orb here. We plan to take it far out to sea, and commit it to the deep, for all time.”
“Then we have a problem, Raheen.”
“Indeed?”
“Indeed. Unless your wizard of the White Staff can make this thing fly. The darkweasel we killed last night couldn’t manage it, and you’ll see him floating in the lake behind us.”
“You mean to deny us, then?”
Berek folded his arms and shrugged, flexing his impressive muscles as he did so, the threat obvious.
“My orders were to prevent the device from falling into the hands of the enemy, and to take it to the City of Gold for destruction by the wizards there. I’m not about to stand by and watch while Eastlander strangers carry it off, and report to my Emperor that the threat to his lands still exists.”
“Not that any of us will live to see our homes again,” one of the Praetorians mumbled, peeling open his jerkin to reveal his uniform.
“There are others here, like those you killed last night?” Gawain asked, eyes fixed on Berek’s, tension slowly rising again.
Farayan snorted, and held up the stump of his right arm. “Only one thing dwells in this threken city of the dead, and it ain’t anything like the darkweasel and his mercenary scum.”
Berek’s eyes narrowed. “You know nothing of the shadow-creature, do you?”
“I know only that the Orb must be destroyed, or so far removed from the kindred races that none may again unleash destruction upon the innocent as was done here a thousand years ago. We shall not be denied, Imperator Praetor. This weapon cannot be allowed to fall into Morloch’s hands, nor the hands of our enemies.”
“We can’t let ‘em take it, Imperator! Oaths we took, before the Emperor himself!”
“Peace, Loryan,” Berek chided the one who’d spoken. “This has been an honourable pause thus far, don’t provoke action where none is yet required.”
“You spoke of a shadow-creature,” Allazar shifted his staff to his left hand, and leaned on it. “What did
you mean?”
Berek eyed his opponents, each in turn, and finding no hint of deception in their fixed and stern expressions, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.
“It’s what we named it. It’s what it is, a shadow of a thing, shapeless, formless. Its touch is death to those living.” And with a jerk of his head, he indicated the mould-corpse lying on the blue-stone of the dockside towards the south-western corner of pool. “That mercenary scum took a bolt in the spine last night. He survived, until the shadow-creature took him in the dark, and left him thus.”
“Took my threken arm, too, or most of it,” Farayan complained, sweat beading his brow, his skin pale in the weak morning sunshine. “Passed near us, tracking the device. I took a swing at it, with my sword. It killed the hand holding the sword instantly. Lost all feeling in it, lost all life in it. Mould began to form, creeping up past the wrist towards the elbow. Imperator Berek took the rest to spare my life.”
“It’s the thing in the box it wants,” Berek asserted. “It knows where the box is, and wants it. In the day, it lurks somewhere. Below ground, maybe. At night, in the dark, it seeks the box. It was the shadow-creature forced the darkweasel and his scum to abandon their run for Pellarn. In the clear, beyond the forest, in the light, the shadow-creature likely won’t survive. So it drove them back towards the city of the dead, like a sheepdog herding a flock.”
“Aye, it don’t like the light,” Farayan agreed. “Saw them merc fools waving torches all around, and the darkweasel making his fireballs in the air to drive it away, couple of days ago. They left their wounded to die, the bastards.”
“The shadow-creature is like a moth circling a flame,” Berek agreed. “It’s why the ironmask and his vermin tried to hide, out there, in the middle of the lake. Hoping starlight or moonlight would keep it away while they tried to find a way to escape it. Worked too, as we discovered ourselves last night, after the battle. We stayed out there until dawn. We saw the creature moving in the darkness and the fog in the trees and shrubs. We saw it take that wounded mercenary when a fog-bank rolled in.”
