In the three or four seconds it took her would-be captor to catch her by the arm and throw her off, Ilbei was on him, one boot planted on his throat and his pickaxe raised and ready to spike him through the head.
A shout came from behind him. “Don’t do it. Put it down!” It sounded like Meggins, of all people.
Ilbei swiveled his head and saw the big man with the giant crossbow leveled at him. It must have been him that said it, or so Ilbei thought at first. But it wasn’t. Meggins was up the slope ten paces to his left, just coming out of a thicket. His bow was drawn back, an arrow pointed at the crossbowman’s head. “Lower that spear launcher, you git bastard, or I’ll put one right through your ear.”
The big man’s eyes narrowed at Ilbei, and Ilbei knew he’d just escaped a skewer through the back. As he considered the weapon still directed at him, he realized exactly how the man had gotten his name: that had to be Ergo the Skewer.
“Put it down,” Meggins demanded again. “I won’t say it a third time.”
“You put it down,” came a new voice from atop the hill. “Drop it, or the giant gets it.”
They all turned to see the last man that had run off from the creek now prodding Kaige ahead of him with the point of Kaige’s own broadsword.
“That’s right. Both of you drop your weapons, or I’ll carve your friend here into steaks and shanks.”
Meggins slid back into the brush a bit, enough to make seeing him harder to do, while the man beneath Ilbei’s feet tried to make a move, twitching his hand down toward his boot, which he had slowly begun to slide up toward his hand. Ilbei mashed down hard against his throat, the heavy sole of his army-issue boot nearly crushing the man’s windpipe, so nearly that the man gagged and sputtered, eyes wide and terrified.
“I’ll snuff ya, son,” Ilbei warned through gritted teeth. “Now ain’t the time fer bein stupid.” He looked back to the bandit with the crossbow. “Look here. There’s no need everyone dyin on account of this here misunderstandin we got goin on.” He glanced back at Mags, who was still on her knees, staring transfixed at the bulging eyes of the man Ilbei was nearly strangulating. In her peripheral vision, she saw him looking at her and turned to him. He looked down at Jasper, pointing at him with his eyes, urgency widening them, suggesting what he hoped she would do. She nodded just enough for him to see.
“What we got here,” the bandit who had to be Ergo the Skewer said, “is a good old dwarven standoff.” He actually laughed.
“I don’t know, boss,” said the man holding Kaige hostage. “I’m doing the math here, and I think we lose one, and they lose two, worst-case scenario.”
“Yes, you idiot, and our loss is me.”
“Well …, yeah, I didn’t mean it like that,” the man said. “I was just, you know, ciphering the odds.”
“Which is why we don’t have you doing the ciphering around here, isn’t it?”
The man with Kaige’s broadsword fell silent then.
“Hard to find good help, ain’t it?” Ilbei said.
“You have no idea,” the Skewer replied.
“So what do ya suppose we ought to do now?” Ilbei asked. “I ain’t too keen on takin one of them steel spears of yers through the back, and ya just made it pretty clear ya ain’t so keen on my man there openin up yer head fer the vultures and coyotes to feed on neither.”
“I owe you a shot in the back,” the Skewer said, a backward movement of his head indicating Meggins’ arrow, still protruding from below his left shoulder blade.
“No, I reckon that was in kind fer that poor bastard lyin in the river over there. Looks to me like he was struck down blindside, the way he’s lyin, face first and head hollowed out from behind and all.”
“You’ve a sharp eye, Sergeant.”
“It’s what they pay me fer.” Ilbei glanced back to Mags, who was trying to revive Jasper without drawing attention to herself, employing a technique that involved using her left hand, hidden behind her thigh, to pinch him at the base of the calf where his leg had flopped close to her. Ilbei turned back to the bandit leader with a smile. “So, seein as ya ain’t dead, and that there feller in the creek has already been sent along to sing Mercy’s song, I reckon ya got off with the best hand of the two. Why not take what ya won and move along, leave some years to all the rest.”
“You’ve killed three of my men for certain, and I suspect the whole count is five,” the Skewer said. “How am I supposed to walk away from that?”
“All five of em died with weapons in their hands. Can ya say the same fer the man ya murdered down there?”
