Rain Walker Read online

  ~ ~ ~

  A full sortie this time, a hundred men, every man armoured with the best that might be found although that was a gambeson and waxed leather or hide cap as often as not. Only sixteen of the hundred had stripes on the keels of their pavises, but every survivor of this night would have earned one.

  Every survivor.

  Much to Kondrat’s vexation, they did not hunt the rain walker this night.

  He found by memory the place they had heard the sappers the night before, checking his position by the East Tower and the Fountain of the Angels and the wide road leading to the docks. Would that he could simply set the red rooster to the thatched roof and watch it burn, but the thatch was as sodden as the rest of the world. The daytime rain was merely a drizzle, but days of soaking had left them without options. With gestures, he set the men to their posts around the building and when he was satisfied called out, “Now, lads! Swing hard!”

  Picks and hammers and maces found little resistance in the light wood and plaster of the walls. Twenty men followed Kondrat down the stairs to the underbuilding, twenty more stayed on the ground floor in case they were needed.

  Only a dozen men were at the works below, hauling dirt from a new tunnel. Along one wall wood was stacked to shore up the tunnel, and brushwood along another to burn and bring down the wall. It would burn, but sooner than any thought.

  Kondrat threw the stone in his hand and more followed from the men behind him. He staggered the first man with shield strike and battered him down with his mace before shoving into the undercroft and striking out again. They were wiry, the sappers, but they were miners, not armsmen, unarmoured and poorly armed. When they surrendered, he sent the survivors upstairs and watched while his men shoved the brushwood into the tunnel. When lit it would burn away the supports and the tunnel would come down along with whatever buildings were above it. Better these homes and shops than the East Tower and the castle wall. He lit the fire himself and shuffled, bent over, out of the tunnel and up the stairs, pausing only at the top to straighten and stretch his creaking back.

  The drizzle had turned to a downpour. That seemed almost normal now, to judge the weather in terms of degree of rain rather than its simple existence.

  Then he heard the butcher-shop sound of another of his men dying.

  Running through the nearest gap in the wall he emerged into the rain where a cluster of his men stood in a circle facing out. In the middle Cyryl stood with a spear ready to thrust over the heads and shoulders of his men. Around another corner, a swirling mass of men stood futilely, vulnerably, about.

  Kondrat saw a familiar face. “Aleksandr, who commands here?”

  “Nikodem, but he was killed.”

  “Then you command now. Get you the men in a circle, some of the older men in the middle to steady and command. How did Nikodem die?”

  “The same thing from last night. Both legs gone at once and no one saw until he was falling.”

  Motion caught in the corner of his eye made him turn to see a shadowy figure entering a building. “Look you to the men. Take them around the building to find stragglers. I will return.”

  “We need you here. I can’t ...”

  “You must, you can, you will.” Kondrat splashed through the heavy mud to the building the rain walker had entered. A rippling flash like a watery sword blade flickered beside a doorpost and he caught it on his shield rim, then thrust into nothing and slipped into the building. The interior was large and open. A shop perhaps, or storage. Shelves stood against two walls, and a single bundle lay near the middle of the floor. There was but the one exit, and nowhere else to hide within. Kondrat ran across the room, jabbing the point of his pavise hard into the bundle. It offered no resistance, and proved to be nothing but layers of old cloth.

  Again, nothing! Where had he gone?

  “In here,” he heard a voice say, a voice with a strong Moeki accent. “Lord Isay said he would be here.” Two figures entered, tall men and broad and young. They wore scale corselets over mail and carried long shields and short falchions.

  The shorter one, the one with the green horsehair crest, said, “He was right. Is your name Kondrat Deepeyes?”

  He should not say, but “My name is Kondrat; some have called me Deepeyes, although I do not answer to it. I am Kondrat son of Razdim. Have you come to kill me?”

  The taller one, with scars down his face, smiled and nodded.

  “Indeed, you may try, and good luck you will need.”

  They spread wide, forcing Kondrat to retreat to keep both within sight, back and back until his shoulder bumped a wall, and back again until his other shoulder did as well. He could retreat no farther, but they could spread no wider, one by each wall. He took a step forward to give himself room at least to thrust even if he could not swing.

