Asher made a cursory inspection of the men and women surrounding him. “This is all of them?” he enquired eagerly. “Do you promise?”
His hungry smile enraged the Father all the more, causing him to step forward and draw both of his short-swords. Mirroring their leader, every Arakesh pulled free their weapons and braced themselves in an attacking stance. Asher didn’t move a muscle. Instead, he waited and watched.
“Which one of you is the bravest I wonder. I suppose it’s whoever doesn’t want to watch the others die.”
“We are Arakesh,” Veda stated. “We do not know fear.”
To Asher, that was just another reason why none of them were real Arakesh. He tilted his head to better see the scar that ran down from Veda’s left eye to his jawline. “You were afraid when I gave you that,” he pointed out. “Or was running away part of your strategy?”
Veda flashed his teeth with a quick snarl. “You will not get the honour of a quick death.”
The ranger was hardly aware of the man’s last words, his attention having shifted to his faithful companion. It brought a fresh smile to his lips.
“What are you smiling at?” Veda spat, clearly distressed with what had likely been a rehearsed conversation gone awry.
“She listened to me,” Asher said, confusing the Father.
Any misunderstanding was immediately cleared up when Avandriell darted through the open window, situated high on the far wall, and collided with the Arakesh at Asher’s back. Even with their heightened senses, their human bodies were incapable of responding to her speed and ferocity. The dragon’s claws, combined with her speed and force, took the man by his leg, snapping it out of shape and, ultimately, taking him off his feet. With ferocious haste, Avandriell dragged the assassin into the adjacent stall, out of sight. His screams were quickly silenced by razor-sharp fangs.
Before either dragon or man had even impacted the ground, however, Asher had leapt forward and brought a downward swing onto Veda Malmagol. The Father managed to parry the silvyr a few inches from his face before countering with his twin short-swords. The ranger jumped back and evaded that second blade only to be assaulted by two more Arakesh. He twisted his body to avoid one before ducking under the second. Rising to his full height, Asher planted a solid kick in one of the assassin’s gut, throwing the woman into Veda.
Free of them both, he met the challenge of the third with a style of parrying known to the elves. It saw him release his grip on the hilt of the weapon as he swapped hands again and again, deflecting the incoming attacks from a multitude of angles while simultaneously confusing the opponent. After a few seconds, the ranger had found his enemy’s opening and he sprang, slashing across the Arakesh’s midriff once and then again after spinning on the ball of his foot. The second strike cut through his leathers and chest to deliver a mortal blow to the man’s heart.
The assassin’s body had barely hit the floor before another of his ilk was upon Asher. Gripping the ranger’s cloak in both hands, the Arakesh yanked him back with enough force to put Asher on the ground. The impact was almost enough to take the wind out of his lungs, but he retained enough sense to know he was being dragged across the stables. Asher tucked in his legs and twisted his hips to narrowly miss the blades of those surrounding him.
A feral anger erupted from somewhere deep in his mind, only it wasn’t his anger. A bronze blur flew across the stables and slammed into the assassin dragging the ranger. Like the other, he was swept from his feet in a splash of blood and gnawing fangs before his body shattered the wood of the closest stall.
Asher used what was left of his momentum and rolled backwards in order to jump up to his feet. Seeing three Arakesh dashing towards him, the ranger quickly unclipped his cloak and let it fall to his feet in a heap.
Throwing himself into the next fight, Asher deflected and parried, but their combined number and angles of attack left the ranger with stinging cuts across various limbs. Growling with the pain, he twisted his body around and brought a sharp elbow into the face of the closest. The Arakesh’s head was whipped back, making him unaware of the silvyr blade plunging towards his gut. After securing the man’s death, Asher lashed out with a foot and kicked back one of the other two, giving him time and space to pull free his bloody short-sword.
That was all he had time for.
Veda had recovered from his fall and was coming down on Asher from a leaping start. The two combatants fell into the rhythm of their lethal dance, their blades clashing between them. The ranger often had to work twice as fast to meet and counter both of Veda’s blades, the Father proving himself the most capable among them with Nightfall’s fighting styles.
