Terry W. Ervin (38 page)

After an intense moment of silence, Belinda’s upper lip curled before smiling, showing a perfect set of white teeth. “Your prince,” she began, lowering herself back onto the stool, “has a penchant for surrounding himself with loyal servants.”

I didn’t sit. She still hadn’t apologized for her insult.

She looked up. “Mercenary, your prince is not a fool. You just proved as much.” She again leaned her staff against the table. “Sit. Tell me more of your prince’s scheme, and what part he sees for me in it.”

As her words expressed interest, I sat. “I am here to seek your assistance in crossing the Western Ocean and reaching my objective.” I pointed to the ring on the map.

“I can get you across the North Atlantic,” she said, pointing at the Western Ocean on the map. “And I can set it up such that you may meet with whom you seek, if he deems you worthy.” She placed a finger to her chin. “The prince seeks aid against the ancient dictator. What do you have to barter?”

Grand Wizard Seelain had called the Necromancer King by that name. “I am authorized to negotiate for your assistance. What would you have?”

She shook her head. “What does the prince have to barter with the Colonel of the West?”

“That is not your concern,” I said, refusing to reveal more than I had to.

“It is, if you desire my assistance. Who or what you offer must be of significant value. If not, it is a waste of my time and my reputation.” Placing both hands on the table, she leaned closer. “I must know. It will be I who pilots and steers you to your destination.”

I felt stuck. Even if I could’ve thought of something other than the Blood-Sword that the prince might offer, I didn’t want to be caught in a lie. “Before I discuss that,” I said, “what is the price for you to carry us across the ocean to our destination?”

“Price?” she spat. “Gold and riches mean little to me.”

“What would you have, then?”

She looked up as if in thought. “I desire unfettered access to Keesee’s Imperial Library.”

I didn’t know what the Imperial Library was, or what it contained. Books, maps, ancestral records? I looked back at the old woman across from me, now sitting with hands on the map in front of her. I recalled my father bartering with Mottir, a buyer of livestock. He always arrived on the coldest winter days and demanded to see the animals. Then he stood firm in the biting wind outside the barn, negotiating. My father always dressed warm so that he could outlast Mottir, never giving an edge. Most farmers hurried to close the deal and return to a warm stove. Belinda the Cursed, I guessed, was playing a similar game.

“That is my price,” she said. “Now, what do you have to barter?”

I crossed my arms. “I have not agreed to your request for unfettered access. While Prince Reveron suggested I contact you, it’s not my only option.”

She grinned. “Mercenary, you lie poorly.”

I grinned in response, feeling the tug of stitches across my cheek. “You underestimate my resourcefulness. Yours may be the preferred option of my prince, but I have another way to pursue.” While she thought on that, I tried to figure a way of limiting access to a library housing information unknown to me. I pictured Wizard Seelain in that library and what words she might use. “In the prince’s name, I can offer you access as a favored patron.” I had no idea what that meant, but certainly one named a favored patron would be barred from anything secret.

“What access is granted a favored patron?”

I’d hoped she wouldn’t ask that. “Access greater than has been given to me, a most trusted servant.”

“That tells me nothing.”

“What have you told me about how you intend to pilot and steer us to our destination? It’s inland, and you don’t appear prepared for long treks.”

She cackled at my comment. “Us, you say?” She spoke as if I gave something away.

I nodded. “Two travel with me.”

“Now, what do you have to barter?” Her eyes narrowed as she spoke. “It must be valuable for me to abandon my business interests while ferrying you about on your errand.”

I was beginning to feel comfortable negotiating with Belinda, and when I realized that I began to worry.

The crone must have deduced my thoughts when I sat up straight. She slapped her hand down on the map. “Well, Mercenary?”

“One week access to the Imperial Library. As a favored patron.”

“One cycle of the moon,” she replied. “What do you have to barter?”

“What do you mean by pilot and steer us to our destination? Do you know our exact destination? Where to find the greater elf I seek?”

