The Contention (10 page)

“Your majesty!” Horace shouted. “This way! Over here. The main streets are too congested; let’s take the side streets.”

Garret turned to see in which direction Horace pointed. Agreeing with him, Garret slowly managed to turn his mount about, and followed his knights down the narrow side road. Horace had been correct in his thinking, and keeping to the smaller, less-traveled roads made for a significantly less stressful ride for both the riders and their mounts.

A quarter of an hour later, Garret and his men finally reached the outer wall of the city and with it Blacksmith Row. Here forges burned white hot while apprentices pumped billows, and men hammered heated steel upon anvils with great mallets. Sharpening wheels spun everywhere as blades, arrowheads and now spearheads were being sharpened to perfection. Garret had no need of such blades, however, and peered past the tables of weapons and armor on display to the more common tools of men stacked in corners or tossed in piles nearly out of sight. Within moments, the young king personally approached the thatch-covered lean-to of one particular blacksmith. The middle-aged man did not hesitate to stop work upon his current creation to see to the king immediately. Even those this far from the castle proper already knew the face of their new young king. Garret watched as the man quickly approached and gave him a filthy smile where more than a single tooth was missing.

“What can I do ye for, yer majesty?” the blacksmith asked.

“I need a dozen of your largest shovels,” Garret answered, and enjoyed the look that came across the man’s face.

“Shovels, ye says?” the blacksmith repeated, his hearing obviously deteriorated from the constant banging of his trade.

“Yes!” Garret nearly shouted, and just for emphasis he nodded as well.

“And what else will ye need?” the man asked, hoping to better his reputation by providing his king with a weapon.

“That is all for now,” Garret replied. “Send one of your boys to the castle for your pay,” he added.

“Pay?” The blacksmith questioned. “No needs fer that, yer majesty, might not even live ta spend it! Word is we need these here shields, like we be needin’ air. I’ll not be sparing one of my boys fer collecting pay if I’m to make enough shields to be sure he lives.”

“Very well, then,” Garret responded, thinking to reward the man in another way. “In that case, get me the shovels and I would have you craft my own personal shield. No need for a notch in that one.” He added.

The blacksmith nodded his understanding with another disgusting smile before he strode away. A moment later the blacksmith and one of his apprentices, probably a son or nephew, returned each with a half a dozen shovels. Handing their wares over to the king and his knights, the blacksmith and his boy quickly returned to their duties, a new and important task at hand. Garret and each of the five knights who accompanied him, tied a pair of shovels to their saddles before remounting and heading for the nearest city gate. Unfortunately the nearest one was the eastern gate, and Garret and his men needed to head west. Skirting around the city heading north, Garret took the lead as his knights fell in behind him, none of them aware of his plan nor his destination.

As Garret rounded the-north eastern corner of the city, he slowed to allow his knights to ride to each side of his mount.

“Time is everything at present!” Garret shouted to his men over the thundering of their mounts’ hooves. “We go to buy more time, but we need to travel with all haste. Horace, you will have to catch up when you can as you are our eyes.”

With that proclamation, Garret prayed silently to Gorandor and focusing the immediate rush of power within him, he ignored the pleasure coursing through his veins as he and his horse began to shimmer. With a concussive boom, Garret and his mount exploded in size, Garret becoming the color of polished steel. Within seconds four more concussive booms sounded from behind Garret as all but one of his knights followed his lead, and size-shifted to try and match his pace.

Though it was an uncommon sight, those guards and archers upon the city walls of Valdadore knew what it was they saw as the ground began to shake beneath the giant hooves of Gorandor’s champions. Cheers erupted from atop each wall and tower, every soldier and mage believing that the king and his knights went to strike fear into the hearts of their approaching foe. For what could be mightier than five massive men, each upon a steed thirty feet or taller? It was an impressive and inspiring sight to witness firsthand, and Garret realized how it must look to his people. Inwardly he found it disappointing though amusing that instead of striking fear into their enemies, they would instead be digging a great big hole. It was a task that in most kingdoms, ruled by most races, would be done by slaves. Here in Valdadore, however, it was the king who did the digging.

