Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial

Arc 5: Chapter 2: Costs

This ugly hunt had been a distraction. And a message.

For two weeks the Hammer Ward, a poorer district mostly populated by lower tier guild houses and workshops, had been inundated with cases of murder and arson. The court had suspected the Carmine Killer returned after weeks of silence, or perhaps more rioting from Priory sympathizers. I had investigated, and soon realized what we were dealing with.

My leather boots slapped at the slick stone of the sewer tunnel as I moved fast as I dared, trying to remember the proper path. Karog lumbered behind me, his gait making me think he instinctively wanted to drop to all fours. With his cleaver in one hand and the big lantern in the other, he could not.

Neither of us spoke, our pace too quick and the treacherous tunnel occupying all our attention. Once again, Karog spotted the threat before I did.

“Something ahead,” he huffed.

I heard it a moment later. Claws scraping on stone, along with the sound of harsh, squealing voices. Like pigs, or…

Their shapes coalesced ahead, lurching, shaggy and course, with bright red eyes bloated into tortured looking spheres.

Rats. Woed rats.

Each was half as large as a full grown man, mangy and gaunt, covered in cancerous protrusions of sharp bone. They swarmed forward, letting out eager cries only superficially like the creature they resembled as they spotted us. They crawled over one another in their fervor to get forward, their scabby mouths foaming.

The nearest leapt, moving with uncanny speed. I sidestepped, almost going into the stew as the slick stone betrayed me, and fouled my cut. I took one of the woed’s twisted forelimbs instead of cleaving its skull, sending a spray of blood in an arc across the floor.

Karog finished it, ramming his machete into the huge rat’s gut while it was still airborne. It scrabbled, enraged and snapping. The ogre sneered before hurling it into the sewer water.

There were plenty more. I righted myself, cursing at the cramped environment. The rats filled the tunnel ahead, no doubt sent by the chorn to waylay us. It confirmed my suspicion about its goal.

“I’m going to cut through them,” I said. Karog didn’t reply. I had to hope he’d heard.

I lifted Faen Orgis in front of my face, almost as though saluting, and amber aureflame burned within the oak branch’s cracks. It gave the hooked blade a brassy sheen as well, making it shimmer as I swept it to my right, ducking low.

I shot forward, the metal rings of my hauberk rattling. The woed beasts bore down on me, crazed eyes forming a sickly constellation, their bodies pressed so close they were nearly one solid mass. They weren’t demons. Not truly. Just poor, sick animals the demon had twisted to its purposes.

Would that have been my fate, I wondered? Perhaps the thought colored some of the hatred, and the revulsion, that went into my clenched muscles.

I clove one nearly in half in a flickering arc of soul fire as I swept my axe overhand. I cut the next, and the next, teeth clenched against the stink of burning, filthy fur and rancid blood. Karog let out a bellow as he barreled into the mass behind me, keeping the rats from surrounding us.

One landed on me, claws digging into the gaps in my coat of iron rings, its buck teeth going for my neck. I stumbled back, momentum halted by its weight. This let another go for my legs. I’d reinforced my shins with steel, but I didn’t wear full plate.

With a shout, I hurled the one on my chest into the wall. My whole body surged with aureflame, reinforcing my natural strength. The creature’s bones cracked as it hit the oily stone. I rammed the sharp point of wood at my axe handle’s base into the one below me, puncturing its brain. Even that didn’t kill it instantly, as it continued trying to gnaw on my greave even as its legs spasmed.

I kicked that one away, pulling my weapon free just in time to take the lower jaw off a particularly huge beast plowing toward me like a bloody eyed boar. It even had tusks like one, which I shattered in a spray of cutting shards. I went around it, wincing as bits of tooth struck me, letting it ram into the piling bodies. It would bleed out quick enough.

Some of my own blood ran down my temple where a shard of tusk had stuck. I plucked it out, glaring into the tunnel ahead.

Just like that, it was over. I had some scrapes and was out of breath, but little worse. Karog had killed more than half the things while I’d carved a path through the swarm’s center. His machete dripped dark blood into the trench.

