The Hickory Staff

by Rob Scott

  ‘Brynne, what are you doing?’

  A tense murmur rippled through the ruffians assembled along the shore as they watched the interchange. Garec retreated several steps and drew his bow, ready to fire in an instant.

  Brynne placed her knife at the woman’s throat and with her free hand reached behind the pirate’s back to withdraw an evil-looking dagger with a curved blade and a short wooden handle. ‘Steven, I appreciate what you did with the rocks, and that tremendous wave, but you still have a lot to learn.’ She tossed the dagger to Mark. ‘One doesn’t get to be the leader of a band like this by surrendering at the first sign of trouble.’

  Steven paled.

  ‘She was going to kill you, so they—’ she nodded towards the pirate ranks inching slowly along the beach, ‘—could kill the rest of us.’

  Angry and embarrassed with himself, Steven cursed aloud in English, a string of epithets that left Mark shaking his head in admiration at his friend’s grasp of the vernacular. Recovering, Steven summed it all up with a rousing, ‘Son of an open-sored Atlantic City whore!’ and stepped forward as if to punch the woman hard across the face.

  She raised her own fists, but rather than backing away, she taunted him, ‘Go ahead, sorcerer, kill me. The way you pined over Rezak back there, I’m surprised you didn’t kiss him goodbye.’ She stared up at him, her eyes fierce. ‘What’s the matter, sorcerer, don’t like confrontation? Afraid to kill me?’

  Rezak. Steven would remember that. He looked down at the unsavoury character glaring at him. ‘I’m not a sorcerer,’ he said.

  ‘Look at that,’ the woman said. Steven fell back several paces as she shoved him hard and laughed, ‘You are afraid to kill me.’ Around them, members of her pirate band laughed and hooted uproariously. The woman spat at Steven’s feet and, reeking confidence, stepped towards him.

  In an instant Brynne was between them again, the hunting knife drawn. Steven barely had time to blink before Brynne had flicked her wrist twice and taken off both the woman’s earlobes. She sounded deadly serious when she told the pirate leader, ‘I, however, am not afraid to kill you.’

  The woman recognised Brynne’s unemotional savagery and lowered her fists. She drew a wet kerchief from around her neck and dabbed at the blood that dripped steadily from her ears. ‘I am wondering how you managed to get in here,’ she said offhandedly, not sounding in the least bit threatened. ‘You could not have come from the river with such a vessel—’ she indicated the Capina Fair, ‘—and I know you didn’t enter this cavern through—’ She hesitated, as if discarding certain words, ‘through other places. So unless you used magic to get inside, I have to assume you have lived your entire lives down here and I have simply never seen you before. It is possible. This is a large lake, and an even larger cavern. And yet, I find that unlikely, because I have met the other permanent inhabitants of this cave on several occasions, and they tend to be a good deal hairier, blinder, and—’ she smiled at Steven for the first time ‘—less attractive than the lot of you.’ She squeezed blood out of the kerchief, then bent down to rinse it in the lake before reapplying it to her ears – although they were still bleeding freely, she didn’t appear to be terribly upset about it.

  ‘So, sorcerer, how did you get down here?’

  For the first time, Steven noticed she was using just one hand, her right hand: her left had either been hanging limply at her side or slightly behind her back since she had joined them on the beach. Looking down at it now, he noticed she was curling and straightening different fingers in a repeating pattern. Behind her, the pirates were standing perfectly still. He thought they looked to be somewhat closer than they had been when he first stood up from the dead man’s body, but perhaps that was a trick of the light. He couldn’t see the raiders assembled behind the first row or two, but there was some movement, as if they were shuffling nervously from side to side, or trying to move without being detected.

  Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw it. A big man, older but tough-looking, with a shaved head and a long scar running across the outside of his neck, was watching the woman’s fingers intently. He was bleeding from several lacerations on his face and arms, but like the woman with the now neatly clipped earlobes, he did not seem to notice his wounds. Instead he stared between Brynne and Mark, watching the curling and straightening of the woman’s fingers.

