by J. S. Morin
She let them go longer at their guesses this time, hearing things like “thieves” and “soldiers,” her favorite guess being “wolves,” but that was not what she was looking for, either.
“That makes us pirates!” Juliana shouted. “It makes us privateers,” she clarified, belatedly realizing that the more technically accurate term was also more confusing. “We have latitude to carry out our mission as I see fit. So from now until the time I release you from my command, you are all pirates … my pirates. My crew. I can out-fight, out-drink, and probably out-gamble any of you, and I invite you to prove otherwise. We will not fight fair, we will not give quarter, and we will not lose. We will eat like kings on what we can steal, and we will drink like princes from our enemies’ wine cellars.” She looked over to see eager gleams in the eyes of her crew. She had gotten their attention.
“Trosh, I will take you back as part of my crew, but the lieutenant stays here.”
“Aye aye, Captain Solaran,” Trosh replied glumly.
Juliana wrinkled her nose. “Too stuffy, and I am not yet used to that name. Captain Juliana will do fine,” she said.
“Captain Juliana it is, then,” Trosh replied, managing a smile.
“Same goes for the rest of you; cut those rank emblems off. When we start raiding supply wagons, pick out anything you like to wear. Silks, leathers, furs, whatever strikes your fancy or suits your tastes. If anyone asks you, you are one of the Daggerstrike Corsairs.”
* * * * * * * *
The straps fitted snugly around her waist and upper thighs, though the holes she used for the buckles were of her own making. Whoever had done the leatherworking for the Daggerstrike had not considered the possibility of someone so slender taking the helm. Juliana was tethered to a pair of posts that flanked her at the ship’s wheel. She could not quite straighten her legs beneath her, allowing her to keep pressure against the deck even when flying inverted. The leather straps attached to the posts were pulled taut, keeping her hips from jostling to the sides as the ship banked and rolled.
The ship’s wheel itself was fixed in place, unable to turn. Each handle around the wheel was inscribed with rune patterns that activated the various controls of the ship, from propulsion to steering, gangplank release to defensive shields. There were also controls for the glass panel that hung in her field of view, suspended in a steel frame just past the wheel. It allowed her to see what was hidden by the deck of the ships, mainly what was in front and below them.
“Well, I don’t know that they trust me yet. Merciful One, if I have not yet used up all my favors, just see us safely through the insanity we are about to embark upon,” Juliana said aloud, since she was the only one on deck. The crew was safely strapped into harnesses of their own, holding them fast to the walls of the outer hull, in reach of the arrow slits.
Juliana let aether flow into the proper runes on the wheel of the Daggerstrike, and the ship rose from the ground, fighting against the growing strength of the rainstorm. Higher and faster it rose, the clouds growing from a vast, theoretical ceiling to the sky into a bank of fog that they approached, and the scope of that vastness challenged the waking mind to grasp.
Through the clouds they shot, streaking at arrow speeds, and into the brilliant daylight. Juliana let out a whoop of delight, and heard it echoed from the crew below.
* * * * * * * *
The storm that had blown in from the Aliani Sea had dropped rain across half the continent of Koriah. It had let up around midday, but had run long enough to fill Iridan’s empty wine barrel with enough water to wash in. Though he sloshed about in ankle-deep water in his wine-cellar hideaway, there were enough rat droppings, dirt, and who knew what else in there for him to dismiss it as possible bathwater.
Iridan shaved as well, thinking that the scant aether it took would hardly be noticed. He had come to feel like a vagabond, and the ritual of shaving helped make him feel civilized again. He tried to justify it to himself as presenting a formidable, intimidating visage to his foes but he knew it for vanity, and could not swallow his own lies.
It was nearly time for his nightly raid. Though sound military tactics would have had him vary the times from night to night, he preferred to get to his grim duties as quickly as the darkness allowed. With the advance of springtime, the days grew longer. Though he could not have noticed such tiny variances from day to day, he imagined that he could, and rankled at the increasing wait each evening.
