Byzantium, Book 1: Dead Men's Road Read online

  “My reasons for travel and my intentions are my own, Margrave. You must know that the Invisible College does not explain itself to outsiders.”

  “Of course. Forgive me. It is only that my master, the Duke, would consider me remiss if I did not present you with an invitation to discuss possible mutually agreeable exchanges of service.”

  “Adepts of the College do not hire out like mercenaries,” the mage warned.

  “No, indeed… no. But if I understood your conversation with the wandering priest correctly, and interpreted your rank properly as you presented it just now, you are currently still an adept initiate, not yet confirmed in your mastery? It would not be against the rules of your fraternity to undertake contract work if the terms and conditions were right?”

  Mirabelle frowned. “I have no interest in getting involved in politics, Margrave Rhodin. I know some little of the disputes between your Duke Sebastio and his rival Baron Olderus. It has turned some parts of Mysia and Bithynia into ruins and may have spread out as far as Phrygia and Paphlagonia. I don’t intend to take sides.”

  “Most men and women of civilization will surely uphold the rightful rule of the appointed military governor, our sovereign Duke, over that of a troublesome outlaw and his ravening reavers.”

  “Most men and women are not magi whose concerns and responsibilities are of a very different nature. I’m not going to hire out to your lord, Margrave.”

  “News has come to me that Nicomedia is burned,” Rhodin reported. “A massacre, of men, women, and children, even those who sheltered at the altars of the gods. Surely…”

  “You’ve done your duty to Duke Sebastio,” Mirabelle told him firmly. “I have heard your embassage and I have replied. Your task is finished.”

  The mage was young, but a mage. Her voice had steel in it. The Imperial Courier dipped his head gracefully and dropped back from her wagon – for now.

  IV. On the Crossing of Boundaries

  The second attack came as the caravan forded a wide but shallow riverbed. It was a good site for an ambush, where the teamsters had to get down from their perches and lead the horses and mules through the foaming waters.

  Fitz recognized the danger straight away and was ready as the first of the robbers broke out from the woods. He took the first one through the chest with an arrow at long range and had his second shaft nocked and aimed before the first man had tumbled into the river.

  Before the guide could loose his second arrow he fell trembling to the ground, foaming at the mouth and twitching spastically. The attackers rushed forward.

  “Raiders! We have to stop them!” cried Vare the smith’s son, rushing forward with his cudgel to engage the enemy. He’d almost reached the river’s edge when he fell twitching as Fitz had.

  “Devilry!” Santar the Guard Commander gasped, falling back as a third of his men dropped to the ground as Fitz had. “Black magic!”

  Encouraged by the general retreat and disorder of the camp guards, the bandits pressed forward to cross the water. Only one defender stood his ground. “C’mon then and try it if y’think you’re hard enough!” Sigroth foamed at them. He swung his axe into a raider’s gut, then wrenched it free dragging entrails and turned to the next assailant. “I’ll take all of you!”

  The bandits spotted the main resistance and closed around the gore splattered Viking.

  Mirabelle emerged from her wagon to see what the alarum was. Hers was the first of the wheeled cabins in line, right behind the goods train, offering her a clear view of the inrushing attackers and retreating caravan guards. She spotted Sigroth’s lone stand in the shallow waters of the ford. “He’s going to die!”

  “Perhaps. If nobody helps him,” Kirkgrim answered from his vantage point on the roof of her caravan. She hadn’t expected the Wanderer to be standing up there, peering out across the river. “We’ve got an enemy somewhere throwing magic around. If you could locate him, I can deal with him.”

  “You could stop a magus?” the adept initiate asked skeptically.

  Kirkgrim shrugged. “It’s a gift,” he told her. “But hurry, because our ferocious friend with the active axe isn’t going to be able to hold those raiders off forever.”

  The white clad mage narrowed her eyes and focused on things which were unseen to the everyday world. She ranged her gaze back and forth across the treeline from where the bandits had charged. “There!” she said at last. “By that twisted beech!”

  “Thanks!” Kirkgrim told her, leaping down from the roof and charging in that direction.

