by J. M. Martin
She nodded. “I understand. You don’t know me. I have no one to vouch for me, and it will take too long to check with anyone you might know back in New Dineen. I take it then that I at least have your interest.”
“At this point you’re just helping us pass the time,” Nix said, then to Egil, “Who do we know in New Dineen?”
The mountains of Egil’s shoulders rose in a shrug. “Two or three slubbers, a couple fakkers.”
“All we know are fakkers and slubbers,” Nix said, shaking his head. “Why is that?”
“I blame you,” Egil said.
“Accepted,” Nix said.
“Do you two try to unbalance everyone with your banter?” she asked.
“Oh, I like her,” Egil said.
Nix smiled. “Let’s start again, then. From the beginning. You can tell us what we ask and maybe get our help, or you can walk out now.””
She held her seat.
“Mind the flame’s color, Egil.”
“Aye.”
“Well enough,” Sairsa said. “We’ll do it your way. I’m in the employ of a wizard of Ochre Order.”
Nix let out a whistle. The Ochre Order and its Arch Magister had a dark reputation and were the true power in New Dineen.
“Name?” Egil asked.
“Oorgan,” she said, and the name meant nothing to Nix. “He is…finalizing a pact with one Kerfallen the Grey.”
Nix kept his face expressionless, though he knew the name Kerfallen well. Nix purchased many of his gewgaws in the Low Bazaar from Kerfallen’s agents. Kerfallen himself was a recluse, a mysterious wizard whose walled manse was rumored to be filled with all manner of magical traps and automata.
“What kind of pact?” Egil asked. “We’ve had bad experiences with pacts.”
“You don’t need to know that,” Sairsa said, and eyed the candle flame sidelong. “I’m not sure I understand it anyway.”
“Wizard shite,” Egil said, nodding in sympathy. He took a slug of ale. “Best not understood.”
“Sounds boring so far,” Nix lied, sitting back in his seat.
Sairsa frowned in irritation. “The Night Blade’s been hired to kill Oorgan before the pact can be concluded.”
“Now that’s something,” Egil said.
“By whom?” Nix said, and winked at Egil.
“And how is it that you know the Night Blade’s been hired?” Egil said.
“Not so boring, now?” Sairsa asked.
“Wizards and assassins deserve one another,” Egil said. “Still….”
“I concede some slight interest,” Nix said, “but what does this have to do with us? And where’s Oorgan now?”
“He’s en route from New Dineen. A day out. I’m here in advance of his arrival.”
“So you’re protecting him but left him behind?” Nix asked.
She reddened. “I’m scouting Dur Follin. And he won’t come to harm. I left him well-protected.”
“You still haven’t told us what this has to do with us,” Egil said.
“You’ve a reputation.”
Nix smiled. “For good looks, intelligence, and charm, of course.”
“For competence,” she said. “You know Dur Follin and its players but are independent of them. That’s what I need. Oorgan will have to remain in town two days before the meeting with Kerfallen.”
“Two days? Why’s that?”
She shrugged. “Something to do with the timing of the pact, preparations, I don’t know.”
“Wizard shite,” Egil repeated.
She clasped her hands and looked them in the eye, each in turn. “So?”
Egil eyed Nix, bushy eyebrows raised. “We wanted something to do. This is something.”
“What’s the pay?” Nix asked her.
She didn’t look surprised by the question, though Egil did.
“This is a damsel in distress, Nix,” the priest said.
She gave Egil an obscene gesture. “Hardly.”
“Hardly it is, then,” Egil said, smiling.
Nix pointed a finger at Egil. “Recall the last damsel in distress we helped. No, recall the last two.”
“Once again,” she said. “I’m not—”
Egil’s brow furrowed and he inclined his head. “That’s a fair point.”
“Pay?” Nix asked Sairsa.
“I”ll pay you more if you vow to talk less.”
Nix laughed.
“Twenty five terns each,” she said. “Seem fair?”
Egil looked at Nix, eyebrows raised.
“It’s light but I’m bored,” Nix said. “Done,” He and Egil didn’t want for coin, and he was too sweaty to haggle.
