by Matt Sheehan
After quite a downward hike we came to an antechamber with a number of open doorways. Rather than guessing, Ramón just called out, “Magnus, you one-armed coward, I’m here for you!”
Moments later a number of towering mages came through the doors and fanned out, encircling our group. A few of them raised their hands and there was a momentary shimmer in the air around us.
Ramón said quietly, “I think they just dropped a shield over us,” but he had a confused look on his face.
Then a mage, bigger than the rest—and with stylized golden arm and hand where the original used to be—walked into the room. He had a smile on his face not unlike the scary one that Ramón has at times.
“Did you notice our new trick? We’ve had many years to perfect our craft down here.”
“All this for just the three of us. You must really be scared of me. Or are you afraid of dogs?” At the time Willie was lying between my legs and shivering.
“Silence!” he boomed. “I could crush your skull with a thought. But I would prefer a slower death for you. Perhaps tied to a stake and roasted.”
Ramón nodded. “So you are scared of me. You know, we had your arm bronzed and I kept it as a trophy. I really like how it brightens up a room.”
A wave of power lifted Magnus’s beard, hair and clothes and knocked over the mages standing next to him.
“I will enjoy watching you die, little man.”
“Why don’t you do it yourself? It would be much more satisfying. But if I kill you, your men answer my questions, and we walk out of here unharmed.”
“What possible reason would I have to agree to that?”
“None really. We both know you can’t beat me.”
His men were looking at him now, and not with admiration. He had been openly challenged in his own home, and he was backing down. He was losing the room and he seemed to realize it.
“You want to die by my hand, De Arca? So be it.” He looked to the man next to him. “Xerxes, prepare my armor.”
Ramón added, “That’s a good idea. You remember what happened the last time you didn’t wear it into battle.”
Magnus ignored him and stormed out of the room.
Shamus asked Ramón, “Can you beat him, sir?”
Ramón answered, without much confidence, “I’m going to have to, lad.”
After one of the mages relieved me of my gun and knife, we were ushered through the largest of the doorways into an immense chamber. The room sort of reminded me of a bigger version of Ramón’s old training room back on Eireland. There was a sparring pit that took up half the area, with targets, wooden fighting dummies and some sort of altar filling the other half. The one major difference was the enormous pen of undead farm animals and woodland creatures. There was a nice variety of critters, all similar to that dilapidated bunny I had seen up top. Surprisingly, it didn’t smell quite as bad as the circus had.
Ramón was led to the middle of the pit. He was allowed to keep his pistol and sword, and they asked if he wanted any other weapons, water or mead. He declined other weapons but accepted the water. “I’ll drink the mead after I kill your boss.”
The mage said something quietly to Ramón. I couldn’t make it out from the distance, but surprise showed on my master’s face.
The rest of us were given seats behind the small wall surrounding the pit. We saw Alek and his men seated on the other side of the arena with what appeared to be chains around their necks and wrists. I was just relieved to see them alive.
The mage who took my weapons was seated a stone’s throw away from me and had propped the long gun against the wall of the pit. I figured if this fight didn’t go the way I was hoping, it wouldn’t hurt to have that gun in my hands. The problem would be getting my hands on it without getting a major beat down from the mages standing between me and it. Then I took a second look at the animal pen and had an idea. I just had to wait until my captors’ attention was elsewhere.
A few minutes later Magnus came out covered in black plate armor head to toe. His golden hand had been replaced with a U-shaped shield with a golden trident painted on it, and in his right hand he held a long, straight, double-edged sword.
At this point everyone’s eyes were on the combatants, and I was able to start easing my way toward the pen. Ramón still hadn’t drawn his sword, but he had a hand on the hilt as both men walked to the center of the pit. There was no banter or ceremony; when they came into range, they just started fighting. Magnus lunged forward with a heavy swing, which Ramón sidestepped easily, only then drawing his sword and slashing up under the apparatus holding the shield to Magnus’s arm.
Ramón’s sword was beautiful, but also unlike any I had ever seen. It was a long, thin, slightly curved single-edged blade, with little hilt to speak of. The handle was long to accommodate two hands and was wrapped in blackened leather.
It must have been sharp because its first slash sliced through enough of whatever was holding the shield to the giant’s arm to effectively make it useless. Magnus grew frustrated with it flopping around, ripped it off and threw it at Ramón.
It was then that I lifted the latch to the gate and swung it wide open. The animals were all drooling and making a groaning sound that was a bit disconcerting, but otherwise showed few signs of life. They certainly weren’t rushing out of the pen like I had hoped. I tried calling the donkey—which was the closest animal to the gate—by saying, “Here, donkey,” and, “That’s a pretty donkey,” but that didn’t work either.
Frustrated, I looked back at the fight to see how my master was doing. Ramón was busy slashing away at an unseen barrier that was protecting Magnus. Time and again Ramón would dodge, slash and meet that barrier, but each time he seemed to get a little bit closer to finding his mark. Finally he ducked a heavy horizontal slash and came up with a thrust that scored a hit to Magnus’s visor and warped it badly.
