by Tim Marquitz
I prayed Rose would understand my choice.
As the darkness closed around me, the world of the living faded. Silence cast its inevitable pall and all my pain drained away, a cloying numbness taking its place. And as I fell into the void, the remnants of who I was flickering and dying, I made peace with my fate and drew in the whispered breath of nothingness.
In the emptiness, I felt God smile.
Tales of the Prodigy
Redemption at Knife’s End
Originally published in Neverland’s Library 2014
The mark moved into the light.
He wasn’t alone.
Gryl cursed under his breath as he watched the three men saunter from the inn; mercenaries, one and all. They walked with a sense of purpose. The other two hadn’t been with Rayk when he’d gone inside, but Gryl knew better than to assume. Amberton swarmed with Korbitt’s lackeys. Why should the outlying inns be any different?
It just meant Gryl would have to work harder to get the information he needed. He didn’t mind.
His long blade already clear of the sheath—no point announcing you’re there with the scrape of steel—he waited until the three men stepped onto the road before he drifted after them. Their booted steps were heavy, crunching dirt beneath their heels with confidence. A crooked smile split Gryl’s lips. They had no clue they were being stalked.
Gryl let them travel a little further, waiting until they slipped into the shadows at the end of the light’s reach from the inn, and then sped his pace. His soft-soled boots made no sound as he closed. He only needed one of them alive.
The merc to the left was broad-shouldered and as tall as Gryl but much wider, slabs of muscle moving thunderously under his cloak and sleeveless, rigid-leather jerkin. His sword hung at his right, making him a leftie. Gryl had taken the measure of the man’s eyes when they’d first emerged from the inn. They were cold, cruel. He’d be the first to die.
The other man was short and thick, but with fat, not muscle. He wore no armor, not that any would fit. His ragged beard covered the lower half of his face and masked his expression, but Gryl could hear the wind whistling from his lungs as he walked. The wooden haft of a hammer jutted out from beneath his cloak, its head buried somewhere in the clutter of cloak and ale-soaked girth that burdened the mercenary’s waist. He’d be strong, but not fast.
Rayk was the least of them, at least physically. Gryl had soldiered with him years back after the Avan-Thrak incursion had run its course. The man was vile, a worm of the lowest kind. That was what made him useful. His loyalty was only to himself. Gryl had experienced that firsthand when Rayk left him standing alone against a dozen Thrak berserkers. Learning the worm was involved with Korbitt was a tantalizing taste of sweet fate he couldn’t pass up.
The darkness roiling about him, Gryl moved behind the broad merc, timing his step to correspond with the swing of the man’s arm. Gryl thrust his sword deep into his armpit just as his limb cleared the breach between leather and flesh. The blade slipped into the man’s chest to a symphony of grating bone. A gurgled grunt slipped from lips already wet and the merc went down the instant he was free of Gryl’s sword.
Rayk spun about with a shriek, his green eyes wide with recognition. The other mercenary gasped and fumbled for his hammer. Long and lean, with a reach that dwarfed the fat man, Gryl kicked him in the crotch. The man’s cheeks purpled and he blew out a noxious breath like a bellows, cloying with the scent of red meat and cheap liquor. Gryl drew his sword across the man’s throat to redirect the stench.
Before the fat mercenary crumpled to the ground, Rayk was off and running. Gryl fought back a grin. He loved the chase, but he knew better than to let the worm get too far. This wasn’t about revenge, however delicious it might be. A girl’s life was at stake.
Gryl darted off, easily catching up to Rayk. The man had never liked to exert himself. He was average in nearly every way, and he excelled at it. He was the man who was always around yet never noticed, the shadow that clung to the wall and never challenged. He slipped through life invisible, feeding off the crumbs and growing fat on the ignorant largesse of others. Unfortunately for Rayk, his invisibility was as much a curse as a blessing. No one was likely to miss him, which suited Gryl fine.
A snap of his wrist severed the tendon at the back of Rayk’s ankle. The worm squeaked and stumbled, momentum carrying him forward when his leg gave way. He fell in a cloud of dust, squirming to be away the moment he landed. Before he could cry out, Gryl dropped in front of him. He pressed his free hand against the man’s mouth and set the tip of his sword in the shell of Rayk’s ear.
