by Riley Keene
“Well, nothing they’d kill us for,” Elise clarified. Ermolt could hear the frustration in her voice, but he wasn’t sure if it was directed at him or the situation in general. “But we shouldn’t just drop our weapons now and hope for the best. We should offer our surrender when they arrive, but keep our weapons on hand. If they mean to kill us, I’d rather die fighting.”
Ermolt nodded solemnly and stood in silence, waiting. He would never admit it, but the Conscript was right. There was no way to know what the guards had in mind, and if they were bent on killing those they considered trespassers, he wouldn’t go out without a fight. Maybe he could even by some time for Athala and Elise to escape.
It wasn’t long before armored men appeared in the doorway. They swarmed into the room, swords ready. There were only six of them, but Ermolt could hear more booted feet approaching. Ermolt stepped forward, putting himself between the guards and his companions, his hammer held horizontally across his form to make himself seem like a barricade.
“Surrender!” one of the guards demanded.
“Drop your weapons!” another shouted.
“Sure!” Elise yelled back. “But only if you can guarantee us a fair trial!”
The guards seemed surprised and they dropped their guard slightly. The commander stepped forward, his helmet-less head scuffed a little from his fight with Ermolt. “Truly? You surrender?”
“Well, we don’t want anyone to be killed here.” Ermolt shifted his hands, resettling his fingers on the haft of his hammer. “If you feel the same, we don’t need to fight.”
“Alright.” The commander gestured with his sword. “Drop your weapons. And your bags. You’re under arrest in the name of the God of Life.”
Ermolt heard Elise gasp and he watched her out of the corner of his eye. She gaped at the commander, freezing with her weapon halfway to the floor. “The God of Life? You are servants of Ydia?”
“Yes, of course.” He gestured again. “Keep going. Drop the mace.”
“We must have been underneath the Temple, then,” she said a little breathlessly. Elise had been right about the Temple being in that direction, which mean that Ermolt had been right about the shielding of the spell. He felt a little surge of joy, but decided this wasn’t the time or place to cry out about it. He’d save that for later. If there was a later.
Elise placed her mace on the floor at her feet carefully, but she didn’t stop there. “I’m a Conscript of Ydia.” She stepped forward over her weapon. “This has all been a misunderstanding. I didn’t know this room was down here, but my status as a Conscript should give me access to it.”
“Tch. You think a Conscript would have access to the deepest reaches of Ydia’s sanctum?” The commander and a few of the other guards chuckled at this. “But if you are a Conscript, then you would know better than to bring the unholy into such a sacred place.” He gave Athala a dismissive glance, and openly sneered at Ermolt. “A wizard is bad enough, but a savage giant is just an insult.” The commander stepped forward and grabbed at her hands.
“Hey!” Elise snapped, tearing her hands out of his reach. “These are my f-friends.” The word gave Ermolt pause, but Elise continued. “They may not be anointed clergy, or even devout worshipers, but they respect Ydia and are deserving of your respect in turn!”
“It’s fine, Elise,” Ermolt said calmly as he kicked his hammer away from his feet a little ways. “I consider it a compliment that he mistakes me for a real giant.” He gave a weak smile, trying to lighten the mood.
The commander, however, ignored him. “You have surrendered to our arrest, and will be dealt with in due time.” The commander gestured, and two other guards stepped up with manacles for Ermolt and Athala. “You will be charged once the two guards you assaulted regain consciousness and can provide some testimony as to what you were doing down here, and your conduct in that holy place.”
“We didn’t even know we were beneath the Temple!” Elise yelled, slapping his hands away again as he held out the manacles.
“I just told you that you will be charged, and we will untangle this mess and determine what punishments are necessary. If you intend to continue to resist, we will not hesitate to subdue you.” He held up the manacles. “This is your last chance.”
