Avengarde

By Zachary Barnes

Avengarde is Taveol’s last refuge; a city of ice and blood, perched on the frozen edge of the known world, where he believes he is safe from the ghosts of his mercenary past. But when Taveol harbors a wounded Fae woman in the face of racial cleansing, the two outcasts are caught up in a decades-spanning conflict that threatens to tear

• Language: English
• Publisher: PandaMonk Publishing, LLC
• Release date: Apr 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9780990517696

Book preview

Act One

1. Moonlight and Blood

Cold.

Cold was all I could remember. A murderer’s cold, bleak and fierce and biting. We stood together on the city’s cliffs, overlooking a frost-flecked sea at the outermost reach of this ravaged world. Too early for snow, according to the augurs, though I could smell it on the wind. I’d have preferred to die somewhere warm, but that couldn’t be helped. There was nowhere else to run: they would always find me, no matter how far I fled. I limped to the cliff’s lip, maimed leg stiff and numb.

Avengarde was my last sanctuary and the final stretch of this tortuous journey. Yet after so many years of hiding, I still couldn’t believe it had come to an end. They won’t get the pleasure of crucifying me like the rest. I took a breath, preparing to step into nothingness when I heard the first screams. They ripped the air, and I clutched my ears protectively, spinning only to fall hard on the cobbles when my maimed leg failed. I lay there, jamming my woolen hood into my ears as the pitch of the wail clawed higher and higher; but right when I thought the screams would burst my eardrums and hemorrhage my brain, they ceased with the suddenness of an in-drawn breath. In their place was a silence so acute that even the wind dared not make a sound.

I grabbed my dagger. Taveol the hypocrite: ready to kill myself one moment and defend myself the next. I shook in the silence as ice-flecked waves mindlessly destroyed themselves below.

"What was that?"

The voice came from the alley behind me, accompanied by clomping boot-steps. I flattened myself against the rock, gripping my dagger’s leather-wrapped hilt. Two shadowed figures appeared in the mouth of the alley. Their gloved hands were raised to protect their faces from the freezing sea-spray that shot in spumes up the cliff.

Quiet. He could be close by.

I felt my heart pound in my throat, tried to suppress my shudder of relief when, after a moment of bone-grinding apprehension, I heard the footsteps fade away in the direction of the screams. Letting my body fall slack against the frosty stone, I cast one last glance at the cliff’s edge and collected myself. Hard years had taught me to never stand still for too long in a city like Avengarde, a city that devours those poor souls whose instincts aren’t sharpened to a razor’s edge. So I let my gut guide me through the dance and whirl of snowflakes. Too early for snow? Damn liars. With the magnetism of an ancient lodestone, I found myself drawn to the memory of that scream. I trod as I always did: in and amongst the shadows, alert to every flicker of this broken city as if each bore a dagger aimed at my heart.

Moving as quickly as my leg could bear, I eyed the huge storm clouds in the sky then the deep shadows of each branching alleyway, one after the other. The source of the screaming was remarkably close, buried within the intestinal contortions of one of Avengarde’s labyrinthine seaside slums. With tingling premonition, I knew I had found what I was looking for when I emerged from the cramped alleys into a small square. Something tugged me forward, like a hook had caught in my soul. Peeking around the storm clouds, the moon’s pale blush revealed what had been masked only moments before: the ruined square was splattered with gore.

The first body I came across was still twitching. More shapes littered the cobbles ahead of me. I edged around the seeping puddle of blood, shaking away the cold as I picked out more corpses in the dappled moonlight. Heads missing, arms torn off, bodies rent in half and viscera strewn about like leaves after a gust of wind. Too dismembered to identify as humans or otherwise but I could see weapons—axes and spears and swords—cold on the ground, looking rather useless without owners to wield them. When the wind shifted, it carried away the slaughterhouse stench but brought to my ears sounds of pursuit. Heavy footfalls, the chink of lamellar armor. I fumbled forward, trying to avoid the pooling blood, mind clouded with primitive fear.

A sliver of white amongst the red caught my eye as I turned to flee. There, in the midst of the scattered bodies and still-steaming intestines, lay a woman whose white skin shone like wan moonlight. She was sprawled face-down on the ground, naked, and splattered in blood from her knees to her neck. The surrounding ground was bare of snow.

