The Battlebone

by Guy Antibes

  The armorer frowned. He clapped Jack on the shoulders as if to pound him into the wooden floor. Shoulder caps and a light breastplate.”

  “Something to protect my back?” Jack asked. “I have been shot there before.”

  “Seasoned, eh? I can do that. Let me show you the material I use. It isn’t steel.” The armorer disappeared in the back but returned with components. The shoulder caps were made out of something that looked like cloth but wasn’t.

  “I use resin and bind it to silk threads. We call it composite armor. It is lighter and will stop arrows and swords, but a heavy weapon can crack the material.”

  “Too brittle?” Jack asked.

  “No. The same blow would cleave a metal cap or drive the blade and the metal into your shoulder, back or front.”

  The armorer assembled a framework of thick silk straps.

  “Here.”

  Jack put the contraption, which was similar to a cuirass, over his head and was amazed at how light the armor felt.

  “It is light.”

  “Four times thicker than steel and twice as strong at half the weight. It is very expensive to produce,” the armorer said.

  An assistant brought a peaked helmet with chinstraps. “This is made out of the same material. It completes the armor.”

  Hidori slapped at the armor now on Jack. “Wonderful, yes? The armor is a giveaway that we are Deep Mist.”

  “And the costumes and the swords aren’t?”

  “Not in the dark. Your mission will be at night, right?” Hidori asked.

  Jack nodded.

  “It is time to go back,” Simaru said. “I promised Okiku we would have you back in time for dinner.”

  Jack wore his armor underneath his cloak and carried his black throwing stars. “How much does all this cost?”

  The Pearl Mist paid for it. You are expected to earn it back.”

  Jack pressed his lips together. It appeared the upcoming mission would be the first payment.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ~

  T anner handled Jack’s new sword at breakfast. Jack’s training blade had remained at the weapons shop.

  “A masterpiece. You will take this to Corand?”

  Jack nodded. “I want to show it to the swordmaker in Underville,” he said. “I owe him for fixing my Lajian sword twice. I’m sure he spent more time on the repairs than what I paid him.”

  Grigar nodded. The armor is something I haven’t seen before. It is even lighter than the best leather armor and stiffer.” The wizard placed Jack’s helmet on his head. He knocked the surface with his knuckles. “Amazing. I wonder if I can get one of these before we leave Yomomai.”

  “I can ask,” Jack said.

  “I like my old weapons,” Tanner said. “I know the magic works as well with a Corandian blade in my hand as a Masukaian one does.”

  Jack smiled. He hoped Tanner’s words were sincere. Jack earned the armor and the weapons, but he didn’t want his friends to be too envious.

  Misika entered the dining hall. “What we sought has arrived,” she said.

  Tanner stayed with Helen and Jackie, while Grigar and Jack followed Misika to a different meeting room. This one had a high table in the center. Okiku stood with Torii. Both looked down on the surface.

  Jack saw it was a plan. He was glad it was more detailed than the diagram of Lord Kaseru’s mansion grounds.

  “Any idea where the book is located?” Jack asked.

  Torii raised his eyes to look at Jack. “No, but there is a treasure room.” He pointed to a room at the back of one of the buildings. There were two anterooms. Jack thought guards could be stationed in each one, but for him, the defensive weakness was the exterior wall at the back of the treasure room..

  “I could teleport from the back,” Jack said.

  Okiku held up a scroll in her hand. “Perhaps not so easily. There is a moat around this particular building.”

  Jack looked more closely to see that what he thought was a pathway was a moat filled with water. That didn’t daunt him, but it might others. He just nodded. That would be his first plan, but Jack would keep that to himself, following the pattern he had established when he scouted Lord Kaseru’s residence.

  “So we come in from the side?”

  Torii nodded without saying anything as Hidori and Simaru walked in.

  “You aren’t wearing your swords,” Hidori said.

