The seven dancers who had, until a moment before, circled in a weaving motion, tumbled and flipped away, scattering to the arena’s corners with unnerving speed. They left behind evidence of their bloody work. Four dwarves lay bleeding out on the ground, sacrificed for the delight and amazement of the crowd.
Aeris grabbed his arm. Loren tore his eyes from the writhing victims and the bowing dancers to look at a large gate not twenty paces away. The bone portcullis rose. When it lifted a foot above the sandy floor, a wide, furry claw raked out through the gap. Both could see great furred beasts straining against chains holding them, claws and fangs worrying the ground and mauling the handlers who got too close. They looked like great cats, brown fur, striped white, with long horns curling out from their skulls. Loren spotted extra pairs of legs on each one.
Even as the first gate climbed, another one on the arena’s opposite side flew open. Two slavering lizards in harnesses burst free from the tunnel, dragging a wheeled, bladed chariot behind them. Standing tall in the wheeled monstrosity was a great humanoid terror, a tarek Loren knew more by reputation than from an actual encounter. Pogren the Foul was big even by tarek standards, and members of the wasteland-dwelling people could reach upwards of seven feet. He had the bestial features common to the people, leathery brown skin and small eyes beneath a pronounced bone ridge, replete with jutting tusks. He was an unpleasant vision, made worse by his cursing as the lizards carried his chariot forward. Worst of all was the hide cloak flapping from Pogren’s back. Loren saw the holes pocking it were once eyes and mouths. Every story Loren had heard about the arena champion ended with him tearing his victim’s face off. The stories were true, it seemed.
As the lizards built up speed and closed the distance between them, Loren saw he wore heavy armor made from lacquered wooden strips arranged in horizontal rows. Here and there, metal spikes jabbed out, ready to catch and tear the flesh of any who drew too close. The chariot sped by, and Pogren swept an axe in a lazy swipe, as if to show Loren and Aeris the instrument of their deaths. The axe had a wide crescent head of obsidian, notched in the center. It was so large, so preposterous, no human could even hope to lift it, let alone wield it in battle. The crowd responded with an enthusiastic cry. Their approval drowned out all other thoughts as the chariot rounded for another pass. The lizards screamed and bounced into each other. Their eyes rolled in pain caused by harness posts driven into their necks.
Aeris grabbed Loren again and shifted him to see what he had noticed. While Pogren had been posturing, the other gate was up all the way. One monster was free already. Blood matted its coat where the gate’s teeth drug furrows into its back as it wriggled free. Two others crept from the shadows. One roared at the crowd. The other slunk low, mere inches above the ground. All three fixed yellow eyes on the fighting pair.
“Kirre!” shouted Aeris into Loren’s ear.
Loren did not know the name, but he garnered enough from Aeris’s expression that he should be worried. The beasts looked like hunters. They had sleek bodies with eight legs, each ending in a clawed paw. Horns emerged from the backs of their heads and looked thick enough to stop an axe blow. As if they were not fearsome enough, something about their movements, their gaze, their very presence hinted at a bestial cunning. They would be no easy foes to face, and with mad Pogren racing about, Loren scrambled for a plan.
The bleeding beast wasted no more time. It sprang toward Loren and Aeris, flinging itself across twenty paces or more, barbed tail swishing and claws extended.
Aeris said something. The crowd noise drowned out the words. Aeris raised the crossbow and fired. The bolt slammed into the kirre’s neck near midleap, so rather than rake them both with its claws, it landed in a rolling heap, throwing up sand in a sheet.
Before the beast could struggle to its feet, Loren was in motion. Leaping forward and wrenching his sword free, he spun the blade to reverse the grip so when he landed, he did so with two feet of chipped stone planted through the monster’s skull. Crimson ropes flew into the air. Loren pulled on the blade, trying to free it from the skull, but it snapped just before it disappeared into the skull.
He spun around with his broken blade. Aeris had cranked another bolt into the crossbow. The other two kirres charged him, covering the distance in effortless leaps. Loren ducked beneath the first, grunting as its claws savaged his back. He then twisted away from the second and rolled across the sand. The bloody streak he left sent fear thrilling through him.
