Temple of the Traveler: Book 01 - Doors to Eternity (37 page)

While the master of the birds was distracted, Onira said, “We’ll give you a safe escort back to your rookery and bother you no more, good sir. Take any two men you choose and these silver coins. You’ve been an immeasurable help in this delicate situation, a fact we will not fail to mention in our regular report to the capital.” The old man seemed flattered and had thus lowered his guard slightly when the captain casually asked, “By the way, what happened to the governor and his household?”

“Abandoned us, the bastards. After decades of leeching us dry, they left town just after the invasion started.”

“Invasion? That sounds rather alarming.” At first, the old man was startled, remembering that he wasn’t supposed to be discussing such matters with outsiders until the council ruled on their status. But then Onira said, “Any other city would surely have fallen.”

The master of the birds was proud of his native city, and it showed. He decided that the southern troops could be trusted and confided in their leader. “Our master of the port used to be a smuggler and knows all the tricks. Those snakes from Intaglios tried to sneak across the river, but the port master summoned the rest of the guilds. Together, we mounted a defense. We dropped rocks on them and sank every boat that got close.”

“That’s when the magic fire started blowing people and buildings to bits,” the scout predicted flatly, well aware of standard, Intagliosian military tactics.

“Aye, scared the piss out of the lot of us. Thirty were killed by the fires on the docks and more by the stampede. Over fifty were injured so badly that they had to be carried away. That would’ve been the end of our defense, but the master of chimney sweeps noticed something important—none of the fire had fallen inside the city walls. Any that bounced inside we could put out in a hurry if we set our minds to it.”

“The wizards had a maximum range?” guessed the Captain.

The master of the birds laid a finger aside his nose. “Or they want the city for themelves. Now that you’re here, we’ll have a nasty surprise of our own.”

When Onira frowned, the old man added, “Relax, there shouldn’t be another attack wave till early morning.” The master of the birds left, promising to send the message off as soon as possible.

The head of the royal scouts gathered his troops together to address them. “Men, I know I promised you a night on the town and some time to rest up when we got back to civilization. I intend to keep the first promise this afternoon. Anything you want for a celebration, you’ll get. If the city council won’t pay, I’ll get it out of my own pocket. That I guarantee. But we’ve just stepped into even deeper shit than against the desert tribes. I won’t lie to you.” Rows of grim-faced men hung on his every word, waiting for his orders.

“A lot of you won’t ever see that rest, not this side of the grave. We have a battle to fight, and precious little to fight it with. The Intagliosian troops on the other side of this river were sent to tackle an indigenous, defending force over twice our size. But the crown in its wisdom has ordered them to put out fires in other parts of the kingdom. Now we’re the only ones standing between the Pretender and all of northern Zanzibos.” Onira paused for this to sink in. “It’s our bloody job. Nobody said it was fair.”

Once a sufficient number of the soldiers had nodded, Shima said, “It’s more unfair to the Swamp Rats, sir. One of us is worth at least five of those local pansies. They don’t stand a chance.” Then the corporal shouted, “First Company!”

To which the others replied, “Kicks Ass!”

Onira handed a confused Shima the dead lieutenant’s rank insignia and whispered, “Don’t make me regret this.”

The men were still cheering and passing around the liquor when the master of the harbor arrived. Instead of meekly answering the council’s questions and waiting for orders from the city elders, Onira began issuing commands of his own. “I need as many flagons of fish oil as you can get me. Also, the best spotters and archers you can muster. We’ll break them into small squadrons. We’re going to take this battle to the wizards; they’re not going to know what hit them.” When the retired pirate wearing the key to the harbor around his neck hesitated, Onira snapped, “Have you got a problem with that, mister?”

The port master responded. “No, sir!” revealing a hidden military past of his own.

“Good,” continued the captain of the scouts. “Bring that healer you promised, and we’re also going to need the best food and drink available. I want it served by friendly faces without whiskers, if you get my drift. A lot of these men are going to die tomorrow pulling your ass out of a sling. I want you to be nice to them and everyone will get along famously.”

