Ink Mage

by Victor Gischler

  Giffen withdrew the dagger, plunged it in again.

  Rina watched in horror. “Daddy!”

  The Duke dropped to his knees, the rapier tumbling from his hand to clatter on the stone steps. He turned his head to look at his daughter, his expression one of utter bewilderment.

  Rina rushed to him, glancing at her mother who sat agape, nearly catatonic.

  Rina scooped up her father’s rapier and swung at Giffen in the same motion. The steward threw up an arm out of reflex and the blade tore a gash across the bottom of his forearm. He screamed and backed away.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Perranese warriors approaching. She turned, sword in front of her. She was aware of all the bodies behind them. The Klaarian soldiers were dead to a man.

  A young Perranese bounded up the steps, thrusting at Rina. His sword was long and curved, but only slightly heavier than her father’s rapier.

  Kork’s teaching immediately took over.

  His armor was made up of overlapping discs of some shining metal. Kork’s enormous sword could probably bite through easily, but she’d need to find a weak spot for the rapier. The mesh under the arms might be fabric or dark, thin chainmail.

  But the Perranese warrior’s wide-brimmed helmet had no face guard.

  She stepped past the thrust, parrying with the rapier. A flick of her wrist brought the blade around and over the warrior’s sword hilt and at his face.

  The Perranese warrior had been surprised twice in less than a second. First, by Rina’s speed. Second, by the sword blade that buried itself deep into his left eye socket.

  Rina almost lost the sword when the warrior screamed and turned away, but she held on and pulled it free of his skull, spinning to face the other warriors who came up more cautiously.

  “Take her alive.” Rina heard Giffen’s voice behind her.

  The remaining warriors stormed up the dais at her. She swung the sword, lunged, turned, swung again. She caught one on the hand, drawing blood, another on the thigh. Her blade bounced off of the chest armor of another, and finally she felt hands on her as they crowded around.

  She kept thrashing as they pressed against her. There was no room to strike with the sword, but she swung backhanded and smashed the hilt into a warrior’s nose, heard the cartilage pop; blood streamed from his nostrils.

  “It’s just one little brat,” yelled Giffen.

  Something sharp struck Rina on the back of the head. The world tilted and blurred and then went black.

  CHAPTER SIX

  She heard the voices before she could open her eyes.

  “Your men found the ropes at the secret spot near the back gate?” Giffen’s voice.

  “Yes.” A light Perranese accent. “The men who came over the wall were in bad spirits. They had been hiding for two weeks, freezing their asses off.” A small chuckle. “But that just made them fight harder, I think.”

  Rina still couldn’t open her eyes. Her head was spinning, throbbing.

  “Still, you must admit it was a good plan,” Giffen said. “No one believes a threat to the back gate is possible. It was simple enough to position a score of men ahead of time, bringing them up by night. If they grew cold and lonely while waiting then they can be first in line at the brothels when you take the city.”

  “If we take the city,” the Perranese voice said. “Taking the front gate from the inside was easy enough, but even now fighting continues in the streets. These people are sloppy fighters but stubborn. They are too stupid to know they are beaten.”

  “You have my full confidence,” Giffen said. “I’m sure your men will soon subdue the remaining—Ah, she’s awake. Good.”

  Rina blinked three times, her vision snapping back into focus. Her face pressed against the cold stone floor. Her head felt heavy like a bag of rocks knocking together. She shifted her line of sight enough to see Giffen and one of the Perranese foreigners looming over her. He had some kind of plume in his broad helmet; an officer maybe.

  Giffen grinned down at her. “Get up, brat.”

  Rina propped herself up on one elbow, head throbbing in protest. That was as far as she could get. The headache behind her eyes was nearly blinding.

  Giffen snapped his fingers impatiently. “Get her up.”

  She felt rough hands grab her under the arms and drag her to her feet. Her head flopped, chin bouncing against her chest. She forced herself to look, lifting her head. She was still in the audience chamber. How long had she been out? There were at least twenty Perranese warriors in the chamber now. What had happened?

