The Love I Never Knew: Contemporary Romance Mystery (Ariadne Silver Romance Mystery #1)
Page 13
I stopped and turned back to look at the big, smelly and undoubtedly male ogre that I’d shared more than one life and death adventure with in the last few months.
“Oh,” was all I could come up with.
Fes followed me without needing any instruction, his leg joints quietly emitting something between a clicking and a scraping sound as he moved which, despite our time together, still tended to give me the creeps. The black and royal blue hair that covered his body provided great camouflage at night in the barren, rocky landscape and rendered him almost invisible to anything or anyone more than twenty metres away, even on a moonlit night like that one.
We made our way round to the more direct path that climbed straight up the spine of the ridge. I drew my bow, notched an arrow and moved behind Fes. We advanced slowly up the path in our mini combat formation that we had almost perfected in the last three weeks. It pretty much involved Fes acting as a shield to soak up any surprise missile fire and then charging into whatever fray might present itself, while I sat back muttering missile charms and firing my bow. If a battle got to the point of me actually having to draw my short sword, well... it was probably just time to run away.
A couple of minutes later and we had reached the top of the ridge without incident. I looked up at the watch tower, the base of which was now less than fifty metres away. It looked quiet and empty from where I was. For a moment I let myself think that maybe we’d got lucky and all the defenders were asleep inside, but I knew that the tower was sure to be filled with NPCs and NPCs were never asleep when you needed them to be.
Teini and Bubeh would be approaching the base of the tower from the other path. Theirs was the more secret path – the defenders would have to be looking at the right spot to see them coming. Me, I could only have been more exposed if I’d removed all of my clothing. My trusty bow seemed puny in my hands and the tower loomed menacingly large above me, even more intimidating for its deserted appearance.
Tensed, waiting for a sickening thud and the white tunnel that would suck me back to Cymbo, I approached the base of the tower and one of the two walls which formed a protective ‘V’ around the entrance. Fes crawled up the side of the tower and paused to scan the area around the entrance before making his way atop the four metre wall and dangling a leg over to pull me up.
He may have been incredibly creepy and I had to be careful where I grabbed his leg to avoid the fluid that occasionally leaked from his joints and the sharper of his body hairs – some of which had already given me a few scars – but I found myself thinking about what a great companion I had chosen. He seemed so much brighter and more aware of the little things (like my inability to scale a four metre wall) than most of the companions I had come across.
I keep saying ‘he’, but in truth I had no idea what sex Fes was or, indeed, if he even had such a thing. All I knew was that, great companion or no, the point where he started laying eggs was probably going to be the point where we went our separate ways.
Atop the wall, I looked at the entrance below me. The door was wide open and no light issued from within. The area outside the entrance was clear as well. As I watched, Teini – evidently on Bubeh’s shoulders – appeared to levitate gracefully up from behind the opposite wall and made a nimble, virtually silent leap onto it. Moments later, Bubeh made a less graceful appearance. We all shared a look that said, ‘Is it me, or is this too easy?’
Suddenly taken by that bravery that only comes with accepting the inevitability of your situation, I was the first to leap down into the potential killing ground that was the area before the entrance. Bow already in hand, I notched an arrow again and held it aimed into the inky blackness beyond the open doorway.
The others leapt down as well and a few moments passed as we all looked pointedly at each other, ending with Bubeh looking pointedly at Fes, Fes letting out a low, irritated hiss, and Bubeh rolling his eyes and stepping up to the doorway, his mallet-like two-handed war hammer held tense and ready. I thought about pointing out how useless that great big weapon was going to be in the tight confines of the tower, but Bubeh was already at the doorway and if they attacked while he (well, she) was trying to change over his weapon, things could be even worse.
Inside, the stone tower was dank, cold and empty, not to mention exceptionally dark, save for the odd patch where moonlight spilt through a small window or arrow loop somewhere up above. From what could be made out, the room was empty except for a few pieces of rickety-looking furniture. Spiral stairs following the outer wall of the tower led upwards to (judging by the placement of windows on the outside) probably about three more levels above us.
With concerned looks, we headed as stealthily as we could upwards.
Those three more levels proved equally empty and soon we stood with only the roof and the readied fire beacon that we were tasked to destroy above us. A ladder led up to the roof through an open hatch and more pointed looks signalled everyone’s reluctance to be the first one up there. This time I relented and asked Fes to go up first, not really thinking about how impractical it was to be sending a giant spider up a ladder.
After two noisy failures that would have let anyone up above know that we were coming, Bubeh helped Fes conquer the ladder with a firm push on the abdomen.
“Yeugh!” Bubeh exclaimed, turning back with his hands held out and, in a narrow strand of moonlight, showing them to be covered in web. “The little bastard shat on me!”
Suddenly there was a loud and worryingly familiar sucking whoosh from somewhere beyond the top of the ladder. Not even a second later Fes was ripped from the top of the ladder in a bright violet blast that sent him flying from my view.
“Fes!” I cried out, and instinctively (although, I presume, not using the instinct for survival) I raced towards the ladder, but a second explosion obliterated the top half of the ladder and a great deal of masonry around it, sending Teini, Bubeh and myself scattering for cover.
There was a powerful wizard up there, too powerful for an NPC watchtower guard in this region. They had to be players up there and they had the high ground. I prepared to say goodbye to Frinn and briefly wished I could have had longer with Fes.
