Take the Darkness...: Epic Fantasy Series (7 page)

‘Who can help me now?’ She asked.

‘Your father.’

Chapter 12

She sat at her uncle’s desk, in his study at the manor house where she’d been born and raised. The fire was crackling in the hearth but she shivered with the cold. In the middle of the room Seth, the tall Northern bastard, was chained at hand and foot in the circle. On the table sat a plate of meat and vegetables that she’d only been able to take a few bites of, and it still tasted cold and filthy in her mouth. The Northman screamed in pain, her black dogs slowly tearing him apart as she watched. Her uncle, Stephan, sat next to her and smiled as he watched the show with her. He looked as she remembered him, strong, powerful, and well dressed with his military clothes and stern face.

He laughed as Seth died for the thousandth time in front of him. ‘If only it had gone that way,’ he said.

Seraphina smiled sadly back at him. ‘It will, uncle, it will.’

Then she heard the noise. It was a deep howl, and it filled her with real happiness. She smiled a real smile for the first time in a long time. As the howl came closer, she let go of her vision and let it slowly fade. Soon the large manor house disappeared around her, as did her uncle. The desk and her writing, and even the fire died away ‘til she was sitting alone in a small cave on a hard rock with just a rotten piece of white meat in front of her. She threw it aside so she wouldn’t see it.

She knew even her face would change. In her visions, she was as beautiful as ever. Long silky blonde hair, clear blue eyes, and fine skin. Not the tired, defeated women she was now. Even her long hair was a tangle of mats and dirt. She’d been here for more than five years, and now her only friend was coming, it had been so long.

She saw him appear from around the corner of the cave and let the illusion of the fire spring back to life. It couldn’t cast warmth, but light only. She saw him, a vision that had once terrified her, but no more. The Wolvern slowly paced up the low cave towards her. Its pale skin and long teeth reflecting the light. She stood as it approached and she ran to it. She reached her arms around the creature and hugged it like an oversized dog.

A dark laugh like she had never heard sounded in her mind, and it actually contained some warmth. ‘
Did you miss me, little princess?’

She had. ‘I did, lord dog, you’ve been gone so very long this time.’ She said the words out loud, just to hear herself speak. Her refined voice was more cracked, but still she tried to be a lady even if she didn’t look like one.

‘
I’ve brought you some dinner, and it’s at the cave entrance.’

‘Thank you, kind sir,’ she said, standing to give the Wolvern a curtsey. Hopefully, it was the bats, since they were at least not human.

Her relationship with this creature, who she now called ‘lord dog’ – and she was his ‘little princess’ – was a strange one, born from the cold and loneliness of this land. She’d been roughly shoved by Seth from the land of the sun, into this cold hell, with a foot bleeding from an arrow wound and hungry mouths all around. He’d told the creature to try not to kill her, and through some sense of sport or torment, it had done just that.

At first she’d thought it was trying to kill her. It had chased her through the snow, her staggering on her bloody foot and crying with pain. Yet, it had killed or driven off any of the dead that came to devour her. It wanted her itself, she thought. Slowly, it had herded her like cattle into this cave. It had sat at the entrance for days until she slowly healed. It had brought her food, but never said a word. One day it had said, ‘
Be like them and they’ll leave you alone.
’

She had practised her guise and found her powers were growing stronger and stronger with use. Soon, she could look like one of them, and it seemed satisfied. ‘
Now you can walk among them
,’ it had told her.

Then it was gone, but it would return every few days or weeks with things for her. Disgusting blind bat-like creatures, small black dogs or parts of them. She’d find them at the entrance of her cave like bloody gifts left by the family cat. One day, as it slunk away after leaving something, she had called out. ‘Please stay, I’m so lonely,’ and it had stayed, curled like a huge dog in front of her imaginary fire, and it had spoken to her. They had become friends. She didn’t know why it liked her or didn’t kill her. If it was some loyalty to Seth or just because it could, she didn’t care... at least she had something that didn’t want her dead in a world of hungry killers.

‘
My boy needs your help’
, it said now.

‘What boy?’

‘
The North boy, he’s here, and he needs your help
.’

