“These two are on me,” the bartender said.
“Thank you,” Vinnie replied. “I want you to keep that. I insist. But promise me you won’t open it until I leave.”
“What—”
“Just trust me,” Vinnie said with a twinkle in his eye.
The bartender shrugged and put the pouch under the bar and out of sight. Vinnie took a seat at a long table where several Assessors, their guards, and crew all sat. The half-drunk men passed around pitchers of ale, wine, and mead. Vinnie emptied his mug several times and filled it with whatever came around.
“You still haven’t told me why you are here,” Clive said from across the broad table. “Last time I saw you, you said you were moving on.”
Vinnie smiled and locked on Clive’s eyes. “I’ve found work,” he said.
“Work?” Clive replied. “Funny, I didn’t hear of any new visas coming through the keep. Did you register at one of the other keeps?”
“No,” Vinnie said flatly. “I haven’t registered. I won’t register, either.”
Several heads turned to him. A few set down their mugs and stared. Clive looked uncomfortable.
“Vinnie, buddy,” he said, trying to laugh. “That’s not funny. We have laws here. As a foreigner—”
“No, it is not funny,” Vinnie replied, taking a few gulps from his mug. “I misspoke. I should say that the work found me.”
“I don’t understand,” Clive said. More of the guards stopped to listen as well as an Assessor or two.
“I also don’t understand,” Vinnie said, smile fading from his lips. “How a land so rich can support itself and continue on when slimy,” he raised his voice, “pitiful, cowardly,” he raised his voice louder, “shit stains find it necessary to beat on old women and take from villages until they starve.”
He polished off the last of his mug and held it out high to the crowd. “My mug is empty!” He shouted. “Who would fill it up?”
The house fell silent. After a long pause, one of the guards spoke.
“You’re a stranger here, fat man,” the burly man said, leaning across the table. “You got no right to judge us, so I’d just shut your mouth if you know what’s good for you.”
Vinnie smiled broadly, but there was no humor in his eyes.
“Is that what you tell the old ladies that you beat down?” Vinnie asked.
“I’m being patient with you, chubbs,” the man spat. “I like you. I really do. I don’t want to have to teach you a lesson. I ain’t never beat on no old lady, but you gotta understand. These peasants need a strong hand. Sometimes they don’t pay so easy. If it did happen, she probably had it coming.”
“Have you ever stopped to think,” Vinnie asked, “that it is not always easy for them to pay?”
The man shrugged. “I just do my job,” the man said. “Protector says we collect, I collect, just like the Assessors order. We survived that way for a hundred years before your tub of guts came along.”
“I’m glad we have an understanding,” Vinnie replied. “Because my job is to make sure your orders don’t end up harming innocent people.”
The man jumped to his feet, but Vinnie stayed seated.
“Who the hell do you think you are!” the man boomed.
As Vinnie was focused on the man yelling, someone else came up behind him and smashed a clay mug over the top of his head. Only his hair moved. His eyes merely widened for a moment, but then he smiled as blood ran down his collar.
“Oh, thank you,” he said. “For this wonderful opportunity.”
Vinnie turned slowly to the man with the broken mug handle in his hand. They locked eyes for a brief moment before the man looked at his hand. He shrugged his shoulders, dropped the handle, and drew back his fist.
The punch never landed. Vinnie was on his feet in a flash—faster than most men could perceive, much less move. SMACK! Instead of making contact with Vinnie’s face, the fist ended up being crushed inside Vinnie’s big, meaty hand.
Vinnie squeezed until he felt one of the bones pop. The man screamed, his knees buckling a bit as he began to fold in from the pain. Vinnie let him go, then picked him up by the collar and the belt and threw him into the people at the table. Ten men lay tangled on the floor beneath an overturned table, and the rest wisely scattered.
Then, it was on. The assessors cleared out while the guards moved in.
“Lock the fucking door!” someone shouted. “This shitbag ain’t leaving here in one piece!”
