by J M D Reid
Ōbhin’s head throbbed from the stock of Creg’s thrown crossbow clipping his temple as it tumbled past. A wet heat trickled down from the ache. Boots thudded on the landing on the second floor. Creg appeared again, another crossbow held in his hand. Ōbhin cursed, diving against the stairs’ wall.
TWANG!
The crossbow’s limbs snapped forward. The bolt blurred past him, the wind of its passage kissed across his cheek. It slammed into the wall below. Creg snarled and retreated down the hallway, his boots pounding on the hardwood. A door slammed shut.
Ōbhin’s heart pumped thundering fear through his veins. At close range, no amount of chain would protect him from a bodkin-tipped crossbow quarrel. He felt naked. Caution slowed his climb, his resonance blade out before him. He took each step with care while banging and shouts echoed below.
Avena had skill with her binder. She could tangle up the ruffians with the energy. She had come far from the riot last spring, spending every day drilling with his guards.
With that fake Smiles.
Ōbhin’s hackles raised. He wanted to learn more about the thing masquerading as Smiles, and what Ust’s men had done with Carstin’s body. Most of all, he burned to know where Dje’awsa lurked. The dark sorcerer who had unleashed the dead in the foggy streets of Kash and transformed Ust into a monster with blood magic and strangely cut gem utilizing the dark power of forbidden obsidian.
“You don’t want to fight me, Creg,” Ōbhin growled as he reached the second-floor landing. The hallway ran in several directions from here, doors lining them. He stared at the three through which Creg could have retreated. He advanced to his right. “You know you can’t beat me even without my resonance blade. You’re good with the backsword, but you’re not better than me.”
Fighting roared from below now as he crept down the hallway. The pounding of his own heart, pumping screaming blood through his ears, almost drowned out all other sounds. Beads of sweat worked down from his scalp to soak into his eyebrows. Some dribbled through, hot salt stinging his eyes.
Which door? If he chose wrong, Creg would pop out and put a bolt in his back.
A door creaked behind him.
*
The front door burst open. Avena acted.
Emerald light burned from the network of gems in her earthen gauntlets, mixing with the purple glowing from the bottom of her binder. She swung. Metal streaked and slammed into the shoulder of the first Green-Faced Boy who charged through the doorway.
His collarbone broke with an audible snap. He screamed in pain. Purple light flared about him, draping diagonally about his torso like a sash. It pinned his left arm to his side while his right spasmed, dropping the sap—a bag full of dense sand used to knock out a mugging victim—to his feet. He fell back into his friends.
“That Black-cursed quim broke my shoulder!” he howled as his friends shoved him to the side.
A scrawny youth with a rusty fish knife cleared the scramble. He thrust his blade at her chest. She retreated. Her binder flicked out and smashed into his arm. Bone snapped, twisting his arm the wrong way at the elbow. He screamed and dropped the fish knife. His friends boiled in behind him, knocking him to the side, the binding energy squeezing about his torso.
Two bigger youths swung heavy cudgels at her at the same time. She flowed into a guard stance as her feet danced. She blocked one with her binder. Purple energy burst across his weapon and snagged the nearest part of him: his head. It drove his own stave into his head, striking him hard and sending him reeling.
The other slammed his makeshift mace into her side. The gambeson’s padding absorbed some of the blow, but she grunted, staggering to the side. The bruise already swelled across her lower ribs, radiating throbbing pain up her left side.
Her exhilaration swallowed the sensation as she pivoted and slammed her binder into his upper thigh. He grunted as the purple energy engulfed both legs and yanked them together. Off-balance, he crashed to the floor, pounding a fist against it in a snarl of pain.
The others rushed at her, leaping over their fallen comrades. She danced back through the room, swinging her binder in vast arcs before her. She changed her fighting tactics with so many around her, seeking to hold them at bay as they struggled to surround her. Brass knuckles gleamed on fists punching towards her. Saps swung in viscous arcs at her head. Staves blurred in powerful swipes.
Her feet moved, a graceful jig that pulled her away from them while her binder cracked into limbs. She broke arms and legs, tangled up limbs in purple energy. They fell to the ground, tripping up their green-masked comrades.
