by Mark Albany
Norel grinned, then leaned in and lightly kissed my cheek. “Who knew that inside that hard, muscular chest of yours, beat the heart of a poet?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, looking at her. “That didn’t even rhyme.”
“I said the heart of a poet, not the tongue,” she replied with a chuckle. “Although I’m sure we’d be able to loosen your tongue with a bit of alcohol. I know you don’t like mead or ale, but there’s probably some beer or wine around here, with the amount of traders who pass through.”
I nodded. “For the first time since we set off from the palace, I think I could use a drink. Or two.”
“Good man,” Norel replied, smiling. “Come on then, we’ll get ourselves a drink.”
As we made our way to where the drinks were being served and carried out by the local barmaids, I realized that there were people out there who recognized us. I noted a couple of them, too. Well, I wasn’t sure. Most elves were a little difficult to tell apart, all things considered, but they still looked like the larger, heavier-set men who had joined us in the battle. They greeted Norel and me by name and cheered us for our efforts in the fight. I couldn’t help but cheer along with them. Whatever they thought, we’d only played a small part in the overall battle. They actually came in and saved the day for us.
I sucked in a deep breath as we reached the bar and watched as a couple of younger, stronger men poured ale directly from barrels, only occasionally using the taps.
“So, beer or wine?” Norel asked.
I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could, someone stepped in behind Norel and nudged her aside as the newcomer moved closer to the two of us.
“I don’t see why we can’t just have both!” the woman said, grinning broadly as she patted both of us on the back and nudged us toward the bar.
“Well, I don’t see why not,” I answered. I turned to her, expecting to see someone I recognized from the battle. Instead, I saw someone who I instantly recognized, but definitely not from the battle. Tall, lean, with a hunter’s build and long, elven ears, and turquoise hair that hung down below her shoulders.
“Well, the heroes of the battle of the Imperial City ought not to pay for their drinks, between you and me,” the woman said with a smile. “Varion Grant and Lady Norel, great mages, warriors and champions of the innocent.”
“Right,” I replied with a nod.
“You can call me Lyth,” she said with a grin. “I was in the battle, at the edges, picking off the monsters with my bow. Was rather good with it, back in the day. Still am, as a matter of fact. Well, I don’t think these boys will go for giving you lot free drinks, so I think you’ll have to claim your own. Off you pop, then!”
I narrowed my eyes. She talked very quickly, snappily, like she expected her orders to be followed without too much effort on her part. Norel seemed to go for it as well, and moved toward the bar without so much as a question.
The turquoise-haired elf kept smiling until Norel was out of earshot, but her expression changed drastically when she had me alone. Well, not quite alone. The whole place was packed, after all, but there was privacy in the sheer numbers and the amount of noise generated by the people around us.
“You lot need to be more careful,” she whispered and leaned close enough that her hair hung over my shoulder. “You’ve put yourselves in a very isolated position by allowing yourselves to be brought out here into the wilderness,. You four are either very stupid or very confident in your abilities.”
I turned to face her and opened my mouth once, twice, and then shook my head. “I’m sorry, do we know you? What are you talking about?”
“Oh, you don’t see it yet, do you?” she asked, pouting delicately. “Aw, bless, I almost feel sorry for you four. Anyway, you need to be prepared for what’s to come. I don’t know what kind of information will help you at this point.”
“Information?” I asked as I scowled at her.
“And here I was, thinking that they kept you around for your wit,” Lyth growled. “Oh well, I do have something for you. Something you should heed, although seeing what I see now, you won’t heed me anyway. Don’t trust the Official. Never trust the office. In fact, if you can help it, you four really shouldn’t trust anyone from this point forward, until further notice.”
“Does that include you?” I asked and leaned forward.
“Ah, wit, dim though it may be,” she replied with a smile. “Remember my words, Grant. You’ll need them.”
I nodded and turned back to face Norel as she returned with drinks for the both of us. She looked around, a confused expression on her face.
“Where did the elf go?” she asked.
I peered back at where Lyth was standing. She wasn’t there anymore, I realized, and I couldn’t see her anywhere.
“She must have left,” I said. “She told me something. She seemed to know us, and what we were doing. She told us not to trust the Official. I mean, we didn’t already, but there’s something she knew that she didn’t tell us. Something that she wanted to tell us but couldn’t, for some reason.”
“Why would she tell us not to trust the Official?” Norel wondered as she looked around. There was a hint of annoyance in her voice, but the noise of the crowd started to rise, which made it almost impossible to hold a conversation. The music had stopped.
I looked around and saw that most of the people were trying to escape. They weren’t happy anymore and they weren’t having fun. There was fear in their eyes. I wasn’t sure where it came from, but I suddenly realized that I had made a mistake by leaving my sword back on Horse’s saddle.
Aliana and Braire made their way toward us. They didn’t have the same problem as I did, of course. Both already had their weapons in their hands, and both looked like they at least shared some of the concern that the rest of the crowd had.
“Lancers!” Aliana shouted over the din of the people around us. “Lancers are here!”