“I can see you are a man of honor, Sergeant. A rare commodity.”
“That last is true. Thieves and cowards is common as dirt.”
“Ouch. You wound me, sir.” His words were not echoed in his smiling eyes.
“So, what say everyone just backs off now? You go on yer way, and we’ll go on ours. Slow and easy as ya please. I’ll let this one up, and our man up there can come on down, and we’ll settle this peaceful and nice.”
“I hardly think that’s possible. We won’t be gone long enough for a cockatrice to crow before you’re after us again. I don’t think I want Her Majesty’s army chasing me around the rest of my days.”
“Well, ya already got Her Majesty’s army after ya. Ya had it before all this here began. And I ain’t goin to promise I won’t come fer ya after, neither, because we both know I will. Straight as that iron stick ya got pulled back there, I will. But if’n ya go and kill us, even one, you’ll have more to worry about than me and a few of my boys. I’m only gonna drag ya in fer words with the general at Hast. If’n ya make em send out the cavs, well, them horse fellers ain’t so nice as me, and there’s a fair share more of em. Lot of em noble boys, too. Got less to reckon fer if’n they ain’t so kind. They’ll drag ya round through the brush up here, maybe tamp yer backside full of poison oak fer a laugh, then draw and quarter ya till ya scream. Rip ya in pieces fer all four corners of the world.”
Jasper began to stir at Ilbei’s feet, and Ilbei heard Mags let out a breath that sounded like relief. He would have let out his own, excepting for the fact he had no idea what, if anything, the skittish young wizard would do.
“I see your man there is waking up,” the Skewer said, dashing Ilbei’s plans for a long-winded attempt to buy them time. “And while that is a truly frightening story you tell about your cavalry friends, I think your caster there might tip the balance of power more immediately, don’t you?”
“I don’t expect I know,” Ilbei said. “But he’s a damn fine wizard, so I’m likin our chances better knowin he ain’t dead.”
The Skewer glanced at Meggins for a moment, then back to Ilbei. He looked like a card player who knew he couldn’t beat his opponent’s hand. “Your word you won’t pursue us if I agree to your proposal that we all back away?”
“I never said I won’t pursue ya,” Ilbei said. “I told ya right out, I’m gonna come and drag ya straight back to Her Majesty’s justice where ya belong. There’s a price fer bein a no-good murderin thief, killin folks what ain’t done nothin to nobody ’cept try to hammer a livin out from under a rock.”
Ergo the Skewer looked up at his man behind Kaige and signaled something with his eyes, but from his angle on it, Ilbei couldn’t make out what. He looked up at Kaige, hoping for a sign, but the big fellow looked like he was only barely on his feet, his eyes crossing and uncrossing. The man holding his sword was nodding when Ilbei looked.
“Now don’t try nothin stupid,” Ilbei said. “I can smell the stupid comin right off the both of ya.”
“Sergeant, please. You insult me. We both know—” He fired his crossbow and, in the same movement, dove back behind the embankment. Fortunately, Ilbei heard the catch in his voice and jerked to the side in time to watch the long projectile whistle past like silver lightning. It only just missed hitting the horse. In the next instant, less time than it took to blink, Meggins’ arrow slid through the weeds and deflected high and out into the brush on the other side of the creek, the Skewer’s trick affording him the protection of the bank, if only by half a moment.
Kaige cried out right after and came rolling down the hill, his own sword stuck half a hand deep into his lower back for the first flop before being knocked out as he rolled. The man who’d done it ran back over the crest of the hill toward the shack. The man who’d been under Ilbei’s boot scrambled to his feet.
Ilbei nailed the man’s legs together with one swing of his pickaxe, the blade entering through the left knee from the outside, exiting the inside, and then arcing in the other knee from the back. The curve of the pickaxe blade tore the right kneecap loose and pushed it through the skin. The small bone dangled against his shin, hanging on a bit of tissue like a cork tied to a bit of leather cord. The man screamed in agony as he fell, and Ilbei left him to leak and wail. He ran up the hill for Kaige.
Kaige rolled to a stop halfway down the hill, collecting dirt and weeds in his wound, which had started to bleed. Meggins ran past him over the hill and disappeared.
