“Ward your tongue,” he snapped. “Or I will remove it.” “I wouldn’t recommend it,” I replied. “If something happens to me, well, bad things will happen to all of you.”
He grabbed the front of my coat and hoisted me off my feet with ease. “And just what do you mean by that? Was that a threat?” I just smiled, showing how unafraid of him I was, and let the git’s own imagination run riot. I could kill with my Gift but that wasn’t what worried the Arcanum, oh no, it was my ability to manipulate minds and twist thoughts that people truly feared.
Old Gerthan laid a hand on the Archmagus’ arm and guided it down until I was able to stand again. “Cease your posturing, Walker. I promise that we are not trying to have you killed. This is not our doing.” I prided myself on detecting liars, noting their dilated pupils, the sweating, higher-pitched voices and a dozen other little tells. Old Gerthan was telling the truth. Or at least a truth, as he believed it.
I brushed Krandus’ hand away, and he let me. “Fine,” I said. “I believe you. But nobody in their right mind would ever want me leading an army.”
“That we can all agree on,” Merwyn said. “And yet it has been requested,” Cillian said. “Demanded even.” That gave me pause. “By who?”
One of the nameless others spoke. “The druí leaders of three separate Clanholds standing in the path of the Skallgrim advance: Dun Bhailiol, Dun Clachan and Kil Noth.”
I paled and leaned on a bench for support. “What is wrong?” Cillian asked. “Are you unwell?” “I’m far from well,” I said in strangled gasps, my hand rising to feel the ragged scars marring my cheek. They waited but I wasn’t about to volunteer anything else. I didn’t even want to think about what happened in Kil Noth six years ago. I wanted nothing to do with any of those insane druí bastards. They were every bit as mad as daemon-worshipping Skallgrim halrúna, though in a very different way.
Krandus elaborated: “If we do not agree to their request they threaten to retreat to their holdfasts and allow the Skallgrim to march unopposed through the mountain passes. Those corrupt heathens will ravage the heartlands of Kaladon, and Setharis’ grain supply will be destroyed. A second year of famine will finish us.” Old Gerthan sighed. “Without their aid we would need to divert half our forces to contain their army in the mountains and risk their wolf-ships reinforcing Ironport before we can take it.”
“We have no choice,” Cillian said. “You have no choice. At first light in two days’ time you will embark at Westford Docks for the Clanholds.”
“I always have a choice,” I snarled. Before they could react I fled the room, head and heart churning with fear and anger. Corridors and faces flashed past as I ran through the Collegiate and out into the streets.
My scars itched as I ran. I refused to go back there! What of Setharis? the ghost of Lynas’ voice whispered in the back of my mind, still acting as my conscience even in death. What of your home? Your people? I shook my head and snarled as I passed through the great gates of Old Town, running downhill for the familiar safety of the Docklands. Nobody could find me there if I didn’t want them to. What of Layla? My steps slowed, stopped.
Carriages and carts clopped past, and the constant stream of messengers and tradesmen eyed me strangely as I stood there, motionless and conflicted. Eventually a great wallowing gilded carriage forced me to retreat to the side of the street, and from there I looked out over what was left of my city.
My eyes were drawn to West Docklands, passing a forest of blackened timbers to alight on the sturdy grey stone building of Charra’s Place. I’d promised Charra that I would take care of Layla after she was gone. Not that her vicious girl needed it; hard as a steel blade and just as sharp, that one. Still, I had promised my last living friend just before her death, and welching on that didn’t sit well with me. If Lynas had been my conscience then Charra had been my partner in crime, the driving force keeping me moving forward in life, to try to make something of myself. During my exile from the city I had drowned my sorrow and loneliness in cups of ale and bought affection. I would not go that way again.
“If you were still here, what would you say to me?” Charra would cross her arms and give me one of her scathing looks. Don’t be an arse, Walker. Running away solves nothing. If there is anything left here that you love then fight for it. If not… then you won’t be sad to see everything torn down and ground to dust, will you? What’s it to be? We don’t have all day.
Despite everything this was still my home. All the bad didn’t outweigh the good memories I’d made here; my mother and father, my friends… no, I couldn’t let an enemy destroy Setharis. I’d never been much of a fighter, just one of those slippery little vermin that only fights when backed into a corner, but rats are vicious when cornered. As I felt my resolve harden I knew one thing: I wasn’t that little gutter rat any more, and nor was I the wastrel magus the Arcanum thought I was, or the scum they had tried to twist me into becoming. I’d killed a god for fuck’s sake! What more did I have to fear?
Besides, there was the state of my hand to consider. I peeled my right glove off and stared at the hard black plates that had recently started spreading across my skin. When my spirit-bound knife Dissever was shattered by the god Nathair during the Black Autumn – may all gods burn! – needles of enchanted black iron had pierced my skin. In the weeks of chaos following I never did find the time to get a healer to look at it, and now it was too late. Not that my pact with that daemon, or spirit or whatever it really was, had ended. In the back of my skull I could still feel a dark and hungry presence biding its time, patiently waiting for something to come to pass. It was silent now, revealing only fragments of its bloodthirsty old self.
I flexed my hand, testing the increasing stiffness. Everybody was on a knife-edge and if their gods-damned tyrant wandered up with a magically tainted hand? In their paranoia they would see it as a sign of magical corruption and put me down without a second thought. I would if I were them.
Perhaps this suicidal mission to the Clanholds should be looked on as an opportunity. The Clansfolk boasted some of the most impressive healers I’d ever known. Their methods were crude by
Arcanum standards, but undeniably effective. It was either that or hack my right hand off here and now before the black iron spread further up my arm. And with a palsied lump of flesh attached to my left wrist that would leave me out to sea without a sail, crippled and useless.
“Worth a try, eh, Charra. Never give up, never give in. You never did.” I sighed deeply, pulled on my glove and began the trek uphill. Sod it, I was going to war.
I paused. Oh shite, was I now in charge of an army? Those poor bastards had no idea what they were in for. I certainly didn’t.
Cillian was sat alone and waiting for me when I returned to the auditorium. “I suspected you would not be gone for long.”
I thumped down next to her. “You’ve more faith in me than I do.” Her mouth quirked into a tired smile. “My faith in you was never what was lacking, Edrin. Besides, after recent events I know you are in need of something worthy to vent your anger.” Both comments were true.
I groaned and rubbed tired eyes. “I’ll do it, but I get to choose my own damn coterie to guard my back. I’ll not suffer your stuck-up wardens who’d be happy to stick a spear in me at the first opportunity. And would probably be well-paid to do so.”
“That sounds eminently sensible,” she replied. “Something that I do not often say where you are concerned.”