Dross (Sphereworld: Joined at the Hilt Book 2)

by Caleb Wachter

  Dan’Moread’s star metal blade coursed upward and, with the aid of his free hand and her internal Titansand ballast, cleaved clean through the White Knight’s left rerebrace—the piece of armor just above the elbow—and severed Yaerilys’ arm completely at the midpoint of her upper arm.

  Randall felt a thrill of satisfaction as that arm—and Rimidalv, which had been held in Yaerilys’ left hand—fell to the ground with a clatter after being knocked just enough off-course that Dani managed to avoid contact with the White Blade’s badly-chipped edge before it finally fell to the bridge deck with Yaerilys’ severed hand still tightly clutching it.

  “Nooooooo!” Yaerilys’ heavily-amplified voice screamed as she fell to her knees, clutching her profusely-bleeding arm as arterial spray slickened the stones before her armored form.

  Now we end him, Dani seethed as she spun herself over in Randall’s right hand prior to raising herself high toward the sun overhead.

  “What about Yaerilys?” Randall asked. “Will she be hurt?”

  Perhaps, Dan’Moread admitted, but he has already destroyed everything she was, Randall. Her only hope to recover who she was is if we destroy him.

  “No!” Yaerilys staggered to her feet as her precious lifeblood continued to spray onto the stones. “Thou must not destroy him!”

  Randall had seconds to make a choice, which he gritted his teeth and did, “Do it!”

  With pleasure—close your eyes, Randall, Dani snarled, moving to a position between Rimidalv and Yaerilys as she shifted her Titansand one last time before bringing her star metal blade down, into, and cleanly through the White Blade midway down his blade.

  Randall was a fraction of a second too slow in closing his eyes, and the flash of light which erupted from Rimidalv’s sundered blade blinded him as a deafening explosion thundered in his ears and the very ground beneath his feet shook with such violence he was afraid the bridge was about to collapse out from underneath them.

  But the bridge held, and when he opened his eyes and was finally able to see he glimpsed a glimmering, golden sphere which seemed to surround him and Dan’Moread. At first he thought it was a trick of his eyes as they slowly recovered from the temporary blindness cause by the flash. But the strange, shimmering field persisted for several seconds and, as he watched, the second-to-last remaining fully-charged godstone in Dani’s blade turned opaque like the other three which had already been drained of their precious energies.

  That was for Kanjin, you cold-hearted bastard, Dan’Moread seethed, and Randall looked down to the section of bridge where what was left of Rimidalv lay.

  The center of the blast, where she had struck his blade, was glowing red from the leftover heat in the roughly two foot wide, six inch deep crater which had been gouged into the stone. He looked up and down the bridge and saw a few disparate shards of White Steel which used to be part of Rimidalv’s blade, and even spotted what looked like a lump of what had just seconds earlier been one of the White Blade’s crosspieces.

  Father would have been ashamed of you, Dan’Moread said contemptuously, and Randall’s eyebrows rose in surprise at hearing her speak of her father.

  But before he could ask after her meaning, he felt her control over his body withdraw and, along with it, the shimmering shield vanished. The heat radiating from the still-glowing crater was strong enough that he took an instinctive step backward—and nearly fell over the prone, armored form of Yaerilys as he did so.

  “Yaerilys!” he blurted unthinkingly, taking a wary look at her motionless form before sheathing Dan’Moread—who had, yet again, gone totally silent following a fight—and kneeling beside the wounded White Knight. He remembered how to undo her armor’s various clasps, hooks and latches, and though it took some work to roll her heavy bulk over he eventually managed to do it.

  Blood was no longer pumping vigorously out of her bleeding stump, but it was clear her heart still beat within her chest from the rhythmic pulsing of the blood which left her body through the devastating wound.

  “Yordan! Yordan!!!” Randall screamed as he tore a piece of hem from her robe-like undergarment and quickly tried to fashion a tourniquet. His hands were shaking and his body ached from the exertion of the fight, but he was determined to do everything he could to save her life. “Yordan, I need bandages and redroot—now!”

