06 - Rule of Thieves

by C. Greenwood

  Dimmingwood outlaws.

  What were they doing here? They couldn’t possibly have got my request for help so soon. Yet here they were, evening our numbers and slowing down the Skeltai advance.

  We fought as long as we could, then fell back to reorganize at the next street.

  In the moments before they came at us again, I somehow found myself alongside Dradac.

  “How did you get here?” I shouted over the noise.

  The redheaded giant informed me the outlaws had been aware for days of increased activity along the Black Forest border. Clearly something big was coming. When Skeltai were seen scouting around the city walls, the outlaws realized almost too late when and where the final clash was coming.

  “Our presence won’t be enough to turn the tide,” Dradac admitted. “But most of us voted to join the fight nonetheless. We’ve no wish to live in a province overrun by Skeltai. Even worse than the Praetor, they are.”

  I was torn between gratitude for them coming and regret that they would probably die for it.

  Before I could express either, the next wave hit and the fighting became too thick to think of anything but staying alive from one breath to the next.

  That morning was a series of fallbacks and regroups as we fought from street to street, slowing but never defeating the enemy. Gradually, I became aware ours was not even the heaviest fight going on in the city. From several streets over came the sounds of a greater battle taking place. Our foes’ numbers dwindled as they abandoned our skirmish to join the growing army amassing in that other part of the city.

  Eventually, we dispatched the last of our enemies, only to realize there was no one left to fight. Not because we had won but because the Skeltai were streaming away to the new battlefront.

  Terrac appeared beside me. “Where do you think they’re going?” he wondered.

  He looked worse than I felt, his armor coated with blood, his face begrimed. I had noticed him struggling to hold his own during the fight. His bad arm was clearly troubling him again, and I feared he would not make it through another clash.

  We looked to the new battlefront, and I noticed for the first time just how much ground we had given. We were barely in the Common anymore and only a short distance from the garden district.

  That was when I realized where the real fight was happening.

  “Hadrian and the magickers are making a stand at the temple,” I said.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I explained quickly to Terrac about the magickers at the temple, and he agreed we must rush to their aid. On arrival, we found the fight was happening not on the temple grounds but in the near gardens. There a glowing blue ring cut a hole in the ground through which Skeltai warriors poured by the hundreds. On the other side of that window, I glimpsed the Black Forest and a wild-eyed shaman, holding the portal open for the others.

  The Skeltai leaping through were met on our side with fireballs and shards of lightning cast by the Swiftsfell magickers who had taken up stations around the portal. Their efforts took a toll on the enemy, but it was clear they wouldn’t be enough. The enemy would soon overwhelm them by sheer numbers.

  In front of the magickers, I spotted the blur of Hadrian’s gray robe, as he whirled, blocked, and attacked the oncoming foes. Instead of fighting with his magical powers, he made good use of his sword.

  Seeing how Hadrian protected the magickers, I shouted for Terrac’s soldiers also to surround and shield them. Terrac echoed my orders, and we charged into the fray, encircling the magickers fighting for us. Freed from the need to focus on self-defense, they could now direct all their attention on stemming the flow of Skeltai flooding from the portal.

  The enemy slowed down as many were blasted into ash and charred bone the instant they set foot on our side. But there were still enough of their warriors getting through to create havoc. We remained hopelessly outnumbered, I realized, even as I severed the head of my nearest foe. The portal must be closed.

  I traded my sword for my bow, aimed, and fired an arrow into the mouth of the portal. It struck the shaman holding the portal open dead in the throat. As he collapsed, the portal began to distort, twisting and shrinking inward. Its magical glow flickered briefly and then winked out. The portal was gone.

  A cheer went up from our Fists and city guards and even from the Swiftsfell magickers. For a moment, it looked as if we had only the Skeltai already arrived to contend with. But our relief was short-lived.

  A tremor shot through the ground.

