“What’s their positioning?” Mercer asked.
“The bowman is on our side of the road along with two others. One of the swords and two clubs are on the other side. Both groups are packed close together and all of their attention is on the bridge. They must not know about the other crossing.”
“That simplifies things,” Mercer said more to himself. “If we can take the bowman by surprise, the others shouldn’t be too hard.”
Allison made a skeptical face. “Five against three?”
“We’ve faced worse,” Mercer said. “Drake, can you slow them down?”
His face pinched in concentration. “Should be able to.”
“Trix, you take the bowman,” said Mercer. “I’ll sneak across the road, circle round and take the swordsman.”
“What should I do?” Allison asked.
“Stay behind Drake,” Mercer told her.
“And try not to give us away,” Trix said.
“Whatever you do,” Drake rasped, “don’t break my concentration.”
They set off through the trees and Allison hurried to keep up. The land sloped up gently and the sound of the water grew louder until the rushing current drowned out the gentle rustle of their passing. Mercer led the way, his axe clutched in one calloused hand and a short sword in the other. Trix was behind him with a pair of throwing knives ready. Drake came next, his twisted black staff gripped in wizened old hands. Allison followed behind him, trying not to trip over roots or stumble through bushes. They still couldn’t see the bandits when Mercer broke off from the group. He turned right and disappeared through the trees. Drake and Allison stayed close to Trix.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The forest was silent and preternaturally still, like nature was holding her breath. Allison could hear her heart beating in her own ears and her footsteps sounded like thunder in the dry underbrush. She placed each foot with exacting care and exaggerated slowness but, no matter where she stepped, she managed to crunch leaves and snap twigs. Trix turned, a scowl on her face, and covered her lips with a finger.
They crept through the trees until Trix spied the backs of three rogues hunkered in the bushes to the side of the road. She gave a silent command to halt. Allison crouched at the base of a gnarled oak while Drake muttered an invocation under his breath. The bandits were focused on the bridge, occasionally whispering among themselves. One puffed on a pipe. White plumes of smoke trailed from his nostrils. Another had his back to a tree and his eyes closed, breathing softly. Across the road, Allison could just make out the shapes of three more hunkered in a shallow depression.
There came the distant sound of hooves galloping at a fast pace along the main road. The bandits sat up, craning their heads for a better look. The pipe smoker nudged the dozing man. He blinked and looked around, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The sound of hooves grew closer and louder, but no rider appeared. Allison was craning her own neck to see when she realized there was no rider. It was a simple spell to fool the bandits. Drake’s face was stretched tight in concentration. His lips moved, and sweat beaded on his forehead. While the bandits watched for the horse and rider, roots crept up from the earth, silently ensnaring their feet and ankles.
The pipe smoker edged forward, eager for a better view of the bridge, and was the first to realize he had been entangled. He tried to move, felt his feet rooted to the forest floor, and looked down. “What the hell?”
Trix stepped out from behind a tree and launched a dagger. It tumbled end over end and bury itself in the smoker’s neck. His eyes opened wide in pain and surprise. His mouth stretched for a scream, but a bright red fountain poured from between his lips instead. He put a hand to the dagger lodged in his throat as a snarl of roots pulled him down to the ground.
The others leapt to their feet, hacking at the grasping vines with swords and knives. The next few moments were utter chaos. Allison leaned around the trunk of the large oak, transfixed by the drama unfolding. Mercer appeared behind the three on the opposite side of the road. He loomed up behind them like some mythical prophet of doom, his notched battle axe in one hand and his short sword in the other. The blades flashed and one of the bandits went to the ground, screaming in pain. The other two turned and tried to mount a defense, but the vines snaring their feet stopped them from retreating.
Closer to hand, the pipe smoker lay dead and his two companions rounded on Trix. The sleeper rose up to his full height, which was head and shoulders taller than Mercer. Trix appeared no more than a child in his shadow. His arms and legs bulged with muscles and his neck was twice the size of Allison’s thigh. While his friends struggled to cut their ankles free of the grasping vines, the big man ripped his feet loose with no more effort than a normal man opening a candy bar wrapper. He clutched a massive club in one meaty paw.
Trix’s eyes went wide at the sight of him. She had not been able to see his size while he was snoozing against the tree trunk. Now she did, and her heart trembled inside her chest. She launched her second throwing knife at the other man. The blade buried itself to the hilt in his chest. He made a gagging noise and hunched over in pain.
Meanwhile, the big man stomped across the open ground and swung his massive club at Trix’s head. She ducked, rolled out of the way, and tried to throw another blade but, in her haste, she missed. The knife went sailing through the trees.
The bruiser rounded on Trix and raised his club overhead. She hunkered before him like a calf cowering up at the farmer come to lop off her head. Her hands clutched at her curved swords, but she knew she was too late.
Drake gave a shout, thrust his staff at the big bruiser’s back, and shouted a command. There was a discharge of violent energy that set Allison’s teeth vibrating and a powerful blast hit the big man between the shoulders. He staggered, turned, and mean little eyes locked onto Drake. Trix was temporarily forgotten.
The giant reared back with his club. Drake stood his ground, chanting an invocation, but he would never cast his spell in time.