“Yes, sir!” answered the port master, sticking out his chest. “Would you care to inspect the docks so you can plan the battle?”

Onira waved the other man away. “After lunch. Right now, I’m going to have the hottest bath and the oldest liquor a gold coin can buy.” Despite the current high morale, the odds of success weren’t good. But with major support from the town and significant luck, they might be able to hold this position until reinforcements arrived. He left his men to their revelry as he tried to wash the stain of many dead soldiers from his mind.

Bunji was seasick and exhausted from twenty hours of forced march, but nobody in the unit dared to complain. When Humi
discovered that her husband’s tattooed assassin had been seen at the northernmost corner of the kingdom, she demanded that the Kragen troops move to take Barnham immediately. Navara, who had hoped to build his career on the siege of strategic Innisport, made the mistake of telling the Lady of the Deep that no troops could be spared from the current conflict. Though he would be glad to take the remote city for her, there was no way soldiers could be deployed there fast enough.

Lady Kragen was not deterred; instead, she dispatched Navara and his staff on the warship that very night. They were ordered to take the majority of her palace guard (now close to fifty swords) and proceed as far north upriver as possible before disembarking. Thereafter, they would march day and night until reaching Barnham. Meanwhile, she promised to gather all the information they needed through her extensive network of natural and supernatural contacts. Any complaints at this point could’ve proved fatal. They had four hours to rest, after which the Shadow of Tumberlin would visit them with news. If the tortured wizard found them unprepared or lazing, he wouldn’t hesitate to report their dereliction of duty to the Lady.

For her part, the new head of House Kragen was pleased by many aspects of this experiment. Not only did the life-stone grant her the ability to collect intelligence and send orders anywhere in her realm, but Tumberlin’s intense suffering provided an object lesson to all who would oppose her. Commanders who’d merely detested Tumberlin when he was an apprentice now dreaded dealing with the eerie messenger because he spooked livestock and made neck hairs stand up. Worse yet, sometimes he’d hang around camps and listen for statements that sounded disloyal so the Lady might reward his diligence with another pain-free hour.

For his part, Tumberlin was even more out-of-sorts than normal. The witch pushed him further every night, ignoring his complaints about what was and wasn’t possible. Colors had been denied him, and everything appeared in the silver and black of the Compass star. Simulating speech without a body had been difficult. At first, only listening had been easy. Alone, he developed the skills of flying, memorizing locations, and instantly returning to places he had been before as if in a dream. Eventually, he learned to sense life forces at a distance and smell weather fronts before they happened. His skills as a wizard, endurance, and sheer force of will were constantly taxed to the limit. More than once, Tumberlin came close to being destroyed by the mortal sun. Over time, he learned to hear the sound of its blast furnace approaching and seek the shelter of his feeble, hobbled body.

At first he’d resented what the vindictive harlot had done to his physical form, but his new senses and the freedom he experienced on his astral travels had shifted his perspective. His body and its sorry state meant little more to him than any other pile of meat. It merely protected him against the ravages of daylight and enabled him to find brief moments of peace. If he hadn’t needed to rebuild his magical energies by contact with it each day, he never would’ve returned. The witch called the stinking near-corpse his sheath. Once simply unappreciated, he now felt like a beast of burden with an insane owner.

The farther north he went from his life-stone, the more energy he had to expend for the simplest activity. He had to exert tremendous will just to be seen by normal human beings. Every word he uttered felt like push boulder up a hill. The limitation of working at night, when people were asleep, made questioning the locals around the trade town of Barnham difficult. To complicate matters, they were under attack from fire mages and wanted to talk about little else. But after a few days, he’d gathered several pieces of weak evidence, a confirmation of a sighting here and an aural trace there. When put together as a whole, they told him that the assassin had been there but had crossed the river into Intaglios at least a week ago. There’d been too much chaos, and too much time had passed, to discern more at this extreme range.

