Nightlord: Sunset (98 page)

I held up my hands, palm to palm, and crossed the thumbs.  “When the strength of two hold firm, slowly the others may learn from that strength,” I said, clicking one finger at a time over to link my hands.  “In time, friendships form, and then families, until the bond cannot be broken.”

“There is wisdom in what you say,” he said, smiling. “If your Raeth will do this, we will not fail in it.”

“Then I am pleased.  Good night, Last-Pale-Light-At-Sunset.”

“As you will, dark one.”

We’ll work on that whole informality thing when I get back.  For the moment, I’m just happy he’s agreeable about not scalping everybody. 

I kneed Bronze and we set off back toward the mountain.

Raeth looked at me as though I were crazy.

“So when warriors of the barbarian hordes come over yonder hill and charge the gates, I should throw wide those gates and let them in?” he demanded.

I made a rude noise.  “They aren’t a horde, they won’t charge the gates, and no, you don’t let charging barbarian hordes in.  They’ve promised to be reasonable.”

“How reasonable can a barbarian horde
be?
” he asked.

“Very.  Just treat them with respect and fairness.  Their leader has about the same social rank as a baron.  The adult men are
all
warriors—the equivalent of a knight.  Keep that in mind.”

“Is it not possible that they simply leave us be?”

“Possible, yes.  But I don’t think it a good idea.  They know these plains and how to live on what the plains provide.  We’ll farm near the mountain, surely—but we have to eat in the meantime.  Later, they’ll make valuable allies.  There are more than one tribe of natives here, and we need to be friends with any of them that are willing.  Deal fairly with them in every way and keep an open mind about how they do things—don’t just assume you’re unassailably right because you’re civilized and they aren’t.  Their civilization is just different.”

We were on the wall, walking together along the eastern curve.  He paused and looked out over the moonlit plains.

“I will follow your lead,” he said, finally.  “This is strange country and I know little enough of it.”  He turned back to me and smiled.  “It will be good to learn something new.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” I agreed.

We walked farther along the wall in silence.

“Where is your shadow?” he asked.

“Tort?  She’s in our rooms, with Tamara.  She doesn’t sleep well.  Tort, I mean.”

“She has had a difficult time,” Raeth agreed.  “Any thoughts on helping her?”

“Just that I will,” I answered.  “I can fix her foot, but it will take time.  A lot of time.  Years, possibly.  The nightmares are easier, though.”

“Oh?  You have a cure for bad dreams?”

“Absolutely.  I go to bed.”

Raeth eyed me.  “This cures bad dreams?”

“When Tort winds up between a nightlord wizard-king and a motherly fire-witch, both of whom want her to be safe, she sleeps like a rock.”

Raeth laughed.  “I would imagine.”

We walked a few more paces in silence.

“When will you be leaving?” he asked.

“Soon.”

“Before dawn?”

“No, I’ll be here all day.  After sunset—then I’ll go.”

There was another silence.

“I am not certain I understand all your reasons,” he said.  “If it were myself, I know the reasons
I
would be going, but yours…”  He shrugged.  “I agree you must go, but do not fully comprehend your thought.”

“Don’t comprehend it, or just want to know if I’ve finally got it all sorted out in my own mind?”

He smiled slightly and didn’t answer.   I sighed; we’d had this discussion… how many times?

“All right,” I said.  “Tobias is, as far as we can tell, trying to take over the entire institution of the Church in Rethven.  He may be intending to take over the kingdom itself.  He’s certainly using demonic forces and is going to try and kill me—and anybody with me—when he feels he can succeed.  With the best of intentions, he’s going to plunge the world back into darkness.”

“And you intend to save the world?” Raeth asked.

“Hell, no!” I declared.  “I can’t save the world!  It’s too big a project.  Either I’d be overwhelmed with an understood responsibility or indifferent because it’s unimaginable.  I just want to save my friends and unborn children.  That’s something in my scope.  I can grasp that.  It’s also something I can do.”

