Peril & Profit

by M. H. Johnson

  "So it's true," Vel whispered, looking at Sorn and his cousins with something like horror. "It wasn't just a hallucination. You're the ones who butchered everyone in the house. My god…"

  Sorn's eyes turned flinty, and his voice utterly cold. His fatigue was instantly supplanted by alarm as he spoke to Vel. "How do you know about the house? Are you saying some of Lord Vorstice's men left this property?"

  "Yes," Vel nodded. "They were hiding here in the hayloft just moments ago. They said they would free me if I told them what I knew, yet the coldness in their eyes made me think they intended to do other things with their knives than simply cut my bonds."

  Vel shuddered. "Then they heard you all leaving the house. I suppose they didn't want to risk the noise of freeing me or of my death knell, so they just darted away, leaving me be. The things they said, however…" Vel visibly paled as he continued to stare at the blood-spattered youths before him. "I assume you're going to kill me now, or eat me alive?"

  "Cease your silly drivel, man. Just answer my questions! Which way did they head and when? Tell me true, Vel, or I might decide to show you just how accurate those soldiers' tales were!"

  Vel's look of wide-eyed horror sickened Sorn slightly. Sorn actually felt a bit of compassion for this man who he intended to spare, appreciating the concern Vel had showed for a seemingly weakened ship's boy whom everyone else here had treated with disdain and contempt. He did not consider Vel an enemy, just a man who had the misfortune to be caught up with the wrong employer at the wrong time. Vel certainly wasn't a member of the Empire's forces. Yet Sorn's good intentions aside, Vel feared him as if he were evil incarnate, sent to devour his very soul.

  "Please lord, they left just moments ago. I know not where. I only know that they cursed me and left." With a sharp intake of breath, Vel seemed to steel himself for the doom he was sure awaited him. "No matter. I am both a coward and a fool, but shall at least accept my fate with my eyes open, the way a man should."

  "Don't be any more of an idiot than you already are," Sorn said in disgust, more angry at himself for the horrible effect he had had on this man than he was at Vel. A man that in another time or place he might have called friend.

  "Halence, you need to get to the king and tell them what is happening. My cousins and I are going to Vorstice's warehouses. We can only hope to head those men off."

  Halence's look was one of genuine concern.

  "You are a fine warrior and a skilled wizard both, I grant you. Whether your arcane magic is by dint of artifacts or no, you and your cousins have done me and my men a favor I will never be able to repay. I will not even ask how you survived what I had feared was a mortal wound, let alone manage to be fit enough to have saved our lives this day. I am only grateful that you have.

  "But, Sorn, think! If they successfully alert three hundred men, in all likelihood the cream of the Empire's soldiers, there is no way that you four, no matter what items of legend you have in your possession, could possibly stand against them! Their swords would overwhelm you, their crossbow bolts fall like rain. If you can head off the men, well and good. But if not… For gods' sakes, lad, get back to the ship and let the king's own soldiers take care of it!"

  Though Sorn was touched by his friend's concern, his only acknowledgment was a grim little smile.

  "Fear not, Captain. The Empires' damned soldiers will not stab Caverenoc from within, if I can help it."

  "Come, cousins!" Sorn called, and Fits, Hanz, and Lieberman, bubbling over with declarations of righteous glory and the heroic vanquishing of their enemies, instantly joined their cousin as he charged full speed out of Vorstice's demesne, the fresh injuries to Sorn's forearms all but forgotten.

  15

  "He will die, you know," Vorstice said nastily, face twisting into a sneer as he spat at Sorn's rapidly disappearing back. "I saw his wounds. Enchanted strength fades, and even I know a missile ward will deflect only a handful of bolts, not several score! Which he will surely face, should he dare confront my loyal troops! I am sure they will make him pay for his insolence a dozen times over, should he survive their first volley."

  Vorstice cried out as Halence, eyes flashing, backhanded him so fast Vorstice hadn't even seen the blow, his head snapping back with the force of the strike. Yet this did not deter Vorstice's vindictive utterances, for all that the man winced and groaned with pain.

