The Call of Ancient Light

by Ben Wolf

  “Maybe if it was new.” Garon shook his head. “Look, you seem like nice young men…” He looked up at Magnus. “…and a nice large lizard-person. I’ll make it eighteen.”

  “No.” Magnus folded his burly arms. “I want fifty.”

  Garon grabbed his chest. “By the Overlord—my heart stopped for a moment there. At my age, my hearing’s not so good. Could you repeat that number?”

  “Fifty.”

  Garon grabbed his chest again, feigning agony. “Yep. That’s what I thought you said. In what world is this junk worth fifty gold coins?”

  “In this one.”

  “Yeah, this one,” Axel echoed.

  Magnus shot him a glare, then he refocused on Garon. He pointed to each item. “Twenty for the set of armor, including the helmet, a coin for the two lengths of rope, five apiece for the two swords, nine for the axe, and ten for all that leather, including the four pairs of boots and the belts.”

  Garon counted his fingers again.

  “It adds up to fifty,” Magnus asserted.

  Garon stopped and narrowed his gaze. “Yes, thanks. I can add. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t have lasted forty years as a merchant and another eight as a shopkeeper.”

  “So do we have a deal?”

  “The only reasonable price you just quoted me was for the two lengths of rope—” Garon grabbed the ropes, dropped them behind his counter, then pulled a gold coin from his pocket. He slid it across the counter. “—for one coin. You’re too high on everything else.”

  Magnus took the gold coin and handed it to Axel, who dropped it into a small coin pouch. “Then we will pack up our things and go.”

  “Where do you expect to get forty-nine coins for the rest of that?”

  “We will visit one of the bigger shops. I expect they have more capital to trade with.” Magnus reached for the suit of armor while Calum held open the sack.

  Faster than Calum would’ve expected, Garon rounded the counter and held up his hand to stop them. “They’ll rip you off. They’re bigger, so they spend more on bigger items, but they always rip off the little guys. Always. Bunch of scoundrels and predators. You can’t trust them. Not at all.”

  “Better than arguing with you,” Axel muttered.

  “Do you have another offer?” Magnus asked.

  “Twenty even. Best deal you’ll get for this stuff.”

  Magnus motioned to Calum. “Pack it all up.”

  Garon’s hand clamped down on Magnus’s wrist as he reached for the helmet, but he let go just as fast. “Wait. You don’t have to leave yet. Let’s try a new number. How about twenty-five?”

  Magnus leaned toward him. “How about forty-nine?”

  “King’s mercy.” Garon clenched his eyes shut and clutched his chest a third time. “Your expectations are unrealistic. No one with half a brain is going to give you forty-nine gold pieces for… this.”

  “How about forty-eight?”

  Garon glared at Magnus and pointed at the door. “Get out.”

  Magnus nodded. He reached for the helmet again, and again, Garon grabbed his wrist then quickly let go.

  “I’ll give you five coins for both swords.”

  “Five each?”

  “Five total.”

  “I said five each.”

  “And I said five total.” Garon held one of them up, and sunlight from one of the windows glinted off the blade. “They’ve been used. I’ll have to sharpen them, shine them, and oil them up before I can resell them.”

  Magnus folded his arms. “Fine. Eight.”

  “Six.”

  “Seven, plus a bigger coin pouch than the one we’ve got, and you have a deal.”

  “And you have a deal if I get to keep the smaller coin pouch.” Garon smirked.

  Magnus smirked as well. “Deal.”

  They exchanged the goods and the coins, and Axel double-checked to make sure he’d removed all of their own coins from the small pouch before he traded it for the new one.

  “Now about that axe,” Garon said. “It’s not worth nine coins. Not a chance. I mean, if the handle were bejeweled with priceless diamonds, then maybe. So I’ll give you three.”

  “Three?” Magnus shook his head. “I can get more than that by selling it to a blacksmith for the metal. Eight.”

  “Look, we can haggle all day over this, but I’m an old man and would rather sit outside my store and watch beautiful young ladies walk on by.” Garon laughed his wheezy laugh again and smacked the counter with his palms. “I’ll give you six, which is more than it’s worth, just to shut you up.”

