This story originally appeared in Anvil Magazine #2, and is the first appearance of Aelfred and Gwendolyn Herakleian, two of the many Bravos of Nerona.
“Down you go,” Aelfred grunted, wrapping his hands around his wife’s waist as he hoisted her over the fence and into the canal. The hard plates of metal hidden under her clothes clanked softly as he adjusted his grip. Gwendolyn rested a hand on his forearm as she swung her feet daintily over the wooden railing and let him carry her down the slope to the bottom of the trench. Her worn leather boots skipped lightly over the muck at the bottom of Saffron Canal as he set her down. Her graceful movements were a stark contrast to the dreary surroundings of the wide channel running through Citadel Fionni. She smoothed the front of her skirt and looked up at him with a critical eye.
“Keep a sharp eye out now, Aelfred,” she said, checking the fit of his helmet and gorget then fluffing out the loose, bushy hair of his beard so it stood out prominently. “You’re fierce and strong so this will be another simple job.”
“Of course it will,” he said, brushing a loose thread of hair back under her brigitta cap. Her swirling dress and loose sleeves flattered her figure but it was the hair that always caught his attention the most, gleaming like spun fire in the late morning sun. “All our work on this wretched peninsula has been simple, straightforward and well paying.”
Gwendolyn’s pale, peach colored lips curved down in a disapproving frown. “Now husband, weren’t you the one who thought coming south would serve us better than remaining in Hessex? And we’ve done well enough in Nerona.”
“Nerona might try doing well enough by us once in a while,” Aelfred grumbled, reaching up and dragging his ax off the lip of the canal then slinging it over his shoulder. He looked out over the canal, taking in the brown water and browner dirt, his vision clear and sharp just as Commanded. In spite of his sour mood he felt his limbs surge with power and a fire stoke itself in his belly as he stomped forward along the muddy banks of the waterway. “Look at this place. Can you believe there was ever saffron growing here?”
His wife tutted at his obvious sour mood. “Fionni is the epitome of the Neronan city, my dear, optimized to cram people together as closely as possible rather than giving each of them their own patch of greenery. It’s what makes them so good at working with each other. And let’s be honest, without such places where would the wealthy merchants who pay us come from?”
Aelfred harrumphed and continued along the canal, although his footsteps grew lighter as his mood grew less dark. At least this wasn’t a sewer channel. The Saffron Canal and many other passages like it crossed the Easter Peninsula between the Gulf of Lum and the Adriatic Ocean, allowing larger ships that couldn’t safely cross the rubble strewed entrance of the Gulf a way back and forth between Nerona’s gulfside and oceanic ports. Those canals, along with the Eastpoint Beacon in the city’s Citadel proper, were a great part of why Fionni was such a wealthy and important city to begin with.
Of course when strange happenings made the locals too scared to use one of those canals something had to be done about it. Those somethings happened to be Aelfred and Gwendolyn.
“What do you think it is?” Aelfred asked, running a hand along the stone wall that held up the embankment along the canal. “Rogue Invoker? A Dwimor of the Fair Folk? Or perhaps someone truly has summoned a demon from the dark beyond?”
“Well the last is impossible,” Gwendolyn murmured, carefully keeping pace with him, positioned two steps behind him and one to his right. “All the reports say no one has died. Those from beyond are many things but peaceful creatures who fear bloodshed? Not hardly. I think the Fair Folk are by far the most likely. An Invoker is possible but a distant second. After all, what spirit of nature could they find down here to Invoke? Perhaps they could reach something out in the sea that would answer their call but otherwise these places are built to crush the soul of man and nature alike.”
He was tempted to remind her they were doing well enough in Nerona and maybe she should be kinder to the place. However he knew that she was not talking about the city broadly but rather the canal specifically, with its featureless stone embankment and dreary gray water combining to make a place even a sleepwalker would grow tired of quickly. Besides, he always lost those kinds of word games when he played them with his wife. “A fitting place for a creature calling itself a dark lord.”
“That is the one thing that confuses me,” Gwendolyn said. “The Fair Folk call their heretics and villains Cheats, they don’t associate evil with light or dark, black or white. For them there’s only fair and unfair. So why would one of them describe themselves as a dark lord?”
“That is out of the ordinary for them, true,” Aelfred said, “but remember these are stories from Neronans, not Sextons. The Fair Folk are quite rare in these parts, not like at home. They may have misremembered, misheard or exaggerated what was said since they haven’t heard stories from childhood about the importance of the Folk’s exact words.”