Asher grunted and growled as a few swipes and slashes got through his defences and tore at his skin. One particular slice opened a healing wound on his leg and caused him to stagger back, offering Veda the perfect opportunity to jump and kick the ranger across the face. The pain spread through his jaw before a greater pain struck him in the head after colliding with a supporting post. Knowing his enemy, Asher pushed away from the post and evaded the Father’s incoming swing.
Where most men would have succumbed to their pain, the ranger welcomed it as an old friend. Pain always brought back his earliest of lessons in Nightfall, reminding him of the strength he had needed to overcome every obstacle, and it had been a life of obstacles. Using his pain to focus his thoughts, Asher planned his next three moves.
The first: relieve Veda of one of his blades and even the fight. He did this with ease, since the Father’s last swing had buried his short-sword in the post. Asher had but to chop down with his silvyr blade and the Arakesh’s weapon was knocked to the ground and taken by the shadows.
The second: drive the pommel of his short-sword into the Father’s eye. It was an agonising blow for any creature and Veda was no exception. He threw his head back and howled as he clutched the strip of fabric over his bleeding eye. His throat exposed, Asher rammed his open palm into his foe’s neck, stealing his breath.
The third and final move: the ranger snatched at the red blindfold, removing it from Veda’s head altogether. When, and only when, the Father met his eyes did Asher drive his silvyr blade into his gut. It wouldn’t be a quick death.
Veda’s eyes bulged with pain and shock. He released his remaining short-sword, letting it clatter to the ground, and gripped Asher’s arm. With what he had left of his strength, he held the ranger’s arm in place, preventing him from removing the silvyr.
“I’ll live long enough to watch you die,” he hissed.
Asher made to pull his blade free but Veda refused to let go. It was all the time the assassin hiding in the rafters needed to drop down and wrestle the ranger away from the Father and his precious blade. While Veda fell to the ground and began to crawl towards the stable doors, Asher was launching himself into the wall of the nearest stall.
His bid to remove the Arakesh on his back succeeded, but the younger man was quicker to recover. From a prone position, the assassin heaved his body up and caught Asher in the face with his knee, stopping the ranger from rising. The next thing he knew, rough hands were grabbing him by the collar and the waist and throwing him out of the stall.
A low grunt escaped Asher’s lips as he pushed himself up onto all fours. Various parts of his body were crying out in pain, demanding his attention, as blood oozed from every limb and half a dozen smaller cuts on his face. Wounded as he was, he could still see and hear the chaos Avandriell was causing further down the stable. The dragon raked with her claws and opened arteries with her fangs when she wasn’t picking assassins up and dropping them from the ceiling. If it wasn’t for her, he would have been swarmed by Arakesh and probably be dead already.
The assassin who had thrown him out of the stall was storming towards him, his quick strides visible in the corner of the ranger’s eye. His instinct was to reach for his weapon, but the silvyr short-sword was halfway across the stables, impaled in Veda’s gut. Asher swore and took a breath, preparing
himself for the brutality he was about to unleash on the younger man.
Those familiar rough hands grabbed at him again, but they failed to lift the ranger. In fact, they failed to do anything after Asher reversed his kneecap. The Arakesh fell back, raging with pain, and tried to crawl away, just like his master. Asher took a hold of the man by the waist of his trousers and dragged him back. Snapping his neck was muscle memory.
A light that felt as bright as the sun suddenly expelled every shadow in the stable, turning the ranger to Avandriell. Hovering in the air, the young dragon had set two of the assassins on fire. They ran into each other, their arms flapping around uselessly, before finally dropping to the ground, dead. Asher would have smiled at his companion’s efforts but a boot to his chest launched him from his knees and onto his back.
