A third man had come running up by then, and then a fourth and a fifth. It was too late for me to retreat back into hiding as their focus was already turned from Henrik to me with deadly intentions in their eyes.
I stood up and turned, launching my scimitar into the first man’s heart in one swift motion. He tried to skid to a halt, but he was moving too fast to save himself. With a kick, he slid from my blade and went sailing to the ground. Embers outlined his wound as they had the man before. The next one came in swinging, and I jumped back, still leaning forward as the blade sailed under my chin, missing me by inches. When it had cleared all the way past, I shot my decorative sword up into the man’s stomach and followed up with a cut to his throat with my primary weapon. He dropped like a bag of bricks—just in time for me to deal with the last guy one on one.
He was the biggest one so far and came charging in with a mace. His fearsome image gave me little pause because I had just come from a forest where I had literally slain a giant man-eating house-monster.
His mace came down like a wrecking ball, and all I had to do was sidestep to avoid the would-be devastating blow. Being so large had a few disadvantages, speed being an important one. I jabbed my scimitar into his side, and he winced in pain like a bug that had just found itself under a boot. His mace fell to the ground, and he stood virtually frozen, looking straight ahead in his final moments. After a brief pause, he staggered to the side, away from me, and plopped down on his knees before falling the rest of the way to join the first man face down in the dirt.
Henrik had made considerable progress, and was only a few yards from me when I turned my attention back to him. There were bodies already littering his path. Clearly, more rogues had come from other directions than just from where I was hiding and were able to meet him without having to greet me first. Our eyes met, and he pointed for me to look back to the camp.
I turned my head just in time to see another man descending upon me, literally. He had jumped into the air and was flying down for me with his blade out like an angry wasp prepared to defend its nest with its life. As before, I simply used my rogue deftness to slide out of the way and watched him fall past me, landing on his knees with a groan. In the next second, both of my swords pressed into his back, sending blood spurting everywhere. I turned back to see Henrik smiling in approval as more men came in from the sides to deal with him.
Look out! There was a distinct feminine voice in my head shouting the warning to me. I spun back around to meet another man charging me with a spear. I hacked at the pole from the side with my blade and slid the edge of my metal along his, running forward until the two of us were face to face, standing a finger’s length apart. Without breaking that intense eye contact, I slid my other sword up under his lungs and watched a mixture of surprise and terror overcome him. He fell to his knees with my blade still deep inside him, and I kicked him back as he limply dropped his spear which went rolling away in a slow arc.
“Where was . . .” I wondered aloud, looking for the source of the voice that had warned me. It was certainly in my head, but I was convinced that it was not simply my subconscious looking out for me. Then I saw her.
There she was—Safira—the olive-skinned desert-princess of a woman watching me from one of the cages in the center of the camp. It had to have been her, I was certain. She stood looking at me with that same defiant look on her face that I had seen on the holographic image I had looted from Conn Felvid.
She began moving her arms around in complex patterns, muttering words that I could not hear from way off where I was standing. The tips of her fingers began to glow, and then the light began to shimmer brighter and brighter, slowing traveling up her hands, all the way to her elbows. When I was sure that it could not possibly get any brighter, she reared back and launched a blast of pure energy into the wall of her cell.
There was a dark blue flash around the entirety of her little prison, like a forcefield, when her attack made contact with the iron bars. The energy that flowed from her hands ricocheted back to her, knocking her down with impressive force. The Gray Favor wizards must have enchanted the cage in case one of the prisoners tried such a maneuver. It hurt to watch and only served to fuel my rage. They would be sorry soon enough.
I surveyed the camp again and found a flock of wizards coming down from their stations on the perimeter. They appeared to be heading for the cages, supposedly to protect the only thing that mattered to them—their slaves, their livelihood. The rest of their people were clearly seen as expendable. All of the mercenaries were firing on all pistons trying to rid the camp of its intruders—albeit failing miserably so far—while the robed figures all but ignored the two of us. I counted eight of them and decided to make these cowards my primary targets, not knowing what to expect them to throw at me.
“Henrik!” I shouted over the noise of the men charging for us from all sides. “Come with me to the cages! Free the slaves!”
“On it!” he yelled at my side.
The two of us zoomed over with everything we had in a desperate race for the cells. In unison, the wizards held their arms and implements forward and began chanting incantations. With no warning, the ground beneath my feet parted and a deep pit opened up to take me down. I had no time to react, so I fell and did all I could to try and save myself, which was to reach out and grasp at the dirt that was falling into the hole with me.
I screamed as I fell and suddenly lurched to a stop when a massive hand closed around my wrist. Speed was clearly not a disadvantage for my friend because he had reached out and saved me in the blink of an eye, before I—Mr. Deft Rogue—could even fully register that I was in danger.
