The Miscreant (An Assassin's Blade Book 2) (21 page)

After hammering some old linen sheets to the sides of the wagon — to serve as caparisons to conceal the small adjustments I’d made — we were off. The mules happily hauled the heavy wagon, containing my supplies, myself and Rovid, up the mother of a ramp that didn’t know when to stop. When it finally leveled off, it was a mostly straight jaunt across bouldered terrain till we got to the immense wall of Erior. Rovid jumped out before then, trailing beside the cart in the high shrubs.

I jammed the wooden shaft we’d built to the left, opening the dispenser. Rovid gave me a thumbs-up, which meant the powder was flowing well. I tossed him my ebon swords and my belt. Wouldn’t look much like a trader if I was packing ebon, would I?

I pushed the mules onward, while Rovid remained behind, in the shrubs.

The air stunk of salt and soiled meat, rich with a gritty, searing haze. That was my cue. Wouldn’t be long before the parapet of crimson-clothed guards would gaze down upon me. So I pulled on the reins, idling the mules. Then I shifted the wooden shaft, closed the dispenser, and hopped back into the bed of the wagon. I yanked out the dispensing bucket from its holding compartment that I’d carved out, and replaced it with a full one. The used bucket got chucked out into the wilds; it’d served its purpose.

Back in the seat, I took a deep breath and told my mules we were about to have some fun, or experience the most dreadful day the three of us would ever know. They didn’t seem to worry. Mules never worry.

I needed to be more like a mule.

Erior’s gate that looked carved out of a mountain was open. A man sixty feet up ordered me to halt, then hollered down below.

Two miserable guards trudged through the heat, sweat glossing up their arms. They each took a position to either side of the cart.

“Name,” the one said. “Business?”

Shit. I hadn’t thought of a good merchant name. “Er… Ervan,” I said in an accent. “Here to sell some stock. Got me some good apples back there. One for each of ya, if you don’t give me no trouble.”

The guard waved his hand. “Let’s see it.”

I waded into the bed of the wagon, snapped off the lids to each bucket, taking care to not trip on the false floor that concealed the one responsible for dispensing my lovely powder.

The men peered into each bucket topped with apples, then rocked back on their heels in a satisfied fashion.

“Go on,” the one said. “Be aware entry to the Gleam is prohibited until further notice.”

I tossed an apple to each, then got on my merry way, keeping a steady hand on the reins to ensure my hasty mules wouldn’t pass the guardsmen on their way back. I didn’t need a comment on how I was leaking black powder out my ass.

Once inside the city, I was less concerned about that. You couldn’t so much as take two steps without smudging your soles in dog shit, fish guts, drunkard-spewed puke, oils and spices from street chefs, and all other marvels of city life.

I parked the wagon near an empty hut. Spicy smoke hissed from an adjacent stall, suffusing my lungs with the scents of charred cedar, lemony mollusks and buttered cod.

“Cheaper than catchin’ it yourself and just as fresh!” the merchant claimed as he turned the spit over his mobile hearth.

A few fine gentleman gathered outside my wagon. They helped me unload the buckets. We pretended to exchange payment, in case anyone was watching, and then I thanked my buyers and climbed into the seat again.

“You boys will be happy,” I told the mules. “Lighter load to carry now.” I elbowed the shaft, opening the dispenser, then got the mules to moving again.

The wagon wobbled on uneven cobbles through the commons — also known as the first of three plateaus that made up the city —stopping and starting abruptly as mindless shoppers meandered through the streets. The kids were the worst. Little bastards would bolt from hidden corners, giggling and laughing as they almost ran their faces into the pure muscle of a mule. Take a mule shoulder to the nose and there ain’t much laughing to be had, I guarantee that.

But the children wouldn’t be running about madly for long. One of the sellswords I’d hired for this job took his position far away from where the wagon rolled along and dusted the cobbles in black powder. He had a large sack slung over his shoulder, which he dropped at his feet.

