Arthur Daigle's Blog - Posts Tagged "alchemy"
Doubtful Allies part 1
This is part 1 of Doubtful Allies:
“How about Buttercup?” Dana Illwind asked Jayden. She saw his frown through his scarf, hat and thick coat with upturned collar. Both Dana and Jayden were dressed for the weather with extra layers of warm cotton clothes. Dana wore leggings and a coat over her usual outfit, and she carried a backpack full of food and camping supplies. “What’s wrong with Buttercup?”
“If you’re going to name a sword, it’s typical to give it a more fearsome title, such as Sworn Doom, a famous elven blade that has a history going back twelve centuries. The owner is attempting to intimidate enemies with his, or in this case her, terrifying weapon. Buttercup is not a name to inspire dread.”
Dana stopped marching along the snowy road and put her hands on her hips. “I happen to like Buttercup. My first cat was named Buttercup, and I loved her very much. And I think I should have the last say over the name of my sword.”
“Undoubtedly so, but your choice could result in insults at your expense that I would feel compelled to redress with overwhelming force.”
“Isn’t that your response to most of life’s problems?”
Jayden shrugged. “It’s worked well so far. Dana, named weapons are rare and much sought after. Naming your weapon may increase its value in the eyes of strangers, perhaps enough for them to attempt to steal it, so consider this matter carefully.”
“Oh.” Dana resumed walking. It was a long way to their destination, and she didn’t want to spend another night camping in the snow. Winter had taken a firm hold, with deep snow and bone chilling cold, making travel by foot difficult and dangerous. The road they were on was better traveled than most, and foot and horse traffic had trampled the snow down. Still, it was rough going even on a sunny afternoon like this.
“Traditionally sword names include references to the original owner, which we’re trying to conceal so the authorities don’t go after your family,” Jayden continued. “Other names refer to a famous battle, or enemy defeated with the weapon. That might be a worthy route since you used it to destroy Wall Wolf, an enemy few would dare attack.”
Dana looked at the sheathed short sword that hung from her belt. “Wolf Killer, Golem Killer, Iron Killer…none of those really work for me.”
“This doesn’t require an immediate decision,” Jayden counseled. “Take your time until you come up with a name that suits you, or no name at all. Until then we have much to occupy our attention.”
“Armored wagons,” she said. “I’d never seen one in my life, and the people in the last village said a caravan of ten went down this road.”
Dana and Jayden had spent the last week traveling toward the center of the kingdom. Jayden had hoped to ambush supply wagons heading for Edgeland, and thus starve out the army occupying the city, but days of searching had turned up no targets.
Instead strangers and passersby reported seeing wagons heading for the next major city, a metropolis of a hundred thousand people. These wagons had covered tops and armor plate on their sides, and oxen pulling them wore yet more armor. Ten soldiers accompanied each wagon, and four archers rode on top. Ten knights on horseback had escorted this strange caravan, guiding their absurdly well-defended charges from town to manor to city, never stopping on the road for the night.
“What could the king and queen be transporting that needs so much protection?” Dana asked.
“The last time we intercepted wagons, they carried a fortune in armor,” Jayden said as he trudged through the snow. “If these wagons warrant such protection they surely carry cargo of great value. What it could be, though, baffles me. Gold and jewels are compact and easily concealed, not requiring so many wagons. Trained monsters would require specialized transports, not wagons sealed as tight as a drum. It could be silks or furs, but even then a guard of a hundred fifty men is extreme.”
“Trade has been shut down,” Dana pointed out. “Travel to Kaleoth ended even before the king and queen tried to invade. Going anywhere is hard in winter, so not much could be coming from Zentrix or Brandish.”
Jayden pointed at deep wagon ruts in the road. “Yet something is coming through, a treasure of such value that the king and queen are willing to spend a ridiculous amount guarding it, and go through the difficulty of traveling during winter. I’ve been looking for a worthwhile target ever since we returned from Kaleoth. I daresay this is it.”
Dana and Jayden reached the top of a snowy hill and looked down on the walled city in the distance. Jayden pointed at it and said, “Welcome the city of Armorston, weapons manufacturing center of the kingdom. If a man tries to kill you, chances are the sword, spear, ax or bow was made here.”
“At least we know who to complain to,” Dana said sarcastically.
Jayden smiled at her. “Jesting aside, I visited here before and saw how dangerous it is. Soldiers have the best armor and weapons. The second risk, and the bigger of the two, is that the people of Armorston are loyal. The king and queen recognize the value of this city and treat its residents well, with lower taxes, no conscription of men into the army and no hostages taken from leading citizens to ensure their obedience. These men and women serve the king and queen by choice, and they will attack any who threaten the crown.”
“And a certain someone has wanted posters with his picture on them across the kingdom. What are you worth dead this time?”
“The last poster listed a reward of fifteen thousand silver pieces on my head, but it was weeks old. The price may have gone up since then.”
Dana peered at the distant city. “How do we get in?”
Jayden pointed at the city gate. “I see no easy path. Soldiers search pedestrians and wagons as they enter. The walls are too tall and smooth to climb. Archers in watchtowers would make short work of flying threats. Digging under the wall would be difficult and time consuming.”
“We could wait for the wagons to come out.”
“That could take weeks or months, if it ever happens.” Jayden shook his head. “The armored wagons aren’t far ahead of us and may not have even been unloaded. If we can get inside Armorston, we can investigate the cargo and then steal or destroy it.”
“I could go in alone,” Dana offered. “Look around, see what’s—”
“No,” he said firmly.
Pouting, she said, “I stabbed Wall Wolf through the eye and killed it. I think that proves I can handle myself.”
“Dana, you are fond of pointing out my mortality, and rightly so. Too often I let anger dictate my actions and put my life in danger. You are offering to go into a city of a hundred thousand people that hate me and love the king and queen.”
“There aren’t wanted posters with my face,” she pressed.
“You have a very identifiable magic blade. Enemy soldiers saw you use it when we brought down the bridge over Racehorse River and when we destroyed Wall Wolf. Soldiers will be looking for it. Even if you go unarmed, you are in great danger from men paid to kill anyone who might be a threat. You are not going into Armorston alone.”
Dana walked in front of Jayden. “Then how are we going in together?”
“I’ll tell you once I figure it out.”
Armorston had outgrown its walls, probably long ago judging by the huge number of buildings clustered around it. There were small villages farther out that offered minor services, including restaurants, inns, stables and teamsters. So many people were coming and going that two strangers drew no attention.
“We’re going to explore the outer sections of the city,” Jayden told her. “There may be ways inside such as sewer networks. We’re both wearing enough winter clothes to make it hard to identify us. Act naturally and don’t draw attention to yourself.”
Armorston was a prosperous city, far richer than any Dana had visited. Men and women wore good quality clothes made of leather, wool, furs or cotton. They were healthy and well fed, and most were in good cheer.
“It’s a good thing the king and queen finally brought those dogs in Kaleoth to heel,” a man declared. He was standing on a street corner and addressing a sizeable crowd. “Smugglers have been using that cesspit as their home base for years, and they’ve been recruiting riffraff from across our kingdom to swell their numbers.”
“That’s disgusting,” Dana whispered to Jayden.
“It’s business,” he replied softly. “The man is a professional agitator, paid to spread propaganda. He also judges how well or poorly his message is received, and points out to the authorities anyone who argues with him.”
“How can you be sure?”
“The king and queen saw us through the civil war, and they’ll see us through this, too,” the man continued. “Kaleoth’s corpse king won’t know what hit him!”
“I’ve met his kind before,” Jayden explained. “There are two armed men at the back of the crowd to guard the agitator. A nod from him can bring them down like lightning on anyone whose words betrays a lack of loyalty. If we stay in Armorston long enough we’ll see him performing on other street corners.”
Dana watched the crowd and found it depressingly eager. Men smiled and nodded at the agitator’s words. More people gathered to listen to him.
“How can they fall for this?” she asked.
“I’m sure Armorston’s residents swear by this man’s loyalty and friendship. He’ll buy them drinks, commiserate with them when they suffer, offer minor aid when he can, a friend to all. He’ll have a reputation for being outspoken and connections to officials who give him inside information. Make no mistake, he is an expert at measuring men’s opinions and changing them.”
Dana shivered. “Lies for sale.”
“Blacksmiths are doing record business, and iron miners and charcoal burners do just as well,” the agitator told the crowd. “The army needs clothes, food and draft animals, fairly paid for from those who have. Good times are around the corner.”
The agitator spent time answering questions before moving on. Once he was gone, Jayden led Dana through the city. They found more signs of royal control, including wanted posters, recruitment brochures for the army, and flyers urging residents to inform on their neighbors if they see suspicious activity. Soldiers guarded prosperous businesses, but Dana couldn’t guess who they were protecting them from.
Hours of searching brought Dana and Jayden back to the point where they’d entered the outskirts of Armorston. Jayden led her to an inn outside city limits. He stayed only long enough to buy food before heading to an isolated grove of fruit trees bare of leaves.
“I have to credit the king and queen for their thoroughness,” he said as they ate. “Sewers are too small to crawl through and sealed with iron grates. There is a space fifteen feet wide between the city wall and the nearest building. I heard hounds inside the city walls in case a man enters unnoticed. This is going to be tricky.”
“We need somewhere to stay. If we camp outdoors so close to a city people are going to ask why, but if we stay indoors the owner is going to report us to the army.”
“Not necessarily.” Jayden pointed to a distant inn on a lonely road. “I came here last winter and made the acquaintance of the man who owns that establishment. He will put us up for the night without telling anyone.”
“He could have left or been arrested since then.”
“The fact that the inn still stands is proof he owns it. If someone had tried to arrest him he would have burned the inn down to cover his escape. If he’d left he would have burned it down for insurance money.”
Dana frowned. “Am I going to regret meeting him?”
“Yes.”
Jayden led her into the inn, where a sniveling weasel of a man stood behind a bar. No one else was present, not surprising given the inn’s poor condition. The man choked on a drink when he saw Jayden remove his hat and scarf.
“Gaston, so good to see you still breathing,” Jayden said as he marched up to the man. “You clearly need business, and my friend and I need rooms.”
“W-what madness could have made you come back here?” Gaston sputtered. “The city bank you burned down has only just been rebuilt! Soldiers practice stabbing straw dummies with your face painted on them.”
“That’s been going on for years. Dana, meet Gaston. He and I have a good working relationship. Namely, I didn’t kill him when I really should have, and in return he does exactly what I tell him to do. How’s your wife, Gaston?”
“Which one?” Gatson asked.
Dana covered her face with her hand. “Why do I keep meeting people like this?”
“It’s a puzzle,” Jayden said. He went through his pockets until he came up with two gold coins and tossed them to Gaston. “I pay for the help I receive. We require two rooms with locks, and your selective ignorance if soldiers ask about us.”
Gaston slipped the coins into a slot on the wall. “Business is down regardless of what the king says. You’ve got the place to yourself. Have the good manners to keep whatever trouble you cause far from my door.”
Jayden sat down at the bar across from Gaston. “Naturally. Armored wagons have come into Armorston. What have you heard about them?”
Gaston shrugged. “Everyone has seen them, no one knows what’s in them. Soldiers guarding them won’t let anyone within ten feet. Businessmen swear the wagons aren’t carrying goods for them.”
“I need a way inside the city,” Jayden said.
“Rooms I can give you,” Gaston replied. “If you want miracles, God is picky about who he hands those out to.”
Dana put a hand on a chair and pulled it away quickly. “When was the last time you cleaned this place?”
Gaston pointed a dirty mug at her. “That’s not my fault. Goblins snuck in last night and brushed grease on the furniture. I told one joke about their king, this Bradshaw fellow. One joke!”
“One was enough,” a squeaky voice outside the inn called out.
Dana perked up at the sound. She’d had reasonably good luck dealing with goblins, and goblins could break into anything when they felt like it. She ran for the door, telling Jayden, “Wait here.”
Outside she found a lone goblin digging through a frozen pile of kitchen scraps next to a window. It looked like Gaston threw his garbage out the nearest window, no surprise given his character, and goblins snapped it up. The goblin was only two feet tall, and so covered in rags that only his wide face showed. Dana walked up to the goblin and smiled. “Hi there, my name’s—”
“I know who you are,” the goblin interrupted. “Goblins don’t have many friends. We remember the ones we’ve got.”
“May I ask a favor?” The goblin shrugged in response, but he didn’t leave or insult her. “My friend and I are looking for armored wagons that went into Armorston. Do you know anything about them?”
“We saw them, but we don’t know what’s in them. Soldiers drove the wagons straight into a warehouse and closed the door before unloading them. There were more armored wagons earlier this month. No idea what they carried, and we can’t get near the warehouse.”
“We’d like to look at them, but we can’t get inside the city walls. Can you help us?”
The goblin frowned as if in deep concentration. “We’ve dug tunnels under the wall, but none big enough for you to fit through. I know a human woman who might help, crazy as a goblin and good for a laugh. Give me a few hours and I’ll get you a yes or no.”
Dana bent down and kissed the goblin on the forehead. “Thank you.”
“Good gravy, woman, are you insane?” the goblin sputtered. “You don’t know where I’ve been!”
The goblin headed out, muttering to himself about crazy girls as he slipped between buildings. Dana headed back to the inn and saw Jayden waiting for her by the door with an upraised eyebrow.
“I have rarely seen goblins behave, and never without a substantial bribe. How is it you are on such good terms with a goblin you’d never met before tonight?”
“You know how I keep your secret?” she asked. When Jayden nodded, she said, “It’s not the only one I’m keeping.”
When she didn’t say any more, Jayden pointed at her. “You can’t end a conversation like that.”
Dana headed into the inn without looking back. “Looks like I just did. Innkeeper, do you have any cheese?”
It took a bit of haggling, but Dana was soon the proud owner of a wedge of cheddar. She stayed outside regardless of the cold, keeping clear of other people while she waited for the goblin to return. There was always a chance he wouldn’t come back, but she’d had good luck dealing with goblins ever since she’d kept quiet about their phony ghost in Fish Bait City. Jayden stayed with her, looking curious but not asking for details.
It was dark when the goblin returned with a wagon pulled by two horses following him. He was already smiling ear to ear before he saw the cheese, and he raced to her side at the sight of it. Dana handed over the cheese and the goblin wolfed it down.
Once the goblin finished eating, he said, “You got me a gift before you knew if I’d brought her.”
“I owed you for looking, whether you succeeded or not.” It warmed her heart to see the goblin smile. Dana rubbed her hands together and asked, “So, who is the mystery woman?”
Jayden tensed. “Woman? Oh no.”
“Jayden!” A young woman jumped off the wagon and raced to him, covering the last few feet between them with an impressive leap that ended with her wrapping her arms around him. Jayden’s face turned white, and his eyes opened wide in terror. He tried and failed to break free from the stranger’s embrace.
“Get her off!”
“That’s her,” the goblin said proudly. “She can get you in the city.”
Jayden kept trying to pry the woman off him. “Get. Her. Off. Now.”
The woman let go, but took Jayden by the hands before he could back away. “Jayden, it’s been too long. I love what you’ve done with your hair. It’s got a ‘dangerous wild man’ feel to it. Ooh, is that a scar? Naughty boy, what have you been up to?”
“Dana, make it stop.”
Dana took the woman by the arm and turned her away from Jayden. The woman was in her twenties, a beauty with an hourglass figure. Her blond hair was tied back in a ponytail that reached to her narrow waist. Her blue eyes sparkled like sapphires. The woman wore a gorgeous silk dress dyed yellow and green, and an emerald green silk coat over that. Her black boots went up to her knees and had blue laces.
“Oh my God, you must be unidentified female accomplice!” the woman squealed. She jumped up and down before hugging Dana. “I’ve wanted to meet you for weeks!”
“Hi,” Dana managed. “Who are you?”
“I keep forgetting how reserved people are around here.” The woman curtsied and bowed her head. “Suzy Lockheart, alchemist, adventurer and troublemaker.”
Dana put a hand over her mouth and tried to keep from laughing. “This is too good. Jayden, this is the lady you used to go on adventures with?”
Jayden gritted his teeth. “One adventure that nearly ended with us all dead.”
“Those boulders missed us by ten feet.” Suzy frowned and corrected, “Eight feet. Maybe six. The important thing is they missed us and we got the money, and there were no witnesses. That’s something you never understood the importance of, dear, making sure no one sees you do naughty things.”
Dana asked, “Unidentified female accomplice?”
Suzy ran back to her wagon and took a stack of papers off the driver’s seat. She sorted through them, throwing most on the ground, until she held up a wanted poster with Jayden’s face on it. “Sorcerer Lord Jayden: wanted for treason, destruction of royal property, theft, assault against royal officials and other crimes. Bounty 18,000 silver pieces, dead or alive, preferably dead. Known to travel with an unknown female accomplice armed with a magic sword. Is that it? Ooh, let me see it!”
The woman pulled Dana’s sword from her sheath and gave it an experimental swing in the air before stabbing a tree with it. The sword sank through the wood like it was warm butter and cut the tree down at chest level. Jayden grabbed Suzy’s hands and pried her fingers open to remove the sword.
Suzy pressed a finger against Jayden’s chest. “I worked with you. I didn’t get a sword.”
“The sword was made long after we’d parted company.” Jayden returned the sword to Dana before addressing Suzy. “I don’t recall you needing help spreading destruction.”
“It’s the thought that counts. You’re supposed to give gifts to pretty ladies.”
“Dana has been a great help to me, and never once nearly gotten me killed.”
Suzy rolled her eyes. “You just won’t let that go.”
Jayden turned his attention to Dana. “I’m going to require an explanation why you did this to me.”
“He,” Dana began, and realized the goblin had left. “I asked a goblin to find us a way inside Armorston. He said he knew someone who could help and brought Suzy.”
“So you didn’t know the goblin was referring to Lockheart,” Jayden said. That seemed to calm him down. “Did the goblin say how this miracle was to take place?”
Suzy wrapped an arm around Jayden’s waist. “You see that lovely wagon over there? I had it specially built by a master carpenter. I told him I needed to transport goods I didn’t want people to find. You know how nosy people can be. Tax collectors, sheriffs, soldiers, public health officials, they just can’t mind their own business.”
Jayden eyed the wagon nervously. “You built secret compartments into the wagon.”
“Sweetie, I can hide three grown men in there, and that’s without trying to squeeze them in. Yub and I are light on cargo at the moment, leaving even more space.”
A blue goblin wearing a white lab coat and blue pants climbed on top of the wagon and waved. Jayden pointed at the goblin and asked, “Yub, I presume?”
“Isn’t he a doll? We met when I was gathering ingredients for bombs.” Suzy pulled in close and whispered into Jayden’s ear, “I just learned goblins love alchemy. There are oodles of them in the Kingdom of the Goblins, blowing things up left and right. Yub wandered off one day to set up his own lab. He was looking for raw materials when we met. The poor dear wasn’t having much luck and asked if he could tag along with me. How could I saw no to a face like that?”
Jayden stared at the grinning goblin. “I am not this desperate.”
“A goblin came to me and said the high and mighty sorcerer lord needs me, which was a serious ego boost,” Suzy gushed. “Naturally I’d love to help, except he was vague on what you wanted. It’s getting late, so let’s go somewhere nice and cozy to talk about what I can do for you, and what I’m getting in return.”
Suzy wrapped her other arm around Dana. “And you have been spending way more time with Jayden than I have, so I’m going to pick your brain for all the dirt on him I can get. Does he snore? He looks like he snores.”
Dana laughed and led Suzy into the inn. Jayden followed, grumbling with every step. Once inside they went into a private room with gaming tables. Suzy and Yub sat down across from Jayden.
“Let me guess, the job is political,” she began. “It’s always political with you. The king did this, the queen did that, that’s all you talk about. Did you ever wonder how much money you could make if you’d just take the best paying jobs?”
“Money is a tool, not a goal,” he said. He grumbled more before admitting, “It’s political. Soldiers brought ten armored wagons into Armotston. I want to know what’s in them, and either steal or destroy it.”
“Innkeeper, drinks, strong ones!” Suzy shouted. “I saw those wagons. There’s no way you could steal ten wagons worth of goods, and burning them is risky when the warehouse they’re stored in is next to the city granaries. If a fire spreads a hundred thousand people go hungry, men women, children, elderly.”
Gaston brought a mug and set it in front of Suzy. She gave him a pitying look and asked, “One? I’ll tell you when to stop bringing them. Jayden, this sounds like it’s going to fail spectacularly, so I want payment up front. Two hundred gold pieces and two dates.”
“I’ll double the gold, but nothing more,” Jayden countered.
Suzy smiled. “Fine, four hundred and two dates.”
Jayden’s face turned red. “No dates!”
“We haven’t got four hundred gold coins, or even two hundred,” Dana said.
“We’ll get it,” Jayden said. “I understand there’s a new bank in town.”
Suzy burst out giggling. “You’re so much fun to play with. If your wallet is a little light, which it wouldn’t be if you took better paying jobs, we can make a deal.”
Jayden’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”
“The king of Brandish is an itsy bit bothered about that invasion attempt on Kaleoth. He heard the justifications and didn’t buy it. He also noticed a lot more soldiers on his border. The clever boy hired me to close one of the passes leading into his kingdom and make it look like a landslide.”
Suzy drank her mug in one long pull. “He commissioned me to build a big bomb, place it at a narrow rocky point in the pass, and boom, no more pass. But, and he was really firm on this, no pay until he sees the explosion, and he wants it done before spring.”
Jayden folded his arms across his chest. “I fail to see how this requires help.”
“I’m getting there. Yub has plans for a bomb big enough to do the job, but it takes a lot of materials that are hard to come by. There’s no way I can find enough ingredients by foraging in the wilderness to do the job in time, especially during winter. Buying what I need isn’t happening with the prospect of a long, bloody, pointless war driving up prices. What I can do, with a little help, is steal it.”
Suzy leaned over the table. “It’s even political. I came to Armorston because an alchemist lives here, rich guy, takes contracts from the king and queen, the sort of person you hate. I visited, flirted with him, talked shop for a couple hours, and when he was busy getting us drinks I checked his stock.”
Dana waved her hands. “Wait a minute. How did you get past their security?”
The innkeeper returned with a bottle and tried to fill Suzy’s mug. She took the bottle from him and drank straight from it. “I don’t have a price on my head. I did some legitimate work over the years, burning tree stumps, blowing up monsters. It gave me a good reputation. Plus, alchemists don’t have the bad press sorcerer lords do. I just had to buy a pass for the month that lets me go everywhere except army and government buildings.”
“I presume this alchemist has the supplies you need,” Jayden said.
Suzy set down her mug and bottle. Her voice was filled with excitement as she leaned closer to Jayden. “He’s got everything and more. Dried powdered phoenix blossoms, shed dragon scales, harpy feathers, etherium. Etherium!”
Suzy reached across the table and grabbed Jayden by the collar of his coat. Her face inches from his, she asked, “Do you know how hard it is to get etherium? Do you have any idea what the black market price is for even one ounce? He’s got five ounces, Jayden! The king and queen have to be supplying him, or paying him enough to buy the best!”
Her voice fell to a whisper. “I want it all. I get you into the city, you help me clean him out, and then we look at your wagons. My part won’t take thirty minutes.”
Jayden looked at Suzy with the same apprehension usually reserved for poisonous snakes. He gently pushed her back into her chair. “When can we do it?”
“Tomorrow night. I don’t want to risk the alchemist using up any of those goodies before we can steal them. Plus, my pass is only good for another three days. After that I either have to apply for permanent residency or leave. We both win, Jayden. You get to burn stuff, or maybe steal it. That always makes you happy. I get a fortune in alchemy ingredients and get to work with you again.”
“Deal.” Jayden reached across the table and shook Suzy’s hand.
“You won’t regret this,” Suzy promised. “Well, you might. You’re so picky about mortal danger and collateral damage. I have to see to my wagon and horses.”
Once Suzy left the inn, Jayden turned to Dana. “I know you were trying to help when you arranged this meeting, but you don’t realize the threat she poses.”
“Come on, Jayden, she survived this long, so she must be good at her job.” He didn’t look convinced, so she added, “You’ve learned new spells since we met. I’ll bet Suzy has learned new tricks and is more powerful than she was the last time you two met.”
Jayden headed for his room. “Which means all of Armorston is now in danger.”
“How about Buttercup?” Dana Illwind asked Jayden. She saw his frown through his scarf, hat and thick coat with upturned collar. Both Dana and Jayden were dressed for the weather with extra layers of warm cotton clothes. Dana wore leggings and a coat over her usual outfit, and she carried a backpack full of food and camping supplies. “What’s wrong with Buttercup?”
“If you’re going to name a sword, it’s typical to give it a more fearsome title, such as Sworn Doom, a famous elven blade that has a history going back twelve centuries. The owner is attempting to intimidate enemies with his, or in this case her, terrifying weapon. Buttercup is not a name to inspire dread.”
Dana stopped marching along the snowy road and put her hands on her hips. “I happen to like Buttercup. My first cat was named Buttercup, and I loved her very much. And I think I should have the last say over the name of my sword.”
“Undoubtedly so, but your choice could result in insults at your expense that I would feel compelled to redress with overwhelming force.”
“Isn’t that your response to most of life’s problems?”
Jayden shrugged. “It’s worked well so far. Dana, named weapons are rare and much sought after. Naming your weapon may increase its value in the eyes of strangers, perhaps enough for them to attempt to steal it, so consider this matter carefully.”
“Oh.” Dana resumed walking. It was a long way to their destination, and she didn’t want to spend another night camping in the snow. Winter had taken a firm hold, with deep snow and bone chilling cold, making travel by foot difficult and dangerous. The road they were on was better traveled than most, and foot and horse traffic had trampled the snow down. Still, it was rough going even on a sunny afternoon like this.
“Traditionally sword names include references to the original owner, which we’re trying to conceal so the authorities don’t go after your family,” Jayden continued. “Other names refer to a famous battle, or enemy defeated with the weapon. That might be a worthy route since you used it to destroy Wall Wolf, an enemy few would dare attack.”
Dana looked at the sheathed short sword that hung from her belt. “Wolf Killer, Golem Killer, Iron Killer…none of those really work for me.”
“This doesn’t require an immediate decision,” Jayden counseled. “Take your time until you come up with a name that suits you, or no name at all. Until then we have much to occupy our attention.”
“Armored wagons,” she said. “I’d never seen one in my life, and the people in the last village said a caravan of ten went down this road.”
Dana and Jayden had spent the last week traveling toward the center of the kingdom. Jayden had hoped to ambush supply wagons heading for Edgeland, and thus starve out the army occupying the city, but days of searching had turned up no targets.
Instead strangers and passersby reported seeing wagons heading for the next major city, a metropolis of a hundred thousand people. These wagons had covered tops and armor plate on their sides, and oxen pulling them wore yet more armor. Ten soldiers accompanied each wagon, and four archers rode on top. Ten knights on horseback had escorted this strange caravan, guiding their absurdly well-defended charges from town to manor to city, never stopping on the road for the night.
“What could the king and queen be transporting that needs so much protection?” Dana asked.
“The last time we intercepted wagons, they carried a fortune in armor,” Jayden said as he trudged through the snow. “If these wagons warrant such protection they surely carry cargo of great value. What it could be, though, baffles me. Gold and jewels are compact and easily concealed, not requiring so many wagons. Trained monsters would require specialized transports, not wagons sealed as tight as a drum. It could be silks or furs, but even then a guard of a hundred fifty men is extreme.”
