Grim Company 02 - Sword Of The North

by Luke Scull

  He cursed himself again for handing over the construct to Melissan back at the lighthouse. She had told him she was going to present it as evidence to the council and had apparently managed to dispose of it before the Watch arrested her. From the guards outside his cell Eremul had learned that Melissan hadn’t said a thing since her capture. It was his word against Remy’s evidence… and it turned out no one was inclined to believe a reputedly mad wizard.

  As he was escorted to the great plaza the crowds that had gathered to watch the execution grew thicker. Young children hurled insults at him while their mothers sneered and made warding gestures. The fleeting respect he had enjoyed was well and truly gone now. He was back to being the bogeyman, the object of ridicule. It hurt more than he had thought it would.

  After all I’ve done for this city. This is how you thank me?

  He forced his hands to stop trembling and set his jaw in a grim line. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing him distressed. Let them gawk and laugh. Melissan’s arrest would change nothing. Dorminia was on the brink of disaster and all it would take was one more nudge before the city plunged into the abyss.

  A gallows had been erected in the Hook. As they approached the platform a huge roar went up from the crowd gathered around it. The barrage of abuse intensified and rotten fruit and vegetables began to rain down on Eremul, splattering all over his robes, striking him in the face and dribbling down his chin.

  ‘Nearly there,’ said the young Watchman who was pushing his chair. He sounded almost apologetic. A dog barked somewhere in the crowd and Eremul was suddenly reminded of an important detail he had overlooked. Filled with panic, he turned to the guard. ‘Tyro,’ he said urgently.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘My dog. Tyro. I left him back at the depository. Somebody needs to feed him when I’m gone.’

  The Watchman looked confused.

  ‘You said I refused payment. When your mother came to me. If she still wishes to repay her debt, she can check on my dog. He’ll need a home, too.’

  ‘I’ll… I’ll mention it to her.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Eremul relaxed slightly and turned his attention back to the platform. Melissan was already up there, her hands bound behind her and a sack pulled over her head. Eremul’s chair was lifted onto the platform and then he was wheeled over to sit beside the rebel leader. The executioner lowered the noose and placed it around Melissan’s neck, and then it was the Halfmage’s turn.

  He stared out over the assembled city folk as the rope settled into position, wondering how long it would take for him to suffocate once the lever that opened the platform was released. Longer than it might a whole-bodied man with the additional weight of a pair of legs to tighten the noose around his throat, he supposed.

  Perhaps I won’t suffocate at all. Perhaps I’ll simply hang there like a stubborn turd, wasting away over the course of days or even weeks. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The sooner he died, the sooner Timerus would release Monique from wherever she was being held captive.

  With a grunt, the executioner tore the sack from Melissan’s head. The woman he had once known as Lorganna was battered and bruised, but apart from the cosmetic damage to her face she looked no different than he remembered. She was remarkably plain for a woman who had inspired such loyalty in her fanatics, who had won a seat on the Council through a piece of breathtakingly audacious deception.

  As Eremul stared at Melissan he had the sudden sense that something wasn’t quite right. It gnawed at him with the overwhelming urgency of an itch he couldn’t scratch, but just then the crowd parted and Timerus arrived.

  The Grand Regent was wearing his golden robes as well as that ridiculous silver circlet atop his balding crown. Behind him trailed his personal bodyguard, the White Lady’s handmaiden in her robes of purest white. Bracka was there too, the big Marshal bellowing orders at his men for no particular reason, enjoying the illusion of importance it gave him. Scurrying a little behind was the spymaster Remy, as dishevelled as ever and quite possibly drunk again, though it was hard to tell with the pouring rain obstructing Eremul’s view.

  Timerus raised a hand and the crowd fell silent. Eremul met the Grand Regent’s beady eyes and the insufferable smugness on that narrow face almost made him abandon their deal.

  I could melt that smile right off your fucking skull, you Ishari snake. As if reading his thoughts, the handmaiden twitched slightly and gave a gentle shake of her head. Eremul swallowed his anger and forced himself to remain calm. It would be over soon.

