Rain Walker



  Rain Walker

  Edwin C. Mason

  © 2013 Edwin C. Mason

  All rights reserved.

  GND Publishing

  Toronto, ON Canada

  Cover image:

  NOAA Photo Library, NOAA Central Library;

  OAR/ERL/National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL)

  Photographer: C. Clark

  Contents

  Author's Note

  Rain Walker

  Also Available

  About the Author

  Author's Note

  Kondrat is a somewhat unusual protagonist for a fantasy story, old enough to make four of the typical teenage heroes, but now that I've come to understand the nature of middle-age and have encountered the dubious pleasure of creaking knees, I wanted to write at least one story in which the protagonist had some of the same problems I do.

  Remember that even geezers have their stories, and they aren't all memories of youth.

  Rain Walker

  Edwin C. Mason

  Kondrat put his hand on the sodden wooden wall and pushed himself up from a squat, the motion smooth and silent apart from the creaking of his knees. The thought that he was too old for this passed through his mind without his notice, discomfort of age lost amongst those of soaking boots, nagging hunger, persistent fear.

  Aleksandr tugged at his sleeve, made a screwing motion and pointed to one side. Kondrat nodded that he had heard the same thing: sappers below the building beside them.

  Aleksandr was dressed as he was, in lamellar and mail, sword, mace and pavise. Except Aleksandr’s helm bore no crest of a pheasant’s tail feathers; except that Aleksandr’s shield had a plain black keel, without the seventeen red stripes that marked off Kondrat’s battles.

  Looking quickly around, Kondrat marked his position by the castle’s East Tower, by the Fountain of the Angels, by the wide road that led from the square to the docks. He nodded; he would find this place again readily enough.

  Sappers in the building might number two or thirty and unless he knew which he would not try them with a force of seven. Battle would commence in the morning, not tonight. And perhaps — gods willing — tomorrow it would not rain.

  He led his men through splashing and sucking mud to the corner and paused there, one sun-darkened hand tugging at the long, dripping tuft of hair on his chin. Little could he see but the wood and plaster of buildings, narrow streets, walls leaning on each other, all dripping with the persistent rain. Even where roofs and awnings overhung, the rain had come enough to soak the ground to viscous mud. Where the Moeki found ground firm enough to dig through Kondrat could not guess. Enough to know they did.

  Movement flashed at a corner on the right while a splash sounded to his left.

  No cat would wander in this weather, no rat or dog or any other thing save a man or a fish. Any splash that could be heard above the drum roll of the rain would have to be seen to.

  Aleksandr’s voice sounded soft in his ear. “I heard a sound.”

  “As did I.”

  “Then why do we not…”

  Kondrat cut him off. “I saw movement.”

  “Then which should we investigate?”

  “Indeed, that is an excellent question to which I have no excellent answer. We must see to both incidents, it would seem.”

  “Almost as if …” Aleksandr hesitated for some seconds. “As if they intended to part us.”

  “Indeed, yes. Take you a man and see to the sound, but do not let the sound see to you. Hame, stay you here to answer a cry of distress from either. Trygg, come you with me.”

  Faces nodded in the dark, Aleksandr’s hatchet face, Hame’s deep-set eyes so like Kondrat’s own, Trygg’s broad forehead.

  Who had told him that a command divided three ways could be stronger than one divided two ways? It had been too many years ago for him to recall. A glance over his shoulder showed two forms starting toward the place where the splash had sounded, and then Kondrat returned to the task at hand and crept toward the corner and the flash of movement.

  The corner shop was a bakery, and tables stood out front to display its wares, tables now bare save for rainwater. Not a crust remained, surely picked down to the last crumb by Moeki soldiers, what had not been snatched hurriedly for the castle’s needs. This, Kondrat thought in an instant, but that instant was too long.

  The butcher’s yard sounds of sword or axe meeting flesh sounded behind him. Turning, he saw Hame and his men splashing though the mud. A quick glance back to see the vacant corner, then he caught Trygg’s eye and ran, swollen joints creaking. He swore as the younger man overtook him, again as his knee threatened to buckle. By the time he reached the others all movement had ceased. The cluster of guardsmen looked to the four corners with the vacant, unfocused look of men straining to see movement.

