by Dan Rabarts
Hrodok smiled again, teeth like the jaws of a beartrap cracking wide. “What a fine idea.”
~
At noon, when the footweary force stopped to rest, Hrodok sought out Eldarian where he sat with his troops amongst a scattering of fallen boulders, eating trail tack and sipping water from a pewter flask. They had left the worst of the burn behind now, and the forest smelled cool and alive. “A word alone?”
Eldarian eyed the warlock suspiciously. “Certainly.”
They walked out of the resting elven warriors’ earshot. Eldarian was more relaxed now, since his own troops in the immediate vicinity, the honour guard protecting the body of their fallen prince, now outnumbered the hornung four to one. If it came to a fight between hornung and elf, his soldiers would cut the hornung down. “What is it?”
“Your reputation is great, noble elf,” Hrodok drawled, giving a superfluous bow, “but I wonder if you would relish the opportunity to make an even greater name for yourself?”
“How so?” Eldarian liked to think himself a humble blade in service to the Lord Regent, but he was not averse to a modicum of pride. Pride was sometimes all a warrior had.
“I have new information regarding the traitor we seek. Would it not be better that you find him and bring him to justice yourself? Would it not be a fine thing for your honour and the honour of your family for a valiant Silverblade to avenge the murder of your prince? To avenge the wrong committed against your people?”
“You know where he is?” Eldarian’s cloak whipped around as he spun to face Hrodok, wariness swept away by this revelation.
“We know where he crossed the river, and which way he was going. But understand this—the information didn’t come from the Coven, but my own sources. We do this together. You’ll be honoured both among the hornung and the elves, and I will gain renown from the deed. But the time to act is now. We must cut across the valley and make for the river with all due haste.”
“What of the wyrmken?”
“If they fall for our ploy, they will attack my troops, the warlocks will send word, and Rathrax will turn his attention to retribution. None of which need concern you.”
“You would sacrifice your soldiers for your own glory?” Eldarian curled his lip in disgust. “They will be expecting us to strike from the flanks, and we will not be there!”
Hrodok shrugged. “They’re the City’s soldiers, not mine. Anyway, they won’t be waiting for my paltry bodyguard, but for your elves, whom they probably don’t trust to come. No doubt they expect I’ll be lying dead amongst the rocks already, murdered by your treacherous kin, who plan to dump my body amongst the dead and claim it an act of the wyrmken. It’s what I would’ve done, were I of a mind to kill you.” He smiled, and Eldarian’s skin crawled. “So, shall we move?”
Eldarian breathed deep. It seemed he’d been saying yes to this warlock all day, and each decision led him further astray. Now they would be heading away from the roads on foot and into deeper forest. Anything could happen out there, but with the rest of the hornung focused on the wyrmken, Eldarian still had the warlock’s troops outnumbered. Besides, the temptation of bringing Prince Larthia’s murderer to justice was too sweet to deny. “Fine,” he said, “let’s move.”
“Good.” Hrodok smiled.
Eldarian couldn’t shake the feeling that he was a tiny bird, picking at a shiny white rock, a rock which was in fact an alligator’s tooth, and at any second the jaws would slam shut and crush him alive.
~
Chef Skerrl shivered on the hard stone stool. It wasn’t the cold, for the sacrificial fires blazed high in the sacred fonts, but rather the Cursemaster’s brassy gaze that drove lances of ice through him. “So you admit you’ve no proof my son was involved with the prince’s death? Yet you spoke his name, and thus damned him in the eyes of the Coven and the Emperor. Why?”
Skerrl tried to speak, but his tongue tangled itself. “Mmmnng Hhhbrng.”
Bane nodded. “I understand. You hated my son, no doubt because he was a better cook than you will ever be. You feared he would outshine you, given the opportunity, and then where would you be? But let’s you and I just agree on that and put this business of motive to bed. What I really want to know is this: what happened in your kitchen last night? Now don’t be so frightened. The last time someone coerced you into giving information an innocent boy was accused of murder, and I would hate to see such a thing repeated. Honesty really is its own reward. Now, how did a poisoner enter your kitchen and lace the prince’s plate?”
