Osserc gestured to the door. ‘Shall I?’
The Jaghut shrugged eloquently. ‘It is not up to me.’
Very well. He tried the door: it opened, creaking loudly. Outside it was an overcast night. It had been raining. The glow of the moon and the Visitor behind the massed clouds gleamed from the wet slates of the walkway. Mist obscured the surrounding stone buildings. The sea broke surging against the nearby shore.
A ragged human figure lay on the ground. A trail of churned-up dirt lay behind it. The trail ended at the steaming heap of a disturbed burial barrow.
Osserc called up the halclass="underline" ‘Something’s escaping. Or tried.’
Gothos approached. He peered out past Osserc’s shoulder. ‘Indeed?’
While they stood watching, the figure thrust out an arm ahead of itself to grasp a fistful of grass and dirt to pull, heaving itself one agonizing hand’s-breadth along. It looked like a man, but stick-thin, in rags and caked in dirt.
‘Know you it, or him?’
Gothos scratched his chin with a thick yellowed nail. His upthrusting Jaghut tusk-like teeth, so close now, appeared to bear the scars of once having been capped. ‘One of the more recently interred.’
‘How is it he’s got this far? Is the House weakening?’
Gothos shook his head. ‘No … Not in this case.’
The jangle of metal announced someone jogging down the street. He appeared from the mist as an iron-grey shape in heavy banded armour. A battered helmet boasting wide cheek-guards completely obscured his face. He looked quite formidable, barrel-chested, with a confident rolling bear-like gait. Osserc was mildly surprised to see such a martial figure here on this small backwater island. The soldier, or guard, took up a post near the low wall surrounding the House’s grounds — the point that the crawling escapee appeared to be making for.
Osserc and Gothos continued to watch while the escapee made his agonizingly slow way towards the wall. Osserc noted that although the many roots writhing like mats across the yard grasped at him they seemed unable to retain their grip as he slipped onward through their hold.
‘I admire his … persistence,’ Gothos murmured. ‘But he is called …’
‘Called?’ Osserc asked, but the Jaghut did not respond.
The wretched figure made the wall and, by scrabbling at the piled fieldstones, pulled himself upright. He was wearing tattered dirt-caked rich silks that might have once been black. Thin baldrics that might once have held weapons criss-crossed his back. His hair was black, touched by grey. He was a slim, aristocratic-looking fellow.
The moment he straightened the soldier ran him through. The broad heavy blade of the soldier’s longsword emerged from the man’s back then was withdrawn, scraping on bone.
The escapee did not so much as flinch. He remained standing. Shaking his head, he gave a long low chuckle that sounded quite crazed.
‘Let him go,’ Gothos called. ‘The House has no hold over him.’
‘How in the name o’ Togg could that be?’ the soldier answered in a rough, parade-ground bark.
The figure had thrown a leg over the wall; the soldier shield-bashed him to tumble back on to the ground where he lay laughing a high giggle as if the situation was hilarious.
‘Let him go, Temper,’ Gothos called once more, sounding bored. ‘You cannot stop him.’
‘Wait a damned minute,’ the soldier, Temper, growled. He pointed an armoured finger. ‘I know this bastard. It’s Cowl! There’s no way I’m lettin’ this ghoul free in my town!’
The figure, perhaps Cowl, grew quite still at that. Then he was up on his feet in an instant, crouched, a knife in each dirt-smeared hand. ‘Your town!’ he hissed. ‘Yours! You don’t actually think I want to spend more than one second in this pathetic shithole?’ He lifted his chin as if to gather his dignity, and brushed at his tattered shirt as if to smooth it. ‘Business elsewhere calls me. I have a message to deliver to my commander.’ Then he pressed a hand to his mouth to stifle a laugh that almost doubled him over.
Temper set his fists on his waist. ‘Well — seems I can’t kill you, seeing as you’re already dead.’ He lifted his armoured head to Osserc and Gothos at the door. ‘What guarantee can you offer?’
Gothos snorted his disgust and walked away up the hall. Osserc remained. Crossing his arms, he called to Cowl, ‘You intend to leave?’
The figure offered a mocking courtier’s bow. Osserc had placed that name now: Cowl, chief assassin and High Mage of the mercenary army, the Crimson Guard. A powerful and dangerous entity to be allowed his freedom on any continent. Yet how could this one possess the strength to shrug off entombment by the Azath? He personally knew of several far more potent beings currently inhumed on these very grounds — some he had battled and was quite glad were now writhing, constrained, beneath his feet. Some who possessed the very blood of the Azathanai themselves. Why, even one of his own daughters had once been taken by a House … Well, that was between them.
And he had warned them.
‘The House cannot, or chooses not to, hold him,’ he called. ‘Let him go. I’ve no doubt he’ll flee.’
‘Flee!’ Cowl echoed, outraged.
Temper laughed his scorn — as Osserc hoped he would. ‘Yeah,’ the soldier scoffed, ‘run away, you pissant knifer. No-good backstabber.’ He backed up a step, inviting Cowl forward.
The assassin was hunched, as if suspicious. But he drew a hand across his mouth, the knife’s blued blade shimmering in the moonlight. In one quick fluid motion he was over the low wall. He tilted his head then, to the soldier, and disappeared in a flicker of shadows.
‘You take a lot upon yourself, soldier,’ Osserc called.
‘That?’ the soldier sneered. He hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat where the assassin had been standing. ‘That was nothin’. Come down here and take one step outside and I’ll run you through. ‘Bout time some someone took you down to size.’
Osserc raised a brow. He was half tempted to accept the challenge. But right now he had no intention of gaining D’rek’s ire. For he recognized her touch upon the man. And so he merely saluted the fellow and pulled the door shut.
He found Gothos reseated, as if nothing had happened, hands flat once more upon the slats of the table. He sat opposite. After a time he found that he could no longer contain his curiosity and so he said: ‘Very well. I must ask — why doesn’t the House have a hold on this man? Surely he is no more powerful than others of the interred.’
Gothos sighed his world-weariness. ‘Because,’ he murmured, completely disinterested, ‘he has already been claimed.’
Osserc grunted his understanding, or rather his complete lack of understanding. That was an answer — but at the same time it answered nothing. Claimed? Whatever did he mean? His thoughts, however, were interrupted by a loud scraping noise of metal over stone echoing from the hallway.
The Nacht creature appeared. It was muttering under its breath, perhaps even mouthing curses. It came dragging a long-handled shovel after it, up the hallway towards the front.
After a moment Osserc heard the front door open then slam shut.
CHAPTER XI
Ancient legend has it that within the central tower of the ceremonial complex dwells a goddess, or genie, formed in the shape of a giant serpent with nine heads. During certain propitious nights of the year this genie appears in the shape of a woman, with whom the god-king must couple. Should the king fail to keep his tryst, disaster is sure to follow.
The strategy meeting to consider the attack upon the Thaumaturg capital, Anditi Pura, was a much less contentious affair than the earlier one for Isana Pura. From his seat among the scattered cushions, Prince Jatal studied the reclining figures of the various family heads and could not believe what he was witnessing. In their ease and laughter, their self-assurance and certainty of the victory ahead, he read ignorance, over-confidence — even childish recklessness.