This is what I am. All I am.
“ We should get a tracker,” Cross said, almost to himself.
“ A tracker?” Stone asked. “Are you serious? We don’t need some mercenary tagging along.” He stopped and turned to Cross. Graves also stopped. Up ahead, the flame-cannon had aimed right at them. “This is serious, Cross. We don’t need a loose cannon on board.”
“ We need all of the help we can get,” Cross said. “We need someone with magic, someone who can track, and someone who knows more than we do about traveling through the Bone March. Correct me if I’m wrong, but what we know about that place isn’t a whole hell of a lot.”
Stone looked at him for a moment, and then smiled.
“ Man, we are screwed,” Stone said with a grin. “I’m taking the advice of a warlock without magic.” He looked back at the city, and the stoicism returned to his chiseled face. “I’ll do the talking.”
“ Guys…” Graves asked from the front. He stared right at the flame-cannon, and it stared back. Naturally, he sounded more than a little nervous. “Any time you want to move your asses and get up here that would be great.”
“ Talk away,” Cross said to Stone. “I’m liable to throw up any second now.”
“ Tough guy,” Stone said with a sad shake of his head. “Great.”
The gates were directly ahead. The border of the dark door was made from thick bands of iron surrounded by a bass relief of a fanged skull, positioned so that when one walked through the gates it was like they’d stepped into a leering mouth.
“ Cheery,” Cross said quietly.
The gate guard’s masks were clear silver plates set with eye-holes. The rest of the masks were featureless ovals, dented and marred to the extent where they reflected nothing. Their armor was mismatched — they wore steel shoulder plates, face wraps and tunics, leather pants and steel-toed boots. Kevlar and flak vests were just barely visible under their billowing cloaks, their hard steel gauntlets gripped sharp iron poles, and they wore aged pistols and wickedly curved knives strapped to their belts.
Surprisingly, the Dirgian guards didn’t detain the three of them much at all. They gave the trio a brief interrogation as to the nature of their visit, verified that they bore neither alchemy or void bombs and didn’t suffer from any arcane diseases, made a quick but fruitless search of their belongings, and ushered them into the city.
TWELVE
Inside the walls, Dirge was much as Cross expected — a dirty, dingy, noise-filled mess.
The streets were filled with grimy citizens with faces spotted with sickness and fatigue, charcoal dust that stuck in the air, iron wheels that ground against the broken street, furnace flames that burned high into the sky, and walls of arcane steam. People moved in crowded packs, and they toted sacks of dried goods and pulled carts of potatoes, grain, coal dust, raw steel and machinery parts. The air tasted like industry and sweat.
Dirge’s structures were pushed together like crowded bystanders. Buildings had been built with crooked angles, and every window and door looked too tall and too narrow, as if every block had been compressed in a giant hand. Dirge was not a tall city except for the outer walls, but it was thoroughly congested. All of its structures, even the clay and dirt roads, were gray or black. Walking through Dirge felt like passing into an ink stain.
“ Do we want to get some rooms?” Graves asked.
“ We might as well,” Stone replied. “No sense sleeping outside the city when we can stay at an inn. But let’s get moving — we don’t want to be out after sundown.”
Cross thrilled at the notion of spending the night in a bed. His back felt as stiff as steel from sleeping in a thin bedroll on uneven ground for the past several days.
Dirge’s sparse population dressed in a variety of clothing as haphazard and diverse as the people themselves. Humans of all races and associations were there: refugees from the rapidly dwindling frontier, miners from the Razortooth logging camps, former citizens of nearby Southern Claw cities like Thornn or Ath. Many of the people looked to be working class, and they dressed in dingy grey and brown work clothes and heavy boots. Others wore a hodgepodge of fashions, from the retro-Medieval attire of Thornn to the heavily cloaked garb worn by the Gol of Meldoar. There were too many people in too much of a rush to pay the three Southern Claw Hunters any mind.
Cross saw very few of the city’s black-garbed sentries down on the street, but they were easy to spot higher up on the parapets, where they watched both the roads of Dirge and the surrounding countryside. Flame-cannons propped on swiveling mounts allowed the sentries to aim the deadly weapons at targets on either side of the outer wall. Cross figured that in addition to the obvious show of force represented in the cannons there were likely more subtle means that Dirge’s rulers used to keep the streets clean of undesirables, from incognito warlocks and witches to arcane scopes in the towers.
The black tower at the center of Dirge loomed over the rest of the city. It was a dagger, a black spike that protruded up from the nexus of town like a dirty blade. Cross couldn’t help but feel watched by the tower, as the thorny obelisk seemed to follow and hover over them as they walked, poised like a frozen black snake. It wasn’t as if the rest of the city wasn’t oppressive — the dark material of the buildings set them in stark contrast to the pale red sky, and Dirge was so dark in some areas that its people became walking silhouettes.
Stone directed them to the tavern district, just a few short blocks from the main city gates so that visiting merchants and emissaries from Rath wouldn’t have to travel far before they came to the hospitality of an inn. Most of the signs in the district were written in High Jlantrian, an archaic tongue used by the vampires. Many Southern Claw officers could read High Jlantrian, but to Cross it looked like a random series of slashes and cuts. He recognized it for what it was, but he couldn’t read it. High Jlantrian had no arcane value at all. Cross had spent his time learning Inverted Malzarian, the text of magic.
It was still daylight when they approached an inn, so there were very few vampires about. Those that Cross did see kept their pale faces carefully wrapped and their bodies concealed beneath bulky crimson cloaks, clothing that symbolized their status. Dirge was an armistice town: its rulers had quietly surrendered to the mercy of the Ebon Cities. The city was allowed to retain its human population, but the local authorities reported to a vampire Viscount, who along with a small contingent of undead honor guards had indirect control of the city.
An unmistakable aura of fear existed in Dirge, so palpable Cross could almost taste it. From what he understood there were only very few vampires to actually be found in the city at any given time, but more could always arrive, as they had the freedom and authority to do whatever they pleased.
This is no way to live, Cross thought bitterly. We’ll run you out of here, and out of everywhere else, you bastards.
The establishment they entered, The Blackfang Inn, was a spacious and smoke-filled place that was deathly quiet, dark and cold. Immaculately clean wood-polished floors and a long and sleek bar showed no signs of ever having been even touched, in spite of the dozen or so patrons seated at both the bar and at the few small tables. Those tavern patrons were stoic and silent, deeply focused on their purple liqueurs and thin black cigarillos. Gray and silver air shone from the skylight above the bar and illuminated the bartender in silhouette. Cross smelled whisky and hashish.
Stone nonchalantly walked up to the bar while Graves and Cross took a seat. The other patrons looked much as the three Hunters did — dirty, unkempt, sleep-deprived and in need of a drink — but for some reason Cross felt ridiculous putting down their dirty packs on a floor that looked like it could have doubled as a trauma room. A large metallic fan set high in the ceiling sliced the pale light from outside into swirling ribbons. A square balcony bound by black iron rails and set with dozens of blank steel doors stood a dozen feet above the main floor. Those doors, Cross could only assume, led to the coveted bedrooms.
Stone bought a round of Dirgian brandy. It was one of the weaker drinks available, he assured them, since they needed to keep their wits about them even though they all agreed a drink was much needed. He also set a room token down on the table.
“ One room?” Graves said with a groan.
