by H. M. Clarke
“Here, you may need this.” Ashe wiped her blade on his trouser leg and held it out hilt first to her.
She looked about her and saw that the other two Dymarki were down on the ground, either dead or unconscious. Ryn took the sword and slid it home in its scabbard, and after wiping off her dagger did the same with that. Pulling the leather lace undone at the neck of her scale and the gambeson, Ryn peeled it back to see what damage had been done to her shoulder. The black tint of the scale armor hid the blood that had seeped through the padded linen beneath. The teeth had torn through the steel link and scale, ripped through the padded gambeson and punctured the flesh and muscle of her shoulder. Blood flowed slowly from the wounds. They looked clean and though it hurt, the pain was nothing compared to what she felt two days ago with her arm.
“You’re hurt! Again,” Ashe blurted out as he knelt down beside her and looked over the wound.
Lily dropped to her knees on her other side while Bron stood back, keeping an eye out for any undesirables. “I wish I could help, but I’m not Donal…I have no ounce of healing talent in me,” she said letting that annoying whine squeak into her voice.
“Both of you, stop fussing. It’s fine. It looks worse than it is.” She lifted her arm and moved it slowly back and forth. “See? It still works,” she said, wincing at the pain. Ashe frowned at her, but Ryn chose to ignore it. “Lily, can I use your neck scarf? I need something to wad this.”
“Sure, Ryn.” Lily untied the pink, silk scarf from her neck and handed it over to Ryn. Ryn took it, folded it into a square and wadded it over the bite marks. She then pulled the gambeson and the scale back over her shoulder so that their weight can keep the makeshift bandage in place.
“Thanks, Lily.”
“We’d best get going otherwise we will be overrun by what was following behind us,” Bron said as he looked back down the avenue toward the city.
Ryn nodded and pushed herself to her feet. The others turned with her toward the Palace, and as Bron started to set the pace, Ashe ran on her right side by her shoulder. He didn’t look happy, but at the moment Ryn did not want to deal with his…whatever this was. Not when the city was going up in flames and Dagan’s anxiety quickly filling her mind via the Link–he must have felt her reaction to the bite. She concentrated on sending calm back along the Link, trying to tell Dagan that she was okay. At least his anxiousness told her that he was not in trouble. Yet.
A strange whistling sound cut into her thoughts and Ryn turned her head to look at Ashe, thinking it was him. He in turn was looking back over his shoulder.
A bright flash made Ryn instinctively shut her eyes. Heat washed over her as the ground shook violently under her feet and felt herself thrown shoulder first onto Ashe as those around her fell hard to the ground. Wincing at the pain shooting through her shoulder, she opened her eyes at the touch of Ashe’s hand on her cheek. Ignoring his worried look, she scrambled to her feet and looked behind them.
A large, heavy set, Dymarki stood on the path near the fallen bodies of the three. The newcomer was shorter than the other cats, but something about the set of the features and the body posture told Ryn that this was a female.
The others struggled to get to their feet as the Cat raised her hands, holding them as if clutching a ball. A pin prick of light came to life between her palms and Ryn saw Lily’s runestaff flare up pink as she began to put up a magical barrier between them. Bron stepped forward, a hand raised with the blade of one of his daggers held between fingers and thumb. The Dymarki had no barrier up; she was exposed. As the Cat gathered her power into her hands to throw, Bron began the move to throw his blade when suddenly a large pointy end of a sword protruded from the Dymarki’s chest. The power between her hands evaporated, and the Cat looked down at her chest as the sword disappeared back where it came. She then slowly collapsed to her knees and then fell sideways, dead.
Black cloth fluttered in the smoke laden breeze as Praetor Maluski slid her blade home with an ominous metal clink in its scabbard. “I know you,” she said as she stared at Ryn. “You were in Magister Drake’s company when he defended these Dymarki.” She glanced down at the dead before her with no emotion showing on her face. “But that doesn’t matter now.” Maluski looked up at them and then strode forward to join them. “The Dymarki are taking people to the Palace and may already be in control. We will need to deal with them.”
