Defiant Guardians Anthology

by Jacob Peppers

  The rest were only the minor bruises and scrapes a man could expect when fighting for his life. Not bad, all told, for someone woken up in the middle of the night with two men trying to kill him. He bared his teeth at the memory. His door being kicked in, two men, Hale’s men, he was sure of that, charging into his room, their swords drawn.

  And just how had they known it was his room, anyway? Soon, he’d have to pay a visit to Sloan, the inn’s owner, and have a long talk, maybe one of those talks where somebody stops breathing. Still, he’d left the bastard a mess to clean up anyway. The two assassins had died, but they hadn’t died easy, Aaron had made sure of that, and he suspected Hale would have some hard questions for Sloan when his men didn’t come back.

  Maybe you should have just said yes, a part of him thought. A sellsword’s life was no easy one, after all. Taking jobs a man would rather pay good coin to get someone else to do than risk himself at, not to mention the fact that half your employers tried to kill you when the thing was done. No more wondering where his next meal was coming from, no more looking over his shoulder. Hale was, after all, one of the most powerful crime lords in the Downs, matched only by Grinner. Not a purse was stolen or a pocket picked in the Downs that one of the two didn’t get their cut. Would it really be so bad to have some stability? Some people looking out for him?

  But no. He was not a good man, he knew that about himself, had known it for many years now, but he’d promised Darrell, the man who’d taken him in and taught him the sword, that he would not become a criminal, and so he would not. Besides, fuck Hale. The man would learn that being told no to a job offer wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. Aaron would make sure of it.

  A knock on the door pulled him from his reverie, and his eyes snapped up, his hand darting to his sword where it lay on the bed, “Who is it?”

  “Dayna, sir,” the woman said, “come with your food.”

  He kept the sword in hand as he opened the door and took a step back to let her in. The woman held a bowl of steaming soup, and Aaron found his mouth watering as she brought it inside and put it on the nightstand. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he smelled the aroma of cooked meat and vegetables. He frowned as another man entered the room, straining and dragging something behind him.

  Aaron frowned, “Who’s this?”

  “Hmm?” The girl asked, her eyes roaming over his bare torso before finally looking to the doorway. “Oh, don’t mind him, sir, that’s just Olem. He’s a simpleton, you understand, can’t talk, but he’s as strong as an ox. Benjin keeps him around the place to do odd jobs for him.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust, “Though I can’t say as I know why anyone’d want to keep a half-wit like him around.”

  “I don’t know,” Aaron said, meeting her gaze, “maybe having someone around that knows how to keep their mouth shut isn’t such a bad thing. Anyway, what’s he doing?”

  Her face turned red at that, and she opened her mouth to say something before thinking better of it. When she did speak, her tone was abrupt, obviously angry, “I thought as maybe you’d like a bath to wash all that blood off. They’s a well in the basement the water comes up just as hot as you please. Though can’t say as why I bothered if’n I’m just going to get talked to like a piece of trash anyway.”

  If you don’t want to be treated like trash, stop acting like it, Aaron thought, but he managed to keep the words back. Barely. “Thanks, but I didn’t order a bath.”

  “It won’t cost you none extra. Besides, if’n you lay on the bed with those clothes on, why you’ll get it filthy and who’ll be doing the wash? Not that spoiled Anna, that’s for sure, no not the sort of work for her. Why it’ll be poor old Dayna has to spend her day soakin’ em and washin’ out the blood. That is,” she said, grinning what she must have taken for a seductive grin, “unless you was to sleep naked.”

  Aaron frowned, part of him thinking that the woman could be a problem but the bigger part thinking that a bath did sound good. A chance to wash the blood off, to clean his wounds. He’d seen men die from infection in smaller cuts than the one on his side, and it was never a pretty thing.

  “Alright,” he said, “a bath’ll be fine.” She grinned, and he held up a hand, “a bath and that’s all.”

  She recoiled as if struck and turned to see that Olem had managed to get the wooden tub into the room. “Come on then you idiot,” she said, slapping him on the arm, “His highness is much too good for the likes of us. Best we get out of his way before he sets his guards on us.” She turned back at the door, giving a mock bow, “I’ll be filling it up for you directly, your Majesty.”

