The Fly Guild (27 page)

“Don’t be like me, boy. Don’t be like me.
Make your run.” His head dropped and his breathing stopped.

Quinton looked at the vial. Everything
about the guild had been a lie. The people he had dared to trust had betrayed
him. Was this one final cruel joke? Was the vial poisoned so that no one would
escape? Would Fist find his body and know that Grubbs had been a faithful
servant until the very end?

He could hear shouting and things being
knocked over in the buildings. The soldiers were coming back. He was out of
time. He uncorked the vial, carefully dribbled a little liquid in each side of
his leg, then drank the rest. It tasted like water, and his leg still hurt.

The wind started to pick up again, and
the rain returned. Perhaps the storm wasn’t done after all. He gasped and
reached for his dagger because it suddenly felt like someone had grabbed his
leg. He could feel the wound being pressured by some unseen force, but the
burning sensation subsided. He examined the wound and saw that, though it was
pink and tender, the hole was no longer there. He gently flexed his leg. It was
still painful, but he could move it again. The boy pulled himself up and took
several ginger steps toward the bottom of the pile. He paused to grab a couple
of stray bags of food and tied them together and then onto his belt.

When he looked up, the prince was
standing across the courtyard staring at him, a dozen men on either side of
him, including several armed with bows. The sky behind him was black as night.
The wind picked up as if the breath of the gods were blowing directly on them,
and the rain became a weapon. There was no way Quinton would make it up the
debris pile with his gimpy leg. The archers probably wouldn’t be able to shoot
him down because of the wind, but the swordsmen would surely catch him.

“I remember you,” called the prince over
the storm. “I remember you from yesterday, and I knew I had seen your face
before.”

Quinton took a couple of steps to the
side and stood on the rug that was draped on the base of the rocks.

“Now that I see my dagger, the one my
grandmother gave me, hanging at your belt, I know why you look so familiar.”

Quinton reached down and tied the
decorative rope on the corner of the rug around his boot, never taking his eyes
off the prince.

“It was you that night who tried to kill
me. It was you that night who took my dagger.” He started to walk forward. The
men started to come with him, but he waved them back. He would handle this
alone.

“That’s not all,” Quinton yelled back. As
he hoped, the prince slowed his pace and turned his head to hear him better.
The sheets of rain were now pouring down and the wind was whipping debris in
all directions, making it hard to see. “This morning, I visited your
grandmother. I escorted her to the balcony.”

The prince’s face twisted in rage as
Quinton tied the other rope around his other foot.

  “It was I who broke into the elf’s
room. It was I who took his sword.” Quinton reached forward, grabbed the other
end of the rug and wrapped the rope around his hands.

The prince pulled out his sword and
stumbled forward, trying not to be blown over by the wind.

“It will make me happy to torture you
every day for years on end for what you have done to my family. Your death will
not be fast.”

Quinton stood up and hoped his plan would
work. He held the rug up in front of him, all four corners tied to an arm or an
ankle. “We will both remember this day then. My name is Quinton, and one day I
will return to finish the job that I failed to do that night.”

The prince moved in to attack.

Quinton quickly high-stepped up into the
air, the magic of the boots carrying him up and out of reach. The archers fired
at him, but between the wind and the rain, it was like throwing confetti into a
tornado. The arrows were batted around and slammed to the ground. The prince
screamed in anger as Quinton climbed into the air, the wind already blowing him
out over the wall. As soon as he turned, the wind grabbed his makeshift sail
and nearly pulled his arms out of his sockets. 

He glanced back at the city. The storm
was blowing the sea into the streets. He could see ships being pushed onto the
roads and buildings crumbling from the force of the wind and the waves. People
were trying to run, but like little ants in a stream, they had no power.

When he looked to his front, he had to
quickly gain altitude again, because he was heading for the tree line and was
not high enough. Several top branches grabbed at his feet as he skimmed by at
an incredible rate of speed. He kept climbing higher and higher and watched
with amazement as the swamp rushed by below. Occasionally, the road that
twisted through it came into view and he spotted gaggles of refugees trying to
make it to safety.

Quinton wasn’t sure how long he could
hang on. The ropes were cutting into his hands from the force, but he was
covering massive distances thanks to the force of the storm. He kept riding the
wind, the way a piece of driftwood rides the tide.

***

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed,
but the rug finally gave out. It tore down the middle and shredded. He now had
four scraps of waterlogged fabric pulling him along. His speed slowed, but he
was still moving. After much struggling, he managed to free himself of each
piece. As he let each one go, it fluttered in the wind to the ground far below.
Even without his sail, the wind still pushed him along. He could see the trees
of the swamp and large lakes, their waters whipped into a frenzy by the storm.

His next problem was how to land. Each
time he dipped his feet and dropped his altitude, another line of trees came
racing up, and he had to climb to safety again. As he approached the ground
each time, he got an idea of just how fast he was going. It was certainly much
faster than any horse could ever run.

