With Friends Like These

  Fenris Whiteeyes held what he now called his bad luck charm dangling in his hand. It was the pendant that he’d found near the dead sentry’s body. The thing was small and made of gold. Valuable. Fenris wasn’t often a thief, but seeing as how he’d likely be killing whoever owned it, he’d sell it once this was all over. Make a little money from the misery. That had always been the mercenary way. The thought, however, gave him little solace inside the sieged ruin that was Vannarbar.

  Word of Herik’s death had spread across Vannarbar faster than a shrill gale, and it had chilled the army down to the bone. It was a lie, of course. A lie. A ploy to spread fear and panic, and it had worked. There were three new men lying in Ivan’s infirmary, recovering from floggings. A punishment for attempted desertion. Would have been a fourth, but the poor bugger had gone unconscious and had not woken up when they untied him.

  Whiteeyes had watched it happen, standing at the head of a large crowd by the eastern gate. It had been the right thing to do, be couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor bastards. You see, Fenris Whiteeyes wasn’t entirely sure that Lord Herik wasn’t dead. No one was. If it were true, then those four deserters were the only sane men from here to Highvale. That was a thought that hung like a fat, grey cloud over all in Vannarbar.

  So, Fenris Whiteeyes held the golden bad luck charm in the sunlight as he sat on a quiet portion of Vannarbar’s western wall. Maybe when this was all over, he’d have the talisman melted down and made into a ring for Alayna. Saints, he missed her. Fenris clutched the amulet in his hand. Enough daydreaming for now, Whiteeyes had a murderer to kill.

  Fenris stood, spotted the building that the frightened Kostian watchman had shown him two days earlier. It was a good place to have a secret meeting. Whiteeyes had been unable to find it again from the ground, and only now that he had the vantage of the walls could he reckon the proper way to get to it on the streets. It was a damn good spot, but its existence within the walls meant more bad news for Fenris. If there was only one traitor in the camp, then a meeting place inside Vannarbar would be unnecessary. The spy would be sneaking in and out of the city to deliver information. There would only be a need for a meeting place if there was more than one traitor inside the city. That meant there were at least two of them. Fenris groaned. It would mean that he would need another man if he didn’t want to get stabbed to death in a dark alley.

  There was only one man that Fenris Whiteeyes had ever trusted implicitly, and he was dead. Karlin Onearm. Karlin the Halfgiant. In a camp where everyone could be the traitor, especially a member of the commanders council, it didn’t leave Fenris with a whole lot of options. The lad, Ruhner was definitely not the traitor. Fenris chuckled to himself as he remembered the sheepish grin on the choir boy’s face after they’d given Karlin his rights. It was not Ruhner, but for the same reasons that Fenris didn’t think he was their murderer, he wasn’t suited to a night of sulking.

  What Fenris Whiteeyes needed was an honest man practised in skulking, deceit and murder. Saints, damn it. What was it Einar Smashednose had said to him? If you’re the traitor, Fenris, then do me a favour and kill me now. Fenris was starting to know how the man had felt.

  Fenris found Borke in a lonely, stone corridor in the Eastern Keep, the hall where levies and wounded camped alike. This was a dark little route that attached itself to Vannarbar’s battlements. No sooner had Fenris found Borke than Borke found Fenris’s dagger pressed against his throat. Fenris pushed the man against the wall, and one pale white eye was lit by a beam of light from an arrow slit.

  “Shit, Fenris…” Borke spluttered.

  “Did you kill Talen?” Fenris said. “Did you kill Ralke Grey before we got there?”

  Borke craned his neck back. A small bead of blood dripped from the tip of Fenris’s dagger.

  “What are you doing?” Borke said.

  Borke was a strong enough man, and Fenris could feel him adjusting his feet. He’d be getting ready to grab Fenris’s dagger with one hand and pull out a blade of his own. Fenris swept Borke’s feet before he got the chance. He fell to the floor, and Fenris was on top of him. His dagger was now positioned under Borke’s chin.

  “Answer my questions,” Fenris said. “Are you the traitor?”

  “No,” Borke swore. “Saints, Fenris. I am not the traitor. I didn’t kill Talen. I didn’t kill Ralke Grey. Though I am starting to wish the Pioter had gutted you back in Lynetor.”