“So true, husband.” In the distance the first bridge after the sea lock grew near. Aelfred shifted his shoulders to keep them perfectly ready and lowered his ax off his shoulder into the ready position. All the stories agreed that the creature terrorizing the canal appeared in shadows. As the sun grew high in the sky the bridges and occasional drainage ditch were the only places where shadows existed in the canal. His wife leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “Sharp eyes, Aelfred. Sharp eyes and ready hands.”
Aelfred swept his gaze back and forth across the canal repeatedly, searching for anything out of place in the tall wooden structure. The canal bridge was a marvel of Neronan construction. A dozen wooden support legs reached down into the canal, all linked to the bridge proper by a series of hinges and pulleys that allowed the bridge to be raised and lowered in halves by drawbridge mechanisms on either side. Towering a good eight feet over the water in the canal, the bridge was impressive in complexity and size.
At the moment the bridge was down, which was typical. They passed underneath it without incident and, no matter how he looked, Aelfred saw no sign of anything out of place beneath it. He was briefly tempted to try climbing out of the canal, crossing the thirty foot bridge to the opposite side and climbing back down to take a closer look under that side of things but eventually decided that would be overkill. The stories agreed the self styled dark lord accosted people on either side of the river. If it was under the bridge it should have made itself known by now.
“One bridge down,” he muttered, “one to go.”
“Plus the three drainage ditches and the place where the beacon tower casts a shadow over the canal in the afternoon.”
“Yes, and those.” Although no one had reported encountering the creature in the shadow of the beacon or by a drainage ditch. It was pretty much always under one of the canal’s two bridges.
They trudged down the waterway for another ten minutes, sweating under the noonday sun. Saffron Canal was short for one of Fionni’s waterways but it was still almost a mile and a half of muddy, uneven ground and crossing it took time. The first drainage ditch was just as unremarkable as the first bridge and they paused by it to share a drink of water from their water skin. Aelfred removed his helmet long enough to splash some of that water on his head. Then they proceeded on, Gwendolyn reminding him to be strong and vigilant.
Two minutes later they were approaching the second bridge when Aelfred caught the change, a barely perceptible shift in the brightness of the sun. It was like a thin cloud had passed overhead. He stopped immediately, motioning for his wife to do the same. She raised her voice and called out, “If there is anyone watching us, call out!”
Her voice rang with her Gift, compelling all who heard it to obey. Even for Aelfred, who knew he wasn’t being addressed and was used to hearing his wife’s Commands, there was a brief desire to comply. A true demon would have the will to easily resist. However for mortals, even those as powerful as the Fair Folk, the chances that anyone had the power to resist when they were off guard were very small. That didn’t make it impossible, and Commands could also be up for interpretation by the hearer, but an unprepared mortal resisting an unexpected Command was quite rare.
A high pitched voice with a strange raspiness to it drifted out from the bridge, asking, “What business have you with the Dark Lord Saffron?”
“We come on behalf of the Mayor of Fionni and the Commandant of the Citadel Garrison,” Aelfred replied. “They demand you leave their canal at once.”
“The Mayor and Commandant?” The voice laughed, an odd sound halfway between coughing and choking, clearly intended to convey mirth yet utterly devoid of that emotion. “Do they think this retaliation for sending my servant, the Blacklight, among them? Go back and tell them their suffering will grow a thousand times worse if they continue to displease me.”
Aelfred pivoted on his front foot foot so he could speak to his wife while keeping an eye on the bridge. “Who or what is the Blacklight?”
“I’ve never heard of it,” she said, her voice pitched low enough that it shouldn’t carry to the speaker under the bridge. “But this is Nerona. The Folk are rare here but instead they seem to have a dozen new, strange creatures and petty local legends vying to take their place every day. It could be any one of them.”
He turned back to the bridge. “Before you can torment the august leaders of Fionni you’ll first deal with us, Saffron. Your champion, this Blacklight, is unknown to me but perhaps our reputation is not as strange to you. I am Aelfred, called Herakleian by the people of Renicie and Lome, and this is my wife, Gwendolyn. We have come here from Hessex, far to the north beyond Isenlund. Five years ago we crossed into Nerona during the Griffon Rider’s Invasion and-”
Shadows from the bridge suddenly shifted and leapt forward in defiance of the sun, changing from a dark, slanted reflection of the bridge to reaching, flailing hands that careened drunkenly along the ground towards them. All the stories agreed that was the dark lord’s primary ability. It was still hard to accept it was actually happening now that he was looking at it. Aelfred felt his wife give him a push in the back and he charged forward, brandishing his ax in both hands. Behind him, Gwendolyn called, “Jump, Aelfred, jump!”