I didn’t add I was A: not at all sure I would succeed, and B: uncertain about being able to actually
kill
Tobias.  Oh, I want to kill him, make no mistake.  But to actually go hunting for a man I’ve never met with the intention of cutting him down… I don’t know.  I’ve never done that before.  If he would just come after me himself, I’d sit quietly and wait for him—I’d have no qualms about skewering him through the gizzard then.

“The rest of us will surely be grateful for your efforts on Tamara’s behalf,” he replied.

“Yeah, but I try not to think about the rest of you.”

Raeth laughed.  “Very well, I will trouble you no further on that subject.”

I smirked.  “So what subject
will
you trouble me on?”

“Well, there are matters of supply I might use for such a purpose.  There are also questions about the nature of the defenses of your castle.  But I suspect I can answer these difficulties with my own authority—and thus free you for more important tasks.”

“Such as?”

“Spending time with the Lady Consort, your Majesty.  You have had little enough of it, and you will depart within a day.”

I ignored his verbal jab and took the advice.  Wise man, Raeth.

The remainder of the night and the whole of the day, I was with Tamara.  Raeth and Bouger double-teamed anyone else that wanted me.  We were uninterrupted.  Even Tort found something else to do—I think she spent the day with Riddle, but I’m not sure.

Have you ever had a companionable silence?  One where you didn’t need to talk?  That’s what we had.  It was a time to quietly
be together
.  Holding hands here, hugging there, a fleeting kiss, a significant look, a silence as comfortable and warm as an old bathrobe.

When we did speak, it was only of good things.  What to name the children was high on the list.  We decided to each provide one girl-name and one boy-name, so no matter what sex the children were, we’d have names picked out for them.  She decided on “Merissa” and “Beryl.”  I suggested “Amber” and “Michael.”

Late in the afternoon, we snuggled close and had a nap in each other’s arms.

It was a good day.

INTERLUDE

“It has given orders,” one said.

“It must be obeyed,” another hissed.

“Let us begin,” a third croaked.

A black wave crawled, hopped, skittered, and flew through the bare-branched forest.  It closed on the tiny island of firelight as the Sea closes on a drowning man.  There were screams, screams of rending wood and twisting metal, screams of men and women and children, screams of dying animals, screams of rage and pain and fear.

The sound of a horn-call rose above the din.  The black shapes ceased their assault and listened.  Hoofbeats drummed the winter earth.

“Be ready,” said one, in a language no human throat might utter.

Mounted men rode into view, swords unsheathed and shields riding their left arms.  Light shone about them, pale and wan, and the dark horde grinned.

The dark ones grinned wider as they fell back before the horsemen.  They allowed themselves to be driven, to be scattered and routed.  They fled, as they had been instructed, and smiled all the wider with the knowledge why.

“I will not believe you!”

The shriek echoed in the chamber, died there.  The eyes—the Eyes!—stared back, unmoved.

“The truth will not change at your childish whim,” returned the voice.  “I say to you that he is heading west, and he will come to the Gate of Shadows.  He will open it.  My kindred cannot stop him; he is too powerful.  Something greater must oppose him…” the voice trailed off.

“What?” Tobias demanded, shivering and pacing.  “What can stop him?”

“I might,” the voice said.  The Eyes moved with Tobias, watching him.  Always watching him.

“No!” he raved, hands waving madly.

“Something must be done,” It countered, reasonably.  “If he opens the Gate of Shadows, all the nightlords, all the blood-drinkers, will return through it in their thousands.  They will swarm over the land, turning all those they touch to the ways of the night.  Death and undeath shall follow in their wake, and no man will stand against them.”

Tobias calmed as though a switch had been thrown.

“I will stop him.”

“I do not believe that you can—”

“The truth will not change at your childish whim!” Tobias snapped.  “I am a Priest of the Light!  I wield the power of martyrs’ blood!  I will oppose this thing of evil and I will overcome it!”

“Will you explain, lord?” asked the Eyes, respectfully.  Cajolingly.  Almost mockingly.

