What I'm Writing Now

Dagger Meets Wizard ~~

Here's the opening of a story that's currently intriguing me.  Rabbit holes are problematic.

Foolish.

Or magicked.

He’d asked Faldo and his cronies about the Keirne.  That question was going to get him killed.

Which was a shame, for he was a fine specimen of a man.

He’d walked in like he owned the tavern, never stopping on his way to the bar.  He stopped beside Faldo and his cronies.  The tapster waited for his order, but the fine specimen ignored him.  He leaned an elbow on the scrubbed plank that had to be sticky from spilled liquor and broke into Faldo’s conversation, a conversation that Dagger had listened to, hoping to get information about which brothel the men were headed for their night’s entertainment.

“Keirne?” Faldo repeated.  “I don’t know no Keirne.”

“The Keirne of Kirchwald,” the fine specimen clarified.  “You’re Faldo, aren’t you?  You were there for the charge on the Red Tower.  You were there when Baron Gysthronnen tumbled the blocks of the tower and took the Keirne.”  He folded his arms, and Dagger watched the leather jerkin stretch across his back.

Faldo wasn’t impressed.  He didn’t have Dagger’s view.  Turning away from the fine specimen, he wiped his sleeve over his mouth.  “The baron’s dead.”

“Cursed,” his friend said.  “Horrible death.  Even I heard about it.”

The fine specimen straightened so he could look around Faldo at the crony.  “You saw the baron die?” and in her corner Dagger strained to hear the answer.

“Nyah.  Heard about it.  We all did.  Wastin’ disease.  Death was a mercy.”

“Why do you say he was cursed?”

“Hale the day he took Kirchwald, sick the day after, dead inside a fortnight.  Cursed by some witch not killed when the Red Tower fell.  What else would you call it?  Ain’t that right, Sergeant?”  The crony clapped a hand on Faldo’s back.

He stiffened.  The crony had overstepped, although he seemed too sloshed to realize.  Faldo drained the last of his ale then tapped his stein on the bar.  “Don’t know what yer talkin’ about, friend.  Don’t know why you’re askin’ me about some Keirne.  I weren’t never in the Kirchwald.”

Faldo lied, as Dagger knew very well.  She might have started her search a year after the assault on Red Tower, but she had tracked five men from the fallen city.  From Gysthronnen’s ashy pyre beyond the tumbled red marble blocks, across the slowly greening vale of the burned Kirch, north into Griestreigon, and finally into prosperous Ornestreigon.

“What happened after the baron died?”

Fool.  Or magicked, she considered, for he didn’t fear the consequences of letting everyone know he was tracking the Keirne, taken when Kirchwald fell.

She peeked at the fine specimen again.  Tall.  Dark hair flowing down his back, ready to be grabbed in a fight and used to trap him.  Broad shoulders.  Straight back.  Gods, the leathers clung to his arse and long legs.  A long dagger hanging from his belt, knife in his boot. No sword.  No bow and arrow.  Not even a crossbow.  No weapons to defend himself when Faldo and his cronies decided to haul him off to gaol.  Or kill him in the closest allée.  Maybe he was a witch.  Or a wizard.

A fool wizard, tempting death.

She swallowed and fastened her gaze on the mug before her, turning and turning it while she strained to hear the guard’s answer.

“You know to ask about Kirchwald and the Keirne, but you don’t know what happened after?”  The crony shook his head.  His three friends had their mugs buried up to their chins, staying out of the interrogation.  “When he died, his troops burned what was left of Kirchwald, scattered the blocks of the Red Tower, then scattered themselves to the four winds.  Wouldn’t you, after what happened to the baron?”

“And Faldo came here.”

The big guard shook his head.  “You’ve got the name right, but the man wrong.  I ain’t that man.  Never rode with Baron Gysthronnen.”

He lied.  Dagger knew he’d served the baron.

And Faldo was no sergeant.  He’d led a troop for Gysthronnen, and when his lord had died and the soldiers scattered, he and four of his fellow commanders left Kirchwald.  They took the Keirne with them.  Even four seasons behind, Dagger had found their trail easy to follow.  She knew one of those five commanders would have the Keirne, and she had a contract to return it to the scattered blocks of the Red Tower.