Wasted time. I started moving without a word, Karog lumbering into step behind me.

Not far ahead, the tunnel widened into a chamber ending in a culvert. Drain water poured in a narrow waterfall into the central trench of the chamber, feeding fresh rain into the sludge.

My squire waited for us there. Eighteen, slim and dark haired with avian brown eyes, she wore a shirt of chain mail under a thigh-length tunic. She was wet from rain runoff and had a foul expression on her face, but seemed otherwise unharmed.

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Fifty feet. “Emma!” I shouted, slowing.

Her eyes shot up, then narrowed to make me out. She would only be able to see the distant light of Karog’s lantern, the rest of the light coming through the drain pipe from the street above. She had her sword, a long saber made for war with a slight curve and an ornate hilt, drawn and held in her right hand. Ready for trouble.

She opened her mouth to say something, but I didn’t hear it. I called out again, but the sewer tunnel seemed to swallow my words, making them hollow and short lived.

I realized that Emma seemed to be getting further away even as I speed-walked toward her. Like a bad dream where you try to run to the end of a long tunnel even as it kept stretching out before you.

The chorn had beaten us here.

“EMMA!” I roared. She called something back, but I only heard a distant tinny echo.

Something began to emerge from the water in the trench below where Emma stood. Long, pale arms stretching up like some ghostly mermaid out of a fetid lagoon.

I began to concentrate on the same dispelling Art I’d used to destroy this trick before. No time, I realized. Phantasms needed time to form into the right shape along with the proper ritual motions, or they’d be useless for their intended purpose. Just pretty glowing mist and light.

I kept moving, breaking into a sprint. The sound of the tunnel turned surreal. My heavy breaths, my beating heart, the clinking rings of my armor overly loud in my ears. The fear struck me like a hammer.

I’d known Emma less than half a year, and she wasn’t always the easiest to get along with, but…

Damn it. She was my responsibility, my ward and apprentice. I had accepted her into my life. I’d fought with her, bantered with her. We’d talked for hours over crackling campfires and kept one another company on winding roads. I’d grown used to her being around, to her acidic temper, her sharp wit, her fickle moods.

I’d let so many people down. Not again. I forced my legs to move faster, muscles screaming with effort. I let out another shout.

But she only kept getting further away. I heard the demon laugh in the darkness, its voice all around me.

Emma stepped forward, confused why I wasn’t getting any closer. She said something else. The chorn pulled itself out of the water, seeming in no hurry. Its pale, blank eyes shone in the tunnel’s gloom, no sign of the woman body now except for those arms emerging from its cloak of dirty hair.

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It was right behind her. I couldn’t warn her. I shouted again, voice cracking, but the warped tunnel ate my voice.

Emma Orley might be many things. She can be haughty, conceited, even cruel. She had been raised by a woman who was in turn raised by a truly evil tyrant, and mentored by wicked faeries and a fallen angel. She stuck at my side, and I knew I could hardly be called a positive role model.

What she wasn’t was a fool, or defenseless. Emma saw my expression, my haste, and her hawkish eyes widened in understanding. She said something again, but not to me.

To the being lurking in her shadow.

The chorn swept out with its spindly claws to grab Emma and drag her down into the water. Instead, something flickered out of the darkness and struck it. Both that blurring shape and the demon went into the shadows, vanishing from my sight.

A moment later, the chorn’s spell broke. Normal sound crashed in, and I moved into the culvert chamber huffing for breath and tense with fear.

A horrible, high pitched yowl echoed off the walls. It sounded very much like the sound an angry cat would make, only much louder and deeper. The noise made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end in a way even the chorn’s presence hadn’t.

“Are you alright?” I asked Emma as I stomped up to her. My heart pounded in my chest.

Emma’s amber eyes were fixed on the shadows, wide and unblinking as a bird of prey’s, but they flicked to me with a mechanical motion. “Yes. What about you? You’re covered in blood.”

I heard Karog stomp up behind, not looking much better. I focused my attention on the corner of the chamber where the horrible sound emanated from.

