by Ted Neill
Haille was waiting with the chamber pot raised high. He brought it down on Felix’s head, the sides shattering, exploding outward with a spray of waste.
Felix was not finished. He countered with a burst of power that flung both Gregor and Haille against the walls, blew out the shutters, smothered the fire, and reduced the locked door to splinters.
Gregor struggled on all fours to recover. Haille rolled to his side, blood dripping from a gash on his forehead. His clothes were soiled with the contents of the chamber pot. Felix was not much better. He staggered to his feet, his body glistening with waste, his powers, for the moment, spent. He picked up the fire poker and stepped towards them, raising it over his shoulder.
“I’ll beat you to death,” he said through barred teeth.
But the beating did not come. Instead a figure flew in through the open doorway, a blur of graceful movements. A sword flashed and knocked the poker out of Felix’s hand, sending it clattering across the floor. Victor Twenge, the flesh trader, stood between Gregor and Felix—Felix as surprised to see him as Gregor was. Felix recovered from the shock, took in his new adversary, gathered what power he had left, and moved to send a spell onto Victor.
But a second figure stole into the room, slipping behind him, and with a whoosh and a clunk, struck Felix in the head with a spinning wooden staff. The woman Gregor had seen before, the one presented as a slave, stood with her legs apart, one arm out for balance, the other still spinning the staff until it came to rest behind her back. It made a small, delicate tapping noise as she set its end on the floor.
Haille was sitting up, wiping the blood from his forehead. “Chloe, you are a sight for sore eyes.”
The woman smiled, nudging Felix with her toe to make certain he was out cold. “I might say the same, Prince Haille.”
“Prince?” Gregor asked, but before Haille could answer, the flesh trader—or at least the man pretending to be one—interrupted.
“Time for life stories later, we need to get to the ship.”
Chapter 15
A Time for Steel
Gregor led Twenge, Haille, and the warrioress named Chloe up a set of stairs and into the castle battlements. The air was swirling with raindrops as the nearing storm was ready to break, but this was the route on which Gregor thought they would be least likely to encounter the revenant. It also allowed Gregor to survey the growing chaos in the castle courtyard and outside along the quay.
Haille’s rescuers had set free all the slaves and they were destroying everything in their path to the Respar, the waiting ship. The library was aflame. Scaffolding holding up the crumbling seawall lay toppled. Tapestries, furniture, and paintings burned in piles throughout the courtyards and along the walkways. The youngest novices had retreated to their dormitory, bunched in the upper windows where they watched the chaos unfold. Formerly loyal guards were in flight, overwhelmed by the numbers of slaves barging up from the dungeons. A few Servior fighters were making a stand along the quay, aided by six older novices, eager to test their powers on living men, but even they were falling back from the onslaught. They had taken cover in a stone archway that stood between the quayside and the inner courtyard. It was a bottleneck of sorts and they had managed to block the way for the vanguard of attacking slaves. The man who had been bound with Chloe stood at the fore of the escapees, a staff like her own in his hands. But even with numbers on his side, he was not able to lead the slaves past the novices and guards in the archway.
Everything was coming apart. Gregor’s role, his identity, his loyalties. Gregor knew the six novices. They were advanced students and each particularly cruel and ambitious. He noted the glee on their faces when their spells struck home and snuffed out the life of another bedraggled slave. They were discovering the true extent of their power and were growing drunk on it. With a shatter-spell one brought down a wall of the castle on a dozen or so slaves. Another set fire to two who had been lucky enough to dodge the falling stones. A third novice mixed the attack and sent a shatter-spell into a group of men. They vaporized into a sickening cloud of red.
I have to stop this.
Haille rested his hand on Gregor’s shoulder. “Time to choose sides.”
Gregor breathed deep. Before he could even let it out, Chloe had grabbed Gregor’s collar. “Can you stop them?”
“I can if I get closer.”
