Oathbreaker ch. 10.4 - Night Ride (Patreon)

“She’s trying to keep me under her thumb,” I groused as I paced in front of the window in my own rooms. I lifted the cup in my hand, which had been full of wine minutes before, and scowled when I found it empty.

“Of course she is,” Vicar said from where he rested by the lit hearth. “You are possibly her most dangerous asset. Can you blame her?”

The mass of scarred black fur and burnt hide sprawled dangerously close to the flames, unbothered by the occasional cinder that snapped out. Though the pose resembled that of a relaxed old wolfhound, the sullen glow of a red eye followed me unblinking.

I stopped my pacing and thought about the question. “The thing is she’s right,” I said begrudgingly. “And I know she’s half doing this for my own good, but…”

Vicar let out a long-suffering sigh. “But you do not wish to marry, because you’re still infatuated with that succubus.”

I’d actually been thinking about the vampire. If Catrin hadn’t left, I would have married her. Only, I’d already asked her to marry me, and she’d said no. This whole thing felt like some grand joke at my expense. And I was starting to understand that Cat probably knew what she’d be getting into and that she’d made the smart choice, and…

And it hurts. It hurts that she didn’t want to stay, and that she thought this life was bad for both of us.

I leaned against the windowsill and fiddled with the empty cup. The Empress had put me and my people up in some rooms in a lower tower with a view of the lake, which seemed to glow under the larger moon. I found myself glaring sidelong at the crowfriar.

“When did I start making you my confidant?” I asked.

“Sometime before you stripped me from my bones and carved a binding pact into my flesh.” The red eye seemed to flicker. “Though, I’m not sure I ever volunteered to give council on your love life… if that’s what you want to call it.”

“It’s a political matter.” I waved a hand. “Rosanna and Markham want me to establish a power base separate from theirs. A dowry and land. Heirs…” I grimaced. “They’re right, only…”

“You don’t have an interest in anyone and you’re poor at reading people.”

No point denying it. “You see the problem.”

“Hm.” The living pelt seemed to consider a while. “Are you quite certain the faerie is still not an option?”

“Yes,” I said in a hard voice. “I’m certain.”

I liked Tzanith. I was attracted to Tzanith. She would be a powerful ally and probably an incredible partner, if I could ignore the fact that she looked like a giant insect under her glamour, which… I could, on reflection, which I was still wondering at. But I didn’t trust her lady. Rosanna and I weren’t far apart in our thoughts there.

“Whoever I match with needs to be someone I can keep distance from,” I said. “Both in terms of my work and emotionally.”

“To lesson the risk of our pernicious problem making them a target?” Vicar asked. At my nod, he said, “If you of all people think you can keep an emotional distance from the mother of your children, then I’m quite certain you are mad.”

“People do it all the time,” I argued defensively. “Half the peerage in Urn keep mistresses or paramours.”

The note of skepticism didn’t leave that burning gaze, but he let it go. “Then I would say that Myrice Gorgon is an excellent prospect. Her family have no true loyalty to the Accord, but you can make them loyal to you. Their Art would make an excellent inheritance for your children, and their backing would give you weight in all your dealings. Besides, Lady Myrice seems to suit your taste and you hers. I’ve seen the way you glance at her.”

I scowled. “I don’t glance.”

The animated pelt didn’t have the ability to quirk an eyebrow, but something about the intensity of the stare suggested one.

I sighed. “She’s basically like an older Emma. It’s uncomfortable. Also, I’ve dealt with Gorgons before. They’re wicked and deceitful.”

“Just your type, then?”

I wheeled about with an angry retort on my tongue, but paused and regarded the dark spirit with a level stare.

“That was good,” I admitted.

He snorted.

I paused and tilted my head down, listening. “You hear that?”

“I hear the city outside,” Vicar murmured sleepily. “And I hear this old castle whispering, and the ghosts dreaming…”

I moved to the window and pushed it open, letting the night air bite me. True autumn was still a fortnight or more away, and the Karledale tended towards warm summers, but this wind had a coldness in it…

There it was again. A starling trilling past sundown.

