by Jason Kenyon
Few people cheered or reacted particularly enthusiastically. While the citizens of Ferrina were grateful to have had the assistance of the paladins, they could tell by the way Malthanes was speaking that more bad news was coming. Archimegadon in particular was starting to develop a very real sense of dread, similar to when he’d noticed things being off at the feast in Castle Aldrack all that time ago.
Malthanes placed his hands on the stand and regarded the crowd. ‘Following the diligent efforts of the Paladin Order in tackling the cult crises across the country, the Central Council has appointed Supreme Commander Salestis de’Cirana, leader of the Order, as Regent of Valanthas. It is our intention to work together with the Central Council to put a stop to these uprisings and bring peace back to Valanthas, making it whole once again.’
‘That’s a good thing, right?’ Obdo asked Neurion.
‘It should be,’ Neurion replied. ‘She has always been fair and just.’
‘With these new duties, unfortunately, the Paladin Order also has new challenges to face,’ Malthanes said. ‘The Knights of Valanthas are currently under investigation following their support of the magical rebellion that took place in Aldrack. As such, we ask that any and all members of the Knights of Valanthas report to the Citadel over the coming week so that we may ensure their loyalty to the kingdom and discount them from further suspicion.
‘Equally, we ask that members of certain noble houses also contact us directly, so that we may discuss with them matters of the kingdom going forwards.’
Malthanes then listed a number of family names that Archimegadon did not recognise. There weren’t many nobles present that Archimegadon could see, but he still noted a few pockets in the crowd where hushed chattering broke out.
‘With these checks, certain precautions will also need to be taken,’ Malthanes said. ‘Entry to and from the city will now require a sealed pass, which can be obtained from Order guardhouses that we are setting up around Ferrina. If you are not sure where they are, you can ask any member of the Order, who will be happy to direct you to the nearest guardhouse.’
‘Tharanor won’t be happy if the paladins are running their own watch,’ Mellara said quietly.
‘In addition to this, we will be restructuring the regulation of trade in the harbour,’ Malthanes continued. Archimegadon swallowed hard; that wasn’t going to go down well with the Blade. ‘To preserve the security of our streets, we will be limiting the sale of weaponry, and you will need to obtain a sealed pass for the ownership of weaponry as well, limited to professions that require such tools. Examples of this would be bows for the hunting trade, or harpoons for fishing. If you are uncertain whether you are permitted to hold weaponry, you can seek advice from one of the Order guardhouses.’
‘I’m not happy,’ Mellara said.
‘Onto the next matter, it is with regret that we must inform you all that the Mage Order has been disbanded, and is currently in the process of being reformed under new leadership. This is owing to the involvement of former archmage Orgus Alhamis in all of the recent tragedies. As such, any prior qualifications and permits for magical use are void, and we ask that all mages and sorcerers present themselves to the Citadel for induction into the new Servants of the Light.’
Archimegadon felt uncomfortably aware of his robes and staff, and was suddenly fearful of being seen, but the crowd ahead of him at least was too involved in what Malthanes was saying to notice him. Without particularly thinking, he turned and pushed his way through the crowd, heedless of the words of both the people he barged and his companions, who hesitantly started to follow.
*
‘Sir Mage, what are you doing?’ Obdo asked.
Archimegadon had managed to give his companions the slip on the way back from the Citadel, after trying to take a shortcut and getting lost instead. Once he’d got back to his house, where his friends had been waiting for him, he’d started gathering some things together and pushing them hurriedly into a satchel. Mellara and Neurion hovered off to one side, neither of them speaking.
‘What does it look like?’ Archimegadon returned eventually. ‘I’m going. I’m leaving. Maybe they won’t have the blockades set up yet.’
‘Don’t you think that might be an overreaction?’ Obdo asked. ‘You never know – this mage bunch might actually be decent.’
‘It’s called the Servants of the Light, Obdo, how decent do you really expect it to be?’ Archimegadon asked. ‘The paladins only have one fix for people they consider to be enemies of their beloved Light, and that’s on the hot end of a stake.’
