You Can't Avoid A Little Blood

by Philip Norris

  “There are a couple of dozen men on the base level keeping a watch on the gate guards, another couple of dozen or so scattered across the first four or five levels as back up should anyone break through. The rest are up in the Highlords private quarters.”

  “How many?”

  “Fifty if they never lost any taking the floors.”

  Nearly a hundred men less the ones he had already killed. He knew the odds were not good but this was no odds at all. He may have had the element of surprise up till now but they surely should have discovered the men he killed and that he was no longer in the room they put him in. He looked down at the weasel, the man had a sly look normally but now something about him gave Joakim pause. Whoever this Boskags was he had had the weasel with him last night in the tavern that meant the weasel was more than just some hired sword and either meant something to Boskags or was a man of worth. If he was either he had caved in rather too quickly which led Joakim to wonder if anything he’d been told was true. As it was Joakim would have to take what he’d been told, anyway the weasel would be missed before long if he wasn’t already and with the building pretty much under their control they had the luxury of conducting a search for him. He was confident he was safe from the men below for now, the ones that had been with the weasel would have gone up so it would be the men up there with this Boskags who would be coming down for him.

  Whatever he did the weasel wasn’t of much use to him now, what little he’d learned be it truth or lie from the man only deepened the mystery as to what was going on here. What reason would an A’yai have for taking over Koon, it was hardly of much strategic value apart from defending the southern approaches into the Northern Empire and if the tale about the troubles in the south being fabricated were true then what was there to defend against. He turned his eye on the weasel and the man caught the meaning in the look instantly and before Joakim could react lashed out catching Joakim on the knee bending it back the wrong way. Joakim went down with a grunt the sudden shock of the impact making him bite his tongue.

  He cursed himself as he rolled to one side away from the weasel who was already clambering to his feet. Over confidence was always a dangerous thing to have and he’d seen it end many men. As he rolled back round to face the weasel the other man was up on his feet and Joakim came up to a crouch at the same time he pulled his short sword. The weasel was unarmed and looked down at the blade and then at Joakim before bolting for the door, he was out in the hallway as Joakim tried to get to his feet and his knee buckled under him. He dropped the blade and went down on his hands and knees letting out a stream of curses in several languages. He was angry at his own stupidity, the weasel had played him, led him to believe he was a beaten man when all along he’d been looking for a way out. Well he’d found his way out.

  Joakim gingerly got up using the sword as a prop and holding onto a side table. Standing upright he put weight on the knee and grimaced as red hot needles of pain shot up into his groin. Laying the sword across the table he gripped it with both hands and began bending his leg, flexing the knee breathing through the pain the way he’d heard women were taught to do during childbirth. The red hot needles cooled and after a minute or so he could put weight on the leg but it still felt tender, he hoped he wouldn’t have to do any running anytime soon. He couldn’t hang around here, the weasel was lose and knew the position of his men. Joakim had a vague idea where some of them maybe but any minute now the weasel would be back with enough men to make the pain in his leg seem like nothing.

  Joakim had to decide his plan of action, he had only two choices open to him, up or down. If the weasel was to be believed either direction led towards at least fifty men, but then the weasel could only have gone in one direction himself and if Joakim had been in his shoes the first thing he would have wanted to do was report back to his superior. So it was down then.

  #

  In the gloomy stairwells and his own haste Joakim had lost count of the levels he had gone down, but he felt sure he must have been on the level above the base where the door out would be. He’d decided whatever the situation here was it was more than he could manage alone. Despite the mythos that surrounded the Regulators they were only men and even a Regulator couldn’t fight alone against a hundred men, that’s if what the weasel had told him was true. There were however others in the Highlords Keep who could fight alongside him.

  The chances were that whatever men the Highlord had at his side in the levels above would be either be dead or under lock and key. If Boskags was any sort of soldier there was no way he’d have kept many alive, the fewer the number were more manageable. That left the Guards of the Gate. He had no way of knowing how many of them there were, he’d only seen the one guard who’d taken his note on the base level along with their captain. She had known who Joakim was, had said he was known to her family. He had wondered on that whilst he’d cooled his heels waiting in the room above, was he known in a friendly way or not. Joakim had not led a blameless life and there was a lot of death behind him, with death came widows, orphans and vengeful siblings. Perhaps he was leaping from the pan to the fire in seeking out the pretty young captain if she still lived.

  When he reached the bottom of the stairs there was no landing like all the others above, this one ended in a large space that had several doors leading off. There were no other stairs so he’d reached the end of the line. He stepped over to the door directly in front of the stairs, he guessed this led out into the base level though he of course couldn’t he sure. Pressing his ear to the door he tried to hear anything beyond but there was nothing, he was just about to go and try one of the other doors when a sound made him stop. Years of sentry duty had attuned his ears to the slightest sound, especially a sound that shouldn’t be there which usually indicated an enemy approaching your camp.

