Joined at the Hilt: Union (Sphereworld: Joined at the Hilt Book 1)

by Caleb Wachter

  “No, no, no,” he stammered pleadingly, “that was right—keep doing that!”

  The commander gave him a strange look. “The only thing I’ll be doing for you is a favor by putting you out of your misery, you pathetic animal,” he growled as his blade flashed out almost too quickly for Randall to follow. He clumsily brought his weapon forward far enough that he managed to deflect the incoming blow, but the commander deftly spun his body and brought his weapon around for another swipe at Randall’s neck.

  Knowing he was hopelessly out of position, Randall fell backward and tried to bring the weapon up in front of his body. But his arms were heavier than they’d ever felt, and he barely managed to get the sword’s tip pointed up as the commander’s blade whistled through the air where his neck had been an instant earlier.

  The commander wasn’t finished there, lashing out with his mailed boot and kicking the blade from Randall’s hands while sending him sprawling out on his back. The weapon clattered against the wall of the building to Randall’s right, and the commander leaned down with a disgusted look on his face.

  “I don’t know what your game is, freak,” he spat, “but you’re going to pay for what you did to my men—starting with your pathetic excuse for manhood!”

  The commander drew his leg back and kicked Randall between the legs—hard. Randall would have screamed if his lungs had responded even a bit, but they didn’t and he merely curled up into a ball of agony as the commander sneered, “You don’t need any of it anyway, from what I hear…what say we relieve you of their burden here and now—along with your tongue?”

  Randall heard the commander draw a blade from his belt. He did his best to resist but he literally couldn’t feel his legs, or even see anything through the haze of pain as the commander bent down with his dagger in hand.

  “All I wanted was to clear a good woman’s name,” the commander grunted as he sliced through Randall’s knot of rope which served as a belt with his dagger. “Suicide’s a stain nearly as bad as elvish blood, and I’ll not have her family needlessly burdened with such a mark—nor will I have her remembered so.”

  Randall tried to regain control of his limbs but failed utterly, so he braced himself for the inevitable before hearing a brief, gurgling sound and Randall felt a spray of warm fluid cover his face. He opened his eyes just in time to see the commander’s hand go to his throat, which had been sliced open nearly from ear to ear. A look of confusion came across the man’s face before his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell to his side, bleeding profusely from his gaping neck wound.

  Standing behind him was Ellie, holding a dagger in her delicate hands and wearing a blank look on her face as she stared down at the dead commander.

  After a few agonizing moments Randall was able to push the pain from his mind and stagger to his feet, once again reminded of just how badly his ribs hurt from earlier in the day—not to mention that he still barely had any sensation in his lower extremities.

  “Ellie,” he gasped, “Ellie, where’s Yordan?”

  Ellie didn’t seem to register that he had even spoken, so he gently shook her by the shoulder as he glanced down the alley. “Ellie!” he said through teeth gritted with pain. “Ellie, where is Yordan?”

  She snapped out of her dazed state and the bloody dagger fell to the ground with a thud. “Yordan?” she asked hollowly as she turned her face toward Randall.

  “Yes, where is she?” he repeated, looking over his shoulder and knowing they needed to get out of there quickly to avoid being caught.

  “She hit her head,” Ellie replied numbly, “tripped on a box, I think.”

  “Good,” Randall said as he felt a huge sense of relief, “good, we need to wake her up and get you back to your new room. Can you pick up the food sack for me?”

  Ellie nodded, her expression still a blank mask. “Of course, Doll,” she said as she moved over to the strewn pile of food which she slowly placed inside the sack.

  Randall moved to the back of the alley and found Yordan sprawled out not far from Biggs’ bleeding body. He turned her over and gently shook her, “Yordan,” he hissed. “Yordan!” he repeated more forcefully. When she failed to stir, he grimaced as he drew his hand back and slapped her across the face. When that failed, he hit her as hard as he dared and her eyes snapped open.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, he placed a hand on her cheek and forced her to look at him. “Yordi, can you walk? We need to get out of here,” he pleaded.

