“Granville Buros,” I said by way of greeting. “Edrin.” It was a calculated insult to omit Walker. My legitimate claim to the surname came from my mother’s folk in the Clanholds, but he’d never considered it proper in the manner of Setharii Houses.
I didn’t give him the pleasure of annoying me, instead I ignored him. “Secca is it? I don’t think we have met before. I am Edrin Walker, and I would clasp hands but I think I need to bathe first.” She did look slightly familiar somehow, but I couldn’t place it.
She offered a faltering, forced smile but her eyes burned into me, examining my face. “Well met, commander.” She didn’t offer her own House name, if she had one. Granville and Cormac’s mouths twitched, resisting the urge to scowl. Oh I liked her. “I am an illusionist by trade and if I am honest, I am not entirely sure how I can assist you.” She did look bewildered and out of place amongst armed wardens and older magi.
“I’m sure we will find many ways,” I said. Depending on how proficient she was, I could come up with any number of sneaky, underhanded uses for a magus of light and shadow. That black-clad one-eyed knight could undoubtedly think up many suited to warfare.
Weak and woozy, I exchanged a few more words and then I took my leave to wash and sup a little bland cabbage soup to settle my stomach before collapsing into a pallet of straw up on the second floor of the inn. I lay there curled up in a ball beneath a dry blanket, the ground still undulating and my nausea plaguing me until exhaustion finally claimed me.
I woke with a hollow gnawing pit where my stomach had been, a raging thirst and a pounding head. Somebody handed me a cup of cold water and I gulped it down. “Thank…” my words dropped off as I realised that one of my mind-broken thralls had handed me the cup. I’d commanded him by instinct before I was properly awake. I stared into the bearded husk’s blank eyes for a moment and saw myself through his mind, then shuddered and hauled myself upright. Dangerous, very dangerous. I clenched my Gift tight as I could. Other people were not mere extensions of myself. For a moment there he had been a part of me, a second pair of eyes.
Every tribe and people across the known world had their own myths and legends from the distant age of tyranny, when magi like me ruled. They were misty memories of an age of nightmares, and thousands of years later it was impossible for modern people to really imagine what occurred back then. But now I was beginning to grasp those true histories only too well. They must have been every bit as horrifying as the Magash Mora, and where that abomination had absorbed flesh, blood and bone into a single amorphous monster, those tyrants had taken minds and done the exact same. If I wanted I could take every warden in this inn and enslave them. I didn’t need to leave them in the same completely broken state as my two Skallgrim raiders but they would be mine all the same in both body and mind. Their eyes would be my eyes, their hands my hands. It was not surprising I was considered a nightmare to the Arcanum.
I broke out in a cold sweat – was it any wonder that Alvarda Kernas had wanted to put one of those Scarrabus into me? I was no hero eager to sacrifice myself for fame and a fancy memorial but I vowed to slit my own throat before allowing that kind of atrocity to happen.
Contemplating suicide was a shitty way to start the day. I cheered up by telling myself that I’d just need to have all my enemies slaughtered before they ever got that close.
I got ready and kicked the rest of my coterie awake. By the time we dragged ourselves down to the common room the wardens had been up, washed and breakfasted and were already outside training in a lazily drifting snowfall. The clangs of steel and muted cursing did nothing to help my headache.
After lingering in the Black Garden my guards were more in need of meat on their bones than weapons practice, so I ordered up food and we ate in the dry and warmth watching the other coteries in full mail and gambeson drilling and sparring with shield, spear and dagger.
I frowned. “Where are all their swords?”
Jovian raised an eyebrow. “You are too used to the narrow lanes of towns and cities perhaps. What use would spears be there? In open battle the reach of a spear is superior. Swords are, hmm, secondary weapons you might say. I expect our bows to take the most lives.” He eyed their large and heavy tower shields stacked off to one side. “Excepting magery of course. Most die to magic while we shield you.”
“I see.” My knowledge about battle was pathetic, mostly consisting of brutal knife-fights in dark alleys. Let the knight and the wardens deal with everything around tactics and warfare then, I would do what I was good at – sneaky bastardry and fucking people up when and where they were least expecting it. The wardens were all very competent but I didn’t need more men and women who fought by the book; no, I wanted stealth and vicious cunning. If the Skallgrim and their summoned daemons got close enough to me then a few extra hands wouldn’t matter.
A note from Cormac left with the innkeep this morning advised that a ship bearing two more coteries and the bulk of our supplies had arrived in the early hours but that we were still missing the last ship, delayed thanks to damage from the storm that had caused us to shelter in the bay. I hoped the last magus and their coterie would catch up with us before we marched tomorrow. The odds were bad enough. He had left a whole bunch of other papers with names and lists but I couldn’t be bothered reading them right there and then. I had a whole day to do that, and I wasn’t needed until we arrived in the Clanholds. The Arcanum had already arranged everything and I was just an inconvenient figurehead.
I asked Jovian to begin teaching my coterie some of his dirty tricks after they were all fed and watered. It was a better use of his time than trying to teach them to fight like wardens. He seemed eager to begin, but also insisted on foisting a long dagger upon me, a sheathed Clanholds dirk to replace the puny knife I always kept handy.
“Mighty magus? Yes, yes all very powerful, but so is a blade in the back, no?”
It was hard to argue with that logic, so I let him tie it to my belt and then slid my smaller knife into my boot before climbing the nearest hill to take a look at some of Barrow Hill’s standing stones. I wanted to be alone, and after today I wouldn’t get another chance for months. I’d been through the town twice before during my long exile and I’d thought nothing of them at the time, but after what I’d seen in the Boneyards below Setharis during the Black Autumn I had some worrying suspicions that called for further exploration.
For all her filth and smoke, unique stench, terrible crime and surly big city populace, I loved Setharis. It would always be a large part of my black and battered little heart. But here and now, tramping through pristine white snow and breathing fresh crisp air, I would rather be nowhere else. The town below was overrun by soldiers and every cart, horse and donkey in the area had been requisitioned to carry our supplies. Messengers came and left, carrying reports and orders. The wardens’ thoughts buzzed like a hive of angry wasps in the back of my brain, a constant annoyance. As I climbed higher the shouts and clangs of my small army faded on the wind, and the wardens swarming all around Barrow Hill reduced to dots, the buzzing dampened to a soft background hiss.
I felt cleansed; my pain, despair and loss all scoured away by icy wind. My troubles seemed lessened by distance. I left it all behind and climbed the path to the flat top of the hill and stood alone in the centre of a circle of tall grey stones that predated the town: ancient rocks standing in defiance of rain, wind and ice for years beyond record. The stones were half buried in snow and wore white caps. Three squared obelisks reared larger than the other, rougher stones in the outer circle: the largest to the north, others forming a triangle to the south-west and south-east.