  “I don’t plan on fighting anyone this morning.” Jack gave the two men a quick nod of the head, the kind that was acceptable among equals. “What do you suggest as a way to get into this mansion?”

  “You can fly,” Simaru said.

  “Not this time,” Torii said. “The informant said the guards on the walls are armed with swords and bows, not spears.”

  Jack was surprised by the comments since he hadn’t been taught anything about flying at Deep Mist. He looked more closely at the plan. The walls were drawn too thin to be manned, but that must have been a mistake. He wondered what other mistakes had been made. At least the servant had mentioned that people could walk on parapets.

  “It looks more like a keep than a mansion,” Grigar said. “That complicates things.”

  “It complicates that which is getting more and more complicated,” Jack said.

  “Yes, lots of complications,” Grigar said with a smile.

  “We still need to examine the book,” Okiku said.

  “May we know what is inside the book since Namori will be the one memorizing the contents?”

  “Not until you embark on your mission,” Okiku said.

  Jack could counter Okiku’s snippiness with developing alternate plans as long as she didn’t saddle them with a minder. Grigar, Namori, and Jack, as a team, could handle the operation. He tapped on a corner of the mansion.

  “This would be a good place to teleport into,” he said. “The buildings cover it up, and we could move along here,” Jack traced his finger along the moat. “If we are willing to get wet, we can infiltrate from the back if there are any windows.”

  “But the idea is to read the contents of the book without being discovered,” Torii said.

  “Is it a ledger with names, dates, and amounts?” Grigar asked. “If so, you could do more damage by removing it and replacing it with a book filled with false entries.”

  “It isn’t that simple,” Okiku said.

  “Yes, complicated,” Jack said, looking at Grigar. “Is Namori capable of committing that kind of information to memory? Are there pages and pages of entries?”

  Okiku gazed at Torii who nodded. “We are looking for names. It is questionable if they are in the ledger or not, but we have to find out who is listed. It is a political matter.”

  “I never for once thought it wasn’t,” Jack said. “So Namori needs to scan the book for the names.”

  “Basically,” Torii said.

  Jack wasn’t too thrilled with the motivation behind the task, but it made more sense if there were Pearl Mist allies that were secretly allied with the Red Herons, especially if the imperial government was a bit shaky.

  “That is good enough for me,” he said. “What about you, Grigar?”

  “After that we can seek out the Battlebone, right?”

  “Right,” Torii said.

  Jack still thought there would be more, but he could only take one step at a time with the paucity of information that Torii Ishoru gave them.

  “What if the book isn’t in the treasure room?” Jack asked. “Where else could it be?”

  Hidori and Simaru were able to give Jack some good information where the lord would hide things.

  “Does the lord of the mansion maintain the information in the book himself?” Grigar said.

  Jack had to smile. That was a very good question and pertinent to their discussion.

  “Grigar is right. If the lord’s steward or some underling of an official does the actual writing in the book, it might not be in any of the places that Hidori and Simaru ta
lked about.”

  The two Deep Mist men frowned and nodded.

  Namori stepped closer to the plan. “Such a thing would be under the direction of the lord or another official that lives on the mansion grounds. Can we get that information from the servant?”

  “We can,” Okiku said. “I think we are done for now. I will contact the servant and ask. If there is a retainer acting as scribe, she might have a better idea of who would do that and where they work.”

  ~

  “Do they want you to sneak into the grounds with a cloth covering your eyes? You should spend two days watching the mansion with your teleporting on the grounds to verify your strategy. Otherwise, the operation is too risky.”

  Jack had to agree with Tanner. “Will you be able to come with us?”

  “I will,” Tanner said. He grinned. “You might need someone to hold the horses.”

  “Then consider yourself part of the team,” Jack said. “Any other observations?”

  Tanner shook his head. “How about you, Helen?”

  “Why is everyone trusting the servant? She could so easily be compromised and working primarily for the Red Herons, giving us false information.”

