Don Bassingthwaite - The Killing Song

“No!” Mithas shouted. “Alive! Take them alive!”

The guard hesitated. Singe ripped his rapier from his scabbard and swung it high, screaming the first battle cry that came into his head. “Frostbrand!”

Confronted with the screaming warrior and Ashi’s deadly grace, the guard very sensibly leaped aside even as he drew his sword. He tried to strike as they swept past him, but Singe beat down his sword and slashed at him. His rapier sliced into the guard’s blue jacket, and the wizard felt the tip of the blade cut flesh. It wasn’t a pretty defense, but the guard stumbled back and they were past him. Singe heard exclamations, footsteps, and orders from Mithas. He risked a glimpse back and saw more mercenaries pouring out from the door behind the counter with the duty officer at their head.

They must have been the reason Mithas had been trying to delay him, he guessed. If they were though …

He looked ahead as he and Ashi passed into the foyer. The outer door stood open, but Singe could hear running footsteps from that direction too.

“Look away, Ashi!” he said, then focused his will on the door and spat the word of one of the simplest spells he knew.

Just beyond the doorway, flame leaped in brief, intense flare. It lasted only an instant, but for that instant it was dazzling-and its sudden appearance was just as startling as he’d hoped. Running footsteps stumbled, voices rose in surprise, and bodies thumped together in confusion. He and Ashi burst out of the doorway and past the mercenaries that had been closing in on either side.

Singe picked the busiest of the streets coming off the square in which the Deneith enclave stood and sprinted toward it. Mithas’s voice followed them in frantic orders to the mercenaries. “Follow them! Bring them back! Alive, damn you, alive!”

A ripple ran along the edge of the crowd as people turned, then drew back at the sight of a naked blade, though more than a few men and women reached for their own weapons, either in self-defense or greed at the possibility of a reward from House Deneith for capturing the fugitives.

“Fight?” asked Ashi at his side.

The hunter had one gloved hand over her face, trying to hide the telltale lines of her dragonmark. Singe thrust her scarf at her. “No,” he said. “Just follow me.”

He didn’t slow down as he plowed into the crowd and made straight for the biggest, drunkest man he could see: a red-faced brute with muscle-corded arms.

As luck would have it, he was busy tipping a tankard to his lips. Singe slapped at the vessel with his free hand, and beer cascaded over the man’s face. Wet and reeking, the man roared in fury and grabbed for him, but Singe skipped aside and stuck out his foot. The man went sprawling into another knot of merrymakers, who also let out furious roars. Singe didn’t wait to see what happened but whirled to two hatchet-faced women who had draped themselves in the colors of Karrnath, raised his rapier, and shouted “Graverobbers! Aundair is the true heir to Galifar!”

Sharn might have been set to celebrate Thronehold and peace, but the wounds of the Last War were still fresh, and it didn’t take much to tear them open again. The Karrn women howled and sprang forward.

And were met by a trio of Aundairians leaping to Singe’s defense with nationalistic pride. “For the Queen!”

Singe slipped back behind the other Aundairians, letting them take the edge of the Karrns’ attack. Or tried to. Abruptly, he felt the prick of dagger on his side, and a man’s voice with the accent of Cyre murmured in his ear. “Slick as the Traveler, my friend, but what do you say to going back to the Deneith enclave. Whatever they want you for, I could use the rew- agh!”

His words ended in a straggled sound as he and his knife were ripped away. A moment later, he went reeling past Singe toward the battling Karrns, propelled by Ashi. One of the women turned with lethal instinct and buried the hand-axe she fought with in his shoulder. The Cyran’s scream was gruesome, and some of his fellow countrymen rushed to his aid, turning indiscriminately against Karrns and Aundairians alike.

The beads woven into her hair sliding and clacking, Ashi whirled back to Singe, and although her scarf was once more tied firmly over her face, he could tell she was smiling. “I like Deathsgate much better than Overlook!”

Singe looked around. In a matter of moments, a wide swath of the crowd had been transformed into churning chaos as drunken brawl merged with patriotic violence. The people in the street who weren’t already embroiled in the fighting were in retreat, pushing and shoving to get away. The mercenaries from the Blademarks hall hadn’t even made it across the square yet.

He jammed his rapier back into its sheath and pulled Ashi along with the moving crowd. In moments, both fighting and mercenaries were lost to sight. Singe turned down another street, then another, finally stopping on the edge of a courtyard where the only hint of violence was a loud argument about a game of sundown. He leaned against the wall of a tavern with one hand and beat the other against his forehead. “Bloody moons!” he cursed. “Twelve bloody moons! Of all the times to lose the scarf …”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Ashi said. “At least we lost the Deneith guards.”

Singe drew a deep breath and tried to rein in his anger. “We lost the guards. We won’t have lost Mithas-he’s going to be looking for you now. You heard him. He recognized the Siberys Mark of Deneith.”

Ashi’s eyebrows drew together. “He only saw my face.”

“That would be all he needed. He knows what he saw. I told you, he’s ambitious. He knows what bringing you to the lords of Deneith would do for his status in the house.”

“You know a lot about him.”

Singe let out a sigh. “When I first joined the Frostbrand, he was Robrand d’Deneith’s lieutenant. Robrand dismissed Mithas when his gambling nearly put the company in danger-and not long after that, he made me lieutenant in his place.” He pushed himself upright. “I suppose we were rivals before that, though. Sorcerers and wizards don’t always get along. His magic is instinctive. I had to work at mine, but I surpassed him. Mithas is the kind of person who doesn’t like seeing anyone get ahead of him.”

“Do you think he’ll send House Deneith after us?” Ashi asked.

“Probably not. That would play his hand too soon. I wouldn’t underestimate what he could accomplish on his own, though. This isn’t good. It isn’t good at all.” He rubbed fingers across his eyes in frustration.

The motion brought a crinkle of paper from his vest. He reached into his pocket and extracted the message that had been waiting for him and looked at it. “You know,” he said, “I don’t even know that this is from Geth. I told him to send a message by Orien post, not Sivis messenger.”

“Are you going to look?”

Singe shrugged and broke the wax that had sealed the message-if Mithas had read it, he managed to seal it up again-and scanned the few lines written on the gray paper in the neat script of a gnome scribe. His mouth twitched, and he squeezed his eyes shut, but he could still see the words.

“Is it from Geth?”

“It’s from Geth,” he said. He opened his eyes and read the message:

5 Aryth

Singe ,

We got to Zarash’ak yesterday. Staying with Bava. She gave us money for Sivis and says hello to Natrac. Buying a boat and heading up river to Fat Tusk tomorrow. Good luck in Sharn. Send word back to Bava if you’re still alive when this is over.

Geth

He folded the message again. His jaw ached, he was holding it so tightly. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything more than that, but twelve moons-all that trouble and this is what we get!” He crushed the message in his hand.