“Trade has been shut down,” Dana pointed out. “Travel to Kaleoth ended even before the king and queen tried to invade. Going anywhere is hard in winter, so not much could be coming from Zentrix or Brandish.”
Jayden pointed at deep wagon ruts in the road. “Yet something is coming through, a treasure of such value that the king and queen are willing to spend a ridiculous amount guarding it, and go through the difficulty of traveling during winter. I’ve been looking for a worthwhile target ever since we returned from Kaleoth. I daresay this is it.”
Dana and Jayden reached the top of a snowy hill and looked down on the walled city in the distance. Jayden pointed at it and said, “Welcome the city of Armorston, weapons manufacturing center of the kingdom. If a man tries to kill you, chances are the sword, spear, ax or bow was made here.”
“At least we know who to complain to,” Dana said sarcastically.
Jayden smiled at her. “Jesting aside, I visited here before and saw how dangerous it is. Soldiers have the best armor and weapons. The second risk, and the bigger of the two, is that the people of Armorston are loyal. The king and queen recognize the value of this city and treat its residents well, with lower taxes, no conscription of men into the army and no hostages taken from leading citizens to ensure their obedience. These men and women serve the king and queen by choice, and they will attack any who threaten the crown.”
“And a certain someone has wanted posters with his picture on them across the kingdom. What are you worth dead this time?”
“The last poster listed a reward of fifteen thousand silver pieces on my head, but it was weeks old. The price may have gone up since then.”
Dana peered at the distant city. “How do we get in?”
Jayden pointed at the city gate. “I see no easy path. Soldiers search pedestrians and wagons as they enter. The walls are too tall and smooth to climb. Archers in watchtowers would make short work of flying threats. Digging under the wall would be difficult and time consuming.”
“We could wait for the wagons to come out.”
“That could take weeks or months, if it ever happens.” Jayden shook his head. “The armored wagons aren’t far ahead of us and may not have even been unloaded. If we can get inside Armorston, we can investigate the cargo and then steal or destroy it.”
“I could go in alone,” Dana offered. “Look around, see what’s—”
“No,” he said firmly.
Pouting, she said, “I stabbed Wall Wolf through the eye and killed it. I think that proves I can handle myself.”
“Dana, you are fond of pointing out my mortality, and rightly so. Too often I let anger dictate my actions and put my life in danger. You are offering to go into a city of a hundred thousand people that hate me and love the king and queen.”
“There aren’t wanted posters with my face,” she pressed.
“You have a very identifiable magic blade. Enemy soldiers saw you use it when we brought down the bridge over Racehorse River and when we destroyed Wall Wolf. Soldiers will be looking for it. Even if you go unarmed, you are in great danger from men paid to kill anyone who might be a threat. You are not going into Armorston alone.”
Dana walked in front of Jayden. “Then how are we going in together?”
“I’ll tell you once I figure it out.”
Armorston had outgrown its walls, probably long ago judging by the huge number of buildings clustered around it. There were small villages farther out that offered minor services, including restaurants, inns, stables and teamsters. So many people were coming and going that two strangers drew no attention.
“We’re going to explore the outer sections of the city,” Jayden told her. “There may be ways inside such as sewer networks. We’re both wearing enough winter clothes to make it hard to identify us. Act naturally and don’t draw attention to yourself.”
Armorston was a prosperous city, far richer than any Dana had visited. Men and women wore good quality clothes made of leather, wool, furs or cotton. They were healthy and well fed, and most were in good cheer.
“It’s a good thing the king and queen finally brought those dogs in Kaleoth to heel,” a man declared. He was standing on a street corner and addressing a sizeable crowd. “Smugglers have been using that cesspit as their home base for years, and they’ve been recruiting riffraff from across our kingdom to swell their numbers.”
“That’s disgusting,” Dana whispered to Jayden.
“It’s business,” he replied softly. “The man is a professional agitator, paid to spread propaganda. He also judges how well or poorly his message is received, and points out to the authorities anyone who argues with him.”
“How can you be sure?”
“The king and queen saw us through the civil war, and they’ll see us through this, too,” the man continued. “Kaleoth’s corpse king won’t know what hit him!”
“I’ve met his kind before,” Jayden explained. “There are two armed men at the back of the crowd to guard the agitator. A nod from him can bring them down like lightning on anyone whose words betrays a lack of loyalty. If we stay in Armorston long enough we’ll see him performing on other street corners.”
Dana watched the crowd and found it depressingly eager. Men smiled and nodded at the agitator’s words. More people gathered to listen to him.
“How can they fall for this?” she asked.
“I’m sure Armorston’s residents swear by this man’s loyalty and friendship. He’ll buy them drinks, commiserate with them when they suffer, offer minor aid when he can, a friend to all. He’ll have a reputation for being outspoken and connections to officials who give him inside information. Make no mistake, he is an expert at measuring men’s opinions and changing them.”
Dana shivered. “Lies for sale.”
“Blacksmiths are doing record business, and iron miners and charcoal burners do just as well,” the agitator told the crowd. “The army needs clothes, food and draft animals, fairly paid for from those who have. Good times are around the corner.”
The agitator spent time answering questions before moving on. Once he was gone, Jayden led Dana through the city. They found more signs of royal control, including wanted posters, recruitment brochures for the army, and flyers urging residents to inform on their neighbors if they see suspicious activity. Soldiers guarded prosperous businesses, but Dana couldn’t guess who they were protecting them from.
Hours of searching brought Dana and Jayden back to the point where they’d entered the outskirts of Armorston. Jayden led her to an inn outside city limits. He stayed only long enough to buy food before heading to an isolated grove of fruit trees bare of leaves.
“I have to credit the king and queen for their thoroughness,” he said as they ate. “Sewers are too small to crawl through and sealed with iron grates. There is a space fifteen feet wide between the city wall and the nearest building. I heard hounds inside the city walls in case a man enters unnoticed. This is going to be tricky.”
“We need somewhere to stay. If we camp outdoors so close to a city people are going to ask why, but if we stay indoors the owner is going to report us to the army.”
“Not necessarily.” Jayden pointed to a distant inn on a lonely road. “I came here last winter and made the acquaintance of the man who owns that establishment. He will put us up for the night without telling anyone.”
“He could have left or been arrested since then.”
“The fact that the inn still stands is proof he owns it. If someone had tried to arrest him he would have burned the inn down to cover his escape. If he’d left he would have burned it down for insurance money.”
Dana frowned. “Am I going to regret meeting him?”
“Yes.”
Jayden led her into the inn, where a sniveling weasel of a man stood behind a bar. No one else was present, not surprising given the inn’s poor condition. The man choked on a drink when he saw Jayden remove his hat and scarf.
“Gaston, so good to see you still breathing,” Jayden said as he marched up to the man. “You clearly need business, and my friend and I need rooms.”
“W-what madness could have made you come back here?” Gaston sputtered. “The city bank you burned down has only just been rebuilt! Soldiers practice stabbing straw dummies with your face painted on them.”
“That’s been going on for years. Dana, meet Gaston. He and I have a good working relationship. Namely, I didn’t kill him when I really should have, and in return he does exactly what I tell him to do. How’s your wife, Gaston?”
“Which one?” Gatson asked.
Dana covered her face with her hand. “Why do I keep meeting people like this?”
“It’s a puzzle,” Jayden said. He went through his pockets until he came up with two gold coins and tossed them to Gaston. “I pay for the help I receive. We require two rooms with locks, and your selective ignorance if soldiers ask about us.”
Gaston slipped the coins into a slot on the wall. “Business is down regardless of what the king says. You’ve got the place to yourself. Have the good manners to keep whatever trouble you cause far from my door.”
Jayden sat down at the bar across from Gaston. “Naturally. Armored wagons have come into Armorston. What have you heard about them?”
Gaston shrugged. “Everyone has seen them, no one knows what’s in them. Soldiers guarding them won’t let anyone within ten feet. Businessmen swear the wagons aren’t carrying goods for them.”
“I need a way inside the city,” Jayden said.
“Rooms I can give you,” Gaston replied. “If you want miracles, God is picky about who he hands those out to.”
Dana put a hand on a chair and pulled it away quickly. “When was the last time you cleaned this place?”
Gaston pointed a dirty mug at her. “That’s not my fault. Goblins snuck in last night and brushed grease on the furniture. I told one joke about their king, this Bradshaw fellow. One joke!”
“One was enough,” a squeaky voice outside the inn called out.
Dana perked up at the sound. She’d had reasonably good luck dealing with goblins, and goblins could break into anything when they felt like it. She ran for the door, telling Jayden, “Wait here.”
Outside she found a lone goblin digging through a frozen pile of kitchen scraps next to a window. It looked like Gaston threw his garbage out the nearest window, no surprise given his character, and goblins snapped it up. The goblin was only two feet tall, and so covered in rags that only his wide face showed. Dana walked up to the goblin and smiled. “Hi there, my name’s—”
“I know who you are,” the goblin interrupted. “Goblins don’t have many friends. We remember the ones we’ve got.”
“May I ask a favor?” The goblin shrugged in response, but he didn’t leave or insult her. “My friend and I are looking for armored wagons that went into Armorston. Do you know anything about them?”
“We saw them, but we don’t know what’s in them. Soldiers drove the wagons straight into a warehouse and closed the door before unloading them. There were more armored wagons earlier this month. No idea what they carried, and we can’t get near the warehouse.”
“We’d like to look at them, but we can’t get inside the city walls. Can you help us?”
The goblin frowned as if in deep concentration. “We’ve dug tunnels under the wall, but none big enough for you to fit through. I know a human woman who might help, crazy as a goblin and good for a laugh. Give me a few hours and I’ll get you a yes or no.”
Dana bent down and kissed the goblin on the forehead. “Thank you.”
“Good gravy, woman, are you insane?” the goblin sputtered. “You don’t know where I’ve been!”
The goblin headed out, muttering to himself about crazy girls as he slipped between buildings. Dana headed back to the inn and saw Jayden waiting for her by the door with an upraised eyebrow.
“I have rarely seen goblins behave, and never without a substantial bribe. How is it you are on such good terms with a goblin you’d never met before tonight?”
“You know how I keep your secret?” she asked. When Jayden nodded, she said, “It’s not the only one I’m keeping.”
When she didn’t say any more, Jayden pointed at her. “You can’t end a conversation like that.”
Dana headed into the inn without looking back. “Looks like I just did. Innkeeper, do you have any cheese?”
It took a bit of haggling, but Dana was soon the proud owner of a wedge of cheddar. She stayed outside regardless of the cold, keeping clear of other people while she waited for the goblin to return. There was always a chance he wouldn’t come back, but she’d had good luck dealing with goblins ever since she’d kept quiet about their phony ghost in Fish Bait City. Jayden stayed with her, looking curious but not asking for details.
It was dark when the goblin returned with a wagon pulled by two horses following him. He was already smiling ear to ear before he saw the cheese, and he raced to her side at the sight of it. Dana handed over the cheese and the goblin wolfed it down.
Once the goblin finished eating, he said, “You got me a gift before you knew if I’d brought her.”
“I owed you for looking, whether you succeeded or not.” It warmed her heart to see the goblin smile. Dana rubbed her hands together and asked, “So, who is the mystery woman?”
Jayden tensed. “Woman? Oh no.”
“Jayden!” A young woman jumped off the wagon and raced to him, covering the last few feet between them with an impressive leap that ended with her wrapping her arms around him. Jayden’s face turned white, and his eyes opened wide in terror. He tried and failed to break free from the stranger’s embrace.
“Get her off!”
“That’s her,” the goblin said proudly. “She can get you in the city.”
Jayden kept trying to pry the woman off him. “Get. Her. Off. Now.”
The woman let go, but took Jayden by the hands before he could back away. “Jayden, it’s been too long. I love what you’ve done with your hair. It’s got a ‘dangerous wild man’ feel to it. Ooh, is that a scar? Naughty boy, what have you been up to?”
“Dana, make it stop.”
Dana took the woman by the arm and turned her away from Jayden. The woman was in her twenties, a beauty with an hourglass figure. Her blond hair was tied back in a ponytail that reached to her narrow waist. Her blue eyes sparkled like sapphires. The woman wore a gorgeous silk dress dyed yellow and green, and an emerald green silk coat over that. Her black boots went up to her knees and had blue laces.
“Oh my God, you must be unidentified female accomplice!” the woman squealed. She jumped up and down before hugging Dana. “I’ve wanted to meet you for weeks!”
“Hi,” Dana managed. “Who are you?”
“I keep forgetting how reserved people are around here.” The woman curtsied and bowed her head. “Suzy Lockheart, alchemist, adventurer and troublemaker.”
Dana put a hand over her mouth and tried to keep from laughing. “This is too good. Jayden, this is the lady you used to go on adventures with?”
Jayden gritted his teeth. “One adventure that nearly ended with us all dead.”
“Those boulders missed us by ten feet.” Suzy frowned and corrected, “Eight feet. Maybe six. The important thing is they missed us and we got the money, and there were no witnesses. That’s something you never understood the importance of, dear, making sure no one sees you do naughty things.”
Dana asked, “Unidentified female accomplice?”
Suzy ran back to her wagon and took a stack of papers off the driver’s seat. She sorted through them, throwing most on the ground, until she held up a wanted poster with Jayden’s face on it. “Sorcerer Lord Jayden: wanted for treason, destruction of royal property, theft, assault against royal officials and other crimes. Bounty 18,000 silver pieces, dead or alive, preferably dead. Known to travel with an unknown female accomplice armed with a magic sword. Is that it? Ooh, let me see it!”
The woman pulled Dana’s sword from her sheath and gave it an experimental swing in the air before stabbing a tree with it. The sword sank through the wood like it was warm butter and cut the tree down at chest level. Jayden grabbed Suzy’s hands and pried her fingers open to remove the sword.
Suzy pressed a finger against Jayden’s chest. “I worked with you. I didn’t get a sword.”
“The sword was made long after we’d parted company.” Jayden returned the sword to Dana before addressing Suzy. “I don’t recall you needing help spreading destruction.”
“It’s the thought that counts. You’re supposed to give gifts to pretty ladies.”
“Dana has been a great help to me, and never once nearly gotten me killed.”
Suzy rolled her eyes. “You just won’t let that go.”
Jayden turned his attention to Dana. “I’m going to require an explanation why you did this to me.”
“He,” Dana began, and realized the goblin had left. “I asked a goblin to find us a way inside Armorston. He said he knew someone who could help and brought Suzy.”
“So you didn’t know the goblin was referring to Lockheart,” Jayden said. That seemed to calm him down. “Did the goblin say how this miracle was to take place?”
Suzy wrapped an arm around Jayden’s waist. “You see that lovely wagon over there? I had it specially built by a master carpenter. I told him I needed to transport goods I didn’t want people to find. You know how nosy people can be. Tax collectors, sheriffs, soldiers, public health officials, they just can’t mind their own business.”
Jayden eyed the wagon nervously. “You built secret compartments into the wagon.”
“Sweetie, I can hide three grown men in there, and that’s without trying to squeeze them in. Yub and I are light on cargo at the moment, leaving even more space.”
A blue goblin wearing a white lab coat and blue pants climbed on top of the wagon and waved. Jayden pointed at the goblin and asked, “Yub, I presume?”
“Isn’t he a doll? We met when I was gathering ingredients for bombs.” Suzy pulled in close and whispered into Jayden’s ear, “I just learned goblins love alchemy. There are oodles of them in the Kingdom of the Goblins, blowing things up left and right. Yub wandered off one day to set up his own lab. He was looking for raw materials when we met. The poor dear wasn’t having much luck and asked if he could tag along with me. How could I saw no to a face like that?”
Jayden stared at the grinning goblin. “I am not this desperate.”
“A goblin came to me and said the high and mighty sorcerer lord needs me, which was a serious ego boost,” Suzy gushed. “Naturally I’d love to help, except he was vague on what you wanted. It’s getting late, so let’s go somewhere nice and cozy to talk about what I can do for you, and what I’m getting in return.”
Suzy wrapped her other arm around Dana. “And you have been spending way more time with Jayden than I have, so I’m going to pick your brain for all the dirt on him I can get. Does he snore? He looks like he snores.”
Dana laughed and led Suzy into the inn. Jayden followed, grumbling with every step. Once inside they went into a private room with gaming tables. Suzy and Yub sat down across from Jayden.
“Let me guess, the job is political,” she began. “It’s always political with you. The king did this, the queen did that, that’s all you talk about. Did you ever wonder how much money you could make if you’d just take the best paying jobs?”
“Money is a tool, not a goal,” he said. He grumbled more before admitting, “It’s political. Soldiers brought ten armored wagons into Armotston. I want to know what’s in them, and either steal or destroy it.”
“Innkeeper, drinks, strong ones!” Suzy shouted. “I saw those wagons. There’s no way you could steal ten wagons worth of goods, and burning them is risky when the warehouse they’re stored in is next to the city granaries. If a fire spreads a hundred thousand people go hungry, men women, children, elderly.”
Gaston brought a mug and set it in front of Suzy. She gave him a pitying look and asked, “One? I’ll tell you when to stop bringing them. Jayden, this sounds like it’s going to fail spectacularly, so I want payment up front. Two hundred gold pieces and two dates.”
“I’ll double the gold, but nothing more,” Jayden countered.
Suzy smiled. “Fine, four hundred and two dates.”
Jayden’s face turned red. “No dates!”
“We haven’t got four hundred gold coins, or even two hundred,” Dana said.
“We’ll get it,” Jayden said. “I understand there’s a new bank in town.”
Suzy burst out giggling. “You’re so much fun to play with. If your wallet is a little light, which it wouldn’t be if you took better paying jobs, we can make a deal.”
Jayden’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”
“The king of Brandish is an itsy bit bothered about that invasion attempt on Kaleoth. He heard the justifications and didn’t buy it. He also noticed a lot more soldiers on his border. The clever boy hired me to close one of the passes leading into his kingdom and make it look like a landslide.”
Suzy drank her mug in one long pull. “He commissioned me to build a big bomb, place it at a narrow rocky point in the pass, and boom, no more pass. But, and he was really firm on this, no pay until he sees the explosion, and he wants it done before spring.”
Jayden folded his arms across his chest. “I fail to see how this requires help.”
“I’m getting there. Yub has plans for a bomb big enough to do the job, but it takes a lot of materials that are hard to come by. There’s no way I can find enough ingredients by foraging in the wilderness to do the job in time, especially during winter. Buying what I need isn’t happening with the prospect of a long, bloody, pointless war driving up prices. What I can do, with a little help, is steal it.”
Suzy leaned over the table. “It’s even political. I came to Armorston because an alchemist lives here, rich guy, takes contracts from the king and queen, the sort of person you hate. I visited, flirted with him, talked shop for a couple hours, and when he was busy getting us drinks I checked his stock.”
Dana waved her hands. “Wait a minute. How did you get past their security?”
The innkeeper returned with a bottle and tried to fill Suzy’s mug. She took the bottle from him and drank straight from it. “I don’t have a price on my head. I did some legitimate work over the years, burning tree stumps, blowing up monsters. It gave me a good reputation. Plus, alchemists don’t have the bad press sorcerer lords do. I just had to buy a pass for the month that lets me go everywhere except army and government buildings.”
“I presume this alchemist has the supplies you need,” Jayden said.
Suzy set down her mug and bottle. Her voice was filled with excitement as she leaned closer to Jayden. “He’s got everything and more. Dried powdered phoenix blossoms, shed dragon scales, harpy feathers, etherium. Etherium!”
Suzy reached across the table and grabbed Jayden by the collar of his coat. Her face inches from his, she asked, “Do you know how hard it is to get etherium? Do you have any idea what the black market price is for even one ounce? He’s got five ounces, Jayden! The king and queen have to be supplying him, or paying him enough to buy the best!”
Her voice fell to a whisper. “I want it all. I get you into the city, you help me clean him out, and then we look at your wagons. My part won’t take thirty minutes.”
Jayden looked at Suzy with the same apprehension usually reserved for poisonous snakes. He gently pushed her back into her chair. “When can we do it?”
“Tomorrow night. I don’t want to risk the alchemist using up any of those goodies before we can steal them. Plus, my pass is only good for another three days. After that I either have to apply for permanent residency or leave. We both win, Jayden. You get to burn stuff, or maybe steal it. That always makes you happy. I get a fortune in alchemy ingredients and get to work with you again.”
“Deal.” Jayden reached across the table and shook Suzy’s hand.
“You won’t regret this,” Suzy promised. “Well, you might. You’re so picky about mortal danger and collateral damage. I have to see to my wagon and horses.”
Once Suzy left the inn, Jayden turned to Dana. “I know you were trying to help when you arranged this meeting, but you don’t realize the threat she poses.”
“Come on, Jayden, she survived this long, so she must be good at her job.” He didn’t look convinced, so she added, “You’ve learned new spells since we met. I’ll bet Suzy has learned new tricks and is more powerful than she was the last time you two met.”
Jayden headed for his room. “Which means all of Armorston is now in danger.”
Doubtful Allies part 2
This is the conclusion to Doubtful Allies:
Jayden’s reunion with Suzy Lockheart clearly wasn’t a success, but at least it had happened without bloodshed, so Dana considered it a win. She headed for her own room, wondering if this meeting might be good for Jayden. He might not like Suzy, but he made it sound like the woman was dangerous. Maybe she might join them. Many of Dana and Jayden’s fights would have gone better with a powerful friend at their side.
Dana was settling for the night when the door opened and Suzy came in. Dana stared at the woman and said, “You could have knocked first.”
“I didn’t leave home, lose my dowry and get disowned so I could be polite.” Suzy sat on the edge of Dana’s bed and waved her hand north. “Zentrix society is all about not making waves. Be polite, follow the rules, bow and grovel to your betters, and once they’re gone let the verbal venom flow. Hypocrisy, thy name is Zentrix.”
Curious, Dana said, “I went there once. Everyone was nice.”
“You didn’t stay long enough. Grow up there and you see people at their worst. I got out before my parents could marry me off to a raging bigot with excellent breeding. Two years apprenticed to an alchemist against my parent’s wishes got me where I am today, not mindless obedience.”
Suzy edged closer. “Enough about me, let’s talk about you. I’ve had this burning question ever since I heard Jayden was traveling with a girl.”
“What is it?”
“I liked Jayden when we had our earlier adventure together. Really liked him. The weird part is he didn’t feel the same. I did everything except tie him up, and I considered it. Then I hear he’s got a girl who’s been with him for months.”
Suzy took Dana’s hands. “I’m not trying to steal him from you. He’s your chew toy, but I need to know what you did that I didn’t. What worked in the end?”
Dana’s heart raced. She felt herself blush. “I, um, you must have heard wrong. We don’t have that kind of relationship. I mean, I like him, but nothing happened.”
Suzy stared at Dana for a moment. The woman’s eye twitched. She stood up and said, “Would you excuse me for a moment.”
Suzy marched to Jayden’s room and kicked the door in. Jayden looked up from his bed where he’d been studying his spell tablets. “Nothing happened? You’ve been with the girl for months and nothing happened! What the crilviz, Jayden!”
“Crilviz?” Dana asked.
“A gnome word, very vulgar,” Jayden explained. “Ms. Lockheart, my love life, or lack thereof, is no business of yours.”
“Don’t give me that!” Suzy yelled. “I know you like girls. I’ve heard the stories.”
Dana got up from her bed. “What stories?”
“Fine, you think I nearly killed you, even if I didn’t, but what about her?” Suzy demanded. “What crime did she commit to spend the rest of her life in the friend zone?”
“Do you mind?” Gaston yelled from the inn’s common room. “If I had customers you’d be driving them off!”
“Shut it!” Suzy yelled back. She turned her attention back to Jayden. “Well?”
Jayden set his spell tablet aside. “Dana is my friend. I have few others, and none I trust like her. She cares for my wellbeing more than I do. I don’t wish to lose her friendship. To try to turn our relationship into something it isn’t, and shouldn’t be, would be wrong. Think ill of me if you will, but I cherish what Dana and I have too much to risk losing it.
“What you seek from me is something I can’t give when there is no depth to the feelings you have for me. When we first met you were rebelling against your strict upbringing, and you’re still doing so today. You seek constant excitement and new experiences, not a bad desire, but I’m nothing more than a diversion from your boredom. I seek more than that, and if you examine your feelings you’ll agree it’s more than you’re willing to give. If I’ve misjudged you, say so.”
When Suzy didn’t reply, he added, “And you don’t care about the people of this kingdom.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” she asked in bewilderment.
“It must sound odd given my actions, but I love the people of this land. I want to end this madness and return them to the peace and prosperity they once enjoyed. They don’t matter to you, nor do the people of your homeland, or the residents of Brandish that you’re in the process of saving from invasion. You prize your independence and care for a select few who have earned your respect. This is a job to you, nothing more, and to me it’s far more important than gold.”
Jayden got up and walked over to Suzy. He put his hands on her shoulders. “You must feel insulted by what I’ve said, but you did ask. You deserved an honest answer, no hypocrisy, no hidden feelings. I harbor no ill will if you wish to cancel our arrangement. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m tired from a long day, so get out of my room and let me get some sleep.”
Jayden led her from his room, shut the door and locked it. Suzy stood in the hallway for a moment before she turned to Dana and asked, “What just happened?”
* * * * *
Dana met Jayden the following morning in the inn’s common room. Gaston served them what might have been food if he’d cooked it right. Dana managed to keep it down with difficulty.
“Last night you gave Suzy a good reason to turn us over to the authorities for the bounty money, or just blow us both up while we slept,” she told him.
Jayden ate his food despite its poor quality. “Any other answer would have made the situation worse. If I had promised her what I had no intention of giving, she would have been even angrier. If I had returned her affections it would have made her believe we had a future together, and with such differing goals it wouldn’t work.”
Gaston walked up to their table and set down a bottle of wine. “The food will go down better with this.”
“And you wonder why you don’t have more customers,” Dana said.
“You try cooking good meals when you can’t get spices,” Gaston said as he left them. “I used to get good supplies from Fish Bait City.”
Jayden poured himself a cup of wine and tasted it. “Passable. In regards to Suzy informing on us, she despises authority figures of any kind. The price on my head is staggering, but claiming it would require her working for men she sees as no different from the ones in her homeland. Her dislike of royalty is so great that I’m surprised she accepted a job from the king of Brandish.”
“He wined me, dined me, and didn’t tax me,” Suzy said as she came into the common room. “I put up with a lot when people are nice to me.”
“I doubt I’ve ever been nice,” Jayden replied as he handed her the bottle.
“You have,” she told him, and took a swig of wine before starting her meal. “Jayden, I won’t pretend I understood half of what you said last night, but making you like someone you don’t is something my parents would do. We’re working together and that’s that. And I’ve never seen you lie to anyone or treat rich people better than poor ones, so you’re owed respect.”
Suzy sat down across from him at the table and fixed him with a stern look. “But tell me this, what happens if you win and the king and queen get killed, imprisoned, exiled, eaten by aardvarks or whatever? Someone’s got to be in charge when they’re gone.”
“I have no desire for the throne,” he told her.