“Soon,” he told himself. “They are getting weaker by the day. Those blade-priests were a challenge, but how many more could they have? Once those run out, I am free to kill at will again.”
“They could have a lot more,” he answered himself. It was a habit that had begun to worry him. “They might send every priest in Safschan here for all I know.” He noticed that his hands were shaking. “It’s not nerves,” he told his hands. “I just need a drink before I go.”
The wine felt good as it poured down his throat. It steadied his hands, and washed away a headache he had not even noticed until it was gone. Iridan felt better, less irritable, more able to think. He briefly considered bringing a bottle with him, just in case he needed it. “No, that would be stupid. It’s glass. It would get broken far too easily, and its weight would be awkward for fighting.”
Iridan collected Dragon’s Whisper, and set off to find his night’s quarry. He took a quick surveillance of the vicinity of his hideaway for Sources, finding only a few animals about, nothing smart enough to pose a threat. “No nosy neighbors to kill tonight,” he muttered to himself. He hated disposing of observers, since he had to move the bodies as well, lest they give clues to his lair’s location.
The streets seemed quieter than usual as Iridan crept along the shadowed alleyways off the main thoroughfares. He caught glimpses of fire in the distance, more than just a torch or a signal beacon. He decided to take a better vantage to try to figure out what the cause was. Sheathing his blade at his back, he climbed a low wall, and leapt to a nearby window sill. He pulled himself up, and launched himself onto the roof of the building next door and from there to the roof of another building a story higher. He would have taken more pride in the acrobatics had aether not done nearly all the work.
There was firelight coming from the central square of Munne. If the square had a proper name, he knew it not. It looked like a gathering by torchlight, if he was to guess. It cast the Megrenn’s headquarters in orangish light. He thought he could make out someone walking on a balcony.
“Makto enfusi delgaja,” Iridan intoned. He hated that there were still so many basic spells he could not perform silently. He touched his hands together thumb to thumb, forefinger to forefinger, drawing them slowly wider. A shimmering field formed between his hands, magnifying the distant scene.
Walking the balcony was a Megrenn general. Iridan knew little of their hierarchy, but by his position overlooking the gathering from the headquarters, he might well have been the commander of the whole occupying force of the city.
“HEAR ME, KADRIN WARLOCK!” A voice boomed through the city, obviously amplified by magic. It startled Iridan, his foot shifting on the slippery roof tiles on which he stood. His magnification spell ended as he caught himself.
“I OFFER A CHALLENGE.” The voice spoke Kadrin with a strange accent. The amplification and the echoing from all the surrounding buildings made any further guesses about its owner pure speculation. “WE MAY END THIS TONIGHT. DEFEAT ME, AND OUR FORCES WILL WITHDRAW, RATHER THAN FORCE YOU TO SLAY US ALL. SINGLE COMBAT, UPON MY HONOR. I AM DENCHI, PRIEST OF THE BLADE.”
“So another of the bastards wants to take my head off,” Iridan mumbled. “What sort of fool do they take me for?”
“YOU HAVE TWO HOURS TO DECIDE.”
“Well now. Two hours. There is a lot a fellow can do with two hours.”
A plan began to form in Iridan’s mind, none of it involving marching into a circle of Megrenn soldiers to engage in single combat. Instead his thoughts turned to the figure
he had seen on the balcony.
* * * * * * * *
The sewers were cleaner than he had imagined they would be, which was the one saving grace of his chosen route to Megrenn headquarters. Iridan had gotten as close as he dared above ground before taking a detour to the waterways below.
Sewers were a boon to the health of a large city, keeping offal from clogging the streets. They were also a bane to guardsmen, generals, and anyone looking to maintain law and order. They were places respectable folk would not go, and places disreputable folk used as highways, be they thieves, fugitives, spies … or assassins. The same measures used to keep those disreputables away also thwarted the civic efforts of the poor souls charged with maintenance, and the whining of civil servants was louder than the whisper-quiet passage of an illicit traveler.