I’m restless. And bored.

Vicar was watching me. I finished the cup of wine and put it down on the end table by the bed, and spoke to the air. “I’m going out.”

I didn’t call for Basil to help me with my armor. I just wanted to walk and clear my head. The shirt and dark trousers I’d worn beneath my council kaftan would do for a night out in late summer. I did grab my cloak and my rondel, buckling the latter on next to a purse with more than a little coin in it. Borrowed coin, from the Empress’s coffers. She’s got a point about needing my own estates, I thought wryly. I had resources in Garihelm tied to my office — unofficial and unnamed — as one of the Emperor’s servants. Technically, I was an Accord justiciar. And the irony that I was paid better as a glorified bailiff than I’d ever been working for the Angels of the God-Queen wasn’t lost on me.

Vicar spoke when I reached the door. “Best take me with you.”

He still sounded drowsy, at the edge of one of his irregular torpors, but I went back to lift the pelt. It was warm like a living thing would be, and smelled of fired hide and sulfur. The long lupine head came to rest over my right shoulder.

I descended the short stair into the solar, gliding stealthily over the rugs so as not to disturb Basil, my page. The boy was twelve, maybe thirteen. Given to me to help tend my kit and run messages, he was a serious lad and hard working, and fast asleep on the little couch by the window. He was from House Karling, who’d been allies to the Silverings since practically forever, and likely more than a little bored in my service.

I descended the tower and made my way to the bailey, where I found the stable master still awake and tending to her charges. There were already more guests arriving from across the Dales in anticipation of the upcoming grand feast, and she didn’t bother masking her irritation at being kept from her duties so late. The grand stables were a riot of clashing smells and sounds, with stalls ranging from simple wooden partitions to reinforced iron pens depending on the fierceness of the animal inside. Even past sundown it was busy and there were grooms hard at work, many of them openly bearing the scars of their trade. Some chimera could breathe fire, or acid.

I was taken to a large stall in a darker corner of the stables, where I found my scadumare waiting restlessly inside. Morgause was a huge beast, black as night. Her features fused the equine and the reptilian, her two ruby eyes gleaming with intelligence even as the steel caps on her horns gleamed in the light of the groom’s lantern. She nipped at me when I drew close, which I dodged from long practice. The mare had teeth like black needles.

“I’ve neglected you, haven’t I?” I stroked her, and after some fuss she settled and let me. They’d been about to feed her, evidenced by the bucket left next to the door, and I fed the scadumare doves from my own hand. She was an avivore, and they were her preferred meal.

“She makes odd sounds at night,” the groom told me. He had haunted eyes. “Sounds like a bird herself.”

“It’s how she lures prey,” I told him. “And she’s nocturnal.”

I wondered for a moment if the noise I’d heard before had been Morgause, but then dismissed it. She would have been inside the stable at the time, nowhere near my tower.

“I’m going to take her out for a ride,” I told the groom. “I’ll have her back in an hour or two.”

I got the mare saddled, adjusted Vicar so he sat more comfortably on my shoulders. That coldness in the air seemed gone now, leaving the night comfortably warm even without the weight of an infernally heated pelt. We were admitted through the bridge gate and across the moat, and passed into the city.

As we crossed the bridge I said, “I’m not infatuated,” and wasn’t sure if it was true. “I’m…”

Guilty? Regretful? Can’t sleep at night because I killed a slave who asked me for help, because I was too busy being heartbroken at the idea that she might have been using me the whole time?

When I thought about it like that, it made me feel unclean.

“Then what would you call it?” He asked me.

