Chapter One

“I’m not tired.” Speranzi lied while she stretched out, “Just bored. How is this supposed to be so horrible? You’re saying they get free food, free housing, free clothing… everything… and all they have to do is work?” Speranzi Jadara asked and scratched her head. “That doesn’t sound so bad.” She brought her hand away from her loose straw blonde hair and dropped it back to her side. “Peasants have to work, get nothing for free, and they have to live on the edge of death every day between monster attacks and bandits and whatever fuckery a fat noble comes up with.”

The fat merchant she escorted wore a serious face when he looked at her. “Jadara, I have traveled all over these lands and many others. I have traded in silks from so far away that nobody I’ve ever bought them from even knows where they were made. I have traded in spices that would cost a king’s ransom just for a vial. I have traded in wood, furs, monster hides, even weapons and armor. If it exists, I have traded in it to build my mercantile empire and make myself one of the richest men in any country. But,” he raised one finger out at chest height, “there is one thing I have never traded in, and never will. Can you guess what?”

Jadara shrugged, “Given what we’re talking about, I can guess, but why don’t you tell me anyway, Corwin.”

Corwin’s chubby, soft face paled a little, he had a sharp eye for talent and a sharp edge in haggling, Speranzi Jadara knew that much from their months of travel since she and her little band had taken up with him. But in all that time he’d never looked afraid or sorrowful or… really anything but jolly, generally cheerful, or a little bit conspiratorial, the latter of which she saw when he was striking a favorable bargain.

But now his face paled and appeared haunted, “Slaves. I will never buy or sell them. The buying and selling of elves is the cruelest, most vile of businesses I have ever seen. Children torn from their parents’ arms, half elves looking in fear at the grandchildren of their own parents, they are hopeless, hollow… empty, and woe to the beautiful ones most of all.”

Speranzi Jadara’s eyes narrowed, she was not particularly tall, though she was lean of body and limb, her body may as well have been carved out of wood, but it was her eyes that were her most striking feature. Narrow by nature and vicious looking in the extreme, with her fine, chiseled features, her expression’s ferocity was only further enhanced.

It wasn’t hard for her to understand Corwin’s meaning about the fate of beautiful elves, male or female alike, even if she’d never seen one, stories of their beauty as a race of nonhumans were widespread, and as a soldier? ‘I’ve seen what will happen to conquered people when the victors go to plunder.’ It was a foul, disgusting affair and one of the things she forbade her little band of mercenaries from ever breaking ranks for even after a battle appeared to be over.

The upshot was it gave them a reputation for iron discipline that most mercenaries lacked, and an aura of trust with clients that brought her considerable wealth despite not being born of the highest nobility.

“So why bring this up now?” She asked as they inched step by step closer to the checkpoint that divided the two lands.

“Because we’re going to a place you’ll see it. The city of Wenmark was founded by people who left the Divine Kingdom centuries ago, and they still retain many of the practices of their home, and that includes the use of elven slave labor in the fields, mines, and inside the city itself.” Corwin replied, “I don’t like going there, but according to the guild charter there are certain cities I am required to visit whether I want to or not.”

“Why would you be required to do that?” Speranzi asked with her brow deeply furrowed. “If you don’t want to sell there, don’t sell there.”

“If I do that, I’ll lose my charter. Some of these cities are very influential and keeping the right to sell around them, means I have to sell to them. I don’t like it. So?” He slumped forward a little, “Even someone like me has to go that way occasionally.”

“Income over ethics. I get it.” She answered, and for a brief moment he stared at her as if his employee had just slapped him across his face, his plump lips parted as if he were going to protest, but her evil face was as neutral it could be, and she added nothing to her words so he simply, finally nodded.

“I suppose so. But if I didn’t do it, someone else would.” He said and turned his back to her, he grabbed hold of the handles of his cart and hauled himself up.

Speranzi shrugged again. “If you say so.” She began walking beside his cart as it began to roll forward. “You don’t pay me to judge your ethics, just protect your ass. It still doesn’t seem any worse than a peasant has it though, we’ve passed through a lot of fights over the last few years, I grew up with war, and the gods know that, whether it’s a noble at a feast or a soldier after a battle. Hell, with soldiers in most armies, they’re not going to care about much but where they can stick it after they win a victory. Half the time they don’t even care whether it’s a woman or not. Brutes will brutalize at the end of the day.”

“Charming.” Corwin answered, the sarcasm dripping from his tongue.

She sighed, “Look, your lordship, I know you want to impress on me that what you mean is that things are a whole lot worse for elves than peasants, I get it, but it just seems like they’re a lot better off. Have you ever seen a starving peasant?”

“I have seen hunger.” Corwin protested, “Who hasn’t?”

