“And why do book peddlers feel the need to wear armor?” The guard’s hand went to the hilt on his opposite hip.
“Oh these? Just costumes my good captain! May I call you captain?”
The guard didn’t answer. He walked up to Barish and looked him over, walking behind him and running a finger down his greatsword. And then walked over to Esh and gazed down at the open books piled up on top of the cart.
“Doesn’t look very organized,” he said.
Esh didn’t know what to say, his fists clenched tight around the cart’s handle to keep him from striking out at the guard. It was Barish who knew what to say.
“We were in a hurry! After we heard about the awful sudden murder of the king we just threw our books and took off. We didn’t want to be caught up in all that mess, we’d rather mourn the death of his majesty from the safety of our homes.”
The guards nodded and scratched his chin. “You two lovers?”
“No,” Esh said.
“Yes,” said Barish at the exact time. He and Esh stared at each other and the guard’s eye brows raised.
“Well, which is it?” the captain asked, his arms crossed and tapping his foot.
“We are lovers, yes.” Barish said, and now it was he who Esh wished to punch. “My sweetheart here is too embarrassed and scared to admit it. We know it’s against Reahlic law.”
“It is…” the captain said, and Esh could have sworn he heard a bit of pity in his voice. He walked back to Barish and made another circle around him. Without any notice, he reached out and spanked Barish hard on the buttocks with a grin. “A dumb law if you ask me.” He winked at Barish. “Come on lads, nothing to see here.”
The guards started to march off and Esh let his tense body relax. But then a wet hand fell from under the books and one of the guards spotted it before Esh could stick it back.
“Captain! There’s a dead humanoid! Under the books!” he shouted, pointing at the hand.
The captain’s eyes went wide once he saw the webbed hand that Esh was now busy stuffing back under the books. “What on… Arrest these males!”
The guards were on them, hungry for action and the possibility of actually making the arrest of the king’s murderers. What an honor it would be! Oh how they would be recognized. Too bad Esh wasn’t going to let them get the satisfaction.
Barish drew his greatsword and spun it upwards to deflect a sword strike directed at Esh’s head. The blow sent vibrations so powerful that the guard released the sword into the air. Esh grabbed it in a backwards grip while spinning and cutting the same guard’s abdomen.
Barish was making great progress with another guard, he deflected two attacks and thrust the tip of his sword into the guard’s throat, pulling it out to block another strike. The gladiator knew how to fight.
Esh kept close to the cart, looking back often to make sure no one had somehow made their way around him. The captain stepped towards him, pushing his cape to the side and unsheathing a small mace with dozens of sharp points forged to its heavy blunt tip. With another flick of his cape he unveiled another twin mace. Esh had fought double sword wielders before, even double axe wielders, but never a double mace wielder. This would be interesting.
The captain knew psychological warfare for his first attack aimed not at Esh, but at the humanoid on the cart. Esh made the mistake of shrieking a loud, “No!” as he sent the blow going the other direction with his foot.
“Ahh! So, it isn’t dead is it? Mind if I take a look?” The captain spun and sent another blow at the side of the cart and Esh blocked that too, however, the force of the strike bent his blade. The sword he wielded was nowhere near the quality of the captain’s mace and would never last.
The captain placed one mace over his shoulder and another at his hip and started to swing them in a pattern Esh knew very well. It was a sword form he had been taught a long time ago. The form needed a high level of agility to be effective and the captain was able to do it with two heavy maces meaning his strength was exemplary.
Another guard ran behind Esh and attacked in a wild manner. Unlike the captain, this guard had barely any training but you didn’t need a lot of instruction to make a fight difficult by attacking from the back. Everything in Esh told him to climb the metal building behind him, and jump from roof to roof until he had made his escape, just like his Master had taught him.
Live and plan another assassination attempt.
