Stonehand, p.8
Stonehand, page 8
The Knight of the Road stopped walking and leaned against the stone wall. “Or has he predicted I will stay within the Keep, protecting you, and his agents will thus have a free hand to enact chaos?”
Lord Mindus cleared his throat. “Speaking for the Nobility, I would support the continued protection of the Lady Darkhelm within this room. Swinford’s leadership must survive this assault.”
“Because Goddess help the population without your inspiring presence, Tomas?”
Forced proximity was not improving the collegiality of those in the room.
With a frustrated growl, Donal sketched a rune in the air and the stack of papers he and Taelsin had searched through burst into flames. “There’s no one who has access to all these new postings. Had they stood a Shadowspy behind me for the last few days, they couldn’t have had better access than they are demonstrating.”
There was a knock at the door, and everyone in the room tensed.
As had become their procedure since news of the attacks filtered in, Donal empowered the Runes of Annulment he had carved into the stone around the door’s wooden frame, and Daine moved forward to open it.
Even before she lifted the heavy metal bar, she felt her health begin to plummet. Goddess help the Messenger on the other side if she was so affected.
Wincing, Daine cracked the door and hurriedly accepted the bundle of papers thrust into her hand. A white-faced boy stumbled backwards into the arms of the Healer, who channelled her most potent spells to keep him alive whilst under the influence of Donal’s spell. The two women nodded to each other before the Knight retreated, rebarring the door.
Breaking the seal and untying the bundle, she then scanned the latest updates, shaking her head as she read.
The notes spoke of further disaster.
The tide of death had continued to remove key defence personnel and was now spreading out to encompass vital support staff. The speed of progress and the scale of the organisation was astonishing. As was the lack of any casualties amongst the attackers.
She passed the papers to Donal. “Mayor Elm, I cannot stay here any longer. Unless the City hits back soon, no one will be left to contest a strike in the morning. All our preparations will be for nought if we do not have anyone alive to enact them!”
“And if you leave, Lady Darkhelm, and these forces focus upon this room? Should we all fall, that will be the end of Swinford.” Taelsin’s voice was even. Like her, he could feel the knife edge on which things now stood.
“Honest word, my Lord? If we do not stem this critical loss, Swinford is lost.”
Taelsin glanced at Donal, who shrugged. “It’s not like I have any better ideas, my Lord. And it’s not like we’re exactly helpless in here, should the worst happen. I suggest we release the Darkhelm on whoever is killing our people.”
The Nobility, with the notable exception of Lady Stelton, protested vociferously, but the decision had already been made.
Taelsin quieted the arguments with an irritated gesture. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Keep is our most secure structure. This room is accessible by one door, and there are guards enough outside to reassure us all. The Lady Darkhelm is quite correct; there will be no need to remove the leadership of Swinford if we have no one left to lead. We cannot hoard our most potent asset for keeping us safe when such a disaster is befalling.”
Nodding her thanks to Taelsin, she lifted the bar and passed it to Donal, who sagged under its weight. “Don’t open this door to anyone but me. No matter what anyone says, this door stays closed. Do you understand me, sir?”
“I doubt I could lift this again should I try! This Class is lacking in Strength, I fear. I would wish you ‘good hunting,’ but I fear this is exactly the move for which those attacking us are waiting. Look after yourself out there, my dear.”
Smiling grimly, she rested a hand on his shoulder. “I will put an end to this night of death, sir, I promise.”
As she pulled open the door, it was unclear who was the more surprised: the Knight of the Road or the three assassins in the middle of slaying the Healer and her guards.
*
In many ways, thought Ciellia, the mission had been a disappointment. When the Hyena had pitched the job to her Cackle, it had seemed an endeavour worthy of their reputation. Infiltration of a besieged City — through an unstable Blood Portal — under the eyes of a Knight of the Road? Sounds interesting. How much gold! Yes, please.
That so few of them had made it through the portal — she shivered at the memory of that journey — made the contract even more lucrative.
The reality, though, as with so many things in her life, had proven much less exciting than she had been promised. She had removed her list of targets well ahead of schedule. Only one of them, a Man-at-Arms with unusual Speed for his Class, had been a challenge, and that was more from her overconfidence than anything else.
She had met up with Balyn and Alanna at their rendezvous point, at which stage they voted to try for their secondary objective. The Hyena has been clear that the capture of Mayor Elm was a desirable goal, but only after completing their individual missions.
“I’ve had more fulfilling evenings,” Alanna muttered as they phased through the gate of the Keep.
“Someone thought it was worth it to employ us to remove these people,” Balyn said as he, with one hand, tore out the throat of a servant who had the misfortune to be standing in front of them as their forms solidified.
“I don’t disagree,” Alanna sighed. With a wave, she cleaned the blood off her fellow Soulknife. “This just feels like the definition of ‘overkill.’ Who hires the Hyena to kill a bunch of middle-ranking functionaries?”
Ciellia checked the map. Their information was that Mayor Elm was currently up two flights of stairs at the end of a defended corridor. “Let’s remember there’s a Knight of the Road around here somewhere. Think about what that might mean before you get too cocky. Did you see her take out that squad with one arrow?”
