“Sorry friend,” the big man said, shaking his head. “But I don’t know no Captain Festa.” He rose to his full height, staring down at the man, and again Darrell was reminded of a lion, this one tensing in preparation to strike.
“Wait,” the swordmaster said, and they all turned to him. “Festa is a friend. It is he who ferried your men and Avarest’s soldiers to Perennia.”
Urek frowned, considering that. “Big bear of a fucker that’s all dressed in animal furs?”
Darrell nodded, not missing the heavy sigh of relief that escaped the newcomer. “Yes, that’s him. Festa is a friend.” Not precisely true, and he wasn’t entirely sure a man like Festa allowed himself friends, but it was close enough and, friend or not, Darrell trusted the temperamental captain.
Urek grunted. “Well, boy,” he said, turning to look down on the sailor, “seems the swordmaster’s given you a reprieve from seein’ what your guts look like. Thing is, I’m a real curious type, see, my late wife, well, she always told me my curiosity’d get me into trouble, but I’ve still yet to find the knack of lettin’ it go. So I tell you what—you start tellin’ me why this Captain Festa of yours sent you, and maybe if I like what you got to say I won’t let Shadow there use you for target practice.”
He gestured to the hook-nosed man who gave the stranger a grin that was anything but reassuring as he held up two thin blades, an eager expression on his face.
“He’s an ugly bastard I’ll admit,” Urek said to the scared sailor, “but I ain’t never seen somebody can lob a knife as true as him.” He leaned a little closer to the man, as if confiding a secret. “It’s on account of he likes it so much, understand. Makes a game of it, aimin’ for this part or that one. Gods, when he’s of a mind, I reckon he can stretch his pleasure out for a few hours at the least and with night coming on…” He shrugged. “Well. Ain’t much else for him to do, is there?”
“C-Captain Festa sent me,” Eric said, “to find the swordmaster. He told me to tell him that if he needed any help from us regarding getting May out of the dungeons, then he’d have it.”
Urek frowned, looking at Shits. “You said he knew somethin’ about Hale. What does this have to do with—”
“In his hands, boss,” Shits said, and Darrell didn’t care for the troubled expression on the man’s face.
The big man must have seen it as well, for some of the affected menace left his features, replaced by an almost pensive look as he turned back to the sailor, noticing, for the first time, the crumpled yellow parchment the man held. “I guess you’d better give that here,” he said, holding out his hand with visible reluctance.
The stranger handed the parchment over tentatively, the way a man might give a piece of meat to a caged lion, ready to snatch his hand back lest the beast decided to add a bit extra to its breakfast. From where he lay, Darrell couldn’t see the parchment, but he could see enough of Urek’s face—darkening with each passing moment—that his stomach fluttered uneasily.
When the big man finished, he looked haggard and tired. “You can put the chair down, Beautiful,” he said in a quiet, lifeless voice. “Unless you’re intent on killin’ the messenger.”
The woman did as she was told, offering no argument as she studied her leader with a sickly, worried expression.
“What is it, boss?” Osirn asked, trying and failing to see over the taller man’s back.
“Trouble is what it is,” the big man answered, still in that voice that was empty of emotion. He offered the swordmaster the parchment, and Darrell found that he did not want it, did not want to read whatever was written there. But among the lessons the years had taught him, he’d long since learned that avoiding the truth didn’t change it, so he took the paper, telling himself that the slight tremor in his hand was a side effect of the wound he’d suffered.
A fairly skilled artist had drawn a picture on the front of the parchment, one that contained two faces, and the swordmaster knew well enough what it meant even before he scanned the words with a growing sense of panic. “Oh gods be good.” He levered himself to his feet, his fear allowing him to ignore, to a degree, the dull, nearly crippling pain that ran through his side as he did.
“You have to rest,” Beautiful protested, but even her normally stern voice sounded weak and uncertain to the swordmaster’s ears.