  For the next half hour, Aaron sat on the bed and ate, savoring the meal. There was nothing better for a man’s appetite, he’d found, than nearly dying. The meat was tough and stringy, and the vegetables were slightly soggy, testifying to the truth of Benjin’s words about his daughter’s cooking, but right then it tasted like just about the best meal he’d ever had. As he ate, the woman, Dayna, came back and forth, filling the tub with buckets of water and pointedly not looking in his direction. He paid her little attention, his mind already on thoughts of ways to pay Hale back for the surprise awakening.

  “Alright then, your kingship,” the woman said, pulling him from thoughts of blood and vengeance, “your bath waits for you.”

  Aaron turned to her, “Thanks.”

  She seemed to take this as a good sign, smiling once more in that calculated way, “I was wondering … after you was clean and all, if maybe you wouldn’t want to—“

  “Just the bath,” he said again, holding back a sigh. He reached into his pocket and took out a gold coin, tossing it to her, “With my thanks.”

  She snatched the coin out of the air, something about the gesture reminding him of the way carrion birds will snatch a piece of meat in flight, and sneered. “I hope you enjoyed the meal,” she said. Then she turned and left, slamming the door behind her.

  Aaron sighed and walked over to the door, latching it, before beginning to strip out of his remaining clothes and remove the bandages.

  He took off his boots first—fine, black leather ones, the nicest piece of clothing he owned—careful to grab the knife he kept secreted there. He removed the simple, unadorned gold necklace from around his neck, placing it reverently in the night stand’s drawer. Then, the knife still in his hand, he walked to the tub and sank into it, placing the blade beside him on the floor. He’d learned long ago that, in the Downs, a man who didn’t keep a blade close didn’t make it long.

  The water was luke-warm and smelled vaguely of sulfur, but despite this he found himself relaxing, sliding into the tub and letting his head rest back on its wooden surface. He should be more worried, he knew that. Hale’s assassins had failed, but he had more—men like Hale always did—and it wasn’t as if Aaron had exactly been subtle. Not that he could have if he’d wanted to, walking around the streets covered in blood, even in the Downs, was guaranteed to draw attention.

  He knew he should prepare in case Hale’s men found him again. A latch was all well and good, but latches could be broken—the night’s events had proved that if nothing else. He knew this, yet he found his thoughts growing fuzzy as he lay in the tepid water, his worries seeming less and less important with each passing moment. He realized with something bordering on alarm that he was tired, impossibly tired. His eyelids felt as if someone had tied lead weights to them, and his movements felt sluggish, uncertain. And was that really so surprising, considering the day he’d had? Still, there were things he needed to do, precautions he needed to take. In just a moment. In a moment, he would get up, slide something in front of the door, maybe pay the innkeeper, Benjin—he seemed like a good enough sort—to tell him if anyone came around asking questions. With that decided, he sank further into the tub, his eyes closing of their own accord.

  He didn’t wake so much as surface above the level of unconsciousness, the way a drowning man might be carried above the water by the ocean’s waves only fo
r it to bury him again. There were voices, a man and a woman. Their words were muffled, unclear, and his confused, muddy thoughts could only pick up bits and pieces.

  “Fool should … listened. Boys wouldn’t … hurt her none … just … her a woman … wasn’t worth his life.” A man’s voice, one he didn’t recognize.

  The woman’s voice now, angry, familiar, “Men … do all your thinking with your … came for money … have hired a whore. Grinner’s … be pissed.”

  Alarm bells ringing in his head, Aaron tried to open his eyes and found that he could not. Fighting down the urge to panic, he tried to move his arms and legs and found that they, too, refused his commands. He remembered the woman, sneering, telling him she hoped he enjoyed the food, and he cursed himself inwardly. She’d drugged him. Of course she had, and he’d been too stupid, too tired to think of it. Still, whatever she’d given him must have been wearing off as he found himself able to make sense of their words now.

  “Shouldn’t have killed him or the others, you damned fools,” the woman said.

