“I think,” said Trophimus, “that nobody has died yet.”
He waited until everybody else was halfway across the courtyard then yelled, “Hey, wait for us!”
The two comrades jogged across the open space, by unspoken accord zigzagging slightly as they splashed through puddles.
There was indeed a warm fire in the hall, and a trestle table just a little larger than was needed to accommodate them all. More pertinently, for the moment Lord Dreik and his three henchmen were outnumbered with no possibility of concealed archers.
Cerdic leaned in close. “We could just…”
“I hope roasted pullets will not be too poor a supper,” said Lord Dreik, moving to the head of the table.
“…wait for the pullets to be served,” completed Trophimus. “Or do you want to supervise the cooks at knife point?”
“Ah,” said Cerdic. “Eat first, murder and pillage second.”
“Exactly. I was expecting just soup.”
“Fuck,” said Cerdic. “The old wanker must have had all his chickens slaughtered just to feed us. I feel almost guilty…”
Lord Dreik gestured for Dekan to sit on his right and the Kid on his left.
One of the two big henchmen appeared with a jug in which the baron daintily cleaned his fingers. More servants with more jugs appeared. The big scarred retainer, however, took station on his lord’s right, just behind Dekan.
The benches creaked as everybody sat. The elderly servant had traded his spear for a lute, and struck up a pleasant melody.
“While we await the roasted pullets,” continued the baron, “there is soup and bread to warm your insides, and beer to dull the ache of the journey.” He clapped his hands and the servants returned with cauldrons of soup, wooden bowls, and hunks of stale bread.
Everybody remembered Dekan’s hasty instructions and waited to tuck in until the baron took a spoonful of soup. He seemed to take no special precaution to avoid supping from the common cauldron. Trophimus, however, found himself glad of his own amulet that protected him from poison. The things were common enough, probably more common than actual poison, so the baron would be a fool to doctor the food in any case.
Cerdic swigged the beer. “Bugger me,” he said in a low voice. “This doesn’t look much like a trap. The servants are a scrawny lot except for those two lads and the big bastard. And Dreik has gone and surrounded himself.”
“I don’t think Axe Girl’s posh toyboy and her pet gigolo count as surrounding anybody,” said Trophimus.
“Hey,” hissed Axe Girl.
“Just joking”, said Trophimus. “Both your boys have done well.”
They were evidently doing very well with the baron. The three of them seemed to be caught up in a merry banter, with much laughter on all sides.
“I have good taste,” said Alice. “Do you think my axe will be okay?”
“I doubt any of the servants could lift it,” said Trophimus.
She grinned at him. “Flatterer.” She dropped into a whisper. “So when do we make our move? The scarred one is big, but he doesn’t stand like a fighter.”
Arms scarred by fire. Big. And—now Trophimus was seeing him in proper light—there were grease stains on his shirt. He wasn’t any sort of warrior, he was a cook. And if the cook was guarding the lord, that meant that there were no roasted pullets and that meant. “I…”
Lord Dreik put a friendly arm around the Kid…steel flashed.
Trophimus leapt to his feet, knocking back the bench so the others fell or stood depending on their reaction time.
Dreik rose from his chair to stand behind the Kid. He had a big knife pressed to the young man’s throat. The high collar would be no protection against the long blade.
The scarred cook got a meaty arm around Dekan’s neck.
“Fuck,” said Cerdic.
“Silence!” snapped Lord Dreik. “I have your precious groom hostage. You don’t want to see him die.”
Axe Girl tugged at Trophimus’s arm and mouthed, “Please.”
Trophimus nodded.
“But the Laws of Hospitality,” squeaked Dekan, impressively managing to stay in role despite the cook’s stranglehold.
“Do not apply to Pagans who worship War Gods with barbarous names,” said the baron. “Now I’m not uncivilised, and I have no wish to start a war. You, Sir Dekan, may take your servants and ride to fetch a ransom. I will even let you take your sidearms for safety. Of course, whatever gifts you brought with you will be forfeit.”
