Vanderjack was surrounded by corpses.
It had stopped raining. Pentar’s shocked residents stared at the bloody carnage in the street, at the dragonarmy uniforms, and at the sellsword standing in the middle of it all. They didn’t notice the dead cook lying at Vanderjack’s feet, a nondescript and pale-featured, slightly overweight corpse that could have been anybody; they were all staring at the bodies of the officer and his men. Vanderjack, however, was staring at the body of Etharion Cordaric.
His sword had fallen from his hand shortly after he drew it out of Etharion and Captain Annaud. Both men had crumpled to the blood-soaked cobblestones, each with his own look of shock permanently fixed across his face. Without the sword, Vanderjack had no ghosts. He didn’t notice.
The sellsword came to his senses when one of the onlookers came up to him and prodded his arm with a broom, perhaps to determine for himself if the man was actually alive and not a statue or merely an upright corpse. Vanderjack jerked away from the touch of the broom, spun about, and knocked it away with his mailed hand.
“Ackal’s Teeth!” he cursed. “Back off and leave me alone!”
The other man held up his hands, backing slowly away. “Seaguard’s going to be here soon,
Vanderjack rubbed at his bare scalp and recovered his breath. He was astounded that the man was so calm and full of sensible advice. It spoke much of Pentar that its folk were inured to the possibility of such violence and more concerned with keeping disturbances quiet.
Sure that he would regret it, Vanderjack bent down and retrieved Lifecleaver from the ground. The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt, the Sword Chorus materialized around him, filling his senses.
“You killed an innocent!” said the Apothecary.
“In all the time we have been with you, you’ve never been this reckless,” said the Aristocrat.
“You are losing your edge,” said the Cavalier.
“If he ever had it without us,” said the Conjuror.
“Annaud was too quick. And you weren’t fast enough,” Vanderjack muttered. “Why pick this time to be so slow off the mark?”
“Don’t place the blame on us!” the Cavalier said, angry.
“You were aware of Annaud’s skill,” the Hunter said.
“You knew how well he could fight,” the Aristocrat added.
Vanderjack shoved the sword into its sheath, dismissing the ghosts. He briefly poked at the cook’s body to see if there was anything to be salvaged from it then looked at the dead Captain Annaud.
A dragonarmy officer carries only enough on his person to get by, a testament to Ariakas’s executive talents, but the heyday of the dragon emperor’s influence was long gone. The remaining highmasters, flight marshals, and captains were swiftly becoming independent, following their greed or ambition without guidance. Captain Annaud seemed to be one of those, a self-styled celebrity in his part of the world. He was technically serving under Highmaster Cairn, which meant there was even more direct influence from the late Ariakas, but Rivven had a broad region to command, and Annaud was frequently out of her sight.
Annaud was wearing amazingly well-crafted armor, tooled leather and scale mail with no stains, signs of wear, or degradation. With the skill and speed of a seasoned looter, the sellsword drew Annaud’s knife from the dead man’s belt, cut a number of critical straps, and hauled the bulk of the armor from the body in less than a minute.
The people in the street, who had until that point stayed clear, seemed to be offended at his carefree looting of a dead body. Several of them ran off to call the Seaguard, while others rushed up to interfere with Vanderjack’s actions. The sellsword looked up and brandished the knife threateningly, driving them off; when he was done gathering the armor together, he pushed his way out of the crowd without further trouble.
Vanderjack ducked down a side street and located a large sack on a pile outside the rear entrance to an off-street eating house that smelled strongly of hops and barley. He dumped the armor into the sack, tied the end with a length of cord he kept on his person, and left the alleyway with the sack over his shoulder as if nothing had happened. On the way, he wiped at his own armor and sleeves, cleaning off blood and grime; he doubted he would be stopped on the street, but it didn’t hurt to present an innocent appearance.
Vanderjack thought about what the Sword Chorus had said to him, about his mistake, about the killing of an innocent. Etharion Cordaric couldn’t really be considered an innocent, he thought. He was a member of Theo’s company, wasn’t he? He signed on knowing that was a dangerous business. Nobody volunteers to become a mercenary, even if it’s just to bake cookies, without that understanding. But if that was true, why did Vanderjack feel so bad about it?
He saw a few members of the Seaguard running past him in the direction of the street where the cook and Annaud had been killed. They didn’t spare him a glance. Apparently, his nondescript disguise was adequate for the situation. That or the Seaguard didn’t really care about the perpetrator and wanted to get to the bodies in time to loot them themselves.
Killing people always brought out the worst in folks, he mused, including him. Vanderjack had stolen, broken into places, robbed people, even lied and cheated and beguiled his way toward riches before, all while acting as a soldier for hire. He wasn’t a good man. He liked living well when he could get the money and the resources. It was all part of the lifestyle-kill people; take their stuff-wasn’t it?
Vanderjack rounded the corner two streets away from the courtyard where he’d left the gnome and the baron’s aide. Damn the cook, anyway. He’d never questioned his mistakes before. He didn’t really care about the cook, but Theo evidently did, and right then he did actually need Theo not to be angry with him. Theo was good at what he did, and Vanderjack was sure that, sneaking into some castle behind enemy lines, he’d need those skills.
Sometimes sacrifices had to be made, he thought. The cook might not be the last one to die on his trip. Gredchen might not last it out … or Theo himself. In that business you never could predict when somebody was going to get run through with a life-draining sword in the middle of a pitched battle with dragonarmy soldiers.
Vanderjack stopped just before the next corner, frowning. The ghosts had insisted he’d killed an innocent. What were the ramifications of that? He suddenly realized that if they were right, and Etharion’s time to die was not in the middle of a pitched battle with dragonarmy soldiers, then the sword’s curse might have been activated.
He drew the blade out from its sheath, feeling the power in the meteoric iron humming into his palm and up his arm as it always did, watched as the ghosts manifested around him, and counted.
There were eight of them.
“So you see,” said the Philosopher. “Our number has grown by one.”
“Your mistake has earned you another advisor,” said the Conjuror.
“I hope you realize what you have done,” asked the Aristocrat.
“So I have a cook’s ghost now too? I suppose that will come in handy when I’m making dinner.” Vanderjack tried to make a joke, peering at the eighth ghost, like all the others indistinct, spectral, and only semireal.
“On the contrary,” said the Apothecary.
“He is not all that he appeared to be,” said the Balladeer.
Then the eighth ghost spoke in a voice clearly different from the others, not as confident or loud or even as ghostly. He just sounded confused. “What happened?”
“Well,” said Vanderjack. “What is he, then, if not a dead cook?”
“Give us time to let him become acquainted to his new state,” said the Apothecary.
“You have other things to do,” said the Aristocrat.
“Find the trail,” said the Hunter. He and all of the others faded from sight.
Vanderjack looked down at the sword. He was still holding it, but the Sword Chorus had gone. That was the first time they had ever done that. Granted, it was the first time he’d actually killed any innocents with the magic sword. He slid it back into its scabbard and continued on.
