Lee’s feet pounded the dirt.
Twenty paces to go.
The bird dragged the boy across the ground and tossed him into the air with a fluid flick of its head.
His vision narrowed. It was just him, the bird, and the boy.
Ten paces to go.
It spun, snatched the boy head first into its beak the way a heron might do with a smelt.
Five paces to go.
The bird’s legs were almost twice Lee’s entire height: its body was in reach of his longsword, but if he missed his strike, the bird could fly away. He had to keep it on the ground.
The bird tipped its head back.
Lee dove at it, wrapping his arms around its left leg in a full-power tackle.
The massive bird stumbled, its backward-bending knee unable to absorb the impact. It hopped on the other leg and righted itself. Extending its wings, it flapped and leapt skyward, managing to cover but a dozen paces before hitting the ground again.
The boy may have been small enough for it to swallow without slicing off limbs, but wasn’t quite in the right position in the bird’s beak. And with Lee clamped on its leg, it was too heavy to take off. It arched its long neck to inspect the creature impeding its meal and in a split second the bird placed Lee into the category of ‘large prey with a pesky tendency to fight back.’
Lee would have to let go to draw his sword. It was like trying to fight a flying giraffe. “Little help!” he shouted.
A crossbow bolt pierced the creature’s backside. Sam trying to help?
I have to make myself a bigger threat, he thought.
Lee bellowed, sank his teeth into the back of the bird’s leg. He bit through dust, grime, scaly skin, sinew, until the foul taste of blood gurgled into his mouth.
Small though his teeth were, the bite drew the bird’s rage. It spit the boy onto the weed-covered ground and slammed at Lee with its knobby beak, trying to knock him loose without breaking its own leg.
Lee let go, drawing his sword in a fluid motion, and lunged at the bird, slicing into its left leg above the knee: not a crippling blow, but drawing blood.
The bird squawked, slammed its beak downward at Lee’s head.
The same downward blow the gastropoid crippled me with.
He sidestepped, dodged the blow, but his heel caught on a stone. He thudded heavily onto his back.
Lee shot a quick glance at the boy: dazed, dripping with saliva, but alive. He had gotten to his hands and knees and was crawling toward the wagon. I’ve got to keep this creature focused on me, he thought.
Be careful what you wish for.
The bird clamped its beak around Lee’s calf, yanked to throw him off balance, grabbed him by the thigh, and jerked him into the air. The flesh of his thigh burned from the brutal crushing. Shaking tore at his tendons, wrenching every joint in his body as he was jerked and shaken like a terrier’s chew toy.
Lee slashed wildly at the creature’s beak—a six-foot-long version of poultry shears. Except that the poultry would be on the giving end of any shearing.
The creature dropped Lee, he fell hard, the six-foot drop nearly knocking the wind from him.
The bird squawked, a crossbow bolt piercing its ribs. It turned, met by a speeding mass of reptilian flesh. Sally rammed into it, skewering it with her lance-like horns. The bird shuddered and collapsed with a dull gurgle.
Lee wiped splattered avian blood from his eyes and gazed up at Shin. “Thanks.”
“You’re helping me bathe Sally after this.”
Lee nodded at Shin. His gaze shifted back to the mass of charcoal feathers and pooling blood, finally settling on the boy. He had crawled halfway back to the safety of the wagon. “Hurry up. Get up and run. Get back under the wagon.”
A second bird swooped in, snapped up the boy in his beak, and landed seventy paces distant in the clearing.
Stupid! Thought Lee. Never let your guard down!
“Shin, get the boy! I’ll never make it—”
The bird glanced back at them, tipped its head back, and in a pair of jerking spasms swallowed the boy whole.
Shin fought to reload his crossbow.
Lee dragged himself to one knee, grimaced in pain, and dropped again. He couldn’t reach the bird. It was all up to Shin.
The bird flapped its wings, leapt skyward.
Shin leveled his crossbow at the retreating bird.
Fired.
Hit.
The bird shrugged off the hit and disappeared into the forest crown.
