by Jay Swanson
“Not for a day or two.” She sounded far calmer than Ardin could possibly understand at the moment.
“What was that thing they stuck in the ground? You were half dead before I broke it on what’s-his-face's chin.”
“It's called MARD,” she said. “It's what they use to drive our power away.”
“I didn't know that stuff was mobile!” He said. “I can't believe we have Khrone's chasing us... you said we have a few days?”
“You'll be fine as long as you stay away from me.”
“What?” It was his turn to look incredulous. “I'm not leaving you.”
“They'll never know you had a hand in it,” she continued as if she'd never heard him. “I'll make it look like I overpowered them all and they'll never know you had a hand in this.”
He walked over to her and sat down, waiting for her to look up again. She finally did, her deep brown eyes red and shimmering from her tears. She was so beautiful Ardin could scarcely breathe to look at her, but he managed to speak.
“I'm not going to leave you,” he said. “You need my help.”
“I don't need your help,” she responded as she started to stand.
Ardin stood up with her and looked around. “Hello? Are we forgetting the events of the morning?”
She turned and faced him, the hard edge returned to her features.
“I don't need anyone, you hear me?” A long finger jabbed Ardin's chest. “I'm getting out of here and I don't need a little boy following me around.”
“Woah now.” He bristled at being called a little boy.
“Just get out of here before you get hurt.” She brushed him off and started over towards the corpse that had pinned her to the ground.
He had been easy enough to move after the MARD stick had been broken, and she started to cover the boy's handiwork by burning Wilks' body. A gentle white mist formed at her feet.
“Look,” Ardin walked over but stopped and choked on the smell of burning flesh.
She ignored the boy and walked over towards the skinny one. She had partially cooked him when she first came to Ardin's rescue but needed to finish him and erase any trace of bullet holes.
“Look!” Ardin was indignant. “I killed two others back up where they first caught up to you too.”
The girl turned at that.
“Are you gonna go find and burn them too?”
She just stood there staring at him, cold uncertainty crossing her face.
“I'm in this one way or another, so you might as well just let me go with you.”
“I told you, I don't need to have a child following me around.”
“I'm not a child!” he yelled at her. “And I have nothing left! OK? I don't have anything to return to. All I have is you. I don't even know your stupid name and all I have is you to protect. Which, if you don't mind my saying, seems obvious to me that you need.”
She stared at him a moment longer, her mouth scrunched to the side as she mulled it over in her head.
“Why would you want to help me?” The question hung in the air, suspended in a volatile mixture of vulnerability and distrust.
“Your mother made me swear to,” he said as he walked slowly towards her, only half believing what he said because he couldn't really remember the exchange.
“And now I see you, in my dreams, in waking visions. I could feel you, knew exactly where to find you. I don't have a choice in this,” he paused, the conviction of his words resting heavy on his heart. “Even if you won't let me go with you, I'll have to follow and do what I can to help. I don't know why, but I have to do it.”
They stood there in silence for what seemed like days before she finally nodded her reluctant approval and started walking west. Ardin quickly gathered his gear and jogged to catch up. Without saying a word, the two of them walked on into the unknown and towards their newly conjoined destiny.
THIRTEEN
POMPIDUS MERODACH PACED in his office, sweating more than usual. The pudgy Mayor of Elandir felt like he'd been cooped up for years, but he refused to leave the safety of his square tower until Troy Silvers had been neutralized. He walked over to the wall of windows that spanned the entire breadth of his office and overlooked the golden fields of wheat and barley that were ready to be harvested.
Just a few stories below him, on what looked like a large shelf that jutted out of the wall, the air conditioning and filtration units worked steadily as the sun bounced off their dull casings. Low clouds to the north had wrapped themselves around the mountains like fluffy shawls, they floated bright in the waning light of the evening.
Merodach wasn't really paying attention to any of that. He was so focused on the problems running through his head that it almost looked as if he would go cross eyed from the effort of peering into his own thoughts. He rubbed his beady eyes under their wire-rimmed spectacles and tried to measure the cost of any sightings of the rogue general.
Silvers was well liked among the people almost as much as he was the army. He didn't need some sort of political revolution to come of the whole thing. Even if no one looked favorably upon the general any more, which was far more probable at this point, he assured himself, the inability to bring him to justice looked bad enough to call his own competence into question.
How could this have all gone so wrong? He had been so close to grasping unquestioned control of the government; all he needed was to silence any potential source of opposition. Brutus, though technically the ranking official in the army, was in no position to command Silvers. Through some ridiculously outdated law, it was illegal in times of peace for one man to control the army, and so it was split into two divisions and maintained by independent generals, answerable only to the Council and the Mayor.
The only options to consolidate power under the puppet general, Brutus, would be to kill Silvers or to start a war. And while killing Silvers had seemed the simpler path to Merodach, it had proved otherwise.
