by Layton Green
Will jumped behind the shorter opponent before he could react, reaching around the delver’s neck for a rear chokehold. He didn’t have the confidence that one punch would silence him, and couldn’t risk sounding the alarm. The delver gasped and bucked. Out of the corner of Will’s eye, he saw Marek pummel his opponent with a huge roundhouse to the temple, dropping him to the stone floor.
Will’s opponent couldn’t breathe or cry out, but he swung backwards with the war hammer and landed a glancing blow on Will’s shoulder. He gritted his teeth and bore the pain. If that had been a direct hit, it would have crushed his shoulder blade.
The delver started flailing, stumbling around with Will clinging to his back, tightening the chokehold. Will hung on like he was riding a mechanical bull. He had badly miscalculated the strength of his opponent.
The delver tried to hit him with the hammer again, but this time Will jerked straight backward, dropping them both. He landed hard on his back and lost his grip.
The delver’s cry of “Intruders!” came halfway out of his mouth before Marek shattered his jaw with a blow from the other delver’s war hammer. Marek’s next swing crushed the guard’s head like a burst water balloon, spattering Will with gore.
They all froze, subjects of a still life painting, waiting for more guards to come spilling out of the barracks. When no one appeared, Will turned to see Caleb’s shadowy form slipping through the door of the equipment room. “Move,” he said, helping Marek pull the dead bodies behind a pile of rubble. “Caleb’s inside.”
Will took the other war hammer, joining the others as they rushed across the street, Yasmina holding the wheezing old man by the arm.
When they entered the equipment room, Will saw what he had feared: a huge room stacked with piles of weapons and armor. Swords, shields, crossbows, buckles, helms, halberds, knives, and a hodgepodge of medieval armaments littered the storehouse.
Caleb was slipping his leather vambraces on his forearms. “I got lucky with these, but I haven’t seen your sword.”
Will swore. The sword was their only chance to free the darvish girl, and it could take them hours to sift through these stacks.
Dalen stopped and stared, then began walking towards the back wall, waving his hands as he went.
“What is it?” Will asked.
Dalen held up a finger for silence, maintaining a course for the back wall.
And then he stepped right through it.
“Come,” he called out. “It’s an illusion.”
Will led with a hand out, feeling nothing but air as he stepped right through the illusory barrier. The others followed him in. On the other side, they found a much smaller room with weapons and armor hanging from orderly hooks on the wall. Rows of wooden chests filled the center of the room.
“I noticed the light hitting that wall wrong,” Dalen said. “A little trick my Da taught me.”
With a surge of hope, Will spotted his scabbard hanging on the wall to his left. He walked over and drew his sword, dropping his hammer in favor of a tooth-shaped shield. Marek picked up a larger shield and a flail with a spiked ball as big as a grapefruit.
Caleb was bent over a chest, checking it for traps. “We might need some funds if by some miracle we survive this mountain.”
“Leave it,” Will said. “We need to hurry.”
“Just one sec, I’ve almost—”
There was a loud click. Three darts shot out of the locking mechanism, embedding themselves into Caleb’s chest. “Caleb!” Will cried, rushing to his brother, who was looking down at his chest with a mixture of dread and disbelief.
Moments later, shouts carried into the room from outside.
Delver shouts.
Marek looked from the chest to the street outside, then back at Caleb. “Fool!” he said. “It vas a silent alarm.”
Caleb tore the darts out of his chest, biting his tongue so he wouldn’t scream. Will felt frozen by the turn of events. This is all falling apart. He forced himself to shake off his sense of impending doom, and said, “We have to reach the darvish girl. It’s our only chance. Go!”
Caleb stumbled, already pale from whatever poison the dart had injected. Will pulled him along as they fled the storeroom. Yasmina picked up a knife on the way out, Dalen took a short sword, and Elegon seemed happy to find a knobby walking stick topped with a bronze owl.
When they exited the building, the street was full of delvers streaming out from the barracks, and Will felt a wave of despair.
We were so close, he whispered to himself. So close.
