Shadowblade (2 page)

Dawn was breaking now and the sky began to lighten, and though he had been walking throughout the wintry night he found that he wasn’t at all tired. Despite the frosty air he was not the least bit uncomfortable. In fact, it seemed very little in the way of uncomfortable conditions bothered him at all.

As the morning sun crept higher, sending beams of light through the branches of the leafless and snow covered trees, Zach was overcome with the feeling that danger was approaching on the road ahead. He dashed to the side of the road and stopped beside the bole of a large tree, where he could hide and yet look in both directions of the road. Fortunately there had been little snowfall of late, and so the rock strewn road would reveal little in the way of Zach’s footprints to those who were not actively looking for them.

He drew his new dagger from inside his coat and looked at his own reflection on its blade, noting how dark and hollow his eyes had become and how ghostly pale his skin seemed to be. His head snapped up as he heard footsteps, confirming his precognition of trouble. Even though the travelers were some distance away, he could somehow tell from the footfalls that there were three of them. All of them were men, and two were definitely armed, though he had no idea why he should be able to sense that from the sound of their footfalls. The other was a magic-wielder of some variety, and he was thankful he had that understanding before he encountered the trio. He realized, too, that the land he was in now was still dangerous even though he had passed beyond the borders of the evil Baron Tyrannus sometime during the night.

How could I possibly know all that from the sound of their feet?
he wondered, looking at the eyes of the skull leering at him from the pommel of his new dagger.

“It is a gift from the lich prince, you fool!” came a voice right beside him. Zach jumped to his feet with his sword in one hand and his dagger in the other just as the travelers came into view from around the bend, a mere dozen yards away. Then he heard that voice again.

“Ahh, what excellent reflexes!”

Zach turned this way and that; whirling, ready to fight. Where had that voice come from? Was there another invisible demon nearby, toying with him as a cat toys with its prey before the kill? Had he been followed by Tyrannus’ minions after all? He grimly recalled the demon that manifested itself before him and Carym in the haunted woods of the Black Baron.

“You there!” shouted one of the approaching men. Zach focused his attention on the foe he could see and, for the moment, forgot the unseen voice. “You are under arrest, brigand!”

“Brigand?” he said, genuinely perplexed. Then he called, “Who in the Seven Hells are
you
?”

“Who are we?” asked the first man, laughing. “Everyone knows and fears the Red Dragons!”

“Right,” Zach said, warily. He wasn’t sure he should fear the soldiers at all. To Zach’s trained eyes, these armed men seemed little more than brigands themselves. Each carried a handheld crossbow strapped to their sides and a small spiked targe. They carried swords but they were sheathed revealing a lack of experience on their part that Zach knew he could exploit. Their armor was mismatched and shoddy, little more than padded leather with random plates attached in different places. The man in the middle wore a jet black robe and carried a ram’s head staff, not unlike the one carried by the dark priest he and Carym met in Dockyard City so long ago; each of the three wore a red sash. Zach smiled as he lowered his sword blade, but did not sheath it. Slowly he moved closer to the armed men.

“I’m no brigand,” he said, indignantly. The armed men didn’t seem convinced. “I’m just a traveler, on my way to Powyss.”

“Aye, and I’m the Rhi of Ckaymru!” quipped the fighter. “Where is your gang? You’ll not rob
us!
”

“I have no gang,” Zach replied casually, now within a few feet of the men who still pointed their crossbows at him. “I’m on my way to Powyss,
alone.
”

It was at that very moment Zach heard an impossible sound. He heard, with incredible clarity, the sound of a human finger as it squeezed the trigger on a crossbow. If he hadn’t been facing his own death, that incredible perceptiveness might have stopped him cold. As it was, Zach was a seasoned warrior and his body instinctively reacted with speed to any threat. And so, when he heard the very faint sounds of a finger brushing the wood of a trigger, and of the trigger sliding in its metal housing, Zach had instinctively raised the blade of the sword in his right hand. The metal tip of the crossbow bolt struck the blade of his sword, ringing loudly. With his other hand, Zach then threw his dagger at the other armed warrior; the blade buried itself to the hilt in the man’s neck and he dropped to the ground.

The first warrior dropped his crossbow and backpedaled, reaching for his still-sheathed sword. But Zach had the advantage of already having his sword in a striking position and lunged at the man, striking him hard in the upper thigh. The man couldn’t walk backward any longer now that he had an injured leg and he fell down, eyes begging for mercy.

But mercy was something that Zach no longer possessed in any significant quantity; so he advanced on the man and slashed his throat with the dagger’s
wicked blade, gleaming red in the morning sun.

The third man stood, his slick black staff held before him. It was then that Zach realized he had not retrieved the blade
from the first corpse’s throat, it had simply reappeared in his hand!

“A fine blade you carry,” said the black robed man in a sibilant voice. “You do not yet know its full potential, do you?”

“I know enough that you would have struck me dead by now if you could have,” returned Zach, advancing on the man. “Which means you can’t. So, I’ll just kill you now.”

Just then, the man’s image shimmered before Zach’s eyes and it seemed the shadows of the trees around him detached themselves from their former hosts and raced across the road to the cloaked man, wrapping him in a shroud of shadows.

