Silviu the Thief - Now Availabile!

Hello all,

My new book, Silviu the Thief - the first book in the Hero's Knot series - is now available for sale at Smashwords and Amazon.

As always, you can also find my books via my website, www.alexanderneill.com.

I had a lot of fun cranking this one out during National Novel Writing Month, and I'm looking forward to following the adventures of Raven/Silviu through at least two more books.

I hope you enjoy it!

Cheers,

- Don

SILVIU THE THIEF - DONE

Hello all,

I'm happy to announce that I've completed and submitted my novel to the National Novel Writing Month competition. That makes me a winner according to the contest rules. So, yay!

Of course, the real work comes next, formatting the book for publication at Amazon:Kindle and Smashwords (and its various affiliates). I should have it done by next week.

And then on to the next book. Not sure at this stage whether it'll be Book II of The Hero's Knot, or if I'll go back to the Chronicles of Anuru and finish off Book I of The Brotherhood of Wyrms. I think I might take some time off and get back to writing over Christmas.

Anyway, for the moment I think I'll just indulge in a little triumphalism and take a break. Yay again!

And as always, thanks for reading!

//Don//

Silviu the Thief

UPDATE 20 November 2012, 1628 hours:

DONE!

I've completed the first draft of Silviu the Thief. It clocks in at 70,000 words - pretty short by my usualy standards, but chances are the tale will "grow in the telling", as another author once said.  And for now, it's long enough for the NaNoWriMo contest.

Now on to the proofing!

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As part of the continuing serialization of my new novel, The Hero's Knot, currently in drafting stage for National Novel Writing Month, here's part III.

Fair warning; upon reflection, it's going to have to be a trilogy. So The Hero's Knot is going to be the title of the whole mess.  My NaNoWriMo submission is going in under the working title, Silviu The Thief.

59,000 words down, -9,000 to go.  But you know me; brevity is not one of my flaws.

This one's headed for 100,000 words. The other two will be just as long by the time they're done.  Maybe longer.

 

Those are provisional titles, of course, but they'll do for now.

 

And for now, here's the next instalment of Silviu The Thief, as currently written.  Lots of proof-reading to come, but for the time being I've got a stranglehold on my dreaded Internal Editor.

 

It'll get better, trust me.

 



♦

His first appointment necessitated a walk of a little more than a mile. After only a couple of blocks, Raven tired of his disguise; the freezing mist had become a drizzle, a chilling spray of near-ice that slicked the sidewalks and transformed his illusory boot-heels from an inconvenience to a danger. He’d used his charms to cure minor injuries and incidental ills before, but he’d never had occasion to try to mend something as serious as a broken ankle, and had little interest in finding himself compelled by importunity to do so. Passing the metro station at Delancey and Essex he stumbled on a curb, and that was the final straw; he put his right hand into his pocket, found the silvery imp, flicked it with a gnawed fingernail, and between one breath and the next, allowed his disguise to bleed away into the dusk. His right boot-heel clacked against the cement, but when the left struck, it did so with the squishy thud of a well-worn running shoe. Skirt, short jacket, ponytail and lip gloss faded away into the night. Raven stepped out of the illusion without breaking stride. Passers-by, their necks tucked tightly into coat-collars, their eyes downcast against the freezing rain or glued to illuminated digital screens, saw nothing.

Sure-footed now – he wore his runners through all the seasons, even in the snows of winter, preferring their comfort and reliable grip on the skin of the world to the conveniences of warmth or water resistance – Raven walked three blocks up Essex. At East Houston Street. He paused for a longing leftward glance at Katz’s Delicatessen (pockets bulging with cash sparked all manner of thoughts in his brain, not least of which were the hungry thunder pounding against his consciousness, and his fondness for latkes and vereniki, and similarly artery-clogging conglomerations of dough and cheese, onion and potato), then shook himself and crossed over to Avenue A. Dismal apartment blocks, an art gallery, shop fronts, sidewalk cafés and the utilitarian brick of the East Fifth Street Con Ed plant rose before him and receded in his wake.

A shadow followed behind him, but he didn’t notice.

With the persistence of a dentist’s drill, the drizzle worked its way down his collar, and he briefly considered holding back a few dollars for a new hat at one of the Chinatown street vendors. Up until a few weeks ago he’d had a Yankees cap, an old and tattered thing thick with filth and reminiscence, but had been forced to part with it as a favour to one of the watchers at Saint Joseph’s near Washington Square Park, in payment for a clean escape from a couple of street cops who’d happened to witness him sliding out of a liquor store with a handful of crumpled bills. They’d been a little more astute than the norm for their type, and Raven had had to think on his feet. He didn’t like to offer sacrifices to work the magic; each time he did it, it felt as if he were carving away a chunk of his being. He was scattering little pieces of Raven all over the city, leaving himself naked and exposed to its raw, elemental might, laying bar his activities, the very core of his being, to anyone with the eyes to see. That he’d had no choice was no balm to his wounded pride; with careful planning, he could work all the wonders he needed with his charms alone, and not be forced to fall back on the might of tokens like his cap, rich with essence and memory. He didn’t like the thought of one of the watchers keeping it, wearing it even; or worse, trading it in turn to some darker being in a further exchange of favours. There was power in personal objects. Raven didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. He knew it in his bones.

Six more blocks, and he was there: Tompkins Square Park, the heart of the East Village. Normally one of his favourite places in the city, he knew it with the intimate familiarity of a lover. He’d been there in summer time, luxuriating in the scent of oak buds and ash, walking barefoot, the better to feel the sparse and struggling grass between his toes. He liked sitting atop tree roots, leaning back against the towering trunks, feeling the life and wonder of living wood quivering beneath him, drawing strength from the vitality of the timber, and returning it in equal measure. He’d had a moment of awakening here, once upon a time; years ago, when he’d still been young in the world, before the darkness had come to cloud the light of day, and life had become a burden. He’d been at the park and had been caught unawares by a sudden rain-squall. He’d taken shelter beneath a leafy maple, only to discover that the tree had been struck a foot or so above the ground by some thoughtless lout behind the tiller bars of an earth-mover of some sort. The bark had been entirely torn away, half of the heartwood beneath it had been splintered into kindling by the force of fire-driven steel. He’d put a hand upon the groaning trunk, and felt the tree’s dying; and with the empathy of the pre-pubescent (an empathy tempered by hardship that kept tears at bay even when he’d happened across a human corpse), he’d wept.

Fumbling through his pockets, he’d grasped the runestone in his left hand, fingers working feverishly against the silver as he thumbed his way through the ten charms that he kept upon a leather thong. He had already learned the trick of knowing whether a charm would serve him in any given instance; either the old, worn silver token would feel alive and electric in his grasp, or it would lay still and quiescent like an old bone. He’d tried the nisse, the paired ravens, the hammer, the shield, the bull, even the crossed, crooked spears, the newest of his charms, the one that had come to him by mysterious paths on his tenth birthday. None availed him. It wasn’t until his questing fingers lit upon the horse – the peculiar eight-legged destrier, rearing and magnificent, that he’d had for more than half his life thus far – that he felt the pulsing tingle of possibility. With the runestone in his left hand and the horse-token in his right, he’d leaned forward, touching his forehead to the wounded tree...and worked a wonder.

Hot, golden light burst from him, exploding from his body like the radiance of a star, spilling from his eyes, his mouth like the very benediction of heaven. An effervescence of the spirit, the light washed over the wounded maple, cloaking it in health, in life, squeezing vitality into its very pores. Before Raven’s astonished eyes, the breach in the bark closed over, filled from all corners by new growth. He embraced the tree, glorying in the new access of strength that he had summoned, breathing in air charged with the shattering weight of possibility, laughing and weeping at the same time. Though it did not move, though not a single branch did more than quiver, it felt as though the tree had embraced him in turn, granting him life and strength in equal measure; and as it did so, Raven felt his senses expanding, his nerves running through the living wood of the tree until he could sense the distant Sun beyond the clouds. Through his fingertips he could taste the air, tainted with the dust and brimstone of upwind power plants; through his toes, the water, drawn from deep in the earth, the foulnesses of the rivers leached from the life-giving fluid by filters of porous stone. He and the tree were one, sugary sap and blood running together, shared in perfect, temporary harmony.