I didn’t have an answer for him, and we both let it go as Morgause cantered into the streets. Harrengate wasn’t a lagoon metropolis like Garihelm, but it was a large town and alive even in the young night. Taverns and inns invited passerby with bright windows and pretty girls, and many people sat outside in the late summer air. The harvest season markets were already open, and the town bustled with farmers in from the countryside as well as merchants come from as far as Venturmoor in pursuit of Karlesian grain.

Once, Harrengate had seemed the greatest city in the world and I’d been in awe of it. It wasn’t even half as big as Seydis, and maybe a third as large as Garihelm, but I preferred Harrengate over those two great cities. Even from as far as the bridge castle on the slope leading up to the Pinnacle, even here on the bustling Street of Lanterns, I could smell the fields and the woods and the lake beyond the outer wall.

There were circles where men and women, and some children, were practicing their dancing to the tune of drums and tambouras and other instruments. Preparing for Harvestrest, which would coincide with the Empress’s grand feast. Southern festivals were complex affairs, and while everyone would end the celebrations too drunk to stand vertical, much less cut a clean leap, the practice was taken very seriously. I passed by one group where an old man with a fiddle sat by a young man with a drum, both of them keeping a beat as a woman twirled and twirled, her brightly striped skirts almost seeming to burn in the glow of nearby lanterns as onlookers clapped in time with the song.

There were more than just Karledalers. I saw Losdalers and Bryndalers and half a dozen other Dalers, most hardly distinguishable in dress and speech from the locals. There were Rosghen from the deep forests that ringed the Tempering Hills, with their baggy pants and mushroom-shaped hats, and Duranikeans, dour and tall from shared blood with the Alheidi. Drivers and frontiersmen from the Herding passed me by, and tribal Sidure; tall, bronze-skinned, and copper-haired, my mother’s people. Some of them saw me on my dark beast and stroked their cheekbone with one thumb in the sign of blood recognizing blood, while others muttered darkly to see me dressed and mounted as a lord.

I heard the dialects of my childhood, listened to the music and smelled the scents of years when my life had been much simpler. Sure, there’d been wars and intrigues and doubts even then, but I’d been a different man, with no myth and no gods in my life, just a sword and a daydream of glory.

Did I miss it? Did I want that time back? Rosanna’s words kept turning about in my head.

I caught sight of something and turned Morgause into a busy inn yard. Those in my path flinched from the shadow of the scadumare and cursed me under their breath when I’d passed, but the one man waved cheerfully as I dismounted and tied my chimera to a waiting post. The other mounts on the fence shied from her.

In the yard, seated beneath the light of a hanging lantern from the corner of the inn’s roof, sat a small group in a circle. They used tree-stumps and stacks of hay as seats, and appeared to be playing cards like soldiers. Several of them had the look of soldiers, though two were House-born, one seemed to be a northerner and a merchant, and another was a middle-aged woman in a madder kirtle.

“Speak of the devil! I was just talking about you!” The man I’d recognized from afar greeted me with a laugh in his voice and jostled the man next to him.

“Lord Arlock,” I greeted him. The Duranikean had switched his council finery out for a simple shirt and pants, both dark, though his left thumb flashed a ring with the scarlet beast that was his House’s marker, like a cross between a tiger and a lizard, wingless and belligerent. His mane of brown hair spilled about his shoulders, and his cheeks were flushed. I guessed the tankard of Karlesian rye in his hand wasn’t his first of the night.

“Lord Arlock,” the nobleman mocked me in a gravelly voice. “Damme, Hewer, we’re not at council!” He leaned into the man next to him, who held similar features but was shorter-haired and more reserved in his manner. “Here, Urick, this is the one I was just talking about.”

The second man, Urick, gave me a nod. “I know him, though we’ve not been formally introduced. I missed you at the tournament last year, Ser.”

“You are Urick Drachen?” I returned his nod. “I’ve heard of you.”

“My cousin,” Arlock said through a burp. “He got to go and play at tourney while I was stuck down here, chasing irks and waiting for a disaster. Turns out I was on the wrong side of fucking Urn!”