She started laughing and couldn’t stop. She laughed until tears had come into her eyes. All this time, she’d wished so hard for someone else to come here and save her from this unending loneliness, and it had to be him, of course, the one person she didn’t want to see ever again. She’d love to kill that bastard for what he’d done to her, but still, why him? Oh well... it must be fate. She would get her revenge, if not companionship.

‘What the hell is he doing here? Elizebetha get sick of him and shove him in?’

The Wolvern sensed her tone and spoke darkly. ‘
He came here with a noble cause, but needs your help now.’

She stopped laughing. ‘Okay, and why does he need my help? He’s a lot more dangerous than me,’ she said with more caution, seeing that the creature was still loyal to him.

‘
He’s under the power of the silver tongue
,’ it said.

The Wolvern had long spoken to her of the land outside her cave, and she’d ventured out only a little. While the dead left her alone when she took their guise, with the dead black eyes and feral teeth, she still hated to see them. Yet, it had told her of the pale ones, and especially the silver tongue. It hated her with a terrifying passion. Apparently they had clashed many times, and he couldn’t kill her because she simply commanded him not to. She’d seen the woman only from a distance, and thought she was incredible, like a living statue, but the Wolvern had warned her to stay away from her.

‘If you can’t kill her, I can’t,’ she said simply.

‘
You can and you will.’

Chapter 13

He watched with unfocused eyes as the flames roared and loudly consumed the pile of bodies that they’d built in the rear courtyard. He’d changed from a hero to a monster in the eyes of many of the troops, as they had no idea why he’d had them take the bodies of the fallen, and then why he’d had them burned. He told them that in a siege they needed to collect all the weapons they could, and he had a pile of stolen swords, bows, and arrows to show the truth of this. And the burning was needed, but they questioned why hadn’t thy just taken the weapons from the fallen and saved themselves the tiresome effort of hauling the bodies up one by one with ropes, and now defiling them.

He could hardly say what the Duke would do with this many fallen, and that they’d be crushed by tomorrow if he’d let them be taken into his camp. So, as the fires burned the bodies of the young boys and men of Twin Plains and the smell of the burning flesh reached his nose, he hardened his heart. Better they think him a monster than they be killed or he be killed. If Seth was here, he would have done the same thing, though he’d hate every moment of it, just like Grimm did, but in war, sometimes you had to do things you hate because they needed to be done.

One thing he’d learned by now was that there was no escaping what sort of a man you were, and the path you took in life. He was called ‘Grimm’ for a reason, and the Northern didn’t give out nicknames lightly. He’d been in more battles than he could count on both hands and had taken that cursed ship, “
The Fleet
” out of Cravoss, because he’d been trying his hand at a life that didn’t involve daily murder... and look how that had turned out. Now, he had a task and he’d to do it well. He had to defend this bloody Keep and the people in it. If he had to do some horrible things to get it done, he wouldn’t shy away. He’d be the monster he needed to be so that the rest of these men and women didn’t have to. At least his gods wouldn’t judge him poorly for it. He knew he could walk with his ancestors with pride.

The man Goldie had clearly missed his calling in life; either that or he’d been a lot more than a simple sailor before. She watched him from the stool near the bar, which she’d moved to as he entertained and recruited every piece of violent scum in the city. They staggered in groups or alone, and found their ways to the leather booth, seating themselves across from him, where he sat like a King with a small but very noticeable pile of gold sitting on the table before him. She watched as he sat now with the silent Flint at his side, and a short man in stained clothing who looked much like a rat before him. He had a pointed face, rotten teeth, and what value would he be as a soldier, she thought.  Goldie spoke to the man in hushed tones, but she had learned to read the lips of people: it was a very good skill for an archer to have, as it always helped spot who was in charge from a distance, even if they had put all their officers in regular clothing to protect them from a well placed arrow.

She realised he was doing something very different from what he was meant to do.  He was here to find and recruit the Red Bastards, but also take anyone else who would fight. He was doing that but also more. She’d seen him scribbling names on a piece of paper and telling the men to meet at the front gate tomorrow morning. So far, he’d recruited at least thirty men for the princely sum of a single gold piece for one week of their lives. It was a fortune for most of these riffraff. Still, they would be dead in the end, so he could just take it back, but as he’d worked, she heard or read on his lips the same words again and again.

