One chance, then, to sneak away while the others were busy fighting. One chance, but not a good one, for Darrell’s body was weak from blood loss, and the corpse lying atop him leaking warm blood onto his chest felt as heavy as if a mountain had come and perched upon him.
Hissing with the effort, Darrell pushed at the corpse, coaxing his failing muscles into action. By the time he was finally able to lever the body off of him his breath was ragged, his face covered in sweat. He lay there gasping for air, struggling against the darkness gathering at the corners of his vision, threatening to overwhelm him.
Then, believing he was as recovered as he would be, he stood. Or, at least, he tried. What actually happened was that his legs gave the slightest twitch, and his back raised a couple of inches off the ground before he collapsed in a panting heap once more. One chance? he thought sardonically. No chance at all, old man. It seemed like maybe he wouldn’t get to die sitting and watching the sunset, after all. But, then, he’d never really expected to. Still, dying was one thing, but giving up was quite another, so he gathered what little strength remained to him, envisioned it in his mind, pictured waves of energy rushing toward him. Then, after a moment, he tried again.
He was still trying when several figures walked up to gather around him, staring at him where he lay writhing on the ground. “Well, by the gods, if it ain’t the swordmaster,” came a gruff voice.
“I told you it was, Urek, didn’t I?” said an eager voice. “I told you, remember, I says, Urek, I’m pretty sure that’s the—”
“Alright there, lad, alright. You told me, sure, and it was well done. Hold on a second,” the man said, and through his blurry vision Darrell was just able to see the man squat down next to him. “Well, shit, old man,” he said. “You’ve got a blade buried in you.”
“My…thanks,” Darrell managed, “for being a fool.” He didn’t know who these men were, or what they wanted, but he wouldn’t go to his death a coward. Not if he could help it.
The man grunted. “Well, then you got off light. A bad one, but I’ve seen men survive worse. Shit, come to that, I’ve seen the boss take wounds quite a bit worse and keep on knockin’ heads like he was in a contest and meant to win it.” He barked what might have been a harsh laugh. “’Course, if the boss was here, he’d say he’d had bigger scratches on his eye.”
“The boss…” the swordmaster said, what little hope he’d had of rescue dwindling each moment. “I guess you mean…Grinner…then.”
“Grinner?” the man spat, his mouth twisting as if he’d just eaten something sour. “Gods no, man. I ain’t got no more time for that old bastard than I do a whore with swords for legs.” He paused, then shrugged. “Well, truth to tell I’d take my chances with the whore and call it a day.” He gave a gesture and one of the other men knelt down beside Darrell, and it wasn’t until he was close, his head bent to examine the wound, that Darrell realized he wasn’t a man at all, but a woman, though one that was bigger, more muscular than most men, including the one who’d first spoken.
“In deep, but not too deep anyway,” the woman murmured in a voice that was surprisingly rough even given her appearance. “Any deeper, and I imagine you’d be havin’ this conversation with the Death God himself.” She leaned in closer, her hand wrapping around the knife, and she glanced at Darrell. “This is going to hurt.”
The swordmaster swallowed, nodding. “I’m ready.”
“You sure?” she said, throwing him a wink that seemed completely out of place on that hard face. “’Cause, if not, I imagine I could find some way to distract you.”
Darrell swallowed again, though this time for a very different reason. “I’m…sure.”
She grunted, her thick shoulders shifting into a shrug. “Your loss, though it’s probably for the best. I’d break you.”
“No offe—” he started, then his words turned into a sharp hiss of pain as she jerked the blade free.
“None taken,” she said, grinning at him and displaying a mouth in which several teeth were missing. “Now, shut up and let me work, unless you fancy bleedin’ to death in this shit-stained alleyway.”
Darrell was about to thank her but decided he’d best let her concentrate. Besides, the wound in his side was throbbing terribly, the sharp pain of her removing the blade having done much to dispel the comfortable—if deadly—numbness that had begun to seep into his limbs, and he didn’t think he could have managed the words anyway. He vaguely saw the woman reach into a pouch at her waist, saw her retrieve a handful of something from within it. “Still awake?” she asked, glancing at his face.
“Still…awake,” Darrell managed.
She sighed. “Too bad—here we were gettin’ along so well. I don’t imagine you’ll appreciate my beauty so much after this.”
Darrell frowned. “Wha—” he began, then she dumped whatever she’d been holding on the wound in his side, rubbed it in, and it felt as if she’d just poured liquid fire onto him. He tried to scream, but what came out was little more than a dried, hacking croak as he strained in the grip of an agony he would not have imagined possible for a man to feel and not die. The last thing he saw before the darkness took him was the blurry, indistinct face of the woman as she leaned close to him, and he wasn’t sure in his current state, but she seemed to be wearing an apologetic expression.
“I know it hurts,” she said, “but you’ve lost a lot of blood, and there was no choice. Healing…always…hurts.” And then Darrell was drifting, and as he was carried further out to sea on the gently lolling waves of unconsciousness, the pain lessened by increments. And though he did not know much about these people, wasn’t sure whether they were friend or foe, he was grateful for that, at least.
