Why I and my axe brothers were here in Tyrosht is something of a long tale, and one I have told elsewhere. It is good enough to say we have reasons to be here, each of us different yet similar. And all under the same bans of exile. Condemned to walk Zagroneichnie, without the borders of the homelands. It is an awful fate, to be denied the homeland, denied succor in any land from danger by others still within the borders of the Zhakon.
It would have been more dangerous, but we were accompanied by those who had chosen the path of ezgnaneiye with us. Among them two of great standing in the land, the Runabrost Grimdarzog, and the rising star of the diplomatic corps, Zefdarfan. That they had chosen to ride away from the gate of the exiles with us had left avalanche of turmoil behind us, And the crossing of the sea of treachery to this port had stirred so much ill-will against us all I was sure the bans would never be lifted now.
Here in the port of the Council I found the attitudes still against us. That we had faced pirates, beasts, undead and more crossing the sea, to reach this place mattered not to those here. I was known, not just as Keilroi of the Mountains, but as an ezgnanst now. Outcast. Unlawful to speak with. I ignored the catcalls from the dwarven quay we had been denied the right to tie the ship to, though some of my companions felt the sting in their souls from the words. Words which ended when I uncovered my prisoner's head to the master of arms at the Gate of the Docks.
"I believe you have an offer of some coins for this one's head...how much for his whole body?" I was arrogant, cold and mean as I knocked the pirate LeGiles to the ground on his knees before the soldier. A soldier whose eyes lit up with a fire like that of a forge well stoked.
"There is only one corsair of these seas I would rather see here in chains before me. But Muirgant has disappeared yet again at the word of a hunter of pirates so fierce." The old man's smile was warm. The first warm smile I had seen. "What name shall I take to the Council to issue the coins unto?" The query was normal, but my answer would shock him.
"I am Keilroi, these are my friends and companions. We give you the pirate, his surviving crew, and their vessel. One less pirate clan to raid the sea." I let the name spread across the stone road and up the quays behind us. It was known to the Karleekie. It was known to all. My exploits in my youth still were told, and here I was, wearing the brand of exile on my forehead, the chain of a penitent and dragging in wanted men like a bounty hunter.
The gasps from the dwarven quay told me the name had struck home. The Keilroi had come to the west. As he came, he brought the Zhakon of the seas with him, still acting to enforce the Laws, not disruption and chaos as most did. The catcalls at us died, and instead the cheers for a hero began. With a few catcalls for the pirates as they began to be unloaded from the hold of the sailing vessel we had taken. Keilroi was still Keilroi to the dwarves. Someone to hope to see, not fear seeing. Unless one walked the path of the NyeZhakonst, then one had better still fear me.
I felt the hand of my old mentor, 'Darzog, on my shoulder. "Less grim, smile some malchik. Keilroi is a happy Karlykn, remember that. It does not hurt to smile from time to time."
And with those words, I was again just a malchik, being chided gently by his mentor to proper behavior. Some things never change, and never should.
/***
Three days it took to get the coins from the Council, but I begrudged them not a bit of that time, for they were being more than fair, we got the bounties on each pirate, coins from the sale of the ship, and rewards from those whose stolen cargoes were identified in the holds. We had enough for most adventurers to retire on, but as we still had further to go, to reach the lands of the Lorsan Coast, where so many of our kindred who were also exiles had settled over the ages.
During those three days, as the others were treated to drinks and food, I sat at our inn thinking, making lists of things we would need, and meeting with the local liaison from the Knights of the Grey Sands to arrange joining a caravan on the northern route west, around the desert they patrolled and kept peace in. If one could call a life of danger peace. It was time well spent, even if I would have preferred to sit before the ochags and drink like the others.
In the darkness of the nights I sat and drank alone, if I could avoid 'Darzog and Dyadya Jaochim. Which was becoming more difficult of late. They meant well, but it still bothered me that they felt my isolation was wrong. I needed to think, and not about the past, but the future. We had made it this far by luck, not planning, and while I was not a great believer in plans, I knew we had to have at least a skeleton of one, or be caught with our shtani around our knees.
This night, had they known, they would have worried at the lack of vodka at my table, not the presence of it. Downstairs in the main area there were many revelers, but here in the balcony area around the main open room, there were few. Our crew and axe brethren were enjoying some of the spoils of our war on the way here, the younger ones learning the ways of the myrmidons we now were.
But I sat in the gloomy booth, recessed away enough to break some of the noise, thinking, and staring at the map before me. The Lorsan Coast, and Kelevfalashch, were still a long ways to go, and after our experience on the waves of the Veleky Vod, we had no desire to continue travel by sea. But there were only two routes west left from this island, three if one wished to take the more dangerous path across the heart of the Grey Desert. That one had no water that one could guarantee. The south caravan path had water in abundance, running down from the great gorya that rimmed the Rift of Dihn and the dry basin of the pustinya. But that meant crossing the lands of the Byezborodnei, and we had already been warned of a rough reception by those folk from some of the Alfs here.
