by Eric Nylund
Elmac dug in his pocket and got his pipe. “That be a wee bit odd, since the Lords cannot be getting involved directly with the Game, or be giving orders to their players.” He turned to Morgana. “You ever be hearing such orders from on high?”
“I was told my choices are mine to make in the Game,” Morgana replied. “Past the initial meet and greet, you’re never supposed to hear from your clan’s sponsors again. Except of course us druid and cleric types.” One corner of her mouth curled into a smirk. “The gods give inspirations and visions, and we do rituals and pray, but all Game references are filtered out. We can’t ask. They can’t tell.”
Morgana glanced at the remaining unsearched corpses. She knelt next to them and tapped open loot windows. “And speaking of inspirations…” From thin air, she plucked out a scroll tube.
She gave it a few prods with her dental picks. “No traps” —she tossed it to me— “that I can find.”
The case was ivory with scrimshawed whaling ships and plesiosaurs. I popped the cap off. Inside was a parchment that I took out and unrolled.
“That be another clue?” Elmac asked and inched closer.
“No such luck,” I told him. “Just our friend the Red Knight.”
I held out the now-familiar WANTED poster.
Elmac took a glance at it. “That fellow gets around.”
Morgana snatched the parchment from me. “This is the same bloke Harlix and his gang was looking for, yeah? Blimey, he’s worth 50,000 quins dead now. Why would an assassin have this? Elmac, you’ve seen this before? Where?”
“In Low District,” he told her. “And the Bloody Rooster. In fact, went up all over High Hill the day before” —he gestured around— “this all be starting.”
Morgana looked like she had something more to say, but remained silent as she stared at the sketch of the Red Knight.
I would have pressed her, but what Elmac had said a moment ago still rattled around in my skull. The gods didn’t, couldn’t, give their players direct orders or information.
So that meant the person who’d put the hit on us had done so on their own initiative. They’d have to hate us enough to warrant such an exorbitant revenge. Furthermore, if the reason for that hatred was as I’d guess—stopping the demonic invasion of High Hill—then they’d also have to know who had been responsible for that.
Only one person fit that description.
William Savage.
Okay, technically he knew it was only me, Elmac, Pendric, Morgana, and Colonel Delacroix. It wasn’t too much of a stretch, though, to think he’d have a contact in Duke Opinicus’s organization to get the rest of the details.
Plus, he had extra motivation to want us dead—to get back into the good graces of his demon prince masters.
I opened my Message Center.
There were no new correspondences from my brother.
I tapped out a quick message to him:
>_Hektor Saint-Savage: We DO need to talk. RIGHT NOW.
ALERT:
William Savage has BLOCKED all messages from Hektor Saint-Savage.
He was blocking me now?
“So guys…” Morgana whispered, “about those Red Knights?”
“Hang on a sec,” I told her. “And it’s not ‘knights.’ There’s just the one.”
“Think you’re wrong about that, Hektor.”
I turned to her.
Morgana faced the broken gates. In a smooth silent motion she unsheathed her daggers.
A fog had rolled in and wavered at the edges of the compound. By the flickering firelight, the mist looked as if it were boiling.
Figures emerged from the mist—odd creatures with two heads and many limbs.
No, there were knights on horseback… and on bison… one rode a bear?… and another on a gigantic gray wolf. There were twenty of them, with lances pointed in a most unfriendly direction.
They wore angular slabs of plate mail that looked so heavy I doubted they could have stood without assistance. …And I counted five among them whose armor was red (almost cherry red, actually, in the ruddy light of the fire).
With a jolt of recognition, I then spotted three familiar non-knights in their ranks: the stylish swashbuckler, Cassie Longstrider riding the monster wolf; on foot was the slate blue, nail-crowned Harlix Hadri; and wearing his curved-horn helmet and sitting astride that huge obsidian-black bear, was Grimhalt.
Cassie waved to me and smiled.
I got chills as I recalled the text from our latest quest: “Avoid Syndicate assassins and/or survive the evening in the Grasslands.”
