The Bandit (Fall of the Swords Book 2)

by Scott Michael Decker

  To the east, the two warriors who'd intercepted and assaulted him entered Burrow. He sent the equivalent of a psychic obscenity in their direction. He cursed himself for his own stupidity in stationing the Wizard Spraying Egret at Burrow Garrison eight months before. The garrison's rate of attrition almost guaranteed that the man would die fighting bandits. Like an idiot, Lurking Hawk had arranged a rendezvous within ten miles of the garrison. Knowing he'd assigned the Wizard to Burrow rankled him. The Sorcerer had forgotten that he might have business at the northern border.

  Lurking Hawk hadn't even known until earlier this afternoon that he'd be coming here in the evening to meet his liege lord. During the audience two days ago, when suggesting that the twins might pose future problems, Lurking Hawk had easily maneuvered Flying Arrow into doing exactly what he wanted. Twice during the conversation, Lurking Hawk had emitted a whisper of psychic suggestion, and Flying Arrow had adopted it as his own idea.

  Implantation's a tool too crude, the Sorcerer thought to himself with a snicker.

  Then, this afternoon, while the Lurking Hawk watched from one of Emparia Castle's northern battlements, Flying Arrow contacted Lofty Lion from the castle spire with the Imperial Sword. Immediately afterward, the Sorcerer contacted the former Emperor through the circuit-generated psychic link between the bracelet and the staff.

  Thank the Infinite Guarding Bear's repatriation is this evening, Lurking Hawk thought, grateful for the distraction. Invited to the ceremony along with the Eastern nobility, Lurking Hawk had no desire to welcome the Usurper back. Anything to divert attention from the border between the Empire and the empty northern lands. On this lonely road the last two Northerners were about to plot their revenge.

  History would revile him. For the next millennium, everyone would refer to him by the epithet “the Traitor.” Treachery was a double-edged knife, cutting both ways. The betrayal of one cause was merely loyalty to another. All Lurking Hawk's actions had one motivation: Loyalty to the Northern Empire. Vengeance will be mine! the Sorcerer thought.

  In pain, tired from travel, drained by his psychic struggle with the other Wizard, Lurking Hawk leaned back against the tree and dozed.

  Someone tapped his foot, waking him.

  Indistinct in the moonlight, a hooded skeleton stood in front of him. Dregs of glistening eye sunken in socket peered from beneath a precipitous, lupine brow.

  Lurking Hawk clutched at his chest in terror.

  “Impudent dog! Where's your obeisance?” Lofty Lion said in the dead language of the north, his voice acid to eardrums.

  The Sorcerer scrambled to put his head in the snow.

  Nodding to acknowledge the bow, the former Emperor staggered, the hood falling away. He might have fallen without the support of the stout wooden staff. “Who are you?” Lofty Lion had little hair left. Only a shaggy ring of silver wisps tufted the mottled, scaly scalp.

  “Eh?” Lurking Hawk found his voice. “You don't remember me?”

  “Address me properly, by the basted balls of the Infinite!” His smell was worse than his voice.

  “Forgive me, Lord Emperor Lion,” Lurking Hawk said, barely recognizing his former Emperor.

  Age had ravaged the man. “Who are you?” Nasal mucus dripped from narrow nostril. A crusted sleeve wiped it away.

  “It is I, your humble servant, Lord Emperor Lion,” Lurking Hawk said, bowing obsequiously.

  “I've thousands of humble servants! How do you expect me to remember them all, eh? Tell me your name!” The mouth was nearly toothless, two rotted stubs remaining.

  “I'm your Sorcerer, Lord Emperor Lion. Don't you remember? Lurking Hawk, Lord.” By the bludgeoned brains of the befuddled lion, he's senile! Lurking Hawk thought, sighing. Will my plan run afoul for lack of proper implementation?

  “You!” the sneering voice cackled witchily. A talon on the hand pointed at him, an accusation. “Traitor! I should obliterate you and your entire perfidious lineage! I should throw your body to the Imperial lions! I should—”

  “You should shut your mouth long enough to find out why I'm here!”

  “Eh? What is it? What do you want?” Frozen spittle slathered a prognathous jaw.

  “I came to tell the Lord Emperor Lion that our chance for vengeance has finally arrived.”

  “Vengeance? Upon whom, Traitor?” The stiff, twisted posture suggested fused vertebrae and a crimped spine.

