by Liam Reese
“You would like a demonstration, perhaps?” he said.
An arrow sprouted from Karyl’s side. The big man let out a muffled groan of anguish. He stayed standing, though, to Thorn’s surprise, and the hand that held the sword barely wavered.
“Another?” said the stranger.
“No!” broke forth Lully.
Irae put her hand out and touched Karyl’s arm; in response, he dropped the extended sword slowly to his side, and sank back onto the ground. Lully crept over to him swiftly to examine his wound.
“Who are you?” said Irae. Her voice was full of banked fire, and her eyes, Thorn could see, were terrifying.
The stranger was unperturbed. “I’m the one who has abducted you,” he said. “The one who will hold you for ransom until I am paid, and the one who will live out my life without facing any consequences. Don’t think of escaping. Don’t think of rescue. Don’t think at all, if you want my advice.”
Irae spat onto the ground. “I don’t,” she said.
The stranger stood. “Think of this as a business relationship,” he said. “I certainly do.”
Then the mob was upon them.
8
Bandits and Highwaymen
Serhiy felt that he was moving up in the world. The king — well, it had to be faced. As modest as Serhiy was possibly capable of being, he still had to admit to the facts. The king scarcely wanted to do anything without first getting his input, and then his approval. Serhiy found it easy to tell himself that the king looked on him with fondness, like a father to a son. It should perhaps have been the other way around; however, given that there was a good twenty year age difference between the two of them, Serhiy didn’t feel that he could rightfully ignore it. Not without showing disrespect.
In his role as executioner, he fulfilled his work with the kind of keen enjoyment that was rarely seen in the capital city. Now, anticipating his inevitable role as the king’s foremost advisor, he went about his business positively ecstatic with glee.
There was so much to be done!
It was no secret that the kingdom needed help. It was, however, probably a secret that the king had turned to a few mildly shady sources for said help. Perhaps it didn’t matter that the neighboring monarch had only agreed to some strenuous terms. Perhaps it didn’t matter that the neighboring king was involved at all. But certainly, if the people as a whole knew where the kingdom obtained the income needed for everyday operations, there would be a bit of a ruckus.
Not that there was anything wrong with the source of the income; not really.
Not that there was anything wrong with a ruckus, either.
But everyday people, common sort of people, didn’t tend to look at things as clearly as those who were more in the know.
Or so Serhiy had been told. He didn’t know firsthand; he wasn’t a politician. All he knew was that he was asked his opinion, it was usually along the lines of, “We’ll sort the bodies out later.”
If that was all there was to politics, perhaps he could handle it after all.
But no, he was more than a common politician. In amongst the king’s advisors, he stood out like a sore thumb. When there were meetings to which he was invited, he moved in smoothly, svelte and sure, handsome as a wild forest. When there were meetings to which he was not invited, he invited himself. The rest of them were yes men, toadies, lackeys, and fear-mongers, most of them as old as the king himself or older, as grey as the king himself or greyer, and utterly incapable of steering the kingdom the direction in which it needed to go.
Case in point: the king hadn’t called any of them for today’s little problem.
It wasn’t so much of a problem of execution as it was for eradication, as Serhiy understood it. The king had a problem and it needed to be eradicated. Perhaps that would be his true title, though he had never heard of anyone being appointed the official Eradicator to the King.
But there was, famously, a first time for everything.
And here he was, at the man’s house, ready to fix the problem. He didn’t remember the gentleman’s name; only that he was a noble with a dispute about a payment. Serhiy didn’t know a great deal about things like that, either nobility or payment disputes. He was proudly as common as they came and had never had much interest in money.
He explained this to the man, after he had vaulted the garden wall, snuck into the house, and found him in his library.
“So, I’m very sorry that I can’t muster up any sympathy for you,” he told the man, having introduced himself politely, and explained his presence. “But, you see, I’ve been well-nigh incapable of it for my entire life, and I’m hardly keen to start now.”