This had to be the “AND” option.
We were on foot against mounted opponents, and I’d seen just how effectively cavalry could destroy infantry.
We needed to get on our…
I cast about. Our bison were nowhere to be seen.
“Do we fight or run?” Morgana asked, trying to look everywhere at once.
Elmac and I stepped to her side.
“Run,” I whispered. “And when they chase us down—we fight.”
CHAPTER 42
We sprinted for the nearest corner of the compound. If we could get there, the walls would protect our flanks and keep the knights from running us down. With a little luck, we’d be able to boost over the wall and escape.
A good tactic, if Elmac had been a sprinter. He wasn’t even an especially good runner, though, and after six strides Morgana and I were far ahead of him.
So we ran back to Elmac, stood our ground… and the knights easily overtook and surrounded us.
Harlix walked up and stood with the knights. His hands were open and spread apart in a gesture of peace. “Please lower your weapons and come with us,” he said.
I might have actually heard the guy out if Grimhalt hadn’t piped up.
“Or fight if you want,” Grimhalt said, his words dripping sarcasm. “You’ll still be coming, just more… tenderized.” He smacked his mace into his gauntleted hand in case we missed the subtlety of his argument.
Charming fellow. I wished Elmac hadn’t talked us out of murdering him when we’d had the chance.
Morgana had heard enough. With a snarl, she shifted to her panther form.
Or at least started the transformation.
Cassie Longstrider held up a heart-shaped charm. It shed a pink light that forced Morgana’s metamorphosis to shift gears… and instead of becoming a fearsome two-hundred-pound cat, she shrank to a mouse.
Mouse Morgana’s growl turned into a squeak of surprised outrage and she scampered for the grass.
Cassie whistled.
A white eagle plummeted from the dark and pounced upon the mouse. The raptor returned to Cassie, who took the proffered prize (thankfully alive and in one piece) and popped Morgana into a tiny cage.
Elmac cried havoc and charged.
Harlix flexed his hands.
From nowhere came a rattling and clattering of metal. Chains materialized about my dwarven companion, wrapped tight, and seemed to anesthetize the poor guy because he toppled over… snoring.
Neat spell, that.
And what did I do? I’d like to say that I fought to the very end and pounded a dozen knights flat.
Not quite how I played it.
Clearly, the neutral ground of the Waypoint Inn that prevented PvP combat was no longer in effect… probably because there was no more Waypoint Inn. It also looked as if Harlix had a way around the game rule that prevented players more than five levels apart from fighting one another—as he was twelfth level, and Elmac merely third.
I was outgunned, outnumbered, and with Harlix on the scene, I suspected outsmarted as well. I was low on health and mana and exhausted from the previous battle. If I fought, I’d lose.
So… I surrendered.
I don’t know how the Marines work on your Earth, but on mine, they never surrender (the actions of the Pacific 4th Marine Regiment in WWII being debatable).
I was not, however, giving up my weapons (since I was a weapon
), and I had every intention of resisting the enemy (by staying conscious long enough to find a way to rescue Morgana and Elmac).
At least, that’s how I justified it. I nonetheless burned with shame and heard the howls of every Marine who had given their lives rather than do what I just had.
I was hooded, bound, and tossed over the hindquarters of a horse.
For hours I bounced along and then got dropped onto the ground like a sack of stones.
A few additional restraints were then added to my person. Chains hobbled my feet. Behind my back, manacles secured my wrists. As an extra special measure, an iron bar between those manacles spread my arms apart, wide enough to be just this side of medieval torture.
I was flattered they thought me so dangerous.
Some jerk yanked the hood off my head.
My vision was blurry from the long stretch of sensory deprivation. It was dark and wherever I was smelled like old concrete, water, dust. A cave?
The half-melted features of Grimhalt resolved as my eyes adjusted.
“Oh, so sorry,” he said. “Was that too rough?”
