“We are always open for business where you are concerned, Master Gage. Let me show you to a table.”
Marsh and Roeglin headed for the stairs, not wanting to keep Gustav waiting, but they had just reached the bottom of the steps when a bell began to toll. That was new. Marsh stopped and looked at her uncle.
He was standing, his head lifted as he listened to the bell and the cacophony of lighter chimes that followed it.
“There are raiders attacking the Deeps wall.” He paused, looking at Marsh. “That’s the wall facing the route leading to Ruins Hall.”
A third set of chimes joined the first two, these harsher and more like the clanging of the bells worn by moutons when they were released into a cavern to graze. Per’s face turned grave as the tailors set their meals on the tables and headed for the door.
“They’re calling everyone to assist,” he said, and then looked at the trader even as he hurried over to the bar. “I’m sorry, Master Gage, but the city needs us.”
The trader snorted as though claiming the Ledge was a city was beyond belief. Per ignored him but waved a hand toward the food that had been set out for the tailors.
“If you’re hungry, you can share the tailors’ lunch…or I’m sure your assistance would be appreciated on the wall.”
That caught the trader’s attention.
“Appreciated?” he asked, and Per nodded, pulling a sword belt and sword from beneath the counter and strapping it to his waist.
“Oh, yes,” he said, reaching back under the counter to take out a sturdy crossbow. Marsh realized his belt had a quiver of bolts hanging opposite his blade.
“Dani—” but Marsh’s cousin shoved open the kitchen doors and hurried across the dining hall.
“Fires are banked, and I’ve pulled everything out of the oven and off the stove,” he said, and his mouth twisted with dismay. “We should charge the raiders for every meal they’ve almost ruined.”
“Almost?” The trader sounded hopeful.
“Almost,” Daniel confirmed, not stopping on his way through. “If we push them back fast enough, lunch will be fine.”
He was followed by the serving girl and three others that Marsh hadn’t met yet, although she vaguely recognized their faces from her trip into the kitchen the evening before. She almost didn’t recognize them now.
In the time it had taken Per to explain the bells and make the traders understand they were leaving, the staff had ditched their aprons and donned simple leather tunics and sword belts, and each one carried a solid timber staff. They moved after Daniel like he knew where he was going—and they’d go with him even if he didn’t.
Per followed.
“You’re welcome to join us,” he told Marsh, but he didn’t wait for her reply.
Marsh didn’t bother asking Roeglin if she could go; she just followed her uncle. Roeglin hesitated, his eyes sheeting white, and then he followed her.
“The others are…” he began, but the clatter of boots on the stairs behind them told her exactly what the others were doing.
None of them said anything when the traders joined them.
“Can’t leave our trading partners in the lurch,” Gage said, hitching his belt. Marsh noticed he was a good head taller than most cavern folk, and that his skin had the tanned quality she associated with those who lived on the surface. She’d have to ask him what that was like when this was over.
The streets were busier when they reached the boardwalk, with groups of people moving in semi-disciplined squads of a half-dozen or more—and every single one of them was armed. It was hard for Marsh not to stop and stare. This wasn’t the Ledge she remembered.
It didn’t take her long to spot Per and Daniel moving in the general direction everyone else was taking—toward the Deeps wall—but as she watched, a second set of chimes rang out, and her uncle and cousin paused. The chimes came a second time, and they turned about and started running in the opposite direction to which they’d been traveling—the one leading to the surface.
“Now I am glad I joined you,” the merchant said. “Nice as this place is, there’s no way I want to be stuck here with no way out and nowhere to trade.”
Marsh understood where he was coming from. Being stuck in Kerrenin’s Ledge might not have been so bad if she’d loved the life she had at the waystation, but the constant flow of folks and stories through her childhood had made her want to see what lay in the world beyond…and then she’d met her first seeker and seen what he’d discovered in the ruins scattered through the Deep, and she’d known what she wanted to do.
Now, though? Now she just wanted peace so everyone could live safely. Adventure and discovery could come later.
