Take the Darkness...: Epic Fantasy Series (20 page)

The Bastard spoke. ‘See, see, it’s what the Duchess paid, and yours is all there safe and sound,’ Goldie said a prayer to his big sister that his gold were the ones on top and not the Duchesses’.

He laughed loudly. ‘What you think these men are, fools King? That’s copper in gold paint, I can see it from here!’  There was a murmur of shock through the men and, taking his cue, the old black man stood up and the room hushed… he was still very respected. He walked slowly to the chest and, pulling forth a coin, took his dagger and, in clear sight of all, scraped a long string of gold paint from it. All saw the copper shining beneath.  Suddenly, everyone in the room was yelling and screaming, Goldie nudged Josette with his foot and she leapt. It was a long distance, but the Bastard was distracted. He turned just in time to see her lunging towards him with her dagger drawn, it sunk deep into his shocked open mouth, slashing his tongue and the inside of his throat. She thrust it back and forth again and again as Farirkar and the other leaders held any of his loyal men back; they were glad someone else could do the dirty work.

‘How do you like being fucked in the mouth? How do you fucking like it?’ She screamed again and again as she destroyed his pretty face.

Chapter 44

The fire in front of them burned brightly but cast less heat than its size would suggest. Seth turned to Seraphina, who sat next to him cross-legged and staring into it, her face suggesting she was far away.

‘Are you doing that?’ He asked her.

She looked startled out of her thoughts and then looked at the fire and laughed softly. ‘Sorry, it is a habit now.’ Suddenly the fire died down to the few bits of broken black tree and grass they’d managed to find and dry.

‘That’s fine, I liked it that way, but I guess it will bring attention,’ he said.

‘I’ve shielded us, so to any around here we look like a pile of stones,’ she said.

‘Stones? Really?’ He asked.

‘Well, an empty field is harder, it’s easier to change something than make it disappear altogether.’ He’d never talked to her about her powers but clearly she’d trained them a lot since she’d been here. He hated to imagine all the horrible things she’d done to him in her visions.

‘I have a question for you, Seth.’ She said.

‘What’s that, Sera-phi-na?’ He asked, pronouncing it in her refined style, and she laughed.

‘Will you send me back when this is done? Do you have that power now?’ She asked.

He’d thought of nothing else since he learned of the marks, and he would have gone back in a moment but he knew he had work to do here. If he left for just one day, he’d be gone a week here, and who knew what would happen in that time. He had to see it done, but she didn’t. It was his job to do and she’d helped more than enough.

‘I’ve not tried, but I’m sure I can… I’ll send you back right now if you want,’ he said.

He saw the relief break in her face, deep lines of tension releasing like when she had dropped her spells, and tears started running down her face.

‘Thank you, Seth, thank you for that, it makes all this worth it, but I won’t go back now, I’ll wait,’ she said.

‘Why would you wait, you’ve done much more than I had any right to ask of you, and you should see the sun again, and not this one. Go back to Cravossi and try not to kill anyone,’ he said, laughing. He had a feeling she was done with the Dark Guild.

‘I have nowhere to go and I’ve come to believe what the Wolvern and Silver say: you are the Druheim and if I can help you, I will.’ She said in seriousness.

Since he’d found the Northern lads they had called him Druheim, and then the Wolvern, Silver, and now her. It meant so much. The Druheim was the warrior of legend that would right all wrongs in the world: he was perfection with a sword, and fearless. Seth felt far from that. He was as Seraphina had said before, a whirlwind that just destroyed all in its path.

‘I don’t feel like it; I’m as you said, a whirlwind of death.’

‘Druheim or not, you’ve got the marks, and this world is, to use your word, ‘fucked’,’ she laughed as she said it. ‘If we can fix it and I can help, then maybe I can make up for some of the many people I helped to send to this place.’

He laughed once again. ‘Let's not start comparing who we feel guilty we’ve killed stories or we’ll never get any sleep.’

She laughed as well, but darkly. ‘True enough, and speaking of killers, where are the Wolvern and Silver?’ She asked.