They were on the battlement, a bowshot from the fighting below. A stairway led downward into the castle floors, but Gregor was afraid of what enemies or allies they might meet in the maze of hallways on the way.
“There is no helping it,” he said aloud, but mainly to himself. “Follow me.”
They ran down the steps coming across a few huddled novices immediately. Gregor ordered them to flee to the north wing for safety—what use did he have for his private sanctuary any longer? Two floors further down they crossed a hallway by the entrance to the treasury where four guards assigned to protect Drahlstrom were carrying out bags of treasure on their shoulders. Upon seeing Gregor they froze, realized they had been caught, and drew their swords to fight their way free. Gregor raised his hands, the power tingling in his fingertips. But before he could speak, Chloe and Twenge danced into their midst, sword cutting, staff swinging, and the men were fallen, dazed, dumb, or dead, their bags of gold spilling out, a coin rolling to stop between Gregor’s legs, the face of his namesake, Gregor Lachnor, looking up at him.
“Let’s go!” Chloe said, nodding for him to continue leading them. A few more stairwells and a few more soldiers dispatched, thanks to Chloe and Twenge, and they were at the level of the quay. To their left the wood planks of the docks rested between pylons, leading to the waiting ship. To their right the novices were making their stand in the archway.
Chloe caught Gregor looking at the Respar. “Not yet. We’re not leaving without our men.”
“And the poor bastards they had chained up here too,” Twenge said.
“Understood,” Gregor said. He signaled to them to wait while he stole up behind the novices and guards. With a quick spell of sleep he dropped all but three of them who were out of reach. They were the same three novices he had seen taking such joy in killing the slaves earlier. Their faces were masks of glee as they blew apart walls of the castle as well as men. But their aim was poor and their judgment worse. One sent a ball of flame arching through the air only to land on the dock itself, setting it on fire.
Gregor recognized that they were spaced too close to one another and he saw an opportunity in the form of a rowboat rocking in the harbor. He focused his thoughts on the knots and lines mooring it until the ropes went slack. Then he flung the boat into the archway where it slammed into the three novices and knocked them clear into the harbor. They were quickly more occupied with reaching the shore and not drowning than killing.
“Come on!” Gregor waved to the slaves. They needed little encouragement and came running or limping under the burden of their injured brethren. The man with the staff neared him, carrying a boy just a few years younger than Gregor.
So young . . . what has been done in my name here?
Another group of slaves, these moving slower than all the others—their limbs emaciated by starvation—passed through the archway. When one stumbled, Gregor ran to his side and propped him up. His body was hard, the bones poking through his withered flesh. He smelled horrible, but Gregor wrapped his arm around him nonetheless and together they worked their way down the dock toward the waiting ship. The sailors were dropping the sails and preparing for a quick escape. Slaves who knew how to sail were helping to haul lines aboard. Chloe took the young boy from the arms of the man she had been chained to and called to him, “Get those men to hurry up, Val.”
By “those men,” she meant the ones Gregor was with. The man Chloe called Val ran into their midst, followed by Victor and Haille, who between the two of them lifted up and carried aboard the man Gregor was helping. Unburdened, Gregor turned back to look at the castle. The flames had spread
within so that the windows glowed like angry eyes. Curds of smoke rose into a column that slanted on the storm wind. Lightning continued to pulse, flashing white trees connecting sea and clouds on the horizon. Guards were in full retreat, novices scattered, his own advisors in hiding. All Gregor knew, all his life, was in ruin.
And a new life waited, just a few steps up the gangway. A life with friends, without false identities, deception, and lies, with comradery, not competition nor conspiracy. He didn’t know what he was waiting for. He turned, ready to climb aboard and sail into a new beginning.
Then he felt a presence. It was as familiar as it was dreadful: his master’s power, unmasked and bearing down on the lot of them on this tiny corner of this tiny island. The flames had risen like a wall between the castle and the quay, but walking through, unscathed, unflinching, was the revenant, a figure of death, hellfire surrounding him.
