Chapter

8

Daretor barely had time to draw his blackened sword again before Thull lunged at him. Daretor chopped down at the blade, then threw a cut-snap at the mage’s head.

Thull parried and followed up with a riposte that sliced through Daretor’s tunic and scraped along his ribs. Daretor swung down wildly, missed Thull as he spin-dodged and their blades clanged loudly as if the blacksmith were still alive and working late at the forge.

Daretor stumbled after the mage, baffled by his own reactions. Something was wrong, he could not believe how clumsily he was chopping and swinging. Even simple stances and dodge footwork had somehow deserted him.

‘Confused?’ laughed Thull. ‘You should be, you fool. For all the time you were with me you never once asked how the skills got into the dragonlinks.’

Daretor tried to attack again, but the sword felt as if he had picked it up for the first time. Thull stepped to one side and easily parried the downward chop of Daretor’s blade.

‘All the time that you were wearing it, the link was soaking up the fighting skills that you used and storing them in its magical aura. You continued to possess your skills of a champion swordsman because you wore the link, but once you took it off you became a pathetic dolt who could not even fight off a blind beggar.’

Daretor lunged forward again, striking down wildly in the hope of knocking Thull’s blade aside so that he could grab him with his free hand – his strength was unchanged, even though his skill with a sword was gone.

Thull shook his head as he skipped back, then dodged to the side. Daretor’s blade bit into the wooden bench, then snapped as he frantically tried to pull it free. He swung the stump at Thull who ducked and then lunged forward with his own blade.

Daretor barely felt the blade pierce him, but there was a searing blaze of pain as Thull drew it back out from just below his ribs. His vision wobbled like a top running out of spin and he toppled into the neatly stacked firewood and coals beside the forge. He clutched at the wound, gasping in agony as blood oozed between his fingers and spread across the cloth of his tunic.

Thull stood over him and cleaned his blade.

‘While wearing the mailshirt I’ll be the greatest warrior ever to walk the world,’ Thull gloated. ‘Without the mailshirt I’m just a so-so swordsman, but I learned that swordwork in my own right over the centuries,’ he added. ‘Yes, you heard correctly. Centuries. I may not be a power ful Adept, but I’m very good at surviving.’

Daretor looked up and met his eyes. ‘The mailshirt … will suck away your skills at fighting … if you wear it?’

‘No, my friend,’ Thull said, sheathing his sword. ‘By wearing an individual link you gain its skills while you wear it, but lose both its skills and your own when you take it off. When the links are worn as part of the mailshirt, they only confer skills – according to my sources.’ His eyes glinted in the steady light from the forge. ‘They cannot take them away.’

Daretor closed his eyes against the pain of his wound. He wheezed loudly, feigning a death-rattle in his breath, then slumped down and was still.

Thull backed towards the bench, still watching Daretor. The warrior did not move.

‘Thank you for your contribution, Daretor,’ Thull told the body. He held the mailshirt high. Its many links glittered like polished silver in the light from the forge. ‘Within these links the skills of thousands of warriors are still alive even though their creators are long dead.’

Thull walked back among the sacks of wood and coal, then returned dragging something across the straw-strewn floor. The body of the blacksmith, Daretor realised.

‘There will be little enough of the pair of you to recognise after the fire, I fear. But it might even appear as though you two squabbled over something, and killed one another. As for that rat in the loft, well who cares for a rat?’

Taking a leatherwork knife from the workbench he began to cut away the thonging that sealed up the neck of the mailshirt. He put his arms into it, then stretched them above his head and began hopping lightly on the spot to shake it down over his arms and torso.

Daretor watched him, his eyes open by only the merest slit. As soon as the mail was down over Thull’s head, Daretor drew his axe. The briefest moment was all he needed to fling it at Thull with all his remaining strength.

The axeblade buried itself in Thull’s sternum, almost up to the short haft. Thull teetered, but did not fall.