We all had some experience with wastelands, and the problems of finding vod safe to consume, from our own adventures in our youth around the lands of the Lead Hills and the vast wastelands around them, or entering the Krasny Styepzei to hunt the great beasts or Vyeleikan-Ludoyed, the tusked giants of those prairies. The northern road was the one controlled by the Knights of the Sands, and open to all for its whole length. It was fraught with many dangers, from dragons to orcs and the lamia of the central desert who from time to time came out to raid the caravans.
But it was the only option, in a sense for us. Which meant our enemies, both from the homeland and here Zagroneichnie, would know our path. As Karleekie marked for death by some of our kin, no true caravan would let us join them, I was sure. Even without asking the Knights or any of the merchants or caravan. Few would want to add to the dangers of their own crossing of that part of the world.
As I sat there sipping the strong kophye that came from Rahab, thick with cream to take out the bitter blades from the taste, I pondered ways to cross the distance. Normally I drank mine without cream, but the syrupy brew made in this place was so strong and bitter, cream was a necessity. As so many times before, I had so much of mind focused on the problem on my table, someone was able to approach me unnoticed. I was lucky that I did not spill the pot or cup at hand when I started when my visitor cleared his throat.
He was an older karlykn, one I knew from my few times in court. He acted as the head of the local members of our race here and in the lands ruled by the Council. Some said he was even an advisor to that assembly on things related to our kind. His face was worn with the marks of worry I myself had begun to carve in my own face with the frowns of concentration. It was a deep brown, an unusual color for our kind, but it was the warm brown of the sun baking his flesh, not rot or some malady of the skin. They called him Gyevard Blednei, for the white hair he had since his youth. It was like a snowy mane on a lion from the north. His eyes were solid black marbles, glittering with humor and joy, despite his stern mime. He reminded me of ‘Darzog in that way, with the stern outer shell hiding the warm person inside.
“Poklonei, my kniaz.” The voice was not the rough one of most of our folk, but a softer one, filled with a sound more like the descent of water in a cascade in the mountains, not the rougher rock tones of my homeland.
I grunted. “I have no claim to that title anymore, Gyevard. Sit, take a cup of this foul brew.”
He smiled wider, and slid into the bench opposite me. “Spacebo, tovarishch. It is rare to find one who drinks Kophe in the evening, but I appreciate it. As I grow older, I find that vodka and veiskei do not sit well on my stomach afterwards.” He poured a cup of the syrupy brew straight, making my own stomach wonder at the iron lining his must have despite his claims otherwise.
“What brings you here, Glava.” I used the old term for chief of several clans, not the more modern appellation of boyar. He chuckled at the term, which meant he was in a good mood.
He sipped his tea, eyes turned to the few on the balcony, waiting patiently for all around to have their attention turn from a meeting of lords to the entertainments below. Such patience he used left me wondering if I could ever have such a calm attitude of waiting for the right moment. His eyes seemed calm, but he leaned back and they never stopped scanning those near and far. It was a gaze I remembered well from my bodyguards of my youth. One that weighed the threats of each it rested on in that single glance, marking the dangerous, the safe and the unknowns for when trouble would break out.
But this night there was no such tussles, the merriment at best were a few wrestling matches, but they were the good natured kind. I could see Joachim below at the end of the bar from which the drinks were served, he was sipping cha, and watching us. There was a look on his face I rarely had seen of late, since he had left his own children behind in his own exile for having spoken for me before the Dvoryets, the assembly of my folks governing councils. It was the smile of relaxation amid friends. But then, 'Darzog had told me once that Joachim was the kind of karlykn who could be happy anywhere, as long as he had friends or family around him.
I waited, trying to match the patience of the dwarf across from me. But I fidgeted to much for it to seem the same. My hands kept seeking the map, tracing the northern caravan route, trying to visualize the path to come in my head. As I did my companion sat nearly perfectly still save the slow oscillation of his head, as he continued to watch as life went on around us.
When at last he spoke, it was softly, so quiet I almost missed the words. "There is word among those who walk the shadowy paths beyond the Zhakon that your life has a new threat to its continuance, young man. There are whispers that the ubeiyotsyei have let a blade be made for you."
The room was no longer warm. It seemed as cold as a windswept peak of the (iron mountains) in the middle of winter. Ubeiyotsyei was a word rarely spoken among our kind, save in talking of the affairs of the other folk of the world. Assassins were rare in our people's doings, we who lived mostly within the Zhakon. For one to be unleashed on us even more infrequent, as any slain, even an exile, was likely to be avenged by his friends and family.
