Cimozjen took to the attack, executing his planned chop at the leading leg. Partway through the swing he rolled his wrist and changed the angle of attack upward, leading with the inside edge of the sword, aiming for Pomindras’s ear. But either Cimozjen was too old and slow, or Pomindras had seen the trick many times in the arena, because he ducked out of the way and raised his shield.
Cimozjen saw an actinic flash, felt a jarring bolt flash through his body, thumping painfully at his forearm and his knees. He felt the point of his sword dig into something, and he nearly lost his grip.
But there’d been no crash of metal.
Cimozjen stepped back, shaken and unnerved, his sword held out defensively. Pomindras slapped his shield upward at Cimozjen’s weapon. As soon as the gold rim of his shield contacted Cimozjen’s arm, another flash and charge of numbness blasted through him. Between the shock and the impact, he lost his grip on his sword, and he saw it fall from his fingers.
It didn’t slide across the boss of Pomindras’s shield. Rather it
fell in, quickly becoming obscured by shadow and vanishing from sight altogether.
“Oops,” said Pomindras in amusement.
And as his foe moved the shield to the side, Cimozjen finally understood what made the shield so impenetrably black. It was a ring of gold-colored metal … encircling
nothing
.
Cimozjen retreated a few steps, shook his hand to restore feeling, and gripped his staff tightly, the bottom end toward Pomindras, the upper end held behind his ear. He slid his right hand to find the proper place.
Seeing Cimozjen disarmed gave Pomindras new confidence. He closed quickly, circling his sword in a taunting sort of manner. “Now I rip apart your chain mail piece by piece, Karrn.” He lunged, a lightning move that slipped past Cimozjen’s parry, carved a terrible slice into his arm, and sheared half of his chain sleeve away.
Sundered links of chain tinkled down the hall.
“And if you think your little stick is going to stop me—”
Cimozjen surged forward, raising the staff for an overhand swat. Pomindras raised his shield. Then with his thumb Cimozjen flipped a tiny switch embedded in the staff and a long, thin blade speared out of one metal-shod end, shattering the small piece of clay that camouflaged the hole. Instead of continuing his overhand attack, Cimozjen put his weight into plunging the spear downward, driving it completely through Pomindras’s foot just forward of the ankle.
Pomindras screamed and staggered, unable to move the injured foot.
“Oops,” said Cimozjen with a glower.
He yanked the spear to the side, pulling Pomindras’s leg to the side before the blade plowed through the flesh between the tarsal bones, slicing Pomindras’s foot lengthwise.
Pomindras fell, scraping down the walls as he scrabbled for traction, gasping in pain.
Seeing an opening, Cimozjen thrust with his spear at
Pomindras’s unprotected torso. Pomindras cried out, shock and pain taking command of his every action. Cimozjen plunged his spear again and again, until he was certain that the son of Deneith would scream no more.
The Quiet Touch of Death
Wir, the 4th day of Aryth, 998
T
hat is a lot of weapons,” said Four.
Cimozjen shrugged. “It’s an armory for House Deneith. I’m not too surprised.” He scratched his head and began to poke around. “I wonder where the boy stashed my longcoat. I hope they kept it rather than sell it. I paid a lot of coin for that thing.”
“Cimmer! You’re alive!” Minrah bounded into the room and leaped into his arms. She snuggled into him, squeezing him as tightly as her small arms would allow.
Cimozjen hugged her back, laughing with relief, but also very aware of every nuance of her proximity, including the way her delicate fingers shifted their position on his back. She sighed contentedly, and the sound was as soft and beautiful as a summer brook.
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” she murmured, burrowing her head into his sweaty tunic.
“I would not let myself be defeated, not here,” he said.
“So how’d you like my plan?” she asked brightly, looking up at him with open, vulnerable, delighted eyes. “That was my idea. Pretty clever, huh?”
Cimozjen half-shrugged. “I guessed at it pretty quickly.”
“Guessed?” asked Minrah. She backed up, affronted, hands on hips. “He was supposed to whisper it to you! Why didn’t you tell him, Four?”