His Duranik drawl made the explicative sound more like facking, an effect that was also common in Herdingers. The two regions shared more than a little blood.

Carefully I said, “I didn’t fight in the tournament at Garihelm.”

Urick’s lip twitched in a slight smile. “Of course.”

“Sit with us!” Arlock insisted and lifted his cup. “Have a pint, or three. We’re playing some hands.”

“He’s losing,” one of the soldiers drawled. He wasn’t House, but wore Drachen livery, the same scarlet beast as on Arlock’s ring snarling on a purpure field. Most of the dignitaries had their own retinues. There was another Drachen guard, a woman with her head shaved on the sides and a streak of white in her otherwise black hair. She snickered at her friend’s comment.

I shrugged and joined their circle. I hadn’t left the castle to a true purpose, and the night was still young. I was introduced to the group. There was Arlock Drachen, his cousin Urick, and their two armbearers. The third soldier was a caravan guard whose contract with a train out of the Gylden had run its term, and I gathered he’d been negotiating with the merchant for a new tenure. The merchant was a posh man from the Eburmarks, a group of city-states to the north of Mirres who resembled Cymrinoreans but would be offended to be told so. He’d braved the roads south to find a good price for his ivory, taken from the deadly ipostamus who roamed the isles between Mirrebel and Cymrinor.

The woman in the red kirtle, on closer inspection, turned out to be shockingly beautiful. She had a long, thin nose and downturned green eyes that seemed at once intelligent and distracted. She was neither tall nor thin, and her dress was slashed at one shoulder in the Westvaler style, with a cloth-of-gold sash like a priest.

“We’re playing Hark,” the guardswoman with the white hair-lock said with a challenging smile. “You know the rules?”

I returned the smile and let my accent shift into the lilt of my youth. “I was born in the Herding, cariad. I knew how to play Hark cyn I could walk.”

“Ohh!” The armswoman’s smile became more genuine and she leant back. “I took you for a great lord, with your dark beast and shiny eyes, but I see we’ve got a Daleman born and bred!”

“He is a great lord,” Arlock said without intent. “He’s the Amaranta’s dragon.”

Silence fell around the circle for a moment. The male Drachen retainer, who was younger than the woman, openly gaped.

“You’re him?” He asked. “You’re Bloody Al?”

His companion elbowed him hard, but Arlock just laughed. “That he is, Sparrow! You’re rubbing elbows with the Black Axe himself.”

“The Headsman,” Sparrow muttered in unmasked fear and awe. I did my best to hide my scowl, already regretting my night out.

The other Drachen retainer was more cautiously impressed. “You’re the Empress’s old First Sword. I heard stories o’ you, gold-eye. They say you helped put her back in that castle up on the rock after her kinslaying uncle took the realm.”

I shrugged. “I was there.”

“He was there!” Arlock chortled. “You hear this, Uri?”

Urick also shrugged and sipped his rye.

Sparrow’s companion nodded, as though coming to a decision, and her easy smile returned. “I’m Badger.”

“On account of the hair,” Sparrow said helpfully. “It’s been like that since we was kids. Folk used to say she was irk-marked.”

Badger shot him a furious glare.

The only other woman in the group, the one with lazy green eyes and hair like dried blood, smiled politely without introducing herself.

“Deal him in!” Arlock demanded. “I’m bored.”

“You’re sloshed,” Urick said.

We played some rounds. Hark was a popular game across the subcontinent, and the rules varied from region to region, but I kept up well enough. I found myself liking Arlock despite his roughness. He paid everyone equal mind, weathered mockery with good humor, and wasn’t as drunk as he pretended.

It was a side of him I never saw at council. There, he acted brash and confrontational but rarely pressed any issue. My impression of him had always been that of a man who didn’t need to make a banner of his intelligence and was happy being underestimated. Drachens had a certain reputation for choler, but Arlock Drachen was a thinking man.

Urick took after him, though he was less gregarious. He winced every time he got a bad hand and smiled apologetically when his cousin got excited.