*****

Mordal sat upon his black stallion taking his time amongst the crowd. Slowly and inevitably he rode towards the castle compound, his primary task predominant in his mind. Having gleaned all the information he could from the common folk who drank too much to keep their mouths shut, Mordal felt it was time to prepare for his mission. His exit strategy had already changed a half a dozen times due to the various routes he had planned becoming one by one too crammed with people to navigate. Thus his latest and hopefully final plan consisted of roof running nearly the entire city. He had mapped out the course he would take, having already adjusted his route to incorporate buildings that would make jumping the distances in between the easiest. It was not a direct route by any standard, but if his plan was completely successful he would not be leaving hastily in any case.

Stopped in his slow trek towards the castle by the unending crowd in the streets, Mordal sat back in his saddle, allowing the stallion to lead himself. Mordal looked around for anything of interest that might distract him for a moment, but found nothing readily available to steal of any worth. Truthfully, he had spent an hour earlier in the day steadily pick-pocketing those milling around in the crowded streets of the city just to pass time. It was not a fruitless endeavor either. He had made more coin off the common people in the streets in a single hour than a pickpocket in his own kingdom could make in a month. The wealth of this small nation was appalling. Mordal could not believe how much coin a common housewife carried upon her person.

These were Mordal’s musings as he noticed the group of highly polished knights riding towards him on their magnificent war horses. Nonchalantly Mordal observed the knights’ approach as any other bystander might. He witnessed as they began to become irritated at their increasingly slower pace, and also as their war horses appeared to become impatient too. Slowly but surely Mordal’s mount picked its way through the crowd, growing ever nearer the knights who attempted in vain to move in the opposite direction towards the assassin. It was not until the first of the knights was directly across the street that Mordal discovered his error when another knight called out to their leader.

“Your majesty!” a red-haired knight shouted from the crowd behind their lead man.

That was when Mordal realized that the King of Valdadore sat upon his horse not twenty feet away. Mordal watched as the young king with chestnut hair and brown eyes turned his steed slowly to go back the way he came. It would be an easy task to fell the king himself this very moment, though escaping with his life would be difficult. Mordal quickly went through his options. He could fell the king and disappear into the crowd, abandoning his mount and the saddlebag filled with coin. But leaving good money to his enemies simply would not do. Or he could kill the king, abandon his mount and climb to the roof tops with the saddlebag, though this strategy left him without a mount. Mordal even thought of shadowing the king until a moment of opportunity revealed itself, allowing him both a quick kill and a clean escape. However, what dissuaded Mordal from this train of thought was the money. The money he might not receive if he killed the King of Valdadore.  Although the young king would be a great target for such an experienced assassin, the man was not his mission.

Even though this one single death could possibly be the most important to King Sigrant’s cause, it was not in Mordal’s orders to kill the young king. Sigrant wanted this war for one reason or another. It was true, the battle would be a short one, but none the less, King Sigrant wanted to anger the young king of Valdadore, scare him perhaps, before he destroyed him. Thus Mordal’s orders did not mention killing the king at all. However, they did mention killing members of his family or close personal friends. Fortunately for Mordal, several wagging tongues the night previous had provided him with a shortlist of just such people currently within the city. Lady Linaya for one sounded like a perfect target. Who better to strike down than the king’s love interest? A young woman who roamed the castle at night where witnesses were few? Or perhaps the king’s mage brother, stories of whom revealed that he had nearly died a few weeks ago at another battle. Surely a weakened or injured mage would be little trouble, especially if the tale of him walking with his eyes closed, apparently recently blind, were true. Also the mage’s young wife, a petite thing named Sara, who pranced about in armor. Mordal had heard that she had recently taken a grievous injury. She was so badly maimed and ashamed of her appearance that she no longer walked about in the daylight, only at night, unless her face was completely covered. It was a very short shortlist, it was true, but would provide enough targets that one of them would slip up and come within Mordal’s path. He only needed one of them, but if they were each such easy prey as he expected, he might kill all three for sport.

