Old Man's Ghosts

by Tom Lloyd

  ‘The evening’s still young.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Enchei exhaled slowly and stared into Sorpan’s eyes as he considered his answer. ‘You got a point to make?’

  Sorpan swallowed his drink and set the glass down. ‘No point,’ he said at last, ‘but it’s an unusual drink. Few have a taste for it.’

  ‘Probably because it tastes like shit.’

  The man’s bark of laughter echoed around the tavern, but was cut short as the keyed-up Enchei twitched. The humour faded in Sorpan’s face as he recognised what had almost happened.

  ‘Few have a taste for it,’ he continued in a quiet voice, ‘I’m one of the few, as it happens, but I know others who drink it. Men and women with hardier constitutions than any sailor.’

  ‘It does get a man drunk,’ Enchei acknowledged.

  ‘I must confess to being curious as to why a man needs to get drunk on something he dislikes.’ Sorpan pushed the tumblers aside and poured a generous measure of whisky into the remaining glasses, pushing one across the table to Enchei.

  As the man sipped his new drink, a voice appeared in Enchei’s head. But enough of being coy – we’re comrades, are we not?

  Enchei tightened his fingers around his glass, fighting the urge to touch them to a scar on the back of his skull. Once, speaking that way had been as natural to him as breathing, but no longer. He’d cut out his voice just as he’d cut his ties to his past. Most days he didn’t even miss it.

  ‘Comrades? Don’t have those no more. My soldiering days are long gone.’

  Sorpan shrugged. ‘As you wish. If I’m intruding, I’ll leave.’

  ‘Think it best I go first.’

  That brought the man up short. ‘It appears I’ve misinterpreted matters. My apologies.’

  ‘No need for that,’ Enchei said, ‘but I don’t know why you’re here and I’d rather not find out.’

  I’m here alone. I’m not in the city on a mission of any kind.

  ‘That’s nice to hear, but I’m not going to take your word for it.’

  You’re a renegade?

  ‘Name-calling ain’t nice.’

  ‘But no longer one of us. Retired away from the fold or independent?’

  Enchei snorted. ‘A fan of fairy tales, are you?’

  The derision was shrugged away by Sorpan. ‘Still – I somehow doubt this is a holiday from the home valleys.’ He frowned down at the bottles on the table. ‘Or that this is a celebration. I might have a taste for Ivytail myself, but still I’d just planned on taking the edge off the day before moving on to something else.’

  ‘That’s what the whisky’s for,’ Enchei said.

  Sorpan shook his head. ‘The whisky’s because, now I’m here, you want a drink that won’t cloud your mind. Before I got here you were just working your way down a bottle of the hard stuff.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re making a point again,’ Enchi growled.

  This time the other man nodded. ‘I was looking to celebrate the conclusion of some mundane business. A man who’s attacking a bottle of Ivytail when he doesn’t even like it, that’s no celebration.’

  ‘So I’m not celebrating. What of it?’

  ‘Nothing, I suppose, I’m just curious.’

  ‘No one in the game is just curious.’

  ‘But you’re out of the game and still drinking to forget. That’s enough to make any man curious.’

  ‘Mebbe I am, no crime in that. We all got ghosts in our shadows; an old man’s just got more than most.’

  ‘But he’s not a drunk or he’d have a stock at home,’ Sorpan mused and nodded towards the door where a trail of snow was melting on the muddy tiles. ‘Hardly the weather to be outside by choice however, even with a hardy constitution. An anniversary? You must be two decades older than me and you’ve a hard way about you. That means maudlin and drunk isn’t something you’ll do lightly and the worst of what you’ve gone through was probably before my time.’

  ‘You know what they say about curiosity?’ Enchei warned.

  Sorpan nodded. ‘It’s a cliff – safe up to a point and then there’s no way back.’

  ‘Loose stones under your feet now. My mood ain’t the finest tonight and from this side o’ the table there’s a knife-edge between curious and theatrics.’

  ‘You think I’m building to some dramatic reveal before I smugly watch a snatch team come through every window? Was that our style twenty years ago?’

