Nightlord: Sunset (90 page)

I nodded.  “In any case, scouting is my job.”  I held up a hand to suppress objections.  “I’m faster, I see in the dark, I have a horse that can leap tall wagons in a single bound, and I stand a good chance of telling a significant number of bad guys to shut up and leave me alone.  If you have a rational argument, I’ll hear it now.”

There was a thick silence.  Tamara finally broke it.

“’Tis better than a journey to face the Hand,” she said, trying to smile.  The sentiment was met with a good deal of grudging agreement.  Once everyone else was out of the wagon—for the first time in days—Tamara and I held each other.

“Lord?” she asked, her face buried in my shirt.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“I must speak before you go.  Will you listen?”

“Sure.”  I had no idea what she wanted to talk about, but I’m not
too
unreasonable.  Usually.

“I have been a priestess and performed the rite of winter every year since I was sixteen,” she began.  “Every year, the Mother selected someone and I would lie with him.  Some were handsome, some were gentle, and some were neither.  Yet they did the bidding of the Mother, whether they knew of it or no.  When they had come and gone, there was nothing more of them.  Over two dozen men, and not one ever tried to see me again.  Such is the way of the rite.”

I could have been jealous.  I could have been upset.  But I wasn’t.  I found that very weird.  She’d just admitted she’d taken a couple dozen different men to bed—well, had sex with them—before she met me.  It’s not a rational thing, jealousy; but hearing her story, I’d half-expected it to rear up and snarl.

Not a twitch.  That does it; now I know I love her.

“I see,” said I, and stroked her hair.  “And the Mother was happy with—wait a second.  Over two dozen?  I thought this rite was once a year!”

She looked up at me.  “But it is.  Every winter.”

“How could you have started at sixteen, then?  Two dozen men would mean you’ve been at this for over twenty years—you’d have to be at least forty!”

She dimpled.  “I have lived forty-two years, my lord.  I have performed the rite twenty-six times—twenty-five times before you.”

“You can’t be that old!” I protested.  “You can’t be a day over twenty.”

Her dimples became more pronounced.  “Health and long life are but two of the gifts of the Mother to Her chosen.  Now, will you hear my tale?”

“Uh, yes.  I’ll shut up.”  And I did.  She settled her head against my chest again and continued.

“With each rite, they would simply arrive, traveling from nowhere to nowhere, passing through to whatever fate She has in store for them, pausing only to please Her as they go.  This is the way of things.  I would see them for an hour or half an hour or for only a few moments; some never even spoke, but fulfilled their roles as beasts in the fields might.  They served their function and were gone.  But you… I met you, spoke with you, knew you, and you went away… and
you came back.
”  Her voice was low and intense and she held me as hard as she could. 

“I carry your seed in my womb, as is fitting; any priestess would bear a child at Her will.  But She never allows the one who sired the babe to be anything but a name, if that.  Yet, though it was many days later, She drew you back to me.  First, you came to me, then I came to you.  She chose us—the last of Her priestesses, the last of the Lords of Night—and it is Her desire we be together.”

“I must remember to thank Her,” I said, sincerely.

Tamara looked up at me, squarely in the eyes.  “Please do.  And do one thing for me?”

“Of course.”

“Come back.  Always,
always
come back.”

“If I can, I will,” I promised.  “Now promise
me
something.”

“Anything.”

“If I don’t come back, it’s because I
can’t
.  Come shove a dragon off me or burn down a temple—but come find me.”

She nodded, eyes bright.  “I will.”

I knew it wouldn’t be easy to go scouting, but I didn’t realize how
hard
it would be.  Tamara matters a lot more to me than I ever realized.

While we had our conference in the wagon—and also during my private farewells with Tamara—everyone was roused to turn the wagons around, one by one, and hitch up horses again.  It was going to be several hours on the road before they came to a southern fork.  While I scouted Eastgate and the mountains, they would head south at best speed, just in case. 

If it came right down to it, we could go around the Eastrange by boat from Baret, but it would take a long time.  I think the Baron would be willing to let us do that, if we could avoid antagonizing the Church in his town any more.

I decided to start with the mountains; it was the least risky of my options.  Bronze and I headed southeast like a bullet.

“I don’t suppose you can find my mountain again, can you?” I asked, shouting into the wind as she galloped like a freight train.  She shook her head, spraying flame-shot smoke over each shoulder in turn.

She says she can’t, boss.

“Thanks, Firebrand.  Crap.  That means we’ll have to camp somewhere along the range and wait for dawn; I’ll have to seek it.”

So we did.  It wasn’t a bad morning, all things considered.  I found a nice spot in a ravine and dragged some pine branches over to help shade it.  I wrapped myself in blankets and reflected how some things never change.