  He torqued the tourniquet as tightly as he could and managed to stem the majority of the blood loss before Yordan came running across the courtyard with a small satchel clutching in her hands. Her eyes went wide as saucers as she saw the glowing crater, along with the White Knight’s hastily-removed armor, but she re-focused before Randall needed to snap her back to attention. “Move aside,” she barked as she slid into position beside Yaerilys’ stump and unfolded her bundle of supplies.

  “Will she live?” Randall asked even before Yordan had placed a hand on the probably-dying woman.

  “Shut yer yap, Rand!” she snapped without interrupting her clearly-practiced motions as she took some dried redroot and crushed it between a pair of spoons. Once powdered, she jammed the awful stuff deep into Yaerilys’ wound in at least a half dozen places before combining even more of the stuff with some kind of jelly and smearing that over the rest of the exposed wound. “Is she wounded elsewhere?” she demanded as she torqued the tourniquet even harder than Randall had done, using a long wooden spoon to increase her leverage when twisting the band of cloth.

  “I don’t think so,” he shook his head as he felt himself go lightheaded, “that armor…it’s too strong.”

  “What happened to her arm?” she asked as she took a piece of twine and began securing the tourniquet at its current pressure.

  “It’s…” he looked around dumbly before spying a small handful of metal pieces which he quickly realized were the ‘knuckle-pieces’ of her dismembered arm’s gauntlet. He considered looking down into the river below but shook his head and said, “I’m pretty sure it’s gone.”

  “I can see that,” she snapped. “Where’d it go?!”

  He tilted his chin toward the slowly-cooling crater, which now only glowed at the very center, and her eyebrows rose before the customary scowl returned to her face.

  “Will she live?” Randall repeated as Yordan pressed her fingers against Yaerilys’ neck and waited for several seconds.

  “She just might do,” Yordan said grimly, “but it’s far from a surety at this crossroads. She lost a lot of blood, and…” she gently rolled Yaerilys’ head from side to side, revealing nearly black streaks of dried blood which ran out from her ears and down her neck, “what in the name of all that’s holy happened to her?”

  “I don’t know,” Randall shook his head. “But whatever it was, it’s over now.”

  “I don’t claim to understand much—if anything—of what’s been goin’ down ‘round here, Rand,” Yordan grimaced before gesturing to Yaerilys’ body, “but after you help me get her back to the gatehouse, I think it’d be best if you started at the beginning and didn’t stop ‘til you reach the end—and no skippin’ anything in the middle, savvy?”

  “You’re right, Yordi,” he nodded as he carefully lifted Yaerilys from the ground and, slowly but surely, made his way to the gatehouse where the others awaited. After they arrived there, he filled in all of the details he had omitted during his previous retellings of the events which he had witnessed—and been party to—over the past few months.

  Chapter XXV: Gain from Loss

  16-2-6-659, Early evening

  Three hours later, Randall had finished answering his friends’ questions about what had transpired in his life since that fateful night in the alley where Dan’Moread had helped save Ellie and Yordan. He had expected his friends to be upset with him for concealing so many important details from his previous retellings of the story, but they had been remarkably reasonable as the question-and-answer session had stretched on even as the sun set overhead.

  “So you and she were lovers?” Ellie asked, tilting her chin toward Yaer
ilys’ unconscious form.

  “I’m not even sure that’s the right term,” he shook his head in exasperation, “but, yes, we were…intimate. She taught me so many things about being a half-elf—a ‘star child’ as she and others call us,” he amended, “and even though our time together was cut shorter than I think either of us would have liked, I owed her a debt of gratitude.”

  “So you cut her arm off?” Yordan snorted as she peered at the wound beneath the recently-changed bandage which bound the stump of her dismembered arm.

  “I can only hope I’d have a friend who was willing to do the same for me,” Lore unexpectedly chided, casting a hard look in Yordan’s direction. “What you did—dueling a White Knight without backup—was the kind of thing books are written about.”

  “Maybe,” Randall shook his head again, “but I can’t help the feeling that I’m somehow the villain in all of this. Rimidalv helped Dani and I several times,” he cast a look down at the still-silent sword who had fast become his closest friend in the world, “and in return what did we do? We killed him,” he finished, simultaneously disgusted and impressed with the veracity of that statement.

