***
“Is it now?” cried Parcifal as she swung Encelados fiercely over her head, the blade glowing blue hot. Lernea had her back, arrows flying from her bow with a trained, fast pace.
“Now is not the time, really!” shouted Lernea and the body of an orc clad in chainmail fell flat a couple of feet away from her, two arrows protruding from its head viscerally.
“Phew! What a putrid smell!” said Winceham, attracting aggravated looks from Ned even in the thick of battle. The halfuin was ready to make a wry comment when his senses alerted him to a new threat. He stepped on the ledge of the promenade and vaulted himself into the air with a backflip; the next moment he landed on the wooden floor, his tiny yet lethal blade stuck in the neck of an orc. Vile green blood gushed in spurts as the orc toppled and fell off the promenade and onto the void of space, without so much as a gurgling sound.
“That came too close, Wince!” shouted Ned and reloaded his crossbow with a new bolt. He took aim at two orcs who were rushing the sisters with a pair of raised bucklers. Ned took his time before he let fly a shot; it missed wildly at the last moment. The orcs drew their weapons, a murky blood-spat axe and a rough whaler’s spear. Ned was already reloading.
“Incoming, lasses!” cried Winceham and filled his sling with a hefty ball of lead, a memoir from the ship’s armory.
Parcifal was locked in a swordfight with the orc that was, in all probability, the gang’s leader. It was a tall, brutish orc with a lisp; he wore real mail and the nasty ability to dodge and parry like the devil’s barbed tail. Lernea heard the halfuin’s warning just in time; she quickly loaded her bow with two arrows and knelt cooly. The crowd applauded at the apparently rare exhibit of teamwork the party was providing; most of the boardwalk was filled with people wanting to take a peek at the unscheduled fight.
“Yer worth the money, ya ferretth!” cried the tall orc, as he parried yet another blow from Parcifal aimed squarely at the small gap at his neck, between his helmet and his armor. Lernea held her breath and let the arrows fly even as the orcs were ready to leap onto her; the next instant, their weapons were flying harmlessly in the air, all the rush of their wielders diminished with a sudden flop. The two orcs were lying slumped against the floor, an arrow having pierced their skulls clean through.
“Blathted windth o’ Morrogah! I thould’ve athked for double the coin!” shouted the tall brute of an orc. He then dodged a blow that would’ve cut his arm off in the nick of time and managed to tackle Parcifal with a sweep of his leg, dropping her on the ground. All of a sudden, there was a blinding flash of light; thick smoke covered everything as far as anyone from the party could see. A mistimed flurry of missiles was absorbed into the cloud harmlessly.
“Is everyone alright?” asked Ned and coughed slightly as the thick smoke made it difficult to breath.
“Short bloke’s team won! Pay up, ya sorry gippos!” said a delighted, rough voice coming from somewhere outside the smoke cloud that was slowly clearing up. The cheery tone of his voice was starkly contrasted by a lot of muttering and swearing for those that had placed the losing bet.
Parcifal stood back on her feet, panting from the exertion. Encelados had never left her grasp; the blade was silver gray again, yet stained with dried orcish blood, the colour of weathered copper.
“I couldn’t land a single blow,” she said in a whisper and wiped the sweat on her furrowed brow with her free palm.
The promenade slowly returned to its more usual hubbub; the traders at the stalls picked up from they had left and started shouting their offers of smelly sea-urchins-on-a-stick, while groups of sailors were busy smashing cups of grog against each other’s head again. A few of the intelligentsia even applauded the party as the smoke eventually cleared and cheered them on for an entertaining, well-performed fight. A couple even tossed some coin at Ned and Winceham’s feet.
“How do they dare mock us?” asked Lernea as she was rounding up her arrows from all the orc bodies she had felled. Ned wasn’t sure about the crowd’s reaction; he looked up, around the trees’ giant leaves and branches where other boardwalks snaked their way. Up there, all around, small gangs of crowds amassed as well, gazing from shady balconies and lit terraces alike. By the looks of it, deadly combat counted as entertainment for these people. It was a troubling idea that the halfuin was quick to analyze more fully.
“Nah, they’re just being appreciative. A good fight’s always a good fight around places like these. The jokes helped as well,” said Winceham offering his own perspective as he gathered the coins, as well as any and all valuables the orcs carried on their persons, especially if those that showed any teeth.
“I didn’t tell any jokes,” said Ned without being completely sure. The halfuin produced a pair of pliers from his belt and went for an orc’s mouth.
“See, that helped since it didn’t spoil the mood,” said Winceham as he pulled out what looked like a silver, saw-like tooth.
“Everyone’s a critic. I see,” said Ned as he looked around, vaguely searching for something specific.
“Where is Bo?” asked Lernea with a contemplative look on her face. All of them exchanged strange looks before gazing at various random points around them.
“He should be with Theo,” said Ned and kept searching in the shuffling crowd around them in vain.
“Where is that oddball?” asked Parcifal, looking positively miffed and genuinely tired, all because of the swordfight. Lernea looked at her sister sternly.
