by Paul Collins
At last Daretor discerned the ragged outline of the Garrical Mountains ahead of them. Had he been in different company he would have cheered at the top of his lungs, but a subtly morbid mood had taken hold of him since his meeting with Jabez Thull, his travelling companion.
The old but strong, lean man seemingly had no past, and he was oddly well-informed. Daretor wondered how, without being one of the rich and powerful, he was even knowledgeable about the movements of the Skelt King’s secret courtesan. Magic, too, featured in his lined and weathered face. Daretor recognised the signs: fine, well-healed clawmarks from a small, seven-fingered hand, a scar below his jaw that was bright blue, an arrogant confidence that intimidated even noblemen, and strength that one would not expect in a man of his age.
Thull had released Daretor from the dungeons in Tol after he had been there for a week. They were unlit, dank and alive with vermin. Most who were sent in never emerged again, and rats were considered a delicacy by those long-term inmates. Daretor had been thrown in there among Skelt’s worst felons on charges of rioting and vandalism, charges that should have earned him no more than a day in the stocks. After a week Jabez Thull had mysteriously appeared and granted him a pardon signed by the Preceptor himself.
It was freedom, but only of a sort. What would the price be? Daretor was a most promising warrior, in fact he had won the Tol marathon fighting carnival for 2127. He had woken in a cell after the celebrations, with a terrible hangover and little memory of his offences.
He had become fettered to … what? A mage? He owed the man a bond and that bond took a strange form. Its discharge was deemed to be helping Thull attack a poorly guarded courtesan’s caravan in the Algon Mountains of Baltoria and stealing a solitary link of chainmail. That had been easy enough, but what now? Thull was old and probably a mage, and old mages often trained young protégés as Adepts. Daretor was not sure if he liked the prospect, but he had decided to follow Thull even after his discharge – without making any commitments.
Daretor cautiously opened his fingers and fed his eyes upon the link, a small, insignificant-looking circle of metal that sat in the palm of his hand and soaked up heat. It was neither gold nor silver, yet it had a sheen, a lustre that should have belonged to a precious metal. Its colour was that of polished silver, yet the highlights shone with an unearthly orange tinge. Under brighter skies he could make out the finest of writing on it, writing that flashed tiny sparkles of rainbow colours. Thull had insisted that he keep guard over the link. It was an odd gesture of trust that still puzzled Daretor.
Again he wondered at its icy touch. Clutched in his hand it should have been warm, yet its coldness chilled his hand as if he were holding a lump of ice.
It had importance, but for the life of him Daretor could not fathom it. ‘A rare, ensorcelled thing, and such things have value,’ he said to himself beneath the roaring wind.
Daretor turned in the saddle to see Thull smiling. Had his ears been keen enough to hear the whispered words above such a wind? Daretor clenched his fist around the link. There was no trusting the man, yet he had trusted Daretor with the link. It could be worn as a ring, Thull had suggested, but Daretor kept it in a pouch. Perhaps it was his right to wear it. The pair of them had equal chances to seize it against six of the King’s guards-men, but Daretor had snatched it from its ornate case first.
The old man’s knowledge had gained the link, so why had he so readily allowed him, Daretor, to keep possession of the enchanted treasure? Perhaps the magic within the link bound it to whoever took it by conquest. Yes, that seemed highly possible! Daretor had seized it, so only he could hold it.
Daretor’s face darkened beneath the cowl that shielded him from the stinging sand. How long would it be before Thull tried to win it for himself by conquest?
The foothills of the Garrical Mountains loomed higher before them. Daretor sighed with relief, then nudged his gelding to a faster walk. The sooner he was out of this accursed place the better. Above the howling wind he heard Thull’s stallion whicker as heels met hide.
The grass, trees and streams of the hills on the south-east of Dragonfrost were a welcome paradise after the bleak, dusty chill of the plain.
The two riders soon stopped to rest their horses. Daretor had been thinking a great deal during the crossing of Dragonfrost, and now he had many questions for his enigmatic partner.
‘We came by this link too easily,’ he said as he brushed down his horse. ‘It has the power to make and break empires?’