  “Deal.”

  “The leather’s not worth ten, either. How about six for that as well?”

  Magnus huffed. “Would you do seven?”

  Garon shook his head. “No.”

  “Then I accept your six.”

  “Now about that armor—”

  “You will not get it for ten coins. You could sell it for double or even triple that, new or otherwise. It is in good shape.”

  “I’ll give you twelve.”

  Magnus clacked his talons on his breastplate. “Eighteen.”

  Garon sighed. “Look, son. I’m going to put a price tag of thirty coins on it. I’ll tell customers it’s on sale for twenty-five, and I’ll probably settle for a sale price in the low twenties. So you asking eighteen for it is excessive, offensive, and just plain ridiculous. I’ll give you thirteen.”

  “How about you give me sixteen, you price it at thirty-five and sell it for twenty-six or twenty-seven?” Magnus asked.

  Garon waved his hand. “If I price it at thirty-five, it’ll sit there until I’m dead and gone and for the next three generations that follow me. Unless there’s a war that engulfs all of Kanarah, no one would pay that much for a used set of armor. At least not that one. Thirteen’s as high as I can go.”

  “Fifteen, then, but I keep the helmet.” Magnus picked it up and held it in his hand.

  “Fifteen?” Garon groaned. “Fifteen? Preposterous. And what are you going to do with a random helmet, anyway? Toss rocks into it when you’re bored? Look, to shut you up, I’ll do fifteen if I get the helmet with the armor, and then you can get out of my store. My heart can’t handle any more of your badgering.”

  “Deal.”

  After their final exchange of goods for coins, Magnus nodded to Calum, who brought over one of the other sacks.

  “We have some… other goods,” Magnus said. “But I do not know if you are willing to deal in them.”

  Garon squinted at him. “Just now pulling out the good stuff, eh? After I’ve spent all my money on your boring junk?”

  Magnus raised an eyebrow. “Like I said, I do not know if you are willing to risk dealing in what we have to sell. Is there anything you refuse to buy?”

  Garon smiled and raised an eyebrow. “I can’t think of anything in particular.”

  Magnus reached into the bag and removed a soldier’s helmet. “How about this?”

  The smile on Garon’s face flipped upside-down, and his other eyebrow rose. All the mirth left his voice. “Get out of my store. Now. And don’t you ever come back here again. Never. Ever. Never ever.”

  Calum glanced at Axel. Garon’s reaction was exactly what they’d feared, and Calum couldn’t help but wonder if they’d made a critical mistake.

  Magnus dropped the helmet back into the bag and handed it to Calum. “One last question. Do you know of anyone who might deal in this type of merchandise?”

  Garon rounded the counter again, this time with his hands up. He shooed them toward the door. “I don’t know anything about anyone. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what you’ve got in that sack. I’ve never seen you before, and we’ve never done business. Crystal? Now get out of my shop, and don’t ever come back.”

  “Thank you for your time.” Magnus nodded to him and stepped out the door behind Calum and Axel. Once they made it outside, Magnus grabbed them both by their shoulders. “We need to get out of here. Now.”<
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  “What?” Axel held his hands out, palms up. “Why?”

  “Because Garon is about to find the nearest soldier and tell him what he has just seen.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Are we bringing the soldiers’ gear with us?” Calum hefted the bag over his shoulder. He hoped they wouldn’t have to keep lugging it around.

  “No. It will slow us down, and if they catch us with it, it will only incriminate us. Better to leave it behind and gain some ambiguity in the process. Nor do we need it anymore anyway. We have enough coin to purchase supplies for the journey across Trader’s Pass and then some.”

  “This is totally unnecessary,” Axel said. “We can just go back in there and make sure he doesn’t say anything.”

  Magnus eyed him. “We have no time to argue about this. We do not know this city like the King’s soldiers do, and I have only been here once before. As far as I know, we are about as close to the center as we could possibly get, which means that no matter what direction we go, it will be hard to get out of here.”

  “Like I said, we won’t have to worry about this hassle if I go back into the shop and—”

  “And what?” Magnus stepped in front of him. “Kill him?”