  But this was no sentry duty and he wasn’t defending a camp but the sound he’d heard was undeniably the sound of a weapon rubbing against a leg. Without knowing for sure he tried to picture what was on the other side of the door, hopefully a lone soldier placed by the door in case anyone from above had escaped capture. Joakim had been roaming for close on an hour now so the soldier on the other side of the door could have been there longer than that, boredom would have set in, the evening was getting late so by now he would have been hungry and his mind on when he’d be relieved so he could eat. A combination of factors could make a sentry lax and create an opening, an opening Joakim hoped to slip through. The only problem being he had no idea if the soldier was alone or if he was facing the door or stood beside it.

  Risking discovery Joakim opened the door a fraction.

  The soldier was about ten feet away leaning against one of the pillars that were at regular intervals across the base level, he was facing away from the door. The base level seemed brighter than when Joakim had been through earlier. Opening the door more he looked out and could see dozens of braziers in between the pillars filling the space with light. He remembered how gloomy it had been and how easy it would have been for someone to hide in the shadows. Obviously whoever Boskags had left in charge down here had thought the same. The soldier had a long spear leant against his shoulder and as he shifted his position it rubbed against his leg making the noise Joakim had heard. Opening the door more Joakim stuck his head out looking left and right but he couldn’t see any more men. Easing the short sword from his belt and crept out towards the soldier.

  The soldier never heard him and probably didn’t realised he’d died it happened so swiftly and silently. Lowering the body to the floor Joakim took the spear and two knives he found on the body before picking it up and carrying it in through the door he’d came from. Dropping the body Joakim went to the other doors in the small room at the base of the stairs, three of them were locked but the fourth was a small store cupboard with mop and bucket and stacks of cloths. He dragged the body in and closed the door before going back out in to the base level.

  Skirting round the outside Joakim made his way towards
what he hoped was the front of the tower where the door was. Stopping occasionally to check further in using the pillars as cover he reached as far as the elevating cabinet, there was a guard there who looked to be as bored and dozy as the first one. Checking around in a circular pattern Joakim couldn’t see any other guards within eyesight of the cabinet and so he headed back and despatched the second guard as quick as the first.

  He’d been moving around from wall to pillar and pillar to pillar for over half hour now and so far had only seen the two guards he’d killed. He began to believe that the numbers the weasel had given him were false, if not he should have seen more men than he’d seen so far. Keeping the elevating cabinet as a marker Joakim knew he’d completed a circuit of the base level when he’d reached a doorway with smears of blood on the floor, checking inside he saw the stairs and the door to the store cupboard. Two guards for the whole level, say some of the gate guards were still alive they may have another two maybe three watching over them. Joakim cursed the weasel, if the rest of his numbers had been as exaggerated then Joakim may only be facing a force of twenty maybe thirty men. Still impossible odds for one man, not like he was Hoshun.

  Joakim made his way back across to the elevating cabinet, he had to find the main door and he knew it was very nearly in a direct line facing the doors to the cabinet. He remembered seeing an entrance off to the right of the door that led – he guessed – to the guardroom. If anywhere on this level that must be where any prisoners would be held. Reaching the cabinet Jaokim stood with his back to the doors and walked ahead warily looking between the pillars for any signs of guards he might have missed. It seemed a longer walk than when he arrived but he eventually saw the main entrance and slowed standing behind a pillar. There were no guards which he thought strange but then if Boskags had men on the main gate he probably felt there was no need for any here as well. As it was it was said that once sealed the doors to a Highlords Keep were unbreakable.

  Looking round the pillar he saw the entrance to what he assumed was the guard room, the door was open and beyond a hallway with a bright light shining up it. Joakim saw shadows moving on the walls of the hallway, seems his assumption was right, now all he had to do was figure a way to get in there without being killed.

  Ten

  Boskags had lost three men when the door shattered. They were led out with blood coming from their ears and nose but no other marks on them. None of the other men had seen them fall as they’d all be equally affected in the same way Boskags had, when everyone else had come to and got up these three stayed down. Boskags had them stripped of anything useful and had their bodies taken to one of the rooms on the level below, he hated losing men for no reason and whatever had happened here seemed to cover that. His men stood around looking like they’d been in a pitched battle and were all warily looking at the bodies as they were removed, he could tell their superstitions were starting to creep in, something he didn’t want to think about right now.

  Another thing he didn’t want to think was what the loss of three men could mean should anyone from outside decide to storm the Keep, not like he had an army at his disposal.

  He’d turned and went back to check on the A’yai, but it was just stood there in the small room staring at one of the windows which now had something in the ancient script of the Frail Men flashing inside it, the hands of the A’yai hoovered over the symbols on the squares beneath. He tried to wake it but there was no response, he’d seen this before with others of its kind, they called it Cathedral, a place where the A’yai communed with each other. Leaving it be Boskags went back out to his men, at least with them he could try to make a good thing of the situation. As he excited the hallway Kark came running into the throne room.

  “Kark…”

  “The Regulator is loose.”

  “What….how?”

  Kark leant forwards with his hands on his knees trying to gulp in air, Boskags looked back down the hallway leading out of the throne room.

  “Where’s the rest of your men, where’s Kebatch?”