Thull smiled. ‘So the legend goes,’ he replied smoothly. ‘But only with the other links of the mailshirt, of course.’
‘If its powers are so great, old one, how did we drive off its guards so easily? I killed one and shouted my war cry, and that was enough to put the rest of them to flight.’
‘Guard it with an army, and it would attract an army,’ said Thull with a dismissive shrug. ‘The Skelt King is nobody’s fool. Those poor yokels knew nothing about what they were carrying.’
‘The Skelt King! They were in the middle of Baltoria when we ambushed them! They were two hundred miles from Skelt.’
‘Royal guile is obviously beyond your comprehension. The King feared the link. He did not know how to tap its power so he tried to hide it far from his own kingdom. Together the links hold power beyond mortal folk’s imaginings.’
‘Aye,’ Daretor said thoughtfully. ‘So do you have knowledge of such arts? Can you tap its power?’
‘It’s not too difficult to understand ancient magic,’ Thull said guardedly, ‘but some things need help to become powerful. Your ring-link is powerful, but remember that it came from a whole mailshirt.’
The man’s voice trailed off, a crackly monotone with a false lilt. Thull reminded Daretor of a lurking spider: ugly and dangerous, passive while lying in wait.
‘You say this one link is so powerful, yet somewhere there is a whole mailshirt,’ he said in wonder. ‘What is the nature of its power?’
‘The fighting skills of many thousands of dead warriors are trapped within its individual links,’ Thull said enticingly.
Thousands! This took Daretor by surprise. ‘Or so your story goes,’ he replied in an unsteady voice.
The mage smiled. ‘Without all the links, the mailshirt’s magic is diminished and the wearer is more vulnerable. Despite this, shall we say, flaw, the mailshirt still has extraordinary, unfathomable powers.’
‘A gleeman’s fable, by the sound of it,’ Daretor said sceptically.
Thull gave a thin laugh. ‘More than a fable, my boy. Come now, let me show you.’ He held out his bony hand for the link.
‘Stay your distance!’ Daretor growled, but he was uncertain, like a cornered and dangerous hound. His hand had dropped to the pommel of his sword.
Thull simply shrugged and sat back on the grass. Daretor could have sworn a bluish light flared about the old man’s lips, but it vanished even as he turned to stare. For a moment Daretor seemed to tumble like a wind-driven rollerbush. He flailed and struggled in a desperate bid to right himself. The feeling was one of wrestling a mass of cold, strong tentacles in pitch darkness.
Daretor awoke exhausted, still standing where he had been. Thull waved languidly to him.
‘Wha – what did you do to me?’
‘You were spoiling for a fight. I merely provided you with a harmless outlet for all that anger.’
‘A dream?’
‘No dream, Daretor. Your enemies were real, but not real as you perceive the word. I could have killed you just now, but I need you as a partner. Without you I might regain the mailshirt, and were I to wear it I would be an impressive opponent even though I am an old man. You are the finest swordsman in southern Skelt, however. That champion’s sash beneath your tunic is proof. Were you to wear the mailshirt you would be invincible, and I have need of an invincible warrior.’
‘For what?’ snapped Daretor, his eyes narrowing to black chips.
‘Uh, uh, one thing at a time.’
Daretor took the link out of his pouch. ‘What proof have you that this link is potent?’ he asked.
Thull pursed his lips, as if making up his mind about something. ‘Try putting the link on your finger, like a ring.’
‘It’s too small.’
‘Try the minor finger of your left hand.’
To Daretor’s surprise, he found that the link fitted. He turned his hand about, staring at it with childlike curiosity. It was almost as if it were a little bigger than it had been. He also noticed that it no longer felt cold, yet there was still an odd tingling sensation about it. Like the grip of death, a voice in his mind warned, but he pushed the thought to one side.
‘Now, have you ever used one of these?’ asked Thull, holding up a sharply pointed dagger with a weighted handle.
Daretor’s hand immediately dropped to the pommel of his sword again, but Thull remained relaxed. ‘A Hamarian throwing knife, a coward’s weapon,’ Daretor said with contempt.