“There’s no time to rest,” Darrell said, meeting the big man’s eyes. “There’s nearly no time at all. I thank you for saving me, but I have to go. I have to…” He shook his head, trying to order his thoughts, “I have to find Thom.”
“Thom?” Urek asked. “Who’s that now?”
Darrell wiped a hand across his mouth, finding that it was suddenly terribly dry. “Thom’s a friend. And the gods help me—he’s in love.”
He could see by the big man’s pained expression that he knew at once what he meant. “Alright, where are we goin’ to find this Thom then?”
Darrell swallowed hard, and he only barely noticed the parchment slipping from his numb fingers. “On Festa’s flag ship, or so I hope. If he’s seen this…” He trailed off, not sure how to finish. Then the full meaning of the man’s words made it through his jumbled, troubled thoughts, and he met his eyes. “Wait. We?”
“Well, why not?” Urek said, nodding, his own expression grim. “We hang around in this inn much longer, we’ll probably end up killin’ each other. Anyway, we just now got you on your feet…” He paused, looking at the wavering swordmaster with a humorless smile. “After a fashion, anyhow. I don’t expect Beautiful would thank me for it, if I let you go off and get yourself killed now.”
The man said the words lightly enough, but Darrell knew what they meant, just as he was sure that the big man knew it too. Urek was risking his life—as well as the lives of those he’d called his family—to see the swordmaster safely to Festa’s ship and, in doing so, he was throwing his lot and the lot of those with him in with Darrell. The swordmaster met the big man’s eyes, and an understanding passed between them. “Thank you.”
Urek grunted, obviously uncomfortable with gratitude.
“But…wait,” Beautiful said in an almost desperate voice, “you can’t. You need the medicine I brought, for the pain. It will put you to sleep, but you need it to get well. Tell him, Urek, don’t let him—”
“Easy, lass,” the big man said, studying the swordmaster. “It seems to me that ain’t nobody in this world goin’ to make this fella here do somethin’ he doesn’t want to, not with him still breathin’ anyway. Besides,” he continued, turning to her, “you get to our age, Beautiful, and pain’s an old friend that greets us in the mornin’ and lays down with us at night. Ain’t that right, swordmaster?”
There was a question within that question, and Darrell knew it. The man was giving him one more chance to call it off, one more chance to listen to Beautiful’s advice and take the medicine and let sleep, the great healer, do its work. “Yes,” Darrell said, nodding resolutely. “That’s right.”
“Alright then,” Urek said, and it seemed to the swordmaster that there was an added note of respect in those simple words. “Come on then, lads and ladies. Let’s go find us a ship.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Aaron ducked under the swiping claw of his assailant, his shining sword tearing through the creature’s midsection. As with the others he’d fought, the creature’s body offered no more resistance than air, as if he were trying to somehow kill the night itself. When his sword sliced through it, the shadowy form disintegrated like a thin patch of fog before a great wind. But the sellsword felt no victory at that, for he had been fighting the creatures for a long time now—just how long he had no way of knowing—and he knew that, soon enough, the creature would reassemble itself, appearing with the horde of its fellows surrounding him without any noticeable wound only to hurl itself at him once more.
Movement from his left caught his eye, and Aaron spun, guided more by instinct than sight, and narrowly avoided what looked like a long tentacle, as blac
k as night, that smashed the ground where he’d stood only seconds before. He let out a cry of anger and frustration, bringing his blade down and hacking away the offending tentacle and it vanished into nothingness a moment later.
Knowing that to stay in one place for too long meant death, the sellsword immediately picked a direction and charged. It didn’t matter much which way he went, for the shadows were all around him now, their teeming masses stretching as far as he could see in that dark world, their nightmarish forms displaying every possible shape and size. The one he came upon had four arms, two on either side, and a large, pitch black horn protruding from its forehead, but Aaron’s blade did its work, and the abomination joined its fellows in whatever place they went before rematerializing minutes later.