A twang let Loren know Aeris had fired again, yet with little result since Loren could see the puff of sand where the bolt hit the ground.
One of the kirres stalked forward. Loren scrambled to his feet. He kept the broken blade in front of him, parallel to the ground. The beast crouched and watched him. Rather than spring forward as they had so far, it opened its mouth as if to roar. No sound came forth, however. Yet Loren could feel something in his bones, something powerful battering his body and mind. The force threw him backward, head over heels until he landed on his back. Air burst from his lungs on impact. He retched to catch his breath. Black spots hung in his vision. He forced himself up and noted Aeris stood a few paces away, struggling to reload in the face of two approaching kirres.
Loren was moving toward Aeris when he remembered Pogren. He spun and saw the chariot had rounded the arena floor and was racing toward them. The tarek swung his axe over his head, round and round, unmindful or uncaring of how exposed he was.
A kirre leaped. Loren dived and slammed into Aeris, to send him and his crossbow bouncing across the arena floor. The crossbow fired a bolt into the stands. Some unlucky spectator died. The crowd roared again with approval. The body fell from the stands, thrown by the bloodthirsty crowd, and landed near enough to a kirre that it jumped back.
Aeris scrambled away, fumbling for his axe as Loren once more regained his feet.
The kirre that had jumped away from the corpse landed in the chariot’s path. The panicked lizards collided with the beast in a tremendous crash, the impact sending the chariot cartwheeling through the air. Pogren and his ridiculous axe landed several feet away.
Someone screamed. Loren turned. The second kirre had reach Aeris and worried him with its claws. Loren freed the alhulak and charged the beast. At the last moment, he swung the strange weapon with all his strength and managed to hook the beast in its jaw. The kirre struggled. The rope twisted around the horn. Loren pulled. The monster was strong, but Loren was stronger. Foot by foot, he hauled the creature back. The beast scrambled. Sand flew. With one final pull, Loren stepped forward and slammed his broken blade through the kirre’s left eye. It screamed, kicked, and died.
Blood ran down Loren’s back. He felt cold and dizzy. He released the alhulak and recovered Aeris’s axe. Aeris was alive. Loren could see him struggling to stand. He would get to his knees and fall down again. Blood from too many cuts told him it wouldn’t be long before he died. Loren could do nothing for him.
Just beyond the thrashing lizards, trapped by their traces and the kirre chewing on them, was Pogren. He broke free from the wreckage. His left arm hung at an odd angle. He gripped the oversized axe in his right hand, still managing to hold on to it despite his injury.
Loren dropped into a wide stance. He planted his feet and held his axe in both hands.
Pogren walked, slow as death. He cut off a lizard’s head as he closed. The remaining kirre scurried back, gleaming eyes tracking the warrior.
The people stood in the stands. It was what they had come to see.
Pogren stopped three paces away. He assessed Loren. His small eyes picked out every cut, scrape, and wound Loren had sustained so far. The tarek was looking for a sign of weakness, anything he could use to end the contest.
Loren did the same. A bone jutted out from the tarek’s arm. Dark blood oozed from the wound.
The tarek said something Loren couldn’t make out. Pogren repeated it. Loren still couldn’t hear. The tarek shrieked and charged.
Loren te
nsed. As the tarek’s axe dropped, Loren stepped forward and brought his own axe up between Pogren’s legs. The tarek’s roar became a screech. Loren pulled back, spun away, and swept the axe across the tarek’s face.
The tarek stumbled, snot and blood spraying from the appalling injury. Loren pressed the advantage. He grabbed the bone sticking out from the tarek’s broken arm and wrenched it forward.
Pogren screamed and pissed all over the ground. He flailed his fist. Loren felt each strike impacting like a mace head. He would not, could not, let go. Pogren brought his fist down again and again. Loren flipped his axe and sent it up into the tarek’s groin once more. The angle was poor, but the wound still sprayed blood in such torrents, Loren wobbled on his feet. His weapon squirted out from his grip. Pogren doubled over and Loren, still holding the bone, pulled and ripped it free from the arm.