  “Is that so?” Fenris said. He had been intently watching Borke’s face. The shock, the fear, and now the annoyance had all been real. The denial of Talen’s murder, of treachery, that felt real too. Perhaps it was. He narrowed his eyes and pressed his blade to Borke’s rough neck. “Should I trust you?”

  “That’s up to you,” Borke said. “If you’re can’t, then stab me now. Otherwise, get your fat arse off my chest, Fenris.”

  Fenris held his blade there a second longer. Borke stared back, unflinching certainty in the man’s eyes. His gut said that Borke wasn’t lying, and unfortunately, that was all he had to go off for now. Fenris got off the man, and Borke sat up against a wall. He rubbed his thick neck with one hand.

  “Is this how you’ve been dealing with everyone on your hunt?” said Borke.

  “So far? Just you.” Fenris said. “I know where our traitors have been meeting. I want to ambush them. I’ll need your help for that, Borke.”

  “Funny way to ask for it.”

  “Sorry about that. I didn’t have much of a clue what else to do.” Fenris gave Borke a hand and pulled the man to his feet. He was heavy. Borke was not very tall, but it was easy to forget how dense the man was. “That said,” Fenris gave Borke a warning glance. “I do have a way to know if you’re lying. And I’ll gut you if that’s the case.”

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Borke raised an eyebrow. “What a pal.”

  Fenris shrugged, then pulled the talisman out. He held it in a thin beam of light. “Do you know what this is? I found it near Talen’s body.”

  Borke’s eyes squinted. “Some eastern symbol for a saint?”

  “Ruhner thought it was Kostian,” Fenris said.

  “Wouldn’t be saying that too loudly,” Borke said.

  “Aye.”

  “Fenris,” Borke said. “There’s not any chance that you’ve arranged for us to start in a brothel to cover our tracks on this job?”

  Fenris grinned at the man. “Tragically, no.”

  Fenris and Borke waited in a slumping, damp house across the lane from the building where the traitors would be meeting. The centuries of abandonment had left their perch in a state of absolute disrepair. All the wood except the large roof beam had rotted away, and the beam itself was cracked and sagging. The floor was wet, and the place reeked of animal shit. It was about as far from the brothel in Lynetor’s siege camp as you could get. To make matters worse, they waited two nights before they saw any signs of movement. The days in between had been brutal as both men had had to pretend that they’d had a full night’s sleep.

  Fenris was glad when he spotted a cloaked figure, torch in hand, disappear into the meeting place. Part of his last-ditch attempt at knowing if he could trust Borke or not consisted of the reasoning that if the meeting never happened again after he told Borke about it, then it meant that Borke was probably in on it. It was flawed and risky logic, but it was all he had to go off at the time.

  Borke was about to move, but Fenris put his hand on the man’s shoulder to tell him to wait. They waited perhaps another quarter of an hour before a second figure slipped through the night and into the meeting place. This one held no torch, and they were almost impossible to see in the dark.

  They waited another few minutes, and no one else appeared.

  “We’ll make our move now,” Fenris whispered.

  They crept out of their hiding place and across the lane. The ground was soft under their feet. The roads of Vannarbar had long been overgrown with weeds. It made creeping in the night precarious, and they walked slowly to avoid any holes in the ground. Fenris got to the exterior wall, and he could hear talking, but he couldn’t make out any words. He stuck his head around the doorway. It was black in the next room, but there was the orange of a flickering torch in the room beyond.

  He stepped through the doorway, and Borke followed after him. Saints, that bastard is loud when he walks. They were both loud to Fenris. To Whiteeyes, his own breath sounded like a panting mut. He was nervous, twitchy and filled with the grim excitement that comes from sneaking up on a man.

  Whiteeyes crossed the room. He got his back to the far wall and moved to the edge of the next doorway. The room beyond it was occupied, and a shadow briefly appeared across the doorway before moving. It made Fenris sink into the wall. Borke crouched on the other side of the opening. He was only visible as a dark blob.

  Fenris tried to catch a word of what was being said, but heard nothing. In the time that Fenris and Borke had waited outside, the meeting had started and finished. The light moved, the two spies moving with it. Both men already had their daggers drawn, and they were ready to strike as they came through the doorway.