After some rounds and some exchange of small coin, the Eburmarker and the caravaner took their leave and went inside to continue talking business. The woman in the red dress said very little, while Badger and Sparrow spoke frequently, usually to argue. During one of their more intense debates, Arlock spoke to me in a quiet aside.

“Spring.” His look was significant. “Come spring, we’ll be campaigning.”

I shrugged and sipped my own drink. “That’s the rumor.”

“It’s bullshit.” The Duranikean ambassador shook his head angrily. “The enemy doesn’t let the season decide when they march. They can attack in blizzards if they want to. They have mages, and monsters, and…”

“We have mages too,” I reminded him. “And we’re not just waiting for the snows to clear. The stasis in Osheim has thrown a lot of plans into disarray, and the Emperor doesn’t want to start an invasion of the eastern valleys with a potential enemy at his back. It’s the same reason Evangeline had everyone so nervous.”

He grunted and lifted his cup to his lips. “I know. I’m just impatient to get this war started. We’re being bled out, Hewer, and I wonder if we’ll have the rancor we need when it’s time. Hell, Talsyn kept us stalled for years.” He gave me a sidelong look. “Speaking of, I hear you didn’t kill that Calerus pup when you had the chance.”

Across the street, an elf was entertaining a group of children with a flute. Tame Wil-O’ Wisps danced about the nimble creature in time with the music.

Arlock put up his hands. “I’m not judging you, Hewer, but some people…”

“I know,” I said. “I know it was a foolish gamble. I just…” I sighed and shook my head. “I’ve spent the last twenty years killing people in an attempt to stop more killing. But it doesn’t stop. We’re just pissing on fires.”

Arlock looked baffled. “We’re knights. We do war.”

“I’m not afraid of fighting,” I said, because I felt he was close to thinking me a craven. “But I’ve stacked up a lot of bodies, Arlock, and there’s always another villain, another threat. I think… I think I’d enjoy having peace for a while, but I can’t see it. I can barely imagine it.”

I thought of Catrin asking me to leave Urn with her. The thought of it had scared me more than any thousand enemies.

I listened to the music and the laughter of people preparing for festival, and wondered if they saw what I couldn’t. Sitting and watching, I felt apart from those people, an outsider, because every moment I was wondering when the next struggle would be.

Somewhere, a starling trilled.

Arlock leaned back and blew out a breath. “Now you’ve depressed me. And it was such a pleasant night.”

“Sorry.”

“But I hear you,” he said. “I might even agree. I was barely more than a squire during the war, and I’d not like to live that again. But damme, Hewer, I’m a knight. It’s my purpose and my passion to make war, and we have as true an evil as we’re ever likely to see waiting for us!”

I held up a hand. “Can we save this for council?”

He shrugged. “I’d like to be your ally. I think we’re of like minds.”

I lifted my own cup. “We should all be allies.”

He grinned. “Perhaps. But as I said, we’re knights — we love enemies as much as friends.” He leaned in closer and lifted his eyebrows. “My Badger fancies you. If you want, I can let you borrow—”

“I’m good, thank you.”

“Suit yourself. But take the time to enjoy yourself as you can, Hewer. All your troubles will still be there tomorrow.” He leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “That pale fellow across the way has been staring at us.”

I followed his gaze, making it seem as though I merely passed my eyes idly across the street. There was a larger inn across the street with an outdoor patio, and I caught sight of him immediately — a pale man in a felt hat and a fine bleached cloak.

“I feel like I’ve seen him before,” I said.

“Trouble?” The Drachen asked.

“Probably nothing. Maybe he fancies you?”

Arlock snorted. “Too pretty for my taste. Looks like a northerner.”

I stood and said my farewells to the group. Before I left, I leaned in and spoke into Arlock’s ear so the others couldn’t overhear. “No one’s sitting on their asses until spring, Drachen. The Empress has done much of this before. So have I.”

