by Damien Lake
Marik grimaced at Kerwin’s crudely accurate description. He still had not come to terms with using his power in such a…a…non-warrior way. About to mention that soonest begun meant the soonest their mission would be done, he instead muttered, “Uh-oh.”
“What?” Landon immediately demanded.
“There,” Marik pointed at the roadway. “A group of six just showed up.”
Darkness shrouded the new arrivals from the others. They relied on Marik to inform them of the going-ons. He ran a commentary while watching the new group walk into the refinery, then angle straight toward the building housing the four auras.
“They joined together,” he reveled, watching the glowing auras meld when the new arrivals entered the room.
“Anything unusual about them?” Kerwin asked.
“Not that I could tell.”
“Must be the locals,” Landon decided. “Coming out to meet with the Spirrattans. Perhaps they have formulated a new plan of attack.”
Dietrik stood, squatting several times to work out the kinks. “Then I suppose there’s little to be garnered by standing around like village idiots.”
Marik rose as well. “There’s an outside door on the western wall of that room. The other door opens on the building’s interior, but you need to go through a maze of hallways to get there.” They began walking for the refinery.
“I favor the outer door,” stated Landon. “ How does this sound? If we charge in, our maneuverability may be hampered as it was for them when they broke into the chapter house. What if we break in, then step back outside?”
Dietrik nodded. “Having to run through the doorway will slow them down, and only one can step though at a time.”
“But,” Kerwin countered, “what’s to stop them from turning tail and running through the building to escape?”
“No choice then,” Marik declared. “My blade is too big for that hallway. What about you, Dietrik? You back up to speed?”
Dietrik raised the arm that had taken the wound in the warehouse. He flexed it while gripping it with his free hand, testing the muscle underneath. “Right as rain! The stiffness has even decided I suffered enough and departed.”
“Fine. Your rapier is best suited to hallway combat. You wait inside in case any flee.” He dithered a moment, deep in thought. Would Dietrik be able to fend for himself alone? Landon had brought his sword as well as his bow, but Marik thought that if too few of them were visible to the thieves when they broke in, the killers might guess they had split their forces. “Kerwin and I will break in through the door, and Landon will wait back to take down any who slip past us.”
“Sounds as good as anything else,” Kerwin allowed. “What about the watchmen?”
Marik had forgotten about them. “Try not to kill any of them. If the cityguard comes down on us, they might not mind so much if the watchmen are still alive. Knock them out if you need to.”
They reached the first building. From there on silence would be essential. Marik halted them only once when a guard strolled past, taking little interest in his surroundings. Once at the correct building, they paused a second time while Marik brought Dietrik around to the main doorway. Thankfully the door contained no locks. They never would have been able to break it in without being heard.
“Don’t rush in,” he whispered to Dietrik. “Wait in the hallway in case any run by. I’m going to get close to listen before we charge in.”
Dietrik nodded. “Would be our bloody luck to attack the wrong chaps, wouldn’t it?”
“I’m sure you’ll hear us. But stay ready.” His friend scowled, that last remark an insult to his intelligence. Marik’s nerves were jittering. If anything went wrong, Janus would surely see to it that Marik’s neck would receive whatever axe fell down from above.
While Dietrik crept through the darkened building, following Marik’s directions, the remaining three followed the outer walls to the other side. Voices could be heard behind the doorway, audible because they were raised in heated anger.
Landon readied his bow several yards back from the wall. The two swordsmen crept up on the door. Their hinges were on the inside, thank goodness. He signaled for Kerwin to pause before the two bent their ears to listen.
Two voices apparently belonged to the primary speakers for each party. Other voices muttered, if keeping out from the fray. Most words were muffled by the thick wood. Only occasional phrases drifted through that they could understand. After a full minute crouching they both heard, in a loud, accusing tone, “I’ll be damned by Shiconn before I’ll ever consider such foolishness! You’ve already cost us too many lives!”
