A Clash of Shadows (10 page)

Katja sprang back out of fear of a follow-up attack, but once her vision returned he had vanished from the stools and into the crowd.

She gave chase. She didn’t know to what end or what she would do if she caught him. She just knew it couldn’t be right to let an enemy stroll away.

He went wherever the crowd was thickest. She caught glimpses of him among the heads, backs, hats and robes and found it difficult to keep him in sight without constantly bumping into people. She received no few complaints.

It wasn’t long before she had to stop and look around for a grey jacket and hat. She saw both on the ground, by one of the sales booths.

Katja cursed silently, forced her way there and stepped up on the booth. The owner objected, but she ignored him long enough to look over the crowd from an elevated position.

She didn’t see him. Vajan was gone. And she was starting to attract attention.

Katja hopped down onto the cobblestones and made herself scarce.

She was not in a good mood when she found Serdra again. She grasped her mentor’s shoulder and leaned to her ear.

“Vajan is here,” she whispered. “The Brotherhood man who stabbed me. And he knows of me.”

Serdra’s expression didn’t change but Katja hadn’t expected it to.

“We shall keep it in mind,” was the only reaction. “What else have you learned?”

Katja received her horse and told the news as they walked to the gate.

“Yes,” Serdra said and looked at the people around them. “There is great tension in the city. People are frightened and let it lead them into anger. I suspect this mercenary business will lead to difficulties. But that is none of our concern.

Katja saw the gate up ahead.

“Let’s examine the scene.”

9.

It was called the Crescent, the slum surrounding Farnar City. The houses were small and no few of them seemed to have been cobbled together by amateurs. Her little home village had been more elegant.

The road out of the city was the only cobbled one to be seen. It passed through the area like a river through a wasteland. Everywhere Katja peeked around the Crescent she saw nothing but winding dirt paths.

On top of everything else the smell was less than lovely. The aqueduct to the north west delivered its cargo inside the wall and the poor clearly had some difficulty maintaining cleanliness.

“This has grown since last I was here,” Serdra said quietly.

Small wonder there was a thriving underworld, in light of such opposites.

There were various reasons for the mass of people that had built up in the last thirty years. People had fled northern conflicts, but not always managed to bring enough with them to start a new life. Runaway slaves often made their way to Farnar. The northern slave system had been abolished in the uprising, but it didn’t mean foreign runaways were received with pomp and ceremony. And the nobility had seized a great deal of farmland and property and the new government had been somewhat slow in restoring things to the way they were.

The result reminded Katja of a blanket sown from many different rags. In spite of the poverty it was easy to see that the worn clothes, battered tools and amateurish building styles came from all over.

“Those are the Mandraal people,” Serdra whispered and pointed to a small group of people loading bales of hay on a cart. “From the lowlands of Kepral, in Revsaka.”

Their identifying features seemed to be long caps with pompons, a cheek tattoo and quite a lot of bone decorations in the clothing.

“Driven from home by an earthquake and persecution,” Katja muttered. Different cultures hadn’t been prominent in her studies, but she had picked up some general notes.

The people said something between them in a language she didn’t understand.

“The Leaf Tongue,” her mentor whispered. “A dying legacy of the old world. There are ever fewer languages in the world.”

Katja nodded. She had heard as much but didn’t see tragedy in that. What use had the world for many tongues? Jukiala had spread the High Tongue into most nooks and crannies, where it remained to this day.

She did re-examine the poor state of the Mandraal people and thought to herself that perhaps it was important to
them
, much like the silly caps. She thought briefly about how much of a difference that made, but then dropped it. She could reach no conclusion on something like that.

“What else do you see?” she asked as they rode slowly. The traffic was rather too heavy for a rush.

“Do you see the mask over there?” Serdra asked and pointed down a street.

Katja looked back and spotted some sort of broken clay piece on a wall before the street vanished from sight.

“Yes?” she said hesitantly.

“They originate from a sub-society that lived in the highlands of Kampara, by the roots of the Tooth Mounts. They believed clay masks protected homes from evil forces. The custom was just about extinct in my youth. That one back there is probably just an heirloom.”

“I see. Did the masks work?”

“It didn’t seem so.”

