by Logan Jacobs
It was their apparent dejection that had inspired my plan, and Dehn was more than happy to play his part as we made our way to the empty table next to the three men.
“Get us three flagons of your finest mead!” the halfling ordered as he kicked back in his chair and managed to prop his ankles up on the edge of the table without falling over.
“Actually, I would prefer spiced wine--” Maruk started, but Dehn shot him a pointed look, and the orc snapped his mouth shut.
“The mead,” Dehn repeated as he peered over the tips of his boots at the barkeep, “to start.”
“Yeah, yeah, keep your shirt on,” the barkeep muttered with a long look at the three of us. I adjusted my hood to better cover my face, but the man said nothing when he brought us our drinks except to tell Dehn to get his feet off the table.
The halfling wasn’t bothered in the least by the admonishment and drained two-thirds of his glass before he stopped for breath.
I sipped at mine just to give myself something to do as I tried to think of what to say to segue into the next stage of our plan. It was watery and had a somewhat stale flavor. Maruk took a drink as well and clapped a large green hand over his mouth a second later as he struggled not to spit it out, which earned our table another dirty look from the barkeep.
Dehn finished his drink in another gulp and slid Maruk’s flagon across the table to himself. The orc didn’t protest.
“We’re gonna go down in history, boys,” the halfling said with a tone of deep satisfaction. He put his feet back up on the table. “Gonna have everyone from here to the Canterrose shaking in their boots at the mention of our names.”
“Certainly,” Maruk said. He swallowed and cast a nervous glance around the rest of the tavern. I wanted to look, too, but I had my back to most of the room so that I could have a good view of Janner and his men, and I didn’t want to be obvious by turning around. Anyway, it was my turn to speak.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do with your share of the loot?” I asked as I leaned in conspiratorially over the table. I was careful to keep my voice down, quiet enough to be convincing and to ensure no one else in the tavern would overhear, but loud enough that Janner, Molyns, and Barre would be able to make out our conversation.
“Hells yeah,” Dehn replied emphatically. “After I drink this place dry, I’m gonna go buy a dragon.”
“Goodness--” Maruk started, then quickly cleared his throat and dropped his voice to a gruff imitation of his cousin Sulla. “I mean, a dragon, that’s badass.”
“They’re pretty expensive,” Dehn said, “but it’s not like I have to worry about that. What about you?”
“I, uh,” Maruk hesitated, “I’m gonna buy a throne.”
“A throne?” Dehn frowned. “Like a fancy chair?”
“Yeah, uh, you know, made out of... the bones of all of the people I’ve killed,” Maruk finished.
“Alright!” Dehn nodded approvingly. “We’re a new class of criminal now, boys. No more shaking down widows for a few coppers for us, we’re rich! We’re gonna have dragons and bone chairs!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Janner’s single eye was trained on our table. Perfect.
“Hey, hey, keep your voices down,” I said in a stage-whisper, “unless you want to have to share our loot with everyone else in this place.”
“Hmph.” Dehn swallowed down the rest of Maruk’s mead and slammed the flagon back on the table with a sigh. “What are we even doing here? With the money we got, we could be drinking in Ovrista.”
“Oh, there’s a lovely little inn near the market district that serves a warmed rum that’s supposed to be legendary,” Maruk gushed, then he caught himself and added in a low rumble, “I’d like to, uh, smash it to pieces. Just ransack the whole place, scuff up the floors, chip the crown moldings--”
“Good idea,” I interjected. “How about we go dig up that chest and go there now?”
Thankfully, Maruk realized what I was getting at and stopped talking, and in my periphery, I noticed Janner elbow Barre and nod in our direction.
“The big city awaits!” Dehn dropped a few coins on the table for our drinks and swung himself down from his chair.
Maruk shuffled quickly out of his seat as well, and the three of us left the Jackal. We waited on the street for a moment, then began to walk slowly toward the gate to allow Janner and his men to catch up. After we’d gone a few dozen yards, Dehn laughed heartily and shoved Maruk on his hip as though the orc had just made a joke, and as he did, the halfling threw a surreptitious glance back toward the tavern.