  They came one at a time, swinging, dodging, retreating, every time a heartbeat too quick for Kondrat’s sword. Nicks began to scar the rim of his pavise and creaking knees began to groan.

  Too old for this.

  On they came, pressing the attack over and over and Kondrat could feel himself slowing, every counterstroke a fingernail slower than the one before, every shield block closer than the last to letting a fatal blade through. He began taking hits on his armour, lames and links deforming, but holding still. The thought flickered through his mind that he must end it now or die.

  Too old for this.

  As the crested one came again from the left, Kondrat ducked the sword and jabbed his pavise hard at the Moek’s knees, felt it hit flesh and shifted his weight for a thrust. Before he could, a shield that seemed like a wall slammed into his right shoulder, shoving him, ramming him halfway through the wall on his left. He was just too slow, slow enough to let the scarred one hit him with a shield rush.

  Too old for this.

  Bracing his foot in the corner and shoving back with all he had left, Kondrat got an inch to work with and spun the edge of his pavise behind the scarred man’s shield. There was little force in the blow, but it struck bone, and the scarred man leaped back. The edge of the shield caught on the long, straight guard of Kondrat’s sword and wrenched it out of his grip. As the sword left his hand, Kondrat no longer thought that he was too old, just that he was dead.

  The crested one charged again, sword deflected by the pavise, and ran Kondrat back into the corner.

  Mace trapped behind him, dagger on the wrong hip, he wondered if he should just wait to die even as he saw his own hand slap against the crested helmet, his own thumb tap at an exposed eye. The thumb touched eyeball, not hard enough to gouge, but reflex took the crested man, both hands rising to protect the eye.

  Coward!

  Kondrat reached for a weapon again, not his own but the dagger on the other man’s belt. It came free and he stabbed low into the thigh, then up into the arm, driving forward as his opponent backed up, finally getting his point under a scale of the man’s corselet and thrusting hard though leather and the under layer of mail. Turning right he shoved the corpse at the scarred man and followed with a thrown dagger. He had never been able to throw a dagger to make it stick in anything, but a bit of metal in the face made the man duck and bought a second, long enough to free his mace from its loop.

  Too old for this? He almost laughed.

  Now facing a single opponent, Kondrat came out into the middle of the room. He struck, high and low, from left and right, above, below and around his shield, giving his foe no opportunity to see a pattern, then he stopped, panting. The scarred man leaped to the bait like a starving trout after a dry fly, a quick, vicious overhand cut. Kondrat shifted to the left and struck a backhanded blow that must have broken the other man’s shoulder, and followed that with a savage overhand blow of his own that dented the scarred man’s helmet and surely cracked the skull beneath.

  Blood flowed across the wooden floor behind him as Kondrat staggered, spent, to the doorway and stumbled into a butcher’s nightmare.

  The rain had slowed to a drizzle again,
light enough to show corpses by the dozen, weeping men bandaging friends, a handful still standing watch, their eyes glazed.

  Every man visible - every corpse visible - wore castle livery.

  “Cyryl,” he called. “Get you every man to the castle. Every live man and as many dead as you can carry. We can do no more good here.”

  He turned once, full around scanning for movement, sound, anything, while the rain increased again, and by the time he came around to where his men had been they had vanished in the rain. In their place a shadow stood.

  “So you have come at last?” Kondrat said.

  The thing said nothing. It had the shape of a man, a tall one and lean, but it rippled like a mountain brook. Closer it came and Kondrat watched the raindrops hit where the figure was and slow as if turned to molasses, then pass out of the figure and fall normally again.

  “What vileness are you, rain walker?” A man, once. The Dwarves had said that much.

  Its voice sounded like a man dying of water on the lungs. “Your death.”

  “Indeed, you are no more than an assassin. If once you fought, you would die in the same manner as any other skulker confronted by a good man with good steel.”

  The rain walker laughed, and sodden air grew wetter still until it felt to Kondrat that he was breathing the bottom of the ocean.

  A sword blade of rippling water darted at his head and Kondrat ducked the blow and struck back at the wrist that twisted out of the way. Skipping back, the rain walker vanished into the sheets of water that fell all around.