Bane gave Skerrl a moment to gather his wits, hoping the chef didn’t die of a heart attack before he could demonstrate to him how a Cursemaster showed his mercy. When all was done, and his son was home safe and well, then the chef could atone for his mistruths. It may be fairly said that the Emperor was at fault for forcing the hapless chef to spout such lies, but it was the way of things that lesser folk should suffer for the deeds of their betters.
Skerrl finally met Bane’s eye and began to talk.
Chapter Seven
Scimitar stiffened, spoon halfway to her mouth, suddenly wary. Akmenos stopped chewing and strained his ears, but could hear almost nothing over water stirring to the boil on the stove. “Time to go,” she said.
“But, the stew—” Akmenos protested, gesturing at his half-full bowl. It had turned out quite delicious, rustically speaking. Cooking outside the castle walls had infused the meat with unexpected hints of terracotta, the freshness of herbs, an essence of river and woods.
“Leave it.”
“You said we’d leave when it was dark. It’s barely past noon.”
Scimitar took his clawed hand in hers, her grey eyes at once imploring and commanding. Akmenos’ heart shuddered a little, then melted into a soggy pool in his chest.
“Trust me. I’m trying to keep you alive,” she said.
He nodded, flushing, feeling a fat and ruddy fool, unable to break her gaze, unwilling to release her hand. She was human, all soft flesh and skin, not a hard ridge about her, no horns to lust after, no tail to wrap around his in the dark. Yet her eyes, her hand, the intensity that held his focus, burned through him. He shook his head and looked away. “I’ll bring the bread,” he mumbled, gazing forlornly over the stew. It would’ve fed them for a couple of days. Now it would go to the rats and the ants. “What about your stores?”
Scimitar released his hand, leaving him somehow colder. She buckled on her sword belt and knives before turning to the door. “Unless you can run with a cart through the woods, we leave it all behind.”
Akmenos grinned weakly. “You assume I can run.”
Scimitar turned away. He imagined her hiding a smile, and his belly glowed. “You’ll run like your life depends on it.” Swinging open the low door, she cast him a withering glance which stole his warmth. “Because it does.”
They ran. To be precise, Scimitar ran, a phantom streaking through the dappled woods, while Akmenos wheezed, puffed and stumbled along in her wake. Sweat streaked his red cheeks. His belly cramped with every step. Maybe waiting for the dogs or the warlocks or the wyrmken might have been less painful than this business of running. What was he even running from? Or was it because of the way Scimitar had touched his hand and looked into his eye; how she’d begged him to come with her. Yes, she’d definitely been begging.
Dense bush gave way to mighty pines. Akmenos’ side blazed. He pressed a hand to his ribs, staggering as if weighed down on one side, although that was probably the onions and potatoes he’d stuffed in his pockets before fleeing the hut. It just wasn’t right to leave so much good food behind. They entered a clearing and Scimitar slowed, circling the space with a predator’s eye. Akmenos collapsed, hurting all over.
Scimitar nudged him with her foot, shaking her head. “Quite the man to have around in a crisis, aren’t you?” she said, hooking an arm under his shoulder and hauling him to his feet. Akmenos shuddered, stricken by her warmth, wondering at her strength, for he was no lightweight. Branc
hes creaked behind them. “Who’s there?”
“Come, onto the plinth.”
Akmenos looked. The centre of the clearing was a raised surface, so layered in pine needles, rotten leaves and fallen branches it appeared little more than a minor rise. But now Scimitar had pointed it out, he could determine the circular shape, and as they ascended the steps, his hooves skidded on stone through the cloak of dead matter.
“What’s happening?”
“Hold your tongue.” She moved away, drawing a knife from one of the sheaths that ran down her back like a second set of vertebrae. She kicked the detritus off the stone to reveal concentric circles of runes carved in an unrecognisable script. “Help me!” she ordered, and Akmenos jumped to follow her lead, scuffing away the rotting humus with his hooves.
“Here.” She reached out to him, knife in one hand, her eyes cold.
Akmenos hesitated. “Why?”
