Martin Hengst - The Last Swordmage

The girl’s voice reached out to her again from the distance, reassurance that she wasn’t the only living thing in this city of antiquity. Her first few steps toward the market square were tentative. She still wasn’t sure where she was going, but she was relatively certain that she would be able to find her way back to the inn. She began counting the number of buildings and how many turns she made, so that if she got turned around, she would at least be able to get back to her room before the Captain missed her.

Market square was a study in organized chaos. As she neared the cacophony, she found an empty doorway and slipped into it, watching in rapt amazement. The number of people in the square was staggering. The closest she had ever been to a gathering of this size was the few times a year that the clans came together for trading and even then, there were more people crammed into this cleared area of cobblestones than made up all the clans put together.

The wagons had been shuttered for the night and a large platform at the front of the square had been cleared of boxes, crates, and drums. The girl who was singing looked as if she might have been Tia’s age, or a little younger. She was lost, her eyes closed, her head thrown back. Lost in the rapture of the beautiful song that burst from her lips with such intensity that it felt as if Tia might be deafened by the sound as it rolled out across the crowd.

A lanky man sat on the corner of the platform, a large drum between his legs. No slave ship quartermaster had ever kept a beat so relentlessly. To the singer’s left, a woman with hair so dark it looked as if the night had wrapped itself around her head was playing a strange stringed instrument that Tia had never seen. She sat behind its curved back, wrapping her arms around it in an intimate embrace as she plucked at the strings.

Music, like most other things, was utilitarian in the clans. There were saga-songs, stories told to the beat of a drum, but Tiadaria had never heard anything like this. This was music created from passion, not from purpose. It was music that reached deep inside her and clenched at her heart, threatening to wring tears from her eyes. Whatever she had expected to come from her explorations, this hadn’t been it. She was a world away from the only home she had ever known. Not only in distance, but in custom and in attitude.

There was a moment of silence and then the crowd erupted in a roaring that Tia could feel through the soles of her boots. Panic flooded through her until she realized that the song had come to an end and these people were showering the performers with their thundering approval. Emboldened by the crowd, Tiadaria lent her voice to the crescendo, pounding her hands together in the most sincere applause she had ever given.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

The voice in her ear startled her. Not only because of the proximity, but because she hadn’t noticed the man’s approach. He was leaning over her shoulder, his head covered with a half-helm. Tia nodded, turning to get a better look at him.

He was clad in heavy armor, a black dragon emblazoned on the breastplate. It was a knight’s armor and belatedly, Tia realized that the man who had been standing behind her for who knew how long was a city guard, or at the very least, a part of the Grand Army of the Imperium. Tia recognized the sigil. The Captain kept armor in his war chest that bore the same crest. Even his fighting armor, the thin white silk with the fine ringlets of silver, had a black dragon embroidered on the inside breast. A man may leave the army, Tia suspected, but she doubted that the army ever left the man.

Why was he staring at her so? He had been standing just over her shoulder; certainly he had seen through the gauzy material of the scarf and seen that she was a slave. Her collar would have betrayed her and he would lower his pike and march her off through the crowd, and object of their scorn and ridicule. Tia had heard stories of what happened to convicts who were paraded through the streets of whatever town or holding they had committed their crimes in. Those stories didn’t oft end well.

The knight’s scrutiny seemed to increase. He cocked his head at her and then pointed to his ear.

“I said,” he nearly shouted over the din, “Beautiful isn’t it?”

Foolish, stupid girl. Tia berated herself as she smiled at the man, whose face settled into more relaxed lines.

“Yes,” she replied, equally loudly, for the girl had started a new song, this one much faster than the last. “Quite!”

The man smiled, patted her on the shoulder, and worked his way through the crowd. Nodding to this person and that, stopping to converse with others only briefly as he made his rounds. It wasn’t long before he was completely long from view.

Tia’s chest ached and she let out a rush of breath that made her head swim. She hadn’t even realized she had been holding it. She rubbed the area under her rib cage, trying to massage the soreness of the extended effort away. Pairs were breaking off in the square now, and the crowd pushed back from the center to allow those who wished to dance the space to do so unimpeded.

The outward expansion of the gathering invaded Tia’s secluded doorway. Where she had been alone a moment before, she was now pressed among a mass of bodies that ebbed and flowed like the tide. She was assaulted by a number of smells, some of the pleasant, others less so. Her heart began to race and she knew that she needed to get back to the inn, back to relative safety and comfort.

Running on dry sand was easier than moving through the ever-shifting throng of people in her way. It seemed that every time she made a few steps headway toward the inn, she was buffeted backward, or to the side, or had to detour around some reveler who, lost in the music, disregarded any attempt for her to slip past expediently. The struggle felt like it went on forever, but she was finally free. She slipped into an alleyway, comforted by the cool blackness there and the relative silence.

Getting her bearings, she was able to deduce that she wasn’t too far off from the inn. If this inn met up with a road parallel to the main road, she could cut a few minutes off her trip by following the alley down to its end. Wanting nothing more than to be in the comfort of the inn, in her bed, fast asleep, she decided to risk it.

The alleys were a stark contrast to the well-lit streets. The blackness seemed to engulf her as she walked and she found herself trailing her fingers down the fieldstone wall beside her, a comforting presence that kept her focused and confident that she was still moving in the right direction. The night seemed to lighten ahead, and Tia saw that her alley joined another at right angles. There must be a lantern or oil lamp down the far alley that was shedding pale, butter colored light over the joint where the walls of the pathways met.

Tiadaria had almost reached the pool of light when a robed figure backed into the alley ahead of her. Momentum carried her another few steps before she was able to stop. The robed figure clutched its stomach, the cream-colored robes stained with blood. So much blood. It slipped through the figure’s clenched fingers and spattered onto the moss etched stones. Tia felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up and she pulled her belt dagger free, ignoring the now familiar jolt that went up her arm and settled into the base of her spine.

No sooner was the blade free than a massive black shape bounded into the alley. It struck the robed figure in a blur, sending it crashing against the wall. There was a moist thud and the body slid down to a sitting position, its legs sprawled grotesquely outward. Tia shifted into the offensive stance the Captain had taught her, but even as her instinct took over, she felt her stomach clench as the beast turned its full attention on her.