The Ranger's Sorrow: The King's Ranger Book 4

by AC Cobble

  “Blessed Mother,” grumbled the ranger, wriggling beneath the bulk of the imp. His arms were smashed beneath it, and he had no leverage to shift the weight on top of him.

  Then, the imp moved, rolling off of him, and Raif was there, looking a combination of impressed and horrified.

  “Are you all right?” asked Zaine, peering around the big fighter.

  “No.”

  Raif reached down and hauled Rew to his feet. The nobleman glanced down at his hand, now covered in the imp’s blood and saliva. In a voice carrying the sort of disdain that only a nobleman could summon, Raif remarked, “That is disgusting.”

  “Yeah, well…” muttered Rew. He found he didn’t have the energy to complete the thought.

  “We need to go,” said Zaine, staring toward the stairwell where the imps had come up to the gallery. From the distance, they could hear the clamor of armored men running. The thief had one arrow nocked on her bow and one left in her quiver. It sounded like a lot more than two men were charging up those stairs. In a high-pitched plea, she added, “Right now. We need to go right now.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” snapped Rew. He glanced at Anne where she crouched on a makeshift stretcher inside the room, straddling Cinda’s prone body.

  Anne, tending to Cinda and not looking up, allowed, “If we have to go, let’s go.”

  Rew started a lurching run down the open gallery, heading away from the stairwell. Behind him, Raif picked up the handles of the stretcher and began to drag it. Anne, still kneeling over Cinda’s bleeding body, worked feverishly to heal the girl as they slid out into the open. The fighter winced at the weight of the two women, but did not complain, and doggedly hurried after Rew, the back end of the stretcher gliding smoothly over the marble floor. Zaine brought up the rear, but after several updates that the soldiers were on the stairs, that they’d ascended to the gallery, and that they were coming, she stopped sharing what she saw.

  Rew frantically glanced at the doors they passed along the gallery, struggling to recall the layout of Calb’s palace, fumbling for ideas of how they could lose what sounded like half the prince’s army crashing after them.

  A green-robed spellcaster bolted out in front of Rew, a hand clutched to a talisman on his chest, an arm raised, and arcane words bubbling from his lips.

  Without pausing, Rew swung a left hook and caught the man full in the face, ending the conjurer’s ritual and preventing him from casting his spell and summoning whatever imps the man had at his command.

  As the conjurer fell, Rew shoved by him, and snatched the talisman from the conjurer’s neck. The ranger flung it over the edge of the gallery, hoping that if it shattered on the floor below, it might release whatever was trapped inside of it. With no guidance, any conjured imp would be just as much trouble for Calb’s men as it would be for Rew and the party.

  Grimacing, Rew realized none of Calb’s spellcasters would have returned to the palace much before the prince himself. Was Calb down below or somewhere else in the sprawling grounds of the palace?

  A junior conjurer and a handful of imps, Rew could handle, but Calb himself would be a problem. The prince would be weakened from his effort against Valchon, but Rew had taken thumps and cuts back in Carff, including dislocating his shoulder, and the fight with the imps had aggravated the injury. Rew’s right side throbbed in agony, and already, he could feel painful swelling in his shoulder tightening his range of motion. The others in the party weren’t in much better shape, and Cinda was completely incapacitated.

  Rew shook his left hand. His knuckles felt bruised from punching the conjurer in the face. He didn’t want to fight Calb left-handed, but he switched his longsword to that hand and whispered a hope to the Blessed Mother they would find a way out. Rew was well-practiced with his hunting knife in his off-hand, but without his longsword in the other, it wouldn’t be the same balance. He felt inadequate and wasn’t sure he trusted his skill to compensate for the heavier blade in the opposite hand he was used to. But he didn’t want to give up the improved reach of the longsword, either. He knew it was only a matter of time until his injured shoulder gave out.

  He glanced back and winced. Raif was staring ahead, focused on following Rew. Past the fighter, Rew could see Anne perched on the stretcher, her expression set, her arms covered in Cinda’s blood. Zaine brought up the rear, an arrow still nocked, her face panicked. Behind her, two dozen armored men were racing after them along with another green-robed conjurer and several dog-sized imps that leapt and bounced along the gallery like coursers on the hunt.

