Keith Baker - The City of Towers

Daine rose and shook the water out his blanket. Pierce was struggling to keep the fire alive, and Lei was starting to break camp, gathering the tarps and blankets. Daine joined her.

“Another fine day, hmm?” he said, handing over his blanket.

Lei smiled and shook her head. Her hair was covered with mud, but it still seemed to gleam in the firelight, as if there was true copper mixed in with the red. Folding his blanket and placing it with the others, she produced the wooden rod she used as a focus for simple magic. With a few deft gestures, she wove a domestic cantrip into the wood. A wave of this makeshift wand drove mud and water from blankets and clothes, and scoured the dirt from her skin and hair. A dry blanket was hardly the most important thing in life, but without Lei’s magic their clothes would have rotted away months ago-and her ability to conjure food was all that stood between the soldiers and starvation.

“We’re almost there,” Lei said, handing him a mug of water and a plate of cold gruel. It was about as pleasant as eating mud, but it had them alive. “If it wasn’t raining, you could see the towers from here.”

“You’re really going to go through with this?”

“Of course. You don’t understand our ways, Daine. I am an heir of the Mark of Making, and I have a responsibility to my house.”

Dragonmarks. Daine swallowed a spoonful of gruel with a grimace. No one was born with a dragonmark, but members of a select few bloodlines carried the potential to manifest a mark and the magical power that came with it. It was Jode’s dragonmark that allowed him to heal injuries with a touch. Lei’s mark had a similar effect, but where Jode could knit flesh and bone, Lei repaired metal and wood. The powers of her dragonmark were the least of Lei’s talents, but the mark defined her place in the world. In an age ravaged by war, a weaponsmith could hold more power than a king, and the dragonmarked artificers of House Cannith were the greatest weaponsmiths of modern times. House Cannith blazed the trail that led to the invention of the stormship, the wand of eternal fire, and of course, the warforged. Dragonmarks were rare even within the families that carried them, and Cannith often formed matches between the dragonmarked in the hopes that children would inherit the powers of the parents. So it was with Lei and her betrothed. Hadran d’Cannith was a widower and almost twice Lei’s age, but his gold was good and his mark was strong.

“Blood above love,” said Daine. “I’ve heard it before. All I’m interested in is the gold you promised us. It’s just … I’ve seen you covered in mud and blood. I have a harder time seeing you as lady of the manor.”

“You think I like sleeping in ditches and watching my friends die?” said Lei as she handed a plate of gruel to the groggy Jode.

“None of us like it. But it’s those who can do it without letting it kill them that make soldiers. You lived through things that killed hardened veterans. You’re one of us.”

Lei shook her head. “My service in the guard was duty to my family. Just as my marriage is. Of the two, I’ll enjoy marriage far more.”

“Ever been married before?”

Lei opened her mouth to retort.

“Please, Captain Daine, my lady Lei!” Jode interjected with a brilliant smile. “If we have only a day’s travel ahead of us, let us enjoy one another’s company while we still can, yes?”

Lei and Daine mumbled apologies and returned to the gruel.

Though the sun was still buried behind the clouds, it was just past dawn when they broke camp and headed back toward the Old Road, the path that connected the great cities of Breland. They’d chosen to sleep in a clearing well away from the road so Pierce could watch for enemies. But a tangle of the King’s Woods lay between the travelers and the road, and it was there that trouble struck.

From behind a tree stepped a man out-a rangy, pock-faced Brelander wearing the patched leather tunic of a Brelish soldier. Perhaps he was a deserter or a retiree with nowhere to go, but Daine thought it just as likely the man had torn his ill-fitting armor from the corpse of its true owner. A gray woolen cloak shielded him from the rain, and he waved a wooden cudgel in their general direction.

“Ho there, travelers!” the man called, his voice a gravelly rasp.

Daine stepped to the front of the group, signaling the others to halt.

“Morgalan’s the name. By your dress, I take you to be strangers in our lovely land. Mourners, are you?”

“Mourners?” asked Daine.

“Refuse from what’s left of Cyre. They’re calling it the Mournland now, on account of there being nothing for you lot to do but mourn for what you lost.”

“If you’ve got a point, make it quick.” Daine’s hand went to his sword, but he held his temper in check. This was far from the first time they’d been harassed, and Daine smelled a trap.

“I have a bit of a nose for the energies of the arcane, and I can see that there’s more to the young lady’s backpack than meets the eye. I’ll be taking that, along with any coin you might have on you.”

“Four to one, by my count. Not odds in your favor.” Daine scratched the back of his neck, using the opportunity to make a few swift gestures to his companions with the tips of his fingers.

“Things are rarely what they seem.” A crossbow bolt flew from the trees and struck the ground near Daine’s feet.

“True,” Daine said, but he was already in motion, charging at the highwayman, drawing his sword and dagger as he ran.

From the corner of his eye, Daine saw Pierce raise his enormous longbow and send two blue-feathered arrows back along the path of the crossbow bolt. There was a cry from the woods and the sound of a man falling from the trees.

Two men and a woman, all three dressed in tattered leathers and armed with hatchets, burst out of the woods to Daine’s left. He slowed his charge long enough to be sure the others had them.

Lei was waiting for them. She hurled a small stone in their direction. It burst with a blinding flare of golden radiance. As the bandits threw up their hands to shield their eyes, Pierce was already loosing more arrows. Within seconds, all three lay stretched out on the ground.

Morgalan met Daine’s charge head-on. With a furious cry and a blow of his cudgel, he knocked Daine’s blade from his hand. But the sword was the lesser threat. Daine’s dagger was Cannith-forged from adamantine and could slice through steel with ease. Daine ducked beneath the bandit’s next blow, and with one swift stroke he cut the cudgel in two, leaving Morgalan with a bare stump of wood.

Dropping the ruined remnant of his club and stepping back, the bandit made an intricate gesture with his left hand while muttering words in a language Daine had never heard. Daine felt the touch of enchantment, and for a moment it was difficult to focus.

Morgalan … Morgalan … why were they fighting, after all? Surely this was a misunderstanding. His friend Morgalan needed his help, needed his assistance against these three brutes …

Daine had dealt with sorcerers before, and Saerath had occasionally tried a charm when he’d been ordered to dig latrines. Gritting his teeth, Daine shook his way free of the intrusive thoughts and drove his dagger into the shoulder of the bandit.

Morgalan gasped and the mystical pressure faded. Daine grabbed the man by his neck with his free hand, yanked the dagger free, and threw Morgalan into the mud. He leaned down, his foot on the bandit’s neck and his blade at his throat.

“Listen to me, Brelander,” he growled. “I’ve been fighting your kind for six years. Every instinct I’ve got says I should slit your throat and leave you bleeding in the dirt.” He struck the pale man across the face with the pommel of his dagger, slamming his face into the mud. “But the war’s over, and I am a stranger in your land. Don’t give me a reason to start fighting again.”