***
Urek stared down at the old man then hocked and spat. “Gods, Beautiful, but if I ever take a wound, and the only way you have of bringin’ me back is that fire powder or whatever the fuck you call it, you let me die, understand? Just seein’ you use it is enough to give a man nightmares.”
The thickly-muscled woman looked up at him from where she was bandaging the swordmaster and gave him a wink. “If it’s good dreams you’re after, I might have the remedy you’re lookin’ for.”
Urek grunted. “I don’t doubt that,” he said, “but somehow I’ve got a feelin’ your solution’d kill me as quick as an axe to the throat. Ian ain’t walked right since you took it in mind to show him your ‘remedy,’ the poor fool.”
She sniffed, and despite her thick frame and manly appearance, it was a surprisingly dainty sound. “Ian is a baby and too small by half—at least in any way that matters. I can’t help it if he can’t handle a real woman.”
Urek snorted. “I’m not sure there’s a man born can handle you, Beautiful.” A bear, maybe, he thought, but wisely left the last unsaid. Beautiful was kind enough—and he’d take her home cures over any healer’s, excepting the fire powder, of course—but she had a temper that, when roused, would have made a bear’s pale in comparison.
She smiled at that, putting her missing teeth—evidence of the fact that she liked to fight as much as she liked certain other activities—on full display, and Urek made himself smile back. “Finished?” he asked.
“Aye,” she said, “I’m finished.” She studied the old man lying unconscious in the alleyway. “He’s a bit wrinkled, I’ll admit, but there’s something…distinguished about him, isn’t there?”
One of the other men in the alley barked a laugh. “Sure, Beautiful, just so long as you like your men like you like your wine—old and bitter.”
Several of the men laughed, but Urek held up a hand, silencing them. “That’s enough of that, now,” he said, scowling at the six others sharing the alley with them. “Unless, that is, you lot want to hang around this alley until the city guard get here. If what we been seein’ lately is any indication, I don’t expect they’ll be apt to listen to any explanations until after we’re dead.”
“B-but Urek,” Osirn, the youth, said in that alw
ays-eager voice he had, “w-we couldn’t explain anything if we were dead on, on account of, well, we’d be…you know. Dead.”
Osirn was the youngest of the crew, and sometimes Urek had a hard time imagining what the boss had been thinking, taking him on. Still, he had to admit he’d never seen anyone with faster fingers, when it came to picking a lock or jimmying a door. The boy worked like he talked—fast. “Yeah,” Urek said, reminding himself to keep his patience, “I suppose we would.”
He looked back to where Beautiful still knelt over the old man and frowned as he saw her running a hand gently across his face. Poor bastard. If the wound don’t kill him, she will. “Alright then, lads, we hang around here much longer we’ll have grown roots by the time the city guard arrive, and I don’t plan on giving these stupid bastards any company,” he said. He gestured at Grinner’s dead men—and woman, Urek and his men being equal opportunity murderers—laying scattered about the alleyway. He turned to one of the men. “Shits, grab him, and let’s get out of here. The rest of you keep your eyes open, and remember what the boss always says—we ain’t safe till we’re dead.”
The man, Shits, stepped forward, scowling. “Aw, come on, boss. Why not let Beautiful carry him? She’s clearly taken a liking to him.”
Urek shot a glance at Beautiful and saw the anger building in her face like dark clouds gathering before a storm. He swallowed hard and looked back at Shits. “Beautiful ain’t gonna carry him on account of carryin’ a heavy load is a man’s job, and Beautiful is a lady.” It said something about the wisdom of those men in his crew—wisdom learned from hard experience thanks to a couple of poor bastards that were no longer breathing—that no one even so much as cracked a smile at that. “You know, Shits,” Urek said, “you think you got your name due to that one time you went out drinkin’ more than any fool with any sense would with somewhat predictable results, but the truth is you got it on account of that’s just about the only thing that comes out of your mouth—shit. Now, get him before I lose my patience.”
Shits muttered under his breath at the laughter of his fellows, but he went, and that was all well enough. Urek never begrudged a man his right to bitch and moan, just so long as he did what needed doing, and a glance at Beautiful showed him, to his relief, that she’d been pleased at his comment.
Shits grunted with the effort of leveraging the old man onto his back. “Gods, but the bastard is heavier than he has any right to be.”
“Yeah,” Urek said dryly. “Well, I’ve always heard the years sit heavy on a man, and now I guess we know the truth of it. Now, if you’re done with your cryin’ I think it’s time we got out of here.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Adina awoke feeling groggy and out of sorts. For several panicked moments she could not remember where she was or how she’d come to be there. Then her memory returned and, with it, a feeling of confidence, of courage that she was surprised to find. It was as if she had turned over a cushion she’d searched before only to see that, this time, a gold coin waited beneath her questing fingers. She didn’t remember much of her meeting with the Speaker, and what little she did recall seemed to make no sense: her standing on a mountain top, the Speaker of the Akalians beside her, his voice soft yet powerful, insistent.