The last of the men were still scrambling for the gangway. Val was the first to turn, his staff in hand. Chloe followed him back down off the ship, Victor Twenge behind her. They made a wall, parting for the slaves who cowered at the sight of the figure in the inferno. The wind ruffled their clothes and pulled at Chloe’s braids. The revenant passed beyond the flames, his body smoking, his eyes terrible slits of blue, the stone at his neck a third eye of pure ice. He shed his cloak, revealing the formidable body of a warrior not dead and not alive, the figure who had been Gregor’s protector. For so long Gregor had taken comfort in the sight of this figure, but now he saw him as so many others must have: an executioner. Gregor’s chest felt hollowed out by fear, his blood pumping in his limbs, his fingertips shaking.
This is how you repay me? He heard his master’s thoughts in his mind. Gregor had no rebuttal, but Val did, readying his staff. Chloe didn’t. She turned, tossed hers to Gregor, then drew the sword from the scabbard at her waist.
“Val, this is a time for steel,” she said.
Twenge, his own long sword already drawn, looked across at the man called Val, who nodded, tossed his battle staff to Gregor, and drew his own gleaming sword. Haille’s feet pounded down the gangway and he came to Gregor’s side.
“Come on, get on the ship,”
“No,” Gregor said, handing the battle staffs to Haille. “They will need me. Go.”
Haille, Prince Haille—whoever he was—nodded and stepped back onto the ship, along with the last of the slaves while Val, Chloe, and Twenge spread out along the dock.
“An unlikely alliance as I could have ever imagined,” Twenge said.
“Strange times . . . ,” Val said out of the corner of his mouth, his teeth grinding.
Gregor’s master was ready, drawing two blades from scabbards on his back and spinning them in a lithe show of dexterity that belied the desiccated nature of the corpse.
“It’s already dead,” Gregor said. “You can’t kill it.” He could hear the panic rising in his voice.
The three warriors looked to one another. Gregor saw the understanding exchanged there: it was unanimous. They knew they were the only line of defense between the ship, the slaves, and this demon. By some code that was more honorable than anything Gregor had ever followed, they were united in the knowledge that they had to stand their ground.
So he would too.
The revenant charged, his blades a flashing whirlwind. The three fighters were prepared. They met the swords strike for strike, moving to flank their enemy. But Gregor’s master was quick and moved like smoke in the wind to avoid their onslaughts. The narrowness of the dock kept them in tight exchanges where their swords beat out staccato rhythms, light from the flames glowing on their blades and glistening on the sweat of their skin. The revenant jerked to a stop, Chloe and Val having locked both his blades with their own. Twenge moved in for a final blow but Gregor’s master surprised them all with a backwards summersault that freed his blades, which he brought hammering down on Val and Chloe. Val countered with his own strike while Chloe dodged, weaving in close. The revenant parried her next strike, then Val’s. The blue stone pulsed and Gregor sensed a spell released. Val charged in further, the revenant backing up, so that the two of them engaged alone.
“Chloe, Vic, some help here?” he cried out over his shoulder.
“I can’t move!” Chloe said, straining at her legs. Twenge too was grimacing as he tried to wrench his feet free of the dock. Gregor rambled out a counter-spell to unbind their legs, and they both stumbled forward before falling into stride and re-engaging. His master did not hold back his enchantments. The stone grew brighter once more and all three fighters were thrown backwards as if struck with an invisible battering ram.
Chloe went over the side of the dock, but before she hit the water Gregor cradled her in his power, imaging a protective net enshrouding her, and levitated her back onto the dock. Val had fallen on the ground, the revenant lifting his swords to strike him while he recovered. Gregor seized Val less gently, sliding him out of danger. Twenge was charging now. But Gregor’s master was not about to spare his former pupil from the fight. His gaze fell on Gregor, who with his powers already extended, had left himself vulnerable to attack. His master took the opportunity and Gregor felt a surge of focused power that made Felix’s attacks from earlier feel like the haphazard enchantments of the most untrained novice.
