Anselmo shivered involuntarily, then pulled up the collar and lapels of his coat and buttoned them close around his neck. He blew a steaming breath into his cupped hands before putting them back in his gloves. What a miserable place to spend the night, he thought to himself. He glanced out the window of the crumbling tower as a cloud drifted past the face of the moon, allowing its light to illuminate the terrain below once again.
Snow still clung to the sides of the mountain, even in late spring, though during the day the sunlight was strong enough to melt some of it. The temperature had dropped precipitously after sunset though, and the commission had been force to take shelter for the night at the only place any was available this high on the road through the pass: the ruins of Isa Bergaz.
Whether the fortress was named for the pass, or the pass for the fortress, had been lost to history many years ago. The party had chosen to avoid the ancient fortress itself; they’d arrived too late to search it for signs of recent visitors, and no one had been interested in taking the chance that the place was truly empty. More than one traveler had been caught by bandits there, as well as other things. Almost any old fortification was going to have a ghost or two, though they were usually harmless. Lonely battlefields in the shadow of a mountain were known to give rise to draugar, and vampires loved to set themselves up as supposed lords in any empty place that could be construed as a castle or manorhouse. Anselmo had heard about a particularly delusional one who’d styled himself Duke of Yellowpine, which was an abandoned sawmill near a village the Agathocletians had burned out during the war. The old bloodsucker had ruled over a few feral goats for nearly a decade before he finally annoyed the wrong trade caravan, and they burned what was left of the mill with him in it.
Anselmo shook his head and smiled as he remembered the story. It was easy for the mind to wander on watch, but he did need to pay attention. He made sure not to stand too close to the window, where the moonlight could give away his position, and snorted another steaming breath through his nose.
The gatehouse to the Stygian fortress was still standing, in fact it was in good condition, given its age. That likely had something to do with how whoever had last attacked this place had ignored the sturdy, well-defended gate and somehow blasted a large hole in the wall instead. Now the road followed the route of the invaders through the breach, and the great gate hadn’t moved since. All that remained of the machinery that slid the thick slab of iron, stone, and rotted wood back was now a corroded lump in a room below where Anselmo struggled to stay warm. While the structure hadn’t stopped whichever army had finally taken the place, it was a decent spot for travelers to camp for the night.
A low whistle from the stone staircase caught his attention, and he saw Rado coming to relieve him. The three hours had seemed to drag on for an eternity.
“All quiet?” the corvidian whispered as he arrived at the top of the stairs.
“Nothing but the cold and the moonlight,” Anselmo told him. Rado nodded and tightened his coat, his feathers fluffing up to ward off the chill. Anselmo nodded back and gratefully began his climb back down, eventually arriving at the camp they’d set on the second floor, and the welcoming warmth of the campfire.
To his surprise, Grimsby was awake. He was sitting in his little cart with a map spread across his lap, and was tracing the roads and mountain ranges with his index finger, his brow knitted in concentration. Porkchop snored lightly by his side, and he looked up as Anselmo arrived.
“Not to be insubordinate,” Anselmo said, his voice low so as not to disturb Tavin’s sleep, “but this is a fucking miserable place to spend a night. We should have made camp back at the tree line, come over the pass tomorrow, and been in the forest on the other side before dark.” He loaded his pipe with smokeleaf as he talked; as much as he’d wanted to, it was foolish to smoke on night watch. Anyone could see the embers in the pipe bowl glowing and pick him off with a bow before he even knew they were there.
Grimsby smirked and handed him a stick from the fire to light his pipe. “I’d have preferred to do things that way myself, but we lost too much time trying to pick up their tracks at the edge of the swamplands, and then replacing that horse.”
“Yeah,” Anselmo agreed, despite his complaints. “I still want to know how they got so far ahead of us that no one has seen them.” After they’d picked through the remains of the river pirates’ hideout, it had been plain that the place had been destroyed to cover up the robbery. Somehow, the Popinjay had survived his fall into the river, and had come to collect his accomplice from his captors, before vanishing back into the swamp. He was going the wrong way to try and get out through Spillway, but none of the people on the road or in the few small hamlets along the way had seen them.
“Do you have any idea what they wanted with the gnome?”
Grimsby looked up from his map. “Not exactly,” he said, “but you can’t be compelled to give information you don’t have, so I’m afraid I won’t get into much more detail than that.” Anselmo frowned. Given the option, he would much rather give up information than be tortured for it. Ignorance and loyalty all too often looked the same to a torturer, so the only way to determine which they were dealing with was to make their captive scream. As far as Anselmo was concerned, the smart move was to talk immediately, and hope that whoever had caught you was recruiting, since things were clearly going their way. Although, thinking like that is probably why he doesn't want to tell me in the first place...
