The Staff of Sakatha

by Tom Liberman

  “I thought your sister was named Jane,” said Sorus.

  “My older brother Valarius,” said Jon. “He’s a druid. He and father talk a lot about those sorts of things but I’ve never really been much interested. It always seemed kind of boring but these steps are something else. The power to do something like this, the power to make … Banisher,” said the young gray knight.

  “Banisher!” said Germanius and suddenly turned to him. “That’s a name from the dim. Banisher, the Black Sword, wielded by the Usurper to slay the Emperor and send his allies back to the Nine Hells and beyond.”

  “No one knows if those stories are true,” said Jon. “In any case, yonder lies a big open cavern and the dragon is inside with the darkling elf and the dragon child. I don’t think we can surprise them. The cave is big and they’ll see us coming from a distance.”

  “How can we take them then?” asked Sorus, his hand ahold of his slim blade. The cold of the hilt made him feel better, but the thought of a dragon quickly sent fear through his body again. He felt his legs suddenly go weak, and he put a hand up against the wall to steady himself. “If we can’t surprise them and that dragon unleashes his breath on us we’ll never even get close to them.”

  “We don’t know if it can use its breath,” said Jon. “Not all dragons can but we do need a plan and I’ve been thinking all the way down here.”

  “Go on, Jon,” said Germanius, standing up straight and looking into the young knights eyes as much as he could from so far below. “You make a plan and I’ll follow it. So will Sir Sorus here. This is your mission and yours alone to decide.”

  “They’re waiting for those creatures we killed upstairs, so they might not be in the mood to attack us right away,” said Jon. “Germanius goes in first and tells them you found their friends just after an ambush up in that cave. Tell them the truth, the dying creatures, the bloody remains, and then say something about a giant human with a big sword and a young knight of Elekargul. Then Sorus and I burst in; while they look at us you close in on the dragon and kill the creature. You’ll be alone up there against all of them for a few moments and it won’t be easy but Sir Sorus and I will come up as fast as we can to help you.”

  “I’ll have to cover my knightly sigil,” said Germanius and pointed to the symbol of the knights of Elekargul, a set of four horseshoes pointing away from each other and a hand broken at the wrist in the middle.

  “I don’t think so,” said Jon. “I didn’t watch them long but I got the impression the dragon child and the white dragon weren’t from around here and the darkling elf has probably never been on the surface at all. He might know about the knights of Elekargul but he won’t make the connection between your symbol and the knights fast enough. If we go quickly this has a chance of working.”

  “All right,” said Germanius. “I’ll kill the dragon but I won’t be able to hold off the others long.”

  Jon stood up straight and stuck his hand out for the old knight to grasp and they shook for a long moment and stared at one another. “It’s been a pleasure serving with you Sir Germanius Brokenhand,” said Jon with a nod of his head. “If I ever do find one girl to settle down with I’ll remember you to her with kind words.”

  Sir Germanius smiled, “You’re a good boy, Jon,” he said. “But you’re young and headstrong. You listen to your father if you ever make it back to Tanelorn, and I want you to promise me something.”

  “Of course,” said Jon with a nod of his head, “anything.”

  “Take Sir Sorus with you. You two are bound together I think. Take him back to this Tanelorn of yours, keep him with you and keep him safe.”

  Jon nodded, “I will.”

  The two men then turned to Sorus who stood there, a sheepish look on his face, and suddenly he found tears in his eyes, “I don’t want you to die, Germanius,” he blubbered and hated himself immediately.

  “What you want doesn’t matter,” said the old knight with a smile as he patted the young knight on the shoulder. “It’s time for me to die. You watch me kill that dragon and tell everyone back in town; my grandson lives in the hills west of Red Roost. You tell him how I died, and you tell the First Rider.”

  Sorus nodded as the tears still came down his face, “I will, Sir Germanius. You can count on me.”

  “I know I can,” replied the knight and then turned towards the cave mouth and strode inside.

