The Way of Pain

by Gregory Mattix

  “Creel? Where are ye?”

  “Brom?” He didn’t dare believe what he was hearing, relief rushing over him like an ocean breaker. “Down here!” He stuck his hand through the bars.

  His friend came into view, holding a burning torch in one hand, his well-used warhammer in the other, its head caked with gore. The dwarf was wearing his sturdy old helm, along with an ill-fitting mail shirt that looked as if it must chafe his round belly uncomfortably. To Creel’s knowledge, he hadn’t worn it in at least two decades.

  “There ye are! Hold on a moment, and I’ll set ye free.” Brom tried to juggle the torch and key ring in one hand, his warhammer in the other, until Creel reached through the bars and took the torch.

  A moment later, the door was opening with a squeal of its rusty hinges. The dwarf grinned at him, looking mighty pleased with himself.

  And with good reason. Creel couldn’t help grinning like a fool, clasping arms with his friend. “How in the Abyss did you get down here?”

  “Come on. Time for talk later.” Brom looked nervously up and down the corridor. “I’ll just say Pincushion insisted we break ye out when she heard what happened.”

  “Rada? Here?”

  “Aye. ’Tis takin’ a lot outta her, I’m afraid.” His smile slipped. “What of the lass?”

  Creel sighed. “Taken in the night a couple days ago, by my best reckoning. How long have I been in here?”

  Brom stroked his plaited silver beard. “This be the afternoon of the third day since ye left for the castle.”

  “Sianna is likely out of the city already, in the clutches of the Nebaran warlord or her people. Come on.”

  They started down the corridor, Creel at a trot, Brom limping along behind as best he could.

  He reached the guardroom at the end of the long hallway and saw her. Rada was leaning heavily against a wall, keeping an eye on the stairwell leading out of the dungeons. She, like Brom, was wearing her old adventuring gear, although hers fit better, due to her sickly condition. He remembered a few years back when she could barely squeeze into her old leather armor, having insisted on accompanying him on a contract. The situation had been humorous at the time, but seeing her now, the memory nearly brought tears to his eyes.

  Rada looked as if she had one foot in the grave already. Her lined face was ashen, lips pale, and red-orange hair limp and dull in the torchlight. She seemed a faded apparition of herself, save for her bright green eyes. They still shone with her fiery spirit, strength of will likely the only thing keeping her on her feet.

  “Rada!” He swept her into his arms, careful not to hurt her.

  “You won’t break me that easily,” she murmured, kissing his neck, and made a sound between a laugh and a sob.

  He embraced her more tightly then kissed her on the mouth before pulling away. “You shouldn’t be here! Gods, your health…”

  She scowled. “What’s the point of having any days remaining if the both of us end up apart, me wasting away and dying? At least I can see you freed, that you may live your life and go save the kingdom and whatnot.”

  “Aye. And I thank you for that—both of you.” Then he noticed the dead gaoler crumpled behind the table, a bloody hole in his chest from what he knew to be one of Rada’s knives.

  “One last adventure, eh?” Brom seemed saddened by the thought. He picked up a long cloth-wrapped object lying on a pitted table and tossed it to Creel. “I reckon ye’ll be needin’ that.”

  He unwrapped the cloth to find Final Strike in its scabbard. He quickly buckled the longsword to his waist. “I wish I could stab this through that traitorous whoreson of a mayor’s throat.”

  “Aye, someone needs to hang the bastard from the top of the ramparts,” Rada said. “Here.” She handed Creel a water skin.

  He drank greedily before returning it. “What’s the plan to get out of here?”

  “Back the way we came,” she replied. “Over the walls and escape through the necropolis below.”

  “You climbed all the way up here from there? How did you set a rope?”

  “Pincushion gave us a boost,” Brom said with a wink.

  “That’s got to tire you immensely,” he protested, looking at Rada in concern. Using her talents took a great deal of energy out of her, even in her youth, and she was bad off to begin with now.

  She patted his cheek. “Let me worry about that. You just keep those guards off us till we make it back to the wall. We’d best get going.”

  “Let’s try to keep the castle-guard casualties to a minimum,” he said. “As for the mayor’s sellswords—they can be damned.”