“Come, come, little ones!” he boomed. “Masks, all types of masks. Scary ones and cheerful ones and sad ones and piggies and monkeys and tigers! Come on, now! Nary a copper a piece it’ll cost you. Free to every young’un out there.”

The kids all ran to him, elbows and knees bouncing wildly, far away from the black powder.

From the center of the commons, where a fountain of some naked gal — probably a goddess — had run dry and been crusted over with salt, I could see the ocean behind the keep of Erior. The keep sat high above the commons, on the third plateau whose rear plunged one hundred feet to the ground, into a labyrinth of spikes and crags. Beyond, sand eventually smoothed out the terrain, meeting with the bluster of the Sapphire Sea.

The waves were always heavy and unfriendly here, but today they seemed particularly violent. Inflated, even — as if an armada patrolled beyond the haze, the sloshing of a thousand oars churning the ocean.

I directed the mules through a wide alleyway, then stopped and looked back. No one seemed to have followed me, so I continued on. The alley spilled out into a flatness of cobblestones. Straight ahead the cobbles sunk into the dirt like the vestige of a road swallowed back into the earth by neglect and time.

Keep on that path and you’d find yourself in the dross of Erior. There, guards rarely patrolled, and if they did, they’d come in groups of tens and twenties. There, the smell of decay festered, and the wood of buildings and shacks was clomped over with cottony mold. If I’d gone much deeper into those streets, my wagon would’ve likely been taken from me, along with my life.

But I made a few turns and stood at the edge of a retaining wall, peering out into the farmlands below. And there, amongst the now-drought-afflicted corn and potatoes and tomatoes and other fruits and veggies, lay this kingdom’s weakness.

From the outside, Erior appears an impregnable fortress. If you approach from the sea, you’re forced to follow the edge of the crags while archers and artillery decimate you from above. If you approach the front wall, good luck knocking down sixty feet of stone while battling the largest army this world has to offer. Trust that it doesn’t take long for Braddock Glannondil to mobilize his bannermen.

Inside these walls, however, things can burn, and fire spreads. And when it spreads, it consumes. The trick is to find the most flammable objects you can. And as drunken accidents have taught me, nothing burns quite as fierce as dry, parched farmland. It’s a sight to behold.

I kept a tight hold on the reins, easing the mules down the steep steps that led from the retaining wall. I didn’t need to flip the cart over here and ruin all my meticulous planning. I glanced back a couple times, making sure the powder was still flowing freely. It was.

Soon as the wagon wheels touched the crusty soil of the farmlands, I began making figure-eight patterns through the fields.

This angered many farmers, the wrath of whom spread across the farmlands in the form of pitchforks, spades, and hoes, tools that were either wielded as angry fists or chucked at my wagon as spears. Farmers were coming out of their houses now, hollering and hooting.

I managed to avoid physical confrontation long enough to have blackened much of their soil with powder — at which point, I jumped into the bed of the now-idle wagon, tore away the false floor and retrieved the bow I’d stowed away.

I leapt out of the cart and somersaulted into a crop of corn. Most of the vegetation was wilted, corn slipping out of their husks, which took on a sickly beige color. Remaining crouched and, for now, out of sight of my pitchfork-wielding pursuants, I fiddled with my bow. I used to be a marksman, back when I was a younger nomad, living the forest life. Probably lost most that skill, but in this case aim didn’t matter so much as distance.

As the fletching of the arrow I’d nocked hissed past my ear, I tilted my head up slowly, watching the feathery tail sail high into the air. Arcing now, making its descent back to earth. It vanished into the dross of Erior.

Rovid better be paying attention
, I thought. The arrow was his signal to light a fire that would punish Braddock Glannondil forevermore.

I dropped the bow and rolled up my pant leg, retrieving the dagger I’d secured to my shin. I’d only brought along three arrows, so the bow was of little use now. If any farmers got in my way as I tried to haul ass out of there, an ebon dagger would work just fine.

Springing to my feet, I spotted a handful of lads with red faces. And they spotted me. I ran, toward the steps opposite those I had come down. More importantly, toward stone — a surface that doesn’t catch fire easily.