Cimozjen intervened. “It was so loud in the ring,” he said. “We could hardly talk to each other. But the ‘SI’ tattoo on his ear was a good idea, and Four dropped a few pretty good hints, as good as he could while shouting. But just to be safe, I jabbed him right here.” He rapped a knuckle on Four’s hammered-iron chest piece, which showed a new scratch across it. “I had to make sure it was no trick, and I figured if it was Four in disguise, I’d scratch his armor. If not, I’d draw blood.”
“That was a dangerous maneuver,” said Four. “I reacted on reflex. It was too similar to the other times I spent … out there. For a moment, I was engaged to kill you, but then I remembered your face in the tavern, and how I diverted my axe—”
“Let’s not travel any further down that road, shall we?” said Cimozjen. “We both survived, and Minrah brought Aurala’s army at the right time.”
“We timed it.”
“You did?”
“Yes,” said Four. “I saw the signal and told you it was time to end the fight.”
“My companions,” said Cimozjen with a gracious bow, “I am impressed.”
“So what’s this?” asked Minrah, reaching for the ebon shield that leaned against a stool next to Cimozjen. A spark flashed brightly, and she yanked her hand back. “Ow! Filth! What’s that evil trick?” she snapped, clutching her arm to her breast.
Cimozjen looked over his shoulder at the shield slung there. “A farewell gift to me from the late unlamented Pomindras, erstwhile commander of the
Silver Cygnet
.” He picked it up and held it by the straps with the inside facing Minrah. “Observe. On this side, a more or less normal wooden shield with arm straps. But on the other”—he turned it around—“a fiendishly clever device. The gold
ring around the edge emits a potent electric shock. And the center … it’s just not there.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s nonexistent. Try to touch it. Go on, I’ve done it myself. So long as you avoid the ring, you’ll come to no harm.”
Minrah reached out tentatively with her other arm. She brushed her fingers at the black boss. “That’s odd,” she said. She reached closer. Closer. “There’s …”
“Nothing,” said Cimozjen, peering over the rim of the shield. “And from my perspective it looks as though your hand is reaching into the shield up to your wrist.”
Minrah yanked her hand out, studied her fingers, then leaned forward carefully and reached in again, well past her elbow. “How far does it go?”
“I’ve no idea at all,” said Cimozjen. “It may well go forever. It swallowed my sword, and I doubt I’ll ever get it back. Unless you want to crawl in and try to find it for me …”
“Buy yourself a new one,” said Minrah, pulling her arm out.
“I’ll make sure I’m armed before you drag me through another one of your wild plans,” he said with a chuckle.
“I’m sorry if it was hard on you, but we didn’t have much time left.”
“What do you mean?” asked Cimozjen.
Minrah pulled out an envelope from her bag. “Take a look at this. Two days ago Rophis delivered an invitation for me to come see him at the Deneith enclave tomorrow. It even includes a guarantee of safe passage, notarized by House Sivis.”
“Why would he want to meet with you?” asked Cimozjen. He took the paper.
“I don’t know,” said Minrah, “but I figured that boded ill for you. I got it the day after I confronted him and demanded your release.”
Cimozjen handed the paper back to Minrah. “Hold for a moment,” he said, espying an Aundairian officer walk toward the trio.
“Excuse me, Minrah Penwright?” said the officer as he closed. He nodded to Cimozjen and Four in turn. “Pardon the intrusion, my good men. Minrah, I thought you should know that we have completed our search of the premises.”
“And …?”
“While we have found several caged beasts, we have not uncovered any direct evidence of enslavement. Certainly nothing that would withstand the Code of Galifar. Yet … that is, perhaps you should accompany me.”
“Captain,” said Minrah, “this is Cimozjen Hellekanus, the man whose saga I told to you. He was held against his will. And this is Four, whom they enslaved from the time he was created until a week or two ago when we freed him.”
The captain glanced at them again. “Pleased to make your acquaintances. You should accompany us as well.”
Cimozjen and Four grabbed their gear. The captain led them through the chambers and hallways beneath the arena until they came to a long corridor with a dozen open archways all along one wall.
The captain gestured them forward. “This is what we found,” he said.
Cimozjen moved down the hall, peering into the open doors. “Yes, this is the sort of room I was kept in. Pallet bed, buckets for food and slop … but I see no manacles. How could they …” His words drifted off as he became aware of the weight of the shield upon his back. Manacles could easily have been unlocked from their footing and dumped into the shield, or into something like it, never to be seen again. He sighed heavily.
