The Darkslayer: Book 03 - Underling Revenge

by Craig Halloran

“Give us back our money!” Lefty cried.

  The man swatted him hard in the face, drawing blood in the crack of the halfling's mouth.

  “What did I say about the noise, Child? Do that again, and I’ll cut your throat.”

  Georgio broke out in a cold sweat and began to sob. The words went through him like a hot knife. He sagged on his weakened knees, tears filling his eyes.

  “Look Boss, you scared him good.”

  “Is that so?”

  The man walked over and tilted Georgio’s face up by the chin.

  “Tell me, Boy, where do you come from?” the man said, his voice persuasive, his eyes glinting and hypnotic.

  Georgio shook his head.

  A blade whisked past his nose.

  “The Magi Roost!”

  The thief stepped back and said, “Interesting. I know this place. There are many wealthy patrons there. Hmmm.”

  The man paced back and forth in the alley, hands behind his back, flipping and catching a coin.

  “All right men, take the halfling back to the nest and await my word. I’ll take the boy with me.”

  Georgio saw the alarm in Lefty’s face as they gagged him and started to drag him away.

  “No!” Georgio cried, trying to pull away.

  The man’s powerful hand grasped him by the nape of his neck.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Boy, and your friend will be fine. It’ll cost you … well someone … though.”

  Georgio puzzled over what that might mean as the man pulled him along. Still, he didn’t know which would be worse: Lefty being kidnapped, or Georgio having to explain to Kam how that had happened. One thing was certain; he and Lefty were in for it.

  Chapter 24

  He couldn’t tell if it tasted good or bad. He didn’t even know what it was called. He kept chewing, biting into something hard, and spitting it out. He picked the small seed off of the ground, pinching it between his fingers. He took another bite of the porous and watery blue bulb, chewed some more, and swallowed. He rubbed the seed between his fingers, thinking that he wanted more, before dropping it onto the grassy ground. He stepped back as the ground began to quake. It split open and a tree burst forth, first the trunk, followed by the branches and then the pale blue leaves. The fruit burst forth on the branches like blossoming flowers. An odd feeling went up his spine. Scorch's work had just begun.

  Scorch didn’t yet have the words, but only his thoughts mattered.

  That seems good. I wonder what seems bad.

  Scorch had remained in isolation since he arrived on Bish. He was uncertain whether or not taking Trinos up on her charge was wise. He felt confined and listless. He tried to remember what or who he was before. He thought something on the roughshod world would remind him of that, but it hadn’t come yet. He wasn’t sure if it was a new start or an imprisonment. One thing was certain: he didn’t belong here. He sat and watched a wagon train winding over the grassy terrain. From the distant hillside where he sat alone, he could clearly hear the people speaking and singing. Song birds chirped in the air, and the insects that crawled and flew made sounds of their own. Scorch’s keen ears were growing accustomed to the new sights and sounds on Bish. They picked up on the danger lurking nearby. A lusty group of orcen robbers and highwaymen readied an ambush nearby. Why would Trinos make such ugly and smelly creatures? It was one of those many moments Scorch would watch with contemplation, trying to understand the world in which he now lived. The unsuspecting humans kept rolling along, livestock in tow. It looked like their last day on Bish had come.

  Scorch watched the attackers charge from behind the rocks and down the hill. He was callous to all of the blood that splattered over the grass as the heavy blades fell. Interesting. It was time his new life on Bish began. He took on a dangerous form and bounded down the hill toward the mayhem at the caravan.

  Chapter 25

  He was sitting on a stone with his knuckles under his chin. Brool was stuck in the ground at his side. A gentle gust of wind ruffled the straggling hairs under his helmet. He inspected the holes in his scale mail, rubbing his finger in the fleshy wounds left by the underling’s mystic javelins. The one in his backside was as bad. His skin was hard and dry with thick scabs all over it that were charred and black. He had been picking at them for over an hour, fighting the urge to take the armor off. He was pretty sure the dwarven mail had saved him though, by somehow absorbing the mage's power.