Yet now he had someone to defend and two attackers. He had never been taught this scenario before and that made him nervous. He would have to improvise. That’s when he remembered his Master’s words, “Knowledge isn’t power. Anyone can gain knowledge and still be sedentary and useless. However, it is those that put action behind what they’ve learned that truly acquire power.”
He bent over and grabbed a handful of ash and flung it in the flanker’s eyes. A mace hit him hard in the ribs and sent him tipping over to one leg. Liquid formed in his eyes from the pain but the stance he was now in gave him enough reach to stick his sword through the mouth of the flanking guard, killing him.
Esh staggered back in front of the cart just as the captain started another attack, this time using another sword influenced mace form.
The captain wasn’t some extraordinary opponent, in fact, Esh could have handled him with ease if it had been another sun-cycle. But he was still wounded badly from the sword slash he’d deliberately taken back at the arena. He’d covered the wound with a slight tug of his tunic. The tautness of the suit over the slash kept the blood flow at a slow trickle, but it still was doing a fine job of reducing his stamina. Also, the two or three broken ribs weren’t helping either..
Deflecting blow after blow, Esh retreated backwards until his left hand touched the cart. More books spilled over, this time revealing a webbed foot. The captain stopped his assault and stared down at the bizarre limb, his mouth making the shape of an ‘O’. Just like all the other humanoids of Reah, he had never seen an undesirable before, he’d only heard of them.
This was Esh’s chance. He pushed off the cart and sprung at the captain, the point of his sword directed to the artery in the neck. His ribs cracked audibly and an insane agony paralyzed him, the pain was so strong that he twisted and fell onto his side in the ash.
“Esh!” Barish called, clanging his sword against another while kicking a guard in the gut. He was too occupied to give any aid.
“What is it we have here? An undesirable? Is it still alive?” The captain walked up to the cart, forgetting completely about the hopeless giant on the ground. “I can only imagine what honors I will be given for bringing this one in!” He swept his arm through the books pushing them all onto the filthy ground. He gasped. “How… Beautiful… Perhaps I shouldn’t turn her in,” he said, scratching his chin. He turned to Esh on the ground, “Perhaps I should sell her instead.” A despicable grin grew on his face.
“Don’t you touch her!” Esh tried to climb to his feet but the captain kicked them out from under him.
“Oh I will! And the guards under me will too, if I will it.” And as the captain laughed Esh saw movement beneath the books. The captain must not have noticed, still laughing at his own sick ideas. Then, a flash of movement and the captain was on the ground beside Esh. The Ballahranian was on top of him, her mouth on his neck. There was a hissing noise and Esh stared into the monstrous eyes of the female as she chewed off a mouth sized chunk.
A high pitch scream escaped the captain’s mouth as the female pulled her head back with a mouthful of bloody skin hanging from her lips. She spit it out and toppled over unconscious again.
“You bitch! What have you done! What… have… you…” and those were the captain’s last words as the last of his life poured from his neck.
Esh touched his ribs and flinched, the pain brining burning tears to his eyes. He pulled back a hand covered in bright red blood that glistened in the yellow light of the moon. One of the spikes must have made it between one of his ribs.
/> He put a hand on the cart to help himself up. He knelt by the female’s body, her eyes shut, a rasping noise coming from her gills, her chest heaving up and down. He picked up her top lip and saw a full set of teeth that came to a razor sharp point. He was letting the lip droop back but something made him stop. The teeth were morphing back to an ordinary humanoid shape and it wasn’t long before they were back to normal. Even the Ballahranian’s respiration had slowed pace, going back to its normal difficulty.
“Please don’t kill me! It was just orders!” Esh heard a soldier say.
Esh turned to see a male on his back at Barish’s feet, his hand held out in the air. Barish spun his sword in one strong hand, lifted the hilt into the sky with both hands, and brought the point down into the guard’s heart. There was a slow and loud exhale of breath and then silence.
