Cathexis: Necromancer's Dagger (60 page)

The man looked to be about thirty years old
and obviously sure of his authority. When he spoke she realized
that he had a highborn accent.

“What do we have here, boys?” Wernok asked,
stepping forward and placing his hands on his hips. He eyed her
curving form boldly.

Scar answered him from two paces back. “Her
name’s Poison,
an
’ she claimed te
have a message te deliver to you.”

“A message?” he asked, lifting his gaze from
the curve of her hips and up to her striking face and steel gray
eyes.

“Be you the man known as Wernok, leader of
the
Riond
Mountain Bandits?” She
asked.

“I am Wernok,” he replied simply, and gave
her a half bow.

“Then this is my say, I wish te join yer
group as one of yer lieutenants,” she said boldly.

A moment of silence greeted her bold
statement.

Wernok smiled, though his eyes remained
hard, “Assuming you check out and aren’t one of the Usurper’s
spies, then you can live under our protection as a camp woman, but
you will have to follow the rules of the band, which means you
belong to any man who is willing to defend you against one
challenger a week. If there isn’t a man willing to defend you, then
you must submit to anyone who wants you, understood?”

“I didn’t ask
fer
protection, I asked te become one ‘o yer lieutenants.
I will not submit
te
any man,” she
responded, her chin held high.

“One of my bandits and a lieutenant no
less!” Wernok chuckled, rubbing his chin in thought.

“This is ridiculous,” Nostrils called out
from the group of people watching, “she’s a woman, so she can’t be
a warrior!” He had followed them down to see what happened when
this feisty woman met Wernok.

An extremely ugly woman wearing leather
armor and a short sword stepped forward. She was short, but very
wide and well muscled, her arms and face scarred from battle
wounds.

“I’m a woman,” she said simply.

“No yer not, Gertha, yer a souldead,” a man
out of the gathering mob called out.

Laughter rippled through the crowd.

“
Gertha
brings up a good point,” Wernok agreed, taking control of the
conversation again, “if she passes the test she can be a warrior,
with warrior privileges.”

The crowd murmured at this statement.

The leader turned back to the
black-clad
woman and said, “So, are you willing
to fight for your privileges?”

“And what does this test consist of?” she
asked in a bored tone, placing a hand on her hip near one of her
daggers.

“You must fight every warrior in the band
that wants to challenge you. You get one hour of rest between each
bout,” Wernok said, “If after one hour no one wishes to test you
further, you’re in.”

“What are the rules o’ the
bout
?” she asked.

“One dagger, and a breechcloth,” he answered
and smirked.

“First blood?” She asked to get
clarification.

“To death or surrender, but if you choose to
surrender you become the victor’s slave for life. I suggest you
reconsider, a woman with looks like yours needn’t worry about
attracting a defender, a very high placed defender,” he answered,
checking out her body.

“I accept the challenge!” She replied in a
loud voice. “So, who’s first?” she said, turning to face the crowd.
She had already decided that she better take on one of the tougher
men so that others would not decide to
challenge
her after the first bout, so she purposely
caught the eye of the big man named Nostrils who had leered at her
earlier.

“I will be,” Nostrils said, stepping forward
and sporting a huge grin. He began to strip off his clothes.

“Fine, I was tired of your face anyway,” she
responded and started to remove her leather armor.

Gertha, the stocky female warrior who had
spoken out came over to her and spoke in a low voice. “Listen to
me, Poison, he’s a wrestler, so don’t let him grapple with ya. With
a body like
yer
about te display
te these scum, every man here will want
te
win ya, so if’n ya don’t want te fight them all beat
this’in
real nasty. If’n ya show
him mercy the rest will line up te try you.”

“Thanks, Gertha, I’ll mind yer words,” she
whispered back.

Then she stripped down to her skin, standing
proudly naked in front of the crowd.

The crowd hooted and hollered at the sight
of the perfect body standing unfettered before them. Her tight
muscles, flat stomach and medium breasts that jutted firmly out in
the chill morning air made many of the men’s mouths water.

A refugee handed her a breechcloth to put on
and she unhurriedly strapped it around her waist.

Wernok walked over to her and his eyes took
in
her naked chest, with a smirk
appearing on his face he handed her a dagger. “This is the only
weapon you are allowed.” Then in a lower
voice,
he said, “And,
Poison,
if you’re not scarred too badly I may choose to
win you from Nostrils, but only after he has had a chance to, ah,
savor his victory."

Wernok stepped back and looked at Nostrils,
who was grinning so broadly that he threatened to display every
rotten tooth in his mouth. He stood in his breechcloth and was
fingering the sharp edge of his dagger with a thumb. “Let the
challenge begin!” Wernok commanded without preamble.

Nostrils walked forward carelessly until he
was five feet from the crouched form of his beautiful opponent.
“So, Poison, ya said you would kill me if I touch ya, come on
here’s yer chance,” and he stuck his dagger in the top of his
breechcloth facing her with bare hands. “I don’t want te scar up my
slave’s body,
she’s go
’in te need
it tonight,” he said in explanation to the crowd.

Many men in the crowd cheered.

“I don’t think I’ll
wait
fer
tonight, how
about we have our first session right here in the dirt? We'll do it
in front of all yer admirers. Then I’ll make them pay while I rent
ya out, what do ya think, honey?” he said, and before she could
retort he sprang forward grabbing at her knife hand wrist with his
left hand while reaching for her waist with his opposite hand.

She slashed his grasping left hand and
danced lightly away from his groping right.

It was only a shallow cut on his hand, so he
stuck it in his mouth and sucked. “Oh,
ye’ll
pay
fer
that, my
lovely. I’ll give ya
te
every man
in the camp once
fer
free.”

There was an even louder cheer from some of
the men in the crowd.