Iridan kept a close eye to the aether as he went, chancing no surprise encounters. He went so far as to draw the Sources out of rats when he found them. Rat Sources were as weak as mammals came, but it still made him feel powerful wrenching the wretched little Sources clear out of them.
Rat-killing aside, Iridan’s precautions paid off. Roughly where he expected to find his destination, he found a pair of guards stationed to protect the way up. Guarding the sewer exit of a building populated by military men was among the worst assignments Iridan could think of. He almost felt as if he were putting the two unlucky blighters out of their misery as he slew them. They died in confusion. Iridan’s sound-deadening spell kept the brief struggle noiseless, and prevented the crash of armored bodies from raising an alarm.
As Iridan emerged into the keep, he scanned the aether yet again. The building was nearly deserted. He was able to avoid a few wandering servants, and find a window to get his bearing. He knew that the balcony faced the east, and was on the fourth floor. Once he found which side of the building faced the torchlight from the square, he rushed for the stairs leading up.
On the fourth floor landing, there was a large door to the east. It had to be the one. In the aether, he saw two Sources within—neither strong enough to be a threat.
Iridan tried the door gently, ready to hurl it back with telekinesis if he found it locked, but hoping to conserve both the aether and the element of surprise. It opened readily at his touch. “Cut off the head,” Rashan had told him. It had been the key to Rashan’s easy victory over Megrenn when he had first conquered them.
Iridan moved to make quick work of the Source nearer the door before making his way to the one nearer the balcony, which he assumed would be the leader of the occupation force. There was a problem, though.
Still watching in the aether, Iridan saw the weak Source he was about to attack strengthen tenfold. A second bit of aether separated from it, shaped like a blade, blocking the path of Dragon’s Whisper. That Source grew a shield around it even before dragon bone had struck steel.
“Welcome, Iridan Korian, Sorcerer of the Fourth Circle,” his intended victim greeted him in excellent Kadrin. The barest genteel hint of a Safschan accent told him his opponent was another blade-priest.
“By the winds! Just how many of you are there? And I am Warlock Iridan, not some Fourth Circle,” Iridan replied. He realized he was being goaded when his response provoked a chuckle. Iridan shielded himself in preparation for a battle rather than the assassination he had intended.
“Myself and the one who issued the challenge, in the square below. We are the last two here; you slew the others. My name is Tiiba,” the blade-priest introduced himself.
Iridan took a respite from the aether to view his opponent. He saw a man larger and more muscular than himself—though most taverns boasted a score each night fitting that description—dressed as his fellows had been. Tiiba’s features were difficult to discern, dark flesh in a darkened room, the only light coming from the torches at street level below. What stood out to Iridan was the one mismatched eye, whiteness reflecting back at him in the paltry light. He switched back to aether-vision immediately thereafter.
“My name is Iridan Solaran now, but you knew that, I think.”
“My thanks for that clarification,” Tiiba said. “It will sound much better when my life’s victories are read, to have the correct name for the warlock I slew, and not the name of some cowardly nobody from a peasant family who was only Fourth Circle.”
The blade-priest launched a slash-thrust combination that had Iridan backpedaling, taking him sidelong across the room, rather than toward either the door or the balcony.
“You seem to know a lot about me. You have spies watching me or the like.” Iridan tried to counterattack, making use of Dragon’s Whisper’s superior speed, but the blade-priest Tiiba seemed to anticipate each attack and have a parry in place and waiting by the time his blow arrived.
“You Kadrins are arrogant, brutish. You think strength of arms or strength of magic is enough for victory. I talk to people, listen to people. I keep company with travelers who know both lands. I study my opponents, when I know who they will be.”
Tiiba launched a combination like nothing Iridan had seen before, even from two opponents. Tiiba slashed, reversed his grip, and slashed back the other direction, then brought a foot around to try to trip him, made a thrust that Iridan had to parry, and used the momentum of the parry to bring the long hilt of his weapon around to slam Iridan in the face.