She snatched his wrist, pulling him near. His hooves scraped the wet stone. “Because,” she breathed in his ear, “I need you close to me.” She was slightly taller than him, her head tilted slightly as she leaned closer, lips parting, her breath on his neck, his cheek. Her lips brushed his, and she drew his hand in to touch the bare skin where her tunic didn’t quite meet her trew. “You must trust me,” she whispered again.
Akmenos struggled to breathe, his heart thundering, loins aching, tail rising, as Scimitar pressed her body to his. Her lips grazed against his rough ridges, her sweetness enfolding him. She was warm, and soft in ways hornung women were not. He barely felt the pain when it came.
Scimitar’s knife sliced through Akmenos’ callused palm, so sharp it was several moments before the blood began to well. He jerked, trying to snatch back his hand, but Scimitar held it tight. The knife had disappeared, and she grabbed his neck to keep him close. For a moment they stared at each other, Scimitar’s hot gaze burning through him, Akmenos reeling with the twin cuts of this small betrayal. She pressed her thighs closer, acknowledging his arousal with her belt buckles.
“Don’t be afraid,” she crooned, as if he were some trapped animal. “Do you trust me?”
Akmenos, much to his own befuddlement, did. He’d never tasted human woman before, and now he had, he wanted more. He nodded dumbly.
Scimitar kissed him again, deeply, letting him explore her mouth with his tongue, then pulled away. She lifted his injured hand to his face, disentangling her fingers. Her hand was also bleeding from a cut to the palm.
“Our blood is mingled now, and it has consecrated this sacred place with our bond of trust. We need this bond, for you are not initiated in the ways of the plinths as I am, but now we have this connection, we can use the plinth to travel through the nether. But you must trust me, no matter what. If we start this and you stop believing, we’ll both be lost. But hold to me and we will survive, I’m sure. Then we can be alone, and we can finish this.” She traced her finger down his cheek and pecked his lips one last time. “Whatever this is,” she murmured. “Are you ready?”
Akmenos nodded, his mouth too dry to speak. Scimitar gripped both his hands and began to chant. Akmenos glanced from the mysterious woman before him, her eyes half-lidded as she recited words in a tongue he didn’t recognise, to the menacing trees, and the sudden crack of breaking branches.
“Scimitar?”
The vale came alive in a frenzy of whirring wings and blades.
Akmenos stumbled as his lover’s hands dissolved into a blur of sharp steel. He dropped to the stone, reaching into his apron to draw a knife, remembering the winged terror from the night before. A weight slammed into him, skittled him sideways off the plinth. Before he had regathered his breath, much less his wits, a strong grip had forced him face-first into the cold earth, one arm bent behind his back. Akmenos cried out, scrambling in the muck for a rock, a branch, finding nothing. Cold scales scraped his wrist, and a voice rasped in his ear. “Hold still this time. We’re not here to hurt you, but the one you’ve fallen in with certainly is.”
Wyrmken, the one that had caught him the night before. It had to be. Only the wyrmken wasn’t alone this time. It sounded like there were more of them, and something…bigger.
“Release me, lizard-breath!” Akmenos had never been quick with the insults, despite having worked in a kitchen most his life. “I’ve stuck you once; I’ll do it again.”
The sky darkened as massive wings darted overhead. Steel clashed in harmony with grunts of battle.
“That was all a rather unfortunate misunderstanding. I was trying to help you out back there, and I’m sorry if you took it wrong. But I tell you true, it’s no random chance that you’ve stumbled upon this witch, and all she’s interested in is what she can take from you. Leave her, come with us, and I can set you straight.”
Akmenos struggled against his captor, but the wyrmken was twice his weight and ten times as strong. On the plinth, blades chimed, and claws scraped stone. Something large shrieked in pain and fury. “Liar! You tried to kill me! I don’t know who you are or what you want, but I didn’t kill that diplomat, whoever he was!”
“No, but we know who did.”
Akmenos paused. “You do?”
“Can’t talk here. Quit struggling. We need to put your little bitch down, then we can clear this all up.”
Akmenos relaxed. “Very well.”