‘Well, they don’t sleep, so they are scouting ahead for us weak humans and probably killing all the scary things for us,’ he said, smiling lightly.

‘Maybe you’re not the Druheim if they are doing your dirty work,’ she said.

‘I’d rather sit at the fire with a pretty girl than kill beasts any night.’ She looked at him next to her and then at the fire. ‘You try anything and I’ll cut your dick off. I might have forgiven you, a bit, but I’d rather bed a living corpse than you!’

‘You can make me look like one if that’s what you like,’ he said, and then had to duck as she threw a stone at him.

He sat close to her around the fire and reached out taking her hand in his. He half expected her to flinch back from it, but she didn’t. He leaned in towards her with his face. She looked at him for a long moment as if deciding what to do, but in the end want to human closeness must have won out. She leaned in towards him and his lips met the softness of hers. Seth saw the fire leapt just a little higher from the corner of his eye and smiled.

Chapter 45

Her father had been right all along; she was a trusting fool, she’d let people see into the power and they had abused it and become corrupted. Of all of Seth’s people, Grimm was the one she had trusted most. He seemed like such a soldier, a fighter through and through, but she should have known there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to save his friends and to win. He saw no shame in the fact that he’d taken those men, and now he was much more dangerous than before. Yet, she couldn’t act against him; she had the power to strip him of the gifts, but who knew how he would react and what he would do. The loyalties of the Cold Death would also be uncertain should she cast him out.

Worse than that, he’d brought back Minsetta. She was doing her best to appear the humble helper. All polite tones, smiles and friendliness, but they hadn’t seen Seth when he’d taken her memories, and the nightmares of the atrocities she’d been behind. They just saw the fine figure and deep brown eyes. She was sick of these attractive, evil women: they just made it so hard for the menfolk to think clearly, as they all wanted to defend them.

She stood in the vineyard at the back of her Keep, the smell of long burnt bodies winning out over the freshness of the vines and unripe grapes. She looked at Minsetta and Grimm, and was scared. He was so filled with rage and looked like a dog ready to rip apart anyone who tried to take his new toy. She’d have to tread lightly.

‘What can you know of Seth, you’ve been dead since
“The Opulent”,
when you tried to kill us,’ Elizebetha said to Minsetta.

‘You’re such a beginner, you think you’re so smart and noble with your little order of Gatherers,’ she spat, her niceties dropped now that she stood alone with Elizebetha and Grimm. ‘I’ve been alive in his mind this whole time. The others weren’t: they are like ghosts, but not me, I was too strong, so I got to see it all. The Duke, the field, the land of the dead, the silver tongue and the marks. He’s got the power of the coins in him, he is the Druheim,’ she said with passion.

‘What? Doesn’t that mean he could come back?’ Grimm asked; he’d learned of the coins from Elizebetha and now his new ghosts who whispered to him of the stories they had heard.

‘It does, Grimm.’ She said in a sweet tone again. ‘But he’s needed, that world is broken and needs to be healed, this is not worth his time right now,’ she said.

‘Us dying here is not worth his time?’ Elizebetha yelled, ‘we’re not important enough to be saved?’

‘You’re so dramatic.’ She said, and turned to Grimm. ‘Is she always like this?’

‘You’re fine and you have all the power you need to save yourself and the people you’ve paid to defend you,’ she said.

‘I will not use my powers to fight,’ she yelled back.

‘I never said you should,’ Minsetta said back in a quiet voice of confidence.

‘Then what are you saying?’

‘Throw yourself off the battlements like you should have done weeks ago,’ she said with an evil smile only Elizebetha could see.

‘What?’ She asked quietly.

‘It’s the perfect solution, they want you dead, no one else, you’re hiding behind these people wringing your hands, crying and acting like you’re all noble, but if you were noble you’d just fucking do it and get it over with.’

‘But they would take my power, my Keep, my knowledge,’ she cried.

‘Oh, all your little wine bottles? Fine, let Grimm take you and then we’ll kill every last one of the Guild together. You’re a weak pathetic old lady who should never have come back, and you should have stayed travelling and let the world forget your name!’