He’d learned another lesson, too; after so vast an expenditure of power he’d fallen prey to exhaustion, collapsing to sleep at the foot of the tree he’d healed. He awoke the next morning, rising wiht the Sun – with the tree itself, he’d realized later on – to find himself warm, dry and safe. The tree had sheltered him against the rain and the night’s chill, in gratitude perhaps for the gift of life and strength that he had imparted. Before leaving he’d thanked the new-healed maple with a touch, and had been a little disappointed not to feel the same explosion of glory and might. He never felt it again, but that didn’t change his memory of the majesty of what he’d done. For years afterward, every time he’d passed the park he’d looked in on the tree. Just to see how it was doing.

Now, as he stalked across East Seventh Street and entered the park from the south, hunched forward against the ever-increasing rain, he didn’t bother looking for the tree. It wasn’t there anymore; a few years ago, it had vanished overnight, hacked to the earth along with dozens of other maples to make way for a studio that advertised modern dance and something called ‘pilates’. Apart from the biblical reference to a former governor of Judea who (insofar as he’d been able to gather) had been conspicuously lacking in both decision-making skills and moral courage, Raven had no idea what ‘pilates’ were. But he was certain that they were a poor substitute for a living tree.

His appointment was behind the studio. There was an awning above the back door, nestled between a dumpster and an old Ford truck that had been parked behind the building shortly after it opened and didn’t appear to have moved since. These features made for decent shelter against the elements, and thus it was here, beneath a single overhead light bulb that was either burned out or had been partially unscrewed, that Two-Beats was generally to be found. Raven had no idea what the fellow’s real name was; everyone called him by his street handle, uttering the moniker with contempt or quivering respect, depending upon whether they looked up at him in fear, or not. Raven didn’t fear the man, but he respected him, just as he respected other dangerous features of the city, like speeding trucks or condemned buildings. Out of caution and customary politeness, he approached the back of the building in the open, walking slowly but steadily, keeping his hands in his pockets.

As he drew closer, he saw his contact’s head come up. The man’s right hand crept towards the back of his waistband, but stopped as recognition set in. Raven nodded at the compliment and stopped a couple of paces away. That left him under the rain instead of the awning, but it was prudent. Two-Beats was considerably larger, and had both a longer reach and an unpredictable temper. If it came to fisticuffs, Raven planned to beat a retreat. Fighting was for fools; for fools with a death wish, in fact.

His contact spoke first. “Blackie.” The word came out in an exaggerated drawl. Two-Beats was himself black-skinned, and embraced every aspect of the stereotyped culture portrayed on television. Raven knew that he had been born in Western Connecticut, in a milquetoast town that bore as much resemblance to Harlem as it did to Pakistan.

It didn’t bother him; as far as Raven was concerned, everyone had the right to smith-craft their own legend. It was what he himself did every day, more or less. “Beats,” he replied with a deferential nod. There was a glassy sheen in the taller man’s eyes, and Raven thought it might be cocaine. Two-Beats, he knew, had expensive tastes. Best to be polite, he thought. It usually was.

“You buying?”

“Paying.” Without moving too quickly, he pulled his left hand from his pocket, opening it to reveal a tight roll of bills. His right hand was still concealed, his fingers caressing the star-shaped silver slug that he thought of as the horn-charm.

Beats’ moist eyes widened. “Okay, then,” he exclaimed, reaching for the money.

Raven pulled it back a hand-span. “It’s for Sherlyn. A thousand. For what she owes you.”

The other man snorted. “Bitch owes me more’n that. A lot more.”

“I’ll get more,” Raven promised. “Tomorrow.”

Two-Beats blinked once, twice, working the offer and its implications through the thick, alkaloid-sodden sludge of his mind. “Three G’s,” he said, “on top o’that.”

Four thousand, Raven thought. A lot, but it might have been more. He waggled the roll. “Three more, and she’s clear?” He watched the tilt of his contact’s head, the set of his jaw, the narrowing of his eyes. The horn-charm granted loquacity, but it also helped the speaker read the truth of what he heard.

Beats nodded. “Yeah.”

Lying. Raven’s cheek twitched, but he gave no other sign. He put the roll of bills in the pimp’s outstretched hand. “Same time tomorrow, then?”

“Why you care, anyway?”

Raven blinked. “Sorry?”

“’Bout Sherlyn. She just Jersey ass, man.” Beats grinned, displaying decaying teeth. “You in love or something?”

Raven cocked an eyebrow, then shrugged. “She helped me out.”

“Ah just bet she did!”

Raven decided to let that pass. “Just trying to help out,” he said soothingly, grinding the horn-charm between thumb and forefinger and willing the magic to work. “Same time tomorrow?” he repeated.

Two-Beats frowned for a moment. Then his face cleared, taking on an almost beatific cast. He caused the money to disappear. “Yeah.”

“And she’ll be fine?” Raven said clearly, fixing the other man with his eyes, unclenching his will a little and letting their unsettling colour show through.

The fellow heaved a theatrical sigh. “’Course, man. My word’s good, right?”

“Right.” Raven’s cheek twitched again; he couldn’t help it. “See you tomorrow.”

Beats nodded. “Ah’ll be here.”

Raven dipped his head in farewell. He left the park, heading eastwards, crossing Avenue B towards Alphabet City, heading for the riverfront. There was a mission at Saint Emeric’s where he could usually find a lukewarm meal and a cold bed, and he planned to stuff the rest of his ill-gotten gains into the donation slot near the arched front doors.

Between the rain, the mounting wind, the slickly treacherous sidewalk, and his preoccupation with his bargain with Two-Beats, Raven failed to notice the old woman until he was practically atop her. At the last instant his brain registered the presence of a clot of shadow huddled in the corner between a mailbox and the crumbling brick of an artisanal bakery, and he stumbled to a halt the barest fraction of an instant before treading on her.

She was old; he saw that at once. Old, and wrapped in shawl and blanket like a film stereotype. The peculiar appropriateness of her attire caught Raven off guard; and when she looked up at him, her eyes caught the rain-dampened streetlamps, reflecting glints of feral yellow and scarlet. There was something atavistic, medieval even, about her appearance, and he found himself recalling the severed head he had seen only an hour ago, wide-eyed, staring, clotted with foulness, and swirling haplessly down into the maelstrom of the rain-tide. Despite himself, he took a step back.

A hand – a claw – age-gnawed, gnarled and spotty, crept tremblingly from beneath the shawl. “Milostenie?” she murmured. “Ofranda?” Though her voice was as decrepit and tremulous as her frame, he heard her words clearly, as if they had been coins dropped from a great height into still water.

Raven cocked his head. “I don’t...I’m sorry, I don’t speak your language.” He’d been about to say that he didn’t understand her, but shied at the last moment away from falsehood. He had no idea what tongue she used, but he knew what she’d said. A plea for alms.

The ancient, bird-like eyes didn’t move; they remained fixed upon him, like nails driven through the planks of his soul. The hand quivered again. “Halp,” she quavered.

There was curiosity in those eyes; assessment, evaluation, even interest. Raven could sense it all. But there was no compulsion. Had he known more about the temper of the world, he might have walked on; but it was not in his nature to deny someone in need. That, after all, was what had drawn him to Sherlyn’s plight, and into the dangerous world of Two-Beats and his ilk.

He didn’t stop to consider his next action; he simply plunged his hand into his pocket, drew out the remainder of the money he had purloined, and pressed it into the old woman’s hand.

The ancient eyes widened, although their colour and focus didn’t change. “Too mach,” she protested, shaking the wad at him. “Too mach!”

Raven took her hand, suppressing a shiver of disgust at the damp, crepe-like texture of her skin. “There’s no such thing,” he said gently, folding her brittle, twiggy fingers over the roll of bills, “as too much help.”

That brought a grin to cracked, ancient lips. The old woman tucked the money away with a conjurer’s finesse, and began to laugh – not a clean, hearty guffaw, but a chilling chortle, a cackle of glee that sent a runnel of spittle trickling down her chin. “No...no such thing!” she crowed.