As Anselmo puffed at his pipe and considered the merits of his flexible loyalties, Grimsby rolled the map back up and put it in his coat. "The good news is that the valley on the other side of the mountains is sparsely inhabited, and there's really only the one road running all the way through. Somebody will see them eventually, we just have to make sure we hear about it when they do."
"How do we manage that?" Anselmo asked. "I don't know anyone out here, and I doubt Tavin has many contacts, unless trees have started taking to crime."
"There's a few inns along the road, and a couple of small villages that get by on subsistence farming, hunting, and trade with the caravaners. A few plum in the right palm, and you can usually find out who's been through."
Anselmo was about to admit he had a point, when a stone tumbled down the stairs from above. The two looked at each other, eyes widening. Porkchop stopped snoring and sat up. Anselmo set down his pipe and picked up his halberd, then poked Tavin insistently with the blunt end of the shaft. The older man started awake, drawing a knife from somewhere in his bedding. He looked around questioningly, but the other two said nothing.
Rado crept down the stairs and met the serious looks from the others. He glanced at his hands, then held up five fingers, put them down, then held up five again. Tavin mouth the question while holding up all of his fingers: Ten? Rado nodded; corvidians had three fingers and a thumb on each hand, so he couldn't hold up ten at a time. Grimsby gave a low whistle, and the others turned with surprise as Cruelty surged up the stairs from the first floor. Anselmo tilted his head in confusion, the stallion was fully saddled, but he could have sworn he saw Grimsby take the saddle off of him when they tied up the horses in the room on the first floor.
The beast ran past where Grimsby was sitting, but he raised a hand and snagged the saddlehorn, pulled himself up into the saddle, and the two disappeared back down the stairs as Cruelty completed a lap of the room, his hooves somehow quieter than they had heard previously. The three men and a dog looked at each other in confusion.
"Should we follow him?" Anselmo whispered to Tavin.
"Gods no," the man replied, pulling on a sword belt and picking up a spear. "Post up at the top of the stairs here and put some sharp bits in whoever's dumb enough to try an' climb up. Won't be able to come at us more'n one or two at a time that way." Anselmo nodded and checked that his dagger was in its sheathe on his belt, then stood with his halberd at the top step. Tavin joined him, the point of his spear held low, and Rado took up position on his other side, holding a heater shield in one hand and a cutlass in the other. Then they waited.
They didn't hear anything at first. The horses had settled down a minute after Grimsby and Cruelty passed by, but suddenly the three men at the top of the stairs heard them stir, their shoes tapping on the stone floor as they moved, and the animals snorted nervously. Anselmo tightened his grip on his halberd and took a high guard position, watching the stairway with the same frightened anticipation that had preceded every serious fight he'd ever been in. He hoped the others wouldn't notice the way his hands shook, or hear the way his heart was pounding in his ears. A glance at Rado showed that his cutlass was shaking ever so slightly, which made Anselmo feel a little better, somehow.
Porkchop sniffed the air, then gave a low growl as the fur on her hackles began to stand up. One moment, the stairwell appeared empty, the next there was a man holding a heater shield and a shortsword standing in front of them, the predatory smile on his face fading as he locked eyes with Anselmo. For his part, Anselmo did like he always had, moving with instincts honed through training and struggle. He rotated the halberd as he brought it down in a crushing blow, like an ogre trying to smash a cockroach. The spur on the back of the weapon caught the edge of the shield and dragged it down, pulling the attacker off-balance. He was wide open, and Tavin didn't hesitate, bringing the point of his spear up in a quick thrust that opened up their assailant's throat, painting the stairs with hot blood as he fell. He made a gurgling noise and began to roll down the narrow passage, holding his wound.
There was another man behind the first, and he tried to stab at Anselmo with a short spear while he pulled back his halberd, struggling to disentangle it from the fallen man's shield. Rado stepped forward with his shield and shoved the point away. The two struggled for an instant as the one coming up tried to push back the corvidian, who was smaller, but Tavin had recovered quickly, and thrust the bloody point of his weapon over Rado's shoulder at the second attacker. The man was suddenly distracted as Porkchop gave an angry bark and snapped her teeth at him, causing him to miss Tavin's counterattack. He screamed and jumped backward, tumbling into his comrades as he clutched at his wounded face.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
A third attacker found his mace knocked away by the man with the ruined face as he came into view of the three at the top of the stairs, and Anselmo thrust this time, stabbing the man just below his collarbone. The wound bled heavily as Anselmo pulled back, and a third man was incapacitated.