“They’re at the Palace already?” Lily whined.
“Why would they be gathering hostages?” Ryn asked.
Bron sighed and shook his head, making his golden braids ripple across his chest. “They’re going to take everyone of import and put them in the same place. Those that agree to surrender, live. Those that don’t…”
“Charming.” Maluski said as she adjusted her gaze to look toward the Palace.
Ryn cocked her head. “I’ll do whatever it takes to defend this city and its people. We are Blackwatch.” Ashe and Lily both nodded in agreement.
The Praetor stared impassively back at them. “Good. Head for the palace, and I will see if I can find more Tribunal and Blackwatch members. These creatures will pay for this outrage.” Without waiting for a reply, Maluski turned and strode away down the path back toward the city.
Ryn stared after her, mouth hanging open in disbelief. How dare that woman give her orders!
Pressure on her good shoulder made Ryn turn. Ashe looked into her eyes as he held her with a firm grip. “Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to do anything.”
“The look on your face says otherwise.”
“Where does she get off bossing us around?”
Bron cleared his throat. “We were heading for the Palace anyway, so she’s not ordering us anywhere. But she did warn us that there may be Dymarki already at the Palace.”
“And if we don’t hurry, there may be more that we have to deal with,” Lily added, her voice growing more shrill as she spoke.
“Let’s go.” Ryn shrugged her shoulder out of Ashe’s grip and pushed her way past Bron and Lily and started back up the path toward the Palace.
CHAPTER TWENTY Three
As they hurried up the cobblestone road through the manicured lawns and gardens, the sounds of fighting, screaming and the roar of the flames and cracking from collapsing buildings from the lower city became muffled through the thick hedges and the branches of the maple and birch. The birds were now gone, and the tinkle of wind chimes and windpipes gave an eerie contrast to the sound coming from the city below.
Ryn lead them past another entry through a large hedge border and found herself behind a group of three Dymarki who were in the midst of a battle against a small group of Tribunal magi. They ducked back behind the hedge and Ryn glanced back around to see what was happening. Numerous bodies lay mauled about the combatants and the bright glow of active runestaves and the power they flung reflected back at them from the destroyed greenery and bodies around them. One of the magi wore the black toga of a Magister, and as he whirled his staff about him, Ryn caught a glimpse of his face, and his eyes. She recognized him.
Ryn ducked back behind the hedge.
“That’s Magister Lorin. He’s a friend of Dagan’s, we have to help them.”
“The Dymarki’s backs are to us. We can take them by surprise.” As Lily spoke, her staff slowly began to glow pink. Ryn smiled at her. For a whiney girly girl, when it comes down to it, Lily didn’t flinch from danger.
“Only if the magi don’t hit us with spells when we come up behind them,” Bron muttered.
“I’m sure they won’t. Let’s go.” With that, Ryn readied her sword and dagger and rushed back around the corner of the Hedge.
One of the Magi was down on the ground, unmoving, a Dymarki looming over them. “For Kaldor!” She yelled, causing the three Dymarki to turn towards them. Just then Magister Lorin let loose a blast from his staff which he was aiming at the foe over the fallen Tribunal man. The cat staggered as the green ball of magic impacted against him, letting
out a roar of pain.
Then Ryn was upon the cat in the middle. She leapt forward, jabbing her blade to get between the Dymarki’s defenses as he hurriedly raised his claws. Pain flared in her shoulder as it protested the jolt of movement. The cat slashed down hard with his razor-sharp claws, but his strikes were clumsy. Ryn ducked aside the first claw and raised her sword to deflect the second. He stumbled back and Ryn leapt and slashed at him quickly. The attack was lucky and cut across the Cat’s face, causing him to reel away, covering his face with his furred hands. She felt sure she had hit his eye.
Ryn raised her blade high over her head and let out a cry as she felt her shoulder quiver in pain.