  “Randy?” she said, blinking her eyes groggily. “What happened?”

  “Never mind that,” he said quickly, “we need to get you back to the loft—stand up so you can get moving.”

  She did as he instructed and was less wobbly than he had expected, so he pointed toward Ellie. “Help El with the food, okay?”

  Yordan nodded, having clearly regained most of her senses. She looked down at the fallen Biggs and her hand went to her mouth. “What happened?!” she asked in obvious fright.

  “We need to go, Yordi,” he insisted, “go help Ellie with the food!”

  Yordan nodded again and quickly made her way to Ellie’s side, leaving Randall beside Biggs’ motionless body. He tried to clear his mind of the haze which hung over him, and he was surprisingly able to do so after only a few deep breaths. He knew they needed to retrieve all of their belongings, since the food they had bought could likely be traced back to dockside and the vendors would have no choice but to cooperate with any investigation—which would inevitably lead straight back to Ellie and Yordan.

  He let his mind work through that angle before realizing that if any of the soldiers survived, they would be able to identify the three of them.

  Randall couldn’t let that happen, but he didn’t know that he could do what was called for if Biggs was still breathing. He leaned down over Biggs’ body and tentatively held out a hand to the man’s neck. He couldn’t feel any movement and while he was no healer, he was fairly certain the man no longer drew breath and the puddle of blood surrounding him was larger than Randall had ever seen a man survive.

  Confident that he was already gone, Randall stood and made his way to Wedge—the man who had leered at Ellie before the fighting had begun, and had thrown the dagger at him with his lone remaining hand. Wedge was also motionless at first glance, but when Randall knelt beside him he felt small breaths of air escaping his lips.

  “We’ve got the food, Randall,” Yordan said, and Randall nodded by way of reply.

  “Good,” he said, feeling the world begin to spin as he knew what he needed to do. “You girls need to take the food and keg and get out of here—now,” he said after a brief pause. “You can’t be seen with me in case…in case someone saw what happened from the street and they catch me.”

  “But Randy—“ Yordan began.

  “No, Yordan!” Randall hissed through clenched teeth. “Go now, and don’t look back no matter what you do! This is my mess and I need you to let me deal with it!”

  Yordan looked like she wanted to protest, but Randall pleaded, “Please, Yordi. I need you to look after Ellie.”

  After a moment’s consideration she nodded curtly. “Good luck, Randall,” she said seriously before turning to Ellie, “let’s go, El.”

  The two girls made for the entry to the alleyway and after looking both ways for several tense seconds they slipped out into the street before disappearing into the dark night.

  Randall breathed a sigh of relief and briefly considered waiting in that very spot for the authorities to come and arrest him. That way, he could bear the brunt of their wrath, but he knew that if it was proven that a half-elf had killed Federation soldiers then it would be ten times as bad for the community as if such was merely suspected.

  That left him with nothing but the grizzly, unthinkable task before him. He looked down at Wedge’s unconscious body and saw that the man had fastened a makeshift tourniquet around his arm using his belt. It had slowed the bleeding enough that he would likely survive for some ti
me—almost certainly long enough for a passerby to find him and send for help.

  Randall saw the dagger which Ellie had used to kill the commander, and almost unconsciously he took it in his hand. Knowing that to think about it for too long would unman him and prevent him from protecting his friends’ lives, he drew the blade across the man’s throat in a quick motion. He then turned away in disgust as he experienced his first, real bout of nausea.

  Several painful heaves later, he had emptied the thankfully meager contents of his stomach onto the alley’s earthen floor. He wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve and turned to make certain the deed was done, and that he had ended the soldier’s life.