“Elise,” Ermolt said as he peacefully placed his wrists into the manacles held before him, “the time for this has passed. If you wanted to fight, you should have said something before we put down our weapons.” The manacles clicked around his wrist, punctuating his sentence poignantly. “We’ll argue when they put us in front of a magistrate or whatever.”
“Absolutely not! We should not even be in trouble!” She shoved the commander back before moving within his personal space. “What is that room supposed to be for? Whose dragon is it under there? Is that even part of the Temple proper? How did you—”
Her words were cut off abruptly as the guard who manacled Ermolt turned and slammed his fist into Elise’s temple, sending her slumping to the ground.
“Thank you, Burnell,” the commander said with a nod.
Burnell, unfortunately, was unconscious halfway through the praise, a manacled wrist ringing against his helmet. He slumped to the floor alongside Elise.
Ermolt bellowed in rage as he charged the next guard near to him. With bound wrists he grabbed the man on either side of his face. Ermolt slammed his forehead into the guard’s nose, breaking it. That guard fell to the floor next.
“Subdue him!” the leader barked, stepping away from the nascent rampage. “Alive if you can,” he added, his voice crackling slightly.
The guards in the door flooded in to stop Ermolt. There were many more than those he had seen before. The rumble came to a brief and brutal ending when two of the guards grabbed Ermolt’s shoulders and dragged him to the floor. He used one of the guards as a shield for a bit, but those still standing rained kicks and punches down on him from above, and eventually Ermolt was forced to curl up defensively.
The commander turned and pointed at Athala. “How about you? Are you going to be any trouble?”
Ermolt watched carefully but Athala only shook her head. She looked to Ermolt pitifully and he smiled up at her. Her hands twitched at her sides once more as if she struggled between casting a spell in defense of her companions or digging a hole in the refuse around the room in an attempt to hide. She struggled for a moment and finally looked away, her shoulders heaving with a sigh.
“Good.” The leader gave her a glare as he sheathed his sword slowly and deliberately. “Get them up,” he barked to his men. The blows stopped and Ermolt took a deep breath. Nothing broken. In the end, that was all that mattered.
“I want them to Auernheim for sentencing while the clerks are still there. I don’t want them cluttering up my holding cells tonight!”
Chapter Fifteen
Athala had never been to Auernheim before—nor to any prison, really—but it was about what she expected.
From the get go, they were treated like scum.
After a bit of processing that seemed a so much less thorough than Athala was expecting, they were brought to a giant room and made to strip down to their undergarments. They were provided rough-spun tunics and pants that seemed to fit each of them as awkwardly as possible. Ermolt’s seemed to squeeze his shoulders and torso like a snake, while Athala’s overflowed in every possible place. Elise looked like she might burst out of her pants with a well flexed thigh muscle, but her tunic was comically oversized.
Once they were outfitted, they were forced to relieve their belongings down to the smallest trinket to a guard. The guard himself was a callous man who roughly assaulted their gear onto tiny shelves with their names written on a bit of blackboard beneath. When Ermolt’s hammer refused to fit in the small space, no matter how much the guard pushed and prodded, the weapon was thrown into a wooden bin in the corner of the room with a little tag looped around the handle.
Dressed and thoroughly relieved of their belongings, Elise and Athala w
ere shoved towards a machine that fitted them with anti-magic devices in the form of small rings. They were then marched through the rest of the processing rooms without stopping—which struck Athala as incredibly odd—and then the three of them were pushed out into the prison yard.
It was early evening, not long after supper, and the yard was busy. It seemed the prison employed a bell or so of time outdoors before lock up. The air was still warm, but the sun had set and Athala was sure things would cool off soon.
“I can’t believe they gave me one of these,” Elise said, tugging at the ring on her finger. “I’m not a spell caster.”
“I think you’re overreacting,” Ermolt said as he surveyed the prison yard. “It’s just a ring.”
“You’re only saying that because didn’t have to get one,” Elise sulked, folding her arms across her chest.