When a quarter of the night remained, he sought out Navara and his thugs. Not certain precisely where the contingent of the palace guard would be, he retraced his multi-night journey a hop southward at a time on the main road, stopping only when he sensed a large pool of adult, human life signs and fires where none should be. Flying to the edge of the camp, he clung to the dark fringes, hoping to surprise some sluggard sentry or hapless soldier urinating in the bushes.

What he discovered surprised even Tumberlin. This troop of slovenly soldiers, encamped around an old barn, flew the banners of Barnham’s governor and the King of Zanzibos, not Kragen. The group was over-provisioned and under-guarded, with too few sentries for such a large assembly. A quick estimate put the number of swords at over twenty, with only fifty or sixty men in the entire retinue. There seemed to be few true military men among them. These troops were in no shape for field combat. The guard closest to him felt a cold twinge at the back of his skull as the shadow of House Kragen laughed with glee. This was going to be too easy.

It didn’t take too much longer to find the palace guards led by Navara. He estimated that the camps were less than two hours’ march apart. With three hours remaining till cursed sunrise, they should have more than enough time for the deed. Appearing in the center of the Inquisitor’s tent, Tumberlin gave Navara’s assistant a fright. The nervous man spilled a fine, bone-china tea set onto the tent floor, wasting good tea and cracking a valuable cup in the process. Navara stood at attention, but said nothing to the cold visitor.

Certain he had their attention, Tumberlin made the necessary effort to speak. “Ambush enemy camp two hours north. Sixty men. Only three sentries. I will reappear when you get close and then lure their south guard away. Understood?”

Navara nodded. The adjutant bowed deeply, never looking the phantom in the face. But his aura exuded a lovely, reddish aroma of fear. When the shadow vanished, Bunji heaved a sigh of relief. At least Lady Kragen’s spy hadn’t seen his face. His identity was still safe. Stationed at the farthest corner of the kingdom, Bunji felt confident that he would never need to worry about his past again.

The assault was more of a massacre. Normally, the officers would have been given a chance to surrender, but Navara was under the strictest orders to proceed north with all possible haste. So many prisoners would’ve slowed his rate of progress. Instead, he set fire to the barn and killed the men as they tried to flee out the front door and the back of the loft. In the official report, the knights of Barnham had resisted to the last man. The battle would go down as the cleanest, most decisive victory of his career.

Bunji was ordered to head the mop-up operation and collect fallen Honors, or any other equipment that may be of use to the war effort. He was, of course, forbidden to carry any weapon aside from a short cudgel denoting his rank. The small squad split into pairs, one spotter and one spearman each, and circled outward from the skeleton of the burned-out barn. True swordsmen were above this sort of clean-up duty.

It was during the exercise of these duties that Navara’s adjutant encountered the shadow again. Tumberlin crouched on a small section of barn roof that still remained and watched. The carnage held a fascination for the evil spirit. He could sense living beings the way a hawk sensed a rabbit moving in a field and often pointed out men hiding or feigning injury to the butcher squad. Worse than this hunger for complete destruction was the way Tumberlin looked whenever the designated soldier plunged a spear into his enemy’s side. The dark apprentice would appear at the scene and sit like one at a banquet, breathing in the essence of bread and simmering stew meat.

No one noticed when the apprentice disappeared from sight altogether. Too active in the hunt, he’d made the mistake of letting his energies get too low. When the situation became critical, his mouth dry and his head spinning, the apprentice was no longer certain he had the strength to return to his own body. Bunji was unaware of his nearly invisible presence as they discovered one of the last victims, a sentry who had almost bled out, but was still breathing. Bunji winced and signaled his spearman for a mercy killing.

Tumberlin had long wondered if the energies cradled in such a fragile shell could be used to replenish his own. He knew that ki mages, with the proper equipment, could transfer years of life force to themselves or another. But he had little practical expertise in the area, no equipment, and little mana to pry the life force out with. Only his special sight and the desperation of hunger drove him to try. Normally, he wouldn’t have possessed the strength to move a feather, let alone to break the connection, the silver cord binding the sentry’s spirit to this plane. But this man practically begged to have the spark fall from his hands. Tumberlin obliged.