Kinshield's Redemption (Book 4) (24 page)

Gavin, Daia, and Cirang drew their weapons and ran to help. The boy, seeing them, stopped, his eyes wide. He looked around frantically, but there was nowhere for him to go.

“Come on,” Gavin shouted, beckoning with his right arm as he ran. “We won’t hurt you.”

One of the dogs leaped. Gavin magically pulled the boy to him barely in time to save him from the snapping jaws. He caught the boy and set him down. Daia’s sword ended one of the feral dogs with a clean stroke. The next one charged Cirang, but she spun at the last second and cleaved it nearly in two when it turned and came back at her. The third lunged for Daia’s legs. Its own momentum drove her sword through its shoulder, and it dropped to the ground with a groan.

Gavin watched the corner for more of them, but none came. He sheathed Aldras Gar and turned to the boy, but all he saw was the boy’s fleeing back. “Stop!” He ran after the boy, and after a couple dozen steps, caught him by the back of his ragged shirt. He felt the fabric tear a little more, but it held. He stopped, keeping hold of the wriggling, panicked child. “It’s awright. I won’t hurt you.”

The boy stopped struggling, looking into Gavin’s eyes with a confused expression. He looked all the world like a human boy but for his mouth, black-lipped with a long, black tongue that made him look like he’d been snacking on gutter slime. “You’re not the Clout.”

Gavin wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but whatever it was, he was sure he wasn’t it. “No, I’m the Wayfarer, and those are my friends.” He lifted his chin towards the two women. They approached, their weapons still drawn but relaxed.

“If you’re not the Clout, why are you allowed to have swords?”

The question served as a warning. If the Clout were the only ones with swords, he would be wise to avoid the Clout. “Where we come from, we’re battlers. We’re supposed to carry swords.”

“What’s a wayfarer?”

“It’s a traveler. I come from another realm.”

“A visitor?” the boy asked. His smile, with teeth set into black gums, looked less welcoming than predatory. Gavin reminded himself that although this was a child, he was still kho-bent, living in a kho-bent realm.

“Yeh, a visitor,” Gavin said. “Did those dogs hurt you? Let me see.” He looked the boy over top to bottom. “What’s your name?”

The stripling’s face looked like it hadn’t been washed in months. Layers of dried grime caked the sides of his cheeks, his neck, his arms and hands. The only clean spots were the narrow streaks beneath his round, murky-brown eyes. His dull beige and gray clothing was patched and torn and patched again, and he had no shoes on feet blackened with dirt. The right shoulder slumped lower than the left, and his arm hung by his side. “Churylshigryf, but everyone calls me Churl.”

“Your shoulder. Does it hurt?”

“Yes,” Churl said, “but I only notice the pain when I’m not running.”

Gavin supposed that running for his life would take his mind off the pain. “How long has it been like that?”

“Two full moons.”

“You understand him?” Daia asked. “He sounds like he’s speaking gibberish.”

“Yeh.”

The boy squinted up at her. “Is she a half-wit? She doesn’t talk right.”

Gavin laughed. “Hardly. She’s speaking the language of my people. Didn’t your parents take you to a healer when you got injured?”

“What’s a hea- healer?”

Gavin’s heart clenched. This realm had no healers? When he thought about it, he supposed it made sense, but even if someone didn’t dedicate himself to the healing arts for the sake of helping others, it was a viable means of earning a living. “Someone who repairs injuries or illnesses. Want me to try to fix it?”

Churl hung his head. “I have nothing to give you for it except...” He mumbled something incoherent.

“I don’t want anything from you. Just to help.”

He looked up, his head slightly cocked. “You’re a strange brute.”

“I’m a visitor. Now, let me check your shoulder.” With gentle touch on the boy’s limp arm, Gavin’s hand began to warm, though it didn’t build to the intense heat it usually did when he was healing. He could sense through the touch that the bone wasn’t where it should be, that it was sitting outside the socket of the shoulder. “Awright, I need you to be brave for a minute. This is going to hurt.”

“I’m always brave.”