  She glanced sideways at the steps of the dais. Her father still lay dead, sprawled where he’d been murdered by the traitor Giffen.

  A sob welled up in her chest suddenly, wracked her entire body. Father …

  Giffen lifted a chin with her finger. “I know you grieve. But believe me, it can get worse. It can always get much worse.”

  She wanted to curse him, but couldn’t summon the words. Her vision blurred with tears.

  “Bring her!”

  But Giffen hadn’t meant Rina. The Perranese warriors parted as two soldiers dragged another woman through the crowd.

  Mother!

  They threw her to the ground, where she knelt, her hands over her head, trembling.

  “First, we show that we’re serious,” Giffen said.

  He signaled one of the Perranese soldiers standing over Rina’s mother.

  The warrior grabbed a fistful of the woman’s hair, jerked her head up and in one smooth motion slit her throat with a long, curved dagger.

  Rina screamed, a long, anguished animal howl. She struggled fiercely against those holding her, murderous rage blinding her to everything but sinking her nails into Giffen’s face.

  An instant later, she went limp, crying helplessly. Oh, Mother, how did this happen? I’m so sorry. So sorry. Mother and Father dead. Duchy seized by invaders. In an eye blink, everything had been taken away.

  Giffen bent to look her in the eye. “Now, I think I have your attention, yes?”

  Rina spat, the warm wad of saliva hitting the side of his nose.

  He straightened, frowned and sighed, wiping the spittle away with a pinky finger. “A brat and a fool to the very end, I see.”

  Giffen swung suddenly, backhanding her across the face, the slap of skin on skin echoing through the audience chamber.

  Sparks went off in Rina’s eyes, her cheek hot and stinging.

  She forced herself to suck in a mouthful of air, let it out slowly, trying to clear her head. When she met Giffen’s gaze again, there were no more tears. Only cold fury. Somehow she would survive this. She would live to hold Giffen’s heart in her hand. She would hack it out of his chest herself, with a dull rusty hatchet.

  “The Perranese are putting me in charge of Klaar,” Giffen said. “We know how stubborn our citizens can be, and they’ll take it better if one of their own rules over them instead of a foreigner. I even have a little story prepared, how on his deathbed your father asked me to take charge of the duchy, to act as a buffer between his beloved people and the savage invaders from across the sea.” Giffen shrugged. “As a loyal subject of Klaar, what else could I do but respect your father’s dying wish?”

  “They’ll see through you in ten seconds,” Rina said. “They’ll rip you to shreds as a traitor and hang your corpse from the city walls for the buzzards.”

  “I don’t think so,” Giffen said. “But as an aid to my little fiction, I want your father’s signet ring. I’d like to show it to the people as I deliver my tearful speech, telling them how the Duke’s final thoughts were of their well-being, and how we should persevere even under Perranese rule. We’ve searched your family’s living quarters. You wouldn’t happen to know where that ring is, would you?”

  “Go fuck yourself.” In fact, she didn’t know. Not a clue. But she wouldn’t tell Giffen even if she did.

  “I want you to imagine that a dank cell in the bowels of the castle dungeon can seem like
paradise compared to … other things,” Giffen told her. “We might even manage to toss you a crust of bread once a day.”

  She said nothing, glared her defiance.

  “Think about where that signet ring is hidden,” Giffen suggested. “It won’t change my plan one bit if I don’t have it, but, unlike when I was a mere steward, I expect to get what I want and we might as well start with you. So I’ll ask you the same question again in an hour, and you’ll have another opportunity to demonstrate your obedience. In the meantime, it’s my understanding that these men,” he gestured to the score of Perranese warriors, “have been without female companionship for a number of weeks.”

  Rina went cold.

  The chamber echoed with the fall of Giffen’s boots. He passed through the big double doors and they thunked closed behind him.

  Silence stretched, and Rina was aware only of the panicked heartbeat thumping in her ears.

