Lucky knelt beside him and raised Alexander’s shirt to reveal the clean and unblemished surface of the dragon-steel chain armor he’d been given only an hour earlier. Lucky nodded in grim satisfaction and permitted only the briefest glance of gratitude to Kelvin before digging into his bag for a jar of healing salve. He took a big dollop of the thick ointment and pulled up the chain and Alexander’s undershirt, revealing the red, swollen, and bruised spot just over his heart. Lucky examined the wound for only a moment before slathering the enchanted ointment over the whole area. Next, he dug a couple of numbweed leaves from his bag and unceremoniously stuffed them into Alexander’s mouth.
Alexander took another breath just as a thunderous jolt shook the door and doorframe. Cracks spread out from the center of the double doors. He started to get up in spite of the waves of pain, but was unable to lift his own weight and that of the pack still strapped on his back. Isabel and Lucky each offered a hand and helped him regain his feet.
Jack was talking to Adele. “Do your quarters have a balcony or a window?” She nodded quickly, with a look of shock and disbelief at the sudden turn of events.
Kelvin turned to Anatoly. “Go! I’ll hold this ground and give you time to escape.”
Anatoly looked the Guild Mage in the eye and nodded with the battle-tested resolve of a hardened soldier. He barked a command to the remaining six guards. “Stand with the Guild Mage! Hold this ground!”
The door shuddered against greater force than it could bear. The cracks widened. The heavy oak bar started to splinter and the locking pins in the floor and ceiling sheered off.
Alexander steadied himself and drew another breath. He could feel the numbweed working. The pain was becoming distant and less urgent. He followed Jack and Adele into the dining room, through the door to the serving quarters, and down the stairs to the level below. With each step his breathing came more easily and the pain receded a little bit more. The injury wasn’t severe, mostly bruising and a few cracked ribs, but it still hurt.
Adele led the way past the kitchen and a number of startled cooks and scullions to a comfortable but simple-looking sitting room with a little balcony about fifty feet up on the side of the detached palace wing.
Jack went out and looked down. He turned back to Adele. “Do you have a rope?” he asked urgently.
She looked flustered for a moment before answering, “Just the one in the well that the kitchen uses for water.”
“Show me,” Jack commanded.
They rushed off and Alexander took the opportunity to sit down and focus on breathing. He drew breath to the limit of his endurance and released it slowly in an effort to keep the bruised muscles of his chest from tightening. The numbness had set in and the drowsiness that always accompanied the healing salve was settling in as well. He was in no danger of losing consciousness but he was starting to get tired. In the distance, they heard another loud thud followed by the cracking and splintering of the doors as they burst open, swung wide, and crashed into the walls. A moment later the whole structure shook violently. Alexander heard shouting followed quickly by the cries of men in battle. He hoped Kelvin would survive the fight.
Jack returned with a rope. The building shuddered again. Alexander heard a groan followed by a loud cracking noise. The structural integrity of the entire building began to fail from the repeated hammer blows of the Guild Mage. Jack ignored the battle raging upstairs and deftly tied one end of the rope around a couch and tossed the other end over the balcony railing. He pushed the couch up to the doorframe to secure the rope and turned to Alexander.
“Can you make it down?” he asked.
Alexander nodded through the pain. “Send Adele and her staff down first. This place isn’t going to hold for long.”
Jack started to protest but stopped short at the look Alexander gave him. Adele was scared of the rope descent but she was more frightened of the fire and battle raging upstairs. She and her staff obeyed their instructions without much fuss and were quickly on the ground. Isabel and Abigail went next, followed by Lucky and then Alexander. He came down too quickly and hit the ground hard, sending him onto his back as the weight of his pack pulled him over. He rolled out of the way for Jack and Anatoly who followed closely behind. There were people in the street looking and pointing at the wing of the palace now half engulfed in flames.
Another great and terrible shock reverberated through the building and into the ground beneath, followed by an ear-splitting crack as the building started to fail. Adele and her staff scattered. Alexander and his companions ran toward the square to get some distance from the building. He knew even as he ran that the enemy waited in the square, but it was the only option. The other three sides of the building were too close to the outer walls of the palace. If the structure collapsed, those roads would be buried with stone and debris.
Even before they reached the end of the road and entered the square, Alexander had drawn his sword. It gave him focus and cleared his mind. Everything else receded from his awareness, even the pain. Right now, he was in a fight and he had a blade in his hand.
They rounded the corner and saw at least twenty men surrounding Wizard Rangle and the giant. The enemy was easily seventy-five feet away and looking up at the burning structure, but they noticed Alexander almost immediately. Even if they hadn’t, they would have in the next moment when Abigail’s first arrow drove cleanly through one of the soldiers and skittered across the flagstone square, trailing blood behind it. The middle of the square was empty with the exception of the enemy, but citizens of New Ruatha stood in clusters all around the square’s edge watching the spectacle.
The enemy turned as one and loosed a volley of crossbow bolts at them. They were close enough to the corner of the building to retreat behind it to avoid the deadly rain. Alexander cast about for an escape route. The square was mostly shopfronts with a few roads leading out here and there, but the closest road was a hundred feet away.