Katja wouldn’t have particularly noticed the mask without it being pointed out. The local love of house decorations clearly had nothing to do with social standing. They just varied in expense. Almost every single building sported whittled sticks, horns, dried flowers, shells and wicker objects.

Actually, the more she thought about it the decorations seemed more prevalent outside the wall than within it. Perhaps it had to do with many of the Crescent residents being desperate immigrants or their descendants. Perhaps such little things made a refugee hovel a home.

She touched the band Linda had tied around her neck and then slid her fingers under the shirt to touch the pebble necklace. She herself wouldn’t live with such permanence. She would in fact never be anything other than a wanderer, unable to attach herself to anything she couldn’t carry with her. Perhaps even for centuries.

The dark sides of the Redcloak life sometimes crept up on her, no matter what she did to shut them out.

They exited the Crescent and drove the horses on. They seemed glad for the movement after the stay in the boat and they rode to the north for a while, towards Bytna. Once the path led them to a rather empty area they slowed down and rode side by side as they talked.

“What does the situation with Vajan change?” Katja asked.

“Being cautious was always the plan,” Serdra said. “But what would you say this changes?”

Katja had rather been expecting the question and didn’t need to think long.

“We... we must at any rate not let him catch us unawares. If he finds out where we are staying or which ship we arrived in he will likely try something. We should perhaps only enter the inn as the curfew is beginning. And take turns sleeping. Or camp in the woodlands. Circumstances permitting. We can look into it after investigating Bytna.”

She fell silent and waited for Serdra’s judgement.

“Not bad,” Serdra said. “But he is in the same situation as you regarding being recognized. If he is staying in the city he doesn’t want to be killed in his sleep any more than you do.” Serdra looked at their surroundings. There was little to see except fields and unimpressive woodlands. “As you said, we will investigate first but I want to get rid of this man and perhaps question him first. We will keep our eyes open if we must operate in the city and if we find him we can try to lead him into a trap.”

Serdra and Vajan had never seen one another and he was the only Brotherhood man who had gotten a good look at Katja and lived. So this hunt would centre around the two of them. She would be a hunter and perhaps bait as well.

Katja felt a shiver of fear and excitement. There would indeed be no mercy in this game.

“But you made a good point about the curfew,” Serdra said. “We will adopt it as policy.”

Katja started to suspect they had arrived when the landscape began changing. It grew more even, but surrounded by forested mounds and hills that had to give good protection from winds. A perfect location for a hamlet.

They rode up on a small bulge and Katja was pleased to have been right.

Bytna could hardly be considered a village. At a glance Katja saw about twenty houses and some of those had been for beasts. The stillness was nonetheless rather unsettling. There was hardly any movement to be seen.

Serdra looked at her and waited to hear if she had any questions. But they had discussed matters on the way. The plan was to feign total ignorance about what had happened here and say they were on their way north. But only if asked.

They nodded to one another and continued downwards.

The quiet was unnerving. Katja looked to the north-west and saw where the demon had gone through the fence around Bytna. The planks hadn’t been much of an obstacle. There must have been a great clamour when it began the killings. The kind that leaves silence.

They passed the stream that ran down one hill and through the hamlet and soon arrived at the gate. It stood wide open and Katja still didn’t hear any animals. Had they all died that night, ran away or was there simply no one left who kept beasts?

It suddenly occurred to Katja to think what would have happened in her own village if she hadn’t killed the demon that assaulted it. How many would it have killed? Would it have continued to haunt the area or run off? How would her neighbours and kinfolk have dealt with it?

She tried to shake those thoughts from her head. She had a job to do and reminiscing got her nowhere.

But as she looked better about and saw signs of the demon’s passage she realized how similar this was and the old grief and horror began to haunt her with a power she had forgotten.

The roof of one house slouched, as a wall had been almost completely broken down. Inwards. Katja had heard no few jokes about hungry farmers running through walls to reach a meal. They didn’t seem funny anymore.

A door had been torn off its hinges. Various debris littered the ground outside the damaged houses. Pots and shoes and such things people would normally pick up again. She also saw a broken shaft, just where blood was still visible on a wall beneath. Perhaps it had been part of a spear, or perhaps someone had been desperate enough to strike the monster with a shovel. Or a broom.