Someone swung a billy club at Vinnie. He batted it aside as if it were a thin stick and drove his fist into the man’s face. He went down like a sack of dirty clothes before the wash bucket.
Two more men rushed in, and Vinnie charged forward. Both of his palms slammed into their chests as their clubs cracked against Vinnie’s head with two loud THOCKS.
The big man hardly seemed to notice as he tossed them away. The two unsuccessful attackers flew back into another group who all tumbled down like bowling pins.
Vinnie whirled as he heard feet running up behind him, and he back-fisted the unfortunate man with a club in each hand. Vinnie scooped him up over his head and tossed him across the bar.
“Maybe you fools should open that door, instead!” Vinnie shouted. “Or it might go a lot worse for you.”
To his disappointment, they didn’t take his advice. Instead, someone grabbed an armload of long knives and began dispersing them among the angered and ego-bruised men.
Vinnie sighed, knowing their bodies would soon be as bruised as their egos before this was said and done—but he did warn them.
He raised both fists over his head and brought them down on the nearest table. The table plank split in two, and Vinnie pulled a section free.
Two men stabbed at him with foot-long knives, but Vinnie batted them aside with the board. He drove his foot into the stomach of a third man, then used the board to wallop the shoulder of a fourth.
Men screamed and bellowed in pain and rage while Vinnie tore through them all. They really seemed to want him dead for some reason.
Two long minutes later, no one but Vinnie had any fight left in them. A few bodies lay on the floor, and he couldn’t tell if they were unconscious or dead. Vinnie didn’t give much of a fuck one way or the other.
They had it coming.
“Vinnie,” the bartender said, standing up from behind the bar. “What did you just do? Why?” His voice sounded pained. “I thought we were friends.”
“Doing what I must,” Vinnie said, kicking a man who crawled toward him with a knife. “I’m sorry about your ale house. That bag is full of solid gold coins. I hope that covers the damages.”
Vinnie felt a pang at the hurt look on the bartender’s face. “Nobody likes Assessors,” the bartender said. “But… this? What the fuck are you doing?”
“Someone’s got to do something,” Vinnie said. “As far as I’m concerned, these asswipes got off easy. Don’t you get tired of serving beer to these monkeys?”
“What’s a monkey?” the bartender asked.
Vinnie just sighed and kicked open the barred door with his left foot. He pushed through the splintered wood and out into the night.
The commotion he had caused didn’t let him hear the alarm bells ringing. At least a dozen men with clubs and knives charged toward him from the keep. There must have been a backdoor through which some smart soul had run to sound the alarm.
Vinnie cursed and high-tailed it to the woods.
Keep 52, Administrative Building
Shouting and the sounds of ringing bells in the courtyard reached her through the closed, top-floor windows.
“A group of bandits are tearing up the ale house!” somebody shouted. She couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, but she counted three sets of feet.
She jumped when pounding rattled the office door. “Commissioner! There’s a general alarm. Check that man! Is he alive?”
Shit, Astrid thought. They found the guard. I should have killed him and
dragged him inside. She decided that next time, she wouldn’t hold back.
“Krann, Do you like birds?” Astrid asked, gathering up Krann by his expensive-looking shirt.
“Wha—what?” Krann stammered. He was finally good and scared.
She turned toward the window and lifted Krann off his feet. “Because you’re about to see if you can fucking fly like one!”
Her eyes turned black, then swirled with gray clouds. She knew the feeling of the Well Energy when it flowed through her in this form. She had looked in the mirror once and scared herself when her eyes looked like this.
But the door behind her crashed open, and she heard the guards draw blades. Instead of throwing Krann out the window, she threw him across the room instead.
Krann shrieked as his flying body knocked down two guards, who cursed with obvious shock, anger, and fear.
Astrid turned on her heel. On impulse, she grabbed one of the smaller ledgers from the desk. “Prisoner log,” was stamped into the brown leather cover. Something told her it was important.
Instead of defenestrating Krann, she threw herself through the window. It took several seconds before she hit the ground in a roll. She found it necessary to pull deeply from the Well to survive the impact.
