by Adam Carter
“Kastra, if I didn’t know better I’d say you were trying to be funny.”
“Faeries have many faults – the main one being that we are splintered into so many subspecies – but the pure faerie race is nothing like humanity.”
“No, not vain at all,” Crenshaw muttered, glancing back to the winch. “Look, I’m sure these saviours of yours will be here any minute, but just in case they decide they need a hand with the drawbridge, do you think you could give me a boost to the winch?”
“There really is no need.”
“Humour me.”
“I don’t see much point, but if you insist.” Kastra waved his hand dismissively. There were no words spoken, there was no concentration. It was a simple flick against an insect crawling up his arm; but the results blew the wind out of Crenshaw as he was hurtled skyward. He sailed past the winch, struck the wall and fell, collapsing atop it. His body screamed in pain, but he gritted his teeth and forced his way through it. Kastra had already gone back to staring at the door and Crenshaw did not have the time to shout at him. The faerie had sent Crenshaw to where he needed to be, and that was all that counted.
“Crenshaw!” Asperathes called over. “Soldiers are coming.”
Crenshaw watched the snake man push Moya behind him as he prepared to face the oncoming soldiers. There were only two, and they looked uncertain now they were so close to an enraged apepkith, but beneath him Crenshaw heard more soldiers coming in at ground level. They would be upon Kastra in moments, but the faerie did not even seem to have noticed them.
Grabbing the winch, Crenshaw began to pull. It was formed of a horizontal bar, at either end of which was a ring of spokes. By pulling down on one spoke, the others ratcheted into place, and if he could develop a good enough system Crenshaw should have been able to pull them relatively quickly. The chain holding down the portcullis was wound about the horizontal bar so the more he turned it the higher it would rise.
The portcullis groaned and moved a few inches from the floor, but it was too little too slowly.
A dozen soldiers piled into the room at ground level, surrounding Kastra. Crenshaw shouted a warning to him, which only succeeded in alerting the guards as to his presence. One of the officers began giving commands to get Crenshaw down from there and he frantically pulled upon the spokes, trying to get the portcullis raised as quickly as possible.
Kastra lifted his arms and a ring of fire blasted out from him, incinerating all the soldiers in a screaming acrid stench. Crenshaw’s stomach tightened: if it hadn’t he would have lost his last meal.
The two guards still debating on whether to attack Asperathes stared wide-eyed before turning and bolting back the way they had come.
Asperathes shot Crenshaw a shaky thumbs-up, but none of them were entirely relaxed as yet. Crenshaw saw Moya fall to her knees; unable to control herself to the same degree as Crenshaw, she vomited on the flagstones, her body shaking at what she had witnessed. The odour of charred death lingering on the air did not help at all.
It was then that Crenshaw noticed Kastra was looking straight at him and desperately he resumed winching. Satisfied, the faerie turned back to the door.
“You want me doing this or not?” Crenshaw muttered. “Make up your mind.”
Shortly, he had the portcullis raised halfway, which was more than enough for people to get through. He stopped winching and was about to ask Kastra how they were going to lower the drawbridge when a bolt of energy seared out of the faerie and sliced clean through the rope keeping the drawbridge up, turning the entire mechanism to bubbling slag. The drawbridge fell slowly forward, as though it knew it must by gravity alone now go down, but was not happy about it in the slightest.
As soon as air appeared between the drawbridge and its mooring, Crenshaw could hear the sounds of combat outside. It seemed Kastra had been right about one thing: their saviours actually were out there. All this time Crenshaw had been a little worried that they had broken out of their cell only to run into the guards and be slaughtered; but if there really was a group of heroes out there Crenshaw’s spirits rose considerably.
He caught Kastra grinning at him wryly and wished the faerie wasn’t quite so powerful in his telepathy.
