Fire and Lightning

While the Healer Cid circled around to re-enter Nont from the north, Ryn, Nuthea, Sagar and Elrann kept to the woods and continued south-east to the hill where they had agreed to meet later.

Ryn led the cochobo by the reins, the captive bounty hunter propped up in its saddle. The black-shrouded man didn’t make any sound except the occasional “Ahhhh”, although from time to time his body twitched, making the cochobo beneath him caw. He seemed still to be lost in his ‘poppy trance’. Ryn carried the man’s sword in its black sheath, making it his own for the time being, seeing as he had returned Sagar’s and had no other.

As they walked, the travellers kept looking over their shoulders, spooked by every stray breeze on the back of their necks . All they saw were trees. All they heard was the sound of the leaves rustling above them, the squerch of their shoes on the forest floor, and the sighing and cawing of the bounty hunter and his steed.

Eventually they made it to the hill beyond Nont that Cid had spoken of and climbed to its crest. Ryn’s shins and calves ached awfully. He had been through a lot thislast day. Not to mention the last week… Mum. Dad. Cleasor. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr. Stay with Nuthea?

At the top of the hill trees obscured the view so they couldn’t beyond it unless they stood at its lip. When they did all they could see was more trees, except for where Nont lay nestled in the north-west.

Ryn tied the cochobo to a branch and they all sat with their backs against the trunks. Everyone seemed too exhausted to talk. So they just sat like that for a while, waiting for their new companion to return. Ryn watched the leaves dance as the branches swayed gently in the breeze.

Can we really trust this man? he thought of the old healer. He wondered if in the end he had voted in the best way. After all, one elderly resident of Nont had betrayed him already.

He looked around at the other members of his traveling party. Nuthea hugged her knees in her torn dress and watched the leaves as well, apparently lost in thought. Sagar had his legs and arms crossed and his head bowed, eyes closed. Elrann fiddled with one of her pistols, tipping some powder from a bottle into a hole she had opened in the top of it.

Come to think of it, can I really trust any of these people? I don’t even want the same things as them. I’m just staying with them for safety and convenience until I can find General Vorr and kill him. Although…

His gazed settled on Nuthea again, but when she raised her eyes to him Ryn quickly looked away at the bounty hunter. The bounty hunter, still sitting astride the cochobo, had gone quiet and stopped making his sighing noises.

It hadn’t turned out to be such a bad choice so far, had it? He might be able to give them more information about what was going on with this Imperial invasion when he woke up. Hang on; when did he fall asleep?

Ryn stood and walked over to the cochobo.

The cochobo inclined its head to inspect Ryn with its beady eyes, then nuzzled him with its beak when Ryn stroked its head feathers. “Hey, well done,” Ryn whispered. “You did good today. I might need you to run fast like that again sometime—so catch a good break while you can.”

Somewhere, a twig snapped.

Ryn’s head snapped round. Nuthea and Elrann looked up too. A heartbeat of quiet.

“What was that?” said Ryn.

“It was nothing,” said Sagar without opening his eyes. “Just a branch falling in the wind or something. Go back to your rest, pup. And sit down. If you must insist on keeping that scumsucker alive, let him sleep off his poppy hit in peace so we can all have a break from him.”

Ryn’s jaw tightened at Sagar’s casual commands. The skypirate was really beginning to irritate him. “I want to find out what he knows about the invasion.”. He also wanted to further vindicate himself for having kept the man alive, but he didn’t say that out loud.

Sagar sighed where he reclined against his tree, but he didn’t say more.

“Hey, wake up,” Ryn prodded the bounty hunter in the leg where he sat on the cochobo. The man didn’t even stir. “Wake up,” Ryn said a bit more loudly and shook the man gently.

Nothing.

“If he’s sleeping off a poppy trance he’ll be pretty hard to rouse,” said Elrann as she polished her pistol with a cloth. “That’s if you can rouse him at all.”

“Just give it a rest would you, pup?” said Sagar.

