The Vale: Behind The Vale

by Brian D. Anderson

  Bracing his back against the rear of the cage, he used both feet to push against it with all his strength. And again, with no result. He was about to resign himself to the fact that there was no possible way out of his situation when the crackle of gunfire drifted in from outside the room. This quickly got louder, and was accompanied by the shouts of men barking orders.

  Someone was attacking the facility.

  Less than a minute later, the door flew open and a man in dark blue fatigues rushed in, his rifle sweeping across the room. On spotting Drake, he glanced over his shoulder and shouted: “I got one in here.”

  Moving closer, the man leveled his rifle and took aim.

  He never got to pull the trigger. A blue streak of energy struck him in the very center of his back, sending him crashing into the front of Drake’s cage and then sliding to the floor. He was still falling when Bane ran in, his hands glowing with mana.

  “If you promise to behave, I’ll let you out,” he said.

  “What’s happening?” Drake demanded.

  “Look, we can discuss that now and end up dead. Or we can run. Your choice.”

  Deeply suspicious, Drake wanted to press Bane into explaining why he was prepared to release him, but more gunfire told him that now was not the time.

  “Just open the door,” he snapped.

  “Not until you promise.”

  Drake grumbled. “I promise. Now get on with it.”

  Bane flashed a grin and then simply touched the lock with his forefinger. The cage door instantly swung wide. Drake dashed over to the table where his P37 still lay.

  “I don’t suppose you were lying about disabling the mana chamber?” he asked. He checked the clip where six normal rounds were housed. It was empty.

  “No. That much was true.”

  With a sigh, Drake snatched up the rifle dropped by the dead man. “You know a way out of here?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Then lead on.”

  Bane wagged his finger. “Remember. You promised to behave.”

  “I’ll behave,” he confirmed, but added as a silent afterthought: For now. It was obvious he had a much better chance of getting out of here alive with a man like Bane at his side. So, as much as he wanted to put a bullet into the guy’s brain, he had to restrain himself.

  They left the room together, Bane crouching low, Drake standing more upright and with his rifle pointing down the passage. They passed three bodies along the way, one wearing the same uniform as the man Bane had killed, the other two in tailored suits – probably Fisk’s men.

  The steps leading up to the entrance looked clear, but Bane shook his head. “There’s an army out there,” he said. “We wouldn’t get five yards.”

  They continued straight on until reaching another door, this one slightly ajar. Voices could be heard inside. Bane looked over his shoulder and winked.

  The glow around his hands intensified. In a single fluid motion, he kicked the door fully open and let loose a streak of blue lightning. Drake could see three uniformed men kneeling behind a pile of crates, their focus down a hallway on the far side of the room. The spell struck two of them simultaneously, burning fist-sized holes in their backs. The third man swung his rifle around, but Drake put a bullet in his heart well before he could aim.

  “Nice shot,” Bane told him.

  Bullets pinged off the wall from down the hall, forcing them to lie flat.

  “Aren’t those your people shooting at us?” Drake asked.

  Bane raised an eyebrow. “My people? What in Vale would make you think that?”

  “Don’t play games,” he warned.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. Let me handle this.”

  After crawling away from the line of fire, Bane raised himself up and waved his arms in a circular motion. In response, the crates the men had been hiding behind levitated a foot in the air.

  “Get ready to charge,” he instructed.

  Drake got to his knees just as the crates erupted into flames and flew like meteors straight down the corridor. As soon as the gunfire stopped, Bane leapt to his feet and ran full tilt behind the advancing inferno. Drake followed close behind.

  At the end of the passage was a large room stacked high with boxes and crates, most of them clearly marked as containing perishable items. It looked like Fisk was bold enough – or foolish enough – to run a black market operation right here under the nose of the magistrate and the royal guard. Six men were scattered about the room, two rolling on the ground with their clothes on fire and the rest busy scrambling around trying to find cover.

  From behind, Drake could hear more men shouting. In the far corner of the room he could see a ladder attached to the wall. This led up to a metal hatch. Barely had his eyes settled on it when pain shot through his arm as a bullet grazed him from his right. He turned and fired, hitting his assailant in the leg. An angry growl slipped out. The wound wasn’t too bad, but it hurt like hell.

  Bane released a short burst of light that exploded at the feet of two others standing near the ladder. Such was the brilliance of this that Drake had to look quickly away to avoid being blinded. More gunfire reverberated off the walls, coming from just inside the passage leading into the room. Bane took off toward the ladder, casting more bursts of vivid light behind him. Drake spat a curse while chasing after him, barely covering his eyes in time.

  Glancing back after reaching the ladder and beginning to climb, he saw a long line of uniformed men now pouring into the room. At the same time, Fisk’s men were stumbling about aimlessly, shouting with pain and rubbing frantically at their inflamed eyes. It was only about twenty feet to the top, but at this moment it seemed to Drake more like a hundred. Bane had already reached the hatch and was crawling out. Then, just as Drake was preparing to do the same, he heard a voice ordering him to stop.

  “Like hell I will,” he muttered, his fingers closing around the top rung for a final pull up.

