William King - Death's Angels

“Was you a thief?” asked someone else.

“Everybody in the Place of Sorrow is a thief,” said Gunther. “If they are not a whore. It is a vile cesspit of every sort of wickedness.”

There was no sense in denying that. Rik felt a strange nostalgia for the covered courtyards and mazy alleys of his home. At least they were warm. He might still have been there now but he had taken the Queen’s gold crown and gone for a soldier.

Of course, if he had not, after the business with Sabena and the jewels, Antonio and his men would probably have had him hanging from a meat hook and Leon with him. Not even the Old Witch could have saved them, if she had been of a mind to, which she most likely was not. She had gotten strange in the later days, as all human sorcerers were said to eventually.

And Antonio was the most powerful crime boss in the city, rich enough to buy immunity even from the Magistrates. It had probably not been such a good idea to sleep with his mistress, Rik reflected. It had been a worse one to help her steal that magic crystal from Antonio’s strongbox.

“It’s a fun place,” said Weasel, just to be contrary. “I enjoyed our time there.”

“That’s because you fit right in,” said another shadowy figure out in the gloom. Weasel just chuckled as if he could not agree more.

“I knew a Terrarch whore there once…” he continued.

“There’s no such thing,” said one of the chorus.

“There is too, least she looked like one of the Exalted…”

“Means nothing, so does Halfbreed,” said somebody else.

“Maybe it was him in a wig,” said Pigeon.

Weasel chuckled again. “I think I would have noticed and so would your mother, since she was right between us.”

“Weasel’s your daddy, Pigeon,” said somebody and then looked up at the sound of footsteps. The Barbarian approached, bringing the hill-man Vosh. Weasel made a place for him by the fire and offered him some biltong and a swig from his special flask. The stranger took it gratefully. Weasel got right down to business.

“What are you doing here with us, Vosh?”

“It’s bad up here, Weasel,” said the stranger. He had the soft lilting accent of the hills. Rik nodded as his suspicions were confirmed. There was no way the stranger could have known Weasel’s name if they had not met before. The hill-man had been with the Lieutenant and the wizard all day.

“Things are always bad in the hills,” said Weasel.

“It’s been worse since the wizard came.” That quietened them. Nobody liked the thought of a wizard being up there, particularly not if they were going to have to fight against him. Wizards were always bad news.

“Wizard?” said Weasel, and even he looked a little worried.

“Renegade Terrarch. Showed up late last autumn. Whispered something in the Prophet's ear and we all had to obey him without question. He turned the old manor house into a hellhole with his experiments. It was bad enough before he started digging the mine. After that…”

“Sounds bad,” said Weasel softly. No one else dared say anything at all. “Mine? Was there gold there?”

“We never saw any. It’s in a cursed unholy site too, near the ruins of Achenar, the old city of the Spider King.”

“What’s this wizard wanting? Why come to the bloody mountains for the middle of winter?”

“Don’t ask me, but it’s no good he’s been up to. He takes people down into the mine and they don’t come back up. At first it was strangers, but then it was our own — people the wizard said were going to betray us. The Prophet agreed. Of course he would, being more than half a wizard himself.”

“I can see where this is going,” said Weasel. “One night he started looking at you slantwise. So you decided that you would run to the Terrarchs and tell them the whole tale.”

“Better that than madmen loose in the mountains, raising ghosts and demons and god knows what else. It's one thing to preach war with the Terrarchs. It's another to start summoning the spawn of the Old Gods to help you. You lowlanders might not remember the old days but we hill-men have long memories…”

“Long memories of the time when you worshipped the scuttling hell-spawned soul-eating bastards,” muttered the Barbarian.

Weasel kept talking. “And the Exalted have promised you sanctuary because among the clans, no matter what the reason, a man who sells out is an enemy. It’s a good way to end up with your own severed dick in your mouth.”

The stranger looked ashamed and defiant. “You would have done the same,” he said.

“Aye, most likely. These wizards have names?”

“Alzibar. He’s a big friend of Zarahel…”

“Zarahel? The Prophet who has been stirring up the tribes?” said Rik.

Vosh nodded. “Thinks he’s the Liberator. Claims the Old Gods are coming back. Claims the old days will return. That the Terrarchs will fall.”

Rik shivered. No one present wanted to think about that. It was one thing to resent the Terrarchs but to have the Demon Gods rise from their graves, to have the old powers of darkness unbound and stalking the land, those were bad thoughts. Even if only a tenth of the things they had been taught about them were true, those were very bad thoughts.

He felt suddenly sure he had stumbled across the secret of their mission. They had been spun a story about the bandits, in case of spies in the camp. He knew what they were really after.

“And we are just kind of heading towards the exact valley where the Prophet and his brother wizard have their camp,” Rik said. Weasel nodded understanding, so did Leon and the Sergeant and a few others. “I wonder why that would be.”

As he spoke Rik noticed a strange silence had fallen over the group. He felt a cold presence over his shoulder and turned to find himself looking up at the silver mask of Master Severin. Its surface reflected the flames of the fire so that it looked like the whole top of the Terrarch’s head was ablaze. It gave him an even more demonic look than usual. His cold eyes gazed down, and Rik felt a momentary dizziness, and the oddest sensation that the wizard was looking deep into his soul. It was not a pleasant feeling.

Severin’s presence cast a pall over everybody. They said nothing, merely sat there like birds hypnotised by a snake. Rik thought the wizard was going to say something but he did not. He merely stared coldly, letting his wintery gaze fall on them, then he beckoned to the hill-man with one gauntleted finger and then strode silently back into the shadows from which he had emerged. The hill-man followed meek as a lamb to the slaughter.

Rik finished sewing the button on his tunic. There was no more conversation that evening.

The wind blew chill from the moment the Foragers broke camp. The fir trees grew more stunted as the bridgebacks carried them higher. Clouds scudded swiftly across the sky, sometimes obscuring the peaks, sometimes rewarding Rik with glimpses of the sun breaking through a gap.

The soldiers dug out scarves, mufflers and old fingerless gloves and those who had them donned extra waistcoats and shirts. The Terrarchs showed no sign of feeling the cold. Rik wondered if this was some proof of the theory that they did not feel pain in the same way as men do.

As he huddled down in the howdah miserably watching the small icicles of snot forming on the end of Weasel’s nose, Rik brooded on the events of the previous night. Had it simply been his imagination or had the mage showed a particular interest in him? It was forbidden for any human to study the art of sorcery, and Rik had done a little of that, snatching the few crumbs of lore the Old Witch had let fall. Maybe the Terrarch had some way of telling.