Grim Company 02 - Sword Of The North

by Luke Scull

  ‘You call yourself Ghost?’ Corvac sneered. ‘Well, guess what. I ain’t afraid of no ghost.’

  ‘You tell him, baby! Slice him up good!’ Goldie taunted. Cole stumbled back, almost fell. His dagger was a dozen feet away. He would never get to it in time.

  Suddenly, Derkin cried out. With a mighty effort, the little man leaped at the Mad Dog to Cole’s left and brought Bessie flashing down. It cleaved the man’s skull apart in a splatter of brain and bone, cranial fluid spraying all over Goldie, whose taunts turned to shrieks.

  Cole seized the moment. With every ounce of strength he had left, he dived towards the body of the last Mad Dog he’d killed and wrenched Magebane free of the man’s throat. As his hands closed around the hilt, warmth seemed to envelop him and his vitality surged back. He felt a brief burning sensation in his back, and then somehow it no longer hurt.

  Corvac reached him then. Cole blocked the Mad Dog leader’s downward swing, and with a sudden surge of energy he pushed back, forcing himself to his feet. The two men moved at the same time, short sword and dagger coming together in a brief but deadly dance. They parted, and there was a moment of utter calm before Corvac stared down at the jewelled hilt quivering in his chest in disbelief. ‘How?’ he asked, his words bubbling from his mouth. ‘I broke you… I made you my bitch…’

  Cole shook his head. ‘What you did to me doesn’t make you strong, Corvac. It makes you the lowest of the low.’

  ‘No one fucks Corvac!’ the enraged little man gasped at him, blood dribbling down his narrow chin. ‘No… one…’

  He never had the chance to finish his sentence. All the anger that had been building up in Cole since that night outside the tavern suddenly burst out of him. He twisted a full circle, intending to roundhouse kick Magebane’s hilt and drive it deep into Corvac’s heart, but Goldie thrust herself in front of her man and caught the full force of Cole’s boot right in the face. Broken teeth and red spittle exploded everywhere as Corvac and Goldie went down in a heap together.

  Cole bent to retrieve Magebane, grimacing as the man’s fading vitality flooded into him, an obscene sensation. Goldie was unconscious. Cole managed to resist the desire to thrust his dagger through her chest as well. It was more than a desire – it was a hunger. The realization scared him. That wasn’t who he was. Was it the Blight filling him with such murderous urges, or something else? The divine essence sheltering within him?

  Derkin was staring at the gore-streaked cleaver in his hands. ‘What now?’ he asked, still shocked at his own savagery of moments before.

  Cole took a quick look around. The Whitecloaks had sided with the Mad Dogs and together they were getting the better of the miners, though Captain Priam’s men moved sluggishly. Cole could see dark matter leaking from the ears of the soldiers, the tortured look in their eyes hinting at some horrible fate that wasn’t yet fully explained.

  That wasn’t the only unpleasant revelation. Throughout the corpse-lined streets of Newharvest, another threat was becoming apparent. Blood-curdling moans joined the shouts of battle and the crackling of burning buildings: the dead were beginning to rise.

  Cole turned to Derkin. ‘Now we fight dirty.’

  It was almost dawn when he finally made his way to the Horn, leaving the scorched town of Newharvest behind him. The survivors had gathered near the platform in the centre to await his return. They hadn’t wanted to accompany him into the Blight. Cole glanced back at the army of corpses marching – or more accurately, shambling – silently behind him. All things considered, he couldn’t really blame them.

  To a man, the Mad Dogs and the Whitecloaks were all dead. The latter had hardly put up much of a fight at all. In fact, they seemed almost relieved when Cole’s army of shamblers fell upon them. The expression on Captain Priam’s face as he died suggested this was a moment he’d been waiting a lifetime for.

  Cole had ordered the survivors to torch the bodies of the Whitecloaks. It didn’t seem right, forcing them to serve him in death. He had a feeling there was a lot the wizard Thanates had yet to tell him about the soldiers, and besides, there were more than enough dead Mad Dogs to do his bidding. If the Trinity were still alive, they would need to fight their way through an army of the dead before they got to him. He hoped it was enough.