Magnus roared with rage after the hit, and a wave of force emanated from him, pushing Ramón back a few feet and kicking up dust in all directions. It also seemed to rouse the critters a bit, and I took the opportunity to try to motivate them with a few well-placed kicks. It got them moving in the right direction, but the speed was nothing to write home about.
At that moment the giant was in the process of ripping stones from the surrounding wall with gestures from his good hand and flinging them with incredible speed at Ramón. Luckily Ramón seemed to be dodging most of the stones and deflecting the rest, all the while inching closer to Magnus.
I looked around for something pokey to get the animals moving, but when I got too close to one of those mage dust globes and realized how hot it was, I got an even better idea. It was a cinch to pull it off the wall, and once I had it, I knew just what to do with it. With a heave, I flung it into the center of the pack.
It landed in a pile of hay, which erupted into a ball of crackly fire. That seemed to get their attention. The low-level groaning turned to nails-on-the-chalkboard screeching as the terrified zombie animals quick-shuffled in all directions.
By this time, Ramón had worked his way into striking range, and I watched as a well-timed slash dislodged the strip of metal protecting the left side of Magnus’s neck. The mage fell back a few steps, likely from the surprise of the hit as much as the force, then gave up on flinging rocks and turned his mental focus directly on Ramón.
Ramón held a deep stance, with his sword out in front of him, and weathered the storm. Magnus’s arms were animated and he was screaming words in a foreign dialect. Ramón tried to maintain his position, but the sword was vibrating and his feet were sliding backward slightly in the dirt.
At the same time, undead animals were working their way through the crowd and onto the pitch. While some of the mages were busy trying to corral them, others tried to extinguish the flames by stomping—which resulted in flaming mage robes and a lo
t of stop, drop and roll.
My distraction worked and my stolen long gun was now unattended. I ran over and picked it up, worked back the action and found the chamber empty. I screamed in rage, then looked up to find a mage standing over me with a smile on his face and the bullet between his thumb and forefinger. I threw the gun at his head, and the force of the blow and the weight of the gun knocked him over the wall and into the pit. It made me feel a little better.
A high-pitched twang that turned out to be the sound of Ramón’s sword snapping brought my attention back to the fight. The blade flew past Ramón’s head, missing by mere centimeters, and lodged itself in the wall on the other side of the pit. Ramón drew his gun, and it was a thing of beauty. I saw his hand move, and then his arm was fully extended and the gun was firing, one shot, before it was flung out of his hands and across the pit.
That one shot hit Magnus at the crown of his helmet, tearing the metal and completely exposing the left side of his face and neck. In the next moment the fight was over. Ramón drew his knife and leaped high into the air, coming down feetfirst onto Magnus’s chest. The momentum carried them both to the ground, with Ramón crouched on his chest, and his knife plunging through Magnus’s throat.
I cheered at first, until I realized that Magnus’s sword was sticking out of Ramón’s back. The crowd was standing and a few were approaching the combatants. I sprinted onto the pitch, scooping up Ramón’s gun in the process. I made it to Ramón well before anyone else and shielded him from the approaching mages. I was in a daze and screaming incoherently, but they rightly assumed that the screaming and weapon waving meant stay away, and happily did so.
After my adrenaline-fueled tunnel vision cleared, I noticed that none of the mages appeared to be too terribly concerned about the demise of their leader. A few of the necromancers had quickly assessed the situation and decided to run away, but most just stood and stared.
And make no mistake, Magnus was good and dead. Ramón’s knife had severed his neck clear to the spinal cord. Ramón looked up at me and said, “I was grounded.”
I replied, “Yes, sir, you were,” right before he passed out.
I realized Shamus, Alek and the rest were standing there as well. I found out later that Nero had picked his lock during the fight, but at the time I really didn’t care how they had freed themselves.
Hector moved me aside while Nero and Alek lifted Ramón’s limp body off the sword and placed him on his back. Nero checked his pulse, then shook his head no before starting chest compressions while Alek tried to staunch the flow of blood with his hands.
Shamus was staring at the scene with a look of abject horror on his face. Hector tried to keep me away from Ramón and said something that I didn’t hear, but I just flung him out of the way. Ramón’s body was pale and lifeless.
I pleaded with Shamus, “Please save him.”
Tears were streaming down his cheeks. “I don’t know how.”
“Try.”
“I couldn’t heal farm animals in school. I can’t.”
I screamed at him, “Damn it, Shamus, try!”
He was sobbing, “I can’t!” But he knelt down and tried anyway. Alek and Nero stepped aside, probably not because they thought it would work but because what they had been doing wasn’t having any affect.
Shamus put his hands over the wound and closed his eyes, but nothing seemed to happen. Ramón’s body remained lifeless, and the pool of blood beneath him continued to grow.
Then something weird happened. Willie came up to Shamus and licked him on the cheek. Then he lay down at his master’s feet. Suddenly Ramón took a breath. It was shallow, but we all heard it. I put my hand on Sha’s shoulder, followed right after by Alek, Nero and Hector. Some of the mages even joined in, putting hands on his head and back.