  They started up the stairs slowly, to account for the limping dwarf and Rada’s frail condition. Creel supported her with an arm around her waist.

  When they reached the top, Creel eased the door open, startling a pair of guards in the red surcoats of Calcote’s men. The pair were standing over a slumped guard with a bloody chest, who’d been dragged behind a hedge a few paces away. They looked as if they’d just stumbled across the dead man.

  Before the two could sound an alarm, Rada whipped out a knife and hurled it. The guard on the left grasped his throat, gurgling and trying futilely to pull the blade free. Creel drew Final Strike and leaped for the second guard, who stumbled over his own feet trying to draw his sword. Final Strike pierced his chest and bit into the cobblestones beneath him as he fell.

  Rada pointed toward the western wall, then the trio was crossing the bailey at a slow run.

  A shout came from behind—a guard atop the barbican had spotted them. They made it across the bailey and raced into the cover of the castle gardens. Boughs with yellow and orange leaves still clinging to them provided some concealment, and the dewed grass was soft underfoot. A fountain burbled cheerily ahead on the path.

  A horn sounded, shattering the castle’s relative stillness. Within moments, more shouts rang out, followed by the drumming of boots on cobblestones as guards took up the pursuit.

  Rada stumbled and fell in the grass. Creel helped her up, and they followed as Brom took the lead. The dwarf lowered his head and plowed directly through a hedgerow, bursting through in an explosion of leaves and broken twigs, then trampling a flowerbed before reaching another path and cutting to the left. Creel and Rada followed, with him supporting her.

  “Halt!”

  A trio of red-garbed soldiers appeared at the end of the path, twenty paces distant. Each had a loaded crossbow aimed at them.

  Brom bellowed a battle cry and charged as he might’ve in his youth, warhammer raised, even though he wasn’t carrying his old shield.

  “Brom, no!” Creel shouted, but he was too late. The guards unloaded their weapons at the grizzled dwarf.

  But the bolts never found their target. Creel felt a ripple of power from beside him, and Rada stiffened, her green eyes blazing.

  The quarrels were brushed aside in midair, as were a maelstrom of leaves from the trees and hedges, momentarily blinding the soldiers. Rada sagged, swooning, and Creel scooped her up and unceremoniously threw her over his shoulder, shocked by how little she weighed.

  Brom reached the guards. A sweep of his hammer struck the first soldier in the hip. Bone crunched, and the man flew sideways to sprawl hard on the cobblestones, unmoving. Brom turned, and his hammer crunched down on the second soldier’s hand before he could draw his sword. Fingers splayed, and he cried out, hand crushed against his own hilt. The second blow caved in his chest.

  A sword slashed across Brom’s back, turning off the links of his sturdy mail shirt. The guard raised his sword to strike at Brom’s neck just as Creel reached him.

  He lunged, Final Strike thrusting beneath the guard’s upraised arm and piercing his armpit, the sword sliding in nearly half its length. The soldier staggered away, a gout of blood spewing as Creel’s blade withdrew. Brom’s next strike caught the already-dying guard in the chin, shattering his jaw and wrenching his head sharply sideways. He fell and didn’t move again.

  “
Brom, come on!” Creel could see at least a dozen more guards converging on the area from different directions.

  “Stairs,” Rada gasped, still slung over his shoulder. She slapped at Creel’s side and pointed to the right, where a staircase led atop the walls.

  They ran for it, departing the garden and crossing the short distance to the stairs. Creel took them two at a time while crossbow quarrels shattered against the wall and stairs. Soldiers shouted and converged on them from all directions. Creel reached the top of the wall, Brom falling behind as he labored up the steps.

  Creel gently set Rada down, and she leaned a hand against one of the merlons, taking a moment to get her directions, then pointed to the left.

  “The rope should be just ahead,” she said.

  Unfortunately, four soldiers were racing toward them along the ramparts from that direction, and two more were approaching from behind.

  “We must press ahead so they can’t surround us!” Creel ran straight at the four soldiers, two castle guards and two Calcote men, yelling like a madman. That seemed to give them pause, for the soldiers hesitated momentarily. A knife glinted as it spun past Creel and struck one of the red-coated guards with the force of a giant’s toss, splitting mail, burying itself to the hilt, and knocking the man off his feet.