Decided upon staying his course, Mordal ignored the image of the king as he disappeared down a side street and was lost as a target of opportunity, at least for the time being. For hours after seeing the king, Mordal led his stallion up to, and around, the castle compound several times taking mental notes of guard numbers and their spacing atop the castle walls, and making various calculations of distance from one object or landmark to another. Planning was nine-tenths of any job Mordal had ever undertaken, and this one would be no different. As afternoon grew into early evening, Mordal steered his mount to the southern gate of the castle compound, and though he watched as many went unchecked into the compound throughout the day, as he approached the guards hailed him and ordered him to stop. A large burly guard stepped in front of Mordal’s stallion, a dumb move by any account, in an effort to detain him, and rather than raise an alarm, Mordal resisted allowing the great black beast to trample the guard to death beneath its hooves.

“Halt!” the guard shouted in a demanding tone.

Mordal stared at the idiot guard skeptically.

“What is your purpose here?” the guard asked.

“I bring a message to Prince Seth, and I should warn you that he does not think kindly of my being delayed,” Mordal lied.

He had heard that the prince and his wife dressed all in black, so what better cover than connecting himself to one of his targets. Just as expected, the idiot guard looked over Mordal’s clothing and stallion. Creating a correlation out of nothing but the color of his garments, the guard stepped aside, allowing the assassin to ride in as if invited. This job was going to be entirely too easy, and the pay, well, it was adequate enough that Mordal imagined he would have undertaken this simple mission for less than a tenth of what he had been promised.

Instead of heading to the castle, Mordal spent the remainder of the evening, until just before dark, riding around the castle complex. He memorized the location of every building, tower and tree. Each of the tiered courtyards he circled at least once, committing the dimensions of each one to memory. Then, returning to a stable near the outer wall of the complex, Mordal walked in as if he owned the place and handed the reins to a stable boy. He told the boy that the beast was to be groomed and fed, but must be ready to leave again at any moment. The boy nodded and turned to lead the animal to a stall. So easy was this job going to be that his horse would look better after the mission than it had before. Mordal actually chuckled at his great fortune.

Leaving the stable as the sun dipped below the castle wall, Mordal clung to the shadows of the stable. Then, calling upon his blessing, he camouflaged himself to blend with the stone of the castle wall. Slowly, as darkness overtook the castle complex, Mordal made his way to the palace itself, thinking to hunt within its walls without having to so much as slit a single throat to gain entry. Entirely too easy.

*****

Seth began laying out the first of the patterns upon Sara’s long daggers. This was a magical chain of symbols he had tried earlier in the day, so he already knew that the outcome would be favorable. Completing each symbol twice, once for each dagger, Seth then moved on to the next symbol. Each dagger would only need four symbols. The first two, infused with power enough to encompass the blade, were the symbols for ‘absorb’ and ‘physical realm’ respectively. These two were then linked to a third and fourth symbol, whose auras encompassed the handle of the weapons. These symbols meant ‘release’ and ‘infuse’. Simply put, any life the blade came into contact with would be drained during the duration of that contact, and the life force would then travel through the blade into the bearer. More or less, in a battle with other humans, as was anticipated, the blades served a dual purpose. First, if Sara sustained injuries in battle, because of her amazing healing ability her life aura would be consumed to mend her wounds. Her new blades would recuperate that lost power each time she struck an enemy. Secondly, since Seth did not know exactly when he would be able to complete Sara’s transformation to restore the rest of her humanity, the blades would consume a small portion of that humanity each time she struck down a human. That force would be melded with her, performing the job for Seth in his absence. Brilliant by any standards.