Old Man's Ghosts (27 page)

‘Beyond Shadowrain. We crossed the great north mountains and skirted the forest where it met the snow-line. We knew of the kingdoms beyond the mountains, beautiful places but too remote to attempt to conquer.

Beyond them, though, there was talk of a great inland sea and civilisation on the far shore – in the kingdoms we knew they called it the garden of the world. Most beloved of the old Gods, we were told, granted a paradise to live in and knowing only peace.’

‘How?’

‘There were guardians chosen from each generation, guardians given the power of Gods. We discovered inherited traits like the ones you have were in these blessed bloodlines – their rituals of adulthood involved relinquishing their powers to the priesthood who kept great repositories for the guardians to draw on.’

‘And you broke into one?’

‘I did. We were outmatched and I took a risk. I was assigned to watch the unit’s back, but we had evaded our pursuit and I saw an opportunity. I broke into a temple while the priests were elsewhere, but it was ancient. A walkway crumbled underneath me and I fell. I lay there half-dead, roused only by the screams of my unit in my ears as they were ambushed and slaughtered a few miles away.’

‘So you contracted it like a virus?’

‘Not quite. A guardian found me, the newest of their number. Just a girl, really, her name was Sarra – or rather it had been. The Lady of Mists was what she’d become. Whatever happened to me in the temple, it would have killed me had she not done something. I don’t know how, but she healed me and changed me at the same time, sent me back alone to tell the tale of how the rest had been killed.

‘Sarra didn’t want a second, stronger expedition to be sent after us, but she warned me to keep my fall in the temple a secret even as I reported how dangerous the guardians were. She wanted me to glimpse the burden the guardians carried, how it turned each of them insane as the years passed. I didn’t understand what she meant at the time, didn’t know what secret she warned me to keep. I only knew that I believed her, that it would be the end of me and all I loved if my masters knew what had happened that day.’

‘
She gave you their greatest weapon and then warned you to keep away?’

‘She gave me the secret of how they passed their weapons on through the generations, but no weapon of theirs. Each guardian was powerful enough to destroy an army – they had done so many times in their history before invaders learned they were invincible by any mortal standards.

‘The changes made to my body – the blades, the mage-sight, the hardened bones, each of the hundred-odd adjustments the mage-priests made when I was younger – they didn’t add up to enough to threaten the guardians, no matter how many of us there were. But Sarra used them as a warning and a punishment – she knew others within the Astaren would turn on me for personal gain just as she knew I wanted a family before I died. She twisted things inside me so those changes became inherited traits rather than just the tinkering of mage-priests. She cursed me with the prize we’d sought there, knowing what any army would do to its own to get their hands on such an advantage.’

‘And so she tied your future and ours in a neat little bow. Once you had children, they would be always under threat from your own comrades.’

Enchei bowed his head, heart as heavy as lead.

‘And then you abandoned us – walked away and told the world you were dead rather than face the consequences of what you had done.’

‘Enchei?’ called a voice.

He looked up, startled for a moment, before getting his bearings. ‘Pirish? I thought you’d gone.’

The tiny old woman stood in the doorway, looking so hard at him he felt her gaze on his soul. She remained spry despite her age and a husband buried longer than Enchei’s girls had been alive; the ravages of the years were visible on her face but didn’t affect her mind.

‘This is my house,’ she snapped, ‘I’ll go when I’m good and ready.’

Enchei sighed. For all their differences there was a fierceness in Pirish that reminded him of the Lady of Mists – a bloody-mindedness and independence that could never be swayed. ‘I need to get on here.’

‘No you don’t,’ she said, advancing into the room and settling into a wicker chair so filled with cushions only someone of Pirish’s size could fit in the remaining space. ‘You need a friend to talk to. I’ve never seen you like that before; like the starlight just marked out your grave in front o’ you.’

He shook his head. ‘Maybe the opposite, actually. Feels like I’ve got part of my life back again, one I thought I’d lost forever.’

‘Then why’ve you got a face like that on ya?’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘Knight’s balls “it’s complicated”. Folk always say that when they’ve dug ’emselves a hole, but it’s rarely so complex.’

‘You’ve no idea.’