She raised the bottle in a toast. “I’ll drink to that. Being in charge is no different than being in jail. You’re at the mercy of the job, day and night doing what has to be done and never what you want to do. But if you don’t take it someone else will. Men will kill to get the crown, and do worse to anyone they rule. We’re talking a repeat of the civil war your people had. If you get what you want you’ll make things a whole lot worse for everyone living here.”
Dana frowned. “You think people would accept a sorcerer lord as their king?”
“Of course not, that’s my point,” Suzy replied. “Turn down the job and it’s anarchy. Take the job and you’ve got rebels, coups by the army, and assassinations attempts on the hour every hour.”
Jayden sipped his drink before answering. “I never imagined my life would end happily ever after. What you predict may well come to pass. Your worst-case scenario has one advantage over doing nothing, namely only one kingdom would suffer, not four. It is a questionable improvement, I admit, but it limits the damage.”
“You’re smart enough to want more than that,” she told him.
“What I want, for now, is to see the contents of those armored wagons,” he replied. “How soon can to make that happen?”
Suzy set down the bottle. “Tonight. We need to get inside Armorston before the city gates close at sunset. It’s better if we go just before noon. There’s more traffic to cover our entrance, and the guard changes at noon so those men will be tired and hungry after a long shift. They’ll be more likely to let us pass without looking too closely.”
“I want see this hiding place,” Dana told her.
“Easy to do.” Suzy led them outside to where she’d stabled her horses and left her wagon. She opened the back to show countless bags and terracotta jars, some as big as a man. Suzy went to the back of the wagon and pressed a hidden switch, causing two of the larger jars to open and reveal compartments four feet tall and two feet deep.
“Nifty, huh? The tops of the jars have false bottoms and are filled with cooking oil, so if someone reaches down there they won’t get suspicious. You’ve even got hidden eyeholes to look through.”
Dana climbed into the wagon and sat in one of compartments. “Can we open these from the inside if we have to?”
Suzy pointed at a spot near Dana’s foot. “A switch by your left foot opens the door.”
“It will do the job,” Jayden said. “How soon do we leave?”
“Now-ish. I hope you don’t mind sharing that space with Yub. He’s a dear, but people overreact when goblins show up a their door, especially ones with bombs.”
Dana took the grinning goblin onto her lap before Suzy swung the door closed. She heard Suzy say, “Watch your hair,” moments before there was the bang of the other door closing. Dana found the eyeholes Suzy had mentioned and was able to watch the wagon leave the inn behind and go onto the road.
The trip there was more interesting than Dana had expected. She saw many other wagons on the road, plus carriages and men riding horses. Most people going into Armorston brought produce, hay, livestock and other simple goods. Men riding carriages were better dressed, and traffic stopped to let them go through. Dana was surprised by what she didn’t see, for there were no trolls, dwarfs, elves or other races, only humans.
Traffic slowed when they neared the city gate. Bored soldiers went through the motions of searching vehicles and people, but they seldom did more than open a few bags or barrels. When Suzy brought her wagon to the gate the soldiers perked up.
“Morning, boys,” Dana heard Suzy say. She couldn’t see the alchemist through the eyeholes.
“Hey, it’s Lockheart,” a soldier said cheerfully. “Got anything to perk a man up, besides seeing you again?”
Dana rolled her eyes at the cheesy pickup line, but Suzy laughed. “I’ve got a bottle of what an innkeeper called wine. It’s half done, but if you don’t mind leftovers it’s yours.”
“I don’t turn down alcohol.” A soldier reached up past the eyeholes and came back into view with a bottle. More guards checked the back of the wagon, but they didn’t search it long. Dana saw soldiers pass around the bottle until it was empty and toss it into the snow. “Go on, ma’am, but you’ll need a permanent residency pass soon.”
“No need for that when I’ll be leaving soon,” Suzy told him.
“That’s a crying shame,” the soldier said before waving her on. “The kingdom needs more pretty girls.”
They went into the more protected areas of the city, and what little Dana could see through the eyeholes proved that Jayden hadn’t exaggerated about Armorston’s weapons manufacturing. The wagon rolled by five large blacksmith shops with many men working at each of them. Firewood and charcoal were stacked up to fuel the forges. Large wagons with reinforced axels brought in iron ore, and armed men carried out swords, spears, axes, arrowheads and maces. The air stunk from so many fires, and it hurt Dana’s eyes and made her nose itch. Yub stayed quiet on her lap and read papers covered in strange formulas.
The wagon rolled through the streets for hours. Suzy received friendly greetings in some quarters and was barely tolerated in others. Soldiers urged her to leave whenever she neared a military post or government building like a jail or courthouse. Dana saw the same agitator from yesterday spinning his lies for a new audience. Eventually night fell and traffic dwindled as the streets emptied of foot traffic, carts and animals. Once they were alone, Suzy turned the wagon down an alley to a street filled with artisans such as surgeons and barbers who advertised their shops with colorful signs.
Suzy stopped her wagon next to a large stone building with its door shut and windows shuttered. “This is the place.”
“Halt!” Dana tensed at the shout. She saw two spearmen wearing winter coats over their chain armor approach the front of the wagon. “Traffic is prohibited on this road.”
“Hey, boys,” Suzy greeted them. “I’ve got a pass for this part of town. I’m supposed to bring your alchemist fresh supplies.”
Suzy showed them her papers, which they took one look at before glaring at her. “Your permits aren’t valid after dark.”
“I’ve come here at night plenty of times,” she protested.
A spearman shoved her papers into a coat pocket. “New regulations took effect yesterday. No travel after dark for citizens or visitors without military permission and armed escorts.”
“No one said anything about new rules when I came here today!”
“It’s your responsibility to keep up with regulations, not ours to inform you. Step off the wagon.”
Dana heard Suzy grumble and the sound of coins jingling. “I’m sure we can work this out.”
Both spearmen approached the wagon with their weapons raised. “You may have bribed soldiers in other cities, but not here. Step off the wagon now, ma’am, and keep your hands where we can see them.”
Suzy gave them a dramatic sigh, and then giggled. “Jayden, be a dear.”
The soldiers looked puzzled by her sudden change of mood. Their confusion ended abruptly when a black clawed hand as big as a man punched one man and then slapped the other to the ground. One spearman maintained consciousness and opened his mouth to scream. Another punch from the giant hand came before he could cry out a warning.
“Ooh, that’s a new one,” Suzy said as the giant hand dissolved. “I love watching you work.”
Jayden and Dana opened the secret compartments and got off the wagon. Suzy brought out rope from inside the wagon, and they tied up the soldiers before stuffing them into the secret compartments. Once that was done they studied the door. Jayden frowned and said, “Oak boards bound in iron, locked and likely barred. The owner values his privacy. Are there more defenses inside?”
Suzy took a small bottle from her coat and pulled her arm back to throw it. “Not that I saw.”
Jayden saw what she was doing and grabbed her arm. “A bomb? Are you trying to draw attention to us?”
“That happened when we beat up those guards. Their officers will notice when they don’t come back. After that we’re looking at an armed response by hundreds of soldiers. So, new plan, smash and grab.”
Dana drew her sword and walked up to the door. “I can do this fast and quiet.”
Suzy put her bomb away and watched Dana cut off the lock on the door with her sword. There were some sparks as the sword sliced through the iron bands on the door, but the light seemed to go unnoticed. She had to cut through an iron bar on the other side of the door. Once she had it open they went inside.
Suzy took the lead as they went through the alchemist’s shop. She took a glass tube from her belongings and shook it, making it produce a bright green light that lit up the building interior. There was a large counter running across the room, and behind it a dizzying array of bottles, vials, pots and jars filled with the most bizarre things Dana had ever seen. Dana winced when she saw a glass jar filled with pickled lizards.
“Ignore that,” Suzy said as she jumped behind the counter. “Those are props to make him look mysterious. He keeps legitimate ingredients back here…or he used to.”
“What?” Jayden asked. He and Dana went around the counter to find row after row of drawers. Suzy pulled them out one after and other and dropped them on the floor, each one empty. Only three drawers had pouches of ingredients, which Suzy took. “Where are the materials you need?”
“Kind of wondering that myself,” she said. Two doors were behind the counter. Suzy opened one and went inside. “This might take a bit. Yub, watch the door for trouble. Dana, be a dear and check the other room.”
Jayden went to the door and stood guard. “Could the alchemist have become suspicious of you and moved his stock?”
Suzy threw papers and clothes out of the room she was in and left them in a pile on the floor. “Last time I saw him, he invited me back and said he hoped we could have a long and productive relationship, the old lecher.”
Dana tried the second door and found it locked. It took her seconds to cut the lock off the door. She opened it and peered inside. Suzy had taken the light with her, so it was hard to see inside the room, but she could make out some things.
“Suzy, what would your bomb look like when it’s done?” Dana asked.
There were thuds and cursing as Suzy continued her search. “About three feet long, a foot thick, iron casing, knobs and a plunger to set the explosion.”
Dana backed out of the room. “That sounds about right, but this one is a bit thicker.”
Jayden and Suzy ran to her side. Suzy lifted her strange light producing tube to illuminate the room. There was a large table covered in empty bottles, dirty spoons, a mortar and pestle, stacks of paperwork and one enormous bomb. The black iron casing was rough and pebbly. The controls were made of wood and recessed into the casing. It looked unworldly, and somehow menacing.
Suzy pushed past the others and stuck the end of her light producing tube into her mouth so she could go through the paperwork with both hands. Jayden followed her and marveled at the bomb.
“This would explain where the alchemist’s stock went,” he said. “Producing this monstrosity must have exhausted his supplies.”
“Why would he make this?” Dana demanded.
“Mmm hmm hmm hmm,” Suzy said. Dana took the tube out of her mouth and held it overhead. “Thank you. The paperwork says this is a Class X Incendiary Device, made on orders from, Jayden, say it with me.”
“The king and queen,” Jayden growled.
“Clever boy.” Suzy held up a contract with a royal seal on the bottom. “He was hired to make his bomb a month ago. It looks like it took weeks to get the materials brought in. Once that was done he only needed days to throw it together.”
“How dangerous is it?” Dana asked.
Suzy went through the papers until she came up with a diagram. “My bomb would have gone off with one big boom. This one has fifty little bombs filled with powdered phoenix blossoms and drops of etherium. A small charge inside would blow open the outer casing, another charge would scatter the smaller bombs, and those would go off like fireballs twenty feet across.”
Dana’s jaw dropped. “You could burn down half a city!”
“Why stop at half?” Jayden asked. “Buildings in most cities are built one against the other, the wood dry and easily ignited. A fire could spread quickly from one building to the next until an entire city burned. It would be equally effective against an army with tightly packed ranks of soldiers.”
Suzy tapped a finger on a paper filled with strange symbols. “Phoenix blossoms are high in phosphorous. Liquefy it, purify it, and it turns white and burns really hot and makes lots of smoke, toxic if breathed in. Putting it out with water would be hard unless you totally submerged it. This bomb uses a lot of phoenix blossoms and can throw it far. The fires would be impossible to stop.”
“So he had all the stuff you needed for a bomb because he was going to build a bomb,” Dana said.
Jayden ran a hand over the bomb. “And he indeed built it. I can only imagine how the king and queen could use this weapon. Suzy, can you disable it and retrieve the materials you need?”
“That’s a hard no.” Suzy dropped the papers on the floor and took back her light tube from Dana. “The phoenix blossoms chemically reacted with the etherium to make it even more dangerous. It’s basically looking for an excuse to go off. I can’t reverse the reaction. It would explode if I even tried.”
“And this guy built it inside a city,” Dan said. She was in awe of the man’s stupidity. “What do we do with it?”
They saw Yub scamper in and point behind him, where a crowd of spearmen ran to the building’s door. An older man with thinning hair and dressed in a bathrobe and slippers led the group. The old man gasped and pointed at Suzy.
“You! You thieving wench! I should have known you were up to no good!”
Suzy smiled at him. “You really should have.”
Jayden stepped in front of her and cast a spell to form his black sword. “Gentlemen, and I use that term loosely, you can only attack us one at a time through that doorway, at least until it fills up with bodies. Allow us to leave in peace and you avoid needless casualties.”
One of the spearmen stepped to the front of the group. “You can’t stop us all! Come on, men, this man is a threat to the entire kingdom!”
The brave soldier took two steps forward and stopped when he realized the other spearmen weren’t following him. The soldier slapped a hand over his face and announced, “Whoever kills him gets the bounty money, tax free.”
“That’s more like it!” another spearman shouted. He ran forward with a dozen more men behind him.
“No one listens to reason,” Jayden said as the men charged him. He hacked two spears in half and dodged two more. That was enough to open the doorway for spearmen to pile into the room, a mistake when their long weapons were poorly suited to such tight quarters. Soldiers pushed up against each other, trying to bring their weapons to bear as Jayden cut spears to pieces.
Suzy giggled as she climbed onto the counter and pulled bombs from inside her coat pockets. She threw them with wild abandon into the packed soldiers, and was rewarded with screams of fear and pain as the bombs went off. Spearmen were thrown about, and many who weren’t hurt fell back to avoid her next attack. Yub joined her and threw more bombs into the fray, adding to the chaos and confusion.
Dana screamed when soldiers burst through the store’s windows. These men handed off their spears to other soldiers and drew swords before climbing inside. With Jayden and Suzy busy, Dana drew her sword and ran over to hold them off. One soldier swung his sword at her head, and she raised her sword to block the attack. There was a shower of sparks as her sword sliced through the soldier’s blade.
The soldier stared at her in horror, finally saying, “I’m still making payment on that!”
Dana put her left hand over her mouth. “Sorry!”
“Don’t apologize to the man trying to kill you!” Jayden shouted.
“Get help!” a soldier shouted. Soldiers outside blew whistles to attract reinforcements. Dana heard people running down the street toward them. She hadn’t seen other exits in the alchemist’s shop besides the front door, now choked with soldiers. Jayden and Suzy couldn’t keep them back forever. Dana wondered if there were wizards or more alchemists in a city this large who could back up the soldiers.
Suzy put a hand on Dana’s shoulder. “I’ve got an idea. Come with me.”
Dana, Jayden, Suzy and Yub fell back to the room with the completed bomb, fighting off soldiers the entire way. Jayden and Dana held back the horde of soldiers while Suzy climbed onto the table holding the bomb. Dana was fighting for her life, cutting apart swords and spears jabbed at her. She didn’t see what happened next until it was too late.
“Gentlemen!” Suzy shouted. The soldiers kept pushing forward regardless of her shout. Suzy threw bombs into the packed soldiers, injuring several and forcing the rest back. It ended the fight briefly, long enough for Suzy to yelled, “May I have your attention, please! This shop contains a firebomb large enough to at a bare minimum destroy the entire block. Anyone standing near it will die horribly when that happens. Is the alchemist nearby? Come on, don’t be shy.”
The older man in his bathrobe slipped between the packed soldiers. Suzy pointed at the bomb and asked, “Would you tell these nice people what I’ve done?”
The man’s face turned white. He trembled and his jaw dropped. “Y-you, you fool, you’ve armed it!”
Suzy smiled, a deranged grin that suggested a total lack of self-preservation. “That’s right, it’s going to go off. If we don’t get away, nobody gets away. So make your peace with God, because we’re all going to meet Him.”
The alchemist asked, “What time did you set it to explode?”
The room was silent. Soldiers stared in terror at the bomb. Suzy looked curious at best before saying, “Hmm, now-ish?”
Soldiers screamed and ran away. Dana threw herself to the floor. She knew it wouldn’t save her, but there was no way she could escape before the bomb went off. For long seconds she stayed down, her arms covering her head. Then Jayden tapped her on the shoulder and helped her up.
“What, why aren’t we dead?” Dana asked.
“I set the bomb to go off in five minutes,” Suzy said. She burst out giggling like it was a grand joke.
Dana yelled, “I thought I was going to die!”
“That was the point, dear,” Suzy told her.
Dana looked at Jayden. “You didn’t take cover. How did you know she was lying?”
“I don’t believe anything she says,” Jayden said. “Come on, the soldiers will return when nothing explodes.”
Suzy bent down over the bomb and began tinkering with it. “Give me just a minute to shut it off. Hmm. Jayden, grab the metal tab here, yes, that’s the one, and pull hard. Harder. Oh dearie.”
“Oh dearie what?” Jayden demanded.
“A metal panel slid over the controls after I set the bomb,” Suzy explained. “It’s not coming off. I think it’s a safeguard to make sure no one disarms the bomb after it’s been set. We’ve got five minutes until it goes off like an angry dragon.”
“You set a bomb you can’t defuse?” Jayden demanded.
Suzy shrugged. “It was this or fight our way out through a hundred men. We aren’t that good.”
Dana ran to the bomb. “I can cut off the metal panel.”
Jayden grabbed her arm before she got close to it. “Your sword produces sparks when it cuts through metal and would set it off.”
Suzy took Yub by the hand and headed for the door. “Five minutes is enough time to get out of here.”
Jayden didn’t budge. “Us, but no one else. Armorston would be destroyed, and countless lives lost with it.”
Suzy told him. “The best we can do is help some residents evacuate.”
“As angry as I am with these people, I won’t condemn them to death.”
Dana’s mind raced as she tried to come up with a solution. The bomb was massively destructive, and Armorston was so large they’d never get it outside the city walls before it went off. Even if they did, there were many houses and shops outside the walls that would be destroyed. There wasn’t a river or chasm to throw the bomb in, either. What was left?
“Sewers!” Dana shouted. That earned her confused looks from the others. “Jayden, we saw sewers flowing out of the city. That means water, maybe enough to smother the fire. Pick the bomb up with your magic hand spell and dump it down a sewer entrance.”
“The nearest entrance big enough to use is three blocks away,” Suzy said.
“Take us there on your wagon.”
Jayden recast the spell to form his magic hand and picked up the bomb. He carried it outside and mounted the wagon. Dana helped Yub into the back while Suzy snapped the reins and sent the horses racing down the street.
The streets weren’t empty at this late hour. A crowd of soldiers was running from the alchemist’s shop, and their panic doubled when they saw the bomb coming towards them. Fresh screams erupted from the soldiers as they fled in all directions.
“There they are!” a man cried out behind the wagon. “Get them!”
Dana saw a crowd of over a hundred soldiers and five knights on horseback coming from behind them. For a second she wondered why they weren’t running for their lives, but then she remembered soldiers had blown whistles at the alchemist’s shop. These men must have come in response and decided to chase the most obvious target, a wagon racing through the streets at night.
“Trouble behind us!” Dana yelled.
“Busy,” Jayden replied. He was focused on keeping his magic hand moving ahead of them and couldn’t help.
“Sweetie, there’s a big red bag next to you,” Suzy said as she drove the horses on. “Throw everything in there.”
Dana reached into the bag and pulled out two terracotta bottles sealed with wax. She threw them at the soldiers and was rewarded with twin explosions that sent men flying. Yub handed her more bombs to throw. She lobbed one after another, thinning the ranks of pursuing soldiers.
“Don’t be stingy,” Suzy called out. “They’re meant to be used.”
A knight rode up alongside the wagon and swung his sword at Dana. She parried the blade with her sword, cutting off the last five inches of the knight’s blade. Another knight tried to attack her. She grabbed a bomb with her left hand and threw it in front of the knight. The explosion spooked the knight’s horse so badly that it reared up and threw the knight off its back.
The wagon took a sharp turn and came to a stop next to an iron door set into the street. Suzy pointed at it and said, “That’s an access to the sewers for workers. Good news is it’s big enough to fit the bomb. Bad news is it’s locked.”
“Got it!” Dana yelled. She jumped off the wagon and hacked at the iron door with her sword. Sparks flew high into the air as she cut through the door until severed pieces splashed down into the sewer water below.
She stepped back as Jayden’s magic hand slipped the bomb into the hole. They heard a reassuring splash and saw water shoot up like a geyser. Soldiers and knights caught up and surrounded them, drawn sword around them like a circle of steel. No one moved. For five seconds the stalemate held, ending when the bomb went off.
The explosion sounded weird to Dana. Water muffled the blast, but the sewer walls made the sound echo. Bright light poured up from the hole, followed by foul smelling white gas. Narrow sewer grates along the street lit up as fire spread through the sewer. The heat was so great that Dana could feel it radiating up through the street and the soles of her boots. Soldiers cried out in confusion and fled. Then the street began to sag.
“You said water would smother the fire,” Dana said.
“If there’s enough to submerge it, yes,” Suzy replied. The street trembled and sunk further. “Construction standards are really low around here.”
“Run for your lives!” Jayden yelled, a warning the soldiers were happy to take. He helped Dana onto the wagon as Suzy snapped the reins. The wagon shot down the street with men fleeing alongside it. Dana looked behind them to see a huge section of the street sink into the ground. Fires burned brightly in the newly formed chasm, and smoke rose in billowing clouds. The chasm grew as more of the street collapsed from the intense heat.
“Ride faster!” Jayden shouted. He used his magic hand to batter aside a carriage parked across the street and then a stack of crates piled up in their way.
The wagon shot down the street at breakneck speeds. Dana saw fire consume more of the sewers and streets above them, but the blaze stayed contained in the chasms it made. She looked ahead to see a closed city gate in front of them. Suzy slowed the wagon, giving Jayden enough time to batter the gate with his magic hand again and again until it came off its hinges. The wagon rode on through the outer sections of the city until it came to a stop miles from Armorston.
Dana, Jayden, Suzy and Yub climbed off the wagon and looked at the devastation behind them. Barred sewer outlets poured out flames floating on the surface of the water. Fires inside Armorston were limited to the sewer network and spared the rest of the city. Panicked crowds fled the disaster but weren’t in immediate danger.
“Oh, oh wow,” Dana said.
“I knew it,” Jayden said. “I knew something would happen. I worked with Lockheart once and it went disastrously wrong. I was a fool to think it could end otherwise! This mission failed in every possible way. I didn’t get close enough to see what those wagons had brought into Armorston, and we didn’t get the bomb ingredients to save Brandish.”
Dana took him by the arm. “Jayden, this isn’t her fault. She didn’t make a huge bomb inside a city.”
Jayden broke free of her grip. “She set the blasted thing off! I can’t imagine who else I’d blame for this. No, I take that back. I blame myself. I should have had the common sense to look for another way in without Suzy ‘the walking disaster’ Lockheart!”
“At least the king and queen don’t have that huge bomb anymore,” Dana told him. “They must be out a lot of money, too.”
“For once in my life they’re not who I’m angry at!”
Dana went to Suzy. The alchemist stared at the city and the screaming crowds of people. She seemed stunned by the damage they’d done. Desperate to console her, Dana said, “Suzy, he doesn’t mean that.”
Suzy turned to face Jayden, not Dana. For a second Suzy’s expression was unreadable. Then she screamed, “Best date ever!” before lunging into Jayden’s arms and passionately kissing him.
Jayden’s reunion with Suzy Lockheart clearly wasn’t a success, but at least it had happened without bloodshed, so Dana considered it a win. She headed for her own room, wondering if this meeting might be good for Jayden. He might not like Suzy, but he made it sound like the woman was dangerous. Maybe she might join them. Many of Dana and Jayden’s fights would have gone better with a powerful friend at their side.
Dana was settling for the night when the door opened and Suzy came in. Dana stared at the woman and said, “You could have knocked first.”
“I didn’t leave home, lose my dowry and get disowned so I could be polite.” Suzy sat on the edge of Dana’s bed and waved her hand north. “Zentrix society is all about not making waves. Be polite, follow the rules, bow and grovel to your betters, and once they’re gone let the verbal venom flow. Hypocrisy, thy name is Zentrix.”
Curious, Dana said, “I went there once. Everyone was nice.”
“You didn’t stay long enough. Grow up there and you see people at their worst. I got out before my parents could marry me off to a raging bigot with excellent breeding. Two years apprenticed to an alchemist against my parent’s wishes got me where I am today, not mindless obedience.”
Suzy edged closer. “Enough about me, let’s talk about you. I’ve had this burning question ever since I heard Jayden was traveling with a girl.”
“What is it?”
“I liked Jayden when we had our earlier adventure together. Really liked him. The weird part is he didn’t feel the same. I did everything except tie him up, and I considered it. Then I hear he’s got a girl who’s been with him for months.”
Suzy took Dana’s hands. “I’m not trying to steal him from you. He’s your chew toy, but I need to know what you did that I didn’t. What worked in the end?”
Dana’s heart raced. She felt herself blush. “I, um, you must have heard wrong. We don’t have that kind of relationship. I mean, I like him, but nothing happened.”
Suzy stared at Dana for a moment. The woman’s eye twitched. She stood up and said, “Would you excuse me for a moment.”
Suzy marched to Jayden’s room and kicked the door in. Jayden looked up from his bed where he’d been studying his spell tablets. “Nothing happened? You’ve been with the girl for months and nothing happened! What the crilviz, Jayden!”
“Crilviz?” Dana asked.
“A gnome word, very vulgar,” Jayden explained. “Ms. Lockheart, my love life, or lack thereof, is no business of yours.”
“Don’t give me that!” Suzy yelled. “I know you like girls. I’ve heard the stories.”
Dana got up from her bed. “What stories?”
“Fine, you think I nearly killed you, even if I didn’t, but what about her?” Suzy demanded. “What crime did she commit to spend the rest of her life in the friend zone?”
“Do you mind?” Gaston yelled from the inn’s common room. “If I had customers you’d be driving them off!”
“Shut it!” Suzy yelled back. She turned her attention back to Jayden. “Well?”
Jayden set his spell tablet aside. “Dana is my friend. I have few others, and none I trust like her. She cares for my wellbeing more than I do. I don’t wish to lose her friendship. To try to turn our relationship into something it isn’t, and shouldn’t be, would be wrong. Think ill of me if you will, but I cherish what Dana and I have too much to risk losing it.
“What you seek from me is something I can’t give when there is no depth to the feelings you have for me. When we first met you were rebelling against your strict upbringing, and you’re still doing so today. You seek constant excitement and new experiences, not a bad desire, but I’m nothing more than a diversion from your boredom. I seek more than that, and if you examine your feelings you’ll agree it’s more than you’re willing to give. If I’ve misjudged you, say so.”
When Suzy didn’t reply, he added, “And you don’t care about the people of this kingdom.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” she asked in bewilderment.
“It must sound odd given my actions, but I love the people of this land. I want to end this madness and return them to the peace and prosperity they once enjoyed. They don’t matter to you, nor do the people of your homeland, or the residents of Brandish that you’re in the process of saving from invasion. You prize your independence and care for a select few who have earned your respect. This is a job to you, nothing more, and to me it’s far more important than gold.”
Jayden got up and walked over to Suzy. He put his hands on her shoulders. “You must feel insulted by what I’ve said, but you did ask. You deserved an honest answer, no hypocrisy, no hidden feelings. I harbor no ill will if you wish to cancel our arrangement. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m tired from a long day, so get out of my room and let me get some sleep.”
Jayden led her from his room, shut the door and locked it. Suzy stood in the hallway for a moment before she turned to Dana and asked, “What just happened?”
* * * * *
Dana met Jayden the following morning in the inn’s common room. Gaston served them what might have been food if he’d cooked it right. Dana managed to keep it down with difficulty.
“Last night you gave Suzy a good reason to turn us over to the authorities for the bounty money, or just blow us both up while we slept,” she told him.
