Black River

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Sands

  Heroes

  Apprentice

  Begging

  Heavies

  Market

  Return North

  Witch

  Tryr

  Strongman

  Road

  Remembrance

  Bogs

  Killers of the North

  Cullan

  Mead hall

  Old Men

  Nothing More Than Dogs

  Edge of Empire

  Raising the Dead

  Rumor of Dark Magic

  The Work of the Chronicler

  The Deserter

  Aftermath

  Justio's tale

  Refugees

  Call of Birgid

  Gathering of the Band

  The Prisoner

  Promise

  Crossing the River

  No Return

  Beyond the Fires

  Escape

  Decimated Village

  In the Mists

  Prisoner Again

  Monsters

  The Boy

  Split

  Blood Price

  Return

  Both Worlds

  Lake's End

  Escape

  Parents

  Eliode

  Embrace

  Dark Woods

  Infiltrate

  Patch

  Healing

  Reunion

  Lost

  Dogs of the North

  Song in the Mists

  The Tower

  Battle

  Unraveling

  Change

  Refusal

  Running

  Blood of the North

  After the Witch

  Doubts

  Trap

  The Steps

  No Words Left

  Last of the Hounds

  About the Author

  Special Gift to My Readers

  BLACK RIVER

  Peter Fugazzotto

  Copyright © 2014 Peter Fugazzotto

  All rights reserved.

  PROLOGUE

  CRAXIUS HEARD WORDS in the river.

  At first, he thought it was the other Dhurman soldiers from the fortress laughing about the ambush. Then he was sure that it was the whispers of a band of Northerners sneaking up on the encampment of soldiers. Finally, he heard children singing.

  But it was only the water rushing against the stones.

  Craxius blew into his cold, cupped hands. He was too old to be on these patrols. The afternoon light had already paled and the cold descended beneath the gray skies. They should have left him with those holding the fortress.

  He stared across the Black River, back towards Cullan, the fort, the shacks that spread out from it, the docks.

  One of his prisoners moaned.

  Craxius cursed his poor luck. At his age, he at least should have been sitting around the campfires passing a bottle of wine with the others. But the fat sergeant singled him out, telling him that he had the first watch of the prisoners. It wasn't fair that the oldest among them had to sit so far from the fires and the wine. Not fair at all.

  "Shut up your mouth," said Craxius to the prisoner.

  "Water." The clansman was a bloody ruin. His furs had been torn from him so he lay pale in the mud and sharp grasses. One of his eyes was lost behind black and swollen flesh. Even stripped of his furs and spears, he still looked fierce.

  Craxius had never gotten used to the thick blonde beards and woad-painted faces of the clansmen. It brought back memories of the war. The fear should have been gone. Empire had long ago yoked the North and quelled the clans.

  Or at least it had for a generation.

  But now the soldiers at Cullan town increasingly were called out by the Dhurman settlers beyond the Black River to ferret out raiding parties. The clans were pushing back against the movement of the settlers across the river, the understood line of peace. But Empire was growing and the settlers needed land.

  "Water," the clansman said again.

  A half dozen prisoners survived the ambush. The others had died beneath sword and spear. Craxius himself had hung back at the rear of the shield wall, pressing against the backs of those before him. He had seen enough fighting to know to stay in the rear. Let the young be the fools.

  The clansmen had been led into the trap by their own people: the Northern gang who controlled the docks at Cullan. Those treacherous Northmen, led by the bald headed one, were the first to turn and sink their blades into their fellow clansmen.

  The North was consuming itself just as it had a generation before.

  "I got no water," said Craxius. "And I got no wine. So shut up."

  "So thirsty." The other prisoners nodded, hands heavy in their shackles.

  "Getting a drink is the last thing you should be worried about." Craxius laughed.

  "Have you no honor?"

  "Just shut up already."

  Craxius suddenly realized that he would die in the North. He would never return to the streets of the immortal city of Empire: Vas Dhurma. He would never again walk along the slow rivers of the South and the wide meadows of daisies. He should have sold the stolen silver necklace right away instead of holding onto it. But he thought that he could return home with it as a gift. Would it have been better to rot in that prison than to have accepted his exile to the North?

  The mists turned into a light rain and the landscape of heather-covered hills and distant peaks blackened.

  When it was dark, he was relieved of his duty. He hurried to the fires and wine. But the fires had died down and the wine bottles were strewn across the cold ground. So he squeezed into a tent shivering beneath the wool blanket.

  Dawn brought only a faded sky and visible breath. The camp was broken quickly. By the time they reached the spot where they would ford the Black River to cross back to the fortress in Cullan, the sun had broken through the clouds.

  Craxius lifted his face to the warmth. He closed his eyes and for a moment imagined himself home, the sweet songs of the tame Southern rivers bubbling in his ears.

  The prisoners screamed and cursed. The Northern thugs moved among them, kicking their feet from beneath them, and stabbing them in their chests.

  "Their heads," said Urbidis from atop his horse. The shard of sun, blindingly bright, reflected off his chest plate.

  The bald leader of the thugs, the one called Spear Spyrchylde, hesitated, muttering something too softly for Craxius to hear.