  ‘For some.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Sorpan hesitated, his face suddenly going tense. Enchei almost rammed a knife into it before he realised the man’s expression wasn’t a prelude but a flash of insight.

  ‘That’s the face of a man thinking too hard.’

  ‘Stars of heaven,’ Sorpan whispered, almost not hearing Enchei. ‘Not twenty years ago, thirty.’

  Enchei eased his baton clear under the table.

  ‘You were there, weren’t you? Those are the ghosts you’re drowning?’

  Despite his readiness, Enchei felt a cold sickness in his gut and distant screams echoed through the frosty streets of memory.

  ‘Some ghosts you can’t drown,’ he whispered. ‘I’m here to remember, not forget.’

  Sorpan was quiet a long while. He stared down at his drink for a dozen heartbeats before moving at all, finally taking a long swallow of whisky. Even in his surprise he was careful to move slowly, to not startle Enchei’s hair-trigger reactions.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a hoarse whisper. He topped both glasses up and raised his in salute. ‘To those who didn’t make it.’

  Enchei drank left-handed. ‘To those I left behind,’ he said, finishing the glass with a second mouthful.

  Sorpan shook his head. ‘There’s only rumours, you know that? Every file is sealed, the whole account hidden.’

  ‘And we’re back to curious.’

  ‘Can you blame me? The greatest horror in past centuries? More dead than the Ten Day War itself? No one outside of the Five knows what happened there, except those who survived. Not thirty-year veterans who deal with every nasty secret the Empire has to offer, not the observers who watch the passes into the valley. Avatars of the Gods have patrolled that place for decades and I half-doubt even they know everything.’

  ‘Some things are best forgotten,’ Enchei said heavily. ‘Nothing for your generation to learn there, nothing in that valley to benefit the Empire or any House in it.’

  Sorpan gaped and leaned forward, this time not even noticing the tightness in Enchei’s face as he did so. ‘But three hundred thousand troops died, without counting the villagers who lived there!’

  Enchei grimaced. ‘I don’t need reminding.’

  ‘And you think they should be written out of history too?’

  ‘Just how they died. If I could write that out of my mind so easily, I would’ve long ago. That whole celestial month – from the snow storm sealing the passes to the day I dragged myself out. As it is, I can’t. All I can do is remember the friends I lost, the folk I met and watched die…’

  Enchei lowered his head. The memories washed fresh and sharp over him now. He was aware Sorpan’s moment had come; if the man was there to take him Enchei was at his weakest, his most vulnerable.

  Part of him wanted it to happen. The ache in his heart grew and grew, threatening to burst out of his chest and set the room aflame. His precautions were in place. They’d never get him alive, and for one brief moment the grief and guilt were so strong that a voice inside him begged for Sorpan to spark that final conflagration.

  But it never came. Slowly the consuming horror subsided and Enchei opened his eyes again to see the other man looking aghast. With an effort Enchei pushed himself to his feet, the unnaturally-strong man feeling the full span of years on his shoulders.

  ‘Some things are best forgotten by history. The Fields of the Broken is one of them.’

  CHAPTER 2

  One year later

  Clear, cold light traced the fr
ost-rimed cobbles. The street was still and quiet under the white glare of the Gods. It was deep into the night and the ruling Order of Jester was halfway over the horizon. Lady Spy would be in Ascendancy for another few days. She led Jester’s wheel of divine constellations across the sky so her light had already fallen below the horizon.

  The cloudless sky wore a milky collar of lesser stars upon which the divine constellations shone like diamonds. By contrast the moon was a dim and sullen shape that seemed to skulk close to the horizon. Two men and a woman stood in the deserted street and surveyed the slender constellations of Cripple and Duellist that flanked Lady Jester.

  The mortals were an even less likely trio than cold-hearted Jester, ever-suffering Cripple and proud Duellist. One man was tall and pale-skinned, with neat clothes and a dark beard, a sharp contrast to the woman ahead of him; teeth white against her ochre skin, blonde hair pulled untidily back in a knot. A north-continent man of money, a south-continent woman of more practical means. The woman’s clothes were a patchwork of cloth and metal; battered scraps of steel stitched and riveted onto a long coat marked by scorch marks and roughly-repaired rents.

