by Dale Lucas
No. He couldn’t give in to that sort of despair. That was how duels were lost. Just as his father’s master-at-arms had taught him, Rem had to drive away the desire for a given outcome—the lust of result, he used to call it. There was only the moment. Only necessity, opportunity. As Rem parried yet another blow that thrust too near to his exposed throat, then blocked a feint from the Estavari’s poniard that dove for his right flank, he pressed all desire and hope away from himself. There could be no hoped-for outcome, no preferred end: there was only blocking the Estavari’s attacks and launching attacks of his own. Thrust, parry, feint, block, riposte. Lunge, thrust, block, retreat. Back and forth they went, the two of them oblivious to the chaos and bloodshed all around them, two contestants locked in a contest for the ultimate prize: life itself.
And miraculously, Rem once more seemed to gain some advantage, however tenuous. He blocked three thrusts, then drew blood from his opponent’s left flank with a hasty pass of his own. The Estavari’s apparent shock at that reversal gave Rem an instant that he exploited. He pressed his opponent, driving him back with a series of fierce blows in succession from both short sword and cutlass. Back and back the hired swordsman retreated. On Rem came, determined to press his coup until he could land another cutting blow.
Success! Rem saw that the retreating Estavari was just about to run into a fallen corpse on the deck. If Rem could press him, send him tumbling backward over that fallen sailor, then Rem might have a chance.
Then something heavy slammed into Rem from the left—a wardwatchman, reeling from a broad, bloody wound across his middle. From the corner of his eye, Rem saw this wounded ally, hands pressed to his bleeding gash, too stunned to watch where he was stumbling. He and Rem fell in a tangle of limbs and curses and hit the deck hard. When Rem landed, both swords went clattering from his hands. Indifferent to the wounded watchwarden’s groans, Rem kicked free of the fellow’s bent frame and tried to scramble for one of his fallen blades.
The Estavari charged as Rem dove. The bravo drove his own sword’s point right into the deck before Rem’s grasping hand. Rem managed to draw his hand back just in time, nearly losing his fingers. His sword was out of reach. The Estavari—and his very deadly blades—stood between him and it.
Rem raised his eyes. The bravo lowered his sword point to Rem’s throat. The blade lingered, sharp and deadly.
“It was a good contest,” the bravo said, smirk returning, his tone almost wistful. “When next I drink, I’ll drink to you, lad.”
CHAPTER TWENTY–EIGHT
Rem prepared to feel the cold bite of the bravo’s blade in his throat, the sudden outrush of hot blood and the quick ebb of life into the cold darkness of death. Above him, the bravo drew back his blade and prepared for the killing thrust.
Then a small bulky form came soaring out of the fray, describing a long, shallow arc through the air toward Rem’s would-be killer. It was Torval. He held a battle-ax—newly acquired from a fallen foe, no doubt—and with both of his thick, strong hands he brought the blade crashing down.
The blade bit deep into the bravo’s skull from behind, cleaving his black-haired head in two, the weight of the blow and Torval’s falling form driving the bravo’s suddenly rag-limp body to the deck right on top of Rem. Rem cowered and closed his eyes as the dead man, the deadly blade, and the tumbling dwarf all plunged toward him. A moment later, Rem was crushed under the weight of two bodies and felt hot blood sheeting over his face. He opened his eyes and saw the dead man’s staring eyes and the leading edge of Torval’s blade just an inch from the tip of his own nose.
From atop the fallen bravo, Torval sat up.
Rem blinked.
Torval yanked on the ax handle. The blade stuck fast in the bravo’s skull, so it brought the whole limp body with it. Torval shoved the corpse aside, and Rem was suddenly free, albeit covered in his would-be murderer’s blood.
Torval offered Rem a hand. “On your feet, lad. This bloody business isn’t over yet.”
Rem took Torval’s hand and found his feet again. Quickly, he snatched up his fallen sword and studied his slain adversary.
“Pity,” Rem said. “I really think I had him.”
Torval gave a grim smirk, then reached behind himself and drew out his maul, which was tucked in his belt at the small of his back. “Thank me later, then, when you’ve come to your senses.”