Most people distrusted those with the Commander’s Gift, fearing they would be forced to do something they didn’t wish to. That was certainly possible, but not where the Gift truly shone. The real power in the Gift lay in their way their orders pushed those that already trusted them to carry out those orders with a skill beyond what they normally possessed. As soon as he heard Gwendolyn’s order Aelfred leapt forward and across the twenty foot canal. The shadows from the bridge wavered for a moment, at first continuing to reach for his wife then turning to cross towards Aelfred as he continued to charge forward. Still born on by the power of his wife’s command Aelfred jumped again, this time focusing on going up, clearing the fence above and landing outside the canal on the streets of Fionni.
For the brief moment he was out of the canal he saw their yelling was attracting a nervous crowd. The natives were wary of getting too close to the canal and the mysterious creature within but whatever self destructive impulse drove people to stare at danger was slowly wearing down their caution. Aelfred ignored them and dashed along the canal towards the crank to raise the bridge. When they’d originally formulated the plan Aelfred hadn’t liked the roles they took but Gwendolyn insisted she would be safe. It was her belief the creature would ignore her to stop him raising the bridge.
That hope was disappointed. As he dashed along the top of the canal Aelfred could clearly see the shadow limbs turning back towards Gwendolyn, merging together into a single lumbering shadow of a creature with bulging, misshapen limbs and no discernible head. His wife quickly began backpedaling. “Show yourself, Dark Lord Saffron,” she called. “You’ve no business lurking under bridges. Step out into the light!”
“What part of Dark Lord was unclear to you?” The disembodied voice replied. Although defiant there was a rasping edge to Saffron’s tone that suggested whoever or whatever it was strained to resist the order. “Begone, strangers. I’ve no score to settle with you.”
For a moment Aelfred considered sticking to the plan and cranking the bridge up to expose whatever it was that lurked beneath it. But the shadow thing kept lurching towards Gwendolyn and all thought of ignoring that quickly left him. Aelfred leapt back over the fence and slid down the side of the canal to the bottom. His wife was still on the opposite side of the canal and the extra push of her Command was mostly faded but Aelfred figured the struts of the bridge were close enough together he could use them to cross the canal if he had to.
Five long strides took Aelfred beneath the bridge itself and he struck his ax on the nearest strut with a loud thud. “If you missed it we’re here to settle with you, your scores don’t matter to us” he snapped. “Time you showed yourself.”
“The great and terrible Dark Lord Saffron shows himself when he chooses and not before!” The shadow figure on the ground spun and swept back toward the bridge with surprising speed. The shadows under the bridge, which hadn’t been as dark as Aelfred expected, quickly darkened back to normal and then grew even thicker.
Aelfred stepped forward to meet the strange giant, slowly swinging his ax in a looping pattern to build momentum. The toes of one boot slipped into the water of the canal as he spread out and lowered his stance. “Anything you want to see today, dear?”
“I always look forward to seeing you at your best, Aelfred, just don’t let him lay a hand on you.” Although her tone was light he could see concern in the purse of her lips. She had unlooped her sling from her belt but hadn’t loaded it yet, instead addressing the shadows under the bridge again. “Come out from under that bridge, Saffron.”
The darkness on the far side of the canal shifted for a moment and the shadow brute that was lurching back towards the structure wavered like a mirage before it steadied again. Whoever was under this bridge, Aelfred was certain he or she wasn’t actually named Saffron. A correct name made a Command much stronger, as did repeated and insistent Commands, and Gwendolyn was a pretty skilled Commander. Yet Saffron was rejecting her Commands very quickly.
Aelfred figured that meant he’d have to do things his way. As the shadow giant raised a flailing arm and swung it towards him under the bridge Aelfred drew back his arm and threw his ax, the three foot ashwood handle tumbling end over end towards the space where the body casting the shadow would be. However the weapon passed right through the space without slowing. With practiced skill he tapped the ax with his Gift, the Impulse shoving the axhead so it popped up in the air and back towards him in a lazy arc. A second Impulse directed the handle neatly back into his hand. The whole process took barely two heartbeats but it was enough time for the shadow to reach him. Bracing his ax with one hand Aelfred held it down, toward the ground, to block the creature’s attack because he assumed the shadow itself must be the threat if there was no invisible creature casting it.
Instead the shadow reached under the bridge and the world around him turned black. He couldn’t see anything, not even when he held his hand up in front of his face and waved it back and forth a few times. The air wasn’t cold, a few trial swings of his ax told him there wasn’t anything solid nearby. He just couldn’t see.