  “You had a difficult decision to make, there’s no question about that,” Lore shook her head dubiously. “Frankly, I think I would have been paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong choice.”

  “Indecision is often the path to the worst possible outcome,” Ellie nodded in agreement. “You did what your heart told you to do, Doll. And you did not do it alone,” she added with a pointed look at Dan’Moread—who now had just a single fully-charged godstone shard embedded in her blade.

  “I’m still havin’ trouble accepting that swords can be alive,” Yordan said skeptically before sighing, “but after hearing you retell your version of that night in the alley, and after seein’ you do what you did to those zombie-things out there—to say nothin’ of when you went up against this gal,” she gestured to Yaerilys, “it actually does make more sense than believin’ you somehow became the world’s greatest swordsman in the few short months since you left the Rickety.”

  “Thanks, Yord,” Randall snorted. “Your confidence is inspiring.”

  “You’re the one makin’ the outrageous claims, Rand,” she retorted. “Crazy claims require crazy proof—just so happens we’ve got plenty of both handy.”

  “So…” he looked around the cramped gatehouse, “what do we do next?”

  “Did Yaerilys have friends?” Ellie asked thoughtfully.

  “She did,” he nodded, “but most of them were driven away by Rimidalv. The only member of her former retinue that was still with her was Ravilich—her real former lover.”

  “Can’t imagine you’ll be lookin’ forward to that particular reunion,” Yordan said heavily.

  “No,” Randall agreed, “I don’t see that one going well for anyone involved—especially if she takes a turn for the worse.”

  “She’s a hale woman, Rand,” Yordan shook her head firmly, “and she’s past the worst of it. We got her wound bound and coagulated before she lost too much blood.”

  “That’s a relief,” Randall exhaled loudly before his keen hearing picked up on the sound of hooves clattering against stone. “Someone’s coming,” he gripped Dan’Moread’s hilt and stood, wincing as his midsection erupted in a series of stabbing pains.

  “You should sit down, Rand,” Yordan said sternly. “You’ve got some bleeding on the inside; I can’t do much to help other than keep giving you redroot teas like you’ve been sipping the last few hours.”

  “I’m ok,” he said tightly as he pushed his way out into the courtyard. “I need to see who this is.”

  He stepped out into the courtyard, which was lit solely by the Wanderer and a few particularly bright stars in the night sky. The clatter of hooves drew steadily nearer from the direction of the bridge, and by the time Randall reached that bridge a familiar wagon was visible. A single lantern hung above the wagon’s driver, and even in such limited light Randall could plainly see that it was Ravilich driving Ser Cavulus’ wagon.

  “Ravilich,” Randall held up his left hand while he gripped Dani’s hilt in his right.

  “Randall?” the other man called out as he drew back on the reins, pulling the wagon to a stop not far from where Randall stood. “The White Knight made for here earlier today and instructed me to follow behind as fast as the wagon could make.”

  “She already arrived, Ravilich,” Randall said steadily, “we fought and defeated the Fleshthings together.”

  “Where is Ser Cavulus now?” Ravilich asked warily as his hand moved slowly to his waist where Randall assumed he had secreted some sort of weapon.

  “Yaerilys is alive,” Randall said, deciding to cut straight to the heart of the matter, “but she’s been badly hurt.”

  Ravilich’s eyes narrowed, and it was only due to his Ghaevlian blood’s gift of superior hearing that he noticed Ravilich’s breathing had stopped for a second before the other man snapped, “Where is she?!”

  “This way,” Randall gestured to the far side of the courtyard, where his friends were tending to the unconscious woman, “my friends are seeing to her, but Ravilich—“ he said warningly as the other man scrambled out of the driver’s seat, “they had nothing to do with what happened to her. I won’t let you in there unless you promise to leave them out of this.”

  “What is your meaning?” Ravilich snapped.