Raven cast her a nervous sidelong glance and stepped back. The withered hand shot out and seize him by the wrist. Her strength and dexterity shocked him, and he tugged reflexively.

She held on, patting his hand. This time he did shiver. “You good boy,” she said eerily. “Very good boy, yes.” Her sleeve fell back, and he saw something on the inside of her left forearm; a scrawl of some sort. A tattoo, possibly.

“Lucky boy, nu?” she went on, almost crooning now. Behind her words the wind had fallen silent, and the tinkling tumble of sleet had ceased; glints of ice lay along the edges of roofs, silvering the power lines and glazing the streets. “Son of Sun and Moon, grandson of sea.” She tugged him closer, and he stumbled towards her; and with her free hand she grasped his forearm, kneading the muscles. “Strong son. Strong arm, strong heart. Very good.”

Alarmed, Raven reared back, yanking his hand out of her grasp. He felt her nails score his wrist, but forbore to glance at the scratches. “I – I have to go,” he stammered. His hands were empty, his charms buried deep in his pockets, all but forgotten, and his eloquence had deserted him.

“Fii bine, fiul lunii,” she murmured. She patted her bosom. “Thanking. You see me soon, nu?”

Raven stumbled backwards. “Sure,” he grunted. Turning his back on her, he pointed himself at the river and threw himself into motion. He could feel her eyes on his back, touching him, probing him like cold, lifeless fingers.

The eyes followed him until he passed behind the apartment building at East Tenth and Szold. The instant he turned the corner, he paused, then glanced back around the edge of the structure.

She was gone. The streetlamps shone cold and passionless on the lip of stone where he’d spoken to her.

Raven took a deep, calming breath. By the time he’d let it out he was chuckling at himself, laughing at the megrims that had him staggering through the night like the liquor-stinking derelicts that gathered with their gauze and lighters beneath the Queensboro Bridge. By the time he was done laughing, he couldn’t recall what he’d been laughing about. A few moments later, lost in thought, he strode past Saint Emeric’s, wondering idly what had happened to the money he’d planned to drop into the church’s donation slot.

When Raven slept that night in an unheated room on a stained and musty-smelling mattress, wrapped in a threadbare blanket against the coming winter’s chill, he dreamed of the Sun and the Moon and the Sea...and of a dark god, tall, majestic and terrible, with lips and loins stained with blood, and a great stag’s head crowned with horns that towered over the earth like the dead branches of the world-tree against the starry sky. The vision shook him, and he woke screaming, but when he did he could remember none of it. All that he could remember was clammy, parchment skin, strange-sounding words...and an old woman’s cold, yellow eyes.

♦♦♦

The Hero's Knot (II)

As part of the continuing serialization of my new novel, The Hero's Knot, currently in drafting stage for National Novel Writing Month, here's part II:

41,000 words down, 9,000 to go.

♦

 

Outside the bank, on a sidewalk decorated beneath the litter of Starbucks cups with frescoes of chalk, chewing gum and old paint, there was a bench. Three horizontal planks of weathered wood set in stippled concrete formed the backrest, and atop the uppermost sat Raven, as secure and stately in his perch as the Lord Chancellor upon the Woolsack. No one noticed him: not the minor functionaries hustling by, tapping frantically at phones or berries or pads as they scuttled between meetings; not the flocks of ne’er-do-well ‘tweens jostling, smoking and cursing with the relish and facility of those new-come to the mysteries of profanity; not the shop-keeps sweeping store-fronts, straightening signs, putting out new produce and taking in the old, or simply standing and staring balefully at the tittering teenagers; not the old women gathered at the corner, scratching feebly at lottery tickets like superannuated hens scrabbling for a kernel in some long-forgotten and irregularly frequented corner of the barnyard.

None of them saw Raven, but Raven saw them. He saw everything. He was the eye in the sky, the all-watcher; the shadow-at-noon, who could hide in a head-beam, scream and be soundless, and even make himself invisible when alone upon a lighted stage. Long practice at his craft had made him a master, to the point where, now, the pale, mundane world and its scuttling denizens seemed to flit by like jabbering actors on the television that he no longer cared to watch. It was too like his everyday vistas; too similar, in that the poor players behind the glass spoke only to each other and never to him, never looked at him, never noticed or acknowledged him. The babbling box was a dim reflection of his life, save that in life the folk that passed him idly by were never so beautiful or witty or charming, never so poised or alluring or steely-jawed or clever or clean. The box spoke of gritty dramas; but his day, from dawn unto the dawning, was awash in the grit of the shadowy netherworld in which he floated like a dead leaf upon the stagnant water of a pond. He needed no pretense of grit; the reality of the world ground upon him every day, paring away flecks of his soul like a joiners rasp upon ash.

As he sat upon his perch, he found himself staring into the gutter, where the last wash of the evening’s rain carried the detritus of the city streets on its final journey via the city’s churning bowels to the river, and thence to the sea. Dead leaves, cigarette butts, a half-crushed bottle purporting to have contained Krystal! Klear! Springwater, a scrap of a campaign pamphlet promising change (although from what and to what was unclear; perhaps origin and destination had been laid out on the missing half of the appeal), a few fragments of a wooden pallet, the inevitable coffee cup-lids, all revolving slowly in the filthy rush, hurrying to the grate and the concrete pipe and oblivion. In their wake, bobbing like an augury, the severed head of a doll floated by. Its hair was long, blonde and clotted with some unnameable flotsam, its cornflower eyes wide and staring, possibly with the shock of decapitation. They seemed to fix on him for a moment, and Raven felt the feathers rise and rustle along his spine. The tangled skein of his destiny had made him a pragmatist and something of a skeptic, and he had long since learned to believe in that which he could see; but he had seen so much even in his brief time upon the earth that there was little left in the world in which he was not prepared to believe. He watched the severed head as it caught in an eddy, chilled by its rictus of a grin, following its azure gaze with his own beady ebon eyes until chance freed it and sent it swirling down into the oubliette, racing along after the rest of the great city’s ills.

Disturbed by the portent, Raven worked his neck, easing tight muscles against the gathering of the dusk and the evening’s chill. His feathers rustled again, and a long coat settled heavily upon his shoulders. His coal-black visage lightened to something pale, even sickly, and black, pinpoint eyes broadened and changed colour too. Only his hair remained the same shade as before; an unruly midnight tangle that hung to ears and eyebrows in a raffled rat’s-nest that hadn’t known a comb in recent memory, if at all. Legged and lanky now, he sat easily atop the wooden beam, not minding the hard edge of the rail as it dug into the back of his thighs through the thin and faded denim of his trousers. His feet, indifferently shod in runners that had once been white but were now an indescribable shade of old, were cold and damp, but that was nothing new. The cold and the damp were bonny companions, and Raven knew them of old, as most did who, like him, shunned the city’s clammy, grudging embrace.

The change came slowly, almost imperceptibly, as if no change were planned until all was done. One instant, Raven; and the next, the man, or nearly. It was a boy’s face atop a boy’s frame; the only manly things about him were the grim et to his lips and pale, jutting, beardless jaw, and the depth of knowledge in his eyes. Fortune’s grace kept curiosity away from them, and that was good; for if any had looked too deeply into those eyes, there might have been questions.

A casual witness would be struck first by the fact that they were of two different colours: the right eye blue, the bright and piercing azure of ice beneath a winter’s sun; and the left green, as glimmering green as a gleaming emerald. He knew what caused it. Raven loved the march of the written word and spent long hours in public libraries, idly rubbing the runestone charm, polishing the worn, knurled silver; consuming printed wisdom with the appetite of a starving man, losing himself in the majesty of lore until inattention made him careless and he allowed his disguise to fray, leading indignant custodians to expel him and his shabbiness from their august environs in a flurry of righteous imprecation. In one such foray he had researched his condition. The learned called it heterochromia iridis, and it was often associated with deafness or blotchy skin, neither of which afflicted him; save when he altered it for anonymity’s sake, his entire body was as pale as his cheeks, while his aural acuity was almost preternaturally sharp, and always had been. As sharp as his oddly-coloured eyes, in fact.