The wyrmken relented, unhanding Akmenos and moving back warily. Akmenos rolled onto his rump, rubbing at his aching arm, his bleeding hand. Beyond the yellow-scaled reptile, Scimitar whirled in a blur of blades against a mighty winged beast with a tooth-filled maw and a huge, stabbing tail which arced venom as it recoiled and struck. Akmenos had heard of wyverns, the wild beasts of the Skullspine Mountains that resembled a small version of the mythical dragon, larger than a horse, large enough for the wyrmken to ride. And indeed, astride the creature was another wyrmken, with scales of blue, bearing a long spear, who was trying to skewer Scimitar as woman, wyrmken and beast lunged about the plinth.
The yellow wyrmken before Akmenos, brandishing a saw-toothed axe, extended a hand. Akmenos looked to the woman who’d sheltered him and offered him her trust. She who had promised to love him, a lowly hornung cook. Nothing made sense; not the murder, nor Skerrl’s accusations; not the wyrmkens’ attacks, or even Scimitar wanting to spirit him away. Akmenos had no reason to trust anyone. Yet Scimitar’s lips were still moving, reciting the ancient words of power even as she duelled the blue wyrmken on its wyvern mount.
She still trusted him.
Akmenos reached out to take the yellow wyrmken’s hand, who gripped it firmly.
One thing Akmenos had learned as a fat little kid growing up in a castle full of soldiers, was that the bigger they come, the harder they fall, and Akmenos had a surplus of potential momentum stored in his belly reserves for moments just like this. He started to rise, then jerked backwards.
Caught off guard, the wyrmken toppled, tumbling down the steps, gravity doing most the work. Akmenos released him, letting him crash into the clearing beyond, then he scrambled up the plinth.
“Scimitar!”
A glance, a nod, and she was moving so fast he barely saw her. She jumped, a heroic leap by any standard, and landed, poised on the wyvern’s long, snaking neck. Her twin blades slashed out, one forward, one back, and the beast was falling, its rider clutching at a spreading blossom of dark blood on its chest. Scimitar leapt backwards, spinning in mid-air to land squarely in the centre of the plinth. “Take my hand,” she said, reaching for him with her still-bloody palm.
Akmenos stood in shock, contemplating the falling monster and its rider. Until just a moment ago Scimitar had moved like a dervish in the battle, but her final manoeuvre left Akmenos with the impression she’d been merely sparring with the monsters, holding them off until Akmenos could reach her. She snapped him from his reverie by squeezing his bloody hand. He squeaked a little.
“Do you still trust me?” she asked.
He met her look, seeing in his mind’s eye the
wyvern’s scaly neck parting like soft cheese, spilling black wine. “Yes,” he said, a strange echo behind his words. But introspection would come later. The wyrmken had tried to kill him. Scimitar wanted to protect him. “Yes, I do.”
“Good.” Her arm whipped out, and a throwing knife sailed past them to slam into the chest of the yellow wyrmken as he rushed the plinth. “Haardlerathenkaanian!” she intoned, and the air around the plinth glowed white.
“You fool!” The wyrmken shouted from the edge of the plinth. “It’s her! She’s the one! She’s the assassin!”
As the air turned from white to gold around them, Akmenos stared at Scimitar, stricken.
“No, Akmenos, no, you must trust me.”
But he didn’t, not anymore. And the nether world swirled in and tore them apart.
Chapter Eight
Tearing the knife from his chest, Shambra ran to Zaertha’s side, skidding to his knees in the slough of gore that pooled on the plinth. Blood pumped from the wound over her heart. “Zaertha…” he began, trying to staunch the bleeding with his bare claws.
“Forget it,” she muttered, sitting up, “she only got the smaller heart. Bring my bag.”
Once Zaertha had patched the wound in her breast and quaffed one of the fiery blue draughts, Shambra helped her stand. “Why did you say that?” Zaertha asked him with a pointed glare. “What’s the point of another lie?”
Shambra’s tongue flicked. “I overheard them talking while you were circling around, and she told him he had to trust her, or the magic of the plinth wouldn’t work. Now he might take it upon himself to be rid of her.”
“But where will he end up?”
“We can work it out and send agents to search for him. It’s the best I could do with the plinth already activated. If you’d just killed her, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