  A violent burning sensation, like being stung by a giant man-sized hornet, struck him in the thigh even before he heard the shot fired. The pain of the impact raced up through his body, attacking his muscles with such force that he immediately felt his grip on the ladder slipping away. He was on the very point of falling when Bane reached down and seized hold of his wrist.

  “You need to pull yourself up,” Bane told him, grunting loudly. “I’m not strong enough to lift you on my own.”

  It was all the reprieve Drake needed. The pain was still there, but the sudden shock to his system had already passed. Regaining his hold, he scrambled through the opening just as a second shot bounced off the wall below the top rung, missing his trailing foot by inches.

  Once out in the open, he looked around. They were close to the back of a wide wooden building about one hundred feet away from the silo. Voices carried, telling him that several more men were gathered on the other side quite near to the entrance – too many of them to confront head on without his P37. In the near distance, a line of cars was speeding away, with red magistrate vehicles in close pursuit. There was no sign of Cal.

  “Can you walk?” Bane asked, shutting the hatch and then melting the hinge with a short burst of mana. That would hold their attackers, but only for a short time. And without Cal, Drake knew they were still trapped.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. Though the rifle had been powerful enough to penetrate the protection his vex crystal provided, he was relieved to see that the wound was shallow.

  “Good. Then you drive.”

  As he spoke, Bane opened a small back door to the building. Inside was Cal. A wave of relief washed over Drake. Rapidly, he stripped off his shirt and tied it around his leg. The pain was still bad, but becoming increasingly manageable. The scratch on his arm had already stopped bleeding. Another vex crystal benefit.

  He eased into the driver’s seat and fired the engine. The large double door at the front was closed and locked, but that was no obstacle. Not for Cal. Bane was already seated and strapping h
imself in. Good thing, too. Drake would have seriously considered leaving him behind. On the other hand, the guy did save me, he acknowledged. But why? That was a question for when they were well away from this place.

  He tossed his P37 over to Bane. “Fix it.” Without waiting for a response, he slammed Cal into gear and pressed hard down on the accelerator.

  The doors were ripped from their hinges as they flew out of the building. Although taken momentarily by surprise, the cluster of men gathered at the front quickly recovered, and assaulted them with a volley of fire. Drake grinned as the rounds pinged and whizzed off Cal’s bodywork. It would take a lot more than anything they were armed with to get through. From the rear view he could see two men getting into one of the few remaining vehicles. He slid onto the main road, and within seconds Cal was racing at over one hundred and sixty. The magistrate officers had no chance of catching them, that much was certain. Even so, they would need to get the hell out of Arbor and into the outer provinces as soon as possible.

  The sun was sinking low when Drake pulled off onto a narrow road that split two fields. He touched the yellow panel on the console and a map of the area popped up on the screen. “Find us a way out of here,” he ordered Bane.

  “Good thing my father removed all the tracking devices,” he remarked. “If he hadn’t, they would know exactly where we are.”

  “Your father?” Drake shook his head, hardly able to believe what he was hearing.

  Bane looked amused at his confusion. “Yes. Do you think Dorn would have given Cal to just anyone?”

  “When we get out of here, you have a lot of explaining to do,” Drake told him.

  “You know, I’ve heard that quite a few times today,” he responded with a grin.

  “Yeah. I bet you have.”

  Chapter Eight

  It was well past midnight before they crossed into Bolivar province. Avoiding the magistrate’s officers and the royal guard had not been so easy at first, and only the fact that Drake was familiar with their methods allowed him to eventually outmaneuver them. Once safely out of Arbor, he was then able to use Cal’s vastly superior speed to put them well beyond the range of any search.

  He changed the camouflage setting to make Cal less recognizable, then started toward an old hawker complex he had lived in for a time a few years ago. Bane was quiet throughout, apparently perfectly at ease with what was happening. The revelation that he was Dorn’s son was still troubling Drake. He rarely placed trust in people, but Dorn had been an exception.

  They pulled into the parking lot of an outdoor market. It was too early yet for anyone to be about or to find anywhere to stay.

  “You need to get that bullet out,” Bane told him.

  Drake untied the makeshift bandage. The bullet was resting in the folds of the cloth, and the wound was already starting to close. “No need,” he said, tossing the round out of the window.

  Bane shook his head in wonder. “I’m starting to understand why the royal guard is so feared.” He handed Drake his P37. “I think you’ll find it’s working just fine now.”

  Drake checked the weapon to be sure this was true, and then pointed it straight at Bane’s head. “Now tell me why I shouldn’t just blow your damn head off.”

  Bane seemed unmoved by the threat. “Well, let’s see. I did save your life. That’s a reason.”

  “I wouldn’t have needed saving if you hadn’t brought me there in the first place.” He noticed the mana building up in Bane. “If you think you’re fast enough, go right ahead.”

  “It was just a job,” he explained, though not making any attempt to release the mana. “Are you telling me you would have done it differently? Be honest. You aren’t angry with me. You’re angry with yourself for being careless.”

  He was right, of course. But that only made Drake want to pull the trigger even more. “Then why save me after going through all the trouble of capturing me in the first place?” he demanded.