The blue-green eyes were unusual, and invited impudent stares, and so Raven worked hard to blur them. It was all a part of his daily ritual, the moment-to-moment attention that was necessary to blend in to his surroundings, to become a part of the drab and unremarkable backdrop that was the great and impersonal city. As he sat atop the bench, balancing easily, watching the drama at the bank unfold before him, his hands were in the pockets of his long coat. Beneath the wads of folded bills that he had convinced the bewildered teller to give him were other, more precious things. In his left hand – the hand of guile, of base emotion, of trickery – he held the forcing charm, the runestone, working it between thumb and forefinger, warming the silver, unlocking its nascent force, tapping into the coiled strength within it and letting that strength flow up sinister wrist and arm, through shoulder and chest and heart and belly, into his lungs, breathing the power, tasting it. And all the while controlling it by conscious volition, shaping it with his thoughts, binding and constraining it; forcing the flow like crackling current down his right arm, into the dexter hand, the hand of strength and reason, the hand of mastery, wherein lay the working charm.

Without looking, working by touch alone, he had selected a single charm from the score that lay jumbled in the depths of his pocket. He knew them all by touch, and knew which one he needed now, feeling the whorls and indentations with his fingertips, seeing in his mind’s eye the fading image of the tiny, grinning imp that hung head-down from the bent limb of witch hazel, sensing the shaping, the focus, that it vouchsafed the river of power coursing through him. It was nisse, the elf; the sprightly gamboller, the wight of the woodlands, the rascal of a thousand faces. Swift and tricky, the charm helped him work the magic, shaping it like clay, like the mass of water-slicked muck atop a potter’s wheel.

For the thousandth time, as he worked to mould the magic, panting and squinting, the image of the potter was replaced by another; by a vision of a smith, bare-chested and sweating, labouring at his forge, shaping glowing steel into a lath by the knowledge of his craft and the strength of his arms. It was a simile more apt to Raven’s peculiar circumstance; after all, one could scarcely wound or kill one’s-self with an ill-wrought earthenware bowl, whereas the magic, like hot iron, could, if mishandled, wound or kill without warning or remorse. It had happened before, through inattention, and would doubtless happen to him again.

Like his form and features, his internal monologue went unnoticed by passersby. Imperceptibly, by inches, his hair lengthened, changing from black to blonde, snarling like a nest of snakes and working itself into a ponytail. His features softened, the nose changing from aquiline to pert, the chin and Adam’s apple receding, the crooked teeth aligning themselves, the lips thickening and turning red. High cheekbones vanished, replaced by dimpled chubbiness, a pattern replicated elsewhere on his body as certain places thinned and others thickened; while crow’s feet, a thick layer of rouge and a clumpy excess of eyelash thickener made for the sort of face men glanced at once and thereafter ignored. Finally, the long, drab coat, jeans and runners became a short, faded leather jacket, a calf-length skirt, and heeled boots.

Careful now, moving with fluid feminine grace instead of his usual lumbering stalk, Raven stepped down from the bench. He didn’t feel any different, not really; the trick of nisse was only a disguise, a glamer, a cheat of the eyes. It was at best a half-change; the boot-heels, for instance, were higher and narrower than his normal footwear, and would trip him up if his concentration failed, but the rounded contours that graced his once-angular form were naught but smoke and shadow, a trompe l’oeil that would betray him if anyone so much as brushed up against him and felt the truth of bone and muscle behind the facade of soft, curvaceous flesh. He had to be careful to avoid physical contact when so disguised. He never wore the glamer of a woman on the subway.

With a final, deliberately incurious glance at the clot of police, investigators, employees and miscellaneous slack-jawed gawkers clustered outside the bank, enduring the cold and the beginnings of a sleety late-autumn mist for the sake of procedural drama, he turned away. He jammed his hands into the pockets of his illusory jacket. The wadded bills – twenties and fifties mostly, just as he had requested from the dreamy-eyed, elderly teller that he had charmed into handing over the contents of her till – were not as warm as gloves (even illusory gloves) might have been, but they were a comfort nonetheless. He had places to go, people to whom to speak, and debts to pay, and the night was still young. Certain that there were no eyes upon him, Raven, cautious and painstaking atop his ill-suited heels, tottered carefully off into the mist. The chill notwithstanding, a little money, no harm done, and a scatheless exit all made for a tolerably successful day. None of the authorities milling about so much as noticed the blonde girl’s departure.

None of the usual ones, at least.

 

♦

The Hero's Knot

Hi, folks!

Sorry for the lengthy absence; I've been working on a variety of other projects.

One of the more recent ones has been my entry for National Novel Writing Month - a book I've been allowing to ferment for a while, called The Hero's Knot.

The details are available at my author's blog, here.

I thought, just for giggles, that I'd serialize the thing on this site, first to see if anyone reads my Anuru blog, and second to air the material out.  I'm eventually going to publish the whole thing at Kindle and Smashwords, once I've submitted the final draft, and then fleshed it out into a full-length novel.

Anywhere, here's the first piece. Enjoy!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE HERO’S KNOT

 

by D. Alexander Neill

 

Prologue

 

The thief had odd-coloured eyes – and then he didn’t.

That was the extent of the identification provided by the wild-eyed Securitas rent-a-cop about a half-hour after the uproar at the Broome Street branch of Delancey Credit. His name was Quinn, and the rest of his testimony was of a sort seemingly designed to drive law enforcement officials to despair: average height and build, Caucasian (maybe), a mop of hair that might have been black or brown or even dirty blonde, jeans, and a dark jacket. Leather jacket, or denim? Can’t say, officer. Was he wearing a hat? Can’t say, officer. Gloves? Can’t say. High tops? Cowboy boots? Glass frigging slippers? Can’t say, officer. When one of the cops had asked him with a sour smirk whether the perpetrator had been wearing sunglasses, he’d nearly offered the same reply before checking himself. The fellow hadn’t been wearing any sunglasses. Of that much, Quinn was reasonably sure. After all, how else could he have known that the thief had had eyes of two different, distinct colours?

To be fair, being questioned by a pair of testy detectives from the NYPD Major Crimes Unit hadn’t done much to soothe Quinn’s jangled nerves, particularly as they’d hinted at charging him with a fistful of firearms offences. In the confusion of the moment, after slamming bodily into the thief and seeing the strange, inexplicable things that he’d seen, Quinn had drawn his sidearm, a nondescript .38 calibre Colt revolver, taken careful aim, and put two rounds into the centre of mass of one of the bank’s potted palms. The first slug was still lodged in the tree’s thick stem; the second, punching straight through, had shattered a polished panel of decorative rose quartz just below a clock and above a garbage can.

The flat crack of the bullets and the sudden whiff of burnt propellant had brought him back to his senses, and he’d found himself staring at the weapon as though he’d pulled a venomous snake from his holster. When questioned about the discharge – first by the branch’s operations manager, and a few minutes later by the two MCU cops – Quinn had sworn up and down that he’d had the front post site centred on the robber’s chest before pulling the trigger.

His oath occasioned a glance between the two constables. The older, and taller, of the two was the first to respond. “Think maybe we should frisk the ficus?”

“It’s a palm,” the other replied. “And I don’t think it was carrying.”

In the end, given that the only casualties had been vegetable and mineral, they let Quinn off with a warning. Perhaps considering valour the better part of discretion, the bank gave him three days’ paid vacation. After all, if it had been a robbery, it certainly wasn’t a major one; after the tills, lockboxes and vault had been verified, all that was found to be missing was one thousand, three hundred and twenty-one dollars: the contents of the single deposit drawer behind the business banking wicket. According to the eyewitnesses to the crime (none of whose descriptions of the thief was any more fulsome than Quinn’s), the malefactor hadn’t been anywhere near that end of the branch. Suspicion might have fallen on Marlene Cleddik, the spinsterly business teller, save for the fact that nearly thirty years of unimpeachable service had made her synonymous with reliability and trust.