Crenshaw watched tensely from where he was standing behind the winch. The drawbridge slammed into the ground, revealing a scene outside the like of which he had not known in so many years. Soldiers fled in every direction; screaming, on fire or just plain lost. The drawbridge led into the castle proper and there should have been some level of order to the soldiers out there, but Crenshaw could see only chaos. Men and women screamed as they died, others lay silent upon the flagstones, some of them even with recognisable wounds. Crenshaw had seen battles before, had partaken in his fair share of slaughter, but what he was witnessing that day was different. It was the scene of death on a grand scale, it was what occurred when a normal, human army was pitted against the inhuman or exceptional.
There were only two saviours and they stepped through the drawbridge together.
The first was clearly a human soldier or mercenary. He was gruff, scarred and wore mismatched armour as though it was a fashion statement. Beside him was an apepkith far older than Asperathes and one of a different species. While Asperathes was evolved from the asp, this snake man had his heritage in the cobra family, for he was broader in the torso, with an inflated hood surrounding his head.
The two men reached the end of the drawbridge and stopped.
“Welcome,” Kastra said, holding his hands out and by his side in what was probably some form of greeting.
The apepkith on the saviours’ side grunted, said something to his companion, who chortled at his wit. Crenshaw had never before seen someone laugh with such confidence at the expense of a faerie, and the sight unnerved him.
“What are you people waiting for?” a third hero said, shouldering roughly through them. He was a man aged somewhere in his thirties, wearing a dark cloak inlaid with sparkling patterns. He was clearly a wizard and wanted everyone to know it.
“They have a faerie,” the soldier told him.
The wizard drew to a halt when he almost collided with Kastra, shrieked something unintelligible and fired a beam of superheated fire through Kastra’s face. Kastra, arms still outstretched to the side, toppled, his head burnt away, and as his corpse hit the floor the wound had been cauterised so well and so quickly it did not even spill blood.
“They have a faerie?” the wizard asked. “They don’t now.”
“I think that was one of the prisoners,” the soldier said.
“Really? Oh well; he was probably in here for something foul anyway. Besides, no one was here to see it.”
“No. No one except that girl up there who looks like she’s going to faint.”
Crenshaw could not believe what was happening. He was staring at the body of Kastra, who had been so certain these people were coming to save him, to save them all. In a way perhaps they had saved Kastra, but that was a philosophical debate Crenshaw really did not want to get into. As soon as the strangers had noticed Moya, something snapped within Crenshaw and he knew if he did not act immediately the poor woman was going to be the next to die.
With a roar of anger, Crenshaw leaped, but a strong arm encircled him before he could throw himself upon them. He beat at the arm, but Asperathes had no intention of letting him die.
“There are four of them, you fool,” Asperathes hissed. “And look what they did to Kastra.”
Crenshaw stopped resisting, knowing his friend was right. Upon seeing Kastra murdered, Asperathes must have known how Crenshaw was going to react and scuttled over to him as quickly as possible. If the snake man could have made it to the winch so easily, it beggared the question of why he had not been the one to have come over in the first place, but Asperathes had never been one to place himself in danger.
Asperathes released him and Crenshaw said, “If only one of us is getting out of this alive, I want it to be the girl.”
“You two finished hugging up there?” the human warrior called up to them. Before he could say much of anything else, however, the chamber was filled with soldiers and he drew his sword, his attention turning to the new threat. The wizard sent a blast of heat at them from one hand, a blast of cold from the other. The result was that most of the magic was cancelled out, but some people died horrifically in the process.
“Now’s our chance,” Asperathes whispered. “Quickly.”
Throwing himself onto the snake man’s back, Crenshaw held on tightly as Aspherathes scuttled his way back to Moya. The young woman had recovered somewhat, although she still looked incredibly pale. Crenshaw was glad they were making their escape that day, for he could see by her constitution that she would not have lasted a week in the dungeon.
Looking down at the massacre below, Crenshaw desperately tried to work out how they were going to get through the drawbridge without being killed by their three supposed saviours. Then he noticed the heroes were pressing their attack, that they were revelling so much in slaughtering the castle’s guards that they no longer cared about the onlookers from above.
