by Max Keith
“Or dead.” The prospect concerned Alorin. She liked Cashel well enough, and did not want him to have died without draining his sperm; though in fairness, knowing Cashel, he probably had. The owl did say the Lady Wennowes had entertained him the night before, but the owl was just an owl. What did it know of sex? The mage looked grimly up.
“Dead or alive; no matter. We’ll get him, and then we’ll do what the Princess wants, and then we’ll be on the road to someplace else.” He glanced around and scowled; gardening did not agree with him. “Anyplace else. I detest seaports.”
“Me too.” Alorin leaned down to pick up her swordbelt. “Give me a nice, clean forest any day.”
“Indeed.” The mage sat back on a box of bulbs and crossed his arms over the grey cloak. “Or a mountain. A nice, snowy mountain.”
“Mm.” The valkrie nodded thoughtfully. “You can see your enemies from miles away on a mountain.” They both brooded over mountains they had known, or forests, or garden sheds, or fucking card games; anything to take their minds off what might be happening to Cashel. Franx messed with a pair of small glass bottles in his pouch, while Alorin reached up and began to braid her hair tightly against her scalp, the silver just starting to come out under the flaming orange that had belonged to Mistress Lyria of the Thirteen Pleasures.
The quiet knock at the door was in the coded pattern that told them Drinn was about to come in, which prevented the valkyrie from summarily attacking when the door opened. The warrior was covered in dirt. “Well,” he said grimly, “he’s still in the basement, and he seems to be still alive.” He shed clods of mud as he crossed to the wineskin. “I dug down far enough to get to the bottom of the boarded-up window on the side of the house. Definite voices and sobs and such. At least two voices, maybe three.” He twisted to begin unstrapping his sword; it would be too long inside the house.
Alorin and Franx exchanged a glance. “The owl appears to have been correct,” she observed.
“As usual.” Franx had paid a great deal of money for that owl, and was sick of his companions mocking it. “That settles it, then. We go in through the basement window.”
“Damn right.” Drinn was already in warrior mode, grim and tall and savage in his stained leather hauberk; Alorin, meanwhile, settled her shortsword at her hip.
“It occurs to me,” she said quietly, “that the Wennowes woman might escape while we’re in the basement.”
“Let her. The owl will follow her.” Franx had his dagger out already. “She’s of middling concern. Our worries are Farrick, then Langmyre, and only then Wennowes.”
“Cashel?”
“Cashel got himself captured. We’ll get him, but he knows why we’re here and he knows that’s what matters.” Franx shuddered. “I almost hope he’s dead,” he admitted. Few things made him nervous, but torture was one of those things. For a few moments more the garden shed rattled and clanked with blades and helms and even Alorin’s little buckler, and then they were ready. “Right. Let’s go.”
There were neighborhoods in cities and towns all up and down the Realm where nobody would have noticed a band of heavily armed people advancing purposefully up the street. The Wennowes home was not in any of those neighborhoods. So the three of them crept carefully from the shed roof over the rear wall, then across some other person’s garden to the Lady Tallora’s wall. The top was jagged with broken glass embedded in the stone, but an irritated Franx simply cast a spell and the shards crumbled like candy in the rain. “Cute spell,” Drinn observed. “Would have been nice if you’d have cast it before I went over earlier, you asshole.”
“What? I didn't know there was glass up there until the owl told me, after you left.” He shrugged defensively. “I just wrote the damn spell, just now. If you think it’s so easy, you can do it next time.”
“Fucker.”
“Are we ready?” The valkyrie had no patience for this. “Your arguing is impressive, but I’d imagine Cash would love the opportunity to listen to it.”
“Just a moment.” The mage reached into his satchel for a pair of small glass bottles. “These need to break together, and then they’ll mix. That will cause an explosion, which will blow the window boards in, which will allow us to jump through.”
“You’re sure it’ll be strong enough to get the thing blown open?” Drinn was worried. “It seemed like pretty thick wood, and if it doesn’t work at once they’ll just kill Cash.”
“Or be ready for us, if he’s dead already.”