Something else lashed out at him, and he brought his blade up only just in time to block a massive club that seemed to have been forged from the darkness itself. He grunted as the impact slid him back, nearly knocking the blade from his hands. He made use of the moment of peace this afforded him, glancing around desperately for his horse. He thought he saw a flicker of white off in the darkness to his right, but it could have been no more than his hopeful imagining, and it didn’t matter in any case, for if that was the horse then it was far too distant for him to reach it before he was cut down or crushed by the horde of creatures.
He’d lost the beast some time ago—an hour, two, he couldn’t be sure—had been knocked from it to the ground. He’d nearly died then as the creatures pressed in on him, seemingly eager to destroy this invader in their newly-conquered world. He’d felt himself being crushed under the weight of their numbers, but the armor had protected him from their attacks long enough for him to get his feet under him once more.
He’d thought the armor ridiculous at first, but since the fighting had begun, Aaron had been given ample opportunities to be thankful for its presence as it shielded his body against the worst of his opponents’ attacks. Yet the armor did nothing for the weariness seeping into his muscles, a weariness beyond anything he’d imagined possible, and he took advantage of the brief moment of respite to get control of his ragged breathing.
He heard something move behind him and started to turn, but his exhausted body wasn’t quick enough to avoid the claws that raked at his back. The armor protected him from the sharp talons, but the impact was still powerful enough to send him stumbling forward, and he fell to one knee. He told his tired limbs and muscles to rise, but they had been overused, his body aching from the battering it had taken, and his legs were slow to respond. He’d only just regained his feet when something massive hit him from out of the darkness with the force of a charging horse, and he screamed in surprise and pain as he was thrown from his feet. He hurtled through the throng, passing through the bodies of his attackers as if they weren’t there at all, the only evidence that he’d struck them a revolting warmth that suffused his body where he touched them, one similar to what he’d felt when touching the great tree.
He hit the ground in a roll, the breath exploding from his body, and more by luck than design he came to rest on one knee once more. He shook his head in an effort to clear the dizziness he felt and hissed at a sharp, dagger-like pain in his chest. A rib cracked then, maybe two. Can’t keep this up for long. And that was true enough. The armor had served him well, but it was covered in deep grooves from the talons that had scored it, not to mention several dents—the one from that last blow spread all the way across his chest—and it wouldn’t be long before it failed. Not that he thought it mattered much—the way things were going, his body would fail him long before the armor did, for his muscles had long since stopped screaming from overuse. Instead, they mewled in quiet voices, without the strength left even to protest the demands he made of them.
The secret lies with Tianya, Co said. This is her world, her fears that you fight, and you cannot defeat them without her.
She’d said much the same several times now, but saying something cost a man—or a floating ball of light, as the case may be—nothing. It had been all Aaron could do to keep from getting butchered by the teeming creatures—he’d had no chance to try to make his way back to the base of the massive tree where, even now, he could hear the child moaning in the distance. “Shouldn’t…have…lost the damned horse,” he muttered, hissing with the effort of leveraging himself to his feet. The creatures, he knew, would not stop coming—they never did—and sure enough the space that his flying passage had cleared was even now being filled with more of them. Dozens. Hundreds. Enough to get the job done, at any rate. More than enough.
Your horse, Co said, her voice full of energy as if she’d just had some incredible idea, the excitement from which she could barely contain. Call it.
“Oh, there’s plenty of things I’d like to call it,” Aaron muttered, “asshole among ‘em. I swear that bastard threw me on purpose.”
Not that, the Virtue snapped, and do you really think now is the best time to be telling jokes?
Aaron backed up, forcing his exhausted arm to raise the blade he carried as he watched the creatures drawing nearer. He hoped it was just his imagination that made it seem as if the blade had lost some of its brilliant luster, but he didn’t think so. “Maybe not the best time,” he said, “but probably the only one. The dead only have the one joke, Firefly, and it isn’t a very funny one.”
