Defiant Guardians Anthology

by Jacob Peppers

  At least two guards keeping watch and plenty more within the house itself, that was certain. He hurried through the streets, working his way back and behind the man in the alleyway and sliding the knife from his boot as he did, concealing it against his arm.

  The guard was alert, ready. Aaron had barely taken a step down the alley when the man spun, something—Aaron was damnably sure it was a crossbow, given his luck of late—held in his hands. “Who’s that?”

  Aaron judged the distance, knowing it was too far and then, praying that the darkness would conceal him, “Ah, shit, man. Don’t be such a bitch. Claude’s got me patrolling, alright?” he said, moving closer, “Just checking to make sure everything’s good out here. Hate to think you were gettin’ bored.”

  The man grunted, the crossbow relaxing in his hands, “Shit, I’ll take bored. Better than being in there, listening to that poor bastard’s screams. Had to hear that shit anymore, I’d probably lose my fucking mind.”

  “Yeah,” Aaron said, thinking, only ten feet more, maybe less, “Well, what are you gonna do? The man’s got his tastes.”

  The guard must have heard something he didn’t like in Aaron’s tone. He shifted, and the crossbow came up again, “Hey, what did you say your name was? They just checked on me less than an hour ago, and it don’t seem I remember Claude taking on any new—“

  Aaron was on him before he finished talking. He knocked the crossbow aside just in time, and the bolt shattered against the cobbled street, a clap of thunder in the near silence. The guard recoiled, perhaps meaning to run, but Aaron rushed into him, slamming him against the wall of the alley. Before the man could react, Aaron grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked his head back, pulling his knife across the guard’s throat. Blood fountained out, spilling over his borrowed clothes, and Aaron clapped a hand over the man’s mouth, holding on grimly as his struggles grew weaker and then stopped altogether. Panting with the effort and from the brief but intense struggle, Aaron lowered the man down until he sat propped against the alley wall, his head sagging over his ruined throat.

  Gasping, his left arm throbbing in pain, Aaron rested against the wall of the alley and fought to get his ragged breathing under control. Damned fool, he cursed himself, you got in a hurry, and you nearly got killed for your trouble. He wondered of what his old master would say if he saw him now but thought he knew well enough. Darrell had never been short on lessons, after all. Recklessness and desperation will kill a man quicker than any blade. Knowledge and patience—these are a swordsman’s greatest weapons. It had been one of the man’s favorite lessons, most often after Aaron had lost his temper during a training session, forgetting what he’d learned in his anger and getting plenty of fresh bruises for his trouble.

  Reckless and desperate. Well, Aaron was both of those now and no help for it. He would worry about knowledge and patience later, after he got his mother’s necklace back. If, of course, he was still alive to worry about anything. For now, he could only count on speed and surprise, neither of which would aid him should someone happen by and find the dead man in the alley before he was finished with his business.

  He levered himself off the alley wall, wiped his blade clean on the dead man’s tunic, and started back to the house where he’d saw the curtain move in a shuffling run. He came at it from the side, staying in a low crouch beneath the windows as he worked his way around the perimeter of the house. He could hear the muffled sound of voices from inside but was unable to make out the words.

  Slowly, carefully, he crept around the house’s edge until he was on the side nearest the one Lucius had indicated. He waited, listening for any signs of someone inside watching it. Hearing nothing, he lifted his head up enough to peer into the window. He looked in on what appeared to be a small bedroom. The blankets on the bed were in disarray, indicating recent use but, for now, at least, the room was empty. Before he could second guess himself, he turned and dashed across the empty space between the two houses, expecting at any moment to hear the sounds of alarm. None came, and he made it to the back of Claude’s home, out of view of anyone who might take a look out of the other house’s windows. He knelt down, leaning against the house’s wooden wall, and gave his hammering heart a moment to slow.