  She was sending messages to him. It was a code. Steven couldn’t work out what the patterns meant, but there was no question the woman before him, still carrying on about him being a sorcerer, was sending orders to the ranks behind her. Steven was almost dazed: he was watching the scene unfold as if he were just a bystander. Now the big pirate began sending a message to someone flanking Steven and the others. The man’s hand rested quietly on his thigh, then, slowly, his index and then ring fingers curled up beneath his palm. It was the tiniest of gestures, almost impossible to catch if you weren’t looking for it. Steven assumed they had been ordered to gather their weapons and prepare an assault. The scarred man curled and waggled his fingers over and over again; Steven guessed he was communicating with the group back along the beach, behind Mark and Brynne.

  His mind raced: an attack was coming, and it would come from both sides at once. He had to act fast. The woman, obviously their leader, was still taunting him, but now Steven understood why. It was a ruse: buy time. Rearm. We have seen his magic, but we have also seen he is unwilling to kill. If he is unwilling to kill, we can take him and the others. Prepare. Prepare in silence.

  This band had not looked to be an organised fighting force, but Steven realised he had been horribly wrong: they were much more than that; this was a group of people who had been together long enough to be able to read one another’s thoughts. They’d come out of the lake in certain positions not by chance, but because of what would come next. Those who could read the code were in front, because any shuffling of ranks after they had all assembled on the beach would have been suspicious.

  This was no ragtag band, and now they were coming for Steven and the Ronan partisans.

  Looking to Mark and Garec, Steven tried his own form of nonverbal communication to get them to move in close. Brynne was still by his side, her knife drawn and held loosely in one hand. After a moment, Mark took a few steps forward, but Garec was wary, not sure he should give up his vantage point against the cavern wall, where he was in a good position to shoot into either group. Steven cried out in his mind, and sneaked quick but piercing glances at Garec, all the while trying not to give anything away to the enemy leader before him.

  Come over here, Garec. Come over here. I can’t protect you if you don’t get your sorry self over here now. Steven willed the bowman to understand. His grip on the staff tightened.

  Garec understood that Steven was trying to tell him something, but he had no idea what. Get ready? Shoot someone? Draw more arrows? What? Confused, Garec looked left, then right, then back at Steven, trying to work out what he was supposed to do. They had moved. The pirates, both groups, had crept forward without anyone noticing. It was only a pace or two, and it had taken them some time, but they were inexorably closing the gap between themselves and the travellers. After what felt like an eternity to Steven, Garec seemed to get the message. The bowman started to grin, then recovered himself and wiped his face clear of all expression. He hastily took stock of what he had, and what he would need to continue this fight in close quarters.

  Calmly lowering his bow, he fought to slow his heart rate and breathing. They were coming. Any moment now, they were coming. He reached slowly down to retrieve the dozen arrows he had stabbed tip-first into the beach. With those firmly in hand, he suddenly took off, running across the camp. As he leaped into place beside Brynne, he cried, ‘Now, Steven, now!’ and with a wave of Steven’s outstretched hands, a great circle of molten fire burst from the ground to surround them. So fast did the flames appear that Garec’s leggings caught fire and he spent several moments patting out the blaze before he could turn his attenti
on back to the raiders.

  The explosion of fire forced the attackers in the forward ranks to fall backwards, their faces and hands seared from the sudden blast, coughing and spluttering and trying to clear their lungs of the intense heat they had inadvertently inhaled. They gaped at the fiery wall, and at their leader, now trapped on the wrong side of the flames, in shock. The tongues of fire reached halfway up the cavern, but there was very little smoke and the heat was far less intense than Mark had expected.

  Seeing Mark’s inquisitive look, Steven grinned. ‘Oh, don’t worry. It’s much hotter on their side than ours.’

  ‘Outstanding!’ Mark was impressed. ‘Steven, you’re getting good at this.’ He gazed around their fire chamber and, almost absentmindedly, put his arm across Brynne’s shoulders.

  ‘Not really.’ Steven shook his head. ‘Most of the time, I imagine what I want to happen and then try to make adjustments once I get things started.’

  ‘But still,’ Mark was encouraging, ‘you’ve come a long way since the Blackstone foothills.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Steven still wasn’t so sure. ‘Except for dealing with Malagon’s wraiths, I’m not sure I’ve done much more than a bit of conjuring.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘What the hell am I saying? How can I be so blasé about something that shouldn’t even be possible?’ He turned to the pirate leader, who hadn’t moved. Her jaw hung slack as she stared at the dancing flames separating her from her band of ruffians.