‘Look friend, there will be no fighting, as we have three hundred men inside and the force of the Duke is 1000 strong. He wants the Keep, not a fight. Once we come with a similar force, we’ll sit down with him and give him the Keep. My man is inside and running the fight, and when I arrive with a bag of the Duke’s money, he’ll open the gates and walk on in. It’s not a fight, but a simple show of force.’

If Flint heard the words he did nothing to halt them, but then, Goldie was speaking in Pellosi, and she didn’t know if he’d be able to understand it. The heavy painted door of the tavern swung open hard, and they walked in. She knew them straight away and so did the rest of the patrons, who had been watching this recruitment with some interest. Many of the traders had found their way to the table to offer support, horses, food, and anything else they thought he might buy.

The captain of the Red Bastards was a man who was always called ‘King Bastard’. He had a name, but she couldn’t remember it, though she knew his face well enough. He swaggered up to the table with two men in tow. They all had short swords at their hips and cocky looks, people feared them by a rightly earned reputation. They wore the normal mismatched armour of mercenaries everywhere, but all three had a red bandage tied around their upper arms: it was said they stained them with the blood of their fallen foes, but she knew that was bullshit. Old blood goes brown, she knew well enough, and these were bright crimson.

King Bastard was a tall man for a Pellosi, but still smaller than either of the Northmen, and he was youngish, around thirty five name days, and quite pretty. He had long flowing blonde hair tied in a horsetail, and had three gold teeth that flashed when he smiled, which was a lot. The look of his smug pretty face gave her a shiver up her spine. This one of all had an evil reputation. They had a habit of buying female slaves to come with them on campaigns, and she’d never heard of one coming back alive or wishing they had.

The Bastard sat down in the seat that was quickly made available by the rat-face man who got up and left as soon as they walked in. Goldie smiled at the man and shook his hand as they sat.

‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ Goldie said.

‘I thought this fairly obvious display might be meant to attract our attention. It’s also got the attention of the city guard, who are less than happy with you,’ the man said in a smooth voice, gold teeth flashing.

‘Oh, well, I had to find you fast, and what better way than a table piled with gold coins?’ He asked.

The man eyed the small pile of gold and smiled again. His men were staring at it and she could see them both looking at it, and then to Flint, and wondering if it would be worth just stealing it.

‘So we’ve heard you’ve got a little dust-up you need help with,’ he said.

‘We do, but I’m not over a barrel, so I don’t want you trying to fuck me on price. We need men, but there will be no battle, just a show of force.’

‘I’ve heard that, too, and spoken a bit too loudly, so you can thank me now for already silencing one man who was riding fast for the camp of said Duke. You’ve heard the words ‘spies’ before, right?’ The Bastard asked sarcastically.

Goldie’s face started to grow red. Here was a man even more cocky and self assured than him.

‘Let's talk rates and numbers, and less about my own abilities,’ said Goldie in a strained voice.

‘Well, we have 1200 men that we can have gathered by tomorrow lunch. The main force is in camp a few miles from the city, and the rest are here causing trouble. You say ‘no fight’, which is good, but also means no spoils or bodies to loot, which is bad, so what do you propose?’

‘One week engagement, a gold a man, half to you now and half when we get our payment from the Duke to not fight,’ said Goldie.

‘And you’re just going to give him the Keep? Have you got that little faith in Dagosh’s army of whores and slaves?’ He asked, laughing, as did his men.

Josette drew her dagger into her hand and saw the King Bastard look over at her as he laughed; he knew her, that was for sure.

Goldie just ignored the barb. ‘We have no love for Black Rock, and if we can get out of this situation rich and alive, that’s all I want.’

They shook hands and the deal was sealed, Goldie having now engaged the least reliable mercenary force in the land.

‘Now tell me about that girl,’ he said, and looked over to the stool where she had been sitting, but only Flint had seen her slip out the door while they shook hands.

‘What girl?’ asked Goldie.

‘Never mind, we’ll see her again, I’m sure.’