  Ahead of them, the gallery extended several hundred more paces, but in the center, a marble bridge crossed over the expansive floor below. Rew hissed a warning and took a turn, streaking across the bridge and the open air. Raif cursed, trying to follow the ranger on the tight turn without spilling his sister and Anne off the stretcher.

  Down in the foyer below them, Rew heard frantic shouts as the soldiers followed their progress. It occurred to Rew that some of those men might be carrying bows, but it was too late for that. He tried to hurry across the wide-open bridge. Cutting perpendicular to the gallery, he saw the closest pursuit was just fifty paces behind and coming fast. The soldiers weren’t close enough that anyone below would stay an attack, but they were close enough Rew and his bedraggled companions weren’t going to win a foot race.

  Ahead of him, the gallery extended in both directions over the giant foyer, but instead of turning, Rew ran to the closest door he could find and yanked it open. It didn’t matter what was behind it. Injured and carrying Cinda, they weren’t going to out run anyone. They had to find somewhere to block pursuit.

  Two servants looked up in shock and terror. Beyond them, Rew saw the sharp-peaked roofs of Jabaan through an open window. Cool air blew in, and a fierce grin lit Rew’s face. He spun just as Zaine slammed the door shut and found a bolt to lock it. Rew rushed to her side and put his left shoulder against a heavy dresser, the wooden legs scrapping until he maneuvered it in front of the door. A breath later, a desk joined it, pushed in place by Raif, who turned and found another sturdy piece of furniture to add to the barricade.

  “It won’t slow them long,” murmured Rew.

  Ignoring the two servants who stood speechlessly on the side of the room, a duster in the hands of one, a cloth and crystal bowl in the hands of the other, Rew darted to the open window and peered out. There was a steep slate roof, a sheer drop, and the tangled streets of Jabaan half a dozen floors below the window.

  He turned to Anne. “Can she move?”

  “No,” hissed the empath.

  Rew held her gaze.

  “She might not make it.”

  “The only other choice is to allow ourselves to be captured. I’m sorry, but we’ve got to risk it.” He looked to Zaine. “Tie up the servants.”

  Raif returned from stacking more furniture in front of the door and picked up the stretcher again, dragging it and the two passengers toward the window. He peered out. “Ah, Rew, that goes straight down. I don’t… We can’t survive that fall.”

  The ranger nodded and then clambered outside the window onto the slate tiles. They were dry, thankfully, but sloped at a treacherous angle. He called back inside, “Raif, hand me the end of the stretcher.”

  Muttering foul disparagements on Rew’s name and all of his ancestors, Anne climbed out first to join him, looking down nervously at the city of Jabaan which spread out in jagged rooftops and towers like a field of broken glass. None of those towers reached the height of the palace. If they fell, it would be a long drop before they hit something.

  Whispering, the empath worried, “Raif is right. That’s a fatal drop, Rew. How are we going to get down from here?”

  Rew shushed her and accepted the end of the stretcher from Raif. With Anne’s help, they carefully pulled it outside and laid it on the roof, Cinda’s feet pointing down at a sharp angle, Rew’s boot wedged beneath the end so the stretcher didn’t slide off into the void.


  Raif came next and then Zaine. The thief offered only a shrug when Rew inquired whether the servants were securely bound.

  “All right,” Rew declared loudly, raising his voice so all could hear, “down we go.”

  He then gestured up, toward the top of the roof, and the party’s eyes brightened. They weren’t going down. There was nowhere to go that way, but perhaps the captive servants had heard and believed the ruse. Perhaps that would give the party a few extra steps to escape their pursuit, which, as they crouched on the slate rooftop, Rew heard was already smashing against the door.

  The imps he’d last seen in the gallery were of the smaller variety and wouldn’t have the strength to batter down the barricade or furniture they’d thrown against the door, but it wouldn’t be long before the soldiers got through the door and shoved away the furniture or until the conjurer summoned something bigger.