  Hesitating, I was nearly skewered by the spear of an opponent. The reverberation rippled through the earth again, this time becoming a series of unmistakable jolts. Everywhere, soldiers of both sides paused in their fighting as they were knocked from their feet.

  All around me, cracks zigzagged through the dirt, grass, and cobbled walkways. Bracing myself against the tremors, I watched as the nearby statue of Queen Tamliess, which had stood strong for centuries, snapped and toppled to its knees like a supplicant.

  The air was charged, tiny lines of dancing lightning zapping around the empty space where the portal had been. A sharp blue line appeared, the beginning of a new portal. It enlarged until it formed a full circle, pushing outward and growing fast.

  On the other side was no swarm of Skeltai warriors this time but a single figure with the head of a wolf and the feathers of a bird. A spear was clutched in its hand.

  For an instant I thought I was looking at some mythical creature of legend. Then I realized the silver wolf’s head was only a headdress, framing the lined face of a man whose hard eyes were fixed directly on me.

  Slowly, he stepped through the portal, his spear held low as if he had little need for it.

  A brave Fist overcame the stupor that had fallen over us all and charged at this new enemy.

  With a gesture of his hand, the shaman caused the man to burst, screaming, into flames. I saw no shot of lightning or other fiery missile. The Fist simply erupted as though from within.

  Others returned to their senses and made to attack him, but the shaman dispatched them as easily as he had the first Fist. One of the Swiftsfell magickers attempted to cast lightning at him, but the shaman lifted his hand and somehow turned the lightning back on the caster, striking and destroying him with his own power.

  I remembered one of the first magical skills I had performed as a child. Scouring my mind of all its fear and anger, I shaped the emotions into a weapon and flung it at the shaman. I expected to see some reaction when it hit. At least a flinch or a flicker of doubt and confusion. I saw nothing. Evidently, such simple tricks did not faze a shaman of this experience and power.

  My mind raced, searching for another idea as he came toward me. My eye caught a gray blur of movement hurtling toward the shaman.

  No! Not Hadrian!

  I could only watch helplessly as the priest rushed at our enemy.

  The shaman lifted his hand, preparing to kill my friend with a flick of his fingers. But when he made the sign, nothing happened. A glowing dome of light had suddenly sprung up around Hadrian, shielding him from the Skeltai’s magic. The priest appeared to be fixed midstride, unable to move, unable to fight. But at least he was alive, for the moment.

  Angering flashing in his eyes for the first time, the shaman turned on the magicker who had shielded Hadrian, the white-haired Swiftsfell elder, Calder. With a motion of his hand, he made the elder erupt into fire from the inside out, flames shooting from the old man’s mouth and pouring from his eye sockets.

  At Calder’s death, rage filled me.

  Power of death my master hath, let fly my arrows and loose my wrath.

  The words, etched across the arm of my bow, often whispered at the back of my mind. But now they reverberated like a shout, as the bow glowed white-hot in my hand. My fingers felt as if they were melting into the wood, yet there was no pain. Only fury.

  I didn’t think. I raised the bow and formed another magical weapon, affixing it to the tip of my arrow. I didn’t
draw on the weak trickle of magic flowing through my dragon scale amulet. Instinctively, I reached past the dragon scale, past the wall that I only now perceived had been blocking me from my natural power. For the first time in over a year, I drew deeply on the unfiltered magic of my mother’s people, the same free magic this shaman commanded.

  I let loose the arrow but never saw it pass through the air. Flying with such unnatural speed it was invisible to the eye, it nonetheless found the heart of my enemy.

  I had meant to affix a fireball to that arrow, much like the kind my grandmother had taught me to make. But in my haste and anger, I had fashioned something powerful and unfamiliar. When it struck home, there was a blinding flare of light. All around me, people cried out and threw up their arms to shield their eyes. A single tongue of white flame, taller than the treetops, shot up into the air. And then they were gone, the flame and the shaman. In their place was only a shallow crater and a mist of dirty ash sprinkling down like rain.