  Four corners, four men. Yorgi held a bandage to his own sleeve and shivered as he stared at the ground. Kondrat looked down. Alvar lay on his back, neck slashed between collar and camail, raindrops splashing into eyes that would never blink again. The other body sprawled face down in the muck. Groaning even before he turned the body, Kondrat whispered a prayer to any gods who might hear. “Hame. My boy,” he said, one hand covering the wound in the boy’s forehead, the narrow slit of a sword thrust.

  He would not weep in battle, not when there remained so many things to do. He wiped rain from his cheeks. Closing the boy’s eyes, so like his own, Kondrat felt unconsciously at his own forehead to see if there was a wound matching his son’s and willing to trade in that instant.

  “Captain?”

  He snapped back at Aleksandr. “What has happened? How many came that they struck, killed two — two of my men — and fled, leaving not a corpse of their own?” Those were not the questions he wanted answered. How would he tell Elga? He struck at a wall, half hoping a splinter would stick.

  “Captain,” Aleksandr said again. “There weren’t any at all. A shadow flickered, no more, and Alvar was dead. It was the same with Hame. As if the air or the rain killed them.”

  “That makes no sense. Can the air strike a man dead?” Kondrat jabbed at his own forehead. “Can the air think to desire a man’s death?” The other man did nothing, merely stood, shoulders shrugged, but whether that indicated confusion or was a gesture against the rain, Kondrat did not know. Air or rain killed the men? What would he be suggesting next, that trolls dug their way up from the core of the earth? A raindrop slid down his back and Kondrat turned to look behind him. It took a feat of will — too hard a feat, he admitted to himself — to slow that turn enough to look like caution rather than fear, but he knew which it was. What should he do next? He almost asked Aleksandr, but the voice of a long-dead instructor came to him: “When in doubt do something, and quickly.”

  “Two men, see you to that building,”

  Yorgi unsheathed his sword and took Trygg by the shoulder, led him skulking silently beneath the low stone lintel. Strain as he might, Kondrat could hear no sound over the muttering of the rain as he waited, trying not to count his breaths. Knots in his shoulders eased when, finally, familiar faces appeared from the shadowed doorway, Trygg first, then Yorgi. Yorgi stepped one foot into the street, leaned from beneath a tattered awning, and died gurgling. Kondrat saw the thrust perfectly well, saw the blade, which did not flash like steel but seemed to ripple like a brook as it jutted from between the lames of Yorgi’s armour. Too old to flow as he once had, he shoved himself up and charged like a bull, sword thrust over his pavise, charged under the awning and through the door, growling, swearing when he felt no impact, no body driven beneath his shield.

  Nothing. Again, nothing. No skulking figure, no tread of boots, no heavy breathing from someone who has just killed three strong men. The dark room was empt
y save for bugs and mice scurrying beneath the sparse furniture.

  He would wait. He would wait until the killer revealed himself if it took until the world froze and the gods returned. Unbidden, his own reason answered that there was a window — small, but passable — in the back and too little cover to hide the killer. Reason demanded that he regroup and return tomorrow to drive the invader from the town, the land; reason insisted that this was war, not vengeance. “The Pit take reason!” he whispered, but still he edged to the doorway and called out, “Pick you up the…” he could not call Hame a body. “Pick them up, but a single man for each; we have not far to go and may need free sword arms. Trygg, can you carry…” but Trygg was already lifting Alvar’s slight corpse, throwing it over a shoulder with contemptuous ease. “The castle then, and quickly.”

  Hurrying from the doorway, Kondrat thought he felt the breeze of a blade, turned, shield high and sword low. Again there was nothing to see but splattering rain.

  Reinforcements came, responding to Aleksandr’s call, Cyryl and a dozen men.

  It did them no good.

  This time Kondrat saw it all, the shadow in the rain, the water-rippling blade that severed Konstantyn’s leg, that cut Teofil’s throat.

  “Surround you him! Surround you him!” Men rushed to obey spreading and curling inward while the shadow vanished in stillness. Then Lubormir fell to the street and the shadow flashed into another, tinier building. The men responded with alacrity that spoke of long training, and hard. Kondrat was third into the hovel and saw that there was no window, no other door, nowhere to hide in a single room stripped bare of even its hearthstone. There was no killer, and soon no shadow to hide one from the torchlight.

  “What devils do we fight?”

  Kondrat turned on the man, one of the youngsters who came to the ranks when the Moeki first marched into view. “Be quiet! Never, never will you ask that again. This is some foe of rare skill, but no devil. No devil. Now, we make again for the castle, with all haste. Go you!”

  As Kondrat left the hovel he made a sign against evil, close to his body where no other would see it.