‘A weapon with which you have no skill,’ Thull hedged.
‘A weapon that holds no interest for me.’
‘Which you cannot use.’
‘I can throw a dirk if I have to,’ Daretor said cautiously, wondering if he could dodge Thull’s knife thrust and draw his own sword in the same movement.
Thull turned his back without another word and idly paced out twenty steps. With the knife he carved a jagged circle with a dot at the centre on the trunk of a burbank tree. Returning, he handed the throwing knife haft-first to Daretor.
‘Do me the favour of throwing to hit that dot in the circle,’ he said.
Daretor grunted, hefted the knife, gripped it by the point, then held it high.
‘I’ll be lucky to even hit the trunk. If I miss, your knife might well be lost in those thorn bushes beyond it.’
‘I’ll risk that. Throw.’
Daretor’s arm swished through the air, and the knife thudded into the trunk, quivering dead centre of the target mark. Daretor grinned with triumph, then forced his lips back into a thin, severe line.
‘A fluke,’ he said, but there was a quaver in his voice.
‘So, try again,’ said Thull wearily. He strode away to the tree and brought back the knife.
Daretor drew back his hand and flung the knife. Unerringly it spun to hit the inner mark with a heavy thud.
‘An enchanted knife,’ Daretor said, ‘or perhaps an enchanted target.’
‘Then use your own knife and aim anywhere. Choose your own target.’
Wizardry had always frightened Daretor as a child and now he knew why. When dealing with charmvendors he knew that he was being given something for his money, but he was not sure what else was being taken as well. He reached down and pulled a short hunting knife from his buskin. He threw it with no particular care, aiming at the edge of the circle directly above Thull’s knife. It hit the freshly cut bark exactly as he intended.
‘Are you convinced as yet?’ called Thull as he walked back with the two knives.
‘One more try.’
Daretor slipped the link from his finger as Thull approached. Without a word he took both knives from Thull and flung the mage’s at the target. It missed the tree completely and vanished into the thorn bushes.
Thull winced, then smiled broadly as he caught sight of Daretor’s ringless finger. ‘A cheap lesson, but of little consequence. There is no enchantment in the tree. Only the link has the power.’
As Daretor sheathed his own knife Thull seemed to mutter something and a line of blue flashed from his mouth and streaked into the thorn bushes. It snapped back, wrapped around the knife. The mage removed the weapon from between his teeth, bowed and sheathed it.
‘That link belongs to a mailshirt, remember that. Ours was not the only ambush planned in the Algon Mountains. There were a dozen men lying in wait further along. Had they seized the link, by now it would be on its way to the house of Fa’red, a merchant-mage in D’loom. He has the whole mailshirt.’
‘This man must be powerful to have such a thing.’
‘Pah. Word has it that he sacked a simple shrine in Hamatriol. The mailshirt had been hidden there and guarded by generations of monks.’
‘Even so.’ Daretor knew that monks were said to be superb fighters. They had to be to fend off the hill tribes. But he would get no further with this line of enquiry from his wily companion. He felt his heart pumping with excitement. ‘So we are going to D’loom.’
‘Of course. The mailshirt is there, and we want the mailshirt.’
‘But surely this Fa’red’s house will be well guarded! If the mailshirt is such a prize – well, I would employ two dozen mercenaries if I were he.’
‘He does.’
‘Then why do you have just me?’
‘Had I not met you when I did, I may well have sought the services of a score of mercenaries myself. However, he who travels with dogs risks fleas. They may have rallied against me, what with the temptation of the mailshirt. Powerful as I am, I am not invincible.’
‘In a way I am heartened to hear that.’
Thull gave Daretor what might have been an imploring look, had it been the face of anyone else. ‘I needed someone I could trust,’ he said simperingly, ‘because in a sense I shall become your follower. The legend goes that he who follows the wearer of the mailshirt is doubly blessed. There is a certain amount of protection to be gained from being the shadow of someone greater – if you gather my meaning.’
‘So when the mailshirt is complete with this missing link, it will make its wearer invulnerable?’
Thull clapped Daretor on the shoulder and laughed. ‘Very nearly so, my boy. The main danger is always in over-confidence.’
