Night guild 3, p.5
Night Guild 3, page 5
“Behold!” a voice cried in Ghennetian. “The prisoners have come for trial by combat, in the name of the king!”
Ronan looked up and saw, above and slightly to the right of the great double doors, a large wooden dais with red-draped walls. This was clearly the dignitaries’ observation area, and sitting in the box was a group of opulently-dressed people.
At their center, seated on an elaborately carved wooden throne, there was a man of middle years with gray eyes and beard, a silver crown on his head. The King of Ghennet himself had come to watch the spectacle.
Next to him, there stood a strange figure. Ronan could not make him out at first, but then he understood what it was that was baffling his eye.
The man was using magic!
As he looked, he saw the tell-tale flickering around the man’s robe and face. The robes changed color, and the face changed shape. Both flickered and wobbled like the illusion they were.
To those around him, the man would seem perfectly normal, but to Ronan’s trained eye, the spell was obvious. He could see through the magic.
He gazed hard at the magic user, drawing a little power from his own shadow that lay behind him, cast by the bright morning sun. That little bit of extra power was all that was needed to penetrate the spell.
The man’s disguise disappeared for just a moment, just long enough for Ronan to see the red robe, the tall figure… and the gleaming gold skull with mad eyes.
Kaishog. The High Priest of the Silent Brotherhood, who had somehow escaped the destruction of the temple, was here, sitting next to the king.
Did he know who the “prisoners” in the arena truly were? Kaishog had looked at them all back in that terrible ritual chamber where they had confronted him at the Silent Brotherhood Temple before the release of the dragons. If they did not use magic, would Kaishog recognize them? If the assassins did use magic, would Kaishog detect it?
Ronan opted to take a chance on the latter.
“Stealth fields!” he said. “Stealth fields, now!”
“I can’t!” Tanya objected. “I have barely any experience using it, and I can’t keep the stealth field up and fight at the same time!”
“Then activate your stealth field and keep back from the fight. That’s Kaishog up there. He will recognize us, he’s sure to.”
Ronan’s own stealth field shimmered into place, and he was aware of Diana and Eric’s coming into play, too. Tanya was less practiced, it was true, but she did have the power to use the stealth field. The basic powers of a Night Guild assassin had passed to her through her association with Ronan and his friends, and she knew how to do the spell.
Ronan was glad of it. A moment later, he felt her pull her own stealth field into place and heard her gasp with the effort of concentration it took. The magic was awkward, but it worked.
“This changes everything,” Ronan said. “Kaishog needs to not recognize us while we’re in here. A regular fight we can handle, but if he has any idea who we really are, they’ll throw everything they’ve got at us, and I don’t fancy our chances if that happens. Stay alert, and look out for Tanya.”
“I’m not going to be able to fight and keep this stealth spell up,” she said with certainty.
“Just focus on the magic, then,” he said. “Leave the rest to us.”
A moment ago, they had been supremely confident. Now, they were severely hampered, not just by the constant risk of discovery by the gold-skulled Kaishog but also by not being able to rely on having Tanya’s specialist melee skill at their backs.
“Nothing for it,” Ronan said grimly. “There’s no getting out of this situation now. Keep your wits about you, friends. We’re in for a fight.”
While they had been conferring, the ringmaster had been shouting about the crimes they had supposedly committed, working the crowd into a frenzy of excitement in the process.
Ronan and his companions kept moving steadily around the arena, not wanting to stay still for too long for fear of arrows — or some other traps — that might skewer them if they stayed still. They moved around toward the observer’s box and the double doors that seemed the most likely place for their enemies to enter.
The doors slammed suddenly open, and a troop of soldiers hurried into the arena. They were dressed like king’s guards, but they were not the enemies that Ronan and his friends were here to fight. Instead, they arrayed themselves in two lines, fanning out from the doorway and raising their spears in salute to the king before standing still.
Then the champions came out.
Ronan had never seen such terrifying-looking creatures. He was fairly hardened and had no difficulty in keeping control of his emotions, but the sight of the champions would have been enough to terrify any common criminal.
There were eight of them; two each if Tanya had been at full fighting strength. As it was, Ronan, Eric, and Diana would have to deal with them all.
The champions were enormous, so large that they barely even seemed human. Ronan wondered if they were part troll or something similar — that really would be an abomination!
They were seven feet tall and dressed in bits of steel plate with thick straps of hard leather holding their chest plates and greaves together. Large patches of skin were exposed despite the armor. The skin was gray and bulbous, stone-like, as if he was looking not at flesh but at the hoary hide of some mountain beast.
They wore helmets that covered their faces entirely, except for their mouths. These were unusually large and toothy.
“Those aren’t human,” Diana said. “They’re some kind of monster.”
“They’ll die all the same,” Eric said grimly. “On me. I’ll take the lead now.”
The champions were evidently used to the terrifying effect that they had on the people they encountered in the arena. They spread out into a line, waving their enormous spears in the air and banging on their round, bronze shields. They roared and stamped, putting on a show for the crowd, barely paying any attention to the people they were here to kill.
