by AC Cobble
“How is he alive?” Zaine exclaimed.
“He’s been magically fortified by the king himself,” explained Rew. “The ranger commandant is a hard man to kill.”
“I can see that,” whispered the thief.
“I’d better get to it, then,” said Rew. He raised his longsword and advanced.
Thanks to the king’s magic, Vyar Grund, the Ranger Commandant, was a nearly impossible man to kill. Fortunately, they already had a good start.
Dust fell from the commandant, and blood dripped as he stumbled his way through the crumbled remains of the stairwell. He raised his arm, and Rew suspected would have formed a portal, but he couldn’t. He’d used too much of his magic surviving Alsayer’s attack. Grund stomped his feet and settled himself. Evidently, he had decided there was nothing to do now but fight.
Rew could barely see the commandant’s face through the coat of blood and dust on it, but neither of them bothered to speak. Rew didn’t need to see his old superior’s expression to know there was no mercy there. Grund waited, so Rew attacked.
He thrust straight at Grund’s face, expecting the man would easily block it, and when Grund counterattacked, Rew ducked low, spinning on a heel, but instead of sweeping his longsword toward Grund’s feet as he had done earlier, he swung up.
Grund jumped, sensing the same attack Rew had used on him successfully in the room below, but he didn’t jump high enough to avoid Rew’s blade. The longsword sliced across Grund’s stomach, almost disemboweling the ranger commandant. Coughing, Grund landed, staggering backward.
Rew twirled his longsword and struck again and again. Grund’s counterattacks came slower, and Rew was able to slide a thrust past his guard and pierce the commandant’s shoulder. Rew chopped down, drawing a line of sparks and forcing Grund’s falchion along the stone roof tiles. Then, Rew whipped his longsword back and severed several of the ranger commandant’s toes.
Grund launched a paltry attack, and Rew beat it aside and swung a blow up, catching Grund on the chin, cutting through skin and cracking bone, flinging the man’s half-mask away.
Rew’s next attack struck the commandant’s wrist, though Grund managed to hang onto his falchion. He couldn’t do anything with the blade, though, and Rew easily knocked it away and then slammed a thrust into the commandant’s chest.
Grund, reeling backward, tried to make room to defend himself, to cast a spell at Rew, to do anything, but Rew kept after him, giving him no space and no time to formulate a plan or to build his magic. There was a strike to Grund’s thigh, his hip, and then, Rew chopped hard into the other man’s good arm. Grund, fighting silently, elicited a moan at that blow. Any normal man would have been dead three times over, but Grund stumbled away, still on his feet, both of his arms nearly useless. He was walking with the grace of a newborn foal. Rew followed, preparing to take the commandant’s head off and end it, but instead of turning to face him, Grund kept shambling away.
“King’s Sake,” muttered Rew, and he started to chase after his commandant, but he was too late.
Grund stumbled to the battlement, and without pause, he pitched himself over it. There was no scream as the man fell, no shriek of terror, nothing. He was simply gone.
Rew stared at where Grund had jumped off the tower, flummoxed.
“I didn’t see that coming,” quipped Zaine.
Rew shook his head, walked to the battlement, and looked down. Five hundred paces below them, a tiny speck marked the spot Vyar Grund’s body had landed.
Zaine joined Rew. “That ought to do it, huh?”
“Maybe.”
“What?” she asked, her head snapping up to look at Rew.
“I told you. Vyar Grund is a hard man to kill,” said ranger, studying the fallen body. It wasn’t moving, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t.
He turned and surveyed the party. Raif’s head was bowed against the back of his father’s. He knelt beside the dead man, weeping. Anne cradled Cinda, looking up at Rew grim-faced. She’d already thought of what he was now considering. Zaine, showing the most impetus of any of them, was by the stairwell, looking at the mess it used to be. The top of it had been blown back by the force of Alsayer’s spell, and much of the rubble had fallen down inside. The roof of the stairs had collapsed.
“We’re not getting through here,” advised the thief.
Rew walked to the other side of the tower, opposite of where Grund had thrown himself off, and hopped up between two crenellations.
