Twixt Heaven And Hell (14 page)

He turned away from the globe and the sorcerer without a word. The Thralls fell into step as he silently returned to the command chamber. Splayed out on the main table were three maps, now. One showed the Shambles and the attack that had just gone through. A ring of symbols denoting minor encampments of their troops surrounded the remaining fort, called Andreth by the enemy after one of the more successful leaders of the past. With the abject failure of his flanking force, he did not have the troops to mount an attack that had much hope of succeeding on this much more formidable stronghold.

The second map showed the city of Pyre itself, as well as the number of troops that remained within. There were very few now, and without the vast numbers of fighting men drinking, carousing, whoring, and brawling, Pyre seemed almost peaceful.

The third map, however, detailed his third target. He was faced with a difficult choice – with Fort Andreth still standing, his position in the Shambles was not secure, and caution dictated that he suspend the third assault in order to shift more assets into the Shambles.

Though Andreth did not have a sizable enough garrison to force him out on their own, if the Enemy moved more soldiers in and struck from the north as well, his forces were in serious jeopardy. He had no indication that they were doing anything of the sort – but though the Warlord depended on his sources of information, he was far from believing they were infallible. Even his most valuable success, his Crown jewel – as he called it in a joke to himself – made mistakes.

Chapter Seventeen

Geralt's limp meant that he could not walk quietly, but Balkan did not look up as he entered the work room. A steady
'tink, tink, tink'
could be heard from the desk where Balkan sat bent over his latest project.

Coming to stand along side him, Geralt watched him work for a moment before he was finally noticed. With a start, Balkan turned his head from the stone tiles that he had been carefully tapping away at with chisel and hammer.

“Geralt! Apologies, I was concentrating.”

“Not at all, Balkan. I thought you had acolytes to help you with all this?” Geralt asked with a chuckle, gesturing to the half-finished rune in the stone.

“With some of it, yes. Wood and leather and such. The acolytes have better things to do with their time than learn stone carving, though – and the stone carvers have better things to do with theirs than assist me. So it is left to me.”

Geralt took the miniscule chisel and mallet from Balkan's hands, studying them, and then his eyes dropped to the dozens of stone tiles that lay waiting in stacks for Balkan's attention. He shook his head disbelievingly.

“You're a man of much greater patience than I.”

Balkan laughed, and stretched, leaning back in his chair. “Is there news of Darius?”

Once word got around of the battle in the Shambles, Balkan had asked Geralt to let him know if anything concerning the Gryphons came through the Globes.

“Yes,” Geralt said, nodding slowly. “His Gryphons suffered during the battle, though I heard no mention of Darius himself being hurt.”

“And the battle itself?”

“The news there is not as good, I'm afraid. Fort Fist has almost certainly been captured, and Fort Andreth's situation is uncertain. The wizards there were ordered to the fight, and we haven't had news from them in some hours. The Enemy is blocking the globe connections.”

“Choirs help them,” Balkan breathed.

Geralt just nodded, deep in his own thoughts. The man no doubt had a much clearer picture of the War than Balkan – though Balkan's duties fell nearly entirely to research and instruction, Geralt was often tasked with gathering reports from the border and presenting them to the Council. Lately he had been able to present precious little good news.

“So,” said Geralt, breaking the heavy silence. “What of this?” He again indicating the stone. “Have your runes yielded up anything interesting?”

“Oh, you should know not to ask it like that,” Balkan scolded. “Everything is interesting.”

“
Ah, of course – silly me. How about
'useful?'
”

“Better,” Balkan said with a smile. “Some of it could be useful. There is a rune that very reliably produces heat – feed it enough power and the leather or wood it's carved in will burst into flame. Most, though, aren't so simple to figure out. One symbol seems to stiffen wood, but soften leather.”

Geralt snorted in amusement.

“Yes. That's this one here, actually,” Balkan nodded to his unfinished stone. “I wonder what it'll do to stone. Crumble it to dust, maybe.”

“In short, then, nothing useful for the War.”

“I suppose. Not yet. But I have many, many more runes to experiment with, and I've only tried a handful of mediums.”

Geralt stood with a shrug. “As always, if I can help at all, simply ask. For now I should return to the globe room – I excused myself to bring you the news.”

“Many thanks, Geralt.”

