Brothers of the Knife

by Dan Rabarts

  Finding his balance, Akmenos ran, legs pumping as fast as they would pump, breath wheezing, heart thumping. He was definitely built more for comfort, but the hissing behind him said that now was a time for speed. He raced down the hill, heedless of the dangers ahead, afraid every step may be his last.

  The night filled with rushing wind, and the sky disappeared. Two great wings, dark sails with tattered edges, flexed against the treeline. Akmenos nearly seized up in raw terror, but the same instincts that told him when an egg was poached to perfection told him that if he stopped now, he would be nicely fried.

  “Gaaaah!” he hollered and, covering his face with his hands, bolted faster than a rat dropped into a hot pan.

  There was a chink of breaking glass, and the air behind him erupted in flames.

  Akmenos jumped, hit the incline on his arms, bounced once, flipped tail over heels as the blast lifted him and threw him down a bank. Breath exploded from his lungs and he skidded on slick humus, a rotten patina of moss, leaves, and pine needles. Akmenos had miraculously escaped the conflagration, only to end up sliding down the gorge, towards the sheer drop into the river. If he threw his head back and dragged himself to a stop by burying his horns in the earth…

  But then the earth fell away.

  Burning above, competing with cold emptiness and a sharp stop below. Akmenos screamed and shut his eyes. The dashing rocks raced towards him. He was just a cook, by the blood of the oath! Yet the warlocks had unleashed some sort of dragonkin upon him. His own brothers, probably. It wouldn’t do to drag him back to the castle just so he could sit there denying his guilt, no. Better he die, so his pleas of innocence might die with him.

  Moments later, when he still hadn’t been smashed to a bloody pulp on the rocks, he risked opening his eyes, and his stomach dropped. The riverbed was falling away. He was falling up. Had he triggered his cantrip again? That would’ve taken a far more finely-honed instinct for battle than he possessed. He could get a lime soufflé to rise, but using his meagre magical skills to save himself from a brutal death in a moment of crisis, without even realising he’d done it, was a touch beyond him.

  Self-admonitions thus resolved, Akmenos returned to the rather pressing matter of how, exactly, he was still airborne. Above him stretched dark, tattered wings, pumping languidly higher.

  The monster had him around the waist and was ascending. He might’ve wet himself right then, just a dribble, but only because it had been quite some time since his last comfort stop. He might’ve also vomited a little bit, but that was probably just a spot of bad chicken from lunch. He hadn’t cooked it himself after all, and you never could be sure with chicken you didn’t cook yourself. Even in mortal peril, his first thought was of food. A good cook is never far from his tools, however. He reached inside his trusty apron, groped for one of many the bone hilts pressed to his belly by his captor’s thick claws. With a tug, he extracted the first knife he could find and jabbed upwards.

  With a screech, the beast’s talons flew open and Akmenos was falling, tumbling end over end, the carving knife gripped in his hand like a victor’s trophy, trailing black fluid as he fell. Akmenos laughed out loud, the laugh of a winner, of a madman. For the first time in years, his mind was perfectly clear. He was dropping towards certain death, but he had a plan. He thought he heard the beast scream something, a word garbled by rage and rushing air, but it sounded an awful lot like: “Fool!”

  Despite the curiosity of this particular choice of word, Akmenos chose to ignore it in case he was distracted from his purpose, which would be terminally detrimental to his chances of survival. The river gorge raced up, and Akmenos invoked the spell. The breeze caught his suddenly weightless body and swept it down the gorge. Maybe not flying, but better than running, and infinitely better than falling. He rolled onto his back and watched for the beast’s next attack. Had his assailant ever observed Akmenos in the process of butchering a whole pig, it would know to keep its distance.

  But it didn’t come again, and soon enough, his spell dwindled. He sheathed his knife before gravity deposited him into the racing river. Sputtering, he dragged himself onto the bank and crawled under an overhang. He curled up and shivered, feeling set upon and dreadfully sorry for himself. Mind you, he was alive, which was an acceptable outcome given the evening’s dire turn. In the morning he would start down what was bound to be a long and dangerous path to setting this wrong to rights—or making up a fake name and starting a new life elsewhere. That might be fun, too. First up, he would need to figure out how to make a decent cup of tea out here in the middle of nowhere.

