Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of his most obnoxious Shaper, Manders, approaching with a determined gait. Gods! The man was insufferable.
“What now?” Shere grunted.
“You know full well what. You are wasting this army chasing a ghost through a graveyard, and graveyard it will be if we continue.”
Shere punched the man in the face and knocked him onto his ass in the mud. The other Shapers and nearby mercenaries fell silent. To Shere, each looked as if he was counting silently to one hundred in his head. Manders gathered himself and rose unsteadily to his feet, wiping a trickle of blood from his mouth with the index finger and thumb of his left hand. He never took his eyes off the bigger man.
Quietly, he said “I could incinerate you where you stand.”
“Then, do it,” Shere urged.
Manders stayed still.
“Then shut the fuck up!” Shere commanded. He was about to turn away when he changed his mind. “I have had it with you cowards. The man we hunt is worth more than all of you combined.”
Incredibly, Manders spoke again. “He runs away.”
Shere barked a laugh right into the Shaper’s face. “Runs away? You imbecile! If he’d merely wanted to run, he could have outrun us easily in the open. There’s but a few of them, while we drag an army of angry vegetables behind us! He’s using our orders against us!”
“But…” Manders began, a light coming on.
“Yes, he’s trying to cripple the End-of-All-Things and humiliate him at the same time. That takes courage.”
The Shapers and mercenaries started muttering amongst themselves.
“Look, I don’t give two shits for the lot of you. You all wanna leave? Leave.” Shere said. “That’s an order. I’ll continue on myself.”
One of the mercenaries started to say something but Manders cut him off with a gesture. Then, with a very sly and self-satisfied look, he said “As you command, General.”
Shere wasn’t going to wait around for them to leave him. He grabbed a nearby water skin, adjusted his belt and walked into the mists without a word or backward glance. After a few hundred paces, he was completely alone, isolated from his former army by a dense, swirling fog. Somewhere behind him his men were venting at one another. Shere grinned. Then he heard the sound of his army moving away and felt a brief twinge of fear. He was committed now. He would succeed or die in the next few hours.
*****
Deda, the Queen’s Castle
It was the largest building he’d ever been inside in his life. There were also probably more people in the castle than in most towns he’d visited over the years. As a result, though there were plenty of guards and elite Queen’s Swords at important junctures, it wasn’t especially difficult to blend in with the regular traffic rushing hither and yon, or hard to find directions to the ailing patient he was allegedly visiting. Wims’ real purpose, of course, was finding a corner, a room, perhaps, in one of the less-frequented parts of the castle, in which he could hole up for a while and from which he could scout the territory, so to speak. His gut told him the place had far more rooms than tenants, despite the stampedes on business in one direction or another. All Wims needed was to find such a room and wait until Soul’s Midnight – the best time for reconnaissance, he’d found.
Hours of searching, however, brought him no closer to his goal. Finally – and against his better judgment – he stopped a cleaning lady, an ancient crone so stooped she surely needed never bend down for her bucket.
“’Scuse me, mum…”
She cocked her head in his direction, and Wims could see she had cataracts in both eyes. A blind cleaning woman? Plainly, standards were not as high as he’d imagined. “Yes?” she croaked.
“The…er…steward assigned me to a room ‘round here, but I can’t seem to find it.”
The old creature cackled. “A room around here, did he?” She laughed again.
Wims began to grow impatient. “And why is that amusing, woman?”
“There’s naught but jakes this whole hallway!”
Infuriating, to be sure, but also useful information. “Bah! The old trickster’s having a laugh at my expense, I see. Where should I be, then?”
“Y’can stay in my room,” the crone said with a disturbing leer, “It’s big enough.”
Wims fought the urge to crush her skull then and there. “Uh, yes, well I’m sure it is. But I’ll be needing privacy to entertain business on his lordship’s behalf,” Wims bluffed.
“His lordship!” she spat. “May Alheria visit kibes upon ‘im!”
“Which way must I go?” Wims fairly shouted in exasperation.
“Turn ‘round. Take the second hallway, left, then…let me see…the third right. Try any o’ them doors on yer left.”
As he started moving away, Wims heard an odd sloshing sound, and turned back towards the crone just in time to catch her slop bucket on his jaw. The world spun before his eyes and he fell to the floor.
*****
He felt a peculiar tension in his arms, legs, shoulders and hips. Even before opening his eyes, he understood the severity of his predicament.
“Come now,” a vaguely familiar voice said to him. “We both know you’re awake, so why pretend otherwise? You’re only embarrassing yourself.”
Sound logic, Wims thought, and opened his eyes. As expected, he lay chained and spread-eagled on some sort of table in a mostly dark room. The one source of light came from behind the figure leaning over him, the only other figure in the room, as far as he could determine.