“Here they come,” Dehn reported with a chuckle. “Bit wobbly.”
“We’ll go slow so they don’t lose us,” I murmured, and that was what we did. The streets were still fairly crowded, so moving slowly wasn’t difficult. The real challenge was ensuring that whenever the crowds separated us from Janner and his men that we gave them a chance to find us again, but after close to half an hour, we finally made it to the fort’s gates, and the empty road into the woods stretched before us, tinged sliver in the moonlight.
Without the distraction of the crowds to throw off the men we were leading into an ambush, we were able to move a bit more quickly, and we spoke loudly along the way of the treasure we’d found. The night was clear and cold, and once we were away from the garrison, quiet. So quiet, in fact, that I could hear Janner and his men behind us if I listened closely. I wasn’t sure if they were just drunk and carelessly noisy or if I was being hypervigilant in anticipation of our ambush, but I was comforted to know that our trap was working.
The clearing that Emeline, Lavinia, and Dehn had selected was only about two miles up the road from the garrison. The trees crowded in close to the dirt road, and even the night birds had gone silent as we approached the spot. It was as if the forest itself was holding its breath.
My heart rate quickened, and I drew my dagger beneath my cloak as we entered the clearing. Over the last quarter mile, I’d heard Janner, Molyns, and Barre draw closer, and I knew they were almost on top of us now. We needed to get them into the clearing before we sprung the trap, though, to reduce the chance of any of them catching on to our plot and trying to escape.
“It’s right here,” I said loudly into the night as I stopped in the clearing. My back was still turned to the men behind us, but I could see the glint of an arrowhead in the moonlight from where Lavinia waited in the shadows beneath the trees.
Then there came a low chuckle from the direction of the road, and Dehn, Maruk, and I turned with weapons drawn to face Janner, Molyns, and Barre. If the men were drunk, they didn’t look it so much now. As they stood, Janner with a crossbow, Molyns with a battered old sword, and Barre with a huge spiked mace, they looked every bit the dangerous murderers we’d been warned about.
“Heard you talkin’ back at the Jackal,” Janner said in a low voice.
“Yeah,” Molyns cut in, “and we thought we might--” He didn’t get to finish his sentence, however, because at that moment, Lavinia’s arrow shot forth from the shadows and lodged into the man’s forehead, right between his eyes. He managed half a step back before he fell into the grass.
“Shit!” Barre growled. “It’s a fucking trap!”
“Finally figured that out, did ya?” Dehn taunted. Barre sneered, and the halfling let out a cry as he charged forward with his dual short swords to meet the other man’s mace.
Janner stepped back in a zigzag, his crossbow up as he scanned the trees behind us for Lavinia. He was smarter than his companion, and I sensed he was going to try to make a run for it a moment before a fireball exploded in the grass behind him. There was a thwick as he shot his crossbow in a panic, but Maruk blocked the bolt with a swift motion, and it fell to the ground at the orc’s feet.
Another shot from Lavinia just barely missed as Janner staggered forward, unwilling to face any of us but unable to retreat. Barre was locked in combat with Dehn, and the sounds of clashing metal rang out
into the night as mace met swords.
As I summoned the mana to my dagger and took a step toward Janner, I caught a flash of purple out of the corner of my eye as Emeline emerged from behind the treeline and prepared another attack of her own. The man’s single eye widened in alarm, but he must have realized that he wouldn’t have time to reload his crossbow before I could stab him or Emeline could barbecue him, and he dropped his weapon and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“I yield!” he called.
For a second, I hesitated. It didn’t feel right to kill him if he was going to surrender, but then again, he and his men hadn’t given quarter to Hayle’s husband, and he had made his living as a criminal. Before I could act, however, the twang of a bowstring sounded and Janner fell onto his knees with an arrow in his chest. As the man grasped weakly at the bloodied shaft and then tumbled onto his face in the grass, my blood ran cold. That wasn’t Lavinia’s arrow, and it had come from the road, not the trees behind us.
