“Not the biggest,” she said, “there’s a woman, she seems to be their big boss, and as bad as Palder is—and he’s bad—she’s even worse!”
Dannen frowned. “But who are they? How many of them? And what do they have to do with us?”
“Bandits,” the woman said, looking past him at the door as if they were demons, and she was afraid that naming them would call their attention down on her. “As for how many…enough. Forty? Fifty? We’re a small village, with two guards that take shifts.” Her lip was trembling again as she met his eyes, a mixture of anger and sadness in her face. “We never stood a chance.”
“So…” Dannen said, his thoughts struggling to catch up, “you mean that, what? Clint and Palder, and this woman, they’re all part of this group of bandits?”
The woman shook her head, frustrated. “You don’t get it—they’re all part of it. Everyone you saw in the common room, everyone you saw on your way through the village too, likely. They kept me here to wait on them, to serve them drinks and endure their pawing, but the rest of the villagers they locked up in the granary.” She sniffled, rubbing at her eyes as the tears which had sat there began to finally fall. “Their leader, that red-haired she-devil, said they didn’t mean us any harm, but harm came just the same.”
Dannen blinked, remembering the guardswoman who’d come upon the two men claiming to be helping the old unconscious man. He remembered her hair, long and red, remembered thinking of how pretty it was. “This ‘boss,’” he said slowly, “the one with the red hair, she a pretty one? Pretty but kind of…sharp, too?”
The woman stared at him, clearly surprised. “You met her then? Gods, stranger, but you’re lucky to be alive.” She gave a shaky, sobbing sigh. “Luckier than Geller anyway.”
“Geller?” Dannen asked, thinking that he knew who the man must be all too well.
She sniffed, rubbing an arm across her nose again. “Geller is—was—the innkeeper. A good man, always treated me nice, never let anyone…but they didn’t care. When they burst in the inn, everyone was terrified, but not Geller. He tried to fight them and Palder he…he…”
“Killed him?” Dannen finished.
She nodded. “Y-yes.”
The pieces were slowly beginning to click into place, and Dannen was realizing that Mariana had been right after all, and that he’d been a fool. “And the blood that was on the counter…”
“Was Geller’s,” she confirmed. “Those…those bastards killed him. Palder killed him for trying to protect me.”
Dannen shook his head. It didn’t make sense. He knew his luck was bad—had figured that out years ago around the dozenth time someone tried to kill him—but to stumble into a bandit attack on a village just because they were looking for a place to stay was almost too much to believe. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, “really, I am. But…do you know why the bandits are here? What they want?”
“Don’t you get it?” the woman said, meeting his eyes, and there wasn’t just sadness there, not now, there was something else, too—anger. Anger that didn’t seem to be for Palder or any of the other bandits but instead for him. “They’re here for you,” she continued, and there was no doubting the anger, the accusation in her voice now.
“For us?” Dannen asked. “But why? And even if they were, how would they know we were coming at all?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “I heard them talking, said that someone hired them, paid them a heavy sum to come here, but I don’t know any more than that, don’t know who it was.”
Dannen frowned, thinking. There was no shortage of people that wanted him dead, so it wouldn’t do good to give that much thought. However, the list of people who wanted him and the others dead—not to mention who were willing to pay a handsome sum to see it done—and also knew where they were…well, that was a much smaller list. “The duke,” he spat, “it has to be.”
“Duke?” she asked.
But he gave his head a distracted shake, thinking. No, how could it be the duke? The man hadn’t known they even existed until they arrived in his town, or at least he hadn’t seemed to, so he couldn’t have hired the bandits before then. As for after, well, even if he would do such a thing—and Dannen didn’t doubt that he would—any messenger he sent to the bandits would have had a hard time crossing the mountains with both of the bridges no more than piles of rubble at the base of a great ravine. But he realized something else, as he racked his brain for answers. Who had hired the bandits to kill them didn’t matter, at least not at the moment. All that mattered was that they had.