One of the delvers pointed at Marek, who stood a head above the others. “There they be! Take them!”
Will spun one way and then the next, trying to decide what to do. If they ran, the delvers would cut them down. If they surrendered, their captors might or might not let them live, but they would certainly take steps to ensure an escape attempt never happened again.
“They’ll kill us all,” Dalen said in a defeated voice, as the delvers raced towards them.
Caleb gripped Will’s hand. His palm felt clammy and a sheen of sweat coated his forehead. “It’s been real, little bro. Sorry I’m a failure at being a thief, too.”
The first delver was twenty feet away, battle hammer raised. Dozens more followed in his wake.
“Will Blackwood!”
The shout, from a familiar voice, came from the main avenue leading to the barracks.
Will turned and saw a swell of prisoners rushing towards the courtyard, with Tamás in the lead. “Will Blackwood! We are with you!”
He realized Tamás was aiming for the barracks, to arm his people.
“Dalen!” Will screamed. “Another diversion! Marek, watch our backs! Everyone else, help me!”
Marek faced off with the lead delver, while Dalen created bursts of light to confuse the next wave. His spells barely slowed them, but the delvers were forced to turn and confront the greater threat of hundreds of freed prisoners bearing down on them.
Will dashed back inside and gathered a pile of weapons in his arms. Caleb and Yasmina followed suit, and they began launching weapons across the street to the prisoners. Tamás noticed and directed a group of his men towards the storeroom, forming an assembly line of weapons. The skirmish quickly turned into a pitched battle. The delvers were better armed and organized, but the prisoners fought with the furious desperation of those who had nothing to lose.
Caleb eyed the top of the octagonal building. “What about the geomancer?” he asked, fear coating his words.
“He must be absent,” Dalen answered. “Or we would know by now.”
More and more delvers poured into the fray, racing in from all angles, and Will knew it was a matter of time before the prisoners were overwhelmed.
Tamás dashed to Will, who was backed against the door of the barracks. “If I know you at all, Will Blackwood, then this is not the extent of your plan.”
“This wasn’t my plan at all,” Will said, looking for a way to escape the chaos. “I want to free the darvish and flee into the Darklands.”
Tamás grasped Will by the arm, catching his breath from the battle. “Clever.” He surveyed the rapidly deteriorating scene. “It must be a small group to succeed.”
“I know,” Will said in monotone, thinking of the likely fate of the other prisoners.
Tamás gripped his shoulder in understanding. “The delvers will give them a chance to lay down arms. They need workers. And if these people choose to die fighting rather than live as slaves, that is their choice. A valiant one.”
Will blew out a breath. “Can your men cover us?”
Tamás’s smile was bright and cold. He exchanged words with two of his closest men, who started ordering the fighters to make a push away from the barracks. Will gathered the others, and they fled in the opposite direction from the melee, towards the imprisoned darvish girl.
No one followed, but when they rounded the next corner, three oncoming delvers stood in their way. Marek, Tamás, and
Will engaged them with a fury. The delvers were wily fighters, tough and skilled, but Tamás proved to be a vicious opponent, using a pair of scimitars to cut his delver down and then rush to Will’s aid. The delver fought like a cornered badger, but Will held him off while Tamás slipped behind him and ran him through.
Rising from the shadows behind the remaining delver, Dalen stabbed the smaller opponent in the back with his short sword. The delver arched in pain, and Marek ended the fight with a skull-crushing blow from his flail.
Dalen stared down at the dead delver in revulsion, and Will sensed it was the first life he had taken. Will squeezed his shoulder and pulled him along. It was only a few months ago that Will had felt the same. And it hadn’t gotten much better. “Two streets to go. We’re almost there.”
Caleb was short of breath, growing paler by the minute. Yasmina had to pull Elegon along. Will wondered what they were going to do with the old man if they needed to sprint. Too much thinking, he told himself. Just act.
With the sounds of battle ricocheting through the night, the screams of the dying a constant stabbing reminder of the choice Will had made, the party turned a corner and saw the basin of water.
