Nightblade

by Jason Howard

  “Yes, many, many years ago. I would say deathtrap is a harsh description.”

  “Is it? How else would you describe a gauntlet of swinging warhammers, re-animating corpses, and an obstacle course over a seemingly bottomless chasm?”

  “Minerva would have stopped if I had commanded her, or if you had spoken the safe word. I was watching from the shadows.”

  “Where did all the corpses come from?” Zac asked.

  “Minerva is now my pet, but there was a time that she lured people here with lusty promises before showing her true form and separating their souls from their bodies. As for the chasm, there is netting under the path to catch someone that makes a misstep.”

  “And the swinging warhammers and axes and such?”

  Ivor shrugged. “Perhaps you should choose a different profession if you desire safety,” Ivor said.

  “True enough,” Zac said.

  Ivor smiled. “Take this token of victory and my sincere congratulations!”

  Ivor gave them two pendants to put around their necks. The pendants were engraved with an embossed insignia of a crown hung around the hilt of a longsword.

  “This shows your qualification for First Blood,” Ivor said. “The fights will be three weeks from now. Good luck, gentlemen.”

  Ivor walked away.

  “Let’s get a drink,” Zac said to Artem.

  Artem looked surprised.

  “Yeah, I know it’s a little early, but after all that, I’m thirsty. I know a good bar we should go to.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?” Zac said.

  “Uh . . . inviting me.”

  Zac clapped Artem on the shoulder and said, “Come on, don’t be ridiculous. After what we’ve been through, you’re my zo now, we’re family. The least I can do is buy you a drink. Let’s go.”

  Artem smiled, though he had no idea what the word zo meant.

  Zac tried to send word to Althos, but knew that he was too far away for it to be immediately received. He sent, ‘We qualified!’ out into the ether, straining to make the psychic message forceful. What the two had discovered was that the farther away from each other they were, the longer it took for the psychic shouts to be heard, if they could be heard at all. Zac would try again when they reached the city.

  ***

  As they walked through the city gates, Zac tucked his pendant under his shirt so pick-pockets wouldn’t see it. Artem noticed this and did likewise.

  Zac swayed and nearly fell as Althos’s excited psychic voice hit him. ‘I’M SO GLAD YOU’RE OKAY—NO INJURIES RIGHT—HOW DID YOU DO—WAS IT HARD—WHAT HAPPENED—AM I GONNA BE ALLOWED TO WATCH YOU FIGHT—DO YOU MISS ME, I MISS YOU—ARE YOU WITH ELIAS?’

  ‘Althos!’ Zac protested. ‘You’re killing me here, stop yelling!’

  Artem had a hand on Zac’s shoulder and a concerned look on his face. “Brother what ravages you?”

  Zac shook his head and said, “Althos. A friend of mine is talking in my mind.”

  “Someone is speaking with your mind . . . violently?”

  “Yeah, he’s very excited.”

  ‘I’m sorry, Zac,’ Althos psychically whispered, his voice timid now.

  Zac laughed to Althos and replied, ‘Forgiven, as always. To answer some of your questions, yeah, I missed you, I’m not with Elias right now, and I’m alright. I met an awesome warrior named Artem and we are just about to grab a drink. Is it okay if we talk more later?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Althos said begrudgingly, ‘Be careful out there. And don’t drink too much.’

  ‘Don’t worry I’ll be alright.’

  The dusky sun was just shutting its eyes as they walked through the city. The workmen and women of Sal Zerone were mostly back in with their families now, enjoying dinner. The night crowd wasn’t out yet.

  They arrived at The Maiden’s Sigh, ignoring the imploring plea of a beggar.

  The beggar turned angry as they opened the door. “Well you can shove your coins up your tight arses then, you heartless sacks of—”

  As the door shut, Artem said, “He acts like we have not paid him a long standing debt.”

  Zac laughed at this. “Yeah, and he would have wasted it on booze anyway. If someone’s going to waste my coin on booze, it’s gonna be me!”