Which left Delancey with a loss so picayune that it would cost the bank more in man-hours to investigate the incident, and the flatfoots of the NYPD MCU with a crime that could not rationally be described as ‘major, and that they would gladly have handed over to their brethren in less august sub-units of the force, save for one fact: as a matter of policy, all bank robberies were deemed major crimes – even robberies where the amount of money stolen was hardly enough to treat the bank’s staff to a burger and fries. This meant that they would keep the Delancey robbery on the same list as the attempt that had been made on the Federal Reserve Depository a few months early. That had been a real robbery, complete with armoured cars, machine guns, a recoilless rifle and significant casualties among guards, patrons and perpetrators alike. This was hardly on the same scale; but it was of the same kind, and New York’s finest would keep looking for the Delancey robber. 

At least this time they would have an advantage. None of the hundreds of witnesses at the Depository break-in had reported a thief with one grass-green eye, and another as blue as ice, that both suddenly changed to brown. It wasn’t as much money, the two detectives agreed later on over a beer, but at least this time they had something to go on.

 

♦

ELVEHELM - Starmeadow XVII - NORKHAN

(Author's note: In the middle of events in Starmeadow, Thanos Mastigo, Chiliarch-elect of the Imperial Army of Ekhan, decided to pay a visit to General Command Headquarters in Norkhan, the capital of Ekhan.  He and his apprentice, the iron wyrmling Valaistnaulata, teleported in to the massive fortress that serves as the HQ for the Imperial Army.  And things went for a massive...well, you know what they went for, don't you?)

 

♦♦♦

            “Ensi kuori!” Valaista shrieked.  “What are those?!”

            Thanos spat to clear his mouth.  Wiry, emaciated figures pulsating with profane life, slavering and shrieking for blood, scampered and tumbled towards them.  “Slaughter wights!”  Gods!  He’d never seen so many in one place before.  Maybe every now and then, on a battlefield...but this...

            The dragon-girl’s sword was in her hand.  “What do I do?” she demanded.

            To his relief, she didn’t sound panicked.  “Karrick teach you combat expertise?” he demanded.  He considered drawing his sword but rejected the idea at once.  He already held Freste’s rod in one hand, and needed the other free for casting.  He’d left the mithral staff – Sylak, Svarda’s gift – back at Domus Casia.  Probably should’ve thought about bringing that, he mused grimly.

            “Yes!”

            “Use it!” he commanded.  “Full defence!”  He switched the rod to his left hand and clenched his right fist until the knuckles cracked.  Decades of experience raced through his mind.  Undead: cold immunity, sometimes lightning immunity.  Fire works.  So do force spells, sonic, sunlight.  Incantations of dreadful power ran through his mind.  “Don’t let’em touch you!” he added unnecessarily.  “They’re deadly.  One of’em hits you, you’re going down.” 

            The girl snarled – a deep, tearing, feral roar.  Thanos cast her an alarmed glance; then, realizing what she had in mind, he grinned.  “Good idea!” he shouted.

            He felt the rippling pulse in the flux as she shrugged off her disguise and exploded into her true shape.  A blast of heated air washed over him as she shook out her wings.

            What’s the big one? she asked suddenly, blasting the thought into his mind.

            Thanos risked a glance over his shoulder.  Half-way across the square, a towering figure was shambling towards them, looming over the wights like a thing out of a nightmare, moaning and gibbering madly in its eagerness to reach the encircled pair.  Festooned in rotting rags and hanging tatters of flesh, teeth showing through missing lips, horns of green-black perched above empty eye-sockets...he drew in a sharp breath.  Oozing runnels of corruption dripped from its maw, its claws, staining the flagstones...

            Thanos blinked.  “No idea!  But it’s not good!”

            The dragon crouched, extending her neck and hissing menacingly at the encroaching ring of monsters.  Thanos slapped her flank with his free hand.

            She turned her burning eyes on him.  What?

            “Take off!”

            He barked a spell: Palo kilpii suojavaat monet!  Instantly, a sheathe of bright violet flames sprang up around his body, leaping to the dragon and surrounding her as well.  “Get up!  Get up in the air!  Away from me!”  He gave her a shove.  “Get out of range!”

            Valaista blinked in surprise...then, realizing what he was talking about, gathered herself, leapt upwards, and began clawing for sky room.

            The powerful downbeats rippled his hair and clothing.  Thanos watched her for a moment to ensure she was following his orders, then turned back to the swiftly-encroaching foes.  He measured the distance with a practiced eye.  Ten paces, and moving fast.  They’d be on him in seconds.

            He had time for two thoughts.  The first one, naturally, was: I wish I'd brought Karrick.

            The second was...What now?

            The men.  There were hundreds of them, common troopers, spearment and swordsmen and archers, ranged before the tower gates.  “Fall back!” he screamed.  “Everybody!  Now!  Take shelter!”          

 

♦♦♦

 

 Cupping her wingtips, Valaista clawed her way skyward.  She felt slow, clumsy; dragons were built to take off from a running start, and a direct ascent left her hanging exposed in mid-air, like a plum on a branch, fat and ripe for plucking.  But she had no alternative; she had seen what Thanos was capable of, and there was no way she was going to get anywhere near the yowling horrors that had leapt through with them.

The ascent left her grinding her fangs in frustration.  Her master had described the courtyard of the Steenborg before executing their leap, but it had still come as a surprise.  The place was like a well.  The curtain wall and gatehouse to her rear were the lowest and least-imposing part of the structure, and even they were terrifying to behold; the wall was topped with a parapet festooned with iron spikes, and the tower was just as terrifying.  The structures to right and left were larger than anything she had ever seen – colossal, towering bastions of stone, buttressed and revetted and looking more like mountains than the abodes of men.  But nothing compared to the fortress itself.  The Steenborg loomed over the square like a vulture on a branch.  It was a massive, brooding thing of black stone faced with iron, with a pair of flanking towers leaning forward like encircling arms, drawing attackers inwards toward the donjon itself: impossibly massive, impossibly tall, ringed with turrets and parapets.

The flanking towers were nearer, lower, and – truth be told – less threatening.  She twitched her tail and spilled air from her left wing, banking and heading for the lower of the two parapets on the southwards tower.  The higher parapet would probably have been safer, she reasoned, but she had no intention of abandoning her master entirely.  She might only be able to use forcedarts to aid him, but she could do that much at least, and the range from the upper parapet to the courtyard looked to be too far for her meagre skills.

At the last possible instant she flared and drew up her hindlegs.  Her claws scraped across the tops of the merlons, she snapped her wings twice in a stall, and she thumped to the stones of the parapet...

...in the middle of a teeming throng of humans.  Before she could so much as steady herself, no less than a dozen crossbows were pointing at various portions of her anatomy.  And not only crossbows.  Most of the humans on the parapet, she realized suddenly, were neither armoured no armed.  They did, however, look exceedingly vigilant.

One of these – a male – was pointing what appeared to be a short, blunt metallic stick at her.  His other hand was crooked oddly in a gesture that she had seen Thanos use more than once.  “Identify yourself!” he snapped.

“Valaistanaulata,” she replied immediately, articulating the words of the traveling tongue with careful precision, folding her wings slowly and ensuring that her forelimbs made no unexpected gestures.  “Apprentice to warmage Thanos Mastigo.”

The human cast a glance over his shoulder at a female that was standing immediately behind him.  This latter nodded curtly, then turned back to stare between the merlons.  She too, Valaista noted, seemed to be holding a stick – this one of bent, gnarled wood.

The male nodded once.  “Find a hole.  Our arcs are the main gate to Horseguards Gate.  Effseeoh unrestricted; dump everything you got.  Try not to hit your boss.”  He slapped her armoured shoulder and winked.  “ ‘Cept by accident, o’course.”

Valaista sat back on her tail, stunned.

The man was working his way between two crossbowmen, trying to squeeze into the loophole they had occupied.  When he saw her hesitate, he frowned.  “Problem?”

The dragon blinked.  “ ‘What’s ‘effseeoh’ unrestricted?' What does that mean?”

The human rolled his eyes.  “Kill everything you can see, anyway you like.”

“What?!” She felt a cough boiling up in her breast and fought to still it.  “What about your...your soldiers?”

The man grinned.  “What soldiers?”