  “Hey, we didn’t have a choice,” the man’s voice, defensive, “well, you seen him. He damn near knocked Dwayne’s head off with that club. Besides, we wasn’t goin’ to hurt her none.”

  “And the others?”

  Sounds, as they spoke, Aaron struggling to place them. The quilt on the bed being thrown off, a muffled crash as the bed itself was turned over. The metallic jingling of gold and silver as they found his coin pouch in his trousers. “Ah, now what do we have here?” The man’s voice, and Aaron could hear the greed in it. Just leave it at that, Aaron thought desperately, take the gold and just leave it.

  “I said what about the others?”

  “Aw shit,” the man’s voice again, apologetic, “we couldn’t just leave ‘em, could we? Them bein’ witnesses and all. Besides, the girl is a looker, seein’ her ought to put us right back in Grinner’s good graces.”

  The sound of a drawer sliding open, and Aaron felt his heart thundering in his chest, “You better hope it does or,” a pause, then a low whistle. “Well, now, what’s this pretty?” Not the necklace, he thought, near frantic now, fighting a silent struggle to get his dead limbs moving.

  The man’s voice, eager, “Real gold, you think? We could sell it, Grinner wouldn’t have to—“

  The sound of a slap, a man’s voice crying out in shock. “Don’t be a damned fool,” Dayna said, “it’ll go straight to Grinner and you better pray it and the girl’s enough to keep him from guttin’ you and the others.”

  “Hey,” the man, indignant, “you’re in it too. If I go down then—“

  “Ah just shut up and come on. The others are already gone, and we’ve got to—just what in the fuck are you doing?”

  “Hey, you got a necklace. I ain’t never seen a nicer pair of boots than these here. They look like they might even be my size.”

  A muddled groan came from somewhere close by and, after a moment, Aaron realized it had been him.

  “What the—I thought you said he’d be out for hours?”

  “He should have been. This whole thing’s went to shit. I’ll take the necklace, you just take care of him. And for fuck’s sake hurry it up.”

  “Hey wait a damned mi—“ but the man cut off at the sound of a door closing. “Aw, you bitch,” he said, his words a low hiss.

  The sound of metal scraping against a scabbard, and Aaron struggled to make his body obey his commands. Nothing. Nothing. There. Had his arm twitched or was he imagining it? The sound of footsteps approaching, and he could feel someone looming over him. “Nothing personal, friend,” the man said.

  Aaron called on every ounce of energy he had, pushing against the fuzzy barrier of the drug the woman had given him, pushing, pushing, and then, in an instant, something gave. His eyes snapped open, and in the same instant he caught the man’s wrist with the knife only inches away from his throat, grabbed his own blade from where it lay beside the bath and slammed it into the man’s chin and up into his mouth.

  Blood fountained out, turning the bath water red. Wet, hacking noises came from the man’s throat. He stumbled backward, falling, and Aaron lost sight of him over the tub’s side. His legs would move now, if barely, and he tried to climb over the tub but found they didn’t have the strength. Instead, he hoisted himself up and over with only the use of his arms and tumbled to the floor feet away from his attacker. Conscious of his own vulnerability, Aaron crawled to the man through a numb haze, his vision blurry, thinking that at any moment his would be killer would rise and finish the job.

  He didn’t, though, and Aaron eventually managed to work his way to the man who, he saw, was quite dead, the blade having went up through his chin and mouth and into his brain. Aaron lay by the corpse for some time, gasping in an effort to get his breath back, half-expecting someone, the woman, maybe, or one of the others they spoke of to come through the door, to see what had happened and kill him. But no one came and, after what felt like an eternity, the feeling began to return to his legs.

  He struggled to his feet, wavering uncertainly, rubbing at his blurry eyes. He stumbled to the night stand, ripped the drawer out and staring at it in something approaching panic. The necklace was gone; they’d taken it. A feeling of loss and despair washed over him worse than anything he’d felt since he was a child, since he’d come down the stairs and found his parents dead in their family’s parlor, lying in pools of spreading blood. He remembered a child’s hand, desperate, reaching out in longing, remembered the short stubby fingers finding the necklace, feeling it in his hands. First his mother and father, now the necklace, taken from him. But one of them … one of them he would get back.