The building shuddered again and the side opposite them started to crumble. It was slow at first as if the building was reluctant to let go of its life and form, then it accelerated in a great rumbling, crashing cacophony. Alexander stole a look around the corner and saw that the enemy was distracted by the collapse of the building and the rising dust cloud. He shouted, “Now!” and ran for the road.
They were almost there when Alexander heard the giant command his troops to give chase. He glanced and saw Rangle creating another ball of liquid fire between his outstretched hands. The undulating bubble filled with angry-looking orange-red liquid. He looked back to his sister. She was running with an arrow already nocked. Alexander pointed at Rangle and shouted, “Abby!”
She spun, saw the threat, and drew just as Rangle released the ball of liquid fire. She brought up her aim a bit and let her arrow go. It leapt from the bow and streaked to the ball of fire sailing toward them. Arrow and magic met in the sky above a cluster of charging troops. The arrow entered the bubble whole and exited as a spray of char and fire. The bubble burst, showering liquid fire down onto the mercenaries below.
Alexander heard Anatoly in the background shout, “Well done!” to Abigail.
They made it to the edge of the square and raced into the street with the sound of screaming in the distance and footfalls somewhat closer. There were at least ten men still chasing them, followed by the giant and Rangle. They ran to the first turn and rounded the corner when Alexander stopped. His chest ached and his lungs burned. He’d had enough of running and was starting to feel an implacable anger at the injustice of Phane and everything he stood for well up inside of him again. They all stopped with him, looking for a place to escape.
“We stand,” he said. “Right here. Isabel, Abigail, take positions over there and kill that wizard if he rounds this corner.” Alexander pointed to a wagon parked without its team across the street and forty feet or so from the corner.
“Anatoly, are you tired of running?” Alexander asked his old mentor.
Ana
toly set his face and nodded slowly as he hefted his axe onto his shoulder.
They could hear the fall of boots approaching quickly. Alexander shrugged off his pack, bow, and quiver. Anatoly tossed his pack aside, too. Jack pulled up his hood and vanished against the pattern of the wall, while Lucky backed off a dozen feet or so down the sidewalk and pulled a vial from his bag.
The moment the first three men rounded the corner, the ground shook from the collapse of the remaining part of the north wing of the palace. The men were distracted just enough by the huge crash that they were totally surprised to find Alexander and Anatoly standing there waiting for them.
Anatoly struck first. A great downward diagonal stroke with his war axe caught the first man on the left shoulder and cleaved him clear through to the right hip. Alexander caught the next man on the point of his sword and drove the blade through his heart and out his back before swiftly drawing it out, stepping past the dying man who hadn’t yet slumped to the ground, and deftly chopping off the arm of the next man with a swift downward stroke.
The rest of the men poured around the corner and something snapped into place in Alexander’s mind. He released all thought. An icy calm flooded into him. He found himself in the singular moment of the now. There was nothing but him, the enemy, and his blade.
He whirled, slashed, and thrust with precision and economy of motion, no longer driven by thought or calculation but by instinct and magic. When he struck, the enemy fell. When they struck, he simply wasn’t in the path of their attack. Their blades fell on empty space while his unerringly found its mark with ruinous precision. He felt the melding of his blade skill and his all around sight. He found that he didn’t need to see with his eyes because his mind’s eye saw more quickly and more accurately. Anatoly fought with the discipline of a trained soldier. Jack could be seen flickering into view and lashing out with his knife. Alexander saw the giant coming and altered his course through the enemy to meet the new attack, but Anatoly was closer.
Anatoly and the giant met head-on and crashed into each other with fury. Their battle was a contest of strength, mass, and anger. Their collision drove them both to the ground where they lost hold of their weapons and resorted to grappling. The giant was a good six inches taller than Anatoly and at least a hundred pounds heavier, but Anatoly was wearing the belt that Kelvin had given him. Alexander calmly, almost routinely, killed the last of the charging guards while Anatoly gained his feet with one of the giant’s hands in his vice-like grip. He spun around once, then twice, and tossed the giant through the air and into the window of a shopfront across the street.
Alexander turned to see Rangle standing thirty feet away preparing another ball of liquid fire. He didn’t waste a moment. He tossed his sword into his off hand, slipped a knife from his boot and threw it with clean precision at the fire wizard. Rangle saw it coming and did the only thing he could, the only thing that would save him. He interrupted the casting of his spell, causing the magic to dissipate and the liquid fire to evaporate before it could fully manifest. The alternative was to allow Alexander’s knife to break the bubble as it formed and have his own liquid fire splash all over him. Alexander’s knife drove into Rangle’s shoulder instead. Alexander steeled himself with grim determination. He was going to kill Rangle and he was going to do it right now. He started toward the wizard until the giant rose from the rubble of the shop and hurled a javelin at him. Without his all around sight he would have been too late to avoid it. As it was, the javelin missed him by just inches.