 

♦♦♦

 

            Thanos had expected his foes to disperse and attack individual targets, and they didn’t disappoint him; the instant his first fireball exploded, igniting a dozen of the beasts and blasting them across the stones, the rest scattered, heading for the formed troops nearest them.  He’d seen their sort before, although never in such terrifying numbers.  They were a fixture of lost battlefields, roaming amid corpses, consuming the dead with horrific abandon.  Had these been nothing more than the common breed of scavenger, he might have handled them all himself; however, this particular species – the soldiers of the Empire called them ‘slaughter wights’ – was especially fearsome, tending to arise from the corpses of men slain by magic.  They arose fuelled by the flux, and by an inescapable craving for flesh; and, unlike their brethren, they consumed also the life energy of the living.

            The answer – as always, where revenants were concerned – was fire, and plenty of it.  His first strike blasted a gaping hole in their ranks.  The explosion burst like a miniature sun, illuminating the courtyard in a brief, terrible blast of red-gold light, eliciting shrieks of rage and agony from the foes he had targeted.

            He ground his teeth as the enemy fiends, leaping and tumbling in a charge that would under different circumstances have been almost funny, ploughed into the ranks of his countrymen.  Claws slashed, red blood spurted, and men screamed and died.  The rest – with the exception of one century that looked a little steadier than the others – broke and fled, screaming in terrified panic.

            He frowned.  There was something wrong with that.  He’d never seen –

            A claw slashed past his head, and he bolted, sprinting into the gap he had created, dodging past flaming foes ignited by his spell, and feeling the strands of the flux shimmering tightly all around him.  He was home, now; the Steenborg was the centre of all the Empire’s might, the bastion of its greatest strength, and the martial power concentrated in this one place was probably greater than at any other spot in the physical world.  Here, too, his fire was hot; the flux felt like a roaring river, and all he had to do was dip his hands –

            – hands, so many hands –

            – into it, to feel the power flowing through his fingers...to...to...

 

            Hang on.  There were dozens, hundreds of hands reaching for the flux all around him...how many other...

            ....like class, it felt like class...so many mages, all dipping into the well at once...

            Momentarily distracted, he almost didn’t hear the flapping.  For an instant he thought it was Valaista disobeying orders.  Then he heard the thing’s breath.

            He snapped a glance over his shoulder.  The largest of the revenants – the tall, tattered thing that had appeared with the wights – had left the ground, and was soaring ponderously through the air towards him.  The sight was chillingly grotesque; its wings, like its body, were little more than a twisted skeletal mass thinly covered in rotting, tattered scraps of flesh.  Mouldy feathers fell from the sky; and droplets did, too, of some stinking, green-black pus.  The ungainly horror crashed to the flagstones only a few paces behind him, hissing and gurgling in some insane parody of speech – words that rang more in his mind than in his ears. 

            ...mmmaaaasssttttiiiggoooo...

            Thanos froze momentarily.  How could it know...?

            No time.  More of the oozing, stinking corruption bled from its frame, splashing the flagstones and some of its minions, causing them to cry out and shy away.  No time.  He eyed the distance to the nearest guards, realized that he was too far back, and took a couple of swift paces forward, descending the stairs to ensure that none of his countrymen would be caught in his next blast.  Reaching into a pouch, he extracted the engraved elfstone and clenched it in his fist.  Focussing his concentration, he gathered the strands of the flux, clenched them, bent them into the desired shape, and unleashed a hellish blast of flame, adding an explosive twist to the detonation for good measure.

            Hotter than dragon’s fire, the burst roared outward, enveloping and obliterating a half-dozen of the wights and crashing into the angel of decay like a tsunami.  For the briefest of moments, Thanos thought that the thing might be able to resist the spell...but then it threw up its clawed arms, roaring in rage, its rags and tattered flesh aflame.  The torrent of force caught the creature and flung it backwards, smashing it to earth.  Gouts of corruption splashed onto the smoking flagstones.

            Elated as he always was when visiting destruction upon an enemy – especially a foul and profane one – Thanos was about to follow when a single, clear trumpet sounded an odd, staccato pattern.  His fury-sodden brain recognized what it was just in time.  He flung his arms up before his eyes.

            A sudden, silver-white glare burst over the courtyard, washing out the Lantern, and bathing everything beneath in a dazzling, blinding glow.

 

♦♦♦

 

            Paska! Valaista mind-shrieked, dazzled by the sudden flare and broadcasting her shock loudly enough to make the humans on the parapet flinch.  What was that?

            “Brilliant fireball,” her new acquaintance explained curtly.  “And that trumpet call meant ‘duck’, by the way.”

            “Thank you,” she growled, blinking in a vain attempt to clear the spots before her eyes.  “But why burst it in midair?  It’s too high up to –”

            “That wasn’t an attack.  That was a signal.”  The man brandished his metal wand.  “It’s showtime.”

            Valaista was about to ask another question, but was interrupted by a second trumpet call – this one a long, sustained silvery blast.

            And all around the parapets, Fortress Steenborg erupted in a blaze of arcane light.

 

♦♦♦

 

            Thanos was unsurprised by the first half-dozen detonations that rocked the square.  He nearly cried out when they enveloped as many friendly as enemy troops, but bit his tongue when he noticed that the Ekhani footmen, after bursting into flame and running around screaming horribly, simply fell to the flagstones...and winked out.

            Not so the wights.  Blast after blast of magical fire exploded among their ranks, setting dead flesh aflame, blowing bodies to flinders, scorching and consuming their tattered remains.  The outraged howling was blood-curdling. 

            At the far end of the parade square, four enormously powerful explosions went off simultaneously, and Thanos saw the apocalyptic light and felt the tell-tale horsekick-to-the-chest of a meteor swarm spell. 

            He blinked, then grinned.  It was good to be home.

            To add to the enemy’s woes, a clatter announced the arrival of a wave of crossbow bolts.  They didn’t do much harm – Thanos saw more than a few simply bounce off the tough flesh of his assailants – but they added a classical note to the cacophony, and they certainly distracted the wights. 

            He was more impressed by the sudden, overwhelming hail of forcedarts that thundered down from the parapets, slashing through the enemy ranks with unerring precision and smacking into the flagstones like unearthly hail.  Someone, he realized, must have paraded every last apprentice for this fight, hoping to expose them to a little action.  Thanos felt absurdly flattered.  Individually, the missiles were unlikely to help; but falling in their hundreds, they were having an effect.

            He was a little taken aback when what looked like a circular cloud of glinting fog sprang up, encircling him.  Only ten feet away, the wall looked like gossamer smoke – but he could hear the hissing whine of the razor-edged forceblades that whirled and spun within it.  Anything that tried to pass through the mist – in either direction – would be instantly cut to ribbons.

            More fireballs burst all around him, their cumulative effect disorienting.  A fire storm spell swept the square before him in a long line, catching a dozen wights, and nearly scorching him with its heat.  He hoped his colleagues were taking their time to aim properly.

He found himself staring at the razor mist.  Something about this particular spellwall seemed...what, familiar?  He blinked against another blast. 

Shory?

            No time for speculation.  Through the mist, he could see the rotting, abominable angel gathering itself, climbing first to its knees, then to its clawed feet.  A fireball burst full on the creature’s chest, but the ragged, hissing horror ignored it.  Turning its bleak, burning gaze on Thanos it howled in outrage; then, bending its knees, it launched itself into the air, angling away from the square, taking off obliquely betwixt the tower and the cavalry barracks, clawing its way into the sky.

            The warmage ground his teeth, clenching his fists in anger.  No way to pursue; without the key the caster had used, he didn’t dare cross the barrier.  The creature was forty paces away, and already fifty in the air.  A lifetime’s experience made it instinctual.  Slant range seventy paces minus, he told himself.  Call it...two hundred feet even.

            Taking careful aim, he crooked his fingers, hissed the words, and –

 

♦♦♦

 

            Valaista hissed between her fangs, and a pair of forcedarts burst from her spread foreclaws, streaking down into the courtyard and lancing into the back of one of the wights menacing the group of soldiers nearest the gatehouse.  It felt ridiculous to be speaking and using gestures to cast spells, but that was what Thanos had taught her.  It seemed disloyal, too, to be defending anyone other than her master; but he was nearly below her, and she had a poor view at best of the tower’s base. She had understood her new acquaintance’s directions immediately and implicitly.  Someone else would be targeting the areas that she couldn’t see.  They’re organized, she realized suddenly.  And coordinated. 