The cat turned back to face her, claws raised and open, fangs bared and glinting. Blood streamed from a large cut that ran through the Dymarki’s cheek, through the eye and terminated in the white furred eye ridge. She braced herself.
But the charge did not come.
In the blink of an eye, the cat was enveloped in a ball of emerald green light and disappeared. The only thing that remained was a puddle of green ooze sticking to the cobblestones. Beyond the path, Ryn saw Magister Lorin slump to the ground, his staff clutched in his hand.
“Magister!” Ryn called as she rushed to the mage’s side. From what she could see, the man had been a little roughed up but looked more like he was exhausted from running a hard mile than battling for his life. Darne Lorin waved a reassuring hand at her. The clink of metal warned her that the others had joined her and, looking up, saw that her friends were standing back, waiting. The other Dymarki were dead. She rose to her feet and held out her hand to Magister Lorin.
“Many thanks, my friend,” he said looking at her with those odd colored eyes.
Ryn had to suppress a shiver. “You don’t seem as badly injured as the others.”
“The others? Surely they cannot all be…” Panic crept into his voice as he spoke and, looking wildly about him, he pushed past Ryn and stumbled to the nearest Tribunal body. He stood there a moment, staring down at the man’s broken body before slumping down onto his knees beside him. “Gone. I told them to run…They were only students.”
“They stayed to do their duty,” Lily stepped toward him, thinking the words a comfort. Darne looked up at her, grief filling his eyes.
“They should have followed orders and left when I told them to. They would be alive right now.”
“Or they could have died trying to get back to the Hall of Justice. The entire city is in chaos,” Bron stated in his matter-of-fact way. “They wouldn’t have got far without a fight.”
The loud thumping of booted feet coming up the cobblestone path stopped any further conversation and Ryn caught sight of a large group of armored people moving toward them. There was a mix of black togas and Blackwatch clocks and at their head was Praetor Maluski. She didn’t have to go far to find men then. As the group neared Maluki slowed her jog, but Ryn could not help her internal smile as she noted that the Blackwatch in Maluski’s group automatically moved the extra steps to stand with Ashe and Lily. Ryn pretended to brush some dirt from her Blackwatch insignia on her uniform to hide the smile that floated to the surface of her face.
“Magister Lorin. You survive.” Praetor Maluski looked at the man as if he was some Murgot that had crawled out of the muck of the Daggerthorn swamp.
“Your relief overwhelms me, Praetor Maluski,” Darne Lorin said rising to his feet, his eyes reluctantly pulled away from the body of his dead student and looked with open antagonism on the Praetor.
It seems Dagan is not the only Magister that can’t stand the woman, Ryn thought.
Maluski frowned and Ryn could see the muscles of her throat working, but whatever words wanted to get out were stuck fast in her throat. She swallowed hard, and whatever comeback she was contemplating for Lorin was pushed back down. Still frowning, she looked at Ryn. “There is no time for talk. We must strike back before it’s too late.”
“And who will lead us into this battle? You?” Lorin spat at her.
“I will fight to defend this country, as I have always done!” Maluski answered the Magister without looking at him.
“To control it, you mean! I won’t have our lives tossed to the flames to feed your vanity!”
The Praetor’s head whipped round fast to lock onto Lorin’s gaze and though their runestaves did not glow, Ryn could feel the power building up around them.
Ryn could not believe that these two wanted to waste precious time fighting each other. She stepped between them, arms out to keep them at a distance in an effort to calm the situation. “We need to work together, not kill each other while we figure out who leads!”
Lorin studied her with his odd colored eyes and grinned. “Then perhaps you should be leading us.”
“What?” Maluski spluttered, her eyebrows raised in surprise. “She isn’t even of this city!”
“Neither am I, yet I don’t hear you complaining about us both fighting to defend our home,” Lorin countered.
Maluski sighed heavily and bowed her head in thought. “Very well, then.” She said raising her head and the Praetor’s sharp gaze turned back to Ryn, “But whatever you plan, be quick about it.”
