Chapter 15 | Vallan
Vallan
We emerge out of an underground basement in an empty house a block away from Kep’s abode. Giving the backs of the onlookers at Kep’s house one last look before moving on, I say to the cub, “Attention is bad for business with Sephania down there.”
“You agreed to go on this retrieval quest, brother,” Garroway says. “We’d best be quick about it to get the Sisters what they need.”
Agreeing with the spindly dhampir, we head west and north, leaving the more ragged regions of Nuhav behind.
The streets are thronged with angry citizens.
It didn’t used to be this way. “They’re not careful,” I say as I bump into a roaming merchant and nearly barrel him across the street, “a curfew will be enacted. Will be harder to revolt if they’re kept under lock and key. ”
“Who will enforce it? The Bronzes?” Garroway chuckles. “You give the lawmen too much credit. Especially with the new law in town.”
I grunt. “Don’t trust the Silverknights, either.”
My shorter companion mutters something about me not trusting anyone, and I disregard it. Now that we’re fugitives, we’re all on edge. I can’t deny feeling even more curmudgeonly than I typically do.
Through streets we go, past emptied stalls of scared traders, crates of rotten fruit. Two vampires hiding in plain sight. I’m leading us toward Vanison Shirin’s most recent hideaway, though I doubt he’ll be there. Good thing for us, I know all five of the silversmith’s recent locations.
It will be a long night if we have to search each one, yet I’m willing to do it for my silverblood.
“Speaking of trust,” Garro muses, “have you noticed tension between my master and Sephania’s master?”
My bushy brow rises and I look down at the concerned dhampir. “Lukain is not Sephania’s master, cub. He is merely like the rest of us.”
“A lover?”
“A tool to be used for her ends.”
Garroway frowns deeply, which is a disconcerting expression on his affable face. “Do you truly think so little of us, brother, in Sephania’s eyes? Or worse, do you truly think she thinks so little of us?”
“Little?” I’m confused. “What have I said to offend your sensibilities, Garroway?”
He lifts a finger and slips sideways to allow a passing couple to run around us down the road. Many people are heading down the road, in fact, in the direction we’re going. “You called us tools.”
My shoulders lift. “A tool is neither wicked nor just. It simply exists to be used. Like us. I don’t get bent about being useful for our silverblood.”
“Yes, I understand your dry explanation, Vall. Surely Sephania sees things through a more romantic lens than us being mere equipment for her operation. Besides, you didn’t answer the question.”
“About Skartovius and Lukain acting like children around each other? Aye, I noticed it, cub.”
He tosses his hands, frustrated. “You could have just said that, save us all the—what in the Damned is this?”
Our conversation dies as we turn the road which will lead us to Vanison’s first hideout underground. Down the bumpy street, commoners are dragging two men out of a house, still dressed in their sleepwear. The men are middle-aged, kicking and frothing at the crowd, which swells around us.
Garroway and I stay near the back of the audience to inspect, because we have to get through them to go where we need to go. Shouting fills the air.
“Traitors! Perverts!” cries a woman, wagging a cudgel. “Shame on the destroyers of the Truehearts!”
“And they’re Bronzes!” shouts a young man. “Employed to protect us!”
“They trade away our daughters to the filth in Olhav. String them up!”
Garroway pouts at me, clicking his tongue. “This doesn’t look good, my big brute.”
I grunt. We continue watching. Even as the group of a dozen men and women coil nooses around the men’s necks. Even as they’re dragged over to barrels and hooked to the edge of a high gable. Even as the barrels are kicked out from under their feet and they twist in the air, spasming, choking, dying.
It’s a brutal hanging under the chill moonlight. A public execution brought on by the very citizens of this city, who tire of their outcries being ignored.
Just then, down the street, horses whinny and come into view, with brass-plated Bronzes streaming into the fray on horseback.
Boots pound the muddy road behind us. Garroway and I step aside to avoid getting splashed, as a contingent of silver-cloaked footmen stream onto the road on the opposite side of the street from the approaching Bronzes.