Luckily for my pursuants, they also ran toward the steps. Because approximately fifteen seconds later, their farmlands burned.

It approached not with the subtleness of an assassin, but with the swagger of a storm. It bellowed a deep, throaty roar that, for a moment, the commons drowned out with a symphony of voices that screeched and squealed in horror. But the roar, it breathed again, lurching into the dross, winnowing down the steps. Eating and engulfing every morsel of food I’d left it.

What the farmers who stayed behind did as their stalks of corn wavered like molten cat tails beneath an ash sky, I couldn’t say. I’d already made the decision that they were sacrificial victims — I had to press on. Move up the steps, meet with Rovid.

Muddy smoke billowed high above the commons; wood had begun to burn. Guards tried to make sense of the chaos, but their training hadn’t prepared them for this. They ran and pointed. Said little, did even less. I looked into the commons but saw nothing except a dense curtain of rolling smoke. A guard sprinted past me, stopped dead before the smoke. He ran around, toward the dross, probably trying to find a less treacherous way in.

I had, for all intents and purposes, devised a way to render myself invisible. But this trick wouldn’t last long. Chaos is a short-lasting disruptor. It’s like pinching a candle and evacuating all light from a room. At first, the mind is overwhelmed. It can’t see. But the mind is nothing if not adaptable. Which was one reason this chaos would come in two phases.

Pressed against the backbone of the second plateau — home to the Gleam — behind the walls of structures who had so far been spared the fury of fire, Rovid was bent over. Huffing, puffing and wheezing.

“Glad you could make it,” I said.

“Thought I was done for. Followed the fire inside like we’d planned, but the smoke came quick. Here.”

He gave me one of the ebon blades he was holding. “Ready?” I asked.

He punched his chest and coughed a few times. “Let’s go.”

The reaper and I bounded up the steps, to the Gleam. Guards were like ants now, even the officers who were coming down from the third plateau, out of the keep. Their eyes were wet and bulging, reflecting the holocaust before them. Trebuchets were being rolled into action. These poor fucks probably thought war had come to their walls.

We made it to the steps of the third plateau, and I saw the last of my friends waddling up, embracing a large bucket. Phase two of Fireworks in Erior was about to begin.

Erior’s dungeon lay in morbid placement adjacent to its mortuary. It tunneled deep beneath the ground, its entrance marked with a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron bands. I went down the earthen steps, but Rovid didn’t follow.

“You’ll hear it all the way down below,” I told him, figuring he was awaiting the big bang.

“You might want a look at this,” he said. “And we might want to hurry. Otherwise, I don’t think we’re gettin’ out of here.”

He wasn’t looking at the keep, waiting for it to smoke and smolder with the explosion of eight buckets full of black powder. He was looking at the sea.

The sea that looked like it was giving birth to thousands of tiny creatures. There must’ve been a hundred ships out there, more swarming in from the haze. If you listened real hard, you could hear a war chant.

It went like this.

“For the Mother!”

Everything I’d planned for… gone. It was all…
gone
.

W
e were
beneath the ground when it blew. Four tremendous bangs, each in succession. So loud you couldn’t help but shiver like a hoarfrost had settled atop your bones. The eruption shook the walls and the ceiling, displacing mud and rock in chunks that fell onto our heads.

“Hope this ceiling holds,” Rovid said.

Disoriented, I kept down the mostly straight hallway. Couldn’t see but a couple feet in front of me.

Rovid said something, but my mind ignored it. I couldn’t get over what I’d seen outside. Kane and I had a deal. We’d struck it in blood. What would he gain from attacking Erior while it burned? He’d storm the walls, sack the city, maybe. But then what? The might of the East would be on him, in far greater numbers than if he had waited for Braddock’s successor to attack.

I had a plan, dammit! Kane and Dercy would form a wall across the Bay of Selaph land bridge. Their armies would serve as a bulwark which the reaped wouldn’t be able to overcome, not for some time at any rate. I’d lied to Kane about a Glannondil attack; there’d be no such thing. An empty crown would send the East into a civil war, claims abound. There was no clear successor to Braddock.