“If the king wanted his loan repaid, he would have sent his treasurer,” the older man stood up and moved towards the door, “not his executioner.”
“But he didn’t, and he did,” pointed out Serhiy. “That suggests something to me, does it to you?” He followed him as he went, matching him pace for pace. “Are you saying that you refuse to give the king what he asks?”
“No one has that kind of money just lying around. I will have to call in a few of my own
loans.”
“Ah, well, in the meantime,” Serhiy said, “we will take what you have.” He stepped in
front of him as he reached the door.
“Now, you listen to me, young man,” said the king’s problem. He was beginning to bluster. Serhiy knew that when they began to bluster, they knew all was lost. Perhaps he still had a faint, false hope of deliverance; almost certainly he did. Delusion was a hallmark of the nobility, in Serhiy’s experience. “The last thing I’m going to do is stand aside and let you sweep in and take whatever you like, based on a false claim that no one can substantiate! You tell me that the king sent you— well, I demand to see proof! You could be a highwayman, for all I know!”
“Yes, I certainly could,” said Serhiy, “this is absolutely true.” He extended a hand and pushed the king’s problem gently to the wall. The king’s problem was an older man, probably well over sixty, and carried a bit more weight than he should. Shorter and slighter than Serhiy, he was no match for a rangy, strong man half his age and twice his experience.
That didn’t stop him from blustering.
“You can’t do this to me! I know the king’s advisors personally! I’ll call for one of them, and you’ll be thrown out on your ear!”
“Oh.” Serhiy stopped and cocked his head thoughtfully. “You know them? Who, specifically?”
“All of them!”
“By name?”
“Yes, certainly. Gerhard — Eber Gerhard was an old friend of mine from when I was just a boy.”
“Gerhard? Dear me, but you do swim in deep waters.” Serhiy looked away from him for a moment, frowning as he tried to remember. “Gerhard. Yes. You’ve known him for years, have you?”
“Decades!”
“It’s a pity, then, that no one bothered to tell you. He died last month, if I recall correctly. Fish.”
The man blanched.
“Gerhard? Dead?” His voice quavered. “Fish?”
“Yes,” explained Serhiy, “he was eaten by them, I believe. At least, that was the end result. I don’t know if they ever decided that something more drastic happened to kick the whole thing off, as it were.”
“Entolpy, then.”
“Entolpy,” said Serhiy, “was hung by the neck until dead. For treason, I believe, though I could be wrong as I was not at his trial.”
“Barragut!”
“Sir Barragut killed himself. They say. Though a certain select few suspect foul play, the king will not endorse such a view, and therefore a ruling of suicide must stand. This is terrible, of course, as neither he nor his widow can be buried in hallowed ground.”
“His widow?”
“Yes, I believe she followed her husband’s example in all things, both in life and in death. It’s terrible, the things true love will do to you, won’t it?”
“Merundi, then
!”
Serhiy felt that he should probably be getting tired of this — and he would have been, had his reminiscing not been so much fun. “You are clutching at straws.”
“I will call for Merundi! Don’t attempt to tell me that he died as well, I saw the man in perfectly rude health this morning in the marketplace and he called me an ass.”
“I thought you claimed to know him?”
“Would he call a complete stranger an ass?”
“I don’t know Sir Merundi very well,” said Serhiy, “but, yes, I believe he might.” He sighed and shook his head. “Feel free to call whoever you wish. There is no one to hear you.”
The man’s eyes were wide enough to pop out of his skull, and he did let out a yell.
“I should not have let you go through the whole rigamarole, I think,” said Serhiy thoughtfully, over the noise. “It was an error in judgement, and let you carry on with the thought that you might perhaps have a chance to escape what is, after all, the king’s own judgement. Tell me.” In a swift movement he moved closer to the man and had one hand around his neck. With the other he readied his knife. “Do you doubt the king’s judgement?”
