Defiant Guardians Anthology

by Jacob Peppers

  “First, I’m going to need to know where Grinner is.”

  “You’re a fool. Even if I tell you where Grinner is, do you think you’re seriously going to be able to get to him? What, do you think he’s hiding in some room just waiting to be plucked like some drunken maiden’s virtue?” He winced, “You’ll never even get close.”

  Aaron grabbed the man’s hand, his knife licked forward, and another finger landed on the floor in a spurt of blood. He clamped his hand over the fat man’s mouth again and waited for the screams to stop. “Eight more to go, Claude, and then I start on your feet. It sounded to me like you said even if you tell me where Grinner is. And let me be clear,” he said, leaning in, his face inches from the fat man’s, “you’re not just going to tell me where Grinner is—you’re going to show me.”

  “Show you?” Claude asked, desperation and pain filling his voice, “he’ll kill me.”

  Aaron cocked his head to the side, “Kill you? Gods, Claude, what do you think I’m going to do? The only difference is that I’m going to make sure you suffer before you go.”

  “Fine, okay,” Claude said, his wounded hand cupped in the other, his body quivering, “I’ll tell you just … help me. The wound … I need a bandage.”

  Aaron nodded, “I’ve got a better idea.” He walked over to the fireplace where the ends of the metal brands had grown a bright red. He pulled on a glove apparently set on the table for the purpose and grabbed one.

  “Wait,” Claude said as Aaron approached, his good hand held up as if to ward him off, “Just a bandage is all I need. To keep the blood in.”

  Aaron ignored him, grabbing his hand and jerking him forward. “Oh, and if you scream, Claude, we’ll see just how much “experimenting” I can do before your men arrive.” The fat man wouldn’t stop struggling, so Aaron was forced to put one foot on his wrist as he brought the branding iron down.

  An instant, sizzling sound, followed closely by the smell of burned flesh, and this time Aaron didn’t have to fight back to need to retch. He waited for several seconds, the fat man letting out desperate mewling sounds and gasps then finally pulled the brand away. He grabbed the man’s wrist, examining his work and shrugged, “There. That should stop the bleeding.” Two of the man’s remaining fingers had been pressed into the brand and the flesh on them had been burned into flaking ash.

  “You … bastard,” Claude gasped, looking at his hand, an expression of terror on his face.

  “Sure,” Aaron said nodding, “I’ve been called worse. Now, I’m assuming you have a back way out of this place. A way of bringing in your “experiments” without being seen.”

  “I don’t know what you’re—“ Claude hesitated as Aaron raised an eyebrow then he swallowed, tears of pain leaking down his face. “Yes.”

  “Show me.”

  Claude rose unsteadily, cradling his wounded hand in front of him, and made his way to the wall behind the dead man. He grabbed what Aaron had taken to be a candle holder mounted on the wall and pulled it down, and the seemingly solid stone wall slid to the side revealing man-sized opening. Aaron nodded and tossed the fat man a rag that had been hanging from a nail in the wall, “Clean yourself up, Claude, and put your shirt on. I wouldn’t want anyone thinking I was walking around with a corpse.” As the fat man dressed, Aaron went back into the other room and dragged the corpse of the dead guard inside the tunnel entrance.

  “Alright,” He said, turning and glancing around the room, “that should do. Oh, and Claude?”

  Grinner’s second turned back to him, a wary expression on his face.

  “Grab your fingers will you? I wouldn’t want any of your men doing the math and wondering why your “experiment” had twelve fingers. Better if they just think you up and disappeared.”

  VI

  The tunnel came out in the basement of one of the houses further down the street and, Aaron was surprised to find it unguarded. “Not even a single man, eh, Claude?” He said, glancing around the abandoned, dust-covered interior of the basement. “Well, I guess spending your life working with the worst the Downs has to offer doesn’t exactly inspire trust, does it? But what of those that helped you dig the tunnel? I can’t imagine you digging it all out yourself.”

  “They’re dead,” Claude said, his hand still cradled against his chest. He’d been silent as they trudged through the dirt passage, Aaron’s sword held at his back and even now the words came out reluctantly. Aaron supposed tortures lost some of their appeal when you became the tortured.