The darvish girl was poised atop the rock, straining to determine the source of the fighting. When she saw them, she jumped into the water, covered her nakedness with her hands, and started babbling.
Free me, she said. Please oh please free me. I will die here. Free me. Free me. Free me.
“Delvers!” Tamás cried. Will turned to see eight albino warriors rounding the corner and rushing down the street.
Will grimaced. Eight was too many. He tossed his sword to Caleb, who he knew wouldn’t participate in the battle. “Free her,” he said.
Tamás gave Will one of his scimitars in replacement. It felt awkward, but it was all he had. To Will’s surprise, Elegon raised his walking stick in a defensive posture and stepped next to Tamás. From his stance, he looked like he knew what he was doing. “Be strong, my friends. Help is on the way,” the old man said mysteriously.
For some reason, the sound of his voice imbued Will with courage. Yasmina stood beside Will, Dalen beside her. Though Will loved them for their bravery, he pushed them both behind him. They wouldn’t withstand the first onslaught. “Do what you can with your magic,” he said to Dalen. “Yaz—help protect Caleb if anyone breaks through.”
And then the delvers were on them. They bore down on Will and his companions with a roar, weapons raised, eight strong and experienced fighters in battle formation. Will felt as if he were going to vomit, but he gave a war cry of his own, drowning his panic in adrenaline.
Tamás yelled at them to push out of the courtyard and into the street to clash with the delvers, so they wouldn’t be surrounded. The delvers squinted off Dalen’s bursts of light, and Will blocked the first blow from an opponent with an upraised shield, though it pushed him back and vibrated his arms. He swung with the scimitar and missed badly, leaving him off balance. It was a completely different feel from his sword. The delver took a swing and Will jumped back, feeling air whoosh by his face.
Marek matched his opponent blow for blow, then drove the delver backwards with a snap kick to the chest. Tamás and Elegon each faced off against two opponents. Tamás was a wizard with his blade, spinning and whirling, keeping the delvers at bay but not managing to advance. Elegon used the superior length of his six-foot long walking staff to fend off his opponents, even cracking one of them on the back. The other delver met the walking stick in midair with the blade of his battle-axe, but Elegon’s weapon held firm. The delver grunted in surprise, and Elegon swept out his legs.
It wasn’t enough. The delvers managed to push them into the brick courtyard in front of the basin, where the rest of their fighters could enter the fray. Will wanted to protect Dalen and Yasmina, but his opponent was experienced and enormously strong. It was all he could do to stay alive.
The delvers kept pushing, forcing Will and his companions to backpedal. One of the delvers rushed around the flank to reach Dalen. If he cut the young illusionist down, Marek’s back would be exposed.
Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw Elegon stumble and go down. The delvers left him and swarmed Tamás. The revolutionary roared, but Will lost sight of him as he focused on his own opponent. The bearded delver facing him grinned, swatted away a blow from Will’s scimitar, and then hit Will’s shield so hard he dropped it and stumbled to a knee.
Will dove backwards as the delver’s hammer came down for the killing blow, striking brick instead. As the delver raised his weapon again, a flash of crimson came between them. With an ululating cry, the darvish girl whirled into the fray, pushing against the delver’s chest with both hands. Will watched in shock as the palms of her hands glowed a deep golden-red, like coals stoked in a fire, and the delver’s tunic burst into flame.
One of the delvers surrounding Tamás broke away and rushed the darvish girl. She flicked her tail, and the barbed tip whipped into the delver’s back, tearing out a chunk of flesh. The pale humanoid screamed and dropped, writhing as if poisoned.
Will and the freed darvish tore into the circle of delvers surrounding Tamás. As she burned another warrior, Tamás spun and delivered a vicious backhand sweep with his scimitar, catching him across the neck.
“Will!”
Caleb’s voice, crying out from behind him. Will turned. Caleb tossed him the sword. Will dropped his hammer, caught the blade, and ran to Marek’s aid, thrusting the sword into the spine of the delver Marek was fighting. The delver fell and twitched on the ground.
