by J. P. Ashman
Without replying, Longoss ran at Blanck, his sudden explosive motion clearly shocking the masked assassin, who only just managed to side step the attack. Longoss, however, had anticipated Blanck’s reaction and his trailing, open palm slapped against the assassin’s mask, knocking it askew as Longoss turned and kicked out, connecting with the man’s closest leg.
Blanck allowed his knee to give way, saving it from breaking and allowing him to drop to the ground and roll, away from Longoss’ next attack and towards his swiftly approaching sister, who leapt over him to lash out at Longoss as she landed.
Two red lines appeared across Longoss’ face, opening his cheek as Terrina’s stilettos continued down, scoring shallow cuts across his outstretched arm.
Longoss cursed and spun to face the female assassin, parrying and barely avoiding a barrage of double lunges, slashes and kicks as she came at him, her features lit with glee.
Stepping back again and again, leading Terrina on, Longoss chose the moment of Blanck’s renewed attack to throw himself at the woman, allowing her blades to rake his ribs as he smashed his head into her petite nose. Blood showered her lips, which let out a cry of pain and shock as her head snapped back.
Blanck’s attack had missed, but he came on all the faster upon seeing the danger to his sister.
Aye, lad, now it’s your turn to lose it. Longoss turned from the reeling woman and stepped in towards Blanck’s hasty attack.
The assassin drove one of his daggers into Longoss’ left shoulder – as Longoss had allowed – and as the blade sank to the hilt, Longoss dropped low, curled his thick right arm around the assassin’s legs and sliced across the back of Blanck’s knees with his eating knife.
A muffled scream erupted from behind Blanck’s white mask as his legs gave way to the sliced tendons. The dagger sucked from Longoss’ shoulder as Blanck held onto it before hitting the ground hard, thrashing about and finally dropping both daggers to paw at his near useless legs.
At a shriek of anger, Longoss jumped to the side, barely missing Terrina as she came in at him fast. He dodged two more kicks, but a third struck him where she’d sliced his ribs and Longoss fell back, rolling across the floor as the woman thrust her stilettos towards him, her brother screaming on the floor beside her.
‘I may have given me word not to kill, Blanck,’ Longoss shouted, regaining his footing and blocking out the pain, ‘but I also swore to bring the Black Guild down, and you two shites are Black Guild!’
‘You’ll be dead before then,’ Terrina shouted, lunging at Longoss again. He avoided her lunge, and the next, his gold teeth flashing as he used the woman’s anger against her, opening himself up again for her to step in close, anticipating a killing blow. Before she could plunge her leading stiletto into Longoss’ heart though, the man dropped to the floor, taking the woman by surprise, her forward momentum tripping her over the prone man as he rolled towards her, taking her legs and dropping her hard to the filthy cobbles. She managed to bring her trailing hand down to slow her fall, but the impact audibly cracked her wrist. Terrina cried out in pain.
Longoss wasted no time and threw himself back at the woman, lashing out with his fist and smashing her already broken nose. Despite her head rocking back, she recovered quickly as her watering eyes searched for her attacker. She saw only the blade that slashed across her pretty face, which scored a deep line across both cheeks and her flattened nose. Screaming all the more, Terrina lashed out with her foot, connecting with Longoss’ jaw as he came at her again with the small knife.
Longoss took the blow to the jaw and the next to the chest. He ignored the pain and continued to slash at the woman kicking him. Her legs were cut to ribbons as he ran his knife across them again and again, eventually pressing his weight against the attack, forcing her leg down and pinning it as his free hand held her broken wrist to the ground. She cried out all the more as he pulled the knife across her forehead, carving up her smooth skin and ruining her face.
Longoss rolled to the side as Terrina managed to bring her good hand round, taking his left ear with the stiletto she gripped tightly, although she never saw the strike, since her eyes were filled with her own blood and tears. She coughed several times before passing out from the pain.