“
First,
you
have te live through this, scum,” she replied, and gave him a ghost
of a smile, before starting to circle her opponent.

“Ya know what I did
te
my last slave girl? I killed her one night when I had
her a little too rough. I didn’t even know she was dead until after
I was done. I’m gonna enjoy
you,
even more, Poison,” he promised.

She didn’t respond because she knew he spoke
the truth about his capacity for brutality, which helped her make a
decision.

Nostrils approached her carefully and pulled
out the dagger from his waist;
this
time,
he was serious. He stalked her in a closing circle as
he carefully
approached
in a
fighting stance. When he
leaped
forward he used his favorite move, one that always worked for him
against an opponent who had not seen him fight. He lunged forward
slashing wildly to force her to step back in defense. During that
confusion,
he switched knife hands
and faked a thrust with his empty right hand, then slashed at her
with the knife in his left. He aimed where she would have to move
when she dodged his right-handed feint.

For the first and last time in his
life,
his opponent wasn’t where
she was supposed to be. When he finished the swipe through the
empty
air he was puzzled, it was
impossible for her to have escaped, he had performed the move
perfectly. Suddenly he felt something wet on his legs and looked
down. There was a slice through his breechcloth and blood pouring
down from underneath. He felt weak and staggered slightly.

“That’s for your slave girl and this is for
me,” his opponent said and then her body blurred into motion as she
threw her dagger in a fluid underhanded toss that angled up to
strike him under the jaw and into his throat.

He gagged horribly on blood gushing out from
his slit gullet and then collapsed dead on the dirt.

The half naked woman walked over and placed
her foot on his still chest before tugging out the bloody dagger
from his throat and casually wiping it clean on his
breechcloth.

No one was making purclaw calls anymore.

She straightened up with the dagger held in
her fist and turned to the crowd. She stood proudly with her
shoulders straight, arms at her side, unashamed of her half naked
body and said, “I waive the rest period, who’s the next fool who
wants to die?”

She watched, but no one seemed to want to
take up the challenge, there was utter silence. Some eyes turned to
Wernok, but he wore a simple look of appraisal. So she turned and
went back to her clothes. When she had her black leather armor in
place again Lady Elizabeth Ember Ardellen walked up to Wernok and
said, “I take it that means I’m in?”

The necromancer SCorcH was still three days
ride from the Kirnath School when the necromancer RIveK’s search
found a possible trace of Elizabeth’s passage.

RIveK had started her search by listing the
closest destinations from the Kirnath School and then ignoring the
most obvious havens. RIveK knew that Lady Elizabeth was on the run
and would be smart enough to avoid any normal traps. That left a
few cities and towns that could be reached within the correct time
span.

She concentrated on the ones nearest to
SCorcH’s path of travel, hoping for a bit of luck. The first town
she tried held no traces, but on the second night of her
search,
she tried a different
town. It was a good prospect for someone on the run, a bandit
haven, fairly lawless and off the main trade routes. The town lay
near the Operhelm border and was named Roper.

Lying in her chamber at Shadow Fortress,
RIveK separated her spirit from her sleeping body by applying some
of the dark powers she commanded. She opened a bridge from this
world into the Dark Plane and slipped her spirit into the alien
darkness.

The necromancer traveled through the nether
world swiftly. She didn't bother to look at the strange colors and
shapes of the alien landscape, or more accurately, the lack of it,
much of the strange place was a void. She moved swiftly toward the
point where she could exit back into her world. The less time she
spent in the nether world the less chance she had of confronting a
Darknull here in its own dimension.

RIveK hoped that her skill as a traveler of
the nether paths would keep any Darknull from noting her passage.
Avoiding detection would keep her from wasting one of the three
chances she had to call on her patron Darknull to save her from
consumption. Once the three times were used up she would have to
re-challenge a ranked Darknull and the challenge always carried a
heavy toll. She knew from her first experience that she could win
such a battle, but the missing piece of skull that marked her from
that initiation convinced her to postpone another such maiming. As
a
necromancer,
she knew she must
continue to travel the nether paths and inevitably the day would
come when she had to fight that battle. She shuddered as she
pondered what form her new maiming would take on her body and
soul.

But luck was with her this time; she felt
her desired exit point nearby and RIveK opened the rift so that her
spirit form could emerge out onto a dark street near the center of
the town called Roper.

She proceeded down the street with purpose.
To an
observer,
she looked real
enough if they didn’t look too closely. An almost imperceptible
thread of purple energy connected back to her real body in
SKartaQ’s Shadow Fortress. Her image mirrored the body she had
left, but if her image was inspected under a
strong
light it would look slightly
translucent.

She entered the seedy part of town and
waited outside a likely tavern for the proper victim. In this part
of
town,
it didn’t take long. The
fourth man to approach the tavern fit her criteria perfectly.

He walked in the shadows and kept an eye on
his back trail with the furtive look of a rodent.

RIveK hid her projected body in the shadow
of a door until he was nearby and then suddenly stepped out into
the man’s path and said, “Hello, could you please tell me the way
to a good hotel? I’ve just arrived in town and I need a room.”

From behind
her,
the
dimly
glowing
light leaked from the edges of the closed tavern door and
illuminated the rounded contours of her female form.

The man in the dark cloak nearly jumped out
of his skin and bolted, but then he saw the fine clothes and the
jewelry on her fingers. He quickly looked up and down the street
with keen eyes to see if she had any companions. Convinced that the
woman was indeed alone a smile worked its way onto his lips as he
said, “Sure, milady, I can help you; just follow me and I’ll show
you the way to just the kind ‘o place yer look’
in fer
.”

He moved off in a direction RIveK knew
wasn’t toward the better part of town, but that just made her
smile, she wasn’t from the best part of town either. She followed
that man quietly, like a good mark.