“O’course,” Gavin said. “Lie down on the ground. We’ll try it this way first.” When the boy complied, Gavin arranged his arms so that they were lying by his sides. “Quit kicking your feet. Lie still.” He lifted the wrist then slowly rotated the forearm towards Churl’s body. The child cried out and began to struggle. Something in his eyes became more feral.

“Hold him still,” he said to Daia. Both battlers sheathed their swords and approached to help. Daia knelt on Churl’s left side and held his arm and torso down. Cirang went to her knees by his feet and held him by the ankles.

Gavin rotated the arm outward, pushing the warm healing magic into him at the same time to help dull the pain. Churl screamed. The shoulder popped back into place, and the boy instantly quieted.

“There. Good as new,” Gavin said, helping him sit up.

“You hurt me.”

“I fixed your shoulder. Doesn’t it feel better? Now you got the use o’your arm back.”

Churl leaped to his feet and backed away. “You stupid, rotten, visitor turd!” He turned and ran. Cirang started off after him, but Gavin called her back.

Daia snorted. “That’s some gratitude.”

“He’s kho-bent,” Gavin said with a shrug.

Cirang nodded. “If he’s anything like I was, he can’t feel gratitude. He probably didn’t even notice that his arm’s better.”

“Gavin,” Daia said, her tone cautionary. He followed her gaze and found a pair of women sneering at them from an open door. They both gripped wooden paddles as if they were weapons.

“Let’s see if one o’them’s the right person.” He started towards the women. Daia and Cirang fell into step beside him. “How now,” he said as he neared.

The two women scurried into the building and shut the door. He heard a bar slide into place. If the gem in his sword had hummed, he’d have persisted in talking to them, but it was quiet.

He scanned up and down the street. A man walked past on the next street, but there was no point in calling out. “People aren’t going to be friendly or helpful here. Guess we’ll have to walk around until we find someone.” He headed in the direction the man had gone. “Maybe we can find a market or something. The boy said something about nobody being allowed weapons except someone called Clout, so don’t draw swords unless you have to.” He cast a quick spell over the three of them, making the swords look like walking canes.

“Be on your guard,” Daia said to Cirang.

They turned the corner and saw quite a few more people ahead, most walking this way and that, some sitting around a big pipe, taking turns sucking down the foul-smelling smoke. Almost everyone was young. No, he noted to himself. Everyone was. He saw not a single elderly person in the crowd. In fact, no one looked older than Calinor or Tennara, both in their early forties. A woman ran through the crowd, bumping people and drawing shouts and curses. A warning burned in the pit of his stomach. She was grabbed by the ponytail and yanked to a stop by a large man wielding a knife. No one stopped him. Instead, passersby gave him a wide berth.

Aldras Gar
.

“You there,” said a deep voice from behind them. “Stop.”

Chapter 30

Gavin remembered the boy’s warning about the Clout before he turned around. “Don’t draw,” he whispered to his two battlers. He held his hands up and turned slowly around. Daia and Cirang followed his lead.

Two brawny swordsmen stood wide-legged, hands on the hilts of the swords sheathed at their waists. Both were bare-chested and dressed in short, black skirts, and both wore black, leather masks with only holes for their eyes, nostrils, and mouth. Their skins were remarkably unscarred, but Gavin supposed that if they were the only ones allowed to carry swords, they were unlikely to be as well practiced as he and his companions were.

“Only the Clout may have swords,” said the one on the right.

“We’re only carrying walking aids,” Gavin said. “If you’ll allow me...” He set his knapsack on the ground and reached slowly for Aldras Gar’s hilt. When the Clout nodded, he drew it and held it in front of him, point on the ground. It looked like a cane of reddish-brown wood and a knob at the top where the sword’s hilt ended in a snake’s head. “You see? We do a lot o’hiking.”

The two Clout turned their heads towards one another as if listening, but neither spoke. Then they took a step apart, revealing a thin man behind them. The man wore a long, black robe like a cleric’s, with a hood to cover his hair and a leather mask matching the two swordsmen’s. He carried a tall staff etched with symbols and topped with a crystal. The thin man glided forward.

Gavin tried to ignore the icy fingers that tickled the back of his neck.