Daretor slumped back against the workbench, watching with incredulous horror as the mage shook off the mailshirt and gripped the axeblade. He heaved at it, and began to force the axehead from his chest, inch by bloody inch. Green ichor oozed from the wound, but he would not die.

Behind him a boy came running down the ramp from the loft. The youth picked up a broadsword that the blacksmith had kept on the wall for his own use, ran up behind Thull and swung the blade just as the axe came free in the mage’s hands.

The well-kept blade chopped halfway through Thull’s tough but scrawny neck. He dropped forward onto his knees, swinging Daretor’s axe backhand as he descended.

Jelindel dodged as Zimak had taught her, then swung the sword again with both hands. This time Thull’s head was severed from his shoulders.

Jelindel stood panting with the sword held limply in her hands. She watched as though mesmerised by the green blood that dripped from the blade. Terror and indecision whirled about her like a monsoon thunderstorm. Thull’s warrior stood before her clutching a terrible sword wound, but did she dare help him?

Thull’s mouth was wide open in the severed head. Yellow teeth lined his gums, sharp fangs, the like of which she had never seen.

Daretor acknowledged his saviour with a weary nod then shuffled across the floor, still clutching his wound. He drew the sword from the scabbard at Thull’s belt. Jelindel decided to run but could not choose between the loft and the main door. Then she realised that Daretor was watching the body, not her.

Silvery globes emerged from the bloodied green stump of Thull’s neck. They coalesced and hung on the air between her and Daretor.

‘We thank thee for freedom,’ whispered a voice like rats skittering over dry straw. ‘We were forced to do evil as slaves, but we are not evil.’

‘You spared me this afternoon,’ said Jelindel. ‘Thank you.’

‘Kindness spawns the most unlikely of allies,’ whispered the globes in reply. ‘Now we take our leave, to find our proper plane once more. May we use his vitality?’

‘Have what you will,’ said Jelindel. ‘My kindermaid told me never to take anything from strange men.’

Blue threads crackled from the body to the globes, then they floated upwards and dissolved through the roof. The whispering echo of ‘Goodbye’ echoed back to the two mortals who held swords at the ready across the body of the dead Adept.

Daretor dropped his sword and clutched at his wound again as he slid down to the floor.

‘Oh my – Zimak!’ Jelindel gasped. She’d forgotten about him. She rushed up the ramp and stopped when she reached the top step.

Zimak was slowly uncurling, sucking air into his aching lungs.

Even as Jelindel was thanking White Quell, a tower clock began to clang out the midnight chimes for the benefit of the port city and its shipping. She had killed Thull just in time to disrupt his life-force coils.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked Zimak, helping him to sit up.

‘No, I’m a mess of cramps and numbness.’

She patted his back reassuringly. ‘Stay there, I’ll be back.’

‘Stop saying that,’ Zimak wheezed.

Jelindel walked back down the ramp to the floor of the shop, then froze as she caught sight of Daretor. In spite of his wound he had managed to wriggle into the mailshirt.

‘You’re mad,’ she cried. ‘After all the bloodshed that mailshirt has caused, all the misery …’

‘Please!’ Daretor gasped. ‘Thought it might be … my only hope.’

She approached warily, the blacksmith’s sword in both hands, but Daretor could barely move.

‘Damn! Nothing!’ he said. ‘That damnable curse-vendor lied … no weapons skills, no healing powers … but perhaps he was deceived, too.’

‘Are you his follower?’ Jelindel asked.

‘Hie! I’m his last victim. He tricked me, he lied, lied, lied … Never realised how evil –’ He began to cough, then wheezed. ‘Please help me out of this thing. White Quell may not find my soul if I die enmeshed within it.’

Jelindel hesitated again. He was wounded but still strong, yet he had pleaded in the name of White Quell. As hesitant as a mouse approaching a sleeping cat, she stepped over Thull’s body and began working the mailshirt up over Daretor’s back and clear of his head and arms. He did not try to seize her.