  Rew sheathed his longsword, awkwardly because his right shoulder was nearly useless now, and grabbed the end of Cinda’s stretcher. He began scuttling higher toward the peak of the roof. Raif easily lifted the bottom half of the stretcher then slid and nearly went plummeting down and off the edge before he caught his footing again. A single slate tile broke loose and skittered away. It fell out of sight. They couldn’t hear it land. Raif offered a sick-looking smile, and with Zaine’s help, they started inching higher. Anne stayed by Cinda’s side, putting her hands on the girl, pouring what empathy she could into the injured necromancer.

  Below in the palace, there were thuds and crashes as Calb’s people tried to break down the door. Alarm bells rang, and Rew wondered if Calb would come straight away or if he would try to learn the nature of the threat to his palace before he showed himself.

  It was their only hope, that the prince was weakened enough by his run at Valchon that he would be afraid. Calb might worry it was Heindaw or some other powerful enemy, and he might not expose himself until he learned different. The prince’s fear gave them a chance, but it would last only as long as it took for Calb’s soldiers to inform him of what they’d seen. Whether or not they could describe Rew to the prince, when Calb learned it was a small group that hadn’t cast a single spell, he would come.

  They reached the top of the roof, and Rew took them over the peak, balancing carefully as he descended the other side. His shoulder was on fire, and he wondered how much longer he could risk carrying Cinda’s stretcher. If he stumbled, if he lost her even for a moment, she would have a short roll and then a long drop.

  “Where, ah…” murmured Raif, looking out at the expansive view.

  Jabaan was situated hundreds of paces above a massive inland lake that extended as far as the eye could see. The palace was perched on the edge of a cliff that loomed over the water. The rooftop of the palace ended, and then, there was nothing until the deep waters of the lake far below. Rew guessed that Raif had not imagined a fall from the other side of the building could be even worse than crashing down half a dozen stories into the city, but it was.

  If they slipped and fell, there was no hope of survival.

  Rew turned. Walking parallel to the drop and the peak of the roof, he led them toward the rest of the palace. Beyond the massive entrance hall they’d been running through, the structure sprawled out into a warren of towers, courtyards, and blocky stone buildings. There were places to hide there, if they weren’t seen before they made it.

  Faint voices reached his ears, and Rew guessed that their pursuers had breached the door and climbed out the window. Hopefully, they wasted precious time peering over the edge and wondering if anyone could have survived the fall to the streets of the city.

  “Just a little bit longer,” murmured Rew. Then, he glanced up and saw a soldier peering out an open door twenty paces in front of him.

  “Duck,” hissed Zaine.

  They did, and she released her arrow. It thumped into the startled guard, and the man pitched backward out of sight.

  The party hurried and found that the guard had been standing inside of a steep, spiral staircase. They heard the crash of his body rolling down the stairs and saw blood smeared along the wall where he’d tried to stop himself from toppling down. The trail of blood continued out of sight, and they didn’t have time to try and clean it.

  Rew glanced behind them, looking at the steep slate roof. The soldiers chasing them hadn’t appeared yet, but there was nowhere to go. Nothing but roof and open air. The only exit was the narrow door the soldier had opened, which must have been access for maintenance. Rew had no idea where the stairwell went, but it was the only way forward.

  He entered the tower. As he did, the sounds of the soldier falling down the spiral stairs finally stopped. There were shouts coming up from the bottom where someone must have heard or seen the man.

  Rew glanced at the others and shrugged. “Up, I guess.”

  Chapter Two

  “An arcanist’s lair?” wondered Anne when they entered the room they’d found at the top of the tower.

  Rew tried to scratch his beard but couldn’t reach as his throbbing and stiffening shoulder limited his movement. He cringed. Stuck in a tower in Calb’s palace and unable to use his arm. That wasn’t good.

  Zaine slipped a small pouch back into her belt and grinned. “I knew that set of lock picks would come in handy.”