Ryn gritted his teeth. “Wake up!” he yelled, and slapped the bounty hunter in the face.

“Huh?! Whrrrrrrrr…” The man opened his eyes. They were deeply bloodshot, more red than right. “Where…where am I?” he rasped. Ryn noticed again how his accent was neither Efstanish nor Imfisi, but something else entirely—a strange combination of guttural and lilting.

“Rrrr...” muttered Sagar, “now you’ve done it…”

“You’re in Imfis, in a forest outside Nont,” Ryn said to the man.

The man’s brow knotted and some grey reasserted itself in his eyes amidst the red. The black discoloration around his mouth was really quite horrible. “I am...? Oh...you’re one of the boys who was with the target.” Boys. At least he classed Sagar as a ‘boy’ as well. Either that or maybe he mistook Elrann for a boy, as some people did. “Why didn’t you kill me when I failed the job?”

“Yes, why indeed...” said Sagar from off to the side.

Even the bounty hunter himself is questioning my decision to keep him alive, Ryn thought. But he set his jaw. He was determined to justify his actions and make some use of his spur-of-the-moment choice to spare this man’s life.

“I didn’t kill you,” Ryn said, “because you’re going to tell us what the Empire is doing invading Imfis.”

The man’s forehead furrowed more deeply as he looked at Ryn. He did nothing for a moment. Then his body twitched and his arms tensed against his bonds. He gave a small grunt.

“You’re not going anywhere,” said Ryn, surprised at his own boldness. “You’re tied up good and tight.”

“Why should I tell you anything?” the man said, his foreign-accented voice dripping with spite.

A clicking noise. Ryn turned to see Elrann standing with her pistol pointed at the bounty hunter’s chest. “Because this time I will shoot to kill,” she said. “I’ve re-loaded. Now tell farmboy here what he wants to know or I fill you full of lead.”

Does everyone have to have a derisive nickname for me? Ryn thought.

The man curled his black-tainted lip and looked contemptuously between the pistol and Ryn. “Do you have any more poppy seed?” he said.

“You just had a hit,” Elrann growled. “You shouldn’t need another one for a while.”

The man smiled, but not in a happy way, and the blackness around his mouth rearranged itself. “It’s never too soon for another hit. Besides, it’s nice to know where your next one is coming from. If I knew that, I might be inclined to be a little more talkative…”

“You’ll be talkative because if you aren’t I’ll put a shot in you,” said Elrann.

“Stop yammering, woman, and just shoot him already!” said Sagar.

“Please,” said Nuthea from where she sat. “No more violence. The One does not approve of senseless killing.”

That lent Ryn a little more authority. “It’s alright, Elrann. He can’t tell us anything if he’s dead…” Dead. Mum. Dad. Cleasor. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr. Stay with Nuthea?

“Where’s the old man?” said the bounty hunter, taking advantage of Ryn’s mind wandering. “The one who gave me the poppy before?”

“He’s doing something,” Ryn said. He decided to use a bargaining tactic that Sagar had used earlier. “But he’ll be back soon. If you talk to us, I’ll get him to give you some more poppy seed when he gets back.”

The man seemed to consider his options. He must know he didn’t really have any.

“Alright,” the man said at last. “I will talk now, for poppy later. What do you wish to know?”

“Well…” Ryn wondered where he should start. “To begin with, what’s your name?”

“Vish,” said the bounty hunter.

“And who exactly hired you to capture Nuthea?”

The man’s grey eyes darted briefly beyond Ryn and back. “Nufea? Nufea is the girl with the blonde hair?”

“That’s right. Nuthea.”

“Nobody ‘hired’ me. I serve the Morekemian Empire.”

“You work for them?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re not a bounty hunter?” said Elrann.

“I am, or perhaps, was on a permanent contract with the Morekemian Empire.”

“You kill for them and they supply you with poppy,” said Elrann.

Vish’s silence might as well have been a ‘yes’.

“But you’re not Morekemian,” said Elrann.