“Dawn tomorrow at the North Gate, then,” she said. “You get ten terns then. The remainder when the meet is over two days hence.”
She stood, turned, and walked out without another word.
After she’d gone, Nix leaned back in his chair and tapped the table top with one finger. “Well, that’s about half a story.”
“You had the candle burning,” Egil said, nodding at the taper and its orange flame.
“It’s just a candle,” Nix admitted. “There’s no magic in it. I wanted to encourage truth. Like she said, we’ve got no time to check her story.”
Egil ran a hand over Ebenor’s eye. “She never looked at it and never hesitated in her responses, so I’d say she spoke truth. Me, I like her. You’re too distrustful.”
“Being distrustful keeps me alive. Keeps you alive, too, often enough. Besides, you trust and like too readily, especially when it comes to pretty women.”
“Bah.”
“You can’t help every woman who walks through these doors, you know.”
“Maybe not all,” Egil answered quietly. “But many.”
Nix knew that was the end of the conversation, at least on that subject. Egil had failed his wife and daughter years earlier, and both had died. He seemed determined to never fail another woman in his life.
“Well,” Nix said, clearing his throat to clear the air. “I was bored and now I’m not.”
“I guess the gods hear our words at times,” Egil said. “Let’s gear up.”
“Aye,” Nix said. “I hope we get to meet this Night Blade.”
#
Nix and Egil met Sairsa on the cobble paved road just within the North Gate. A dozen or so other people stood around them, stinking in the pre-dawn heat, yawning, eyes bleary with hangovers or sleeplessness. Nix made most of them as caravaneers who hadn’t gotten out of Dur Follin before the gates closed for the night and so had gotten stuck inside. Most were probably late for their posts in the caravan yards outside the walls.
The sky lightened with dawn and the eight watchmen, looking as hungover as the caravaneers, went through the routine of opening the gate. The crowd edged forward as they slid bolts and turned gears.
“Back off,” one of the watchman barked.
The routine ended with the turning of a great spoked wheel, the slow clink of wrist-thick chains, and the gate swinging open.
A half dozen donkey or oxen-drawn open-topped wagons lined the road outside, farmers and farmhands milling around them. Several tents were pitched in the grass in the shadow of the walls.
“This Oorgan’s a farmer-wizard, then,” Nix said.
Sairsa pushed through the throng, brow furrowed. “They should’ve arrived last night if they’d kept to the schedule I set. Stay here,” she said, and hurried away.
“I guess we’ll stay here,” Egil said.
“Aye.”
The farmers avoided eye contact with Egil and Nix as they drove or walked past, no doubt made uncomfortable by their hard looks and sharp steel. A short time later Sairsa returned, leading a train of three saddled horses.
“Oorgan’s a horse, then?” Nix said.
“Probably just the ass,” Egil said.
“Shut your holes and mount up,” she said. She swung into the saddle with practiced grace.
“I don’t ride,”
Nix said.
Sairsa glared at him. “You do today. I—”
“I don’t ride,” he repeated, eyeing the horse nervously. “Look at the shifty eyes on this beast. No one should trust him.”
“It’s a her, Nix, a mare, and I gave Oorgan a particular travel schedule to follow. That he’s not here when he should be means something happened to delay him. We need to go find him. Right now. And that means you ride.”
Nix shuffled his feet. “Listen, I can’t ride, is what I mean to say. I never learned.”
Her look could have spoiled milk. “City bred slubber.”
Nix affected indignance. “I’m just particular about the reasons I’ll part my legs.”
She shook her head. “You’ll ride with me, then. I’ll help you up.”
Nix could feel Egil’s grin, a giant smile that stretched from one end of the city to the other.
“Come on,” she said and extended a hand.
“Not a fakkin’ word, Egil,” he said and surrendered to the inevitable.
He took her hand, she lifted him up, and he sat behind her.
“I feel a bit unstable,” he lied, and wrapped his arms around her. She might have been slim, but she was all gristle.