“Rew!” exclaimed Zaine.
“The bridge,” he reminded her.
“Oh,” she said. She looked over the edge and remarked, “I can make that jump, and you, but the others…”
“We’ll catch them,” declared Rew. He looked back to Anne. “Are you ready, if we need you?”
She nodded.
“Raif,” called Rew, “it’s time to go.”
The boy did not move. He stayed beside his father, his hands impotently clutching the dead man’s clothing. Across the yawning gap between the tower and the keep, Rew could hear alarm bells. He could hear distant orders being shouted, and he knew they wouldn’t have much time. The carnage on the bridge would dissuade the regular soldiers, but eventually, Duke Eeron or his spellcasters would force the men out. Soon, they would be coming.
Sighing, Rew hopped down and walked to Raif. He picked up the boy’s huge greatsword and declared, “Raif Fedgley, you are now the eldest male of your line. You are Baron Fedgley, lad. You’re the head of your house, and we need you.”
Raif did not move. He mumbled into his father’s body, “The baron of what? Our line is tarnished. Our name means nothing. Our city has been taken, and our liege has betrayed us.”
“The name was tarnished, aye,” said Rew, “but it doesn’t have to end that way, lad. You’re alive. Cinda is alive. The line continues.”
He thought it best not to mention that as far as they knew, the eldest sister Kallie was alive as well. Another time. It wouldn’t matter if they all died in the next few minutes.
Raif stayed with his head bowed over his father.
“Do you want the name Fedgley to stand for a selfish necromancer who called upon wraiths that slaughtered hundreds, or do you want it to mean something else? You have the power, lad, to restore the honor of your name. Only you have that power.”
Finally, Raif looked up. His eyes were rimmed in red, and his lips were pressed tightly together. “I know what you’re trying to do, Ranger. Don’t think to play with me and our honor. It won’t work.”
Rew snorted. He turned and pointed to Cinda. “I can’t get her out of here without you, lad. If you don’t help, she’s going to die. Forget your name. Forget your honor. I don’t care. But will you forget your sister? I thought you were a fighter, Raif. Fight for her.”
Scowling at Rew, Raif struggled to his feet. Wordlessly, Rew handed the boy the greatsword. For a moment, he worried Raif was going to use it on him, but instead, Raif asked, “What’s your plan?”
23
Rew had gone first. He’d been standing between two crenellations on the battlement, looking down at the blood-stained bridge below. It looked like the floor of a charnel house, if the owners hadn’t bothered to clean in months. The remains of Duke Eeron’s soldiers spread out like carpet, extending from the tower to two-thirds of the way to the keep.
He could see more soldiers clustered in the gate to the keep and along the walls. They were looking at the tower and the people atop it, but none of them were venturing closer. Maybe they knew it was wraiths who’d attacked the previous wave of soldiers, or maybe they didn’t. They certainly had no way of knowing that Cinda had banished the wraiths.
Rew frowned. Would knowing Cinda banished the wraiths encourage the soldiers to come closer or keep them away? What was more frightening: wraiths, or a necromancer who could control them?
Until the duke himself forced the men across the bridge, Rew knew his group had a little time. None of those soldiers were going to volunte
er to venture across the slaughtered remains of their peers without strong encouragement. Rew certainly wouldn’t be walking across that killing ground. Not unless he had to.
“Should I go first?” Zaine asked as she and the ranger stood atop the battlement.
“No, I’ll go.”
“All right, but you weren’t jumping, so I thought…”
“I’ll go,” the ranger insisted. He fixed his gaze on the bridge, the impossibly narrow looking, gore-slick bridge, and not the five-hundred pace drop on either side of it. The wind whipped his cloak around them, and he felt the wool tugging at his neck, like it was a sail sweeping him out into the open air.
“King’s Sake,” Rew grumbled. Then, he jumped. For a brief moment, it’d felt like time had stalled, but a breath later he contacted the stone surface of the bridge. He landed heavily and dropped into a roll to disperse his momentum.