  Rada put a bit extra on that one.

  Then Creel was on the remaining men. He parried aside one opponent’s clumsy thrust and ducked another, bringing Final Strike around and carving a deep gash in one soldier’s thigh. He spun in the opposite direction, elbowing the second man in the mouth. The third soldier’s broadsword opened a gash in his shoulder, but he barely noticed, already committing to an overhead strike. His blade split open the second red-coat’s head.

  A bellow sounded behind him, and he whirled, sensing an attack on his back, only to see Brom charge into the man with the wounded leg. The dwarf drove his head into the man’s gut, driving him back into the wall’s nearest crenel. He hooked the soldier beneath the knees and heaved him over the side. A brief wail was followed by a distant thump and then silence.

  The castle guard with the split lip gaped in surprise, then Creel shouldered into him, knocking him off the inside of the rampart. He crashed through the roof of a storage shed but appeared to survive, moving weakly amid the wreckage, although he likely wouldn’t be back in action for some time.

  “Over here!” Brom waved them over to where a rope was looped around one of the merlons a short distance away.

  Creel glanced back at Rada and saw she was struggling, still ten paces away with two Calcote mercenaries gaining rapidly and three more cresting the stairs. The three on the stairs carried loaded crossbows, which they took a moment to aim and then fired. Creel staggered, a bolt ripping into the bicep of his sword arm. With a growl, he tore it free and ran to aid Rada and hold off the guards.

  “Brom, help Rada down! I’ll hold them off.”

  Rada had fallen to her knees, grasping at her back, and her face was pained. Blood stained her lips, and a moment later, he saw a feathered shaft protruding from the area of her kidney.

  “Oh, gods, no! Rada!”

  “Leave me,” she said, face contorted in pain.

  “Never.” He sprinted toward her for all he was worth.

  The two nearest guards were almost upon Rada, one raising his sword to cut her down. Creel leaped into the air and brought Final Strike down in a mighty two-handed strike. The red-tinged steel cleaved through the soldier’s raised forearm and continued through his shoulder and down to his navel. His torso split apart, blood erupting everywhere. Creel distantly noted his sword’s fullers were filled with blood, and it had come alive in his hands, feeling as light as parchment, the enchantment reaching its peak upon tasting enough blood. He whirled and cut into the next soldier, hewing him apart at the waist, Final Strike feeling almost no resistance. A mess of entrails spilled out as the top half of the man tumbled at the feet of the three crossbowmen. The remaining guards regarded their butchered companions with shock.

  Creel started toward them, feeling nothing but rage over what he knew in his heart to be a fatal wound to his already-ill friend and lover. The remaining mercenaries must have seen their deaths painted on his face in the blood of their friends, for they turned and fled back along the ramparts.

  With an effort of will, he let them go, fearing what he would find when he turned. Brom was crouched over Rada, who was slumped on her knees, a pool of dark blood spreading beneath her. The dwarf’s face was grim when he met Creel’s eyes.

  Another trio of mercenaries was approaching from the opposite direction, Creel noted. He gritted his teeth in a moment of indecision before kneeling at Rada’s side.

  “Flee, you fools,” she said, voice thick with pain. “I’m dead anyway.”

  “I’ll not leave you,” Creel said. He gathered her up gently in his arms, taking care not to jostle the quarrel. She groaned in pain but didn’t try to resist.

  “Go on, Brom. Over the side with you. Selda will have my hide if you don’t make it back.”

  The dwarf nodded and slung his hammer over his shoulder on his baldric hook. He climbed atop the crenel, gripped the rope, and lowered himself over the side of the wall.

  “Dak, watch out.”

  He looked up to see one of the approaching guards aiming a crossbow at him while the other two warily approached with blades in hand.

  “I’ve got these.” Rada’s eyes blazed in her ashen face as power reverberated through the air.

  The crossbowman’s finger moved to pull the trigger, but then his hand deformed as if squeezed in a vice, and the crossbow’s stock snapped in half. The man wailed in agony. An instant later, all three soldiers were swept from the ramparts like dried leaves in a gale, tumbling head over heels until their bodies crunched into the flagstones of the bailey below.