13
“Well, of course there are Lancers here,” I answered her. “We came with them ourselves. That doesn’t explain why they’re all so terrified of them in here. They saw us enter Huron with them.”
“No, not the ones we came with,” Aliana growled and shook her head. “New ones, and there are more of them. I’m not sure where they came from, but they’re out there. Killing guards. Taking people prisoner. And they’re coming into the inn. Looking for us, I think.”
“Now, why would they be looking for us, I wonder?” I asked and looked around. I saw a couple of them now, forcing themselves in. They were aggressive, but mostly ignored the rest of the people that passed them, confirming the supposition that they were looking for us.
It was further reinforced when they saw us inside the inn. The leaders shouted orders, commanding the Lancers to take up offensive positions. Aliana reacted to that with a predatory grin and licked her lips as she twirled the blades around in her hands. There was that darkness in her again. The stuff of nightmares and wet dreams, all wrapped up in one.
I balanced myself and drew a deep breath as I reached into myself for some power. Sure, most of my fighting experience involved having a magical, runed sword, but then, most of my training was fighting without any weapons. I felt my left hand burn painfully as I watched the Lancers circle around us, isolating us from any kind of escape.
“Not yet,” Norel said softly. “Too many innocent people. Don’t want them caught in the middle of the fight.”
Well, I supposed that one of us had to be the voice of reason. Aliana, Braire, and I were all raring to start the fight. We weren’t the ones stuck in the inn’s common room with all these Lancers.
All these Lancers were stuck here, with us.
“Which way to the stables?” I asked and looked around the room as the rest of the civilians cleared away, leaving us alone with the men as they looked at us, weapons raised and ready for a fight. They didn’t offer any terms for surrender. No sign that they wanted to take us alive. Their weapons were
bared and ready for combat.
“West side of the building,” Aliana said and inhaled. “I think.”
“You think?” I asked.
“Why is it important?” she inquired without taking her eyes off of the men who intended to kill us.
“I left my sword back on Horse’s saddle,” I replied.
“Why haven’t you named your horse yet, by the way?” Braire asked. She looked a lot more comfortable with our situation than anyone had a right to be.
“I did name him,” I answered, and made a face. “I call him Horse. Not Horsie, though. He doesn’t like that.”
“You can’t call a horse, ‘Horse’,” Braire protested. “It’s not right. Would you want me to just call you Human? Or Ape?”
“Do you think that now is really the time to talk about that?” Norel asked. Her power built in her hands.
“Well, considering that we’re about to be murdered by two—three dozen Lancers with magically protected armor, I consider our chances of having this conversation later as slim. Just me, though.”
I nodded. It was a good point.
“So, west side of the building, then?” I asked as I looked around and tried to orient myself, remembering where the west side was. The door that we’d entered from faced the sun, which meant that the stable was on the opposite side. Made sense. West side.
I had a plan. I only hoped that the rest of them would join. They hadn’t left their weapons on a horse’s saddle, after all.
I pushed as much power as I could into the runes in my hands, making it as painful as I could stand. I gasped for breath as all three of them looked over at me.
“Grant, are you alright?” Aliana asked.
“Just… want to try something,” I hissed through clenched teeth and focused all the pain and anger rushing through my body. Once I reached my limit, I stepped forward and raised my hand. I couldn’t see it personally, but from the way that the Lancers reacted to it, the light reflecting in their eyes, I could tell that they probably hadn’t seen something quite like this very often.
I screamed as the power released and pulsed out of my hand in a brilliant blast of white light. It launched toward one of the Lancers in the back who faced away from the west side of the building.
The power blasted into him and forced him to step back, but I saw the runes in his armor glow, and all the power disappeared.
“Well, if that wasn’t a waste of time,” Braire growled.
I nodded and waited for something. Hoped, really. This was the first time I’d ever tried something this advanced. I’d never even had it taught to me. I’d just seen someone do it. Once. And it wasn’t even against a Lancer.
The man looked down a moment before his armor exploded in a concussive blast that knocked all the men around him forward and away, and more importantly, blasted a bit of a hole in the west wall of the building.
Braire turned to look at me, scowling. I wasn’t sure what that was for, but all I could manage was a shrug as the rest of the Lancers charged in. Half of them were either downed or still recovering from the magical blast, but the rest would be more than enough trouble for us to deal with in close quarters.
“Aliana, how quickly can you cast a portal for us?” I asked and looked around while pouring more power into my hand.
“Quickly enough, I think,” she replied, her knives spinning as she stepped under a swinging sword, then used her wings to knock the man off-balance as she cut into his hamstrings through his armor and around his throat with an elegant flourish.
“Get it ready, then,” I shouted as I sidestepped a vicious chop and placed my hand on the man’s face, under the helmet. Sure, the armor was protected from most magical attacks, but I didn’t need to hit him in the armor, right?
The heat of the blast reverberated against my hand as the man fell, his head not much more than a mess of red and grey against the inside of his helmet. I dodged another strike, knocked the attacker off balance, and sprinted as an opening appeared that allowed me to rush at the hole to where the stable was.