“I…er…” began Dekan.
“This is not a negotiation, sir,” snapped the Baron. “I have your nephew hostage.
Cerdic nudged Trophimus; it would be simple just to abandon the boy, perhaps make Dekan and Alice believe they would come back for him.
Trophimus shook his head. If it had been Rufus, or one of the Blade Bitches, perhaps, given this was almost certainly his last job ever, so he no longer needed to guard his reputation. Axe Girl, however, was an old friend.
“As I said, I’m not uncivilised,” said Lord Dreik. “My servants will take the boy into custody. The rest of you may finish your soup and spend the night here. There will of course be guards on the d—”
The Kid grabbed Dreik’s wrist with his left hand and with his right snatched an eating knife from the table.
“No!” screamed Axe Girl, starting forward.
Lord Dreik made a slashing motion that should have half beheaded the lad.
Even so, the Kid stabbed backwards with the short eating knife.
Dreik screamed. Still screaming he staggered away toward the fireplace, clutching his abdomen while blood flowed between his be-ringed fingers.
The by-blows froze.
The boy flipped the blade and slashed the throat of the nearest.
Dekan meanwhile ducked free of the cook and somehow managed to throw him across the table. Wine splashed. Food spilled. Then Dekan had the man’s dagger and made an end.
The ordinary servants rushed for the door. The surviving by-blow tried to drag Lord Driek for safety. A tankard thunked into the back of his head and he went down under the body of his father.
The bounty hunters took up candlesticks and stools, all except Alice who shoved aside friend and foe alike to get to the Kid.
What followed couldn’t be dignified with the term, “melee”.
Afterwards, they threw the bodies down the outside steps and returned to the beer and soup.
Dekan made a fuss of giving Trophimus the lord’s chair.
Trophimus knew he should send people out to search the castle just to be sure, but the chair was comfortable and his gut told him that Lord Dreik had used all his men for the ambush.
“I could get used to this,” he said, “we all could. But the money from this job will make us all gentry, and back home, somewhere less impoverished.”
“Not a shithole, you mean,” said Cerdic and everybody laughed.
Trophimus banged on the table. “A toast to the Kid—” He held up his hand. “But first, how did you know the knife was blunt?”
“Yes…yes…” everybody wanted to know.
“It was sharp,” said the Kid with a smirk. “But this enchanted blade-proof shirt was a gift from the Marquis of Sodor. Very fashionable.”
Alice slammed down her ale mug. “You little bastard, you should have told me!”
Trophimus raised his voice to cut off her tirade, “To the Kid!”
“To the Invincible Kid,” corrected the Kid.
“Say,” said Rufus. “What about the pullets?”
“There never were any,” said Trophimus. “This was a trap from the start.”
“So much for the fucking laws of hospitality,” said Cerdic. He leaned in close. “Is the Kid going to get himself killed?”
Trophimus shrugged a shoulder. “He can guard the horses when we do the snatch.”
Chapter 21: Bounty Hunters!
Unseen, beyond the mouth of the gulley, the desert wind plucked an eerie m
elody from the edge of the sword Peacebringer. A gust whirled between the rock walls and dusted sand over the surface of Zahna’s tea.
She shifted to huddle into the overhanging rock, protecting her cup in her own shadow. The Boy had better be worth all this trouble.
Back in that odd temple of stone columns, she’d looked for any sign that he was the reincarnation of an indomitable swordsman.
Her lips quirked.
Reincarnation of an owl, more like.
A permanently startled one, judging from the way he’d stared at her.
Well, she didn’t need him for a lover, just a protector. And really, she was doing him a favour in breaking the cycle of incarnations that would keep him trapped in that monastery.
The wind picked up and the sword sang louder.
Zahna had left the ancient sword planted in the ground because that was where it was needed. However, it made a good sentinel.
She closed her eyes and let her perceptions expand to fill the gulley.
Form 0.
Blame that on a poor night’s sleep.
Performing Scout at Level 3.