‘Who are you?’ he whispered as he lay back against the leg of the bench.

‘I’m the blacksmith’s dau – son.’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘Door-son. What’s that?’

Jelindel bit her lip. ‘It’s sort of an apprentice – it’s a local term. The mage had my friend Zimak trapped in the loft with a binding word.’

Her eyes picked out a box with a red circle embla-zoned on its side. She reached up to the bench above Daretor and pulled it down. She had watched the healers at work at their stalls in the marketplace, and had even helped them a few times. She hoped that she had absorbed enough of their skills. She opened the box before Daretor.

‘I’m not a magical mailshirt, but I may be able to help,’ she said tersely.

‘Do it. I’ll die anyway.’

She swabbed his wound with essence of spirits and rubbed in oils that she recognised by smell rather than name. Using pronged ratclips she closed the edges of the wound, then threaded a needle, rubbed it with spirits and oils, and began to sew Daretor’s skin like soft leather.

‘Not as much blood as there might have been,’ she said as she worked. ‘You may be lucky.’

Only seven stitches were needed to close the wound, then she bandaged him with strips of his cloak.

‘If he hadn’t robbed me of my swordsmanship, I would have taken him easily,’ Daretor said as Jelindel began packing the healing kit back into the box.

‘He was toying with you,’ said Jelindel impatiently. ‘Had you beaten him with a sword he would have bound you with the blue coils of a binding word.’

Injured pride silenced Daretor for a moment. He gestured to the mage’s body. ‘You must search him.’

‘Search him? Not for all the known gods,’ Jelindel protested, staring at the headless body covered in green blood.

By now Zimak was slowly climbing down the ramp to the loft. ‘I’ll do it,’ he volunteered.

‘And this one?’ Daretor enquired.

‘Zimak,’ said Jelindel. ‘It’s all you need to know.’ Zimak staggered over to the mage’s body, forcing movement into his numb limbs.

Jelindel picked up the sword and stood ready as Zimak rummaged.

‘I’m good at this; robbed a few corpses in my time,’ Zimak explained. He soon held up a gold medallion and two purses.

Jelindel took the medallion and angled it to read its inscription. ‘It’s a rare crest. The script is highly stylised.’

She read the scroll lettering with difficulty. ‘Mage … highest, or perhaps most supreme … to the … most learned Preceptor …’

‘You can read?’ Daretor said suspiciously. ‘A blacksmith’s apprentice?’

‘He’s actually a runaway monk,’ Zimak explained. ‘He’s my personal tutor in language arts.’

Daretor waved the explanation away. ‘The Preceptor,’ he panted. ‘All this time Thull was working for him. The Preceptor must want the mailshirt beyond cost and life, yet it has no power. I don’t understand.’

Jelindel handed the medallion to Daretor and picked up the mailshirt. As he stared blankly at the script, she examined the mailshirt closely.

‘There are seven rows of double-linking on the left shoulder, but only six and a half rows of double-links on the right,’ she pointed out. ‘Links are missing from the mailshirt. Perhaps it has to be complete before it can work.’

‘Quite likely,’ whispered Daretor, letting the medallion fall to the floor. ‘Thull said the mailshirt confers weapons skills on the wearer, but … I felt nothing, not even my own skills with a sword. Aye, perhaps it has to be whole before it can do that.’

Jelindel put the mailshirt down again and sat thinking as Zimak counted the coins in Thull’s two purses.

‘Eleven gold oriels in one and fifty silver argents in the other,’ Zimak reported. ‘We’ll split the money. What do you say? He owes us that much for the pain of this day past.’

‘Agreed,’ said Jelindel as if in a trance. ‘Besides, I have to flee from D’loom this very night.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Certain … religious authorities wish to find me.’

‘Ah ha, so you don’t want to become Brother Jaelin again.’