  Chapter Four

  Shambra crouched on the ledge, stiff and sore, as day broke. The knife wound in his belly burned, warning of the infection to come. He could barely walk like this, much less fly. Damn that horned fool.

  Gingerly, he peeled away the leaf poultice he’d crushed into the wound the night before. The leaves were black with dried blood, and his leathery skin seethed. Shambra hissed with the pain. He needed to get off this mountainside and resume the hunt, but Akmenos could be miles away by now—if he’d survived the fall. The valley still smoked and smouldered in places, from last night’s blaze. It would’ve driven back Rathrax’s soldiers and hounds, but the warlocks may yet have found a way to send someone after the vagrant cook. Shambra had to reach him first.

  The air ghosted around him, a smoky image cloaked in darkness coalescing in the morning light. Shambra grimaced.

  “Is it done? Do you have him?”

  He let his lip curl back, and smoke spool from his wide nostrils, narrowing his reptilian eyes to slits. “No. But I will track him down, never fear.”

  “Fool,” the vision spat, “I never should have trusted you with a quest of such importance. If he falls into the wrong hands, all our work will be undone.”

  “He stabbed me!” Shambra retorted, gesturing to his ugly belly wound. “I was bleeding. I would’ve fallen, and we both would’ve died.”

  “Enough excuses. Find him.”

  “Can you send aid? I fear I am no longer at the peak of my strength.”

  The figure huffed. “This will be remembered, Shambra.” Then it was gone, curls of mist dissipating on the morning breeze.

  Shambra leaned back, drawing deep painful breaths, and rifled through his pack for more medicinal herbs and something to eat. He had a long day ahead, and no idea how he would find Akmenos now. Hopefully the fool would continue to move out in the open, so Shambra might have a chance of reaching him before the warlocks did.

  ~

  “Any word?” Arah asked. She delicately replaced her teacup in its saucer and looked up at Fraag, her son. Her claws were manicured to a smooth shine, her long horns curling around her brow and sweeping down to frame her face, her coppery eyes as piercing as the twin ceremonial daggers on her hips. She embraced the bardic imaginings of her, as a figure of beauty and despair glaring down on the world from atop her pedestal. At her word, any citizen would kneel and spill their own blood for her. She didn’t actually drink the blood—what a ghastly suggestion—but the ranks of the Coven could swallow a soul as readily as the most powerful undead, in their pursuit of the emperor’s wishes.

  “Not yet,” Fraag grumbled. “The Coven have worked through the night. They assure us they’ll locate Akmenos by nightfall.”

  “So says the Coven. What of Grebbeth? How go his efforts?”

  “Grebbeth is Grebbeth. What he says and what he does may be two different things.”

  “Indeed. Send me Hrodok,” she said, by way of dismissal.

  Fraag nodded stiffly and departed, lifting his armoured tail so it might not scrape the floor and raise his mother’s ire.

  Arah turned back to her contemplation of the smoking dawn. She lifted her teacup in her sweet, savage fingers and sipped the brew. The tea was good, but not as good as that to which she, as Head Seeress of the Coven and wife of the Cursemaster, was accustomed. There were benefits to having a son on the kitchen staff. And now
he was gone, accused of murder, caught up in something presumably more diabolical than it appeared on the surface. Had Arah been behind such a plot it would have been just that—apparently straightforward, but infinitely twisted within.

  A tail scraped across the floor, and she turned with a frown.

  “Lift your tail in the presence of your matriarch.”

  “Good morning, Mother.” Hrodok was tall and thin, handsome yet cast with a fearsome aura. Their third-eldest son reminded Arah of his father in his younger days, although somewhat more brooding. Hrodok was a schemer, which served him well in the Coven. There always seemed to be blood under his claws, which Arah found endearing in her assassins, but less so in her progeny. He bowed slightly, lifting his tail obediently, though a ghost of a sneer lit his lips. “You summoned me, Mother?”

  Arah gave him a hard look, the one they both knew from long experience indicated she didn’t like his tone of voice. “This is your only warning, child of my blood. Should any ill befall Akmenos, I shall hold you personally responsible. Do you understand?”