Rem surveyed the deck quickly. The watch was winning, only a few belligerent pirates and crewmen still in the fight, the rest stone-dead on the deck, nursing wounds, or already bound and ready for incarceration. They had not won the night yet, but all apparent signs pointed to a rapidly approaching victory.
“Rem, lad! At the stern!” Torval shouted, and pointed toward the aft deck. Rem followed Torval’s pointing finger and immediately saw what had Torval so agitated.
Masarda, seeing his bodyguard cold on the deck and the tide of battle turning in the watchmen’s favor, was slinking toward the port side of the ship, a look of angry panic on his thin, pale face.
Masarda was making a run for it.
In silent accord, Rem and Torval gave chase.
The chaos on the deck around them was still thick, despite the fact that the standing watchwardens now outnumbered their still-fighting adversaries. Rem could have sworn that when they boarded, he counted no more than twenty sailors on deck. But more had been waiting, perhaps in the hold, perhaps in the rigging, for there were certainly just as many joined in the fray at the present moment, while almost two score—sailors and watchwardens—lay scattered around, lifeless or nursing wounds or trying to keep from being stepped on by their battling compatriots.
As Rem and Torval wove a zigzagging path through the calamity, they were nearly skewered, axed, speared, bludgeoned, chain-whipped, and tackled. They pressed on, nonetheless, intent on being drawn no further into the melee. They had their eyes on their quarry: Mykaas Masarda, the villain whom all this bitter business hinged upon, who even now hurried down the stern-deck stairs, made his way along the port gunwale of the caravel, then, when the moment was right, leapt over the rail and down onto the pier. Rem and Torval reached the gunwale mere moments behind him. Down below, Masarda had landed hard and rolled. He now regained his feet, and dashed off toward the darkness that was shrouding the storehouses and customs stations beyond the pier along the waterfront. Rem knew well that if Masarda reached those dark labyrinths with any considerable lead on them, he would probably escape.
Torval didn’t hesitate. Short or no, the dwarf leapt right up onto the gunwale, then launched himself into space. He landed square on his feet, making a loud thud, as though someone had dropped a heavy chest laden with gold and lead, then took off in a sprint after their suspect. Rem hove himself over the gunwale and followed.
The world grew strangely quiet as the turbulence and tumult of the battle on the ship’s deck dwindled and the torchlight and lamplight of the ship’s deck receded. The tenebrous fog that shrouded the waterfront engulfed them. All Rem heard was the thumping of their feet as they ran, the pounding of his own thudding heart in his ears. Rem saw Torval about fifty feet ahead of him, and beyond Torval, the fleeing Masarda, his rich silk and velvet robes flowing behind him like a harlequin cloak. The elven flesh peddler seemed to be angling toward a broad, ill-lit alley between two customhouses.
“Torval!” Rem called. “Don’t let him—”
“I know!” the dwarf shouted back over his shoulder, never breaking stride.
The darkness swallowed Masarda. Rem couldn’t believe how thick, how palpable that darkness seemed to be. One moment the elf was there, fleeing; the next, he was gone, swallowed by the lurid, lightless abyss between the two looming customhouses. Pounding nearer, Rem thought he saw the elf’s furtive form moving fleetly among stacked crates and scattered detritus in the dark alleyway, but he couldn’t be sure.
Ahead of him, the same darkness swallowed Torval.
Damn! Both of them vanished, swallowed by the shadows! Rem summoned
a little more strength, a little more speed, and went hurtling into the malign darkness after them. When the murk swallowed him, Rem dug in his heels and scuffed to a halt. Everything was indistinct and still, the world around him a sinister patchwork of gray blacks and blue blacks sewn onto and thrown into relief against even deeper blacks. The walls of the customhouses rose on either side of him, baleful and ominous. What he thought might be empty crates and discarded pallets littered the darkness like the bones of old mammoths and dragons strewn on a blasted, moonless moor. Not only was he very nearly blind, he was also moving into a narrow passage cluttered with obscured obstacles, replete with places to hide or from which to mount an ambush.
And Rem guessed that an elf, even one no longer capable of using his mind alone to communicate, probably had better night vision than he.
He heard heavy footsteps ahead and off to his right, but no answer came.