  Axel didn’t back up. “If it came to that, sure.”

  “You cannot just kill your way out of every problem, Axel.”

  “Beats running from them, don’t you think?” Axel smirked. “But that’s what works for you, isn’t it, Scales? You still never told us why you left your homeland. Are you running from something?”

  Calum gawked at Axel’s audacity. He’d been curious about Magnus, too, but he hadn’t dared ask him about it. And he certainly wouldn’t have challenged him about it like this, either.

  Magnus glared at him. “That is not a conversation we have time for, nor is it any of your concern.”

  “Oh, so you are running from something.” Axel tapped his chin with his fingers. “Let’s see… you have special armor, a special sword… From what I’ve seen here in the city, no other Saurians have anything like it, do they? You must’ve been someone important, or rich, or both. I wonder what—”

  “Enough, Axel,” Magnus hissed. “I have nothing to say to you. Nothing. We must go. Now. Every minute you waste talking is another minute we could use to make our escape.”

  “Both of you, stop,” Calum said.

  Axel nudged Calum. “Got you kind of curious now, doesn’t he?”

  “Calum, please.” Magnus turned to him. “This is not helpful. We must flee.”

  “And now he’s being defensive. Must’ve been something pretty juicy if he’s getting all worked up about it, huh?” Axel laughed.

  Magnus grabbed Axel by his breastplate and lifted him off of his feet. “You know nothing about me. Nothing. So do not pretend you do.”

  “Put him down, Magnus.” Leader or not, Calum was getting tired of mediating Axel and Magnus’s tiffs. More importantly, if they had to run, carrying Axel wasn’t ideal.

  Magnus let him drop but turned away from Axel, who managed to land on his feet. “We need to go. Now. There is no time.”

  Calum nodded. “We’re going. Axel, you’re not killing anyone. We’ll dump the bags in a trash heap behind one of these buildings, and then we’ll head north back to the Snake Mountains for a few days until everything calms down here. Let’s go.”

  “Whatever you say, oh great leader,” Axel gave a mock bow that grated on Calum’s sense of calm, but he forced himself to ignore it and started to move.

  Everything went as Calum had intended, including dropping the sacks of gear on one of the trash piles, until they reached the city’s north gate, the same one through which they had entered. A dozen soldiers who weren’t there before now stood at the gate, huddled around their commander.

  “Back. Back. Now.” Calum swiveled on his heels and headed the opposite way.

  “Oh, come on. We can get through them, Calum.” Axel stopped him mid-stride. “We just handled more than double that number a week ago.”

  “There are other soldiers nearby. This is home to the third largest contingent of the King’s soldiers in Kanarah, after Solace itself and the Border Fortress farther east,” Magnus warned. “We cannot instigate any more trouble than we already have.”

  Axel exhaled a long sigh. “Whatever. I’m not gonna argue. I know it won’t make a difference. Never does.”

  Calum sighed. Not this whiny “woe-is-me” garbage again.

  “Whatever we decide to do, let’s not discuss it in the street, in plain sight,” Calum said. He glanced at the group of soldiers again.

  One of them was watching the trio. He leaned to his side and said something to the soldier next to him. The soldier’s head rotated, and he looked at Calum as well.

  Definitely time to go.

  They scampered behind a nearby building. Calum looked up at Magnus as they walked down an alley. “Is there an east gate?”

  “There is, but I have never been there.” Magnus glanced over Calum’s shoulder. “They are pursuing us. Do not turn around.”

  Axel swore. “How many?”

  Magnus growled. “All of them.”

  Calum eyed him. “What do you mean, all of them?”

  “Too many to fight. More than were standing around at the gate. It is time to run.”

  “You ready?” Calum nodded at Axel.

  “If you’re not willing to fight, then I guess I don’t have another choice.”

  “East gate it is. If we get separated, meet up there.” Calum nodded to Magnus. “We’re ready. Say when, Magnus.”

  Magnus paused for a moment, still watching over Calum’s shoulder. “Now.”

  All three of them bolted from their spot behind the building and into the street.