  ‘However,’ he said directly to her, ‘I am not a sorcerer.’

  ‘Then what are you?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘I’m a bank manager,’ Steven said. ‘Actually, I’m assistant manager, and if Howard ever retires, then I will become manager. I am only an assistant manager because I lack the skill to be a professional baseball player, and I lack the will and the self-confidence to risk becoming much more than I am – or than I was six weeks ago. I appear to have been chosen by this staff to wield it in compassionate defence of myself, my friends and our cause, but other than that, I have never been able to produce, let alone understand, anything magical, mystical, or supernatural.’ He would have continued parodying his former life, but she interrupted.

  ‘What are you called?’

  ‘I am called Steven Taylor, of the Idaho Springs Taylors. You can call me Steven.’ He reached out to shake her hand, but she simply stared, unsure how to proceed. Giving up after a few seconds, Steven introduced his friends: ‘This is Mark Jenkins, a teacher of history, our history, so he finds himself with a head full of completely useless knowledge here in Eldarn.’

  ‘An absolute pleasure to meet you,’ Mark said. ‘Sorry it had to be behind a wall of fire, but we’re not keen on being slaughtered just at the moment.’ He grinned.

  ‘Mark Jenkins,’ the woman echoed faintly.

  Steven introduced Garec and then Brynne. He was about to suggest the woman reciprocate, and explain why she had ordered her crew of pirate ruffians to attack them without provocation when she interrupted him once again.

  ‘Garec Haile, the archer. And you—’ she pointed to Brynne. ‘He said your name was—’

  ‘Brynne. I am Brynne Farro of Estrad. I own the Greentree Tavern in Greentree Square, if you know the place.’

  Mark added, ‘We don’t, Steven and me. We tried to go one night. I wanted a tuna sandwich, but a legendary, life-draining demon chased us out of town after eating a stray dog that happened by. Garec and Sallax have assured us that it’s a nice place. Good food, and the kitchen’s open late at weekends.’ The woman wasn’t paying him any attention; she didn’t even query the English word weekend.

  Instead, she stared intently at Brynne, and Steven was sure he saw a look of relief pass over her face, although it was replaced almost immediately by the grim visage he was getting familiar with.

  ‘Sallax,’ she said under her breath, ‘Sallax Farro of Estrad.’

  ‘My brother.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  Brynne’s jaw tensed. ‘He is making his way to Orindale.’

  ‘Is Gilmour Stow with him?’

  Garec perked up. ‘Who are you? How do you know Gilmour?’

  The woman ignored him and continued staring at Brynne. ‘You must tell me where Sallax Farro is right now. It is important.’

  Steven broke in, ‘As congenial as we are trying to make this little gathering, I think it’s time to remind you that you are no longer in a position to be making demands or dealing out orders.’

  Brynne ignored Steven and demanded, ‘What do you know of my brother?’

  The woman grimaced as she realised blood was still dripping from her mutilated earlobes. Then, grinning, as if she alone were in complete control of all their destinies, she said, ‘When days in Rona grow balmy …’ Her voice faded. She looked expectantly at them.

  Steven was getting annoyed; he thought he’d behaved remarkably decently so far, given the woman had been about to kill them all without a second thought. ‘Being cryptic will get not get us anywhere. Now, answer the question. What do you know of Sallax – and for that matter, what do you know of Gilmour?’

  ‘When days in Rona grow balmy,’ she repeated.

  Steven grew more angry. ‘We have tried to be nice about this, but I will suspend you and your entire band of bullies from the damned roof of this place for the next Twinmoon if you don’t—’

  Garec grabbed Steven’s arm and hissed, ‘Wait. Give me a moment.’ He dropped his bow and began rubbing his temples, muttering to himself. The others caught bits of what he said, but with his head down and his eyes closed, he sounded more than a little crazy. ‘Sallax, you rutter … so pissing covert – crazy old sorcerer, drunk that night … it’s always balmy down there— I remember! I remember it now, we were drunker than demon-spawn, but I remember!’ He was shouting as a thin smile broke across the woman’s stony countenance.

