by David Benem
“War,” she said again. “As profound a tragedy as anyone could witness.”
Drenj crouched low beside her. “Odd words from an assassin,” he said, his voice wielding an edge.
Fencress shifted on her elbows. She looked to the Khaldisian and Paddyn nearby. “Ever the pious one, the one who claims his hands have never been sullied by the dark work?”
Drenj seemed not to hear, his dark gaze trained upon the combat. Men screamed and orders were shouted in the distance. Steel hissed and rang. “An assassin calls war a tragedy?” he said after a moment. He rubbed eyes moist with sweat and perhaps a few fallen tears, smearing a black mess across his sunken cheeks. “You permit yourself to judge the righteousness of the means of men’s deaths?”
“Women die too, you know,” Fencress said, mouth curling to a smirk. Drenj was troubled, she knew—his haggard, stained face told of despair and little else. If this were deadman’s dice, he’d be the dead man. “The tragedy of war, though,” she said, “is in its absolute stupidity, the fact that so much death happens at the same time and in the same place and for reasons not shared by those doing the killing. You think any of those poor sods out there are throwing around their steel for the glory of Rune? For the glory of Rune’s dead king? Nonsense. They’re doing it because they’re told to and nothing more than that. Sounds like no reason at all, if you ask me.”
Drenj sniffled. “When do we ever get to choose our reasons for dying, Fencress? A knife in the back or a spill from a horse is no choice. Death by red fever is no choice, nor is death by…” he said, his voice cracking, “some kind of plague.”
Fencress tucked a stray strand of black hair back within her leather cowl, knowing the Khaldisian remained troubled by Karnag’s words. “Death finds us all and we have little or no choice as to when or how,” she said, meaning the words as some sort of comfort. “But I wasn’t talking about dying. I was talking about killing.”
“And you believe there’s a choice in that?” asked Drenj, eyelids drooping with sadness. “That people can choose why and when they are driven to such acts, and that some choices are better than others?”
“I do,” she said, with conviction. “Coin is always a better cause for me than country. My cause is ever my own. Show me a man whose cause is anything other than a selfish thing and I’ll show you a damned fool. When I kill, it’s for my own reasons, for my own cause.”
“I’d say there’s no choice at all. Killing is the very worst of things. Why would anyone choose to do that? I’d say there are only two reasons that’d compel a person to take the life of another: desperation and depravity.”
Fencress looked to the Khaldisian, her eyes narrowing to a squint. “Now who’s the one standing in judgment of others, Drenj? I for one will never be judged by the likes of you or any other man for that matter. My conscience is clear.”
Drenj held her gaze but said nothing.
Fencress stared again to the battlefield. “Fools,” she said, meaning the word as much for Drenj as the soldiers below. “Bloody fools.”
“You’re not unlike him, you know.”
Him.
Karnag.
Fencress peeked back above her shoulder, back to where Karnag… rested or meditated or did whatever it was he did.
Paddyn shifted closer. “What’s he doing, Fencress?” he said, the words whistling through the space left by his missing tooth.
Fencress scowled. “Probably making ready to kill someone.”
Evening had long ago given way to night. Fencress shook her thin blanket and shifted upon the lumpy ground. After a moment she lay still, sucking in steamy breaths while listening to the clash of distant combat broken only by Paddyn’s clumsy snore.
She turned to where Karnag had bedded down and saw only a bundle of rags. He—and Gravemaker—were not to be found.
She tugged gloves upon her hands and flexed her fingers. She drew her twin swords closer, even though they’d already been within a comfortable arm’s reach. It was too dark, too quiet, too unsafe. Even here at their hilltop encampment far enough from the fighting things seemed… dangerous.
She cursed and pressed herself to a seat. She’d not slept much this night, nor did she reckon she would in the few remaining hours before dawn. Too many unknown perils lurked about and she didn’t fancy the notion of being caught unawares.
She needed to case her surroundings and get a clearer idea of what and where those dangers were.
And of those, perhaps Karnag most of all.