Ilbei rolled Kaige onto his back and looked into his eyes, fearing it was already too late, but Kaige was actually revived some by the pain and the fall.
“I think I let them get away, Sarge,” Kaige told him. “Two of them boys jumped right out and whomped me in the head.”
“Ya got bigger problems than yer thick head, boy,” Ilbei said. “They done stuck ya in the back.”
“Oh,” he said, reaching back to feel for the wound. “Is that what that is?”
Ilbei looked down the hill to where Mags had cut herself loose on the screaming man’s longsword and was now shaking Jasper fully back to consciousness.
“Hurry,” Ilbei called down to her. “Hurry, hurry.”
“He’s coming around,” Mags called up. “Just keep pressure on the wound.”
“I’m keepin damn pressure on it. What do ya think I’m doin over here, pickin daisies?” He looked back up to where Meggins had disappeared, but there was no sign of the soldier yet. “Damn him if he gets hisself killed,” he spat.
“Oh, I ain’t killed, Sarge,” Kaige said, smiling up at him as if he were lying at the bottom of a keg of ale. “I had worse than this before.”
“I know ya have, son. So just pipe down, and we’ll have Jasper over here to fix ya up.”
“Where’s Meggins? They didn’t get him after they rung my gong, did they? He back yet?”
“No, they didn’t get him,” Ilbei said, taking advantage of the gap in Kaige’s memory.
“Where’s he at, then? You need to tell him next time to wait up for me. He’s too damned fast. He ran right past them hiding in the brush. When I finally come through,
whack
, they ambushed me in the skull.”
“Well, ya can tell him yerself,” Ilbei said, looking back and forth between the rising Jasper and the last-known location of the still-missing Meggins. “Soon as he gets here.”
“Where’d he go to?”
“He’s off bein a gods-be-damned hero,” Ilbei said, feeling as he did that he’d sort of let that slip. But he let the thought go as he saw that Jasper was finally up, collecting his scrolls. Mags helped him, and a moment later, they came up the slope, with Mags supporting the mage sturdily.
Jasper knelt down beside Kaige, whose blood was now running in a stream several finger-widths wide in the dirt between Ilbei’s knees, and looked him over. He fished through his satchel and pulled out a scroll.
“Can ya read them things proper, what with yer brain been rattled recently?” Ilbei asked. “Hard to say which of ya got struck the worse.”
“I can read it,” Jasper said. Then he turned and vomited in the weeds. “I think.”
Ilbei shook his head, and guilt filled him. He’d nearly led his men to disaster taking on the Skewer. And Meggins was still up there chasing them.
“Keep an eye on em both,” Ilbei said, directing the statement to Mags, as Jasper was more firmly settled and unfurling a scroll. “I’ll be right back.” And with that he ran off in pursuit of Meggins.
By the time he returned, Meggins in tow, the bandits had gotten away. The one Ilbei had pickaxed through the legs was dead, and Mags and Kaige were pulling the miner out of the water respectfully. Kaige appeared to be as healthy as an ox. It seemed stab wounds and blunt head blows were just the sorts of things Jasper’s army-issue healing scrolls were intended for. With Kaige up and as merry as a man just risen from a nap, Jasper had gone to where the miner had finally split open his boulder, his last act before being murdered. There was a hole where the bandits had been digging in the gravel there, and the wizard sat waist deep in the water, scooping out gravel with his hands.
“What in the name of wet idiots is he doin?” Ilbei asked as he stepped in to help Kaige and Mags carry the miner up to higher ground.
Before anyone could answer, Jasper called out, “I’ve got it. He was right!” He held up his hand triumphantly. In it, a bright chunk of gold, as big as his fist, gleamed wetly in the sun.
Chapter 15
J
asper ran the chunk of gold over to Ilbei, breathless as a boy who’s caught his first fish. Though the distance was short, he was panting by the time he got there. “Placer gold, just like I knew it would be. He was right to think it was down there.”
“Makes his murder all the worse. Her Majesty’s laws are hard on men what kill fer greed. Won’t go well fer Ergo the Skewer and those what got off with him.”