The five men left a trail of broken lives from Kirchwald to Ornestreigon.  They surprised her by staying together.  She would have ridden off on her own.  And that would have given her the dilemma of whom to follow.  Yet they rode together, even into the capital Verdeneth.  Their evil deeds made them memorable to freeholders and villagers, even jaded townsmen.  When they could not hire what they wanted, they took it, and they delighted in taking what they wanted.  Dagger had heard tales of screams and pain.  She’d seen scars from knife and flame.  She’d counted graves.  If she hadn’t had a contract, she would have taken a personal one, to kill each one of the commanders.

But she had a contract that offered her opportunity.

Faldo would be the first to die, after he identified his fellow commanders.  She would work her way through them to the Keirne and then return it to the razed city of Kirchwald.

“The Faldo I’m looking for was a commander,” said the fine specimen, still persisting, giving them a reason to fetch shovels to dig his grave.  “He had five friends.”  He counted five.

“Not us,” the crony said.  “I ain’t never been across the border.”

“Not us,” another man said.  “We’ve been guards here in Verdeneth for three years and more.”

“Not me,” Faldo said.  “I ain’t never commanded an army.  I’m a sergeant, appointed a couple of months back.  I came here a few months back with my commander, but he never served in Kirchwald.”

Clever lies.  He commanded troops, not the whole army.  The commanders hadn’t served in Kirchwald; they served in the army that attacked Kirchwald.

All so the dead Baron Gysthronnen could take the Keirne from the Wizard of the Red Tower.

Dagger kept her head down.  Faldo may have fallen from high rank, but he was one of those five commanders.  She knew it.  For months she had wormed her way closer and closer to the Keirne of Kirchwald.  She had covered her tracks.  She had asked her questions in corners and shadows.  She had slipped coins across scrubbed tables or wrangled information out of men who hadn’t wanted to remember the assault on the Kirchwald.  And she found Faldo, here in Verdeneth.  She had only to get him alone.

She was certain of only one more of them, Britellt, still a commander, harder to reach than Faldo was.

This fool walked up to the former commander and asked him who had led the charge on the Red Tower.  He came poorly armed.  And he acted like his questions were nothing.

“What do you want with this Faldo?” one of the other men asked, wiser than the crony who had talked first and longest, obeying some hidden cue from his sergeant.

“I want the Keirne.”

“Keirne?  What is this Keirne?”

“A magical stone.  One that only a wizard can wield.”

“A magical stone,” Faldo repeated.  “What kind of magic has it got?”

“Now that I don’t know.”

“You got magic?”

“Do I look like a hill witch?”

“You don’t look like much.”

Dagger disagreed.  His profile was cleanly lined.  The half of his face that she could see lacked the puffiness of heavy drink.  He had broad shoulders and narrow hips.  He’d had moved with panther stillness, his strides smooth and long, a man at home in his body.

Gods, she didn’t want him dead even though he kept digging his grave deeper.

“What you want this Keirne for?”

“I have a witch friend.  A bane witch.  He’s looking for the Keirne.”

“You have a witch friend,” Faldo repeated slowly.  “He here in Verdeneth?”

“No.  He’s at Castle Hardraste.  Or what’s left of Castle Hardraste, after the ground troll pulled it apart.”

The men had heard of the event, and they pursued the fall of Hardraste and the attack of a ground troll on the castle as Dagger got up.  Keeping her cloak close, she tossed the coin for her drink to the tavern girl then made her way to the door and into the cold night air.

She couldn’t get distracted from her goal.  Faldo would know which one of the men had possession of the Keirne.  She had to get that information from him.  She had daggers and a sword that she wouldn’t hesitate to wield.  She had a magicked medallion that the old hill witch had sworn would blur her appearance for a hundred and one hours.  Once she had the Keirne, she would stuff the magicked stone into its lead-lined box and return it to the Red Tower.  And collect her reward.

No fool wizard would take it from her, no matter how good-looking a specimen was.