by Terah Edun
“Ready for a second round of fire?” she asked, dispassionate as she raised her hands.
She refused to spare him just because the fire would consume him. It was her or him and as Mae had learned this last week, if she wanted to survive, she always had to choose herself. If she died or her family died in sacrifice for her, there would be no one left to push through the casting that all of this effort had been originally for.
“You idiot,” the warrior said while looking at her as if she was crazy.
“You’re the one disarmed, not me,” Mae said triumphantly as they circled each other warily.
He coughed, a hacking sound that was more than it seemed then because he dropped the tome as he spewed not just phlegm but blood. Enough that his hand was cover in red spray. Apparently her attack on his chest had done some internal damage, enough that blood was going up places it shouldn’t.
Seeing his blackened chest momentarily on display Mae her feel a bit revulsion at what she’d done, but she couldn’t forget that the man eyeing her baefully would not only turn her over to her torturers in a blink but he also likely had participated in the round of her family in the nights previous. Mae was under no illusions as to what something like that entailed. The Darnes’ clan may not have been a band of warriors but her aunts and uncles wouldn’t have gone down without a fight either.
Every bruise, broken bone, and harm that had come to them she owed to people like the mercenary standing before her. So she didn’t let sympathy cripple her response. She couldn’t. Eyeing the grimoire he had momentarily dropped in his coughing spell, Mae hurled a blast of fire at his face to throw him off balance and dove for it. Unfortunately her targeting was off and she fell to the floor too far away to scoop it up.
Seeing now that she wanted the grimoire back badly, the mercenary stepped forward and put a heavy booted foot directly down on its cover with a grunt.
“Aww, that wasn’t very nice,” Mae complained as she winced and stood up with her hand on her hurt knee.
He chuckled through his obvious pain.
“What you did with that little fire trick wasn’t very nice either girl,” he replied mockingly.
Mae snorted and continued to circle him warily as she tried to get behind him and out of his line of sight. But he just kept turning and turning with her. Always keeping his boot on her prize. Seeing no choice as he held the high ground, Mae rushed him as she tried to send fire up his tall frame and grab her prize at the same time.
Just as she reached him the mercenary spoke out in a taunt, “Did you ever wonder why none of the scouts were sent out after your little escape attempt?”
“No,” Mae shouted as she darted low and away with the grimoire briefly in her grasp but he snatched it back out of her hands with a quickness she hadn’t known he could muster.
Still she managed to stay out of the grasp of the hand he momentarily broke away from its position over his burned chest. She just had to let him have the grimoire. Surrendering the ground she had earned was frustrating but at least she was still free. So Mae backed away and tried to get a handle on the situation. She realized then that they both were at a disadvantage. Mae couldn’t use one hand because it needed to remain covered in fire as an offensive tactic. And he was primarily relying on only one hand because the alternate was either stuck holding his burned chest together and gripping the grimoire.
Which meant they were each down at least a limb.
As if realizing too that they had come close to a even stance, the mercenary looked over at her with a gleam in his eye.
“You don’t seem to be too interested, but still I’ll tell you why,” the mercenary said while practically gloating in her face.
He clearly felt good about keeping the text out of her hands.
“Why?” Mae asked as she watched him resentfully. Even now he was gasping in clear pain, but he stayed standing.
“Because they weren’t going to waste the energy of a hundred mercenaries sent out to search every room for you,” the mercenary said cruelly.
“That’s a stupid plan,” Mae offered. “You can’t recover someone you aren’t looking for.”
“See that’s what I said,” the mercenary said as he winced and kept her in his line of sight. “You want to know what those women mages told me?”
“What?” Mae asked, already tired of this question-and-answer session.
“That you’d make it easy for them,” he said triumphantly. “They didn’t need to go looking for you when you’d make yourself known.”
He finished with a wide grin and Mae didn’t like it one bit. He was clearly still capable of putting up a fight, even a verbal one, while she wasn’t seriously hurt but out of breath already.
It would help if I had the benefit of a warrior’s training too, she thought sourly.
But there was nothing she could do about that now. Just continue to circle warily and hope to catch him off-guard. She was too far away now for her fire to be effective, and she needed to stay at least an arm’s length away so he didn’t drop the text and grab her.
In reply to his insulting reveal Mae said, “Well, yeah I’m here now but I don’t see anyone else but you and you’re half dead.”
It wasn’t true but her barbed comment seemed to wound his ego. She was watching him carefully and saw the resentment show clearly on his face. Not to mention the fact that he was slower now that he had the grimoire tucked hard to his side. He knew it too. Curiously he didn’t get rid of it, no matter how much more maneuverable he’d be without it.
So in effect they were in a stalemate, her with her bum knee and him with his wounded chest.
Weeks ago the very idea of fighting someone like him into a draw would have made her proud.
Her, a Darnes girl, facing off against a trained warrior and holding her own!
Now it just made her wary. Because someone else could come through here at any second or the mages could overhear their confrontation just rooms away, and then she would be outnumbered with no possible way to get away.