“Where is Korbitt keeping her?”
Sweat glistened on Rayk’s brow as he stared up with moist eyes. He started to shake his head but Gryl applied a tiny bit of pressure to his blade, its sharpened edge milking a single line of blood from his ear.
“The Xenius girl: Vai. Tell me where she is, and I’ll let you go.”
The worm trembled and Gryl could feel the man’s tongue working inside his mouth, licking at his teeth. He was contemplating his options. Gryl pressed his sword again to make the choice easier. Rayk mumbled something against his palm.
“Scream and I’ll cut your tongue out and make you write the answer to my question in your blood.” He met the worm’s wet eyes. “Are we clear?” Rayk gave the slightest of nods and Gryl pulled his hand aside.
“He has her at the Broken Lizard.” The words spilled loose like a flood. “Keeps her upstairs…she’s special to him.”
Gryl sighed. Nothing was ever easy. The Broken Lizard sat in the center of the busiest road in Amberton, just doors down from the barracks that housed the city’s militia; all of them sucking on the tit of Korbitt’s purse. The sheriff of Amberton had his office down the block from the tavern, but he was as much in pocket as the rest of Korbitt’s minions. The Broken Lizard was the last damn place Gryl wanted to be.
“Does he take her anywhere? Does she ever leave?”
Rayk swallowed hard and shook his head.
A knot coalesced in his stomach as Gryl imagined what he’d have to do. There was no way around it. “I guess that’s it, then.” He wrapped his hand about the worm’s throat and stood, keeping pressure on the blade.
“You said you’d let me go,” Rayk whined, his voice crackling at the last. “You said.”
“That I did, Rayk. That I did. I just didn’t say where I’d let you go off to…I’m thinking the next life would be most appropriate seeing that’s what you intended when you left me to the berserkers.” Gryl shoved hard, sheathing his blade inside the worm’s skull.
Rayk’s eyes jutted wide, bulging from the steel lodged in his brain, and then went dark. Gryl had been right: delicious.
Hel let the body slip from his sword and glanced about for a place to stash it and the others. He couldn’t have Korbitt find his dead mercenaries before Gryl was ready. There was a rescue to plan.
#
Gryl hunched in a darkened alley across from the Broken Lizard. Lantern light flickered inside the establishment, dancing to the tune of the tavern’s rowdy occupants. A chaotic assemblage of shouts and foot stomps and garish music played on out of tune instruments gushed from the shuttered doors and washed over Gryl’s ears like a dirty wave. He felt almost violated.
Though he’d spent years in the trenches with all manner of men, he would never feel at home with soldiers, mercenaries. Their appetites were garish and cruel and completely foreign to Gryl. Having never known the touch of a woman, save for the Avan seer who castrated him as a boy, he could not understand the interest in the fairer sex or the rancid liquor that led men afoul of them. It was all soldiers spoke of, marking Gryl as an outcast even though no one alive knew of his emasculation. He was not one of them, and though they knew not why, they still knew.
A shrill laugh drew his wandering thoughts back to the Lizard. A buxom woman, with more of her pale breasts spilling from her corset than what remained inside, stepped out onto the
tavern’s porch. Korbitt emerged with her. Gryl flushed.
Korbitt towered over the plump woman, his lion’s mane of dark hair pulled back in a loose tail. He stared at the woman with hungry eyes, a crooked smile twisting his lips. There was no hiding the lust in his gaze and she reveled in it. She arched her back and turned to better his view, casting the lure.
“Go on now, before you get me riled up,” Korbitt told her, smacking her hard on the ass for emphasis. Her bottom lip drooped. “Now, don’t be gettin’ all offended, Chastity.” Korbitt laughed, the sound like two stones scraping together. “I just need you to drag the rest of the men here before I get all caught up in them curves of yours, woman. You know I can’t think with those sexy udders all up against my whiskers.”