  “Kirkgrim!” Mirabelle yelled after him, “It’s a wizard! He can drop you with a word!”

  “I know,” the Wanderer called back. He pelted down to the riverbank, downing a stray bandit who got too close with a single sweep of his quarterstaff. “Hey, magician-in-the-trees!”

  The Wanderer caught sight of a bulky man in robes, and of one violet eye and one milky white one turning on him. The magus snarled and twisted his fingers into the mnemonic positions many sorcerers adopted to help them unleash their spells. The air around Kirkgrim turned chill.

  “Be thou silent!” the priest of Lugh commanded the man beneath the beech.

  The wizard’s throat closed in mid incantation. The spell with which he was about to devastate the charging Kirkgrim strangled in his mouth. He took one look at the lean staff wielding Wanderer splashing across the water toward him and retreated away into the forest.

  Sigroth was still surrounded by bandits. A few had peeled off toward the undefended caravans, but Mirabelle moved forward, gestured, and sent them tumbling down to twitch alongside the fallen guards. The rest continued to hack away at the bloodstained Viking, striking again and again at his staggering bulk.

  An enraged truffle pig abruptly entered the melee, charging with tusks lowered, indiscriminately trampling the attackers. Even as Sigroth staggered to his knees the porcine avenger tackled the cluster of robbers around him.

  Kirkgrim did the nastiest thing to the bandits he could think of. He waded up behind the injured Viking, laid a healing hand upon him, and said, “Be thou well!” The worst of Sigroth’s wounds closed up; the priest of Lugh had been fairly sure that his gods would approve of a lone hero’s stand against unfeasible odds. The angry warrior rose to his feet with renewed vigor.

  That was too much for the assailants. They broke again and raced for the trees. They left behind three twitching prisoners and five dead comrades.

  “Come back!” shouted Sigroth, furious at their desertion. “Come back and be slain! Cheaters!”

  “I’m afraid they’re going to absolutely refuse to come back and be slaughtered,” Rhodin the Imperial Messenger judged. “Life is so unfair, isn’t it?” Now that the conflict was over he had appeared to gather intelligence. He fell to searching the bodies but could find no clue to their origins.

  Padavas and Santar rallied the caravan guards to set up a proper perimeter. The dedicated security hired by Davidus of Tessera stayed surrounding their employer’s wagons as before.

  Kirkgrim raced over to where Mirabelle and Brother Jastus were examining Fitz, Vare, and the other fallen guard. “Are they alright?”

  “They have been enchanted,” the monk reported. “Who can say their fate, or if they will ever recover?”

  “They will,” the mage assured him. “It’ll take an hour or so for the magics that are paralyzing them to wear off. We should keep them somewhere warm and safe.”

  “Right,” the Wanderer agreed. “Will you take them to your cabin, Lady Mirabelle? Right now we need to get this ford crossed before those people with pointy metal things come back. Hey, Caravan Master, get your people working. The rest of you, get your things together, stop gawking and get moving. C’mon!”

  “Who does he think he is?” Santar mumbled.

  “A man who knows what he’s doing,” Sigroth answered as he stalked past, bloody and triumphant.

  ***

  Navigating the ford across what the Romans had once calle
d the river Boulgarophygon proved difficult for some of the heavier transport. Davidus’ wide-based wagon loaded with rare woods proved particularly difficult to drag across, requiring his teams to be double-yoked to haul the carts over the muddy ford bottom.

  Padavas fretted about the bandits’ return. Many of the lesser travelers were equally unhappy with the delay and selected him to vent their frustration on. Hodis the farmer became the unofficial spokesman. “We all paid for a safe passage, Caravan Master. How much extra did that fat merchant offer for you to value his goods over our lives?”

  “It’s not like that, Hodis, and you know it. No one can guarantee safe passage. Nobody knows what bandits will do. And nobody gets left behind. If it was you had lost an axle, say, we’d he helping you make repairs and get yourself back on the road as swift as possible. And you can’t claim you weren’t protected when the raiders came, either back at Havas or this afternoon.”