“Hunger isn’t the same as starving, Corwin. I’ve been hungry,” she shook her head, “but starving is something else. Your body eats itself, your muscles shrink, your belly can get big like it’s rotting inside, the more you do to try to get food, and the more you fail, the more desperate you get. People would sell themselves or their own children to avoid that. They’ll do anything for food, look at me.” She said and slapped her armored chest, it was scale armor and painted black for cheap and easy maintenance. “I’ve walked all over selling my bow, and my little band is full of men… and women, who are doing the same with their swords and axes. We all want to make money, but first and foremost, nobody wants to starve. So we fight and kill strangers just like hunters hunt and kill beasts or how adventurers do monsters.”

She smacked his leg with the back of her gloved hand, “You’re just a big softie, I’m sure it’s not that bad. Everybody is just trying to get by and that’s just another way to do it. The gods are in charge after all, and they will punish all those who offend them.”

“You think I’m-” Corwin was about to protest, then closed his mouth quite slowly when she smirked up at him with her head tilted slightly away from him.

“You are, neighbor, you are. But don’t feel too bad about it. You’re a man of coin and numbers and you’re good with both. Me, I use this.” She tapped the bow in her other hand. Besides, I like you, I never have trouble sleeping at night when you hire me on. You don’t do anything to try my conscience.” She flashed a smile up at him that when he first saw it, chilled him to the bones, like a demon in a human body… but now? After knowing her for years and having hired her many times he knew, ‘She just looks that way.’

It still set his hairs standing on end, but the visceral fear that led him to ‘hire’ Speranzi Jadara in the first place out of fear she intended to rob him if he didn’t was long since gone.

She walked with the confident stride of a woman secure in her skills while most of her people rode on horseback, largely so she could jump into his wagon and protect him with relative ease. The caravan behind him was only a handful of wagons now, with most having been dropped as the expedition continued onward, along with the mercenaries responsible for each segment.

They were but one hundred strong, her Black Quiver company, but as the younger bastard sons and daughters of lesser nobility, they were well trained and reasonably well equipped.

It was an amiable silence between the two as the wagon rocked beneath the fat merchant, his junior apprentices, and his handful of laborers. The horse plodded along through the muck of a wet, ‘not quite’ washed out road, the dark brown boots of the archer beside him squelching almost as loud as the hooves themselves.

On either side of them the sparse trees swayed and the sky rumbled overhead, gray and promising a near drowning if anyone dared sleep in the mud.

“We’re being tracked.” She said and gave his leg an amiable trio of slaps as if she’d said something funny. “Don’t look in the woods, but we have company, and they’re not good neighbors.”

“How do you know?” He asked without breaking his forward facing gaze at the empty road ahead.

“The mud we just trampled through had footprints in it.” Speranzi said, and he only looked down at her as if to ask…

‘And?!’

“So did the grass.” Speranzi answered, and when Corwin said nothing again, she explained further. “Somebody came this way, then went into the woods, why?” She shrugged at her own question. “There’s nothing here, and it was recent, it’s not about to rain, not till nightfall. Plus we’re going to fall short of the border when we have to stop, and the border is safe.”

Corwin did his best to keep his face from going pale as her explanation began to lend understanding to his mind. “People feel safe when they’re almost safe. They want us relaxed. They’ll try to kill us just before we get in reach.”

“How many?” Corwin asked.

“Three or four sets of footprints back there at least, there’s a hundred escorts plus your laborers. If they’re going to take us they have to be at least twice that.” She explained and smacked his thigh with the back of her hand, “But hey, don’t worry, I’ve protected every inch of your hide a half a dozen times now, what’s one more, eh?” She gave him a reassuring smile, or what she meant as a reassuring smile.

But Corwin could see in her ice blue eyes that there was something else roiling inside her, the ferocity of a veteran readying themselves for a fight.

It was impossible to tell, he was sure of that, at least to a distant observer, but up close he could feel the murderous intent growing in every casual stride. ‘They say this is how warriors gather the mana of their bodies for their warrior arts, but it’s a far cry from what I’ve seen from the usual magic casters.’ Corwin pondered and kept an eye toward the young woman who walked calmly beside him as if she were any noble lady on an easy afternoon stroll through her gardens. Or, more likely, with the steady long forward step of a young nobleman, or the trainer who took the young nobleman to pieces.

Speranzi Jadara’s life before her mercenary work remained a bit of a mystery to him as she never spoke much of it, though he could detect some seeds of truth from what little she’d said. The youngest daughter of a minor noble house, she had no real future and as she said her father put it, ‘far too ugly for any man anywhere to ever want to marry’ she trained at the only thing she knew that didn’t require a partner, archery. ‘How cruel could a father be, to tell his own child she’s too ugly to be loved or wanted…’ She laughed about it, at least outwardly.