“Too far away,” said Shin. “The bolt has no hitting power at this range. We should go.”
“It can’t… NO! We’ve got to go after it,” yelled Lee.
“We couldn’t hope to catch it,” said Shin.
“No! He can’t just be—” Lee pulled himself to his feet, the surge of pain distracting him for a moment. “Ooooh, holy fuck that hurts.” He collapsed to his knees.
Shin glared at Lee’s mangled thigh. “You’re lucky it’s still attached. The armor probably saved you.” He offered a hand. “Get up. Sally and I can take you back to the cart.”
Lee dragged himself into the cart a minute later.
Sam, standing in the reinforced corner of the cart, glanced down at him. “You’re a mess. You OK, Lee?”
Lee pulled himself up on the rail of the cart. A pair of birds at the edge of the clearing fought over a caprid. A third bird pecked at the carcass of a wood panther with a half-dozen arrows in it. The bird Sally had gored lay next to one of the wagons. The rest were gone. “Just like that, it’s over. And I couldn’t save him. I failed.”
“You did your best, Lee. You always do.”
“Birds are gone, but the scent of blood’s in the air.” Gnebnik glared at the leader of the work crew. “I don’t care if you’re not finished, we gotta go.”
The man growled, shook his head, and the group set off for town. With three-and-a-half wagons full of oilwood, and two fewer crew members.
Chapter 17
The group returned to Hazelhearth late afternoon. Lee initially refused help, disappearing into the back room of the Dancing Dryad. Shin joined him a few minutes later, and after a few whispered words, Lee assented to the neko’s assistance cleaning and dressing his savaged thigh. Lee retired to the attic just after sundown.
The moon was well overhead when Sam padded up the wooden staircase to their sleeping room in the attic, carrying a single candle. She set the candle on a rustic nightstand and glanced at Lee, lying in bed with his back to her. “Are you awake?” she whispered.
“Am now,” said Lee.
“Sorry.”
“It’s OK.”
“How’s the leg?”
Lee rolled over to face her. “Shin took a look when we got back. Only needed a few stitches. Middle section of the bird’s beak is serrated—designed to hold prey. Wounds were shallow. Just a lot of ’em. And bruised all to hell. Probably don’t need all the bandages, but I don’t wanna bleed all over the bed linens.”
“After seeing what the upper section of that beak can do, I suppose you got lucky.” Sam sat in bed and began unlacing her boots. “We got lucky.”
“I don’t feel lucky. One badly wounded, two killed. People we were supposed to protect.”
“The healer says the woman who was gored should be all right. Antlers didn’t hit any vital organs.”
“I read about people dying… being killed all the time in the papers back home. A factory accident. A fire. Outbreak of typhus.” Lee stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know why this seems different.”
“I know what you mean, I still can’t get the image of the boy out of my head. Being carried off in the beak of that bird. Like a fish. Or a rodent.” Sam donned a pair of heavy woolen socks to ward off the chill in the unheated attic and tucked her feet under the covers. “In the papers it’s always so sensationalized. There’s always someone to blame. A greedy factory owner. Careless foreman.”
“There is somebody to blame. Me.”
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“You did everything you could.”
Lee sat up in bed. “You know what the boy said to me? ‘Aren’t you supposed to be one of the warriors protecting us?’ Some job I did.”
“We were in an impossible situation. There were just too many of them. Too many people to escort, too many predators, coming at us from too many different directions.”
“Yeah. Well. Here’s hoping for no dreams tonight.”
Sam snuffed the single candle. “Goodnight, Lee.”
◊ ◊ ◊
Sam, Lee, and Shin shared a drink and meal at the Dancing Dryad the following evening. Lee received an hour’s extra sleep and change of dressing for his wounds, but otherwise it was business as usual for the group.
“Lady Isylnoir didn’t have time for me today—again,” said Sam. “Though after the day we had yesterday, I suppose I’m not too disappointed.”
“You seem to be able to read her better than the rest of us,” said Lee. “Maybe you should have submitted the quest report instead of Gnebnik.”