Once the sun was fully up, I sent out a spell in the general direction of my mountain.  I’m well familiar with it, so I got a good lock on it.

Bronze and I spent the day trying to walk, climb, or scramble in the general direction of my mountain.  It didn’t go well.  Periodically, I’d use my crystal to get more of an eagle’s-eye view of the terrain; it wasn’t pretty.  Rather, it was quite pretty, in a rugged, impassable fashion.  I also learned if something looks like an easy route from a thousand feet up it can be a treacherous, nasty, evil path when you’re trying to walk along it. 

I also got a new appreciation for how blasted
thick
the Eastrange is.  Eastgate sits on the thinnest, narrowest section of the whole range—even so, the pass is over a dozen miles long.  Everywhere else, it’s wider.  You could lose whole armies in those mountains and valleys.  It was almost a country of its own.  I found several nice valleys almost side by side—and impossible to get to from each other, short of using grappling hooks and rope.

Somewhere around mid-afternoon—and a lot more scrying spells—I called it quits.

“Bronze, I don’t think there’s a way through around here.  At least, nothing we can expect women and children to take.  You and I might get through this section and sneak up on the mountain, but it’d take more than I’ve got to get everyone across.  This place is rugged as the dark side of the Moon and less hospitable.”

She tossed her head and stomped.

She says we can take these overgrown pebbles, boss.  Just give her a chance and she’ll kick a road through.

“I don’t doubt you can do it, old girl,” I said, patting her neck.  “I wish I had the time to let you.  But we’d just have to destroy it afterward; we can’t have a road leading to our hidden lair.  It looks like we’ll be scouting out Eastgate tonight.”

Bronze tossed her head and turned around, heading northward along the mountains.

She says that kicking a road through an army will do just fine, boss.

“Thanks, Firebrand.”

I wouldn’t mind carving a path, either.

“I’ll bear that in mind.  But I want to see if we can get through
without
bloodshed.”

There was a long silence from Firebrand.  We passed a large rock, possibly a marker of some sort.  It had been squared off and carved on, but the markings were worn away.

Boss, has it ever occurred to you that you’re weird?

“On many occasions.  People tend to point it out.  What weirdness did you have in mind?”

What are you?
Firebrand asked.  I paused, surprised at the question.

“Hmm.  I used to be human.  I still feel like one, sometimes.  I’m a nightlord.  A vampire.  I’m also a wizard and a knight—”

That’ll do.  A nightlord.  And what do you eat and drink?

“Blood and souls.”

And you want to get through Eastgate
without
bloodshed?  Who’s crazy here, you or me?

I chuckled.  “I see your point, if you’ll pardon the expression.  But as it happens, I don’t particularly care for killing.”

Oh, now that
is
weird, boss.

“Would it help if I mentioned that goblins taste terrible?”

Hmm.  Well, at least that makes sense.

I chuckled as we galloped north.

FRIDAY, MARCH 3
RD

W
ell, Eastgate has been sacked.  Someone rolled into town and beat the place to a bloody pulp, then started rebuilding and fortifying it.  Mostly goblins; hundreds if not thousands of the little guys were running around—I can’t call it “marching”—and doing general labor.  They were like ants, swarming over everything.  Overseeing them, about one to every ten or so, there was an orc with a whip, apparently a sergeant.  There were also whole units of orcs, obviously the elite divisions, who were loafing around in full kit—a reaction force in case of attack.

I saw all this from a mountainside about four miles away.  Getting up there would have been a serious activity for a professional rock-climber.  I prepped a gravity-shifting spell in advance for it.  Instead of a nearly-vertical cliff face, it was as though I had tilted the whole mountain back about forty degrees.  A comparative walk in the park.  It did give the whole world a sort of tilted look to it, though; standing straight meant I was the one tilted.

As for watching such details from four miles away… well, dragons have really good eyesight. 

Burp.

I wonder what else I can eat and what effects it would have?  Does all monster blood carry with it strange qualities?  Come to that, is it the blood or the spirit?  And do I really want to catch things and coldly devour them to experiment?

I guess I’ll just wonder.

Anyway, it didn’t look like my people were going to fight our way through that lot.  Being highly optimistic and assuming we could, A:  roll up three times our number of enemies outside the defenses, and B: get inside the new palisade around Eastgate, we would still have C: about two thousand enemy soldiers in town that would contest our passage.

If I could cast spells at night, there would be no problem getting through.  As it was…

I wondered if we could bribe them.

“Any ideas, Firebrand?”

Kill them all, drink their blood, consume their spirits, and burn the bodies?

“Good idea.  Could take a while, though.  Should we get started now, or should we look for wizards and shamans and magicians, first?”

