Dragon's Trail

by Joseph Malik

  I am going to do so much more than kill you guys.

  Ten men. Nine, plus the tattooed guy.

  He thought of war.

  Of mayhem.

  He thought of hunting every last one of them across wastelands.

  All but one in tunics or arming jackets. Nobody in mail. Guardsman’s swords.

  Gar’s goons.

  “Impeccable timing,” said a fat man in a gray and green doublet, undoubtedly Gar. He wore a long saxe horizontally under his great belly in the manner of Axe Valley mercenaries. “Where are the other two?” he asked the tattooed man. “The big one, and the commander?”

  Tattooed Guy said, “Those two are gonna be dead tonight. The rest of my team’s working on that.”

  Jarrod couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

  Tattooed Guy shoved him. “You think that’s funny?”

  “Yeah,” Jarrod chuckled. “I really do.”

  The fat man grunted, then addressed Jarrod. “You know me?”

  “Yes,” said Jarrod. “You’re the pig who escaped from the spit for dinner. We missed you.”

  This brought groans and a few catcalls. Gar looked to his men and motioned for them to quiet down, smiling a bit. “We’re going to talk for a while,” he said. “And Von, there, he’s going to watch the door to make sure you don’t leave.”

  “Von, huh?” Jarrod said, turning to Tattooed Guy. “Was that so hard?”

  Von grumbled.

  “Here’s the deal, Lieutenant,” said Gar to Jarrod. “The sooner you tell me what I want to know, the sooner we kill you.”

  “Wow,” said Jarrod, stone-faced. “How can I refuse an offer like that?”

  “You can’t,” said Gar. “Because you’re going to die tonight, anyway. But—and here’s the catch—we can’t kill you until you tell me what you know. So you talk, and then once we kill you, I promise, we’ll let her go. If you stop talking, we start cutting pieces off of her.”

  Jarrod grunted, all business. “Understood. What do you need from me?”

  “The letters,” Gar said. “Where are they, and who else knows about them?”

  “The what?” Jarrod asked.

  He heard cloth ripping. Daelle screamed. There was commotion in the corner around her, men cheering and catcalling. He put it out of his head.

  “The letters,” Gar repeated, louder.

  “I don’t understand,” said Jarrod.

  “The letters!” Gar screamed, his jowls going red.

  Jarrod snapped his fingers. “Oh, the letters!” he said, brightening. “Forgive me. I’m still learning your language. She’s my translator.”

  He reached into the small of his back. “I’ve got your letters, right here.”

  “Where did he go?” Javal wondered, as the dancing girls did their thing on the dais. “He was heading for the water closet, one floor up.”

  “That was two songs ago,” said Durn. “It’s not that far of a walk. Do you think the little guy found himself some company on the way back?”

  “He hasn’t eaten since yesterday,” Javal said. “So I doubt he’d miss this. Besides, he’d be with one of the dancers, anyway. His translator isn’t here, either,” he said, looking around.

  “Come to think of it,” said Durn, “The Chancellor and the commander left about the same time.”

  Javal tapped every knight at the table and stood. “Every one of you who’s sober, with me. Right now.”

  “What the hell is that?” said Gar.

  Von’s hand went to Jarrod’s arming sword, slung on the wrong side; first his right hand, then his left, then both as he struggled to clear it.

  It cost him his life.

  Jarrod indexed, braced, and as the arming sword came free he emptied two rounds into Von’s chest and a third into his forehead, opening his skull across the wall like a melon fired from a cannon. Jarrod’s ears disappeared under a landslide of whine.

  His hands trembling, his vision cloudy, he pointed the gun at the group.

  The commotion in the corner had stopped.

  He didn’t have a clear shot at Gar.

  Time slowed.

  “Fuck you,” he muttered through gritted teeth, and shot one, knocking him over.

  And then another, blowing off his jaw. The man next to him collapsed, hosed in gore.

  Gar hit the floor and Jarrod emptied the magazine, fourteen more rounds, tracking diving bodies and shooting for center mass. The pistol roared again and again, impossibly loud, cracking the world in half.