Less than ten feet away, one of the Lancers noted what I was doing and swung at my legs. I saw it just in time, leaping to land on my shoulder and roll, coming smoothly back up on my feet again. My roguishness extended beyond the realms of magic, after all—I was a cunning escape artist even before I’d worked with the three sisters.
I reached the stables after avoiding a group of men as they tried to encircle me and keep me away from the other three. I didn’t mind. I didn’t doubt that I could handle them once I had my sword.
A quick run through the stables revealed Horse. The beast looked as placid as always—he never really bothered with much when he had a bag of oats to eat. Of course, he wasn’t saddled. It hung on his stall door.
And there was the sword.
“Hello, my beauty!” I whispered and unhooked the weapon from the saddle as Horse snorted. “I’m not talking to you. I mean, you are beautiful, objectively, but I would never call you that. Never mind. I’ll come back for you when I can, all right?”
No response. I didn’t expect one. I drew the blade from its sheath. The familiar feeling of having something to pool my power into made me smile as I faced down the three that came to trap me. They paused when they saw the glowing runes on the blade.
“Basically,” I growled then drew a deep breath, “run.”
They didn’t take my advice. I swept the blade at them as they stepped forward, unleashing a blast that was carefully timed to hit them and them alone. There was a hint of disappointment as I watched their armor absorb most of the blast. The little that wasn’t caught, however, was enough to send them sprawling to the ground.
I’d take what I could get. I jumped over them before they recovered and quickly retraced my path back to the inn’s common room, where the fighting was still heated. The Lancers had apparently decided against being the first ones to charge in, but as Norel blasted them from afar, they reconsidered and charged forward to engage Aliana and Braire, who held defensive positions around Norel.
There were a couple more men on the ground who looked dazed but unhurt since their armor protected them from the brunt of Norel’s blasts.
We weren’t going to last long, here. We didn’t have the time or the energy to take them all on.
I flooded as much power as I could into the blade then swung it in a heavy arc in the Lancers’ direction, away from the three sisters, as I charged in. The power drained from my body. Sure, Braire had told me to contain and save my energy, but at this point, it was all I could think of that would buy us enough time to get a portal open.
The air filled with acrid smoke as the blast showered the room with a bright white light. The first three or four men in front of me were cleanly cut in half, their wounds cauterized by the heat from it. A handful more were killed as well, and a few more wounded. Not enough. I sucked in deep breaths as every muscle in my body suddenly drained of energy.
“Aliana!” I roared as the woman in question looked around, almost confused by what she just witnessed. “Portal! Now, if you fucking please!”
“Right,” she snapped and closed her eyes for a moment as Norel and Braire gathered close. I smelled that familiar smell and dreaded the familiar tug in my guts. The portal dragged the four of us in, then vanished less than a second later.
I looked around, still struggling to breathe, and narrowed my eyes.
“Where are we?” I wondered aloud as I pushed myself to my feet, still gripping my sword.
“Never mind that.” Aliana jumped up with more energy than I had. “How are you? Using that much energy can’t have been easy on your body.”
“Never mind my body,” I said, irritably. “Well, you know I don’t mean that, but we should focus on getting all our bodies away from any kind of danger.”
“They’re already following us.” Braire pointed to the approaching torchlight. We were in the woods just outside the city, I realized, and not that far in, either. Still, it shoul
d have taken them a lot longer than that to disengage from the inn and find us.
Well, unless they had troops waiting outside the city to counter us doing something precisely like that.
“What happened to the Official?” I asked. “Did any of you catch sight of her in the fighting?”
Braire shook her head. “She would have been in the mayor’s home.”
Right. That left us without someone to question about these new developments.
I sucked in a deep breath and brought my sword up as I looked around, weighing our options. We were out on the west side of the mountains, meaning that if we went east, we would be heading up the slopes.
Not ideal, but we’d sprung a trap of some sort and I didn’t want to see what would happen when it snapped shut.
I took a couple of steps in that direction and then stopped cold. Something moved in the darkness.
“You have got to be shitting me,” I snarled disgustedly. Just our fucking luck.
“What?” Aliana asked and looked away from the incoming Lancer troops. She paused when she saw what I was talking about.
“Fuck me,” Braire growled.
With the meager moonlight, all I could see were shapes, really, but the sound of heavy, lumbering steps was all the indication I needed to tell me that there were golems waiting for us in the forest as well.
Not us, specifically, I thought. Hoped.
The smaller figures had glowing green eyes. Eyes that came closer as I turned to the other three in my party.
“Well, what do you think?” I asked. “We can’t stay here. Do we attack the monsters, or the Lancers? Against which do you think we have a better chance?”
The three shared a glance. It wasn’t an easy choice. Out in the dark, attacking the monsters had to be a poor move. Then again, there were too many Lancers for us to defeat alone.
“Just let them fight each other,” Braire said as she experienced an epiphany. “They don’t appear to be fighting in tandem, which means that if we guide them all onto the same field of battle, they’ll fight each other just as eagerly as us. That should be enough of a distraction to stage an escape.”