“Aelfred?” A tinge of worry in his wife’s voice. “Aelfred, are you alright?”
“I feel fine, I just can’t see anything. Can you?”
“Everything but you. I-”
“Enough!” Something like a whine worked its way into Saffron’s voice. “I am the great and terrible Dark Lord Saffron and I will not suffer you presence any longer! Get out of here before I do something lasting to you!”
“Can you see anything here besides shadow?” Aelfred asked, deciding to ignore the creature in the shadows with him.
“No, just the dark.” Gwendolyn’s voice suddenly pitched up a tad and got much louder, the tone of Command in it. “You there! Yes, you! Raise the drawbridge on your side.”
Aelfred reached out with his ax handle until it clunked against a support. Then he stuck the weapon’s handle in his belt. Although the dark hampered him he was able to clamber up one of the beams and go from timber to timber until he felt them begin to move under his hands. Then he just hung on as the bridge raised. The shadows and sunlight underneath shifted as it did and Aelfred found he was beginning to see the world around him again.
“Stop that!” Saffron yelled. The note in his voice was stronger now and Aelfred realized it wasn’t whining – it was desperation. “Stop that, I insist! I am the Dark Lord Saffron, I sent my servant the Blacklight to thwart the Commandant of the Citadel, I have claimed this place and I will not stand for you to meddle any longer. Leave me in peace! I am the great and terrible Dark Lord-”
His wife interrupted, saying, “Come out from there, Saffron!”
This time Saffron didn’t recover quickly. The drawbridge reached it’s raised position with a creaking thud and the shadows quickly dissolved into the noonday sun. Only a few dense patches remained in the furthest recesses under the bridge by the banks of the canal. Aelfred found himself hanging onto one of the struts only a few feet above the ground on Gwendolyn’s side of the waterway. He dropped himself down to the ground and dusted himself off.
“You heard the lady,” Aelfred said as he started towards the densest patch of darkness still present under that side of the bridge. “Come on out!”
For good measure he kicked at a stone with his boot, sending it skipping into the shadows and forming just enough of a connection with it that he could add a second shove with his Gift, causing it to jump up to head height suddenly as it flew into the unnatural darkness. There was a yelp of surprise, rather than pain, then silence. Gwendolyn hurried up behind him, calling out, “Come out, Saffron. We know you’re not a dark lord, let this ridiculous sham rest and stop frightening the townsfolk.”
“I am!” Saffron’s voice was getting more and more unstable, its already high pitch wavering and cracking with the effort of fighting the Command. Aelfred stopped a few feet away from the unnatural darkness and listened. His ears, still sharpened from Gwendolyn’s admonition to be vigilant, caught the sound of a footstep, very light and coming towards them, followed by a strange dragging sound. “I am the dark lord Saffron!”
The voice lacked the resolve to convince a small child. His wife took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then, in a tone that broke no refusal from man or child, she barked, “I said come out from there, Saffron!”
“I won’t!” The voice wailed, even as another step told Aelfred it was doing exactly what she’d ordered. Another dragging sound and a lumpy, misshapen outline appeared in the shadows. “I am the terr-”
A hiccup interrupted the word, followed by a cough. “The terrib-
The darkened shape was about three and a half feet tall, twisted backwards, inky blackness surrounding its hands as it clutched at the shadows. Some kind of human Gift, to be sure, but not one Aelfred knew. “The terri-”
The cause of the dragging sound became clear when the figure took another step forward, its left leg bent slightly at an unnatural angle that made it difficult to use. He’d seen many similar things in the past, bones that had broken and healed poorly. With the last step forward whatever power connected the shadows to the person holding them strained to breaking and the darkness leaked out of his hands, vanishing in the light of the noonday sun. Strained beyond endurance, a boy of no more than ten dropped to the ground in a heap and began to sob. “Terrible, terrible,” he wailed, tears cutting paths through a layer of grime and filth on his face. Dark circles lurked under his eyes and his cheeks were hollow with hunger. He threw himself facedown on the ground, sobbing as he babbled. “Terrible, I’m so sorry, please, I’m terrible, so sorry…”
He threw his hands over his head as he cried in a pose anyone who’d seen a beaten dog or tortured child could understand. Gwendolyn rushed past her husband and swooped down to try and cradle the child in her lap. Aelfred’s stomach tied itself into knots watching the way the boy cringed away from her touch, unable to comprehend something as simple as a comforting embrace.