“No one’s spotted her yet. I heard she’s been charged with holding the sewer entrance. As they’ve nearly cleared the tunnels, maybe she headed down there this night? Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve got lucky. Four Heavy Swordsmen round the next corner.”
The three did not speak again as they tore their way through the Keep, closing in on the room that housed the meeting Nobility. Few of the guards they encountered had even heard of Soulknives, much less could they conceive how to fight assassins who could teleport short distances at will.
“Weird to have a Healer outside a room, isn’t it?” Ciellia was peering at their destination.
“Maybe meetings of Nobles get fractious? They threw that snooty bitch out the window, after all.”
Ciellia shrugged. It did not really matter, after all. But the position of that Healer was curious. “Let’s get this done. Balyn, take care of anyone who is not Mayor Elm. Alanna, he’s your responsibility once we go through the door. You have clearance for anything short of killing him; he needs to be alive for us to claim the bounty. I’ll alert the Hyena once you have him and channel the Homing Beacon. Agree?”
The other two nodded, and in a moment, they flowed outwards. The guards beside the Healer were down in seconds, and Alanna’s hand was in and out of the woman’s chest — emerging with her heart — before a single spell could be cast.
Ciellia just had time to puzzle at an unconscious boy lying on the floor next to the Healer, before the door behind them opened, and a very familiar and entirely unwelcome figure stepped through.
“Lords, help us,” she whispered, and the Soulknives struck.
Chapter Fourteen
“Shredding Cabbage”
The figures with knives were upon her in an instant. It was the sound of three sets of rolling dice that first alerted her to the unusual nature of these assailants. That, and when the tallest of the three — the only male — vanished and reappeared beside her, plunging his dagger towards her throat.
Soulknives.
If this Class did not quite have the legendary status of the Knights of the Road, then that was merely because it was tricky to write rousing songs about assassins. The two Classes actually came a bit closer than might be assumed.
The stability of the Goddess was, of course, best demonstrated in the form of her chosen avatars, the Knights of the Road. Unchanging, unyielding solidity. The proverbial immovable objects. An Advanced, Evolved Class with the maximum levels of Strength and Constitution witnessed in humans. Or “particularly resilient cockroaches,” as Daine’s Mentor had famously described them.
Soulknives, on the other hand, were sworn to the Lords of Misrule. If the Goddess’s Knights were the embodiment of constant maximum power, then the shifting, changing nature of the Soulknives was their direct opposite. The power of their Skills waxed and waned during confrontations at the whim of the dice of their Lords. This made them terrifyingly unpredictable opponents.
Thus, when Balyn found his
And things would have worked out very poorly for the Lady Darkhelm had it not been for one significant fact.
She had faced Soulknives before.
Well, someone whose Skills were very similar, anyway.
Daine had, more regularly than any other, stood in the blood-soaked circle of sawdust against Gallant Stonehand during her years at his school. More often than not, of course, this would result in a beating that led to a hospital bed, to which a drunk and remorseful Stonehand would later come visiting. She had lost count of the times she would return to consciousness with the old man’s hand in hers and whispers of his previous life tumbling from his lips.
Until their last meeting, when he confided in her about his time as a Blade of Ruin, she had always assumed he had once been a Soulknife. His stories, and her painful lived experience, spoke of uncanny Speed, a capacity to conjure bladed weapons, and strength in telepathic assaults. She had learned everything she could about the Class, hoping to be able to put it to use in their duels.
This was how, when Daine saw these assassins and heard the dice rolling, she knew what to do.
Balyn did not follow the blur of Daine’s hand as she caught his wrist, broke it, and disarmed him. He just had time to register one of the Lords tutting, as if in disappointment, as the knife was driven deep into his heart.
Across the corridor, Alanna watched, barely comprehending, as the powerfully built woman in the doorway dispatched Balyn in a flurry of movement. As he fell to the floor, she experienced that moment of cognitive dissonance that came with seeing the full power of a Knight of the Road for the first time. Surely no one that big could move that quickly? She shook her head to clear her thinking and instantly threw both her daggers at the Knight.
Sensing they would not hit anything critical, Daine took both blades to her chest, her healing capacity easily overcoming the initial damage and the subsequent Bleed Effect. In response, she threw the knife she had taken from the dead man at her feet. It took the short assassin in the right eye, the force of the throw propelling her corpse backwards, to hang pinned against the wall.
And then there was one.
Ciellia stepped forwards, conjuring a psionic blade in each hand. She knew the sensible move now was to run, but she could hear her dice still rolling, and she knew her Lords would not look positively on ignoble retreat.
Where would be the entertainment in that, after all?
Watching the assassin warily, Daine plucked the two knives from her chest and carefully flicked her blood off their edges. She could still hear the sound of rattling dice, as if someone held them in a cup, not quite prepared to cast them yet.