“Relax, you two.” The mage smiled a grim and deadly little smile. “The amounts I put in here? We’ll be lucky if the whole side of the house doesn’t cave in.” He frowned. “Well, I’m exaggerating. But only a little. Come on.”
One at a time, the three of them stole over the wall, taking great care not to let their weapons clank against the brickwork. There was but one window on this side of the building, high up; this was a major reason why Drinn had begun his explorations there. Alorin went first, sleek and fast, all tight leather and light shoes. Drinn followed, given a boost by an exasperated Franx, in his leather armor and steel cap, his heavy war-boots scrabbling against the vines that sprinkled the wall like lank hairs on a balding man’s scalp.
Finally came Franx himself; he could have simply levitated himself, but Alorin’s deception charm had been tiring; worse, he needed to save his energy for the bigger spell to come, a spell he had written and perfected over the past week, crafting it carefully as only an experienced mage can do if he’s relying on it to deal with a more senior mage.
The three of them dropped silently to Lady Wennowes’ springy green turf, then wasted no time; they soon squatted beside Drinn’s shallow hole beside the boarded-up window. They tried to force themselves not to listen for screams or cries from within.
“All right,” Franx said fiercely. “We go in sequence: Drinn first, then me, and Alorin in the rear.”
The valkyrie glanced over at the warrior. “You go left, I’ll go right.”
“Sure.”
“And don’t trip over me,” Franx added to Drinn. “I’ll be beneath the window, doing a spell. Kill everything. We’d prefer the mage alive, and plainly we don’t want to kill Cash, but he’s been in the hands of the Emperor’s best torturer for hours now.” He looked from one to the other. “So it may be a mercy. Right. I’ve got the two bottles here. Drinn, dig a little hole right beside the wood. I’ll pour in the first compound, then we’ll get back and I’ll fling the second bottle at the hole.”
“Back?” Drinn sounded dubious. “How far?”
The mage squinted a moment in thought. “Ten feet? Yes. Ten feet, straight back. Think of it as a running start; the wood blows, Drinn, and you take off. No hesitation. I’ll be right up your ass, and then Alorin will be up mine.”
The warrior gave a fierce, whispered laugh. “You wish.”
“Hurry.” At long last, the valkyrie sounded something other than flatly calm. A hint of excitement frosted her voice. “Cashel awaits.”
“Yes.” They drew their weapons. “Drinn? A hole.”
“Don’t call me that,” joked the warrior, but then he slid down into his little pit and poked his fingers into the earth.
Goddamn, thought the deranged Cashel within. The rodents are at it again. He raised his numbed head and focused his one good eye, amazed that that sour Captain Spavige wasn’t bothered by the sound; he was leaning right up against the boarded window, after all, fascinated at what the Imperial Mage was doing to Cashel’s body. Could he not hear the scratching of the creeping little creatures? But then, Cash knew, he’d always had sharp ears. It was a bard’s blessing, and his curse.
Like now, when he felt he could hear the very blood running weakly through his body. Every drop was very precious to him now. There was so much less of it than there should be, for he could also hear some of it dripping on the floor, and by this time he’d been hearing that for quite awhile. He was very cold. And, in truth, he could understand Spavige’s interest; he wa
s himself a bit fascinated by Farrick’s artistry. He supposed he ought to be fearful; that artistry was, after all, being used against him. But at this point he just couldn’t make himself care.
Besides, he had a final performance to give. For there was quite an audience in the little room, come to see Aslo Farrick work. Spavige and that big fucker Brasher had come down, and beside them the wispy Guildmage Tighe watched respectfully. Gitsey leaned in the doorway with an odd smile on her face. In the corner, still motionless on her barrel, waited the Blade of Langmyre.
Only the lady of the house was missing.
“Now, you see?” Farrick was performing, too. “With both blades inserted, you can use them as levers against each other.” He demonstrated; the noise from the others was the hushed, whispered verbal applause you’d hear at the opera. Whatever the mage was doing, it hurt exquisitely, though Cashel was far past screaming. There was a familiar splattering sound from the puddle on the floor at Cashel’s feet. “See? And we control the flow of the blood by tightening the tourniquet again, thus, and so…” He’d been going on in this vein for some time. Dimly, Cashel realized that was a pun; vein. See? Because his were draining? He knew it was funny, but did not know he could still laugh until Langmyre pointed it out, that voice of hers such a grating mess, an F sharp in a very high register.