“Ignorant mercenary, I drew the map you carry.” She pointed to scrolled letters across the bottom of the map. BC. “You try my patience. I will ask one last time. What do you bring of value to the Colonel of the West?”

That was the second time she named the greater elf. I took a sharp breath, letting her insult pass. “I carry the prince’s sword. The Blood-Sword.”

She nodded once to my answer.

“You don’t appear surprised.”

“I am not, Mercenary. You have not brought it into the city, have you?”

“It is in the care of others. Now, pilot and steer us to our destination?”

She ran her fingers up and down her staff, caressing it. “I have a vessel that will carry us across the Atlantic. I know of a place where you can signal the Colonel. If you are deemed worthy, his minions will deliver you to him.”

“That’s a vague answer.”

“No more so than favored patron. I will draw up a contract.”

“No contract,” I said, not trusting her to write an honest one that I could read and comprehend. “A seer can draw forth the memory of this negotiation.”

“What if you don’t survive?”

“If I don’t survive?” A cold chill ran down my spine. “What information have you withheld?”

She continued to caress her staff. “If you are not deemed worthy?”

“What does that mean?”

“That is up to the elf you seek.” Her eyes sparkled blue. “Not me.”

“Well,” I said, smiling. “Survive or not, if you want access to the library, it is you who will have to face the seer. And I suspect it will be Imperial Seer Lochelle.”

She stopped running her fingers along her staff and hissed. “You and your henchmen, meet me at midnight two nights hence in the village of Hommel. Be at the fishing dock.” The crone pointed a crooked, red-nailed finger at me. “If you’re not, I still get the agreed upon access to the library.”

Even though I didn’t think she’d answer, I asked, “Why didn’t it surprise you when I mentioned the sword I intend to barter?”

She levered herself up from her stool, once again playing the part of a bone-weary old woman. “Who you name as the enemy, his forces even now comb the Faxtinian lands for your prince. Fortunately for you, it has not crossed his mind to seek the sword and prince separately.” She turned and began to leave, but stopped and said over her shoulder, “At least not that I have heard.”

2,873 Years before the Reign of King Tobias of Keesee

General Mzali had no intention of returning to his bunker. Activation of the ventilation system using the first key would release the variant strain Ebola virus into the bunker. The second would initiate the twelve hour countdown, the end of which would trigger detonation of eighteen tons of explosives, destroying the underground complex.

“I believe we should enjoy the fallout of world events touring the fjords of Norway,” said the general, realizing the lieutenant failed to catch his play on words. “Then maybe visit our friends in Germany, should they survive.”

Once aboard the refurbished ballistic missile submarine purchased from a mothballed fleet four years earlier, General Mzali ordered it out into the Mediterranean. His objective was to submerge and ride out the chaos and destruction he’d helped unleash. Instead of ballistic missiles, the launch tubes carried food and supplies to be supplemented by bunkered caches scattered around the globe.

Making my way to the city gate before the sun rose, I kept replaying my encounter with Belinda the Cursed. Somehow, the negotiations seemed to go too easy, too well. Outside the gate and on the way back to our campsite, I set those concerns aside. In addition to a mixture of merchants and mercenaries, strings of men, women, and some children, bound by ropes and chains, trudged toward the city under watchful goblin eyes, ready with their whips.

Now I understood why the inner courtyard marketplace had been cleared except for makeshift stalls with a central platform. My stomach turned at the thought of a slave market. Those in chains weren’t captured soldiers. They were survivors from the Faxtinian villages routed and destroyed by the enemy. Magical, thumb-sized marks like tattoos had been emblazoned on the forehead of each captive, identifying them as property. I’d seen such marks on prize bulls, used instead of branding to avoid marring the animal’s hide.