            It wasn’t a defensive action.  It was a trap.  She wondered whether Thanos had realized what was going –

            Crackling and snarling with horrific power, a brilliant, emerald-green lance shot up from the courtyard, smashing into the fleeing angel with an audible roar.  The creature’s flight faltered for just an instant, but it recovered and continued flapping clumsily away.  It was high above the gatehouse tower, now, and clawing for altitude – well out of range of any of her spells.

            Mind your arcs.  She turned her attention back to the courtyard and sent another burst of darts into one of the faltering wights.  To her immense delight, it stumbled and went down.  Her roar of triumph startled the crossbowman sharing the loophole with her, and his bolt went wild.

            I’ll apologize later, she thought happily, scanning for another target.

 

♦♦♦

 

            “Damn it!” Thanos screamed.  “It’s getting away!  Drop this thing so I can move!”

            Beside himself with rage, he watched the angel rise higher and higher, clawing the air with great, ungainly sweeps of its wings.  All around, the thunderous cacophony of battle went on unabated.  The slapping roar of detonations, the hissing crack of force-darts – and once, to his delighted astonishment, a roaring crash as a pillar of holy fire cascaded out of the sky, falling full on a trio of wights and smashing them into ash – all continued unabated, as his quarry climbed higher and higher.

            At last, after what seemed an eternity, the razor-mist gave a peculiar sigh...and vanished into thin air.  Was it too late?  The warmage stepped forward; then, realizing that his target was flying faster than he could run, he barked a long-familiar spell, interweaving the words with a complex array of additional phrases.  At the end of his incantation, a pair of gleaming, smoking points leapt from his outstretched hands, streaking through the air.

            It was as if the corrupted angel could sense its doom coming.  Twisting desperately in mid-air, it struggled to avoid the howling blast of the twin detonations.  It couldn’t avoid them both.  The arcane flame caught on its tattered, undead flesh like a First-Day firework, igniting its bones and even the pestilent ooze that ran from it like a rain of nausea.  Flaring like a burning hayrick, the creature tumbled out of the sky, shrieking its hatred and defiance – until, like a shooting star, it crashed into the flagstones just beyond the gatehouse, scattering smoking debris hither and yon.

            Thanos watched his late enemy tumble to earth.  When he heard the echoing thud from beyond the gatehouse he nodded in satisfaction.  Then he turned to help mop up the few remaining wights.

 

♦♦♦

 

            In the moments following the battle, a veritable tide of soldiers – real ones, this time – poured out of the four great gates and into the square.  Interspersed among them were dozens of Vara’s annointed – the grey-robed, bare-headed, bare-footed priests of the Healing Hand.  Some, unlike the bulk of their brethren, wore boots, light helmets and mail.  Thanos recognized these as battle surgeons, and gave them a happy wave or a pat on the back, as the opportunity arose.  He was surprised to see that instead of their usual packs of gauze, boiled lint and distilled wine, these bore silver pails. 

            Their purpose shortly became clear.  As he watched, the priests dipped and swung, plying the device known throughout the Empire as “the Abbot’s Backscratcher” – a morningstar with a hollow reservoir built into the haft, that splashed a fine mist of blessed water onto anything the wielder struck.  Moving in carefully coordinated sweeps, the priests anointed each of the fallen enemy corpses.  Soon the parade ground was filled with the hissing, sizzling sound of holy water scorching undead flesh.  Fine clouds of putrid mist filled the air. 

            The warmage grinned.  It was good to be back with the Army again.  Smells like...like victory, he thought.

            After taking several moments to reassure himself that nothing else was moving, Thanos pulled himself together, wiggling his fingers to loosen them and tucking Annistara’s spellstone back into his pouch.  Squaring his shoulders, he set a course for the main gate of the Steenborg.  As he began mounting the steps, he was unsurprised to see a number of faces – some unfamiliar, some more than familiar – among the crowd that had issued from the sally ports.  They seemed to be waiting for him.  None of them looked especially happy to see him.

            The warmage sighed.  There was a black-haired woman among them that he recognized instantly, who looked as if she had a good deal to say to him.  He ignored her.  Deal with the grumpiest first. 

            Sorting them out by eye, he altered his trajectory to head for a tall, gaunt, clean-shaven fellow.  White hair and a scarred face topped heavy practice armour of boiled leather and bronze plates.  Sliding to a halt, Thanos saluted.  “General.”

            “Forgot how we run ambushes, eh?” the older man glowered.  His name was Din Hauvvak.  He had been a legate for more than twenty years, had taught Thanos defensive tactics at the academy, and had been the Deputy Vendicar – Wartack’s right-hand man – when Thanos, Karrick and Xeros had left Norkhan some months before. 

            Thanos ground his teeth.  “I’d expected an extra passenger or two.  I didn’t expect...that.”  He nodded back at the parade square.  “Nicely done, by the way.  Especially the meteor swarm.”

            “That was Barry,” Hauvvak shrugged.  When Thanos looked blank, he added, “That’s right, you haven’t met him yet.  Berengar of Vesterskov.  New Secretary and Loremaster to the Council of Steel.  Good man.”  He winked.  “Always got his nose in a book.  You’ll like him.”

            “I like anybody who burns that much mana keeping me safe,” Thanos laughed.

            “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing,” Hauvvak agreed.  “Nice job yourself on that...whatever the hells it was.”  He shuddered.  “That was the worst incursion we’ve had yet.”

            He paused, then added in lower tones, “Can we be serious for a moment?”

            “Of course,” the warmage replied guardedly.

            “I’m a little concerned by your reactions out there,” the general said carefully.  “You fought like you were alone.”

            Thanos bit his lip.  His old teacher had a point.  “I’ve gotten used to being alone,” he acknowledged carefully, “at least as far as arcane support goes.  I didn’t know what to expect, either in terms of the enemy that might come through with us, or in terms of support at this end.”

            “The former, I’ll stipulate,” Hauvvak replied.  “But the latter...you know how we do business, old friend.  You warned us of a hot arrival, and you should’ve realized that we’d prepare a hot reception for any strap-hangers you managed to bring along.”

            Thanos briefly considered arguing, but decided that it was pointless.  How could he possibly describe the experience of fighting as a lone mage to someone who had only ever fought in huge, regular formations?  “I guess the last few months have changed my style a little,” he said as blandly as he could.

            “This is why we don’t like officers adventuring, you know,” Hauvvak groused.  “You learn bad habits, and we have to beat them out of you before you teach’em to the wetties.”

            The warmage sighed heavily.  “Are you going to keep pissing on me, or are you going to welcome me home?” he asked, extending his hand.

            Scar-face snorted.  Ignoring the proffered hand, he swept Thanos into a brief bear-hug.  Then he shoved him away and swatted him gently on the head.  “Welcome home, Colonel.  And congratulations, by the way.”

            “Thank you, General,” Thanos replied equally formally.  “Nice to be back.” 

            “Hmmph.  Wait a little before you say that,” Hauvvak snorted.  “Folks upstairs want to see you.  Percelex.”

            “ ‘Folks’? Not the big guy?” the warmage frowned.

            Hauvvak shook his head.  “He’s out west, spying out the land.  Totally covert; no eyes, no ears, no tongue.  Something to do with a report we got a few months back from the south end of the Vale.  Even if he flies, he won’t be back for a few weeks.  And there’re no transtations out there.”

            The warmage started.  “Still?  I thought we were trying to build one!  South of the Tamal Krak, or thereabouts?”

            “Didn’t work,” Hauvvak shrugged.  “The Vale’s still too...how d’you lot put it? ‘Perturbed’?”

            “Perturbatus,” Thanos nodded.  “Means the flux’s all a-roil.”  He glanced around the square.  “So...no casualties at all?”  That made him feel a good deal better.

            “None,” Hauvvak replied.  “You think I’m fool enough to put live footmen into a freefire zone?  Especially when I’m planning on using it as a training opportunity for the wetties?”  He chuckled without humour.  “You were the only thing breathing out there, dummy.”