Gregor was slammed against the castle wall with force that knocked the breath from his body. It took all his effort not to lose consciousness as he struggled to pull air back into his lungs. Helping Val, Chloe, and Twenge was beyond him. He watched, desperate to regain his strength, while the three allies moved in on the revenant once more. Without his interference, his master picked apart their attacks, combining blade and sorcery to wear all three of them down. Twenge was blasted against the castle next to Gregor, his sword clattering to the ground, falling next to him, his blond locks across his face, his body eerily still until he groaned and made an aborted attempt to roll onto his side.
The revenant drove into Chloe with a furious new attack. Fatigued, her counter strikes were slow, her grace absent, and she fell back, giving ground, moving towards the burning planks of the dock. Gregor could feel the heat of the flames, so he knew she must have too. She pivoted to her left but the revenant was too fast, his strength inexhaustible. His swing connected with her blade and knocked it free of her hand. Her sword tumbled out of reach and splashed into the harbor. The revenant made a second swing but it stopped just short of her neck—her pulse visible—Val’s blade holding back what would have been a fatal blow.
“Not her. Not on my watch,” he said.
The revenant reconfigured his attack to engage Val, his two swords smashing into Val’s one. Chloe drew a long knife from each boot but as she closed in from the side, the revenant struck her with the same outpouring of power he had Gregor and Twenge. She went flying as if drawn on a string, the blades spinning from her hands as she struck a pylon, arching her back in a painful twist.
Twenge was getting back to his feet, shaking the cobwebs out of his head. He crossed the quay and fell in line alongside Val. For a few brilliant moments the two of them moved in cadence and drove the revenant towards the edge of the dock where the water reflected the burning hellscape like a black mirror. But the rhythm of the battle was in Gregor now and he knew his master would counter with an incantation. There was no time to wait. Gregor’s thoughts were hazy and his steps off balance, but he forced himself up and wrapped Val in a protective shield just before the revenant called forth the flames from the burning dock to envelop him. Gregor sent a gust of wind, already wet with the rain that had finally broken, and extinguished the fire.
But if the revenant had let his guard down, it had only been a feint, for as Twenge moved in, the revenant was ready and caught him square in the torso with his sword. Val reached out, but was blocked still by the same invisible spell wall that had just saved him.
Twenge shook with the pain of the mortal blow, his own sword raised over his head, poised ready in a now pointless strike. He an
d the revenant regarded one another, killer and victim, victor and vanquished, the rain drops beginning to fly between them in slanting lines. But Victor had not given up the fight just yet. He swept down his sword, like a woodsman splitting a log, and connected with the revenant’s shoulder. Broken bits of ring-mail glittered in an outward explosion. There was no blood, the flesh was dry and dead. A cloud of dust hung in the air as the arm dropped to the deck and the sword slid off into the water.
Gregor saw the snarl on the dead man’s face and felt his master’s displeasure as he willed the revenant to twist the blade in Twenge’s gut. Twenge cried out and clutched the revenant’s remaining hand, as if he too would drive the sword into himself. For a moment he even seemed to pull himself closer to his executioner, sliding forward on the very blade that had murdered him, when he cried out, “Now, Mandaly!”
Val, the shields around him dissipated, smashed his sword down into the revenant’s skull. Blue light poured from the crack in the bone. Val squared his shoulders and swung once more, sending the head spinning from the shoulders like a broken melon. It bounced on the planks, the light escaping in beams before fading, the collar with the stone rolling free of the collapsed body.
Val was immediately next to Twenge where he had fallen. Gregor froze with indecision before running to Chloe. She stirred and woke when he roused her and, with Gregor’s help, she crossed to where Twenge was laying. Victor’s blond beard and mustache were flecked with bright red blood and he was rolled on his side since the blade protruding from his back made it impossible to lie flat. Gregor could already see the life draining out of his eyes.
“Easy, friend. The fight is won,” Val was saying.