Using Scout, Attune With Nature. 5 of 6 Potestas remaining.
Result = 3 (Performance) +1 (Luck) +2 (Feat) +2 (“Familiar Sword in Wind”) = 8.
Effect = Perceiving at 8.
She shifted to kneel more comfortably, relaxed her muscles.
Form 4. 4 of 6 Potestas remaining.
Performing Scout at Level 7.
Using Scout, Attune With Nature. 3 of 6 Potestas remaining.
Result = 7 (Performance) +1 (Luck) +2 (Feat) +2 (“Familiar Sword in Wind”) = 12.
The sounds became translucent, like the layers of rice paper when she was learning the Astral Geometries.
The nearby spring burbled and splashed through the rocks to feed the tiny rivulet that ran out of the canyon. Air and Water together formed a warbling accompaniement to the song of the sword. There was no regular pulse, but it had its own rules, like when the Gorvak string-flautists extemporised hours of tumbling music.
The expanded awareness carried with it a ghost memory: white grains of sand like stars on oily black tea.
Zahna looked down and saw her own face reflected back: moon pale compared to the memory.
“Who am I?”
You are Zahna, Human Warlock, Youth, Spiritual, Perceptive, Driven, Cold.
“Thanks a lot,” she said. That wasn’t really a description of a nice person, but it was one who might defeat Gronchard the Flayer.
The rest was more impressive.
Potestas 4/6. Will 3. 1 Recent Ritual. 3 of 3 Prepared Charms.
She could feel them, the little blocks of tea, individually wrapped in their little box: one Illuminate, and two Heals, each good for twelve doses.
Vitality 4. Toughness 2.
She owed that to her combat skills, tested a few times on her travels.
Vocations:
Wizard 4 (Cantrips, Rituals, Great Rituals, Tea Making, Tea Blending):
Cantrips: Backwards Remembering, Portents, Astral Cloak, Purify, Walk Unhindered, Restore Vitality.
Rituals: Walk Through, Step Between, Illuminate, Transcend, Heal, Flip (3/6).
Flow Fighter 2 (Empty Hand, Twin Knives, Staff): Thunder Bolt, Whirlwind, Death’s Tornado, Flying Attack 3/6.
Scout 3 (Steppes, Mountains, Deserts, Jungles): Attune With Nature, Survival, Forage, Trapping, Climb, Parkour, Stalk, Hide 4/6.
She grimaced. “All borrowed from past selves,” she said.
Various General Skills including Riding.
“Enough!”
Marvak had taught her to ride when his people came to the Plain of the Wizard’s Tower for spring grazing. He had promised to teach her the bow next season, but when he rode up to the tower, he would find it burned.
Would he mourn her in the Gorvak way? Would he grow his hair out until he could plait it into death braids? Or would he shrug her off as a mere amusement? A quarry carried off by some predator, before it could be stalked and skinned.
Zahna hadn’t yet learned to read a soul. Now if she ever did, it would be the quick but dangerous way: her Demon unlocking the knowledge in moments of peril, rather than her teacher patiently jogging her dead memories. She had learned to take Portents, though, but after the events of the summer, she was not sure whether it was worth using that to investigate her relationship with Morvak.
The portents for that day had been good—or at least according to Mistress Zinaven, to whom Zahna had been apprenticed since being fished out of a Fire Temple orphanage at the age of seven.
Of course, portents were useless for detecting events that were unlikely on any given day, but certain over a given time period.
The old wizard’s seasonal oracle had also not provided any sort of warning: The phoenix embraces the ashes and rises.
They’d agreed that the phoenix was her, given her origins in a Fire Temple. Zahna had argued that the ashes represented the powers of her past selves.
The old lady, however, had suggested with a twinkle in her usually steely eye, that it was an erotic allusion. The Gorvak folk, for example, were known for their ash blond hair.
There were, said Mistress Zinaven, books on the upper shelves that might help her in that regard.