She couldn’t remember the man’s exact words, but she remembered well their meaning—you are enough. A simple thing, really, yet her fate and that of her people might depend on her understanding it, believing it. For all her life, Adina had always measured herself against those around her, and had inevitably found herself wanting. She was not as wise as her father, not as compassionate as Eladen. Nor, either, was she as clever as Ellemont, or as wild, as bold as her sister Olivia had been.
Tears gathered in her eyes, but she was slow to wipe them away. Though the memory of the family she’d loved so dearly was painful, there was also joy there, joy and, more than that, comfort. So she allowed herself a moment, lying there in the Akalian barracks, to remember her father’s easy smile, Olivia’s, wild, somehow freeing laugh. She remembered too the half-grin, arrogant and self-deprecating at the same time, that her brother, Ellemont, so often gave her. As if the world were full of fools and he knew it, yet he knew just as well that he was one of them. She remembered Eladen, standing tall against her—and the rest of her siblings—recriminations and warnings, doing what was right not because it was easy but simply because it was how he was.
The world was a darker place now that Olivia’s laughter was no longer in it, now that Eladen’s hope, and her father’s wisdom had been wasted and squandered. It had been done the way a child, knowing no better, might discard some precious gem because it was covered in dirt only to pick up a river-smoothed rock instead and think themselves lucky in the bargain.
The world was that child, rushing along the river bank, charging headlong across a fallen log that spanned the rapids beneath, unaware that the fallen tree upon which she ran was cracking beneath her. Adina did not know if she and the others could hold that makeshift bridge together long enough for the child to cross, thought it all too likely that the youth would be swept away in the torrent that was Kevlane’s cruel quest, but she would try.
She didn’t have her father’s wisdom, nor her brothers’ cleverness or compassion, yet she was enough. Enough to see the battle through to whatever might come, enough to stand against the coming darkness, and if she could not save the girl from her precarious perch, then she would at least stand on the other side with a lantern in hand, showing her the way that she must go and, she hoped, giving the girl—giving the world—the strength they needed to reach the other side.
She wondered idly what the others had experienced when the Speaker touched them with the power of the Virtue of Will, wondered if they felt as she did—somehow lighter, as if a great burden had been stripped away from her. They all had departed the meeting room at nearly the same time—Gryle, Caleb, even Leomin and the woman Seline who had shown up moments before Adina had been lost in her own vision or dream or whatever it had been. They had walked out together, and yet Adina had not thought to ask them of their own experiences with the Speaker, had not even stopped to wonder how the man might have touched all of them at once with such power—or even if he had. She had been exhausted and elated and possessed of a contentment that most often only came to one in dreams, when the worries and fears of the waking world stood on the other side of a barrier of sleep, unable to penetrate into the dream in which she found herself.
And whatever the others had experienced, they, too, seemed reluctant to speak, to break the power of the dream that still seemed to hang over them. They had each made their way to their rooms separately with no more than small, knowing smiles. All, that was, except for Aaron. For the first time since she’d wakened, Adina felt a twinge of worry. The sellsword had not walked out with her and the others. When she’d left, he and the Speaker had both been sitting, their heads against their chests, their eyes closed, so still that, had she not seen their chests rise and fall, Adina might have thought them dead. She had considered asking the Speaker if everything was okay, but had decided against it as she had not wished to interrupt whatever vision the two men shared. Now, though, with the power of her vision no longer as strong and all-encompassing, she felt a niggle of worry that Aaron had not left with them, nor had he come to see her when he’d finished as she’d been sure he would.
That doesn’t mean there’s anything to worry about, Addy, she thought, and started at the nickname her brother Eladen had given her when she was a child. She had not thought of it in some time, not since Eladen’s death at the least, and it was odd that it would invade her own thoughts so naturally. Still, old nickname or not, surely she didn’t have to worry about Aaron. It was no great surprise that it would take him longer to hear and accept the Speaker’s message, for while he was the most capable man she knew, he was also the most stubborn. Add to that the fact that Aaron was the general of her sister’s army, and that it would be he who would led the battle aga
inst Kevlane and his creatures, and it was no real surprise that the Speaker’s message to Aaron had taken longer to impart—or to receive—than it had for the others.
But for all her logic, Adina couldn’t rid herself of the uncertainty that had disrupted her otherwise happy mood. She rose from her bed and dressed, all the while telling herself that everything was okay, that Aaron was okay. Not that it did her much good. With each moment that passed as she hurriedly threw on her clothes and boots, Adina grew more and more certain that something had happened, that something was wrong. By the time she was finished dressing, her fear had crystallized in her mind, and she left the room at a run.
She hurried down the barrack’s hallway to the room Aaron had been given. He’ll be fine, she told herself as she knocked. He’ll answer the door, exhausted from lack of sleep, but fine otherwise. But no one answered her first knock, or the second. She tested the door and it swung open. Aaron was not there. The barracks had no windows, and so she couldn’t be sure what time it was, but she didn’t think she’d slept overly long. She felt certain it was still dark, most likely the very early hours of the morning.
So then where was he? There’s still no reason to panic, she told herself. He just stayed in the meeting room with the Speaker, that’s all. That made some kind of sense, surely. Even now, the two men were no doubt bent in conversation, most likely over how the Akalians would breach Baresh’s walls to open the gate,and what to do once they had.
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