  He paused as he came within sight of the Horn. The rising sun bathed the giant monument in an orange glow. Cole shielded his eyes and squinted, trying to work out why the tip of the Horn had somehow turned white while the rest of the giant landmark was as jet black as ever. As he got closer, though, he saw the truth of the matter.

  The Trinity were impaled on the end of the Horn, their lifeless bodies stacked one on top of the other, pale robes falling uselessly around them.

  Kneeling on the blasted earth before the Horn was Thanates. Cole thought he might be dead too – but with a great effort the wizard raised his head. ‘It is done?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘Is the town secured?’ The man’s black coat was even more tattered and torn than before. He was covered in a dozen small wounds and looked utterly spent.

  ‘Yes,’ Cole replied. He stared at the dead handmaidens in wonder and then hurried over to the wizard. ‘You’re badly hurt.’

  ‘Hurt? This is nothing. The White Lady had me lashed a hundred times before she hanged me from the walls of her city. After a few days had passed, once they thought me dead, the carrion birds and other predators began to feed on me. I claimed the soul of the crow that pecked out my eyes. This much I remember.’

  Cole stared at Thanates in shock. ‘The White Lady did that to you?’

  ‘She did many things. The question is why.’ The wizard sniffed the air. ‘An army of the dead accompanies you. They will prove useful.’

  ‘They will?’

  Thanates clenched his jaw. With an iron display of willpower he climbed to his feet. ‘A ship is due to arrive on the coast this morning. We will seize the vessel and use it to return to the City of Towers.’

  ‘We’re going to Thelassa?’ Cole exclaimed. ‘But what about the White Lady? If she finds out we’re there in her city—’

  ‘Oh, she will find out. I intend to make certain of it. But first there is something I must do.’

  ‘What?’

  Thanates pulled his tattered coat tightly about him and set off in the direction of Newharvest, walking with a pronounced limp. ‘The White Lady is perhaps the most powerful wizard left in the north,’ he called back without turning. ‘I will require every scrap of magic ore left in Newharvest.’

  The wizard’s voice dropped to a deadly whisper then, and Cole had to hurry after him to catch his next words. ‘I will have the truth. And then… I will have my vengeance.’

  Revelations

  ‘Creator’s cock, it’s the Halfmage! He’ll have the answers we need.’

  Eremul glanced at the small crowd that had gathered on the street corner and immediately regretted it. He should have put his head down and kept going, pretended he hadn’t heard the desperate-looking fellow in the filthy rags that passed for clothes. The others with him were just as dishevelled. Mobs like these were growing increasingly common, and though the Halfmage wasn’t in any particular fear for his safety, he was already running late.

  ‘When are our loved ones coming home?’ the man called out. ‘It’s been two months now! Please, you must know something about what’s happening.’

  Must I indeed? Who made me Halliax, Lord of Knowledge? Eremul didn’t bother giving voice to his scorn. After all, Halliax had been a relatively obscure deity and these days few could name more than a handful of dead gods. Five centuries on from the Godswar and they were finally fading from memory.

  Just like the city’s jubilation at the death of the tyrant Salazar.

  If Eremul had learned anything from years spent with his nose buried in books on history and philosophy, it was that contentment was the most transient emotion of all. The human spirit was not meant to float suspended in the calm waters of equanimity but rather to lurch wildly fro
m one crisis to another.

  ‘Please, Halfmage!’

  The desperate plea tore him away from his ruminations. Eremul grimaced at the anguish in the man’s voice. A father’s pain, he guessed. Maybe a husband’s. Both unfamiliar to him, but no less potent for that. More so, perhaps.

  With a sigh, he slowed his chair and turned to face the mob. ‘Look, you’re asking the wrong person. I have no more insight into why the Pioneers have not returned than you.’

  ‘You don’t? But you’re the Master of Magic. You can find out for us, can’t you?’