“Gnebnik may seem a bit rough, but he knows how to handle people like Lady Isylnoir,” said Shin.
“Like he handled the idiot leader of the work crew?”
“Lee!”
“I didn’t mean it.” Lee squeezed his eyes shut and drew a deep, slow breath. “Just… grumpy. And the fact that I can’t enjoy an ale with the rest of you isn’t helping.”
“Deep well water will help you heal faster,” said Shin. “Give it a few days and you’ll see.”
“But ale is made from water—”
Shin shook his head, flashing his friendly-yet-intimidating toothy grin. “It’s not the water, it’s the magic in it. Magic from deep underground. But it dissipates over time.”
Lee frowned, glaring into the clay mug. “If it’s magic, shouldn’t it glow or something?”
“Not how it works. The magic will cause certain types of minerals to glow. But that makes its healing ability wear off fas—”
The front door creaked open. Gnebnik stormed into the room, his expression as icy as the blast of autumn wind he let in.
He grabbed an ale and joined them, slamming a fist onto the table as he sat.
Shin glanced at him. “Was it as you feared?”
“Aye. No payment, and quest marked a failure.”
“Doesn’t seem fair,” said Lee. “The work crew were the ones acting foolishly.”
Gnebnik grumbled and took a draught of ale. “I shouldn’t have taken the quest,” he said. “It was a bad setup.”
“But if you didn’t, who would have?” asked Sam.
“No one,” said Gnebnik.
“That’s how it works sometimes,” said Shin. “The work crew is given one task. Instructed to collect oilwood. Told they will be protected. And we are given the assignment of escorting them, but with no control of where they go and what they do.”
“People set at odds with each other and monsters win,” said Sam, draining her mug.
Gnebnik and Shin nodded, frowned, and took a deep draught of ale.
Lee simply frowned.
“Lemme get another round.” Lee stood and collected Sam and Shin’s mugs. “At least someone should enjoy the evening.”
“Drink your water,” said Shin. “The longer it sits, the more it loses its potency.”
Lee gulped down the remainder of the lukewarm water and strode to the bar.
Tilly glanced up from a game she was playing with a neko woman as Lee approached. “Another round?”
“Yup, thanks.”
Lee examined the game as he waited for Tilly to fill their mugs. It had a hexagonal playing board and looked like a cross between backgammon and Chinese checkers, except that some of the pieces glowed.
“Here ya go.” Tilly set the mugs on the bar. “I suppose since you’re long-term lodgers, and seeing as Gnebnik’s paying your tab, it’d be easier to let you serve yourselves.”
“Sure. You keep the tab on that sheet at the back, right?”
Tilly nodded at Lee, picked up a pair of dice and rolled them onto the board.
Lee cocked his head, staring at the board. “Those… are dice? May I?”
Tilly nodded.
He picked up the strangely formed dice, rolling them between his fingers to count the sides. “Twelve. Twelve sides. Never seen anything like it.”
“You don’t have dice on your world?” asked Tilly.
“We do, but they only have six sides.”
“You’re joking? A cube? They wouldn’t roll properly.”
Lee nodded, returning to the corner table, and set down the mugs. “You’ll never believe it, Sam, the game they were playing: they use glowing playing pieces and twelve-sided dice!”
“Hmm,” said Sam. “Some of those glow stones, I’d imagine. I’d like to take a closer look at how those things work one of these days.”
“What’s so odd about twelve-sided dice,” said Shin. “It’s the standard shape. Except among elves. They use twenty-sided dice for their games.”
“Ha,” barked Gnebnik. “Jes’ don’t let them hear ya call it a game. It’s a ‘tactical simulation,’ or a ‘mental training exercise.’ ”
Lee took out his notebook and began scrawling in it.
“Let me guess, you’re going to include this in your game,” said Sam.
“Come on! Even you gotta admit it would give it an exotic flair.”
“Ah, well, I suppose anything that brings a little cheer is welcome.”
The four clunked their mugs together.
◊ ◊ ◊
The following morning, after first completing more pleasant tasks, such as helping clean the stable behind Gnebnik’s workshop, Sam washed up, straightened her collar four times, and took the long route to Lady Isylnoir’s ‘manor.’