Allison sprang from hiding, wrapped her arms around Drake and bore him to the forest floor, cutting off his words midsentence. The club whistled through the air over their heads and they landed on stony ground covered in gnarled roots. All the air went out of Drake in a loud whoop. Allison felt the spell evaporate.
A shadow blocked out the light. Allison looked over her shoulder and found the giant towering over her. He raised the cudgel to turn her into paste and she cowered, covered her head in a useless gesture.
Trix drew both blades with a hiss of steel and slashed at the giant’s back. His leather jerkin bore the brunt of the damage. The blades ripped through tanned leather and stitching, raking a long gash across his right shoulder. He grunted in pain, spun around, and flailed with the club. Trix tried to parry with her curved sword, and the heavy bit of wood bent her blade nearly in half with a ringing sound.
On the west side of the road, Mercer hacked down the other two bandits and sprinted through the trees. Trix was falling back before the fury of the giant’s attacks. She had given up trying to deflect his club. It would only smash her weapons into useless hunks. Instead she dodged and feinted, trying to stab at the big man with quick thrusts, but his size and reach prevented her from landing a blow.
She had worked herself into a corner, caught between a tight stand of trees and the giant when Mercer leapt a small thicket and lashed out with his axe. The blade hacked the big man’s arm off at the elbow.
The giant roared in pain and reared backwards. Dark blood spurted from the stump of his arm. His hand, still clutching the cudgel, landed in the dirt.
Allison covered her mouth with one hand. The sight made her stomach twist.
Mercer dispatched the giant with two savage blows to the head. The heavy axe blade split the big man’s skull open with a sickening crunch and dashed his brains out on the forest floor in a pulpy red mess.
Allison turned her face away.
The whole thing lasted less than five minutes. Mercer stood ove
r the mutilated corpse of the giant, gasping for air. He palmed sweat from his forehead while Trix let out a shaking breath. Drake struggled into a sitting position. His wizened face twisted in pain. He probed his ribs where he had landed on a sharp root and said, “I think you cracked a rib.”
Allison said, “You’re welcome.”
“For what?”
“Saving your life.”
“You ruined my spell and nearly got us both killed.”
Trix helped Drake to his feet, Mercer wiped his axe blade, and the three of them searched the dead men for valuables. They showed no more concern for the dead men than they had the hodag. Allison turned her face away. It was macabre sight, like watching vultures pick the flesh from a corpse. She said, “Don’t you have any respect for the dead?”
“They’re not dead,” Trix told her. “Not really.”
“And it’s no less than they had in store for us,” Mercer added.
As they looted the corpses, one of the bandits coughed and croaked out a plea for help. It was the second man Trix had killed. One of her daggers was still stuck in his chest. Blood bubbled up from his mouth. His eyes rolled in their sockets, found Allison, and he managed to say, “Help me.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
The others went on looting the bodies for valuables and paid the gasping man no attention. The ensorcelled roots had let go and shriveled back into the earth, leaving the dying man free to lift a pleading hand toward Allison. Air wheezed from his open mouth and pink bubbles formed around the knife blade stuck in his chest. His mouth moved, but it took him a second to force the words out. “Please,” he said. “It hurts.”
“Shouldn’t we . . .” Allison shrugged. “Help him?”
“There’s nothing we can do for him,” Mercer said. “He took up with the wrong crowd.”
He finished searching the giant with the broken skull, walked over, gripped the throwing knife, and twisted. It made a horrible crunching noise and the bandit’s eyes rolled up in his head. He coughed up blood and breathed his last. Mercer ripped the dagger free and tossed it back to Trix, who wiped the blade and returned the weapon to its sheath.
“How can you be so callous?” Allison asked.
“Plenty of practice,” Mercer told her.
“Keeping him alive would have only prolonged his pain,” Drake said. “Now he’ll wake up back at the server site and be no worse for wear.”
“It’s considered a mercy in this world,” Trix said. “If we wanted to be cruel, we could have kept him alive and in pain as punishment for trying to rob us. Lot of groups we know would not have been kind enough to put him out of his misery.”
Allison shook her head. “I still think it’s barbaric.”
“They don’t call it the Savage Realms for nothing,” Drake said.
When the corpses had been relieved of anything valuable, the group divided up the loot. There was some debate over whether Allison should share in the profits. Drake, of course, was of the opinion she had done nothing and therefore should get nothing. Mercer and Trix argued for an even split. Allison put that argument to rest by insisting that she wouldn’t accept anything from the dead bandits and the three sorted a small pile of ByteCoin amongst themselves. It totaled twenty-seven pieces for each with an extra, which Trix won after the toss of a die crudely carved from a bit of yellowed bone.
The sun hung low in the west by the time they reached the outskirts of Thunderside. The thick forest pressed in on either side of the road, creating a narrow lane where only two could ride abreast. Mercer and Trix led the way in case of another ambush, while Allison and Drake brought up the rear. They turned a bend in the road and the trees opened up, giving Allison her first look at Thunderside. The rushing falls made a mighty roar. Allison had to yell to be heard. Clustered around the base of the cliffs lay a sprawling town encircled by two mighty rivers which joined and then turned southwest. The falls crashed down into deep pools and gave off a thick mist which blanketed the lower city. Great halls, carved of stone, marched up the steep hillside in ranks, right up to the very top of the cliff, and waterwheels were everywhere, endlessly turning in the strong current, daisy-chained together throughout the breathtaking panorama. A long stout bridge guarded by soldiers was the only way into the city from the south.