Kane wouldn’t be able to hold on to this city for more than a couple weeks at best, but that didn’t matter. Without that idiot’s help in the South, Dercy wouldn’t be able to push back the reaped.

They’d swarm into Mizridahl, a society of mangled bones murdering all they came across. By the time an organizational effort could be made to combat them, it’d be too late. And with Mizridahl on the brink of extinction, the second part of my plan… well, it didn’t much matter, did it?

“I think we’re at a fork,” Rovid said, waving his hand in front of him. “You hear that? This way.”

I had to pick my mind up out of its deep, dark hole. No matter what happened out there… no matter how dismal the future looked, I had a job to do: save my Rots.

“Hello?” Rovid hollered. “Here to, er, free you. Got your Shepherd with me.”

A distant echo rolled through the hallway. “We’re over here!”

“That’s Rimeria’s voice,” I said.

I jogged into the slender darkness. Would’ve run, but I didn’t feel like sprinting into a surprise pillar and having Rovid not only free my friends but also carry my sorry ass out.

“Would’ve helped if you’d brought a torch, Shepherd,” Rory said.

Smart-ass couldn’t have been suffering too badly to be cracking jokes. “I can go back and get one if you want,” I said. “Just sit real tight.”

Several of my Rots laughed. Good sign, there.

“Astul?” croaked a meek, feminine voice. Vayle.

“Yeah,” Rimeria said. “Man of the hour’s here. We’re getting out. I told you we would.”

From the sounds of their voices and their vague apparitions it appeared they were stowed down here elbow to elbow. Probably chained to pillars I couldn’t see.

“Where are you bound?” I asked.

“Ankles and wrists,” Rory said.

Some chains rattled. I squinted but couldn’t identify a thing.

“Can you stretch your hands enough that a blade can fit between them?” I asked.

“Er… yeah. Maybe.”

I reached out with a hand. Felt gritty flesh that seemed to crawl in reaction to my touch.

Rory hissed. “Easy there, Shepherd. Fucked my knuckles all up.”

“Sorry. All right. I feel the chain. Going to guide the blade to it now. Tell me if I cut you.”

“
Oh
,
fuck
,” he whispered. Then a long, drawn-out sigh.

I felt steel beneath my ebon blade. There wasn’t much to work with here. A smidgen right or left and I’d cut off a finger or two. So I held my breath and pushed the sharpest edge in all of Mizridahl downward.

“Fuck yeah!” Rory yelled. “Had all my faith in you, Shepherd.”

A careful strike to the chain binding his ankles set him free. Well, to be perfectly accurate, it sent him jumping up and then falling right on his ass. Idle your body for more than a day or two, and you’ll find your legs forget how to work properly.

With Rovid lending me a hand, we cut the remaining Rots free, up to the very last one — my commander. Her fingers were clammy against mine, gaunt and shivering. She’d been in here longer than the others. Soon as her chains were broken, she fell into me, weeping.

Every word I’d intended to say got stuck in my mouth like a thick ball of cotton. I simply rubbed her back and helped her up. She wobbled and crashed into my shoulder, unable to support her own weight. The others had gotten used to their weakened legs now and, while not running, were at least walking about.

I ordered everyone out, then had Rovid assume the lead. Vayle and I limped behind.

We emerged into an air full of fresh burning wood. Ash had sidled along from the commons, now blanketing the sky above us.

“Wait,” Vayle said, pushing off me. “I think I can do it myself.”

She looked bad. Black, swollen puffs for eyes, a crooked nose. Old blood staining her cracked lips. But she balanced herself and attempted a smile, however brief.

“You’ll have to move quickly,” I said, gesturing toward the beach that was marching toward Erior. “I brought a war with me.”

She smiled weakly. “You have a penchant for that.”

“Come on,” Rovid said. “Smoke’s only gonna get thicker.”