  When the gun clicked, blood was spreading fast across the dusty floor from a stack of bodies in the corner. More than a few groaned and sobbed.

  There were still two standing—Gar and one other—and one on his knees, retching. Gar’s fine doublet dripped with blood.

  Jarrod kicked his sword up into his hand and sheathed the pistol.

  What he didn’t have was a second magazine.

  The soldier next to Gar was older, big, and unafraid. He kicked the puking soldier, who got to his feet, saying something Jarrod couldn’t hear or understand; possibly in Gavrian, possibly because Jarrod’s eardrums felt like they’d been blown clear down to his tonsils.

  He saw Gar’s lips moving but couldn’t make out the words. Gar’s eyes traveled towards the door as he spoke.

  Jarrod backed up to see the door opening.

  He unclipped his cape and wrapped it around his arm.

  Javal, Durn, and the knights of the Stallion met Carter and Daorah coming down the stairs.

  “Where’s Sir Jarrod?” Javal asked.

  “He was behind us,” Carter said. “We ran into some trouble.” It was then that Javal noticed that both Carter and Daorah had greasy black-red blood up their arms to the elbow.

  “House Fletcher,” said Daorah. “We took two of them down. They’re up on four. Two more got away. They were headed this way.”

  Durn swore under his breath.

  “Are you wounded?” Javal asked.

  Carter shook his head. “Nothing serious.”

  “Did anyone get past you?”

  “One guy. About your size, with a tattoo on his face.”

  Javal and Durn headed up the stairs at a run.

  Jarrod backed into the center of the room as more and more men came through the door, down the stairs. He quit counting at eight.

  Tight quarters. No armor.

  Oh, Lord, this is gonna leave a dent.

  Sir Jarrod, the One-Handed Since That Whole House Fletcher Incident.

  He was acclimating to the ringing in his ears. He heard Gar’s gristly voice admonishing them not to kill him.

  “Good luck with that,” Jarrod grunted, menacing the group with his sword. Four of them had their swords out; short, heavy guardsman’s blades. None of them were in armor.

  Saber rules. Get the touch and get out. Be the last man standing, get to your medical kit, tourniquet off your stumps. This is where you earn it.

  He’d settled into a space in the room with the well on his left, the pile of bodies behind it, and Gar and Big Guy behind the pile and Daelle behind them; and a wall with a rack of shelves on his right at an angle, making a funnel into him wide enough for one man on either side. They’d be reduced mostly to thrusts in the cramped quarters, which gave him a few inches of reach with the arming sword.

  Two engaged, one down either side.

  Amateurs.

  He feinted, cutover, and slashed one across the eye; sidestepped, enveloped, and took half a foot from the second. Swords clattered and rang on the wooden floor and both collapsed, wailing and writhing. He stabbed the one with the injured foot, below the scapula, into the lung. He slipped the sword out—so, so sharp—and fell back deeper as the next two leaped over them.

  You know what we call this?

  Jarrod stabbed one in the face, throwing the sword out to grab it by the pommel for the extra inches. The wounded man fell back, shrieking, blood
in rivers between his hands.

  We call it a “Fatal Funnel.”

  He adjusted his grip and engaged the other with a heavy parry, whipping the cape down on the blade to entangle it and spearing him low in the belly as he fell backwards.

  Never, never, never run straight into someone who’s ready for you.

  The sword split a wide hole as he pulled it free. Organs spilled out from beneath the soldier’s arming jacket as if Perseus had kicked him.

  Never.

  The next four, five, six, rushed Jarrod bare-handed, driving him off his feet and pinning him to the floor. His sword clattered away and they began beating him. He saw flashes of light but the padding in the jacket helped. A bit.

  “Hold him down!” Gar yelled. “I’m gonna take some pieces off the little bastard!”

  They pinned Jarrod’s arms and legs, and Gar was standing over him with his saxe. “Gonna take some fight out of you, boy,” he said. “Then we’re gonna have us that little talk.”