  A moment later they heard his voice calling, “Great dragon of the north, I have news of your allies, they are slain by a giant but they told me of the staff!”

  There was a sudden babble of sounds from beyond the door as the acoustics of the large cave seemed to turn all conversation into a muddle.

  “Give him a few moments to get away from the cave entrance,” said Jon. “He’ll move off to the side so they’re not looking directly at it and then we make our move.”

  Sorus nodded and pulled out his sword, “I’m with you, Jon.”

  “I know,” said Jon. “It looks like I’m to take you back to Tanelorn. There’s no getting out of that promise I made to Germanius, so you’re stuck with me.”

  Sorus nodded and they waited for a few more seconds and then Jon pulled his mammoth stone sword from its scabbard and raised it up, “For the Gray!” he shouted and dashed into the room. Sorus didn’t have a moment to contemplate the war cry but simply shouted out, “For Elakargul” and charged in after.

  Sorus watched Jon as he loped across the smooth marble floor of the immense cavern, immediately broke into a sprint of his own, but fell further behind with every stride. The seven foot tall teenager moved with apparent languid motions but covered ground faster than a sprinter, which left Sorus far behind. Up ahead stood the first dragon the young knight saw outside of pictures, a dragon child much like the one upstairs but with green and white scales, and a darkling elf with purplish black skin, silver hair, and a twinkling set of chain mail on his breast and arms. In front of them stood Sir Germanius, his arms spread out as if in appeal although the eyes of the three foes eyes locked on Jon Gray as he dashed towards them his sword raised above his head.

  Things seemed to move in slow motion as Sorus willed his legs to move faster. The darkling elf moved first as it pulled a slim, curved blade from the jeweled scabbard at his side and lunged towards Jon and shouted out something in a language that the young knight did not understand. The dragon child looked towards the white dragon in confusion and the creature itself, just as Jon described with two long, thick horns protruding from its head, turned to face Jon with a look of anticipation in its eyes.

  “Jon Gray,” it said in the plainest words Sorus ever heard in his life. “My master told me you might be meddling in these affairs. I’m glad it will be I, Snowball the steed of Lord Wh …. Argahaha,” it screamed, and Sorus noted Sir Germanius’s sword plunged deeply into its neck.

  The dragon child hissed, charged towards the old knight, and drew a wicked blade from its side with a quick motion.

  “Watch out!” screamed Sorus still halfway across the great chamber and Germanius pulled the blade from the creatures neck but not before it reached forward like a snake with one talon and grabbed the wrist of the old warrior. Sorus heard the snap from across the room clearly, but the broken sword arm didn’t stop the old knight as he pulled a longer dagger from his belt with his left hand and lunged forward towards the beast’s mouth. The creature opened its jaws wide enough to encircle the waist of Germanius and bit down with a terrible crunching sound as the teeth bit into chain armor.

  Germanius plunged the dagger into the creature’s head between the two horns and a fountain of blood spewed out of his mouth. A moment later the dragon child plunged his blade into the old warrior’s lower body which hung kicking and squirming in the mouth of the creature.

  “Damn you,” screamed Sorus, and suddenly he was there, on top of them, as he rushed past Jon and the darkling elf and towards the dragon child. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the elf raise up his sword to parry Jon�
��s sweeping blow and heard a strange little tinkle sound, but then he was upon the dragon child who busied itself plunging its blade into Sir Germanius a second time. He lunged forward the point of his own sword aimed at the creatures exposed back but it half turned, perhaps as it heard his cry, and the blade slid along its right shoulder and sliced through a thick leather breastplate but failed to damage the creature.

  Sorus’s momentum took him past the dragon child and into the side of the dragon itself where he bounced off the hard scales and took a step backwards. He spun around just in time to see his foe lunge with its sword and the young knight managed to parry the blow with a quick down stroke and then whip his own blade up towards its throat, but the creature was too quick and dodged backwards and out of the way.

