The Last Garrison (Dungeons & Dragons Novel) (16 page)

Kohel clapped Padlur on the back, causing Nergei to turn around just in time to hear him say, “Look how impressive those men are! These are the kind of mercenaries we should be hiring.”

Nergei opened his mouth to offer a retort, then thought better and turned back around, to where Sten and Spundwand stood beside him.

Or rather, to where they had been standing beside him. But there was just a small gap in the crowd, one that widened as the crowd backed up, leaving the human archer, the half-elf, and Magla standing alone, pinned beneath the gaze of the archers, each nocking a barbed arrow, each pulling back the long black bow of his father’s failed station.

The human archers, the half-elf, and Magla all stood, attention locked on each other, waiting for some other to move, but the change came not from any of them but from Luzhon, who—when she could not stand the tension any longer—yelled, “Nergei, we must do something!”

Everyone—nearly everyone—turned and looked at the teenage girl, seeing her frustration, an emotion they shared, plus another, which perhaps they did not: Luzhon’s admiration for Magla was evident already, clearly visible in the flush of her cheeks, the set of her fists balled against her hips.

As for Nergei, he wanted nothing more than to protect the elf, whom he also found impressive, but whatever magic had risen in him when Luzhon and the others had been threatened by the kenku in the woods, it would not come to him, not even as two events unfolded in front of him simultaneously.

The first was the half-elf—still grinning his ridiculous grin—saying, “Since there’s no reason for me to get stuck in the middle here, I’ll just be taking my leave,” while turning the purse upside down in his already-dropping hand, moving so fast that despite the human’s movements he could not reach him before the half-elf’s hand was moving upward again, flinging the opening purse into the air.

The second was the
twang
of a released bowstring, its arrow flying in from the far end of the shooting lane toward Magla.

Luzhon screamed, and Nergei too, but what fell out of the rising purse was not silver but an orb the size
of Nergei’s fist, perfectly round and greenish blue in color. The half-elf caught the orb and held it above his head, uttering some word of power which Nergei could not recognize but which the orb knew. The orb flashed green, then expelled a ball of sheer force forward toward the incoming arrow and through to the archer behind, catching both of them in its path and hurtling them off into some street behind.

Up until then, the crowd had been interested enough to wait for the impending violence, but once the fight was joined, most ran, heading for side streets and alleys, clearing the shooting lane that had turned from competitive to deadly. The noise of the escaping crowd rose louder as the human reached for his short blade, intent on keeping his fight with Magla short.

The human was fast, but as his hand closed upon the pommel so did one of Magla’s, and in her other hand she held one of her arrows, plucked from her quiver in an instant and quickly shoved through the man’s forearm and into his thigh, pinning his sword arm to his leg. Magla spun away, retrieving her bow before it could fall, then swung its length hard across the man’s back, sending him screaming to the street.

Magla and the half-elf were moving together, their backs angled toward each other. Two arrows from Magla’s bow removed two of the rooftop archers, and a magical green bolt from the half-elf’s orb removed
another. Two more remained at the far end of the alley, and Magla raised her bow to take them down even as the half-elf threw up a shield of blue energy to block their frantically shot arrows.

Magla drew back, ready to take a shot, but before she could both men were jerked down, disappearing beneath the roof. The elf archer kept the arrow nocked until it was obvious the two men wouldn’t be reappearing. Then she returned her arrow to her quiver and her bow to her back before drawing a well-crafted dagger from her hip and kneeling beside the still-groaning human archer, who was desperately trying to work the arrow from his arm and thigh. She pressed her dagger to his throat, and in a low voice, she said, “Remember that it was not the elves of Lastwood who maimed you, as you believe they killed your forbearers. Not the elves at all, although one of their number pierced you with her arrow. Your loss of gold and blood falls only on yourself, and not on me.” The elf stood, returned the weapon to its scabbard. “I am blameless, innocent, in need of no forgiveness from you or from anyone.”

Magla did not wait for the man’s reply, only walked away as he screamed at the tearing of the arrow’s barbs through his flesh, cutting him anew as he tried to remove them from the wound the only way he could, back the way they came.

Across the street, Magla rejoined the half-elf in walking away from the scene of the scuffle, her face still just as impassive as his was effusive.

