David Dalglish - A Dance of Ghosts

“Did he threaten you?” he asked.

Delysia swallowed. Haern would not return to Veldaren. His mind was set, but if she revealed the threat, she knew what he’d do. He’d send her away, refusing to trust her. That was how Haern worked, and she’d come to accept it. The man would take any risk so long as the consequences were only on himself, but should it be someone else, someone he cared for …

“He never said he would harm me,” she said, as close to a lie as she could manage, and still she felt ill by it.

Haern let out a sigh.

“I’ll pay more attention, all right?” he asked. “But I refuse to believe he knows I’m his son. He’d have acted far sooner. The moment he knew, he’d have torn Veldaren apart to have me back at his side. Listen, perhaps you’re right, and he wants to recruit me in some way. If that is the case, I promise you, I’ll never be what Thren wants me to be. I’m stronger than I ever was, smarter, wiser. I can stand against him far better than when I was a child.”

The words were like tiny needles to her heart, and she stood on her toes so she could kiss his cheek.

“Don’t you see?” she asked him. “It’s the child you were that must survive.”

With that, she returned to the fire, determined to deny her fear of Thren, to be there no matter the cost. At her arrival, Thren tore off a leg of the rabbit and tossed it her way.

“Dig in,” he said as she caught it. “It’ll be tougher than it looks, though.”

He winked, and she smiled sweetly back as she bit into the flesh, vowing that no matter the cost, she would not let such a horrible man win.

Lord Victor Kane stood before the mirror and adjusted the collar of his shirt for the third time.

“Forget it,” he said, yanking off the silken garment. “It’s not me, anyway.”

Instead, he put on a plain undershirt, followed by his finely woven chain mail shirt. It was heavy, but when he clasped his sword belt to his waist, it helped to distribute some of the weight. That done, he grabbed his sword, pulled a tunic with his family’s crest over his head, and then looked once more into the mirror. This time, he looked ready for battle, the rings of his chain mail shining in the light streaming in through his window.

Much better, he thought. Better he be comfortable than pretend to be something he wasn’t.

“Milord?” asked a man at the door after a quick set of knocks.

“Come in, Sef,” Victor said.

The door opened, and into Victor’s small room stepped Sef Battleborn, a heavyset and bearded man whose long brown hair had more than a fair share of gray in it. Sef had been a loyal soldier of his family for decades now, and Victor hoped he’d be around for decades more.

“Going to Alyssa’s again?” he asked, looking Victor up and down.

“Hard to woo a woman when you’re not at her side.”

“The poets say differently.”

“The poets write their ballads so that young maidens will throw themselves at their feet afterwards,” Victor said, tugging on his chain mail to readjust its weight so it was centered instead of too far on his right shoulder. “And since when do you listen to poets?”

“When I’m off drinking,” Sef said. “Something you used to do with me before all this started.”

Victor ran a hand through his hair, glanced at Sef.

“Is there a reason you’re here, other than to complain about my not getting shit-faced with you at a tavern?”

“Sadly, there is,” Sef said, and he sighed. “The mercenary captains have all gathered downstairs. They want to be paid, Victor, and they aren’t leaving until they get what they think is theirs.”

“How many?” Victor asked Sef, who stood in the doorway to Victor’s room looking miserable.

“Fifteen,” his old friend said. “If you tally up those under their command, it’s nearly six hundred of our mercenaries.”

Six hundred of their remaining thousand. Victor slowly stood from his chair, walked over to Sef.

“Fetch me soldiers still loyal to my cause,” he said. “Have them outside in case I need them.”

“Yes, my lord,” Sef said, bowing his head. “Will you come speak with the captains?”

“In a moment,” Victor said. “Just … tell them to give me a moment.”

When the door closed, Victor walked back to his desk and grabbed his dagger off it. Staring into the edge, he asked himself how far he was willing to go. His parents’death … how far must he go before they were avenged? How much spilled blood was the city of Veldaren truly worth?

“One more drop,” he said to his distorted reflection upon the blade. “Every day it seems I say it: just one more drop…”

Was that how rivers began, with just one more drop? He didn’t know, but what he did know was that the memory of his parents was worth an ocean; sheathing the dagger on his belt, he flung open the door to his room and marched down the steps into the lower floor of his converted tavern. Sitting in chairs, standing at the bar, by the door, and leaning against the walls were the various mercenary captains. Victor knew them all well, had befriended many of them over the past few years. They’d formed the backbone of his forces required to cleanse the scourge of the underworld from Veldaren. But it’d all been a gamble relying on the king to help shoulder the load of paying them, and as the men had died and the grumbles began, that gamble had failed spectacularly.

“He emerges,” said Joras One-Eye, sitting at a table with a large glass in his left hand. A bit of foam from the beer within coated his short beard. “I hope you managed to find a few extra bags of gold underneath your bed while we waited.”

Victor walked over to him, and while the others watched, he stole Joras’s drink and finished it himself. Feeling the burn going down, he used it to give himself the extra push he needed.

“I see no reason for this farce,” he told them. “Time. That is all I ask for. How much coin have I already poured into your open hands? Surely you can trust me to wait a few weeks more…”

“Hard for a dead man to pay his debts,” Joras said. “And we all know that’s what you are: a dead man walking.”

“If you all did your damn jobs, the danger on my life would be irrelevant.” He glared at them, then set his glass back down on the table. “Nothing has changed. Come here and threaten as you wish, but it won’t get you your gold. If you want to disband and send your men home, then do it. If you won’t wait for your payment, then you won’t receive it. The truth is that simple.”

“Aye, that’s simple, all right,” said another of the captains, a hefty man with two axes strapped to his belt. “So how’s about we make it simple for you, Lord Kane? If we don’t get paid, me and my men go find our payment elsewhere. How about in your family lands? I think there’s a few extra silvers lost in those golden wheat fields of yours.”

“I hear women can go for a pretty handful of silvers in parts of the world, too,” a third captain piped up.

“Are you threatening me?” Victor asked.

“I think we are,” Joras said, standing. The others mumbled their agreement. “And I think you need to give us a better answer than the one we’ve had. All of us have bled and died for you, for this wretched city, and while you might be a weeping-heart fool, we aren’t doing it for the good of our souls.”

“Good of our pockets, maybe,” someone from the back chimed in.

Victor swallowed hard, and when Sef stepped inside, Victor nodded.

“So be it,” he said. “Give me but a moment, and I will see what I can do. Good men as you deserve payment for the work you’ve done.”