I felt my eyebrows seeking my hairline, as I tried to silently convey both my curiosity as to whom would try such a foolish action and the way this word had leaked from a tsyech as secretive as theirs. Their guild was known for killing those that spoke of its inner workings, or even rumors of its clients or contracts. That Gyevard had heard such, and lived to speak of it to the target told me something of the internal war going on inside that gathering of professionals we called a tsyech. A war within that guild would cause chaos everywhere, as contracts were taken against the codes of their rules. Not that rules were as strong a control as the Zhakon, the Law we Karleekie lived by.
He said no more, still watching, with the eyes of a warrior on guard duty, no longer the lazy gaze, but a more intense one. And his eyes were on one person, an alf, one of the byezborodnei, who leaned against the far balcony wall with an air of arrogance one could only find among the worst of that race. The arrogance of one not afraid of even the gods. I had seen many of his kind in the past half century, those who had walked away from gods and ethics in pursuit of power and wealth. They were no longer the people of honor they had been even just before my birth. Too many had taken upon themselves prejudices against others, feeling superior to the rest of the world.
This one, though, was more dangerous, he had weapons in evidence on his body, including a strange knife. One with a red lacquered handle. Even I had heard in my sheltered life, of the blades that marked one of the ubeiyotsyei on a mission. The way the elder with me was focused on him suddenly told me this was the threat I had to pass in this place to move on. But the alf's focus was not me, but the bar. He watched me from time to time, but it was Dyadya he was targeting.
I reached down and touched the topor leaning against the bench between me and the wall. I found the cold steel reassuring, knowing that even the slightest touch of it on this foe's flesh would pain him dearly. This was my only advantage, for while I was a warrior, this one specialized in leaving his blade between the shoulder blades of unsuspecting recipients of his skill. I needed to get up and move about, yet a simple hand gesture kept me in my seat for a few moments longer, as Gyevard motioned me to hold.
"Not yet, let his arrogance grow some more, and he will be apt to make mistakes." The words came from a mouth that barely moved, and was in the yazik, the speech of our people, but a dialect rarely heard outside the hills I had grown up in. The tongue of the Choelm was one few outside the clans of the hills knew, and thus safer to use for such a warning.
So I tried to learn a warrior's patience. To find the moment to strike that would turn the battle we now would be engaged in. I kept my face towards my companion, speaking of the trail to come, trying to keep my face from showing any hint of my observation of this foe. A fighter's mime is very difficult to maintain, I learned that day. Doing so while spying was harder yet.
As we sat, the alf became used to us there, relaxed even, yet it was the relaxation of a lion on the hunt, the disinterested act that belies his purpose in walking or standing in some place near the prey. There was a look of bored his face, but the eyes carried his hatred of all around him. Occasionally he scratched various places where it was obvious to a person familiar with carrying weapons that some deadly tool rested there, and he was more interested in checking to see they were there and ready to use.
I found myself doing much the same, with my axe beside me, not to mention knives and other toys I had learned of late. As well as finding my hand touching the kurok on the table before us in passing. Discharge of such a weapon in this town was forbidden, but I knew that if they were forced to choose between the hell to come of Jaochim's death or injury and my firing the kurok's small lead projectile, the latter would be more easily dealt with. But it would let someone know that one of our guns was able to come past the gates of the docks, compromising a vast smuggling empire, and ruining the ability to have our folk trade here.
There had to be a way to mess up this one's plans. Plans or the ruining of them, were the meat and potatoes of my own history. Keilroi was known all over as the wrecker of plans, hence LeGiles impending appointment with a noose at the docks. I felt my face scrunch up, remembering the words the pirate when I took him, that he would never be hung. This was a diversion, and if the Council had half a brain, they would not respond to any call for the guard here. There had never been a breakout from the tyurma here, but there was always a first time for everything. And as I realized this was just a diversion, that old wicked smile came to my face, as my eyebrows began to dance up and down with mirth at a plan that came to me. Weapon dancing is often associated among my kind with merriment and celebrations like we were in here. And few save the forge lords danced with a hammer. My hand sought out my own hammer, the great heavy thing with the arshen and a hand haft. It was heavy, with a large block of metal, topped with a spike.
"Excuse me a moment, I think I should join the merriment." I stood, leaving my axe, but picking up my hammer. "It seems a bit dead here, perhaps a hammer dance?"
The look of shock on Gyevard's face was a joy. He was a warrior of the careful school, but I had been raised and trained amid the wild hill clans of the Choelm. And they tended to have a different feeling about battle, it was something to enter into with a recklessness to shatter the enemies will, and break their courage with the wild battle rages. I knew better now, knowing that they did plan their battles, as carefully as the other warriors, they just refused to use formations in combat. Or to have inflexible plans, the way some did.