  Jack nodded. “The walls weren’t accurate,” he said. “I put it down to a lack of artistry, but that might be something we can check when we poke around on site.”

  “If the Red Herons know about Pearl Mist interest in the book, then they might put the wrong names in,” Grigar said.

  “Torii is too smart not to know that,” Jack said. “Do you agree?”

  “I do,” Tanner said. “He isn’t the leader of the Yomomai academy because of his good looks. Are there too many possibilities?”

  Helen grunted. “Of course, there are. The Masukaians do this all the time. I haven’t spent all my time here changing diapers and feeding a beautiful little girl. One person I don’t trust is Okiku. Perhaps that is why she isn’t a trainer at Deep Mist.”

  “I hadn’t quite thought of her presence here in that way. She is shown a great deal of respect for a traitor,” Grigar said. “If Torii Ishoru suspects something, perhaps all he has are suspicions. If he feels the same way, that is.”

  “It all stinks, to me,” Jack said, “but I don’t see a clear way out. If we are to get in a position to find the Battlebone, we have to do this, but I’d rather our adventure wasn’t like our experience at Zuri Mountain. I still don’t know what the real deal was there.”

  “We still could have been killed,” Grigar said, with a grimace.

  “I don’t want the father of my child unnecessarily in harm’s way, but I feel you have to try your best. I’ll do some investigating here while you are gone. I am certain the Pearl Mist organization is the one to be allied with. The Red Herons are too much like the Black Finger Society for my taste.”

  “See if you can discover some information where the Battlebone is in case we return and are assigned yet another task,” Tanner said.

  “Yes, sir.” Helen saluted to her husband.

  “Could you do that, please?” Tanner said with a wide smile.

  “I’ll consider it.” Helen pursed her lips, but there was the hint of a smile behind it.

  “Then Tanner comes with us, as our personal stableboy,” Jack said. Tanner grunted as Jack continued, “We need another person to mind any minder we get stuck with.”

  Tanner shook his head. “As long as it isn’t Hidori or Simaru. I played swordsman with Hidori once, and he was too fast, much too fast.”

  “He isn’t as good as Simaru,” Jack said. “I sparred with both of them. Simaru is the best swordsman I’ve ever fought, using the enhanced Masukaian technique, of course.” Jack said, looking at Tanner. “If they met a good Corandian swordsman with the right visualization, they might be surprised.”

  Tanner laughed. “Is that an offer to teach me?”

  Jack nodded. “Just on the visualization part. The enhancement is a fifth-level manipulation, but one that Helen was able to tap into.”

  Helen smiled. “I did, didn’t I?”

  “I didn’t get very far until I used a different mental picture. I think that is what we need to work on,” Jack said.

  “And that was something no one bothered to change during all the lessons I have taken all these months.”

  “Grigar and I will go over some Deep Mist techniques on our way to the mansion. It might be the case that Namori was held back as well.”

  “I think you may be right,” Grigar said.

  Jack shivered. He shouldn’t be the one to be right so much of the time.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ~

  N amori, Tanner, Grigar, and Jack peeked over a hill overlooking a remote compound. Even from up here, Jack could see differences in the layout from what he remembered of the plan. There were more defenses making it more like a fort than a manor

  Namori had made a duplicate of the servant’s sketch and was comparing it to what she saw. “It isn’t quite the same,” she said. “The moat is twice as wide as the plan, for instance.”

  That confirmed Jack’s suspicions. “Then anything could be a fabrication.”

  “Probably is,” Tanner said. He spent some time concentrating on their objective. A few carts had come and gone while they watched. “Why doesn’t Grigar hitch a ride on one of the supply carts and get a feel for the place in the light. Everything looks different in the dark.”

  Grigar chuckled. “Aren’t I too old to be a spy?”

  “You certainly are too old to be a burglar,” Tanner said. “Can you do it?

  Grigar pulled out his purse and examined its contents. “I’ll find someone who would like to double their money.” He slipped away and headed down the hill, away from the mansion but toward the road that led to it.