“Get that pus-filled quim!” howled a tough on his back, clutching a shattered knee, his legs bound tight.
“Someone seize her from behind!”
“Tooth, break her skull in.”
“Stop being a Black-cursed coward and batter that wench down!”
She savored the power. Her earthen gauntlet let her inflict even more debilitating damage. So long as she didn’t hit heads, she wouldn’t kill any of them. She would leave them with broken bones, unable to thieve for months or longer.
Maybe they’d find an honest profession.
She smacked a boy, whose blond hair proclaimed Roidanese blood, in the side. Her brown braid danced behind her as she whirled to hit the tough coming up behind her from the fireplace. He didn’t have a weapon in his hand. Only a closed, dirty fist. She readied for his punch.
It didn’t come.
He threw thick soot into her face. Pain stung her eyes. The world went dark as she squeezed them shut. Grit abraded the sensitive surface of her eyes. Tears sprang from the corners. She squeaked out in shock, her footsteps faltering.
A hard blow slammed into her stomach. Air burst from her lungs. She staggered and fell to her knees, struggling to breathe. To see. Spittle spilled over her chin as she gasped, pain radiating up through her abdomen.
“That’ll teach you your place, wench,” snarled an angry voice.
*
Ōbhin threw himself to the floor in a clatter of rattling mail.
His resonance blade punched through the floor like it was made of the thinnest Demochian silk. A quarrel buzzed over his head and smashed through the cheap window at the hallway’s end. The bubbled glass shattered, glittering shards spilling across the floor.
Ōbhin pressed himself up to his feet and whirled around to see Creg darting into a door on the left side of the hallway. There was only one other door on that side near Ōbhin. He darted for it and kicked it open. Cheap, dry wood burst in splinters. He rushed through the wreckage into a long room running the length of the hallway. Creg was at the other end by a bed. Several crossbows, cocked and loaded, lay on it. He had another one in hand, aimed at the door he’d expected Ōbhin to come through.
Creg pivoted and leveled the weapon at Ōbhin. Tension squeezed about the Qothian’s throat. Twenty cubits between the two. Ten strides at a running pace. He’d never make it before the trigger pulled. However, a chest of drawers stood along the wall on the edge of a throw rug only three cubits away; the only cover between Ōbhin and Creg.
Ōbhin growled, “How many of those do you have stashed through the house?”
“Enough,” Creg said. He sniffled, snot bubbling around his right nostril. “Heard you were lookin’ for me.”
“I'm wondering why you’re resonating with the Rangers’ filthy Tone now.”
A sneer crossed the scrawny man’s face. “The Rangers welcome a man with skill. The Boss thought to dump his piss-filled chamber pot on me ‘cause of Ust.”
Ōbhin darted for the chest of drawers.
TWANG!
He slammed into the side of the chest of drawers. The crossbow struck the wall behind Ōbhin. Creg cursed as the Qothian burst out from behind his cover to cross the rest of the room at a sprint. The scrawny man lunged for the bed and his waiting crossbows.
Ōbhin’s right foot stepped on the small throw rug.
Nothing lay beneath it.
The rug rustled as �
�bhin’s weight plunged through it into a small hole. His left boot still stood on a solid floor, but his right slammed down and broke through the lath-and plaster ceiling of the first floor. He dropped to his knee, jagged wood scraping against his leather boot.
Creg grinned and picked up his next crossbow.
*
Avena swung blind before her, a hard and brutal attack that held nothing back. She screamed through the pain radiating up her stomach. It turned into a choking cough, soot thick in her mouth. A curse burst before her then her weapon crashed hard into a solid body.
Her attacker landed screaming on the floor. She blinked and wiped at her eyes with her left sleeve. She gained her feet, panting. Sooty tears spilled down her cheeks. Raw, red veins ran through the stained whites of her eyes. She gazed across the blurry sitting room and adjoining kitchen.
Thugs and street ruffians lay in bound, groaning piles. The one who’d blinded her groaned at her feet. He looked to have been the last one still able to fight. She panted and groaned, leaning on the butt of her weapon, struggling to regain her breath.