‘So tell me,’ she said, shifting slightly in her seat to get more comfortable. ‘I’ve no stake in this, not like your Lawbringer friend.’

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Enchei said in a hollow voice. ‘I need people to forgive me and it doesn’t matter what’s right or wrong, true or false. I need ’em to forgive me in their hearts, not just say the words, and there’s nothing I can do to help it.’

‘Must be family then,’ Pirish concluded, a smug look on her face. ‘Nothing messes a man’s head up more’n family. I thought you’d left yours a long while back, some scandal or the like?’

Enchei hesitated. He’d known Pirish for a few years now, longer than Narin, but had never told her his secrets and she’d been careful not to ask. Intimations of an insalubrious past were enough for Pirish – from how they’d met, Enchei guessed she’d known more than a few men like that and would be fazed by little. But she was content not to pry and he had always been glad of it.

‘That’s right,’ he said after a pause that was long enough for Pirish to notice. ‘Left them a long time back, but they tracked me down.’

‘A man can never apologise enough,’ Pirish declared. ‘For what he said, for what he didn’t say – hells, sometimes just for bein’ himself or having the face he does. Say you’re sorry and say it again. Say it till you’ve run out of breath then bloody write it down instead.’

‘Never been good at sorry.’

‘Aye, doubt you’ve had much practice,’ she said darkly, ‘but mebbe you try and mean it this time, eh? My first husband never could sound sorry – arrogant bastard he was, always wearin’ a grin like the Emperor himself would forgive whatever he’d done.’

‘First husband? What did you do to him?’

‘Hah, don’t think I weren’t tempted once or twice. As you’re mebbe plannin’, you shut a man in that pitch-dark smokehouse for five minutes and he’s dead all accidental like.’ She sighed. ‘But though the Emperor might’ve forgiven him, turns out an Eagle warrior caste wasn’t so accommodatin’. Never found out what he’d said to the man, only that the little sod was coming half-nekked out some floozy’s house at the time. The Eagle put a bullet between his eyes and just kept on walkin’ like nothin’ had ever happened.’

Before Enchei could find the words to reply, there came the thump of feet on the stairs and Kesh’s face appeared at the doorway.

‘If you old buggers have finished your tea party, we’ve got work to do, remember?’

‘Aye, I remember,’ Enchei scowled. ‘I’m on it.’

‘Really? Because I thought you were going to nail planks across the inside of those shutters?’ Kesh said, pointing to the wide window ahead of him.

‘You filled all the buckets with water?’

‘Just getting the last few now. There’s six downstairs already. Pirish, I know there’s a smokehouse downstairs, but why so many buckets?’

The old woman cackled. ‘Can never have too many,’ she said, ‘not when you’ve got fires smoking day an’ night.’

‘They won’t burn the place,’ Enchei said, pushing thoughts of his daughters from his mind. ‘They’re warrior caste on a blood feud; they’ll barge their way in and want us to see their faces as they kill us.’

‘You sure they’ll come in the other bedroom?’

He nodded. ‘It’s an easy hop up on to the smokehouse roof. We leave a lamp burning in this room and the other dark; it’ll be the obvious entry point.’

‘Unless they kick in my front door,’ Pirish pointed out.

‘They’ll do that too, come at us from both directions. I’ll set up a surprise for anyone getting through that door. My money’s on the leaders coming up here, though – let the noise down below lure folk downstairs and give time for a little family reunion.’

‘But they get that boy with the demons in his head instead?’ Pirish asked. ‘Tough you may be, Enchei, but you’re no warrior caste.’

‘There’ll be no straight fight up here either,’ Enchei said firmly. ‘We’re taking no risks today.’

‘Glad to hear it.’ Pirish hauled herself up out of the chair. ‘So like the lady said, you’ve got work to do, which means I’m to the pub. Fetch me when it’s all over an’ it’s my house again.’

‘Thank you, Pirish.’

She waved it away as she headed down the stairs, calling over her shoulder, ‘Just you keep my house from burnin’ down, you hear?’ She cackled again. ‘And remember I’m always lookin’ out for a fourth husband before I die!’

