The Shadowmage Trilogy (Twilight of Kerberos: The Shadowmage Books) (86 page)

Mighty spells of destruction had been unleashed here, deep battle magic, the type of incantations requiring several wizards to properly fuel and that could blast half an army apart in one incandescent salvo, leaving nothing but ash. More minor spells left their mark with mere craters, some of them yards across, stones and boulders torn from the earth and hurled into the air lying scattered around them.

One grey morning, they saw a valley filed with the dead, the scene of a vicious struggle between the two empires. Armour rusted where it had fallen decades before, the skeletal owners inside long since picked clean of flesh by animals and of valuables by more human scavengers. Lucius estimated more than a thousand men had met their end in that valley.

At the centre of this open graveyard was the remnants of a massive machine, one that must have towered over the knights and soldiers as they fought. A single, large iron-shod wheel propped up the black structure, canting it at a high angle, while the main hull was rent in two, perhaps from a particularly devastating spell. Lucius did not recognise the device, but he had heard of huge war machines, propelled or pushed in battle by men or horses, large mobile fortresses that were used to crush the enemy and serve as elevated platforms for archers and other missile troops. Heavily armoured, such machines were no longer built by either Empire, each costing as much as a regular fort or small castle. He had little doubt they would appear once more if the peace between Vos and Pontaine ever broke down and war came back to the Territories.

They passed several villages on their route, each as wretched as the farm and little better than a slum. Approaching another, Lucius saw it was little more than a line of tiny hovels lining a worn track, itself blocked by the corpse of a horse that looked as though it had been worked to death.

“Why do these people not move?” Adrianna wondered. “We are little more than a week out of Turnitia, anyone could make the trip and find far better conditions in the city. Even the beggars live better than this!”

“Not everyone can make the journey,” Lucius said. “We can protect ourselves if attacked, but what are these people to do? They are just as likely to be killed for their clothing by the people of the next village. Besides, this is all they have known. They saw the products of civilisation when the armies of Vos and Pontaine marched through their villages, trampled their crops and killed their livestock. It is possible they think this is as good as life gets if you are not a knight or some warlord.”

He pulled out a map and studied it for a moment, looking up occasionally to gauge his whereabouts. The map was not complete, nor highly detailed, but it had allowed him to count off the number of villages he expected to pass on their journey. Beside him, Adrianna shifted uncomfortably in her saddle. She was no skilled rider, but had so far not complained about her discomfort.

“How much further?” she asked.

Lucius pursed his lips as he tried to judge the esoteric method of scaling the baron’s cartographer had used. “We will make Jakus Point... maybe this evening,” he said. “Give us a chance for a decent bed, should be cheap enough out here. Then we strike out in the morning. Apparently the Pontaine camp is east of Jakus Point, maybe northeast. About half a day’s ride.”

“East, maybe northeast,” Adrianna stated with some irritation.

He shrugged. “From what I understand, map-making is not as cut and dried as magic. It tends to be less than precise.”

“Will anyone in this Jakus Point know about it?”

“That is what I am hoping.”

Folding the map away, he gently kicked his horse forward.

“Only one way to find out.”

J
AKUS
P
OINT MIGHT
well have once been a central hub in the Anclas Territories, a common trading area for the surrounding villages and farms, with merchants passing through regularly from Pontaine and perhaps even Vos. If this had been so, it was before Lucius’ time.

After the war, the small township could call itself as free and independent as Turnitia had been, or as Freiport was now, with no direct master. However, Lucius could see the entire town was enslaved to something far worse – poverty and neglect. Few outsiders came here and those that did were rarely welcomed by the locals.

As Adrianna and Lucius rode slowly down the main street that was little more than a churned up track interspersed by cobbles, the few inhabitants they saw avoided all eye contact. Children crouched behind dilapidated wagons or ran behind buildings in an effort to hide, while men and women running errands quickened their pace as the horses drew nearer.

“This place is filthy,” Adrianna said, wrinkling her scarred face in disgust, and Lucius suspected she referred to the people as much as the town itself.

“This is how people here live. They have no other choice.”

Adrianna did not answer, but he could almost feel her contempt, and began to think just how far removed the Shadowmage had become from other people. A large building down the end of the rough street caught his attention and he pointed it out.

“There. I think we’ll find what we are looking for there.”

Peering through the rain, Adrianna snorted. “Looks like a slop house.”

Lucius shrugged. “It probably is, but it is the best accommodation we are likely to find here.”

“I would almost prefer sleeping in the rain again.”

“You wouldn’t,” he said, with half a smile. “However, it is not just us I am thinking of. Any outsiders will also be there, likely as not.”

“You think people come here intentionally?”

“If the Pontaine camp is as close as the baron’s cartographer thinks it is, then I think we might well be in luck.”

The inn had no name that Lucius could see as they approached, though the lantern light from the common room spilling onto the street seemed welcoming enough. Whatever Adrianna thought of the place, Lucius was glad to have any bed that included a roof over his head, no matter how many fleas and rats might share it with him. He had certainly spent nights in far worse places.

A young boy hesitantly poked his head out of the low stable next to the tavern, taking a few steps towards them when Lucius smiled and held out a coin. They dismounted and let the stableboy lead their horses into the dry, and then followed suit, pushing open the front door of the inn.

It was little different from Lucius’ expectations. The warmth was the first thing he noticed, as a large fire crackled quietly at the far end of the common room, an elderly grey-haired woman using its heat as she stirred the contents of a wide copper pot. The denizens at various crooked tables scattered before him were obviously local, common in appearance with unkempt clothes and sullen expressions as they nursed their drink. Few seemed to have ordered food beyond bread or biscuits and gravy.