  "The Empire is not kind to those who interfere with its plans," Vorstice continued. For all that he had been beaten, humiliated, and defeated, the weight of his contempt-filled gaze still gave Vorstice a certain presence, diminished only slightly as he spat out a bloody tooth.

  "Well let us go, good Captain Halence. We hardly want to keep the palace waiting, do we?"

  His smile was mocking and despite all that had occurred, and the hideous crimes of torture and treachery all about his home, Halence had the curious feeling that somehow they were playing right into Vorstice's hands.

  "Indeed," Halence said coldly, shoving Vorstice toward one of the two carriages that Halence's men, one of whom had been an army supply sergeant in a different life years ago, had effortlessly hitched a restive team of horses to. They had armed themselves with blades and bucklers seized from their captors and were prepared to leave at Halence's command. Halence found some grim satisfaction in Vorstice's gasp as he was tossed into the carriage, no doubt jolting his much-deserved wounds.

  "Captain," whispered one of Halence's men, "What about the lads? You know if they don't intercept those soldiers in time, they could well be rushing to their deaths, no?"

  Halence's look was grim as he gazed upon his men. "If there is one thing that we have learned about our lads these last few days, it's that it doesn't profit to underestimate them. Those that do, pay a dear price for it. And though risky, Sorn's conclusion is correct. Those men must be chased down and dealt with, and those lads are the only ones with the strength and speed to do it."

  Halence glared at Vorstice who suddenly blanched and paled, as if only realizing then how close the captain was from unsheathing the saber he had claimed, and striking the corrupt noble down, right then and there.

  "If those fleeing armsmen managed to rile the hornet's nest of Empire soldiers swarming unseen like cockroaches under our feet, Caverenoc itself will be put in peril. Which is also why we must warn the king immediately. For if we don't, this whole city could be in flames before the night is out. You saw their speed. No doubt if the hidden troops are alerted, Sorn and his cousins can hightail it out of there faster than any man alive. Come, my friends. We have a duty of our own to fill with all haste."

  At that point Halence nearly stumbled, wracked as he was with an agonized coughing fit, gasping slightly as the pain of his broken rib lanced through him with every cough.

  "Captain, are you all right?" Concerned eyes gazed into his own.

  Halence gave his friend a reassuring smile when he caught his breath. "Just a parting gift from Hankro, there. All and all, I'd say he got the worse end of the exchange, no?"

  The sailor nodded as he glanced at Hankro's ravaged countenance through the open carriage window. His face was set in a rictus of agony, chest heaving with exhaustion and shock as he desperately sought to minimize the pain of his shattered left arm. Every movement clearly tormented him with a fresh burst of pain. His right arm was if anything even more grizzly, ending just above the elbow in a recently seared stump still leaking pus from the cauterization. Having been dumped offhandedly into the carriage by Sorn, whose supernatural strength still chilled the sailors who had witnessed it, for all that the lad was their savior, the man's crippled legs were unapparent. Yet none could doubt that Hankro had, indeed, gotten the worse end of the deal.

  "Aye, Captain. You are right on that, no doubt. Still, all and all, doesn't it trouble you that Vorstice and his men look far the worse for wear than we do?"

  Halence nodded grimly at that. "Nonetheless, we have a job to do, whatever our appearance. I am sure the king will hear us out. As soon
as he learns of warehouses full of enemy soldiers ready to sack his city from within, I have no doubt that he will be more than willing to forgive what we had to do to get the information. Besides, it was Vorstice who had imprisoned us, killing one of our own men before beginning to work on me." Halence glared at a trembling Vorstice. "Whatever Sorn had to do to free me was well within his rights, and what befell Hankro is no more than he deserved."

  "No doubt you're right, Captain," Halence's man said with a nod. "Relv says we're ready to go."

  Halence took as deep a breath as his cracked rib would allow, steeling himself for what was to come. "We have the soldier from the dungeon safely squared away?" Halence's man smiled as his two companions rather roughly threw the very thoroughly hog-tied soldier, who had been stripped near naked as an added precaution, at Vorstice's and Hankro's feet. It was an act which immediately set Hankro shrieking as the soldier's trussed body jolted Hankro's agonized frame, though soon enough the torturer fell back to an exhausted whimper once more. Halence nodded in satisfaction. "All right, then. We're off."

