Chapter 5
He was lying. It turns out he really was stupid enough to steal me.
Saras and I were dragged away from the camp, past two dead bodies on the ground outside, the remains of Hagrim's sentries. I assumed the guard watching us that night was dead also, though it wasn't Atan, who likely deserved it. My hands were still tied behind my back, only now another rope was around my neck, just in case I decided to struggle. Clever.
Once outside the camp, we stopped and waited until three more men showed up. Arnum had arrived at Hagrim's camp with two, but I counted six standing around Saras and I, including Arnum. But then I recognized one of the new arrivals as the other bidder, the one whose face I couldn't place. Suddenly, it all made sense.
"Everything clear?" Arnum asked the other man.
"Aye," he said. "Still quiet. We killed the sentries to the north."
"Good. Go back and get the gem. And take care of our other problem."
They disappeared into the woods, just as fast as they arrived. Arnum and his two men wasted no time in dragging us off the ground again and marching deeper into the woods. As we moved, he saw me looking at him, and he must have decided it was safe enough to let me talk. He pulled the cloth out of my mouth.
"Something to say, halfman?"
"I'm impressed. You sent your own man in as another bidder, to give you extra men to pull this stunt. Very clever. You're smarter than what I've been telling people."
Arnum stopped and punched me in the face. Hard. If the man holding me hadn’t grabbed me under the shoulders, I would have fallen to the ground in a daze. Arnum smiled, and flexed his hand. "I've been waiting to do that for a while. Get used to it because I'll be doing it a lot now that you’re mine."
I groaned, then popped my jaw back into place. "You never intended to buy me, did you?"
"Why waste the money when I can just take you?"
"You'll die for this, Arnum. Hagrim will kill you for stealing from him."
"Hagrim will be dead in a few minutes. And that gem of yours will be mine. I look to make a small fortune from this adventure. Turning you in, returning the gem, and claiming the bounty on Hagrim, which is paid whether he's dead or alive. All thanks to you. You thought you were so smart, escaping from me in Harfort. All you did was make me work a little harder to become a whole lot richer. I may retire after I turn you in."
He motioned, and the man holding me propped me back up on my feet. Arnum pushed deeper into the forest, Saras and I dragged along behind him. To our doom.
But then the gods of fate stepped in once more.
The sky lit up, lifting the darkness from the forest. We all turned to see streaks of orange and red fly into the air behind us, followed a moment later by a boom that rattled my bones. An explosion of fire, in Hagrim’s camp. Is this how Arnum meant for Hagrim to die? The light faded as quickly as it came, but an orange glow remained, illuminating the thick plume of smoke left behind.
"Gods protect us..." one of the men said, in awe.
"Move," Arnum barked, his confused expression clearly indicating that he didn’t expect this. "Now!"
Arnum ran through the woods, his men hauling us behind as fast as they could manage. We began to separate, thinning out in the trees in the rush to escape, and I realized that now was as good a time as any to try and get away. Unfortunately, Arnum thought the same thing. He stopped and waited for us.
"Hurry up!" he shouted. His men complained that we were slowing them down, so Arnum pointed at Saras, without hesitation. "Kill that one. We don't need him."
Saras' eyes went wide, and he looked at me for help, both of us knowing I couldn't give it. I pulled at my ropes, but the man holding me pushed me down and locked his arm around my neck. I watched in horror as the other bounty hunter also forced Saras to the ground and then pulled out a knife.
"No!" I roared, but it did no good. He grabbed Saras’ hair, pulling his head up so he could cut his throat. The knife moved in slow motion, and I felt words of protest leave my mouth but I don’t remember what they were. I just knew that I would make these men pay dearly for what they were about to do.
The knife reached Saras’ throat, but then stopped. Suddenly, Arnum’s man stumbled back a step and I saw why - an arrow protruded from his chest. He looked down, confused, and reached up to grab it when another impaled itself into his gut. He staggered for a moment and then fell to his knees. A third arrow flew out from the darkness, hitting Arnum in his leg. Arnum stumbled back, crying out, and started limping away. A fourth came, hitting my captor in his shoulder, but he turned and ran into the darkness before he could suffer the same fate as his colleagues.
Riose emerged from the shadows then, and I wondered briefly if I was just trading one captor for another. He set down his bow and pulled out a knife, cutting Saras' hands free. He walked toward me, and I couldn't help but recall all the terrible things I'd said to him over the last few days. Luckily, he was the forgiving type. He cut my bonds, too.
"What are you doing?" Arnum shouted. He'd stopped several paces away, lying on the ground, clutching his leg. "You can't let him escape!"
I grabbed the sword from the dead bounty hunter and hurried to Arnum, standing over him as menacingly as I could. Arnum stared up at me defiantly, for which I had to give him credit. He would face his death like a man. That's why I wouldn't kill him just yet. I stabbed the sword into the ground, grabbed him by the neck and punched him in the face a few times, until his eyes began to roll back in his head. Then I dropped him and let him groan for a while, clutching his bloodied face.
I walked back and nodded to Saras, relieved that he was still alive. I’d seen him close to death a few times now, but this was different. Vastly different. Had Saras died at the hands of these men, I would have unleashed my fury on every living person in Pontas. Speaking of which, I was missing something.
"We have to go back. My sword is in the camp, and so is the gem."
"Your sword is here." Riose held the blade out, still in its scabbard, and I grabbed it. He backed away, not entirely sure what I would do with it, but I just strapped it around my waist. I wasn't ready to kill him anymore, but I didn't mind letting him think I was for a while longer. I gave the other sword to Saras, while Riose picked up his bow.
"Leave the gem," Saras said.
"I can't."
