Azorius Fiction: The Hussar's Last Mission

By Doug Beyer

Parts 1-2 | Parts 3-4 | Parts 5-6

ONE

It was in the last days of the fraying Guildpact, in the senate chamber of the Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, that Modar Bejiri advanced to receive his field hussar's brooch. Modar wore his court dress uniform, feckless white against his blue vedalken skin, and his booted steps echoed in the hall. Broad marble columns seemed to march past him, and the sharp angles of the enormous Azorius Eye, centered in stained glass on the wall ahead, moved closer to him as he approached his superior officers.

As a field hussar, he would have full rights to leave Prahv. Modar had already planned his route into the wilds of the Tenth District, where he could ply the measured justice of his guild where it was most needed. And the promotion represented all he had worked for in his career as hussar of court. With his mouth a restrained line and his eyes locked on the face of the district imperator, he marched.

He stopped before the imperator and saluted sharply. The imperator returned salute and spoke.

“Court Hussar Modar Bejiri of the Prahv Senate Elite Guard,” the imperator recited. “You have been selected for special dispensation by order of the Azorius Senate. As you accept this token you are afforded the rank, title and responsibilities of Field Hussar First Standing, by which authority you shall advance the principles of law and reason as specified in the Bylaw Scrolls and interpreted by the Grand Arbiter of the Azorius Senate, and by which acceptance you forego the rank, title and responsibilities of Court Hussar, effective immediately.”

Modar did not nod or bow. He stood straight and said, “I accept.”

The district imperator unbuckled Modar's old signet brooch and clasped the field hussar's brooch in its place on his cloak. Somewhere, outside the walls of Prahv, spire-crows ululated, a sound thinned by a rising wind.

TWO

“Drake eggs, fresh as you please, guildsman,” said a tattooed crone as she held up a basket laden with blue-speckled, leathery sacs. Fragrant smoke curled around her from a nearby hookah hawker, and from atop the raised stage that formed the center of Tin Street Market, a bow-necked viashino warbled a solo on a bent rattlehorn.

Field Hussar Modar Bejiri surveyed the marketplace from the height of Ashmane's saddle. As he put gentle pressure on Ashmane's flanks, they ambled along the seams of what looked to Modar like a patchwork quilt—rough textures bound to clash, yet sewn into pleasing order by mercantile necessity. So fascinated was he by the structure of Tin Street Market that he almost didn't hear the truncated moan—the unmistakable sound of a man's last cry before unconsciousness.

If any marketgoers heard the cry, they gave no indication. Modar pulled on Ashmane's reins and swung toward the source of the sound, a hollow between two shopfronts. The hollow led to an alleyway, a dim space shunned by the tall buildings flanking it. Even before he saw the crumpled body, Modar caught sight of dark, rolling lines of blood.

A woman in Boros uniform stood over an enormous corpse—it must have been an ogre, perhaps a bodyguard or a manual laborer for the inn. Blood was still settling in the mortar lines of the street, surrounding each cobblestone with crimson. She was no Wojek investigator—her hands, tipped with jagged black fingernails, dripped with the blood of the victim.

“Halt!” Modar shouted as he dismounted. “As Cour—as Field Hussar of the Azorius Senate, under authority of Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, I command you to desist or face prosecution under the laws of the Guildpact.”

The woman turned toward him, grinning. She sank her claws into the body, and runes on her gauntlets glowed and hummed. Her grin morphed into a fat-lipped sneer as her face transformed before Modar's eyes. In a moment, she had become a huge, hairy ogre—Modar glanced down—she had taken the exact form of the victim. The shapeshifter's newly meaty hands ended in the same rough black claws it had had in the Wojek woman's form.

“You're next, vedalken,” it sneered.

Parts 1-2 | Parts 3-4 | Parts 5-6