“I now have something he will want,” Tobias said, smiling.  His eyes were focused on something far-distant, possibly beyond the edge of the world.  “He will come for it, as he did before.  I will be ready.”

“And if he evades your trap?” asked the voice.

“Then I will stand before the Gate of Shadows and face him down,” Tobias replied, calmly.  Too calmly.  “I have the power.  I can defeat him.”

“As you say,” the voice replied, in what Tobias thought was agreement.

Why are you showing me this?

What do you want?

Hello?  Are you going to answer me?

What the hell is this all about?

Who are you? 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15
TH

I
f they’d had the chance, they would have given me a major sendoff.  Flowers thrown, cheering, music, the works.  I didn’t give them the chance.  As soon as the sun went down, I kissed Tamara again and made a break for Bronze.  I much prefer to come and go like a thief in the night.  All that fanfare and whatnot just embarrasses me.

Darn it, I wasn’t quick enough.  Tort was standing in the main gateway.  She was clean, wore a blue dress, and had her hair all back in a tail.  She also looked woebegone.

If I ever get to the point where an unhappy little girl doesn’t move my heart, I’ll know I’m the monster legends make my kind out to be.  I sighed and reined up.

“What is it, Tort?”

She stepped up to Bronze’s left and held up her arms.  What was I going to do?  Kick Bronze and ride on?  Instead, I dismounted and picked her up; she was a lot heavier and healthier than the first time I’d held her, and I was glad of it.  She hugged my neck.

“Thank you,” she said, and gave me a little-girl peck on my cheek.  Then she went right back to squeezing me.  I don’t know if someone told her to say that or if she just felt like it.  Frankly, I don’t want to know.  I just enjoyed it.  I hugged her for a minute, then put her down.

“Sir?” she asked, not letting go of my neck.  I stayed crouched at her level.

“Yes, Tort?”

“Why don’t you ever play?” she asked, loosening her grip enough to look me in the face.

“Because I have a lot of people to take care of, Tort.”

“Like you took care of Riddle?  And me?”

“Yes.”

She hugged me again.  “Then you
are
an angel.” 

That’s child logic for you.  How many blood-sucking fiends of evil get accused of being an angel by anybody?  Tort is just too young to understand what I really am.

“I’m sorry, Tort, but I’m not an angel.”

“You saved me,” she protested, fiercely.  “You’re
my
angel!”

Well.  Okay.  If she wanted to put it like that…

“All right.  I’ll do my best to be your angel.”  I hugged her and patted her back.  “Now I have to go do angel-things for other people, too.  All right?”

Angel of Death things,
I added, to myself.  Firebrand snickered at me.

She let go of me and stepped back.  “Will you come back?” she asked.

Good question.

“I don’t know,” I answered, honestly.  “I will if I can.  I promise.  I’m going to grow you a foot, remember?”

“All right.”

Little girls.  I swear.  If I have daughters, Tamara’s going to have to be the stern one; I’ll spoil them rotten.

I mounted up and kicked Bronze into a gallop.  Bronze struck blue-green sparks from the ridgeline as we descended.  She gained speed the whole way down, blowing smoke and flaming sparks over her shoulders.  We hit the plains smoothly and bore left, northward. 

What took us days by wagon train we crossed again in minutes.  We halted at the main portal to Eastgate and the
Kingdom of Rethven less than an hour after the sun had vanished under the horizon.

“Open the gate!” I shouted.  Heads popped up and looked over the wall at me.  Goblin heads.  I wondered if the little guys were standing on boxes.

“Who goes there?” one demanded.  I thought hard about how to answer in goblin and finally gave up.

“Open the gate,” I threatened, “or my blood will rise from the streets and consume you.”

That worked.  They opened the gate.

Inside, soldiery was pouring in my direction to form a double file.  They made a lane for me as Bronze walked forward.  The place was shaping up nicely.  Most of the damaged buildings had been torn down and used to fortify everything else, while the new wall—the one facing the rest of the kingdom—appeared to be intact and ready for battle.  A stone wall was in progress just inside it, but progress was slow.  At least they had the wooden palisade finished.  I also saw that there were more troops than I remembered.