Shonrey ground to a halt and watched the urchin trudge past the tavern up ahead. The light had been failing steadily and now dusk was upon them. The lamp that hung over the tavern door was lit, creating a bubble of warmth in the fog. He could just about read the tavern’s name, the Broken Field, as the urchin passed it, eyes downcast but turned just slightly to the left.

They had taken an oblique route to get here, but Shonrey felt a quickening in his gut that told him finally they were where the Gods willed them to be. The Lawbringer had been demoted, Shonrey saw, but not stripped of his rank entirely. Another example of the weakness within the Lawbringers, the cheap blood that flowed in their veins. Either they were too cowardly to fully acknowledge their mistakes or they were so venal that they did not consider his crimes serious.

Shonrey ground his teeth in anger, feeling his hand tighten into a fist. He would show them what punishment was appropriate to one who betrayed her husband, her family, her caste. This Investigator and his whore, both would learn the wrath of the Wyverns before the night was out.

Investigator Narin was a grey phantom in the fog as he moved in bursts and constantly turned to check behind, but Shonrey had learned from their mistakes of days past.

Their missing kin, their failures in following the Lawbringer to his whore’s lair – all solved by a single coin and a grubby low-caste boy with no honour. He was a local, no more than fourteen years old, and interested only in the silver coin he’d been promised.

Growing up penniless on those streets, the boy called Virin hadn’t cared why he was to follow a Lawbringer, but even in this one day he had proved his worth at it. The man was watching for dark faces following him and it seemed he had not even noticed just another poor, white face walking behind. How the Investigator and his associates had managed to ambush his previous pursuers not once but twice remained a mystery, but it no longer mattered. Now he was undone by his own grasping, low-born kind.

The sound of boots on cobbles heralded Shonrey’s youngest cousin, Toher, a gangly youth whose questions had been a constant irritant over the days they had spent in the Imperial City. They both wore dark blue cloaks over their clothes, enough to hide everything but their faces. Up ahead, the urchin in the ragged clothes had stopped past the tavern and turned to face them.

‘Has he found it?’ Toher asked, clouds of breath betraying the anxiety of one so young he had never been in battle.

But you’re lucky, cousin,
Shonrey thought,
you will survive your first fight. Perhaps you’ll learn the sense to survive battle-proper. House Eagle’s armies will prove more dangerous than this Investigator when the warhorns finally sound, and it’s my duty to see you safe until then.

He did not answer the youth for a long while, instead watching the urchin keenly. Virin waited a moment then retraced his steps, heading towards them with head again low. It afforded him one final glance at the side-street the Investigator had disappeared down.

‘Return to Vosain,’ Shonrey said at last, eyes never leaving the urchin growing steadily more real as he emerged from the fog. ‘Tell him to come at once.’

Toher nodded. ‘So close to Dragon District,’ he breathed as he cast around to get his bearings. ‘Astonishing.’

‘Their choices will have been limited,’ Shonrey said. ‘The Investigator will have had little money and has likely never left this city in his life. His thinking will have been similarly limited.’

‘And Kine will not have been able to travel …’ Too late did Toher realise his mistake and tail off.

Shonrey turned and grabbed the youth by the throat. ‘Never speak that name,’ he hissed with barely constrained fury. Toher croaked and shuddered as Shonrey’s grip closed his windpipe but the tall warrior did not relent. ‘She is dead to us. The whore was never part of our family, understand me?’

Toher’s eyes began to roll up and Shonrey released him, letting the youth fall back to the ground where he gasped and pawed at his throat. Finally he heaved in a ragged breath, retching once noisily before he recovered himself.

‘I’m … my apologies, cousin,’ he managed at last, sitting with legs splayed in the slush and filth of the street.

‘Get up,’ Shonrey snapped, turning away. ‘Bring Vosain to me, quickly now.’

As Toher fled, the urchin stepped forward – he had wisely decided not to get involved in the scuffle – and stuck out a grubby hand. ‘Smokehouse, down behind the tavern.’

Shonrey pulled a silver coin from his increasingly depleted purse and held it up. The embossed Wyvern emblem on one side glinted in the feeble light of the street.

‘You have one final task,’ he said in halting Imperial. While it was the trade language of the Empire, Shonrey’s family were warriors only, their need to learn anything more than House Dragon’s tongue limited.

