Sword of the Tyrant

by Cebelius

  "I'm surprised they let you live," Terry said, suppressing his anger. "I probably wouldn't have."

  The tiger-man shrugged. "It is what it is. There were too many to fight, and while I am not a coward, I like living."

  "Why didn't you just leave?" Terry asked.

  "I do not regret what I did, but that does not mean I think it was right," he said, his eyes steady. "I committed a crime, and I bear the punishment. I chose the fight I could win over the one I could not. That is all."

  "You expect me to believe someone willing to break their word to defend the helpless would turn around and accept punishment?" Terry scoffed. "Bullshit."

  "Do you see chains on me?" he said, spreading his hands. "I could have left at any time. If I have any other reasons, they are none of your business."

  Terry's eyes narrowed slightly, and he jerked a thumb over his shoulder and asked, "Why was he branded a coward?"

  "He failed his rite of passage. Vlad sent him on his quest, and when he returned the shaman declared him a failure and a coward. He became an Untouchable. So it is."

  "What was the quest?"

  The tiger-man shrugged. "Each youngling's rite of passage is his own. He knows, and Vlad knows." He jerked his chin toward the other cell as he said, "That one never contested his cowardice even after Vlad condemned him. He knows what he did, or did not do."

  Without turning away from the man in front of him, Terry raised his voice. "Mila!"

  "Yes?" Mila was leaning against the wall outside, and did not move as she replied.

  "Find out why this one is still here. Ask around, I don't care. I'll wait."

  "You want me to leave you alone with him?" Mila asked.

  "Prada's with me. This guy's nothing. Go, please. We only have until sunset."

  Mila left without a word, and once she was gone Terry said, "Sure you don't want to tell me why you're really hanging around?"

  The tiger-man flexed his fingers and claws slid into view as he growled, "You think too highly of yourself. My brother only got one of the others, I finished two."

  "Bitch, please. My sash could kick your ass," Terry said, waving an idle hand toward Prada's outward manifestation. She lifted her silken tail and waggled it at the tiger-man, who's eyes widened as he saw it, then lifted to Terry's again as the human smirked.

  "I really could," Prada purred. "I'll be happy to demonstrate. My husband won't even have to move."

  "I already held you down yesterday; do you honestly think you stand any kind of chance against me?" Terry asked.

  "You don't even have claws!"

  Terry turned a hand up and crooked his fingers, letting his pearly claws slide into view as he lifted an eyebrow at the oathbreaker.

  "What are you?" the man breathed.

  "Trouble." Terry clenched his fist to press his claws back out of sight. "Last chance to tell me before Mila gets back."

  The tiger-man scratched behind one ear, face contorted as his tail lashed behind him. "Fine. Mila Kolenko will not learn anything anyway. I never told anyone, but I stayed for a girl. Miri. I thought if I could find a way to clear my name, she would forgive me."

  "How can you clear your name? You did what you were accused of," Terry pointed out. "You killed your own kind rather than fight the people you were paid to fight. Far as I can tell, you're just as much of a coward as that guy across the hall."

  "What would you know about facing hopeless odds?" the tiger-man growled. "You have magic — real power! What we faced was ten to one. Even if all five of us had fought, we'd have been wiped out and the caravan would have been taken anyway. Anyone willing to throw their life away like that for nothing is a fool!"

  Terry didn't immediately reply, because his mind was on his sister, and the fact that he had been exactly that kind of fool, and thrown his life away.

  Not for nothing though. Not for nothing.

  He thought about telling his story, but it didn't seem worth it. The man in front of him didn't seem the type to care. Eventually, he shrugged and said, "There are no certainties in life. What's your name?"

  "Ivar."

  "No last name?"

  "Not anymore. My parents disowned me."

  "Yeah, figures. I'm not going to clear your name, Ivar. All I'm offering is a chance to do something worthwhile. Hell, if everything goes sideways you'll wind up with whatever that voice wants to give you. Given how long it took to break your enchantment, you want that pretty bad."