  “You picked the lock all right, but next time, try disarming the trap as well, eh?” complained Raif, touching a dent on his armor that had been left by a thin, steel dart. “That thing would have stung fierce if it’d hit one of us.”

  “Not for long,” said Rew. “It was poisoned.”

  Raif looked at him, aghast, and even Zaine swallowed uncomfortably before opening her mouth, probably to attempt some quip to distract Raif from the fact that she’d nearly killed him.

  “How long do you think we have, Rew?” questioned Anne, interrupting Zaine.

  The empath was crouched beside Cinda where they’d left the stretcher on the floor. Anne’s hands were covered in blood to her elbows, but she’d lost the panicked look in her eyes. Cinda wasn’t going to die, yet. Instead, Anne looked resigned. The spiral stairwell led up from the roof to the room they’d found and nowhere else. If they left the room, their choices were back onto the roof or down below where the dead soldier had fallen and been found. Staying in the room wasn’t a good option, but Rew wasn’t liking any of their other choices, either.

  “We don’t have long,” responded Rew, looking around the chamber, hoping for inspiration. “Zaine, that cloak there, help me tie it into a sling.”

  The thief assisted, and in moments, Rew’s sword arm was bound to his side, his shoulder immobilized as best as he and Zaine could manage. Anne, in between her ministrations of Cinda, observed their efforts grimly.

  Raif was poking through the chamber, trying to find something they could use, but he looked up shaking his head. “It’s all worthless. Just books and… experiments, I guess. I don’t know what any of them are supposed to do.”

  Rew grunted. He went to study the various decanters and burners that Raif had found on a wide, heavily scarred wooden table. Without the knowledge of an arcanist, none of it looked particularly useful.

  “I don’t imagine it will take long for whoever found that soldier to call for some more of them,” remarked Zaine, looking ruefully at Cinda’s unconscious body. “Will she be all right?”

  “She’ll live for now,” murmured Anne. “If we had several days and a quiet, safe space, I’d have no worries about a full recovery, but as it is… She lost a lot of blood, and I had to put most of my energy into repairing her lungs where her sister—where Kallie—stabbed her. I’m still working, but after such an abrupt surge of empathy, her body needs time to adjust. Too much empathy in some circumstances is almost as bad as none at all.”

  “How long until she’s stabilized?” asked Rew.

  “A few hours until she’s hale enough to get through this without my help?” speculated Anne. “Even with my help, at least a full day u
ntil she’s back on her feet. Maybe two.”

  “We’re not going to have that,” mentioned Rew.

  Wordlessly, Anne turned from him and went back to work on Cinda. Rew and Zaine tried to patch up the various cuts and scrapes Raif had gotten between the battle in Carff and the attack by his sister, but when the fighter began to remove his armor to give them a better access to a laceration on his side, Rew shook his head.

  “Lad, you’re going to need that.”

  Wincing, Raif gripped his greatsword and let them work.

  On the stairwell outside the room, they heard the racket of armored men moving about, but it was a quarter hour before someone finally pounded a heavy fist on the door. “Open up or we’ll break it down!”

  “And why should we save you the effort?” Rew called in response.

  This was a pause, as if the speaker was thinking that one over. Then, the voice answered, “Because if you open it up, I’ll walk you down nice and easy. If I have to come in there, I’ll lock a chain around your neck and drag you to the dungeons like a goat to slaughter.”

  There was a commotion on the other side, and Zaine pressed her ear to the door to listen. “The arcanist, I think. He’s coming up. He says he has a key.”

  Bellowing, Rew called out, “If you put a key into that door, I’ll start putting these books into the fire. Go fetch the prince. I want to talk to him.”

  “What?” came a startled response from the other side of the door. “The prince? You want to see the prince?”

  “First book is going into the fire now. Every few minutes, I throw in another,” warned Rew loudly. “Get the prince, and I’ll stop.”

  There was another sound of commotion. An old man’s voice called, “Hold on. Hold on, those are invaluable tomes. The knowledge in them is irreplaceable. I don’t know what sort of game you think to play, but the prince doesn’t—“

  “Four more minutes, then another book,” shouted Rew.