A half-articulated response followed, interrupted by the louder voice. “I don’t care what he says! This was supposed to be quick and clean!”
Kerwin moved his mouth to Marik’s ear. “Sounds like whatever agreement the dark guilds had with each other is falling apart.”
Marik nodded. He briefly considered leaving the refinery. Without support, the Spirrattan thieves would likely return in disgrace. But that left too many open possibilities. Killing them here and now might make the dark guilds consider a new assault on the fosterlings too expensive an option in both coins and lives. If they left, Hilliard, and the other fosterlings also, would remain in danger for as long as they quartered with Duke Tilus.
He rose and made motions with his hands to his two shieldmates. Kerwin stepped back a pace. Landon nocked an arrow to his string. Marik drew his sword where he stood before the door.
After a deep breath he instituted his strength working. The upcoming fight hardly called for it, battling against untrained amateurs. He only wanted the door to go down under the first kick.
In Kingshome he had spent the winter refining this new technique whenever other matters allowed him the time. Unlike the battle at the Hollister Bridge, he had brought it to a point of greater control. Though he could not maintain it indefinitely or move mountains through sheer strength, he better understood the intricacies of his body. He could call upon that fantastic strength without running the risk of shattering his bones through a simple movement.
In his mind he visualized his body, its every muscle, every sinew, every bone, every blood vein, every fiber. Marik only needed to strengthen his legs for the next moment yet he had learned to never focus solely on any one portion of his anatomy. Such only invited misfortune. Once he fixed his body in his mind, he envisioned the energy coursing through his fine network of energy webs. He opened his power reserves to the network, flooding his body with new energy that swelled the channels in his muscles. Strength burst through his body.
He raised his booted foot and slammed it into the door inches from the knob. The door ripped from the frame, its bolt streaking across the room like an arrow, striking one man in the back shoulder before he could register Marik’s arrival. While the door slammed into the wall with terrific force, the man clutched his shoulder in surprised agony.
Marik quickly glanced around the room, seeing the men to whom the auras belonged. Nearest to him stood a scruffy, untrustworthy rat of a man, staring at him in comic surprise. Before anyone could react, Marik lashed out and cut the rat’s throat.
He deliberately swung in a wild manner, concealing the care he actually imbued the strike with. If he showcased his phenomenal strength it would scare them off, stampeding them into the hallways, into a Dietrik unprepared for such a mass exodus. The rat fell in a tumble, clutching simultaneously for the long knife sheathed at his belt and the frothy blood spurting from his ruptured neck.
Alarmed shouts erupted from the remaining men, for which Marik felt glad. It added to his sudden restudy of the room when the crowd drew weapons. “Oh hells!” he muttered, striving for the tone of one who realizes he has walked into a situation far beyond his expectations. He shuffled backward a step in a show of fear when the door struck him in the head.
The top hinge had snapped during the impact with the wall. It leaned at an angle, its bottom pressed hard against the w
all as the surviving lower hinge squalled in twisting agony. Marik, startled, lifted his free hand to hold back the leaning door. Enraged howls brought his head around to the angry tide surging for him.
Marik released the door and jumped outside in a haste no longer feigned. From inside he heard the first voice shouting, “Hurry! Get that bastard! Get him!”
The second voice, no longer muffled, screamed in protest, “No you damned fools! It’s a trick!” His words found no purchase against their howls.
Kerwin quickly stepped to a point far enough away they could both fight effectively. They knew each other’s fighting styles well. “Nothing like a grand entrance, eh?”
“Here they come,” Marik replied when the defunct door was ripped aside. He allowed the strength working to slip. He would not need it for this battle.
Two swordsmen, unmasked this time, were pushed outside by the press of cutthroats thirsting for vengeance. One still shouted for the fools behind them to stop. He quickly understood that an unavoidable fight loomed, so abandoned his unheeded shouts in favor of drawing his sword.
