by Shae Hutto
The woman grinned, showing bloody teeth, but didn’t say anything. Claire didn’t really have the heart to let Amanda beat a defenseless person, even if Amanda was willing. She decided to use a different bluff.
“Fine,” she said. “Nick, dear. Could you come over here? I need you to use that little knife of yours.”
The woman screeched in terror. “No! Keep him away from me!”
“That was unexpected,” mused Claire. She waved Nick back and lowered her voice so nobody but the woman could hear her talking. “Ok. I’ll keep him away. Tell me why, though. Why are you afraid of Nick?”
“I am not afraid of your little brother, fool,” spat the woman. “I am afraid of the dagger that possesses him. When the dagger drinks your blood, it steals part of your life essence. If it takes your life, like that of my brother, it imprisons your soul within it for all eternity.” She looked mournfully at Nick, who presumably had killed the woman’s brother with the little dagger.
“Is there a way to reverse the possession?”
“Not that I know of,” said the woman with a glint of smug satisfaction. “I imagine that if they were physically separated, maybe in different worlds, he might begin to recover. If he survived the process. He won’t do it willingly.”
“So that’s what the Queen meant when she said he had taken something of hers,” mused Claire to herself. She spoke more loudly to the crumpled assassin on the floor. “He can call the dagger from a distance and make it appear in his hand,” she said. “He couldn’t do that across worlds?”
The woman tried to shrug and grimaced with the pain it caused. “No way to know, but I doubt it. Also, the Queen has a container that can keep it from disappearing and insulate against its effects.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
“It was half our quest. The Queen sent us to find the Eye and the dagger and bring them both back to her. We were supposed to kill you and your brother.”
“Thank you,” said Claire as she stood up. “I promise to let you go.”
“Time to get to work,” said Claire to her gang of people who were watching her with interest, except for Amanda who was taking a quick nap on the floor. Claire woke up Amanda and then she dug around in her bag and pulled out Intermediate Wand Magic. “Here,” she said to Nick as she handed him the big leather tome. “Dig around in there and find us a spell that will amplify sound. It would be handy to be able to put everyone in the castle to sleep. Amanda, let’s go outside for a sec. I got something I want to talk to you about.”
“What am I, chopped liver?” asked Roger indignantly.
“You stand about looking dashing and handsome,” said Claire jokingly and kissed him on his cheek. Roger’s grin was practically ear to ear. “And keep Stan the Man here from touching that sax until she and I come back.” Roger nodded his understanding. “Oh, and Roger?”
“Hmm?”
“If you’re going to stare as we walk away, keep your eyes on me and not her, understand?”
Roger nearly choked. He turned bright red.
“Yer mad, woman,” he said but not loud enough for Claire to hear. She grinned impishly, and she and Amanda left the building, giggling.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Take That!
“Have fun storming the castle!”-The Princess Bride
It turned out that there was no spell for sound amplification in Intermediate Wand Magic. However, Nick did point out a couple of spells that might prove useful. One looked like it could cause the ground to erupt violently. The other was used to make things grow in size exponentially. Claire admitted they could be useful and devoted a few minutes to trying to memorize them. She was pretty sure that she didn’t do a good job, but had no time to devote to getting them just right.
They left the female twin lying in the middle of the road, her twisted and broken limbs making her look like some loathsome spider that had been swatted and left to die on the floor. Her broken hand now had a large bloody wound where the black heart tattoo had been removed with a knife; a small black dagger to be precise. In accordance with Claire and Amanda’s plan, the men and Weenie marched off toward the castle on the road. Claire, Amanda and Stan rode on Connix. As they left, Claire pointed at the deserted cottage.
“Burn it down, smoky,” she said.
Connix obeyed, more because he wanted to than because Claire told him to. A roiling ball of greenish flame rose from his throat and rocketed into the cottage like a missile, sending burning thatch and embers flying in all directions as the building exploded violently. The remains crackled enthusiastically, lighting the evening and temporarily delaying the coming night.
“Alright. Let’s make a couple wide loops around the castle while we wait for the boys to get in position” ordered Claire.
“I know the plan,” growled Connix as he soared off into the gathering shadows with his burden of domineering women and a jazz musician. They circled Aulain and the Queen’s castle from a distance that hid them in the gloom. They could see that the castle was a buzz of activity like a disturbed ant bed. These ants were deadly armed soldiers in putrid colored uniforms and sorcerers wielding destructive magic. They looked like they were significantly increasing the defensive ability of the castle. Claire began to be a little worried about the ground crew currently making their way to the castle while they floated through the night with the breeze in their hair. She listened intently for any signal from the comm device. Time seemed to drag on forever.
When it was time to act, she knew it even before the comm came to life.
“Go,” said Roger from the comm. She heard a voice in the background yell something, but she couldn’t tell who it was or what they said. On the castle wall, she could see men running toward the eastern gate. Violent sorcery lit the night on that side of the castle. Distantly, she made out the sounds of battle.
“It’s showtime,” said Claire. “Put us down on the west side. Make sure we’re far enough out that nobody sees us.”