  The muffled sound of a scream broke the silence, and he tensed, shooting glances around him in the darkness. No men appeared with swords drawn, crossbows fixed, and, in another moment, he realized that the scream had been coming from inside Claude’s home, not from the guard station. Taking slow deep breaths and fighting down the urge to run, he made his way around the back of the house, searching for any door or window that he could use to gain entry. He’d made it halfway around the side of the house when he grew convinced that there was no door or window on this side, and he cursed himself for a fool. Knowledge and patience. He could hear the old man’s chiding voice as clearly as if he’d been standing right beside him.

  Aaron had been in such a hurry that he hadn’t studied the layout of the house like he should have, had been so wrapped up in getting his mother’s necklace back that he hadn’t spared the time he needed to do a thorough reconnaissance of the place. He’d been in a hurry, and he’d been careless, both mistakes that were worth a man’s life in a place like the Downs. How long before someone found the dead man? An hour? Less?

  Struggling to keep his rising panic under control, Aaron forced himself to continue his search. The darkness was complete, a starless night, and he was forced to feel along the wall with his hands for a window or door. He’d nearly reached the end when a small, almost imperceptible glimmer of orange light caught his eye at the base of the wall. He crept toward it, kneeling down, and a flood of relief washed through him. The light was coming from a small window where it met the ground. A basement. Of course. If the stories about Claude were true—and Aaron had no reason to believe otherwise—the man would want privacy while he sated whatever perverse hungers he had. Knowledge was all well and good, he decided, but luck would do in a pinch.

  He examined the window in the dim orange glow of what must have been a candle on the inside of the room. The window was equipped with a simple latch and some kind of material—it appeared to be wool—had been stuffed around its frame in an effort to sound proof the basement. An explanation for the muffled screams he’d heard earlier.

  Aaron risked a glance through the window, but it was covered in soot, and he could see nothing but vague outlines of what looked to be a wall. He tried the window and was unsurprised to find it locked. He glanced around him then quickly tore another strip from his shirt—Gods, but he hoped Celes didn’t want the clothes back. He wrapped the cloth around his fist and struck the window once, wincing as it broke and listening to the almost musical sound of shattered glass tinkling on the floor below. He waited for several seconds, holding his breath, anticipating sounds of alarm from inside. When none came, he unfastened the latch, brushing aside pieces of broken glass before easing the window open.

  Gods, but I must have Inaden’s own luck tonight. But the God of Luck was ever a fickle god, and there was no telling how his dice might land. Refusing to tempt his fate any further, Aaron glanced around once more, ensuring himself that he was alone. Then he pulled his knife from his boot, climbed through the window, and landed in a crouch on the basement’s hard stone floor.

  He rose and was about to turn when he felt the sharp point of a blade at his back, “Picked the wrong house to rob, friend.”

  Shit. Aaron tensed and another lesson of his old master came to him. Never do what they expect, lad. In a duel, as in war, a man’s greatest advantage is taking his opponent by surprise.

  The man would expect him to cower, to beg, maybe. He would expect to have the upper hand. What he wouldn’t expect—or so Aaron hoped—was for the apparent robber to attack.

  He spun, grunting as the man’s knife traced a line of fire across his back. He had an instant to register the look of surprise on the guard’s face before he buried his own blade in the man’s
throat. The man started to cry out, but Aaron clamped his other hand over the man’s mouth, silencing any noise that might give him away.

  He held the man that way for several seconds, waiting for his struggles to cease. When they finally did, he eased the corpse to the ground, wincing at the sharp pain where the blade had scored him. He ran a hand along his own lower back and grimaced as it came away red with blood. Gods, but I’ve got to be running out of the stuff.

  The cut was shallow though, thank the gods, and he looked up, taking in his surroundings. He was in a large basement, poorly lit by two candles sitting on a table nearby. He noticed a chair—where the guard must have been sitting—beside a set of stairs that went to the first floor of the house. Another door, closed now, led to a separate room in the basement and it was from this room that the man’s screams (no longer muffled, but loud and terrible) came.

  The sharp, tangy smell of blood and the sweet, sickening aroma of burning flesh filled his nostrils, and Aaron gagged, barely suppressing the urge to puke. Gods above, how had the guard stood it? The only explanation was that he must have grown accustomed to the smell, being down here so long, and to Aaron’s mind there were some things a man should never get used to.