The attackers abandoned any attempts at stealth at this point, and began shouting as they dragged the wounded and dying back down the stairs. Porkchop growled and barked viciously, but didn't attempt to follow them.
"It's an ambush!"
"Bring more shields, you fucking idiots, don't just run up there and get stabbed!"
"You'll die for that, you filthy animals!"
As enraged threats echoed up the passage, Anselmo felt a grim satisfaction at the results of the initial encounter. Seven against three wasn't great, but it was an improvement over ten against three. Still, he wondered what in the name of the gods Grimsby was doing; there were supposed to be four members of the Assayers' Commission for the General Welfare.
"Fuck the shields, burn them out!" someone shouted on the first floor.
"Yeah!"
"It's what they deserve!"
The three at the top of the stairs exchanged worried glances.
No, Anselmo thought to himself, there's no way they have a pyromancer. It's an attempt to trick us! He swallowed nervously. Gods, I hope it's just a trick.
Fenron wiped the blood off his hands and launched into a torrent of curses in his native language. None of the others spoke Endish, but they got the general idea. This was supposed to be easy! Only four of them; just take them by surprise at night, find out what they know, and slit their throats! he thought. How had it gone so wrong?
He turned to two cloaked figures standing a few feet away. "Are you just going to fucking stand there all night, or are you going to make yourself useful?" The taller of the two turned his hooded head toward him, and Fenron could see a haughty expression on the man's face, and his knuckles were white as his grip tightened around the staff in his hand.
"You will not speak to me so," he insisted in a thick Imperial accent while he looked down his nose, grey eyes locked on Fenron's nearly black ones. Fenron snarled, but reined in his temper. The taller man only tolerated the disrespect because Fenron was a full-blooded Stygian, and the Agathocletians fancied themselves the rightful heirs of the ancient empire. Still, he couldn't push the noble far. Most people couldn't say what he had and expect to survive. He was still a bit surprised the Imperial hadn't just assumed command of their crew, but that might have been because he didn't want to have to talk to any of the others, who were mostly Ostrogothi.
"I apologize, Your Grace," Fenron said, fairly confident that he wasn't addressing the man correctly. "My men and I appear to have underestimated our opponents, would you be so kind as to subdue them?" He wanted to stab the pompous bastard, but then he wouldn't get paid, and would almost certainly be killed for his temerity.
"My title is draconarius, I am not one of these savages who calls themselves viscount or margrave," Celsus Cornu scoffed. He shrugged off his cloak, revealing an ornately engraved suit of armor over a black and red robe, and downed the contents of a vial from a pouch on his belt. The end of the runed wooden rod clamped in his staff ignited in a shower of sparks as his valet helped fasten his helmet, and the pyromancer turned toward the ancient gatehouse. He breathed deeply, feeling the connection the elixir opened to the flow of power through the world, the primal energy of fire suffusing the material plane.
Sparks danced across his fingertips as he drew the fire to him, spinning and condensing into a ball in his hand that shone like a lighthouse beacon. Movement in one of the windows above drew his eye, and he spotted a black, feathered head looking down at him in alarm. Celsus smiled to himself and threw the fireball.
Anselmo groaned, then coughed as he struggled to sit up. The ringing in his ears left him disoriented, but he knew he didn't have time to waste, and he felt around him for the handle of his halberd. Finding it, he staggered to his feet, leaning on the shaft to steady himself. Blinking the dust from his eyes, he saw Tavin struggling get Rado to stand, while Porkchop whined and licked the side of his head. The corvidian's feathers were singed, but the scorching on the face of his shield suggested that it had protected him from the majority of the blast. The fireball had hit the edge of the window an instant after Rado had shouted and dove for cover.
"Come on," Anselmo grunted, "get over here and help me cover the stairway before they rush us!" Porkchop loped over, tail held low, but Tavin stayed where he was.
"They don't need ta rush us," Tavin grimaced. Rado came to with a start and let out a pained caw. "That Aggie bastard can burn us ta ash without even climbin' the stairs."
"Where's Grimsby?" rasped Rado. Anselmo scowled and spat down the stairwell.
The orange firelight from outside shifted, and the blast of another fireball sounded from somewhere below. The three flinched, but nothing happened; the spell hadn't been aimed at them.
"They should've rushed us by now, if they were goin' to," Tavin said.