Three men carried themselves differently though, and they caught Lucius’ thiefes eye immediately. Sitting at a table near the fire, they all had their backs to the wall and were talking in low voices, trying to blend in but not quite managing it. Though none bore weapons or armour, he presumed they were soldiers or mercenaries, warriors of some kind. Two had wide moustaches, as was currently in fashion throughout Pontaine.

He glanced sideways at Adrianna, and she nodded almost imperceptibly. She had noticed them as well.

Nodding in friendly greeting to several of the locals that looked up at their entrance, Lucius fixed a smile on his face and walked straight to the open fire, rubbing his hands as if trying to ward off the cold. The woman stirring away at her pot looked up at him, and a flash of fear passed over her face briefly.

“My husband will be along to see to you in just a minute,” she managed to say. “I can take your wet cloaks and hang them by the fire to dry, if that is your wish.”

“Lady, nothing could please us more right now,” Lucius said, and he meant it. The aroma of the stew she was stirring washed over him and he suddenly felt very hungry.

As the woman hung their cloaks, Lucius saw what he presumed was the owner, an old man with at least ten more years on him than his wife, hunched over by age. He appeared from an open doorway at the opposite end of the common room, carrying two mugs that slopped liquid onto the floor with his unsteady gait.

After laying the mugs down on a table that was taken by locals, he looked up briefly, the movement obviously causing him some pain, to look at Lucius and Adrianna. He started shuffling towards them.

“If that is the pace everything moves round here, this is going to be a very long night,” Adrianna said.

Lucius ignored her and smiled in greeting as the man finally reached their table.

“What will you be wanting?” he asked, his voice neither subservient nor hostile. Lucius guessed that, living in this place, the man had seen his fair share of trouble in the past, and had clearly come to deal with it with apathy.

“Beer, milk, mead, whatever you’ve got. And some of that delicious stew your good lady wife is cooking, if you would.”

The man grunted in response and shuffled back to the kitchen. His wife began ladling out bowls of the stew and laid them out before Lucius and Adrianna. The meat was probably from some part of a horse that he had no wish to discover, but the old woman was clearly a cook of some talent. Even Adrianna ate without complaint.

As he ate, Lucius flickered his gaze over to the three outsiders and, finally, caught the eye of one of them.

“Nasty weather out there, eh?” he said.

He received nothing more than a slight incline of the head in response, but Lucius had his way in and he wasn’t going to let the gate close on him. Standing up, Lucius took his mug from the innkeeper who had just arrived back at their table, and then walked past the fire to sit himself at the warriors’ table.

“I swear, been raining ever since we entered the Territories,” he said.

All three looked at him then and one frowned. “What do you want, friend?” he asked.

Lucius shrugged. “We’re all travellers here. Always worth seeing where we have all been, let each other know of any trouble we saw on the road. Can I get you lads a drink?”

They wanted to say no, they knew they should say no, but as soon as Lucius saw one of them open his mouth and hesitate, he knew he had them. If there was one common uniting factor among fighting men, be they soldiers of Vos, Pontaine or free company mercenaries, it was their singular inability to refuse a drink when offered freely.

As the drink began to flow, so the looser their lips became. They were duly joined by Adrianna, though her scarred face and stern looks served to keep the men at bay. For his part, Lucius studied the men carefully, though without making it obvious. Two had moustaches, one did not, but he did sport a thin and recent cut to one side of his top lip.

All three from Pontaine? Lucius wondered, and suddenly had an image in his head of all three trying to disguise themselves but two of them being too proud to shave. It was a thought that almost made him smile, but another idea crossed his mind. Why would a man from Pontaine shave other than to hide where he was from? What were they running from?

As the conversation flowed, the men claimed to have been escorting a merchant’s wagon from Vos through the Territories but were now out of work, the default position for a sword-for-hire, one joked.

Lucius narrowed in on that. He had heard the joke before, and it was the kind of thing a mercenary would say. But the accent that spoke it... they were trying to hide it, but the trace of Pontaine in the man’s voice was too thick to cloak completely, especially from someone who lived in Turnitia and had recently been forced to spot the accent when doing business.

Deserters, then? Lucius thought. If so, he might just have struck rich, as if they had fled from the baron’s encampment, then a few more drinks and a flutter of gold might tell him all he needed to know. On the other hand, here in the Anclas Territories, they might well be simple mercenaries.

“I hear there is work for swords at the Pontaine camp nearby,” Lucius said, casually enough. The effect on the men seated opposite him was electric, and he saw each had stiffened at the mention of the camp. They looked at one another, almost seeming furtive.

Looking at each in turn, Lucius decided to push his luck.

“If you are from that camp, we are on the same side,” he said, lowering his voice.

“How’s that?” one of the men asked suspiciously.

“I have been sent by the baron to see what the delay is. And let me make it clear – I am not interested whether you have deserted the camp. Frankly, given where it is, I might have been tempted to do so myself.”

His attempt at levity fell flat and he saw all three bristle at the mention of desertion. The man lacking a moustache nearly exploded.

“We are not–” he said, almost shouting before he stopped and checked himself, glancing around to see if any of the locals had taken notice. None seemed to think it wise to trouble themselves with an outsider’s problems.

“We are not deserters,” the man hissed, still angry.

Lucius held up a hand to ward off his fury.

“I meant nothing by it, only that it would be none of my business.” He looked around the common room himself, then leaned forward so his whisper could be heard. Adrianna too leaned in.