M McNally - The Sable City

“I don’t hear any more of them. No god loves a stirge.”

The man’s voice was startling in the silence. It was deep as befit his physique, and had the flat Beoan accent all legionnaires tended to acquire in time, no matter from what part of the sprawling Empire they originally hailed.

“Loves a what?” Tilda asked from the ground in her smallest voice.

“Stirges.” The man poked his club at the wreckage at his feet. “Blighted, blood-sucking trouble they are. A flock will drain a horse or beeve dry in an hour. Less for a man.”

The man turned to face Tilda, and her eyes flicked to the fat blade of the legionnaire short sword thrust naked through his belt on his left hip.

“Are you all right?” he asked, reaching Tilda in a stride and kneeling close enough for her to perceive his features in the gathering gloom. Her spirits were divided by what she saw.

First, the fellow was quite handsome, which was a good thing in and of itself. Legion regulations tolerated no facial hair but this fellow had a beard and mustache coming in along with the hair on his head, still short but black and thick. It framed rather than hid what were good features. Strong jaw, high cheeks, and a brow that was a bit on the thick side, giving neat dark eyebrows a slightly forward-thrusting look of intensity. His deep-set eyes in the plunging shadows looked to be a murky shade of brown however, which, while not unpleasant, were certainly not emerald green.

But really, odds of 500-to-1 against had been far too long to bet.

“I think I need to burn my cloak,” Tilda said, and indeed the man’s nose wrinkled as he got a whiff of the gore from Tilda’s garment.

“You fell on one?” he asked with a note of amusement, obviously having missed Tilda’s haphazard acrobatics. “Come on, let’s get you on your feet.”

Tilda accepted the offered hand and felt the rough calluses of practice with weapons. Her hands were much the same, though she still had her gloves on. She let the man help her up and gave a shudder and a groan as the bloody mess of the first stirge slid out of her cloak and plopped to the ground. She had almost straightened fully when her long braid swished loose over her shoulder in what was rapidly becoming only moon and starlight. Tilda felt the man’s hand tighten on hers and then suddenly release, and she pitched forward off-balance to fall headlong back to the ground as he danced several steps away. He cast aside his branch, gripped the hilt of his sword, and snarled.

“You are a Miilarkian!”

Tilda, with the wind knocked out of her, groaned neutrally.

“What in the hells are you doing out here? And alone?” The man barked with the voice of command, surely as he would have were he still a soldier of the Legions. Before Tilda could muster enough breath to answer the fellow said, “Or are you alone at all?” He drew his sword cleanly while taking several more steps away to put his back against a tree trunk.

Horses approached at a trot and swiftly appeared, dark shapes that were the Captain on his pony, leading the mare. Both animals hung their heads in a manner distinctly sheepish for horses, but the dwarf’s hood snapped about as his shadowed eyes raked the surroundings. His gaze passed over Tilda with nary a pause, then locked on the legionnaire. Block was out of the saddle quick as thought, advancing on the man and striking a spark from a flint in one hand. The oil-soaked head of a torch bloomed and the Captain thrust it toward the legionnaire’s face. The man scowled and squinted in the sudden light, teeth and sword bared, but Block stared only at his eyes.

Brown.

“Damn your eyes,” the dwarf growled, sounding both angry and suddenly tired. The man only stared back, blinking, and Block shifted the torch so the light fell on Tilda.

“Are you alive?”

Climbing back to her feet, Tilda felt like she had fallen off the Ghost Mountain, bouncing the whole way down.

“Mostly.”

The torch swung back to the gaping legionnaire. He had recognized Tilda for what she was by her braid, but seemed utterly dumbfounded by a likewise braided, beardless dwarf. Tilda could scarcely blame him, for the Captain was one of a kind.

“Soldier,” Block barked. “What was your company of the 34 ^ Legion?”

The staring man answered by rote.

“Second Century.”

That was at least something. Tilda felt a flutter of hope in her chest, which at this point only made her ribs ache worse.

“We seek your commanding Centurion,” Block said, his voice suddenly quiet. “The man called John Lepokahan.”

The word gave Tilda a twinge, for le po ka han was a biting oath in the old language of the Islands. It was also the name that luck, or else some subtle magic inherent to the Captain, had led them to discover that their quarry had assumed when he enrolled in the Codian Legions, six years ago now.

The renegade just went on staring. The mare and her pony had been moving toward Tilda, but they stopped short as if even they were anxious to hear the man’s answer. The crackle of Block’s burning brand was the only sound in a moment that lingered on toward painful.

“Soldier…”

“Lepokahan was not his real name,” the bedraggled deserter of the Legions said softly. “He said it was John Deskata, before he was exiled from Miilark.”

It was unthinkable to stop and talk at any length in the midst of a stirge infestation, much less to set up camp nearby. Yet with night settled about the forested hills and out on the steppe, blundering far through the darkness was hardly an option.

The ex-legionnaire retrieved a pair of saddlebags from nearby and slung them across his shoulders, then led the way westerly while creeping widely around the infested orchard. Tilda followed close behind his dark silhouette leading both horses from the ground, while Block rode the pony. She made an unvoiced vow to herself that the next time she was in an otherwise healthy orchard left to spoil, with overripe fruit hanging neglected and no sound of birds, she would not just take a moment to wonder why it was so, but just get gone out of there right away.

The trudge through the trees was tricky in the dark, and every misstep and stumble sent a throbbing ache around Tilda’s midsection. But soon it was over. The two-horse column descended one last hillock and emerged again onto the grassy steppe, blonde stalks looking silvery in the waning moonlight. The renegade marched west with a long stride for perhaps a quarter mile, and just as Tilda was deciding to remount her horse, he stopped and about-faced. Though there was not enough light to make out his expression, his posture was now relaxed. He put both hands on his hips, which did keep one close to the sword at his side.

“When stirges come down from the mountains, they hunt in a narrow corridor back to their main nest. They won’t find us out here.”

“Where is Lepokahan?” Block growled in a manner that made the word sound less like an assumed name and more like the oath that it was.

“I told you,” the renegade said. “Gone. Him and a few others cut out two days before the fight with Duke Gratchik. Deserted from the desertion, if you will. But I know where they are going, and I am going after them myself. You, gentle Islanders, are welcome to tag along.”

The dwarf leaned forward in his saddle to add something colorful, but the renegade held up a hand.

“Your further satisfaction will have to wait until morning, Guv. I am plain done-in, and the two of you cannot be much better off. Particularly not your girl, there.”

Tilda turned to look toward the Captain, but stopped halfway and closed her eyes as a stitch flared in her neck. The renegade took the set of saddlebags off his shoulders and started tramping a narrow flat spot in the long grass. Block spoke at Tilda.