            “Well,” the man amended instantly, before Thanos could retort, “you, and that dragon.  Got an explanation for her?”

            “Long or short version?” Thanos grumped.

            “Short.  We’ve got to get upstairs.”  He took Thanos by the elbow and led him toward the gates.  The remainder of the hangers-on followed behind.

            “She’s my apprentice,” Thanos said as they walked.

            “Didn’t recognize the breed.”

            “Iron dragon,” Thanos replied.  “Met her parents outside Elder Delvin.  We did each other a good turn.  They asked, and I felt obliged to...to...”

            “Say no more.”  Hauvvak nodded approvingly.  “She’s prettier than Xeros, anyway.  More useful in a fight, too, I’ll bet.”

            “She can hold her own, in battle anyway,” the warmage shrugged.  Then he frowned.  “How is Xeros?”

            “Busy,” Hauvvak replied.  “We all are.  He’s back at your home station in Whitefields.  Got’im teaching classes in personal support.  He specializes in survival techniques. He'll be heading out on recce before too long.”

            Thanos shook his head in wonder.  “Well, Vara knows he’s got first-hand experience.”

            “That was my thought.”

            At the top of the stairs, they turned around and surveyed the carnage.  The undead – both those set alight by arcane fire, and those ignited by the priests – were still burning.  Palls of greasy, horrid smoke mounted into the morning sky. 

            “So that was all illusion out there, then?” Thanos asked.

            “Bet your ass,” Hauvvak nodded.  They paused at the gate doors.  Hauvvak put his hand to the bronze.  After a brief interval, Thanos heard the internal mechanism clatter to life, and felt the low, grinding vibration of the bars being withdrawn.

            While they waited, the warmage turned to the black-haired woman that he had noticed earlier.  “That was your doing, I suppose?  The razor mist, I mean.”

            The woman he addressed was half a head shorter than him – a slender, serious-looking girl in an elegant dress.  Her skin tone, eyes and figure bespoke her human origins, but her hair – long, midnight black and glimmeringly alive – suggested a hint of the Third House in her ancestry.  There was, Thanos knew, more than a hint; though she looked twenty, she was over forty.  Her raven familiar, he recalled with a snort, was older than twenty.  “You’re welcome,” she sniffed.

            “You’re the best, Shory,” Thanos said.  For good measure, he bowed.

            “I know.  I’m brilliant.  I did the shades, too.”  She made a show of examining her nails.  “Where’s Karrick?”

            “Left him in Starmeadow.”

            “You left –”   The woman looked startled, then angry.  “You knew you were leaping into a potential combat situation, and you left your scutator behind?”

            “I did bring a dragon,” Thanos said, wondering how he had managed to end up on the defensive again.

            “A little one!” the woman – Shory – exclaimed.  “Who you immediately sent out of the fight!”

            “She’s...you don’t...I can’t afford to...gah!” the warmage began heatedly before faltering to an ignominious halt.  He stopped himself and took a deep breath.  Nobody ever won an argument with Shory.

            The woman watched him closely, one shapely eyebrow – narrow and arched, another artefact of her elven forebear – cocked in amusement.  “Giving up so soon?”

            “The only way to win against you is not to fight,” Thanos grumped.

            “That’s right.”  Shory reached up and patted his cheek.  “If you were as smart as I am, you’d’ve brought Karrick, I’d be arguing with him right now.”  The pat turned into a gentle slap.  “And you’d be off the hook.”

            Thanos grasped the woman’s tiny wrist and moved her hand slowly away from his face.  “Something else you need to know about adventuring,” he grated, “is that it makes me very, very cranky.  And just lately I’ve had my fill of pretty, overly clever ladies.”

            Shory’s eyes took on a silvery glint.  She looked as though she were about to offer a retort; but something she saw in Thanos’ own, very direct gaze must have dissuaded her.  Her scowl became a pout.  “The idiot didn’t even write to me,” she complained.

            Thanos barked a laugh.  “Karrick?  Write?”  He shook his head in wonder.

            “Don’t tell me he’s been too busy!” the woman said dangerously.

            “Well, he has been a little occupied with –”

            A sudden, thunderous flurry of wing-beats announced Valaista’s arrival.  Her claws clattered on the marble flagstones just as the last of the gate bars thudded back and the massive door began to swing open.  Without waiting for orders or an invitation, she shifted swiftly back into her Kindred form.  A moment later, all of the men in her immediate vicinity were grinning.

            Thanos indicated the party surrounding him with a wave.  “Valaista, this is General Din Hauvvak, Second-in-Command of the Imperial Army, and one of my old teachers.  Din, may I present Valaistanaulata, first of the first clutch of Gloriana Ferrous of Elder Delvin, and her mate Anachromin Ferrous, the current Iron Speaker.”

            “Charmed,” Hauvvak said automatically.  Thanos knew that his old instructor was taken aback by the cascade of names and titles, but a lifetime of diplomacy and command enabled the fellow to cover his shock.  He held out his hand, and Valaista, after a nod from Thanos, took it.  Instead of shaking it, Hauvvak bowed over it like a courtier.  “Welcome to Norkhan, Beauteous Fang,” he added, straightening up.

            Valaista turned wide eyes on Thanos.

            “We don’t see a lot of dragons in the Empire,” the warmage said without expression.  “And Din likes to be old-fashioned when occasion arises.”

            The dragon-girl turned back to Hauvvak, one eyebrow cocked.  “How do you address male dragons?”

            “ ‘Valiant Fang’,” Hauvvak replied.    “By the way,” he added, glancing at Thanos, “I’m no longer the deputy.  I resigned a few months back.  Varos Kald’s got my chair.  I took up my old post as Master of Aspirants.”

            “May Holy Vara help the wetties, then,” Thanos chuckled.  He nodded at the black-haired woman, continuing with the introductions.  “Valaista, this is Shory Nestra, one of the more talented illusionists at the Academy.”

            “Head of the Department of Deception, actually,” the woman corrected him stiffly.  “As of First-Day.”  She offered Valaista a chilly nod.

            “Really?” Thanos exclaimed.  “Congratulations!”  To Valaista, he added, “She’s one of Karrick’s...er...”

            Shory watched him search for the right word, then supplied it herself.  “ ‘Old friends’.  Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

            Valaista blinked.  “You don’t look that old,” the dragon-girl said, slightly confused.

            “We’re not really ‘friends’, either,” the black-haired woman snorted contemptuously. 

            Valaista, Thanos noted, wisely decided not to rise to that particular bait.  She's learning, he thought. At Hauvvak’s urging, they moved into the forecourt of the Steenborg.  Shory didn’t take her eyes off of the tall, silver-haired dragon-girl.  As they walked, the black-haired woman asked, “So...how do you know Karrick?”

            “He’s been teaching me to wield his blade,” Valaista replied easily, glancing around with immense interest at the architecture.  She hadn’t seen anything like it since leaving the Deeprealm.  “I’m getting really good at it.”

            Shory’s right eye began to twitch.  “Oh, really?” she muttered.

            “Hmm, yes,” the dragon-girl nodded, captivated by the beauty and scope of the stonework.  “I like it a lot better than the elven ones I’ve handled.  Stiffer, heavier...bigger.  A lot bigger.”  She made a fist, leaving a space where a hilt might go.  “It fits me perfectly.  Feels...I don’t know.  Just right.”

            Shory made a sound a little like an ungreased cartwheel.

            A few paces ahead, Hauvvak shot Thanos a wide-eyed glance.  “Is...is she talking about what I think she’s –”

            “Karrick’s teaching her swordplay,” Thanos whispered, desperately trying to stifle a chortle and sounding strangled as a result.  “And no, that’s not a euphemism.  Don’t let the shape fool you; she’s actually a three-month wyrmling.  It’ll be a century or so before she rises to mate.”  He shook his head.  “In the meantime, it’s been loads of fun.”

            Hauvvak nodded, looking relieved.  Then he grinned.  “You gonna tell Shory?”

            Thanos shook his head.  “Don’t be silly.  She’s brilliant, remember?  I’m sure she’ll figure it out.”

 

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