“And thus ends the last source of suspense in our relationship.”
He recognized the voice: it was a stronger, clearer version of that used by the crone in the hallway.
“Your Majesty,” Wims said, a statement of fact, an acknowledgment of her station.
“I have many enemies,” she responded. “More than I can count and probably more than I’m aware of. Can we dispense with the gamesmanship and the torture? Tell me what I wish to know, and I shall let you live, largely unharmed and free to return to whoever it is you serve.”
Inwardly, Wims had been bracing himself for prolonged torture and a slow death. “I don’t believe I can accommodate you,” he said. Something about chatting with the Virgin Queen elevated his speech, or at least his desire to speak well.
“You do understand, don’t you, that I have the means to compel you to tell me, whether you will or no?”
“Undoubtedly. But I suspect the…one I serve would visit worse upon me than you’re capable of.”
“Then the only way to spare you that torment is to kill you.”
What could he say to that?
“I am unspeakably old, for a human,” the Queen said. “Surprising enough in itself, but when one considers how many assassination attempts I’ve survived – not to mention the more mundane things like the plague, food poisoning, accidental injury – you’ll begin to see just how resourceful and determined I am.”
“Yes,” Wims agreed, “I would never have guessed you’d roam your own halls in disguise.”
“Don’t try to flatter me, boy,” the Queen snapped, “Your life has just gotten an order of magnitude worse. I will have what I want from you, if I have to reduce your body to a quivering pile of offal. However, I was hoping you would not be stupid enough to force my hand in that regard.”
Wims heard little of that; he was still reeling from the fact she’d called him “boy.” He hadn’t been called boy in decades.
“Now, I have an army of well-trained and highly paid torturers. And, of course, I have an equally large number of Shapers, Alchemists and suchlike. The fact of the matter is, we don’t even require you to be alive in order to extract the information we want. It’s just as easy to kill you now and interrogate your captive shade. But…” she paused for dramatic effect, “I’ve been feeling a little bored of late. I was hoping you might amuse me by trying something novel, like cooperating.”
For a moment, Wims
wondered if the Virgin Queen and the End-of-All-Things might be related, such was their mutual penchant for flamboyant threats. He’d once heard someone say “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” What hadn’t been noted was that it also made rulers bat-shit crazy.
“Well?” the Queen asked, expectantly.
Then, Wims heard himself say something he couldn’t quite believe, “I’m afraid you’ll have to torture me, your Highness.”
The Queen groaned in irritation. “Men! And they wonder why I’ve remained unwed. Fine!” she spat, “Torture it is! Much joy may it bring you!”
The light grew brighter for a second before it went out altogether. The door opened and shut again with authority. Wims wondered what sort of torture they’d try first.
*****
“Ah, there you are!” a weirdly alto but undeniably male voice said. “I was beginning to fear that Her Majesty hit you a touch too hard with that old bucket of hers.”
Wims rolled his eyes toward the speaker and discovered a man of middle years with an absurd mop of hair that could not possibly have been his own. Watery blue eyes gazed at him from either side of a nose whose size was only surpassed by the owner’s Adam’s apple, both of which were magnified by the man’s complete lack of a chin. “Now that I know you’re again amongst the living, I shall resume my reading of scripture for your benefit,” the fellow said.
This had to be a trick, a jest of some kind. Wims readjusted his head and shoulders as best he could under the circumstances and took a better, closer look at his visitor. He was dressed in the ragged homespun of friar – not unlike the disguise Wims himself had been wearing just days earlier – and had brought nothing with him Wims could see other than the massive tome he now had perched on his lap.
“This is torture?” Wims asked aloud.
“Pardon?”
“I understood I was to be tortured,” Wims replied in an almost disappointed tone.
“Torture?” the man said, clearly mystified. “I know nothing of torture. I was asked to minister to your spiritual well-being.”
“Ha!” Wims laughed. “Waste of time.”
*****
An eternity later, the man droned on, unabated, never changing his tempo or volume, and Wims Deda would happily have climbed the smooth stone walls with his fingernails if given half a chance. She was diabolical, Wims thought. The Queen was utterly diabolical. Somehow she’d known he could endure his measure of physical agony and then some, but that he had precious little patience for prattle. Still, this couldn’t possibly be the torture he’d been expecting. Easiest thing in the world to shut the man out.
Except that it wasn’t. The man never tired, never changed, and the unusual pitch of his voice seemed to cut through whatever barriers Wims threw up. Now, Wims just wanted to throw up, period. The endless litany was making him ill, he was sure of it. Just when he was about to surrender, the other man closed the book and stood.