“Princesses have to adhere to certain principles, sister. You can’t just use any word. ‘Oddball’ sounds rather demeaning. ‘Special’ is much more appropriate in Theo’s case.”
“Call him daft if you like, but he’s missing, that’s for sure,” said Winceham and sat down to have a smoke.
“Are you sure?” Ned asked, sounding rather shaken.
“I just said that’s for sure,” reiterated the halfuin, and stuffed his pipe with a generous amount of tobacco, before adding with a measure of apathy, “and those two weirdos aren’t the only missing items.”
Ned realised it immediately then; it was Lernea who voiced it on cue.
“The chair. It’s gone,” said the exiled princess with a flush of anger on her face.
“Forget about the chair now! Theo and Bo are missing!” said Ned.
“There’s no bodies lying around,” said Winceham after shooting a mere glance and exhaled a cloud of smoke as if it somehow added validity to his point.
“This is serious Wince. They’re probably in danger and it’s my fault. It’s all my fault,” said Ned and shook his head.
“Since when is everything your fault?” asked Lernea. Ned looked at her with a sudden, yet restrained anger.
“Isn’t it? It’s how it all started, isn’t it?”
“Stop being foolish. I don’t suffer fools gladly. And you’re not one, I can tell. I’ve developed a keen eye for them over the years.”
Lernea walked over to Ned’s side. Parcifal asked with a feeling of uncertainty:
“Are you referring to me?”
“Usually I’d chide you for being so self-absorbed, but I did have you in mind,” replied Lernea.
“Would you mind your step please, missus?” said a tall, lank fellow with a bland, ghostly pale face who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. An almost identical man beside him was pulling a rather large handcart. They were dressed in simple, loose-fitting violet-colored robes and matching sandals. The two men began to load one of the bodies onto the cart.
“What are you doing?” asked Lernea as if someone had just spilled milk and cookies on her palace’s most expensive rug.
“Just clearing up the promenade. If you don’t mind,” came an answer without any sort of color in the voice, except perhaps bland indifference.
Suddenly, an arrow zipped through the air and got stuck on the pale-faced man’s back. He slightly furrowed his brow, smiled hesitantly, and fell dead right on top of the body he was carrying. Lernea too
k a step back reflexively and saw there was a note attached to the arrow. The other man in the robe observed a moment’s silence and nodded to himself pensively.
“Mack always said he wanted to go out on the job. You know, doing something notable,” said the dead man’s colleague and continued with the job of loading the bodies without another word. Lernea overcame her shocked surprise and read the note. Her face became an oblique mask of harsh determination.
“They have Bo. And the device,” she said flatly but her eyes shone fiercely.
“The grog dispenser?” asked Winceham simply out of curiousity, sending tiny circles of smoke up in the air without so much as batting an eyelid.
“The thaumaturgic device,” replied Ned searching their surroundings for signs of the messenger, to no avail.
“The what?” asked Winceham once again, as if he were hard of hearing.
“The grog dispenser, yes,” said Parcifal irritated, tying up a small gash with some clean cloth she always carried. Lernea pondered at the note for a moment.
“That means, they don’t have Theo,” she said and her face turned thoughtful.
“Who are ‘they’?” asked Parcifal, wiping off the rest of the orcish blood from Encelados with one sudden sweep of the blade.
“The Culprits,” said Lernea, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes, I heard that. I mean, who are they?” insisted Parcifal.
“It’s signed, ‘The Culprits’! With a capital ‘C’!” shouted Lernea angrily. Winceham was lying down on the promenade totally relaxed, even when the body collector started washing away the thick, green sticky pools of blood lying about.
“It says that if we try to do anything funny - and I quote - the bunny will snuff it. They promise to return him, once they’re done.”
“That still doesn’t mean much. Done with what? Making stew out of him?” said the halfuin.
“That’s not funny. We’ll have to find out what it means ourselves,” said Ned.
“What about Theo?” asked Lernea. Ned shrugged and paused for a moment. At length, he said:
“Maybe he’s lost. Maybe he was scared, I don’t know. Maybe he’s just fooling around, who can tell? It’s Theo. Then again, if we find Bo, it should be easier to track down Theo, and vice versa. Him and Bo, they have this..”
“Affinity,” chimed in Lernea and added, “We’ll just need to ask around. And we need to know what happened to Theo’s people.”
“How do we go about that? We just got jumped in plain view. Was it those Culprits’ doing? The place seems to be full of gangs like these. Still, we don’t want to attract too much attention, especially not now,” said Ned and crossed his arms against his chest.
“I think I know the right man for the job. Well, almost a man,” Lernea said and shot a gaze full of meaning at Winceham, followed by a grin. The halfuin noticed, exhaled a puff of smoke and said with utmost sincerity and a misguided sense of manliness:
“I knew you’d come around. It must be the smell of danger, isn’t it? Ladies just love the smell of danger around me.”
Party of Five - Book II Page 3