Pressing his hand against the bloody hole where his ear had been, Longoss finally stood. He looked down on the mutilated woman. I never wanted any of this, ye fools. I just wanted to walk away, with Elleth…
He looked across at Terrina’s brother then, who was crawling across the street, a trail of blood stretched out behind him. Longoss staggered across to the man. Crouching in front of him, he smiled gold despite his injuries.
‘Even unable to kill, I will bring the Black Guild down. Do ye see now, Blanck?’ Grey eyes flinched as the white mask pulled back from Longoss’ knife, which flashed across in front of it.
‘But you, Blanck… you took Elleth away from me personally.’ The mask shook and Longoss could hear Blanck mumbling. ‘Yes,’ Longoss said, nodding, ‘personally.’ He leaned in closer and sneered at the man behind the mask. ‘You made it personal, Blanck, you. Poi Son might have ordered it and he’ll pay for that, believe you me, but you’re the cunt that did it, sliced her throat, and there ain’t no excuse for that. I may have killed many in my time Blanck, but not like that, not a defenceless girl, and for that ye’ll suffer the most.’
Blanck screamed and his white mask shed red tears as Longoss took the assassin’s eyes.
‘It’s a shame ye’ll never get to see the only woman I ever truly fucked up; yer sister over there.’
Blanck screamed even more, in pain and anger, and thrashed about on the cobbles as Longoss moved about him.
‘She was a pretty one yer sister, a real pretty one in fact, but then again, so was Elleth.’
‘Please,’ Blanck managed, after coughing on the blood running down the inside of his mask.
‘Please?’ Longoss said, almost whispering. ‘Ye better be joking, Blanck, asking me for mercy? Ye better be fucking joking!’ he roared, as he pulled the assassin’s braes down just enough to slice away his manhood.
Blanck’s scream caused pigeons a block away to lift into the sky, and then the assassin threw up behind his mask.
Longoss pulled the mask free as Blanck spat the blood flecked vomit across the ground.
‘Can’t have ye choking now, can we, lad? I gave me word not to kill, ye see?’
Rising to his feet after cleaning his blade on Blanck’s cloak, Longoss took one last look at the butchered siblings, before grimacing at the pain now flooding his body from his many wounds.
I’ll be needing some more of that juice, Sears, but not before I get us some food, drink and Coppin some clothes. Then we’ll be on our way, for I think it’s safe to say the Black Guild knows where we are, and I reckon I’ve just shat in the bloody hornets’ nest.
Shaking his head at it all, Longoss continued on his way down the street, towards the bakers he knew.
***
As the riot continued outside Tyndurris, another bloodied guard was rushed into the barracks where both Morri and Cullane attended to a man who'd been hit by an old, blunt crossbow bolt. Luckily for him, his thick padded gambeson had taken most of the impact and the bolt tip had only slightly pierced his skin. The impact itself, however, had left him with a fractured rib, and the guard struggled for breath.
‘You’ll be fine,’ Cullane purred, trying to calm the man down as Morri cleaned the wound and rubbed a balm into the skin surrounding it.
‘Now, I can’t bandage this wound tightly,’ Morri explained, ‘as I don’t want to injure your rib any further or cause you to suffer fluid on your lungs. So once in a while you will have to brace yourself and take a couple of deep—
‘What was that?’ Morri looked up at Cullane, and then round to Orix and the other clerics tending to the newest victim of the ongoing riot.
Elloise tilted her head. ‘It sounded like it came from the floor below… there, again.’
Orix – who was standing on a stool to reach the man he and Elloise were tending to – merely shrugged at the blonde woman next to him.
‘There was some kind of experiment in the lower chambers earlier, I heard the explosions,’ Morri said.
‘Perhaps that’s it,’ Cullane said, clearly unsure, ‘but it sounded like the floor below and it was no explosion—
‘There it was again. It sounds like a beast’s roar?’
Master Orix shrugged and waved his hands for the clerics to get back to work. ‘It’ll be that young sorceress showing off to the soldiers,’ the old gnome said, as he struggled to mop blood away from the guard who was being held down. ‘Will you be still, it’s not even deep and you’re just making it worse.’