Jayden ate his food despite its poor quality. “Any other answer would have made the situation worse. If I had promised her what I had no intention of giving, she would have been even angrier. If I had returned her affections it would have made her believe we had a future together, and with such differing goals it wouldn’t work.”
Gaston walked up to their table and set down a bottle of wine. “The food will go down better with this.”
“And you wonder why you don’t have more customers,” Dana said.
“You try cooking good meals when you can’t get spices,” Gaston said as he left them. “I used to get good supplies from Fish Bait City.”
Jayden poured himself a cup of wine and tasted it. “Passable. In regards to Suzy informing on us, she despises authority figures of any kind. The price on my head is staggering, but claiming it would require her working for men she sees as no different from the ones in her homeland. Her dislike of royalty is so great that I’m surprised she accepted a job from the king of Brandish.”
“He wined me, dined me, and didn’t tax me,” Suzy said as she came into the common room. “I put up with a lot when people are nice to me.”
“I doubt I’ve ever been nice,” Jayden replied as he handed her the bottle.
“You have,” she told him, and took a swig of wine before starting her meal. “Jayden, I won’t pretend I understood half of what you said last night, but making you like someone you don’t is something my parents would do. We’re working together and that’s that. And I’ve never seen you lie to anyone or treat rich people better than poor ones, so you’re owed respect.”
Suzy sat down across from him at the table and fixed him with a stern look. “But tell me this, what happens if you win and the king and queen get killed, imprisoned, exiled, eaten by aardvarks or whatever? Someone’s got to be in charge when they’re gone.”
“I have no desire for the throne,” he told her.
She raised the bottle in a toast. “I’ll drink to that. Being in charge is no different than being in jail. You’re at the mercy of the job, day and night doing what has to be done and never what you want to do. But if you don’t take it someone else will. Men will kill to get the crown, and do worse to anyone they rule. We’re talking a repeat of the civil war your people had. If you get what you want you’ll make things a whole lot worse for everyone living here.”
Dana frowned. “You think people would accept a sorcerer lord as their king?”
“Of course not, that’s my point,” Suzy replied. “Turn down the job and it’s anarchy. Take the job and you’ve got rebels, coups by the army, and assassinations attempts on the hour every hour.”
Jayden sipped his drink before answering. “I never imagined my life would end happily ever after. What you predict may well come to pass. Your worst-case scenario has one advantage over doing nothing, namely only one kingdom would suffer, not four. It is a questionable improvement, I admit, but it limits the damage.”
“You’re smart enough to want more than that,” she told him.
“What I want, for now, is to see the contents of those armored wagons,” he replied. “How soon can to make that happen?”
Suzy set down the bottle. “Tonight. We need to get inside Armorston before the city gates close at sunset. It’s better if we go just before noon. There’s more traffic to cover our entrance, and the guard changes at noon so those men will be tired and hungry after a long shift. They’ll be more likely to let us pass without looking too closely.”
“I want see this hiding place,” Dana told her.
“Easy to do.” Suzy led them outside to where she’d stabled her horses and left her wagon. She opened the back to show countless bags and terracotta jars, some as big as a man. Suzy went to the back of the wagon and pressed a hidden switch, causing two of the larger jars to open and reveal compartments four feet tall and two feet deep.
“Nifty, huh? The tops of the jars have false bottoms and are filled with cooking oil, so if someone reaches down there they won’t get suspicious. You’ve even got hidden eyeholes to look through.”
Dana climbed into the wagon and sat in one of compartments. “Can we open these from the inside if we have to?”
Suzy pointed at a spot near Dana’s foot. “A switch by your left foot opens the door.”
“It will do the job,” Jayden said. “How soon do we leave?”
“Now-ish. I hope you don’t mind sharing that space with Yub. He’s a dear, but people overreact when goblins show up a their door, especially ones with bombs.”
Dana took the grinning goblin onto her lap before Suzy swung the door closed. She heard Suzy say, “Watch your hair,” moments before there was the bang of the other door closing. Dana found the eyeholes Suzy had mentioned and was able to watch the wagon leave the inn behind and go onto the road.
The trip there was more interesting than Dana had expected. She saw many other wagons on the road, plus carriages and men riding horses. Most people going into Armorston brought produce, hay, livestock and other simple goods. Men riding carriages were better dressed, and traffic stopped to let them go through. Dana was surprised by what she didn’t see, for there were no trolls, dwarfs, elves or other races, only humans.
Traffic slowed when they neared the city gate. Bored soldiers went through the motions of searching vehicles and people, but they seldom did more than open a few bags or barrels. When Suzy brought her wagon to the gate the soldiers perked up.
“Morning, boys,” Dana heard Suzy say. She couldn’t see the alchemist through the eyeholes.
“Hey, it’s Lockheart,” a soldier said cheerfully. “Got anything to perk a man up, besides seeing you again?”
Dana rolled her eyes at the cheesy pickup line, but Suzy laughed. “I’ve got a bottle of what an innkeeper called wine. It’s half done, but if you don’t mind leftovers it’s yours.”
“I don’t turn down alcohol.” A soldier reached up past the eyeholes and came back into view with a bottle. More guards checked the back of the wagon, but they didn’t search it long. Dana saw soldiers pass around the bottle until it was empty and toss it into the snow. “Go on, ma’am, but you’ll need a permanent residency pass soon.”
“No need for that when I’ll be leaving soon,” Suzy told him.
“That’s a crying shame,” the soldier said before waving her on. “The kingdom needs more pretty girls.”
They went into the more protected areas of the city, and what little Dana could see through the eyeholes proved that Jayden hadn’t exaggerated about Armorston’s weapons manufacturing. The wagon rolled by five large blacksmith shops with many men working at each of them. Firewood and charcoal were stacked up to fuel the forges. Large wagons with reinforced axels brought in iron ore, and armed men carried out swords, spears, axes, arrowheads and maces. The air stunk from so many fires, and it hurt Dana’s eyes and made her nose itch. Yub stayed quiet on her lap and read papers covered in strange formulas.
The wagon rolled through the streets for hours. Suzy received friendly greetings in some quarters and was barely tolerated in others. Soldiers urged her to leave whenever she neared a military post or government building like a jail or courthouse. Dana saw the same agitator from yesterday spinning his lies for a new audience. Eventually night fell and traffic dwindled as the streets emptied of foot traffic, carts and animals. Once they were alone, Suzy turned the wagon down an alley to a street filled with artisans such as surgeons and barbers who advertised their shops with colorful signs.
Suzy stopped her wagon next to a large stone building with its door shut and windows shuttered. “This is the place.”
“Halt!” Dana tensed at the shout. She saw two spearmen wearing winter coats over their chain armor approach the front of the wagon. “Traffic is prohibited on this road.”
“Hey, boys,” Suzy greeted them. “I’ve got a pass for this part of town. I’m supposed to bring your alchemist fresh supplies.”
Suzy showed them her papers, which they took one look at before glaring at her. “Your permits aren’t valid after dark.”
“I’ve come here at night plenty of times,” she protested.
A spearman shoved her papers into a coat pocket. “New regulations took effect yesterday. No travel after dark for citizens or visitors without military permission and armed escorts.”
“No one said anything about new rules when I came here today!”
“It’s your responsibility to keep up with regulations, not ours to inform you. Step off the wagon.”
Dana heard Suzy grumble and the sound of coins jingling. “I’m sure we can work this out.”
Both spearmen approached the wagon with their weapons raised. “You may have bribed soldiers in other cities, but not here. Step off the wagon now, ma’am, and keep your hands where we can see them.”
Suzy gave them a dramatic sigh, and then giggled. “Jayden, be a dear.”
The soldiers looked puzzled by her sudden change of mood. Their confusion ended abruptly when a black clawed hand as big as a man punched one man and then slapped the other to the ground. One spearman maintained consciousness and opened his mouth to scream. Another punch from the giant hand came before he could cry out a warning.
“Ooh, that’s a new one,” Suzy said as the giant hand dissolved. “I love watching you work.”
Jayden and Dana opened the secret compartments and got off the wagon. Suzy brought out rope from inside the wagon, and they tied up the soldiers before stuffing them into the secret compartments. Once that was done they studied the door. Jayden frowned and said, “Oak boards bound in iron, locked and likely barred. The owner values his privacy. Are there more defenses inside?”
Suzy took a small bottle from her coat and pulled her arm back to throw it. “Not that I saw.”
Jayden saw what she was doing and grabbed her arm. “A bomb? Are you trying to draw attention to us?”
“That happened when we beat up those guards. Their officers will notice when they don’t come back. After that we’re looking at an armed response by hundreds of soldiers. So, new plan, smash and grab.”
Dana drew her sword and walked up to the door. “I can do this fast and quiet.”
Suzy put her bomb away and watched Dana cut off the lock on the door with her sword. There were some sparks as the sword sliced through the iron bands on the door, but the light seemed to go unnoticed. She had to cut through an iron bar on the other side of the door. Once she had it open they went inside.
Suzy took the lead as they went through the alchemist’s shop. She took a glass tube from her belongings and shook it, making it produce a bright green light that lit up the building interior. There was a large counter running across the room, and behind it a dizzying array of bottles, vials, pots and jars filled with the most bizarre things Dana had ever seen. Dana winced when she saw a glass jar filled with pickled lizards.
“Ignore that,” Suzy said as she jumped behind the counter. “Those are props to make him look mysterious. He keeps legitimate ingredients back here…or he used to.”
“What?” Jayden asked. He and Dana went around the counter to find row after row of drawers. Suzy pulled them out one after and other and dropped them on the floor, each one empty. Only three drawers had pouches of ingredients, which Suzy took. “Where are the materials you need?”
“Kind of wondering that myself,” she said. Two doors were behind the counter. Suzy opened one and went inside. “This might take a bit. Yub, watch the door for trouble. Dana, be a dear and check the other room.”
Jayden went to the door and stood guard. “Could the alchemist have become suspicious of you and moved his stock?”
Suzy threw papers and clothes out of the room she was in and left them in a pile on the floor. “Last time I saw him, he invited me back and said he hoped we could have a long and productive relationship, the old lecher.”
Dana tried the second door and found it locked. It took her seconds to cut the lock off the door. She opened it and peered inside. Suzy had taken the light with her, so it was hard to see inside the room, but she could make out some things.
“Suzy, what would your bomb look like when it’s done?” Dana asked.
There were thuds and cursing as Suzy continued her search. “About three feet long, a foot thick, iron casing, knobs and a plunger to set the explosion.”
Dana backed out of the room. “That sounds about right, but this one is a bit thicker.”
Jayden and Suzy ran to her side. Suzy lifted her strange light producing tube to illuminate the room. There was a large table covered in empty bottles, dirty spoons, a mortar and pestle, stacks of paperwork and one enormous bomb. The black iron casing was rough and pebbly. The controls were made of wood and recessed into the casing. It looked unworldly, and somehow menacing.
Suzy pushed past the others and stuck the end of her light producing tube into her mouth so she could go through the paperwork with both hands. Jayden followed her and marveled at the bomb.
“This would explain where the alchemist’s stock went,” he said. “Producing this monstrosity must have exhausted his supplies.”
“Why would he make this?” Dana demanded.
“Mmm hmm hmm hmm,” Suzy said. Dana took the tube out of her mouth and held it overhead. “Thank you. The paperwork says this is a Class X Incendiary Device, made on orders from, Jayden, say it with me.”
“The king and queen,” Jayden growled.
“Clever boy.” Suzy held up a contract with a royal seal on the bottom. “He was hired to make his bomb a month ago. It looks like it took weeks to get the materials brought in. Once that was done he only needed days to throw it together.”
“How dangerous is it?” Dana asked.
Suzy went through the papers until she came up with a diagram. “My bomb would have gone off with one big boom. This one has fifty little bombs filled with powdered phoenix blossoms and drops of etherium. A small charge inside would blow open the outer casing, another charge would scatter the smaller bombs, and those would go off like fireballs twenty feet across.”
Dana’s jaw dropped. “You could burn down half a city!”
“Why stop at half?” Jayden asked. “Buildings in most cities are built one against the other, the wood dry and easily ignited. A fire could spread quickly from one building to the next until an entire city burned. It would be equally effective against an army with tightly packed ranks of soldiers.”
Suzy tapped a finger on a paper filled with strange symbols. “Phoenix blossoms are high in phosphorous. Liquefy it, purify it, and it turns white and burns really hot and makes lots of smoke, toxic if breathed in. Putting it out with water would be hard unless you totally submerged it. This bomb uses a lot of phoenix blossoms and can throw it far. The fires would be impossible to stop.”
“So he had all the stuff you needed for a bomb because he was going to build a bomb,” Dana said.
Jayden ran a hand over the bomb. “And he indeed built it. I can only imagine how the king and queen could use this weapon. Suzy, can you disable it and retrieve the materials you need?”
“That’s a hard no.” Suzy dropped the papers on the floor and took back her light tube from Dana. “The phoenix blossoms chemically reacted with the etherium to make it even more dangerous. It’s basically looking for an excuse to go off. I can’t reverse the reaction. It would explode if I even tried.”
“And this guy built it inside a city,” Dan said. She was in awe of the man’s stupidity. “What do we do with it?”
They saw Yub scamper in and point behind him, where a crowd of spearmen ran to the building’s door. An older man with thinning hair and dressed in a bathrobe and slippers led the group. The old man gasped and pointed at Suzy.
“You! You thieving wench! I should have known you were up to no good!”
Suzy smiled at him. “You really should have.”
Jayden stepped in front of her and cast a spell to form his black sword. “Gentlemen, and I use that term loosely, you can only attack us one at a time through that doorway, at least until it fills up with bodies. Allow us to leave in peace and you avoid needless casualties.”
One of the spearmen stepped to the front of the group. “You can’t stop us all! Come on, men, this man is a threat to the entire kingdom!”
The brave soldier took two steps forward and stopped when he realized the other spearmen weren’t following him. The soldier slapped a hand over his face and announced, “Whoever kills him gets the bounty money, tax free.”
“That’s more like it!” another spearman shouted. He ran forward with a dozen more men behind him.
“No one listens to reason,” Jayden said as the men charged him. He hacked two spears in half and dodged two more. That was enough to open the doorway for spearmen to pile into the room, a mistake when their long weapons were poorly suited to such tight quarters. Soldiers pushed up against each other, trying to bring their weapons to bear as Jayden cut spears to pieces.
Suzy giggled as she climbed onto the counter and pulled bombs from inside her coat pockets. She threw them with wild abandon into the packed soldiers, and was rewarded with screams of fear and pain as the bombs went off. Spearmen were thrown about, and many who weren’t hurt fell back to avoid her next attack. Yub joined her and threw more bombs into the fray, adding to the chaos and confusion.
Dana screamed when soldiers burst through the store’s windows. These men handed off their spears to other soldiers and drew swords before climbing inside. With Jayden and Suzy busy, Dana drew her sword and ran over to hold them off. One soldier swung his sword at her head, and she raised her sword to block the attack. There was a shower of sparks as her sword sliced through the soldier’s blade.
The soldier stared at her in horror, finally saying, “I’m still making payment on that!”
Dana put her left hand over her mouth. “Sorry!”
“Don’t apologize to the man trying to kill you!” Jayden shouted.
“Get help!” a soldier shouted. Soldiers outside blew whistles to attract reinforcements. Dana heard people running down the street toward them. She hadn’t seen other exits in the alchemist’s shop besides the front door, now choked with soldiers. Jayden and Suzy couldn’t keep them back forever. Dana wondered if there were wizards or more alchemists in a city this large who could back up the soldiers.
Suzy put a hand on Dana’s shoulder. “I’ve got an idea. Come with me.”
Dana, Jayden, Suzy and Yub fell back to the room with the completed bomb, fighting off soldiers the entire way. Jayden and Dana held back the horde of soldiers while Suzy climbed onto the table holding the bomb. Dana was fighting for her life, cutting apart swords and spears jabbed at her. She didn’t see what happened next until it was too late.
“Gentlemen!” Suzy shouted. The soldiers kept pushing forward regardless of her shout. Suzy threw bombs into the packed soldiers, injuring several and forcing the rest back. It ended the fight briefly, long enough for Suzy to yelled, “May I have your attention, please! This shop contains a firebomb large enough to at a bare minimum destroy the entire block. Anyone standing near it will die horribly when that happens. Is the alchemist nearby? Come on, don’t be shy.”
The older man in his bathrobe slipped between the packed soldiers. Suzy pointed at the bomb and asked, “Would you tell these nice people what I’ve done?”
The man’s face turned white. He trembled and his jaw dropped. “Y-you, you fool, you’ve armed it!”
Suzy smiled, a deranged grin that suggested a total lack of self-preservation. “That’s right, it’s going to go off. If we don’t get away, nobody gets away. So make your peace with God, because we’re all going to meet Him.”
The alchemist asked, “What time did you set it to explode?”
The room was silent. Soldiers stared in terror at the bomb. Suzy looked curious at best before saying, “Hmm, now-ish?”
Soldiers screamed and ran away. Dana threw herself to the floor. She knew it wouldn’t save her, but there was no way she could escape before the bomb went off. For long seconds she stayed down, her arms covering her head. Then Jayden tapped her on the shoulder and helped her up.
“What, why aren’t we dead?” Dana asked.
“I set the bomb to go off in five minutes,” Suzy said. She burst out giggling like it was a grand joke.
Dana yelled, “I thought I was going to die!”
“That was the point, dear,” Suzy told her.
Dana looked at Jayden. “You didn’t take cover. How did you know she was lying?”
“I don’t believe anything she says,” Jayden said. “Come on, the soldiers will return when nothing explodes.”
Suzy bent down over the bomb and began tinkering with it. “Give me just a minute to shut it off. Hmm. Jayden, grab the metal tab here, yes, that’s the one, and pull hard. Harder. Oh dearie.”
“Oh dearie what?” Jayden demanded.
“A metal panel slid over the controls after I set the bomb,” Suzy explained. “It’s not coming off. I think it’s a safeguard to make sure no one disarms the bomb after it’s been set. We’ve got five minutes until it goes off like an angry dragon.”
“You set a bomb you can’t defuse?” Jayden demanded.
Suzy shrugged. “It was this or fight our way out through a hundred men. We aren’t that good.”
Dana ran to the bomb. “I can cut off the metal panel.”
Jayden grabbed her arm before she got close to it. “Your sword produces sparks when it cuts through metal and would set it off.”
Suzy took Yub by the hand and headed for the door. “Five minutes is enough time to get out of here.”
Jayden didn’t budge. “Us, but no one else. Armorston would be destroyed, and countless lives lost with it.”
Suzy told him. “The best we can do is help some residents evacuate.”
“As angry as I am with these people, I won’t condemn them to death.”
Dana’s mind raced as she tried to come up with a solution. The bomb was massively destructive, and Armorston was so large they’d never get it outside the city walls before it went off. Even if they did, there were many houses and shops outside the walls that would be destroyed. There wasn’t a river or chasm to throw the bomb in, either. What was left?
“Sewers!” Dana shouted. That earned her confused looks from the others. “Jayden, we saw sewers flowing out of the city. That means water, maybe enough to smother the fire. Pick the bomb up with your magic hand spell and dump it down a sewer entrance.”
“The nearest entrance big enough to use is three blocks away,” Suzy said.
“Take us there on your wagon.”
Jayden recast the spell to form his magic hand and picked up the bomb. He carried it outside and mounted the wagon. Dana helped Yub into the back while Suzy snapped the reins and sent the horses racing down the street.
The streets weren’t empty at this late hour. A crowd of soldiers was running from the alchemist’s shop, and their panic doubled when they saw the bomb coming towards them. Fresh screams erupted from the soldiers as they fled in all directions.
“There they are!” a man cried out behind the wagon. “Get them!”
Dana saw a crowd of over a hundred soldiers and five knights on horseback coming from behind them. For a second she wondered why they weren’t running for their lives, but then she remembered soldiers had blown whistles at the alchemist’s shop. These men must have come in response and decided to chase the most obvious target, a wagon racing through the streets at night.
“Trouble behind us!” Dana yelled.
“Busy,” Jayden replied. He was focused on keeping his magic hand moving ahead of them and couldn’t help.
“Sweetie, there’s a big red bag next to you,” Suzy said as she drove the horses on. “Throw everything in there.”
Dana reached into the bag and pulled out two terracotta bottles sealed with wax. She threw them at the soldiers and was rewarded with twin explosions that sent men flying. Yub handed her more bombs to throw. She lobbed one after another, thinning the ranks of pursuing soldiers.
“Don’t be stingy,” Suzy called out. “They’re meant to be used.”
A knight rode up alongside the wagon and swung his sword at Dana. She parried the blade with her sword, cutting off the last five inches of the knight’s blade. Another knight tried to attack her. She grabbed a bomb with her left hand and threw it in front of the knight. The explosion spooked the knight’s horse so badly that it reared up and threw the knight off its back.
The wagon took a sharp turn and came to a stop next to an iron door set into the street. Suzy pointed at it and said, “That’s an access to the sewers for workers. Good news is it’s big enough to fit the bomb. Bad news is it’s locked.”
“Got it!” Dana yelled. She jumped off the wagon and hacked at the iron door with her sword. Sparks flew high into the air as she cut through the door until severed pieces splashed down into the sewer water below.
She stepped back as Jayden’s magic hand slipped the bomb into the hole. They heard a reassuring splash and saw water shoot up like a geyser. Soldiers and knights caught up and surrounded them, drawn sword around them like a circle of steel. No one moved. For five seconds the stalemate held, ending when the bomb went off.
The explosion sounded weird to Dana. Water muffled the blast, but the sewer walls made the sound echo. Bright light poured up from the hole, followed by foul smelling white gas. Narrow sewer grates along the street lit up as fire spread through the sewer. The heat was so great that Dana could feel it radiating up through the street and the soles of her boots. Soldiers cried out in confusion and fled. Then the street began to sag.
“You said water would smother the fire,” Dana said.
“If there’s enough to submerge it, yes,” Suzy replied. The street trembled and sunk further. “Construction standards are really low around here.”
“Run for your lives!” Jayden yelled, a warning the soldiers were happy to take. He helped Dana onto the wagon as Suzy snapped the reins. The wagon shot down the street with men fleeing alongside it. Dana looked behind them to see a huge section of the street sink into the ground. Fires burned brightly in the newly formed chasm, and smoke rose in billowing clouds. The chasm grew as more of the street collapsed from the intense heat.
“Ride faster!” Jayden shouted. He used his magic hand to batter aside a carriage parked across the street and then a stack of crates piled up in their way.
The wagon shot down the street at breakneck speeds. Dana saw fire consume more of the sewers and streets above them, but the blaze stayed contained in the chasms it made. She looked ahead to see a closed city gate in front of them. Suzy slowed the wagon, giving Jayden enough time to batter the gate with his magic hand again and again until it came off its hinges. The wagon rode on through the outer sections of the city until it came to a stop miles from Armorston.
Dana, Jayden, Suzy and Yub climbed off the wagon and looked at the devastation behind them. Barred sewer outlets poured out flames floating on the surface of the water. Fires inside Armorston were limited to the sewer network and spared the rest of the city. Panicked crowds fled the disaster but weren’t in immediate danger.
“Oh, oh wow,” Dana said.
“I knew it,” Jayden said. “I knew something would happen. I worked with Lockheart once and it went disastrously wrong. I was a fool to think it could end otherwise! This mission failed in every possible way. I didn’t get close enough to see what those wagons had brought into Armorston, and we didn’t get the bomb ingredients to save Brandish.”
Dana took him by the arm. “Jayden, this isn’t her fault. She didn’t make a huge bomb inside a city.”
Jayden broke free of her grip. “She set the blasted thing off! I can’t imagine who else I’d blame for this. No, I take that back. I blame myself. I should have had the common sense to look for another way in without Suzy ‘the walking disaster’ Lockheart!”
“At least the king and queen don’t have that huge bomb anymore,” Dana told him. “They must be out a lot of money, too.”
“For once in my life they’re not who I’m angry at!”
Dana went to Suzy. The alchemist stared at the city and the screaming crowds of people. She seemed stunned by the damage they’d done. Desperate to console her, Dana said, “Suzy, he doesn’t mean that.”
Suzy turned to face Jayden, not Dana. For a second Suzy’s expression was unreadable. Then she screamed, “Best date ever!” before lunging into Jayden’s arms and passionately kissing him.
Rented Swords part 1
This is the first part of Renter Swords.
* * * * *
Dana woke to the smell of frying bacon, biscuits, eggs and a blend of spices she couldn’t identify. That last one wasn’t surprising since she’d grown up in an isolated town at the edge of the kingdom. Merchants came rarely and didn’t bring exotic spices, so her mother cooked only with what could be grown locally.
“What did you put in there?” Dana asked as she got out from under a pile of blankets.
“Garlic, sweet bark and dragon pepper,” Suzy Lockheart told her. “A little dragon pepper goes a long way, and that’s a good thing. The last shop I saw offering it wanted three silver pieces a pound. Do any of Jayden’s underworld connections offer it cheaper?”
Dana rubbed her eyes and stared at the feast being prepared. Suzy had four pots sitting over the fire or cooling next to it. “The only smuggler friend of his I met left the kingdom months ago. Suzy, I don’t think we can eat that much.”
“Don’t be silly, I’m cooking for the entire day. We don’t have much alchemic fire for food preparation. That’s stuff is expensive, you know, so I do all the cooking before it goes out. These pots are breakfast, that one over there is trail cake for lunch, and that one is…something or other, I forget, but we’re having it cold for supper.”
Dana, Jayden, Suzy and Yub the goblin were staying in an abandoned barn miles from Armorston. They’d made the ruined building their base after fleeing the city two weeks ago. Knights had patrolled the roads vigorously for days after the four of them destroyed much of the city’s sewer network. Staying in place had avoided these patrols.
The barn had seen better decades, with holes in the roof and one wall missing, but it was large enough to fit the four of them plus Suzy’s wagon and horses. It was also far from the nearest house, so there was little risk of them being discovered. Still, Suzy only cooked meals over alchemic fire that produced no smoke.
Dana looked around their meager dwelling and only saw Suzy and Yub. “Where’s Jayden?”
Suzy handed her a plate of food. “He was muttering about wanting to get away from me, made some vague threats and went outside to practice his magic. Brooding isn’t attractive in men.”
Dana ate quickly, partly because she didn’t want the food to get cold and partly because it was so good. “This is incredible. Where did you learn to cook?”
“Cooking is no different than alchemy. Mix the right ingredients, stir as needed and don’t let it burn. Of course soufflés don’t explode and take out nearby buildings when you get them wrong. The analogy isn’t perfect.”
Once she finished eating, Dana handed back her plate and went to look in on Jayden. The last two weeks had been hard on him. He was still angry he hadn’t learned what had been inside the armored wagons in Armorston. Whatever it was, it had taken a lot of time, money and manpower to bring it to the city, and he wanted to know what warranted such a high cost. He was also chaffing at the extended time spent with Suzy Lockheart, a woman he barely tolerated.
Dana found Jayden standing in the snow behind the barn. There had been large snowdrifts around the barn, but Jayden’s experiments had long since blasted them apart. The handsome sorcerer lord was reading one of his spell tablets, muttering under his breath and occasionally swearing in frustration.
“You’ll catch cold,” she warned.