“Beware of this one, Emtor,” the Guardians said, appearing behind the thin man.

“You of the pink mouths aren’t of this realm.” He turned his eyes to Daia. “That one is useful. I’ll keep her. Dispose of the others.”

Daia cried out, hunching over. Gavin tried to examine her to find out what was happening, but she vanished, along with the thin man. “Hey! No. Bring her back.” To the Guardians’ smoky white image, he shouted, “Do something. Help her.”

In response, the Guardians disappeared.
Damn them,
Gavin thought.

The two swordsmen drew their weapons.

“Fight,” he told Cirang. She drew her sword, and the two got into battle position, one foot forward, weapons at ready. He’d never fought with her before and didn’t know her level of competency, but between the original Cirang’s years as a Viragon Sister and Sithral Tyr’s expertise handling a blade, her skill should be sharp. The biggest problem would be her zhi-bent nature making her hesitant to hurt anyone. He might have to fight both men.

The two Clout rushed them at the same time, swords raised. Gavin stepped in and swung Aldras Gar. It crackled with magical energy, sending a bolt of white light from its tip and feeling the weapon lag in his hand. A deep wound opened across the Clout’s belly, and the swordsman cried out. Gavin spun to the right, expecting to see his opponent’s entrails tumbling out, but when he faced his opponent again, the wound was gone. His skin was perfect and unscarred. “What the hell?” He blocked the Clout’s sword and turned the weapon down, then brought his sword around again. It sliced up into the man’s armpit so deeply that it hit the collarbone and stopped. Again, the Clout hollered in pain, but the wound closed the very instant Gavin withdrew his blade.

Beside him, Cirang was slicing and blocking and stabbing with short, quick thrusts and swings, hitting her mark more often than not but doing no lasting damage. “King Gavin, they’ve got some kind of magic on their side,” she said through her labored breathing.

Without Daia, Gavin’s sword skill was greater than his magic, but they weren’t doing any damage to their opponents. Though Aldras Gar’s enchantment would keep him strong, Cirang would start to tire. Then he had an idea.

When his opponent left his torso unguarded again, Gavin ran his blade directly through the heart. The swordsman screamed. For a moment, he wavered on his feet, blood pulsing out of the wound and streaming down his belly, but Gavin held Aldras Gar in place. The Clout slumped to his knees and then fell onto his side. At last, Gavin withdrew his sword, ready to run the man through once more if he moved, but the wound didn’t close. The Clout was dead.

Gavin expected to be tired from five months without a proper sword fight, but because of the sword’s enchantment—strength in battle—he felt as fresh as if he’d been standing still. “Leave your weapon in the wound,” he told Cirang. When the other Clout was at the end of another missed swing, he stepped in and ran Aldras Gar between the swordsman’s ribs. Cirang stabbed him in the chest below the heart, and together they eased him to the ground, where his blood pooled beneath his still body.

The black-robed man appeared again. “What have you done? Stop!” he commanded, striking his staff on the ground. A ripple in the air expanded outward in a circle. It reached Cirang first, and she froze in place, her sword still buried in the Clout’s chest. When it swept over Gavin, he felt immensely heavy and stiff. He couldn’t move anything but his eyes, though the magic didn’t impair his breathing. His arms and legs were stiff as stone. Aldras Gar slipped from his grasp and fell to the ground with a clank.

The thin mage eyed the two dead Clout and clucked his tongue. “Pity. I’ll have to buy two more.” He made a subtle hand movement, and both bodies disappeared, leaving only the red puddles soaking into the dirt. Two new Clout appeared in their places, perfect and unblemished by scars.

Aww, hell,
Gavin thought.

The thin mage walked around Gavin, eyeing Aldras Gar with interest. “One of you is the Wayfarer.” He circled Cirang next. “You’re a contemptible weakling with no useful skill or power,” he said with a sneer. “It isn’t you, which means it’s either you of the illusion,” he said, approaching Gavin once more, “or the female of the curious orange flame. I would kill you both and take the power for myself, but alas, the Baron commands me to bring you to him.” Being a foot shorter, he had to look up to leer into Gavin’s face. “Slay the female and put her weapons in the armory.”