  All was still. The remaining Skeltai still had us outnumbered, but they seemed frozen in uncertainty at the loss of their leader. A murmur passed through the horde. Then, one by one, they stepped aside, making way for someone to pass through the crowd.

  He was a tall young warrior who walked with authority, as if commanding the respect of the others. He wore a bearskin, his face and bare chest patterned with swirls of red paint. It was that paint and the multitude of tiny braids in his silvery blue hair that helped me identify him. I had encountered this Skeltai in the Black Forest a year ago.

  He was the grandson of an ancient shaman, the leader of all the Skeltai, who I had killed during my escape from enemy territory. But my history with this young warrior went back even further than that. The outlaws and I had once captured him as he scouted our territory and had tortured him for information. We never broke him, and in the end, he had killed two of our men and escaped.

  It was strangely fitting that I should face him now, with the fate of us all in his hands. For what I had done to him, including the slaying of his grandfather last year, he would have his vengeance.

  And yet his eyes were not on me as he approached, but on the bow in my hands.

  “Again we meet, finder of the bow.” He acknowledged me tonelessly. His voice was empty of anger or accusation. If he meant to kill me in the next breath, he gave no hint of it.

  I gripped the bow tightly and tried to decide whether I should defend myself. But it would be a useless gesture. Against the overwhelming odds and the other shaman back in the Black Forest who were doubtless standing by, ready to open more portals, there was no chance of victory.

  So I risked all and stood unflinching as the Skeltai and I faced one another.

  He eyed me consideringly. “You want this?” he asked, sweeping an arm to indicate the bloodshed around us.

  “No,” I said honestly. “We defend ourselves because we’re under attack. It is you and your army that force war upon us.”

  He glanced at the place where the shaman I destroyed had last stood before being transformed into ash. There was a hint of contempt in his eyes.

  “I no longer want this,” he informed me. “Once I desired vengeance against you and your people. But after the death of my grandfather, my father was driven mad by the same desire. Now he has come to the same end, again at your hands.”

  So the shaman I had just destroyed was this man’s father. That should not bode well for me. And yet I sensed somehow a vague satisfaction in the young warrior before me. Perhaps he was not entirely displeased at being suddenly made leader in his father’s stead.

  He said, “I have seen how you are favored by the barra-banac. I would be a fool to risk its wrath.” He looked at the bow in my hands with greedy longing. “All I want now is the barra-banac.”

  Despite the look in his eyes, I didn’t fear him snatching the weapon from me. Not while I lived. The barra-banac, as the Skeltai called my bow, was sacred to them. As such, its bearer received something like respect. But not enough to save my life if I stood between them and what they wanted.

  I held the bow against me, realizing what the young Skeltai leader was offering. The weapon was no longer hot to my touch, but I still felt its echo in my mind.

  “If you went away, you would be back,” I told the Skeltai. “We might bargain for peace now, but one day you would return. It is unavoidable while your people still hunger for the blood of mine.”

  He glanced over my deathly pale skin, pointed ears, and winter-seed darkened hair, already showing silver at its roots. It puzzled him, I sensed, that I drew a line between his people and mine when I clearly descended from the same ancestors he did.

  But all he said was, “I see no enemy before me. And with the barra-banac restored, the Skeltai people will see no enemy before them.”

  His expression was sincere. And surprisingly, I believed him. I had a sudden premonition, almost a waking vision, of an era of peace between the Skeltai and the citizens of the province.

  A curious numbness descended over me as I saw what must be done. I unclenched my grip on the bow and relinquished the weapon into his hands.

  The instant the bow passed from my possession, all the colors of the world grew dull before my eyes. The afternoon breeze against my cheek. The heat of the sun beating down on my shoulders. All of it was suddenly less than it had ever been.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  In the aftermath of the battle, we tended to our dead and wounded. Immediately after the last Skeltai warrior had disappeared through newly opened portals, taking the bow with them, I went to Hadrian. He was stunned and suffering a severe headache, either through Calder’s shielding him or through the shield having been broken so roughly at Calder’s death. But temple priests soon appeared to attend him. The rest of the injured were taken to the healing hall.