  “Upon the man who destroyed the Northern Empire, fool!”

  “Why didn't you say so? Am I a mind-reader? I hear Flatulating Arrow impregnated his consort. Must have been the juices of the Infinite, though. Man has an empty quiver, like me. How'd he do it, Lord Hook?” A cystoid larynx swelled the throat, like an apple half-swallowed.

  “ 'Hawk,' Lord,” Lurking Hawk replied. “With the juices of the Infinite, as you say, Lord Emperor Lion.” One of three people who knew the truth, he knew that that was two too many. “The Infinite has arranged for the Consort to bear twins.”

  “That's what the flow tells me, Lord Hack. So?” The neck was a corded, wrinkled pillar and buttressed sagging jowls that hung in scaly folds below cheekbones collapsed into the face.

  “That's 'Hawk,' you deaf old buzzard! So he contacted you this afternoon, eh? Tell me why he might have done that, Lord Emperor Lion.”

  “How could I know? What am I, a Prescient Wizard? Why did the Emperor Frustrated Arrow contact me, eh?” Gnarled, trembling hands of shriveled skin, prominent vein, and knobby knuckle clutched the polished staff.

  Lurking Hawk was growing tired of the pointless conversation. Sighing, he recited, “The Northern Heir Sword.”

  Lofty Lion collapsed to the road, the staff falling away.

  Thank the Infinite the implant still works, Lurking Hawk thought. Having lain dormant for fourteen years, it could have easily failed.

  The Sorcerer slipped off the small talisman with which he'd contacted Lofty Lion that afternoon. Through the psychic link between the bracelet and the staff, Lurking Hawk disabled the circuits protecting the former Emperor, leaving on those that made him invisible.

  Then the Sorcerer prepared his mind for the implantation. Having constructed the basic features of the implant, the Sorcerer transferred the modules into the decrepit man's ossified brain. Connecting the modules, he then reprogrammed the staff to accept the changes, the staff designed to protect Lofty Lion from implantation as well.

  Fifteen years ago, as the Eastern Armed Forces under the General Guarding Bear besieged the Northern castle, Lurking Hawk had hidden the Northern Heir Sword and implanted Lofty Lion with a memory of destroying it. When the castle fell not long afterward, Flying Arrow had been livid when he learned Lofty Lion had destroyed the Sword. He'd ordered the Eastern Sorcerer Flowing Mind to examine Lofty Lion, revealing an implanted memory. Furious, Flying Arrow had then perpetrated the depravity of the millennium. He'd ordered every single remaining citizen of the Northern Empire tortured and killed in front of Lofty Lion. The effort to persuade the Northern Emperor to divulge the Heir Sword's location had proved futile. Lofty Lion simply hadn't known.

  Only Lurking Hawk had known the location of the Heir Sword.

  Knowledge that Lurking Hawk had just planted in Lofty Lion's subconscious mind. When the correct circumstances coincided, the former Emperor would retrieve the Northern Heir Sword.

  Lurking Hawk withdrew from Lofty Lion's mind. The former Emperor began to stir. Reactivating the staff, Lurking Hawk turned without a word and retreated southward, staggering from exhaustion.

  We Northerners will have our revenge!

  Chapter 5

  Mates of long affiliation develop a mate-empathy link. Aligning on the same frequencies, the mates engage in a constant exchange of perception, thought and emotion. To the uninformed observer, psychic conversation between mates of many years looks bizarre. Scant expression and gesture, interspersed by an infrequent word, are the only physical signs that a conversation is taking place. Historians hypothesize that such mo
tions are vestigial from a time before history when humans hadn't yet developed psychic powers. This exchange is so fast and garbled that even Wizard-empaths find it difficult to follow.

  For most long-standing couples, intervals of separation cause each person periods of mild grief and depression, although each knows that the other is alive. The frequencies of each having aligned with the other's over many years, a separation frees up the frequencies to revert whence they were before the start of the relationship. The reversion itself is moderately fast, changing in a year what might take twenty years to develop. Depending on each person's adaptability, the reversion can be painful, not unlike a bird molting. Mates have died because a separation was too long and the condition remained untreated.—Propinquity: The Mate-Empathy Link, by the Wizard Easing Comfort.