  “Well. Of course they are. No one left to tell your secret, no one left to worry about. Still … kind of leaves you in a spot now, doesn’t it?”

  Claude didn’t answer, only stared at him with that cold, dead gaze. “Well,” Aaron said, motioning to the stairs with his sword, “Lead on.”

  They walked for over an hour, sticking to the back alleys, avoiding those few people they saw walking in the street, and the sun was just peaking over the horizon when the fat man finally stopped, “We’re here.”

  Aaron stared out at the street from where they stood in the alleyway. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  He looked out upon God’s Row, one of the finest streets in Avarest. No run-down buildings here, no beggars sitting in the street in rags, their hands held up in desperation. The city guard would have made sure of it. Instead, men and women dressed in their finery, brightly colored silks and velvets, walked along the streets or traveled them in coaches, stopping from time to time to admire some bobble or piece of clothing at one of the many high-end shops lining the lane.

  The shop owners did not shout their prices, huckstering to passersby as was common in the Downs. Instead, tailors and silversmiths and merchants of all sorts bowed to their well-dressed, well-moneyed guests and scraped and complimented them on their most discerning choice of this potion or that trinket, their tones always admiring, always slightly apologetic. Aaron shook his head in wonder, noting that the shop owners wore clothes and jewelry almost as nice as that of their patrons, a single piece of which would have been worth a fortune to a man or woman living in the Downs.

  City guards, their uniforms washed and bright, patrolled the street, smiling and nodding to men and women who rarely deigned to notice their presence and, when they did, did so with the air of someone who’d sat down for tea and noticed some foul scent on the air. “You mean to tell me,” he said, unable to keep the incredulity from his voice, “that Grinner, your boss, works at one of these shops?”

  Claude sneered at him, apparently emboldened by the crowds of people, “Don’t be a fool. Of course he doesn’t. He’s there.” He motioned with his head toward a large building in the center of the street.

  Aaron took in the building with its large, gold-trimmed marble pedestals, and raised an eyebrow as he noticed the stylized image etched into the door. It was the image of a woman’s outline lying recumbent on a golden divan. The woman was naked save for a gold-trimmed tiara, but her impossibly long hair managed to maintain her modesty while hinting at what was hidden beneath. He’d seen the image enough to know it for what it was—Aliandra, the Goddess of Beauty and Youth. In the last few years, the minor goddess had grown increasingly popular with the rich upper class. Unsurprisingly, worship of Aliandra had never taken root in the Downs—it was hard to worry about beauty when your children starved and each trip you made to work gave you about even odds of getting mugged or worse.

  “A church.” He said, his voice flat, “Your boss works for a priest.”

  “Grinner works for no one,” Claude said, but Aaron was barely paying him any attention. He was staring at the milling crowd of people and trying to decide how he was going to get at Grinner—if, indeed, he was in the church—and get his mother’s necklace back.

  “And it won’t matter to you either way.” There was something in the fat man’s tone that Aaron didn’t like, and he turned to see Claude smiling that slow, cruel smile, “Tell me,” Claude said, “would you like to watch when I do
my experiments on the barmaid? Would you like to watch her beg me to kill her? I believe I’d like that.”

  “Watch yourself, Claude,” Aaron said, “you’ve still got plenty of fingers left.”

  The fat man grinned, “What are you going to do, Mr. Envelar? Kill me in front of all these people? Torture me, maybe? With city guards no less than a yell away? I doubt that. I doubt that very much.” He winked, “I’ll be seeing you soon, Mr. Envelar.”

  He stepped out into the street before Aaron could grab him, weaving his way through the crowd and heading in the direction of the church. “Shit,” Aaron hissed. He hesitated in a moment of indecision. The man had been right—there were too many people here, too many witnesses. Not to mention the fact that the city guard—seemingly everywhere, now that he looked—would be on him before he even got his sword out of its sheathe.

  His mind raced, and he seriously considered turning around and going back to the Downs. After all, he knew where Grinner was now, could find him again. But he’ll move. Claude will tell him what happened, and you’ll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life, always wondering if today would be the day that you were taken. Or Celes. Or May. In the end, the thought of May or Celes hanging from two wooden posts while the fat man performed his perverted experiments decided him, and he stepped into the street.