‘You have it, more or less.’

‘I … have to go, too,’ whispered Daretor.

‘You’re not fit to travel,’ Jelindel said at once. ‘You’ve got a wound that would have killed most people.’

‘Damn that! Thull murdered Fa’red tonight when he torched his house. I was with him and I’ll be held accountable if the constables chance upon me. If you want to leave here, leave with me. Saddle a horse from the back of the shop. Take me to the stables at the Boar and Bottle.’

‘Riding’s going to rip your wound right open,’ Zimak ventured, feeling oddly left out.

‘Where are you bound?’ asked Jelindel.

‘For the other dragonlinks. I must track them down, then rid the world of such abominable devices that rob years of skill and training from honourable warriors such as myself.’

Jelindel picked up the two purses. ‘We should divide these between us now.’

‘Oh, I’ve already taken a few argents as my share,’ said Zimak. ‘You two take the purses.’

Jelindel frowned, then shook both purses. ‘They both jingle like argents,’ she declared. ‘Gold has a different ring.’

Zimak’s confident smile collapsed.

‘I – I, ah, thought we would be staying in the city, so I, ah, decided to guard the gold, that is, being the most able-bodied of the three of us – under the circumstances.’

Jelindel’s eyes widened with anger. ‘Give them back, Zimak. All of them.’

Zimak returned the gold oriels to Jelindel, who snatched them from his hand and turned back to the warrior. He was staring at her, his eyes proud but pleading.

‘So do you really want to leave D’loom tonight?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said firmly, the scene in the temple library’s reading room flashing before her eyes for a moment.

‘Good. We must cover our trail, else we’ll be tracked and run to ground. Do as I bid you.’

Daretor got to his feet with difficulty, but he was strong and determined, and was able to manage a shuffling walk in spite of the agony from his wound and the pints of blood that he had lost.

Zimak saddled a horse while Jelindel helped Daretor pack a pair of saddlebags with things from the shop. When the horse was ready, Daretor scraped a few live coals out of the hearth and flicked them into the straw where they began to smoulder. Almost as an afterthought he stuffed the mailshirt into a coal sack and asked Jelindel to secure it to the saddle.

It took both Jelindel and Zimak’s combined strength to get Daretor up into the saddle. Having done that, Zimak led the horse down the narrow street towards the Boar and Bottle while Jelindel set the blacksmith’s other horses free.

The smithy was well alight in the distance as they reached the tavern. Shouts and clanging bells roused the citizens of the port to fight the second fire of the night.

‘Slowly now,’ Daretor directed from the horse. ‘We shouldn’t appear to be in a hurry.’ Louder, he called, ‘Where’s my friend Thull?’ Daretor had learned Thull’s lesson on leaving false trails.

‘Pox take your friend,’ the huge landlord bellowed back as he handed out frame pails to the men and women gathered there. ‘To the beach now, all of ye! Form a pail chain to the fire!’

Daretor waited outside on the stolen horse as Zimak and Jelindel ran up to his room and threw the gear there together. They descended the stairs, saddlebags and bedrolls in their arms.

Ellien appeared from the kitchen. She had been left to guard the tavern against looters while all others were at the fire.

‘Ellien, what are the accounts of those two strangers Thull and Daretor?’ Jelindel demanded urgently, loading Daretor’s saddlebags and bedroll onto Zimak and pushing him towards the door.

‘Accounts? I don’t know. The landlord can work them out from his register, but I can’t read … I only serve in the taproom –’

‘Here!’

Jelindel spilled a handful of argents onto the nearest table.

‘Jaelin! That’s ten times what they could possibly owe!’

‘Then the rest is for your dowry,’ said Jelindel, taking the girl by both shoulders and looking into her eyes. ‘Ellien, I am about to leave D’loom and I shall never, never see you again. Please, find a brave, gentle boy and marry him, but never think of me again.’