The woman that came down on him had a single short-sword, but both of her hands were driving it down towards Asher’s throat. At the last second, he managed to grip her wrists, halting the tip of the blade as it touched his skin. They both groaned under the effort, one driving down, the other braced. Again, Avandriell came to his aid. He saw her wings flap either side of the Arakesh before her claws sank deep into the woman’s back. Her attack on Asher was immediately over, giving him the time to twist the short-sword from her grip and run it across her throat.
Avandriell, the ultimate predator, wasted no time bounding over the ground and barrelling into another assassin. Asher spared a glance at Veda, who was still desperately trying to crawl away. The ranger gripped his enemy’s blade and started towards him, intending to finish what he had started. His first step, however, was the closest he got to the Father.
He heard the whistle of flying steel, but his senses had failed to locate its location before the blade was sinking into his arm. Asher roared and dropped the weapon he had taken. As he moved to take the dagger out, two more came hurtling in his direction, the blades thrown from the darkness. A last second shift of his shoulders allowed him to evade the first dagger which went on to find the post behind him. The second was lower and more central, catching him in the left hip.
The new pain in his hip forced Asher down to one knee, where he watched two Arakesh take shape from the shadows. Veda, it seemed, had staggered the attack on him, ordering a pair to hold back and ensure a fatigued ranger was met by fresh assassins. Regardless of the doubt it clearly showed on the Father’s part, it was a new tactic that must have come out of Asher’s time hunting them down. The ranger swore again.
The pair of killers ran at him, their short-swords coming into play now. Asher gritted his teeth against the inevitable pain and yanked the dagger from his arm. He launched it with years of experience behind him, but the blindfolded assassins felt the steel in the air and dodged it with little effort. By the time he got round to removing the blade from his hip, the duo were upon him. Asher could do naught but throw his arm out and hope to stop at least one of them from swinging their sword.
There was barely any time to perceive it but, in that fraction of a second, Asher felt the hairs on his outstretched arm stand on end. There was a rush of heat, pulsing from the bones in his arm down to the smaller bones in his open hand. The air in front of his hand fractured and rippled outwards at great speed, picking up the loose hay and dirt from the ground before slamming into the Arakesh. Their direction was instantly reversed and with violent consequences. Both men hit the side of the stables with enough force to push their bodies through the hard wood to the outside. They didn’t get back up.
Still in significant pain and down on one knee, Asher brought his hand back and examined the palm. There was a dull ache in his fingers but they were perfectly normal in appearance. He hadn’t used magic like that since his days with Paldora’s gem on his finger. The thought led his gaze back to Avandriell. The dragon was walking out of a stall with blood around her mouth and up her legs.
The ranger tried to get up and walk towards her but the pain in his hip brought him down again. Avandriell hurried to his side and nuzzled her head into his chest, where he was apparently very bruised. He patted her scales and eased her away before attempting to rise again. On his feet, if a little hunched, Asher surveyed the bodies scattered across the stable, two of which were on fire. There was one, though, who continued to move, if very slowly.
Sensing his disdain, Avandriell bounded and pounced until she was blocking Veda’s way to the doors. The dragon lowered her head to the Father’s and growled at him, baring her gore-coated fangs. Avandriell knew everything that had happened to Asher in Nightfall. She knew that it was men like Veda that had tormented her companion and twisted who he was to fit their needs. It brought out her wrathful side.
“Wait,” Asher croaked, limping across the stable.
Asher reached down and unceremoniously retrieved his silvyr blade from Veda’s gut. The Father cried out in agony and curled up in a ball, though there was nothing he could do to stop the blood loss now.
Looking down at the pathetic man, the ranger’s vision blurred, creating two images of the Father. Asher touched his fingers to his head and discovered a decent amount of blood on his hairline. He had no idea when that particular blow had struck him, but he knew a blackout was coming his way and soon.