  From behind them, the cries and yells of several soldiers filled Calum’s ears. He stole a glance back. Magnus hadn’t exaggerated—the entire dozen soldiers who’d been standing at the gate now chased after them, plus many, many more. Too many to count with only a quick look.

  Definitely too many to fight.

  Calum faced forward in time to see a pretty young lady carrying a basket full of flowers step in front of him. She squeaked, and he barely skidded to a stop in time. Then he sidestepped her and kept running.

  “Pardon me!” he called back to her.

  With Axel in the lead, Calum chased Magnus’s green tail through the streets.

  A soldier emerged from an alleyway to his right. Calum reacted by slamming his gauntleted fist into the soldier’s nose. The impact stung his hand, but the soldier got it way worse.

  And it meant one fewer soldier chasing them.

  Magnus took a hard left down an alley, and Calum followed. On his way in, Calum drew his sword and severed the leg of a cart full of apples, oranges, and walnuts. It tipped over, and its contents spilled in front of the alley. Calum hoped it would slow the soldiers down, though he didn’t love hearing the angry shouts of the cart’s owner behind him.

  The alley drained into another street, one far more crowded than the one they just left. Calum had wanted to sheathe his sword, but he opted to keep it out in case he ran into any more soldiers while on the run.

  Due to the thick traffic on the street, Magnus got in front of Axel and roared, and a path cleared through the crowd as people scattered away from the admittedly frightening sound. The trio continued to run.

  Ahead of them, three soldiers emerged from the base of a watchtower in front of Magnus, but he couldn’t stop in time. Instead, he whipped his tail around and sent all three of them crashing through the wall of a nearby shop. The surrounding civilians screamed and recoiled from Magnus, and Calum couldn’t blame them for it.

  They passed about ten more streets and came up to the east gate, but Magnus stopped short. Then he cut south, right past Calum and Axel.

  “More soldiers. South gate,” was all he said as he barreled past them.

  Sure enough, a contingent of soldiers about the same s
ize as the one at the north gate now ran toward them.

  Calum’s burning legs propelled him after Axel and Magnus. If they couldn’t get out through the south gate, what would they do then?

  Just run, Calum, he told himself. Worry about the rest later.

  The three of them rounded a corner and stopped short. A platoon of soldiers four rows deep blocked the street. Had the soldiers in pursuit cut them off, or were these totally different soldiers?

  Magnus faced Calum and Axel. “Rooftops. Now.”

  Before Calum could ask what that meant, Magnus grabbed him by his collar and his belt and hurled him into the air. Blue sky filled his vision, then his body smacked against something hard, and everything snapped to white, then black. His eyes reset in time to see Axel flying through the air down at him.

  As if Calum’s body didn’t already hurt enough from running through the city and landing on the rooftop, all two-hundred-plus pounds of Axel landed right on top of him. The impact pushed the air out of Calum’s lungs and sent fresh pain through his torso.

  They both let out a loud “oof,” and then Axel jumped up.

  “Thanks for breaking my fall. Always knew you were a big windbag.” He grabbed Calum by his wrist and yanked him up to his feet. “Come on. We gotta keep moving.”

  Wheezing, Calum headed for the edge of the roof. “Is Magnus coming after us?”

  A gigantic green head popped up over the side of the building, followed by two big green hands. Magnus’s talons dug into the wooden edge, and he shouted, “Go! Do not tarry on my account!”

  Calum nodded, sheathed his sword, and spun around. He chased Axel, who deftly bounded from rooftop to rooftop. They ducked under clotheslines, sidestepped small chimneys, and even jumped over a pipe-smoking roof-dweller reclining in a low chair.

  “Southwest, Axel!” Magnus yelled from behind them. “Calum, tell him!”

  Calum repeated the words.

  “I heard him the first time!” Axel corrected his course and cleared a wide gap between two roofs.

  Calum jumped as well, but he didn’t make it quite as far. He managed to grab onto the edge of the building, but his chest, knees, and thighs smacked the side. It would have hurt a lot worse had he not been wearing armor, but it still left him stunned and weakened.