“Cold doesn’t bother me.” Jayden’s messy blond hair whipped in the steady breeze, as did the gray cloak he wore over his black and silver clothes. He tapped the spell tablet and announced, “Failure does, and this blasted spell has vexed me for months.”
“You learned your first spell in hours.”
Jayden held up the tablet for her to see. “There is one word here I never came across in my studies of the ancient sorcerer lords. I’ve been guessing at its meaning, and guesses aren’t enough when it comes to magic. You must have a precise understanding. Reginald Lootmore paid for my help with this spell tablet, a potentially valuable addition to my magical arsenal, and I can’t tap that power because of one word!”
Just then Suzy walked by and handed Jayden his breakfast. Once her hands were free and Jayden’s weren’t, she smiled and ran her fingers through his hair before walking away. “Morning, tiger.”
After she was out of earshot, Dana asked, “Why does she keep implying that you two are…you know?”
“I’d thought she’d finally abandoned her interest in me, and then we destroyed a large portion of a major city. Some women appreciate flowers, others poetry. Lockheart finds massive destruction romantic. As for why she insinuates we have been involved, I can only guess she hopes to inspire me to share her feelings.”
“That’s, um, okay, wow.”
Jayden smiled. “At a loss for words?”
Dana blushed. “Eat before your breakfast freezes.”
“Lockheart’s skill as a cook is one of her saving graces,” he said as he ate. “I marveled at her meals the first time we met, as did Lootmore and McShootersun. It was a tad disconcerting watching her butcher game animals we’d caught. I understand the necessity of the task, but her giggling was unnerving.”
“Lootmore told a funny joke!” Suzy shouted from inside the barn. “You know, the one about the bishop, the gnome and the landslide. Let’s see, how does it go?”
“The joke was long, boring, and inappropriate for young girls!” Jayden shouted back. He turned to Dana and said, “Cover your ears if she repeats it.”
Dana looked out over the cold, snowy wilderness around them. “I’m really glad no one lives here who could hear you two shouting. They might wonder what’s going on in an abandoned building that makes so much noise, and ask soldiers to investigate.”
Jayden gulped down his food. “Don’t expect me to be civil to the woman. She’s nearly killed me twice, and she might try again.”
Once his mouth was full, Dana asked, “How long are we going to stay here?”
He swallowed before answering, “I still want to know what was transported into Armorston at such a high expense. Until we learn what it is, get a lead on a better target or are forced to leave by superior forces, we wait and observe.”
Isolated and ruined as it was, the barn overlooked a road called King’s Way that led to Armorston. This wasn’t the only way into the city, but it was the largest and most traveled road. From here they could see every wagon, horse or pedestrian while still being in cover, except there had been no travelers on the road since they’d come.
“An imperfect observation post, I admit, but Gaston and men in his pay are watching the other roads leaving Armorston,” Jayden said. “We’ll know if the armored wagons leave and can pursue them. If more armored wagons try to enter the city, we can attack them before help arrives.”
Dana folded her arms across her chest. “How much do you trust him?”
“Gaston likes gold and we have it. He also likes breathing, a fact that can end quite suddenly if he betrays us. He can’t turn us over to the authorities for the reward money without revealing his involvement with us. Make no mistake, he’s not an ideal ally, but I’ve learned to take help from wherever I can get it.” Jayden raised an eyebrow and asked, “Can your friends provide aid?”
“If you mean the goblins, they said Armorston has archers on every street corner, and they’re shooting at anything that moves. I won’t have them die because of me.”
Jayden finished eating and set the plate on a nearby tree stump. “Admirably said. We have to be careful with the lives of those who favor us, especially when they are so few. Which brings up another topic.”
“What?”
“I need Lockheart to complete her contract with Brandish. Closing off a pass into that kingdom may be enough to save them from invasion. For that to happen she needs to make her bomb. I know a little of alchemy, and I believe she can use cheaper ingredients than phoenix blossoms and etherium to produce a cruder and less effective bomb. See if she can come up with alternative materials.”
Dana raised an eyebrow. “You could talk to her too, you know.”
“I need time alone with this spell tablet. Besides, you have a better rapport with her than I do. My conversations with Lockheart start with her flirting, and end with us screaming and trying not to be crushed by falling rocks.”
“Those rocks didn’t land anywhere near you!” Suzy yelled.
Dana picked up Jayden’s plate and went inside the ruined barn. She found Yub giggling and Suzy fuming as she went through her belongings. Suzy didn’t look up when Dana came close, merely saying, “I don’t know why I bother.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s trying to discourage you.”
Suzy pointed a finger at her. “It’s not working. I miss my adventures with Jayden, Lootmore and McShootersun. We worked well together, no matter what Mr. Picky out there says. The three of us is close to that team. We just need one more person who can put up with Jayden.”
“Doesn’t Yub count?” Dana asked. Yub heard the suggestion and spit out chicken feathers he was eating.
“He’s not looking for the spotlight or being in the line of fire,” Suzy explained. “We need someone who’s ready to go out there and do incredibly stupid things for poorly developed reasons, just like the rest of us.”
Dana was shocked that Jayden and Suzy had spent this much time together without someone getting killed. A long-term partnership between them was impossible. Rather than point that out, she asked, “How did you hear us out there?”
“You two talk too loud. Tell Jayden I need charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur, lots of it. And he’s right, it would be a big, crude bomb compared to what I wanted to build.”
“Would it do the job?”
“Oh please, I’ve been blowing things up before you were…that shadow looks an awful lot like a helmet.”
Dana peered over Suzy’s shoulder. Sure enough, shadows in the barn were twisting and bending until they looked like pieces of armor. Seconds later the armor launched into the air and shot out of the barn. They heard banging and clanking, followed by a yell from Jayden. Both women raced outside with Yub right behind them.
“So that’s what that spell does,” Dana said.
Suzy rolled her eyes. “Oh, look, he’s even harder to reach. I didn’t think it was possible.”
“Your concern for me is touching,” Jayden said sarcastically, his voice echoing inside the shadowy helmet. Jayden was flat on his back in the snow and encased in overlapping plates of ebony material that shifted and quivered until it solidified into an intimidating suit of plate armor. Long spikes jutted from the shoulder guards, wickedly barbed blades sprouted from the gauntlets, and in place of fingers the armor had long, thick claws like a bear. Jayden sat up and brushed snow off his chest.
“Magic armor,” Dana said. She wanted to help him up, but there wasn’t a part of the armor lacking blades, spikes or sharp edges. “This looks like a keeper.”
Jayden stood up and stretched his arms, first at the shoulders, then the elbows, and finally his fingers. “I’m less certain of that. I can move easily enough, and I think I can grip weapons, but there’s no way to cast spells with my fingers inside these claws. Impressive as this armor is, it’s worthless if I can’t use magic while wearing it.”
“Maybe the sorcerer lords used this spell to protect their bodyguards,” Dana suggested.
Suzy took a rock off the ground and tapped Jayden’s right arm. “Did you feel that?”
“No.”
She hit him far harder. “How about that?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t painful. Suzy, put that down this instant.”
Suzy dropped the far larger rock she was lifting. “It was an experiment.”
The armor boiled away, leaving Jayden disheveled and annoyed. “No spell is useful in all situations. This one is no exception. Still, it is a puzzle solved that had been vexing me, and a new tool to use.” He glanced at the distant road and added, “We have a visitor, possibly even a helpful one.”
Dana looked over and saw Gaston coming up the road toward them. The dirty little man wore layers of clothes to keep warm and hide his identity. Gaston was the only man who knew they were staying here, and he made regular visits to provide information and overpriced supplies. Jayden, Dana, Suzy and Yub waited patiently until Gaston stopped feet in front of them.
Gaston held out one hand. “Fifty gold pieces.”
“That’s a stiff charge,” Dana said.
“And one I have no intention of paying without good reason,” Jayden added.
“What I know is worth the gold,” Gaston said.
Jayden frowned. “You wouldn’t risk your own life to save ours, so you didn’t come to warn us of danger. You wouldn’t share riches, so you’re not offering an opportunity for treasure, unless it’s too dangerous for you to take advantage of. You’ve learned about the armored wagons in Armorston!”
Gaston told them, “The whole lot of them left this morning, guarded by swordsmen, archers and knights. The streets were cleared for them, every citizen kept indoors until they’d left the city. You want them, and I know which road they took. Find that out on your own and you’ll waste so much time you’ll never catch them. Fifty gold pieces buys the name of the road they’re on.”
The goblin Dana had met outside Gaston’s inn ran up to her. She’d been so focused on Gaston that she hadn’t noticed the far smaller goblin, especially since we was wearing a white cape that helped him blend in with the snow. “They’re on Inverness Road, going so slow a turtle could outrun them.”
“That was worth good money!” Gaston yelled at the goblin.
“I’m still peeved about that joke you made about my king,” the goblin retorted. “Nobody insults King Will the War Winner and walks away happy.”
“Thank you,” Dana said, and she kissed the goblin on the forehead.
“Not in front of witnesses!” the goblin sputtered. He saw Yub giggling and shouted, “Don’t you dare tell anyone about this!”
Jayden stepped in front of Gaston and counted out ten gold coins. “You were helpful, so some payment is justified.”
“Twenty gold coins worth of helpful?” Gaston asked hopefully.
“No. Dana, Suzy, collect our belongings and prepare to leave. If the wagons are on Inverness Road I have a good idea what their destination is. We’ll need a day or more to catch up, and then we can plan our attack.”
Dana approached the goblin to shake his hand, but the goblin backed away from her. “No more random acts of affection.”
“There’s nothing random about rewarding a person who’s helped you. Let me get you some cheese.”
It didn’t take long for them to load up Suzy’s wagon and head out. They saw Gaston trundling off into the distance, while the goblin was nowhere to be seen. That was no surprise given how good goblins were at hiding. Suzy handled the reins while Dana, Jayden and Yub rode on the back of the wagon.
Most people stayed indoors during winter, and not just to keep warm. Roads in the kingdom were few and poorly maintained, and even an average storm could cover them in snow that lasted until springtime. Severe storms, and there were plenty of those, could drop a foot of snow. Had there been ice on the roads all hope of catching the armored wagons would be lost.
Today they had to travel regardless of the weather, no easy task even for a wagon pulled by two strong horses. The animals made slow progress and left a trail an idiot could follow. Fortunately they were short of idiots at the moment, or any witnesses whatsoever, courtesy of the same cold weather that slowed them down. By nightfall they’d only gone twenty miles and made camp in a forest clearing.
Suzy heaved a dramatic sigh and fixed Jayden with a stern look. “Okay, I’m just going to come out and say it: why couldn’t you just magic us where we need to be?”
Jayden got off her wagon and stretched his legs. “Most sorcerer lord spells focus on inflicting damage rather than improving mobility. It’s actually interesting you should bring up that topic, because it’s one of the reasons why elves of old defeated the sorcerer lords. Elven magic has a number of spells allowing them to quickly travel great distances. Time and again they used those spells to outmaneuver the sorcerer lords, going deep behind enemy lines to do massive damage, then fleeing to safety.”
“Not the answer I was hoping for,” Suzy told him.
“Please, regale me with tales of how alchemy lets you travel a hundred miles a day.”
Suzy stuck her tongue out at him. “Spoilsport. I need to see to the horses. Yub, start a fire and get my pots out.”
“Dana and I will make sure we don’t have company,” Jayden said. He walked further down the trail from the wagon. Once they were a hundred feet away, he said, “We’re traveling slower than I’d like. I’m not sure we can catch up with the armored wagons at this rate, but walking through this snow would be no faster and more tiring.”
With Suzy and Yub far enough away that they couldn’t listen, Dana felt confident to broach a subject that had been on her mind for weeks. “Since we’ve got some privacy, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“Your tone suggests this conversation is going to be painful.”
She smiled at him. “Doesn’t have to be. When we first met Suzy Lockheart, she said she knew you liked girls because she’d heard stories about you.”
“I was right, incredibly painful, and completely unwarranted. Dana, in our time together I never inquired about your love life, because it would be boorish to do so and it’s none of my business. It’s not unreasonable for you to show equal respect for my privacy.”
“We kind of crossed the privacy barrier when Witch Way showed me parts of your life,” she pointed out. “It was like I lived them.”
“Thankfully my time spent with women wasn’t one of those shared experiences.” He glanced at her and frowned. “A number of stories circulate concerning my life, most total fabrications and the rest only partially accurate. Whatever Suzy thinks she knows should be considered hearsay or products of her deranged mind.”
“So the topic is closed?”
“Closed, dead, buried on unhallowed ground and never to be touched again.”
“I understand,” she told him. “You feel strongly about this, and I won’t bring it up again. Suzy can tell me what she’s heard, and I’ll correct anything I know is wrong.”
Dana took two steps back when she heard Jayden say, “You didn’t used to be this manipulative.”
“I learned from the best.”
He waved for her to return, and she ran back. He frowned again before beginning. “I’d like to know what brought up this topic.”
“We’ve been spending weeks with Suzy drooling over you, and Maya fell for you, but you never return their interest. I want to know why.”
Jayden hesitated before answering. “I suppose it does no damage given how many of my secrets you already know. I want to make it clear, though, that this is for your ears and no one else’s.”
Dana jogged in front of him. “So, is there a girl you’ve got your heart set on?”
“No.” Jayden looked off into the distance. “My life since leaving The Isle of Tears has been largely one of isolation. I took refuge in wild places, tracking rumors of sorcerer lord ruins to loot for gold and magic. I met few people, many of them criminals seeking the same riches I did. There were only three women I traveled with. Two ended disastrously.”
Dana’s blood ran cold. “What happened?”
“I met the first girl when I was seventeen. She was young, pretty, kind, and desperate to escape the small town she grew up in. We crossed paths at a shop where I was selling weapons I’d stolen from bandits. She’d heard rumors of me and followed me to a camp I’d made in a nearby forest. When I saw her, I feared she would report me to the authorities. Instead she begged to join me. She wanted excitement and adventure her hometown couldn’t offer, and freedom from gossiping neighbors.”
“A strange woman showed up at your camp and you thought, ‘Hey, this could work?’” Dana asked.
“Yes,” he said crossly, making her blush. “I was young, lonely, uncertain of myself, and having an attractive girl my own age express an interest in me was flattering. Her courage and competence nearly matched your own, and she was a great help many times. Our relationship developed from friendship to romance.
“Any hope it could lead to marriage nearly ended in tragedy. A manticore was terrorizing small villages in the northwest of the kingdom, and I made the mistake of hunting it with her. I found the beast and wounded it twice. It thought better of attacking me and decided she was easier prey. She ran for her life with a bloodthirsty monster in hot pursuit, barely reaching the cover of woods too thick for it to follow. I caught up with the beast and hacked it to pieces in my fury.
“As much as she cared for me, she’d come within inches of dying, a risk she couldn’t bring herself to take again. She begged me to leave the kingdom with her and start new lives far away. Peace, happiness, companionship, it was an offer any man should have accepted, and I refused. I couldn’t abandon my quest against the king and queen. I found her a new village to settle in and gave her a hundred gold coins. The last I’d heard, she had a husband and children she adored.”
Dana had started this discussion from curiosity and a desire to help Jayden open up to her. Instead she’d opened an old wound. Tears formed around her eyes. She tried to blink them away, but they kept flowing.
“My second experience with a woman was shorter and less pleasant,” he continued. “We met in Pearl Bay after I’d looted a tomb of a sorcerer king. She’d heard I was spending money freely. She was pretty and poor, and my newfound wealth attracted her attention. I should have had the good sense to say no, but after nearly being killed for what seemed like the hundredth time I was tired of being alone. She knew much of the region and helped me locate more tombs. She also used me to get back at her enemies, which didn’t bother me when they were so repugnant.”
“This one ended badly, too, didn’t it?” Dana asked.
“Oh yes. We visited the Kingdom of Brandish, where I’d heard a collector had a spell tablet for the shadow hand spells you’ve seen me use. The man was pleasant enough, but unfortunately he knew the full value of his possessions. I had to pay a thousand gold coins in currency and jewels for the tablet, everything I had. When the woman found out she was furious. She hated being poor. She said that money was hers as much as mine, not an unreasonable point of view when she’d helped me find some of it. I told her I wouldn’t hesitate to make similar deals in the future.”
There was anger in his voice when he continued. “She demanded to know why I hadn’t killed the collector and taken the tablet and the rest of his property. I hadn’t thought her so vicious, or that she thought I was a casual killer who would cut down an innocent man. Her question ended our relationship.”
“I, I didn’t know,” Dana said as she fought back tears.
“You can see why I don’t share this.”
Waving her hands in the air, she cried out, “I just, when I asked, I couldn’t figure out why you didn’t already have a girl! I thought you turned Maya and Suzy down because there’s a princess waiting for you to come back to her, or a nymph.”
“Why would a princess wait for a dead prince or a wanted criminal? As for nymphs, I haven’t met any, and I’m told on good authority they’re far more conservative than you’d expect. It would be nice to find out in person, though.”
Jayden put his hands on her shoulders. “Those failed relationships made me cautious. People I care for can be placed in incredible danger by being near me. Some women would use me if they could, while many don’t share my goals. When I first met Suzy Lockheart I felt no attraction, for I had experience with disasters of the heart. I had no trouble seeing how badly it would end between us if I’d accepted her invitations. I didn’t pursue a relationship with Maya because I didn’t want to hurt her, physically or emotionally.”
“Wait, you said there were three girls you traveled with,” she pressed.
“Ah, yes, the last one.” Jayden smiled as he walked away from Dana. “She wasn’t looking for romance. She needed my help and decided to ‘fix’ me, as women often do. She saw qualities in me I’d thought long dead, and worked hard to unearth them. Clever, brave, loyal, it’s amazing a suitor hadn’t married her before we’d met.”
Curious, Dana asked, “What happened to her?”
Jayden laughed, a welcome sound after such a horrible tale. Without looking back, he asked, “Happened? You’re still here.”
* * * * *
The next day brought more agonizingly slow travel. Suzy’s horses had difficulty with the snow and needed frequent breaks to rest and feed. Halfway through the day they went through the wagon’s contents and threw out anything not essential to lighten the load, and Jayden and Dana walked alongside. This only helped a little.
When they stopped to make camp again, Jayden declared, “Our path will overlook Inverness Road in another mile. I’m going to scout ahead and see if I can find our targets.”
“I’ll have a fire and hot food ready when you get back,” Suzy said. Judging by the number of pots she was taking off her wagon, she was planning on cooking several meals at the same time again. She threw an arm around Dana and added, “And we can swap secrets once you’re gone.”
Dana froze. “What?”
“Oh come on, I saw the way you looked when you came back last night. You two had deep, emotional, heart to heart conversation. I want details!”
Dana slipped out of Suzy’s grip and ran after Jayden. “Wait up!”
“I did warn you about her,” Jayden reminded Dana once she caught up with him.
“I’m sorry for not taking you more seriously, and for joking about you two. Suzy doesn’t have boundaries, I mean any of them.” She hesitated before saying, “You seem worried. Is there a threat on this road?”
“Duke Wiskver has a large estate not far ahead. He is one of the king and queen’s staunchest supporters from the days of the civil war. Wiskver was originally a merchant who imported food and clothes during the conflict, saving many lives and freeing up farmers to be trained as soldiers. After the war ended his reward was to be made a nobleman and given the estate of a disloyal duke.”
“How tough is he?”
Jayden waved his hand. “Personally, not very, but the man is obscenely wealthy. He has trading rights with other kingdoms and earns a fortune every year. Wiskver can afford the best of everything, including guards, and he is fanatically loyal to the throne. That’s in large part because other nobles despise him for being a jumped up pretender while they have been nobles for generations. If the king and queen fall he is sure to follow, for his peers will never support him.”
“I bet that’s where the wagons are headed,” Dana said. “Armored wagons have to cost a bundle, plus whatever they’re carrying, and this guy sounds like he’s got the cash.”
“It’s a likely destination. Our disastrous visit to Armorston may have convinced the duke to relocate the wagons to a safer location, like his manor house.”
They reached the overlook and saw a wide road to the south. Dana and Jayden worked their way down the slope and inspected the road. There were plentiful footprints in the snow, a fair number of hoof prints and deep wagon ruts. Dana followed the ruts until she came across a pile of horse droppings.
“It’s cold but not frozen. We’re hours behind them.” She spread the droppings with the tip of her boot. “No bits of hay in the manure. I think they’re feeding the animals oats.”
Jayden raised an eyebrow. “You can tell that from droppings?”
Dana folded her arms across her chest. “You grew up in a castle. I grew up on a farm.”
“Fair point. I see lights on the horizon, likely our quarry. It’s far enough ahead that we can’t reach it quickly, and a long march in this cold is dangerous. We’ll return to Suzy and tell her the good news. With luck we can catch up with them tomorrow.”
* * * * *
The following morning there wasn’t any luck to be had. A storm rolled in and dropped two more inches of snow, enough to slow them down even further and reduce visibility. The only saving grace was that the armored wagons they were chasing would suffer equally under these harsh conditions. Hours went by while they inched forward. It was dark when they stopped again, this time close enough to see the armored wagons and the manor house.
The manor was three stories high in the center of a cluster of equally large buildings. Dana saw two large barns, an enormous stable, two granaries, a blacksmith shop and more. The wagons were parked next to one of the warehouses while the oxen were led to the stable. Surrounding these buildings and wagons were tents and cheery fires, and around those fires were hordes of armed men.
“This is a level of screwed I’ve never experienced before,” Suzy said as she peered into the darkness. “There’s got to be a thousand soldiers camped around the manor.”
“Not all of them are soldiers,” Jayden told her. “Half wear blue and black uniforms of Skitherin mercenaries, which is ironically worse than if they’d been soldiers.”
“They’re evil?” Dana asked.
“They’re competent,” he corrected her. “Soldiers fight when ordered to, often time going months or years between battles. Mercenaries are paid only when they fight, so they fight constantly. Frequent battles make them skilled warriors. Their leaders’ only loyalty is to their next payday, and unlike army officers who receive their positions from royal decrees, their positions come from success in battle. We can expect neither mistakes nor mercy from them.”
“You take me to the nicest places,” Suzy said.
* * * * *
Dana woke to the smell of frying bacon, biscuits, eggs and a blend of spices she couldn’t identify. That last one wasn’t surprising since she’d grown up in an isolated town at the edge of the kingdom. Merchants came rarely and didn’t bring exotic spices, so her mother cooked only with what could be grown locally.
“What did you put in there?” Dana asked as she got out from under a pile of blankets.
“Garlic, sweet bark and dragon pepper,” Suzy Lockheart told her. “A little dragon pepper goes a long way, and that’s a good thing. The last shop I saw offering it wanted three silver pieces a pound. Do any of Jayden’s underworld connections offer it cheaper?”
Dana rubbed her eyes and stared at the feast being prepared. Suzy had four pots sitting over the fire or cooling next to it. “The only smuggler friend of his I met left the kingdom months ago. Suzy, I don’t think we can eat that much.”
“Don’t be silly, I’m cooking for the entire day. We don’t have much alchemic fire for food preparation. That’s stuff is expensive, you know, so I do all the cooking before it goes out. These pots are breakfast, that one over there is trail cake for lunch, and that one is…something or other, I forget, but we’re having it cold for supper.”
Dana, Jayden, Suzy and Yub the goblin were staying in an abandoned barn miles from Armorston. They’d made the ruined building their base after fleeing the city two weeks ago. Knights had patrolled the roads vigorously for days after the four of them destroyed much of the city’s sewer network. Staying in place had avoided these patrols.
The barn had seen better decades, with holes in the roof and one wall missing, but it was large enough to fit the four of them plus Suzy’s wagon and horses. It was also far from the nearest house, so there was little risk of them being discovered. Still, Suzy only cooked meals over alchemic fire that produced no smoke.
Dana looked around their meager dwelling and only saw Suzy and Yub. “Where’s Jayden?”
Suzy handed her a plate of food. “He was muttering about wanting to get away from me, made some vague threats and went outside to practice his magic. Brooding isn’t attractive in men.”
Dana ate quickly, partly because she didn’t want the food to get cold and partly because it was so good. “This is incredible. Where did you learn to cook?”
“Cooking is no different than alchemy. Mix the right ingredients, stir as needed and don’t let it burn. Of course soufflés don’t explode and take out nearby buildings when you get them wrong. The analogy isn’t perfect.”
Once she finished eating, Dana handed back her plate and went to look in on Jayden. The last two weeks had been hard on him. He was still angry he hadn’t learned what had been inside the armored wagons in Armorston. Whatever it was, it had taken a lot of time, money and manpower to bring it to the city, and he wanted to know what warranted such a high cost. He was also chaffing at the extended time spent with Suzy Lockheart, a woman he barely tolerated.
Dana found Jayden standing in the snow behind the barn. There had been large snowdrifts around the barn, but Jayden’s experiments had long since blasted them apart. The handsome sorcerer lord was reading one of his spell tablets, muttering under his breath and occasionally swearing in frustration.
“You’ll catch cold,” she warned.
“Cold doesn’t bother me.” Jayden’s messy blond hair whipped in the steady breeze, as did the gray cloak he wore over his black and silver clothes. He tapped the spell tablet and announced, “Failure does, and this blasted spell has vexed me for months.”
“You learned your first spell in hours.”
Jayden held up the tablet for her to see. “There is one word here I never came across in my studies of the ancient sorcerer lords. I’ve been guessing at its meaning, and guesses aren’t enough when it comes to magic. You must have a precise understanding. Reginald Lootmore paid for my help with this spell tablet, a potentially valuable addition to my magical arsenal, and I can’t tap that power because of one word!”
Just then Suzy walked by and handed Jayden his breakfast. Once her hands were free and Jayden’s weren’t, she smiled and ran her fingers through his hair before walking away. “Morning, tiger.”
After she was out of earshot, Dana asked, “Why does she keep implying that you two are…you know?”
“I’d thought she’d finally abandoned her interest in me, and then we destroyed a large portion of a major city. Some women appreciate flowers, others poetry. Lockheart finds massive destruction romantic. As for why she insinuates we have been involved, I can only guess she hopes to inspire me to share her feelings.”
“That’s, um, okay, wow.”
Jayden smiled. “At a loss for words?”
Dana blushed. “Eat before your breakfast freezes.”
“Lockheart’s skill as a cook is one of her saving graces,” he said as he ate. “I marveled at her meals the first time we met, as did Lootmore and McShootersun. It was a tad disconcerting watching her butcher game animals we’d caught. I understand the necessity of the task, but her giggling was unnerving.”
“Lootmore told a funny joke!” Suzy shouted from inside the barn. “You know, the one about the bishop, the gnome and the landslide. Let’s see, how does it go?”
“The joke was long, boring, and inappropriate for young girls!” Jayden shouted back. He turned to Dana and said, “Cover your ears if she repeats it.”
Dana looked out over the cold, snowy wilderness around them. “I’m really glad no one lives here who could hear you two shouting. They might wonder what’s going on in an abandoned building that makes so much noise, and ask soldiers to investigate.”
Jayden gulped down his food. “Don’t expect me to be civil to the woman. She’s nearly killed me twice, and she might try again.”
Once his mouth was full, Dana asked, “How long are we going to stay here?”
He swallowed before answering, “I still want to know what was transported into Armorston at such a high expense. Until we learn what it is, get a lead on a better target or are forced to leave by superior forces, we wait and observe.”