‘What? Have I offended you by what I did in the taproom? Am I too coarse of manner to –’

‘No! You are lovely, far too lovely for – for what I am. There are brave and gentle youths in the world, Ellien. You don’t have to marry an oaf. Now goodbye, goodbye forever.’

Jelindel threw her arms around the girl and hugged her tightly for a moment. Ellien was kissing Jelindel on the cheek when Zimak put his head through the open door.

‘Jaelin, will you tell me what the fradork is happen– you filthy swine, Brother Jaelin, and after all that talk about chastity and self-control, too.’

‘Shut up, Zimak! Go to the nearest stables and saddle two horses. Daretor won’t get far without us.’

‘Us? What do you mean, us? I’m staying in D’loom. I’ve got a job, I’ve got a licence with the Guild of Alley Gangs, I’ve got friends and family, I’ve got a bank account –’

‘Move, damn you!’ Jelindel shouted, snatching up a tankard and flinging it at the doorway. ‘You carried messages for both Thull and Fa’red today and they’re both dead. Do you think that Fa’red’s servants will not mention your name to the constables?’

Zimak moved.

‘What did he mean, ‘Brother Jaelin’?’ asked Ellien, ‘and what is all that blood and green muck on your tunic?’

‘It’s nothing but spilled paint.’

‘You’re limping,’ Ellien fussed to cover her alarm. ‘Have you been in a fight? Are you hurt?’

Jelindel fished out her hessian bag of personal things from where she had left it behind the counter earlier that night.

‘Off the register, Ellien, I’ve been in a fight. I’m hurt, I’ve just killed something evil, and people are after me. Now please, just say that Daretor paid his account and left.’

‘Well, yes, but –’

‘Goodbye, Ellien, I must go now.’

Jelindel limped out into the darkness and Ellien heard scuffling and cursing from the direction of the stables. Moments later three horses clopped by in the darkness outside.

‘Don’t just limp along with the fradork horse, Jaelin,’ Zimak’s voice called out in the darkness. ‘Get into the saddle and ride.’

‘I don’t know how to ride, damn you!’ Jelindel shouted back angrily, then the hoofbeats faded in the distance.

Ellien stared through the open door into the blackness beyond until she could hear nothing other than the shouts of the distant firefighters, then sank to a bench.

‘Goodbye, Jaelin. I’ll never forget you,’ she said as her eyes overflowed with tears.

Jelindel, Zimak and Daretor rode to the beach, turned, then kept riding and only stopped whenever Jelindel fell out of the saddle. The incoming tide washed the hoof-prints away as they passed, and by the time they stopped to spell the horses and tend Daretor’s wound, the port was no more than a vague glow on the horizon.

‘I must be mad,’ said Zimak. ‘I had a good life in D’loom.’

‘As a successful market rat,’ said Jelindel.

‘Now I’m an outlaw, a fugitive. Another week and I’d have had Zeldenia Kremtil around behind her mother’s drapery stall. She hugged me and kissed me yesterday, she rubbed her thigh against my –’

‘She’s got the pox, one of the charm-healers told me.’

‘You’re joking!’ gasped Zimak.

‘I’ve no sense of humour. You’re always telling me that.’

‘Er, can one get the pox by kissing?’

‘Only if your gums bleed. Daretor, can you go any further, or should we stop here awhile?’

‘Too exposed here,’ he gasped through a haze of pain. ‘Camp in those hills ahead. How’s your riding, Jaelin?’

‘I’m staying on, more or less. How did you learn to ride, Zimak?’

‘My father let me ride the carthorses around the docks ever since I could walk. It kept me safe and in view. Where are we bound for, anyway?’

‘For the next dragonlink,’ replied Daretor, ‘but just for now we have to get clear of Skelt. We can pass through the Algon Mountains and into Baltoria. It will be safer there.’

‘I haven’t got border papers,’ muttered Zimak.

‘I’ll forge you a set,’ countered Jelindel.