  ‘Fellow citizens,’ Timerus intoned in his arrogant drawl, his voice carrying over the soft roar of the rain. ‘I present to you the accused! This woman Melissan plotted the downfall of our fair city whilst insinuating herself onto its very Council. The campaign of terror she instigated through her network of fanatics caused considerable damage to the city coffers.’

  ‘Not just our coffers! My wife was taken from me the night of the fire,’ a man cried out, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘She burned alive in our bed.’

  A muscle in Timerus’s check twitched at the interruption, but he inclined his head and his voice was grave. ‘Quite. Let us also not forget the human cost this woman’s villainy has wrought upon us all.’

  ‘Whore!’ someone shrieked.

  Timerus uttered something to Bracka, who in turn barked a few words to his lieutenants. The guards began to fan out into the crowd and issue stern warnings to keep quiet while the Grand Regent was speaking. Eremul watched it all with a jaded eye. He’d only been in the job a few months but already Timerus was displaying dictatorial tendencies that would have made Salazar proud.

  He glanced at Melissan again. She displayed no emotion on her bland face. Rather, she looked like she was… waiting for something. That sense of urgency tugged at him again, tugged at a memory that was as slippery as an eel to pin down.

  ‘Not only did Melissan’s schemes taint the aftermath of our glorious liberation,’ Timerus continued, ‘she also turned one of our own against us. A man once thought a hero. Alas, the wizard who sits before you was not satisfied with the great honour bestowed upon him for his role in winning the city’s freedom. No, he desired more. Like all wizards, his lust for power corrupted his soul. And so he hatched a plot with the woman beside him, and together the two of them sought to tear the city apart in their quest for power. What you see before you, ladies and gentlemen, is the true face of villainy.’

  ‘Hang them,’ someone shouted.

  ‘Traitor scum!’ someone else roared. Others joined in and soon the crowd was a seething cauldron of anger and abuse. Timerus allowed the massed citizenry to work themselves into a frenzy before he raised a hand and order was restored.

  ‘These two were foolish to believe they could dupe the Grand Council. They were foolish to believe their nefarious schemes could go unpunished. Let their fates serve as a lesson to any who would do us harm. My colleagues and I serve the White Lady’s will; we carry her light in our hearts, and there is no darkness it will not illuminate when our people are threatened.’

  It was too much. Eremul couldn’t help himself. The snigger burst out of him before he could stop it, snot and rainwater bubbling out of his nose to run down his chin. He had to hand it to Timerus; he’d heard some bullshit in his time but that last part was pure gold, one final nugget of idiocy to take with him to the grave.

  ‘Any last words?’ the Grand Magistrate drawled. If he’d noticed Eremul’s reaction, he gave no indication.

  The Halfmage attempted to clear his throat. There were many things he wanted to say. He wanted to scream his innocence; he wanted to state that this was all a big mistake, that the woman next to him had set him up. But it was too late for that. They had Monique, and if he didn’t play along, they would kill her. It was a strange thing, caring enough about someone to willingly surrender his own life. Perhaps it was true what the cult of the Nameless claimed: that love was man’s greatest weakness.

  Perhaps
it was true, but as he gazed out at the hundreds of pairs of eyes locked on him, all he saw was Monique’s smile. ‘No words,’ he said raggedly, his voice hardly carrying above the rain. ‘Just… remember our agreement.’

  Melissan lifted her head then. ‘I would speak,’ she said, and to Eremul’s ears her voice sounded more musical than he remembered, and all of a sudden that sense of urgency struck him so hard his head felt as if it might explode. He blinked away water as he stared at her, fighting against unseen forces he couldn’t comprehend, couldn’t rationalize except for the persistent sense that something was very wrong.

  ‘I wish to admit my guilt.’

  Timerus raised a narrow eyebrow. ‘I believe your guilt is already established. We have your full confession.’

  ‘I wish to confess to something else.’