That was their first mistake.
Eric darted forward as quick as a striking snake, his spear in his hand and his head lowered. He moved away from his fellows, and Ronan and Diana stayed back for the moment, covering Tanya.
They held still now, waiting to see what would happen.
Eric leaped into the air to a gasp from the crowd, and the nearest champion began to turn his head.
Too late.
Eric landed on the champion’s back, feet first. He slammed the tip of his spear into the bare spot of skin between the champion’s neck and the beginning of his shoulder blade.
Then, with a wrench, he pulled the spear out. Dark blood spouted from the wound, and the champion roared in pain and anger, but he did not fall. His huge body writhed for a moment, but Eric was thrown off balance and leaped from the giant creature’s back to land on the ground.
The other champions had begun to turn to face Eric, but Ronan saw now that the monsters were slow and clumsy; they would not be able to tackle a swift Night Guild assassin.
Eric proved Ronan right immediately. Before the other champions could do anything, Eric whirled about to give the spear more momentum and slammed it through the wounded champion’s chest at a point where the armor left an area of soft flesh exposed. Eric ran forward, driving against the spear with all his strength, and made the champion howl with pain as his momentum drove the spear thrust home.
Then, Eric hauled the weapon back, and the champion fell like a toppled tree, crashing to the ground and sending up a cloud of dust as it landed in the sand.
“Go on!” Ronan shouted in encouragement to his friend.
“You two must go help him,” Tanya gasped. Ronan could hear in her voice the struggle she was having to keep up her stealth field, but he knew she was right.
“Come on, Diana,” Ronan said. “Tanya’s right. We must back Eric up.”
The crowd had gasped in surprise and shock when the mighty champion had fallen, and now they cheered in support as Ronan and Diana surged forward to fight alongside their friend. Eric still had his spear, and he was dancing away from another champion approaching him from the left. Ronan darted forward, drawing power from the shadows as he did so. The light in the arena was bright and clear, and the shadows of the champions were crisp on the sand as they lumbered forward.
Ronan grabbed the power from the nearest champion’s shadow. This monster was as big as all the others but less well-armored. Instead of steel, he was dressed only in chainmail and leather. He carried a huge sword, however, way bigger than anything a normal warrior could have wielded.
The champion whirled the sword in the air and smashed it down into the ground as Ronan neatly side-stepped away. His stealth field, Ronan knew, would be making his image harder for the champions to track, so he pushed even more power into it from the shadows as he moved up to meet the nearest champion.
The creature had legs as thick as tree trunks, but bulging veins showed through the muscles. Ronan identified the main artery in his enemy’s leg and moved quickly, the short sword gleaming in his hand. As the monster was hauling its huge sword out of the ground where it had landed, Ronan made one, two, three swift cuts. The first two cuts took out the tendons at the backs of the creature’s knees, and the third severed the artery in the right leg.
With a confused howl, the champion staggered two steps forward and then fell to the ground, unable to move. Blood poured from the arterial wound, and Ronan knew that the champion would be dead within a minute.
As he turned, he saw another champion fall as Diana leaped away. She had jumped perilously close to the creature’s mouth to deal it a death blow to the neck, much to the adulation of the crowd. Even as she’d done so, Eric had taken out another monstrous champion with a powerful spear thrust to the belly.
Only four remained.
A quick glance up at the observer’s box showed a frowning king, glaring down into the arena, and a mix of expressions on the faces of the advisors who had clustered around the king in the box. Some looked impressed, some (presumably those who had bet on the prisoners) looked very pleased, and others merely bemused.
One man, a tall figure in a soldier’s dress uniform, looked thunderously angry.
Kaishog’s stance showed that he was watching with interest, but there was no suggestion that he had any idea that the prisoners were anything other than unexpectedly good fighters.
Ronan called to his friends. “With me!” he roared, and Eric and Diana both moved back to put themselves near him.
The four remaining champions were unwilling to attack. Ronan now suspected that they were more executioners than champions. It seemed likely to him that they were mostly used to just killing frightened people in the ring, rather than being actively resisted.
A shout from the box above made Ronan look up. The man in dress uniform — decorated golden armor, a tall helmet with a purple plume, and a bright scarlet cloak — had advanced to the edge of the box and was shouting orders in a guttural language that Ronan did not understand.
It must have been the language of the champions, for the remaining four all heeded whatever the man was saying. They lurched forward, staring murder at Ronan and his friends through the slits in their heavy helmets.
They seemed to be intent on making a coordinated attack this time, and Ronan took a step backward, scanning the rest of the arena in case more enemies should appear. The four remaining champions stepped over their companions’ bodies and then charged in a line toward the four friends.
“Let me go first this time,” Diana said suddenly.
To Eric and Ronan’s surprise, she darted forward, and bright white light shone from both her hands as she did so. She changed, morphing into a different shape. A shout of appreciation went up from the crowd as she took on the appearance of a king’s guard — a tall man in the same uniform as the men who lined the walls.
“What in the name of the gods?” Eric muttered. “How is she doing that?”