  Fenris wasn’t about to kill the men just yet. There were questions to be asked, and perhaps a beheading to be held at the east gate once they had no answers left in them. He hit the first man through the door in the stomach. It was the torchbearer, and the torch went clattering to the ground. He grabbed the man by the back of his neck and threw him down after it. Fenris pounced on top of the spy. Behind him, Borke stepped in to deal with the next man.

  Fenris and the spy wrestled. Whiteeyes couldn’t see his face, but whoever he was, he was a strong man. He crunched a knee into Fenris’s ribs. Whiteeyes swore, lashed out to where he thought the man’s head was, and missed. The spy kicked up, caught Fenris in his wounded thigh and used the distraction of Fenris’s pain to scramble to his feet. They face each other, two duelling silhouettes in the spluttering light of the fallen torch.

  The spy lashed out with a knife, and Fenris dodged back. In return, he sliced his own dagger in a fast arc. He must have hit something, because the man wilted back.

  “You can surrender,” Fenris said. “Or you can die.”

  The spy didn’t say anything, but he backed away. Fenris was about to press the advantage when he saw a newcomer in the doorway. Whiteeyes cursed. He stepped back to put both men on the same side of him, and make sure none of them could take his back.

  But this new spy did not move like a normal man. He moved, walking in a strange, drifting motion. Judging from the posture of the wounded spy, he did not know the newcomer either. It was only when he came into the centre of the room, where he should have been lit in part by the sputtering torch, that Fenris realised what he really was.

  “A spirit,” he breathed.

  Fenris Whiteeyes went cold. He hadn’t been this cold since the harrowing night with the priest, the harrowing night that had killed Karlin.

  “Borke,” Fenris yelled now. “There’s a shadow.”

  Borke was on the other side of the room, by the doorway that the spies had come through. He had his dagger out, and in the torchlight, Fenris caught sight of blood smeared across his forehead. He was nervously facing off with the other rogue when Fenris started yelling.

  The wounded spy ran for the doorway, stumbling past the shadow. Fenris made to stop him, but didn’t dare try to get around the spirit. He heard the man hit the ground, scream, then start running again. Similarly, Borke’s attacker backed away and clambered through a rotten hole that used to be a window. Borke looked at the rotten window, started towards it, but stopped when he realised that Fenris Whiteeyes was the one poor sod without an escape route.

  Fenris licked his lips nervously. He didn’t have the priest’s holy water now, and throwing the things off the wall wasn’t an option like it had been for Einar’s men when they were fighting on the battlements. It would be his steel against the spirits… Whiteeyes had no clue, but the ghost that he’d heard so much about from the scared Kostians turned towards him.

  Fenris cut towards the spirit. His hand went numb as it passed through the dark vapour. Chilled to the bone. He attacked again, and similarly, it did nothing. The spirit reached for him, and Fenris stumbled back. He hit the wall behind him. Saints, he prayed, give me light. Light!

  “Borke,” Fenris yelled. “Grab the torch. Get the torch!”

  Borke had been frozen, locked in the awful dread of watching the spirit attack Fenris. Now, he jumped to life, scrambling to grab the fallen torch. Once he had it, he swung it at the spirit. The torch passed through the thing, burning off black sooty clouds. It was not like Miertaz’s light or the effect of the hallowed blades that Fenris and Karlin had used. This was a desperate act, not the blessing of a priest. But the spirit was different too. It was less solid, more smoke-like. Borke’s frantic waving and swinging of the flaming torch boiled away at the spirit, like he was swatting at steam. It continued until Borke swung high for the things vaporous head. Fenris had to duck as Borke smashed the torch into the wall, sending hot sparks onto Fenris’s scalp. At last, with the spirit burnt away. Borke slumped to the ground.

  “Thank the Saints for clumsy fools and their torches,” Borke said. “How did you know to do that?”

  Fenris sat back against the wall. Sighed in relief. “I didn’t really. But the priest made light, and that worked. The torch is light, and if it didn’t work, I was dead anyway. Thanks for that.”

  “Priest my arse,” Borke said. “There are still spirits running around. And now we’ve lost the bastards too.”

  “Aye.” Fenris looked down at his shaking hands. They were still cold. The dagger was frosted on its edge, and Fenris held it up to the light. There was frozen blood on its edge.

  “Not so fast,” Fenris said. He showed the dagger to Borke. “Blood. That means I’ve marked my man. There won’t be many men walking around camp with fresh dagger wounds. We’ll have him come sunrise.”