  “Dead…the Regulator he…killed them got loose…”

  Boskags stepped over and grabbed Kark by the shoulders and shook him.

  “Make sense man what happened, Pin and Doff came up ages ago saying you’d been told to bring the Regulator up here.”

  Kark shook himself loose and glared at Boskags. “That A’yai said to bring him up here he never said why I guess to question him.”

  Boskags looked over his shoulder to where the A’yai was. Kark looked down at the blood on the floor.

  “What happened here?”

  “Never mind that, tell me about the Regulator?”

  “He was already out, he jumped me and Kebatch when we were heading own to get him. He boasted about killing three others as well, I’m guessing two of them would be Bernd and Saren.”

  Boskags swore, that was seven men he was down that he knew about and the night had not even begun yet.

  “Where did you last see him?”

  “Down on fifteen or fourteen I’m not sure which. I fed him a line that we had over a hundred men and he was doomed.” Kark smiled like he’d accomplished some great feat, Boskags had to resist the urge to hit him. The fool had no way of knowing the losses made their situation tenuous at best.

  “Get every man left live from twenty upwards up here with us, we need to prepare a defensive position.”

  Kark looked confused. “He’s only one man.”

  “He may be only one man but if I were him I know where I’d be heading and soon he’ll be more than one man.” Kark’s confusion grew as his brow furrowed and he slowly worked out the implications of the situation. “Now you know why you should never mess with a Regulator they’re always a dozen steps ahead of you. How many men did we leave on the Gate level?”

  Kark thought about it. “Six, four in the guard room and the other two watching the stairs and elevating cabinet….you don’t think…”

  “Yes that’s exactly what I think, with the gate guards he’ll have maybe ten men, if he’s half the man I assume him to be he won’t stay on the ground he’ll be coming up thinking he can liberate the Highlord.”

  Kark looked up at the throne. “Where is the Highlord?”

  “That’s another problem.” Boskags said as he turned and headed back towards the A’yai.

  #

  Access denied

  The answer was wrong

  Impossible our information is perfect

  The door is sealed

  Access denied

  It is as feared the seal is corrupted

  It has been too long all is lost

  Impossible this was planned for

  Tenemi stared at the illuminated numbers, the final word still flashed red to green pulsing like a heartbeat. Every action had been carried out as per the ancient plan, the answer had been given yet the seal was closed. If Tenemi had been human the next course of action would be to beat on the door ineffectually expecting physical force to work. But the humans knew no better, blunt force was their answer to every problem. This problem needed A’yai logic and that logic need to be applied fast. Tenemi was aware time was passing and every minute delayed had implications on events yet to happen.

  The answer must be given again

  If incorrect again the seal will never open

  All will be lost

  Centuries wasted the humans will have won

  The answer must be given

  Tenemi’s hand hovered over the first of the numbers and for a second hesitated again. What if the seal was damaged beyond the point it still worked, what if the answer was the wrong answer. Tenemi focused on the numbers, too many years with the humans had meant their doubts and fears had seeped into Tenemi’s mind-set, corrupting, diminishing the order that was all there was to an A’yai.

  “The answer must be given.”

  “Tenemi?”

  Boskags voice from behind, for the second time in a matter of hours Tenemi had been distracted e
nough a human had been able to approach undetected. This had to end.

  “Now is not the time Jakamo Boskags.”

  “Now is the time, the Regulator Karesh is loose and I believe possibly gathering a force to assault us.”

  Tenemi turned to look at Boskags and the human stood firm. Boskags was not like other humans, he didn’t have their superstitious fears about the A’yai and he was far more intelligent than his peers. That was why Tenemi had nominated him for this task, of all the humans assessed he was the only one with the highest probability of success.

  “A force? There are not enough of the Highlords soldiers left to offer any resistance.”

  “There are enough what with the ones we have under lock up here and who were on the Gate level. And with a Regulator at the head that is more than enough.”

  “You have at least twice that number.”

  “Did, there are more than enough dead that I know of to be a problem.”

  There was something in the human’s eyes, resentment. The human blamed Tenemi for the situation.

  “You never believed it was wise to bring the Regulator here or to keep him alive did you?”

  “You don’t keep a feral dog and then wonder why it bit you.”

  “Such a human response. We A’yai see beyond such things, the Regulator was of use.”

  “How so?”

  Tenemi turned back and prepared to enter the answer again.

  “I repeat my previous statement Jakamo Boskags. Now is not the time, I employed you to manage the situation so manage it.”

  Tenemi focused on the numbers and cleared all thoughts of Boskags and the Regulator, all that mattered now was the answer.

  #

  Boskags glared at the A’yai and contemplated whether it would be a good idea to slip a blade into its back now and cut his losses. But then it was no easy feat to kill an A’yai, they were not human, they didn’t have internal organs and blood like we did. No, it was not a good idea, no matter where you went in the Four Empires they were there and so it was told if you did something to one of them they all knew about it. Boskags wasn’t a fearful man but he was a careful one and he wanted nothing more than to live to a very old age in comfort. Killing an A’yai meant he’d be looking over his shoulder and probably not live that long.