  One underling down and one more to go. It was a singular thought that kept running circles in his head, reminding him that he actually hoped this was the last underling. He twisted the bracers on his wrists and sighed. He had never felt such anticipation like this about any fight. He got up and stretched his arms high.

  “Bone!” The armor was still pinching into his skin. It was bad enough that he had been slashed and poked over a dozen times in the past two days, but now his own armor seemed to attack him. He plucked Brool from the ground and began to twirl it around.

  “Cut, thrust, swipe! Cut, thrust, swipe!”

  He stuck the war-axe back in the ground.

  “Slat!”

  He sat back down and pulled a canteen from his backpack. He now kept the backpack looped on his arm out of a healthy caution born of the times he had been parted from it and from the sack. He drank. The slug of water was warm, adding little comfort to his dried throat. Just thinking seemed to hurt. His eyes were bloodshot and weary behind the slots of his helmet. He was more stiff and achy from head to toe than he could ever recall feeling in his life. If that underling was coming, he wouldn’t be catching him at his best, which he felt had come and gone. He felt like an old warrior that had survived one too many battles. He swore if he survived the next encounter he would go home.

  Now that he had stopped and had time to think, reality began to settle in. He had left a beautiful woman for the taste of blood and dirt. He still felt he was doing the right thing, leaving his friends behind and out of harm's way, but maybe there was another choice, another path, another road. He had been tracking paths with keen eyes for years, but maybe he had missed one. Still, all of the pleasurable images had faded in his memories, had receded back so that right now, his mind was full of vibrant recent memories of his battle with the underlings.

  Might as well build a fire.

  He didn’t want to take a chance that the underling would miss him. He started picking twigs and tree needles from the ground. The land was sparse. Loose rocks and rugged brush was all he came by. He pulled some from the ground with his hands. The roots weren’t deep, but they spidered out a good distance along the ground. Some wilting bone trees were nearby. They were eight to ten feet tall, sparsely covered with ghostly white leaves. He took Brool and chopped them down. The massive blade chopped the narrow trunks into kindling.

  Ten minutes later he was warming his hands on a small blazing fire. The suns were still an hour above the horizon, so it was still hotter than two red-headed whores outside, but the fire kept Venir company. The crackling fire was a friend, alive and breathing. His mouth watered for ale. He stomach rumbled for bread. One more fight and I’m going home.

  The darkness covered the land now as the suns dipped and the moons rose. Venir sat staring into the fire, the rock grave of the underling at his back. An orange hue illuminated his haggard face. The vibrant warrior was gone, only a shell remained.

  His grumbling didn’t sound natural.

  “I’ll give it til’ morning, then I’m gone. Blast these underlings! Let someone else kill them!”

  He strapped his backpack fully onto both arms and then lay back against it on his elbows, staring at the eerie moons rising over the distant hillside. He closed his eyes. He was in a deep slumber when his head began to throb. He dreamed of a pair of cloaked underlings coming his way, eyes brighter than fire, arms wrapped in energized snakes. Venir lurched up from the ground, snatching his axe and rolling to his feet. His pulsating head aroused his body like strong coffee. New energy surged from head to toe
. Every hair on his arms rose, and his vision was as razor sharp as an eagle's. He spied in the sky a billowing black shadow that hovered before one of the glowing moons.

  “Come down and play, Underling! I have a message for you!” All of Venir's thoughts about his friends receded completely when he slashed Brool in the air. Suddenly, he was hungry for vengeance. Brool was alive in his hand, its razor’s edges gleaming in the night.

  “Are you scared, Underling!? Why not come down? My axe will comfort you!”

  Venir could feel the underling’s contempt and hatred. It was strong, maybe more so than the other's had been.

  “Come, Vermin! I’ll make a nice stone grave for you, just like the other's!”

  The underling was closing in; its eyes were blazing silver dots in the sky. Thirty feet high and fifty feet away, it stopped. Venir could feel its eyes boring into him. It was the one that had tried to crush his heart in his chest. Venir’s heart ached at the thought. He didn’t want to go through that again. Venir picked up a stone and threw it, only to watch it ricochet harmlessly away.