‘I’m sure it won’t be that bad,’ Obdo said.
‘Even if it’s not bad in that way, we’re in trouble,’ Mellara said, looking up at them all with her arms folded. ‘If the paladins are planning to control the docks, I don’t think Lord Diojin is going to take it quietly. He has an army at his disposal and he’s put down interference with blood before.’
‘He won’t last against Light magic, surely?’ Obdo asked.
‘He took on demons, you can bet he’ll have tricks to deal with paladins,’ Mellara replied. ‘Not like we need to fight openly – we have buildings all over the place where we can ambush patrols, without ever having to get into close quarters. What the paladins are proposing will ruin Lord Diojin if he lets it happen – and he won’t. This happened before, in Vara Shinto.’
‘Vara what?’ Obdo asked.
‘Harbour town in Ta-Shiang,’ Mellara replied. ‘Where the Blade used to rule, before they moved here and I joined them. The, uh… I guess we’d call them Mage Knights… they tried to kick Lord Diojin out. He killed most of them, and then burned Vara Shinto down when they called in reinforcements.’
‘Nice guy.’
‘You don’t screw with Lord Diojin,’ Mellara said.
‘Mellara, you know him best – what is his attitude towards us right now?’ Archimegadon asked.
Mellara raised her eyebrows. ‘Uhm, interesting question – I think he kinda respects us for killing Marr. We solved a lot of problems for him, and you stopped causing the Blade trouble, so I think you’re alright with him. Why?’
‘You bunch will have ways out of Ferrina, yes?’ Archimegadon asked. ‘I imagine that I’ll be needing your help.’
‘I could probably help you sneak out without even needing to go through Lord Diojin,’ Mellara said. ‘Not all the ways are manned. I think we cleared the demons out of the larger exits, and the small ones should still be good.’
‘Surprised you didn’t use them before,’ Obdo said. ‘You know, when Marr ruled the city.’
‘You wouldn’t have got the Blade out through those exits,’ Mellara said. ‘The fighters, sure, but everyone else? Like the cooks, servants, or even the random people we rescued. That wouldn’t have happened. And most important to Lord Diojin, we’d have lost our riches, and that would have killed us. We’d have been back to square one as an organisation, and there’s no way Lord Diojin would’ve let that happen.’
‘So I guess he won’t leave Ferrina this time either?’
‘He might,’ Mellara replied. ‘Ferrina’s pretty dead for business anyway, and this isn’t gonna help things any. He’ll fight or he’ll run, equal chance, but running will need organisation, and that takes time.’
Archimegadon was trying to force some more robes into his satchel and gave up with a sigh. ‘Think we can make it in one go?’
‘There’s not any usable exits around here,’ Mellara replied. ‘We’ll have to go all the way to the docks, or the one in Old Town, but the Order were there in force last I heard.’
‘Of course.’
‘There might be a couple still in the nobles’ quarter,’ Mellara said. ‘I bet they have more p…’
A knocking at the door interrupted her, and caused Archimegadon to drop his satchel in his surprise. Neurion stooped to gather all the stuff Archimegadon had dropped, and set to rearranging everything into a more orderly configuration in the satchel while Archimegadon rush
ed over to the window and peered out. Sure enough, as his pessimism had predicted, a group of paladins was standing outside. They had even brought a fully-armoured warhorse, which was shaking its tail and making grumpy noises as one of the paladins was telling it to wait and stay still. Archimegadon stepped away hurriedly and bumped into Obdo, while Mellara nimbly skipped out of his path.
‘Oops,’ Archimegadon said. ‘Erm, anyway, Mellara, there’s paladins out there.’
‘You think they know about you?’ Mellara asked.
‘The city has records of my house,’ Archimegadon replied, frowning as he thought back to how Yuriath had found him before. ‘I’d also be on a list at the Mage School in Melethas, so if they’ve got that then they might have figured it out.’
‘Lovely,’ Mellara said. ‘Alright, want me to go get rid of them?’