“How long?” he asked.
“What?”
He turned, meeting the woman’s eyes as he sat and began pulling on his boots. “How long until they come?”
She shook her head. “Not long. They just wanted to wait until you were all asleep, or at least that’s what I heard them say. I thought about hiding until it was over…maybe trying to sneak out but you helped me in the common room…you and your friends. So I thought…I thought I’d warn you.” She sniffed. “Not that it’s likely to do much good.”
Dannen finished tugging on his boots then rose, putting an arm on his shoulder. “There’s no way to know that—but thank you. You risked a lot to come here and warn us, and I appreciate it. And I’m sorry…for your friend.”
She nodded slowly, sniffling. “What…what will you do?”
“First, I’ve got to warn my friends. After that…I don’t know. I’m assuming they’re all still down in the common room? The bandits, I mean?”
“Yes. Drinking Geller’s finest ale,” she said.
“Damn. I guess we’ll have to fight them—no other hope for it.”
“All of them?” she said, blinking. “Do…do you think you can defeat that many, you and your friends, I mean?”
Dannen considered the numbers of bandits he’d seen in the common room when he walked in. Forty or fifty total, the woman had said, which meant that nearly all of them, save ten or so, were down there even now, sharpening their blades for the blood to come, most likely. “No,” he said with a sigh, “no I don’t. But it’s not as if we can sneak past them, so what choice do we have?”
“I…might have a solution for that,” she said.
Dannen turned to her. “I’m listening.”
“There’s a room at the end of the hall, Geller’s room. He has a house, but after his wife passed, and his daughter left the village with her husband, it’s just him, and he says he likes to be at the inn, keep an eye on things.” She gave a sad smile. “I think he was probably just lonely. Either way, his room, unlike the rest, has a window. He had it put in on account of he said he liked to look up at the stars, said he thought he could almost see his wife…” She trailed off, giving a quiet sob, then shook her head. “Anyway, maybe you could climb out that way.”
Dannen wasn’t much of a climber, and the gods knew he’d had enough of it when he’d nearly fallen off the mountainside, but then he wasn’t much of a fan of getting skewered on a bandit’s blade either, so he nodded. “Thank you, miss…”
“Name’s Delilah,” she said.
He offered his hand and she took it. “Dannen. Anyway, thank you, Delilah, for warning me. Now, you’d better go back downstairs—if you stay up here too long, they’ll start to wonder, and I don’t want you getting in any trouble on our account.”
She nodded then forced a smile. “Of course. Though, I think I’m in trouble either way.”
With that, she moved to the table, grabbing the tray and lifting the covering off. “Your dinner, sir.”
Dannen grabbed the key from the platter and looked at her. “To Geller’s room?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Thank you, again. And I’m sorry, Delilah. About…well, about all of it.”
She met his eyes then gave a slow nod. “Me too. Good luck, Dannen.”
“I’ll send help,” Dannen said, and the woman paused with her hand on the door knob. “When we get away, I mean. I’ll sen
d help.”
She gave him a small smile, one that was at once appreciative and one that showed that she believed that, if any help came, it would be far too late to save her or those she cared about. Then she opened the door quietly and walked through it.
He watched her leave, wishing there was something he could do for her, wishing there was something he could do for the other townsfolk. But as much as he might wish it, he knew that he and his four companions would stand no chance against forty or fifty bandits, not in an open fight, and somehow he doubted that they’d be willing to face them one at a time, queuing in a line for the privilege.
No, they would stand no chance, that was all. The best hope for them and the villagers was for them to make it away and send help. He glanced at Fedder on the bed, still snoring away, and wondered if the man would have continued snoring even while the bandits’ knives did their work. Likely, he would have. “Fedder,” he said, “get up.”
The mage didn’t answer but continued to slumber on, and Dannen, knowing they were running out of time and that the bandits might show up at any minute, moved to the bed and slapped the man hard across the face.