“Should he be giggling?”
“By now, my dear, his mind is quite gone,” Farrick pointed out with absolute confidence. “He’s not even certain where he is. Indeed, if at this point I asked him for the location of his friends, he would not be able to imagine how to answer.”
Because I don’t know, you twit, and suddenly Cashel wanted more than anything else to see broad, battered Drinn, or cool and sexy Alorin Kaye, or even that sarcastic magic bastard Franx, or any of the rest: Aimee, Ferkis, the affable slut Lynna, little Sheel by the stables, or poor dead Welliver, even cold lovely Princess Raxillene; beneath that, however, he found himself hoping, praying, that anyone he’d ever met was far away from these awful people.
Suddenly, he realized the rodent had gone away.
“So next,” the mage went on, warming to his subject, “we’ll move on to the main event: the penis and testicles. Now, can anyone tell me which ball is most properly removed first?” Langmyre could, presumably, and it was likely a couple of the rest could make a guess, but to the vague disappointment of his detached mind, Cashel never learned the answer. For just then, there was a sharp crunching rap against the other side of the window boards, somewhat like a Yule ornament falling from a height.
But that was the very last thing Cashel was aware of for quite some time, the shock of the explosion knocking him at last into blessed unconsciousness. So he missed the sudden and spectacular disintegration of the boards, the split second of shock on Niko Spavige’s face as his hale old body filled with a glorious infinity of splinters and little rocks, just before a wash of liquid golden fire split him at the waist and left his legs leaning intact against the stone while sending the rest of him, splinters and all, bouncing off the far wall. On the way he flew into Aslo Farrick who, quite astonished, discovered himself suddenly parted from his levering blades and his heated rods, quivering in blind surprise beneath the overcooked earthly remains of Captain Spavige.
The same liquid fire found Brasher, who merely grunted down at the ignited flesh of his right arm and groped with his left for something, anything, to smother it with. Which was why he was not yet even reaching for the hammer at his belt as Drinn of Fiveoaks, crying hoarsely in rage, came boots-first through the wreck of the boarded-up window and began laying about him with a dirk in one hand and a hatchet in the other, blindly swinging left along the wall until the hatchet found Brasher’s shoulder with a meaty thump that left the stout blade buried beyond hope of recovery without a great deal of leverage; Farrick could no doubt discourse on the subject, had he not been scrambling beneath poor charred Spavige.
Nobody was paying attention to the arrival of Poildrin Franx, who stumbled over the sea-captain’s tottering legs and then crouched, already mouthing words that he read off an incongruous notecard clutched in his left hand, his right upraised and glowing with a weird greenish tint. But they certainly noticed the valkyrie’s entrance; even if she hadn’t gleamed dully with the steel of her little shield and her wicked, sawbacked blade, it was difficult not to notice the way she was plunging that short sword straight into Ledley Tighe’s body, just above the belly button, with force enough to lift him off his feet with the point of her blade striking sparks off the stone wall behind him as it went through.
Drinn’s battle cry turned into a shriek as Brasher finally figured out that his best weapon was the burning stump of his own arm, which he was now flapping across Drinn’s face; had Cashel been awake, he might have discovered that Brasher’s skin and Drinn’s eyebrows smelled the same way his own skin had smelled as it burned, which Farrick had made it briefly do around teatime. Crazed, Drinn brought his dirk against his massive foe’s abdomen again and again, stabbing in a frenzy.
Alorin, meanwhile, was just turning away from the mess she’d made of the dying Tighe’s scrotum when she brought her buckler up hard and fast, instinctively, barely fast enough to catch Langmyre’s blade; she grunted and shoved the tiny assassin’s arm aside, then the two Free Fighters of Lammorel backed up, squared off, and eyed each other from as far as the tiny chamber would allow.
When, with a loud whoosh like the entire house sighing, Franx’ spell suddenly hit.