“I’m sure you can’t help it,” I croaked, “having been spanked every night by your mother before bed. Childhood issues are the worst, aren’t they?”
His left eye twitched. Must have hit close to the mark.
Grimhalt hauled back his gauntleted fist.
Cassie caught Grimhalt’s bicep, checking his motion.
Too bad. Apparently, Grimhalt had forgotten he’d sworn an oath to his Wild Hunt gods never to harm a Hero of Thera. I would have liked to have seen what they would have done to him.
“Don’t,” Cassie told him and glanced over her shoulder. “Not until you know who has his say.”
Grimhalt grumbled, dropped his arm, and skulked off like a moody teenager.
“You seem like a reasonable fellow, Saint-Savage,” Cassie said. “Play nice with Grimhalt. He has issues socializing with other children his age.”
“Let me loose,” I whispered, “and I can show you how reasonable I can be.”
Cassie took off her ostrich-plumed pirate hat and stared into my eyes. “Tempting, but no. You’re too smart and charming for your own good. Mine too.” She then held a flask of water to my mouth.
I drank the whole thing. “Thanks.”
She patted my cheek. “Make life easier and behave, okay?” She strode off.
I watched her go and wondered what her story was. She didn’t seem as maniacal as Grimhalt, as frightening as Harlix, or as evil as Yamina. Then again, it could be an act. She could be part of the Silent Syndicate for all I knew.
But they’d taken us alive, which ran counter to the whole assassination thing.
An escort of six knights marched me through the dark (at a snail’s pace due to my restraints).
There was light ahead—magically glowing rocks set every ten paces. I could see now that we were in a limestone passage with dripping stalactites.
Could we be in the hills west of the Grasslands? Or had we backtracked through the gate to Thera? No telling.
We emerged into a grand cavern the size of a stadium. There was a strong breeze and cooking fires spiced the air with alder wood smoke and percolating coffee.
More knights camped here. They stopped talking and mending their armor and stared at me.
I counted fifty, then stopped.
Okay, not assassins—not with all the heavy plate armor lying about being meticulously repaired and oiled. I also didn’t get that “bandit” vibe from them. Too neat and organized. No, this had the feel of a military camp.
I noticed that one in ten of them had the red-brown colored armor that had been sketched on the WANTED poster.
If they were doing what I thought they were doing… it was ingenious.
The poster had shown only the Red Knight and mentioned his “band of cutthroats.” The Red Knight could have been anyone when they wore that armor. He could pop up in several places at once and be impossible to kill, for if one Red Knight fell in battle, another would simply step up to claim the title.
My knight escorts pushed me ahead.
Before me upon a dais of rippled limestone was a throne. It was stout enough for an ogre to sit upon and made entirely of skulls, most from large animals, but yes, there were a few artfully placed humanoid skulls that stared down at me.
Cassie hauled Elmac’s snoring carcass next to me.
She unlocked a padlock securing his magical chains. They fell away and faded to nothing.
Elmac started, coughed, and sat bolt upright. “Did we win?”
He reached for a battle axe that wasn’t there—with an arm he no longer had. His prosthetic had been removed on our journey.
“Oh, suppose not then,” he whispered.
“It was close,” I lied.
Cassie then set a tiny cage on the ground and opened it.
Lightning quick—a mouse darted out.
Cassie pinned her tail. “Not so fast, sister rat,” she said. “Run off and we’ll be obliged to kill your friends. It’s not a good time to test anyone’s patience.”
The mouse ceased struggling and gave a tiny exhale of defeat.
Cassie took out the charm she’d used before and waved it over the mouse.
Morgana became Morgana once more.
“Bloody rudest thing ever.” Morgana stabbed a glare filled with daggers at Cassie.
Cassie merely tilted her head in reply and then proceeded to relieve Morgana of twenty assorted weapons and various lock picks and tools secreted on her person. Cassie allowed Morgana to keep her leather armor on, though, so there was a modicum of professional courtesy.