  Claude was taking his time, confident in his escape, and it didn’t take Aaron long to catch up with him. “Ah, Mr. Envelar,” the fat man said, smiling widely, “shall we visit Grinner together th—“

  He cut off, as Aaron lashed out in one quick motion, bringing the ridge of his hand as hard as he could into the man’s throat. Something crunched beneath the blow, but he didn’t slow, continuing to press his way through the crowd and ignoring the rattling wheezes behind him.

  He was nearly at the Church gate when a woman in the crowd screamed, then someone else joined in. He turned to see several of the city guardsmen rushing forward, not toward him, thank the gods, but toward where a growing circle of people watched a man thrash and kick on the cobbles. The man’s face was turning a dark shade of blue, and those around him watched, unhelping, as if they’d paid for seats at the spectacle. “See ya around, Claude,” he said before walking through the gates and into the church.

  VII

  Inside, the church was dimly lit, the only illumination coming from the sun streaming through the stained glass windows and falling on the floor and pews in dappled splashes of red and blue and green.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but the morning service isn’t for another two hours.”

  A deep, mellifluous voice. Aaron turned to see a man standing on the small stage of the church on which sat a four foot high wooden podium. The man walked closer, a peaceful smile on his face. He wore pristine white robes, but his garments did little to hide his thickly muscled chest and arms, and even in the poor light cast through the windows, Aaron could see that the man had a strong jaw line and features that belonged on some ancient hero of legend. The big man was smiling, holding his hands up in apology, but Aaron noted that his knuckles were calloused, and his hands and arms looked big enough to crush boulders, if he got the desire.

  “I’m here to see the priest,” Aaron said, scanning the church for anyone else but seeing no one.

  The man bowed his head slightly, “I’m sorry, sir, but his Holiness is resting, just now. Communing with the goddess takes much out of him.”

  Aaron snorted. He’d heard of the strange worshipping that took place in the temples of Aliandra, had heard stories of orgies and more, dedicated to the Goddess of Beauty and Youth. He turned to fully face the big man, throwing his cloak behind one shoulder and exposing the sword strapped to his back, “Ah, well. I guess I’ll just talk to Grinner then.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed and suddenly he was charging forward, shockingly fast for a man his size. Ah Pit, Aaron had time to think, then the man bulled into him with the force of a stampeding horse, and the next thing he knew, Aaron was flying through the air. He struck a wooden pew, knocking it over, and the air was knocked out of him as the pew fell over. He tumbled across the floor, finally coming to a gasping, groaning stop. He reached unsteadily for the handle of his sword, still gasping, fighting to get his breath back, but thick fingers settled on his shoulders in a crushing grip, jerking him off the ground as if he weighed no more than a child. He struggled against the man’s hold, but he might as well have been trying to move a mountain for all the good it did him and, in another moment, he was flying again.

  This time he struck the solid wood podium. Something gave in his wounded arm with a sickening crack, and he screamed. Gasping, grunting with pain and effort, he turned to look back at his attacker and watched his assailant approaching through blurry, unfocused eyes. The man was approaching slowly now, confident that he had the upper hand. Aaron reached for the sword at his back with unsteady fingers, but they found nothing, and panic gripped him as he noticed his blade lying halfway across the room between him and his attacker.

  He started to crawl toward it and had barely made any progress when the big man was on him again. Aaron curled up into a protective ball, and the big man grabbed him by the front of the shirt and pulled him off the floor once more. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said, the mask of fury on his face making him appear like some righteous god bent on destruction.

  Aaron’s vision swam, but he lashed out with the knife he’d taken from his boot when the man grabbed him. He stabbed the blade into the inside of his assailant’s arm opposite his elbow. The big man roared in pain, his grip loosening, and Aaron fell to the ground in a heap. He’d risen to his hands and knees when the man’s foot struck him in the chest. He felt a rib crack, and he tumbled across the floor until he fetched up against another pew.