“Qoth,” Emma explained, though I’d already guessed the second creature in that patch of darkness to be her familiar. Even my golden eyes couldn’t pierce the supernatural gloom where the two monsters fought.

The noise continued for over a minute, then ceased with a jarring abruptness. All three of us tensed, waiting to see what would crawl out of the darkness.

When Qoth had appeared, I’d only caught a brief glimpse of him in motion. However, I felt certain he’d been in his feline form, a huge black cat with long limbs and a spindly tail. When he emerged however, it was in his elven shape as a short, thin man with long gray hair and a frayed nobleman’s robe worn loose. The garment dragged on the damp stones, torn in many places, and Qoth walked with a notable limp. In his loose fingers he held a leaf bladed sword left to scrape along the floor.

The sword was drenched in dark, steaming blood.

The Briar Elf looked haggard, meeting none of our gazes until he drew near the pipe leading up to the street. Then, in a hoarse voice he said, “I am tired. Do not call on me again until I’ve had rest.”

Without another word, the elf stepped into the current of relatively clean rainwater and wan daylight spilling below the pipe, and vanished.

Emma sighed. “He’s gone into the Wend. I think he’s cross with me.”

I hefted my axe up onto one shoulder. “You can rarely fight demons without cost. He probably needs to return to his own sanctuary to make sure the wounds don’t linger.”

The itching scars over my left eye acted as a constant reminder of that risk.

Emma saw the state of me and grimaced. “Don’t tell me you’re going to make me clean all that.”

Despite everything, I felt a smile threaten the corner of my lip. I’d almost lost her. If I had…

I would have become a worse man for it, I think. I suppressed the smile and spoke with dour seriousness. “Of course. It’s a squire’s duty to clean her knight’s armor.”

Emma let out a despairing sigh. “Lovely.”

“If we’re finished,” Karog rumbled, “I need to return to the Drains. This business took up enough time. I must report.”

I nodded, and the ogre began to climb out of the sloping pipe feeding water into the sewer tunnel. I glanced at the spot where the demon and wicked faerie had scrapped. It had seemed a hollow of almost physical darkness at the time. Now it was just an ordinary corner of the room. Gory, unrecognizable remains splattered the floor and walls in a steaming mess.

Clerics would be needed to cleanse that, though I suspected the damage the chorn had done to the ecosystem below the city streets would take months to deal with. Perhaps years.

It had just been one. And I was no closer to finding its big brother.

I waited on the street above the sewer entrance for an hour, sitting on the edge of a fountain in a small square. Emma lurked in an alley nearby, using the roof of a building to keep dry. I let the rain wash off the filth of the sewers.

Emma had returned my cloak. The deep red garment, woven by Qoth’s people, kept dry on the inside even in the steady downpour. The rain wasn’t so cold as it had been in past weeks, one of many signs of the summer fast approaching. It should have left me shivering even so, but I wasn’t often cold thanks to the blessed fire woven into me.

This was how the guard found me. The clicks of iron-shod talons echoed off the square as a small contingent of mounted soldiers came down the street. They wore the yellow livery of Garihelm’s regulars and rode cockatrices, large raptors favored by Reynish soldiery.

The leader of the band didn’t wear Reynish yellow, but instead an ornate set of white-green armor fashioned into the shape of ridged sea shells, one pauldron forming a spiral above one shoulder. A cape the color of sea foam kept the knight’s gear relatively dry.

The leader dismounted from her chimera and stomped over to me, sabatons clacking through the rain. She doffed her helmet in a single smooth motion, the curved two-hander on her back rattling dangerously as she fixed me with a scowl.

Ser Kaia Gorr, the Empress’s First Sword and leader of her household guard, was a big woman with nearly as many scars as me. She kept her ash colored hair shaved on the sides, forming a martial swoop that shadowed her right eye. Her voice had a faint accent common in the northern isles, clipped and guttural.

“You were supposed to wait for us to close off this area,” she snapped. “I hadn’t even gotten my men into the sewers.”