  16

  "Sorn," Hanz asked between deep, steady breaths, "do you see any sign of them?"

  "No," came the frustrated reply, Sorn's expression one of irritated concern as the four youths maintained their all-out sprint, making a beeline to where Sorn thought the warehouses had to be.

  "Guys!" Fitz exclaimed excitedly, his arm pointing out two stumbling figures. "Look over there!"

  Chests heaving, two exhausted-looking figures dressed in scaled leathers continued to stumble onward deeper into the city. They frequently gave startled turns at the slightest sound of any passing pedestrian. Surprisingly, they still held their crossbows, for all the odd looks it earned, people instinctively going out of their way to avoid contact with the strange looking men brandishing such deadly weapons.

  "All right, guys, they're in sight. Make sure your defensive wards are up, and let's fade."

  Sorn's grin was a nasty one, his look that of a hunter spotting his prey at last. Making sure he understood their lurching rout, Sorn then spent a few precious moments staring inward as did his cousins, and their uniform guttural chanting, low pitched as it was, caused a few strange looks to be directed their way. Those glances turned to wide-eyed alarm in anyone who dared a closer look.

  Sorn could imagine what the shocked looking pedestrians were thinking. Fey and wild looking, naked blades raised before them still covered with gore, they no doubt seemed like nothing so much as apparitions from the darkest of legends. More than one pedestrian could be heard crying for the town watch, at which point Sorn and his cousins faded from sight, one by one. This, of course, gave those who had still been gazing at the four an even greater shock, and they crossed themselves in various ways, Sorn overhearing their whispers that their city was now being visited by spirits in its final hours.

  The two exhausted guards, wide-eyed and flinching as anyone approached, eventually stumbled to a walking pace. Seeing that besides frightened looking pedestrians there was no visible danger in sight, their terror eventually gave way to relief.

  "Etricht. Think we'd best put these away?" One said turning to the other, speaking softly in his native tongue. "They are giving the fools here a fright, and the last thing we need is to get the watch on our backs. The captain wouldn't be pleased, should we lead them to our base."

  "You're right, Crichta," nodded the other. "What the captain would do to us makes what we had witnessed seem no more unpleasant than a pulled tooth. Indeed, we were fools for bringing these things out in public. Captain always says a frightened man is a dead one."

  The two soldiers discretely turned and slipped the crossbows under their cloaks with a practiced motion, and it was as if they had never been.

  Crichta sneered. "If the captain had witnessed what we had, no doubt he would have turned pale and shat himself, same as any man."

  "Agreed," the other man said, giving vent to a chuckle more nerves than humor. "Looks like we lucked out, Crichta. Pity our commander had to make a deal with a lord on the bad side of demon wizards, but at least they are no longer after us."

  Crichta nodded his head in solemn agreement. His look of relief turned to horror, however, as Etricht's consoling smile left his countenance, along with his head entire. His smile was still fixed in place as his head gently spun around twice with a faint splatter of blood before bouncing upon the cobblestones, his body collapsing in a far bloodier heap, a moment later.

  Before the remains of what moments ago had been a living, breathing, fellow soldier of the Empire stood a horrifying apparition covered with sticky rivulets of drying blood. For all its inhuman beauty, the apparition was to Crichta as terrifying as death incarnate.

  The figure's expression was a chilling one, and his eyes glimmered with a hint of true madness. He chose that moment to smile at Crichta, and Crichta couldn't help but moan, near tripping over his own feet as he tried to back away, stumbling abruptly when he felt his legs give way under him, suddenly weak and uncoordinated, looking down in horror at the jutting blade erupting from his belly, having ripped through his thick armor and torso as effortlessly as a blade would slice through an overripe melon.

  Chrichta only screamed as Sorn tore his blade free, eyes rolling back as he gasped horribly, collapsing to the ground and flapping like a gutted fish. His awful moans soon turned to weak gasps, and with a final gurgling cry, he made no sound at all.