“Maruk, look out!” I shouted, and the orc raised his shield just in time to block a second arrow aimed for his head. I ducked back behind him and scanned the shadows beneath the trees until I found the pinprick of light in the distance. I raised my hand and quelled the archer’s mana in a gesture, but even as I did, someone else gave a cry, and four more men rushed into the clearing from the road with weapons drawn.
I didn’t recognize any of them from the Jackal, but I could still guess what had happened. They must have followed Janner, Molyns, and Barre when we’d led them out of the garrison. No doubt the three had enemies, or maybe these other men were simply opportunists who hoped to rob them while they were drunk and vulnerable. It didn’t really matter either way, they were our problem now.
I picked out one man armed with an axe, another with a pair of daggers, and two more with swords, none of which seemed to be in the best condition, and there was still the archer down by the road. There was no time to form a plan as the man with the axe charged at me.
I ducked out of the way of his blade, but he still collided with me in an awkward tangle of limbs that nearly knocked me off my feet.
I shoved him away and brought my knife up between us, but as soon as my attacker caught sight of the glowing blade, he stepped swiftly out of stabbing range. Or so he thought. With just a flick of my hand, I summoned a mana clone behind the man, and his eyes bulged as the clone stabbed him with a mana knife of its own. The clone’s and the man’s mana combined in an electric burst like a lighting strike barely a foot away from me, and as the man’s corpse fell into the grass, I saw even in the dim twilight that it was charred black.
Just as I turned back to face the rest of our new rivals, an arrow arched out from the shadows by the road and struck one of the swordsmen in the back. He pitched forward with a startled gurgle, and my blood ran cold. A quick glance told me that Lavinia was still somewhere beneath the shelter of the trees behind me, so why would the archer suddenly turn on his friends? As I saw the archer’s mana flare up down by the road, but further away than he’d stood before, the answer came to me. It wasn’t the same archer.
Lavinia had come to the same realization, and the twang of her bowstring as she shot the second swordsman was punctuated by a frustrated cry.
“Gods, did they all just follow each other out here like ants?” the ladona ranger demanded of no one in particular.
“What’s going on?” Maruk threw a confused glance over to me, his brow furrowed.
“We’ve got more company,” I explained. “Looks like some men followed Janner, and more men followed those guys.” I scanned the trees and the gap that led to the road and tried to count the spots of mana that I could make out. From this distance, the lights in the men’s chests looked almost like wisps as they darted through the forest. “Looks like another five or six.”
“Bring it on!” Dehn shouted as he yanked his bloody sword out of Barre’s corpse and picked up the dead man’s spiked mace. The mace was a bit too big for the halfling, but what he lacked in stature, he more than made up for in enthusiasm, and he swung the weapon up over his head as he charged into the woods with a war cry to find his next victim.
There was a hiss behind me, and I ducked instinctively as a fireball streaked overhead and crashed into one of the men who was trying to sneak up through the trees to our clearing. In less than a second, his entire body was engulfed in flames, and he screamed and flailed as he stumbled through the trees.
“Nice shot!” I called back to Emeline, and I turned to give the panthera mage a congratulatory grin.
“How about some lights?” Lavinia suggested. “I can barely see what I’m supposed to be shooting at here.”
“No problem,” Emeline replied, and she held out her arms and raised her hands. At once, her mana flooded forth and orbs of golden magelight sprang into the air around the clearing to illuminate the battlefield.
“Thanks--” Lavinia started, but the ranger had barely gotten the word out when the lights were extinguished one by one in rapid suggestion. “Hey!”
I turned back to Emeline for an explanation, but the pyromancer looked just as confused as I did until we both heard the whistle of a fireball coming toward us. I ducked, but Emeline threw up her hands and the flames scattered into a shower of sparks before they reached her, and we both whirled at once toward the trees where the attack had come from.