  Hrodok’s eyes flared, and his tail swept dangerously. “It was not I who poisoned the Landarian emissary.”

  “Nor was it Akmenos. The lad doesn’t have the gumption for such a thing. If he had, he would’ve been long gone before the pathetic elf took his first bite. Furthermore, I saw him last night when he looked in on the scene of the murder, and there was no guilt in his eyes. Do what you must to find him and return him safely. Work Grebbeth until he bleeds, if blood is what is needed. I will take care of the Coven, and the Landarians. But if you think this is some convenient opportunity to please the Cursemasters or the Emperor, and to up your stake in the dynasty, think again. If Akmenos dies, by any means, then so shall you. Understood?” She clinked her teacup down and fixed her coppery gaze upon him until he dropped his eyes.

  “Indeed, Mother.” Hrodok nodded curtly, shoulders straining against his thick black tunic.

  “Very well. Dismissed.”

  The warlock stalked from the sunchamber, his tail lightly scraping the floor as he left. Arah let it slide. From a lesser subject, it might have meant execution, but this was her son. She might not love him deep in her heart, but he occupied a soft spot in her liver, at the very least. And for all his machinations, it only took a minor threat of bloody retribution to keep him in line. For ambition to be worth anything, one must be alive to enjoy it.

  Arah sipped, frowning. It was going to be a long day. She would need better tea than this.

  ~

  Grebbeth startled as the door to the scrying chamber slammed open and Hrodok stormed across the sanctum, with Fraag in tow. “Close those curtains!” Hrodok barked. “Bar the door!” Grebbeth stumbled to obey, as Fraag secured the door behind them, while Hrodok strode to the sideboard and poured a dram of firewater. The three brothers, three of six, regarded each other across the glowing embers of the firepit, the potential of the coming hours and days stretching out dangerously between them. They stood on a precipice, and they might fall, or fly, together. Or they might just fall.

  “So, things went well with Mother, then?” Grebbeth ventured. Such needling would surely draw his brother’s ire, but otherwise Hrodok was wont to brood until he burst, which was often worse than simply bearing the brunt of his rage at the outset.

  “What luck have you had in scrying him?” Hrodok demanded.

  “None yet,” Grebbeth replied. “He isn’t on the roads, nor any path I could find. Mind you, there’s been only me to look, and a lot of ground out there for the scrying, and—”

  “Enough!” Hrodok roared. “Forget the roads. He must be on the river. You’ve checked the river, right?”

  “Aah…” Grebbeth paled, then ducked as a bolt of dark flame belched from Hrodok’s outstretched palm. Grebbeth peeked up through smoke and singed eyebrows, cowering.

  “Fool,” Hrodok snarled. “How is it we were spawned from the same brood? Search the river. If we don’t find him before the Coven, I’ll be holding you both responsible.”

  “Before the Coven?” Grebbeth asked. “I thought we were the Coven.”

  “We are, and we’re not.” Hrodok paced the sanctum, stroking his thin sharp goatee. “Things have changed. Accordingly, so too must our design.”

  “Will he still take the fall for that dead elf?” Grebbeth rubbed his hands together.

  “Just find him. Fraag, assemble a company of guards to bring him back, unharmed.”

  “Really?” Grebbeth whined. “Unharmed? Can’t we hurt him just a little bit?”

  Grebbeth didn’t duck in time and slammed into the wall with a burning patch in the middle of his chest. He coughed and groaned, clutching his smoking tunic.

  “He’s our brother, moron. We’re meant to look out for him.”

  “But…you said…”

  “Things have changed. Now, get to work. I have matters to attend to.” Hrodok strode from the sanctum, slamming the heavy door behind him.

  “Does he always have to slam the door?” Grebbeth asked, shaking his head.

  “Mother’s put the acid on him to bring Akmenos home safe. Now, you’d better get on with it before he really gets mad.”

  Fraag left Grebbeth alone with the tomes laid out around the smoke font. Grebbeth poured himself a slug of fiery liquor and swallowed it, since it was a universal truth that it was always late enough for a drink somewhere. Given they’d not yet slept and breakfast hadn’t been conveniently delivered to their sanctum—which Grebbeth blamed squarely on Akmenos, since he was the kitchen bitch, after all—it was therefore still the night before, so he was well within his rights to keep on drinking. Anyway, it helped him think, and for all that Hrodok treated his brothers as imbeciles, he had given Grebbeth a lot to think about.