  Satisfied that he had killed the man, Randall turned from his corpse and went to the unwrapped bundle. He hastily replaced its contents before looking across the alleyway at the mysterious weapon which had been both the cause of, and deliverance from, the horrific events of the evening. He briefly considered abandoning it, believing that the Federation’s wrath might be subdued somewhat if they were to recover it, but the note which ‘T’ had written to him came to the fore of his mind for some reason.

  Insane as it sounded—even after seeing what he had just seen—it seemed that the weapon had spoken to him. If that was true, it had clearly attempted to help protect his friends from certain depravity at the hands of the soldiers now lying dead around him. If for no reason other than that, he was indebted to it and felt obligated to take it with him, since there was absolutely no chance he would have survived the night without its help.

  He made his way over to the blade and picked it up. He was briefly surprised that he felt no jolt or numb sensation when he did so, but he didn’t have time to linger. Hastily placing the weapon in its broad, leather scabbard, he wrapped the bundle tightly around it and slung his small rucksack over his shoulder. Peering around the corner of the alley, he looked carefully to the left, then to the right. He looked both ways once more before he was satisfied that no eyes were on him.

  Slipping around the corner, he went in the opposite direction from Ellie and Yordan and made his way toward dockside, at what he hoped was a leisurely nighttime pace. But all he could focus on was the sound of own heartbeat, which drowned out all other sound with its relentless pounding in his ears.

  Chapter VI: Drift Away

  Night, 25-11-5-659

  Slipping through the city in a circuitous, painfully slow route that took at least two hours when it should have taken no more than twenty minutes, Randall nervously checked the time tower at the center of Three Rivers as he approached dockside. The tower emitted a faint, yellow light from the top of its spire, which meant he still had at least a half hour before sixth bell, when Rhekim and his boat headed upriver. The closer he got to the harbor, the more Randall feared that slipping onto the craft would be more than a little difficult with the increased patrols at dockside.

  He thought of Ellie and Yordan, and silently cursed himself the entire way to dockside for having involved them in his troubles. He should have left them as soon as they’d been settled in their new lodgings, but he had selfishly wanted to spend just a little more time with them. Now they were in danger because of that selfishness, and he could never forgive himself if something were to happen to them.

  He saw a pair of city watchmen strolling his way with torches in hand, and he ducked into an alleyway to wait until they had passed by. They gave a cursory look down the blind alley, but Randall had hidden himself beneath an old, half-rotten sack and the watchmen passed by without setting foot in the alley.

  It was well-past the dockside curfew and having no papers granting him free passage throughout the city after said curfew, Randall knew he had only one option if he was to have any hope of making his way onto Rhekim’s boat.

  He opened the sword bundle and took out the nearly spent makeup kip and looked at the two bottles which still seemed to have enough contents to do the job. The trouble was the lack of light—his Ghaevlian blood only gave him the equivalent of black-and-white vision at night—so he decided to mix equal parts of the two pigments, which seemed to match the same, basic, pureblood human skin tone in the darkness.

  Randall poured their contents onto a small, round seashell which was included in the kit and mixed the dyes with his finger until he was confident they had been properly blended.

  He knew that to conceal his lineage was a grave offense under Federation law. But he actually felt a dark smile tug at the corner of his mouth, as he knew that murder was the only charge that would matter if they caught him.

  With that in mind, he smeared the dye across his face until he felt its sticky substance on every part of his face. He took out a small mirror from the disguise kit and angled it to reflect the moonlight onto his face.

  His heart sank when he saw the absolutely terrible mess he had made with the stuff. There were random smudges all over his face, which he did his best to remove but the dye was already drying into a hard coat. By the time he was finished, he had removed nearly half of the dye from his face.

  Randall noticed his hand was trembling and he looked at it sternly in an attempt to stop, but to no avail. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, after which he muttered, “Come on, Rand. You can do this.”

  He wiped the leftover dye from his skin and placed the now-spent disguise kit back into the bundle before taking the unused one out.

