Chapter 6: 6

Barrin slid for longer than he had expected, coming to a tumbling stop at the bottom and immediately setting himself in a crouch, awaiting the worst. When an attack didn’t come, he waited for Maeal to finish her descent. She, too, came to a rolling stop a short distance away and, to Barrin’s surprise, he could see her. Only now did he realise that the area they had fallen to held light. A low, flickering light, but light nonetheless.

He could investigate that in a moment. For now, he had to find the guard and that was not quite as difficult a task as he would have thought. There, almost ten feet away, the guard lay in a crumpled, twisted state, the sword feet away from the guard’s twitching hand. What remained of the sword. Only the hilt and a broken stump remained and, as Barrin stepped closer, he saw the rest of the sword embedded in the guard’s gut. He had impaled himself in the unexpected fall.

“The poor fool.” Maeal began to move toward the guard until Barrin held her back. “He is in great pain.”

“You didn’t seem to care as I tortured him. Have no pity for this man, for he had none to give to any other.” He stepped forward, dipping to retrieve the sword hilt, and came to crouch beside the guard. “Now, we shall talk.”

He touched the broken blade, lifting it to look at the injury. Painful, perhaps fatal, but not enough to hold the guard still in this position. The man’s legs twisted in odd directions, arms limp on the sand-covered floor. He did not even attempt to move. Only his remaining eye flickered and widened at Barrin’s approach. The neck. The sword had penetrated the man’s gut, but the fall had broken his neck. He could not move if he wished to.

“Have pity!” Spittle bubbled upon the man’s lips as he glared at Barrin. “End it! End my suffering!”

“I have no pity.” Barrin bounced the piece of broken sword against his palm, showing the guard he had the means to bring his death sooner rather than later. “You will speak now, then I will consider giving you release. If I do not like what you say, you will take many, painful, days to die. Do you agree to these terms?”

“Yes! Yes! Anything!” Blood trickled from the corner of the man’s mouth, frantic eye continuing to move. “Please!”

Barrin nodded, shifting his weight and seating himself, cross-legged. He laid the hilt of the sword in his lap and rested his wrists upon his knees. He thirsted, but he put that aside for the moment. To the side, Maeal watched in silence. He appreciated that. Too many people with compassion would try to force his hand in such a situation. He could forgive that slip that she had shown. This time. Not in front of the condemned, he would have preferred. Never show them the mercy they craved. Father, again. All Barrin’s thoughts seemed to turn to Father, eventually.

“Who is your master?” He used the broken sword to point toward the branding upon his own arm. “Who wields the magic that captured me and ... others? Who gave me this brand?”

“I don’t know. I speak true!” The man’s jaw grimaced, though not in pain. “We are ... were, a simple company of mercenaries. We work for whoever holds enough coin. I never saw the ones who captured you. This I swear! The caravan passed to us from the hands of others.”

A slow nod from Barrin as he considered those words. They had the hint of truth to them, but he could not help but feel the man did not say all he knew. It was true, with the vast distances involved in travelling across Khaddush, companies often took turns escorting caravans. For the legitimate businesses, the spice traders, the gold and precious stones traders, it kept their guards fresh and put paid to those that may think of robbing them. For those outside the laws of the land, it kept everything separated. One foul creature to the next, the better to maintain secrecy.

What he had not said interested Barrin more. He had all but avoided answering the most important question. That of who captured Kahri and him. Oh, the man had made it appear he had answered, but that watering eye told a different story. Barrin stared before returning to his feet, the man following, as far as he could, with the one good eye filled with desperation. He turned away, seeing the woman crouched, fascinated by what she saw.

“Go. Examine where we are, but do not go too far. Foul things survive in such places.” He waved her away before turning back to the guard and lowering himself again. “You did not lie, but you omitted. On that, you broke the terms and forfeit my assistance in your end. Surely you must have known I would see this?”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” The man had no other way of expressing himself but with his eye, and it pleaded now with as much passion as his voice. “It is rumour, nothing more. Gossip passed between the previous guards. Foolish tattle. I swear, I did not think it worth mentioning!”

“First, tell me who hired you.” Returning to his cross-legged seat, Barrin slammed the broken piece of the sword into the dust and sand, leaving it standing upright. “Then the rumour.”

“The captain of the previous company. Ah ... Gaharri! Yes! Gaharri of the Company of Golden Moons! He paid much, so you can imagine ...” He stopped as Barrin held up a hand. He did not need to say everything. The man’s tongue flickered across parched lips. “The rumour ... the rumour is foolish. Nothing more. But, they say that the one behind everything is ... Shumma-Vohk.”

Barrin showed nothing upon his face, though he felt the shock of hearing that name. Many knew that name as though knowing of legend. A creature of myth. A tale to frighten children. A sorcerer said to have lived for centuries, personal vassal of the most foul demons to walk the Underworld. He had heard the sharp intake of breath behind him and knew the woman had returned, hearing those last two words. Shumma-Vohk. He almost felt afeared himself. Almost.