The tarek crumpled. Loren adjusted his grip on the bone. He almost dropped it, so slippery was it in his hands. He looked out across the grounds, shouted, and brought the bone down with a swift stab to the tarek’s neck.
Melech used his teeth to pull the last scrap of meat from the bone skewer he had purchased from a street vendor while his bodyguards scrapped in the alley. They had waited an hour for the sun to cross overhead, avoiding the punishing heat so that they might cover a block without sucking down all the water in their skins. Even in Tyr, high sun was a time to find shade and hold it, even when the work was easy.
The muls did not seem bothered by the heat. Their dwarf blood ensured they could withstand hardships lethal to humans. And Ugly and Uglier, as Melech called them, were tough even by mul standards. Before the king died, they fought in the arena. The piercings and tattoos covering their bodies commemorated the many victories and rare defeats they found in Tyr’s fitting pit. Or so they said. Melech had no taste for blood sport and never went to the games to watch. He went to steal.
That, he reflected, was a different life. It had been years since he prowled Shadow Square, clipping purses and hustling travelers. He had not robbed a merchant at knifepoint in months, and since he was climbing the organization’s ranks, his time as a thief was over. Instead, Melech collected. And he hated it.
Collections were easy. His rivals all wanted the work. Just walk the city, knock on doors, stick out the palm, and offer thanks for the coins placed there. Rich or poor, sick or healthy, people paid. To do otherwise was to find one’s home burgled, burned, or worse. To do otherwise meant learning to walk with a limp or burying a beloved child or pet. Tyr was a dangerous place, and keeping the danger at bay was expensive. The organization provided a unique service. Pay for protection or find out just how nasty Tyr could be.
Melech hated the work.
The muls broke out clubs and took turns smashing the other on the head.
Melech flicked away the skewer. He had been stealing for as long as he could remember. Taking coin from other folks was never a problem, provided Melech got to choose his mark. In the collecting business, his master, the nefarious Torston, made all the choices, and he never cared if his victims could afford to be robbed or not. It was never a factor.
Each time Melech took the ceramic pieces from an artisan or peddler, he knew it was water from their mouths, food from their families. Stealing from the poor was useless. They didn’t have anything worth stealing in the first place. Worse, people down to their last couple of bits were less inclined to part with them if it meant starving to death. Melech brought along the toughs to make sure people paid even when they couldn’t.
Melech shook himself. Fretting about the work didn’t make it any easier. He checked the shadows. The sun had slid past the zenith and the day would begin to cool off, little by little, until night fell.
“Let’s go,” he said to the muls. Bright blood leaked from their split lips, and one’s eye had swollen shut. They pulled themselves from the ground and fell in on either side, grumbling and muttering as normal.
The muls were not cruel. They were brutal and effective. They hated slavers and saw their work as a chance to get revenge for every time some master scourged their backs. The trouble was in their eyes, anyone who wasn’t a slave at one time was by default a slave owner. When Melech argued, one or the other would explain even if they did not own slaves, they thought about it.
Maybe they had a point, Melech considered as they emerged from the alley and joined the people streaming down a busy thoroughfare. Melech had never owned slaves and perhaps would himself have been one if it hadn’t been for the hand of fate snatching him from the auction block when he was a boy. Torston saved him from some unspeakable fate—a slave’s career opportunities ranged from the sad to the cruel to the downright awful. Melech owed him and did pretty much whatever Torston said, even if it did make him feel sick.
“Next?” piped a high-pitched voice at his side. The voice belonged to Kep, another constant companion, friend of many years, and fellow pincher. Melech nicknamed the halfling Munch for his disgusting eating habits. Halflings were a strange, diminutive people rumored to come from somewhere beyond the Ringing Mountains to the west. Melech never asked where Kep came from. He never cared. They were a tribal, savage folk, keeping strange customs and beliefs about the world. All Melech knew about halflings was they spoke their own language; were rather short; and ate anything that walked, crawled, or slithered across the earth.