There would be a fight here soon, so the best way to deal with it was to take the initiative, in a way the enemy would least expect. I spun my hammer twice in front of me, and leaped to the broad banister on the balcony's edge. Just the motion caught the eyes of many below. But I needed all eyes on me, so the fool would think his time had come to strike. The malot crafted on the Heart's Forge began to leave a trail of steely blue in a ring as I began to swirl it with a purpose to my right side. That ring was of the magics from the Forge, and a touch of red for the heart's blood I had shed in its making.
"Let us celebrate the victory over piracy! Give me a beat, tovarishchie! Let us dance the hammer's beat!" And with that I began to shuffle seemingly without care along the railing, to the beat of the many hands and suddenly produced hammers on the tables below. I paced my steps to the beat, letting the rhythm claim me as I went. It is an old dance, the forge dance, that I tried to do, and not suited to the rail, obviously so. And this let me jump to the stairs nearby and dance down them, gently tapping the louder strikes on the banister as I descended. I could not help but smile, and it was one that Steffan and Zeffan knew well as I reached the main floor. I saw their looks of shock, they could tell I was up to something, but had not noticed the lurker above yet.
The hammer was swirled above my head, as the beat picked up to the steady forge tapping of a smith at his task. I no longer had to entice the beat, but still took the hammer on metal strike with gentle force on the supports of the balconies above. Each step seemed unplanned, but was made with a goal in mind. At last the whole of the bar was singing the forging song, the Pyesnya Kovalnya, that we had all heard some time in the past, at festival or sung as an item was crafted over anvils all round the world. At last I stepped out of the ubeintsya's sight for a moment, and laid into the support holding up his perch with all my might.
The reward was not all I wanted, the wood was not as solid as I had thought, old and dried out, it shattered easily, splinters sailing throughout the bar like the shards of a ship struck by the ball from a cannon. He had already started his move when his footing had been taken from him, stepping forward to leap down to our level. I was out of position by luck of the rotted column of wood, spinning under the might of my own miscalculation wildly, as the hammer came back towards the center of the building, it rang on metal, and something red danced up to ricochet off the falling balcony back to my foe, equally off balance from the unexpected fall. The alf was face down on a table, stunned, as his own crimson blade found his buttocks. His shriek was of fear and hate, mixed with shame as he tried to reach back to remove it. The song died as the balcony finished its slow descent, and blocked my view.
It was only a few beats of my heart later that I was free of the mess I had made, my hands finding Dyada and 'Darzog's arms to guide them to safety. I found there was no more threat, only the shambles I had made of a place I found suddenly I liked more than I had before. The old runabrost stopped me firmly, and pointed at the bloody blade, still embedded in the seat of the assassin, whose body was twitching as only a poisoned man could do.
"Malchik, there is no threat left, this kind acts alone." His voice though soft, carried through the suddenly silent hall. "The marks on those blades are said to tell the tale for all to know."
I walked over to the body, looking carefully, my hammer firmly held at my side, ready to block a blow if needed. He was dead by the time I got there, even though the blow could not have been fatal. Save for the coating on that damned blade.
Poison, the mark of the deadliest of the assassins, and the colored blade said it all. This was meant for someone feared by some other. Some coward who did not wish to face their foe fairly, but desired their death by any means money could buy.
As 'Darzog said, there were three marks on the hilt, at the blade was the crest of my family, marked with the bar sinister. I had been the target. Not Joachim, not the runabrost. Me.
The next one I did not recognize, it was a crown wreathed in flames, but that was the mark of the foe who wanted me dead. I would have to puzzle this mark out, to understand who my real foe was. Last was a single dagger, with a drop hanging from its tip. Assassination by poison, one attempt. I would face no others, for now. But my grip on my hammer tightened rather than loosening. Someone wanted me dead, and it was not those in Ovozyest. This boded ill for me.
I reached to my belt and carefully took out my gloves donning them, but never letting my hammer leave my hands. I had been sent a message, and the gods had protected me against the death this blade had promised. But now, there was only one thing left to do. The symbol for my foe burned like the flames that were part of it into my mind, as I removed the dagger, set it on the floor and struck it with my hammer, which was enchanted to break weapons safely. No shard flew, no other paid a price, yet, for this action. But now the assassins would know their alf had failed. And I was alert to the threat.
When I met the eyes of my companions, they were all filled with worry. Zefdarfan wanted to say something, but I motioned him to silence. I needed to think about this, and deeply. There was no more celebrations that night, as we made the repairs to the balcony and sought a new support for it, and several others. All this and more we did in silence, as we each thought hard on the message I had been sent.
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