Gods be good, Aaron, call the horse!
Suddenly, one of the shadows separated itself from the others, gliding toward him with a deceptive speed, and Aaron swung the shining blade, taking its taloned hand off at what he took to be its wrist before his back-swing passed through the place where it neck was, and it vanished. “And just what in the Fields am I supposed to call it?” he demanded. “I don’t know the damn thing’s name!”
It doesn’t matter, the Virtue hissed back, just call it anything.
Aaron rolled his eyes, and was about to say something when another of the shadows rushed forward, and the next several moments were a desperate struggle as he pushed his body to its limits and beyond. Finally, he found an opening and lunged, the sword leading, and the creature dissipated into the air. “Ah fuck it,” he said. “Spot! Come here, boy!”
He waited a moment, scanning the area where he thought he’d seen the horse, but nothing happened. “See, Firefly?” he said. “This isn’t a story-book and—” He cut off as a flash of white—unmistakable now—came charging toward him, plowing a path through the shadows and scattering them like chaff.
Less than a minute later, the horse stood in front of him, regarding him as if wondering what had taken him so long to call it. “Son of a bitch,” Aaron said. “You mean you could have done that the whole time, and you’ve been standing over there taking your ease while I’m getting my ass kicked?”
The horse only stared back at him, but there was a smugness in its eyes Aaron didn’t care for. Still, for all the power of its rush and the damage it had wrought on the enemy’s lines, the horse hadn’t made it through the charge unscathed. Three long, bloody cuts ran down its side where one of the shadows had clawed it, and there were several crimson scratches along its muzzle. A bellow came from the darkness, and Aaron spun to see one of the massive, towering forms—probably the bastard that had struck him—bearing down on them. “We’re going to have a talk about this later,” the sellsword promised, then he climbed onto the horse—his horse, he supposed—grunting at a sharp pain from his ribs. “Come on then,” he croaked, grabbing the reins and turning the horse in the direction of the tree looming in the distance. “Let’s go save us a crazy little girl.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“What’s happening to him?” Adina demanded. The last few hours had been torture as she listened to the sellsword’s grunts and hisses of pain, watched his body jerk from time to time as if from some invisible blow, and noted his shoulders slowly sagging more and more from exhaustion. But the last noise that had issued from the sellsword’s throat hadn’t been a growl or a grunt at all, but a scream so ful
l of pain that her skin had grown cold. “What’s happening to him?” she said again, hating the desperate whine in her voice but unable to contain it.
“He is losing,” said the Speaker. Though his own worry was clear in his tone, Adina wanted to scream at him, to rail at him that he was a liar, to tell him that he knew nothing, but it would do no good, and she knew that he was right in any case. Whatever Aaron was fighting, he was losing, she need only look at his body, to listen to his ragged breathing to know the truth of it. So instead of giving in to the urge to yell and condemn the Speaker, she turned back to Aaron, grasping his free hand in hers.
“Princess,” the Speaker said, “there is something I must tell you.” His voice sounded troubled, sad, and Adina turned to look at him. Oh gods, she thought, what now? Though the Akalian was expressionless as usual, there was something about his posture, about the way he stood so erect, that made her think he was reluctant to share whatever news he’d learned.
“Is it something to do with why that other Akalian came in a few hours ago?”
The Speaker nodded. “Yes. I had thought to wait to tell you, thought that, perhaps, the battle here would be decided, one way or the other, but I fear we are running out of time, and I dare not keep it from you any longer.”
“Keep what from me?” Adina said, a flutter of apprehension rising in her along with the certainty that, whatever news the Speaker had, she did not want to hear it. “And what do you mean we’re running out of time?”
The Speaker winced. “Perhaps, I misspoke, for it is not only we who are running out of time, but also the city of Perennia.”
Adina frowned. “Surely, you don’t mean Kevlane. I know that the tournament in Baresh must be starting soon but…” She trailed off, unsure how to finish.
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