A booted foot burst through the ceiling.
Avena gaped at it. Ōbhin’s boot. She recognized the brown hue and the worn creases. She heard him grunt, his leg swinging as he struggled to yank it free. A spike of fear for the swordsman shot through her, a terror she hadn’t felt in many years.
Flashes of that horrible waiting outside Dualayn’s lab filled her, helpless to do anything as she worried if the first man she’d loved would live or die. Deeper memories from the day Evane died dredged up that awful emptiness from her soul’s depths. Both galvanized her into action.
She’d vowed to never stand by helpless again. She’d let Evane drown. She’d hadn’t known how to assist Dualayn in curing Chames. She wasn’t a helpless girl any longer. She was a woman of twenty winters.
She rushed for the stairs.
*
Creg aimed up the crossbow with a large grin on his face. He moved in an almost lazy fashion as Ōbhin struggled to rip his leg free. The top of his boot was caught on a broken slat. Desperation pounded through Ōbhin’s veins as Creg grinned, a line of yellowish snot running to his crusty upper lip.
“Always did think you were better than me,” he said. “Now, let’s tal—”
Ōbhin had only one attack left. He threw his resonance blade.
The humming sword tumbled through the air. Fear flashed across Creg’s face, painted by the spinning emerald. The bandit swung his crossbow to bat the blade aside. The sword sliced through the left arm of the crossbow. The force of the cocked string snapped the severed part back, slamming it into Creg’s shoulder. The swinging stock of the weapon crashed into the side of the sword.
Resonance blades cut only with their edge.
The blow sent the blade spinning to Ōbhin’s right. It buried into the wall beside the door Creg had waited by. The tulwar sunk to the crossguard, the projections of steel stopping the blade from spearing through the wall.
“Black-cursed bastard,” snarled Creg as the blow from the ruined crossbow sent him stumbling onto the bed. His left arm hung twisted, pain burning across his face.
Ōbhin heaved with both hands planted on the floor and snapped the piece of wood caught on his boot. He jerked his leg free of the hole. Chainmail rattled as he rushed for his blade embedded in the wall. Footsteps banged up the stairs. Avena cried out; her words were muffled by the hot blood pounding through Ōbhin’s ears.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Creg throwing himself off the bed. The man drew his backsword, a single-edged straight blade favored in Lothon. The bandit howled and rushed at Ōbhin, raising his weapon high to deliver a powerful strike.
“Ōbhin!” Avena’s words were clearer.
His black-gloved hand gripped the leather-wrapped handle of his resonance blade, the emerald shining bright. He wrenched it free of the wall and turned around to see slicing death coming for him.
“I’m coming!” shouted Avena as Ōbhin slashed his sword before him.
It was an instinctive swing, and a bad one. Ōbhin’s training recognized it as his blade cut through the end of Creg’s sword. Momentum didn’t stop. It was conserved. He severed through half the sword; the top half now tumbled in a deadly arc at him.
He was trained to fight with a resonance blade. He knew his opponent’s weapon was still lethal after being severed. So his feet were already dancing beneath him, his body twisting sideways out of instincts drilled into him on the dueling sands. The severed end of the sword flashed past him even as he flowed into his next attack.
A disabling slice to Creg’s leg.
Avena gave a frightful shriek behind him. A bone-crunching blow echoed followed by the thudding of a body hitting the floor. Ōbhin’s heart clenched as he finished his cut, severing through Creg’s right leg above the knee.
Ōbhin whirled around as the bandit howled in pain. Creg fell with a painful thud on the ground. The coppery scent of blood filled the air. It spurted from the stump of the bandit’s leg, splashing Ōbhin’s boots.
Ōbhin finished his turn. His heart stopped.
The end of Creg’s sword had tumbled through the open doorway and slammed into Avena’s head. A half-cubit of blade had punched through her temple above her left eye. Blood oozed around the steel while her body twitched and spasmed on the floor.
Horror punched Ōbhin in the guts. His hand holding his sword trembled as he stared in dumbfounded shock.
“Avena?” he croaked.