Egil mounted the larger of the remaining two horses, and Sairsa spurred the mare into motion. Nix kept his mouth shut and held on tight as the horses tore down the northbound road out Dur Follin. Keeping the Meander to their left, they devoured the miles. Soon they were clear of the hamlets and farmsteads that dotted the landscape around the city. Open road extended before them.
“Maybe he turned back?” Nix asked.
Sairsa shook her head. “Not possible. Something’s gone amiss.”
They topped a tall rise and the dark ribbon of the road stretched out below them. Figures moved on it, two groups. Sairsa cursed.
A group of four horsemen armed with bows harried a nobleman’s carriage pelting down the road toward Dur Follin. The horsemen, clad in leather jerkins and plumed helms, rode like experts. Nix made them as Jafari, easterners noted for their horsemanship. Cavalry cutlasses hung from their belts, but their bows were their weapons of choice. They drew as they rode and shot at the driver and the team of four horses. The driver ducked and crouched at every shot, sometimes veered the carriage toward the riders to foul their aim. The carriage bounced, jostled, and tilted wildly left and right, nearly toppling at one point. Nix was sure it would soon lose a wheel.
Perhaps a fifth of a league behind the carriage, another two groups of horsemen fought a pitched battle.
“That’s them,” Sairsa said, and spurred her mount down the rise. “Those are the bodyguards back up the road. They must have tried to hold off the attack while the carriage fled.”
“Aye, but four of the Jafari broke ranks and followed.”
“Protecting the carriage is the priority,” Sairsa said. “The bodyguards knew the risks.”
“Get me within throwing range,” Nix said, drawing a throwing dagger, then called to Egil. “We take out those four first, yeah?”
“Aye,” Egil called, and drew a hand axe from his belt
Sairsa noticed the dagger Nix he held. “You can’t hit anything from horseback with that!”
“Milady, it’s been a long time since I’ve missed anything. Just get me close.”
As they tore down the rise, the distant melee ended with four of the carriage’s guards falling to Jafari blades and the sole surviving bodyguard bolting in the other direction. The six surviving Jafari attackers spurred their horses and rode hard after the carriage.
“See it?” Nix called to Egil.
“I see it,” Egil shouted back. “We work fast before they catch up. I’m to the right.”
“Aye, that,” Nix said to himself. To Sairsa, he said, “Go left.”
She did. The four Jafari horseman saw them coming, turned their horses, bent their bows, and fired. Sairsa veered hard to the left to avoid the shot, and Egil turned his mount hard right. Two of the Jafari snarled, drew their cutlasses, and spurred their mounts at Egil, Nix, and Sairsa.
“A bit closer now,” Nix said in Sairsa’s ear as they bore down on the Jafari. Sairsa drew her blade and the Jafari had eyes only for her.
Nix could see his face, tanned and wrinkled from the sun, silver ringlets in his dark beard, long hair bouncing behind him, cutlass raised high, yellowed teeth bared in a snarl.
“That’ll do,” Nix said to her, leaned out a bit, and hurled his dagger at the Jafari. The blade hit him in the throat and sank to the hilt. His eyes widened, and he fell from his mount, choking on steel and blood.
Nix checked on Egil, saw that the big priest had no intention of closing with a Jafari cavalryman either. At fifteen paces distant, Egil hurled his handaxe, not at the rider, but at the mount. The axe hit the horse in the head and it staggered once and dropped, taking the rider down with him. Dazed and wounded, the Jafari rose on wobbly legs. Egil drew one of the two large hammers he carried, closed the distance, and slammed it into the stunned cavalryman’s head, sending a plume of blood skyward along with the plumed helmet.
Nix looked ahead and saw an arrow finally catch the driver in the side. The driver at it, sagged, and dropped the reins. The carriage started to slow.
“Get me to the carriage,” Nix said.
“What are you going to do?”
“Drive it,” he said. “At least I’ll be off this fakking horse.”
Sairsa goaded their mount on. Nix called to Egil.
“Occupy them both!”
Egil nodded. He ducked low in the saddle, using his mount as cover, hammer hanging from his ham fist as he charged toward the carriage and the two Jafari. One of them broke off and rode at him, cutlass in hand. They closed on one another rapidly and the Jafari slashed downward with his cutlass. Egil caught his arm at the wrist with his free hand while at the same time slamming his hammer into the hapless man’s chest. Bones shattered and a spray of blood exploded from out of his mouth as he careened backward off his horse.