***

On the eve of their arrival at Bastion, Darius and Robert took the sorcerer a stone’s throw from the sleeping Gryphons and sat him down. He had been given no herbal concoction the night before and was almost fully lucid. It did not take him long to realize he was no longer anywhere near the Shambles. The sorcerer looked wary. Darius was glad for that. It would make him more compliant.

“You know my name, sorcerer. What is yours?”

“Kray,” the man answered.

“The sorcerer you killed. Who was he?” Darius asked.

“Padraig,” said the man. There was lingering hatred in his voice. His accent struck Darius as harsh, the names strange and uncouth, the ‘r’ sounds rolled and consonants clipped. Darius had never heard the Enemy speak beyond shouts on the battlefield.

“Kray, tomorrow we will arrive in the city of Bastion. You will enter with us. If you make one hostile move, you will be killed. Do you understand?”

The man actually looked insulted at the insinuation that he might harm anyone, but merely nodded. A moment later, though, he did mutter, “I mean you no harm.”

Darius nodded, though he had no intentions of letting his guard down until he knew far more about their new friend.

“Be that as it may, we must still be careful. Surely you understand that much.”

To his surprise, the sorcerer made no more protestations of friendliness, and merely nodded. “I expected this.”

“Then you are wise. Here is a blanket – join the soldiers and get some rest.”

When the sorcerer had obeyed, Robert looked uneasily at his captain, though he did not voice his misgivings. Darius tried to reassure him.

“I will not sleep tonight, Robert. If this man is sincere about joining us, it is time to start showing him at least a little bit of kindness.”

“And if he’s a snake in the bushes, sir?”

“Then we watch the bushes and cut his head off as soon as he rears up.”

Soon after the sun reached its apex the next day, the Gryphons entered Bastion by a side gate. Several wizards were there to greet them, including Balkan. Arric was conspicuously absent, though his man Callos was present. Darius watched them take note of how many men were missing. Balkan’s eyes were filled with concern, though when he spoke to Darius it was in an attempt to lighten the homecoming.

“Back for rest already? What a lazy bunch your Gryphons have become, Darius,” he said in a forcedly jovial tone.

Somewhere within this ‘lazy’ bunch was the man Kray, who wore a cloak to disguise his armor. To every soldier of Bastion, the enemy armor was clearly distinct from the style that Bastion used.

A half-hearted smile was Darius's only reply to Balkan’s poor jest. He addressed the wizards who had shown to see him arrive.

“I know you have come for the news I bring, but that must wait. As you can see my men have had a very hard time in the field and I must see them back to the barracks, and rest a bit myself, before I bring what I have learned to the council.”

In his mind, Darius phrased it differently.
I have a sorcerer with me who I do not wish known to you, and I must make arrangements to have him hidden and guarded.

Wizards cannot read the secret intentions within the minds of men, and this was the first time Darius had been glad for that. Always before he had wished the opposite – but he had never sought to hide something from his own fellows. He would not, however, let Arric and the rest of the council stick their nose in this matter.

They made it to the barracks without incident. The majority of the men settled in for additional rest. Darius and Robert took the prisoner into the wizard's own quarters.

Turning to Robert, he dropped his voice low enough that Kray would not hear. “Robert, I need you to go and get Wizard Balkan, and bring him here.” He gave his lieutenant directions to Balkan’s home and sent him off. Then he turned once more to his captive sorcerer. He barely knew how to begin, there were so many questions. He started with the obvious one first.

“Why?” He was sure the man would know what he referred to. What else could there be?

The answer was calm and simple. “I hate them.”

“Who?” When Kray did not seem about to answer – seemed confused by the question, in fact – Darius went on. “You hated your people? Your superiors? The other sorcerers? Who?”

Something shimmered darkly in Kray’s eyes as he considered. “All of them.”

“Again then, why?”

More hesitation, and Darius repeated the question. At last however, a look of intense confusion and annoyance screwed up the sorcerer’s face as he finally answered – “I… don’t remember.”

Darius scoffed in disbelief. This man had murdered his peer and butchered hundreds of his own soldiers, and he did not remember why? Absurd!

“Do you mean us harm, Kray?” With the brutality the man had shown in the Shambles Darius half-suspected that Kray was mad, though – save perhaps for the sudden, suspicious memory loss – he acted sane enough now.

