by Philip Blood
She spoke to the mother quietly, “He is very sick, but not beyond my skill.”
“You can save him? Please, save my son and I’ll do anyth’in fer ya. Just save my son, please,” the distraught woman begged.
“Do not fear, he will recover,” she promised. Placing her hand over his heart she began to heal the aura. As the heart pumped the blood through the area of healing it returned to the body untainted by the blackness. After a brief time, he was healed.
Now, something to cloak the magic, Elizabeth thought and took out some simple cooking spice from her belt pouch and placed it under the boy’s tongue. “That will take care o’ him. When he wakes tonight, let him eat and drink as much as he wishes, then after he rests a few days he should be back te normal,” she told the woman.
The worried mother nodded, not quite believing her son was cured.
Elizabeth stood and began to leave the tent. The mother placed her hand on her son’s brow and then cried out in some strange dialect, “Misur Ceranka!” Then she exclaimed, “His ‘burn’ has yielded!”
Santhra stepped quickly to the boy’s side and placed her hand on his forehead. After a moment she released it and spoke to his mother, “G’lan has smiled on ya this day; the ‘burn’ is indeed gone.”
“How may I repay you?” the woman exclaimed to Elizabeth.
The sorceress smiled as she looked at the joyous face of the young mother and said, “I have already been repaid by your joy.”
The mother looked puzzled, but she nodded and returned to her recovering son’s side, weeping this time with relief and joy.
Elizabeth and Santhra stepped outside and the older woman stopped her for a moment, “There is more here than the eyes can see, that was fast heal’in.”
And you’re smarter than I believed, I’ll have to be more careful, Elizabeth thought, and she said, “Yes, I’m a healer, though my bark proclaims me another tree,” purposely misunderstanding the woman’s reference to what was hidden.
“How are you at broken bones?” Santhra asked.
“Let’s find out,” was Elizabeth’s response.
Through the rest of the day Elizabeth was careful to use mundane means of cure on some of the injuries she tended: splints, poultices, thorough cleanings, and mixtures of herbs for medicines, but underlying each of these methods, she applied her aura healing powers to accelerate the process.
As she readied herself to leave the refugees Santhra took her aside again and said, “I’m sorry I was hard on you earlier, you are indeed a healer. Why don’t you stay here with us?”
“Santhra, not all who fight are bandits. We need leaders who will work fer more than the gain o’ round or the privileges o’ the powerful. I want te see these people,” she gestured across Santhra’s tent community, “get the chance te return te their rightful land and lives. Te do that I’ll have te play by the rules o’ those in charge, until I’m in charge. I need the support o’ yer people; you outnumber the bandits thirty te one. With yer support, we can take our destiny into our own hands. So I go te play their games and fight under their rules te gain the foothold I need t’ make changes. Try not te judge me harshly, and try te explain te more o’ yer people; I need their support.”
“I will, Poison, and good luck,” Santhra said. She turned to walk back into her community, thinking, Poison, what an odd name for a healer.
Elizabeth returned to the bandit’s portion of the camp.
A group of men told her that Wernok was looking for her, so Elizabeth headed for the bandit leader's cabin. The door was open, so she strolled in and took a seat. Wernok was reading a document, so Elizabeth waited patiently to find out why the bandit leader had called her into his cabin. She waited quietly, not bothered by his silly game of silence, she could out wait a rock.
He finally realized that she was not going to ask him about the summons, so after setting down a message he had been pretending to read he laced his fingers together and leaned forward onto his desk. “How are you acclimating with the men?”
So, Elizabeth thought, now he wants to sneak up on whatever it is he plans on telling me. She answered aloud, “Fine, they seem to accept me.”
“No trouble because you’re a woman?” he asked.
Is this another bid to get me to be his woman? she thought but answered, “No, the example I made o’ Nostrils has kept any o’ the men with amorous thoughts admir’in from a distance. That’s the way I want te keep it,” she added, before he could make any overtures.
“This I’ve gathered,” he replied, “So, you think they’ve accepted you well enough to trust you in a fight?”
Now we’re getting to the main point, she thought and she answered, “No problem, o’ course they won’t trust me completely until we’ve been blooded together.”
“That’s right, so I’ve decided to send you out on the next mission. You’re leaving tomorrow morning. You'll be part of a fifteen-man squad on their way to take a merchant train heading for Belorn. I’ve received word from our scouts that they left Myrnvale yesterday,” he explained.
“Oo’s in command?” Elizabeth asked.
“Razor,” he answered simply.
“Yer favorite, does that mean anyth’in?”
“So you heard of him already, that’s good, and as you will soon see everything I do means something. He’s my best lieutenant and he’ll be there to smooth out any difficulties with the men. Some of them may not be overly excited by having to break in a green recruit on a first mission, and a woman at that,” the bandit commander explained.
“This isn’t my first action, so I’m not exactly green. I’ve been on the other side o’ these attacks quite a few times. I used te make my liv’in’ guard’in merchants from bandit groups just like this,” Elizabeth lied to him bluntly.