  Javal and Durn hit the stairwell at the tower.

  “They can’t be up,” said Durn.

  “You just don’t want to climb those stairs.”

  “Yes,” Durn agreed, “And think about it. Where are Gar’s boys? What’s the one area that he controls?”

  Javal saw the door to the right of the tower. The door, he knew, led to a stairwell exiting to a path long worn across the quad to the barracks; the shortcut for the changing of the tower guard.

  Six more knights of the Stallion were heading down the hallway toward them at a run. Javal yelled at them to bring every sworn knight in the castle to the enlisted barracks, immediately.

  He and Durn headed down the stairs as knights started yelling out of windows and into hallways, setting the entire castle on alert.

  Don’t panic.

  Jarrod looked up at the point of the long saxe, flickering in the firelight.

  Breathe.

  It’s going to work out.

  It’s just going to hurt until then, that’s all.

  Jarrod choked back blood; his nose was broken and he’d had the wind knocked out of him. But with two Golden Gloves bouts and a winning savate record under his belt, fighting for air around a busted nose and seeing electric purple Cheetos everywhere was no more a concern than seeing the CHECK ENGINE light come on.

  You wanted to buy your soul back. Here’s your chance.

  Oh, God, this is going to hurt, though.

  Gar’s face was greasy with sweat, his eyes wide and more than a little crazy. “And before I’m done with you, you’re going to teach me to use that lightning stick of yours. I could use me some magic like that.”

  Someone reached into his waistband and pulled out the little pistol, handing it to Gar, who grinned as it shone in the light. “It needs to recharge, yeah?” asked Gar.

  The one who’d taken the gun punched Jarrod in the stomach. He missed the high-impact chest plate and hit the padded kidney belt. It still hurt. “Answer him!”

  Wait for it.

  Jarrod knew that the more men there were working in concert, the sooner one of them will make a tactical mistake. This was what he had counted on, and capitalized on, taking out the first four on either side of the well so quickly only because they’d never done it before.

  He knew these men hadn’t drilled at what they were doing right now. They’d been jockeying for position and playing grab-ass trying to hold him down, and if there hadn’t been so many of them he’d have been free, already.

  And it’s not like they practiced holding somebody down while Fat Boy does impromptu surgery, that’s for damned sure.

  Somebody’s gonna flinch, and I’m gonna have his ass.

  He waited. The saxe hovered as Gar examined the gun.

  Oh, he likes the shiny thing.

  The guy on his right leg let up.

  It wasn’t much; for a fraction of a thought he applied half strength, then let go completely for a quarter of a second to shift his hands. Jarrod’s right leg snaked free.

  As survivors of the night would later recount, that was when it all went to hell.

  The leg leaped up like a thing alive and locked around the man’s neck and shoulder, pulling him forward and knocking Gar off-balance.

  Gar, by incidence, stabbed the man who was pinning Jarrod’s left hand, long and deep from his eye socket down through the cheek and exiting near his ear.

  Jarrod found his left hand free.

  He punched Gar in the testicles and nailed him with a palm strike under the chin, knocking him sideways.

  The man who’d been holding his right arm—unsettled by the screams of the blinded man beside him and watching his other buddy turning red, and with absolutely zero grasp of what exactly was happening—let go of Jarrod’s right hand to try and work Jarrod’s leg free from around his friend’s neck, figuring that would remedy everything.

  Jarrod cranked the leg down tighter and slammed his carbon-fiber-shod elbow into Helpful Guy’s skull several times until he collapsed. As the man on his left leg gave up his hold to try to control the arm, Jarrod bucked out of the pin altogether, locking down the triangle choke with his left knee on his right ankle. The soldier in the choke turned dark purple.

  Hanging like a spider monkey from a rapidly-asphyxiating guy a hundred pounds heavier than himself, Jarrod considered things to be going pretty well.

  It was the other nine men in the room, the alleged professionals, who had no idea what to do next or how to do it. It occurred to more than one of them that they might have awakened some sort of demon inside Jarrod that had caused him to sprout extra arms.