Meanwhile the other Jafari fired at Sairsa and Nix. The arrow whistled by Nix’s ear. Sairsa veered to the other side of the carriage.
“A kiss for luck?” Nix asked.
She sneered.
“Worth a try,” he said. He timed his dismount as best he could, though he didn’t so much leap from the horse as lean toward the carriage and heave himself awkwardly out of the saddle. He barely got his hands on the driver’s bench side rail. The rest of him dangled free, his boots skidding along the road, as Sairsa galloped off and wheeled around.
“Shite, shite, shite,” he said, skipping along the road.
An arrow thunked into the wood beside his left hand. He pulled himself up to the bench with a grunt, frantically grabbed the corpse of the driver in both hands, and twisted the body in front of him, using it as a shield. He felt an arrow slam into it.
“Someone kill that bunghole!” he shouted, peeking out from behind the driver’s body.
One of Egil’s hammers flew across his field and vision and slammed into the ribs of the Jafari’s horse. The mount whinnied with pain and collapsed, throwing the rider who tumbled to the hard earth and didn’t rise.
Nix tossed the carriage driver’s body over the side with a hurried apology, grabbed the reins, and snapped them on the horses. They lurched into a gallop.
“You alive in there?” Nix called over his shoulder into the passenger compartment.
“Just drive!” said a gruff voice.
“Not even a thanks? Nix grumbled. “Fakkin’ wizards.”
Egil and Sairsa fell in to either side of the carriage.
“Oorgan, do you live?” Sairsa called. “Are you hurt?”
“Yes and no,” shouted the wizard.
“As him if he’s polite,” Nix shouted. “That’ll get a no, too.”
Oorgan ignored him. “It took you far too long to return, Sairsa!”
Arrows started to fall down around them in twos and threes. Nix stood on the benc
h for a moment and looked back. The six Jafari cavalrymen from the second group rode hard after the carriage, firing as they came. They were at the limit of their range and the carriage was maintaining its distance.
Nix grinned, but the grin failed as an arrow sank into the haunch of the right rear horse. The beast screamed with pain, stumbled, and fell, fouling the whole team. The carriage lurched to an awkward stop. The two front horses stomped and whinnied. Behind them, the Jafari closed.
Sairsa leaped from her horse on top of the carriage’s roof.
“Cut the traces and get them going, Nix.”
Nix did exactly that, freeing it from its trace. “Sorry, beast,” he said to the wounded horse, and guided the other three away.
Egil slammed a hammer into the wounded horse’s head, ending it’s pain.
“Hurry,” the priest said, bouncing his hammer in his fist and watching the Jafari close the distance.
“Come on, you oafs!” barked Oorgan from within the carriage.
Sairsa’s crossbow sang.
“Nice shot,” Egil said, and Nix assumed she’d felled a Jafari.
Nix leaped back onto the bench and whipped the reins. The three remaining horses lurched into motion.
“Hyah! Hyah!”
Soon the horses were once more at a gallop. Sairsa’s crossbow continued its rhythmic song and the rain of arrows soon stopped as the Jafari soon gave up the chase.
“We clear?” Nix called.
She slid down from the roof of the carriage and took a seat beside Nix on the bench.
“We’re clear,” she said, “but I lost some good men.”
“Not that good, obviously,” Nix said.
Egil, riding beside the carriage, said, “So this Night Blade uses Jafari hireswords to do his work? A coward, Nix, just as I said.”
Nix couldn’t but agree.
Sairsa thumped a fist on the carriage’s passenger compartment. “All right in there?”
“Just get me to Dur Follin,” the wizard answered.
#
The low rumble of distant thunder vowed rain, and soon. Nix shook his head.
“Been waiting on rain for weeks and we’re going to get it tonight of all nights. Fak.”
“Aye, that,” Egil said, hefting the weight of the new hammer he’d procured. “Roads will be a slog.”