  He hesitated, glancing at the stairwell in case someone had heard the guard’s struggles and was coming to check. Seeing no one, he drew his sword in one hand and, holding his knife in the other, eased the door open.

  Inside, the smell hit him like a physical blow, and he gagged again. The sour taste of vomit coated his throat, and he barely managed to suppress it. A man—or what once had been a man—hung from two thick wooden poles in the center of the room, a wrist and ankle tied to each pole. The man’s fingers had all been cut off, the bloody nubs lay scattered on the floor around him, and one of his feet was missing, but that was not the worst of it. The man’s nose was gone, and in its place was a gaping hole that looked to have been recently burned. Aaron noted, distractedly, that two steel brands lay in a fireplace, the fire burning lively inside and providing more than enough light to fill the small room.

  A man that had to be Claude stood at one corner of the room, his back to Aaron. He’d taken his shirt off, displaying a sickly pale white torso, thick with fat and covered in curly black hair. He only wore a pair of dress trousers, having removed his shoes, too, and was currently sorting through a variety of sharp, cruel instruments that lay spread out on a table in front of him, picking one up and examining it before putting it down and looking at another.

  The man hanging from the pole noticed Aaron and began to scream, terribly, pitiable screams with no words in them, only anguish and pain. Aaron doubted if the man could speak at all after what he’d been through. Claude must have taken the man’s screams as a matter of course, not bothering to look back at the man as he continued to look through his tools. “You know,” the fat man said in a conversational tone, “it really is quite amazing what the human body can experience and still survive. And I should know,” he said with a high-pitched giggle that would have been more at home on a little girl, “you could say that I’ve made a study of it.”

  “Ah,” he said, holding up what looked like a set of tongs whose edges had been sharpened. “There we are. For example,” he said, turning to the man, oblivious of Aaron standing in the doorway, “did you know that with this—a device of my own design—I can pluck out one of your eyeballs in a moment? And yet, still, you will survive it.”

  The poor bastard made strangled, gargling noises in his throat, spitting out blood, his eyes gazing at Aaron with desperation. Noticing this, Claude sighed, the sound of a man struggling to perform for an audience that didn’t appreciate him. “It’s about damned time,” he said, turning, “I asked for more wood nearly an hour a—“ he cut off staring at Aaron, a look of confusion on his face. “Wait a minute you’re not—“

  Aaron made a sound of disgust and lashed out, hitting the man in the face with the handle of his knife. Claude made a strangled sound of pain and stumbled back, his thick, stumpy arms—covered in blood nearly to the shoulder—waving frantically before he fell down in a sitting position, both hands covering his nose. “Do you have any idea—“ he started, his voice muffled.

  “Yeah,” Aaron interrupted, taking slow breaths in an effort to keep down his rising gorge, “I know exactly who you are, you sick bastard. Now, if you so much as make a sound when I don’t ask for it, if you move, I’ll carve you up. I’ll make what you did to this poor bastard look like a child’s work. Are we clear?” A lie, that. He might kill the man, sure, but he’d never be able to bring himself to do the things that had been done to the man hanging from the wooden beams.

  The initial shock of the blow gone, Claude let his hands fall into his lap, staring at Aaron with eyes that didn’t show fear or even anger, only a dead sort of surety. “Oh, if it isn’t Aaron Envelar. And how are you today, Mr. Envelar?”

  Aaron frowned, “How do you know my name?”

  Claude smiled, displaying a row of perfect teeth stained red with blood. “Oh, I make it my business to know about anybody of relevance in the Downs. Still, I must confess to a certain degree of surprise in seeing you walking around. I would have thought Hale’s men would have finished the job.” He made a tsking sound in his throat, “You really never can get good help these days.”

  “I’m harder to kill than I look,” Aaron said, wincing as a wave of dizziness—probably from blood loss, if he had to guess—came over him.

  The fat man’s smile widened, “I’m excited to hear it. I find that too many of my,” he gestured vaguely at the man hanging from the posts, “experiments, die prematurely. I will make it a point of taking my time with you. After, of course, I get some practice in on everyone you care about.”