Lorin’s grin stayed on his face, but at least now it looked more natural rather than the cat that got the cream. “Tell us, then: what is our course of action?”
Ryn looked toward the Palace. “We need to find out why they are gathering hostages. We need to know their intensions.” She waited for Maluski to start the expected witty argument against her suggestion.
But the Praetor’s face relaxed at her words. “An excellent choice. Let’s move quickly.”
Ryn looked in shock at Ashe, who gave her a bewildered shrug in response. Maluski barely looked at her as she moved her group of Tribunal up the path toward the Palace. The remaining Blackwatch and surprisingly Magister Lorin (though maybe not so surprising considering his reaction to Maluski) waited for her order to move. Ryn felt a little uneasy about how quickly, and how pleased, Maluski was with her decision and left her with the sneaking suspicion that she was playing right into whatever plan the Praetor had going. Ryn gritted her teeth. Either way she had made the right call and throughout all this was Dagan’s worry and annoyance leaking through their Link.
“Let’s go and move up near the main doors of the Palace before Praetor Maluski decides to do a frontal attack on the place.”
CHAPTER TWENTY Four
Darne Lorin ducked his head back behind the cover of the wall and looked back at Ryn and the others. “There seem to be a great many Dymarki at the Palace’s entrance.”
“No Palace Guards then?” Ryn asked.
Lorin shook his head. “I couldn’t see any bodies, so they must have been captured and being kept with the others.”
“Then they’ve already taken it over. Clearly they’ve been planning this for some time.” Maluski’s voice came from behind Ryn. Ryn gritted her teeth and ignored her.
“Either that or we’re the pushovers they think we are.” Bron’s tone implied that he thought ‘pushover,’ was more likely.
“This is the only way in. We must assault them now, before their numbers grow,” Maluski said, ignoring Bron. The restless shuffling of the group told Ryn that they were champing at the bit to do something to show that not everyone in this city was a pushover.
Magister Lorin turned disbelieving eyes on the Praetor. “Are you mad? They have hostages! We need a distraction to get us into the Palace undetected.”
Ryn couldn’t help but agree with Lorin. She tugged on his toga to change places with him to get her closer to the corner and took a peek around the wall herself. Several Dymarki warriors stood along the landing leading up to the Palace Doors, and they did not look friendly. She leaned back against the wall and looked at the others. “A direct assault is too risky. We don’t know how many warriors are inside and we don’t want to throw away our lives on an assault that puts us at a major disadvantage.”
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��And we need to know how many people they are holding in there. What if we put them in danger by attacking?” Lorin added.
“We need to get people in, but we need to infiltrate a small group to find out what’s going on and to get the rest of us inside,” Ashe said with Bron nodding in agreement. The Praetor just stared impassively back at her.
“Excellent idea.”
“There is a small door that leads out to the gardens just off of the west atrium. It’s not well known and would make a suitable entry point if someone can open it from the inside.’
Ryn nodded to Lorin. Weird eyes or not, the man did have a good head on his shoulders. “I’ll take Ashe, Lily and Bron with me into the palace. I can’t ask anyone else to take this risk.”
“There is a hidden door not far from those Palace doors that the guards used to come and go without congesting the primary entrance. But those Dymarki will see anyone who approaches that area,” Maluski said.
“We’ll need to get you inside and to catch up as soon as we can.” Lorin gave Ryn a wry grin.
“And just how will we do this?” Maluski growled at him.
“Have confidence Praetor,” Lorin said as he unslung his runestaff from his back. He grinned at them all again and, holding the staff out like an extension of his arm, Lorin ducked around the corner and ran toward the Palace gate.
“Magister, No!” Ryn tried to make a snatch at his toga, but only succeeded in grabbing the heavy wool, and she was left holding just the black cloth in her hands.
The Dymarki warriors lined up along the top landing saw him approach and moved to stand in front of the door. When Lorin was still a slight distance away from them he came to a stop, still holding his staff running along his arm out to his side. The Dymarki warrior standing in the middle of the group stepped forward and snarled.