Isolated and ruined as it was, the barn overlooked a road called King’s Way that led to Armorston. This wasn’t the only way into the city, but it was the largest and most traveled road. From here they could see every wagon, horse or pedestrian while still being in cover, except there had been no travelers on the road since they’d come.
“An imperfect observation post, I admit, but Gaston and men in his pay are watching the other roads leaving Armorston,” Jayden said. “We’ll know if the armored wagons leave and can pursue them. If more armored wagons try to enter the city, we can attack them before help arrives.”
Dana folded her arms across her chest. “How much do you trust him?”
“Gaston likes gold and we have it. He also likes breathing, a fact that can end quite suddenly if he betrays us. He can’t turn us over to the authorities for the reward money without revealing his involvement with us. Make no mistake, he’s not an ideal ally, but I’ve learned to take help from wherever I can get it.” Jayden raised an eyebrow and asked, “Can your friends provide aid?”
“If you mean the goblins, they said Armorston has archers on every street corner, and they’re shooting at anything that moves. I won’t have them die because of me.”
Jayden finished eating and set the plate on a nearby tree stump. “Admirably said. We have to be careful with the lives of those who favor us, especially when they are so few. Which brings up another topic.”
“What?”
“I need Lockheart to complete her contract with Brandish. Closing off a pass into that kingdom may be enough to save them from invasion. For that to happen she needs to make her bomb. I know a little of alchemy, and I believe she can use cheaper ingredients than phoenix blossoms and etherium to produce a cruder and less effective bomb. See if she can come up with alternative materials.”
Dana raised an eyebrow. “You could talk to her too, you know.”
“I need time alone with this spell tablet. Besides, you have a better rapport with her than I do. My conversations with Lockheart start with her flirting, and end with us screaming and trying not to be crushed by falling rocks.”
“Those rocks didn’t land anywhere near you!” Suzy yelled.
Dana picked up Jayden’s plate and went inside the ruined barn. She found Yub giggling and Suzy fuming as she went through her belongings. Suzy didn’t look up when Dana came close, merely saying, “I don’t know why I bother.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s trying to discourage you.”
Suzy pointed a finger at her. “It’s not working. I miss my adventures with Jayden, Lootmore and McShootersun. We worked well together, no matter what Mr. Picky out there says. The three of us is close to that team. We just need one more person who can put up with Jayden.”
“Doesn’t Yub count?” Dana asked. Yub heard the suggestion and spit out chicken feathers he was eating.
“He’s not looking for the spotlight or being in the line of fire,” Suzy explained. “We need someone who’s ready to go out there and do incredibly stupid things for poorly developed reasons, just like the rest of us.”
Dana was shocked that Jayden and Suzy had spent this much time together without someone getting killed. A long-term partnership between them was impossible. Rather than point that out, she asked, “How did you hear us out there?”
“You two talk too loud. Tell Jayden I need charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur, lots of it. And he’s right, it would be a big, crude bomb compared to what I wanted to build.”
“Would it do the job?”
“Oh please, I’ve been blowing things up before you were…that shadow looks an awful lot like a helmet.”
Dana peered over Suzy’s shoulder. Sure enough, shadows in the barn were twisting and bending until they looked like pieces of armor. Seconds later the armor launched into the air and shot out of the barn. They heard banging and clanking, followed by a yell from Jayden. Both women raced outside with Yub right behind them.
“So that’s what that spell does,” Dana said.
Suzy rolled her eyes. “Oh, look, he’s even harder to reach. I didn’t think it was possible.”
“Your concern for me is touching,” Jayden said sarcastically, his voice echoing inside the shadowy helmet. Jayden was flat on his back in the snow and encased in overlapping plates of ebony material that shifted and quivered until it solidified into an intimidating suit of plate armor. Long spikes jutted from the shoulder guards, wickedly barbed blades sprouted from the gauntlets, and in place of fingers the armor had long, thick claws like a bear. Jayden sat up and brushed snow off his chest.
“Magic armor,” Dana said. She wanted to help him up, but there wasn’t a part of the armor lacking blades, spikes or sharp edges. “This looks like a keeper.”
Jayden stood up and stretched his arms, first at the shoulders, then the elbows, and finally his fingers. “I’m less certain of that. I can move easily enough, and I think I can grip weapons, but there’s no way to cast spells with my fingers inside these claws. Impressive as this armor is, it’s worthless if I can’t use magic while wearing it.”
“Maybe the sorcerer lords used this spell to protect their bodyguards,” Dana suggested.
Suzy took a rock off the ground and tapped Jayden’s right arm. “Did you feel that?”
“No.”
She hit him far harder. “How about that?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t painful. Suzy, put that down this instant.”
Suzy dropped the far larger rock she was lifting. “It was an experiment.”
The armor boiled away, leaving Jayden disheveled and annoyed. “No spell is useful in all situations. This one is no exception. Still, it is a puzzle solved that had been vexing me, and a new tool to use.” He glanced at the distant road and added, “We have a visitor, possibly even a helpful one.”
Dana looked over and saw Gaston coming up the road toward them. The dirty little man wore layers of clothes to keep warm and hide his identity. Gaston was the only man who knew they were staying here, and he made regular visits to provide information and overpriced supplies. Jayden, Dana, Suzy and Yub waited patiently until Gaston stopped feet in front of them.
Gaston held out one hand. “Fifty gold pieces.”
“That’s a stiff charge,” Dana said.
“And one I have no intention of paying without good reason,” Jayden added.
“What I know is worth the gold,” Gaston said.
Jayden frowned. “You wouldn’t risk your own life to save ours, so you didn’t come to warn us of danger. You wouldn’t share riches, so you’re not offering an opportunity for treasure, unless it’s too dangerous for you to take advantage of. You’ve learned about the armored wagons in Armorston!”
Gaston told them, “The whole lot of them left this morning, guarded by swordsmen, archers and knights. The streets were cleared for them, every citizen kept indoors until they’d left the city. You want them, and I know which road they took. Find that out on your own and you’ll waste so much time you’ll never catch them. Fifty gold pieces buys the name of the road they’re on.”
The goblin Dana had met outside Gaston’s inn ran up to her. She’d been so focused on Gaston that she hadn’t noticed the far smaller goblin, especially since we was wearing a white cape that helped him blend in with the snow. “They’re on Inverness Road, going so slow a turtle could outrun them.”
“That was worth good money!” Gaston yelled at the goblin.
“I’m still peeved about that joke you made about my king,” the goblin retorted. “Nobody insults King Will the War Winner and walks away happy.”
“Thank you,” Dana said, and she kissed the goblin on the forehead.
“Not in front of witnesses!” the goblin sputtered. He saw Yub giggling and shouted, “Don’t you dare tell anyone about this!”
Jayden stepped in front of Gaston and counted out ten gold coins. “You were helpful, so some payment is justified.”
“Twenty gold coins worth of helpful?” Gaston asked hopefully.
“No. Dana, Suzy, collect our belongings and prepare to leave. If the wagons are on Inverness Road I have a good idea what their destination is. We’ll need a day or more to catch up, and then we can plan our attack.”
Dana approached the goblin to shake his hand, but the goblin backed away from her. “No more random acts of affection.”
“There’s nothing random about rewarding a person who’s helped you. Let me get you some cheese.”
It didn’t take long for them to load up Suzy’s wagon and head out. They saw Gaston trundling off into the distance, while the goblin was nowhere to be seen. That was no surprise given how good goblins were at hiding. Suzy handled the reins while Dana, Jayden and Yub rode on the back of the wagon.
Most people stayed indoors during winter, and not just to keep warm. Roads in the kingdom were few and poorly maintained, and even an average storm could cover them in snow that lasted until springtime. Severe storms, and there were plenty of those, could drop a foot of snow. Had there been ice on the roads all hope of catching the armored wagons would be lost.
Today they had to travel regardless of the weather, no easy task even for a wagon pulled by two strong horses. The animals made slow progress and left a trail an idiot could follow. Fortunately they were short of idiots at the moment, or any witnesses whatsoever, courtesy of the same cold weather that slowed them down. By nightfall they’d only gone twenty miles and made camp in a forest clearing.
Suzy heaved a dramatic sigh and fixed Jayden with a stern look. “Okay, I’m just going to come out and say it: why couldn’t you just magic us where we need to be?”
Jayden got off her wagon and stretched his legs. “Most sorcerer lord spells focus on inflicting damage rather than improving mobility. It’s actually interesting you should bring up that topic, because it’s one of the reasons why elves of old defeated the sorcerer lords. Elven magic has a number of spells allowing them to quickly travel great distances. Time and again they used those spells to outmaneuver the sorcerer lords, going deep behind enemy lines to do massive damage, then fleeing to safety.”
“Not the answer I was hoping for,” Suzy told him.
“Please, regale me with tales of how alchemy lets you travel a hundred miles a day.”
Suzy stuck her tongue out at him. “Spoilsport. I need to see to the horses. Yub, start a fire and get my pots out.”
“Dana and I will make sure we don’t have company,” Jayden said. He walked further down the trail from the wagon. Once they were a hundred feet away, he said, “We’re traveling slower than I’d like. I’m not sure we can catch up with the armored wagons at this rate, but walking through this snow would be no faster and more tiring.”
With Suzy and Yub far enough away that they couldn’t listen, Dana felt confident to broach a subject that had been on her mind for weeks. “Since we’ve got some privacy, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“Your tone suggests this conversation is going to be painful.”
She smiled at him. “Doesn’t have to be. When we first met Suzy Lockheart, she said she knew you liked girls because she’d heard stories about you.”
“I was right, incredibly painful, and completely unwarranted. Dana, in our time together I never inquired about your love life, because it would be boorish to do so and it’s none of my business. It’s not unreasonable for you to show equal respect for my privacy.”
“We kind of crossed the privacy barrier when Witch Way showed me parts of your life,” she pointed out. “It was like I lived them.”
“Thankfully my time spent with women wasn’t one of those shared experiences.” He glanced at her and frowned. “A number of stories circulate concerning my life, most total fabrications and the rest only partially accurate. Whatever Suzy thinks she knows should be considered hearsay or products of her deranged mind.”
“So the topic is closed?”
“Closed, dead, buried on unhallowed ground and never to be touched again.”
“I understand,” she told him. “You feel strongly about this, and I won’t bring it up again. Suzy can tell me what she’s heard, and I’ll correct anything I know is wrong.”
Dana took two steps back when she heard Jayden say, “You didn’t used to be this manipulative.”
“I learned from the best.”
He waved for her to return, and she ran back. He frowned again before beginning. “I’d like to know what brought up this topic.”
“We’ve been spending weeks with Suzy drooling over you, and Maya fell for you, but you never return their interest. I want to know why.”
Jayden hesitated before answering. “I suppose it does no damage given how many of my secrets you already know. I want to make it clear, though, that this is for your ears and no one else’s.”
Dana jogged in front of him. “So, is there a girl you’ve got your heart set on?”
“No.” Jayden looked off into the distance. “My life since leaving The Isle of Tears has been largely one of isolation. I took refuge in wild places, tracking rumors of sorcerer lord ruins to loot for gold and magic. I met few people, many of them criminals seeking the same riches I did. There were only three women I traveled with. Two ended disastrously.”
Dana’s blood ran cold. “What happened?”
“I met the first girl when I was seventeen. She was young, pretty, kind, and desperate to escape the small town she grew up in. We crossed paths at a shop where I was selling weapons I’d stolen from bandits. She’d heard rumors of me and followed me to a camp I’d made in a nearby forest. When I saw her, I feared she would report me to the authorities. Instead she begged to join me. She wanted excitement and adventure her hometown couldn’t offer, and freedom from gossiping neighbors.”
“A strange woman showed up at your camp and you thought, ‘Hey, this could work?’” Dana asked.
“Yes,” he said crossly, making her blush. “I was young, lonely, uncertain of myself, and having an attractive girl my own age express an interest in me was flattering. Her courage and competence nearly matched your own, and she was a great help many times. Our relationship developed from friendship to romance.
“Any hope it could lead to marriage nearly ended in tragedy. A manticore was terrorizing small villages in the northwest of the kingdom, and I made the mistake of hunting it with her. I found the beast and wounded it twice. It thought better of attacking me and decided she was easier prey. She ran for her life with a bloodthirsty monster in hot pursuit, barely reaching the cover of woods too thick for it to follow. I caught up with the beast and hacked it to pieces in my fury.
“As much as she cared for me, she’d come within inches of dying, a risk she couldn’t bring herself to take again. She begged me to leave the kingdom with her and start new lives far away. Peace, happiness, companionship, it was an offer any man should have accepted, and I refused. I couldn’t abandon my quest against the king and queen. I found her a new village to settle in and gave her a hundred gold coins. The last I’d heard, she had a husband and children she adored.”
Dana had started this discussion from curiosity and a desire to help Jayden open up to her. Instead she’d opened an old wound. Tears formed around her eyes. She tried to blink them away, but they kept flowing.
“My second experience with a woman was shorter and less pleasant,” he continued. “We met in Pearl Bay after I’d looted a tomb of a sorcerer king. She’d heard I was spending money freely. She was pretty and poor, and my newfound wealth attracted her attention. I should have had the good sense to say no, but after nearly being killed for what seemed like the hundredth time I was tired of being alone. She knew much of the region and helped me locate more tombs. She also used me to get back at her enemies, which didn’t bother me when they were so repugnant.”
“This one ended badly, too, didn’t it?” Dana asked.
“Oh yes. We visited the Kingdom of Brandish, where I’d heard a collector had a spell tablet for the shadow hand spells you’ve seen me use. The man was pleasant enough, but unfortunately he knew the full value of his possessions. I had to pay a thousand gold coins in currency and jewels for the tablet, everything I had. When the woman found out she was furious. She hated being poor. She said that money was hers as much as mine, not an unreasonable point of view when she’d helped me find some of it. I told her I wouldn’t hesitate to make similar deals in the future.”
There was anger in his voice when he continued. “She demanded to know why I hadn’t killed the collector and taken the tablet and the rest of his property. I hadn’t thought her so vicious, or that she thought I was a casual killer who would cut down an innocent man. Her question ended our relationship.”
“I, I didn’t know,” Dana said as she fought back tears.
“You can see why I don’t share this.”
Waving her hands in the air, she cried out, “I just, when I asked, I couldn’t figure out why you didn’t already have a girl! I thought you turned Maya and Suzy down because there’s a princess waiting for you to come back to her, or a nymph.”
“Why would a princess wait for a dead prince or a wanted criminal? As for nymphs, I haven’t met any, and I’m told on good authority they’re far more conservative than you’d expect. It would be nice to find out in person, though.”
Jayden put his hands on her shoulders. “Those failed relationships made me cautious. People I care for can be placed in incredible danger by being near me. Some women would use me if they could, while many don’t share my goals. When I first met Suzy Lockheart I felt no attraction, for I had experience with disasters of the heart. I had no trouble seeing how badly it would end between us if I’d accepted her invitations. I didn’t pursue a relationship with Maya because I didn’t want to hurt her, physically or emotionally.”
“Wait, you said there were three girls you traveled with,” she pressed.
“Ah, yes, the last one.” Jayden smiled as he walked away from Dana. “She wasn’t looking for romance. She needed my help and decided to ‘fix’ me, as women often do. She saw qualities in me I’d thought long dead, and worked hard to unearth them. Clever, brave, loyal, it’s amazing a suitor hadn’t married her before we’d met.”
Curious, Dana asked, “What happened to her?”
Jayden laughed, a welcome sound after such a horrible tale. Without looking back, he asked, “Happened? You’re still here.”
* * * * *
The next day brought more agonizingly slow travel. Suzy’s horses had difficulty with the snow and needed frequent breaks to rest and feed. Halfway through the day they went through the wagon’s contents and threw out anything not essential to lighten the load, and Jayden and Dana walked alongside. This only helped a little.
When they stopped to make camp again, Jayden declared, “Our path will overlook Inverness Road in another mile. I’m going to scout ahead and see if I can find our targets.”
“I’ll have a fire and hot food ready when you get back,” Suzy said. Judging by the number of pots she was taking off her wagon, she was planning on cooking several meals at the same time again. She threw an arm around Dana and added, “And we can swap secrets once you’re gone.”
Dana froze. “What?”
“Oh come on, I saw the way you looked when you came back last night. You two had deep, emotional, heart to heart conversation. I want details!”
Dana slipped out of Suzy’s grip and ran after Jayden. “Wait up!”
“I did warn you about her,” Jayden reminded Dana once she caught up with him.
“I’m sorry for not taking you more seriously, and for joking about you two. Suzy doesn’t have boundaries, I mean any of them.” She hesitated before saying, “You seem worried. Is there a threat on this road?”
“Duke Wiskver has a large estate not far ahead. He is one of the king and queen’s staunchest supporters from the days of the civil war. Wiskver was originally a merchant who imported food and clothes during the conflict, saving many lives and freeing up farmers to be trained as soldiers. After the war ended his reward was to be made a nobleman and given the estate of a disloyal duke.”
“How tough is he?”
Jayden waved his hand. “Personally, not very, but the man is obscenely wealthy. He has trading rights with other kingdoms and earns a fortune every year. Wiskver can afford the best of everything, including guards, and he is fanatically loyal to the throne. That’s in large part because other nobles despise him for being a jumped up pretender while they have been nobles for generations. If the king and queen fall he is sure to follow, for his peers will never support him.”
“I bet that’s where the wagons are headed,” Dana said. “Armored wagons have to cost a bundle, plus whatever they’re carrying, and this guy sounds like he’s got the cash.”
“It’s a likely destination. Our disastrous visit to Armorston may have convinced the duke to relocate the wagons to a safer location, like his manor house.”
They reached the overlook and saw a wide road to the south. Dana and Jayden worked their way down the slope and inspected the road. There were plentiful footprints in the snow, a fair number of hoof prints and deep wagon ruts. Dana followed the ruts until she came across a pile of horse droppings.
“It’s cold but not frozen. We’re hours behind them.” She spread the droppings with the tip of her boot. “No bits of hay in the manure. I think they’re feeding the animals oats.”
Jayden raised an eyebrow. “You can tell that from droppings?”
Dana folded her arms across her chest. “You grew up in a castle. I grew up on a farm.”
“Fair point. I see lights on the horizon, likely our quarry. It’s far enough ahead that we can’t reach it quickly, and a long march in this cold is dangerous. We’ll return to Suzy and tell her the good news. With luck we can catch up with them tomorrow.”
* * * * *
The following morning there wasn’t any luck to be had. A storm rolled in and dropped two more inches of snow, enough to slow them down even further and reduce visibility. The only saving grace was that the armored wagons they were chasing would suffer equally under these harsh conditions. Hours went by while they inched forward. It was dark when they stopped again, this time close enough to see the armored wagons and the manor house.
The manor was three stories high in the center of a cluster of equally large buildings. Dana saw two large barns, an enormous stable, two granaries, a blacksmith shop and more. The wagons were parked next to one of the warehouses while the oxen were led to the stable. Surrounding these buildings and wagons were tents and cheery fires, and around those fires were hordes of armed men.
“This is a level of screwed I’ve never experienced before,” Suzy said as she peered into the darkness. “There’s got to be a thousand soldiers camped around the manor.”
“Not all of them are soldiers,” Jayden told her. “Half wear blue and black uniforms of Skitherin mercenaries, which is ironically worse than if they’d been soldiers.”
“They’re evil?” Dana asked.
“They’re competent,” he corrected her. “Soldiers fight when ordered to, often time going months or years between battles. Mercenaries are paid only when they fight, so they fight constantly. Frequent battles make them skilled warriors. Their leaders’ only loyalty is to their next payday, and unlike army officers who receive their positions from royal decrees, their positions come from success in battle. We can expect neither mistakes nor mercy from them.”
“You take me to the nicest places,” Suzy said.
Rented Swords part 2
This is the conclusion of Rented Swords
* * * * *
Dana stared at the mercenaries. “Duke Wiskver hired that many men?”
Jayden shook his head. “More likely these mercenaries were hired by the king and queen. Come spring they will earn their keep in the royal couple’s wars. I imagine Duke Wiskver has the unenviable duty of feeding them during the winter. He’s making the best of a bad situation by using them as guards for whatever those wagons contain.”
Suzy tapped her fingers on the side of her wagon. “Sneaking in there is going to be hard. Getting out with whatever’s in those wagons is impossible. We’re going to have to burn it all, Jayden. I’ve got firebombs to do the job.”
“If the contents of those wagons are flammable, we could repeat the disaster you caused in Armorston,” he said. “We’ll see what’s there and act accordingly.”
“By burning it,” Suzy said sweetly.
“Why does he have two barns?” Dana asked before Jayden could shout at Suzy.
Jayden paused. “I was here before the civil war, and there was only one barn then. Where the second barn stands used to be a far smaller building leading to a large natural cavern. The duke who once lived here used the cave to store beer barrels while the beer fermented. Wiskver didn’t follow his example.”
“That’s stupid,” Dana said. “Brewers make good money. Why wouldn’t he have men do the work?”
“Because he’s a snob,” Jayden said. “Beer is poor men’s drink, and he has aspirations to greatness.”
“We can sneak inside,” Suzy said. “I don’t see guards on patrol, and there aren’t dogs sniffing out intruders. Wiskver is either real confident or real stupid.”
“He expects little trouble with so many men at his command.” Jayden cautioned, “Ground around the manor lacks cover. We’d be seen coming at a distance, and by now both of us have bounties on our heads and wanted posters with our portraits.”
“But not mine,” Dana said.
Jayden grabbed her by the arm. “No.”
Dana pulled free. “There has to be farmers and ranchers living nearby. They’ll think I’m one of them looking for work. I can get in, find out what’s going on and get back.”
“Even if they don’t know who you are, sending a young woman among soldiers and mercenaries is too dangerous,” he said. “You have no ideas the risk you’re taking or the cost you’ll pay if even one man among that thousand seeks to do you harm.”
“What choice is there?” she demanded. “You said those mercenaries are going to be here until spring. We can’t wait that long. And what if they’re carrying weapons in those wagons, maybe more bombs like the one Suzy set off? Whatever is in there is so valuable they’re spending lots of money on it, and you don’t do that without a good reason.”
Suzy smiled at Dana. “McShootersun would love you.”
Jayden stared hard at Dana before marching back to Suzy’s wagon. “You need a disguise that will make them want to let you in, and Lockheart generously provided it.”
“I did what?” Suzy asked.
“Soldiers and mercenaries eat like horses,” Jayden said. He gathered up food that Suzy had cooked and wrapped it in an old blanket. “A peasant girl with food to sell, especially good food, is going to be a welcome sight they will want to return as often as possible. You’ll have to leave your sword here or risk arousing their suspicion.”
Jayden handed her the bundle, but didn’t let go when she tried to pull it from his grasp. His eyes locked onto hers with a fierceness she knew all too well. “If we see or hear signs of danger, if we even suspect a threat to your wellbeing, Lockheart and I will come down on them like the wrath of God.”
With Jayden that was no idle threat. Dana was less certain of what Suzy was capable of, but Jayden made it sound like the woman was a serious threat, possibly his equal.
Dana met his gaze. “You trusted me before. Trust me now.”
She left them and hurried toward the manor and its army of soldiers and mercenaries. It surprised her how far she got before the first man noticed her. Two spearmen wearing chain armor and dressed in blue and black stepped toward her and gave her curious looks when she stopped in front of them and curtsied.
“Good sirs, my name is Candice Latchkey. My family needs money to cover next year’s taxes. Forgive me if I ask too much, but I brought home cooked meals I thought you might like to buy. I know you’ll love it, and I don’t charge much.”
One spearman looked through the bundle of food while the second kept an eye on her. The first one pinched off a piece of Suzy’s bread and tasted it. He nodded and looked to the other spearman. “It’s good. We’ll have to clear this with the captain first. Sven, take her to the command tent.”
A spearman barely older than Dana led her to a large brightly lit tent. Inside stood three older men wearing plate armor and arguing over plates of cold chicken. They paused when the young spearman entered and saluted. Dana opened her mouth, but one of the men spoke first.
“Peasant,” he said. The man had ugly scars along the left side of his jaw, like he’d been badly burned in the past. His hair was black going to gray and cut very short. He walked up to her and saw the bundle she was carrying. “Trying to curry favor or do business?”
Dana curtsied again. “Business. I’m selling home cooked—”
The man jammed a finger into one of Suzy’s pies and stuck it in his mouth. “Sweet bark. I haven’t tasted that in a long time. Where does a peasant girl get sweet bark?”
Thinking fast, she said, “A man came to my village with spices for sale. We didn’t know why he sold it so cheaply.”
The scarred man laughed. “He’s a clever thief to sell to peasants. You’d eat the evidence fast enough. Fine, sell your food and be on your way, but if one of my men eats it and falls sick, you’ll pay.”
Dana did her best to look offended. “Sir! I’ve never disappointed a customer, much less harmed one.”
“Off with you,” the scarred man said.
Dana left the tent and went among the armed men around the manor. She gradually made her way closer to the armored wagons, careful to take a roundabout path so it didn’t look like that was her objective. As she walked she offered food to nearby men. Most refused her, but men came in ones and twos to buy what she had. This earned a fair number of copper coins, far less than the spices in the food were worth, and kept up the appearance that she was a peddler.
Bit by bit she got closer to the armored wagons. She stopped when she was twenty feet away and tried to look inside the nearest one. The back of the wagon had been lowered, and even in the poor light of the camp she could see it was empty. The contents had been unloaded.
So many wagons could carry tons of cargo. That meant it had to be transferred to a building with lots of space. Dana studied the two barns and decided to check the one built over the cavern. If Duke Wiskver was feeling particularly paranoid he might hide the goods underground.
Dana earned another handful of coins as she worked he way closer to the barn. Neither barn had soldiers or mercenaries camped close to it, which meant approaching them might make her stand out. Dana risked it and went closer. She got within fifty feet and stopped, but not willingly.
Her feet didn’t want to move. She pressed on, lifting a foot and trying to fall forward, but even this got her only a step closer. The closer she got the worse this strange compulsion was until she couldn’t move her arms, legs, even her fingers closer to the building. Panicking, she took a step backwards, and to her relief she moved away at full speed.
What to do? There was still another barn to check. Would the same mysterious force defend that one? She tried to look casual as she approached the barn. This time there was no trouble, and she reached a side door without incident. The door was barred from the outside. Dana had no trouble lifting the bar and setting it quietly on the ground.
She opened the door to find the enormous barn was filled front to back with people. Most of them were girls her age or younger, while about a third were boys no older than twelve. They wore simple cotton clothes and huddled around small brick lined fire pits. The girls and boys were chained together in long lines like prisoners.
Worse than this, if such a thing was possible, were their anguished faces. They looked at Dana in fear and self-loathing. Many turned away at the sight of her. Those who did meet gaze had writing tattooed onto their right cheeks just below the eye. Dana took a step forward and read the words on the nearest girl. It said, “Property of,” with a line below those repulsive words. They were slaves.
“Who are you?” Dana whispered.
“The man said we don’t have names anymore,” a girl responded.
“What man?”
Another girl told the first one, “Don’t talk. You’ll get us in trouble.”