  The Grand Regent steepled his fingers in front of his chin. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Forty years ago as you count the passing of time, a ship arrived upon a distant shore. Others had come to this shore before and had been turned away – but this ship had been battered by a storm and would capsize at any moment. I took pity on the crew, allowed it entry to our port. This was my first mistake.’

  As Eremul stared, aghast, Melissan’s skin seemed to ripple.

  ‘My second mistake was to offer the crew shelter while they convalesced. The youngest among us had never before seen a human. They were curious. They listened… and thus were they lost.’

  Like a torrent of water rushing in to fill a burst dam, memories flooded back to Eremul. Memories of a night outside the depository, when a man he thought he knew revealed himself to be something else entirely. With growing horror, the Halfmage watched as Melissan’s face seemed to take on more angular features, her skin whitening, becoming pale.

  ‘When the time came for the humans to return across the sea, two of our kind decided they wished to accompany them. They were eager to see the world we had left behind. I warned them against such recklessness… but in my weakness I relented, eventually allowed them to go. That was my third mistake.’

  All in the crowd stood transfixed by Melissan’s words, caught up in the spell her voice wove.

  ‘My kin were taken to the city you humans named Shadowport and presented to the Magelord Marius. At first they were happy to share their knowledge with him, revealing technologies your kind were still many centuries from discovering. But this human, Marius, grew more demanding. He wanted to learn their every secret. And when they grew weary of his demands, he tortured them. The suffering our kin endured at his hands is unimaginable. And for that… I am guilty.’

  The pain in Melissan’s voice moved Eremul to tears, and as he looked out across the crowd he saw that others were crying too, men and women sobbing in each other’s arms. The ‘woman’ beside him was somehow manipulating the emotions of those present, forcing them to share in her grief, to sympathize with her loss. To his credit or perhaps his eternal damnation, Timerus seemed unmoved. ‘What are you?’ the Grand Regent demanded.

  ‘She’s a Fade,’ Eremul rasped. And he knew it to be true, for he alone had encountered such a being once before. The night Salazar fell. The confrontation with Isaac outside the depository.

  ‘A fehd,’ Melissan corrected him softly. ‘Fade is what we did, two thousand years ago. We gave you much before we left: the tools to build a civilization we hoped would one day mirror the glory of our own. Instead you tyrannized your own people. You killed your gods. You broke the Pattern and in doing so inflicted immeasurable damage on the world. My kind have decided that mankind is poison. A poison that must be cleansed if the land is ever to recover.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Timerus asked, his voice quavering only a little. ‘What… what can I do to offer redress?’

  ‘Redress? The one you called Salazar sought to offer redress, too. Forty thousand human lives for two of my kind.’ Melissan shook her head then, each strand of her fine silver hair dancing like woven moonlight. ‘It was never enough. If he had sacrificed every human on this continent, it would not have been enough.’

  Timerus nodded and then turned to Bracka. ‘Shoot her.’

  Melissan raised her arms, and somehow her hands were no longer bound. In her left hand she carried a cylindrical device made of metal. There was a pregnant pause – and then the world seemed to explode.

  When his vision finally returned, Eremul found himself on his side, suspended awkwardly by his neck from the noose above. His chair had toppled over from the impact of the blast, one wheel spinning wildly in the rain. There was a great roaring in his ears and smoke filled his nostrils. The rope was tight around his neck, choking him, and he stared at the scene before him with eyes bulging from the terrible pressure around his throat.

  The headless corpse of Timerus jerked wildly for a few seconds before toppling backwards. The ruins of the Grand Regent’s head were splattered all over Remy and Bracka – but before either man could react the White Lady’s handmaiden pulled a crystalline sword from… somewhere, and beheaded them both faster than even the Unborn could move, and it was then that Eremul noticed that her eyes weren’t colourless like those of the other handmaidens but rather as black as obsidian, older than the mountains and forests, so ancient that even his own choking expiry struck him as pitifully insignificant.

  How? he wondered dully as the world began to darken.