Athala looked down at the small ring locked on the pinky finger of either hand. It seemed to be made of a dull metal, likely an inexpensive alloy that was able to resist a beating. The small device made it impossible to bend the finger at the first or second knuckle.
“That’s because I’m a barbarian,” he said. “This is clearly stereotyping. We have wizards just as mighty as any down here.”
“They probably just didn’t have one the size of a house for your giant mitts,” Elise said haughtily.
“It is quite ingenious though,” Athala said to distract them. “Hand motions are the part of the spell casting process required to draw in magical energies. But they have to be so precise that even just a small impediment such as this prevents it entirely. Even a gagged wizard can be dangerous by just calling up energy and unleashing it without shaping it with a spell, and this prevents even that. And it doesn’t impede day-to-day activities. We can still feed ourselves, clean ourselves, and operate simple machines. We don’t need to be helped around like if we were manacled or gagged or whatever else.”
“Yeah, so then why’d I get one?”
“To be completely fair, they don’t know that you aren’t a wizard.” Athala shrugged. “There are plenty of wizards who take up other professions because they are either unaware of their talents or didn’t have the money to follow up on it.”
She paused in thought. “At any rate, wizards in the northern tribes are treated very differently than wizards down here. If my studies are accurate, tribal customs prevent them from pursuing other interests. A barbarian wizard is almost definitely going to be a less capable warrior or outdoorsman than other barbarians.” Athala looked Ermolt up and down for a moment. “I imagine the size of your biceps would compare less favorably to the size of your head if you had spend the requisite years in training customary of your people.”
Ermolt grinned at her. “So what you’re saying is they’re too scared of me to think I could be a wizard.”
“Hypothetically, you could have just not had your talent discovered at the typical age, so—”
“Oy, you three,” a nearby guard barked, “get moving. This door needs to stay clear.”
They began to make their way out into the yard, trying not to pass too close to any of the other inmates. It didn’t matter. Athala was horrified to see that they soon became the focus of everyone in the yard who was not otherwise engaged with exercise, gambling, or posturing for fights. Athala began to fall behind her companions as she frowned, mumbling to herself.
“What are you doing?” Elise whispered to her, gesturing for her to catch up.
“I’m trying to make sure I remember the missing runes from that spell,” Athala responded. “If we can get back there again, I’ll need to know it from memory alone. We destroyed the door and that was half of the puzzle.”
“We’ll be fine,” Elise said and she threw an arm around Athala’s shoulders, tried to reassure her. “We’ll get our stuff back when they let us go, and you had the rubbings in there.”
“You saw how they were handling our things.” Athala wrinkled her nose. “I just want to be prepared in case they go through them and mess up the rubbing.”
Ermolt came to a halt ahead and Elise and Athala stopped short behind him. Athala peeked around the barbarian.
A large woman blocked their path. She looked to be more muscled than Ermolt, but that might have just been her broad hips and massive shoulders. Athala was sure she wasn’t a barbarian—their women tended to have sharper noses and jawlines, but she was still impressive.
“I always love when they bring new people in,” the woman said, her voice gruff and gravelly, but her tone light. “Such interesting specimens Auernheim brings for me.” She paused, and Athala realized the rest of the prison yard was quiet, watching earnestly as this woman paced back and forth in tight little lines in front of Ermolt. “So what’s a pretty thing like you doing here?” the woman finally asked, touching a curl of Ermolt’s hair.
The barbarian didn’t move, but Athala could see tension in his shoulders.
“Leave him alone,” Elise said in warning. The Conscript stepped forward, her arms loosely at her sides.
“I wasn’t talking to you, tiny.” The woman placed a hand on Elise’s shoulder, shoving her away. She eyed Athala for a moment but when the wizard put up no resistance to help Ermolt, the woman grinned and returned to touching his hair. “How did you end up in my prison, big guy?”
Ermolt flinched away from her touch, but he didn’t try to stop her. Athala couldn’t quite see his face without stepping forward, but she could see a faint tremble across his form. Anger simmered in Athala’s belly.