Her nature seemed good humored and as they came to know one another, Corwin considered her a trusted colleague, and she seemed at ease with him, if a little distant considering their last six years of familiarity.

But distant or not, when it came to battle, he wasn’t going to question her.

“When we get to the base of the hill, I’m going to act like we’ve broken a wheel on the wagon. We’ll make camp there at the base.” Speranzi ordered, it sounded strange to Corwin’s ears, the top of the hill was a hundred feet high, it seemed far more secure than the base, but he shrugged as if it were no nevermind of his.

He didn’t have to wait too long before they reached her chosen campsite, and she left his side to go approach her soldiers one by one, she had to look up to speak to them, and they down to speak with her, but each time she was done clapping them on the arm, they rubbed their muscles as if struck by an iron bar.

Reaching the encampment she chose, she began shouting and cursing, “Damn it! You stupid merchant! A broken wheel?! Now?! With this much to spend, you can’t be bothered to get a decent wagon!” Her hands gestured wildly overhead while she kicked up a fuss and wrenched the wheel off the wagon and tossed it aside. “We don’t have enough time to fix it before dark and I am not walking all night! We’ll make camp here and leave in the morning after a quick patch job to repair it!”

Corwin played along while her imaginary fit went on, and they began to prepare.

The few wagons were put into a semicircle shape against the base of the hill and the tents were pitched into the grass and muck just before the distant sun’s fading orange glow could disappear entirely.

Corwin’s eyes were still doubtful, though he said nothing until after dark when the campfire’s were reduced to orange glows and slowly extinguished one by one as soldiers and laborers covered the wood with damp earth.

As he crawled towards the entrance of his tent in the dark, he felt a hard hand on his shoulder. “Who said to go to your tent?” Speranzi asked while looking down at him while he remained on all fours.

“But you said-” She shook her head.

“I said to make camp. I never said we would sleep in it.” She corrected him and inclined her head toward the hilltop. “Use the wagons to obscure you and go that way to the other side of the hill, just out of view, and climb up to the top.” She whispered, and Corwin gave a furtive nod.

The horses remained in place, secured to wagons where they would make tempting prizes, and he hastened to obey while she went from tent to tent to wake or alert the occupants.

Each one in turn, their body covered with a cloak of mottled gray and green, crawled or climbed the hill as concealed as they could be in ones or twos until their camp was empty of all but a handful of her soldiers.

“Now what?” He asked when Speranzi approached him again at the top of the hill.

“Now,” she said and began pointing to various places on the hill that would give her people an encircled view of the area, “we wait.”

The moon was concealed by the rolling sea of gray clouds in the sky, through rumbling thunder promised a storm ahead.

“Will they really attack like this?” Corwin asked and looked down the hill at his seemingly vulnerable little caravan, then up at the ink dark night sky.

“Yes. Bandits, raiders, whatever they are, they won’t miss out on an easy prize.” Speranzi promised and drew an arrow from the quiver on her back. “In fact, there they are.” She said, and Corwin squinted against the wall of night that barred his vision.

Night vision wasn’t an uncommon blessing for those who ranged the world as scouts and hunters, but it was uncommon for common merchants, and as such, Corwin quickly gave up, though he noted that of the multitude of her warriors atop the hill with them, a fair number began drawing arrows of their own and making ready to fire.

“One arrow, one soul.” She whispered without looking over her shoulder to see their acknowledgements.

They waited and watched as a band of some two hundred and fifty crawled on their bellies toward the almost completely empty encampment.

Perhaps there was a signal nobody atop the hill could hear, or perhaps it was the nickering of stirring, anxious horses that was the signal to the bandits, but they almost in one body jumped to their feet and with a shout, charged at the encampment with shouts of bloodlust.

Their swords stabbing into the multitude of tents and bedrolls, ripping blankets up from places where nobody slept, caught up in a blood fury where there was no blood to satisfy them.

Speranzi however, had begun to loose her arrows, draw and loose, draw and loose, she had five in the air before the first bandit fell, pierced through the lungs, he fell into the mud with wide, confused eyes as if he could not believe he’d been killed.

Rain began to fall, a trickle at first, it began to fall faster and harder while the Black Quivers began to loose arrows of their own from the top of the hill, no battle cries were uttered, no commands or threats. Just silent arrows falling with the rain and adding bandit blood into the expanding pools of water that lay here and there.

Corwin watched from behind the safety of their backs as the more elite and skilled archers of his hired soldiers picked off targets as if it were broad daylight, drawing and loosing arrows as casually as he counted out coins. His blood still froze over.