  “What we saw was one man holding off the bandits while your other fellows fell down twitching or fled. A wild Viking, at that! And then you had help from that Kirkgrim fellow, the one they say has a healing touch. And now you’ve got us all stood here struggling to keep herds together and pack beasts quiet while that rich man tries to get us all killed by dallying at the ford!”

  “You’ll be glad enough of that rich man’s guards if another attack comes.”

  “All I saw them doing was surrounding him and his property.” Hodis moved on to his next grievance. “Anyways, what about that witch? Nobody told us we’d be traveling with a sorceress that can curse us all with the twitch of a finger.”

  “She’s a licensed mage, by Imperial charter. She’s got every right to join the caravan if she wants to. And to protect herself and us as best she might if trouble comes.”

  “They’re saying that she’s the reason trouble keeps coming. Some white eyed conjurer enemy with a grudge, by all accounts. Why not send her away and we can all have peace?”

  Padavas shook his head. “Look, I’ve been running this caravan for seventeen years, and I traveled with my uncle for twenty before that. I have never abandoned a passenger for no reason. Thieves, molesters, conmen, yes. A brawler or two. Once a whore who delighted to stir the men to knife fights. But so far Lady Mirabelle has only tried to help out here. I didn’t see you running to help Sigroth Sigrothson when he stood alone at the ford – but she did. Look to your own business and tell the folks who sent you here to look to theirs. The caravan is my business.”

  But Padavas the Portly was concerned.

  ***

  “Lady Mirabelle, we need to talk,” Kirkgrim Carrionwake told the beautiful mage once the caravan was rolling again. He hauled himself up into her van, noticing that Fitz and his compatriots had recovered and returned to their duties.

  The lady in white turned to stare at the impudent intruder. “Do we now?”

  Kirkgrim pulled back his gray hood, revealing an unremarkable face topped with tangled brown hair. His eyes were his best feature, filled with mischief and wisdom, which seemed at first a strange combination. He was dressed simply, and only the pouches at his belt betrayed his calling as healer and diviner.

  Mirabelle de Castile, on the other hand, looked anything but ordinary. Clad in a simple kirtle of white cotton, her long silver-black hair trailing loose behind her, her high eyebrows arched in indignation, she was possibly the most spectacular woman Kirkgrim had ever seen. He grinned again.

  “Of course we must talk. There’s more happening than meets the eye, isn’t there? Bandits supported by a mage? An undead army shambling around somewhere? Those are hardly usual encounters on even the most dangerous roads. I can’t help but feel I’m missing a chapter. Possibly the Venetian Chapter of the Illuminati.”

  Mirabelle considered this, and gestured for him to sit on the pallet. A huge ironbound book lay between them. “What do you wish to know, holy Kirkgrim?” she challenged him.

  “They’re after that box you’re carrying,” the Wanderer summarized. “Those poor sods we hung back at the abandoned waystation and at the ford told us that much. They’ve been hired by that one-eyed chap I shut up for a while earlier. He’s a wizard, and he wants something being carried by a Venetian adept.”

  “Adept initiate,” Mirabelle told him. “I’m still an apprentice. I have to fulfill this quest before I’m recognized as a master by the Invisible College.”

  “And the quest is…”

  “Private business of the Invisible College, Kirkgrim Carrionwake.”

  “No, darling. It stopped being private when people started dying. Or when dead men started walking, if that’s true. I don’t care about your order’s secrets much, but I do care that there are over a hundred people traveling in this wagon train who might die because of them.”

  The mage flinched. She reached to the satchel laid across the huge tome beside her and withdrew a small inlaid wooden casket. “My task is to deliver this box, unopened, from Dr Mirabilis of the College at Venice to Dr Pretorius at the College Chapter House in Byzantium. Then I will be affirmed as an adept and can return home to my teacher.”

  “Your teacher sent you to do this quest?” Kirkgrim checked.

  “Lady Merill sent me to the College to be tested. The College Chapter House set the task.”

  “And what is in the box?”

  Mirabelle paused. “I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”

  “Well at least two forces want it very badly, Lady,” Kirkgrim warned, “and they’re killing people because of it. Think about that.” He jumped out of the wagon and went off to walk on his own.