Iridan’s shield bore the blow well but it knocked him off balance. Iridan stumbled against something, discovering a bookshelf in the wall he had been driven back against.
As with the other blade-priests, Iridan found himself outmatched in skill at arms. He switched his attacks to the aether before he took too much punishment against his shielding spell. He gathered aether quickly, and launched an aether-bolt at Tiiba’s midsection, hoping to blast him backward if not win the battle right then and there.
Tiiba parried.
Iridan’s eyes widened in shock as the rune-blade turned aside his magical attack. He did not react in time to get his blade in the way of Tiiba’s next attack. The world spun as the blow hammered home against his shield. Again the shield held but Iridan was hurled to the ground.
Iridan gathered aether to him, drawing for all he was worth. A bit of it he directed into his fading shield spell, the rest he unleashed as hellfire. Tiiba did not attempt to parry that attack. Though his aether-vision was not detailed enough to reveal his foe’s expression, Iridan imagined with glee the shocked look on Tiiba’s face as he set the room aflame.
His own safe haven free of the blaze would not last long, he knew, but he could see by Tiiba’s persistent shield that the battle was not yet over. Iridan tried to bolt for the door but Tiiba cut him off, holding his ground despite the conflagration.
“No escape for you this way, warlock pup,” Tiiba quipped. It seemed the blade-priest was willing to let both of them die in the fires, or at least bring it down to a test of shield spells to see who would last long enough to escape.
“Stay in the flames if you like,” Iridan shot back, bolting for the balcony. It was four stories down and into the teeth of the Megrenn army, including the last blade-priest, but Iridan still preferred his odds there. The Megrenn commanding officer was taking refuge in a corner of the balcony, away from the flames. Iridan cut him in two before hopping up onto the railing, and jumping down.
The impact on his shield spell was worse than Iridan anticipated. Despite the spell, he felt something crunch in his leg. He collapsed to the ground.
“Stay back!” a voice shouted.
Through the haze of pain, Iridan figured it to be the second blade-priest. Blade-priest—Tiiba!
The immediacy of his injured leg had distracted him from the thought of pursuit. He rolled in time to see Tiiba falling from the sky, heading straight for him, blade raised to strike. Iridan raised Dragon’s Whisper, preparing to deflect the attack if he could. He drew aether like a madman, giving no consideration to his capacity. The abundance of idle Sources milling about had left the square awash in aether.
Tii
ba’s impact sent Dragon’s Whisper skittering across the flagstones, broke down what remained of Iridan’s shielding spell but did not finish him. Tiiba seemed to sense victory, holding his rune-blade high as he prepared for a decisive strike. Iridan’s lips curled into a smile as he anticipated the wreckage of a man that would be left after he unleashed his spell.
“Juliana will never love you, monster,” Tiiba said to him, venom in his voice.
Iridan’s eyes widened in horror. His concentration broke for a moment, but that moment was too long. Through the searing pain of the drawn aether coursing unchecked through his body, he saw Tiiba’s blade come down.
Chapter 33 - Reconnecting
The Sand Piper bobbed proudly in her berth, having delivered her passengers safely to Scar Harbor. Porters and longshoremen filed along the gangplanks, coming and going with supplies, cargo, and luggage. The onshore breeze reminded everyone that autumn had come to Acardia, and that unlike the tame lands of the south, bright blue skies did not guarantee balmy temperatures; there was a toothy edge to it that cut through thin cloth, and went straight to the skin.
Several of the gentlemen passengers made a show of carrying their own belongings, generally to fluff their egos in front of their ladies. In Brannis’s case, he felt awful watching a man half his size attempting to wrangle a trunk filled with his armor, sword, and a collection of Kadrin books, not to mention the full wardrobe that Soria had acquired for him. The trunk seemed sized optimistically for future purchases, and was of unwieldy size as well as weight. Brannis took it by the handle on one end while the porter had both hands under the other. Soria allowed three trunks of hers to be carried by the dockhands and Rakashi’s belongings were brought ashore by two young passengers who insisted that it was an honor to be of assistance to him.