  Then the hands holding her frantically pawed at her clothes, a sleeve ripped. Rina screamed. The other men crowded, reaching in, all trying to get at her all at once. She heard more cloth ripping. She struggled, tried to kick, hands on her legs, pushing her dress up. One of the men produced a dagger, sliced the laces of her tight bodice, and it popped loose. Her breasts shifted under the thin fabric of her shift. One of the men had a handful of her hair. She could not remember a time when she wasn’t screaming.

  They lowered her to the stone floor, and one of the warriors knelt in front of her, pried her knees apart. She kicked at him, but others moved in to grab her ankles.

  She tried to thrash, squirm, anything. Her arms and legs were held fast. This was it, the end. She had a desperate thought that maybe she could grab a dagger from one of the other warriors’ belts and plunge it into her own heart, but they held her too tightly.

  Rina looked at the man kneeling before her, pleading with her eyes, hoping he could feel some sort of mercy.

  A blur of movement, the glint of metal.

  The head popped off of the warrior who’d been kneeling in front of her, tumbling though the air and raining blood. Rina blinked, unsure of what she’d seen.

  Another metallic blur, and the hand holding her ankle separated at the wrist. Impossibly, the men crowding her seemed not to notice. They pushed in, hands grabbing at her breasts through the thin, silken shift. The point of a thick blade, thrust through the open mouth of a warrior holding her arm. His eyes shot wide as blood fountained out of his mouth and down his chin.

  Now the Perranese warriors realized something was amiss. They released Rina, backed away, drawing their swords.

  Kork whirled among them, swinging his sword in two-handed fashion, severed limbs flying in arcs of blood. They tried to rally and rush him, but he ducked beneath their sword swings, dodged their thrusts, batted aside their blades.

  Kork’s hand flicked toward Rina. Something landed in her lap.

  She fumbled for it, head swimming. A glass vial wrapped in leather. She uncorked it, the ting of steel on steel echoing in the audience chamber. She brought it to her mouth, the pungent tangy odor hitting her a split second before she titled it back and drained the vial. It’s warmth raced through her body, reaching every part of her at once.

  Her head cleared, pain fading.

  A healing elixir. They were fabulously expensive. Never mind that now!

  Kork spun among the Perranese warriors, the brute force of his huge blade hacking easily through the armor. Everywhere Kork struck, another invader stumbled back, spraying blood and screaming.

  Rina shrugged off the bodice and scooped up one of the fallen Perranese swords. The would-be rapists had unwittingly done her a favor. Wearing only the silken, sleeveless shift, she was able to move more fluidly. The foreign sword was single edged, made more for slicing and hacking than thrusting. She instantly recalled Kork’s lessons with such weapons and waded without hesitation into the combat.

  They didn’t even notice Rina at first, all of them crowding around Kork, trying to bring down the big man.

  Rina swung the sword, an upward, backhanded cut. The blade slid under the back of a warrior’s broad helmet, laying open the base of his skull. Blood and brains spilled out hotly onto the floor as the warrior fell.

  She turned to another, stabbed at the weak area of the armor under his arm. She pulled the sword out fast, felt a hot spray of blood across her face.

  They’d noticed Rina now, and two of the warriors broke off their assault on Kork to come at her. She knocked one’s sword aside as he stepped in for a thrust, but flicked her wrist for a quick strike at the other, the blade dragging down the warrior’s bracer until it caught the fleshy part between his thumb and forefinger. He flinched back, hissing pain.

  Instead of following up with a kill strike, she turned back to the other one, who was moving to chop down at her with a two-handed swing. She blocked, ducked around and tried to slice low at his belly, but he got his blade back in time to parry her.

  Now both came at her at once. They were well trained, she realized, and not underestimating her as had the warrior she’d killed earlier.

  Think, idiot. What would Kork tell you?

  He’d say to remember your strengths.

  She wasn’t strong, but she was fast.

  Rina launched at the two warriors, her blade a blur between the two of them, metal clanging and tinging—thrust, block, stab. They were forced to stay on defense. Rina roared, high-pitched and ragged, not in grief as before, but in pure rage. She kept pressing forward, the muscles in her sword arm beginning to burn hot. How much longer could she keep this up?

