Dark Path: Book Three of the Phantom Badgers

by RW Krpoun

  There were nine riders with a string of remounts and four pack horses; even at a distance the marks of hard riding were clearly visible. As the distance closed (the Badgers’ position was only a grassy plaza from the roadway the group was traversing) the riders were observed to be seven well-armed Orcs, a Human male, and a Human female, the latter two armed but not armored. None of the nine wore any visible insignia.

  Bridget waited until the riders had passed behind a building before whispering to Elonia. “How far can you track them in here?”

  “Half a mile,” the Seeress whispered back, tension pinching her features. She gripped a small crystal slab in both hands and closed her eyes in deep concentration while her companions climbed from the tree. Elonia joined them shortly, grim faced. “They stand out like a fire in a well,” she shook her head. “That alone is bad news. They’re Direthrell servitors, Arbmante’s; the woman is a Nepas and the man is a wizard, both from Alantarn itself.”

  Bridget swore. “They’re on to us. Damn them, they’re come to warn the liche about the Torc.”

  “That’s the most detail you’ve come up with since the wolf-riders,” Maxmillian chose his words carefully. “That is, you are awfully definite. Is there some special reason?”

  The green eyes pinned him, cat-calm again. “Yes, some very strong affinity with us. It is centered on the woman, the messenger, no doubt, sent to warn the White Necromancer.”

  “That doesn't seem right,” Maxmillian persisted. “I mean, why send someone from Alantarn? Couldn’t they just send word to their agents in the area and have them handle it? Just how crucial could swapping what they know about the Torc for some payment be?”

  “What difference does it make?” Henri snapped. “If the Direthrell know who opened the gates for the raid on Alantarn we’ve got bigger problems than the White Necromancer to worry about. We’re at war with an entire nation for crying out loud; in short, we’re dead. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “They might not know who did it, just what was taken,” Maxmillian countered. “After all, the Torc used to be theirs.”

  “Not likely,” Bridget shook her head. “They wouldn’t have waited so long. In any case, the important point is this: the White Necromancer doesn't know about the Torc now; all we have to do is take out that messenger and the primary mission is still a go.”

  “And we could find out just what the Direthrell actually know about us,” Elonia nodded. “We’re not dead yet.”

  The full implications were dawning on Maxmillian, who felt the crumbling flagstones under his feet beginning to spin. An entire nation of long-lived Threll seeking his slow, horrible death; a relentless, evil people with a highly developed spy apparatus were after him! He took a deep, albeit shaky, breath to get a grip on his emotions; it was as Elonia said, they weren’t finished just yet. Maxmillian I hadn’t rolled over and died just because someone told him he was in trouble, and Maxmillian IV wasn’t going to either. He took another breath, deeper and steadier this time.

  Henri was arguing with Bridget while Elonia stood to one side, staring into the distance, pondering something. Maxmillian ended the argument by slapping the tree trunk with the flat of his hammer. “Bridget’s right, we press on,” the scholar informed the wizard. “First point, Elonia could be wrong; she’s not the best Seer around (no offense intended), and this place has all kinds of twists and tricks, magic-wise. We can’t be panicked off just because she gets a bad reading. Second point, we can’t go back to Oramere without some facts; that woman knows what the Direthrell know about us, or most of it. We’ll take her and squeeze the truth out, and then decide about the liche after that. If the White Necromancer doesn't know about the Torc, I say we take him, it: one less enemy is a good thing no matter what.”

  “Maxmillian has put it in a nutshell,” Elonia stepped up beside the historian. “It is possible I could have misinterpreted the readings from the group, and as he pointed out earlier, there is some mystery as to why the woman was sent from Alantarn when sending the message through local agents would have been both cheaper and much more secure.”

  The Arturian scowled and shook his head, then shrugged. “Whatever. If the Direthrell are after us, it makes no difference whether they kill us or the liche does. Lead on, Bridget. No point in dragging out the waiting.”