  ‘This is the place?’ asked the third man, at last turning away from Lady Jester’s light. Enveloped in a heavy silver fur he was also pale, but not of the north this time. Deathly-white skin and grey hair coupled with lilac eyes marked him as a Leviathan, from that House’s islands far to the south-west. ‘This is where we will find the trail?’

  The first man stirred into movement and nodded. With a grey cloak edged in pale fox fur, he resembled a statue in the cold winter light. There was the faint glint of frost on his shoulders and a silver badge gleamed at his throat.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘On this night?’

  ‘You keep questioning me, Leviathan,’ he said sternly. ‘I’m growing tired of it.’

  ‘That is not my concern.’

  ‘Pissing me off should be. You’re not your master.’

  The Leviathan turned to face him. ‘No, Ghost, I am not – but neither are you. You answer to me as you answer to Priest, and I am yet to be impressed.’

  The man from House Ghost regarded him, still barely moving. ‘You don’t believe me?’ he asked with a mixture of amusement and contempt.

  ‘You have shown us nothing, Master Sorpan, nothing but supposition,’ the pale-eyed man said with an equanimous shrug of the shoulder. To Sorpan it seemed an oddly neat and understated gesture from the broad man, but characterised what he knew of the Leviathan. ‘I am here because this may yet be a trap.’

  ‘A trap, Kebrai? You think I was set up by my own? Unlike House Leviathan we’re not composed of paranoid madmen – there are no senseless purges or childish scheming between fiefdoms.’

  Kebrai grinned nastily. ‘No purges you ever noticed, but such things are as inevitable as the turning stars. Where power gathers, paranoia is but a whisper away.’

  Sorpan spat on the ground and nodded towards the side-road they stood near.

  ‘The tavern’s there and this is the night, but he’s a survivor not a fool. The trail begins here, but you’ll not have him tonight.’

  ‘Priest understands patience as well as any alive; just remember your life rides on this. There are too many eyes watching the Imperial City to act here without good reason.’

  ‘If the reason wasn’t good, we wouldn’t be here at all.’

  ‘It is so.’

  They both looked at the woman ahead of them whose eyes had moved from the passing stars to those at their zenith. Sorpan didn’t need to follow her gaze to know which constellation she had fixed upon – the Order of God-Emperor was high above them now and the south position was occupied by Lord Huntsman. Though she dealt with demons and cultivated a savage appearance, she was hardly the crazed shamaness he’d expected and she was particular in her honouring of Huntsman.

  An icy breath of wind shivered over them, bringing with it the muted sound of voices. Even at this late hour the streets of the Imperial City were not deserted and the Leviathan turned to check on his trailing guards. No signal came from the House Smoke mercenaries who’d escorted them here, so Kebrai nodded.

  ‘Sharish, it is time.’

  The shamaness, Sharish, bared her pointed teeth and beckoned to Sorpan. He followed her across the cobbles to stand opposite the side-street’s entrance. From there he could just see the tavern, the slender threads of light around the shutters and the sheen of ice on its tiled roof. It seemed an unremarkable place to find an Astaren hero, grown shabby under the battering sea breeze.

  A small upper storey and a roof peaked like a prow to part the south-westerly wind, an alley covering two sides. According to the grey-eyed mercenary who’d been sent to scout the place there were three men inside who could be the target, but Sorpan knew none would be as they watched each leave. You didn’t get to be an old Astaren by getting sloppy and retirement wouldn’t diminish the man’s instincts. If anything it would sharpen them.

  A loose tile on one of the rooftops clacked noisily as the wind picked up, breaking the hush of deepest night. Old instincts made Sorpan wary; abrupt noises in the dark and dangerous strangers made poor companions.

  ‘Come.’

  Sharish had a velvety growl to her voice, one that seemed to match the three long claw-marks down her cheek. Sorpan ducked his head and allowed her to put her callused palms around his bearded face.

  ‘Keep still.’

  ‘No.’ That prompted her to curl her lip, a snarl ready, but he smiled and forestalled her anger. Light flickered briefly in his eyes. ‘I will give you the scent.’