And Zahna had hooded her eyes and flushed, and thought, just a little, of Marvak with his archer’s muscles and his short, cropped hair that was indeed ash blond.
Then the Flying Tooth Garden had appeared.
Had Marvak and his kin been there, perhaps things would have been different.
No. More people would have died, that was all.
The tower had transformed from home to trap, then, with help a little help, to an inferno. Apprentice and Mistress had climbed the great spiral stair just a few turns ahead of the attackers, trailing torches, lighting everything they passed. They reached the top-floor observatory just ahead of pursuit. They were in the act of downing tea kept for such an occasion, when the door gave and soldiers crammed into the chamber.
The old lady died.
Zahna lived.
She Walked Between to an abandoned Realm of old ruins and parched fields. That night, the dead memories came and she knew why the Flying Tooth Garden had come for her, and what she had to do.
Armed with the chart and supplies from Zinaven’s secret cache, she navigated the wormholes to the Deserts of Outer Yinkesia. Her own bones had granted her a Surge, and yielded up a relic for her protector. Thence to the outskirts of Yinksi City, from where once the Grey Cortège had fetched the Marshal’s body. She had leased an entire estate just so she could carry out her Great Ritual and Step Between right into their monastery—that should have been impossible, but a link from a past life pierced the formidable defences.
Then, navigating the wormholes over weeks then months, she worked her way around to the place indicated by her Backwards Remembering.
Future memories were imperfect of course; sometimes partial, always selective. However, if the boy were going to become a man—like Marvak perhaps—then it was going to be here…apparently.
The rhythm of the wind shifted. Somebody was coming.
More than one person. Had he brought friends?
Or had Gronchard’s hunters found her?
Zahna downed her tea, refilled the little samovar and put one of her three charmed blocks of tea into it.
Tea. Charmed; “Illuminate”.
The wind fanned the charcoal so it glowed visibly, even in the glare of the desert sun. The water bubbled, browned.
And she listened.
Beyond the mouth of the little canyon, harness jingled. Hooves rattled stones.
Not the boy, then. Besides, if it were him, she would have seen their bond stretched out like an old lock of hair.
Leather creaked, horses snuffled. The hunters had dismounted. Now the sounds shifted…not so much sounds as the presence of people muffling the wind, muting the shrill song of the sword as they closed off escape.
Her Backwards Remembering had taken her to a spot that was effectively a trap. The logical course would be to scale the rock walls and ghost away, but here was the place where she would acquire her protector—or not. In any case, they had horses and supplies, and she did not. They could starve her out, or outpace her.
The tea was ready. She wrapped a rag around the samovar’s handle and poured, holding the spout low so that the wind did not divert the dark liquid as it fell.
Now the enemy revealed themselves in a line across the width of the blind canyon: nine men and women with clubs and shields, arranged in threes. One of the trios—all similar looking blond women—had large shields designed for stopping arrows, but no doubt handy for literally boxing in a captive; she would see if she could reduce their numbers.
Two big men strode behind the shield-warriors. One was a tall cataphract clad in head-to-toe lamellar scales, strips of steel and mail. He brandished a forked thief catcher as if it were a staff of command. The other wore a mailshirt. He had a net over one shoulder, a scabbarded bow peeking over the other.
Her eyes narrowed. That bow might be a problem for her protector.
Current Form 4. Performing Wizard at Level 8.
Unlock Nudge?
Nudge unlocked at 2/6 Grasp.
Using Cantrip Nudge 2/6, cost 3 Potestas, 1 of 6 remaining.
She sang softly to the bow, lamented that it had crossed between so many realms with different climates, regretted its long working life.
The wind carried away her words, but she felt the bow respond to them. Its fibres relaxed, gave way along fissures created by years of use.
Result = 8 (Performance) +1 (Luck) = 9.
Effect = Uncommon Occurrence (8)
Cantrip Nudge advances to 3/6 Grasp.
The hunters fanned out as they closed.
The Jungle Tomb of the Ice Queen (The Flying Tooth Garden Book 1) Page 14