“It can’t get worse than this,” the first one said. “The tall man, Wiskver, bought us in Skitherin. He brought us to a city, and today he brought us here. He’s going to sell us in springtime.”
These girls and boys were the cargo of the armored wagons. Jayden had said Duke Wiskver was still earning his riches through trade. They’d met slaves in Baron Scalamonger’s estate, and later a boy owned by an army officer Imuran Tellet. Scalamonger had said many noblemen used slave labor, but even in Dana’s worst nightmares she hadn’t believed the trade in human lives was this extensive. Duke Wiskver must be supplying the demand, and no doubt earning a handsome profit.
Dana took the girl’s hands in hers. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.”
“How? We can’t go home. Our own families sold us. We have no money, no land, no one to turn to.” The girl looked down. “Run. Leave before they sell you, too.”
There wasn’t much of Suzy’s cooking left. Dana handed it to the girl and said, “It won’t go far, but pass it around. Please believe me, help is coming.”
Dana left the barn and closed the door behind her. She felt an empty feeling in her heart. She had to help these poor people, but what could she do when the duke had a thousand men? Dana hurried away from the barn and headed for the edge of the camp.
“Hey, girl, you have anything left?” Dana spun around and saw the young spearman from before approach her.
“Uh, Sven, isn’t it? Sorry, no, all out. I’ll bring more tomorrow.”
Sven laughed and caught up with her. “You sold out that fast? I thought you’d be here all night. This duke is an idiot, but he feeds us enough that we don’t have to poach game or buy food. You’re good.”
Dana kept walking toward the edge of the camp. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have a man yet, do you?”
That made her stop in mid step. “I have a boyfriend.”
“But does he have money? You’re a good cook, and you’re good at peddling. Most women are too shy for that. You should see girls run when we come into town! Sheep are braver. A man would do well to have you for a wife.”
“I’ll be sure to tell my boyfriend.”
Sven cheerfully said, “My captain shares loot and pay from our employer, not like some captains. I have enough to settle down and buy a farm. I just need a wife. Your man doesn’t have money or he wouldn’t let you come here alone. I’m a better choice than he is.”
“Wait, you’d asked a stranger to marry you?”
“Why not? Back in Skitherin Kingdom, grandparents arrange marriages. Here we have to find wives by ourselves. A woman who can cook and is pretty, that’s a good catch. Love can come later.”
Dana knew parents who meddled in their children’s love lives, forbidding certain boys and encouraging others. It wasn’t strange for parents to pick a wife or husband for their children. “Take your money home and let your family pick a girl for you.”
Sven waved his hand like he was shooing away a fly. “Why go back? You know what would happen if I tried? The nobles, the magistrates, the Ministry of Obedience, they’d take every coin from me. I risked my life to earn that money. I can spend it, I can give it away, but no one takes it from me.”
Sven stopped her and pulled a coin pouch from his belt. He opened it and held it up to show her. “See, gold. That’s enough to buy good land, livestock, tools—”
“And buy a wife, too,” Dana interrupted.
“No, it’s not like that!”
Skitherin Kingdom must be a miserable place if men like Sven would risk their lives by becoming mercenaries. It must be doubly miserable if families sell their daughters and even sons. Sven hated his homeland, natural enough given what he’d said. The other mercenaries probably felt the same. But how did they feel about the common people from back home?
Dana put her hands on her hips. “It is so! You think you can buy me like those poor Skitherin girls in the barn.”
Sven’s expression went from panic to confusion. “What girls?”
“The ones in the barn. Duke Wiskver bought them from your homeland, and he’s selling them here. I won’t be bought for pocket change.”
Confusion gave way to anger, and then grim determination as Sven grabbed Dana’s hand. “Come with me.”
Dana barely had to feign indignation as Sven dragged her to the command tent. “Hey, wait a minute!”
Soldiers and mercenaries watched with concern as Sven pulled her along. They reached the command tent to find little had changed, except the cold chicken dinners were now only bones picked clean. The scarred man leading the mercenaries raised an eyebrow when he saw Dana again.
“What did she do?” he demanded.
Sven pushed Dana toward the ugly man. “Tell the captain what you told me.”
Dana pointed at Sven. “He wants to settle down and asked me to marry him.”
The captain burst out laughing. Sven blushed and shouted, “Not that part!”
“He showed me what you paid him and said he could support me. I said I wouldn’t be bought like those Skitherin girls in the barn.”
The captain stopped laughing. “Girls? What’s this about? How would you know what’s in those barns?”
Oops. Dana prayed she was a convincing liar. “I heard voices in the barn and thought some of your men were staying there. I opened a side door and saw girls and young boys chained up. They said they were from Skitherin Kingdom, and that the duke had bought them.”
The captain’s eyes narrowed. “The wagons that came in this morning, they went straight into the barn before unloading so we wouldn’t see.”
“Is this how they’re able to pay us?” Sven demanded. “Our daughters and sisters are being sold like oxen, and to do what? Mop floors if they’re lucky! Captain, are we going to take money from a man who hires us to fight his battles while treating our women like animals?”
Sven’s yelling brought mercenaries running to the command tent until there was a crowd gathered around the entrance. The captain glared at Sven and Dana. He looked angry and conflicted. Finally he said, “I don’t take a peasant’s word for anything. She says there are slaves in that barn, I look before I believe her.”
The captain marched out of the tent with his men following. Sven took the lead with Dana still in his grip. They marched up to the second, older barn, and the captain tried to open the large front door. He glowered at Dana when it didn’t budge.
“I used the side door,” she said, and pointed to it.
Grumbling under his breath, the captain marched to the side door, pulled off the bar and threw it aside. He opened the door and peered inside. Seconds later he came back out. “Sven, let the girl go.”
“Then it’s true.” Sven released Dana and ran to the door. He came back swearing and stomping his feet. More mercenaries came over and looked inside. Some looked outraged, while others were merely curious.
“Karl, open the door,” the captain ordered. A man big as an ogre lumbered up to the barn’s main door, lifted a sledgehammer and struck the lock. Wham! Wham! A third blow took the lock off, and the enormous man pulled the door open to reveal hundreds of cowering girls and boys.
The commotion brought soldiers, archers and knights running over. Steps behind them came a man wearing a sable coat. He was older with silver hair, and would have looked handsome except for the look of utter contempt on his face.
“What is the meaning of this?” the older man demanded.
“I believe that is my question, Duke Wiskver,” the mercenary captain replied. He gestured to the slaves. “Women and children of Skitherin in chains, goods to be sold no different than sheep or goats, and you thought we wouldn’t care?”
“My property is none of your business,” Wiskver said haughtily. “You have been paid well to fight for the king and queen. Nothing else that goes on in this kingdom is your concern.”
“King and queen,” the captain repeated. “Strange how often I hear that. Most kings speak for themselves, yet your king’s proclamations always come with his wife’s name attached to them, like she is his equal.”
“You dog!” Wiskver spat on the ground. “You’re hired help, nothing more, yet you dare to speak so contemptibly of my king!”
Dana watched the mercenaries and soldiers. The two sides were the same size, but the mercenaries were better armed and armored, and they looked more confident. Jayden had said mercenary captains didn’t owe their positions to royal commands or grants. The captain had earned his position through courage, quick wits and constant victories. His men followed because he paid them, and they could leave if they were dissatisfied. Many of them looked furious. If he backed down he risked them deserting or replacing him.
A fight could break out any second. Dana raced away, slipping twice on snow trampled down to mush by foot traffic. She heard shouting and insults behind her as she reached the tents, and barely got past them when she ran into Jayden, Suzy and Yub. She slid across the wet ground and landed at Jayden’s feet.
Jayden looked worried as he helped her up. “Are you hurt?”
“No, but it’s about to get really messy.” Dana looked back at the growing crowd of soldiers and mercenaries. She wasn’t sure which side would win if they fought. Jayden and Suzy could tip the fight in the mercenaries’ favor, but she hesitated to explain what she’d seen. Jayden had gone berserk when he’d seen the slaves at Scalamonger’s estate, and he might do so again. “Promise me you’re not going to go feral.”
Suzy looked confused. “What?”
“She’s worried I’ll lose my temper,” Jayden explained. “Dana, I won’t get angry. Tell me what you saw.”
“The new barn is protected by some kind of magic that kept me back, and I learned what was in the armored wagons. They were carrying people, Jayden, hundreds of girls and boys from Skitherin Kingdom. They’re chained up in the other barn. Wiskver is going to sell them this spring. I told the mercenaries, and they’re confronting the duke.” Dana saw Jayden’s eye’s narrow and his face turn red. “No, you promised!”
Suzy went through her coat and brought out a small bomb. “He promised, I didn’t. Back home I saw too many people treated like dirt, but they were still free people. This stops if I have to blow up every building here to do it.”
“Ms. Lockheart, I believe we’ve finally found a matter where we’re of the same opinion,” Jayden declared.
Dana grabbed them both by the arm. “The mercenaries are minutes away from rebelling. If you attack they’ll join forces with the soldiers to defend themselves. Just sit still and let them fight each other.”
Jayden looked dubious as he studied the growing conflict. “They’re too busy to pay attention to us. We can get closer and take action if needed. Lockheart, I assume your wagon is well supplied with explosives?”
“Like you have to ask.”
“Bring it with us and hide it behind a tent.”
They snuck into the tent camp and found the mercenaries and soldiers in a war of words. Men shouted back and forth, with Wiskver and the scarred mercenary captain the loudest and angriest.
“You came highly recommended as skilled warriors, yet I find disobedient curs before me!” Wiskver bellowed.
“You want blind obedience, buy a golem,” the scarred captain retorted. “You want battles won, hire men who think and treat them well. Is that what you thought we were, slaves for rent?”
A lone mercenary approached the barn’s entrance. Wiskver shouted, “Get away from there!”
The mercenary ignored him. “Tanya?”
One of the slave girls sat up straight, her eyes snapping open and her jaw dropping in shock. Just as fast she crouched down and covered her face with her hands. The mercenary ran to her and wrapped his arms around her. “Tanya!”
The scarred captain went to the man and put a hand on his shoulder. The mercenary had doubtlessly fought many battles, seen horrors beyond description, yet tears ran down his face like rivers. “S-sir, this is Tanya, from my village. She grew up three doors down from me. She’s a good girl. I, sir, I can’t leave her like this.”
The scarred captain looked at his followers, now universally angry. His eyes fell on Wiskver. “They’re coming with us. Take whatever they cost you out of our pay.”
“You’ll do no such thing!” Wiskver thundered. He pulled a jeweled rod from inside his coat and pointed it at them. “Men, attack!”
Dana had to give the soldiers credit for bravery if not brains as they charged headlong into the mercenaries. The mercenaries battered them aside with contemptible ease, fighting with a unity and ferocity Dana had rarely seen. Soldiers were surrounded and knocked to the ground, their weapons broken, and a few were even robbed.
Suzy ran headlong into the fight with Yub at her side. “I want in on this!”
Jayden handed Dana her sword back and followed Suzy. Suzy threw bombs and sent knights screaming from their horses. Jayden formed his giant magic hand and bowled over archers taking aim at the mercenaries. Yub tripped soldiers and took their wallets.
Dana ignored the fight and ran into the barn. Slaves cowered when she approached, and they screamed when she drew her magic sword. She swung down as hard as she could. A shower of sparks shot up as it hacked through a chain holding twenty slaves together. Screams turned into shouts of joy, and slaves held up their chains for her to cut.
Wiskver ran into the barn and saw her chop through another chain. “No, stop!”
Dana pointed her sword at his heart. “I’m coming for you next!”
Wiskver ran screaming from the barn. Dana hacked chains apart one after another until everyone was free. She led them out to find the soldiers falling back. Wiskver wasn’t with them. Instead he headed for the second barn. He held up his jeweled rod and went right through the barrier that had kept Dana back.
“Oh no.” Dana saw Jayden pursuing fleeing soldiers and waved to him. “Jayden, stop Wiskver!”
The warning came too late. Wiskver pressed his rod against the barn’s door, and it swung open as if strong men were pushing it. He stepped aside and pointed his rod at the mercenaries.
“Idiots!” Wiskver screamed into the barn. “Worthless retches the lot of you! I paid good money for you failures! Not one of you would do a day’s work! If work is too good for you, then fight in my name! Kill! Kill!”
Seconds passed with no response, making Dana think Wiskver was out of his mind, before a lone voice called back, “You only had to say it once.”
The barn’s interior lit up with a sea of red lights. There was a strange clacking sound, like sticks hitting sticks, followed by a hateful, braying laughter, and the stuff of nightmares poured out. Animated skeletons ran screaming from the barn like a river in flood, each one with red light pouring from empty eye sockets, and unarmed except for their sharp teeth and nails. Horrible as even one of these abominations was, they emerged by the hundreds, laughing, screaming and throwing their heads back as they howled.
Dana would have screamed in horror or fear, but the cry died in her throat as a wave of pain washed over her. She grabbed her head and pinched her eyes shut as she doubled over. The slaves suffered the same agony and cried out. Seconds later pain turned to rage, an unquenchable hatred that made her entire body shake.
The skeletal horde crashed into the mercenaries with overwhelming numbers. The scarred captain rallied his men into a rough square that slowly fell back. Skeletons surrounded the formation and pounded on it from all sides. Mercenaries battered skeletons to pieces, only for more to take their place.
Skeletons also went after the soldiers. Wiskver shouted at them to stop and waved his rod at them to no avail. Soldiers fought with fierceness equaling the mercenaries, falling back only far enough to have walls at their backs. Skeletons attacked the buildings as well and tried to force their way through doors and windows. Wiskver pulled at his hair, helpless to stop the battle.
Then they came to the barn.
“Ooh, look at all the pretty pretties to kill,” a horrifying skeleton said as it stepped in front of the barn door. This one was missing a foot and had a horse’s hoof in its place, and there was an extra arm on its left side. “I must have been a good boy!”
Dana screamed in pain and revulsion as she charged the monster. It tried to grab her with its three arms. She slid under its clumsy swings and lashed out with her sword, hacking off two of its arms. The skeleton looked puzzled and held up the stumps in front of its glowing eyes. She swung again and lopped off both legs at the knees. The skeleton fell to the ground, and she plunged her sword through its ribs and spine, destroying it.
“Hey, save some for me,” a skeleton with a wolf’s skull said as it swaggered into the barn. It stared at the shattered bones and its jaw dropped. “Huh?”
Dana charged the skeleton and swung across its chest, slicing through rib bones before cutting off the front of its skull. The skeleton fell backwards into a third skeleton, knocking it over. She leapt onto the fallen skeleton and cut it to pieces.
Dana heard a faint noise of a girl screaming. In her fury it took seconds to realize the screams were hers. Pain and rage made it hard to think. She saw skeletons running to join the attack on the mercenaries. She growled under her breath and ran after them, catching up with one and stabbing it in the back until it fell.
Mercenaries and soldiers were pushed together by the rush of skeletons until they stood side by side. The men fought with the same fury Dana did, snarling and screaming as they battered and hacked their enemies to pieces. Skeletons mobbed men and dragged them down, but men ran to the rescue and pulled their victims to safety. It would have been impressive, except the stream of skeletons from the barn never slackened.
Jayden fought his way to the embattled men, his black sword slashing apart skeletons like they were wheat before a scythe. He seemed to be the only person not totally consumed by rage. Suzy Lockheart was steps behind him and hurling explosives at anything within range. Yub followed suit with more explosives. When he ran out he threw himself at the nearest skeleton and bit it, chewing the skeleton’s leg and eating it.
Dana destroyed ten skeletons getting to Jayden. She was hit twice and knocked back, but she went on heedless of the blows until she reached him. Jayden embraced her with his left arm when she came close.
“Jayden, make it stop!” Dana clutched her head and gritted her teeth. “I want…I need to kill them! I hate them all!”
“Your body is reacting to the presence of undead,” he said. “The pain will stop when they’re gone. My mind cloud spell protects me, but it takes too long to cast it on you.”
Skeletons tried to swarm the two of them. Suzy spotted the attack and hurled a bomb into the mob, blasting it apart. She tried to charge the next group of skeletons until Jayden pulled her to a stop.
“Why don’t they stop coming?” Dana asked. “The barn’s not that big.”
“Wiskver must have put them into the cavern below as well as in the barn,” Jayden said. “It’s large enough to house thousands of skeletons. We’ll be overrun if we stay and chased down if we flee.”
More skeletons attacked. These ones were pieced together nightmares with bones from men and animals fused together. Jayden destroyed the first two with his black sword, while Dana charged a third one and cut it apart. Suzy hurled firebombs into the skeletons and burned them to ashes.
“More!” Suzy yelled. “Keep them coming! I’ve got bombs for weeks!”
“Cave,” Dana gasped. “If most of them are underground, can we bring the cave down on them? Like we did in Armorton when we blew up the sewers?”
“We’d need an enormous amount of explosives,” Jayden told her.
“Suzy, we need all the bombs you have!” Dana yelled.
Suzy had trouble focusing enough to answer. “Bombs. More bombs in my wagon.”
“Enough to blow up the barn?” Dana asked.
“Yes.” Suzy ran to her wagon just as her horses broke free of their yokes. Dana assumed the animals would run off. Instead they raced to the nearest skeletons and stomped them to pieces. Suzy climbed onto her wagon and said, “I can set the bombs to go off, but I can’t move them closer.”
Jayden hacked apart another skeleton and impaled a second one that Dana finished off. He let his black sword fade out and formed one of his giant magic hands. The hand grabbed the back of the wagon and pushed it toward the barn. Suzy pulled a test tube out of her coat, shook it hard and threw it into the back of her wagon. She jumped off as the wagon rolled by Jayden and Dana.
The wagon rolled fast and struck the stream of undead coming from the barn, crushing a dozen of them before going through the barn’s door. Skeletons kept pouring out, and some climbed onto the wagon.
Dana grabbed Suzy by the arm. “When is it going to g—”
BOOM! The explosion leveled the barn, throwing huge pieces of burning timber through the air to crash into skeletons. Dense clouds of smoke and dust billowed into the air. The ground shook and began to sink, slowly at first but picking up speed quickly. What little remained of the barn vanished into the ground, and more land around it disappeared. Soldiers, mercenaries and slaves fled when the manor house crumbled into the earth.
Mercenaries and soldiers surrounded a hundred skeletons still standing and finished them off. Three skeletons tried to flee. They only got a few steps before Jayden caught up with them and swung his black lash, wrapping it around them and burning through them. With the last skeletons gone the pain lifted, and people across the battlefield collapsed in exhaustion.
Suzy stared at the gaping hole where the barn and manor house had been. “That was good.”
Jayden let his magic whip fade away. “Incredibly satisfying.”
* * * * *
Dana woke the following morning to see soldiers and mercenaries, who’d only the night before had tried to kill one another, were side by side picking through the remains of Duke Wiskver’s property. They looted anything worth taking, loading up with food, drink and warm clothing. One soldier kept apologizing, telling anyone who’d listen that he hadn’t known of the duke’s crimes. Dana looked around and found Jayden talking to the scarred mercenary captain.
Jayden asked, “What will you do now?”
“There are other companies of Skitherin mercenaries in this kingdom,” the captain said. “I need to tell them what we’ve learned, both about our womenfolk and that a duke was involved in necromancy. We’ll take the women and children with us and leave the kingdom. No amount of gold is worth this.”
“It’s a pleasure to hear that.”
The captain slapped Jayden on the back. “I’ve heard about you. You’re got quite a price on your head. You’re also quite a wizard. I don’t have a wizard working for me. You could come with us.”
“Tempting as that is, I have work to do here.”
The captain saw Dana as she walked up to them. He looked at Sven the spearman and shouted, “That the one you wanted?”
Sven blushed. “Uh, yes.”
“I saw her fight last night. Good eye, boy.”
The captain walked away, leaving Dana and Jayden alone. Dana looked at the gaping hole in the ground left by Suzy’s explosives. “Jayden, there was an army of skeletons down there. How hard would it have been to make so many?”
“Only the strongest necromancers would have the power.” He frowned and added, “Animated skeletons are typically made from the bones of only one animal or person. The ones we faced had been cobbled together from many sources, sometimes with extra limbs. If a necromancer that powerful is allowed to continue experimenting, there’s no telling what horrors he could produce.”
“They were stored on Wiskver’s land. He thought he could control them. He was in on it, Jayden, he had to be.”
“He was indeed. The duke fled during the battle, a wise move given that his own men would tear him apart if they got the chance. Wiskver’s dealing with a necromancer opens the possibility that the king and queen might be behind it. Would Wiskver take such a risk without their support? Did they order him to do this?”
Jayden looked off into the distance. “Father, what have you done?”
Dana heard horses whinny and armor plates clink. She turned to see Suzy and Yub driving an armored wagon and stop next to them.
“There wasn’t as much loot as I’d like, but Wiskver had agricultural supplies I can use,” she said. “Sulfur, charcoal, and a soldier told me I can find saltpeter in the next town. It’s enough to make the bomb I need. We’ve got time to reach Brandish and close off the pass. Let’s go.”
“I can’t,” Jayden told her.
“What do you mean you can’t?” Suzy demanded. She waved an arm at the liberated slaves. “You saw that! Girls were turned into property! It makes the garbage I put up with growing up look like a cakewalk. We can’t let this spread to other kingdoms!”
“Which is why you have to close the pass to Brandish as soon as possible. You have the tools to do the job without us. Dana and I have to find the necromancer responsible for this outrage before he causes further suffering.”
“You think you can stop the monster who did this without me?” Suzy asked.
“There’s no choice. If I come with you the necromancer will produce further atrocities. If you come with me Brandish is left open to attack. Neither of us can fail.” Jayden walked up to her and took her hand. “You have to do this.”
She stared at him. “This is why you’re like this, isn’t it? You saw this nightmare coming and focused your whole life to stopping it.”
“I suspected it, but last night proved I underestimated the threat. I’ve failed to end this horror. I need you, Ms. Lockheart. Help me stop this madness before it spreads. Hundreds of thousands of lives depend on you.”
Suzy stared hard at him and rode off. “We’ll meet again.”
“Feeling relieved?” Dana asked him as he watched Suzy leave.
“Yes, but not for the reason you think. Suzy understands me better than she did before, perhaps enough that what she’s doing in Brandish is no longer just a job. If so, the people of that kingdom have a worthy ally for the battles to come. Dana, we need to go. Finding the necromancer will be no easy feat.”
They left Duke Wiskver’s ruined estate and headed into the snowy wilderness. Dana looked back briefly at the soldiers who’d once served the duke. What would they do now? If nothing else they could spread the word of the duke’s crimes. That alone could do immeasurable good.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about a name for my sword,” she began.
Jayden smiled. “Again?”
She drew the blade and studied it. “You said the name should mention important battles or famous deed. I know it sounds silly, but destroying Wall Wolf didn’t seem like it was important enough. The golem wasn’t a monster, just a mindless tool. It could have been used for good if better people were controlling it.”
“That is a very good point.”
“Duke Wiskver is different. He decided to be a slaver. He decided to use the undead.” She thought back to the night before and shuddered. “How could anyone think he could control those things? Stopping him, freeing those children, I’m proud of that. My parents would be proud. I used the sword to do it. So I’m calling it Chain Cutter.”
No sooner has she said the words then the sword shook so hard she had to hold it with both hands. Sparks poured off it like a shower, and it made a crackling sound like distant thunder. The noise, sparks and shaking stopped almost as fast as it started, leaving Dana worried and confused. She looked at the blade. The words Chain Cutter were written across one side of the sword in flowing letters that faintly glowed like stars at night.
Hesitantly, she asked Jayden, “Is that normal?”
Jayden didn’t look bothered. “Normal is a relative term with magic.”
* * * * *
Dana stared at the mercenaries. “Duke Wiskver hired that many men?”
Jayden shook his head. “More likely these mercenaries were hired by the king and queen. Come spring they will earn their keep in the royal couple’s wars. I imagine Duke Wiskver has the unenviable duty of feeding them during the winter. He’s making the best of a bad situation by using them as guards for whatever those wagons contain.”
Suzy tapped her fingers on the side of her wagon. “Sneaking in there is going to be hard. Getting out with whatever’s in those wagons is impossible. We’re going to have to burn it all, Jayden. I’ve got firebombs to do the job.”
“If the contents of those wagons are flammable, we could repeat the disaster you caused in Armorston,” he said. “We’ll see what’s there and act accordingly.”
“By burning it,” Suzy said sweetly.
“Why does he have two barns?” Dana asked before Jayden could shout at Suzy.
Jayden paused. “I was here before the civil war, and there was only one barn then. Where the second barn stands used to be a far smaller building leading to a large natural cavern. The duke who once lived here used the cave to store beer barrels while the beer fermented. Wiskver didn’t follow his example.”
“That’s stupid,” Dana said. “Brewers make good money. Why wouldn’t he have men do the work?”
“Because he’s a snob,” Jayden said. “Beer is poor men’s drink, and he has aspirations to greatness.”
“We can sneak inside,” Suzy said. “I don’t see guards on patrol, and there aren’t dogs sniffing out intruders. Wiskver is either real confident or real stupid.”
“He expects little trouble with so many men at his command.” Jayden cautioned, “Ground around the manor lacks cover. We’d be seen coming at a distance, and by now both of us have bounties on our heads and wanted posters with our portraits.”
“But not mine,” Dana said.
Jayden grabbed her by the arm. “No.”
Dana pulled free. “There has to be farmers and ranchers living nearby. They’ll think I’m one of them looking for work. I can get in, find out what’s going on and get back.”
“Even if they don’t know who you are, sending a young woman among soldiers and mercenaries is too dangerous,” he said. “You have no ideas the risk you’re taking or the cost you’ll pay if even one man among that thousand seeks to do you harm.”
“What choice is there?” she demanded. “You said those mercenaries are going to be here until spring. We can’t wait that long. And what if they’re carrying weapons in those wagons, maybe more bombs like the one Suzy set off? Whatever is in there is so valuable they’re spending lots of money on it, and you don’t do that without a good reason.”
Suzy smiled at Dana. “McShootersun would love you.”
Jayden stared hard at Dana before marching back to Suzy’s wagon. “You need a disguise that will make them want to let you in, and Lockheart generously provided it.”
“I did what?” Suzy asked.
“Soldiers and mercenaries eat like horses,” Jayden said. He gathered up food that Suzy had cooked and wrapped it in an old blanket. “A peasant girl with food to sell, especially good food, is going to be a welcome sight they will want to return as often as possible. You’ll have to leave your sword here or risk arousing their suspicion.”
Jayden handed her the bundle, but didn’t let go when she tried to pull it from his grasp. His eyes locked onto hers with a fierceness she knew all too well. “If we see or hear signs of danger, if we even suspect a threat to your wellbeing, Lockheart and I will come down on them like the wrath of God.”
With Jayden that was no idle threat. Dana was less certain of what Suzy was capable of, but Jayden made it sound like the woman was a serious threat, possibly his equal.
Dana met his gaze. “You trusted me before. Trust me now.”
She left them and hurried toward the manor and its army of soldiers and mercenaries. It surprised her how far she got before the first man noticed her. Two spearmen wearing chain armor and dressed in blue and black stepped toward her and gave her curious looks when she stopped in front of them and curtsied.
“Good sirs, my name is Candice Latchkey. My family needs money to cover next year’s taxes. Forgive me if I ask too much, but I brought home cooked meals I thought you might like to buy. I know you’ll love it, and I don’t charge much.”