  I spoke with the surviving Swiftsfell magickers, expressing our regret at the loss of their elder but our gratitude for their help. I reassured them the Praetor himself, before his death, had vowed they would face no persecution here in Selbius.

  All the while I dealt with the Swiftsfell party and assisted with the transportation of the wounded, I was distracted. Searching. I had last seen Terrac just before killing the shaman. He had been in the thick of the fighting and struggling. I had had no glimpse of him since.

  I surveyed the churned and body-littered ground around me. The once-beautiful garden that had been the pride of the city was now transformed into a bloodstained battlefield. And there was no sign of Terrac here. Fear gnawing at me, I remembered how his injured arm had been holding him back. How I had worried only a short while ago that he could not survive another fight.

  Throughout the rest of that long day, I searched the face of every corpse in recognizable condition, dreading what I would find. I went also to the healing hall and looked for him there. But I never did find Terrac.

  ____________________

  The inhabitants of Selbius showed themselves strong in this time of crises. From commoners in the street to nobles up at the keep, everyone worked over the next few days and nights. We put out fires, tended the injured, buried the dead, and cleaned up the city.

  On our third night after the battle, we gathered solemnly in the great hall. Here we toasted our dead and celebrated the living, grateful for the soldiers who had fought for the city in its desperate hour.

  Some even toasted the band of outlaws who had mysteriously appeared during the fighting and then disappeared back to their forest just as quickly when it was over. There was a rumor going around that these men were no longer outside the law but were now valued servants of the province.

  There was another rumor some found more difficult to credit, despite the many witnesses who attested to it. It was whispered that a party of magickers from another province had appeared in the midst of battle to help us win the day. But if there had truly been such a party, they had slipped away immediately after the fight, perhaps returning to their place of origin.

  De
spite the questions surrounding this story, there was a general feeling that, whether magickers had fought on our side or not, magic itself was not as forbidden as it had once been. After all, wasn’t the now-deceased Praetor’s own servant, Ilan of Dimmingwood, said to have used some unnatural power against the enemy shaman? And she could not be criticized in this or in anything else after achieving peace for the province.

  These were the conversations that swirled around me that night, as I sat among the low tables in the great hall, dining alongside the commoners and castle servants.

  Atop the dais at the head of the room, the Praetor’s table was not as full as it should have been. Counselors Branek and Delecarte and a handful of nobles still held their places. But the seats of the Praetor, the Lady Morwena, and the dead Counselor Summerdale were conspicuously empty.

  Lady Morwena’s lifeless body had finally been found in the garden the other day. Her death was taken for an accident, and no one seemed greatly interested in exploring the matter. So I kept silent and allowed the truth about her and Summerdale’s conspiracy to pass unknown. Likewise, I kept silent about the contents of Tarius’s locked tower room and honored my personal vow to lose the key and never enter those premises again.

  But neither Morwena nor the wizard’s lair were what weighed on my mind tonight. Desperate to be alone with my thoughts, I slipped out of the crowded great hall and into the Praetor’s audience chamber. The vast room was still and dark, but for the dancing glow of a few torches. Slowly, reluctantly, I approached the dais with the Praetor’s tall, throne-like chair. I walked around the chair, running a hand over its ornate carvings, and found in myself no desire to fill it.

  Intruding on my thoughts, came the unwanted memory of the Praetor’s letter and ring tucked away in their hiding place in my room, their existence still unknown to all but me, the discreet house steward, and Tarius’s personal healer. Even as the city rebuilt itself over the past few days, it had seemed to be holding its breath, leaderless, waiting to learn which hand would be the next to guide it. It was still waiting.