Skeleton Company

Chapter 4

Swordmaster Ellig of Roundoin sat with a cozy charcoal brazier on one side of him and a clutch of beeswax candles on a small table on the other side. He should have been mellow after a chicken dinner and a glass of wine, but instead his face was flushed with anger.

“Two unarmed men did this?” He jabbed a finger at Submaster Tavin’s smashed face. “Out in the open? And the whole town saw you humiliated?”

humiliatedTavin stared miserably at the ground. Novice Oldwin stared at the back of the tent wall. Only Herbst, the other novice, had the courage to look the master in the eye.

“Swordmaster, they surprised us. I mean, they challenged us to a duel. They were former soldiers, they said, so we assumed they were honorable, but…” he tailed off, thinking hard.

“But?” Ellig probed.

“Tavin accepted their challenge, Excellency. He was going to take them on, both at the same time!”

“Foolish,” Ellig spat at Tavin. “You’re just a sub-master. Wisdom must come along with skill, or our School will be humiliated. Was humiliated. What next?”

Was“They tricked me!” Tavin broke in, looking up for the first time. His voice was muffled and stuffy, as if he suffered from an awful head cold. “Oldwin and the one, the brownie, they were talking terms of the duel. The other one, the little greenie, he was getting in his sack for his sword, when all of a sudden, he pulled out a cat!”

Ellig stared. He blinked, three times, trying to figure out if he had just heard right. “I have fought and won no less than eight duels, two of them to the death. I have also helped kill half a dozen men from ambush, and I know a lot of tricks, but…a cat?” he rasped. “He tricked you with a cat?”

catcat?“It was all black,” Oldwin explained. “Maybe it was devil-hexed?”

Ellig stared again, willing his face into a stony wall instead of giving vent to his wrath. When he spoke, his voice was soft but clear. “It was not a cat,” he declared. “It was a jaguar. A beast of the southern jungles. A kit, yes, but dangerous already and growing swiftly. In the wild such a monster can bring down a full-grown bull, to say nothing of a man. And in those Quamforsaken southern lands, certain warlocks enthrall such beasts, calling them familiars, and use them as assassins. It is clear that you came across just such a warlock and his familiar. You were most fortunate to escape death.”

familiars“It didn’t look dangerous,” Novice Herbst put in.

Ellig switched his glare to the honest youngster. “It wasn’t, you fool,” he said, still icily calm. “But the School must save face. And we can use the tale in our favor if a kitten becomes a jaguar in the retelling. And even better if its owner becomes a warlock instead of a cat-lover. These are dark times. There are rumors of treachery, desertion, heresy, wizardry, and gross immorality of the worst kinds, all coming up from the south. That is why Lord Krodon – Emperor Krodon – has us here watching the docks in the first place. People will be quick to believe a tale of an evil warlock. The story will spread swiftly as the three of you ride north to track them down.”

“We’re going to track them down?” Tavin gulped.

“You are going to track them down, but not confront them. You’ve proven yourself incapable of that. But when you find them, you will summon me and I will bring several other masters and a pastmaster, and we will destroy them. Both men and the cat. You will ride at first light.”

“Yes, Master,” the three novices said together.

“One more thing before you go. These two men. Describe them again to me. I must be certain of something.”

“The greenie was short,” Oldwin replied. “Yea tall.” He held his hand about five feet off the floor to demonstrate. “Purple hair like any other greenie, and silver eyes. Heavy scars, and ugly as hell. Quam knows what happened, but he looks like he’s taken a dozen ax blows to the face. The other’s a brownie. Tall, rangy. Stands like a soldier. Grizzled, but still good looking.”

Ellig tossed a shrug. “Hmm. Doesn’t sound familiar. But thank you. Now go.”

Sub-master Tavin and the two novices trooped out of the room. Ellig sat for a moment, weighing options. The pastmasters did not have much patience for false alarms and hysteria. Worse, they hated being reminded of humiliation. Not that the School was frequently disgraced, but it happened, every now and again. Such incidents were never recorded, never even spoken of, so that the reputation of the School remained unsullied. The most worthless acolyte must still believe that the School was above embarrassment. But Ellig remembered the day Pastmaster Tshun had died. He had been there at the duel. He remembered the flash of ax and blade, the sound of splintering bone and rending flesh, the aghast faces of the other pastmasters, and Tshun’s final scream.

And Ellig remembered the greenie. His evil silver eyes, his grotesque scars, the echo of his drunken cackle as he stalked out of the dueling yard.

“Tavin,” Ellig whispered, “you don’t know how lucky you were today.”

Ellig took a candle and moved to his writing table. He shuffled among his papers and found a miniature tube with a wisp of a blank scroll inside – paper for emergency dispatches sent by pigeons. He had only two birds left, and he had already been cautioned about using them too frequently. But this news of the scarred greenie, he was sure, qualified as School business of the most urgent sort. He took his finest pen in hand and began composing a short, neat, but unignorable message.