by Ari Marmell
It was something else about her worth cultivating, definitely. Time to see how that cultivation was progressing.
This next bit-Kaleb braced himself-could hurt if I'm wrong.
The torrent of fire still cascading from his hands, feeding the blazing wall, Kaleb took a step nearer Mellorin and aimed a blast of flame over her head. The mercenaries fell back, shrieking as hair and beards ignited, and the young woman smiled her thanks.
A smile that fell from her face as though it, too, had melted. For when Kaleb hurled fire her way, a gap had opened briefly in the fiery bastion. The footsteps of a mercenary pounded across the earth behind him, but he pretended not to hear. He saw Mellorin tense, begin to move his way, and only then did he look behind… THE LAST OF THE INTERVENING WARRIORS slumped at Jassion's feet, and the baron stood face-to-face with Captain Losalis. The one gripped Talon rock-steady in both hands; the other had produced a crescent-shaped saber and raised the knife-edged shield before him.
"My lord," Losalis began, "stop! I swear I didn't-"
But Jassion was already lunging, and though he heard the words, the pounding in his ears and the fire in his mind had long since rendered him incapable of listening.
With nigh supernatural grace, Losalis ducked beneath the first slash and swung the saber in a brutal cross-cut. Jassion's chain took the blow without parting, and the blade left only a light scoring on the steel, but the impact doubled the baron over, ribs aching, struggling for breath. Losalis raised his shield-hand high and brought it brutally down, an axe as deadly as any executioner's, but Jassion allowed himself to tumble left, turning his pained collapse into an awkward roll. He staggered upright and parried another slash as Losalis pressed his attack, refusing Jassion the moment he needed to recover.
Losalis was better than he; of that, even in the midst of his murderous fury, Jassion had no doubt. But he held Talon, and that would have to make the difference.
Again he parried, and again-first saber, then shield. Only the unnatural speed of the Kholben Shiar allowed him to bring the massive blade in line, and even so he found himself retreating. Gradually, he allowed his parries to rise ever higher, leaving himself open for another slash. Mentally he braced, girding himself against the pain to come.
Maybe Losalis recognized the trap for what it was, or perhaps he simply knew that his saber couldn't penetrate his foe's armor. Rather than delivering another bruising blow to Jassion's ribs, as the baron had hoped, the mercenary swung at his legs.
Desperate, Jassion dropped to his knees lest he find himself crippled. The blade indeed rang against chain and Jassion brought his right elbow down, briefly pinning the saber to his side. That was as he planned; being on his knees rather than his feet, as Losalis raised the shield overhead once more, was not.
Swiftly as he could given the awkward posture, Jassion swung the Kholben Shiar upward even as Losalis brought his brutal shield down. And indeed, Talon's infernal magics made all the difference. With the hideous squeal of rending metal, the shield-and a small portion of the flesh to which it was strapped-pinwheeled away to land in the dust.
Losalis screamed in agony. Jassion fell sideways and rolled across the earth, taking the mercenary's saber with him. He kicked at the ground, spinning on his back, whipping Talon around him.
Leather, flesh, and bone parted before the Kholben Shiar and Losalis, now silent as his body convulsed in shock, tumbled to his back, both feet severed at the ankles.
The baron staggered up once more, ignoring the pounding agony in his chest, raised Talon one last time-and Losalis, former lieutenant of the Terror of the East, suffered no more. "KALEB!" MELLORIN SHRIEKED, SPRINGING toward him even as she recognized that she couldn't possibly reach him in time.
The sorcerer was fast, spinning to meet the man who had burst through his faltering flame. He almost dodged, so that what would have been a murderous thrust through his chest instead sliced along one arm, spraying drops of blood to boil away in the roaring fire. Again he shifted the angle of his magics, and the warrior who'd dared attack him fell to earth in a burning heap of human wreckage.
But that distraction allowed Ulfgai to close. He'd crept around the edges of the battle, drawing ever nearer the man who was holding their reinforcements at bay. Tears clouded the vicious barbarian's eyes as Losalis fell, and his entire body twitched in apparent desire to hurl himself at Jassion, but no. Clearly he knew that, with the sorcerer down, he and his men could overwhelm the enemy, and then he would have his vengeance.
