NexLord: Dark Prophecies (22 page)

Aerin used all his strength and swung the
knotted sheet around in an arc that struck the guard on the
shoulder and side of his head.

At the same
time,
Lor twisted out of the guard’s loosening grip, spun
on his heel to add momentum, and slammed his bony elbow deep into
the guard’s gut.  With a 'woof' of escaping
air,
the guard doubled over and dropped his
cudgel to the dirt.

Aerin shoved the guard and he staggered
forward, banging his head on the solid wall.

Lor jumped behind the dazed, bent over
guard
, and clasped his hands
together again; signaling to Aerin he was ready to give him another
boost. 

Aerin got the idea and dropped his bag. With
quick
acceleration,
he stepped
into Lor’s hands and then onto the guard’s back and vaulted up to
grab the top of the wall.  
This
time,
he had barely got on top when his bag of loot struck
him, nearly knocking him off the other side of the wall.

He recovered just in time to see Lor vault
off a rock, kick off the trunk of a tree and launch upwards to grab
a wrist thick tree branch. He continued his momentum with a swing
that brought him around in an arc toward the wall.  He
released at the height of his swing, flipped and landed cat-like on
the wall.  With a grin at Aerin, he added, “Care to
follow me?” then dashed off down the wall toward the buildings of
the city, where they had originally arrived.

Aerin scooped up his bag and ran after his
friend, laughing.

Behind
them,
they heard the whistles of guards sounding the alarm, but once they
reached the safety of the roofs there was little danger anyone
could follow them.  They had escaped.

A few minutes later, panting for breath, the
two youngsters reached a place of relative safety. It was out of
sight and high above the city below.  They stopped and
sat down to catch their breath.  Aerin looked at the
red-cheeked Lor and started to laugh.

“I can’t believe you had me vault off that
poor guard’s back!  I’ll bet he’s so mad right now he
could eat shoe leather!”

Lor grinned, “I had to get you some kind of
boost; after all I had already gotten you up there
once!  You are too fat to lift a second time.”

“FAT, I am not!  Besides, you
should be thanking me; you would have a knot the size of a goose
egg on your head by now if he had landed that cudgel blow.”

“True, but I wouldn’t have been caught at all
if you hadn’t decided to become a thief tonight,” Lor pointed
out.  “So I’ll just keep my thanks to myself.”

Aerin paused and the smile faded from his
lips.  He sighed and pushed his bag over to
Lor.  “You don’t have to tell me what is so important
that you had to steal, but if it was that important you can use
this as well.  I don’t believe in stealing, Lor, it is
wrong, no matter what the case, but you are my friend and I would
enter the Dreadmaster’s palace itself if you needed me.”

Lor looked down, ashamed.  “Aerin,
I…”

Aerin shook his head, “No, you don’t have to
tell me anything, but promise me that next time you are in trouble
and you need money you will ask me for help.  If there is
no other way, then I’ll help you do whatever you need, but if I am
going to be your friend then I should be able to offer my help to
you.  It’s not charity I offer, it’s friendship.”

Lor nodded.

Aerin stood.  “Now I have to be
going, Mara is going to skin me alive as it is.  If she
finds out I have turned into a thief, well, I don’t think I want to
live.”

Lor nodded, lost in the words Aerin had
spoken.

After Aerin was gone, Lor looked at the two
bags of loot and sighed.  He picked them up and headed in
a direction that would have puzzled Aerin.

Aerin’s eyes flew open and he knew he was
caught.  Someone was pounding on his door; it had to be
the guard.  Wracked with guilt, Aerin went to his door to
face the charges.  He yanked the door open, only to find
Tocor standing there with his black-gloved hand still raised, and
Mara standing a pace behind him and leaning on her cane.

“My,” Mara said to Tocor, “he looks rather
bruised.  Has he been dreaming when he should be dodging
in weapon practice?”

Aerin looked down at his bare stomach and
chest; he was only wearing a pair of shorts.  There were
some angry black and blue marks where he had landed on the
windowsill the night before.

“I fell down,” he explained without
imagination.

Mara entered his room, “So I see, rather
clumsy of you.  Now, boy, I have a few questions for
you.  I noticed you came in pretty late last night.”