Chapter Three
“You cut off my Black-damned leg!” howled Creg. Something struck Ōbhin in the back, rustling his chainmail. The lower half of the backsword clattered at his feet.
Ōbhin stared at Avena as an avalanche of guilt engulfed him. The crushing horror swept about him like the rush of snow spilling down a mountain slope. It choked him. He didn’t remember turning off his resonance blade and sheathing it. He didn’t hear Creg’s curses while the blood pumped from the stump of his leg.
“Avena?” croaked from Ōbhin’s lips, a sound of boyish fright.
I heard her coming, lashed through his mind. She was racing up the stairs to help me. I stepped aside and let this happen. It wouldn’t have penetrated my armor. I could have taken it on my shoulder and been fine.
He knelt over her, staring in horror at her twitching body. Her eyes danced beneath her eyelids. He could see a bit of spittle bubbling at the corner of her mouth. He ripped off his black glove, not caring that he exposed his hand before a woman, and held it over her mouth and nose.
He felt the warmth of her breath on his hand.
“Aliiva’s motherly love,” he gasped, crying out to the Tone of Mothers whose touch soothed. Topazes were the gem that resonated with Aliiva’s harmony. The jewels that healed.
Dualayn!
His employer’s name crashed through the heavy snows of guilt smothering Ōbhin. If she survived long enough, Dualayn was the only man in the world with the skill to save her. His topaz healers and knowledge of anatomy might be enough.
Had to be enough.
A mad hope seized Ōbhin. He scooped up Avena in his arms with care, wincing as her head lolled. The end of the backsword thrusting out of her skull quivered. Her entire body convulsed in his arms for a moment.
“Just hold on, Avena,” he snarled, not realizing he spoke Qothian, his native tongue. A language she couldn’t understand. “Aliiva, let your loving Tone sustain her and, Vatsim, let your music sing strength through my limbs.”
He left Creg howling obscenities. Nothing else mattered to Ōbhin. He raced with single-minded madness. He crashed down the stairs and leaped over the groaning, bound bodies of the Green-Faced Boys. He burst onto the street, passersby gasping in shock. A woman screamed. A man shouted.
Their words spilled like rainwater over oilcloth.
He ran.
His legs stretched out before him, chainmail armor rattling as he raced through the slums. He held something more precio
us than his life in his arms. He glanced down at her face, more blood trickling out around the sword. It spilled over her eye. She wept a crimson tear.
His boots thudded on worn cobblestones. The summer sun glinted off the piece of the backsword, dazzling his eyes at times. He raced along the Greenwine and its sludgy waters. It flowed towards the Ustern, the mighty river bisecting Kash in half. People parted out of his way like waves before the prow of a sailing ship, fleeing the murderous intensity in his gaze.
Fear lashed at him to go faster.
Legs burned. He sucked in lungfuls of air. Drilling his guards, forcing them to run every day, had given him the endurance to push past the protesting muscles. He ignored the coppery taste building at the back of his throat.
Sustain her life, Aliiva. Please!
Avena had been the bright ray that led him out of his darkness. She hadn’t let him sink back into a simpler life of drifting through misery. She had convinced him to stay on the harder path. Together, they would polish the guilt and filth off their souls, to let their diamonds shine brilliantly.
I can’t have killed her.
The darkness pressed in on him as he ran. He could feel it threatening to devour his world. He’d returned to Niszeh’s Black Tone, allowing disharmony to control his life again. Becoming a cold killer ruled by apathy, a sword swinging without any care. A pawn of men like Ust and Grey.
He reached Greenway Bridge and raced over the stone structure built across the Ustern. He heard shouts from the guardsmen wearing the white stag on their green and blue tabards. They chased after him, shouting at him to stop.
“Filthy Tethyrian! What did you do to that girl?”
Killed her, thought Ōbhin. His eyes flicked down to her. More blood trickled out to stain her face. She still bled. That had to be a good sign.
Her body twitched as he ran. The spasms rippled down her arms and torqued her body in his grip. He pounded across the bridge with long strides. The guards were shouting behind him, their voices growing distant. He passed wagons, the teamsters, wearing white or green armbands, glancing at him with bored ease.