Rangle was casting another spell but this time it came out much more quickly. A plane of reddish heat formed before him, blocking Alexander’s path. Two arrows zipped by Alexander from behind but turned to ash when they passed through the wall of heat. The giant was preparing to throw another javelin when Abigail and Isabel turned their arrows on him. Each of them loosed an arrow, causing his javelin to go wide. Isabel’s arrow bounced harmlessly off his breastplate, but Abigail’s arrow drove through the steel breastplate and an inch into his chest over his right lung. He cried out in rage and surprise.
Both turned and fled, Rangle retreating back into the square toward the rubble of the collapsed palace wing and the giant into the storefront he’d just demolished. Alexander wanted to pursue them but he reminded himself that the battle mage may well have survived the confrontation with Kelvin and could still be coming for him. Alexander gave one last look toward the burning mound of broken stone and timber that only minutes ago had been his lavish quarters and silently asked the Maker to deliver Kelvin alive and whole from the rubble. He turned without a word and found his pack.
Chapter 52
“Let’s go.”
Alexander headed off down the street, drawing stares from the people he passed. It wasn’t five minutes before he heard the sound of galloping horses. He started looking for a way off the road when a platoon of palace guards rounded the corner and headed straight for him. The commander was Captain Sava.
“To the King!” he shouted fiercely to his men at the sight of Alexander.
Only moments later Alexander and his friends were surrounded by a protective cordon of loyal soldiers.
Captain Sava dismounted and saluted crisply, fist to heart. “Lord Alexander, we feared the worst when the north wing collapsed. The Regent has ordered …”
Alexander cut him off. “Have six of your men dismount. We need their horses. Six men will provide escort to the stables. The rest will begin searching for a giant about seven feet tall and maybe three hundred and fifty pounds, a wizard dressed in brown robes with a knife sticking out of his right shoulder, and another wizard about five and a half feet tall and dressed in black. Engage with superior numbers using archers or crossbows. They’re all extremely dangerous, especially the one in black. Finally, the Guild Mage may be buried in the rubble of the visitor’s wing. Summon what men you need to dig him out.”
Captain Sava didn’t hesitate. He ordered the nearest six men to dismount. Without taking a breath, he started assigning duties to the rest of his men. Only moments later Alexander and his companions were on horseback and racing through the streets of the city toward the stables. They arrived quickly with Captain Sava in the lead. The captain called out orders to make Alexander’s horses ready immediately. The stable master was a competent man who understood an occasional need for urgency. He didn’t ask questions but instead started barking commands to his stable hands and had Alexander’s group mounted on well-bred, well-trained steeds in minutes.
“Captain Sava, see that the Regent is aware of the events of this morning. I will return soon.” Alexander offered the man his hand.
Captain Sava took it with pride. “I will see to it myself. Safe journey, Lord Alexander.”
Jack led the way down the winding roads away from the central plateau and into the less affluent neighborhoods below. People stopped to look when they passed and whispered or pointed at Alexander. He didn’t pay any attention to them; instead he scanned for threats. He didn’t know what Phane might throw at him next and wanted to be sure that he saw it coming, whatever it was.
Soon they were out of the city and on the plains to the north of New Ruatha, riding hard toward the looming black mountain on the horizon that was Blackstone Keep. The road they followed looked as though it had once been well traveled but had long ago fallen into disuse and disrepair. An hour out of the city they slowed their pace to rest the horses. Blackstone Keep was a two-day ride even if it looked like it was only a few hours away. He had to assume that his enemies would be coming after him, so he felt a sense of urgency to cover more ground, to keep running, but he had to protect the horses. If they lost even one, it would slow them down more than anything else.
He was lost in thought when he heard Slyder overhead. He looked up to see the small-framed forest hawk circling high above. Isabel tipped her head back slightly and closed her eyes. Her shoulders tensed in alarm even before her piercing green eyes snapped open.
“Enemy to the north
, maybe an hour’s ride. Looks like troops from Headwater. They’re spread out in a watch line for miles in each direction.”
Alexander reined in his horse and brought the big chestnut stallion to a stop, patting the side of his neck to reassure him.
“How thin is the line?” he asked.
“Squads of four every mile or so,” Isabel answered. “Just close enough to see the next link in the chain.”
Alexander was tired of running. He was tired of being hunted. And he was angry. The simple injustice of it gnawed at him. Phane wanted to rule the world, not to help make it a better place, not to heal people or bring nations together, not to prevent war or establish stability through just and moral law. He wanted to rule the world to placate his ego. He wanted to be more important than everybody else and he wanted everyone alive to know it. Petty ego. Self-aggrandizement. Narcissism.
Alexander stared at the silhouette of Blackstone Keep while his blood boiled at a low simmer. When the thought occurred to him, he almost laughed.
“Have you tried talking to your horse yet?” he asked Isabel.
She looked almost startled.
“No. In the excitement I forgot all about it,” she said. Her hand came up to the finely crafted animal-charm necklace around her neck.
“Give it a try. Ask your horse how she’s feeling. In fact, ask them all, if you can,” Alexander suggested.
She gave him a blank look for a moment. “I’m not sure how it works but I’ll try.” She placed her hand on the neck of her horse and closed her eyes. Alexander could see the aura of the necklace swell with the flow of magic.
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