I must admit the Silverknights seem much more uniform and unified than they did last I saw them when they were a ragtag operation only just finding resurgence.
It seems the citizens are on the side of the Silvers, and the Bronzes are trying to hold everyone else accountable for the crimes against their soldiers.
Garroway sighs. “This doesn’t look good at all, my big brute.”
I can’t disagree. A public execution is one thing. A brawl between the Bronzes and Silvers, right here in the open? Sephania will not like what’s become of her homeland—what barbarism has beset them.
Swords are drawn. The citizens who hanged the two men from the house scream to get away from the center of the road where the two steely rows begin to converge.
Metal rattles and rasps from the heavy armor of the Silverknights and the Bronzes coming to meet each other on the wide road They’re preparing to fight under the backdrop of two men hanging from a roof, no longer kicking, blowing in the breeze.
A Bronze commander points his drawn blade at the hanging bodies, seething at the Silvers. “No trial was given, no justice served for our comrades!”
A Silverknight leader answers in kind, haughtily lifting his chin and lowering the mask of his helmet. “The citizens of this city decide the outcome. The time of the Bronzemen is over, traitors.”
A second-in-command of the Bronze commander levels an axe toward the Silverknights, pointing past them. “You call us traitors, yet you hide paleskins in your midst?”
I blink, realizing he’s leveling the axe past the Silvers.
At us.
“Shit,” I mutter.
Garroway hisses as all eyes on the field turn to us. “No, no, certainly not good at all.” He draws his daggers.
I palm my axe slung over my back. This was not what we had in mind, and damn our curiosity for outing us. We should have continued toward Vanison when we had the chance, and now we’ve opened ourselves up to both the metallurgic forces.
There’s nothing like a common foe to turn enemies into allies.
“They have vampires in their ranks!” screams a Bronze.
The Silverknight commander’s jaw drops at the sight of us, me especially, and now he’s on the back foot, defending his men. “We don’t know these fiends! Soldiers, attack the bloodsuckers!”
Just like that, courageous men charge toward us from the back rank of the Silverknights.
I slide to my left, no longer willing to simply spectate, and punch the pommel of my axe into a man’s mask, spurting blood and chipped teeth from the small slivers of his closed helmet as he stumbles back and drops.
Another Silver is right behind him, stabbing a spear at me from length. Using my momentum from the first man, my hands glide down the haft of my war-axe. My body goes with it, and I sidestep the spear and bring the curved blade down, snapping the fortified wood of the man’s spear in two.
Garroway leaps forward, kneeing the confused soldier holding two sticks of wood right in the balls where his armor doesn’t cover.
With a squeal, the soldier falls to his knees, losing all nerve for battle.
Garro streams toward me like a specter, jumping. I kneel, recognizing his trajectory, and allow him to plant his foot on my shoulder and leap off my body to stab his daggers at the next soldier in line, high near his ears.
The Silverknights become jarred, line breaking from our brutal defense. We’ve killed no one—Sephania’s orders—yet three knights are quickly writhing in the mud.
The Bronzes find the advantage and charge the Silverknights, sandwiching the Silvers and kicking up dust and spattering mud with their heavy boots.
The night turns into a dreary skirmish. There are screams everywhere. I catch Garroway through the dust, whipping his daggers around and earning a few nicks in tendons that leave Silverknights hobbling and screaming to get away from the masterful rogue.
I swing my axe in wide arcs to keep our adversaries at bay, while Garroway does the dirty work of disabling and incapacitating anyone who gets too close.
Seeing the Bronzes charge the Silverknights from the back, and a whistle ordering the Silvers to protect both lines, gives me an idea—an opening.
As my cub wheels around for the next soldier in line, I grab Garroway’s wiry arm and spin him about. “Follow,” I grunt, and push him along.
Through the dust we emerge on the side of the street, only having to defend ourselves against a few more mistimed strikes before we’re fleeing from the chaotic scene that’s broken out.
We pull our hoods low and dash into the mouth of an alley, emerging from another side. Garroway takes the lead—though I know Vanison’s locations better, the cub intrinsically knows the inner workings of the streets better after living here for so many years.