  Petor barred the door behind the departing servitors with a sense of misgiving. The guest quarters were in an old mansion that was fairly well maintained and stuffed with an assortment of furnishings that were mismatched even to his untrained eye. The burly half-Orc Thane had disliked the place from the moment he set eyes upon it: too big, too many doors, too much space for too few people; there was no way he could secure it with the troops he had. He had done what he could, making sure his troops were in the same wing as Kustar and the wizard, although split between two rooms. It had been all he could do to keep them that much together; they had wanted to sprawl out, prowl around, and dig into the stocks of ale and wine the servitors had left. There was no point in posting a sentry, the Thane knew: by midnight all six would be helplessly drunk.

  This deep in the White Necromancer’s hold they should be completely safe from everything but the liche, but Petor’s instincts were howling: the city was too big, too empty, and guarded mainly by reputation; liche or not, the half-Orc figured too much ego and too little practical sense had gone into choosing an entire city as a base. Worse, these days the Wastes were filling with rumors that the liche was fading, losing its powers, getting confused. Sooner or later somebody was going to try the White Necromancer, and Petor had no intention of being caught in the middle when it happened. Not for the first time today, he wished some other Dora had been available when Kustar had arrived.

  Muttering to himself, he made his way back to the simple room he had taken as his quarters, one door down from the wizard’s huge suite, and safely between his Orcs and the two VIPs. He scowled as he passed the side-passage leading to his troop’s quarters; the bastards sounded drunk already and were making enough noise to wake the dead, which was not all that funny a saying in a place like this. They were good warriors, the best in his section, but when fighting was not an immediate prospect they were a tough lot to keep in line. Tomorrow, he promised himself, he would bang some heads together and get them firmly to hand, and with luck they would be back out on the plains soon.

  The hall he was walking down was broad and thickly carpeted, lit every ten feet by a dim, slow-burning lantern of hammered brass; inside his room Petor had left a candle burning beside the bed. As he approached the open door he hesitated, instinctively slipping his renac from its scabbard; the candle flame was shifting ever so slightly, as if disturbed by the breathing or slight restive movements of someone waiting in the room. He glanced back the way he had come, considered going back going for a couple of his men, but dismissed the thought, as the possibility of looking foolish in front of them outweighed the risk. Moving softly, the heavy falchion held low and angled across his body, he stepped to the doorway of his room, ready for trouble.

  She was lying on the bed, elbows beneath her, covered by the sheet to mid-breast and bare above, long hair loose and swept back, her cool level gaze clear despite the candle-shadows that danced across her clean, square-cut features that spoke of mixed blood and bone-deep beauty. She smiled at him, a cool, confident expression, completely at ease. “Compliments of the White Necromancer.”

  Bemused, he took a step into the room, sword still at the ready but his eyes riveted on the woman, who let the sheet slip an inch or so down the slopes of her full breasts. The lack of discarded clothing had just begun to register when something slammed into his unarmored lower back, doubling him over in agony; a sharp rap on the elbow numbed his arm down to the fingertips and sent his renac tumbling across the musty carpet. A second tap brought darkness even as he was trying to push himself back to his feet.

  A sharp, acrid odor that combined the worst of hot metal and old food brought him back, insistently dig
ging into his nostrils and clearing some of the cobwebs from his mind. He let his head clear a bit before opening his eyes and looking around, but it was painfully clear that he was securely bound.

  He opened his eyes and then closed them when the room swam and spun, repeating the process with first one and then the other eye until he was able to look around and move his head without weaving like a drunk.

  He was still in his room, sitting on a sort of two-cushion couch that had originally been against the wall next to the door; now it was in the center of the room, and he could sense someone behind him. His arms were down at his sides, wrists securely lashed to the tops of his thighs, with his elbows bound to his spear, which ran through the crook of his elbows and behind his back, and which was itself lashed to the arms of the couch. Some light cord hobbled his ankles to the legs of the couch; after a couple covert tries, it was obvious that he wasn’t going to get free by himself without a lot more activity than his visitors would allow.