I shrugged, little energy left to argue. I sat on the edge of the fountain still, my axe propped head down. I felt tired, sore, and wanted a proper bath even despite the rain. I wouldn’t have minded a meal, though the horror down below the spot I presently sat remained too fresh for food to sound appealing.

“Well?” Kaia demanded. “What do you have to report?”

Karog had vanished already. He hadn’t been here on behalf of the Imperial court, but for his own people down in the slums. No doubt he’d gone to report our success to Parn and his people.

I had people to answer to as well. Kaia Gorr was not one of them. Yet, I had enough enemies.

I stood, and immediately felt the tension of the mounted guardsmen like a prickling electricity in the air. Their mounts shifted, beaks and talons clicking as they sensed the nervousness of their riders. The soldiers watched me from the shadows of their helms, hands lingering close to their weapons.

Ignoring them, I spoke to the royal knight. “The creature is dead. My squire finished it off.” No need to explain about the familiar. It was Emma’s creature, so she got the credit.

Kaia narrowed her eyes and glanced toward where Emma lingered nearby. The girl gave a condescending little finger wave, smirking. The Empress’s champion snorted.

“There were mutant rats down there,” I added. “I’d have your guards sweep the tunnels in number, probably arm them with spears and crossbows. Woed are hard to kill, but not so hard as demons. Have a clericon soak their weapons in holy water, maybe send some who have a useful battle Art. Aura hurts them bad as anything.”

Kaia nodded thoughtfully. “Was it him? The Carmine Killer?”

When I shook my head, she cursed savagely in her own language. Then she did it in the common speech for good measure.

“More than a year and this thing still eludes us,” she spat bitterly. “And now there are more of them? Where are they all coming from?”

A good question. One I was still trying to figure out an answer to.

“The gargoyles on the city walls and churches should be preventing them from crossing into the city easily,” I said. “The whole capital should have a strong threshold too, being a cathedral city. It’s a veritable fortress against the profane.”

They managed to infiltrate Elfhome, I reminded myself. And the Blessed Country was far better guarded.

Kaia glowered into the rain. “Well, they are here. Aren’t you supposed to be some expert at hunting them, Headsman?”

My turn to glare. “It’s a large city, not even counting everything below the lagoon. If we could convince the court to provision an expedition into the Undercity…”

Kaia snorted. “With the summit still ongoing? There’s a gaggle of monarchs in town, Hewer. The Emperor can’t afford to show weakness by gutting his garrison for some foray into the crypts.”

She clapped a gauntleted hand on my shoulder. “It’s your job to hunt this thing. I can’t spare men to help you every time. Priory sympathizers are still instigating violence every day, and there are hundreds of knights here for the tournament from other realms, some of them from one still technically at war with us.”

I hadn’t forgotten about Talsyn. Even still, I clenched my jaw in frustration.

Kaia met my eyes evenly, where most would wince or squint at the glint of light in them. “You want to provision resources for your monster hunt? Convince the Emperor. Her Grace has enough on her plate trying to calm tensions down from your stunt last month.”

I winced. The city still reeled from the outbreak of violence following my raid on Rose Malin, the base of operations for the Priory of the Arda and stronghold of the Inquisition. I had delivered a sentence of execution to the Grand Prior, but there had been dramatic repercussions.

Rosanna Silvering, the Empress of the Accorded Realms as well as my former liege lady and friend, had spent years trying to keep conflicts between the radical factions of the Church and the noble Houses from flaring into bloodshed. I had ruined all those efforts in a night. I’d had good reasons, and perhaps stopped something worse. Even still…

Rosanna hadn’t spoken to me since. I’d had to get Kaia to help with the chorn hunt as a favor, and I suspected the knight would not hesitate to call that in.

I nodded. “I’ll speak with the Emperor.”

Kaia snorted again, this time with even more derision. “Good luck getting a word in with him. We’re less than a week from it now, you know.”

I blinked. Had it really snuck up on us so fast? I caught Emma’s excited expression, though she coughed and looked away when she saw my sour look.

“The damned tournament,” I growled. I had enough problems already.