  ‘My sister disposed of one of those creatures some months back and took her place,’ Melissan said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘The three of us have been hiding out in this city for years. Making preparations.’

  The fehd took a step towards him. Her free hand went to her waist, and when it withdrew it clutched a blade that looked to be made of glass. It hummed through the air, too fast for his failing eyes to follow. The next thing he knew Eremul was in a heap on the platform, the severed noose falling away from his neck as he gasped in air.

  ‘Three of you?’ Eremul rasped, once he had recovered breath enough to speak. The crowd had started rioting, whatever glamour that had enthralled them now shattered. The Crimson Watch were under attack from men brandishing knives and other weapons they must have secreted under their clothes. As the Halfmage took in the chaos, he realized that many of those at the heart of the commotion must be mind-controlled fanatics, strategically positioned among the crowd.

  ‘You’ve met our brother Isaac,’ Melissan said. ‘It was he who arranged to transport our army of thralls – those implanted with our technology – into the city. Isaac is with the First Fleet now. It will arrive soon.’

  There was a loud bang as the first firebomb exploded in the plaza and the stench of burning flesh filled the air.

  Then the screams started.

  ‘Why?’ Eremul whispered above the tumult. ‘Why cut me down? Why spare me?’

  ‘Our brother Isaac commanded that you be unharmed, at least for now. You should know it is but a temporary respite – the humans we massacred at the Celestial Isles were but the first. We will not stop until your entire race is purged from these lands.’

  Homecoming

  They reached the Greenwild just as the late-autumn snow began to fall.

  Kayne wiped frost from his beard with the back of his hand and checked to see how the orphans were faring. Somehow they’d made it to the edge of the great forest without losing a single child, though Tiny Tom had fallen badly ill yesterday afternoon and others were showing signs of sickness. Every one of the orphans was cold and miserable – but against all the odds they were alive.

  Boots crunched on the frosty grass and Brick came to stand beside Kayne. Together they stared into the depths of the Greenwild.

  ‘He’s gone, isn’t he?’ Brick said eventually, breaking the silence. Near a week had passed since their encounter with the gholam, and in that time the youngster had said very little. They’d been busy with seeing the foundlings to safety, true enough, but the old warrior knew there was more to it than that. The way Brick struggled to meet his gaze reminded him of Magnar in years go
ne by.

  Kayne blinked snow from his eyes. ‘Aye,’ he said simply. ‘He’s gone.’

  A gust of wind howled through the trees and Brick shivered. Like Kayne, he’d given his cloak to the orphans to help keep them warm. ‘He saved us all in the end.’

  Kayne nodded.

  Brick turned to watch Corinn as she portioned out the meagre reserves of food that remained. For his part, the boy barely seemed to eat a thing. He’d been thin before, but now he looked gaunt, all skin and bone. ‘Why didn’t tell you tell him the truth?’ the youngster asked.

  Kayne watched his breath mist in the early-morning air, trying to think of the right answer to that question. The honest answer. ‘Sometimes a lie builds until the truth does more harm than good,’ he replied. ‘That and I’m a bloody old fool.’

  ‘He would have followed you to the ends of the earth.’

  Kayne grunted and turned away. With considerable effort he knelt down and pretended to check the ground for tracks. In truth he didn’t have a clue what he was looking for, but the movement helped hide his face from Brick. ‘He was the most loyal friend a man could wish for,’ he said gruffly. ‘Ain’t many like him around these days.’

  He remembered the Wolf’s final words to him. If I ever see you again I’ll kill you. That’s a promise.

  Jerek wouldn’t see him again; he knew that with a certainty. The gholam was a weapon forged by the gods, an unstoppable killing machine that no man could hope to outrun, not down in those forsaken ruins. The fact Jerek had bought them time to flee to safety was astonishing enough. If anyone could’ve managed that, it was the Wolf.

  ‘The children are ready to move. Are you crying?’

  Kayne uttered a silent curse and blinked away tears as Jana Shah Shan suddenly loomed over him. He hadn’t heard her approach. The woman moved as quiet as a ghost.