Bob came out to meet me, flanked by five elves in dark clothes—one extra from the last time I’d been through.  I didn’t dismount.

“Lord, you honor us with your presence.”

“I do,” I admitted.  “Tell me how you fare.”

“More soldiers rally to your cause.  We have lines of supply into the depths of the mountains and can outlast a siege.  We are constructing engines of war to rain down destruction on any attackers.  The city is strongly held.”

“Good.  You should have no trouble from the east for some time.  It is the armies of Rethven that are most likely to give you difficulty.”

“They will break upon us like surf upon the rocks,” he assured me.

“Good.  I am but passing through, for I have an errand within the kingdom that begs my attention.”

Bob bowed low, as did his cohorts.  “May your passage be swift as shadows at sunset.”

“Well said,” I replied.  “Keep up the good work.”

“I shall, my lord.”

I kicked Bronze and she reared.  Horses can scream loudly.  When they paw the air, they’re impressively large and dangerous-looking.  Bronze is larger than a normal horse to begin with.  Combined with steam-whistle volume and a gout of smoke and fire, I’m certain we looked terrifying.

We took off toward the other gate.  Either Bob signaled someone or ther
e were decent IQ’s on gate duty; it started to open before we were halfway there.  At our speed, the double doors of the gate were barely wide enough to let us pass when we shot through.

I glanced back under one arm.  The gate was already swinging shut and the wall was almost completely lined with wide-eyed soldiers.

You’d think the capitol would be easy to find.  If you’ve never been there, it can be tricky.  Why don’t they post signs at the crossroads? 
Surely, it can’t be that expensive?  Or is it just because most people can’t read?  Or most people don’t travel?  Whatever the reason, it’s blasted inconvenient.

For example:

A man in dark green, astride a huge bronze horse, reins up at the door to an inn.  Smoke and flames still pour from the horse’s nostrils in great gouts.  The man goes into the inn and asks directions to Carrillon.  Nobody answers; they are too busy staring and gaping.  Once the man makes it known he’s serious about wanting directions—picking someone up by the shirtfront does wonders—several people are obliging enough to point out a road.

A quick thank-you and he’s off again.  But not to Carrillon.  He’s off to the next town on the way.  Now he has to repeat the process to see which road he needs to take from there.

Bronze may be capable of incredible speeds, but she needs to know where to go.  At least I have the sense to stop and ask directions!  It may slow me down, average-velocity-wise, but it makes it possible to actually reach my destination.  I can get lost on Bronze—and make record time while I’m lost!  I’d rather spend some of that extra time finding out where to go.

It was well after midnight before we came into sight of the capitol.

Carrillon is a major medieval metropolis.  The city itself is placed near the southern coast, straddling another river—the Oisen, I think it’s called.  The river itself is very wide and slow-moving; barge traffic goes both ways on it and larger vessels can sail up for some distance.

I say that Carrillon straddles the Oisen.  That’s not exactly true.  The actual city proper is on the western bank of the river, enclosed by walls.  The eastern bank of the river has what I would call a placeholder fortification.  There are some towers, linked by heavy walls, that dominate the eastern bank.  I get the impression that someone tried to take the capitol via a riverborne invasion and this was the reaction when it was all over.

The city is laid out like a bull’s-eye.  The center of the city is the old, high-rent district.  It includes people who have both high station and high wealth.  Sort of an upper-crust-of-the-nobility-only neighborhood.  It also has the stoutest, highest walls and a bunch of city police.  The nobility also have some personal guards keeping an eye on their estates and persons.

Outside that is a neighborhood devoted to money.  Wealth is apparently the major factor for where one lives.  In this second ring, you have merchants—successful ones—and lesser nobility.  There are also some of the more exclusive (read: expensive) shops; jewelers, glassblowers, and other such trades can be found here.  The walls around ring two are still high and thick, but they aren’t manned for defense.  I guess the theory is if an invasion rolls in, there will be time to man the walls while the invaders deal with the outer urban areas.  The city guard still has a strong presence in ring two, though, to keep the riff-raff from making any ruckus.