  This time, he selected a single vial of pigment and used the reflected moonlight in an attempt to do a better job of it. To his surprise, he actually thought he had done so after a painstaking period of time. He coated his hands and forearms in the same dye, careful to keep the palms of his hands from being overly stained by the dark, brown pigment.

  The job finished—at least to the best of his ability—Randall replaced the kit’s contents and re-tied the bundle, which he tucked under his arm as he headed back out onto the street.

  He looked up to the time tower and saw that its light had gained intensity since his last check, and he knew he had only minutes before Rhekim’s ship left.

  Randall quickened his pace as he turned the last corner leading to dockside, and almost ran into a pair of Federation soldiers. Despite his intention to boldly move past them, he froze in terror as the two men gave him an appraising look.

  “Ye feelin’ alright, mate?” asked one as he turned toward Randall. “Yer skin don’t look right…”

  The other soldier nodded in agreement, and Randall knew he had to think fast in order to keep from being discovered. His throat felt suddenly dry, and he coughed almost reflexively, covering his mouth with his closed fist as he did so.

  An idea came to him and he coughed again—this time much more forcefully—causing a harsh, wheezing sound to accompany the cough.

  “Best ye stay back, friend,” he warned in his best, southern-flavored, Federation accent, “got a terrible cough, I have.”

  The soldiers stopped in their tracks and glanced at each other nervously. “Dockside’s restricted past dark,” said the first one. “We’ll need to see your papers ‘fore you can pass.”

  Randall nodded agreeably before feigning a much more violent coughing fit which saw him double over in agony—the act of which actually caused his ribs to protest enough that he clutched his side in genuine pain.

  “O’ course, mates,” he replied after regaining control of his breathing. “Have ‘em in my bundle, I do,” he explained as he began to unwrap the sword pack. He had only one idea how to get through this, since he only had a single piece of paper with him—the note ‘T’ had left him.

  Reaching inside the now-open bundle, he produced the paper and held it forth before feigning another violent fit of coughs, careful this time not to aggravate his damaged ribs.

  Seeing the soldier unfazed by proximity to his coughing—likely since Federation citizens were afforded higher priority at the houses of healing than were half-elves, which made them less concerned with minor ailments—Randall knew he had only one play left to h
im.

  He pulled the hand with the paper back toward his face, concealing his other hand behind the wadded note. Reaching up into his right nostril, he grabbed the now-hardened gob of redroot cloth Yordan had placed there earlier in the day. Pushing and twisting the stiff bit of rag as hard as he could, he then tore it from his nose and was more grateful than he ever thought he could have been at the sight of his own blood streaming down onto the crumpled bit of paper.

  Satisfied that the note was sufficiently soaked, he gave the soldier an apologetic look as he hesitantly held the paper forth in one hand while using the other to staunch the flow of blood from his nose.

  The first soldier gave his companion a look of concern, who returned the expression with one of pure disgust. “Go on,” said the second with a dismissive wave. “And be quick about it, ye hear?” he added sternly as he backed away, followed closely by the other soldier.

  Amazed that it had actually worked, Randall nodded gratefully as he hastily rolled up the bundle which he then tucked under his arm before shuffling off toward the docks. He immediately saw Rhekim’s ship: The Jiggling Maid.

  Standing at the base of the ramp was the owner and captain himself, Rhekim Fisherson, a pureblood whose family had plied the Snake for generations—a fact of which he was eager to remind those with whom he did business. Randall moved toward him as quickly as he thought he could without looking suspicious. Just then he heard the sixth bell ring in the distance, which was echoed by the many smaller bells scattered throughout dockside and its surrounding districts.

  “Cast off the lines, boys,” called Rhekim, “looks like this is all we’re takin’ this trip.”

  Randall felt like breaking out into a run as he saw the crew begin to unfasten the loading ramp as the captain began to ascend to the deck of his boat.

  “Captain,” Randall called out, and he saw Rhekim turn with an expectant look on his face.