Cameron Johnston - The Traitor God

To the readers and the dreamers, who in my experience tend to be one and the same.

Ten years.

Ten wretched years spent fleeing daemons and debt, reduced to a vagabond with little more than the clothes on my back and a set of loaded dice. Every week brought different taverns, different faces, and none that cared if I died in a ditch. The same old scams day after day, blurring into a dreary endless mass as I kept two steps ahead of the unnatural beasts that stalked me. I was a hollow man clinging to existence for a single purpose. It was a price I was more than willing to pay.

I stared into my ale-cup and wondered what had become of my old friends, the very reason for my exile. Concentrating on Lynas’ presence in the back of my mind, I felt his comforting warmth pulsing through the Gift-bond that irrevocably linked the two of us. We were more than friends, and more than family; we were part of each other. He was still alive, though a hundred leagues between us had reduced our magical bond to a single thread of sensation that offered no further insight. The deal still held – my exile kept Lynas, Charra and their daughter Layla safe and healthy. It was all that kept me going.

As I did on every anniversary of my flight from home, the great city of Setharis, I lifted a cup in their honour. I drained dregs as sour as my mood and thumped it down on the rough table, a splinter jabbing my finger. The wood was battered and scarred, every bit as worn down as I felt. Come the morning I’d be glad to finally see the back of this dingy tavern and tedious town of Ironport. I teased the sliver of wood from my skin and sucked at the bright bead of blood, the fiery savour of magic bursting on my tongue, expanding my senses.

A hint of burning reached my nostrils: pitch, woodsmoke, and something more unpleasant that tickled the back of my throat. It wasn’t coming from the tavern’s kitchen. The docks perhaps? I squinted at the door to the street and wondered if I should step out into the night air and take a look, but then the serving girl drew my full attention, weaving towards me through a clamouring crowd of dusty and drink-starved miners just off the last shift in the iron mines.

“Here you are, m’lord,” she said, setting a steaming bowl of stew down in front of me. She flashed a coquettish smile and batted her eyelashes in what I could only assume was meant to be an alluring manner; or perhaps she had something stuck in her eye. Her gaze lingered over the ragged scars that cut from the corner of my right eye to my jaw and trailed off down my neck, intrigued by their unspoken tale – which was how it would remain. Some stories are dangerous.

“Thank you, lass,” I said, already feeling the fuzzy warmth of alcohol spreading from my belly. I was pleasantly tipsy rather than drunk, but the night was young yet and I wasn’t here for anything so insipid as pleasant – no, I was trying to drown the thought of yet another year bled out in the gutters. I slid my cup towards her. “More ale. Keep it coming.”

The high and mighty magi of the Arcanum had beaten it into us that no magus should ever get drunk, but I never had given a rat’s arse about their stupid rules. They might rule Setharis but they did not rule me. Once those arrogant bastards got their claws into a magically Gifted mind like mine they never, ever, let go, and they would be hounding me still if I hadn’t taken great pains to fake my death. A bucket of my blood, a lot of magic, and a masterwork of deception was a small price to pay to get them off my back. If only my daemons were as easy to fool.

From the other side of the tavern, old Sleazy glared at the serving girl with his one remaining eye, bald and scarred pate beading with sweat as he hefted a barrel of ruby ale into place behind the bar. She hastily collected my empty cup, favouring me with another smile before scurrying off back to the kitchen.

She wasn’t dissuaded by my scars, overlooking the ugliness because of my fine clothes and a pouch fat with coin. I was ostensibly a good catch, and she was still young and pretty enough to think herself destined for something more exciting than a life of drudgery in a grimy little mining town like Ironport. She wasn’t to know that I was a liar and a killer, or that my pouch held mostly copper bits. She couldn’t know that in Setharis the name Edrin Walker would cause folk to slam doors and trace symbols in the air to ward off evil.

I shuddered. Best avoid thinking about home, of deals, dead gods and daemons, and force myself to ponder better things. Safer things. I watched the bloodied sliver of wood burn in the flame of my table candle – it really wouldn’t do to leave any trace of my magic here. My pursuers could track me by such things, which is why I used it so rarely.

The girl hurried back with another cup of ale – a better brew than I’d paid for – before moving on to serve a table of rowdy, drunken sailors bandying rumours of missing ships and Skallgrim sea-raiders pillaging villages up and down the coast. Sailors were wont to exaggerate, and their fanciful tales devolved into wild rumours of kidnapped children and blood sacrifice, nothing I hadn’t heard a hundred times before about the tribal savages from across the Sea of Storms.

I ignored their wagging tongues and watched the girl. I wasn’t about to disabuse her of any fanciful notions on my last night in town, to ruin my only chance for a little fun; with my itinerant lifestyle it was in short supply. Sleazy turned his gimlet glare on me and I looked away. That sour bastard’s single eye held as much malice as any ten normal men could muster. The tavernkeep was not so easily fooled. He must have been pleased when a couple of overdue ships finally docked, ready to carry me away from his shitty little tavern in the morning.

I was sat in a corner of the rundown shack, eponymously titled Sleazy’s Tavern, swilling ale and chowing down on the special stew, trying to figure out what the slimy grey lumps of surprise meat actually were, when somebody kicked open the door and hurled in a lantern. It exploded against the wall, flaming oil showering drinkers and setting the rush floor-mats ablaze. People screamed, tearing at burning clothes and hair. Wood that had soaked up untold years of spilt alcohol eagerly took light, black smoke billowing through the tavern.

Coughing and spluttering, smoke stinging my eyes and burning my throat, I snatched up my pack and shoved a dirt-smeared miner out of my way as I bolted for the door. I got out a split-second before the panicked and heaving mob behind me blocked the only exit to the street in a frantic attempt to claw their way out of the inferno all at the same time. Those at the back would die choking if they were lucky, burning if not.

I sensed the attack a moment before blackened steel came swinging through the smoke towards my face. I ducked and an axe crunched through the skull of the unlucky sap behind me. A bearded Skallgrim raider in chain and furs, his shaven head tattooed with angular runes, snarled and yanked at the weapon embedded in the corpse blocking the doorway. Head still down, I charged, ramming my shoulder into his belly. He lost grip of his weapon and stumbled, falling to one knee. I wasn’t a great fighter, but even I knew that only fools gave their foes time to think. I booted his raised knee and it crunched inwards. He fell onto all fours and I stamped on his weapon-hand, grinding down. He howled in pain as small bones popped beneath my heel.

I thought he was done and tried to make my escape, but he had other ideas. He grabbed hold of my belt with his uninjured hand and hauled me closer. I tried to pull away but the press of bodies behind me made that impossible. He launched himself forward, jaw clamping down on my crotch. Shitshitshitshit – it wasn’t the first time somebody had swung an axe at my face, but nobody had tried to bite my cock off before! In drunken panic a trickle of magic squirted through my flesh, strengthening muscles. I smashed my fist into the raider’s face and his teeth lost their grip. My knee snapped up to break his nose with a crunch of bone and cartilage. He went down hard, shaved head cracking off the cobbles. The protective runes inked into his scalp didn’t seem to help much as my boot rammed into his face, once, twice, then again for good measure, leaving it a toothless cavern – that biting bastard was finished now.