But it was thawed with relief, the noise of his camp being torn up, shredded tents, bedrolls with sword shaped holes, and torn open pillows, it brought home to Corwin the reality of the matter. ‘I can’t bribe a thief who wants to start by stealing my life, even if I could, I would never sleep soundly again, wondering when he’d come back for more!’

By comparison, his guardians were steadily erasing the murderous thieves from relative safety. ‘I wonder how many they’ll get before-’

He never got to finish the question.

A crack of lightning briefly turned night to day and the toll wrought on the bandits from Speranzi and her archers became obvious to the bandits who each believed the others were engaged in fruitful killing.

Horses neighed, nickered, even screamed and kicked up a fuss, adding to the chaos as they sought to escape the place they were bound to, but with the crack of lightning to show them the truth, the bandits caught sight of their ambushers and leveled their rusty blades, knives, and chipped axes toward the top of the hill.

“Get up there you fools!” Someone amid the bandit ranks had sense enough to order, and the murderous band, or rather, its remnants up to that moment, began to run up the steep and slippery gap as swiftly as they could, which was precious little.

The rain came down in sheets, and with more lightning flashes, Speranzi’s remaining, less skilled archers, now had their chance. Arrows began to fly down into the bodies and faces which had no real chance of avoiding the danger.

Coupled with the slippery grass from the sheets of rain pouring down, it was difficult to say who fell from an arrow that took their life and caused the dead to slide back down to the base of the hill, and who fell wounded and simply could not stop their backwards fall.

Thunder began to rumble ever louder and every lightning strike became the unspoken symbol of the Black Quivers to pour steel tipped arrows into the soft fleshy bodies of those who could only continue to struggle up the hill.

Corwin lay on his belly, for all the good that truly did to give him a low profile, ‘You’re too fat.’ He told himself as he crawled forward, unable to resist the chance to watch. Being bolder than those who made up the ranks of his servants and apprentices and huddled out of view, he made it up to the very edge of the hill and looked at the bloody scene.

Speranzi said nothing, she only drew and loosed arrow after arrow in a steady motion, her vicious eyes fixed on her prey, the pouring rain did nothing to slow her grip, and each hold and draw was as firm and resolute as the one before it.

Her soldiers were not so different, practiced hands kept pouring death down the hill, and to come up bravely became a death sentence carried out by an arrow in the face.

One thing was noteworthy in particular to Corwin, ‘The ones who can’t shoot as often keep putting more of their arrows in the quivers of those who can.’ There was a kind of stark, brutal professionalism to their act, and when the lightning flashed and Corwin caught sight of their faces, they were as placid as a lake surface on a windless day.

Utter calm, utter ease.

And utterly without fear.

The bandit voices and shouts intended to terrify their intended victims grew softer and softer until even the bandits themselves realized that their numbers were being winnowed down to nothing.

And when this understanding dawned upon one of them, he cast his sword down to the grass, tucked tail and ran, showing the difference between the professional soldier and the bully boy bandit.

The nameless bandit’s understanding of their misfortune was only the first, from there it spread, the shouts of anger and bloodlust transformed to terror and, their vigorous shouts became shrieks of fear. From one to another the fear spread like a disease and the will to fight was broken like a wave crashing against immovable stone.

Two ran, then four, then a dozen, slipping, falling, tumbling and sliding down the slippery slope, and still the arrows came down into the chests of those who had not yet broken.

A long string of lightning cracks lit up the night and showed the slaughter for what it was, the two hundred and fifty had lost seven out of every ten with two out of three already turning around and running… the last tenth could see the good order at the top of the hill, and the bloody streaks in the grass where the living were transformed into the dead and sent back to the bottom of the hill again…

And the last bit of will was broken.

“Keep firing!” Speranzi shouted the order, and the arrows continued to pierce the flesh and spill the life of those who tried to flee to whatever safety the forest would offer them.

One however, seemed to have some sense. Instead of fleeing into the forest, Speranzi’s eye caught them rushing for the horses. ‘Not half bad, they’re probably not expecting us to notice one, they can take the horse and flee… or not.’ She thought, adjusted her aim, and let her arrow fly as the would-be horsethief tried to climb into the saddle. The arrow struck and the body fell into the mud to die alone apart from their brothers.

The rain of steel fell amidst the falling water, glinting in the flashes of light from the sky… until there were no more standing on their feet, and Speranzi held her fist up. “Hold!” She shouted.

And the steel rain ceased.

“Handlers and apprentices, bring up the tents and set up as best you can, half you lot go help them, the rest, pile the bodies. We’ve got a busy night ahead!” Speranzi shouted over the noise of the storm, despite not being especially big, and if anything, rather on the short side, her voice could boom over the noise of the disruptive sky.

Her soldiers let out a single unified cheer at their victory, and then with that, began the cleanup.