They waited until Per and Daniel had caught them.
“This way,” Per shouted, and they fell in with the catering staff and the tailors, the traders joining them.
Marsh noticed that Dominique scanned the squads around them, looking nervous.
“Anything we can help with?” she asked, and he started.
“I’m sorry. It’s Piet.” He waved his hand helplessly, and Marsh understood.
“Is it his first battle?”
Dominique shook his head.
“No, but the boy gets excited, and sometimes I need to…” He paused, looking embarrassed, and Roeglin swore.
“We’ll find him,” he said, grabbing Marsh by the arm. “Which armorer did you send him to?”
“I…there is only one.”
They left him in the street looking after them, but Marsh had no time to worry about him. Roeglin was already asking questions.
“You know the way?”
Marsh shrugged his hand from her arm and caught it in her own.
“Follow me!”
They raced through the streets, Marsh taking every short cut she could remember from a youth of running errands for her uncle. It didn’t take them long to reach the smithy. To their surprise, Piet was still there, but he was flat out on the floor, blood oozing from a cut on his head while sounds of battle came from the room beyond.
“He’s lucky he isn’t dead,” Roeglin muttered, glancing down at the boy.
Marsh wanted to know how he knew, but then she caught the faint rise and fall of the boy’s chest and relaxed. Leaving Piet on the floor, she followed Roeglin toward the room beyond the shop entry.
“I. Told. Ye. NO!” was punctuated by the clang of metal striking metal, and Marsh remembered the blacksmith was a woman. “And. I. Meant. No.”
More clashes followed, which sounded suspiciously like someone had just cleared a workbench of all its tools. Someone grunted with pain, and then someone cried out. Not the smith, to Marsh’s relief.
Scan ahead, Roeglin ordered, and Marsh tried to sense how many lives occupied the room beyond.
There were four of them—one faced off against three others. Marsh widened the scan to include the ceiling and asked the shadows to show her who might be hidden. It was no surprise to find a fifth attacker hiding in the rafters, and a sixth stepping back toward the door.
He thinks he heard something, Roeglin told her and pulled a dart from the shadows. Let me confirm that for him.
The intruder reached the door, pivoting to scan the shop’s interior. He didn’t have time to shout an alarm; Roeglin’s dart took him in the throat. The shadow mage followed by stepping up to the door before anyone on the other side had time to react. He’d drawn and cast two more darts by the time he’d stepped through, and Marsh heard a heavy thump as something or someone hit the floor.
She wasn’t worried, though; Roeglin would have been reading her mind while she scanned. He’d know of the two intruders hiding in the room.
Three, came almost as a gasp, and Marsh swore.
How could she have missed one?
Shadow mage.
Son of the misbegotten Deep!
Marsh wasted no time.
I suppose you got your idiotic ass skewered, you half-bred mind-walking asshole.
“Than
ks. Thanks a lot,” Roeglin wheezed. Marsh heard startled laughter behind the pain and was glad she’d distracted him from it.
She hadn’t distracted him enough for him to forget to send an image of the room to her mind as she charged forward, and she ducked the swing of the mage’s blade as she came through the door, stamping down hard and pivoting as she pulled buckler and blade from the dark. The enemy mage’s second strike hit the shield and bounced off, and Marsh put all the momentum of her turn into her strike.
She was lucky the mage hadn’t known she was aware of where he was, or he’d have been more prepared. As it was, she reached the end of her turn as he dropped to his knees, in time to see Roeglin’s dart slam into his side, finishing what she’d started. It took her mere heartbeats to turn back, looking for her next opponent—and she was almost too slow.
These were raiders, and more than one of them had an affinity for the dark. Whatever they’d wanted with the blacksmith, they’d wanted it badly enough to send more than mere cannon fodder. Movement flashed in the corner of her eye and she brought the shield up with barely enough time to turn the next blow, shuffling back just enough that the second, shorter, blade tore through fabric and not flesh.