Behind him, Zaine dropped before he could even turn, and the light-footed thief landed with no problems. Anne went next, and Rew caught her in his arms. He stumbled and fell on his bottom, but neither of them was hurt worse than an embarrassing bruise. Then, it was the Fedgleys’ turn.
“We don’t have a lot of time!” warned Zaine, watching the stirring soldiers at the other end of the bridge. “Someone in authority is over there now.”
Raif leaned against the battlement, holding his sister by her wrists. He lowered her as far as he could, and then, he dropped her.
Rew caught her easily and lowered her body to lay her down.
“How come you fell when you caught me?” complained Anne, rubbing her elbow which had smacked against the stone of the bridge when they’d collapsed.
“She’s as light as a…” began Rew. He swallowed and said, “I was ready for her. You just, ah, I was surprised by how far the drop was. Practice, you know?”
Anne snorted, and Rew turned to look up at Raif.
The big youth was closing his eyes.
“Are you going to catch him too?” wondered Zaine.
“No.”
Whether Raif knew that or not was unclear, but after a short hesitation, the fighter dropped off the battlement and landed with the grace of a rock. His leg broke, and his eyes snapped open along with his mouth. He croaked a strangled cry of pain that lasted until Anne was able to draw the agony from him. The empath’s mouth tightened, and Rew could see her eyes watering. Drawing the pain from others was what she did, but rarely had she needed to work so quickly in such circumstances.
As soon as Anne nodded that it was safe to do so, Rew grabbed Raif’s breastplate and dragged him inside of the tower. Anne followed, walking in a crouch beside the youth with her hands still on him. Zaine struggled with Cinda, pulling the noblewoman’s prone body by the arms.
“There in the corner,” said Rew, observing the slaughter in the room.
Vyar Grund, on his way up the stairwell, had killed everything in sight. It wasn’t quite as messy as the scene out on the bridge, but it was messy enough, and after walking through the wraiths’ work, Rew hoped anyone would be shocked into numbness by the glistening, ravaged remains of dead people.
The party arranged themselves in the corner, Anne pouring her empathy into Raif, Cinda breathing evenly but unconscious. Zaine whispered she could watch at the door, but Rew shook his head and told her to stay where she was and to lie still.
With scores of injuries between them, Raif recovering from a broken leg, and Cinda unconscious, it would be suicide to attempt climbing out the way they’d come in. Walking out the bridge, into the bristling legions of Duke Eeron’s troops, would be even worse. It was broad daylight, and any way they left the tower, they’d be seen. That meant they had to get creative.
No mundane soldiers would be trusted to investigate what happened. Duke Eeron would send his spellcasters. He would send his best ones, and Rew hoped there wasn’t a spellcaster in Spinesend more powerful than the duke himself. If he was in the city, Duke Eeron would be the one to lead the group to retake his tower. He wouldn’t be able to trust anyone else to investigate the attack on his home and what had happened to such a high-profile prisoner. If Duke Eeron did not come himself, he’d look weak and useless in front of his men, not to mention whichever prince he’d have to explain the loss of Baron Fedgley to. No, as much as Vaeldon’s nobles preferred to avoid personal risk, Duke Eeron had no choice in these circumstances. It was the Investiture, and any failure could mean death. Duke Eeron would come.
Rew hoped so, at least.
He glanced over the party. They were covered in blood and dust. Perfect. He began to whisper a steady incantation, repeating the same phrases over and over again. He bent down, touching each member of the party, whispering over them, casting a fog of concealment around them. As a group, they lay in the corner, and they blended into the grim tableau of death and destruction.
Low magic, when used in the right circumstances—such as merely confirming what a person expected to see—could be incredibly effective. Even in daylight. Even when used against a high magician of incredible talent. Rew felt confident the party could lie unnoticed for a time. As long as whoever had cast the glamour over Baron Worgon’s forces did not turn up, that was. Rew stuttered then took a deep breath before resuming his chant.