The woman giggled, obviously forgiving Korbitt, and waddled off blowing a kiss, her dress splayed out behind her and dragging in the dirt. Korbitt watched her walk away with a greedy stare as Gryl, in turn, watched him. Their hungers were different but their passions were the same.
Korbitt had been a knight of the Shytan Empire at one point before its fall to the Avan overlords. Like many of the empire’s warriors, he’d drifted west after the Avan had been routed, the ruins of Shytan still too polluted with Thrak berserkers to remain. Gryl had been freed of his Avan servitude in part due to men like Korbitt, but he owed the knight no gratitude. Korbitt had sullied his status through slavery, his coin made on the backs of the weak and disinherited.
Korbitt went back inside the Lizard, lewd shouts accompanying his return.
Whatever honor the knight might have possessed had long ago rotted, withering in the gallows of his heart. And if his affronts of the past were not enough, his kidnap of the Xenius girl from her loving ward most certainly was.
There were so few of the Xenius left in the world, the magical people a shining light in the abyss of pestilent humanity. Sweet and gentle, the Xenius were first revered for their mysticism, cherished for the sorcery that came so easily to their kind. But all that changed once the world learned they were pacifistic and would not raise a hand to defend their homes, their family, or even their own lives. At first, they were only used for their powers, but as it became known there was little limit to the stores of magical energy inside them, use became devour. The Xenius were culled out of jealousy, to keep others from possessing what the mighty few held rein. Now there were maybe less than a hundred of the free Xenius scattered about the realm, hidden and fearful of being found.
His cloak rubbed with mud and soaked with the remnants of liquor found discarded in the alley, Gryl pulled his hood tight and stumbled into the street, a scented mess. He knew there was little time. The woman had gone to summon more dogs to their master and there were already a dozen inside, maybe more. The music blurred his senses to their individual sounds, but the clatter assured him he was in for a war, even without factoring in the Shytan knight. He needed time to survey the Lizard before Korbitt and his men realized what he was, like they had the girl.
Vai had been sheltered at a church in rural Caesins, a small village south of Amberton. One of the knight’s men had seen her there when he passed through. Her ward, Delvin, learned this when Korbitt rode in a fortnight later to steal the girl away, and passed the information on to Gryl along with a purse of gold coins. And a message: Kill the bastard and bring Vai home. It was a task Gryl was more than willing to take on. Like the Xenius, there were so few of his kind left.
Were the mercenaries to spy his scars, they would know instantly they were in the presence of a Prodigy, one of the Avan slave warriors, trained from birth to ignore both fear and pain. He wished that to be a surprise, if only for a few moments, so he checked his skullcap to be certain it was still in place beneath the hood. There might still be one or two that recognized his face from his time on the lines, but he had to take that risk.
Gryl feigned drunkenness and made his way across the road, head down. He staggered, but only slightly. There was no point marking himself as a victim to be taken advantage of. He wanted only to fit in amidst the debauchery long enough to slip inside the Lizard and confirm what he was up against. If he was forced to make a stand in the street, Vai would never see her home again.
He wound his way to the horse rail that separated the tavern from the road, and slipped around the far end. The weathered planks of the porch creaked beneath his feet but he did nothing to quiet the sound against his instincts. A few heads turned his way, a handful of men carrying on a loud conversation near the door, but no stares lingered. Gryl breathed a relieved sigh as they went back to their talk, and then crept closer, squeezing past the men with effort to avoid bumping them. He could smell the alcohol that clung to their sweat. They’d be easy to rile in such states, and he didn’t want that. Not yet, at least.
The discordant wail of drunk-fingered players struck him when he entered the tavern. The banners, which hung from the thick rafters above, fluttered as though the music was a physical force. Patrons gathered about an inebriated foursome who plucked away, almost at random, at the instruments in their laps, a fifth’s drumming so poorly timed it was if he was playing to his heartbeat. It made for poor accompaniment, but with that cluster of people enthralled by the attempt, Gryl let his eyes wander to take in the rest of the Broken Lizard.