He spotted a large swath of high grass
and reeds that appeared to have some sort of trail running through the middle
of it. It was the most open spot he had seen in some time. He pointed his feet
and began his final descent. As he approached the ground, he tried to start
running with his legs, hoping to slow himself. He was coming down right on the
trail, but as soon as his feet hit the ground he pitched forward, the boots no
longer keeping him upright. He did several somersaults and then crashed into
the high grass, flipping and rolling until he came to a stop. 

His elbow hurt and his hands and arms
were scraped up, but the grass had cushioned his fall. He crawled back toward
the trail to get out of the ankle-deep water he was in. There was some sort of
stone ruin ahead. He stumbled a few steps in the wind and looked at it. There
was only one part of a stone wall left of whatever ancient being had live here,
and it was only knee high, but it was good enough. Quinton crawled next to it
to shelter from the wind, closed his eyes and fell asleep. His slumber was
easy, because he was finally free.

EPILOGUE

Blackberries grew in abundance around his
lake in the swamp. At first, he built a platform and slept in the branches of
the trees for fear of the giant lizards that Sands had warned him about. But as
the days went on, he explored all around his new home and saw no sign of them,
so he built a crude lean-to using part of the old stone wall. He had his food
from the sacks to get him through those early days, and he made good use of it,
stretching every provision as long as he could. The berries were many, but he
knew they wouldn’t last forever. 

The tall marsh grass formed small natural
pools, where fish would sometimes congregate. He used his sword like an ax,
chopped down several saplings and tied them together in bundles using the broad
strands of the reed grass that was exceptionally tough. He then took his
bundles and blocked off the small streams that led from pool to pool, trapping
the fish so he could spear them with his sword.

Weeks later, he made a spear from a small
sapling and used his dagger to sharpen the end into a point, then hardened it
in his cooking fire. With practice in the pools, he learned to spear fish from
the shore. Soon, he rarely used the bundles of sticks to trap the fish.

The water in the lake tasted a little
funny, but it was clean. Unlike the filth of the city, the outdoors was fresh.
He bathed in the lake and enjoyed the feeling the cool water brought to his
dirty body, washing away all the horrible memories.

But not all memories would leave on their
own. Each night, he saw them at the top of the rubble, leaving without him. He
saw her face, and his heart sank. Occasionally, he woke up and found his hand
clawing at the ground and a tear running down his cheek. She was the one thing
that had kept him going in that place, the one thing of beauty, the one person
he trusted. And she betrayed him.

“Trust no one,” Grubbs had told him in
the beginning, and in the end, he was right. Trust no one. Now he knew why.

Sometimes he looked up at the stars after
his fire had burned out and wondered where she was under the great black
blanket of sky. He wondered if she ever wondered what had happened to him. But
based on the situation she left him in, wounded, alone and surrounded by
soldiers, she probably assumed he was dead. And realistically, he thought, she
probably didn’t even care. If she had, she would have waited for him. Waited
for him like they had planned.

As he cleaned a fish using a knife one
bright afternoon, a thought popped into his head. What if she had waited for
him? What if she had been with him in the courtyard? The soldiers would have
still come. Even if they had made it out of the city, they would have been
hunted down. Or washed away in the storm. Did she die in the storm? He thought
about it for a moment then decided no. She was alive. He could feel it. Some
day, they would meet again.

The days were bright and long, and after
so many years of being stacked with other humans in a cold, dank basement like
fleshy firewood, Quinton was glad to be alone with his thoughts. No more
stealing, no more killing. The only person he answered to was himself. 

On nights with a full moon, he kept
having the same dream. He was in a castle made of fog. The walls eddied and
swirled all around him, and the floor was lost beneath a knee-high mist. There
was always a figure in the distance, a boy his age, but he had a faint glow
about him, as if moonlight shone from within. He did not appear to have any
hair and his skin was pale white, but his features were always lost. Was this a
shadow of himself in some netherworld? Or was it a message from beyond? He did not
know. He didn’t like being in that dream, but he never felt threatened, and the
figure never drew close enough for him to see the truth.

The full moons came and went, the berry
vines bloomed and faded. The only want Quinton had was for clothes. Most of
what he had was mere rags, and he was already stripped to the waist. He was
able to fashion a shirt of sorts out of one of his bags, but there wasn’t much
warmth on the nights when it was cold. There were plenty of deer in the area,
but he had no bow. He tried his spear at them a few times, but he didn’t know
how to hunt, and the spear was too small to bring one down.

He began to think of moving on. He would
find the road and follow it out of the swamp. Perhaps he could barter for some
new clothes. If not, he certainly knew how to steal some. He began to make
preparations to leave. He would wait until the berries were in full fruit
again, then set out to see what else was out there.

When the time was right, he gathered up
as many berries as he could fit in a sack, stored up a few days’ worth of fish
that he could eat before it went bad and took several large live bullfrogs that
would provide him some fresh meat if he were unable to find any. As the sun
rose in the east, Quinton set out on his path, a free man.

T
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