“Have a care,” a voice called out from the cloud of darkness. “We
will
meet again!”

Then the cloud of shadows became naught but a wisp of smoke and then was gone completely. Zach shook his head, annoyed that he had not had a chance to kill the man, angry with himself that he might have to face him again. He paused for a moment to be certain there were no other surprises in store for him. Sensing no more threats, Zach sheathed his weapons and returned to the bodies of the dead men with plunder on his mind.

The men possessed little of interest to Zach, other than some local currency which he could use in Powyss. The soldier's Arnathian Crowns might or might not be accepted but would surely mark him as a traveler, someone to be taken advantage of. But Arnathian Crowns had an excellent reputation for having the purest gold content, and that could prove useful in a bargain. He stuffed the coins into his pack before dragging the corpses to the side of the road and pushing them down the hill far enough to be hidden from casual sight.

As he hid the corpses from view, he was struck by how they had already begun to decompose. Ordinarily, it would take some time for the joints to begin stiffening and for the skin to dry out. And yet, despite the preserving nature of the cold winter air, the eyes of the corpses were beginning to sink into skulls and the joints and bones were locking into position.

He wondered whether there had been an enchantment placed upon the men by the dark magic-wielder.

“It’s the dagger, you fool!” came the invisible voice once again.

Zach whirled around, angry at himself, perhaps
he had missed
a potential foe.

“I am no enemy, Zach,” it whispered. “I am you. It is time to go to Powyss.”

Zach didn’t understand why but he was inclined to believe the voice, and he knew it was indeed time to move on from this spot lest any further patrols come along and catch him near the bodies.

That voice must belong to the blade!
he reasoned.
It’s an intelligent weapon!

As Zach set out again for Powyss, he pondered the remarkable encounter with the armed men and how easily he had dispatched them. When he considered how his dagger had, in fact, inexplicably reappeared in his hand after he had thrown it, he understood its awesome power. The dagger, he surmised, had caused the rapid decay of the soldiers he killed. Did it drain them the way a vampire drains a victim of its blood? Did it store that stolen life force within itself, or would it transfer that energy to him?

He decided that such a remarkable dagger should have a name, as did the great and terrible weapons of the heroes and villains of old. As he walked towards Powyss with renewed vigor, several names came to mind. But only one seemed to fit his new path and the dagger’s potential greatness.

Morloth,
bringer of death.

Zach was hungry, famished as though he hadn’t eaten in days. Traveling generated a far greater appetite in him than he could satisfy with mere trail rations, but he truly felt as though he would starve if he didn’t eat soon. The soldiers who had accosted him on the roadway hadn’t been heavily encumbered with provisions and it seemed as though they had not traveled very far to reach the place where they had waylaid him.

It was clear that the men had possessed authority. If they had been mere brigands they would have simply attacked him and robbed his corpse, or held him hostage until they realized that no one would come to ransom him. It seemed that these men were probably in the employ of a lord, perhaps the lord of Powyss, and held the duty of policing the roads. They weren’t very good at what they did, but one of them had referred to himself and his companions as “Red Dragons.”

Zach did not recall passing any villages in the night, and didn’t even recall the exact moment in which he passed from the haunted forest of the Black Baron. Perhaps when the magic of the
bordershift
occurred it had placed him on a main road between Powyss and some other nearby village or city. It seemed very unlikely that the trio had come there expressly to find him, yet many unlikely things had happened since he parted company with Carym and the others.

Certainly the powers of his new weapon,
Morloth
, and its fantastic ability to reappear in his hand at will and his enhanced senses seemed very unlikely. But then, so was meeting the lich in the first place. And the entire chain of events that led him to this point would have been inconceivable to him before. Who would have thought that he would find himself in a magical ship that could travel above
and
below the seas? Then, the ship sustained irreparable damage and was lost, marooning the companions in an ancient wealthy ghost-city in the bizarre world below the surface of the world, the Underllars. It was the place where he happened upon the ancient lich prince who had somehow trapped himself there in a state of undeath, for eternity. It was he who had given Zach the amazing weapon which he was now so fond of. The lich had mentioned, albeit without specificity, that the blade had many powers. Then there was the matter of his enhanced senses. He had never in his life been able to hear so well and deduce so much from something that was as far away as those men had been when he first heard them.

I heard the man’s finger pulling the trigger?
He stood shaking his head in disbelief.
And I heard them coming before I could have possibly heard them coming!

“Don’t be a fool, Zach.”

That voice, again!

He looked
about, weapons at the ready, scanning trees and road.

Nothing. It must be the blade!

“I am
not
, nothing,” came the voice. This time it sounded as though it were right by his ear! “And I am
not
a demented dagger!”

“Come out!” he shouted, furious. “Come out where I can see you.”

There was no response. But then he had that peculiar sensation again, as though he could hear someone approaching from far away. He decided it would be best to push on as fast as he could. When he rounded the next bend, a great city perched at the edge of a harbor came into view in the distance; and another patrol was coming his way. Another patrol of three, two armed men and one in black robes. Yet he sensed that this robed man was not the same one he encountered earlier.

Zach stood his ground, dagger in one hand and sword in the other, ready to fight again. This time he would kill the robed one first!