  Urbidis, the commander of the fortress at Cullan, tossed a bag and it jingled as it landed at the feet of the Northman. The bald man picked up the coins and tucked it into his vest.

  The Northern thugs worked quickly, the big one using an axe to remove the heads, the others driving them onto the poles on the banks of the river. A dozen heads turned north, a warning to those who would challenge Empire.

  Craxius hurried past the heads and stepped into the icy Black River, shocked by the cold.

  Alongside him strode the bald Northman, the sound of the coins rattling against his chest rising above the din of the river, and the Northman strode forward smiling as if unaffected by the river, as if he felt nothing.

  SANDS

  SAND LIFTED IN a great gust forcing Shield Scyldmund to close his eyes.

  He strained to hear something that would guide him.

  The fine particles blasted against his skin, sharp, at the edge of pain. The sand hissed as it slithered beneath the dented rings of his armor, twisted into his graying beard, and lodged itself into the wrinkles that masked his eyes. These fierce sands wore down city walls, witnessed the fall of kingdoms, tore the skin from corpses. />
  When Shield opened his eyes again, nothing had changed.

  The Brothers Bull still lay dead beneath the earth, the mounds that echoed their bodies fading. With each swirl, the tiny grains of sand erased the grave mounds as if the two giant brothers had never existed.

  How soon before the memory of them would be wiped from the lands?

  Shield had wanted to burn his fallen sword brothers after the battle, so they could ride to the heavens on the black smoke, but what was there to burn here in desert Hopht: stone and sand?

  At least their bodies would not be torn to bits by the jackals and vultures. At least the unrelenting sand offered that.

  Shield Scyldmund, clansman of the North, lingered, worn out and bloody, over the two graves. The eyes of his companion Harad bore into him. Shield could feel Harad's desire that his leader speak of the Hounds of the North, and reassure him of their place as heroes in the world, of their destiny to wipe out dark magic from the world. This is what Shield had promised them.

  But Shield could find no words.

  Twenty long years.

  Nothing to do but stare at his shadow stretched over men he led into death.

  "I am ready to go," said Harad Hammerhand. The sand stuck to his heavily sweating face, peppering his fiery red beard. Despite the heat and sun, the big Northman wore a thinning wool cloak over his shoulders, superstitious about revealing his armor.

  "A few more moments, then we'll gather the others and back to camp," said Scyldmund.

  "No, Shield, I am ready to go." Harad's hammer, blood splattered, rested head down in the sand between his feet.

  "Not going to abandon me now after all the years, are you?" Scyldmund had seen so many of the Hounds of the North leave over the years, for the most part on their backs, faithful to him and their clans, even on fields of blood worlds away. And Harad was the most faithful, always had been.

  Some of the other Hounds, like Patch, stayed faithful to the bags of coins for each job completed. Now with the jobs dwindling, Shield wondered whether he would be able to keep them together.

  "We've been gone for a lifetime," said Harad.

  Scyldmund nodded. Through a gap in the granite outcroppings, the Hophtian city on the desert plain below unfurled in black smoke.

  Even from this distance, he could follow the straight line of refugees – the tottering wagons, the overloaded camels, the women in blue robes dragging and carrying their children, the old men leaning on their staffs for one last look at their fallen city. Already, a cohort had raised the red eagle banners of Empire of Dhurma on the city walls laying claim to the last city of rebellious Hopht.

  The war was over, the God King dead, but blood lust still needed to be released. Empire's legionnaires would run wild.

  The night before when the whispers of the death of the God King rattled through the legion that surrounded the walled city, and even as the Northmen readied themselves, Cassius, their Dhurman handler, had pulled Shield and the Hounds from those surging through the poorly defended city walls: there was a special job for which he needed his magic hunters.

  But Cassius also wanted to remove the Hounds from the chaos of the pillaging and the rumors of knives being slipped into the backs of the clansmen, the hated dogs from the North.

  In the pitch black, Cassius with their guide Semir had led them to this rise outside the city to help a Chronicler hunt down the rumor of a witch.

  Shield looked one last time at the graves of the Brothers Bull and followed the game trail back up to where the others sheltered against the sand and sun.

  "I really want to go back home, Shield," said Harad again, his boots kicking stones as he followed his leader.

  Shield Scyldmund shrugged. "You going right now?"

  "Of course not. But I want to return home, the wide fields, a wife." He patted his shoulder bag beneath his cloak, his palm giving a solid thump to the book. "There are things we need to bring back to our people. A power that can be ours."

  One of the other Hounds, Night, a shadow against the granite stones, cleared his throat.

  In the shade of the rocks, what remained of the witch hunting party huddled about a small fire, the meat of a scrawny hare sizzling and popping over the flames. Shield looked over those that had survived the fighting: the Hounds – Night, Cook, Patch, Hawk – two Dhurman legionnaires, and Semir, the skirted Hophtian scout with his painted eyes, who sat apart, face hidden in hands speckled in the blood of his own people.

  Harad shook his head. "What's left of the Hounds? I don't want to be buried beneath this damned sand. I want to cross the Black River one more time, feel my feet sink into the earth from which we were spawned and return my soul to our land."