The urchin hesitated. Evidently he wanted to curse and demand his money, but he knew what that would bring from a warrior caste.

‘What?’ he said in a sulky voice.

‘Scout the land,’ was the best Shonrey could manage at first, falling back on words a warrior needed to learn. ‘The smokehouse is big? Small? We can flank it?’

‘Ah right,’ Virin said, nodding as he understood. ‘Aye, there’s an alley behind. It’s this way.’

‘I wait here,’ Shonrey said.

‘Suit yourself, I’ll go check. Been a while since I came this way, but I reckon I remember it okay. You’ll get in easy enough round the back – some old woman owns it, I think. Probably rented her spare room out, it’s not a big place, none of these round here are.’

‘Find me a path,’ the Wyvern said, fingers touching the butt of a pistol at his waist, ‘and the silver is yours.’

It took Toher a half-hour to return with the remaining five of their number, Vosain at their fore as always. In that time Shonrey had himself ventured to the mouth of the side-street and scouted what he could of their goal. The smokehouse was a typical low-caste building; shabby and small, made from yellow clay bricks stained halfway to black by dirt and rain.

Virin, now paid and gone, had told him there was a workroom behind the main door and the smoke-room itself lay beside it. Above the workroom were two smaller ones where the owner lived, one looking out onto the street, the other over the smoke-room. An alley that stank of piss ran from the rear of the tavern all the way down behind the houses until it reached the wide street that served as the border with Dragon District. Their path was clear to Shonrey, the only problem being a large man he had seen entering the house after Investigator Narin.

‘I was lucky,’ he said to his cousin as they stood together, fifty yards from the side-street entrance. ‘A minute earlier and he could have seen me there.’

The scarred veteran looked down at him. ‘You are sure he did not?’

‘I am sure.’

Vosain nodded, taking him at his word. The age between them was too great for them to have grown up as friends, but they had served five years together in the army. Shonrey had once been the foolish youth Toher was – perhaps not so foolish, given the skirmishes he’d survived in those early days, but still reliant on his elder cousin to see him through.

‘He was warrior caste?’ Vosain asked.

‘No. A big man; he looked like a mercenary or hired thug, but no high caste.’

‘We do not need to worry, then. Toher alone is worth more than a low-caste mercenary.’

Unlike most Wyvern warriors, Vosain’s dark head was bald rather than a mass of braided or threaded hair. It accentuated the brutal bullet-scar and ruined upper-half of his right ear, making him appear even more fearsome than his size already indicated.

Shonrey glanced back at the youth, standing nervously to the rear. Vosain was right in that the youth had been trained to shoot well enough, but there had to be more at work here. They had all lost kin on this blood feud; sisters and brothers dead in some gutter, their corpses eaten by demons, he was forced to conclude.

‘We must assume he is dangerous,’ Shonrey pressed. ‘We have too many dead to do otherwise.’

‘You think one mercenary killed so many of our kin?’

‘Not alone I’m sure, but what other explanation is there?’

‘A dozen or more,’ Vosain growled. ‘Do you forget my brother was among our first to be lost? I underestimate no man.’

‘Then what? Have we stumbled into something more?’

‘That bloodless viper son of Brightlance is all my brother stumbled into,’ Vosain replied, ‘and he paid for such luck with his life. Lawbringer Rhe is a great warrior, this is known, but he is not here now. There are no guns inside, no true warriors. I had not thought you so anxious, Shonrey.’

‘When we’ve lost the first skirmishes, I grow wary,’ Shonrey said calmly. ‘Your brother had four with him, none returned. Harai and Usern were assigned to follow Lawbringer Rhe the next day and they disappeared with our two watchers on the bridge. Until I know how they were ambushed, I remain wary.’

‘Your wariness lets victory slip through your fingers,’ Vosain spat. ‘We have the rats cornered now. I will kill them both myself if needs be.’

‘I am always at your side, cousin, you know that.’

‘I do.’

They fell silent as Vosain considered the layout Shonrey had reported. With the divine constellations hidden by cloud, the diffused slivers of light from surrounding windows were the only light. The street itself was quiet, the side-street and alley deserted now.