He bends us around corners, has us leaping over barrels and debris in the road, all while a few straggling Silverknights chase us.
Another contingent stands ready a few blocks away, and we curse as we pull up short. The Silverknights here are set in two deep lines, “protecting” the streets, likely to act as reinforcements for the hanging scene down the way.
I recognize the short man at front, a short beard new on his face. Though he hardly comes up to my chest, I know he’s not to be underestimated.
I grip my axe two-handed. Garroway crouches, bending his knees to get low to the ground. Behind us, footsteps fall away as four Silverknights reach us. In front, twenty more wait.
Rirth, the vertically challenged Silverknight chieftain in question, steps forward from his ranks. With one hand on the silver sword at his hip, he lifts his other palm to stop the four behind us from charging, likely knowing it will lead to their deaths.
“Halt. I know these two,” Rirth growls. His voice is raspy, likely from constant shouting at his soldiers.
The man has done quite well for himself building such a powerful military occupation in Nuhav.
It reminds me of Overlord Barnabac Craxon with his hold over the military in Olhav.
His hold over me. The constant threats and debasements Barnabac put me through for decades, until finally meeting his fitting end at the Five Ministries meeting.
Rirth and Barnabac are nothing alike. One is alive, one is deader than dead. One is a human, one was a vampire. Rirth is small, Barnabac was large. And, if I am to believe Sephania, Rirth is an honorable man, whereas Barnabac could be trusted about as much as I trust a wasp not to sting me.
“They’re bloody Buvers, sir,” one of the soldiers curses behind us. “They deserve a watery grave or a stake through the heart.”
“We will give it to them . . .” Rirth trails off, stepping forward and eyeing us warily. “. . . if they’re found in these streets again. Understood?”
I frown. My body loosens. He’s giving us an out, but the way he’s doing it angers me. I have to fight to keep my bloodrage at bay. “If I understand you correctly, Silverknight Rirth, you are threatening us.”
“I am. Tell Sephania to keep her bloodsuckers out of Nuhavian affairs. She gave up the right to protect the people when she became a vampire-lover.”
Next to me, Garroway mutters, “Better than calling her a bloodsucker-fucker, I suppose.”
I’m not feeling the same levity he is. I don’t appreciate being threatened. Part of me wants to see how deep I could gouge a split through his body height-wise—how deep the cut would go from his skull to his groin. Perhaps I could cut the tick-sized man fully in half with one swipe.
The thoughts behind my bloodrage, focusing on Sephania, tell me to stand down.
The red curtain falls away and I clench my jaw as I stare at the nondescript soldier standing in front of us.
A nondescript soldier who has gained the allegiance and loyalty of hundreds across the city, who simply want to take up the silver to take down the sex-traders and the vampires.
We will have it out with these Silverknight frauds. I have no doubt about it. My nostrils flare. But tonight is not that night. We have a mission. “Very well,” I tell Rirth. “I will relay your message to Sephania.”
He studies me with narrowed eyes across the street. At that moment, a faint drizzle begins from the sky, muddying the streets even worse and pinging off the silver armor of the soldiers around us.
Rirth nods curtly and steps aside.
As we pass through the tunnel of nervous silver soldiers, Garroway keeps his daggers drawn and spinning in his hands.
He mutters to Rirth, “The Bronzes you’re fighting down the road .
. . the people of this city . . . civil war will not bring you victory.
It will only make the Ministers’ jobs easier to bring you to your knees.
You give a warning, soldier boy, but take one as well: Olhav is gleefully watching you rip your city apart, waiting to feed on the scraps. ”
Rirth’s jaw bunches. Through gritted teeth, he says, “You let Nuhavians worry about Nuhav, grayskin. Tell Sephania to stop sticking her nose where she’s not wanted.”
Garro croaks a laugh. “Haven’t you learned anything in the years you’ve known Sephania Lock, you silver-swinging fool? No one tells her where she can and can’t stick her nose.”