“We’re nothing to them,” Crenshaw said.
“What do you expect?” Asperathes said. “They’re adventurers: heroes. That’s what adventuring heroes are like. Now come on, while they’ve forgotten about us.”
There was no staircase leading to the ground level, although they did find a thin ladder and descended it rapidly. Crenshaw touched down first, helping Moya off the ladder, with the snake man bringing up their rear. Crenshaw’s eyes lingered on the backs of the warriors tearing their way through the baroness’s soldiers. He had no idea whether she would herself fall this day or whether she might have already been making her escape while her castle was taken. Nor did he know what these three heroes would do once they encountered all the prisoners running riot.
His eyes lingered upon Kastra, lying on his back with his arms outstretched. If not for what they had done to Kastra, Crenshaw might have been running to join them, might have gained his freedom only to throw it away again and die for revenge.
“Crenshaw,” Asperathes hissed. “You coming?”
Without a word, Crenshaw turned his back on the monsters and followed his friends across the drawbridge. It led to the castle proper, but he had no doubt they would face little trouble in escaping to the outside world. He would have put good money on there being very few people left alive following the murderous and destructive path of the monsters who called themselves heroes.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Here you are, ladies. The drinks tonight are on me.”
Asperathes set down the tankards and all but collapsed into his seat. Upon escaping the castle they had each stared in wonder at the pale evening sky, slack-jawed in awe at how vast the expanse of freedom truly was. Once they had got over it, Asperathes and Crenshaw had decided they wanted to go for a beer, and the little wizard – without anywhere better to go – had followed them in what Asperathes might already have called a drunken trance. The girl was in shock, you didn’t need to be a doctor to see that, and Asperathes decided the drink wouldn’t hurt her any.
They had therefore headed to the nearest town, which was thankfully both nearby and large enough to hide them, and had found a busy tavern in which to lose themselves. If the baroness survived her encounter with those three savages, she would no doubt be sending soldiers out to recapture what prisoners they could, but first she would have to recover from the attack. That gave them an evening off, at the very least; and if this was going to be their one evening of life after so many years in captivity, Asperathes for one intended to make the most of it.
He watched Crenshaw chug the beer so quickly it made him choke, while Moya simply stared at it, not seeing the tankard but focusing on the thick rust-coloured liquid slowly bubbling within. Likely she could see herself as one of those bubbles, being carried along on life’s whims, falling in with other bubbles and having long ago lost her ability to choose. At least that was what Asperathes assumed she was doing. She looked the poetical type, but for all he knew her mind could have snapped and she thought she was still in her cell.
“A toast,” Asperathes said, partly to test his theory. “To the talented woman who zapped our lock and gave us hope enough to escape that hellhole.”
Crenshaw raised his own tankard, although Moya continued to stare.
“That would be you,” Crenshaw told her with a mild frown. Bless Crenshaw, he always was a little naïve.
“My dear man,” Asperathes said, “I think you’ll find your little wizard is in shock.”
“I’m not his little wizard.”
“And that she has a backbone.”
Moya looked at him then. Her eyes were angry, her body was tight, almost trembling, and Asperathes figured this was going to be some form of womanly outburst. He knew very little of the human psyche, which was why he never minded taking out a contract to kill their kind, but their females and males were vastly different. In the apepkith, there was no difference at all, other than biological differences of course. The mind of a snake woman was no different to the mind of a snake man. Humans, however, were a strange bunch. They did studies into their own minds – behavioural psychology, he believed they called it. Asperathes had known human females who loudly claimed the sexes should be equal, then spent their entire lives trying to prove females were better. It was all very peculiar.
He did not know whether he was disappointed or relieved when Moya did not vent an outburst at all.
“Well,” Crenshaw said, “we’re alive and free, and that’s the main thing.”
“We’re not all free,” Moya said. “They killed Kastra.”