He’d designed it, he’d say later, to counter what he expected from the more advanced and less exhausted Farrick. Combing the City Mage’s small library, he’d found an old spell from the Third Days, written by a famous old Overmage named Herrfle or Herrfel, both being acceptable; it was a particularly cunning binding charm, but even at the Mages’ College Poildrin Franx had been famous as a gifted spell-writer, and he’d added a few special touches to the old charm to make it more potent. And then it had all been a question of how well he could cast it, in the dark and repulsively smelly cellar, with steel clashing and ears ringing, with the musty dust of his explosion dancing through the stuffy air, with blood flying and limbs burning. The notecard had helped him get the old words right, but could he focus the power behind the words?
Well enough, it seemed. A verdigris-colored line moved slowly out from his upraised hand, a plane of energy sweeping along the walls and the blood-puddled floor, over the gasping bodies locked in combat, to melt against the struggling Imperial Mage, still working to get free of the crumbly remains of Lady Wennowes’ captain; at once the entire, oddly-shaped mass went still, captain and mage, while Franx focused intently and tried to brace for the inevitable counterspell.
The fight between Drinn and Brasher was plainly not going to last long, its outcome already ordained; Drinn would be scorched and Brasher would be killed, the only open question being the number of wounds to each. The two women in the middle of the room, then, were providing the only real show on offer, even if a strangely intent Gitsey, poised for immediate flight, was the only one watching. Unperturbed, the valkyrie stood with her head brushing the sagging ceiling and her shortsword held low. Her opponent had nothing but her little knife and whatever native speed and agility she possessed; considerable, as it turned out.
The women circled wordlessly as Drinn at last got Brasher to leak enough blood to collapse, the occasional flash of a blade and spatter of blood being the only breaks in the tension from the middle of the chamber. Both women were superbly trained in the tradition of Lammorel, looking constantly for efficient, contained slashes to the backs of knees and ankles, the insides of biceps, the palms of hands; the goal, as Alorin had often explained to the rest of them, was to create enough debilitating wounds to vital places until the foe, tired and hopeless, could be dispatched cleanly and with as little drama as possible.
And it often worked; Alorin Kaye was an excellent fighter. But she seldom fought against others trained as she was. And so the fight wen
t on, and even as the panting, muttering Drinn at last got Brasher’s massive head hacked off and his hatchet back, the room’s unearthly greenish light began to change.
The counterspell was massive.
Give a mage enough time, it is said, and he will cast a spell that will destroy the world. Aslo Farrick did not need to do that, but the breaking of Franx’ spell was much easier for him. He lay, crouched and immobile, while he sensed the nature of Poildrin’s spell and combed his mind for a counter; once he had it, from memory, he unleashed it.
“Kill him!” Franx’ shriek came as he twisted aside, his head ringing and his mouth bleeding, and the exhausted Drinn responded, bloody-bladed, stalking away from the wreck he’d made of Brasher to advance, quite unwillingly, on the mage; for his part, Farrick had finally dragged himself free of the husk that had once been Spavige, but his counterspell had left him dizzy enough that he did not seem to like his chances against the enraged Drinn, stinking of burned flesh and spilled blood and silhouetted against the light coming in through the blown window.
Scuttling crablike, Farrick slipped aside and made for the door, and by the time Drinn turned to take him, all that was left was Gitsey, her purple eyes wide in a white face. Drinn halted, took a deep breath, caught a wisp of flying blood across his face from Alorin’s fight, and took in the coughing Franx and the flashing Lammorel blades and the grim sight of Cashel, looking dead, hanging from a hook by his hands and with various implements thrust into his body. He hung his head. “Begone, girl,” he grunted, and then he turned back to help his friends in the charnel room. As the mage had said, the owl was outside; they could find Aslo Farrick later.
Wearily, Drinn watched for a few seconds as the women carved each other; his eyes sought Alorin’s, met them, and decided she did not want his help. Cashel wasn’t talking either, but he was in clear need; fearing what he would find, then, the warrior hauled himself across the room, raised his scorched arm, and with an anguished cry brought his dirk through the rope holding up Cash.