Ring three, the outermost ring of the city inside the walls, is devoted to the upper-middle-class.  The skilled workers and the upscale service industries make their homes and shops here—frequently, the same thing.  Coopers, smiths, wine-merchants, stables, carriage-wrights, the works.  The major markets are also in this ring.  The wall around ring three is only about fifteen feet high—which is huge, considering the sheer
size
of the city—and patrolled by the city guard.  Meaning there are a pairs of watchmen walking around the city all night.  Ring three doesn’t have a lot of cops per unit of area; there isn’t as much in the way of easily portable wealth, or people important enough to protect.

Outside the city are the slums.  Nobody is allowed to build against the wall, but the houses crowd up right to the hundred-pace limit—except on the south and east sides, of course.  These sides have holes in the outer wall for wooden piers, and the sea and the river come right up to the foot of the wall.  It looks like a magical construction job to me, or their engineering is a lot more clever than I give them credit for.  The
farther you get from the wall on the non-river sides, the sparser the buildings become—and the less savory.  Inns and taverns outside the wall are not pleasant places.  They tend to have large, ugly men with big sticks hanging around.  With luck, those are the bouncers.

Beyond the slums, there’s farmland.  Lots of it, on both sides of the river.  There are three wooden bridges across the river.  One connects with the city itself; the other two are found
farther north of the city.

I found all this out by the simple expedient of getting mugged.

It was easy.  Bronze took a walk in the river to cool off, then we went to an inn with a stable—there weren’t many outside the walls.  It was one of the better inns to the north of the city, near a river bridge.  It was at least a trifle cleaner than most, but noisy.  The common room downstairs doubled as a tavern; private rooms were on the second floor.  I left Bronze out front and went in to buy a drink. 

Gold in such a place is rare.  Usually, there are copper and silver coins.  I flashed a large gold coin—a
dekat
, or the rough equivalent of a hundred-dollar bill—and asked for a room.  The innkeeper was only too glad to accommodate me.

“I’ve no way to change yer lordship’s coin,” he said.  The accent reminded me slightly of my aged friends in captivity.  “If ye’ll leave it with me, I’ll have it broken at a moneylender’s while ye sit to table in the morn.”

I sighed, as though it were an imposition.  “I suppose so,” I huffed, loudly.  “I shall have a bottle of your finest brandy as well, and a lad to show me to my room.  I’ve sorrows to drink away and do not wish to be disturbed.”

He bowed and provided these things.  The kid was actually a young girl, about nine, but with that world-wise air that comes with a difficult environment.  She was none too clean, but her clothes were well-mended and her hair was braided neatly into a tail.  She kept out of arm’s reach and was always watching me.  I think other customers have tried to be over-affectionate with her.

“Thank you,” I told her, and flicked at silver coin to her.  She caught it and made it disappear.  “Do you know where I might find Linnaeus the Bard?”

“Heard of ’im.  Sings for his supper about town.  Try the middle city,” she suggested.

“Thank you again.  And if anyone asks about me, tell them I’m down by half a bottle already and drinking steadily.”

She glanced at the bottle of brandy, then at me.  “If y’say so, then ’tis so.”

“Good girl.”  I flicked her another silver.  “Goodnight.”

She dipped in an attempt at a curtsey; I don’t think she got much practice.  “Goodeven, lord.”

I shut the door and examined the room.  It was small, dark, had one window—with both bars and shutters—and a straw-filled mattress on a cot.  There was a cracked clay pitcher and a matching clay basin on the windowsill.  I didn’t like the smell of the mattress; I waved a fistful of tendrils through it.  That killed a godawful number of fleas, vermin, and molds.  Only then did I lay down on it and wait.

The wait wasn’t a long one—an hour or so.  A pair of rough men tried to sneak into my room.  If I had been passed out drunk, they would have succeeded.  They crept in without light, sneaking carefully, if blindly, to the bed.