Book 6: Chapter 25 - The Sword of Dread (RAW)

“Only two roads lead to power: one is paved with untouched corpses, the other with unburied friends. True power is always attained through sacrifice, and better this be the sacrifice of strangers than your own.”

- Atraban Qahtani, Meditations on Crown and Sword 237 A.C.

After the debacle with the boys, it was ironically easier to slot the two elven girls into the daily running of… well, me, as they took their place. We were two people down, after all. And since they had proven trustworthy enough to return to me my valuable swords, I doubted they would run off with them now. A part of me found it somehow oddly convenient how fate arranged things. As for Cordelia, she drifted in and out, here and there. We did not speak much, but I felt her sometimes looking at me, her expression watchful and judging. To this day, the warrior woman disturbed me more than I cared to admit.

The dark elven sisters, despite the menial nature of their tasks, did not complain, or at least did not complain within earshot of me. Until recently, I had not realized just how much support an armored, mounted warrior required. There was the daily care of Theodore, the inspection of my armor and weapons, the logistics of day-to-day affairs, the financial side of things—dozens of responsibilities, all now handled by others. It made me almost wish for simpler times.

Still, it was a small price to pay for the raw power I could bring to any conflict. And though I didn’t fraternize with the men, my mere presence seemed to have a positive effect. They had seen me fight—not for coin, not for some Great Holder House—but for the honor of one of their own. One of their officers. And I think, in its own quiet way, that meant something to the common soldiery.

We made good the rest of the journey to Narilmu without issue. The guards at the western gate proved no fools: sellswords entered three at a time, ten trios to each bell or turn of the glass. A good precaution, but it did not matter in the long run. Records were fudged, bribes exchanged, and slowly and surely, scores of Mercenaries had infiltrated the city. 

Narilmu itself was a miniature version of Al‑Lazar, but without the excessive opulence. No mother‑of‑pearl tiles caught the sun, nor did gilded statues crowd every square. Yet the architecture of its white‑washed arches and striking domes spoke the same southern tongue, if in a quieter voice. Its folk walked with an easy grace, bartering loud and laughing louder, free of Al‑Lazar’s tight reserve and untouched by the hollow‑cheeked desperation of the City of Dust.  

Seeing the forest of masts crowding Narilmu’s quays, I needed no ledger to judge its wealth. High-sided northern cogs, bluff-bowed and square-sailed, rode low. Broad-bellied carracks in the colors of the rainbow loomed beside them, their towering stern castles hung with painted gods and monsters. Slim lateen-rigged caravels navigating through the deep harbor, decks piled high with bales, lacquered chests, and living cargo. A plethora of local coasters, fat-keeled salt boats, and fish luggers came and went, weaving through the larger vessels. Narilmu was, beyond dispute, the picture of a thriving, healthy city built on maritime trade.

Damien lost no time. Through his scarred sergeants, he gathered fifty fresh recruits in as many hours, and I knew he meant to swell the ranks sixfold before we marched again. Seeing that we were well-disciplined and meant well, Narilmu’s councillors, pleased to see their purses grow, kept the gates unbarred.

The Pasha Teshik was gladder still. He opened his gaols, sweeping thieves and beggars into our ranks like rubbish from a courtyard. De Savant accepted every one of them, grinning as though he had found silver in a midden.

The training fields outside the walls rang from dawn to dusk. Sergeants cursed and cuffed the green recruits, shaping them into something that might one day hold a line. There were many who tried to escape this new life, and those who bolted were dragged back in chains and flogged within an inch of their life only to be restored with Health potions. We had taken in many criminals, and the ones who stole before fleeing were nailed to timber crosses, bait for the hungry seabirds.

The path to rehabilitation was ever the thorny one.

After a week spent planning how to surround and infiltrate the fortified keep of the local lord, the perfect opportunity presented itself. The Pasha announced a feast for the Festival of the Stars and Sea and summoned Damien and his officers to dine with him. Also, under the cover of the festival, we had a greater invitation to slip even more of the men into the city’s veins.

Now, I found myself in the command tent of our company, plotting with the officers around a round table with a rough map of the city on it on how best to go about this side quest.

“You will go alone and deliver my apologies to Pasha Teshik while we bottle up his keep. You said you only needed to be able to enter, yes? Then do what you do best, while we make sure no one escapes,” he ordered of me, his voice even and frank.

“What terms will you offer this Teshik? A cornered rat fights hardest and all that drivel.”

“Terms?” He smiled, thin and cold. “If he lays his head upon the block and his kin forswear their claims, we will, by the laws of this land, have to preserve the rest. That will be the only thing the Sultana will see as a fulfillment of the directive of our contract. But I doubt he would agree to that, lest he be a saint or such. The men will not like having the chance of booty taken away from them, but they like less the chance of dying in an assault against a fortified position.”

“What if, by some divine miracle, I convince Lord Teshik to embrace the path of noble self-sacrifice?” I asked, the words dressed in jest, laughter light on my lips.

“Then bring us his head,” Damien replied, his voice flat as hammered iron. “We’ll see it salted, perfumed, and sent with all due ceremony to the Sultana’s emissary. A fine gesture, though I suspect it will do little to please her. When one takes the reins of power, there is wisdom only in the extremes—mercy to rival that of a saint, a statement of power, or ruthlessness so complete it leaves no tongues wagging. Anything between is seen as weakness.”