  Stumbling, slipping through the mud, Kondrat tried to follow, splashing water about himself. He stopped. He could not see beyond five feet, but he could hear the splashing of his own shoes, and if his then why not another’s? He heard no sound but the endless drumming of the month-old showers. Then he heard it, a splash behind him. He whirled, pavise up, catching a sword cut, then a watery foot kicked him behind the knee and he fell heavily on his arm, limb and mace trapped alike beneath his body.

  Blow came after blow then, chipping wood from his shield while he tried to crawl his head and legs and arms to the pavise’s spurious safety. He kicked, hoping that a lucky blow would land on a foe he could not see, praying it would not cost him a foot. Finally his heel struck something hard - shin most likely - and the blows on his shield paused for a second. He shifted, turned on his hip and struck where his kick had be flesh, his mace crushing nothing but air and raindrops. Slipping again, he sprawled on his back in the mud.

  Rain pelted his face. “Cold steel or hot,” he said, each breath laboured, “bronze or iron, oak or stone. That’s what the Dwarves said.” He pushed himself to unsteady feet. “If I can kick you I can kill you.”

  Nothing appeared around him, neither in the street nor in the doorways or windows. Staggering, he crossed the street at random then back again hoping for a glimpse of movement, or a raindrop falling oddly.

  There! He swung madly. The counterstroke came swift and precise, nicking his chin as he twisted wildly. Then the rain walker was gone again, again, again.

  Kondrat whispered, “They said you could be killed when you were here. That leaves me a question: when aren’t you here? rain walker. Is that it? Do you walk only in the rain? You vanished under that awning.”

  The almost familiar rippling blade slashed neck high, too fast, too sudden for Kondrat to raise his pavise against it and skidded along the iron of his camail. As he spun away, he knew. There had been no figure to swing the sword; the sword itself was visible, but only that part that protruded from the canvas awning. Again he looked under the sagging awning, heavy with water and dripping. “Is that your secret? Where there is no rain you are not? That is the reason you were unseen inside a building. Indeed it is obvious now.”

  The sword darted from cover again, piercing a lame and sinking deep into flesh high in his left chest. Kondrat watched the pavise drop to the mud, surprised to see his own knees land beside it. His mace seemed to be there as well. No matter. Or did it matter? He fumbled for it anyway.

  The sword tip - all he could see of it - rose for another strike,

  Too old for this.

  Lurching to his feet, Kondrat staggered aside enough that the sword glanced off his armour, sliding down his mail sleeve. Off balance, he tried to keep his footing as he stumbled toward the awning support, finally slipping and sprawling full length. He raised his head to get it out of the mud and saw the support pole inches out of reach. An almost-dry scuffing of feet came to his ears, a sound that could only have come from beneath the awning. This time when he pushed himself up he didn’t even gain his feet, catching just enough under him that he fell a few feet farther forward, enough that his shoulder bumped the pole and it shifted, bent, creaked, but would not fall.

  A teacher in the long ago of youth and ball games, when studying the sword had been thrilling, told him once that the time would come when instinct and training were useless. When that time came he would have to use his head.

  Kondrat’s helmet snapped the support pole and a wide sheet of rainwater dropped from the cloth awning.

  It landed full on the rain walker, outlining him, blanketing him for long seconds as the water slowed in passing though his body, more than long enough for one grieving old man to rise to his backside and throw his mace. There was little on the throw, but enough when placed in the right spot. The rain walker screeched and dropped, watery hands around a watery knee.

  Pushing up from his seat, Kondrat lurched again, clearing only a few feet, but enough. He had one chance and no one to come to his aid. Dagger held in both hands, he flopped onto the rain walker, felt a solid enough body, but for how long?

  He stabbed, dagger sinking deep, water haemorrhaging rhythmically around his hand. The rain walker’s howl sounded more like outrage than pain, but helped Kondrat locate the watery head. A palm jammed into the chin cut off the howl and cleared a path for his dagger to find the rain walker’s throat. Water flowed freely from that wound as well.

  Kondrat pushed himself over to the wall to watch. As the watery blood drained, colour came back to the figure in the mud, slowly revealing a slender man of average size and about thirty years. He wasn't as tall as he appeared when he wasn't there.

  “Lord Isay, they called you.” Kondrat was surprised to find his voice so steady. “Indeed, I think they meant you. What made you become as you are, my lord? Hatred, or greed, or folly?”