  You know what Kork would say. “You think your muscles hurt? Try a blade in the belly.”

  One of the warriors slipped in a puddle of his comrade’s blood. He righted himself instantly, but his defense wavered. Only for an instant, but it was enough.

  Rina thrust the sword into the warrior’s throat. He fell back, gurgling blood, his eyes beaming disbelief. It looked painful.

  Good.

  But you don’t have time to gloat, stupid girl.

  She turned to the other one, swinging wildly now, desperate to end the fight. Her heart thundered against her chest. She panted, lungs burning. Kork had pushed her often in practice sessions, emphasizing the importance of good conditioning. But it was never the real thing—the smell of blood and sweat, the screams of the dying, the thrill of blood lust through her entire body while simultaneously feeling she could collapse any second.

  Her foe took advantage of her sloppy swings, knocked her sword aside and stepped in, aiming a thrust at her midsection. If her reflexes had been any slower at all, he would have finished her there, slicing open her belly, but she sidestepped just in time. The thrust cut a long slice in her shift, and she gasped as she felt the sword tip draw a shallow four-inch line across her side.

  But Kork’s training held. Even as part of her brain registered the wound, another more decisive part took in the enemy’s posture. He’d had to give up some defense to make his attack. Rina brought her own sword down hard, and only the warrior’s bracer kept him from losing his hand at the wrist. The bloody wound was enough to force him to drop the sword.

  Panic blazed suddenly in his eyes as Rina pressed her attack. He tried to go for a dagger on his belt, but Rina swung, once, twice, three, four times, some of the blows glancing off armor but others biting through into flesh. He went down, babbling his foreign tongue. Rina imagined he was begging for mercy.

  You’ve come to the wrong shop for mercy.

  With two hands, she jabbed the sword down into his open mouth, felt it punch through the back of his head and helm and strike the stone floor.

  She yanked the sword out immediately, held it in front of her as she spun a complete circle. Where was her next enemy? From which direction would the next attack come?

  She saw only Kork, pulling his great sword from the torso of a Perranese warrior.

  And the bodies.

  Oh, Dumo, so many bodies. More than a
score she could see now. Most lay still, but others twitched. None rose to trouble her. The hall was thick with the copper stench of death and loosened bowels.

  Rina looked down at herself, a sweaty, blood-spattered mess. Her hands, completely slick and red, did not seem like her own. She blinked stupidly.

  Kork was suddenly next to her, dragging her by the wrist.

  “Come.”

  Rina tore her gaze from her hands, blinked at Kork. “What?”

  “There is no time,” Kork said. “The castle is overrun. They may already be looking for you. I don’t know. Now hurry.”

  And suddenly Kork was pulling her through the castle hallways. She followed numbly, her heart going leaden, knowing hopelessly that the nightmare continued, and she couldn’t wake up.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Rina wasn’t paying attention to where Kork was taking her. She didn’t care. If Kork had let her, she would have simply crawled into a corner and gone to sleep, and if she never woke up again, that would be just fine.

  It wasn’t until she’d tripped down her fourth flight of stairs that Rina grew curious. In Castle Klaar, down wasn’t synonymous with out. At least not in this case. They’d already passed the storage rooms and were heading to the dungeons. Kork paused at the doorway to the little room reserved for the jailer, cocked his head and listened for a long moment.

  Kork nodded, satisfied. “He’s not in there. Probably died out on one of the walls, defending the city.”

  Yes, Rina remembered. All able bodied men reported for duty at such times. How many butchers and blacksmiths and stable hands had thought themselves safe behind Klaar’s walls only to die at the end of a Perranese sword?

  She thought fleetingly of the boy who’d helped her with her boot. She’d thought him cute and had teased him on a whim. Oh, Dumo, had that really only happened a few hours ago? It seemed like a lifetime. And now he was dead like the rest, whoever he was. The world in which she could tease boys on a whim was gone forever.