  “Do you want me to follow him?” Tanner asked Jack.

  “Why don’t you go? You can practice with your newly-found speed.”

  Tanner grinned. “I am a lot faster, aren’t I? I was surprised that the same visualization that you use worked for me. Your strokes slowed up, and suddenly, we were competitive. It was like magic.”

  “It was magic,” Jack said. “I’m going to drill the right placement of the buildings into my head for tonight’s operation while you are gone.”

  Tanner made his way to the horses and checked their bindings before he slipped out of Jack’s sight, heading in the same direction that Grigar had gone.

  “It worked better for me too,” Namori said when Jack turned back from watching Tanner leave. “I had pictured a shark in the ocean. It worked to speed me up. I suspect I could qualify for Deep Mist, now.”

  “But don’t. There was a reason they kept you from going. Maybe it is your mother’s position as a hostage.” Jack shrugged. “I also wouldn’t show it off quite yet, unless you are in a fight.”

  Namori frowned. “You are thinking too much like a Masukaian. When you first arrived, you didn’t doubt everything.”

  “There is physical self-defense and mental self-defense. In Masukai, I have developed more of both. I won’t deny it. My mentor agrees with you. I never did mention it to Penny.”

  “Your girlfriend?”

  “Penny? You do mean Penny Ephram?”

  Namori nodded.

  Jack laughed. “I wouldn’t call her a girlfriend, but I’ve communicated with her while I’ve been gone. I suppose it has kept me from being so homesick. It’s been interesting watching her change. I’m not sure I’d recognize her if I saw her again.”

  “But you will see her again?” Namori asked.

  “We share Fasher Tempest as our master, and we live in the same village, at least our parents do, at this point. Sure, I’ll see her again.”

  “Would you consider having another girlfriend?” Namori asked.

  Jack sighed. He didn’t mean to, but it just came out. “It isn’t a matter of another girlfriend. Penny and I don’t have a real relationship.”

  Namori smiled. “Good, because I like you, Jack W
inder.” She said his name with the proper Corandian pronunciation. “Do you like me?”

  Quite frankly, Jack hadn’t ever considered Namori an available girl.

  “I don’t dislike you, but I always thought Masukaian women didn’t like the look of Corandian men.”

  She smiled. “That isn’t true in my case or in others. There are those at the Yomomai academy who think you are very handsome, even by Masukaian standards.”

  “Even by Masukaian standards,” Jack said. He laughed gently, “Whatever they are. Let’s spend some time together after this mission if we both make it through whatever our enemy has prepared.”

  “Who is our enemy?” Namori asked.

  “Someone other than you and someone other than me.” He looked at Namori with different eyes as she smiled at him. She was much prettier once she confessed that she liked him. He had always been attracted to the woman, but he had always regarded her as off-limits, someone to keep in the background of his existence in Masukai.

  In a few minutes, Tanner scampered up the hill.

  “Grigar will be riding into our view any time, now,” the mercenary said. “He hit it off really well with another older driver. They are delivering wool cloth for the ladies of the mansion to make winter clothes.”

  “It must be very fine wool,” Namori said, “for a mansion this rich.”

  “So something might be wrong?” Jack asked her.

  She nodded. “Silk cloth would be what someone would be delivering for ladies, unless…” She narrowed her eyes. “Did you see the cloth?

  “I saw a bolt of dark red,” Tanner said. “The driver showed Grigar what he carried.”

  “Uniforms?” Namori said. “Soldiers often wear wool uniforms since they need to hold up better in the field.”

  Grigar, are all the bolts of wool red? Jack asked, instantly turning to telepathy.

  Red and black. The weave is very tight and sturdy, but a bit thicker than I would think a lord’s lady would wear. Grigar said. Should I be alarmed?

  Namori just said that soldiers are the ones to wear clothes made out of wool. Keep your eyes and ears ready. If you get into any trouble—