  ***

  Truder the Younger settled comfortably back to his watch once the excitement had died down. Others in the caravan felt the need to gossip and chatter about what was happening. Truder had always preferred a taciturn silence, and his grizzled countenance and unfriendly glower usually meant he could have it. He found himself a good spot to the north of the camp where a twisted tree made a natural leaning post, lit his pipe, and maintained his vigil.

  A corpse-light ball of luminous energy swerved out of the trees, oriented on him, and slammed into his chest, killing him outright without a mark.

  The black-garbed Necromancer stalked out of the darkness to examine his victim. “Excellent,” he hissed. “You will do perfectly, my friend!”

  He opened the dead guard’s mouth and pressed something onto his tongue. He pierced the man’s throat and eyes with black nails, and slid similar slivers of metal under the corpse’s fingernails. Then he intoned a very long ritual, which culminated in him slashing his own palm and allowing the blood to drip down onto Truder’s lips.

  “Orior... Rise,” the Necromancer commanded, and the dead man stood up. Truder now appeared as he had in life. “Excellent,” the dark mage judged. “They will not know you are mine. Now listen to your instructions carefully, my minion…”

  V: On the Dead and the Lost

  “Look at this!” Fitz called to Sigroth, pointing ahead on the narrow trail. “Fred’s found something.”

  The Viking trotted forward to join the guide. “Dead horses?” he puzzled.

  “It’s the three mounts our deserting guards took off with,” Fitz pointed out. “They’ve been ripped to shreds.”

  “Where are the men who took them then?”

  Fitz crawled around, examining the hoofmarks and footprints on the churned-up ground. “I don’t like the probable answer,” he warned, shuddering.

  “Explain,” Sigroth insisted. Being confused made him irritated; and he was confused a lot.

  “I’d say this all happened last night, judging by the softness of the tracks. The deserters rode down here, fast but not hell-for-leather. It was probably getting dark and they’d want to get off the road before it got too late. But not here, where there’s thick unfriendly forest all round for easy ambush. They rounded that corner and plowed straight in to a whole bunch of people blocking the way.”

  “That’s all these footprints.” Even the
big Viking could guess that much.

  “Right. And these horseshoe marks here are where the animals shied. But this is the bit I don’t like, Sigroth…”

  “What?”

  “Well, the people who surrounded the horses walked with a very slow, rolling gait, as if they were off balance. Most of them were barefoot. A few… look at his imprint here, I swear bone was cutting through the flesh of the heel. And this one, missing toes. The animals went crazy – see how they stamped about. One threw his rider here. The others were dragged off there and there. See the blood?”

  “Yes. But I don’t get it. What happened here?”

  The tracker took a breath. “I think these poor beasts were got by those walking dead men that bandit mentioned,” he told the Viking. “And I think their riders may have joined that unhappy band.”

  “Really?” Sigroth looked around, hefting his axe in case any revenant should chance to still be lurking on the forest road.

  “Either that or the dead are really hungry.” Fitz shivered. The dense forest seemed to press in around him.

  Sigroth furrowed his brow with the effort of thought. “Your pig can smell trails and things, right?”

  “That is correct,” admitted the guide. “Old Fred’s pretty reliable really,” he added, scratching the pig’s ears.

  “And dead people are really smelly, aren’t they?”

  “You think we should track them?” Fitz wondered. “Perhaps find their daytime resting place and destroy them as they sleep?”

  “Well, we’re going to have to hit them sooner or later,” reasoned the Viking. Then he continued plaintively, “And I haven’t hit anything with my axe since yesterday at the ford.”

  “Let’s have a word with Padavas and Santar,” Fitz suggested. “And Kirkgrim. Always good to have a priest about when there’s necromancy in the air.” He left the Viking looking up at the skies in a puzzled manner and went to formulate a plan.

  ***

  “What’s the delay this time?” Alfosus the Slaver demanded as Santar signaled all the wagons to stop.

  “Trouble down the road, from what Davidus of Tessera was told by Padavas,” answered Rhodin. “Rest your animals. We might have to make camp here if we can’t move before nightfall.”