  "You would too if you had spent the last ten years living as a pariah among your own people. I would have settled for a friend, and she offered me love. Would you have turned her down?"

  "Probably not," Terry conceded.

  Internally, he was struggling with the fact that what this man had done was completely dishonorable and yes, cowardly ... but there was something Terry liked about him anyway. He was direct, made no apologies. And unless he was lying, he'd spent the last ten years trying to earn back the respect that he had thrown away. It wasn't enough. As far as Terry was concerned, he was looking at an unapologetic murderer. Such men did not merit forgiveness from anyone, but there was something magnetic about Ivar he could neither explain nor deny.

  "Okay, one thing. You wanted to live because you wanted this woman, Miri? But you had to know she'd never accept what you did."

  Ivar shrugged and said, "A living man has a chance, however slight. A dead man has none. Honor doesn't buy food, and respect doesn't keep a man warm in winter."

  "Maybe not, but they will get you the love of a good woman," Terry said, bemused. "And a good woman will feed you and keep you warm."

  "Things that might comfort a man whose choice was something other than death. I chose to live, Terry. Because I made that choice I am here now: the man you need."

  "You'll do it then?"

  Ivar nodded. "Asking you to clear my name was foolish. I will let my actions speak for me. I spent ten years doing that, why change now?"

  Terry stepped aside. Ivar walked out of his cell, turned, and passed through the ward without hesitation.

  As Terry moved to follow him, an arm shot out of the window of the coward's cell.

  "I will do it," he said. "I will be your bait. You cannot set Ivar loose. Not now!"

  "You had your chance. As you said, what you want is none of my business," Terry said coldly. "You're back-up, nothing more. You chose this for yourself. Live with it."

  "You have no idea how long I've already lived with it!" he cried after Terry.

  "I gave you your chance to tell me," Terry said with a last glance back.

  "I swore not to say!"

  Terry snorted. "Convenient. What's your name?"

  "Aleksei."

  "Well, Aleksei? Let me give you a piece of hard-earned wisdom. A man is responsible for what he does, because those things make him what he is. So, what are you?"

  "I'm a man who keeps his promises," Aleksei said, though his tone was one of abject despair, and his hand disappeared as he pulled it back.

  Terry stopped.

  He glanced back at the cell, then down the hallway. Ivar was already out of sight in the darkness of the corridor beyond the lit taper Mila had left behind for him.

  Prada mentally asked, 'What is it, Husband?'

  My choices for bait are a desperate probably-lying coward or a charismatic probably-lying sociopath. This whole thing is pretty much guaranteed to blow up in my face.

  'Does it matter? You made your choice. Either of these serve equally well for the use we'll put them to, and neither poses any realistic threat to us.'

  I suppose not ...

  As he picked up the taper and followed after the oathbreaker, Ivar, Terry heard Aleksei's quiet sobs fade away in the dark behind him.

  19

  Gapping the Bridge

  Asturial did not rejoin them for almost four hours, and during that time Yuri wracked his brain to come up with some way to cross the bridge. Euryale could fly out and around, approaching and petrifying the enemy from
a high angle unlikely to be covered by the ballista or crossbowmen almost certainly set to defend, but that plan relied on a number of assumptions Yuri was unwilling to make.

  The idea that the opposition had no magical support, or that there were no mystic traps out there that might paralyze or incapacitate a flyer and send her tumbling to an unknown fate kept him from seriously considering using her in that way.

  He set Twisted to watch for hobs crossing the bridge, but none came. Unlike their smaller cousins or orcs, hobgoblins possessed real discipline, and weren't about to walk into an ambush when they'd set one themselves.

  Besides, they can see our light.

  Yuri glanced at the lantern, but didn't focus on it, not wanting his night vision too compromised.

  Wait.