I ogled at the keep for a moment. Pockets of soot painted its stones, and fire raged from its windows. I wanted to see Braddock’s face then. Watch his expression as he reaped precisely what I’d told him he would if he
ever
waged war with the Black Rot. I wondered if amongst the cacophony of screams was his voice, bleating.

As I turned to catch up with the others, a realization squeezed my chest like a vise. I had overlooked something. Rather,
someone
. She was small and bouncy on her feet, hair spun up in the tightest of ponytails. As inquisitive as they come, curious as a kitten.

“Astul!” Rovid hollered. “Let’s go!”

I ran to him, put my face to his shoulder. “Take them to the Swamplands. I’ll meet you there.”

Voices reached for me as I tore off toward the keep. Ignoring them wasn’t easy — particularly those cries from my commander — but it’s a lot easier to disregard your friends’ concern than to brush off the knowledge that you murdered a child.

Fire bellowed from a window in the keep, flames punching out and licking up the stone exterior. The main entrance was fucked — nothing but blaze and smoke. But the rear would likely still be in good condition, if I could reach it.

I climbed the steps into the front courtyard of the keep. Even here, a good thirty feet from its walls, the miasma of the cataclysm before me choked my lungs. The warmth of a rampant fire clung to my skin like humid vapors.

A man jumped from high in the keep. Head over heels he tumbled down, down, down. He screamed briefly, before the cobbles received him like an iron pillow.

I could live with incidents like that, fucked up as that sounds. But if the next jumper had been Braddock’s daughter… that wasn’t a good thought.

Around the outer edge of the keep I dashed, along the dirt parapet of a narrow retaining wall. Rather ugly back here. Lots of weathered stone the color of winter clouds and stringy grass and dirt tilled from the elements. You wouldn’t know it, though, unless you were busting ass through here. Huge shrubs and bushes of colorful flowers rose up past the rim of the retaining wall, obstructing your view from the outside.

The rear courtyard greeted me with a bounty of purples and pinks and yellows and blues, its flowers blissfully unaware that in approximately twenty minutes, they’d all be ash.

I checked the double-leaf doors leading inside the keep. No luck. They gave me a creaky laugh as they rocked on their hinges, telling me it’d take more than a few forceful shoves to break ’em down.

I didn’t have anything except forceful shoves.

A quick glance around the courtyard revealed nothing helpful. Violet orchids and bluebells and amaranths may effuse color and beauty, but they’re pretty shitty in terms of practicality.

From inside the walls, a voice. “The tablecloths! Make a gurney with ’em. Hurry it up.”

I pounded on the doors. “Let me in! Let me in! I’m here to help.”

There was a grinding and clicking and clacking. Then something scraped against the doors, like a reinforced plank of wood being removed.

The doors opened outward, slowly. A warm gust of air seethed into the courtyard, and a sooty face stared at me.

“Who’re you?” he asked. Behind him, guards were shedding their armor. Some were already in loin cloths and tattered shirts, on their knees fastening mail to sawed-off table legs that would serve as a gurney.

“Here for the market,” I said. “Saw the keep go up in flames, thought you could use my help.”

He wiped the spit and snot from his nose and mouth. “All right. Clearing out from top to bottom. I’ve got at least four lords—”

I blew past him like a flame through a door that’d just been opened. He might’ve wailed and hollered for me to stop, but I didn’t hear a thing as I bounded up a spiral staircase.

The ceiling above me shuddered, and the floor below trembled. Smoke snaked through the hallways I trespassed, a cloud of blackness and grays, unfurling like the ocean over its shore.

It stung my eyes, made me gag and cough even though I’d lifted my shirt up over my mouth and nose. Could barely see a thing except the hot fog that dimmed the guiding wall torchlight into thumb-sized flickers.

I had no sense of direction here, but I knew I needed to go up. With hands prowling the hallway walls, I felt something grainy on my palms.

Wood.

As if I was groping a long-lost lover, my fingers searched frantically for a handle.