“Just do it,” Veda moaned. “Or get your… pet to do it. Whatever helps… your conscience, traitor. Just know… you will always be… one of us. Killing me… killing all of us… just proves that… you were the best of us…”
His blade gripped in hand and pointed at Veda, Asher prepared himself to finish the Arakesh, ending the ancient order once and for all. But it wasn’t the first time he had heard words like those. Words that had stuck with him since the last assassin of Nightfall had been at his mercy. Like Veda did now, that Arakesh had looked up at him and seen themselves reflected back. But what else could be done? The Arakesh were a scourge, a plague that had brought its rot to every corner of Illian for a thousand years. They needed eradicating. If Veda was allowed to escape or if he found some way to survive, the order would continue.
Pressing the silvyr tip to Veda’s chest, Asher offered the man a final grimace to take to hell with him. “I can live with that,” he replied.
As his arm tensed, ready to drive his blade down, an unusual and overwhelming feeling swept over the ranger. In that same moment, he was taken back to the first time Avandriell had swelled with magic and grown in size. Like then, Asher felt the cautionary arm of Adan’Karth hold him back.
Looking beyond Veda, Avandriell’s golden eyes were waiting for her companion. Though she gave no outward suggestion of what was to come, Asher could feel it in her. Around the dragon, small pieces of debris and dirt began to lift from the ground and float in the air. Ignoring Veda altogether, the ranger turned on his heel and dived in the opposite direction.
The gloom and even the firelight from the bodies were eclipsed by the bright star that was birthed inside the stables. It expanded for six feet in every direction, propelled by the rawest magic there was. Everything inside that sphere was disintegrated, including all but a single foot of Veda Malmagol.
Succumbing to his injuries now, Asher slowly rolled onto his back and searched through the smoke for any sign of his companion. The intense burst of magic had spread to one of the supporting posts, removing a chunk of the wood while setting the rest of it alight. The fire and smoke made it hard to see anything, though Asher wasn’t sure his head injury didn’t have something to do with his poor vision.
A silhouette began to take shape near the doors, beyond the scorch mark that Veda’s body had left on the ground. The silhouette rose and continued to rise and expand, taking on a hulking shape.
“Avandriell?” he uttered.
The smoke curled as that silhouette pushed through to reach him. A single head, a little larger than a horse’s, emerged to rest over the ranger. Avandriell’s reptilian eyes blinked once as she looked down on her wounded companion. They were the same shade of gold, if a few sizes bigger. The two horns, one above e
ach eye, were thicker and much taller now.
Asher desperately wanted to see all of her, to marvel at the way she had grown, to admire her increased beauty. But the world was fading away and the smoke was making it harder to breathe.
Asher… Avandriell’s voice was a soothing balm that gave him just enough life to keep his eyes open a moment longer.
In that time, the wall behind Avandriell was ripped away in a violent explosion of splintered wood. There, with the stars and moon at his back, Athis the ironheart stood tall on his back legs, his mighty fangs bared in a snarl.
Asher, Avandriell said again, her golden eyes drawing the ranger in. Hold on… Her voice was the last thing he heard before the black took him.
* * *
“I think he’s waking up,” came a voice from the ether.
It was familiar, but the ranger struggled to place it.
“Quickly,” the same voice said, “alert my mother.”
“Inara,” Asher croaked, his throat horribly dry.
“I’m here,” the Guardian replied.
The ranger’s eyes fluttered open and protested against the light streaming in through a large window to his left. Inara’s elfish face slowly grew in detail until all the blurry lines were gone, leaving naught but her smile.
“You’re in Governor Tarlan’s guest house,” she informed him before he could begin his stream of questions. “It’s a few hours past midday. You’ve been out since the pre-dawn, but we’ve taken good care of you. And you certainly needed it,” she added, leaning away to cast her eyes over his body. “You can take a beating, I’ll give you that.”
Asher’s hand instinctively moved to the pinch he felt on his left hip. He could feel a rough scab but nothing else.
“You had a dagger in there,” Inara told him. “And besides the plethora of gashes and bruises, you also had a nasty cut on your head.”
“Why am I not dead?” he asked.
A Clash of Fates: The Echoes Saga: Book Nine Page 56