The southerner raised a wedge-shaped axe, prepared to dash Kaleb's brains across the earth…
And shuddered with the impact of Mellorin's falchion. Fur-lined leathers absorbed most of the blow, and Ulfgai was already turning to swat aside this nuisance when she drove the point of her dagger into his gut.
Ulfgai coughed, staining his beard with blood, and Mellorin forced herself to twist the knife in the wound. The fingers clasping that axe trembled but did not drop the weapon.
Whether he would have had the strength left to kill her, Mellorin never knew. Kaleb appeared behind the mercenary, and his hands were now empty of fire. They closed, instead, upon Ulfgai's shoulder, and shoved the weakened southerner back into the flames.
"I can open us a path," he said tiredly to his companions. "And with the grasses burning, it should be a few moments before the rest of them realize that they're just facing normal flames, now, not magic. We'd best be gone by then."
Mellorin helped her uncle, who couldn't seem to stand upright, to mount his horse, and then the wounded sorcerer to do the same. She wondered, briefly, why the beasts hadn't panicked, whether this was more of Kaleb's magic or simply that the ring of fire permitted them nowhere to run.
Kaleb unleashed one last burst of flame through the grassfire, hoping to scatter-if not to slay-any mercenaries on the other side. Then, suppressing the flame as easily as he'd summoned it, he carved them a path to freedom. The pounding of hooves was lost in the roar of the fire, and the frustrated screams of the warriors beyond. THEY MADE A COLD CAMP, far from the roadside. Hours of hard and painful riding had probably averted pursuit, but they weren't about to take that for granted.
Jassion, his ribs wrapped tight, muttered and grumbled as he struggled to find a position in which he might sleep. Kaleb, arm neatly bandaged, crossed the camp to kneel before the young woman, who was sitting on a stump and gazing off into the distance.
"Mellorin?" he asked gently.
"I didn't… Kaleb, I've never…"
Carefully-giving her every opportunity to pull away, to ask him to stop-the sorcerer took her hand. "I know," he told her. "You know what else you did?"
She stared blankly.
"You saved my life." He turned her hand over, brushed a light kiss across her knuckles. "Thank you, Mellorin." Then, hesitantly, he leaned in and placed another soft kiss on her cheek. He smiled at her as he rose, pretending not to notice the sudden flutter of her pulse in her neck, and returned to his own blankets.
Yes, he decided with a grin that absolutely did not mean what Mellorin doubtless thought it did. That worked out just fine.
Chapter Twelve
THE CORRIDORS OF THE HALL of Meeting felt a lot more claustrophobic than they had mere minutes prior. Irrial could have sworn the walls were actually closing in, the doors transforming into prison bars. Not even the carpet muffled the tread of the soldiers who pressed in from all sides, reverberating in unison, the inexorable march of time itself.
She knew the plan-such as it was-for they'd both acknowledged the possibility of capture, but damn it all, if Corvis didn't act soon, she wasn't going to wait for him!
Two guards strode before her, broad shoulders and hauberks blocking her view of the hallway, while the other four marched behind. Irrial didn't need to look, for she could feel their looming presence, and the skin between her shoulder blades twinged nervously at the thought of those brutal crossbows.
Corvis walked beside her in a peculiar slouch, shoulders
slumped and head hanging. He lurked at the corners of her vision, where detail blurred like moist watercolor, and she thought she saw his lips moving.
Almost time, then.
Her hand grew clammy, her breathing tight. "When it starts," he'd told her, "all I need is for you to keep them off me." A simple enough proposition, in theory. But what if-?
Corvis waited until they drew even with a branching passageway, the intersection providing a bit more room to maneuver than the narrow halls, and then he collapsed. With a pained, sepulchral groan, he struck the floor, limp as a boned trout. He landed facing away from Irrial and guards alike, and the noblewoman could only trust that he was maintaining his near-silent concentration.