Although they never spoke much about their past, they worked well together when thieving. Kep would often play the part of a small, crying child. He would start bawling and some do-gooder would happen along to help. By the time the mark figured out the child was not, in fact, a child, but a dirty halfling, Melech was already a block away with the mark’s purse in hand. It was a good scam, and Melech missed its simplicity.
Melech hadn’t seen Kep all morning. Kep had a habit of running off when he should be working. Him making it back after high sun was a surprise.
“Old Finster. The apothecary on Stink Street?”
Kep nodded. “Don’t like him.”
Ugly grunted. Uglier fished something horrid from his nostril.
“Kalak’s wrinkled stones. You don’t like anybody, Kep,” said Melech. “What’s wrong with Finster?”
Kep, as serious as he could be, said, “He wouldn’t let me eat his lizard.”
Ugly laughed, a horrible chuffing noise.
Melech sighed. “If I had a lizard, I would object if you tried to eat it. And, now we’re talking about it, I need you to hold back on the biting.”
Kep scowled.
“These strolls through the Warrens”—Melech gestured at the crumbling buildings rotting to all sides—“are pleasant and all, to say nothing of the company,” he winked at Uglier, “but our customers cannot pay us if you chew off their faces.”
The scowl deepened.
“So why don’t we let Finster keep his nose. Oh. And his fingers, toes, and … yes, how about we just don’t bite Finster at all.”
Kep kicked a bit of clay, sending it skidding down the street.
The four left the main street and ducked into the Warrens’ narrow streets, turning one way, then another, doubling back again before inching a bit closer to their destination. The Warrens made tangled look tidy. The entire community was a jumble, with streets created from opportunity rather than from foresight or planning. Melech had spent his childhood there. Even though he knew the ins and outs, the Warrens could surprise him, such as when a pile of buildings collapsed and erased a convenient short cut. There were also few legitimate businesses in the Warrens. The ones who prospered were not much more than bone pickers, folks who made ends meet by scouring the ruins for things someone, somewhere might find valuable.
Finster’s Apothecary was not quite in the Warrens, though it was close, just on the edge of the Tradesmen’s District, where the widespread ruin and squalor abated a bit. It was a nasty little hole tucked between two warehouses. Old Finster just claimed the gap between the larger buildings, borrowing their walls, and slapping some b
oards overhead. He built up the other two walls using bricks stolen from the Warrens.
A year past, the templars would have paid a pretty coin to even hear about Finster’s. They were always sniffing out those who dealt in sorcery. Yet Finster’s clientele and the thieves who protected him kept their mouths shut. But the templars didn’t care so much anymore. Finster catered to illegals, bringing in all sorts of forbidden things to sell to the other folk who dabbled in magic’s forbidden arts. As one of a scant few with the stones to engage in the business, he had a veritable monopoly because the elf dealers who sometimes dealt in the same commodities couldn’t be trusted and because Finster’s customers were all handpicked by other customers. No one who shopped there wanted to see old Finster dancing at the end of a rope.
Melech had visited Finster three times since taking up the collections trade, and each time it was like squeezing water from a stone to get his coin. Last time, Ugly had to get a little rough with the merchandise before Finster made good on his debt. Melech hoped the muls would not have to go so far this time. Not because he cared whether or not Finster escaped the meeting with both legs intact. Melech did not like wizards or their kind. They were a nasty lot, using life energy to power their spells, or so someone had explained to him once. Melech worried one day his thugs might go too far and old Finster might use a spell to sort them all out. Melech had no interest in facing down sorcery.
They rounded the last corner before the apothecary’s shop, bringing it into view at the end of a dingy alley. A stone step led up to a wooden door hairy with peeling paint. Odd markings adorned the frame, arcane symbols. They set the place out as being safe for mages, or so Melech guessed.
Ugly made a step toward the building, but Melech caught his arm. “Wait.” Finster might owe money to Torston, but just strolling in and making demands was a bad idea. Wizards in Tyr were more brazen since the old sorcerer-king was gone. King Kalak hated wizards and had his templars hunt them down. Melech had even seen a few moving in the open. Even though a few templars still hunted wizards, Finster could get away with a spell or two.
Death Mark Page 6