  He looked at the lantern again, remembering what Terry had suggested in Monsoon. Orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins all had darksight in common. With no light, they could see perfectly well. They could also see in daylight, but direct sunlight hurt their eyes. Goblins and orcs took much longer to adjust to bright light than folk that lived their lives on the surface. Was the same true of hobgoblins?

  With too many questions, Yuri set that line of thought aside and moved on. Even if they blinded those waiting on the other side of the bridge, his group would still be forced to attack in a straight, predictable line. All the hobgoblins had to do was pull a trigger.

  He considered asking Asturial to simply absorb enough size to withstand the ballista, but there was too great a chance something like that would simply collapse the cavern and kill everyone.

  He considered asking her if she could craft an illusion of their party going forward to trigger a response, but that wouldn't get them across the bridge.

  He even considered asking Asturial to lob a big fireball over there to see what happened. The problem was that the bridge had to survive, and there was a decent chance that the defenders would destroy it if they felt they were in danger of losing their hold on it.

  Yuri wondered if he shouldn't simply leave, and search for another way into Svartheim. There almost certainly were other ways in ... the problem was those ways were likely through the Everdark.

  He was still struggling with what to do when Asturial finally rejoined them.

  Laina stood up from where she'd been moodily staring at the stone between her legs and hugged the dragon proxy, who returned her embrace without a word spoken.

  Then she did the same with Euryale, and moved to dress.

  Once done, she went to Yuri and said, "Well? How do we get across?"

  She listened as Yuri detailed the various thoughts he'd had, and why none of them would work with a high enough chance of success to be worth trying.

  Asturial cast a spell, and glanced out into the dark before shaking her head. "You were right. There are wards out there. They will trigger against an aerial approach. Given that, I believe our best chance would be to use the reverse of your illusion idea."

  Yuri thought for a moment, then said, "So, convince them we are not on the bridge, when we are?"

  "It is not without risk, but we need to get across. Our other possibility is for me to carve hand and footholds out of the stone and go around the edge, but that is almost as if not more dangerous than a head-on assault. If we are discovered still hanging from the wall we would be destroyed."

  "When you were hit, could you see the far side?"

  "Dimly. The presence of a ballista is obvious, but it serves both as offense and defense. Its bulk takes up the majority of the open fighting space. Beyond were crossbowmen, but I could not tell you how many."

  "No mages?"

  Asturial gave him 'the look.' "Yuri, mages do not always wear robes. I have no idea if any of the hobs I saw, or those I didn't, can use magic. That said, if they do not have mages present by now, they are incompetent."

  "If they were that, we would have the sword already. Ugh. This is the worst," Yuri muttered. "I would never even contemplate something like this under any normal circumstance. It is suicide. There is no way to cross this bridge without ..."

  Yuri blinked, then looked at Asturial. "There is no way to cross the bridge."

  "That is not what I hoped to hear from you," Asturial said drily. "We need to get into Svartheim, and if we look for another route it could take us weeks, and would likely present equivalent dangers presuming we did find an alternative."

  "Oh, no. That is our way in. We just cannot cross the bridge."

  "You said that, say the next part," Euryale snapped, setting her brazen claws on her hips in irritation. "It's obvious you have a plan."

  Yuri looked at Asturial, his grin feral. "If I said to you, 'Destroy the bridge,' can you handle the rest?"

  "You want me to cast an illusion making it appear as though we've-"

  She trailed off as Yuri shook his head and said, "No. For real. Any mages over there would probably be able to see through an illusion, so we need to convince them to leave. If the bridge were gone, could you get us across along the same path? Would that trigger the wards you saw?"

  Asturial looked at him curiously for a long moment. She glanced back out into the open space, thought for a moment, then a slow smile spread across her features as she said, "Why yes, yes I could, and no, it wouldn't trigger the wards."

  "Anything?"