He nodded and toasted me, and I went back to Morgause. She was annoyed that our ride had been interrupted and bit at me, but soon enough we were underway. I took her to the town gates, where the duty sergeant made it clear he thought something was amiss.

“Night patrol, my lord?” He asked me.

“Just taking my mare out for exercise.” Explaining that Morgause was nocturnal had become tedious. “Feel free to report it. Best someone look for me if I don’t come back, eh?”

That seemed to reassure him, and I was admitted through. We rode out onto the starlit fields beyond Harrengate’s outer wall, crossing a second moat fed from the lake another mile off. As soon as Morgause cleared the bridge, I turned her upstream and when we hit the wide fields beyond the road I let her have her head and we were flying.

Morgause’s night vision was excellent, much better than her daysight, and even as we tore at dangerous speeds over the open fields beyond the city, as the looming moonlit brilliance of the Pinnacle and the royal palace receded and the orange glow of the Street of Lanterns was lost to the luminescence of the night sky, I felt little fear. We made for the lake, and I let the mare set her own pace. I’d done a poor job of exercising her in our weeks as the Empress’s guests.

We made to the edge of a small wood that ran up to the lake’s shoreline, and here I let Morgause slow to a canter. She was breathing hard, and I patted her as I inspected the tree-line. It was oppressively dark within, a stark counter to the otherwise brilliant late summer evening.

Vicar spoke up for the first time since we’d left the castle. “What are you plotting?”

“Not much of a plotter,” I said.

“I disagree. You have a certain low cunning.”

I snorted and spurred Morgause into the copse. She went without complaint or fear, her strong flanks still heaving from the sustained sprint. Night birds and crickets sang in the darkness. Through gaps in the trees, the moonlit lake shimmered to my left as I advanced, pushing leaves aside and ducking under branches.

We stepped into a small clearing, one where enough moonlight shone down that I could see my surroundings even without aura-sight. Here I had my mount pause. For an entire minute, there was nothing but crickets and soft wind in the boughs.

“You’ve got me alone,” I said to the empty night. “You wanted my attention.”

Another moment of silence. Morgause’s tufted ears flicked up as something moved in the undergrowth. An owl hooted.

A starling whistled.

Not a starling.

Morgause turned before I did, and the motion carried my draw. My hand dipped into the shadows beneath my cloak, which I used to block the moonlight. A flash of cold as my hand reached somewhere else, and then I drew out a small crossbow fashioned of dark wood smoothed to a perfect shining finish, its components steel and Sacred Gold, a bolt already loaded. Black and violet miasma wreathed the weapon as I brought it to bear.

Something moved in the trees. I tracked it, the molten light of my enhanced gaze sweeping the woods.

“Ware,” Vicar grunted. “There are two.”

I felt heat against my cheek as the devil began to draw in breath to breathe hellfire.

“Don’t,” I warned. “You’ll set the whole copse ablaze.”

His jaws snapped shut and cut the ruddy light of his own working off. I panned my crossbow, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger.

Snap!

In the same instant, something hit me from my right. The impact tore me from the saddle and sent us both tumbling into the grass. It was strong and fast, not not human — no human could have hit me at speed in the dark atop a saddle and land like a cat after. It wore steel, and I didn’t, and a lance of pain shot through the whole right side of my body.

Momentarily stunned, it took me precious seconds to realize I’d dropped my weapon during the fall and lost Vicar, who’d slipped from my shoulders to land in a heap nearby. Morgause was on her hind legs and hissing, lashing out with her hooves — which were sharp as talons — at something I couldn’t quite see in my state of disorientation.

But as I got to a knee and regained my focus, I saw what crouched in the grass not six paces away, stalled from ripping my throat out only by the war chimera threatening it. It was pale and armored in hard steel like a knight, its eyes shining in the darkness and its long fangs bared in a furious snarl. I’d seen the same sight often enough the past spring to know what I was looking at.

Vampire.