She glanced up at the empty scaffold and shattered third-floor windows. “Lunch break I suppose.”
Sam rapped thrice on the door.
No response came.
She repeated.
Just like those childhood tea parties. Priscilla Mildenhall would always take her sweet time coming to the door.
A voice, clear as a church bell on a cloudless winter day, and twice as cold, chimed from within. “This will make the third time you’ve needed to enter my residence to take measurement of the windows. I suggest you learn to write.”
Sam smiled, suspecting that the glazier was in the middle of a very long lunch break in order to down an extra mug of ale. “It is Sam. Gnebnik indicated you wished to speak with me.” She managed to suppress the addendum ‘again.’
“Finally a bit of tolerable news. Enter.”
Sam had just placed a hand on the door, when it opened. A short man with a cook’s apron, a stack of soiled dishes, and the expression a rabbit might have after escaping a den of wolves nodded at her and hurried away. She took a deep breath, stepped into the compact foyer, and shut the door behind her.
Ascending the stairway, she found Lady Isylnoir pacing about the study. The half-elf was dressed in a set of layered silk robes, in shades of green and cream. Though elaborate, they were tighter fitting, and rather less ostentatious than the dresses Sam’s former nemesis Priscilla Mildenhall used to wear.
Lady Isylnoir shook her head. “At the academy the cooks and servants were always under the supervision of one of the administrators. Every meal coordinated, every hour of the day planned. How am I supposed to learn spells for my new level when I spend half my day ordering these incompetent staff about?”
And the other half complaining about it, thought Sam, nodding her head in feigned sympathy. “Such are the challenges of rustic locales. I am certain you shall find a way to endure.”
“As a battlemage I must,” replied Lady Isylnoir. “Now, follow me.”
Sam followed her up a second flight of stairs to the attic of the building, a semi-habitable space under the tall, steeply pitched roof. It was illuminated by three dormers on each side, a multi-pane window facing the back, an
d a gaping hole at the front.
“This space is insufficient. I require a large, open room.”
To accommodate your ego? Or perhaps your wardrobe? thought Sam, again nodding in agreement.
“The town’s builder had the nerve to dissent,” continued Lady Isylnoir, managing to enunciate the ‘ill’ in builder with just the right emphasis to convey biting derision. “He said he wasn’t certain the roof would accommodate the strain of the renovations I had in mind.”
“The structure seems generous by the standards of the town. Are none of the existing rooms of sufficient size?”
“As a human, I don’t expect you to understand. But I don’t require intelligence or magical aptitude for this task. All I require is that you redesign this room, to accommodate a covered training area no smaller than twenty-five feet by thirty feet. Remove a wall and use the space from one of the neighbor’s attics if necessary. Design it, and convince the builder, carpenter, and mason to get it done. I could certainly threaten them into action, but would prefer not to.”
“Well, charm doesn’t seem to be your strong suit,” replied Sam. Oh dear. That was out loud, wasn’t it? I seem to be out of practice.
Lady Isylnoir stopped, cocking her head as if she were uncertain what an actual slight were. As if an actual slight were a concept so foreign as to require further analysis. She picked up a small tome off a roll-top desk, but didn’t look at it.
“The builder does have a valid point about the roof, especially if you intend to annex space from the neighboring building.” Sam was eager to change the focus of the conversation. “Not insurmountable, but it could be time consuming. Is there a civic building in town? Perhaps a town hall? That might provide a more expeditious solution.”
“There is a town hall, but I need my study next to it. Plus, it’s drafty.”
Your temper not enough to heat it up? thought Sam, this time keeping the thought confined within her head. Although a curl at the corner of her lips might have betrayed a smile.
Lady Isylnoir straightened her spine and drew back her shoulders, posture going from stiff to petrified. She glared down at Sam, her full head height advantage seeming to miss its usual intimidation effect. “Do you know what it means to be an imperial battlemage.”
Hazelhearth Hires Heroes Page 16