Not being utter imbeciles, the soldiers reacted swiftly, calmly. The two in front knelt beside the fallen prisoner, one checking for pulse or fever, the other keeping tight grip on the hilt of his sword in case this should prove some feeble ruse. The remaining four clustered around Irrial, blocking any possible escape with their bodies while keeping their arbalests trained on Corvis.
The thought that the freckle-faced baroness might prove the greater threat had clearly never crossed their minds.
Irrial took her cane in both hands and yanked. For an instant, the walking stick seemed to come smoothly apart, before the illusion that Corvis had wrapped around it-subtle, static, far harder to detect than that which cloaked his own features-unraveled. In her left hand, Irrial clutched two thin strips of wood, wrapped in a leather thong to form a makeshift scabbard; in her right, a narrow, long-bladed sword, the weapon of a duelist rather than a soldier.
A sword whose blade was etched from tip to hilt with spidery runes and wavering figures. Even surrounded by enemies on all sides, it was all she could do to keep her focus off the whispers and urges that crawled through her mind, weevils hatched from the demonic spirit of the thing in her hand.
The baroness struck in both directions at once. The crude scabbard slammed one guard across the bridge of his nose, cracking wood and cartilage alike, while Sunder cleaved through a second mercenary's crossbow, rendering it so much junk. Dropping the shattered wood, she drove her knee into the groin of the man whose weapon she'd just obliterated. He doubled over in an awkward bow and Irrial thrust Sunder over his head, stabbing into the shoulder of yet a third guard. She prayed it would be enough to keep him out of the fight…
The last of the four drew his own blade and thrust brutally at her chest. Irrial leapt aside, sweeping Sunder in a desperate parry, awkward but impossibly swift. She heard the creak of leather and mail as the pair behind her rose from Corvis's side, but could not spare a moment to glance their way. She could only keep moving and hope that they'd recognize the distinct possibility of skewering their fellow guards before pulling the triggers on those crossbows.
Apparently they did, for no bolts flew. Instead she sensed a presence looming behind, twisted, then stabbed Sunder down into the thigh of the approaching man. He screamed, clutching at the gaping wound.
But the second soldier hurled himself bodily at Irrial's legs, knocking them out from under her. She fell hard, and only the thick carpeting saved her from a cracked skull. A broad-shouldered man, nose battered and bleeding, knelt painfully on Irrial's left arm, while the fellow she'd kneed stomped brutally on her other wrist. Despite herself she cried out, and felt Sunder slide from her spasming fingers.
"Cerris!" she cried out, trying desperately to peer past the shapes gathered around and atop her. No help there, she noted gravely; he lay on the carpet where he'd fallen. The guard who'd nearly gutted her now stood over him, sword held to his throat. Footsteps sounded in the hall, and another dozen guards appeared from around the corners and through various doors, drawn by the commotion.
Well, Irrial thought bitterly, that could have gone better. They were in worse trouble now than they'd been, without the slightest indication that Corvis's plan had even-
More footsteps, again from both sides. Guards and prisoners alike strained their necks first this way then that, desperate to see.
What they saw were Guildmasters and barons, knights and earls-perhaps eight or nine in total. Some wielded swords, some daggers, some chair legs or other makeshift clubs, but all wore that subtle, preoccupied look Irrial had seen upon so many faces earlier that day. And in the lead, bludgeon held high, was Mubarris, master of the Cartwrights' and Carpenters' Guild.
They were a rockslide of living, panting, foolish-looking flesh, ready to dash themselves to bloody bits against the bulwark of the assembled mercenaries. Stronger, more numerous, better equipped, and far better trained, the soldiers could have slaughtered the lot without breaking a sweat.
But these were their employers, men and women they'd been hired to protect. Confusion stayed the warriors' hands for a precious instant before self-preservation usurped control, and in that time the blades and bludgeons landed. Blood seeped into the formerly expensive carpeting, and the first soldier fell without having raised a finger.
The shock of the unprovoked assault faded, and the remaining mercenaries responded as mercenaries do. Crossbows thrummed, blades swung, and bodies toppled.
Irrial felt the pressure on her arms ease up as the guards holding her rose to deal with this new threat. She surged to her feet, reaching for Sunder.