Someone had cast a glamour that covered an entire army. They had fooled thousands of people, including Rew. They’d fooled Baron Worgon thoroughly over a period of several days, if not longer. Whoever could cast such a powerful glamour would see through Rew’s paltry magic in an instant, but it was all that he had. This was his only idea.
Her calm voice a counterpoint to Rew’s chanting, Anne prayed to the Blessed Mother.
Rew was wrong. They did send in the regular soldiers first. The pitiful men were white as fresh milk, and the cursory glance they gave the bodies in the room left Rew wondering whether he’d even needed to cast a fog of concealment over his companions. The soldiers expected to see bodies, and so they did.
Half a dozen of them shuffled up the stairwell, their armor clinking, their breaths bursting from noses like bellows in a forge. Shortly, because the stairwell was completely blocked, Rew heard them come back down the stairs and go to the lower levels. It wasn’t long before they returned, and almost jogging, they exited the tower back into the light of day.
His lips curling up as he continued the incantation, Rew resisted turning to his companions. The plan, such as it was, was working. The soldiers had been sent to scout the tower, or more likely, they’d been sent to see whether or not they would return. Duke Eeron wasn’t risking his own neck. He’d offered his men as a sacrifice in case anyone was still alive inside. With any luck, the soldiers had at least been thorough enough to see the broken iron bars on the window of the cell below. Rew hoped they would report back to the duke that everyone had fled.
It was several long minutes before they heard footfalls again, and then the duke himself walked in with a coterie of spellcasters and several dozen soldiers. It was too many people for the compact space in the tower, particularly given the ugly mess the dead bodies made scattered across the floor. In the thicket of people, it’d be hard to see anything, and Rew felt a smile truly form on his lips as several of the soldiers were pushed closer to where the party lay hidden. Those men had eyes only for the duke and his spellcasters. They gave the bodies not a second glance.
The duke immediately began issuing orders and directing his people to different parts of the tower. Rew waited patiently. Until they cleared the rubble in the stairwell, the duke’s men could not access the roof where Baron Fedgley’s body lay, and there was nothing worth seeing below them, but Eeron’s men did not know that. Anne and the others remained frozen, and Rew’s voice was a whisper on the wind as he continued chanting.
Spellcasters, decked in plush robes, the collars turned up in the chill air, the hems held high as they stepped over pools of blood, stalked about pompously, as if they’d had something to do with stopping the calamity that had occurred in the tower. So
ldiers moved slower and more cautiously, perhaps wondering why they were even there. To the soldiers’ eyes, no one was left alive in the tower. The arcanists, though, who came in last, actually studied the room. Rew suppressed a quiver of worry. The learned men might see through his illusion or detect that something was amiss, but before they had time to fully observe the room they were in, Duke Eeron growled at them to climb up to where the soldiers were already clearing the rubble. He wanted his arcanists to inspect Baron Fedgley’s body, to see if it actually was the baron, and he didn’t want a second of delay.
Rew smirked. Duke Eeron was expecting to be fooled by a glamour, but he was looking for the wrong one.
As the arcanists ascended the stairwell and the groups of soldiers formed a line to pass down heavy pieces of shattered stone, the spellcasters went down a level, evidently not wanting to be seen standing around doing nothing. That was the duke’s job, which he settled into by stepping aside to give the soldiers room to work. The men passed chunks of mortar down the line and then tossed it off the side of the bridge outside, uncaring about the hovels and shops that surrounded the base of the tower.
Quietly, as if he was stalking through the forest, Rew rose from where he’d been hiding beneath the table the ledger had sat on. Earlier, he’d taken the thick, leather-bound book and stuffed it in his pack then flipped the table over to make his shelter. With the chaotic mess in the room, no one had given the table a second thought. While Eeron’s men were still distracted searching the tower and cleaning the rubble, Rew stepped behind the duke and wrapped his arm around the man’s neck. With his other hand, Rew put the tip of his hunting knife against the duke’s rib cage and pressed.
“You move, and I push,” promised Rew, pressing his knife hard enough that the razor-sharp tip punched through the duke’s thickly embroidered doublet and the steel pricked the man’s flesh.