“I know the plan,” insisted Connix again as he glided in low and used his huge outstretched wings as an aerodynamic brake. They touched down lightly and quietly with none of the violent flapping of wings that they had come to expect. When Connix wanted to, he was capable of being quiet and stealthy. The three humans climbed off the back of the sulfurous-smelling beast and Connix launched himself back into the air. They made their way as quickly but as quietly as possible toward the western wall of the castle. When they reached it, they waited impatiently.
They didn’t have to wait long. Soon, the barely audible clamor of conflict on the east side of the castle was drowned out by the closer and louder sounds of dragon attack on the north side. Screaming and explosions echoed from the castle’s battlements. An officer came and gathered what few defenders were left on this side of the wall and led them north to the site of Connix’s renewed attack. As far as Claire could tell, the wall above them was bare.
“So, now what?” asked Stan. “Are you going to pole vault onto the wall or something?”
Claire and Amanda rolled their eyes at each other in the darkness.
“We have no pole vault and that wall is four or five times higher than my previous record. So, no, Stan. I will not be pole vaulting onto the wall today. But thanks for playing.”
“He’s so cute when he’s stupid,” said Amanda with a girlish giggle.
“Ok, so no pole vault,” allowed Stan irritably. “How are we going to get from down here to up there?”
“Well, I did a little reading on how to modify a spell I used to great effect earlier.”
“What spell was that?” asked Stan.
“I used a flaming lasso to throw some people out of a window.”
“Whoa,” protested Stan. “You ain’t gonna throw me anywhere with a flaming lasso!”
“That’s the modification I’ve been working on,” said Claire as she snapped her wand into her hand from where it had been hidden in her sleeve. “Let’s hope I got rid of the flaming part.”
“I’m ok!” he called down weakly.
“Hush,” Claire whisper-shouted up at him.
“Oh, me next!” said Amanda happily as she clapped her hands with glee.
“You’re a nut job,” said Claire with a smirk. “Be careful with that sax, girl.” She lassoed Amanda who was holding tightly to the sax and whipped her up to the top of the wall in similar fashion. She was also dropped from several feet up, causing her dress to fly up over her head, revealing shapely thighs strapped with an arsenal of weaponry. Unlike Stan, she landed quietly and on her feet. She peered over the wall at Claire and gave her a thumbs up. She and Stan vanished from view. Claire started jogging south to begin her own assault on the gate from the city.
_________________________________________________
Roger, Nick, Gardener and Weenie stared from the shadows at the towering castle wall and the gate set into its eastern side. There were no guards at ground level, but there were at least ten on the top of the wall. They were armed with an assortment of halberds, swords and crossbows. A pair of them were manning a large arbalest that faced out toward the forest. One black-robed wizard stalked amongst the soldiers, looking intimidating and enigmatic.
“I could use one of those crossbows,” said Roger as he gazed at the obstacle before them and contemplated how best to attack it.
“Ok,” said Nick simply and vanished in a burst of shadows. He re-appeared on the wall, grabbed a crossbow from the hands of one of the men, pushed the startled soldier over the edge of the wall and vanished before anyone could react. The soldier fell, screaming, to his crunchy demise at the foot of the wall. Excited and fearful exclamations came from the soldiers on the wall and several crossbow bolts were fired harmlessly into the darkness by spooked soldiers.
“No discipline,” muttered Gardener in disgust. “Those are not proper soldiers.”
“Have you ever had that happen to you?” asked Roger.
“No, I can’t say that I have,” admitted Gardener grudgingly. “It might strain the discipline of even Royal Marines. But not this badly.”
Nick materialized at the base of the wall and grabbed the quiver full of bolts from the dying soldier and vanished again just as a bolt of black lightning erupted from the hands of the sorcerer and chewed up the ground where he had been a second before. Nick coalesced from the shadows next to Roger and handed him the crossbow and the bolts.
“Here ya go,” he said happily. Roger took the weapons with a look of uneasiness at Nick.
Nick vanished again and must have reappeared somewhere close by because a fireball screamed out of the woods a couple of hundred yards to their north and impacted the sorcerer who had succeeded in erecting a magical shield that caused the fireball to shatter into a million fragments of flame and sparks. The impact pushed him to his knees but left him unharmed. Nick appeared back next to Roger as the sorcerer unleashed a devastating attack on the empty forest where the fireball had come from. Crossbow bolts rained into the forest and the arbalest sent a massive spear-like bolt zinging and ricocheting through the trees.
“I’ll appear on the wall again and attack one of the soldiers,” said Nick. “You shoot the sorcerer.” Without waiting for a reply, Nick exploded into shadows again. When he brought himself back together on top of the wall, he immediately stabbed a soldier and kicked another one off the wall. He launched another fireball at the sorcerer who barely deflected it again. Roger took aim and shot the sorcerer with the crossbow. It didn’t hit him anywhere vital, but lodged itself firmly in his upper thigh. With a scream of pain, the sorcerer collapsed to the side and fell off the wall on the other side.
“Go,” said Roger into the comm.
