The Archon's Assassin (45 page)

“Nothing I can get a good swing at, laddie.” And maybe that was the problem. While he’d been in the thick of the fighting, he’d not had time to worry; time to wonder what was up with him. But here, in the relative safety of Lorgen’s camp, all they had been doing was waiting. Waiting for the mist to find them. Waiting to be picked off like sheep.

Lorgen laughed deep down in his belly. It sounded good-natured enough, but that didn’t mean it was. “Did your fair share of swinging earlier, I’d say, for all the good it did. Kill one of those black-garbed pieces of dung, another replaces him. Seen it before, I tell you. There’s no end to them. Theurgy, if you ask me. Black theurgy. Same kind that brings the dead to life and conjures this bastard mist.”

“The Prior?” Nameless took a step away from the ghostly carpet still inching toward him. Talking had cost him his resolve.

“Aye, that’s what the lackwits in Wolfmalen call him. To the rest of us, he’s still Otto Blightey, the Liche Lord.”

“And what is it with the townsfolk, laddie? I found them a little…” Nameless struggled to find the right word. “Odd” wasn’t specific enough, and “pathetic” seemed just a tad unfair.

“Docile?” Lorgen offered.

“Yes, that’s a good way of putting it.”

“Deluded? Beguiled? Because I tell you, they weren’t always that way. They were our people. They were free folk, till the Liche Lord put a glamor on them. Fodder’s all they are now. Well, not all. There’s more going on, but I can’t fathom it. Has them all believing he’s some holy man; some tinpot Ipsissimus like they have in Aeterna.”

Shader had mentioned an Ipsissimus, the supreme head of his religion on Earth. “You think he’s starting a rival faith?”

“That’s just it,” Lorgen said. “To do that, he’d need more devotees, but Wolfmalen’s population never changes. No children, no newcomers, and no one dies.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad,” Nameless said. There was an appeal in the idea of all that stability. And not dying… Did that mean they had no fear? Not from what he’d seen at George and Hilda’s. They’d seemed afraid of the castle. Afraid of the Prior himself. Though, it was akin to the fear of children not wanting to be punished.

He swiveled the great helm so he could watch Lorgen for a response. Had to tilt his head quite a bit, because Lorgen was a big bastard. Big, and ugly with it: face more scars than skin; outcropping forehead, and a beard even dwarves would have found ostentatious. He had an axe, too: a long-hafted single blader. Should have been hard not to like him, on account of that alone. But Nameless was caught up wondering if that axe would be used on him; if he could take the big man down, if it came to it.
Why?
he asked himself. Why think that? Lorgen had come to their aid; been nothing but friendly. But other thoughts wormed their way into his mind:
That’s how it always starts. Where do you think he got those scars? Are the giant’s gauntlets going to be enough, if he starts on you?

“I’ve a question for you,” Lorgen said.

He hadn’t responded to Nameless’s comment. Hadn’t elaborated on what he’d said, either. What did he mean there were no children? That no one dies? Remarks like that demanded an explanation. Unless he was hiding something.

“What brings you to Verusia?” Lorgen said. “Because you’re clearly not local.”

“Oh, laddie?” Nameless said. “And what makes you think that?”

Lorgen stooped to look down at him. “Your height, for one thing. Yours and the little fellow’s who came to me for help; not to mention the pale-faced one in the cloak. Then there’s your accents.”

“Bird came to you, you say?” Nameless said. “I mean, I knew he led you to us”—in the form of an owl—“but how did he come to find you?”
How did he know he could trust you?
Come to think of it, how could Nameless trust Bird? What if this was all some elaborate ploy. After all, the shogger was a homunculus, wasn’t he? As honorable as thieves and assassins, and twice as duplicitous. Which made him wonder about Shadrak, who was clearly both: spawn of the Demiurgos and a cutthroat to boot. A friend, yes, but did that really count for anything? How could you know? How could you really know?

“You have to wonder,” Lorgen said. “And I don’t mind telling you, he gives me the creeps, what with the way he changes form and all. Though, in a strange way, that’s what persuaded me. Persuaded me he wasn’t from Blightey. The Liche Lord disguises himself, right enough, but he’s no changeling, and few are the animals that will come within a hundred miles of his presence. This Bird said there was trouble brewing. Said you’d wandered too close to the castle. That made you either stupid or ignorant, far as I’m concerned; but no one deserves to be tortured and impaled for either. But the other one, the one with the pink eyes, I’ve not seen hide nor hair of him since we reached camp. He’s not foolish enough to go back there, is he?”