He leaned back, the candlelight catching on the silver thread of his sleeve. “Still, do as you will. Dance to whatever tune the Divines have no doubt strung for you, for I do not think we will ever in the service of the Salahaem again. That road is closed.”

“She bears no grudge against you,” I said, careful now. “Her quarrel lies with me, and me alone.” Even as I spoke, my mind wandered, tallying the blood I might spill in Teshik’s keep should he prove less than grateful for our “generous” terms.

That drew a chuckle from the men around the table. Damien’s officers grinned like wolves in a dark wood. I felt the heat rise in my chest and considered, for the briefest moment, if a lesson in manners might be in order. A painful one.

But Damien only smiled, that disarming boyish smile that he wore when it suited him. “No offence meant,” he said, “but the world does not revolve around your tiff with the Lady Aelayah, however grand it might feel to you. Hers is an issue with us. We are a potential future inconvenience, bearers of truths better left unknown. A stain in the new history she no doubt wishes to write. We know too much. Not enough to merit steel in the gut, but enough to make our absence more than desirable.”

“In war,” he continued, “there are certain tasks you dare not ask your own people to carry out, especially if they are against your own people. That’s where we had come in, and why we must also go.”

“Then perhaps we are kin in our rejection,” I said, finding a grim humor in it. “You and I, cast out by the same woman in power.”

Damien chuckled weakly at this. 

Despite myself, I found my lips curling into an approximation of a smile. “And revolve, you say? I had you pegged for one of those who thought the world flat.”

“It has been known for thousands of years that the world is round,” Al‑Sinwar interjected with a wry smile. “Though in the far northern wastes, some still shout to the skies that it lies flat as a dining board.”

“If memory serves,” Damien added, “some old philosopher in Quas proved it with a pair of sticks and a keen eye. His name is lost to me, but not his method.”

“Then let us leave the shape of the world to scholars,” I said, shifting the tone. “What I want to know is how we’ll go about ending the Pasha Teshik’s reign. The particulars, if you will.”

Raedric, the thin man with the eyes of a clerk and the hands of a strangler, cleared his throat. “At the commander’s behest, I’ve prepared a list. Men of… questionable usefulness. If you like, they can accompany you to the Pasha’s keep.”

“Are they truly that useless?” I asked, my tone dry as sun-bleached bone.

“They’ve proven fractious,” he said without a hint of shame.

“I’ll take them,” I said. “They’ll lend an air of legitimacy to my arrival. All they need do is walk me to the gates of the keep, I think.”

“They’ll be invited inside, of course. That’s the custom,” Raedric said. “Refusal would raise too many questions.”

I drummed armored fingers on the tabletop, one by one. “Then it cannot be helped.”

There was a collective easing in the tent, a slow exhalation, as if they had feared I might make an issue of it. Did they truly see me as so inflexible, so obstinate?

“Very well,” Damien said at last, rising with a stretch. “You’ll leave with them well before sundown. We’ll see to our own preparations, make sure our people are in place. May the Divines watch your back… not that you seem the sort to need them. Make sure Pasha Teshik dies, even if you have to drop the entire keep on his head to do so.”

And with that, the council broke, men rising in ones and twos. No horns sounded, no cries of war echoed through the air—just the quiet knowledge that soon a storm would be unleashed and someone would soon be dead.

Now, it would soon be my part to play the role of a very unstealthy assassin.

***

My escort numbered ten, a full Scale, as the sellswords call it, and at first glance they appeared an ordinary lot. They were neither scab‑ridden cutthroats nor shining knights in armor. Yet the closer I looked, the stranger the patchwork became.

One man wore a solid coat‑of‑plates, well-made but archaic and old. Beside him strode a hulking brute clad in brigandine stitched with bronze studs, the metal beneath the cloth clinking like dice in a cup. A third favoured lamellar splints laced together with fraying silk cords—Tides work, I thought, by the intricate knotwork through its protective surface. The fourth rattled under a heavy hauberk of fine chain mail.

There was a lean veteran in a thick, blackened cuirass, its breast slightly dented in some long‑forgotten conflict, and another whose left pauldron was a looted shard of blue Coralith, veined and glossy, as though the sea had lent him armour for a single grim errand. Even the lightest among them bore plated steel vambraces polished bright for the occasion, though each cuff was nicked and scarred from old blows, and boiled leather armor. Yet another wore a full harness of fine Aranthian make.

For all their motley protective gear, one detail held them together: every man wore a sword at his hip, blades clean and oiled, the hilts wrapped in fresh linen. Whatever sins had singled them out for this “honour,” the company had at least made some effort to dress them to look the part of an honour guard.

“Master Gilgamesh,” said the foremost, a square‑jawed man whose helm carried a red plume. “We are to escort you to Pasha Teshik’s keep.”

Did he know the doom that stalked behind him and these men like a second shadow? I doubted it.

“Those are your only orders?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. We are to accept you as Scale‑leader and obey in all things.” Confidence rang in his voice; faith glittered in his eyes.

So, I surmised, he did not know that he was being offered as a sacrificial lamb. I saw no need to disabuse him of this notion. There is nothing worse than the sword of dread hanging over your neck. 

And, if he was lucky and the Divines smiled upon him, he still might survive this day and the bloodbath I had foreseen that was soon to unfold.