I found some footing in a patch of dry dirt that had decided to stay put and was knocked back down by a chunk of the stuff the size of my torso. It exploded all around me on impact and immediately reformed itself into a mass the size of a fist, but this time it had me held firmly in its center. Alas, it was only dry dirt, so I was able to pull myself out of it with relative ease. As soon as I did, it collapsed to the ground in a small pile.
I paid little attention to what Henrik was doing during those confusing moments, but if he was faced with similar trials, he must have overcome them with masterful efficiency because he was already at the cages, swinging like an enraged mother bear at any robed asshole unlucky enough to be caught in his blade’s vicious trajectory.
He somehow managed to cleave two of them down in a single swipe, and it was then that I realized something very important about these wizards: they were completely useless without their magic to save them. This was the case in most roleplaying games, but I expected them to provide a little more resistance than I had just witnessed—they could at least have tried to dodge or go for a dagger or something. But no, instead they decided to just fucking stand there and drop like flies.
A few swings later, Henrik managed to do some serious damage to the cage holding Safira. There was a grating clang and suddenly one of her cage’s walls fell, sending scores of prisoners spilling out, tripping over one another as they all burst into action chasing their freedom.
He had freed them just in time, too, as the rogues were now catching up to us. The slaves quickly prepared for battle and launched themselves into the swarm of brigands, outnumbering our enemies three to one. As each enemy fell, a former slave hurried in to take his weapon, using it to cut down more mercenaries, which in turn gained more weapons for our allies. The tides had turned at an alarming rate. What at first appeared to be insurmountable odds had quickly become an overwhelming chance at victory.
When I turned back to see how Henrik was faring, I found all of the wizards lying dead. He had not done it alone though. There were several thick-armed men reaching through the walls of the remaining cages still anchoring several wizards’ corpses in place, blood spilling out of the gashes my ally had torn into them.
By the time I had decided to run in and help finish off the henchmen, the battle was over. All of them lay dead. Henrik had
broken all of the cages open, freeing all the slaves. Safira was standing at the edge of her prison, watching as if she were waiting for me to come and introduce myself. It appeared that I had completed my quest.
Pop!
Exp: 300
Kill: 6 Gray Favor Henchmen
Search?
“Yes.”
Looting . . .
30sv coins.
LEVEL UP!
You’ve reached level 3!
STR +0, END +0, AGI +2, INT +0, WIS +1, CHA +1
NEW SKILL!
Deathlash
Type: Active
Description: Allows the user to cleave through armor with a single cut of the blade. Only works for sharp melee weapons.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
QUEST COMPLETE: Paving The Way
Exp: 500
My heart was racing more from the rush I was getting off of seeing all those rewards than it was in response to the battle I had just fought. A new skill; a new level; a quest completed, even with its modest rewards, which were nothing aside from the decent amount of experience bestowed to me. I was pulled from my ecstasy by the shouting of one of the women.
“Look! They’re getting away!”
She was right. I had either miscounted, or three of the wizards had remained out of sight during the conflict because some of them, along with a handful of henchmen, were disappearing over a hill to the south.
“Should we pursue?” one of the men asked. He was looking at me, as were others, as if they somehow assumed that I was the decision-maker between Henrik and I. I was the decision-maker as far as I was concerned—being the only actual human in the party—but it seemed like a lot to assume. I kept forgetting that none of these people were real, and the frequency at which that slipped my mind was beginning to worry me.
“No.” I waved the idea away. “Leave them. Let them run to their masters and tell them what’s become of their precious camp and their slaves.” Then I added, “We’ll rest here tonight and make preparations to get you all home tomorrow. If that does not sit well with anyone, come speak to me in private and we can figure something else out.”
No one protested my decision, which was good because I honestly did not know what options I would have had for anyone who just absolutely could not stay there for the night.
It was a cause for celebration, but the fight had not been won without its losses on the slave’s end. As it turned out, three of the slave women had died in the conflict, two of them run through with spears while the third had been beheaded. It was a sad scene, and many of the survivors broke down crying all around the deceased. It was a shame to think that those women were so close to freedom. I was sure that many of their sisters and brothers in bondage were unnecessarily cursing themselves for not doing this or that to save them.
Safira took this news particularly hard when she regained consciousness. In the moment I took my eyes from her, I was told a man had come up to her from behind and struck her on the head with the hilt of his blade. I thanked the gods of chance that he had not struck her a little harder, adding her own corpse to the small pile the rest of us were lamenting.
When she had mostly regained her composure, my damsel went over to the bodies, which by then had been laid out in a line, shoulder to shoulder, facing the sky. It was bad enough to see a good person die, but it was a hundred times worse to see the dead faces of three people so young and so beautiful, so full of potential, with their lives taken from them far sooner than they should have been.