“Shadrak?” Nameless shrugged. “I wouldn’t call him foolish. He takes too many precautions for that, and he makes a virtue out of being unseen. Told me he was going back to retrieve his weapons.” He chuckled at that. He knew how obsessional the assassin was. The thought of him cursing as he ferreted through the snow looking for every last razor star would have been a sight to behold. “Then he was planning to return to our…” How should he put it? “… transportation to pick up some more supplies.” Shadrak was a planner, and he always liked to be prepared. He’d been shaken by the attack, same as they all had. He’d flung everything he had at the black-garbs, and still they’d kept on coming.

“But if we could return to my first question,” Lorgen said. There was a hint of steel in his voice. Ordinarily, Nameless admired that in a man, but now all he heard was implied threat. He may have misread the tone, because Lorgen was standing relaxed, and his gaze was roving over the encroaching mist, as if he didn’t really expect an answer.

“Business with the Liche Lord,” Nameless said.

Lorgen stiffened, and his fingers tightened around the haft of his axe. “Aye, and what business is that?”

“Steady, laddie,” Nameless said. “His goons were attacking us, remember?”

Lorgen said nothing, but he managed a slight nod.

“He has something we need,” Nameless said. “And we aim to take it from him.”

“A friend?” Lorgen said. He almost gasped as he said it, and the scars on his face were pulled tight as he grimaced.

“No, not a friend, laddie. Just something.”

The tension visibly melted from Lorgen’s muscles. “Good. Well, not good. Any business with the Liche Lord tends to end in suffering. But it is good you have lost no one to him. At least, not yet.”

“And you have?” Nameless asked. He regretted it almost instantly.

Lorgen shut his eyes and turned his head aside. He drew in a long breath and let it out in a sigh. When he opened his eyes, he looked down the slope at the mist.

“It’s receding. It hasn’t detected our camp. We only moved a few nights ago. The old site was compromised last time the mist came.”

“This is a regular occurrence?” Nameless said. “I thought we’d triggered it by straying too near the castle.”

“You probably did. But it’s a frequent menace, wafting through the woods, looking for us.”

“But why?”

Lorgen rolled his shoulders and looked off into the last ribbons of bruised sunlight creeping beneath the horizon. “Because we are his.” He sneered. “All of Verusia is his. Mostly dead. Mostly undead. But the Liche Lord maintains a sizeable stock of the living.”

“Then leave,” Nameless said. “I know I would.”

“Getting in is all very well,” Lorgen said, “but you try getting out, and you’ll find the Gallic border patrols much more zealous. Not only that, but Blightey has things out near the fringes. Things that make sure no one tries to leave.”

“And this is better?” Nameless said. His imagination was running riot with the implications. What if they hadn’t got the plane ship? Would they have been trapped? Would he? He knew it shouldn’t have bothered him; knew he’d have normally risen to the challenge, but he wasn’t right. Something felt wrong. Idly, almost absently, he pulled at one of the gauntlets, but it wouldn’t come free. It seemed to have shrunk; shrunk so much it chafed. He grew desperate, pulled harder, but desisted when Lorgen shot him a look.

“We survive. In pockets of resistance, we survive. And we grow. The laughter of children graces our camps. Maybe one day, if we hold out long enough…” His voice trailed off, as if he lacked the conviction to continue. When he resumed speaking, it was in fits and starts, until he brought his tongue under control by some colossal act of will.

“Shit on him. Shit on Otto Blightey.” He may have been warding himself with curses. “Never want to look on that demon again. Three days I was in his dungeons with nothing for company but the sounds of screaming.” He winced and closed his eyes. “My daughters. My wife.” He shook his head. “Think hard before you go there. Think very hard. Evil shogger. Evil.”

“Not sure I have a choice, laddie,” Nameless said. His own voice came out tremulous. Lorgen’s words had moved him, but he didn’t know what to say. What could he say?