“I know, some of my men have heard of your exploits. As far as I know we haven’t tangled with you in the past. That's a good thing, my men would resent letting a past enemy into their ranks, particularly if that enemy had killed his friends,” Wernok told Elizabeth. “But… just curiously, reports said that you had lost an eye,” and he looked up at her as he spoke.
“No, but I wore an eye patch for awhile. It helped to discourage advances. Ugliness has its advantages. As for running into you or your men, I mostly worked down south and seldom got further north than Myrnvale. From what I’ve seen and heard, you work north o’ Myrnvale. It’s the reason I chose te join yer band, I didn’t want te be fighting old friends,” Elizabeth explained.
“You know there is always the chance that one of your old friends will take a job in the north,” Wernok commented, watching Elizabeth carefully for her reaction, “you might be required to kill one someday.”
“They know the risks when they take the round. Ya look out fer yerself in life, no one else is go’in te do it fer ya,” Elizabeth said, purposely giving him the response he wanted to hear.
“Good, then since there’s no conflict of interest I don’t see any problems. Check in with Razor after you leave here and then ready your weapons. You can get your horse ready in the morning. This is your chance to prove yourself on a raid; don't disappoint me,” Wernok said, finishing the conversation.
The mind projection of the necromancer RIveK slipped out of the Dark Plane into an alley near the central square of Myrnvale just as the clock above the square struck ten bells.
She was out of the alley and walking across the square before the tenth dull reverberation had stopped echoing. She decided that it was time to make use of a situation common to large cities such as Myrnvale.
She entered the low light district, but this time, she was looking for a different kind of help. She waited in the shadows of an alley and watched an intersection of two major streets. After a half-bell, her vigilance was rewarded. A small shape dressed in rags scurried across the intersection and into an alley. RIveK crossed the street and followed.
The necromancer attached a string of power to the scampering shape so that she would no
t lose him and then allowed him to get far in the lead.
She followed her thin purple string of energy until she reached an old three-story building in a narrow alley. Rats crawled along the lower edges of the buildings, scurrying through the filth and muck that littered and stained the cobblestone streets.
RIveK’s insubstantial projection passed silently up the rickety old stairs that should have creaked and groaned in warning to those who lived above.
Tonight RIveK was dressed in dark green leathers with a black cloak draped over her shoulders, her blood red hair was tied back in a ponytail and the hood of the cloak was over her head covering the damaged portion of her skull. Black gloves finished off the outfit covering her long fingers and painted nails.
It took a moment for the rag-a-muffin children to see her as she stepped onto the top floor of the building. She placed her gloved hands on her hips and waited patiently.
One of twenty-odd children looked up from where she was counting out copper coins to the eldest and leader of the children. The little girl immediately screamed out warning.
Children fairly exploded outward in all directions heading for the doors and windows of the building in an all out rout of flying limbs.
Even at the extraordinary rate that the children fled they were not fast enough to escape the smiling RIveK, she raised her hands and every door slammed shut, every shutter banged closed. All openings that lacked a method of closure suddenly crackled with a thin sheet of purple energy stretched across them.
One child, who had too much momentum to stop, hit a sheet of the necromancer’s power. Light flared and all the hair on his body burned off instantly. He screamed and collapsed into a ball, shaking and crying.
A few others tried to force open a door and got singed by the purple energy, though not as severely.
Eventually, they all stopped trying to flee and cowered into the back corners. A few pulled out knives and pointed them at her; a couple even had slings. They launched their stone missiles which passed through her smiling image.
RIveK stepped away from the closed door behind her and sat delicately on an old wooden crate near the center of the room.
“Now that you understand who is in charge here, let us begin our talk,” she said calmly to the terrified street urchins who watched her carefully.
“A man named Hetark and a woman named Elizabeth entered this city, probably within the last two days. I want you to find them for me. They may or may not be using their real names, this is what they look like,” she said, describing the two people.
RIveK would have shown them a projection of their faces, but she had never met Elizabeth or her knight.
“Why should we?” a small voice called out, RIveK thought he was probably the leader.
“Because I’ll pay you this,” she said, setting a large stack of gold coins on the crate next to her leg.
The urchin gang gasped, they had never seen that much wealth in one place.
Their leader stepped forward; he was a bone rack of a boy about fourteen years old.
“How do we know ye won’t cheat us?” he asked.
“I am extremely wealthy, so this amount doesn’t even mean anything to me, besides I may need to use your services again someday, all right?” she asked.
“Fine, let us get on with it,” he responded bravely.
“Yes by all means, but five of you will stay here with me, including you, as insurance that my wishes are met. If any of you decide to try and run and just leave these fine friends to their fate then remember that I’ve marked you all. I can find you anytime I wish, watch,” she said and tweaked the thin purple string that was still attached to the boy she had followed; it was invisible to the children.
He yelped and screamed with pain for a moment, then she stopped and he recovered.
“You have until morning and then I want to see every one of you back here whether you know something or not, GO!” she suddenly snapped, and the windows and doors opened.