"You were right. That was a mage looking for it, and he's obviously destroying everything to get it."
"Yeah," Riose added. "This isn’t a game anymore. I'd quit while you're ahead."
"Look, I hate that damn thing, but I'm not leaving it behind. No one has ever gotten away with stealing from me, and that's not changing tonight. I have a reputation to protect."
"Basileus..." Saras began, but he never got to finish. Blasts of fire exploded in the trees nearby, and all three of us dove to the ground. The blasts were followed by balls of fire that tore through the forest, darting around the trees in swirling, wavy lines until they exploded just past us.
"He's coming!" Riose shouted, unhelpfully.
"Run!" Saras leapt up and charged away into the woods, away from the fire. Riose followed, and even though I hated leaving the gem behind, I knew when I was out of my league. So I ran too. I only made it a few paces, though, before the air itself hardened around my ankles, stopping me in mid stride. My body flipped around until I was upside down, held in the air by the magic that had taken hold of my ankles. The same magic then ripped the sword from my hands, and it landed out of reach on the ground below. Riose and Saras suffered the same fate, hanging from nothing in the middle of the forest, until the mage finally appeared.
He still wore his robe, but the hood was down, and his eyes glowed and sparkled like orange lightning. I'd heard stories about wizards with glowing orange eyes, who rained fire down upon their enemies. Everyone had. And I knew instantly that this wasn’t a regular mage.
This was a draco. A dragon mage.
"Where is the gem?" he asked, his voice deep and
commanding. When he spoke, I heard a chorus of echoes in my mind that made it sound as if he wasn’t the only one asking.
"I don't know," I said, barely getting the words out. The air was thick now, hot, and hard to breathe. Dracos were even more fanatical in their worship of dragons than the Dralasians, who expelled them from their Order centuries ago. According to rumor they only practiced a subset of magic laid down by their founder, a set of spells that mimicked the powers of real dragons – fire, flying, mind domination, and fear. And the best mastered each and every one. "We were going back to camp... to find it."
"It was Arnum," Riose said. "He took these two one direction, and had the rest of his men take the gem in the other. That way he'd escape with at least one." He was bluffing, but it was a good one... Arnum sent his men back to camp a few minutes ago to get the gem. But the draco might not know that.
My body flew against a nearby tree, hard, then away until I hit another. Whatever magic he was using to hold us in the air, he used it to shake us around, banging us against anything solid, and sometimes sharp. "You lie! One of you took it, and I will find out. I will flay each of you alive until the truth comes out. Starting with you."
He meant me.
I floated through air, dragged by the invisible grip on my ankle, until a flick of his wrist stopped me just out of reach of his face. I couldn’t stop staring at his eyes, which crackled like fire.
"The human body is a vessel of lies and deceit,” he explained, as if giving me a sermon, “a container filled with darkness and evil, which escapes from every orifice. Fire is cleansing, however. It banishes the darkness, and chases it away. And when the ashes of your body float away in the wind, they will carry away the evil from your soul. It is more than you deserve, but I am feeling gracious. However, you can prove before you die that there is something worth redemption by telling me the truth... where is the gem?"
My sword. It was lying on the ground, just out of reach. If I could grab it, or the mage, or something, I could get out of this. I just needed a distraction.
"Nothing to say? That will change very shortly."
He held out his hand, palm up, where a small flame danced about. The flame began to collapse in on itself, though, curling up into a ball, which grew hotter and whiter. It became so bright that I couldn’t even look at it, and the heat enveloped my body. I held up my hands, and tried to pull away, but there was no escape. I would burn to death.
The draco cried out, and at first I thought I was hearing an orgasmic exultation before I became his victim. But then I fell to the ground, and the light dimmed. I looked up to see Arnum lying on his elbows next to the mage, but the arrow that had been in his leg was now in the mage's calf.
"He's mine!" Arnum shouted through broken teeth. He yanked the arrow out, and was about to stab it back in when the draco spun around, and a torrent of fire left his hands, enveloping the bounty hunter’s body. Arnum screamed, a piercing, high-pitched wail that died out almost as quickly as it started. For a moment I was horrified. That is until I remembered my sword. I scrambled back, grabbed it, and lunged at the mage, stabbing him in the gut. Before I could pull the sword out and finish the job, an arrow stuck in his neck. Then Saras appeared and stabbed him right in the heart. The draco's eyes went wide, his mouth hung open, whatever words he'd chosen to say just then frozen on his lips. Saras and I backed away, watching him carefully, in case he had one final death throe left that might burn us alive. But he had no magic left. The dragon mage fell to his knees, then onto his face.
I looked at Saras, who was breathing heavily, that look on his face that said 'I can't believe that just happened to us... again', and I nodded in agreement. I turned back to Riose, who had another arrow nocked, ready to fire, but he sensed the end just as we did and cautiously lowered his weapon. A hiss escaped the draco’s body, and for a terrifying moment we all tensed, thinking he'd somehow cheated death, and this would be where the three of us would die. But then the hiss faded away, and when I leaned in closer I realized I was only hearing his last breath escape through the hole in his neck from Riose’s arrow. The draco was dead.
Next to him lay the charred remains of Arnum’s body, his arm wrapped around his face in a futile attempt to protect himself from the dragon mage’s inferno. His entire body was black, like charcoal, and I wondered if he would crumble if I touched him. I thought about it, but that seemed too cruel, even for a bastard like him. Because of his single-minded hatred for me, I still lived, which meant I had to forever remember him for that. I spent all this time worried about letting him revel in my defeat, but instead I would be cursed with the knowledge that I owed him my life. I sighed, for the gods of fate continued to toy with me.