‘Absolutely,’ Archimegadon replied, taking his satchel back from Neurion. Unlike the Mage for Hire, Neurion had managed to fit everything Archimegadon had gathered inside, through the ancient magic of folding.
‘You might want to change into something a bit less mage-y,’ Mellara said, before heading off downstairs with Obdo and Neurion in tow.
After changing into a drab brown outfit that he’d not used in years, Archimegadon considered his options. Was he going to wait around, just for the paladins to ignore Mellara and barge in anyway? Certainly not. Carrying his satchel over his shoulder, he checked out of the window for the paladins and saw that they were no longer visible, presumably as they were now under the cover of the doorframe. Only their horse remained, though it was not likely to be much use as a lookout. He checked to his right, but there was no convenient ledge to follow in that direction, so he’d have to go left, over the doorframe, and then see if he could skip across to the neighbouring house from there.
*
Meanwhile, downstairs, Mellara opened the door.
The paladin blinked, looked down at a sheet of paper, and then back up at her.
‘Ahm, is this the residence of Master Ardon Forseld?’ the paladin asked.
‘Nope,’ Mellara replied. ‘I think you’re a couple of houses off.’
‘Says number twenty-eight here,’ the paladin said, before looking up at the number on the door, which was gently swinging behind Mellara. Two paladins stood idly behind him, their featureless helms managing even so to convey an expression of boredom.
‘Maybe that was a while ago,’ Mellara said. ‘I bought this off an old man half a year ago.’
‘Councillor said he was still in town,’ the paladin said.
Mellara glared. ‘Then perhaps you have the wrong house. Perhaps he moved.’
She became aware of noises above, and swallowed hard. Without thinking, she put a hand to her ponytail and tugged it absently.
‘If you don’t mind, I’ll be having a look around,’ the paladin said.
‘Under what authority?’ Mellara asked, getting annoyed in spite of herself.
The paladin froze, as though he didn’t actually know. He looked back at the picture in his hands, which Mellara now saw was a hastily-scrawled image of a bearded man, presumably from someone’s description of Archimegadon. Given that the paladin had mentioned a councillor, she had the feeling that Abernoth had sold out Archie.
‘Why, under the authority of Her Radiance, Supreme Commander Salestis de’Cirana,’ the paladin finally replied, and the plume on his helmet seemed to rise in triumph.
‘Well, I guess you can have a look,’ Mellara said, ‘but I don’t want you making a mess with all that heavy armour.’
The paladin nodded and motioned to his fellows. One of them stepped back to their warhorse as it began to get agitated again, while the other shook his head and stepped towards the door.
‘I’m telling you, though, you aren’t going to find this Ardon Forseld of yours here,’ Mellara said.
At that moment there was a loud noise from above, followed by a terrible curse. Mellara had a flicker of an instant in which she hoped that her expectations would not be met, but that instant swiftly passed and was followed by Archimegadon falling from the ledge above, his landing cushioned by the paladin tending to the charger. The other two paladins turned to stare at the scene that had unfolded.
Mellara was faster to react. She grabbed the shoulder of one of the paladins and eased him off balance, before kicking in the back of his leg and completing his collapse to the ground. The other paladin noticed and turned slowly in his heavy armour, but given that selfsame armour he invalidated most of Mellara’s usual options in unarmed combat.
Obdo chose that moment to provide a solution, charging from the door with a wooden chair and using it like a battering ram to push back the paladin. As the paladin stumbled, Obdo raised the chair and brought it down hard on the paladin’s head. While the blow was mostly harmless against the heavy armour, it was enough to finish the steady backwards momentum of the paladin and send him crashing to the tiles in a similar fashion to his fellows.
Archimegadon stumbled to his feet while the charger decided it had had enough of this stupidity and simply galloped off down the road, never to be seen again. The companions all exchanged quick glances and then ran off as one, knowing that they’d not be coming back here again any time soon.
Chapter Three: Blade in Flight
A month after escaping from his own home, Archimegadon was attempting to carry a number of weapons, which normally he might have done without issue, given his prior career as a handyman. Right now, though, he had gone back to wearing his mage robes, and while they appeased his vanity, they didn’t do too much for ease of movement.