  “Come! Fight!” he cried.

  Venir noticed a thin silver lining catching fire along the underling’s robes. He picked up a murmuring from high above inside of his helm. The hairs on the nape of his neck stood up. He was surrounded by something invisible and smothering. One second he was standing and in the next he was lifted from his feet. He swung wild in the air, trying to strike what had lifted him from the ground, but he didn’t feel a thing. It felt like a soft cushion had scooped him up and begun carrying him away.

  “NO!” he shouted, legs kicking in mid-air.

  The underling was coming closer now, hands fanned out, fingers manipulating his direction like a puppet. All of Venir’s strength and anger did him no good fighting the unseen hands that held him. He squirmed and thrashed like a suffocating fish, but it was to no avail. He glided now, back toward the endless wall of mist in the distance.

  What is it doing?

  The underling, Lord Verbard, was walking on the ground now, twenty feet away, and still manipulating Venir in the air with unseen hands, pushing him back. The underling stopped by the stone grave. A twisted smile crossed its evil face. It seemed to anchor its feet to the ground. It began pushing the air in powerful motions, howling with glee.

  Venir was sailing backward now, ten feet above the ground. The underling was diminishing in the distance. Venir’s head burned like fire. He could sense the triumph in the underling, like nothing he ever felt from them before. Its fear was gone. All it felt was a triumphant glee in the revenge it wrought. Venir felt envy and fury as the mist began to thicken around him. One second the underling was there and the next the entire world he knew was gone.

  He felt the wind rushing through his hair. All he knew was that he was still going backward. How far he had gone he did not know. He could see nothing but the thick white mist. His axe was hardly visible before his eyes. The throbbing in his head began to subside, but another series of thoughts ate at his brain.

  Where will I be?

  There were no suns nor moons along the horizon. No up or down. He had heard stories of cliffs that dropped off deep within the mist. He had known of people that had gone in, only to never return. In his mind he still felt the underling's presence, but the force that surrounded him began to subside. He was slowing down. Suddenly, there was a total disconnect with the underling inside his head. The difference was day and night, a prolonged burden lifted. He felt freedom from any underling presence in his mind, something he hadn’t felt in five years. With the underling's presence, the unseen hands that held him disappeared, dropping him in midair.

  Venir’s heart pounded with elation that the invisible clutches that had held him were gone.

  “Yes!”

  He prepared himself for the hard landing as he fell, but he kept going. He was in a free fall. As the seconds passed, his fear of the inevitable began to grow. He continued to fall.

  Chapter 26

  The last thing Kam needed was another drink of Muckle Sap, especially with an objectionable patron. It was one of those rules that she had made for her staff: too much fraternization with the customers led to trouble. It was early though, so no one else was around except Joline. Of course, it was her rule, and she could break her own rule … if she wanted. Besides, she felt compelled to appease the unpleasant woman across from her. She tipped her glass and drank.

  The woman with the chopped up black hair gave it a moment before she took a drink of her own. Kam folded her arms over her chest and cocked her eye.

  “How is it?”

  “It’s good. The best I’ve had in years.”

  “Try it with some cheese.”

  The nameless woman helped herself without a word. Her fingers were long and scarred, but proficient with the proper etiquette of eating pleasantries. The woman’s rugged appearance defied her manners. What Kam had fed her was delicious stuff, the kind that made uncouth pallets grunt. It was not so with this stranger, therefore she'd had the best food before. Who is she?

  Kam shifted in her chair as she spread some jelly on her bread. She was full, but it was good manners to eat when company ate. She had no idea what to say to this woman. It wasn’t like her to be nervous. It was clear the dark woman wasn’t going to offer anything, either. She chose her words with care.

  “So, are you settling in or passing through?”

  The woman just stared, blue eyes as hard as sapphires.

  “Look, Prissy—”

  “Kam—call me Kam.”

  “Very well, Kam. I’ll be moving on ...”