  ~

  Arah’s footsteps echoed hollowly against the sepulchre’s stone guardians, glaring statues of dead heroes who stood sentry over the hall, grim reminders that all hornung, however great, must surely surrender to the dark fires eventually. Shafts of sunlight stabbed through the haze. The smoke and the stink from last night’s forest fire filled the castle. The staff would be busy for weeks wiping up soot.

  Bane sat at the mighty altar at the sepulchre’s west end, poring over a massive tome laid open before him. His horns were long and twisted, his face a gnarled mass of wrinkles and coarse beard. The claws on the ends of his muscular arms were yellowed but polished smooth. “You disturb me,” Bane rumbled, barely glancing up.

  “You gave up your right to peace from me when you turned your key in my lock,” Arah chided him, striding up the stone steps. “It is the yield of your spawn out there, and you know as well as I that he is not guilty, for all Skerrl’s accusations.”

  “The Coven has spoken.”

  “Damn the Coven.” Arah flicked the book closed. “The Coven is supposed to be a bastion of magical supremacy that underpins the power of the Hornung Empire, and you, apparently, are its head. Yet it has become little more than Rathrax’s puppet, a hive of fawning, self-serving marionettes who use their position to make their own lives more comfortable. Akmenos is your son. Despite what you may think, you have a responsibility to him. And I can make your life hell for far longer than the Coven ever could.”

  Bane turned his brassy gaze on her. “What, exactly, do you expect of me? The facts would appear quite clear.”

  “What facts? An elf died at the emperor’s feasting table, and the chef, under mortal duress, pointed his finger at our son, who saw the sense in fleeing before he was gutted for the sake of satisfying the Landarian retinue? Meanwhile the real killer watches Castle Kriikan dissolve into anarchy, watches the Alliance between Hornung and Landaria crumble, watches and laughs as the eyes of the Warlocks are turned away from every other matter to pursue a poor wretch into the mountains. Akmenos is no assassin. Tell me you honestly believe your youngest son, who has not a violent bone in his body, might be behind this?”

  Bane’s jaw stiffened. “He ran. He made his g
uilt plain.”

  “No, he made it plain that he is sensible. I saw him that night, saw his face, and there was not a whit of guilt about him. Think, Bane. Who would have the most to gain from a schism between Hornung and Landaria? What benefit in impugning the name of a lowly kitchen cook, other than for the sake of impugning the name of his family, of his father. This isn’t just a blow against Rathrax, it is a blow against you, and by association the Coven. If the Coven loses its credibility, then so too does the Hornung empire.”

  “You’re being dramatic,” Bane pushed back the heavy stone chair and stood, stretching his tail, back and shoulders. “Akmenos is not even of the Coven.”

  “No, he’s not, which some will say speaks to motive, as all of his brothers are either of the Coven or the Warmasters or the Palace Guard. Others will say this speaks of subterfuge, of a long-laid plan to insert a loyal subject into a position to attack Hornung and her allies from the inside. Relations between Hornung and Landaria have never been this strained. Landaria may be Rathrax’s vassal, but the elves grow ever stronger under Lord Regent Lleyorian. It would not take much to tip the balance, have vassal turn enemy, and this event may well perpetuate that divide. If it can be suggested that Bane, and those warlocks loyal to him, are behind this betrayal, then war within our own ranks is only a matter of time. Not that you need me to tell you any of this.”

  “Sometimes I wonder why you are only my wife, and not my Empress.” Bane glowered. “With your instincts for politics, you could’ve made a fine handmaiden to the Emperor.”

  Arah brushed one clawed finger down his bristly face. “I considered it, but that brute Rathrax has no idea how to treat a lady.” She leaned in and placed a quick kiss on his lips. “Now, husband mine, seed to my spawn, do what you should’ve done as soon as the alarums were sounded last night. Discover who this murderer is, and stop them before they can do any more harm.” She turned to go, brushing her tail lightly up Bane’s inner thigh before descending the steps. The sepulchre echoed with her fading footsteps.