  Aaron grunted a laugh, “That’s a short list there, fat man.”

  “Oh?” Claude asked, raising an eyebrow, “Is that so? Everybody has someone, Mr. Envelar. Or does the barmaid … what is her name? Ah, yes, Celes. Does she mean so little to you? And what of her boss? May, isn’t it?” He nodded, “An admirable woman. I wonder how long she would last.”

  Aaron took a step closer, pointing his sword at the chubby man’s throat, “Another word about either of them, and I’ll kill you now.”

  The man laughed, a tittering, girlish laugh that made Aaron’s skin crawl, “No, Mr. Envelar. You won’t. You see, most men—and women, too, of course—go out of their way to avoid me. I doubt very much that whatever urge motivated you to come into my house and attack me would be satisfied by my quick death. Or am I very much mistaken? Feel free to show me, rather than tell. Words are, after all, notoriously misleading.”

  “P-P-please.” The voice was rough and hard to understand, full of pain and despair, and Aaron turned to see the hanging man staring at him, a look in the man’s eyes bordering on madness. “Help … me.”

  Aaron looked back to Claude, “If you so much as move, I’ll kill you, and my motivations can be damned.” Then he walked over to the wounded man. Up close, the man’s wounds were even more shocking, and it was a wonder he was alive at all. He would have bled out long ago if not for what were clearly the burn marks of brands on his wounds, cauterizing them and keeping the blood from escaping. “Please,” the man wheezed again.

  Aaron nodded, meeting the man’s eyes, “I’m sorry.” He was still watching the man’s eyes when he slid the sword into his heart. The man’s breath left him in a sigh that sounded almost relieved, and his body slumped in death.

  “Now, that was uncalled for,” Claude spoke from his position seated on the floor, a petulance in his voice like a child who has had his favorite toy taken away. “I wasn’t finished with him.”

  Aaron turned back to him, his grip tightening on his sword’s handle. “Who was he, that you would do this to him? Why?”

  Claude shrugged as if it was of no importance, “I don’t know who he was. As for why ….” He smiled again, a sly, secretive expression, “Well, let’s chalk it up to man’s eterna
l quest for knowledge, shall we?”

  Aaron resisted the urge to plunge his blade through the fat man’s heart. Barely. “I need you to tell me where Grinner is.”

  Claude tittered, his hand going to his ample stomach and leaving a crimson hand print on the pale flesh, “Oh, Mr. Envelar. As if Grinner would trust a coward to be his second in command. And if I don’t tell you, then what? You’ll kill me? All men die—I’ve seen enough to know it. Truly, you are an optimist if you thought it would be so easy.”

  “I’m not an optimist,” Aaron said, kneeling beside him. Before the fat man could react, he reached forward, jerking one of the man’s hands toward him, and brought his knife down in one smooth motion.

  Claude’s severed finger fell to the ground, and Aaron clamped his hand over the man’s mouth, muffling his scream. “You see,” He said as Claude’s screams quieted to desperate, breathless moans, “I’m a realist. And, realistically, I assume that you’ll tell me what I want to know long before I finish with your fingers. But, then, I could be wrong. I guess we’ll see.”

  Claude leaned away from him, true fear in his eyes now as he stared at the severed digit lying on the floor beside him. Aaron had been a sellsword for a long time, and he knew some things that the average person didn’t. One of those things was that it wasn’t the actual pain of such a wound that worked on a man the most, but the knowledge that a part of him was gone, had been taken. The knowledge that the man would always be less than he had been, that he had lost some irreplaceable part of himself.

  It was that knowledge he saw working in Claude’s eyes now. When the man’s groans grew quiet, Aaron took his hand away. “I wouldn’t worry so much, Claude. It’s just a finger, you know. You’ve got plenty of them. Nine more, in fact.”

  The fat man met his gaze, cupping his hand around the wound, and there was anger there now, there was no mistaking it. “What do you want to know?” He asked, all traces of humor gone.