"Watch the fuckin' stairs," Anselmo growled, then stomped over to the window, hoping he wasn't about to catch one of those fireballs with his face. He paused for just a moment, then steeled himself and looked out. His eyes widened in amazement.
A pyromancer in full armor held out their hand, and a torrent of fire sprayed out into the night, chasing after a creature made of churning, boiling shadows. Anselmo squinted, and realized that it was a horse and rider, somehow wrapped in darkness. The horse galloped to a mad rhythm, its neck pumping up and down, always ahead of the flames hurtling after it. It let out a screech that left Anselmo shaking, a sound that would haunt him in his nightmares from then on, the sort of sound that would be made by horse-demons, if there were such things to chase after the souls of wicked horses.
The rider raised a shadowy shortbow and loosed a black-shafted arrow at the pyromancer, who managed to turn it aside with a spell that sounded like a thunderclap. In the flash of the sorcerer's defense, Anselmo saw a cloaked figure lying on the ground with another dark arrow protruding from his neck. The horse turned, and the rider let another arrow fly at the Agathocletian, who wasn't fast enough this time. His armor saved him though, and his head jerked to the side as the arrowhead bounced of the side of his helmet with a metallic noise.
The pyromancer appeared to be enraged by this, and the shower of sparks raining from the end of his staff became a deluge. He raised both arms into the air and roared, then swung the staff in a horizontal arc. A wave of fire rushed out, rising and curling over on itself the way that waves break against the shore, chasing after the dark rider.
The horse and rider both leaned to the side as the beast somehow turned and managed to go even faster, charging frantically at the ancient wall extending out from the gatehouse. The wave of fire came closer and closer, and Anselmo thought that the pair would either burn or crash headlong into the stone, but as they entered the shadow of the wall, they disappeared.
The fire washed over the ancient granite blocks, but its intended target was nowhere to be seen. Anselmo heard the Agathocletian begin to shout a curse, before being cut off. He turned his head in amazement to see the rider emerge from another shadow near the wall and loose an arrow, and this time his opponent's luck ran out. The arrow plunged into a gap in the pyromancer's armor near his elbow, before there was another flash of firelight and a deafening explosion. The horse shrieked, and the rider turned away and galloped into the dark.
The pyromancer ran away from the gatehouse, followed by a couple of bandits. Anselmo watched as they made for the fortress.
"We don't have a lot of time," someone said behind him, and Anselmo whirled around to see Grimsby sitting astride Cruelty in the middle of the room. Grimsby himself looked largely the same, except for the burn marks on his coat and hat. Cruelty was different though, his eyes were pale, like those of a corpse, and the shadows seemed to cling to his coat. There was a painful looking burn on his shoulder.
"You're a damned grey brigadier!" exclaimed Tavin. He pointed at Cruelty. "No wonder he's so damned vicious, he's a nightmare!"
"We can talk about this later," Grimsby told him. "We need to be gone before they come back with reinforcements. Grab the gear, grab the horses, and get your asses down the other side of the mountain. I'll try to slow down any pursuers."
"Piss on that," Anselmo said, finding his voice at last. "That pyromancer has an arrow in him already, why don't we finish them?!"
"In the first place, we don't know how many are in the fortress, and in the second, pyromancers are like animals, they're at their most dangerous when they're wounded," Grimsby replied. "What you saw out there is nothing compared to what he can do if he doesn't care about fool's char, or hitting his own men." He turned Cruelty's reins, and they vanished into the shadows next to the wall. Porkchop whined.
"Don't just stand there, hurry up!" Tavin started to grab things and stuff them into his pack. Not knowing what else to do, Anselmo followed his example.
"What's fool's char?" asked Rado, as grabbed his bedroll.
"Those Aggie wizards are playin' with something mortals weren't meant ta handle. When they channel the power, they need protection ao keep it from burning them; that's what the staves do." Tavin kept talking as he slung his pack over his back. "When they use up the protection, or they do something too big, the fire starts to burn them, starting with their fingertips and moving up. If they're not fools, or drunk on the magic, they stop before that happens."
"Cindermad," Anselmo said, shuddering as he remembered some of the worst stories the old veterans had told him about the war. Tavin nodded.
"They can't tell friend from foe at that point, all ya can do is try to get clear an' wait for 'em to burn up. Saw it twice durin' the war."
Anselmo led the way down the stairs, the point of his halberd in front of him, but the only men on the first floor were the two they'd killed, and another two with arrows sticking out of them. Tavin gave them a poke with his spear, but they were dead, too.
The three mounted up and cantered down the mountain as fast as they dared, with Porkchop following close on their heels.