  "Really, Sorn," complained one voice with no apparent owner. "You didn't have to take out both of them."

  "Yeah, Sorn. You could have left one for us."

  Sorn, expression still grim, seemed ready to snap a scathing retort to his cousins, before collecting himself and nodding once.

  "You're right, guys, I should have. It was only fair. I suppose I am getting just a tad carried away with my passions. I just can't stand these creatures, daring to come to this city full of innocent people, desiring nothing less than to systematically turn all these families' dreams of happiness into lives of torture and despair.

  "When I think of what these putrid bastards seek to do, when I think of all the tens of thousands that they have no doubt already done these hideous acts of cruelty to, all the girls whose innocent smiles were torn away forever by these monsters who destroyed their lives and innocence both…"

  Sorn shook with the intensity of his outrage, and his cousin's voices betrayed their worry.

  "Easy, cousin," a concerned Fitz soothed. "You wish to help these people. Okay, we will. We stopped the bad guys, we'll warn the king about their base, and all unawares the king will sneak his men up on them and bam, it’ll be over. We win, they lose, and a good night to all. So rest easy, okay?"

  "Fitz's right, Sorn," Hanz chimed in. "If you get any angrier, you might explode, yourself! And what good would that do?"

  Sorn's eyes widened at the thought, knowing exactly what the voice he recognized now as Hanz meant, his outrage immediately giving way to an expression of careworn concern.

  "You're right, cousins. And thank you for your clear-headed counsel. Come, let's get to the castle and warn the king."

  "Um, Sorn?"

  "Yes, Lieberman?"

  "You know that people are staring at you, right?"

  It was only then that Sorn truly registered his dreadful appearance; for his arms, face, and hair were thoroughly soaked with bloody gore, and he realized with some chagrin that he had not even bothered to clean his blade after the latter skirmishes. No doubt his sheath was also a mess. The fact that he was apparently speaking to voices unseen over two corpses, casually waving his blood-spattered weapon around as he spoke, probably explained the horrified looks being shot his way and the rather hasty retreat everyone seemed to be making from the area.

  "Err, good observation there, Lieberman," Sorn said amidst his cousins' invisible snickers, at which point he closed his eyes and soon faded from sight.

  "It occurs to me that Halence is probably giving the necessary report even as w
e speak," commented a more cool-headed Sorn. "I think we have time to tidy up before we head to the palace ourselves. More a formality than anything else, I suspect. Let's take care of these two, since the last thing we need is to raise alarm so near to our foe's hiding spot." Though they were invisible, they looked as one to the three large warehouses, farther from the docks than any other, and on higher ground.

  The warehouses looked to be in a slight state of disrepair, save for the more recent construction that served to connect the three structures, via adjoining wooden fences that completely blocked the alleys between the buildings, at least on the first level. No other visible alterations were apparent, though Sorn noted that the upper window shutters were uniformly open, probably to allow easy surveillance of the surrounding area.

  The state of mild disrepair was not so surprising considering that the warehouses were the farthest from the docks, which would require sailors transporting the goods for storage to travel farther uphill than at any other location, for all that the slope was a mild one. Of course, what made it a less than perfect spot for storage actually made it an ideal location for secret tunnels, being well above sea-level, and closer to the city walls. It was perfect, really, and no doubt Vorstice had brought it for a song.

  With a few more guttural words whispered into the air, the two bodies soon faded from sight as well.

  "Nice work, Fitz."

  "Thanks, Sorn!" The voice of Fitz replied, sounding pleased with the compliment.

  “You guys aren't getting tired, are you?” Sorn queried. “I know it’s been a long day."

  "Well, maybe slightly," Hanz allowed. "How about you? Truly, Sorn, you looked near exhaustion before the hunt perked you up again."

  "It's weird, Hanz. Honestly, right now I'm feeling exhausted, more drained than I've ever felt before as Sorn. What's odd about it is that when I was in the midst of my rage, I felt like I was bursting with energy, like I could cast spells all day without fail!"