We could have tried to run, but with hundreds of Cylives potentially depending on our success there, it certainly seemed a better option to take death in the front rather than in the back for the slim chance of escape. In a beautiful moment that one remembers later like it had happened in slow motion, the three of us made our decision simultaneously and turned to attack.
Teini hopped onto Bubeh’s shoulder who then leapt to his feet, launching the barbarian and his fearsome Bastard Sword of Kanoch through the gap and out into the night air beyond. I rolled back to my feet and brought my bow up, losing a shaft at a shape moving somewhere up on the roof as the clangs of battle started to ring down from above. A pleasing cry of pain gave me my echoed response, and with that I drew my short sword (the one I had bought for just ten copper pieces and usually only used for running away) and took a run up at Bubeh, landing a foot in his (we’ve settled on his) waiting hands to also be propelled upwards as Teini had been moments before.
The first thing I noticed as I waited for the artificial world’s gravity to overcome the force of the throw and deposit me on the roof, was the lack of the expected signal fire. The beacon was there, its frame, but there was no flammable material inside it whatsoever. Which begged the question, why were we just about to get ourselves killed for it? The next thing I noticed, upon landing, was the stench of burnt spider hair and this caused the battle rage to settle even more completely upon me.
To my right, Teini’s whirling blade was forcing an opponent back towards the edge of the tower’s roof. At the far side of the roof, another, smaller figure - the wizard - was looking towards Teini, a bluish sphere growing in its hands. I started to charge the wizard, hoping to at least interrupt the spell casting, but someone blind-sided me from behind and to the left, their mace glancing off my shoulder and causing a shot of th
e dull, reduced version of pain that came with injuries in CyberV. It was still enough for me to elicit an involuntary yelp and I barreled into my opponent, briefly dancing a scrappy waltz with them as we grappled in the half light of the setting moon.
Finally I uncoupled from them with a mighty shove and (though I would insist it was planned at the time) had fortunately chosen the right shoving moment to see them disappear down the enlarged opening and into the clutches of Bubeh’s war hammer. Turning back, the spell caster was now more fully illuminated so as to be visible and had turned out to be a halfling female. This was a problem.
“Stop!” she screamed at the top of her magically amplified voice.
Everyone did so and looked around at each other, stunned… We were all supposed to be on the same side!
“What the fuck are you doing?” she demanded of Teini.
“What do you mean, ‘what the fuck are we doing’?” he exclaimed as best he could between breaths. “You just tried to bloody kill us!”
“We thought you were tower guards,” said the soldier that Teini had nearly forced off the side of the tower.
“Do we look like tower guards?” I said to the halfling. She was cute-looking - for a halfling, that is.
“Well…” she struggled momentarily, then returned with sharp-tongued form. “You made enough noise for twenty guards; plus, you sent that great big spider after us.”
Fes! Poor Fes.
“Can I put this guy down now?” Bubeh called up from below.
“Guess so,” Teini replied, though he kept his eye on the armoured soldier before him. Then he turned to the witch, (in the game, female wizards are witches and male ones are warlocks) as she seemed to be the leader. “What the hell are you doing in our tower?”
“Your tower?” she cried out. “This was our bloody tower to take you troll-dunged morons!”
For the first time, I noticed the human thief who had taken my arrow in the shoulder as he rose to his feet from the battlements near the witch. He was looking at me with a murderous expression – possibly something to do with the quiver of arrows on my back.
“No,” replied Teini with condescending calmness, “this is our tower, ‘Tower G’.”
A collective groan went up from the witch, the soldier and the thief.
“Don’t worry,” Teini continued, even more condescendingly, “could happen to anyone. That alphabet is a tricky one and it’s not like there’s any harm done, you only fried his companion and left a watchtower free to signal that our arm-”
“-This is ‘H’.” The halfling witch’s timing was flawless and Teini’s face a picture. “That’s ‘G’,” she said, pointing to an even higher ridge several kilometres to the southeast, its silhouette faintly visible against the lightening sky which signalled that dawn was less than half an hour away.
Teini turned to look at it, his expression pulled gaunt with the realisation of how badly we had screwed up. “The raiding party will be coming past there in the next ten, fifteen minutes; we’ll never make it in time.”
“If it’s only that beacon,” the halfling replied, almost managing kind, now that Teini had admitted our error, “it might be alright. It might not get seen.”
“You think?” asked Teini, desperate for some hope.
“Actually, I think it probably won’t matter.”
“Why’s that?”
The witch, the thief and the soldier – who I could now see was a dwarf character – all looked at each other.
“What?” Teini and I insisted together.
“The tower was empty and there was no signal fire here,” said the thief in the gravest of voices.
“And…?” called Bubeh from below. “So what?”
But I was beginning to understand and I could see from Teini’s face that he was too. Nobody seemed to want to say it.
“Shit!” Bubeh suddenly exclaimed. “They pulled the guards back; it’s a trap!”
Just then, two hairy(ish) legs appeared over the side of the tower’s battlements and strained to pull six more and a great big body over as well. Our three new allies on the roof eyed Fes as he trudged wearily to my side. It’s hard for a pair of seventy centimetre long pedipalps and four pairs of eyes the size of small saucers to look more pissed off and fearsome than they already do the rest of the time, but somehow he managed it.
The thief sniffed and pulled a disgusted face. “Oh my God,” he exclaimed, “what is that nasty smell?”
Fes let out a couple of angry hisses and clicks and shifted to face the thief, his front pair of legs and head still smoking and rather more devoid of hair than usual.
“Oh… sorry.”
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Booklist
Links to access all books published by Morris Fenris:
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