Her red hair spilled like stilled flame down her back. Some of the ends had dipped into blood and painted crazy scrawls across her skin—a red tattoo. Then her body moved in a single, shallow breath. I limped to her side, sheathed my knife, checked her pulse. Up-down, her throat rose weakly against my fingers. Barely alive.

I was in the midst of collecting my thoughts when I heard movement from the alley. Slowly turning so as not to be seen, I made out shadowed figures picking through the bodies. The Sons were here, spreading out, searching. They’d see my position in a few moments. I quickly rolled the woman over. Her hair parted, revealing her face.

She was impossibly beautiful. A flower misplaced in this abattoir. I sucked in a breath, paralyzed. Two sharply pointed ears ruptured from beneath her hair’s red cascade. Twyth-ani ears…

Approaching bootsteps shook me free of my reverie, and I lurched to my feet, turning to leave. I glanced back at the Twyth-ani woman. The Sons would find her, sell her hair, cut off her ears, crucify her. Because I had led them here.

Against every self-interested instinct that savage years had branded and whipped and cut into me, I turned and lifted the Twyth-ani woman from the cobbles of the bloody square, wrapping my jacket protectively around her cold body as I heaved her over my shoulder. She wasn’t human, but I didn’t care: no-one deserved to die in that place. Her weight was no more than a feather, but my limping gait slowed me, as I pushed through the heavier snow. My lame leg dragged a furrow in the fresh powder, a farmer’s tilled sward.

I strained forward past the perimeter of the square into shadow, hoping that I had fled in time, that the Sons might lose me in the coming blindness of the storm. But as I glanced back through the cold dark, I could see them moving toward me. The storm had not erased my trail.

He’s here! I heard one of them call, and knew it was my death-knell. The weakening rhythm of the Twyth-ani woman’s shallow breathing drove me onward, though I realized it would do us no good. I wrenched around in time to see the foremost of the Sons break from the storm’s curtain, course forward like a hound on the scent as he saw me.

When I turned back, searching in futility for somewhere to hide, my maimed leg collapsed and the Twyth-ani woman spilled from my shoulder onto the cobbles. Breath coming raggedly, I hauled her around the alley’s corner as fast as my limping leg would allow, heard the pound of approaching boots on all sides. Figures burst from the falling snow to my right and left and I tumbled backward, foot catching on an upraised stair. We collapsed into the hollow shell of a ruined building.

I pulled the Twyth-ani woman close, jammed my eyes shut and readied my dagger. We lay tangled in darkness as our executioners approached. I pulled my blade to her pale throat and willed myself to make the cut.

Because with the Sons of Dawn, death is a mercy.

2. An Ebbing Star

The spray of arterial blood showered me in steaming droplets. Like a broken bowl, the head wobbled across the floor until it came to rest at my feet. My knife hand shook. The headless Dawn-Son soldier who had first leapt into the ruined building thudded on top of me. I didn’t have time for surprise as the lifeless impact drove the breath from my lungs.

Lifeblood pumped fountain-like onto me, steaming and then freezing amidst my hair, my beard, under my snot-rimmed nose. I choked on it, spitting and fumbling with the dead weight atop me. The rank stench of ordure permeated the small room. Warm urine seeped onto my leg as the dead man’s bowels discharged one last time. Scarcely breathing, I fought to escape from beneath the corpse when the sudden clangor of combat rang from outside. I got completely still.

Twin shadows advanced, coalescing into tall, rangy men as they passed beneath the smashed lintel. Gritting my teeth, I held my breath, supine, drenched in gore and shit. The newcomers searched through the building dark, muttering words I could not understand. They prowled toward us. I tensed, waited to be discovered and quickly executed. But the blow never came. Squinting, I watched as one of them scooped an object off the floor. When the man stood, I could see the uneven shape of the severed head swinging by its stringy hair from his clenched fist. As quickly as they had arrived, the phantoms vanished with their grisly prize.

With a sharp gasp, I remembered how to breathe. My first words were whispered thanks to whatever patron of luck had smiled on us this night. Somehow, ensconced in the darkness, the warriors had overlooked us. The sounds of battle had already died, though I still dared not move.

Billowing wind ushered fleets of snowflakes into the dark room accompanied by snatches of conversation, none of which was remotely decipherable. After the last strains of subdued chatter faded, I began counting my heartbeats. At two hundred, I listened again. Nothing. I pulled the Fae woman closer, taking advantage of the Dawn-Son’s residual body heat as the corpse cooled. She was a block of ice beside me. Little strands of her hair froze, a thousand red icicles.