  Screaming with fury, Sorus launched himself towards the creature and was inside a sword blow that would otherwise have cut him in half. He wrestled with the thing for half a step but then it stumbled over something and went over backwards to the floor with Sorus on top. The dragon child tried to wriggle away but the brewer hacked downwards with a chopping motion, the very bottom of his little sword slicing into the thing’s face and cutting through its lower jaw to expose a complete second set of teeth embedded below its main fangs.

  “Ahhh,” he screamed as the thing tried to raise its head and bite at him. He struck again with the bottom edge of his sword and pushed down with all his strength until he felt the blade bite heavily into bone. Blood was everywhere but he raised his sword again and jammed it down at the throat of the creature, slicing through its neck as more blood shot out. He raised his sword yet again and felt a heavy hand restrain him. He spun, without thinking and slashed at the hulking figure behind him but a thick stone sword blocked his attempt and there was a sudden strange little tinkling sound. When Sorus brought the blade back it was light, and when he looked at it he realized it had snapped in half. He gazed up through the haze and saw Jon Gray’s intent gray eyes.

  “So … sorry,” he said with a shake of his head. He staggered to his feet, his legs unsteady and his hands trembling. “I got carried away,” he went on and looked at the broken sword in his hand but did not really see it. “I think it’s broken,” he said.

  Jon nodded his head. “You’ll have to take Sir Germanius’s,” he replied with a motion of his head behind Sorus. The young knight felt the anger and energy suddenly drain from his body, and he wanted to fall down, but he managed to turn and see the old knight still in the jaws of the white dragon with his small blade buried in the thing’s head. On the ground near him lay his long sword where it dropped when the creature snapped his wrist.

  “I don’t know,” said Sorus and looked back at Jon, who nodded his head a single time.

  “Of course you do, he wanted you to have it, you know that,” said Jon with a motion of his head towards the sword again.

  Sorus shook his head and the strange webs that seemed to engulf it slowly evaporated and returned clarity to his thoughts. “What happened to the darkling?”

  Jon pointed with his heavy stone sword toward a figure slumped on the ground ten feet away that made little sounds, “I cracked him pretty good in the ribs and he’s not breathing so great. We won’t torture him for information though, right?”

  Sorus nodded his head, “Right,” and went over to pick up the sword. He took it in his hand and the hilt of the heavy blade felt like a bolt of lightning. He stood and looked at the crushed body of the old knight still in the jaws of the dragon and smiled, “Should we leave him like that?” he said. “It’s a pose I think he’d be proud to be remembered by.”

  “Can you draw at all?” asked Jon as he came over to stand next to the boy.

  Sorus shook his head, “No.”

  “I’ve had lessons,” said Jon. “You watch the darkling while I make a sketch. We’ll carry Sir Germanius back up to the surface, bury him, and then take the sketch to Odellius and see if he can do justice with a statue. I think the old fellow might like that, what do you say?”

  Sorus nodded his head and smiled, “I think he’d like that just fine, and I think Sir Odelluis might be proud to have that chance.” The young knight then walked over to the slumped form of the Darkling and saw that the creature looked like a curled up baby and the wheezes that escaped his lung were his best attempts to breathe. The creature looked up at him with those strange silver eyes and made sort of a gasp but said nothing else. The skin of the creature seemed to turn a lighter shade of blue as its breath became more and more labored while Jon worked away with a piece of parchment and some charcoal pens he pulled out from some deep recess in his pack.

  “I think he’s dying,” said Sorus to Jon and the big gray knight looked up from his work for a moment. “My amulet only works with dragon children and you did a good number on that one over there so it doesn’t really matter anyway. I’m sure they knew something about the Staff of Sakatha but now we’ll never know. We can only hope that we find out something from someone else.”

  “You’re not mad I killed the dragon child?” asked Sorus as his eyes turned back to the still corpse and the thick pool of blood all around it. The image reminded him that blood covered his hands and armor and he realized how sticky he suddenly felt.

  “Killing your opponent is the objective,” said Jon in a monotone sort of voice and Sorus could tell this was another lesson from the young gray knight’s father.