Rem drew a breath. Blinked. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but it availed him little. He just saw the crowded world before him in more subtle shades of black and gray. When he finally decided to press on, he took three steps, then tripped over something that stretched and shifted with his passage. He caught himself before falling on his face, and felt what had caught him with his hands: it was a span of discarded fishing net, its hemp coarse and dry from long abandonment. Rem managed to stand and tried to disentangle himself. He freed one leg, but the other held fast. When he finally managed to yank that leg free of the net’s grip, he lost his balance and went tumbling backward into a heap of splintery old crates. Something atop one of the crates fell when he nudged it. When it hit the stony alley floor, it rang like metal, then thumped like wood.
“Poor, blind manling,” a silky voice purred from some deep corner of the inky blackness.
It was Masarda, hiding somewhere in the shadows ahead, waiting for him. Rem tried to pinpoint where the voice came from, but his fear and the darkness made it impossible. Knowing that he needed some advantage—any advantage—Rem turned, used the crate as an anchor, and crouched toward where he’d heard the fallen object land. He felt about in the darkness. His hands finally found a long, slender shaft, damp and cold in the night air, pocked with rust. It was mounted atop a thick wooden pole.
That’s what he had knocked over when he thumped into this crate, then: an old whaler’s harpoon.
“I should warn you, boy, that you have no hope of besting me, hand to hand or blade to blade. One of my owners saw little value in me as a laborer, but ample opportunity for me as blade fodder in the blood-sport ring. No one was more surprised or delighted than he when I survived that first match—and almost two dozen thereafter.”
Rem let his fingers slide along the harpoon’s length, seeking its spear tip. The shaft was old and rusted, slightly bent, but the tip still felt somewhat sharp, deadly enough. Rem decided that in such close quarters, unable to see anything around him, it might be a good idea to have a throwaway weapon that could work equally well as both a wide block and a leverage against bodily attacks. Thus, he lifted the old harpoon, couched it in his grip like a spear, and regained his feet. He slowly advanced into the inky night, his sword swinging in its scabbard at his hip.
“I earned my freedom with blood, boy—can you say the same?”
“I thought elves were a silent folk,” Rem snapped in response. “Shut your mouth and make your move, if you’re so bloody dangerous.”
Surely Masarda heard the trembling in his voice, the fear underlying the bravado, even if being thorned meant he could no longer read minds. Rem couldn’t even fool himself into thinking he wasn’t worried about the outcome of this misadventure.
“Quake in fear, Watchman. Your time will come.”
Rem moved forward, caution making his legs stiff and his feet heavy. “Torval?” he hissed, trying to locate his companion, finding no sign of him. Wan light seemed to bloom above him and descend like slow-falling rain, drawing out the contours and gilding the leading edges of the detritus littering the alleyway. For a moment, Rem wondered just what was happening, then realized that, above them, the clouds must have drifted, revealing the slim crescent moon that hung in the sky and giving them, even through the considerable mists that shrouded Yenara at this hour, some small increase in light. Something moved off to his right, fleet and low, and set his heart hammering in his chest. He swung the harpoon toward the moving shadow. When he blinked and tried to focus on its movement, he realized it was too low to the ground to be his elven adversary. It was only a stray cat, green eyes flashing in the dark.
“Tilting at phantoms,” Masarda taunted. “Your dread is pitiful.”
There was a quick, soft sound off to his left. A heavy foot crushing loose sand and gravel beneath its weight. Rem turned toward the sound and there, in the diaphanous darkness, he thought he saw his partner’s low, broad form materializing out of the moon-silvered fog.
Rem fought the urge to say something, assuming that Torval, like most dwarves, had good enough night vision to know that his partner was just ahead of him. Of course, Torval could see him clearly, and would be at his side in moments—
Then steel whispered from a scabbard. In the murk, Rem saw a lithe figure separate itself from the deepest shadows and spring toward Torval. Only the sudden movement of the two figures drew them out of the darkness and made them distinct in Rem’s vision. Rem thought he saw the flash of steel in the moonlight and cried out, barely able to help himself.
“Torval, behind you!”