“If they were so sure that I’d come straight to them,” Mae said. “They did a poor showing of it.”
“Oh, how’s that?” the mercenary said with a strange look.
“I’ve seen your men out on patrols in the far reaches of the buildings,” Mae said. “They’d have no reason to be back there if they weren’t looking for someone.”
“Oh,” chuckled her warrior opponent. “They were looking for someone alright. The four mages conjured up a map of the greater holding and sent groups of three each out on foot to make sure none of your relatives were running around doing stupid things.”
“We found a few of them too,” he added smugly.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Mae snarled. “Maybe I should even visit them, ask them how they’re doing. You’re holding them in the great room off the stable yards right?”
She was throwing out a location just to see if he’d bite.
“You won’t get that answer out of me so easily girl,” the mercenary challenged. “But I’ll do you one better, because you’ll be seeing your family soon enough.”
Mae didn’t like the sound of that. Coming from him the words sounded very much like the threat they were.
Still she tried to keep him and his free hand in her wary sights. He still had a knife at his waist that he could potentially throw at her but he’d yet to unsheathe it which meant it was possible he was under orders not to hurt her, only to restrain her.
Then again, he just might not want to get in close combat, seeing as her hands were still glowing. Now that she knew she wasn’t getting that grimoire back, Mae saw no reason to hold her fire back anymore.
With that power and rage unleashed, Mae almost felt on an equal level to this trained warrior. Almost.
She began to increase the power going to her hands. Building it from that subtle, warning glow to a fire so bright the flames would incinerate anything they touched in seconds.
“I wouldn’t d
o that if I was you girl,” the mercenary warned quickly. “You’re biting off more than you can chew with that power.”
““I’m pretty sure I can handle you just fine,” Mae said sarcastically. “No need for insults my big friend.”
He snorted as he replied, “It’s not me you need to be worried about. Here’s a tip. You know how the mages said you’d be back in their grasps soon enough?”
Mae frowned as she nodded in short reply and began to take wary steps forward. She couldn’t dart here-and-there anymore because of her knee, so she made careful calculated movements to back him towards a door. He’d be trapped there with nowhere to go.
Responding to him verbally so he wouldn’t see where she was forcing him to go, Mae said, “Yes, I remember. Like I said, threats don’t scare me.”
“It’s not a threat,” the mercenary said solemnly with a crafty look in his eyes. “You’ve spent more time than any of my guard with that mage. You ever seen her when she sets her eyes on something?”
Mae stilled because she had.
“Mage Donna Marie isn’t giving up on you,” he said in a solemn promise. “And she’s already sprung a trap that you can’t even see yet.”
Mae swallowed heavily at that thought but she was determined that he wasn’t going to scare her. Even when his gaze started to focus over her shoulder rather than on her. She wasn’t going to fall for it. There was nothing coming up behind her. She would hear it if other warriors with chainmail were coming around the corner or anyone else for that matter.
“I’m not falling for it!” Mae called out bravely. “Surrender now, give me the tome and I’ll let you live. Don’t and you’ll get more of the fire you’ve already had a taste for.”
The mercenary shook his head and took a full step back. Then another.
Mae looked at him in confusion. Her fire was a neat trick but she hadn’t even built it up enough yet to be truly scary. That would have come next after she had had time to process his response. Still he kept backing away even as she paused to assess the situation and wondered if she should actually turn around. She was just afraid if she did, he would take advantage of her weakness.
Too late, she realized, that his plan wasn’t to move forward against her in a rush.
Instead she watched in disbelief as he took one last step towards the door that was supposed to block him in for her maneuvers, then he reached behind him with the hand that had been covering his chest, he suddenly grabbed the door handle and he pushed it open all while staring directly at her.
Mae realized then that he had wanted to get to that door all along. She had thought she was leading him into a trap right where she wanted him, but it turned out that instead he had been maneuvering himself backwards not out of fear but out of skill.
He didn’t wait for her to respond, just darted through the door as fast as a rat. Leaving Mae behind stumped as to what had just happened. Frustrated and furious Mae lunged at the door, but too late she realized it was barred from the other side now.
The only thing she could do was bang on the metal side in frustration.
That is until she heard a voice shout at her through the now-closed door and he sounded delightfully smug about it too.
“Good luck little mage, you’re going to need it!”
21
Going over his words, Mae thought to herself, What’s that supposed to mean?
But she hadn’t a clue as she dropped her now useless hands down by her side. The door was sealed from the other side and she certainly wasn’t going to try to blast a hole through a metal door. She feared the flames would just return back on her and besides it would do her no good to try to get through because if he had wanted to get away…well, he was long gone now.
She had lost the grimoire and fought the warrior down to the stalemate, but being left alone in this area felt less like a victory than more like a warning.
Mae rubbed her left elbow with her opposite hand in rejected defeat before deciding that a stalemate wasn’t defeat. It was just a chance to move on before the rest of Donna Marie’s minions caught up with her.