  He pulled himself up until he was sitting with his back against the pew and managed to raise blurry eyes in time to see the man coming for him again. The white sleeve of the man’s robe was coated in blood, the knife still protruding from his arm, but if the wound pained him, he gave no sign. Still, pain or not, the big man’s movements were less sure, more sluggish, and as he reached forward, Aaron jerked the knife out of his arm and plunged it into the side of his attacker’s slab of a thigh, about three fingers down from the groin, as he’d been shown so long ago.

  The big man roared in pain and anger and a fist that felt more like a boulder struck Aaron’s shoulder which immediately went numb and senseless. Darkness threatened at the corners of his vision, but Aaron grunted with effort, reaching up with his good hand and grabbing hold of the handle of the knife. He wrenched the blade sideways, tearing through the meat of the man’s inner thigh.

  Blood fountained out in a spray, covering Aaron, and the big man’s grip loosened. Aaron fell back to the ground with a grunt and watched the big man stumble back, a look of confused disbelief on his face. He pawed ineffectually at the knife in his leg for a moment before falling to his knees, his gaze meeting Aaron’s, uncomprehending.

  “Severed … the arteries,” Aaron gasped by way of explanation, his teeth gritted against the pain. “You need those.”

  The big man’s face twisted in fury, and he reached for Aaron only to collapse, his face striking the floor with a loud thud. Aaron lay there for a minute, gasping, then he levered himself up to a sitting position, his back leaned against the pew. His left arm hung useless and unresponsive, and the sharp, biting pain in his chest told him that he’d definitely cracked a rib, maybe more than one.

  The dark river of unconsciousness threatened to surge forward, and Aaron shook his head, forcing it back with a will. He had no doubt that if he fell asleep here, now, he would not wake up again. He grabbed hold of the pew with his good hand and pulled himself to his feet, hissing at the pain in his chest and arm.

  Slowly, gingerly, he bent to retrieve his knife and noticed a silver necklace on the man’s neck, something hanging from it. He pulled the necklace over the man’s head and saw that a key dangled from the sil
ver chain. He stuffed the key into the pocket of his trousers before pulling his knife out of the big man’s thigh. It came free with a sickening, liquid sound, and he wiped it on the man’s white robe before sliding it back into his boot. That done, he shuffled across the room and grabbed his sword from where it had fallen, drawing the blade and slinging the sheathe across his back.

  He glanced around the room and noted a door behind the altar, started toward it. He was just passing the altar when he lost his balance and was forced to catch himself on its wooden surface. He paused for a moment, taking a few slow breaths, as deep as his wounded rib would allow, then shuffled to the door.

  He was surprised to find the door unlocked, and he stepped through it, easing it shut behind him. A short hallway stretched ahead of him. A candle burned in a silver candle holder halfway down the hallway’s length, and by its uncertain light he saw several doors on either wall. He limped to the first door and looked inside, grunting in surprise. The walls, ceiling, and floor of the room had been painted in a blue so bright it was almost painful to look upon. An enormous bed took up almost the entire floor, the only piece of furniture in the room, and its sheets and pillows matched the color of the room itself, making it difficult to tell where the bed began and ended. No doubt an intentional illusion.

  He passed a room of green, another of black, and another of crimson, all of them a match for the blue room, all of them unoccupied. The worshippers of Aliandra, it seemed, expressed the worship of their goddess in some peculiar ways. He didn’t bother to look at the rest as he passed them, instead making his way to the door at the end of the hall. He reached the door only to find it locked, so he retrieved the key he’d found around the big man’s neck and was relieved to find that it fit. He took a deep breath, readied his sword, and walked inside.

  The room was twice as large as the others he’d seen, and he was surprised to find it normal, if richly appointed. A large desk sat in one corner, stacked high with papers. Letters from parishioners, perhaps? Or kill orders for some unfortunate souls who’d earned Grinner’s displeasure? Aaron found that he didn’t much care; it wasn’t what he’d come for, after all. Several bookshelves stood against the walls, a fortune in books and scrolls piled high on their shelves, and a large fireplace sat on one side of the room. At the opposite end, separated from the rest of the room by a thin gauzy curtain of silk, sat a bed as large the ones in the rooms he’d passed, though this one, at least, was covered with simple satin sheets that seemed almost abnormally modest when compared to the others.