“No!” was the vehement answer. There was also surprise at the question, as if Darius should have known. “I mean… to join you. To be a man of Bastion.”

The words came out clumsily, as if the man had never spoken them aloud before. When Darius realized exactly what Kray had said he had the urge to laugh. It all sounded so ridiculous.

“Kray, I know there are many in your lands worth hating. I’ve killed many, and I’ve heard the terrible stories of the simple folk who manage to escape. You, however, are a sorcerer. I’ve always considered you to be the ones worth hating. I will ask once more:
Why
did you betray your people?”

For long moments the wizard watched as the sorcerer stared at the floor. He believed more and more with each passing moment that this man was telling the truth. There was confusion and anger roiling off the sorcerer like steam from a cook pot, and the longer Darius waited for a response, the worse it grew.

All at once, however, the anger disappeared, and the visible tension that had Kray almost shaking eased. He looked up with sudden wonder in his face, and Darius saw something that nearly made him gasp.

Kray was weeping.

“No. I do remember now. I was very young, that is why I couldn’t before. I have not thought of it in years.” Kray’s voice showed none of the sadness in his eyes. Whatever the man had been through, it had made him hard as granite, in body and soul. Blinking away his tears, the sorcerer told his story.

“I was found at the age of four. Soldiers and sorcerers roam the lands at all times of the year, but there are many farms and households for them to search. The larger boys are taken away to be warriors by the time they turn twelve. But anyone found to have the talent for magic is taken immediately.

“Before now, I did not remember anything before I was taken. My first memories were of the slave pits, riding past them in the wagon that carried me to Pyre. That was almost a year after I was taken, and I already hated everyone around me. I never questioned the feeling. The sorcerer who’d found me was pleased. He thought I had the aggressiveness to be a wonderful magician for his masters.

“My training, however, showed me to be a… disappointment to my teachers. I was weak. Whatever it is in a sorcerer that gives him strong magic, I had only a little of it. Far from being the favorite anymore, I was shunned. I would be for the rest of my life. My hatred had never left me, and now the insults and the fury drove me to plan things I knew would earn me eternal torment at the fingers of a Demon if I were found out.

“I was never found out. I won the silver at seventeen, long after the age when most sorcerers do. I found out afterward that they had been ready to execute me if I turned eighteen without defeating my enemies on the arena sands.

“I thought that becoming a true sorcerer would earn me some measure of acceptance. It only increased the vitriol with which my ‘peers’ treated me. I was given nicknames, called by those and any number of insults, called by any number of things but by my right name!”

Kray’s voice became ever more heated as he spoke. Darius could see the man reliving his story, his eyes staring at and through the floor with a far-away look.

“I, a sorcerer! Forced to endure such humiliation. My plans for revenge became ever more grand, included more people at every turn. I finally decided revenge against a few was not enough. I would surely be killed after, and that was not good enough. I had outsmarted the soldiers on the arena sands, and I would outsmart all the rest. I would betray them, and give my loyalty to the enemy.” He looked at Darius, drawn back to the present. “To Bastion”

“You still haven’t told me what it was that caused all this,” Darius pointed out. Kray nodded, and continued.

“I was four when they took me,” he repeated. “Very young, perhaps that is why I did not remember. Perhaps I did not want to. It has been so long now, and there have been so many outrages…

“I remember my mother holding me, my father held at spear point. They knew they could not resist, and my mother handed me over to the sorcerer. It felt like being held by a nightmare, one from which I would never wake up. I started screaming. I had a dog, a young dog who’d been a puppy from the old guard hound my father kept. It growled at the soldiers when it heard me crying and screaming.

“They killed it, drove a spear through its neck. It could not harm them. They killed it for pleasure, for punishment at the mere symbolic act of defiance that a growling puppy was capable of. At that moment, I knew everything about them. They were cowards. Bastards and cowards who would kill a thing that was weaker than themselves just to prove their own power.”

Kray smiled a bittersweet, yet satisfied smile as he rediscovered his own past. “I remember now. That is the day I started to hate.” He looked at Darius again, and there was a peace in his eyes, behind the tears. “I found out later that they kill the families, as well. A sorcerer must have no loyalty but to the Warlord and to Pyre, it was said. It didn’t matter. My heart already overflowed with hatred, and even knowing this did not change anything. I had forgotten my family long before then.”