  The Halfmage tried not to wince at the earnest expression of hope on the man’s face. He had preferred it when no one had expected anything from him except possibly a good laugh. ‘I’m certain that if the Council had any news, I would be among the first to know,’ he said. Actually, he would likely be the last to know if Timerus had his way. ‘Perhaps ill weather delayed the return voyage. Perhaps the Celestial Isles are simply so rich with resources that it has taken longer than expected to catalogue everything.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I’m no clairvoyant, but those strike me as the most logical explanations. Really, what’s the worst that could have happened?’ He didn’t mention a couple of the more pessimistic theories that had occurred to him recently. He wanted to conclude his meeting at the old abandoned lighthouse before he spoke of his fears to Lorganna.

  ‘I guess that makes sense. I’m just worried about my son. He means the world to me.’

  ‘I can well understand,’ Eremul lied, but it was the kind of lie that made his heart ache strangely. For some reason he thought of Monique, who was visiting him later at the depository for the very first time. He hoped Tyro hadn’t made a mess.

  ‘Do you have any children, Halfmage?’ the fellow asked. It wasn’t a question asked out of spite but rather honest curiosity, and Eremul forced himself to swallow the instinctive vitriol that welled up inside him.

  ‘No,’ he replied. And then for some reason, he added, ‘Maybe I will one day.’ Creator’s cock, what is happening to me?

  The man nodded and turned to the mob behind him. ‘I think we’ve wasted enough of this hero’s time,’ he said happily. The small crowd began to disperse. Eremul noted with surprise that fresh hope had appeared on faces that moments ago were heavy with despair.

  All because some crippled bastard they mistakenly believe to be a hero provided a few half-arsed words of comfort.

  He actually found himself feeling sorry for them.

  ‘Fare thee well, Halfmage,’ said the leader of the mob, without a hint of irony. There had been a time when being told ‘fare thee well’ would have elicited a furious response from Eremul. Instead he smiled wryly and continued north towards Raven’s Bluff.

  As he made his way through harbourside alleys teeming with the poor and starving he wondered what had become of the two sisters he’d sent to Thelassa. They should have returned long before now. He’d not heard so much as a peep. It was just like the time he’d sent the small band to the Wailing Rift, he reflected. It was almost as if his quests weren’t being treated with the gravitas they deserved. After all, in the bad works of fiction he kept hidden in the depository, if a stern-faced wizard arrived bearing tales of impending disaster, the chosen ones bloody well did what was asked of them. They didn’t pocket the coin he had handed them and quietly bugger off Creator-knows-where like Sasha and her psychotic sister.

  He ought to be annoyed but in truth he hardly cared. He had more important things on his mind, or at least so it seemed. He thought again of Monique. They’d met on three separate occasions since their ‘date’ – gods, he hated that word – at the Rose and Sceptre. He was starting believe she actually liked him. He just hoped she didn’t run screaming if it ever reached the point where intimacy reared its ugly head.

  ‘Spare a copper?’ a hag squawked at him, too decrepit for any man to want to pay for a bite of her withered old cherry. Eremul patted down his robes but belatedly realized he’d forgotten his coin purse.

  ‘I have no coppers to spare. But I can offer you my blessings.’

  The old woman spat, revealing a gummy mouth sprouting crooked brown teeth. ‘I can’t eat blessings, can I? Thanks for nothing, cripple.’

  Eremul merely shrugged and rode by. There was no point losing his temper. In a city where the half the population was struggling to eat and the other half was under constant threat of violence from Melissan’s fanatics, insults were scarcely worth getting upset about.

  As he left Whalebone Street and made his way up Raven’s Walk, Eremul almost collided with a bunch of drunkards staggering from one of the cheap dives lining the bottom of the promenade. It was early to be drinking, but this was one of the poorest parts of the city and he couldn’t blame the desperate for wanting to drown their sorrows.

  A handful of glassy-eyed faces stared at him with varying degrees of despondency. One face looked vaguely familiar behind a wild growth of grey stubble, but just then another drunk barged into Eremul, almost knocking his chair over. The Halfmage had to throw his weight to the side to right the chair and avoid being dumped on his arse. ‘Watch where you’re going!’ he hissed as drunken guffaws receded behind him.

  A burly beggar covered head to toe in bandages and slumped against a wall stretched out a mangled hand to ask for coin, but Eremul rode right on by the fellow and whatever unfortunate incident had befallen him. There was only so much sympathy to go around.