  Was that splashing out there? He thought the rain might be easing at last.

  “You may be disappointed to hear that you haven’t killed off my whole family. I still have another son — no, two sons — and a daughter, although if you weren’t dead I wouldn’t tell you of them, because I suspect you were petty and spiteful in life. That great a fool I am not.”

  Yes, there was splashing, and movement, too, and a voice. “Captain, are you here?” Aleksandr’s hatchet face appeared through the rain.

  “Most of me at least.” Familiar faces gathered around him.

  “How badly are you hurt?” Aleksandr probed beneath Kondrat’s cuirass.

  “Stuff you a cloth in there and bear me home. The gods will let us all know how bad it is. See you the corpse there? Bear him back to the castle. Let the Dwarves study him.”

  As they hoisted him in gentle hands, one thought passed through his mind.

  Too old for this.

  finis

  Also Available from this Author

  available wherever fine e-books are sold

  Short Novels set in the Age of Four Empires

  Ozan the Hero - On the cusp of manhood young Erramun comes to the Haegmarch to take possession of his new lands and meet his new bride. He expects years of peace to grow into his role, but instead of wise coaching from Lord Harduwich, he finds a shambles, his new home ransacked and his people in chains.

  For young Theudhar, the loss is deeply personal. His mother is dead, his father and sister taken. Now he finds himself the acting marcher lord, and raiders wit
hin the land are his responsibility.

  Now they must lead older and wiser men in a pursuit through forest and mountain into the Caverns of Night, to rescue their bride and sister from humanity's oldest and foulest enemies.

  The Caverns of Night - In Nikye in the conquered land of Nesalia, Ozan lives the quiet life he enjoys, running a bookshop and chatting with customers of all stations in life. At least that's what he thought, until unexpected events occur with unprecedented regularity.

  The appearance of a new thieves' guild threatens the uneasy peace between the authorities and the criminal element, and Ozan's delicate neutrality.

  On top of that, trouble comes into his life in the form of hauntingly beautiful people with the darkest secrets imaginable. Soon, people are dying in the streets, and the secret to survival for a city full of innocents and criminals alike may lie in any of the thousands of books stored in Ozan's mind.

  Fire of St. Denian's - Coming Soon

  The Guardian of Roydai - Coming Soon

  Short Stories

  Cards - Zuleika has secrets to keep, and a small magic with which she keeps her world in order.

  Cave of the Oracle - She's a delicate thing, the Oracle, and very pretty. When Cenhelm, a warrior of high standing in the king's household, is sent to take her home it's a quest likely to try his patience more than his abilities. Then he remembers that when magic is involved, anything can happen.

  The Enemy of My Enemy - Three dangerous men meet in a wizard's tower, an executioner, an assassin, and a wizard darker and more dangerous than both combined. Three men with no love for each other, who will survive?

  The Lake - In a world of violence and danger, five women must use nurturing magic to overcome an army. As they strive for the safety of their families and neighbours, they discover that all is not as it seems.

  Masks - When a little girl is lost in the woods, the last thing she needs is an approaching monster. Can Alienor survive her encounter with a nightmare?

  The Pint of Innocence - Jowan, a master mage of the Uala Guild trapped in the rival city of Pnastre must overthrow the masters of the land to free the people. First, though, he must find a source of power because he's exhausted his meagre supply and power is illegal in Pnastre.

  Tower of the Eagle - Henrik comes courting the fair daughter of a powerful wizard, but he comes with ulterior motives and carefully prepared lies. Can Brigitta discover his dark motives? Can she escape the broken and twisted minions he brings?

  Assassin - Coming Soon

  Temple of the Fox - Coming Soon

  About the Author

  Edwin C. Mason was born in 1964 in a house half-full of books and dedicated his early years to similarly filling the other half. Now he dreams of filling other people's houses the same way.

  He started writing in 1977 after reading Pirates of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and in the intervening years he has made every mistake it's possible for a writer to make. He writes fantasy, science fiction and, occasionally, horror. Some of his writing is humorous, some funny only to his proofreaders.

  His non-writing related interests include history, mythology, and darts.

  He lives in Toronto with his dreams and delusions.

  Thank you for reading books on Archive.BookFrom.Net
Share this book with friends