For a moment he let his mind flee from the scene before him, wondering how the boy found enough to eat down there. Perhaps he was catching fish out of the canal. Whatever the Blacklight he mentioned was, if it even existed, the child clearly had no connection to it. There were only a few rags propped on a stick under the bridge to shelter the boy. Why hadn’t he gone to the Heralds of the Kings? They had an orphanage in Fionni. What in the name of Eternity was wrong with the people of Nerona that they hadn’t seen fit to help a boy so badly abused he played at evil to find peace?
Aelfred sat down beside his wife with a grunt. As loath as he was to admit it, that last bit was as true in Hessex as anywhere else. He sighed and shook his head. “Stars and scars, what are we supposed to do now?”
“Please…” the boy coughed again and peeked at Aelfred around his wife’s side. “Just leave me here. Or drag me off to the debtors jail if the Mayor and Commandant want money for the trouble I’ve caused. Just… don’t give me back to my brother.”
“Your brother?” Confusion vanished and cold certainty took its place. “No, we won’t do that. But, just to be certain we don’t make a mistake, tell me his name…”
Nevio staggered through the front door of his house, leaning on the wall as he finished the bottle and threw it in the general direction of the stove. The clay vessel hit the bricks and shattered but he ignored it. “Zalt, Nico, leaving me a dark house to come home to.”
He pushed off the wall, swaying to keep his balance, then turned to the door to close it behind him. As he reached out the door slammed closed in his face. Stunned, Nevio flopped back on his rear end. After a moment to gather his wits he lurched upwards, leaned against the door and pulled himself up to his feet. Then he shoved the door open and staggered out into the street. No one was there. It wasn’t very windy, either.
Maybe a dog or something was out there, running through the streets, and hit the door. Nodding to himself, Nevio pulled himself back into the house and slammed the door again leaving himself in the dark house. He pulled his cloak off, wadded it up and threw it on the stool by the door then headed towards the stove to find his oil lamp. He was fairly sure he’d left it there.
The house was cluttered and messy, slowly falling apart since their mother had died. For a time Nevio’s brother had tried to keep house but the incompetent fool failed at every turn. Nevio suspected he’d kept going down to the canals to play and fallen in one day, just one more member of his zalted family to die and leave him alone. So Nevio would just have to make do. He reached the stove and started groping around, the shadows of the room swimming past his eyes, when a deep, feminine voice said, “Nevio. Take a seat.”
For some reason he took three long steps across the room to a table he could barely see in the dark, pulled a chair out from it and sat down there. The chair on the other side was pulled far back into the corner by the window. Someone was sitting in it but she was positioned so that the moonlight spilling in the shutters beside her blinded him and made it impossible to see more than the outline of her figure and her hard, baleful green eyes. Nevio felt acid welling up in his throat and swallowed, hard. “Who are you?”
“I?” She laughed, a sound as sharp and beautiful as shards of glass in the air. “No one of importance. I come here on behalf of the Dark Lord Saffron, Nevio. Do you know why?”
“No. Who-” The door opened behind him and Nevio started to turn.
“Look at me, Nevio.” Like an iron hook the words took him by the ears and turned him back around to stare at the woman in the corner. A glint of red swept past her eyes, like a hint of demon’s fire. “You’ve wronged Saffron and we’re here to even the score. Roll up your pant leg, Nevio.”
“My what?” Even as he asked he was doing exactly as instructed, his fingers fumbling but still carrying out the task. Once he finished rough hands grabbed him under the arms, dragged him to his feet and threw him face down on the table.
The woman got up out of the chair and stepped forward, the moonlight behind her ringing her figure in an unearthly halo. She leaned down until her face, hidden behind a black veil, was only inches away. Wisps of red hair burned around her eyes like fire. “You sent Saffron a child maimed in body and mind and expected him to accept that? Shame, Nevio, shame.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Nevio babbled, feeling shame well up in him in bitter waves. “I didn’t know. Nico was always a stupid child but-”
“Silence,” she hissed. “We’re not here for your excuses. Taking full repayment for all you’ve done would take far too long so we’ll just take a tithe of it for the moment. You’d best behave yourself after, Nevio, or we’ll come and collect the rest. Now hold still.”
The woman rose to her full height, her green eyes staring down at him without remorse or pity. He heard whoever or whatever was behind him shifting. There was a grunt and a wet crack then his leg exploded in pain.
Aelfred and Gwendolyn left him screaming in his house, their vengeance done. All they could do now was make sure Nico never needed the Dark Lord Saffron again.
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