I felt her skin. Terribly cold. It made me want to move, and I had to remind myself that whoever had slaughtered the Sons could still be out there, bedecked in human souvenirs. Eager to take another trophy, or two.

I waited till the tips of my fingers started to ice, and then waited some more for good measure. The cold demanded action—I had to move. Squirming out from beneath the now-frozen corpse, I picked myself up and relieved the Dawn-Son of his fur-lined cloak. He certainly didn’t need it as much as the Fae woman did.

Cold wind beckoned, and I trudged into the storm after hoisting the woman over my shoulder once more. Of the battle, there was no trace. The bodies had already been swallowed by the hungry storm. Immediately, I was blind in the pale wash of white, and I damned the snow to some suitably hot hell as I limped forward.

Icy air seared my throat, jabbed my lungs when I took a breath. Methodically, I checked the Fae woman’s arrhythmical heartbeat as the growing storm tried its best to entomb us in a wintry mausoleum. My fingers froze into shovel-heads and I glanced around, trying vainly to get my bearings. Not a soul in sight. Only a cadger’s frozen corpse. His blackened hands were paralyzed in supplication. I have stolen through cities on the blackest of nights, fleeting as a shadow and silent as sin, but never with a dying woman in my arms and a near-maimed leg. It tested me to my foundation.

My inn loomed from the whiteout, a galleon-breaking sea-fog; I gasped in relief, honestly not expecting to make it this far. I paused, gathered my thoughts. Run through the common room with a frozen, bloody woman over my shoulder? A well-executed plan followed by a well-executed man!

Instead, I moved to the Golden Keyboard’s side door, which, pocketed by darkness and obscured with heaping trash, was jammed shut. As I fumbled against the icy padlock, the stump of my missing finger itched, as usual. Damn not-finger. With one final twist, my rusty steel key clicked into place. The door grated open after I put my shoulder into it. The sudden warmth of the inside made me hiss in shock as I heaved the woman across the wooden floorboards.

I forced the door shut, stomped the ice off my boots, and thanked whatever gods were listening for the inn’s thick walls, which harbored us from the killing storm and the worst of the cold. The long hallway echoed with noise from the common room, flickered with light thrown off the distant fire. If anyone saw the Fae woman, we were both as good as dead. Propping her body against the wall, I rearranged my jacket on her frozen body, stuffing her hair and her ears beneath the pocked wool. Ice tinkled onto the floorboards. Her pointy ears refused to hide, so I cursed them under my breath and tried to cover them the best that I could. With one hand under her legs and the other at her neck, I lifted the woman and tried to ignore the fiery pain that raced up and down my tired arms.

I tripped more than once on the uneven floorboards of the darkened hall. Laughter ringing from the common room spurred me up the stairs, which creaked and groaned like a poorly-made chair. Every little sound made me cringe.

My door was at the top of the flight. A jagged keyhole marred the blood-red boards, painted such to drive away the devils of the night. Or so the locals tell me. When darkness falls deep as snow and the disparate worlds of the living and of legend draw into close embrace, I can almost imagine the fetid breath of ancient Erovian demons icy against my neck; only then am I thankful for my red door.

I thought I felt the woman stir, and nearly dropped her as I lowered her to the floor so that I could unlock my door. She was stiffening like a corpse. There would be time to ask questions later, if she survived the night. I unlocked my room, pushed open the door. Unbidden, the question of where I would hide the Fae woman’s body if she didn’t survive the night ploughed pell-mell through my mind and lodged itself there, as worry is so often wont to do.

I tried to lift the Fae woman and failed. Breathing hard and shivering for all I was worth, I grabbed her under her arms and pulled her across the floor as gently as possible. Say what you like about Taveol, but first say I’ve a strong heart, if not a strong back.

Bumbling in the dark, I grasped for a light, managing to coax a small flame to life on the meager taper I kept on my bedside table. Its warmth was welcome, and from my hands I unwrapped the linens that served as my gloves, slowly working the frost from my knuckles over the candle-flame. I molted snake-like from my now-wet clothes before carefully setting down the amulet that hung around my neck. I pulled on the only other tunic and trousers I owned and wrapped my feet in threadbare cloth.