Fighting back another wave of tears, Safira knelt down to the girl closest to her and began singing a sort of hymn under her breath. After a short time, she reached over and touched the girl’s chest over her still heart. She formed her own fingers into the shape of a heart with each hand forming one half. Safira continued her low, somber chant as she formed her hands into the shape of a bird, flapping her fingers like wings as the thumbs stayed locked together in the semblance of a head. It was here that her hands started to glow a bright white with the faintest tint of gold. An aura formed around the bird-shape and remained in place as Safira pulled her hands away.
There was now a bird made of pure light gently resting over the dead girl’s heart. Safira pointed to it and said, “Cora,” and I was not sure if she was giving the creature of light a command in a language unknown to me or if she was saying the girl’s name.
My damsel moved to the next girl in line, leaving the bird where it sat, and began going through the same ritual with this second girl. This time when she stood, she pointed to the second bird that now sat over that girl’s heart and said, “Anna,” and I was sure then that she was pronouncing the name of each victim.
She moved to the final girl and went through the motions for a third time, saying, “Fiona,” at her spell’s finale. All three birds watched her as if awaiting further instruction, but she did not say anything else right away. Instead, she stood over the three women for a long time, silently watching them as the tears began to well up in her eyes once more.
Slowly, she turned to address the crowd and said, “Does anyone have anything to say for these poor souls?”
Several of the prisoners came forward and said pleasant things about each of the girls—how they would be missed, how much easier they had made it for others during those nightmarish times, how much they were loved. The three birds turned to each person as they spoke, as if soaking up what they were saying. When no more people came forward, Safira turned her attention back to her magical creations and began signing her fingers in the air.
Each bird opened its mouth and out came a musical version of the impromptu eulogies that had just been given. Between every song of praise and lamentation for each victim, the bird sang the girl’s name. The whole scene almost brought a tear to my eye. Though I did not know them, I felt that each of these girls had been truly loved by their fellow prisoners.
When each bird ran through its recording several times, Safira held up a hand to quiet them and said, “Now, each of you, fly to the closest of kin of each of these women and play your sad messages so that their loved ones know what has become of them. Now, go!”
The birds turned to the sky and were off, spreading out in different directions and eventually flying out of sight. This was followed by a long moment of silence, during which I could still hear the weeping and sniffling of many of those in attendance. Perhaps, I thought, it would be best to leave the celebrations for the next day, or maybe everyone could just celebrate once they were returned home safely. It was a depressing thing to see such bittersweet victories.
12
The funeral continued with the respectful burying of the three who had fallen. The dozens of vagabond bodies were not treated in such a manner. Few men who dedicated their lives to crime and greed were ever missed. These corpses were piled high by a few of the men and set ablaze in a brilliant pyre over one of the hills bordering the camp.
There were two of the freed who approached me during this labor—a man and a woman—who offered their tracking services in an effort to repay the debt they felt they owed to me. I assured them that there was no debt to be repaid, but they insisted on swearing their allegiance to me, not just to pay me back but, they said, to also pay the universe back for the karmic debt they had racked up in serving the Gray Favor. I will admit that the mention of this caught me off guard. My hand instinctively reached for my scimitar, but I drew it back when I acknowledged that my apprehension was misplaced. They were slaves, they promised me, but being the trackers by profession that they were, the Gray Favor sought to make use of their abilities in navigating the land and hunting down escaped slaves as well as the Gray Favor’s enemies. They had no choice but to obey, fearing for their lives. Indeed, they said, a lot of the prisoners we had just freed were already recaptured by the help of these two.
They seemed earnest and genuine enough, but I had a nagging worry that they might do something to endanger the rest of us. I was still unsure of where their loyalties lay a
nd suspicious that they were only volunteering this information in an attempt to over compensate to hide their true intentions. Luckily, I had a man who claimed to see auras, in a sense. I called Henrik over and asked him to appraise the two, making it very clear to them that I was hesitant to trust them with open arms.
Henrik studied them for a few moments and gave me the green light, saying that they seemed to be honest people and he would have no qualms about taking their words as truth. That was good enough for me, so I gave them their first assignment.
I told them that, as soon as the sun rose the next morning, they were to take all of the prisoners to their respective homes. When they had finished that, if they still wanted to serve at my side, they were welcome to seek me out at Cul’Maryn, the city, because I was unsure of what my standing at the Temple would be after returning to the forest. Both of the trackers promised me they would do as I asked, and that they only saw it as the first step in their long journey to make amends for their transgressions against this land and its people. They assured me that, unless disaster struck them, we would meet again, and they would happily follow my lead wherever I needed them.
The rituals were very draining on Safira. Not long after her ethereal doves flew off to the families of the deceased, she retired to one of the tents and slept the night away. We did not get to really talk at all aside from a few pleasantries. Not wanting to be too intrusive, I took a nearby tent when the others and I had finished burning the bodies and slept until a little before dawn, waking when the trackers were gearing up to lead the prisoners out of the desert.
Circuit World Page 17