‘Is that why the King had the link guarded by only a half-dozen lackeys who ran almost as soon as we challenged them?’
‘No,’ Thull said. ‘As I have explained, a strongly guarded treasure would attract far more attention, and thus greater adversaries than us. His half-dozen men were an unobtrusive, adequate escort for a courtesan.’
If he is lying, at least he is consistent, Daretor decided. Thull began collecting brushwood for kindling. While he went about his business, Daretor sat and pondered what he had learned. Night was not far off, and the sharp wailing of a distant dire fox seemed to pour cold melancholy over him. Daretor huddled beneath his trail cloak and wished that Thull would hurry with the fire.
He now knew Jabez Thull for what he was: a powerful mage and probably a high Adept. If the man had ever taken any vows on the benign use of enchantment, he had certainly abandoned them long ago. Daretor fancied that he could feel something grasping deep within his head as he rode with Thull, yet for all those suspicions the man had behaved well so far.
Daretor knew little of hedgerow and medical magic, and nothing of the darker enchantments or cold sciences. During the wartime mountain battles in Hamaria he had heard veteran warriors telling lurid tales around campfires on the cold nights, but everyone knew that much of what veterans said was lies.
Thull returned and made a pile of brushwood and sticks. He muttered a word in a foreign tongue and snapped his fingers. A coil of smoke emerged from within the pile. He then intoned something else unintelligible and a little breeze fanned the hidden spark into a comforting blaze.
Daretor began to cheer up. Two days of travel would take them through the Garrical Mountains that shielded subtropical D’loom from the chill winds of Dragonfrost. He preferred civilisation to these barren, dangerous waste -lands. Only a crazed hermit would wish otherwise, yet … yet once they reached their destination, Thull would be directing his fate again.
Ancient D’loom had once been a trade centre whose markets were piled high with lavish exotica, yet now its splendour was fading. The once thriving seaport’s jetties lurched precariously to and fro as the waves lapped past their stanchions, and derricks with rusty iron bindings stood like silent sentinels over the mostly deserted shipping berths.
The proud and colourfully dyed late
en sails of a few outriggers were furled, their spars like skeletal limbs rocking with the incoming tide. Wharfjacks huddled in groups, their faces weatherworn and uncaring. The gulls, wheeling against the azure sky, screeched mournfully for scraps that were seldom there.
The languid wind that blew in across the harbour carried with it more than the tang of salt air, but if either Daretor or Thull noticed the wafting reek of raw sewage and decaying seaweed, neither showed it. Besides, the warm air also carried the enticing aroma of spice-scented mead and smoke from an open fire roasting the crackling on a pig. Daretor tried to relax after the long and difficult journey, but he was edgy with impatience. The trip across the accursed Dragonfrost had sapped any enthusiasm he had for what was becoming a tiresome and dangerous adventure.
Thull had taken them directly to a tavern and the heat from the fire was oppressive in the subtropical air. ‘What am I to do here?’ he asked Thull yet again.
Thull quaffed the last of his cold mead and slammed the tankard upon the table for service. ‘A decade of brigand raids from the islands has squeezed off most of the shipping that once made D’loom rich. It is no longer a profitable port of call for the merchant ships. Yes?’
Daretor nodded silently in agreement. It was common knowledge that there were more brigands plundering along the Skelt Coast than anywhere in the known world. The myriad archipelagos that dotted the coast proved to be a safe haven from the dwindling fleet of the King’s sloops free to patrol this part of his realm. The King was more interested in seizing islands that were easy targets than those where the brigand bases were to be found. The losses to merchants had become so severe that the once bountiful trade was now carried via camel caravans overland. The camels suffered greatly on these inland treks, for the terrain of Skelt rose very, very sharply from the coast, and kept on rising right up into the clouds. Most of Skelt was a series of high plateaus and even higher mountains. Its deserts were as dry as any desert might be expected to be, but were freezing in spite of being close to the equator. Thousands of camels died, and their bodies were left to lie where they fell, becoming frozen and mummified within days. Trade faltered, then declined.