The other name held his immediate attention more. If the rumour of the touch of Shumma-Vohk was, indeed, true, then Barrin would find it easier to reach the sorcerer through his intermediaries. He knew of the Company of Golden Moons, but had never encountered any of them. From what he had heard, they were, to a large extent, unconcerned with legalities, but did not choose illegal activities to the exclusion of other jobs. Well-trained and well-armed. Those were the qualities that interested Barrin more.

The Company ventured out from the town of Tesh, some two hundred miles South-West of the port of Bar-Es Rasha, on the Northern coast. The Company, more-or-less, owned Tesh, with extensive barracks and a headquarters as well fortified as any army’s. Some distance from here, though. Some great distance, even as the crow flew, let alone without camels, or horses, to carry them. It could take weeks to reach Tesh and he could not guarantee he could find this captain, Gaharri, there when he did arrive.

Weeks without Kahri. Without knowing whether his lover lived or not. His rage could burn that long, longer, but he feared his hope for his love could not last. Even now, he knew he had spent too long affecting his escape, not to mention how many days he had spent unconscious from the sorcery that had laid him weak and immobile. His father’s voice boomed in his mind, telling him that hope never kept anyone alive. Most days, he could ignore those memories, if he chose to. His father’s words had run unimpeded through his mind for days, now.

“Is it true? What he says?” Maeal leaned in close, her lips tickling his ear as she whispered. “Shumma-Vohk?”

“He believes so.” With a sigh, Barrin shrugged away from the woman, rising to his feet and tugging the water skin around to the front. “He is a man, even if it is true. Shumma-Vohk is not a creature of myth. He is not a monster. He is a man and all men can die. All men bleed and I will coat myself in his blood if it is he that took Kahri.”

Now that he had the answers he sought, had the next task to put his efforts toward, Barrin took a look around him. Braziers. The light came from braziers and sconces upon the walls where they had come to a stop. As he took a short drink, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he narrowed his eyes at those walls. The lit braziers did not concern him so much. In a world where sorcerers and wizards could command such immense power, everlasting light seemed far less unlikely.

The reliefs upon the walls did concern him. Like the stories he had read in the books Father had forced upon him long ago. Pictures showing the scenes in the stories. Here he saw such scenes writ upon the walls. He sniffed, testing the air. Musty, but somewhat fresh and flowing. Somewhere, beyond this hallway revealed by the collapse they had slid down, lay an exit. If he could find that exit, he could begin his next task. He could find Captain Gaharri and, from him, find the next link in this chain of events.

“You sense it too.” It wasn’t a question as Maeal joined him to look at the carvings in the wall. “Something evil lurks here. The braziers are kept lit by someone. Or something.”

“I sense nothing.” He looked at her, far too quick to bring superstition to explain reality. “There are no monsters. Only monstrous men and women. If there were monsters, I would have killed them.”

Superstition. Barrin had no time for it. There were gods. There were demons. And, between them, torn between the two, sat mortals. Humankind. Frail, duplicitous, flawed beings of flesh and blood, who told tales of monsters and terrible creatures to make sense of the evil that humankind perpetrated against themselves. People could not reconcile the vile atrocities that other people could bring down upon their fellow men and women, and thus created monsters to take on those acts. To disavow the actions of others not so far removed from themselves.

The reliefs upon the walls showed the inhumanities of humankind. As he read it, only from this small section, the people of this city fought a great war and then became lost in their bloodlust, not only slaughtering the armies of their enemy, but their civilians. Their women, their children, the old and the weak and the infirm. Only one survived. Though what happened to that survivor, Barrin could not say. This section of the story ended there.

One day, after he found Kahri, safe and untouched, and he had brought down his vengeance upon those that had wronged them, Barrin could enjoy returning to this place and see how that story ended. Perhaps he could learn vital lessons from the mistakes of this people’s past. A fancy. Nothing more. He knew full well he would never return here. Not through choice.

“Have you learned all you can from him?” She placed a delicate, black-fingered hand upon his bare chest as she looked over his shoulder, back to the guard. “Will you set him free now? Will you end his suffering?”

Barrin pulled away from her hand, replacing the stopper on the waterskin, and turned back to the guard. He could. A swift twist of the head and he would finish the damage the fall had begun. The man would die in an instant and suffer no more. But he had taken great relish in beating Barrin. He had enjoyed watching the suffering of everyone in those carriages and, most important of all, Barrin didn’t care whether the man suffered or not. It was not his problem.

“No.” He bent almost double, taking up the broken sword, a bare three inches from guard to ragged tip, and turned away.

He was wrong. The next task was not to find Captain Gaharri. Before he could do that, he needed to exit this place of dark histories and mysterious, lit braziers. That task lay before him and he had but a broken sword at hand. Concerns for a brute of a guard mattered little against that.