  Halfrekkr was a superlative representative of his race. Standing at six foot one, weighing just over two hundred pounds with not a single spare ounce of fat on his heavily muscled frame, his voice was a commanding baritone devoid of the slurring or hesitant stutters of his goblin kin. His skin was ashen rather than green or ochre, and his yellow eyes were widely set in a brutish face. His tusks stretched his lips into a permanent grimace, and his nose was wide and flat.

  His armor was a masterwork of plate protected by numerous runic enchantments. Weapons were hung from his belt and the black and gold baldric he wore, but he carried none in hand.

  For most of the last four hours, he'd been standing stock-still in a hallway packed with his kinsmen. They were the best of the best of his army, but since the lone dragon proxy had attempted to cross and been shot, there had been no change. The light of a single lantern was still visible on the far side of the bridge, but whoever remained there had made no move.

  The willowy albino creature next to him shook her head, not daring to look up. Her eyes were closed as she concentrated.

  "The dragon sent another proxy, but all they've done is talk, lord," she said, her voice low and uncertain. "I cannot make out what they say."

  "Yes yes, I know the limits of your power." The hobgoblin commander scowled. "They're plotting something. The aerial wards are in place?"

  "Yes lord. Anything that attempts to cross by any other route will be thunderstruck."

  Halfrekkr's scowl deepened. It was obvious by the party composition that these were dungeon delvers. He had been apprised of their foes' great fighting prowess when they had warded off the rockfall and slaughtered the elements sent up to see why the guard change had not gone as planned. He had assembled the most formidable possible response, even bringing the bergsrå with him to collapse the bridge should it become necessary.

  Then the waiting game had begun. Halfrekkr was good at this game: he had played it before, and always won. It only had one, very simple rule: whoever moved first, died.

  He had already lost fifty-two troops to the group on the far side. He did not intend to lose more. He was too close now. Only another year, and he would have the strength to assault and conquer the elven forest of Avoril. With a foothold there, and the necromancer to guard his rear, he could begin raiding the trade routes beyond, and eventually capture a city worth keeping.

  Once the villages and Torp had been wiped out, he'd been confident he would see no more trouble coming to his doorstep. Yet here it was, and such an odd combination. A tiger-kin male, a dragon, a minotress, a loup garou, and something else.

  Something new.

  "My lord, the dragon proxy
is moving," the bergsrå's voice was diffident, and she neither opened her eyes nor moved other than to speak.

  Halfrekkr waited, saying nothing.

  "She has begun to cast ... she draws a sword. Very large. Now she is at the bridge."

  "Ready ballista," Halfrekkr said absently. He didn't believe she was actually stupid enough to try again, but if there was one thing that had consistently surprised him over the years, it was how stupid monster hunters could be.

  They never gave up. They always came back, always pushed their luck. Always. The dragon might present a problem, but Halfrekkr knew all the ways into Svartheim, and none of the others were within the range of a dragon proxy. They would stop her here, and she would eventually abandon these others who had convinced her to do this.

  A crack like thunder echoed, jerking the hobgoblin from his musings. He looked down at his little bergsrå, but before she could say anything the answer became clear as with an answering crack the near side of the bridge broke, and the entire arch tumbled away into darkness. He didn't see it, but he knew.

  His bergsrå confirmed it a moment later. "They've destroyed the bridge."

  Halfrekkr was baffled, but only for a moment.

  "They must have been sent by one of the surrounding nations. This is a holding action meant to contain us here. Armies will follow."

  His scowl returned and he raised his voice. "Back to your regular posts! Send word to Mor. Tell her to expect me ... we need to talk."

  He waited while his soldiers filed past him. He did not move, they moved. Not one of them so much as brushed his arm. When they were gone, he strode forward and stopped just behind the ballista, peering ahead. Across the vast open space, he could make out the dim light of the lantern.

  He reached out, grabbed the butt of the ballista, shifted the assembly a bit, and pulled the trigger.

  With a heavy thump, the bolt was away.