“What happened?” asked the half-elf, putting a hand over his eyes to aid his vision of the street’s end, where the other two archers still had not appeared. “We were just getting started, and they ran away? I thought they were the bravest descendents of Grandmoor.”

“The point isn’t for us to get in a fight. Next time, you could try to head off the trouble before it comes to blows. That is, after all, the point of your involvement—to double the money while lessening the risk.”

“And miss you giving that great speech? Not a chance in the world. The great bow-maiden speaks!”

“In any case, they didn’t run away. Didn’t you see our two friends?”

“What two friends?”

“Ask them,” she said, jerking a thumb behind her back, to where Nergei, Luzhon, Imony, Padlur, and Kohel stood. Luzhon gasped, and for the first time Magla made a smile to match the half-elf’s ever-present expression. “They’re friends of theirs, too.”

After Sten and Spundwand returned to the street, the elf and half-elf clasped hands with the warlord and the dwarf, exchanging pleasantries until it was obvious to Nergei that all four were acquainted, if not friends. Still, he waited until he and the others were motioned forward before approaching, and only then after Kohel, Padlur, and Luzhon had all introduced themselves did he offer his own name.

“And I am Mikal, Magla’s brother,” replied the half-elf.

“But you are only—” Nergei stopped, stammered, apologized. “I apologize. It is not my place to say anything.”

“No,” said Mikal, still smiling. “You are wondering, and you have expressed your wonder. Nothing wrong with that, especially in one like yourself. Yes, I am her brother. Born after, but surely first to die. That is the curse of the half-born. My elven longevity is a mere sliver of hers. This is why we travel together. We are the last family either has, and have vowed to stay at each other’s side for what short years we have between us. For in thirty or forty years I will be dead, and none of my years will show in her face. Perhaps then she will return to her people, and seek what inheritance might still await her among her father’s kin. But not now, and not yet. For now, she lives with me in what part of the world we share, and that is enough.”

“You said ‘one like me.’ What am I like?”

“You are an apprentice arcanist yourself, are you not? A student of the arts? In touch with the wild magic, perhaps?”

Nergei stammered again, suddenly afraid; his master would talk to the wizard, and the wizard would tell his master what he had done, what he had been forbidden to do. “No, wizard, I am none of those things. Merely my master’s boy.”

Mikal looked closer, stroked the trim triangle of his goatee. “Perhaps you are right. In any case, now we have both made some mistake about the other, and so we are even, and still well-met. And just in case I am wrong, perhaps there is a thing or two I can show you upon our journey.”

Magla waved them all over, so that once again Sten could explain to the two warriors what he had already explained to Imony, that together they would go to Haven, where they would protect those who could not protect themselves. There would be nothing in return. Not money, for the people of Haven had none. Not glory, for the people of Haven sung no songs that were heard outside their walls. Not the love of the gods, for what gods there were loved none on Haven’s peak save to bless them with the occasional bounty of a good harvest, but rather had already abandoned them to what dark fate awaited.

There would be death or there would not be death, and nothing else would Sten promise those who might choose to follow him up the mountain and into the small, thankless village of Haven, hung below the highest observatory in the known world, because promises of greatness were for heroes, and the age of heroes had already passed them by.

With the party gathered, the villagers returned to retrieve the nag and their cart, and of course Pyla, who had stayed beside it while they had explored the city. Together, the four teenagers introduced Pyla to each of the warriors in turn: Sten, the ex-guardsman; Spundwand, the aged dwarf battlepriest; Imony, the warrior whose size and shape betrayed her power and grace in hand-to-hand combat; and the matched pair of the archer and the wizard, the elf Magla and her half-breed brother, Mikal.

As they gathered their things to go, Nergei once again consulted the growing perceptions within himself, the instinct complemented with some growing magic, searching for some sign of deception from any of them, some sign of danger. After days of close attention to everything in the city, he felt strangely quiet, he wondered at that too. When he’d first begun to tease at the magic within him, its whisperings had been
loud, distracting, but his senses had felt nearly silent, and then—before they had even recrossed the plains to the foothills, he found himself waking up again, already shaking off the dullness of their return’s first steps. The birds that had been following them the entire journey down the mountain had returned to the sky far above, there again to escort them back up.