The Four Forges (6 page)

Sevryn scaled the side of the low barn and raced across the top. From its vantage, he could see the troops massing to bring him down, squad after squad filling the open yards between the buildings. His chances dropped with every man he saw emerge.

Damn Gilgarran. Why hadn’t he let Sevryn speak? If he had, they’d all still be inside, talking, perhaps sitting with a goblet of brandy to warm them, with a round of bread and cheese in front of them, and Gilgarran still alive. Why hadn’t he let Sevryn speak?

Sevryn jumped from the low barn to the taller building, catching at the eave and pulling himself up and over. Barely out of breath, he took the structure at a headlong run as arrows whistled after him. Bolgers swarmed the barn. He fought with boot and long knife, slashing and rolling their bodies off into the others coming up. Something heavy caught him in the back, bringing him to his knees. He went limp, overbalancing the attacker, and they both rolled and fell off the barn. He landed on top, removed his long knife from the Bolger’s chest, and got to his feet as Galdarkan guards rounded the barn.

Sevryn lunged at them, scattering the archers before they could get their bows up and a shot off. He left his long knife in the back of one’s knee, and pulled another as he headed toward the main yards again, thankful that in his arrogance Quendius hadn’t had them searched nearly thoroughly enough.

Surprise his main element, he cut through one squad which was clearly astonished that he had doubled back into their midst. By the time they’d shouted they had him, they were all facedown in the mud, and he angled off again.

He found himself facing huge, solid wooden buildings that smelled of heat, smoke, charcoal, and steel. If Gilgarran had expected one forge, he’d underestimated by several, but now Sevryn understood his mentor’s intense interest in the place. As he darted inside, he put a finger in his coat cuffs, loosening a thread, then dumped three small balls into his hand. They needed heat or fire to ignite, and what blasted at him would be more than sufficient. The great stone oven roared with the intake of fresh air as he threw the doors open wide, and Bolgers snapped and snarled at him from the corners. He grabbed a pair of tongs and placed a ball deep inside the oven. Grabbing a hank of keys off a tall hook far from the reach of those shackled, he tossed them at the nearest Bolger, saying only, “Run fast.”

He planted the other two balls as well before the shouting of the guards drew near. Taking his own advice to heart, he raced across the compound.

Sevryn gave up the idea of finding a horse to get away. Unless he got his own trained mount, who was dead tired after days of travel anyway; he couldn’t trust it to get through the troops without panicking and being brought down. He would be better on his own feet. He leaped through the pigpens again, heading for the main house. The gate he sought had to be on the other side.

An arrow struck. He felt it bury itself into his greatcoat and upper left arm. It stung, but the thick wool of his coat and the silk lining took the brunt of the blow. Worth its weight in gold, that silk lining was. He reeled anyway, letting them think the injury worse than it really was. Howls of triumph split the air behind him. Now he knew where they were.

Sevryn skidded to a halt in the mud, turning, unfastening his coat. Three more throwing daggers they’d failed to find when disarming him met his touch. Three tosses, four Galdarkans fell, one of the dead tripping the fourth who fell on his own sword with a guttural cry of pain.

Nearly out of blades now, Sevryn again angled away from the direction he truly wanted, leading them away, not giving them a chance to block him. Arrows struck the ground at his heels,
thunk
,
thunk
,
thunk!
He bowed his head and put all he had left into a sprint.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the gate. Still open, for what enemy did Quendius have in this hidden fortress?

Sevryn cut back, and went for it. He had but one purpose that Gilgarran had given him: to get out. Keep silent and remember the astiri, the Way. He burst through the gate, gasping, and into the mountain wilderness, and Quendius was blocking his path, sword in hand, keening like a devil wind in a high tempest. Galdarkans flanked either side of him.

“Almost clever enough!” Quendius laughed without humor. He brought his sword arm up, even as he beckoned his guard to close in. The weapon belled like a howling creature in his fist, blood ribboning down its steel and washing away in the pounding rain.

Sevryn dug inside of himself, soul deep, reaching for whatever Talents he had, and the shield that Gilgarran had insisted he learn to build. As the Galdarkans closed in on him, he found it.
“Don’t kill me,”
he said, as he went down, a cut in his side, the greatcoat slicing open as the blade Quendius wielded went through it like a hot knife through butter.