The guard on the bench blushed at the realisation his injury wasn’t bad.
A few moments passed before Cullane asked, ‘There’s no way anyone could have got down to the treasury is there?’
One of the older clerics shook his head. ‘We would hear the guards outside this room if they had, no, the treasury is quite—’
The cleric was cut off by a shout outside the door and a clash of weapons. Everyone in the room looked up at each other and paused, whilst the two guards on the benches looked across worriedly to one another.
A bell rang twice before ending suddenly and then someone released a guttural scream from just beyond the closed door to the barracks.
‘Weapons,’ Orix shouted as he hopped down from the stool and pulled a curved knife from his many pocketed robe, surprising everyone. The two wounded guards swung their legs from the benches and hopped down, both wincing with pain as they did so, but managing to draw their short-swords that lay in scabbards on a table nearby. Both Cullane and Morri, as well as the other clerics in the room, ran to a weapons rack on the wall and pulled off a short-sword each as Elloise took a goedendag and began spinning it with surprising skill.
One of the guards rushed forward and threw a catch on the door before stepping back to join the ragged line stretched loosely from one side of the chamber to the other.
More clashes of metal came from the other side of the door and Cullane muttered something about not having any combat spells prepared. As the words left her mouth, the door itself shook, clearly struck on the far side with something heavy. The people in the room looked around at each other again, wondering how the rioters could have managed to breach both the gates and the tower’s entrance, especially through all the men-at-arms currently standing guard outside.
‘Almost all of our men are in the courtyard,’ the guard with the broken rib said, his breathing shallow and ragged. ‘How could anyone get through? They never have before and no one out there’s called for battle mages as far as I know? It wasn’t that bad out there, no worse than the last riot.’
The door shook again, dust lifting from its hinges.
‘Don’t wait for them to get too far in,’ Orix said. ‘As soon as the door opens we attack, understood?’ No one replied but everyone nodded as they tensed in anticipation.
‘The horn!’ the bloodied guard said, as he hobbled over to an old dusty horn sat on a wall bracket. He wiped the mouthpiece quickly before taking a deep breath and blowing long and hard into the curved instrument. The sound was strange, like a hundred strong male choir all humming at once. The note reverberated off everything and everyone in the room.
The banging on the door stopped for a second and then resumed at a higher rate. The guard blew again and the whole room shook; hairs on the back of everyone’s necks stood high as the sound struck deep into their ears.
Renewed shouts came from the other side of the door and another man briefly screamed out in pain. Fresh clashes of weapons sounded and the banging on the door stopped. The bloodied guard shoved the thin end of the horn through his belt and came to rejoin the defensive line across the barracks as everyone looked at him in appreciation.
‘I don’t know if it’s ever been used before, but it’s supposed to rally every guard and battle mage on station to this point. Let’s hope it—’
He was cut off as a large explosion and shouts of terror erupted on the far side of the door.
‘Battle mage,’ Cullane said, and several of the others nodded, involuntary smiles spreading across most of their faces.
Just then, the door rocked on its hinges and crashed open. A filthy looking man fell to the floor with a pickaxe in his hand. He looked up and snarled as two more similar looking brutes piled through the door past him. A fireball slammed into another man somewhere behind them, clearly cast by the battle mage who was out of sight.
Cullane screamed at the sudden entry – or rather squeaked as her voice rose too high – and the injured guard with the horn rushed forward before Orix could say anything. He was flattened by the ham-like fist of the biggest man, who came quickly for the group before bouncing off what looked like a vertical sheet of water that had suddenly appeared.
Elloise let out a sigh of relief as her defensive spell worked. The three attackers looked furious. ‘I can’t hold them for long,’ she said, as the men swung their picks and shovel at the barrier, its liquid like surface splashing less with every impact.
The sound of someone calling for crossbows to be used came from outside the room, followed by another fireball that briefly lit the open doorway.
‘Do something,’ Morri said to Cullane.
‘Why me?’
‘Because the rest of us are clerics and you’re a sorceress, you must be able to conjure something up, literally?’
The barrier began to fail.