“You are right. I am from Aibar. I learned to kill in Aibar.”

“How did you get involved with the Empire, then?” asked Ryn.

“They found me. They gave me poppy. Now I work for them. I hate them, but I work for them. The bigger the targets I kill, the more poppy they give me.”

“Why?” asked Ryn. “If you hate them, why don’t you just leave?” Hating the Empire was something he shared with this man, at least.

Vish dropped his voice. “You have never tasted poppy seed, have you, boy? It is the greatest feeling you could ever imagine. Greater. There is nothing better than it. Nothing. I have tried to leave it, but I cannot. I need the poppy. It makes me happy. I am a slave to it. So I am a slave to the Empire too, since they give me poppy in return for killing.”

Ryn pondered that. He understood the man little more How Ryn hated the Empire. All they did was steal, kill, destroy. Enslave. Mum. Dad. Cleasor. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr. Stay with Nuthea?

“We will help you escape from your poppy enslavement,” said Ryn.

“We will?” said Elrann.

“Urgggh…” groaned Sagar, like his perception of Ryn’s stupidity made him physically sick. “Will you all just shut up?”

“That is a noble idea, Ryn,” said Nuthea. She stood next to him and Elrann, and smiled.

Vish just sucked in his black lips and said nothing, and this time it wasn’t clear what his nothing meant.

“So…” Ryn said, “if you work for the Empire, you know what they’re up to: Why did you invade Imfis?”

“Yeah, what gives?!” said Elrann all of a sudden. “We pay our levies! There hasn’t been any Imfisi trouble with the Empire for a long time, ’cept for the odd little pirate raid.”

“I wouldn’t call them little...” said Sagar from where he sat.

“Still, nothing that should have led to a full-scale invasion! What in the hells is going on here?” Elrann was clearly still rattled by what had happened—as they all were—but as a recent resident of Imfis she seemed to be feeling it most.

Vish shook his head from where he sat atop the cochobo. “I know as much as you do, boy—”

“I’m a girl,” said Elrann. “Woman, actually.”

“So she claims,” said Sagar.

Vish frowned. “But you have short hair and you dress like a boy. And you carry pistols.”

“Yeah. What of it?”

Vish raised his eyebrows, but then blinked, apparently accepting this oddity. “Alright, girl, then. I know as much as you do, girl. I just kill my targets. They don’t tell me why or where I’m going. I was flown by airship to Imfis, dropped into the forest and told to hunt for a woman matching her description.” His eyes flicked to Nuthea. “They showed me a drawing and set me loose. They must have been very keen to get their hands on her, as they had not given me any poppy for a long time.”

“Why does that affect anything?” said Ryn.

“Because the more desperate he is for poppy the harder he will hunt, dingbat,” said Elrann.

“Oh.”

“How did you find me?” said Nuthea. “If they knew where I was, why didn’t they send more soldiers to capture me? Why did they just send you?”

Vish licked his blackened lips. “You will give me lots of poppy when the old man returns?”

“We’ll get him to give you some, yes…” said Ryn carefully. “And then we’ll start helping you to get free from it.”

Vish swallowed, then said, “There are others like me. Not all from Aibar—though some are. Other Shadowfingers.”

“‘Shadowfingers’?” said Sagar. Now he stood and joined them too. “What in the poodoo is a ‘Shadowfinger’?”

Vish bit his lip. “I want lots of poppy.”.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Sagar, taking over the bartering from Ryn. “When the old timer gets back, sure.”

“We are the Emperor’s elite assassins,” said Vish. “People call us bounty hunters because that is what they think we are. And that is true, in a way. But really, we are all poppy slaves—and slaves to the Emperor because of that. The Emperor finds the most dangerous killers in Mid, gets us hooked on poppy, and then uses us to carry out his wishes. Together, we make up the Emperor’s Hands. It wasn’t just me they dropped into Imfis, but two other Shadowfingers as well.” He looked at Nuthea. “He must be very keen to get his hands on you. They must have known the general area you were in, but not exactly where. I stole this cochobo for transportation and just happened to chance upon you in the forest. I was lucky, I suppose. Or not, as the case may be,” he added, eyeing Elrann’s pistol.