The smoke was searing my eyes now. I grunted and gnashed my teeth.
Don’t scream
, I told myself.
Stay calm. Stay in control.

There — the handle. I pulled, then pushed. It was the push that did it. The door swung open, and I went with it, tumbling inside. Quickly back to my feet, I elbowed the door closed.

A trail of smoke had followed me in, and a thin film of the stuff crept beneath the door, but the air in here wasn’t nearly as toxic. Wouldn’t be that way for long, though. Thankfully, a set of stairs lay before me. Had no idea where they led, but they went up, so I followed them.

About twenty steps later, another door greeted me. I covered my mouth and nose with my shirt again, counted down from three and yanked on the handle.

Through the leaden gloom, something whisked by.

“Hey!” I called out. “Where’s Lord Braddock?”

“C’mere,” answered a man.

“Keep talking,” I said, following the boom of his voice. “Can’t see shit.”

He coughed, and I coughed. He gagged, and I gagged. Thankfully, he never stopped talking.

“In here, in here,” he said.

Into an apparent inlet I went, then I tripped and smacked my forehead on what felt like the riser of a stair. Getting back to my feet confirmed that suspicion.

This staircase went up another twenty or so steps, which is hell to climb when you can’t even see your own hand in front of your face. It led into a wide hallway. Here the smoke filtered through like steam rising from a geyser. Still not pleasant to suck into your lungs, but considerably more tolerable.

It was here that my guide and I first took stock of one another.

I’d thought his voice sounded familiar, and I was right.

He glared at me, his fragile body swallowed by a crimson robe. “What are you doing here?”

“Search and rescue,” I said. “Where’s Braddock’s daughter?”

Rike’s eyes thinned in those old, deep sockets of his. “Probably dead. You did this, didn’t you?”

A quick assessment of the hallway revealed crimson carpet and banners strung along the walls. The doors here were massive, with handles of gold plate. Down a ways, the head of a wolf painted in blood stuck out from the center of two broad doors.

“Thanks for the directions,” I told Rike. With two fistfuls of his robes, I slammed the old man against a wall so hard, the back of his skull ricocheted off the stone. And his eyes went blank. Probably too forceful, to be honest. But I couldn’t risk being held up. The smoke was thickening, and the fires were climbing.

Hopefully Talira reacted like most children when fear crawls through them. Even the most fiercely independent ones seek Mommy and Daddy when their world crumbles. To that point, hopefully Braddock hadn’t already been whisked away to safety.

The snarling snout of a sculpted crimson wolf split into two as I opened the doors to what I assumed was Braddock’s chambers.

“Dear, please! You must—”

A young woman in a dingy red gown stood beside a four-poster bed. Her hands were looped around the thin arms of a little girl who was balled up in the sheets, clinging to her mummified father.

All four windows were open, allowing smoke to filter out. But like two separate storms coming to a head, the ashen clouds from the commons and those from the keep met halfway. Soon, this kingdom would suffocate.

Talira’s eyes opened wide when she saw me. “Ass-assin,” she said. Her narrow mouth opened and closed, rosy lips tight with fear. “Please don’t kill my father.” She bit her lip. “Or me, or Madrie. Please. Please!”

I stood at Braddock’s beside. He was wrapped from head to toe in white cloth, every inch of flesh concealed. Only his eyes were naked to the world. But they weren’t really eyes. They were pockets of blisters, lids sealed shut and colored the red of infection.

“I’m not going to hurt anyone,” I told Talira.

Braddock jerked when he heard my voice. And he made a noise. A pathetic gabble.

I put my hands on the edge of the window frame and peered out. Ground lay about forty feet below. Falling that distance wasn’t exactly an enticing thought, but neither was trudging back through a smoke-filled keep, especially when I wasn’t confident I’d be able to retrace my steps.

“Off the bed,” I told Talira.

She looked to the gowned woman — the apparent Madrie — for guidance.

“Look,” I said, “either I get some cooperation here, or you’ll be coughing up smog in about five minutes. What’ll it be?”