  ‘I don’t work that way.’

  ‘I have layer upon layer of defences in my mind. You’ll likely burn your senses out before you get anything.’

  He brought her head closer, almost close enough to kiss those full lips, and began to mouth secret words to the night. Her confusion deepened initially but then threads of light began to appear in the air, shifting shapes that twisted and spiralled in no breeze they could feel. These wound their way to her face and he held her still as they burst as delicately as tiny bubbles – minute flashes of light illuminating the muddy-green of her eyes.

  ‘I see him,’ she breathed, ‘I have the scent.’

  Sorpan stepped back. ‘Good.’

  At her urging he retreated further, finding Kebrai had moved away too. With a gesture the man recalled his mercenary guards; four lithe, light-skinned warriors from House Smoke, a major House within the Dragon hegemony and thus a common sight on the streets of its protectorate city. They silently fell in behind, all watching Sharish as she stepped forward.

  In the shadow of an overhang, Sharish unfastened the thong on a long object wrapped in grease-stained cloth. With delicate movements she unveiled a staff which she held out as she knelt. Made of some pale wood, it had sigils scratched into its surface and a head split into three twisted tines. Fat coils of copper wire bunched around the base of those while both the shaft and tines were wrapped in haphazard twists of more wire, creating a bulbous flared shape that reminded Sorpan of a henbane flower.

  The winter wind seemed to blow colder as Sharish muttered in some strange dialect of her own language. Behind him the mercenaries began to shift uncomfortably. Sorpan knew she could use demons to hunt a particular scent, but their anxiety triggered a memory of his. His career had been unremarkable thus far – minor work in the greater scheme of things – but his training had been thorough.

  Either I’m wrong, or Sharish’s more insane than she appears.

  His answer came soon enough. The wind’s cold fingers slapped across his exposed face, dragging at his coat, and with it came a distant sound to chill the heart. The faint call of a hunting hound, barely audible over the strengthening wind but laden with savage intent. Without meaning to, his hand went to the pistol at his waist and for a moment Sorpan was glad he’d come dressed as a warrior caste, red on his collar and a gun at his side. Then he remembered his suspicions and realised
a gun would do little.

  He forced himself to stay very still and watch Sharish with horrified awe as she continued her mantra of summoning. Fleeting sparks began to dance around the metal flower-head, swiftly building in intensity. Soon there were fitful bursts of light shuddering within it, the hiss and crackle momentarily drowning out her words and prompting the shamaness to continue her refrain in a louder voice. The distant howls grew no louder, but began to come from all directions, as though whatever made them was circling its prey. With little warning the stuttering burst of light grew to blinding proportions – one great flash, then two more in rapid succession.

  At each flash the street was bathed in light – all but black shadows cast in stark relief ahead of her. A glimpse was all Sorpan needed to gasp and fall back in horror – each glimpsed shadow different in size and outline but the smallest still the size of a pony. The suggestion of long lupine snouts and enormous fangs was all he could make out, the sharp line of ears and mass of muscled shoulders with no detail visible.

  Gods on high! Sorpan fought the urge to curse aloud, all too aware he did not want to attract further attention. Gentle Empress and the Lady Pity, what have I just unleashed on this city?

  CHAPTER 3

  ‘Oh Jester’s Knives, again?’

  Lady Kine Vanden Wyvern closed her eyes, lips pursed and pale against the wave of pain around her belly. With an effort she took a breath, short and ragged, then another. Bent like an old woman, Kine gripped the back of the chair she stood over as though it were a lifeline. Despite everything, between huffs of breath she felt a moment of absurd humour. Standing there, panting like a dog, she couldn’t help but hear the disapproving voices of her aunts echo across the sea from her homeland.

  A noblewoman must walk with grace – haste is for warriors. Never let your breathing be heard – panting is for dogs and rutting peasants. A noblewoman must never raise her voice – cries and pleas are the domain of the religious caste.

  ‘Look at me now, you shrivelled witches,’ she moaned through gritted teeth, ‘waddling like a sow, grunting and gasping like a commoner. Shame upon shame staining you all!’