“Can’t leave any to go report what they saw this moon-cycle.” Barish said, giving his greatsword one heavy swing to rid itself of the foreign blood before sheathing it.
This impressed Esh. To sheath a bloody sword was amateur for an assassin. The blood would start to smell and could easily give away one’s position.
This was no ordinary gladiator.
He had taken on a whole platoon of guards by himself and had come out with barely a scratch. Esh would have to keep a closer eye on him.
“Good idea,” Esh said, putting the female over his shoulder and struggling to his feet.
“Hold on, let me help.” Barish ran over and took some of the female’s weight.
They placed her back onto the cart and replaced the soaked blankets back onto her gills.
“Did you see that?” Esh asked him.
“See what? I was a bit busy.” Barish looked down at the captain and gaped. “Did you… did you do that? You’re sick!” He punched Esh on the shoulder playfully, making Esh wail. “Oh hell, shit… Sorry, sorry. Here, I’ll push the cart. We better get going.”
The two unlikely acquaintances made their way into the darkness of the moon-cycle leaving behind a pile of dead guards.
34 - Last Hope
“I figured something like this would happen, lad.”
Esh, Barish, and the cart stood in front of the hut having met Rift standing outside the door when they approached. “I didn’t see this exact circumstance, but expected nothing less. Come in, you fools, hurry. No need melting out here. I’ve got some stew brewing inside.”
Barish whistled loudly as they entered the nothingness of the top hut. “Some place you got here, old timer.”
Rift pointed a small finger at the cart. “Who’s under the books?”
Esh knocked some of the literature to the ground revealing the female’s sunken face and parched lips. He then pulled her hand out and spread her fingers for his Master to see. “She’s dying.”
“Hmm… So I was right in thinking you had something to do with the king’s murder and ost prized possession.”
“She isn’t a possession, Master. You taught me that. And I didn’t kill the king, someone else did. One of his guard named Yemesh stuck him with a dagger.”
“Then why isn’t this Yemesh the one being tracked down?”
“Well, no one saw him do it. I’d judged him an amateur at best but the skill at which he’d thrown the dagger was excellent, one that would have rivaled my own.”
The Elder squeezed his eyes with his hand and made a small groan. He walked over to the cart and pushed the rest of the books off the female. Putting the back of his hands on her gills, he shook his head and pierced his lips. “You’re right about her, she is dying. Not sure if there is anything I can do for this one at this stage.”
“Well we have to try!” Esh straightened himself and grimaced from the pain in his back.
“Of course we do, lad. I can’t just leave her highness to rot in the Red sun, now can I?”
Esh tilted his head. “Her highness?”
Rift grabbed the Ballahranian off the cart and flung the trap door open with one foot before dropped down to the lower level. Barish hadn’t expected this and about fell over trying to grab onto the elderly male thinking he fell by accident.
On his knees, Barish peered down the hole and whistled again. “I see you’ve all been holding out on me! Just look down there!” He jumped after the Elder and Esh followed but chose to climb down instead.
Much to Esh’s disapproval, his Master made it clear that he needed to be treated first.
“The Princess can’t be saved if you start dying in the process, lad. We have to stop your blood loss and clean the wounds before they become infected.”
“I told you!” Barish exclaimed.
“You.” Rift pointed at the gladiator.
“Me?” Barish asked, pointing to himself.
“No, the other half naked male in my home. Remove the blankets and start pouring the rest of the canisters over her highness’ gills.”
“Why do you keep calling her, her highness?” Esh asked. He unsnapped his armor and let it fall into the sand. His Master didn’t answer.
“I’m going to have to widen that arrow wound to pull the barb out. Here,” Rift said, handing Esh a piece of cloth. “Bite on this.”
Grabbing a dagger from the wall, Rift cut each of the wounds in an ‘X’ shape to match the tips of the arrows deep within his muscle. Esh did not need the cloth in his mouth and spit it out. He’d grown used to his Master’s unorthodox ways of healing. “Is she some sort of royalty?” he asked.