  * * *

  “The Lord Emperor Arrow really knows how to stage an Imperial Ball!” Running Bear said during a lull in the conversation, his speech somewhat slurred.

  No one in the refectory of the Bear residence felt inclined to respond. Scattered around the table were empty plates from the just-finished meal. The evening of debauchery had disheveled the ornately dressed revelers. Only Rolling Bear appeared not to have imbibed, danced and mingled until the small hours of morning. Only he, in fact, hadn't gotten intoxicated.

  An hour earlier, the Bear Patriarchy procession—or at least those members invited to the Imperial Ball—had moved merrily along the southern avenue. Stumbling and weaving their way toward home, they'd raucously greeted everyone they met, bestowing their blessings on all. In alleys and upon fences, many had also bestowed the expurgations of their dissipation. More than one of their company had passed out into their own discharges, sober servants rescuing them.

  Guarding Bear belched, sated with the meal, the imbibing, and the honor shown him the evening before and into the night. In the chair beside him, Bubbling Water took his hand and smiled. She looked happy with the homage the Emperor had bestowed on him. Guarding Bear wondered if she'd felt as flustered as he when Flying Arrow had thrown away decorum to welcome him home with salutations.

  “I thought the Lord Emperor didn't like you much, Lord Bear,” Healing Hand said.

  Guarding Bear roared with laughter.

  Healing Hand frowned, as if he didn't understand. “You told me that yourself, Lord Bear! Why did he welcome you like that if he doesn't like you?”

  Bubbling Water buried her laughter in Guarding Bear's shoulder.

  Tousling her hair, he answered the boy between fits of giggling. “The Emperor has to conceal his dislike of me, Hand, a dislike so vast he felt the need to overcompensate. The more honor he shows me, the more he detests me.”

  “Oh,” Healing Hand said, leaning his chin on his hand, looking puzzled.

  “If I were the Emperor—and thankfully I'm not, Little Hand—I'd have welcomed me in exactly the same way,” Guarding Bear said. “The next day I'd have ordered me to accomplish some impossible task to punish me for my transgression. Some task so arduous I might lose my life, such as, well—laying siege to the Tiger Fortress.”

  “He wouldn't do that, would he?” Healing Hand asked.

  “He might, Little Hand. Last night he was in a difficult situation. He had to honor me for saving the Lord Emperor Jaguar's life, and he still hasn't punished me for attacking the Lord Emperor Jaguar eight months ago. You see?”

  Healing Hand looked as baffled as ever. “Well, no, Lord Bear, I don't. Why does he have to punish you?”

  “If I can assault the Lord Emperor Jaguar with impunity, I could do the same to him, eh?” Guarding Bear said. “Flying Arrow has to show that attacking an Emperor—any Emperor—is very imprudent.”

  Healing Hand nodded dubiously, then shook his head, then glanced at the ceiling.

  Chuckling, Bubbling Water yawned, closed her eyes and leaned against her mate.

  A servant appeared and filled everyone's coffee cup, asking if they'd finished. No one dissented. Plates, glasses, platters and utensils rose from the table and floated into the kitchen.

  Snatching the last piece of sausage as the platter rose, Running Bear saluted his father with it. “Great party. Glad you're home, Father. Got to run.” Bowing and standing, he stuffed sausage in his mouth and licked his fingers, wiped them on his sleeve and stepped toward the door.

  “Remember your promise, Running Bear,” Bubbling Water said.

  “Yes, Mother,” he replied, winking at her and leaving.

  Guarding Bear glanced at Bubbling Water.

  “Can we leave it for awhile, my love?” she replied. “It's been so long since we've seen each other.” She rubbed the day of growth on his face.

  Caressing her nose with a finger, he bent to kiss her. Rising, he led her from the refectory, toward their suite in the east wing of the mansion.

  Several times along the way, they stopped to kiss and fondle, their desire for each other growing slowly. The intensity of their intimacy after long absences always surprised Guarding Bear. Often it was like the passion of young lovers newly acquainted, instead of the sure and knowing gentleness of mates long familiar with each other.

  When they reached their suite, Bubbling Water shed her clothes, and he did likewise, grinning. He didn't remove the pendant. She molded her body to his.

  “Shall we bathe first?” he asked, knowing he stank of old sweat, new food, and the indulgences of the night before. Nodding, she led him by not his nose to the excretory-bath.