He inspected the door, and noted the lack of an interior latch. “There was such a door on my room, but it led not into the hallway, but almost straight into the arena.”
“That’s impossible,” said the captain. “We’ve checked every exit from the arena. They all lead to hallways or common rooms.”
“Magic,” said Minrah. She was standing in a doorway, running her hands up and down the frame. “Runes carved into the frame,
but every frame has been marred. I’ll wager that a mage could ensorcel these, connecting them to the arena. That way, the only places prisoners could go would be straight from their pen to the arena and back.”
“There’s more,” said the captain, and he gestured down the hall.
Cimozjen walked slowly along, following the captain’s direction. Two more doors, and he saw what the captain meant. A body lay in the middle of the room in a pool of blood, his face crushed by a spiked instrument.
Cimozjen kneeled down beside the body and placed his fingers on the man’s throat. There was no pulse, but the skin had not yet gone fully cold. “They killed them.”
“Yes, they did,” said the captain. “And they did a thorough job. We can’t identify him by his features, and he has nothing on him to indicate his name or allegiance.”
Cimozjen moved to the next archway. “And another.”
“And more down the hall. Worse yet, there’s a whole room with crates that contain nothing but wrecked warforged just a little further on.”
Cimozjen shook his head. “They killed them all,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Killed them so they’d not tell you they were being held prisoner.”
“You know that, and I know that,” said the captain. “But the Code of Galifar treats these as simple murders. We could perhaps try a diviner or a necromancer, but that’s expensive and the results they can get are spotty at best. And we have hundreds of potential murderers that we’ve arrested, and who knows how many more got away?”
“I saved not even a one of them. They all died.”
“Not the one in the last cell,” said the captain. “You should take a look.”
Cimozjen walked to the last opening and peered in cautiously. There, in the center of the room, stood a man dressed in worn peasant’s clothing. He looked at Cimozjen, not a flicker of recognition in his eye.
“Ripfist!” blurted Cimozjen.
“What?” said Minrah. “Who?”
“They call him Ripfist,” called Cimozjen over his shoulder. “He’s … he’s had monastic training of some sort. A combat monk.”
“A monk?” asked Minrah. “Is he Aundairian?” She scooted quickly down the hall, shielding her eyes from the corpses that lay in the rooms.
Cimozjen looked in his eyes. The man had a glassy stare, deep behind which moved a semblance of consciousness, like the shadow of a leviathan stirring at the bottom of a calm, still lake. “I doubt if he even knows any more,” said Cimozjen.
He moved slowly, subserviently into the room. Ripfist watched him with awareness, but no interest. Cimozjen moved closer, and saw that his hair was a tangled mess on one side of his head. He leaned closer and blew gently, moving a shock of hair enough to see a large jagged scar on the side of his scalp near the front.
He heard Minrah pad into the room behind him and gasp.
“He appears to have taken a nasty blow to the head,” said Cimozjen. “Be careful, though, he still has all his deadly instincts, and there’s no way to tell what might ignite his fury.”
Minrah moved closer and sat on the floor. Cimozjen backed away to the door so as not to crowd Ripfist. Four was walking down the hall to see as well, and Cimozjen gestured for him to remain where he was.
Minrah leaned forward and patted the ground. “Come and sit, please. Can we talk?”
“Talk …” said Ripfist blankly.
“Yes, talk.” She patted the ground again and smiled. “Will you come and sit? Come!”
“Sit,” said Ripfist. His brow clouded for a moment. Slowly, uncertainly, he lowered himself to the floor, sitting on his heels with his hands resting on his thighs.
“My name is Minrah,” she said. She spoke gently, as though to a shy child. “Do you remember your name?”
“No, I … I do—” he tried to say something else, but the words wouldn’t come out of his mouth. He scrunched up his face in anger and frustration, and looked about the room. It seemed he was almost ready to cry.
“That’s just fine,” said Minrah. “Don’t you worry your head.”
Ripfist raised one hand to his scar. “My … my head, it …” He looked at Minrah and licked his lips. “Sit,” he said with a tentative smile.
“That’s right,” said Minrah. “We’re sitting together, you and I. It’s very nice, isn’t it?”
The smile flickered about his lips again, but never reached his eyes.