“Behind you!” shouted Gardener. A troop of reinforcements had arrived at the double time and the sergeant leading the formation was coming up behind Nick with a wicked halberd. Alerted by Gardener’s timely yell, Nick sidestepped the thrust but was off balance. The halberd wielding sergeant made an unexpected move and swung the halberd like a baseball bat, although at extreme extension and without a lot of force. Nevertheless, the razor-sharp blade impacted Nick in the chest. Thankfully, it was at an oblique angle and didn’t bite nearly as deeply as it should have. Instead of opening his chest like a meat cleaver, the halberd skipped upward and the flat of the blade struck him across the forehead. The force of the blow was enough to send Nick over the wall and into the courtyard of the castle. Roger and Gardener watched in horror as he vanished from view.
____________________________________________
Claire was slick with sweat and her shoulder hurt from her backpack rubbing against it. Her new riding boots were giving her blisters. The sounds of battle were coming from seemingly everywhere within the castle and the night refused to stay dark as energy attacks provided sporadic bursts of brilliant illumination. There was still plenty of darkness for someone in an Elven cloak to hide in, though. Claire gritted her teeth and forced herself to run faster. Like a ghostly cat, lithe and ephemeral, she flitted through the darkness, a blur of focused intent and malign intentions.
The wall to the city was puny in comparison to the one surrounding the castle and had numerous entry points, besides. She anticipated simply running through one. They were all closed. Claire found herself stymied by an unexpectedly effective barrier. A ten-foot wall is just as effective as a fifty foot one if you don’t have a way over it. Claire grinned. Although she would have preferred to just jog through an open gate, she knew how to get over this wall. She hadn’t exactly told the truth when she claimed to not have a pole vault handy. Coach Simmons had been perplexed when a twelve-foot pole vault had gone missing from the equipment room. How do you sneak something like that out? It’s not like you can put it in your backpack. You could, however, put it in an ugly beaded bag of holding. The diameter of the pole was just small enough to fit through the inflexible mouth of the tacky orange bag. The length wasn’t an issue because once past the mouth, space was unlimited inside the bag. Nor was weight relevant. Claire dug the bag out of her backpack and slowly worked the end of the pole out of it. She slid the bag down the length of the pole as it appeared from the infinity inside.
She found a spot on the wall that had a house up against it on the inside. The roof would keep her from breaking all of the bones in her body when she landed. She tossed her backpack over the wall. Now, she was committed. She looked at her boots for a few seconds, then pulled them off and tossed them over as well. They were just too hard to run in. She paced off a good run up area, estimating about 50 yards. The base of the wall looked like it would work well as a trap for the pole vault. She tested it by placing the tip of the pole against the wall. It slipped a little, so she dug out a depression that effectively trapped the tip of the pole. She was a little nervous, unlike at track meets. Typically, she was calm before an event because physical competition came easily to her. Her present twinge of anxiety was about the fact that there was no bar to clear and no bag to land on. If she failed, she would smack a stone wall. If she succeeded, she would land on a tile roof. She shook off her nerves and started her run.
From the moment she took the first step with the pole held by her side, she knew it was going to work. She felt the exhilaration of wind in her face and felt the strength in her arms. The grassy sod felt like carpet beneath her bare feet. She planted the pole perfectly and felt the moment of incredulous shock at how much the bole bent beneath her weight and momentum. There was always a split second of believing the pole was just go
ing to snap in two. When the pole flexed, releasing like a spring and imparting all her stored energy back to her with a radically changed vector, she felt the g forces of acceleration and laughed with delight as she flew through the night air, a flash of red that arced over the wall and landed with a roll on the roof on the other side. Unfortunately, the pole fell away. She made a mental note to retrieve it later.
Claire was off the roof and in her boots in record time and jogging happily toward the wall gate, reveling in the feeling of physical invincibility that comes with success. The sounds of energetic battle were getting louder and she put on more speed to make up for the time lost getting over the town wall. She didn’t even attempt to hide herself, but ran right up to the gate. There were two guards this time and a score of troops on the wall above the gate.
“Hold up there, girl,” said one of the guards. “What seems to be the hurry?”
Claire considered attacking them, but felt the odds were not in her favor. She also didn’t feel like hurting or killing anyone. There had been enough of that already. She mentally kicked herself for not having a plan for this part. The big scheme had just glossed over this little “get in the front gate” part.
“Pizza delivery?” she joked.
“Beat it, kid,” said one of the gate guards.
“No, really,” said Claire. “I need to see the Queen.”
“No, really,” mocked the guard. “You need to get out of here before you catch a beating.”
“A beating?” asked Claire in shock. Her mouth hung agape for literal seconds. “I think you should rethink that.”
“Who in hell do you think you are?” asked the guard.
“I’m Claire freaking Grant,” snarled Claire. She wasn’t prepared for what happened next. The guard who hadn’t said anything lashed out with one mail-clad fist and struck her backhand across the face. Claire saw stars and sank to one knee. It took all her effort to not topple over. Pain radiated across her face, heat and ice intermingled. Light blossomed and morphed behind her eyelids and she felt like she was going to throw up. Dimly, she heard the guards laughing.