“Trespassing.” The word was forced from between his teeth. His hands shook at his sides, but Athala wasn’t sure if it was fear or anger.
Elise returned to Athala’s side, and the movement forced her to look away from their barbarian friend. The whole yard was watching now, even those who had been previously occupied with other activities. She saw many teasing grins and heard rude and insulting catcalls. Athala’s face contorted in rage.
“Aw,” the woman said as she leaned in close to look over Ermolt’s shoulder at Elise and Athala. “Your friends got you in trouble, did they?” The woman turned her head to bring her lips close to Ermolt’s cheek. She hadn’t actually touched him yet, but she was very much within his personal space. “Maybe you need new friends, then? I could take care of you. In a place like this, friends like that could get you in much worse trouble, you know. I’d keep you out of trouble.”
“Hey!” Athala yelled, stepping forward. “I think you were told to leave him alone.”
“Back off,” the woman snapped. “He wants me to be his friend now.”
“You know, I don’t think he does.” Athala squared her shoulders. “In fact, I think if you asked him, instead of telling him what you want, he’d say so himself.”
“Look little one, I’ll make you a deal. You and your other little friend there can walk away. I’ll take this one back to my room and we can have a good time.” Ermolt shuddered as she ran a finger across his shoulders. “If not, you take his place.”
Athala tilted her head, blinking up at the woman. “Take his—“ she trailed off, the realization of what was meant setting in. Athala had always preferred the company of women, and it had been quite a while since she indulged herself in a little physical activity, but she wasn’t desperate for attention. Even if she had been, she would have looked for a partner of much higher caliber than this bully. “Oh,” Athala said finally, barking with laughter. “Oh, honey, no.”
“Well, then back off.” The woman went to wrap an arm around Ermolt but Athala reached out and grabbed her elbow.
“I don’t think you understood me. I wasn’t saying that I won’t go with you. More that ‘no’ you aren’t worthy of my attentions. A girl has to have standards.” Athala looked up at the woman, cocking her head to one side. The blush that crossed the woman’s face made Athala grin. “Threatening someone who is obviously not interested doesn’t make you a better person, here or anywhere else. Ermolt didn’t consent to being your play t
hing, and I refuse to let you take him anywhere. Now leave my friend alone, please.” The smile and laughter that had filled her eyes drained away as Athala steeled herself to protect her friend. “I won’t ask again.”
The woman made a disgusted noise, looking Athala up and down. If this staring contest had taken place while Athala was still in her dress and leggings, the woman might have decided to call her bluff. And then Athala would have been in trouble. But in the shapeless tunic and pants of the prison attire, Athala liked to think she could be a little more intimidating.
It wasn’t until the woman noticed the little rings around Athala’s finger—and then the ones on Elise’s fingers—that she suddenly looked scared. Athala wasn’t sure if she had successfully intimidated her or if the rings had. Maybe there was a history of wizards who overcame the contraptions. Athala would have to ask someone later if she could remember.
The woman retreated a few steps, then a few more. Athala stepped forward, bringing her hands up as if she meant to cast a spell.
The woman fled.
“Anyone else?” Athala turned, looking around the yard at the inmates who had watched the exchange. Slowly, those who had been watching went back to their business. “Didn’t think so.”
Athala let out a shaky breath and then immediately turned to check up on Ermolt, but Elise stopped her. The Conscript was staring at her, mouth agape. Athala cracked a small smile and shook her head before returning her attention to Ermolt.
“Are you alright?” Athala said quietly.
“Yeah, just,” he paused, shuddering visibly again. His shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. I’m supposed to be protecting you, not the other way around.”
“There are always going to be things you need help from others on.” Athala reached out to touch him but hesitated right before she came in contact with his arm. Ermolt looked up and nodded at her, and Athala gave him a side hug. “I’m just so glad she didn’t call my bluff. That woman would have bent me in half.”