A knock came at the door but he ignored it. He was in no mood to handle any of his duties, lost in the grim outlook of his own future. His new assistant had the worst timing. The knock was repeated, this time he waved it off and shouted something about leaving him alone. Merodach didn't want to be bothered.
“Sir,” came a low, tense voice.
“If I told you once–” He whipped around on his assistant but his protests were cut short as General Flavian Brutus stood in front of him; thick jaw set. “Flavian? What the hell are you doing up here? I thought you were drilling your men on parade this afternoon.”
“Sir,” Brutus started again. “It's the northwest outpost, sir.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The northwest outpost,” Brutus wasn't sure how else to put it so he repeated himself. “It came under attack tonight.”
“Wait, the listening post? That outpost?”
“Yes sir.” Brutus hardly moved as his brow furrowed, his whole square frame seemed taught. “It was attacked around an hour ago. At first we thought they were simply ignoring our hails on the radio, but then we looked up the surveillance footage.”
Brutus pulled a book-sized object out of the bag he had placed on the chair next to him. He pressed a button on its side as he placed it on the Mayor's desk and it flickered to life. The big general pressed another button on the device and it began to play a video, the quality of which was lacking to say the least. Grainy, the black and white picture showed four men sitting around a low table, sharing drinks and apparently playing a card game.
“We installed the cameras in the outposts some time ago,” the general made the apology like he was excusing his possession of the footage. He shrugged. “Some of the guards were falling asleep on their watch or getting drunk. Not much to do out there.”
The video continued to play. The four men could be heard quietly laughing and joking through crackly speakers on the small box.
“What the hell are we watching, Flavian?”
“Pardon me, sir, but just watch.”<
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The video continued on much the same way as it had started, a hand of cards was won by one man and another by his opposite. The room was small, dimly lit, an attempt to keep an eye on the plains from the top of one of the foothills in the northeast. The men were obviously not concerned with their surroundings.
“Flavian–”
“Sir,” Brutus simply directed his superior's gaze back to the screen with his own unwavering attention.
Merodach sighed and looked back at the screen just as something moved beyond one of the windows in the room. It was brief, and hard to see through the camouflage that covered the windows, but the space behind the building was visibly disturbed as something moved through the twilight beyond.
“What the...”
The men continued to play, laughing and pushing cards around the table. Whatever the thing was flitted by the window again, and this time the man facing the window with his back to the camera noticed it. He pointed, and it sounded like he asked the others if they'd seen anything.
They told him he was seeing things and tried to get him to deal the cards, but he wouldn't. He was spooked, and fixated on the window. He said something else but it didn't come through, Merodach assumed it was due to his facing away from the camera.
Whatever he said in turn spooked his comrades who exclaimed disbelief but reached for their weapons. They shifted so that they faced outwards, sitting silent, staring out the camouflaged windows. Tense.
One of the men could be seen to slowly slip the safety off on his rifle, Merodach assumed the others were doing the same. Slowly, with a forced calm, the soldier on the right side of the screen raised his rifle and put it up to the window, resting it on the sill. The others began to crouch, not seeing what he was aiming at but ready to respond.
Rifle against his shoulder, the soldier pressed his cheek into the stock as if to take aim. Before any of them could react a glinting piece of metal swept through the window. It sliced the camouflage mesh so that it fell and sent a spurt of dark blood arching from the soldier's face.
“Dear God!” Merodach couldn't help his reaction.
The soldier reeled back, crashing down on the table and breaking it. His face split open as the other three men began yelling and shoving their rifles out of the windows of the small building. One of the three shouted for the others to stop yelling as their friend writhed and died slowly on the floor. Silence came through the speakers again. It was broken intermittently by bursts of static as the recording worked to recreate events previously witnessed.
The three men sat on their stools, rifles out, tense. They faced the three exposed sides of the building and waited, scanning the hillside and few trees that hemmed them in. They were fairly exposed on top of that hill, but it gave them a wide line of sight. And for what seemed like an eternity, they waited.
The single bulb in the short hallway behind the camera that led to the door cast a dim light, and as the shadows of the mountains and hills began to cover the landscape the footage got darker and darker. But not dark enough not to notice a long shadow slowly grow on the floor until it almost reached the man sitting at the middle window.
The gaping corpse of the first man lay on the broken table. Scattered cards lay on and around him like the signature of his killer. It almost looked as if he was staring down the hallway in one last futile attempt to warn his companions. Merodach almost yelled at the men on the screen himself.
The shadow seemed to morph, taking on a more defined shape. A man was standing in the hallway. His arm moved up as he reached for something on his back, and out came what looked like a long slender blade. It must have made some noise as it came free of the scabbard because no sooner had he drawn it than the three men turned and began firing at him. A dark figure appeared on screen and moved quickly towards the soldier on his left. Covered in a large, black cloak, the man seemed to be a spinning mass of cloth as his blade slit the soldier's throat, the long blade twisting immediately in a sinister jab behind and into the second soldier's stomach.