  He grabbed his boots from beside the door and shuffled to where his clothes lay scattered on the floor. He frowned in disgust at the bloody tunic and trousers before a thought struck him, and he glanced back at the corpse on the floor, a grim, humorless smile spreading on his face, “You look like you’re just about the right size.”

  III

  Dressed in the dead man’s clothes, his sword once more sheathed at his back, Aaron slid the door of his room open. He suspected that everyone was gone by now, but his body still felt weak, his motions unsure, and he wasn’t prepared to test it if he could help it.

  He risked a glance out of the door, first one way then the other. Finding no one, he slipped out of his room and crept down the hallway. He stopped at the room next to his, pushed the door open with the toe of his boot. Inside was a room that matched his completely, except, of course, for the fact that his room held only one dead man. A middle-aged man lay dead on the floor. He looked to have been stabbed repeatedly. Had he heard something, perhaps, and gotten up to see what it was? Probably, and his wife or escort—it could be either, in a place like this—had been the lucky one. From the looks of it, she’d never woken up and, thanks to some man or woman’s blade, never would again.

  He passed several more rooms as he made his way to the stairs, but he didn’t stop to check them. He knew well what he would find. At the top of the stairs, he stopped, hearing something. He cocked his head, listening, a hand drifting to the sword at his back. The sound came again, and he placed it. It was the low groaning of a man and, unless he completely missed his guess, a dying one.

  He worked his way down the stairs, taking in the common room of the inn. Several of the tables had been overturned. Broken glass and splintered wood lay strewn about the floor. Corpses were scattered about the room, including the body of the man, Olem, who’d brought the tub he’d bathed in. He looked around the room with a practiced eye, recreating the scene in his mind.

  There’d been four of them, maybe five. They hadn’t carried swords but knives—many of the corpses had defensive wounds on their arms. The groan came again, and he followed the trail of devastation to the bar from where the sound had originated. He worked his way around the wooden counter and found Benjin. The innkeeper had been stabbed several times, but judging by the blood on the end of the club
he still held gripped in one white-knuckled fist, he hadn’t gone down easy. He’d managed to drag himself up so that his back was propped against the wall.

  His eyes met Aaron’s and he let out a shuddery breath. “M-Mr. Envelar.”

  Aaron squatted down beside the dying man, “Benjin.”

  “My … my daughter,” the innkeeper said, grunting in pain, “They took her.”

  Aaron nodded, not thinking about the man’s daughter, but his mom’s necklace, about the last piece of his parents that he had. “I know.”

  “Please … Mr. Envelar,” he said, the desperation clear in his voice, “can you help me? Call the city guard or….” He broke off coughing, blood dribbling down his chin.

  Aaron sighed. The guard wouldn’t help. Oh, they’d make a show of investigating the murders at the inn, asking questions, writing reports, but it would be no more than that. Dozens of the city guard, at least, were on Hale or Grinner’s pay roll, many of them growing rich from ignoring what the crime bosses wanted them to ignore and ensuring that others did the same. The rest of the city belonged to the guards, but the Downs belonged to Hale and Grinner. It had been that way for years, and it would take more than half a dozen dead and one kidnapped girl to change that.

  Benjin must have seen something of Aaron’s thoughts in his eyes. Either that or he came to the conclusion on his own because his expression grew more desperate. “They won’t help.”

  “No.”

  The innkeeper’s eyes slipped closed, slowly, and he went silent. Aaron waited for a minute, then two, before rising and starting away. He’d taken no more than two steps when the innkeeper spoke, “Do you … know something, Mr. Envelar?” Aaron turned back to the innkeeper. “I thought … your name … familiar. Remembered. A sellsword … they call you, the Silent Blade.”

  Aaron shrugged. It had never been a name he’d been particularly fond of, “They call me a lot of things.”

  “I have … some money,” the older man said, his words thick, his voice sluggish now. “My daughter ….” His body gave a shudder and was still. He did not move or speak again.