Kerwin and Marik faced the swordsmen, recognizing them for the only genuine fighters. The local thieves pushed their way out, intent on revenge for the slain rat-man. Swordsmen and mercenaries gauged each other. All four leapt as one.
Marik’s opponent was the apparent leader heading the Spirrattan delegation. He used a blade with a single edge, though not one so oddly proportioned as Sloan’s. This blade reached three feet in length with a basket hilt encasing the hand. It resembled the sabers used by mounted calvary, if less broad across the blade.
The swordsman launched an attack the same moment Marik unleashed his own. Both targeted the other’s chest. Their blades clashed. Marik’s sword commanded the advantage of length and weight, forcing the swordsman’s blade to yield, but the Spirrattan’s sword held the speed advantage. While Marik recovered from the first strike, he found his opponent’s blade slicing for his neck.
Marik stepped back in a quick step, able to do nothing except raise his sword’s hilt before his face. The opposing blade struck steel rather than flesh. Without the counterforce Marik would have applied in a genuine block, the saber forced the larger blade away. Steel touched his neck, too slow to cut skin yet making Marik jerk sideways in reflexive startlement.
He needed to take control of this fight. Marik sidled away across the dirt. An arrow streaked past him. Peripherally he noted the shaft piercing the throat of the man shouting for vengeance, the first voice’s owner. A thick bloody bubble burst from his mouth to cut short his cries. One other knife wielder already lay on the ground, an arrow protruding from his chest. Two local thugs fought to maneuver around the occupied swordsmen. They were unaware of their friends’ plight.
While inexperienced in the ways of fighting, this Thoenar rat pack had purchased their deaths in advance, paying in full measure-weight through their attacks on Hilliard. They were grain to be mown down by a mercenary scythe. Any distaste the Crimson Kings might have felt at killing such unworthy men had long since departed. This would be a battle without quarter granted.
The extra distance of Marik’s blade cost the swordsman the moment he needed to launch a speedy follow-up. Marik renewed his assault. He cut at the man with an eastern slash. The assassin met it with a block rather than an attack, not wanting to count on dumb luck again. While Marik’s blade slipped off at an upward angle, the swordsman tried to brute his way forward to cut the mercenary’s legs out from under him.
Except Marik had entered full battle mentality, regarding this Spirrattan thief as being deadly as any foe he’d ever fought on the battle field. He had hoped for a quick resolution. Marik adjusted, bringing out his combat skill. Slower than his previous sword, he had nevertheless adapted his combination strikes to this newer blade. Already he followed through into a western strike, looping the sword around using the momentum off the reflected attack.
This nearly caught the assassin off guard. He slid on the dirt when he twisted to block the new strike. Marik continued with an eastern slash, met this time by the man’s altered defense.
His opponent waited for the blow. In a move Marik had never seen before, the man raised his sword upright to block the heavier blade head-on. He braced the sword’s backside with his free hand, eerily resembling Colbey’s stance whenever the scout initiated a practice session.
Marik’s blade struck the vertical length of steel and stopped dead when the man applied resistant force with both hands, his feet digging into the ground for purchase. Before Marik could reposition from the stalled strike, the assassin leaned forward, his blade skimming along Marik’s sword.
The man lashed. Marik instinctively rotated his blade. His hilt moved left, altering the guard’s position enough that the saber clanged against the T-guard rather than biting into his face.
That was too close for Marik’s comfort. He slammed the hilt forward in an attempt to smash the man’s face. His opponent ducked lower and spun at the same time, bringing him away from Marik while repositioning for a new strike. A pained scream from the side briefly drew both men’s attention before they reengaged.
Kerwin’s opponent stared at his wrist, ending in a bloody, fountaining stump. The sword he once held came to rest on the ground, a severed hand still clutching the hilt. In shock, the man did nothing as Kerwin finished the job with a centerline thrust through the chest.
“May your god damn you!” shouted Marik’s foe. “Damn you all to the lowest hell!”