The dwarf half turned, but Masarda was already on him. The long, curved dagger in the elf’s hand flashed—its blade clearly visible because it caught the pallid moonlight—and dug deep into Torval’s muscled flank. Torval roared, enraged, and Rem saw the maul in the dwarf’s hand rise for a killing blow.
But Masarda had the advantage. His lithe form swung behind the dwarf, out of the path of his maul, as he simultaneously twisted the knife in Torval’s side. Torval’s maul fell to the ground with a ferrous clatter. Rem charged toward them, bent and rusted old harpoon ready. As he neared, he realized that there was another blade in Masarda’s second hand. That blade hovered at Torval’s throat. Both figures were still.
Rem edged closer, blinking. He held the harpoon low, ready for an underhand thrust. He tried to get a better image of the two shadowy figures before him, but they were little more than moon-edged silhouettes, just like everything else in the alleyway: ghosts of themselves, half-effaced by gloom and fog.
Nonetheless, Rem thought he saw precisely what was unfolding. Masarda was behind Torval, crouching a little so that the dwarf’s short, broad body protected his own. One slender elven hand kept the first dagger planted in Torval’s left flank, just below his ribs, while the other hand held a similar curved blade to Torval’s thick throat, ready to slice it at a moment’s notice. Although Rem could not be sure, he thought he caught the glitter of Masarda’s almond-shaped elven eyes in the shadows, studying him, daring him to edge closer.
“Another step,” the elf said, “and the Stump dies.”
Rem did not drop the harpoon, but he did raise a single hand in deference.
“Drop the harpoon, clumsy weapon though it is,” Masarda said. “I want both of your hands where I can see them.”
Rem nodded. “Fine,” he said, “just don’t—”
“Don’t you do it, lad,” Torval growled.
“Quiet!” Masarda hissed, jerking the hovering blade closer to Torval’s throat and digging the other deeper into the dwarf’s flank.
Everything that happened next happened quickly.
Rem saw Torval, still howling from the pain of that twisted knife in his side, pivot and wrench away from Masarda’s grip. One thick-fingered hand rose, grasped the arm holding the dagger close to Torval’s own throat, and yanked. Masarda tried to compensate and return the dagger to its previous position, ready to cut Torval’s throat and bleed him like a pig, but the moment gained by Torval yanking the dagger away was enough. Torval sounded a low, bello
wing battle cry, bent forward, then jerked his head backward with all the force he could muster. Rem heard Masarda’s nose break, saw moonlight glinting on a sudden rush of blood sheeting down the elf’s long, narrow face.
Then Torval collapsed. Masarda stood unprotected, a clear target.
Rem’s instincts seized him. He lifted the harpoon, took the length of a single, in-drawn breath to aim down the slightly bent shaft, then hove the awkward iron-and-wood pike as hard as he could. The harpoon sailed in a long, flat arc. There was a grunt, a groan, then Masarda’s legs folded beneath him.
Rem rushed forward. Torval, nearer to the fallen elf, rolled toward him and disarmed him, clumsily swiping each dagger from Masarda’s grip in turn. Rem blinked, trying to get a good look at Masarda in the dark. If he was not mistaken, the elf’s eyes were still open wide. His face was covered in a glut of shiny black blood, all gushing from his newly broken nose. The harpoon had skewered him just below the ribs, passing through cleanly and gleaming out the far side of him. It probably hurt like the sundry hells, but it didn’t look like a killing wound.
At least, not right away.
“Your whistle,” Torval said.
“What?” Rem asked.
“Your whistle,” Torval said again, weak and wheezing. There was agony in the dwarf’s voice, and the sound of that agony gave Rem a terrible fright. “Blow your whistle.”
Rem suddenly realized that Torval was talking about the little brass whistle that Rem wore—that all the watchwardens wore—about his neck. He reached into his shirt to fetch it.
That’s when Torval exhaled a long, rattling breath and seemed to go limp on the dirty floor of the alleyway.
Rem blew his whistle. The sound was shrill and vulgar in the still night air. Moments later, he started screaming. Amid the pounding of bootheels coming nearer and voices crying out in the dark, he thought he also heard Mykaas Masarda laughing where he lay.