The black pillars of smoke they had seen from atop the ridge that morning were immediately apparent. A great fissure had opened in one cliff face as if an angry god with a giant axe had cleaved into the western side of Thunderside, leaving behind a terrible wound. The damage was extensive and catastrophic. Stone houses had crumbled into the great fissure, leaving behind a jumble of broken ruins, leaking smoke, and clouds of fine dust that filled the air and made Allison’s eyes water.
“An earthquake?” she guessed.
Mercer shook his head. “Doubtful.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Never heard of an earthquake in the Realms,” he told her.
They checked their mounts at the foot of the bridge and hailed one of the guardsmen.
“What’s happened?” Mercer asked.
“Cave in,” the young guard told him.
Trix muttered a curse and Mercer let out a low whistle.
“We hadn’t heard anything of this in Tanthus,” Drake said. “When did it happen?”
“Three days ago,” the young man said. “Baron Narsul sent messengers. You probably passed them on your journey north.”
“No doubt,” Mercer said.
“You’d do as well to ride on through,” the young guardsman said as he leaned on his lance. “You won’t find lodging for any money. Those that didn’t die in the cave-in have taken every available room, and those that couldn’t get rooms are sleeping in hay lofts, storehouses, open taverns, and the street if need be.”
Mercer thanked him for the advice and they rode across the bridge, their animals’ hooves clippety-clopping on the stone arch. Evidence of the destruction was everywhere, even in the lower city. Destitute men and women huddled in open doorways, calling out for ByteCoin as they passed. Mercer and Trix tossed a few coins to women or injured men. Drake handed out small bottles of a foul-smelling concoction which he claimed would heal small wounds.
Allison asked, “What caused the cave-in do you think?”
“Mine collapse,” Mercer said.
“Do they mine gold here?” she wanted to know.
“They do,” Mercer said. “Along with silver and iron ore as well. Some of the most finely crafted weapons in the Realms can be found in Thunderside, but that is the least valuable thing to come from these hills. The true value is in ByteCoin. They dig up over a million ByteCoin a year from the ground beneath Thunderside. It was only a matter of time before there was a cave-in.”
They worked their way through the lower city to the base of the cliffs, turned east away from the destruction, and took a lift to the upper reaches. The inhabitants of Thunderside had fashioned crude elevators using the waterwheels for propulsion. The group climbed down off their horses and had to wait for one of the creaking wooden platforms to go by, then hurried their animals forward and an enormous waterwheel lifted them skyward. They climbed off several levels up and walked their horses along a winding series of passages to another makeshift elevator. It took seven trips to reach the top of the cliff, and then Mercer led the way along a narrow ledge toward the center of the city.
From here Allison could see all the way to the southern ridge and the forested valley below. Hard to believe she had been standing on the other side looking north only this morning. It seemed an impossible distance. Somewhere in between was the river and the spot where they had met the pack of brigands. She could also see down into the ugly scar where the ground had collapsed, taking buildings and people with it. Thick black smoke rose from the jagged fissure that had cut through the city like a knife.
Mercer stopped his horse before a hall of carven pillars guarded by more men of the watch dressed in steel helmets, armed with pikes. A broad f
light of steps led up to a set of iron-banded doors set with a gold seal depicting two rampant lions bracketing a shining star, or maybe it was the sun. The workmanship was crude and made it difficult to be sure.
“This is as far as you go,” one of the guardsmen said. He was a stout fellow with broad shoulders and a wiry blond beard. “Thunderside officials only beyond this point.”
“Tell Baron Narsul that Mercer is here to see him.”
“That name supposed to mean something to me?” the guard asked.
“No,” said Mercer. “But it will mean something to Narsul.”
The guard looked Mercer over, sucked his teeth in thought, and then shrugged. “I’ll tell him. But don’t hold your breath, stranger. In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got a bit of a catastrophe on our hands.”
“I noticed,” Mercer assured him.
The guardsman took the steps two at a time and disappeared through one of the heavy doors. Mercer and the others waited at the bottom of the steps while the rest of the men-at-arms watched them closely. For fifteen minutes they stood on the windswept terrace, breathing dust from the collapse. Allison was starting to think they would be turned away. She was just about to say as much when the watchman returned and said, “The baron will see you.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The watchman led the way through a massive hall of carven pillars worked with gold and silver, up a sweeping staircase, and along a broad passage to a long chamber with a lofty ceiling and narrow windows looking out over the town of Thunderside. Motes of dust swirled in brilliant shafts of light slanting in through the arches.
Half a dozen men gathered around a battle-scarred table and a series of maps drawn on rough parchment. One of them looked up when the newcomers arrived. He was a squat man with solid legs and a round belly. A half smile turned up one side of his face. “Mercer! How have you been?”
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