As he and his companions snuck down the streets he cast a thought back to the paladins they’d killed in the weapons shop. He regretted what had happened, but since that fateful day a month ago when the paladins had made their announcement, the holy knights had been on the warpath. Not given to be understanding of those who disagreed with their ways, the paladins had swiftly changed from their role of saviours to that of harsh overlords, with violent repercussions for the slightest disagreements.
Things had gone much as Mellara had predicted. Unwilling to turn over control of the docks to the paladins, Diojin and the Fallen Blade had rallied the other criminal gangs and waged a campaign against the Order, forcing them out of the docks and even going so far as to build a barricade across part of the city. This situation had only become worse as the knights and mages who resided in the rest of Ferrina sought protection and fled into Diojin’s arms. Pretty soon all the work they’d done in restoring peace to the streets had been erased, and tension gripped the city as the paladins slowly gathered their forces in preparation for crushing the Fallen Blade and their knight and mage allies.
As for Archimegadon himself, he’d nearly made it out of the city, only for wretched Neurion to comment that he feared for the other people in Ferrina. Before Archimegadon could slip into the secret passage Mellara had opened for them, he’d had an unwanted rush of honour, and promptly decided to stay in Ferrina and see if he could somehow help others who these new regulations were sure to affect.
This had, against Archimegadon’s better judgement, led him to throw in his lot with the Fallen Blade. Dangerous though they were, they were also the only ones stupid enough to defy the Paladin Order. They also were the best people around at getting hold of information, and had soon confirmed Archimegadon’s fears that the re-structuring of the knights and mages under paladin control had been fairly similar to Bartell’s purge of the remaining good members of the Order of Endless Skies, who had been killed off in quiet corners of Castle Aldrack. Most had simply been stripped of their possessions and imprisoned, while those who disagreed had disappeared entirely.
‘Well,’ Archimegadon said as they snuck down a sombre alley, ‘do you suppose this will be enough for our beloved Lord Diojin?’
‘He won’t be pleased until there’s a hundred miles between us and him,’ Tharanor replied.
‘He doesn’t hate us all tha
t much,’ Mellara said, though she didn’t look convinced.
Archimegadon’s beard and hair lacked the usual styling that he preferred to do each day, making him appear quite harassed, which was a fair impression given that he was currently kill-on-sight for a high number of people right now. Tharanor, his black-bearded guardsman companion, didn’t look much better, but his ebon hair and dark leather guard’s armour made him hard to see in the gloomy streets. Mellara, meanwhile, was the group’s scout, but insisted on wearing her favourite blue jerkin and white shirt, rationalising that they didn’t show up very well in the shadows anyway.
Tharanor had joined their band again not long into the paladin takeover. The Order had given him the chance to become one of their enforcers, instead of setting up a new City Watch, and he had first-hand seen the brutality with which the paladins had dealt with those knights and mages who had turned themselves in. Not long after that, he’d been picked up by Mellara, who had gone looking for him at Archimegadon’s request, and he’d subsequently joined the Blade’s resistance in the docks.
Archimegadon snorted at Mellara’s prior comment. ‘He didn’t like us before we dealt with Marr, and he hates us twice as much now.’
‘And yet he lets you live in his mansion,’ Mellara said, smirking.
‘Only because he’s afraid to cross us,’ Tharanor said.
‘People hate what they fear,’ Archimegadon added.
‘You must be afraid of pretty much everyone then,’ Mellara said.
Archimegadon stopped walking, causing the others to stumble into him, and he dropped a few of the sheathed blades he was carrying. The loud clangour caused Mellara and Tharanor to wince and check around for paladins, but Archimegadon was not interested in this.
‘I beg your pardon, madam?’ he asked, his eyebrows quivering with fury. ‘I, Archimegadon, Mage for Hire, Champion of Arranoth and Godslayer of Ferrina, afraid of anything? How dare you suggest such a thing?’