Divorced from the immediate danger of the cold, I turned my attention to the woman. My taper’s flickering light illuminated her face, the rise and fall of her chest. She possessed an icy beauty, that which cannot be touched by mere men like me. I worked my jacket off her body, scattering snow across the wooden floor. Crystals of ice and gore splotched her perfect skin, but she had no wounds to account for the blood.

I lifted her onto my cot. If she were a human woman, I might have admired her nakedness, but she was Fae. Such things were not permissible. Instead, I fixed my eyes on her blue fingertips as I cleaned her, dried her off, wrung out her hair. Splotches of red remained, but they were not blood. They were something deeper in her skin, fading like a dying sun.

She was still cold, despite my attention. It clove to her like a child to his mother’s knee. But I had seen men revived despite limbs that had frozen solid. But every one of them had awoken, walked around, and then died moments late. I was told that their hearts had burst from the sudden expansion of their blood vessels. Rewarming is an incredibly delicate process.

I grabbed my fur blankets and piled them on until she looked small beneath them. A fire, next. The task was a steady, calming one and soon, flames danced in my cracked hearth.

I pulled back the bed covers and clambered in, trapping my own heat in the cocoon of warmth. As gently as I could, I hugged her close without rubbing skin. Her body seemed to leech my warmth and set me shivering. When I could stand the chill no longer, I hauled myself to the fireside to warm myself. When I returned to the cot, I brought a bowl of water that steamed in the flickering light. I poured it down her throat as slowly as my shaking hands would allow. A little color returned to the Fae woman’s cheeks, though she was far from healthy.

A slam from downstairs brought me upright in a flash. Front doors make a distinctive sound when smashed open, and that was it. I threw the blankets over the Fae woman as footsteps crashed up the stairs. Wild pounding against my door seemed to shake the floor, and I was only halfway across the room when my door burst open on its ancient hinges. Leah, my only barmaid plowed into my room, eyes wide. For once, her face was not caged in that eternal frown. Master Räv! she lurched to a halt as she saw me limping toward her. I-I couldn’t stop them, they just charged right in…

Boot-steps pounded in the common room. I felt sick.

Slow down, girl, I said, hearing the calmness of my voice as if from a half-league’s distance. Tell me quickly, are they wearing all white?

Yes! she said, voice shaking. Yes, white everything.

My heart lurched. Go to your room, and stay there, I commanded, limping toward my desk. Leah did not move. I said GO! She flinched at the iron in my voice and found the courage to dash back down the stairs. A banded chest squatted on my desk, and I pulled it open soundlessly. Three knives glistened, points up, like soldiers at attention. Heart pounding in time with the advancing clamor from the below, I pulled all three knives out by their delicately balanced hafts, careful not to touch the glistening blades. Demonshood, distilled, clung to the metal in black droplets.

I spared one glance to my cot and the blanketed Fae woman before limping toward the stairs.

Shouting below sped me downward as I stretched my arm back and forth, loosening it, before palming one of the throwing daggers. I stopped at the corner with one arm behind my back, tensed like a coiled spring. The Sons of Dawn were waiting in the common room. I could hear them, could imagine them spread out within the throng of patrons. Difficult targets. I evened my breaths, prepared to throw, and stepped around the corner.

3. Gathering Storms

I stepped around the corner, knives ready, but I was not prepared for the chaos that awaited. One of the regulars—a big brute called Oda—lay in a heap at the white-booted feet of a Dawn-Son. Dumb Oda’s throat was cut ear to ear. Blood already pooled and spread canal-like between the floorboards. One of the larger Sons was strangling another unfortunate. The man’s feet kicked feebly against the wall where he was pinned. His fat fingers pried against the throttling, iron-clad grip crushing his windpipe. A third Son turned to cordon off the kitchen while the fourth—clearly the leader—stood looking at me, steely eyes locked on mine. He gripped the hilt of a bloody blade, which he cleaned on Oda’s stained tunic with two flicks and stepped over the corpse, angling toward me through the crowd.

Told you, no Fae here! one of the bystanders cried, backing away.

Shut your mouth, commanded the Son by the kitchen doorway.

I weighed the poisoned knife in my hand, waiting for the crowds to part and expose the advancing Dawn-Son. I would only have time for one clean throw before the chaos began. But as the Dawn-Son leader cleared the press, I hesitated. A better look at my enemy showed waxy olive skin, dark hair, road-stained white armor. With one swift motion, I pushed the knife back into my pocket.

He’s right. No Fae here, I said, limping forward.