She withdrew from her makeshift bed and pulled on boots, cloak and cowl. She cinched the belt holding her scabbards, slipped the blades into place, and widened her eyes to the night.
She tiptoed through their small camp, about the doused fire pit and between the dozing forms of Drenj and Paddyn. She paused for a moment, eyes upon them. She’d heard the Khaldisian weeping earlier and knew the young man had broken. It troubled her, but not enough to sway her intentions. She’d pushed too large a wager to the table’s center to quit the game now. She’d tied her chances to Karnag and needed to see things through.
She came to the hilltop’s crest. Karnag had chosen this spot—indeed, he’d insisted upon it. “This is the place,” he’d said. “An old and sacred place, and one perfect for my purpose.”
She’d shrugged off the words at the time, but now reckoned it offered a fine view of the battlefront, the Sullen Sea just east of it, and—when she squinted—the faint glow of Riverweave a few leagues to the north.
A fine view of all the killing.
The size of the gathered forces was staggering. Many thousands occupied the broad swath of land below, Rune’s soldiers behind trenches and wooden fortifications and the bulk of the Arranese encamped a mile or so to the south. Moonlight played upon the field between, across ruined armor and rivers of blood and the wreckage of men and beasts, and caused it all to twinkle like some deranged fairytale sky.
Fencress grimaced and found a flask she’d salvaged from an abandoned supply cart. She twisted off the cap and sucked down a swallow. It wasn’t good whiskey—she’d not had that since Ironmoor—but it’d dull the edges and shove some courage in her heart.
She thought about that for an instant. She wasn’t normally the sort to need drink for bravery. But then things were anything but normal now.
She took another sour pull and examined the downward slope and the land beyond. Tangles of bodies, warriors of both Rune and Arranan, piled about. There was movement, too. Occasional Arranese war parties ranged across the field, as did a handful of scouts from Rune. In the midst of it all struggled groaning bastards with missing limbs or broken parts, toiling as though their sad efforts would buy them another meaningful day in this hell.
“Bloody fools,” she whispered.
But as awful as it all was, as wretched and as wound-filled, there was something worse. Fencress felt it like the gnaw of sickness in her belly.
Somewhere Karnag stood. Somewhere he raged. Somewhere he killed.
But where?
She looked to the sea and then southward, to the Arranese army and the darkened land beyond. She wagered they weren’t terribly far—thirty leagues at most—from where they’d found Karnag weeks before. That place where he’d killed countless Arranese and made some sort of monument from their bloody bits.
Could he be doing that again?
She shuddered and took another sip of whiskey. She wondered where all this was headed, to what fortune, or misfortune, chance would take them. She knew what she hoped for but worried the odds of changing or saving Karnag became slimmer by the moment.
She took a few skulking steps down the hillside, keen eyes trying to take in those things she’d not seen already. She scanned the Arranese war parties, all groups of seven riding in wedged bunches. One, though, had scattered and rode about haphazardly. It had now but six riders, all those hoisting weapons and torches.
She knew what troubled them.
Karnag.
She watche
d the scene play out, the Arranese horsemen wheeling, searching. She heard their distant, accented words. Words of confusion. Words of fear.
And she saw them fall.
One by one they fell.
More shouting on the air, this in a gravelly voice familiar to her. Karnag’s voice.
All but one fell. That last rider fled to the Arranese encampment and Fencress swore she could hear the echo of Karnag’s laughter chasing him down.
She sank to the scratchy weeds of the hillside and drew her twin swords. These were dangers she could not understand. Chaos swirled about her and chance seemed more random than ever.
There seemed no safe bet.
She tightened her cowl and tried to follow Karnag’s dark shadow across the plain. She thought she saw him come near a scout from Rune and heard the soldier shout. Then a squelch, a pained moan, and silence.
She sheathed one of her swords and grabbed the flask once more. Karnag seemed to desire more than wanton murder. He had a plan, she knew.
She took a long pull of the rotgut and wondered about the killer’s motives.
Her friend’s motives, she reminded herself.