  It took a couple of long seconds before someone finally started kicking him, attempting to peel him loose through brute force and ignorance.

  Jarrod covered his head with his arms, and felt the blows on the motocross armor. He couldn’t help but grin. As long as they kept hitting him with fists and feet he might as well have been wearing the field harness he’d left at home.

  Two men helped the soldier in the choke to stand up, with Jarrod still hanging off him. It was the worst possible thing they could have done; standing up amplified the lock. He collapsed, driving Jarrod into the floor.

  The others stomped and beat on Jarrod, but the guy in the choke was limp and Jarrod shoved him back with both legs and rolled away.

  On his way up he grabbed a man by the jacket, swept his legs, and the world was targets. Unwinding, his elbow pulverized an orbital bone; an eyeball bulged. Someone drove a heavy fist into his spine, hit the ultralight armor, and yowled, swearing.

  Jarrod cracked out teeth with his forehead, collapsed a knee with a heel stomp, a flurry of punches and elbows drove someone back, and then a huge opening led to a fouétte upside the head that smashed someone else back into the well, screaming—the same man whose leg he’d just broken. Another flurry and a knife-edge kick splattered someone into Gar, who fell into a wall of shelves and brought the whole world down around him from the sound of it.

  Two more jumped him and tried to wrestle him down. He snapped an arm backwards at the elbow and pulled the other one close and rolled, hurling him across the room into the wall with his feet.

  Jarrod flipped to his feet and stomped on a hand, then scattered a crawling man’s teeth across the floor like kicking a bowl of ice cubes.

  Someone big grabbed him from behind, shooting an arm down over Jarrod’s chest and locking him in a bear hug as the last stepped over bodies, a sword in his hand. “Hold him!” the one with the sword shouted.

  Jarrod twisted into the big guy with a handful of arming jacket and kicked his legs out, cartwheeling him forward over his shoulder into a pool of blood and spraying gore in all directions.

  The man with the sword froze, his eyes flicking between Jarrod and the man he’d thrown. “Are you some kind of god?” he asked.

  Jarrod kicked a guardsman’s sword into his hand and flipped it around a couple of times. “Fi
nd out,” he growled.

  A feint, an envelopment, and then Jarrod cut the man’s throat and left him squirming on the floor, an ocean of black glimmering out into the firelight as he kicked and choked, yet another sputtering voice among the chorus of moans and sobs and the frantic yelling of the guy in the well.

  Jarrod looked left and right as he stepped over bodies, stabbing the groaning ones for good measure and stomping on any body parts that moved. The air was thick with blood and smoke and piss and voided bowels.

  His right hand was broken and swelling.

  The man Gar had stabbed was holding his face together with both hands, his legs squirming in a pool of something Jarrod didn’t want to think about. Jarrod let him live, reaching beside him to pick up the gun. He shook it off and holstered it.

  He kicked and yanked his way through heavy bodies and weeping, useless men until he found his arming sword. He toed it into his hand, sighting down the length for damage. A few bangs on the edge near the balance but no major splits. He shoved the guardsman’s sword into someone trying to crawl for the door, who howled for a long moment and then took to sobbing.

  He left it jutting, Excaliburesque.

  The guy in the well would not shut up.

  The big soldier he’d thrown halfway to hell started to groan. Jarrod took four broad strides and stabbed him through the throat, blood jetting onto the wall nearby as he worked the blade back and forth. It would not do to have any of these guys on their feet and pissed-off. Not now. Not after all that work.

  Something caught in the back of his mouth, and he coughed several times until he threw up what felt like a pinecone. When he spat it out, it was a mouthful of frothy blood, pink and foamy in the firelight.

  When he thought about it, he could feel a cramping pain in his back, a tension pneumothorax. One of his lungs was collapsing as his chest cavity filled up with air.

  He’d either been stabbed and hadn’t felt it, or he had a busted rib that had punched a hole in his lung. Every breath was getting tougher.