Let’s look, boss,
Firebrand suggested. 
Maybe we can find the guy in charge.

“Might as well.  I’m thinking we may be able to bribe the commanders.”

Could be.  How much gold do you have?

“On me?” I asked.  “Not a lot.  But we have several pounds of it in the wagons, along with a fistful of jewels.  Between the Duke Ganelon and the merfolk, we’re still pretty rich.”

Might be worth a try.

I walked down the mountainside like I might walk down a really steep slope.  The spell should keep going for half the night or until I clapped my hands.  It’s a good idea to be able to shut the thing off, so I included the mundane hand-clap cancellation—a switch, if you will, that didn’t take wizardry to throw.  I’m glad I took the time to figure out how to do that.

I got back down to Bronze, clapped my hands, and then waited for a few seconds while the world rocked under me.  Weird feeling, that.

“What do you think?” I asked of both Firebrand and Bronze.  “Ride straight in and see what they have to say?  Or sneak in?”

Bronze scraped dirt up in a furrow.  She snorted.  There was a wisp of smoke.

I was about to suggest sneaking in, boss, but Bronze seems to think that you would leave her outside again if that happened.  She doesn’t like that idea.

“I gathered,” I replied, patting her neck and letting her nuzzle me with a hot, metal nose.  “We’ll try just riding up to their gate and saying hello,” I told her.  “Think you can carry me to safety even if they shoot me full of holes and set me on fire?”

Bronze tossed her head and bared her teeth.

She says that if you hang on, she’ll bear you across fields of goblin blood and burning orcs and the blackest depths of Hell,
Firebrand supplied.

“Really?”

Well, she really just said “yes.”  But she
meant
what I said,
Firebrand admitted.

I didn’t have an answer to that.  I mounted up and we headed for the city.

The palisade was mostly wood; trees had been cut from all around the place, stripped, and placed as a wall.  It reminded me of a fort in a Western movie.  And why not?  The redskins weren’t all that far away, come to think of it.

The wall wasn’t done; there was a lot of frontage to cover.  The technique appeared to involve digging a trench and throwing all the dirt in toward the city.  This, when mixed with loose rock and broken stone, became a mound where the ends of the tree trunks—and other timbers, presumably from buildings—were thrust to form a wall.  Attackers would have to go down into a fairly deep ditch, then climb up twice as far to get to the timbers themselves.  They had the ditch done; it was the wall itself that was still being constructed.

Not bad.  I probably wouldn’t have thought of it, myself.  I wondered if they would find a way to flood the ditch and make it a moat.

The construction crew was pretty impressive.  I’ve never really seen monsters before, unless you count a demon or two.

The goblins had the shovels and reminded me of ants, as I said. 
Orku
were dragging up timbers, stripping trees, that sort of thing.  I’m not sure what was setting them upright in the holes at the top of the mound.  It had long arms, lots of muscles, tusks, floppy ears, and stood about nine feet tall.  I wasn’t willing to bet on whether it was a troll or an ogre.  Either way, it could win prizes for ugly.  It was certainly an effective crane.  Another pair with giant-sized sledgehammers made good pile drivers.

Their sentry system was pretty decent, too.  I came into view of the city at a walk; we weren’t in a major hurry.  Besides, I wanted to give them an opportunity to see me.  I needn’t have worried; a troop of cavalry poured out through the wooden gate and came galloping hell-for-leather toward me.

We stopped.  I watched them come for a moment.  They were
orku
, whooping and snarling and waving spears.  Each had a sword and short bow as well.

I drew Firebrand and it lit like a torch.

The cavalry divided into two columns of eight; they surrounded me and kept about a two-spear length away.  The spears were all pointed at me.

The leader addressed me, asking, “Who are you and what do you want?”

“I am Halar,” I replied, “and I wish to speak to your leaders.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“Because I want to bribe them.”

To my surprise, he raised his spear and fit the butt into a cup alongside one stirrup.  “Come with me.”

They escorted me to the gate while keeping me surrounded.  They knew what they were doing.  I revised my optimistic estimate of how many my people could have fought their way through.  I think Tamara could have accounted for a lot more of them than all of us sword-wielders together, but I don’t think it would be enough.

Once inside the gate, we continued into town.  I was not surprised to find the ducal manor had been left mostly intact.  Nor was I surprised to find it was now the command center for the invaders.  It was a nice place.  We stopped just outside the front door.

“Dismount,” the
orku
cavalry leader said.

I dismounted.

“I’ll have your sword,” it said.  I had a strong feeling of déjà vu.  I sheathed Firebrand and kept my hands away from the hilt.