  His annoyance faded as he ascended the hill north of the harbour. He noted how much easier the journey was than the last time, his shoulders powering him up the rise with surprising ease. Before he knew it he had reached the top of Raven’s Bluff.

  The ruined lighthouse was exactly as he remembered: a decrepit old tower overlooking the harbour, which few ever ventured near. Earlier in the year the White Lady had summoned him to this place for a clandestine meeting with her handmaidens. The Halfmage judged it the perfect spot to meet with Lorganna away from prying eyes.

  The door was already a little ajar. He pushed it open and peered inside. A flickering torch illuminated the damp, circular chamber. Lorganna had her back to him, the woman’s attention fixed on the fellow strapped to the chair in the centre of the room. The two guards Lorganna had evidently brought with her placed their hands on their weapons and scowled at him in that practised way of hired thugs the world over.

  The Civic Relations Minister turned. ‘Eremul,’ she said. ‘I thought you weren’t going to show.’

  ‘Never bet against a man with no legs.’ Eremul wheeled himself over to the prisoner and raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘He’s young. It would seem Melissan has started recruiting early.’

  ‘Go outside and keep watch,’ Lorganna ordered the two men. ‘If you see anyone approach, raise the alarm.’ The hired muscle exchanged a look and then left.

  ‘Thank you for arranging this,’ Eremul said. He’d never been comfortable expressing gratitude, but the woman had earned it. ‘Doubtless your colleagues on the Council consider me crazy.’

  Lorganna shrugged. She had discarded the long black robes of the city’s magistrates for a plain brown tunic. She carried anonymity well, Eremul thought. There was nothing memorable about either her face or manner. ‘If the Fade truly are returning to these shores, the Council will soon regret dismissing your concerns out of hand.’

  Eremul reached forward and took hold of the leather strap gagging the prisoner. ‘May I?’

  Lorganna nodded. The Halfmage untied the strap and pulled it away from the fanatic’s mouth. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  The captive spat in his face.

  Eremul wiped saliva from his chin and tried to control his rising temper. It had been a while since anyone had dared spit on him and he’d forgotten quite how unpleasant it felt.

  ‘They’re all like this,’ Lorganna said, shaking her head. ‘The Grand Regent has authorized every kind of torture imaginable to force them to comply, but these fanatics w
on’t give up a thing.’

  ‘Their tongues might not talk, but it is not so easy to control one’s thoughts.’ The Halfmage placed a hand on the captive’s head. Ignoring the fanatic’s desperate thrashing, he summoned his magic. ‘The last time I practised thought-mining was on our dearly departed Magelord. I doubt this young firebrand will prove any more obstinate.’

  He probed, but try as he might he couldn’t read anything except vague feelings of anger and, oddly, bewilderment. ‘Where is the tattoo?’ Eremul asked, sweat beading his brow.

  ‘On his left arm, just below the shoulder.’

  The door creaked open and one of Lorganna’s hirelings poked his shaved head into the room. ‘We caught some old drunk wandering around outside,’ he said. ‘Fellow’s so pissed he almost fell off the edge of the cliff.’

  ‘Give him a kick up the arse and send him on his way,’ Eremul replied irritably. ‘Or just toss him in the harbour.’ Lorganna frowned at him. ‘I’m jesting,’ he half lied.

  ‘See to it that he descends the hill safely,’ Lorganna ordered. Her lackey bobbed his head and disappeared.

  ‘Left arm, just below the shoulder,’ Eremul murmured. He withdrew a knife from his robes and cut away the fanatic’s sleeve. There it was – like a spider curled up tight beneath the skin. The Fade script.

  ‘You plan to cut it out of him?’ Lorganna asked, sounding apprehensive.

  ‘Nothing so uncouth as that. I will tease it out using magic. In the event it somehow evades my grasp, be a dear and stamp on it. We must not let this one escape.’

  The Halfmage took a deep breath and began channelling his magic into the tattoo, muttering the words of a binding spell that would hold the thing in place as soon as it crawled free of its host’s flesh. It was delicate work: an undertaking beyond the skill of many wizards. Though Eremul was always the weakest of mages when it came to raw power, he possessed a level of craft that had sometimes impressed even old Poskarus.