You the innkeep? the leader asked, sword flicking level with my neck. I eyed Oda’s corpse nervously.

Yes, I said, stopping just out of sword-reach. Like I said, there’s no Fae here, and now an innocent man’s got killed for nothing.

The room quieted. Every eye was fixed on me. The worried silence of dangerous men is a terrible thing. Cold sweat beaded in my armpit, slid down my side. The leader advanced. I searched his face for sudden recognition and saw none.

We’ll see about that, the Son spat.

And him? I asked, looking at the choking man whose kicks grew increasingly feeble. He’s not Fae.

The Dawn-Son eyed me with a whisper of a sneer dragging at his lip. Then he turned and snapped at his man, who let the near-dead patron slide from his grasp. Purple-face gasped and spat and jerked as he fought for breath.

Clear out! the leader said, and the common room scrambled to obey him. They left only Oda, who was still cooling on the floor, staring lifelessly at me, accusingly. I turned, found Leah cowering by the stairs and I limped to her side, feeling the Dawn-Son’s eyes on my back. Pack your things, girl, I whispered. Get out of Avengarde as quick as you can. She disappeared wordlessly down the hallway to her room.

Sweep this shithole from top to bottom. Check every damned corner, commanded the leader as he turned and pointed at me. And if the innkeep makes one wrong move, kill him.

With my hands grasped together to keep them from shaking, I led the Dawn-Sons down the narrow hall and watched as they kicked in door after door, flooding into each cramped quarter with bared steel. When they encountered tenants unlucky enough to be in their way, they pitched the offending individuals and their chattels into the hallway. Their leader watched it all impassively, scraping the road-dirt off his white armor. They kicked in another door and threw Hædri—a woman older than the mountains—from her room. I helped her to her feet, wiped the blood from her wrinkled brow.

This inn now belongs to the Sons of Dawn, the leader said when I turned to face him, Hædri quivering at my side. I penned in my rage and sent the old woman scurrying down the hallway toward the common room with half a mind to follow her before the Dawn-Son’s pitiless voice wrenched me around. Sit still, innkeep. I want you where I can see you.

I stared at him, mouth suddenly dry. Understood. The knives in my pocket bounced against each other as I shifted, and he glanced at my jacket. The muscles in my arm tensed, but I was saved by one of the Dawn-Sons who pounded out from a side room, shaking his head.

Nothing, Captain.

The Dawn-Son captain swiveled, glance lingering on my pocket.

Like I told you before, no Fae here, I said. I keep a clean inn.

So you say, the captain mused, turning back to me sharply. Show me your room. My heart thudded into my stomach’s pit, and I felt the weight of the knives in my pocket. They’d be necessary after all…

The invaders shoved me down the hall, toward the common room. As we came in sight of the staircase, the knot in my stomach tightened. They marched me up the stairs and I limped like a man mounting the gallows’ scaffolding. We reached the topmost landing and faced my door, which was slightly ajar.

The Dawn-Son Captain shouldered past me, pushing the door completely open. What the hell—

I reached for my knives, sensed the Son at my back tense. But then I caught a glimpse of the room as the Dawn-Sons moved inside. The Fae woman was nowhere to be seen. I barely contained a sigh of relief as I peered into my room. Like dogs the Sons pawed through my detritus, sniffing around. My eyes lingered on the overturned cot, the empty blankets.

Search it. Search the whole damned place. The captain’s voice was a dead thing, sheathed in cold iron. His men sprang eagerly at his word, cutting through my possessions with sadistic vigor. I flinched when they poured the contents of my small chest upon the ground, watched the paper drift like leaves before a windstorm, saw my amulet fall to the ground with a clink and wished it was safe around my neck. The captain’s eyes had fixed on the hearth as a cold smile crawled over his face.

This room’s mine, he said, turning to me and holding out one gauntleted hand. I gritted my teeth and pulled the ring of keys from around my neck, handed them over. He grabbed my keys with one hand and my shoulder with the other, squeezing bones with his metal grip.

A pleasure doing business with you, he sneered, Master—

Räv, I squeaked out the alias. Master Räv, humbly at your service. He released my shoulder and I hobbled back.

Well then, Räv. I’m Captain Lester, he said, facing his newly acquired quarters. We’ll be needing breakfast tomorrow morning. With that, he strode into my room, finished with our conversation.

Gods dammit, I hissed, carefully feeling the poisoned knives where they lay in my pocket. Where could