They all ran, except the leader, he was frozen in his tracks with his eyes locked on RIveK’s. When the last four children were about to leave the doors all closed again trapping them and their leader in the sealed room with RIveK.
“You’re the lucky five who get to stay with me ‘til morning. To pass the time each of you will tell me an interesting story, and if you don’t amuse me you will be punished,” she promised and gave the youngest girl child a small jolt of pain as an example.
Razor chose the bandit squad's campsite near enough to the road to reach it easily, but far enough behind a gently rolling hill to keep them from being seen. After the bandits had pitched their camp the lieutenant called all fifteen of them together.
Razor's face was devoid of expression as he laid out the details of their raid in his whispery voice. “According to Wernok’s information, the merchant train should be passing here sometime tomorrow morning. I need two volunteers to scout the merchant and two to scout the site of the ambush.”
Two men volunteered to scout the ambush site, so Razor sent them off to begin immediately.
“I’ll scout the merchant’s camp, I know their guard setups fairly well,” Elizabeth volunteered.
A man with a square cut face, thick brows, a shock of black hair and a wide grin, stepped forward. “I’ll go with her te make sure she stays out ‘o trouble,” said the fairly large bandit named Bushwhacker.
“Be careful Poison, he don’t get his name from strik’in plants,” another bandit said jokingly.
A few of the other men laughed heartily at the comment.
They even laughed louder at Elizabeth’s replied, “He’ll have te change his name te Bustedbranch if’n he gets fresh with me.”
Razor did not join in the laughter, the other bandits would have been surprised if he had; no one there had ever seen him smile.
“Fine, I’ll expect your report on their guard strength, estimated arrival time, and number of wagons before morning,” he whispered, and then added, “Don’t disappoint me.” He stared directly into Elizabeth’s eyes, holding her gaze for a moment to emphasize his implied threat, and then he turned and left them to prepare their horses.
Elizabeth’s eyes never wavered from the Lieutenant’s, he bothered her, and he had a mind shield, just like his boss, Wernok. She stared after him as he walked away. Who gave them these shields? It has the same feel and strength of Wernok’s. Someone with power planted them and it’s vital that I find out whom.
She walked to the horses and Bushwhacker gave her a jaunty grin from where he was cinching his saddle down tighter. She checked his thoughts but picked up no signs of antagonism. He seemed to have taken her good-natured threat as she had intended. Elizabeth had wanted them to start laughing with her instead of at her.
“Need a boost,” she asked with a grin.
He swung lazily into his saddle and returned her smile before replying, “Not today, but if I’m ridd’in too fast yer ya, let me know,” and he galloped off toward the road.
Good, this one seems a decent fellow, he’s already treating me as part of the gang, Elizabeth thought as she mounted and hurried to catch up to Bushwhacker.
A bell and a half later the two of them were on foot and sneaking toward the merchant camp. There were four wagons and a string of ten pack mules for carrying the merchant’s wares. The wagons were arranged in a square and a large fire burned in the middle of the camp.
Bushwhacker spotted two sentries, one on each side of the camp perpendicular to the road. He suggested that they both move in closer from either side of the road, so they could get a look at how many other men sat around the fire.
Elizabeth agreed for a different reason, she wanted to get close enough to pick up a few thoughts and find out more about these men.
As she moved closer she spread her aura perception out looking for sentries that her partner had not found. She only found the two known guards. She could already have told Bushwhacker that there were exactly twelve men seated around the f
ire, but she still wanted to get closer.
When she reached about equal distance between one sentry and the main camp group she was close enough to read their surface thoughts clearly. She sampled each man’s thoughts looking for one who was thinking about something of interest.
She learned that they were working for a merchant out of Belorn, so they were not part of the Usurper’s men. This was an honest group of merchants, not an enemy of Autrany.
Then Elizabeth checked the thoughts of the sentry, he was looking back down the trail and wondering what the lights were that he caught occasionally reflecting in the sky. He figured it was another camp about two leagues down the road. He was wondering if it was anything he should worry about since they didn’t know of any other merchants traveling this way right now. Usually, merchants banded together when traveling the same direction to strengthen themselves against bandit attacks.
Elizabeth backed quietly out of her hidden position and went back to meet with Bushwhacker at the horses. She had an idea and she needed to convince her partner to go along with her new plan.
“What’d ya find?” he asked when they reunited.
“I counted twelve at the fire, two watch’in, as you figured,” she replied and then asked, “And you?”
“The same, ready te head back?” he said, gesturing with his thumb over his shoulder.
“There are some lights flicker’in from a league or so down the road. Let’s go check them out, we don’t need any surprise company show’in up when we didn’t invite them,” Elizabeth said, to convince Bushwhacker to exceed their orders.
“Yer right, it’ll only delay us a little, I’m fer it,” he said, climbing into his saddle, then he looked down at Elizabeth and with a smirk he added, “What yer wait’in fer, a boost?” He waited for her to mount up and then they walked their horses in the direction of the flickering light.