“Son of the Deep!”
“Take him!” the man facing her shouted, and another raider slid from the shadow and ran toward her.
“No!” but the blacksmith’s flurry of blows could not get her past the raider standing in her path.
Marsh tried to keep an eye on both the raider she was fighting and the man rapidly closing the distance between them.
I got this. Although from the sound of it, Roeglin was having trouble getting anything.
“Hang in there,” Marsh muttered, parrying a series of fierce strikes as the second raider charged past her.
The rapid tattoo of his feet striking the floor stopped with a startled shout, followed by a series of heavy blows and then a shortened scream. Roeglin’s harsh breathing sounded in the semi-silence that followed, but Marsh had to stay focused on the man before her. He was fast, his form blending with the shadows and making it hard to see exactly where he was but giving Marsh an idea.
The man was using real blades, and she knew just how effective those were against shadows. Concentrating on keeping him at bay, she slid into the shadows, letting her body become one with them while remaining separate.
“Clever girl,” her opponent muttered, and Marsh decided she was sick of looking at his face.
After all, if she was one with the shadows, there was no reason she couldn’t be standing behind him and driving her sword through his back. As fast as thought, she was, hearing her opponent’s startled shout as she vanished from in front of him. It was followed by a cry of pain as she missed her first strike, slicing across his back instead of driving her blade into his chest.
She danced back a step, dropping out of the shadows as she recovered her strike and thrust forward, plunging her blade into him as he came around to face her. His gaze dropped to the sword in his chest and he fell back, his weapons clattering to the floor.
“That just leaves you,” the blacksmith said.
“Ye’re not good enough.”
“Wanna bet?” Marsh looked across in time to see the woman slash her sword across the man’s throat and then drive a dagger up and into his chest.
“Not laughing now, are ye?” she asked, kicking him to dislodge him from the blade.
She kicked the corpse as it fell, but it did not respond, so she stepped around it and ran for the door.
“My son,” she said as she passed. “They’re going to use him against me.”
Her son? Well, no wonder she’d been fighting like a kat. Speaking of which, where was Mordan?
She’d lost track of the kat when they’d returned to the dining room to answer the messenger’s summons, and now Marsh wondered where the monster had gone. The question was answered by the hubbub that erupted up the stairs on the other side of the shop.
“No, Ma. No! It’s okay. She’s friendly.”
“Get out of the way, boy, and get away from her.”
“No. She kept me safe.”
Marsh bolted up the stairs, coming to a skidding halt when the blacksmith turned to face her, sword in hand. The woman’s face relaxed when she saw who it was.
“You!” She gestured toward the room. “Wanna help me deal with this?”
A low growl rumbled out of the room.
“Hoshkat?” Marsh asked, and the smith nodded. “Blue eyes, probably sitting on the bed?”
“Got it in one.” The woman’s face took on a look of curiosity. “Ye know it?”
“She’s mine. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize she’d followed me.”
“Good thing she did,” the boy standing in front of Mordan said. “They sent two after me, while the rest tried to get my ma to go work for them. Said the town would be less likely to fight if they had no armor, and that they’d pay better than the town could afford.”
He looked anxiously past her to his mother.
“You told them no, right?”
“That’s what the disagreement was about,” she said.
“Did we get ‘em all?” the boy asked, and by “we,” Marsh guessed he meant her and his mother, which reminded her…
“I need to check on my partner,” she said. “I think he’s hurt.”
Roeglin was bleeding from a gash in his side that might have been worse if the blade hadn’t bounced off the hilt of his sword.
“So, there’s something to be said for the whole shadow weapons thing,” Marsh told him, taking him into the shop proper so she could see the wound. “It’s a good thing we’ve got a meeting tomorrow. Gustav would have been upset when we told him you couldn’t travel.”
“Who says I’m going to the meeting?” Roeglin challenged, but the smith interrupted before Marsh could reply.
“That needs stitching. Wait one.”
The boy had followed his mother into the room. Now he looked under Marsh’s arm and then hurried away.