“Not us,” Marik replied, despite the fact he usually avoided conversation during combat. “You damned yourselves.” He reared back in an obvious eastern strike that duplicated his previous.
Furious, the assassin gave no thought to why Marik would repeat a failed attack. Before starting the swing, Marik reinitiated the strength working, putting the superior strength of his technique behind the blow.
The Spirrattan readied an identical block to the last. This time it served to defeat rather than protect him.
When the terrible force from Marik’s blow connected, the man’s wrists, locked and braced to halt the heavier sword, bent back with a sickening snap. His broken hands released the sword as bone splinters pierced through scarlet-red skin. The sword catapulted away while Marik’s continued along its path, slowed but still lethal. His tip gouged through the assassin’s exposed throat at the same moment the excruciating pain hit his senses.
A blood arc fanned through the air, the dark liquid a void in the evening gloom. The assassin fell to lie staring into the nighttime abyss. Marik bent down, unable to forbear the comment on his mind, a comment born from his many frustrations and the continuos attacks against his charge by unseen assailants.
“If you ever have the chance to talk to your Dark Father from beyond the veil, tell him what happens to those who cross swords with the Crimson Kings!”
The man stared into his eyes. Marik hoped he remained lucid enough to understand his slayer’s words.
A quick survey revealed four local thugs dead from amazingly quick bow work along with his and Kerwin’s kills. “There’s still three left!” Marik ran to the door. He entered after one quick glance for danger. Kerwin followed in his wake.
In the far corner huddled a shivering boy, certainly no older than fifteen. He held a long knife in a hand that shook so badly it was a wonder he did not drop it. His eyes stared at them in wide terror. Marik ran past, concerned for Dietrik, knowing Kerwin would end the remaining Thoenar rat.
Where were the other two Spirrattan assassins? Worry for Dietrik ate at the edge of Marik’s battle fire, blowing it away under a fearful hurricane when he charged into the hallway.
One of the other swordsmen was dead, but Dietrik
No! Dietrik!
lay slumped against the wall, his rapier impaled through the swordsman’s torso. His friend was still. A bloody sheen coated his upper torso.
Marik ran to his friend and slipped in blood as he crouched down at the same mom
ent. His hand shot forward to grasp Dietrik’s shoulder.
A groan escape Dietrik’s lips, resounding joyously through Marik’s heart despite the pain echoing in the sound. Dietrik’s eyes fluttered open to focus on Marik.
“Damn it all,” he muttered. “There goes the other arm…”
“You idiot,” Marik scolded him. “You’re supposed to be better than this.”
Landon thundered into the hall, swiveling with his bow to find a shot. When he saw Dietrik, he scowled. “What, again?”
“No, my right arm this time,” Dietrik replied, strength returning to his voice. “The other one must have run down to the front door there,” he added, indicating the direction with his eyes. “Watch out for him, mate. They were both a fair sight better than good. I only got this one by luck. The other took advantage of my rapier being stuck in his friend.”
Marik nodded. “I’ll cut his head off, Dietrik, don’t you worry about that. Landon will look after you.”
Before Landon could protest, Marik dashed down the corridor. He ran to where he knew the front door would be and rushed outside when he found it standing open. In the cool night air he glanced around, seeing nobody. Under his magesight, among the brick buildings of the refinery, the black etheric walls blocked him from finding Dietrik’s assailant. Marik started to drift upward before halting himself with a mental slap.
A double damned fool, that’s me! If he’s lurking around the corner, he could leap out and kill me before I have the chance to reenter my body!
He jogged to the nearest corner to peer around. Nothing. His quarry did not crouch in readiness. That hardly meant this area could be considered safe. No, if he wanted to drift the etheric in search of his prey, he needed a haven to shelter his body.
This corner lay near the tall brick tower he had noted earlier. Marik noticed iron rungs set into the side leading to the top. A long rope attached to a large basket dangled beside the rungs, undoubtedly used to haul items to the top. He judged the tower must be twenty feet across at the peek.