No Redcloak had been present to intervene.

There was fear, pain and death in the air and Katja hoped she wouldn’t have to use her past-sight.

“Hello?!” Katja shouted.

From where she stood she could see the north part of the fence. It was being strengthened and heightened. Someone was nailing and tying and digging in planks and sticks and piling rocks up against the whole thing.

She stopped examining the add-ons when she heard footsteps and a man of about forty years appeared from behind a house.

He had a lot of hair and a beard he seemed to neglect, and bags beneath staring eyes. He held a long spear. The tip was rusty but had been sharpened quite thoroughly.

“What do you want?” the man asked with roughness Katja couldn’t find it in herself to take badly. His eyes were rather wild and she wondered how much sleep he had gotten recently.

“We are on our way north,” Katja said. “We were hoping to find a farrier to...”

“There is no farrier here,” the man said. “Continue on north.” He waved his spear towards the add-ons.

“What happened?” she asked. “Do bandits strike so close to-”

“BANDITS!?” the man shouted and banged his spear shaft on the ground. He immediately calmed down, but Katja didn’t see any peace in it. He was simply exhausted. “Just go,” he said dully. “May the fathers forgive my inhospitality but we are in no condition to show kindness.”

“We?” Katja asked and looked around. She felt rather bad about the lack of empathy her cover demanded.

“My family is fetching more nails,” the man said through his teeth.

“What...” Katja cleared her throat. “What happened?” She used the memories to put softness and sympathy in her voice. It seemed to reach him a bit.

“Evil,” he muttered and seemed to be deflating as the conversation progressed. “True evil.” He turned to the west, to the gap in the fence, with the lassitude of a wounded man.

“We woke to the screams,” he muttered weakly and stared at the gap. “We should have run,” he said, but didn’t seem to be talking to them. “Run, rather than cower together.”

The man closed his eyes and was silent for a few moments.

“Leave me be,” he said in a distant tone. “The chancellor’s men are to the east, by the manor. That cursed dread that should have been torn down long ago. Talk to them if you wish.”

He turned his back to them and staggered away. Katja could think of no way to push him further without arousing suspicion. She looked at Serdra, who just indicated her head to the east.

All right then.

They rode off.

“Did you listen?” Serdra asked when Bytna was vanishing from sight.

“I... no,” Katja admitted. “I didn’t want to be pulled into the event. Not with him standing there.”

“Very well,” her mentor said without any condemnation. “I listened a bit myself. I sensed only blind madness. It looks like my suspicions were correct. Something went wrong here.”

They found a way into the woodlands to the east where they could lead the horses.

After a while Katja led both horses as Serdra scouted ahead. She returned after a while and took her horse. They walked on a bit longer before finding a spot to tie the horses where no one would see them and then continued.

They soon exited the foliage and stepped onto an old road. Katja glimpsed a great wall to the south-east before they dove back into cover on the other side of the road.

From there was a short stroll south to the property. A wall covered in vegetation greeted them. From beyond it came the soft clatter of idle people.

“Carefully now,” Serdra said and pointed at the wall. It was rough enough to be scalable and since there was no rush Katja could take her time finding handholds. They climbed up side by side, looked at one another and then peeked carefully over the edge.

The manor was impressive. It took more than vines and a few holes to change that. It had been built from white rock, was three stories in places and was separated into multiple parts that came together into a beautiful whole.

The wall stretched around a garden that would have sufficed as a village’s farmland and Katja assumed it had been an ornamental garden, in light of all the different trees and bushes standing in orderly lines. It hadn’t been tended in a long time though, and the garden was in the process of becoming as wild as the surrounding forest.

“The Rose Clan,” Katja muttered.

She had heard soft whispers of them back home and the Shades and Serdra had filled in many of the gaps.

The Rose Clan had been one of those innumerable threads leading back into the loins of Torgeir Stonefoot. They had amassed great wealth and for a time been one of the greatest families of the north. And one of the shadiest. As with so many other things some of the stories were probably exaggerations, but Shades and some dead Redcloak had had run-ins with them. In spite of long-standing suspicions no one had ever been able to connect them to the Brotherhood of the Pit. They seemed to be an entirely separate evil.