David Dalglish: A Dance of Ghosts

“Drop your weapons,” Haern told them.

They had no chance to respond. Blades pierced both their chests, and they gasped before they fell. Thren Felhorn stood behind them, his swords and clothes caked with blood.

“Drop your weapons?” Thren asked, swinging his short swords in a futile attempt to fling the blood off them. “Did you plan on taking prisoners?”

Haern looked around for any more to fight, but the three wagons had been abandoned.

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“You hesitate to kill women,” Thren said, shaking his head. “The ones immersed in the lives we live are just as dangerous as any man. You’ll get yourself killed someday if you let such a weakness linger.”

“Perhaps.” He sheathed his blades. “Did you kill the rest?”

Thren gestured north, toward the forest.

“About five or six managed to flee. I’m sure they’ll come back for the wagon in a day or two, see what’s left of it. We have nothing to fear from those cowards.”

Haern was less ready to be so dismissive, but he did not argue the point. Instead, he stood and stared at the bodies bleeding out before him as his father walked over to the nearest covered wagon and tossed aside one of the flaps. One of the women was not yet dead, but her eyes were glassy, her breath coming in rapid, shallow gasps. Her fingers were near her face, digging into the loose earth as her hands convulsed at random intervals.

“We needed to refresh our supplies, so meeting them was fortunate,” Thren said, and Haern heard rattling as he pushed aside unseen things to search through the wagon’s contents.

“Aye,” Haern said, kneeling down before the woman. He reached into his belt, withdrew a dagger he kept for emergencies. The woman continued to gasp, slower now. Feeling like he’d swallowed a rock, Haern forced her eyelids closed with his left hand, then stabbed with his right. Unlike his father’s strike, his pierced the heart directly. He left the blade in there, not wishing to increase the pain any further, and instead watched and waited. The woman let out a gasp, but it sounded more surprised than anything. And then the breath leaked out of her, the movement of her chest stopped, and her fingers curled in tight and moved no more.

Haern pulled free the dagger and stood. As he cleaned it on the bottom of his cloak, he glanced over his shoulder, caught his father watching him.

“That wasn’t necessary,” said Thren.

“I disagree. Did you find anything useful?”

Thren gestured for him to come closer and look for himself.

“Plenty of food and drink,” Thren said as Haern glanced inside. “But it looks like it was only for the crew manning the wagons. I thought there’d be some crimleaf in here, maybe some wines laced with Violet, but instead we have only these…”

He pushed aside the lid to a crate, reached inside, and lifted out a thick stone slab. It was roughly the size of his chest, and by the strain on his muscles, it was clearly heavy. Thren dropped it down on the wood, and at sight of the mark carved onto the front, he turned and spit.

“Egotistical bastards,” Thren said. “They can’t mark territory like any other guild. They have to carve it into the very stone of the walls and street.”

Haern reached down, his fingers tracing the four-pointed star of the Sun Guild, deeply cut into the tile with a skilled hand and then painted a soft yellow. The sight of it grew a pit in the center of Haern’s stomach as he wondered what all transpired in Veldaren during his absence. He’d hoped that after they drove out the first wave of members, plus killed the priest, Laerek, who’d been helping the Sun Guild move into the city, they would have earned a respite. Apparently, that was not the case.

“How many are there?” Haern asked, looking further into the wagon.

“Ten in this wagon alone,” Thren said. “The Darkhand plans on taking over the entire city, by the looks of it. These stones will signify their territory, and I have a feeling that in a few months, it will be impossible to cross a single street without seeing one.”

“Darkhand?” Haern asked.

Thren shook his head.

“Leader of the Sun Guild. Don’t worry about him for now. We have our own matters to attend. There’s cheese wrapped up near the front, plus some butter and lard. Grab your pack and get to it while I load up on whatever oats they had. If we’re to have a city left waiting for us by the time we’re done, we need to reach Luther and the Sanctuary as soon as possible.”

With their supplies now refilled, the two walked until nightfall, then found a spot safely far enough from the road to build a fire and eat the small portion of smoked pork they’d taken. Haern sat opposite his father, trying to do his best to relax and forget the previous hours of the day. He’d gone through far worse during his scouring of Veldaren. Why should a simple caravan bother him so much now?

Thren, meanwhile, looked the happiest he’d been since their trip began. Cleaning a bit of pork from his teeth, he tossed a scrap too burnt and hard to eat into the fire and stared at Haern, who shivered, feeling as cold as ever beneath that gaze. Haern shifted side to side, trying to find a way to make the carpet of leaves beneath him into something more comfortable.

“That hood,” Thren said, breaking a silence that had lasted more than an hour. “Who did you get it from?”

Haern tugged once on its side, and he huddled closer to the fire.

“What does it matter?” he asked. “It’s only a hood.”

Thren shook his head, clearly disappointed.

“I’m no fool. No matter the time of day, there’s always a shadow that falls across your face. Sometimes I can see your eyes; sometimes I can’t. And your voice, it’s not like it should be. It sounds more like you’re whispering, except it’s loud as you need it to be for me to hear even if I’m five feet away or five hundred. There’s magic in it, and you’re not the kind of man who wields a wand or a staff, Watcher. You deal in steel, which means the magic came from someone else. I’m only curious as to who. It’s an effective trick, albeit a simple one.”

Haern drummed his fingers on the hilts of his sabers, pondered over how to answer.

“I took it from a man I killed,” he said at last.

“Do I know him?”

He shook his head.

“An elf from afar. He thought to control a city with his blades. I showed him otherwise.”

Thren let out a chuckle, and he lay back against one of the trees that surrounded their camp, with the hope that their trunks and leaves might hide the light of the fire from travelers.

“So you took it as a trophy?”

“Not a trophy,” Haern said harsher than he meant. “A warning, for myself.”

“And what kind of warning might that be? Not to be weaker than your opponent?”

Haern let out a sigh, and he stared into the fire instead of answering. How could he explain to his father that the reason he’d taken the hood was as a reminder to never believe as the elf, Graeven, had believed? To feel he was a god among mortals, controller of all their fates?

“A warning against what I might become,” Haern said. “I’d rather not discuss it.”

“Of course, of course,” said Thren. He pulled his own hood back, used it as a cushion between the harsh bark of the tree and his head. “The perfect, noble Watcher. Never a man who could bribe him, never a whore who could seduce him. The way my men describe you would make you a god of death and shadows. Fear is a weapon you wield with skill, so spare me vague sentimentalism about warnings and reminders. You wear it to frighten your prey; just admit as much. It’s sad to see someone living a lie.”

Haern stood, and his hands fell to his sabers. He had no intention to draw them, but he wanted to deny the casual dismissal, to say or do something to somehow show his father the seriousness in which he took his words. Instead, Thren ignored him completely, closing his eyes as if to sleep.