Elizebetha broke. She started to cry, tears streaking down her face, and she ran from the vineyard. Minsetta turned to Grimm, who looked shocked at her outburst. ‘I’m sorry about that, but now we can talk.’ 

‘That was cruel,’ Grimm said, but that’s not what he felt. Ever since Seth had run, he’d felt a pit of shame. It was gone now that she’d told him of the land of the dead and his battle there. He was the Druheim and guided by forces stronger than himself. He’d seen in Seth, a thousand times, that his instincts would rule him and always, always lead him to the true path. He’d saved the redhead girl, Josette, on instinct, and she’d been of more use than anyone. He’d taken the coin to that place not only to save them, but because it needed to be there.

But since Seth had gone, he’d felt lost himself. He was someone when he was helping Seth. He was the strong right arm of the Druheim, in the songs they would sing of him as well. He’d be a side note, along with Goldie, Flint and Stone, but what would they say of Elizebetha? Was this woman wrong? They had fought to protect the coins, they were what mattered, but they were gone now, and what exactly was he going to die for? Her? This Keep, some dusty books, and secrets of some old men?

‘Never fear, she won’t do it,’ Minsetta said. ‘She’s far too selfish, she’ll cry and ring her hands some more and talk to her dear dead father, then find some backbone for a day or two, then break again when the Duchess comes over that wall and she sees you all butchered. You know how this ends, right?’

‘I do, but maybe not as you think,’ he said with growing confidence.

‘Goldie and Josette will turn the Red Bastards, and they will turn on themselves and the Duchess, then we’ll march out of the Keep and we’ll come at them hard and destroy them,’ he said.

She laughed out loud. ‘That is some fine faith you place in your friends. Goldie I know, but not this girl Josette, but if that’s what you think, I believe you that it will happen. You’re not a normal man, my angry friend,’ she said.

‘What do you mean? I’m just Seth’s retainer, nothing more, a soldier, now a strong one, but a soldier.’

‘No, you’re not. You think anyone can summon after seeing it twice? They can use songs of their own device? They can create a circle of power with Northern words? Do you realise that if you stepped into this circle, nothing but a Northern cast blade or arrow could breach it?’ She asked, admiration in her voice.

‘What? Is that true?’

‘Have faith, Grimm, if you see that it will happen, but we must play our part; you said we must march ourselves, why? Picture it and focus.’

Grimm thought hard of the vision in his mind, as he’d never experienced anything like this. It was as if the songs had unlocked something in his mind, along with the power taken from the men. He saw Goldie speaking in a tent and swaying the men, but not all. He saw them fighting amongst themselves, but only arguing, half leaving, but he must march to crush the Duchess between the two.

‘I see it, they will sway half the men, but they will fear to attack unless we help them, and if they see us coming out from the Keep and engaging the Duchess, they will come in from behind.’

She laughed. ‘And if they don’t?’

‘We’re going to die anyway, I’d rather in full battle with a sword in my hand than getting an arrow in me hiding on the battlements,’ he said with fire.

‘How very Northern of you.’ She said with a laugh.

‘And what’s your part in this? You’ve helped me, it’s true, but you’re far from an ally. You can fight, I’ve been told, but what use are you in the front line?’ He asked.

‘Oh, I’m not, I’m an assassin, a summoner, the queen of cutthroats...’

Grimm suddenly felt a pain so deep and horrible inside of himself that he collapsed to his knees, and he felt the power dripping out of him. The memories and strength he’d just gained were being leached out. He cast his mind out and saw Elizebetha sitting in her study doing it. She was scared of him and for him, and wanted him weak. She’d take it all, not just the new ones, but all Seth had given. Minsetta looked at him with deep concern.

‘Break the circle now!’ She yelled.

He thought for only a moment, and then reaching out with a trembling hand, pushed a bone out of line.

She was at his side in an instant and whispering words he’d never heard. The pain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. She laughed, shaking her head. ‘Told you she wouldn’t do it. My next mission, I suppose, will be to protect you from her long enough to save her worthless hide.’