Her back almost doubled over as she tumbled twice and ended up springing to her feet.
The chaos Vinnie had caused kept the panicked guards from seeing her as she rushed back to the building and plastered herself against the wall, melting into the shadows.
Astrid opened the book to the page marked by a ribbon built into the binding. She found a long list of names for the month of October. All but two of those names were marked, “fined/released.”
But the notes next to those remaining names made her smile. “Foreign magic users,” the note said. Her instinct was correct. She had one more task to complete.
She stuck close to the building’s shadow while creeping around the foundation. About half way around, she came across a series of window wells. Poking her head down into one, she found steel bars across the window. Craning her neck a little revealed the cell blocks.
“Jail, how do I break you?” she asked as she continued along the outside wall.
Around the next corner, she peeked around and found what she hoped was the entrance. There were no guards. Could I be that lucky, she asked herself. Not luck, she answered. That had to be Vinnie.
She hoped he was OK.
She waited a few seconds, took a deep breath, then bolted for the basement door. She jumped down five steps and was about to check the handle when the door opened.
Astrid stood bolt upright, eyes wide in surprise. “Is this where I pay tolls?” she asked unconvincingly.
The men drew back his fist to punch her, but she kicked him in the balls. When his head dropped, she kneed him in the gut. She dragged him back into the basement by the collar and kicked the door closed behind her.
She dropped him on the floor, and he cradled his nuts and moaned. “Sorry about that,” she said. “You startled me.”
“You bandits will pay for this,” he wheezed.
“I’m not a bandit,” Astrid said, plucking the handcuffs from his belt.
She used the cuffs to secure him to the bars of a cell. That’s when she first noticed the prisoners. One stood motionless in the center of his cell in a ripped, gray undershirt. The other hung upside down by his ankles from the cell ceiling.
“Any more guards around?” Astrid asked.
The short man with the light brown skin said nothing. He only stared at her with narrow, angled eyes with no detectable emotion on his face.
“OK… ” Astrid said. “Not the talkative type.” She tilted her head to look at the upside down man. “How about you, bat boy? Got an answer for me?”
“Yeah,” the hanger said. “They all left except the guy you just turned into a eunuch.”
“I think she broke one,” the guard moaned.
“Oh, poor you,” said the inverted guy. “It’s so unfair when torturers get kicked in the nuts.”
Astrid fumbled with the keychain, looking for the key that would open the cells.
“It’s the brass one,” upside down said.
Astrid found it.
The man in the next cell over spoke then. “Open my cell. Leave that one. He is the real criminal. He’s a bandit.”
“What’s your name?” Astrid asked the ‘real criminal.’
“Gormer. Pleased to meet you. Don’t listen to him. He has no sense of humor. I’ve told him all my best jokes while hanging here. Nothing… ”
Astrid unlocked Gormer’s cell and wrapped her arms around his legs. She lifted him off the hook that held him up by the ropes wrapped around his ankles. Then, she left him.
“Wait!” he said. “You can’t leave me like this!”
“We’ll talk in a minute,” Astrid said, unlocking the other cell. He pushed past Astrid immediately and reached for the keys.
“Whoa there, buddy,” she said. “I don’t even know your name.”
“I am Tarkon the Fallen,” the dour man said. “I need my weapons and armor back.”
“You gotta take me with you,” Gormer said.
“Shush,” Astrid replied.
“My name is ‘Astrid the Breaking Your Sorry Ass Out of Jail,’” she said. “I could be ‘Astrid the Has a Job for You Two.’”
“Work for you?” Gormer said. “Your shitty jailbreak plan just guaranteed that the five keeps within a twenty-mile radius will send troops.”
“Well,” Astrid said, shrugging her shoulders. “The jailbreak is improvised. I saw your entries in the arrest ledger under ‘Foreign Magic Users,’ and it just so happens that I need some of those.”
“Whoa,” Gormer said, looking past Astrid’s shoulder. “Where’d that fat guy come from?”