The mountain spewed forth with a roar that deafened him. The explosion shook him to his core. A second time, and then a third, flames shooting upward to the leaden sky, the molten fury undaunted by rain and cloud. Billows of smoke and ash shot up, and his nostrils stung with the smell of the explosions and fire. Debris rained down on them, hot and fiery bits of wood, metal, and stone.

Quendius turned sharply.
“Velk,”
he spat and more, fury welling out of him, and Sevryn knew he was a dead man.

“Do not kill me,”
he got out in a hoarse whisper as the guard closed on him. Something clubbed the back of his head. Red flashes split the great black darkness crashing down on him, as he lost all control of his mortal body. This was why Gilgarran had not let him speak. His Talent, his
Voice.
His Voice persuaded, commanded, when he used it. Gilgarran wanted to be sure no one was prepared for it.

Too late, he understand Gilgarran’s plan, as nothingness took him.

HE WOKE, STIFF AND hurting, in a gutter full of the effluvia of the city, nighttime stained by the sputter of oil torches and lamps, streaking the air with a dirty orange, sooty smoke. Slowly, Sevryn rolled over. He lay, free and awake, in the armpit of some town, somewhere. His senses assailed him, after that first quavering breath that told him he was alive. He smelled worse than the gutter, as if he’d been on a week-long drunk, pissed himself, and fallen into the waste headfirst. He levered himself into a sitting position, peering at himself in the dim light of the back alley, counting limbs, then digits. Everything seemed to be intact, although he had no reason to think it would be, not with the last memory he had, and there was not a part of his body that did not hurt.

Having expected death, it could have been far worse.

Sevryn rubbed his hands together, feeling heavy calluses that he did not remember, and then scrubbing one hand over the back of his head. His hair felt like a rat’s nest, nasty and matted and unkempt, but below it, he could probe and feel a sizable dent in his skull that awoke a piercing ache when he jabbed too hard. The injury did not seem all that recent, but the lancing throb through his head now made him groan and double over, vision blurring.

He clutched at his temples, jaw clenched against the waves of nausea racking him, and the sour taste rising in his mouth. After long moments, he began to pant and slowly the nausea subsided. When he could lift his head, Sevryn put a hand to his left shoulder. Stiff yes, but nothing fresh there either. Healed, then. Some time had passed. How much? And where had he been, other than some place doing manual labor, and where was he now?

He needed help. Help, money, shelter. Sevryn got to his feet, leaning heavily against the rough wooden side of a back alley building. He wouldn’t be taken back. He’d die first, this time. The very timbers he clung to stank, his nostrils flaring as new odors assaulted him, but he held to it for support anyway, crawling along the side to where the crooked street opened up a bit and light splintered in. He looked down. His clothes were little more than rags and he could not honestly say if he knew them for his or not, clothes he’d owned or stolen. His boots fit poorly, the sole half gone on one, with the other sewn sloppily back to the upper and near to falling off again. Those hadn’t been custom made, of that he could be certain, as his toes pinched uncomfortably and his heels chafed. He wore a cape that smelled of horse and might have begun as a saddle blanket. Sevryn ran his hand under it, holding it up to the illumination, examining it, then letting it drop into place. He tried to think, but the thoughts spun away from him like fallen leaves caught in a driving wind, swept away.

Sevryn pushed on through the alleys, reaching a better part of town, cleaner by the smell of it, although he carried his own cloud of misery with him. Propped on the corner of a building, with muted sounds of laughter and talk reaching him through the wooden boards, he tried to gather his thoughts again as his head ceased to throb.

Either Sevryn was leaning against a tavern, or his senses were no good at all. He could feel the warmth seeping through the cracks in the wood, hear the tones of congeniality within, smell the spilled ale on the floorboards and piss in the nearby gutter. Within a stride or two of aid, then, for Gilgarran had contacts all over the lands, but he hesitated. Where had he been . . . and for how long? He doubted he’d escaped soon after his capture. If Quendius had held him, had he broken? What had he revealed of his mentor, his training, what little he knew of Gilgarran’s motives and movements? Had he been let go just to be followed? No, he could not risk exposing Gilgarran’s network until he understood more of what had happened. He’d been kept alive for some purpose, and he was a liability until he knew why.