I saw the bright orange light of the rival mage’s mana peek out from behind a tree just as he channeled his mana for another attack and raised my hand out to him. As I clenched my fist and quelled his magic, he lurched out from behind his cover, doubled over in shock and pain.
“Lavinia! One o’clock!” I called.
The ranger was quick, and one of her arrows struck the mage almost before I’d finished speaking. Then his mana dimmed and vanished as his body crashed into the undergrowth.
Not all of our new enemies were so cautious, however, and there was a grunt to my left as one of them charged out of the woods and met Maruk head-on with a double-bladed axe that was bigger than I was. If the rival mage had been a surprise, he had nothing on the man who clashed with Maruk now. At seven and a half feet tall, I knew he must be an orc as well, or perhaps a hobgoblin, though it was difficult to tell beneath his layers of thick leather armor and the paint on his face. Fearsome tusks protruded from his lower lip, and one had broken to a jagged point.
Maruk had managed to block his assailant’s first blow, but the other orc was incredibly fast for his size and caught the shield warrior on the shin as he swung his axe again. Maruk cried out and staggered back as I threw up a mana clone between him and his opponent.
If the axe-wielder thought there was anything strange about the existence of my mana clone, he didn’t show it, and he cut through it with a sweep of his axe. A shower of raw mana exploded when his blade made contact, but the warrior barely slowed down as he advanced on Maruk again. He had barely made it a step, however, when Emeline shot a jet of bright flame directly at his face. That, at least, proved harder for him to ignore than the mana clone, and he roared in pain and fury as he swiped at his face with one arm.
Emeline and I had bought Maruk enough time to steady himself, but the painted orc recovered more quickly than I would have thought possible and hefted his axe up again to swing at our guildmate. Maruk was ready for him and caught the blow to save his own neck. The sound was like nothing I’d ever heard before as the warrior’s axe cleaved the smaller of Maruk’s shields and split the metal like it was butter, and the shield fell from Maruk’s arm in two pieces.
The painted orc didn’t let up, and Maruk was barely able to get his other shield up in time to block the next blow as it came. The sound of metal on metal rang out through the clearing as the axe warrior attacked with startling ferocity, and it was all Maruk could do to stay on his feet beneath such an assault.
I cast three more clones to help him, but none were tall enough to stab the axe-warrior in the chest where they would have the most eff
ect and could only cut at the orc’s legs and waist. At least they helped to divide the painted orc’s attention and allow Maruk some breathing room. He favored his injured leg slightly, and I knew it pained him.
The axe-warrior destroyed all three clones with a single sweep of his weapon, but before he could round on Maruk again, I curled my hand into a fist and quelled his mana. It wasn’t as effective against a non-mage, but it did the trick, and the painted orc jolted and froze for a moment.
Maruk had managed to stay on his feet despite the wound to his leg, and the shield warrior’s expression was set in a quiet, focused fury as he crouched and prepared to charge the other orc. As his mana glowed brighter, I concentrated with him and used my magic to augment his shields just as I did with my own mana blade. The metal glowed with a bright blue light that was reflected in Maruk’s eyes as he let out a powerful bellow and charged at his opponent.
There was a terrible crack as Maruk’s shield hit, and the other orc’s chest caved in, his sternum broken from the blow. The light of his mana dimmed and went out as he collapsed into the grass.
Maruk’s chest heaved as he stepped back, and for a second he looked proud of himself, but then he shuddered and frowned.
“Well, that was rather gruesome,” the orc intoned. He gave me a grateful smile. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” I replied. “Come on, we still have to deal with his friends.”
Lavinia and Emeline had kept the rest of our new enemies back with ranged attacks while Dehn stormed through their ranks like a whirlwind of death, but there were more of them than I’d realized, and we were still outnumbered. I estimated there were about seven in all still standing. I didn’t see any more mages, but there was a panthera alchemist who ducked out from his hiding place in the trees now and then to lob something explosive at Dehn. The others, as best as I could make out, were mostly armed with swords or knives, though I noticed another archer as he flitted through the forest.