‘I’ll go,’ the remaining guard said, his free arm cradling his ribs.
The older cleric grabbed the guard by the arm, who winced instantly. ‘I get the point,’ he conceded, looking at the cleric, who nodded in return.
‘Get ready,’ Elloise said, as the last strike from a pick caused no more than a ripple in her rapidly fading barrier.
Another cry of pain echoed through from the far room and two of the three men hammering on the barrier glanced back, clearly worried.
‘On guard,’ Orix cried, his defensive stance a strange sight to his fellow clerics and an amusing one to the three brutish men, who laughed and jeered at the small gnome.
‘Ooh…’ Cullane looked pleased with herself, but before anyone could ask, her eyes closed, opening a heartbeat later to reveal white, pupil-less orbs. Morri looked at her, full of hope for what she might conjure.
As the barrier fell, the man in the middle – shovel in hand – lurched forward suddenly, before crying out in intense pain. His eyes rolled back and his body jerked in spasms as he raised the shovel and spun, wrapping it round the nearest man’s head, surely killing him with the bloody strike.
His remaining companion jumped back, horrified as the shovel wielding brute swung at him wildly. The clerics and remaining guard looked on dumbfounded as the larger of the two men dodged another swipe from the shovel before stepping in and striking his attacker in the side with his pick. The distraction opened up a chance for Elloise and she lunged forward, taking the heavy man’s legs from under him with the stave of her goedendag.
Both men hit the ground at the same time, and as the crazed shovel wielder crumpled, Cullane dashed forward and held out her hand. Cullane's pallid bookworm emerged from the man’s head and crawled into her palm, whistling and clicking all the way.
Both Morri and Orix laughed out loud as the other clerics and injured guard kept the remaining man at bay with their weapons.
‘That was amazing,’ Morri said, beaming at the young sorceress.
Whilst her bookworm gradually faded from existence, Cullane blushed. ‘It’s all I could think of.’ She smiled back at Morri.
Another man’s scream carried through the open door followed by the sound of more armoured men.
‘Listen?’ Orix said. They all strained to hear over the shouts and clashes of weapons. ‘Whoever it is, they’re being beaten back down, not up?’
‘
Well, of course,’ Morri stated matter-of-factly. ‘The battle mage and guards will have come down from the riot in the courtyard.’
Orix shook his head and the older cleric looked at the gnome as the answer dawned on him too. ‘The first support should have come from the treasury, on the floor below,’ the white haired man said, who now held a short-sword to the surviving prisoner’s throat.
Orix nodded. ‘Correct. The first to attend should have been the treasury guards below, who are, or should be, closer than those outside in the courtyard or on any floor above ground level.’
The two guards in the room nodded slowly in realisation, the one who'd been floored finally coming round and being hauled carefully to his feet by Morri.
‘That means they came from below,’ Cullane wrinkled her nose in confusion, ‘but how? We’re already underground, so how could anyone get in a lower chamber? Not through a portal, I can vouch for that,’ she added firmly.
Orix shook his head. ‘No, Cullane, not a portal. There have long been rumours of underground tunnels though, dating back centuries or more. They may have come through them? Those explosions we heard earlier, and that roaring, from the treasury you thought?’ Orix shook his head as it all became clear. Cullane slowly nodded her agreement. Orix pointed to the three men on the floor, two with pools of blood spreading from their still bodies and one whimpering under the gaze of the mages. ‘Look at these men, they look like prisoners.’
The others noticed the binding marks on their wrists for the first time.
‘But the lower chambers are reinforced with strong magic,’ Morri said, and again Orix shook his head.
‘The lower chambers are protected from within,’ the gnome said, ‘to stop magic, explosions and the like from damaging Tyndurris. They have never been protected against anyone breaking in, Morri, not to my knowledge anyway?’
Several in the room shook their heads in disbelief as it all became apparent. The fighting went on outside, seemingly descending the stairs as they fought on.
The guards demanded the remaining prisoner tell them what was happening below, but he refused, and Orix forbade them from harming him to get the truth.