Ronan looked up at the observers’ box and saw Kaishog leaning forward, every line of his stance speaking of intent interest, his hands on the edge of the box. Ronan could see Kaishog’s disguised face set in a look of interested detachment, but he felt the rush of hatred and understanding that flowed from the figure of the High Priest that hid under the glamor.
He knows, he thought. He sees that we have magic. What is Diana doing?
Without warning, Diana had manifested an as yet unheard of power: the power to completely change her shape. She had used the power of faces in the past — that was something that they all had been taught — but this was entirely new.
“She’ll draw too much attention,” Ronan could not help saying, but even as he spoke, he smiled at how effective her diversion had been. The champions turned as she darted past them, and a moment later, two of them had charged away and were now bearing down on the ranks of king’s guards at the back of the hall.
The remaining two faltered.
“Now!” Ronan cried, and he and Eric dashed forward to deal with the two that remained.
As he did so, Ronan saw Kaishog lean toward the king and say something, but the king shook his head angrily. The man in the dress uniform was talking urgently to the king from the other side, but the king swatted him away as well as if unwilling to listen to either of his advisors.
Then Ronan had no more time to look. His champion filled his vision, its huge, ugly bulk rearing up in front of him as it roared out its battlecry.
Ronan dodged a monstrous swing of the creature’s gigantic sword, but then he moved to the side and cut upward, lodging his own blade in the arm of the monster. The sword was stuck, jammed up against a bone, and Ronan drew his second blade, cutting at the creature’s leg to distract it.
Then, as the champion looked down, Ronan leaped up and caught the monster’s armor.
The crowd roared in appreciation of his daring as he ran up the monster, hauling himself up the leather straps that held its armor together until he reached the creature’s neck. Then he stabbed forward with his sword, driving the point into the side of the champion’s neck before leaping away as the monster tumbled forward into the dust.
He glanced around.
Eric was finishing off his own champion, while the remaining two had crashed into the row of soldiers at the back of the arena. Those two champions had been searching for Diana, but they did not know which one was her. So, they had taken the logical route of attempting to kill all the guards who were there.
The guard captain was shouting orders, trying to keep his panicking troops together, when Diana suddenly rippled back into her normal shape and leaped up onto the back of one of the champions. Ronan and Eric ran forward, and as they dispatched the champion closest to them, Diana took out the one that she had climbed up on to: the last one.
As the last champion fell, there was a huge cheer. The audience was jumping up and down, yelling and stamping, pumping their fists in the air and clapping.
Ronan glanced at the king and saw a look of resigned admiration on his face.
“Release them! Release them!” the crowd was shouting.
Eric had knelt next to one of the injured guards, and his hands glowed pale yellow as he used his healing power to fix the man’s injuries. Diana smiled and waved to the crowd, and Ronan looked up at the king. The king spoke to a herald next to him, then held up a hand to quiet the crowd.
Deadly silence suddenly filled the great arena. The silence was complete; it was almost shocking after the thunderous tumult of a moment before. The herald took a great breath and then shouted in his trained voice. The shout rang through the great space like a trumpet blast.
“By order of the king, the prisoners have received trial by combat. They have won the combat, so they will be released in line with the law!”
The crowd went wild. Ronan could see the dissatisfaction on the faces of those around the king, all except for one or two who looked a little too self-satisfied. Ronan thought he could guess which of the folk there had gotten word of Deshyor’s actions and had bet in the right direction.
The tall man in the dress uniform saluted the king stiffly and spoke to a lieutenant at his side, who hurried away. Kaishog bowed to the king and turned away as well, leaving the box in a rush.
Tanya had now joined them, her stealth field still in place. Eric was crouched among the guards, healing them with the power of his hands.
Ronan was at his wits’ end. What had come over his friends? No doubt Diana’s shape-shifting power had turned the fight in their favor, but it had been foolhardy. Now Eric was using bright magic, healing the guards as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Ronan stood, waiting to see what would happen next. The captain of the guards in the arena approached him.
“Thank you,” he said, bowing to Ronan. “Your friends have the gifts of Mala and the generosity of Mala, too. Only with such divine favor would you heal us, after the wrong we’ve done to you.”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Ronan said, looking the man warily in the eye. “What have you done to me?”
“It was my guard company that caught you and tried to force you to pay a bribe despite knowing that you’d paid Deshyor for protection. We’ll change our ways in future. You’ve shown us a better way to be.”
Ronan nodded. “Right,” he said shortly, not caring much for the guard’s piety. “Are we free to go now?”
“Indeed,” the guard said. “But tradition states that you stay and greet the king.”
Ronan glanced around. At any moment, Kaishog might appear. Ronan had no idea what influence the gold skull had around here, and he did not want to wait and find out.
“Much as I’d love to stick with tradition, I think we’ll pass this time. Where’s the way out?”
The guard pointed through the opened double doors. “Straight through there, first door on the right. But the king…”
“Let’s go!” Ronan shouted before the guard could continue. His friends came at his call, and he turned and ran out of the arena, heading for the door.
