The Witch War Cycle

Chapter one-1

Chapter one

The first deathsGray mist parted before the prow of the narrow boat, clung damply to our faces, dewed our evening cloaks with diamonds. Gaunt fingers of mist reached across the canal to the opposite bank where the blank stone rear of a villa patched a mass of darkness against the night.

We were a silent company with only the soft ripple of water as an accompaniment. Then Seg said: “A damned spooky night, this, my old dom.”

Seg Segutorio is one of the fey ones of two worlds, and at his words his wife Milsi put her arm through his more securely and pressed closer. Delia responded with one of her silvery-golden laughs and was about to pass a scathing comment on the gullibility of some folk over ghouls and spookies and the Kregen equivalent of things that go bump in the night, when young Fortin, standing in the prow with his boathook, called out.

“Look! On the bank — there!”

We all looked. A man wrapped in a cloak walked unsteadily along the towpath and I was about to inquire with a touch of sarcasm of young Fortin what we were supposed to be staring at when a humped gray mass launched itself through the air.

The man had no chance. Screaming, writhing, he went down into the mud.

A monstrous shaggy shape hunched above him. The impression of crimson eyes, of yellow fangs, of a thick and coarsely tangled pelt, of a beast-form bunched with demonic energy, was followed by the clearly heard crunch of bones breaking through.

The people in the narrow boat set up a yelling. The beast reared his head. He stared out full at us. Smoky ruby eyes glared malevolently. The yellow fangs and black jaws glistened thickly with blood that darkened ominously in that uncertain light.

Seg reached around to his back for the great Lohvian longbow that was not there. We were all dressed for the evening’s entertainment, with rapiers and left-hand daggers. A lady and gentleman do not normally need longbows and war-swords and shields along the streets and canals of Vondium, the capital of the Empire of Vallia.

Kregen’s first Moon, the Maiden with the Many Smiles, cast down her fuzzy pink light upon the slatey waters, and tendrils of mist coiled up to engulf the light. The air darkened.

“Steer for the bank!” I bellowed.

Old Naghan the Tiller put his helm over at once and we glided into the bank. Fortin fended us off and Seg and I leaped ashore.

The poor fellow was dead, his throat torn clean out.

Delia said, “Call the Watch.”

“Can you see the damn beast?” Seg glared about.

In the shifting shards of pinkish illumination, with the mist bafflingly obscuring details, we could see no sign of that monstrous shaggy beast.

Dormvelt, the bo’sun, hauled out his silver whistle — it was a whistle and not a pipe — and blew. The City Fathers, instituted by the Presidio to run many of the day-to-day functions of Vondium, had suggested that a City Watch would be in keeping with the requirements of law and order. The Pallans, the ministers or secretaries, responsible for their various departments of Vallia, had agreed. I was pleased now to see how rapidly the Watch tumbled up, summoned by Dormvelt’s call.

These were not the happy, rapscallion, lethargic Watch of Sanurkazz, who invariably turned up too late at a fracas, with swords rusted into their scabbards. These men were old soldiers, with stout polearms, and lanterns, and a couple of werstings on leather leashes reinforced with brass.

“What’s to do, koters?” called their leader who wore yellow and white feathers in his hat.

Then he saw me.

He knew better than to go into the extravagant full incline, all slavish indignity in a free man.

“Majister!”

“Lahal, Tom the Toes,” I said, for I recognized him for an old churgur of the army. As a churgur he still carried sword and shield. His men shone their lanterns on the corpse.

“A bad business. Did you see a monstrous great animal running off?”

“No majister.” Tom the Toes rattled his sword against his shield. “Larko! If you can’t keep those dratted werstings quiet in the presence of the emperor, then—”

“I dunno, Tom — look at ’em! They’re going crazy...”

Werstings, those vicious black and white striped hunting dogs, are popularly supposed to be tamed into serving humanity as watchdogs and hunting dogs. But most folk eye them askance, knowing with that sixth sense of humans that the dogs are only pretending to be tamed and that they will break out into their savage ways at the first opportunity. Now the two werstings were drawing back their lips, exposing their fangs. They were snarling deep in their throats, guttural and menacing sounds. The hair around their necks stood up and their backs bristled.

Larko held onto the leashes, hanging back, and I’d swear that at any moment he’d be towed along with his heels slipping in the mud.

“The beast’s scent upsets them,” said Delia. “So we follow.”

Trust Delia to get to the heart of anything faster than anyone else.

Tom the Toes, holding himself very erect, huffed and puffed, and got out: “Majestrix! My lady! You are not dressed or weaponed for danger — majestrix—”

Delia, who is the Empress of Vallia as well as the lady of many other realms of Kregen, knew exactly the right answer to this tough old soldier.

“You have the right of it, Tom. Therefore you brave lads can go on ahead into the danger, and I will skulk along at the back. Does that please you?”

“Delia!” I said, and looked at Tom, who bit his lip, and then swung about and yelled with great ill-temper upon his men. He was, of course, a Deldar in command of this patrol, and, like all Deldars, he could bellow.

We all set off after the werstings who now that the backward pressure was released from their leashes seemed mightily reluctant to follow the scent that so disturbed them. They started off, and then they stopped, making horrid little noises low down in the scale.