  There, she saw that the servant had heated the bath water nearly to scalding. Dismissing her, Bubbling Water sat her mate on the small wooden stool. “Close your eyes,” she said, dousing him. With a sponge she began to lather him. “Tell me about your 'vacation'.”

  Gratefully, he submitted to her attentions, loving her and enjoying the thorough cleaning she gave him. The room shields were on, he saw, so he lowered his own. With words and telepathy, he told her of his doings in the Southern Empire.

  'Ostensibly, I won this pendant in the dueling rings at the Southern Empire's annual tournament. No one will question how I got it. I did defeat the best swordsmen of the Southern Empire. In an exhibition match afterward, while blindfolded, I dueled a pair of identical twin warriors, a sword in each hand. Tens of thousands of spectators watched me defeat the twin Southern Warriors. A long day of fighting behind me, I and the Emperor repaired to the castle, where an assassin almost succeeded in taking his life. If I hadn't been following the Emperor by a few paces, and stumbled and fallen on the hem of Snarling Jaguar's robes, he'd be dead. The Emperor fell as the assassin struck. The first stroke missed. Leaping to defend him, I disarmed the assassin literally, hacking off the arms. To commemorate my saving him, Snarling Jaguar ordered the castle sculptor to make a statue of me. To reward me personally, he ordered the Sorcerer Hungry Pirhana to fashion this gold pendant. Embedded in the solid gold disk is a talisman.

  'When he saw I was reluctant to accept an illegal gift, Snarling Jaguar said, “Disgusting law. I should repeal it. It doesn't discriminate between the person using the talisman against his or her Empire, and the person applying the tool for the Empire's benefit. A talisman is only as destructive as the mind that wields it.”

  'Hungry Pirhana expressed his doubts when I told him my specifications. Knowing how the Imperial Swords often hurt Emperors, I wanted to disable the talisman circuits and, if need be, have the talisman modified. I didn't want to become prisoner to a few electrical circuits. I also specified that the operative frequencies be flexible. Since an Imperial Sword's so rigid, an Heir's mind needs at least five years of Heir-Sword preparation. Although hesitant, Hungry Pirhana constructed the talisman to my specifications. Then he installed the circuits in the pendant I won for defeating the best Southern swordsmen.'

  Bubbling Water finished lathering him, but for his pleasure and for hers, she washed him again where he liked it most.

  With his mind, he tickled the pleasure centers of hers. She dropped the sponge but continued to wash him. �
��I hear you've been busy as well,” he said with a groan.

  'After you left, nothing seemed to be happening in Emparia City,' Bubbling Water sent. 'I toured the prefecture with Healing Hand and Whispering Oak. Aged Oak should be proud of his daughter. She's very beautiful and as cantankerous as he is.

  'I made the mistake of informing the Mayor of Nest, Foraging Puma, of my coming. When I arrived, he had a lavish welcome waiting. I cut it short, but during the parade, Healing Hand saw that Foraging Puma was extremely nervous. That boy's talents! Anyway, he discovered that the Mayor had been filching from the city treasury, among other malefactions. I ordered him imprisoned, searched his house and summoned all city employees. Of the thousand or so bureaucrats, only nine hundred gathered immediately. I ordered the city militia to round up the remaining bureaucrats. Unfortunately, most of the warriors had known about or benefitted from Foraging Puma's malfeasances. About a hundred warriors and city officials were absconding with whatever they could pack, and I had no means to stop them.

  'Then Healing Hand volunteered to do it. I laughed, of course. How could a mere boy stop the flight of so many miscreants? He gave me a dark look and surprised me. One of these days he won't astonish me, but I doubt that'll be anytime soon.

  'He stepped out into the street and extended those large hands of his, like a man groping in the dark. Turning slowly, he spun once all the way around. Soon the psychic flow was laden with horror at the apparent deaths of every administrator or warrior I wanted to capture. Only they weren't dead. They were asleep, all one hundred fifty-one miscreants plus the members of their families. In less than ten seconds, Healing Hand put to sleep a total of seven hundred thirty-three people! Worse, he didn't even perspire!'

  Guarding Bear closed his eyes as Bubbling Water doused him to rinse off the suds. Standing, he gestured her to sit.

  Smiling, she accepted gratefully, closing her eyes as she lowered herself. She gasped as the hot water drenched her. As he lathered her, she continued, his touch pleasing.