Tamás, Marek, and the darvish girl faced off against the last three guards. The darvish’s opponent looked particularly skilled, so Will rushed to help her, busying her opponent with his blade while she slipped behind him. She jumped on the delver’s back and placed her hands on either side of his face, and his head exploded into flame. The delver roared and tried to shake her off, but she gave a cry of rage and pressed her hands deeper. He thrashed and screamed as his flesh melted, but she held tight, flames framing her face like a vision of demonic beauty. Not until the delver’s head was a charred lump of pudding did she step away, letting the corpse collapse at her feet.
Will felt nauseous, but he also buzzed with bloodlust. Marek had dispatched his opponent, and Tamás’s scimitar slipped through the final delver’s defenses, slicing open his abdomen like a piece of ripe fruit.
“Elegon!” Yasmina cried.
She rushed to cradle the old man’s head in her hands. Blood poured from a gash in his side, near his heart.
He thrust the owl-tipped walking stick at her. “You’re a wilder now, my dear. My legacy passes to you.”
She ignored him. “You’ll be fine. We’ll get you some help—”
He cut her off. “I was dying before the battle started. You must leave me.”
Will heard a strange sound behind him, gentle swishing across stone, and turned to see one of the strangest sights he had ever witnessed: seven giant moles, each the size of a full grown pig, scampering towards them from the other side of the basin. The faces of the creatures resembled star-shaped pieces of rubber protruding from their fur. The party cringed as they approached, but the moles stopped a few feet away and rested on their clawed forelegs, as if awaiting a command.
Elegon sighed. “Ah, they’ve come.” The two tiny moles scampered out of his sleeve, and he patted them. “Thank you, my friends.”
Will heard more noises, this time booted feet and shouting from a group of delvers.
Tamás’s voice was grim. “Reinforcements are near.”
Will whipped around to face the darvish girl. “When I first saw you, you said that if we freed you, you would free us. Is that true? Can you help?”
He had no idea if she understood his words, but he thought she would understand the pleading, helpless look they were all giving her. If she couldn’t get them out of Olde Fellengard, they were doomed.
Her lips moved, forming a breathy language
of crackling embers and whispers on stone. Will’s armband translated. I shall do my best.
The girl’s hands returned to their normal color as she climbed onto one of the giant moles and waved for everyone to follow. Elegon protested, but Tamás and Marek lifted him onto one of the creatures.
With everyone gripping the fur of a mole, the darvish girl pointed to her left, deeper into the city. Just as the moles began to move, their stiff gaits reminding Will of a mechanized toy, a large group of delvers came into view, shouting and pointing towards Will and his companions.
In the lead was Farzal.
“We’ll get ye!” Farzal roared, one hand stroking his curly beard beneath a wicked grin, the other hand hefting a battle-axe. “We’ll get ye and flay ye alive!”
-33-
Tonight is the night.
Mala estimated she had two remaining dosages of the Potion of Diminution. One for her and one for the majitsu. For better or for worse, her fate was about to be sealed.
She had a hunch and a plan, depending on what happened in the forest that night. If her hunch was wrong, her backup plan involved fleeing deeper into the woods, hoping against hope she survived long enough to find a town—and most likely never seeing her home world again.
Two hours after the sun went down, once reasonably sure the hags were asleep, Mala undressed and squeezed her clothes through the latticework opening. No matter the outcome, she wasn’t going back inside that filthy cage. Not ever. She would drink her own poison first.
She emptied two more drops, slipped the vial through, and shrank to the height of two inches.
After climbing out and returning to normal size, she donned her clothing and strode to the majistu’s cage. He was next in line to be sacrificed in the forest, though she hadn’t told him what had happened to the unicorn. Her plan depended on his ignorance.
“This ends tonight,” she said. “I’ll be back for you an hour before dawn.”
Hazir snarled. “What do you have planned? Are we not working together?”
She could hear the distress and frustration in his voice, and she smiled to herself. Let one of the vaunted majitsu feel fear for once. “I’ve come to believe the hags are weakest just before dawn,” she said. “Weak enough that we might be able to overcome them.”