She whirled to find Vinnie in the doorway. He ignored the question and stood there with a smile on his face. When he gave a quick bow, Astrid saw the hair at the back of his head was matted with blood. She didn’t ask.
“Time is short,” Vinnie said. “If you two want to make yourselves useful and put your thumb in the eyes of this corrupt system, come with us. Otherwise, you can go your separate ways.”
Tarkon perked up at that proposal. “A cause?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“A worthy one, at that,” Vinnie said. He hurried over to Gormer, drew his dagger, and cut the ropes at his wrists and ankles.
“We need horses,” Gormer said, standing up. He stumbled about the cell trying to regain his balance. “Fuck, I can’t tell which end is up.” He rushed over to the guard and almost kicked him before Vinnie pulled him back. “You hung me upside down for hours, you fucking asshole!”
“You got off light, criminal,” the guard said with obvious disgust.
Astrid almost kicked him herself.
“And I need my weapons and armor,” Tarkon said. “I am nothing without them.”
He snatched the keys from Astrid before she could react, then tore deeper into the basement.
“No time for this shit,” Astrid grumbled as they all followed Tarkon back to a steel door.
“This must be it,” he said, trying all the keys in turn. When he couldn’t find any one that worked, he threw them down in disgust. “Stand back,” he said. “It might get hot around me.”
And it did. Tarkon’s eyes turned black, then glowed bright orange as he lifted his palms to the heavy plate of steel that protected the lock mechanism. The metal glowed, then melted seconds later as the rest stepped back to avoid the heat.
The compact man gripped the still-dripping metal of the hole he had made and yanked the door open.
The room was crammed with shelves. Tarkon closed his eyes for a moment, then darted left and ran down the narrow space between shelves.
“Hurry up!” Astrid said. She couldn’t see him, but she heard rustling. She popped back out into the room to see if anyone else was coming. Their luck still held, though the commotion o
utside increased.
“We need horses,” Gormer said.
“I only found two,” Vinnie said. Astrid raised her eyebrows and Vinnie added. “They’re probably trying to catch the rest now.”
Gormer looked the big man up and down. “Smarter than you look,” he said. “We’ll need help from my friends.”
“No,” Tarkon said, finally emerging from the store room. He was clad from head to toe in black. He wore light armor, with some sort of old-world material making up the sleeves, with hard, black plates attached at the chest, shoulders, and forearms. His thighs and shins were similarly covered. The plates didn’t look like metal, but Astrid had no time to wonder.
She did, however, wonder about the two curved, club-like objects, each about eighteen inches long, that hung at his hips. She guessed they must have been his weapons, but they didn’t look very effective at all.
“All black,” Gormer smirked. “Why am I not surprised?”
Tarkon just growled and pushed past them all. “Don’t mock the Sacred Steel,” he ordered.
“Where the hell is he going?” Gormer asked.
“How should I know?” Astrid replied. “He’s your cellmate.”
“You’ll never make it alone,” Gormer called to Tarkon’s back.
Vinnie rushed up behind Tarkon and the rest followed through the cell block and back out into the yard.
The chaos Vinnie created was a form of magic in and of itself. One of the warehouses was burning. Men ran around chasing horses while a pitiful-looking bucket brigade attempted to put out the warehouse fire.
Two horses stood placidly by the door. Astrid was certain which one Vinnie had selected for himself. He walked over to the quarter-horse and hopped up on her back without a saddle.
“Damn, fat boy,” Gormer said. “You’re kind of nimble.”
“Get on,” Vinnie grumbled.
“Wait,” Gormer said. “I need to call some friends. We won’t make it without them.”
His eyes rolled up in the back of his head, then glowed white. He stumbled on his feet, then blood ran from both nostrils. “That’s all I can do,” he mumbled woozily. “I think they heard me…”
Vinnie guided the horse over to Gormer and scooped him up by the collar before he fell. He hauled him up easily and laid him down across the horse’s neck.
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