His hand was too tight to allow for any true speech, but he thought that the garbled, gargled sounds emitted by the half-strangled man possessed a vaguely negative edge.
“Ah, good,” he said, and the knife plunged true. “I hate to argue over loyalty to the crown,” he said, letting the man sink to the ground. He pulled the knife free and wiped the blood off on the problem’s rich cloak.
It was truly terrible, he thought, the things that highwaymen and bandits got up to these days.
As he went about his business, the king’s business, he fell to reflecting on the last name on the man’s litany. Merundi. Yes, true to what Serhiy had told him, all the others had fallen one by one. The last men on the king’s council were all yes men, afraid to tell the king what they truly thought, perhaps even afraid to truly think anything divisive. But this last one, Merundi, was a wild card. Serhiy hardly knew him even by sight, because he was so chronically laid up with bronchitis.
Perhaps his health would do him in, in the end.
If not, Serhiy could certainly be of some assistance.
They shouldn’t have fought, to begin with. It was ludicrous to even contemplate. What were they? A rebel queen, a defected guard with an arrow in his back, spurting blood everywhere. A tiny daisy-delicate kitchen maid with anger issues. An elderly nurse maid, a discount bard, and him — him, Thorn, who by rights should have been seen as the most powerful of them all. Who was the most powerful of them all, but regardless of whether his powers were broken or merely changing as the bard said, they still took time…
And Irae had still led them all into the fight.
Perhaps she hadn’t meant to. Perhaps it was Karyl’s fault. Thorn had caught the brief nod that transpired between the rebel queen and the disgraced guard. It was a sad, short nod - more a droop of the head than anything - but Irae had immediately leapt into action, slicing her sword from its place at her side and attacking the still seated stranger.
Impossibly fast, he had a sword out as well, and blocked her as easily as if she were a spoiled child hammering at someone with a small fist — which was, Thorn thought, perhaps not far from the truth. The princess was not unskilled with a sword, and she had been taught, he knew. But she was only one.
Karyl, of course, was larger, stronger, and had more experience under his belt; but he also had an arrow wound just above it, and though he fought bravely and intelligently, he succumbed in scarcely any time at all.
Thorn didn’t know what to do. He had never been in a fight like this; he had barely been in a fight at all, though he had defended himself against wild animals. And that was what he ended up defaulting to, without quite even realizing it; his brain said Wolf, and his hand was unreeling his slingshot from his wrist before he even registered what was happening. It was too close combat for him to use it properly, so as he slung the stones, he knew they would never fly. Instead, he swung the shot clear at the end of the leather, bashing the slung stone against any head or other body part that came in front of him, his mind white in sheer panic.
He could not see what Lully, Graic, and the bard were doing; he was surrounded by black-clad highwaymen. The night was dark, the torch had gone out, and all he knew were terrifying phantom shapes dancing here and there, macabre, with the moonlight glinting off them and turning them all into trophies.
It went on forever and for no time at all and stopped immediately, when the scream cut through the battle as sharp as any sword.
It was Lully, he knew, and when the sound reached Irae, she came to a standstill as swiftly and smoothly as though she were water that had run out. She dropped her sword, threw her hands in the air, and cried out, “Stop!”
Everything went still. In the moonlight, which had turned her face regal not long ago, Irae now appeared as frozen as a statue.
She would not claim surrender, any more than she would claim defeat. But the highwaymen knew that she would fight no more.
In the darkness, Thorn heard a faint whimper, and Lully started to cry.
They were taken to the road and forced into a march. Thorn was alone, his companions spread out before him and behind him, solitary. Apart from the tramp of feet, the presence of a dark-clad stranger in front of him and one after, he could almost have been alone entirely. The silence rose above him like a giant glass bowl, and the stars were vividly out.
The highwaymen had horses, which they rode for speed, but they also had a cart, with two horses, and someone dressed like an executioner for a driver.