But he did have a choice, didn’t he? He’d survived well enough trapped in the great helm, and he’d done no more harm. It might have been a shogging inconvenience traveling to the Perfect Peak to be fed, but compared with the alternative…

He had to wonder: was that how the dwarves of Arx Gravis felt about him? The way Lorgen did about Blightey? The Ravine Butcher had slaughtered their loved ones, stuck their heads on spikes. The familiar cramps of despair gripped his innards. There was no coming back from what he’d done. No forgiveness. No atonement.

So, why was he risking his companions’ lives on some madcap quest to free himself from the helm? Free himself from the lure of the black axe? He had no right. No shogging right.

He gave the other gauntlet a surreptitious yank, but it, too, was stuck. Like the helm. Had he lost his hands as well as his head? Was that the philosopher’s plan? To obscure him one bit at a time? To encase him in scarolite and steel? Why would he do that? Plots and possibilities whirled about his mind. None of them made much sense, but all of them made him wonder.

He pulled his shoulder blades together until his back popped. He was knotted up with tension, head to toe, but there was shog all he could do about it.

“It’s heading out toward the crags,” Lorgen said, his focus back on the mist. “Where our old camp used to be. Guess it’s a good thing we moved.”

A chill deeper than that the snow had to offer insinuated its way into Nameless’s bones. He couldn’t tell if it was coming from the retreating mist, or the fact he couldn’t get the gauntlets off. He’d felt something similar in the darkness of Gehenna, when he’d gone after the black axe: an innominate dread that gave rise to whispers of thought, promptings, threats, warnings. He had no defense against that sort of thing. An enemy he could stand toe to toe with, no matter how big, how strong, had never bothered him. If you could hit it, chances are, it would bleed; and if it bled, it could be killed. But intangible fears, be they born from powers he did not comprehend, or his own inner demons, pierced him sharper than any blade; cut him right to the marrow.

“Come,” Lorgen said, starting off back down the slope. “Least we can chance a cook fire now. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

Always
,
Nameless wanted to say.
Always shogging starving
.
Not so much from the need for sustenance, because Aristodeus’s muck took care of that, but for the taste of food. And of beer. If nothing else, a pint would settle his nerves, and get him feeling like a dwarf again.

***

There was more than one fire back at camp. Most of them were little more than smoldering wounds on the surface of the white ground. They brought back memories of the fire giant’s face, where Galen had shot it. And gut-clenching images of its pulped and caved-in head.

Lorgen’s people hunched about the fires, roasting skewered strips of meat over the flames. Whatever it was they were cooking, it was charred beyond recognition, and smelled vaguely of chicken.

The canvas shelters they’d erected around the perimeter were almost invisible under their blankets of snow. A couple of men were finishing off putting up new tents for the companions. It seemed likely these were the shelters of those who had fallen, or those who had been taken.

Such unexpected kindness, such consideration of total strangers, thawed the doubts Nameless had been having about their rescuers. Why go to all this trouble? Why come to their aid in the first place? Why the hospitality, if they bore any ill intent?

“Thought you said there were no animals close by,” Nameless said, indicating the food being passed around. “What do you do, hunt afar and salt them?”

Lorgen leaned in, as if he were going to answer. He appeared to chew over a reply then discard it. Instead, he indicated a fire much bigger than the rest: a fire that clearly didn’t give a shog if it was spotted.

Albert glanced up from whatever he was roasting on a long stick. Looked like sausages. “Went with Shadrak back to the ship,” the poisoner said. “Picked up some supplies. I assume you’re hungry.” As if he’d forgotten, Albert waved apologetically and tapped his head. “Oh, of course, you can’t eat in that thing, can you? Never mind. All the more for me.”

Lorgen settled himself with a clutch of his people. A woman offered him some meat, but he shook his head. The low hubbub of voices greeted his arrival. Probably, they had a lot to talk about.

Nameless couldn’t help wondering if he’d said something to offend the big man. If he had, though, he had no idea what it was.

He did his best to shrug the feeling off and went to sit next to Bird on the far side of Albert’s blaze. The homunculus had his head turned pointedly away from what was cooking. Clearly, he wouldn’t be eating, either.

Ludo had his nose in his Liber. He looked ashen, and thinner than he had mere hours ago. Must have been an effect of the firelight sending flickering shadows over his face. If he was hungry, he showed no sign of it, as if all the nourishment he needed could be dredged from the words on the page.