  “Give me your word, Ravilich,” Randall growled as he turned Dan’Moread in his hand, hoping that her star metal blade would reflect the Wanderer’s light enough that the other man would take his meaning. “Swear that you’ll not bring them to harm, and that whatever anger you need to vent is directed at me.”

  “What did you do to her?!” Ravilich cried as he made to bolt past Randall, but Randall interdicted himself and held out his left hand haltingly.

  “She’s free, Ravilich,” Randall said in a raised voice. “Stop and think about that—she’s free! That’s what I did for her—for both of you!”

  Ravilich froze in his tracks. “You…what?” he stammered in disbelief before his expression hardened. “What did you do?” he seethed, drawing a dirk from concealment and lowering into a fighting crouch.

  “Don’t do that, Ravilich,” Randall warned, taking a step back while bringing Dan’Moread up into a defensive stance. “Think about what I just said: I freed her from Rimidalv. Do you think he wanted that?”

  “Out of my way!” Ravilich cried before lunging at Randall with his dirk aimed at Randall’s chest.

  Relying on his past several months of training, Randall easily turned the dirk aside. But Dan’Moread was heavy and cumbersome for a blade of her size, and Ravilich’s following thrusts and swipes were far quicker than anything Randall could hope to match.

  He struggled and backpedaled as Ravilich pressed forward, with the enraged Squire scoring a handful of nicks to Randall’s torso and lightly-armored arms.

  “Stop right now, Ravilich!” Randall barked after managing to sneak a short punch through Ravilich’s guard—a punch which featured Dan’Moread’s heavy pommel. The blow smashed Ravilich’s nose with an audible wet, crunching sound and the other man reeled backward as he failed to keep his feet beneath himself.

  Falling to the stone bridge’s deck, Ravilich lost his grip on the dirk and it went skittering several feet from where he landed. Before the enraged Squire could recover it, Randall managed to place Dan’Moread’s razor-sharp tip against the other man’s neck.

  “Stop, Ravilich!” Randall yelled, and for a brief instant the murderous rage he saw in the other man’s eyes sent chills down his spine. Randall knew he could not reason with Ravilich now—or perhaps ever—and he shuddered to think of what he might be forced to do if the White Blade’s Squire did not abandon his reckless course. “I’ll—“ Randall began to utter a threat he dearly hoped he would never have to make good on, but before he could get past the first word he heard a voice cut through the night air.


  “Ravi?” a woman called out in apparent confusion, and Randall turned to see the pale, bandaged form of Yaerilys emerge from the gatehouse with Yordan helping to support the one-armed woman’s larger frame with her own shorter body.

  Moving as one, the two women slowly shuffled out into the moonlight and Randall breathed a sigh of relief when he returned his focus to Ravilich where he saw not even a trace of the mindless rage which had been there a moment earlier.

  “Leese?” Ravilich breathed as his eyes went wide. Randall stepped back, lowering Dan’Moread and keeping a close eye on the other man as the former Squire scrambled to his feet. “Leese?!” Ravilich repeated with a mixture of joy and horror as he looked up and down her unarmored form.

  “Ravi!” Yaerilys cried as she attempted to quicken her pace. Her eyes rolled off-target after just a few steps, but by then Ravilich had crossed half of the ground which separated them—with Randall remaining close behind just in case the emotionally distraught man opted to be less than civil with Randall’s friends.

  A few seconds later they were in each other’s arms, with Ravilich bursting into tears and sobbing audibly as he clutched her against himself. “You’re…I…we…” he stammered stupidly as she slowly regained a look of clarity and locked her eyes with his.

  “You…you never left…” she said with a weak smile that brought tears to Randall’s eyes. It was a smile she had once graced Randall with, but he now knew that it had only ever been meant for Ravilich.

  “No!” Ravilich shook his head as his sobs turned to indescribable sounds of elation. He brushed her hair from her face and said fiercely, “I could never abandon you, Yar. I would have died before leaving you!”

  “My…shining…knight,” she said with an unexpected quirk of her mouth as her gaze wandered toward Randall. When their eyes met, Randall saw not a trace of recognition in hers as she cocked her head and said, “Who are…”