Ramón started breathing regularly, and some color returned to his face. Then Shamus collapsed. I thought the strain had killed him, and I went crazy again. Nero and Alek had to restrain me, and it wasn’t until Hector assured me that he was still alive that I came back to my senses.
Shamus was alive, but his breathing was shallow. He was pale as a sheet and looked like he had lost considerable weight. Xerxes offered us the use of their medical facilities, and we accepted. Apparently, he and the remaining mages were pretty happy their boss was dead. He was even happy about the guys we killed outside, being that those mages were Magnus’s most staunch supporters. The fire of their youth had long since burned out, and their future under Magnus had looked bleak until now. The setup was sparse, but at least we had beds to put them on.
Xerxes also offered us food and wine, and not too surprisingly, Shamus drinks wine put to his lips, even while in a coma. I guess it was a coma. He was asleep for a few days. Willie slept on the bed and would only leave to use to toilet. We had to put his food and water right next to him or he would have starved. He growled at the mages if they went near Shamus, but for once tolerated my presence.
Ramón actually woke up first. He wasn’t in fantastic shape, but the wound was closed and he could walk with assistance. The walking with assistance thing wasn’t going to fly, so Nero went into town and bought him a cane. He found one with a sword hidden inside, which made the man happy.
At this point I was done with the adventure, but Alek stuck to the script. He questioned everyone who had stayed about the bones and about Silas’s whereabouts. When Ramón was up and around, he joined in as well.
The consensus on the story was that they had no idea where Silas was. The mages had looked for many years but eventually had given up. Silas was a solitary man and had left no known family. At this point, they figured he had started a new life or was dead.
The good news came with the mention of Jacob. They didn’t know where he was either. That would have been too easy. But they did know that he never returned home. His house had been under surveillance since around the time he went missing, and his family was still there.
So now that we had the Jacob’s address, all we needed was Shamus. We knew Jacob wouldn’t be there, but we also knew that Sha could track him with one or two personal items from his old home.
Four days after the fight, Shamus woke up hungry—and even more so, thirsty.
Chapter Eighteen
I had literally just stepped out of the room for a few minutes when Shamus woke up. The mage Daniel, one of the many mages who had taken an interest in Shamus since Ramón’s healing, was helping with Sha’s recovery. He happened to be there at the time and responded to his request for something to drink.
He brought water, which Shamus wouldn’t touch. Shamus asked for beer and was told the closest thing they had was mead. Daniel wasn’t sure that was such a good idea but acquiesced when the patient became irritable. The mage left a glass and a pitcher of mead with Sha, then went to find me. By the time I got there, the pitcher was empty and the mug was most of the way there as well.
“Hey there, Helmut. The room-service guy was nice enough to get me some mead. You should really tip him.” He looked around as he drained the mug. “What kind of hotel is this anyway?”
“We’re not in a hotel, we’re still on the island of Tyre.”
“Why?”
“Do you remember what happened?”
He stared off into space for a moment, and then he panicked. “Ramón, is he...”
“He’s fine, more or less. You saved him. Do you remember that?”
“Oh yeah, I remember. He got hurt somehow and you were yelling at me for no reason. There was blood all over the place, and all these sliced-up vessels and organs that I had no idea what they did. I just imagined sewing them back together. At first the stitches wouldn’t hold, but then it started working for some reason. Then I got tired and took a nap.”
“That nap lasted for four days.”
“Wow, that was a long nap.” H
e was a little rummy.
“How are you feeling?”
“Really hungry, now that you mention it. Will they feed us?” He lowered his voice. “Are we prisoners?”
“No, more like honored guests. It turns out they didn’t like Magnus very much. They see us as liberators, and they were very impressed with the healing you did.”
“Great, great. So, maybe some more mead and something deep-fried? By the way, why are my clothes so loose?”
In the kitchen I found a number of mages hard at work preparing a celebration feast in honor of Ramón and Shamus. While thankful to Ramón for killing Magnus, they saw Shamus as more of a spiritual savior. After using their powers for nothing better than animating dead forest animals for over a decade, the mages now saw healing as their true calling.
I grabbed a plate of lamb pitas to tide Sha over as well as another pitcher of mead. Alek, Hector and Nero were leaving Sha’s room as I got back. Alek told me Ramón was in there and had wanted a moment alone with Shamus. A few minutes later Ramón came out with a look on his face that I just couldn’t read. I pried a little, but all he would say was that Shamus was full of surprises.
I brought Shamus the pitas. At first he didn’t seem convinced that they would be edible, but after the first bite he demolished the whole plate. Afterward he wanted to know if we were done with the adventure. I broke the news to him that we had a lead on Jacob, and we were just waiting on him to be ready to travel. He wasn’t happy.
“This trip was a stupid idea. I never should have let you talk me into this.”
“Shamus, I’m the one that told you it was a stupid idea.”