Then the Soulknife lunged, her psionic blades slashing through the air. Daine parried with one of the salvaged knives and cut back with the other. Ciellia jerked her head away, avoiding the flashing edge, and pivoted to counter. Daine blocked each of the strikes with impeccable timing, a dark expression on her face as she kept forcing the Soulknife back to avoid her counterattacks. Her borrowed blades grazed Ciellia’s left arm, then her right, leaving deep gashes behind. Blood flowed freely to drop on the floor, and both women kept glancing downwards to avoid the chance of a slip.
Undeterred by her wounds, the assassin concentrated her psychic energy into an external form. When it was ready, with a mental command, she launched a barrage of flying psionic blades at the Knight.
Sensing the need to avoid some, if not all, of these attacks, Daine jumped backwards and away. However, her trailing foot touched the edge of the growing pool of blood, and she lost her footing just as some of the projectiles hammered into her.
Seeing the hoped-for opening, Ciellia charged forward, closing the gap with the now-vulnerable Knight. With precise strikes, she delivered a flurry of blows that left deep wounds in the older woman’s body. Whilst Daine’s healing ability allowed her to weather most of the attacks, the relentlessness of the assault quickly began to take its toll.
Ciellia saw fatigue settle in the Knight’s eyes. Their parries become slower, and her strikes repeatedly find their mark. Finally, with a decisive swing, she plunged both blades deep into the Knight’s chest.
Daine’s eyes widened in shock, and she gasped for breath; the psionic blades dissipated into mist now that they had done their damage. She dropped to one knee, her doomed defence having led her back into the doorway.
The Soulknife drew one of her conventional blades and stepped forward to deliver the coup de grace to the fallen Knight. She could see huddled forms of Nobility inside the room and grinned at the prospect of completing the mission.
But then Ciellia recognised something was not quite right: her health was dropping alarmingly. She knew she had taken wounds, but nothing explained this. Quickly, she pulled a health potion from her inventory and downed it, but after a momentary boost, her health started dropping like a stone again. She swayed. Poison? No, all her Resistances were maxed out.
What was happening?
In a daze, she was dimly aware that an elderly man had appeared in the doorway and was helping the Knight to her feet. “You know, my dear, it strikes me that you could do worse than invest in a good-uality shield? It would save the wear and tear on clothing, if nothing else. I cannot help but think you are taking the words ‘meat shield’ a little too literally.”
The Knight laughed. She laughed? Ceillia did not understand what was happening. That woman had been moments from death. How was she standing, much less laughing? “It has been mentioned, sir. Now, if you want to be able to ask this assassin any questions, I suggest you disable those runes before it is too late.”
“You forget, my dear, death is no longer any barrier to me asking my questions. No barrier at all.”
Ciellia was dimly aware of solid hands grasping her under her elbows and lifting her to her feet. Her head lolled to look at how it all was. Alanna, but with a terrible wound on her face, was on her left, and Balyn, his chest bathed in red, was on her right.
She barely registered that her dice had stopped rolling before the darkness took her.
*
The Hyena was bending over the body of what she had been told was one of Swinford’s premier Blacksmiths when a wave of nausea hit her.
One of her twenty in the City had fallen.
Then again. Almost immediately afterwards. A second presence . . . gone. She staggered and fell into a pile of scrap armour.
Her sense of those in her Cackle was imperfect; she could not tell who had fallen, just that their end had been violent. She was returning to her feet when a third death rocked her — but this one was not like the others. Whoever passed this time was unnaturally torn from the world.
The pain this inflicted made her vomit.
But that was as to nothing compared to what happened next. The three presences were suddenly back in her sense of her team, but changed somehow.
And with them came an awareness of something else. A voice.
And that voice was speaking directly to her head.
“Good evening, I’m just leaving a message for, erm, I’m told you call yourself the Hyena? Is that right? Good for you. Branding is, after all, so important in your line of business. Now, where was I? Ah, yes. I seem to have been able to connect to whatever strange psychic network you and your . . . what did she say they were called? Oh, yes. A Cackle. Excellent. You really have gone all in with that concept, haven’t you? Well done, you. What? I know, I’m getting to it, my Lord! Have some patience. Do you have any idea how difficult this is? Fine. Have it your way. This is a message for the Hyena from Mayor Elm of Swinford. End your attacks on our citizenry immediately or my agent — I guess that means me — will cast
The Hyena took a moment to gather her thoughts and then recalled her forces.
The three who had died and then returned did not, she was somewhat relieved to see, respond to the summons.
Chapter Fifteen
Lessons to be Learned
“I had been led to believe that our method of communication with our infiltration team was foolproof?” Souit’s voice was, as it had been since the abortive first assault on Swinford’s walls, somewhat frosty. “Did I misunderstand your briefing?”
Spymistress Stein shuffled uneasily in her chair. She was not enjoying her time outside the Capital.
After decades submerged in the shadowy world of palace intrigue, she jumped at the King’s “suggestion” to join the punitive expeditionary force to the West. The opportunity to see the rest of the Kingdom and strengthen her wider network was simply too good to miss. In her eightieth year, and by the grace of the Dark God with many more to come, she had eagerly looked forward to a reinvigorating experience from which she could return triumphant and energised.