The third, uncertain of what to do at this point, lunged at the figure as if to strike it with the butt of his rifle. It parried easily with the hilt of its sword and simply stood to the side as the soldier's midsection caught on the blade. His weight slowly pulled him down and slid him along until he was disemboweled and nearly cut in two by the time he hit the floor. The figure didn't move as the soldier slid off its blade and died, it simply stood facing the camera.
Merodach couldn't see its face. He didn’t have to. He knew exactly what he was looking at; could feel its icy stare through the darkness that covered its face.
It moved now, raising its blade and hacking to the side of the camera. Dislodged from its mounting the picture spun into blurry madness before thudding into sudden stillness in the pool of black on the floor. It sat there, on its side, staring straight into the fallen bodies of the soldiers lying about the room.
A solitary black boot stood in the middle of the pool of blood for a moment before picking up and stepping out of the frame. The screen went dark, followed by a serial number and set of notices of confidentiality.
“Dear God, Brutus.” Merodach looked up at the stern face of his thick general. “When did you come upon this?”
“Not ten minutes before I came up here.”
“No one's seen this?”
“No, sir. Just the communications technician and myself.”
“How long ago was this recorded?”
“Roughly an hour before that.”
“And the outpost? How far away is it from Elandir?”
“Ten clicks, sir.”
Merodach waved the figure away. “Use real words, General.”
“Ten kilometers away, sir.”
The Mayor looked aghast, all the red in his cheeks and nose drained away as he gaped at Brutus and put his hand over his chest. “Is he on his way here?”
“We don't know that sir.”
“You don't know?!”
“I think it would be safe to assume.” Brutus turned off the contraption and put it back in his bag. “But we can't be sure.”
“He could be here at any minute!”
“I wanted to know what you would have me do sir.”
“What I would have you do?” Merodach exploded at his general. “I would have you apprehend and kill Troy Silvers for treason! That is what I would have you do, General!”
Flavian Brutus smiled at that. “I hoped you'd say that sir. I've been dying for a good fight.”
“I'm afraid you're in for one, Brutus, whether you want one or not.” Merodach picked up the phone receiver off his desk and punched a few buttons with vehemence. “We're in deep, deep shit here, General.”
Brutus didn't find the situation so troubling. “If he's coming here, he'll be assaulting the world's most heavily fortified city alone. He'll be dead before he reaches the walls.”
“Theo?” Merodach turned his attention to the phone before he exploded at his general. “Seal the tower and alert my bodyguard. I don't want anyone in or out until I give the word.”
He looked up at Brutus for a moment before turning back to the phone.
“Except Brutus, have them let him out. What? Of course, damnit! You're not leaving if I'm not. Yes. Have them turned on and then alert the City Guard... no. Just tell them to assemble and General Brutus will give them their orders.”
He slammed the phone down and stared daggers at the moron in front of him. Effective at soldiering, he thought for a moment, not so much at putting pieces of puzzles together.
“Did you see what I just saw?”
“Sir?”
“The video, the video that you just played for me, you were watching it, weren't you?”
Brutus looked at his bag, then back at his Mayor. It seemed an overly obvious question. Those usually meant the fat little man was getting angry. He straightened his shoulders and nodded curtly.
“Dear God, man! Those soldiers were all facing out when a man walks in wit
h a sword and hacks them all to pieces?”
“Sir, it's Silvers.”
“It's not Silvers! For the love of... it's the damned Shadow King! Those men were ambushed from within their own outpost! He didn't walk through any damned door or they would have heard him come in!”
“Either way sir, we'll kill the bastard.”
It finally clicked for Brutus. Under his assumed air of confidence he realized how serious this was going to get. He had never actually faced a Shade on his own, he had only heard stories. Silvers was one of the few men left in the military who had any experience fighting Mages and Shades. Now it turned out he was one.
He thought it over for a minute longer. “That's why he didn't seem hurt when they shot him up.”
“He probably didn't feel a single bullet pass through him, the bastard.” Merodach walked around the desk and placed his pudgy hands on the broad shoulders of his general. “I need you to go down there, prepare your men, and end this menace before he comes in here and murders us both.”
“I think there are some Hunters in the garrison right now.” Brutus' mind was flying.
He might not be too quick on his feet with politics and intrigue, but he could handle anything that revolved around violence with speed and ruthless efficiency.
“I can get them to cook up their gear and provide some advantage.”
“Just remember he knows all of your tricks.” Merodach wasn't satisfied, though he doubted he would get any peace of mind until this was all over. “And for God's sake, don't lead your men from the front. I can't afford you getting skewered or sliced to hell tonight.”
The alarm went out as the tower was sealed and the Guard alerted.
“Time for me to go, sir.” The big general turned to leave.
“Just remember that that isn't just Silvers you're dealing with out there!” Merodach called after him. “That's the goddamned harbinger of death stalking us tonight, Brutus!”