  “I suppose, but we needed that information if we’re going to find the staff,” he replied. “By the Black Horse I’m a sticky mess. We need to find some water.”

  “I’m not much for a jaunt around in the darkling lands,” said Jon as he still looked at the climactic battle scene of the dragon and Germanius. “But, you are a mess. That darkling isn’t going anywhere and there’s probably water in this place somewhere. Look around but don’t get too far away.”

  “Okay, Jon,” said Sorus with a glance at their downed foe as it struggled to breath. The rattling sound in his throat grew more pronounced with each breath. “Do you think you broke his ribs?”

  “I probably punctured his lung,” said Jon. “The flat of the Stone Blade is more dangerous than the edge at times and I sometimes forget that. Now go get cleaned up, this figure drawing is damned difficult and my big meat hocks weren’t meant for fine work like this.”

  Sorus looked down at the darkling whose skin now looked almost yellow and who gasped out quick, short breaths, and then he turned to walk past the white dragon and Sir Germanius although he tried not to look too closely at the pair. He walked for maybe fifty paces, still well within sight of Jon and the battle, when he heard a slight rush of a sound that reminded him of the noise a small creek might make and soon enough found a pool where a cataract of water cascaded from a crack in the wall nearby. He quickly stripped off his clothes and took a step into the water only to give off a howl and jump back.

  “Are you okay?” shouted Jon’s voice echoing throughout the large cave and bouncing back and forth several times before silence once again fell.

  “I’m fine,” said Sorus in a lower tone but now concerned that sound might alert any other creature in the vicinity to their presence. “Water’s cold,” he finished and then clenched his jaw and moved quickly into the freezing water. He could stand the intensity for only a few seconds but managed to duck his head and rub out at least some of the blood. He leapt out, his body gave a shudder, and then tried to quickly wash off his jerkin, but the thick blood seemed to have seeped into every nook and cranny and he knew the job was impossible down here under these circumstances. He did his best in the short time, then slipped the wet clothes back on, and made his way back to Jon as his body shivered badly.

  “You look like a drowned rat,” said the young knight. “We should get out of here as quick as possible. I didn’t mean to yell that loud earlier and who knows who heard. I finished drawing,” he said and handed over the art for inspection.

  Sorus looked at it as his hands shook from the cold and his teeth ch
attered, “I can’t tell in this light,” he said, “but it looks okay.”

  “Help me pry open the jaws of this thing,” said Jon and took ahold of the creature’s upper jaw.

  Sorus grabbed the lower and with a, “One, two, three,” they managed to extricate the old knight from the dragon’s mouth. Puncture wounds ran up and down his body in the shape of the dragon’s jaw. The razor sharp teeth apparently cut through his heavy chain armor like the old man’s knife through soft pine.

  “By the Black Horse,” said Sorus and stared in wonder at the damage the creature did to Germanius with a single bite. “The power of this thing,” he said as they kicked over the dead dragon.

  “Cut the horns off,” said Jon. “We’ll take them back to town to give to his grandson and any other relatives.”

  Sorus nodded his head and reached for his sword and only belatedly realized it was the blade of Germanius and he didn’t want to use it for the first time in this way. He looked around for a long knife but the only one readily available was stuck in the head of the dragon. He tried to yank out the deeply embedded hilt, but the skull of the creature did not yield the blade. “Thing’s stuck in deep,” he grunted and put his back into the effort. Blood and other gore stuck to the hilt of the blade and made it difficult to grip and even with his best effort he failed to pull it free.

  “Maybe it’s meant to be there,” said Jon and handed over a small dagger. “This is a Tanelornian knife,” he said, “my father made it himself. Why don’t you keep it for a while?”

  Sorus looked at the blade which seemed sturdy and plain with only a floral symbol at the end, the same symbol that adorned Jon’s armor.

  “What is that flower?” he asked and pointed to the decoration.

  “Mistletoe,” said Jon. “It’s the holy flower of the gray druids and the symbol of Tanelorn. They say it stands for neutrality.”