  He noticed that Artem was looking around like he’d just stepped into a dream. The multicolored, enchanted torches of the bar, the huge mural of the sighing maiden, the clink of glasses, the early drinkers, forearms on the bar, the beautiful female bartender mixing a drink—he took it all in slowly.

  A brawny man with a mane of a beard stepped up to them and said, “Weapons please.”

  The man held an enormous warhammer in one hand like it was nothing.

  “What?” Artem said, confused.

  Zac said, “It’s a bar, you’re not allowed to carry your weapons in. They’ll just store it in that closet there next to the door. Right?”

  The brawny man nodded.

  Artem reluctantly relinquished his halberd, watching as it was stored.

  At the bar Zac motioned for a drink. The bartender knew what he wanted.

  When the bartender asked Artem what he wanted, he hesitated, then said he’d have whatever Zac was having.

  “To our eventual prosperity, and the beautiful women that flock to us because of it,” Zac said, holding up his glass.

  Artem just looked at him.

  Zac waited. Then he smiled, realizing that Artem didn’t understand.

  “Clink the glasses,” he said. “Like this.”

  After Artem finally did, Zac took a gulp. Artem sipped, his face scrunching up from the bitter taste of the beer.

  “Tell me your story,” Artem said.

  Zac smiled. “You get right to the point with everything, I like that.”

  Artem said nothing.

  “I’m from Raezellia, but I don’t remember much about the place. My mother sold me to slavers after my father died. I had a brother and three sisters, I guess it was just too many for her to take care of. My first master owned a farm outside of the City of Emerald Shore in the south. He also owned a few restaurants and taverns in the city. I worked at the farm at first, but I was too little to do the hard labor. They had me shucking akoshes and throwing seed, things like that.

  “How old were you?”

  “Don’t remember. I think around six. I worked on the farm for a year or so, but things changed when my master took a liking to me and decided I would do better being a house slave in one of his restaurants. I worked in the restaurant and lived with the other slaves in the second story of the place. I learned how to talk properly and mingle with culture so that I could serve them. I also learned all the rules and flourishes of etiquette, like that little clinking the glasses thing we just did.

  “I worked every day from dawn till dusk. Sometimes I worked longer if I had to a second shift at one of his taverns or inns. But I was grateful that it wasn’t the backbreaking work of the farm.

  “Then my master took ill and died. Everything he owned passed to his only son. And his son didn’t like me. I think it’s because his father liked me that the son decided to hate me and make my life hell. He sold me to a man named Lord Arthur Temnick.

  “Arthur Temnick put me to work in a mining town called Detren. That was the worst kind of labor you can get. I worked so hard I thought I would die. I worked there until recently. About a week ago these knights wearing black armor rode into town and burned everything down.”

  Artem’s eyes widened.

  “What?” Zac asked.

  “Continue,” Artem said.

  “They had the symbol of a black widow on their armor. Their leader, a man named Roen, was channeling this spell onto some of the ones who lived. I think it was a Soulbane spell. I escaped and came here to earn citizenship in the city-state of Sal Zerone where slavery is illegal, and I can be free. What’s your story?”

  “I . . . want to tell you. But I cannot. It hurts too much to tell it in de
tail. I may tell you soon, but not today,” Artem said. “I can tell you that the men in black armor came to my village as well. They destroyed everything I was. They killed my whole tribe. I am alone in the world.”

  Zac clasped Artem’s shoulder, but he said nothing—there was nothing to say. He could have said “time will wash the pain away” or any number of dumb and overused condolences. But Zac hated these. Some wounds never heal. Can a blind man ever see? No. Can a crippled man ever walk? No.

  Zac took a gulp of his beer.

  “How can you drink this stuff?” Artem said.

  “You’ll get a taste for it. But in the meantime, try one of the ciders. It’ll still get you tipsy, but it has a sweeter taste.”

  Artem nodded at this, and motioned for the bartender. “What do you mean tipsy?”

  “You’ve never heard of being drunk?”