“They won’t have it,” announced Larko. Now he was trying to pull them along, and they dragged back. “This ain’t like my werstings at all — come on, Polly, come on, Fancy. Don’t make a fool of me in front o’ the emperor and the empress.”

But the werstings, it was quite clear, were prepared to make a fool of anybody rather than follow that scent.

We were getting nowhere so I made the obvious decision.

The City Fathers had allocated houses in each precinct to be turned into guardhouses where the patrols of the Watch were based. Since the Time of Troubles, which had torn Vallia into shreds, peoples’ lives were vastly different from what they had been in the old prosperous days of peace and plenty. The times bred restless spirits, men and women hardened by suffering who demanded back from anyone available what they considered their due. A Watch even in Vondium was necessary. We had not worn war-gear; the times, wrong though they were, were not as bad as that.

I said, “Tom, better get back to your guardhouse and report. It is clear the werstings will not track that beast. Tell the Hikdar that I want an immediate check on all known menageries, zoos, arenas — we have to discover where that beast escaped from. And, by Vox, his owner will have a deal of explaining to do, believe me!”

“Quidang!”

“Tell all patrols to be on the alert — well, you don’t need me to tell you your duty. Just look at this poor devil’s throat. We have to find that animal, and fast.”

Delia put a hand on my arm.

“I suppose you will go off—”

“Only until the prefect is alerted and we have men searching—”

“And I suppose Marion will wait?”

This was, indeed, a problem of etiquette.

As I pondered the implications, Seg broke in to say: “Did anyone recognize that beast? I did not.”

“No — nor me.” No one, it seemed, had any clear idea of just what kind of animal it was who had ripped out a poor fellow’s throat.

A cloak was thrown over the corpse and the Watch lifted it up and prepared to carry it back to the guardhouse. The werstings were only too happy to leave.

I held Delia, and said, “Only as long as it takes, my heart. Marion will understand.”

“Yes. She will.”

“H’mm — that means she won’t like it. Well, of course not. But by the same token that she does not want to start the evening until the emperor and empress arrive, I am the emperor and have my duties.”

Seg said, “Milsi, my love, if you go with Delia, Dray and I’ll be along as soon as we can.”

“Oh?” I said, as Milsi nodded immediate understanding acceptance.

“Too right, my old dom.”

Sometimes there is no arguing with Seg Segutorio, with the wild mane of black hair and those fey blue eyes. If I was going off into what might appear a mundane business of reporting this killing and seeing that the hunt was up, he intended to be there too, just in case...

With a beautifully controlled touch of temper, Delia pointed out the obvious.

“The prefect will do all you can do, Dray.”

“I expect nothing less. All the same—”

“Very well. Off you go. And don’t be long!”

The mist swirled about us, clammy and concealing, as the ladies and their escorts reentered the narrow boat.

The smell of the water lifted to us, tangy and tinged with that strange scent of the canal waters of Vallia. Some of the Watch did not venture within six paces of the edge and were without the slightest interest in those slatey waters. Others walked near and did not mind. The first were not canalmen, and while the second might not be vens, either, they could drink of the water and not die.

The narrow boat vanished into the mist.

Seg and I and the others started off to the guardhouse.

“That monstrous brute worries me, Dray.” Seg shook his head. “You know me, my old dom, and a hulking great monster scares me sometimes. But this one, this is different.”

“We’ll find out what i***t let him loose. You know the new laws prohibit wild-beast entertainments. Well, if I find some lout has been enjoying himself torturing animals and killing them in the name of sport — no wonder the thing attacked. It’s probably hungry and thirsty, scared out of its wits, and ready to turn on anyone.”

“True. And it’s dangerous, Erthyr knows.”

We did not spend long at the guardhouse. The Hikdar in command there jumped into action when we appeared. Mounted messengers were sent off galloping to warn the other precincts, search parties were organized, and a man was dispatched to haul the prefect out to take overall command. When all that was done Seg suggested we ought at last to take ourselves off to the party.

“Yes. And I own I am looking forward to it.”

“I need a wet, and that is sooth.”

“I’m with you there. Also, I’m interested in meeting this Strom Nango ham Hofnar.”

Seg grimaced.

“The very sound of the name, here in Vondium, rings strange.”

“Aye.”

“Well, if Marion is set on marrying him, there’s an end to it. These women, once they’ve made up their minds, are never deflected.”

“You do not, of course, Seg, include the Lady Milsi in this wild and extravagant generalization?”

He had the grace to throw his handsome head back and roar with laughter.

“You may think you have me there, my old dom, but I tell you — I cannot say which one of us was the more eager.”

The truth was, I was overjoyed that my blade comrade had at last found a lady. The Lady Milsi, who was Queen Mab of Croxdrin and who thusly had made Seg into King Mabo, I knew to be right for him, a wonderful lady, a great queen, and a girl any man would joy in. She’d had the sense to pick on Seg and go to very great lengths to make sure she won him. Very soon we would have to make arrangements to take her to the Sacred Pool of Baptism in the River Zelph in far Aphrasöe, the Swinging City. There the immersion in that magical milky fluid would confer on her not only a thousand years of life but the ability to throw off sickness and to recover from wounds in incredibly short times.

The narrow boat returned for us and we boarded at the spot where this mysterious beast had killed his poor victim. We pushed off and floated near silently along the canal.