Yet, as he trembled in the cold of the night, his body thin, scabbed, and scarred, he stood on the edge of being alive. He hated to have come this far, only to lose the battle. He pondered his options. Go in and beg or . . .

“Hssst. Master, the game is on the move. He’s been drugged as yer askt and he’s a-comin’ yer way.” A ragged Dweller dodged out of the tavern alley ahead of him, and engaged in talk with a tall, lean shadow Sevryn hadn’t spotted before then. With a quiet hiss of his own, he leaned back out of view, watching.

“It’s as you promised?” the shadow grumbled.

“His pouch is near full. The innkeep stood him a few rounds, rich trader’s son that he is. Yer marked him well, yer did.”

“Good.” A coin flipped through the air, metal catching the ambient light, shining as it spun to the eager fist snatching it out of the air. “Not a word of this.”

“No, ser!” The Dweller lad dashed away, breath chugging through his sturdy frame, and the shadow scuffed his boots, readying his stance.

Sevryn studied the mouth of the alley and the thief. Kernan, from his height and bulk. Galdarkan were far taller, elves as tall but wiry, and definitely not a Bolger. He wondered about the mark and decided profit and nothing else motivated the attack, but the thief was wary enough he’d had the target drugged first. He could speculate on that, but it seemed obvious enough to him, and the sound of an inn door being thrown open wide, wood sides crashing against the frame broke his thoughts. The boom sounded like thunder, bringing an echo of fear within him that he squelched as well as he could with a bit of surprise, and then Sevryn could hear a wave of laughter from inside. A figure reeled across the broken street, stumbled in the gutter, and Sevryn could hear the rattle of a weapon harness and belt as the drunkard headed their way. The mark mumbled to himself, words Sevryn couldn’t quite catch, and the man rounded the corner into their alleyway and began to fumble at his pants. An oddly stiff glint traced the leggings of his right pants leg, hidden by the darkness of night.

The cutpurse struck, knife hilt in his fist, a sharp blow behind the mark’s ear. Shadows tumbled. The mark fell, not out but downed, and rolled in the dirt, grunting, trying to draw his sword and cursing at himself.

“Bloody hand. Bloody elves and bloody hand!” He shimmied away on his back, out of range of another blow, as the thief tackled him and the two rolled about.

Sevryn stepped in. He drew back his boot and kicked the thief in the back of the head as hard as he could. Bones snap-cracked and the thief went limp. The sole of his boot went its own way, as well, and a sudden draft shot through the remains of his footwear. Sevryn peeled the man off his intended victim, who looked up blearily, succumbing to the drink and drugs in his system, his mouth twisted about a curse.

He looked at the man’s sword hand, skin black-purple and drawn tight over the structure of his bones, and Sevryn’s eyes narrowed. He’d not seen a wound healed like that before, but he knew who the drugged man had to be, a tale repeated in many a tavern. He brushed the sword out of the trader’s feeble hand as the man gave a howl of frustration.

“Train your bloody other sword hand, then, fool, you’ve a strong arm for a shield and another hand to hold a blade. Act like the man you were born to be.” Sevryn leaned over, took the eating dagger from the other’s waistband, a fine piece of weaponry in its own right, and used it to cut away its master’s purse. The leather pouch jangled heavily in his palm.

The trader sagged back onto the street, eyelids drooping. Sevryn leaned still closer, enunciating his words closely, piercingly, to be remembered. “And it’s this bloody Vaelinar who saved you.”

The trader stared at him a moment, before his eyes rolled back into his skull and he lost all hearing.

He stalked a pace or two to the cutpurse’s still form, and Sevryn looked the would-be thief over carefully. He should be sorry he’d killed him, but couldn’t find the mercy within him. He pulled off the dead man’s well-made boots. If not a fit, it was close enough. He’d have herb powder in them first, though, to sweeten the stink and kill off any bugs that came with them.

Sevryn tucked the boots under his arm and jogged away, quickly, to a safe distance before letting out a shout and hail that would attract attention. No sense letting the trader lie there as prey for someone else. He kept moving as the tavern door was flung open, amber light spilled out, and the street filled with curious onlookers.