Fedder grunted, his eyes snapping open. “What? Who’s there?”
Dannen sighed. “It’s me and keep your voice down.”
“Butcher?” the man asked frowning, as if it was just as likely that some stranger had wandered into his room. Which, considering what the bandits had planned, Dannen supposed wasn’t that far from the truth.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
The man winced, rubbing his face. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“We have to get out of here—now. It’s a trap.”
To the mage’s credit, he didn’t ask any questions, only leapt from the bed in one smooth motion that would have left Dannen’s back hurting for weeks. His eyes scanned the room, looking for a threat. “Where?” the big man growled. “Where are they?”
“Most of them are down in the common room just now, I’d imagine, drawing lots for who gets the privilege of killing us.”
Fedder frowned. “The villagers?”
“Not villagers,” Dannen said. “Bandits. Bandits someone hired to make sure we never left Yarrow alive. Now, no more questions—we don’t have much time. We have to go get the others.”
The mage nodded, a grim expression on his face, not that Dannen could blame him. If a tavern full of people eager to murder him wasn’t enough to dampen a man’s mood then he didn’t know what was. He moved toward the door, Fedder behind him, and eased it open, peering down the hall.
Despite the fears crowding Dannen’s mind, the hallway was empty, the would-be murderers most likely busy making sure to stay hydrated—an important concern, you had the murder of four people on your agenda.
“Stay quiet and stay low,” Dannen whispered back to Fedder. “The last thing we need is for someone to catch a glimpse of your ugly mug and decide the killin’ needs to get done right now.”
And with that, they began creeping across the landing. He could hear the sounds of laughter and talk from the common room below. It was only a short distance, no more than a few dozen feet, but Dannen was sweating by the time they reached Tesler’s door, his heart thundering in his chest. He tried the latch only to remember, even as he did, that the young man had locked it at his urging.
For a moment, he only stared at the door at a loss. He didn’t have any tools to pick the door’s lock with and wouldn’t have known the first thing about using them even if he had. After all, he wasn’t the type of man who went around breaking into other people’s doors. As a general rule, he was the one getting broken in on.
He was still frowning, trying to decide what to do, when Fedder reached past him and with a casualness that beggared the imagination, grabbed the door handle and pushed it forward. The door was locked. Dannen knew the door was locked, yet for all of the lack of resistance it showed it may as well not have been, and in another moment it swung open easily, the only indication that it had been locked at all the broken metal clasp and splintered wood hanging from its side.
In spite of the danger they faced, Dannen found himself staring, blinking at the mage. Fedder noticed him watching him then gave a small shrug. “There’s a bit of a trick to it. Guess I’ve forgotten the key to my room a few times, got some experience at it.”
A bit of a trick to it. “Sure,” Dannen said, quite sure that the “trick” was having arms as big as tree trunks and a strength that would make trolls jealous. Still, he didn’t have time to sit around and gawk, not now. He eased through the doorway, wincing at each creak of the frame.
With no window to let in the light, the room was dark, covered in shadows, and the only illumination came from the narrow crack the mage left in the door after he stepped through to stand beside Dannen. In that poor light, he could just make out the shape of Tesler lying in the bed, his back turned to them. At least, he hoped it was Tesler. If the bandits were so comfortable in their ability to kill him and the others that they had decided to take care of the young man and then take a nap in his bed before getting on with it, then he and the others were in more trouble than he’d reckoned—and he’d reckoned a lot.
He was just starting toward the bed, meaning to give the man a quiet shake to rouse him, when what little light there was suddenly vanished as the door slammed shut behind them. “What the—” Fedder began. There was a grunt of surprise or pain, likely both, and Dannen felt, more than saw, the mage flung across the room to strike the wall, hard. Fedder let out a groan, and Dannen could just make out his shadowed figure as he slumped to the ground, unconscious or well on his way.