“True,” Asperathes said. “But I never much liked him anyway.”
“Did you just say that? A man is dead.”
“A lot of men are dead. Those brutes won’t care who they kill, assuming the soldiers left any still alive. You weren’t in that dungeon long enough to stop caring, Miss Moya. You weren’t there to watch as people you’ve known for years are dragged out of your cell to scream themselves to oblivion in the death chamber, only to have everyone take bets on how long it will take them to die.”
“Isn’t there something the law can do about the baroness?”
Asperathes snorted. “Not likely. The baroness is the law around here. Was; she’s hopefully dead by now.”
“I rather hope not,” Crenshaw said, and Asperathes had seen that look in his eyes before.
“Careful, my friend,” he said. “Revenge never ends well. If she’s dead, she’s dead. The identity of the one who wields the weapon that kills her isn’t truly important.”
“It is to me,” Crenshaw grumbled.
“So now you’re arguing over who kills her,” Moya said.
“Remember,” Asperathes told her, “we weren’t pleasant people before they threw us in prison. I was a contract assassin, if you recall.”
“I thought you were a bounty hunter.”
“That too.”
“I just had a thought,” Crenshaw said. “We escaped from prison with nothing but the clothes on our back. What did you use to pay for this round?”
“Nothing,” Asperathes said. “I’m an apepkith, the bartender’s human.”
Crenshaw and Moya both glowered at him, but he did not much care. The apepkith had ruled the lands for more years than anyone could remember. They were stronger, faster, superior to humans in every way; but most of all they were in charge. That did not mean an apepkith could get away with going onto the street and indiscriminately murdering a crowd of humans, but it certainly meant one could demand a free round of drinks. About the only people on par with an apepkith were the magic users, who generally just thought themselves better. Apepkith magic users; now there was a truly arrogant breed.
“Well we�
��re not going to rely on intimidation to get us through life,” Crenshaw said. “We need to gather enough money to get us out of here.”
“We’re sticking together?” Asperathes asked, curious.
“You do what you like. I have a wife to get back to, so long as I’m right and she hasn’t moved on to someone better.”
“My good man, there is no one better.” Asperathes considered the situation. “Well, I have nothing more pressing to be doing, so I’ll stick with you for a while longer if that’s all right. I would say it’s better to split up, but there are so many escaped prisoners no one’s going to associate the two of us as part of them just because we stick together.”
“What about you, Karina?” Crenshaw asked.
Asperathes momentarily wondered who Karina was, then recalled that humans have two names. It was something which always threw him, just for a moment.
“I don’t know,” Moya said, staring at the table now. “I don’t have anyone.”
“Do you have any money?” Asperathes asked and received a sharp glance from Crenshaw. “What?” the apepkith asked. “She’s a wizard, which means she was born to the upper classes, which means she’s loaded.”
“She was also arrested for something,” Crenshaw said, “and maybe that means she doesn’t have any.”
“Which is why I asked,” Asperathes said defensively. “Old chap, I get that you want to go softly-softly with her in case she snaps and blows your head off, but we have little time for subtlety.”
“Will you two stop?” Moya said, fighting back her tears again. “The dungeon, Baros, watching Kastra killed right before us … After everything that’s happened, you two are talking like everything’s hunky-dory. Everything is not hunky-dory. Terrible things have happened, people are dead – so many people are dead – and we’re … we’re sitting in a grotty tavern drinking beer.”
“Well, to be fair,” Asperathes said, “I think it’s mainly water.”
“Stop trying to make jokes!”
Asperathes found the woman a curiosity. He was not afraid she would kill him, not very afraid anyway. She had power, but no control of her emotions, which told him she had received very little training. With magic users, the first lessons they were always taught were those of self-control. Otherwise the school would burn down every other week. Asperathes had been watching Moya for some time now and had been formulating theories. Perhaps it was all the mental puzzles he and Crenshaw had done over the years, but he was beginning to draw conclusions.