  She felt like she could breathe again. Thank goodness.

  “… just not right away.”

  The tightness in her chest returned. Please don’t ask for a room.

  “I’ll be needing a room and a stable.”

  Slat! The Magi Roost had one vacant room. She took another sip.

  “So how long do you need to stay?”

  The woman shrugged and said, “As long as I have to.”

  Kam smiled, saying, “Well, I know a great place.”

  “I like it here.”

  “The Magi Roost is full,” she lied, taking another sip.

  The stranger washed down her food and wiped off her mouth with a napkin. Her fingers ran across the scabbard on her sword.

  “I don’t believe you … Kam.” Kam propped her elbow on the table and leaned toward the stranger. This is my roost, and I'll decide who stays and who goes!

  “I don’t care if you believe me or not.”

  “Is that so?”

  The woman had a witchy look in her eye. Either the woman was teasing, or she was about to take a swipe at her. Kam was a good judge of character, but in this case she couldn’t tell. Where are my customers? Someone should have come in for breakfast by now. Resisting the urge to look around, she confronted the woman.

  “Look, Lady, I decide who stays. You won’t be. I can tell an honest face when I see one, and yours isn’t one.”

  She readied her spell and her tongue began to tingle. For a moment, the woman’s face remained as cold as stone. Then the woman’s face softened the ever slightest and so did her grinding tone.

  “I'm sorry, Kam. It’s … it’s just been a rough road. I feel out of place here. It’s so nice and I’m so filthy. I smell, and my clothes are a tattered mess. I-I can’t say who I am. I’m not trying to deceive you. I just can’t say my name. Really,” she pleaded.

  Kam leaned back, astonished at the woman’s words. The sour face had somehow turned to gold. The woman was bewitching enough, but Kam's gut wouldn’t trust her words, no matter how sincere they sounded.

  “I’m sorry, Miss, but it’s odd that you can’t give a name. I don’t do business like that.”

  The woman’s hand lifted from her sword, hiding her face in shame.

  “I know, I know. It’s just that I’m an outcast. A lone one at that.”

  “You don’t have anybody?”

/>   “Just the sword, and it’s not even mine. It was my husband's, a betrayed soldier, now dead.”

  The woman began to sob, hiding her watering eyes in her cloak.

  Kam refilled the woman’s goblet and said, “So, what brings you here?”

  The woman wiped the tears from her eyes and took a long swallow.

  “I need to hide … to change,” she stammered. “You know what I mean. I was told the City of Three was the place to go. I was told to come here.”

  Kam tried to hide her sympathy by fiddling with her goblet. She searched the woman’s pleading eyes. She shifted in her seat as she wiped her hand on her short dress. The City of Three was known for its illusions, but what this woman was asking for was extreme. Is she talking transfiguration? She cannot be. But she sensed the worst, based off the desperation in the woman’s voice. What this woman was asking for was a dangerous thing, indeed.

  “Well, you came to the right city, just the wrong tavern. This place is full of magi, wizards, sorcerers, and the like, but if you’re talking about what I think you are … then you need to seek help elsewhere. I don’t deal with things like that.”

  The woman stiffened.

  “I was told that your patrons do.”

  The stranger was right. Any one of many were connected enough to see such a task through, however, it wasn’t the kind of business that Kam wanted the Magi Roost to be known for. As far as she knew, it wasn’t, until now. She rubbed her palms on her dress.

  “What my patrons do is their business, and I don’t need some nameless stranger harassing them. My customers come to unwind.”

  “That’s not all … I hear,” the woman said as she leaned forward on her elbows.

  “Maybe what you heard is wrong. How could you possibly know if you have never been here? Maybe you bribed a liar. Have you considered that? The people have tongues of silver in this city. They’ll sell anything, especially to a desperate woman like you.”

  The woman let out a chuckle; her feeble expression had vanished only to be replaced by something even more sinister than before. Kam’s headache began to reassert itself. Her heart started pounding in her chest. She placed her fingers on her temples and said, “I think it’s time that you go.”