Dannen stared, shocked, trying to understand. He had opened the door, had seen the room, and there had been no one, it couldn’t—his thoughts cut off as he heard a sound, but not just any sound…a quiet pitter-patter on the wooden floorboards. It seemed to be all around him, and he continued turning, spinning in the darkness, trying to track it. At first, he saw nothing, and he felt a growing, budding panic.
Then, in the darkness, a light bloomed. Two lights, two small, golden spheres, the eyes of some animal, were watching him from a few feet away. Something small, no bigger than a dog, certainly, and he was just beginning to decide that surely it must be the young man’s squirrel—a fact which seemed to be supported by the quiet chittering he’d heard—when something strange happened.
Those eyes, and the vague, shadowed figure to which they were attached, began to grow higher off the ground, higher and higher until they were on a level with Dannen’s own. And then…higher still, until whatever this strange, shadowed creature was stared down at him from over a foot higher. It did not chatter now, this creature. Instead, the sound that came from it was a sort of growling, chomping sound, one that would have seemed far more at home coming from a bear than any squirrel.
Dannen had seen many creatures in his time, creatures that most people had the luxury of believing were no more than a myth, but whatever it was that shared the darkness with him was like nothing he had ever seen before, and he felt a thrill of fear as it began to lumber closer.
He knew then that he was going to die. He’d had the feeling before, of course, when facing a pissed-off unicorn, or a furious troll, a thousand other times, but never had it felt so powerful, so inarguable. He was going to die. Badly. Anything that could throw the hulking mage across the room with seemingly no difficulty could deal with him easily enough, particularly when he couldn’t see it or, at least, could see no more than its massive outline.
The thing moved closer toward him still, and it was only feet away when Fedder spoke. “Dannen?” he asked in a voice that was clearly in pain. “What…what happened?”
At the sound of the mage’s voice, the creature, whatever it was, spun away from Dannen, taking its piercing, freezing golden gaze with it, and then, it was gone, its hulking form nowhere to be seen, as if Dannen had only imagined it.
“I…I don’t know,” Dannen managed, his breath rasping
and shallow.
Before the mage could respond, light suddenly bloomed in the darkness of the room, and it was all Dannen could do to suppress the squeak of fear that threatened to come. He turned to the source of the light, thinking that whatever that terrible creature was would soon be revealed. Instead, all he saw was the young man Tesler holding a lamp and sitting up in bed, a confused expression on his face. “Dannen?” he asked, his voice thick and confused with sleep. Then he turned and Dannen followed his gaze to where Fedder half-sat half-lay against the room’s far wall, an unfocused quality to the mage’s own bewildered stare that showed he’d taken a hard hit. “Fedder?” the young man asked. “What…what are you two doing here?”
“I…” Dannen began, licking his lips, still scanning the room, sure that, any moment, he would see the creature, whatever it was, preparing to strike. “There…there was something here. A…a monster.”
“A monster?” Tesler asked, frowning.
“A big one,” Fedder agreed with a groan as he slowly worked his way to his feet, using the wall for support.
“I…I don’t understand,” Tesler answered.
“Well,” Dannen said slowly, “that makes three of us. It was big, alright, and it had…glowing eyes. Like some sort of animal, a bear maybe or…” He cut off, frustrated, giving his head a shake. “I don’t know.”
“A…bear,” Tesler said. “Are…I mean…are you sure that you didn’t…dream it?”
Dannen turned to look at the man. “In my experience, dreams don’t sling you across the room, lad. Besides, why in the name of the gods would I be asleep in your room?” No sooner had he finished speaking than there was a rustling in the blankets still draped over the young man’s lap and suddenly his small squirrel companion appeared, eyeing Dannen.
Dannen frowned, staring at it. Chittering. He remembered hearing chittering, and the pitter-patter of something small on the wooden floors. Something that might well have been the feet of a small animal. A cat, maybe, a dog. Or…a squirrel. He watched the creature, who brought its hands up to its face and began to rub them against it, as if there was an itch it couldn’t scratch, yet as it did this, its eyes never left him.
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