“She’s a member of the only organized monarchy I’d ever bend the knee to.” He placed one hand on Esh’s back and used his other hand to yank out the arrows.
Esh wanted to yelp but replaced it with a harsh grunt. Without the cooling effect of the armor he’d begun to sweat under the intense heat of the dungeon. A mixture of the pain and heat was pushing him to the brink of passing out. But he had to know more.
“Is she the Queen of the Blue territory?”
Rift slapped the top of his head hard. “Lad! She is Dashine, Princess of the Blue. Now, no more questions, we have work to do.”
His Master finished up his back and then began to examine the ribs. With a few painful shoves in random spots the ribs were placed back in their correct placement.
“What happened here?” Master Rift asked Esh, pointing at the sword cut right under his left pectoral.
“Long story.”
His master let out a sigh of exasperation and grabbed his sewing kit. After cleaning the wound and heating the needle, he sewed his young student back up. Esh’s torso was then wrapped.
“Now that you’re all taken care of, we must create her highness an appropriate eco-environment.” Rift said, rubbing his hands together. “Esh, alchemically create some clay and start rolling two tubes about the length of the female’s body.” He turned to Barish, “You, you start digging a hole.”
“And why do I have to dig the hole?” Barish demanded. “I don’t even know you two!”
Rift looked at him and up at the trap door. “You’re free to leave whenever you wish. Thank you for your help up to this point.” Rift walked up to Barish and grabbed his hand, placing a few coins of Reahlic currency in his palm. “Will this do?”
Barish looked down at his palm and back at the Elder now walking back to the Ballahranian. He closed his grip and started to climb the rope back up into the world above.
Esh lowered his head and said, “Remember when you said I was different?” Barish stopped halfway up the rope. “Well, I thought you might have been different as well.”
Barish paused and hung in the air for a moment. He started his ascent again.
Esh made two long tubes of clay just as his Master had asked. They both dried rapidly in the heat but did not crack. Clay was a very important material for survival purposes and, therefore, Xep had required him to get very efficient in its creation.
He gave both clay tubes to Rift who chiseled out holes on the top layer of both. He then used the rest of the clay to close off the bottom ends.
“We will use these to disperse liquid onto Dashine evenly. The way I cut the holes is very important, see how tight they are? That will create a mist like effect which makes it easier for the gills. I also closed off the ends so that the liquid has no place to escape.”
“Oh, I think I see where you’re going with this. We then use the pressure of the liquid canisters to blow liquid through the tubes and onto her.”
“Her highness,” his Master corrected him. “And precisely.”
“But we are running out of canisters, one of us will have to go up and get more.”
It had taken half a sun-cycle for Esh to complete the clay tubes and during that time his Master had gone through the liquid supply at a much faster pace which he deemed necessary to keep her alive. They were down now to only three canisters which wasn’t going to bring them enough time to go and grab some more.
“Can’t Xep alchemically create liquid?”
“He can but not nearly enough for the Princess,” answered Rift, scratching his balding head.
“Well we can’t just sit here and do nothing, Master!”
It was just then that a massive bag fell through the roof and plopped onto the sand with a loud thud. Barish’s head stuck itself through the hole. “I hear someone’s in need of precious blue liquid!”
Esh smiled up at him and saw that his Master was also smiling.
“I guess you aren’t an ass after all,” Rift said.
Barish hopped down on top of the bag and opened it spilling hundreds of canisters of liquid into the sand. He then stood and walked up to Rift, his hand held out in front of him. “The name’s Barish. Former teacher and present sun-cycle gladiator. At your service.”
Rift took the hand and gave it a shake. “Do you realize what you’ve done, Barish, gladiator of Zel?”
Barish glanced at Esh for an answer but Esh was just as confused. “Ugh… stole a lot of liquid?”
The Four Territories: The Dark Assassin Book One Page 24