The knights in the cavern gathered about us. With lit torches and unwavering, unfriendly gazes, it set the scene for a nice cozy lynching.
“So,” I asked Cassie, “how do you execute prisoners here? Drowning in wine, I hope?”
She gave a soft laugh. “I always thought the Duke of Clarence got off easy for his treachery. But for you, I’ll be happy to put in a good word.”
I was surprised she got the reference. Cassie must come from a version of Earth similar enough to mine to have had a War of the Roses, and a King Edward who executed his brother by such an imaginative means.
Harlix made his way through the crowd.
The knights parted for him. Of course, they did, he was a powerful high-level wizard (not to mention his eerie skin and creepy crown of nails). Who wouldn’t get out of his way? The way they looked at him, though, it was more grudging tolerance than the respect I’d have expected if he led this bunch.
Harlix halted next to the throne of bones. He smoothed his star-filled robe, and said, “My apologies for the extreme methods used to bring you here.”
“Easy enough to make amends,” Morgana said. “Let us go and all’s forgiven.”
He gave her a weak smile. “I will, but I require the answers to a few simple questions first.”
Yeah, I trusted this guy as much as Yamina, Mr. Null, or my brother, William “the Bloody” Savage.
“If you be asking questions,” Elmac said, fidgeting, “be asking them and get it over with. I’m hungry and hungover and want my arm back.”
Grimhalt shoved his way to Harlix’s side and pointed at Elmac. “That’s the one I told you about,” he whispered.
Harlix nodded, then to Elmac said, “Mr. Argenté-Wolfram, you are from Thera, yes?”
Elmac frowned, seeming to take a second to recognize his new name. “Aye, I be the nephew to Count Augustus Wolfram of the Grand House ’o Seven Hammers. Eighty-fifth in line to the Peacock Throne. ’O course I be from ruddy Thera.”
Elmac had mentioned his new incarnation was half mountain dwarf and half mithril dwarf, and that he’d been “quite the scandal.” Bastard royalty?
Gasps of astonishment rippled among the knights.
Curious reaction. But maybe it was the response any knight would give after realizing they’d just manhandled a true royal. Wasn’t there a
code or something? Until now, I’d thought the “knight” title I’d been calling these jokers was a euphemism, part of their act. Maybe not.
“And you are new to our…” Harlix waved about his head, a gesture anyone but a player would dismiss as swatting at a gnat. “…endeavor?”
“As you can plainly see,” Elmac replied.
Harlix could literally see Elmac’s name, level, and clan affiliation on his placard. So why ask?
“And you three were in High Hill a few days ago?” Harlix went on.
“Sure,” I said. “So were you. We saw you outside the Rooster as it burned to the ground. What’s your point?”
“A moment more of your indulgence please.” He closed his eyes and held out his fingertips as if touching, feeling, searching for something I couldn’t see. The nails embedded about his forehead sank deeper into his skull.
“He’s got some blinking truth magic, I bet,” Morgana murmured to me. “Careful with your words, mate.”
Okay, in that light, this made more sense. He might be testing our responses to questions he knew the answers to, to get a baseline.
Well, question-and-answer sessions could work both ways.
“You three were looking for the Red Knight before,” I asked and waved to the assembled warriors. “So you found—what? His band of not-so-merry outlaws?”
“Not outlaws, you idiot,” Grimhalt spat. “Anyone with eyes can see they’re the finest legion of—”
Harlix turned to him and black flames crackled in his eyes.
If that was an illusion, it was a good one. I felt the heat from those tiny fires five paces away.
Grimhalt shut his trap and took a step back.
A legion, huh? That fit with the whole military look and feel of the camp, and their reaction to Elmac’s royal status. I was now convinced they were true “Sirs” and “Dames.” But that begged the question: why were real knights roaming the countryside as wanted bandits?
Harlix regained his composure and nodded at me and Morgana. “You two came to Thera a month ago, yes?”
Morgana and I exchanged a look. It was an odd question to ask, even if he was getting a baseline for his lie-detecting magic.