Corvis, who had rolled from beneath his captor in his own moment of distraction, got there first.
The blade shifted like living clay from dueling sword to brutal axe, and the aging warlord began to kill. Irrial flinched from the butchery, the deaths of men and women who had committed no evil, but were simply doing the job for which they'd been hired. But when Corvis stopped for an instant at her side, extending, hilt-first, the sword he'd yanked from a mercenary's hand even as he'd ripped Sunder from the fellow's chest, she sighed and accepted the blade. And when Corvis waded into the thick of the melee, chopping down soldiers like saplings, she was at his back, stabbing and lunging. She would survive, she would escape, no matter what it took.
For Rahariem's sake, perhaps for all Imphallion's.
She had no choice. THEY RACED ALONG THE HIGHWAY, kicking up a cloud of dust as thick as a desert sandstorm. For more than an hour they'd galloped, Corvis desperately casting a handful of spells to keep the horses fresh.
Alas, he had no similar spells to protect his aching rump from the punishment of their grueling pace.
They left behind a capitol in chaos. Over two dozen guards, and perhaps four or five aristocrats and Guildmasters, lay butchered throughout the Hall of Meeting. Nobody seemed sure precisely how it had happened, for Corvis's surviving "minions" had once more been mystically coerced never to speak of what had occurred, and none of the soldiers who'd been present had survived. The former warlord had every reason to hope it would be some time before anyone in authority even knew for certain that they had escaped-and even longer until they could mount any sort of pursuit.
None of which was even remotely enough to convince him to slow down, no matter that his entire body throbbed like one big saddle sore.
Eventually, however, they reached the limits of Corvis's modest magics. The horses began to tire, their sides lathered, and though he'd have liked to cover a few additional miles, Corvis reluctantly reined in his mount and guided the laboring beast off the road. For only a few moments more they continued, until they found themselves on the cracked banks of what, during cooler months, would have been a stream. A few puddles of muddy water remained, and the horses gratefully submerged their noses as though planning to dive in and float away.
Irrial wilted from the saddle with an extended groan.
"You're starting to remind me of bagpipes," Corvis joked weakly as he, too, flopped to the dirt. He knew she must be exhausted when she couldn't even muster a glare.
"I'm sorry," he wheezed at her, taking a huge gulp from his waterskin. "But it's not just foot pursuit I'm worried about. I don't know what sorts of sorcerers the Guilds might have access to these days. Our best defense really is d
istance at this point. And-"
"I didn't ask," she told him flatly. And that, throughout the sweltering summer night and into the next morning, was the end of the conversation. "SO WHY DON'T YOU DO THAT more often?" she asked while they saddled the horses, after a cold breakfast of salted venison and dried fruits.
"Do…?"
"That spell." She hauled herself into the saddle, wincing at the pains in her back and thighs that hadn't faded overnight. "The one you cast on the horses. Don't misunderstand, I've no interest in enduring that on a regular basis, but it would save us a lot of time."
"Dangerous," he told her, standing beside his own roan, one hand resting idly in the stirrup. "It's far too easy to kill the horses-either by pushing them too hard, or just from the strain of the spell itself. If we hadn't been so damn desperate yesterday, I'd never have risked it." Still he stood, idly tapping a finger on the leather, and made no move to mount.
"Problem?" she asked.
"Maybe…" He frowned.
"Don't tell me: You have no idea what to do next?"
"Oh, I have some thoughts. It's just…" He sighed, and his expression became even more dour. Much as he'd have liked to hide it, any observer-let alone one who knew him as well as Irrial-would probably have suspected that he was frightened of something.
"I didn't really expect we'd find all our answers in Mecepheum," he admitted, "but I'd hoped. If we're to go chasing leads all over Daltheos's creation, there's someone I have to see first."
"Someone you think has answers?"
"Someone I think has questions."
"Um… All right," she said finally. "So where are we going?"
"Give me a minute." Then, at her expression, "I don't actually know, Irrial. Ever since my first campaign, I've cast a particular spell on my lieutenants. It lets me locate them far more easily than I could with any traditional divination."