  There were four of them, he saw: someone standing behind him, another, a Human male, standing at the nearly-closed door watching the hall; Petor couldn’t see much of him but his outline and the scabbard of his sword-rapier. The woman who had lured him was fully dressed now, sitting cross-legged on the bed going through his saddlebags. Another woman perched on the bureau in front of him, a long-legged, dark-haired little willowy thing clad in worn clothes and marked by hard travel. Both women were armed and looked like they knew how to use them, the bait bitch with a couple of crooked fighting knives and the dark-haired snip with a sword-rapier and sling-pouch. They didn’t wear any insignia, but Petor made them as professionals at the first glance, and not the kind he liked: these were killers, mercenaries or he missed his guess. He wondered if this wasn’t some sort of revenge from Kustar.

  “I hope you aren't going to try and yell,” the dark haired woman commented, holding up his wineskin with an inquiring look. Petor nodded his head and opened his mouth for a stream of brandy, taking in the jeweled torc the woman wore at her neck; for some reason, the rubies on it appeared to sparkle more than the single candle warranted. “Fine. Who are you?”

  “Petor.”

  “Petor, you can call me Bet, as in, all bets are off if you lie to me. You’re in the service of Arbmante, most likely a Thane with the rank of Dora, or section-leader. I know some of what is going on, and you are going to fill in the rest. I know enough so that if you lie, you’re dead, and not quickly at that. Believe me, the last place you want to die is in the hold of the White Necromancer.”

  “I’m in the pay of Arbmante,” Petor conceded, mind working. “You don’t want to cross the Direthrell on even routine business, and this isn’t routine business. You would be better off to drop the whole matter.”

  “You can’t scry in Tiria, thanks to the liche,” Bet smiled easily. “They won’t have a clue as to who made your group vanish, and the liche won’t be around long enough to answer questions. In any case, do you really want to cross a group who’s crazy enough to take on the White Necromancer in its lair?”

  Petor gave it some thought, and then shrugged as best he could. The chances of survival were almost none, but these bastards would surely kill him if he didn’t cooperate, and he was too much the veteran to believe that he could hold out against pain, drugs, or spells for long enough to do any good. “Ask away.”

  “Good. Now start telling us what you are about, everything you know. Keep it short and to the point, I’ve got other business this night. Tell the truth, answer our questions, and you might live through this.”

  “I’m part of the garrison at a place called Fort Margrave, a Dark Threll station quite a ways northwest of here. Seven days ago I was assigned to escort a Pargaie officer, and here I am.”

  “Tell us more about this officer, including how long you’ve known her.”

  “Her name is Kustar Pravas, I’m not sure of her exact rank, but she’s carrying an atingo from the Hold-Master at Alantarn; she arrived by Gate seven days ago with a Human who goes by Coke, but that’s not his real name. I was told to take six of my section and plenty of supplies; the mission was just to escort the officer while she poked around the Wastes.”

  “How did you end up here, then?”

  “An hour out of the fort she tells me to get her here fast. Six days very hard riding and here we are.”

  “Once more: your job was just to escort her around the Wastes?”

  “Yeah, just around. She was supposed to be investigating something, but once clear of the fort we made a beeline to Tiria. She said she had business with the White Necromancer, but she didn’t say why and I didn’t ask.”

  “What did she say to the liche’s servitors?”

  “Just that she was from Arbmante and had profitable business, she knew the greeting protocols and all that; the servitors escorted us here, and we’re supposed to get a summons in a day or so. Or Kustar is, I guess.”

  “More about Kustar.”

  “Not much to tell: she’s in the suite with the white panels on the door.”

  “Coke.”

  “She called him ‘wizard’ a couple times, and he’s in worse shape than she is; he’s in the suite next door. I don’t think he’s Pargaie; I would guess Temple if anything.”