“I told Tocor I would be out,” Aerin defended
quickly, his guilty thoughts making him nervous.

A look passed between Tocor and Mara that
Aerin couldn’t read.

“
Yes,
I
know.  I’ve heard, just this morning, about some
interesting developments in the merchant’s quarter last night.”

Aerin’s eyes nearly bugged out of their
sockets, and he knew he was dead.

“Seems there was some sort of break in at the
Merchant Master’s Villa,” Mara continued while watching
Aerin.  “A guard was assaulted, though I believe he hurt
his dignity more than his body, certainly he had
fewer
bruises than your little falling down
mishap seems to have brought you.”

Aerin just watched her; he knew she would
close the trap eventually, so he waited resignedly for the
question.  He already knew he couldn’t lie to Mara.

“It was a very strange affair.  It
seems someone entered the Merchant Master’s Villa via the roof,
quite a feat to swing in the open window, I would
imagine.  Someone could get... bruised, doing
that.  The miscreants messed up his bed and removed many
valuable objects.  Now this isn’t all that interesting,
thieves are a common nuisance in a city this large.”

Aerin continued to wait for the Headsman’s
ax
to fall.

“However, I hear tell that the two diminutive
rascals managed to disarm the guard that tried to apprehend them,
even using him as a footstool to mount the wall.  Then
they made a spectacular escape over the rooftops of the city,
confounding all pursuit with their inordinate skill.  But
what puzzled the authorities is that after the two successful young
hoodlums escaped cleanly, they returned all the stolen goods to the
front gate of the Merchant Master and actually rang the bell to
call the guards.  It’s simply amazing.  Don’t
you find them amazing, Tocor?” Mara asked him conversationally.

“Very,” he rumbled in reply.

“Yes,” Mara continued, “how about you,
Aerin?  Don’t you find the whole affair quite puzzling
and amazing, all at the same time?”

Aerin was still trying to grasp the last part
of the story; he had hardly been listening as he contemplated his,
soon to be, miserable fate.  At the mention of the
returned goods, Aerin had nearly choked in
surprise.  After a moment to recover his wits, Aerin
swallowed and then couldn’t look Mara in the eye as he finally
replied, “Yes, Sen Mara, very amazing.”

“I just hope that the two young rascals have
learned their
lesson
so that
harder lessons need not be applied.”

Aerin nodded, “I’m sure they have, I’m very
positive.”

 “That’s good.  Now I think
you will have to skip morning practice today; those bruises need a
chance to heal.  Come along, Tocor, I need to go to the
Merchant Quarter, such interesting things happen there.”

With that Mara and Tocor left a dumbfounded
Aerin sitting on the edge of his bed.  Aerin tried to
puzzle out what had just happened, she knew, and he knew she knew
he knew she knew, but oh bother… all that really mattered was that
she hadn’t killed him.  He remembered her words from a
few years ago… 
I always know more than you think.

Chapter Seven

"In rescue will truth be revealed, and in
flight a friend found."

- From the Prophecies of Gold

Dono picked up Lor’s trail the next morning
and followed his friend through the city.  He wasn’t
looking forward to explaining to Aerin why he had missed the
rendezvous the night before, but he hoped to make up for it by
getting back on the job this morning.  He noted that Lor
seemed focused this morning, he moved across the rooftops with
speed and purpose.  It wasn’t until they crossed near the
third street market that Dono grew nervous.  They were
entering that nebulous neutral zone, and soon they would be in the
Skull’s streets.  When Lor suddenly descended to street
level, Dono stopped on the roof of a church and observed from
behind a corner gargoyle. 

Dono sucked in a breath when he saw the
rascal, Berver, step out of the alley and accost
Lor.  Instead of speeding off, Dono noted that Lor
actually moved forward to talk to the little dung lover. When
Berver moved off into the alley, Lor stayed and sat on a stack of
boxes, while obviously waiting for Berver to fetch more of the
Skulls. Dono knew something serious was afoot.  He
mentally calculated the trip to Mara’s and concluded he could
manage it in less than ten minutes, if he really pushed, so he
pushed.  