“Some ‘elite assassin’,” Elrann said.

“I was doing fine until you shot me with that infernal contraption.”

“You got careless, bountyhunterman,” said Elrann.

“And you.” Vish nodded at Sagar. “How did my first cut not wound you more deeply?”

“Wind powers, scumsucker,” said Sagar. He held out his hand and a brief rush of air gusted around him. “I saw you coming and pushed myself back from you at the last moment, so you didn’t cut me so deep. I still went down, though.”

Vish looked surprised. “Three of you have elemental powers.”

There was a noise like a dog barking, only deeper and angrier, from somewhere far away. Everyone looked round in the direction it had come from, the direction from which they had walked, but there was nothing to be seen, only the interwoven eaves of the trees.

“What was that?” said Ryn.

“Nothing,” said Sagar. “A stray dog or something. So you’re one of these ‘Shadowfingers’ then,” he said, turning back to Vish. “One of the Morekemian Emperor’s assassins. If that’s true, you must know why he has invaded Imfis.”

“I have no idea why the Empire have invaded this pitiful little country,” said Vish.

“He’s lying,” said Elrann.

“Think what you will. I have no reason to lie to any of you. In fact, it’s in my interests to tell you the truth. They don’t tell me what they’re doing—they just drop me into places and point me in the direction of my target so I can claim my poppy. I just want my poppy.”

“Do you know who General Vorr is?” Ryn said.

Vish was silent a moment. “Yes.”

Ryn’s pulse quickened. “What can you tell me about him?”

“He is a brutal, cruel, highly dangerous Imperial officer.”

“What’s his involvement in the invasion?”

“He has been tasked with leading the invasion of Imfis by the Emperor.”

“How do you know that much if they don’t tell you anything?”

“Vorr is running the whole operation. He personally gave me my orders to recapture your blonde-haired girl himself.”

“Nuthea.”

“Nufea.”

“What’s he planning next?”

Vish sighed; not a sigh of pleasure this time like when he had been in the poppy trance, but asigh of exasperation. “That I cannot tell you. He merely issued me with my target. I was capture her, then report back , receive my poppy, and await my next target. I don’t know anything about why I am given my targets, why the Empire are doing what they’re doing, or what they’re going to do next. I find it is best not to think about such things. All I am interested in is my poppy.”

Ryn’s pulse slowed, and he sighed now as well. Whatever the others thought, he judged this man was probably telling the truth, and that he really didn’t know anything more about Vorr’s plans or whereabouts. It made sense. He was just a kind of slave who followed orders.

“Quick!”

Ryn’s head snapped round. Someone had called out from somewhere in the forest, just on the edge of hearing.

There was another sound like the bark they had heard earlier, only louder and closer this time. There it was again.

Rustling. Something moving through the undergrowth.

And then the old man Cid appeared, hurtling through the trees towards them at full gallop on the back of a yellow cochobo. Where he grasped the reins he also held a rope attached to another cochobo that galloped along behind him.

“Get on, get on!” he yelled as he approached them. His face was puffy and red and he spoke between gasps for breath. “We’ve got to go, now! They’re coming! They recognised me leaving the stable and now they’re coming!”

“Who’s coming?” Ryn was the first to say as he scrambled around in a panic, trying to work out which cochobo to mount.

The barking noise again, closer still; bone-chillingly close.

“The Imperials, of course!” yelled Cid urgently. “But they’ve got something with them! Some kind of beast!”

“Ah,” said Vish. “That would be Ozan’s pet. One of my colleagues has found you.”

From between the trees behind him, where Cid had been only moments ago, several black-armoured Imperial soldiers mounted on cochobos appeared.

And with them, twice their height and more than four times their width, with another man in black seated atop it, was some sort of bone-white, dog-shaped, pug-faced, black-eyed, many-fanged, barking monster.