His strange talk had troubled her and thus she’d tried closing her ears to it. But sorting over it now she knew he’d been speaking of things both long ago and yet to come. Histories and prophecies mingled in his mouth. Threats against this ‘Thaydorne’ and Arranan’s Spider King, names spoken together as though one and the same.
Another awful laugh sounded. This one not far away.
She stared into the night, down the slope of the hill and toward the battlefield. She spied him at the hill’s base, an imposing, fearsome figure clutching a bulging sack. He strode up the incline, shouldering the sack and shaking a wet mess from the massive sword gripped in his hand.
Closer he came, nearer to Fencress. The moonlight caught his face, his countenance pale and cut by a grin. It struck her as little different than a bleached skull, all bare bones and hollow eyes and toothy smile.
She gripped the flask and took another swallow. She gave half a thought to slinking back into her bedroll but knew Karnag had spotted her by now. She didn’t want to show more fear than she knew he already perceived.
He came near and tossed the large sack to the earth. It landed with a thump, shifted then settled. Karnag paused and seemed to admire it, his sick smile widening all the more.
Fencress looked to him, whiskey warming her head and stoking an ill-tempered feeling within. “You’ve brought me a birthday present? How kind. It was only a day or two ago, I think.” Her words fell without humor, though she suspected that mattered not with Karnag. The only laughter he knew now was born of cruelty.
He dropped to a seat beside the sack. “Birthday?” he asked with what sounded utter confusion. His head seemed to wrestle with the notion but then he shook his mess of fraying black braids. “I’ve brought no gifts. I’ve brought invitations.”
“Ah,” Fencress said. “You’re throwing me a party, then?” It was the sort of line that, months before, might have drawn a slight smirk to Karnag’s lips. Fencress worried, though, the Karnag she’d known then was all but gone.
Karnag looked to the bloodied plain below, to that great mass of dead and dying, and the discomforting smile returned to his face. “Invitations…”
Fencress stared blankly.
“Yes,” Karnag said, “indeed these are invitations. They are invitations for my brother. With each I send him a new request to parley, and the tongue of our talk shall be violence. Behold…” He pulled apart the strings binding his sack and rummaged within. His hands returned with a severed head, a face of angled features with olive skin slack upon it. Blood dripped and slopped into Karnag’s lap.
Fencress grimaced. “An Arranese warrior,” she said flatly. “Or at least the topmost part of him. Forgive me, Karnag, but if severed heads are serving as your invitations I don’t wager many will want to attend this party.”
Karnag turned the head’s face toward his own and seemed to study its eyes. “I’ve learned the dead hold secrets, secrets they reveal only to those who’ve discovered how to ask for them.”
Fencress sucked down the last mouthful of whiskey, the burn bothering her not at all. “What secrets are those, Karnag?”
Karnag’s eyes fluttered for a moment. Fencress couldn’t be sure but she thought she saw a string of dark shadows—an inky black darker than the night about them—stretch from the disembodied head toward Karnag and he appeared to inhale the eddies from the air. It seemed no different from what she’d seen in that field of dead men and silent crows just days before.
Karnag grinned again. “The secrets are many.”
She looked to him, silent, and fear filled her heart.
“This man,” said Karnag, staring at the severed head, “was Hashaan. He was a warrior and breaker of horses of some renown among his people. He served as one of the Spider King’s most trusted commanders. His death will trouble Thaydorne and Thaydorne will send soldiers to seek out his killer and the killer of the other corpses I’ve left upon the field this night. And when those who seek out the killer suffer death themselves, my brother will seek the killer himself. Thus, the headless corpses, and the heads themselves, serve as my invitations. He will come to me.”
Fencress swallowed, wishing she had a few more sips of whiskey in her flask. “And so that’s why you’ve come here.”
Karnag lowered the head and looked to her. “I’ve come for Thaydorne.”
“Thaydorne,” Fencress said. “Arranan’s Spider King.”
“The same. I come to destroy him. He seeks to steal something from me. He thinks he commands the ending of things but has yet to understand death is mine alone to wield.” He glanced northward. “Father need choose but one son.”