‘I will take Toher,’ Vosain announced at last. ‘He will guard my back and ensure no one from the tavern uses the alley. I will climb the roof of the smoke-room and wait at the window there. That front door should be easily kicked in – even barred, two of you should be able to break it down with your shoulders.’

‘They have relied on ambush before,’ Shonrey said slowly, knowing no other answer was possible. ‘They will do so again.’

‘It is so. Break in the door and fire on anyone you see, but do not enter. Lure them out if you can. Station one man at the window, ready to shoot should they use that.’

‘Meanwhile you will enter and take them by surprise. I should be with you, though, not Toher. Better we both make the assault.’

‘Either one of us will succeed or both will fail,’ Vosain argued, putting his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. ‘When you hear my guns, enter cautiously. They cannot cover both sides effectively.’

‘We should take nothing for granted. I have a grenade, I will use it. It does my honour no good, but until the whore is dead my honour can suffer no greater stain.’

Vosain’s mouth thinned. ‘Very well,’ he said with obvious reluctance. ‘You are right, cousin. They fight without honour and nor should we until she is dead.’ He turned and beckoned the youngest of their group over. ‘Toher, come with me.’

‘You have to the count of a hundred,’ Shonrey said, freeing his pistols from their holster ties. ‘Then you must be in place, ready for when we breach the door.’

Vosain nodded. ‘Lord Knight bless our cause.’

‘Lord Executioner guide our hands,’ Shonrey replied. ‘The Gods be with us all, cousin.’

From beneath a cloak of rags, he watched. Hunched and pathetic, he was ignored by all in his hollow of broken boxes. Just another beggar too drunk or crazed to find somewhere more sheltered from the descending cold. Just another beggar who’d be dead by morning, whose corpse others would step over until one became sickened by the sight and tipped him into the river to feed the demons.

The fog grew thicker, the breeze off the sea a savage cold that left ice in its wake. Still the beggar did not move, did nothing but watch. He was motionless and silent, but for the voices that chattered in the depths of his mind.

We wait.

There are four.

I count ten.

Sea snakes.

Count the shadows.

I see flame and shadow.

The hounds call.

Dragons rise from the depths.

We burn.

Still he did not move, but he watched all and slowly the fog curling around him grew and thickened. A corona of vapour rose from his shoulders, then smoke. At last he moved, head bowing to look at his clasped grey hands. Each finger was inscribed with a prayer; hands, arms and entire body too, an ancient etched script that glowed faintly in the darkness. As he watched, the glow increased and the rags of his cloak continued to smoulder.

We burn,
he called to the night.

Shonrey finished his count and made a small gesture with his hand. Each of the Wyvern warriors shrugged off the long concealing coats and shook their braided hair loose before they drew their pistols. One moved next to the lower window of the workroom, ready to shoot anyone who might throw open the shutters, and the rest headed straight for the door. The largest, Urern, led the way and broke into a run in the last few steps.

He dipped his shoulder and hit the door with the full weight of his body. The sound echoed like thunder around the street as something burst under the pressure. The door flew open and Urern staggered forward over the threshold, dropping to a crouch as Shonrey levelled his pistol at the room behind. A sour, pungent smell met him; smoked meat and fish mingled with something unrecognisable to a high caste.

The room was dark enough that he could only make out the regular shapes of packing crates arranged along the far wall. The door lurched drunkenly, one hinge ripped free of the wood. Ahead was an open doorway to a smaller room, empty chairs and a dead stove illuminated by weak lamplight from above. Just as Shonrey took a breath a dark shape edged around the corner of the doorway ahead and darted back. He fired on instinct, seeing his bullet strike the far wall.

He turned, leaving another to aim at anything that moved in the room and gestured to the cousin at the rear of them. He offered over a burning taper which Shonrey held to the stub of fuse on his grenade. They were untrustworthy weapons and disliked by all warrior castes, but he had enough deaths to account for back home without chancing more. When the first group of family had not returned from their mission to capture the Investigator, Shonrey had bought the fist-sized iron ball from a Dragon weapon-smith, aware of its power in the narrow streets of the Imperial City.