  Creel cradled Rada to his chest and moved to the rope. He leaned over and saw Brom was only halfway down. A wide ledge was formed between the edge of the rocky bluff and the castle wall. Below that was an even greater drop of about twenty paces down to the necropolis below. As he was puzzling out how he’d manage to negotiate the rope while carrying Rada, she gripped him tightly around the neck.

  Blood trickled from her nose and ears, a clear sign she’d overexerted her psionic talent. “One last ride, Dak,” she whispered. “Hold me close.”

  He did so, leaning down to kiss her forehead, tears blurring his vision. Rada smiled, and her eyes blazed. The two of them rose into the air as if held in the palm of a giant hand, her psionic power rippling the air around them. They levitated over the wall and smoothly descended, passing Brom, who had just reached the ledge at the base of the wall, then glided down toward the autumn-colored canopies of trees below.

  A worrisome moment came when Rada’s eyes fluttered and she wheezed for breath. They wobbled in midair, and Creel was afraid they would fall before she regained control. A moment later, they settled onto a broad path in the necropolis.

  Creel’s feet landed gently upon the path, and he knew Rada had expended the last of her energy. He cradled her to his chest as he waited for Brom to climb the rest of the way down and rejoin them. Aware of the sticky blood coating his arms and belly, he looked around for a place to set her down.

  “I’d best tend to that wound,” he said though he knew the act would be futile.

  Rada shook her head gently. “Nay, Dak. ’Tis too late for me. I guess the gods have a sense of humor, eh? Here we are in the graveyard just in time to put me in the ground.” She cupped his cheek, her smile tearing at his heart.

  “Rada…”

  “Shhh. This is how Rada the Knife was always meant to leave this world, falling in heroic battle to save her love, not in some damned sickbed wasting away. You needn’t mourn for me.”

  Creel swallowed hard, words momentarily forsaking him. “Aye, but I’d see you off the warrior’s way, not in the cold ground,” he finally managed.

  “That would be grand.” Her eye
s were starting to lose their focus. “Tell Stormy goodbye for me.”

  “I shall. Until we meet again, my love.”

  Rada smiled, her face serene. In Creel’s mind, the long years were gone, and she was once more the fiery lass he’d first come to love decades earlier. “I’ll await you… in Sabyl’s hall. I had much to say… but no time. Drawer in my d-desk… Read it… my l-love…” She sagged in his arms, the last of her life evanescing away.

  Creel fell to his knees, clutching her to his chest. He wept, his tears falling upon her pale face, and he gently closed those lovely green eyes that had always haunted his thoughts.

  Brom found him a few minutes later, and he sat down heavily beside Creel, clasping one of Rada’s hands in his own. “Ah, gods. Be at peace, Pincushion.” Tears filled his own eyes.

  They kept a silent vigil, honoring Rada the Knife, adventurer and rogue, mind-bender, and dear friend.

  Chapter 38

  Creel couldn’t have said how much time passed, but eventually the sounds of pursuit intruded on the serenity of the necropolis. Armor jingled, and harsh shouts rang out in the distance.

  “Time we be gone from here,” Brom said quietly. “Tilda is waitin’ in the woods with a cart.”

  He nodded and rose, collecting Rada in his arms. Her face was peaceful in death, freed of the wasting ailment that had gnawed at her relentlessly for many months.

  They didn’t have much difficulty evading the guards. Their pursuers made no attempt to approach with any stealth, and the graveyard was vast, filled with thick foliage and tombstones and mausoleums that obscured sight lines. With the excited shouting and jingling armor and crunching of dried leaves underfoot, a half-deaf elephant probably could’ve avoided the guards.

  The pair circled away from their pursuers, heading south toward the newest expansion of the necropolis. They passed outside the original walls and through the newest plots, where the commoner graves lay. A waist-high wall was all that separated the necropolis from the Llantry Woods in that area. Once they clambered over the fieldstone wall, Brom led Creel down a path between the trees, and after a few minutes, they found a small, tarp-covered cart waiting with a familiar pony hitched to it, grazing contentedly.