T. Lain - The Death Ray

"Don't let me…" Jandik gasped, blood foaming on his quivering lips, his eyes rolling up to lazily scan Regdar's face. "Don't let me…die here. It stinks."

Regdar forced himself to laugh and got a smile from the wounded tracker. He was rifling through his pack, crouching over the fallen watchman.

"You're not going to die here," Regdar reassured the man. "You're under my command, and I don't remember giving you any such order."

"Lorec…" Jandik coughed out, "and Samoth…"

Regdar's fingers found the vial he was looking for and pulled it out of his pack with a jerk.

"I'll deal with them myself," Regdar joked darkly as he peeled the wax off the cork. "Now, I want you to drink this…all of it."

"No…" the tracker mumbled halfheartedly, wiping sleet, blood, and dust from his hair. "Don't waste that on-"

Regdar pushed the vial past the tracker's lips and smiled again as Jandik greedily drank the contents of the vial. When it was empty, Regdar gently drew it away from Jandik's mouth. The tracker leaned forward, trying to suck any last drop from the vial.

"Easy," Regdar said, "you got it all. It should just take a-"

He stopped when he heard something he thought was an armored footstep echo quietly from the dark space behind the ruined door.

"Did you hear that?" Naull whispered as Regdar stood.

Jandik coughed, wiped his lips on the back of a hand, and coughed again. The second time, no blood came with it. The tracker took a deep breath.

Regdar put up a hand for silence and the group of survivors obeyed. As he waited for the sound to come again, Regdar scanned the corpse of Watch Sergeant Lorec, doing his best to see the ruined body of one of his men in terms of resources rather than emotion. His eyes settled on the sergeant's sword just when the sound came again. There was no mistaking it that time.

Regdar held his greatsword in one hand as he bent to retrieve the dead sergeant's shining, polished long sword. It was probably an heirloom, and Regdar quickly, silently promised himself to return it to the sergeant's family, but he had use of it first.

"Something's moving in there," Regdar whispered to the others, who had gathered behind him.

He flipped the long sword over in his grip and held it out, pommel-first, to Lem, the next in line among the watchmen. Lem took the sword, admiring its gleaming blade.

"I can't take this," Lem whispered. "This is magical, or I'm a son of a naga."

"Shut up and use it," Regdar replied, putting both hands on his own greatsword. "Stay right behind me. Whatever is in there, I want you to kill it. Understood?"

Lem nodded, then exchanged a worried glance with Asil and Drahir.

"Drahir," Regdar continued, "get up here with that lantern. Stand just behind Lem. Naull, I need you behind Drahir. Asil, stay back with Jandik and keep an eye on our exit."

"I'm fine," the tracker said as he staggered to his feet, leaning against the wall and wincing with pain. "That potion did the trick."

Regdar was about to protest when the sound of a pile of rocks shifting-it could only be that-echoed from the space behind the door. He knew the time for planning and talking was over, and he stepped across the threshold into darkness.

"Go on, fools," Vargussel murmured to the image in his mind. "Let the little one serve some function after all."

The parchment and the spell cast on it had been a ruse-simple but effective. It hadn't managed to kill Regdar but it was succeeding in its second mission: drawing intruders down the wrong path.

Vargussel watched Regdar slip into the shadows. The mage rubbed his hands together nervously in anticipation of the moment when The lord constable sank into a fighting stance and called out, Engaged! -whatever that meant.

The dread guard stepped up over a pile of rubble-stone, bricks, and wood piled three feet high-where one of the walls had collapsed, decades gone by. Regdar stood in a corridor that ran the length of the west end of the slaughterhouse's basement. To the lord constable's right was the ruin of two rooms that once served as storage but had come to be the watchpost of Vargussel's earlier effort in the creation of a magical construct.

The dread guard had cost Vargussel dearly at the time, but it proved too stupid, too slow, and too weak for his greater purposes. It could never wield the death ray but it could pick off unwary intruders.

Regdar easily deflected the dread guard's first attack but the construct fought on. It had no other choice, no survival instinct, no independent mind.

Vargussel sat back and watched.

Naull could see the man who attacked Regdar but couldn't see his face. He was wearing a rusted but once grand suit of banded armor and an elaborately plumed helm with a visor that covered the whole of his face. The broadsword with which he deftly parried Regdar's bigger blade was undoubtedly enchanted.

The man was shorter than Regdar by a hand or more, and though the armor was heavy, Naull couldn't imagine the dark, rusted knight making the booming footsteps Regdar and other witnesses had described. Still, she'd learned not to judge a book by its cover, and she knew well enough that though he looked like a normal man, he could still be strong enough to flip over the bed. The holes in the floor had been carved with magic, and the young aristocrats had been killed magically as well.

Naull brought to mind a simple spell that she hoped might end things quickly. In the cramped, tumbledown space, Regdar was slashing at the knight with his greatsword, keeping Lem and the others back. Jandik looked like he was itching to fight but his wounds were still too painful, and he had trouble just keeping on his feet. From the others Naull could sense the same palpable feeling of relief that she was experiencing herself. They'd found their murderer and he was a man in armor, not a monster, not a godlike steel demon from some sewer-reeking hell.

Naull cast the spell, focusing all of its energy at the dark knight. She fully expected him to crumple to the rubble-strewn floor at Regdar's feet, fast asleep, but the armored warrior didn't oblige. To Naull it seemed as if the spell had passed right through the strange man as if he wasn't even there.

There could be any number of reasons for that, she told herself, but still…

She felt that sense of relief and hope quickly fading back to anxiety and panic.

Regdar banged another of the strange knight's attacks away while stepping back and to the left. He'd taken the measure of his opponent and found the dark knight strong and insistent, brave and relentless-but slow and predictable. He expected the knight to slash high at his throat with a cross-chest backhand, and that's just what the mysterious man did.

Rather than wave his own sword in front of himself to parry the slash, Regdar crouched and let the blow pass just over the top of his head. The dark knight was momentarily unbalanced with most of his weight on his right foot and his left foot almost off the floor.

Regdar let himself fall back on his rear as he kicked out with his right foot, slamming it hard into the inside of the dark knight's right knee.

The stranger's right knee emitted a loud snap and collapsed, sending him sprawling in a clatter of steel onto the top of the rubble pile. Regdar was surprised that the man didn't grunt, cry out, or make any sound at all either when his knee was dislocated or when he fell facefirst onto a pile of sharp stones and splintered wood. The dark knight's helmet popped loose when his neck snapped at the end of the fall and before Regdar could spin up to his feet, the knight was already standing, even though he was missing a head.

The helm rolled off the pile of rubble and came to rest against Regdar's foot but it was empty. In front of Regdar stood the knight, his weight on his undamaged left leg, his sword swinging into a guard position, and just an empty space where his head should have been.