Though Korbitt was nowhere to be seen, his men had found a home near the stairs, their table pressed into the far corner. They sat in a loose half-circle, most of their backs to the wall. Each was armed with a sword and extra short blades. They wore an assortment of armors, but none were without it. They hadn’t come to celebrate. That meant those the woman was bringing would be armed and armored the same as their companions.
Time had run short.
Gryl quickly confirmed Vai was nowhere amidst the twenty-odd patrons of the bar and hoped Rayk had told him the truth. He moved close to the wall and headed for the stairs, suspecting Korbitt would be up there with the girl. Nothing in the tavern noises suggested Gryl had been noticed, so he went on. He cast furtive glances at the mercenaries from beneath the cover of his hood but like the men outside, they seemed too involved to care about anything outside of their circle. That was perfect.
He reached the banister and grasped its rail, setting foot on the first step.
“And just where do you think you’re going?” A mercenary asked; one he hadn’t seen.
Gryl ignored him and took a few more steps.
“I’m talking to you, you drunken son of a sheep-assed whore.” The man came around behind, chest puffed with misappropriated authority.
Chairs scraped across the wooden floors as the rest of the men got to their feet and started over. Gryl bowed his head. This was what he was trying to avoid. He muttered an incoherent apology and turned with aggravating slowness, but remained on the stairs. These weren’t the kind of men to simply let him apologize and walk away without consequence. He cast his eyes across the tavern for the clearest route to the door.
“Come here,” another of the mercenaries called out, waving him down. He already had a dagger in his hand, the steel shining in the glow of the lanterns. Several more men wandered over to be a part of the commotion. The charade had come to an inglorious end. He looked up at them.
“I know you,” the first said, his face twisted in an effort to place a name to the memory of Gryl’s face. “You’re—”
Gryl didn’t let him finish. He snapped the clasp of his cloak and spun it off, loosing it in their direction before he leapt over the banister. He bounced across a table and onto the floor as the mercenaries flung his cloak aside and gave chase, weapons drawn. The makeshift musicians stopped their clatter and the tavern went silent, Gryl drawing every open eye with his maneuver. He clenched his teeth hard, frustrated he was forced to abandon the stairs with Vai so close, but he couldn’t risk bringing a ravaging army to her doorstep. As of now, the mercenaries knew nothing of his purpose at the Lizard even if he had been recognized. As long as they didn’t stop him, they would never know why he
was there. He made to bolt for the door.
Right then, the buxom woman burst into the tavern. A dozen men in ramshackle armor stormed in behind her, seeming curious about the disconcerting silence. Their eyes went wide at the scene before them. The woman screamed and bolted, shoving her way past the men at her back, but the mercenaries weren’t so easily dismissed. The smell of blood was in the air. They drew their weapons and advanced to reinforce their companions.
“You’re one of them Avan freaks,” the first mercenary said, emboldened by his reinforcements, his snaggletoothed grin more yellow than white. “Where are you gonna run now, rabbit?”
“It seems nowhere,” Gryl answered, freeing his blade and setting it before him to keep the distance. “See me to Korbitt, and I’ll let you all live.”
The men stared blank-eyed for a quiet moment, and then one by one they burst into raucous laughter. They had already made their decision to fight…so had he. Gryl gave them no time for anything else.
He drove the point of his blade under the chin of the yellow-toothed mercenary and transformed his hyena’s laugh into a death rattle. Blood gushed as Gryl yanked his sword free and kicked the flailing body toward its companions. Despite their surprise at their friend’s untimely death, they wasted no time attacking.
Steel flashed and Gryl met it with kind. The clang of swords rang out loud, punctuating the screams of the fleeing patrons not involved. Gryl drifted closer to the bar. The drunks might not be a part of the battle, but he had no doubt they’d stick steel into his ribs if it helped their standing with Korbitt. The mercenaries had the same in mind. They charged with obvious fury, eager to be the one to kill him…reckless.
The first merc in line went down screaming, clutching at his punctured eye. Then they were on him en masse. Gryl moved in a graceful furor, twisting and dodging and parrying the blows that might land flush, letting the others past without effort. Tiny red nicks streaked his tunic as they glanced by, but he ignored the bee stings of his wounds and fought on.