  “Because I need you to help me complete another job I’ve taken on.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “Same as yours: finding Prince Salazar.”

  Drake stiffened. “Who hired you?”

  Bane chuckled. “You know the rules. A good hawker never reveals the identity of his employer. But who hired me isn’t what should be important to you right now. What should be of more interest is that I already know where the prince is being held.”

  “Bullshit. If you know where he is, why not go get him yourself?”

  “Because he knows you...you’re old friends. He’s more likely to run away from me. And the last thing I want is to accidentally harm him.”

  There was sound logic behind this reasoning. But not enough. Drake shook his head. “Sorry, but I’m doing this alone. Now get out.”

  Bane’s smile never faded for an instant. “That’s fine...if you think you can find him. Why do you think I brought you to Fisk first? I needed a way back in. And you, my friend, provided this.”

  The thin hiss of the P37 charging cut through the air. “Don’t insult my intelligence,” Drake snapped. “You work for Fisk.”

  “Sure. Fisk hires me from time to time, but I am not one of his lackeys. He had the information I required, and so I traded it for you.” There was a long pause before he added: “Who do you think informed the magistrate about Fisk’s little operation?”

  “You?”

  “How else was I going to get you back out? Granted, the magistrate’s men were a bit more enthusiastic than I’d anticipated. But it worked, all the same.”

  “Then who hired Fisk to kill me?”

  Bane shrugged. “How should I know? I told you before, he only hires me from time to time.”

  Xavier and the magistrate had both claimed that Bane was in Fisk’s employ. But then, Xavier possibly wanted him dead. For sure someone had planted the bomb in Cal.

  “If you think you can find the prince first, then by all means go ahead,” Bane continued. “But seeing as how I know where he is – or at least, where he was – and you do not…”

  Drake gritted his teeth, his finger still itching to pull the trigger. At this close range, even the powerful protection that Bane was getting from his mana would not save him. “Okay,” he finally conceded. “We’ll work together. For now. But I promise you, get in my way and it will be the last thing you ever do.”

  “Fair enough.” Bane glanced outside to where a truck was pulling into the lot. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind lowering your weapon, maybe we should find a place where we can discuss a plan of action.”

  Drake holstered his P37 and fired Cal’s engine. He knew of a lodging house a short distance away that would be open soon. Which was just as well. Fatigue was creeping into his joints and muscles; he badly needed to rest awhile. That Bane still looked fresh and full of energy made him dislike the man even more.

  As he pulled onto the road, the world seemed as it did on that first day of exile: dark and sinister. The life of a hawker was dangerous, but at least it was comprehensible. They ran, you chased. You were in charge of your own destiny. Trust was something you never needed, not when you worked alone. This was fortunate, because he had quickly learned you couldn’t trust anyone.

  “Tell me one thing,” Drake said. “Did your father know about any of this?”

  Bane was clearly surprised at the question. “Hell, no! And if you ever want revenge, telling him would be the easiest way to get it. He thinks the world of you. The only decent man in Vale, I think were his exact words. If he knew what I did, he’d never speak to me again. It’s bad enough I became a hawker.”

  This made Drake feel somewhat better. After a short pause, he asked, “Why did you leave the College of Mages?”

  “A kind way of saying it might be that I was asked to go. The truth? I was expelled.”

  “Why?”

  He gave a lopsided grin. “They said I couldn’t be trusted.”

  “That I can believe.”

  The lodge opened a few m
inutes after they arrived, allowing Drake to quickly book a room. He then checked Cal’s trunk. If Bane knew anything about the panel containing the case and the money, he certainly hadn’t touched it. His sword was still where he had put it as well. Satisfied, he headed for the room.

  Once inside, he immediately collapsed on the bed. Through weary eyes he watched Bane cast a protection ward over the door and then settle into a tattered chair on the other side of the room. Wards were complex, and most mages didn’t possess the power or the knowledge to create them. There was definitely more to Dorn’s son than met the eye. But for now, questions would have to wait. His body was near its limit, and the road ahead would be long and dangerous.

  His dreams were filled with painful visions of his trial. The condemnation in the eyes of his fellow guards and the deep sorrow on the face of King Nedar were all too vivid. But most of all it was the voice of Lenora that threatened to break his heart – the way she had pleaded to go with him, and the fury she’d unleashed when he refused.

  He woke in a cold sweat. Bane was standing at the window with a look of deep concern on his face.

  “What is it?” Drake asked.

  “Trouble.”

  Drake shot up from the bed. From outside, he could already hear screams of terror. At first he couldn’t see what was causing the commotion. Then, after a moment, it became horribly clear as a hulking figure lumbered out from behind a building on the other side of the street.

  Its pale green flesh was covered with what appeared from a distance to be scales, though in reality Drake knew them to be simply deep ridges. Just above a pair of black soulless eyes, two sharply pointed horns protruded from a narrow brow. The eyes shifted menacingly around as though searching for prey. Then, flailing its taloned arms about wildly and with thick globules of saliva dripping from its fanged maw, the creature let out an ear-rending roar.