I clenched my teeth while facing the sneering goblin grins. As always, their eyes betrayed gleeful malice. There was nothing I could do but avoid the captives’ tortured expressions when they dared glance up from the ground. I told myself the numbers were small, less than one hundred. Their fate was better than becoming a zombie. I took solace in knowing my family had fled south in time. That Keesee was now besieged fostered my resolve to trade the Blood-Sword for something capable of stopping the Necromancer King.

Rather than avoid or ignore the jeering faces of the goblins, I marched past, meeting each with grim resolve. Some laughed, especially when in the company of an ogre. The rest looked to their captives, shouting about some imagined misstep. After passing the last of the captives going to auction, the majority of travelers on the road again consisted of merchants leading beasts of burden hitched to carts bearing food or wares.

As I approached where the road crossed over the irrigation ditch that led to our camp, I spotted a few vultures spiraling downward, hurrying to join those already feasting. The cawing of gore crows jostling for carrion morsels grew louder. In the distance I saw the woods near our camp. Maybe the brethren of the dead ogres there returned for revenge?

I broke into a sprint, hoping the scavengers fed upon dead livestock. The vultures and protesting crows took flight. With a sigh of relief, I saw that the bodies weren’t human. One ogre and four goblins, or what was left of them. I’d seen enough battlefields to recognize they’d died in combat. I moved the bodies with my spear. Nothing was left in their camp, not a blanket, waterskin, or food. Next to the scattered supply of wood, no warm coals burned under the dead campfire’s ashes.

The nearby scavengers hopped closer, anxious for me to depart. “Camp’s picked clean as your bones will soon be,” I muttered to the dead goblins before scanning the irrigation ditch and then down the road. Only a trio of men leading oxen with carts plodding toward Sint Malo. They were a quarter of a mile away and appeared oblivious of me.

I trotted toward our campsite. When I reached it, I found the campfire scattered and cold as the goblin camp’s. I knelt, examining the grass and weeds. Although tramped down, they didn’t appear to have been slept upon during the night. Shaws could have told for sure.

I don’t know why I didn’t consider the possibility that Roos and Lilly had run off with the Blood-Sword. Even if they had, certainly not as a team, and the body of one would be lying in the camp.

I searched around for some sign of where Roos and Lilly had gone until movement in the woods caught my attention. It was Lilly waving her hand, signaling me to her. I looked around. The men and oxen had plodded past, stirring up the crows but not stopping. I checked the sky for dragons before crossing the unplanted field to meet her.

“Been waiting for you all morning,” Lilly said, grinning. She ducked behind a tree and nodded the direction of the road. “See your Crusader friend’s handiwork?”

“The dead ogre and goblins?”

Lilly nodded and led me deeper into the trees. “He found out they had slaves. Then he had only one thing on his mind. Forget the sword.”

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Is he okay?”

We reached an overgrown path and took it.

“I’m fine,” she replied. “Glad you’re back. How’d it go?”

“Fine. Even got you something.”

Lilly stopped and turned. “Really?” She smiled, but with eyebrows raised, unsure. “Food is all I really need. I already hate hardtack.” Lilly held out a hand. “Looks like you could use some help.”

I unslung my crossbow and handed it to her. “I’ll dig out your stuff when we get to camp.” I readjusted my load. “Where are we camped?”

The shade of the thick trees overhead couldn’t hide Lilly blushing. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

I winked. “I know.”

I listened to Lilly as we continued down the path. “After Roos snuck up on them goblins in their sleep,” she explained, “and blasting away with his gun, it wasn’t safe to remain anywhere nearby.” She shook her head, kicking at weeds as she spoke.

Things obviously hadn’t gone as planned or smoothly between Roos and Lilly. “Exactly what happened?”

“That Crusader saw them goblins and an ogre set up camp not far from us, near the road. He has some sort of long tube he calls a spyglass. When he saw the forehead marks on the chained humans his face turned red. Said he could tolerate a lot in this accursed land, but he couldn’t abide slavery. Especially not women and children.”