  Artem shook his head. He looked to the end of the bar, where a man was swaying dangerously and mumbling to himself. “Is it the same as how smoking lifts your mind from your body, and let’s you float above everything?”

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that. You’re wordy for a warrior. You should have been a bard.”

  Zac ordered Artem a cider, even though Artem insisted that he had had enough. Artem took a swig, then turned to Zac.

  Zac felt an arm reach around his neck and sink in a choke. He was lifted a little off his barstool and could feel the blood draining from his head. He struggled—he knew who it was though, and that he would never get the fierce strength of the chokehold off of him.

  Artem leapt up and raised a hand up in the air. His halberd smashed through the wooden door of the weapons closet, splinters flying everywhere. The guard at the door leapt up, but stopped short when he saw Artem’s next quick movement. Artem put the point of his halberd to the neck of the man choking Zac.

  “Let him go,” Artem said.

  “Whoa, I’m not really—” Elias started.

  “You have five seconds,” Artem continued. “Maybe seven if we count how long you’ll be alive while your head rolls across the floor.”

  Elias let go of Zac and put his hands up.

  Zac said, “Artem, he’s a friend. My fighting trainer actually, his name’s Elias.”

  Artem stared at him through narrowed eyes and—slowly—lowered the halberd.

  “Elias, meet Artem. I met him at the First Blood qualifiers.”

  Artem was a little embarrassed now, and he stood unsure of himself as everyone in the bar stared at him. Elias stuck out a hand. Artem shook it.

  The bartender, who was now holding a long, cruel looking dagger, said, “He may be a friend of yours, but that halberd trick just broke my closet.”

  “I’ll pay for it next time I come in,” Elias said.

  “So tomorrow,” the bartender said, putting his dagger back onto a shelf under the bar. “You come in every day, I should charge you rent by now, you washed up alcoholic.”

  Elias ignored this and pointed an accusatory finger at Zac and said, “You were totally unaware of your surroundings. I could have killed you.”

  “But you would never do that, right? Pull up a stool.”

  “You need to be aware of your environment. You owe me a drink for that.”

  “Sure, whatever. Take a look at this.”

  Zac pulled the pendant out from under his shirt. “I qualified for in First Blood!”

  “As I expected you would,” Elias said.

  “My head feels funny,” Artem said with a slight sway.

  “Good,” Zac said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Bartender, get him another one.”

  Artem laughed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “I was a lazy kid. I worked really hard at avoiding work. Faking sick, making up excuses, and trying to avoid getting chores from my parents. I was so lazy that avoiding work became a full time job! What I learned is that life is not about avoiding work, it’s about avoiding the wrong kind of work. When you’re doing the work you were meant for, life is a breeze! Not really, life is never a breeze, but it’s much more bearable when you love what you do. I suppose the only breeze that life can be compared to comes out of your arse.”

  –Art Wheelihan, bard and jester

  The next three weeks were simple and grueling, but also some of the best Zac could ever remember having. Every day Elias would wake him and Artem up, and they’d go for a long run. It was on their first long run out into the woods that Althos and Artem met. Introducing Artem to Althos and watching them become friends made Zac infinitely happy. Elias rode Hessia alongside them as they jogged so he could keep the pace. Zac noticed that the sheelak was getting bigger by the day. As the weeks stretched on he gained about sixty pounds, most of it muscle.

  After the run they trained for hours, Elias putting them through one drill after another. After the drills they’d spar with magically safeguarded weapons. Often they ended up with bruises, bloody noses, sprained and sore joints, and inexplicable pains that crippled them in the mornings. Elias forced them to spend hours each day stretching to compensate for the damage they were doing.

  Artem was easily Zac’s better with weapons, but one day Zac challenged him at boxing. Zac was much faster with his hands and dominated him every time, even though Artem was taller and heavier.