  The bait-bitch, done with pawing his belongings, spoke up. “What do you know about the White Necromancer?”

  The raid group held a conference in an adjoining, empty suite after securely gagging Petor.

  “This doesn't look as bad as it initially did,” Bridget offered hopefully. “What’s an atingo?”

  “A baton that confers brevet authority,” Elonia advised her. “It is issued by a commander to a subordinate for the execution of a specific task which is both long in duration and complex in execution.”

  “Not the sort of thing issued to a courier or diplomat,” Maxmillian observed.

  “Not at all; a simple letter of authority would be used. An atingo is very rare.”

  “The half-Orc said the Pargaie officer was supposed to be investigating, and that it seems likely that her intention of coming here was unknown to the commander of the fort,” Bridget mused. “That would suggest that her mission is secret. Why would they want to keep it so covert?”

  The four gave that one some thought. “From our studies before Alantarn,” Elonia began slowly, “I would venture a guess: this Kustar is investigating something, hence the authority-baton, possibly investigating the persons behind the raid. Such an investigation would be kept very secret until it was completed, and perhaps even then.”

  “If they’re still investigating, that means they aren't sure who did it,” Henri observed happily from his position at the door. “They might have keyed in on the Torc and are hoping that the liche can give them an idea who would want to employ it.”

  “I’ll go along with the first part,” Maxmillian tapped his hammer against the arm of his chair thoughtfully. “But surely the Pargaie has a good idea of who hates the White Necromancer, however long that list might be.”

  The four sat in silence for a few minutes; finally Bridget stood. “We know one thing for sure: the Torc is still unknown to the liche, otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten this far. The primary mission is still on, for while the Direthrell may or may not know the identity of the raiders, the liche is definitely a threat.”

  “What about Kustar and the wizard?”

  “We kill the wizard and take Kustar alive; she should be able to tell us if the Direthrell are looking for us by name. We leave Petor alive until we grab her and know what’s going on for certain; the Orc guards we’ll leave for last, when they’re good and drunk. Before we leave we’ll check out the stables; maybe in the confusion we can steal some provisions and grain.”

  “If we take out Kustar now, and I admit it’s the best way, we’ll have to move on the liche immediately,” Henri observed. “We’ll only have a matter of hours until the servitors bring breakfast.”

  “Like you said, Henri, there�
�s no point in dragging out the waiting.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The disruption of ordinary magic made taking the wizard a far simpler matter than would be the norm: under these circumstances, they had no worries of magical traps or alarms. Bridget simply remained behind with Petor to insure that the Torc’s field would not alert the trained senses of the spellcaster; Elonia swiftly and silently picked the lock on the suite’s main door, and the raiders were in the wizard’s quarters.

  They found ‘Coke’ sprawled across a huge canopied bed in the bedroom of what amounted to a luxury apartment, sleeping so soundly that he never stirred until Henri drove the point of Petor’s dagger through his left eyesocket and on into the brain. Working quickly, he and Elonia gathered up the wizard’s saddlebags and personal belongings before returning to Petor’s room, careful to cover the body with the bedclothes and to lock the suite’s door behind them.

  “Like clubbing bunnies,” the Arturian grinned as they spread out the captured goods. “He never knew what hit him.”

  “Clothes, travel gear, not much money (keep it),” Bridget muttered as she sifted through the saddlebags. “Hello, what’s this?” She tossed a couple broaches onto the floor for all to see.

  “Insignia of the Alantarn garrison, insignia of the Temple, and another: probably indicates that he serves in some retinue rather than in the Temple at large,” Elonia murmured, ticking off the devices.

  “That’s strange, a Pargaie officer on a covert mission with a Temple wizard,” Maxmillian observed. “That can’t be routine.”

  “Not at all,” Elonia nodded. “The Temple and the Pargaie don’t mix in the normal course of things. This might suggest a dire emergency, or something completely out of the norm.”