Dono seldom moved at the full speed of which
he was capable while on the roofs.  In many
ways,
he was nearly the equal of Lor when it
came to knowing the High Road, and today he used every trick he
knew.  It wasn’t until he actually saw Aerin warming up
in the practice sand, that he made a mistake.  He
descended from the roof at too great a
speed
and landed with a little too much
momentum.  His ankle gave out and he went down, rolling
across the ground nearly to Aerin’s feet.

“DONO, whoa, that’s one way to say hello, I
suppose!” Aerin noted with a smile.

Dono gripped his twisted ankle in
pain
but spoke a moment
later.  “It’s Lor; he’s gone to meet with the
Skulls.”

“What!” Aerin exclaimed.

Dono quickly relayed where and what he had
seen.

Aerin looked for Gandarel, but it was too
early for his friend to have arrived.

“I’m going over there!” Aerin decided.

Dono tried to get up, but nearly fell again
when he tried to put weight on his sprained ankle.

“You just wait here, I’ll see to
Lor.  Send Gandarel when he arrives,” Aerin ordered as he
grabbed a quarterstaff and swarmed up the side of their building to
the rooftops.

As Aerin
leaped
the gaps between buildings, at reckless speeds,
his mind worked.  He couldn't understand why Lor would
step into the lion's den voluntarily.  From personal
experience,
Aerin knew how hard
Lor had worked to stay out of the Skull's grip.  It
didn't make sense, at least not until Aerin put it together with
Lor's recent mood change and his sudden return to
thievery.  Aerin suddenly wondered if the break in at the
Merchant Master's Villa had more to do with the Skulls, and not his
mother's waning health.  Aerin figured that they had
something held over Lor, but what that was he had no idea.

Aerin reached the entranceway to the alley
where Dono had last seen Lor, but there was no sight of
him.  Aerin
leaped
the
gap at the narrowest part of the street without a thought,
something that would have scared him out of ten years of life prior
to Lor's instructions in the art of the High Road. 

As he ran along the edge of the building,
looking down into the alley below, Aerin finally saw a large group
of boys up ahead.

By
Gedin’s
beard, it looks like the whole Skull’s
gang,
thought Aerin.

When he reached the roof, just above the
group of boys, Aerin knelt down by the edge, looking for a place to
descend.

Just then, a large boy grabbed Lor by the
front of his shirt and pulled him close, while he yelled in Lor's
face.  "I'll ask you again, WHERE IS THE LOOT!"

Lor's hand went above the other boy's
arm
as if to start prying it
loose, but instead of grabbing the boy’s arm he slammed the heel of
his hand into his assailant's throat.

"Don't touch me," Lor hissed.

The large boy released him, staggering back
and choking.

Aerin didn't like where this was going, his
eyes desperately searched for an easy way down.  In the
alley, two boys tried to grab Lor by the arms, but he dove forward
and did a somersault over his right shoulder, and then came to his
feet in a crouch.

"I told you, the deal is off!"  Lor
exclaimed.

"It's too late for that, Lor; remember you
came to us looking for a good hit and a fence.  Now you
will have to deliver the goods," another Skulls boy answered.

Aerin saw the old drain pipe near Lor; it was
obvious that Lor was maneuvering in that direction, so he could
make his escape to the roofs.  Aerin had just decided to
make a slight disturbance to give Lor his
chance
when one of the boys behind Lor tried to grab
him.

Lor elbowed him in the stomach and then
slammed the back of his head into the boy's nose.  Blood
immediately splattered the boy's chin, as his ruined nose bled
profusely. 

It was the sight of blood that triggered the
mass attack.

Lor fought with all his skill and training,
he spun, kicked and kept moving constantly, but he was unarmed and
there were just too many of them.  A hand managed to grab
the collar of his shirt, so Lor twisted to get out of his
assailant's grasp. His shirt tore, setting him momentarily free,
but that slight delay allowed one of the other boys to strike Lor
with a club.  Lor collapsed to his knees with a cry of
pain.

With Lor finally down, and holding his
wounded shoulder, the rest of the Skull's started to close in to
beat him senseless.