  Every night they slept in Elias’s house, which was on the outskirts of the city, under a bridge that stretched across the river. Althos continued to sleep in the woods with Hessia, because Elias’s place was too small for the fast-growing sheelak. Elias apologized for his tiny, dilapidated residence, but Zac, who had slept in overcrowded slave quarters since he was young, laughed that off. Artem, who had been sleeping in a mud-thatch hut all his life, was amazed at how the hinges on the doors worked and how the floor was so solid. The two of them slept in a tiny room with a bunk bed and not much else. Zac wondered about the bunk bed. One night at dinner, Elias told them he had once had kids, but his wife had left him.

  “For a while she brought the kids by, so I had the bunk bed for them, but then she said I was a bad influence with all my drinking. Good riddance to her, I think I started drinking a little less after I didn’t have to listen to her nagging voice anymore!”

  Zac laughed with him but wondered how much of a front Elias was putting on by acting like he didn’t care.

  After Elias had stopped laughing he got quiet for a while, then mumbled, “I do miss my boys though.”

  An awkward silence stretched until Zac came up with some small talk to change the subject.

  As the days wore on, Elias started to focus Artem and Zac on different things. He told Zac that his fighting style wasn’t refined, and that it wouldn’t be in the few weeks they had left to train. Instead, he focused Zac on raw athleticism and fundamental fighting techniques. Also, Zac was rapidly gaining muscle because of his new diet. As a slave, he had been fed the bare minimum for survival (all for Lord Temnick to save money of course). Porridge for breakfast, rice for dinner, and water to wash it down—that was the slave’s diet.

  With the new diet Elias was guiding Zac into—protein rich fish and meat, lots of vegetables and fruits for vitamins—Zac felt invincible. Elias was soon commenting that although Zac was years behind in terms of skill, he was a quick learner and he was the strongest, most natural athlete he’d ever worked with. Zac relished these compliments, and as their bond grew, he strove to try and please Elias, pushing himself harder and harder each day.

  Elias focused on Zac’s strengths and fighting style and taught Zac how to overwhelm an enemy with combinations of attacks and unceasing aggression. Elias also started to pick up on the moves Zac loved, the ones he was naturally good at. He was excellent at punching, and with his gauntlets he could stun an enemy with body shots and jabs to the face. Elias helped him come up with a combo beginning with a left jab to the eyes or chin of his opponent. Sometimes Zac used his fist, sometimes the head of the axe. After stunning his opponent with this quick move, Zac could come over the top with a
hard hammer strike—he always held the hammer in his dominant right hand—and then a quick slash with his handaxe.

  The handaxe strike would be aimed right across the neck, half-decapitating the opponent. Elias instructed Zac to make sure he didn’t go too deep and slash into the vertebrae, because then the axe might get stuck. Zac would have to feel the neck muscles slicing apart and pull his strike back.

  “A clean decapitation is possible, but risky with such a small handaxe. You just don’t have the weight,” Elias said.

  Zac chuckled at the matter of fact description.

  Elias added, “The great thing about your punches is that they’re unexpected in a weapons fight. Learn how to feint with your weapons, and then throw quick punches to set up weapon strikes. This will be the backbone of your speed based fighting style,” Elias said after one of the training sessions.

  “We’re building off your talents and strengths—and we’re also making your fight style unique, so that others won’t know how to defend against it or what to expect. This is how we can neutralize the disadvantage your lack of experience poses,” Elias said.

  Artem’s style of fighting was graceful, fluid, and knowledgeable. But it was also too fair, too obvious. He needed to understand how to feint and bait, how to trick the opponent and set up attacks with guile.

  Elias admonished, “You’re not going to be fighting against tribesmen or hunting down game. You’re going to be fighting tooth and nail against all sorts of different warriors, and they will use every advantage they can. So should you!” Elias also taught Artem some dirty tricks that he could use when the officials didn’t have a good view. He told Artem that he didn’t have to fight dirty—but should know how if his opponent was doing it. “If your opponent bends the rules a little bit, you bend them back.”

  When they employed sparring partners, Elias was surprised by how acrobatic Artem was, and how good he was at keeping opponents at a distance and using his height, reach, and the length of his halberd to dance away from attacks and keep opponents helpless. Zac received a lot of bruises and welts trying to catch up with Artem and get in range.