  Then, taking them all by surprise – the bleeding pirate included – Garec threw his arm about her shoulders and drew her firmly to him in a warm embrace. Throwing his head back, he shouted, ‘Drink Falkan wine after Twinmoon!’

  ‘What the hell is happening here?’ Mark was thoroughly confused.

  The stranger smiled broadly at them, her arm now draped over Garec’s shoulders. ‘When days in Rona grow balmy—’

  Garec completed the sentence, ‘Drink Falkan wine after Twinmoon.’ He laughed out loud, relief clear on his face.

  The woman clapped Garec on the back, then reached out with her opposite hand to slap Steven firmly but good-naturedly across both cheeks. ‘Welcome to Falkan, Steven Taylor, Mark Jenkins. My name is Gita Kamrec, of Orindale, and I lead the southern corps of the Falkan Resistance Movement.’

  Steven looked at Gita and Garec while his firewall raged around them.

  She smiled again and asked, ‘Would you turn this off now, please?’

  Garec nodded agreement and said, ‘It’s really okay.’

  As Steven relaxed the wall of flame, Mark suddenly remembered the band of thugs assembled on the stony beach. His body tensed as the fiery shimmer dissipated, tiny flecks of fire dancing about them like orphan snowflakes after a blizzard. The pirates came slowly back into focus. Mark ground his teeth together and felt his stomach flop over. Warily, he reached for the battle-axe. Hearing Garec laugh and carry on with the stranger was not enough to make him entirely confident that they were out of harm’s way. He held his breath, waiting for an attack and hoping Steven could retrieve their defences as quickly as he had released them.

  As the flames withdrew, Gita lifted her left arm to the roof and made a fist. She then opened her fingers and rotated her hand a number of times; it looked to Steven as if she were trying to make sure every single one of her soldiers could see it. Mark tensed again; he was about to reach up and wrench Gita’s hand back until her wrist snapped when he detected a sudden change come over the cavern. It felt as if the granite bedrock itself sighed with relief as the entire band of attackers breathed out – the physical exhal
ation was audible. The sounds of daggers being sheathed, bowstrings released and swords sliding back into scabbards echoed around the vast cavern. Intimidating grimaces were exchanged for toothy grins, some still bloody from flying stones. People started to pull out scarves and handkerchiefs and bits of rag to clean each other’s wounds and a low murmur rose, sounding like the last few moments before the curtain rises on a play.

  There would be no attack. The cut-throats were chatting among themselves amiably, passing the time as if some of their number were not lying dead, scattered about the beach like bloody driftwood. Mark became less anxious as men began wrapping their fallen comrades in heavy wool blankets, then arranging the bodies in a neat row alongside the back wall.

  Some of them were taking longer to recover from the shock of dealing with a magician as apparently powerful as Steven. Mark laughed to himself: how embarrassed these dangerous partisans would be if they knew the most dangerous thing Steven did most days was cross Miner Street against the lights.

  He could hear laughter, and teasing, and Mark wondered at the alacrity with which this band had changed from being a deadly fighting force to a group of friends joking with one another at a beach party. Some had evidently drawn the Eldarni equivalent of a short straw and had dived into the freezing lake to retrieve those longboats that remained. Garec’s campfire was reignited and wineskins, dried meats, bread and even cheese were being produced. Mark had no idea who Gita Kamrec of Orindale was, but her command of this group was impressive. He looked nervously back at her pale hands, wondering if he would recognise the go ahead and dismember them sign. Catching him staring at her, Gita smiled and shoved both hands into her tunic.

  She was a small, thin woman, and Mark was astonished such a tiny wisp could command an army. Her hair, although wet and matted now, was long and looked as if it were usually well cared for. Instead of the solid leather belt most soldiers used to carry their daggers, knives or rapiers, Gita wore a woven and embroidered wool belt. It may have been pretty, and colourfully decorated with beads, but it served its purpose well, holding sheaths for two short daggers, a curved, dangerous-looking blade like a fillet knife, and a long sword with a decorative pommel. Looking closer, Mark noticed Gita’s skin was tanned nearly to leather, as if she had spent a lifetime outdoors. Her arms, though skinny, were muscular, and Mark guessed she would be good with a knife, quick and low to the ground.