“Father?”
Karnag seemed not to hear and dug again into his sack of human parts. His hands emerged with another severed head. This, it seemed, was that of a soldier of Rune, the pale countenance still stuffed within the steel casing of its battered helmet. “And this was Elmin Pine, son of a fisherman from a village near the Waters of World’s End. He…” Karnag looked upward toward the night. “He will be a beginning.”
Fencress tugged tight the gloves upon her hands. Her hopes for answers were bleeding away though still the question found her mouth. “Karnag, what is happening? Where does this path lead you?”
Karnag looked to her, empty eyes reflecting the moonlight like a pair of distant ghosts. “To the end.”
She sat for a time longer, waiting for more words to come, but they did not. Instead Karnag’s gaze returned to the severed head in his hands. He mumbled words Fencress neither understood nor cared to. He tossed aside the head then arose, looking back toward the battlefield.
Fencress stood also, stared to Karnag, then turned her back to her friend. She heard him walk away, stomping back down the hill’s slope with a low, disconcerting laugh. After a moment she strode back to her bedroll.
Sleep did not come easy.
“Thaydorne,” Karnag said with a strange chuckle from across the morning campfire. He tore dirty teeth through salted pork then laughed again. “Thaydorne was nothing before that battle…” He twisted about to regard the war raging on the plain behind him, the many soldiers of Arranan and Rune clashing almost a mile away. “Nothing. A mercenary, a strongman. But he was no slayer.”
Fencress gnawed at her chunk of pork, the meat sour in her mouth. Breakfast with Karnag was no longer a pleasant thing—his company well worse than the sour pork—and she wagered it’d only grow more horrible.
“He was never worthy of the gifts Illienne imparted,” Karnag continued. “Had he not curried her favor with deeds at Cirak—simple deeds any soldier could have performed—he’d never have been among the chosen. His brother Vellinor was twice his measure!” He shook his frayed braids. “I gave Illienne my counsel, but she did not listen. Perhaps… Perhaps that is why she granted wisdom to me. Perhaps she thought
I’d not seen the truth of things. But I did, and now I know that truth more clearly than ever…”
Fencress stopped chewing and looked to Drenj and Paddyn. The young men huddled far from the fire, wide eyes upon Karnag.
“Thaydorne!” Karnag said with another odd laugh. “Illienne instructed that his role in the last battle had been foretold, that it would be Thaydorne who’d deliver the decisive blow against Yrghul. Thaydorne’s strike proved to be the last though it could have come from anyone, from any blade. Yrghul was weak, broken. He was all but defeated when Thaydorne came upon him. Thaydorne was no slayer. His was no more than the fall of an executioner’s axe. He is nothing like…” He turned to stare upon the battlefield, to the soldiers of both armies clashing upon it.
Fencress began chewing again then swallowed dry meat into her dry throat. “Nothing like what?”
Karnag looked to her, dead eyes displaying what seemed a hint of surprise. “Nothing like me. I have become the greatest slayer the heavens have ever witnessed. I have become death, and the days to come will chronicle my triumph. Thaydorne will fall, and he will fall by my hand.”
21
THE WORST OF TREASON
“Prefect Gamghast Graystone!” announced the armored bailiff, voice booming through the dusty, column-lined chamber. He thrust his halberd upward, its steel reflecting the gleam of many torches illuminating the courtroom. “Proceed to the chair!”
“If I must,” Gamghast spat, shifting painfully upon his seat at the chamber’s rear. He grabbed his staff and looked to Prefect Borel and the dozens of acolytes about him. He patted his robes and felt both the folded note he’d kept and the vial of quicksilver he’d secured from the Sanctum’s apothecary. “This will not be our ending, my friends,” he whispered, then pressed against his staff to stand.
“I pray you’re right,” said Borel, jowls quivering.
“This way, Prefect,” barked the bailiff. He gestured down the length of faded carpet laid between rows of scattered dignitaries and stretching toward the bench of the Magistrate Examiners.