The cart was a jail cell, a mobile prison. It was all thick, black-painted wood, apart from a small, high window in each of the doors that opened at the back. The doors stretched wide to let them in, and engulfed them, swallowed them down, and they were inside the belly of the beast. It was tiny, cramped in there, and far too small for the six of them. Plus, there was already someone occupying it, which of course only made things worse as Ruben immediately stood on her.
“Ow! Watch yourself!”
Ruben actually fell backwards in his haste to get away from the unknown person, landing on Graic in turn, who pushed him unceremoniously onto the floor and then sat on him.
The stranger — would he ever again meet a familiar person? Thorn had his doubts — stood straight and leaned against the corner. In the little light glinting from the tiny window, Thorn could see that she was young, perhaps not more than fourteen or fifteen, and her tiny, delicate face, was arranged in a forceful, wary frown. He couldn’t make out much of her features, beyond the glare, but something tugged strongly at Thorn’s memory.
“She glares,” he said.
“One is not surprised,” said Karyl, “given that she has just been stood on by a legendarian. We have bigger problems than her.” He ignored her after that, and turned to Lully, who had been jostled into the cart as incautiously as the rest of them. She had stopped crying, but it was clearly an effort. Karyl took her kindly by one shoulder, even as he winced in pain, and steered her into the light, blotting out the features of the stranger. “Your arm?”
Lully hiccupped and nodded. Her face was sodden and tear-stained, but as she looked up at the former guard, it also filled with absolute trust.
Karyl handled her gently, but she still gave vent to a cry of pain. He shook his head.
“Broken,” he said.
Irae had not spoken since she had called a halt to the battle. Now, she said, her voice strained, “Is it bad?”
Thorn glanced at her quickly, surprised, and found that her lips were pale and drawn, her eyes shadowed and heavy.
“It could be worse, I think,” said Karyl. “But I’m not a medic. The most patching up I’ve ever done has been myself, when a doctor could not come.”
“Can you do anything for her?”
Karyl only grunted doubtfully, but he was already stripping off his own blood-st
ained tunic, wrenching it over his head with one hand, and, using his teeth, ripping it in half.
“We will have to splint it, I think,” he said, breathing hard from the exertion and pain, “but I’ve only ever done that for a dog.”
“It should be the same principle,” said the bard from the floor. He was watching, wide-eyed. “I may have a book on it.”
“Forget the books,” said Karyl. “Do you have anything slightly more useful in that pack of yours? We need something straight to bind her arm to.”
Ruben made as if to get up, but Graic sat on him harder. Karyl reached for the bag, rummaged inside, and removed a small mandolin.
“Oh, dear,” said Ruben faintly.
The mandolin was unceremoniously smashed, and from the wreckage, Karyl drew the longest, straightest piece.
“I’m sorry,” said Lully, eyes luminous now with unshed tears.
“That’s quite alright,” said Ruben, managing a smile. “I was never very good at it. So difficult to keep in tune. My best instrument is my voice, at any rate.”
Lully bit her lip till it bled, but she stayed quiet apart from a few whimpers as Karyl wrapped and splinted her arm to the ruined mandolin. He helped her to sit with her back against the wall, then smoothed her hair over her forehead and sat across from her. The cart was so small that their feet intertwined. The former guard set to binding his own wound with another strip of his torn tunic, breaking off the shaft of the arrow with another grunt but not attempting to pull it out.
They sat together, and the aftermath curled around them. When Thorn lifted his hand to tug at his hair, it trembled. In his mind, the fight was a brownish blur with red edges. It throbbed like a toothache, and he wanted desperately not to think of it, but it kept sliding insidiously to forefront of his brain, and like someone with moon sickness, his mind suddenly had a mind of its own.
Quietly, he said, “We should not have gone into battle.”
“Don’t,” said Karyl softly, but Thorn didn’t care what he said.
“It was foolish,” he said, his voice growing louder. “The most reckless thing we could possibly have done, given the circumstances. None of us, bar yourself and Karyl, had the slightest idea of what we were doing—”