“I’ll go put some water on.”
“You’re from the monastery, aren’t ye?” the smith asked, and Roeglin nodded.
Marsh noticed that his face was pale and his skin filmed with sweat.
“Every time, Ro. Every single time,” she muttered, but the blacksmith was talking.
“Heard of ye. Never thought to see ye. Didn’t think ye’d show yerselves after what the shadow mages are doing in these caverns.”
“Not us,” Roeglin said. “We fight them when we find them.”
He gasped as she probed at the wound.
“Lucky,” she said. “No poison on the blade, an’ the cut’s clean. A couple of weeks’ rest and you’ll be causing yer girl more grief than ever.”
Marsh’s eyes widened. His girl? She caught Roeglin’s look, and they both blushed.
“Huh. Not his girl, then? Well, I wouldn’t wait too long. His kind don’t grow on trees.”
That’s one way of putting it, Marsh thought.
Hey! was quickly followed by, “Ouch!”
“Stop yer gripin’, boy.”
Marsh saw that the smith had threaded a needle and taken the first stitch. She paused when her son returned carrying a pan of hot water and some clean cloths. The woman turned to Marsh.
“Keep him steady,” she directed and went to work.
After another yelp of protest, Roeglin settled, breathing hard as the wound was cleaned and hissing with pain as the smith began stitching. He’d closed his eyes by the time she’d finished, but Marsh could feel fine tremors running through him every time the needle touched.
“There. Done,” the woman said and poked Roeglin in the ribs above the wound. “Ye can open yer eyes again, ye big girl.”
“Hey!” Marsh protested. “We don’t make that much of a fuss.”
Roeglin managed a chuckle at that.
“Oh, no,” he mocked. “The fuss you make is on a far grander scale.”
The boy i
nterrupted them.
“How d’you think they’re going with the attack?”
The woman cocked her head.
“Well, they haven’t sounded the all-clear yet, but I’m guessing things will settle down soon.”
The boy blinked and turned a wide-eyed stare to his mother.
“Why?”
“Because the raiders didn’t get what they came for—and the attacks were a distraction while they tried.”
“Oh.” Her son was silent for a moment, chewing his bottom lip as he thought over what she’d said, then, “Will they come again?”
Marsh could see from the look on the woman’s face that she wanted to say no, that this would be the last time the shadow raiders tried for them, but she could also see that the smith didn’t want to lie to her son. In the end, the woman chose the truth.
“They may, Sam. They don’t want us here lookin’ after the town.”
He looked troubled, his coal-brown eyes taking on a darker hue. The smith laid a hand on his arm.
“Don’t let it bother ye, boy. They’ll come, and we’ll make ‘em sorry all over again. Isn’t that right, shadow mage?”
Roeglin cleared his throat.
“We can give you shelter at the monastery if you need it,” he told her, but she shook her head.
“That would be giving them what they wanted, and I don’t aim to do that. Why should their lives be any easier than the rest of us?”
It was a good point.
“What about him?”
Again the smith’s son interrupted them, pointing at Piet’s still form.
“Piet!”
The blacksmith hurried over to the youth, then returned for a damp cloth and her sewing kit.
“Looks like whoever hit him was in a hurry.” She caught Marsh’s look as she headed back to kneel beside the boy. “He’d be dead if they weren’t. I’d say Master Dominique is a very lucky man.”
She bathed the wound as she talked, then carefully stitched the edges together.
“Well,” she said when she was done. “He’ll be pleased with that, even if his father won’t. Boys always like a good scar.”
Boys did, did they? Marsh thought, wondering how Roeglin felt about his.
Oh, just fine, Marsh. Always wanted something else to itch and ache at awkward moments. Yeah, thanks a lot. Thanks for asking.
Magic Below Paris Complete Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 8): Trading Into Shadow, Trading Into Darkness, Trading Close to Light, Trading By Firelight, Trading by Shroomlight, plus 3 more Page 61