“You have my permission to borrow it for safekeeping, but I can’t guarantee it’ll agree.”

The
orku
growled a command and spears pointed at me from all sides.  He pushed his way up to me and seized Firebrand’s hilt.

He screamed and jerked back as Firebrand sizzled like red-hot metal.  It left a hard burn on the offending hand.

“Maybe we should just leave it where it is, hmm?” I suggested.

Nursing his burned hand, he snarled something in
orku.
  One of his troops stuck me in one arm with a spear; I held still and let him.  It was a good hit, too; went right through the muscle, missed the bone by a hair, and stuck out the other side of the bicep.  It hurt quite a bit, but it hurt even more when he jerked it back out.  There were barbs on the spearhead.  The commander grinned at me.

“Take off the belt and drop the sword.”

I examined the hole in my shirtsleeve.  The wound was healed up and gone by then.

“You know,” I replied, conversationally, “I’m going to mention this to your commander.  A new shirt is eating into the bribe I can offer.”

He snorted.  “You’re a tough one.”  Then he said something else in
orku
and three spearmen went for my legs.  They knew their job; I wound up kneeling suddenly.

“Well?” he asked.  “I can keep this up all night.”

While he spoke, I regenerated.  I could learn to like this rate of recovery.  I stood up again.

“So can I, but I won’t be patient that long.”

He snarled again and I interrupted him in the middle of it.  I took a spear away from one of the troopers and swung it in a circle, whacking skulls in passing with the butt of it.  Then I threw the spear into the heavy outer door of the manor; it went completely through and vanished inside.  Oops.

I leaped forward and snatched the commander by the throat.  I lifted him off the ground with one hand and looked him in the eye.  He was bigger than I am by about five inches and looked like he outweighed me by a hundred and fifty pounds.

“I’ve come a long way,” I said, softly, just loud enough to be heard over the groaning and the flailing of the troops behind me.  “I’ve had a church on my ass, gods trying to kill me, a dragon trying to eat me, and now
you
.  I am keeping the sword and you’ll never even
suggest
I hand it over again—or I’ll break every bone from your fingertips to your spine and send you out to play with a pair of forest cats. 
Do we have an understanding?
”

I don’t like
orku
much.  Nasty, smelly, evil brutes.  They remind me of jocks when I was in high school; I have bad memories of those. 

He gurgled and clawed at my arm, tried to kick me, and finally drew a dagger.  He stabbed my forearm with it, in and out, quick and efficient.  I pulled back my sleeve and let him actually see the wounds close.  His eyes, already trying to bug out, couldn’t get any worse.  But his frantic gurgling changed tone.  He flung down the dagger.

One of his troopers put a spear through me from behind.  I looked down at the spearhead sticking out of my chest, then back up at the commander.  I sighed.  I put him down gently.  He sat down, coughing and hacking. 

The trooper behind me yanked out the spear.  It hurt a lot; all of them were barbed.  The trooper probably expected me to go to my knees, blood bubbling in my mouth.  Instead, I turned around.

“Bad idea,” I said.  I knocked the spear aside and was
on
him, bearing him to the ground.  I sank fangs into his flesh and tendrils into his spirit before he knew what hit him.  In seconds, I had a flash of his existence:  Cold mountains, tough farming, climbing rocks and hunting, challenges and fighting with his fellows, long feuds with other valley clans, combat over females, trials of blood and pain.

And he was gone.

I looked up from my crouch, suddenly aware I had done the right thing.  To be respected, I would have to demonstrate power, strength, and ruthlessness.  It was their way.  They respected only what they couldn’t kill.  It echoed with what I had taken from the goblins I’d devoured.  That was the way of all their kind.

They took my actions to heart.  They were already on their knees, knocking foreheads to the pavement, their commander included.

I got up and stood over him.  “Are you going to give me any more trouble?”

“No, master,” he replied.  I got the feeling I’d had this conversation somewhere before.

“Good.  Lead me to your commanders.”

He sprang to his feet and hurried to the door.  He pounded on it and someone inside opened it.  It led to a receiving room.  There was a dead goblin nailed to the far wall by a spear.  Whups.

The trip through the manor was pretty quick; there was no nonsense about surrendering weapons or asking my business.  My escort stayed several steps ahead of me, constantly clearing the way.  Nobody gave us any trouble, not even when he ushered me into the presence of the Supreme High Overlord, Master and Commander, General of the army.

I should have seen it coming, but I’m sometimes dense.  Have I mentioned that?

“Hi, Bob.”

The orcs and goblins and other such beasties have two things humans don’t; they see really well in the dark and their digestion rivals that of a goat.  Humans, however, have one major advantage that seems difficult to overcome:  superior intelligence.