“It’s best I get going then,” Mae said grimly as tried to work some non-hurt sensations back into her knee by massaging it lightly with a little bit of heat radiating from her hand. It seemed to be working as the sharp pain eased substantially although she didn’t know how long that would last and if it was just because of the warmth in her hands or more likely, something in her magic that she couldn’t yet control.
Mae decided to just be grateful for the alleviated pain at the moment. And it didn’t come a second too soon, because she heard a stomp behind her just then.
Mae couldn’t believe it and stupidly she froze…just for a moment.
Maybe I misheard? She thought hopefully.
But no such luck. Another scuffling sound drifted towards her, far enough away that she knew she wasn’t getting her head lopped off her neck in the very next second but she needed to figure out what she was going to do soon. She didn’t want to turn around just yet because the distance was working in her favor. Whoever was behind her had no idea she knew they were there. That was about the only thing she had going for her though as she looked around at a hall empty of anything but a statute now broken in the scuffle and a lone weapon discarded on the floor.
“The sword,” Mae crowed.
She might get out of this yet. She wasn’t going to thank the mercenary for leaving it behind, but she welcomed having a weapon to face off against a new opponent with. Hoping that the magic that was giving some relief to her potentially strained knee kept going, Mae dove to the right and with true aim, snatched up the sword by the hilt. She was still no better at wielding it than she had been when confronting the mercenary but she would rather have it than not. Besides she was discovering new skills every day.
“Maybe I’m a prized swordfighter in the making and don’t know it,” Mae whispered to herself in a bit of plea as she whirled around to face this new threat with bravery on her face.
“Okay, not so much,” she noted as the sword she held confidently in her hand nearly took off her foot as she turned in the opposite direction.
It was so long, and built for a person with an arm length that was easily double hers, that in an effort to not drag it on the floor she’d stuck out her foot for both balance and speed.
Well, that speed had the edge of the blade carving into the side of her big toe before she’d completed her rotation. The poor leather stopped the blade from doing worse, but at this point she was proving as much a danger to herself as to others.
Trying to pull limbs into her side, heavy sword and all, Mae focused her attention on whoever had outflanked her. They had been silent until now and she saw why. There was no one there…yet. But she heard curiously heavy footfalls coming from around the corner towards her.
She wondered what the deep thumps meant.
Maybe chainmail? Mae thought with a frown.
That sounded like overkill to her but perhaps Donna Marie and Ava were warier of her skills now that she had escaped and eluded capture for a full day’s time.
Nervously, Mae spread her legs for balance and raised the sword until it was chest height. She called up her magic and stalled it. She wanted to build the presence of the heat up but not release the flames until the absolutely last second. With her two-handed grip of the sword, the flames should go straight up the sword and give her the advantage of both having a magical weapon as she swung and hopefully surprise her opponents enough that she could carve through them despite her obvious lack of sword-handling skills.
The thumps came again, but it was one thump at a time…almost like it was something massive walking towards her instead a cadre of individuals sent to bring her back dead or alive. Mae wasn’t precisely sure which of those scenarios she preferred but she knew that she didn’t have much of a choice. She was going to confront them with her flaming sword whether she wanted to or not.
Precisely because the talking
mercenary had distracted her long enough that she hadn’t realized she was in a dead-end hallway which an enemy could use to easily flank her. Not that Mae was some sort of genius military mind, it was just that she had nowhere to go with the impenetrable metal door locked behind her and the only way out in front of her, straight around the corner.
So she stayed ready as the seconds went by.
Maybe its Donna Marie with a group of warriors and she’s somehow disguised their footfalls to throw off the trail, she thought terrified.
She wasn’t ready to face more than one person, let alone a cohort and a mage. But she didn’t have a choice. She called in more fire to both her hands, steeled her spine and turned around with her new sword upraised to face whoever had snuck up on her.
Before she’d completed the turn a roar sounded that shook her to her very bones.
Mae’s jaw dropped and she momentarily lowered her still-flaming sword.
What came around the corner, slowly at first, was like nothing she’d ever seen before.
First she only saw what she thought was a large white staff coming around the corner. Curved and aged with yellow she realized quickly enough that it was more like a curved bone than anything else. Except…it was attached to a living being.
Like a tusk? She thought in distraction.
“No, it’s definitely a horn!” Mae confirmed to no one else but herself.
Following behind the horn was a sizeable snout with a tapered point, a large head and utterly massive body. The creature stood at least ten feet tall, there was no telling how long it was, but its massive grey hide hinted at a weight of at least two tons. Which explained where the sound of those thumps had come from. She was surprised it wasn’t louder in fact, but even now it wasn’t making any more noise than its footfalls. It didn’t need to roar or bugle to announce its presence. It’s very size stipulated that once you saw it, you couldn’t see or focus on anything else. Yet here she was standing alone in the corridor, facing it down. It was so gargantuan that its heavy sides brushed the walls of the room to either side when it moved its head this way and that, seeking its enemies out.