One spearman looked through the bundle of food while the second kept an eye on her. The first one pinched off a piece of Suzy’s bread and tasted it. He nodded and looked to the other spearman. “It’s good. We’ll have to clear this with the captain first. Sven, take her to the command tent.”
A spearman barely older than Dana led her to a large brightly lit tent. Inside stood three older men wearing plate armor and arguing over plates of cold chicken. They paused when the young spearman entered and saluted. Dana opened her mouth, but one of the men spoke first.
“Peasant,” he said. The man had ugly scars along the left side of his jaw, like he’d been badly burned in the past. His hair was black going to gray and cut very short. He walked up to her and saw the bundle she was carrying. “Trying to curry favor or do business?”
Dana curtsied again. “Business. I’m selling home cooked—”
The man jammed a finger into one of Suzy’s pies and stuck it in his mouth. “Sweet bark. I haven’t tasted that in a long time. Where does a peasant girl get sweet bark?”
Thinking fast, she said, “A man came to my village with spices for sale. We didn’t know why he sold it so cheaply.”
The scarred man laughed. “He’s a clever thief to sell to peasants. You’d eat the evidence fast enough. Fine, sell your food and be on your way, but if one of my men eats it and falls sick, you’ll pay.”
Dana did her best to look offended. “Sir! I’ve never disappointed a customer, much less harmed one.”
“Off with you,” the scarred man said.
Dana left the tent and went among the armed men around the manor. She gradually made her way closer to the armored wagons, careful to take a roundabout path so it didn’t look like that was her objective. As she walked she offered food to nearby men. Most refused her, but men came in ones and twos to buy what she had. This earned a fair number of copper coins, far less than the spices in the food were worth, and kept up the appearance that she was a peddler.
Bit by bit she got closer to the armored wagons. She stopped when she was twenty feet away and tried to look inside the nearest one. The back of the wagon had been lowered, and even in the poor light of the camp she could see it was empty. The contents had been unloaded.
So many wagons could carry tons of cargo. That meant it had to be transferred to a building with lots of space. Dana studied the two barns and decided to check the one built over the cavern. If Duke Wiskver was feeling particularly paranoid he might hide the goods underground.
Dana earned another handful of coins as she worked he way closer to the barn. Neither barn had soldiers or mercenaries camped close to it, which meant approaching them might make her stand out. Dana risked it and went closer. She got within fifty feet and stopped, but not willingly.
Her feet didn’t want to move. She pressed on, lifting a foot and trying to fall forward, but even this got her only a step closer. The closer she got the worse this strange compulsion was until she couldn’t move her arms, legs, even her fingers closer to the building. Panicking, she took a step backwards, and to her relief she moved away at full speed.
What to do? There was still another barn to check. Would the same mysterious force defend that one? She tried to look casual as she approached the barn. This time there was no trouble, and she reached a side door without incident. The door was barred from the outside. Dana had no trouble lifting the bar and setting it quietly on the ground.
She opened the door to find the enormous barn was filled front to back with people. Most of them were girls her age or younger, while about a third were boys no older than twelve. They wore simple cotton clothes and huddled around small brick lined fire pits. The girls and boys were chained together in long lines like prisoners.
Worse than this, if such a thing was possible, were their anguished faces. They looked at Dana in fear and self-loathing. Many turned away at the sight of her. Those who did meet gaze had writing tattooed onto their right cheeks just below the eye. Dana took a step forward and read the words on the nearest girl. It said, “Property of,” with a line below those repulsive words. They were slaves.
“Who are you?” Dana whispered.
“The man said we don’t have names anymore,” a girl responded.
“What man?”
Another girl told the first one, “Don’t talk. You’ll get us in trouble.”
“It can’t get worse than this,” the first one said. “The tall man, Wiskver, bought us in Skitherin. He brought us to a city, and today he brought us here. He’s going to sell us in springtime.”
These girls and boys were the cargo of the armored wagons. Jayden had said Duke Wiskver was still earning his riches through trade. They’d met slaves in Baron Scalamonger’s estate, and later a boy owned by an army officer Imuran Tellet. Scalamonger had said many noblemen used slave labor, but even in Dana’s worst nightmares she hadn’t believed the trade in human lives was this extensive. Duke Wiskver must be supplying the demand, and no doubt earning a handsome profit.
Dana took the girl’s hands in hers. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.”
“How? We can’t go home. Our own families sold us. We have no money, no land, no one to turn to.” The girl looked down. “Run. Leave before they sell you, too.”
There wasn’t much of Suzy’s cooking left. Dana handed it to the girl and said, “It won’t go far, but pass it around. Please believe me, help is coming.”
Dana left the barn and closed the door behind her. She felt an empty feeling in her heart. She had to help these poor people, but what could she do when the duke had a thousand men? Dana hurried away from the barn and headed for the edge of the camp.
“Hey, girl, you have anything left?” Dana spun around and saw the young spearman from before approach her.
“Uh, Sven, isn’t it? Sorry, no, all out. I’ll bring more tomorrow.”
Sven laughed and caught up with her. “You sold out that fast? I thought you’d be here all night. This duke is an idiot, but he feeds us enough that we don’t have to poach game or buy food. You’re good.”
Dana kept walking toward the edge of the camp. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have a man yet, do you?”
That made her stop in mid step. “I have a boyfriend.”
“But does he have money? You’re a good cook, and you’re good at peddling. Most women are too shy for that. You should see girls run when we come into town! Sheep are braver. A man would do well to have you for a wife.”
“I’ll be sure to tell my boyfriend.”
Sven cheerfully said, “My captain shares loot and pay from our employer, not like some captains. I have enough to settle down and buy a farm. I just need a wife. Your man doesn’t have money or he wouldn’t let you come here alone. I’m a better choice than he is.”
“Wait, you’d asked a stranger to marry you?”
“Why not? Back in Skitherin Kingdom, grandparents arrange marriages. Here we have to find wives by ourselves. A woman who can cook and is pretty, that’s a good catch. Love can come later.”
Dana knew parents who meddled in their children’s love lives, forbidding certain boys and encouraging others. It wasn’t strange for parents to pick a wife or husband for their children. “Take your money home and let your family pick a girl for you.”
Sven waved his hand like he was shooing away a fly. “Why go back? You know what would happen if I tried? The nobles, the magistrates, the Ministry of Obedience, they’d take every coin from me. I risked my life to earn that money. I can spend it, I can give it away, but no one takes it from me.”
Sven stopped her and pulled a coin pouch from his belt. He opened it and held it up to show her. “See, gold. That’s enough to buy good land, livestock, tools—”
“And buy a wife, too,” Dana interrupted.
“No, it’s not like that!”
Skitherin Kingdom must be a miserable place if men like Sven would risk their lives by becoming mercenaries. It must be doubly miserable if families sell their daughters and even sons. Sven hated his homeland, natural enough given what he’d said. The other mercenaries probably felt the same. But how did they feel about the common people from back home?
Dana put her hands on her hips. “It is so! You think you can buy me like those poor Skitherin girls in the barn.”
Sven’s expression went from panic to confusion. “What girls?”
“The ones in the barn. Duke Wiskver bought them from your homeland, and he’s selling them here. I won’t be bought for pocket change.”
Confusion gave way to anger, and then grim determination as Sven grabbed Dana’s hand. “Come with me.”
Dana barely had to feign indignation as Sven dragged her to the command tent. “Hey, wait a minute!”
Soldiers and mercenaries watched with concern as Sven pulled her along. They reached the command tent to find little had changed, except the cold chicken dinners were now only bones picked clean. The scarred man leading the mercenaries raised an eyebrow when he saw Dana again.
“What did she do?” he demanded.
Sven pushed Dana toward the ugly man. “Tell the captain what you told me.”
Dana pointed at Sven. “He wants to settle down and asked me to marry him.”
The captain burst out laughing. Sven blushed and shouted, “Not that part!”
“He showed me what you paid him and said he could support me. I said I wouldn’t be bought like those Skitherin girls in the barn.”
The captain stopped laughing. “Girls? What’s this about? How would you know what’s in those barns?”
Oops. Dana prayed she was a convincing liar. “I heard voices in the barn and thought some of your men were staying there. I opened a side door and saw girls and young boys chained up. They said they were from Skitherin Kingdom, and that the duke had bought them.”
The captain’s eyes narrowed. “The wagons that came in this morning, they went straight into the barn before unloading so we wouldn’t see.”
“Is this how they’re able to pay us?” Sven demanded. “Our daughters and sisters are being sold like oxen, and to do what? Mop floors if they’re lucky! Captain, are we going to take money from a man who hires us to fight his battles while treating our women like animals?”
Sven’s yelling brought mercenaries running to the command tent until there was a crowd gathered around the entrance. The captain glared at Sven and Dana. He looked angry and conflicted. Finally he said, “I don’t take a peasant’s word for anything. She says there are slaves in that barn, I look before I believe her.”
The captain marched out of the tent with his men following. Sven took the lead with Dana still in his grip. They marched up to the second, older barn, and the captain tried to open the large front door. He glowered at Dana when it didn’t budge.
“I used the side door,” she said, and pointed to it.
Grumbling under his breath, the captain marched to the side door, pulled off the bar and threw it aside. He opened the door and peered inside. Seconds later he came back out. “Sven, let the girl go.”
“Then it’s true.” Sven released Dana and ran to the door. He came back swearing and stomping his feet. More mercenaries came over and looked inside. Some looked outraged, while others were merely curious.
“Karl, open the door,” the captain ordered. A man big as an ogre lumbered up to the barn’s main door, lifted a sledgehammer and struck the lock. Wham! Wham! A third blow took the lock off, and the enormous man pulled the door open to reveal hundreds of cowering girls and boys.
The commotion brought soldiers, archers and knights running over. Steps behind them came a man wearing a sable coat. He was older with silver hair, and would have looked handsome except for the look of utter contempt on his face.
“What is the meaning of this?” the older man demanded.
“I believe that is my question, Duke Wiskver,” the mercenary captain replied. He gestured to the slaves. “Women and children of Skitherin in chains, goods to be sold no different than sheep or goats, and you thought we wouldn’t care?”
“My property is none of your business,” Wiskver said haughtily. “You have been paid well to fight for the king and queen. Nothing else that goes on in this kingdom is your concern.”
“King and queen,” the captain repeated. “Strange how often I hear that. Most kings speak for themselves, yet your king’s proclamations always come with his wife’s name attached to them, like she is his equal.”
“You dog!” Wiskver spat on the ground. “You’re hired help, nothing more, yet you dare to speak so contemptibly of my king!”
Dana watched the mercenaries and soldiers. The two sides were the same size, but the mercenaries were better armed and armored, and they looked more confident. Jayden had said mercenary captains didn’t owe their positions to royal commands or grants. The captain had earned his position through courage, quick wits and constant victories. His men followed because he paid them, and they could leave if they were dissatisfied. Many of them looked furious. If he backed down he risked them deserting or replacing him.
A fight could break out any second. Dana raced away, slipping twice on snow trampled down to mush by foot traffic. She heard shouting and insults behind her as she reached the tents, and barely got past them when she ran into Jayden, Suzy and Yub. She slid across the wet ground and landed at Jayden’s feet.
Jayden looked worried as he helped her up. “Are you hurt?”
“No, but it’s about to get really messy.” Dana looked back at the growing crowd of soldiers and mercenaries. She wasn’t sure which side would win if they fought. Jayden and Suzy could tip the fight in the mercenaries’ favor, but she hesitated to explain what she’d seen. Jayden had gone berserk when he’d seen the slaves at Scalamonger’s estate, and he might do so again. “Promise me you’re not going to go feral.”
Suzy looked confused. “What?”
“She’s worried I’ll lose my temper,” Jayden explained. “Dana, I won’t get angry. Tell me what you saw.”
“The new barn is protected by some kind of magic that kept me back, and I learned what was in the armored wagons. They were carrying people, Jayden, hundreds of girls and boys from Skitherin Kingdom. They’re chained up in the other barn. Wiskver is going to sell them this spring. I told the mercenaries, and they’re confronting the duke.” Dana saw Jayden’s eye’s narrow and his face turn red. “No, you promised!”
Suzy went through her coat and brought out a small bomb. “He promised, I didn’t. Back home I saw too many people treated like dirt, but they were still free people. This stops if I have to blow up every building here to do it.”
“Ms. Lockheart, I believe we’ve finally found a matter where we’re of the same opinion,” Jayden declared.
Dana grabbed them both by the arm. “The mercenaries are minutes away from rebelling. If you attack they’ll join forces with the soldiers to defend themselves. Just sit still and let them fight each other.”
Jayden looked dubious as he studied the growing conflict. “They’re too busy to pay attention to us. We can get closer and take action if needed. Lockheart, I assume your wagon is well supplied with explosives?”
“Like you have to ask.”
“Bring it with us and hide it behind a tent.”
They snuck into the tent camp and found the mercenaries and soldiers in a war of words. Men shouted back and forth, with Wiskver and the scarred mercenary captain the loudest and angriest.
“You came highly recommended as skilled warriors, yet I find disobedient curs before me!” Wiskver bellowed.
“You want blind obedience, buy a golem,” the scarred captain retorted. “You want battles won, hire men who think and treat them well. Is that what you thought we were, slaves for rent?”
A lone mercenary approached the barn’s entrance. Wiskver shouted, “Get away from there!”
The mercenary ignored him. “Tanya?”
One of the slave girls sat up straight, her eyes snapping open and her jaw dropping in shock. Just as fast she crouched down and covered her face with her hands. The mercenary ran to her and wrapped his arms around her. “Tanya!”
The scarred captain went to the man and put a hand on his shoulder. The mercenary had doubtlessly fought many battles, seen horrors beyond description, yet tears ran down his face like rivers. “S-sir, this is Tanya, from my village. She grew up three doors down from me. She’s a good girl. I, sir, I can’t leave her like this.”
The scarred captain looked at his followers, now universally angry. His eyes fell on Wiskver. “They’re coming with us. Take whatever they cost you out of our pay.”
“You’ll do no such thing!” Wiskver thundered. He pulled a jeweled rod from inside his coat and pointed it at them. “Men, attack!”
Dana had to give the soldiers credit for bravery if not brains as they charged headlong into the mercenaries. The mercenaries battered them aside with contemptible ease, fighting with a unity and ferocity Dana had rarely seen. Soldiers were surrounded and knocked to the ground, their weapons broken, and a few were even robbed.
Suzy ran headlong into the fight with Yub at her side. “I want in on this!”
Jayden handed Dana her sword back and followed Suzy. Suzy threw bombs and sent knights screaming from their horses. Jayden formed his giant magic hand and bowled over archers taking aim at the mercenaries. Yub tripped soldiers and took their wallets.
Dana ignored the fight and ran into the barn. Slaves cowered when she approached, and they screamed when she drew her magic sword. She swung down as hard as she could. A shower of sparks shot up as it hacked through a chain holding twenty slaves together. Screams turned into shouts of joy, and slaves held up their chains for her to cut.
Wiskver ran into the barn and saw her chop through another chain. “No, stop!”
Dana pointed her sword at his heart. “I’m coming for you next!”
Wiskver ran screaming from the barn. Dana hacked chains apart one after another until everyone was free. She led them out to find the soldiers falling back. Wiskver wasn’t with them. Instead he headed for the second barn. He held up his jeweled rod and went right through the barrier that had kept Dana back.
“Oh no.” Dana saw Jayden pursuing fleeing soldiers and waved to him. “Jayden, stop Wiskver!”
The warning came too late. Wiskver pressed his rod against the barn’s door, and it swung open as if strong men were pushing it. He stepped aside and pointed his rod at the mercenaries.
“Idiots!” Wiskver screamed into the barn. “Worthless retches the lot of you! I paid good money for you failures! Not one of you would do a day’s work! If work is too good for you, then fight in my name! Kill! Kill!”
Seconds passed with no response, making Dana think Wiskver was out of his mind, before a lone voice called back, “You only had to say it once.”
The barn’s interior lit up with a sea of red lights. There was a strange clacking sound, like sticks hitting sticks, followed by a hateful, braying laughter, and the stuff of nightmares poured out. Animated skeletons ran screaming from the barn like a river in flood, each one with red light pouring from empty eye sockets, and unarmed except for their sharp teeth and nails. Horrible as even one of these abominations was, they emerged by the hundreds, laughing, screaming and throwing their heads back as they howled.
Dana would have screamed in horror or fear, but the cry died in her throat as a wave of pain washed over her. She grabbed her head and pinched her eyes shut as she doubled over. The slaves suffered the same agony and cried out. Seconds later pain turned to rage, an unquenchable hatred that made her entire body shake.
The skeletal horde crashed into the mercenaries with overwhelming numbers. The scarred captain rallied his men into a rough square that slowly fell back. Skeletons surrounded the formation and pounded on it from all sides. Mercenaries battered skeletons to pieces, only for more to take their place.
Skeletons also went after the soldiers. Wiskver shouted at them to stop and waved his rod at them to no avail. Soldiers fought with fierceness equaling the mercenaries, falling back only far enough to have walls at their backs. Skeletons attacked the buildings as well and tried to force their way through doors and windows. Wiskver pulled at his hair, helpless to stop the battle.
Then they came to the barn.
“Ooh, look at all the pretty pretties to kill,” a horrifying skeleton said as it stepped in front of the barn door. This one was missing a foot and had a horse’s hoof in its place, and there was an extra arm on its left side. “I must have been a good boy!”
Dana screamed in pain and revulsion as she charged the monster. It tried to grab her with its three arms. She slid under its clumsy swings and lashed out with her sword, hacking off two of its arms. The skeleton looked puzzled and held up the stumps in front of its glowing eyes. She swung again and lopped off both legs at the knees. The skeleton fell to the ground, and she plunged her sword through its ribs and spine, destroying it.
“Hey, save some for me,” a skeleton with a wolf’s skull said as it swaggered into the barn. It stared at the shattered bones and its jaw dropped. “Huh?”
Dana charged the skeleton and swung across its chest, slicing through rib bones before cutting off the front of its skull. The skeleton fell backwards into a third skeleton, knocking it over. She leapt onto the fallen skeleton and cut it to pieces.
Dana heard a faint noise of a girl screaming. In her fury it took seconds to realize the screams were hers. Pain and rage made it hard to think. She saw skeletons running to join the attack on the mercenaries. She growled under her breath and ran after them, catching up with one and stabbing it in the back until it fell.
Mercenaries and soldiers were pushed together by the rush of skeletons until they stood side by side. The men fought with the same fury Dana did, snarling and screaming as they battered and hacked their enemies to pieces. Skeletons mobbed men and dragged them down, but men ran to the rescue and pulled their victims to safety. It would have been impressive, except the stream of skeletons from the barn never slackened.
Jayden fought his way to the embattled men, his black sword slashing apart skeletons like they were wheat before a scythe. He seemed to be the only person not totally consumed by rage. Suzy Lockheart was steps behind him and hurling explosives at anything within range. Yub followed suit with more explosives. When he ran out he threw himself at the nearest skeleton and bit it, chewing the skeleton’s leg and eating it.
Dana destroyed ten skeletons getting to Jayden. She was hit twice and knocked back, but she went on heedless of the blows until she reached him. Jayden embraced her with his left arm when she came close.
“Jayden, make it stop!” Dana clutched her head and gritted her teeth. “I want…I need to kill them! I hate them all!”
“Your body is reacting to the presence of undead,” he said. “The pain will stop when they’re gone. My mind cloud spell protects me, but it takes too long to cast it on you.”
Skeletons tried to swarm the two of them. Suzy spotted the attack and hurled a bomb into the mob, blasting it apart. She tried to charge the next group of skeletons until Jayden pulled her to a stop.
“Why don’t they stop coming?” Dana asked. “The barn’s not that big.”
“Wiskver must have put them into the cavern below as well as in the barn,” Jayden said. “It’s large enough to house thousands of skeletons. We’ll be overrun if we stay and chased down if we flee.”
More skeletons attacked. These ones were pieced together nightmares with bones from men and animals fused together. Jayden destroyed the first two with his black sword, while Dana charged a third one and cut it apart. Suzy hurled firebombs into the skeletons and burned them to ashes.
“More!” Suzy yelled. “Keep them coming! I’ve got bombs for weeks!”
“Cave,” Dana gasped. “If most of them are underground, can we bring the cave down on them? Like we did in Armorton when we blew up the sewers?”
“We’d need an enormous amount of explosives,” Jayden told her.
“Suzy, we need all the bombs you have!” Dana yelled.
Suzy had trouble focusing enough to answer. “Bombs. More bombs in my wagon.”
“Enough to blow up the barn?” Dana asked.
“Yes.” Suzy ran to her wagon just as her horses broke free of their yokes. Dana assumed the animals would run off. Instead they raced to the nearest skeletons and stomped them to pieces. Suzy climbed onto her wagon and said, “I can set the bombs to go off, but I can’t move them closer.”
Jayden hacked apart another skeleton and impaled a second one that Dana finished off. He let his black sword fade out and formed one of his giant magic hands. The hand grabbed the back of the wagon and pushed it toward the barn. Suzy pulled a test tube out of her coat, shook it hard and threw it into the back of her wagon. She jumped off as the wagon rolled by Jayden and Dana.
The wagon rolled fast and struck the stream of undead coming from the barn, crushing a dozen of them before going through the barn’s door. Skeletons kept pouring out, and some climbed onto the wagon.
Dana grabbed Suzy by the arm. “When is it going to g—”
BOOM! The explosion leveled the barn, throwing huge pieces of burning timber through the air to crash into skeletons. Dense clouds of smoke and dust billowed into the air. The ground shook and began to sink, slowly at first but picking up speed quickly. What little remained of the barn vanished into the ground, and more land around it disappeared. Soldiers, mercenaries and slaves fled when the manor house crumbled into the earth.
Mercenaries and soldiers surrounded a hundred skeletons still standing and finished them off. Three skeletons tried to flee. They only got a few steps before Jayden caught up with them and swung his black lash, wrapping it around them and burning through them. With the last skeletons gone the pain lifted, and people across the battlefield collapsed in exhaustion.
Suzy stared at the gaping hole where the barn and manor house had been. “That was good.”
Jayden let his magic whip fade away. “Incredibly satisfying.”
* * * * *
Dana woke the following morning to see soldiers and mercenaries, who’d only the night before had tried to kill one another, were side by side picking through the remains of Duke Wiskver’s property. They looted anything worth taking, loading up with food, drink and warm clothing. One soldier kept apologizing, telling anyone who’d listen that he hadn’t known of the duke’s crimes. Dana looked around and found Jayden talking to the scarred mercenary captain.
Jayden asked, “What will you do now?”
“There are other companies of Skitherin mercenaries in this kingdom,” the captain said. “I need to tell them what we’ve learned, both about our womenfolk and that a duke was involved in necromancy. We’ll take the women and children with us and leave the kingdom. No amount of gold is worth this.”
“It’s a pleasure to hear that.”
The captain slapped Jayden on the back. “I’ve heard about you. You’re got quite a price on your head. You’re also quite a wizard. I don’t have a wizard working for me. You could come with us.”
“Tempting as that is, I have work to do here.”
The captain saw Dana as she walked up to them. He looked at Sven the spearman and shouted, “That the one you wanted?”
Sven blushed. “Uh, yes.”
“I saw her fight last night. Good eye, boy.”
The captain walked away, leaving Dana and Jayden alone. Dana looked at the gaping hole in the ground left by Suzy’s explosives. “Jayden, there was an army of skeletons down there. How hard would it have been to make so many?”
“Only the strongest necromancers would have the power.” He frowned and added, “Animated skeletons are typically made from the bones of only one animal or person. The ones we faced had been cobbled together from many sources, sometimes with extra limbs. If a necromancer that powerful is allowed to continue experimenting, there’s no telling what horrors he could produce.”
“They were stored on Wiskver’s land. He thought he could control them. He was in on it, Jayden, he had to be.”
“He was indeed. The duke fled during the battle, a wise move given that his own men would tear him apart if they got the chance. Wiskver’s dealing with a necromancer opens the possibility that the king and queen might be behind it. Would Wiskver take such a risk without their support? Did they order him to do this?”
Jayden looked off into the distance. “Father, what have you done?”
Dana heard horses whinny and armor plates clink. She turned to see Suzy and Yub driving an armored wagon and stop next to them.
“There wasn’t as much loot as I’d like, but Wiskver had agricultural supplies I can use,” she said. “Sulfur, charcoal, and a soldier told me I can find saltpeter in the next town. It’s enough to make the bomb I need. We’ve got time to reach Brandish and close off the pass. Let’s go.”
“I can’t,” Jayden told her.
“What do you mean you can’t?” Suzy demanded. She waved an arm at the liberated slaves. “You saw that! Girls were turned into property! It makes the garbage I put up with growing up look like a cakewalk. We can’t let this spread to other kingdoms!”
“Which is why you have to close the pass to Brandish as soon as possible. You have the tools to do the job without us. Dana and I have to find the necromancer responsible for this outrage before he causes further suffering.”
“You think you can stop the monster who did this without me?” Suzy asked.
“There’s no choice. If I come with you the necromancer will produce further atrocities. If you come with me Brandish is left open to attack. Neither of us can fail.” Jayden walked up to her and took her hand. “You have to do this.”
She stared at him. “This is why you’re like this, isn’t it? You saw this nightmare coming and focused your whole life to stopping it.”
“I suspected it, but last night proved I underestimated the threat. I’ve failed to end this horror. I need you, Ms. Lockheart. Help me stop this madness before it spreads. Hundreds of thousands of lives depend on you.”
Suzy stared hard at him and rode off. “We’ll meet again.”
“Feeling relieved?” Dana asked him as he watched Suzy leave.
“Yes, but not for the reason you think. Suzy understands me better than she did before, perhaps enough that what she’s doing in Brandish is no longer just a job. If so, the people of that kingdom have a worthy ally for the battles to come. Dana, we need to go. Finding the necromancer will be no easy feat.”
They left Duke Wiskver’s ruined estate and headed into the snowy wilderness. Dana looked back briefly at the soldiers who’d once served the duke. What would they do now? If nothing else they could spread the word of the duke’s crimes. That alone could do immeasurable good.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about a name for my sword,” she began.
Jayden smiled. “Again?”
She drew the blade and studied it. “You said the name should mention important battles or famous deed. I know it sounds silly, but destroying Wall Wolf didn’t seem like it was important enough. The golem wasn’t a monster, just a mindless tool. It could have been used for good if better people were controlling it.”
“That is a very good point.”
“Duke Wiskver is different. He decided to be a slaver. He decided to use the undead.” She thought back to the night before and shuddered. “How could anyone think he could control those things? Stopping him, freeing those children, I’m proud of that. My parents would be proud. I used the sword to do it. So I’m calling it Chain Cutter.”
No sooner has she said the words then the sword shook so hard she had to hold it with both hands. Sparks poured off it like a shower, and it made a crackling sound like distant thunder. The noise, sparks and shaking stopped almost as fast as it started, leaving Dana worried and confused. She looked at the blade. The words Chain Cutter were written across one side of the sword in flowing letters that faintly glowed like stars at night.
Hesitantly, she asked Jayden, “Is that normal?”
Jayden didn’t look bothered. “Normal is a relative term with magic.”