“We’ve made tremendous progress today…through Volume One. It’s fortunate you’re lying down and able to rest, as the remaining twenty-seven volumes can be a bit taxing.”
Before Wims could yell in protest, the other man doused his candle and left the room.
Twenty-seven more volumes and not done with this one? Diabolical!
*****
Janks, the Queen’s Camp
“Wanks!” Kittins bellowed. “Major wants to see you. This minute!”
Bailis hadn’t wanted to see him since the major had ripped him a new one. Janks had been convinced Bailis had washed his hands of him, but now, out of nowhere, a summons. What could it be? Had they found Long’s corpse somewhere? Janks’ chin sagged to his chest as he stumbled off towards the major’s tent. What new misery was in store?
He reached Bailis’ tent just as the major popped his head out to check on Janks’ status. Unexpectedly, Bailis smiled upon seeing him.
“Ah, there you are. Do come in.”
Janks wished he’d refilled his flask before coming. He could do with a good pull right about now. Short of alternatives, he ducked, followed Bailis’ retreating form inside…
Where he immediately spotted D’Kem and Spirk sitting at a table, finishing what from all appearances had been a hearty meal. As he made eye contact with D’Kem, the older man stood up and Janks rushed over to embrace him.
“By the gods, you’re alive!” Janks shouted, emotion welling up in his voice.
“And so am I!” Spirk pointed out.
Same old Spirk. Unable to control his excitement, happiness and relief, Janks just laughed. “So you are, lad, so you are! But tell me, how did you manage it? And Long, is he…”
“One thing at a time,” Bailis interrupted. “These two’ve been through it, Corporal. Give ‘em a moment to breathe, eh?” He pulled out a chair and gestured for Janks to sit, join his friends.
“You’re right, of course. As you say.”
D’Kem wiped his mouth with his napkin and spoke. “I won’t keep you waiting, Janks. We don’t know Long’s current…situation. He and Mardine were both alive last time Spirk and I saw them. We survived the enemy’s initiation rites, for lack of a better term, and spent the first several days together, until they dragged Long away.”
“But…did they drag him away to kill him?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“But you don’t know?”
D’Kem sighed. “No, I do not know. But I have reason to believe he’s still alive.”
“But he could be dead?” Janks asked, in a rising panic.
D’Kem regarded him sternly. “Hadn’t you reconciled yourself to that, already?”
“Well, yes. Seeing you again, though...I mean…I was hoping…”
“Tell him the rest,” Bailis urged the old Shaper.
“Yeah, tell him the good part!” Spirk chimed in.
This time, the Shaper wheeled in his seat and glared at the younger man, as a father might a mischievous child. Turning back to Janks, he cleared his throat, composed his thoughts. “I believe our friend is still alive, because the End-of-All-Things needs his assistance.”
Janks looked from D’Kem to the major and back, searching for any sign they were joking. “His assistance?” he repeated, at last.
“Whatever else may be true of him, the End-of-All-Things does not possess a particularly military mind. His entire plan seems to be to crush everyone he encounters with superior numbers and firepower. So far, his methods have worked. But he’s sharp enough to recognize that this won’t work forever or in every circumstance.”
“And how do you know all this?”
“We captured some scouts!” Spirk answered brightly.
“We?” D’Kem asked.
“Well, I was there!” Spirk protested.
“And what did these scouts tell you?”
Clearly, it was Major Bailis’ turn to speak. “This End-of-All-Things goes through generals at an alarming rate. Seems he has a very short temper. And he needs his generals to formulate strategy, counter his enemies, all of that. The thing is, his command structure’s a botch-up: he’s got several generals on top, and all other officers are sergeants, essentially– he calls them ‘captains’ – whose job is to herd the horde one direction or another and keep it more or less in fighting trim.”
“But how does he maintain order?”
“Mahnus knows. The whole thing’s like an army run by an angry child.”
“You think he’s forcing Long to advise him, then?”
Before Bailis could answer, a soldier was ushered into the tent and came over to stand before him. Saluting, he said, “Enemy’s on the move, sir.”
This caught everyone’s attention.
“He’s moving?” Bailis asked, not certain he’d heard correctly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Direction?”
“Comin’ right at us, sir,” the soldier answered.
“This enemy’s out of his mind! Nobody starts a war this late in the autumn. We’ll be up to our knees
in snow at any moment. Both sides’ll lose more men to the cold than each other!”
The soldier coughed. “They respectfully request your presence in the officers’ mess.”
“I’ll be there straightaway,” Bailis said. To D’Kem, Spirk and Janks he added, “You’d best get back to your unit. Tell your sergeant we may have to mobilize quickly.”
Steel, Blood & Fire (Immortal Treachery Book 1) Page 35
