The Tyranny of the Night

28. Alameddine, Weary Soultaken

It took ages to slide down the back half of the Firaldian peninsula, into Hoyal, the easternmost cantonment of Alameddine. Shagot could not stay awake. He was dull and uncommunicative. Life grew harsher. Because they moved too slowly to get away from the scene of any major crime, Svavar did not indulge in activities that might attract attention.

The money the brothers carried became a liability. Low-grade, unemployed mercenaries did not carry double-ducat and five-ducat gold pieces. Men of that despicable level ought never to see such coins.

Prolonged hunger forced Svavar to betray himself. The venue was a crossroad town named Testoli, famous for nothing in the entire history of the world. Testoli lay a dozen miles north of the Hoyal canton, which was mostly wilderness preserved for hunting by the Grail Emperors and Alameddine's royals.

A dumb response to hunger turned into a stroke of good fortune. The eyes that noted gold in the hands of scum who ought to be strangers to silver belonged to the brigand Rollo Registi, infamous for a league around. Rollo was stupid and unsuccessful in his chosen profession. His band barely managed to survive – by, secretly, herding sheep in the hills over in Hoyal canton. They poached the Emperor's pastures instead of his game.

Rollo hurried off to collect his henchmen. There were just two of them, in bad health, and not the sort who had friends likely to become upset if something happened to them.

This served Svavar and Shagot well when Rollo and friends attacked them. The Grimmssons took enough copper and small silver off the corpses to complete their journey without attracting further attention.

Svavar did not tell Shagot about the warrior woman who backed them up during the encounter. A kraken of fear now held Svavar in its all-smothering embrace. He, who had been raised by truly terrible parents to deny and defy fear, whatever its source or form.

Any respectable Andorayan of Svavar's time faced fear with bludgeon in hand. That was so deeply engrained, and so intimately known, that Svavar understood his unmanning could have no mortal cause.

He might not be the brightest light in the firmament nor the fastest frog in the race but he was intimate with the beliefs of his people. He knew the common myths well. Which left him certain that he knew his guardian angel. But his imagination was not wild enough to discern her motives.

She would be Arlensul, first daughter of the Gray Walker, Chooser of the Slain, banished from the Great Sky Fortress for having dared to love the mortal, Gedanke. Now a sworn enemy of the Walker and her kin. A cruel, traitorous worm slithering amongst the Instrumentalities of the Night, starved for revenge.

Svavar still told Shagot nothing. Possibly he believed Grim too much a tool of those who trod iron-shod upon the back of the northern world. Or, maybe, those who had done so in the once upon a times.

Today the Old Ones were considered gone. Fairy tales. Increasingly ill-recalled myth. Andoray, nominally, was a Chaldarean realm now. It acknowledged a Chaldarean ruler.

Still, there were old folks back in the mountains there who were convinced that the advance of the wall of ice was due entirely to that adoption of the southern God. Those fools. Those fools!

A more disappointing horror for the Grimmssons was that the kings of Freisland had succeeded in annexing Andoray. Erief's efforts had meant nothing in the long run.

Svavar harbored a sour suspicion that history always reduced the works of man to naught, a suspicion that nothing mattered beyond four or five generations.

Grim did not care. Grim was sullen, silent, focused exclusively on his mission when he was awake.

Just guessing, Svavar suspected that Grim's devotion to sleep was necessitated by his connection to the Great Sky Fortress. It was difficult for the Old Ones to maintain contact from far away.

IN TIME SVAVAR HOOKED UP WITH A MERCENARY BAND CAPtained by a thug named Ockska Rashaki, a renegade Calziran with illusions that allying himself with Vondera Koterba would let him repay a catalog of personal grievances beyond the Vaillarentiglia Mountains. Rakshaki's band numbered fewer than sixty men, thieves and murderers all. They were the sort who gave all soldiers, and mercenaries in particular, a terrible name.

Svavar felt right at home, except for the language problem. Shagot did, too, when he woke up long enough to see what was going on. Between them the brothers kicked a half-dozen asses and Shagot killed a huge, stupid beast named Renwal who terrorized the rest of the band on Rashaki's behalf.

Rashaki was not pleased by the loss of his enforcer, but he was a realist. He invested no emotion in his followers.

Ockska Rashaki loved no one but Ockska Rashaki. Ockska Rashaki was interested only in what Ockska Rashaki hoped to accomplish.

Svavar and Shagot settled down to await the arrival of the man they were supposed to kill. He would come, Shagot insisted. And Shagot would know when he did.

It was not to be an onerous wait. Ockska Rashaki did not demand much of his followers. And Vondera Koterba did not demand much of Rashaki's band. They had a smugglers' pass to watch. Koterba made sure they were fed so that they did not start raiding the Alameddine countryside.

Shagot was content to eat, sleep most of the time, and take the occasional shit. He, like his masters, was content to wait

Svavar endured. He had suffered the world long enough to know that every misery eventually ends.

These days, almost every day, Svavar saw Arlensul, unnoticed by anyone else, lurking around this camp of men with dead souls. He and she were joined in an unspoken conspiracy.