  Patch, seated by the fire with Cook hunched over his shoulder, laughed. His one eye glinting in the light, the other half of his face, scarred and eyeless, lost in shadow. "Not so easy to bury a big oaf like you. All those fucking stones in the earth. Hard enough to dig a small hole. Forgot about that. Plus where we going to get coin in the North? We chase the coin."

  The others laughed, too – the last of the Hounds of the North – the last of the original two dozen reckless marauding youth that had begun their adventures some twenty years ago beyond the Black River, following the swords of their leaders Shield and Spear, back in the time when Empire was only a whisper in the wind and the clan raiders ruled the bogs and hills of heather.

  Back in a time before the magic and treachery of the Warlock King drove Shield into blood red rage.

  Shield wondered what path Spear had taken, whether his one-time companion and sworn sword brother still ran wild in the North.

  "He just wants a wife to rub his feetsies," said Cook.

  "That's not what we he wants his wife to rub," Patch said, his face scrunching up in laughter around the cracked leather eye patch.

  Cook stooped over Patch. Cook's fat fingers cleaned out a gash on the top of Patch blonde head where one of the witch's Hophtian guards had breeched the Northman's defense. Patch grimaced and whined.

  "Stop moving around or I'll sew your ear to the side of your head."

  "Should have named you Butcher instead of Cook."

  "What about you, Shield?" asked Harad. "No desire to return home?"

  Shield shook his head. "I can't imagine myself returning to work the land or fish the rivers or walk with goats." But even as he said those words his stomach twisted with embodied memories of the vast valleys of grass, the mists rising from the bogs, and the endless untamed forests north of the snow-capped highlands. "There is still magic to be quelled. Warlocks and witches to be silenced."

  "And we'll lend our blades," said Hawk.

  "As long as there is coin," said Patch. "And plenty of it." The others nodded and grunted approval, all but Harad who bit his lower lip.

  "You stick with us, Harad," said Shield. "The Hounds of the North would be nothing without Harad."

  "The Hounds of North are six now. How much longer will our luck hold out? What next after this? Hopht has fallen."

  "We return to the lovely city of Vas Dhurma for a spell. Wine, women, a bit of brawling perhaps. Just what Patch has been begging for. We soak in the baths, we sleep in late, we get our feet rubbed, and then we wait for the next charge. We are the Hounds of the North."

  "Not so sure Empire has much need for us anymore. They kept us back, just like they did during this whole campaign."

  "Saving the best for last," said Hawk. His sword, as tall as he was, rested between his legs and on his shoulder. "Why you getting this way, Harad?"

  "We're running out time, you little fool. We're no longer the bulls of our youth running wild on the fields of heather. Gray hair, wrinkles, injuries that never fully heal. We don't lead the charge for Empire anymore. We were not the ones sent in to assassinate the God King and his warlocks. We're clean up. We murder old men and girls. We're expendable."

  "She was a fucking witch," said Patch. "Don't care how old she was."

  "Sit still, you
idiot," said Cook, "or I'll just tear your ear off and be done with this."

  "Enough," said Shield."

  "We were faithful, but to what?" said Harad. "Our conquerors?"

  Night's fist shot up by his head and the Hounds silenced themselves, hands to spears and shields. Footsteps crunched in granite and sand. From a narrow passage in the stones, Cassius emerged, the fading afternoon sun blinding against his segmented Dhurman armor. He pulled his red plumed helmet from his head and squatted beside Shield. A dirty trail along his smooth cheek told a story of sweat and grime, the life of a soldier in the field, even if that soldier was a heralded Captain of the Ninth Legion.

  "Everything good here?"

  "Yes, Captain."

  Cassius tugged at the red tunic beneath his armor, then buffed his helm with a corner of loose fabric. "If it were up to me, Northmen, we would bring you into the ranks of the legions. Gods know you men deserve it. But I'm just another soldier in the army of Empire. Faithful, sworn by blood to country and emperor. You are more than just barbarian mercenaries to me, and, on my word, I will do all I can in my power to do right by you. You deserve it."

  The Hounds mumbled and nodded, eyes returning to weapons or staring at the dark cave of death in the boulder strewn ravine below, all except Harad who shook his head and said, "Just want to be done with this, out of the infernal heat and sand, back to the heather and green hills. There I belong."

  Cassius begged Shield away from the others, back into the maze of stones to where the Chronicler sat on a stone. The old man squinted with his pale eyes. His thick yellowed nails, reminiscent of a dog, traced a spiral in the leather bound box, his Keeper of Tongues. Lips sneered past his long white beard. He was still angry that Shield had killed the witch before her words could be caught on vellum.

  Cassius, speaking to Shield, bent his head towards the old man wrapped in his white robe. "You did right. We got the witch's tongue."

  Shield fought back the memories of the dank cave, the skulls on the wall, the dark skinned Hophtian guards raised from the dead coming at them hard, the curtain liquid with the night sky. When he had emerged from that chamber after all that bloodshed, the head of the witch in his hand, the head of that young girl, he had nearly pitched to his knees in front of the others.